She marries him to pay off her father’s debt.
For the first several months, Isabelle just thought he had a bad memory. She’d even found it funny that Mr. Gold, who everyone in town seemed so frightened of, had trouble with details. The first time he’d come to collect the rent, he’d arrived a full half an hour before her father’s usual return home. She’d explained and invited him in to wait, fully expecting him to make his excuses. After all, no sane person would want to be alone with a girl fresh out of the asylum.
Instead, he’d accepted her invitation, and they’d had a lovely chat. She’d actually done most of the talking, with him providing regular prompts for her to tell him more about the books she was reading and her hopes for her future. Izzy quite liked him. He was a good listener, and he didn’t stare at her the way other people did. He stared at her in a different way. Everyone else watched her to see if she was going to do something crazy. Mr. Gold watched her because it seemed to give him pleasure if his small smile was anything to judge by.
April 2012
Fic: Painted Lady
Rating: NC17
Summary: Rumpelstiltskin is bemused by Belle’s hobbies.
Notes: This is the quickest 2300 words I have ever written. Also, PWP. And that bloody spinning wheel makes a cameo again. Really, I should make this threesome fic, whenever I involve the wheel.
Chapter 8 of Penitent is now up. And good grief, this story is trying to mangle my heart.
It took Gold a long time to realize he was awake. His dreams had been disjointed and strange, but Belle was always in them, smiling and holding out her hands to him, making the blood and screams vanish as long as he held onto her. When she went away, the nightmares returned, reaching out with their black tendrils to pull him down into a world of fire and ice until Belle returned to him again.
Finally, she stayed, wrapping herself around him like she loved him. She stroked his hair and whispered soft words, and the flames receded, unable to touch her purity. He floated in that place for an eternity with her arms around him, and although he doubted heaven had a place for him, it felt like he was already there. Slowly he became aware of a throbbing pain in his side, which didn’t fit the peaceful scene at all. He blinked his eyes open to faint morning light, only then realizing that the warm body in his arms was no dream.
Summary: an unlikely friendship forms across enemy lines.
Follow up to Morning 1,002
Prompt: Attack Challenge “Velodrome, Leafier, Cared, Nearness, Plead”
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Belle runs (“Always running, running, running, dearie,” he’d told her once with that giggle, finding her about the grounds, stockings torn to shreds. He’d plucked a stray apple blossom from her hair, at a time when he and his hands still frightened her. She’d only needed to feel spring beneath her feet. “Why look at you: leafier than Laurel Daphne in bloom,” he’d said).
There was nothing innocent about Mr. Gold in any sense of the word. After centuries spent as the Dark One, he’d seen everything human beings could do to each other, and the television and computer he’d found in his Storybrooke home filled in any blanks. Nothing could shock him any longer.
Then one day Emma found a secret buried inside a mystery never meant to be found, and he didn’t have to care about what people could do to each other any longer because all that mattered now was what he could do for Belle and what he was going to do to Regina for stealing her. The latter could wait though, because Belle was alive again, and he had the second chance he’d longed for since the day she walked out of the dungeon with her head held high.
