Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thing no one tells you about being a ghost is how much energy it takes. That’s why most people don’t do it when they die. If they try shortly after death, they often only show up as brief flashes that are see-through and hard to recognize as human. The ones that stick around usually have some almighty grudge or a score to settle. A lot of hauntings are about the search for justice, or at least compassion. 

Once you summon enough strength to appear to the living, there’s no controlling it. You become formless, sometimes thoughtless. Not even a soul anymore, just a force so powerful that most living people can only perceive you as something evil. Sweet old grandmothers who just want to check in on their descendants have to tune in to raw, primal rage in order to cross the veil. When they do, they often end up scaring the pants off of the very family they wanted to comfort. 

It’s kind of sad, being a ghost.

****

What remained of Belle French had the opposite problem of most other ghosts. She was full of energy. Several thousand volts of it. 

At the time of Belle’s death, electricity had been new. Everyone was pretty sure it was just a fad. It would burn itself out in a few years. But they couldn’t deny that Mr. Edison’s incandescent lamp gave off a brighter and steadier light than gas lamps ever could. So even if it was a folly, at least it was a useful novelty. Maybe it would be worth keeping around. 

Maurice French had believed in the merits of electricity. After seeing the electrical displays at the White City of the Columbia Exhibition in Chicago, he had made his fortune by investing in progress. When he had his new house built in a coastal town in Maine, he insisted that the whole building should be wired for electric lights. The builders were pretty sure that Maurice was crazy. He had already decided that the house should be painted pink and green. But he was paying the builders five thousand dollars. The money was good, so they did what he said. 

Belle had followed in her father’s footsteps with tinkering and inventing. Book learning would only take a person so far, her father said. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to really know what you’re dealing with. Belle was always eager to take something apart and put it back together in order to understand how it worked.

Unfortunately, electric wiring works by having enough power to stop a human heart.

She didn’t remember dying. One day, she had removed a panel of her bedroom wall--with every intention of hammering it back into place when she was done--and had been carefully examining the ceramic tubes that surrounded the copper wires. The tubes were nailed into the wooden wall supports, and the wires went through them in a giant web that went all over the house. At some point in her exploration, there was a flash of light, and a burning smell, and then Belle was looking at her body from inside the wall.

For the first few decades, she was stuck in a limited circuit. Though the house had been built with electricity in mind, most of the bedrooms only had one wall with wires where Belle could exist. The parlor and drawing room downstairs were slightly better set up, with outlets and electric lamps on all four walls. Wires connected the house to the telegraph pole outside, but Belle was never able to get very far. Something tied her to the house.

She could stay inside the wires, but the back of a wall was never very interesting. It was much better to reach out into an electrical device. When she went into lamps, she could see whatever the light bulb saw. Usually it was a motionless view of the floor or a scrap of a table. The inside of a  lampshade was about as interesting as the inside of a wall. The only rooms with bare bulbs--where she could see the whole room--were in the basement and the attic, where no one ever went. 

Her favorite light bulb was over her father’s work table. She spent a lot of time watching him fiddle with his inventions or draw up plans. When he read at night in his study, she went into that bulb. From over his shoulder, she caught fragments of words from books and the newspaper.

Being with her father was the only time Belle missed being alive. When she saw a screwdriver roll off a table, she was never able to pick it up for him, or even tell him where it was when he started looking for it. She would try to get his attention by flickering the light, but he would just twist the light bulb and look annoyed. When he read, she tried to make the bulb a little brighter, a little warmer on cold nights. She imagined she was standing behind him or sitting at his bedside like a guardian. She couldn’t do anything for him, but maybe she could let him know he wasn’t alone. 

She didn’t see him die. Over the decades, her father grew older and more frail. He spent more time at home, then in his room, then in his bed. A nurse lived in the house. She served him meals and saw to his needs. Belle heard the tense conversations between the nurse and the doctors and her father. Then one day, some young men in white came to the house. They carried him down the stairs and set him into a wheelchair. They took him away and he never came back. 

If he had died at home, could they have seen each other again? Just for a moment? Could he have stayed behind, like her? Could she have gone with him to whatever fate awaits souls that don’t become ghosts?

She would never find out. 

It’s pretty sad, being a ghost.

****

After her father died, Belle faded into the walls for a while. People came into the house, but they weren’t worth watching. Strangers unplugged the lamps, switched off and on the overhead lights as they came and went. Belle felt the surges of power, but they went through her. She didn’t want to be part of it, so she wasn’t. 

New people came in, people she couldn’t bring herself to care about. She only noticed them when they used electricity. The young woman had a device that curled and crimped her short hair. Her husband had a razor that plugged into the wall. They liked to dance together while listening to music on the radio. They liked to make love with the lights on.

Belle watched it all with insulated jealousy. Seeing this couple--so young, so happy, so alive --made her mourn the loss of her own life. She would never make love to anyone. She would never love anyone. She would never know anyone. Ever. 

She would never travel and see all the places she had read about in her books. She would never hold a book in her hands again. She could hear and see, but she would never taste, or smell. She would never be anything other than an observer of the living.

She measured time by the currents that ran through her. The most sudden change was the day the icebox in the kitchen was replaced by a refrigerator. It drew more power than everything else in the house put together. The man called in men in overalls to install a new circuit breaker. He was doing well, it seemed. He had all kinds of plans to fill the house with new “appliances.”

More appliances gave Belle more areas to explore. The oven and stove, the various mixers and blenders in the kitchen. Inside the refrigerator was interesting, because it was always changing. The people who lived in her house took food out of the refrigerator all day, and often put new foods in. When they kept the door open and pondered what they wanted to eat, it was the longest look Belle ever got at their faces. 

The machines for washing and drying laundry quickly became her favorites. She liked the sensations they produced. Rhythmic thumping, rapid spinning--they made her feel physical . It was almost like dancing, like feeling her own feet pounding on the cement basement floor. It was almost like having a body.

There were children in her house now. The not-so-young-anymore couple bought small lights to shine on them while they slept. It was to protect against the fear of monsters. Belle was the closest thing to a monster in this house and she spent all night looking over them. They weren’t afraid.

 Sometimes the children amused themselves by playing with the lights. Chubby fingers pushed the heavy buttons on and off again and again. To Belle, it almost felt like they were inviting her into their game. It was the sort of thing a child would believe, wasn’t it? These children might well think that electricity was really just an invisible woman who wanted to be friends with them.    

In a moment of hope, Belle tried to touch them back, but it only ended up shocking a child and making all of them cry. Their mother said it served them right for wasting electricity. 

It served Belle right for trying to reach out to living people. 

At Christmastime, the house was strewn with lights. Belle twinkled through her home, seeing the rooms through colored glass--red and green and gold. When the lights were set up by windows, she got to look out at her neighborhood for the first time in fifty years. 

The Christmas tree became her winter residence. From inside an electric star, she watched the children put up ornaments and open presents. Their eyes went wide every year when they saw the tree lit up for the first time. Belle pretended their joy was for her.

Being inside the vacuum cleaner gave her a chance to explore the house again. From the ground level, she saw the modern furniture they’d put in her house. The children left shoes and toys all over the floor. Sometimes the mother used an attachment on the vacuum cleaner to take dust off of the walls, so Belle got a good look at the new wallpaper and paint. She saw everything better when she wasn’t limited to a fixed position in a light bulb. 

They also bought a big box they called a television . They put it in the living room and almost never turned it off. The mother watched the box while she ironed and folded laundry and bustled about the house during the day. The children lay on the floor, staring up at the screen in a trance. The father would shoo the children out when he came home in the evenings, so he could sit in his easy chair and smoke cigarettes and watch television alone.

But he wasn’t alone. None of them were. The ghost of Belle French was their companion any time they flipped a switch. 

****

The children grew up quickly. One Christmas, a girl got something she called a hair dryer, which she plugged in as soon as she could. Belle settled into the strange dome while the girl sat beneath it. Together, they read magazines while Belle coiled around the girl’s hair curlers, a blanket of electric warmth. 

