Royal weddings were extravagant affairs. They were never planned in a day, or even a week. At minimum they took months, especially when there was so much for the bride to learn. Soon after her engagement, it became obvious to Cora that Prince Henry was only distantly in line for the throne, the chances she'd ever be Queen were slim, but not impossible. But regardless of that fact, Henry and Cora, once they were married, were to be given their own spit of land to rule over for the King and Queen. There was a lot to teach her before she could marry Henry and be crowned as Princess, and the King wasn't going to allow her to marry his son without that education.

And so, the wedding was planned so distantly down the road it felt like something that would never get there. But a lengthy engagement suited him just fine. Aside from politics, there was much for Cora to learn.

She was a promised woman, and a part of him acknowledged that was dangerous, but after that night together in the tower, he just couldn't stop spending time with her. During the day the King and the Prince, the Kingdom and the palace could have her. But night was their time. After the castle had gone to bed or Cora had pronounced she was retiring, he'd gotten good at slipping into the castle under cover of darkness to see her. They'd met every night since the Prince had proposed and she'd moved in. And she knew it was wrong too, dangerous, but he suspected that she got a secret thrill out of the running around. He suspected it, because he got a secret thrill out of running around behind the backs of so many. Not that they were ever discreet. They'd been nearly caught more than a few times, and knowing that the fate for Cora, if caught, would be death, one of the first things he'd taught her had been privacy. He taught her how to place a spell upon the reflective surfaces in the rooms they used. It wouldn't make them unusable, he taught her, but it would make sure no sound came from them. To stay hidden from view, she simply had to place a blanket over them. It was usually only after the blanket went over the mirrors, once the illusion of complete privacy was achieved, that their meetings turned into something more.

The reason for seeing her was always under the pretense of learning magic, but more often than not, there lessons turned into late-night rendezvous that involved learning far more than magic. It wasn't exactly their fault, not always at least. Their classroom kept moving and shifting. First, they'd met in the tower she'd originally been imprisoned in, it was there that he'd given her Morgan's book, so she could learn even while he wasn't present. And it was there that the noise of their embraces had drawn the curiosity of the servants and forced them out. Into the garden next time, underneath the moonlight, where they discussed plants and herbs and the purposes of each in magic, before the gardeners had heard voices and they'd taken shelter in the little gardening shed and quieted their laughter with passionate kisses. He taught her about potions in the kitchen when all the maids had gone to sleep, and that was when they'd learned that she was ticklish just under her ribs and he'd first gotten away with holding her breast in the palm of his hand as she groaned at the path his lips made over her neck. He'd gotten, perhaps, a bit too aggressive when he pushed closer and when she'd reached back to balance her weight on the table, she'd suddenly shrieked as blood covered her hand. She'd cut herself on a knife, and they'd barely escaped before they'd been caught. He taught her how to heal herself that night.

Today they'd been talking about spells in the ballroom. It was brazen and daring, considering all the possible reflective surfaces that couldn't be covered with a blanket, but they'd needed a large space. Tonight he was teaching her how to move air and make wind capable of gusting and knocking opposing forces backward. This time, it was her that got a touch too aggressive, only with magic instead of his body. Eventually, she'd knocked the King's throne back. A maid in the next room had come running and they had taken off running. In the back of his mind, he knew it was ridiculous. He was the fucking Dark One! He could disappear and reappear at a second's notice, and yet here he was, chasing after Cora, hand in hand, letting her push him into a room and close the door where they hid from a mere non-magical mortal! It was childish. But maybe that was the reason it was also fun. He liked the way she shrank into him and allowed him to hold her closer as they suppressed their laughter and listened in the hallway, praying those maids wouldn't come in to clean this place next or search it for the reasons behind the noises. By now, it should have been at the forefront of their mind not to make so much noise.

