A/N: Some information about this story
I expect it to come out at around 12 chapters and 65,000 words.
Warnings: horror sequences, internalized homophobia
Thanks for reading!
A silence falls over Storybrooke as the Dark Ones rises from the depths of the placid lake. It is not the calm silence of a sleepy town in Maine on an ordinary evening in late autumn. It is eerie and it makes the hair on the back of Emma's neck stand up.
It suddenly feels much cooler, like a sudden gust of wind, except that the night is completely still. Emma turns around to ask Henry if he felt it too, but he is still standing against the back bumper of her car looking down the street.
"Henry, what is it?"
She backtracks to stand beside him, and then she sees. A thick, milky fog is creeping toward them, blocking the view of the road where it turns into the woods. It almost looks alive.
"I think…" Henry squints, "there are people in there."
"There can't be," Emma replies but she squints at it too. If they are about to relive some 1980s horror movie—which she would only ever consider a serious possibility in this town—she at least wants to see the ghost pirates before they kill her.
"Don't you see all those shadows?" Henry asks. "They look like they're wearing cloaks or capes or something."
"Dark Ones…" Emma murmurs as realization washes over her. This is Hook's plan. This is why he needed Excalibur. It makes sense to her now. "Henry, they're Dark Ones. Come on, get inside."
She grabs Henry by the sleeve of his sweatshirt and drags him toward Granny's Diner.
"Mom, I can help!" he protests as she shoves him through the door and slams it shut.
"Not this time!" she calls to him through the glass. "Stay in there! Lock the back door! I mean it, Henry! I swear if I see you out here…" she trails off. "If there's only one time in your life that you do what I say, it needs to be now! I have to go find Regina!"
She glances over her shoulder as she takes off down the street, just to make sure the door is still tightly shut. She cannot see Henry. He is probably halfway to the back door already. She rounds the corner at the library, her feet almost sliding out from under her, and then she hears Regina's voice.
"Emma!"
How that woman runs at full speed in those heels will never fail to impress Emma. Her jacket flaps and Robin jogs behind her clutching a bow that Emma is sure will be absolutely useless against the mob of Dark Ones rolling into town with the fog.
Regina slows to a stop. "Did you feel the temperature drop?" she pants.
"Did you see the fog coming up the street?" Emma responds.
Regina straightens up and adjusts her jacket. "Whatever the pirate summoned, it's here now."
"It's the Dark Ones," Emma informs her. "All of them. Henry and I saw them. He must have used Excalibur to summon them from the Underworld somehow."
"Henry!" Regina's eyes widen and she is looking around frantically. "Where's Henry?"
"He's fine, I locked him in Granny's," Emma reassures her.
"Yes, if he's still there," Regina mutters. "So what do you suggest we do about your boyfriend's little family reunion?"
Boyfriend. The word has never sounded quite right coming out of Regina's mouth, and now it is accompanied by an incredible feeling of regret and uncertainty, like a plastic bag has just been pulled from her head but now that it's gone, she feels exposed, even though it was suffocating her. Emma wants to correct her, but as Regina ventures down the street toward Granny's to get a closer look at the fog inching toward them, Emma decides they have bigger problems to worry about.
"You're asking me?" Emma replies as she joins her. "You know more about magic."
"Yes, but you're the one with all the knowledge of the Dark One." Regina's tone is dry, and Emma gets the feeling she is just managing not to roll her eyes.
"I don't know." Emma shrugs, and Regina sighs. "Are they even alive? Can we even hit them with magic?"
This time Regina doesroll her eyes. "For goodness sake, they're not ghosts, Emma."
"I don't know, you kill the Dark One by stabbing then with the dagger, right?" She is speaking faster now, her voice gaining a panicked edge.
"They've already been stabbed," Regina points out. "That's why they're all dead. You're suggesting we, what, double kill them?"
Emma crosses her arms triumphantly. "So they are ghosts."
Regina groans. "In a manner of speaking, I supposed. Though I'm sure our son would point out that dead does not necessarily equal ghost. You're a child."
"Well, they came to Storybrooke at night." Emma furrows her brow so tightly it hurts. "And they represent darkness… so what if we hit them with light?"
"Light light or light magic?" Regina asks, but she sounds impressed.
"Uhh, let's try both?"
