A/N: OH MY GOD YOU GUYS OVER 100 FOLLOWERS! In only three chapters, that's pretty amazing. Only three reviews on the last chapter though, but I suppose it wasn't terribly exciting. Anyway, I gave in to the urge to write a Merlin vic and that's why this is so late.
Dedicated to my best friend, without whose steadfast support (read: constant nagging), this fix probably would have been abandoned due to laziness ages ago.
Oh, and I also don't own OUAT. Just in case you wanted to know.
Afterwards, they were both so emotionally (and physically) exhausted that they collectively trudged across the hall to Emma's room and fell asleep within minutes. By the time Emma awoke, there was sunlight streaming into the windows. Rolling over in bed, Emma saw Killian's arm flung across the bed. She caught sight of the black, scrawling ink across his inner wrist and gasped….instead of the name 'Milah,' which used to adorn Killian's wrist, there was the word 'Emma' emblazoned there, with the outline of a swan surrounding it. How could he have gotten a new tattoo without her realizing it? When had he removed the tattoo of Milah's name? Killian has quite a few questions to answer when he wakes up, Emma decided as she rolled over once more.
Meanwhile, the Golds had made good use of their bed earlier than Emma and Killian had the previous night, and were therefore able to wake up earlier in order to begin researching the strange mirror, poring over books and generally tearing apart the shop in order to find information about it. So far, even after hours of searching, they had found nothing about the elusive mirror, not even a possible name. The man Rumple had purchased the mirror from knew nothing of its magical properties; the Dark one had sensed the strong magic emanating from the object and purchased it with the intent to research it. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it), Belle's entrance into his life had driven all thoughts of the object completely from his mind.
However, now he wished he had been slightly more focused as he sent his beloved shop into disarray seeking a way to send Milah back to the past where she belonged, preferably before Belle lost her patience with the 'calm research' approach and resolved her issues with Rumple's ex-wife by throttling her for good measure. As Belle's frustration mounted at her inability to find information on the mirror, Rumplestiltskin worried that she was getting exponentially closer to the throttling option with every minute that passed. Just as he was sure that Belle was surely going to burst with the sheer frustration of it all, she shrieked with excitement, pointing to a passage in a large, dusty tome, and began reading aloud at a ridiculously fast pace.
When she finished reciting the paragraph (about fifteen seconds after she had started), Gold realized that he hadn't actually recognized any words that she said, and thus asked her to repeat the information at a processable speed. She rolled her eyes playfully as though he had asked her to write the book, and recited once more: "The Mirror of Antid is designed to transport people to a different time, even to different worlds. The mirror can only be used at noon and midnight, as these are the two points in time during which the veil between the past, present, and future are at their thinnest, and time can be traversed without an output of magic from the user. However, the user cannot be transported through the mirror against their will (most likely for moral reasons). When the user steps through the mirror, they cannot control where they appear, to the best of our knowledge, but when they step back through, they will always return to the time and place from which they came. Very little else is known about the mirror, as the intentions of the mirror's creator, Antid, and the logic behind the transportation of the user are unknown."
As Belle panted, trying to recover her breath from the effort of reading the passage twice, practically without taking a breath, Rumple pondered the implications of not being able to simply push Milah into the mirror and have his problem taken care of. He sighed, placing his hand on his forehead as he began scheming, attempting to formulate ways to get his ex-wife the hell out of this time and into the mirror. (He was normally banned from scheming, but figured that under the circumstances, Belle would make an exception).
Just as he was beginning to find the correct evil-scheme-y mindset for the task at hand, Neal came barreling into the shop with a grin on his face, in hopes of attaining some of Belle's Storybrooke-renowned chocolate chip pancakes (no, really, she had been getting threatening looks from Granny for weeks because they were that good). The grin promptly fell off his face as he took in the state of his father's shop. His joviality was further dampened by the sights of his father with the beginnings of a rather dangerous scheme on his face and his step-mother gripping a counter, panting for breath. Well, they're both clothed, so there's that. Sighing long-sufferingly, Neal ran a hand down his face and asked the the other occupants of the room had been expecting since the moment he had walked in the room: "What the hell is going on?!"
In response,Rumplestiltskin walked gravely up to his son, and putting his hand on Neal's shoulder, began, "Well, you see, son…"
Meanwhile, in a bedroom at Granny's, Milah paced around the room angrily, furious at having been locked up like a criminal (which, by definition of being a pirate, she technically was), or some sort of animal, by a woman about half her size. The door had been chained closed. Chained! Killian had actually paid a woman to chain her inside a bedroom. Even the glass contraptions that showed the outside world were locked somehow.
She blamed that blonde trollop who Killian had been with the previous night; perhaps she had enchanted him into forgetting about Milah, his true love. She couldn't very well save him from the inside of this room! With a sound of frustration, she went to try her luck with the glass invention once more. After fiddling with seemingly random knobs, she discovered that she could open the glass. She hoisted herself out the window with a smirk, and began scaling down the wall. Upon reaching the ground, Milah smirked and crossed her arms across her chest.
Killian, I'm coming for you.
A/N: So, there it is, guys! The end of the fourth chapter! Did you like it? Did you hate it? Will it be hot? Will it be cold? Will it be wet? Will it be dry? Sorry, I need to curb my Merlin references. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and will leave a review!
Love,
ancientgreekfreak
P.S.- In case any of you were wondering the mirror's name, Antid, is Old English for 'time' because it's time travel.