#some canon I truly wish to cast into the sea and never understand comprehensively

[frownyalfred]

“actually you have a fundamental misunderstanding of canon—” good. I want to misunderstand it.

[im-not-a-what]

Fic: Uncovered, Undone

Title: Uncovered, Undone

Summary: Canon divergence from season 2. Belle and Rumplestiltskin have a tumultuous start after they find each other again in Storybrooke, but it’s nothing compared to the bombshell Rumple drops in the wake of rescuing Belle from Moe. Belle, reeling and hurt, grapples with this revelation. Nothing will be the same, but can anything be salvaged?

Rating: T (brief sexual references)

Genre: angst, oh boy the angst

Characters/relationships: Belle, Rumplestiltskin, Rumbelle (sort of)

Notes: Prompted by @ofdragon0wls who wanted an ace/aro Rumple fic. Written from Belle’s perspective.

It was known by allies and enemies that Rumplestiltskin was a man loaded with secrets. In the Dark Castle, Belle anticipated that early on. He wasn’t entirely inscrutable. Just enough that she was tugged by temptation to peel back his layers. Although her fear dwindled in the following weeks, she paced herself in how much she poked and pestered him, pushing his limits only to the brink of the familiarity they were fostering. But she’d felt the give in his façade. He’d started to show honesty. Something warm and good, if no less mysterious, finally bloomed. That was love, she gradually realized between meeting the Queen and kissing Rumplestiltskin.

Maybe she had tried to solve the mystery of that love before she was ready for it. Being cast out of her love’s castle, then imprisoned by his rival, then trapped in an asylum for ageless decades had eroded Belle’s patience. So, the moment she woke up and laid eyes on him—another surprise, another mystery solved (what did he look like as an ordinary man?)—she jumped at the chance to make her feelings unquestionably clear. And he seemed happy. That wasn’t ambiguous to her. They hugged. They kissed���did she move in first, or did he? That wasn’t a mystery so much as a whirlwind of confusion. It felt right and true. True Love. It was never meant to be easy, but that made it worth fighting for, right?

Now the greatest mystery Belle was busy piecing together was how she ended up at Granny’s diner nursing an iced tea and a plate of pancakes, alone, so despondent that pancakes couldn’t raise her spirits.

Ruby kept passing her table and offering a few words of interest or assistance: “You want a refill? You sure you’re okay?” Then finally, “You

sure

you don’t want to talk?”

Maybe Ruby’s insistence dissolved her desire for solitude. Or maybe it was due to the anxiety bubbling like a sour carbonated drink, eating away at her silent self-pity. Belle pulled in enough air to let out the words. “I don’t know if it would do any good, but … I just don’t know how to feel. Except stupid.”

Ruby’s brilliant eyes sharpened to silver-blue blades. “Is this about Gold?”

Belle frowned. Her drooping gaze answered for her.

“I knew it.” Ruby took the opposite seat in Belle’s booth. The diner was slow at this hour. Even if it hadn’t been, she would’ve risked a reprimand from Granny and some cranky customers. “What did he do?”

The moment Belle started thinking about that question, a swell of sympathy splashed her. Sympathy for Rumple. Was that pathetic and misguided? It had become a habit to look for the good and pitiable so as to fight the grim impression he left on everyone else.

“Oh, Ruby, it’s not like that. He didn’t . . . I know he wasn’t trying to hurt me.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

Belle sighed. “I know. He did hurt me, but—”

“If you need me to wolf out on him, I will.” The waitress was half-smiling. Half-kidding.

“No. Trust me, if he’d done something to warrant that, I’d tell you. This is . . . this is complicated. I’m madder at myself than him.”

The crease in Ruby’s brow spoke her skepticism. Belle could guess her worry: that she was blaming herself when Rumple was at fault. Taking another breath, slower this time, Belle arranged her words before setting them out in to create a more comprehensible picture.

“Rumple told me he’s . . . he said we can’t stay together.”

Eyebrows jumped up. Ruby flinched like she’d had a shock or been lightly smack. “What? He broke up with you?”

