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“He's not going to believe you.”
Belle glanced up from the book she was leafing through frantically. “Who's not going to believe me?”
“I won't. When I've forgotten everything and you try to explain what happened, I won't believe a single word you'll say.”
“Right,” she said, absent-mindedly.
He paced the room. “I might have a solution.”
Belle didn't acknowledge what he said.
“Listen, this isn't going to be easy, but I think you might be able to convince me if you-”
“If you spent half as much time helping me find a cure as you do coming up with these useless solutions to problems we won't have, maybe we'd have solved this already!” she shouted at him.
He stopped talking.
Belle went back to reading her book.
After a moment, he tried again.
“Belle,” he said, voice as tranquil as he could make it given the circumstances, “we need to be practical.”
“I don't want to be practical!” she screamed, her voice getting louder. “I don't want to think about it! And I surely don't want to make plans for when it happens because it is – not – going – to happen!”
“I know that you are upset,” he said, sitting close to her on the cot. She got up and paced the room while the book was still in her hands. It didn't stop him from continuing the long speech he had been working one for a few days now. “I'm scared too. But we don't have a lot of time and we need to find the best way to deal with this situation-”
“The best way to deal with this situation would have been you thinking of this before you asked me to break your curse.”
“I know, love,” he nodded, letting her rant.
“Do you ever think of picking up a book before you make such crucial decisions? Or are you just too arrogant to even consider that your plans might backfire?”
“I know, love.”
“You know, you know, you always know! And now I'm left trying to save your ass – again! - while you sit over there doing nothing to save this relationship and I am TIRED!” The book missed his head by an inch, but she didn't seem to mind at all. “I am TIRED of always being the only one fighting to get this BLOODY happy ending and never getting anywhere!”
Belle panted and cried and stood there, waiting for him to start shouting back because, even though she hadn't told any lies, she was still being hysterical and unnecessarily cruel and she wanted to start a fight. She wanted them to start screaming at each other like they had never done before because he was the one fading away. If only they could learn to hate each other before he was gone completely.
Instead, he asked, “Can I go over there and hold you?”
At that, she started sobbing.
He took that as a yes and got up to give her a hug.
Rumpel rubbed circles on her back and whispered, “It's okay” very quietly, until her sobs became weak enough for her to say, “I'm sorry I yelled.”
He replied, “I'm sorry you always have to be the strong one.”
“I don't want to have to tell you Neal's dead.”
Her husband squeezed his arms around her. “I know, Belle.”
“I don't want to tell you anything!”
“I know.”
“We were going to be happy,” she sobbed. “Why can't we just be happy?”
Rumple rubbed her back, over and over, trying to buy himself some time to find the right words to say. But there were no right words. Not this time.
“I am going to lose you,” she moaned against his jacket.
“I'll never stop loving you.”
She scoffed. “You won't even remember me.”
He looked inside her eyes and tried to smile. “Well then, what a lucky man I am. I get to fall in love with you all over again.”
“Very funny.”
“I'm serious.”
“Who says you'll even love me?”
His shock was genuine. “How can anybody not love you?”
She sniffed and almost smiled. Then asked, with a hint of guilt in her voice, “What if I can't love you?”
“Love someone else,” he answered, as if it were logical. “You have the most beautiful heart, I shouldn't have the right to pull it into oblivion with me.”
“You have the only right.”
It was his turn to almost smile.
Belle hid her face on his jacket again and said, “How can I make you believe me?”
*
For the next hour, Rumpelstiltskin sat on the cot and listened to Belle as she spoke, legs outstretched and face devoid of any kind of emotion other than fear or hesitation. Sometimes he'd look down at his hands, still wondering if they were truly his. Once, he touched his face discreetly, just to check if it felt like his own, but whatever conclusions he drew from that, he did not share with either Belle or Emma and kept on listening.
Emma sat back and allowed Belle to do all the talking. She started off by telling him about the Dark Curse and how the previous Dark One was dead now and all his powers had been transferred to Rumpelstiltskin. The man tried to argue, but she simply said, “I know it's a long and complicated tale, but please, just let me finish. Everything will be easier if you let me finish.”
Though he looked confused and eager to just get to the end of it, he bowed his head and said, “Yes, my Lady,” with such subservience one would have thought Belle had barked orders at him to be quiet and not to dare interrupt her again. But her voice was kind and cautious; Emma would dare say she had never heard such kindness in a person's voice before and she wondered if Belle was not only trying to make him feel comfortable and safe, but also keep herself from breaking down. It hadn't even been twelve hours since her True Love was lost to her. And yet, there he was, eyes on the ground, too scared or shy to look at her.
