Epilogue
A/N. U2's "Original of the Species" makes a reprise for this chapter. Many thanks to Grace, Sudoku, Anarra, Sbcarri, Hermitess, Ieyere, Stineblicher, Dawnfire, and WastefulWaif, for all the encouragement. For all the Rumbellers and Swanfirers out there who felt like Season 2 must've been written by Regina and Cora ("Our heart collection needs refreshing, Mom. I know! Let's rip out the fans' hearts!"), this fluffy chapter is for you, with lots of Rumbelle love.
For Grace and Sudoku: I tweaked the chapter for you, dearies: a little more about Annabelle and the addition of Davy. Hope you like the changes!
Fifth Year
Ruby and Slightly have come for a visit, compliments of his boss' magic; they have brought care packages from New York: clothes, tools, books, mp3 players, batteries, and a generator. Those are all communal gifts, meant to be distributed; Slightly's brought some special gifts just for the family: cans of coffee for Bae, boxes of instant cocoa for Emma and rose-scented shampoo for Belle.
The last box, Slightly explains, doesn't contain gifts. "These rightfully belong to you."
Emma rips off the lid to find a child's mobile carefully wrapped in the Village Voice (Bae immediately claims the newspapers for his own). As she holds it up to the light, the glass unicorns dance and cast rainbows on the ceiling. "Didn't I see this some—Gold! This was in your shop!"
"Before that," Rumplestiltskin says, "it was in your nursery. Your parents will be thrilled to see it. But how did you come across it, Slightly?"
"Hey, let's give this to Archie," Bae suggests. "He's gonna need stuff like this."
"No way!" Emma objects. "This is going in our nursery."
"Uhm, babe, do you have something to tell me?" Bae gulps.
"Not yet, but maybe this will serve as inspiration."
Subtly, Belle leans over and whispers something in her husband's ear that makes him gulp: "Maybe Emma doesn't have something to tell yet, but I do. As soon as everyone goes home."
"Go on, there's more in the box," Ruby urges, and Emma reaches in again, this time retrieving a guitar. "Wonderful! We can have music! But nobody here can play."
Rumplestiltskin offers quietly, "I can. Or could, anyway; it's been a long time." Emma hands him the guitar and he manages to produce a squeaky C major, a G major and D major. "Time to learn some lullabies."
"Do you recognize this guitar?" Slightly asks.
"Looks like one I used to have in the shop. Used to play it sometimes, on slow days."
"That's what it is," Ruby declares. "Some of us went back to Maine last week, just to see if we could find any trace of Storybrooke. We hunted for hours, but there's not so much as stop sign left standing. Just trees and grass, wildflowers, birds. Granny and I saw a black wolf near the river."
Emma casts a hasty glance at Slightly, but he shakes his head, warning her against asking: Ruby doesn't remember her Enchanted Forest past, and it's best that no one ever mentions it.
"But we found a few things, where we think the pawnshop used to be," Ruby continues. "Including these."
Belle speculates, "The giants—in the last few minutes, I remember seeing a pack of giants raid the shop, throwing stuff around. They must've done us the favor of throwing these things outside."
"Something of yours is in bottom of the box, Belle," Ruby prompts.
Delighted, Belle fishes around. She comes up with a velvet-lined wooden box. "Doesn't look familiar."
"We bought the box just to protect what's inside. Open it." Ruby gives her a little nudge.
Belle pushes the lid off and for a moment stares, then she covers her mouth to hold back a cry. "Oh my gods! Rumplestiltskin, look!" With both hands she lifts out the box's contents: a white china cup, with a touch of gold on the handle and a twig of blue on the bowl. She turns it in her hands until the chip faces up, and then tears moisten her eyelashes.
"My boss took the liberty of repairing it," Slightly says.
Rumplestiltskin ponders: he remembers perfectly clearly instructing Regina to surrender the cup to magic as his payment for the restoration of his health. The price was fair: magic would not have rejected it. That leaves only one other explanation: Regina must have disobeyed him and paid the price herself. He decides to ask her, for, whatever she paid, it must have been precious to her. . . but then he changes his mind. She has never mentioned this largess, in all these years: keeping the gift secret must please her, and he should respect that.
