Chapter Text
There is a woman on Cameron Gold’s doorstep.
He finds her at ten in the morning, although he has no idea how long she might have been waiting for him to do so. She is curled around herself, her arms clasped about her knees, shivering and staring at the street. Her long dark hair is matted, tangled and shaggy around her face, her hospital scrubs more than a little worse for wear.
“Are you lost, dear?” he asks, after a moment, and she turns to look at him, a little crease between her eyebrows. As if she didn’t expect those to be his first words; as if trying to figure out how to proceed.
“No…” she shakes her head, “I promised I would come back, I’m just sorry it took so long. Your Saviour took her time, didn’t she? And even then, busting out took forever.”
Her voice is a little scratchy, dry-throated and underused, but clear and steady. “I’m… I’m sorry?” He shakes his head, unsure of what in God’s name is happening here.
She just sighs, “Yes, I know. Me too. But here we are.”
“Have we met?” He feels the absurd urge to prod her with his cane: she sits so still on his porch that she might be cast in stone. There is something a very little bit familiar about her, as if he might have seen her in the street once or twice, sat one table over in Granny’s on a rainy day or spied her passing his shop as he stared out of the window.
She stands, dusts herself down, and stares up at him, “Yes…” she frowns, and then smiles, bemusedly, “You don’t remember?”
He shrugs, “I’m sure I would remember if I’d met you, dear. The scrubs make you rather unforgettable.”
She laughs a little, bitterly, and looks down at her clothing, “I wasn’t wearing this when we met. I distinctly remember a long dress made of golden silk, my fiancé’s stupid idea, and you wore significantly more leather.” She glances up and down, and he has the distinct sensation that she is undressing him with her eyes. Which would be entirely fine - she is a rather astonishingly pretty girl, behind the tangled hair and the scrubs - except he rather feels he comes up short.
“I’m afraid I’m not exactly the biker type, dear,” he smiles because she is clearly utterly insane, “You have me confused with someone else. August Booth, perhaps: he owns a rather shiny motorcycle.”
Or, at least, he had until it had met with Gold’s car key. The bastard had broken a window in his shop, tried to steal something rather valuable, and while Gold still had no notion of what the boy had been playing at, revenge had been rather unexpectedly swift and sweet.
“No,” she dismisses that entirely, a line appearing between her eyebrows as she thinks hard, “The Curse disagrees: it doesn’t fit the leathers you wore. I believe… rock star is closer, although still not quite right.”
And there Gold has to laugh, because no one - not even in his youth - would ever have referred to him as a rock star. “Do you need help getting back to the hospital?”
She shakes her head, “I made a promise to go with you forever. And no matter how innocent you act now, Rumpelstiltskin, I don’t break deals any more often than you do.”
And with that, she pushes him aside and strides inside as if she belongs, as if she owns the place and he is the stranger, although she looks about with no small amount of curiosity. He just stares after her, dumbfounded, for a long moment before following her: perhaps he can distract her and call the hospital when she’s not around, have the Mayor sort this out. He has no love at all for Regina Mills, but she does at least get things done.
“Why the stained glass?” she asks, head cocked to one side.
“It ah—“ he scrambles for an answer: he never really thought about it before, “Was there when I moved in. It’s pretty enough to look at, no more of a hassle to clean.”
“Ah.” She nods, and then, unexpectedly, jumps up and throws her arms around him. He stumbles, having to use his cane to balance him as his knee almost gives out, but he steadies himself at last.
She buries her face in the meeting between his shoulder and his neck, her arms around his shoulders, and he is entirely surprised to feel his own arms coming around to clasp around her torso, holding her against him tentatively as she clings to him. “I’m just…” She sniffled against his shoulder, as if - heaven forbid - she were about to start to cry, “I’m so glad you’re alive!”
“Yes,” he murmurs, the awkwardness slipping in as the reality of the situation overrides his utter shock and confusion, “Um… me too?”
She pulls back, wipes at her eyes, and he is horrified to see that she has started to cry, “You… you really don’t remember anything.” She half-sobs, “Nothing at all.”
“I’m sorry.” He fidgets his hands at his sides, awkward and unknowing of how to proceed, “Are you sure…”
“Yes!” she snaps, and steps back in alarm: what if she’s dangerous? Violent? What if she’s escaped from the psychiatric ward and has a knife stashed on her person, and is ready to murder anyone who tries to reason with her? His hands grip his cane: he doesn’t want to be stabbed by an escaped psychotic, but neither he doesn’t wish to harm this woman.
Never hurt, never harm, they will all live, you have my word.
