"No, I don't understand…what, exactly, are you?!"

"His name is Rumpelstiltskin," Maleficent drawled in answer to Cruella's question.

"The Dark One," Ursula added, sounding thoroughly unimpressed.

"He got me hooked on a sleeping potion, how do you know him?" Maleficent questioned.

"He tried to take my family's trident. The question is, how do you not know him?" Ursula answered before turning back to Cruella.

This was a part of the conversation that he'd been prepared for, but not looking forward to. He couldn't just bring three people into a room who had never had any experience with one another and expect them to simply get along and follow his lead. There were bound to be questions. Questions he wanted answered in a certain way and a certain time because the truth was that those questions took time, and time was what they were running out of quickly!

"She's not from around here," he inserted quickly once Cruella opened her mouth. If he didn't control the conversation, then it would run wild, and that was time they couldn't afford to use. He was already surrounded three to one. This was a delicate dance. "She's from another realm entirely, in fact, had to be fetched specifically for this job."

"That odd man works for you?!" Cruella burst out.

"A former associate," he answered. He assumed that by "odd man" she meant Jefferson and that was certainly not a relationship to get into at the moment. It wasn't something he'd planned on addressing, but he was sure to use the word "associate" for an important reason. It let them know he'd worked with other people before. "But enough with the formalities…I have a proposition for you all that I think you'll find most intriguing, in fact, too intriguing to pass up."

"Where you're concerned…not likely," Maleficent sneered.

"I have a problem that requires help from all three of you," he went on, ignoring her and not giving them time to form any kind of bond. He wanted to use them, but the last thing he wanted was for them to see themselves on the same team, a team that didn't include him. It was funny the things that could unite foes, but three people in agreement over something like this could do it. "Shall we discuss this over tea?"

He snapped his fingers and used magic to take them, dogs and all, to another room where a fire was blazing.

"Oh!" Cruella gasped, placing hand over her chest as if she might have a heart attack. Ursula and Maleficent just seemed annoyed. "How did you do that?"

"In this world, magic is more than just halitosis or a parlor trick, dearie," he smiled at her. "I can do all that and more. For example…tea!" He snapped his fingers again, and it appeared before her eyes wide. A realm jumper and now Dark Magic all in one day; he was surprised that she hadn't wet herself, though not surprised to see one of her beasts jump up on the couch to sit beside. Poor Maleficent turned her nose up at it being on her sofa. He was curious. Was the dog protecting her, as Jefferson had said it would? Or was it simply scared for itself?

"Ah…would you care for some?" he questioned, turning and offering a cup to Ursula.

"From you?" she sneered, looking down at it with something like disgust. "Not a chance."

"Good choice, it's probably spiked with something sinister," Maleficent concluded.

"More sinister than you, dearie?" he questioned, turning in her direction.

Maleficent batted her eyelashes at him but never removed her gaze. Simply said, "I'll decline," in a girlish whisper as if she'd been trying to impersonate the princess she'd lost her King too. A tragic tale. But he had noticed that she hadn't kicked him out of her castle yet. That was telling.

"Then that leaves you, dearie…" he offered, turning back to Cruella.

She was doing her best to feign being relaxed, she wanted to be as cool as her other two sister pawns, but her heartbeat betrayed how nervous she actually was. He wasn't surprised when she waved him away and sat back in her seat with her dog.

"Just ate, darling, besides…realm travel and all, it gets to you after a while."

"Very well!" he responded, snapping his fingers and making the tea set disappear again like it had never been there. He took a seat of his own and settled in with ease, but he knew that at the heart of it he was doing the same thing that Cruella was. He was trying to act calm, to maintain the power over the three that he needed, but inside he was potentially more nervous than she was. None of them knew what was on the line for him. If one of them refused to help he could probably work around it but if two or all three of them refused…he'd cross that bridge when he came to it. If he came to it. Until then, he just had to proceed as he'd planned.

"Now then, now that you've met me, I wonder how familiar are you with one another."

"I don't need to be," Maleficent snapped immediately. "I've nothing to do with fish or other realms. I'm sure your both devilish in your own way, but if it doesn't concern King Stefan and his lovely family, I have no need of you."

"Then you are not dreaming big enough, dearie!"

