A/N: This has been floating around in my brain all day. I had to write it down in order to concentrate on anything. This was written after the events of "The Apprentice," so I accept no responsibility for inconsistencies in the story that happen after that episode. XD
Hope you like it, and as always, please review.
Regina stands on the front porch with Henry, and she's staring at the door. She takes a deep breath in, and lets it out slowly.
"So... are you going to knock?" Henry asks impishly.
"Of course I am," Regina snaps softly. "I just... need to prepare myself."
Henry looks away with a half smile, but says nothing while Regina continues to "prepare herself."
Finally, she works up the nerve and steps up to the door. Before she can knock, however, the door opens to reveal a relatively plain-looking, overweight young woman with auburn hair.
"Regina," the woman acknowledges with a small smile. "Henry." She greets Henry somewhat more warmly. "It's good that you're here," she says in a lofty accent. "Please, come in."
She walks away from the door and back into the house, leaving a confused Henry and Regina to follow her.
The home is as ordinary on the inside as it was on the outside, and just as plain as its owner. The pair follow the noise of the owner of the back of the house, where the woman is fussing about in the kitchen.
"I knew you'd find your way here eventually," the woman says, sliding a tray of what appear to be snickerdoodles into the oven, "but you are a bit earlier than I expected."
"You were expecting us?" Henry asks.
The woman removes her apron and hangs it on a hook in the kitchen. "Well, I never can tell with you, Henry," she says, removing a kettle from the stove and placing it on a serving tray with three dainty cups. "You're a wild card, and largely unpredictable."
She lifts the tray expertly and brings it into the dining room where she sets it on a table. "But, you," she says, looking now at Regina. "Part of me always knew you'd come."
"So, you know why we're here," Regina says, stepping forward, squaring her shoulders.
"I do," the writer says, pouring tea unto each of the three cups with a practiced hand.
"Are you her?" Henry asks. "Are you the Writer?"
The woman smiles and places one teacup in front of each of the three chairs at the small, round table. "I am," she confirms, seating herself at the table. "My name is Rowan."
Rowan gestures to the two other chairs. "Why don't you join me?"
Regina doesn't move for a while, until Henry nudges her in the direction of the table. "Come on," he whispers to her. "This is your chance."
Reluctantly, wearing an expression of distaste, Regina sits, and Henry sits next to her.
"We want you to write a happy ending for my mom," Henry says without prompting.
Rowan laughs. "No pleasantries. Straight to the heart of things," she says. "I've always liked that about you, Henry."
"This isn't funny!" Regina bursts, annoyed by Rowan's amusement. "This is my life, and I demand that you fix it!"
Rowan's laughter ends sharply, and her expression changes into a cold mirror of what it was before. "Fix it?" Rowan scoffs, her voice rising in pitch and volume. "You want me to fix it? To write you a happy ending?"
"Mom!" Henry hisses at his mother, then turns to Rowan. "Please. She deserves a happy ending. We came to ask for your help."
Rowan's stormy eyes remain locked to Regina's furious ones for a few tense moments longer, before she turns her attention to Henry. Her eyes soften and the corners of her mouth draw up slightly.
"Let me ask you a question, Henry," Rowan says slowly. "How do you write a happy ending for someone so determined to be miserable?"
She turns to Regina. "I have written dozens of happy ending for you. Between you and Rumplestiltskin, I have written more happy endings than for the whole of the Enchanted Forest. You have remained unhappy because you chose magic and vengeance over love and contentment. You succumbed to fear and hatred at every opportunity for happiness, and threw each one back in my face. Everyone deserves a happy ending, Henry, I agree, but some people do not want them."
"Liar!" Regina shouts. "What opportunities for happiness have I ever had? My entire life has revolved around pain and suffering and unbearable loss!" Her voice cracks at this last.
Rowan doesn't match her fury this time; she remains calm. "Snow White's father cared for you," she says firmly, "and the Genie fell madly for you, but you used one to murder the other, and trapped the Genie within a mirror."
"I didn't trap Sydney! He wished himself into that mirror!"
Rowan frowns, "I meant a little more recently."
Regina halts at this, and turns pale.
"Mom?" Henry asks. "What does she mean, 'more recently'?"
Regina struggles for words, but before she can answer, Rowan continues on.
"I sent you a fairy, Regina. A literal fairy. A clumsy waif-of-a-fairy, perhaps, but she led you to your love, and you walked away from it. You chose your vengeance over happiness once again, ruining not only your own, but two other lives."
