Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time or its characters. I only borrow.
"Why would Pan even want the curse? I already cast it," Regina said.
"And I broke it," Emma added.
"That doesn't mean you can't cast it again. And this time, without your parents' true love woven in, even you would be powerless to break it." Thanks for the cheerfulness, Gold.
David was a tad confused. "I don't understand, we're already in this land."
"What exactly would casting the spell in Storybrooke do now?" Mary-Margaret questioned. Regina and Gold looked at each other.
"It would be like… before," Gold told them. Emma utilized the stunned silence to call for Hook, Neal, and Tinker Bell to come down into the vault and to explain about the curse.
"Everyone inside the town line would forget who they are. Time wouldn't move," Regina added when Emma was done.
Hook addressed everyone but Mary-Margaret and David. "What about you? None of you were cursed before. "
"Henry wasn't even born in the Enchanted Forest," Neal added.
"It doesn't matter. Everyone in the town would forget," Gold informed them, to everyone's unhappiness.
"Why would Pan even want that? There would be no magic, how does that help him?" Mary-Margaret made a very good point.
"Again, like before. Magic could be brought back separate from the curse." Gold spoke as though the group was full of dim-witted children. "There would be magic, we just wouldn't know that we can use it."
Neal contemplated for a moment. "What if we just leave Storybrooke?"
Emma had to burst his bubble. "Everyone who was cursed before would forget as soon as they crossed the town line. With the exception of Gold, who has his… scarf… talisman… thing." Well, and Smee, but she honestly didn't think he'd be of much use anyway.
"So… those of us who can leave go. We'll find a way to break it." Why am I not surprised that Neal wants to run? Emma thought.
"With what magic?" Regina was half-scoffing and half-serious. "There is no magic out there. There is no breaking the curse even with magic, not once it's cast and we've forgotten."
"Can we do something before it's cast?" David wondered.
"Aside from killing Pan before he can cast it? No." Gold answered.
Mary-Margaret was doubtful. "You're telling us that you and Regina, the writer and caster of the original curse, have absolutely no way to stop this from coming."
Gold just looked at her in that you should already know the answer to that way of his. "I'm sorry, have we been too vague on this point?"
Emma had gone from glass nearly empty mode into glass still nearly empty, but I'm the savior and I can't get a damn day off mode. "We are standing in a crypt full of magic."
"It's a vault," Regina interjected, somewhere between offended and annoyed.
"In this vault full of magic, there's no way we can protect the town?" Emma asked the two major-magic-users in the crypt. There are hearts in boxes and we're below a mausoleum, it's a crypt. No use pushing the point, though.
Hook, who had been mostly quiet for a while now, turned to Regina and asked about a shield. "Cora shielded a portion of the Enchanted Forest when your curse rolled through. Couldn't you do the same?"
The formerly (though possibly still) evil queen rolled her eyes. "If you'll recall, time was still frozen inside that bubble until the curse was broken. Even if we could form some sort of shield, we'd still be unable to do anything."
"What if we leave?" And again with the running, Emma thought. She also thought she might not be being totally fair about Neal, but a decade of trust issues compounded on her pre-existing abandonment issues wasn't something she could forgive overnight. Or in a week or two, whatever.
Mary-Margaret shook her head. "We already covered that. No one can cross the town line without-"
"I'm not talking about leaving Storybrooke. I'm talking about leaving this land."
Tinker Bell, so quiet that Emma had almost forgotten she was there, chimed in. "And go where?"
David seemed to be on the same page as Neal. "The Enchanted Forest. We were trying to find a way home one before, anyway. Now seems as good a time as any to double those efforts."
"And just how do you plan on getting us there?" The fairy had found her attitude again. "Pan's shadow isn't trapped in the sail anymore to make it fly, and, even if I could get the pixie dust to work again, there's not enough of it to cover the whole ship." All good points. Extra points for delivering logic with 'tude.
"And, unless I'm mistaken, we're all out of magic beans, so there's no opening a portal." Of course Gold would join in, though his attitude was a bit muted. Emma had been half-listening to everyone else while she tried to think of solutions. Though she couldn't help but notice that Regina was suddenly looking a bit uncomfortable, and Emma wasn't the only one to see it.
"Regina?" Tink asked with a raised brow. Regina just continued to look like she was really trying to avoid saying something.
