He had once promised that he would do nothing else until he found his son. But the truth was that he'd made that vow years ago, when he was certain that getting back to Baelfire was going to take a couple of days at most. However, days soon morphed into weeks, then weeks into months, months into years, and now here he was, in three years he would be one hundred, and it seemed like it was only tomorrow. He could remember a time when watching Bae grow up felt too fast. Now, feeling himself age, though he never actually changed on the outside, seemed like it was nothing. Time had that effect when sleep was elusive. Years sometimes felt like they passed in days. And so while he had, in fact, promised he'd do nothing else until he found his son, he'd found that deal-making was a fair distraction as he waited to decipher pieces of the puzzle that hadn't yet fallen into place.

Jiminy Stromboli was now Jiminy Cricket. It had taken a while, but he'd finally hunted that boy down, and what he'd found was only that damn cricket! He was looking after a boy named Geppetto, who, he had come to discover, was the child of the two puppets he now possessed. The dark-haired man was still nowhere in sight, though he watched that cricket carefully. Geppetto had dark hair, it was possible that one day he could grow up to be that man. Though a voice whispered in his head that it wasn't that simple, in his time as the Dark One he'd come to find that nearly anything was possible. The honest truth was that after all these years, his power of foresight was only marginally better than it had been when he'd first acquired it. He was better at understanding the feelings and urges he had from it, but the visions he'd seen when it had first become his own, the names, the faces, the hints…he hadn't figured most of them out yet. He'd come to understand that it wasn't him, but rather that those events just hadn't come to pass and it may be many more years until they did, though he couldn't understand how he was supposed to meet his son again if this was how long it was going to take. He had only that one prediction, that one promise, that he would see his son again to keep him going. It was a guarantee there was an end to his work. And in the meantime, the deal-making helped. Besides, he could never tell which deal he might make that may well be beneficial to him somewhere along his hunt.

He'd been called to this village several times over the last few years, always for the same thing. There was a beast running wild in the woods, and they wished protection for their children, their cattle, their homes, anything, and everything they owned. These poor folks were fools. Too scared to stop and look at the evidence right in front of their own faces when it came to helping themselves. Though he supposed he shouldn't be too upset by their ignorance, it was his "bread and butter" after all. And if, by chance, they chose to dust themselves off and observe that the mysterious creature only ever struck during the three nights of the full moon, if they observed that it never hunted during the day only at night, if they only realized that the beast never left any indication of a day time habitat, then they might realize that what they had on their hands was not a beast, but a genuine werewolf. And warding them off was as simple as getting ones hands on a certain potion and sprinkling it where the wolf didn't belong. Then again, even if they did realize it, there was one ingredient within that potion that could be tricky for the average witch or wizard to get his hands on. How lucky for them that he wasn't ordinary, and how lucky for him that they were not intelligent.

He had a bottle of the stuff in his pocket now. It was what nearly everyone in the village wanted to meet with him for, and so it was only natural for him to assume it was going to be the outcome. He thought he'd been planning ahead. He hadn't expected it to turn interesting.

"He's a lying cheating bastard of a man…"

He smirked as he looked over her red-stained face. "I take it we're not talking about the town beast."

"What? No! Of course not! My husband!" she cried before biting her knuckle and taking in a sharp breath. He turned around so she wouldn't see him roll his eyes at her as she began to cry. He had a soft spot in his heart for those who have been burned by unfaithful lovers and spouses, for obvious reasons, but crying was something he simply couldn't tolerate. In his experience, those kinds of people didn't deserve the tears that far too many wasted on them. In his opinion all those people actually deserved was-

His gut rolled.

There, across the room, something that made him feel like there was an invisible string that ran from his body to it. It was the instinct of his foresight that he'd come to realize meant one thing: something was important.

This was why he took these summonses. He never knew which one was going to be important, and it appeared this one was. But why?

"I assume you are looking for revenge of some sort," he stated, looking back at the woman with a smile on his face that suggested he was excited to help. Just as he anticipated, the tears stopped as she looked up at him.

