The miller's daughter loved her daughter.
This was a fact without dispute. One could not have a child she did not love, and from the way she doted on her, the townspeople could not imagine anything else. Without fail, the young girl received almost anything she wanted. If she didn't get it from her mother, then she certainly got it from her father. It was said that if the miller's daughter loved her daughter, then her husband loved the girl twice as much. The three of them spent many happy years together, enjoying each others' company and having their company enjoyed.
But somewhere along the way, something went wrong.
Regina's cheek stung.
She rubbed one hand along her smooth skin, feeling the imprint of nail marks, the accidental scratches her mother left behind. This was the first time in twelve years her mother ever laid a hand on her in such a way, and she was left wondering what caused it. She'd spoken nothing but the truth. Wasn't that what was asked of her?
The girl straightened the fabric of her sky blue dress, one she'd received as a birthday present only a few weeks before. It was plain in comparison to the frills and poofs most girls of her status wore – in fact, if any of them saw it, they'd call her a peasant, despite the expensive dye. But she'd promised her mother she wouldn't wear it out of the house, unless it was beneath something else with fancier trappings, so she'd received it.
The first time she wore it, her father said she was beautiful. Her mother gave a simple nod in agreement – that was her way.
Perhaps it was not quite the right outfit to be wearing when she wanted to appease her mother.
Regina lifted the fabric over her head, leaving the slim underdress, and stepped away from the mirror, placing the dress on her bed before carousing her wardrobe. Her hand strayed across another dress – lavender, her mother's favorite color – and pulled it out, turning to the mirror once more and holding it against her skin.
A pixie fluttered close to her head and, as she caught its reflection, held up one hand in a gentle wave.
The dress clattered to the ground as Regina raised a hand to her cheek once more. Then she ran out of her room and down the hallway, bare feet loud on the stone floor.
"Mother!"
A maidservant in tan with a white apron reached her first and stood there with her as another went to find the mistress of the house. She held Regina close, running one hand through her dark curls, until the girl's mother appeared – a regal woman with auburn hair that curled past her shoulders. When she appeared at the edge of the hallway, Regina tore away from the servant and ran to her mother. She grabbed her mother's gown, hid her face in the folds of her dress.
Her mother's eyes flickered to the confused servant before focusing on her daughter, one hand stroking her back in an attempt to comfort. "What's wrong, dear? Did something frighten you again?"
Regina shook her head into her mother's dress and took a deep breath of her mother's scent – red roses and the faintest hint of wheat. She steadied her shaking, looked up at her mother with dark, frightened eyes, and started to speak. "A pixie—" She gulped and forced herself to speak up. "Another pixie, in my room."
Her mother froze, and Regina flinched, eyes screwing shut until she heard her mother's voice again.
"Leave us."
"Yes, mistress Cora," the maidservant said, and Regina opened her eyes enough to see her give a slight bow before returning back down the hall.
Cora knelt down to her daughter's level, and Regina froze as her mother reached one hand out, the tips of her nails stroking once along the impressions on her cheek, a frown knitted into her features. "Did you talk to it?"
"No, Mother." Regina glanced away, back to her room, looking anywhere but at her mother. Then she turned back, eager, focused. "I came out here and called for you as soon as it appeared."
"Good girl." Cora kissed her daughter's forehead then smoothed the girl's tangled hair. She smiled, but the expression didn't meet her eyes. "I'm here now, darling. Don't be afraid."
Regina nodded once, trying to remain stoic and failing. She pressed forward against Cora once more, wrapping her arms around her mother. She sought comfort but did not find it.
Cora hesitated only a second – practice helped – then pulled her daughter tight against her chest. The girl was warm, so warm, and the sound of her heartbeat against her chest calmed her. She held her even tighter to her hollow chest until her daughter let her go. Regina looked up at her mother, and her eyes looked so much like his but wider. Still, despite all of his charm, the innocence remained the same. If her heart were here, there might have been a pang in Cora's chest, and a part of her might have felt sad. But, as it was, without her heart all she had were memories – remembrances that once she'd been nothing but a weak, vulnerable woman.
Her daughter would not be like that.
"What do I do, Mother? About the pixies?" Regina asked, shaking her out of her reverie.
Cora pushed locks of her daughter's dark hair out of her face and behind her ear, then she let her hand rest on her cheek. "For now, don't talk to it. Finish dressing, and then we'll begin your training on everything you need to know about them. How does that sound?"
Regina nodded once, a smile lighting up her face, and turned away, grasping her mother's hand in her own as she returned to her room. She scooped her lavender dress off the floor, her eyes scanning the room. Cora did the same and, on not seeing anything, as expected of one so old, she allowed herself to watch her young daughter. After a few moments, the wrinkles tight across Regina's forehead relaxed, and the smile returned. She glanced to her mother and lifted the dress for her to see. "I was planning on wearing this. Is it..." Regina hesitated and lowered her head. "Is it okay?"
