No one had anything to say in the wake of Emma's disappearance. At least no one had anything important or useful to say. They all stared at one another in absolute confusion for a few moments before Killian breathed "Bloody hell…" and a small groggy voice echoed "Papa!" through the diner.

"Roland?" Robin questioned looking around the chaotic and dark diner. It seemed to break the spell of still quiet that had settled over them. "Roland?!"

"There!" she pointed out finally moving from her spot and instantly regretting it as her body flared with pain. She winced as she rubbed her shoulder. What was wrong with her?! "I saw him behind the counter."

Robin quickly darted away and ducked down behind the counter. Regina followed and when Robin stood up again he held the small boy in his arms. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"

Roland shook his head. "No. Why is it nighttime and..." his eyes widened as he looked out one of the windows. She followed his gaze expecting to find horror or terror, but it was just a streetlight. "Papa, why are we here again?"

"I wish I knew son. I wish I knew…"

"Henry…Henry are you alright?" Regina questioned, suddenly looking past her. She turned and found Henry still staring at the door Emma had come in as if willing her to come back.

"Sh-she's the Dark One. What happened to her?"

"Henry I want you to listen to me," Regina cooed quickly coming over and taking his hands. "The person you just saw isn't Emma, it's not your mother. And I promise you we are going to get her back!"

"That's what we were supposed to do when we went to Camelot! That's why we went!"

"And clearly something went wrong," Regina pointed out. "Emma may believe that we failed, but Henry, believe me, you only fail when you give up and stop trying. No one in this room is going to stop trying. Here or there, nothing has changed, we're going to help Emma. All of us."

It was a rousing speech, truly it was. Or it would have been if this was weeks ago. Seeing Emma like that…it had been a little too disheartening. And seeing Sneezy, still standing there, completely encased in stone…it was more than disheartening. It was terrifying.

"Other than the obvious…is everyone alright?" Regina questioned looking around the room. "Anyone hurt? Anything different?"

"Besides our clothes?"

"Besides Emma?"

"I did say other than the obvious! Focus. What do we know?"

Suddenly light burst into the diner and she shrank back in confusion then groaned in pain and maybe even a little fear. But it was nothing. Granny had simply turned the lights on and now she could see just how pale and terrified everyone looked. Only Regina seemed to be thinking coherently. Regina and Granny of course who turned the lights off and then on again before moving back to the counter and plugging in some appliances. "Electricity's back…so is the water, fryers look good...they were completely destory a few hours ago," she concluded finding a faucet she didn't even know about and also turning it on.

"I think you mean weeks ago," Mary Margaret corrected.

"Greasy food aside, that tells us what we're dealing with," Regina muttered.

"Curse," she concluded for herself and for the sake of the others who clearly had no idea what she was talking about.

"How do you know?" Mary Margaret questioned suspiciously.

"A portal wouldn't have cared how it delivered us back to Storybrooke," she answered for Regina. Mary Margaret didn't need the stress-fueled ramblings of Regina to make things worse. "That's why the fryers broke down on our way there in the first place. A portal wouldn't have cared, but a curse would have. It would have been designed to drop us right back into Storybrooke just the way things were before."

Mary Margaret didn't look anymore settled than she had before. She couldn't entirely blame her. Aside from Emma turning one of her friends into a statue she'd just confirmed for her that her daughter had created a curse, the worst kind of Dark Magic imaginable. It was a hard pill to swallow and-

"I thought you said the diner would be fine in that portal!" Granny suddenly barked at Regina! When she turned to face her, she was red in the face at her declaration and staring at Regina.

"I lied," Regina answered simply. "And it doesn't matter now because lucky you-your precious diner is perfect again. We're all fine."

"But we shouldn't be…" Mary Margaret muttered with wide glassy eyes. "David…the curse that takes people here…you need a heart to make it work! If Emma used that curse to bring us here that means she-"

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Regina inserted quickly. "We don't know anything yet. Focus first, lose your heads later. Anything else missing?"

"Besides skin, blood, and bones…" Doc muttered examining Sneezy sadly.

She had no words for the dwarf. There was nothing she could think of to say or do, nothing she could think of that would help. No, that wasn't true. She could think of one word, one thing that might help. Rumpelstiltskin. He wasn't the Dark One anymore, but there was magic in his shop that didn't require him to be the Dark One. Sneezy was stone, maybe if she went back she could find something to turn him back?

"I'm still wearing this terrible little bracelet of yours. Oh! But apparently I have my voice back!" Zelena piped up from where she was, suddenly beaming as she pressed her hand to her throat. She'd nearly forgotten that Regina had taken her voice away for obvious reasons before they'd left. And now that it was back she wished it wasn't. Zelena was hardly humble. "Oh it's so lovely, light, and feminine! Oh I've missed you my beautiful little-"

Suddenly Zelena was gone. Behind her, there was a snap of fingers and Zelena disappeared in a plume of smoke just as Emma had. For a moment she felt her jaw drop and her heart race. What had Emma done? Where they next? Was she really just going to start picking people off one by-

"That was enough of her," Regina muttered. When she looked over her hand was already in the air as though she'd been the one to snap her fingers. Not everything had a dark root then. She was just on edge.