He smiles a little, for her gift could only have been motivated by Love. Once again, Rumplestiltskin is astounded by the tremendous power of True Love. He clears his throat. "We, uh, we'll have a talk with her when the moon rises tonight. We have a lot to thank her for."
Slightly grins like the Cheshire Cat. "She'll love that." Then he addresses Emma and Bae. "She says we can come back again next year, so if there's anything you want, make a list."
"What do you miss?" Ruby asks. "Besides us, of course."
"Granny's burgers," Emma answers promptly. "Bear claws. Cinnamon. My yellow Bug."
"Jelly donuts, central heat and air, the New York Yankees," Bae enumerates.
"Belle? What do you miss?"
"Hmm?" Belle is preoccupied with the cup. "Oh. Movies. The Internet. Microwave ovens."
"Rumplestiltskin?"
His hands move soundlessly along the neck of the guitar, shaping chords that only he hears. His sight is turned inward.
"Rumplestiltskin?" Ruby tries again. "What do you miss about Storybrooke?"
He blinks, returning to the present to grin wickedly. "Granny charging me extra for pickles. Rent day." He runs a hand through his thinning hair. "Toupees."
Ruby gives him a little shove. "Seriously. What do you miss?"
He glances at Belle, remembering a conversation from long ago—and forgiving himself for it. "You're right. There is something I love: my things!"
"Seriously?" He thinks a moment. "Not a thing. Not one single solitary thing."
Eleventh Year
Rumplestiltskin is spinning. Winter is coming—Belle reports that the meteorologist, Grace, has predicted a late winter, but Rumplestiltskin's joints tell him otherwise, and his joints are never wrong (it's the only form of prognostication he's ever trusted). Winter is coming and wool will be needed: blankets and sweaters, slacks and hoods, so he stokes the fire, and as Belle heats the water for tea, he spins, his hands on autopilot.
This first batch of wool, however, isn't for general consumption. It's for mittens, yellow mittens with a little blue puffball dangling from the wrist, and the mittens will be a Christmas gift for a special someone, the first one of her kind, the first native Evatonian.
He hears the school bell ring in the distance. In his mind's eye he sees Queen Snow in her white wool sweater (yarn by Rumplestiltskin, weaving by Belle), her arms folded, because she too will feel the bite of frost in the air, standing in the open doorway as Evaton Elementary's combined kindergarten and first grades burst free from their eight-hour confinement. When the last child—that will be Archie's Annabelle, adopted from a Gloucy orphanage; she's a dreamer and a dawdler, and Archie adores her for it—has trotted out onto the playground, the queen will gather her books and her bags and pause for a moment with her finger on the light switch (because even after a full year of the luxury of artificial lights, she still celebrates the advent of electricity in Evaton). Then someone will call a hello to her, bringing her out of her reverie, and she'll flip the switch, close the door behind her, and make her way back to her castle.
It's a strange world. The queen teaches elementary school in the Dark Castle; her consort works construction while their son-in-law comes along behind, wiring the houses for electricity; her daughter employs magic to drive away ogres and pirates; her older grandson, the future philosopher-mage-king, has crossed worlds to study at Oxford. He too is the first one of his kind. And the librarian is married to the former king of evil, who now babysits Bae and Emma's two-year-old Davy while spinning wool and milking cows.
Despite the chill in the wind, Belle has opened the living room window (real glass! A birthday gift from her husband), and for just this purpose: so that he and she can hear the approaching giggle. Or rather, giggles—today there are two; some sort of footrace going on. Belle leans out the window, and Rumplestiltskin can tell from the way her fanny tenses in her tight jeans that she's annoyed (that's a habit of hers: fanny clenching). So that means, he supposes, that the kids ran through the flower garden again. But instead of chewing them out, she lets it go, pulls her head back inside; the flowers died two months ago; no use complaining. "Walnut cookies today," she calls out to gigglers. "Cora, can you stay for a little while?"
A high-pitched voice answers, "Mom says I can play until four-thirty." Then there's a giggle: "But Daddy says I can play until five."
Belle stifles her own giggle and glances over her shoulder at her husband and whispers, "She's such a little manipulator."
Rumplestiltskin grins back. "The only one who doesn't seem to know that is Regina."
"Well, I hope Frank will get a little firmer with her as she grows up. She needs discipline."
