It wasn't the best time for people to come seeking deals from him. Winter was coming on. It wasn't quite freezing yet, it was still only Fall in the village, but the mountain was already cold. He was already experiencing high winds and occasional bouts of snow that usually chased people away from his domain, making them question just how much they wanted to talk to him. So when he heard a knock on his door, he was almost eager to answer, just to see just who had braved the cold to speak with him.

In the foyer, he waved his hand, and the front door opened automatically on not one, not two, but three visitors. A very tall blonde woman, flanked by two shorter women of similar face. Obviously sisters. The two sisters on the outside were shivering from the cold, they huddled around their third sister who didn't seem overly bothered by it. They stood as a united force, clutching their hands together in a death grip. Fear. But not permanent fear. As they stood there before him he observed as one squeezed their hand and the grip loosened ever so slightly. A sisterly acknowledgement that they were there for one another and to have no fear and-

The Seer was talking in his head. The Dark Ones were stirring too, sharing information he hadn't caught before. The sisters were far from ordinary. And the one in the middle…she was far from weak.

"Well, well, well, what do I have here but the three beauties of…Arendelle?! My what a long way you've come. And, oh! Princesses, I believe. Well, in that case, what an honor to make your acquaintance," he pronounced, dropping into a deep bow.

"How could you know that?" one of the girls asked, a smile suddenly curling over her face.

"Well, you're the ones who have come to see me and come such a long way for a reason, of course! You must know then that it is my job to know all. Otherwise you wouldn't have come."

There it was. A squeeze. The one who had smiled, her intrigue disappeared as her sister squeezed her hand but not out of fear or calming. It was a warning. And if the looks on the girl's faces were any indication, they could tell the difference. What interesting dynamics at play.

"Yes, um…thank-thank you for seeing us Mister Rumpels-Dark One…Sir!"

"Mister, Mister, Mister, Sir, Sir, Sir…tell me, what have I done to earn such monikers."

"Oh!" the girl gasped with wide eyes. "Well…we were just…I was just-"

"My sister was just trying to be polite-"

"No need to respond, Dearie," he informed the older sister. "'Twas a rhetorical question." Another squeeze and this time…magic. Not only through the middle girl, where he sensed it the most, but through all the sisters, though he could sense the gift wasn't in the two on the side, it was something else. There, on their wrists…three ribbons. One for each. They'd flared with magic when they'd squeezed one another's hands. How interesting...

"Now, why don't you step into my domain and tell me all about your problems," he waved them in, and the moment they were inside, he let the door close behind them with a bang that made them jump and gasp…and squeeze. And there it was again, that small bit of magic. He turned on his heel and led them into the Great Room.

"Oh, Sir-Dark One, it's really my problem, not theirs!" one of the girls cried out behind him as they followed.

"Ingrid, don't be silly! We're sisters. Your problems are our problems. We want to help you! Let us!"

"You see, Mist-Si-Dark One, when we were children, we learned that our sister as born with ice powers!" the other one responded. "She can make ice and snow when she wants."

"But also when I don't want to, I can't control myself."

"Right, which is why we're here! We need your help-"

"I need your help to stop them. So I can live with my sisters and in my Kingdom in peace without fear they'll discover who I am-"

"What," he corrected quickly as he took a seat at the other end of the table and left them standing there opposite him.

"Excuse me?" the middle girl, Ingrid, the future Queen of Arendelle, questioned.

"What you are…not who you are," he corrected. He'd already heard enough to know what was going on. Ice powers. Very specific, only teaching her more would tell him for sure, but if he had to guess, she was a genuine Elemental; those capable of controlling only one of the four magical elements, but controlling it with such force that they were in fact stronger than those who could deal in all four. Other Dark One's had dealt with Elementals prior to him but he'd only ever seen one other in his life, also from Arendelle, also with the ability to create and harness ice…perhaps a family member? How many generations back had that girl been?

"Sir, our sister is no monster, if that's what you're implying!"

"Who said anything about a monster?" he questioned. In fact, the one he'd known before was quite in control of her powers, and most Elementals did eventually learn to control them out of necessity. So long as they learned to embrace their powers and not run terrified from them, most Elementals could live out their days peacefully with few ever really knowing what they were. But, he supposed, the difference between who and what…it was a simple mistake to make.

"What she is would be far more than that. Perhaps you are but too young to understand that what we are influences who we are and who we will become. There is no shame in understanding ourselves completely."

"You see Ingrid!" the smiling sister commented, squeezing her sister's hand again. "It's just as we've said. We don't have to be here, we can help you learn to love yourself."