In a moment like this, a small part of Cora, the part that still belonged with her heart, felt warm. The logical part of her said that someday Regina would grow up and stop seeking her approval, and part of her knew that, if she still had her heart, she would want a mental painting of this moment, one she could hold close – a valued memory, just like those connected with her past.
But instead her lips pressed together and she gave a slight nod. "Although that dress is most becoming, it is not conducive to a day spent indoors and studying. You wouldn't want to wrinkle it, after all." She glanced to Regina's four poster bed and ran her hands along the smooth silk of the dress lying there. "You should wear this instead," she said, examining the sky blue fabric.
At least if it got wrinkled, they wouldn't lose anything significant.
Regina didn't say anything, stared at the blue dress for a moment, and then nodded before forcing a smile onto her face. She started to replace the lavender dress in her wardrobe, but as soon as Cora noticed what she was doing, she stopped her, placing a hand on her daughter's arm. "We have servants for that, dear." She made a motion to her bed. "Just leave it there. They can put it away while we study."
Another nod from her daughter, just as firm, and the smile returned as she grabbed her mother's hand again, squeezing it once. "Of course!"
Her eyes were bright, and that confused her.
Cora carefully took her hand out of her daughter's grasp and smiled the same smile that never reached her eyes. "Finish quick, dear one, for there is much to learn."
"Yes, Mother."
When Cora led her to her private room, Regina knew there was something wrong. Sure, the slap last night told her that much, but not only had she never set foot in her mother's room of magic, she'd been expressly forbidden to ever enter it. But now, to be led here...
To be quite honest, she wasn't sure she wanted it like this. Her mother's magic was dark, mysterious, beautiful. It was completely Cora's realm, just like her father's was in the stables with his horses. Although she'd hoped one day to be old enough for her mother to train her in the magical arts, she was afraid this was as close as she would ever come to it.
She wanted to learn magic, not...pixie lore.
But perhaps pixie lore was magic.
Was this why her mother appeared to hate the pixies? Because she had stolen their magic and learned all of their secrets? Was she afraid they would come after her...or would hurt her daughter out of spite?
Regina held back a silent shudder.
Her stockinged feet shuffled across the cold stone floor. Most days she wore heels or her black boots – her mother hated the boots but accepted them whenever they went riding – but after seeing the pixie, being promised to learn everything – she'd been in a hurry, and so had her mother. Cora hadn't questioned her lack of shoes, if she even noticed it, and that was a wonder in and of itself.
But something told her, if she should ever enter this room again, she needed to wear her boots. She didn't want to be vulnerable here at all.
Glass beakers and bottles lined shelves on the walls, each one holding a different potion or dust. One was filled with a floating gold liquid that seemed to be held in by the cork at the top, while another was filled with sparkling black and blue dust...or, at least, Regina thought it was dust, but by the way it kept shifting, she couldn't quite decide. Scattered in-between all of the glass containers were scrolls – countless scrolls, one after the other, filling all of the empty space – and where Regina caught the barest glimpse inside of one, she noticed not just her mother's tiny, cramped writing but another that looked...fancier, more effeminate. She couldn't quite place it.
Her mother led her to a desk and created a chair, the purple clouds indicative of her magic surrounding it until all of a sudden it appeared. The clouds returned on one of the windowless walls – the room was unnaturally bright for the lack of light – and a large board appeared on the wall, white and with an ashy piece of wood in front of it. Then, as if on second thought, the board disappeared with a wave of her mother's hand.
Cora gestured to the chair and turned away for a moment, auburn hair swishing along the nape of her neck. "Sit."
Regina knew better than to ask questions, knew to obey the command without hesitation. Maybe it was still wrong of her to be in this room – as curious as she was in regards to her mother's magic, a part of her was just as terrified. As her mother searched among her shelves for something in particular, Regina let out a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She gripped the edges of her chair, digging her nails into the hard wooden surface then releasing her grip. She glanced at one of the scrolls again, only to find this one covered with nothing but the unfamiliar scrawling script. "Mother?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Who wrote all of this?"
To her gain, Cora didn't freeze or miss a beat. "A horrible little imp of a man whom I hope you never meet." She sighed and pulled a leather-bound book off a shelf, dust coating its cover until she wiped it off, revealing intricate golden weavings, spirals, and Celtic knots. With a single motion, she turned and placed it on the table in front of her daughter, flipping through pages until, finally, she stopped on one.
