As the night wore on, the remaining Storybrooke heroes (except for Henry, who was now considered old enough to be designated as his baby uncle's caretaker during times of crisis) found their way to the Evil Queen's vault under the cemetary, where Regina had all her magical supplies stored. She worked on a divination spell while Captain Hook, David Nolan, and Princess Jasmine lounged around the confined space in varying states of impatience.

Hook watched in amusement as David hovered behind Regina, an earnest but clueless expression on his face. The sheriff wasn't any more of a sorcerer than he was, so why pretend to understand magic? He was only going to end up irritating the woman, who still had a temper despite renouncing her Evil Queen half.

At David's latest query, Regina snapped, "This spell traces genie magic. That will lead us to the lamp." She put the finishing touches on her potion, then lifted it up to the light and peered critically at it.

"I hope this works," said Jasmine. "I hate to think what that woman is doing to Aladdin."

Regina snorted. She laid out a small mirror and let the potion drip onto the reflective surface. After a few moments of staring into it, she looked up at the others. "It's in Gold's shop."

"Right. Let's go." David had armed himself with a sword, arguing that it would be more visually threatening than a gun to a foe who might be unfamiliar with the Land Without Magic; he now pulled it from the scabbard and brandished it menacingly.

Regina waved a hand, surrounding them with a cloud of smoke which dropped them into the even tighter quarters of the cluttered pawn shop. The sign on the door was turned to "CLOSED", but that had never stopped anyone. The lights were on and the woman from the diner, the same one who had stolen the genie lamp and banished Emma, was there behind the counter, a wand in her right hand and a cloud of gold billowing from her left hand. Sitting on the counter was the genie lamp and a baby in a wicker basket.

A baby? That was new, thought Hook. And an old-fashioned basket rather than the oversized carriers most people used in Storybrooke. Huh. Well, that made things easier. Even as David lunged forward with the sword, Hook snatched the basket. But before he could pull it away, the woman waved her wand and a bolt of purple lightning struck out at Hook, sending him crashing backwards into a cabinet, where he lay stunned, thoughts scattered and pain shooting through all his limbs.

David fared no better, magic freezing him in place where he stood.

However, strength of numbers told in the end: Regina cast a fireball at the stranger, forcing her to defend herself, and in that moment of distraction, Jasmine darted in and grabbed the lamp before fleeing through the curtained doorway that led to the back room of the pawn shop.

The woman snarled, "I don't have time for this nonsense." She stabbed her wand at Regina, sending out a blinding flare of gold-hued magic.

Hook threw up an arm to shield his face. He blinked as the light faded, and by the time he could see again, the stranger had taken the infant and gone. "Where did she go?"

"How the hell would I know?" Regina gestured at David, releasing him from his paralysis. Then she glanced past the sheriff and her eyes widened. "Maybe ask him."

Aladdin had just pushed his way through the curtain, Jasmine at his side with the lamp. He looked dazed, rubbing at his face in confusion, while Jasmine frowned at him with a worried expression. "Ask me what?"

"Who was that woman? What does she want in Storybrooke? What did she make you do?" David shot the questions one after the other at the genie.

"I...I don't know." Aladdin shook his head, looking more dazed than ever. "I can't remember."

Regina sighed. "A memory spell. I should have known."

"Yeah, I guess." Aladdin looked sheepish. "Sorry."

"Never mind," David cut in. "It's not your fault. We should be used to this by now. We'll work it out. The important thing is to get Emma back safely."

"Our new friend wished her away," said Hook. "Remember that bit, mate?"

"I... No. Last thing I remember is sitting in Granny's Diner with Jasmine." Aladdin glanced at the princess, and she nodded.

"And then that woman suddenly appeared, and stole the lamp, and when Emma tried to stop her, forced you to send her away," Jasmine explained.

"Right. So you want to find Emma, all three of you?"

"Yes," said David and Hook in unison. Hook scrambled to his feet and prepared himself for another jolt of magical transportation.

