This is probably the least I've ever edited a story, since I tend to edit while writing. Half of it is inspired by my own personal angst, and the other half that I'm most proud of is inspired by drinking a bottle of red wine, so have at it. I originally planned it as a one-shot, but I'm thinking of extending it to either a three chapter ficlet or a fully fleshed out story, so to any readers who enjoy it let me know your thoughts. As always, happy reading and if you enjoy the tale enough to tell me about it, feel free to shoot me a review or PM!

The world burned on the tips of Queen Regina's fingers, blazing so brightly from her imminent victory that she imagined herself aflame from the fires of triumph coursing through her veins. Her hands soitched to cause misfortune and pain, to peel back the layers of chaos leaf-by-leaf until nothing was left but a tarnished core. And now, a year down her deliberate path of turmoil, the time had now come to scratch that itch burning under her skin for far too long. She had her final playing card in captivity, her ace in the hole against her greatest foe since her mother's power poured into her bones. That ace would've been a queen if she hadn't intruded on her happy ending in the making, and now the sweet, sweet taste of domination was too overwhelming for her—Regina will destroy every last trace of this card that made her appealing to her enemy… and then she will rebuild her from the trace scraps left, turning the lover into the foe.

Belle.

Many of her victims in the past have become scorched and dismayed by her wicked intentions. Some she rendered unfit to pursue what they originally had their hearts set on, others she eliminated from her line of sight before they had the chance to beg for her mercy; but Belle, his Belle, would soon be under her control, and nothing in the history of the world will change what the Queen planned for her fate.

She'd been shackled to one of the hundred dungeon walls for months now without leave of room for movement or comfort, and Regina intended to starve the blind faith out of her. Her wrists hung in a swollen cluster of crimson against the unforgiving cuffs. Any feeling in the nerve endings of her hands and arms were long gone. One could say she had gotten away lucky, but no one ever did with Regina in tow. But Belle refused to break under the heavy eyes of the monarch, no matter the tortures she endured. Her times of weeping and woe came in the early hours of morning when her solace was solely the silence of the world.

She had done the same when Rumpelstiltskin cast her off, pushing her aside out of his own vendetta against the paranoia and cowardice gnawing at him. He had rather denied the possibility of requited love than subject himself to the bliss that could've been. Her tears spilled only when eyes would not see and ears would not hear, and for that Belle was thankful.

Yes, the world had finally turned its back on a woman who knew no bounds when it came to bravery, and it would be bravery she planned to take with her to the grave. If she ever made it to her grave, that is. The moment she left Rumpelstiltskin's castle, she had sensed a foreboding danger on the horizon. Sounds of horsemen and carriages in passing startled her, particularly at night. She avoided the main roads afterwards. Gossip and rumors in circulation that had any trace of her story embedded in its words caused her to turn the opposite direction and wander elsewhere. Life after Rumpelstiltskin filled her with a paranoia of her own, and Belle managed… for a while. There were days when she felt a chill of strange trepidation, that fearful paranoia egging her onwards, as if it were him purposefully warning her that her association with him would be the death of her… and not a month into her travels, shehad found her. The day the Queen captured her was the day she made her decision to go back to Rumpelstiltskin, a foolish thought on her part. She'd been dwelling on the matter for weeks, how pointless his outburst was to her, how she should have refused to leave in order to convince him of her love. Belle even considered composing a letter for permission to return, but opted against mere formalities. They had been far past formalities by the end of her stay.

Night and day passed. Winter reared its ugly bites of frost. Belle survived. She always would.

Her condition stayed the same. Chained. Broken in more ways than one. Confused.

Not even a guard would turn his head to acknowledge her demands as to why she was arrested, no one except him. He never gave his name to Belle when she politely asked for it, but the Queen had taken liberties to have him posted outside her cell when the moon was at its highest—her special time of lonely sanctity and sadness that wordlessly permitted her release of the tears and sobs she would hold back in the sunlight.

The first night he spoke to her she had lashed out at him, fearful of what the conversation might bring and if he would confide details of her thoughts to her captor—Belle soon discovered that it was their captor, not hers alone. They never talked much, for the quietness was what Belle knew best now, and most of their little conversations had driven her to tears. It took three months for her to learn of his past. He told her that he had been raised by wolves in the Enchanted Forest, and that his captivity happened because he refused to cut the heart from a woman the Queen despised most. Now the monarch had his heart in a box instead, and, with time, Belle's heart would also be separated from her body.