A few years later, a boy received a new type of lamp. The bulb was perfectly ordinary, though there was some bright blue goop above it, blocking the view. If Belle stayed in the bulb for a while, she would see the goop rise away from the bulb and float up into a tube of green water. It was hypnotizing. She would spend hours in that bulb, watching the blue goop form and break apart and reform in the green liquid. It reminded her of something she’d read about happening in Polynesian islands--lava.

These weren’t toys, Belle realized. The children didn’t play with toys anymore.  They brought home “dates,” even when the parents weren’t home to supervise. They would turn off most of the lights, but not all. They left the television playing, as a quick excuse for what they were doing so close to each other on the sofa.

Once, the girl brought home a boy she clearly didn’t like. Or at least, she didn’t like him sticking his hand down her blouse. She tried to be nice about it, but there was no hiding her relief when the porch light turned on--which clearly meant that her parents had come home. Only, when the girl leapt off the sofa to open the door, her parents were nowhere to be found. The porch light, apparently, had turned on all by itself.

One by one, the children grew older and left the house. The woman kept them close in her heart, making care packages with homemade cookies. Those foods always mixed consistently, and never burned in the electric oven. She used an electric typewriter to write letters that went with the gifts. Belle poured herself into the keys and levers, as their mother gave them her love.

Every year they came back for Christmas. Every year the father found some new light-up decoration he could put outside. As long as the extension cord had one end plugged into the house, Belle could go outside and see the snow. The children helped their father set up the lights, climbing ladders and going up onto the roof.

Every year, it was the brightest house on the block. 

In time, the children had children. Belle loved it when the grandchildren came to visit. By now, the man and the woman had become set into a routine. They puttered in and out of the same rooms, turned on the same lights and devices day in and day out. But every time the grandchildren came, the world was thrown into chaos. They stayed in rooms that hadn’t been opened in months, turning on lights that even Belle had forgotten about. They went into the basement and the attic to tell frightening stories. The littlest ones always insisted that they were not scared. On those nights, Belle made sure to keep the night-lights extra bright in their rooms. 

More quickly than she would have thought possible, the grandchildren were growing up too. Now when they visited, all they wanted to do was watch television or play games that they attached to the television. From inside the wires, Belle couldn’t see what they saw on the screen. She only knew the rapt faces and the furious pushing of buttons. They competed against each other, four at a time. Any extra children were left watching and begging to play the winner. 

As it turned out, the game device was just another machine that plugged into the wall. The main body was a sort of plastic box, like a cabinet. It held circuitry more advanced than anything else in the house. Wires connected the cabinet to smaller devices that each child held in both hands. They pushed buttons with their thumbs, and nudged a plastic stick in the center of the device. She couldn’t put herself in all four devices at once, so she went back and forth between them. Whichever child held her found that their buttons pressed down just a touch easier, and that their plastic stick was just a little better to handle. 

She liked to make sure the little ones won the game sometimes. 

****

The man died first. Belle saw him collapse one day, while he was moving boxes alone in the basement. He was still alive when Belle rushed up the stairs to find his wife. She was sitting in a sunny window on the second floor, looking at a box of old photographs. No lights were on near her, no devices of any kind. Desperate, Belle went into the doorbell. She made it ring, over and over. The old woman shouted for her husband to answer it. When he didn’t, and when she shuffled to the door and found no one there, she cursed those darn kids nowadays and went right back to her memories. 

When Belle looked down at the old man again, he wasn’t breathing anymore. 

The children came for the funeral. There was no joy in this visit. Even the grandchildren were subdued. Belle looked on at them all, feeling more helpless, more isolated than she ever had before. She had known this man for most of his life. She had been in the oven while the cakes had baked for every one of his birthdays. Chocolate cake, that was his favorite. Dark chocolate with whipped cream on top. She’d been in the mixer, whipping the cream, every year. 

Unlike the celebrations Belle had spent with this family, she couldn’t take part in the wake. When they were happy, she had learned how to become a part of their happiness. She watched them as though through a window but still took their joy into her own heart. 

But grief wasn’t like that. In grief, these people had each other. They could speak of the departed, tell stories and share memories. They could laugh through the tears, comforted by the fact that they weren’t alone. 

Belle was alone. Belle had no one to speak to, no one to comfort her, no one that she could comfort or listen to. Her grief had no outlet.

Then the house was empty, except for the old woman, and Belle. She took to following the woman around, as she used to do with her father. Belle used the lights to warm her, or dimmed them when they were too bright for her old eyes. She lowered the temperature on the stove when food was at risk of burning. She made sure the refrigerator was cool, to keep the food fresh longer. 

She wished she could do more. 

The woman died six months after her husband. This time, Belle saw it happen. A living person wouldn’t have seen it, and not only because they wouldn’t have been watching her sleep all night with no need to blink. It was the briefest flash. The old woman exhaled. Then, for less than an instant, she glowed and became the beautiful young woman she’d been when she’d first moved into this house. Then she didn’t inhale.

Belle didn’t get a chance to talk to her. She didn’t get to let the woman know that she’d been watching over her all this time. The soul that exited the woman’s body didn’t even look at Belle. She looked up, to the sky, with her arms outstretched and her face beaming. 

Belle could only hope that whatever came next was as joyful as the woman seemed to think it was.

She would probably never find out. 

****

The children and grandchildren came to clean out the house. All of them lived far away from Storybrooke, so none of them wanted to stay here. It was only then that Belle realized that she would never see them again. Any of them. Ever. Their lives had taken them all over the world, but she would never leave this house.

All their lives she had been watching over them. She loved them, spent time with them, given them everything she had the capacity to give. And they never knew.  She would never get to say good-bye to them. After all, she had never said hello. When they left this house, they would leave her--forever--and they would feel no sorrow. 

They prepared to sell the house, the children and grandchildren. They took their heirlooms and the furniture and the electric devices. Much of it was declared junk. They couldn’t imagine why their parents and grandparents had held on to these relics. They said the wiring was faulty. They said it was a miracle the house hadn’t burned down. 

They would never know that it wasn’t a miracle.

They shut the door for the last time. Belle watched them leave from the lightbulb on the porch. None of them looked back.

They left, to live their lives together. Belle stayed, to live her death alone. 

It’s a God-damned tragedy, being a ghost. 

Chapter Text

Bailey Gold slumped against the window of the passenger’s side of his dad’s car. He held a potted plant on his lap and a fish tank between his feet. Some things were too fragile to let the movers take in their van. 

The drive from Boston to Maine was hot and long and stupid. Most of the conversation was about the new town they were moving into, Storybrooke.

“So you’re telling me this place doesn’t have a movie theater?”

Papa kept his eyes on the road. “There’s one the next town over.”

He rolled his eyes and thwumped back into the seat. “You’d have to drive me there. Every time. You’d probably sit in the car in the parking lot and read for two hours.”

“Sounds like a treat to me. Or we could go to the movies together .”

“Yeah, but you don’t like movies.”

“I like movies,” Papa protested. “What I don’t like are feature-length theme park rides.”

Bae blew out a stream of air. In Boston, the nearest multiplex was only two bus stops away from their apartment. He could go by himself and meet his friends there. They could watch movies and eat junk food and he never had to care if it met the ‘artistic merits’ his father cared so much about. 

He tried another tactic. “Are there any museums there?”

For as long as he could remember, they’d had memberships to every art, science, and history museum in town. He’d been crazy for dinosaurs when he was a kid. Even now that he was older, the museums were still interesting. At least, they were something to do. And there was no question that they met Papa’s approval. 

“I’m sure there’s something about local history.”

“ Local history? Papa, we’re leaving behind the entire history of the American Revolution!”

His father only snorted. “There’s more to the world than America.”

He fell back against the headrest. “Then why didn’t we move to Scotland? It’s gotta be better than Maine .”

“I don’t think your mother would appreciate me taking you out of the county.”

“Whatever. She doesn’t care.”

Papa slowed down a little. He took one hand off the steering wheel to put it on Bae’s shoulder. “Hey, listen. Your mother is a complicated woman, but she does love you. It was brave of her to admit that she can’t take care of you the way you deserve. She will want to see you again, and when she does, it will be easier if you’re close.”

