Black Fairy

At some point in Fiona's life, she marries Malcolm and becomes pregnant with his child. During a dark winter, Fiona gives birth to their son, and shortly after, the Blue Fairy and Tiger Lily, the newborn's fairy godmother, visit to deliver a prophecy about the child's destiny to become the Savior and die fighting a great evil. Fiona becomes obsessed with researching fairy lore in order to stop the prophecy and comes to believe the great evil, who is foretold to be born in winter with the mark of a crescent moon, must be a child who will be born soon. Upon tricking Tiger Lily into setting down her wand, Fiona takes it and recites an incantation to turn herself into a fairy, out of the belief that becoming a fairy gives her more power to protect her son. She and Tiger Lily visit hundreds of newborns to check for the birthmark, but none of the children have it. Deciding to create a Dark Curse to banish all children to a Land Without Magic to eliminate the possibility of any of them becoming the great evil, Fiona persuades Tiger Lily into allowing her into the sacred fairy vault to assemble the ingredients, although she lies to Tiger Lily about the enchantment being two spells she wants to combine. Tiger Lily attempts to stop her once she figures out the truth, but Fiona rips out her heart and begins crushing it. As she proclaims her willingness to kill her son's fairy godmother to keep her son from his fate, this act of darkness causes her magic to darken and grants her with a wand imbued with great dark power. To the shock of both fairies, Fiona's wrist now has the mark of the crescent moon, proving she is the great evil that her son is meant to kill and lose his life against. After Tiger Lily is given her heart back by the Blue Fairy, she offers the Shears of Destiny to Fiona so she can alter her own fate by cutting away her powers, but Fiona insists she needs her powers to protect her son. Too afraid of a future where her son will die no matter what, she uses the shears to sever her son's Savior ties. The Blue Fairy then banishes Fiona to the Dark Realm and takes possession of her wand. Before disappearing into the portal, Fiona vows to do everything in her power to one day get back to her son. In the aftermath, the Blue Fairy and Tiger Lily bring Fiona's child back to Malcolm, who is led by the fairies into believing the woman he loves is dead. Heartsick with grief, Malcolm begrudges his son for being the reason that Fiona is gone and bitterly gives him the name Rumplestiltskin. ("The Black Fairy")

In the Dark Realm, time runs strangely and anything is possible, which only allows Fiona to leave long enough to capture a child before the realm drags her back in, though she can also be summoned temporarily by an incantation. The children she captures are forced to work to mine dark fairy dust for her. In time, Fiona becomes known as the Black Fairy. ("Going Home," "Changelings," "Wish You Were Here," "Mother's Little Helper," "Awake")

Somehow, the Dark Curse scroll that Fiona created ends up in Bald Mountain in the Enchanted Forest ("Darkness on the Edge of Town," "Mother's Little Helper")

At some point, some of the Black Fairy's dark fairy dust ended up in Snow White's possession.^[2] ("Snow Falls," "There's No Place Like Home")

After some time, Rumplestiltskin plans to summon the Black Fairy with the incantation, bait her with a baby, and then paralyze her with squid ink. After the fairy is frozen in place by the ink, she recognizes him as the Dark One and notes that if he knows her, he must also know that she will be freed from the ink shortly. He tells her that she cannot have the child yet and expresses his desire to ask her a few questions about herself, starting with his curiosity about why, as a kidnapper of babies, she abandoned the one child who belonged to her. Shocked, the Black Fairy realizes that Rumplestiltskin is the son she was separated from long ago, but once she regains her composure, she lies to Rumple and says that she chose power over love. This statement, as well as Rumplestiltskin's maid arriving to rescue the infant, distracts Rumplestiltskin long enough for the squid ink to wear off. The Black Fairy then grabs her son, giggling over how time has run out for him to ask her any more questions, before coldly shoving him away. She then transforms into her miniature fairy form and flies off. ("Changelings," "The Black Fairy")

The Black Fairy visits Storybrooke, where she catches Mother Superior flying through the forest with Gideon, her grandson. She attacks her, and though Mother Superior fights back, she is no match for the dark fairy and is later found by the other nuns close to death. The Black Fairy then takes Gideon to her domain, telling the nursemaid to raise him as if he were the Black Fairy's own son, as he is very special. The nursemaid discovers a book among his blankets, but the Black Fairy takes it away. ("Wish You Were Here," "Tougher Than the Rest," "Mother's Little Helper")

