No way could I have quiet night in, sitting here with Ella pretending neither of us was worried that we had no idea whether my mother was in town, and if she was, how vengeful she felt towards either of us. There just had to be a knock on the door.

"I'll get it," said Ella, raising form the chair. Old habits die hard…

"You're a Queen. You should have people to do this for you," I said, getting up. Not sure if I was angry at the person who cast the curse and landed us here, at my mother, responsible for Ella constantly feeling like she had to do everything for me, or at the person at the door, who I was pretty sure, was a certain thief…

"Will. Whatever brings you here?" I said with my most lady-like, least sincere smile when I opened the front door only to have my suspicions confirmed.

"My lady."

I was tempted to curtsy just then, realizing that I was not angry at him after all. I was glad to see him, actually.

Ella had only one guest room at her disposal, and she found it absolutely necessary for me to stay in it. Crucial, if we were to make people forget about that wicked stepsister nonsense. But Will was reminded, often and loudly, that he was family too no matter how things ended with Anastasia, and was to stop by at least once a day to be properly fed, because we were not letting him starve.

Something that would have happened if he was left to his own devices in the woods. Some people just weren't hunters. Which, I suppose, explained the whole thief thing…

He was keeping his distance these days, letting me to get reacquainted with my family. Which just made me miss him, however ridiculous that sounded. Something about the surge of emotion I felt whenever he showed up made me feel that something must have changed between us in the last year.

"Dru…? Who is it?" asked Ella from inside the house.

"Just Will."

"Just Will that has decided someone's been antisocial for too long," he yelled from the door. The next thing I knew, Ella was standing next to me.

"That's a bad idea. It's a whole new world for her. World where everyone thinks she's a… a villain," she said, glancing nervously my way.

I just shrugged my shoulders. They weren't that far off, though I did feel a little insulted that everyone thought that all I ever managed to become was a wicked stepsister. I did have a life of my own. One that was not limited to a single part in a single story.

"You're just naming the reasons why she needs a drink," pointed out Will.

That got him a smile. I started to have a bad feeling about this.

"I don't need a drink," I felt forced to say.

"But you do need company. Remind me again how you spent all those years you were cursed…?" said Ella turning to me.

I said nothing. The necklace of claws around my neck said it all. After my first and last ball I did what I would have done years ago if I didn't have two sisters to protect from the influence – and murderous plans – of my mother. Went back home. To the last place that felt like home to me. Sherwood.

Leaving the life of privilege, intrigues and unsafe footwear behind, I went a little native. My only plans for last thousand Friday nights had to do with not getting eaten.

"Let's all just remember what happened to the last person who tried to force me to do something I didn't like," I said after I saw them exchange glances. Ella gave me a smile that confirmed my worst fears.

"Let's all just remember that as your Queen, I could always order you."

I gave Will my best I'll murder you for this look and sighed. And went to get my coat.

"I don't feel like drinking," I said following him outside.

"Good. Because I do. And when I drink I just might fight…" he said, as if that settled anything. And I knew there was no way I was talking my way out of this one.

Bar fight, especially without someone with actual combat skills to have his back, was the last he needed. In my case though, it might help to distract me from how strange it still felt. Being in Storybrooke.

Where I was constantly meeting long-lost relatives, or, even more often, people who were unaware of how fast I went from talking to punching when someone used my full name. Or my full title. Anyone who called me anything more than Dru, really…Which was definitely not helping people forget that they spent a few decades thinking about me as someone whose only goal was to ruin Cinderella's life. But in my defense, I also punched anyone who called her anything other than Ella, hating that ridiculous nickname more than she ever did. How did that failed to win me some good points I did not know.

Ella had a theory about me wearing too much leather and necklace of animal parts, making no secrets about disposing of the animals they used to belong to myself… And might have been right, since people unaware of who I was just assumed I was related to Granny.

"So how was your day?" asked Will as we walked towards the brightly lit center of town. I gave him a look.

"That bad…?"

"I managed to cross a street without getting run over by a car," I said shrugging my shoulders lightly.

This was not a good place for me. I was stuck living with Ella, pretending there is a chance I'll get used to it all eventually, and the woods were just not deep enough to get lost in properly around here. Not to mention that I had no clue how I got cursed with the rest of them, since I did such a great job escaping the first time the land filled with clouds of ominous purple haze.

