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Chapter Text

She slips to his side under cover of darkness, to grasp the whining, giggling bars between her cold and tiny fingers.

“I know your secret.” A note of joy, a soul-deep triumph on a noisy rush of warm air, and she is grinning the way only a woman can when she sees a glimpse of the light that men have concealed.

She has blue eyes, eyes that can see true, straight to the heart of a man. Regina would tear them out, hold the glistening things on a delicate little dessert knife and gulp them down whole - she has never seen anything in his cage except a glamour, an illusion thin as the dawn mist, but enough to blind most.

“You are no dragon.” The girl says - and she is, a child with her curls bouncing around her shoulders - and how old he feels, to see her feckless youth, to remember the boy that was never a coward - who burnt with a bright, all-consuming fire that he will seek the warmth of forever.

“Then who am I?” He asks - his first words in nine years, in a voice rusted with disuse. He drops the illusion, and she does not flinch at his haggard appearance, his scaled skin, his vicious eyes. She only blinks, as though he has been at the corner of her sight all along, and she must only bring him into focus.

She leans closer, and the column of her white throat in the moonlight brings a double-edged urge - to bruise or caress, the sin of his ragged claws on her unblemished flesh.

“I know your name. But I should not say it. My father made a deal with the Queen-“

“The bitch-Queen is a false and twisted hag. She is blighted with magic and can bring no heir of her own into the womb. It was her price for power. If she has my name that is what she will ask. And when I refuse she will tear out my heart and take all my magic, and wreak vengeance on the world for her sour belly.”

Pity crosses her eyes, clear and stark as a crow on a winter sky, and he shoves his face between the bars, ignoring the stab of the fairy-wrought cage.

“She will keep no deal she has struck with your father. She is easily governed by… love and loss. A web of emotions that she will tangle you all in, and drain your lives.”

The girl gasps, entranced.

“You have the gift of foresight?”

“Of course I do, dearie. I am greater and older than she. And I have only broken one deal in my life, and trust me when I say it has been a long one.”

“You would make a deal…for your freedom?”

“Yes.” He hisses, and arches his spine at the thought of being no longer encircled by metal infused with thrice-cursed fairy blood and dust.

“You could stop the Ogre War?”

“Of course.”

“Save all my family and friends?”

“If you wish it.”

He can tell she hasn’t understood.

“Why wouldn’t I-“

“Dearie, you are dealing with the Dark One. I saw how you flinched when your betrothed lay his hand on your shoulder. One word from me, and he could perish bravely in battle, with much glory and honour, and leave you free to marry someone of your own choosing.”

“Kill Gaston - I could never do that. That is a wicked thought.”

She pushes herself away from the bars, and he grabs her wrist with uncanny speed. His thumb is on her pulse, thrumming like the wings of a bird, and he strokes it once, twice, to feel its softness, to wonder how life survives at all, when it hides its weaknesses under such vulnerable coverings.

“You can do what you like, dearie. I am yours to command. Now, do we have a deal? Tomorrow when the fairy’s curse ends, you will say my true name and I will save your precious village.”

She hesitates, snatches glances at her captured arm through her lashes, but she makes the right choice, and he watches her cloaked shadow until it is lost in the darkness. 

Chapter Text

Belle stands shivering in the dawn air, watching a crowd of curious onlookers gather beneath the converted scaffold. She can see the Dark One, sitting so still with his arms locked about his chest, as though he is trying to contain something huge and dangerous between his ribs. His eyes glitter as he lifts his head, and she looks quickly away.

She can still see the dragon, all coiled and cramped and the same gold-green, she realises now, as his skin, but it is insubstantial as a reflection on a lake’s surface, and if she does not concentrate the illusion ripples and breaks apart. The people standing in the churned mud beneath her cannot see him. Their eyes never turn to the far corner where the Dark One sits, crouched as though ready to spring.

“Are you ready, dear?”

Belle starts badly, turning to see the Queen gliding towards her in a shapely gown of deep purple. In her white hands she has the knife, oddly curved, and the letters boil and writhe under the metal, waiting for her to breathe his name to life.

“You were very clever to find his name in all those dusty old books. I searched for years with more…direct methods, with magic spells and potions, but it is you, in the end, who finds it. Such an industrious little bookworm.”

There is malice beneath those honeyed tones, and Belle shudders as she recalls the Dark One’s prediction the night before. Regina eyes her like an eagle does a fieldmouse it cannot decide whether to fall upon and devour, or to simply tease until it drops dead of nervous terror.

Belle lifts her chin, and looks the other woman in the eye.

“You should have let a woman guess his name much earlier, Your Majesty. You would not have had to wait ten years putting your hope in village men.”

“Well, it matters no longer, does it my pet? Ah, here comes your father and your handsome betrothed. We must proceed swiftly - the fairies said the curse would break when the sun lifted over the horizon. He must not be allowed to walk free. Are you ready?”

