If there was one thing that he excelled at, it was taking the tragedy that was his life and using it for something useful-like motivation. The way he saw it, after the debacle with Cora he could sit around, feeling sorry for himself, throwing fireballs at a hand-drawn portrait, and twisting his fingers wondering if he'd truly ruined the prophecy, or…he could get to work. He could trust that the prophecy would be just as right as it always was. He could trust that one day one of the servants, who he'd heard had their tongues, as well as a few hearts, removed, would utter a name they heard. Or, perhaps to his joy and delight, it would be Cora, perhaps she'd let the name slip when telling her new best friend, a dragon named Maleficent, where she'd learned her magic. Or better yet, perhaps it would be Regina herself. Now wouldn't that be the spectacle!

He chose, of course, to trust the prophecy. He had no reason not to. Everyone in his life, his father, the fairies, Milah, and now Cora, they all seemed to lie to him at every turn. The prophecy was the only thing that seemed unwavering. Why wouldn't he trust it?

But the thing about remembering to trust it meant that he was suddenly aware of just how much work there was to be done. Being away from Cora…it was as if someone had dashed cold water on his face. He could see the eldest child of Princess Cora, he knew that she was alive, but he also knew that while nothing was going to happen anytime soon, time could fly. Right now, the child was just that, a child. There was no chance that she was going to create a curse that would harm a fly, much less one that would take him to see his son! He needed to wait until she came of the proper age to learn magic. With a mother like Cora, a foul woman who had removed her own heart, he had no doubt that when the time finally came, she'd have the right motivation. But there was a rub, of course. If he didn't get his hands on the curse, there would be no curse to cast! Or worse, Regina would somehow find it on her own, and he'd be unprepared.

Well, of course, he'd been looking for the right curse! Of course, he'd been searching for it ever since he'd first talked to the Blue Fairy all those years ago! His library was filled with books of dark history, powerful curses, abominations the world did not speak of. He'd read every single one of their pages in search of the curse that could do something like what the Blue Fairy had lied to him about. So far, he'd come up empty-handed. He had to do something, had to attempt something that had never been attempted before…he had to send someone into the Fairy's Garden. Donna and Steven were, of course, the optimal solution. Their ability to take orders without questioning was only paralleled by their ability to place themselves in the heart of danger without arguing. Not that they'd had much choice in the matter, of course. Two weeks ago, he'd sent them away. Armed with small bags and jars, handfuls of spells and magic they might need to pull off their heist, he'd sent them to the Fairy's stronghold to figure out what curse the Blue Fairy feared so much. He'd been awaiting their return ever since.

But he hadn't been bored. There was plenty to watch as he waited for them. It was Regina's fifth birthday. And oh, what a birthday she was given. He'd watched preparations for it all this week in his cauldron, watching as her mother and father filled the castle with good things for their precocious little girl. Now it was the time of the actual party. Five years old and she'd been given the head of the table. He watched as the image showed two women carrying a large cake out and setting it down before her as her father and mother stood on either side.

Poor girl. She was unhappy about something, clearly. Perhaps the gown she was wearing as she kept picking and itching and Cora kept coming forward to pull her hands away. The images he pulled out of the cauldron were always silent, unfortunately, but he could tell by the facial cues and the way she moved her mouth that whatever Cora had just whispered into her ear as she pulled her hand away yet again, had not been pleasant. Regina did look miserable.