"My dreams are plenty big enough."

He let out a classic high-pitched burst of laughter at her comments. "Heroes…and Villains. I shouldn't need to tell you which the four of us are considered."

"And I am perfectly fine with-"

"Let him speak!" Ursula burst out before she could say another word. She shrugged when Maleficent glared at her.

"You may be perfectly fine with your status, but you don't speak for me."

"Nor me," Cruella chimed in.

"And you don't need to use my home to be taken in by his wild fantasies."

"He says he needs all of us," Cruella insisted.

"You're new here. He says a lot of things. You'll learn that," Maleficent drawled.

"Just hear him out!" Ursula screeched her way.

The three women looked at one another. Cruella and Maleficent gave one another glances of agreement before casting their challenging gazes upon Maleficent. She continued her chilly glare upon them both, and he couldn't have been happier! Already factions were forming. Cruella and Ursula were not "with" him, not exactly. But they were both on the same page and that page was labeled "interested". When they'd first stepped inside this castle there had been four individuals, now those four made three groups: "yes", "no", and "maybe". Considering his end goal was one group of women and himself in the "yes" group, as a separate entity, he was entirely pleased with what he saw happening.

"Fine…talk," Maleficent sneered, looking in his direction.

Perfect.

"There are two kinds of people in the world, and yet both share one dream, a desire for one thing: a happy ending. To see all our hopes and dreams come true! There is only one thing that separates us from the heroes. They get their happy endings. We don't.

"There is a lot more that separates us from them," Maleficent argued.

"Is there?" he questioned. "We battle, and they win—a happy ending for them. Our wants and needs are seen as secondary just because some of our ways to go about getting them are considered 'less than desirable'. They get what they want, they grow stronger, more loved. We don't get what we want, we're branded as 'wrong', 'immoral', and 'monsters'. They have support for their causes, we are cast aside, isolated, flung to the farthest reaches of the realm where we sit and sulk in our lonesome towers while they throw their parties. There is only one difference between us and them," he concluded. "They get what they want, we don't. It is as simple as that, unless…"

"Unless…" Cruella prompted. She was sitting on the edge of her seat, looking more than intrigued at his proposition. And her heartbeat said that she truly wasn't afraid as she had been before or even comfortable as she'd been trying to pretend she was. There was no pretending this time. He had her interest.

"Unless we stop being divided. You have me, Rumpelstiltskin, the greatest wizard that's ever lived. And then there's the three of you, the 'Queens of Darkness' if you will," he pronounced. Cruella visibly shuddered at the name, Ursula stood a little taller, and Maleficent looked away with an eye roll, a reaction typical of her but spoke in volumes. She liked it too; she just didn't want to appear as though she did. "Ursula…the Sea Witch, the powers of the ocean bow to you in all your tentacely glory. Cruella De Vil, questionable as that breath of yours is, you have the ability to command beasts at your will. And speaking of beasts, Maleficent-"

"You'll stop right there," she insisted letting her staff hit the floor with a resounding thud! "They may be willing to give up all their secrets on a whim, but I'm not about to. I'm going to need a lot more information first."

Two down and one…moving in her fellow witches' direction. Maleficent had gone from wanting him and the pair out of her castle to requesting more information. It was a vast improvement that threatened to make him downright giddy. He didn't want to get his hopes up, but it was hard not to when he considered the fact that a few days ago he'd been preparing for Anna's arrival, and now the curse he had hunted for decades was within his grasp in only a few short hours. He was so close he could taste it! But this time, he wasn't going to let that be a distraction to him, not like he had with the hat. He couldn't be careless, he had to focus! If that incident had taught him anything, it was that this wasn't over until he was back in his tower hiding and protecting the curse with spell after spell after spell.

"And how are we going to get that information if you won't let him finish a sentence?" Cruella demanded suddenly.

"You can't speak to me like that in my own home!" Maleficent roared back.

"I just did, darling. Now then…this happy ending shenanigan you're promising us, can you really do that? Are you really that powerful?"

"Yeah, he's powerful, but not that powerful," Maleficent answered quickly.

"No one is," Ursula added.

