I'm so glad people like the meeting between Mulan and Henry! It's gonna be fun writing them together.
As always, read and review!
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By the time David arrived at the mansion night had fallen, his truck was running on fumes, and he wasn't sure he could feel his fingers. Either the digits had gone so cold in the rain that he really had lost feeling or he had gripped the steering wheel so tightly he'd cut off his own circulation.
As if a little thing like finger sensation mattered right now.
The rain was pounding harder and felt like it was trying to blind him as he drove up the road and haphazardly parked in the middle of the mansion driveway behind Emma's yellow bug. He slammed the door shut and ran up the steps, taking them three at a time. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Regina speeding up the driveway. She pulled up behind him, her car screeching to an angry halt on the pavement. David could feel the anger rolling off the Queen. It was a miracle she hadn't set anything on fire yet. Her control must've barely been in check.
David didn't know his way around the extensive mansion, and was ready to run through every room and floor, screaming for Emma and Killian until he found them. Before he could, Regina called out to him impatiently from a side hallway, "This way! Hurry up!"
"How do you know-?"
She didn't answer him, already turning down the hallway with surefooted strides, the heat of her magic practically scorching the air around her. For all her obvious fury, she was very controlled, the line of her shoulders rigid and strong. Her physical assuredness was a stark contrast to the turmoil that must have been exploding inside of her at Henry's disappearance.
David ran after Regina, following her around every tucked in corner and side door. He nearly lost sight of her several times when she pulled on a trick book or false candle to open a secret passage. This mansion was a labyrinth that would drive a person insane.
Whether it was five minutes later or fifty, it took entirely too long for David's liking to reach the secret book room. As they entered he saw Killian standing dejected to one side and watched Emma drop her glowing hands to angrily pull on the handle of a painted wooden door that stood ominously alone in the middle of the room.
"Seriously? Open damn it!"
"I told you, Emma, it was locked when I got here. We don't know what kind of magic surrounds this door. Perhaps it means to keep us out." To say Killian looked terrible would have been a gross understatement. He wore the face of a man about to fall from his last hope. The pirate had been out in the storm for the better part of the afternoon and had sat in front of the tauntingly locked portal for the rest of the day, so close but unable to go after Henry to remedy his perceived mistake. Killian was still probably thinking that it was all his fault that Henry had gotten to this door, how if he hadn't held David back in the park they could all be talking to Henry in the safety of Storybrooke instead of trying to fly to the Enchanted Forest after him.
Emma finally let go of the door handle to face Killian, whose hand and hook were paused halfway to holding her, torn between moving closer and pulling back.
Emma's voice was barely restrained in anger as she spoke, "There has to be a way through this door. My magic opened the door to Arendelle, so why won't it work here?" It broke David's heart to see his daughter like this. She was so close to being able to run after Henry but was stopped dead in her tracks. This wasn't about being the Savior and unable to help someone, this was Emma Swan the mother, unable to go after her son.
Regina had heard enough. While David watched Emma and Killian, the Queen had been studying the door and whatever magic prevented it from being opened again. She lifted her hands and David watched in fascination as they glowed an eerie bright green.
"Move," She seethed, her voice no louder than usual but carrying a weight and authority that had Emma and Hook snapping to attention, finally noticing the two new comers.
Hook's arms finished their initial movement and reached for Emma, pulling her away from the door just as Regina shot the green light at the portal. A white light shone around the door on impact, revealing the barrier keeping it shut. The barrier started cracking in green and white splinters as Regina's magic worked through the portal's shield. With every shattered piece of the shield, the door slowly started to open.
"But how…" Emma started, wide-eyed. She held her hands loosely in front of her, and David knew she was questioning her abilities.
Regina cried out in effort and a brighter pulse of green light emanated from her hands. The light shot into the barrier and pulled the door open wide enough for a person to fit through.
"I'm forcing it. Now go!" Regina called, eyes locked on the doorway.
Emma didn't need to be told twice and she raced through the door at full speed. Hook quickly followed, both of them disappearing into the splintering green and white streaks of magic.
From where he stood behind Regina, David could see her shoulders shaking from magical strain. And as he moved to run through the door himself he caught sight of Regina's face. Her mouth was tight but trembling, her eyes narrowed angrily but brimming with unshed tears. She wasn't going through the portal, he realized. Regina was staying to keep the doorway open and was sacrificing her chance to find her son. She trusted them to bring Henry back safe.
