Return to the Forest

by Rahlian

The countdown has started. Storybrooke is dying. Emma and Regina cannot stop it. There is only one option left. Abandoned. Might come back to this someday.

1. Magic Beans

Return to the Forest

A/N: This picks up in the middle of the season 2 finale And Straight On Till Morning. Alternate title for this chapter is Three.

Chapter One: Magic Beans

Emma came to her feet with everyone else in Granny's when David came through the door.

"You get it?"

"Yeah. Hook managed to get one from Greg and Tamara."

"Good. You okay?" she asked, looking at the bloody tear in David's sleeve.

"Just a graze, I'm fine."

"Alright. Time to get everyone and get out of here."

"Where's Mom?" Henry asked, stepping forward.

"She is down in the mine with the device, holding it back and giving us time to escape."

"There's something else, isn't there?"

"I'm sorry Henry, but she said that when she made the device, she made it so that it couldn't be stopped and couldn't be tampered with. If she stops trying to hold it back, it will go off immediately and destroy the entire town."

"No, that can't be right. She can't sacrifice herself for us." Henry looked around at the gathered adults, trying to think of something, anything. "What if we made the portal in the mine?"

Emma shook her head. "The mine shaft is too small to let everyone get through the portal in time."

"No, there has to be something else we can do. She is family, she is sacrificing herself so that everyone else will be okay. We have to do something. We can't leave her behind."

"She wants this, Henry. She made me promise that I would keep you safe."

"We saved her from the wraith! How is saving her this time any different?

"Henry has a point. We sent it through a portal before, why don't we do the same with the spell?" Mary Margaret asked.

"Because we have no idea if it will work."

"Mary Margret's right," David agreed. "It's entirely possible that it won't but we have to try."

"It is too risky," Emma objected again. "The town won't go along with it, not to save Regina."

"Yes we will," Dr. Whale interrupted. "Because it is the right thing to do. We have never been led astray by our prince and princess, so I say we let them lead again. Anyone disagree?"

There was a chorus of nays, everyone looking to Emma. "I know it is hard and we haven't had a lot of chances to be good parents, but let us try now. This is the right decision."

"And it is the one we will make," David said, slipping an arm across Mary Margret's shoulders.

"We still have time. It is not too late," Mary Margret continued.

Emma reached out to Henry, hugging him. "I just don't want him to be alone. I grew up that way, I know how it is and have to do the same. Using the bean now ensures that everyone survives. If we wait, we could lose everything. Besides, didn't you say that you wanted to go back to the Enchanted Forest?"

"I do, Emma, I really do, but the cost would be too high. Killing Cora wasn't the right thing, Emma, it was the easy thing. If there I one thing that her death taught me it is that right and easy rarely coincide, and this is one of those times."

"So you are willing to risk the lives of every single person living in Storybrooke on the chance that the bean will suck the spell in?"

Mary Margret looked at David and nodded. "Honey, please. Let's take the hard path because if we don't and use the bean to return to the Enchanted Forest at the cost of Regina's life, everything we build, the entire future will be on her blood."

"I understand what you are saying, but there has to be some way of either saving the town or saving Regina that won't risk either."

"The only person who could possibly do that is Gold, and he won't help."

"There are supposed to be two beans left right?" David nodded and Emma's expression firmed. "Greg and Tamara. They have the other bean. You guys and the rest of the town take one portal, and I will go down in the mine with the other to get Regina. It is the only way."

Mary Margaret and David exchanged a look. "We have no idea where they are though," David said, "and we are running out of time."

"Running out of time is not out of time. You were just with them; they can't have gotten too far. Certainly not far enough to hide from us if we get everybody to look. I will take the bean we have down into the mine and use it at the last minute; you track down Greg and Tamara and take theirs."

"How are we going to find each other if we are using different portals though?" Henry asked.

"Our castle," Mary Margaret said after a moment. "King George's old one, the one overlooking the lake. Think of it when you use the bean, and it should take you there."

"Sounds like a plan," David said, dropping the magic bean into Emma's hand and pulling away from Mary Margaret to start the search. "Are you sure about this, Emma? I mean, you were the one opposed to going back to the Forest in the first place."

