It was three or four hours past midnight. Rumplestiltskin usually knew the time in his castle without glancing at a clock, but he'd lost track. He'd finished the book of tales hours ago and moved onto another that suited his humor better. Trials of Messina, after all, told the story of a lady falsely accused of betraying her husband-to-be and how the idiot believed the charges and publically humiliated her. It was her cousin's true love who stood up for her and tried to defend her, leaving the court of his liege lord when he wouldn't accept her innocence.

"'My lord, for your many courtesies I thank you,'" Rumplestiltskin read. "'I must discontinue your company. You have among you killed a sweet and innocent maid. I thank you, princes, for my lady's death: Record it with your high and worthy deeds: 'Twas bravely done, if you bethink you of it.'"

He stopped abruptly. Belle's eyelids had fluttered for a moment, and she turned her head towards him. He saw her open her eyes and look at him.

Belle heard a voice. It had a gentle, comforting sound, like water in a brook, though she could not quite make out the words. She turned towards it and opened her eyes. They were still blurry with sleep. She saw a figure sitting by her bedside, reading from a book. But, the reader saw her stirring and quickly put the book aside. The figure turned the little knob on the oil lamp on the bedside table, making the flame burn brighter. At the same moment, Belle blinked the last of the sleep out of her eyes and saw that it was a man by her bed. The Dark One looked down at her.

Rumplestiltskin saw the fear in Belle's eyes as she recognized him. He was already reaching out to her. He meant . . . he wasn't sure what he meant. To brush away the lock of hair that had tumbled towards her eyes, to gently touch her face, or just touch her hand. Madness, all of them. He pulled his hand back.

"Belle," though his voice had been steady as he read only seconds before, now it sounded rough and hoarse. "How are you feeling? Do you—do you remember what happened?" His fingers twitched towards her again, longing to reach her in some way, to offer comfort.

The blood drained from Belle's face. "I ruined your deal," she whispered. "Didn't I?"

Belle watched the Dark One's hands. For a moment, they reached out to her with their fishhook claws. Then, he looked at them as if just surprised they were there. His hands stopped, his fingers fluttering uncertainly, like the wings of a bird caught in midflight.

"Belle," he began, though he never used her name. She was always "Madam" or "Dearie," depending on his mood. "Madam" went with his harsher moods, "Dearie" with the kinder ones. She didn't know what his calling her by name meant, but the change unnerved her further. "How are you feeling?" he went on, his voice rough. "Do you—" His voice shifted, becoming deeper, a threatening rumble hiding beneath it. His claws twitched as he spoke. "—Do you remember what happened?"

He'd told her to leave while he negotiated with the sheriff. For her. And she'd left, just as he'd told her to. Belle relived the panic and fear, feeling as if the walls were closing in on her. She couldn't breathe. She'd had to get out of the hall, out of the castle. Belle wished she could run out onto the ramparts now, escaping him, despite the memory of the biting cold.

She remembered that cold seeping into her, her confusion as she'd tried to find her way back, the snow blinding her. She remembered slipping and falling, and then—

Belle stared at the Dark One as the truth hit her.

Vivid memories rose up, choking her. The post in the village square, a metal ring at the top that a rope was put through, her wrists bound at either end, arms pulled high above her head as Hordor ordered the whipping to begin. The soldier doing it had warned her not to move, not to try and twist out of the way. "I'll aim for your back," he'd said good-naturedly. "Don't move and ruin my aim. It'll be worse for you if I miss."

They didn't believe in leaving such things to chance at sea. On Jones' ship, Belle or any sailors up for flogging were always tied firmly in place, backs exposed to the cat.

Jones had sounded so calm as he gave the order for the punishment to begin, no hint of anger or passion in his voice. Though, from how he was after, she knew that was a lie.

Belle had done the worst crime she could in the Dark One's eyes, she realized, far worse than any of the excuses Jones had used to punish her. "I ruined your deal. Didn't I?"

Rumplestiltskin stared at Belle, not understanding. "Deal? What deal? What are you—?"

"Please," she was begging, he thought, desperate. "I—I can still—I can do what you want—I can—I can—"

The gods knew he'd seen people begging for their lives. He knew what desperation looked like and how to make it pay his price. Belle was pleading with him, begging to pay a price so horrible she couldn't force out the words. Because she feared something even worse.

It took him a moment to understand what that 'even worse' was: him.