"The street lamps?" Regina asks her. Emma nods and they take their stances, the two of them as a team again. Emma missed this when she was pushing everyone away. Something deep in her gut had ached every time she had faced a problem she knew Regina would have been able to solve. It's natural, she thinks. They're friends.
"One, two," Regina's voice pulls her out of her head, "three!"
Emma focuses her magic on the street lamp nearest her, and then the second. Her brain barely registers Robin's shout of, "It's working!" from somewhere behind her. She'd forgotten he was even here.
In the distance, the fog parts like a curtain right down the middle and creeps towards the alleyways between the buildings, into the shadows, but it is still coming at them. Emma can see the hooded figures reforming where the light can't reach them.
"Emma, use your light magic!" she hears Regina call.
Emma focuses again on the figure she can see most clearly. It is shaped like a woman and it lurks under the cover of a porch. She hurls a ball of magic at it, but something is wrong. Her magic is not the clear white she is used to, but the sickly yellow she remembers from Camelot, from when she let Violet's horse go shortly after their return. Of course, she realizes. She is still a Dark One.
"I can't cast light magic!" she calls to Regina. "It's up to you!" She turns toward her, and her eyes widen in horror.
Emma feels like she is watching it happen in a movie. A hooded figure is standing right behind Regina. She is too preoccupied with shooting beams of light magic to realize that she is slowly being enveloped in fog.
Emma's mind whirs to life, trying to put the pieces together, but her thoughts seem to come to her in slow motion. Regina's shadow stretched behind her like the train of a dress, touching the shadow of Emma's bug, touching the shadow of the mailbox in front of Granny's, touching the shadow of the bushes.
"Regina!" She calls, powerless to do anything else. Regina's head begins to turn toward her, her eyes glinting, her lips stretched into a wide, almost maniacal smile.
And then the figure touches her shoulder and her body goes rigid, like she is frozen solid from the inside. Suddenly, time shifts from moving very slowly to very fast. Emma blasts a ball of magic at it and then realizes all over again that it has no effect. She shoots for a lamp post instead. The light around the figure grows and at first it begins to fade, but it shrinks into the bushes, pulling a lifeless and very grey Regina with it.
Just like that, the fog is withdrawing. The former Dark Ones dissolve into the cool night air. The bushes where Emma last saw Regina rustle. Emma runs toward them, but she knows before she reaches them that Regina will no longer be there.
She straightens up and turns back down the street, to where Robin is jogging toward her. She can tell by the look on his face that he knows too. Regina is gone.
"This is my fault," Emma mutters, not for the first time. She is leaning heavily on a table at Granny's, her face buried in her hands. "If I had just let Killian die—"
Snow's arm is around her shoulders in an instant. "No, it's not," she assures her. "You were saving someone you loved. He chose to go dark. He could have fought it like you did. None of this is your fault."
"He told me he wouldn't be able to resist the darkness," Emma murmurs. "I should have believed him. He begged me to let him die. I just… couldn't."
"Emma, you can't blame yourself for this—"
"Yes, she can."
Emma looks up from her hands. Henry is sitting at the end of the counter leaning against the wall. His jaw is set and his eyes are glistening but his cheeks are dry. Emma remembers the ten year old boy who showed up at her door in Boston, the boy who looked at her like she could perform miracles. This Henry looks at her with the sting of betrayal in his eyes. She hates what she has put him through. What she has put all of them through.
"Henry!" Snow gasps, but his expression is unfaltering.
"You've been telling us you only pretended to go dark in Camelot, but you ignored his dying wish because you were selfish, and now my mom is gone." His frown cuts into her almost as much as his words. "That's not what a savior does."
"I'm not the savior anymore," Emma mumbles. "I told all of you that. There is no savior now."
"Yes, there was," Snow replies slowly, like she's not sure she should say anything at all. "Regina was the savior."
David hops off his bar stool and Emma can see his mind working. "That must be why they took her."
"Killian said his plan was to snuff out the light," Emma adds. "Do you think he meant he wanted to—" Emma breaks off and the room goes silent. None of them want to complete that sentence.
"Kill the savior," Henry finally finishes. His voice cracks on the last word and he turns away from her and charges out the back of the dining room toward the back door.
Emma sighs. "I'll go talk to him." She scoots her wobbly chair away from the table and stands up. She is still shaking.
