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The rain finally lets up on the day Rumplestiltskin dies.
It's been pouring down all week and the outskirts of Storybrooke are filthy with mud and everyone's been living with umbrellas glued to their hands. Wednesday, around four or five AM, with weak moonlight pouring in through gauzy white curtains, it suddenly stops. After the constant deafening thunder of the rain, the silence is ringing and hollow.
–
Belle stands near the front of the group only because everyone urged her to. She doesn't like the feeling of everyone's gaze on her, and she doesn't like the people around her watching Rumplestiltskin's dark coffin being lowered into the ground with relief behind their eyes, and she doesn't like the sympathy and the well-wishing and the clear blue sky like nothing is wrong and she hates the whole funeral.
Is that a bad thing to say about your husband's funeral? Belle isn't sure, but she thinks perhaps it's the most natural thing in the world.
She watches David talk through the burn of her unshed tears, unhearing, wanting nothing more than to leave. He carefully avoids looking at her and when he stops talking, a solemn silence follows and everyone is quick to trickle away from the graveyard, leaving her in the empty and the silence. Ruby gives her a firm run on the shoulder, and Belle hardly feels it at all.
She stays behind, feeling breathless and off-kilter and empty, staring at the coffin. She hasn't moved since she got here and she can't imagine ever moving again.
From the corner of her eye, she sees sudden movement. She can't be bothered to turn and look but after a few seconds she realizes it's Baelfire. He'd spent the whole funeral near the back, she realizes, and now he's come up here to say goodbye, still and rigid with tension.
Belle supposes she should leave him to say goodbye in peace, but he looks so lost standing there and she can't bring herself to leave. Instead she stands next to him, just shy of touching.
He looks up at her, eyes dull and tired, and then back at the coffin. Belle can see his throat move as he swallows.
Bae and Rumplestiltskin's relationship never got any less complicated, as far as Belle could tell. He was back in Storybrooke for Henry and he was attempting a careful relationship with his father. They'd agreed to lunch, once every Tuesday at noon. Belle tagged along sometimes, and they talked easily enough about Henry or the other townspeople, but they'd always carefully avoided the topic of their own relationship, their own lives.
Yesterday afternoon they'd had lunch. Baelfire had been running late, Belle remembers, and there was something so utterly resigned to the slow way Rumplestiltskin kept glancing at his watch, like he'd been waiting for the day Bae stood him up for ages. Belle supposes he had been.
When Bae finally showed up, pulling off soaked jacket and giving a hurried apology about Henry being sick, the smile that broke across Rumplestiltskin's face nearly broke Belle's heart.
And now he is dead and his body will rot and his smile will never break her heart again.
--
She stands with Bae for a long time, silently, both of them unable to move or speak or think. Eventually, when the sun is slowly setting and the sky is a dreary orange, Belle puts a hand on Bae's shoulder.
“The sun is setting,” she croaks out.
Bae dips his head a little.
“We should get inside.”
He nods again, a slight movement, eyes still on the coffin. Not once has he cried. Belle hasn't found it in herself to cry, either, but she can feel the constant threat of tears behind her eyelids.
“Come on, let's have some tea.”
Belle gives a little push with the hand still on his shoulder, and Bae takes a step forward rather than away. She can see it in him, the urge to say something, something grand and memorable that Rumplestiltskin can take with him to the afterlife. Some words of support, of love. Belle had had the same urge, but she couldn't find any words grand enough or meaningful enough, so in the end she'd brushed a hand across his coffin like she was stroking his shoulder and turned around.
“Bye, dad,” he says.
He kneels down and touches his fingertips to the wet grass for only a heartbeat before turning around and leaving.
–
They go back to Bae's apartment for tea. Belle can't stomach the thought of returning to their house (her house now, and isn't that nauseating) and Granny's diner would be full of people watching them with pity and fascination, so they go to Bae's apartment.
It's a small place and Rumplestiltskin had only been there once, standing awkwardly in the living room while Bae fixed up some tea. It was near enough to the docks that everything smelled of fish, and the power had a habit out going of at inopportune moments, but it had Bae's scarf flung over the chair and his shoes tucked under the sofa and it was his, and when Bae handed Rumplestiltskin his mug of lukewarm tea, Rumplestiltskin had looked around with fondness and pride and said you did good, son.