"I don't care!" Ingrid insisted, squeezing both their hands. The ribbons flared. He wondered, did they know what they had before him. "Gerta, Helga…I just want these powers gone! I just want to be normal! Can you help me do that, Dark One?" she asked suddenly, turning her head and fixing her stare upon him so that he had to fight back a shudder. A woman of ice indeed.

"Perhaps…" The Seer wasn't just whispering now, she was screaming, showing him flashes in his head of a world he didn't know yet but had seen in other visions.

A wall of ice.

A mirror imbued with magic.

Villian.

Victim.

Curse.

A feeling of death, murder.

"You shall try. Kill the spares. Spare your family. Try you shall."

Sisters. But not these three. A bond preserved…through the ribbons on their wrists.

"Only when the time is right."

"Ice powers, you say?" he shouted from the other side of the table.

"And snow," Ingrid finished for him.

"My, my, how intriguing. And such a rare gift. Why would you ever want to give it up? Perhaps I could interest you in lessons instead?" Lessons would certainly allow him to identify her gifts more completely, perhaps even tell him why the Seer in his mind was painting her as blackness when she wore so much white. Not to mention it might help him learn how to better guide Regina who had to be the priority-

"Kill the spares, spare your family!" the Seer shouted.

It was all very intriguing, but that especially deserved a look. If she was a danger to Baelfire…he wasn't about to go through all this trouble just to put his son at risk again.

"No," she refused outright. "I want to stop them. We heard that you were the greatest collector of magic in all the Land. You must have something that can help."

"Well, of course, I do, dearie," he was quick to remark. In fact, he had exactly the things that she would be needing. But watching as the sisters continued their hand-holding…he couldn't for the life of him understand why she was here. To get rid of powers such as her own was drastic when she needed only to master the art of control, something he was certain at least one sister wanted to help her with. He sat forward. "The thing I don't understand is why you need me when you already have all the help you could possibly ask for."

"What do you mean?" she questioned. An innocent question. Truly innocent. This girl, she hadn't a clue what she possessed. It seemed that in addition to her powers she was also the proud owner of ignorance and had no desire, it seemed to want to rid herself of that. She'd rather displace her own powers than be brought into the light? He wasn't about to lose a couple of his prized possessions over ignorance.

He moved to get up, but instead of taking his time to walk to them, he simply appeared behind them, a demonstration of what control of power could do. Perhaps she'd be impressed by it. Maybe even changed.

"True love comes in many forms," he pointed out. "But the sisterly bond... Oh!" he moved to the other side. "Worth its weight in magic."

"My powers are too strong. I need something to control them," Ingrid insisted yet again. Now, there was a stubborn woman if he'd ever met one.

"Well, if you insist. Just remember," he explained as he leaned against his table to watch the girls. "Love is free. But all magic comes with a price!"

From a drawer in his workshop, he called forth a pair of pale blue gloves. He'd gotten them in a hasty deal with a witch who had a hobby of carving wood. In his opinion, they were the only thing that she'd ever done that had any value for she'd placed on them a neutrality spell. They would cancel any magic they came into contact with, much the way the cloak he'd given dear Granny worked.

"These gloves can help you conceal your powers," he explained as he presented them to her.

"And stop them?" Ingrid pressed.

He let out a little laugh. Clever enough to catch on to a simple turn of phrase but too ignorant to take the time to learn about herself. He supposed that made her simply average—an awful thing considering the power inside of her.

"Well, only if you believe it." Elementals were known for conjuring their magic with the use of their emotions, but they often learned first to channel it through their hands. Gloves, and her continued belief in her own ignorance, should take care of most of the problem. But not all. "Faith can be powerful. But for those who lack it, well, sometimes another solution is required…"

He turned his attention and thus their own to a special urn that he'd only acquired recently. He'd practically throttled the man who brought it to him once he learned what it could do. It captured magic. Contained it in the most uncomfortable of ways. All magic. Including his own. Which was perhaps why he preferred to keep it in this room, far away from his own laboratory where he did most of his work, lest he accidentally find it opened and himself inside it. He'd rather face the hells of Pandora's Box.

"Think of this as your fail-safe," he explained, carefully picking it up off of its pedestal. He had a mortar and pestle that was of little use to him he could put in its place. "If things get too chilly, simply pop the top and in you go. All your powers will be contained, and all of the Realms shall be safe from you. Problem solved," he concluded, offering it to them.