However it happened the fact was that right now I was stuck. My life became filled with things I never planned on doing. Just yesterday I found myself shoe shopping with Ella, making sure she would never again wear something as insane as her glass slippers, that were, let's face it, foot mutilation waiting to happen… And of course plotting how to painfully dispose of Regina the whole time, in case it was her fault that I was here. Without a cursed identity, which robbed me of the chance to have a name that did not make me want to hurt people who used it.

"Is Ella still being…?" tried Will again. It was painfully obvious that, unlike me, he was not trained – for years – in the fine art of small talk. So I decided to help him.

"Oh yes. Making up for the fact everyone in the town has a bit too Disney ideas about who I am – whatever that means."

"Not everyone," he said. Doing his best not to look at me…

"Will… Where are we going?" I asked, realizing I should have done that some minutes ago.

"Rabbit hole."

That stopped me midstride… "What? You know I gave my word never to go there…!"

"Oh, bloody… I didn't say Wonderland. I said Rabbit hole. It's a bar."

"It is?" I said, studying his face for any sign of deception. Not that he was a very good liar. "Sounds classy," I sighed and got moving again.

"You have no idea."

"How was your day?" I said, when the silence started to stretch, and I felt all the creepy noises of this place getting on my nerves.

"Uneventful," he said. Not a very good liar, as I said, but I wasn't about to start interrogating him. I knew him well enough to know that someone else will take care of that, if the local sheriff was at all competent. "Read a book," he added.

"Anything interesting…?"

"Interesting how it managed to miss all the good parts," he said. "There was this adorable theory about the King cancelling all the executions the second the Queen got distracted."

"What?"

I said that before I realized just what I was asking. And he had enough reason not to try to answer. We both knew that I always preferred if things that happened in Wonderland stayed in Wonderland. After all, that place was nothing less than a madhouse the size of a kingdom…

"Let's just say that I understand how it feels to be as far away from the Disney version of yourself as possible. I don't think I even was in the Disney version," he said.

"One of these days someone will have to explain to me what that word means…"

He only grinned at that and pointed at something ahead of us.

"Rabbit hole?" I said, sounded as enthusiastically as if I was heading for another ball. But I followed.

Drunk Will was more likely explain to me what the hell Disney meant. Maybe even how he ended up here, heartless and depressed, which was a theme he was avoiding since we met our first day in Storybrooke. Catching each other's eyes in the crowd – me having Ella holding me in almost suffocating hug, and at the receiving end of many odd looks, he talking to a tall dark stranger that had the haunted, Wonderland-survivor look about him.

I still had hard time believing it was all only a week ago… And then I walked into strange half-lit room and had hard time believing many things, mostly how much I would prefer to be anywhere else right now, even if it meant being at a ball.

"Sit," he said, pointing towards an empty table in the corner.

Suspiciously empty, considering how full the place seemed. I did not move, giving him a look to tell him I knew he was up to something.

He knew I knew. Giving me a chesshire grin he headed for the bar, leaving me very little choice when it came to my next action. I rolled my eyes and headed for the table he indicated. At least it was pretty near an emergency exit. That always made me feel better.

I sat down and started glaring at Will, for the moment not caring who saw me and assumed that I was the wicked stepsister after all. And then I realized I wasn't alone.

"You don't look like a fairy godmother," said the stranger at my table. Well, not a stranger exactly. Ella once pointed him out to me, as the local doctor – assuming, not wrongly, that I might be spending a lot of time in his company, since my lifestyle made me kind of a collector when it came to scars.

"A fairy godmother?" I said, giving him my best seriously? look, while panicking internally. Who's been spreading the truth…?!

"That's what Ashley is telling everyone," he said almost apologetically.

"Ella," I said distractedly. "I think of that other name as a pretty bad joke."

"There are lots of those floating around," said a new voice. And just like that another seat was taken.

"Granny?" I said, not bothering to hide my shock. She only gave me rather wolfish grin and turned her attention to her drink.

"What's happening here?" I said. Not what I meant to say, but that was how it came out. What I meant to say was "I'm going to kill Will…"

But before I could, there was the Blue fairy sitting to my right. Looking pretty far from sober and not bothering to make any secrets about it holding instead of a glass a whole bottle of something called tequila.

The feeling something very strange was happening here disappeared with her. Now I just felt like I really had to wake up.

"You're the stepsister…?" she said disinterestedly. I ignored her, turning to the Doctor whose name I still had some trouble recalling.

"Not sure why you're here. He didn't tell us," he answered before I got around asking.

"And now he's late…" added Granny.

But before I could ask who – before I could, in the same breath, add something along the lines of what the bloody hell is going on here? – the last seat was taken, and I no longer knew what to ask. But at least I knew who to ask.

