vargen23 prompted: dragons' blood and tea
Sideways, Through a Mirror
For some time, Gold leaves her mostly alone, though Belle still finds flowers on her doorstep. Gladiolus in admiration of strength. Hydrangeas for apology. Hydrangeas from so many different bushes, Belle begins to wonder if Gold isn't wandering the town, sneaking into other people's gardens in the night.
He used to, she knows. Once upon a time, he brought her water lilies from the Frog King's pond. He filled their dinner table with spiky protea from the mouths of dragon's dens and carried her anemones from the bottom of the sea in a little glass bowl just big enough to hold with both hands.
Now he brings her hydrangeas, stolen from his neighbors.
Belle ignores everything that turns up on her stoop. Until, one day, he leaves her daffodils. Because they are her favorite.
This bouquet, she sets on fire and nails to the door of his shop.
After that, the flowers stop coming.
Weeks pass. Archie calls. And Archie calls. And Archie calls. Sometimes worried, sometimes stern, but Belle never answers. She hears the whispers as she walks down the street. People don't know what to make of her now. Magic is impossible, but she is magic, and they saw fire. They saw Mr. Gold—the man they all fear—cornered against his own car. They saw his sleeves char black.
So the phone rings and Belle ignores it, and days pass without a blip.
Then, one morning, as Belle sits crosslegged in the window of the shop, setting up the new week's Easter display, Alice skips inside. The little girl looks different without her party frock and harried braid, but her wide, wicked grin and the mostly invisible rabbit that follows along behind her is much unchanged.
Belle cannot help but return that smile. As the little girl's mother walks up to the front counter to speak with Moe, Belle waves her over.
Her father glances her way, smiles fast and grateful. He is utterly smitten with the widow, and children make awkward attempts at flirting even more difficult.
"Morning, Mrs. Hargreaves," he begins and Alice skips over.
The poor thing is practically squashed under the weight of all the books in her clear plastic backpack. As she sets it down on the floor beside the window ledge, Belle catches a few titles. The Secret Garden. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. The Rats of Nimh.
I want a daughter, she thinks again, without meaning to. I want a little girl, just like you.
Instead, she says, "Hello," and smiles a secret. "Do you want to come in?"
From the counter, Alice's mother says to Moe, "I'm here for Mr. Gold, actually. Such a weird man. I never know where I stand with him. But he'll give me an extension on my rent as long as I come here today—and it had to be today—to place this order. He said to call it a peace offering."
Alice shakes her head at her mother's fluttering eyes, then smiles at Belle. She is so much older than she seems—and then, suddenly, she is not. She says, "Yes. Very much and thank you."
Climbing up into the window beside her takes some doing, but with a little help, Alice manages. She plops down and grins, stretches out her feet between the flowers. "We're on our way to school. Yuck. I'm glad Mr. Gold made us come here first."
Carefully, Belle keeps her face steady and unconcerned. She threads a tulip with wire and eases it into the brick of florist foam glued down in the belly of the basket. "Mr. Gold made you come here?"
At the counter, Mrs. Hargreaves laughs and leans in. "I haven't the faintest," Belle hears distantly. "Personally, I think your girl knocked the sense out of him. And a good job, too. Someone needed to."
Briefly, Alice glances backwards at her mother before she nods. "My mama hates him, but I think he's okay. He gave me a peppermint once." She doesn't seem bothered at all, as if old dragons with sweeties are par for the course. Alice leans in, touching a tulip's sleek bud. "What're you doing up here?"
"Making the Easter displays." Carefully, Belle scoops a chunk of sod and tiny purple flowers into the belly of a tender green basket. She glances up at Alice and offers the girl a smile. "Would you like to help?"
"If I get dirty before school, Mama will scold. And Bit. They're just the same." She screws up her face. "Fussy."
Belle grins. She leans in and whispers, "When I was a little girl, before I knew magic, I had a tutor just like that. Smelly old bird never let me have any fun."
Alice's eyes flare wide and bright. "You too?" she asks, as though this is a revelation. "What'd you do?"
"Well, I ran away a lot. I was very good at hiding in trees." Belle presses down another smile, tries hard to look stern. "But I don't think you should do that."
Alice sighs. "No. Bit would fuss."
