A/N: The conclusion to Death Becomes Him. If there's interest, I will write and post a follow-up epilogue. Let me know. Thanks to all for reading and reviewing.

Friday Morning

Belle woke at dawn, the room barely light and the sky streaked with high clouds, yellow and pink reflecting the rising sun. She reached for Gold but he was gone. The sheets on his side of the bed were cold, and the only evidence he had been there was the dented pillow beside her and the lingering scent of his aftershave.

Rising, she slid her arms into Gold's worn brown bathrobe and tied the threadbare sash, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she padded out of his bedroom and into the hallway, her body still sluggish and sore from their lovemaking. She paused in front of her closed bedroom door where the ceiling had caved and shuddered, then checked the living room, kitchen, and bathroom. Gold was nowhere in the house, and a peek out the side window confirmed her suspicions; the black, hulking shadow of his black Cadillac was missing, the crime scene tape that had been stretched across his property for most of the week pooled in the gravel at the bottom of the driveway.

Worried for him, her heart quickened to a staccato beat and she wrapped her arms around herself. Gold had warned her that he intended to end the charade, to admit his death had been faked, but he still wasn't convinced Zelena was a danger. She had to find him before Zelena discovered he was still alive.

The shop. Instinct told her it was the first place he would go, just as she somehow knew he had a good reason for leaving her in bed without a word. It was too late to save her heart, but it wasn't too late to admit the truth to herself or to him: she'd convinced him to fake his death because she wanted to be close to him.

Perhaps she was no better than Zelena Kelly, but she loved him, and whatever happened next, she wasn't going to let him face it alone.

xoxo

The pawnshop was unlocked but silent except for the low hum of the air conditioner, which was already chugging in the humid summer air. Belle's arms pebbled with gooseflesh; the normally pristine display cases were dulled by a thin coat of dust and the store smelled slightly musty from being closed up for almost a week. She rubbed her chilly arms and crossed the curtain barrier into the back room. She'd been in Gold's shop as a customer several times, but she'd never ventured into his work area. She had no idea what she would find or what she was looking for, but her instinct cried louder and louder with each passing moment. She would start her search here.

"A visitor." Zelena was perched at a desk in the corner, legs crossed with practiced ease, as though she owned the shop. "How deliciously unexpected."

Fear dried Belle's mouth to cotton, but she lifted her chin and met Zelena's icy gaze. "What are you doing here, Miss Kelly?"

Zelena shot her a scornful look and evaded the question. "Look who's sniffing around Gold's shop like a dog begging for scraps."

Belle smiled coldly. "I think you must be projecting."

Zelena's answering laugh was low and mean. "Gold's had every type of woman there is, Brittany, but I don't believe I've ever seen him with a prissy little librarian."

White hot fury surged through her, and she nearly blurted that they'd spent the night together. No, Gold was supposed to be dead. Gloating about their fledgling relationship would make her no better than the woman standing in front of her.

"Right. He'd be much better suited for a…what is it you do for a living again? Belle snapped her fingers. "Oh, yes, gold-digger."

Zelena glared.

Belle willed herself to calm down. "What difference does it make now? Mr. Gold is dead." She found a small, sharp edge of a fingernail to pick at.

"Yes, I know. Pity." Zelena's smile was a cruel, red line as she reached for an account book in the corner of the desk and began paging through it.

The pulse in Belle's throat began to jump again, and she scanned the room looking for clues or something to help. "I thought you were devastated."

"It's called acting, Bridget." Zelena was still looking at the ledger. "You really should learn to lie, you know. Did he hire you or something? Are you the executor of his will? Funeral planner?"

"No," Belle said, still searching the cluttered workspace for a trap or a distraction. "We were only neighbors."

There it was. Belle's eyes landed on a small tape-recorder in the center of the worktable. While Zelena's head was bent over Gold's books, Belle whispered a quick prayer as she pressed the record button. She blew out a silent huff of relief when the tape started to roll.

"So what are your plans now that Gold is dead?" Belle stopped hugging herself against the sharp air and took a step forward, trying to look more at ease.

"Why to take over the shop, of course. It would be a shame for it to sit here empty." Zelena stood up and ambled to the work table, then picked up a broken mantel clock and fingered a gear. "Gold's things should be cared for properly. He would want it this way."

Belle wondered how Zelena knew anything about what Gold wanted, but she swallowed and waited for her to continue. Experience had taught her that uncomfortable stretches of silence usually kept people talking. Be patient.

