Chapter Nine: Truth

"Love is an endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit."

~ Peter Ustinov

Belle busied herself in the library, trying to concentrate on the stacks that she had placed on the floor in preparation of organizing them. Her eyes kept bouncing between her task at hand and the door that led to her apartment. She was happy that it was Baelfire, she was happy for him, truly happy. But something nagged at the back of her mind. Something wasn't settling well.

"Belle?" Rumplestiltskin called softly from the door. She was barely aware that it even opened.

"Hey," she smiled and put the book down, "How's it going in there?"

"Better than expected, I think," Rumplestiltskin nodded and held out a hand toward her, "I need to say something and you should be in here to hear it too. It's something you need to know."

"Okay," she said a little unsure, but took his hand and followed him back into her apartment.

He sat Belle down at the table on his other side while he sat between her and his son. He took a breath and looked at her quickly before he continued, "Truth and trust… that's what we agreed on. No matter how dark or monstrous it may be?"

She gave him a brave smile that she hoped that he could pull courage from. Whatever he was about to tell her was big and he was afraid that it would be one of those secrets that will scare her away for good. She put a hand over one of his that was sitting on the table and gave it a tight squeeze.

"No matter how dark," she repeated and waited for him to start.

Baelfire waited along with her; apparently this was an answer to one of his questions. He leaned toward Rumplestiltskin, but didn't make any move to touch or reassure him in any way.

Rumplestiltskin swallowed and took a breath. He turned his head slightly to Baelfire, "That night that I told you she died, wasn't the truth."

"I found that out when I was twelve," Baelfire admitted and shrugged, "Cassandra told me that mother ran off with someone. You went to get her, but couldn't bring her back."

"Well, yes. I went to bring her back. I begged for her release, if not for my sake than for yours. He disagreed and wanted me to duel for her. I knew that I wouldn't win, and I was not going to leave you an orphan. Not when I promised you that I would come back," Rumplestiltskin nodded; at least that part was out of the way.

"He wouldn't let you even see her?" Baelfire asked.

"No," Rumplestiltskin continued and squeezed back on Belle's hand whenever she gave him some reassurance, "After you had… gone to this world, I grew darker. The thing inside of me, eating at me, telling me such horrible things…"

"Go ahead, papa," Baelifire tried to get him to continue.

"I tracked down a man who said that he would be able to get another magic bean," he flicked his eyes to Baelfire, "I offered him a deal and he took it. Then, I saw him. The man who took your mother. He sat with his lads, jolly and filled with rum. I followed him and I challenged him to a duel. He didn't recognize me at first, but I reminded him. I told him that I would take his life the next day… and then that day came and I took his sword ready to run him through. I asked about your mother. He said that she had died long ago…"

"He killed her?" Baelfire pushed against his chair ready to stand and fight the fiend as if he was in the same room.

"No, and the story isn't done," he flicked his eyes toward the table. He took another moment for Baelfire to calm down and then went on, "I fought him, taunted him, just like the shadow within me told me to do. I was happy in that instance, though. More than happy to do it. I had him on the ground and ready to deal the final blow. Then I look up as someone screams for him. Who do I spy? … your mother."

"She was alive?"

"And well taken care of," Rumplestiltskin nodded, "Dressed as well as the captain himself. I had found out that they had captured my little bean. My way to you, Bea."

"What did you do?"

"They made me a deal," he tilted his head a little back and forth as he usually did with a flared swipe of his hand. Belle squeezed his hand again and tried to reign him back from the darkness that was building in him. The monster trying to claw out. He stopped and put his hand back on the table, "Thank you."

She smiled reassuringly and nodded at him to continue. She would stay quiet during this. It wasn't her place. Milah, his wife, which was before her. She had no part of the history, but he was willing to share it with her, even if it would tear at her from the inside.

"What was the deal?" Baelfire asked carefully, unsure if he wanted to know.

"In exchange for the Captain's life- for her lover was a pirate captain- she would give me back my bean… I accepted."

"I assume there is more to the story."

"We made it back to his ship and there they showed me the prize I was after. I should have left it at that. I should have taken it quickly and left them to their pirate ways. But I couldn't help asking her… why? Why leave us? Why leave you? I could understand me, but why leave you behind? You were perfect."

Baelfire lowered his eyes and shook his head.

"She told me that she was sorry for leaving you. She regretted it every day," he paused then and looked up at the ceiling of Belle's apartment, "Then she told me that she never loved me. Never wanted me. Couldn't love me or even try. That she had fallen in love with a captain because she wanted to be free."

Baelfire looked up to see his father close his eyes in resignation.

