The Dark One's arms closed around Belle and held her tight as she sobbed, words tumbling out of her. Humiliations, cruelties, nightmares she had tried to block out for years—centuries—they came rushing out in a torrent she seemed powerless to stop.
All the while, she kept waiting for the Dark One to tell her enough, to hold her tongue and stop making up lies or puffing up her small troubles, her justified punishments. Instead, he held her, his arms closing around her as if he could block out the world, keeping her safe from—from everything.
Belle had forgotten what it was like to be held like this, to be held tight in an embrace giving comfort and safety, demanding nothing in return. She had forgotten what it was like to hunger for touch like this, to crave it.
Not since Rumplestiltskin went to war.
There had been something hot and moist against her neck. She'd barely noticed as she spoke. Now, finally, shakily drawing to a close, she touched it curiously, drawing back a little from the Dark One as she did. That was when she saw his eyes. They were full of tears with wet track down his face, making the scales glitter. That was what had been falling against her skin.
For a moment, as she drew back, she saw his expression change. Grief became worry. He was afraid he'd done something wrong, that he'd hurt her. She let her fingertips brush against his cheek, wonderingly.
"Why?" Belle asked.
His face crumpled. She'd hurt him—without meaning to, without even knowing she could.
"You shouldn't cry over this. You know you shouldn't. I agreed to what Jones wanted. Everything that happened, I agreed to."
The Dark One shifted from grief to anger—more anger than she'd seen in him since All Soul's Night. No, angrier than that, much angrier. "No," he growled. "You didn't.
"I've made deals for centuries, Belle. Torturing someone till she agrees to your terms isn't a choice, any more than holding a knife to her throat and telling her to agree to a deal or see her blood spilled all over the floor would be a choice. That's what Jones did to you."
"If I didn't make a choice, then what did I do?" Belle asked, surprised at the heat in her voice. No, she mustn't be angry. She'd learned what happened when she got angry. And she wasn't evens sure what she had to be angry about.
But, the Dark One looked properly chastised, as if he understood what upset her even when she didn't. "You made many choices," he said. "Terrible ones." He took her hand and kissed the back of it with an intensity that awed her. "You chose to save Baelfire. No matter the cost. You tried to save that girl and give her justice, despite the risk. You did it after seeing Jones murder a man in cold blood without even the pretense of honor."
"No," Belle said, shaking her head. "No. I told you—I told you what I was—what I am. I—"
"You're not. And, even if you were, Jones held your servant's bond. What did that make him? Whatever benighted land that judge lived in, what did their law say about pimps and procurers holding the servant bonds of honorable women?"
"I wasn't—I'm not—"
"You are. You are the most honorable woman I have ever known. And the bravest. I'm the Dark One, Belle—the Dark One. There are kings and emperors who live in terror of me. With cause. They wouldn't dream of defying me. You've done it how many times? From the day you first saw me. In a room full of knights and nobles, you were the only one who would stand up to me.
"Belle, you don't need Gaston to have an honorable name. I could make you a queen, if you liked. An empress. I—I would tell the world you are my liege lady and I am nothing but your servant, if you want."
Belle gave a shaky laugh in spite of herself.
"I would," the Dark One insisted. He sounded like Bae when he argued between yawns that he wasn't tired.
She laughed again, though it sounded a little like a sob, and managed a smile. "You would make a terrible servant. Don't deny it."
He looked affronted. "Didn't I make an excellent servant today? I didn't even poison that fool, Henrie. He didn't have so much as a stomach ache."
"Not poisoning the guests is a good quality in a servant," Belle agreed. "But, we both know you only managed it because you enjoyed putting one over on them. And because it was only for half an afternoon. If you'd had to do it for a full day, I suppose they'd have been toads before it was over."
He put his hand to his heart. "You wound me, Belle. I can be much more creative than toads."
She laughed again, but it turned into a sob. The Dark One pulled her close. "I'm sorry, Belle. I'm so sorry."
"I just want it to stop," she whispered. "I want the pain to go away, but it only gets worse."
"When someone recovers from freezing—someone who doesn't have sun-flowers or a magic fleece—it's painful. When the blood comes back into a frozen limb, it feels like pins and needles. Not a tingling feeling. Like hundreds of pins and needles jabbing into you—deep into you. But, despite the pain, it's a good sign. It means the limb isn't dead. It means life is coming back, even if it does hurt. And it gets better. I know it hurts now but, I promise you, Belle, it gets better."
"How can you know?"
"I . . . lived for fourteen years in a village where people spat when they heard my name. I was a cripple, and people I'd thought of as friends and neighbors laughed when they knocked me down. There were people I loved who. . . . I failed. I thought those wounds would never heal, but time . . . eases them. It will ease yours, if you give it a chance. And I will do what I can to help it, if you let me."
Belle got up, pushing him away and walking to the far side of the room. Looking out the window. In the back, where the gardens were, the Dark One had carefully arranged the trees and hedges at the borders. Even from the library, the snowy mountains were only a bit of landscape, far off in the distance. Here, she could see where the frail springtime he'd created ended and the snows began down along the road Gaston had taken. This was nothing more than a flicker of warmth in a great sea of cold and ice.
Belle had tried to believe in warmth before. It always betrayed her.
"Why?" she demanded, not turning to look at him, head bowed and arms wrapped around herself as though she were already fighting off the cold. "Why should it matter to you?"
He was silent so long, she had to turn and face him. She didn't know what she expected to see. Anger, perhaps. She could understand anger. She could trust it, she thought. Even when it tried to pretend it was something it wasn't. It was always so simple and direct. Belle thought of Jones. His anger had almost been boring, really, towards the end. It was predictable, even in its capriciousness. Its wants were so simple, pain, humiliation, power.
