Here we are again.

Hopefully I'm doing okay so far. Sorry for any typos and grammatical errors.

Enjoy.

Regina got out her keys to get into the house as quickly as possible. Picking up on paperwork after Neverland had been a little more complicated than she had expected. Honestly, the town didn't really get up to anything while they were gone so imagine her surprise when three burst pipes and an unusual, but minor tremor caused enough damage that she had to sign off on the budget for reconstruction.

So, she was definitely happy to be home. At least those were her thoughts before she opened the door to the smoke detector blaring and smoke smearing the air. Henry was yelling about something and Regina was already stressed out enough. Now the house was on fire.

"Henry?" She called rushing into the house closing the door behind her, phone and keys still clutched in her hands. "Henry?"

The sound of pans clattering was the only reply she seemed to get as Henry's shouting went silent. She briskly hurried towards the kitchen waving the smoke away from her face.

"Emma?!"

When she arrived at the doorway to the kitchen she heard the obvious sound of the fire extinguisher being sprayed. Henry was the first to appear in her line of sight. His hair was disheveled but was smiling sheepishly with black smears across his face. He engulfed her in a hug and she hugged him back if only to calm her rapidly beating heart.

"Hi mom." Henry mumbled into her coat.

"Henry…" She freed a hand from his back and used her magic to clear up the smoke. Her shoulders deflated instantly spotting Emma holding the extinguisher and looking a little more disheveled than Henry did. Actually, she just looked completely devastated, which worried Regina. "Emma, are you okay? Are you hurt?"

"No." Emma shook her head but didn't look any less distraught. "I was just…"

Regina raised an eyebrow at the blonde and turned to Henry. "Are you okay, darling?"

"I'm fine, mom. We were just trying to help out."

"I know, my little prince. Thank you." She kissed his forehead and brushed his growing hair out of his face. "Go get cleaned up, okay?"

"Okay." He nodded, heading towards the door. He stopped short and turned around to her. "Can we have pizza for dinner?"

Regina looked around the kitchen with a sigh. There was no way she was cleaning that up enough to cook dinner before Henry's bedtime. She had no choice but to relent. Giving him a quiet nod, she shooed him out the room and averted her attention back to Emma who was still hugging the extinguisher as she looked at the source of the kitchen disaster.

The brunette put her keys and phone down on the counter and walked over to Emma. She examined the oven that was about as well done as whatever was inside and there was one medium sized scorch mark on the counter. Everything else was just smoky and covered in flame retardant.

"Sweetheart, are you sure you're okay?" She asked, gently touching her shoulder before firmly taking the extinguisher from her arms and placing it on the counter. "Emma?"

"I just wanted to make you dinner. That's all…" Emma said absently, still staring at the oven.

"What were you making?" Regina questioned.

"Meatloaf…Well, I was trying. I don't even know what happened."

"As long as you and Henry are alright, it doesn't matter how it happened."

"But-"

"It's the thought that counts and it was very sweet."

Emma shook her head, raking a hand through her hair. "I'm useless."

"Oh, Emma." Regina turned her around so that they were face to face. "Don't say that. Not everyone can cook and it's perfectly fine if you can't."

"No, but what if you break both your hands…or you get hurt in general. I can't cook and we'd be eating take out. What if you couldn't ever use your arms again to cook or do anything and you're stuck with me?"

"Emma, my god, where is all of this coming from?" Regina asked with furrowed brow. "You and I both know the chances of that happening to me are very slim. Breaking both hands, however, sounds very much like you. In any case, if it really means that much to you, I can teach you how to cook."

"You'd do that?" Emma asked, sounding surprised

"I'm your true love. I have a feeling it's my responsibility to teach you so you don't kill yourself making pasta." Just as she was hoping, Emma gave a small smile of amusement that she tried to hide. Regina brought her hands up to Emma's face and kissed her nose. "You're perfect how you are. You're incredibly sweet and selfless…and, of course, willing to put up with me of all people. You are also a giant idiot but I still love you."