Belle stared at her half-drunk iced tea. “Essentially.”

“Why the hell did he do that?”

She was still dissecting the answer. Oh, Rumple’s reasoning had been transparent. That is, transparent to him. He must’ve wrestled with it for a while, perhaps from the moment of their reunion by the well. Since their second kiss.

“I’m not sure I can talk about it. It’s personal. To him.”

That assuaged some of Ruby’s indignant disbelief. “Ah. It’s an ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ excuse?”

“It’s pretty legitimate,” Belle said. She granted him that, based on what he’d told her.

After a longer pause than necessary, Ruby tilted her head. “Is he gay?”

Belle’s eyebrow twitched. She came close to smiling. “I almost wish it were that. But maybe I’d feel the same, anyway.”

Even if she didn’t understand what exactly Belle meant, Ruby grasped enough to wince and say, “Aww, man. I’m sorry, Belle.”

Belle nodded. And, surprisingly, she did give a tiny smile. Talking was helping. It felt like baby steps, like learning to walk again. “I’ll be okay. Eventually.”

“Hey, how about I help you take your mind off it? Maybe tonight at the Rabbit Hole? Drink fancy cocktails, shoot some pool, flirt with guys way beneath us?”

The chuckle that wanted to escape Belle’s chest hurt, yet her smile widened. “I’ll think about it. Thank you.”

After Belle paid her bill at the diner and headed out, she returned her thoughts to memories and what brought about this situation. One of Ruby’s questions kept coming back. It brought unexpected illumination. She stepped back and watched her last few conversations with Rumple as an outsider. Maybe that would help her untangle this knot. Another mystery to peel away like a layer of dead skin.

*~*

Rarely had she woken in the morning and found him in bed. Sometimes he was up making her breakfast, an effective blind that she mistook as romantic. Other times, she would wake up in the early hours when darkness still covered the world to find a chill on the side he was supposed to be lying in. One morning, as she tracked him down to the basement, to his spinning wheel, she remembered how he’d spun at the Dark Castle at all hours. Did the Dark One truly sleep? As he was immortal, it made sense that sleep wouldn’t be necessary for survival (although lack of sleep might drive him mad). Her other thought was that he was performing magic beyond his gold-spinning. Given his habits, that made sense, too. She decided to talk to him after the sun was up. It was time for the mysteries between them to be solved. Rumple deserved some privacy, but she didn’t want him sneaking around all the time, as though to hide himself from her.

The first talk didn’t help much. Rumple kept mostly mum when she told what she saw, how he needed to trust her if they were going to be together. She interpreted the downcast look as a sign that he didn’t have the courage, or he preferred having his magical secrets to himself.

She decided to vent her brewing frustration out in town, turning the uncomfortable lump in her stomach into a kindled desire for exploration. Maybe it was unwise to leave Rumple ignorant about her plan. Armed with stubbornness, she told herself it was fair play. If he could sneak around at his pleasure, so could she. Just give him a taste of how it felt; then maybe he’d see sense.

If only she had shaken off the bad luck that came with independent adventuring. A short man in a red cap nabbed her at the shuttered-up library. Her father, disapproving of her relationship with Rumple, tried to send her over the town line to erase her memories. Against all expectation, Rumple saved her just as she’d secretly dreamed he would in the Enchanted Forest. The moment of elation sunk as she remembered why she’d left the house in a huff. Grateful as she was for his intervention, she was not Rumple’s reward for a good deed. She was angrier at him than she could admit to herself before.

She went off to be alone again, though not before grabbing some clothes and renting a room at Granny’s. Yes, she was mad at Rumple, but hope simmered. She waited for a new chance, just as she had during her time away from the Dark Castle, prior to her capture at the Evil Queen’s hands.

A day later, hope came in a box. The key to the apartment above the library. A note told her to be at the library at 3.

Then there they were, face to face, like boats navigating a choppy sea, either to pass one another or make contact for a fruitful exchange. Or an exchange of fire. Belle’s stomach was a bird all heated and flapping about.

