Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Summary: AU, Belle is Rumpelstiltskin and Baelfire's maid from The Return.

Prompt: Belle isn't a princess.

Belle waits at the crossroads tapping her foot impatiently, because, of course, Eoghain is late with the eggs, again.

At this rate she will never finish supper on time, and gods know, her employer is nothing if not punctual.

She had understood when the paunchy man had declared to her that, under no circumstances, could he be prevailed upon to drive his chicken cart any further into the forest—she hadn't liked this declaration, but she had understood it. Eoghain, as well as the rest of the town, fears her employer worse than plague, and only slightly less than ogres. Which is saying something.

The townspeople call him by many names: savior, monster, Dark One, father, Rumpelstiltskin, spinner—though, the last few are whispered over a dying day's fire, for rumor has it, the weaver is want to remember his past life, and the villagers even more wanting in his forgetting of their past enmity.

They call him by many names; Belle just calls him 'sir.'

She huffs, throwing up her arms in exasperation. She can wait no longer for eggs. The father and son would simply have to suffice themselves with thrown-together potato stew. She trudges back into the forest, the opposite direction of her own, equally isolated homestead, up the hill to the rather fine house she waits upon. The place is no estate (and Belle has seen estates), but it's the largest in the village, perhaps even the largest out of the surrounding three.

She's not unhappy to work there, and what's more he pays well—even if thread is a strange currency. At least she can wrap it about her ankle so as not to lose it.

Belle is no pampered princess, to be sure, but that doesn't mean she likes her current line of work (nor, was she a strapping, young, leader of masses and that didn't stop the duke from ordering her to the front lines), but she must eat, and like all war refugees, she knows hunger all too well.

Belle met the spinner only once before his transformation. It is just after she and her father Maurice, just two out of the mass of all those displaced by the ongoing fighting, pouring into the (now-secure) lands, stumble into the town that she decides will become their new home, for now at least. They are battered and half-starved, and looking for healing and privacy—particularly the later, her father being what he is.

She leaves her father to rest on a stone under the shade of a Birch tree at the edge of the village, while she continues on to search out a place for them. Belle is direct, too direct for a woman, but all the same, she goes into the first yard she sees. She approaches the unimposing house, where a poorly dressed man and boy (soon to be young man) tote a cart laden with battered spools and bolts of homespun clothe. "Excuse me, sir?" she asks.

The man looks up and around to both sides, for surely the voice isn't addressing him. No one would ever address him with the title of 'sir.' He looks to her, for it is a woman's voice, "Are you speaking to me?"

"Yes, you." She steps closer. The man takes a step, a limp really, for on closer inspection she sees that he is lame and carries a large walking stick, obscuring her view of the charming boy—she remembers a page with that same chocolate look about him; she remembers the way his brains and blood had looked against the boulders on the battlefields of Avonlea.

Belle shakes her head, "I need some help."

"Then, it seems, you've come to the wrong man," he answers, turning his head down from her and goes back to tugging on the cart.

"Surely you can help. It's just, my father and I are looking for a someplace, a home, really, but not in the village."

"Oh, papa, Old Saorla's house."

"Bae," the father hisses, but the boy is not deterred.

The little thing walks up to Belle, and he's younger than she thought at first, for he still knows no fear of strangers. That'll change. "It's in the glen, past the old bridge, made of thatch and close to the stream, what's more. Old Saorla passed winter last, but the house is still there. The roof too. My friends and I play out by it sometimes."

She smiles her brightest, courtly smile (she'd rather give him her field smile, but she hasn't seen that one in sometime), "Thank you, good sir."

The boy chuckles, and then, of all the silly things, replies, "No matter, my lady."

Belle almost laughs. She turns to leave, giving a final look to the boy and a nod to the father, who she knows sees the action, but does not acknowledge it. A call stops her.

"I'm Baelfire." The son points to the man she can't see behind the cart, "And that is my father, Rumpelstiltskin."

"I'm Belle."

She is not there, the day the soldiers die, nor for the children's homecoming. Belle is always a little too late—her curse.

