Rumpelstiltskin frowned, running his hand over Snow White's body and studying the tingling of the magic against his palm. He was stricken by how exhausted she looked – sunken cheeks, grey hue of her skin and misty eyes too large for her tired face. It was as if she was clinging to life with the sheer force of her will.
It wasn't a curse after all. It was a poison eating her from within. Regina lacked finesse; she enjoyed inflicting pain and suffering, often acting bluntly. Charming had called him just in time; the antidote was simple but it required some precious and rare ingredients. Not that the price mattered. Rumpelstiltskin fetched the ingredients in the blink of an eye. It was always convenient knowing the right traders, and trading the brewed concoction for an official pardon for Belle (in case she ever stumbled upon an over-suspicious soldier) and a future favour from the prince who was all too eager to agree on those terms. It was short-sighted of him, but people in love had a tendency to lose their ability to think. Not that Charming had ever had enough of that originally.
The prince was so relieved to see the colour return to his wife's face after she drank the potion he even shook Rumpelstiltskin's hand with words of sincere gratitude. The sorcerer wiped his hand on his coat after that to erase the royal touch; truly, it was unnecessary, his job there was done and he did not need any of that disgusting… sentiment.
The Castle greeted him with silence. Belle wasn't in the dining room nor was she in the library. Rumpelstiltskin checked the laboratory, frowning at the foul smell of the spoiled potion – it wasn't tended to in time and curled into thick clogs - and the kitchen; she wasn't there either. The worry clawed at his heart and his pulse quickened. Surely, she must be in her room. She didn't just leave him, it was impossible.
Her chambers were empty and his heart sank when he saw the ring he gave her yesterday glistening on the bedside table. He grabbed the thing and clenched it in his fist, willing himself to calm down before his concern turned into a full-blown panic.
Nothing indicated that the girl planned to leave. She had no reason to, he simply refused to believe she could look at him openly while plotting an escape. Her things where lying around the place – her clothes, her books, a hairbrush, her shoes still in the wardrobe. She had enough common sense not to depart without at least her cloak.
Belle could still be on the Castle grounds though. He closed his eyes, concentrating on his breathing. In a bid to compose himself, he slowly inhaled through his nose then exhaled the same way. When his mind cleared a bit, Rumpelstiltskin reached out with his magic, scanning the rooms of the Castle and the surrounding territory. He could not detect her. He checked the wards – they indicated that someone did pass through them but it wasn't a magical creature or anyone particularly strong to break them.
He walked to his lab briskly, the quick steps echoing in the empty hall and pulled a drawer out of his table. Belle could go to the village; she mentioned she didn't like the people there but it didn't make it impossible for her to visit the market.
Where the hell was it? Rumpelstiltskin grabbed the drawer and turned it upside down, spilling the contents on the table top and swishing the papers around, until he found what he was looking for. He grabbed the mirror in his left hand raised it to his eye level. It was rather small, the frame made of darkened silver; the thing looked old but ordinary.
"Show me Belle," he ordered clearly and his reflection blinked before thick grey smoke swirled under the surface and the frame lit up with a faint green glow. Yet nothing else happened. The smoke curled into eerie shapes but then disappeared, leaving the glass grey and non-transparent. Rumpelstiltskin put the useless thing back onto the table, his heart pounding loudly in his ears.
If the mirror failed to show him Belle, it meant two things. Either someone was blocking his magic or the girl was… No, he absolutely refused to accept the second option. If she was dead – and she was not, she couldn't be – he'd wipe the whole kingdom off the ground, he'd incinerate the guilty one on the spot, or even better, he'd torture him and heal him back to strip his flesh off his bones over and over, he would…
But if someone was indeed preventing him from seeing her… It definitely wasn't fairy magic, he'd be able to sense it at once. Other than that…Well, he knew only one person who liked playing around with mirrors and was strong enough to block him out. It couldn't be a plain coincidence that this happened while he was away, attending to Queen Snow, mending the damage his former apprentice had caused.
He practically ran down the stairs to the living room, hopping over two steps at a time. He approached the full-height mirror in the corner and stripped the obscuring fabric off.
"Regina!" he bellowed, a few drops of his spittle landing on the smooth surface. "Regina!"
The mirror rippled before the woman presented herself. He could only see her face and the top of her shoulders, her own mirror probably a lot smaller in size. Her make-up was impeccable, although too bright and she was wearing a blue dress with a sparkling diamond necklace accentuating the low-cut.
"Rumple," she drawled with a lazy smile as if she expected him. "What a pleasant… surprise."
Her words indicated that his call came as no surprise to her. Rumpelstiltskin wished he could reach out for the witch and just close his fingers around her throat.