After Gideon grows into a young boy, the Black Fairy forces him to live in a jail cell and work in the mines like the other children. He eventually finds the book among the Black Fairy's possessions and steals it, reading it to Roderick, the boy in the cell next to his. One night, they are interrupted when the Black Fairy arrives, revealing she knew that Gideon had stolen it. Gideon tells her it is not hers, as he has read the message left in the front of the book and knows that his real mother left it for him. The Black Fairy takes it anyway, telling Gideon that he cannot be a hero like his namesake, the main character of the book, and that she can prove it. She then takes Roderick and begins to drag him off, leaving Gideon's cell unlocked. However, even when he discovers this, Gideon is too afraid to face the Black Fairy despite Roderick pleading for his help and abandons his friend to his fate. The Black Fairy takes Roderick to her tower and whips him through the night. ("Ill-Boding Patterns," "Mother's Little Helper")

Years later, the Black Fairy calls for Gideon and informs him that it is his twenty-eighth birthday, surprising him since he has never known about his own birthday. She teases him, noting that everyone has a birthday, though he has never celebrated one before. As more fairy dust is brought to the Black Fairy from the mines, she discovers that the key to her vault where she keeps the dust is missing and directs Gideon to find the culprit, arming him with a small bottle of dust. However, she is secretly aware that the culprit is Roderick, Gideon's old friend, and plans to test Gideon to see if he will betray her. When Gideon listens to Roderick's tale and agrees to help him contact the Savior in another realm through a crystal ball, the Black Fairy catches them and shatters the ball, revealing her disappointment in Gideon. Though she will not physically harm him, she prepares to attack Roderick instead as punishment. In an attempt to stop her, Gideon hurls the fairy dust at her, but she dodges it and expresses outrage that he would do such a thing to his own mother. She then uses some of the dust on Roderick, transforming him into a beetle, and crushes him under her boot, telling a horrified Gideon that it is his fault. She proceeds to rip out Gideon's heart, commanding him to go to the realm where the Savior lives and kill her, which will allow him to use Hrunting to break the spell that keeps the Black Fairy from leaving her realm. ("Mother's Little Helper")

Under the Black Fairy's thrall, Gideon arrives in Storybrooke and lies to his parents about his plans to kill Emma, the Savior, so that he can use her power to defeat the Black Fairy. Though his first fight with her results in a victory for Emma, he is spared by her thanks to his father's pleas and the Black Fairy develops a new plan, forcing Gideon to send Hook, Emma's true love to the Enchanted Forest and using him as leverage, refusing to let him return until she works with him. They go to the Sorcerer's Mansion under the false pretense of opening a portal to bring Hook back so that Emma will trust Gideon. However, the portal instead brings a massive spider through, which ties Emma up in its web as Gideon teleports away. As Emma slowly suffocates away, Hrunting starts to open its portal, and even though she is eventually rescued by Mr. Gold, it is enough to let the Black Fairy through. Later, Gideon attempts to tell the Black Fairy that her plan failed, but she appears behind him, thanking him for his help and telling him they have much more to do. ("Wish You Were Here," "Tougher Than the Rest," "Page 23," "A Wondrous Place," "Mother's Little Helper")

When the Black Fairy goes to her son's pawnshop to reveal her presence in Storybrooke to him, Mr. Gold questions how she managed to get to Storybrooke, to which she has Gideon enter, as proof of his supposed betrayal of Mr. Gold and Belle. Though Mr. Gold tries to attack her, the Black Fairy seizes the Dagger and orders him to stop, though she promises not to command him to do anything else and then returns it, remarking that she expects him to join her side willingly when he sees the darkness she brings. She later encounters Emma and Snow White in the woods, where they have found several pixie dust flowers that bloomed due to the Black Fairy's evil presence. Disappointed that the flowers killed her dramatic entrance, the Black Fairy reveals herself and Gideon. She taunts Emma, announcing her plan to kill the Savior in the final battle, and has Gideon destroy all the flowers, stopping Emma and Snow's only chance at awakening Snow and David from their joint curse. However, she does not realize that Gideon's love for his mother gave him the power to resist her orders and leave one flower alive, a fact that is later revealed to her by Mr. Gold, who has realized that the Black Fairy possesses Gideon's heart and states that he will not stop until he gets it back from her, though the Black Fairy notes that if the two of them were to go head-to-head, the entire town would be a destroyed; a risk Mr. Gold is willing to take. ("Awake")