The kindness and grief in the Dark One's eyes unnerved her. What did it want from her? What could she give them?
The Dark One searched her face with equal desperation, as if he were trying to find words she would understand. He looked over her shoulder, towards some books on the wall. Inspiration seemed to hit him. He walked past her, not seeing—or pretending not to see—how she shrank back from him. He pulled a book off the shelf. The writing on the cover looked like Danaan but Belle hadn't recognized the language when she'd looked through it.
"This book is from another world," he told her. "An odd one, by all accounts. I'd almost forgotten it till we were building this house. This poem—I remembered this poem and thought of you." He opened the book and began to translate.
It was more of a story than a poem, at least the way he read it. There was a man, Meader living somewhere in the far north. A kind of bear the Dark One called a silverback had attacked Meader's cabin in the woods, stealing meat.
"Silverbacks are black," the Dark One said. "With bits of gray. It gives them a grizzled look. They can weigh three times as much as the brown bears you know. When they're angered, nothing short of death will stop them."
He went on with the tale, how the bear tried to break into the cabin and the Meader waited all night, weapons drawn. The bear left with the dawn only to come back at evening. Meader shot it and ran.
"A real storm of a run," the Dark One read. "A great bear, Meader says,
Even when he's been hit in the heart, will keep running
Until he falls down."
He glanced at Belle as he read that part. His sad, pained eyes lingered over her chest, just where her own heart would be. She remembered the stories she'd heard about wizards and witches, that they could read hearts. Whatever secrets the Dark One did or didn't see, he went on. Long after, when Meader must have hoped the bear had died, he went back and found it, trying to understand why it had attacked the way it did, without fear of men.
"And then he understood
What lay behind the bear's odd behavior:
Half of the beast's jaw was eaten away by an abscess, and caries.
Toothache, for years. An ache without comprehensible reason,
Which often drives us to senseless action
And gives us blind courage. We have nothing to lose,
We come out of the forest, and not always with the hope
That we will be cured by some dentist from heaven."
He closed the book, looking down at it, he said. "I love the beauty of your heart and soul, your bravery and courage." He gave a sad sigh, as if he knew she wouldn't believe him. But, he looked at her, eyes intent. "I know that you have trouble seeing who you are. So I'm going to tell you. You are a hero who saved your son. When you should have been blind to anything but your own pain, you could see a stranger's suffering and risk your life to save her. You're a beautiful woman who reaches out to others and loves them even when the ugliness of the world should make it impossible. You love them. You really, really love them. You find light in the darkness. And, when it's not there, you create it."
He fixed his strange, lizard's eyes on her. Their yellow streaks burned, like the winter sun at dawn. "You make me want to go back—back to the best version of me. And that never happened before. So when you look in the mirror and you don't know who you are, that's who you are. Thank you, Belle.
"And, about Gaston," he added. "Your mother, more than anything else, wanted you to marry someone kind. She could have taken you back to the Marchlands and married you off to a king—or to the king's second cousin once removed, so Maurice says. Better than Gaston, at any rate.
"But, she wanted you to marry someone—someone kind." He paused. "I'm a monster, Belle. You—you know how little kindness there is in me. But . . . sometimes, it's what we don't have that we value most. I—I wish I had more kindness to give you. Because, more than anything, that's what you deserve—more than deserve, it's what you need. This ache inside you, it can be healed. I may not have much to give you, but I can promise you that
"If—if you think your mother was right, if you—if you're glad your first husband was a kind man—then, please, don't marry Gaston. . Don't—don't let it drive you to madness."
X
Rumplestiltskin was not sure if he had spoken too much or too little. He didn't even know if he any of what he'd said had been the right thing to say.
The words that kept burning on the tip of his tongue, that he wanted to say more than anything else, were, "I'm your husband," but they wouldn't come out.
Maybe it was the way Belle still shrank from him. Maybe it was because he still didn't trust himself not to hurt her. Her words, everything she'd told him, they were like blood pouring from wounds.
For Belle, the man he'd once been was her memory of kindness. He was a coward, he always had been, but he didn't know how to take that away from her—not without sending her running into Gaston's arms. Or worse.
Because, he'd seen the pain eating away at Belle, and he could imagine her very easily slipping into something even more self-destructive than a life with Gaston.
Belle's stomach chose that moment to rumble. She reddened.
"You must be starving," Rumplestiltskin said. A mundane problem, hunger, one he was too glad to grab hold of. "Have you eaten anything today? Besides the two bites I saw at the table?"
Belle shook her head. "Do you . . . do you suppose Goodwoman Dove has anything left in the kitchen?"
Rumplestiltskin snorted. "She cooked enough to feed an army. I'm sure she does. You'll feel better with something inside you."
Belle nodded absently. "That would be good and . . . not tonight. I'm too tired tonight. But, tomorrow. I'll write a letter to Gaston. I—I should say it to his face. We'll have to have him come back again. But, I know what answer to give him.
X
Note: The poem Rumplestiltskin reads is "A Story" by Czeslaw Milosz from his Collected Poems (or from his collected poems as posted online where I found it). I made a few changes. The bear Rumple calls a silverback is a grizzly (he's translating and I didn't want to try and figure out if there are grizzlies in the Enchanted Forest. I just assumed Rumple knew a similar animal with a different name). In the poem, Rumple just calls it a "great bear." I thought about changing the word dentist, but couldn't think of a good substitute.
While Milosz was Polish, he also lived in the U.S. and France. I don't know if the copy of the poem I read was a translation or if Milosz wrote it in English. For the story, I assumed Rumple was translating from Polish. He's a man of many hidden gifts.