"Where did you send her?" Mary Margaret asked as Neal began to fuss in her arms.

"Back to the hospital. They'll handle her there and at least I won't have to."

"Love…maybe it's not what's missing that we should be concerned with," Killian called, his gaze fixated on something that was beyond the little kitchen window.

She didn't bother to wait for an invitation, she shouldered her rose and stepped into the back with Regina even with her body screaming at her to stop moving. There were two obvious things to note right away. The first and perhaps most glaring was that the diner was put back together without any problem. The wood and the hallway that took them to the Bed and Breakfast that had been left behind when they'd gone to Camelot was knit back together so seamlessly she couldn't even tell where the gaping hole had been.

But the second, less obvious but somehow more daunting sight that met her eyes was something different entirely.

"Books?!" she exclaimed.

"Lots of them," Regina echoed looking it over at her side. She suspected that "lots of them" was a bit of an exaggeration, considering she'd rarely ever traveled with less than a dozen books but there they sat, no more and less than ten books sat stacked in two small piles by the bathroom, looking oddly neat in the midst of the chaos that the curse had brought them in. It was as if Santa Claus himself had left them there as a present on Christmas. And beside that…

"It's more than that," she pointed out stepping up to the wall and examining the other piles behind the books.

"Our clothes!" Mary Margaret blanched as she joined them. Their clothes, Emma's baby blanket, and the Apprentice's wand, even the black bag Regina had carried everything in. It was everything that they had gone with and more. It was remarkable, she just wished she could really wrap her head around it! Regina knelt next to her as she began distributing the neatly folded piles of clothing to their owners, setting her own aside. Skirt, shirt, sweater, shoes…it was all these.

"These are basic!" Regina blanched looking a few of the books over. "You have more complicated stuff in the library."

She glanced over at the book she was examining and read a couple of paragraphs. She was right. She could have repeated all of what she read without the book. And the rest of them? She pulled the second stack apart one by one. Basic. Average. Introductory. But…

"This one's not," she commented holding it in her arms closer. Regina reached for it and she felt herself flinch when her hands got too close to skin. "Don't! Don't come any closer, I don't need your help," she spat pushing herself up off the floor and backing away from the evil queen, her body rejected the motion but her soul still didn't feel far enough away.

"I was just trying to help," Regina commented.

"Why should I trust you?" she questioned automatically. It was foolish she knew it was. Regina was just as confused as she was and under the eyes of not just Robin Hood but her son she wasn't likely to hurt her like before…but she'd been burned too many times to trust people like she once had.

"Okay…what's going on between the two of you," David questioned looking between the pair of them. "You've been acting odd all day!"

"Weeks," Doc muttered.

What was going on between them? So much! Not the least of which was the fact that Regina had betrayed her the way she had! The truth was it wasn't just that Regina had taken her heart, it was how she acted about it, how she was acting about it now, as if they were still friends. There was a time that she thought she could never trust Regina because of what she'd done to her after she'd left Rumple. But she had. Over time she'd come to not just tolerate her but trust her and even respect her for the changes she'd made in her life. And then she'd thrown it all away and now acted as though nothing had happened.

She stared at her, she waited for her to show her she was wrong, to confess to the others what she'd done. But instead Regina just glared back at her from her spot on the floor. Her gaze was like fire, not just begging but fearsome and threatening. She wasn't going to confess what she'd done. And she wasn't going to let her do it. What would happen if she told? That was something that terrified her. But she couldn't stand the thought of being here in this room with the truth stretching between them.

"I'm sorry, I have to go," she whispered reaching up and wiping tears from the rim of her eyes.

"Go? Go where?!" Mary Margaret shrieked.

"I have to check on Rumple," was the first thing that popped out of her mouth.

People argued. She heard them make comments and felt hands try to catch her but she ignored them and the pain radiating over her body. Instead, she retrieved her clothes and the bell jar then ran away from the diner.

Because when you erase a lot of time suddenly a lot of stuff comes back to haunt you. For instance, Belle and Regina never kissed and made up, all those conversations Belle and Henry had are gone, and let's not forget that all the knowledge they had is also unreachable. Sigh...essentially it means the storyline repeats itself. Or does it?

Thank you all so much, Fox24, Skitzoeinhoven, NejiHina100, Grace5231973, TwistedMidnight, Kathryn Claire O'Connor, Teresa Martin, Carlyle23, Rumbellefan, Ladybugsmomma, and my unnamed guest, I'm so thrilled to have so many of you reading MC&U with me and of course, I'm so happy that you've been looking forward to this! Tenth in the series (not counting ML), can you believe it! I feel like it's a milestone and we need a cake or something. Shame they haven't invented virtual cake yet, but fortunately, I think regular cake tastes better. Go out and have yourself some cake or pie or ice cream! YAY! Peace and Happy Reading!