"Regina?" Emma's voice was low, just short of threatening. "You have an idea, don't you? What is it?"
Regina sighed. "We don't need a portal to get to the Enchanted Forest." A statement to which many voices replied with "what?" in various tones of voice. "There's another spell…" Regina trailed off. Whether that was due to the expressions of the people surrounding her or her reluctance to perform this particular piece of magic, it was anyone's guess.
"And you didn't think to mention this before?" Hook's expression was one of those leaning more towards homicidal than confused.
"Well, it's not like I've ever had the occasion to use it before!" Regina defended herself. "And it's not exactly a transportation spell."
A spell that would transport everyone to the Enchanted Forest, but wasn't a transportation spell. Emma wasn't really in the mood for riddles. "Then what is it?"
Regina sighed again. "It will send everyone back."
"How is that not a transportation spell?" For once, Emma was of a mind with her father.
"Everyone will go back to where they're from," Regina explained. Everyone looked at each other. Again, some faces showed confusion, but most seemed to understand.
Henry, still wearing Pan's body and using Pan's kinda creepy voice, was the one to ask for confirmation. "So, everyone would go back to the land where they were born?"
Like hell. "Absolutely not. Henry is from here. I'm not leaving him alone." Emma may have been a bit emphatic in her response, because both Hook and Neal were looking at her like… well… she had been a bit emphatic in her response. It had occurred to her that they, too, would go back to the Enchanted Forest.
"Would your spell affect only those in town?" Hook was still looking at Emma, even as he spoke to Regina.
"Yes. If I'm in Storybrooke when I cast it, only those inside the border will go back."
"So, Emma, Henry, and I will leave before you cast it." And again with the running, Neal? "That way Henry won't be alone." Hook didn't look thrilled with Neal's suggestion. Emma wasn't too fond of it herself.
"So, we just lose everyone else we care about?" She glanced briefly at Hook. "Sounds great." Emma was trying to be understanding about Neal, really. Probably. Okay, maybe she didn't have the patience at the moment.
Mary-Margaret put a hand to her head. "So, to sum it up. Our options are to kill Pan, to be cursed, to be frozen in a timeless bubble, or to go back to the Enchanted Forest and leave some of our loved ones behind."
"Yes." Regina could be nothing if not direct.
"Um… If killing Pan is part of any plan, can we add 'switch our bodies back' before it?" Henry requested.
Emma was still thinking things through. "If you remembered… If you knew you had magic and how to use it… Could you break the curse after it was cast? I mean, nothing's unbreakable, right?" She looked between Regina and Gold. Who then looked at each other.
After a bit of silent conversation, it was Gold who answered with "yes, but we have no way of remembering."
"You remembered. Even after Regina cast her curse, you remembered that you're Rumpelstiltskin."
"I had a potion. I took it before the curse, it allowed me to retain my memories even as the persona of Mr. Gold was created."
Emma couldn't believe that this hadn't been mentioned sooner. "So we make some of that! You and Regina take the potion and de-spellify the town afterwards." I can't believe I'm suggesting we put the fate of the town in the hands of Regina and Rumpelstiltskin.
"There's no time. It takes weeks to make the potion properly, and I doubt Pan's going to give us even days."
"So we go," Emma said with a sigh and a shrug. "A couple of us leave before the curse hits, you give us very precise instructions on how to make the potion, we come back when it's ready and spike the punch at a town meeting." See, Neal. This isn't running away with a very vague 'see you later.' This is a strategic relocation with a specific plan to return and fix shit. See the difference?
"You would need magic for that, and as previously stated, there isn't any on the outside." Regina through her hands up, obviously frustrated that no one was getting it.
Emma shook her head at that. "Yes, there is. August told me about it. He saw some sort of healer in Hong Kong when he started turning to wood. There might be one nearby… If Tamara didn't succeed in killing them all." She added that last bit under her breath, but she could tell that Hook, at least, still heard her.
Neal looked like he was trying to suss it out. "So… leave, make the potion, find a genuine shaman or something, convince him to add his magic to it, then come back and hope it works?" Emma wasn't appreciative of his tone of voice. He seemed very skeptical about finding a 'genuine shaman or something'. You know what, buddy? I haven't heard anything better from you.