"Well, here," she says and smiles—whenever has she smiled so often before? She picks a tiny purple flower from where its lack will not be noticed. "For Bit. He can eat this. It's just a dog violet."
"Oh! Thank you." So gingerly, Alice accepts the flower with utter concentration and the gravity of a ceremony, as though she is not often given presents for the friend that no one else can see.
Turning, she offers it to the vested rabbit at her side. He reaches out, takes the flower carefully between long and gnarled claws. Immediately, the little purple bloom goes hazy.
Bit gives it a nibble, twitches his nose and gobbles it down.
When he looks up hopefully, Alice crosses her arms. "No, you say thank you."
The rabbit scrunches up its nose and sweeps a bow, bending down so low his ears sweep a pattern in the pollen strewn across the tile floor. And Belle laughs, abruptly and without quite meaning to. The awkward, birdy sound of it startles Alice into laughing, too.
Immediately, Belle covers her mouth with a hand, but Alice dissolves again into giggles, and she remembers it's alright to laugh—even at a mostly invisible rabbit. With a child here, she can laugh and it doesn't matter what at, or if no one else can see it. Because she's made a friend.
And at the counter, both Mrs. Hargreaves and her father look around at them, their faces torn in identical expressions of love and wistful wonder.
Belle knows the eyes of a worried parent. She thinks perhaps Alice doesn't laugh nearly as much as she should, either.
"Would he like another?" she asks, reaching for the unsorted pile of flowers. But Alice shakes her head.
"He's on a diet today. Otherwise he won't fit into his waistcoats. That happened last spring. He went around bare chested like a wild hopper." She whispers the last as if scandalized. Belle looks, and she thinks she can see the rabbit blush.
Her father asks Mrs. Hargreaves something in lower tones. The woman nods, chews a lip, turns her head aside. Flowers are chosen at random, cards and greetings dropped inside. Their eyes keep touching, slipping away, then aching for the loss.
"Well, Bit looks quite dapper today," Belle says. "I don't think another flower will hurt him much. They're so small."
Alice shakes her head. She finds a daisy lost in the box of grass and twirls it between her fingers.
"But they're like candy," she says. "And he eats when he's stressed. He's meant to have dandelions and grass."
Belle snorts. "Seems a bit bland."
Beside them, Bit nods emphatically. Again, Belle laughs.
Alice smiles. But then, she cocks her head and asks, "Who's that man in the doorway there?"
"My papa, probably," Belle says. She finishes threading a daffodil with wire and turns to look.
Hatter stands in the doorway to the back room. Wide eyed and stricken, he stands with legs locked, frozen in the doorframe. The look on his face speaks of pain.
"Oh, that's Hatter."
"Your friend, Hatter?" Alice asks.
"Yes." Belle frowns. Hatter didn't seem glossy this morning, but he's acting strangely now. "He's called Jefferson here, though. We save Hatter for secrets and the underneath of picnic tables. Would you like to meet him?"
"Okay!"
And Belle tries to wave him over, but he doesn't seem to notice. His eyes are on Alice, and only on Alice, but when the little girl smiles and waves at him, he jerks into motion like a broken wind-up toy, scrambling backwards and away, back into the sorting room.
At the desk, neither Alice's mother nor Belle's father notice Hatter's abrupt disappearance.
"Oh." The little girl's face falls. "He doesn't like strangers either?"
"Usually he's the best with strangers." Belle leans towards the glass to check the street outside. Maybe the queen has found them, she thinks.
But no, if the queen were here, they'd fight together. They'd raze the whole block down. And in any case, the street is empty, save for an old woman walking her cocker spaniel.
"I don't know what's wrong," she says.
At the counter, Alice's mother pulls herself away from awkward flirting long enough to say, "Well, I guess that's about it, then. I'll um… I'll see you soon." She blushes and turns, pats her hair into place although it hasn't moved. "Come on, Gracie. Time to go."
Belle arches an eyebrow.
"Gracie?" she asks.
Alice flashes a sneaky smile and ducks her head. "I lied." She darts in, cups her hands to Belle's ear and whispers. "If you see me tomorrow, I'll be Bruce. Shh."
