Chapter 6: Petulance with Potions and Plotting
The Queen was distracted. And severely so at that.
Concentrate, Regina. Concentrate.
The royal brunette readjusted her grip on the piston in her palm as she pursed her lips into a thin, tight line. The extra pressure against her teeth usually helped to increase focus.
She squinted at the open grimoire on the table and scrutinized her potion's progress.
Her beaker had been set to a light simmer. The evening primrose oil she'd added was twirling into a dissolved line of color within the see-through bubbles. And the bowl containing the mushy mix of dandelion root, milk thistle, and crushed tarragon was well on its way to becoming a pulverized paste.
Tarragon that just happened to exactly match the color of someone's irritatingly brilliant green eyes.
Her mouth tipped down at the corners at the unwanted imagery that had yet again sprouted up into her head. This past hour had been brutal on her subconscious: trying in vain to fixate on the sloping scrawl of the recipe instead of the infuriating blips of fair-skinned muscles and toothy grins that insisted on pushing themselves into the forefront of her brain.
She didn't have time to dwell on the obnoxious knight that may or may not be intruding in her castle at the moment. She had witchcraft to perfect.
And so Regina viciously took out her frustration on the mash of herbs with renewed vigor. She beat it to a pulp. Clobbered it really. She pounded the plants so hard that by the time she was done the end of the piston had split in her hand and a good portion of her blend had been beaten into the creases of the container.
A wayward splinter bristled painfully in her palm and the Queen whipped her head to the right to scowl at her preoccupied teacher.
She decided to blame him for this.
Regina was quickly remembering why she had grown to despise every part about being in Rumpelstiltskin's castle. The imp himself was repugnant and, were it not for the maddeningly useful skills she was learning here, she would have avoided this place like the plague. The whole estate was boxy and cramped; crowded by too many angles and corners and dust. Always so much dust. And as a result, the air constantly felt too close for comfort and she stifled in it. Regina scrunched up her nose as if to sneeze.
The man desperately needed to get himself a cleaning girl that wouldn't be put off by his vastly unfortunate face.
And this room, this room especially, was permanently ripe with clutter. Humming knickknacks and forgotten baubles heaped the shelves in droves so that trinket upon trinket upon trinket piled up on one another until it would have been a miracle to find anything in a hurry. Regina mused that the whole of the workroom probably looked much like the seer's mind should he ever allow himself to use the gift of his foresight to its full potential. She'd heard the whispers in her youth just as all the other children had: that looking into the future was a jumble of disjointed chaos that only made sense if you knew exactly what it was you were searching for, and that going in blind was a guaranteed way to make you lose your marbles.
Not that he really needed any help in that category anyway.
"You're not going to find your answers by glaring at me, dearie. That's what the book is for."
Rumpelstiltskin didn't even bother to look up from his work to insult her intelligence; too busy with his goddamn spinning wheel to pay her any attention. Around and around and around it whirred, up over his head, through his fingers and back around again: the clicking staccato of his own personally endless metronome. Straw into gold, straw into gold, straw into gold.
Gold that when spilled out on the floor like that held a stark resemblance to the bouncing blonde curls of one Sir Emma Swan.
Regina nearly bit through her cheek in annoyance and fought the urge to stamp her foot.
"But you're my tutor," the brunette snapped back. "You're supposed to be helping me."
The omnipresent click-clack of the spindle skidded to a halt beneath gnarled fingers and the new silence was almost deafening in its absence. The brunette forced her eyes from the glossy pile at his feet to meet the equally as gold, but far less pretty, gleam of the imp's bulging eyes.
"I'm not supposed to be doing anything with you, Regina." The way her name slid down his throat made the bile rise in hers. "And yet, there you stand."
The Queen felt herself momentarily shrink under his gaze and she instantly hated herself for it. Parental figures becoming cross with her had never boded well in the past and as such she tamped down on her natural instinct to apologize; gesturing tetchily instead at the table before her to overcompensate, "Yes. Here I stand, muddling through on my own… which I could have done just as easily within the confines of my own estate."
She thrust her nose haughtily into the air. "And I don't see how this," her eyes flicked to glower at the indecent recipe he had chosen for her to prepare, "is going to help me gain supremacy over my life."
The skeevy little man rose from his stool. "Oh, so we're going to be impatient now, are we?" Rumple crowed, mincing toward her with an odd little spring in his step. "You've been evading my tutelage for over a week and you just expect to jump right back in where you left off?"