"Revenge…I want him to suffer as he dies. I want him to feel the pain of what I feel. I want…"

On and on she went as he turned his back and inspected the trinkets behind him. He'd heard her story a thousand times. Young man marries young woman, has a few kids, and then old man looks at younger women and turns his affections toward them and away from older woman…tale as old as time. But he let her talk. He let her ramble because there was something here for him, something…something he needed to find, needed to have.

That!

That?

He felt it the moment he put his hands on the teacup. He'd attempted to move it aside to see if there was anything of value below it, but the moment he touched it a feeling of overwhelming completion rocketed through him and ended again after his brief couple seconds of touch ended. Completion...he didn't even know that was an emotion! But...he couldn't understand why this cup would stir a reaction like that within him. A teacup? Curiously he touched another of the cups. Then the teapot. No reaction. It was just this cup. Just this one teacup. Small and delicate. It was clean and white, the only color on it a bit of blue. Around the rim and just on the front. A branch and some leaves. The same pattern on all the teacups and pots. It was no different than the others, but it felt different. He felt…he didn't quite know how to put words to what he felt when he touched it, but it was strong. The closest he could come to recognition was the way he'd felt when Milah first placed Baelfire into his arms, and he had an overwhelming urge to protect and guard. This was like that only softer somehow. And yet…

In the back of his mind, he heard the whisperings of the Seer.

"Not Yet."

"Too whole."

"Missing nothing."

Suddenly the light was brighter, he was standing in the great room of his castle, he held the empty cup in his hands. It was chipped along the rim. He couldn't destroy it.

This power was far more frustrating than even he knew sometimes. Just more puzzle pieces, and yet the thought of leaving this space without it was…it was unthinkable. He had to take it with him. How, for once, was easy enough.

"Let me get this straight!" he proclaimed, turning back to the woman, who was somehow still talking, with a smile on his face. "You've summoned me, The Dark One, to do what you cannot…kill your husband."

Alexandra let out a sigh. "Yes. No!" she exclaimed with a sudden shake of the head. "Yes, but no…it's not that simple. You see there are complications…"

"There always are, Dearie. So go on, tell dear old Rumpelstiltskin all about those pesky little details so that we might vanquish the villain together!" He made of a show of his arms before sitting down in one of her chairs by the fire and crossing his legs as he leaned in closer as if interested in the story. She was hesitant of him, understandably. It was nice to be in the presence of one woman who didn't get stars in her eyes but knew the power he had all the same. He wanted to use that to his advantage. After all these years he knew the drill, he knew how to mold himself into what they wanted him to be. The woman needed a helpful fatherly figure to listen to her and understand her. So that was the role he played. And it worked. Eventually, she came forward and sat in the chair opposite him; her heartrate even slowed a bit when she did it.

"A few months ago, before all this began, some people came into town and set up shop. They were selling insurance and-"

"Let me guess…you took out a policy on poor Mr. Edwaurdo, did you not."

She cast her glance to the side, a sign of shame, then drew a great breath as if to offer an explanation, but in the end, she just nodded and choked out, "I did."

Insurance policies. They hadn't existed back when he was a boy or even when Bae was a boy. They'd only recently begun to pop up and a shame too because he suspected that he would have been great at selling them if it was years ago. He'd seen the deals behind them, read the contracts, even made a few deals to help people be free from them. At the heart of it, that was all they were, deals! A deal to pay a certain amount, to gamble the risk of not dying or being injured or falling ill. If all was well, the insurance collector kept the money. If something happened and death, injury, or sickness occurred, then the family in question received a very healthy sum of money. It sounded like a good idea, but it mostly just meant that those who wrote and prepared the individual policies became rich. The policies were expensive. Looking around this house, the notion of how this woman had afforded one escaped him. Why she had done it, when up until a few days ago they'd been a happy couple, was curious, to say the least. Fortunately, Alexandra was a talker and didn't dare keep him in suspense for long.

