Summary: "The rain brought her back to him once, perhaps it can do so again." Rumpelstiltskin is reunited with Belle in the Enchanted Forest, only to lose her again when the curse hits. To regain her, he must first regain something of his own he has long thought lost – courage. [Rated for violence and mentions of torture]

Disclaimer: Alas, I own nought but the plot.

Note: I went home from work sick with a fever. Sixteen hours of sleep and liquid paracetamol later, this happened. I'd been toying with the idea for a while, but now I've finally but pen to paper. Well, fingertips to keyboard.

Warning:

This fic briefly [less than 700 words] depicts torture at the hands of clerics of an entirely fictional religious order. Please read at your own risk.

Waters to Restore and Return

Part One

Rumpelstiltskin wakes with a jolt, sitting bolt upright and looking around to see what has roused him from his slumber so suddenly and so thoroughly. Perhaps it was the rain, roaring and violent outside the window. No, somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears the memory of a voice, and he shakes his head to try and grasp the dream before it slips away.

It's then that realisation hits him, with all the force of a stampeding bull and more. Four simple words woke him, a desperate, pleading cry for help.

Rumpelstiltskin, save me, please.

It is not the cry that takes his breath away. He has heard enough desperate souls call for the Dark One not to be shocked by their broken pleas. No, it is the voice, for it is her voice, the voice of a woman he thought dead.

Belle is alive. Of that he has no doubt. The pain and utter anguish in her voice, in her weak little cry, is too real to be anything but. It is only a whisper, barely that, but her soul is all out of hope and positively screaming for release behind those four simple words. Belle is alive, and she has asked him for his help, and he could not obey more readily than if she held him in magical thrall with his knife. He does not pause to plan ahead, or even think of the possible consequences of his actions. He merely pinpoints her in space and distance and flies to her aid as fast as the wings of magic can take him.

His destination is dark, the only light provided by flickering candles in brackets that drip oily black wax down the walls. The floor is sticky underfoot and the cold stone chamber radiates the stench of a slaughterer's, mingled with the altogether more human scents of fear, despair and lost hope. Rumpelstiltskin knows the smell well enough. He's in a torture chamber.

Regina may have lied about Belle's death, but she did not lie about the clerics. There are five of them in the room, gathered at one end. Brothers of the Scarlet Order, clad in black and red. Immediately, Rumpelstiltskin knows where he is. The tower lies at the far corner of the duchy of Avonlea; built on the crossroads of the Five Kingdoms, none wish to take responsibility for it and thus it lies outside the jurisdiction of them all, so that the horrors it houses may be performed in peace.

Locally it is known as the Pit, its form looking like a shard of stone sinking into the depths of Hell itself.

No-one who has been taken there has ever returned.

Rumpelstiltskin feels his blood begin to boil in his veins. Her own father has done this to her, her own father has sent her to be flayed alive in the name of purity and righteousness. Sir Maurice will pay, as soon as the clerics are no more than simply another stain on their blood-soaked walls. He takes a step towards them.

It is then that he sees Belle.

X

Belle is strangely calm; maybe it's because she knows that she simply cannot last much longer, and soon it will all be over. She'll be safe when she's dead. It's the only thought that keeps her from going mad. Belle recognises her captors, the clerics. The zealots obsessed with the purity and salvation of others to hide their own dark and heinous desires. She no longer has the strength to be defiant, but by the Gods she was at first, screaming till her throat was raw and bleeding that she was no demon's harlot, that Rumpelstiltskin had never laid a finger on her and her chastity was still intact, which more than could be said for theirs.

She was punished more severely for disrespecting the Order than for her supposed transgressions. Somehow it is unthinkable not to assume that every maiden who enters the Dark One's castle automatically enters his bed as well.

They can hurt her as much as they like, lash her till the skin has all but gone from her back, burn her with fire and ice and prise her fingernails off one by one, but no matter how many times they snarl at her to repent and purge her soul, she will not do it. She has done nothing wrong.

She went with Rumpelstiltskin to save them all from the ravaging hordes of ogres, and this is how her sacrifice is repaid.

But by the Gods, she is tired, and she hurts so much that she is practically numb to it now. She wants it to be over. She has spent so long in her dark prison that she has lost all sense of time, of night and day.

The black candle wax is the worst, because although the heat is not as searing as flame itself, it melts so thick and oily that it sticks to the skin it burns and pulls it away when she tries to peel it off. (Or at least, she used to, before she lost her fingernails and all sense of purchase.) She groans when she sees it, not again.

