A/N: Another long chapter, but there was so much to wrap up I couldn't possibly have done it in a shorter amount of time - not the way I write, anyway! :) Many thanks and appreciation go to the writers of the show - from whom I steal and tweak unashamedly - and the actors who make it beautiful and believable. And a ton of thanks to everyone who's read, reviewed, followed, and favorited! Hope you all enjoy the ending, and I'd love to hear what you think of it!

Disclaimer: Imitation is the highest form of flattery! No copyright infringement is intended.

Chapter 15: Out Of Magic

Everything was different. Every time she looked, every time she turned away and then back, things were ever so slightly different, barely altered, just that little bit off. A Mickey Mouse clock moved to a different shelf in his shop. A painting added to the wall in his house. A shop she'd never before noticed there on the street beside another she recognized. An extra tinge of sadness darkening his eyes, straining the lines of his face, adding a sheen to rich eyes.

Those hurt the worst.

But she couldn't say any of that, not aloud, not here, not to the man sitting before her so patiently, his expression so intent as he waited for her to make a misstep that would allow him to consign her to the gray nothingness of her cell.

"Is everything all right, Belle?" Dr. Hopper asked her again. His pen tapped against his notepad, only once before he stopped the compulsive movement; she wondered if he had restrained himself because he'd heard the aggravated sigh the pen made.

"Everything is fine," she said softly, playing with her sleeve. She knew it was imperative that she stick to her script of safe things to say—she would have known that even if Gold hadn't reiterated it a hundred times on the drive to the therapist's office.

"Be careful what you say," he'd told her, deaf to his cufflinks echoing him in teasing mimicry. "Don't mention objects talking, or tell him that you've been skipping time. You have to see him, Belle, but you can't tell him everything. I won't be able to be there with you, so…just be careful. I…" His voice had roughened, then, deepened slightly. "I won't let you be taken away again. No matter what. All right?"

"All right," she'd replied, waving back at a cheerful mailbox. "I don't want to be taken from you, Gold," she'd added. "I love being with you."

He had swallowed, a muscle fluttering rapidly against his jaw, and when she'd reached out to place her hand on his arm, she'd felt his muscles coiled tightly beneath his skin and sleeve.

"I'll be careful," she'd promised.

And she would be. After all, bad enough she was in a cell at all; how much worse would it be if, even in her own hallucinations, she was locked up? Despite knowing Dr. Hopper was watching her closely, she couldn't restrain her shudder at that thought. And what would happen to Gold if I were locked up here, too? Would he fade away? No, better by far to stick to a script and lie and smile. She knew how to pretend, how to play a part, how to hide beneath complacent words and seeming docility. She'd been doing it for years, allaying her captors' anger and avoiding their pills and straitjackets. Even though Dr. Hopper wielded kindness and patience rather than threats and brute force, she could stand firm against him.

For Gold, she could.

"Are you?" Dr. Hopper leaned forward, resting an elbow on his knee, the motion placing his head slightly lowers than hers so that she found herself looking down at him. "You've been through several changes recently—I heard you moved back in with Mr. Gold."

"Yes." She nodded, uncomfortable with this reversal of their usual heights. "He asked me to."

Dr. Hopper nodded, and she could practically see his thoughts, as if his glasses were actually windows into his mind, could see him picking his words with such care. Trying to trap her, to lure her in and then snap the doors closed behind her. Purposely, she breathed through her nose, careful, evenly measured breaths. It took a lot of effort, but she managed not to dart a glance back at the door, slanted just slightly open at her request.

"So…you're happy at Mr. Gold's? You wanted to move in?"

"Yes," she said, and she was actually a bit impatient now, frustration consuming fear. "Why does everyone think that I didn't? He asked—asked—and I said yes. I'm happier there, with him, and he's happier, too, which makes me even happier. I have my own bedroom, if that's what you're worried about."

"I'm sorry." Dr. Hopper made a calming gesture with his hand, straightening in his chair to give her more space between them. "I'm just…just concerned for you. Not in a bad way, Belle. I just want to make sure that everything that's been happening lately is in your best interests. If you're happy, if you're healing, then I'm happy too. But you know the sheriff is worried about other people exerting undue influence over you, and one of the reasons for our meetings is to make sure that you're content and safe. Since the move to Mr. Gold's coincided with our missed sessions, I just wanted to make absolutely certain you were all right with it."

"I am," she said firmly. For the first time since their session had started, she met his pale, sincere eyes. "I am all right. I am happy. I am safe. I still go over and see Papa, and I'm working at Gold's pawnshop, and yesterday I even went to see David at the Pet Shelter to try and cheer him up. I met someone new, too—August. He helped me find my way when I got lost."

"Good. Good." Dr. Hopper's smile was small and pleased, congratulatory, as if they were celebrating some sort of milestone and not just a simple introduction. "It's always good to meet new people. I'm very happy to hear that you're getting out and around, meeting new people, experiencing new things. That's a very encouraging sign, Belle."

"Yes," she murmured, her eyes falling back to her sleeve, worried between her hands to keep herself from reaching into her pocket and pulling out Gold's handkerchief to worry over instead. She knew she had to stick to the script, but it had been almost an hour since she'd seen Gold, and she was beginning to wonder exactly what was and wasn't real—did Dr. Hopper know that his books were so dusty that they kept sneezing? Or was that something only she knew?

"And the doors?" Dr. Hopper's voice was incredibly gentle, so soft and compassionate that Belle almost burst into tears. Because she was still worried about the doors, and Gold had had to open them all for her to come here, and she had almost screamed when her car door had stuck slightly before he could open it. Because even now, worrying about her script and fighting not to say bless you to the books' sneezes, she still felt a desperate urge to flee to the door and slip out before it could close forever behind her.

But she did have a script, and she needed to stick to it. Gold was waiting outside for her, and if the door did close, she knew he would open it for her. He could always open any and every door, no matter whether they were locked or not; he had promised her.

So she lifted her eyes again and made herself meet Dr. Hopper's gaze. She didn't smile, though; that would have been trying too hard, and Gold had told her that little touches did far more than any too-large, obviously untrue gestures. "I'm doing better with them," she said, and was proud of herself when she managed to get the entire sentence out without a single tremor marring her voice. "They don't bother me at the pawnshop at all. And most days, I don't even think of them at Gold's house."

"Good," Dr. Hopper said again, and he was so happy for her, so pleased, that Belle felt suddenly very ashamed for her lies. She looked away, tugging at her sleeve so hard she thought it might rip. It's necessary, she reminded herself. This deception was securing her freedom, winning her another day outside that dull non-existence of imprisonment, so even though she felt bad, she wouldn't cave into her guilt.

"Are you sleeping through the nights still?"

Belle hadn't yet been able to figure out why he kept asking her this. She couldn't remember having nightmares, but he mentioned them, as if she had complained of having them once, so she supposed she must have suffered them during that first week after her release, the week she still couldn't remember, try as hard as she might.

"I am," she replied, and was happy that this, at least, wasn't a lie. August had spoken of lies, of trust, of promises, and the pain in his eyes had taken her aback, as had his relief and gratefulness when she'd told him that she believed him. She flinched away from Archie when she imagined what expression he might hold should he find out just how many lies she had spoken in their fifty minutes together.

"It sounds like you're doing very well," he pronounced, oblivious to her thoughts. "Is there anything you wanted to talk about or ask me before we wrap up?"

"No," she began, before trailing off. Hesitating, she bit her lip, then blurted out, "Did I know the mayor before…before?"

Dr. Hopper's eyebrows rose in surprise. "The mayor? I…I don't know. I suppose you'd probably met her. Why?"

She shrugged, shifting uncomfortably. "I don't know. I…I heard her, talking to Gold, and it seemed…she sounded familiar."

"I know you're having trouble with some memories," the therapist said gingerly, "but I don't think it's anything to worry overmuch about. They'll probably trickle back slowly, painlessly. It's just your subconscious releasing them as you grow ever more adjusted and stronger, better able to face them. It's a good thing, really."

"Okay." Belle chanced a tremulous smile, somewhat reassured. Perhaps I met her during that missing week, she decided. "Thank you."

"No problem," he assured her. "I really am on your side, so please don't ever hesitate to ask me anything or talk to me about anything that's bothering you."

"You're on my side." Belle turned the words over and over again in her mind. Doctors had never been on her side before, never wanted to help her, never treated her with kindness or gentleness, and yet there was something about Archie Hopper that made her want to trust him, want to relax in his presence. She studied him intently for a long moment, wondering just how much he was on her side. Would he keep her secrets if she told him that his clock was whispering gossip in her ear? Would he help Gold keep her out of her cell if she confided in him about the hour she had spent in the backroom of the pawnshop, apparently curled up and muttering in a corner, before he had woken her with her name and a finger trickling down her cheek?

She couldn't risk it. Even if Dr. Hopper tried to help her, she had a hard time believing that the sheriff would do the same. And if what she had understood about Gold and the mayor's confrontation was true, then the mayor herself would do her best to separate Belle from her beloved pawnbroker. So, best not to risk Dr. Hopper's goodwill. Best not to trust him. Best to keep her secrets between her and Gold alone.

So she made her farewells, and nodded when Dr. Hopper told her to be careful not to miss so many sessions again, and slipped out the open door, and smiled to find Gold pacing there in the hallway painted with golden hues as if to frame him in his namesake.

There was a tenseness to the line of his shoulders, a perilous expectancy around his eyes, a coiled rigidity to the way he clenched his cane in his fist, as he caught sight of her. "Well?" he asked, almost breathless. He was prepared, waiting, ready to go to war for her, to spirit her away, to fight all the forces the town could send at them, ready to rip down walls and tear down doors and battle any champion, all for her sake.

Love and fondness and vast wonder poured through her, and a smile seemed like such an inadequate way to express her overwhelming emotions, so she wrapped her hands around his arm and leaned into him and kissed him delicately on the lips, her love only swelling higher when he softened and gentled and calmed at her touch.

"Everything's fine," she told him, and kissed his smile, unable to resist.

It didn't relieve his worry entirely, but it was enough to ease his tension and allow him to bend enough to curl in around her when she tucked herself at his side, slotting herself into the place that was seemingly made for her.

He took her back to the shop where they ate the lunch she—or rather, they—had prepared, her packing the sandwiches and bottles of water while laughing at his teasing and ducking away from his questing fingers, looking to snatch an early snack from the chips. She knew that his antics had been his way of trying to keep her from being nervous about her upcoming session with Dr. Hopper, and it had worked too, up until they had actually gotten into the car to drive to his office.

