Chapter 2
If it were anyone else–that toothpaste-commercial model they call Prince Charming, say, or the gods-gift-to-nobody corpse-thief that claims to be a healer, or the stammering umbella boy–anybody else but Josiah Dove (who would without hesitation lay down his life for a friend, even the dubious one who signs his paycheck once a week), Gold would swoop in like a hungry hawk and take what's his, take the woman the Fates selected for him long ago and bound to him in ties no curse can put usunder. . . .
No, he wouldn't. That would be stupid, and Rumplestiltskin/Gold may possess many undesirable qualities, but neither in this life nor the previous one has stupidity ranked among them. He knows the curse better than anyone (better even than she who cast it, and he counted on the hotheaded sorceress' failure to bother reading the fine print to build in certain loopholes and trapdoors to his curse). If he were to attempt to tamper with the fake lives the curse wrote for himself, Josiah or Belle (Belinda, he must remember: Belinda in this world)–if he were to, say, send Josiah on some fool's errand to a city far away so that Belle/Belinda would be left unguarded, ready to fall prey to the Schemer of Storybrooke, the curse would merely block his move with another, more dastardly move of its own, for it is written in stone (and blood and fire) that Belle/Belinda French and Josiah Dove are happy husband and wife, flaunting their joy under the noses of all the lonely people around them, most especially the man Belle is truly meant to be with. All to amuse an envious queen who thinks she can outmanuever her master.
But the stone will shatter, the blood will wash away and the fire, burn out, with a single kiss born of pure love, when the savior fulfills her destiny. It's just damn hard waiting, when Belle is an arm's length away.
He dreams of her, the caresses, the kisses, the sweet promises that should have been exchanged when they had the chance in the Dark Castle, had he not been such a narrow-minded fool as to assume she would break his power and steal him from Bae. The truth, he learned after she left, is that her faith in him made him stronger, and that in love, there is always another path to reunion.
As his heart reaches for her, his body, forgetting it's three hundred years old, hungers as it never did for another woman. He dreams and twists in his bedsheets and wakes up alone in the dark, sweating, burning. She looks exactly as she did in the Enchanted Forest, mountain-stream-clear blue eyes, tumbling auburn hair, saucy I've-got-you-figured-out smile. Even her accent, her gestures, her walk are the same. Damn Regina, who planned it that way to torment him.
This time, however, they live in a world of short skirts and low necklines, and mores that would've made their Forest counterparts blush. Even the snow-white schoolteacher has slept with men without the validation of marriage. An affair, while fodder for gossip, would not call for a duel, as it would have in the Forest.
Gold could do it, too: the Doves are both too sweet and innocent to suspect him of evil plots and lustful imaginings. He could manipulate her into an affair and leave everyone convinced, after it was over, that it was Josiah's fault.
But that's what stops Gold: not the loss of his only friends, not the anguish an affair would cause them, but the certainty that it would be over, just a short-lived fling, and then the curse would yank Belle from him again. Temporary isn't good enough–it's worse than not at all. For what would Belle think of him when the curse breaks and she awakes, to find her beloved has used her so?
Gold thinks about this as he watches Ms. Dove buy her groceries, wash her car, weed her garden, deposit her paycheck. From the tinted windows of his Cadillac and the picture windows of his shop, day after day he watches her, and loves her, and respects her husband, and hates Regina. For someone must take the blame for the jealousy and yearning that rob him of his sleep and his appetite, musn't they? And only when he's so entangled in his damp sheets that he can't escape the truth does he take a portion of the blame onto himself. (He washes the sheets himself so she won't suspect, and when he replaces them, he musses his bed to make it appear slept-in.)
He's a jaded soul who's seen the worst mankind can do–who's done the worst mankind can do. He doesn't fool himself into thinking that when Emma kisses the curse away, a month, a year, a decade from now, Belle will run into his arms and Josiah will wave a cheery goodbye to her and offer to stand best man at the wedding. There will be confusion, guilt, loneliness, and especially when they learn of Rumplestiltskin's role in the curse, anger. In the end, they will turn on him, his friend and his beloved and everyone else, turn on him, and then turn away in disgust. As everyone always has.
"How sad," he overhears the teacher say to the waitress one morning, just before he enters the diner. "The only way he can persuade anyone to come around him is to pay them."
"Might be sad," the waitress allows, "except he brings it on himself."
"He's an odd one. Impeccible manners, and always so well put together, but. . . ."
"if you touched him, you'd get frostbite, he's that cold."
"Still, Belinda speaks well of him."
"Belinda speaks well of everybody."
Then Gold yanks the diner door open and crosses the threshold, and they stop talking.
Weeks, months pass and stubborn Emma digs in to Storybrooke but seems no closer to believing, and the late-night voice that has been whispering to Gold of the intimate, passionate things that Josiah must be doing with Belle in their little white house across town, now starts to snarl. He is Rumplestiltskin, damn it, powerful and conniving; he takes what he wants and those who dare deny him are crushed beneath his boots. He bought Belle, paid a fair price for her–she took his offer willingly; she gave her vow of "forever." She belongs to him, regardless which world they reside in, which names they live under.