Rowan's voice slows, and becomes more gentle. In a forgiving tone, she continues, "So, I stopped sending you lovers. I tried to strengthen your heart through familial love instead, but we both know price you paid for you curse—your ultimate revenge."
Regina looks away, her eyes catching her own reflection on the surface of her tea.
"Mom?" Henry asks, his voice small. "What's she talking about?"
"A choice you mother made a long time ago," Rowan answers instead. Regina casts a glance at the Writer, a pleading gaze.
"A decision born of malice... and made by the woman your mother left behind."
Regina presses her lips together, the only sign of her gratitude for Rowan not revealing her darkest hour to Henry.
"So you know," Rowan says, meeting Regina's eyes, "I am sorry about Daniel. It wasn't supposed to happen that way. Your story wasn't the story of an evil queen. It was the story of a princess whose love of a stableboy defied convention and status."
Tears fill Regina's eyes, a few spilling over. Henry reaches for her hand and wraps his around it.
"Why?" she asks. "Why, then?"
Rowan sighs and leans back in her chair. She looks thoughtful for a moment, then shakes her head. "You should drink your tea before it gets cold," she says, then stands up to return to the kitchen.
Rage returns to Regina, and she releases Henry's hand to throw the teacup at the wall. Rowan, however, doesn't even flinch as the china shatters on impact and tea is splattered everywhere.
"Tea?!" Regina shouts, getting to her feet. "I didn't come here for tea! I came here for my happy ending!"
Rowan turns the oven off and removes the tray from it. She shakes her head while moving cookies from the tray onto a large, red plate with a spatula.
"No," she says, "you came here to find someone you could blame for all the bad decisions you've made. You'd like to think that I forced you to be the way you are, because the terrifying alternative is that you did this to yourself."
Rowan walks back into the dining room with the plate of cookies and sets it on the table. "Of course," she continues, "what you couldn't possibly know is that neither is the truth."
Caught off-guard by this, Regina's stern posture falters.
"Anyway," Rowan goes on, "it isn't that kind of tea. I was apprentice to a talented Writer who had a penchant for magical edibles, a habit I picked up. If you want answers, I suggest you drink it."
Rowan waves her hand toward Regina's teacup, which is sitting in front of her seat, still steaming, as though it had never been smashed in the first place.
"You, too, Henry. It's high time you understood the role you play in all of this."
"The role I play? What does this have to do with me?" Henry asks, looking surprised.
"A great deal more than you realize," Rowan says, taking her own teacup into her hands. "Shall we?"
"No," Regina says sternly. "I don't want Henry involved in this."
"Mom!" Henry protests. "I'm in this with you, all the way. Project Mongoose, remember?"
"Henry, I said no!"
"You can't hold him back from this, Regina," Rowan says slowly, "and, more importantly, you shouldn't. Henry needs to understand, and so do you."
Regina begins to argue the issue, but before she can get one word out, Henry takes his teacup and gulps down the hot tea, taking both Regina and Rowan by surprise.
Henry makes a face, looking nauseated, but Rowan's soft voice floats to him. "Your vision will go a bit blurred, and you'll feel dizzy, but the feeling will pass. Close your eyes for a moment or two and then open them."
Henry obeys, and when he opens his eyes, he finds himself in an entirely different place. The table in front of him with the tea tray and cookies is all that remains. A moment later, Rowan and Regina shimmer into view at their respective seats at the table.
"It's a glamour," Regina says in amazement, looking around.
"Actually," Rowan corrects her, "both rooms are complete and separate. The common focal point of the table unites them across a border between the Storybrook and a... pocket dimension of sorts."
The plain walls of the dining room are gone, replaced by darker ones, carpeted for absorption of sound. A desk with a stack of blank parchment pages on it did in one corner. Next to the desk is a wastebasket overflowing with crumpled sheets of parchment that hadn't met with Rowan's satisfaction.
Three of the wall are occupied by bookshelves containing rows of thin books with names on them—some familiar, and some not. An identical copy of Henry's fairy tale book sits on a pedestal off to one side, under a glass case.
The book catches Henry's attention immediately and he walks over to it. "It's like mine," he says, his eyes full of wonder.
"It's the original," Rowan says. "It isn't common practice," she admits, "for a Writer to make two copies of the same book, but I thought it would fix it."