"It wasn't that I didn't want to go, it was that I wasn't sure. But it is hardly like I have a choice now. Either we go back to the Enchanted Forest, or we all die." Emma said simply.

"I hope that this works, Emma," Mary Margaret said, putting a hand on Emma's shoulder.

"So do I. We need to start looking for Greg and Tamara though."

"You're right. The more people that are searching the sooner we will find them."

"And I will go down to the mine to tell Regina what is going on." Mary Margaret nodded and stepped past her daughter, leaving Emma with Henry.

"Thanks."

"Thanks for what, kiddo?" Emma asked, squatting and holding him by his shoulders.

"For trying to save my mom. I know that you two don't like each other, but you are still trying to save her."

"Well, it's like you said; she's family. And while I may not like her that much, you love her, and that is all I need." Henry gave a sharp nod and a smile.

OoOoO

"What the hell are you doing back down here?" Regina demanded, sparing a glance up at Emma as she came around the corner of the mine shaft.

"We're here to tell you what is going on," Henry said, stepping out from behind Emma.

"What is he doing here?" Regina asked again through gritted teeth. "You should have used the bean to make a portal back to the Enchanted Forest already like you promised."

"And I will, but not without you."

"We have a plan, Mom. We have the whole town looking for Greg and Tamara and the magic bean and will use it down here so that we can all escape to the Forest."

Regina's hands were shaking from the effort it was taking her to restrain the power of the trigger, grimacing as the effort took its toll. "That won't work and you know it. You don't have the time to waste going after Greg and Tamara and the second bean. I have no idea how much longer I can hold this thing back and it will detonate the moment I stop doing so."

Emma looked to Henry and back to Regina, stepping forward, holding her hands out.

"Stop! What are you doing?"

"I have magic, I've used it before. I'm strong. Let me help."

"No. You have to get Henry out of here."

"Trust me, I want nothing more than to do just that but if I do that, Henry would never forgive me. So I am going to help you hold the trigger back to buy everyone in the town above who is searching for one of the last two magical beans in this world to save your sorry ass. I am helping, so get over it." Emma had continued walking forward as she spoke and thrust her hands out with her last words, power arcing, connecting her with the slowly rotating diamond hovering between her and Regina.

"Henry, take my phone and go up to the mouth of the mine and call David or Mary Margaret to let them know what's going on."

"Okay," Henry said with a grin, reaching into her pocket and running up the shaft.

"So," Regina said after a moment.

"Here we are," Emma replied in kind.

"You are crazy, you know that right?"

"The only reason why I am doing this is because despite who you are, despite everything you have done, Henry loves you. I have no idea why, but he does."

Regina gave a short, bitter laugh. "I have to agree with you there. He always believed that I can be a better person than I have ever been. I am the Evil Queen for crying out loud and he thought I could be a hero."

"Well you did volunteer to sacrifice yourself so that all the townspeople can escape back to the Forest. As much as it pains me to say, that is pretty heroic."

"I imagine it does," Regina said dryly.

"I know you have tried and struggled to be good, and I can't entirely fault you with some of the things that you've done. As you said, you are the Evil Queen and I have to say that you have had some spectacularly bad influences in your life, not the least of which was your mother."

"She was my mother, but she did some terrible things both to me and the people I loved to get me to where I was. She was my mother, but she loved power more than anything else, and that is the reason why I am doing this. Not to prove anything to the people above us who will never see me as anything other than the Evil Queen, but to myself and to Henry. The Evil Queen is not all that I am, all that I can be."

"I can get that. I have done some things that have been hard to put behind me, and I know what it is like trying to get people to see that." Emma grunted suddenly, the strain of restraining the trigger spiking.

"Take it easy, Emma. You are new at this magic thing, you have to ration your strength. It does us no good if you use up all your strength trying to stop it cold when we are just trying to slow it down." The conversation stopped for a few minutes while the two women focused at the task at hand.

"You do realize that if your madcap plan actually works, everything you know will change, right?"