The light from a high window above the bookshelves encased Rumple in a glow that turned his hair divinely radiant, but his face was shadowed.

“Look,” she forced herself to begin while holding up the key, “if you thought this would win me back—”

Rumple raised a hand. “No, no, Belle, that’s not it. I came here to tell you the truth. All of it.”

She wished and willed her belly to be iron so it could calm down, reining in the frantic optimism and gnawing cynicism that both threatened to make her queasy. He hardly looked much better. The wrinkles in his forehead said as much. Somehow, he held her gaze.

“I’ve been a coward for most of my life. Now I’ve come to rely on magic to cover for it, allowing me to gather power. But doing so has always cost the people that mean the most to me.”

“Your son,” Belle whispered.

“Yes. Baelfire.” A gentle puff came out with the name, like a protective cloud. Warmth filled in the spaces between the consonants and hung on the end. Did he say her name like that?

“What happened to him?” she asked. “You said you lost him.”

“I did. I lost him to my blind need for power. I’ve spent the last few centuries venturing down so many paths back to him. Eventually, there was only one: a curse.”

“The curse that brought us to Storybrooke.” A door opened. A mystery pulled apart like the wrapping on a Yuletide present. Some of Belle’s harshness at his earlier behavior melted. He’d done all this for his son. It was still a lot of dark magic and dark deeds, but at least his heart was in the right place.

“And yet, even now, so close to finding him and making things right, I brought magic to Storybrooke. It’s my crutch, Belle. I can’t let it go.”

She listened as she walked toward him. Not the best answer. No less the truth, which was what mattered.

“There’s more,” Rumple said, his already trembling voice dropping lower.

“It’s all right,” she said, her voice also shaky. “Please, tell me.”

“You had a right to be angry and walk away. In a way, I hope that makes it easier for you to hear what I need to tell you.”

She couldn’t see how what he’d said was easier to hear because of her anger. Besides, she wasn’t as angry. Not angry at all, really.

“Rumple, I just wanted you to be honest with me. Now you have.”

He folded in his lips. “Does that mean you want us to be together?”

She swallowed some air. Her chest rose, ready to speak.

“No,” Rumple jumped in, “don’t answer. That will make things worse.”

Her eyes widened. What did he mean?

“There’s something else I wasn’t honest about. Our relationship.”

Belle pressed her back against a bookcase and waited, as wide-eyed and still as a nervous rabbit.

Rumple prudently made the effort to look her in the eye, but without moving closer. “Please understand that my love for you is true. You brought light into my life. You helped me want to be my best self. Nothing in this world can make me want to lose that.”

She was conscious of the distance, the way he leaned on his cane, facing her but with the support between them. He watched her tenderly with the same gaze as when she’d asked him to hold her in bed, and after she’d climaxed from his fingers and he’d resumed cradling her.

“It’s just . . . I’ve come to realize that certain things most people want—romance, sex—aren’t things I want.”

It was a silent detonation. She must have misheard him. “W-what?”

“I know, I know,” he rushed to say. “That’s not the impression I gave you when we first reunited. Or the days that followed. The truth is it wasn’t hard for me to play that part. I’ve played it before. For different reasons.”

“Wait a minute.” Belle held up her hand. Her voice was a sharp, shuddering icicle. “Played a part? You mean you pretended to want me?”

Rumple’s darting eyes and reaffirmed grip on his cane struck her as the signs of a man desperate to run but is bound to the floor by leg shackles. “I pretended to desire you as most men would desire someone like you, Belle.”

Ice enveloped her. She dangled, on the cusp of falling and smashing to pieces. “Why? Why, Rumple?”

“I don’t know!” His voice cracked like wet firewood set ablaze. “All my life I’ve felt that it’s the way I should be, to feel those fires and longings. I told myself I felt them for my first wife. I convinced myself the same a couple times after, but I believed it less and less as the years passed. When I became the Dark One, I didn’t need to pretend. Let the populace think I ravish women or men for my deviant pleasure. I didn’t need to do anything to perpetuate those rumors. All I needed was my magic and my quest. Except . . . except it wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to bed anyone, and friends seemed as unreliable as lovers. Yet I found myself . . . lonely. The castle felt soulless. I started to think if just one other person lived there—no one special, just a servant—I’d be satisfied.