Bae didn’t say anything. He looked out the window, watched the forest pass by. It didn’t make sense that Papa had more faith in his mother than he did. Wasn’t divorcing someone supposed to mean you hated that person? But Papa never seemed to hate Mom, even when she was at her worst. He was just sad for her. It was the same thing whenever Bae messed up--he said he wasn’t mad, just disappointed. 

Bae was mad. Your mother is supposed to care about you. Your mother is supposed to put you first. At the very least, a kid should be in the top three on a mom’s list of priorities. From a young age, Bae had figured out that his mother’s first three concerns were always sex, drugs, and rock and roll. 

He shook his head, got back to the subject of why Papa shouldn’t move him to some stupid little town in the middle of nowhere. 

“Does this place even have a library ?”

“That it does,” Papa grinned. “Practically right next door to where I’m going to have my shop. You can go there whenever you like.”

Bae sighed. It probably wouldn’t have any of the events and clubs the Boston Public Library did. But at least it was something . That was all he wanted: Something interesting to happen in this new place.  

****

Why was it pink?  

He was still in the car. At fourteen, Bae hadn’t been taught how to drive, or how to hotwire a car, but he was pretty sure he could figure out both skills on the fly. All he had to do was slide over into the driver’s seat, fiddle with some wires, and press the gas pedal--whichever one that was. He could be on the road back to Boston and Papa would never be able to run after him. 

Nah, he’d get pulled over. Or he’d need to stop for gas and he didn’t have any money. There weren’t any gas stations that would accept a potted poinsettia or a tank full of female betta fish as payment, and that was all Bae had on him right now. 

So he opened the car door and stepped out, holding the plant in both hands. Papa was standing in front of the yard, looking up at the house. When Bae stood beside him, he saw that he was smiling.

Seeing how happy his father was to be here made Bae feel bad for hating moving so much. He still wanted to go home, but he was ready to admit that wasn’t going to happen. One way or another, this was their home now.

 “So, pink, huh?”

Papa chuckled. “They liked their colors in the Victorian era. I did check to make sure the walls weren’t papered in arsenic green.”

He walked to the porch, so happy he barely needed his cane. Bae followed. 

“Arsenic? Isn’t that poison?”

“It certainly is.” Papa pulled out the key to the front door. “And also a very vibrant dye. But don’t worry, son. Everything is safe in there.”

While his father fiddled with the lock, Bae looked around the outside. He tried to think of something good to say about this new place. “We’ve never had a yard before.”

“There’s a patio in the back, too,” Papa said. “I was thinking of putting in a fire pit.”

He nodded slowly. Their apartment in the city had been great, but there weren’t a lot of options for outdoor stuff. Papa had tried to “enrich” Bae’s summers with camping trips that had always ended in one disaster or another. Maybe a yard and a fire pit was a better place to start. 

With a heavy sigh, Bae followed his father into the house. 

“Count yourself lucky,” Papa said. “It used to be pink on the inside too.”

Bae wrinkled his nose as he looked around the main entrance. “And now it’s gray and white.”

“Gypsum and Homburg. It took me a long time to decide on those paint colors.”

It looked… clean, Bae guessed. The movers would be coming later with the furniture and most of the boxes, so right now the whole house was empty. It felt empty. Their voices echoed as they spoke. Outside it was getting hot, but the house made Bae shiver. It was all really weird .  

“I bet somebody died in here,” he said.

Papa just chuckled. “Maybe you were right about moving to Scotland. Back there, it’s when someone hasn’t died in a house that you know something’s wrong with it.” 

“No, I mean… doesn’t it feel creepy to you?”

“No,” Papa said. He ran his hands over the polished wood around the door and the staircase and the fireplace inside the entryway. Bae could see how much he was trying not to smile. “This place feels exciting, son. It’s a blank canvas, it can become anything.”

Bae let out a whoosh of air and tried to see the house the way Papa saw it.

“The stained glass around the door is pretty,” he offered.  

“There’s more on the stair landing, do you see that?” Papa turned Bae’s body to look. “And there’s a window in that little nook here.”

“Oh that’s cool,” he admitted. “I didn’t know we had nooks.”

“Might even be a cranny around here somewhere.” Papa looked at his watch. “The movers will be here soon. Why don’t you look around upstairs while I handle things down here? Go say hello to the house.”

Bae snorted. “What?”

“Like in that movie you used to watch. The Japanese cartoon? About the two little girls who moved into a new house.”

“ My Neighbor Totoro ? That’s a kid’s movie.”

“I liked it.”

Bae rolled his eyes but started to go upstairs anyway. “I’m gonna go find a sunny window for the plant,” he said. “Then a shady spot where I can put my fish tank. I do not need to say hello to a house .”

Papa just shrugged. “Well, don’t blame me if the soot spirits decide they don’t like you because you were rude to them.”

He shook his head and went to the second floor. Soot spirits! Did Papa think he was still a kid? There weren’t any spirits in this house.

****

Bae’s bedroom was on the third floor. He picked it out because he wanted a balcony. Papa had let him because the balcony was so high up there was no way he could climb down to sneak out of the house. Not that Bae would do something like that. In Storybrooke, where was there to go ?

He put his poinsettia on the balcony, and his fish on a shelf in a nook by the balcony door. When he plugged in the tank, the filter gurgled to life and started working right away.

“Awesome,” he said to himself. He meant it, too. That filter didn’t always work the first time, or at least it hadn’t in Boston. He’d thought he would have to get Papa to buy him a new one, but now maybe he wouldn’t. 

With his two most important possessions taken care of, Bae decided to help move in everything else. The charger for his phone was in one of the suitcases he’d packed into the car. He should find that before the battery ran out. His laptop, too, he should get that out of the heat as soon as he could. 

He took the narrow back staircase that led down into the kitchen. The movers were using the main stairs, now he could stay out of their way. This would also be a great way to sneak past Papa for late-night snacks.

Maybe this house wasn’t so bad after all. 

Chapter Text

Faraday Gold shook his head when he saw the light coming from underneath the door of the upstairs office. 

“Bae!” He had to yell down the stairs to make sure his son would hear him. Normally he discouraged shouting indoors, but he’d spent the better part of an hour walking all over the house looking for the book he wanted to read, and he was damned if he was going to bother with the stairs if he didn’t have to. “How many times have I told you to turn out the lights when you leave a room?”

“I did!” The boy shouted over the gunfire coming from his video game. 

“Then why is the light on?” he muttered as he opened the door. He pressed the wall button to turn off the overhead light, but then saw that his desk light was on as well. 

That was odd. 

The office had two desks on opposite walls, one for Bae and one for himself. The layout was a holdover from their days in the less spacious apartment in Boston. They had always worked together. Bae would do his homework or practice drawing while Gold reviewed his contracts from work. Having his boy near him had helped him feel like less of a bloodsucking lawyer. Now that he had semi-retired to the country, he used his desk as a place to balance the books and do research on inventory for his new pawnshop.

Bae had finished his homework an hour ago, but the lamp on Gold’s desk was lit. Exasperated, he limped over to shut it off. His ankle had been killing him all day, and had only gotten worse while he’d walked up and down the house searching for--

Yorke’s How to Date Furniture . He discovered the book between the desk and the wall. It must have fallen. When he’d looked in this room earlier, he hadn’t seen it. 

“Well then.” Gold retrieved his book. “Good thing the lamp was on after all.” He slid his finger over the green glass lampshade. “Thanks for that.”

Book in hand, he went downstairs to the living room. Bae was still playing his video game. The rugged adventurer hung off a railing on the side of a train moving through the jungle. When Bae pressed a button, the character jumped to the top of the train car and started mowing down enemies with a machine gun.

“Are you shooting Nazis or zombies in this one?”

“Mercenaries,” Bae said without breaking his gaze. “I have to get to the front of the train and rescue the girl.”

“They’ve kidnapped her?”

 “No, they think she’s on their side, but I think she’s on mine. I have to find out which one of us is wrong.”

Gold sat down on the couch next to his son. He turned on a reading lamp, but knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on his book while the television blared out violence and profanity. He didn’t care for these games, but if he watched his son play they would be able to talk about them together. He wanted to be involved in his boy’s life, even if that meant interacting with things he didn’t really understand.

“Is that helicopter coming to help you out?”