But hiding did have its perks. When the sounds they heard outside finally passed and they realized they were safe from discovery, they were finally free to look at each other, let out a peal of riotous laughter before Cora leaned up to kiss him once more. Deeply. Urgently. As it always did the passion grew and just as he let out a sigh and had the urge to take a breath, he felt a pull against his arms and he pushed until Cora was up against a wall, smiling with drunken happiness he was confident he shared in before kissing her again so that their mouths opened and he tasted the chocolate she'd had for dessert on her tongue.

The magic they were teaching each other was most certainly not limited to spells and potions. It was a dangerous game they were playing right under the nose of the King and her fiancé, but at the moment, he didn't particularly care to stop. And for the first time, he didn't feel as though he had too.

Meeting Cora meant more than secret mid-night meetings. It was a timeline. For the first time since he'd acquired his power of foresight, he had a sense of time. He wasn't searching blindly for random faces and events. He was waiting for Cora. For her child. For Regina to get old enough to cast a curse. To hate Snow White enough to cast the curse. No, Cora wasn't even pregnant yet, it might be a couple of years until her firstborn came along, but it wouldn't be long. And from there it was what? Twenty years? Thirty? Thirty-five? To anyone else, it might seem long, but he'd waited a century already. Next to that, another thirty-five years was nothing. And if Cora was there with him, why shouldn't he enjoy this time with her?

Suddenly, Cora broke away. Her chest was heaving, making him need more than anything to bend down and place another kiss at the indent at the top of her cleavage as he caught his own breath.

"You've gone rigid again, Darling," she finally breathed.

"Have I?' he questioned with false surprise. She complained of that whenever this happened. When he was with her and his thoughts drifted to his son. He hadn't known his body would react to those thoughts but she sensed it every time. Not that she understood it, he had yet to actually explain to her the reason for it. "Merely taking in the scenery," he excused moving away from her and letting his eyes wander around the room they'd taken shelter in. "Where did we end up?"

The room was big, but simple. A single lit fireplace against the wall and book after book sat upon shelf after shelf. There was a desk and high-backed chair pushed against one wall. Another table with chairs around it was in the center of the room. And by the fireplace big, plump, soft-looking armchairs that looked like they'd be a joy to snuggle up in with a loved one or a book.

"The Library," Cora said, stating what he'd already put together. "Xavier's personal library, to be specific. Fortunately, he goes to bed early. And better yet, it's fortunate that Henry and I will be moving to an estate of our own after we're married. I can't wait…he's not exactly what a prince should be, but I'd rather live there with him for an eternity than stay in this place with his father breathing down my neck. I hate that man, and yet…Henry could stand to be a little more like him," she sighed falling down into one of the armchairs, so her legs were kicked over the side of it.

Her musings were not news to him. This was a dangerous game they'd been playing but he knew that her side of the game was more difficult than his own was. He had to be secretive for her sake, but it was she who led a double life. She had to be a future princess, madly in love with her own "Prince Charming" during the day as she was taught manners and etiquette and all that she needed to know in order to be a princess one day. But then at night, with him…she became this. Magical. Beautiful. Rude. Arrogant. A sorceress. And if the look she was giving him from that chair had the proper effect, a temptress like he'd never imagined existed. It had to be difficult for her, but gods was it intoxicating to him!

He was about to give into her beckoning eyes, to pull her down onto that rug and maybe feel for something lower than her chest, but the second he took a step closer, he encountered something magical that stopped him in his tracks. Focused as he'd been on Cora, it was as though he was a dog who had just smelled a cat, and the feeling was so unexpected it distracted him from the beautiful woman wordlessly calling him closer.

"Rumple…Rumple, what is it, my dear?"

He didn't know. He was looking around, trying to identify the source of the magic when…there it was. His heart began to flutter as he moved closer to it, wondering if it was what he thought it was.

