The One That Got Away

I watched as he paced his room, looking at the window every few seconds. He doesn’t think I exist anymore. He believes I’m dead. The queen told him I was dead. He’s forced himself into believing I’m an apparition, and so to him its become. When we talk he won’t touch me, and I dare not get near him unless it’s in his dreams.

“Rumplestiltskin.” I whisper. “Calm down, love, please.”

“She’s on her way here to make a deal.” He said quietly, “She’s coming here after what she did to you! To us!”

I wandered in front of him, meeting his eyes, “She told me to kiss you, said it would break the curse, but I loved you either way. You’re the one that shattered that, not her! You couldn’t handle the fact that somebody might actually care about you so you forced me away.”

He snarled turning away from me. “Don’t make me regret something I cannot change.”

“And there is the downfall of power…” I whisper, “You must regret what even you can no longer change.”

He began to pace again as I moved away from him. “What if I came back?” I whispered. “What if I found a girl just like me?” I stopped again, looking at him. “What if I told you I could live?”

“Don’t tempt me, Belle.” He whispered.

“Is your power greater than that, Rumplestiltskin?”

Finally, what I’d been waiting for, for what seemed like eternity, happened. He grabbed my shoulders, slamming my back into the wall. My hair flew around me as I looked up at him and smiled.

“I told you I was alive.”

He stared at me for a long time before pulling me into his arms and hugging me tightly. The doors suddenly swung open and the queen walked in, proud and hideous as usual—

I shrieked as he threw himself awake in anger. His entire dream shattered. I gasped, trying to breathe as I stared at my ceiling, in my room, where I’d been the whole time. Its like once I was in his dreams, part of me knew it was not real, but I couldn’t believe it, so I let it be a dream for me too. But unlike Rumplestiltskin, I knew what was coming. The queen was angry with him, and that had repercussions. She’d built a cage that could contain his powers.

And I never told him it was coming. Never told him he was going to be imprisoned.

What does that say about love? I looked around my bedroom, seeing nothing in the darkness, just as I would if the light were on. Pulling my knees up to my chest, I whispered his name to myself; just because I loved the way it felt on my lips. I would never see him again. I would never be with him.

He knew it, I knew it, and we hated the queen for it, because it was all her fault.