“No it is not .” Bae’s shoulders tensed as he furiously mashed at the buttons. On screen, the adventurer hid from the helicopter’s guns by ducking behind apparently bulletproof crates and hanging off a railing on the opposite side of the train.

“Wait,” Gold said. “I’ve seen you play this level before. This is where you kept dying because you hit the signal lights and fell off the train.”

“That was back in Boston.” Bae’s eyes never left the screen. “I’ve beaten the whole game since then. Now I’m replaying it on Crushing difficulty.”

“ Crushing ?” Gold mused. “And this is fun ?”

“It is when I win.” 

Eventually, his son got a rocket launcher, which he used to hold off the helicopter until one of the train cars jumped the track and flew up into the air in a suitably spectacular fashion. The rest of the train sped into a tunnel, which kept the adventurer out of sight from the helicopter. 

“That’s the end of the level, isn’t it?”

Breathless, Bae put the game on pause. He bounced off the couch and turned to Gold, eyes shining. “Did you see that? I can’t believe I made it out of there!”

“I’m sure the story wouldn’t be the same if you hadn’t.”

“No, but without dying! Papa, I didn’t die once ! And that’s on Crushing mode!”

“Well, good job then.”

“No, you don’t get it. I never could have done that back in Boston. I’m so much better at video games now.”  

“So you’re finally ready to admit the move was good for you?”

His son laughed and collapsed on the couch. “Maybe I got good at gaming because I don’t have anything else to do around here.”

It was a joke between them now, the culture shock between Boston and Storybrooke. Bae had moped for the final few weeks of summer, but ever since school had started, he’d begun to make friends. Apparently being from a big city was an easy way to gain some popularity. 

“Alright.” Bae picked up the controller again. “I’m gonna keep going.”

“No, don’t start another level,” Gold said. “You know the rule about screen time before you go to sleep.”

“It’s not even nine--”

“It is almost nine.” He had to be firm on this point. “I want you to read for an hour and wind down a little.”

His son groaned loudly, his hands still clutching the controller. “Just one more level! Just let me get off the train, please? ”

Despite his better judgment, Gold felt himself wavering. Bae had been so excited to beat one level, how could he deny him a chance to beat another? And it wasn’t nine o’clock yet. He could let Bae lose a little reading time in order to play his game.  It wouldn’t matter that much in the long run, and it would make him happy.

It was hard not to be a pushover for his son. He was a good kid and usually his wants were reasonable. If all Bae’s mother ever gave him was a string of broken promises, why shouldn’t his father let him have everything? But rules were important too. Self-discipline was a trait Bae would need as he grew up. Sometimes Gold had to be the heavy, whether he wanted to be or not. 

Before he could say anything one way or another, a ping sounded out from the television. Bae read the error message and made a face.

“Ugh, stupid system update.” He trudged over to the television and put his controller away in the charging dock.

Gold looked at the screen, saw that the video game system was shutting down by itself. Internally, he breathed a sigh of relief at not having to be a killjoy.

“Lucky that,” he muttered. 

Bae retrieved his library book and plopped down on the couch. He turned on the reading lamp on the opposite side of Gold’s.

“I’m gonna beat the next level  tomorrow,” he said. “Just watch.” 

Gold smiled and opened up his own book. “I bet you will.”

****

A few weeks later, Bae had a friend for an overnight. An overnight, not a slumber party. Apparently slumber parties were only for girls . When boys spent a whole night eating junk food, playing games, and staying up talking, the event could be called anything except a slumber party. Gold made that mistake early in the evening, and the glares from Bae and August made him decide to stare at the kitchen microwave until the bag of popcorn inside was fully popped. 

After video games and a movie in the living room, the boys thundered up the stairs to Bae’s room. Gold let them be, and allowed for a certain level of rambunctiousness before he would lay down the law. Any noise that couldn’t pass through three stories probably wasn’t anything worth worrying about. 

It wasn’t until around midnight, when he was going to his own bedroom on the second floor, that he noticed anything amiss. On the back stairs that connected Bae's room to the hallway, one of the lights was flickering. As he got closer, Gold saw that the light wasn’t just flickering, it was very deliberately being turned on and off. Was August showing Bae some kind of Morse code? If that was the case, he could do it with a flashlight instead of taxing Gold’s one hundred and thirty-year-old wiring.

“What are you two doing up there?” 

He called, but there was no answer. The light didn’t stop blinking. Gold sighed and accepted the fact that he’d have to go up himself.

The back stairs were too narrow for him to comfortably use his cane, so he held onto it while bracing himself against the railing. Surprisingly, he didn’t see a boy at the light switch at the top of the stairs. Behind him, the light was still blinking on and off. 

For a moment as he looked at the light, Gold had the oddest feeling. The blinking seemed… purposeful. Determined, somehow. He’d never thought of an overhead light having a will of its own, but that was his impression now. This light wanted something.

Absurdly, Gold reached out to the sloped ceiling and touched the blinking light. The glass cover was warm but not hot.  

“It’s alright,” he said to the inanimate object. “I’ve got this under control.”

As if in response to his touch, the blinking stopped. The light sent out a steady glow. Somehow, the color of the light seemed warmer than it had before. As if the light was happy, or blushing.

Gold blinked several times, then shook his head. He wasn’t much of a drinker--couldn’t be, with the pain medication he sometimes needed for his ankle. He didn’t recall hallucinations or mental lapses being on the list of side effects for his prescription. If this happened again, he would have to mention it to his doctor. 

In the meantime, he had to check in on the boys. 

He knocked on the door and opened it at the same time. Bae’s room was dark, lit only by a circle of candles in the middle of the floor. He heard the sound of hurried whispers, but couldn’t see where the boys were.

“What is going on in here?” He tried to flip on the lamps, but nothing happened when he touched the switch.

“Hi Papa,” Bae’s voice came from the dim room. “We’re just playing.”

“Playing at what? What happened to your lamps? Why do you have open flames on the carpet?”

“Oh, right.” The characteristic bright light of a phone flashlight shone out and was quickly joined by another. 

Gold heard the noises of children fumbling over furniture. The candles were blown out, and one by one the lamps were turned back on. When Gold had remodeled this house, he’d decided to replace the overhead lights with plug-in sconces to make this room feel less like an attic. He hadn’t thought he would have a reason to regret that choice.

Now that it was light inside Bae’s room, he could see that the candles were circling a ouija board on the floor. He sighed. 

“What were you boys doing?”

Bae shrugged. “August says this house could be haunted, so we were trying to reach out.”

“And you think a board game and candles are the way to go about it?”

Another shrug. August wore the look of quiet shame that came from possibly getting his friend in trouble. But Bae wasn’t in trouble. Aside from the fire, there was nothing about this scenario that Gold could reasonably object to. Even the candles were a gray area, since Gold had never actually forbidden his son from burning candles in his room. He’d never thought he would need to. 

In the silence, Gold asked another question. “Why did you unplug all the lamps?”

Bae looked at August. 

“I looked it up on the internet,” the boy shrugged. “How to talk to ghosts. They said to remove any ‘unnatural energy sources’ and light a circle of candles.”

Gold nodded. “The internet, of course. And you didn’t think that your cell phones counted as an unnatural energy source?”

The two boys all looked at each other, exchanging ‘why didn’t we think of that?’ expressions. 

“Why would you think the house is haunted, anyway? We’ve lived here for months and never noticed anything paranormal.”

 August spoke again. “Cuz of the girl who died here.”

“The previous owner of this house was an old woman who spent her last days bedridden, so even if her spirit remained, it wouldn’t be doing much moving around.”

“Not Mrs. Scarlet,” August said. “We’re talking about Belle French.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Gold saw one of the lamps slowly glow brighter, then fade to dimness, then brighten again. It almost looked like someone breathing, an inhale and an exhale. He made an active choice to stop noticing it. 

“If there are ghosts in this house, don’t you think it’s more polite to let them exist as they are? There’s no reason not to live and let live.”

“But they’re not--”

“I think you have had a very exciting evening,” Gold interrupted August who was clearly about to point out that ghosts, by definition, did not live. “You should go to bed now. I don’t want to hear anything else about ghosts in my home. And Bae?”