And then she's off, out of the window with Bit at her heels and a sack full of books dragging behind her. Alice's—Gracie's—mother smiles at Belle and shrugs. Her eyes are genuinely warm as she waves goodbye. She seems grateful, strangely enough. Hopeful.
Belle returns her smile and her wave. Only then does Mrs. Hargreaves follow her daughter out into the street.
Odd, she thinks, but then something crashes in the back room and abruptly, she forgets about it. She rises, leaps off the window just as her father starts, sets down the piece of paper in his hand.
Belle shakes her head. "Let me get him, papa."
Moe nods. "Be careful, dear," he says.
This, too, strikes Belle as odd, but she doesn't stop to think.
She slips into the back room, to find Hatter standing over the fallen coatrack with his shoulders tight and bent. Plaster dusts his clenched and shaking hands. She thinks he must have torn the hooks right out of the wall.
"Hatter?" Belle ventures.
When he turns to her, he's shaking from head to foot. Twin tear tracks streak his face.
"That's my daughter," he whispers. "That's my little girl."
Belle does for him the best she can, but Hatter is a wild wreck and he will not be soothed. She thinks she should call Archie, maybe, and waits hopefully for the phone to ring. But Archie hasn't called in days, and anyway, that would be the worst kind of betrayal.
Some secrets—the secrets that come with names—can never be shared.
So Belle offers Hatter pills at the intervals the bottle suggests. She keeps him well glossy, and makes him eat. She rubs his shoulder, though he does not cry again. He simply sits, and stares, and occasionally he whispers, "my baby girl," and "I want that bastard dead."
And Belle doesn't know what he heard from the back room, but Mrs. Hargreaves called it a peace offering. Said she'd been sent by Gold. And it's strange, it's odd. It hurts in a way Belle didn't know she could. But somehow, it… makes sense.
Because all the flowers in the world wouldn't begin to sketch the first lines of an apology in the air. But a daughter—Hatter's daughter… Peace, after hunting jabberwocks and scorching the sidewalk with flame…
Belle sits with Hatter. She does not leave his side. She holds his hand, and whispers stories the swamp dragons told them, once upon a time.
And she can't help thinking—hoping—that Gold meant what his messenger said.
When finally, finally, sleep catches Hatter upside his aching head, Belle sneaks downstairs. She finds the slip of paper full of numbers on the coffee table, and squints at her father's messy hand. Home, says one set of numbers. Another, shop. Another, mobile.
Belle picks the last set—because whatever a mobile is, apparently it always reaches Gold—and carefully, she works the buttons on the phone.
The slight plastic bowl with its many holes trills in her ear. Then again. And again. It trills so long that Belle hangs up, and dials the number again. This time, on the fourth trill, something clicks and something thuds, and Gold's groggy, grumpy voice snarls, "What?"
Belle decides she likes phones. Because on the other end of this, there is a monster who destroyed an entire world. But on the phone he sounds small and sleepy, a little boy woken up long after he should have been abed.
She says, "I want to talk. May I come see you?"
Something thuds again. Belle hears Gold swear from far away, scrambling, and then his voice is near again. "Belle?"
It sounds like a question, like peach pits that have yet to burn. Belle sits down on the edge of the couch and says, "Yes."
"And you want to…? Of course, yes. Always," he breathes, as if he cannot. As if air is precious and he is dreaming somewhere undersea. "You're always welcome. Always."
A pause, and then he adds, "But—you do realize it's one in the morning?"
Belle smiles, because in the dark room there is no one to see it. "Yes."
Gently, Gold ventures, "Usually, people are abed this hour, dearie."
"Hatter is abed," she says. "Thus the hour."
"Ah." He does his best, but his voice still darkens. "I see. Well, then. You have my home address?"
She does not. So Gold gives it to her, painstakingly careful, as if he is afraid she will get lost. He recites his address twice, tells her again and again the landmarks she will need to find, though his voice keeps going muddled and strangely deep, as though he is breaking, or cannot quite figure out whether he is sleeping or awake.
When, at last, Belle laughs at him and tells him, "Stop. If I don't find it now, it isn't meant to be," on the other end, she hears him swallow.
He murmurs, "Belle. Can we call a truce?"