Emma thought that Hook could tell she was annoyed. Open book, she sighed to herself. He moved closer to her, barely grazing her arm with a couple of fingers, but it helped enough that she didn't let her annoyance get the best of her. He turned again to Regina and Gold. "If this works, how will you break the curse? Is there some spell to undo what's been done? Or…"
Gold responded, "without another way to break it written in, the curse is tied to the one that casts it. If we kill Pan…" Henry cleared his throat in the most obvious manner possible. "… after we get Henry's body back, of course. If we kill Pan, the curse will die with him."
Emma put that plan on the 'maybe' pile. "Alright, we have three possible plans there; body-switch and then kill Pan, try to undo the curse after it's cast, or Regina's return spell. What about the shield?"
"What about it? Like I said, we'd be frozen. Even if you left town before it was cast, you would be frozen as soon as you stepped back in. If you could get back in, which I don't think you could."
Why does everyone see only the problems? Emma mused. Then she called herself a hypocrite. "Could we do the same thing as with the curse? A couple people leave, you put up the shield, and we use a potion or something to get back inside and moving around, and to unfreeze you?" Wasn't I the one who was always saying 'magic isn't the answer?' And now I'm actually pushing to use it. If I hadn't hated Pan before…
David and Mary-Margaret had been whispering heatedly to each other. Mary-Margaret finally looked up at Emma. "Emma, I think our best chance… Is if you leave with Henry, and Regina casts her return spell."
Emma was a little bit stunned. "Okay we'll forget, for now, how you left me alone the first time a curse threatened people, because I can understand that now. What about Henry? He'll lose just about everyone he knows and loves. Not to mention he'll be stuck in a psychopath's body. And Pan? You just want to give him a little slice of Neverland on Earth for anyone to fall into? A town in which he will have complete control over everything and everyone? In what way is that our best chance?"
David spoke up "maybe we should let the town vote. It's not just us who'll be affected."
"The town's almost certainly going to vote to go back. They've just wanted to go home for so long, they probably won't think about the consequences for this land. With the shield, or trying to break the curse after, we keep Pan from getting what he wants, and maybe Regina would be willing to do her return spell later anyway."
"You said to break the curse after it's cast, we'd need to kill Pan, right? How will that be any easier after it's cast than it is right now?" Tink asked.
"First of all, his guard will be down. If we get our memories back and play along for a bit, he might not see it coming. Second, we might be able to find a counter-curse, if we have long enough to look. Third, we'll have time to come up with something to render Pan's magic useless, which should definitely make him easier to kill." Gold's reasoning was sound, or so it seemed to Emma, but he still didn't seem entirely comfortable with this plan.
"Here's what I propose. Plan A: get Henry's body back, then kill Pan. If that fails, we go to plan B: Regina tries to shield the town. Someone will come with me to find someone magical and make the… potions of mobility. If Regina can't shield the town we go to plan C: Someone comes with me to find someone magical and make the potions for memory." Plan D: they go off to the Enchanted Forest and I spend the rest of my life finding a way to get there and slap them all silly.
Everyone was quiet. David and Mary-Margaret know that arguing with me is pointless. Regina doesn't want to leave Henry, and Gold knows that Neal doesn't want to either. Emma had no clue what Tink and Hook were thinking, they were both quiet and studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone else. Henry was also quiet, but he was looking around at everyone else. Finally, he spoke. "I agree with Emma. I know it's risky, if we can't kill Pan before he can work the curse, but you're all my family, and I don't want to lose you."
And that was it. No one was going to argue with this boy they loved. This boy who had been abducted, had his heart ripped out (the fact that he ripped it out himself is irrelevant), and was shoved into the body of the psychopathic man-turned-teenager responsible for it all. Well, Hook and Tink might have argued, but they didn't.
Emma waited a moment, until she was absolutely sure they would go along with it.
Hook broke the silence. "Plan A it is; returning Henry to his body and killing Pan. And Felix, since he'll likely be right there fighting for his master."
And he's an annoying pain in the ass. "Once upon a time I would've discouraged killing a brainwashed orphan. But he held my son hostage and tried to take away his hope."
"Dibs." Aww, Regina, I wanted to say that.
"Let's get going then," Tink said in a tone that suggested she didn't think this would work. "Off to kill Peter Pan."