Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.

PART II

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

FORGOT ABOUT RUMPLE

Ya'll know me still the same OG

But I been low key

Hated on by most these niggas

With no cheese, no deals and no G's, no wheels and no keys

No boats, no snowmobiles and no skis

Mad at me cause

I can finally afford to provide my family with groceries

Got a crib with a studio and it's all full of tracks

To add to the wall full of plaques

Hanging up in the office in back of my house like trophies

But ya'll think I'm gonna let my dough freeze

Ho Please

You better bow down on both knees

Who you think taught you to smoke trees?

Who you think brought you the oldies?

"Turn that off!" Belle scolded, entering the shop to find Hook blaring rap music from an iPhone placed beside Rumple's head.

"What? I figured I'd wake him up by offending his eardrums," Hook huffed.

"All you're doing is making him weaker, you idiot! Just like Regina yelling at him!" Belle exclaimed, holding out her bell jar with the pathetic looking rose in it. "And stop getting crumbs all over him! Did you steal those from Granny's?"

"There was no sign that said 'just take one'," Hook argued. "People didn't really seem in an eating mood, what with the whole depressing funeral thing. And I was going to dust-buster him off later."

"God, you are turning into an even bigger pain in the ass since you ass got bigger!"

"There is nothing wrong with my arse!"

"Hook, you're fat!"

"No, I'm not! It's muscle!"

"No, it's fat! And I think all that transfat must be reacting adversely with whatever hair growth tonic shit you're taking from that Shaman con artist, because even Snow didn't blimp up that fast when she was pregnant. It's not healthy!"

"I am not fat! You take that back!" Hook demanded.

"Or what? You'll punch me? Shoot me in the back? Good luck catching me even in stripper heals! And I don't think your fat finger could fit around the trigger!" Belle taunted. "Now. Get. Out. Fat. Pirate. Whore."

Hook glared and took his grocery bag of pilfered funeral reception food and Henry's stolen iPhone. "You're mean."

"You're fat. And slutty. And you fathered a child with your own mother and then made out with the grandchild produced from that incestuous family tree, you sicko!"

"I told you that in confidence to help me deal with it not taunt me with it!" Hook wined.

"Then you shouldn't have tried to kill my husband with music while using him as a table for your stolen junk food!"

"Yeah, well, your mom got eaten by ogres! You should develop an eating disorder over that!"

With that lame insult, Hook retreated from the back of the pawn shop. Belle could hear him muttering about his pickled hand in the jar behind the counter before he left completely, and then she was finally alone, left to dust-buster off her husband.

"God, he is such a teenage girl!" Belle groaned. "It was fun at the start pretending to be his friend, secretly planning to betray him in some horrible way after I had earned his trust and maybe even gotten him to try and sleep with me so I could record it on video and show it to Emma and then we could tag-team beat his ass into the ground, but... ugh... it's just too much work! He's so whiny and needy and emotional all the time. I really should just give up. It was a good plan, Rumple, but he's exhausting. And he ruined your tie...

"I'm sorry, Rumple," she sighed at the grease stains on his favorite silk tie that would never come out, not even with magic, because silk had special properties... which gossip around town had something to do with why Snow White was banned from the dry cleaner.

"I'm sorry for so many things, not just your tie," she continued. "I've placed a lot of expectations on you and none on myself. I blame you for not being strong enough to fight the Darkness, but then I don't help you fight it. I keep threatening to leave you, I don't even know why. Maybe because you sent me away when I could have saved you. Maybe a part of me is still bitter over that and what it cost me, though I know you've suffered horribly since, enough that we should be even in that regard. Too bad the heart isn't logical."

While sweeping up the crumbs on the floor, Belle mused, "Things would be a lot easier for Neal and Emma if they were, that's for sure. They've been avoiding each other the past couple of days. Or rather Neal has been voiding Emma... and I think her parents have been avoiding both of them. Snow said they had a big fight at the Sheriff's Station when she came to pick up Jerry. She cried. I had to make her tea. It was a whole thing. God, The Charmings are annoying, aren't they?

"Anyway," Belle switched topics, "the funeral wasn't bad. Roland is going to live with Little John who's been more of a father to him than Robin since Marian's disappearance. I think Archie will miss looking after him, even if it was just for few days to deal with his nightmares. We really need to find a way to uncurse that poor guy. I'm thinking we can get Tinkerbell to steal the Black Fairy's wand. I'm not sure we want to try the Sorcerer's wand after the mass murder mess. It's clearly the more evil of the two. But, anyway, Archie is so lonely and it's just unnatural and I think he and Dr. Whale would be good together, don't you? He'd curb Viktor's mad scientist tendencies and Viktor would encourage Archie to be more extroverted, have more fun...

"Of course, who knows how any of us would be if we weren't bound to that book? It might not be as strongly in this world, but it's strong enough. I had an interesting talk about with Cruella and she helped me do some research into the quill and those books, and it's all very sketchy, Rumple," said Belle. "The Authors aren't just vessels that allow for the unbiased recording of history through some sort of magic taken from the Oracle at Delphi. I'm not sure if Hades meddled or some darker force, but the intentions of those who wield the pen have substantial influence, even subconsciously, so Isaac was influencing all of our lives even when he wasn't intentionally writing it down wrong, which means at least a generation of events and people are all screwed up. Who knows, maybe in his sleep he made The Charmings transform into selfish idiots? Maybe he made you not trust me when I kissed you! All I know is that we're not who we're supposed to be, and I think Emma is supposed to fix that, and that's why Neal was brought back, not because of killing Zelena by destroying the time spell. It's something greater than us, than magic, I think. Because, really, when you think about it, our world is stuck, unable to become something more, just like all of us.

