#sieben9

[celticheartedfangirl]

Okay you guys .....

@sieben9 is going to watch the SGU episode Human tomorrow.

Anyone else think they should do a wee bit of live blogging for that one?

I think so.

[gch1995]

Get to know me tag meme (tagged by @rumplefloofywoobiestiltskin)

Rules: Tag 9 people you want to know better and answer the questions.

Name: Grace 

Gender: Female

Birthday: July 6, 1995, so I’m 23 years old going on 24 now. It feels like my generation is getting old so fast! Like, I can’t believe that Hilary Duff, Zac Efron,Taylor Swift, Vanessa Hudgens, Drake Bell, Josh Peck, Emmy Rossum, Lea Michele, Ashley Tisdale Dianna Agron, and Amanda Bynes are already in their early thirties! I can’t believe Miley Cyrus, Dylan and Cole Sprouse, Selena Gomez, Emma Roberts, Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart, Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato, Victoria Justice, Sophie Turner, Ariana Grande,  Emma Watson, Jennifer Lawrence, Freddie Highmore, Joe Jonas, Miranda Cosgrove, Anna Sophia Robb, Debbie Ryan, Jaimie Lynn Spears, and Dakota Fanning are all around the same age as me! I can’t believe we’re already in our mid twenties to early thirties! It feels like our childhoods were not that long ago, even though they were over ten years ago! It still feels like I didn’t watch Hannah Montana, The Amanda Show, Sonny with a Chance, The Wizards of Waverley Place, Drake and Josh, Zoey 101, iCarly, Because of Winn Dixie, Hairspray (2007), The Bridge to Terabethia, The Suite Life of Zac and Cody, Jessie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Glee, the High School Musical films, Victorious, Unfabulous, Sharkboy and LavaGirl, The Lizzie McGuire series, The Phantom of the Opera, The Twilight Saga, and the Harry Potter movies on TV and in movie theaters when I was a kid growing up with these guys that long ago! I still remember singing You Belong With Me, Teardrops on My Guitar, Love Story, Picture to Burn, Boyfriend, Our Song, Baby, Never Say Never, One Less Lonely Girl, and buying my friend in high school a Justin Bieber album for her birthday because she was obsessed with him back in 2012! I remember being a stupid kid in middle school and high school who thought she was so smart because she managed to read all four of the trashy Twilight novels by Stephanie Meyer in less than a year!!! I remember how fucking stupid I was as a kid for idolizing Edward Cullen’s and Bella Swan’s romance!!! I’ve matured so much since then, we all have, but it still feels like our childhoods/teenage years weren’t that long ago! We’re still relatively young adults! A lot of people older who are over thirty five, would still call us kids, but it feels like we’ve grown/are growing up so damn fast!!! It still feels like we should be babies!!! I think a great thing about those of us in our generation though is just how young most of us still look in our twenties to early thirties for our age!!! Like, I still look the same as I did seven years ago when I was sixteen at nearly twenty-four! Selena Gomez, Dylan and Cole Sprouse, Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande, Victoria Justice,Taylor Swift, Kristen Stewart, Justin Bieber, Vanessa Hudgens, Zac Efron, Emma Watson, Emmy Rossum, and Freddie Highmore still mostly look the same as they did over ten years ago! We’re the generation that seems to age well and/or barely age at all, so long as we take care of ourselves! We’re the age of vampires!! Relationship Status: Single, in the romantic sense, but I have my parents, my brothers, my grandparents, my aunt and my little cousins, and a cat for family.

