It was his fault. Most things were, but this…he hadn't exactly expected to be the source of this. That a choice he'd made might come back to bite him as badly as this decision had. That her secret would have its roots in a secret of his own.

Belle told him the story he wished to hear, faithfully as ever. Every detail seared him to the bone.

After the ogre attack that had killed her mother, she'd woken up after several days with no memory of the incident and a father who was suddenly colder and harsher than she remembered. She'd grown obsessed, completely preoccupied with understanding what had happened after her memory went blank. She'd decided that the best way to understand it was to remember it, and for that, she'd had to run away from home to the country of Arendelle, where she'd heard the tale of the Rock Trolls, who she hoped could restore those memories.

In Arendelle, she'd run into Princess Anna at a trading post, and the girl had graciously agreed to take her to see the rock trolls. On the hike they'd made up the mountain was where Belle had first laid eyes on that box. Anna had fallen, and it had tumbled out of her bag, and she'd explained to her what it was then before shoving it back in her bag. It was on that same trip up the mountain that Anna had told her about her aunt.

When the visit to the trolls had been concluded, once they'd given her a stone that, when brewed with tea, would return her memories, the pair had traveled back down the mountain only to be confronted by the Ice Queen herself. There had been a quake on the mountain that caused Anna to lose her balance. She'd fallen, hanging on the edge of the cliff, and Belle, the stone with her supposed memories, had fallen from her hand. Desperate for answers about her mother, she'd gone after that stone but found it just out of reach. It had fallen, dashed against the rocks, and that had been that. She'd tried to get to Anna afterward but had been too late. Anna had fallen, she was certain, to her death, before Anna's Aunt emerged at the bottom of the cliff, informed her that it was family business, and swept Anna away.

"If I'd reached for her, I could have pulled her up!" she exclaimed, her voice cracking as tears rolled down her cheeks. She blamed herself, but only because she didn't know any better. Only because she didn't know that the fault was his. Yes, he was a logical man who weighed the consequences of his actions all the time, and so he knew that the right thing to do in that situation would have been to save Anna. But he only knew that because he knew what she did not.

It was his fault. The reason she had gone to Arendelle, the reason she'd had to find the rock trolls, the reason she had no memories of her mother. That was his fault. Although he wasn't sure he was willing to call it a "fault" given what he'd done.

Before he'd met her, before he knew not who she was but who she was to become, he'd met her father alone in the room where she'd been put to sleep because the images of what the ogres had done to her mother had driven her to insanity. Maurice had made a deal with him to remove those memories at the cost of his memories with her mother. He'd taken the deal, turned her head, and only then had he realized that he'd seen her before in his visions. But still unknowing exactly what she would be to him one day, those visions hadn't stopped him from completing the deal he'd made with Maurice.

He'd been naïve then, unsure of why he'd had visions of her, why the Seer had impressed upon him her importance. So, he'd taken her memories of her mother. Something he still wasn't sure she knew. Which meant that the rock the trolls had given her was useless. Magic they'd used would have plucked that time from her memory, but the potion he'd used on her to return her sanity to her was powerful. It had to be for a job like that. If she'd managed to get that rock and take it home, if she'd managed to brew it in the tea, all she would have found was blank space. The memories weren't locked behind a door or covered up; they were gone.

Her trip to Arendelle had been a folly before it even began. Yet she'd been there because of him. And he hadn't even known it because though he'd checked in on her often in the time after he'd taken her memories, curious as ever, after Anna had left with the hat, he'd discovered the location of the Curse and been distracted for days, not bothering to check in on anyone. He'd looked away right when he'd needed to look in, apparently.

"Maybe if I'd saved her, we would have been able to use that hat as she planned and stopped her…all of this!" Belle cried.

"No," he answered honestly. The Seer had been warning him about Ingrid long before Belle had come along. And the Seer had never been wrong. Besides, Anna might have taken that hat from him, but the idea that she was powerful enough to work it, that was laughable. "That hat requires powerful magic to be activated. It's possible the Snow Queen, maybe even Elsa, might have been able to use it, but the two of you on a mountain…you wouldn't have had a chance against her."

"You know about the hat?"

"As I do most things."

Fuck.

Too late. He caught himself too late and now Belle's silence told him that she knew it too.

"I thought you said you didn't think it existed," she questioned. "That an object like that sounded too good to be true."

Yes, he had.

"The stories I've heard of it did sound too good to be true until my wife told me that she'd personally seen it," he lied. Yes, that should explain it away easily enough. As far as she was concerned, it was a myth until she brought it up a few moments ago. But he was going to have to be more careful going forward.

