Belle put down her book when he finally came into the living room. He had changed and scraped off the worst of the grime, but evidently hadn't wanted to risk remaining in the house with her too long and skipped showering and she could still see some dark colored spots on his jawline and in his hair that she didn't really want to think about too hard. For a moment she wondered if his magi wouldn't clean blood, and if that's why he'd needed her around when the thief tried to take his wand all those years ago. She didn't like how little the state of him bothered her, or how relieved she was that Guy of Gisbourne was dead. The man had terrorized her when she'd known him, and Lacey had lived with his other self for eighteen years. Belle wouldn't miss him at all, but she still couldn't help feeling like she should care that this man sitting in front of her had done the deed. He was the father of her child, and he had murdered at least one man tonight - and she didn't think the less of him for it. Perhaps she'd spent too much time in the company of evil, but all she could really think about was how Sir Guy would never, ever be a threat to her or her daughter ever again.
"Preparing for single motherhood?" Rumpelstiltskin said at last, nodding towards the copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting that Lacey hadn't bothered to look at.
"Am I?" she asked him earnestly, and he glanced down looking for all the world like a child called to the carpet. "Will you sit?"
He nodded, sitting on a chair nearby rather than joining her on the sofa. For the longest time, neither one spoke, and he wouldn't even meet her eye.
"Do you think I hate you?" she finally asked. "Because of everything?"
"I wouldn't blame you if you did," he said, meeting her gaze at last. "If I'd left you alone, you'd be married by now."
"That's true," she replied. "Or I'd have been killed by ogres, but let's pretend for a minute that you're right. Do you think I'd be happy right now?"
"No one was happy under the curse," he reminded her darkly.
"Lacey was," Belle said with a shrug. "Or as happy as I think she knew how to be. At least for a little while. But that's not what I asked. I asked if you thought I'd be happy now. Do you think Gaston would have made me happy?"
She'd honestly have preferred Gaston to Sir Guy, but her affection for the man was only that which she owed to the future father of her children – no more and no less. She hadn't really missed him at all until she'd returned home and found her options even more severely limited than they had been, and even then what she had really missed was the promise of a marriage where she would largely have been left alone.
"Did I make you happy?" he said sharply, obviously meaning it as a rhetorical question.
"At times," she replied, and he seemed startled by the words. "I was very happy in the castle. It was probably the happiest I'd been in my entire life. Were you happy?"
"I was," he admitted, his eyes far away. "A brief flicker of light..."
"I was angry when you made me leave," she replied. "And heartbroken when I couldn't return. And then I was just so happy to know you'd found me again under the curse, and then I found out you'd left me and I just felt everything again all at once. All the anger and heartbreak and terror I'd felt just hit me all over again and it felt like I might explode from it all."
"And now?"
"Now..." she took a minute to gather her thoughts. "I don't want to do this without you, Rumpelstiltskin. You're the father of my child, regardless of whether it was me and you or Lacey and Gold or you and Lacey. I've loved you, and I don't know that I'll love anyone the same while you live."
His entire body relaxed at that, and she realized how convinced he'd been from the beginning that she would hate him.
"I love you too, Belle," he said sadly, almost pleading with her to believe him. "I thought I was doing the best I could for you. I wanted you to have your adventures, and then I was just so scared and by the time I realized what I'd done it was too late to bring you back. When Regina said you'd moved on, a part of me hated you for not feeling the same as me, but another part of me just thought 'well, that's it then, she's gone and the best you can do is not remind her of you.'"
"So you let me go again," she said simply, and he just nodded sadly. "You promised me forever, you know. I meant it when I said it, and I thought you did too. You bargained for my life and yet you keep trying to force me away."
"I thought it would be for the best," he admitted. "By the time I woke up and Lacey was there I knew you'd hate me for everything that had happened between us, but I couldn't make her leave without Regina suspecting I was awake and then she was pregnant – you were pregnant – and I knew it was mine. I couldn't leave either of you like that."
She wasn't sure whether he was referring to her and the baby or her and Lacey, but it didn't matter too much at that point anyway.
"How did you know it was yours?"
"I was there for your first time, apparently," he said with a sigh. "Neither one of us noticed the blood, but it's still there."
"Oh thank the gods," she blurted out. "It's really hard to tell how many of Lacey's memories actually happened and how many are just there. I'd been a little worried about that."