"The darkness in me swelled and roared and I heard nothing else. My hand grabbed her heart from her chest and I crushed it in my hand as she died in her lover's arms," his hand suddenly was cold and he knew that Belle had let go. He opened his eyes to see his son's eyes were enlarged and filled with tears. Rumplestiltskin looked down at the table and couldn't bring himself to look at either of them, "I killed your mother, Bae."

Baelfire pushed back and out of the chair then. He paced the room and his eyes flashed from the floor to his father, who hadn't moved a muscle since his last confession. Belle still sat next to him, but her hands were glued to her mouth and her eyes kept scanning in front of her, trying to process what she just heard.

"How… how could…?"

"I was wrong to kill her," he said in a pleading tone, "I regret killing your mother, Bae."

"My mother…" he whispered and leaned over the table, smashing his hands against it, "But not your wife."

"At that point, I didn't have a wife," he finally looked up at his son. A mixture of grief, guilt and anger rolled across his features, "I don't think I ever had one."

Baelfire pushed the table back and stepped away and toward the corner of the room. He folded and unfolded his arms, unsure of what he should do. He always told himself that if he found that man that had killed his mother, it was his duty as her son to avenge her death. Now he knew it was his own father, what was he supposed to do? He turned away from the table and stared out one of the windows of the apartment.

Belle still stayed quiet and still, the only way he knew that she was still alive was because her breathing echoed beneath her hands. He gritted his teeth and bit the bullet to turn toward her. Her eyes were shifting back and forth as if she was reading something invisible in the air. Her spine was straight and he was glad for the small favor that she wasn't leaning away from him. At least, not yet.

"Belle…" he whispered and her eyes stilled, but still didn't turn toward him. She stared into the empty space ahead of her, "… please say something."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. After she let it out, she kept her eyes shut, "You know I don't like it. I despise it. But it happened, and you told me the truth. Even though you knew that it may drive me away, you still told me. That took courage."

"Belle," he said in a sigh.

"Thank you for not reaching for me," she said and he instantly knew that she would have jumped away if he had, "It will take me a little time to digest it. She was your wife."

"And a lover to someone else," he said with sudden regret, "She wasn't my wife in any essence of the word. She was the mother to my child, yes, but she was also the woman who abandoned him without a second thought."

Belle paused and opened her eyes, but still kept them trained on her hands in her lap, "I know you regret it, at least a little… but it is not my forgiveness that you need."

He nodded and looked at Baelfire who hadn't moved from the window.

She stood from the table, "I am going to be in the library."

He didn't say anything for fear that anything said would make it worse. She walked to the door to the library and closed it behind her.

Once the door clicked Baelfire turned back to his father, eyes shimmering and tears falling steady down his face. Rumplestiltskin looked at his son and awaited his judgment.

"I don't know if I can give it, papa," Baelfire said sincerely.

"I don't expect it, Bae," he shook his head and pushed himself up with the help of his cane. He felt so weak, so destroyed, but had to get away from the room. He walked to the door and turned toward him before he walked through it, "You could hate me until the end of time and it would be justified."

"Where are you going?" Baelfire asked him before he closed the door.

"Just a walk. I will be back later. It's up to you and Belle if you will still have my company," he said and finally closed the door with a whisper of, "I am sorry."

…

An hour later and Baelfire sat at Belle's table, staring at his hands, trying to keep his mind together. That man was right. His father murdered his mother. How does that make any sense?

The door to the library opened and Belle came through her hands swiping at her face and bright red rimmed her eyes. She looked up and jumped a little when she saw Baelfire at the table. She put a hand to her chest, but calmed her breathing and heart.

"I'm sorry," she whispered and shook her head, "I wasn't expecting any one to still be here."

"Understandable," he nodded and looked back at his hands.

She stood by the door and looked at her stove then back to the man slumped over her table, "Would you like some fresh tea?"

He looked at her strangely and then narrowed his eyes in an effort to understand her actions, "Don't you want me out of your apartment? After all that just happened?"

"I know it happened a long time ago for you," she said and collected the used cups from earlier and cleaned them out at the sink before turning her attention to the boiling water. She continued to talk over her shoulder as she went along her task, "But being told something like that. It makes it fresh. It's like you just lost her again."

Baelfire watched her back as she fiddled with the stove and the tea. She poured the water into the small tea pot to let the loose leaf tea could simmer. She put the set in the middle of the table and took a seat across from him. They both sat in silence, unsure of what was to come next.

"Aren't you scared of him?" Baelfire broke the quiet and looked up at her and into her clear, blue eyes. He looked a little panicked and more than a little confused, "If he could kill my mother…"

"He won't hurt me," she shook her head.

"How are you so sure?"

"Because he is my true love and no curse or anger or evil can surpass that kind of power," she paused and began to pour the tea for the two of them, "He has shadows and evil in him, I know… but he is trying, Bealfire. Little by little he's trying to become that man that he knows and wants to be."

