Fluff prompt: they name their first child after Bae
I’m so sorry. These were supposed to be fluffy prompt fills. But really, this couldn’t have gone any other way.
[you should take this apologetic attitude to mean that here there be angst. or at least pain]
A long time ago, in some period of her life that seemed more dream than reality at this point, Belle had dreamed of children. She had played with dolls as a young child, caring for them like babies and always bringing them along with her on her adventures through her father’s castle and lands. Soon enough she had given up the dolls in favour of more daunting adventures and thoughts of children had flown from her mind entirely. Until she had met a strange, small man who hid behind magic to protect his broken heart. She had barely had enough time with him to realize the True Love that existed between them before they were separated, but she had found herself wondering, on some lonely nights locked up in a tower of the Evil Queen’s castle, what their child might look like, act like, if they ever had one. Then the curse had come and taken away any knowledge of herself for far too long. But she had found Rumplestiltskin again and even through the rough patches she had found herself drifting back to the same notion of a child. It wasn’t the right time for such thoughts of course, which was proved to her when she lost him again.
So much had happened in what seemed like such a short space of time and just when she had managed to get Rumple back, they had lost Baelfire.
The boy Rumple had spent centuries looking for, had created a curse in order to find, and who had searched for a way to bring back his Papa with perhaps even more fervour than Belle herself, all to get back to his own son and the woman he loved. They had lost him so that Rumple could survive to destroy the evil woman who had put them all in such a horrendous position.
Destroy her they had - that had been Rumple’s singular focus from the moment of Bae’s death, and even Belle could only hope to bring him the smallest instances of relief.
Once Zelena was gone, Rumplestiltskin had retreated into himself. He had fixed a potion for Emma to give to Henry, but he couldn’t bear to see the boy or even Emma herself, even when Belle had tried to convince him it might help them to grieve together. Belle knew he would have tried to push her away as well, but she hadn’t let him. They had spent countless days just laying in his bed together, her wrapped around him, trying to hold him together while she was sure she could hear his heart tearing itself to pieces. Sometimes he wept and trembled, sometimes he slept only to awaken screaming as nightmares pursued him, sometimes he just lay still and she knew he wasn’t sleeping - just staring blankly across the room, sometimes she read to him - he seemed most at ease then. Sometimes he would roll over to face her and he would beg her, with his hands and with his eyes and with his words, to make him forget. She would always do her best, but she was never sure if it was enough.
She was terrified when she eventually realized she hadn’t had to deal with monthly bleeding recently. It took her nearly a week to work up the courage to go to a drug store and purchase a test. She brought the box hidden in her purse to Granny’s and sat down to have a cup of tea, held with shaking hands, before slipping into the bathroom of the diner to do the test. The anxiety had left her stomach a churning mess while she waited for the results and her hands had been shaking so much she’d barely been able to pick the little stick up after the three minute wait. The little plus sign was what started the tears because there were no good choices for her to make. She couldn’t get rid of the baby - it would destroy her to lose that connection to Rumple and it would destroy him to lose another child. But Baelfire had been gone barely half a year ago and Belle just knew that Rumple’s guilt over it was going to eat him up inside even more when he found out he would soon have another child. Belle had thought of Bae as a son almost from the moment Rumple had first told her about him, and she knew having another baby so soon after the recent loss was going to affect her as well, but she was sick with worry for Rumple.
It was a difficult nine months. Very difficult. Every change that had to be made to the house to make it safe for a baby, every single decision that had to be made from the colour in the nursery to the method of the birth, had cut the two of them to the bone. Picking a name had been the hardest. They had both had tears in their eyes as they exchanged ideas and wrote them down and when they felt they’d come to something like a decision they had curled up together on the couch and just held on tight.
Belle was fairly certain that neither she nor Rumple had really stopped crying since Bae had died, but while the tears continued the night their daughter was born they were happier and more hopeful tears than they had been for some time.
Rum hadn’t been able to bear the idea of naming the baby after Bae - it felt too close to trying to replace his son, and Belle had agreed. But a diminutive of the name he had chosen to go by in this world without magic had seemed a decent choice.
Nelly Rosalin Gold was born fifteen months and three days after her older brother died to protect the people he loved.
Belle knew her face was a wet mess as she stared up at her True Love, seated next to her on the hospital bed. One of his hands squeezed hers tightly while his other arm held their daughter tightly against his chest. There were tears dripping off of his face as well, and his voice was hoarse with the evidence of his pain as he took a deep breath and whispered to the sleeping baby in his arms.
"Hello, Precious. We’re here now. Your Mama and Papa have got you. We love you so much. And I swear to you that we will never ever let you go.”