The brunette huffed. "Well, I'm here now, aren't I?"
"Not impressive enough."
"I snuck out of my castle for you!" Regina nearly growled, her flaring temper beginning to make her brave. "Do you know what the King will do to me if he discovers my absence?"
"Not. My. Problem," he enunciated pointedly. And the glib little smile he offered with the phrase did nothing to further endear him.
The exasperating imp fluttered nearer to the Queen's station and he bent in close like he was explaining a secret to a dull child. His skin glistened in the spots of dusky light filtering through the grimy windows.
"One must show initiative to become as proficient in the dark arts as me." He caressed his chest delicately for a moment before the twist of his fingers flew upward like a deranged showman at a circus. "And sacrifice is the key to powerful spells. And that takes dedication." His side-eye drew deadly, "Which is something I fear you lack."
"Ah, ah," Rumple chided, his chastising finger stopping her parted mouth before she could protest. She snapped it shut as he continued. "The ingredients needed for higher-level enchantments are much more dire to collect. You must be willing to give up a part of yourself. I'll admit you have wrath in spades, but do you really think you have what it takes to concoct a jealousy draught? Distill a truth serum? Perform a sleeping curse?"
His eyes grew bulbous in a mock pout as that finger from before moved to beneath her chin. His breath was putrid against her lips. "No dearie, you do not."
Regina's back stiffened under his blunt critique and she backed away from his touch. "I am more than capable of doing what you ask of me if you would only just–!"
Two gangly hands slammed down on the table and the words once again snagged in her throat.
"Do I need to remind you of your last attempt to go over my head?!" His voice was a shrill squeak that felt like fingernails to her eardrums. "Of how your misguided notions of necromancy lost me countless resources and you a stable boy?!" Rumpelstiltskin pierced her with a dark, derisive look and Regina refused the urge to stare at her toes.
He snarled in her face, "Your failure in that venture was embarrassing for everyone involved. So no, I am not ready to trust you with advanced spell-casting just yet."
Rumpelstiltskin had notbeen pleased with her the evening she had come crawling back into his castle, all tear-stained cheeks and fervent apologies and a chest filled to bursting with a freshly broken heart. He had adamantly refused her at first; but that had been before she had started leaking purple fumes and threatened to shatter one of his antique clocks in her anguish.
He had accepted her offer fairly quickly after that.
If her miserable life had taught her anything thus far, it was that using someone's weakness against them was the quickest way to get what you wanted.
Regina steeled herself against her tutor's indignation and tried not to focus on the decaying teeth currently spitting out his patronizing tone. "As I've told you before, I will tell you again," the imp was saying, "transcending death is even beyond my reach."
"And I thought nothing was beyond your reach."
The man suddenly silhouetted in the doorframe was very, very tall and he was made even more so by the shoddily-made top hat he had perched atop his helter-skelter hair. He was the proud owner of a well-worn leather coat that nearly brushed the floor when he walked and flaunted faded blue eyes that neared lilac in color when the sunlight hit them just so. They were mischievous and not to be trusted.
"Busy," Jefferson stated, throwing his hands up in front of him; the gesture belied only by the sarcastically wide grimace of teeth he grit in their direction. His eyebrows rose impressively high on his forehead as he backtracked. "Should I come back or…"
"No, no. Nothing important going on here," Rumpelstiltskin insisted as he flounced away from the Queen, disregarding his pupil entirely. He shushed his fingers idly through the air. "Ignore her."
The scruffy milliner dipped his head at the Queen as he shrugged past the table to meet the imp at the cluttered workbench across the room.
"Regina."
"Hatter," she greeted tersely.
The men gathered together without a second glance in her direction and Regina bit back the sharp curse that was on her tongue. She was, yet again, being discounted in the presence of others.
She grimaced down at her work as she began to scrape her blend into the boiling beaker.
She was a Queen, goddammit, and as such she warranted some respect. She was taking dangerous time out of her day to be here; the least Rumple could do was give her the attention she deserved. Especially after he'd made such a fuss about her coming back in the first place.
Regina poked absently at the floating paste that was beginning to fragment and change color in her scalding brew, and snuck a surreptitious glance at the conversation in the corner.