“Uh-huh?”

“No more playing with fire until you can afford to buy me another house when this one burns down. Deal?”

Bae nodded. “Deal.”

****

Gold wanted to play off the pseudo-seance as harmless childishness, but the incident with the lights had rattled him. As much as he tried to tell himself that it was nothing, he couldn’t make himself believe it. The boys had been reaching out for a spirit named Belle French, and at the exact same time the lights closest to them had gone haywire. 

It couldn’t be a coincidence. 

It had to be a coincidence. 

Though he wasn’t a particularly religious person, Gold had spent the last few years working to develop his spiritual side. His lifelong style of repressing his anger for as long as possible and then taking it out on any inanimate object or terrified person that happened to be nearby was not healthy, emotionally or physically. It had been during one of these outbursts--on a phone call with Milah--that he had gotten into the car crash that had almost cost him his leg. It was then that he decided his recovery should include emotional therapy, as well as physical. There had been a lot of mumbo-jumbo, but his biggest takeaway had been the philosophy of slowing down, of being aware of his reactions and mindful of the environment around him.

Gradually, Gold had learned to identify and withdraw from things that were bad for him. At his law firm, he had declined to take on cases that would require the ruthless viciousness that used to be his trademark. If an argument with Milah was riling him up, he would end the conversation before his anger got the better of him. Soon it seemed that the whole city of Boston was made up entirely of things that irritated him--noise and people and smells and advertising. True joy, he was learning, was best found in the quiet moments between him and Bae. 

He had moved to this house to find peace, to shore up his reserves of inner strength. This journey had taught him to seek out stillness, and to allow the world to teach him things. 

If the world wanted to introduce him to a spiritual presence in his house, the least he could do was listen.

****

He’d been meaning to make a second visit to the Storybrooke Free Public Library for a while now. Since they’d moved in, he’d been there only once before, to sign Bae up with a library card. His son was in and out of the place at least once a week, devouring books like they were slices of pizza. 

Bae liked to hang out there as well, in the hours between when he got out of school and when Gold closed the pawn shop and took them home. The two buildings were practically next door to each other, with a park and a diner on the same block. The fact that all the activities of Storybrooke were within walking distance of each other had been one of its major appeals. 

While Bae consumed every new book he could get his hands on, Gold had a backlog of twenty years’ worth of books he’d bought but never read. He’d been making a point to get through them before seeking out anything new, so visits to the library hadn’t been a priority. That was, until he needed to look up information on the history of his house. 

Belle French, Bae’s friend had named the spirit that might exist in his home. Gold knew the original owner of the house was Maurice French, a minor pioneer of the industrial revolution. Presumably, Belle French was a relative, though Gold had never seen the name come up in his research. He hadn’t met the previous family who lived here--the Scarlets--so if they had ever encountered something unusual, he hadn’t heard it from them. When deciding to purchase this place, he’d been more interested in the architecture of the house than the people who had lived there. 

Perhaps that was an oversight. 

One evening at the end of October, Gold closed up the shop early and walked over to the library. Mrs. O’Connell at the circulation desk looked up politely as he approached.

“Hello,” Gold said. “I don’t have a specific book in mind, but I’m hoping you can help me with some research.”

“Of course.” The librarian turned to her computer. “What’s the topic?”

“Local history, I suppose. I live in Maurice French’s old house, and I’d like to know more about him.”

“Old Moe?” She brightened. “He’s the most famous person to ever even look at Storybrooke, let alone live here, so there’s information about him everywhere. The historical society has the primary sources. archives of all his correspondence and business information, as well as a lot of personal effects, like pictures and stuff.”

Gold nodded, and Mrs. O’Connell kept going. “Of course, our pride and joy is the Reading Room. It’s part of a trust Moe bequeathed to the library in memory of his daughter.”

“His daughter?” Gold perked up. “What can you tell me about her?”

Mrs. O’Connell looked over Gold’s shoulder. There was a line forming behind him. “Why don’t you check out the Reading Room? It’s just around the corner back there.”

Gold looked in the direction the librarian pointed. He nodded his thanks and went off. 

Around the corner there were two glass-fronted wooden doors that lead into a cozy room. The rest of the library had been remodeled and re-styled over the decades, but this room was a time capsule of the turn of the twentieth century. 

The walls were papered in light blue and gold, with dark wood trim and built-in bookshelves. A circle of armchairs surrounded a central table. The fact that people were permitted to sit in the chairs meant they were likely reproductions, but the style was accurate. There were a few glass cases that displayed carefully labeled artifacts--clothes and photographs and books.  A bricked-up fireplace marked the center of the far wall. Above the mantle hung an oil painting of the most beautiful woman Gold had ever seen. Above the portrait, a sign stretched across the length of the wall:

The Belle French Memorial Reading Room. 

There were people in the room, so Gold couldn’t act on his instinct to stagger toward the portrait in a daze. Instead, he stood back, in a corner where no one would have a reason to bother him. From there, he gazed up at her face.

She was dressed in the style of the period, but there was something wickedly modern about her eyes. There was a light in them, as though she knew a secret she was too polite to say. The painting didn’t show her smiling, exactly, but her lips quirked up into a half-grin, almost a smirk. The rest of the portrait was picture-perfect--nothing terribly different from any other image of a beautiful upper class young woman. But her eyes and her smile, they made her come to life.

Looking around the glass cases, Gold learned more about Belle French. There were photographs of her, alone and with her father at various points in their lives. His favorite was of her as a little girl, in front of the house he now lived in. There were a few mementos from her season as a debutante, but the bulk of the material concerned her intellectual endeavors. She’d graduated from Radcliffe--which was as close to Harvard as a woman could get during that era. Apparently, she had contributed to several of the inventions that made Maurice French’s fortune. There were copies of the patents in the name of M. and B. French. A placard attributed to Maurice contemplated the discoveries and advancements Belle could have made if her life had not been cut short so soon.

The reading room was dedicated in memory of her love of learning after her death by electrocution.

Gold let out a heavy breath. It overwhelmed him, in a way he couldn’t quite name. This promising girl, full of life, had been dead for a hundred years. He lived in her house, walked through the rooms and halls she walked through. He almost didn’t feel worthy of it. Much of the house had been restored, but just as much was as it had been during Belle’s lifetime. The moldings, the stained glass windows--had she found it as beautiful as he did? Had she played on the balconies like Bae? Did she sit out on the porch with coffee in the mornings and watch the town go by?

Imagining her day-to-day life lifted Belle French from the dust of being a historical figure. In Gold’s mind, she was practically a roommate. Belle had lived in his house every day of her life. She had died there, electrocuted by some of the same wires that lit his lamps.

Gold blinked.

****

Later that night, after Bae had gone to bed, Gold turned on all the lights in his bedroom. The overhead lights, the reading lamps, he even brought in more lamps from other rooms and plugged them into his walls. He didn’t think about what he was doing. If he thought about it, he would realize how foolish he was being and he would stop. 

He didn’t want to stop. 

Fully dressed, he leaned against the edge of his bed. He took a deep breath, and then spoke.

“Belle?” His voice was clear, calm. “Belle French, can you hear me? Are you there?”

He had barely finished saying the words before all of the lamps started blinking at once. At first, it was wild, every bulb flashing a different rhythm, some of them going much brighter than their wattage would normally allow. For a moment, Gold was worried they would blow a fuse. But slowly, the silent cacophony gathered together in one voice. All the lights in his room blinked on and off continuously, in unison, steady as a heartbeat.

Despite having planned for this exact thing to happen, Gold’s breathing turned shallow as he looked at the proof before his eyes. It seemed he had broken out into a cold sweat. Gripping his cane, he sat heavily on the bed.

The lights still pulsed. 

“Well then,” he said. 

He took a moment to catch his breath. Then he looked around at the invisible presence, the circle of light that surrounded him. 

“Hello, Belle. It’s nice to meet you.”

Chapter Text

Being a ghost was so much better when someone knew you were alive. For the first time in decades, Belle’s existence had meaning again. Gold and Bae lived in her house and Gold knew about her! She knew their names because he had told her! Gold had understood that the flashing lights and unusually active electronics meant that something was there. He had seen her reaching out--the first person in over a hundred years who had noticed her. He had made an effort to communicate with her. He had called her by her name ! 

