Moments after her arrival into the world, arms were reaching out to hold her: mother and father, united in their love for her and each other; two older sisters, bemused by her tiny fingers and toes; a granny—it doesn't matter from which side of the family—who took one look at the sky blue eyes and gave her a name, one that told her, in the first moments of life, she was admired, welcomed, protected, loved. Others, so many others, hovered in the background—nurses and nannies and servants and generals and gentry—come to pay homage (and some, come to speculate on how this princess could best be used to help their own sons and daughters advance in society). Though she was third, and therefore unlikely to rule, likely to serve her kingdom only through the marriage she would someday make, the husband she would someday bolster, the sons she would someday raise, her arrival was welcomed, so very welcomed, and not just because she was the most recent in a bloodline, not just because she was beautiful from birth. Her first vision in life, when her sky blue eyes focused, was a smile—it didn't matter whose. Soft fingers reached out to lavish affection, arms reached out to shelter, voices reached out to promise the newborn would want for nothing, all of her needs and most of her dreams would be fulfilled.
It was only her right. Not because she was royal, not because she was beautiful, but because she was.
All babies, Rumple believes, whether princesses or spinner's sons, come into the world owning this right. All babies. Except a few had the right removed from them, maybe gambled away by their parents, maybe stolen away by a curse.
He knows about Belle's first hour of life because she told him about it, laughing in her letters. He knows because he saw it in her parents' eyes last night in the library. He knows because he heard it in her smile, and he is so happy for her. It's only what she deserves.
And she deserves that the same admiration, affection, protection and love continue throughout her life. Her kingdom deserves for their Queen to be secure like this. Rumple can offer her all those things—but in accepting them from him, she would be losing them from her people. First the nobles, then the servants, then her soldiers would start to doubt, start to question, then take away their admiration, then their affection, then their protection. And they'd be right to do so: what judgment does it show to choose as one's consort a shadow like Rumplestiltskin?
As he sits beside his fire, Midnight on his lap, no sound but the crackle of burning twigs and the occasional sigh of the sleeping cat, he compares her first days in life to his own. Yes, they share similar tastes, and yes, sometimes their minds seem to produce the same thought, but he can't imagine why. Their lives have been completely different from the first hour of breath.
He was a quiet baby. That's what the spinsters, his father's aunts, had told him when he asked, but then they looked at each other, measuring their words, snipping off their thoughts like so much thread. A quiet baby, not because he felt content, not because silence was his nature, but because he figured out right away there was no use in fussing. No one would come.
There was a mother, of course there was, but she was, well, unable to give what most mothers give, the aunts said (somehow he came to understand she was too busy making a living on her back). A few months after she'd weaned him, she'd taken him to the aunts to raise, then she'd left for the city. Which city, the aunts couldn't remember. Or maybe they didn't want him to go looking for her (what they didn't realize was that there was no danger of that. He was neither a nostalgic nor a curious child.).
There was a father, Malcolm. He came in and out of Rumple's life, but mostly out. Rumple has three early memories of him. In the first, he remembers standing beside a table in a noisy, smelly place. His father is seated, a tankard in one hand, a drumstick in the other (turkey. To this day Rumple can still smell it and his stomach still clutches.). Malcolm is bent over a plate of vegetables. A woman—or maybe it was a long-haired man; Rumple can't recall—brings him a loaf of bread and more ale (he remembers that distinctly: "More ale!" his father shouts, and throws a coin into the air.). Malcolm's hair is long and unwashed (Rumple knows now that was a sign of the downward spiral of a drinking binge. Normally Malcolm kept himself washed, his hair and nails trimmed so he would appear approachable and respectable. Easier to draw in inexperienced gamblers that way.).
Grease on his chin, Malcolm tears off chunks of turkey with his teeth and calls for more ale. When there's little but bone and sinew left on the drumstick, Malcolm tosses it beneath the table, where the tavern keeper's dog mauls it. He knows he's going to get smacked for it, but Rumple whimpers anyway. "Papa, please." Malcolm chuckles. He'll make Rumple work for it. "Please, what?"
That's all right; Rumple has no pride. "I'm hungry."
"You didn't earn your food today." True. Rumple was supposed to pick pockets while Malcolm distracted the victims. He has the fingers for it, long and thin and nimble, and usually he succeeds: when he's caught, his frail frame and big brown eyes get him out of trouble. Usually. But today his mind just wasn't in his work. He'd forgotten altogether what he was supposed to do to the first victim and when the second caught him, he just couldn't work up the tears that would get him off the hook. They'd had to run, a copper hot on their heels. Malcolm is right: Rumple hasn't earned his bread.