Favorite Color(s): Any shade of pink, red, or blue

Top 3 Ships:

1). Rumbelle (Rumplestiltskin x Belle) from ABC’s Once Upon A Time, but with conditions. I love how much they love each other, and would do anything for each other when they are both in-character. I’m also a sucker for the whole “love redeems” and BATB tropes in fiction, but they also tend to be the ones that the writers love to fuck up deliberately for shits ad giggles at some point on TV shows when they get bored or lazy. That’s why I only accept their individual characters or relationship together when they are both written in-character, so mostly from S1-3A of canon OUAT and in various canon-divergent/AU scenarios thereafter. However, I feel like the same thing can be said about every other remaining main character/ ship in canon OUAT post 3A. There was a serious nosedive in characterization, consistency, and storytelling integrity after Neal got killed off in canon OUAT, and while there were moments where Rumple, Belle, Emma, and everyone else seemed to be like the characters and relationships I originally fell in love with in canon from 3B-S7, I still feel like the show truly ended most organically and satisfyingly with “Going Home” (3x11), and there were serious problems with the writing starting to show with plot versus character driven writing, rape culture, abuse apology, broken rules of magic, plotholes, and character favoritism, even before 3B in S2. But after Neal got killed off, Hook became the main lead, and they started resurrecting the dead with magic when it suited the plot, they clearly didn’t know what the fuck they were doing anymore, and weren’t trying to tell any sort of story at all by undoing everyone’s original characterizations for plot back-and-forth.Everyone was ruined by illogically ooc, inconsistent, and toxic character destroying plot driven inexcusably bad writing that made absolutely no sense, which made them all unsympathetic and unrecognizable from 3B-S7 at one point or another, including Emma, Belle, the Charmings, and Henry, the “good guys,” so I try to pretend it never happened, and quit watching regularly after S5 to preserve my sanity.

2). Jane Eyre x Mr. Edward-Fairfax Rochester from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte-Again, I’m a sucker for the whole “love redeems” trope in fiction, and I appreciate how Edward is portrayed as the “dark” one, while Jane is the “virtuous” one, but neither one of them are without their flaws that go unaddressed, which is a big problem with a lot of “love redeems” couples. Their conflicts become hypocritically one-sided. 

3). Anne Shirley x Gilbert Blythe from the Anne of Green Gables series by Lucy Maud Montgomery-These two started out as frenemies, then became best friends in childhood and adolescence, and then eventually got married. The perfect love story!

Last Song I Listened To: I watched and listened to the Hairspay (2007) musical-comedy film adaptation on Netflix with Nikki Blonsky, Amanda Bynes, John Travolta, Zac Efron, Queen Latifah, Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brittany Snow, James Marsden, Elijah Kelley, and Allison Janney, and have been jamming out to Miss Baltimore Crabs, The Ladies’ Choice, Good Morning Baltimore, I Can Hear the Bells, You Can’t Stop the Beat,  Welcome to the ‘60s, Run and Tell That, Big, Blonde and Beautiful, and Without Love a lot since remembering the music again. Does that count?

Last Movie I Watched: The Silence of the Lambs (1991) with Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins on Netflix.

I’m tagging @ishtarelisheba, @mrgoldsdearie, @sieben9, @emospritelet, @rufeepeach, @ellen729, @pinchtheprincess, @0ceanofdarkness, @thestory812 and whoever else wants to do it. 

[abovethemists]

Oh! So now that you’ve finished off season 6 I can share my favorite fic of mine with you, @sieben9! I started it during the hiatus between 6A and 6B and finished it shortly after 6B ended so it’s canon divergent. It takes place a couple years after the events of season 6 and is based on the idea that Rumple and Belle didn’t get back together, but have a friendly co-parenting relationship that they’re both totally happy with. Obviously. Neither of them wants anything more than that I promise. 

Here’s the synopsis: Belle and Rumple never got back together after the events of season 6, but they did get their baby back. When Gideon turns 3, Belle realizes she wants another baby. The problem is, she only wants another child with Rumple. 

The Future’s So Bright

Along with gorgeous cover art by @midstorm

[anthonybrxdgerton]

Lily Sparks OUAT recaps masterpost.

So, @sieben9 I don’t believe you had a pleasure to meet Lily Sparks yet? She’s a tv.com journalist who happens to make pretty damn ouat recaps.

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN THE LINKS TO EPISODES YOU HAVEN’T SEEN YET, BUT DON’T WORRY, THOSE EPISODES ARE NOT TITLED SO YOU WON'T ACCIDENTALLY BE SPOILED.