She told him of how he had stopped the Ogres' War and brought the children back to the village. Regardless of what she had just instructed, he asked, “Was Bae among them?”
If she had shushed him and ordered him to be silent once again, he'd probably have given her another bow of the head and obeyed. But she said, “He didn't go to war.”
He sighed, and as breath left his lungs his whole body relaxed. “Oh, thank god,” he muttered to himself. “Thank god.”
Belle's eyes filled with tears, but his eyes were still on the floor, so he didn't notice it.
She said, “You kept the soldiers from taking him.”
He sneered at himself. “Me? I couldn't protect him the first time they tried to take him.”
“You had the power of the Dark One by then,” Belle said, brushing her tears away.
He shook his head, as if her tale was too hard for him to believe, but didn't disagree with her.
Belle continued her story, painting her husband as a man of business, rather than an evil wizard, which might have been a little farfetched, but not completely untrue. She spoke of the many Kings and Queens that would seek his magic and deal in unimaginable riches. She spoke of the castle filled with treasures. For years, she said, he was feared throughout the realms because of his magic and power, but also respected; so much so that many practitioners of magic wished to be his students.
One of his students was Regina (“The woman who just left,” Emma explained.”), and when Regina was old and skilled enough, he gave her a curse that ripped them all from the Enchanted Forest and brought them to this Land Without Magic.
“That's where we've been for the past thirty two years.”
She waited for him to ask something. He just stared at the floor and said nothing.
“And a month ago I broke...” she trailed off. Cleared her throat. “Your Curse was broken and every bit of darkness that there was left in you is now gone. But with it were the memories of the past two hundred years. Which is why you cannot remember anything I just told you.”
He still said nothing.
“We know you probably have a lot of questions,” Emma said, stepping in. “We understand that it's all very confusing for you.”
Again, nothing.
“We also understand,” Emma continued, speaking a little louder to see if she got a reaction out of him, “that it's hard to take it all in and that you might not believe us, but if you give us a few days, we'll give you all the proof you need.”
“I have to believe you.”
His reply was so quiet they almost didn't hear it.
“If everything you're telling me is true,” he said, his voice as cautious as Belle's, “then I had enough power to protect Bae.”
There was a spark of hope in his eyes.
Belle braced herself for the moment she had been delaying for too long now.
Rumpelstiltskin noticed their sudden silence and pressed, “Did he make it to this land?”
Belle said, “Yes.”
He didn't seem think her short answer was sign of anything bad and asked, “Then can you please let me see my boy?”
Emma said, “Belle, do you want to wait outside?”
“He came to this land first,” she said, ignoring Emma's offer once again. “You know what a magic bean is.”
He looked up from the floor now, his eyes dark and fearful. “Yes.”
“He fell into a portal, not long after you became the Dark One. He ended up in this land, and that is why you gave Regina that curse. You wanted to come after him.”
“You said it's been two hundred years,” he said, terribly afraid of that number. People can disappear in two hundred. People will surely die in less.
“Yes,” Belle replied.
“Was I too late?”
“No. You found him. He was already a grown man by then. Neal-Baelfire had a son of his own.”
“I'm a grandfather?” he said, and Emma and Belle thought that, had the situation been different, the news would have probably delighted him because the corners of his mouth were very close to forming a smile.
“His name is Henry. He really wants to meet you.”
“Is my boy with him?”
Belle took a deep breath. When no words came out of her mouth, Emma placed a hand on her shoulder and said, “Something happened a year ago. There was a powerful witch named Zelena. She wanted to hurt everybody in town, including you. Including your grandson.”
“But I-I was the Dark One,” he stammered, finally sensing bad news were coming.
“You remember the dagger the beggar told you about?” Emma continued, sensing Belle's body tense under the palm of her hand. “How you could control the Dark One just by wielding the dagger?”
He stared at her, waiting.
“She had your dagger and there was nothing you could do. Neal- Your son... didn't make it. I'm sorry.”
Belle looked up and watched him take in the new information through a veil of tears. His hand fumbled for the wall, as if he were about to fall, regardless of being seated already.
After a moment, he shook his head. “I don't believe you.”
Belle said, “I know.”
“That's-that's cruel. It's sorcery or a joke or-or-I don't know. I don't care. I don't believe you.”
“He-you...” Belle blinked and wiped the tears that had rolled down her cheeks. “Before you forgot everything, you said you'd never believe me. So you gave me proof.”