"Of course it will," Emma said, scoffing. "If this works, we will all end up in fairy-tale land after all."

"I am not sure that you really do. It is the Enchanted Forest we will be going back to. Your father and mother are king and queen there, and that means that Henry and you will be a prince and princess, royalty. That means holding court, attending balls, receiving foreign dignitaries. You will have to wear corsets and gowns, tiaras, jewelry worth the GDP of a small African nation, the whole shebang. You will have to learn how to curtsy, dance, ride a horse, basically go back five hundred years to become a royal lady and forget everything you have learned about being a liberated, free-thinking, twenty-first century woman. Given that you have Henry, you might not have to marry, but he certainly will when he comes of age."

"And what makes you such an authority on all this?"

Regina gave Emma a condescending smile. "Because while the Forest is just a bunch of fairy tales to you, they are my and everyone else's lives. And even though I am not a royal by birth like you, I was Queen for a very long time." Emma couldn't really argue with her on that, so she didn't. At least the baby girl that Ella girl had will be raised like a proper royal."

"A proper royal? What does that mean?"

"It means that I know you. The people of Storybrooke are going to go back to their fairy tale lives like nothing ever happened, no dark curse, no Land Without Magic. Henry is young, he will learn how to be the prince he will be there, but you were raised and grew up here. You are not going to have such an easy time adjusting though. All little boys and girls want to be princes and princesses that live in grand castles. But I know you and you are going to hate being a princess, all pampered and prettied. You are never going to be a proper lady, let alone a proper princess." Emma opened her mouth to object, but Regina didn't give her the chance to speak

"Don't try to deny it, Ms. Swan. We both know it is true. Learning to wear a gown is the least of the changes that you are going to have to deal with."

Emma scowled. "Alright Regina, you made you point. There are a lot of things that I am going to have to deal with in the Enchanted Forest."

"I only wish I could be around when you realize it. Take my word when I say that you are never prepared for your first royal ball. I wasn't and my mother spent every moment from the day that I turned twelve preparing me for mine."

"Good God, even when you are trying to be heroic you are still a bitch."

"I guess it is just who I am. You can take the evil out of the Queen, but not the woman."

"I guess," Emma agreed. The blond of the pair winced suddenly, the magical current flowing from her fingertips suddenly flexing and wobbling.

"We should probably stop talking, save our strength and whatnot. This is going to get much harder, especially if it takes a while to find the other magic bean," Regina suggested.

"Sounds like a good idea."

OoOoO

"So we know they have to be trying to get out of town. Half the dwarves are down on the road out of town and the other half are at the troll bridge. Granny and Red are down at the docks with Anton, but they could just as easily have gone through the forest as taken the road or a boat to get out of town."

"I know, and I am in the forest with Ruby right now having everyone who can track or hunt search the forest for them. I think that it is the most logical place for them to hide out to escape Storybrooke's destruction. I don't think they will go too far though. Their bosses will want them to stay close enough to make absolutely certain that the town is destroyed, and they can't do that if they pick a direction and keep running."

"You are probably right. The forest is so big that they figured that they it would be easiest to hide out there, which they are probably right about."

"Hopefully not too right, though. There is no way that we will recall everyone if we have to use the one bean we have before we find the other one."

"Everyone knew the risks they were taking when we agreed to try to save Regina."

"That doesn't mean that we won't be responsible if we can't get everyone back to the Forest alive. And that's what this is about, getting everyone out alive."

"I know that, and I am- hold on, I'm getting another call." David lowered the phone to look at the screen and made a little noise of surprise when he saw who it was. " Emma, you tell Regina what is going on?"

"Not Emma, Henry. Emma is still down in the mine with my mom helping her hold back the trigger. Have you found Greg and Tamara yet?"

"No we haven't, but we only just started looking. If Emma is helping Regina with the device, then we may have more time than we originally thought, which is a good thing."

"Why is it a good thing, aside from the obvious?" Henry asked.

"We think that they are hiding out in the forest, waiting for the town to self-destruct."There was a slight pause, as Henry took in what Mary Margaret said.