And who to kill once I'm done with Will Scarlet.

"Jefferson?"

"Really? I expected something more like what the bloody hell is going on here?"

"I was getting to that," I said, as angrily as I could over my shock.

"You're here for group therapy," he said, reading my expression, and skipping denial – in order to get things moving, probably. "Because you're a bad case of having a fairy tale that had very little to do with what actually happened. And so do we."

"So does everyone," I said.

If there was one thing I was certain of in this land, this was it. Everything seemed to be getting… lost in translation. That's how Ella called it…

"But not everyone has a story with such an impressive body count."

That made me forget how to breathe for a moment.

A part of my mind was already working on a defense. Something about me having nothing to do with that fairy's unfortunate end… But that was not what he meant and I knew it. And it took me a lot of self-control not to say "Who told you?"

Because I had pretty good idea…

"Whatever you are referring to?" I said when I was done counting to ten. When panicked, I went very lady-like. Years of so called education were hard to fight. Right now, I was almost grateful for that insane reflex.

"This is a safe zone," informed me the Blue Fairy conspiratorially. "We all got people killed. You wouldn't believe how many…"

"I have no idea who has been telling you stories," I started saying. And found myself unable to finish that sentence.

There was something about the silence between them, something that convinced me this was just the right group of people. People who could understand, and with their own implied crimes wouldn't feel inclined to judge me. And even though I had lifelong habit of keeping secrets, I knew that before this night was over I will have a little less of them.

Which was why Will brought me here in the first place, I understood finally.

Because he knew – he knew he couldn't understand, and he knew I needed someone who could. More than I would ever admit. Secrets were my thing, true, but they were not a good thing. That was a message years of nightmares were trying to get across to me. Maybe, just this once, I could try to listen.

"Ella doesn't know half of it," I said after a long hesitation. Feeling exhausted by that single sentence… "And she never will. I can't have her feeling like she owes me…"

"Her happy ending…?" said Granny, putting a glass of amber liquid in front of me.

"I just helped a little. More for the sake of my conscience than for her, really," I said. Pretty sure they weren't buying it.

"So what really happened?"

"Because everyone knows there are no fairy godmothers," said the Fairy at the table, for once sounding almost present.

I took a deep breath and tried to find a way to put it all in words. Start at the beginning, I remembered. Something that was o much easier said than done. And go on until you come to the end…

"It started like most stories do, actually. With someone too young and naive to know any better asking a sorcerer for advice," I said, still having a hard time believing I was actually doing this. "I didn't just want to get her safely away from mother, before she could do something… Anyway. What I asked for was a happy ending. She did deserve it. Earned it hundred times over… He told me about the ball being pretty much her only chance. And asked for nothing in return…"

That sentence found me with a glass in my hand. I took a sip that did not seem to help one bit and went on.

"But he did happen to mention a fairy that has been seen lurking in the neighborhood. One that might be able to help me. Never mentioned how people called her, of course."

"Unbelievable," said Granny disgustedly. Having the very same feelings about the subject I gave her a tiny smile and continued.

"I think she would have killed me if she didn't find the idea of someone asking her for a favor so funny. When she was done laughing she said she'll do it. For a price."

I finished my drink then, playing for time. Telling them about the price for my sister's happiness would require going back to another story that didn't make it to any book of fairytales, and I really didn't think I could get into it right now.

Not to mention the feeling that someone here already knew.

"For a… something that I would never let fall into her hands," I said in the end. "I agreed to her terms, of course. Not many other choices when she was pointing that wand of hers at me. And I went back to Rumpelstiltskin. To make a deal he wanted to make all along. I'll tell him when and where she'll be so he can take her by surprise and get her wand, and he'll make sure I won't have to pay… And he did. Ella ended to be the one paying for it."

"Well it was her happy ending," said the Fairy that had no idea how lucky she was she still had all her teeth.

"Will told me you might get aggressive over that," said Jefferson, catching my arm just in time.

"Let… go…"

"She spent twenty-eight years as a nun. She's been punished enough."

I started to laugh.

I wasn't exactly sure how that happened, but I had some problems getting it under control and I wasn't alone with that problem.

"Oh that's nothing. I sparkled too… And had to make up names for fairies that refused to be named after pastel colors," said Blue, not one bit offended.

"Is that how you justify being a manipulative psychopath?"

"Let's not start that again, Mr. Let's-play-god MD …"

I poured myself another drink feeling I might end up thanking Will instead of digging him a shallow grave in the woods…