In that split second, he made a choice. Instead of running through the portal, he grabbed the door to wrench it open further. As soon as his hands touched the wood he felt a surge of energy pour through him. It was like lightning and fire rushing through his veins, burning him from the inside out. His hands felt scorched and seared where they met the wood of the door, and he didn't know if his desperate attempt would make a difference at all in keeping the portal open. He only knew he wanted Regina to have the chance to go after her son.
Regina's eyes locked with David's in surprise and her mouth opened, probably to yell at him for wasting time. She never got the chance to reprimand him though, because he yelled out to her first.
"Go!"
Regina paused only a second longer to send David a single, grateful look before running through the shattering portal herself. As soon as she crossed the threshold, the door was yanked from David's hands and snapped shut with a resounding thud. He fell to the floor, suddenly exhausted and barely able to move, the world fading in and out of focus around him. He wondered briefly if that was what handling magic was like. It was pure and lethal power and took the life right out of him.
And apparently also his skin. Looking down at his palms David found that the scorching feeling from the door was far from imaginary, and had left some very physical marks on him. His hands were burned an angry red and blistered in several spots. If he had held on any longer he could very well have lost all of the skin, could have lost the hands themselves. Maybe he wasn't meant to handle that kind of magic, he thought wearily. But the deed was done and he wouldn't change his actions.
There was no doubt in his mind that he made the right decision to have Regina go through the portal instead of him. He remembered when Zelena had taken his son Neal from the hospital only months before. Being able to run after her had been a blessing David didn't know he'd had. It had given him a sense of purpose at the time, instead of having to wait for someone else, albeit people he trusted, to bring his son back to him.
Looking at the painted door David knew it would stay locked now. If there were already magical protections in place that even Regina had to force her way through then it was inevitable that the door stay closed. But maybe he could get Belle to help him find a way to open it for the return journey. She knew Gold's shop and inventory like the back of her hand. There had to be a spell in there that she could use.
Just as David was beginning to hope the door would be his family's ticket back to Storybrooke, it started to vanish. Bit by bit, in circles of white and green tinged light, the door dematerialized in front of him. It was as if the door read his thoughts and was taunting him, saying 'nope, not this way'.
Soon he was left lying in the room with the blank storybooks, alone with his thoughts and seared skin. Not knowing if Emma and the others had even reached the Enchanted Forest or if they had been thrown through the portal to somewhere realms away from Henry. He had to believe they would find each other though, because if there was one thing David Nolan and his family were good at, it was never giving up on each other.
He would have to tell Mary Margaret what happened, he blearily realized, and then they could talk to Belle about finding a different portal to bring everyone home. Of course, he would have to find the energy to move first though.
Anger was the first thing that crossed Regina's mind when she saw David trying to hold the door open himself without magic. How dare he waste her efforts, she had thought. He knew she didn't need help opening the portal, had seen his daughter and the pirate run through it already. So what in the hell did he think he was trying to prove?
Gratitude was the next thing to cross her mind. He'd told her to 'go', to find Henry while he stayed behind. She didn't question it or waste another moment, only hoped he understood her unspoken thanks as she raced through the doorway. Whether or not he realized the depths of what he had done in that moment Regina knew she would be forever thankful for his trust in her and understanding that she needed to find Henry herself.
Robin was gone from her life forever, and Regina knew she couldn't handle losing Henry too, not again. At least by going to the Enchanted Forest herself she felt as if she had a say in the matter of her son's return.
Unlike other portal doors where a single step was all that was needed to cross the realms, this portal felt like running through a long tunnel. A tunnel that happened to be collapsing and proverbially flooding behind her, trying to pull her under its magical weight, but Regina ran harder, her legs burning with the effort. She could feel something ahead of her pushing back as she ran blindly forward, trying to force her into the abyss behind her. It was like trying to sprint through rapids while outrunning a whirlpool, and it was just as impossible to breathe.
Something really didn't want them getting through that door.
The realization made Regina run harder, just to prove her would be nemesis wrong. Her lungs burned from the lack of air and her legs threatened to give out on her, but couldn't give in, not when Henry's life could be on the line. She burst through a barrier only moments later, leaving the drowning maelstrom of the portal behind. Suddenly she was weightless, nothing pushing against her front and nothing chasing her down from the back. Her limbs sputtered in relief at the lack of pressure and she flew forward. It was several steps before she caught herself from careening face first into the muddy ground, arms thrown out beside her in an attempt at balance.