ALSO: I CAN’T FIND ANY MORE RECAPS PAST 6.11 SO IF ANYONE KNOWS WHY/HAVE ANY MORE LINKS (IF THEY EXIST) PLEASE LET ME KNOW AND DON’T SPOIL ANYTHING FOR SIEBEN)

She is funny,

sarcastic,

and she’s always brutally honest.

Emphasis on brutally.

Of course, the photos are not the only thing you might enjoy, Lily’s recaps really are something else, and besides being sarcastic little shit, she’s very often on point. Here’s one paragraph from 1x06:

Snow and Prince Charming have mixed DNA, so for him to look at a windmill and decide to go back to his fake wife is not piquing my interest in their relationship so much as punishing me for caring about them in the first place. It doesn't help that Josh Dallas might seriously be into Ginnifer Goodwin. I mean, if the acting he's doing opposite his fairytale mom is any indication, I don't think that crackling energy in his scenes with Ginnifer is acting. #StartingRumors

About year later Josh and Ginny got married.

Links are under the cut!

Season 1:

1.01 Pilot (aka. Too Crazy Not to Root For)

1.02 The Thing You Love Most (aka. Curses!)

1.03 Snow Falls (aka. Kiss and Wake Up)

1.04 The Price of Gold (aka. Assassination of (Fairy Tale) Character)

1.05 That Still Small Voice (aka. Pulling the Strings)

1.06 The Shepherd (aka. Snow Job)

1.07 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (aka. Crying Wolf)

1.08 Desperate Souls (aka. Kiss My Boot!)

1.09. True North (aka. Who's Your Daddy?)

1.10 7.10 AM (aka. When Doves Cry)

1.11 Fruit of the Poisonous Tree (aka. Genie in a Bottle)

1.12 Skin Deep (aka. Deeply Disappointing)

1.13 What Happened To Frederick (aka. Real Love)

1.14 Dreamy (aka. Rotten Dwarf Eggs)

1.15 Red-Handed (aka. Time to Transform)

1.16 Heart of Darkness (aka. Straight to the Heart (of Darkness))

1.17 Hat Tricks (aka. A Tip of the Hat)

1.18 The Stable Boy (aka. Mother Knows Best)

1.19 The Return (aka. Sonny-Side Up)

1.20 The Stranger (aka. A Heartwarming Nightmare)

1.21 An Apple As Red As Blood (aka. Snackrificies)

1.22 A Land Without Magic (aka. There’s A Cloud Hanging Over Us)

Season 2:

2.01 Broken (aka. (Literally) Falling Into Place)

2.02 We Are Both (aka. The Un-Evil Queen)

2.03 Lady of the Lake (aka. A Million Little Pieces)

2.04 The Crocodile (aka. Never-again Land)

2.05. The Doctor (aka. A Patched-Together Abomination)

2.06 Tallahassee (aka. No Honor Among Thieves)

2.07 Child of the Moon (aka. Pack Mentality)

2.08 Into The Deep (aka. Bedtime for Bonzo)

2.09 Queen of Hearts (aka. New Conflict Ahoy, Me Hearties!)

2.10 The Cricket Game (aka. Can People Change? Who Cares?)

2.11 The Outsider (aka. For Whom the Belle Tolls)

2.12 In the Name of the Brother (aka. Multi-dimensional Storytelling, Literally)

2.13 Tiny (aka. Take Us to the Beans!)

2.14 Manhattan (aka. In the Name of the Father)

2.15 The Queen Is Dead (aka. Birthday Girl)

2.16 The Miller’s Daughter (aka. Sympathy for the Devil)

2.17 Welcome To Storybrooke (aka. Open Your Heart to Me (Also Can We All Start 'Shipping Emma and Regina?))

2.18 Selfless, Brave And True (aka. Bait and Switch)

2.19 Lacey (aka. The Lacey Is a Tramp!)

2.20 The Evil Queen (aka. This Show Just Keeps Bagging on Regina/the Evil Queen)

2.21 Second Star To The Right (aka. The Diamond Goes Pear-shaped)

2.22 And Straight on ‘Til Morning (aka. Straight on 'Til Season 3)

Season 3:

3.01 The Heart of the Truest Believer (aka. U Start Believing in Me & I'll Start Believing in U)

3.02 Lost Girl (aka. Breaking the Cycle)

3.03 Quite A Common Fairy (aka. Watching With Hope, Not Anger)

3.04 Nasty Habits (aka. Nasty Messages)

3.05 Good Form (aka. Bromance, Romance, and Hook-ups)

3.06 Ariel (aka. Part of Which World?)

3.07 Dark Hollow (aka. How Darling)

3.08 Think Lovely Thoughts (aka. Dusthead Deadbeat Dads)

3.09 Save Henry (aka. I Regret Nothing)

3.10 The New Neverland (aka. A Familiar Story Device)

3.11 Going Home (aka. Over the Borderline)

3.12 New York City Serenade (aka. Pawed by a Flying Monkey)

3.13 Witch Hunt (aka. A Mother's Touch)

3.14 The Tower (aka. Once Upon a Freudian Slip)

3.15 Quiet Minds (aka. Lumiere Arrives and an Old Flame Gets Snuffed)

3.16 It’s Not Easy Being Green (aka. Once Upon a Repetition Compulsion)

3.17 The Jolly Roger (aka. Your Curse Is On My Lips)

3.18 Bleeding Through (aka. What Ghost Around Comes Around)

3.19 A Curious Thing (aka. Give Your Heart a Break)

3.20 Kansas (aka. Ding, Dong, the Witch Is... Something)

3.21/3.22 Snow Drifts/There’s No Place Like Home (aka. Twice Upon a Cash Grab) 

Season 4 (titled up to episode 3):

4.01 A Tale of Two Sisters (aka. Not Cool, Bro)

4.02 White Out (aka. More Like Wig Out!)

4.03 Rocky Road (aka. A Hot Mess of a Sunday)

4.04

4.05

4.06

4.07

4.08 (those two epiodes are treated as one)

4.09

4.10

4.11

4.12

4.13

4.14

4.15

4.16

4.17

4.18

4.19

4.20

4.21

Season 5:

5.01

5.02

5.03

5.04

5.05

5.06

5.07

5.08 (two episodes as one gain)

5.09

5.10

5.11

5.12

5.13

5.14

5.15

5.16

5.17

5.18

5.19

5.20

5.21

Season 6:

6.01

6.02

6.03

6.04

6.05

6.06

6.07

6.08

6.09

6.10

6.11

[therumbellehappyendingaward-blog]

Summary: Rumplestiltskin tries to rid himself of the dagger, but things don’t go according to plan and he is left feeling more vulnerable than he has in centuries and now he fears he will lose everything but Belle isn’t about to let him give up and with her help he may just learn the true nature of magic and the power of wishful thinking. 

Chapter 1 Writer: @sieben9

PROMPT: MAGIC

AO3: HERE

A crash shook the castle, setting the old walls trembling, and making Belle jump so badly that she nearly sent her book flying halfway across the library. She backed against a wall and waited with bated breath for the shudders to subside. It had been some time since one of Rumplestiltskin's dabblings in magic had gone wrong quite this spectacularly, and she didn't want to risk being nearly crushed by a falling piece of furniture. Again.

Finally, the trembling abated, and Belle breathed a sigh of relief, before surveying the damage around her. Considering how intense the shaking had been, it wasn't too bad. Quite a lot of books had tumbled down from their shelves, and Belle flinched at the thought of the damage the fall might have caused them, before setting out to clear up the mess. She piled the more seriously afflicted tomes in a corner. Maybe she could convince Rumplestiltskin to repair them as an apology. If he stayed true to form, it wouldn't take him long to appear somewhere in the room under the guise of complaining about the chaos, while really apologising for causing it in the first place and, most likely, checking up on her safety.

A silly ruse, really, but he was often like that: Concerned with maintaining a fearsome reputation that she knew was mostly for show. The fact that she was able spent her evenings reading in this library — the library he had all but admitted building for her — was maybe the clearest sign of that. These days, her duties in the castle seemed minimal, at most, and brought her suspiciously often into the company of its owner. Belle suspected that the building was either capable of cleaning itself, or that Rumplestiltskin simply maintained most rooms with magic.

