"Late again?"

"It's the mornings, Rumple and I are working out a new schedule with Gideon."

"I've noticed. There's my Little Prince Charming!"

They'd been trying and surprisingly enough succeeding at their new schedule. In some ways, with him sharing the room with her like before, it was very much like simply discovering what they'd lost and then adding Gideon into the mix. In the mornings Rumple was the first to use the bathroom, she held their son, changed him, and was usually halfway through is feeding when Rumple finally came in to relieve her and let her shower and change to prepare for work herself. It worked. The only problem was that neither of them had been to work on time since beginning this odd new exploration. In part, it was because of the sleep. They took turns now at night, caring for their son one after the other so that they were even getting to the point when they all too happily pushed one another out of bed when it was their turn, and wondered how many more times they'd wake each night. She suspected he was beginning to admit even to himself that sleep made him both a better person, but interrupting it so much made him a much more tired person. Always the first to rise she'd begun to notice that since they'd had their talk, he was likely to sleep right through the rest of the morning with her, until Gideon's screams woke them both up and they began their day. Their nights were busy, but somehow filled with laughter and jokes. And their days…those had become much more evenly split, despite Rapunzel's remarks.

Gideon now spent half of every other day in the shop with his father, to make up for taking him away at night. Rapunzel hadn't taken kindly to it, enjoying having her godson to take care of in addition to the library, but they'd started a trend of going to lunch every other day, just the two of them, and dropping Gideon off at Rumple's shop beforehand. The shop was now equipped with a bassinet, one that was sturdy and worked, as well as a small refrigerator and microwave to accommodate all of Gideon's needs.

This was one of those days. Gideon would spend half the day with them before she and Rapunzel went to lunch and left Gideon with his father. It usually put Rapunzel in a sour mood, but letting her have more time with him in the mornings usually countered that easily enough and now that she was getting up at night as well, she was finally tired enough to be happy to have someone to turn him over to when she arrived at work.

"Good morning, handsome man!" Rapunzel shrieked as she reached into the stroller she'd bought just that week and pulled Gideon out. Suddenly her late arrival appeared to be forgotten.

"You wouldn't say that if you spent half your night up with him."

"Well, any time you want to give me the chance, I'll take it. We would have a great week together, wouldn't we, Gideon?!" She shook her head, wondering where in that conversation Rapunzel had gone from watching Gideon for one night, to an entire week. But she dismissed it, and went back to unpacking her bag for the day as Rapunzel spoiled Gideon for her.

The spoiling never seemed to last long, as it was difficult for even Rapunzel to spoil a sleeping baby. Soon enough she took Gideon upstairs to his fold out crib and returned with the baby monitor, so they could get to work. It was a productive day, they re-shelved books, updated a few of the donations into the computer, visited Granny along with Gideon for lunch, and discussed a few of Rapunzel's latest poem quotes, which she still hadn't entirely figured out to do with.

"They're growing."

"I know…" she grinned looking over the stack on the desk. "But you know, it got me thinking maybe we could do a quote of the day! Get a chalkboard and put a different quote out every day. Maybe we could make a contest out of it."

"And what would give away as a prize?"

"Candy, toys, stickers, anything! We could start handing out Encyclopedias! No one seems to want to use them since the last curse broke."

Yes, she'd noticed that too. Storybrooke was changing. Overnight she'd seen cell phones begin to spring up, and not the kind that she had; it was the kind Emma and Henry carried, smartphones. And that wasn't all. The library had received a delivery on behalf of the city the other day, a dozen new computers, slimmer and lighter than the bulky one that Will taught her to use the internet on. She'd exchanged the two in a heartbeat and noticed the connection was faster now too. And just that morning, on her way to work, she'd seen one of their neighbors having a dish installed on their roof. Something about the breaking of the last curse was different. She was beginning to feel more like Storybrooke was part of the world as a whole, instead of an isolated little island and she wanted desperately, hoped with every fiber of her being, that was a good sign. She hoped it meant that all the bad they'd faced was truly over and done, and they could move on with their lives and assimilate into this new world. She hoped.

"Hey, have you noticed-"

But her words were cut off by the library door opening and a figure struggling to pull something inside. When she caught sight of the hair her heart stopped and she looked over her shoulder at Rapunzel, wondering if it was possible to run and hide somewhere, anything to avoid this conversation! She'd been dreading for weeks. But Rapunzel only shook her head, refusing to let her go anywhere. She obviously had been waiting for Snow White to visit them.

"Hi Snow!" she greeted cheerfully as the mother pulled a stroller into the library with little Neal asleep inside. That was the only part of this unexpected arrival that made her smirk. She liked little Neal. And he slept like the dead just her son did.