"Fate has a funny way of fixing things for us. If you and Elsa's sister had confronted the Snow Queen, one or both of you might be dead. Now, with this turn of events, you both have the opportunity to live."

"So long as we defeat the Snow Queen and find Anna."

"We will," he promised, holding her closer for her own comfort.

He meant what he said. He'd gotten sidetracked with Belle this afternoon, but as soon as she was on her feet again and in her right mind, he would get back to trying to figure out what he'd missed with Ingrid, what he needed that she had.

However, through this unfortunate turn of events, he felt that he no longer needed to question her plan. He had a terrible feeling he'd already seen it. And that, well…it certainly would introduce some complications he hadn't planned on.

"What was that? What did she do to me?" Belle questioned as if she could sense where his thoughts had gone.

Given the potential complications, this was one thing he didn't feel an urge to lie about.

"If it makes you feel any better, she didn't do it with you in mind. Anyone would have fallen prey to that mirror.

"Why? What does it do?"

He took in a deep gulp of air to stop the shiver that ran down his back when he thought of it. That Curse...it was truly an awful one.

"That mirror is part of a terrible spell, created for a King who lost his daughter when she took her own life because she was unloved by those in her kingdom. The King requested a curse that would make his unsympathetic subjects feel his pain. The curse was cast on a mirror, causing it to shatter and rain down on the people, but it backfired. The curse didn't have enough Dark Magic and so instead of spreading throughout the kingdom, it touched those in the castle, those affected felt pain, though not necessarily the king's pain.

"It's called the Spell of Shattered Sight, because it takes every good thing a person has ever done and shrinks it down until it's as if it was never there at all, then takes a hold of every bad thing, every terrible or deceptive thought or action, no matter how minuscule and magnifies it so that it is all you are capable of seeing. The strong and weak…those distinctions don't matter under this spell.

"It's a deadly infection but only if the spell is cast, if the mirror shatters and is allowed to distribute the dark power it carries to others. Until the mirror breaks, the only one it poses a danger to is the one gazing into it unprepared to fend off its magic."

"What happened to them? The ones that lived by the castle, what happened to them after the spell was cast?"

He sighed again. He wasn't present for that particular time, but he was present another time someone had cast the curse. He was the one who had fixed it. That was how he'd gotten his castle and the memories of the cleanup…he was a soldier, a man who had seen war, and yet the bloodbath he'd walked through in his castle before he'd moved Bae in was still haunting.

"Without a counter, the spell progressed as it should," he answered. "They tore themselves apart until there were none left, the castle was left abandoned, the king dead with no heirs, the Kingdom fell, over time the lands were taken by others, eventually the world forgot about them, and the tale became just another fairy tale in this realm as well as ours."

Although seeing that mirror today, it seemed as though the fairy tale was about to be made real again. Perhaps quite soon.

"You think she wants to cast the spell?" Belle questioned after a moment of pause, her thoughts catching up to his own.

"I don't know why else she would have a mirror with the spell infused into it," he answered honestly. There was no reason to hide what she was bound to figure out on her own from her. "She's strengthened the spell, made it strong enough for a great distance."

Too strong for a single person of her magical strength to release it. But with three powerful women…the ribbons...

Suddenly he had a terrible feeling he knew why she would want them. It also potentially explained why she hadn't come to him for them yet. If she truly wanted the three of them to be sisters, taking their power to enact that curse likely wouldn't achieve the effect she wanted.

Belle went still for a moment, then plucked herself away from him and turned to look him in the eye, her brow furrowed with worry for what he suspected she'd already figured out but was hoping he'd deny.

"How great a distance?"

He took a steady breath, weighed the consequences of either answer he could give her, and then told the absolute truth. "As powerful as the Dark Magic I felt coming off of it was? It could cover a great distance, Belle."

Her jaw dropped with her understanding of what he'd just explained. "She wants the town to destroy itself," she finally breathed.

It would certainly seem that way. Though how it was supposed to help her get what she wanted, he was still clueless to-

"We have to go!" Belle exclaimed, suddenly jumping off the cot.

"Go?! You're not well. You shouldn't be going anywhere!" he chastised as she gathered her things.

"We have to go back to the cave. We have to destroy the mirror, smash it!"

Something in his chest fell as he watched her, determined to save the day. But if it were that simple, he would have done that himself when he saw how it captivated her, if only because it had done so.