"Where is she," he snarled. He knew he shouldn't allow his temper to show, to let Regina realize how much it affected him, to give her the satisfaction of finally getting under his skin.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," her smile widened even further and her voice became more honeyed. "Lost something, haven't you?"
"You evil soul!" he exclaimed and threw the ring he was still clutching at the mirror with all his force. It cracked the glass over Regina's brow and she wrinkled her nose in distaste.
"No need to be so rude, Rumple. If you want to talk, you can contact me when you calm down and…" she turned her face away, intending to leave.
"Stay right where you are!" Rumpelstiltskin shouted, jabbing a finger at the Evil Queen's reflection. "You will tell me where she is or I will…"
"You will what, Rumple? Threatening me will not get you what you want."
Regina dropped the pretence of being ignorant of the subject. She tried to remain calm, but her eyes narrowed and he knew she was afraid. He was the one to teach her magic, after all. Regina may not fully know what he was capable of, but what she knew better was not to provoke him any further.
"Alright, I just might know where your current favourite toy girl is," Regina confessed, her tone back to cooing. He frowned at the way she referred to Belle but did not correct her.
"You have no business with her."
"No, but since you've been so reluctant to deal with me lately, I though you required an… incentive."
Incentive, right. Kidnapping the girl was a bloody incentive to make him speak to her and coax him into the right mood for deals.
"Release her and we can discuss whatever you want," Rumpelstiltskin felt suddenly calm. The situation was bad, but he could manage Regina. She thought herself to be, by far, more clever than she actually was. She admitted to having Belle and she'd not harm her now that he knew about it. Finding the girl was a question of time and maybe he could be patient. It didn't mean he'd not make the witch pay dearly though.
"Do you take me for a complete fool, Rumple?" she laughed but her eyes remained cold. "No, the girl stays where she is."
"What do you want, Regina?" he asked tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose. Gods, let it be over with quickly. "Help you with Snow White? Fine, you said you needed a curse for her…"
"Oh, I've dealt with Snow White," she replied smugly. "She's no longer in my way."
So she didn't know he'd healed the Queen and still considered her to be on her death bed. Well, that was something.
"I need True Love."
"Flattered, dearie, but not interested," Rumpelstiltskin replied giving her a mocking bow of his head when she scowled at his quip. "Or do you mistake me for a match-maker? Did you get bored of your huntsman already?"
"I had to dispose of him. He proved to be too free-spirited." Disposal was a kind word for what his fate was truly like, but Regina didn't seem to feel any regret for killing him.
"You can find yourself a fairy who'd be only too eager to provide you with an excellent male specimen, I'm sure." His voice was acidy and her cheeks flushed a little at the taunting.
"Very funny, Rumple. No, I need to return something that was… lost." He raised his eyebrows as she went on. "I want you to revive Daniel."
"The filthy stable boy you had a crush on?" She touted at him. It was a cheap move, but if she called Belle his toy he could damn well call her ex-lover anything he desired. "We've had this conversation before, dearie. It cannot be undone. Resurrecting the dead is beyond my power, Regina."
"He's not dead!" she argued hotly but quickly regained her composure. "My dear mother took his heart." She made the word mother sound obscene.
Yes, he knew he did a good job on her. Regina, once so shy and kind, afraid to raise her voice at anyone turned into this: vicious, cold, unfeeling. Well, not entirely true. She did feel but those were only negative emotions. She still held onto her past, but again, in some ways, so did he. There was a hole in her heart, an emptiness that made her desperate, made her search for something to fill it and she believed it was vengeance. But now, it seemed, she'd changed her mind.
"And I've heard that you managed to create the potion, to extract True Love that could return what was lost."
Ah, so that's what it all was about. She hoped to spin the clock back to when she was happy, when she could truly feel something good. She believed she could be reunited with her girl crush and finally feel whole. Rumpelstiltskin ran his index finger along his upper lip.
"Perhaps I did, perhaps I did not." Regina's puppet genie had probably told her about the potion. It took him decades of careful research and hundreds of unsuccessful experiments but he did unite two contradicting natures, creating little amounts of a half-liquid, half-gas essence that was love.
"What if it doesn't work?" he said slowly, but he knew Regina wouldn't listen to his reasoning. He created her, he made her into what she was now and she'd not hold back on anything.
"Then I'll find something else. Bring me the potion and you can have your girl back."
She broke the connection and he found himself staring at his own reflection - wild hair, reptilian oddly large eyes and his scrawny shape. What could Belle ever see in him? He covered the mirror, not bothering to fix the crack in it.
If all Regina required was the bloody True Love potion, he'd give it to her gladly; it was a small price to pay for Belle's safety and freedom.
The only problem was that the above concoction was safely hidden inside the belly of a dragon.