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“He looks horrible,” Charming said, as the council broke up that night.
“He was never the picture of good health, or sanity,” Snow replied.
“He did help us.”
“For a price.”
“A price.” Charming passed a book of maps back to Belle. “Not nearly as high as it could have been. And why would he trade for your hair, or my cloak? What possible use could either of those be to him?”
Belle looked up, curious. She’d always heard that Rumplestiltskin’s prices were more than anyone could afford to pay. Only the most foolish, or desperate, called upon him. It was said that he could gain power over a person just by knowing their name.
One of many refugees, Belle was thankful to have found a safe haven in the White kingdom. While her book-learning had been less than valued at home, she soon found herself a part of Snow White’s inner circle. She was alive, which was more than could be said for her father, or Gaston.
“He won’t die. He’s the Dark One.”
“Snow, if our child breaks this curse, he’ll be free as well. Do we really want him as an enemy?”
“But what could we do? Everyone is afraid to even go near that part of the mines now.”
“I will go.”
The two royals had forgotten she was there.
Charming frowned in concern. “Belle, it’s dangerous.”
She lifted one shoulder philosophically, juggling her pile of books.
“Is it more dangerous for me than anyone else?”
~
Snow’s general, a surly dwarf named Grumpy, walked her down through the long tunnels. She could traverse them later with the changing of the guard, if there was a later. He didn’t like this at all.
“The guard detail goes no closer,” he said, with a nod to the two who stood watch. They could see the bend in the tunnel from here, and any who might approach, but not much else.
She thanked him and went on ahead. It was some time before the bars of the cell came into view, and she wondered how the two stationed at the fork would know if anything untoward were to occur.
Her shoulder was aching by then, the full bucket she carried heavy and unbalanced by the lantern in her other hand.
The cell was formed from the end of the mine shaft, with jagged nooks and crannies that receded into shadows. Above the bars as well, for the Dark One crept down, agile as a spider upon his web.
When she was twelve, Gaston had shown her a spider he’d kept in a sealed bottle for ages. It was still alive, he’d boasted, shaking the thing to prove his point.
Rumplestiltskin was filthy. There was no other word for it. The entire cell reeked. She supposed if she’d been underground with naught to wash with for weeks, she’d be in an equally poor state.
He tilted his head, birdlike, and inspected her.
She set the bucket before the gate’s wide base with a sigh of relief. “I’m sorry it’s cold. We’ve no way yet to bring the water here before it cools.” Perhaps she could speak to the crew who ran the miners’ mess hall tomorrow.
Rumplestiltskin stared at her, unblinking, for the longest time, and she began to feel uncomfortable under his scrutiny.
“Oh! Um. Here.” She unslung her satchel and passed it between the bars.
His fingernails were the color of new iron, and shaped into claws. They didn’t scratch her.
She turned and left.
~
The next day he caught her wrist in his hand. His thumb rested over her pulse. He was cleaner, but the cell still smelled foul.
“Why did you come back?” It was the first she’d heard him speak.
“Someone had to.”
He frowned. “No, they didn’t.”
They hadn’t. The torches in the brackets had long guttered out, with none willing to venture close to the Dark One’s lair for even that small task. During the day some light filtered in from the cracks in the ceiling above, but at night it must be black as pitch.
Honesty then. “We'd like not to make an enemy of you.”
An eyebrow arched incredulously. “And… imprisoning me accomplishes this?”
Her eyes narrowed. “No one decides your fate but you. You knew what you were doing.”
Grudging amusement played over him, his pebbled skin waxy with a sheen of gold.
“So I did. So did she. You’d be a maid to the Dark One?”
His hand on her wrist was warm like any other’s, and she found she did not mind his touch.
“There’s worse things.” She smiled. “And you’re interesting.”
He giggled. “Come to gawk at the monster, then.”
She couldn’t tell if it were an accusation, a conclusion, or an invitation.
“As you like, sir.” Her inflection was equally layered with nuance.
His mouth quirked. She’d heard he was clever; it made her curiosity burn.
“Is there anything I can bring you?”