Yes…Dark One magic. It had been created by a former, and therefore he had the memories of the creation. He knew exactly what had gone into the making of it, and the reason it existed, he only had to tap into those memories from…four Dark One's before him. A King who had been cruel and punishing to his sons after losing the first and most beloved in an accident. The King had wanted a way always to know where they were the more they rebelled against him. So he'd made a deal with a Dark One who fashioned this — a globe made of magic. White on the surface, with no identifiable landmasses, inside it hummed from magic, perhaps recognizing his as he recognized it's.

"Valuable," the Seer's voice whispered in his ear. "Find the boy!"

"Rumple, are you alright?" he felt Cora's hand upon his shoulder and felt her warmth next to him. She was concerned. He, on the other hand, felt ecstatic.

"This globe…do you know where it came from?"

She gave it a glance before shaking her head. "No, of course not, as if Xavier had time to waste on telling me stories. Why? What is it?"

He plucked it off the table and brought it closer to the light, where it was easier to see. "It was made by a Dark One, hundreds of years ago. It can find anyone, anywhere, any realm. Or so the King it was given to was told." He searched the foreign memories once more and confirmed it. Yes, that was what it did. The King hadn't been lied to, which meant…

The tip of the globe was sharp, meant to pierce skin even skin as thick as his own was these days. Cora hissed out his name when she saw what he'd done but didn't stop him from letting his hand hover over the mass of white and swirled on the surface as though it were made of water. He watched with eager anticipation, hardly feeling it when Cora took his hand to heal the puncture on his finger as slowly something began to form along the white of the globe. And island. A single solitary island in the entire world with only one little pinprick in the water a fair distance from it. It was red, the precise color of the blood he'd dropped onto it, but he hunched his shoulders in frustration and did his best not to reach out and toss the thing across the room.

Neverland.

The globe had found his blood. But it had found his blood one generation in the wrong direction!

And Bae…

"Do you know where that is?" Cora asked next to him as the image, no longer needed, began to swirl and fade.

"No," he lied with a growl. Maybe it wasn't that it didn't work, but that it couldn't. Bae had gone to a Land Without Magic that much was clear. By very definition, then, magic couldn't work in that land, and nothing for it would work here…not unless he changed the Land Without Magic into a Land With Magic. On that day the globe might be useful, which was the only reason he wasn't destroying it now. But until then…

"And who is it you're trying to find, exactly?" Cora prodded next to him.

That answer, truth or lie, certainly didn't come as easily as the last question. As an unwritten rule, he'd spoken of his son to almost no one since he'd gone away, save for one conversation with the Blue Fairy and another with Milah and a final one with the Seer. Beyond that, there were times that he'd mentioned he had a son, to comfort or manipulate others into trusting him; in this case, he was certain he'd mentioned it to Cora once, on the night they met, but he hadn't spoken his name. Not aloud, not to another. Telling someone else, explaining the reason behind his dealings, and how he'd failed in them, it seemed wrong. And thankfully, in his situations, the people he mentioned it to generally didn't care. In truth, it was because he hadn't ever had a relationship with any one of them, not since Bae had left had he bothered himself with just trivialities. But now with Cora, things had changed in the last month. What once seemed like an endless stretch of unknown time suddenly had an end date. The time was coming! And the brown-haired woman he'd seen in his bed, the one from his vision…if it was Cora, if things had truly shifted to the point that he had a partner in all of this, why not tell that someone. He had done a lot of terrible, awful things since becoming the Dark One, the part of him that was still human recognized that sometimes, that all the trickery, murder, and deception had to return to him at some point. Yet, all of those terrible things were far easier to confess than what had happened with his own flesh and blood.

"My son," he muttered in a voice so low he was certain he'd have to repeat himself but prayed he didn't. If she asked him to, he might lose his nerve and reconsider.

"Your son…" she repeated thankful. "You mentioned him the night we met. You lost him?" she guessed correctly.

He bit the inside of his cheek until it bled. He'd never thought of it that way before. He'd never thought of it with such an active and careless verb, but he supposed…yes, it was right.

