[OUaT] Sweetheart Deal
Title: Sweetheart Deal
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Pairing: Rumpelstiltskin/Belle
Rating: PG
Word count: 3,749
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Summary: Belle might not be getting everything she'd hoped for out of this deal, but the situation's not as unbalanced as it looks.
A/N: Happy Birthday, MC! This wasn't what I thought I'd be writing for the occasion but I hope you enjoy it. <3
Also, fits h/c bingo's 'making deals with demons' square.
Sweetheart Deal
Everyone knows Rumpelstiltskin's the man you call when you've lost even your last scrap of hope and you're willing to sell your own mother for a solution. What no one knows is: is he a man at all?
Belle has no idea. Nor does her father, but he's made the offer anyway - gold for victory. Gold can be replaced. Lives can't, and fighting the ogres is killing their people. However high the price, it'll be worth it to have no more blood shed on the battlefield, no more families sending their loved ones off to die. Enough people have made that sacrifice already and there's nothing Belle can do about it.
Women her age have laid down their lives in the Ogre Wars; her father's rank spares her from doing the same. The only thing she can do is watch him fret that help will arrive too late, or never appear at all, while her fiancé Gaston, who has all the depth of a pane of glass, paces the room and pretends that he's somehow making a difference by being there.
He's not, of course. None of them are, until Rumpelstiltskin appears and rejects the offer of gold in favour of something far more precious. Now there's something only Belle can do. Her father doesn't like it. Gaston likes it even less, shoving his betrothed roughly behind him without even looking at her face. Belle can't gauge if he's actually concerned for her, or worried about how he'll appear if he lets his fiancée run off with a monster. The latter, probably. Gaston can't pass a mirror without pausing to admire himself; without his image, he's nothing.
"We'll have a fine wedding, Belle; I promise you that. Once the war is over, naturally. It wouldn't do to be seen spending frivolously in these hard times."
Oh yes, he's a shallow one. But it's an arranged marriage, nothing more - Belle's resigned to being unable to choose love for herself, save the love she bears for her family and friends. Gaston is not of their number, for all that he has a place at her father's side.
"I know he might not be your first choice, but his father's one of my oldest friends. He'll treat you well, Belle, and look after you when I'm gone."
"Don't say such things, Papa! Gaston's...he's all right, but I don't love him, and he could never replace you."
"All I'm asking is for you to do your duty to me, as he does, and love may yet grow between you. Give the boy a chance, Belle. Please? For my sake."
"Yes, Papa."
Duty, that's the key. If you can't have love, maybe doing the right thing is enough, even if it's only the right thing as far as everyone else is concerned. Everyone thinks Belle should marry Gaston.
No one thinks Belle should go with Rumpelstiltskin to look after his estate.
No one but Belle and the man himself, for he is a man, whatever else he may be. At least, he wears a man's shape, though one quite unlike those men Belle knows. Rumpelstiltskin has nothing to prove with either his body or his dress; neither flowing capes nor rippling muscles, and no sword hanging at his side. He has no need of one, the rumours are quite definite about that; the sharpest things about him are the long, dark fingernails.
Everything's dark, really. Rumpelstiltskin dresses like a monster from a child's nightmare and Belle can't tell, by candlelight, if his skin's actually a greenish gold. It's not cosmetic, she's certain of that. The skin, the nails, the mad gleam in the eyes when Rumpelstiltskin congratulates them all on their "little war" and giggles - they don't strike Belle as terribly human.
But human or not, a deal's a deal.
-----
This was supposed to be Belle's chance to be heroic. Sacrifice herself for her people, go play maid to the monster for the rest of her life. It's worth it to keep everyone else safe, but she hopes the rest of her life isn't going to be spent in this dungeon. Even a future as Gaston's wife might be preferable to that. How's she supposed to show what she can do if she can't even leave the room?
As far as dungeons go, things could be worse. There's a high window, letting in moonlight through the bars, and an actual mattress, not the heap of straw she'd expected. There's not enough light to see the condition of the mattress, mind, and that's probably a good thing, judging by the state of the rooms they'd passed through to get there. Rumpelstiltskin's magic might be powerful, but it doesn't appear to be much use for keeping the place clean.
Nervous, exhausted and alone, Belle huddles down on the mattress, tucks her feet as far under her dress as they'll go, and tries to sleep. Perhaps tomorrow will be brighter.
-----
Morning is brighter, certainly, but only outside the building, as Belle discovers when the door finally opens and every curtain in the castle remains stubbornly closed. It might as well be night. Belle still has no idea how her new employer looks by daylight. He doesn't even enter the dungeon, merely stands in the doorway and wakes her up with a, "Rise and shine, dearie. The estate isn't going to clean itself."