So he watches her from his windows, plays dominos with her husband and struggles to be patient with the savior.
Emma seems no closer to believing, and yet family by family, the curse is starting to–not break, yet, but pull apart at the seams. Charming awakens from his coma. Hansel and Gretel are reunited with their father. Thomas and Ella are reunited and their baby, delivered (and another intricate, elaborate scheme comes to fruition, with the savior owing Gold a large, unnamed favor).
And a change creeps over Belle, so subtle that it's weeks before she becomes aware of it herself–weeks that leave Gold guessing as to whether he's imagining things.
It starts with her coming later to clean his house, so that she's still there, just taking his dinner out of the oven when he walks in at 7:15, as he has every night since Storybrooke was created. The first night it happens, she's embarrassed and apologetic. "Oh! I overslept this morning, got a late start." He doesn't believe her. Not Belle of the Forest nor Belinda of this world has ever overslept. But he pretends to accept her apology and her promise it won't happen again–until it does, the next week and the week after.
He finds she's cooking more than he can consume–double portions, in fact–so he invites her to dine with him. They both pretend her husband will be home late and she's glad to have someone to talk to, instead of going home to an empty house. He wonders what she is telling Josiah, but he doesn't ask; for his part, Dove is just as cheerful as ever. As they converse over her experiments in exotic cooking, he wonders what she finds to talk about with Josiah. Though good-natured, Dove lacks her curiosity, her interest in books and movies. He prefers to talk about the cars he restores as a sideline business, or the results of a fishing or hunting weekend.
Gold opens her ears to classical music; Belle opens his eyes to ballet (alas, only on TV; they both know a trip to New York or Boston is out of the question). Her stays grow later and later. She must, after all, wash the dishes after dinner, and by then she needs to put her feet up for a few minutes' rest before she drives home. As the weeks flow into months, he finds himself seated beside her on the couch each Wednesday evening until ten, when she finally uncurls herself and goes home.
Is it cheating? Not in the legal sense, but there's an emotional and intellectual connection growing (or rather, uncovering itself) between Gold and Belinda, and as Dove comes in the shop's back door each Thursday morning with his fulsome grin and booming "Morning, Mr. Gold" it sure feels dirty. Not enough, though, for Gold to put a stop to it. And how can it be cheating when Belle is Rumplestiltskin's beloved? Gold ponders this often, and feels a stab of comaraderie when a confused Nolan stumbles into his shop and stares in near-recognition at Emma's unicorn mobile. He almost commisserates, too, with the dwarf who's besotted with a fairy/nun (either one untouchable). How much we have in common, Gold is tempted to say to the cuckolded husband and the starcrossed admirer; but not even the fencepost-dense Nolan or the half-drunken Leroy would believe that a monster could love a lady, and she, him.
He finds Belle looking at him sometimes with glances that reveal both perplexity and familiarity . . . bordering on intimacy. She finds excuses to touch him–never suggestively, but not exactly appropriately for an employee. He finds excuses to allow her to touch him. She offers, one evening, to teach him to waltz, encouraging him to lean on her a little, to take his weight off his ankle. She smells of roses, just as she used to, and she flows around him like a summer rain. After she leaves, he has to belt back a scotch to get to sleep that night.
It's nature, it's destiny, the way she touches him, the way he stares after her as she walks out his door. They were meant to be together, and when the curse is broken–and oh, he does some desperate things to push Emma along–they will be; they will be in the open the lovers they are drifting into becoming now in secret. They will awaken to themselves and go out, together, inseparable, into this world to find Bae, to find Rumplestiltskin's redemption, and perhaps they will never go back, not to the fake town or the enchanted castle. His wish fulfilled, they will chase hers, visiting all the places for which she's been collecting travelogues.
It's this certainty that keeps him sane when she walks away on Wednesdays. It's her soul, which wickedness, despite its proximity, has never tainted, and Josiah's loyalty, which worlds have tested over and over but which has never wavered, that keep Rumplestiltskin at arm's length. He sins with her and against them, but only in his dreams.
And then everything changes again.
She calls in sick one Wednesday, just about the time it seems Nolan will leave his "wife" for Mary Margaret and all of Regina's plans will unravel. Gold misses Belle as he dines alone on canned spaghetti, and he finds dark thoughts creep into his mind as he worries over ways to protect Mary Margaret from Regina while Emma is still getting her act together. He's recognized, ever since the Robin Hood incident, that Belle rehumanizes him, and without her gentle influence, the darkness is harder to resist. It becomes irresistible when, on the following Wednesday, he comes home to find his dinner in the oven and his beloved already gone for the night.
She's left a note on the kitchen counter: "Sorry, Mr. Gold, for missing work last week. Had a bout of morning sickness. Beef stroganoff in the oven. Have a good week. Belinda."