“Yes.” Belle says, and smiles sweetly into the face of the Queen she is about to betray.

“Then proceed.” Regina orders and stalks to her black throne-chair, with its carvings of sharp-winged dragons and wailing mermaids.

Belle raises the knife to her lips, the eyes of the village upon her. She promises herself that Papa and Gaston will understand what she must do.

“Rumplestiltskin.” She whispers, and the air crackles with magic like an oncoming storm. The hairs on her arms stand on end.

The first glint of sunlight strikes her right eye, and Belle knows the sun has cleared the horizon.

She lifts her voice for all to hear.

“You now belong to… no living being but yourself.”

Regina screams in rage, but it is a tiny thing compared with the groan and shriek of the fairy-cage blasting apart. Snarls of metal explode outwards, prompting screams and yells of pain from unfortunate onlookers as they strike.

The dragon-glamour dissolves in the sunlight, and the Dark One steps forth from his cage, prompting a new wave of screams as the village folk scramble to get away from him. He shakes back his wild hair, and tilts back his head as the new daylight washes over him.

Belle finds herself laughing, breathlessly, dropping down from the scaffold to the earth. She doesn’t even realise a piece of the cage has struck her until she sees the droplets of blood on the Dark One’s blade. Her lip stings, and her searching fingers come away smeared with red.

The next moments Belle can never clearly remember. She sees her father’s red robe through the mass of terrified people. He is clearly shouting her name, but she cannot hear him over the ringing in her ears. Belle looks around to find Regina behind her, her arm upraised, black hatred marring her proud features.

The curse blackens the grass as it races towards her, she stumbles on suddenly dead earth, and the only sound she can hear is a shrill whistle as time slows.

And then Rumplestiltskin is there, gripping her arm savagely, and the world spins away.

Chapter Text

They arrive at his Dark Castle in a flurry of dust. Rumplestiltskin has not set foot there for ten years, and the dust is ankle-deep on the flagstones of his entrance hall, and it hurries and creeps and swirls about his feet. He throws the girl to the ground, her palms scraping on the rough stone as she tries to break her fall.

Her innocent blue eyes sear like a brand on his overheated flesh.

“What has happened?” She gasps.

He begins to circle her, his voice sounding first near, then far, disorienting in the dimness of his hall, and her head snaps back and forth, trying to track his movements.

“You broke our deal.” He hisses at her, and the hatred is an ugly weight in his chest.

“I don’t understand! How did I - tell me what has happened!”

The command brings blood to his throat, and he growls high and wounded as he is forced to reply.

“Your blood, dearie - your blood on the dagger! I should have known that you would not be satisfied with the protection of your pathetic little village. You had no noble intentions - you would promise me freedom and then tie me to eternal servitude!”

“What - eternal servitude?”

“Is that what you found in those dusty old tomes? How to snare the Dark One?”

“What? Please, calm down - what does that mean?”

He lunges at her then, buries his cruel claws into the soft flesh of her arms and drags her close until they are inches apart.

“That I am bound to your blood, you false witch, bound to all the heirs of your body, and I cannot see an ending to it in this age of the world.”

Despair leads him to throw her into the dungeons, an empty act if all she must do is command him to open the door. He leaves the useless dagger abandoned on the flagstones, and hides himself away in the clutter and shadow of the west wing, grieving the loss of his son for the second time.

It takes her days to approach him, cautiously, her dress still stained with the mud of that last wretched village. His rage has burnt itself through by then, replaced with a dull bitterness. He does not meet her questing eyes, like a good slave should.

He hears the ring of his dagger against the wood of his workbench.

“I am deeply sorry for what has happened to you.” She says quietly, and he hunches his shoulders against her words.

“I swear I did not know what my blood would do. It was an accident. Is there no way to make it right?”

“You can’t.” He says. And then he summons a little of his old self into his voice, that edge of manic, madcap glee that so unnerves the people he deals with.

“But you can begin to make use of your servant, can you not dearie? You are Queen and Mistress here.” He indicates the frowning black walls that curve about them.

“What is your command?”

She is watching him, but he does not know what she wants to see.

“I command nothing, except for you to send a message to my father. I would take counsel with him.”

“As you wish.” He gives his most extravagant and courtly bow and stalks away to find a place where she isn’t, where she does not stand, forlornly, with a swollen lip and a dirty dress and those maddening, trusting eyes.

He ends up eavesdropping, crouched in the rafters of his dining hall with his hands wrapped about his knees, catching their quiet talk as it drifts upwards.

He learns, accidentally, that her name is Belle. It is sweet-sounding, and he hums it several times in his throat before he recalls the girl that belongs to it, and stops himself.