"No." Regina's voice overruled them both. "It'll probably take magic to get Emma back. So unless you two have secretly been studying wizardry at night school, that means me."

"I'm coming with you," insisted David. "She's my daughter."

"David, you need to stay put." Regina's expression was even more unyielding. "You have another child to protect, not to mention Snow. My other half may be busy with Robin's baby, but if she sees an advantage to take..."

David grimaced, but conceded the point. "All right."

Before Hook could voice his own objection, Regina continued her argument. "And if this stranger means harm to Storybrooke — she already stole the genie lamp and a wand, possibly a baby: not a good start — then your only hope of finding out her plans is him." She turned to glare at Hook, stabbing a finger towards his chest.

"Me?" Hook was baffled but flattered. Obviously, he had the advantage of experience and wisdom over the good-hearted but rather naive David, but he hadn't expected Regina to acknowledge that.

"Yes, pirate, it's time to use your powers of treachery for good."

Hook scowled. So much for being appreciated.

"What, have you forgotten already? Because I haven't." Regina gave him a nasty smirk. "If you can worm your way into the good graces of my mother, then turn around and work for evil Mulder and Scully, I'm sure you'll have no problem dazzling our latest Big Bad with your roguish charm."

Bitch, he didn't say. Instead, he bit his tongue and agreed through his teeth. "Fine."

Regina took the lamp from Jasmine, holding it just long enough to establish possession before setting it down on the counter. She nodded to Aladdin, taking a breath before making her wish to be sent to the same place as Emma Swan.

"Your wish is my command." Aladdin smiled and stretched out his hand, and Regina vanished in a puff of sand-colored smoke.

David stared blankly at the spot where she had vanished.

Jasmine picked up the lamp. "Don't worry. Regina won't let Emma down; she'll bring her back in one piece."

"I hope so," said David. He sighed, shaking his head and re-sheathing his sword. "What about you two?"

"We need to find Agrabah before anyone else gets their hands on the lamp," said Jasmine.

"You're going to use a wish to get there? That might be dangerous," warned David. But the pair were adamant. Soon Hook and David were alone in the pawnshop.

"What now?"

"I'm calling Gold, letting him know someone broke into his shop," said David, already holding the phone to his ear.

Hook snorted. "Why bother? I'll wager this stranger is in league with the Crocodile."

"We have no evidence for that." David frowned as his call went unanswered. He lowered his phone and started typing. "And even if they are working together, no point in letting them know that we know..."

That task completed, David headed back to the sheriff's office. "If someone's missing a baby, they'll probably look there for help..." He glanced over at Hook, the implicit request clear in his expression.

"And with you at the desk, that leaves me to investigate the stranger." This was proving to be a long night, thought Hook, and not in the enjoyable sense. Damn Regina for sticking him with the legwork.

"Would you? Thanks, I'd appreciate it." David smiled and disappeared inside the building.

"Yeah, no problem, mate." Definitely a long night. And he was in no hurry to catch up to another bad-tempered magic-wielding woman. No reason he couldn't stop by the Rabbit Hole for a drink first, as part of his inquiries. So he did. An hour or two passed pleasantly enough, with no further news of the sorcerous stranger. With a sigh and a wistful glance at his empty glass, Hook pushed himself away from the bar and headed back out to the street.

As he passed by Granny's Diner, he was startled to find it lit up like a trapped lightning storm. The door opened and two dwarves hurtled outside. One of them (he thought it was the one called Leroy) shouted, "Portal! We've been portal-ed!"

Hook backed away a step to avoid being knocked over as they fled down the street. "Bloody hell."

A few moments later, after the lights had died down, a tall, ominous figure in a hooded robe emerged from the diner and headed down the street, his path taking him past Hook.

Hook looked the new arrival up and down, the haze of alcohol muddling any natural caution he might have in confronting a sorcerer who might well be Emma's prophesied killer. "Who the hell are you?"