"'Fix it'?" Regina asks suspisiously, keeping her eyes on her son. "Fix what?"
"Perhaps Henry can tell you," Rowan says.
Henry looks back at Rowan. "Me? How would I know?"
Rowan purses her lips. "Take a closer look at the book, Henry. Tell me what you see."
Henry's confusion is apparent, but he does as he's told. He unlatches the top of the case and opens it carefully. Without waiting for permission, he picks the heavy book up and walks with it to the table. Rowan moves the tea tray out of his way and he opens it in the middle, laying it across the table.
Silence falls over the room as Henry flips through the pages of the book, but it doesn't take long for him to spot differences.
"These stories are different," he says after a few minutes' searching. "I don't understand. None of this is right."
"Your book," Rowan explains, "shows the stories as they happened. Mine tells the stories as they were written."
Henry scans through the book as quickly as he can, but no matter how many pages he turns, he doesn't seem to get any further.
"These stories... They go back hundreds of years."
"I'm older than I look," Rowan says dryly. "The Enchanted Forest was around long before the likes of Snow White or even Rumplestiltskin."
Henry stops suddenly and his hand freezes as it reaches for another page to turn.
"Henry, what is it?" Regina asks, looking concerned. She leans forward to look over Henry's shoulder.
"It... just... feels weird," Henry says, struggling for the words to explain.
"You're getting close," Rowan says, "but it can't hurt you. Not anymore than it already has."
Regina casts a warning glance at Rowan, but remains perched over Henry as he continues turning the pages.
When Henry at last finds the source of his discomfort, it isn't what he's expecting. At the top of a page, in the middle of a story about a person whose name he doesn't recognize, a black spot the size of a softball obscures most of the words. The spot appears to move and pulse, like a roiling black cloud.
"What the hell is that?" Regina asks, her hands on Henry's shoulders now.
"It's ink," Henry says softly.
"Yes," Rowan confirms.
Henry looks up at Rowan for an explanation.
She smiles grimly. "It's a long tradition, being a Writer," she begins. "It is a great gift, but also an extraordinary burden and responsibility. Those of us precious few with the gift are selected with the utmost care and put through extensive training. I was an apprentice for three hundred years, and a journeyman for two hundred more before I was ever allowed an Inkwell."
"So, there are more of you?" Henry asks. "More Writers?"
Rowan pauses before she answers this question, looking pained for an instant. "Not anymore," she says at last. "When a Writer finishes her works, she writes a final story: her own. She becomes a part of the masterpiece she has created and ceases to exist in this world. One day, like all Writers before me, I will fade into the background of the Enchanted Forest, just another chapter in the book."
"What does this have to do with my happy ending?" Regina demands.
"Everything," Rowan tells her. "It takes more than the luck of your birth to become a Writer, and there's a reason it takes centuries of training before a Writer is allowed an Inkwell."
"The magic is in the ink," Regina concludes.
"Neither the bloodright nor the ink can accomplish the magic on its own," Rowan says. "It is a combination of the two that makes it possible. But, yes," she confirms, "the ink is magic in its purest form."
"And, what?" Henry asks. "Someone spilled ink all over this page?"
"My former apprentice," Rowan tells them. "He was a foolish boy, and impatient. Had he told me about the accident before I finished the book, it could have been salvaged. It would have taken weeks of reconstruction of the book, but it could have been fixed. Once those two words—"The end."—are placed on the last page, it seals the magic and casts the spell."
Henry turns and digs through his bag for his copy of the book.
"But this page that's messed up isn't even in my book," he says, opening the duplicate and laying it across the original.
Even as he says it, though, his book opens up to the same defaced page as Rowan's.
"But I've never seen this before," he protests. "I would have remembered."
"You didn't know what you were looking for," Rowan explains. "Before, it only showed you the stories of the people around you, because they were stories that were happening in that moment. However, when you know what you're looking, it can show you anything you like."
"So, there are a few words missing," Regina jumps in. "So what? What's so significant about a thousand-year-old typo?"
"There's more to it than that, Regina," Rowan warns. "This is the point in the history of the Enchanted Forest where uncontrolled, unrefined magic leaked into the world. What you're looking at isn't any ordinary ink blot. What you're looking at, is the birth of the Dark One. The original Dark One."
"The Dark One?" Regina breathes. "You mean to tell me that a careless idiot knocking over a bottle of ink is responsible for the creation of the Dark One?!"