But if it was any consolation, it didn't last long. It never did when her father was around. The second Cora stepped away, he came up behind Regina and whispered something in her ear that made both of them break out into a smile. Her mother might have been a horrendous bitch incapable of loving anyone because of the choices she'd made, but he had to give it to Prince Henry, he seemed to genuinely love the girl. Better yet, Regina seemed to adore her father. From what he'd seen of their relationship, they were always happy when they were with one another and sometimes it made Cora clearly so angry that it made him happy as well. Anything that managed to get under Cora's skin was a miracle so far as he was concerned. Anything like this…

After her father had finished whispering in her ear, Regina had nodded as she smiled. Her father offered her hand to her and she began to stand up on the chair she had been sitting so properly in. He saw Cora step forward, her mouth formed the word "Henry!" in a sharp rebuke, but he ignored her it seemed as he helped Regina lean forward so she could close her eyes and blow out the candle. Cora glared at the pair of them the entire time, but Henry didn't notice. The moment Regina opened her eyes again, they immediately grew wide, and her jaw dropped. She looked at her father, who nodded and told her something he couldn't make out before he picked her up off the chair and set her down on the ground. He joined the guests in watching as she ran quickly over to a small gray pony and hugged it as the guests applauded. Regina's mouth was moving rapidly. As her father joined her, he thought she might have been saying "Thank you" over and over again in that way children did when they were excited. And there was Cora in the corner. Sulking. Incapable of rejoicing with them or feeling anything for this happy moment. She had all the symptoms of someone who had no heart. And he didn't feel the least bit sorry for her. Not even when-

Intruder!

The hair on the back of his neck stood up as he waved his hand over the cauldron, forcing the image away. He looked around. He had so many protection spells on the castle place that he knew when the mice came and went. His magic was telling him he wasn't alone now. Someone was here. And it wasn't someone who was coming to him for a deal. This individual was filled with magic already — Light Magic.

As if sensing that she'd been discovered, he watched as none other than the Blue Bug herself came brazenly in through the open window across the tower.

"You don't have permission to enter here, Dearie."

She stopped just over his spinning wheel and sighed. "I'm here for you. We thought you'd want these back!"

All at once, she waved the wand in her hand, and a small portal-like hole appeared just over his table. There was a thud as something came crashing down onto it, and the magic above dissolved.

It wasn't just one thing; it was two. The dolls, Donna and Steven, they'd been discovered and…

There was something different about them, something that made them nearly unrecognizable when they'd first fallen. Now, as he stepped up to put his hands over them and prepared for the small feeling of familiarity that came when he encountered magic of his own, he realized what that difference was. There was no feeling. There was no recognition. No magic in them at all!

"You've-"

"Freed them!" the Blue Fairy admitted as he stared up at her. "We used Light Magic to send their souls away, onto the beyond. Jiminy has already been informed. It was his greatest wish other than to help their child, and it was our greatest wish too once we saw what you had done to them. They're of no use to you now, Rumpelstiltskin!"

"You filthy little witch!"

Magic began to roll off of him just as anger coursed inside of him. He'd never know now if they'd found what he was looking for! He'd have to figure out another way to discover that curse! Fire blossomed over his palm, and he reared back to throw it at her.

"I'm a fairy!" she cried before he could. "This is what we do! Good!"

"I've never known a fairy to do good!" he roared. "Or have you forgotten your little secret about the Black Fairy?"

"The Black Fairy…" she shook her head and turned her nose up at him. "I don't know what you are talking about. And just because we won't assist you in destroying the realm to find your son doesn't mean we don't do good, Rumpelstiltskin!"

He let out a shout that sounded far more like a war cry than a scream as he hurled the ball in his hand at the bug. She dodged it, the stone behind her blackened.

"As if that will solve anything," she chastised. "You had your chance, Rumpelstiltskin, you didn't take it, now you have to live with the consequences. We won't let the rest of the realm suffer because of your unhappiness!"

"Get out!" he roared. "Get out of my castle! Get out!"

"Happily," she stated before turning and flying out the way that she'd come, but he…

He couldn't go back to what he'd been doing, not with those two soulless pieces of wood lying on the table staring at him. Anger and revenge, those were always the emotions that made it so easy for him to summon up his magic and use it. But a funny thing happened when anger multiplied, when it became nothing but pure rage, he'd found it was almost impossible to use his magic, and in truth, he didn't want to. It was much more satisfying to feel things around him break at his own hands rather than magical ones that did not exist.

