Work Text:
Once again, Belle found herself minding the pawn shop while everyone wondered about Gold’s fate. And once again, Zelena was in Storybrooke.
Zelena, Belle thought with scorn. If Belle—kind, forgiving Belle who could find the goodness in everyone—had an enemy, it was Zelena. She was back to ruin everyone’s happiness. Rumple’s, Regina’s, Robin’s, no doubt Belle’s too. And now there would be a child. An innocent child with that for a mother. No one deserved that fate.
She thought of Rumple protected by the apprentice’s charm. What would he want her to do about Zelena? Be good, she thought he'd say. Sit home and wait while the powerful ones figure out what to do.
Belle scoffed and shook her head. She’d told her father. She’d told Gaston. She’d even told Rumple. They never listened.
“No one decides my fate but me,” she said to the dusty boxes in the backroom of Mr. Gold’s shop with a determined set in her chin. She’d just have to teach Zelena that too.
Thanks to all her work organizing the place, she was able to find what she was looking for easily. A box labeled “clothes,” and in it was a fur coat made from seemingly every animal imaginable, an invisible suit, and a pair of ruby red shoes.
“What pretty dancing shoes!” Belle said as she lifted them from the box. She placed them on her feet and patted the souls. Would they trick Zelena? How much did they look like her shoes that allowed her to travel to the Enchanted Forest so many years ago? She wrapped them in tissue paper, put them in a shopping bag along with a book, and headed out to the hospital.
She shivered as she approached the nurses’ station, remembering her time there and the detached care the nurses provided. She couldn't hold that against them personally, after all, they didn't know any better, but she could never see them in their starched white uniforms as anything other than sinister.
“Regina sent me to give this to her sister.” The lie came easily, and she showed the nurse a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
The nurse looked up from her magazine and nodded. "End of the hall."
Belle walked past the orderly forever mopping the dingy floor. She’d never wanted to set foot in that place again. Twenty-eight years trapped in a padded cell was enough for her. But here she was.
With a deep breath, she opened the door. Zelena was slumped on the bed staring out the window. Belle knew that window so well. The draft that always came through. The view of everyone’s feet in the hospital courtyard. The taunt of sunshine and freedom, close but inaccessible.
“Not so powerful now.” Belle’s voice cracked as she said it. But she squared her shoulders, determined to stay strong.
Zelena turned to her with a sneer on her face. “What do you want?”
Belle took out the book and tossed it on Zelena’s bed. “To give you this.”
Zelena rolled her eyes at the book. “Thanks, but I’m not really the reading type.”
“And this,” Belle said as she pulled out the ruby shoes.
For a brief second, Zelena’s face lit up with pleasure. But then she turned skeptical. “Are those what I think they are?"
“There’s no place like home, Zelena.”
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Where did you get them? And why would you want to give them to me?”
“They were in the shop. And because I want you gone.” At least that was true.
Zelena snorted a humorless laugh and caressed her stomach. “You mean you don’t want to meet the baby?” She was already starting to show. Belle guessed she was maybe four months along.
“You think this is a good place to raise a child?” Belle gestured around the small cell. “At least you won’t have to worry about the baby hitting its head. All the walls are padded.”
“Oh, I don’t intend on staying here very much longer.”
“Yeah? What are you planning on doing? Going after Regina again? Raising your child to hate her? Tearing her and Robin apart? For what? Will that make you happy?”
For a moment, Zelena’s sneer flickered. But she regained herself and narrowed her eyes at Belle again. “I don’t have to answer to you!” she spat out.
Belle shook her head. “No, you don’t. And you don’t have to stay here either.” She tossed the shoes to Zelena. “Think about it.” Belle left Zelena’s cell and heard the door automatically lock behind her. She smiled, wondering how long it would be before Zelena put on the shoes.
***
She didn’t have to wonder long. The following morning, Will came by.
“I got muffins.” He held up a take-away bag from Granny’s. “And I brought in your paper.” He laid the morning edition of The Mirror on her kitchen table.
Belle had her back to him and was pouring orange juice into a Champaign flute. She offered Will a glass. “Thanks. Mimosa?”
He took it with a wry smile. “Are we celebrating something?”
She shrugged coyly. “Not exactly. I was just in the mood.”
He continued to look at her askance but accepted the drink. Mimosa was the perfect complement to a lemon poppy seed muffin.
A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door.
“Regina!” Belle gasped when she opened the door. Will stood up and moved by Belle’s side. “What are you doing here?”
“Relax. I’m just here to return a library book.” She held out a copy of What to Expect.
“You can drop it in the library’s book return slot during off hours. I’m having breakfast now.”
“I’m not interested in how you play house with the knave.” She pushed the book to Belle. “This book was found in my sister’s cell this morning. It’s from the library. Since I don’t think they deliver, someone had to have given it to her.”
Belle shrugged, trying not to give anything away. “It’s a public library. Anyone could have checked it out and given it to her.”
“Yes, and you can tell me who.”
“Why does it matter?”
Regina nodded to the copy of The Mirror still rolled up on the table. “Turn to page two.”