"Love how you underestimate me. Adorable!" he responded without letting his confidence fail, though, if they could hear his heartbeat now, it would betray him. The small spat between Maleficent and Cruella was a reminder of just how focused he needed to be. Though they'd solved it on their own, for the most part, it just as easily could have gone the other way. He had to maintain his control.

"What exactly are you offering, short stuff?" Cruella questioned.

"Only the answer to all your prayers."

"I'm not exactly the religious sort," she retorted.

"Shocked."

"Look!" All at once and without warning or even foresight on his behalf, she was out of her seat, rushing at him with a cold, steely look in her eyes. She hurdled herself forward until she was right in front of him, mere inches from his face. He didn't allow himself to be shocked or look startled in the least. He'd faced worse than a female devil in heels who could barely keep her clothes on. "I was quite content with my life until I received this summons, and I do not appreciate being dragged around on false promises!"

"Nothing false about it, dearie," he stated rising to his feet so they were nearly nose to nose. "I know exactly what you want, and you," he added looking at Ursula, who straightened her back and looked interested, before he turned to look at Maleficent, "and you." She looked less than interested.

"Really?" she questioned skeptically.

"Really."

It was a lie. An outright lie. In truth, he knew very little about the three of them compared to what he knew about people he typically made deals with. For two of them, he could probably take a fairly accurate guesses as to what they really wanted, for Cruella he couldn't even begin to guess what she'd want aside from a dog groomer, that would take time. The only honest thing he knew about all of them is that they were villains in this great story Merlin had put them in, they were villains like him, and that meant that they wanted something. If nothing else, he could use that and ask the Seer for information later.

"But don't worry," he added, moving around her and back into the center of their small circle. "I'm not one to betray trusts, so your secrets can remain your own. What I will share is what we all have in common...a desire for happiness, a desire to do what villains can never do: to win." He let that sit for a moment. He didn't need to know what they wanted most of all, only they did. They needed to know. They needed to let the potential of it fill them up so that they could picture it in their heads and get hooked on the idea of having it all as so many villains like themselves did. "And I'm here to show you how, together."

"Even if we would work together, no spell known to man or woman can do what you're saying."

"Of course not, dearie!" he corrected, turning to look at his hardest sell. After all these years he'd thought that getting Regina to come by and help her extract her revenge on dear Aurora might have lessened the sting of what she'd asked him to do all those years ago. But alas, sometimes the one negative in being the orchestrator of all his deeds meant that they went unnoticed and unappreciated. "But we're not looking for a spell. We're looking for a curse. A dark curse," he clarified, turning to the rest of the group. "One that, if you help procure it, can get each and every one of you exactly what you want. Your..." he said to Cruella before turning to Ursula, "happy..." finally, he turned to the tricky one, the dragon "ending."

With all of them staring at him, he took his seat. It wasn't the easiest thing in the room to work a deal with three people at the same time, but he was confident he'd done it at least with two of them. Maleficent seemed a bit more…distrusting. Her head was cocked to the side, and he could see the wheels in that horned head of hers turning. They were so close, just a single word from any would do it now. Finally, Maleficent stepped forward, her staff making a clunking sound every time it hit the floor, echoing over and over in the stone room. When she stood toe to toe with him and towered above his resting form her eyes narrowed, and he nearly shivered. It was a shame. Picturesque as they were, she might have made an excellent leader of this group; if it weren't for him.

"Prove it," the dragon demanded in a quiet but menacing tone.

He smiled. Mission accomplished.

"Gladly."


I wasn't happy about where the last chapter had to break off but it's mostly because of this one. This scene needed so much framing added to it just to begin to fit into the story that it was ridiculous. Everything from being in a different room, to the single teacup sitting out, to the women talking comfortably in chairs and on the couches, it was always obvious that we'd missed something and that was what I had to fill in. Plus, this deal is ultimately a super important one for Rumple, so it was kind of fun to be in his head through this one.

Big thank yous to MerlockVonBaron, Jennifer Baratta, and Grace5231973 for your reviews on the last chapter, simple as it was. I'm hoping that you'll enjoy this one a little bit more. I fretted for a good long while over whether or not I kept the Queens in character or not but on a lot of my edits and read-throughs, I forget where the scene begins and ends, which is usually a good sign that everyone was kept in character. I hope you'll agree. And now, if you're ready, we're on to the main event! Peace and Happy Reading!