"Are you alright?"

He was shocked when he looked up from his work to see Belle standing before him, tea on a tray. It was evening, dinner should have been hours ago, but he'd worked through it just as he'd worked through it for the last few days, ever since the Blue Fairy's visit. He felt like it had been days since he'd last seen her...had it been? He'd found it so hard to focus after that visit it was difficutl to remember.

"Fine, fine," he answered, waving her away, hoping she'd get the message that he didn't want to be bothered. Unfortunately, he knew her well enough at this point to know that she was not the kind of person to be easily dismissed, especially after these last few days. They'd gone in almost a single heartbeat from friendly conversation over afternoon tea to damn near no communication as he worked constantly.

"It's just that lately you've been distracted…different."

Different. Well, if she'd gotten news like he'd gotten perhaps she would find that she was different too. But distracted...was that what he was? Distracted? It was a strange word to use when he found himself suddenly feeling more dedicated than ever.

"I am no different today than I was a hundred years ago or will be a hundred years from now," he answered. He'd tried to keep his tone light, but unfortunately, in order to do that, he'd had to squeeze his jaw shut, and it only succeeded in making him sound as if he was snarling at her. She took the hint and left his workspace, leaving him with a feeling like a rock in his belly as he watched her go.

For once he hadn't meant to be cruel, he'd even tried hard not to, but the truth was he was so wound up he didn't think there was any kind of alternative to being the way he was right now. Days ago, the Blue Fairy had left. For days he'd been like this. She'd left him with many emotions after her riddled pronouncement, and those words had left him feeling anything but "fine". How could he be fine? He'd been a fool.

After her departure, he'd brought the Dark Curse out again, a rarity all its own, even though he knew exactly what he was going to find. He knew it because he'd sensed it the first time he'd ever held the damn thing.

Fairy magic.

And Dark magic.

The magic was built into the damn thing; embedded right into the fucking scroll. He could feel it just as he had from day one, nothing had changed. So long as the person with the right heart, the right motivation was the one casting it, their magical prowess would be of no consequence. That was why, if he could find a way to create a spell of true love and then match that true love to specific people, say Snow White and Prince James, then a single drop of the potion created onto the parchment itself would be enough to weaken the Curse. He didn't need any words added, no caveats, no adjustments. One drop of true love, the most powerful magic in all the realm, would be enough to allow the child, the true product of that union of love, to become the savior to the Curse.

True Love was the only magic strong enough to overcome the Dark Magic on the scroll.

Dark Magic and Fairy Magic…together…he'd never thought to question how that was a possibility and he was an idiot for not considering it. Now he did.

Fairy Magic was always Light, but this…this was Dark magic, very Dark indeed. After a hundred years of practicing his craft he knew that it wouldn't have been possible for traces of the fairy magic to remain while the Dark Magic was there, at least not this much of it. Little bits of both could potentially live side by side, but this much Dark Magic should have swallowed the Fairy magic whole. How could he have gone this long without fucking putting it all together, adding up the pieces?! Why had he needed the Blue Bug to give him a hint?!

The only explanation was that the Curse was born of a fairy who was of the darkness.

There had only ever been one of those as far as he knew.

The Black Fairy.

His mother.

Just the thought of that had him wanting to throw something across the room. For the last few days, ever since his epiphany following the bug's visit, he'd been combing through books, kicking himself every other second because the damn answer had been in front of him the entire time!

He'd been researching this Curse for a century, focused on it before it was ever even in his possession, practically knew the damn thing inside and out without having to ever see it! In the beginning, he'd read hundreds, maybe even thousands of origin tales for it! All of them were speculation, no one really seemed to know where the Curse had come from for sure, but now that he had the answer, he was struck by just how many hypotheses involved the Black Fairy. He'd spent an entire night going through those books, counting it out, making his calculations. More than half of all the theories he'd read included his mother. Between that and what the Blue Fairy had said, he was more than willing to believe that he knew who was responsible for the Curse.

Unfortunately, that was the only thing he knew.

When, where, and why, especially why, were questions that remained unanswered.

When had she created it? Before he was born? After? He knew so little about her, about his own timeline. His earliest memory was sitting in front of a window looking at the stars and thinking that he'd dropped from the sky because he was so unlike his father and had no mother! Had the Curse been in existence even then?

Where had she done this deed? The Black Fairy had been banished to another realm, that was always what he had been told, always his own understanding. But if she was there and the curse resided here, did that mean it was something she'd done before she was banished? Was it the reason that she'd been banished?

But the most important question of all was why. Why had she done this? What had led the Black Fairy, his own mother, to create a Curse like this? What had she intended? With her magic so clearly still imbued within the parchment, if she had some other kind of incentive, something that he didn't know about, it might still come through.

He needed to know.

That was why, in the dark of the night, he took his dagger and went deep into the forest to a small clearing that allowed him to look up and see the stars. He held his dagger high over his head as he watched, pushed magic deep into the dagger, and then into the air around him and summoned the one person who had ever dared to tell him anything truthful…

"Reul Dearg…"

He held his breath as he waited, looking slowly about, this way and that for a spark of red. But the air was still.

"Reul Dearg!" he commanded, pushing even more into his dagger for the summoning.

But he had been the Dark One for well over a century; he knew the feeling of nothing but his own magic.

"Red Fairy!" he cried so loud his voice echoed through the forest. He hadn't seen her since she'd saved him as a boy. According to her, she was his fairy godmother. She should have answered him when he called! She was the only one in all his life who had ever given him answers, real answers! She was the one who dared to tell him what the Blue Fairy never had, that his mother wasn't dead, that she was the Black Fairy! If he was ever going to question a fairy and actually believe her, it would have been the Red Fairy.

A summoning should have worked.

But she didn't come.

He lowered his hand and stumbled back onto a log. He managed to slip his dagger back into his boot before hanging his head in his hands and rubbing his face.

He wasn't fine. He wasn't even in the same village as fine. He was tired, exhausted. For the first time in a long while he felt like if he went home and laid down in his bed, he might actually be able to sleep…at least until he realized he was dreaming of Belle…

He shook the images of his latest daydreams of his caretaker out of his head and took a breath. He could figure this out. He could. He just had to take a breath, clear Belle out of his head, banish anger and confusion and pain out of his mind, and start thinking like the Dark One.

If he had half a chance of getting this Curse off the ground as he wanted it to in order to get back to his son, then he needed to understand it. He needed to know. The Blue Fairy wasn't going to talk to him. The Red Fairy wasn't responding. He could try his cauldron, try his crystal ball, but aside from the fact that he wouldn't be able to hear what he saw, there was the issue that guarded as this Curse had been he had a suspicion that Fairy Magic would interfere. That left one option. One option that he really didn't want to consider. One option that even the voices hated.

He could ask the Black Fairy, herself.

Short chapter, but I felt like it was necessary in order to bridge the gap between the last chapter and the next chapter properly. That being said, and I think this will become clearer later, I'm in the camp that thinks Rumple was always looking for a reason to talk to the Black Fairy, this just finally gives him the excuse to do it. Hm...perhaps that's why when he finally talks to her, he doesn't really ask her the right questions...

Thank you, thank you, thank you Spunkymouse, Jennifer Baratta, and Grace5231973 for your reviews thus far! They are always wonderful for me to read. For anyone who is still completely lost and clueless as to where all this Black Fairy stuff is going, let's move on to the next chapter where we'll finally really dig into the 6x09 chapter! Peace and Happy Reading!