Title: Of Dreams and Awakenings
Rating: T
Word count: ~51k
Characters: Belle/Isabelle French, Mr Gold/Rumplestiltskin, Mary Margaret, Emma Swan, Archie Hopper, Henry Mills, Regina Mills, Moe French, various other Storybrooke characters.
Pairing: Belle/Rumplstiltskin (Isabelle/Mr Gold)
Disclaimer: Anything you recognise from 'Once Upon A Time' does not belong to me.
Belle can't sleep.
It isn't a problem she often has; usually sleep comes easily, and for the rare nights it doesn't, Archie has given her a few sleeping pills. But the sleeping pills tend to make it harder to wake up from nightmares, and usually Isabelle prefers not sleeping to not being able to wake up.
It's different tonight; tonight she feels filled to the brim, mind and body buzzing with her new knowledge, her new self-awareness. She's spent the past hour tossing about in the bed, sometimes too hot and sometimes too cold, never quite comfortable enough to relax.
She rolls over onto her back, stares up at the ceiling through the darkness. She can't sleep and she doesn't want to, not really. She wants…
She wants what she can't have, at least not right now. She wants Rumplestiltskin, and he is in his house across town, far too far for her to be thinking of getting up in the middle of the night and going to see him.
He'll be asleep anyway, Belle tells herself as she slides from the bed and goes to the window. She opens the curtains, presses her forehead to cool glass. There's a streetlight close, and she can see the street below, bathed in orange light. Emma's car, a bike chained to the bike stand outside the apartment block. And…
She knows the other car outside, knows who it belongs to. She can't see if there's anyone in it, but he has to be there. He can walk, of course, but not far or without pain. He'll be in the car, watching over her, making sure she's safe.
She should think it's creepy; she should feel a little disgusted, perhaps. He's older than she is, and sitting in his car outside the apartment…it ought to be creepy, and it would be if she didn't want to see him so badly.
Belle retreats from the window, shuts the curtains again and hurries into clothes. Jeans, bra, shirt, socks, keys safely in her pocket. She doesn't put on her shoes, holds them in her hand as she eases her bedroom door open and tiptoes across the apartment to the front door. Once she's in the hallway she puts her shoes on, and then scurries down the stairs, out of the building and towards the car.
She surprises him, but the surprise melts into pleasure and he opens the car door, brings his good leg out so he's facing her more.
"You know," she says, "I think this could be considered stalking."
"It's only stalking if you're not pleased to see me," Mr Gold counters, and Belle can't suppress a grin as she looks down at him. "You should be asleep," he says.
"So should you," she says, and she wraps her arms around herself, wishes she'd thought to bring a jacket. It's past midnight and not warm, but she'd been so intent on her goal – and on being quiet – that the temperature had escaped her notice.
"Get in, you silly girl," he says, an admonishment, and she goes around the car, slides into the passenger seat, closes the door behind her. With the doors shut the car is warm, and he reaches for her, rubs her cold fingers between his hands. "You should be asleep," he says again, a murmur, but it's clear he doesn't want her to be asleep. He wants her here, with him, just as she wants to be here.
"I couldn't," she says. "There's too much going on in my head." He nods, waits for her to continue, and Belle tries to decide what to say – tries to pull a thread from the tangle in her mind, to begin to unravel it all. "Mary Margaret is Snow White," she says at last, and Rumplestiltskin tilts his head, smiles a faint smile.
"Guess, or knowledge?" he asks.
"A little of both," says Belle. "I remember the Queen talking about Snow White, when I was her prisoner. And Henry – he has this book…"
"Ah, yes," says Rumplestiltskin, all smug satisfaction, all grinning pleasure at something he's had a hand in, and Belle wonders exactly how Henry got that book, exactly what planted the suggestion in his mind that the book was real. "Young Henry is quite insightful," he says. "Yes, Miss Blanchard is indeed the fair Snow White. And Emma Swan is her daughter."