It took Belle a while to realise that Rumplestiltskin wasn't going to make an appearance. Outside, the sun was already setting, and she was nearly done tidying up the library. It seemed odd enough that a twinge of worry tugged at her gut, silly as it seemed. After all, what could possibly have harmed the Dark One? He probably just wanted to avoid apologising — he certainly made it look like the act caused him physical pain each time.

Well, Belle decided, if Rumplestiltskin wasn't going to come looking for her, she was just going to have to go looking for him. It certainly didn't have anything to do with that persistent feeling of worry; she simply wanted him to fix these books for her. Yes, that was definitely it.

Her first thought was to just check his usual haunts within the castle, but she quickly gave up on the idea. She only saw him in the more open rooms during the day, and that was certainly not the place where he conducted his magical experiments. No, if she wanted to find Rumplestiltskin, she would have to find the source of the explosion. This train of thought led her along new cracks and flaws in the castle's structure all the way to the opposite end of the building, and up into another tower where she found an open door.

"Rumplestiltskin?" she asked. Even if they had a more familiar relationship these days, it seemed imprudent to surprise a busy sorcerer.

No reply came, so she knocked on the door, repeating more loudly, "Rumplestiltskin? Are you in there?"

Silent seconds passed, and Belle was about to resign herself to the idea that she might have been wrong about his whereabouts, when she heard a very quiet "Come in."

With a satisfied smile — she had found him after all — Belle pushed open the door and stepped into the room. It was larger than she had expected, and the air smelled like a meadow after a thunderstorm, coppery and strange, but also fresh and washed clean. Various shelves and clutter of no doubt magical items took up most of the space, but in the middle stood a single table that was suspiciously clear of any disarray. Next to it, a figure sat slumped on a stool, and it took Belle a moment to recognise it as Rumplestiltskin.

"I've never seen this place before," Belle whispered, mostly to herself.

"That would explain why I leave tracks in the dust whenever I come in here."

Belle looked down pointedly at the spotless floor — well, spotless save for the recent signs of disarray, at least — but didn't rise to the bait otherwise. "I was cleaning and heard a noise. Are you alright?" Calling the almighty thunder from earlier 'a noise' felt like even more of a lie than claiming that she was cleaning while actually reading in the library, but she doubted that he would call her on it.

Indeed, Rumplestiltskin just waved her off. "Yes, yes, I'm fine. Everything is fine. Now go away."

Belle raised an eyebrow. This did not seem like him. If nothing else, he should have taken the opportunity to tease her about the allegedly terrible condition of the castle. Squinting, she took a closer look at him, and saw that he looked visibly dishevelled, if unharmed. "Are you sure your alright?" she asked again. "Half the castle seems to have fallen in on itself and—"

" I said I'm fine!" he snapped, now all but snarling at her. He never got up from his stool, but Belle still flinched back. At that, his face softened, but only for a moment. "I am in the middle of a very important breakthrough. Now leave, before you can cause any more damage."

"I'm sorry," Belle managed to say. "I was just worried—"

"I said leave!" His arm moved lightning quick and Belle ducked away instinctively. Behind her something shattered, and when she looked around, she saw the remains of an empty beaker. Without another word, she backed out of the door and fled back to her room.

##

The next morning, Belle woke up determined to find Rumplestiltskin and confront him about his behaviour on the night before. Yes, he had a temper, but he had never really lost it at her like that since she had set free that poor man who had tried to steal from him. Something was wrong, and he was going to tell her what.

However, when Belle went looking for him once again infuriating man seemed nowhere to be found. More than that, as the day went on it became clear to Belle that he was actively avoiding her. While his schedule had never been entirely predictable, Belle had gained the impression that he would usually turn up in the dinner hall at the appropriate times, and on most days, she would happen across him several times a day while going about her — now relatively few — duties. They would talk, or at least trade banter, and both would usually leave the conversation in a better mood than when they had begun it. Now, however, she saw neither hair, nor sparkly hide of him for the entire day, save for a short run-in in the evening, when she went back to her room and found him leaning against the wall, looking decidedly exhausted.