"He's just upset about Regina," Snow tells her, her hand covering Emma's. "Don't take it personally."
"I know," Emma replies. "But he wasn't wrong."
She takes the cup of coffee that has been too cold to drink for at least ten minutes and shuffles through the dining room, past the jukebox she has never seen anyone play, and down the narrow hallway that leads to the door.
Henry is sitting on the back step, and when he hears the door open, he wipes hastily at his eyes with his shirt sleeve. Emma sits down next to him and places the cup beside her. "I know I did this," she tells him.
He doesn't look at her. He doesn't say a word.
She sighs. "When Killian was dying… I don't know, my mind went blank. All I could think about was how he was going to die and it was going to be my fault and how I wouldn't… have anyone.
"You would have had people," Henry mutters.
"Well, yeah, but it's not the same." Emma cannot explain how it's not exactly. It's not the romance or the sex she feels like she needs. If it was, she wouldn't have dragged her feet at every stage of their relationship. But Hook had been familiar. They joked around, they had fun together, and he made her family happy. He made her feel like she could have the life she always imagined, like the ones she saw on television growing up. She'd never thought that kind of normalcy would be possible for her before. Now she just feels the nagging uncertainty.
"Yeah, but now you have even fewer people," Henry points out.
"I know, kid." She wants to wrap her arm around his shoulders, but she doesn't think she could take it if he pulled away from her. "I lost her too. She was special to me too." As a mentor, her mind rushes to add. As a friend. "I'm going to fix this."
"How?" he asks, and she can hear the tears in his voice. It breaks her heart. "They took her to the Underworld, Mom. She's gone. She's not coming back. Dead is dead."
"No, there's a way," Emma answers, her resolve hardening. "I'm the Dark One. There has to be a way."
"You think?" He still sounds wary, like he doesn't want to get his hopes up but he is allowing himself to reach, just with one arm, towards the possibility. He has the heart of the truest believer and even he is skeptical. He is growing up.
"I promise." There is so much ferocity in her voice, she nearly believes it herself.
No, she does believe it. Regina Mills is not dead. Emma has magic. She can travel through realms, through time. She has watched her parents meet. There is a way to fix this. Regina Mills is not dead.
She stands up and shoves her hands into her pockets. "I have to go talk to someone," she tells him. "David and Mary Margaret are still inside. They'll take you home when you're ready. Don't… don't stay out here too long, okay?"
She takes one last look at him and decides he is going to be okay. Well, he isn't okay, but he is handling it, and as much as Emma wants to stay with him, time is not something she can spare right now. The longer she waits, the more likely it is that Regina is…
"I love you, Henry. You know that right?"
He looks up at her. His cheeks are damp and he is not smiling, but it is progress. "Yeah, Mom. I know."
The pawn shop is silent when Emma steps over the threshold, and for a moment, she thinks Rumplestiltskin might not even be there. Then, with a flutter of the curtain that divides the shop from the back room, he appears.
"Ah, Miss Swan." He comes to a stop at the center of the counter. He is studying her carefully, without the amusement he gleaned from making people uncomfortable when he was the Dark One. "You haven't come to return Excalibur, I see."
Emma shakes her head. "I lost it. Killian has it. It was… stupid."
"I thought as much when I saw your little family reunion outside my shop earlier. One of your friends even tried to take refuge in my back room. While I admire your quick thinking, streetlights?" He shakes his head. "You're the Dark One, dearie. You're better than those parlor tricks."
He reaches into the glass cabinet and plucks out an ornate golden goblet. He rubs as it with his thumb and then reaches back down and produces a rag. "What brings you back here so soon?"
Emma approaches the counter. "They took Regina. They took her to the Underworld. There has to be a way to get her back. You were the Dark One for hundreds of years. If there's anyone who knows a way…" She does not like how desperate she sounds, and she especially doesn't like that it reflects how desperate she is, but for once, Rumplestiltskin does not comment on that.
"You thought it would be me," he finishes her sentence. He looks down at the goblet he is polishing and then back up at her. "Did you know this very cup is at the root of all your problems? And mine too." He holds it up to the light and nods, satisfied with his work. "This was the original source of magic in the realms. Of course, it can't help you now. You already have immortality." He replaces it in the case and straightens back up to look at her. "You're right, there is a way."