"There's no new frontier in our world. So you have to wake up so we can figure out what this means!"

A cough from the bed caused Belle to startled. "Rumple!?"

His eyes pealed open. "Belle," he rasped out, "I love you, and I agree, but my ears are still ringing from that damned demon music, so do kindly shut up."

Belle broke into a wide grin. "Oh, Rumple, I knew you could hear me!"

"Unfortunately," he mumbled under his breath while accepting her hug and kiss.

"Oh, don't be such a grouch!" Belle admonished. "Just because you're not the Dark One doesn't mean you can't be powerful and important. Also, you are so going to therapy for trying to switch the daggers so you could use it to become an even more powerful Dark One when Emma used the Promethian Flame and Farther killed Merlin."

"You're not going to divorce me?" Rumple asked, surprised as he sat up.

"Did you hear anything I said? Of course not. Just the usual trial separation thing we're so good at," Belle told him. "I know you only did it because you are insecure and this family of hypocritical assholes treats you like complete crap if they acknowledge you at all, which is only when they need your Dark One powers. It's the only way you know how to be needed or included, but that's their problem, not yours, Rumple. They're assholes. They're the 'cool kids' in our fake high school memories who only ever needed us to help them pass exams and then pranked us at the prom."

"Yes, they are that," sighed Rumple. "I don't know why Ba-Neal wants to belong to their shallow little clique - or have anything to do with Emma Swan now that he knows what - or whom- she did."

Belle smiled sadly. "Neal loves her, or at least he loves the Emma who was one of the outcasts, just like him. I think he wishes they could get that back, get that Emma back... and I think Emma really wants to get her back too, but-"

"But once you start changing," sighed Rumple, "it's not so easy to change back. She'll only end up hurting him more, Belle... as I keep hurting you."

"And I have kept hurting you. But that's our choice, to be open to that hurt," Belle reminded and squeezed his hand. "I just wish they would be. Emma spends a lot of time drinking coffee alone at Granny's, listening to Tinkerbell's stories about Baelfire in Neverland like she's trying to punish herself by hearing about the conditions he lived in because of Hook."

"As well she should!"

"Rumple," Belle sighed. "She died."

"As did I. But no one threw me a 'welcome back' party did they? They completely forgot that I sacrificed my life for them just because the only way for my return was to be as the Dark One again, even though that's all I was ever good to them for, as you said. But, apparently, that idiot girl becomes the Dark One, turns Hook into the Dark Two, and suddenly all of their scheming and murdering and back-stabbing and emotional abuse is adorable and instantly forgivable and worth blackmailing me and you to sweep all that under the rug so they can live happily ever after."

Frowning, Belle deduced, "You saw some thing while you were... wherever you were."

"There are many possible timelines, most of which do not come to pass," sighed Rumple, "many of them destroyed by our so-called Savior's idiocy. If not for her torrid affair with my son..."

"It was hardly torrid, Rumple. It sounds more like Emma and Hook-"

"I don't even want to think about that little skank and Milah's sloppy seconds. I actually felt bad for binding a child to that curse to find my son, but after all the things she has done to hurt him and just be a selfish little fool in general? I don't," Rumple growled. "She doesn't deserve my son. She doesn't deserve to raise her son any more than Regina."

Rumple let out a sigh and lamented, "Unfortunately, no one in this family deserves to raise the boy... and at this point, I fear, Henry himself has been too tainted. It's a lucky thing he did destroy that pen before he was seduced by teenage hormones and his mothers' heavy-handed attempt to keep him safe which has resulted in a dangerous inferiority complex that, in this family leads one to making bad choices in the name of pride which leads to getting a taste for power that we are clearly predisposed to crave like Hook craves rum and... whatever this is," he grumbled, brushing some crumbs out of his breast pocket.

"Crab puffs. He's been obsessed with them since Camelot."

"Well I'm sure he does have a long history with crabs," snarked Rumple and Belle giggled.

"No doubt."

"So... he really did father Queen Eva by his own mother? I figured something shady had gone down with that girl's adoption when I heard whispers that it was claimed I brokered it for those royals, but I didn't imagine a case of seaside incest, suicide, and mermaid time portals. Frankly, I didn't even know mermaids could create time portals. We really must steal that hair net and examine it..."

"Rumple, you are not using a magical hair net to try and travel back in time and get your Dark One powers back!" Belle scolded.

"Can I at least use it to drown Hook? That would be wonderfully ironic."

Belle sighed. "No. It's too much fun fat shaming him and making 'your mama' jokes. Besides, he's got all those doubloons he's paying Archie for therapy and Archie does owe you back rent on both his apartment and his office."

Rumple groaned. "Darn you, woman, appealing to my greed to curb my thirst for power!"

"That's why you love me," Belle boasted. "I know how to use your worst qualities for good."

AN: Rumple is back! (The song is obviously "Forgot About Dre".)

Next up: Emma finally moves out of Granny's and has a deja vu moment.