But now there was nothing more to be worried about. Gold assured her the sheriff was too busy trying to get custody of the young boy she had met what seemed so long ago to worry about causing trouble for them, and now that Dr. Hopper had been fooled, they were in the all clear.

"And the mayor?" she asked him, taking a sip of her iced tea. "She won't come after us?"

"Oh, no," he asserted, low and intent and dangerous. "She knows what she stands to lose if she does. One thing to threaten, quite another to actually face retribution for doing something."

Belle wasn't sure she understood what that meant, but she hadn't wholly understood the conversation she and August had overheard either, and she knew Gold would protect her no matter what, so she let the topic slide away. It was hard to focus and concentrate on anything for any period of time, anyway, hard not to be distracted by the conversations rustling all about them, filling up the vast, close shop with whispers, so many of them she thought they might drive her mad if she didn't stay close to Gold. The whispers were muted and hushed, almost afraid to come too near, around him.

When they went home that night—and Belle felt a thrill just to call it that, even in her own mind, home—Gold lingered for dinner, then saw her sequestered in the library with a book and excused himself, saying there was something he needed to retrieve from its hiding place.

"I have a feeling Miss Swan will be needing it soon," he told her, a wily gleam in his dark eyes. "I wouldn't want to inconvenience her by not having it ready. It'll need polishing, I'm sure."

He was always making deals—she was sure he was, though she couldn't quite recall why she thought so—so she smiled at his restrained eagerness, his fiendish delight, and turned to her book when he said he didn't need any help.

Not that she got much reading done. With Gold out of the room, everyone wanted to talk to her, throwing out their own thoughts and observations and advice.

"Make sure he doesn't try to control you," the empty picture frame on the desk counseled her.

"Yes, but don't frighten him away," interjected one half of a set of bookends, painted eyes glistening with refracted light.

"He's too distracted now, anyway," added the other half of the set. "His plans are all coming to fruition—you won't rate very high on his priorities right now."

"Nonsense," the first half countered. "He does love her."

"Of course he does," Belle stated defiantly. "I don't know why you keep trying to convince me that he doesn't."

"I'm not saying he doesn't love you," the picture frame argued. It looked so bare and lonely without a picture within its perimeter; Belle resolved to find a picture to place within. Maybe then it wouldn't be quite so cynical and pessimistic. "I'm just saying that he doesn't quite know how to love, and so you have to be careful not to let him mistreat you, even with the best of intentions."

"He won't!" Belle insisted, echoed by one half of the set of bookends as well as the pair of glasses on the desk. "He's lonely, and he's afraid of losing me, but that doesn't mean he's going to lock me away. He's been nothing but kind and gentle to me!"

"Has he?" hissed the cushion at her back, startling her. She stared at it askance as it moved to face her, its tassels waving hypnotically. "What about when he shouted at you? Drove you away? Chased you into icy streets?"

"Don't," she said numbly, her voice distant and hollow. "Don't bring that up. That was a long time ago."

"Maybe." The cushion shrugged, its cruelty at odds with its plump appearance. "But do people ever really change?"

"Belle?"

She started and looked away from the now-motionless cushion to the wide-open door, where Gold stood, staring at her with an indecipherable expression. His stance was easy, casual, his legs spread apart, his cane before him, hands placed lightly over it. And yet, there was something in the slant of his mouth, the shadows in his eyes, the too-purposeful stillness of his fingers, that made her think he was not nearly as calm as he wanted her to think he was.

"Yes?" she asked, reluctantly setting her book aside. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"I did. Ms. Swan won't be unprotected when she goes to slay a dragon, not that she'll thank me for it." Gold's smile was mirthless, hiding that peculiar impatience he wouldn't explain.

Belle let out a tiny laugh. "I can never tell when you're joking."

"Yet still you laugh," he countered. "Should I be offended by that?"

"No." She crossed the room to stand by his side, looking up at him, basking in the glow that added untold depths to his eyes whenever he looked at her. "I laugh because I'm happy."

"Belle…" He gazed down at her, his voice trailing off into nothing, for a long moment before he shook his head slightly. "I'm glad. You'll…you'll tell me, won't you? If you ever stop being happy?"

"I would," she replied with a shrug, wishing she could lift her hands and wipe away the doubt and fear from his features as easily as if she were wiping away tears. But these wounds were inside him, and she well knew what it was to be broken on the inside, to be afraid and unable to conquer that terror, so she only smiled and added, "But if I'm not happy, it'll probably be because you're not there, so it'll be hard to tell you."

His thumb traced a wondering, disbelieving trail down the side of her face, his eyes studying her so fixedly, so determinedly, so carefully, as if she were one of his mysteries to be unraveled.

An instant later, though, his vulnerability was snatched back inside himself, wrapped up in layers and layers of protective walls, hidden and concealed, and he took a tiny step backward, setting some little bit of space between them.

"Shall we call it a night?" he asked, not even hiding that he was changing the subject. "I have a feeling that tomorrow will be…quite the exciting day."

"All right." She was curious about the slight emphasis he put on exciting, about the distracted gleam in his eyes, but she didn't ask about it. He might have told her already, after all, might have explained it, might have let her in on the secret he brandished so flamboyantly, like a trophy. So much slipped her mind, these days, and if he had told her, she didn't want to remind him that she wasn't quite all there.

Again, despite herself, she had to stifle the surge of guilt roiling within her. She was crazy—they both knew it—and yet she let him insist on keeping her near him. It was dangerous and…and crazy…but still she said nothing, just tucked herself into her place at his side and followed him to her bedroom. It's my hallucination, she reminded herself fiercely. And that means I can make it look however I want. And Gold could not fit in her cell, so here she would remain.

As he had done every night, Gold told her good night at the door to her bedroom, dropping a lingering kiss to her cheek and waiting for her to step inside before he continued down the hallway to his own room. And as she did every night, Belle readied for bed and waited until the light adorning the bottom of Gold's door transformed to a dark pool before she left her own room behind and padded into his.

He always seemed taken aback when she came in, but he never sent her away, only pulled back the covers in mute permission. She slipped in beside him, instinctively moving to huddle next to his heat. But this time when she touched him, she didn't find the warmth she expected.

With a hiss, she pulled her hand back. "You're cold!" she exclaimed even as she pressed closer to him, arranging the blankets more closely around him—if she didn't do it, she knew he'd lie there and let himself freeze. She was inordinately pleased when he hesitantly draped his arm around her and dropped a light kiss on her forehead. Laying her hand flat on his chest, she waited for the minute shudder to pass through his frame, chasing away his tension, the sign she had come to know meant he had dropped his guard, even if ever so slightly and so regrettably temporarily.

"Do you have nightmares?" she asked him, almost whispering, tilting her head against his shoulder so she could see his profile. It was the first time she'd had the courage to ask it, and she hoped it wouldn't make that customary tension flood back into his body. He didn't retreat, but he was silent, so she hastily added, "It's just…you approach sleep like it's an obstacle. I thought that…that maybe you had nightmares."

"I do," he murmured, his voice a quiet hum in his chest, a gentle vibration under her hand. "But I prefer nightmares to the alternative."

She raised her eyebrows. "To dreams?"

"Yes." He shifted beneath her, pulled her more tightly against him, kept his face turned so that the moonlight couldn't illuminate whatever expression he wore. Not that she needed to see him; his tone and his embrace were eloquent enough all on their own. "With nightmares, at least when you wake up, you're pleasantly surprised. But if you have dreams…well, then, you have to wake up and face a harsher reality. Better to have neither and just keep a steady medium—avoid surprises altogether. Take the world like it is. It's not like wishes do anything for you anyway."

Belle felt something thick and foreign move through her, tracing her veins, filling up the empty places in her chest, enveloping her thoughts, something full and warm and giving. She couldn't put a name to it—it wasn't pity, but nor was it only compassion. It was heavy and whole and overwhelming. Maybe it was empathy, or maybe it was just a connection forged between them, allowing her to feel what it must be like to live as he did. She had thought her cell was an in-between existence, but now she thought it was better than what Gold faced—trapped between the past he regretted and loathed and longed for all at once and the future he seemed so impatient to reach and yet was so terrified of. Trapped in a non state of being, keeping himself steady and never-changing, and all by choice, which meant that feeling—feeling anything—for him had to be so awfully, incredibly painful, terribly so if he would choose nothing over feeling. She wondered if—hoped that—she made it better for him, at least a little bit.

"And what would you choose?" His question caught her before she could sink too deeply into whatever emotion it was making her indescribably sad.

"I would take the dreams and forget about waking up," she answered before she remembered that he didn't like to be reminded that he was a hallucination. But he only huffed a quiet laugh and ran his free hand through her hair.

"That's one way of dealing with it, I suppose."

She smiled at his laughter, no matter how quiet it was, and felt her sadness recede. He did so much for her, protecting her and keeping her safe and waking her up when she lost herself; it made her happy to know she could make him laugh, could give him a place to relax, could be there for him when the nightmares came.

"But…" He was silent for so long that she thought he had decided not to speak after all, but then he curled himself around her, burying his hand in her hair, wrapping her tighter with his other arm. His voice was the gentlest, quietest whisper in her ear, a flutter of air over her skin. "But sometimes reality can be even better than dreams."

Moved by his words, tears wetting her eyelashes for no reason she could put into words, Belle tilted her head and kissed his jaw. The only answer she had for him, but it seemed enough for him. Another shudder rippled through his body, and an extra layer of tension she hadn't even realized he still held poured out of him. And when he slipped into sleep, she dared to hope that maybe he wouldn't be plagued by either nightmares or dreams for this one night.

She thought her own sleep would have been as dreamless, if given the chance, but she hadn't been asleep for longer than a few moments when she was woken by the sound of crying.

Her first thought was that she hadn't helped Gold at all, that maybe she had only made his nightmares worse, but it wasn't him crying. When she lifted her head from his chest and looked down at him, she saw that he was sound asleep, his face dry, his features relaxed in sleep, though the tiny crease between his brows was still there. Belle lifted a finger and ghosted it over his brow before another sob rent the air and captured her attention.

Keeping her movements quiet and slow so as not to wake Gold, Belle slipped from bed, her bare feet chilled against the floor. She drifted through the house, following the sounds of the soft, mournful weeping—out of the bedroom, through the hallway, down the stairs, until she found herself in a sitting room, facing the origin of the sobs.