For so long, Belle had been lonely, lonelier than a living person ever could be. She’d watched a family live their lives--grow up and grow old around her--and none of them had ever known she was there. But Gold knew. He had figured it out. Until the end of time, or whenever she stopped existing, Belle would be grateful to him. Him acknowledging her gave her a purpose. Now, all she wanted to do was help her Gold and his son. 

****

It was difficult at first. Electronics had changed since the days of the family. Bae and Gold both spent most of their time staring at devices. Not only the television and Bae’s video games, but portable computing machines and strange, flat telephones that apparently served as windows to the entire world. A world that she was still locked out of. Belle’s abilities were connected to the house, to the wires and outlets in the walls where she’d died. These new marvels only had to be plugged into the wall some of the time--usually when they weren’t being used. There was no way for her to enter a battery and spend the day in Gold’s pocket. 

Often, Bae forgot to set the alarm on his cell phone. Belle could only make it ring if he had plugged it in to charge--which he didn’t always do. When this happened, she would try to wake him up some other way, by flashing the lights or turning the filter on his aquarium on and off. Sometimes he would sleep through those, which meant Gold would have to walk up three flights of stairs on his bad leg just to tell his son that breakfast was ready. 

This infuriated Belle. There was nothing worse than having no effect on circumstances around her. It defeated the whole purpose of existing! These occasions were when she truly felt like a ghost--unable to do anything but watch people she loved suffer.

Quickly, Gold learned Belle’s limitations, and even more quickly understood how much she hated them. To accommodate her, he brought a pair of clock radios from his pawn shop into his and Bae’s bedrooms. Gold told Bae that it would be better to keep their phones downstairs, to limit screen time for both of them. Bae complained, but eventually conceded that the clocks were “retro,” which was apparently satisfactory.

Now Belle could wake them up in the mornings without any problems. She tuned the radios to music they would like, woke them in ways that suited them best. Gold liked classical music played at a slowly-increasing volume. He could ease into a morning like a sunrise. Bae, on the other hand, would sleep through anything less subtle than a Klaxon Company automobile horn. Over time, Belle found that if she blasted classic rock and roll music at a high enough volume, Bae would be out of bed and halfway through brushing his teeth before he’d even opened his eyes. She made his bedroom lights a little dim on dark Maine mornings, so it would be easier for the boy to blink himself awake.

Belle loved the hustle and bustle of their morning routines, especially in the kitchen. She was there in the grinder for Gold’s coffee beans, and heating up the coffee itself. Bae’s Pop-Tarts never burned and were never too hot in the middle. If they made oatmeal on the stove, Belle balanced the heating element to make sure the milk never scalded the pot. On weekends, Gold would fry bacon and eggs or pancakes on the electric griddle, squeeze oranges in an electric juicer. Everything came out perfect. Belle made sure of that. 

These were, mostly, the same services she used to do for the family. The appliances were more advanced, but she figured them out. It was nice to have a challenge again, something to occupy her mind. 

Gold made all the difference. He didn’t talk to her in front of his son, but he let her know he knew she was there. He would mutter words of thanks under his breath, knowing she was always listening. The way he touched his appliances was almost a caress, and she was sure he only did it because of her. He would wipe the machines down after each use, keeping them clean on the outside, while Belle maintained them on the inside.      

He never officially told Bae that Belle existed. He did speak openly about the “spiritual essence” of the house and how “benevolent forces” were watching over them. Bae seemed to take such statements in stride, believing Gold as much as any teen-ager believed anything their parents said. 

Belle didn’t blame the boy for not believing in ghosts. Nor did she blame Gold for being cagey about her existence. Even with proof, the idea that the soul of a woman from a hundred years ago was haunting the electricity of one’s house was a lot to ask someone to accept. She had hardly believed it when Gold had first spoken her name.

Sometimes she still couldn’t believe he had kept talking to her once she had made her presence known. 

****

Through a lengthy process of trial and error, they developed a way of communicating together. At first, everything had been very one-way. Gold would speak and Belle would flash the lights to answer yes or no questions. Attempts to utilize Mr. Morse’s telegraph code ended up being too cumbersome for a regular conversation. Gold would lose count of the dashes and dots, or Belle would be so excited to say something she would hurry through her flickers. She’d make a long blink of the lights too short and a short blink barely visible at all. Gold would get confused and they’d have to start all over again. 

The breakthrough came when Gold brought home a magnetic tape recorder. He kept it in the office he shared with Bae, telling his son that he was recording a daily journal. That was just a cover. The real purpose of the tape recorder was something he could pretend to be talking into, while he was giving Belle a long monologue of his thoughts.

He told her about his day, about Storybrooke and the world outside the house, the daily hassles and minor celebrations of a small town. He told her about history, what had changed since she had been alive. He told her about himself. About Bae. About the wife he was now divorced from and the journey of self-actualization he had undertaken that had led him to where he was now. 

Belle took in every word. She hadn’t realized how ravenous she was for new information--for stories as well as facts. Gold had so much to speak about, including things he had never told anyone before. 

If only she could reciprocate! Belle had as much to tell Gold as he had to tell her. She wanted to give him knowledge from her time, little details that didn’t get written about in history books. She would tell him more about the house, of the family that had lived their lives here. She would tell him of herself--all the thoughts and feelings, joys and sorrows, that she had never been able to express to a living soul.

She would tell him how much it meant to her that he treated her like a person.

****

For a few weeks, Gold made his “recordings” at night, after Bae had gone to sleep. One night, the boy suffered from a bout of biliousness and sought his father out. Gold directed his son to the stomach medications, then sent him back to bed. On his way out of the office, Bae had pointed out that the plug for the tape recorder was dangling from the table, well away from the outlet. To save face, Gold hastily plugged in the cord, then went to bed himself.

Leaving Belle alone with a tape recorder that was--for the first time--connected to her. 

She settled in, exploring the machine as she did every new device. She manipulated the buttons, made the spools of tape spin around at varying speeds, played back the ancient recording that was on the tape. She even went into the microphone Gold spoke into. For a lark, Belle swooped around the wiring, finding it particularly sensitive to vibrations. She jumped back and forth along a thin ribbon of metal between two magnets.

She did this for a while, until the tape ran out and the Record button snapped back into place. The sudden change got her attention. Had that button been pushed down the whole time? Had she been recording something?

Carefully, Belle rotated the spindles that were in the center of the circular reels of tape. That wound the tape backwards from one spool to the other, so it was starting at the beginning again. From inside the machine, she pushed down the button marked Play. 

She tried not to get her hopes up that the recorder had actually captured any sound. She was merely experimenting. She just had to make sure that her hypothesis was correct. Besides, what else did she have to do with her time?

For forty-five minutes, Belle listened to the crackles and whirs of the recorder playing back the silence of an empty room. Then, towards the end, there came a barrage of strange sounds of varying pitch. It was so loud, Belle had to turn down the volume for fear of waking up Gold or Bae. As she listened more, she understood what she was hearing. 

If she breathed, her breath would have stopped.

Belle was hearing the effects of her presence in the microphone. Playing back and forth with the ribbon of wire, doing that had made noise .  

Noise.

It wasn’t sound yet. 

But it was a start. 

****

She spent the rest of the night refining her understanding of the microphone. She recorded her efforts, rewound the tape again and again, and listened to the results. Through this process, the noises turned into sounds. Then the sounds became a voice. 

Her voice.

For the first time in over a hundred years, Belle heard her own voice.

“Hello?”

Her voice sounded on the edge of tears--though she had no eyes to cry with, no throat to close up with emotion. 

“Gold? Gold, I’m aware of the incomprehensibility of these circumstances, but you have my absolute assurance of reality. This is me .” The voice from the recorder was almost sobbing. “This is Belle French, speaking to you.”

Her words began to speed up, as the gravity of the situation lifted and all that was left was the euphoria.

