Summary: She wanted a family. Fate had other ideas. (Written for the "Writers Anonymous Transition Challenge" on the WA forum.)
She should have known she wouldn't get away with it. Yet for one shining moment, with her newborn son in her arms and her beloved husband by her side, Fiona thought she could finally have the family she wanted and the life she had dreamed of. Then the Blue Fairy came fluttering in through the window with one of her minions in tow and that was that.
Fiona was too stunned to do more than keep up the pretense of ignorance — she didn't know them, and they didn't know her. Blue's eyes gleamed with triumph as she delivered her news. Fiona's son was destined to be a Savior, bound by prophecy to fight a great evil and die. Blue omitted the inevitable ending, delivering the curse as if it were a blessing.
"...born with great light magic!" she said, as if her smile didn't hide a knife.
Fiona looked at the other fairy who accompanied Blue, the one assigned to be the child's godmother. Tiger Lily, Blue had called her. She was young, too young, too honored to be chosen to question anything. Belief shone in her eyes. Every word that fell out of her leader's mouth was as precious as diamonds, and she could only see the glitter but not the hard, sharp edges.
After they had left, Malcolm turned to her with a question in his eyes.
Fiona shook her head at her husband. "It's nothing. It means nothing."
He knew her too well to believe her, but he only said, "Before we were so rudely interrupted, weren't we about to name our boy?"
Fiona tensed. "No! No, we can't. Not until he's safe..."
"Safe? From what?" He was an easy-going man, with his playful smile and twinkling eyes, but now he looked ready to fight, despite being no match for the fairies. Fiona couldn't let him get entangled in Blue's machinations.
"Nothing." Fiona forced a chuckle. "Call it a mother's heart, to worry over her child. But let's wait a little." She hoped that without a name, the prophecy might miss its target, or at least buy them time. With luck, she would be able to squeeze more details from Tiger Lily.
Tiger Lily was innocent enough to tell her the truth. A great evil was prophesied, one born in the same winter as her son, marked with a scar like a crescent moon. It wasn't much, but she knew she had to find this evil and eliminate it before it could kill her son in some 'Final Battle'. To do that, she needed power — and Tiger Lily was innocent enough to let Fiona lay hands on her wand.
One incantation later, Fiona was a fairy again, and Tiger Lily demanded explanations.
"Did you not wonder how I was able to read the fairy language?" Fiona saw understanding dawn in eyes that saw her for the first time.
"Who... who are you, really?"
"The same person I've always been." Fiona was no one, but she had always been no one, even before her name was struck from the fairy records. Nothing but a low-ranking fairy who had defied Blue and fallen in love with a human man. Blue had tried to dissuade the match by dangling the prospect of promotion in front of her, but Fiona knew that Blue would never have let her become a fairy godmother.
"So you ran away?" Tiger Lily looked appalled.
Fiona shrugged. "As a beacon of Light and Goodness, she could hardly force me to stay."
But that didn't mean Blue would let it go so easily. It was said that she had the ear of the Olympian gods. This prophecy reeked of their interference, this fate that Blue laid so smugly on Fiona's son. Having lost the mother, Blue was determined to have the son. All in the name of the greater good, of course. Fiona didn't share her suspicions with Tiger Lily, who seemed to have a genuinely kind heart.
That made it harder when Tiger Lily finally realized the lengths Fiona would go to to protect her son: a curse that would banish the innocent and guilty alike, a wand that had once belonged to the darkest of the fairies. Tiger Lily tried to stop her.
"I will not let my son die!" Fiona tore the heart out of Tiger Lily's chest and threatened to crush it.
But she had underestimated the young fairy. Tiger Lily twisted the prophecy around, the crescent mark burning onto Fiona's wrist, and uttered the fatal words, "You are the great evil. You and your son are destined to destroy each other."
Everything after that happened in a blur. Blue was there to save her minion (how long had she been lurking, watching them?) and Tiger Lily handed Fiona the golden shears of fate, urging her to cut away her own magic and thus change her own fate.
"No." Fiona knew instinctively that it was a trap. With his mother powerless to protect him, her son would be no more than Blue's pawn. Savior? Light magic? He would be as twisted as—
"Your son is destined to be a great hero."
As Tiger Lily.
Destined? How dare they! Destiny never made anyone a true hero. Fiona cut the chain binding him to his doom, giving the choice back to him. If he lost the light magic that came with the prophecy, so be it. Was magic worth such a price? If so, let that be his own decision, not something forced on an unknowing baby!
And for that act, Blue banished her. Fiona tried desperately to hold onto her son, but the other fairy was too powerful, and Fiona lost everything.
I will find my way back to you. Consciousness returned slowly. Fiona opened her eyes to pitch black. She blinked, pressing her hands to her eyelids, illusory colors the only relief from the darkness. Magic permeated the air, suffocating and heavy like a cold mist.
"Well, well, well, is it time at last?" The whisper came out of nowhere and far too close.
"Who's there?" Fiona lashed out with a thought of fire, but the flame died before it could breach the darkness.
Chilly fingers grabbed her arm, traced the brand on her wrist. "You bear the mark. You've touched the wand..."