"Emma – but – " Belle falters, frowns thoughtfully. "This sounds like a very long story," she says. "Start at the beginning, please."
Amusement lurks behind his eyes, around the corners of his mouth. "A very long story," he agrees. "Far too long for the middle of the night, love."
"I'm not going anywhere," Belle says softly. "I think…I think I need to know. Please tell me, Rumplestiltskin?"
It's perhaps his name that does it, or perhaps the moment when he realises he's still holding her hand. Something removes his opposition, though, and Belle settles more comfortably into her seat and watches his face as he tells her a very long, rather complicated story.
It begins with a lamed father and the son he lost through claiming power to end the ogre wars. But then it also begins with a girl, and a lover, and a magic-wielding mother. It ends with another mother, and a beast trapped beneath a castle, and a deposed queen intent on having her revenge on a child who never meant any harm.
Rumplestiltskin's own part in it is less clear than the Queen's, and Snow White's. He doesn't reveal to her the how of the curse's creation, or whether he knew what would happen after – whether he knew he would end up in this world with the rest of them, but with the full knowledge of who he is.
He doesn't talk about any of that until the end of the story, when Belle squeezes his hand and tries to speak but finds words dead in her mouth.
"I lost my son," he says, and this is the story he never told her, the story he'd promised her that day long ago when he set her free from the Dark Castle. "It – it was my fault. All I knew was that he'd gone to a place without magic, and so I…"
"You tried to find a way to get here too," says Belle softly.
"Of course I did. Every minute of my life from the moment he was gone…every minute was spent trying to get to him, to get him back." He closes his eyes, leans his head back against the head rest. "Until you. You made me forget, for a while. And I loved you so much. And once I'd lost you, I…I twisted the curse. I wanted to find Bae but I didn't want anyone else to have the happiness that had been denied to me." He glances at her now, smiles a bitter smile. "You would have liked him," he says. "Sometimes I would dream that I had you both back and we could be a family."
Belle can't speak, can't find the right words. She cannot give him forgiveness for creating the curse, because it isn't hers to give; and since he did not cast it, he is owed no blame for its execution.
"And since then," she says at last, slow and careful, "time has been…frozen?"
"Yes." He looks away from her, out of the windscreen. "Or perhaps you could say time has been…looped. Every day is different, but nothing fundamentally alters. People have not aged, or died, or been born – unless they try to leave Storybrooke." His smile is grim, perhaps a little bitter. "Nobody can leave Storybrooke, you see," he says to her. "People who try to leave either have a change of heart and decide to stay, or they…disappear."
"Disappear," Belle repeats. "Die?"
"Some of them do indeed die," he says, and his mouth is a twisting scowl. "But people do die, dearie."
"I just meant…" She trails off, pulls her hand from his and shakes her head. "I don't know what I meant. Did you design the curse that way?"
"Some of the parameters were…flexible," Rumplestiltskin admits, and his fingers flutter in the air for a moment, and for a moment she is back in his castle and laughing at the dark jokes he sometimes makes, always accompanied by a flourish of his hands. "So much of magic is about intent, you understand, and the Queen's intent was…" The fingers curl into a fist, and Belle almost flinches. "Control. Revenge, of course, but…control."
"But you remember," says Belle. "And now I do too. How is that control?"
"I designed it, of course I made sure I would remember who I am," he says, looking back at her now, teeth bared in what's not quite a grin. "And as for you…I can't explain that. Not yet. I have theories, but if true love's kiss was enough to break the spell, Miss Blanchard and Mr Nolan would long since have awoken to themselves."
"So why am I different?" Belle asks, voice small and scared, and Rumplestiltskin's eyes narrow a little. He reaches a hand out to her, strokes one finger across her jaw, over her lips.