Will sat back down at the table. He spread the paper out on the table and began to read. “‘A disturbance arose early this morning in the secure unit of the Storybrooke hospital. Infamous resident Zelena was found dancing.’” He looked up at Regina. “So?”
“Keep reading. Or is the article too long for you?”
Belle folded her arms across her chest. “Why don’t you just tell me what happened and how it concerns me?”
Regina helped herself to Belle’s mimosa. “The shoes she was wearing, they weren’t your standard hospital issue. I’m sure you remember, they didn’t exactly give you dancing shoes.”
“And?”
“The shoes were cursed to make the wearer dance.”
“Since when is dancing a problem?”
Regina shook her head slowly. “I expect the stupid act from your new bed warmer Will over there. Not you who runs the library. Not you who has the keys to Rumple’s shop. You know exactly what kind of shoes they were.”
Will cleared his throat and continued reading. “‘The patient informed hospital staff that she could not stop dancing. She danced until her feet blistered and bled. Hospital staff found themselves unable to remove Zelena’s shoes.’”
“She couldn’t sleep. She can’t eat or rest or do anything except for dance. And she’ll continue dancing until she starves. Well, Mrs. Gold?” Regina asked coldly.
Belle shrugged with one shoulder. “Are you asking me if there’s anything in Rumple’s shop to remove the shoes?”
“Is there?”
Belle looked thoughtful for a moment. “There might be one thing.”
***
Emma came as soon as she was summoned, part and parcel of her new role as the Dark One. Belle didn’t know if she’d ever get used to seeing Emma with her reptilian eyes and her sickly golden pallor. It reminded her too much of Rumple and all they’d been through. She had to look away.
“You called? I kind of like this new power. Better response time than I had as sheriff.”
Belle cleared her throat. “What do you know of the red shoes?”
Emma shook her head and furrowed her brows, confused. “Nothing.”
“They were in Rumple’s shop.”
“Still, nothing. I gained the Dark One’s power, not his knowledge. Why don’t you just tell me instead of playing Twenty Questions?”
“They’re shoes that...”
Regina grew irritable and cut her off. “Little Miss Perfect over there gave my sister a pair of cursed dancing shoes. Now Zelena can’t take them off and she can’t stop dancing.”
Emma nodded. “And you want me to provide music to accompany her?”
“No!” Regina shouted. “Is trying to be funny but failing miserably also part of this whole Dark One package? I want you to get the shoes off her!”
“Is that all? Simple!” Emma disappeared in a puff of purple smoke.
Belle, Regina, and Will stared at each other awkwardly after Emma’s departure. “Well, that was easy,” Belle finally said. “Thanks for returning the book. I’ll bring it back to the library if it’s not on your way home.”
Regina quirked her lips and gave a light laugh. “Don’t think you’ve gotten off so easily, my dear. Your little stunt with my sister...”
“You have no proof it was me.”
She laughed again. It was a menacing laugh. “I don’t need proof,” she sneered, looking like her sister as she did so.
Will stood up, ready to protect Belle. He banged his fist on the table. “I won’t stand here and let Belle be threatened in her own home.”
A fireball grew in Regina’s hands. She moved it between her fingers as though playing with it. “Are you sure you want to try to stop me?”
To his credit, Will stood his ground. But Belle placed a hand on his arm, holding him back. Nervously, she swallowed. “What are you going to do to me?”
“The same thing I did to Mary Margaret when she killed my mother with her trickery.” Regina closed her hand, and the fireball vanished. “Nothing.”
Belle scoffed. “Nothing? So all that...”
“Nothing except this.”
Belle gasped as Regina reached her hand into Belle’s chest and removed her heart. Will caught Belle as she stumbled. “Regina!” he shouted. “We should have known you’d never change.”
“Change,” Regina said with a snort of laughter. “That’s what I wanted to show you.” She held Belle’s throbbing red heart out to her and pointed out the dark lump. “That. That’s darkness. Your darkness. And if you’re not careful, it will consume you as it did Rumpelstiltskin.”
***
Locks and nurses’ stations couldn’t stop Emma anymore. She appeared right inside Zelena’s cell sitting cross-legged on her bed. She clapped her hands in time with Zelena’s jig. “Oh, wonderful!” she cried with delight. “That you can still dance and be merry in a place like this! It proves the triumph of the human spirit!”
“Why are you here, Dark One?” Zelena asked. She was near breathless from her dance.
“I thought you might want a dancing partner.” Emma jumped up and began doing the mashed potato.
“Have you come here just to mock me?” Emma was sure Zelena would have sounded more menacing if she hadn’t been doing the pony.
“No.” Emma stopped dancing and pulled out the Dark One’s dagger. “I’ve come to help.”
In one hand, she held the dagger. In the other, she pushed a ball of red light into Zelena, paralyzing the lower half of her body.
Zelena breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank yo--"
“Now lie down," Emma said, pushing Zelena onto her back on the bed. "This will only hurt for a moment.”
With the Dark One’s dagger, she cut off Zelena’s feet. Still in those red shoes, Zelena’s feet fell to the floor and danced away, out of the hospital, down the street, and into the woods that surround Storybrooke.