The place is dark and dim even with the lights on and Baelfire turns the TV on purely out of habit, leaving the sound low. There's a German black and white movie playing and as Belle follows Bae into the kitchen, the background buzz of it is strangely soothing. A woman is holding a very passionate speech and at any other time Belle would be trying to make out the words but right now Belle feels like she barely has a grasp on the English language, never mind German.
As it is, her head is buzzing and it's hard to focus on any one thing, so instead Belle sits behind the kitchen table and watches Bae put the kettle on and lets the noise blot out everything else. Belle isn't sure how long she drifts like that, but she startles when Bae taps her on the shoulder. He's holding out a mug for her, and Belle takes it, cradling the warmth in her hands. Maine is very different from the Enchanted Forest, and some days Belle is still bothered by the cold.
She looks at Bae – slumped into himself, quiet and defeated in the dim light – and thinks she should say something, anything at all. But the words catch in her throat so Belle lifts the mug to her mouth and drinks instead.
–
The day after the funeral finds Belle unable to leave the house. She'd been hesitant to go home after, and now that she's here she feels trapped, unable to leave. There's an ache in her bones that drags her down, and she sleeps on the sofa in the living room, surrounded by books she doesn't want to read and a mountain of blankets and pillows.
She'd come home late last night, tired and empty. Bae had driven her home after a long, silent afternoon, but he couldn't bring himself to get out of the car or even look at the house, and they'd parted without another word.
All day she's been keeping her head down, trying to ignore the signs of another life in this house – the overcoat hanging over the stairs, the contracts spread out on the desk, the car keys on the end table – and so far it hasn't really been working.
When it's nearing five and all Belle has done is lay on the sofa and shuffle around between the kitchen and the living room, there's a knock on the door. She intends to ignore it, unwilling to face well-wishers and their cloying sympathy, but the knock keeps up and after a few seconds Belle feels guilty for ignoring whoever it is.
When she opens the door, it's Bae. He looks empty and small, wrapped up sweater and scarf and jacket, and Belle is suddenly very conscious of the fact that she hasn't showered yet, and she's wearing the same black sweater she was wearing yesterday.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
“Feel up to a walk?” he asks, voice hoarse like the words are having trouble coming up. Belle supposes they are.
For the first time all day, she opens her mouth to speak. It takes a few seconds for the words to come to her through the haze of feeling. “Alright,” she says, and she's surprised by the scratchiness of her own voice. “I need to shower.” Belle gestures hopelessly with her hands. “I, I haven't yet, so,” she says and she trails off, looking at Bae.
“Yeah, yeah, okay. I'll just – wait.”
“Yeah.”
So Belle moves aside and lets Bae in, and when she goes upstairs he hesitates for a second before following her. She thinks he might not want to be alone in here, and she can understand that. It is nice to have Bae in the house with her, Belle thinks as she walks through the hallway. It feels safer that way, with another presence to deflect the sheer weight of the memories it holds.
When she gets to the bedroom door, Belle pauses and steels herself and looks at Bae. He's looking at the floor, the walls, anything but the door to his father's room.
In the end, going in is easier than Belle would have expected. She forces all of her thoughts out of her head and pushes the door open and enters the room, and suddenly it's not so bad. This is it, she thinks. This is his room and my room and he used to sit there and brush my hair and now he never will again. Now it's my room.
It sounds wrong, my room, like Rumplestiltskin's presence can't still be felt, like he hasn't forever left a mark on the whole house. Belle swallows heavily and grabs some clean clothes from the closet before heading into the bathroom.
Showering is nice, if only because the pounding of the shower keeps the thoughts out of her head, and Belle only realizes just how dirty she'd felt when she's clean again. Coming out of the bathroom, warmly dressed and feeling right in her skin again, Belle somehow expects Rumplestiltskin to just be sitting there, shoes toed off and paging through a book, waiting for his turn in the bathroom. Instead she sees Baelfire sitting on the bed, at Rumplestiltskin's side. He's holding his hands on his thighs like he's afraid to touch anything, staring at the photo of the three of them on the bedside table. That was a nice day, Belle thinks with a pang of loss, a light spring morning when they'd sat at the docks and drank coffee.
Suddenly, she can't be in this room anymore, and she crosses it quickly and leaves before she can look at anything else.