"You've always been different," he says. "Does it matter why?" Belle shakes her head, feels his fingers fall away from her mouth, licks her lips nervously. His eyes are dark and fixed upon her mouth, and Belle almost wants to shiver. He touches her so much easier than he ever did before, in that other world, and the more he touches her, the more she wants.
"I…" The sound fades and Belle bites her lip, glances away from him. She's nervous, but she's not sure why.
Rumplestiltskin looks at her, and shakes his head. A faint smile lingers about his mouth, and it's the softer smile she remembers from the castle and from her interactions with Mr Gold over the past few weeks, not the manic grin he shows when tricking and dealing.
Then the smile fades, and his gaze slips away from her. "Tell me about what happened to you," he requests, and Belle shivers, hugs herself. He says nothing more, nothing to convince or persuade her – but he answered her questions, and she knows he didn't lie to her. He deserves the same honesty from her.
"I left the castle," she says slowly, "and…I'd reached the village. I went to the inn, I was…shaken. And then I left, the next day. I meant to go back to my father. But she must have been waiting for me. She took me from the road." That dark carriage and the knights in black, the painted red smile that hadn't even pretended to be friendly this time. One of the knights had hit her on the head, knocked her unconscious, and when she'd woken up, it was to find herself in a cold, dark cell.
"I don't know how long I was there," she says at last. She stares blindly out of the window, can't bear to look at him, to see his expression as he hears what happened to her. What he sent her to, for if he hadn't sent her away, the Queen would not have been able to take her. "Years, I think. I didn't have any way to measure time, but there were several winters, and several summers. It was so hot in the summer. I had a window, but it was small and high up on the wall. I couldn't see out of it. But in winter it let in the snow…it was so cold then." She closes her eyes, feels that cold again, an ache deep down in her bones. "I didn't have any blankets, or…just the dress I'd been wearing. And that got older and dirtier and…" She's shivering, she realises, but it feels distant, unreal.
"Did she hurt you?" Rumplestiltskin asks, a dangerous murmur, and Belle shakes her head.
"No," she says. "Not after the first few days." The first few days…there had been pain, beyond anything she'd ever experienced, as the Queen tried to drag answers from her. She'd asked again and again about Rumplestiltskin, about his weaknesses, about his habits and patterns of behaviour. Belle hadn't answered – or rather, she had answered, but with things that the Queen didn't want or need to know. He likes his tea with cream, not milk. He's bad-tempered in the morning. Things that mattered to her, but not to the Queen.
After a few days, or perhaps a few weeks, the Queen had given up. Then she'd been left alone almost entirely. Food had appeared in her cell, usually once a day but sometimes less often. There was a bucket in the corner that emptied itself when she used it. Another bucket of water that was never emptied, no matter how much she drank. Enough to make sure she wouldn't die, but not enough to keep her from getting thin or from growing ill.
"But at first," he whispers. "She hurt you."
Belle shrugs her shoulders, glances at him, sees the pain he's feeling, the agony he's trying to hide. "Yes," she says; she won't lie to him, gives him the truth as he has always given it to her. "Yes, she hurt me. But so did you."
He flinches, and Belle almost – almost – regrets her words. But not quite; they need this out in the open if they're to move forwards.
She needs to hear him apologise. Just once, that's all she needs. She doesn't need him to beg for forgiveness, she just needs to hear him say the words, just once, and mean them.
Just once.
"Belle," he says, and she looks at him and waits. "Belle, I – I'm sorry." Something in her eases, and she almost misses his next words. "I'm a coward, I've always been a coward, and I let that – I let you go, and it was one of the worst mistakes I've ever made. Can you – can you possibly forgive me? If I hadn't thrown you out, she would never have –"
"Of course I forgive you," she says, cutting across his flow of words. "I forgave you long ago." And she twists in her seat, curses the gear stick between them but manages to get close enough to him. He's staring at her in wonder, and Belle smiles as she balances herself with her hands on his shoulders. His hands come to rest at her waist as she brings her mouth to his.