"I love you, too." Emma grinned and pulled Regina into a hug and kissed her a few times on her chin and then on her lips. "Sorry about the counter, though."

"It's replaceable." Regina said. "You are not."

She blinked out of the memory with a tired sigh. It was a favorite memory of hers. She wasn't sure why but surely it had to do with the fact that the coffee maker was now next to the spot on the counter that still held a small singe from the incident.

Regina brushed her fingers against the spot and pulled her hand away quickly when she realized she would be late for work if she spent any more time remembering Emma's many incidents that left marks here and there around the house. They almost were the only things that proved Emma once lived here. That Regina was once loved by someone very special.

Emma's scent had faded from her pillow and her other belongings. Regina didn't have enough energy to be ashamed or embarrassed that she cried for hours after having noticed Emma's favorite sweatshirt no longer smelled like Emma.

Henry's things still smelled of him but soon that would fade too. She felt she'd already had Emma slip away from her even more but once Henry's things just smelled of clean linen or an unused room, that's when it would get ever harder to live there alone.

So, for now those spots were all she was going to have left of them but she would have to learn to reminisce when convenient if she were to attempt to find a way to move on. Though, Regina was sure she would never be able to, eventually she would have to actually try.

Regina turned on the coffeemaker and sighed to herself, leaning heavily on her hands against the counter as she tried not to give that scorch mark another glance.

Emma groaned, slapping her hand against her alarm. And even though the annoying sound stopped, there was no off button for the barking right beside her bed. She removed her head from under her two pillows and glanced over the edge of the bed to the wide awake puppy sitting up in her little doggy bed.

"You couldn't just give me ten more minutes, Duchess?" Emma asked tiredly.

Had she known Cavalier King Charles Spaniel meant pampered, spoiled puppy she wouldn't have…well, no. She still would have adopted the little diva, she just wouldn't have been so surprised.

She dropped her hand down to the puppy and grinned when Duchess nipped at her fingers and then nudged at her hand impatiently.

"Okay, okay. I'm up." Emma sighed, pushing herself out of bed and wiping her hand across her face. She pulled open her nightstand drawer and grabbed her notebook, flipping to a new page. She uncapped a pen and wrote something down. "She was there again, Duchess. I burned down her kitchen and she didn't flip out. Sounds like the woman of my dreams, huh?"

The puppy sneezed and Emma just closed her book. She put it back in its hiding place and got out of bed, scooping up the dog to her right arm. A yawn escaped her lips as she set the puppy down on the indoor potty patch she found at the store that surprisingly worked.

"I pee, you pee, and then you sit there while I finish, deal?" Emma asked absently. Duchess knew exactly what to do, seeming to like routine, relieving herself just as Emma closed the door to the separate part of the bathroom where the toilet was.

As instructed, Duchess moved off the patch and stayed in one spot while Emma got ready for work. Although, Emma was sure the only reason she was listening was because she didn't like her paws to touch the ground. She had to be carried if she was going anywhere.

Emma picked her up and put her on the bed while she got ready and then carried her into the kitchen. She sat her in front of her food bowl, poured in the expensive dog food, and started herself some coffee.

"Henry?" She called, heading down the hallway after sitting down some water for Duchess. "Time to get up, kid."

She opened the door to his room and found him reading the book again. She wasn't sure where he got it from but he had been so caught up in it since he found it. Though, it wasn't much of a problem considering he wasn't getting too distracted from everything else going on in his life. Still did his homework. Still practicing hard for baseball.

"Well, at least you're up." Emma said, leaning against the door frame. "What do you want for breakfast?"

Henry slowly pulled his eyes away from the book and looked up to her. "Um, I'm really just feeling cereal today."

"Okay, then. Come on. Can't be late today."

Henry closed the book and shoved it into his bag with his notebook. "You say that every day."

"And it is true every day." Emma argued.

"David…"

"Okay, that's upside down..."

"David-"

"F…to 1B…" David frowned looking at the instructions to the crib he was supposed to be building. "This makes no sense. That part is not even in English."

