A Knack for Monsters

symbolic-everything prompted: A crunch of glass underfoot

intrikate88 prompted: ouroboros

A Knack for Monsters

Later that evening, the doorbell rings. Halfway to the couch with two cups of tea in hand, Hatter goes rigid, stiff-legged, like a dog ready to fight. Immediately, Belle's father is out of his chair. Maybe it's the pills he took at dinner, but Moe French moves quickly for a man with three broken ribs and his arm in a sling.

He says, "I'll get it. You kids stay out of sight, yeah?" and with one last glance at her, limps out into the front hall.

Her father is not a brave man anymore. Where once he fought a dragon in his youth, here he flinches at the sound of tires in the night. But now, Belle's heart clenches to see his shoulders high and level once again, the bearing of an old king at war.

She bares her teeth in pride—it hurts, somehow, burning like breaking feathers on a phoenix tail. Hatter stands at her side, his hip against the arm of the couch. Together, they twist their fingers at his back in a cantrip for honor and good luck.

Her father is not a brave man, but he loves like the sun, and he will stand between them and the world as long as his legs hold up.

When Moe returns, he comes with the sheriff close at his back.

"Sit anywhere you like," he says, gesturing at the scattering of plush, well-worn furniture in the den.

Most of it is older than this world, pieces her mother loved once upon a time, before she died. Some have been reupholstered—and in the case of the fainting chair, un-upholstered, made into a bookshelf—but this house is still in many ways a castle.

Emma seems to sense it. She settles gingerly at the edge of an armchair across from Belle, sets her plastic grocery bag on the floor beside the table.

"I brought your shoes," she says, indicating the bag. "You uh… pulled a Cinderella on us."

"Thank you." Belle smiles and keeps her hands tightly folded in her lap. "My knight in shining badge."

Emma snorts. "Yeah," she says. "About that. Do you want to file a restraining order?"

This is not a familiar term—yet another word to learn, like airplanes and television and what to do when the microwave beeps—but at least this phrase is clear enough.

Something she'll say to make Rumpelstiltskin go away.

Emma is a nice girl, but her words are not strong enough to take on any weapon in Rumpelstiltskin's hoard.

"It'll keep Gold away from you," Emma adds when she does not speak. "No contact, not with you, not with your family. It'd be like he didn't exist."

Hatter's hand finds her shoulder. Belle can't see him—she cannot turn her head away from Emma—and it is nice to know the world hasn't gobbled him up. He squeezes, once, and Belle shakes her head.

"No, thank you," she says.

Emma frowns, cocks her head.

"Belle," she starts to speak, takes a breath and pauses instead. Very like the mayor's boy, Belle notices, but when Emma starts again, her voice is gentle, not wheedling.

"Listen," she says. "I've never seen anybody run as fast as you ran from him today and I've seen guys trying to outrun police dogs. I can get you the forms, no problem, and I promise—no judge in the world is going to turn you down."

Standing in the doorway, her father hums his disapproval. "Probably better that we don't, Sherriff."

With pursed lips, Emma glances between them. The look in her eyes says there's deep water here and damned if she won't find a stick deep enough to reach the bottom.

"Now, hold up a minute. You don't have to press charges for a restraining order, if that's what you're worried about. It's just a couple of forms, a court appearance, and that's it."

And Emma is a nice girl, but somehow, sitting across from the sheriff feels like drifting on an unsettled sea. Belle swallows. The room spins and canters, but she can do this. She can do this. Once upon a time, she used to be brave.

Still, she risks a glance at Hatter, catches him licking his lips. It's a nervous habit, a hawker's tell.

"Little manxome piece of paper's not gonna stop him," Hatter says. Belle takes his hand from her shoulder, twines their fingers together and nests them together on his knee.

Abruptly, his knee stops shaking. He seems startled, as if he hadn't noticed his leg jogging away without him.

And for a long moment, Emma narrows her eyes and looks between them all.

Once, when Belle was very young, she read a story about Gertha the Bold, a dragon hunter in the Western mountains. She'd always imagined Gertha something like this girl—red leather for scales, men's breeches, and a tangled golden mane. Gertha's eyes were black, not green, but otherwise, Emma sits with shoulders taut in the heart-hearth of her father's old kingdom, and she is more than ready to slay dragons.

"What I don't understand," she says at long last, meeting Belle's eyes like an oncoming truck. "He's just a man. A seriously messed up snake of a man, but a man, just the same. You caved half his chest in, Belle—he's obviously human. Why are you still so scared of him?"

Belle catches Hatter's eyes for a moment. Minutely, he shakes his head. Emma catches it. Of course Emma catches it. Dragon hunters must be quick, ready for teeth in the shadows.

And Belle wants to tell her. She wants to trust this woman who found her beating a man to death and wrapped her in a blanket just the same. Who stood between her and the Evil Queen without knowing or caring for the danger she placed herself in. Who said, "No. They're coming with me," and made the sorceress walk away.