“And then . . . and then I saw you. When you first called me to help you stop the ogres, remember?”

Belle barely knew anything about the present, let alone the past. She blinked and, like a weary fisherman, cast her mind to the past as accurately as she could with low expectations. She remembered the first time she saw him in the war room. That was her earliest recollection. She shook her head.

“I guess I never told you,” he said, trying to make it sound off-handed, as though he were his callous impish self again. “You scoured books upon books for a ritual that could summon the Dark One. What you didn’t realize was that repeating my name three times was enough to get my attention if I felt it worth my time. I peeked in on you, watched you argue with your father about the ogres, and decided that you’d be suitable. I didn’t expect it to be a permanent arrangement; you’d amuse me for a time, then I’d find an excuse to send you back to your family. But you were there back-talking and poking your nose in my things. You became a beloved nuisance. The castle wasn’t so quiet, except when you were reading. And I . . . I found myself loving you. But what kind of love, I don’t quite know. I do know it’s the truest kind I’ve ever known. Just not the kind that you might be looking for.”

She couldn’t stop trembling. No, she wouldn’t make herself stop. How could anyone expect her to?

“You’re—” Her throat burned when she swallowed. She forced the muscles to push down a mouthful of saliva, anyway. “You’re not making any sense.”

His gaze drooped. She’d nicked him unintentionally, yet he didn’t look surprised. His thumb brushed over the cane’s golden head. Belle watched that thumb until tears blurred her vision.

“I know,” he whispered, high and so quiet he was barely audible.

She hated not understanding. As the first tears fell, she rubbed them away and demanded her lungs to keep taking steady breaths. “Rumple, if you just want us to be friends, then just—just say so. I don’t understand why you let me think you wanted more.”

“I don’t really know.” His voice gained a little strength. “Perhaps . . . when you kissed me, I remembered how I failed in the past with …”

“With your first wife? Baelfire’s mother?” Her voice crackled with caged sobs. It amazed her she had a voice at all.

A short nod, eyes still down.

Belle clenched her hands. She bit her lip. If she had more words, they might make things worse. But, oh, she wanted to yell. About what? About … about all the wasted time, the secrecy, her own stupid heart—the same heart that boiled with pain yet shrank back from hurting Rumple. It still didn’t make sense. Why become lovers with someone, much less marry them, if you didn’t desire them? The memory of Gaston niggled her. That wasn’t the same, but—but perhaps—

“I wanted a family.” He was all but whispering. “I still do. I’ll find a way to Bae, even though the magic I summoned is stopping me from leaving town. But that is my journey to make, my price to pay. I wouldn’t expect you to make any more sacrifices.”

Silence came and dug into her skin like a thousand nettles. He was trying to be truthful and kind, and that hurt worse. Maybe it was a front. Maybe he was pushing her away for other reasons. He wouldn’t be the first man in her life to attempt protecting her without respecting her intelligence. But he looked pained, too. With one glimpse at that raw vulnerability when he at last met her eye, her lungs clenched shut.

“I’m so sorry, Belle.” Her name still sounded sweet and dangerous on his lips. “You deserve the truth, and so much more.”

Anger failed her. Heartbreak was a breaker she couldn’t flee, but only tumble into and know that any moment she would drown. Yet she was still. Both she and he watched, searched, then retreated, resigned more than satisfied. She looked down; he walked away. His eyes were still on her as he whispered, “Goodbye, Belle.”

*~*

It was still too soon to divorce herself from the feelings that clung to those memories. To be fair to herself, her grief needn’t be driven away. In time, it would molder into harmless dust. That said, after the strain Rumple put himself through explaining his feelings, she wanted to give that effort the respectful reflection it deserved. This wasn’t strictly about his desires, or lack of them, for her. He’d faced this before. Had his wife understood? It wasn’t hard to imagine the confusion and hurt she’d probably felt.

