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It was without a doubt all completely her fault. Honestly, most things were these days. Rumplestiltskin was often gone for long periods of time, a day or two here, a week or more there. He left her alone in the Dark Castle to dust or read or do whatever her heart desired. It was boring, frankly. Oh, she enjoyed her reading no doubt, but she enjoyed his company even more. And so there were only so many days she could take of complete solitude before she got…well...curious.
That day had brought her to his tower room. She always enjoyed exploring it, like her own personal cave of wonders. But she knew better than to touch. Touching was bad. He had told her that multiple times. I don’t care if you go in there dearie, just don’t touch anything.
Which was why, of course, she had touched something.
And that something had touched back.
And now she was trapped with rather large vines wrapped tightly around her stomach and binding her arms to the couch that he kept in the room for an occasional nap. She could barely move, though she could breathe fine.
But she was bored.
Very bored.
And it was all her own damned fault.
The problem, as she saw it, was that if Rumplestiltskin didn’t come back from his trip for another week he’d find that he had a very dead maid on his hands. And she wasn’t quite ready to admit defeat.
She squirmed and twisted and begged whatever it was to release her. But it stayed steadfast. It did not tighten, but it did not release her. Really, she had no idea what she had touched and if it would wear off in a day or a week or never.
So she remained where she was. She passed the first hour by thinking about the latest book she had been reading and where the plot might be going. Several ideas presented themselves to her and she enjoyed each and every one.
But that fun wore of quickly.
She spent the next couple hours imagining how Rumplestiltskin might come to her rescue, her own knight in scales and wizard’s robes. None of those probably matched up with reality. And she was getting increasingly nervous that she would have to face that reality soon.
Three hours down, the gods only knew how much longer.
She spent an hour singing the songs of her homeland.
And then one carrying on imaginary conversations with her employer.
And yet a third making up her own songs.
Six hours down and no hope of rescue. Not one thing had changed about her situation except that the sun had gone down a little bit and sunset was upon them. It was a lovely sunset. Or would be if she could see more than a quarter of the window from where she was.
It really was getting quite tiresome. Worse even than the boredom of being stuck in his tower like this was the fact that she had to pee. And if she didn’t get out of her predicament soon, he was going to find a dead maid sitting on a couch soaked in urine. Which was rather less appealing to her than his just finding her dead.
Twenty minutes later and she couldn’t take it anymore. “Rumplestiltskin!” She didn’t even know if he’d come, but she hoped that a frantic call coming from his own tower would be enough to…
“And just what have we here?” His voice came from the doorway of the room and she turned her head to look at him.
“Rumplestiltskin!” She had never been so relieved to see the man in her entire life. Not even when he saved her people from the ogres. No, this time she was really really happy to see him.
“What did you do to yourself?” He cocked his head to the side, brow furrowing.
“I don’t even know.”
“I know what you did,” he pointed out.
“I…”
And he stepped closer and leaned down. “You touched something.”
She hung her head, bit her lower lip. “I did.”
He was silent for another moment and she didn’t dare look up at him. “How long have you been like this?”
“Um…six hours or so?”
His eyes widened. “It took you that long to call for me?”
“I didn’t want you to know.” She bit her lip and watched as he smirked.
“Well, maybe I’ll keep you tied up like that for awhile longer then.” Her eyes widened and she noticed his did too at the implication behind the words. “I…um…nevermind then.” He waved a hand and suddenly she was released, the vines melting away as if they’d never been there.
After a moment of joy, she jumped up and launched herself at him. “Thank you!” she shouted as she wrapped her arms tightly around him. “Thank you so much.” And then she was off and running.
“Belle?” He sounded confused and maybe a little irate but she just didn’t have time for such things.
“I have to pee!” she shouted over her shoulder and made a beeline for her own chambers. They could discuss this little fiasco later when her bladder wasn’t full to bursting.
The fact that she heard his high-pitched giggling laughter follow her down the hallway made her feel just slightly better about the whole thing. Maybe it was all too ridiculous for her to get in any sort of real trouble over it all.