Her father is eager to plan her wedding with the armoured oaf that cannot seem to detach hand from sword-hilt, though it would be worse than useless if Rumplestiltskin took it in mind to kill him.Lord Maurice thumps his hands on the heavy oak table, trying to force merriment into the oppressive atmosphere of his castle. They will have no joyous wedding here - in this ugly, dangerous keep hunched below its ring of sharp-toothed mountains.

Gaston seems eager - but who would not be, to wed the noblewoman who controls a monster. Surely a more attractive dowry has never existed, especially in the wake of his work to rebuild their little town, a thing he regrets taking pains over when it has won him this poisonous reward.

But then she surprises him.

“No, Papa, please. Gaston, I cannot marry you.”

“Why, my girl?”

“I have bound Rumplestiltskin to me and all who follow in my bloodline. If I were to have children, he would never be free. I cannot imagine a worse fate.”

“Belle, he is not a person - he is a monster.”

“My lord, Belle is young and has the weak heart of a woman. I shall ease this burden when we wed, Belle. You shall want for nothing, and I shall take care of the beast.”

“No- no- Papa, what need have we of such power? Is it not enough that he stopped the war, rebuilt our home? You know as well as I that such power will bring enemies. It always comes with a price. Would you have me become another Regina?”

“Child, this will be different. Gaston will take charge of the monster. You will not even have to see him if you wish.”

“Stop! Stop this! He is bound to me, not to Gaston, and I will decide my own fate.”

She is standing now, so brave - foolish, the Dark part of him thinks, to throw away such power - nay, she is brave, braver than he ever was, as spinner or imp. Her hair swirls about her shoulders, her jaw is set, her eyes sharp as splintered diamond, as implacable as night.

“I shall stay here, and never marry, and when I die he will be free.”

It is that moment when he first begins to love her, though he realises it only by looking back across the cruel years that sunder them.

It is different afterwards between them. They move about each other with caution, like dancers unsure of the next step.

Gaston returns only once to make a fight of it, and it makes Rumplestiltskin smile to see him adorn their dining table in full bloom as he and Belle take their tea together.

Chapter Text

Belle comes back to herself in a forest, following a stranger with a limp and a face so familiar that it hurts.

“Mistress…” He growls as they break apart from their desperate kiss, and she traces a finger over his cheekbone and places her head on his chest to feel the truth of his heartbeat.

“Stop that. There are no masters and slaves here.” She tells him, and he smiles.

For a moment she doubts - the strangeness of his smooth skin, the way his hair hangs so straight - but then she catches the glint of gold in his teeth and knows that he is her beloved Rumplestiltskin, and that he loves her still.

Her greatest regret in that other world was their parting. She had hoped that with time Regina’s anger had faded. She had hoped to rid them both of the curse that had chained them in such different ways. And where had her good intentions led her - to his rejection and her disappointment and fleeing into the arms of the Queen’s men like a fool.

The only thing that kept Belle going through her long years of imprisonment was the thought that perhaps she had been kept longer than he. And it was something they shared, despite their sundering - the weight of four walls, the memory of spending too much time alone in too little a space, a burden they carry still.

“Come, love.” Rumplestiltskin says, dropping his face into her hair. “Let us go home.”

But True Love it seems, and especially theirs, does not have so smooth a course.

She catches him practicing magic, and the ghosts and old wounds that gather between them send her scrambling through the window of his bedroom to seek her freedom.

Her father betrays her - and though she should not feel so bitter, as it seems to run in the family - it is sad to know that she is no longer a child, and Maurice will never again be the one man who could do no wrong in her eyes.

And then Rumplestiltskin gives her a library, and resurrects the ghost of his poor lost son, and so they grow into a wiser and deeper understanding of each other.

But as the holiday the people of this land call Christmas approaches, Belle senses a change in the air. Over nearly three decades, she and Rumplestiltskin have shared only two kisses amidst a lifetime of suffering. And Belle believes that it is time for her to seek a remedy to this poison that conspires to drive them apart.

She comes to him softly, barefoot through the pine-scented darkness. Rumplestiltskin is brooding before the fire, and Belle knows that it is Bae he turns his thoughts towards on the night before Christmas. She hates to see him so withdrawn at this time of hope and joy.

She strokes her fingers over his suit-clad shoulders, and shivers as her new red silk dress slides against her thighs.

“Rum…” She whispers, and his eyes scorch her body.

Belle knows that the townspeople still call him ‘beast’, and that she is considered some ill-fated sacrifice. But as he circles her in the almost darkness - her heart so loud, and the blood shivering in her veins - he resembles more the phantom of her hospital cage, stirring only the air.

It terrifies her still, sometimes, that this may all be a dream. She must touch him or go mad with the fear of it.

“No more tears, love.” Rumplestiltskin strokes them from her cheeks.

“Not ever again.”