A/N: I got a few truly lovely reviews on the last chapter and I wanted to let you all know how much they meant me. There's always something unsettling about finding your way in a new fandom and figuring out what little pieces you can bring to the table. I've been extremely grateful to find that at least there are a few out there who feel that this story brings something new.

Once . . .

Now, if anyone ever asked Belle to tell her story herself, she would not start with the Ogre Wars or her mother's death or even Rumplestiltskin's bargain.

Instead, she would start with a stranger.

No, not that one.

This one comes first. Not a dark elegant lady with a sharp, quick stride, but a gray ramshackle man with a limp.

She meets him by chance (or at least she will believe it to be chance for nearly half a year) three months before Avonlea's fall. And though once he goes she will never be able to quite remember the sound of his voice or the shape of his features, couldn't tell you the shade of his hair or the color of his eyes if her life depended on it, everything else stays with her, imprinted on her memory in clear, stark relief, like she might somehow find him in the negative space. So if she closed her eyes she could still describe the way the early autumn sun had just started to set turning the sky bloody and casting the land in shadows. Could tell you about the smoke from the scorched earth that clings to her hair and clothes; the sweat and grime that's formed a thin film on her skin; the moans of the wounded in the distance . . .

It's a strange backdrop for the beginning of a love story she supposes.

(And it is a love story when Belle tells it. She's uncompromising on that point.)

But this is the way it begins all the same.

He's perched on one of the stone outcroppings that line the bank of the stream when she comes down to fetch more water for the soldiers. And the funny thing is she would almost swear he wasn't there when she put the bucket in, but there's no mistaking the reflection that appears just behind her own as she pulls it back out.

Startled, Belle loses her balance and goes tumbling backwards.

The bucket of water goes with her.

Her dignity isn't far behind.

There's a soft quiet sound that might be laughter (or just rustling leaves). And Belle props herself up on her elbows to pin him with a glare, tongue already forming a quick retort. But the face that meets hers is nothing more than a picture of servile concern.

Still there's something in his eyes, a suggestion of dark amusement swimming just beneath the surface of his seeming subservience that strikes her as wrong, causes her initial rush of embarrassment to give way to a piercing lance of panic. Because there aren't many reasons to men traveling alone on the fringes of a war-zone (brigand, mercenary, deserter all flit through her mind), and none of them bode well for her.

Blindly she fumbles for the handle of the bucket, wishing it were a knife.

Then again swing wide and hard . . .

"Ach, please! I-" he holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender, "I mean you no harm, milady. Please-"

The broad, mud-thick Boderlands accent hits her ears and makes her blink in surprise. She would have expected something sharper, more . . . But that's ridiculous, she can see it now – the rough gray homespun of his cloak, the calloused dirt-smudged hands he holds up in plea. Suddenly he's smaller, less threatening an Belle can't imagine what she'd been so scared of.

Foolish of her –

Something tickles at the edge of her mind, a shadow dancing in the peripheral vision of her consciousness. But when she tries to examine it more closely, look at it head on, it's disappeared, slipped through her fingers like smoke.

For a moment she thinks she should chase it, but before she can he shifts, the movement catching her eye and pulling her attention.

All at once, she's painfully aware of the fact she's still sprawled out on the ground, soaking wet and mud-splattered; skirts rucked-up, arms and legs akimbo; maidenly modesty and gentle graces nowhere to be seen.

Fairies help her, she must be a sight.

Flushing in embarrassment, Belle stands and begins to swipe at the patches of dirt in an effort to regain some semblance of dignity. It's a fruitless quest. All she manages to accomplish is to turn her apron into a ghoulish canvas of mud smears and blood splatters.

With a sigh of frustration, she gives the whole project up for a lost cause.

"You know this is the moment when a gentleman would apologize for startling me and tell me I look radiantly beautiful."

"Sorry milady. I'm not much of a gentleman," he says it quietly with an apologetic self-consciousness that's almost painful to witness. But there's something . . . a flash of emotion too quick for her to catch skittering across his face, a discordant note in his voice that makes her feel like she's hearing two men—one modest and one mocking—saying the same thing, both utterly sincere in their meaning.

Against all reason and sense, it's the mocking one Belle hears and she laughs. It's a hysterical little laugh, a small hiccup of gallows humor, born more of relief and exhaustion than any real amusement, but it's a laugh all the same.

With the same power to wound.

He scowls turning in on himself, and to her horror Belle realizes he thinks she's laughing at him.

"Oh, no. No, it was a quip. I wasn't serious. I was- Well I was embarrassed and trying to cover it." Swiping a bedraggled lock of hair out of her eyes, she glances down at herself with a rueful smile. "Truthfully, I doubt any man, gentleman or not, would be able to tell me with a straight face that I look even a little bit beautiful right now."

Her stranger doesn't say anything, but when she lifts her eyes he's looking at her in a way makes her breath catch and her heart stop. It's too bold, too brazen and yet strangely shy all at once. It's like nothing she's ever seen on a man's face before- And for second she almost catches a glimpse of something 'other' in the cast of his features and for a second she would swear he's going to prove her wrong.