"I asked him to make me a partner," she continued, her voice dripping with disdain. "To be an apprentice in his shop. I thought he could teach me about antiques, jewelry, the art of the sale. But he cast me aside, said he wanted his son to join the family business. But his son isn't here. I am."

Belle winced at her shrill, possessive tone. "His son is family. You can't simply take over someone's business, Zelena. You don't have a right to it."

"Family?" Zelena's high-pitched, hyena-like laugh caused Belle's insides to tremble. "What does family mean anyway? I was her daughter, too, but she always loved her more than she loved me." Zelena leaned down and murmured into the speaker of an antique radio, then pressed her ear to it with a manic giggle. "Regina got everything. Everything! Now it's my turn."

Belle's eyes widened with awareness. "Is that why you stole Regina's necklace?" she asked softly. "The one from her mother?"

"Stole?" Zelena's head snapped up with a whine. "I didn't steal. I claimed what was rightfully mine. Mother should have given it to me. I'm the oldest!"

"I see." Belle nodded around the knot in her throat. "And Mary Margaret Nolan's brooch? Leroy Kline's bracelet?" She ticked off the items Zelena had taken from people in town. The tension in the air grew more palpable, and Belle bit her lower lip with worry; the tall redhead was beginning to pace nervously, eyes blown wide and hands flailing.

Zelena dragged shaking, spindly fingers down her skirt, her motions becoming increasingly agitated. A frenzied gleam sparked in her eyes. "They'll get over it. By the way, how did you like your little surprises?" She giggled, punctuating her threatening posture.

Belle's blood ran ice cold as she tried to stall for time and keep Zelena talking. "So it was you. The knife, the shaving cream, the bookshelf. " Belle suppressed a shiver. "The roof. H-how?"

Zelena chortled, a shrill hysterical noise. "You're somewhat new in town, Beverly, but I'm not. I grew up in that pathetic little shack you call a happy home, while my sister grew up across town with our mother in a big, fancy house like Gold's. I know every inch of your little house, including all the best haunts and hideouts." Zelena ran a long nail the color of new blood along the top of Gold's battered walnut desk.

"My attempts to behead you in your sleep with your own bedroom ceiling weren't successful, but perhaps the exposure to asbestos will catch up with you. Drip, drip, drip." She cackled again. "It's a much more agonizing, slower death. The rain was the perfect excuse to fiddle with the water tanks."

Belle was now sandwiched between the shelves lining the wall and the worktable, and Zelena began to advance toward her, a menacing glint in her eyes.

"Then again—" Zelena pulled out her gun with a casual wave—"I don't like to leave things to chance."

Belle faltered, her feet losing purchase on the polished wood floor, and she reached behind her to steady herself on the shelf at her back. Her fingers found the metal supports and she squeezed hard.

"It's unfortunate, you lumbering into Gold's shop," Zelena said. Her eyes were strange and otherworldly as she pointed the gun at Belle's heart. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"I don't imagine you expected me at all, dearie."

Gold. He was here. He'd come to rescue her.

xoxo

The blood drained from Zelena's face, her smug expression melting away, and she jumped back, shuffling until she was pressed against the worktable, still stretching the gun toward Belle with a shaking hand. Belle's trembling body made a desperate jerk in his direction.

Forcing himself not to meet Belle's searching, fearful gaze, he aimed his gun at Zelena's head with a grimace. "You were right, Belle," he said without taking his eyes off his target. "Faking one's death does have its uses."

"You…but she said you're…." Zelena dropped the gun, hysteria reflected in her eyes, black pupils swallowing cold-as-ice blue, her pale face twisted with rage.

"It was a ruse," he replied flatly.

"Why?" she whined again, beginning to snivel.

"I have Belle to thank. She suspected you were a jewel thief who wanted me dead. Turns out she was right."

He glanced at Belle's pinched, frightened face and anger burned in his gut, hot and raw. Zelena's antics had crossed the line from creepy to attempted murder. In the wee hours of the morning he had left Belle, warm and sleeping in his bed, to pick through the rubble in her bedroom, unable to deny the mounting evidence of Zelena's depravity. Among the debris he had found a lockbox stuffed with jewelry, some of it matching the description of the stolen items.

"No! You've got it all wrong, Gold." Zelena stretched out desperate hands. "All I wanted was a chance to prove myself to you. I was heartbroken when she told me you'd died." Zelena slid a malicious look in Belle's direction.