Fiona jerked back. "Don't touch me." She covered the mark with her other hand. "It means nothing!"
Laughter. "It means you are destined to take my place in this wretched realm."
"Your place?" Fiona's eyes strained to see the other, but the darkness was absolute. "Who... who are you?"
"I think you can guess."
Fiona had heard the rumors, the ones Blue tried her best to stamp out. She had felt the power in the wand before Blue had wrested it from her. "You're the Black Fairy."
"And so will you be." The other cackled gleefully. "And I will be no more." Then she sighed, the last few whispered words nearly inaudible, "I will be free..."
"You want me to kill you?"
"It's your destiny."
"No! Just because the Fates put this mark on my skin—"
The fingers brushed against her once more. "Fool. It wasn't the Fates. It was you, always was, always will be..."
Fiona stumbled back another step in shock. "What?"
"Time moves strangely in this realm." The voice turned contemplative. "We stand outside the currents of the worlds above. That mark is a message to yourself from yourself from the future."
"No, no, the future isn't fixed." Fiona shook her head uselessly. "I refuse to believe that. I can't stay. I have to go back. I have to save my son!"
"From the Blue Fairy?"
"From her damned prophecy!" Fiona clenched her fists, remembering the look on Blue's face, the certainty that she had won.
"As you are, you lack the power to defeat either one," the other said quietly, without malice, simply stating a truth they both knew.
"I don't care!" That was a lie, but Fiona was desperate. "I have to try."
"The power to break fate is here, in this realm." The voice in the darkness offered her that hope.
How could she refuse? Fiona unclenched her fingers, reached out blindly in entreaty. "Tell me... please..."
"You must bury your name. Give it to me," demanded the voice.
"Fiona." The name was the person, in magic and in the spirit world. It was her self she was giving up, her family, her past. Things she had already lost, she thought bitterly, because of Blue.
In return, the other gave her the heart of the dark realm, her own heart. She was the heart of the realm. Its power ran through her veins, opened her eyes. She could see everything. Memories trickled like dust from her predecessor. She inhaled darkness, breathed out chaos.
The Black Fairy was dead. The Black Fairy lived. The Black Fairy was eternal. She had unimaginable power...
The power to break fate. Then the voice of memory continued with a cruel addendum, But no power to leave this realm. You need the wand.
She could have screamed. Perhaps she did, but there was no one to hear. She was trapped, just as the Black Fairy before her had been. No wonder she had been so eager to pass on that burden, even at the cost of her own life!
"Damn you all." She was not so weak. She would find a way, no matter how long it took.
Not even Blue could shut all the doors to the dark realm forever. The Black Fairy had once upon a time been called upon to help children — those flawed children who were not quite good enough for Blue to bother with, the ones who had no family, no power, no great destinies. The ones already touched by darkness. The ones who would upset Blue's natural order, given the chance — so she denied them the chance.
But Blue couldn't silence them completely. Something as simple as the desperate crying of an abandoned child opened a brief window to the sunlit realms. The Black Fairy couldn't leave, but she could take what was offered...
"My son. I have to save my son." If she stole him away to the dark realm, he would be as trapped as she was, but at least they would be together. They would be here, where she held all the power. She could keep him safe. She could snatch him back from the Blue Fairy at the moment of their separation.
But in all of time, through all the realms, how could she find one nameless baby out of the countless abandoned souls?
She took them all, each one she found, hoping for the best. She suffered bitter disappointment each time. She couldn't help but blame them for not being her son.
"Useless brats." She couldn't send them back, so she had to keep them. Most of them would have died anyway, so she felt justified into setting them to work. "Or not so useless. Blue has her dwarves to mine for her. If we're ever to break free of this prison, we'll need our own supply of fairy dust."
Dark fairy dust for a dark realm. Dark enough to break free, to break fate, to break the Blue Fairy.
"Call me the 'Great Evil' if you like. No savior will protect you when the battle comes, and for you, it will be final," she vowed. "In the name of the nameless, for my son and all the others, for the families you destroyed, you will pay the price for what you've done."
And if I fail, my son, if I can't be the mother you need, she thought, then at least you still have a father. Please, Malcolm, you must look after our boy... you're all he has left.
She should have known better. Malcolm buried his own name a few scant years after Fiona, no more the father. Centuries later, she learned the truth. What was gone was gone, and there was no getting it back.
Author's note: The Blue Fairy was supposedly one of the "good guys" in canon, yet canon also has her blatantly lying outright to Belle about the Black Fairy in episode 6.09 (in hindsight, it seemed like Blue was there to try to prevent a re-union or reconciliation between the Black Fairy and her son). She also broke up Nova/Astrid the fairy and Dreamy/Grumpy/Leroy the dwarf in canon for reasons that (as stated) were pretty sketchy, so it's not that implausible that she had done it before. Fiona was awfully quick to pick up on fairy magic in canon and could speak and read the fairy language, not something just any old peasant would have learned in school! So putting two and two together, Fiona was probably a fairy before she married Malcolm. (Note to the fandom-blind: Malcolm became Peter Pan and abandoned his son when the latter was a small child.)