He looked so very uncomfortable at her outburst, and she didn't really blame him. Gold and Lacey had a certain understanding; neither one ever discussed the other's past.
"She lost her virginity in high school," Belle said as dispassionately as she could when she was recalling these memories. "And there was nobody after Gold. Before him…gods, I don't know. Some of them are just blurry faces in drunken memories that never happened. There are all these men in my memory and I know some of them, but I don't even know if they have matching memories or not."
Belle thought that was probably the part of the curse she hated the most. Waking up pregnant hadn't been fun, but at least she knew who the baby's father was and while she and Rumpelstiltskin weren't precisely ready for children, she at least would have chose him had she been given the option. But there were any number of men – most of them perfect strangers – who may or may not have memories of her naked and touching them and being touched. The memories felt like a violation, and the fact that she wasn't sure how she'd ever find out who had them and what they were (or even if she wanted to know) just compounded the feeling of helplessness.
"I wish I could fix it," Rumpelstiltskin said from the chair and she remembered her point in all of this. "If I could, I would carve you out of all of them."
"No," she replied. "I don't want you going on another rampage. They were all victims, too. Gisbourne deserved it; they don't."
"As you wish."
"So where does that leave us?" she asked him.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," she said, staring at him until he looked at her. "We're having a child together. I love you, and I'd like to try and do this as a family. But at the same time, I can't forget the things you've done, I can't forget that you don't trust me, and I can't go back to the girl I was when we met. I can't start a relationship with you as we stand right now. I can't trust you to be there. So, where does that leave us?"
His fingers were twitching in a little nervous habit she still remembered from their time together and his eyes held something between cautious hope and sheer terror.
"I'm willing to do whatever you need me to," he said quickly. "For you or the baby. If you want me to leave and never come back, I'll leave. If you want me to stay and help then I'll stay."
"I don't want to do this alone," she replied. "I'd like you to stay in the house with us, and I'd like you to be my child's father. But you're not my lover, you're not my husband, and we're only barely friends. The only thing that's on the table right now is my continued effort towards being civil and you living in this house with us."
The cautious hope seemed to crack, and he was now on the verge of actually smiling at her. She really hadn't expected him to be so excited about her offer that was barely an offer, but here he was with what looked like happy tears beginning in his eyes.
"I can live with that," he said. "I honestly didn't expect you'd ever want me to see her."
"You're her father," Belle said with a little shrug. "Unless you give me a reason to think she'd be better off without you, I want you to be in her life. I think our daughter deserves both of us."
"Then she'll have both of us," he replied. "You have my word."
Belle remembered the last time he gave her his word, and she held her breath hoping that this time would end better. Maybe she was a fool to trust him again, but she knew what he'd done to reach his son. Her daughter deserved to be loved like that, and Belle wouldn't be the one to deny it to her. She could make this work for her child's sake (and maybe just a little bit for her own) come hell or high water.
The story continues Summer 2015 in the upcoming fic Come Hell or High Water.
So wow, you guys. It's over. I know that was kind of a strange place to end it, but Any Port in a Storm was always intended to just be a season 1 AU. It was a reaction to stories where Rumpelstiltskin wakes up and instantly realizes Belle is there and he loves her and he thought she was dead, because it occurred to me that if Belle was out in the open it was because Regina would think she wasn't a threat anymore. It wasn't until I was almost done with this story that I realized there's more to this than season one.
I want to thank everyone who embraced Lacey so fantastically. I know she can be a hard sell sometimes, and the fact that y'all gave her a chance and even got this the TEA for Best Golden Lace and nominated in Best Fic was so incredible and I'm so pleased with the result. None of which would have been possible, by the way, without the incredible assistance of thelasthomelyurl who has beta read all but one chapter (and did these last two from London). If you want to know what it looks like when she's not around, look at any of my other stories because she's really saved my ass on at least one major occasion (Lacey was not initially so horrified by the idea of locking Gold up) plus the - I'm going to go with hundreds - of times she had to fix my commas and poor choice of phrasing. She'll also be back for CHOHW, so let's all be very grateful for that.
So to everyone who voted for me in TEA, or sat in on my livestreams, and left notes and comments and kudos, and everyone who posted about loving this story I just want to say THANK YOU from the bottom of my black little heart. None of this would have been possible without you guys. This isn't the end for Rumple and Belle, it's the beginning.