Regina glanced down and focused on the page, studying it as her eyes widened. "Yes, yes, that's it! That's the pixie!"
Cora let a smile, wary but sure, spread across her face, her lips tight in a thin little line. "I thought so." She gazed at the image on the book in front of her. She'd seen the image before, although she'd never seen a true pixie herself. Her hand reached out, one finger tracing the drawing slow and soft, and then she looked back to her daughter. "I've been researching these pixies for a very long time, hoping that my research would be needless, that they would never contact you."
Feeling the solemnity of her mother's words, Regina took a deep breath, glanced to the picture, and then let her gaze rest once more on the woman in front of her. "What are they, really?"
"Incubators."
The man with scaly golden skin sat in his castle, calmly spinning straw into gold. The very motion soothed him, the rough feel of the straw as it passed through his hands and around the still creaking wheel. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, allowing muscle memory to take over. Like this, he could imagine other moments in time – a woman sitting in the corner of the room, smiling and humming as she sewed a patch on one of his worn work shirts, or a small boy with curly brown hair scampering around a threadbare cottage while the woman shouted at her now useless husband, or that same boy now older, the woman long gone, his dark eyes full of betrayal.
I don't know why you focus on all these old memories. There's nothing there for you anymore.
The man shifted in his seat, ignoring the voice in his head for as long as he could, trying to keep the image of his son pure in his mind. For a moment, only a moment, he was able to accomplish it— but then the image faded until only darkness was left. He knew the voice would return before it did and shivered once.
Would you like to see our latest recruits?
"No, dearie, I'd prefer you take care of your own business." He kept his eyes shut. The alien Incubator didn't need one of its host messengers nearby to talk with him, but often, out of an appreciation for the sanity of its most valuable asset, it did so anyway, letting one body stay here while countless others scavenged the world for desperate souls.
He hoped that would be the end of this conversation, but he sensed the Incubator's lingering need to talk. He sighed again and opened his eyes, focusing on the straw between his fingers. "What is it, dearie? You know I'm more than willing to explain whatever emotion you need."
A pixie – one of the Incubator's host bodies – flew over the spinning wheel, its translucent wings beating twice to keep it aloft. Once, the alien told him that the design was intentional – that little children liked to believe in fairies who could grant them the greatest desires of their hearts. Given that the fairies themselves were real with a dust reliant magic of their own harvested by their little dwarven slaves, it would be quite easy for the children to demand attention and wishes.
But fairy magic was unpredictable – they often didn't so much fulfill the child's wish as they gave them a means of being helped – often with drastic and unfortunate consequences.
With this in mind, the alien Incubator had introduced pixies as its own host bodies. They took a form similar to the fairies, but without the frill and sparkle and fanciness that the fairies wore. The Incubator's pixies – always women, just like the fairies – wore their hair down and always seemed shy and soft-spoken, subservient to everyone but their leader and human compatriot. In some senses, they were the peasants of the fairy world.
Their magic, however, was much stronger than the fairies, and their deals were at once both more rewarding and more costly.
Magic always came with a price.
This particular body, with long mousy hair and a sky blue dress, seemed to sit on the edge of the spinning wheel, crossing its legs and clasping its hands in its lap. I'm having problems with one of our possible recruits, Rumplestiltskin. Do you have any advice?
"Show me."
Rumplestiltskin hated this part, hated how the Incubator living in his flesh could take over his mind with the simplest request. True, it often chose not to do so, allowing him to be himself as much as possible – and even, in one case, declining the opportunity to add a new recruit to its contracted army on the basis that he did not desire it. This did not stop him from hating its coldly logical touch and its apparent distaste for even the smallest of emotions – or the knowledge that, should it so desire, it could control him just as it controlled its other bodies, despite any sort of fight he might make to the contrary. It was the Incubator within who cost him his son, and for that, it was the part of him fused with the Incubator which he most loathed.
At his words, the Incubator mind filtered into his own, taking over his sight, and at first he couldn't focus on any one thing. Multiple images – everything that every pixie was seeing or had seen – flooded his mind all at once until the Incubator focused on one image in particular, bringing it into an even greater light, closer and closer until that was all Rumplestiltskin could see. And yet – the connection to the Incubator's mind left a constant flooding of information in the background, something that the cursed part of him took in and filed away in his subconscious.
The different children – and their families – would flood his dreams.
He knew the girl with the tangled brown hair as soon as he saw her, even though he had never spoken to her. A pixie fluttered unseen right behind the girl – and Rumplestiltskin held back a delighted giggle when he saw the book sitting in front of her, a quick magical sketch of a pixie on one of its pages. Her name slipped through his lips, a name he'd known since prophesying her very existence—
"Regina."
