Set after True Love's Kiss. Rumplestilskin has found Belle, living homeless, and has brought her back to Dark Castle.

Angst and unspoken desires await...

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There she sat, the blazing fire outlining her perfect profile in a divine halo as she combed her delicate fingers through her ratty auburn curls.

With her mud-caked hemline and holes in her worn silver slippers she was like another girl, woman, to him completely.

A far cry from the pampered, privileged lady he bargained for nearly two years ago.

A far cry from the Princess that she used to be…..

He watched her as he leaned against the doorway, his silk covered arms crossed across his chest, his sage eyes shimmering in the fire light.

He stared intently, taking in her tattered form and new thinness. He felt a painful stab of guilt when he watched her roll down her filthy stockings and saw the numerous bruises and bloodied scratches that littered her pale legs.

"From sleeping on the damned ground, like a bloody hound no doubt…" he seethed to himself from his darkened doorway.

She was a waif, a common beggar sleeping under a bridge at the mouth of King Midas' battlements when he saw her, her crystalline blue eyes locking with his viridian gold.

"Belle…" he breathed when he saw her, washing her dirty face in the icy water of the branch that lay a few yards from the Kingdom gates.

Her once fetching blue dress now ripped and soiled, her luxurious chestnut hair lack-luster and unkempt, and her feet bound with bloody rags.

She froze.

And her eyes immediately began to tear at the sight of him.

Her True Love…

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"I know you're there." She said over her shoulder as she rubbed her dirty hands in front of the fire, trying to warm them.

"I know that you know I'm here." He answered as he stared at her broken, discolored nails.

"Forgive me, I seem to have forgotten omnipotence is bundled up with all of your other powers." She spat as she hiked her ripped skirt up over her knees.

She wore no petticoats.

Rumpelstiltskin's eyes flew to the floor in humility and if he could still blush, he knew his face would be the same color as the rose he gave her so very, very long ago.

He swallowed the lump that had suddenly arisen in his throat as she scowled into the fire, her arms wrapped around her bared knees.

"You haven't touched your plate." He said as his eyes darted to the untouched china bowl of mutton stew long grown cold on the rug beside Belle.

"I'm not hungry." She clipped.

"Liar." He sang from his post.

Her head snapped around angrily, her eyes nearly colorless as she glared at him, her jaw locked in indignation,

"How dare you call me a liar." She hissed, her dingy blue skirt twisting around her thighs as her body turned toward him.

He struggled not to look at her in her unintentional immodesty.

After a few moments of deafening silence and hateful glaring from Belle she spoke again,

"Do not tell me the great and powerful Dark One has nothing to say?"

Belle rose and brushed herself off, not that it would do any good, and thrust her hands on her waist.

"No quips? No witty little riddles to taunt me with?!" she yelled as she stalked towards his shadowed figure in the doorway.

Rumpelstiltskin gritted his teeth as he watched her bare feet glide across the polished floor.

"Come now! No temper, no shouts, no cursing my name like last time?!"

He remained silent as she approached him, spewing her long bottled up rage and pain.

"Tell me, Rumpelstiltskin," she spat his name at him like an accusation, "do you still think me in league with the 'Queen'?"

She was a breath away from him now, her raggedy skirt balled up in her fists, her beautiful face twisted in ire.

"I hardly think she'd let the treasured spy she enlisted to crush the nefarious Dark One sleep under a bridge and beg for crumbs on the street! Just as I seriously doubt this powerful witch would allow her precious ally to be spat upon and called the monsters whore!" she screamed as she fell into dirty, weeping cerulean heap in front of him.

Rumpelstiltskin was at her side immediately.

"What have I done to you?" he whispered as he cradled her to his chest, the smell of the woods and filth wafting up into his nose from her dull locks.

Not caring that her tears drenched his favorite silk shirt.

Not caring that she didn't return his embrace.

Not caring that she cursed him between her woeful sobs.

Belle raised her forlorn head and looked at him, her tears streaming down her ashy face,

"You have shattered me."

He looked down, abashed.

Too ashamed at her truthful words to meet her gaze,

"Goddamn her!" he snarled.

Belle went limp in his grasp as she laid her head against his shoulder.

He did not see her sad smile but heard her chuckle,

"Yes damn her, for you have already damned me for the rest of my existence."