–
By an unspoken agreement, they head out of town. Both of them stay silent for most of the walk, and Belle spends her time focusing on the steady tread of the their feet on the pavement. She feels pleasantly hollow, dazed like she's been drinking too much or sleeping too little.
They've been walking by the side of the road for a while, surrounded by the stillness of the forest on both sides of the road, when Bae suddenly speaks. “It's so stupid,” he bursts out, breathless, like he'd been holding it in all week. Maybe he had. “I really love him,” he says, voice uncharacteristically soft. “He hurt so many people and I love him.”
Belle nods and hums a vague agreement, sensing that there's more to it.
“It's like we're cursed,” he continues, and he sounds like he'd be laughing if his father hadn't just died. “Aside from the obvious, I mean. Everyone in this town keeps trying to do what's best for their kids because they love them and they keep fucking up.”
He sounds hopeless and lost and tired, and Belle thinks of her own father, of the cold chains around her wrist and the cold air of the mines and the fear that sent her heart pounding when her father ordered Smee to take her away. She hasn't really spoken to him about it, though she's seen him around town. He hadn't come to the funeral and he hadn't even congratulated them on their marriage and that said all Belle needed to know.
All the same, thinking of him now, with Bae a forlorn presence by her side, part of her wants nothing more than to curl up in her father's lap and hide behind his broad shoulders.
“I know he loves – loved, whatever – me, but he just, I don't know, went about it all wrong.” Bae huffs out a laugh and licks his lips, and the gesture is so like Rumplestiltskin that Belle almost gasps, heart skipping a beat like being slammed in the stomach, the missing flaring up in a sudden physical ache. Then Bae continues his story and it dies down to a slow simmer, always waiting in the back of her head to pick up again. “You know he offered to turn me fourteen again, when he found me back? Like taking away my history, the things that make me me will make it better, make my relationship with him better.”
Bae shakes his head at himself, at his dead father, and Belle is surprised to realize she knows exactly how he feels.
“Before,” she says, and her voice is croaky but it works, which is more than she was counting on. “Before I became Lacey, my papa had me kidnapped and sent over the town line so I would lose my memory. So I wouldn't be with Rumplestiltskin. So I would stay with papa. He thought it was best for me, thought he got to decide what was best for me.”
Belle shudders at the righteous anger she still feels at the memory, the screeching incoherent rage that her father would do that to her, would ignore her wishes so blatantly. Bae looks up at her and Belle meets his eye, and the moment is strangely intimate.
Her relationship with Bae was always a little awkward. When she'd thought about Rumplestiltskin's son back in the Enchanted Forest, she'd always imagined him the way Rumplestiltskin had: fourteen and floppy-haired and long-limbed. When she'd found him in his thirties instead, gravel-voiced and graying, she hadn't quite known what to do. And since Rumple's relationship with Bae was on shaky ground at best, she'd mostly kept out of the way. She made friendly small talk with Bae over lunch sometimes, and asked after Henry, and that was it.
Now, here, in the tree-filtered sunlight by the side of the road, she feels a strange sort of kinship with him. She doesn't feel like his stepmother – god knows Bae doesn't need another mother – but she feels like family of some sort.
“It's all so messed up,” Bae says. “I love him, and he killed my own mother, and I love him. I don't know if I regret him casting the curse,” he continues, eyes faraway and conflicted. “It's so fucked up because he manipulated someone into literally cursing the whole world, and I can't wish he hadn't because he would've died alone otherwise. He couldn't die alone,” Bae says, and there are tears in his voice now, though his eyes are dry.
“I know,” Belle says, soft and calm. She still feels not-quite-hollow, like everything is just a little too far removed to really feel it, and it makes this conversation so much easier. Tonight, she thinks, tonight it will hit her. Tonight she will come home and trudge up the stairs to her bedroom and fall down on their bed (the bed where he died, dear god) and cry and cry and cry until her eyes feel dry and gritty. Tonight she will howl, will screech and claw at the sheets and fall apart completely because he's gone, gone, gone and she'll never be able to collapse into bed at two AM after a particularly gripping story and fall into his warm embrace, the low chuckle, good story, dear? so tonight she will writhe and scream into her pillows about the unfairness of it all. For now, Belle is as calm as the lazy sea, thoughts hazy and still.