Piled on the floor beside a desk sat a tiny pile of white and blue shards. She could not say how she knew, but she was certain that if she were to painstakingly glue them all back together, she would find herself with a teacup. But not a whole teacup.

A chipped teacup.

She frowned, her hand rubbing her forehead as she tried to make sense of her thoughts. A teacup? Why…why does that seem so familiar? So…so important?

"You have to help it," said the calculator on the desk, the one Gold always used when he was going through his books, urgency coating its usually measured voice.

"Of course," Belle agreed instantly. She knelt on the floor before the ruins of what had once been a teacup. Vaguely, she thought she was crying, too, but her tears seemed distant and unimportant next to the plight of these few, weeping shards. "But…but how? What should I do?"

"Pick up the pieces," the clock on the mantel advised her.

Belle instantly recoiled. "No! I can't do that! I mustn't…mustn't touch anything sharp." She couldn't, strangely, quite recall why that seemed so important, but she thought of Gold, asleep and vulnerable and trusting, and she shuddered away from the sharp pieces of porcelain lying so helpless before her. "No," she said again, a solemn vow.

"Well…" The calculator, always helpful, tapped out a thoughtful rhythm before suggesting, "Maybe if you just touched them to put them away? You could lock them up where no one can be hurt by them."

"Yes." She bit her lip, scared and nervous but eager to do anything that would stop the insistent weeping. "Yes. I think that would be all right. But what shall I put them in?"

"Here." A magnifying glass pointed with its handle to a small chest, hand-painted with a delicate tracery of vines and roses.

"Yes, that'll do." Belle smiled and rose to her feet to retrieve the box, relieved to find it already empty. Then, holding her breath, trembling on the edge of something perilous and dangerous, she knelt again and reached out with numb hands to pick up the shards and deposit them inside the wooden chest.

"What are you doing, dearest?"

With a small shriek, Belle fell away from the shards, panicking and guilty and startled, staring wide-eyed at the slight, narrow form silhouetted in the doorway. "I'm sorry!" she babbled. "I wasn't going to hurt anyone, I promise! I was just…it was hurting so much, I just wanted to help! I wouldn't—I wouldn't have hurt anyone!"

The shards had fallen abruptly silent, the other articles in the room watching voicelessly.

The silhouette—why does it look so familiar, him stepping forward into a room with the light behind him?—moved, shifted closer to her, and his dark eyes were suddenly lit with the reflection of the lamp by the door. Something deep and dark and trembling stirred there in his gaze, something tight and tragic in the downturn of his mouth, something pained and hurting in the slump of his shoulders. But he was quiet and calm as he moved to stand beside her, his hand soft and gentle on her head. "It's all right, dearest. You did nothing wrong. It's…actually a good idea."

Though he leaned on a cane, he did not even grimace as he knelt at her side, so anguished and solitary that Belle couldn't help but soften toward him. She did not flinch away when their hands bumped each other as they carefully collected the broken remnants of this teacup and deposited them so carefully, so reverently in the painted chest. His hands did not tremble, but she thought, oddly, that he was, maybe not physically, but inwardly.

"I thought," she began tentatively, "that maybe…maybe we could fix it?"

The man beside her, familiar and comforting, was silent a moment, his hands moving so slowly to pick up and cradle the last few pieces before setting them so carefully with the others inside the box. "Not everything can be fixed, Belle," he finally said, and the sound of her name on his lilting tongue almost made her gasp.

"But…" She looked away, suddenly and wholly sad, weighted down with grief and sorrow she couldn't explain, couldn't define, a feeling of loss as if even the hope of something had just been irrevocably taken away from her. Bowing her head as he closed the lid over the now-silent shards, she blinked away tears.

His hand on hers, long and calloused fingers curling so comfortingly around her palm, startled her and soothed her simultaneously. "But…we can try," he offered, and there were tears in his eyes too.

Her smile was immediate, loss vanquished, sorrow obliterated. She slipped easily to her feet, eager and excited, and moved to help him stand without even thinking about it. "Where should we keep it? Until we can fix it?"

Shifting his weight as he took up his cane again, he thought a moment, then seemed to hesitate before meeting her gaze. His eyes were dark hollows, drinking in the light and reflecting back embers. "I know a place. A room upstairs. No one ever goes in there, so it will be safe and undisturbed."

"All right," she agreed. She picked up the chest and cradled it against her body protectively. She wasn't sure how she knew, but she was absolutely certain that these shards were immensely important. And she thought that maybe, somehow, they were one of the only things holding together the man walking slowly at her side, leading her upstairs.

He came to a sudden halt at a door midway down the hallway. It was closed, and for an instant, she was afraid, but he reached out his long, clever fingers, and she relaxed. Sometime in the past he had opened an immovable door, and so she knew that she didn't have to worry about locks when he was around.

"It's perfect," she declared when the door swung open to reveal a pristine bedroom, dust-free, colored in rich tones, its every inch covered with love and apologies and hope. She stepped inside and was not even surprised when the man stayed on the threshold, standing there to guide her back to him but unable to traverse this room's floor.

Belle didn't question him, only smiled tenderly up at him and said, "I'll put it somewhere you can see it from the doorway, somewhere safe."

His replying nod was faint, almost not even there, but Belle saw it and knew she needed to hurry before the open wounds inside this room bled him dry.

With fleeting steps, she hurried to the nightstand by the bed and placed the chest in its center, near a silver pin designed to close a cloak or shawl. The light from the hallway fell in shimmering strands along the decorated wood of the chest, and Belle nudged it just a bit more toward the center of the nightstand to ensure that it wouldn't be knocked to the floor, wouldn't spill its precious treasure beneath their feet.

As soon as it was out of her hands and safe, Belle felt a weight lift from her shoulders, then she turned and flitted hastily back to the man's side. "Ready," she said breathlessly once she was standing outside the room, reaching out with a hand to wrap her fingers around his arm just below his elbow.

"Perhaps…" he said, softly, as if voicing a fantasy, afraid it would sound ridiculous in the light of day. "Perhaps by the time someone comes to stay in this room, we'll have fixed it."

"I'll help," she offered immediately, knowing that no one else could help him do it. Perhaps no one else could even get him to try.

His smile was every bit as joyful as it was pained, an odd combination Belle recognized as if she had seen it every day of her life. "Thank you," he said, and he dipped his head in gratitude, an almost archaic, outdated, but utterly charming gesture. "But come, it's late. We should get some sleep."

"I was trying, but it was crying so loud," Belle complained. She did not know this man's name, could not quiet the humming of the shadows long enough to remember it, but she did not think it odd at all that she kept her hand on his arm, leaned her head tiredly against his shoulder.

He let out a quiet sigh, almost a laugh. "Yes, I remember what that's like."

His steps were sure despite his limp, and after a slight hesitation when he turned from the door closed on the shards, he led her unerringly to a bedroom at the end of the hall. The covers on the bed were disturbed, and she felt guilty for pulling him from his sleep; he did not look as if he got nearly enough rest.

When he slipped his arm from her loose grip, she turned to face him. He had not moved from the door—still open, she noted with relief—and now he watched her, patient, waiting to see what she would do. She thought it might have ordinarily been awkward, climbing into bed with a man whose name she could not remember, but it felt so natural and right with him that she did not even question it, and when she slipped beneath the covers, the man's shoulders loosened and he slowly joined her.

He never makes the first move, she thought, unable to explain how she knew that, and so she scooted closer to him until he took her in his arms. As soon as she was enfolded in his cold and welcoming embrace, a sigh of contentment floated up from the depths of her being to be released into the darkness.

"I can't protect you from them anymore, can I?" His voice was sudden and unexpected, but Belle didn't start or flinch. Instead, she laid her hand flat over his chest to better feel the tiny hum his every word made shiver across her palm.

"What do you mean?" she asked drowsily.

"The voices you hear. You can hear them even when you're with me now. Can't you?"

She was silent, suddenly wide awake, for the first time uncomfortable in his presence, disturbed by the anguish beneath his monotone words. "Should I not be able to?" she finally asked.

His arms tightened around her, as if he were seeking comfort even as he tried to give it. "It's all right. It's not your fault. We were just…well, we were too happy for this place. But don't worry—soon it will be over. Soon I'll have everything I need to…to fix it. The cup. The room. You. Me. We're so close, Belle. Just a bit longer."

"I'm not afraid," she told him in an effort to soothe away the desperation tensing him beneath her, tightening his words.

He let out a chuckle that was little more than a breath. "Of course you're not. My brave Belle. You shall have to be brave enough for the both of us."

"That's easy," she said slowly, wonderingly, "when you're with me." She had meant it as a reassurance and so she was alarmed when he let out a breath that was not a chuckle, a breath that resembled a sob.

"I love you," he whispered, and he pressed a kiss to her temple, and just like that, Belle remembered that his name was Gold, that she loved him, that he had a son, that he had spoken of broken intentions over shattered cups, that he had kissed her and said good night to her in front of her bedroom, that they had spoken of dreams.

A slight, miniscule shiver quaked its way through her frame, because she had not skipped time and she had not woken somewhere else, but she had forgotten his name and had even forgotten that she loved him and what if, next time, she forgot that she trusted him and that he was not to be hurt? What if, one day, she picked up something sharp and he came in and she made him bleed, cut him, betrayed his trust, the same trust that allowed him to be vulnerable with her?

I have to leave him, she thought, and it was ice poured over her soul, cold and burning all at once in its necessity. I have to protect him.

But right now he was holding her and waiting, his love still echoing in the room, and tomorrow was soon enough. She could not understand why he thought it a hard thing to be brave when just those three words he uttered so breathlessly, so poignantly, could fill her up with strength and peace enough to face her realization with equanimity. But she knew that he worried about it, that he feared her leaving, so she burrowed closer to his side.

"I love you too," she replied, and as much as the rest of her world was in doubt, those words were the one thing she knew to be absolutely and inarguably true.

He was different in the morning, more focused, driven, single-minded to the point of distractibility. It amused Belle, flooded her with pained fondness, to watch his carefully apportioned movements, his methodical purpose turned into a stately, strange dance, his eyes sharp and intent and afire with impatience she had never before seen so strong and undiminished in him. He drank his coffee as if it were his last meal before a battle, dressed as if he were donning armor, looked at her as if she were everything he could ever possibly want to come back from war to.