"Belle, no—no." She was struggling to get up when she shouldn't even be moving. He took her by the shoulders, trying to lower her back into bed. "You can't—I wouldn't—" How did he even make his argument? He might as well be an Ogre protesting he never meant to eat her as be the Deal Maker swearing he didn't want her deal.

Only then did he realize he was doing what he'd told himself not to, what could only make things worse: touching her and pushing her back—back into a bed.

He expected her to start screaming. Instead, Belle froze, going utterly still under his touch, as still as a rabbit under a fox's gaze. Worse, he thought. The rabbit still hopes not to be noticed if it doesn't move. It doesn't sit still and mute, knowing it's already prey.

Belle's protests died. She looked up at him, no hope of escape in her eyes, waiting for whatever he decided to do.

As suddenly as he'd seized hold of her, the Dark One let her go, backing away as though she'd burned him. His hands were raised, like a man surrendering. Belle almost thought the Dark One was staring at her in horror.

"Belle, I wouldn't—I—" The Dark One swallowed. He wrapped his arms around himself. "I made no deal for you with the sheriff. The only bargain I offered him was to give him the chance to keep his tongue between his teeth. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have even offered him that, not without your permission." He passed a hand over his brow. Slowly, he sat back down in his chair, lifting his hands again, showing them empty. They trembled and twitched, as if he weren't certain what to do with them. "Belle, let me—let me tell you a story."

Rumplestiltskin shied back from the truth—the full truth. He'd seen how Belle held onto the locket and he'd heard Bae talking about his father last night. The memory of him, of the man he'd been, a man who loved her and cared for her, was one of Belle's anchors. He didn't dare take that away from her, not when he had nothing better than a cruel, petty, blind fool to put in his place.

"Once, a long time ago I was just—" He didn't look human, and there was no reason to pretend he was. "—just an ordinary one of what I am. I lived in a village. I had a family." Family. It sounded like more than just the two of them. Rumplestiltskin wasn't going to hurt her with the truth, but he wasn't going to lie, either. "I—I had a wife." He looked at her, pale and nearly dead because of him, looking up at him and expecting the worst. He wished he could go back and change everything from that stupid, hellish moment at the inn and say what he should have said there. "Who I loved. Very much.

"The Ogre Wars came to our lands, too. I was called up to fight—I wanted to go," he added hastily, as if she might doubt him. Bae thought of his father as a hero, and that's what he'd meant to be when he marched off to the frontlines. "I wanted to be brave. And I had people I—I needed to keep safe." Even more than proving himself to the people who still whispered he was his father's son, that had been his real reason for going. He was fighting to protect Belle and their village.

"Our army had a seer, a young girl." Belle probably knew no more about Seers than he had back then. They were rarer than witches and wizards, and the tales told of them rarely came near the truth. "Seers aren't born, you know, not often." He wasn't going to tell Belle how that poor child had been scarred, the black lines that tore across her face where her eyes had been cut out. "But, sometimes, if someone is cruel enough and the gift is strong enough and the Seer is lucky—or unlucky—enough to survive the attempts to change her, there are ways. A child with a touch of Sight can be made into something more. Most of the time, they aren't lucky, and the seer dies. Or goes mad."

"This girl, though, she'd lived. I was set to guard her cage—that's how they kept her, locked up in a covered cage like an animal. I didn't know what was inside, not till she started calling to me. She told me things about what would happen in the battle, and she tricked me into helping her get away." He ruminated on that. He suspected men had died because of her escape, the men from his village in the battle the next day, other men (and women—and children—as the Duke grew more and more careless about who he sent to die). But, freeing her—it still might have been the right thing to do. "I might have helped her anyway. She was a child, and the things they'd done to her. . . ." Yet, setting her free didn't change what had been done, and other people—other children—had died.

He wondered, if he'd never spoken to the Seer or ignored her warnings if Morraine would have lived.

Morraine would have wanted him to let the Seer go.

"Before she went, the Seer gave me a prophecy. Seers are tricky at the best of times, and fate is a slippery thing to get hold of." He didn't mention his own experience with seeing the future. Keep it simple, he told himself. "She warned me—I understood her warning to mean I would die if I went into battle the next day, and my family—my family would suffer because of it." Your son will grow up fatherless. Murderers and worse will prowl around him.

"I'd seen it before," he added. "Children abandoned, left fatherless." He tried not to think about his own father. Best not to mention him. There was too good a chance Belle might recognize those stories from the past. "Then, the war came, and things were worse. The Ogres never cared if their victims were soldiers or innocents." He'd seen the ruined villages the Ogres left in their wake, and he'd seen survivors who'd managed to escape or hide. "I saw things that gave me nightmares for years." They'd probably still give him nightmares if he slept the way normal people did.