"The forest? Oh that is really bad. I mean it's a forest, how are you going to find them in it?"

"Mary Margaret has everyone who knows how to hunt or track through a forest out looking for them. We have to believe that Emma and Regina will buy us enough time to find them."

"I know they will, that isn't what I was doubting, it's just that hiding out in the forest is a really good idea. I mean, if this wasn't a story and it wasn't Snow White and Prince Charming hunting them, they might actually get away."

"Fortunately we are Snow White and Prince Charming so that means that we will find them and we will do it in time. After all, good always wins out in the end," David said with certainty.

"Indeed it does. Now, I need to get back to coordinate the forest search so that good does win out." The line clicked as Mary Margaret hung up.

"You got anything Ruby?" Mary Margaret called out.

"Yes and no. I keep picking it up and losing it almost as quickly. Whoever taught them their woodcraft was very good. I am pretty certain that one of them has been laying false trails."

"Can you find them?"

"Any other time I would say yes, but they are being very careful not to be found. They have obviously spent a good deal of time preparing for this. Honestly, I am not sure that I can find them in time without some kind of help."

Mary Margaret let out a little grunt of frustration. "I hate this. Emma, my daughter is down in the mine with Regina, trying to hold back the self-destruct button that Regina built into the curse while we hunt two people who want to destroy everything we are. Come on, Ruby, there has to be something that you aren't doing to find them."

"Hey, back off. I am doing everything I can to find these two. I know what will happen if we don't find them in time, and I for one do not want to die for the Evil Queen."

Mary Margaret sighed. "I'm sorry, I know you are trying, I know you are. I'm just frustrated that we are running out of time and we are no closer to finding them than we were an hour ago. It isn't enough to find them before Regina's trigger goes off; we also have to have enough time to get everyone through the portal as well.

"It's okay, I get it. Still, we have to believe that we will find them."

OoOoO

"How is the search going?" Regina asked when Henry came around the bend in the mine shaft.

"Not so good," Henry said with an understandably worried look. Mary Margaret thinks that they are hiding out in the woods."

"Oh… Well that is… bad," Emma said after a moment. "The forest is huge… If those two have enough of a head start we… will never find them, no matter… hng… how much time we buy them."

"Not necessarily…" Regina disagreed. Though the power flowing from the two women's hands was steady and strong, the effort of restraining the curse trigger was starting to show. Their breathing was becoming labored, and sweat was starting to bead on Emma's brow.

"What do you mean… not necessarily?"

"I… mean that there might… be one place that they could be found."

"Why would you know where they can be found."

"Because I told Greg… where I buried his father… after I killed him over twenty… years ago."

"You killed Greg's father?" Henry asked, tone rising.

"It was… a long time ago… before you showed me that I… could be someone other than… the Evil Queen." Henry pulled a pen and a notebook out of his backpack and wrote down the directions as Regina gave them.

"Alright, I will go and tell Mary Margaret about this."

OoOoO

It didn't take long for Mary Margaret's phone to ring again. "I know where they are," Henry said without preamble.

"You know where they are?" Mary Margaret repeated.

"My mom said she buried Greg's dad in the forest after she killed him a bunch of years ago. She told me where she did it."

"Hold on," Mary Margaret interrupted when he started to rattle off the directions so she could put her phone on speaker so the werewolf could listen in.

"Alright, got it," Ruby said, darting off.

"Ruby says that she knows how to find the place," Mary Margaret said, jogging after Ruby.

"Good. But you have to hurry; Emma and my mom are running out of strength. I don't know how much longer they can hold the trigger back."

"We are working as fast as we can. Stay out of the mine so that David or I can call you when we have the bean."

"Sure thing."

Mary Margaret ended the call and quickly dialed another number.

"David, it's me. Henry says that Regina thinks she knows where Greg and Tamara are, but Henry says we don't have much time left. Emma and Regina can't hold the trigger back much longer."

'Good. Tell me where and I will get as many people as I can to join up with you there."

Mary Margaret repeated the location of Kurt Flynn's grave and hung up again, speed-dialing the rest of her half of the search party.