Sitting on the transfigured, reupholstered remnants of her dead mother's favorite couch, she considers this. She remembers the scent of her mother's perfume, and the way her eyes laughed when she should have been cross.
Belle nods, though there is no one here to see it. "For tonight."
"Of course," he agrees. "For tonight." Then, so gently, "I love you."
"I will take twenty minutes," Belle says.
And then, just as gently, she hangs up the phone.
When Gold answers the door, he is dressed. Belle had half expected he would have gone back to bed, decided her a dream and come out later to answer the door in his bedclothes or a robe. But, Gold looks as expensive as always, of course, if a little frayed. His eyes roam her face, but never leave.
"You came." It sounds so much like thank you that something behind Belle's breastbone goes soft.
"May I come in?" she says.
"Of course. Sorry, I—" he cuts himself off and steps back, gestures to the warm-lit all behind him with as much of a bow as he can manage with his leg. "I made tea," he offers.
Belle tries a smile—something small. "Thank you."
Inside, his house is nothing like the Dark Castle used to be. The floors are warm wood, the walls something close to the rose he left on her stoop. At her shoulder, when Belle drapes her coat on the rack next to his, the hall light plays on the colored glass of his doors, and despite the clutter of two worlds sprawled between these rooms, it strikes Belle that this is the sort of house to raise a child in.
So many windows full of so many colors. In daylight, Gold must live in rainbows.
One day, she thinks, she'd like a house like this.
Gold limps into the kitchen, ginger with his broken ribs and his bad knee. Belle follows. She watches and waits until he pours two cups of tea before saying, "Thank you for Hatter's daughter." And then, "What are your intentions?"
Gold stops. Carefully, he sets the kettle back down, half-turns his head her way.
"My intentions? She's seven."
Belle stands her ground. She holds her shoulders high and even in the doorway, like a dragon hunter gone to war.
"Yes. And if you try to use her against Hatter, I will kill you. I know I'm not as strong as you, Rumpelstiltskin, but I am brave," she says, and an instant later, Belle realizes it's true. It's true, and it's like breathing again. "I am brave. And if you hurt him, I will not stop until you're dead."
He glances at her sideways, gathers up the two mugs in his unbroken arm and limps heavily to the table, this time without his cane.
"It was a peace offering," he says, and will not look at her. "Whatever you must think of me, I'd never harm a child."
His eyes dart away like minnows in shallow water. A truth. He has always been uncomfortable with truths.
Belle nods. She sits down and accepts her tea. His kitchen table is not at all what she expected. It would never grace a dining hall, or even a family home. Small, circular, with one crooked leg—this is the table of an empty house, and a lonely, broken man.
And he… he was a man once, wasn't he?
"Hatter thinks you're working for the queen," she says.
Gold breathes through his nose, out through his mouth. She wonders if he has been to see Archie, too. It doesn't seem to help him, either. He rubs his eyes as though he is in pain.
"Why Hatter?" he asks. "Out of anyone you could have found. Why not the dwarves, Belle? You seemed to get on well enough with them."
Belle cradles her mug in her hands, tastes the steam on the pad of her tongue in search of poisons. There are rules on the road that can never be forgotten. Always give a stranger food, but never accept blindly what you are given. She waits until Gold takes a sip from his before she tastes her own.
"I knew you were watching me," she says.
His eyes slip away. He shifts. His knee brushes hers beneath the table and Gold startles, though he hides it well. He pulls away, arranges himself so that she no longer feels his heat against her skin, though she sees his fingers pressing too tight against the edges of his cup. He coughs, though lightly, nothing to jar his ribs.
"Do you remember Sirle?"
"That was the… the city full of ginger princes, was it not? I remember meeting old King Coren. He was sweet. And absolutely crawling with grandchildren." Belle wants to laugh, but it sticks and flutters in her throat.
She thinks maybe her ashy peach pit is growing into a tree.
But Gold says nothing, and when finally she looks up, Belle finds his eyes on her, taking tally of her face, noting every line and curve.
"He introduced you to the crowd as his wife," he whispers at last and his dark eyes dart away. "I went home after that. Drank myself stupid."
"Oh."
