She fell into nothingness.

The first thing that came back was her hearing. A shrill three-note call, repeating on a tight loop, pierced through the fuzzy haze of her awakening, filling her with a terrifying premonition of what was to come. In a different setting, she would have dismissed it as a natural phenomenon, some night bird 'singing' in the dark. Here, now, it sounded like a demon hellbent on her damnation. She wanted to run, wanted to hide, but there was nothing to hide behind, nothing to hold onto.

Rumple had never said anything about such creatures...

They're here for Zelena. Your soul, I will not permit them to take. The voice slithered out of the darkness and wrapped around her.

It was a strange feeling. She hadn't even been sure she existed until the darkness seized an undefined something that she now defined as her, as Belle, somewhere between thought and reality like a phantom limb.

"I'm dead..." she tried saying. Her voice didn't even sound as real as the cries of the soul-takers. She could barely focus on her own thoughts. The relentless chatter of the birds rose to a deafening cacophony, then suddenly broke into a loud flurry of fluttering wings.

Not as much as one might think, said the darkness into the ensuing silence.

"He crushed my heart!" Belle burst out, that memory suddenly clear in her mind's eye. "I... I didn't think he would..."

What you need to remember... is that... the man you love, also loves you.

"What use is that? True love's kiss failed. He actually killed me..."

Yet for Rumplestiltskin, a death may succeed where a kiss fails.

"True love's murder?" Belle scoffed at the idea.

As he once said, he's full of love. A brush of sorcery cleared a window back into the world of the living. Whether it's true, you may see for yourself.

Sight returned, revealing... herself. Was it herself, that person lying pale and lifeless on the rough black floor of the vault? But the person kneeling at her side, face buried in his hands — that was Rumplestiltskin.

"No, no, no..." His voice was muffled, but Belle heard enough to know it was her name he cried out in his broken sobs. Stripped of the fine shirt and dragonhide coat he wore in Belle's memories of their Enchanted Forest selves, he made a small, crumpled figure in his grief and his guilt. He had not looked so naked when he had threatened her, while the aura of the beast had clung to him so heavily. But now, now he clearly remembered her — too late. "Belle... please..."

"Please..." echoed Belle. Her heart clenched to see him in such pain (and how could that be, with her heart gone to dust?). "You have to help him. He thinks it's his fault, he always does, but it really isn't. It's going to eat him alive, and he deserves better..."

"Deserve is not for me to say, neither yes nor no," said the darkness.

"But I do say it. Can't you tell him that? I don't blame him, I forgive him, I love him, and he has to... he has to live..." Belle's voice trailed off to a whisper, and she swallowed — another phantom sensation in this dark limbo. She assumed she wouldn't be allowed to stay. That she would be sent to the Underworld, then to whatever waited for her soul beyond that. If she was never to meet with him again, ever... then she didn't want to leave him with this burden of guilt. "Tell him I will always love him..."

"Tell him yourself."

"I'm dead. And to bring me back..." Belle knew all too well that it was possible, here in this place, at the source of this darkness. "No, the price is too high. I don't want someone else to die for my sake." No matter how glad Belle was for Rumple's life, she knew that given the choice, he would never have accepted his son's sacrifice.

"Indeed, not for you, but only for him," agreed the darkness dryly. "As the soul-takers may attest."

Zelena deserved it, Belle managed not to say. She had made her judgement, but it seemed unwise to be self-righteous while her soul was at the mercy of Our Grandmother who dwelt in darkness. "Then there is some other way?"

"Killing you, saving you. This Rumplestiltskin is full of contradictions." The darkness washed out in a gentle wave. The ribbons on the imp's collar flared briefly with the colors of the night. "In the same breath as he crushed your heart, he swept the dust into the sorcerer's hat, and from thence for safekeeping in his own heart. But he doesn't know, and so he grieves..."

Then... they still had hope. Belle stared at her husband, willing him to think. To realize.