The imp did not seem impressed with whatever the hatter had brought him. Rumpelstiltskin's already irritated face had pinched even further in displeasure, when he suddenly flourished his fingers at the man's chest and snarled something nasty. Jefferson backed away a little and raised his voice in frustration, "But why would anyone want that?!"
"My business," the imp spit back.
The hatter brought his voice back down to a harsh whisper, "Then come with me in my hat and I'm sure we can work something out…"
"No."
Jefferson let out an irritated sigh and rolled his eyes at the ground. "So do you want the orb or not?"
Rumple made an elongated sound of indecision before finally snatching the crystalline sphere from the proffered hand. It sparkled handsomely in his distorted fingers. "Yes." He ended the conversation abruptly with a nod and bowed. "Help yourself to as much gold as you deem appropriate. And you…"
He whirled and Regina looked up at her teacher from beneath heavy eyelashes.
"Finish that potion before I return."
And with that, Rumpelstiltskin scurried out of the room.
The instant the imp had disappeared from sight, Regina felt Jefferson's eyes swing none-too-subtly to rest upon her form, and within two heartbeats the teleporter had bounded around the table to hover obnoxiously over her shoulder; hands clasped behind his back and bouncing on his toes.
She pointedly pretended to not notice his presence.
That was until he sucked in an extravagant inhale right behind her head and nearly startled her out of her skin with his sudden, boisterous call of "What are you doing!?"
"Nothing that concerns you," she replied tartly.
"Aww come on Queenie, don't be like that," the hatter groused, and moved in so close to her that she could feel his chest pressed fully against her spine. His hand had also found that low place on the small of her back that he always seemed so fond of. "Whatcha' cooking?"
He took an exaggeratedly long sniff next to her ear. And then gagged loudly.
"God, Regina! That just smells wrong."
Regina scowled at the man pinching his own nose and looked back at her potion. "Why? What's wrong with it?"
"Seriously?!" he choked.
She took a small whiff herself and felt her mouth tip down at the corners. She checked her open spell book again.
The simmering liquid had begun morphing into a soft eggshell blue with the addition of her vegetable paste, and that was right in line with the brilliant turquoise it would be deepening to when it was completed. She ran a long index finger over the recipe before she turned her nose back up at the hatter.
"Well, it's not finished yet," the brunette replied peevishly. "And it says right here that the mephitic odor will dissipate with whisking. It's not supposed to smell nice." She placed the grimoire back on the table and had just picked up the stirring stick when she felt the hatter's breath against her shoulder again.
Regina jammed her elbow into his gut and reveled childishly in his grunt. "Move. You're in my light."
With a pout, Jefferson situated himself opposite from her and prodded at a few of the fizzing apparatuses strewn out along the counter. "But still…" he mumbled as he dropped his chin onto the tabletop. It made one of his eyeballs distort grotesquely in her direction through the rounded glass. "Must everything you make always be so noxious?"
The Queen stopped her counterclockwise stirring and straightened to lock deadly eyes on his stupid face. The comment was an affront to her skills as a chef, which was something she took very seriously. Potion-brewing wasn't so different from cooking after all.
"It is not noxious. It's fermenting."
"And it smells like ass." He flicked a beaker so that the sound dinged off his nail. "What's it supposed to be, anyway?"
"Don't–!" Regina grabbed for the grimoire but Jefferson was faster, yanking it right out from underneath her scrambling fingers.
His pale eyes lit up with mirth as he read and proceeded to sway around the room with the book like it was a dance partner. "Oh-ho!" he sing-songed, and his trench coat swished harmoniously around his ankles with a twirl. "A fertility potion, huh? No way." The cackle in the back of his throat was iron-sharp. "You're still trying to get a son out of that old king yet?"
Regina felt her cheeks pink up against her will and watched as her friend's light-hearted smile fell a little at her hesitance. "Wait a minute…" he frowned and stopped spinning. "Is this for you or for him?"
She crossed her arms protectively in front of her chest and snidely stuck out her chin. "It's just part of my lesson today; it has nothing to do with me personally. I need to master many skills in order to become a powerful enchantress."
"Uh-huh. If you say so."
"I do say so." Regina's hand dropped to her hip while the other outstretched towards the hatter crankily; palm up like she was expecting his utmost compliance. "Now give it back," she ordered.
He grinned. "No."
"Jefferson, I have work to do," the Queen whined, and it only made him smile wider. And when she tried to snatch the book out of his hand herself, he held it above his own head so that she couldn't reach it.