It took her a few moments to catch her breath, but even then she still felt winded. She had used too much magic to force the portal open, Regina realized. It could be days before she got back to full strength. That was time she didn't have. Henry could be in danger at that exact moment and she wouldn't be able to help.
A squelching sound brought Regina's attention to her traveling companions, who were currently finding their feet in the muddy forest clearing. It was so dark she had trouble seeing their figures standing several feet away.
Hook, though completely drenched from the rain in Storybrooke, seemed to be mud free, and was currently lending a hand to the Savior, who had tumbled into the slick ground.
"You ok?" Regina heard him ask, puppy dog eyes probably pleading as usual.
Emma took his offered hand up and brushed the mud off her jeans and leather jacket as best she could. "Just once I'd like to land on my feet out of a portal," She muttered, annoyed.
A loud slam echoed through the clearing and the three whipped around to watch the portal door slam angrily shut. The door started to dematerialize in a mist of green and white light that lit the dark clearing in an eerie glow; giving the three several moments of light that lingered after the door vanished.
The pirate turned to Regina. "Where's David?" He asked warily. Emma's eyes stayed nervously glued to the disappearing door. Regina knew that she was afraid her father was trapped inside the portal during its collapse, but she didn't need to worry.
"He let me go through," Regina answered. When two sets of eyes locked onto her she shifted her feet, anxious under their scrutiny. "David held the door open and let me go through instead of him. He's back in Storybrooke."
Green eyes met brown and held them for a moment before softening. Emma realized why her father let her through instead of coming himself, and Regina was grateful for the Savior's understanding. The one thing they'd had in common since before the first curse was broken was their personal responsibility for Henry's safety.
Emma absently flipped her blonde hair over one shoulder with a still muddy hand, eager to move the conversation forward. "So, if we had that hard a time getting through the door, then how the hell did Henry manage it?"
"Perhaps the doorway chose to let him in, but only him," Hook offered. "It may be a temperamental portal of sorts."
"Doors can be picky? I don't know if I buy it. I thought portals were supposed to just be open or closed? Not have moods." Emma cast a doubtful look at the pirate, but looked a little unsure of her logic.
"The pirate may be right," Regina noted, surprising them both. "It's not exactly about mood, but there are some portals that are magically inclined to only let certain types of people through, like the pure-hearted. But this door…"
"But this door what?" Emma asked, taking several steps toward Regina, boots squelching in the mud.
Regina struggled to put the words together in her mind. She wasn't certain herself yet, and she didn't want to give the wrong impression about the portal's nature, lest it lead them all on a wild goose chase away from Henry.
"If it were about being pure of heart, that wouldn't have stopped you, Miss Swan. You are a product of true love and have plenty of light magic ability," She mused. "This portal's magic was… raw somehow, and untrained. It looked like the Arendelle door and even tried to behave like it, but it was just a field of shifting energy and intention."
"And for those of us not magically inclined…?" Hook questioned, irked at being out of the loop.
"You were right Killian. Someone didn't want anyone but Henry using that door," Emma's voice was hollow in realization. Regina didn't want to admit what such a thing implied, but she knew Emma was thinking the same thing as her. A portal made specifically for Henry could mean someone wanted to lure Henry away. Maybe they had a vendetta against her or the Savior or someone else from Henry's life, or maybe word had gotten out that Henry possessed the heart of the truest believer. Information like that couldn't have stayed confined to Neverland forever. It wasn't much of a stretch to assume his heart could be used for any number of magical purposes, be they dark, light, or otherwise.
"Possibly," Regina answered, voice tight and her arms curling tensely around her.
The three were quiet for several moments, lost in their thoughts of what magical force had brought Henry to the Enchanted Forest and been so keen on keeping everyone else out.
Fully taking in their surroundings for the first time Regina realized her clothes were probably the least practical things to be wearing in the Enchanted Forest after a rainstorm and she wished she had brought a rain jacket of some sort with her. Instead, she was stuck wearing the pencil skirt, blazer, and blouse she had spent the day doing paperwork in. While her boots were at least slightly more practical than stilettos, even with their thin heels, she was sorely tempted to use what little magic she had right now to change outfits.
She knew she wouldn't though.