But she just lets out a deep breath, heavy and harsh, and puts her hands over her face; he sees her shoulders shake, “I’m sorry, but yes, I’m sure. It’s you, the way you were for a moment, when I—“ she shakes her head, smiles and laughs around her freely-flowing tears, and he feels so utterly useless and unworthy of this woman in this moment that he hates himself, “I’m sorry. Just trust me. We knew each other.”
He nods, shortly, a plan forming. He gestures with one hand, “Would you like to take a seat, Miss…”
“Belle,” she smiles, and then her head cocks to one side, as if listening to something far away, “I’m being told it’s French. Belle French.”
Being told?
“Right. Well, Miss French, take a seat.” She nods, her eyes a little sadder than he might have expected, and follows his directions, sitting herself neatly down on his threadbare leather sofa and breathing in deeply. Then something clicks in his mind, “Would you by any chance be a relation of Moe French? He sells flowers across town.”
“Moe…” she considers for a moment, her gaze suddenly unfocused and distant. And then it clears, and her smile is abrupt and radiant, “Oh, yes! I believe he’s my father. It’s short for Maurice, right? Tall, heavy build, different accent to yours?”
The girl doesn’t know her own father’s name? Gold needs to be on the phone to the Mayor as soon as possible: she’s clearly out of her mind. “Yes,” he says, distractedly, “He’s Australian I believe. Like you, judging by your own accent.”
“Australian…” she thinks again, as if somehow consulting an encyclopaedia in her head, “Yes! Right, Australian, of course!”
And then she goes back to burying her nose in his upholstery.
“Something the matter now, dear?” he asks. She almost nuzzles into the leather couch cushions, and he’s left wondering — for the fifty-eighth time this morning — what in God’s name she’s doing.
“This,” she says, “This is more like how you should smell. Your cologne is nice but all wrong.”
“Ah, yes,” he shifts uncomfortably as he takes a seat opposite her in his armchair, “The, ah, leather you mentioned.”
She nods, and for all her strangeness, all the odd twists of words she uses and the growing suspicion he holds that she is certifiably insane, her eyes are sharp and clear. And utterly, entirely, completely blue, like pure-cut stones, or the sky on the purest of summer days.
He is not given to poetry, and yet here he is.
“Tell me something then, dear,” he says, hands clasped on his knees as he regards her. He doesn’t know if one is supposed to indulge the mentally unbalanced, but he is curious: her delusions focus on him, after all, and he’d hate to have loose ends, “If we do know each other as you claim we do, tell me something personal you know about me.”
She gives him a hard, strange look, her whole face creased in thought, and he wonders if she will break down, if he has broken her psychosis and she will collapse foaming at the mouth, if he will have to send her back to the asylum strapped to a gurney.
But then her eyes brighten, and she smiles at him, “You have a fondness for a chipped teacup. All the others are fine, but still every time you take your chances with the chipped one. You take your tea with milk and no sugar, and made in a teapot, none of this bag in a cup of water nonsense. You prefer to close the curtains, keep things dark and private, as often as possible. And you like spinning wheels, although I’m willing to bet you don’t know why anymore.”
She watches him carefully, eyebrows raised, awaiting his reaction.
She was spot-on with everything: scarily accurate. And far more than one could gain from simply watching through the windows or talking to the town: as she said, his curtains are closed much of the time.
“Can I stay?” she asks, “Please?”
And before he can stop himself, he is nodding and showing her to a guest room. Because she is beautiful, and on the run, and Mayor Mills will be pissed off something rotten by this, and, most of all, because she knows him. She knows his little details, although how he cannot fathom, and he can lock her in the bedroom from the outside to prevent her from murdering him in the night.
—
She wakes him in the middle of the night, screaming, hands pounding on the door. He hobbles as fast as his bad leg can carry him to her door, and opens the lock without even thinking, despite the dangers of a lunatic woman in his home
She should not be locked in, never, no more dungeons for this girl, not ever again.
Her hands are bloodied, torn to ribbons, as she falls onto him. She has been scratching at the walls, trying to escape. Escape from a house she walked into willingly.
She is sobbing, clinging to him, bleeding hands fisted in his robe, and he rocks her as if he knows her, as if she is a child.
“Rum?” she whimpers, her cries finally quieting, and her blue eyes blink up at him so wide and trusting. Perhaps he has a leather-clad identical twin in another town and the bastard somehow dumped this girl off here with him.
It doesn’t explain the scrubs, but it’s a theory.
“No, it’s just me,” he smiles, as gently as he can, “Mr. Gold, see?”
“Gold.” She nods, repeats to herself, like a child learning by rote, “Gold, yes, Gold. Not Rum, not anymore.”