The figure stopped, head turning to face him, features still hidden under the hood. "You're... Killian Jones. Captain Hook."

Hook grinned, unsurprised to be recognized — after all, his trademark feature was well-known. "Fame at last!"

"Yes, I know you, you foul serpent."

"Well, that's a bit harsh," began Hook, but before he could marshal his wits, the stranger came a step closer, raising a hand to point at him accusingly.

"You tried to kill my mother!" A flicker of orange spat out from the stranger's fingers. The world seemed to swirl around Hook, the robed figure taking on gigantic proportions while Hook's legs seemed to collapse under him. He tried to shout out a curse, but it came out as an inhuman hiss. Worse, he found himself trapped inside a metal cage with enchanted bars that burned at his touch. His touch... his hook was gone. His arms were gone. Looking down at himself, he saw only a coiled, scaly length...

The bastard had turned him into a snake!

"Belle... what happened?" Rumple rocked back in horror, his hands sliding down to grip her wrists too tightly. It hadn't taken him long to detect the Darkness coiled around her soul. "Did... did my mother do this to you?"

She flinched, twisting her hands and looking away. "I made my own choice."

"You..." His voice was choked, anguished. "The Darkness..."

"It doesn't matter. We have to save Gideon." Belle pulled away again, and this time Rumple released his grip.

"Oh, Belle." He struggled to stand up, nearly fell over when his ankle gave under his weight. "I failed you again."

She started to move forward to support him, realizing that his old injury had returned with this latest resurrection, but he shook his head and turned instead to lean against the giant cauldron. Belle bit her lip, wishing that things were different between them, but what was gone was gone. "Don't... don't blame yourself. It's not your fault."

"It is." He glanced down at himself, concentrated for a moment, and after a swirl of magic, he stood up straighter, his clothing once more crisp and dry. Only his demeanor was as defeated as ever. "It seems the price of my sins isn't so easy to evade, shears or no shears. I incurred that debt when I repaid mercy with evil — the healer, I murdered him, that's how Hades acquired the contract — but the fates are cruel to force you and Gideon to pay for my villainy. If only I had been stronger — if I had stopped, that night when we were together.."

Belle closed the distance between them, stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. She met his startled, guilty gaze. "No. Don't you dare wish our son out of existence! Besides, I was equally to blame. I wanted you so badly, I didn't stop to think... to ask..."

"Belle..."

"It's funny, isn't it, that I get angry at you for assuming that you'll lose me, yet I always assume that you'll take me back, no matter how many times I leave." She let go and half-turned, stepping away, unable to face him as she continued her confession. "I told myself that it was my choice not to return, and that was the only thing that mattered. But then, as you said on the Jolly Roger, necessity would make me come to you..."

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him watching her. He lifted a hand, then dropped it again, as if afraid to approach her. "Belle, I'm sorry. I was angry, too."

Beginning to feel chilled, Belle paced back and forth in the dim tunnel, rubbing her hands for warmth. "No, I do need your help, but it's time I stopped hiding behind your dark magic and then hating you when I can't accept it. Dove was right, what he said."

"Dove?" Rumple lifted his head sharply. "What did he say?"

"Only the truth." Belle stopped pacing to look at him. "Don't be upset."

"I know how 'truth' can be used to manipulate people!"

"Don't." She touched his arm, not wanting this distraction now. "He was helping me. Really helping... not like Zelena. Please. Anyway, that's not important now."

Rumple lowered his head and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "You're right." He closed his eyes and laid his palm against the side of the Cauldron of Rebirth. Some troubling thought seemed to pass between them, just beyond the range of Belle's hearing.

"What is it?"

"Nothing. There's a price for my restoration. I'll deal with it later."

Belle looked at him in alarm, but he shook his head and with a wave of his hand, transported them both back to his house. Dove was still there. He met their arrival with his usual imperturbability, even when Rumple gave him a narrow-eyed glare. Belle braced herself to intervene, but all Rumple said was, "Things are moving. You shouldn't be here."