"Belle," he reached out and grabbed her around the wrist before she could move to leave the back room. "It's not that simple. If it was, I'd have destroyed it the moment I saw you with it, but as I said, destroying it would only release the power.

The drive went out of her as he said the words, but not her fight. That he saw clear and plain as day on her face. She'd stopped moving, but her mind was still working, still thinking and analyzing, trying to figure this out so she could fix it. He wasn't sure there was an answer she was going to like, or at least not one he was going to like giving to her.

"How do we take it away? How do we stop the Spell of Shattered Sight?"

"Magic," he answered, knowing exactly how he could keep her busy. "I'm strong enough to undo the spell, but it must be done properly, and for me to do what I do best, I'll need you to do what you do best."

She nodded and breathed out, "research," the exact answer he wanted her to come to. Of course, he didn't really need her to research how to dismantle the thing. It wouldn't be as simple as a potion and a flick of the wrist, but with a bit of time, he could use his magic to overpower and undo Ingrid's. But he had to keep Belle busy with something as he was working on this problem. Until he knew precisely what Ingrid was up to, he had no intention of getting in her way just yet.

"I have to tell them," Belle inserted finally. "I have to tell them what I told you and what you told me."

"Right this moment?!" he argued. He didn't love the idea of her running out at this very moment to tell everyone. He knew there was no preventing her from doing it, he just preferred it wasn't right after she herself had been affected by magic and needed healing. Admittedly, she wasn't swaying anymore, and her eyes were focused, but he still would rather see her nap for a while rather than leave.

"They need to be told, Rumple. Now! She could cast that spell at any time! We would all be-"

"Yes, yes, I see, but I…"

He couldn't expect her to be any less than she was. Even if his activities at the moment left him less than she wanted him to be. Besides, what she meant by needing to tell everyone—it wasn't just what he had told her and what they'd discovered. It was Anna. She didn't know what he did, and he knew that his words of assurance wouldn't be enough to sway her guilty conscience. She'd want to confess. She'd need to. And although he didn't agree with the conclusion, he knew that she'd come to, he could see how it had been eating her alive these past few days. Speaking it would likely do her some good.

"I understand," he conceded with a nod. "I can go with you, if you'd like, to find Emma and Elsa."

"I think…" she paused for a moment as if in consideration, then blew out a long breath and nodded her head. "I think this is something I need to do…alone."

He nodded. That answer didn't surprise him. And he could think of a dozen good things that he could be doing with a little time to himself now that all this was over. Perhaps it was for the better all the way around.

"I understand," he nodded.

At his words, she let out a small sob and then quickly launched herself into him, letting her arms wrap around his neck as she held on tight. The action took him completely by surprise, especially when he heard her sniffle back another cry.

"Thank you," she choked out. "Thank you for understanding everything."

Gratitude and guilt permeated her words. And he understood that, too.

"I'd be a fool not to," he whispered back against her, holding her tighter before she finally peeled herself from his grasp, and left him alone to think.

I think there's an important reminder with this chapter that will apply to a lot of these fictions to come. I'm going to try to explain it the best I can. Please remember, I am writing these chapters from the point of view of Rumpelstiltskin. I say this because there are a lot of the troubles and arguments and garbage that's about to come up in the live of Rumbelle and I want it to be clear that I'm not trying to take sides. I'm just trying to accurately portray the character that was created. Me, personally, I think Belle and Rumple both make a lot of mistakes in seasons 4-6. I don't hold Rumple accountable for all of their issues, and I don't hold Belle accountable for all of their issues. Sometimes it's one, sometimes it's the other, and sometimes it's both. However, I bring this up now because I'm very aware that Rumple starts this chapter by saying "this is my fault." And in a lot of the chapters to come, in this fiction and the others you haven't read yet, this is something that comes up a lot. Do I actually think Rumple is responsible for all of the things he holds himself responsible for? No. (Do I think there are things he probably should hold himself responsible for that he doesn't? Yes. And could you sub Belle's name into those two sentences and the statements still be true? In my opinion, yes.) But I believe that it's within his character to blame himself for something before he blames Belle, especially in a situation like this. Agree with it, or don't. Just know that it is going to happen as we move forward.

Thank you Rsbeall12 and Grace5231973 for your reviews on the previous chapters. Whew, after that explanation, I'm a little nervous. I'm hoping that you'll find my assessment of his character is on target. Mostly because at this point, I've been writing for these characters for over ten years. If I have this wrong, then I've got to go back to square one. Peace and Happy Reading.