“Proof that my boy is dead?”
“Proof that I wouldn't lie to you.”
Belle reached up to hold Emma'd hand. “I think it's best that you leave.”
Emma looked at her, then at Rumpelstiltskin, then at Belle again. “Are you sure you don't want me here for this?”
“Yes, I need to do this part alone.”
Emma nodded and told Rumpelstiltskin, “I am very sorry,” before disappearing through the curtain.
Belle said, “He-you-” she stopped. Started over, “You told me that when you were a boy your father left you to be cared for by two spinsters.”
His eyes faltered when she started speaking, waiting for her to reveal a terrible secret that would prove that everything she had just told him was true, but then he sighed. “Lady Belle, everyone knows who my father was.”
“I know,” Belle nodded. “A cheat and a coward who abandoned you.”
“Yes,” he agreed, lowering his eyes again.
Belle realized for the first time that the wound his father had left was even fresher for him. Rumpel had first told her of Peter Pan the night he returned from Neverland, wrapped in her arms and feeling safe for the first time in hundreds of years. Even then, with Neal and Henry safely home and his father supposedly locked away in Pandora's box, she could tell every word had been a struggle.
The man who was sitting in front of her shared her husband's face, but had nothing in common with him anymore. He had not killed his own father, nor been to Neverland. He wasn't the one who had confessed his childhood fears with her so that she could sooth away his nightmares of monstrous shadows. This perfect stranger still resented his father deeply, which made everything even harder.
Belle took in a deep breath and exhaled the next words quickly, “The spinsters gave you a magic bean.”
Rumpelstiltskin's head snapped up, wide eyes staring into hers.
“They told you it could take you anywhere in the world and to any realm you wished, where you could make a fresh start,” she continued. “That some day, when you were older, you could use it to escape your father's bad reputation. But you didn't listen to them. You still loved him so very much. You were only a boy. You waited for them to fall asleep and stole the bean. And you went to fetch your father, so you could be a family again. And his suggestion when you asked where you should go was that you should both go to Neverland-”
His interruption was barely audible. “I don't think I want to talk to you anymore.”
It was enough to make her want to stop talking, but she didn't. She had to go through with it.
“You used the magic bean to create a portal and you were taken to a beautiful island where you could get anything you wanted just by using your imagination. And your father wanted to fly. So he took you to the tallest trees in Neverland, where you could get Pixie Dust.”
He stared at her, mesmerized. Belle could see his chest starting to heave underneath his shirt.
“He climbed up the tree and left you behind-”
“Please,” he whispered.
“I'm sorry,” she said, struggling to keep her voice firm and steady. “I really am. But he left you behind and you thought he wasn't going to come back because he was taking so long. And you couldn't do anything about it, because you were too scared to climb that tree after him. So you just sat there and you wept, clinging to a doll your father had given you just a few days before. A doll you named Peter Pan.”
He covered his ears and closed his eyes, blocking her out.
Belle reached for his hands and pulled them down, saying, “That was the first time you felt like a coward, sitting under those trees, unable to climb up. Unable to do anything. But he came down that tree.”
He started shaking his head and struggling to pull his hands free, but she wouldn't let him go.
“Only, he didn't come back alone,” she said, speaking faster, more urgently. “He had brought a monster with him. A shadow monster. Because you can't stay in Neverland unless you are a child, and a to become a child again he had to let go of the one thing that was holding him back.”
He started weeping. “Please, let me go-”
“He had to let go of you,” she continued, mercilessly. “He allowed that beast to drag you through the realms and drop you from the skies just so he could be young again. And ever since then you've been terrified of heights, and of leaving your village. And I am sorry to bring this up, but I need you to believe me.”
She watched him shake his head from side to side and double himself in half, desperately trying to pretend she wasn't there anymore.
“You didn't tell it to the spinsters who raised you,” Belle insisted, tears running down her face. “You didn't tell it to Milah. You didn't even tell it to Baelfire. You wouldn't tell something so personal to anyone you'd think would ever use it to tell you such a cruel lie!”
Belle finally allowed him to pull his hands free and buried his face in them, sobbing.
“My boy is dead!” he cried. “My little boy!”
“I'm sorry,” she whispered, her lips quivering and giving in to her own sorrow. “I really am.”
“My beautiful boy!” he continued, curling himself into a ball.
Belle knew that it meant nothing to him anymore , but she reached out for his head and stroke his hair. T hey had mourned Neal's death together twice before. S he couldn't leave him to grieve alone simply because they were strangers to each other.