Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.


CHAPTER NINE

THE ARTIST & THE PRISONER

Their first morning back in Manhattan Emma and Henry had sorted through Neal's apartment looking for anything that would shed some light on the life he'd lived. Robin, unfortunately, had trashed all of his identification and other papers - probably at Zelena's urging - so there were no bank statements that would point in the direction of a safe deposit box or paycheck stubs that would indicate where Neal had worked.

Thankfully, Emma did find a business card in a pocket of a black messenger bag that Robin must have been using from the filled-out employment applications and fake I.D.s Regina had made for him. The card, for an upscale publishing company in midtown, didn't jive with the rest.

A woman with severely cut hair and glasses far more expensive and flattering than Emma's met them at the reception desk while picking up her fancy Starbucks order and introduced herself as the head of the Graphic Art Department.

"Yes, Neal Cassidy," she nodded. "He was an odd case. Never actually applied, but one of our editors happened on him in Central Park and liked his portfolio. He worked here for six months or so then took a leave of absence for a family emergency and we never heard back. One of our interns even went by his apartment after his phone was disconnected. The building's super said his apartment had been recently bought by his father. That's all we ever found out. It was a disappointment, really. I was going to promote him. He showed the illustrative talent as well as a good head for numbers that could have gotten him my job one day, or at another company. I wondered if he'd gotten poached, but he didn't seem the type to just go off the grid like that, leave without further notice."

Emma almost smiled wryly at how much that actually was like Neal. Or had been. Instead she explained with a frown, "He passed away, actually."

"Yeah," scowled Henry. "My aunt-"

"Neal took time off to see his sister," Emma ad-libbed before Henry could tell some sordid magical murder tale, "and help out their father who was having heart problems, but it turned out Neal's fiancée was a con artist living with some other guy. They were after his father's money and Neal ended up getting shot in an altercation."

"How horrible," the bespeckled woman gasped before amending, "I did meet that fiancée of his once. I remember him going on about her training for marathons or some such thing. Personally, I didn't like her. She gave off a vibe like she was after something, but Neal certainly didn't have much to go after for someone like that. Of course... I had no idea his father was wealthy. He never talked about his family other than saying his mother had passed when he was young and he'd had some falling out with his father years ago."

Henry snorted lightly at that and Emma asked, "We're just trying to find out more about Neal's life here in New York. We... we were estranged for a long time. Henry wanted to know more about his dad."

"Well, that's all I can really tell you," the woman replied. "That editor doesn't work here anymore and, as I said, Neal never filled out an application or gave us a resume. I think Steve's at Pendant now. Maybe he could help you."


"My Lord, what brings you here today?"

"Cut the crap, old man," Neal addressed The Apprentice while crushing down his unease at the Hannibal Lector vibes the guy projected.

"Always so pleasant!"

Neal glowered. The old sorcerer had given him the creeps since he appeared in The Underworld, but it wasn't until he got Hades' job that Neal had access to his books and the records of all the man's crimes against humanity, magic, worlds, time... the list went on. He'd intentionally unleashed The Darkness from Neal's father to attack Emma, for instance, though it didn't seem he had intended to die himself in the process and so became more obsessed that Cruella deVil with escaping The Underworld, having used her as his pawn to get Henry the quill. He hadn't, however, gotten Neal's son to write him back to life, but instead began some convoluted con that involved murdering the god Morpheus and using his dream powers to make Rumplestiltskin and Belle believe they were having dreams of their unborn child who didn't want them together as part of a plan to basically soul-swap with Neal's half brother by doing something that involved Henry having the quill, the dreams, and The River of Fire where the Furies ultimately captured him.

It was some kind of big deal that had the gods worried but probably wouldn't have amounted to the manhunt mess it had if Neal's father and step-mother hadn't actually believed their two week old zygote was sentient and could manifest in adult form with fully functional thoughts and opinions! Frankly, he had to wonder if everyone in Storybrooke had been severely brain-damaged since his death - maybe it was the time travel thing slowly unraveling reality with compounding paradoxes or maybe Emma's sister as The Dark One had made those dreamcatchers wrong and fucked up their brains - because it kind of hurt his brain that his step-mother had been that laughably stupid and his father that sadly gullible... and to this day oblivious that their kid had never actually been a powerful dream master self-named after a deity with any sort of opinion about anything other than his poopy diaper.

