Breathe Symphonies: What You Will Miss the Most

By: TriplePirouette/3Pirouette

Category: AU post -ep

Spoilers: through 1.12

Disclaimer: They're not mine.

Word Count: 1938

Distribution: my , LJ, and my AO3. Anyone else please ask first :)

Summary: There are modern conveniences that Jolie/Belle will miss when she returns back to the Dark Castle after the curse is broken, but Gold will miss something a bit more precious. In the "I Will Not Kiss You" Universe, part 4 of Breathe Symphonies.

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AN: I DON'T EVEN KNOW. This was supposed to be fluffy and happy and it's NOT. I'm SORRY.

So I'll just make it a serious shot for the Rumbelle Wars on Tumblr. Let me know if I hit you, I had shell shock and I WROTE it.

NOW FOR THE FEELS

Their dinner has been shared in comfortable silence until she lets her spoon rest on the side of her bowl of stew with a clatter, leaning her head onto folded hands to stare at him. Gold looks up and slowly lets his spoon come to rest as well. He matches her pose with a curious smile. Twenty eight years without her company would have been awfully boring, he thinks. Jolie to everyone else, but she's never ceased being my Belle.

"I think," she starts with a coy smile, "there will actually be some things I will miss when we go back."

He's surprised by her train of thought, but is careful not to let it show. It's been months since they've really discussed going back in any manner that didn't include strategy that would help Emma. "Oh, like what?"

"Microwaves," she supplies right away, "and air conditioning. Central heating as well... Oh! And deodorant. That's truly lovely."

He laughs and picks up his spoon again. "Yes, deodorant does make many people more tolerable than layers of filth and perfume." He cradles a piece of potato up to his lips, speaking again before he lets it slide past, "Go on, there must be more."

She thinks for a second, picking up her own spoon and swirling it in her dish. So many times right at the beginning they had discussed what they were missing from back home. The vastness of the castle, the blooming gardens, his spinning wheel creaking slowly as she worked... only now that they were facing actually, truly returning did she start to see this life as something other than a prison sentence and an ability to kiss him. She started to take notice of the things that made her day easier, that made her smile. "Ice cream," she says, watching the vegetables in her soup, "Swing music."

He laughs. It's different without the high pitched twitter of the Dark Magic, but she loves it all the same. She bites her lip, trying to come up with something else that will make him laugh again. Her eyes light up and she watches him, waiting to see his reaction to her next words. "Well... underwear here is a toss up. The panties are much better than corsets and pantaloons and bustles, but some of those bras are just hideous.. and don't even get me started on thongs..."

He nearly chokes on a mouthful of meat, but regains his composure quickly. When their gazes meet there's a crackle of energy. He swallows slowly, his own evil smile taking over his face. It's nearly the man she remembers. "Wouldn't mind if you did without any of it, dearie..." His tone, his smirk... so impish and light and just enough innuendo to still make her blush.

"You're shameless," she whispers, flaunting the flush on her face with a sultry look from under her lashes.

His eyes darken, iris giving way to pupils that undress her from across the table. His voice lowers. "Oh, yes."

They share a moment of charged, unspoken promises before she clears her throat and pulls her eyes from his gaze, letting the moment go for the time being. There's still dinner to get through, dishes to be done, and a city council meeting that they have to interrupt later this evening, but she knows a promise in his eyes when she sees one. "What about you?" she asks, trying to return to the lightness of before, letting the searing heat die down to a simmer between them. Belle stirs her stew, sinking celery and carrots and searching for more meat. When he doesn't answer she looks up.

She expects to find him still staring hotly at her. It's happened often enough that she's been unable to redirect his passion. Instead, she finds that he's stilled, even his breathing, and his eyes have dropped, unwilling or unable to look at her. He gently lets his spoon slip into the bowl, his hands falling to his lap. "What have I said?" she asks quietly, surprised by the drastic turn in his demeanor.

He gives no answer, and her silverware clatters into her bowl as she shoves back out of her chair and slips around the table to kneel at his side. "Don't do this to me now, Rumpelstiltskin," she begs, "Emma is so very close and-"

"You."

His gentle word is like a bullet to her heart. It tears through the room, leaving silence in it's wake but for the clock's second hand noisily ticking away the time.

"Me?" Belle asks when she can no longer stand how loud the silence between them has become.

He grasps her hands tightly in his, never moving his eyes from the center of his stew bowl. "I could tell you how I'll miss classical music and the beauty of machinery. I could explain how sad I'll be when I can no longer feel brushed cotton against my skin because of how soft is is compared to scratchy wool and thick leather. I could tell you about every scent and taste and experience of this world that I've cataloged for twenty eight years with the express intention to simply remember, but there is only one truth. That truth is that when we leave, the only thing I will really miss is you."

