Here it is! Signed, sealed, and delivered! Chapter two! I hope you all enjoy, and I promise that the mystery of Ella's mischief will be revealed in good time, though I'm sure some of you have a theory or two.

"So Henry is with Grace and should be back later, and we won't be out too late," Emma said as Snow gently led her in the direction of the door where Killian stood waiting.

"Take your time. The two of you don't get time to yourselves often. Treasure it," Snow reassured her daughter with a smile that she mirrored before Emma trotted over to the stairs to press a kiss to her own daughter's forehead.

"Be a good girl," Emma said as Ella nodded in response before adding a wink in Killian's direction when her mother had turned back towards the door. Killian answered her with a wink of his own and a single finger pressed to his lips before he stepped to the side to let Emma through the door and out into the hallway.

"Play nice with your uncle," Killian added as Ella cast a glance over at Neal, whose head was buried in Henry's storybook. He seized every opportunity to read through it, though he already knew each story by heart.

"I will," Ella affirmed as Killian nodded one final silent thank you to David and Snow before he stepped out and into the hallway and pulled the door shut.

"Well, Miss Ella," David asked as his granddaughter turned her gaze on him. "What shall we do tonight? Sword fighting? Fort building?"

"Archery? Dancing?" Snow added, though Ella's attention seemed to be trained in the direction of the stairs. She shook her head to answer them before she ran to the couch, grabbing Neal's hand and yanking him to his feet, the pages of the storybook flapping against the cover as it dangled in one of his hands.

"Where are we going?" he asked as Ella continued to pull him across the room and up the stairs, surprisingly strong considering Neal was older. When she didn't respond, he gave up his struggle and caught up to her, running next to her on his own.

"And why aren't we invited?" David called after them as they approached the top.

"No grown ups allowed!" Ella yelled back, voice already muffled as the pair disappeared into her bedroom, the door slamming shut before either of them could get another word out. Snow joined David on the couch as he reached for the remote to turn the TV on and huffed a sigh, crossing his arms over his chest.

"We're Snow White and Prince Charming. How much cooler could we get?" he grumbled.

"We're grandparents. I don't think we could be any less cool," Snow countered, pressing a kiss to her husband's cheek as she snuggled into his chest and watched him channel surf.


The closing of a door forced Snow from her slumber as she bolted upright, eyes scanning the now darkened room and quickly finding Henry standing over her and a snoring David.

"Napping on the job?" he teased as he started towards the kitchen, opened the fridge, and pulled a piece of cold pizza out that he immediately shoved into his mouth while searching for something to drink.

Panicked, Snow jumped up from the couch and dashed upstairs to Ella's room. She quickly threw the door open, and upon finding Ella and Neal still inside, let out the breath she'd been holding in. After a moment of surveying the situation before her with the fear now dissipating, she couldn't help but wonder what the two kids were up to. They sat cross-legged in the floor directly in front of a full-length mirror, and they'd only just turned away from it to look at her when she'd opened the door, as if they'd been staring into it. But when she looked, she saw only their reflections. Neal, a spitting image of his father despite his mother's dark hair, stared back at her in surprise. And Eleanor, a living example of what Emma must have looked like during the childhood that they never got to see or experience, surveyed her carefully with Killian's deep blue ocean eyes. And finally, she saw herself, hair disheveled from sleep, watching through frantic green eyes that were calming with every moment that passed.

"What are you two doing up here?" she asked, gaze shifting from the reflections to the very real children sitting before her. Neal looked from Ella to the mirror and finally to Snow, his inability to keep a secret, inherited from his mother, beginning to show through.

Before he could answer, however, the door downstairs opened and closed, and Ella was up and running, pulling Neal behind her past Snow and out of the bedroom. They were already downstairs by the time Snow realized what was going on, her reaction time still slowed by the effects of sleep. She joined them after a moment, flattening her hair back down to her head as she went.

Ella was wrapped around Emma's leg while Killian was standing by the couch, leaning over so that he was inches away from David, who remained fast asleep.

"Dave," Killian whispered, his smirk growing wider by the second. "Dave," he repeated, louder. When David still didn't wake, he took a deep breath in. "DAVE!" he bellowed as David's eyes flew open. Killian leaned back just in time to avoid David's fist connecting with his face and instead stood next to the couch doubled over in laughter.

"Guess I'm taking all the night shifts at the station in the future," Emma teased as Killian's laughter grew even louder, garnering him a smack on the head by his father-in-law, who stood from his spot on the couch and walked over to join Snow near the door. "Any trouble?" Emma asked as Ella skipped across the room to her father, who had finally recovered from his fit of laughter.

"We didn't hear a peep out of her the entire night," Snow answered, resolving that Ella and Neal's actions must have been prompted by their very active imaginations. Children raised in a town where everyone they met was part of one large fairy tale certainly encouraged creativity. "We should be heading home. Say goodbye, Neal."

He nodded, casting a suspicious glance at Ella as she approached to hug him. Once he'd been around the room and had given hugs to Killian and Henry, only Emma remained. But rather than his customary hug for his big sister, he took her left hand in his and examined it carefully, turning it over and back, before his eyes grew wide and he quickly released it and wrapped his arms around her. Emma looked to Snow, eyebrows furrowed in confusion, but all that she could do was shrug in her own display of total bewilderment, wondering just what exactly her granddaughter, who was quite possibly more mischievous than her father if that was possible, was up to. Unable to find an immediate answer, she followed Neal's pattern of hugging each person in the room before following David and her son out the door.