“Anything?” The eyebrow was chiding, this time.
“It was a question, not a promise.” She knew better.
“I’ll not be here long,” he said.
Was it true then, about the curse?
He still held her wrist, although he seemed to have forgotten it. She knew something of craving human touch, and wondered if he might be capable of falling prey to the same.
Her gaze lingered too long on his hand; he released her as if burnt.
“A wheel, and wool,” he muttered. “I’ll not spin to enrich my jailors.”
Could he, in there? Fairy magic kept him from escaping. Who knew how effective it was at anything else. No one would be able to enter to remove spun gold from his cell, but that was beside the point.
“No straw, then?”
“Straw is used for more than spinning,” was his cautious, dry response.
Oh! She blushed.
~
The dwarven miners used wheelbarrows for their diamonds; Belle borrowed one, brought him bales of straw. The intact bales too big to fit through the bars, he pulled the straw through by handfuls, gathered it up in armfuls.
She broke apart the bales and stuffed them between the bars. The straw disappeared into the dim recesses, where Grumpy said there was a pit in the stone, and the smell began to fade away.
Belle had responsibilities elsewhere, but she stayed and talked with him, in between his trips back and forth. It was perhaps twenty paces, she thought, from the gate to where he took the remainder of the straw, but his sing-song, trills, and giggles echoed back through the craigs as if he’d spoken next to her.
She was under no illusions that he liked her; he conversed with her because he had no one else.
He had a dry, biting sense of humour tinged with the occasional macabre twist. The longer they spoke, the more coherent he got, until he almost seemed human.
“Why didn’t you call for me, when the ogres came?”
She didn’t ask him what he meant. “Because we had nothing to offer.”
He stopped, genuinely puzzled, his arms full of straw. “Surely you jest.”
“Do I?”
“A pretty lass like you?” He leered. She thought it might have been playful. “I’d have traded for you.”
Bemused, she made another excursion back to the surface and brought warmed water, a partially disassembled spinning wheel nested on thick fleece beside it, its various accessories clattering with each bump in the tunnel’s floor.
The base of the thing wouldn’t fit through the bars.
She eyed the lever that would raise them and sighed. There was no getting around the fairy magic that protected its lock, even if she were of a mind to pick apart its secrets.
Rumplestiltskin watched her curiously. She would have thought he’d be more offended by his imprisonment.
“Now what do I do?”
He was laughing at her, she was certain of it. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out, dearie.”
She scowled at him. “It’s your wheel. Do they make these things any smaller?”
“Some have spokes the span of your arms.” He was hanging on the bars, at ease as a boy on a pasture fence.
“Why spinning?” she asked him.
His head tilted.
“I mean, why do you like it?”
That unblinking stare was back, and she wondered if she’d pried too far.
At last he said, “It helps me to forget.”
~
Belle took to visiting the mines at midday, bowls of something hot (or warm, by the time she reached the cell) next to the water in her borrowed wheelbarrow.
The base of the spinning wheel - Rumplestiltskin called it a ‘table’ - stood neglected against the far end of the gate. She sat with her back to the barrier, and after some days he unbent enough to sit on the other side, his back to hers.
Without direct sunlight, the passing of time seemed irrelevant. It was easy to let it slip through her fingers.
One afternoon, her belly full of stew, she asked him, “What do you know about fairies?”
There was a pause, the clink of his spoon inside the bowl.
“More than I’d like.” It was a growl, for all he remained seated.
“You don’t like them at all, do you?”
“No,” he said sourly. “Why?”
She pulled her shawl tighter around her, played with the fringe. “Grumpy told me how he got his name. He fell in love with a fairy.”
“More the fool, he,” came Rumplestiltskin’s caustic reply.
Belle sighed. “Absolutely everyone seems to have told-him-so. Is it true that fairies can’t love?”
“That would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?”
“Rumple.”
She heard his shrug, a rustling of his leather jerkin on the bars.
“I would imagine they can… as much as any other person. They’re a secretive bunch.”
The hints of unease that had been niggling at her all day solidified into a knot in her stomach.