For a long moment, it is all Belle can think to say. At last, at length, she sighs and runs her fingers through her hair. "We… no, we were never married, Rumpelstiltskin. Nor do we ever want to be. It was part of our act. Sometimes, I was Madam Sorceress, and he the apprentice. Other times, we'd switch. Or we'd be married. Brother and sister. Cousins, once. Enemies, another."
His lips twitch. Slowly, he shakes his head and stares down into his tea.
"Then I'm afraid I've spent the last thirty years of my life a truly foolish old man."
Belle smiles at him over her tea—chamomile, two sugars, the way she's always taken it—and awkward, coltish, Gold smiles back.
From there, things are easier. For the first time in thirty years, they take the first tentative steps towards friendship again.
Belle doesn't sleep. She returns home three hours later with her head abuzz and static leaping from her fingers. So, instead, as quietly as she can, she cleans the kitchen. She sorts the messy den, takes the list of Gold's numbers and slides it in her father's little black book with all the others.
The sun has not yet begun to sink its fingers into the clouds, but Belle makes breakfast just the same. When Hatter comes down at six, he glares at the pancakes she offers him through bleary eyes. He wears his lavender top hat, though the buttons of his shirt are as of yet undone and his skinny silver belt buckle dances when he walks.
"Where were you?" he demands, unmoving in the door.
Belle sees no point in lying. The damage, such as it is, has hours since been done. "I went to see Mr. Gold."
Hatter smiles, and though he is not glossy, it does not reach his eyes.
"Did you kill him?"
"I thankedhim."
She sets the pancakes on the table—a table meant to house a family—because it's obvious Hatter will not take them. His mouth twists in ugly ways she hasn't seen in years. "For what?"
"For your daughter, Jefferson," Belle snaps. "You could have gone years without knowing."
"Yeah?" he swallows, glances over her shoulder, back to her, then past her, unseeing. "And what good does knowing do me, eh? Because that bastard knows just how to get at me now. He's probably watching us through the damn mirrors."
"He's not and you know it," she says before he can prowl around the house breaking glass again. "Sit down and eat."
Now, finally, Hatter staggers into the kitchen.
"Eat?" he demands. "Eat? Your frumious wizard has my baby girl, Belle—and now, apparently, he has you. You tell me how in the uffish hell I'm supposed to sit down and eat?"
Belle stares him down. She is not afraid. "Bend at the hip, again at the knee. I find that usually helps."
"Belle."
"No, you're being ridiculous."
"I don't want you near him," he says. He shakes his head, his eyes bright and too-clear. "You don't understand, Belle, I'll not let him have you."
And though she loves Hatter, abruptly, her patience breaks. She flings her spatula down into the sink and rounds on him, teeth unhappily bared.
"No one has me, Hatter. I am my own woman and I choose my fate."
Hatter barks a laugh in her face. "Like you chose him in the first place, yeah? Like you chose to be captured by the queen because you learned a little magic, because she thought she could use us against him? You chose that? Oh, dearie me, I must have missed that contract. When did I sign up?"
"No. No, Hatter, I saved my village when I went with him. I made the right choice that day."
"Did you have a choice? You went to your death that day. How kind of the monster not to rape you. How generous he left you alive."
They circle each other over the kitchen table, both of them fisting spells they can't quite seem to grasp. In the plastic rack of drying dishes, a forgotten dishtowel turns into a sleeping dove. In the garbage, the remnants of a pumpkin pie become a smashed and battered match-box truck.
"You don't know him," Belle says. She keeps her shoulders very straight, as though, if she faces Hatter as she did the ogres, this problem will go away.
But he says, "Neither do you," and laughs. "He got roaring drunk and lost an entire kingdom. Belle, he made this fucking curse we're trapped in."
"This is the queen's curse!" she shouts and Hatter clicks his fingers, slams his hands down onto the table.
"Exactly. But you listen to the spells sing and tell me he wasn't the one to make it."
Belle breathes like Archie told her, but it never seems to help. She wants to throw things. Heavy things. She wants to aim them straight at Hatter's face.
"So he made it." She shrugs with an effort, glares at him a challenge. "He's a whore, Hatter, he'll make for anyone if the payment's right. And who are you to talk, anyway? The Queen of Hearts owns your head."
Hatter goes very still, suddenly, on the opposite side of the table. His doggish face darkens. His fingers catch in the rungs of a chair and go nearly blue around the knuckles. Belle can count every vein from where she stands.
