The deed was done far before dawn's earliest light; there wasn't a doubt about that in his mind. The deal was done. Jethero was dead. When his body finally was found, there would be no denying it was not Alexandra who killed him, and by all accounts, he should be well on his way to picking up the rest of his tea set by now. Actually, by the time the sun rose, he acknowledged that he should have picked up his tea set hours ago and be home studying it by now trying to identify it's importance in the future. But there he sat, still up in the trees looking down at the barn, unmoving, just like he had been all night.

He told himself that it was just to be sure, to make absolutely positive that Jethero was dead, but the truth was he didn't need to see the carnage to know and it wasn't what he was waiting for. What he was really waiting for was-

That.

For nearly as soon as the sun rose, he heard a scream emerge from that barn, high pitched and blood-curdling. But he didn't take any satisfaction from it. In fact, he didn't know why it affected him quite the way it did. Granny had turned him down and he'd resorted to doing what he knew he had to in order to make the deal work, but somehow…her scream rang out in his ears, repeating over and over again. His heart was hard these days. He had very few cares in the world and yet this Granny, this…girl-she had found one of those soft spots. And in the night, the idea of walking off and leaving her to this alone had seemed wrong in a way that the murder of Jethero had not.

In the middle of the night, after the screams of Jethero had given way to nothing but the sounds of ripping flesh he'd gone back into the house to send his puppets back to the castle where they belonged and also had grabbed the key Donna had used to lock her away with. Now, though he was two dozen feet up in the air at least, he easily slid off of the branch he sat on and the next minute was safely on the ground. At the door of the barn, he heard no motion, no tugging or pulling on the chain that bound her, only the sound of weeping. Weeping…from this woman...it sounded as silly as saying she was bleating! And yet, when he finally removed the spell he'd placed on the barn door and opened it, he saw that he wasn't wrong. She was a huddled mass against the far wall, her head was in her hands, and her body shook from the sobs that came screaming out of her mouth. At least until the barn door opened and the light flooded in.

Scared and afraid were two words he'd never thought would describe this woman, but they were all he could think to use for the look in her eyes as she finally turned her head to look up at the figure before her. A moment later he knew that she was aware of who he was, and she scrambled to her feet.

"You!" she screamed as she looked around the scene in front of her. And what a scene it was too. Now that he let his eyes roam as her own did he could see the bloody pulp of a mess on the ground that was once a man. There was blood on the walls, bloody paw prints on the ground, scratch marks on the wood. Alexandra had truly gotten her wish…Jethero had suffered. And now Granny…

"You…you tricked me!" she cried as she slowly came to the realization of what had happened. "You tricked me into…oh…what have I done?!" She put her hands to her head and sank down against the back wall again as she cried the chains around her clacking and clanging with her movements.

"You've done exactly as I intended," he explained in a low voice, his natural voice. There was no need to toy with her, no need to put on a show. She desired nothing of him now but answers and there was no reason why she shouldn't have them. "You can rest assured, Dearie, that what you've done is squash a pest, a true insect."

She shook her head as her eyes remained focused on the former body. "No one deserves this…"

"He was a philanderer. A swine. And now, thanks to you, there can be no doubt to the authorities that he was not killed by the wife or children he's tormented with his lies and deceit. They'll have enough money to survive the winter and get back on their feet before the wife remarries."

"And what was in it for you?" she demanded finally looking back up at him. Her eyes were red, her face swollen from the tears she'd shed, but he could still see the anger in her, he could hear the bit of it in her tone. "Why did you care about them? What was worth all of that? All of this?!"

Oh, she was a sympathetic sight, that much was certain, but he wasn't stupid enough to fall for those doe eyes no matter how attractive her fire was. She was too good for him, and the answer that she was after wasn't even really clear to him yet, though he doubted she'd find that and acceptable excuse.

"That's my business. It's nothing that concerns you…at least not yet."

"Not yet…" she choked out a laugh that was somewhere between a snort and a sob. "What does that mean?"

In truth, he hadn't known what it meant, not until she'd asked. Not until he told himself that he should go and leave her be and the monster that lived within his own skin rebelled and reminded him what a wonderful tool a creature with her abilities could be! She might look sad and pathetic now, but she was a strong woman underneath it all. Having her on his side could be helpful, at least until he figured out the images and riddles coming into his mind.

"You think yourself a monster-"

"I am a monster!" she bit back, rising to her feet so quickly the chain still tied around her arm rattled. "You may have set out all the ingredients Rumpelstiltskin, but I'm the one that made the cake! I did this! Me! And that makes me a monster!"

