CHAPTER TWO - RETURN TO GOLD

Robin Hood landed in a smooth tucked roll, barely missing Hook's head with his right boot. Hook wasn't as lucky the next time as the prince collapsed right on top of the dashing pirate just as he was starting to rise from his knees.

Nobody said time travel was easy.

Robin helped the other two to untangle themselves and get back on their feet and immediately the three men looked around for Rumpelstiltskin who was easy to spot seeing as he was once again golden hued and only about 20 yards away having a fit of murderous rage at a ficus.

Charming wiped his eyes on his shirt and advanced on The Dark One, who happened to be the one and only man who might be able to explain what just happened.

"Our families have disappeared out of existence! Do you really think hacking at that plant with a cursed dagger is going to bring them back?"

"No!" Rumple rumbled.

"Well unless Zelena opened a time portal with the sole purpose of changing herself into a fern, I hardly see how your current behavior will help you achieve your ends."

Rumple lowered his dagger arm and visibly tried to reign in his emotions, "You're right there ...Charming." he said, rolling the syllables of Charming's name around in a way that was either mocking or as Charming chose to see it, very nearly affectionate. "What I need," Rumple continued, "is to FIND Zelena and make sure she pays for what she did."

"After we find a way to stop her from doing whatever it is she did or does or did/does in the past that makes all our loved ones disappear... right?"

"Charmingly put." Hook chimed in, subtly keeping Robin Hood between himself and his old enemy as they joined the other too by the now ragged ficus.

"Please, Dark One" Robin Hood pleaded, "Will you help us to save our loved ones?"

"Are we too late?" Charming asked.

Rumple sighed irritably, evidently he was to be stuck with this trio unless he chose to turn them all into snails... hmmm. He slid his dagger into a hidden pocket in his coat. "No." he said, "If Zelena's magic worked as she claimed it would than we should have come through only a few minutes after her. Unfortunately as you can see, she seems to have used magic to travel somewhere else before we arrived and I have had somewhat ...limited luck in tracking where she went."

Hook laughed, "All that power and the crocodile can't even find his prey."

Rumple bristled, "I WILL find Zelena and I certainly don't need the help of a pirate to do it!"

Hook shank back a bit behind Robin Hood.

"We'll ALL find her" Charming stated firmly, "Together." he looked from thief, to pirate, to Dark One and added, "We've ALL got family tied up in this in one way or another. Now let's stop squabbling amongst ourselves and get out there and fight for our families!"

"Here here" Robin cheered, "But how do we find this witch?"

"Presumably, we just ask around to see if anyone green has been seen in the vicinity." Hook quipped, gesturing to the Dark One's returned love for gold tones.

"...And how do we capture her when we find her?" Charming asked, ignoring Hook's remark.

"You let me worry about that pesky little detail." Rumple said. "As for finding her, I propose that we try thinking like her and after spending that last age locked in her cage as her personal... pet ...I think I can manage that. Zelena wanted to change her past. Specifically she wanted to make sure that her mother never abandoned her and she believed the best way to achieve that aim, was to kill Princess Eva before she could interfere with her mother's royal marriage."

"We know, she planned on killing Snow's mother; which is why Snow and Emma disappeared." Charming stated the obvious.

"And with Cora marrying Prince Leopold instead of that empty-headed Henry, dear old Regina won't have existed either." Rumple added, nodding towards Robin Hood.

"So to find her, all we have to do is find Eva." Charming said.

Rumple sighed again, "No. To find Zelena, we must find Cora. The season is still summer, she has months to kill Princess Eva before she can interfere in her mother's wedding plans. I don't know about you, but I don't want to spend the next three or four months following Snow White's mother around her castle waiting for Zelena to show up. No no, Zelena will run strait for Cora so that she can finally meet her precious mother..." he paused, then added, "If she only knew Cora as well as I did than she'd realize that Cora did her a favor by abandoning her. She was no prize as a mother. As Regina probably told you all ready."

"The Dark One's right. Which is not something I enjoy saying," Hook admitted. "We should find Cora."

Charming turned to Rumple, "Do you know where Cora was at this point in her life?"

"If memory serves, she was a miller's daughter and she spent most of her days before I met her grinding flour for her drunken lout of a father or serving swill beer to degenerates in a bar."

"Oh, perhaps we've met." Hook chimed in.

"Now is not the time Hook" David said, silencing the pirate and turning back to Rumple to ask him to take them to Cora's bar, "Rump..."

Rumple immediately silenced David with a magic choke-hold.

"Do not under any circumstances," he said, "Say my name aloud here."

He released David from the choke hold with a minor gesture.

David rubbed his throat and croaked out something that sounded vaguely like, "ok."

"Names..." Rumple continued, flourishing his arms in a theatrical manner, "...have power. Here much more so then back in Storybrook and I think," he said, "that the last thing any of you wants is for my former, less... personable self, to show up and demand to know what's going on."

"That..." Hook said, pointing at Gold, "sounds like an excellent plan to me."

"Perhaps we should then choose another name to call you by?" Robin said to Rumple.

"He's right" David chimed in, "We can hardly wander around The Enchanted Forest calling you Dark One..." he paused, "actually we really can't wander around here at all with you looking like that." he rubbed the skin on his own arm to remind Rumple that he was once again a golden man, "Not to mention the, uh... voice."

Rumple stopped looking at his golden fingernails in annoyance, "and what's wrong with my voice all of a sudden?"

"It has, 'er... risen a bit since we came through the time portal." David said carefully.

"And then there are the clothes." Robin added. "We shall all need new garments here if we wish to blend in."

"Fine!" Rumple said irritably. He flourished his hand over David, Hook and Robin, "A glamour spell." he said.

"But we look exactly the same!" Hook complained.

Rumple produced a mirror. "Only to each other." he explained, "to everyone else you will look like this... he showed them their new forms in the small mirror. All three were dressed as peasants with plain dirty clothes and even plainer and dirtier faces. Rumple however they noticed, was dressed in fine gold brocade.

David looked at his and Hook and Robin's clothes with approval, but to Rumple he said, "A prince? I thought the point was NOT to be noticed?"

Hook scratched his face with his hook, "You might want to tone down the gold mate." he said. "If this bar is indeed the den of iniquity you say it is, then a prince of such... regal bearing may attract the wrong kind of attention."

Rumple rolled his eyes, but tacitly acknowledged that they had a point by running his hands down his jacket which turned from gold brocade into a somewhat more subdued, but still rather dapper suit of clothing. "Better?" he grumbled.

"Much" David said, cracking a small smile and bravely clapping the most powerful wizard who ever lived on the back.

"Now that we're all properly attired..." Rumple said, preparing the magic that would transport them to where they needed to go, "...let's go pay Cora a visit shall we?"