"Rapunzel, hi!" Snow smiled, grinning ear to ear at the sight of her friend. Her feet stayed firmly planted on the ground while Rapunzel moved around her and reached out to hug the woman.

"It's good to see you again," she said. "And the baby!" Rapunzel peered into the stroller and patted his tummy, ignoring the fact that he was asleep. "Last time I saw you, you were still in your mommy's tummy! Gideon is upstairs sleeping, if you want, I can take him and let you two talk."

She glared at the back of her friends head. "Let them talk"! She was not prepared to speak with Snow White, not after all that had happened! She hadn't seen the woman since she'd found her wedding dress and while she'd been amiable then, perhaps willing to move on eventually, that had been before she'd believed that she'd kidnapped her own child because hers had died! What was Rapunzel thinking?!

Snow looked down at Neal in his stroller, tempted by the offer but much to her relief shook her head. "That's okay, I think he's fine, I wouldn't want to move him and risk waking him up. These days it's a blessing when he sleeps. But thank you, though."

"No problem," Rapunzel smiled stepping away and looking back at her.

The three women formed the three corners of a triangle, but she felt that it was more of an angle at the moment, she and Snow each making up separate points of it but disconnected through the events that had happened weeks ago. They both looked at Rapunzel, the one connection they had that was friendly and amiable. But when nothing but silence rose between them, her smile vanished and she looked back and forth between them all.

"Well…I think I hear Gideon so I better go check on him," Rapunzel finally excused with a smile.

"I don't hear anything."

"My hearing is better than yours." Rapunzel glared at her with wide eyes as she made her way to the desk, grabbed the baby monitor, and flipped it off. "Yep, definitely waking up. I'll leave you two to it. Tell David I say 'hi' when you see him."

"I will, thanks."

"Rapunzel!" she shouted out as she left, but all she heard echo through the halls was "Gotta go!" before she disappeared among the shelves on her way up to the apartment, leaving her alone in a room with Snow White…the last person she really wanted to be in a room with. There had been a lot of healing done in the last few weeks, a lot of progress made toward forgiveness and getting rid of her anger. But this was the one place, the one relationship that had been left open to bleed, the nerves exposed, the infection grown. They'd thought that they had kidnapped a child to replace Gideon. It had taken her four weeks to come and see her after all that had happened between Emma and Gideon! When they'd needed help, it was Regina who made the request, not Snow. She'd been avoiding them. So why was she here now? Staring at her? Not saying a word as they faced each other across the room?

Finally, Snow took a breath, she looked down at Neal, then back at her and then at a spot above her head and opened her mouth only to close it again. And then open it again.

"You know, I-"

"How is that woman?" she questioned quickly. It was a cowardly question, one she knew she was only asking because she was certain that she wasn't ready to hear what she had to say just yet. But from the puzzled look on Snow's face, she could tell that she wasn't quite sure what she was talking about.

"The uh, the woman, the old one, the one Rumple make the potion for…did everything work out alright?"

"Oh, yes!" Snow answered eagerly. If she didn't know any better, she seemed just as happy to have something else to talk about as she was. "Yeah, she died a couple of weeks ago."

She felt her jaw drop and her eyes widen. When things worked out, she didn't expect to hear that death was involved! She was speechless. What on earth-

"Oh, but it was a good thing though!" Snow inserted quickly. "It's complicated, there's a much longer story to it, but the short version is that it turned out that she had a very rare disease that her body couldn't fight off. When she decided not to pursue more medical treatment her daughter wanted more time with her so…"

"Her daughter was the one who was holding her mother there."

"A…it was really more of a spell gone wrong and good intentions…not gone bad but not unharmful either. She just wanted more time and had a difficult time letting go."

"But she passed?" she clarified. "She was ready?"

Snow nodded. "And the daughter was too. I mean no one is ever really 'ready' for something like that but she was as prepared as she could be, she had her closure. It wasn't the ending we expected but it was happy. And…for David and I too. We're moving. Tomorrow actually."

"Moving?!" she blanched. She could have sworn that this many surprises all at once were not good for her heart, but she was equally sure that this kind of small talk was far more preferable than what Snow had initially wanted to talk about. "Out of Storybrooke?"

"No, nothing like that," she smiled. "We had been looking for a house to move into for a while, the loft was perfect for Mary Margaret and Emma but small for a family of three, even with Emma moved out. And Faline, the daughter of the woman, she called us after her mother passed and asked if we wanted the farmhouse her mother had been living at. She said there were too many memories and wanted to get rid of it fast so it all worked out in the end."