The portal had dumped them on the top of a wooded hill, overlooking a misty valley of dense pine forest. It had clearly rained earlier, and for the rain to seep through the thick trees of the forest enough to muddy the ground this much, it must have been one hell of a storm. But the sky was mostly clear now, moonless and starry with only the barest wisps of spent rainclouds floating through the night air, and when Regina looked up she saw the constellations of her childhood. If Regina remembered correctly and if the doorway worked like other portals she had used, then it was probably around the same time of night and year here as in Storybrooke.
"Does anyone else find that particular blot of mist to be a tad out of place?" Hook pulled the two women out of their reverie, pointing to a wall of impenetrable clouds trapped in one corner of the valley several miles away, covering a good chunk of the forest below. The clouds were too thick to just be mist or fog, and more closely resembled the dense thunderclouds that probably caused the earlier heavy rain. But the way they just sat in the valley, impossibly unmoving and stoically rigid, had warning bells going off in Regina's mind.
There was something magical and wrong about those clouds.
"Why do I get the feeling Henry probably walked straight into that stupidly ominous mist?" Emma asked, decidedly not amused at the realization.
"Because he's our son and a trouble magnet," Regina replied easily. She knew logically it was too dark to safely follow after Henry's trail, (Assuming he'd willingly gone into the grounded cloud of death in the first place, but then again, where else would he go?) but she'd be damned if she was going to let something as inconsequential as a lack of light stop her. "Miss Swan, I do believe we need some light if we're going down this hill anytime soon."
Emma looked at Regina curiously. "You're not gonna use your fireballs?"
Regina gave in to the urge to roll her eyes. "I can't do all the magical heavy lifting, or did you miss the part where I forced open a locked portal?"
The Savior looked ready to snap something at Regina, but the one-handed wonder swooped in front of Emma with a hand on her shoulder "Emma, love," He started quickly. "Henry can't have gone far and he has the common sense to stop somewhere for the night. We can catch up to him, wherever he is."
Regina almost missed the change in the pirate's voice. It was less cocky than usual, more prayerful and dare she say, apologetic. Regina certainly wasn't Hook's biggest fan but she was still grateful for everything he had done to help them in the past and even today. He had clearly been out in the Storybrooke rain for some time so he must have been searching for Henry just as diligently as David was. And he found the portal door at the mansion that Henry had probably used, so what did he have to be apologetic about? If anything, his apology seemed more like a concerted effort at fixing something.
Uneasiness settled in the back of Regina's mind. Whatever that something was he was trying to fix, Regina would bet anything it had to do with Henry. Maybe it even had to do with why Henry ran through the portal in the first place.
If Emma noticed the change in her boyfriend's tone she didn't acknowledge it or even look at him as he spoke. Her eyes were now glued to the foreboding cloud in the valley, green orbs hard and determined.
"My light, my lead Regina," The blonde said, voice steely and leaving no room for question.
"Fine." If the Savior wanted to lead during the night then that was fine with Regina. She wasn't going argue. She was too emotionally and magically drained to put up much of a fight anyway.
Emma took a steadying breath and held one hand in front of her, brow furrowed in concentration for several moments, before a halo of light filled the area around her in the form of a handheld fireball.
The relief on Emma's face was almost comical to Regina. Why was the Savior always so surprised whenever she used magic for anything outside of a fight? Yes, magic stemmed from emotions, and it was always easier to draw from them during the heat of battle, but Emma had come a long way from accidentally blowing out walls or overheating a baby bottle.
Emma strode forward to move down the hill and toward the cloud, fireball in hand and Hook following closely on her heels like a lovesick puppy. Regina walked with them but kept several steps behind. Their boots squelched with every step and Regina couldn't help the quiet scoff that escaped her at the ridiculousness of the sound. Knowing their rotten luck, they were walking straight into a great big magical disaster that Henry would somehow be at the center of, and they were going to get there by squishing along a muddy forest in an oddly anticlimactic, entirely laughable fashion.
She had faced far more frightening and dangerous things than an echoing squelch to achieve her goals, and as long as Henry was ok and she could get him back to Storybrooke safe and sound, Regina would do whatever it took to find him. She might have to survive camping with captain guy-liner and the Savior to do it, but she would find her son.
"So does this make me your squire?"