Perhaps he sensed something. Perhaps not. Suddenly, his head lifted and he muttered under his breath. His eyes went wide and his face contorted in an agony of hope. He pressed a hand to his bare chest, and in one swift motion, ripped out his own heart. Glittering motes of golden light danced over the charred black lump. He stared at it for a long moment, his expression going slack with astonishment. Then he seemed to steel himself. He raised his other hand to the heart. Magic gathered force.

An invisible blade sliced the heart in two.

Before Belle could blink, Rumplestiltskin shoved one half of the heart into the dead woman before him. Then he rocked backwards, his other hand pressed against himself.

Everything blurred and went dark and heavy. Belle gasped, an involuntary intake of air that seemed to burn her throat. The sensation dragged her fully into the reality of her physical form. She blinked, everything coming into focus only slowly. She scrambled to sit up and get her feet under her.

Rumple was watching her from a few feet away, hunched over with one knee on the ground.

A smile spread across her face. "Rumple!"

He whispered warily, "Belle... are you... are you all right?"

He was alive. He remembered. Like a fog lifting, everything just seemed better now that he was here, with her. Bursting with sudden joy, she moved forward to embrace him.

Rumplestiltskin recoiled at her touch. He fell backwards, shrinking into himself. Then he froze, head turned away from her as if in shame. He mumbled wretchedly, "Sorry, sorry. I can't..."

Belle flinched. "No, I know." She rocked back on her heels. "I'm sorry, too. I shouldn't have..."

Rumple shuddered, curled with his back to her, but he didn't speak. She knew he was crying and didn't want her to see.

Belle inched forward cautiously. Her hand hovered over his shoulder. She said softly, "Hey. Hey, it's me. She's gone. She can't hurt you anymore." They had thought that before, twice, and been wrong, twice. But this time was different. "I crushed her heart and heard the soul-takers catch what was left."

Rumple stiffened. His head turned, and she caught a glimpse of his eyes, wide and startled, before he ducked and hid again. Then he reached out tentatively, covering her hand with his.

She squeezed in acknowledgement, inching yet closer, to sit shoulder to shoulder next to him.

It was a long time before he could bring himself to speak again. Still without looking at her, he said in a harsh whisper, "How can you stay? After what I did..."

"You saved me." Belle reminded him, "True love is worth fighting for."

He shook his head. "It seems my fate... is to destroy everything I love. You have to leave, before..." His head dropped again and his breath came out in a long sigh.

"I don't believe that. We can have a future together. A family." Belle hated how defeated he sounded, too beaten even to be angry anymore. But it was people who had brought them to this point, not some abstraction called fate. People could change. People could be fought. "You said you would believe me, remember?"

"Ah, Belle," he murmured. "I wish I could."

"It's all right if you can't, not after everything that happened to you." She had once thought all she had to do was tell him to believe in her vision of a happy ending, and it would come true. That had lasted for less than a day before she was watching her true love die in front of her while she was unable to move or even speak. Once upon a time, the hope of finding his son had kept him going through the centuries. Now that son was gone. But Rumple was alive, and so was she. "If you can't, I'll believe for both of us. Even if I'm wrong in the end, I still think it's worth it."

"Worth what? I can't even touch you without..." He cut himself off.

"Without being reminded of Zelena?"

Rumple flinched. "She took away every good thing in my life. Stole every happiness, however trivial."

Even the meat pies. So he had once confided to Belle after waking from another nightmare where he had been back in the cage in the Dark Castle. This time, the witch had broken him even further, seared herself into his psyche until he had no possibility of escape.

"I am not letting her take you from me!" Belle burst out, her fury boiling over the more she thought about it.

Rumple chuckled weakly. "Too late. I killed you, sweetheart."

She gripped his hand again. "And here I am, alive, ok? Thank you, by the way. That was a clever move, splitting your heart."

He shrugged. "If it worked for the Charmings..."

