He left Belle alone in the Great Room and was more than a bit surprised to find that he didn't want to. The second he crossed the threshold and the door closed behind him, he had the urge to turn back, to sit at his wheel as she settled and spin, just to keep an eye on her. He didn't want to spy as he had before, he just wanted to keep her in his sights.

It was a silly reaction. One that was probably born out of his panic. The truth was that he couldn't stay with her, he had his Gauntlet to see to and his magic to test.

Up in his tower, he summoned Pirithous. He appeared in a dressing gown with an irritated look on his face, but he was there. "Seriously?" he questioned looking him over.

He didn't respond. Just took a parchment and one of the quills that remained after Belle's theft and wrote out a note for the women who were probably spending their night celebrating.

Meet me at the bluff in one hour, or you'll regret it. -R

"I'm sending you to another Kingdom. You are familiar, I assume with Maleficent?"

"The dragon?" he asked without interest. "Who isn't?"

"Take this to her, make sure she reads it."

Pirithous snatched the paper out of his hand once it had been folded then stood there and sighed, his contempt for their situation still blatantly obvious. "Alright…let's get this over with," he shrugged.

He rolled his eyes as he used his magic to send him to Maleficent's castle, where he hoped, for his sake, he'd at least turn into a bird to deliver the letter instead of let them see him in his sleeping clothes. With that handled, he allowed his magic to take himself outside. He could have walked, but he figured it was better to avoid Belle and not risk running into her. Outside, this late at night and after everything that had happened, was not a likely place he'd meet her. He started at the hole in the wall, the place that he assumed she'd been taken from. He'd meant what he said to her earlier. Aside from meeting his maid's captors, he did have protection spells to make stronger, but now he also had a murder to plan for. Quiet could help that.

No more animals coming in and out of property. Whether Cruella had paid the boy, enchanted him to lure Belle away, or just taken advantage of the situation, he wasn't willing to let something like that happen again. More protection would help. As for the three of them…he wanted them to die. He'd feel absolutely no guilt about killing them. Frankly, he'd expected them to die years ago when he'd used them to steal his curse. It must have been through mere coincidence that they'd lived to begin with. Now he simply had to finish the job. Belle may have been the maid, and Regina might have been wrong about the fact that he cared for her, but she was his property. No one took his property away without permission and lived to tell the tale. No one treated his property the way they'd treated her and didn't die a painful, horrible-

He sucked in a breath as a vision came to him, an image of the future, without question or doubt.

He was standing in a room, a home, made entirely of wood. It was small, smaller than the hovel was, but cozy. He felt a sense of ownership about it. It belonged to him. It was his home. One of them. One of many? It wasn't the home that mattered. It was the people he saw there. Standing around him there were women. Three of them dressed in clothes that he was beginning to recognize as what they'd wear in another realm. The women were Maleficent, Ursula, and Cruella. And there before him, sitting in a chair was Regina.

In his ear, the Seer whispered one word: team.

"No!" he snarled as he came out of the vision. His heart beat rapidly, it always did after a vision, but this was different. Usually, it was excitement or nerves he felt rushing through him. This was anger.

Team, the Seer said. A vision of the three women, with him, with Regina, in the new realm and the word she came up with to describe it was "team"?! He let heat rise in him, let it congregate in a ball of fire in the center of his palm before he threw it against wall of his property. It wasn't enough. He wanted to do more than throw fire, he wanted to hunt, to maim, to destroy! He wanted to kill. Them! He wanted the witches dead for what they'd done. Taking Belle, harming her as they had, demanding the ransom, getting their greedy little fingers on his Gauntlet for all the time they'd had it! He wanted to see them squirm! He wanted to watch them as he squeezed the life out of them just as they had tried to squeeze the life out of Belle…

Again, a vision of the women in the wooden room overwhelmed him. This time, when the Seer said the word "team", she screamed it.

Sometimes he hated his gift. He knew that it was going to be responsible for getting him back to his son, but at times like this, when the Seer came in and spoiled his plans, he imagined what his life would be like if he didn't have her in his head, if he didn't feel like he had to listen to her all the time! He wondered, just once, what would happen if he ignored her now. If he went and killed the women, just how awful would it be? Would Bae be jeopardized?

