Summary: "He didn't intend to shoot her so squarely. He intended to hit her shoulder, or lower leg, or even just graze her with the bullet. Anything to make her topple over the line."

Alternate ending to S2Ep11. Hook ponders his motives, Rumpelstiltskin honours his promises, and not all fairy tales have happy endings. Warning – Character death.

Note: Whilst trying to write a fix-it for 'The Outsider' I ended up with, well, this. It was cathartic, in a strange way. This is what comes of having two days off work ill and feeling sorry for yourself.

Disclaimer: I own nought but the plot bunny.

Remember For the Both of Us

If he's being brutally honest with himself, Hook is surprised that the Crocodile hasn't tried to kill him yet. He's tried to kill him for far lesser crimes than the one that now hangs over him, the one that is completely and utterly Hook's own fault.

He didn't intend to shoot her so squarely. He intended to hit her shoulder, or lower leg, or even just graze her with the bullet. Anything to make her topple over the line. He's a good shot, he could have done it. But sadly, Hook's marksmanship skill has always belonged to the 'shoot-to-kill' variety. He can't deliberately miss.

He never intended to shoot Belle so squarely in the chest. It was an accident. He told Swan that, he even told the Crocodile. Now all he needs to do is convince himself. It was an accident. He did not murder her. He is better than the Crocodile. He did not just kill a man's True Love in front of him…

"Belle! Belle!" She goes limp in his arms, and Rumpel knows it's too late. She's crossed the town line. "Belle!"

"Wh-wh-who's Belle?" she stammers as he pulls her back across the boundary, lays her on the tarmac. He shot her. Hook shot her. Rumpel feels the flames begin to flicker around his fingertips, half-rises to launch them. But something stops him, and the fire extinguishes itself before it is more than a few little embers.

His palms are slick and sticky where they've been pressed against Belle's back to hold her, and he can see the scarlet dribbling over his fingers and down his sleeves. Her breath is coming in little ragged pants, her eyes wide and scared.

Belle is dying, and there is nothing he can do to stop it. Only a handful of magics can prevent the inevitability and finality of death, none of which he can access quickly enough. And as he has said so many times to others: once she's gone, it is forever. Magic can do much, but no' that. Dead is dead.

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart, I'm so, so sorry." He's a stranger to her now, this probably isn't reassuring but he can't just say nothing.

"Am I dying?" she manages to choke out, and a little rivulet of blood trickles down from the corner of her mouth.

She wanted honesty from him before and he won't break that promise now. He nods, slowly, and wipes away that horrible line of blood with his handkerchief. Too stark against her too-pale skin.

"I don't know who you are," she manages between increasingly laboured little breaths. "Will you stay? Please? I don't want to be alone. I'm scared."

He finds one of her hands and squeezes. "I'm right here, love. I'm not going anywhere, I promise."

She coughs wetly and spits a mouthful of blood into his lap.

"Sorry."

"It's no matter, love. No matter at all."

What's a suit in the grander scheme of life and death?

Hook looks up to see the Crocodile, still covered with his lover's blood, staring through the bars at him.

"I would have killed you," the older man growls. "But Belle wouldn't want me to. Her good opinion of me is all I have left, and I will not dishonour it. So be aware, Hook, that you owe your life to the woman you murdered."

He leaves, and it's just Hook and Swan. Her expression is grave as she unlocks the cell and escorts him to the interview room.

She fiddles around with the mechanical device on the table between them, then presses a button on it and speaks.

"Talk. You just shot dead an innocent woman in cold blood. So talk. And don't you dare give me some crap about her not being innocent because she loves Gold."

"It was an accident."

"You pointed a gun at her and pulled the trigger. Where's the accident in that?"

Hook can't really reply to that one, because maybe he did intend to kill her after all. Maybe he is no better than the Crocodile…

Rumpel squeezes Belle's hand, trying to will some of his warmth to enter her cold, cold body.

"What's… your name?" she asks, and her voice is barely above a whispered slur now. He smiles, blinks back the mist of tears.

"Rumpel," he replies. "You used to call me Rumpel."

"Don't… remember."

"I know you don't, sweetheart, I know. But it's all right. It doesn't matter. I remember, and I can remember for the both of us."

"Rumpel… I'm scared…"

"Don't be, love. Just think of it as going home. I'm right here, and I love you."

He has to say it, one last time. Even if she doesn't remember, she has to know it, has to hear it from him before she fades.

The brief flicker of a smile graces her drained face as she closes her eyes.

"Thank you," she whispers.

It's the last thing she says, and her hand goes limp in his a moment later.

He stays with her. He promised he wouldn't leave her, so he doesn't. Not until the paramedics drag him away.

X

After the funeral, Rumpelstiltskin returns to the town line. Belle's blood has long since been washed away in the New England rain. He leans on the bonnet of the Cadillac, fingering the fringe of Bae's shawl.

It would be so incredibly easy. To walk over that line and be rid of all the pain, free from all the anguish and regret. To return to the oblivious pawnbroker he once was.

But forgetting Belle after everything she went through, pretending she never existed after she died trying to help him to see Bae, is the cruellest thing he can do to her. Everything she suffered would be in vain.

He told her that he would remember for the both of them, and he will. She wanted him to find his son, and he will.

He wraps Bae's shawl back round his neck and gets back into the car.

No time like the present. Nothing keeping him in Storybrooke any longer but the memories of Belle, and these he will carry with him wherever he goes, no matter how heavy, no matter how painful; they are as much a part of him as his own skin.

He looks away from the road to clear his blurred vision for a split second, and he doesn't see the car with the Pennsylvania plates speeding towards him until it is too late.