Dove nodded, raising an eyebrow in query.

"Go to the cabin. Keep an eye on the Evil Queen and her baby niece."

Dove nodded again and left without another word. Nor did Rumple comment. He merely picked up the golden shears and stowed them away in some extradimensional pocket inside his suit. He did the same with his phone, after checking the messages. "Ah, Sheriff Nolan. How thoughtful of you."

"What did he say?" Belle asked.

"Nothing I didn't already know. She was at the pawn shop."

Belle didn't need to ask who 'she' was. And even though they teleported themselves there in an instant, she was already long gone. Tiny wisps of gold thread covered everything like a layer of magical dust. Belle swiped a finger across a shelf and examined the residue. The Black Fairy had managed to break Rumple's tracking cuff, and far sooner than they had hoped.

"She took her wand. She must have used the genie to break through my wards. Damn it!" His cane suddenly in his hand again, Rumple swept it across a counter, sending fragile objects crashing violently into the far wall. "We're too late."

"Rumple! Don't say that. We'll...we'll find her." Belle forced herself to believe that. "Where... where would she have taken him?"

Rumple didn't answer at first. Breathing heavily, he dropped the cane and rested his hands on the edge of the counter, his head bowed. Then he spoke softly of realms of dark magic, where time ran differently and nothing made sense.

"There must be something we can do." Even if that meant diving headfirst into the dark realms.

"There is still one hope. I...I set a fail-safe." Rumple avoided her gaze, in that way he had when he had done something he knew she wouldn't approve of. "A last resort."

"What fail-safe?" Belle deliberately moved closer, not letting him slither out of the truth this time. "Tell me."

He sighed and held his hand up to the lamp. "Look."

Belle frowned, not seeing anything of note in his hand. Then she looked past his fingers and saw what was missing. "Your shadow!"

"Aye, my shadow. I set it to guard our son. Just in case."

Belle remembered that he had cut off his own shadow once before, when he had gone to Neverland to face Peter Pan. Most people who had their shadows torn away died of that loss, but not Rumplestiltskin. It was a strange gift, not something intrinsic to the Dark One, nor any spell she had ever read about, but rather something that had passed down through Rumple's maternal line. Or so she surmised, from the few hints he had dropped later. Dark fairy magic. Nothing he took any pride in. "Then we still have a chance."

"My shadow shares my name and my nature, but not my full powers." Rumple grimaced. "I'm afraid it's no match for the Black Fairy."

"Then...?" She tried to think what it would do. If Rumple's shadow shared his intelligence and even some of his powers, it would still be a force to be reckoned with.

Whatever Rumple meant to say was cut short by the tinkle of bells as the front door was pushed open. A tall figure in a hooded robe stepped inside and stopped, dramatically pushing back the hood to reveal his face — a face familiar to Belle from her dreams. His voice, too, was the one she remembered, as he dropped his greeting into their stunned silence. "Hello, Mother. Hello, Father."

Drawn together instinctively, Belle and Rumple turned to gape at their impossibly grown son.

Rumple found his tongue first. "How? How is this possible...?"

Gideon's answer confirmed their worst fears. The Black Fairy had taken him to a place where time moved differently, and raised him to be her instrument, all in the blink of an eye. And now he had broken free, hell bent on fulfilling a mission of his own: to kill the Savior and take her powers. He thought it would make him a hero — he smiled softly at his mother when he explained it. Because he needed light magic to free the other children from the Black Fairy.

Shocked, Belle and Rumple did their best to dissuade him. Rumple stammered something about the difficulty, which Belle thought was entirely beside the point, but her attempt to convince Gideon that murder was wrong and un-heroic fell on deaf ears.

"One life, against the lives of hundreds who are lost, crying in the darkness, without hope," said Gideon. "And who will care for those lost, if not I?"