"Murder…" Baelfire said in a low voice, a word that has been repeated in his head over and over for the last hour.

"What he did today was one of the bravest things I have ever seen him do," Belle said in a quiet voice and then took a sip of the warm tea.

"What?"

"He told the truth," she looked up at him with a sad smile, "He knew that it could have lost us both. Driven both of us away for good this time. But he still told the truth. You have no idea how much that means. How much that shows that he is changing."

Bealfire looked at his reflection in the tea in front of him and thought about her words. Belle put her hand on his shoulder for a try at comfort. She didn't know how far to push since she had only met him not two hours earlier. She patted it a bit awkwardly and let her hand drop.

"Do you think it is possible?" Baelfire asked after a long pause, "For him to change?"

"If not for himself, he will certainly push to be a man that he thinks you can be proud of," she said and sipped the last of the tea from her cup. She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. She smiled and chuckled a little awkwardly, "Well, this was a great way to meet one another isn't it? I will be the woman that you met when your mother died all over again."

"No," he shook his head and looked at her as she tried to smooth down her already smooth skirt, "You will be the woman who holds his heart. Now I know why."

"Why then?" she asked.

"Because even when he told you that horrible truth, when he revealed his greatest and most desperate secret, you still loved him. You were surprised and maybe even disgusted by the act, but not by the man. I could see it in your eyes when you couldn't meet his," Baelfire chuckled sadly too for a moment, "My mother never looked that way. When I was a young boy, I thought that she had stopped loving him when he couldn't make the stew right."

Belle was close to tears again and chocked out a laugh, "Well, he learned to make it because I couldn't make it worth beans when I started to live with him in the Dark Castle. I burned half of the pots that I tried it with. Don't know how, but I did."

"Dark Castle?" he asked.

"His very large estate when he was fully immersed as the Dark One. Years after he lost you," she explained, "I was its caretaker. That's how we met."

"I've been in love with you ever since."

Belle and Baelfire looked to the door where Rumplestiltskin leaned heavily on his cane and watched the two most important people in his life chuckle over tea. It was something that he never before dreamed would become a reality. Now that it was, he desperately wanted to be a part of it.

"Any tea left?" he asked, fear laced through his voice.

Baelfire looked into his cup again and tried his best not to yell or scream. He just didn't have the strength for it. Any of it.

Belle on the other hand poured another cup, took it over to the man in the open doorway. She handed the cup over and pulled on his jacket sleeve once he took it, "Come on in and close the door. You're going to let all the flies in here."

His face fell at that point and so did the cup. He wrapped her in a tight embrace and buried his face in her hair. Her arms instantly held him to her in return and took some of the burden of his weight. He took long gasps of breath and tried to find reason that she still loved him- tried to find sense in her slow, eventual forgiveness. He could come up with nothing, except for the fact that she was Belle. As much as he threw at her, she threw it right back in understanding and absolution.

"Thank you," he whispered in her hair.

She pulled back slightly and looked into his eyes as she reminded him, "No matter how dark."

He nodded furiously and hugged her to him again, "I don't deserve you."

Belle shushed his ramblings that caught in her hair more than in her ear and ran a hand through his hair. Her other hand reached around his back and rubbed circles in the middle of it, soothing and pushing the darkness back. The shadows that had grown and manifested themselves in him over the last hour withered away as she kept him in her arms.

Baelfire watched the scene. His father returned from a battle more than likely with himself. Bruised, broken and torn apart from the inside out.

His mind went back to the day when his father came back from the wars. He was only three at the time, but he remembered. He had never seen his father before, being born just after he had left to fight. But he had come back, his knee smashed, unable to be healed and scalded by hot water from his superiors for leaving his post. For running. For being a coward. His mother, Milah, instead of embracing her husband, thanking the gods above that he had returned, kicked at the walking stick he was bracing himself on and watched him fall to the floor.

'You are worthless, Rumplestiltskin! Can't even die properly, like an honorable man,' she grumbled and walked to the back of the cottage, the furthest away that she could get from her coward husband. Baelfire didn't understand. He was happy his papa was back. He didn't want him to die, he wanted to know him. Baelfire had walked to his father's curled up body and carefully lifted one of his arms so he could crawl into the older man's embrace. Even amid the screaming Milah and his shame, he held his son close because he realized that the little boy was all he had that was worth living for. He was the only thing that loved him.

Now, in this land without magic, the most powerful man that ever wielded magic held tight to a young woman who soothed away the shadows that plagued his mind. He held on as if he was that crippled man once again, holding on to the only thing that still loved him.

Baelfire shut his eyes and looked at the floor under his shoes. He still couldn't find it in him to stand and join them.