Outside of Jefferson's home, he breathed in the fresh air and let it clear his head. Their conversation had been a lot more intense than he'd planned for, it was a lot more than he'd prepared for, but it was done. This part, at least. The real fun was only about to begin, he wasn't finished with his plotting and planning, but he'd planned out about as far as he could for now, at least without the Seer's help. It was time to sit back and watch. It was time to wait to see where the chips would land and then put out fires and point others in the right direction as was necessary. It was tedious work, it was going to be expensive to keep all his little birds in line, but he'd manage it. If not for Belle, then for Baelfire.

He wanted to go home. He wanted to be by himself. Miner's Day was tomorrow that meant there would be a celebration that would start tonight. There would be people all over town setting up this time of day, which usually meant he was busy ignoring it. After all that, he wanted to go back to his shop, lock the door, and spend the rest of the evening holding his chipped cup in his hands, dreaming about the possibility that magic could bring someone back from the dead. No one would miss him. He wanted to do that. But on the drive back to his shop, his phone rang, and he got a call from none other than Leroy.

At home, Leroy was more commonly known as Grumpy. He was one of Snow's seven little dwarf friends, probably her favorite and the bravest of them all. But here, Leroy was the town drunk. In the last twenty-eight years, he'd acted as his lawyer several times after he'd done something stupid. He nearly swore when he saw the number. He didn't have time for this right now. And that was what he intended to tell Leroy when he told him about the latest trouble he'd gotten into. But to his surprise, Leroy didn't need him for his legal abilities but rather for his Pawnbroker abilities. He had a boat that he wanted to sell for some reason, probably to pay off some gambling debt or other. He was tempted, once again, to say "no" and go back to his shop as he'd planned. But he was the town pawnbroker, among other things, apparently. The town was still cursed, and so he was still two people. He had to be both Rumpelstiltskin and Mr. Gold. And while Rumpelstiltskin would have been happy to roll his eyes and tell him to fuck off, Mr. Gold would have gone to make the sale. So he used his turn signal, made the appropriate turn toward the bay, then told Leroy he'd meet him at the dock in a few minutes.

The second he arrived and saw Leroy standing there looking the "boat" over, he regretted this decision. It was a piece of shit.

"This is what passes for a boat these days?" he muttered as he came to stand beside Leroy.

"I bought it as an investment."

"And never actually invested in it, I see."

"Never had the time," he shrugged.

Or the sobriety, he suspected.

"Now, I know it's a bit of a fixer-upper, could probably use a new coat of paint, a few spritzes of Febreze here and there, but you can't tell me that five thousand's not a reasonable price for this beauty."

He resisted the urge to laugh, the businessman in him wouldn't allow it, but it was always funny when people did this. Five thousand was a reasonable cost for it, even if it was a piece of trash. But five thousand was market value. Even if he sold the thing tomorrow, as it was, there was no money to be made off of it, and considering he suddenly had a fair number of employees to be paid under the table, he couldn't look at not making money off of it. By the time he painted it, hired someone to fix it up a bit, and waited for the Curse to break so he could find a buyer, he'd be in the hole if he paid five thousand. Buy low, sell high, the pawnbroker's mantra.

"Three thousand, I think," he corrected.

"I need five," Leroy pressed, turning to look at him.

"You need five?" he questioned. Five…what a precise number. And for what? He'd never paid him anything for all those times he'd come to his aid with Sheriff Graham. "To what do we owe the specificity?"

"Trying to help out a friend."

"Oh, I see," he smirked. He wasn't aware the dwarf had friends in this world; not even his own brothers liked him here. And he wasn't a bank, not exactly anyway. And what friend on earth could he have made that would make him want to get his hands on that kind of money?

"Look, you don't even have to pay me anything. Just forgive one month's rent for the nuns."

"The nuns?" he questioned. What was Leroy doing selling off something for the nuns? Had he found religion?

"You can have the boat. They'll pay you back eventually. It's a good deal. You get everything."

"So, that's what this is about," he smiled. He wasn't sure what had provoked it, but he understood it.

"Come on," Leroy urged. "You're a rich guy. You can afford to give them time to make up one month's, right?"

"You're right. I could."

"So, great."

"But I won't," he corrected, watching Leroy's face fall.

Dove told him last month that the Fairy Bugs impersonating nuns had just barely got their rent in. He suspected that they wouldn't make it this month at all. Given his history with them, he was okay with that. They'd always had money problems, they always sold candles at Miner's Day to get as much as they possibly could for the year, and they'd always made it because the Curse had been working to keep them in place. Now that the Curse was weakening, that assurance was gone. It was a part of the Curse breaking he was all too eager to watch!

"I have a fairly specific rental agreement. If they miss a payment, I'm within my rights to evict."

"Oh, come on. Why don't you-"

"And," he interrupted before Leroy could say anything more, "quite honestly, it's going to be a great relief to be rid of such distasteful tenants."

"You don't like nuns? Who doesn't like nuns?"

Because they were arrogant little bitches who thought they were better than everyone else just because they had Light Magic on their side. And they'd slapped a ruler across Mr. Gold's knuckles far too much growing up, false memory or not, one did not forget the sting of that.

"Oh, I have my reasons. And they're mine. Let's just say I have a long and complicated history with them, and leave it at that."

He didn't give him any other explanation, just turned and walked away, throwing a brief wave over his shoulder. He smiled as he walked back, happy he'd taken the call and come. The Fairies homeless and begging him for favors. He rather liked the sound of that. In fact, he…

Just then, one of them walked past him, actually smiled in his direction before casting her eyes down, and his stomach felt like it jumped into his throat. He knew her. She was familiar. But…other than the Blue Fairy and Red Fairy, and his mother, of course, he'd never really dealt with any others, at least none that were alive. Why was she so familiar? Why did he know her?

He knew how. It didn't strike him until he got back in his car and watched as she and Leroy interacted, but it came to him. He'd seen her in a vision. Long ago, when Snow had first met Grumpy, he'd had a vision of his past, who the dwarf had been before he'd met the princess. In that past, there had been a fairy, a fairy he'd loved, a fairy he'd bought a stolen diamond for. That was why he'd been in the prison with Snow White in the first place when he'd had the vision.

The fairy was her!

Every happiness he'd just felt melted away as he stared at the two. Their encounter didn't appear to end well, but rather with her walking away as Leroy looked…well…downright grumpy. Suddenly he felt like an idiot. There were all kinds of ways for this Curse to weaken. Revenge, the fairies on the street, that was one way. But love, two lovers reunited as he and Belle never would be, that was another way. It was the far more powerful way.

Watching the Curse break a little more would have put Regina even more on edge. He should have taken the deal.

It's a bit of a bland chapter, nothing you shouldn't have seen coming. In fact, I'll admit, I did consider very briefly pulling it and just summarizing since it's really just filler. Though I would like to state that it's not filler by my choice, but rather A&E. 1x14 was a filler episode. Ultimately they spent time out of their main story to focus on a storyline they never came back to, and that sort of makes this a useless chapter. It exists to get us from point A to B.

Thank you Alarda and Grace5231973, for your reviews on the last chapter and for letting me know it was enjoyable. Yay! I do love me some Jefferson. I hope you won't take my negativity on this chapter to heart. It's not so much that I hate this episode as it was just boring. I don't think I'm alone in that. I vaguely remember seeing this episode on some Top 10 Worst Episode of OUAT years ago. But, of course, I used this episode to bring Jefferson back, so I suppose that it's fair I had to endure the rest of what went with it to do that. My least favorite episode contains one of my favorite chapters, it seems like a just reward indeed! Peace and Happy Reading!