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Chapter 23
"Did you see me loving you before you came to my father's castle?"
Belle was draped across Rumpelstiltskin's chest as he leisurely combed his long, spindly fingers through her waves.
She knew he could prophesize, but as he had told her many times before, the future did not always come out as envisioned.
"I saw that you would be my price."
He twirled a curl slowly around the tip of his finger and let it fall back into Belle's auburn mane.
"Why me?"
"My price is always-"
"-something precious."
"Precisely."
"I was precious to my father and my people."
"Beloved by all who knew you, that is what I saw in my visions."
He traced the length of her backbone slowly with his finger, tickling her lightly as he went.
"He was beyond cruel to me, you know."
Belle said matter-of-factly as she rested her chin on top of her hands that were now daintily folded atop Rumpelstiltskin's sternum.
"He allowed them to spit and throw their waste at me while he just sat on his throne and watched."
As she spoke Rumpelstiltskin imagined pulling King Maurice's entrails from his stomach and draping gaily them from the rafters like garlands for a ball…
"He told me I wasn't worth feeding to his hounds."
He pictured ripping each tooth from his gums with his claws and letting King Maurice see them coated in his own blood and bits of flesh….
"He did save me though." she mused as she turned onto her back.
"The group of soldiers that presented me to my father, some of the very same I saved from certain death, were going to rape me and my father asked them if they truly wanted to come behind the Dark One."
She placed her lover's arm across her bare breasts and continued.
"'She is his whore,' my father affirmed, 'this strumpet who was once a beloved Princess and most treasured daughter. She has rutted with that fiend, stains of their lustful pleasure are plain upon her skirts. I can see it in her eyes that she has now become a Monster's whore. Do you honorable young men truly wish to taint your virtue with this most foul lump of harlotry?!'"
Belle's voice held neither sorrow nor sadness; it was hard and callused with resentment.
"They turned me loose then, those virtuous young soldiers; but not after beating me with their fists and kicking me with their heavy boots."
Her deep sapphire eyes drifted up to the canopy, "I felt almost thankful when one spoke up and said, 'No! Not in the face! T'would be a lamentable tragedy to maim such beauty!'"
She laughed huskily and looked to her Monster.
"Such beauty!"
"I'll have to kill them all now you must surely know that." he hissed through gritted teeth.
"Why do you think I told you?"
She moved to straddle his hips and cupped his sharp face in her white hands, "I have lost my goodness Rumpelstiltskin, just as I have lost my faith in people. I am very changed. When my own father spat in my face every brave fiber in my soul burned and turned to ash. My eyes no longer sparkle with innocence and good intentions, my mind is no longer pure, the ability to see the good inside people has blown away like dust in the wind, and as for the good inside of me no one but you and our child shall ever see it again."
His claws rested on her naked hips, drawing soothing circles with his cracked nails.
She was broken.
She had given up herself for those backward peasants and they all but crucified her for it.
They would all pay.
Especially her father….
Rumpelstiltskin would plan his death step by tortuous step.
Tick-Tock dearie tick-tock….
He would beg for mercy as his daughter had.
And his pleas would fall on deaf ears...
"My darling Belle," he said as his hands moved to hug her waist, "I will never let anyone hurt you again."
She smiled sadly and laid her head against his shoulder.
"How can you say that when you are the main one who has hurt me?"
They made love until the bright morning sun began to peek over the snow topped mountains.
"Do you want me to be the mother of your child?" she asked as he held her tight to his chest.
"I want my happily ever after and that is you and our child."
"It's going to be a girl." She corrected as she ran her nails through his chest hair.
"I know."
"You've seen her?"
Rumpelstiltskin smiled and pressed a light kiss between her eyes, "Yes and she looks like you, a little Belle."
Belle's musical laugh filled the air between them.
It was the first time he had heard her genuinely amused in a very long time…
"Whatever shall we call her?"
He thought for a moment and then grinned, "Little Belle."
"We can't name her after me." She giggled.
"She will be like you in every way, I have seen it."
"Like I used to be you mean."
The mirth in her voice was suddenly gone; replaced now with a raw desolation.
"No," he said sternly, "like you are. She will see the good in everyone, she will be brave and kind, she will be like you Belle."
"The bastard daughter of a Monster's whore?" she barked as she pulled her body from his grasp and rolled to the edge of the bed.
Her pale back curved down to meet her hips perfectly.
Every inch of her was covered in porcelain.
As if she had been dipped in whitewash.
Rumpelstiltskin had never saw skin that white…that flawless…
It nearly made him forget how to breathe.
Her thick, wavy locks reached almost to the middle of her back and when she turned to face him, her curls obscured her breasts slightly from his view.
"You mustn't say such things." He chastised as he flung the bedclothes back from his own nude body and got out of the state bed.
"And who are you to say I mustn't? We aren't wed thus our child be deemed bastard, that is the way Rumpelstiltskin. I know what I have become."
His body glittered and shone in the sunlight, highlighted beautifully when he stepped in front of the wide, floor-length window.
Belle groped angrily through the tangled bedclothes for her dressing gown.
"What are you doing?" he sighed.
"Looking for my," she pulled her wrinkled gown from the wad of pale blankets and blindly white sheets, "gown."
He pushed his matted curls away from his forehead and watched her as she slipped on the thin white robe trimmed in pale yellow ribbon.
"Rumpelstiltskin?" She said timidly, "Are we truly going to live happily ever after? Can we have our happy ending? Finally?"
Her voice shivered with emotion as she struggled to tie her gown closed.
He crossed to her and enveloped her in his arms just as he had when she kissed him for the second time.
She placed her ear to his heart as she clung to him.
"It's all I want." She said.
"It's all I've wanted since I landed in your arms that spring day."
"We will have our happy ending Belle, it is time for me, for us. Whatever hateful fate destiny has in store for me I refuse it, here and now. I will fight it with all my soul."
His hands snaked between them and rested on her lower stomach.
"Happily. Ever. After."