“He didn't die alone,” she says, and in the distance a bird is calling, loud and overwhelming. “He had us. He died loved.” She's surprised to find her voice breaking on the last word, and Bae actually lets out a sob at that.
“Yeah,” he says with a rough voice, brushing his sleeve across his face. “Yeah, he did.”
–
They walk until the sun has set. They're in the forest itself now, dark and cold and damp with dew, but Belle hasn't been able to bring herself to head home and it's so peaceful out here, the birds hooting and the rush of leaves in the wind. Her feet are aching and the tips of her ears are slowly going numb, but the peace of the forest does her good, the slow encroaching fog enclosing her mind as well.
Eventually, with a sigh, she looks at Bae. They haven't said a word since their conversation earlier today, and he looks completely lost in thought.
“Bae,” she says. “I want to go back.”
Which is actually true, she thinks, because part of her realizes that she will have to go home at some point and she might as well do it before she freezes to death. Be brave, she thinks to herself, breathing in deeply. She can face her empty house. Rumplestiltskin always said he admired her bravery, he strength. Belle inhales and feels a little like her old self, wandering out into the great wide Somewhere, armed with a dagger and some books – not nearly enough but all she's got – and exhales.
“Alright,” Baelfire says and they turn around and head back.
–
When they arrive at the house, Baelfire keeps himself angled away from it, trying not to see it. Belle looks at him, not avoiding her home but not consciously looking at it either and she watches Bae as he fidgets, wringing his hands. His father never did that, she thinks. He rubbed his thumb along his knuckles or twirled his fingers, small gestures, contained, like deep down he was still afraid of taking up too much space or revealing too many weaknesses.
It's strange to compare father and son. Sometimes they're so similar her heart just about melts, and moments like these Belle realizes just how different they are. Bae's expressive and open in a way his father never dared to be, spreading his arms wide when angry, loose-limbed and uncontrolled. Somehow, the contrast between him and Rumplestiltskin's stillness is comforting, Bae's loud voice instead of Rumple's quietly controlled tone. Being without a constant reminder of his absence.
The moonlight falls across Baelfire's face and he forces a tight smile for a second before opening his mouth to say something. No words seem to come out and he closes it again, face falling.
Belle looks up at him and she has that feeling again, like she should say something grand and meaningful, some words of advice that Bae can carry with him forever. Perhaps something about losing her mother, about getting through it on the love from her remaining family, or something about how humans are made by hardship. Something he can look back on one day when his father's death sounds more like an echo of a memory instead of a blaring siren, something that would make him smile.
But Rumplestiltskin was the wordsmith in the family and Belle feels like she's stumbling around in the dark, trying to find the right words when her tongue lays clumsily in her mouth and her brain is a haze of grief and regret and love.
She bites her lip and forces herself to move her arm, stretching it out until her hand is hovering over Bae's forearm, not quite touching. She hasn't reached out to touch anyone since she brushed Rumple's hair out of his face Tuesday night, laughing and telling him it was getting long and he should cut it, and he'd reached out and taken her wrist and kissed the palm and told her for you, anything, soft and low. The memory of that night is a punch in the gut, a physical ache that has her stomach churning, breath hitching, brows furrowing.
Still, Belle breathes through it and reaches out and brushes her hand across Bae's arm, quick and soft, a little too forced to be tender but still well-intentioned. She pulls her hand back after a second, the contact strange and almost disorienting, and glances up at his face quickly.
Bae looks heartbroken and hurt and for a second Belle can see the little boy whose mother left him, whose father couldn't bring himself to go with him, and all the three centuries of heartbreak and people who couldn't bring themselves to love him.
And Belle hurts too and she wants to go home and curl up in bed with Rumple and cry but Rumplestiltskin is gone and she isn't getting him back, but Baelfire is here and he needs a hug and Belle needs a hug, even if the thought of touching someone when she can never touch her husband again kind of makes her skin crawl. The strange kinship from the forest is still lingering in the back of her head, and Belle wants to make it better for a boy who's so much like her in some ways.
She puts an arm around Bae's shoulder and hugs him.
“You'll be alright,” she says, for lack of a better thing. It's a dagger and some books – not nearly enough but all she's got.
“Yeah,” Baelfire says, gravel-voiced, and to her surprise he puts his arms around her and pulls her close, almost bruisingly hard. “So will you, Belle.”