Sometime after finding a growing cache of light fairy crystals in the dwarf tunnels, the Black Fairy forms a plan to lure Zelena there and use the witch's magic to turn the crystals into dark crystals so she can start the final battle. Arriving to Zelena's farmhouse, she takes the witch's infant daughter in her arms just before Zelena comes into the nursery and finds her baby missing. The Black Fairy steps out to reveal herself, teasingly stating that it's hard to keep an eye on children, and when Zelena takes Robin back from her, she expresses a desire to keep holding the infant, claiming she loves that "new baby" smell. She offers to side with Zelena, noting that she seems alone in the town, though Zelena adamantly refuses. The Black Fairy warns her that she will not want to be alone for what's coming and Zelena insists that she's not afraid of her. The Black Fairy keeps the offer open, telling Zelena to come to the tunnels if she changes her mind. Instead, Zelena decides, against Regina's wishes, to go there and attempt a sneak attack on the Black Fairy. As the sisters argue, the Black Fairy has Gideon magically toss Regina into a wall and keep her distracted while she flees, with Zelena in hot pursuit of her. Zelena catches her and flings her into a wall before blasting her with magic, however, the Black Fairy is unaffected and stands up as she laughs at Zelena's magic, walking up to her and redirecting her magic into the surrounding fairy crystals, imbuing them with her dark magic as Gideon and Regina arrive. As Zelena questions why the Black Fairy didn't use her own dark magic, the Black Fairy explains that Zelena's magic is at a disbalance due to her own lack of love and desire to prove herself while the Black Fairy's own is stable and therefore useless to her since she is confident in herself. She then releases a powerful blast from the crystals and teleports Zelena and Regina out of the mines. Despite this, Zelena later destroys her power, causing the crystals to return to normal, much to the Black Fairy's horror. At the wishing well, the Black Fairy spies on the heroes with a crystal ball, observing that Emma has successfully reawakened Mother Superior. Gideon notes that the heroes seem to be defeating her, first by taking her dark magic and now saving the Blue Fairy, and asks if she's really that afraid of the broken wand, an item which Mother Superior has a piece of. The Black Fairy shrugs in apparent indifference over the wand, calling it a trinket, and states why she wants to be rid of Mother Superior, who she knows her darkest secret: the true reason she gave up Rumplestiltskin when he was a baby. ("Where Bluebirds Fly")

With the Black Fairy disguised as Snow and Gideon disguised as David, they are present at the pawnshop to witness Mr. Gold awakening Mother Superior, who regains consciousness and reveals to the heroes that the other half of the wand is at the heart of Storybrooke. Before the nun can say anything else, the Black Fairy begins choking her. Emma is shocked at her mother's actions, to which Fiona reveals she is not Snow by shedding her disguise, with Gideon also reverting to his real form. Fiona then teleports herself and Mother Superior away to the mines, while Gideon is captured by his parents. Fiona begins to threaten Mother Superior, asking her where the other half of her wand is, but the latter vows to tell her nothing. Nonetheless, the Black Fairy uses a tool to extract information from the nun's head and learns the missing wand half is hidden in the diner. Arriving to see the heroes have already gotten the wand, Fiona demands it from them, however, Regina refuses to surrender without a fight. Fiona challenges her, which Regina gladly accepts before teleporting both of them outside. As Fiona blasts Regina and prepares an even more powerful surge of magic, Zelena slams her car into the Black Fairy, sending her flying into the air before she falls on her face. Fiona retreats and later confronts Mr. Gold, who now has some knowledge of his mother's past and his destiny to kill her. She insists he doesn't know everything that happened and then uses her magic to show him what led to her banishment. Mr. Gold is surprised to learn she did love him and left him unwillingly, however, he criticizes her for choosing power over love. Fiona defends her choice, stating that she needed her power to protect him, but Mr. Gold calls her out for lying since he once told himself the same thing when he chose power over his own first born son. Standing by her decisions, the Black Fairy proclaims that everything she has done was to keep him safe from the dangers of the world, to which Mr. Gold considers that it's only unsafe because of villains like them. Fiona then apologizes for making the wrong choices with the belief she was doing it out of love for him and expresses regret for hurting him. Mr. Gold points out she also caused pain to Gideon, which Fiona excuses by saying that it made Gideon strong. To this, Mr. Gold reflects on the things he's done with both of his sons that started out with good intentions and ended badly. Fiona, believing this means he can empathize with her actions, asks to start over as a family with him if he can forgive her for the things she's done. Mr. Gold presumably agrees and tricks the heroes into thinking he killed the Black Fairy by showing them a heart that is supposed to be hers. Fiona returns Gideon's heart to Mr. Gold, although in actuality, she gave him a decoy and kept the real one. Later on, Fiona meets up with her son again as they begin to conspire to kill Emma on the day of her wedding. ("The Black Fairy," "The Final Battle Part 2")