Once more, his vision of the outside world faded away, and he saw the women in the wooden room. There was no denying the angry shout in his head at the word "team". It was so loud it nearly gave him a headache.

"I hear you!" he growled, forcing the vision away as he took deep breathes. He heard her, even if he wished he hadn't. He'd have to spare the bitches. The Seer wasn't going to settle for anything less than that. Sometimes...he missed the days of being tormented by Nimue…

The hour hadn't yet arrived, but that didn't stop him from going to the Bluff. The sea was a bit calmer now, though it was a bit closer to him, coming in with the tide. He wanted to be the first one there, to be prepared for them, to see the conditions they'd kept Belle for himself.

It wasn't bad. He explored the cave they'd been hiding in when he arrived, looked at the pool of water that shimmered quietly inside of it. There were footprints everywhere, and in the corner, off to a side, there was a large portion of sand that was tamped down as if someone had sat there. It was about the size of his maid's backside. Other than those few reminders, the cave was empty. If he didn't know what had taken place in this spot, he wouldn't have had a clue anyone had been held against their will. It was a well-chosen place for that. Demon's Bluff wasn't exactly a tourist attraction or one the locals would have dared to cross. They could have kept her here for days and no one would have noticed.

And it was tempting, so tempting, to do the same, to teach them a lesson in at least one way. There were more of them, but his magic was superior. He could overpower them, leave them here to rot, to figure their own way out…

"Don't panic, dearie…" he muttered as he felt a scratch in the back of his head from the Seer, a threat to bring about the vision and remind him again. He didn't need it. Against his better judgement, when the time came for him to stand out on the rock and wait for them, he'd already decided he wasn't going to harm them. At least not purposefully. He needed them later, so he'd preserve what was between them…for later. He'd take his Gauntlet, but he'd let them go and ward his home against them, in efforts avoid any more unfortunate interactions with them until his time in the new world. That was his plan.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with secretly hoping they struck and would give him the opportunity to defend himself.

He purposefully kept his back to the cave, expanding his magic to seal it off to their arrival. If he couldn't go after them, then he at least wanted them to stand in the place he'd stood, back to nothing but a cliff drop into nothing.

A stir of magic and black smoke announced their arrival, and he was pleased to see the women huddle together on that cliff. Their faces were stern, but their eyes deceived them. Cruella didn't like the situation, Ursula was concerned, and Maleficent…as always, she was the ring leader.

"Our business is concluded, Rumpelstiltskin. You got what you wanted from that mountain, and now we have what we want."

Indeed, they did. It didn't take a fool to see they hadn't brought the Gauntlet. But he'd expected that. His letter hadn't told them to bring it, and for good reason, that was part of the experiment.

"How did you know I had it?" he questioned. "Did the maid tell you?"

It was the only part about this that didn't make any sense. He'd had the Gauntlet for all of two days, kept safe and sound in his home. Neither Guinevere nor Lancelot were magical, their distance left little time for them to send a message to anyone much less these villains. And he was under the impression, thanks to his vision that prior to being with the Queen, it had been in Merlin's Tower. So little movement, so little time. Yet they'd been very specific to ask for it. He wanted to know how they'd known. If they'd tortured Belle, cast some sort of spell on her…

"You led us right to it, darling," Cruella commented.

"To be more accurate, it led us right to you," Ursula corrected.

"You're shy of uncovered mirrors in that place you call a home, and you're overly cautious about reflective surfaces, or at least you were until the girl started dusting and doing her own shinning," Maleficent explained.

"In the end, it was so clean we could use it as a mirror, our first real look into your castle since you cast your spells to keep us out. We've been looking for a way in for years," Ursula informed him.

"Try not to act so surprised. Of course we know about the spells, you set them when you betrayed us."