Belle rubs the sleep from her eyes, momentarily disoriented by being so close to the floor. "Do all your servants sleep in rooms like this?"
Rumpelstiltskin holds a hand under his chin, pointing his index finger straight up. "There's a little shortage of servants around here, as you'll soon see." He doesn't appear to be offended by the question, thank goodness. "They don't seem to last very long."
That, Belle doesn't care for, but he did tell her it was forever, after all, and he can't be angry with her yet when she hasn't even had the chance to do anything. He marches her through to the kitchens, where he tells her to find herself breakfast and then attend to him with a tea tray.
"You don't even have a cook?" she asks.
"Did have." Rumpelstiltskin giggles, sinister and childish all at once, and Belle's not sure how to take it. "Until yesterday."
With that, he leaves her alone to investigate the kitchens. The pantries are well-stocked; the unfortunate cook clearly believed in keeping multiple everything. Understandable, out here in the middle of nowhere. She washes up as best she can, breakfasts on rolls that look like they might still be edible, and sets a kettle of water to boil on the fire. By the time the water's ready she's found the tea service. This is the first task she's been asked to perform for Rumpelstiltskin and she desperately wants to get it right. They've struck a deal - now she has to live up to her end of the bargain.
Tea is a strange affair. Belle receives her list of duties, accidentally chips a teacup, and discovers her employer has a sense of humour, which the rumours had neglected to mention. An unusual sense of humour, to be sure, since skinning children isn't a popular subject for jokes, but it makes Belle feel a trifle less lost. They're all alone in this dark, gloomy castle, with its bizarre bric-à-brac and secrets in every corner. She needs something to cling to, some sign that they can talk to each other, or she'll go quite mad.
It's an educational first day. Belle gets a brief tour of the castle and learns, much to her relief, that Rumpelstiltskin uses less than a quarter of its rooms.
"It seems such a waste to have all this space and no one else to use it." Belle shuts the door on yet another room filled with gold. Rumpelstiltskin spins it himself; fortunately, the gold won't need much in the way of cleaning. "You could probably house an entire village in here!"
"An entire village wouldn't want to live with me," Rumpelstiltskin points out. "No one would."
Belle can't really disagree with that but thinks it's best not to agree, either, because Rumpelstiltskin sounds more sad than mad, and he's probably got his reasons. She doesn't think he's the type to throw lavish parties or invite friends over to stay - most of the uninhabited rooms are either full of gold, or entirely empty.
Of course, Rumpelstiltskin does have quite a collection of curios. Peculiar dolls that give Belle the shivers to look at them. Old weapons gathering dust in corners. Cups and chalices better suited to serving poison than tea. All of it is now Belle's responsibility and she suspects that by the time she's done with the housework for the day, she'll have to start all over again.
The last room on the tour is clearly designed for human habitation, and a female human, at that. There's a comfortable-looking bed, soft carpet, and thick, velvety curtains hiding yet another window. Belle opens up a wardrobe to find it full of dresses in her size - nothing she could wear to a ball, but certainly sufficient for working around the castle.
"Your cook didn't stay in here, did she?" she guesses.
"Not for long."
Belle pulls out a blue dress, holding it up against herself to see the fit. Perfect match. "And I suppose she was the same size as me, too?"
"He wasn't much taller than you, but I don't think blue was his colour," Rumpelstiltskin says, cackling. "The clothes are for you, dearie. Can't have you wearing your one dress to rags and then running around bare, can we?"
The thought doesn't appeal to Belle, although it's probably what Papa and Gaston think she's doing, if they don't think she's already been carved up and served as dinner. There are shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe - no doubt they fit too - and a chest of drawers, the contents of which, she suspects, are not to be taken out in front of men. Though this must all have got in here somehow. Magic?
Belle hangs up the dress again and turns to Rumpelstiltskin with a grateful smile. "Thank you," she says, and then adds, boldly, "Does that mean this is my room now?"
Rumpelstiltskin's shoulders jerk in an awkward shrug, not one of his calculated, carefully orchestrated gestures. He won't meet her eyes. "If you like."
Belle doesn't want to embarrass him futher by belabouring the point. She's got the rest of her life to puzzle him out.
-----
It's not so bad, Belle decides, working for Rumpelstiltskin. She doesn't get paid, not that she'd be able to go anywhere to spend any money, but if she needs anything, all she has to do is mention it and it'll have appeared by morning, whether it's a band to tie back her hair or a new saucepan for the kitchen. She suffers no abuse worse than the occasional splash of boiling water when making the tea, and she's never asked to do anything truly objectionable, which makes her a great deal better off than the average domestic servant. It's a busy life but a lonely one.