Sometime after adding a cloud of dark fairy dust to the inside of the clock tower, which is set to unleash a Dark Curse when the clock strikes six o'clock, the Black Fairy unceremoniously makes her presence known to Emma by blackening Snow's old wedding dress. Fiona smugly brings up Emma's inability to run away from her past as a sad little orphan and gives her the chance to forfeit her heart now instead of facing her in the final battle. When Emma refuses, Fiona directs her to the clock tower to see what she has in store for her. The Black Fairy comes to her son's aid when Hook knocks out Mr. Gold with a dose of Dreamshade and later waits for Emma in the mayor's office. After Emma arrives to begin the final battle rather than wait until the curse is in effect, Fiona notes that she had intended to wait for her curse to separate Emma from her family but that they ended up doing the work for her. She then teleports in the paralyzed bodies of Snow, David, Hook, Regina, and Zelena, all of whom are frozen because of Mr. Gold stealing Regina's freezing potion and using it on them. With her crystal ball, Fiona broadcasts the audio of young Emma and mockingly notes the amount of misery she hears in it, to which Emma tries to magically choke her, but it doesn't work, as the fairy points out, because Emma finally understands the truth: that she can't fight alone. Emma retreats only to return later and willingly give up her heart to the Black Fairy. Fiona succeeds in ripping out the heart but is strangely unable to crush it into ash and ends up dropping it to which Henry rushes in to reveal to Emma that she has never been alone because her heart contains the songs of those who love her. As Emma's strength grows as she begins to sing her own song, the Black Fairy attempts to blast her with magic, but it has no effect on her. Fiona watches with a wary gaze as Emma continues singing in order to slowly free her family and friends, and when the song reaches a high note, a white light shoots toward, completely undoing the paralysis. After Emma regains her heart from Henry, an angry Fiona warns her about not taking the easy route and that her curse will be far worse than she could ever imagine. ("The Song in Your Heart")

Under her curse, Fiona keeps a tight rein in Storybrooke as the new madam mayor while attempting to convince an institutionized Emma to stay on the path of her recovery by rejecting Henry's ideas of fairy tales being real. Unknown to Emma, this is the final battle, in which if her belief is extinguished completely, whole realms will collapse because of the loss of magic and Fiona will gain uncharted powers that will enable her to go beyond the laws of magic. Upon finding Henry visiting Emma at the psychiatric ward, Fiona takes away the fairy tale book from him and later tries to persuade Emma to burn it to prove to Henry that the stories in it aren't real. Emma refuses out of reluctance to crush Henry's feelings and reasons that she isn't ready, to which Fiona allows Dr. Hopper to hold onto the book until then. Later, Fiona receives a phone call about Emma's disappearance from the ward, leading her to find Henry stealing the book from Dr. Hopper's office, where she magically shoves him down the stairs, causing his arm to break. When Mr. Gold comes to her for answers about Belle, who supposedly abandoned him and Gideon long ago, she puts on a sympathetic act while showing him photographic proof that Belle is living a happy life without her husband and son. She encourages him to put the past behind because he could never be the man Belle wanted him to, but he can still be the man that his son needs. After Mr. Gold thanks her and leaves, Fiona opens the book and sees Henry's symbol scribbles, realizing it is a message about finishing the final battle. Emma, persuaded by Fiona that Henry's delusions will cause him even more bodily harm one day, burns the book and leaves for Boston after saying goodbye to Henry. ("The Final Battle Part 1," "The Final Battle Part 2")

However, Fiona is furious upon discovering Emma returned to town and that she still maintains a small speck of belief in Henry. She forces Gideon to help her search for her wand, which is hidden somewhere in the pawnshop. After retrieving it, Fiona uses the wand to decipher the symbols, which tell of the final battle ending when light defeats light. Mr. Gold, having retained his real memories this whole time, returns to confront Fiona with the truth about Belle, who she purposely kept away from him and Gideon. Fiona insists she did it for his own good since Belle would have turned him away from his darker instincts, but she promises that once the final battle ends, her magic will reach uncharted levels that will allow her to make his family love him without him having to give up his Dark One powers. She even offers to revive his deceased firstborn, Baelfire, but as tempting as it is, Mr. Gold declines, no longer wanting to pay the price of magic. Mr. Gold grabs her wand, using it to magically choke her until she falls to her knees, while vowing to make her suffer for what she's done to his family. Fiona mocks him for thinking that stopping her will end the final battle and instead reveals the message in the symbols. As Mr. Gold realizes she intends for Gideon to kill Emma and that she still has his son's heart, Fiona admits she already ordered Gideon to do it and that she suspects not even her death will undo the command she gave him. Mr. Gold, willing to take the risk to find out, kills her. With the Black Fairy dead, her curse ends, returning Emma's banished family to Storybrooke and restoring everyone's lost memories. ("The Final Battle Part 2")