So he raged. He swept his arms out over the contents of the tables before him and listened to the crashing and smashing of glass. He tipped over his cauldron and watched as the liquid spilled across the floor, the wet putting the fire out with a flash that turned it purple for just a minute. He kicked the stool to his spinning wheel across the room, where it sailed into the wall and burst into pieces. He moved to the table the dolls had been dropped upon and moved to flip it over only…

Ever since he'd got them, those dolls always wore the same clothes. They were always unchanging. He'd seen it so many times he knew exactly what they looked like just as he knew exactly what they should feel like when his magic once coursed through them. The small piece of ivory colored something that he saw sticking out of a pocket on Donna's dress…he'd never seen that before.

Already on two legs, he quickly set the table back down on all fours and moved Steven aside so he could examine Donna. It was a piece of paper, rough around the edges as if it had been torn from something. It was old, thus it's odd color. And it was small. Too small even for the doll to have held but with the fairies being so tiny he'd assumed their Coven was too and so one of the potions he'd given the pair was one that would shrink them down to a fairy's size to search. On the back, there appeared to be writing on it, tidy womanly scrawl, but on the other side, there was only paper and something bigger scribbled in gray. That could only mean one thing. She must have found something. Better yet, she'd written something down. And she must have shoved it in her pocket before the Blue Fairy caught them.

Quickly, he checked the rest of the pockets, not only on Donna but also on Steven. That single piece of paper was all that he found. It was all that was left. But the writing was too small, even with his eyesight, he couldn't read it and with the cauldron smashed he didn't have the time to make a potion that would grow it into a decent size. Even then, he wasn't willing to risk harming whatever was on the paper itself. Instead, he found the shattered remains of a magnifying glass and waved his hand over them to restore it. Then he flatted out the little scrap of paper and looked at it through the glass. On the backside, the tiny scribbles seemed to be a record of some kind. It appeared to document an incident in fairy history, one where a mother attempted to cut her son's destiny away from him with the Shears of Destiny, and the Fairy God-mother intervened. That was where the record cut off. But on the other side, there were only three words written on the paper, but they were enough to make him smile and say "well done" to the lifeless figure. She had been smart and useful, after all. She'd been freed by those fairies but not without leaving him with the answer he sought first.

The Dark Curse.

Welcome to the third, and shortest, section of The Dark Curse. I call this section The Preparation Section and it's kind of a weird situation. The Preparation Section covers a large span of time in only a few short chapters (as you can see here five years have passed since the last chapter), as such the Preparation Section sort of plays as "filler section" in getting to our next section. However, "Filler Section" means that it has the opposite effect on the chapters in the section. Since there is not a lot going on during this section, it stands to reason that if something gets a chapter, it must be something really important! As as you can see, we're starting out strong with this chapter. Considering what this fiction is really about, it's possibly the most important chapter of the fiction. I loved getting to write this chapter even if there wasn't a whole lot of action involved in it. For clarification, he has not actually found The Dark Curse, we all know that is safely tucked away on Bald Mountain at the moment. But up until this chapter, all he knew was that someday Regina would cast "a powerful curse". This is the moment that the curse gets its name and he knows what he has to go after now. We're still a long way away from finding it, but now he knows he has to find "The Dark Curse". In addition, I explained why we never really saw much of Donna and Stephen in the series. They're useless now. Nothing but dolls. So for the most part, every time we encounter them beyond this in the story they're really nothing but a relic of really clever Dark One Magic. I guess he'll be needing new help in the future. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Thank you, thank you, thank you MerlockVonBaron, MissAmande, Jennifer Baratta, and Grace5231973 for reviews on the last chapter! I'm really happy everyone enjoyed that section even if we aren't Golden Heart Fans! I'm so honored you continue to read this with me through thick and thin! Fair warning, The Preparation section is the shortest section in this fiction, it's only about 9 chapters. So if some of the randomness within this section bugs you, never worry, we'll be out of it soon enough! Peace and Happy Reading!