It's even lonelier when Rumpelstiltskin vanishes to see a petitioner, and she doesn't have even his quiet, subdued presence over at the spinning wheel for company. He's never away for long, though. Even if he were, Belle wouldn't attempt to leave. They've made a deal and she's not going back on it.
Besides, things could easily be worse. She could be Gaston's wife, forced to listen to him witter on about himself and other, equally trivial things, from morning till night. Rumpelstiltskin speaks little, despite her attempts to draw him out, although he's better at responding to any purely practical questions. The personal, he avoids, evading with threats that she knows better now than to take seriously.
That only makes Belle all the more curious. There's a mystery here, hidden behind heavy drapes and under long wooden tables, and she intends to unravel it little by little.
When the drapes finally do come down - by accident - Belle gets to see her employer in full daylight for the first time. He seems startled by the sun, but more so by Belle in his arms, as if he'd never meant to catch her at all. Any gentleman would catch a falling lady. As much as Rumpelstiltskin insists he's not a man, much less a gentleman, she's yet to meet one in whose arms she'd feel safer. Mortal men are fallible; Belle knows their weaknesses. She doesn't know Rumpelstiltskin's. Not yet.
He takes her thanks as well as ever, setting her down in a rush. Belle thinks she's embarrassed him again, best make amends so they can brush it over but no, he surprises her by letting the window remain uncovered. Moreover, she's allowed to uncover the rest, too, though she carefully removes the nails rather than tearing the material straight off the walls. He'll get used to it, he says.
Things are changing around here. Belle breaks into a smile watching Rumpelstiltskin walking off in a daze. He's obviously surprising himself as much as he'd surprise anyone else who didn't know him.
"See?" she says to him later when she brings him fresh straw for the spinning wheel. "A little light never hurt anyone."
"There's a certain breed of troll who'd disagree with you - if they could still talk."
It might be a joke. Belle's experience of the world is somewhat limited; there are a good many things she doesn't know, including the effect of light on trolls. She laughs anyway. "But you're not a troll!"
Rumpelstiltskin's hands freeze, reaching for the straw. "I'm far worse than a troll," he says softly, and leaves the room without looking back.
-----
If Rumpelstiltskin is worse than a troll, then trolls can't be that bad, Belle thinks, though she'd prefer not to find out. After a couple of months she's managed to turn this dark, dreary castle into...a home. Sunlight brightens every corner, leaving only the shadows in Rumpelstiltskin's heart, and those hidden in the mirrors he still refuses to uncover.
There's time to work on him about the mirrors. It's not so far-fetched to believe she can change his mind, as she did with the curtains. Belle likes to think they're friends now, of a sort, rather than master and servant. Friends who never go anywhere together, who never talk about anything personal - at least, not on Rumpelstiltskin's side - and never discuss the future, but friends nonetheless. Friends have no fear of each other, only for each other, and Belle has long since ceased to be afraid of anything Rumpelstiltskin says or does. It's hard to feel terrified of someone so playful, who makes her smile on a daily basis with outlandish quips and silly giggles.
Their deal didn't include friendship. Belle's lucked out, and she hopes Rumpelstiltskin feels that way too. The two of them have no one else.
Yet to an outsider, their relationship would seem most uneven. The long table still has but one chair, in which Rumpelstiltskin sits while Belle pours the tea. She cleans the castle, while he spins straw into gold and conducts strange, occasionally explosive experiments in his laboratory. He can leave at will; she hasn't left the estate since she arrived.
And of course there's that imbalance of power, isn't there? A darkness in Rumpelstiltskin far less visible than his discoloured skin or the talons he calls fingernails. Belle sees the lighter side - the human side - of his personality, but she can't forget that there's more to him than that.
"All these phials!" she marvels as she dusts shelves in the laboratory. "What do you keep in them all?"
Rumpelstiltskin glances up from his workbench and snaps, "Careful with that!"
Belle hurriedly withdraws her feather duster. "I was only trying to clean them; I'm not going to break anything."
The laboratory might actually be the creepiest place in the castle, though some of the attics could provide reasonable competition. It's not the collection of mysterious glass phials that make Belle reluctant to enter the room to clean, but the expression Rumpelstiltskin wears when he's adding to their number.
He's at it right now, cackling over his cupped hands. Curious, Belle sidles up beside him, opting not to perch on the workbench in case she knocks something over. Too much glass in here to risk otherwise. She watches him drop a bloody hank of meat into an empty phial.
"Is that a tongue?" Belle says in horror.