The head of the clerics smiles, almost benevolently, he is worse than the rest because he genuinely believes that this is doing her soul good and she should be grateful to him for it.

"All it takes are four words, Belle," he sighs. "Just say them, my child, and all this can come to an end. Four words. I repent my sin."

Belle cannot take it anymore. She's had enough. So she says four words.

Not the four words they want to hear. Four words that she hopes will make the end swifter.

"Rumpelstiltskin, save me, please."

She closes her eyes in anticipation of the pain to come, but it never arrives. There is a scream, but it is not hers. She opens her eyes as the cacophony breaks out. One of the clerics is howling, clawing at the wax that now coats his face with one hand, whilst the other hangs limply at his side, the shoulder wrenched from its socket.

Belle blinks, because standing in the centre of the room, nothing short of growling, is Rumpelstiltskin. When she had asked for his help, she had never expected him to hear her, and she had certainly never expected him to come to her. It is why she has never called him before. She did not want to lose false hope.

"Belle."

He comes towards her, the stupefied clerics letting him pass by, dumbstruck, and Belle cries, not because he is seeing her naked and broken and chained to a table, but because he's here, and it is all finally at an end. A small part of her wonders if she is dead, but no, she's still in too much pain. He's in a state she's never known him in before; his anger is burning, intense, and so very, very quiet. She was never afraid of him in his rages, when he would shout and throw things, but this is a different anger. She can see, though, that it's not directed at her. For her he has only sorrow, and pleading.

"Oh, Belle," he breathes, and his voice is barely more than a whisper as he touches her cheek, her tears coating his fingertips. "Oh Belle, I am so sorry, so very sorry."

The cleric brave or foolish enough to approach him is flung backwards into the dark depths of the room that Belle cannot see, but she can hear his screams. She squeezes her eyes tight shut.

"Save me," she breathes.

With a word she is free, and he swirls his cloak over her for warmth and modesty, lifting her off the table and into his arms.

"Don't look, Belle," he whispers, and her eyes remain closed.

She wishes she could close her ears as well.

But then all is still, and all is quiet, and when she dares to open her eyes and look up from his chest, they are in the Dark Castle once more, back in her old room. (Her actual room, with the wardrobe that she swore was enchanted, not the dungeon.)

"Oh Belle…"

He says his name like she's a miracle, that he can't quite believe she's real, when really, it's the other way round.

"You came," she whispers.

She can't fight it, the oncoming oblivion. It's as if she can let go now, safe in the knowledge that her ordeal is over, that there will be no more suffering.

"I will always come when you call," Rumpelstiltskin replies, his voice ever more distant. "Wherever you are."

X

Rumpelstiltskin is worried about Belle. She is healing physically; soon she will be up and about fully, her skin no longer flawed by cuts and burns, but he is not sure that even he can heal the scars upon her beautiful mind. No, they will always be there, to serve as a mocking reminder of what he did in casting her out, what he caused her to suffer.

She is getting better; after a week's rest and care, she no longer flinches at loud noises or shakes at the sight of a few flickering candle-flames in otherwise pitch black. She talks more animatedly now as he sits by her bedside to keep her company, and if he closes his eyes and listens to her, he can almost believe that she has fully returned to him. But when he sees her face and looks into those blue eyes, he can see that something's still not right. She's distant around him without actively shunning him; she lets him change her dressings and rub his salves into her skin, but she doesn't seek him out, she is not as free with her gentle touches as she used to be. What worries him most is that since that moment when she first saw him in the tower, she hasn't cried, not even when she's alone; there are no telltale signs of red-rimmed eyes and blotchy cheeks. He knows the catharsis of tears, and a part of him wants Belle to know it too, feels that it might help her.

The rain continues to pour around the castle, heavier and more violent than Rumpelstiltskin has ever known it.

He enters Belle's chamber one evening to find her sitting in the bay window, her knees drawn up to her chest under her nightgown. She often used to sit there before in idle hours, reading or sometimes just watching the world go by. She's watching the rain now, one hand pressed up against the glass.

"I want to go outside," she says as he sits down beside her.

"It's raining," he says, stupidly, because of course she knows it's raining, she's staring at the blasted stuff.