There was a son. I lost him. Like I lost his mother.

Rumple hadn’t rejected his wife. He’d lost her. Did he feel the same about Belle? Maybe he’d learned that he needed to come out as he was or risk a greater pain than having to tell someone who loves you that you don’t feel the same about them.

This reasonable, well-intended meditation felt like a cement wall withstanding the wild pummels from her no less riled emotions. The hurt didn’t subside. She was merely buffering it with what compassion and sensibility she could rake up. It didn’t make her inclined to seek out Rumple and say she could forgive him. She wasn’t ready to forgive him. Someday she would. Belle saw it like a distant horizon she had yet to reach, certain but so far away it might as well be across the universe.

What followed were weeks of cocooning herself in her library work, venting to Archie, and making herself enjoy life a bit with Ruby, Ashely and Leroy. It took all that and more for Belle to feel any sense of wellness. She settled into life in Storybrooke and slowly rebuilt her relationship with her father. But the nights caught her in morose thoughts. Was Rumple doing well? They’d not spoken. He was avoiding her as much as she was him. What short, wordless encounters they’d had at the pharmacy or on the street offered no insight into his emotional state. He remained as skilled as ever in masking himself from the world. She tasted bitterness knowing that she’d returned to being part of “the world” to him. So much for being friends. So much for all the love and light she’d allegedly brought into his life when they could barely look at each other now.

Was he suffering? Was he relieved? Did she have any right to ask? Was he worth the risk of asking?

In the depths of one of those sleepless nights, she remembered Mulan, their adventure, and what she’d learned from them. Rumple had said she deserved more than he could give. That might’ve been true. Should that undo the friendship they had started? Did that make it worth less than a romantic relationship? No, her heart insisted.

And what might become of Rumple, even with his quest and his son, if he had no one else to care for? He’d been at his worst in their early days, so quick to hurt people. Maybe he’d hidden his bad behavior better when he’d started to like her. Even so, he was not quite as dark now as he had been. If her friendship had something to do with that, and if she wasn’t compromising herself by maintaining that friendship, it couldn’t be wrong.

All the same, she felt hard thumpings against her sternum at the hinted reminder of what had become of old hopes for her future with him.

It wouldn’t be any different if he’d rejected me for someone else, she thought with only an inkling of sardonic tartness.

Maybe that made this situation more bearable. She’d take it over total hopelessness.

*~*

Blood rushed to her ears as Belle stepped into the pawnshop. The bell above startled her. She’d forgotten it. It had been over a month since she had been inside.

She had meant to visit when he was working behind the counter, as she’d noticed a few times lately when passing by the door. Best to start on a Monday, she’d decided over the weekend, as a new routine. From there they could set whatever pace they mutually found comfortable, assuming they’d find mutual comfort at all.

He was not here. It was tempting to return to the library or head to Granny’s for lunch, and the temptation nearly pulled her out of the shop. Almost to spite it, for the cowardice it betrayed, she checked that the door was unlocked. The Open sign faced out, so feeling the knob turn for her and seeing the door move for her shouldn’t have been a shock. She winced. No, she wasn’t afraid. It just felt intrusive entering his shop when he wasn’t around. She couldn’t let him think she was ambushing him.

To buy some time and an excuse to linger, Belle surveyed the merchandise cluttering his shop. There was so much of it—a chess set, tea sets, a ship in a bottle, incongruent toys and instruments amidst more valuable ash trays and watches. She couldn’t help recalling the random assortment of odds and ends ranging in quality that he’d stocked up in his castle. She even spied a long, flat case that could’ve held a sword. About a month ago, she’d marveled upon beholding the shop’s interior for the first time, but she never found the chance to explore it more. After the disaster with the wraith, Belle took some time adjusting to this world in the safety of Rumple’s house (and parsing through his horde there). How much of this stuff had he acquired through pawning or purchasing? How much came by the curse? So many questions wallowed like dust on an untended mantle.

Her mood was taking a melancholy turn. Belle straightened from her hunched posture to catch hide or tail of Rumple. A few seconds later, the bell again chimed. Belle whipped toward the door, as quick as a banner on a windy day.