Rumplestiltskin chuckles. "Which 'she'—Cora or Regina?"
Now Belle can't hold in her giggle, despite the fact that the child being spoken of has dashed onto the front porch, right behind her little hostess. Cora, who's dressed in patent leather shoes and a velvet coat, waits politely at the threshold until Belle invites her in. Manipulative and headstrong like her mother, she is; but her mother is a stickler for manners, so Cora gets gold stars for etiquette in Queen Snow's class.
"Thank you, ma'am," Cora says in answer to the invitation. Since most Evatonians go by their original names, surnames are rare here; children address their elders as "sir" or "ma'am" rather than "Mr." or "Ms." One of the smaller features of this strange, hybrid world.
Cora's little hostess untwines herself from her mother's arms and accepts a kiss on the top of her blonde head. "Mama! I timesed three numbers in my head today."
Belle's mouth drops open and she looks at her husband over her daughter's head. The child is saying that she correctly multiplied three numbers without writing them down. Belle is stunned: Queen Snow hasn't even introduced addition to the first grade yet. Most of the child's classmates can't figure two plus two.
"MIT," Rumplestiltskin predicts. "Or Stanford." He's suspected it all along, ever since his two-year-old arranged a stack of numbered blocks in sequence. Her other skills are on par for her age, but her mind grasps numbers with a facility that Archie calls "gifted" ("Her father and I," Belle argues, "are the ones who were given a gift").
Belle nods. "Maybe we need to ask Emma and Bae to learn to spin gold."
Rumplestiltskin shrugs. "Don't worry. When she's ready for college, the money will be there." As it was for Henry: scholarships from Oxford were supplemented by contributions from the entire community, the largest coming from the Doves. For once, no one asked Regina how she'd acquired the money. . . .
"Ready for cookies?" Belle asks.
"Yes, ma'am." Cora slips off her velvet coat and follows Belle into the kitchen, but Maerwynn says, "In a minute."
Rumplestiltskin opens his arms in anticipation. "In a minute" is their special phrase: translated, it means I want to see Daddy first.
She comes running. She approaches him from the right and sets her body in launch mode, ready to leap onto his knee, then she stops herself: she remembers her daddy had a sore there, before she was born, and even though it's healed there's still a mark. He's assured her his thigh doesn't hurt, but she thinks it looks as if it should, so she never, ever sits on the right knee. The left, however, is free for the pouncing.
Wiggling against his chest until she's comfortable, she tilts her head back to look at him. That's another of their games: she loves to look at him upside down. She says it makes him look bigger. "Hi Daddy."
"Hi honey."
Her eyes are crystal blue, like her mother's, but flecked with gold, and her long fingers flutter when she's excited; Belle says Maerwynn reminds her of the imp in those moments. "Let's spin."
He sets his hands on the wheel again, and she sets her own on top of his. Ever since she could sit up on her own, she's spent a few minutes of her day, every day, like this. Whether she views it as a contribution to his work or just a fun thing to do with daddy, he doesn't know, but it's their ritual. As a toddler she would stare for a solid hour at the wheel—not him, but the wheel—in motion. He used to wonder if it did for her what it does for him, but lately, he thinks her fascination comes from a different place: for her, he suspects, there is math in the wheel, numbers in the patterns of the spinning, equations in the processes. The wheel speaks to her, as it does to him, but in a different language.
Numbers, the ancient mages believed, contain a magic so powerful that it must be locked behind a code that only the wisest and most patient of mages, after centuries of study, can decipher. Numbers, the moderns believe, unlock science's greatest mysteries: the human genome, the origin of the universe, the source of life. Belle and Rumplestiltskin's daughter has been assigned by the Fates to master this highly specialized power, the hybrid of magic and science. She will be as faithful as her mother and as powerful as her father.
And so they spin for a few minutes, in silence, in harmony, ignoring the conversation going on in the kitchen. Perhaps it's bad manners for Maerwynn to ignore her guest. Maybe Maerwynn won't become the social butterfly that Cora will be; maybe she won't become the orator that her nephew Henry is; maybe she won't be the bookworm her mom is or the artist her dad is. But she's going to set the world on its ear; though he can no longer see the future, he's sure of it. She is going to be something amazing.
She already is: the fulfilled promise of True Love.