"Many, many years ago," he confirmed. "I am…quite old, you know."

"I've assumed," she answered. For a while, there was silence a time when he didn't know how to go on, and he could sense Cora wanted so badly to ask a question it was beginning to make his skin itch. "How long ago was it?" was finally what came out of her mouth, and he was almost happy she'd asked it in the way she had and not pondered how old Bae was when he'd gone missing.

"A little over a hundred years now…"

Cora was a pale woman, there wasn't much color to her except for the color she added to her face artificially. But his words he swore that even that drained out of her face. She'd assumed he was old but hadn't assumed he was that old.

"Cat got your tongue?" he questioned with a smile, thankful they could move onto something to do with him rather than Baelfire.

"No, it's just…Rumple, if it's been over a hundred years, how can you be sure that your son is-"

"Alive?" he finished for her, unwilling to hear such a thing from her lips. He supposed they hadn't quite moved on as he thought they had. "I know," he promised. "I know he's still alive for the same reason that I know that your daughter will one day help me get back to him."

"And that reason is…"

Again he paused. Tell, don't tell? It was quite the conundrum. When he glanced over at her, he knew he was going to have to tell her something; the question was, just how much was he going to have to tell.

"Because I see the future," he answered. "It's a very uncertain difficult practice. But the future dictates that one day the firstborn of Princess Cora will cast the spell that will take me to the land where my son is."

"Princess…"

"Yes, that's how I knew you could be more than a Miller's daughter," he'd made the comment off-handedly, but now that he was looking at her once more, he knew he'd made a mistake. She looked away from him, her eyes wide her mouth open…she looked hurt. Should he not have told her that bit?

"That and…your tenacity," he whispered turning away from the globe and pulling her into his arms. "The power that I sensed inside of you…" he kissed one side of her neck, "…your determination…" he kissed the other side and she began to smile as he turned back to her mouth. "And-"

"Quit while you're ahead, my dear Rumple," she interrupted before throwing herself back into his arms.

So we're expanding on Cora a little mostly because I really don't see them having a week-long affair. I always assumed that the backstory in this episode covered a longer period of time just because he went from teaching her beginners magic to Cora excelling and I felt that she needed more than a week for that. But never fear, because while we're going to explore their relationship, we're also going to take advantage of the opportunity to address some other things. So, let me take the opportunity, in this author's note, to let you in on a little secret. One of the reasons this fiction is so long is because it has a big job to do. This isn't just "hey, let's get the Dark Curse all setup and go", this fiction is the set up for every single season, from here to the end. And because it's a companion with Moments, it's the set up to every Moments fiction as well. Every single thing that is said in Storybrooke, every object given away in the store, every reference that is made...this is where it starts. Well...not in the Cora Section, at least not all of it, but throughout this fiction, there are certain chapters dedicated simply to setting up future fictions and scenes and chapters in Moments that we know are coming! Usually, these chapters begin with one of two questions. "How does X get Y?" or "Why does X need Y?" So, this for example, sets up season two and happens to answer both of those question. In season two Cora comes to Storybrooke, she shows up in the shop, speaks with knowledge of Baelfire, and she gives Rumple the globe. How does she know about Baelfire, why does she know that he needs the globe, why hasn't he taken it before? This chapter was dedicated to answering those questions and I hope you like the explanation. Oh, all but the last question of course. Why he doesn't take it for himself...we'll get there. In addition, this chapter had to be compatible with Chapter 47 of Moments Seen and Unseen when Rumple explains his relationship with Cora to Belle.

Thank you Grace5231973, MerlockVonBaron, and MissAmande for your comments on the last chapter. I do hope you like this chapter and the chapters that are added to this fiction for Cora. This was a huge project to undertake. Did I get it all right and perfect? I hope so, but I acknowledge that I probably didn't. I'm sure somewhere something is missing. But I know there will be grace given in those situations and what I am certain of is that they will be few and far between! Peace and Happy Reading!