"Not much time now," he murmured as he opened the front door for her. "Soon, very soon, everything will be made right."

"Good," she said even though she wasn't entirely sure what he meant. She didn't want to dull the vibrant energy humming beneath his skin like lightning, didn't want to quench the almost-manic hope sparking like magic in his eyes. Maybe if he still possessed this frantic purpose, he would not be so sad when she left him to check herself into the hospital.

He softened when he looked at her, as she walked out the door he so bravely held open for her, something indefinable and arrested moving across his features, and he placed his hand over hers for an instant, just a tiny moment of time, a warm touch. And for a moment, he wasn't Gold. For a moment, he was someone else, someone more ethereal and haunting and magical.

And Belle found herself flinching away, because she did not want him to be ghostlike or transient. He might only be a hallucination, but she wanted—needed—him to be real, more real than anything else, especially the cell. She needed him to endure even after she left him, needed to know that he was still strong and safe and severe and damaged but oh so beautiful—even if she couldn'tbe there with him.

Hurt flickered in his compelling eyes, but he only closed the door behind them. "Soon," he said again, a quiet, powerful promise that made knots tighten in her stomach.

Soon she would be gone. Soon she would be locked away.

Soon he would be safe.

She did not like feeling broken, as she did when he looked at her like that, as if she were missing something, but she knew she deserved the look. She was broken, and unlike the cup, she could not be fixed. Which is why I have to leave, she reminded herself, and sincerely hoped that she could be as brave as he thought she was.

At the shop, she helped him unload the long, flat case he had unearthed the night before, feeling an almost visceral thrill of adrenaline when he asked her to hold the door open for him. He did not seem to harbor a moment's doubt that she wouldn't be able to open it or that she'd be too scared to hold it long enough for him to pass through. Another reason I need to leave, so I don't disappoint him, she thought, but she couldn't deny the triumph she felt when she opened the door, held it wide for him, and closed it behind them.

Though that was, perhaps, the last time she would ever get to control exactly when doors opened and closed.

The chores needed to be done still, no matter her decision, and Belle went about doing them with an air of mourning; she was glad Gold was too preoccupied polishing a sword and digging up an old, tiny key to notice her sorrow. As she drifted the dust-cloth over items and shelves and counters, she also trailed lingering touches over them, storing up inside herself memories she would use to combat the grim reality of her cell. Maybe, if she remembered them all well enough, she would be able to one day imagine herself free again.

Despite her own preoccupation, Belle made certain to watch Gold very closely. That moment of haunting unreality outside his house scared her more than she cared to admit, so she kept a close eye on him to make sure he didn't disappear. She was turning herself in to protect him, and she needed to know that he was still there, still alive and real to her, if she was going to be strong enough to voluntarily walk back to her cell at the hospital.

Before she could turn herself in, however, she first needed to find a way to slip free of Gold's protective concern. He was so careful of her, particularly since the night she had wandered from the backroom of the pawnshop and found August, and even in the midst of his coiled intensity, he kept close to her. Or perhaps it was she who kept close to him; it was so hard to tell.

Perhaps I can pretend I'm going to visit Papa, she thought, but before she could contemplate how to phrase it so that Gold wouldn't insist on accompanying her, he went suddenly and completely rigid and fixed beside her. His head came up, his nostrils flaring, pupils dilating, and with rushed, steady steps, he moved to peer through the glass of the door. A small, fierce smile curved his thin lips and made him resemble a bird of prey about to swoop down on an unsuspecting rabbit—or perhaps he was a dragon, leading the knights come to ambush him into a trap of his own.

"Finally," he breathed, an expulsion of breath that seemed to contain within its fluttering hope decades upon decades of impatience and yearning and something else Belle couldn't quite identify.

"What is it?" she asked curiously, setting side her dust-cloth and moving to join him. She couldn't see anyone in the street, but Gold's eyes were far-seeing, as if he could look down avenues and times wholly outside of her understanding.

"It's the mayor," he replied, voice low and burning with power that sent chills to pebble her flesh, "and the lovely sheriff. They're coming to pay us a visit."

Belle felt herself go numb and clumsy, her limbs tingling and swelling until she couldn't even take a step and the shop swirled and tilted all around her. Not yet! I'm not ready yet! It wasn't even fair—she had surrendered to the necessity of being locked up, so couldn't they let her choose the fate of her own free will? Did they have to come now, to force her into the prison that was to have been her sacrificial gift to Gold?

Always, always just a little too late, she mourned, and wrapped her arms around herself in a useless attempt to drive away the apathy shrouding her.

"Coming—for…for me?" she managed to ask through the sickness at the pit of her stomach and the lump in her throat, through a dry tongue and stiff lips, through terrible fear and an awakening anger at the unfairness and injustice of it all.

"What?" His attention was abruptly on her, stripped of its cunning foresight, all his concern and regret and love for her exposed. His hands were warm on her shoulder and her cheek, warm and solid, driving away terror and the whispers of the shadows and forestalling the panic trying to take control of her. "No, no, dearest, not that. I would never let them take you, never!" he promised, ferocity and danger and promise all rolled up in that single assurance. "They are coming for something different—Henry has been hurt, and they are coming to bargain for my help."

"Henry?" She stared up at him, remembering the young boy with the wise eyes and sage tone, the seer trapped in the body of a child, and maybe that was only a fancy given her by madness, but she felt a hot flare of fear rise up in her at the thought of anything bad happening to such a young child. "What happened to him?"

"Nothing much." And his attention moved from her, swinging back to whatever plan of his was coming to fruition, like a magnetized lodestone, his hands dropping away from her. His eyes were deep, dark shadows, black in the dim shop, and the glare from the glass door reflected tiny beads of sharp focus, like sparks, in the black pupils as he looked toward the two women Belle still couldn't see. "He'll be fine, eventually. But first…first, they will do something for me."

"No." The word was so quiet it was almost inaudible, but to Belle, it seemed to hold all the impact of an earthquake shivering through her soul, erupting to spew out rocks and stones and terrible damage to all it touched. She stared at the man before her in dawning horror, in horrified comprehension. Menace and danger and sly cunning and threats—she had known he possessed them all, had rested secure in the knowledge that they would allow him to protect her…but she had never once stopped to consider what those qualities, those attributes, might do if he were to send them lashing outward to anyone else.

"Gold," she said, and there was something in her tone that made him look back at her. "Please…please tell me you didn't hurt that boy. Please tell me this isn't because of your argument with the mayor!" She took a deep, shuddering breath and forced out the next words. "Please tell me that boy isn't hurt because of me."

"Of course not," he dismissed, as if the very notion were impossible. Something very like impatience moved through him as he divided his glances between her and the street where now, finally, Belle caught sight of the mayor and the sheriff coming toward the pawnshop. "The boy was hurt because no one ever stops to consider the price or the consequences of their actions. He'll be safe—that is, should the sheriff realize her role in all this in time."

"You…you could tell her," Belle suggested, almost in a whisper. She was looking at Gold and for the first time she thought she was seeing him the way everyone else did, thought she was finally seeing why everyone she met warned her away from the meticulous, calculating, tricky pawnbroker. "You could save that boy. Couldn't you?"

"At what price?" Gold shook his head, flipped an indifferent hand. "No, everything will work out exactly as it's supposed to. I told you, Belle, soon I'll have everything I need to fix it all. I've waited too long for this. Now, please, go wait in the back, won't you?" He turned and met her gaze and for the first time seemed to realize that she was shocked and dazed and horrified. Something stirred and flickered in his expression, some shadow chasing lines across his features, but it was hidden away too quickly for her to decipher it, and his jaw clenched, his mouth tightening, eyes narrowing. "Go wait in the back, Belle," he said again, more quietly. "It's for the best."

"Gold—"

"They're almost here!" he snapped, reaching out a hand to push her toward the backroom. "I don't want them to see you. Their focus should be all on young Henry, not on you and how they can exploit you to hurt me or get what they want."

Belle flinched away from him, recoiling from his touch. She stared up at him, and she did not care that he had frozen, that he was staring at her with something like regret, that he had yanked his hand back from her as if burned. All she could focus on was the manic intensity flaring in his eyes like the sun, a madness totally alien to her own and yet just as undeniable, fixed in orbit around whatever goal he thought worth endangering a young boy's life and manipulating the lives of so many people—maybe even everyone—in this town.

"Belle…" He grimaced, reached out as if to touch her face, let his hand drop before it could touch and mesmerize her anew. His shoulders slumped, and Belle realized again that he was older than she, something ageless and powerful and so very awfully broken inside him.

This was her opportunity, she knew. He was sending her to the backroom, was going to be preoccupied with his schemes and his ploys, and she could slip away and be at the hospital before he realized that she had gone.

But she did not want to leave with these hurtful, searing words as their last, did not want to turn her back as this new, startling wall built itself up between them.

He was damaged and broken and so layered that she had not even realized these layers he was displaying now had been there, but she had known he was all those things already, and no matter how they frightened and unsettled her, he was still Gold. He was still hers.

"All right," she said softly. She did not touch him, did not answer the mute apology she saw in him, did not say anything else. Only looked at him, storing this memory up, too, because even though it was darker and colder than her others of him, it was still him, and maybe when the cell grew too close and confining, when the orderlies hurt her as they held her down to inject her with debilitating drugs, when their poisons moved through her veins and sent the world skittering away from her…maybe then she would think on this memory of him, and treasure the cruelty and the sinister edge and the fierce devotion. Maybe she would remember it, and imagine that he was just as focused, just as driven, just as unhinged in his search for her and his desire to save her and protect her and open the door for her again.

"Just go," he said softly, and she knew he did not mean any farther than the backroom, knew he did not know this was goodbye and those were the last of his words she would have, but they hurt nonetheless. For a brief moment, with them echoing in her soul, she felt an odd sense of déjà vu, a disorienting instant of familiarity, compounding her hurt and magnifying, multiplying it until she almost crumpled to the floor at his feet, felled by his words and his jagged edges and his preoccupation.

But she wanted to be brave, and this was her chance, her gift to him, so she turned her back and ducked past the divider curtain and went into the backroom. And when the bell over the front door rang, she opened the back door and slipped out into the dusk shadows.

For once, nothing and no one spoke to her. The town was as silent as her tears. It only made it worse because his voice wasn't there to fill the silence, his breathing wasn't there to break the stillness, his hands weren't there to chase away the cold. There was only her and even the voices had abandoned her and night was closing its silken wings over her, and yet this was still better than what was waiting for her at her destination.