"Not exactly," Rowan admits. "I mean to tell you that a careless idiot who knocked over a bottle of ink became the Dark One."
Both Henry and Regina are silent while Rowan continues.
"When I finished the book, and inscribed the final two words to seal the magic, the story was set into motion. It was flawless, like I'd always dreamed. I watched as my works came to life and played out—beautiful stories of love and courage and honor."
She runs her right hand over the page opposite the ink spill. Beneath her fingers is a portrait of a young girl asleep in bed. She traces the splash of blond hair on the girl's pillow lovingly.
"Her name was Sarah," Rowan says, smiling like a proud mother. "She was going to grow up to negotiate peace between humans and trolls." She taps the ink stain with one finger. "This was the contribution my apprentice made to the book, so when Sarah's story began and this page was revealed, the fool boy was drawn into the story. He became the mess he made."
Rowan turns the page, but the ink stain is in the same spot on this one, as well. The picture opposite the words now shows Sarah peeking over a rock at what could only be a troll.
"The ink bled through to every page after that," Rowan tells them, turning page after page. "Most everything in the book is bound by rules, because it was written that way, but dark magic wasn't written into the story—it was unleashed upon it. It grew in size over the years and spread like an infection through the book."
After several more chapters, the stain covers nearly an entire page.
"How do we stop it?" Henry asks her, tearing his eyes away from the book.
Rowan smiles at Henry, but her eyes are sad. "I admire your spirit, Henry," she tells him, "but there isn't anything more than I can do."
She stands and turns in a circle, gesturing to the bookshelves that line the walls. "Look around my workshop, Henry," she says. "This is everything that I've done to stop it. Hundreds of volumes, revisions, addenda. Bloody sequels, Henry. All written in an attempt to guide people back to their happy endings. Some of them worked, many of them have multiple rewrites, but all of them, I'm afraid, are temporary solutions at best."
Rowan sighs and drops back down into her chair, looking tired. "I thought I could thwart the dark magic with love and compassion," she says, putting her head in her hands, "but even white magic was written with rules and boundaries to be followed. I've all but run out of time, and all I've managed is to delay the inevitable."
"How can you run out of time?" Henry asks. "Just keep writing! I-I'll help you!"
Rowan gives Henry the shadow of a smile. "As kind a thought as that is, Henry, you haven't the gift, and I simply haven't the time. Emma's story was the last, next to mine, and it's almost finished. When my story starts, I won't be able to return to the workshop. I'll simply be another character in the book, and no use to anyone."
"So, there's no hope then," Regina states, her voice low and deep. "That's it."
Henry stands and turns to his mother. "Don't say that," he tells her. "There has to be a way. There's always a way."
"If there is," Rowan says in a whisper, "there is only one."
Henry whirls around to face Rowan, who is staring at him with intensity. All in an instant, his expression changes from hopeful to confused to understanding.
"You... mean me, don't you?" he asks, and Rowan nods.
"What can I do?" Henry asks. "I'm just... me."
Rowan shakes her head. "Henry," she says, "what you fail to realize is there is one enormous factor that makes you different from every other person in Storybrook."
Henry just stares at her, confused. Finally, it's Regina who speaks up.
"He's not in the book," she says
"He's not in the book," Rowan confirms. "Henry, you remarkable boy, you defy all logic and law. You are a product of the book, but you weren't written into it. More than that, you have been the only person who has been able to positively affect whatever story he comes into contact with. You brought warmth to the evil queen's heart. You led Emma to defeat the curse of Storybrook. It was your belief and pure heart that defeated Peter Pan in the end. You're the true believer, son of the savior, and a descendant of true love. You were born in a world beyond the influence of magic, and I think that you are precisely the loophole that white magic needs to combat the darkness."
The room falls silent while Henry digests this information. Rowan doesn't look away, and he meets her eyes steadily for several minutes before finally asking, in a somewhat shaky voice, "You think I can fix my mom's story?"
Rowan smiles. "Henry, I think you can fix everyone's story. You, Henry, you are extraordinary in every way, and if there is any way of restoring the Enchanted Forest and every happy ending in it, it lies with you."
A/N: Thank you for reading. It's been driving me nuts how they just left the prophecy about Henry and Rumplestiltskin unfulfilled and moved on like it wasn't even important. Gah! I felt like tying everything up in a little bow.
If you want more, let me know, and I'll write more, but I really needed to get this out of my system. XD