She nods, nods again, childlike, and curls against him, sobbing and shaking, but quieter, softer now. He strokes her hair lightly, softly: it feels the natural thing to do.
It’s just one night, he thinks, grasping for the irritation at imposition he should feel. Cameron Gold is a man with a hard face and a harder heart, and he let his curiosity get the better of him.
But she is crying, wretched, clinging to him. Gold hasn’t comforted a woman in perhaps twenty years, and the memories he has of such close contact are fleeting, faded and scarce. He lives alone. He walks and eats and goes about his work alone. He sleeps alone.
But the girl won’t let go, and she is soft, warm in his arms. It feels good, for a small and private moment, to be needed.
Then, slowly, gradually, she detangles herself from him, “Sorry, Mr. Gold,” she says, “I… it won’t happen again.”
“Quite right.” He nods, standing with her, “Is there anything you need, to help you sleep?”
She thinks a moment, really considering the question, “Could you… just, tell me something?”
“Depends on the something.” He says, cautiously, but it earns a little smile.
“Your name. Just… Mr-what-Gold? The curse— it’s incomplete.”
“My given name is Cameron.” He tells her, hoping it is an acceptable answer. She nods, satisfied and a little deflated, perhaps, but the weeping wreck is gone, and he is relieved.
“Thank you. I… thank you, Cameron Gold.”
“You’re quite welcome,” he replies, mystified, “Sleep well, dear.”
He limps off down the hall without another word to her. For some reason it hurts too much to look at her: he thinks it is the disappointment in her eyes.
—-
He calls the hospital the next morning, but does not tell Dr. Whale right away what has happened. He has an instinctive distrust of any of Mayor Mills’ pet institutions, the hospital and, until recently, law enforcement both ranking high on his list. That Emma Swan has freed the Sheriff’s office from her control was, of course, a lucky coincidence. Nothing to do with the fight between the pair of them he just happened to ensure happened outside his shop rather than inside it, or the time he saw her walking as Regina crossed the street and nearly ran the mayor over with his car. That she was elected off the back of both heroics and willingness not to be bullied is a coincidence.
But still, while the Sheriff is at least a neutral party, he does not trust the hospital the same way. So he is wary, and asks, “Is there a psychiatric ward in Storybrooke hospital, or perhaps an asylum? I don’t believe I factored it onto the city council’s rent for the site.”
“Well,” Whale pauses, bemused, “Any outpatient psychiatric treatment we send to Dr. Hopper, but in any case stronger than that we have to send the patient to Augusta. We’re a very small hospital, Mr Gold.”
“I see.” Gold nods, his suspicions confirmed: she cannot have escaped from an asylum, then, not one in Storybrooke at any rate, “And there are no mental health facilities closer than Augusta?”
“None with inpatient care, no.” Whale says, sounding a little irritated.
“Alright, thank you, Dr. Whale.” Gold says, and hangs up.
So she’s not an asylum escapee after all. Or, if she is, she has come a long way for a girl with nothing but her hospital scrubs. He’s heard no news in either the paper or on the radio about a missing patient, even though when David Nolan went AWOL from his coma bed, it had been on the news within hours. If she has a car and could drive, no doubt she could have found herself better clothing before her arrival. And the Storybrooke woods stretch for miles in every direction: there is no other town within walking distance.
So, Gold surmises, the question remains: where did she come from?
He returns to sit at the kitchen table, opposite his new houseguest. She has borrowed some clothes from him, an old pair of jeans from the attic that fit reasonably well and one of his shirts. “Where did you come from?” he asks, bluntly, because the lack of information is starting to worry him more than he’d like.
“The same place you did, like the rest of the town,” she smiles, calmly, “But—“
“But I don’t remember, yes, dear, you said.” He snaps, too tired of this game, at last, to make any pretence at playing along, “I meant yesterday: where were you before you landed on my doorstep?”
She pauses, thinking a moment, then nods, “The Curse says it was a hospital. In town. A place you put people to forget about them.”
“The Curse?” he asks, puzzled, but she doesn’t look fazed by his confusion, just nods with that same little smile she always seems to wear.
She looks at him a moment, as if she can’t believe he’s even asking. “The Curse that the Queen cast to make everyone forget, and be miserable in a world with no happy endings.” She explains, clearly and a little slowly, as if to a dimwitted child.
“Ah, of course, how silly of me.” He nods, past the point of being anything but dismissive and disbelieving.
“You don’t believe me.” She says, and he can’t tell if she is accusing or resigned or simply very, very sad.