"Give. It. Back," she demanded.
"No," he grinned again.
Regina threw her hands down on the table in exasperation and groaned, "Don't you have gold to go collect somewhere?"
"And miss out on bothering you?" Jefferson snapped the book shut in one hand to make sure she lost her place and then slid it back across the table towards the Queen. It knocked hard against one of her dirty mixing bowls and she had to catch it before it flew off the counter. "Never," he goaded.
She glowered mightily at his insolence and turned away to fan through the recipes in search of her misplaced page. He settled in noisily to plink out a tuneless song against the tops of her glassware.
It wasn't long before the milliner could practically see the brunette's eye twitching at the discordant sounds but still, she refused to acknowledge his existence. He swore that before the day was through, she was going to grind all of those pretty white teeth of hers into a dusty paste.
"Re-gin-a," he moaned, stretching out the syllables of her name after he'd finished his song in a clatter of cacophonous tapping. "Don't ignore me; we haven't caught up in ages. I mean, I haven't even seen you since we tried to resurrect–"
"Don't you speak his name!"
Jefferson's head craned back on his neck as he raised his hands in supplication. "Sorry," he winced as the Queen turned downcast towards her potion again. "Didn't know you were still so bent out of shape over the guy." The man scratched at the unkempt hair under his tattered top hat apologetically. "You can't fault me for trying to start up a conversation," he pointed out.
But when her icy silence continued, he tried again softly, "You know I didn't know that that Frankenstein guy was off his rocker any more than you did, right? Don't be mad at me."
Regina breathed in heavily through her nose and felt her shoulders drop a little. The teleporter's hapless demeanor, whether faked or genuine – she could never quite tell the difference and that bothered her more than she ever cared to admit – was always disarming. Whether she truly believed his claim, however, was another matter entirely.
She met his pleading eyes with a fractious look of her own.
"Fine," she grumbled, and pasted on this sickly-sweet smile that made her look more like a shark than like she was engrossed in his life story. "How have you been, dear?"
But the hatter took her roiling sarcasm in stride… which just irked her all the more. "I am a man that travels and see much," was his airy reply, and the Queen rolled her eyes at his incessant need to wax poetic about himself. His hand gestured grandly skyward. "And as such I always have an interesting tale to tell. As you know, I deal trade in many lands. Lands, you haven't even heard of–"
"Like Oz."
Regina's gaze darkened and Jefferson swallowed so that she could see his adam's apple bob.
"No… not recently," he dodged, and wet his poufy lips with a soft 'smack'. "Recently I've been spending my time in the land of the giants. I hear things; mentions of phantom objects, of mystical powers hidden in plain sight… of a rumored realm of goliaths that only exists at the precipice of a beanstalk and stretches straight into the heavens! A wondrous place where the eggs are ornate and the harps can play themselves…"
The brunette tuned out the majority of his story by watching her stirring stick go round and round inside her brew, mixing it so fast that even after she'd stopped a miniature vortex still swirled there like a tunnel into the center of the world.
And it was as she was staring down at that gaping hole of creamy blue that snippets of the genie's earlier rambles came floating back to her. She'd done her research earlier that morning, flipping through the ancient book of spells she'd stolen from under her mother's pillow what seemed like lifetimes ago, and she had indeed found the fabled object he'd been talking about.
"Have you ever come across a kris knife in your travels?"
Jefferson was momentarily thrown by Regina's sudden non-sequitur, and he stopped mid-strut and mid-story to consider. "A kris knife?" he blinked. "You mean the one with the warbled blade?" The man waved his hand wobblily through the air in the sad imitation of a squiggle.
As if she didn't know what 'warbled' looked like.
She shot him a sour look. "That's not the technical term for it, but yes."
His eyebrows scrunched together as he tapped pensively at his lips. "Not that I can recall. Giants don't really carry that kind of artillery. Don't have to… being as big as they are." He snapped his fingers jovially in excitement. "But I did find an enchanted compass up there though! Would you be interested in that?"
Regina rapped her stirring stick lightly against the glass before leaving it to stew in her potion. "And pray tell, what could I possibly want with an enchanted compass?" she snipped.