Snow grinned at him as she sat on the couch with a protruding belly and an aching back.

The whole waking up eight months pregnant wasn't at all what she was expecting from a curse. No one was expecting to be put under yet another curse where their memories were now missing either. She remembered saying goodbye to Henry and Emma and going back to the Enchanted Forest. Anything after that, for an entire year, was just missing.

"David, take a break." She sighed. He looked to her in concern and dropped the instructions to the floor.

"What's wrong?"

"How are we doing this right now David?" Snow asked.

"Doing what?"

"Building cribs and looking for a house…"

"What's wrong with that?" He questioned, coming to sit next to her on the couch.

"David, we have daughter out there somewhere. It's like we're giving up on ever finding her again. It took some time for her to even consider forgiving us for putting her through that wardrobe…What were we thinking? Another baby?"

"I know for a fact that we weren't looking to replace Emma. Nothing could ever replace her."

"Then how did we end up with another baby?" Snow hissed.

"Maybe things just got rough. Maybe one of us was having a hard time and…the Enchanted Forest isn't known for its excellent forms of birth control." David chuckled and Snow tried not to show any amusement by it. "The heat of the moment. Maybe we just forgot to consider the consequences…I don't know but we're not replacing Emma."

"We still have plenty of other problems, David."

"Snow-" He started, taking her hands in his.

"Now is not a good time to have a baby. We're cursed…again. Our memories are gone. And then there's…Regina. I'm worried about her."

"I know."

"She works and then she goes home. I can't imagine how the house feels without Henry and Emma there."

"We're going to get them back, Snow. For her and for us."

"I don't doubt that but we haven't found them yet. Regina is taking this worse than anyone. We have each other, David. Regina doesn't have much of anyone. Hook's gone and he was her friend."

David nodded, sighing to himself in frustration. "Maybe I'll start helping her out a little more with finding a way to take down the barrier at the town line. Could help to have a Charming to yell at…"

"She may yell but I'm sure she'll secretly appreciate the company. Regina just needs to know she's not alone. We'll see if Tinkerbell and I can't convince her to have lunch or at least coffee."

"Well then that's settled." He clapped his hands against his knees and glared over to the pieces of crib laying on the floor. "I think I'm going to take a break from that."

"I think you should." Snow smirked.

Henry watched his mother pull off in the bug and then turned back to the front of the school where everyone was walking into the building and parents were talking. He looked down to the book in his hands and up to the familiar man sitting on a nearby bench with a coffee in his hand. He had a pair of sunglasses on and was looking down at his phone.

It had to be him. That man was the only thing out of place since he got the book. His bag hadn't gone missing and the book hadn't shown up until they ran into each other. There something weird about that book. It gave him a weird feeling. Like he was missing something important about all those characters inside. On top of that he wanted to know why the man left it with him.

He walked over to the bench, taking a seat on the opposite side and placed the book in the space between them.

"Morning, lad." The man greeted.

"You gave me the book." Henry stated.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you'll believe."

"Believe what?" Henry frowned. "They're just stories."

"You don't really think that, do you? That they're just stories?"

"They are…who are you?"

"Didn't find me in there?"

Henry examined his face with a small frown. He was becoming faintly familiar to him. Not just from the book either. It was like they knew each other once but surely Henry would've remembered him if he dated his mother. That wasn't who he was though. Henry could certainly only remember one guy a long time ago and a woman not too recently either.

He glanced down to his book and then back up to the man. Cut his hair short and leave only a bit of stubble on his face. Henry's eyes widened and he let out a small gasp. "You're Captain Hook?"

"At your service Prince Henry." Killian bowed his head slightly. "I gave it to you because you're the truest believer. Your family needs you to believe in them."

"My family?"

"Emma, of course, needs you to believe. Regina, your grandparents, your father..."

"My father?" He asked suspiciously. "Regina? The Evil Queen?"

