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A scream echoed through the tower. The guards at the iron door stared at each other with wide eyes, but they snapped to attention when they saw her on the stairs. Regina pushed past them to peer through the small barred window in the door.
The girl was on her hands and knees in a pile of straw. She was naked, her limp dark hair plastered on her face and shoulders. Her body heaved as she gasped for breath. She screamed again, arching back, revealing a distended belly striped with red stretch marks on pale skin. It was difficult to reconcile Rumplestiltskin’s pretty little maid with the sweaty creature now panting on the floor.
There was not much in the world that could shock Regina, but this girl had been one of them. When she’d first met Belle on the road, lustrous chocolate curls had tumbled from underneath her traveling cloak, framing a porcelain face that still hadn’t quite lost the plumpness of her childhood. Bright blue eyes, intelligent and curious, looked up at the Queen and her pert little mouth stretched into the sweetest of smiles. Regina had never expected that the hideous, twisted creature called Rumplestiltskin could have won the affections of such a beauty. And won it he had, for the maid had positively glowed as she talked about her master. It had taken nothing at all to convince the girl to break her master’s curse with True Love’s Kiss.
Of course the Dark One would never allow his curse to fade, and tossing the girl from his castle was utterly predictable. But Regina also knew whatever remained of the man he had once been would not eject the girl from his heart so easily. She had the girl followed when she fled her master’s wrath, then captured her and locked her away in a tower warded against magical intrusion. Once enough time had passed to let Rumplestiltskin’s black heart grow fonder at the girl’s absence, Regina told him the girl was dead. She spun a tale of how Belle had returned home after he had rejected her. How she had been tortured with cleansing by her father’s clerics. How she had thrown herself off her tower prison. Rumplestiltskin had been devastated by her story, and Regina still reveled at discovering just how large that crack in his armor really was. The girl was his weakness, perhaps his biggest weakness.
The pregnancy had been a surprise. It had never crossed Regina’s mind that the beauty would have ever consented to bed the beast—though perhaps consent was not involved at all. Regina would have liked to bring the Dark One here now, to show him what his lust had done to his precious Belle. To see the guilt on his face as she screamed in agony. To show him how his spawn had permanently marred her youthful beauty. Alas, she couldn’t. The girl was still a very important chess piece in her game with the Dark One, as was this child. And Rumple would probably kill her.
The elderly midwife knelt beside the girl, prodding at her nether regions. The wrinkled hand came away smeared with blood and the woman told the girl it was almost over. Regina turned away in disgust, thankful she had been spared the horrors of childbearing.
The girl’s screams and moans were soon replaced by the piercing wail of an infant. Regina turned to the guard. “Open it.”
Only the midwife noticed her enter the chamber. The girl reclined in the straw, focused on the bloody thing lying on her chest. Belle’s face glowed with pure love, though her eyes drooped with exhaustion. She murmured endearments as her hands gently caressed the mewling creature. A thick cord ran from the slimy infant to the apex of the girl’s blood-smeared thighs. Regina fought not to lose her lunch.
Regina looked pointedly at the midwife, who curtsied under the gaze of her queen. “It’s a fine boy,” the old woman said. The queen shrugged—it didn’t matter to her what the sex was, though it may matter to Rumple. The midwife turned to Belle. “Let me take him, love, you still need to deliver the afterbirth.” She took a small silver knife from her satchel, then cut the cord. She wrapped the baby in a thin linen blanket, then stood and turned to the queen. “I need to get him cleaned up--“
“No,” Regina said. “Bring it here.”
Belle blinked in confusion, tearing her attention away from her baby in the midwife’s arms to notice someone else in the room. “No…” she moaned. “What are you doing?”
The midwife hesitated, glanced sadly at Belle, but then stepped over to Regina and put the baby in her arms.
“No!” Belle tried to push herself up, but she couldn’t get her shaky legs under her. She crawled towards Regina. “Don’t take my baby,” she pleaded, sobbing. “He’s mine!”
Belle reached out, her fingers grasping at Regina’s skirt. Regina stepped back through the door and the guard pulled it shut.
“No!” Belle’s wail pierced the tower and her fists pounded on the door. “No! Bring him back! Bring back my son! Bring back my son!”
The baby seemed to pick up on its mother’s distress and started to fuss. Regina balanced the squirming creature in one arm while she reached into her belt pouch. She tossed a vial to the guards. “Sedate her,” she said. She turned in a flurry of skirts and descended the stairs with the screaming infant in her arms, the distraught howls of its mother fading behind them.
Jefferson was waiting for her at the bottom of the tower. His eyes were focused upward, where Belle’s cries of anguish could still be heard. He looked at Regina coldly. “You stole her baby.”
“No different than what her lover has done on many occasions.” She thrust the howling baby into his arms. Jefferson cuddled it close, whispered softly into a tiny ear, and the infant calmed.
“How did you do that?” Regina asked.
“For one, I don’t hold babies like they’re sacks of flour.” He smiled at the baby in his arms. “And babies know when people like them,” he cooed.