Emma inhales sharply. "There is?"
"The Dark One has power over death," Rumplestiltskin tells her. "You can take the lives of others at will, but you evade death yourself. You can also go into the Underworld. All you have to do is summon the ferryman. He'll lead you there."
Emma narrows her eyes. "If it's so easy, why did you just let Neal die? Why didn't you save him?"
Rumplestiltskin sighs and shakes his head. He looks tired, and after years of being the man who always had a trick up his sleeve, who always knew more than everyone else in the room, it is disconcerting. "No one said anything about easy. Once you get to the Underworld, it is… difficult to leave. You can't just go back the way you came. There is only one way out and to get there, you have to pass through… true horrors."
"And what, you just couldn't stomach it?" Emma snaps. "Not even for your son?"
"And here I thought we'd established my cowardice long ago," Rumplestiltskin replies bitterly. "I was never a savior."
If only people would stop talking about saviors for once. When it was her, it unnerved her. It made her feel inadequate. Now that it's… now it just devastates her. Emma bites back her retort and shakes her head. "Just tell me how to get there."
"That bit is really quite simple," he explains. "All you need to do is go to the lake and cast a spell. It's called the Fool's Errand. Don't let the name fool you, it's very powerful magic. Anyone with magical abilities can cast it, but it would be near impossible for anyone else to gather the ingredients."
"The Fool's Errand," Emma repeats. "Got it." She turns to leave, and then she stops. "You're not going to try to collect payment from my family after I'm gone."
Rumplestiltskin simply stares at her, and now Emma knows she is not imagining it. He is tired. "I've lost loved ones too, Miss Swan."
She nods slowly and turns back toward the door, but his voice stops her. "One last thing."
"What?" she asks without turning back around.
"The Underworld is a cruel place, and it does not abide by the rules of magic as you've come to know them," Rumplestiltskin warns her. "Say your goodbyes before you leave."
"Emma, you don't have to do this," Snow tells her. They are huddled together by the door of Snow's apartment, their voices hushed so they don't wake Henry and Neal. "Regina wouldn't have wanted Henry to lose both of his mothers."
"Regina didn't want to be dead," Emma growls. "I have to do this. It's my fault she's down there at all. If it wasn't for me, she would have kissed Henry goodnight instead of the two of you. I'm going. I have to do this."
"Then we're going with you," David replies. She shouldn't be surprised to hear this. It's her parents' answer to everything, because Emma can never be the only family member in life-threatening peril, but Emma has caused enough destruction.
"No, I won't let you risk your lives. You need to be here for Neal. And for Henry."
Robin steps forward. "Well, I'm going. I should be there."
"You should be here," Emma answers. "Your kids are going to think the fairies are their parents if you're away from them any longer. Look, I'm not going to risk leaving anymore children parentless."
Snow pulls David aside and Emma watches with narrowed eyes as they have a hushed conversation that might even be an argument.
"I want to come with you," Robin argues, but Emma is barely listening. "She's the love of my life. I've already lost love once. I won't lose it again."
Emma suppresses the urge to roll her eyes. "I'm not going to be responsible for orphaning your children," she replies instead, glancing sidelong toward the bed where Henry is sleeping. "And no offense, but I don't think your bow and arrow are going to do me much good against whatever the true horrors in the Underworld are anyway." She wants to tell him that he will only slow her down, that his ridiculous attempts at heroism are likely to get them killed, but she thinks that might be a little callous at a time like this. Even for her.
"Emma," Snow returns to the group, pulling David behind her. "As your mother, I can't let you go down there alone. Your father will stay here with Henry and Neal. We'll go together."
Her hand feels heavy with guilt on Emma's shoulder. She shakes her head. "No, you have a baby. You can't leave him."
Snow's hand slips around to Emma's other shoulder and she hugs Emma to her side. "Neal is not my only child," she whispers. "You've been alone long enough, Emma. I know you think you don't need anyone else, but it doesn't have to be like that." She cups Emma's cheek with her hand. "You are my daughter, and I'm here for you no matter what."
Emma's shoulders droop. Snow has that look in her eyes that she gets when she knows that her intuition is unquestionably right and there is no convincing her otherwise.