And still she walked on. She kept her chin canted high, kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, kept her feet headed directly toward the hospital. She had been scared too long; all that was left to her, the only method of redeeming herself, was to turn herself over.

The closer she drew to the hospital, though, the more she began to doubt herself.

Turn herself in? Lock herself away? How would shutting away all the light and happiness and joy in her life save Gold? How could she protect him when she wouldn't even be with him? Wouldn't her absence only make the shadows in his eyes and the darkness on his soul grow to blot out all the smiles and pleasure and softness he had unearthed and dusted off for her?

Or was that only her cowardice speaking, trying to convince her to turn away?

"Are you all right?"

Belle was afraid to quit moving, not sure that she would be able to start again if she once let herself stop, but the feminine voice was so kind and concerned that she couldn't help but turn and look over her shoulder at a slender woman with ebony hair hurrying up to her.

"Are you okay?" the woman asked again, even more urgently, and too late, Belle unwrapped her arms from around herself and wiped the tears from her face.

"I-I'm fine," she tried to say, but her voice betrayed her, breaking into as many pieces as that teacup Gold so treasured.

"I'm sorry." The woman hesitated, then hesitantly placed a gloved hand on Belle's shoulder. "Is there anything I can do? I don't mean to intrude, but...well, I was on the way to the hospital, but you looked…well, is there anything I can do?"

She tried to draw herself up, tried to fight back the tears, tried to remind herself of all the reasons she needed to keep walking to the hospital, to that gray cell…but she couldn't. Despite herself, she found herself turning into this kind woman's offered comfort.

"Please…please, just…" But her voice trailed off because she didn't even know what to ask for. Or rather, she knew what she wanted, what she needed, but it wasn't something this Good Samaritan could—or would—get for her.

"Here, sit down." The woman led her to a nearby bench and sat her down, keeping a comforting hand on her back as she let her cry. It was nothing like the comfort Gold would have proffered; he would have enveloped her in his arms and murmured soothing words to her and hushed her and then, if that did not work, would have tentatively kissed her tears away until she forgot why she was sad and buried her hands in his hair to kiss him. This woman's comfort was soft and distant, not fierce and all-encompassing, gentle and patient, not desperate and hopeful, but it was comforting all the same, and Belle cried harder to receive it.

"I'm sorry," she finally murmured after long moments. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't worry about it," the woman said, and somehow Belle had known that was what she would say. "Sometimes you just need to cry. Is there…is something wrong?"

"No," Belle whispered. She took a deep breath and straightened, slowly drawing out Gold's crimson handkerchief to clean her eyes and cheeks. Finally, feeling a bit more presentable, she met her comforter's eyes and smiled. "I'm Belle."

"Yes," the woman smiled, "and I'm Mary Margaret."

Belle's eyes widened as she took another look at this woman who had patted her shoulder as she wept. "Mary Margaret? David's Mary Margaret?" When the woman blanched, Belle flinched and dropped her eyes. "I'm sorry—was I not supposed to say that? It's just…just that he talked about you all the time—well, not all the time, not really, just that he told me he loved you—and I knew you would come back to him if he apologized."

Mary Margaret looked away, so sad and dejected that Belle raised her hand awkwardly, ready to try and return the favor of patting her on the shoulder should she begin to cry.

"Please, don't be mad," Belle pleaded helplessly, inept at this, so unequipped to handle anyone who wasn't Gold. His mysteries were compelling and easy, or at least pleasant, to unravel, but everyone else was a puzzle to read, a headache waiting to happen in their ambiguities. "I didn't mean to offend you, or—or get David in trouble. I worked with him at the Pet Shelter, you know, for a while."

"It's all right." Mary Margaret shook her head, as if to rid herself of the tears she had almost shed, before she turned back to Belle. "I've heard about you too. Not from David, but…you know."

"Yes." Belle's smile was almost bitter—she hadn't realized she had a bitter smile, but it felt twisted and cynical on her lips. "Of course."

"Is…" Mary Margaret narrowed her eyes, clearly deliberating on what she should say, and then asked, "Is everything all right? I mean…I can call Emma for you if something…if you were hurt or—"

"No, it's not that." Belle felt that habitual surge of quick protectiveness rise within her, which surprised her. After seeing Gold's harsh and serrated edges in the shop, she would have thought she would no longer feel the urge to defend him to everyone she met. And perhaps it was a bit muted, slightly weaker than it had been before, but it was still there. For some reason, that reassured her, eased some tension inside herself she hadn't even realized existed.

"I was leaving him," she said calmly, not reacting to Mary Margaret's surprise, ineptly concealed. "I thought it was the only way to protect him—but I think I was really trying to protect myself. Sometimes…sometimes it hurts, loving him, and it was easier to think I could leave it all behind—keep the love without having to worry about the bad moments and the…" She chuckled weakly, waved the damp handkerchief. "The tears. But I don't think it's going to work. I…I don't want to leave him. I think…I think being apart from him is going to be worse than all the bad moments with him could ever be!"

Mary Margaret stared at her, her expression so stricken that Belle felt a moment of panic, terrified she had skipped time again. But she was still holding the handkerchief, her cheeks were still wet, she held no blade or thorn or shard of glass, and twilight still clung to the edges of the horizon.

Before she could ask what was wrong, Mary Margaret let out a heavy sigh and twitched her lips into the approximation of a smile. "I guess you're right," she said, the cheer in her voice patently false, the awed discovery tinging her tone very real. "Being apart really doesn't solve anything."

There was sudden decisiveness, resolve that hadn't been there before, pouring steel into Mary Margaret's slender frame, but for once, Belle's curiosity wasn't enough to keep her impatience, her growing sense of foreboding, from growing.

Gold needs me, she thought, such an obvious truth that she wondered how she had not seen it before. Even if he weren't her delusion, he was, for all his power and control and precision, alone and lost and so very, very afraid. He needed her to be there. He had told her he needed her to be brave for the both of them, and she had promised that she would. But here she was, running away, and he had surely discovered that she was gone by now.

And the last words they had exchanged had been so cruel, so harsh, so final.

"I-I'm sorry!" Belle stood so quickly that Mary Margaret started in surprise. "Thank you—thank you for helping me, but I have to go! I'm sorry!"

"It's all right," Mary Margaret managed, a confused frown making her features look almost pixie-ish. "Good luck?"

Belle was surprised when she smiled, an outpouring of emotion propelled by the urgency and fear and hope singing in her veins, fizzing up through her body to make her almost lightheaded. "Thank you," she said again. "Tell David hi for me?"

And she was gone, no time to look back, no time to say more. Maybe later she could look her up and tell her just how much she appreciated her kindness, how grateful she was that Mary Margaret had stopped her before she could make the worst mistake of her life, but for now, she could think only of Gold. It wasn't cowardly to walk away, but sometimes it was bravest of all to stay in the first place. So she would go back.

If he'll take me back.

The thought sobered her, because he might not. He might be too distracted with his schemes, or too hurt by her abandonment, or too angry that she had left him after promising she would stay with him.

He might not take her back…but she thought he would. Hoped he would.

When she burst into the pawnshop with the discordant clattering of the bell above her head, she felt her heart skip a nervous beat at the sight of the dim interior, the lights shut off. But the door had been unlocked, and there was light coming from the backroom. Agile fairies twirled in the pit of her stomach as she hesitantly crossed the room; her fingers shook as she reached out to pull the curtain aside; her breath caught in her throat when she saw Gold standing near the counter, his back to her.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice dull, with none of its usual subtle flair or eloquent hypnotism, "but the shop's closed—"

He stared at her as if he had never seen her before. No, she corrected herself, he stares as if he thinks I am a dream come to haunt him. And knowing he was her hallucination, as often as she was afraid that he would not be there the next time she looked for him, she knew the feeling well. So she stepped forward to meet him in the center of the floor, his hand fumbling for his cane.

"I'm sorry, Gold," she said, the words spilling from her lips in a hasty, disjointed flow. "I thought that…that if I turned myself in, I could make sure that I didn't hurt you. But I couldn't do it. I—"

"You came back," he interrupted, hollow and shaky and brittle. He squeezed her arm, making sure she was real, simultaneously giving her proof that he was.

"I'm sorry," she said again, her heart hurting. "I wanted to protect you. But…maybe we can protect each other instead?"

"Yes," he blurted, and he gathered her into his arms, and this was exactly the feeling she had missed when Mary Margaret had set her hand on her back so comfortingly. Gold wrapped her up in himself, enfolding her so completely, obliterating everything else, replacing it all with his scent and his feel and his heartbeat until she thought she might actually melt right into him, a second skin that held him together and gave him courage and strength and security.

"Yes, I'll protect you," he breathed in her ear. Then he pulled back and cupped the back of her head in his palm and kissed her, all desperation and disbelief and devotion so thick and overwhelming that she could have drowned in it if it weren't so necessary to her continued well-being.

"Gold," she murmured when he pulled away to let her gasp for breath, clinging to him.

He shuddered at the sound of her saying his name, then he blinked and very obviously pulled himself together. "Hey, there will be time for that later." He paused, then shook himself again and offered her a timid smile. "But for now, there's somewhere I have to be."

"It's important?" she asked, trying very hard not to feel disappointed at the sight of that distracted look back in his eyes.

"Oh, yes," he breathed, so fervent and wistful that Belle blinked, taken aback.

"Can I go with you?" she asked, all but begged.

His hesitation was slight, minute, but she saw it and felt a hollow void open inside herself. She looked away, her tears all used up and wiped away, numbness and perhaps a bit of disenchantment taking their place.

"All right." Gold placed his long and agile fingers on her chin and tilted her head up until she met his somber gaze. "You can come. But we must hurry. All the pieces are in place, Belle, and if I'm too late…if this doesn't work…" Panic wrapped in bleakness flashed like a nightmare over his features before he could hide away the emotion and school his expression.

He needs me, she reminded herself. So she slipped her hand into his and offered him a ghost of a smile. "Then let's hurry."

"Yes." He straightened, his lips quirking into a happy, satisfied, almost smug grin, his eyes already seeing past her to whatever his goal was. He turned and released her hand briefly to open a small drawer and retrieve the key she had helped him find what felt like days ago.

"Where are we going?" she asked when he tucked the key into his pocket.

His smile was triumphant, almost a sneer except that it possessed too much gleeful anticipation. "The library, dearest. The dragon's lair."