“As I speak, it is twenty-seven minutes past four in the morning. There is nothing in the world I want more than to wake you this minute and bring you into your office to hear me. I--I’m so… overcome , to share this news with you. To share myself with you.” She gave out a chuckle, a breath that she didn’t have. “I hope you can appreciate the twofold blessing of this event: That at last I have the ability to speak to you, and that I can share this accomplishment with you. There is the joyous discovery itself, and then the… the communion of joy, I suppose would be the way to put it, though that has a ring of religiosity that may not be appropriate given my supernatural circumstances. I never gave much credence to spiritualism, but…”

She babbled on until the tape ran out. It was tempting to rewind the reels and record over her first message in the hopes that now she might be more coherent, but there was such sincerity in her first attempt. Belle had no desire to deny the depth of feeling that had gripped her at the first thought of sharing her voice with another person.

And the thought of sharing her voice with Gold, specifically. 

Nervous and excited, Belle burned off a little power by zooming through the house and revving up every device one by one. From outside Bae’s room in the attic, down to the basement chest freezer, she gave a boost to everything she touched. 

It wasn’t enough. Her happiness burned so brightly, there was no bulb that could contain it. She could power a spotlight, a searchlight, she could rival the sun .

She couldn’t wait anymore. It was close enough to Gold’s regular alarm time. Waking him now wouldn’t spoil his day.

Belle burst into the radio at full volume, turned on every light in his bedroom at once. Gold groaned and cursed and covered his eyes. At least he had been aware of her for long enough to instantly understand that she was trying to get his attention. 

“ What? ” he croaked. His voice was always rough and deep when he first woke up. “What is it, Belle?”

She blinked the lights in a path leading to his bathroom, signaling that she wanted him to get up and get ready.

Still in bed, Gold looked at the clock. “It’s early.” He complained as badly as Bae did. “What are you trying to tell me?”

Belle retraced the pattern of light bulbs leading from Gold’s bed to the bathroom--one by one, deliberately, to signal that she was being very patient and repeating herself for his benefit. 

Groggily, infuriatingly slowly, Gold got out of bed and began to dress. 

Over the years, Belle had made a habit of turning away from her inhabitants during private moments. Curious as she might be about Gold’s body, she was no peeping tom. Today, however, she was sorely tempted to make an exception--just to make sure he hadn’t gone back to sleep. 

Finally, Gold  appeared in front of his bedroom, fully appareled in one of his modern suits. Belle lit a path of lights down the hall to his office. She had to blink the desk lamp several times before he understood that she wanted him to sit down. By no means could she begin the recording while he was still standing.

As soon as her voice came out of the speaker, Gold’s lingering irritation melted away. The hard lines of his face went soft, and he put his hand over his mouth. His other hand shook as he reached to stop the tape.

“Belle?” he whispered. He directed his question to the tape recorder. There were tears in his eyes. “Belle is that really you?”

She started to blink the lamp, then thought of something better. She re-wound the tape, and went into the microphone. It only took her a second to record her answer, then she pressed Play.

“Yes, Gold. It’s really me.”

****

After that, everything changed. Gold found more recording devices and placed them all around the house. The kitchen, the living room, his bedroom--anywhere where they might want to talk to each other. He even acquired a portable ‘boom box’ that he could plug into an outlet on the front porch.  Bae was out of the house more often nowadays, spending time with his friends or at extracurricular activities. More evenings than not, the two of them were alone together.

“If it weren’t for you, I might lose myself in work again,” Gold told her one evening. He was alone in the dining room, savoring the supper he had made for himself. “I’m so glad I have you.” 

Belle knew what he was going to say, so she had her recorded answer ready: “I’m glad I have you, too.”

Now that they could really talk to each other, the closeness that had begun to grow between them blossomed into a deeper intimacy. Belle could ask questions of her Gold, she could offer her opinions. Gold would invite people from town into the house for dinner or a party, and then spend the rest of the night talking to Belle about them. When Bae’s friends and girl-friends came over, she would tell Gold who she thought was a good influence on him. He wanted to know what she thought, about everything that happened and everyone she met.

“I always wanted a man who would listen to me,” Belle told him once. “Back when I thought marriage was inevitable. There weren’t many men who would, in my day.”

Gold was in the process of taking off his shoes and putting his feet up at the end of a long day. The cold of a Maine winter played hell on his bad ankle, so he plugged in a heating pad and propped up his leg before he went to bed. Belle touched him through the insulated wires, rubbing and warming him, easing his pain. 

“I’ve always thought of love as being a home,” he sighed. “When you love someone, you should feel comfortable, and safe--” A yawn broke through his sentence. “--and warm.”

Belle couldn’t devote her attention to the heating pad and the tape recorder at the same time. It took her a moment to make a reply:

“You almost sound like you’re saying you love me.”

Gold smiled. That soft, sweet, almost-silly smile that he only wore when they were alone together. “I think I do, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Yes, Belle, I’m sure of it. I love you.”

****

The power surge blew every fuse in the house’s breaker box. Once Gold replaced them all and the electricity was restored, Belle was able to tell him that she loved him too.

****

Now that they had declared their love, Belle no longer felt compelled to look away when Gold dressed or bathed. Instead, she drank in the sight of him--though he was always a little embarrassed to be seen naked under  full lights. She told him how handsome she thought he was, the little details she found charming, how curious she was about the male body. Man of the world though he was, it made him blush to hear such sentiments played on a recording at full volume. 

It was much more comfortable for Gold when he could lay on his bed underneath an electric blanket. Darkness and closeness were more what he was used to in lovemaking. Through heated wires, Belle felt the shape of his form--the width of his shoulders, the grip of his large hands, the bulge of his sex. 

Both of them hesitated for her to get too close to his flesh. He said that there were ways--that there was equipment he could purchase for ‘electronic stimulation.’ Apparently some people sought out the sensation and accepted any potential risks. Belle said it wasn’t necessary. She couldn’t bear the possibility of hurting her Gold. And who could say if she’d be able to control herself in the midst of an erotic frenzy?

Safer by far to stick with the blanket. If he drew it up over his face, she could trace the shape of his lips, press into him like a kiss. Without any risk of injury, she could seek out all the parts of him that were sensitive. His nipples, his throat, the insides of his arms--she pulsed flutters of heat over his body. She touched him, while he touched himself. He whispered his fantasies of how beautiful he imagined her body was, of what he would do to her if she was with him, what they would do together.

There was, Belle could not deny, a little pang of loss every time he spoke about her body. At this point, she knew Gold in every way that mattered, and he knew her in every way but one. Was that enough?  Would their bond be stronger if she had skin for him to touch? Would they be any more intimate if she had a pulse that would quicken at his bold words? Would his passion increase if he could feel her labored breath against his ear? Would her existence matter more if she could physically experience the joys of the flesh? 

She could convince herself that the answer to these questions would always be a resounding no , but there were other matters that tore at her heart. Might they love each other more if they could have a child together? If they could have a life together? Was it wrong for the dead to love the living? Was Belle hurting Gold by keeping him a homebody, keeping him from seeking out a living companion? She had always wanted to see the world, to travel and explore. Just because she was trapped in these wires, there was no need for him to be bound to her.

He told her how he loved her, how happy she made him. He whispered nothings to her as he drifted off to sleep. Belle rested in the wires of his blanket, pressing herself against him like a spooning lover. If he rolled onto his back, she would form herself on top of him, the shape of the girl who had last drawn breath before Gold’s parents and grandparents were born. 

Her dearest love had so little time, all living people did. How could she ask him to waste it with her ?

“Because I love you,” he told her once when she brought up her concerns. “Because I’ve already lived a life full of events but empty of meaning. The only things I’ve ever done that were truly worthwhile were to raise Bae and to find you.”

“But--” She had a reply recorded, but Gold stopped the tape.

“I was already resolved to spend the rest of my life in this house.” His voice was unemotional, but certain. “The only difference that meeting you makes is that now I don’t have to do it alone. And neither do you, sweetheart.” He stretched his hand wide over the recorder. “I don’t want you to be alone anymore. I’m never going to leave you, for as long as I can help it.”

****

As Bae grew older, Belle met Gold’s desire for companionship more and more. Their boy moved out of the house to go to college. On summers and school holidays, he came back with bags of dirty laundry and complaints about the school’s facilities being on the other side of campus from his dormitory. Belle took special care with his clothes when they were in the washer and dryer. She wanted her efforts to last until the next break. She wanted to take care of him, even while he was away from home.  