"She adopted you and she's not that person anymore. She loves misses you and your mother very much." When Henry started to look confused, Killian sat down the coffee at his feet and pulled off the sunglasses. "Everything in that book is true. All the people are real."

"But-"

"We need you, Henry."

"How?"

Killian pulled the vial from his coat and sat it down on top of the story book. "I'm a stranger to you, I know, and there are rules about that but this is important. I'm asking you to drink this, lad, and if you do, I won't ask you to come with me. You can leave."

Henry picked up the vial and looked at it intensely. "What is it?"

"It's a memory potion." He tapped a finger against the glass. "It took a lot…cost a lot to get that."

"Cost?"

"My ship but it's a mere possession. If I really wanted another, I could get one but it's not important."

"The Jolly Roger. You gave up the Jolly Roger for this? Why are you doing this? Why is it so important to you?"

"I owe your mother a great deal. And I promised her she would see you again. Rather not start off my redemption with a big failure with something so important."

"Okay. But if I don't get any memories back, I'm telling my mom." Henry threatened.

Killian nodded. "No need. I'll go away." He reached down beside him and picked up Henry's backpack.

Henry pursed his lips as he sat it down next to his feet. The teen looked down to the vial, giving one last skeptical glance to the man. He pulled the cork from the vial and hesitantly brought it to his lips, noticing Killian was no longer look at him anymore.

"Don't drink it all. Save some for Emma." He commented, just as the potion hit his tongue. There was still half left when he was done and Henry put the cork back in with a frown.

"Nothing is happen-"

Killian caught the vial as it fell from Henry's hand as the boy gasped in surprise. Images flashed before his eyes. Memories. Family he couldn't believe had forgotten. His grandparents. His dad.

His mom.

Henry inhaled a deep breath and looked to the pirate beside him. A smile broke out on his face and sprung from his spot on the bench. "It's you!" He exclaimed and Killian grinned. "You're here in New York."

"Indeed, I am."

"My mom sent you?"

"Not exactly. I made it my mission after…" He paused. It was something probably shouldn't mention to him. "Well, that doesn't matter right now. I saw how upset your mother was with you both gone so I took it upon myself to try and find you. And then during my travels I received a message that there was a new curse."

"A new curse?" Henry said to himself. "Well, we have to go home. Back to my mom."

"While I agree with you, Henry, one thing at a time." Killian reasoned. "You still have to get to your lessons for today, of course."

"We have more important things to do."

With a sigh, Killian crouched down in front of him with the vial in his hand. "Storybrooke is important. Getting back to your family is as well but you have an important job right now. You have to keep this safe and get the rest of this to your mother. Maybe in her drink."

"We have to go now then."

"Just trust me on this one if you show up with a stranger, no way is she going to want to have a drink anytime soon. And if your mother isn't convinced we have no way to Storybrooke anyway. I can't drive and neither can you."

"I guess you're right. But how can I focus through the day knowing all this?" Henry huffed folding his arms across his chest.

"You're the son of the Evil Queen and the Savior, I'm sure you'll find a way." Killian assured pushing the vial into his coat pocket. "Now you should be off. Doesn't that bell ring soon?"

"Yeah." Henry sighed. "I'll see you after school?"

"Send me a message once your mother remembers. Then we'll see each other."

"Okay." Henry nodded, handing over his phone so that Killian could leave the number.

"Here you are." The pirate pulled something from his pocket and handed it to Henry along with his phone. He took it seeing that it was a photo of him with his mothers. He looked up to the pirate and smiled gratefully.

To Killian's surprise, Henry hugged him and he returned it tentatively.

"Thank you for coming to get us."

I'm pouring it into her water. Will that work?

Yes, it should.

Do you know where we live? We should probably get going as soon as possible.

I should be there in five minutes after you send me the message. Let your mother decide when we leave. You do still have a life here.

Okay. She's on her way in.

Henry sighed but put down his phone and grabbed Emma's water bottle from the refrigerator. He gave a side eye to the puppy that was watching him with a tilted was also the same look his mother had gave him after he practically tackled her to the ground for a hug. It felt like he was seeing her for the first time again. Completely slipped his mind not to act unusual.