"A farmhouse." She tried to picture the charming family on a farm, milking cows, herding sheep, riding horses. The last bit was easy enough to picture from their time in the Enchanted Forest, but it was also that time she'd spent with them in the Enchanted Forest that made the first bit difficult to picture.

"Oh, David was a shepherd in the Enchanted Forest, he knows how to look after a farm."

"A shepherd!" David? Prince Charming? She felt as though her head was spinning. So many changes were coming to Storybrooke. "Well…doesn't that take time? I thought he worked with Emma."

"Hook is taking over his position, even learning to drive a car, which is terrifying if you drive with him, land transportation is not his strong suite, but he's getting the hang of it slowly. As soon as we can get him to stop calling 'right and left' 'port and starboard' we'll be fine. And David is looking forward to getting back to his roots, working with sheep and horses again. And it's got plenty of space for Neal to grow up and learn to ride a horse. And enough rooms that Emma, Hook, and Henry can all stay the night if they want to. It's…it's a good thing."

She'd finally taken a breath, suddenly aware that she'd been rambling instead of just talking with her and needed to slow down. She was nervous to be here. But then so was she.

"That's good," she commented quietly. "I'm…I'm happy for you. Both of you. All of you," she smiled looking over at Neal.

"Yeah…"

The room grew silent again. All caught up on everything that had happened since they'd last seen each other that left only one final topic for discussion and she wasn't certain either of them really wanted to have it. But Snow was here, and she'd taken that first step. Would she take another? And could she reciprocate it?

"Listen…I talked to Henry and I've been talking to Regina a lot lately and it occurred to me that weeks ago…some things were said that were very uncharacteristic and-"

"Evil," she provided feeling the shock grow on her face. Those "things" that were said were not just uncharacteristic, they had been downright evil. But she could tell from the way her face fell that Snow White hadn't ever considered an adjective that strong before now.

"I was going to go with 'rude' but if you think that's a better word…" she said quietly, her face ashen as tears gathered in her eyes.

"You said you would bond with Emma over killing my son," she reminded her.

Snow opened her mouth but then closed it again, she could see the breath that was caught in her lungs, the words that she'd had prepared swelling and dying in her chest as she considered what she'd said as well as what she could say.

"Yes, I did say that, but…to be fair he was threatening the life of my daughter."

"And that makes it alright?" she questioned gently. Though she wanted to scream and cry and yell she had no intention of causing more harm to the woman who was already struggling with the truth of just how bad things had been. She had the strength to keep calm, even if it was difficult. She had things to say, but she was strong enough to say them, not scream them.

"You acted to defend your child and when I did the same you acted like I was doing such an awful thing. When Emma had the Dark Curse you went to great lengths to protect her in Camelot. Why are you to be celebrated for protecting your child at her worst when Rumple and I were scorned? What made Emma worth saving and Gideon irrelevant? And for that matter, when Emma was the Dark One, what made her redeemable and Rumple unsalvageable, nothing more than a sacrifice to be dismissed when he was human and in trouble? I thought better of you. I thought you valued all lives. I thought we were better friends than that."

"I know. We were…are…I hoped…"

But she didn't finish her sentence. Oddly enough it was the one thing she did right, she just hadn't known it until now. She didn't fight the accusations she'd thrown at her, didn't try to explain or make excuses, or deny them. She simply accepted them. And did nothing to refute them. It helped, but it didn't erase the scars. It didn't fix what had happened. And while the silence that stretched between them now was different than it had been a few moments ago, more comfortable, less tense, it was still awkward as they stared at one another, wondering where they were supposed to go if neither could say "sorry" and mean it, and yet each had their regrets.

"Henry can't finish the storybook," Snow finally muttered after a few heartbeats.

She sighed and casually wiped at the small bit of moisture that had formed under her eye. A change of subject. That was probably about the only place they could go after all that.

"Why not?" she inquired, her voice stiff and strained from the swollen bulge in her throat. "Has he uh…has he figured out why."

She nodded. "Because it's not a happy ending. Emma and Gideon safe but all of us still fighting and angry with each other…that's not a happy ending, that's letting evil win."

"So that's why you're here?" she questioned. "To make amends so Henry can finish his book?"

"I'm here because hearing him say that was eye-opening and I want to fix it."

And there they were again, contemplating how it was possible to fix what she was sure couldn't be whole again.

"How?" she wondered aloud.

"Next week? We're having Thanksgiving dinner at Granny's, and I want you to come. You and Rumple and Gideon."

"You want us to pretend to be a family again?"