"This," Rumpelstiltskin gives her a madman's grin, with teeth best suited for gnawing on the bones of babies, "is one of the most powerful emotions in the world."
"Love?" Belle guesses. She can think of none stronger.
"Envy." Rumpelstiltskin stoppers the phial, rolling it between his palms. The tongue glows sickly green, desire grown warped. "Envy can turn a good man bad, eats away at him until he can think of nothing else but the thing he wants, and of taking it away from the one who has it.
"Envy ruined this young girl's life, and that of the witch who took her tongue from her. The most beautiful voice in the world, and she sold it for love."
It doesn't look like it's worth much now. Belle averts her eyes from the sickening sight. "So why do you have it? You can't sell love, can you?"
Rumpelstiltskin points to an empty space on the shelf. "Not yet. The Sea Witch is only interested in impeding the course of true love, and that, I can do. For a price."
"A tongue? That's your price?" Belle can't keep the disgust from her voice. It's one thing to know your employer has a dark side; it's quite another to see him handling human body parts.
And that's if this girl is even human.
"My price is something...precious. Something with meaning. It wouldn't be a fair trade, otherwise."
"Like me for the safety of my village?" Belle says bitterly. "Was that a fair trade?"
Rumpelstiltskin places the offending phial on the shelf behind him, sidestepping so Belle doesn't have to look at it. "It wasn't the worst deal I ever made?" he offers, and Belle thinks that's as close as they're going to get to him saying he's glad she's there.
-----
Sometimes Belle wonders if Rumpelstiltskin has always been like this. She's been hearing the stories for as long as she can remember, all of them about how terrible his power is, and how it's safest never to cross his path in the first place.
None of the stories ever mentioned how peaceful he can look when he's spinning at the wheel and watching her polish the table. No one's ever talked about how funny he can be when he's not trying to intimidate. (Belle's had to tweak her sense of humour slightly, sure, but she left a war to come here - sometimes all you can do with the macabre is laugh about it.) Sharing a joke is shared understanding, and that's special, and Belle loves it that Rumpelstiltskin tries to make her laugh.
That's not the attitude of a captor to his captive. They could pass the days in silence and never speak to each other, and maybe if Belle weren't so talkative, they would, but she can't keep silent. She loves to be around people, to get to know them from the inside out. Rumpelstiltskin is all the conversation she has, now, and thus far he's resisted all her attempts to procure them some additional company.
"You can't possibly expect me to take care of the grounds and keep the castle clean by myself," she argues. "There's enough work here for a dozen gardeners!"
"Two dozen," Rumpelstiltskin says, "but they are rather short." He walks her over to the window and points to a squat garden gnome, grimacing at them from under a tree. The gardens look decently cared for, as it happens, but Belle has no idea how unless her employer's magic works better on trees than on cobwebs. "You see that little fellow? He and his friends take care of the grounds for me."
"But he's an ornament...isn't he?" Belle's learned by now not to take anything around here for granted.
"Only by day. By night, he runs around pruning bushes."
"That doesn't seem fair, to keep them like that." The gnome's an ugly little creature and looks none too pleased about his situation, but he's worse off than Belle. At least she doesn't spend the day rooted to the spot.
Except that she does, only her spot's much bigger than the gnome's.
"Gnomes don't play fair, dearie. If they did, they wouldn't have broken their deal with me."
Of course it's another deal. That's what Rumpelstiltskin does when Belle doesn't see him. Though not unexpected it's an unpleasant reminder, and while she knows she's not going to like the answer she can't stop herself from asking the question. "If this is their punishment for breaking the deal, what was the deal?"
"They didn't have to do the gardening."
Another crazy giggle, another lunatic glint in the madman's eye. Belle wants to feel bad for the gnomes. She wants to feel angry at Rumpelstiltskin. Disgust, or loathing, or disappointment...any of these things would do. He inspires the worst feelings in the world.
With Gaston, there was boredom. Boredom and...nothing, not even dislike. She didn't care about him enough to dislike him.
With Rumpelstiltskin, there's everything from fear (barely there, just on the fringes) to care (is he eating enough? he always seems so thin). There's revulsion for the awful things he's done, and sympathy for the loneliness he tries to hide. Resentment for taking her away from her family and friends, but at the same time, he's become her friend. She can't hate him. She can like him, she might even love him, but she can't hate him.
Man or monster, or perhaps both. Neither, even. Belle doesn't know what he is, but she's learning who he is, and that's complicated enough in itself. The more she learns, the more she has to accept that she can't appreciate the good if she doesn't acknowledge the bad.
And there's a lot of good, even if Rumpelstiltskin likes to pretend it's nothing to do with him. He's good to Belle, at least, and she's going nowhere.