"But it means you still had hope for us." So maybe she didn't have to keep the faith all by herself. Then it occurred to her, "Maybe a heart isn't the only thing we can share like that..."

"What do you mean?" A spark of curiosity was enough to coax him into daring a glance at her.

She smiled back as reassuringly as she could. "I was thinking, we can't let her ruin this, us, together. We need to get her out of your mind. If you could share my memories, my... mental associations, maybe..."

"Ones untainted by the witch," breathed Rumple. "That... that's brilliant, sweetheart!" This time he gave her an open, wondering look. It was the way he used to gaze at her sometimes when he thought she couldn't see him. Then wariness shuttered his face again. "If it works."

"We can make it work."

Minds were delicate, fragile creations. But Rumple had plenty of experience with memory spells, both in removing memories and changing them, as attested by his work with the Dark Curse. She suspected that most of his difficulty in working around the amnesia caused by the town line and with her Lacey memories came from Regina, as the curse caster, being the one in control of that magic.

This time, they could work together to craft the necessary spell. With Belle's mother's gift of insight, it only took hours rather than days or weeks. Rationally, perhaps it wasn't the most urgent matter at hand, but Belle's heart told her otherwise. The voice of the darkness had gone silent for now, but something it had said lingered in the back of Belle's mind.

And so she could only offer blood on the altar, but not flowers.

In a sense, Belle had sacrificed Zelena's life (her blood, her heart) to Our Grandmother, as Nimue had done with Vortigan. But flowers?

A serpent with two heads.

Rumple was the Dark One. In sharing a heart, Belle shared that with him. She had decided it back in Storybrooke, and it held true now. He was the Dark One — it was who he was, as much as he was the man behind the mask.

I love all of him, even the parts that belong to the darkness.

She had said it. She had meant it. Now she intended to prove it, to the darkness itself. But according to the voice of the darkness, because Merlin had turned away, the first Dark One had not reached her full potential, and neither had those who came after, including Rumple. Now they had a chance to fix that. Intuitively, she knew it was vital to their future.

"It's important," she told Rumple when he questioned her priorities. "You are. We are. This..."

So they finished the spell.

Belle took a step back, looking at him carefully, not sure of the effects.

Rumplestiltskin blinked at her, a dazed expression on his face. Then his eyes dropped, and he mumbled in embarrassment. He closed his eyes and gestured. A billowing cloak woven of darkness dropped over his shoulders, covering his nakedness down to his ankles.

Belle chuckled weakly. That was the least of her worries. "It's nothing I haven't seen before..."

"Maybe not like this." He grimaced, adjusting the cloak. Another twitch of magic had him in a threadbare peasant's tunic and drawers underneath the cloak.

A glimpse of Rumple in overwrought finery flashed through her mind. Zelena had used him as a living dress-up doll, forcing him into this or that outfit according to her whimsy. Another small enjoyment she stole from him, thought Belle. She remembered the flair he had once displayed in his choice of clothes, both in the Enchanted Forest and in Storybrooke. Now this featureless, obscuring cloak was about all he could stomach — something that screamed Don't look at me, reflecting a need to hide instilled by the witch's unrelenting, devouring gaze. The nondescript clothes that now lay against his skin must have been drawn from one of the few buried moments of his past that Zelena had not managed to excavate.

It was a more visceral understanding that Belle had gained from the spell. The sharing went both ways. But Rumple's memories, however awful, were experienced in Belle's mind at a remove. It felt like an intense work of fiction she could be temporarily immersed in, but was ultimately under her control. It was this distancing factor that she hoped could shield Rumple from himself enough so that he could begin to heal.

She reached out to touch his hand, holding her breath to check his reaction.

He stiffened, then relaxed. He nodded slightly.

Belle took a step, letting her hands slide up his arms. Now they stood close enough for their foreheads to touch. She could feel his breath on her face.

"Belle," he whispered, half reminder, half plea.