That and the clumsy streak, though that she usually chalks the clumsy up to more of a general disability. Most days, she is simply glad she has all her appendages intact, which is more than she could say for most. That and her father. She is glad to still have him, intact or no.

Needless to say, things are quite bad when she starts to look for work. Of course, there is none to be had. With the children returned by the Dark One, field hands and attendants to watch the cart on market day are all too numerous. Belle cannot find anyone willing to hire her, even for the meager sum she asks.

It isn't until Eoghain, the egg-cart man, mentions something about someone needing a maid that Belle thinks there's hope. Then Eoghain mentions just exactly who needs the maid.

"It's him, isn't it?" she realizes.

The man shifts from foot to foot, awkward as one of his chickens, but all the same offers her a ride to the crossroads in his dirty cart. "I'll go no farther than this, mum," he tells her.

Mum, did she really look that old, she wonders, but they sold the hand mirror at their first stop, so Belle's no way of finding a definitive answer. "Thank you, Eoghain. This is fine, really," she lilts and he gives her that look she always gets when she says something with too high an accent, reminding everyone just how far the ogres can throw down the mighty. All the same, he points her in the direction of Rumpelstiltskin's new house.

She walks on alone, her skirt catching on overgrown weeds and thistles. It's tattered, but it's the only one she owns. She traded her clothes all along the way, the last of her Sunday-skirts, which itself was hardly presentable, four towns back in exchange for milk and a crust of hard bread.

Belle tops the hill Eoghain had pointed out to her and comes upon the grand house, wood and stone brickwork. Also, by the look of the lay, she bets it has something of a foundation and in all likelihood wooden floors too. Imagine that.

She trudges to the front door; no time like the present. Belle girds herself, taking a deep breath, but not too deep, for her tunic isn't in much better shape than her skirt, and she can't have it falling to shreds before the job interview, and knocks on the door.

Where there had been rustling within the house, a hammer-silence falls. She raps again, "Hello? Anybody home?"

The door opens sharply, "What business have you, to disturb us?"

Belle hears a muffled noise inside, something like the sound she makes when her father used to tease her at state dinners, but when she tries to peer around the lame spinner, the Dark One, counters her step for step. This rubs her wrong, but then she realizes something. Belle's head tilts to the side, "Your leg's healed."

He pauses, but then answers, "So it is."

She looks up at him. She's seen him down at the village on market day, and this is not the fear-filled spinner she'd met on the road, but if she squints just right, yes there, she can see it, through the newly purchased finery and the mottled, shining skin. Belle can still see the man who hid behind the cart. "You probably don't remember me, but—"

"Belle!"

She smiles, as the mud-colored head peaks around his father's waist. "What are you doing on this side of the forest?"

"Yes, what are you doing on our side of the forest, I wonder?"

Your forest, eh? Belle knew this game, no matter if you stand on marble or an unruly patch of dandelions, condescension is nine times out of ten a sloppily-constructed cover for fear. "They told me, down at the village that you're having a difficult time finding a maid?"

"Yes, it would seem so," he says, guarded, but not catching her meaning just yet.

Belle shrugs her shoulders, "Well, here I am. I'll be your maid."

The boy's face lights up; his father's falls. "You? A maid?" he questions, for her accent wouldn't usually be found carrying brooms and scrubbing out chamber pots.

She sighs. Yes, yes, she wasn't always dirt poor and desperate to feed herself and her father but, must they go over that again, right now? "Aye, a maid. So are you going to hire me or not, because if the answer is not, then I'd like to be on my way. It'll be dark soon, and I don't know these woods all that well yet."

He crinkles his brow, but (for Belle can see it all play out on his features—even colored as they are) he makes his choice—she hopes for them both it's the right one. "Well, considering we're not likely to get another offer, you'll have to do." Rumpelstiltskin waves his hand grandly, be here tomorrow," he turns to shut the door, but raises a finger to her face, "early."

"See you tomorrow, Belle," she hears Baelfire squeak, before the door shuts, and the lock after it.

Belle starts the long walk home, wondering just exactly what she's agreed to with this deal.