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Weekend after weekend, every idle trip after another, Mr. Gold sought out these places. Every day off, he found himself in another store full of all these old items. Searching, puzzling through them, as if there were some secret to be uncovered. He was not a man to believe in mysticism or in sentiment, so he wasn't entirely sure what gripped him. It was always the ones by the sea that drew him closer.
He searched the aisles as if he could hear a heartbeat calling him to something. So far nothing - he always left with a strange feeling of emptiness and disappointment. Which was silly - how could a man be disappointed not to find something he didn't know he had been looking for?
Mr. Gold lingered, looking at the small toy horse on display.
"Looking for something for the kiddies?" a clerk smiled politely.
Mr. Gold snorted at the question. "Me? No, I have no children." His tongue felt heavy when he said that, for some reason. He wasn't the fatherly type, it was a ridiculous idea. "Good workmanship, that's all."
He left the same as before, empty-handed.
He was walking down the street back towards his accommodations when it happened.
His chest shuddered and he started coughing. Not just coughing, but choking. He doubled over, leaning on his cane, trying to gasp for air that he couldn’t find.
He coughed until it passed, leaving his throat feeling grainy. His tongue... tasted of salt. He looked down at his hand.
Water. Sea water.
He should be alarmed, he thought, vaguely. Something empty in him squirmed, like seeing a shape darting by the corner of your eye but finding nothing there to notice. His mind sought for a response, a reaction, and was only met with a wall of nothing. Odd, then, was the thought he settled on. He wiped his hand clean with his handkerchief and carried on.
He was just passing between old brick buildings - perhaps one was a library, he thought - when it happened again. He staggered, spluttered up more of the saltwater, grimacing. The second contraction of his lungs brought up not just water, but something else. Something tasted like... coppery.
Blood. Not his own, he knew instinctively.
Not his, but familiar-
The memory hit him as if both buildings collapsed on either side of him.
"...I told you, I'm fine. It was just a little fall..." a soft voice floated to his ears.
A warm body pressed against his, he could feel her heartbeat against his chest.
"See?" a smile, with pink lips that made him dizzy just to be near...
Darkness to the press of a warm mouth, of a gentle kiss, her bottom lip leaving blood on his own, the taste of iron-
Belle.
Belle.
He came back to reality coughing up the last of the salt and iron taste, his head throbbing badly. He had forgotten.
The seizing in his chest turned into burning. He had forgotten Belle. Something was very, very wrong, and sure as hell he was going to find out what it was, and where his wife was.
Belle floated, the weight on her chest felt so peaceful, so heavy. Such deep, difficult serenity. Nothing to do but surrender to it...
Now that he knew… something, at least, other memories still evaded him. His head throbbed and some of his thoughts were like moving through sludge.
He searched the antique shop again. The next and the next, he knew what Mr. Gold had been looking for; he had known it like an instinct under his skin, the compass at the center of him that always pointed towards Belle. He could find his way back to her four realms over and he would never let that cease, not even with the power of magic or fire or evil between them.
It was in the fifth one he found. The little vial of pebbles looked innocuous to the untrained eye, but to the Dark One who had studied so many magical texts... oh, yes, they were much more than that.
Heavy, heavy, heavy... the slightest ripple of agitation, but calmed quickly... it was so nice and dark here...
Rumple found himself impatient on the journey back to the beach he had dredged up that it had happened. He sat in the dark of the train, staring out the window at the barely visible walls of the tunnel they were passing through.
His headache worsened, grasping for memories it was still renewing, then-
He saw Bae's face in his mind's eye. In an instant, every part of him ached.
The salt on his face that time was not that cursed water.
Not at first. He felt it dislodging from his lungs painfully between choked sobs. For a moment, everything burned - his throat, his chest, his heart, with pain, with guilt, with loss, with a want so intense it would put spots in his vision if he dared to open his eyes.
He was bringing up more and more of that saltwater. He was running out of time.
"Rumple." She had said, her voice quiet where she leaned against his shoulder. "Sometimes... sometimes I wish I could see the man you would've been. If everything hadn't... hurt you like it did."
"I know," he murmured. He looked at the angel on his arm. "I wish I could be that man, the man with no darkness, the one you want."
She had shook her head, going to refute it, going to say. 'You are the man I want.' but the crash of the waves drowned out her reply.
Rumple stood by the edge of the water.
He raised his hand, chanting the words he had to recall with perfect clarity. The paste in symbols over his skin burned. He ignored it.
He would be damned if he’d lose another love to the sea.
Belle started coming to... the heaviness. The heaviness!