“The Blue fairy told Grumpy that they couldn’t, that Nova wanted to be a fairy godmother, and that Grumpy would keep her from it. I think… I think he broke her heart.”
Silence.
“Well there’s your answer then - they can.” His voice was low and gravelly, seething with anger, but she doubted it was on Grumpy’s behalf. “It’s not... the first time the Rhuel Gorem has come between folk who ought to be together.”
Belle couldn’t have this conversation with her back to him. She stood and placed her empty bowl in the wheelbarrow. He was standing when she returned, his bowl held out to her.
She took the bowl and caught his hand. He stared at it, perplexed. The bowl went on the floor by her feet, his hand then held in both of hers.
“What did she do?”
He swallowed.
“She is the reason I lost my son.”
But fairies were supposed to be good.
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
If he’d been perplexed by her touch, he looked at her now as if he’d never seen anything like her. It was disconcerting.
“I can’t tell anyone that you said she’s not to be trusted.”
He snorted. “Indeed not.”
He’d had a son. A son?
“So you… you were a man, once. An ordinary man.”
His head wove back and forth, so-so. “As ordinary as they come.”
“Will you tell me what happened?”
He wavered.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I‘ll make you a deal.” His other hand touched her cheek, the backs of his fingers warm. “Get me my wheel, in here, and I’ll share my tale.”
Those fingers scattered her thoughts. The flat surfaces of his claws were satin-smooth.
“In there? Rumple, I don’t know how. They won’t just give me the key.”
He hesitated. Rumplestiltskin did not hesitate, not ever.
“Use the same quill that got me here.”
She inhaled sharply, surprised that he would suggest such a thing. “You told Cinderella that her debt to you would only grow if she used the quill, and then Prince Thomas went missing.”
He scoffed. “That’s because she owes me her child, and reneged.”
“Her child?” Belle repeated, appalled. She stepped back from him in dismay, and dropped his hand.
He hid the flash of hurt, but not quickly enough.
“She traded it-” he sneered “-for a night at a ball.”
His words filled Belle with a deep sense of disquiet. Who were these people that she’d tied her fate to?
“I’ll find it a home - where it’s wanted. Did you think I used infants in my potions?”
Her face must have shown her chagrin, for he scowled. Now he was offended. Not by his imprisonment, but by her low opinion of him.
“Get the quill,” he snapped, and walked away.
~
I’ll find it a home, he’d said. ‘I will,’ not ‘I would have.’
He didn’t expect to be in here forever, nor even until Ella gave birth. Belle’s selective report to the council threw it into an uproar. Gepetto could not possibly finish the wardrobe soon enough.
But it got her what she wanted - the key and the crimson quill.
And an escort. Rumplestiltskin was no happier to see the general than Grumpy was to see him. Grumpy stayed far down the row of bars by the lock.
“You don’t have to do this.”
The quill fluttered impatiently between Rumplestiltskin’s long fingers; his mouth set in a mulish frown. “I want my wheel.”
“I can bring you books,” she offered.
He flicked her chin with the feather. “You’d part with your books?”
“I trust you to give them back.”
The constant motion of his hands stilled.
“Perhaps. Later.”
Parchment rustled, and blue fire crackled over him.
“Grumpy.”
The bars were open for only moments, the wheel set inside, then quickly snapped shut once more.
Grumpy retreated some paces to wait for her.
She touched Rumplestiltskin’s immobile arm, lowered it gently to his side, then the other.
“The magic won’t wear off for a few minutes yet,” she said, although he surely knew this better than she.
His eyes skittered to the tunnel behind her, to the general standing there. His voice was low enough that only she would hear him.
“Stay with me,” he requested.
“You don’t mind?”
“Of course I mind,” he snapped. Grudgingly, “But you’re a better option than whoever might wander down that tunnel. ”
“I’ll be off then,” Grumpy said. He offered her an awkward bow. “Miss.”
She waited until the sound of his boots faded before saying,
“Admit it - you’re happy I’m here.”
Rumplestiltskin’s nose wrinkled. “I’m not unhappy.”
“And, uh, you promised me a story.”
“Did I?”