"It was a few months ago, the attacks on the town were getting worse, and Edwaurdo was going out in the parties after the beast. He's a miner, and I'm a baker, with four children! We don't make much, just enough to survive! If he'd gone out after the monster and didn't return, I wasn't sure how I was going to get by without that money! It's enough that after the deed is done, it will really help us stay on our feet until my oldest can work as well! But, if he dies under suspicious circumstances…that is…if…if it looks like…"

"Oh, now Rumpelstiltskin is beginning to see it all clearly, Dearie!" he scoffed, finally rising from his chair. He'd seen the contracts these companies drew up, and he knew exactly what she was afraid of. "If there is any suspicion that you have killed him, any at all, their contract will become 'null and void'…" he chirped, quoting their term with his fingers.

"Yes, exactly," Alexandra sighed with relief.

"It has to look like an accident so that you and your children can't be suspected and denied your claim. 'Tis a simple matter of 'cause and effect', nothing for the Dark One to worry about, for I shall think of something that will never lead them back to you-"

"Oh!" she breathed. "Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank-"

"Oh! No need to thank me, Dearie! Just pay me!" he corrected. "I don't do such things out of the kindness of my own heart, after all…" he took a few steps closer and held his hand up as if to whisper in her ear so no one else would hear in their empty room, "they say I have no heart at all!"

He smiled as he stepped away, and she shuddered. "R-r-right. Of course, you're not doing this for free. I…I could pay you…a sum of the insurance policy, perhaps…"

"Oh, no, no, no, no…no, if I've a need for money I simply spin it for myself!"

"But…without money…I don't have anything else for you," she admitted her eyes falling. "There is nothing of value in my life."

"One man's garbage is another's treasure!" he proclaimed, taking a few steps back to the tea set. "Or in this case, woman's garbage! My price is simple enough…this tea set will do just fine."

"Tea set…" her eyes fell on the white porcelain beside him, and her brow knitted together. "B-b-but that…that was my grandmothers! I haven't used it in years! It's of no value unless you value sentimentality."

"Well, luckily for you sentimentality is a tradable commodity to me." He quickly plucked the teacup, the one that made his insides swirl, up off the tray in front of him. "I'll take this as my down payment, and I'll be back for the rest when the deal is done. He summoned his magic to create parchment and ink, a magical and binding contract. Normally he didn't bother with such a thing, but he always wanted to give people what they expected of him. For some simply the question of having a deal was enough, for others, they preferred his word. After dealing with insurance thieves, he felt sure that a contract would seal the deal, and leave her satisfied that all was in order.

He held the cup tight in his hand as she took the paper from him and read over the first few lines, at the most. The contract was nearly as tall as he was, there was no possible way she'd finished it within the few seconds that she looked up at him again.

"And you promise…you'll make him suffer…like I have? It'll hurt?"

He let a sinister smile curl over his lips and held her gaze firmly. In a time when most of his clients wanted death to be quick and painless, he had to admit, he did love stipulations like that…

"Until the end."

At his words, she marched over to a writing desk, took a quill, and signed the contract.

There are some fun surprises coming your way, and this is the first one. Ever wonder where Rumple got his tea set? Well, there it is! He's got the cup but how he'll acquire the rest of it...that's a whole other surprise and two more of those unanswered questions. This chapter, along with the next five I am extremely proud of. They are not scenes that you'll find in Once Upon a Time, but I tend to consider it the episode that never was. In my mind, there was a character that never had their story told, they were always a supporting character and showed up in several flashbacks, but never had one that was their own. So I created her story and, in doing so, took the opportunity to answer a bunch of my unanswered questions.

Thank you Grace5231973, Enomisje, and Jennifer Baratta, for your reviews on the last chapter! I'm excited for you to read these few chapters and super excited to hear what you'll think. So, what do you think...do you know where we're going with these six chapters? Do you know who the main character in this episode that never was is? Find out in the next chapter-or at least get one last very big hint! Peace and Happy Reading!