Can't breathe, oh no, no, oh gods-
She thrashed, fighting against the water, her chest heaving with false attempts to breathe. She grasped for something, anything to find purchase on. Her body was shoved by the current-
For an awful, truly awful moment, Belle thought she was stuck in some sort of unearthly void, no up or down, nowhere to go but choke on darkness until she lost her mind. Something like that would be thought of in the Dark One's worst vengeance, she could imagine. Forever-
A hand grasped her wrist - her other hand finding the arm attached, fighting her way up towards it. Two hands now, finding a desperate grip on her slippery skin, yanking her upwards with a familiar force.
Light came down to meet her, blinding her, and she gasped in more water until-
Her head broke to the surface, coughing and gasping, her chest convulsed, and Rumple was pulling her up, pulling him into her arms.
"Belle! Belle, Belle-" his urgent, strained voice was the first thing beyond the thrum of the ocean she had heard for so long, she wanted to cry in relief.
He hauled her back through the water, then to her feet, and when those wouldn't hold her, up into his arms. They finally hit shore and he stumbled first, dragging her down with him. He dragged them both away from the water like a cat would its kitten from a pond.
"Belle, shh, breathe, breathe for me-" he coughed, and for an eerie, fitful second, they were both silently coughing up the same water. He drew in a harsh breath and her lungs eased. "Breathe, love. There you go, there you go."
She was shivering against him as she gagged and coughed. He held her close, rubbing a hand over her back, urging the water out of her lungs. She blinked salt from her burning eyes.
"Rumple, Ru-" her hands curled weakly in his wet shirt.
"Shh, shh..." he watched her chatter and reached for his pile of things, haphazardly shaking out his sweater before pulling it over her head. It plastered to her, but it was better than nothing. "It's just me. Keep breathing. Stay with me, Belle."
She took deep, jagged breaths until they finally evened out. She rested against him, fully trusting, clutching onto him.
"...What-" she started to ask and then muffled a pained sound into his shirt when her head ached, memories trudging back in.
"No more wishes for either of us, alright? Not in general. Not to any deity." His voice was harsh and rasped in her ear. She nodded with him.
They sat like that, shivering on the beach for a good few moments longer.
Rumple watched the tide pull in, lapping up towards them. He dragged his bag closer, digging out a necklace. "Belle."
She looked up and he slipped it around her neck.
"A protection." he answered before she asked. "Against the goddess. The further we go inland, the better, but for the time being... she's going to be mad that I undid the deal."
"She's going to be mad you remember?"
"No." he spat again, trying to get the taste of salt from his mouth. "No, when we wished... the price for my unassuming, unburdened life was you. All magic comes with a price - but you, you would not be my price to give.”
She sat up against his chest. Her blue eyes were a better blue than the ocean – one Rumple could believe in.
"She thought I was the reason you had been hurt-"
"No, no." he stroked her hair back. "But if I hadn't been hurt in the first place, I never would have found my way to you. You... I wouldn't give you up for all the pain I have suffered, no."
"Love..." she leaned up and kissed the corner of his mouth. His head swam.
He wanted to collapse. His heart fluttered more like a trapped bird than a ram on the fence of his ribs now and he could breathe, for just a glorious second.
She kissed his hand, over his wedding ring, and then spat out sand that got in her mouth for it. She giggled, he laughed.
Then he choked.
She pulled back, concerned.
"I didn't just forget you." His words wavered, heavy with guilt and horror. "I couldn't remember your face, or... or Bae's."
She pulled him down into a warm, wet embrace, and let him shake.
"But you do. You do." she said softly.
Even in the depths of his madness he had never, never forgotten about his son. Not in the worst moments. She kissed his temple as he trembled, and not from the cold. She wound fingers in his wet hair and held him close.
“Your turn. Breathe.” She whispered.
When they managed to get away, get washed, and Belle slumped tiredly in his arms in bed, he stared at the ceiling.
What kind of husband and father could forget? He had been cursed many times in his life, hurt... but he had never suffered the same sort of amnesia as the others. He was supposed to be above that. The Dark One. The most powerful sorcerer of the Enchanted Forest. If nothing else, he should prove to be a stronger man for his family than that.
Belle stirred. She saw him, still tense and awake, a sight not unknown to her. She leaned up and kissed him clumsily, tasting of her, and finally not of the sea.
"Shhh..." she mumbled on instinct, out of habit. "It's okay... m' here... sleep..."
His heart melted into a pool in his chest, the warmth of her filling every fiber. She was like magic.
He kissed her temple and inhaled her. It still took most of his willpower to let the motions bring him down to sleep. He let her even and clear breathing soothe him.
The rest... the rest could wait until morning, when he took her back home and they figured out how to outrun the sea. He had his Belle.