Her face was blunt, nothing subtle about it at all, like melted steel that had held all the potential in the world and yet had turned brittle and hollow and hard, all sharp edges and stark emotion and direct threats so ineptly hidden behind contrived concern and heightened, magnified, distorted by the blatant beauty that leapt out to slap everyone who caught sight of it. As soon as Belle saw her face, turning away from a hole in the wall, framed by books cowering away from her presence, she was assailed by a terrible, disorienting sensation of falling, something swooping in through her and rattling around in her mind until all that was left to her was the memory of another hole and a closed door and that smile peering inside at her, ready to devour her alive should she fail to cower and hide and submit.

Terror, as stark and blunt and unconcealed as the mayor's—and now she knew how she had known the mayor, didn't she, knew why the mere sound of her voice had sent cold lead to pool at her joints, congealing around her bones until she hadn't been able to move, had shrunk back against August's steady, solid presence—as blatant as the mayor's features, all of it slapping outward to strike directly at the most vulnerable parts of her. The door swung closed behind Belle, latched with a snap, and a tiny whimper was wrung from somewhere deep in the back of her throat.

Gold's hand brushed her back, briefly, and then he was striding ahead of her, prowling ahead, looking like nothing so much as a dragon stalking its coiled prey, brushing aside the mayor's voice—as quick and damaging as a snapping whip—as if it were nothing more than wind.

"Your Majesty," he said in a sibilant hiss, the casualness of it all as much a weapon as the hard, merciless glare in his eyes that looked almost black in the shadowed library, and there was something wrong about what he had called the mayor, but Belle couldn't hold onto it, not when the door was shut behind her and the hole in the wall led deep down underground where there'd be no way out and only a stark smile that held nothing within in it to equate it with a smile, nothing more than a baring of teeth, to look forward to, to visit her, to break the monotony of mere existence. She wanted to cling to Gold, wanted to hold onto him and make him hold her pieces together so that she didn't shatter and spiral outward into oblivion. But he was prowling back and forth before the mayor, heedless of her danger, careless of her threat, single-minded in his quest as he grabbed a chair and spun it in one swift, smooth motion to face the mayor.

"Sit," he commanded so sharply that Belle flinched back, expecting to see the piercing syllable embedded in the mayor's flesh, standing upright like a thrown dagger; she was surprised that it was invisible, that it did not show blood-red against the pale complexion of blunt, beautiful features. The smile that played along the corners of his mouth was beyond menacing, beyond threatening; it was danger and damage and destruction and death a breath away from being delivered, and it was completely unlike any smile he'd ever given her, smiles of happiness and lunches and kisses and soothed nightmares and woken dazes and mended hearts. And for an instant, Belle was almost as terrified of him as she was of the mayor backing away from Gold, shaking her head, holding her hand up to protect her from—

"Please!"

And the mayor, as easily as that—a word and a smile and a chair—was defeated, crumpling and falling, distaste and revulsion and hatred and inexplicable anguish twisting large eyes and wide lips and molded cheekbones into a mask of helplessness. She fell into the chair as if punched in the stomach, folding in on herself, and she was speaking, pouring out words at Gold's feet like offerings, like weapons, like hopes, but he waded through them as if they did not exist and stood before her and smiled.

"Hush," he commanded, and then, so purposely, so intently, so slowly, savoring it, tasting it as he spoke it: "Please."

Silence fell. Terrible, horrifying silence, and Belle had never liked this mayor, could only remember cold gray and immovable doors and terrifying helplessness when she looked at her, but she felt pity, like a tiny, almost unnoticed worm slither through the pit of her stomach.

She felt her spine hit the wall before she even realized that she'd been moving, backing away from the scene in front of her and the man she had thought she knew but now realized was nothing more than one face, like a single facet of a multi-faceted diamond that twisted and turned and gleamed and reflected so that you could never tell who or what or when you were looking at and were deceived into thinking there was only one face.

"Just a moment more, Belle," Gold murmured, his voice once more soft. But he did not look at her, did not turn to see her, only stepped forward to stand at the very edge of the hole in the wall. Belle whimpered again and held her hand out toward him, wanting to catch him, to yank him away before he could fall and be locked away forever, but she could not move from her place, not when the mayor was now staring at her, and, lacking subtlety, her sudden spark of inspiration was plain to see. Only, Gold didn't see it; he was too busy sending clever hands over mechanisms laced in shadows and making something groan and creak like the dragon he had told her awaited them within the library she had not thought to be afraid of.

Belle stared, wide-eyed, at the mayor's eyes. Regina, she remembered hearing, and the name suited her. Stark and blunt, lacking subtlety, possessing beauty supplanted by purpose and ambition, and all of it staring right back at her, full of plans and desperation, and nothing was more dangerous than a desperate parent backed into a corner.

She tried to look away, tried to take a step toward Gold, tried to flee to his safety, but she couldn't move, hypnotized, the rabbit lured to a stop in the hawk's shadow. And the longer she stared at Regina's black—oh so black, so very black that Belle wondered how she could ever have thought Gold's eyes black when his had that golden gleam to lighten them—the more she stared into black eyes, the less she remembered of why she was here. Sanity was something she only loosely held onto on the best of days, and this day was far from the best, and she was not a warrior, was not brave, was only a lost and scared mental patient struggling oh so hard to stay free, and so her sanity was released.

She looked at the mayor—

Blinked.

—tried so hard to hold on, tried to call for Gold's help, but it was a pitiful attempt, easily covered over by the screech of something below, a hot flare like fire roaring up from the hole to envelop them in smoke and sparks and ash—

Breathed.

—pressed her palms to the wall behind her so hard that she thought there would be tiny, fingerprinted bruises on the tips of each of her fingers, until she thought the wall would crack and shatter beneath her tension, and Regina was scooting the chair toward her, stark and severe features all lined up in cold menace, and she could not forget, could not skip time, not now, not when Gold was distracted and the mayor was right in front of her, looming, reaching out with hands up toward her throat, easily batting away Belle's fluttering, useless hands—

"Off with her head!"

Time had stopped. She only knew that because when it came racing back forward to reclaim its uncontested place as insidious ruler of all things in existence, it sucked its way around her with an irritated snarl to take up the reigns once more.

She had stopped breathing. She only knew that because when someone tall and quick and blurry burst through the doors to tear Regina's hands from her throat, she began to cough and sputter and gasp for air in that desperate way one did only when they were seconds away from blacking out.

Insanity was fencing her in behind concrete barriers and hopeless futures. She only knew that because she couldn't think, couldn't reason, could only watch and breathe in ragged breaths and sink to the floor, leaning back against the wall, and wrap her arms around her legs.

Gold turned from the hungry hole in the wall, lightning crackling around him, the eye of a storm that would lap out to destroy whoever he instructed. He was standing over her in seconds, fierce and whole and hackles bristling, fangs bared, a dark and ancient force so powerful it could not even fathom being defeated.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, and she almost gasped in relief to hear his voice. It was something real, something cohesive she could hold onto in order to keep from losing herself. There were too many sharp and dangerous things around when even please could be a blade, too many weapons for her to risk losing time and waking to find herself holding something lethal and threatening.

"Came to help," the blurry man snapped back, hauling a trembling Regina up into the chair and tying her hands to the chair. "She's double-crossed me for the last time—I want to make sure she gets what's coming to her. And a good thing I came too, what with her sudden desire to turn nearby beauties into silent bargaining chips."

"Yes." Gold frowned, but it was a soft frown, more gentle than the smile he'd targeted at the mayor, as he knelt at Belle's side. He reached out long, calloused fingers, and she knew there was nothing to be afraid of—she knew that—but fear was unhinged and wild within her and sparked like a taut rope snapping in the wind, so she flinched away and shut her eyes because the hole was gaping wide behind him—can't he see it there, ready to pounce and devour him?

When she opened her eyes again, slowly and cautiously, his hands were at his side and he was looking at the man who had ripped away suffocation and menace. "Finally arrived in time for something, Hatter."

"The name is Jefferson." Irritation threaded thick and red through his words, almost as thick and red as the scar showing on his neck before he readjusted his cravat and hid it away behind silk and knots. "And what exactly are we doing here?"

"Making a withdrawal," Gold murmured. He met her eyes, and she was caught, drawn to him, and she knew she knew him, but the mayor's hard glare had sent out fog to encase her in confused trembling so she couldn't make her mind give up the memories regarding this man before her. She only knew that his name was Gold and that when he tentatively touched her she did not mind and that he was soft and careful as he helped her stand and brushed a strand of hair from her face.

"I'll fix it, Belle," he promised her, and then he was turning and suddenly, instead of softness and tentativeness and promise, he was all lines and angles and purpose. "Well, Jefferson, thank you once more for your services. I assure you, the Queen will pay for what's been done."

"I want what she took from me!" Jefferson hissed, and Belle shrank back, grateful for the lifeline Gold offered her in his hand resting so temporarily on her elbow.

"And so you will have it." A promise as durable and unyielding as time itself, and Gold threw it over his shoulder as casually as if it meant nothing. He moved to the counter, opened a drawer, and withdrew a roll of duct tape, all with quick and economical movements, and Belle fiercely envied his assurance, his knowledge of the world and everything within it.

He savagely ripped off a piece of tape and moved to the mayor, which it was a mistake, because Belle's eyes followed him and now she was once more looking at the mayor, and something insidious and nefarious, something trying to erase all that she was, moved outward to gag Belle as surely as Gold was gagging Regina.

Black eyes and red lips and pale skin and…and a door, a hole, locks and pills and straitjackets and…and dungeons and chains and…no, that's not right. It had been orderlies and…and those same black eyes, those same lips now covered by silver tape, and Belle trembled and huddled in on herself—

Blinked.

—her nails bit into her palms as she fought to retain her hold on herself. Words swirled over her head, so many of them, like flags and banners and signs, all of them relaying something and sending out messages, warring and battling and fighting and spilling out blood that bled transparent rather than crimson red—

Breathed.

—the world had gone sideways, and still there were voices, but they were overpowered by the scream of a beast beneath her, maybe her very insanity given voice, as a door clicked shut behind running steps, and then there was a caress and a whisper and a promise that didn't mean anything anymore because she couldn't remember and steps accented by a cadenced tap and she was alone, without even a name to call her own, lost and spiraling away and all she could hold onto was one word: gold.

