Title: A Kind of Moving On

Rating: K+

Word count: 2970

Characters/Pairings: Rumplestiltskin, Belle, Rumplestiltskin/Belle, mention of Baelfire, brief mention (not by name) of Jefferson. Blink and you'll miss it reference to Belle's father and Regina.

Disclaimer: Nothing you recognise belongs to me, including characters and borrowed storylines.

Notes: Post-finale fic. Of course. Spoilers for that, obviously.

Summary: "You're making the same choices you did then," she tells him. "Your power is always going to be more important to you than I am."

"Why?"

Rumplestiltskin doesn't look at her; he steps away from the well and glances about, his free hand moving restlessly through the air. Belle thinks he's trying to grasp the magic he's unleashed on this world, thinks he's relearning his power, but she may be wrong. She might not know him anymore, if she ever did to begin with.

"Why?" she demands. He looks at her, a sidelong glance, as if he's afraid, as if he knows that she's angry and knows why she's angry. As if he knows he deserves it.

As if he's afraid she'll reject him now as he once rejected her.

Belle swallows. Her mouth is dry, her legs are aching from unaccustomed exercise. She's still in hospital scrubs, a coat and shoes borrowed from who knows where, and she feels bedraggled and out of sorts. She doesn't feel like someone who can stand up to Rumplestiltskin.

But if she can't, nobody can. And she doesn't think there's anybody alive who knows him the way she knows him.

"I'm never going to be enough, am I?" she asks softly, and he twitches, turns towards her and tries to speak. Belle holds up her hand to stop him, and he falls silent. She takes a deep breath, tries to find the right words. "You're making the same choices you did then," she tells him. "Your power is always going to be more important to you than I am."

"Belle, that's –"

"No," she says. She's close to tears. For long years she's been shut up in the basement of the hospital, cut off from the knowledge of who she is, and now she remembers and she can't handle Rumplestiltskin's denials on top of everything else. "No, don't…just don't."

She knows he loves her – knows it now he's finally said it – but she knows that it's not enough. It's clearly not enough.

She turns and starts to walk away from him. She thinks she's going back in the direction they came from, thinks she's going back to his car, but she doesn't really care if she's not. She doesn't want to see him, doesn't want to sit in his car while he drives her back to town. Back to whatever awaits her there, because she has no idea if her father's alive, or if anyone else remembers. She has no idea what he's unleashed by dropping that potion into the well.

"Belle, wait!"

He's coming after her, hurrying faster than is probably wise with his leg, but Belle doesn't stop. Her vision's blurred and hot tears are falling down her cheeks, and she almost hates herself for still being capable of crying over him.

She doesn't stop. She keeps going, but her legs can't hold her and her eyes are filled with hot tears, and she stumbles over a root and hits the ground. She grazes her palms as she tries to catch herself, and her arm is jarred so badly she cries out.

"Belle!"

He's at her side in moments, the cane discarded as he kneels beside her. Belle sits up, looks down to see blood and dirt on her hands and it seems odd, somehow, that she should be bleeding. Her arm hurts, but she doesn't think it's broken; she may have sprained a muscle, she thinks. She hasn't used her muscles much for a long time, after all, and she isn't used to the exertion of…being free.

"Let me see," he says, reaching for her hands, but Belle pulls away. She's crying, sobbing so hard she's shaking, but she tries to stop. He's anguished, so anguished, just as he was earlier in the shop when she'd gone to him without knowing who he was.

You're real. You're alive. I'll protect you.

She can't bear it, can't bear his pain despite all he's done, despite the way he's once again shown that he values his power more than he values her. She can't bear it.

"I'm fine," she manages. "Just grazed."

"Let me see," he says again, and he takes her hands in his, turns the palms upwards and hisses. He is still for a moment, silent, and then he lifts her hands, first one and then the other, and kisses her palms.

The grazes disappear in the blink of the eye, leaving dirt and a memory of pain, and Belle shivers. Magic has come to this world, and he has brought it. It cannot be for a good reason, and no good can come of it. She remembers his casual use of magic, remembers his love of power.

"Good as new," he murmurs. He can't meet her eyes, and Belle scrutinises him, sees once again all the changes from the man she remembers. She wonders if he will return to that appearance, if it is only a matter of time before his skin turns yellow-green and his eyes darken.

She wonders if she should kiss him now, to store up the memory against the time when she is not allowed to kiss him. Because if he has gone this far in restoring his magic, she knows there is no hope that he will ever allow her to kiss him again. True love's kiss – the most powerful magic of all. It would break Rumplestiltskin's curse, but she knows he will not let that happen. He will never let that happen. Even though he loves her.