"I want to go outside," Belle repeats firmly, and she looks him in the eye. Rumpelstiltskin's stomach twists, because there's something there that wasn't there before, the tiniest spark of the old Belle in their azure depths. "I haven't been outside for months, Rumpel. I want to feel the wind and rain on my face."

"Dearie, you'll catch your death," he twitters, but he doesn't protest too much, because if this is what it takes to bring Belle back to him, fully and truly, then so be it.

"Please, Rumpel," she says. "Please, I need to feel it. To feel that it's real."

He nods, because he can't deny her anything. Not now, not after everything that's happened.

"All right, love. Let's go outside."

Rumpelstiltskin summons a thick outdoor cloak for her and she slips off the windowseat to put it on. He takes her shoulders in a gentle grip to transport them, to save time and Belle's precious energy. As they land in the kitchen. Belle reaches up and takes one of his hands in hers. It's the first time that she has actively reached out for him since they returned to the castle. She squeezes his fingers, and Rumpelstiltskin can tell that she is trying to draw on his courage to augment her own. He sighs, melancholy; she was always the one with enough bravery for the both of them, and she'll find precious little in him.

They go to the kitchen door that leads out to the little herb garden that Belle had tended so lovingly when she had first been with him. It is sadly unkempt now, a testament to her absence, a constant reminder of what he had and what he so foolishly let go.

Rumpelstiltskin steps out into the rain and is soaked to the skin in a matter of seconds, in spite of the thick dragonhide he wears. He hands Belle out of the door and she turns her face up into the deluge. She walks a few steps forward, turns down the hood of her cloak and then discards it altogether, raising her arms up and letting the rain drench her. Her nightgown is practically transparent and clinging to every curve. Rumpelstiltskin pushes those thoughts to the back of his mind and focuses on her face. He can almost see the rain washing away the last traces of her trauma as he hovers by her side. She is still weak from her ordeal; there is a limit to how much he is prepared to do with magic lest the price be too much for either of them to pay. To heal her completely in one fingersnap would be possible, but he would fear for the fallout it might do to her in other ways. She staggers a little under the force of the water, and Rumpelstiltskin catches her, pulling her in close against him. Not all the water running down her cheeks has come from the rain; she shudders with noiseless, racking sobs. He pets her sodden, rat-tailed hair, murmuring soothing nothings, and a sound bubbles up from the pit of her stomach as her crying finally gains voice.

"You're going to be all right," Rumpelstiltskin croons softly, tucking her head in under his chin, trying to protect her from the rain as best he can. "You're safe now. You've been so brave for so long, and you can cry now. No-one's going to hurt you. Never again."

She looks up at him, and in her red, puffy eyes, he can tell that she is back, that Belle has finally returned to him. She's never going to be exactly the same as she was before, how can she be after all that has happened to her? But now there is hope in Rumpelstiltskin's heart, hope that perhaps, together, they can pick up the pieces of her shattered life and begin to fit them back together again.

The urge to kiss her is overwhelming, but he fights it back. Belle doesn't, and he has to pull away and place his fingers over her lips.

"We can't, Belle." The hurt in her eyes is painful to see. "I'm sorry, but we can't."

"But you saved me," Belle whispers. "You chose me."

That he did. In choosing to save her, without hope or agenda, with no deal in mind, he chose her over magic. And in any other circumstances, in any other world, he would do so again right now.

"I can't protect us without my power, Belle," he says. "I can't let anything happen to you, I won't. In any other world, I'd kiss you every minute of the day. But we need magic here. I've dragged you into my world, and we're in this mess too deeply now." He rests his forehead against hers, ignoring the cold trickle of water down his neck. "I love you, Belle. More than anything."

Belle wraps her arms around his middle and closes her eyes, pressing her forehead against his, as close to a kiss as they'll ever manage in this world.

"I understand."

"Thank you."

Rumpelstiltskin doesn't know how long they stay there, embracing in the pouring rain, foreheads touching.

"This is our kiss," Belle says eventually. "This is how I know you love me."

Rumpelstiltskin nods. At length, they break apart, go inside; he draws Belle a hot bath before drying off himself. She lets him tuck her back into bed – tomorrow he'll let her get up properly; he'll make sure she doesn't catch cold from this venture in the rain, not when it worked a miracle he could not.

The rain is blessed with a magic Rumpelstiltskin will never know.

He presses his forehead against hers as she drifts off into a dreamless sleep.

"In any other world," he echoes.

To Be Continued