"Shut up," he says. "That's different."
There is a reason they do not speak of names. The reason is here, today, burning in the lines of history and agony between them. Belle bears her teeth.
"Is it different?" she presses. "You lost your daughter."
"Shut up."
"You lost your daughter because you couldn't keep your fingers out of the damn pies. That was you, Hatter. That was always you."
Hatter shoves the chair over. He reaches out and swipes the plate of pancakes off the table. It shatters to the ground, far more than chipped, but Belle doesn't turn her head to look. She stares Hatter in his cold diamond eyes, even as he snarls, "Don't you talk about my girl. Don't you dare."
Hatter will not hurt her, because he is frightened and today, Belle is brave.
"Do you even know that woman she was with today? Is that her mother? Because I'll bet a dime to the dozen it isn't. She's a lost child, Hatter—she's a lost child because of what you did."
"Don't you fucking dare!" he bellows, slams his hands again onto the table. "I did what I had to. I was the only thing she had. I made sure she'd be safe. I kept her out of it."
"Oh, don't act so fucking noble. The queen pointed and you killed."
"I had no choice! I was apprenticed!"
"Everyone always has a choice. And you knew that wasn't the right one—you knew it, Hatter—but you still—"
"You want to talk about blame, mutton? Is that what this is? Because Rumpelstiltskin's working for the queen and you know it, Belle. You bloody well know it, but you're still going to crawl in his bed—"
"I went to thank him."
"Oh, yes, thank you for the flowers, dear. Thank you for stealing my Hatter's daughter. Thank you for the uffish dagger in my back."
Belle crosses her hands over her chest. She will not shake. She will not.
"Hatter," she bites. "Stop."
"Why?" He spreads his arms and laughs, sauntering around the table towards her. "What the fuck does it matter anymore, huh? The queen knows we're here. You saw to that, lighting up like a damned myth in the middle of the town. What's it matter if we're quiet? Damn it, Belle, we've been quiet for thirty years and I'm done. I want to burn her down!"
"Shut up!" Belle shouts. She shoves him, their faces barely inches apart, slams her fists like grief into his chest. "You shut up, Hatter! You shut up right now, or so help me I will break you! What the hell do you know anyway? I loved him. I loved him!"
And Hatter quiets. He stills and stands and lets her strike him, though pain streaks his face.
When finally she stops, he still says nothing. She has asked him to shut up.
But his face creases in something like sympathy, something like a knife twisting in her gut. He mouths, "Loved."
Belle turns away. She rights the chair and sits down at the kitchen table, ignoring the mess he's made of their breakfast.
"Fuck you, Hatter," she says, and though her heart is in it, the venom is gone. "Loved, yes. As in lost. As in no longer. But I kissed him and his curse receded. That means it's true love. It has to be true love."
Another chair scrapes against the checkered tile as Hatter pulls it back. He sits next to her, sighs, takes off his hat and turns it over in his hands. For a long while, they sit together in their silence. Belle hears a door ease gently shut again upstairs. They've woken her father, but he won't come down as long as no spells are cast.
New house rules. No firebirds on the good carpet.
"I never understood true love," Hatter says at last. "Maybe you truly loved him then. Maybe that's what it took. Maybe if you kissed him tomorrow, nothing would happen."
Belle does not look up. "I don't think he's evil."
She feels Hatter's shrug. "If nothing else, he battered your father all to hell, mutton."
"I didn't say I thought he was good. And anyway…" Belle smiles suddenly, something small and sneaky. "I broke his face for that. His… you know, his teeth. His arm. I was brave."
"Yes." Hatter smiles at her and reaches across the table. In old habit, their fingers twine together. "You've always had the fortitude of a gryphon, m'dear."
The argument ends entirely too easily. And Belle should suspect. She knows better—she knows Hatter—but her head is awhirl with curses and queens and she doesn't think. Or rather, she thinks—about Gold, about the coming war, about the price on their heads, about true love and kindness and evil and the magic on her fingers—but not about the right things at all.
And so, it is not for another few hours later, when Belle looks up from the book she hasn't been reading, that she thinks to wonder where Hatter has gone.