"I need a book from the library," she mutters, and Snow's face lights up. "A spell book of advanced magic. The spell I need to cast is called the Fool's Errand. Get the book from Belle and gather as many of the ingredients as you can get your hands on. Meet me at the lake in an hour."
Snow nods. "Go say goodbye to Henry. Take all the time you need. I'll take care of it."
Emma takes a deep breath and makes her way past the group, toward Snow and David's bed where she can hear her son snoring.
"Henry," she jostles his shoulder. "Henry, wake up. I need to talk to you."
The snoring fades and his eyes blink open. "What do you want?" He is tired, still half asleep, but she can already see him curling in on himself, closing himself off to her.
"I'm sorry about what happened to your other mom, Henry," Emma tells him, already blinking back tears. She takes a deep breath and clenches her jaw. This conversation is going to be much more difficult than she anticipated. "I know it was my fault. I thought…" she sighs. "I thought I could handle Killian. I thought I could fix everything without anyone finding out what I'd done, but I was wrong and Regina paid for it."
He furrows his brow the way he always does when he is confused, the way he has since Emma first met him. Regina does it too, she realizes. Henry must have gotten it from her. "How?"
"Mr. Gold gave me a spell that will get me into the Underwold. I can do that because… I'm the Dark One. Apparently I'm like the master of death or something." She tries to smile but she just cannot summon the willpower. "I'm going to go get her. I'm going to bring her back. It'll be okay."
"Then why do you look like you don't believe that?" Henry's voice is small and quiet, like it was when he overheard Emma call him crazy. He sounds defeated.
She is silent for a long moment while Henry studies her as if he can ascertain the truth if he just looks at her hard enough. "It's dangerous," she finally tells him. "The Underworld is apparently a pretty bad place, so I wanted to tell you before I left that I love you and I'm going to do everything I can possibly do to find Regina and bring her back here. I promise." She feels a tear slip down her cheek. "I just really wanted you to know that."
Henry sits up, alarmed. "You might not come back? So Mom's already dead and now you're might die too?"
"Henry, it's not like that—" Emma begins, but he throws himself back against the pillow and rolls over so that his face is buried.
"Why are you being so selfish?"
"I'm not being selfish, Henry. I'm doing this for her and for you. I have to do this for you. It's what Regina would do too." She genuinely believes that.
"Just go away," he mutters.
"Henry," Emma protests. "Please don't make me leave like this."
"Go away!" he repeats, and Emma sighs. She sets a hand on the back of his head and feels him tense.
"I love you, kid," she tells him. She is crying now but she tries to keep the tears out of her voice. "I'll find her and we'll be back by next week. You'll see." She presses a kiss to his hair.
He does not look up as she walks away.
The breeze off the lake is cooler than it was in town. Emma can feel that but it does not make her uncomfortable the way it would have before she was cursed. If she was completely human, she would have shivered and pulled her hat down over her ears. Now she stands as still as Sneezy's statute, hands clasped comfortably behind her back, her high bun exposing the back of her neck to the wind.
She sees Snow before she hears her. She is wearing that awful pink coat. It has always reminded Emma of a foster home she stayed in when she was eleven. The walls of the Whatleys' living room were painted puce, and white satin table clothes covered all of the end tables. The husband had been a dentist and the wife, a school nurse. They supposedly had a son, but Emma never met him the entire five months she lived there. Their other foster daughter once told Emma that he didn't really exist, that Craig Whatley was really just their old cat who got hit by a car and Mrs. Whatley was delusional and Mr. Whatley went along with it because it was easier. By eleven, Emma was too old to believe that, and Heather lied anyway, but after she heard the story, the house seemed just a little more eerie, the creaks and groans just a little louder.
"I got everything I could find," Snow tells her. She is hauling a large tote bag with a picture of a pug on it over her shoulder. Emma can see a jar of something that looks like worms poking out. "Some of the ingredients have to come from you."
"You found the spell?" Emma asks. Looking for a book of Dark One magic, even in Belle's library, had seemed like a crap shoot.
"Yep," Snow reports, smiling cheerfully, as if they are not about to walk into hell. "In a book called Magick Moste Vile. I wonder why she would have had that."
The better question, Emma thinks, is why it was in the library and not hidden in the back of Gold's or in Regina's vault, but she pushes those questions to the back of her mind as she moves closer to Snow, who is digging the book out of the bag. She lays it on the grass and flips it open.