"I think you'll like my mom. She was a Queen once." He told the puppy. "But my Ma still says she is, so I guess she is. Either way, she's sophisticated like you are."

Duchess barked in response but Henry shrugged it off as he poured the potion into the bottle. He closed the cap and shook it up.

Emma was just coming from her run so she'd probably drink the whole bottle in one go. It was going to be more effective than put it in her coffee in the morning since it took her forever to finish it.

He pushed it back into the refrigerator and grabbed the vial off the counter. Duchess yapped at him as he walked by and he rolled his eyes as he picked her up from the floor. "Puppies are supposed to run around and stuff." He muttered, sitting her down on the couch next to him and resumed his video game.

After a few minutes, he heard keys on the other side of the door and was actually really excited for his mother to arrive. He was ready to go back to Storybrooke as soon as possible. Although, he knew Emma might be in shock for a bit but she'd be ready to get back to his mom too. They were True Loves and his brunette mother had been living without them for a long time. Surely, she would be worried about her living all alone all this time.

"I hear a video game." Emma called coming down the hallway. "Did you finish your homework, kid?"

"Yep." Henry answered, glancing to Duchess who made herself comfortable on the cushion beside him. "Good run?"

"Yeah, great." She replied, pulling her other earbud out as she laid down her phone and keys. She opened the refrigerator, distracting Henry from his game. He kept his eyes on the screen but he was listening so hard in anticipation his virtual car was driving on the sidewalk and roughly missing turns. He paused the game and turned around as she brought the water to her lips.

As he expected, Emma gulped down the water in record time. She let out a relieved breath. Then the potion surely hit her...and pretty hard, too. Her face dropped and the water bottle dropped from her hand, making the loudest thudding sound possible. Henry watched her breathing pick up as she held on to the counter with a tight grip.

"Ma?" Henry questioned standing up from the couch. Duchess started barking, sensing someone was in distress. "Ma, are you okay?"

Emma's breathing became labored and unexpectedly, her nose started to bleed. Henry's eyes widened and he was about to go for his phone to call Killian when she sucked in a sharp breath.

"Ma?"

"Oh god, my head." Emma moaned, bringing her hand to her face. Henry swiped the towel from the table and rushed over to her. They were both surprised to hear a jiggling collar as Duchess walked over to them both.

"Are you okay?" Henry asked, handing her the towel. She took it and held it against her nose. She put her free hand on his shoulder and looked at him intensely. "Henry…"

"I know. I remember."

"Oh." She leaned against the counter. "Hook…he was here…"

"He gave me the memory potion. Although that didn't happen to me. Maybe I gave you too much."

"I have a lot more memories than you do, Hen." Emma closed her eyes and sighed. "Wow, that potion had a punch."

A knock on the door interrupted their conversation and Henry went to go answer it. He opened the door to Killian and the man looked inside to Emma. "Swan?" He asked.

"Captain." Emma chuckled. "Sorry I didn't recognize you earlier

"It's alright. Good to see you, love." He smiled, walking in with Henry after he closed the door.

"How did you know to come?" Henry questioned.

"You called but didn't say anything and then I heard something was wrong. I needed to make sure you were alright."

"She got a nosebleed." Henry supplied, going over to his phone to end the call he had made without knowing.

"I'm fine. Really, fine."

"That's good to hear, love. Because there's a new curse and Storybrooke needs their savior again."

"Storybrooke…" Emma mumbled. Her many dreams came pouring back into her head. "Oh god, how long has it been? A year?"

"And then some, I assume." Killian said. He and Henry looked at her curiously but maybe it should have been very obvious what she was thinking about. "What is it, Swan?"

"How could I forget her? I can't believe it." Emma said, pulling the towel away from her face. She walked up to Henry and kissed his head. Henry smiled at her knowing exactly what she was talking about but Killian was still confused.

"Regina."

SQ shall reunite very soon. :)