When Papa gets up to use the privy, Rumple swipes a turnip from Malcolm's plate. To this day, Rumple hates turnips.
The second memory may have actually happened before or after the first; he can't judge because he seemed just as small in both. He's being beaten up by a group of farm boys, larger but not necessarily older than himself. While they are pounding on him, their fathers are smacking Malcolm around in the same alley. Rumple remembers the smell of piss in the puddle of rainwater the boys thrust his face into. He remembers feeling the pain of having his shoes stolen from him but not the pain of the kicks and punches; somewhere along the line, he's become inured. Why he remembers this out of all the other beatings he and Malcolm took in those years, it's because for once it isn't punishment for a failed con game. They are being beaten up just for the hell of it. Except, when it's over and Malcolm extends a hand toward his son, it's not to pick him up; it's to slap him. Rumple has never understood why.
In his final memory of his father, Malcolm appears at the aunts' cottage. Rumple has been living there about a year. He's well fed and well dressed in clothes he and the aunts made themselves. He's learning a trade—the spinsters will apprentice him out next year to a local master spinner—and he's damn good at it. He loves the wheel like nothing else he's ever touched; it makes his mind go numb and his body float away until all that's left is his fingers. The wheel chases the world away, but more importantly, it makes Rumple disappear.
When Malcolm shows up, he's well fed and well dressed too—so that means he's working a con. Still, Rumple can't resist when he calls him "son" and asks him to take a ride with him in his brand new carriage, maybe even live with him in his new house. Open arms and ruffled hair are, it seems, Rumple's weakness. He leaps into the carriage. There's another boy inside, seated beside an elderly man; Malcolm introduces them as friends. "Do you know what today is?" Malcolm asks with a twinkle in his charming eye.
This is probably a trick, Rumple realizes, but he dares answer, "It's my birthday." The aunts baked him a pie; it's cooling on the window sill and he looks back at it longingly as Malcolm jiggles the reins and the horse starts forward.
Maybe Malcolm doesn't hear him. "It's Anthony's birthday. We're all going to a carnival to celebrate!"
Anthony and his grandfather cheer.
Rumple shrinks into the leather seat.
Not that it isn't a special day: Malcolm seems to have plenty of money to spend on toys and treats for Anthony, and there's even a bag of candy for Rumple so he can enjoy the sight of his new friend taking a pony ride and swinging a mallet to ring a bell at the top of a stand. Anthony throws three little balls at ceramic dogs on a shelf and wins a prize by knocking one down. Anthony goes into a house of distorted mirrors with Malcolm while Rumple waits outside with Anthony's grandfather. Anthony is lifted onto the strong man's shoulders and paraded up and down through the game rows as everyone applauds the birthday boy. And when night falls and the fair goers gather on a hill to watch fireworks light the dark sky, Anthony sits in Malcolm's lap. His head falls onto Malcolm's shoulder and he drifts off to sleep.
"How would you like to have a new brother?" Malcolm asks as he carries Anthony in his arms to the carriage, the grandfather and Rumple trailing. Rumple isn't sure whether the question is for him or Anthony, so he remains silent. When they arrive at the aunts' cottage, Malcolm says he's a big enough boy to go inside by himself. "But tell your aunts to make a nice suit of clothes for you, because any day now, you'll be going to meet your new mama."
Rumple takes himself inside. He doesn't wave as the carriage drives away.
Malcolm never comes back. As an adult, Rumple figures out that the carnival was another con. The grandfather, Rumple learns, was a wealthy shipping man whose son-in-law had died at sea. The rich young widow had been fighting off suitors, all of them after her money, until her father met the (apparently) equally wealthy widower Malcolm, who also had a young son to raise. The courtship was brief. It was the most successful con of Malcolm's career.
These are their pedigrees: Belle's, full of love and security; Rumple's, full of lies. No, he's never learned to fight back or even speak up from himself: there was never a point to it. And anything the gray men might have to say against him might be false in fact but truthful in substance. He had hoped that as his life had improved over the years with the addition of friends and a little respect from his fellow townsmen, maybe he had changed too; maybe he'd found his strength. Last night had shown him he was the same little sniveler who'd swiped scraps from a stronger man's table.
Belle needs more than a companion of the heart: she needs a consort. A champion against her enemies, foreign and domestic. He wants nothing less for her than everything she needs and deserves.
That's not him.