She pressed closer still. She released his arms in favor of slipping her hands underneath the cloak and running them up his back. She felt him shiver at the touch, but he didn't try to withdraw. She remembered the first time she had hugged him — his utter shock that anyone would ever willingly embrace the monster. She remembered the second time, re-united after twenty-eight years lost to the curse — both of their hearts overflowing with emotion.

Rumplestiltskin, wait. I remember. I love you.

Yes. Yes. And I love you, too.

His arms closed around her, and she knew he remembered, too. Inch by inch, he let her reclaim him. But when she reached under the tunic to touch bare skin, he went very still.

She stopped, listening to him breathe.

"..." He looked at her warily. "Wait..."

It wasn't that the spell hadn't worked. It had worked beyond any reasonable expectation. Belle suspected their success was due to the grace of Our Grandmother, who had claimed a symbol of their true love in payment for Rumplestiltskin's freedom. And how could he be accounted free of Zelena as long as her ghost held him in mental chains?

And Rumple, who knew magic better than anyone, who had dealt with the aftermath of his first captivity by himself, had to wonder what price they would have to pay for this unnatural recovery.

"It's all right," Belle whispered. "We can do this."

"Here? Now?" He caught her wrist. "Belle, what did you do? What bargain did you make to save me?"

"I had no choice." Then she corrected herself, "No, I did. I chose not to abandon you to death or worse. Not again."

His face creased in pain at her words. "Belle..."

"It was worth it. You are." She saw the doubts gnawing at him. "No, listen. You killed someone to become the Dark One, and now so have I. But that's only one side of what Our Grandmother set as the price for her help."

"What else, then?"

Belle explained haltingly what the voice of the darkness had told her and what she had guessed. Death and rebirth, light and dark, a sacrifice of hearts and flowers.

Rumplestiltskin grimaced at the explanation. "It feels... cheap. To turn what's between us into, what, something to trade for a divine favor..."

Belle shrugged. "It was what my father planned for me, in this version of the story, and not even to someone of my own choosing. Actually, it was much the same in the original — and Gaston wasn't even a god!"

A huff of laughter lightened Rumple's harsh expression. "Neither am I, sweetheart."

"Well, I've never done it with an audience before. Some people like that kind of thing, you know." Belle glanced at the dark grate. There was no sign of activity, but she could sense the presence lurking in the shadows. So what? Maybe Our Grandmother is bored out of her divine mind stuck down in the vault for who knows how many centuries. Providing her a bit of entertainment out of gratitude isn't the end of the world...

Rumple snorted. He scanned their surroundings with a critical eye. "But this place is hardly conducive to lovemaking. Does Our Grandmother expect me to have you up against a wall?!"

Belle said in amusement, recognizing his complaint for implicit agreement, "You did, with Lacey!"

He dropped his gaze in shame. "I.. Belle, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be." Belle stopped him hastily before his guilt killed the mood completely. "It was good. I liked it. She is part of me, you know."

And he did know. Her memories were in there alongside his own, now. She smiled at the slight flush that rose on his cheeks, a deeper gold on the imp's green-tinged skin.

She cupped his face. "Actually, I miss Lacey sometimes..."

That brought back a hint of a smile. "She was something of an exhibitionist, now that I think about it."

Indeed, Belle remembered how it had been Rumple who had tempered Lacey's excesses in those wild couple of months before he had gone to Neverland. But there was one important advantage Lacey had over Belle: Zelena had never met Lacey. "So how about it, Mr. Gold? Care to show a girl a good time?"

The imp's inhuman eyes darkened. With a growl of, "Oh yeah, I'll show you," he seized her with the deceptive strength that Lacey had so appreciated and just as he had threatened (promised) shoved her up against the nearest wall.

Belle hadn't been the only one to enjoy that aspect of her time as Lacey. But it was even better without the amnesia and false memories hanging over their heads.

Later...

"Something feels different," Belle said after a while.

"Yes, I can think about meat pies without wanting to vomit."

She gave him a look.