Mulan looked at Henry curiously as they walked through the downtrodden village, but didn't answer him. Night had just about fallen as far as she could tell (Truthfully it was so dark earlier that Mulan had a hard time knowing just what time of day it was at all. The clouds seemed thicker than usual of late.) and the pair still needed to drop off the stolen items from the trolls before finding somewhere to sleep. While Mulan would have been thrilled to have a soft bed, she knew they would more than likely be shown to a haystack in a barn or stable. A town as poor and down on its luck as this one rarely had enough beds to sleep its own residents, let alone travelers. There wasn't even an inn to speak of, which made Mulan all the more certain that they rarely got any travelers at all that needed putting up for the night. It reminded her of home briefly and she forced the memories aside before they could plague her the way they always did.
"What about your apprentice? It'd be so cool to have an apprentice. Someone you could pass things on to and teach. Like in Fantasia! And Star Wars! You could be my Sorcerer or my Obi-Wan Kenobi!" Obi-who? He must have made those things up. There was no way such things could exist outside the realm of an individual's imagination.
How could this be the same young man who, only hours earlier appeared ready to faint at the sight of the troll's deceased bodies? Were all of his questions and nonsensical ramblings a coping mechanism? Mulan didn't recall Emma Swan or Baelfire shying away from the dead in her time with either of them, but their life experiences had likely forced them to a certain level of tolerance around the deceased. It was certainly something she had been forced to learn early on.
Henry, for all his enthusiasm and zeal about adventure, seemed far too green in his endeavors. She still wasn't sure what his so-called quest was for. He claimed it was to prove his worthiness and maturity to his family, but Mulan was starting to think perhaps he wanted to prove it to himself more, even if he didn't realize it yet. He was clearly a well-learned young man who had potential and ambition, but to do what exactly, Mulan didn't know.
"This is your first time in this realm, yes? And you don't have a map or way of knowing where you are in the forest?" She asked, curious about his answer. A few townspeople wandered around them as they walked along the dirt road, staring oddly at Henry's strange clothes and how clean he looked. Mulan couldn't blame them for staring, since she was just as curious about some of his garments, even having seen his parent's clothes. His pants were an odd textured shade of blue and his shoes, though covered in mud from their walk, were bright and colorful. And with his red scarf, clean dark coat, and chin held high, Mulan thought he would have fit in fairly easily with some of the nobility she had met in her travels.
It made him look all the more green and ill fit for the forest.
"I told you I have a compass," He offered defensively, as though preparing himself for her dismissal.
Mulan didn't want to dismiss him. She had been serious when she said it was dangerous to be alone in the forest, and she certainly didn't want Henry wandering around there in all his inexperience and naivety. That was what she told herself anyway. Part of her admitted that maybe she had been on her own for a tad too long and just wanted some company, even if she had to take the time to teach him to survive in the forest. There was just one thing she wanted to be certain of first.
"You mentioned that you picked west at random to travel, and that you were happy to be moving further west. You admit you had no way of knowing what lay ahead, so why did you choose that direction?" She was testing him. It was a little mean of her but if he was going to tag along she needed at least some shred of evidence that he wouldn't impulsively fly off the handle at the first chance, and that he could focus and be logical both when it counted and when it didn't necessarily matter. Good instincts were one thing, but having the patience to find the right signs and clues to make an informed decision was another thing entirely.
Henry shrugged. "I didn't know what was in any other direction either. What did I have to lose?" It wasn't the answer she had hoped for, but it struck a chord in her nonetheless, bringing with it an unbidden memory.
"I'll go west. I've nothing to lose now."
She barely recognized her own voice in her memories anymore. Had it been so long since she'd thought of them? She never liked reliving those moments, even in the privacy of her mind where she had full control over them, so to have someone bring it up so unexpectedly for her…
"Um, Mulan?" She came to and saw Henry staring at her oddly.
She gave him a smile. Maybe this was what she needed. Some fate had brought them together and she wouldn't turn from it. "I don't know who this Obi-wan is, but perhaps there is no name yet, for what it is we are doing."
Henry's lips curled unhappily. "So I'm not a squire then?"
"No Henry, you're not a squire." But you could be a friend, she thought. "We need to bring these to whoever is in charge. Then we can find a place to sleep."
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So a little peek into Mulan's thoughts and now we've got our other key players in the Enchanted Forest.
In case it wasn't clear, the portal spat Regina, Killian, and Emma out somewhere different from where it let Henry out.
Remember, reviews make the muse happy!