Regardless of why the people Neal had left behind turned into morons, and whatever The Apprentice's ultimate plan there, he'd had his stolen powers stripped away by Zeus and was shackled down here where it had become Neal's task to interrogate him and find out exactly what he was up to.

"Did you know that Snow White was carrying twins when you cast that spell?" Neal demanded.

The Apprentice stood a bit straighter and tipped his head. His scraggly beard and wizard robes that had once given him a wise Dumbledore look now gave himself something of a crazy Taliban guy look and one had to wonder if he didn't have some similarly fucked up ideology behind all of his sketchy actions.

"Have her daughters finally come undone then?" the old geezer asked, smiling a little.

Glaring, Neal confirmed, "Yes, they have. You knew, and you didn't say anything. Did you also know that Emma's sister took control after Zelena took her magic?"

"And thus her heart while subverted by her sister's was susceptible to being darkened - and plucked out by anyone," shrugged The Apprentice. "Anyone with a brain should have been able to figure out that something drastic had changed with The Savior when the cardinal rules no longer applied. But, of course, how could I warn anyone when your father had trapped me in that hat?"

"You had plenty of time before then to send a note. I managed that when I was mostly dead," Neal argued. "Plus, you apparently can just jump realms at will since you showed up to turn Lily into a stalking psychopath for no apparent reason other than to put her on a collision course with Emma."

"Not with Emma. Her sister."

"So, what, you wanted Emma's sister to kill Maleficent's child? Or you hoped Lily would kill Emma's Evil Twin?"

"I have my reasons," the old man shrugged, "and you don't need to know them."

"You were trying to get Merlin, your own mentor, killed," Neal accused. "And you wanted my son to take over for Isaac. And I know you know that being The Author is not some glorious task. You duped a teenage boy into helping reap more souls for this realm, souls from a world the gods don't even want here. When he refused the first time, you cornered him down here and used some bullshit about un-murdering Cruella cleansing Emma's soul. I know she was working with you-"

"And intending to stab me in the back, literally, most-likely," smirked the old man.

Neal narrowed his eyes. "I can't say that I blame her. Henry's not recording history, he's writing an unbreakable contract that gives the gods the authority to bless or damn anyone who gets their story penned by that quill in one of those creepy books. Anyone who knew that would want the power to have themselves written out of it."

The Apprentice smirked. "Alas, instead the lad added to it. I must admit, it was quite amusing how delighted he was to help include his uncle's story. That sweet little lullaby might as well have been your namesake's viper.

"But that's not my fault," he insisted. "If Snow White and Prince Charming weren't the worst parents in The Enchanted Forest, they would have been home with their son rather than tagging along with their morally corrupt daughter to help her save a syphilitic alcoholic rapist. If they were actually good parents, they wouldn't have stood for that mentally defective girl to come here at all and talked some sense into her rather than their 'love justifies all means' drivel until they failed, and then trying some 'you need to learn how to grieve but don't blame yourself for all of the things that are clearly your fault' codswallup. Those two are complete and utter fools who were asking to be taken advantage of that day in the forest."

"You wanted Isaac to trick them. He was your pawn," Neal accused.

"We're all someone's pawn, Baelfire."

"Maybe, but you're clearing the board more than most. You wanted to ensure Emma was born The Savior but with a stowaway bizarro version of her that was apathetic enough to let Henry wander around here unsupervised so you could appeal to his adolescent need to be as important as his 'legendary' family."

"He is quite easily manipulated into abandoning his views for the opposite," chuckled The Apprentice. "One nonsensical peptalk from his auntie and he was back on 'Team Magic' and bringing all of those free literary folk back into the fold to be judged by jokers and fools who give fealty to an immortal himbo, not to mention a few extras from your second adoptive world."

"Fucking with the laws of magic and the interconnectedness of realms like that is a serious crime, old man," Neal reminded.

"Oh, I'm well aware," he shrugged. "I knew I'd end up here eventually. But don't pretend you've any love for your keeper or that he wasn't using you just as much. Gods know all in the hearts and minds of mortals. You think Zeus had no idea that it wasn't Emma who came for that pirate? But Hades was about to make a play for Olympus and had to be stopped so Zeus needed a new warden and you were willing. It mattered not to him that you were acting on falsehoods, on truths he knew but chose not to disclose to ensure he got what he wanted. You're his bitch, boy. Everyone is. And there are no magical pruning shears that can sever your soul from this realm and turn you back into an ordinary loser."