“Are you—” she began, her earlier irritation already forgotten.

“You should be asleep,” he replied, ignoring her question. “Good night.”

Belle tried to engage him again, but he fell silent and refused to even look at her, until she stalked off, once again intensely irritated. Only later did she realise that she'd never seen him actually walking the corridors before. Part of her had always assumed that he magically appeared and disappeared as he pleased, never bothering with mundane concerns like corridors or stairs.

This pattern of evasion continued for two more days. In the end, Belle simply lost patience and went looking for the castle’s elusive owner. Her search didn’t take long. She found him in a previously empty room on the ground floor, buried in a thick tome with something about "Protective Spells" in the title. Belle only caught a glimpse of the cover, before he slammed it shut to glare at her. "What is it now?" Rumplestiltskin asked in a none-too-gentle tone.

"You have been avoiding me for three days," Belle said, trying to keep calm. "Ever since the accident in the lab. I just wanted to make sure—"

"I'm fine," Rumplestiltskin snarled and his emphasis alone convinced Belle that he wasn't.

"You've been avoiding me." Belle couldn't help but let the words sound like an accusation.

"Maybe because I was getting tired of your inane questions." Rumplestiltskin never moved, but his words had gained a dangerous edge.

"Don't be ridiculous! We've spoken exactly once in the last days, and you were ready to bolt to avoid that conversation, too. Not to mention that you threw something at me to avoid explaining what happened. This isn't like you."

"Oh, and you would be the expert on what is 'like me', I suppose?" A nasty grin, devoid of any humour, flashed across his face. "No doubt through the long hours of deep conversations we've had, where I bared my heart and soul to you, and which, of course, make you amply qualified to judge my state of mind."

Belle pressed her lips together. "This is exactly what I mean," she said, although this was much more like him. He could be cruel, sometimes, but rarely without reason, and almost never to her. Not in the recent weeks, at least. "And I'm going to keep asking you questions until you tell me what is wrong. You can't avoid me forever."

His eyes flashed. "Maybe not. But I can certainly lock you in your old cell if you won't leave me alone, when I order you to."

Silence fell, and Belle felt the blood drain from her face. "I think," she said, choosing each word carefully, "that we should end this conversation right now."

Even Rumplestiltskin seemed to realise that he had gone too far. His eyes widened, and he moved to get up. "No, wait," he began. "Belle, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"I don't think I will." The words seemed to come from far away, even though it was her mouth saying them. "When you're ready to talk, come and find me. You usually know where. Until then, I don't think I have anything to say to you, Rumplestiltskin." With that, she stalked off, fighting against the tears that were stinging her eyes.

##

Belle woke in almost complete darkness, wedged into a tight space, with aching muscles and dry eyes. For a moment, her thoughts raced, trying to remember where she was. After her fight with Rumplestiltskin, she hadn't been able to face going back to her room, still too shaken by Rumplestiltskin's threat. She liked to think that he would never follow through on it, but the thought of waking up in that dungeon again had felt like an iron vice squeezing her chest until it was fit to crumple in on itself. Instead, she had gone to the only place that still felt like safety.

The library. Right. She was in the library, wedged between two shelves that hid her from view of anyone who might be glancing casually into the room.

She remembered crying a little, before forcing herself to calm down and pulling a book down from the shelves. She must have fallen asleep while reading, because the moon now stood high in the sky and cast its pale light through the library's windows. Belle sighed. Comforting as the books were, the library did not make for good sleeping quarters. She would have to go to her room, or be completely exhausted in the morning.

Just as she was getting up, she heard a faint thump on the stairs and froze. There was really only one option for who could be making noise at this hour in the castle, and Belle had no desire to confront Rumplestiltskin when she was tired and aching all over from her ill-advised nap.

So she held perfectly still while his steps approached. Were they just a little slower than usual? And what was that faint thump that followed them? Tap-tap-thunk. Tap-tap-thunk.

The sounds changed when he reached the top of the stairs, and she could hear him breathe. Her ears painted a picture of golden skin glittering in the silvery light, while he walked through the room, no doubt looking for her. She heard wood scraping on wood — the ladder, he's using the ladder — and a faint rustling noise.