"So in your grief you hid a box filled with stolen jewelry in Belle's ceiling?" He barked a harsh, humorless laugh. "Did you really believe you could frame her for theft and get away with it?"

"You two are the ones who should be arrested! For fraud!" She screamed, lunging toward him, her teeth sinking into his bicep. The sharp, stinging bite forced him to lower the gun, and she slammed her head into his chest, forcing him off-balance. He staggered back, catching himself before he hit the floor.

When he looked up, Zelena was slumped on the floor unconscious and Belle was standing over her limp form holding an antique volume of Shakespeare in her quivering arms. She dropped the book to the floor with a high-pitched cry.

"Belle!" Gold ran to her, wrapping both of his arms around her waist and hauling her against his chest. She buried her face against his shirt, shaking and sobbing. "Just breathe, baby, I'm here. It's okay. It's okay. She can't hurt us anymore."

After several long minutes, she raised her head and sniffled. "Thank you for getting here when you did," she said to his shoulder, still shaking like a leaf in a winter squall.

He ducked his chin, his lips desperately seeking hers, and punished her mouth with a bruising kiss. "It was nothing," he said, masking his own relief behind a teasing smile. "I was being neighborly."

"Is that so?" She was smiling at him, but her eyes carried a haunted strain, as though she feared what might come next.

During a brief lapse in judgment after they'd made love, he'd lain in bed watching her sleep, all the while rehearsing the hollow words he would say. I'm not good enough for you. Eventually you'll leave. We have no future. Coward that he was, he had decided to walk away first to save them both the heartache.

Looking at her now, he knew he could never force those words past his lips, however true they might be. His brittle, underused heart was filled with his wonderful neighbor, each frustrating, adorable aspect of her, from her silly clumsiness and her jaw-dropping smile, to the way her hair fell around her shoulders in lush, radiant waves that framed her face and neck. She'd ruined his boring, empty life with her kisses and her sunshine and her brûléed banana oatmeal.

"Belle, I'm sorry. I should have left a note this morning, woken you, said something. When I remembered that Zelena's mother Cora once owned your home, I realized you were right—Zelena had been the one to play all those dirty pranks. On a hunch, I picked through the rubble in your bedroom looking for evidence and I found this." He gestured toward the lockbox filled with stolen jewelry. "I shouldn't have doubted you. You were right all along, sweetheart."

Her eyes hit the floor. "I'm no better than she is," she said sadly. "I lied too."

"What do you mean?"

She sighed and twisted her fingers together. "I was worried about Zelena hurting you, but it's not the reason I asked you to fake your death. I know you can take care of yourself." Her wet, vulnerable gaze met his. "I've been trying to get your attention for so long…I convinced myself…I thought maybe if you stayed with me I could make you love me, or at least I could pretend for a little while. I'm so sorry, Gold."

"You're sorry for loving me?"

"Yes. No. I don't know." She looked away again.

"I can assure you, Belle, nothing that happened between us was me pretending." He lifted her hands and cradled them against his chest. "Do you remember when you asked me if there was anything I liked about you?"

She nodded miserably and tried to withdraw her hands, but he held her tight, massaging her knuckles in small, slow circles.

"You should have been asking if there was anything I liked about me. I'm not a great catch, Belle. I've had a short but terrible string of relationships, I have a grown son I rarely see, and I'm an old, crabby cripple who's twenty years older than you."

Her eyes clouded with confusion. "I don't understand."

"I know you don't, sweetheart—that's why I love you. None of my shortcomings matter to you. You don't even see them." He drew her fingers up his chest to his lips. "Belle, the thing I like best about myself is you."

"Oh," she said, her eyes glinting with happy tears.

xoxo

The Sheriff's yellow Volkswagon bug arrived as Belle tucked her head under Gold's chin with a contented sigh, sirens blaring in the otherwise sleepy street.

From the floor, an unconscious Zelena moaned, and Belle reluctantly moved out of Gold's arms long enough to check the strength of the ropes tied around her ankles and wrists.

Gold stepped behind her, making Belle's neck prickle as he nuzzled her hair. "Oh good," he said wryly when the car pulled into the alley beside the shop. "Jefferson's here just in time to be no help at all."

Belle clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her giggle.

The side door of the shop burst open, swinging so hard it rattled the walls of the store. "Papa? What the hell is going on?"

