With a sorceress as powerful as Maleficent terrorizing the city, Jefferson wanted to find a way to do everything that he could to keep his daughter from thinking about what was going on more than she had to. That meant that a tea party was in order. A proper one. Good tea, plenty of food, and lots of quality entertainment. Grace was safely in the company of friends back at the apartment complex, so Jefferson took the opportunity to visit a store that he recalled carrying quality baked goods. A cake seemed like a good idea. He'd pick one out tonight and surprise Grace with it tomorrow at tea.
It seemed like such a little thing. A tea party. But it wasn't. Not for them. It was a steady occurrence in their life. Before they had been torn apart by Regina's curse, Jefferson and Grace had their tea daily. When the curse had been broken and Grace landed herself here, they picked up on the old tradition right away, acting as though nothing in the world had changed even though an apocalypse had risen up all around them. Maleficent may have been stalking her way through their ranks with her dark magic, but that didn't matter. They'd stick together, they'd have their tea, and everything was going to be okay.
That was what Jefferson wanted Grace to believe. He was far too cynical and far too paranoid of a man to fall into that sort of logic himself. The important thing was that he got Grace to believe it. He didn't want her to be scared and he certainly didn't want her to fall apart because another sorceress was threatening to ruin their lives again.
Fingers at the cloth of the scarf wrapped around his neck, Jefferson hopped over a curb and kept to the path that led to his destination. It had gotten dark quickly and the streets in this area were surprisingly much more bare than usual. Hands slipping down to his pockets, Jefferson continued on his way, never taking a moment to stop until he heard a roughly familiar voice sound from around the corner.
Though his path wound up ahead rather than in the direction of the speaker, Jefferson turned her way anyway. She had spoken in an urgent, yet distressed voice. Something could have easily been wrong.
...so why, exactly, was he walking in that direction again? Jefferson slowed. Rather than walking straight out to greet Belle, Jefferson crept over to the side and pressed his back to the wall of a building, shifting in toward a particularly shadowy area. If she was being followed or attacked, he didn't want to jump into the middle of it. That would have been stupid. Instead, Jefferson decided to watch and wait.