But gold didn't mean anything; it was only an element, something to be treasured and valued and hoarded, wrapped up in the coils of a dragon, only there were no dragons anymore, so instead of being wrapped up, it was spun out like thread, brilliant and glistening with forgotten things and too many tears to ever shed them all. Gold that whispered and hugged her and smiled and shook when he touched her and made quips that turned darkness into laughter and—no, that couldn't be right, because gold didn't smile and kisses couldn't be spent.

But there was gold, she knew it. She knew it was important, knew she needed to grab hold of it and never let go. And how odd, she had never thought herself to be greedy or possessive, and yet she was. She wanted to grab hold of the gold that shone like the sun in her cracked and broken mind, covetousness and greediness waking like livewires inside her, demanding that she take hold of every smile, every glitter, every word, every treasure, and bind it all up so that no one could ever steal it from her. It was hers and hers alone, and she would fight any dragon, any witch, anything at all to protect what was hers.

Silly thoughts. So funny she couldn't help but smile slightly to herself. She might have tried to relay them to the books leaning in all around her, but her train of thought was broken by the feel of a hand on hers. She found the hand, followed it up a dark-clad arm, past a narrow shoulder and into a face staring back at her, his face a canvas filled to the brim with unknowable thoughts and emotions and memories.

"Gold," she murmured, and she blushed because now he would know how greedy she was. "I need gold."

"I'm here," he said.

She frowned—that doesn't make sense; he's not smiling, not a metal—but then she saw it in the glint of his teeth, his open mouth, a spark of gold, a brilliant sheen against the shadows all around her, as if the black he wore was a cover through which the gold inside him poured out, rays of sunlight nudging past doors and drapes and shutters. And in his arm, cradled there like a baby—it would be a son, she was somehow sure—was a golden egg.

"You're gold?" she asked, and couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief when he nodded disjointedly.

"Yes. We need to go, all right, come on, dearest."

He put his arm around her—security and heat and tiny fizzling memories that sparked and faded in her mind too quickly for her to catch hold of—and moved her toward a door. She wasn't quite certain why he wanted to move that direction—it wasn't like doors ever did anything; certainly they never opened—but she was halted by the sound of a woman's cry from behind her. A woman also calling for gold.

"Wait, she—" She tried to turn back toward the hole in the wall. It might have frightened her at one point, but right now she was already trapped in the hole in her mind, and so a physical hole couldn't do any further harm.

"Didn't you want me to save Henry?" the man asked her, the shaded nuances of his voice almost hypnotizing. "The young boy?"

"Yes?" she answered, and the world was certainly upside down, because it emerged like a question.

"Then we need to leave her. She'll figure out her role soon enough—she's not quite as dense as she wants everyone to believe."

He was so confident, so assured, that she couldn't help but believe him, and anyway, he was still moving toward the door and she couldn't lose him, not when he was the gold she craved. They passed a dark woman crackling with rage and desperation and resentment. She had silver across her mouth and over her hands, but that was nothing to be concerned about, not when they were only bandages eased across open wounds, curtailing a grimmer fate of bleeding out poison into open air.

"Come along." The man pulled her forward, and she couldn't help but gape when he opened the door for her and they stumbled out into open air. She—she wished she could remember her name, but all she could remember was gold and all she could hear were bells—she took in deep breaths of the crisp air and smelled sea and wind and frost and freedom, an intoxicating blend that left her dizzy and breathless.

"We must hurry," the man said. "I only have a limited time to finish this before we can leave this town forever."

She followed him to a car, long and black; it suited him. He reached out to open the side door for her, but he held a cane in one hand and the golden egg in the other. Something moved across his face, illuminated by the moon and the stars above them, before he took the egg and offered it to her.

"Here," he whispered.

She didn't know his name, didn't know why she had been in the library, didn't know where they were going or why she wasn't in her cell anymore—but she knew that he was trusting her with something much more than the gold of the egg. She could read the struggle on his face, could see his intense worry as she reached out steady hands to take the egg and cradle it to herself as he had done.

"I'll be very careful," she promised him. "I won't drop it this time."

A ghost of a smile passed across his thin lips as he opened the door for her, and she slid in carefully, cautiously, gentle and ginger with the egg in her arms. It felt more durable than a teacup, more likely to survive mishandling, but sometimes appearances were deceiving and teacup or egg or heart, she didn't want to let him down.

As he crossed to get in the driver's side, she found herself studying the egg. It was extravagant and grand, covered with carvings etched and upraised along its sides, but there was a catch in the middle, a tiny keyhole. She wondered if he had the key or if that was what they needed to get.

"This is made of gold," she observed finally after he had begun driving, leaving the library behind. She didn't like the silence that had fallen to cover them up, didn't like that he was tense and nervous, his eyes darting all about, his mouth set into a straight line. She wanted him to look at her, wanted him to smile, just so she could see if there really was gold leaking out of him, wanted him to speak again so she could continue to hoard it all away, somewhere deep inside herself where no one else would be able to find it.

"Perhaps," he said softly, "but it's what's inside that matters."

A smile spread across her lips, turning the night-cloaked forest around them light, because he was right. She was certain that it was what was inside the man beside her that mattered more than anything. He was dark on the outside and gold inside, and much as it might be a character flaw, she could not help the greediness so very alive and burning within her.

"Yes," she whispered, and he glanced sideways at her, a tiny puzzled crease appearing in his brow when he saw her smile.

"Ah, Belle," he breathed, turning away, his hands going white-knuckled on the steering wheel.

"Is that…is that my name?" She stared at him, then ducked her head, suddenly embarrassed. She caressed the coolness of the egg in her hands, studying its whorls and fascinations as avidly as she wanted to study the man beside her.

"It is," he said simply, and yet the tightness of his voice bespoke the price behind the simple answer.

"I…I don't remember anything," she admitted. "Do I…do I know you?"

He swallowed, then let out a mirthless laugh. His smile didn't show gold; it revealed pieces of his heart, shattered and bruised and broken, jagged and edged, sticking up through the chinks in his armor. "Apparently not. But…you will."

She wanted to smile at that, wanted to sigh in relief at that assured answer, but the torn and ragged edges fraying the ends of his voice, like rust creeping over gold, supplanting its sheen, made her stare at him worriedly instead. "Isn't…isn't that a good thing?"

The slight shake of his head sent pain stabbing inward to her own heart, and she might not understand why, but she certainly understood the sudden clenching of her stomach at his next words: "Not many would think so, but…I'll let you decide."

"You will?" Her shock that he could open the door or that he would trust the golden egg to her or that he knew her name, none of it amounted to anything next to the dazed wonder and awe she felt now. Others opened and closed doors for her; others drugged her or left her alone for days and centuries on end; others led her where she needed to go or told her what to do. She could not remember a time, could not imagine a time, when she got to make her own decisions. It seemed even more impossible and fantastical than gold smiling and kissing and laughing.

"Of course," he said, no hesitation marring the positive statement. "Your fate is your own."

"I…" She swallowed and had to look away, lean her head against the cool window to calm the blazing rush of her chaotic, disordered thoughts. "I don't think they've ever let me do that before."

"You did it anyway." And he reached out with a hand to brush a strand of her hair behind her shoulder, a touch she barely felt, barely there at all, save that it sent fireworks of discovery and longing radiating through her entire body, his strange alchemy replacing the blood in her veins with startled hope and reawakened—and she was sure it was reawakened, something she'd felt before coming back to life within her—desire and warm affection.

But his hand was already back on the steering wheel, and for all that she wanted to keep him all to herself, wanted to reach out and brush away the troubled lines around his mouth, he was still a stranger and she was still lost and unsure. So she turned her head and watched the scenery pass her by outside the window—so many things she watched from windows, but this time she didn't care, not when the more interesting thing, the more valuable thing, was inside with her.

She thought she dozed off because she was startled when a tender touch stroked her cheek and she opened her eyes to find the car parked at the end of a road, living forest all around them, dawn beginning to brush the edges of the leaves with haloed light. Taking in a quick breath, she sat up straight and checked to make certain the egg was still safe. Her smile was automatic when she found it still protected in the circle of her arms.

"I didn't drop it," she assured him, offering it to him.

His smile was the sad one, the one that hinted at all his chipped edges and empty nights and bleak thoughts. "Thank you."

When he climbed out of the car, she eagerly followed him, anxious not to lose him. He was hers, gold and darkness, desire and hurt, forgotten memories and unknown futures, and she couldn't let him go. He set the egg down on the hood of the car and pulled from his pocket a key. Watching him, she put her hands in her own pockets, curious to find whether she carried any keys as well, but all she found was a wrinkled and worn handkerchief, glinting dull red in the early morning light. It didn't seem as useful as the tiny key the man was using to open the egg, but it felt important and her hand closed tightly over it as if by habit.

As soon as he unlocked the egg, his long fingers pulled it open down the middle. She couldn't help but gasp when he pulled out a tiny glass bottle that shone and stirred purple, tiny colored sparks adorning the amethyst glow that floated ethereally as if it would drift into the ether should he pull off the cap.

"What is that?" she asked, curious and entranced and nervous all at once.

"Magic," he said, his voice almost detached, strangely hungry.

Her eyebrows arched in surprise. "I-I didn't know we believed in magic."

He chuckled and tucked the bottle away in a decisive movement so quick it was almost sleight-of-hand. "There is none in this world, but this will remedy that."

"Why?" she asked curiously.

He had already turned, already started forward down a path no one but him could see, yet he halted as if struck at her question. "Because," he said, his face half-turned from her, his profile limned in silver by the newborn sunrise, "I lost something. Something infinitely precious. And this is the only way I know to get it back. To get everything back." And suddenly, so suddenly it felt like a lightning burst across her vision, he was looking at her, determination and resolve and bottled impatience clashing with the same greediness she herself felt.

Maybe…maybe this greed isn't wrong after all, she thought, and felt a band of tension ease from around her chest at this redeeming, comforting possibility.

"All right," she said softly. Taking tiny steps to keep her balance on the uneven ground, she moved to stand beside him. Her hands twitched, almost reaching out to take his arm before she stopped them. "What do we have to do?"

In an instant, he had relaxed, which made her belatedly realize that he had been rigid and bristling, ready to defend himself and the purple potion he carried. And he was astonished and disbelieving and awed, a mixture so familiar it sent a thrill straight through her heart, stirring forgotten thoughts and lost memories. Softness and sadness and something that looked a lot like love melted and transformed his features into an entirely new face, and he stroked a careful thumb over her cheek as if she hypnotized him. "Oh, Belle," he whispered, his accent thick with shading and nuances she would have understood except that her stomach had disappeared and her heart was beating so rapidly and she felt light and weightless and dizzy. "There's no one quite like you."