"I . . . couldn't do that to my family. I took a stone mallet and crushed my leg." He saw Belle flinch. Was she imagining bones splintering under the blow? She looked at his legs, as if expecting to see blood and broken bones, but both were whole and hale.

"I survived," Rumplestiltskin said, skipping over the consequences of that choice. "And was branded a coward. Word reached my village ahead of me. By the time I returned. . . ." It hurt. He thought it wouldn't, not after all these years, not when everything he thought he knew had been thrown into confusion. He closed his eyes, reliving the empty house and Hordor's lies. The words burned as he said them. "My wife, my family, they were gone.

"I heard stories. She was ashamed of me, ashamed to be known by my name. They said she'd—she'd become a rich man's mistress, that she wouldn't even acknowledge I was the father of. . . ." He shook his head. That was another lie. He'd seen Bae's eyes glow as he spoke about his father, repeating the stories Belle had raised him on. There'd only been a moment when he hesitated.

"Lord Maurice says I shouldn't talk about him," Bae had said. "Only to Mama. He says it's not polite to talk about him at court. But, it's all right if I tell you, isn't it? We're not at court." Rumplestiltskin assured him he could say whatever he wanted, and the stories came pouring out.

"It doesn't matter," Rumplestiltskin said to Belle. All the lies didn't matter. Except they did. For centuries, he'd believed them. He'd nearly destroyed Belle because of them. He opened his eyes and looked at her, pleading with her. "For years, I blamed myself. I'd failed her, shamed her before everyone, and she'd left me. "Then, I became a wizard, the Dark One. There's a very long story behind that. It's as unpleasant as the Seer's, in its way, only I did it to myself.

"And I . . . changed. Part of it was power, part of it . . . it's a dangerous thing to suddenly be able to do whatever you want. I stopped the Ogres and saved our people. But, I also. . . . There was a man who would have hurt Morraine. She was like a daughter to me, and I . . . stopped him. He and his men were dragging her from the house when I did it. But, Morraine. . . ." He didn't want to lie to Belle about this, even by omission. But, he'd seen her fear. Rumplestiltskin remembered when he'd first held the dagger and summoned the Dark One. His power over Zoso had been absolute. He could have told him to tear out his own heart, and Zoso would have had no choice but to obey. Yet, after years of living in the village and with his all the casual cruelties that went with it, he'd been terrified. Zoso had towered over him, a burning darkness with eyes of flame, like the shadow that his father had tossed him to as a child. If he'd demanded Rumplestiltskin give back his dagger, he might have been stupid and terrified enough to do it.

That's what Rumplestiltskin was for Belle. Listing his past crimes, explaining how he'd driven away he'd sacrificed everything to save would only hurt her. He sighed and went on with his tale. "Morraine was afraid of how I'd changed. She found a magical doorway to another world, and ran away." And he'd let her go. He'd healed Morraine's mother after he'd defeated the Ogres. At the time, he'd thought of them becoming a family. But, she'd been even more frightened of his growing madness than her daughter was. They'd called on the Blue Star, who had granted their wish.

Except Rumplestiltskin had learned of their plan.

The murderous anger and mad humor that had dominated him by then for weeks vanished, like a small ember in a cold flood. All he could find inside him was the poor spinner. Morraine and her mother were making the same decision Belle had. Even with all his power, he'd failed them. They didn't want him or anything to do with him.

Instead, that night, he'd left out a large pouch full of gold on the table. He'd pointed it out to Morraine, who thought she was being sneaky as she gathered a few things, clothes that needed mending, boots that could use a polish before they were put away.

"I have some business that will take me away for a few days," he'd told her. "I won't be here for market day. If you see something you like, I wanted you to have coins to buy it." He'd given her other gifts, a king's ransom in jewelry, a crown encrusted with precious gems, but gold coins would be easier to spend wherever they were going.

He'd watched from the shadows as Morraine and her mother used the magic bean they'd been given. Cold fear had washed over him as the portal opened. Rumplestiltskin knew his father had chosen to let him go, but he had dreamt for years of green fires that ate his father and turned him into a monster who fed children to shadows. He'd almost called out to Morraine and her mother, telling them not to go, to come back.

Instead, he'd watched them go, telling himself it was for the best. Despite his power, he was still the poor spinner, the village coward. They knew him and they were right to leave him.

"I had a magic charm," he told Belle. "Made with a lock of Morraine's hair and a drop of her blood. It told me she was still alive and well. Till, one day, it didn't. She'd died.

