"I see we're no better today than we were yesterday…" he murmured. It was either that or Regina had taken his orders to bring her rage as seriously as possible.

She was here, in the tower just as he'd ordered her to be, but she was still miserable as she'd been the day before. Odd, somedays he could swear the brown was going out of her eyes, making them nothing but deep black abysses. Those eyes seemed to get darker just as her voice seemed to get lower. He'd told her to bring her rage and today she had, she'd brought it all with her and it was so potent in the air today he knew he wanted to teach her about manipulating weather. Anger like she had this moment could be easily channeled into lightning and who knew…maybe she'd strike the house of the Apprentice and solve one problem for him.

"I'm here," she snapped without enthusiasm. "You never said I had to be better than yesterday. In fact…you told me to come angry!"

"I told you to bring 'simmering rage', dearie, not fire. And speaking of fire…have you been practicing?"

She glared at him, black eyes underneath black eyelashes because she knew just as well as he did that her ability to craft fire hadn't improved yet. Funny thing, magic and emotions. The pair were linked together in ways that seemed magical on their own sometimes. Regina's inability to learn fire, at least at first, came from a lack of angry in her pretty, pristine, innocent little life. Now Regina knew darkness, she knew rage and was learning to embrace both. But the problem with her ability to create fire was that the anger had to be properly focused and channeled. At the moment, Regina knew too much anger to do that. That innocent little girl had opened the door on grief and depression and frustration and anger and now it was too overwhelming to focus. She despised her step-daughter, felt irritation, at the very least for her husband, she felt guilt and grief and fury toward her mother, and anger toward her father who never rescued her. And of course he held no hope at being excluded from her frustrations. As her knowledge and abilities increased their lessons grew more and more difficult which set him up to be very frustrating on even the best of days as if he wasn't frustrating all on his own. She was angry at the world. Therefore, it was too much to hope that she'd be able to channel fire, but that didn't mean he was going to stop pushing…

"I assume that whatever it is you are setting up over there is for our lesson today," she answered, her own attempt at trying to redirect their conversation.

"Indeed it will," he sighed looking over the objects he was setting out for her. They weren't so much magical tools but they were certainly tools that would help her to direct her anger if she wanted to. A lightning rod, a rain gauge, a windsock, and a few other weather-related items. None of these, of course, would make any difference if he couldn't get her to cool her anger a bit. Or at least channel it. What exactly was bothering the Queen? "But only if you want it to."

"'If I want it too'..."

"Today we'll be learning to manipulate weather, make it rain, make it snow, make lightning flash and thunder crash!" he cried out dramatically before looking down at her again. "But I think there is something else you'd rather discuss first."

"Like what? Stop prodding and just ask your questions!"

"Well if I knew what you'd like to discuss then I wouldn't be prodding, now would I," he pointed out. Magic required a clear head and since he'd stumbled upon her yesterday it was clear she didn't possess that. "Methinks you've got…something on your mind…" he stated in a singsong voice.

"What would you know about my mind?" she questioned, though he took note of the fact that her voice lifted a little, the darkness she held around her turned into a darker gray.

"More than you know!" he proclaimed before he took the opportunity to make a show of sitting on his spinning stool, crossing one leg over the other, and raising his head in mock anticipation. "Go on, tell old 'Papa Rumple' what's keeping you up at night!"

She stared at him for a while with skepticism. He understood it. They had done a lot together since their first meeting, discussed many things in addition to the magic he taught her but this was the first time there was no cover for their discussions. They'd never simply sat and had a conversation. It wasn't his favorite thing to do. Conversations had him constantly aware of what he was saying and how he was saying it. They opened the door to sharing information so that individuals might trust him and that led to the potential for that information to be shared or used in ways that might make him weak, as Zelena had attempted with her meat pie.

But he'd be a fool if he hadn't expected at least a few of these conversations with Regina. What did he know about the inside of her mind, more than she thought but not nearly enough either. This was how it was done, this was how he had to figure it out and sort through it all, so he could make her into a witch strong enough to make fire and then one day cast his curse. He didn't like it, but in a way he'd known this was coming ever since he'd snuck up on her eating yesterday. This was where it would lead.

So while Regina was silent for a long while, quietly challenging him to grow impatient or uncomfortable and move on, he held his ground. He stayed propped on his stool in expectation, reminding himself that he had nothing but time. Eventually, he saw her crack. A grimace grew over her face as she looked away, hunched her shoulders and sighed.

"My mother…she was happy with her magic?"

"Well now," he exclaimed with a laugh of derision. "I don't think we should presume your mother ever had the heart to be happy about anything." Had the heart…he couldn't help but smile at his own personal joke. He was fairly sure that Regina hadn't a clue about what her mother had done to her own heart but she knew at least that happiness, any emotion really, never came easy to Cora. But he knew why.

"Fine…she wasn't happy, but she was satisfied with it…wasn't she?"