His onset of information naming her terrible fate hushed Belle into a vow of silence for the rest of winter and into early spring. She started to prepare herself for what would become of her, what it would be like living without the beating life source inside of her. Then she began to wonder. If the guard has lived in this very state for months or possibly years and can still retain much of the man he was before, could Belle be the same? Another half a year of captivity passed and so had many more conversations with the dungeon guard. They would talk of things that had no point to them; sometimes they spoke of their dreams, where they would be if the Queen hadn't found them, what their lives were like before all of this. Belle carried the same question from the previous winter, rolling around on the tip of her tongue. She feared for the answer, or if the guard would provide her with one. But on one specific night in particular, her curiosity took hold of her, and she found herself asking the question before she realized it slipped from her lips, "How is it possible to live without your heart? What is her purpose in wanting to take it? I have never done wrong to her… I just knew someone long ago who might have."

Belle heard him breathe slowly through the small window in the door, and then she saw his eyes. They were the first set of eyes she had seen in nearly a year, and they looked so sad, so distant when her baby blues met the forest's reflection in his.

He answered her honestly, because though he did not know her in completeness, her eyes told him she wanted the truth. "It is something she does when she feels she can use us against her enemies, as pawns. Sometimes the hearts she takes are from the beloved of her foes. When she comes in possession of these hearts, she can bend that person to her will. Control every thought, every feeling. Turn you against your True Love. Make you hate them. That is why you are here."

Belle twisted her wrists inside the cuffs welded to wall to bring back feeling into her arms, rising to stand feebly on her own two feet to meet his face properly. "What you're trying to say is," she swallowed, blinking away the pain and confusion etched into the new stress lines on her face. "She's going to use me as a weapon against my True Love? That's impossible," Belle gaped. "Our love isn't true anymore."

"But that is where you're wrong. True Love will always be True Love, whether or not both of your hearts are broken. He is the only adversary of hers that is more powerful than she. If she wants to destroy him, she has to take away what he loves the most. You," he finished.

The guard immediately apologized for exposing Belle's impending despair, but she insisted that she would not have it any other way.

"Will it hurt?" is the question she posed next. The second winter at the Queen's castle had set out to spread its chill even deeper into Belle's bones, and she needed further distraction to keep her legs from collapsing inwards on her. She needed to know every detail of her doom, needed to be ready for the worst. "Having your heart ripped from your chest?"

"Only for a moment," he replied after a long period of silence. "You see them, everyone you love. Faces that had an emotion attached to them become numbed. You grow cold, almost near death, searching for something to fill that emptiness she gives you. I'd consider anyone lucky if she erases their mind." Belle felt him staring at her through the door. She was shaking from head to toe, the pale blue in her eyes growing larger with worry.
"Do you think I will still remember who I am when she takes my heart? Even if I can't… feel like I used to?" It seemed nonsensical for her to panic like this. Her father, after all, believed Belle to be ruined by the Dark One. And despite what the guard had told her, she thought the Dark One himself wouldn't yet blink an eye if he never knew her whereabouts again.

No, what Belle was most afraid of losing was her humanity, what made her Belle in the first place. The guard seemed relatively human, if not kind, without his heart.

His booted feet shuffled outside the room, pacing for an answer Belle could swallow bravely.

"If the Queen had plans of taking away your mind, she would be doing you a kindness. I have a feeling your mind will be very intact and aware of all that will occur. She wants you to remember him." He dared not say 'Rumpelstiltskin' aloud. "She wants you to betray him."

"And if I fight back? If I fail?" Belle retorted.

"If you fight back, she will use you as a pawn in the worst of ways. If you fail her, there is a chance she will kill you. For the sake of your life, and for the sake of us somehow finding a way out of here, do not refuse her. You will be free someday, Belle. You just have to wait."

When winter ended its reign, she never heard the voice of the guard again.

Not two weeks into the following spring, Queen Regina paid a visit Belle had been anticipating for a lifetime. She waltzed in in all her finery, her attire quite similar to the apparel she wore the day they met on the road. Belle had long been released from her cuffs on the wall, finding comfort in the corner of her room nearest to the window. Her wrists bore the marks of raised flesh where her chains dug too deeply, and from time to time Belle rubbed the soreness that was no longer there. They exchanged looks of contempt once Regina had herself situated comfortably at the entrance of the room. Neither of them spoke a word until Belle decided to toss aside mere frivolities. In spite of everything, what difference would it make?

"I know what you plan to do with me," she stated plainly, as if Belle had all the time in the world to exchange harsh words with the second most powerful sorcerer in the land.

"Of course you do," Regina shot back acridly. "You've always been the bookish kind of girl. With some persuasion and convincing, I knew the Huntsman would crack under the weight of a desperate girl calling for desperate measures."