He shrugged and smiled. "You fall asleep. I get hungry. Maybe it's the low blood sugar."

Currently cuddled against him, Belle conceded the point. She knew she would have drifted off by now if they had been sitting on anything more comfortable than a hastily conjured blanket. She freed an arm and indicated her skin. "Is it me, or do I look scalier now?"

Rumple followed her gaze. He stroked the back of her hand, then kissed it gently. "Hmm. The mark of Our Grandmother, according to Nimue."

"Ah." People would look at her differently, Belle thought. Everyone except Rumple and her mother. She sighed. "But it's more than appearances. Some deeper balance seems to have shifted."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you said before..." she began slowly, trying to articulate what she felt. "As the Dark One, your heart can only grow darker. A one-way ratchet driving you closer to hell..."

"And now I'm dragging you down with me," he concluded. "Belle, I swear, I never meant to..."

"No, no." She shook her head. "That's what I'm trying to say. I think that's no longer true. A seed of light has taken root in our hearts. That's what our tree in the Wood Beyond represents, and now that magic is always in us, too."

"Perhaps you're right..." said Rumple. This was what they had been trying to achieve in the first place by sharing their hearts.

"Don't you see? That means that as long as we have love, we won't succumb completely to the darkness. You've rewritten your fate, again!"

"You mean you have, sweetheart. You've given an old monster far more than he deserves." He nuzzled her hair and whispered, "Thank you."

"You're no more a monster than I am," she murmured. Since she had learned the truth about her mother, she had been forced to reconsider what exactly it meant to be a 'monster'. "But it wasn't my power that saved you... I hope I haven't traded one set of shackles for another."

Rumple sighed. "I've been the Dark One for three hundred years. That curse may push my choices to be darker than before, but they are still my own. It's not like..." His fingers went to the collar nailed into his neck.

After her miraculous revival, Belle had been careful not to touch it again. "She said it wasn't for her to decide what you deserved. And she wanted Zelena stopped, but left the choice to me."

Rumple nodded. He closed his eyes for a long moment. "You've always made me want to be a better man. I hate to think I've had the opposite effect on you."

"Or maybe you've broadened my understanding," countered Belle. "You showed me the world beyond the black and white of my books."

"Let's hope you're right, and your light can balance my darkness." He turned to the black grate and knelt down, bowing his head to the silent presence. "It seems we owe you our thanks..."

Belle followed suit and offered her gratitude as well. "Thank you, Grandmother."

Tendrils of darkness shot out and whirled around them, hissing in a language Belle could almost comprehend. Their sacrifice had been accepted, it seemed. They were to be... not pawns, but... representatives? Agents? Human avatars of an alien power?

"I think... she wants us to use our own best judgement. To use the powers granted to us in order to serve her people in this world," Rumple said at last.

"Her people?"

"The same as ever. The desperate souls who call upon the Dark One." His lips twitched in a crooked smile. "What else?"

Belle turned back to the last few flailing wisps of darkness. "But what about the dagger? The collar? How can he be freed from that?"

One last reply came through: Let he who tied that knot untie it!

Belle met her husband's eyes. "Wait... does she mean...?"

He nodded. "We need to find Merlin."


Author's note: True love's homicide: No, but it's canonical that Rumple broke the Dark Curse by killing his mother: there was the "true love magical flash" special effect and everything. It happened when he killed Pan, too! (Though that was more ambiguous.) If they didn't want me to interpret it this way, they should have done it differently. :-P

Magical cures for mental issues and trauma: well, they use magic for everything else. Why wouldn't you, if you could? (Comes with a price... yeah, yeah, it always does...)

I don't remember ever hearing whippoorwhills in real life, but I listened to recordings on YouTube! I can see why they'd be imagined to be "psychopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying". It's a "The Dunwich Horror" (by H. P. Lovecraft) reference, if anyone was wondering. In this AU, Colette was a third half-human Whately sibling (secretly smuggled away by Lavinia or something).