Somewhere in the distance a man screams in pain.

And the moment shatters.

Belle shakes it off and turns to kneel beside the stream once again, ignoring the reflection that appears next to hers. And if her hands shake just a little, well the scream startled her. The moment meant nothing. It's already forgotten.

But it's not. It won't be. The shards it leaves behind will lodge beneath her skin, tender and sharp and painful. Long after he's gone, after he's splintered in her memory beyond recognition, she will still feel him there, cutting into her. And some nights she will lie in bed and press at the ragged fragments until it hurts, until she aches at the sensation.

And one night a month from now she will look over at Gaston and know he will never make her feel anything, whether it be love or loathing, that acutely and for the first time her self-imposed prison will chafe.

For now though, she draws water, catches her breath, and tries to talk of nothing.

"You're a long way from the Borderlands."

The comment is met with a long silence, and if she couldn't still see his reflection in the water, she'd imagine he'd disappeared on her. Sitting back on her haunches, she glances over her shoulder. "You are from the Borderlands, aren't you? Your accent-"

Licking his lips, he nods slowly as if waking from a dream. "Aye. I was. Once."

Belle flinches at his use of the past-tense. Clumsy. That was so clumsy of her. No one's from the Borderlands any more. Not for going on two years now.

"I'm sorry, that was-" But she can't quite find the right words to apologize for her careless misstep. Winds up lifting the ladle in offering instead. "Would you like some? I know it's not much, but-"

Narrowing his eyes, he cocks his head as if evaluating the sincerity of the offer.

"Don't you need it, for-?" He gestures vaguely up the embankment towards the soldier's camp.

"I can always draw more. It's not as hard as I make it look, truly."

Another long considering look, and then with a curt nod of acceptance, he draws his staff towards him and leverages himself to standing. The awkward labored movement catches her by surprise and a tiny 'Oh!' of pity drops from her lips before she can stop it.

What happens next occurs in a kind of horrid slow motion. At her exclamation, he casts a dark glare in her direction and with lapse in concentration seems to momentarily forget his own infirmity, landing hard on his bad leg.

At his hiss of pain, Belle takes an urgent half-step forward, but it's the wrong move. He throws a hand out to ward her off, his grimace of pain contorting into an ugly mocking smile. "Not a pretty sight is it, milady? What your war leaves behind ?"

"I've seen worse," she murmurs, refusing to be baited. Bringing the ladle over to him she adds, "And it's not my war."

"No, of course not. But let's agree it's a little more yours than mine."

He's hardly the first man to be made bitter and vicious by pain that she's encountered, but that doesn't stop the accusation from landing across her cheek like a slap.

Belle's tossed the water in his face before she knows what she's doing.

For a tense moment all they can seem to do is stare at each other, and it feels as if they are perched on a knife's point and it skitters through her mind that perhaps she had been right to fear him in the first place. But just as quickly as the thought forms it's dispelled, because in the next breath the shock of it seems to make him register what he just said, how many boundaries of propriety he's crossed (no peasant talks to a woman of station this way no matter how warranted), and he seems to almost collapse in on himself, eyes widening in horror as he scrambles to apologize. "I'm sorry milady. I shouldnae have said that. That was-"

"True." Belle cuts him off, turning away. "It was ugly and cruel and absolutely uncalled for when I was just trying to be kind. But that doesn't make it untrue."

The words come out colder than she intends, but she can't help it. It's as if the sight of him abasing himself in apology has robbed her of her anger only to find she has nothing left to replace it, no compassion or kindness or strength to give him. And all she feels is empty and used up and so very, very tired.

Suddenly the weight of everything is just too much, the lives and blood and the harvests they've lost. The children who will die this winter from lack of food and the men who will die when the spring thaw comes and the ogres renew their attacks. And she sinks down onto the rocks, biting her lip bloody in effort to stifle a sob.

Gods, how she hates this war. So much death and so much loss and the people keep looking to her father for an answer, and she knows he doesn't have one and she knows the lack is killing him. They have a year on the outside before all of her father's lands fall. And then what will become of them? Of any of them?

There's a tap of wood on stone and she looks up to find him standing in front her, leaning hard on his staff, half-full ladle extended in awkward apology. But Belle can't seem to make her hand reach out to take it, finds herself short on forgiveness along with everything. Still when he starts to back away, she shifts over offering him a space beside her on the rock in silent invitation. Because it's obvious his leg is hurting him and she may not have much forgiveness in her, but she's long ago lost her taste for retribution.

After a long moment of indecision, he takes it, but his body remains tense and wary as if he thinks it might be a trick, half-expects to be beaten for his impertinence.

He's such a strange contradiction. Speaking far too boldly one minute and cowering the next. Everything about him is grey and small and unassuming, doing his best to avoid notice, and yet when she looks at him Belle finds it almost impossible to tear her gaze away.