Her hands lay useless in her lap as she stared at one of the many tapestries that lined the walls of the great hall.

She whispered,

"Do you believe me now? Do you believe that I love you?"

He remained silent.

She sighed, "I fear I shall always love you Rumpelstiltskin, even though I thought perhaps time would heal my wounds and it was all just fancy, but the kiss worked…."

"I thought you were dead."

"What?" she said as she shifted to face him.

"Regina came to me and told me that your father had imprisoned you and sent clerics to cleanse your body of…me. She said you threw yourself from the tower your father had kept you in. You died." He choked on the last word as she stared at him, dumbfounded.

"You believe her as she lies, yet you berate me for speaking true." Belle whispered.

"Please Belle," he sighed as he lowered his head, "Won't you tell me what happened to you?"

"She told her tale half true," Belle said as she laid her head back on his shoulder, "Upon my return to my father's Kingdom I was stripped of my title and declared a harlot in the streets. They spat on me, those people I gave my life for, and my own father turned his back to me as a mob ran me from my home."

Rumpelstiltskin gritted his teeth in anger, his claws curled around her almost painfully.

"I lived in the woods, I was lucky no one found me."

"Why didn't you call me Belle? You know all you had to do was say my name!"

She looked down at her mud caked dress,

"I wish you had made me your whore, maybe my shame would be easier to bear."

"You don't know what you're saying!" He snapped.

"Oh yes I do, even though I can never have your love I could have had….that."

"Gods Belle!" he yelled.

"Gods Belle!" she mocked as she wrenched her body away from his embrace, "Don't you see I would have given you anything! I loved you, I love you yet! You've broken me, cursed me, hated me, yet I still love you!"

"I haven't hurt you in that way! You're still pure, your virtue-"

"My virtue is dead."

A single tear snaked it way down her cheek as she glared at him, her blue eyes smoldering.

His upper lip flinched, "Don't say that Belle, you're everything that is good and pure and right."

"Look at me Rumpelstiltskin!" she screamed as she grabbed her nasty skirt, "I'm not pure and good! I'm no longer Princess Belle draped in golden bridal satin! I'm not brave and I am definitely not the savior I so desperately longed to be! I'm filth!" a pitiful sob wracked through her body and she looked up at him with a heaving breast and slowly whispered,

"I am the Monster's Whore."

"Shut the hell up!" he wailed as he pushed her from his arms and jumped from the floor.

Belle fell backward and crouched on the rug looking wild and heathen as she watched him sling furniture out of his path to one of the many large bare windows across from her.

With his back to her he leaned, palms down, against the glass and looked out into the black night and exhaled deeply.

A wide grin crept across her flawless face.

Propping herself up she stared at his back, the chagrin of her words still hung in the air over them.

So much had been left unsaid between them, but not anymore.

Belle would do the brave thing one more time.

Quietly, she rose and went to him,

"Rumpelstiltskin." She whispered a breath away from him.

"There's a grief that can't be spoken." He said as the scream of his nails against the glass cut through the electric air.

Belle saw herself reflected behind him and she laid her hand flat against his leather covered back, "I love you." She said plainly.

"I have killed you." he hissed as he caught her frail wrist in his claw.

Belle winced at the stab of his jagged talons as they dug into the translucent skin just above the heel of her hand. His lips curled over his teeth in a sneer and Belle stared, fearless, into the bottomless black pits that were his eyes.

She was in awe of him...as always.

"Yes. You killed me." she hissed with the identical agony, "Now ressurect me. Break me, dishonor me, destroy me."

Belle's eyes began to well with new tears, "Do what ever you want to me! Only make me yours!"

"You cannot fathom what you are asking!" Rumplestilskin growled as he clenched his fingers around Belle's wrist, "To have a monster steal your virtue? To soil you, to take and demolish your purity?!" he sighed heavily, "Gods Belle have you no pride?!"

"With you, Rumplestilskin, I must always choose between my love or my pride."

Her fingers clutched at the wide collar of his tunic, skimming through the sparse dusting of hair against the glittering gold of his chest,

"I can never have both."

His nails dug into Belle's back as he held her to him, the strong sweetness of her innocence masking the outdoor stench of her.

"Make me yours." she whispered against his neck, "I love you Rumplestilskin."

He scoffed, "Who could ever learn to love a Beast?"