She hummed, undeterred. “Tell me about your son.”
“I lost him,” he said, his eyes dropping. “There’s nothing more to tell, really.”
Slowly, alert for any indication of displeasure from him, she touched his cheek. Only the upward flicker of his golden eyes responded. They widened, and he ceased to breathe.
“And since then, you’ve loved no one. And no one has loved you.”
Her hand slid into his hair, his curls sifted between her fingers.
As slowly as she’d touched him, she leaned up on her toes, one of the cold bars gripped for balance, and kissed him.
For a moment he froze. Then his mouth opened to her, a needy whine building in the back of his throat.
He gasped.
Eyes closed, absorbed in him, Belle couldn’t miss his sudden inhale. Even as she craved more, she withdrew. It wasn’t fair to kiss a man who was unable to pull away.
Healthy patches of pink spread from his mouth, the gold receding, heavy, graven lines becoming shallower, smoother.
Belle squeaked, and his eyes flew open, a lovely, clear amber brown.
He blinked, woozy, disoriented. A furrow formed between his brows. Dazedly, “What’s happening?”
A glorious excitement was rising in her, a forgotten memory of childhood tales, and an incandescent eagerness.
“It’s real,” she replied, awed, “what you told Charming. True love can break any curse, can’t it?”
His nose scrunched as if he were in pain, and he shook off the magic overtaking him.
True love. She laughed, giddy, and pressed her mouth to his.
“No!” The horrified, muffled word sent a sharp spear flying through her gut.
His eyes were back to their normal striated gold, and large with panic.
She wanted to help him. His curse was a terrible thing; surely without its addiction he would recognise it for the burden that it was.
But he saw her indecision, and she his terror.
“No, please,” he begged. “I can’t. Belle, please.” Tears trickled down his pebbled cheeks.
She wanted.
A sob rose in her, a tearing grief. She wanted, and she couldn’t.
Slumping, her head rested against his chest, which rose and fell in rapid, fearful breaths, then gradually began to slow.
The magical fire flared, wisped away. His shoulders shifted, and she knew that she had lost her chance. His movement was returning, and with it his ability to retreat from her.
“Why?” was all she could muster.
Fumbling, he wrapped his arms around her, around the bars between them. Cautiously, as though she might spring up and steal his choice from him.
Again. If she loved him, how could she? What kind of a monster did it make her if she would pursue this against his will?
His clawed hand was careful on her cheek, the palm lacking the pebbled texture of the rest of him. She turned her head into it, even knowing it was there to push her away.
If she betrayed him.
“I love you,” she said, defeated.
His mouth caressed her forehead, breathed trembling life into her. The salt from his tears made her skin itch; he licked them away.
“I need my power, Belle. Not… not for its own sake. I need it to find-” words cracked, broke “-my son.”
She looked up, and he flinched.
What had she done?
“Your son? You said you lost him.”
Rumplestiltskin shook his head.
“I let him go. I let... my own son go because I was a coward. I don’t… I don’t expect he’ll ever want to speak to me again. I didn’t create this curse to get him back. I created it for the opportunity to beg his forgiveness.”
The tears, stemmed with her acquiescence, fell afresh.
She bent his head to her in turn; his murderous claws threaded into her hair, infinitely gentle. She licked the moisture from the corners of his eyes, then his cheeks. He allowed this, barely breathing, and her heart ached for the trust she had lost, and the trust that remained.
His nose brushed hers, nuzzled up along the ridge.
“I thought myself unlovable,” he confessed. “That no one could ever love me. I swore that I would love nothing else until I found him again.”
“‘Tis fortunate that I am not a thing, then. You’re almost there, aren’t you?”
His lips sucked at the curve of her temple, and she felt her belly tighten. Longing, for what she didn’t know. He drew back to see her, and what he found appeared to please him, for he smiled.
“Close. So close. There is an ingredient missing, and I need to be here.”
“You wanted to be here.”
He smirked. “Didn’t you know that?”
The back of his fingers over her lips, he said, “I promised my Bae that if he found a way to get rid of my power, I’d do it.”