He took a few deep breaths. He didn't particularly care for being yelled at or interrupted but given her state, he could excuse it.

"You think yourself a monster, but you are not. Not really. There are many werewolves in our realm, an entire family has lived right under your nose for decades before you came along and you never knew it because they can control themselves. Your troubles come from a lack of control. You fight the wolf inside of you and so it always wins. Accept what you are, and control becomes yours. You'll be naught but an ordinary wolf once a month, not hunted, not a murderer. I can help you come to accept what you are…if you give me the chance."

So that was what it was. He hadn't realized what he'd found so compelling about the woman until this very moment, until he'd begun his temptation, but now he saw it. She was him. Years ago after receiving the Dark Curse. She was who he'd been then when he'd been unwilling to truly embrace his new nature and the fight against it had cost him everything, including Baelfire! He saw himself in her eyes. Along with her potential.

But what he saw didn't matter. All that mattered was what Granny saw when he offered his hand to her. And as she looked quickly between that hand and the bloody scene over his shoulder, he was fairly certain that she didn't see things the way he did.

"No," she stated stepping away the little she could with the chain still attached to her wrist. "No, I won't do that! I won't be the monster you think I am and I will never be indebted to you in any way! I will never, ever, be this…again!"

He knew a desperate soul when he saw one, which meant that despite what she thought, he also recognized a satisfied soul. She meant every word she'd said, and that meant there was no deal to be made. He'd keep her in his sights, watch her grow into the "Granny" he already thought of her as, but this was the last of their transactions. He felt it just as much as he knew it. And before he left, he felt an odd compulsion to do what he'd never done before as the Dark One, magic at no cost…even if he knew it would rebound and make him worse than he was. He simply thought of it as the fulfillment of the deal that never was.

From beneath his own cloak he pulled out the brilliant red one he'd made and originally intended to give to her. He dropped it at her feet the way she had dropped it at his before all this.

"Keep the cloak, Dearie, blame the destruction on the wolf, and leave this place. The realm may never know we ever met. Use it, tell your family a wizard gave it to you, if they ask, put this behind you and live your life as you intended."

Her eyes…she had suck striking eyes. Firm and observant, but at the same time whoever had once said the eyes were the window to the soul must have known her because they were. She didn't say thank you, but he knew that the tears in her eyes were not only tears of anger as well as sadness and pain, but now mingled with tears of gratitude. She'd never say thank you, she wasn't that type of person, but he knew the cloak made all the difference.

His head turned as he began to hear voices outside. Male voices. They smelled blood. The Lucas family had returned from their own dalliances with the full moon. And so he used his magic to leave her there in the barn, the key to her chain still with him. He'd let that woman discover on her own that he'd dropped her into the barn of wolves just like her. They had a son about her age, and foresight had proven that future generations would someday come in handy. He trusted that, for what he'd seen had already come to pass. No matter what happened from this point on, whenever they encountered one another in the future, he had no doubt theirs would always be a complicated relationship.

And so we have the conclusion to The Episode That Never Was. What did you think of Granny's section? We didn't have much info on Rumple and Granny during the show, just that nagging little comment about the pair of them having a complicated relationship. Now, for me, this chapter is really the crux of that comment. What makes a relationship "complicated"? In my mind, it means a relationship that is neither wholly negative or positive. To me, a complicated relationship has aspects of both. What makes their relationship complicated? Well, the negative, of course, is that Rumple gets Granny to kill the man, something she certainly didn't want to happen. But the positive comes at the end. She gets the cloak. Rumple gives her this great powerful object that she desperately wants so she can control her power. That object, as we know, will prove to be helpful later in life for her and her granddaughter. So, in my mind, when she looks back on this moment, she obviously doesn't like it, but she can't hate it either because it's the moment she got her cloak. I also used the "complicated relationship" to explain a bit of what we read in Red's Tale, the book that was published for Ruby and the OUAT writers say is canon. In that story, Red states that a wizard gave Granny the cloak but that's about it. It's never really gone into more than that. And after this event, I like to think that Granny is giving her granddaughter a half-truth. She's lying about these events because she doesn't want or need to explain them to Ruby, but also being honest in the fact that she got the cloak from a Wizard. And there you have it! A complicated relationship and an intact canon! Ta-da!

Thank you Grace5231973, MissAmande, and Jennifer Baratta for your reviews! I'm super excited to hear how you feel about this chapter as well as this entire section because this is it! This is the last chapter in The Beginning Section! One down, seven to go! The next chapter will be the start of the next section and I think you are really going to like the turn of events that awaits us in those chapters. In the meantime, I can't wait to hear your thoughts! Peace and Happy Reading!