Glowering, Neal inquired, "So, what, this was all about taking down Olympus?"

"Oh, let the gods have their mountain. But having dominion over us all? Why do you think I hoarded all of those empty books? Why do you think I ensured the ones already filled were brought to that other world, hidden in a place where you - or your son - would find them. Those books need to be unbound, and not just in a such a way that unreliable narrators can insert their own pages. We're all damned by that quill and ink, by the pages bound with the golden threads of Olympus - which makes them quite hard to destroy. Not even The River of Fire could burn the pages your boy left. Perhaps the Olympian Crystal could have taken care of this mess, but, alas, that story took a detour."

"You mean a man got murdered and a portal was opened in Manhattan that's further destabilized the barrier between realms," scoffed Neal. "And you don't sound so concerned. Are you looking to free mortals from the gods' dominion or just destroy reality?"

The old man grinned again. "As I said, my happy ending is not one I'm going to share. You, My Lord, should focus on yours."

"Mine is rather irrelevant considering I'm as trapped as you are. As you so gleefully pointed out."

"Yes, just with more power... or the illusion of it," The Apprentice shrugged.

"I have the power to throw your ass in The Styx," Neal threatened and the man chuckled.

"Oh, if you did, you would have already. No, I think not. Zeus has ordered you to interrogate me, but you can't even touch me let alone toss me in with those Lost Souls," The Apprentice taunted. "That must smart, doesn't it? And all the changes you want to make that are beyond your authority as a mere mortal allowed to play with the gods.

"Take your mother for instance," he continued. "You want to save her and all those poor souls your quasi-sister-in-law got damned in her selfish quest. But you can't. Even if you were allowed to try, do you think you would save them? What have you ever succeeded at, Baelfire? You couldn't save your father. You couldn't save Wendy. You didn't help Emma find her happy ending. You didn't keep your promise to be there for your son. And then you bound yourself to this farce of a purgatory for an impostor."

The Apprentice scoffed at Neal's stony expression. "So don't try to sell me some Candid bullshit, boy, that you made the best of choices in the best of all possible worlds with the hand fate dealt you or that you did anything more than put these cuffs on yourself. You fucked up, you know the world's a worse off place for the mistakes you and your idiot family have made, and there's a better chance of that pirate dying and being resurrected again than you righting all of these wrongs. You're no savior. And you're no god. You're just a dead man who indentured his soul for the wrong woman."

Neal clenched his fists and turned away, heading for the door.

"She'll come for you, Baelfire!" the old man called out after him. "And when she does, it will only bring more misery!"


It was a beautiful fall afternoon in Central Park. The leaves were changing colors and holiday decorations were starting to go up on the light poles.

Steve from Pendant had sent Emma and Henry to the park, specifically to the hansom cab hub where people took rides in white coaches. According to the editor, Neal had driven one and had left his sketch book in the cab one evening when the man and his wife were taking a romantic spin around Central Park. And that was how Neal got hired by his previous employer.

At the line of carriages between 6th and 5th Avenue, Emma asked around. Many of the drivers were new hires for the holiday season, but a few remembered him and eventually an older man pulled his carriage up to let some tourists off and nodded congenially.

"Oh, Neal! Of course I remember him. He had a way with the horses that most of the first-timers don't. He was always friendly. Even offered to return items people left in his carriage on his own time," the man told them. "I remember one time some little girl had left her stuffed... either a bunny or a kitty, I think, and the parents called looking for it. He took the subway all the way to Staton Island after his shift.

"He didn't work here more than six months, though," the man told them. "The thing is... there's a lot of problems here. The city tries to cover it up, but it's in the news now and then that some of the drivers mistreat the horses and there are problems with bike messengers and sometimes even cars hitting them. Neal talked to some reporter and the boss found out and, well, he got fired. He didn't want the fight for the 'whistle blower' protection whatever. And, anyway, some publisher had seen some of his drawings while on a ride, came to see me, and I gave him Neal's phone number, so it worked out, I suppose. Neal got a better paying job, which he deserved. Even if things still aren't much improved around here, to be honest.