Cruella always was the ignorant one. He wasn't surprised they knew about the spells in fact he was glad they did. He'd done what he'd done in order to send a message, and he would have been happy it was received if not for the other emotions going through his mind. He was relieved in a way he hadn't expected to be. They hadn't gotten the information from Belle. She hadn't betrayed him, and they hadn't harmed her to learn about the Gauntlet. That was good. But he was also angry. He needed more spells, in fact he needed to go home and probably create one himself to protect against the reflective surfaces once and for all. He couldn't keep a maid and tell her not to clean. And he should have seen the danger in what he'd told her when he'd brought her on. Her kidnapping was more or less his own fault for not being careful enough.

But he wasn't about to admit that to them, nor was he going to show them any of those emotions. He was angry. He was here for his Gauntlet and to put this to rest until the future came to pass. He just wanted to go home and check on Belle.

"There may come a day when the students surpass the master. But today is not that day. I want my gauntlet," he said clearly before holding out his hand for it. He knew they wouldn't set it there, not that easily at least, but he wanted to make a point.

"We made a deal, Rumple," Maleficent pointed out. "And you never go back on a deal."

"No," he corrected. "I paid a ransom. Quite different. Demanding a ransom from the Dark One is not a deal. It's a death wish, and…"

With little effort he called on his magic, on the spells and potions he'd been attaching to his things, preparing them one day to the journey to the other realm. He sought out the Gauntlet in his mind's eye, and then, with a clink of metal, it was in his hand. His experiment was a success. His potion would work.

"A fool's errand," he finished with a smile. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."

"Whatever you're up to, it'll never work," Cruella called as he turned to leave. "The game is rigged. The villains never win."

"Why don't you join us?" Ursula added in a seductive voice. "Perhaps we can change the game together."

He nearly laughed. As if he hadn't tried that very argument with them years ago. He'd gotten what he wanted then, and he was going to get what he wanted now. Because while he knew the game was "rigged" as she said, his goal wasn't to win. His goal was simply to succeed long enough to see his son again. That would be enough for him. It was easy to win when the goals were attainable and small…and there was a Seer in one's head whispering secrets of the future; no matter how annoying that Seer was or how inconvenient the future she presented.

One day they would join together, at least according to the Seer. But that future was too far down the line to consider right now. Someday was not this day.

"You severely underestimate me, dearie. I always win. And I win alone. I certainly don't need to join you, uh, Queens of Darkness," he taunted before vanishing once more…this time with the Gauntlet in hand.

And so now you know, his experiment is a success! Yep, I had him test the potion he created a few chapters back that enables him to call certain items to him. Rumple is good with his tricks, but I figured he wouldn't really trust anything that went untested and this gave him the opportunity. Plus, without this potion here, we start back into the "Rumple comes off as all powerful but sometimes not" plothole. On the show he snaps the Gauntlet into his hands. Okay...why not with the wand, or Robin's bow, or the potion...if he can do something like that why hasn't he just summoned the Gauntlet or the Sorcerer's Hat before, it would certainly be a lot easier than all the trading he does! So here we have an explanation, just like I've given to a lot of those things mentioned that explains why he doesn't do those things but why he can suddenly do it now. Perfect? No, but better than what we had before? I like to think so. And hey, I wondered if anyone had caught on to the fact that all throughout the last few chapters he'd been saying he was going to kill the Queen's of Darkness for what they did, but obviously we know he doesn't. The vision existed to change that mindset for him. And let me tell you, that was a tricky vision to create! I wanted Regina to be part of it so that he would both trust her and be suspicious of her in the future.

Grace5231973 and Jennifer Baratta thank you so much for your wonderful, lovely comments! I'm really excited to present the next set of chapters to you. They are some of my favorite chapters from Moments and solid Rumbelle times. They're the quiet Winter/Spring Chapters, chapters that I mostly wrote on my own to fill a bit of time in Moments, but with a couple of "seen scenes" added in. And speaking of "adding", there is a twist I've added into one of those chapters and well...I'm nervous. I put a pretty different twist on a classic scene and that sort of thing always makes me a little twitchy. I'm hoping you'll like it, I'm scared you won't, but we're going to go for it anyway! Peace and Happy Reading!