The hatter's mouth twisted in confusion at the cutting tone and he tugged fervidly at his coat sleeves instead, "Uhh, well, if it's weaponry you need then, I've heard murmurings of some pretty intricate stuff that's happening over in Camelot…"
"No dear," she chided silkily. "That won't be necessary. It's not just any dagger I'm looking for. The one I'm after is a very particular blade, and just so happens to have a very familiar name engraved right above the hilt."
Jefferson's eyes nearly bulged out of his skull when it clicked.
"The Dark One's dagger?!" he hissed. "Really, Regina?" His hands gripped the length of the table like they were claws as the brunette in question returned his paranoia with an entirely all-too-complacent expression. He suppressed the urge to strangle her where she stood. "Are you insane?!" he managed to grind out through clenched teeth.
She retorted by simply pursing her plump lips in distaste before leveling him with a steady look. "Ironic, coming from the man who usually has a 'mad' placed in front of his moniker."
But Jefferson just continued to stare at her as if she were a hydra that had just spontaneously sprouted three extra heads.
"You can't be serious."
"Deathly so."
Her eyebrow quirked slyly as she sidled into his personal space on a harsh whisper. "Think about it. He currently holds the reins on both our leashes; but that technically doesn't make any sense. I was born with my abilities and your skill with the inanimate is unmatched by anyone I've ever seen." She glanced shiftily at his teleporting hat before she pouted through a scowl. "His powers on the other hand were gifted to him on a shiny piece of twisted silver. And it bothers me."
"It bothers you." Jefferson gaped; dumbfounded by the sheer audacity of the tiny Queen before him.
"Yes. It does." Her judgmental face told him she thought that much was obvious. "And I was thinking that if you and I were to say, steal, the origin of these powers of his, we would be able to control him together and manipulate all of the magic he wields as well. In theory of course."
"Con- control him?!" the hatter sputtered. "You do realize that this is the Dark One that we're talking about, right? As in Rumpelstiltskin? As in the notorious entrepreneur of wishes and deal-maker extraordinaire… THAT Rumpelstiltskin?!"
"Except apparently," Regina held up a perfectly manicured finger with a wicked gleam in her eye, "Rumpelstiltskin has not always been the Dark One. Apparently, he had to stab somebody in order to end up with that ugly face of his."
"But you can't just wield a person… can you?"
"According to my sources, if you find that dagger, we can," the Queen swooned, her voice husky at the thought. "That is unless… you want to kill him." Her fingers danced almost flirtatiously along the table's edge as she prowled catlike back down the bench. She was smirking, but her attention was cold and clear and nasty. "Then you could be the next Dark One."
Jefferson felt all of the color drain from his skin. "That's not funny, Regina."
She must have found his petrified face amusing though, for a licentious snort knocked through her nose at that and shook her shoulders in such an undignified manner that some of the tension in the room lifted ever-so-slightly. And when the brunette finally turned her gaze back up to meet his, most of the malice had already melted from her irises.
The tightness at their corners however… remained.
She cranked up the heat beneath her beaker to watch the remaining off-color particles within it sizzle and thin into nothing.
"Oh my dear Jefferson, you wound me," the Queen crooned sardonically, and she swatted stiffly at the air as if to disparage his very valid concern. "It was only a thought."
She attempted a smile. It twitched briefly at her lips and fell before ever reaching her eyes. "Next thing you know, you'll be telling me that you actually like working for the little leech."
But when the man didn't immediately seek to sass her back, Regina glanced over to see the milliner picking fidgetishly at his silken ascot. She raised an eyebrow at his silence, "I thought you hated collecting for him."
"I don't… enjoy it… per se," the hatter stuttered. "But it has its benefits. I won't be in this line of work forever though." He shrugged weakly with one shoulder. "You know I'm saving up."
Regina squinted to herself before she remembered. And when she did, she couldn't stop the wicked snarl of cheekiness that skittered up her ribcage at the memory. "Riiiight," she drawled flippantly. "The whole 'becoming a hobo so you can sell mushrooms in the woods' thing. I'd nearly forgotten."
The cleft in his chin wobbled a little bit. "It's a solid plan."
"Oh yes, I'm sure. It's truly inspired. Any sane woman would be thrilled to hermit herself in the woods for you," she teased, batting her eyelashes coquettishly at his sulking countenance. "The relentless pinecone smell must simply be a novelty that I alone do not share."
Turning back to her task for a moment, the regal brunette plucked one of the imp's pinkish vials of liquid from the shelf behind her and dropped a few salt crystals into the mix. It foamed immediately before calming to a pleasant hue of luminescent violet.