"Geronimo," he nodded to the gelding that Henry was petting a short distance away, "collapsed last week and someone caught it on their phone and put it on YouTube. Some of the drivers, they overwork them, get one last fair even if the weather is too hot or too cold."

"Geronimo... Neal's horse?" Emma guessed and the man laughed at that.

"You knew him well, then. He said it had to be a sign when he was assigned that old horse, though he never said what about the name made him think that."

"We... were together over a decade ago, on the west coast," Emma explained, "and had a son, though we had split up and I never found him to tell since I'd given Henry up for adoption. Henry tracked me down a few years ago..."

"And you're looking for his father," nodded the man. "Well, I wish I could help. His phone number and address aren't current anymore. I tried looking him up myself after he stopped walking through the park on his way to work. It's been a few years now. I assumed he got transferred out of state. Maybe to Boston."

Emma couldn't bring herself to tell the man that Neal was dead so she just smiled. "Thanks, anyway. It's nice to hear he was doing something good... and that made him happy. He was a good guy... even if things didn't work out."

"That he was. Hey," the man told her and amended, "I have some of his drawings if you're interested?"

"Yeah, I'd like that."

"Should be in the club house," he said and Emma followed to the door. After a minute or two the cabbie came out of the office with some large sketches of Central Park and the carriages and a handful of sketch pad pages and that had been ripped out of their spiral binding.

"I recognized you right away," he said, handing over the ripped pages. "Emma, isn't it? He mentioned you a few times. The love of his life that got away."

They were all renditions of her, Emma realized. Her back in Portland but also scenes from Neal's imagination. Some of them featured self-portraits of Neal, the two of them together. There was even one she recognized as a version of the large charcoal drawing in his apartment, but not in silhouette.

"Neal was usually in a good mood. I mean, no one in New York is ever cheerful exactly," chuffed the old man, "but one day on his way to work he just ripped all these out, tossed them in the trash. I happened to be on my route, so I retrieved them. He didn't notice, but I thought next time he came by I'd see if he wanted them back. Impulsive things like that, you often regret them, you know? But that was the last time I saw Neal."

Emma took the sketches while fighting tears. "Thank you."

"Love's a bitch sometimes, you know," the old man told her sadly. "But maybe it's not too late?"

"Yeah," Emma nodded back, even though it was too late. Looking over at Henry petting the horse, she asked, "How much for a ride with Geronimo?"


Neal forced himself not to dwell on the old geezer's words as he returned to the Library. He focused on completing his tasks for the day and then headed out, taking his usual route through the park which was devoid of the horse carriages, paddle boats, and other entertainment.

Arthur wasn't on his bench, probably off ranting to some newcomers that he was the rightful King, and the subway was mostly deserted, few souls venturing underground - probably because Arthur had spread a rumor that Cerberus lived down here.

Neal didn't bother with any music for the trip, as music just made everything seem even more depressing. He'd come across a guy in a burned out cab once playing "Only You" and that had kind of been the end of music for him in The Underworld.

Back at his apartment, Neal pulled out leftover Chinese and listened to rain starting to fall - which would have everyone huddled inside in terror thanks to Hades. Neal liked the rain, the soothing staccato rhythm against the windows, rare as it was here.

With a sigh, he gave into temptation and pulled from his messenger bag the crystal ball. He'd taken it from the Dark Castle on his and Belle's quest and replicas of his belongings had come with him to The Underworld. It was how he'd been able to watch Emma and Henry, hard as it was. It was how he'd learned about Emma becoming the Dark One and her quest to save Hook.

And how he'd discovered that he'd been screwed again. Of course.

Touching his fingers to the base, Neal concentrated on Emma and it didn't take long for the mist to clear and reveal - his apartment.

His throat closed up watching her and Henry - he'd grown so much - pulling slices of pizza from a box on his kitchen table.

"I miss you," Neal sighed. "But don't come for me."


After hanging Neal's dreamcatcher in the window, Emma thought the way the sunset scattered through the webbing seemed almost magical.

But there was no magic that could bring Neal back to her. All she had were stories other people had told and regrets that she never took the time to hear them from Neal, to find out what he'd done with his life after leaving her.

In her anger, of course, she'd assumed he did selfish things, never thinking of her. By the time she realized that probably wasn't true he was gone, taken first by that bullet, then Pan's curse, then the Vault of the Dark One. She knew now that he'd lived in this crappy apartment because he used most of the money he made to pay back the people he'd stolen from, including that jewelry store, even though insurance must have covered it anyway.