And she wants to tell her. But there is no way to say, "because he's magic," and still sound sane.

"He's more dangerous than he advertises," Belle says instead, and this is half a lie, but true enough. "He has ways of reaching people without ever lifting a finger."

And Emma grins, all teeth, a little trick stolen from the dragons she slays.

"Well, tell you what, then," she says. "He comes at you in any way? I'll lock him up and make sure he never sees the light of day again."

"You can do that?" Moe asks.

Emma shrugs. "Technically or really? Because technically, that's not legal, but I'm learning law and justice are two different things in Storybrooke. You wanna guess which one I swore to uphold?"

Belle smiles. Even with the world a tipping, frightening sea, she smiles.

Emma could. She believes it. If anyone, Emma could.

But Hatter shakes his head, bares his teeth. "Not worth the risk. Don't want to spend any more time than I have to waiting for the frumious trap to break."

Emma's eyes barely flicker to Hatter. She watches Belle instead, gauging, her head ever so slightly cocked, the corner of her lip caught between her teeth.

At last she says, "That's alright. But you've got my number, Belle, if you need anything."

Belle nods. She hears water crashing in her ears, the cry of gulls thrashing against the rocks. A second conversation runs fast like fire beneath the surface of their words and she can't hear it—she can't hear anything over the rush of her own blood—but Emma does.

She thinks it might be all Emma hears. The sheriff looks right through them. Their protests may as well be etching on a leaded window.

Belle swallows. If she is a dragon, she is hardly large enough to make this hunter a new pair of boots.

"I have your number," she agrees.

"Was that all you needed, sheriff?" Hatter asks.

He stands and he means to put himself between Belle and the world again, but Emma's faster. Dragon hunters always are. She says, "Just one more thing. I've been wondering. Where's your accent from, anyway?"

Hatter's shoulder draw taught. Belle stands up. "Australia," she says, and draws the dragon hunter's eyes back to hers.

Emma makes a sound, something like a surprised grunt. "Doesn't sound like yours."

And she's watching, listening, hearing the conversation they aren't having.

Belle stands her ground.

"Australia's a big place."

"Huh," she says again. She does not smile. Belle wonders what she heard. "Alright then. I guess I'll see myself out."

It takes an hour before the conversation surfaces again, over a sink full of dirty dishes and Belle up to her arm in suds.

"Frumious, Hatter? Manxome? You are slipping."

Standing at her side, with exaggerated care, he settles a newly dry plate into the plastic rack. "Don't take your wizard out on me."

"This isn't Wonderland," she snaps. "Can't you just say fuck like a normal man?"

"She unnerves me."

"She could unnerve a rock. We have to be careful. If it gets back to the queen that we remember—"

He snatches up another plate, snarls, "It won't."

Belle glances at him from the corner of her eye. His shoulders are taut, his jaw tight enough to crack. "You're not this careless," she says. "What's going on?"

Hatter shrugs it off. "I'm getting old."

"Hawkers don't get old, Hatter, they get dead. That's what you've always said."

"Well, maybe I changed my mind."

"Or maybe you've been into my pills."

"Listen, mutton, I've been really fucking kind, but do you honestly think you're the only one that goddamned place fucked up?"

"Dr. Hopper—"

"I'm not going to Dr. Hopper."

"So you're giving up?"

"Giving up?" he slams the plate down into the rack. Bits of porcelain fragment off and slide towards the drain. "I'm keeping safe. I'm not spilling my guts to a frumi—fucking cricket. And I haven't said a word about your going, mutton, because it seems like he makes you happy. But by the knights, I'm not spilling my guts to a bug that won't shut up."

No voices were raised, no gazes met or accusations made, but Belle feels her hands begin to shake. She lifts her arms from the soapy water and strips off her plastic yellow gloves.

Hatter watches her, head down, ready to run. Gently, she reaches out and takes his hand in hers. A tendril of magic runs over the back of his hand and into hers.

"We're not fighting about pills, are we?" she asks. "I don't… I don't care if you take mine. You're welcome to, Hatter. Yours if you want them."

Sucking in a shaky breath through his nose, he tugs her close, tucks her head beneath his chin.

"I'm sorry," he says.

She presses into him, feeling his heat like a wall, like an aging kingdom.

"I as well. It's just, this thing… I'm afraid one day we'll wake up and be back at the beginning. Like the snake eating its own tail, hurting and hungry, again and again. Just this, this story, forever."

"We've stayed in one place too long. That's our problem, mutton," he says, his free hand tangling in her hair. "You and me, we're not meant to settle down."

She shakes her head, leaving tearstains on the lapels of Hatter's smart vest.

"I'm so worried it's not over."

Hatter shakes his head and breathes. "You know it's not."

Belle wants to laugh.

"Lucky us," she whispers to his pocket. "I've got a knack for monsters."

In the middle of the night, Belle wakes to the sound of breaking glass. She finds Hatter shaking, a battered felt top hat on his head, another clenched in one bleeding fist.