Hope surged within her. She wanted him free, but-
“The queen hasn’t cast the curse yet, has she?”
He shook his head. “She will pay me a visit soon. She needs that last ingredient.”
Belle wrapped his hand in both of hers, pressed it to her mouth.
“Your son didn’t - find it,” she felt obliged to point out. “You and I did.”
Rumplestiltskin smiled sadly. “I’ve taken advantage of a great many loopholes in my life. I don’t think he’d appreciate this one.”
~
One day she came to the mines to find him tense with excitement. He scrambled down from his perch, all but bouncing on his toes.
“She was here, last night,” he said.
Belle reached for his hands.
“How long, do you think?”
“Days. She’ll come again, when the watchtower tolls. You must not be here for that.”
“After? Will there be time?”
His eyes closed- “Time, yes,” -popped open- “when the black knights come. She will hunt the child, up! in the tower. Not here.”
Her presence was calming him, his manic energy subsiding. He trembled.
“Break it, Belle, please. Stop for nothing and no one. Not even me.”
“You?”
His eyes fever-bright, he swallowed. “I promised my son - but Belle, I’m afraid.”
“No one else will have magic there, will they?”
His hands twitched. Her thumbs smoothed over them, memorized their shape, their texture.
“Rumple?”
He turned his palms upward, cupped in hers, watched her caress them, her pale skin and his dark mottled gold, and leaned into the bars.
“Not as such, no,” he answered.
She gathered up his hands, brought them to her mouth, and kissed them. Waited.
“It is not true to say that it is a land without magic, or the curse would not be possible. It has no magic of its own. Magic can enter, can be carried in an object, or a person.”
“Will you let me break your curse, when the time comes?”
He nodded, his eyes fastened upon their hands. “I broke my deal with him once,” he whispered. “I shall not repeat the error, even if… even if it leaves me defenseless.”
The tremble was back; the idea terrified him.
Belle climbed up on the ledge and knelt with her knees between the bars, held his head against her chest and stroked his hair. He pressed into her, despite the cold metal between them, his cheek nestled in the bodice of her gown.
“Tell me about him. Not what happened-” he’d shied from those memories “-the good parts.”
He needed this, needed to remember the bright, shining light she knew he’d carried for so many years.
A long breath, then,
“His name is Baelfire. My Bae.”
~
Much later, when her knees no longer allowed her balance upon the ledge, Rumplestiltskin said,
“It is possible that I will wake from the curse long before you do. You won’t remember me.”
Belle could not imagine a world where she would not know him, where he would not be seared into her memories.
“So I must ask you now: Might I have your leave to court you? Properly, that is, without all of-” he waved, the cell, the bars, and magic between them “-this.”
She smiled, pressed her mouth into his hands. “In whatever world we find ourselves, I want you with me, in whatever capacity possible.”
He had wept before her in fear, in sorrow, and pain; she saw him raw with joy. Her heart’s match, and brave enough to allow her entrance. The ring he set upon her finger was spun of gold, its woven threads as soft as wool.
~
That day and the next passed slowly, until at last she was racing down through the mines. She tripped on the uneven floor and kept going, hiked up her skirts and ran.
Behind her, purple smoke boiled at the far end of the tunnel. It seethed and slid. There was no time for pause; she flew into his arms, the metal cold between them, and claimed his mouth.
This was no chaste meeting; she’d craved him for too long. His fear made his breath come short: she nipped at him, coaxed his tongue to tangle with hers, and buried her hands in his curls.
His pebbled skin smoothed, his hair flowed softer between her fingers.
That high-pitched whine she’d first encountered rose again, guttered into a moan. She responded in kind, fought with her skirts to wrap her legs around him.
The bars were in her way; he knelt upon the ledge and pulled her closer, petticoats and linen crushed between them.
He had to stop for air, panting. She tipped his chin to see his eyes, to take in his human features, and brushed her lips over his.
“It’s gone,” he breathed, the words a hoarse prayer. “It’s really gone.”
“You did it,” she said.
And she drew his mouth back to hers, knowing that this kiss would have to last them for the next twenty-eight years.
~