The pages are thick and worn and some of the ink is smudged, but Emma can still read it. Snow flips past a potion that gives a person's hand the power to remove hearts, a curse that kills a person's true love using only a lock of their hair, and—Snow's breath catches before she rushes turn the page—a spell that transfers the darkness from one living vessel into another. Finally they reach the page where, next to a hand-drawn picture of a hooded figure in a rowboat, The Fool's Errand is scrawled in small, spidery letters.
"That's not a very encouraging name, is it?" Emma can tell Snow is trying to lighten the mood, but she cannot bring herself to laugh. It would sound hollow anyway.
"Did you bring a cauldron?" Emma asks. "Or… a mixing bowl or something?"
"We don't need it," Snow tells her. "Look. You just build a fire and throw the ingredients in."
"That sounds questionable," Emma answers, reading and rereading the instruction over her shoulder. "How do you make sure all the ingredients go in?"
"You're the Dark One." Snow shrugs. "Magic them in."
Emma grits her teeth. Now that she has seemingly infinite magic, it is becoming the answer to everything and she hates it. She wants to forget that she is the Dark One about to trek off into the Underworld. For two seconds, she just wants to be Emma trying desperately and in slight exasperation to save Regina, once again.
But as Snow lays out the ingredients, she spreads her hands and directs them into the flames with as much precision as she can manage, because this is Regina after all, and bringing her back is more important that Emma's existential crisis at the moment. She is here because of her choices and pretending that the last month didn't happen is not going to help anyone.
There's a rat carcass, which Snow shoots a dirty look as she digs out of a Ziploc bag, a pressed lily, the jar of maggots, and what looks like a scoop of rocks.
"That's it?" Emma raises her eyebrows. The flames are still the same color, the same shape, the same size.
"No." Snow looks back at the book. "There are still two more ingredients that I couldn't get myself. They have to come from you. We need…" she consults the book again, but Emma has a sneaking suspicion that she is stalling. "A tear of grief and anguish and a vile of the Dark One's blood."
Emma sighs and crosses her arms. "I wish I'd known that before we left the apartment. I could have gotten it from Henry," she grumbles.
Snow places a hand on her arm. "Your tears will work too, Emma. I know you've been holding back. Maybe for Henry?" She smiles encouragingly. "But it's okay to cry here. It might save her life."
But Emma can't. She can't cry about losing Regina because that means accepting that Regina is gone. That means dealing with the mistake she made, really thinking about everything it cost. When she first had the idea, the risk had seemed so small, and then the situation had slipped out of her control so slowly that she hadn't realized she wasn't pulling the strings anymore until they were completely out of her reach. She'd thought Hook would at least try to resist like she did. Like Regina would have.
And then it is happening. She can feel her eyes brimming. The first tear flows down her cheek and Snow, with one hand rubbing her back, tips it into a glass vial. She remembers doing this to Regina in Camelot as she cried over Daniel. It doesn't feel like it was only days ago.
"I need something to cut myself with," Emma demands, wiping her eyes furiously and trying to pretend that her chin is not wobbling. Snow nods and produces a small knife from her pocket. Emma feels a rare rush of gratitude at her for not trying to talk about it. She runs it across her palm and barely feels the sting. She holds the knife over the fire and waits for several drops of blood to fall in.
Immediately, the warm, orange light fades into a deathly grey that casts stark shadows across their faces and makes them look like skeletons. Snow shivers audibly beside her and Emma realizes that the heat has disappeared, replaced by a cutting chill.
"Look," Snow murmurs, nodding out at the lake. In the distance, Emma can see the fog approaching once again, but this time, there is only one figure, a tall, inhumanly thin being, stone still as the boat slides silently across the water without causing a ripple.
"It's Charon," Emma whispers without knowing how she knows this. She turns to Snow. "We have to follow."
The boat comes to a stop and Emma wades out to meet it. After a moment's hesitation, Snow sloshes in behind her.
Finally, when they are close enough to make out dark, dead eyes beneath the hood, Charon turns the boat around and begins to retreat toward the center of the lake. Snow takes Emma's hand and Emma is surprised to find that she is glad for the comfort as they wade in deep enough that the water touches her chin.