She can't. They have a deal.
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Pairing: Rumpelstiltskin/Belle
Rating: PG
Word count: 3,749
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Summary: Belle might not be getting everything she'd hoped for out of this deal, but the situation's not as unbalanced as it looks.
A/N: Happy Birthday, MC! This wasn't what I thought I'd be writing for the occasion but I hope you enjoy it. <3
Also, fits h/c bingo's 'making deals with demons' square.
Sweetheart Deal
Everyone knows Rumpelstiltskin's the man you call when you've lost even your last scrap of hope and you're willing to sell your own mother for a solution. What no one knows is: is he a man at all?
Belle has no idea. Nor does her father, but he's made the offer anyway - gold for victory. Gold can be replaced. Lives can't, and fighting the ogres is killing their people. However high the price, it'll be worth it to have no more blood shed on the battlefield, no more families sending their loved ones off to die. Enough people have made that sacrifice already and there's nothing Belle can do about it.
Women her age have laid down their lives in the Ogre Wars; her father's rank spares her from doing the same. The only thing she can do is watch him fret that help will arrive too late, or never appear at all, while her fiancé Gaston, who has all the depth of a pane of glass, paces the room and pretends that he's somehow making a difference by being there.
He's not, of course. None of them are, until Rumpelstiltskin appears and rejects the offer of gold in favour of something far more precious. Now there's something only Belle can do. Her father doesn't like it. Gaston likes it even less, shoving his betrothed roughly behind him without even looking at her face. Belle can't gauge if he's actually concerned for her, or worried about how he'll appear if he lets his fiancée run off with a monster. The latter, probably. Gaston can't pass a mirror without pausing to admire himself; without his image, he's nothing.
"We'll have a fine wedding, Belle; I promise you that. Once the war is over, naturally. It wouldn't do to be seen spending frivolously in these hard times."
Oh yes, he's a shallow one. But it's an arranged marriage, nothing more - Belle's resigned to being unable to choose love for herself, save the love she bears for her family and friends. Gaston is not of their number, for all that he has a place at her father's side.
"I know he might not be your first choice, but his father's one of my oldest friends. He'll treat you well, Belle, and look after you when I'm gone."
"Don't say such things, Papa! Gaston's...he's all right, but I don't love him, and he could never replace you."
"All I'm asking is for you to do your duty to me, as he does, and love may yet grow between you. Give the boy a chance, Belle. Please? For my sake."
"Yes, Papa."
Duty, that's the key. If you can't have love, maybe doing the right thing is enough, even if it's only the right thing as far as everyone else is concerned. Everyone thinks Belle should marry Gaston.
No one thinks Belle should go with Rumpelstiltskin to look after his estate.
No one but Belle and the man himself, for he is a man, whatever else he may be. At least, he wears a man's shape, though one quite unlike those men Belle knows. Rumpelstiltskin has nothing to prove with either his body or his dress; neither flowing capes nor rippling muscles, and no sword hanging at his side. He has no need of one, the rumours are quite definite about that; the sharpest things about him are the long, dark fingernails.
Everything's dark, really. Rumpelstiltskin dresses like a monster from a child's nightmare and Belle can't tell, by candlelight, if his skin's actually a greenish gold. It's not cosmetic, she's certain of that. The skin, the nails, the mad gleam in the eyes when Rumpelstiltskin congratulates them all on their "little war" and giggles - they don't strike Belle as terribly human.
But human or not, a deal's a deal.
-----
This was supposed to be Belle's chance to be heroic. Sacrifice herself for her people, go play maid to the monster for the rest of her life. It's worth it to keep everyone else safe, but she hopes the rest of her life isn't going to be spent in this dungeon. Even a future as Gaston's wife might be preferable to that. How's she supposed to show what she can do if she can't even leave the room?
As far as dungeons go, things could be worse. There's a high window, letting in moonlight through the bars, and an actual mattress, not the heap of straw she'd expected. There's not enough light to see the condition of the mattress, mind, and that's probably a good thing, judging by the state of the rooms they'd passed through to get there. Rumpelstiltskin's magic might be powerful, but it doesn't appear to be much use for keeping the place clean.
Nervous, exhausted and alone, Belle huddles down on the mattress, tucks her feet as far under her dress as they'll go, and tries to sleep. Perhaps tomorrow will be brighter.
-----
Morning is brighter, certainly, but only outside the building, as Belle discovers when the door finally opens and every curtain in the castle remains stubbornly closed. It might as well be night. Belle still has no idea how her new employer looks by daylight. He doesn't even enter the dungeon, merely stands in the doorway and wakes her up with a, "Rise and shine, dearie. The estate isn't going to clean itself."