While she was still stealing and living out of a car, he was teaching night school math classes to immigrants. While she was doing a job offered as an ultimatum to jail time and pretending it made her good and important he was helping runaway and foster kids at one of those after school programs. There was some vindication now in knowing her lapses in morality were the result of her sister fighting to get out, but it was hard to just let go of the guilt for the people who got hurt whenever she went into selfish bitch mode - or abandon the anger for how her own paths in life, the choices she could have made to be a good mother, hold a steady job, be someone she was proud of, were every time undermined by feelings and intentions that weren't really hers.

Which included that never had coffee date with Neal. And trying anything to save him that day in the forest. Not to mention that time travel fuckery that was entirely her sister and had probably screwed up all kinds of things in the past thirty-odd years that no one would even remember had been changed for the worse.

Well, maybe Neal would, wherever he was, but that where was beyond reaching and all Emma could hope was that he was looking down on her somehow, that he knew she hadn't forsaken him and would have done anything she could to change her sister's selfish actions. That she was going to do her best to keep her promise and raise Henry up right, no matter how hard it would be to deprogram the kid of all the ass-backward and just plain nonsensical brand of "ethics" and "justice" that filled his book, that was either a reflection of a messed up world, a symptom of it, or had actually contributed over the years with those shady, selfish Authors- and yes, she included Walt Fucking Disney and his frozen head who turned a job into his own lucrative billion dollar empire and instead of trying to inject some of the few "progressive" bits of the real histories where women were stronger, where there was racial diversity, he went for the same dress and pearls white supremacy bullshit that seemed to, no matter how much it unnerved Emma to think it, define how her parents and their friends viewed their reality.

Had Disney made things worse?

Either way, Emma was going to make sure Henry didn't turn out like that. Or Isaac. He was going to write things they way people really were, not some idealized, misogynist, racist version where only certain people's stories mattered. Or maybe she'd get him to burn that damn book, to break that quill again, because the kid was right before Cruella messed with his head: no one should have that kind of power. Because it wasn't just writing history. There had to be some kind of feedback loop with that magic for the book to have mattered at all in breaking the Dark Curse. And being at the mercy of magic like that, it made Emma seriously fucking uncomfortable. Her sister might be totally cool with it - and probably pissed that Emma got all the magic powers - but she wasn't, and she was going to do something about it!

She just had to figure out how to reconnect with Henry first.

It felt sort of like the first time all over again. Only this time she'd known Henry, he wasn't just a faceless crying baby. This time she had concrete regrets and pain for the things she'd missed while standing right there. She had her sister's memories the same way her sister had hers, but where that bitch was an oblivious tramp where Henry was concerned, Emma could look back and see her son's confusion and feelings of isolation and betrayal as his "mother" repeatedly chose her boyfriend over him, never bothered to talk to him about the possibility she was dying, never asked if he was okay with that douchebag pirate moving into her house. The list went on and on, including all that "Dark Swan" bullshit, and Emma had no idea how to make up for stuff that wasn't her doing or just... pick up where she left off with Henry, because he'd grown up while she was just an unwilling passenger in her sister's story, a mostly useless conscience battered by the Dark One into being nearly ineffectual and nowhere near as influential on her sister's emotionally-driven decisions as her sister had been on Emma's all those years when they held opposite roles.

It was kind of demoralizing to know she was that useless as a savior that she couldn't even really help her sister. Maybe keep her from committing cold-blooded murder, but not covering it up. Not ripping out a girl's heart or brainwashing her son so that he looked at Neal's dreamcatcher like it was made by a giant venomous spider that was going to attack him in his sleep, and no amount of explaining how cherished it was, how much it meant to his own story, would probably change that, because her fucking sister had decided to use everything dear to her to fuck over her family, and no matter what their mother said, Emma knew there was spite involved. There was malice aforethought in all of those actions for the years she was trapped, for the quasi-conscious part of Emma that had continued to fight against her selfish actions. Snow White could delude herself to feel better about her own selfish choices, to pretend like she didn't have an imperfectly dangerous child, but Emma had shared a skin with her twin her entire life, and she knew there was no empathy, no compassion there - because that was all her.