Rumplestiltskin was backlit and aglow, like in the library, but only for the time it took him to close the door and move further into the shop. Shadows gathered around like loving cats. “Belle? I wasn’t expecting you. How are you?”

The selfless concern behind the pleasantry sounded real, but it was burdened by nerves. Maybe he feared she screwed up the courage to tell him off for his actions. The idea had its attractions, but no. Her anger and confusion had ebbed enough that making a scene lost all allure.

“I’m all right. About as well as anyone can expect.” Belle buoyed her voice above trenches of self-pity. She hurried on to save herself from sinking. “I hope you’re well. The shop seems to be … um, in good order.”

“It is, thank you.” His confusion remained. Some wariness faded with a hesitant smile. “Did something in here catch your eye? Or did you just want to browse? Feel free to look at anything you wish.”

“Thank you,” she said, and she was relieved to feel sincere saying that. “I came to see you, if that’s all right.”

His eyebrows inched up. More confusion. More hesitation and skittishness. “Of course.”

Hurry up, she thought, even though she didn’t want to rush anything if doing so meant saying the wrong thing. She had put in prior practice, though, and there was a desperate urge to kill the awkwardness hanging between them. “I-I’ve been thinking about how we left things. Believe me, I took what you said seriously, so don’t think I’m trying to … to undermine what you told me. In any way.”

Oh, that hadn’t come out quite right. A subtle steeliness glazed over his expression. He was ready for, perhaps, the usual arguments to discredit his feelings. He nodded and waited with cooler patience than she liked.

“You were right about it not being fair to me—to either of us—to stay together. If I’m going to be with someone, it should be someone who wants me the same way as I want them. And I would want to be with someone who was completely comfortable with the relationship we have. Obviously, that wasn’t so for you. So, you were right to end things between us.”

That relaxed him a bit. Belle’s heart lightened by a straw’s weight. “The only thing that I can’t yet accept is that … is that we have to cut each other out of our lives. Maybe it would be easier in the end to move on entirely. But … but I don’t think I want to. You still mean so much to me, and our not being a couple doesn’t change that. I’m not saying we can, or should be, close the way we were before. But the truth is, well, you’re a dear friend to me. For all we’ve been through, I’ve always thought of you as someone worthwhile to spend time with.” She chuckled. “Even if I didn’t have many other options in the beginning.”

Rumple smiled, and heartbreaking sweetness filled his face. It was hard not to forgive him for past misdeeds when he looked like that.

“So, if it’s not uncomfortable for you, I’d like us to be, at the very least, sociable. You know, meet up for lunch now and then. Say hi to each other in passing rather than pretend we’re each carrying the plague. There’s no question of my forcing anything more than friendship. I promise you that.”

“But is that enough for you?” His voice landed as gently on her ears as a feather.

“For you and me? Maybe not as first, but I can bear it. And if I can’t, I’ll tell you. I am a free woman who can pursue whatever relationships interest her. I’m not condemning myself to misery by spending time with you, Rumple. It’s thanks to you, after all, that I have my own place, and a job so I can support myself. So, stop thinking you’re imprisoning me again. If I want to walk away, I’ll walk away.”

The shop was like a cupboard they’d been locked into, only thin shafts of light peeking through the blinds on the windows. It felt more closed-in than the library, and yet, paradoxically, less stifling. Belle had a mind to keep still to avoid bumping into a glass case, not because of paralyzing anxiety. One small tremor did crawl up her spine right before Rumple spoke.

“Well … I suppose … have you tried Granny’s burgers?”

Belle spoke with the breath that wanted to rush in and balloon her chest. “I have, but only once so far. I haven’t tried it with the pickles. They sounded bold on the first go.”

Rumple nearly laughed. He continued to look a little befuddled, and more fragile, but his smile stayed. “If you want to try them, we could do so together some time.”

Her smile matched his in slightly broken, slightly healed contentment. Hope in the face of every reason not to. Why change now?

“I would like that,” she said.