Ingrid nodded, a small smile twitching in her cheeks even as her sisters exchanged a disapproving glance behind her back.

Their bond broke as Ingrid stepped forward, ready to take them from him, and he fought to roll his eyes. Someone stepping up to take his possessions without properly concluding their deal was something that happened all too often. Fortunately, he happened to love this part of the process.

"I don't know how you do things in Arendelle, dearie, but here a deal requires an exchange of goods," he stated, pulling the urn away from her. "What I want is…uh…" he feigned looking about them as he left the urn on the table. But there was nothing to consider. He'd had his eye on something that he wanted from the moment they came in. It was the first thing the Seer had zeroed in on when he'd seen them. He didn't know why they were important, not yet, but he doubted it was a custom in Arendelle to wear yellow ribbons on one's wrist. He also doubted it was an accident that they'd all worn them the same day. The ribbons meant something, not only to them but to the future. He had to know what.

"These lovely ribbons! All three!"

Immediately the girls turned to their wrists and looked them over.

"Our ribbons?" Ingrid questioned as the other two girls looked at one another with wide eyes. Sentiment…that was what he saw. "But they're just silly little things we've worn since we were children," Ingrid explained. It wasn't much to go on for a normal man, but for one who had been around for far longer than a normal man should and understood he was a monster as Ingrid feared she'd become, he'd gotten just enough information. They were precious. And precious objects could sometimes absorb that sentiment he saw in their eyes.

"Sometimes, with enough love, ordinary objects can come to possess their own special kind of magic," he explained, purposefully getting up and moving about the table so she could see the urn and the gloves before her. A very clear choice with no obstacles but her own in her way.

"Ingrid, no," he heard one of the sisters urge.

"We can't give them up. It's not right," the other agreed.

"I-i-it's just a symbol," Ingrid stuttered. "It's not strong enough. I need something that will guarantee that I never hurt anyone again." Again…how lucky was he. Hurting others could be excellent motivation for the right individual. Perhaps the murder the Seer now rambled on about in his mind. "Like he said, a fail-safe."

"We are your fail-safe, Ingrid," one of the girls stressed.

Oh, but how unlucky was he that these girls seemed…particularly bonded. It was a questionable deal, he knew that much, but the monster inside of him didn't particularly care if the deal was good or bad, all that mattered was making it! And if he allowed them to talk much longer…there would be none.

"Do we have a deal?" he questioned, bursting back into their conversation quickly. Ingrid looked back and forth between her sisters and then finally at the ribbon on her wrist.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, reaching down to undo the bow. "It's not enough."

The sisters may have disagreed with their sister, but at her motion, they listened and followed through. They removed their own ribbons and offered them to him as well.

"Deal, deal, deal," he chimed as he held them in his hand, then stepped aside and allowed Ingrid to swoop in and take her prizes. Oh, she didn't waste time, she handed the urn to her sister and quickly put the gloves on her own hands as though they were her salvation. Yes…that would solve most of the problem. As for the last little bit.

"Careful with that urn, dearie!" he called out to the redhead who held it now. "Opening it accidentally could have…undesirable consequences." The sisters looked at each other with wide eyes before the blonde on the right gave a tug on her sister's arms.

"Let's go," she urged. They were gone in the blink of an eye.


This chapter seems like filler but it sets up so many important chapters for the future! This is only the first introduction we have to the Arendelle clan, and we will be encountering one of the sisters again, maybe sooner than you think. But, in my mind, one of the most important things this chapter does is set up a self-fullfilling prophecy. I wanted it to show just how intense the Seer's powers are and how she is easy to misinterpret. "Kill the spares, spare your family," along with the words "you will try." I worded that just so. For someone hearing it for the first time, as Rumple is, it's easy to assume that the Seer is warning him, saying "hey, when all this goes down you need to kill everyone and escape with your family." But for those of us that have seen it, we know that it's just an ordinary prediction, she's saying "in the future, you are going to try and kill everyone and save your family." It's not the warning he thinks, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's how I choose to explain season 4A. Hopefully, you don't mind it and think it's decent.

Thank you MissAmande, Jennifer Baratta, and Grace5231973 for your reviews on the previous chapter! I'm really interested to hear what you think of this one since this chapter is sort of set up to the set up to the set up. I can't wait for part two of the set up, which is coming later but probably sooner than you think. Better yet, I'm excited for the next chapter. I think it's going to come as a bit of a surprise to some people, but ultimately I think you'll like it. I'm on pins and needles, personally, it is the one chapter that I'm really hoping I didn't screw up. Peace and Happy Reading!