CHAPTER NINE
THE MIRROR OF ERISED
The glass shatters and a luminous white smoke shoots from the shards, coalescing into one vaporous trail.
Mulan uses her sword to direct it toward Emma and the tiny pendant. At first, as the life-force swirls around her, she doesn't think it will work, but then the pendant glows and seems to suck the white fog into the metal sigil until the light winks out, leaving the pendant warm to the touch.
Breathless, heart pounding, Emma brushes away tears and hands the keychain and the claw both to Mulan, telling her, "Get this back to the ship. If I don't return before the next sunrise, you set course for home."
Any other person would have objected or inquired about being entrusted with the soul of a child, but Mulan simply nods and tells Emma, "Let your heart be your guide. It will not steer you wrong."
And then dark-haired warrior turns away and vanishes into the shadows of the labyrinth.
Left alone and with no magic in this realm, Emma continues through the hall of mirrors. She is searching for one different from the rest, spoke of in legends recorded in Belle's books that sounds something like the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter: it shows you what your heart most desires.
Mulan had claimed not see it, but the sad look in her dark eyes more than any super power suggests otherwise.
But Emma has no time to ponder what the stoic woman wants most when she must focus on the impossibility of her own heart's deepest longing.
She walks through many hallways that weave into one another, passes many mirrors, some harmless, some disturbing in the souls they contain. There's no way to know how many had come to be trapped in an attempt to find that one mirror and choosing one meant to deceive, how many are the victims of wraiths, and how many suffer here as a result of magic not meant for mortals to meddle with.
Just being here probably qualifies as the last.
Emma feels a bit like Indiana Jones with mirrors standing in for goblets, but it seems a reasonable trope to look for the most unassuming and simple looking glass.
So when at last she finds one small and speckled, propped against the stone wall without even a frame, she stands before it, unflinching, gazing deeply into the mist... which swirls and solidifies into a younger, bespeckled version of herself from that day in Portland, kissing a younger, leather-jacket clad Neal in a park - before everything went to shit. It's her last truly happy, fear-free moment, one she wants so deeply to go back to in order to change what happened next.
If her heart is pure enough, the legend said, she could pass into Wayland. If not...
She has to trust in herself, believe in her love. She hadn't that day in the forest or in Rumplestiltskin's storeroom of weird magic shit. But all of that fear and bitterness has long since leached away, replaced by love and longing.
Emma closes her eyes and steps forward to meet her reflection.
AN: Ah, the Mirror of Erised. Excuse me while I go on a Harry Potter rant. Any one else see OutlawQueen like Ron/Hermione and CaptainSwan like Harry/Ginny? Even in the epilogue, Ron has zero actual respect or understanding of Hermione as person, and he never did anything really to make her fall in love with him other than just exist. And Harry's completely shallow and psychologically creepy Mary Sue romance with Ginny Weasley, a girl who is his mother's doppleganger, is oedipal complex wrong. One ship is about completely incompatible couples who don't really care about each other's basic personality traits because somehow they are just fated to be together and being opposite is somehow supposed to be appealing. The other is about the main character and a tacked-on love interest with zero important backstory or depth of character who only appealed to Harry because she suddenly turned sixteen and got big boobies and then he pined for her for a year from afar and fantasized about marriage even though he had all of five minutes of actually interacting with her. And furthermore, if these people live to be 200 fucking years old, why are they all getting married and knocked up at 20, pumping out kids like the Duggars? A decade on, and I am still thoroughly disappointed in The Deatlhy Hallows.