"Why?" she asks again. "Why is it so important to you?" Why is it more important than her, but she leaves that unsaid – unsaid but not unheard, because he looks at her, helpless and angry and lost. He knows that's what she meant.

"You couldn't understand," he says at last. "Power is everything, Belle."

"No," says Belle, fierce and angry suddenly. She reaches out and takes his hand, clasps it tight and brings it to rest on her breast, above her heart. "Love is everything, Rumplestiltskin. This love. How is power more important than that?" He stares at his hand where she's placed it against her, and she can feel him trembling.

But he says nothing, and Belle shakes her head.

"It's your choice," she says, the fierceness fading, the anger draining away leaving only pain and regret and heartache. "You keep making the same choice. And I can't…I've been locked up for so long, I can't keep waiting."

"I thought you were dead," he says at once, pleading with her. "You were dead, Belle. If I'd known –"

"You'd have found me?" she interrupts. "But you didn't know, and you didn't find me. And you say you love me but you're going to push me away all over again."

"No! No, Belle, this is…I can protect you now," he says. He's scared, she can see it in the way he holds himself, the speed of his words falling from his mouth. He's scared, and she knows he's at his most cowardly when he's scared, she knows it's a dangerous thing for Rumplestiltskin to be scared. "I can protect you from her – from everything."

Belle swallows, considers her words carefully. "No," she says at last. "No, that's not it. You were planning this long, long before you knew I was alive. You'd have done this even if that strange man hadn't released me from the hospital." There's a flicker of something across his face – curiosity, perhaps, or gratitude to that unknown man – but it disappears quickly.

"You don't understand," he says again. "I've waited years – centuries – for this. Everything has been planned down to the last detail."

"But why?" she demands. "Why? You won't tell me why!" He opens his mouth but can't speak, shakes his head and looks away from her. "Then," she continues, "the only reason I can see is that your power means more to you than me. And I can't stay if that's true."

She releases his hand, but he doesn't pull away from her. His fingers move, just a little, as if he's reassuring himself that she's real, that he's really touching her.

"Belle," he whispers. "Don't."

"Then tell me why," she says, hard and uncompromising. "You have to tell me. Or –"

"Or what?" he snarls, a hint of that raging beast buried within, buried beneath the smooth, polished exterior, and Belle tries not to be afraid. She tries not to let it affect her.

"Or I'll go," she says quietly. "If you can't at least give me a reason, I can't…I can't be with you." She doesn't know what she'll do; the only people she knows in the town are the Queen and the man who released her, if she can say she knows him. Her father is there, perhaps, but even if he remembers who he is, she doesn't know that she can go back to him. Not after so much time, not after she's changed so much.

But she can't stay if Rumplestiltskin can't give her a reason beyond his love of power, his need for it.

He closes his eyes, bows his head. Defeated, more than she has ever seen him before. His hand falls away from her, and he shakes his head. Belle waits, practically holding her breath. This moment is key; if he refuses her now, she will get up and walk away and she will try to forget him. She will try to forget that she loves him, that he is her true love, because he will have shown that none of that matters to him. He will have shown that she does not matter, even though he has admitted that he loves her.

"I lost him," he says at last, a whisper that she barely hears over the sounds of the woods around them. "I lost him. And it was my fault."

It takes a moment for her to understand, but no more. There is only one person Rumplestiltskin has ever spoken of as lost, only one person he has spoken of in tones like this.

"Your son," she breathes, and he nods without opening his eyes. "What – what happened?"

And he tells her. He unfolds the story he'd promised her so long ago and in another world. It's confused: he doesn't start at the beginning but jumps around as he remembers things, as he attempts to explain what he's never explained to anyone before. He speaks of the ogre wars, of the conscription order that would have taken his son from him.

Baelfire, she learns then, his son's name is Baelfire.

He speaks of the fighting when he was young, of the way he'd run from the horror of it and they'd maimed him as punishment. He admits how his wife had left him, disgusted by his cowardice, leaving him with their son. He tells her how he had known he would give anything to keep Baelfire from dying for the useless, unending war against the ogres. A war that could never be won.

He tells her about the Dark One, and Belle knows where this is going before he says it, knows what happened before he speaks the words. His voice is a low murmur as he relates how the Dark One tricked him into taking his power, into releasing him from his servitude. He tells her of the way he stopped the war, stopped the conscription of innocent children by massacring the ogres and driving them back across the mountains into their own lands.

He tells her about losing Baelfire, about his son's deal and how he'd meant to keep it. He explains why he binds himself with deals, why he never, ever broke a deal after that first one. He growls when he speaks of the Blue Fairy, snarling and vicious as he blames her with one word and curses himself for his cowardice with the next.