"Probably because they all have memories," she teased with a wry grin, simultaneously astounded at her own boldness and ease around him and struck by a sense of loss, as if she were missing something dreadfully important to him.

"You might be surprised," he retorted dryly. But he was distracted again, then, turning and looking back to the path drawing him ever onward. "Come on, it's not that far from here."

His strides were quick and hurried, sure and fixed, never pausing for any stone or twist or crack in the ground. He kept his eyes fixed forward, something ahead of them calling him on with a siren call that he had been able to resist for only so long and now could not help but succumb to. Or so she thought, but then, her thoughts went round and round in circles until she was surprised she could walk in a straight line herself. It was easier to look down at her own feet, at the leaves she walked over and the dirt she ground beneath her shoes and the hem of her blue coat as it played along her legs with every step, easier to follow behind him and try not to think too much. Thinking too much about anything, trying to keep herself focused on one subject, only made her head hurt, and since she was pretty sure she remembered her mind breaking, she didn't want to risk it happening again. She didn't remember anything, didn't know who she was, but at least she was out of the cell and she was with a man who looked at her as if he would break down any and every door for her no matter what they were made of or how many locks they had, and that was enough for now.

"Almost there," he called over his shoulder, and she bit her lip, wondering what he had to do to bring magic back. Wondering if he was really talking about magic or if it was a term for something she was supposed to know. Hadn't he also mentioned dragons? Or had that been her? She couldn't remember, and it was too much work to chase the thought down.

A sudden gust of wind swept past and through her, carrying with it ice and fire all at once, leaving purple and orange highlights behind when she blinked. She sucked in a sharp breath, smelled the scent of something at once incredibly foreign and familiar, reached out a hand as if to find something that was no longer there—

She blinked.

She breathed.

And Belle woke up.

Memories flooded in with all the force of a violent, torrential storm, soaking her in a deluge of moments made up of two different worlds. Memories of monsters and magic and myths made real. Memories of insanity and imprisonment and immense confusion as reality had unmade itself around her. Memories of two women, one strong and trying so hard to be brave and protected and loved by a man who thought he was a beast, the other lost and unsure and mad…and protected and loved by a man who thought he was a monster.

Rumplestiltskin.

He was there, still shining gold in her mind, outlined by the stark memory of what seemed, to her, to have been only yesterday, of an indoor picnic by the fireside, of soft touches and daring kisses and quiet confessions as they luxuriated in being alone, and then a chipped cup pulled from its safe hiding place and insanity blinding her to Rumplestiltskin—but only temporarily because even in madness, she had still known he was hers, that she belonged with him.

And there he was, striding forward ahead of her, forging toward something, running from what he knew was coming. Soon, he'd told her, had promised that she would know him.

And she did. She knew him. It seemed like just moments ago he had shown her their cup, seemed like weeks ago since she had been attacked by the Queen and stared at him without recognition, and yet she missed him with a ferocity that took her aback. He was running, and she wasn't sure why, but she didn't want to chase him; she wanted him to turn around and look at her, wanted to know why he was so afraid.

"Wait," she tried to say, her voice weak, torn between the Belle who was a princess and the Belle who was a lunatic.

"No, no, we're very close," he said, never pausing, never slowing.

But she had both sets of memories now, and she knew how to summon the deal-maker to her side.

"Rumplestiltskin." The word was golden on her tongue, sweet and heavy and luxurious, laden with power not wholly magical. "Wait."

He was frozen for an instant. And then he was moving, spinning to face her, eyes wide and tremulous, fear and hope etched in equal lines, side by side, across his beloved face. "Belle?" he whispered. He shuddered in a deep breath, peered so closely down into her eyes as she stumbled nearer to him. "Belle?"

"Rumplestiltskin," she repeated. He was so uncertain, and still scared, and she didn't know why because she had loved him in both worlds, in both incarnations, even cursed and afraid and lost, but then, he had always thought himself unworthy, completely incapable of earning love or loving in return no matter how often they both proved that belief wrong. So she smiled, and she said, "I decided—it's a good thing. To know you. A very good thing."

"Belle," and her name on his lips was a prayer, a plea, an exhalation of soul-deep relief, and he opened his arms, and she stepped forward, and she was wholly encased in his love and affection and dark, burning devotion, and she reciprocated, wrapping her arms as tightly around him as she could, defined and profiled and highlighted by his body against hers, encasing him in her love and fondness and brilliant, burning commitment.

"I love you," she whispered, because she had been about to tell him when he'd shown her their cup, had felt the words already lined up in her mouth, ready to be released, and she had been ready to say them again when she'd come back to him instead of locking herself away, had opened her mouth to speak them before he'd recalled himself to his task. But now she could say them, and so she did.

As always, a shudder ran through him, as if he could not help but physically react to those words directed to him. Belle wanted, suddenly and completely, to say them so often, to convince him of them so thoroughly, that one day he would no longer have to be surprised at them, that one day he would know without even being told that they were true.

"Yes, and I love you," he murmured, and she couldn't help but laugh with the pure joy fanning outward to encompass her in jubilance and delight and even relief. She lifted her head from his shoulder, tilted back, ready to kiss him, but his hand was on her cheek, spanning the side of her head, and regret and hope warred within his eyes. "But there's…still something I have to do."

And yet he didn't move. Only watched her. Dark, deep, almost unfathomable wells of grief and desperation inside him, terrible patience outlining his form as he stood still in her embrace.

And Belle understood.

"Your son," she realized. "He's what you lost—you can bring him back?"

"He's here," he admitted, so quietly she caught them only because she could feel them vibrating through her, because she knew him and knew that only two things could make him look so lost and so hopeful and so vulnerable all at once. "I have to find him."

"Of course you do," she asserted firmly. She stepped backward, then, let her arms fall from his shoulders, because this was something he needed to do—something he had crossed worlds and times and lives and centuries to make right—and she would never stand between him and his son.

Gratitude, vast and quick, flashed across his expression, and he trailed his hand down her arm to thread his fingers through hers. They walked, side by side, to a well, situated where it overlooked the town that had once been a world.

"This well flows from a spring that brings back what once was lost to you," Rumplestiltskin explained. His tone would have been identical to the times in the Dark Castle when he'd answered her curious questions except for the tiny ragged edge that made it flutter slightly. She squeezed his hand tighter and stepped to the well, looked down into darkness so black she couldn't even see the liquid reflection of water.

Rumplestiltskin breathed, in and then out, and then he reached into his pocket and drew out the bottle of magic. "It's True Love," he told her. "I bottled it."

"It can break any curse," she replied, the familiar, oft-thought words filled with old pain buried beneath layers of happiness.

"It's the most powerful magic of all," Rumplestiltskin affirmed. His hand shook when he held the bottle over the well, and Belle reached out to place hers over his, steadying it. She let out a breath when he opened his hand and let the glowing magic fall down into depths she couldn't perceive.

His hand found hers again, giving comfort, seeking it in turn, and she did her best to give it to him. A gasp of surprise and fear was torn from her when purple smoke billowed up and out of the well, vehement and violent and so thick Belle was almost afraid to breathe. She instinctively stumbled back a pace, and Rumplestiltskin moved with her without once tearing his gaze from the magic he had unleashed.

With the force of the smoke's movement fluttering his hair back from his face, his eyes locked on the future he had foreseen and ensured, Belle thought he almost looked like magic itself personified, given shape and form and set upon the earth for some purpose she couldn't divine. He seemed, in the light of this enchantment, to be as ageless as the sky, as old as the mountains, yet contradictorily as young as the babbling, teasing brooks. He seemed more a force of the universe than a person, and for just an instant, Belle loosened her grip on his hand, staring up at him in awe and nervousness.

But then he turned to look down at her, and tears glittered like gold in honey-brown eyes, and his mouth quirked up in a lopsided smile that showed the mysteries beneath the facades, and the moment passed and he was Rumplestiltskin once more, influenced and touched by Mr. Gold.

"I'll find him, Belle," he promised—promised her, promised himself, promised the absent Bae. "I'm so close."

"We'll find him," she corrected softly, and he pulled her close, let her rest her head on his shoulder as the sun rose in a sky painted purple with magic.

They watched the smoke spread and merge and dissipate, watched until the world looked once more as it always had. If Belle looked ahead, she saw Storybrooke, firmly mired in this world—magic-less no more—but if she looked behind, over her shoulder, she could have sworn they were standing in the Enchanted Forest, in their old world, filled to overflowing with magic of all kinds.

None as intoxicating or amazing as the man holding her close to his side, smelling of lightning and books and fire.

"Will I be able to kiss you?" she asked quietly, not lifting her head from his shoulder. She wanted to be able to kiss him, wanted to be able to stay close to him without worrying about stealing away his magic and immortality and curse, but she could not begrudge him this, not when it was Bae on the line.

"My darling Belle…" There was a trace of laughter in his voice, echoes of the impish Rumplestiltskin laughing at her over tea.

"I don't want to take away your magic," she said, defending herself, looking up at him with a frown. "Not when you just went through so much to bring it—"

"Oh, sweetheart," he interrupted, half-smiling and half-crying, and then he pulled her close and dipped his head and kissed her.

Tomorrow, she would have questions for him. Tomorrow, they would probably have to face the town's awakened residents and their accusations and blame. Tomorrow, there would be things to learn about each other and mistakes to be made and apologies to speak and more kisses to exchange. Tomorrow they would make more memories.

Because memories were precious things, and they made them who they were, but even without them, she would always find her way back to him. He was Rumplestiltskin and she was Belle, and no matter what world or magic touched them, she was supremely confident that they belonged together. He was holding her close with a possessiveness she matched, only to loosen his grip on her and caress her face with hesitant tentativeness, and no matter how many tomorrows they held, no matter what all their tomorrows contained, Belle would never get tired of feeling his loving dichotomy, his two sides made one in his love for her.

Magic was here, yes, but it was nowhere near as powerful as the love she felt for him. True Love, after all, was the most powerful magic of all, and so she knew—knew as surely as she knew the touch of his lips and the feel of his hands and the beat of his heart—that they would come out all right because love was the one thing they had.

It was true.

It was magic.

It was forever.

The End