Belle rubs the sleep from her eyes, momentarily disoriented by being so close to the floor. "Do all your servants sleep in rooms like this?"
Rumpelstiltskin holds a hand under his chin, pointing his index finger straight up. "There's a little shortage of servants around here, as you'll soon see." He doesn't appear to be offended by the question, thank goodness. "They don't seem to last very long."
That, Belle doesn't care for, but he did tell her it was forever, after all, and he can't be angry with her yet when she hasn't even had the chance to do anything. He marches her through to the kitchens, where he tells her to find herself breakfast and then attend to him with a tea tray.
"You don't even have a cook?" she asks.
"Did have." Rumpelstiltskin giggles, sinister and childish all at once, and Belle's not sure how to take it. "Until yesterday."
With that, he leaves her alone to investigate the kitchens. The pantries are well-stocked; the unfortunate cook clearly believed in keeping multiple everything. Understandable, out here in the middle of nowhere. She washes up as best she can, breakfasts on rolls that look like they might still be edible, and sets a kettle of water to boil on the fire. By the time the water's ready she's found the tea service. This is the first task she's been asked to perform for Rumpelstiltskin and she desperately wants to get it right. They've struck a deal - now she has to live up to her end of the bargain.
Tea is a strange affair. Belle receives her list of duties, accidentally chips a teacup, and discovers her employer has a sense of humour, which the rumours had neglected to mention. An unusual sense of humour, to be sure, since skinning children isn't a popular subject for jokes, but it makes Belle feel a trifle less lost. They're all alone in this dark, gloomy castle, with its bizarre bric-à-brac and secrets in every corner. She needs something to cling to, some sign that they can talk to each other, or she'll go quite mad.
It's an educational first day. Belle gets a brief tour of the castle and learns, much to her relief, that Rumpelstiltskin uses less than a quarter of its rooms.
"It seems such a waste to have all this space and no one else to use it." Belle shuts the door on yet another room filled with gold. Rumpelstiltskin spins it himself; fortunately, the gold won't need much in the way of cleaning. "You could probably house an entire village in here!"
"An entire village wouldn't want to live with me," Rumpelstiltskin points out. "No one would."
Belle can't really disagree with that but thinks it's best not to agree, either, because Rumpelstiltskin sounds more sad than mad, and he's probably got his reasons. She doesn't think he's the type to throw lavish parties or invite friends over to stay - most of the uninhabited rooms are either full of gold, or entirely empty.
Of course, Rumpelstiltskin does have quite a collection of curios. Peculiar dolls that give Belle the shivers to look at them. Old weapons gathering dust in corners. Cups and chalices better suited to serving poison than tea. All of it is now Belle's responsibility and she suspects that by the time she's done with the housework for the day, she'll have to start all over again.
The last room on the tour is clearly designed for human habitation, and a female human, at that. There's a comfortable-looking bed, soft carpet, and thick, velvety curtains hiding yet another window. Belle opens up a wardrobe to find it full of dresses in her size - nothing she could wear to a ball, but certainly sufficient for working around the castle.
"Your cook didn't stay in here, did she?" she guesses.
"Not for long."
Belle pulls out a blue dress, holding it up against herself to see the fit. Perfect match. "And I suppose she was the same size as me, too?"
"He wasn't much taller than you, but I don't think blue was his colour," Rumpelstiltskin says, cackling. "The clothes are for you, dearie. Can't have you wearing your one dress to rags and then running around bare, can we?"
The thought doesn't appeal to Belle, although it's probably what Papa and Gaston think she's doing, if they don't think she's already been carved up and served as dinner. There are shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe - no doubt they fit too - and a chest of drawers, the contents of which, she suspects, are not to be taken out in front of men. Though this must all have got in here somehow. Magic?
Belle hangs up the dress again and turns to Rumpelstiltskin with a grateful smile. "Thank you," she says, and then adds, boldly, "Does that mean this is my room now?"
Rumpelstiltskin's shoulders jerk in an awkward shrug, not one of his calculated, carefully orchestrated gestures. He won't meet her eyes. "If you like."
Belle doesn't want to embarrass him futher by belabouring the point. She's got the rest of her life to puzzle him out.
-----
It's not so bad, Belle decides, working for Rumpelstiltskin. She doesn't get paid, not that she'd be able to go anywhere to spend any money, but if she needs anything, all she has to do is mention it and it'll have appeared by morning, whether it's a band to tie back her hair or a new saucepan for the kitchen. She suffers no abuse worse than the occasional splash of boiling water when making the tea, and she's never asked to do anything truly objectionable, which makes her a great deal better off than the average domestic servant. It's a busy life but a lonely one.