One break, Bae arrived with a girl he wanted his father to meet. Belle watched with envy as the couple sat beside each other on the sofa, as they held hands and shared secret smiles. Gold wasn’t sure about this girl, who had come from what he called “a rough background,” but Belle convinced him that this stranger was good enough for their Bae. Emma Swan made him happy, that was what mattered most.

It was a small wedding, small enough for them to host the ceremony in the house. Belle shone in the soft lights. She trilled in the lilting music from a portable keyboard. Gold typed out a speech on the old electric typewriter, and Belle pressed her agreement into every word. Night after night, she told Gold about the love she had for these children, the hope she had for their future, the determination that she would do everything in her limited power to make their lives easier. He knew, and he loved her more than ever for it.

After the ceremony, there was a party in the backyard, and the DJ hooked his amplifiers up to the house. In her own way, Belle danced the night away with everyone else.

Once he was a married man, Bae moved out all of his possessions that hadn’t already made their way to his and Emma’s apartment in Boston. It seemed so little time since he had first moved into his room in the attic, since Belle had first felt the glug of his aquarium filter.

“There will always be a place for you here.” Gold told his son what they both felt. “For you and Emma--and your family.”

In the empty room, Bae scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, that family might be coming a little sooner than we expected.”

“I know,” Gold smiled. 

Several times the night before, Emma had woken up to vomit in the bathroom. Belle had turned on the plug-in deodorizer, kept the lights from blinding the girl, then rushed off to tell Gold. 

After Henry was born, they came up to visit at least once a month. Often enough, Gold told them, to justify having a nursery fully-equipped with every conceivable electric convenience. Bae and Emma thought that this was just Gold spoiling his grandson--which it was--but it was also a way for Belle to take a turn caring for the baby. She warmed his bottles and his wet wipes. She worked a singing light-up automaton to soothe him and make him laugh and give his parents some much-needed sleep. Bae and Emma both said he never cried when he was in Storybrooke. Belle watched over Henry through his nightlights, as she had the children and grandchildren of the first couple who lived in her house. 

****

She watched over Gold too. She watched as his hair grew gray and thin. She watched as he leaned on his cane more and more. She watched when he coughed and couldn’t catch his breath. She watched him age and decline, the only man she had ever loved. 

She tried to help. He told her the schedule of when he had to take which medications, and she always reminded him. She also stopped him from taking too many, if he became forgetful and tried to make up for a dose he didn’t remember taking. When his hearing began to go, Belle looked after his rechargeable hearing aids. She made the house lights brighter, to help him see. As she had with the old woman in her last days, Belle kept Gold’s food fresh in the refrigerator, kept it from burning on the stove. In a normal house, the amount of electronic devices he kept plugged in might have proven a fire hazard, but not here. In this house, the machines were Belle’s tie to him. They were everything she could offer to him.

He met with his lawyer in the dining room, to hammer out a living will, along with everything else he would need, for the end.

“I want to stay in this house,” he told Bae once. “I don’t care if going to some facility would give me another six months, I want to be here. For as long as possible.”

“I know, Pop,” Bae said, patting the old man on the knee. “You’ve always been obsessed with this place.” 

“This is home,” Gold closed his eyes and leaned back to doze in his easy chair. The lights dimmed around him, too subtle for Bae to notice, but Gold did. He smiled. “Love is home.”

True to his wishes, the house became a hospital. Home-health nurses came and went, to monitor Gold’s condition when he became too frail to manage doctor visits. At first it was only visits during the day, but soon someone needed to be there overnight as well. New machines were plugged in--oxygen tanks, heart monitors, a newfangled hospital bed. Belle made sure all of them worked perfectly. The bed had an engine that moved the inside of the mattress and prevented a patient from getting bedsores. Belle was able to ease Gold’s muscles, keep him from aching. She touched him and soothed him as best she could.   

The tape recorder was still in his bedroom, shoved away into a corner but still plugged in. Belle could speak to him only briefly, when the nurses were far enough away that they wouldn’t hear her. Gold spoke to her as much as he ever had, muttering under his breath so the nurses wouldn’t think he had dementia. That was the one great gift of her Gold’s decline--as frail as his body had become, his mind was as sharp as ever. 

“My will is very clear,” he told her one night when he couldn’t sleep. “No one can change it, not even Bae--though Bae knows my wishes and he’s promised to abide by them.” He took a shaking breath. “I’ve set up a trust for you, sweetheart, a trust to preserve this house in perpetuity.” 

Another breath, labored. She shouldn’t let him talk so much. Everything he said were things that Belle already knew, that she had helped him plan. Telling her again was just him reassuring himself that she’d be taken care of.

“I’ve already had the house put on the National Register of Historic Places. It will never be torn down.” A wheeze. “I’ve bequeathed it to the town, instructed them to turn this residence into a museum. You’ll like that, won’t you, sweetheart? Always meeting new people--always learning new things--”

His speech was interrupted by one of his horrible, hacking coughs. Belle would have given anything to help him, even just to put a hand on his back or offer him a tissue. It was cold comfort to think that anyone would be helpless in this situation. That Bae or the nurses could do no more for Gold than she could. The fact that she was dead didn’t change how hard it was to see the death of someone she loved. 

“It will be alright,” she murmured  through the tape recorder. “You’ll be alright, my love. I’ll be alright. A-a museum will be wonderful. Thank you.”

“Belle,” he whispered. He was drifting off again. “The Belle French Museum. Just for you, sweetheart. Forever.”

Forever.

He meant it as a promise, but Belle could only see it as damnation. To exist forever--aware but not alive--alone--unloved-- again . She could not bear it. She couldn’t bear the thought of it. 

****

When Gold faded into final unconsciousness, Belle hunkered down in the heart monitor. Every beat of his pulse went through her. The steady beeping was the only thing that tethered her to reality.

She would not be without him. She couldn’t go back to being alone, unseen, helpless. Gold was her world. Gold was her life . When he died…

The machine she was in could monitor his heart rate, but couldn’t control it. All of the devices meant to preserve his life were powerless when it mattered most. The beepings became erratic, infrequent. Belle felt the end happening--felt it with the whole of her being--and she couldn’t stop it.

Heartbeat by heartbeat, her Gold’s life drained out of him. Beep by beep, the hope drained out of Belle’s soul.

Please , she begged him silently. Please don’t leave me.

But no matter how she pleaded, the line still went flat. 

The time of death was called. The nurses pulled the plug. Belle was disconnected from Gold. He was gone. Forever. 

No.

No, it couldn’t happen. 

She couldn’t let it happen.

Belle didn’t think. She couldn’t think. Her despair and her rage and her love were so great, all she could do was feel .

And act.

Gathering all the electricity in the house--every wire, every bulb, every charging port and circuit--Belle pulled herself together and let her power overload everything .

****

The world was light. Brighter than any bulb Belle knew, with no place for shadows. At first, all she could see was the brightness. Then, suddenly, he was there, and he had always been there. 

“Gold!”

He was alive! He was young again! He was healthy and beautiful and he looked completely stunned as he looked at her.

He looked at her.

Belle blinked. Her eyelids lowered to cover her eyeballs and her vision went black for a moment. Her breathing was heavy and--

She was breathing!

Gold was staring at her. For the first time in all their years together, he could see her.

Belle couldn’t  believe it. She had to make sure. She looked down.

She looked down. The muscles of her neck stretched to move her head so her eyes could see her hands. 

She hadn’t had hands since she’d died.

“Belle,” Gold whispered. “Sweetheart, is that really you?”

She looked up to see him, see him with her eyes instead of through a light bulb. Heat gathered at her face as her emotions flowed out from her brain. Her lips parted, her throat contracted. Air passed through her esophagus over her larynx and she spoke .

“Gold.”

He ran to her. He didn’t limp, he had no cane. He ran to her and he threw his arms around her and she felt his touch. He pulled her close.

“I knew you’d find a way to me, sweetheart.”

He kissed her. For the first time. She kissed him back. And all they knew was their love. 

Love and light held their souls together in perfect bliss. 

Forever.