Slowly, Belle puts her book aside and stands. Her bones ache. She is fifty-eight years old. At the same time, she is not yet thirty.
"Hatter?" she calls down the stairs.
"Oh, you just missed him, sweetheart," her father calls back up. "He left about an hour ago. Took the van. What'd you need?"
No, Belle thinks. Oh, no.
She flies down the steps, barely stops long enough to put on her shoes, to call over her shoulder, "Hatter's doing something stupid. If I'm not back by nightfall, Papa, give me up for lost."
"What?" he starts and stands. "Belle, wait!"
But she's already out the door, flying down the streets and many turns to Gold's pawn shop. The walk is thirty minutes. At a dead run, it turns out to be fifteen.
But she's already missed him. The shop is unlocked, the door ajar. The sun shines cheerfully overhead, but the sign says closed.
"Hatter?" she calls through heaving breaths, pushing open the door. "Gold?"
No one answers. Inside, the shop reeks of magic. Bad spells. Tricks gone warped and crooked. The air smells like gnomes and knives and a split stomach. The air smells like the queen's dungeon. Like a dying phoenix. Like dragons' blood and tea.
Belle shoves her way through a sea of fallen clutter and into the back room. There, she finds an overturned tea tray on the floor, smashed and puddling. She picks up the kettle and opens the lid.
It smells… odd. Dirty, somehow. Old and deep.
Mushrooms.
Abruptly, Belle thinks of the lavender hat, the broken mirror the week before.
Hatter didn't put his fist through it, she realizes. He put his body through it. He broke it to keep something from following him in. Covering his tracks.
He always was best at covering his tracks.
She should have guessed. She should have smelled Wonderland on him, should have known, but she'd been so sure he couldn't glass-jump here, in this new world. She'd thought they were stranded. She'd thought they were stuck—after all, if he could glass-jump, why were they still here?
Why weren't they home?
But that's not the point, not the point. Belle stands, threads her hands in her hair and pulls. The pain grounds her, steels her thoughts to the task at hand. She turns, taking in details, smelling the air.
Signs of a struggle, but not much. The spell-scents are strange and muddled and mixed with mushroom. What did Hatter use? A percussion spell, maybe? Percussion knocks people back—out, knocks people out if it's used right—and yes, there! Belle spots Gold's cane lying sideways, half hidden under the table. A smear of blood on the table's edge.
Drugged, unconscious, without his cane. Without the wand hidden in the cane.
Gold is lost.
No.
Belle snatches up the cane and barrels through the side door, also unlocked. She finds Gold's Cadillac still there, parked discretely in the alleyway, and she doesn't know how to drive, but her father has been teaching them on the van—fuck, Hatter has the van—and it can't be that hard.
It can't be.
So she picks the lock with a sideways spell and slips into the leather seat. She doesn't have the keys, but cars are just electricity, aren't they, and electricity is just a kind of magic. She can do this. She can.
Make it start. Right pedal means go. Simple. Simple. She'll be okay. They'll all be okay.
Belle concentrates, fires a spell into the wheel. The dash lights up, and for a moment her heart flies into her throat, hoping, hoping—
But the lights flicker out. Dead.
Not dead, please, no.
Belle needs more skill than she has, more training than she was ever taught. Needs more, because if Hatter was here, she could do it, but Hatter isn't here—Hatter is going to kill Rumpelstiltskin—and Belle tears at the cane.
If there's a mechanism to open the top, she can't find it—but she can feel the wand seething inside.
Belle kicks open the car door and slams the cane into the brick wall of the building. Again and again, she smashes it home. Wood splinters. Her hands heat. Flame coils up her arms unattended. Still, Belle brings the cane down.
And she brings the cane down.
And she brings the cane down.
The metal warps, molding to her fingers, dripping down her wrists. But finally, the last wooden thread splinters and shatters, and with a clang, the wand falls free. When Belle snatches it up from the rain wet cement, her fingers dry a puddle there with a bone-jarring hiss.
Belle climbs back in the car.
"You will start this fucking machine," she growls to the wand in her hand, "You will start it, or gods help me, I will destroy you, too. I will uncreate you."
The wand trembles between her metal soaked fingers. But the car starts. Thank god, the car starts.
Right pedal means go.
Belle drives.