"... so I was thinking we could hang Dad's drawings at Grandma and Grandpa's until you get a place and - Mom, you okay?"

Emma shook off her wayward thoughts and nodded, grabbing a slice for her plate. "Yeah, fine. Still figuring out this whole 'free of my parasitic twin' plus 'having my own darkness' stuff. It's... weird looking back at my life and decisions I made and now knowing someone else was influencing them, usually not in a good way."

"Like giving me up," Henry grimaced and Emma sat down.

"Yeah, like that."

"Pan would have come after me, though, so it worked out," shrugged Henry.

"Maybe," Emma agreed, "but I'd rather have the real memories of raising you than the fake ones Regina gave me. I know nothing can change that, though. And I know she's your mother, in a lot of ways more than I can ever be. What you had with her was real, what we had was lies..."

Henry set his pizza down and shook his head. "That's not true. You're both my moms. And even if those memories weren't real, they were happy, which I didn't have for real with Regina. And I know that's why she did it, to make up for it, but it still counts as ours, Mom." He frowned, considering, "I just wish Dad could have been part of that too."

Emma sighed. "Me too, Henry. I wish... I wish I had been able to find a way to bring him with us. Maybe everything would have been different then. I didn't even take the time to think about it. My sister-"

"Was too busy flirting with Hook to let you?" Henry snorted.

"And I was too scared to try, to even admit that I'd gotten my hopes up, let myself consider giving it another go with your dad only to have that blow up again like the universe didn't want us to, so I didn't try to fight against that feeling," Emma explained regretfully. "A real savior, a real hero, would have fought for that, for her own kid's happy ending. For hers. Maybe not as blindly and selfishly as my sister did, but I still screwed up and now there's always going to be this... emptiness in our family," she concluded with a sad look at the empty chair across from her, where Neal had sat the night they reunited picking at left over Chinese while she tried to convince Henry to go back to the hotel with her and Gold.

"It wasn't your fault," Henry insisted and scowled. "It was Pan and Zelena and your sister who wanted you to be selfish. And Grandma and Gramps for not helping Dad get back to us. I don't get how they could do that. And Dad still helped them, even when he had to know that meant he'd die sooner once he got split from his dad. That's what real heroes do. He just got stuck with a crappy destiny."

"Yeah," Emma agreed while silently wondering, and how had they repaid that sacrifice? Zelena was still alive, raising a kid after getting another father murdered, they all avoided Rumplestiltskin like the Plague, essentially having excommunicated him from the family before Neal's body was even cold and weren't much kinder to Belle either, having let that relationship turn into a gruesome highway accident of backstabbing, hypocrisy, selfishness, and stupidity - with a kid stuck in the middle.

Emma picked up her soda cup. "To crappy destinies," she mock toasted. "Seems to run in the family."

They ate in silence aside from the rain that had started to fall. Henry eventually excused himself to use the bathroom and Emma took the dishes to the sink.

Feeling rather miserable, Emma touched the keychain at her throat, wondering when the empty feeling, the guilt and regret would go away -then realizing given the gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach she still had for giving up her kid, it probably never completely would.

Emma let out a sigh and dried her hands. At least she didn't have an ugly-ass engagement ring that originally belonged to an asshole who got it as a result of committing mass murder and was then worn by another asshole murderer for three hundred years.

It really wasn't fair, she lamented, fighting tears. She was the one who suffered through a shitty childhood, who had first love taken away from her and had to give up her kid because of a stupid destiny! Neal was the one who tried and tried and tried to help others while always getting a raw deal for his selflessness. Why did they get fucked over while her selfish bitch sister and her rapist lover got the epic true love romance and adventures and a happily ever after that they didn't even have the emotional capacity to appreciate? Had she run over a cart of nuns in a past life or something? Was being a savior really a curse and she was doomed unless she used those stupid scissors? Could those things have separated her and her sister sooner and un-saviored her? Had her savior-ness doomed Neal?

"I'm sorry," she choked out. "I'm sorry loving me ruined your life."

There was a knock on the front door.


AN: Neal using the crystal ball to watch Emma and Henry: sweet or Hook-like creepy? The show introducing the Shears of Destiny as a big horrible deception between Hook and Emma being turned into more Evil Rumple plotting: surprise or saw it coming a nautical mile away?

Next up: Another quest begins.