"I found a doorway of my own into that world. It wasn't even hard. Some worlds have very different rules that make using magic to reach them difficult. Some are almost impossible to reach. But, this one was very like our own. I—I could have followed her easily, if I'd wanted. When it could still do some good.

"But . . . she'd been afraid of me. With cause. I . . . thought it was better. And she died."

He'd found the men who killed Morraine and her mother, robbers who'd noticed the strangers with plenty of gold. . . . They'd stolen the jewels as well as the coins. Rumplestiltskin hadn't made them more of a target by giving Morraine the gold, or so he told himself.

The leader of the small gang had kept the pouch. It was good craftsmanship, after all. Once he had wealth and power, Rumplestiltskin had never given Morraine anything but the best. Her other things had been thrown away in a ditch. Rumplestiltskin had found her doll, but there were no bodies for him to bring back and bury. In that land, they burnt the dead and scattered the ashes, believing it freed the soul. Rumplestiltskin had made a point of telling the robbers he was going to bury their bodies where they would never be found before he killed them. He'd turned the leader into a crippled rat first, small enough to fit into the pouch he'd stolen. It made a decent casket.

"After that, I found the Seer again. We had a long talk. She lived alone in the forest, as far from people as she could get. Her gift was less painful that way. The futures she saw were less complicated, and very little she could do would change them. Hedgehogs don't pay attention if you warn them one side of the tree would be better to build their burrows on than another.

"I . . . wanted to make up for Morraine. She told me there was a child I had to find. I would have to save him from a curse and protect him as—as if he were my own. She meant Bae.

"She also told me I would have to pay a price to his rightful guardian. I thought she meant Lord Maurice. But, she didn't. She meant you.

"Belle . . . I'm sorry. Before I even spoke to you in Maurice's court, I told myself you were . . . like my wife. I was wrong about you. I—I think I was wrong about her, too, all these years. She saved our family. I. . . ." Now this was becoming tricky, as he picked his way through the truth. "I met one of our children years later. She was gone, then." Gone under the curse. If Belle ever did learn the truth, he might have trouble convincing her that wasn't a lie. "So, I still don't know why she did the things she did." Though I can guess. "Our son didn't know—he didn't even know who I was. But, he was alive. He'd been cared for and protected, all the things I couldn't have done for him. She'd saved his life, the lives of all our family." Her life as well as Bae's.

"You remind me of her in so many ways. That made me angry, at first. These last few days I've begun to realize, if you're like her . . . then, I was wrong about her all these years. She did what she had to. To save the people she loved.

"At the festival, when I tried to kiss you—I'm sorry. I was thinking of her. I told you before, you're a servant, not a sacrifice. I was asking for something I had no right to, and I'm sorry. And I had no right to be angry with you. But, I swear to you, I would never sell you to a man or—or force you to bed one, no more than I could have done that to Morraine.

"But, Belle, please, tell me. When you went out into the storm, you almost died. Was that what you wanted? Were you trying to die?"

Belle looked at him. She was so tired and empty. His grief for Morraine sounded real. But, there had been times Jones sounded sincere as well when he told her he regretted the punishments he gave her, apologizing for the necessity even when she saw the hunger in his eyes.

There was no hunger in the Dark Ones eyes, inhuman though they might be. She thought he looked close to weeping.

Did it matter? Whether he was lying or telling the truth, it didn't change why she'd gone out. "I couldn't breathe," she told him. "It felt as if the walls were closing in on me. I had to go out. By the time I felt I could go back in, I couldn't find the way. I remember slipping and falling. The snow broke my fall, but I was too tired to get up. . . . How did you find me?"

"Bae," he told her. "He'd been taking a nap. When he woke and couldn't find you, he came and got me." His hand twitched towards her. He pulled it back, wrapping his arms around himself and looking miserable. "It was an accident? Truly?"

"Yes."

He nodded, but his misery seemed to increase. "I . . . have to pay your price, Belle. And I haven't. I haven't given you anything you need or anything you wanted. I—I think the only way to do that is for you to leave, you and Bae both."

X

Note: The Trials of Messina Rumple was reading from is his world's version of Much Ado About Nothing. The lines he read, in the actual play, are spoken in different scenes by different characters, but I thought they suited Rumple's mood.

The Tale of Britomart that Belle was reading earlier is her world's version of the third book of Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. I suspect the version in the Enchanted Forest is much longer with many more adventures, since Belle hadn't gotten to the story of Hellenore.