It's even lonelier when Rumpelstiltskin vanishes to see a petitioner, and she doesn't have even his quiet, subdued presence over at the spinning wheel for company. He's never away for long, though. Even if he were, Belle wouldn't attempt to leave. They've made a deal and she's not going back on it.
Besides, things could easily be worse. She could be Gaston's wife, forced to listen to him witter on about himself and other, equally trivial things, from morning till night. Rumpelstiltskin speaks little, despite her attempts to draw him out, although he's better at responding to any purely practical questions. The personal, he avoids, evading with threats that she knows better now than to take seriously.
That only makes Belle all the more curious. There's a mystery here, hidden behind heavy drapes and under long wooden tables, and she intends to unravel it little by little.
When the drapes finally do come down - by accident - Belle gets to see her employer in full daylight for the first time. He seems startled by the sun, but more so by Belle in his arms, as if he'd never meant to catch her at all. Any gentleman would catch a falling lady. As much as Rumpelstiltskin insists he's not a man, much less a gentleman, she's yet to meet one in whose arms she'd feel safer. Mortal men are fallible; Belle knows their weaknesses. She doesn't know Rumpelstiltskin's. Not yet.
He takes her thanks as well as ever, setting her down in a rush. Belle thinks she's embarrassed him again, best make amends so they can brush it over but no, he surprises her by letting the window remain uncovered. Moreover, she's allowed to uncover the rest, too, though she carefully removes the nails rather than tearing the material straight off the walls. He'll get used to it, he says.
Things are changing around here. Belle breaks into a smile watching Rumpelstiltskin walking off in a daze. He's obviously surprising himself as much as he'd surprise anyone else who didn't know him.
"See?" she says to him later when she brings him fresh straw for the spinning wheel. "A little light never hurt anyone."
"There's a certain breed of troll who'd disagree with you - if they could still talk."
It might be a joke. Belle's experience of the world is somewhat limited; there are a good many things she doesn't know, including the effect of light on trolls. She laughs anyway. "But you're not a troll!"
Rumpelstiltskin's hands freeze, reaching for the straw. "I'm far worse than a troll," he says softly, and leaves the room without looking back.
-----
If Rumpelstiltskin is worse than a troll, then trolls can't be that bad, Belle thinks, though she'd prefer not to find out. After a couple of months she's managed to turn this dark, dreary castle into...a home. Sunlight brightens every corner, leaving only the shadows in Rumpelstiltskin's heart, and those hidden in the mirrors he still refuses to uncover.
There's time to work on him about the mirrors. It's not so far-fetched to believe she can change his mind, as she did with the curtains. Belle likes to think they're friends now, of a sort, rather than master and servant. Friends who never go anywhere together, who never talk about anything personal - at least, not on Rumpelstiltskin's side - and never discuss the future, but friends nonetheless. Friends have no fear of each other, only for each other, and Belle has long since ceased to be afraid of anything Rumpelstiltskin says or does. It's hard to feel terrified of someone so playful, who makes her smile on a daily basis with outlandish quips and silly giggles.
Their deal didn't include friendship. Belle's lucked out, and she hopes Rumpelstiltskin feels that way too. The two of them have no one else.
Yet to an outsider, their relationship would seem most uneven. The long table still has but one chair, in which Rumpelstiltskin sits while Belle pours the tea. She cleans the castle, while he spins straw into gold and conducts strange, occasionally explosive experiments in his laboratory. He can leave at will; she hasn't left the estate since she arrived.
And of course there's that imbalance of power, isn't there? A darkness in Rumpelstiltskin far less visible than his discoloured skin or the talons he calls fingernails. Belle sees the lighter side - the human side - of his personality, but she can't forget that there's more to him than that.
"All these phials!" she marvels as she dusts shelves in the laboratory. "What do you keep in them all?"
Rumpelstiltskin glances up from his workbench and snaps, "Careful with that!"
Belle hurriedly withdraws her feather duster. "I was only trying to clean them; I'm not going to break anything."
The laboratory might actually be the creepiest place in the castle, though some of the attics could provide reasonable competition. It's not the collection of mysterious glass phials that make Belle reluctant to enter the room to clean, but the expression Rumpelstiltskin wears when he's adding to their number.
He's at it right now, cackling over his cupped hands. Curious, Belle sidles up beside him, opting not to perch on the workbench in case she knocks something over. Too much glass in here to risk otherwise. She watches him drop a bloody hank of meat into an empty phial.
"Is that a tongue?" Belle says in horror.
"This," Rumpelstiltskin gives her a madman's grin, with teeth best suited for gnawing on the bones of babies, "is one of the most powerful emotions in the world."