Just a few more steps and her potion would be complete.
The hatter puffed out his chest as he tugged at the bottom of his vest to straighten it. "A good woman can appreciate a cottage in the woods. And that is exactly what I will buy for her when I have earned enough gold from working as Rumple's retrieval artist."
"Retrieval artist? Is that what they're calling it now?"
He tried to level her with a look that didn't have nearly enough menace behind it. "And I'll have you know that the mushroom industry is growing day by day."
The Queen shook her head incredulously as she swirled the vial at eye level for a few moments; a small grin playing around her lips at the ludicrous thought. "You are the only person I can imagine whose dream is to forage for fungus day in and day out," she scoffed. "Way to reach for the stars, dear."
The liquid seemed runny enough and the potion only called for three drops of it anyway. Adjusting her hand accordingly, she readied to tap in the required amount as Jefferson reappeared by her side.
She chuckled acidly as she felt his too-familiar hand arrive at the small of her back once again and leaned closer to her beaker. "We put the fun in fungus," she continued to ridicule. "That could be your slogan."
Unfortunately for Regina, she didn't see the way her final jab had left a wounded smear of hurt streaked across Jefferson's face. Nor did she see it coming when, in his insulted state, the man decided to viciously shove the underside of her elbow so that she dumped the entire vial of fluid into her simmering draught, instead of the trifling quantity expected.
Also unfortunately for Regina, the surprise of being so aggressively jostled made her gasp at the exact moment a plumb of putrid mustard-yellow smoke came erupting out of her beaker.
It hit her straight in the face.
"Oops," the teleporter deadpanned.
"Jefferson, you idiot, what were you thinking?!" the Queen shrieked, wheezing and panting as she struggled to find her breath. Swatting madly at the fumes in the surrounding air, she eventually ended up bent at the waist to reacquaint her hands with her knees as she hacked the remaining vapor from her lungs.
Once she had gotten control of airways again, she swung her head up to stare hard at the passive milliner looking blankly back at her. "What on earth did you do that for?" Regina rasped.
Jefferson stooped so close to her face that she could see the specks of lavender shining in his eyes. "Don't mock the mushrooms, Queenie," he stated loftily, and patted her on the shoulder. "Never mock the mushrooms."
And with that he tauntingly doffed his top hat at her and twirled to scamper out the door.
"What?" Regina coughed again as she righted herself and a little cloud of lingering yellow gas staggered out on her breath. "Oh don't tell me that was because I actually managed to offend you?!" she jeered. "Jefferson!"
But he didn't turn around. And when the royal dared a glimpse at her bubbling brew, she found it to be a sickeningly snot-like shade of green with goopy chunks already beginning to coagulate and fuse to the inside of the beaker.
Her heart sank. All of her hard work right down the drain.
"JEFFERSON!" she hissed at his hastily retreating form. "That is not fair! You get back here this instant and you FIX THIS!"
"Fix what, dearie?"
The Queen's vexed expression whirled around and fell slack at the sight of her tutor standing immediately beside her.
"I didn't–"
Rumple wordlessly pushed her corseted stomach away from table with the back of his hand and peered forward to let the results of her concoction speak for itself. He frowned. And when the imp tried to retrieve the stirring stick that had jumped ship into the mixture, it stayed stuck fast in the viscous gunk: sticky tendrils like melted cheese clinging to it for dear life.
A black bubble popped apologetically in the middle of the now rapidly graying substance.
Regina swallowed.
The sorcerer sighed a heavy sigh that made his whole chest sink with the exhalation. "You are far worse than your mother at this," he muttered. "Cora was always excellent when it came to potions; poison being her specialty." He rubbed his index finger and thumb together to rid them of the oily substance still saturating his skin. "She would be so devastatingly disappointed in you."
The blow landed way harder than it should have and the Queen's fists clenched in spite of herself. She felt as if her insides had shriveled to nothing as the old hurt of never good enough you're such a disappointment Regina stop slouching stop scowling stop squirming don't just stand there you'll become an old maid disappointing disappointing disappointing careened through her system like a hurricane.
Which was instantly followed by a violent flash of indignant, self-preserving anger.