Shifting uncomfortably under her scrutiny, he tries again for apology. "Dinnae mean-"

Belle shakes her head, unwilling to give him the lie. "You did. You meant it."

He closes his eyes and swallows, and when he finally speaks his voice is a harsh, raw whisper. "Milady, I dinnae know what you want me to say."

"I could say the same thing about you." She lays two significant fingers on the staff that now rests between them. "I don't know what you want me to say to make this better."

He doesn't respond and Belle sighs. She knows she's not really being fair to him. It's a cruel kind of game she's seen others of her class engage in with a peasant who's angered them. Verbally sparring, lording their education and position over the other to beat them back down into place. But the need to say something to someone is suddenly overwhelming, and he's here and he opened this wound. He can at least do her the courtesy of letting her bleed on him.

"I was twenty when the Ogres came. I can still remember the rider coming in from the Borderlands. His horse died as he dismounted, right there in our courtyard, and I remember being horrified that he'd ridden the animal so hard."

Her stranger emits a sharp, stifled huff of mirthless laughter, and Belle lets her mouth curve in a rueful smile of acknowledgment. "I know. It sounds . . . incredibly naïve now, even as I'm saying it. Not much of a first casualty. But it wasn't the last I saw."

She doesn't continue immediately. Instead digs self-consciously at a knot on his staff with her thumbnail. Belle doesn't what she was expecting, but she can't deny she was expecting something, some offer of his experiences to match her own, something other than this scornful, bitter silence.

But nothing else comes.

"Maybe it means nothing to you. Maybe you don't believe it. But I am sorry for whatever you lost, and if you think my family should be blamed for part of that, for not protecting you better maybe that's fair. But you should know that my father would give anything to save his people and so would I."

That gets his attention. Slowly he lifts his head to look at her, his eyes hard and piercing, and when he speaks something's different. Consonants sharper, voice edged and careful. "You shouldn't say something like that if you don't mean it, milady. You never know who might hear."

And now he has hers. Suddenly Belle can remember every story she's ever heard about helpful strangers and dangerous beggars and she doesn't even care which this man might be. Leaning forward her heart beating faster, she challenges, "And if I do mean it?"

He shakes his head. "You don't. You shouldn't. Anything- Anything can be a very steep price."

Belle can't help herself. She laughs, sour and derisive. "You think I don't know that?" Reaching out blindly, she grasps his hand. "What is it you need? My life? Believe me if I thought my dying would accomplish something other than one more body, I would have waded into the fray long ago."

And she knows how she sounds, how she looks – a bedraggled creature, half-mad with desperation, begging for assistance from a stranger who likely has no more magic than she – so the shock on his face is hardly a surprise.

After all it's probably not every day noblewomen beg him to do the impossible.

For a long moment his eyes scour her face as if looking for the lie, searching for the doubt, the regret. Belle just holds his gaze, steady and resolute.

"You mean that, don't you?"

"I do."

His mouth twitches in a pained half-smile. "There are worse things than death."

"I know."

He closes his eyes at that, and there seems to be a kind of war going on inside him.

"Please."

Flinching, he withdraws his hand. "I'm sorry milady. I shouldnae have- I cannae help you."

Of course he can't. It's obvious now. He's just a man and a lame one at that. Whatever she'd thought she'd seen had been nothing more than her desperation getting the better of her. She above all people should know how easily a lie becomes a legend.

Besides, magic doesn't come to the Frontlands anymore, not for almost a century. Not since the Dark One slipped his leash and stole the Duke's children from their beds. Not since the clerics came.

But hope, even the possibility of hope . . . is difficult to relinquish once it's been grasped.

"You know someone who can, though," she presses, "When you said you never know who might be listening. You were talking about someone specific. Who?"

"You willnae like the price."

"I don't have to like it to be willing to pay."

"Are you so very eager to throw yourself off a cliff?" he snarls.

"No. Not eager. I'd much rather stand at the edge and throw the Ogres over. But-" she shrugs, "Desperate times."

That seems to give him pause and he nods slowly.

"Aye." He touches his fingers to a small notch on his staff. "Desperate times."

Belle never tells anyone about her stranger, about the name he whispered in her ear just as the last ray of light was swallowed by shadows or the fact she could no more remember how he left than the way he came.

Her father is righteously horrified when she returns from the soldier's camp with Rumplestiltskin's name on her lips. There are apparently some lines he is not yet willing to cross.

Three months later when moral absolutes have been reduced to dust, it is Belle who hands him the quill and parchment. Watches as he writes promises of gold and holds her tongue.

The Dark One's help will not be bought so cheaply, her stranger warned her as much, but her father doesn't need to know that.

"There," her father whispers with a sigh as he presses his seal into the wax, "I have offered him all I have. Let us hope it is enough."

Heart clenching at the unconscious truth he's just uttered, Belle brushes a kiss to his temple, closes her eyes and doesn't say anything.

Desperate times.