"The gig is up," Mary Margaret announced eight minutes later, stepping into the clearing with Ruby, most of the dwarves, all armed with their pickaxes and David with his pistol. Greg and Tamara didn't even bother to raise their guns, so outnumbered were they.

"The bean, if you please," David said, his pistol up, but not pointing at either of them.

The two exchanged a look, Greg reaching into his pocket and withdrawing the clear, rainbow-flecked bean. He bounced it on him palm once before tossing it to Mary Margaret.

"That's it; you are giving it up so easily?"

"You want to use that bean to leave our world," Tamara said. "That is an acceptable resolution to us. We want you gone; how you go doesn't really matter."

"She has a point, I suppose," Leeroy said. "I mean, we either go back to the Enchanted Forest with the bean, or we all die when Regina's trigger goes off. Either way we are gone, just like they want."

"Tie them up," David said. "They have been a constant problem for us; I don't want them interfering with our escape. They are resourceful; I am sure that they will find a way to get themselves free."

Three of the dwarves stepped forward, Greg and Tamara offering their wrists to be bound. They were tied up separately against two trees, their restraints double checked before David, Mary Margaret, Ruby, Leroy and the rest of the searchers began to make their way back to the town.

"Henry, its Mary Margaret. We have the bean and are heading back to the clock tower to evacuate everyone."

"Great. How long do I need to wait before we can use the other bean?"

"Ten minutes. Set a timer on your watch or Emma's phone, and use the bean Emma has when it goes off."

"Alright,I'm setting the timer now. I'll go back down into the mine when we are done here. Are you sure ten minutes is long enough?"

"It has to be enough. You said that Emma and Regina are running out of time. Ten minutes has to be enough."

"I get it. I'm going down into the mine now. Ten minutes."

"Ten minutes." The line went dead and Mary Margaret relayed her conversation to David and Ruby.

"It is enough time," David said decisively. "We are almost back to town. Ten minutes is more than enough to get everyone through the portal."

"I just hope that Emma and Regina can hold out long enough."

David just stared forward, face in an expression of determination. "They will do it. Emma will hold out for as long as we need her to."

"She couldn't possibly do anything else," Mary Margaret agreed. "She is our daughter after all."

"Indeed she is," David replied, giving Mary Margaret a flash of a smile.

It took six minutes for David, Mary Margaret, Ruby, the dwarves and the rest of the forest party to arrive at the clock tower to find that the hundreds of displaced fairy-tale characters gathered in the middle of the intersection.

"Alright everybody , we have less than five minutes to get everyone back home. Once the portal opens, everyone has to get through it as quickly as possible. Just think of the place you wish to return to as you step through, and you will appear there. Those of you that wish to remain with, Mary Margaret… Snow White and I, we are going to the royal castle overlooking the lake. Once it is open, nobody stops for anything." David waited for anyone to say anything, ask anything, but when nobody did, he pulled the magic bean out of his pocket, bounced it in his palm once, twice and tossed it into the middle of the intersection. The bean rolled and came to a stop, and melted into the asphalt of the road, a rapidly expanding luminescent green vortex sinking into the road.

"That's it, everyone through," David shouted over the noise. It only took a moment for the first of the crowd to jump into the portal, quickly followed by a handful, then a dozen, everyone quickly rushing the portal. David and Mary Margaret exchanged a look as the last of the townsfolk too the plunge, each breathing deep before stepping into the green light.

OoOoO

"Time's up," Henry announced, the alarm he set on Emma's phone going off.

"Good," Regina grunted. "I am… almost.. at the end… of my…strength." Both Emma and Regina where sweating now, and both were clearly struggling to maintain the flow of magic connecting them to the diamond, knees and elbows wobbling.

"Give me the bean," Emma squeezed out between clenched teeth. "We will… all jump though it… together."

"Okay, on the count of three. One, two…" Once again, the bean lay dormant on the ground, after Emma dropped it, for a moment before turning into a dimensional whirlpool.

"Three!"

OoOoO

A/N: Fucking plot bunnies. What can I say?