Regina was sick and tired of being treated as if she had the intelligence of an incompetent servant and Rumple's purposefully biting remarks were the last straw to what she could now see had been a completely fruitless lesson. What she was risking to be here was not worth the tripe he was currently serving her, and she intended to rectify that malady at once.
So Regina gathered her courage from the tips of her toes, just like her father had always instructed in the gentlest of tones on the darkest of nights in her childhood, planted her shoulders in a ridged stance, and set her chin in petulance.
She downright refused to be out-maneuvered by a gremlin.
"The art of potion-making is outdated if you ask me," she challenged as her mercurial teacher began to saunter back towards that inane spinning wheel of his. She knew if she didn't needle him enough, he was sure to snub her again and Regina's patience had finally reached its end.
"I find poison to be slow-working, conniving, and underhanded in its results," she pushed on. "Unless you were to brew an elixir for healing purposes, I actually think the entire process of creating a toxin is rather arcane when you get right down to it."
"If you're so dissatisfied with the way I teach, you know where the door is, dearie," was the blithe response he tossed over his shoulder.
And then the Queen dropped her voice into a low throaty hum that seemed to permeate the very crevices of the tension-filled workroom's clutter. "Because if I was going to kill someone, I'd want my victim to know it was me that was their undoing," she purred.
That stopped him dead in his tracks.
Rumpelstiltskin's eyebrows shot to his scalp; the scaly skin of his forehead creasing in piqued interest as he pivoted a full one-hundred and eighty degrees in slow rotation. "Would you now?"
"Of course. I see no valor in tricking someone into their own demise." Regina feigned nonchalance and watched one of her blood-red fingernails trace the wood grain of the table; her heart suddenly fluttering with what she was about to propose. "I simply want to be able to protect myself and… should I need to hurt someone in order to ensure my own protection… I would like to feel competent in the delivery."
The imp didn't hide his giggle of glee as he bounded back toward his capricious pupil in unrestrained delight. His fingers ticked unconsciously with little black wisps of smoke. "Are you sure?" he sneered at the regal brunette. "You know that once you start down this road there's no going back. It could be dangerous."
Regina's gaze snapped up to burn at the questioning of her sincerity and she exploded. "I want to be dangerous! That's the entire point!"
Throwing her hands up in the air, she stalked past the parasitic man and away from her failure of a potion, which she now resented as well for becoming as hard as a rock.
It felt like it was mocking her too.
"If I were ever to meet an assassin without the presence of my guards, what would I do? What could I do, Rumple?!" she ranted. "Tell him to please hold on a moment while I whip up some smelly liquid to throw in hisface?!" The Queen scoffed at the foolish notion and spun on the spot. "No! He would attack me and I would certainly, and quite easily, be killed!"
The realization made her pause and for a second the anger stopped. "I have no way to defend myself if I'm alone. I need this," she stated quietly to herself, and nodded just the slightest bit as if in agreement with the thoughts in her own head. "The best defense is a good offense."
Rumpelstiltskin's eyes narrowed. "And who was it that told you that?"
A spark of something faltered in the brunette's gaze at the inquiry before it was waved away with his comment as if it were a pesky gnat. "No one of importance," she was quick to amend. "I don't even remember who it was."
Her jaw clicked once and the man watched as Regina's thoughtful features hardened again into an unbudging expression of stubbornness. "What does matter is that I am a queen,and I should be feared when I have to be," she declared. "I want to be able to fight."
Her fingers dug into her own hips as she puffed herself up to her full height. And then the Queen pierced her teacher with a glare that she would later become infamous for.
"Make me frightening or I will find someone else who will."
The imp acquiesced to her demand with the slight incline of his head. "Very well then," was all he said.
With a flick of his wrist, light exploded out of his palm and the Dark One watched as his student's eyes lit up with the flame now swirling about his fingertips.
And that was exactly why Rumpelstiltskin had picked her in the first place; the fact she was the progeny of his hated ex-lover was almost just a perk at this point. Cora had twisted the beginnings of her daughter into the most magnificently malleable tool imaginable; the stupid girl was even wearing her mother's dress.
But it was that darkening need he saw glittering in her eyes that he loved the most. That malevolent want. That unquenchable thirst for power and control that he constantly sold to her as the way to freedom and light.
The ball of fire in his hand crackled in the thickening air. "Will this suffice your desire, dearie?"
Regina didn't have to answer. For the ravenous expression on her face practically screamed that Yes. Yes it absolutely would.