“No, I don’t.” He says, just as plainly, “Because curses and happy endings have never existed anywhere, and I’m wondering if I should send you to the hospital anyway. You’re clearly out of your mind.”
She stares at him, the utter hurt and betrayal in her eyes twisting a knife in his gut. Why does he feel a traitor? Why does he feel a coward? This girl is nothing and no one to him, just a possibly dangerous inconvenience with bright blue eyes and glittering delusions.
“If you send me back,” she says, shakily, “You’ll never see me again.”
“Sort of the appeal, dear.” He says, a little maliciously, but it pains him to do it. She’s a sick woman in need of help, but he is not a good man, he is not a kind samaritan.
“No, you don’t understand,” she says, desperately, and he remembers the bloodied and screaming girl who landed in his arms the night before, “If I go back there she will kill me.”
“Hospitals don’t kill people,” he says, with patronising gentleness, “They make people better.”
“I was locked away, in the dark and alone, without enough food and with no way out, for twenty-eight years!” She argues back, and she can be barely twenty-eight now so how that is true he has no idea, “And she will kill me for escaping and for finding you, and then she will wake you long enough to see my body and hear my screaming, and to know that she won.”
“Do you understand how completely insane you sound right now?” He demands, because she shouldn’t be able to hurt him: no one is able to hurt him. He is the fearsome Mr. Gold, the terror of Storybrooke, and he will not be shaken by a girl who is clearly out of her mind, and her stories of myth and murder.
“I do, yes.” She nods, voice shaking, “And I understand that everything I say convinces you more to call Regina’s men over here and have me sent away.”
“It does indeed.” He nods, and wonders again why he hasn’t yet done just that, why he thought to ask about the existence of an asylum in Storybrooke in such dishonest terms rather than simply sending her back to Whale for treatment. She is not his responsibility, but she refuses to believe that.
“Fine.” She sighs, and he sees her thinking, brow furrowed and pretty eyes clouded, “Fine. How about this? How about I try to make this sane for you, hm? My father is Maurice French, he sells flowers. A dark force came into our lives… two years ago, I think, and I had no choice but to leave my father, and be locked away forever at the whim of a monster.”
“You sound no more sane than before, dear.” He says, but gentler, because he can still see no insanity, no wild danger in her eyes despite the strangeness of her stories. It would be easier if she looked deranged. She just looks terrified, impassioned, but rational and reasonable. Belief in curses and evil witches notwithstanding.
“Well translate it, then! Call it a metaphor!” She stares at him like he’s the one who doesn’t understand, raking a hand through her dark hair, “The dark force is my supposed insanity, my being locked away is my stay in the hospital, and the monster was Regina. It only felt like twenty-eight years because of the solitude. Except… except that I’m not insane. I never have been. I’ve only done one truly mad thing in my whole life, and it wasn’t dark. It was brilliant.”
“Your father thought you had lost your mind, and Regina convinced him to have you committed. To an asylum that, by all accounts, does not exist?”
“The C—“ she stops, and then nods, “Yes. Yes, that’s right.”
“Then where is this mystery man in this tale?” he asks, “This Rum you cried for last night, with all the leather?”
“I’m looking at him,” she says, beaming.
“I haven’t worn leather since my youth, dear, aside from my gloves, shoes and belt.”
“Then perhaps…” she says, slowly, thinking her next words through, “Perhaps it would help you to believe I was insane for a while, just a little bit, just enough. Perhaps it would help to think that I took what I knew of you and added it to my psychosis, and it left a trace.”
“Except you know me, the details, more than what gossip would tell you.”
“Except… yes, I know you!” She huffs, throws up her hands “See? The half-truths and lies are complicated, and yet you think the truth is impossible! Why won’t you just believe me?”
He can see her honesty, or at least her true belief, and he can’t bear to hurt her again. She’s right: there is no story that adds up. She knows him as a close friend would, but he’s never seen her before in his life. She escaped from an asylum that doesn’t exist. She knew her own father’s given name and face but not his occupation, and not his surname.
But when he sighs, and answers her, it is not a question, and not a statement of the utter impossibility of the situation. Instead, it is the first truth he feels he’s admitted in a lifetime of half-truths and twisted deals, and he doesn’t understand why it pains him to say it: it’s only truth.
“Because no one, no one, would ever dream of me, dear.”
She stares at him, bites her lip, a fierce joy and then dampening sadness - disappointment, always disappointment in her eyes - passing over her face. And sympathy, empathetic pain, not pity but something kinder and more understanding, something stronger.
“Can I stay?” she asks, softly, “Please?”
Gold doesn’t say anything, but he makes no more move to turn her out, and Belle makes no move to leave.