Silence followed, and Belle listened, barely breathing, for his next move.

It came as a resounding, and almost comically protracted crash. One moment, the library was as quiet as a grave, and in the next, filled with the sound of falling books, falling shelves, and one falling Dark One, who let out a thoroughly undignified curse. Belle flinched and ducked, out of sheer habit, until the crashing had abided. She then cautiously peeked around the shelf, to see Rumplestiltskin lying sprawled amidst scattered books, groaning faintly in what she had to assume was pain.

"Rumplestiltskin?" she asked.

He flinched at the sound of his name, quickly pushing himself up from the ground and into a sitting position, but not getting up entirely. He looked around, clearly searching for something and Belle stepped closer and into a beam of moonlight that fell through a window and illuminated the room.

He flinched and scrambled backwards, away from her, eyes impossibly wide and dark in the faint light. "Who—" He broke off. "Belle?"

She didn't ask who else he had been expecting. For some reason, seeing her seemed to terrify him, and even the thought that he might be scared of her was abhorrent. "I'm sorry," she said, keeping her voice low and soothing. "I didn't know you were here until I heard the crash." That wasn't entirely true, but it was close enough. She certainly hadn't meant to spy on him. "What happened?"

His face closed off again. "I fell."

Belle waited, holding her breath, afraid that anything she might say would only make him close up more. Something was terribly wrong with Rumplestiltskin, that much was clear, but if he didn't tell her what it was, there was no chance of her helping him with it. Only a very small part of Belle was surprised that her first instinct was indeed to help a man who technically still held her captive.

The silence stretched between them, their eyes locked, neither of them willing to make the next move. Then, as if something inside him had snapped under the tension, Rumplestiltskin deflated. "I fell, because I was trying to take out a new book, while still holding this one on the other hand, and put weight on my bad leg."

"I didn't know you had a bad leg," Belle said carefully.

Rumplestiltskin made a sound that could almost be called a laugh. "Of course you didn't," he said bitterly, dropping his gaze from hers. "Normally, I make up for the injury with magic."

This time, Belle didn't say anything. She had the feeling that he was working his way towards what he really wanted to say, and she didn't want to throw him off his path with a wrong word.

After a while, Rumplestiltskin spoke again.  "It was the potion," he explained. "I was trying to — never mind what I was trying to do. Something went wrong, and…" His gaze was fixed on his hands in his lap. "I lost it."

Belle frowned. "Lost what?" She suspected that she already knew the answer, but even forming the thought in her head seemed ludicrous. She had to hear him say it..

Rumplestiltskin took a deep breath and said, in a clear and measured voice, "I lost my magic."

[pinchtheprincess]

@sieben9 mentioned you on a post “Damn, Rumple”

@pinchtheprincess I should probably be more surprised, huh?

That there are dagger control fics? In the Rumbelle fandom?

I think I’d be a touch disappointed in you, if you were. Probably it would take the shine off your star status, and we can’t have that, can we? 

[scribbles-by-kate]

sieben9 mentioned you on a post “Ooooh, it’s Belle focused. Even better! …wait, why is this one so...”

@scribbles-by-kate​ I think the occasional bursting-into-tears might have ruined the atmosphere, yes. What the hell. I just... Can someone set the guy on fire, please? I don't want to involve the poor lobsters in this

@sieben9, yeah, so now you know where the RumBelle/Belle fandom’s abiding loathing for Captain Hook comes from. She literally saved his life and he repaid her by shooting her in the back. Fucking coward. Remember how I said Rumple will go after you directly, while his enemies come after people he loves? Yeah, prime example right there.

Yeah, wish someone would set Hook on fire...

[moonshine-muffin]

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag! (Mal noch 'ne halbe Stunde vor Schluss reingegrätscht, anscheinend *g*)

Dankeschön! (hehe, I see what you did there ^^ Lieber ne halbe Stunde vor Schluss als in der letzten Minute der Nachspielzeit ey. Selbst mein Hund ist fertig mit den Nerven, der muss ja immer mitkläffen wenn seine Menschen grölen)