He turns his head then, his eyes meeting hers and pleading for understanding. She says nothing, but shifts closer and rests her chin on his knee, her lips pressed desperately to his knuckles. He shakes his head and presses on. "Every moment I've spent with you, I'll miss, because everything I know about the curse, and about the way that she cast it tells me that when it is broken, this will all have ceased to happen. I will be stuck back in that prison beneath the earth, and you will return back to the castle, no memory for either of us of the lifetime we spent here."

Her breath hitches, tears spring to her eyes, but he sees the war within her to fight the emotion, to stay strong and brave through what he has to say. "We won't remember?"

He flinches, the emotion manifesting as physical pain in the pit of his stomach. "I've tried, my love, for nearly three decades to find a way around it, but I have no magic here." He pulls her hands to his lips, kissing her knuckles tightly before pulling her hands to rest over his heart. "But when Emma succeeds, for I know she will- I designed it that way, we will go back to the moment that the curse was enacted. The only change will be that the Queen will be stripped of her power. Everything else, everything, will be just as it was."

Her head slowly starts to move until it is a fierce shake that lets lose a single tear down her cheek. "No. No, I refuse to believe that. We've remembered. Your kiss..."

He stands, pulling her to his chest and holding her as if he could stop the curse by sheer will alone. "I will miss you, Belle. Every quiet moment, every night spent cuddled in bed," he takes a deep breath and buries his head in her neck, his words a fierce declaration, "Every kiss. Every kiss, my precious one, I will miss."

Her voice catches as the tears finally let down, her arms clutching desperately into his jacket. "We won't remember. We won't remember any of this..."

He takes her head in his hands, gently brushing away the tears from her reddened cheeks. His voice has taken on a defeated edge, something she's never heard from him before. "No, my love."

"I won't be able to find you?" Her hands fist in the silk of his shirt, the texture so familiar and so wrong under her fingers all at once.

He can only shake his head as she sinks back into his embrace, the tears still falling. Sniffs and hiccups break up the silence of the dining room, the hands of the clock seeming just that much more damning with each ominous tick. Their dinner cools and congeals, the sunlight through the window sinks lower and lower, but neither can find the courage to pull from the embrace.

Her tears slowly let up and he can feel her breath hot on his neck. He catalogs the moment, just as he's tried to remember every moment in her arms. When she speaks he can feel her words rumble through his chest. "How long have you known?"

He's glad they're entwined, because he knows he could never look at her in this moment. "Always."

Venom starts to slither in her voice, but she contradicts it by holding him tighter. "Why didn't you tell me?" Her fists pounds into the middle of his back, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to get her point across. "Cowardly, again?" Her words plead for him to make her understand, her tears soaking through his shirt.

"Yes," he admits to quickly, the truth rushing out like a confession. "And to tell you, Belle..." he whispers her name like a prayer, twisting his nose into her hair and memorizing the soft scent of her shampoo and skin, "to tell you would have been to crush your hope. Twenty eight years without hope for a happy ending? That is far too cruel, even for me."

Belle leans back in his embrace just enough to press her palms to his chest, her forehead dropped under his chin, her fingers aching to feel the power that used to inhabit him, the buzzing that used to lie beneath the leather and silk that she could feel crackling in the air when she got too close to him. "Is there no hope?"

His silence is answer enough.

Belle steps back out of his arms, watching the fight fall from his body. Even in this world he had always been confident, powerful...bigger than life. The defeated slump to his shoulders and the slack way he hangs his head is not a look on him she wishes to ever see again. She steps forward, pressing her lips chastely to his. He isn't expecting the contact, and barely returns the gesture. She takes her hand below his chin, forcing his eyes to meet hers. "An entire lifetime of love lost," he whispers to her. "All magic comes with a price."

The words hang in the air between them: a pall, a prison sentence, a future that neither of them can change. She had been counting down the days until they returned to the castle, until they returned to a life interrupted. Now every second that passed brought them closer to a fate far worse than a few lost memories and a coastal town in Maine.

Belle reaches to his hands, wrapping his arms around her until he is holding her nearly as tightly as he was before. She lets her arms wrap around his neck, nestling into the comfort of his embrace and hiding her raw red eyes from the rest of the world. "Then let's not pay any more of a price than we must." He holds her tight, fitting them together like to lost puzzle pieces they seem destined to be. "If this is all we have," she whispers, "then it must be enough."