I woke up and he was screaming
I'd left him dreaming
I roll over and shake him tightly
And whisper, "If they want you
Oh, they're gonna have to fight me."
Oh, fight me

- Laura Marling, Night Terror

One of the benefits of being the Dark One was that he didn't need to sleep nearly as often as your average human being. He explained this to Belle after she had gotten up for a midnight snack and stumbled across him at his wheel.

"Why is it a benefit?" she asked.

He didn't look at her, focused on the spinning as he replied, "I can get more done."

She was silent for so long that he thought she'd fallen asleep where she sat, but then she suddenly spoke again. "You said you spin to forget."

He tried not to tense. "And?"

"You have so much gold thread already," she said reasonably. "Surely you don't need more. If you wanted to do actual work, you'd be up in your tower."

His lips drew into a tight line, and he kept his back to her. "It's late, dearie," he said softly. "You should go back to bed."

He heard a sigh and a rustle of cloth, then soft footsteps. The door clicked shut.

Pausing the wheel, he pinched his nose. After a moment, he ground his palms against his eyes and resumed spinning.

Belle went back to her room, but she didn't fall asleep again. She lay staring at the ceiling, the encounter playing on loop in her head, unable to shake the image of Rumpelstiltskin steadily spinning at his wheel from dusk to dawn, night after night. It made her strangely sad. The man was a mystery.

She rolled onto her side and curled up. Mysteries weren't any good if they were simple, but this was more than intellectually hard. The more she seemed to learn of him, the more tragic of a figure he seemed to become. She tried to push it out of her head so she could go back to sleep, but the memory of how small and alone he had looked plagued her.

After a while, she decided sleep wasn't happening, so she slid from under the covers and wrapped her robe around herself. She padded silently through the still halls – something about the Dark Castle at night made her creep down corridors she would stride confidently along in the day. At last she reached the dining room, and peeked inside.

Rumpelstiltskin was still at his spinning wheel, but he was slumped against it, fast asleep.

So the Dark One couldn't stay up forever. She smiled, and was about to withdraw when his breath hitched. It was small, but gave her pause. His hand, a length of thread dangling from his fingers, clenched, and his whole body shuddered. She wavered in the doorway, unsure if she should leave him be or see if he was all right. Her mind was made up for her when he shouted and jerked, toppling his stool and hitting the floor with a thud. She was beside him before she even realized she'd moved forward. His breathing was harsh and frantic, and he was trying to curl in on himself, muttering desperate pleas – for what, she couldn't discern. Not considering potential consequences, she shook his shoulder, then again more roughly when he didn't respond, calling his name.

His eyes snapped open and he was on her in a flash, fingers wrapped around her throat, pinning her to the floor. There was a frightening moment that seemed to stretch on for an eternity where she looked into his eyes and saw death and despair and nothing else, and then recognition and horror dawned over his features. He pushed away from her, stumbling to his feet, staggering back as she slowly stood. "What are you doing here?" he croaked.

Belle couldn't find words, rubbing at her neck, too stunned to even think yet.

And so they stood in silence, regarding each other warily.

Rumpelstiltskin hadn't meant to fall asleep. He'd meant to keep spinning until Belle showed up again, at a reasonable hour, with breakfast.

But at times, intent is meaningless.

He'd underestimated how tired he was. When was the last time he slept? It was so hard to keep track these decades. So his hands slowed, stopped. His eyelids drooped, his shoulders went slack.

He fell asleep.

He dreamed.

He was back on the battlefield and the ogres were everywhere. A man was ripped in half right in front of him, and he felt the warm blood spatter his face, heard the scream cut short. Everyone was dying. He was sure he was dying, too, though he had no wound worse than the gash on his arm. The sound of death around him was what was killing him, pressing on his ears like it had physical weight, like it was the heaviest thing in the world.

Then it was over and he wasn't dead. The battlefield was silent, but that wasn't any better than the noise. Something squelched under his foot as he picked his way through the dead, and he forced himself not to look down. He didn't want to know. Clutching his injured arm, he wandered aimlessly through the aftermath. It wasn't until the sun had gone down and the silent field long behind him did he realize he was heading home.

He was perhaps a mile from his town when they caught him. They circled him, pushed him, jeered at him, berated him for abandoning the fight. They grabbed him, dragged him the rest of the way home and threw him into the dirt at the center of the village. Milah was there and Bae was there, oh, Bae was there as they proclaimed him a coward and smashed his knee with a club. Through the pain, he was aware that he was begging, begging, but they laughed and gave him a couple of kicks and another blow to the leg for good measure and Bae was there, oh, Bae, Bae, Bae was there as they left him bleeding in the dust, in the middle of town.

And then he was back on the battlefield and the ogres were everywhere and everyone was dying and he learned what a man's insides looked like and he could taste metal in his mouth, and they were laughing and Bae was there, and the screams stole away his will to live and turned his spine to liquid and he wanted to run run run but his leg was broken and everything was shaking and someone was calling his name someone was holding him down he had to fight back he had to get away

The haze in his head cleared and he realized with nausea that he was holding Belle down, that he'd attacked her. He scrambled back as quickly as he could, fighting the urge to flee entirely. "What are you doing here?" he managed to ask. Didn't she go back to bed? Wasn't she supposed to be asleep, dreaming about adventure and far-off lands, or whatever pleasant and non-violent dreams she had?

She seemed dumbstruck, massaging the place he'd grabbed her. Internally, he winced, hoping that he hadn't bruised her. There was a long moment of stark, stale quiet, and he was seriously considering magicking himself away to his study when she said, "I wanted to make sure you were all right."

He tittered nervously. "Well, I'm fine now, dearie."

He had no idea what she was going to do next, maybe just sigh and leave, and he was surprised when she shook her head and, soft but strong, said, "Don't lie to me."

There was no resentment in her voice, no anger. Just a subtle request – no, demand – hidden but still commanding.

He wanted to run, but her gaze had him nailed to the ground, and he was again reminded of her upbringing, of the role she must have played in the battle against the ogres. Had she been born a man, he was sure she would have been a knight, a commander, a powerful leader, and only her gender kept her from being truly allowed those positions.

He wondered, had she been leading him back then on that battlefield, if he would have deserted. Would he have been able to draw upon her courage and face his terror?

Could he now?

She was waiting for him, patiently, like she could wait forever if she had to. He had doubted that she would keep her promise of forever, but at that moment he couldn't.

At last he found his voice. "I've lived a long life, and seen some things that can't be unseen. It's of no matter to you."

Slowly, she approached him, footfalls silent. She stopped inches from him and searched his eyes. He was sure she could see right into his soul.

"You've fought," she said. "You've been on a battlefield."

His mouth was suddenly dry, and he swallowed a couple of times. "What makes you think that?"

"I wasn't exactly sheltered from the war," she replied, a slight amount of reproach in her tone at the fact that he might have assumed otherwise. "I helped a lot in the infirmary. Every single soldier I treated had a certain look in his eye. You have it too."

Again words abandoned him, and he stared helplessly back at her.

"I won't ask," she said quietly. "You don't need to tell me. But I'll keep you company, if you want me to."

He closed his eyes, trying to remember how to breathe. The nightmares were something he'd done his best to keep hidden from Bae and Milah, because he didn't want to disappoint his son any more than he already had and his wife reviled him enough as it was. Now it made him feel weak, vulnerable, and he despised it, loathed that anyone was seeing him this way. He hated himself for not being strong enough.

He forced himself to meet her eyes again and found no pity, only compassion and understanding.

He found just a tiny spark of bravery.

"Yes," he said hoarsely. "I would like that."