He tells her about long, lonely years searching for the curse that would lead to the world where Baelfire had gone. He tells her about the Queen, about the deals he made with her over the years, about Snow White and her prince, about the magic he'd created to make sure, when he reached this world, that he would not be powerless forever.

The magic he'd created, and released, so that he could continue to search for his son. His lost son.

"I have to find him," Rumplestiltskin says at last, and he's crying, he's shaking, and she wants nothing more than to reach out and hold him close to her. She doesn't; not yet. She feels somehow that it won't be welcomed quite yet. "Everything I've done – it's all for him." She wants to speak but can't find the words, and in a moment the impulse fades as he lifts his head and looks at her for the first time since he began his story. "Except…except you," he says brokenly. "Except when you came. Belle – I –" He can't seem to say it, and Belle reaches out and takes his hands.

"Did I help?" she asks quietly. "Did I help a little?"

"Oh, Belle." He clutches her hands, lifts one to press a kiss to her knuckles. "More than a little. You were…you made me forget. But that…"

"That scared you," Belle murmurs, and suddenly it all makes sense. Suddenly his fear and his need for power make sense – and although she can't approve of his methods, of the way he's gone about it, she can understand the why. She can understand that he's spent every minute of his life trying to get back his son, and then she made him forget. Even if just for a moment. And kissing him – breaking his curse – would have meant his son was lost forever.

All the sorrow and pain and misery he's caused people – she can't forget it. And she knows that when – if – the people in Storybrooke find out that he caused all this, they will not forgive. And yet all he was trying to do was get his son back.

She can accept being of lesser importance than his son; it's only right, only natural. And if his son is central to his being, it means that magic, that power, is not. And that is a good thing, she thinks, even though he has again and again made the choice of power over her love.

"Thank you," she says at last. "Thank you for telling me."

"So you see," he says, and he's pleading with her once again, desperate for her to approve, to understand. "You see why I had to do it."

"I…think I see," says Belle slowly. "I'm not sure I understand why you must use magic for it. But I understand…more." He waits, and Belle's heart aches for his pain. He expects her to reject him even now he's tried to explain why he's made the choices he has, why he's done what he's done. He expects her to leave him.

"Thank you," she says again. He nods slightly, keeps waiting, and Belle glances at her hands in his. Her nails, cut so short, her pale skin – so pale because she's not seen the sunlight in years. Her hands, safely in his.

"I have one more question," she says after a moment. "If that's alright."

"Of course."

"If I kiss you," Belle whispers, "will it – would you –" But she doesn't even have to finish the question; he's shaking his head, and there's hope burning in his eyes, and he grips her hands almost too tightly.

"No," he says, just as quiet as she. "No, it wouldn't. It wouldn't break my curse. It wouldn't stop my power. Not in this place. The magic I've brought…it's not the same as in our world. It's enough, but not the same. When we're back there – then it would. But not here." Belle nods slowly, licks her lip and sees him follow the movement of her tongue. She's nervous, but still she knows this is right. She knows she can forgive him for choosing his power when really he was choosing his son.

She hopes he can let go of the power when he finds Baelfire; it's not something she can think about right now. He said he promised Baelfire, he said he'd give it all up once he finds his son again, and she's not entirely sure that she believes him. Again and again he's chosen power over love. But she can't doubt him, not now – or at least, she can't think about those doubts.

She loves him, and she's spent so many years apart from him – more years than she can remember, between the time here and the time locked up in the Queen's dungeons. Time had been meaningless there, as it has been meaningless here for so long.

She loves him, and she smiles at him now, sees his anxiety start to ease a little as he watches her.

"Then kiss me," she says. "Kiss me?"

She closes her eyes when his lips touch hers, pulls a hand from his to lift to his head so she can tangle her fingers in his hair. It's soft, and chaste, almost as if he's worshipping rather than embracing her and Belle doesn't want that; she pulls him closer and tastes him, feels him grow more confident and more passionate. He's pouring his whole self into the kiss and she returns it, tries to show him how she loves him.

"Belle," he whispers when they part. "Oh my Belle."

She smiles, lets her hand slip down from his hair to his shoulder. "Rumplestiltskin," she says. "Take me home."

"Home," he repeats. "You mean…"

"I'm coming with you, of course," says Belle, and he exhales slowly, a smile starting to form on his lips. "To your home. Ours, if…" She trails off, and Rumplestiltskin's smile becomes real, soft and fond.

"Yes," he says. "Yes, we'll…we'll go home."