"No, I want us to be a family again. To put some of this behind us and start fresh. It's…it's all around us! We are right on the brink of new chapters, all of us. David and I with the house, Hook with the new job! Regina is finally doing mayor jobs she hasn't had time to do since the curse began, Zelena is settled in, and you and Rumple have a life with Gideon. We're all so close to starting a new chapter I want us to do what we have to do so that we can do it together."

It was a pretty speech, one that she was very tempted to give into but in the end, her heart still ached over what had happened, and instead of jubilation, she felt timid sadness.

"I don't know if I'm…ready."

"That's okay. There's still a week to think about it."

It was at that moment that she heard a noise, one that she had been used to hearing over the last few weeks but not from her boy, it came from the stroller Snow had been pushing. Neal had woken. And getting older as he was, he was less inclined to cry when he woke, more likely to babble hoping his mother would hear him, which she did. Snow immediately plucked the smiling boy from his place and held him in her arms. It was amazing just how much growing he could do in a few months. It startled her to think that Gideon would be that big soon. He'd probably be taller than her before he was ten if he grew at Neal's rate!

Smiling at the thought, she found herself moving forward and offering her hands to the boy, who saw her and reached out for her, leaning out of his mother's arms so that she could take him from her and hold him herself for the first time in a long while. He was heavier than she remembered. But he still smelled the same and looked at her with familiar eyes.

"I've missed this little guy."

"I know you took care of him when we were in the Underworld. I never thanked you for that."

"It was nothing," she dismissed honestly. Going to look after Neal and Robin had honestly been the highlight of her day each and every time.

"I always knew you'd make a good mother."

She finally took her eyes off of Neal to look over at Snow and found her beaming. A good mother. After what happened after Gideon had been born there were still times she wondered…

But that was all in the past. And in the present, if Rumpelstiltskin's praise was to be believed, she was doing much better than she had when he was first born.

"I'm trying. There is still a lot to learn and not really much to it at a month old, but we're learning."

"And things with Rumpelstiltskin? They're going well?"

She nodded through her smile. That was a topic she felt certain about. She'd been right all along and she wanted everyone who had ever doubted her, ever doubted him, to know about it.

"It's like he's a new man," she confirmed, thinking about all that had happened these last few weeks. "We're both very happy."

And they were. So much that there was no doubt in her mind whether Rumple was happy about all the changes they'd been through. She had no urge to take the words back or put in caveats or even hope for the best. They were happy. She could see it in them night after night, day after day. They were happy.

"Belle…promise me you'll think about it; about coming to dinner. You know there aren't a lot of little ones we know in town for Neal to play with, it would be nice to have you and Gideon back in our lives, for the better this time. And I know they could both use a playmate eventually."

She felt the swell of happiness begin to shrink in her chest as she was caught by memories of their past and began to wonder if they'd fall back into those problems all over again so easily. She didn't want it to just be her and Gideon. She wouldn't let it be the two of them and not the three of them.

"And Rumple, too?" she clarified.

"Well, of course," Snow answered without hesitation. "He's Henry's grandfather."


There you go. I told you a lot of those little chapters were set up. The house they are moving into belonged to the old woman they helped. At this point they've had time to do the paperwork and are getting ready to move, that should be kosher. And then the chapter that featured Henry not being able to finish his book, I promised that had further inclinations and these are them. For Snow, I figured that listening to Henry tell the story of what Rumple and Belle went through on their end with Gideon might give her a good kick in the pants to realize that things had been less than ideally handled when older Gideon was in town and there were things that had to be said about that. We have here an invitation to dinner and nothing more. Both women are unhappy, very little is resolved and I did that for the same reason I didn't let Belle and her father reconcile just as much as why I had Belle tell Hook to forget about Milah (more or less) in MX&U. Sometimes things are just a mess. The past is the past. You can't change it, you can't fix it, and sometimes you just have to say there is nothing we can do about that but change the way we move forward. I saw these situations as falling into that category. What happened, happened. They need to learn from it what they can, and move on, or else they'll live in it forever. Belle does that by insisting that they see her family as a family of three, and Snow does it at the end with the acknowledgment of Rumple as Henry's grandfather. Small steps forward, but significant in my mind.

Many thanks to Fox24, Grace5231973, Rumbellefan, and Paintbrush123 for reviews on the last chapter. I'm glad that you liked the way that little conversation played out. With only five chapters left we have some final things to finish up and I hope you are going to enjoy those moments just as much. Truly, from here, I think that all these chapters are positive ones. Hasn't this fiction been therapeutic? Peace and Happy Reading!