A/N: This concept has been eating me alive since the moment I watched The Miller's Daughter, and so do I thus dive back into the murky waters of multi-chapter fanfiction. May God have mercy on my soul.

Oh, and canon timeline? What canon timeline? I do what I wanna do. Because FREEDOM.

Maids and Merchandise

the child of my body / the flesh of my soul / will die in returning the birthright he stole
Heather Dale, "Mordred's Lullaby"

"My firstborn child?"
"She is quite important."

All magic comes with a price.

One can pay in piecemeal - little wounds dripping blood as the years march by - or one can advance a sacrifice large enough to power a lifetime of sorcery. One can pay with everything one has or ever could.

One can pay with one's heart.

This is why it costs Cora nothing to ease her labor. A spell for painlessness; a spell for speed; a spell for fortitude. At dinner she feels the telling gush of wetness soak her skirts, and the sun has only just set when her chambers are rent with a newborn's wails.

"A girl, my lady." The midwife's round, doughy face is sympathetic as she relates the news from between Cora's legs; the king, prince, and castle were hoping for an heir to this branch of the royal line, and clearly she assumes the mother was as well. Nobles do not pray for daughters.

"She?"
"Yes, I see the future. Weren't you listening?"

Cora adds false resignation to her voice as she says, "So be it. Clean her, then report to Prince Henry that his wife has borne him a healthy babe - but that I'll not see him till morning. I wish to be alone with my child."

The servants scurry to obey. No one in the land dares question the miller's daughter now.

Another spell to dissipate the stench of sweat and afterbirth; one more to dry the milk within her breasts. She will not need it.

She spends the next hour examining the red-cheeked, squalling infant as it squirms in her lap, curious about this queer otherness her body has brought forth. She unwraps tight lace swaddling to count the fingers and toes. She verifies the gender. She touches the downy hairs of its legs. She prods the severed cord that once bound them together. She watches its lips smack uselessly at empty air.

Cora suspects that this is when a mother is meant to fall in love.

She thanks the Gods she has no heart with which to do so.

Another hour goes by. Then another. Cora begins to wonder whether she has been forgotten or whether he is simply distracted; but whatever the reason, the clock has struck twelve before the Dark One appears silently as a shadow at the end of her four-poster bed. "Sorry I'm late," he lilts, tapping his nails against the mahogany footboard, scales reflecting candlelight. "So many transactions to complete, so little time. I do hope you haven't grown attached."

In a way, she admires how he makes no effort to hide his malice. He wants to torture. He wants this will be as painful as possible.

But it is a wasted effort. Cora has felt him clutching her hips, heard him moaning her name; he cannot intimidate her, no matter how many layers of dragon leather he hides behind. "There's no point in attaching oneself to merchandise," she replies coolly.

This brings him up short, though he covers it with a high giggle that makes shivers run down Cora's spine - not an entirely unpleasant sensation. "Marriage hasn't changed you, I see!" Every inch of him drips with poisoned sarcasm. "Nice to know a man can rely on something to remain constant in such an unpredictable world as this."

"You are not a man."

A pause, then: "Quite right. Good of you to remind me." His unnatural, reptilian gaze leaves Cora's face to settle on the mewling babe in her lap. "That's an impressive set of lungs you've spawned," he says, and a person who knew him less might buy the indifference of his manner.

"She's hungry, I think."

"They're born hungry, dearie. Haven't you fed her?"

"Why should I, when she isn't mine?"

The flash of contempt in Rumpelstiltskin's expression makes something ache where Cora's heart used to be. "A fine mother you are," he snaps.

"That hardly concerns you."

She takes no satisfaction in his flinch - though neither does she feel remorse. It is only the truth, after all.

The newborn's wails rise another octave; perhaps it thinks this new voice belongs to someone who will see to its needs. Cora's ears are beginning to hurt. She flicks her wrist, and a wave of shimmering mist softens the screams to a whisper.

Rumpelstiltskin edges around the mattress; there is no spring in his step now, no movement fluttering his hands. He leans in close to the silently sobbing child and hums something indistinct; he peers at each feature, lingering on her nose in particular; his claws touch the baby's palm, which immediately fists around his finger. This innocent action makes his breath catch in his throat, and is followed by the softest oh of an exhale.

"She'll have brown eyes," he observes, "though not the color of yours." His voice drops low and cautious, thick with the accent Cora only ever heard on the darkest of nights, when he would tell her of a wretched past known to no one else living.

She is not capable of being tender, not anymore, but a gentleness she has not felt since her wedding day fills her as she says, "Yes - the same shade as Prince Henry's." He glances up; she reminds him, "It's been more than a year, Rumple."

In that moment, more hatred than Cora realized could exist in a single creature fills the room. The desperate, vaguely wistful craving vanishes; he jerks his hand from the baby's grip and pulls back, looking at it now with something like disgust, as though the helpless infant were a viper who had tried to sink its teeth into his flesh. "Yes, dearie," he bites out, "I can count. Now let's get on with this, shall we?"

A snap of his fingers conjures a carrying basket from thin air. He drops it unceremoniously on the bed; Cora sits up further against the pillows - wincing at an ache in her abdomen too deep for a spell to touch - and settles her child into a nest of cotton blankets. It is a cradle fit for a peasant, not a princess.

"What will become of her?" she asks.

Rumpelstiltskin chuckles, dark and cold. "That hardly concerns you."

The miller's daughter nods, then tucks the blankets just a bit tighter. The baby has exhausted itself with tears; it gnaws despairingly on its tiny knuckles, eyes shut, ribs rising and falling in shuddering breaths. It is likely the last time they will see each other.

Cora still feels nothing in the empty cavern of her chest.

But her firstborn deserves one gift - a gift that only a mother should give. "Her name is Regina," she informs Rumpelstiltskin.

This declaration earns Cora a high, mocking laugh. It reminds her of when they first met in a tower filled with straw and a creaking spinning wheel. "Regina. How subtle. But you waste your time; a name will not turn your whelp into a queen."

Cora just smiles. "Names," she says to her former lover, "have power."

Rumpelstiltskin bares his stained teeth in return. "Oh, dearie," he tells her, "power? Is the one thing I can guarantee she'll have."

He and the basket vanish.

Cora counts off five minutes before she screams for the guards.

Next: Wherein Belle makes a deal and a trinket is retrieved.