Regina rolled her eyes and walked towards the garden. “Is it ready?”
“Yes. If all goes well, your spell will open a portal at a random destination in time and space near a suitable… replacement.” He frowned. “You’re not going to kill the other baby, are you?”
“Jefferson,” she crooned and gave him a sickly sweet smile. “Do I look like a baby killer to you?”
“Honestly?” he asked. “Well…yes.”
Regina glared. “I won’t be killing any babies. Anyway, we need the other one to get back through the portal. But I did make the spell search for a dying infant, so it won’t live long enough to upset things here.” She smirked. “We wouldn’t want it to grow up to be my archenemy now, would we?”
“Nope,” Jefferson said, sarcasm dripping in his voice. “We wouldn’t want that.”
The hat dumped them out near a hovel that smelled of sheep. Regina wrinkled her nose and hiked her skirts to walk through the muck. She’d need new shoes after this.
Jefferson walked behind her, cuddling the baby in one arm. “He’ll kill you if he ever finds out, you know.”
“Then it’s in our best interest he never find out,” Regina snapped. She turned to glare at him. “Or perhaps another child will go missing, hmm?”
Jefferson’s face darkened, and for a moment Regina thought she may have pushed the madman too far by threatening his daughter again, but he just set his jaw and glared back. “Let’s get this over with.”
Regina peeked in the window, observing yet another scene of childbirth. The midwife cheerily talked a steady stream of encouragement as the woman screamed and groaned her way through the birth. This time, though, there was no wail after the infant slipped into the world. With a wave of her hand, Regina froze the occupants of the hovel, then stepped inside.
It smelled even worse on the inside, of greasy wool and unwashed bodies mixed with the metallic tang of blood. She walked over to the people she’d frozen in time. In the midwife’s hands was a tiny baby, so small it would fit in Jefferson’s hand. Its skin was a sickly blue. Regina plucked the knife from the bag next to the woman and cut the cord, then picked up the infant. She sensed that its hold on life was fading, but the stasis spell would allow it to live long enough to get three of them back through the portal. She handed the pathetic thing to Jefferson, trading him for the Dark One’s child. She set it in the midwife’s lap. A quick altering of memories, and the woman would believe she had delivered a healthy infant and cut the cord herself.
She turned to Jefferson. “Let’s go.”
They left the hovel and walked back to the portal. “Poor thing,” Jefferson sighed, looking down at the still-frozen baby. “Is there anything you can do for him?”
“It’s dying, Jefferson. That’s why my spell picked this place. It only has to stay alive long enough to get us back through your portal.”
With a wave of her hand, she released the spell on the women and the infant, then walked through the portal.
She continued walking as she entered her own world, leaving Jefferson standing next to his hat in her garden. She had to check on Belle, make sure she was properly sedated. Couldn’t have the woman killing herself for real in grief over her lost child. Well...not before Regina could use it against Rumplestiltskin.
Regina heard footsteps rushing up behind her. “I think the baby is dead,” Jefferson said sadly.
She stopped and sneered at him. “So? Throw it on the dungheap for all I care.” She turned on her heel and her face broke into a smug smile as she strolled up to the castle entry. She’d bested Rumplestiltskin. She’d stolen the woman he loved, the only person who had ever truly loved him, and made him believe he’d sent her away to a gruesome end. And then she’d stolen his child, his child with Belle, and left it at a random point in time where he’d never, ever find it. That revelation would be saved for the most dire of circumstances. If he ever bested her, with her dying breath Regina would tell him about the child. It would crush him.
Hedda swaddled the whimpering infant. She could have sworn he was coming too early and she’d prepared his mother for the worst, but the boy in her arms was plump and healthy. She must have calculated wrong, though how she’d miscalculated this badly she couldn’t figure out.
“Here you go, little one. Here’s your mummy.”
She handed off the infant and stepped back as he was put to his mother’s breast. The boy latched on and suckled enthusiastically. Hedda smiled, elated that the grim situation she’d prepared for this evening had turned out happily for the babe. The only worry now was the mother. She was less than enthusiastic about having the child. Though, considering the rumors about the babe’s father, Hedda really couldn’t blame her. But that was no cause to take it out on the boy.
“Have you decided on a name for him,” the midwife asked. This wasn’t the first time she’d assisted a less than enthusiastic mother. Naming often helped strengthen the bond, even with an unwanted child.
The mother sighed and looked down at the infant at her breast. “If the rumors are true… I suppose he’ll need a strong name to get him through.” She pressed her lips grimly, studying the child, then sighed. “I don’t know.”
Hedda tweaked a tiny hand peeking from the blanket. Poor little mite. A cold mother and a cowardly father. Perhaps it would have been better if he’d been born too early and died. But he was here and the least she could do was help give him a good start in life. “Perhaps a name from the old stories? When I was a girl, my granny told me of a great warrior who had slain a dragon in the valley to the east of the village long ago. Do you know it?”
Milah nodded. “Yes, I suppose that will work well enough.” She looked down at the babe in her arms. “Then his name is Baelfire.”