Avoiding bits of shattered mirror, she pads into the hall without a word, returns with tweezers and antiseptic and little blue pills. The pills come first. Then the glass. Once upon a time, she'd have used boiled dandelion to fend off infection. Tonight, she uses Neosporin. The spell she works to close the gashes remains unchanged. She knows this routine.

When she has finished, Belle eases Hatter back into bed and he does not protest. With their backs to the moon, they curl together like lost children, like seashells tucked one inside the other. Legs tangle. Arms alight. Belle pushes the bed sheets down to keep them from catching fire. Hatter's magic shutters and sobs, wrenching at hers.

Together, they clutch and cuddle, shivering in the dark while a funeral pyre cascades down their shoulders, mourning the loss of former lives.

Two broken phoenixes, they light the room.

Belle tucks her face in Hatter's shoulder, rubs restless circles down his back, and tries not to cry as they shatter.

The next morning, they are better. Hatter zips up the back of her sundress with a smile and drops his newsboy hat down over her ears. Belle grins. She pulls the hat low over her eyes and does a slow tango by herself, slippered feet sliding over shards of mirror in the middle of the bedroom. A moment later Hatter joins her. They dance together down the stairs and her father laughs.

"No playing on the stairs, children," he says and Hatter winks at him.

Belle hugs her father good morning today. She is better now at touching people, and Moe French is so gentle, so careful with his old warrior's hands, as if he is afraid she might break.

"Did you eat yet, Moe?" Hatter asks, padding into the kitchen, still in bare feet despite the glass. "I thought I'd make omelets today."

Belle smiles to herself and does not listen for her father's response. She slips out the kitchen door, instead, meaning to start the morning with the paper and the feel of grass between her toes.

But while the paper is there, as always, sitting neatly on the stoop… it is not alone.

A hybrid tea rose rests beside it. This one wears an odd color—not quite red and with a tender yellow settled deep down in the cup of the petals. Its stem is corkscrewed and crooked. Not one of theirs. People never buy roses with less than perfect stems.

This flower made its home in a trellis, maybe. Or a wild briar bush.

Poetic, Belle thinks. She is not a fan of poetry.

Carefully, avoiding the thatching of hooked and angled thorns, she stoops to pick up the flower by its bloom. Underneath, she finds a note.

Belle—

Sorry to have so grievously upset you yesterday. It was not my intent.

Could we meet? Wherever you feel comfortable. I'd like to explain.

—Gold

For a long moment, Belle stands frozen, the open door behind her, a grinning expanse of lawn waiting ahead. The sun beats down, burning the morning mist from the grass, but she can't feel it.

She thinks she should probably hide the note from Hatter. If he sees it, he'll do something wretched and now, here, they won't be able to run from the consequences. Belle thinks she should hide it. It should be her secret. One of those things, like names, that they don't share.

But he is her other half, her chosen twin, and she needs him.

So Belle pivots, blindly, and makes her way back inside the kitchen. Hatter stands at the stove, preparing to crack a half-dozen eggs. He takes one look at her face, and sets the egg he holds back inside the carton.

They do not speak. They have little need for words. Belle only hands him the note and the rose.

Hatter reads. His face darkens like an oncoming storm. His jaw locks. Magic flares from his shoulders and eyes. A moment later he strides out into the living room to find her father.

"Knave of Hearts can't keep his fingers out of the damn pies," he snarls, thrusts the paper in her father's lap.

And Moe's face goes thunderous dark. He spares the paper half a glance and asks, "Where'd you get this, sweetheart?"

Belle feels her oceans rising. The world groans beneath her feet, heavy and ponderous and far, far too large.

She can only touch Hatter's hem and point.

"The front stoop," Hatter gives her voice. "With the paper." And then, "You have this bastard's number, Moe?"

For a moment, her father looks ready only to take up his old sword. "Yeah," he says at last. "Yeah. I've got his mobile. Keeps it on him at all times. In case of business, the plonker."

Rifling through a messy stack of papers beside the couch, Moe comes up with a weatherworn scrap of numbers and hands it to Hatter. "He'll answer."

And easy as that, Hatter calls him. Belle thinks distantly that this sort of thing should be harder. This new world with its strange mechanical magic that Hatter caught onto so blindingly fast. She still cannot work the microwave, has trouble with the stove, but Hatter punches ten buttons and doesn't waste time with pleasantries.

When the ringing on the other end stops, low and harsh like growling dogs, like a monster woken hungry in the night, Hatter growls, "Listen up, Jabberwock. Come near my Mary Ann again and I will cripple you."

On the far distant end, Belle hears an older beast rumbling, but cannot make out the words, and whatever Gold says, Hatter laughs.

"No. You will try."

"Hatter," Belle whispers. Her fingers find his hem, and a little of the raging darkness eases from his eyes.

"Have a nice day, Jabberwock," he says. "You know where you stand."