"Satisfied in what way?" he prodded. There were a number of ways an individual could be satisfied, and despite the nasty things that appeared in his mind at first he was fairly certain that Regina was getting to the heart of the matter.

"Every way. A way she couldn't find satisfaction from me or even my father. A purpose that life couldn't give her but magic could…"

"That's true. Magic was her god, if capable of such emotion, it would have been her passion."

In fact, before she had discarded her own heart, it had been her passion. It had been their passion and what a beautiful passion it had made and would have made, if only he hadn't seen too late how she'd valued it over him.

"It was enough for her. All her life, magic was enough, everything else was just…extra?"

He wouldn't have used those words. Extra still implied something with emotion and that wasn't true. For Cora magic was everything. Still, that was just an issue of semantics.

"That's more or less true. Cora liked what magic brought to her. Power, strength, dominance. She'd have taken up a pipe and run rats out of town if it promised her those things."

"Power…you think it'll be enough to sustain me? Because some nights like last night…"

"Last night…what happened last night…"

Ah, now she hadn't expected to say what she's just said. That much was clear in the look that he gave her. It was a look that a deer had when a carriage suddenly rattled along down the road and they were so consumed in watching it that they couldn't see an escape route. He hadn't kept watch on Regina last night, he hadn't felt a need too, but now he suddenly had the urge to question if he should have. She wouldn't have referenced last night if there wasn't a reason. They were getting somewhere with their conversation. Whatever happened to Regina last night, it was the key to what she was experiencing now. What had his little apprentice done…?

It was the fairies. Well, it was one fairy he wasn't familiar with to be precise, but a fairy all the same. He fought to hold back his scowl as Regina confessed the tale to him about how she'd gone out onto her balcony and "accidentally" taken a tumble. A fairy had saved her, they'd spent much of that night and the next day talking and with the help of some stolen fairy dust, yesterday the Pixie had taken Regina to meet her soul mate. His heart felt as though it might beat out of his chest as she described a bar and a man sitting there with a lion tattoo on his wrist. The fairy had left her to meet him on her own…and she left.

She hadn't gone into the bar to meet him. Not out of a sense of loyalty or devotion to her current husband, but he could see the fear in her eyes even as she'd told him about it, the guilt she felt over sending that fairy away last night upset. He couldn't feel anything for such a bug. What he did feel was relief. Last night he'd spent his time lecturing Jefferson on spending too much time with his fling and how it would lead to destruction. He'd had no idea just how close he'd been to the destruction of the one thing he needed more than anything to get him back to his son.

"You were too afraid to go inside…" he concluded for her. "You've longed for love all your life…why didn't you go inside?" In truth, he hadn't meant to ask the question out loud. But he did feel an overwhelming urge to know the truth. He'd nearly lost her and yet he hadn't. Why? Such information had just helped him. Could it be helpful once more?

Regina only grimaced as she shook her head. "Love has never given me anything but grief," she admitted quietly.

"An unfortunate side effect."

"What proof do I have this would have been any different than Daniel or King Leopold?"

"None whatsoever."

She nodded in agreement. "So I started thinking...maybe with magic things can be different. Magic was enough for my mother, maybe…maybe it could be enough for me. Love won't get me what I want but magic…magic just might."

"And that, my dear is a worthy goal…" he muttered rising to his feet to grab a lightning rod from the table.

"I was afraid last night, I was afraid when you first showed up in my bedroom, and I used to be afraid when I thought about my mother and her magic but now…now I don't feel so afraid," she muttered absent-mindedly as he handed her the rod. She took it in her fist and instantly the sizzle in the air he'd felt before began to move with purpose.

He hated fairies, though in this case he found a small part of himself was grateful as he watched her. Was it possible this strange creature had actually just done him a favor?

"What do you feel now?" he questioned watching her as she stared at the lightning rod as though she knew what it was or what it could do. Suddenly a roll of thunder echoed from outside the tower window and he stood aside just in time for a stray bolt of lightning to come from the inside to touch the metal of the rod in her hand. Concentrated, focused power.

Regina smirked.

"Strong."

Not my favorite chapter, but one that I still felt was necessary to bridge the gap. I did want Regina to learn something from her experience with Tinkerbell and when I considered what that might look like this is what I came up with. Again, not my favorite chapter, but I will swear up and down that it's 100% necessary to this story. It helps Regina to evolve.

Thank you MissAmande, Jennifer Baratta, Grace5231973, and Alarda for your reviews. I am curious as to what you'll say about this chapter and even more curious as to what you'll think about the next chapter. It's not a Regina chapter, it's not even a Jefferson chapter, but it is a very crucial chapter in Rumple's timeline. It's about an object (or objects really) that we saw him with on the show but we never actually saw how he came to possess. It's important for a number of reasons and I can almost guarantee you don't know what's coming. Shall we find out? Peace and Happy Reading!