So that was his name, at least the name that she called him. Huntsman. Belle rose to her feet without hesitance and refused to bow or curtsey to her captor as prompted. She perched her hand on the sill of the tiny window, turning her livid eyes to meet that of the Queen's. If these were her last moments as Belle, she would certainly make the most of them and give her all before her life dwindled to ash and clouded darkness.

"Such a brave little one, aren't you?" Regina taunted. "Always willing to take charge of your destiny. Always telling the superior what is right. No wonder Rumple developed a fondness for you. He likes the fight."

"You knew," said Belle. Regina's poisonous jests played her heartstrings where she knew it bled most freely, but the warrior building like the thrum of a war drum in Belle snubbed the flaming wounds before they built to a wildfire. "You knew who I was before we met on the road to town. None of it was a coincidence."

"Exactly, dear." She paced about the room, observing her surroundings as if it was the first time she had seen the filth a dungeon brought with it; a meager distraction, of course.

"The mirrors," Belle uttered suddenly, interrupting Regina out of her reveries of just exactly what she intended to do with this delicate creature now that Rumple created the curse that will end all curses. "He kept them covered because of you. You can watch him through the mirrors."

"Right again. That imp thinks he can outsmart any threat that stands in his way. He had me fooled for years; he even fooled you, sweetheart. Did you really think he would give up his power for love? Love is temporary. It does not exist. It is a paltry fragment of hope programmed into humans to give them purpose in their lives. I knew he would cast you out. Princesses are not meant for beasts."

Belle swallowed down the words she wanted to say to Regina. She would never show weakness to her even in this last hour of her life. Fate is fate, and if that meant that it would all come down to this, then so be it.

"Do what you came here for. I've accepted my fate long ago, and I won't stand here and let you plague me with truths that won't matter by tomorrow morning." Her prison guard, the Huntsman forewarned her of what she would become, what she would think after her heart came under dominion of the Queen. Belle will not feel, she will not love—she will hate, and more importantly, she will become a playing card against Rumpelstiltskin. She remembered the words of the Huntsman telling her to not resist, and it was that fiber of hope she intended to cling to until the day came when Regina's rule over Belle would cease.

The Queen's face puckered in revelation. "So quick to forget your life, dear? I had thought you would have wanted to know if Rumple asked after you before I claim what is rightfully mine." Belle's face betrayed her for just a second, and Regina couldn't help but laugh at the prospect of promise imprinted in her prisoner's features. She would savor this moment for a later date, in a world very different from this one. "Yes, he believes you to be dead, or didn't the Huntsman disclose to you this little slice? You see, your beloved thinks of you as a martyr, for I told him that it was your father who locked you away. He thinks that your family has shunned you because of their belief that he has ravished you senseless and corrupted you. You've been skinned alive in his mind, burned and peeled back layer-by-layer of flesh until you couldn't bear the thought of living anymore—you threw yourself from the highest tower, and died." The Queen thrust her hand between the folds of skin harboring the secret of Belle's heart deep within her chest, twisting her nails just right to have a firm grip on the glowing, frantically beating orb that nevermore belonged to her or Rumpelstiltskin. "You don't even exist in his mind. You are just another piece of his past lost to the madness of his own darkness. You are another burden he must carry to the end of time."

Belle choked on the bile rising past her throat, pale eyes widening until one could see the whites through and through. Her chest contracted in reaction to Regina's invasion, trying to hold back the vital organ being stolen away for safekeeping.

"You should have seen the way he looked at me when I gave him the news. It looked as if the world had shattered into splinters around him. Pity," she spat. Regina's nails dug and dug until Belle thought that she would fall into oblivion from the pain, and then in one swift movement, she felt a snap. She was staring at the glowing form once nestled tightly in her body in front of her very own eyes. It shone with an essence of the pinks and golds she grew fond of when watching the sunsets on the balcony of her father's castle, and it beat fervently in the Queen's palm. "He will love you to his dying day, Belle, and you will never love him back. Think of it as a harmless poison. No pain will come to you in passing, but every step I make you take against Rumpelstiltskin will kill him quicker, and you will grow stronger."

The fire that formerly burned in Belle's chest had all the more extinguished at the separation point. A chill took its place, filling her bones with hate until she thought she would drown in its murky depths. She watched the face of her mother and father fade into nothingness, the looks of her people at their most joyful slumping into empty stares of condemnation and despondency.

Rumpelstiltskin was the last to flash through her mind. Belle watched herself reach out in desperation, watched his mischievous gleam morph into animosity as he turned from her.

She watched herself plummet from the highest peaks of her dreams until that hope shed its veil and became a numbing, bitter taste of loathing at the bottom of an infinite ocean.

Belle once loved Rumpelstiltskin.

But Rumpelstiltskin did not love her.

Now Belle loved Rumpelstiltskin no more.