A young man bounded toward them and Belle gasped. Gold's son, Neal.

"You're alive, thank God!" The younger man ran a rough hand through a thick crop of dark curls, making them stand on end. "I've been worried sick."

"Neal? What are you doing here?" Gold's jaw was slack, his cheeks mottled with color. Belle couldn't hold back her smile at the sight of the man she loved flushed with surprise.

"A friend of Emma's—Sheriff Swan, I mean—called and told her you were dead. Who's this?" Neal pointed his finger in her direction.

"Belle, this is my son, Neal. Neal, this is Belle. She's…" Gold reached for her hand and she squeezed his fingers in reassurance. "We're…I…"

"I'm his favorite neighbor," Belle said, coming to his rescue. She offered her other hand to Neal with a welcoming smile. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"Oh!" Neal's grip was warm and firm and he flashed her a dimpled smile so like his father's that her heart flip-flopped. "You're the cute next door neighbor. Great to meet you, Belle. Papa told me about you."

"Did he now?" She tilted her head toward Gold and smirked.

"No," he sputtered, the tips of his adorable pixie ears turning pink.

"No to what?" Belle blinked at him, unable to resist the chance to tease him. "No, we aren't neighbors? Or no, I'm not cute?" For years she'd believed herself to be invisible to him, but apparently she'd been quite the topic.

"You're the one who bakes all those fantastic desserts, right?" Neal asked. "Papa was talking about this blueberry cake you make with orange zest."

"Stilted conversations, huh?" Belle swatted Gold's arm playfully, remembering his worries about his relationship with Neal as they worked on his obituary. Despite what Gold believed, Neal clearly loved his father and listened to what he had to say.

Gold pinched the bridge of his nose, his wary expression reminding her of a cornered puppy. "One time. I mentioned you one time."

"Belle is the only person in Storybrooke you ever talk about, Papa."

"Perhaps I understated things a fraction," Gold allowed as Emma Swan handcuffed Zelena and hoisted her to her feet. "I did have to help you make the obituary interesting, Belle. Can't have my reputation as the town hermit completely in tatters."

"You also said she was beautiful." Neal elbowed his father, and Belle blushed at the compliment.

"Not helping, son."

"Wow, it's miracle you two fell for each other," Emma drawled, holding a semi-conscious Zelena upright. She looked at the tape recorder on the workbench and smiled at Belle. "I'll be back for the taped confession. Quick thinking, Belle. And when you're ready, come down to the station and make a statement. I'm so glad you're all right."

"No thanks to you!" Gold barked. "Flitting off to New York City and leaving that gigolo Jefferson in charge!"

"Easy Papa," Neal said quietly, his big brown eyes shining toward the sheriff. "Emma's entitled to a vacation too."

Belle looked between Emma and Neal with a knowing smile. "I know you're trying to protect me, love, but I think Neal might have been the subject of Emma's vacation," she said, rubbing Gold's arm in a soothing pattern.

"Yes, yes, fine," he told Belle. Then to Emma, "I'll consider forgiving you, Miss Swan, if you give your deputy a special project." He scowled. "Something that chains him to a desk for the next month or so should suffice."

Emma winked and pushed Zelena out the side door. "I think that can be arranged."

"Don't be too hard on Jeff," Belle said, stroking a sensitive place on her neck where Gold had marked her last night. "He was rather instrumental in pushing us together."

"Fair enough," Gold said gruffly, then gave her a soft, sweet peck on the lips.

"So Papa," Neal said, clearing his throat. "How would you feel about me moving back home?"

"I would love nothing more, but what brought this on?"

Neal slid a glance out the side window into the alley, where Emma had finished reading Zelena her rights and was pushing her into the car. "I need to be closer to family and…other things in Storybrooke."

"Things like Miss Swan," Gold said baldly. "I should have known it was about a woman."

"How's that?" Neal retorted.

"Because it's always about a woman. How do you think I wound up faking my own death?" He pulled Belle into his arms with a lopsided grin and kissed her again. "I'm a lucky man."

Neal raised an eyebrow. "This sounds like a story I need to hear."

"Maybe we could continue this conversation over breakfast," Belle offered as her stomach rumbled. "I can make my famous baked oatmeal?"

Gold's answering smile was wicked. "We'll stop for bagels at Granny's first."

"You sure you're ready to reveal yourself to the entire town?" she asked, in surprise.

He flashed her another grin and nodded. "No time like the present to come back from the dead."

The End