A/N: Something I felt compelled to write after 1x17. Missing scene after MM's escape.
"I have to hurry!" Jefferson murmured quickly to himself as he finished tying Mary Margaret's arms behind her back. "I have to hurry! Emma will start to look for you any moment! I have to hurry!"
"Why are you doing this?" Mary Margaret weakly asked, her chin falling toward her chest as the drugs relaxed her muscles and dulled her senses. The room spun around her, the man before he a blur as he tied her legs together. "Why?"
"Because!" Jefferson grimaced as he tied the knot tightly, and put his hands on her knees to brace as he stood. "Because this is what needs to be done!"
Mary Margaret knew she would have wriggled away from his touch if she were capable of such a powerful movement. "B-But…why?"
"Look," Jefferson roughly grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him. He ignored her tears, not caring much for the emotions of others for whom he did not care about. When she tried to avert his gaze, he forced her back and sternly ordered, "Look at me, Mary Margaret."
She whimpered, but did not disobey.
"You are simply a means to an end," he told her with an insanely gleeful smirk.
"But what end?"
Jefferson shook his head, muffling her cries when he wrapped a scarf around her mouth. In the most tender act he'd ever inflict on another, he wiped away her tears with the pads of his thumbs, calloused from years of sewing.
"What end?" He asked quietly. "You should know what end."
Her head shook furiously, muffled sounds escaping.
Jefferson sighed. "I am doing this for my daughter, Mary Margaret. So she can have her real father back and know that she is loved. Everything I do is for her, to bring her back to me. So that we can be a family again. I am doing this to give her the best future possible."
Jefferson stopped her rebuttal when he grabbed her chin again. Leaning in close to her, he angrily reminded her, "And you of all people should understand that." He paused, and then added with a smirk, "Snow White."
Jefferson ignored her weakened screams as he spun around, grabbing his jacket from the chair. Shrugging it on, he turned off the light of the room, standing in the doorway as he warned her, "Now don't run go running away on me again. You never know what crazy people you'll run into out there."
"You're crazy!"
"No, I am not crazy," his smile faded and his eyes turned dark, "I'm just a man trying to protect a little girl who doesn't know how horrible a life she now lives. That doesn't make me crazy, that makes me a father."
When Mary Margaret began to protest, he roared, "I will not abandon my daughter!"
Jefferson slammed the door behind him, ignorant of her sobbing screams or the way her body violently shook against the restraints, attempting to break free. Jefferson couldn't focus on anything besides the intense hope that soon, after twenty-eight agonizing years, he'd have his daughter back in his arms again.