"Love?" Belle guesses. She can think of none stronger.
"Envy." Rumpelstiltskin stoppers the phial, rolling it between his palms. The tongue glows sickly green, desire grown warped. "Envy can turn a good man bad, eats away at him until he can think of nothing else but the thing he wants, and of taking it away from the one who has it.
"Envy ruined this young girl's life, and that of the witch who took her tongue from her. The most beautiful voice in the world, and she sold it for love."
It doesn't look like it's worth much now. Belle averts her eyes from the sickening sight. "So why do you have it? You can't sell love, can you?"
Rumpelstiltskin points to an empty space on the shelf. "Not yet. The Sea Witch is only interested in impeding the course of true love, and that, I can do. For a price."
"A tongue? That's your price?" Belle can't keep the disgust from her voice. It's one thing to know your employer has a dark side; it's quite another to see him handling human body parts.
And that's if this girl is even human.
"My price is something...precious. Something with meaning. It wouldn't be a fair trade, otherwise."
"Like me for the safety of my village?" Belle says bitterly. "Was that a fair trade?"
Rumpelstiltskin places the offending phial on the shelf behind him, sidestepping so Belle doesn't have to look at it. "It wasn't the worst deal I ever made?" he offers, and Belle thinks that's as close as they're going to get to him saying he's glad she's there.
-----
Sometimes Belle wonders if Rumpelstiltskin has always been like this. She's been hearing the stories for as long as she can remember, all of them about how terrible his power is, and how it's safest never to cross his path in the first place.
None of the stories ever mentioned how peaceful he can look when he's spinning at the wheel and watching her polish the table. No one's ever talked about how funny he can be when he's not trying to intimidate. (Belle's had to tweak her sense of humour slightly, sure, but she left a war to come here - sometimes all you can do with the macabre is laugh about it.) Sharing a joke is shared understanding, and that's special, and Belle loves it that Rumpelstiltskin tries to make her laugh.
That's not the attitude of a captor to his captive. They could pass the days in silence and never speak to each other, and maybe if Belle weren't so talkative, they would, but she can't keep silent. She loves to be around people, to get to know them from the inside out. Rumpelstiltskin is all the conversation she has, now, and thus far he's resisted all her attempts to procure them some additional company.
"You can't possibly expect me to take care of the grounds and keep the castle clean by myself," she argues. "There's enough work here for a dozen gardeners!"
"Two dozen," Rumpelstiltskin says, "but they are rather short." He walks her over to the window and points to a squat garden gnome, grimacing at them from under a tree. The gardens look decently cared for, as it happens, but Belle has no idea how unless her employer's magic works better on trees than on cobwebs. "You see that little fellow? He and his friends take care of the grounds for me."
"But he's an ornament...isn't he?" Belle's learned by now not to take anything around here for granted.
"Only by day. By night, he runs around pruning bushes."
"That doesn't seem fair, to keep them like that." The gnome's an ugly little creature and looks none too pleased about his situation, but he's worse off than Belle. At least she doesn't spend the day rooted to the spot.
Except that she does, only her spot's much bigger than the gnome's.
"Gnomes don't play fair, dearie. If they did, they wouldn't have broken their deal with me."
Of course it's another deal. That's what Rumpelstiltskin does when Belle doesn't see him. Though not unexpected it's an unpleasant reminder, and while she knows she's not going to like the answer she can't stop herself from asking the question. "If this is their punishment for breaking the deal, what was the deal?"
"They didn't have to do the gardening."
Another crazy giggle, another lunatic glint in the madman's eye. Belle wants to feel bad for the gnomes. She wants to feel angry at Rumpelstiltskin. Disgust, or loathing, or disappointment...any of these things would do. He inspires the worst feelings in the world.
With Gaston, there was boredom. Boredom and...nothing, not even dislike. She didn't care about him enough to dislike him.
With Rumpelstiltskin, there's everything from fear (barely there, just on the fringes) to care (is he eating enough? he always seems so thin). There's revulsion for the awful things he's done, and sympathy for the loneliness he tries to hide. Resentment for taking her away from her family and friends, but at the same time, he's become her friend. She can't hate him. She can like him, she might even love him, but she can't hate him.
Man or monster, or perhaps both. Neither, even. Belle doesn't know what he is, but she's learning who he is, and that's complicated enough in itself. The more she learns, the more she has to accept that she can't appreciate the good if she doesn't acknowledge the bad.
And there's a lot of good, even if Rumpelstiltskin likes to pretend it's nothing to do with him. He's good to Belle, at least, and she's going nowhere.
She can't. They have a deal.