"There must be another way!" Belle tried again to get through to their son, but to her despair, he seemed as stubbornly pig-headed as his parents had ever been. Then another thought crept into her mind, Your son deserves light magic more than the so-called Savior. When did Emma Swan ever save you? When Rumple was powerless, she sent Merida to kill you. When you were under a sleeping curse, she didn't care. None of them cared. Belle banished the dark thought, but after that, her arguments felt weak even to herself.

"We'll help you, son," said Rumple, and Belle didn't miss him not specifying what they would help Gideon with, but she bit her tongue, hoping that her husband's tricks with words would succeed where her blunt pleas had failed.

No such luck.

"Help! As you helped me for the past twenty-eight years, Father?" Gideon's face twisted in resentment. "You promised to protect me."

"Gideon... I..." Rumple stumbled through an apology, finally running out of words.

"I've seen it in a vision," stated Gideon. "This is my destiny." And then he vanished in a spiral of orange smoke.

"Visions distort the truth; visions lie," whispered Rumple, but he was speaking to empty air. "Oh, son." Then he turned to Belle and they stared at each other wildly. In heavy silence, their disbelief at finding their son suddenly full-grown and homicidal settled slowly into dull acceptance.

"He can't kill Emma," Belle said at last. "We have to find him, talk to him."

"Isn't that what we were just doing?"

"Yes, but we didn't have time to think." Belle refused to give up so easily. "I know there must be good in his heart."

"And that might stay his hand, if he had his heart."

"What?" Belle jerked backwards in fresh shock. Rumple couldn't mean...

But he was already nodding glumly. "That fail-safe I mentioned. Belle, I did it to protect him."

"Gods, Rumple! Your shadow ripped out our baby's heart?" Every time she thought she knew what he was capable of, he did something like this? "And did what with it?"

His fingers twitched in agitation. Whatever the answer, Belle knew she wouldn't like it.

"It would have run to the one place it knew the Black Fairy wouldn't be able to follow."

"Where?"

"Neverland."

Neverland? Belle shut her eyes, appalled. This was getting worse by the minute. "Rumple, how could you do that to him?"

"It was my last resort, to shield him the only way I could from pain and suffering. And... Belle, if an enemy got their hands on his heart... I couldn't risk that." His voice broke, and she could hear the fear that lay underneath, the same fear that had driven every awful deed he had ever done. The terrifying thing was that she was beginning to understand that fear all too well. To lose a child — it was unthinkable. She didn't, she wouldn't think it.

"We have to give him his heart back. We have to stop him... stop him from..."

"From falling deeper into darkness. I know." Rumple touched her arms lightly. "We will. We just have to find him first."

Before he kills Emma Swan. Or she kills him.

Author's notes: Well, 6.11-6.13 went better than I expected, except for the Rumbelle dialogue. Every time Belle opens her mouth, I'm like, "WTF!? Have you been drinking the memory tea!?" But Gideon is winning me over, and I'm amused by the Dark One parenting techniques. (Though 6.13 felt like a retcon, and the S1-2 flashbacks were so much better/intense with RC cranked up to 11.)

Streamlining (no canoe trip with your son when a dark sorcerer is out to kill you!) as well as outright altering events and backstories.

No Wish!Robin in Storybrooke. Anyway, I thought the magic tree only transported two people. Everything else in Wish!Realm same as canon, except time flows differently.

Vault of hearts: WTF, Regina!? Head-canon: she returned all the ones she could off-screen (maybe season 4?). Also, Regina thought she had a consensual relationship with Graham. Even though the Curse makes consent problematic, I find it more forgivable than outright heart-control rape. Everyone may be a murderer, but they don't have to be rapists, too.

Hook didn't kill David's father. Too contrived of a coincidence, and didn't add any new characterization to Hook. Pointless relationship drama, when they already have enough issues as it is. I'm retconning in a different anti-Hook thing. CS will not be endgame. SQ fits the arc of the show better IMO.

No Beowulf or Hrunting. I decided to use my own backstory, and the magic sword is the one I invented for my one-shot Unto Heavens Unspanned.