The Incubator within waited, neither angry nor impatient. It knew there was a reason its emotional, human host hadn't yet given advice, knew that he was waiting for something to happen before he spoke and the image was dismissed—
And it judged him for that.
A flash of auburn hair, a woman who once became close to an Incubator herself—
"You just need to wait," Rumplestiltskin said finally, opening his eyes and returning to spinning his straw into gold. "Cora knows too much about your ways to give her daughter any room for desires you and your kind might...use to your advantage."
But she has potential. The pixie cocked its head to one side, as if it were confused. She must have something she wants very strongly – a wish – or else she couldn't see us. You know this.
"Cora will make her child afraid of you." Rumplestiltskin stood and stopped his spinning wheel before gathering the basket of gold.
He didn't need any of this.
"Belle? Will you come here?" he called, but no one came. The golden imp shook his head once; it'd been years since he'd taken the seer's powers, but he had a hard time straightening out which time he was truly in after coming out of the Incubator's mind.
But one thing was still true, if Regina was that small, that young—
"You'll have to wait for your opportunity. Right now she trusts her mother too completely to listen to any of you, and the nail marks—" He giggled once and gave a flourish of his hand.
There's nothing you can do?
Rumple closed his eyes, remembering a man in black, begging him for some sort of salvation and offering anything as payment. A grin eased across his scaly lips. "I have an idea...but it will take a few years to ripen." He turned back, but the pixie was already gone. So the Incubator had nothing more to say to him.
Good.
The golden man glanced down at the spun gold in his basket, one small enough that he could hold it in one hand. There was easily enough gold to feed an entire village for a fortnight. Rumple closed his eyes once more, trying to arrange his thoughts, his memories, his time, and put it all in proper order. When he was done, he let out a deep breath.
"Daniel?"
Almost as soon as he spoke, a teenage boy stepped into the room, leather gloved hands clasped behind his back. He bowed as he entered. "Yes, master?"
Rumple rolled his eyes. "We've been through this. I'm not your master." Still, he tossed the basket to the boy. "I trust you know what to do with this?"
Daniel nodded, catching the basket with one hand. "I'm surprised you don't take it yourself. They never see me, and they'd be even less likely to catch you, if you don't mind my saying it." But at a wave of his master's hand, Daniel bowed again and stepped back out of the little room, boots pounding down the stairs.
Rumplestiltskin didn't watch him go, choosing instead to look once more at the spinning wheel. He didn't have to close his eyes to remember, not this time, not when his mind was already so muddled. It was as though he was in the tower cell with her again, the room filled – overflowing – with straw, and in the middle of it all, a spinning wheel and a teenage girl in a red dress. The alien sent him there, back when he still made its contracts, back when he'd let himself be a pawn just as much as he set up his own master plan. He'd know her daughter would be important, but he hadn't yet known what that meant.
Even now, he could see her testing to see if she could escape out the window before returning to the wheel with a scoff of frustration. Her hair was pulled up and away from her face, revealing a fragile neck like a dandelion stalk. He could still smell the sweet scent of her tears, even though he'd never seen them and doubted that anyone had since her mother died. He reached out as if to touch her.
Then he shook his head, pushing the memories away. He would not be such a fool as to try for something that no longer existed and never would again.
Rumplestiltskin turned and left the room, locking the door behind him. Tomorrow he would make yet another step to save his son, to gain him back. The Incubator already agreed with his plan – not to the plan, exactly, but to letting them reconcile. It didn't want to risk losing him, after all. Besides, in the end it would get its most powerful magical girl and fill its quote. That was all it cared about.
So it was a win-win situation.
Tomorrow, he'd send his servant away to live in the nearby town and be its stable boy. Or, no, it would have to be a town farther still. She would never come this close to him in her search for new help; she'd expect someone of his to infiltrate. She was no fool.
And this, too, was his fault.
Rumplestiltskin let one scaly, golden hand rest on his chest and listened to his heartbeat. The Incubator once taught him how to rip out a heart without damaging it, but even that separation didn't protect it from getting hurt. Sometimes he wasn't sure if it was worth it, keeping it here in his human chest, but...he didn't want to be even more like the Incubators. He still needed his heart.
Just like, someday, she would need hers, too.
Author's Note: Yay for the first real chapter! I hope you enjoy how this is starting out and that everything is making sense. (I realize there's a lot of telling, but there's going to be a lot of magical lingo that I need to set down in a short amount of time, and I apologize for that.)
It'll take a little bit longer for the next two chapters to come out because...well, I haven't written them yet. I was typing up my second draft, and it just felt wrong of me to not take the time to elaborate. So there may be a pause there.
But it'll be worth it. :)
Please let me know what you think! (Even criticism. I love it.)