AN: This is the chapter I had written long ago, so I'm happy to publish it immediately today. Unfortunately you'll have to wait for more, probably until the end of December.

To answer some questions from the comments:
* None of them were sent to our world by the curse
* They are 27-and-something by now
* They will go to Storybrooke, no worries. Using a car. For obvious reasons, no yellow bug for them
* We'll meet Regina quite soon, and you'll get to meet whoever is living with her even earlier
* Some kids don't understand the idea of twins or triplets, and even some grownups are weird about it, yes

As usual, if you see anything wrong/unclear/badly written, point it out and I'll try to fix it :)

Now they know

The guy seemed harmless enough, so Elena finally let him inside. All three looked at him expectantly, as he sat there, looking very uncomfortable. He played with his leather jacket cuffs and they perched on the sofa, waiting.

"Well?" Elsa decided to break the silence.

"Ah. Well" he coughed. "My name is August and..." he paused to take big gulp of air. "I was sent to watch over you."

Elsa snickered and Emma smacked her shoulder to silence her.

Elena finally found her voice.

"What are you, a guardian angel?"

"If he is, the angels are rather..."

"...scruffy."

He sighed again.

"You parents sent me with you, OK? And I really tried to stay in the same place, to make sure I don't lose you, but some idiots in Social Services decided it will be better to separate us and sent me to some stupid country house for boys. I never knew before these actually existed. They supposedly thought it was better for my health" he coughed and grimaced. "My asthma and my allergies disagree."

"Our... parents?" Elena asked in a weak voice.

"Yes. I'm sorry I couldn't be here earlier" he made a face. "I was looking... well, anyway. The thing is, you know you were found in baskets, in a forest, by some kid, right?"

They nodded mutely.

"I'm the kid who supposedly 'found' you all. Actually, I only found one, the other two were sent with me. I can tell you exactly where, when, what we were all wearing and even who was in which basket. I suppose they wouldn't have told you that. This one" he pointed to the sturdy wicker basket - filled with various cables and cell chargers - by the window "was Emma's and Elena's. And that one" white construction of thin wooden ribbons now held yarn "was Elsa's. I know you will be suspicious, but listen, please" he paused and coughed again.

Elsa shuddered with sudden understanding.

August explained the events from twenty seven years earlier as well as he could, still skirting around the question of their actual origin.

"So" Elsa sighed again, by now sandwiched between her sisters, both holding her in a tight hug. "As I know you came with them, I'm guessing you have no idea who my parents might be. But what about theirs?"

"Yeah, that..." August stared at the dark window for a moment. "Your parents - now, hear me out and don't hit me and don't laugh - are best known as the Bandit Princess and the Dragon Killer. Or, Snow White and Prince James."

"Bull" Elsa's natural calm had already been rattled by the news they received just a moment before and now her normally measured, cultured voice broke just a little.

Elena pursed her lips and waited for Emma's reaction. Emma's 'lie detector' evolved soon after Henry was born (she was complaining a bit that it could have shown earlier and spared them all the court case hassle) and they relied on it in dealings with suspicious outsiders.

"He's not lying."

They were silent for a moment, looking at August, as he fidgeted in the soft chair.

"Actually, I'm telling perfect truth, for once."

His feelings and stress were, in fact, shouting "TRUTH" for Emma, so she nodded to her sisters.

"So, we're what, fairies?"

He snorted.

"No, perfectly normal humans. Just, well, a tiny bit magical. Actually, not that tiny a bit, sorry" he moved a bit, trying to find a better position. "At least one of you has already been using magic, a lot."

Emma looked at him appraisingly.

"You are still telling the truth, but that doesn't mean it is a fact. I mean, you could believe that magic exists, but still it would not make it any more true. Same with our parents. Someone might have messed with you, you were just a kid after all."

His shoulders slumped a bit.

"One of you is using magic. And I mean it. She can even do it unknowingly, but I guarantee you, she is. I could probably work out which one, if you weren't sitting all in one place" he smiled crookedly.

"What?" Elsa blinked. "How?"

He pursed his lips.

"I... Magic pains me, OK? I mean, it's like an itch that goes painful, the closer I get to a magician. Especially if they are actively, daily, working it. I can detect magicked items and places, sometimes old curses."

Emma leaned forward and looked at him in silence, lips pressed into a thin line.

"How?" she asked quietly. "Why are you so sensitive to magic? And, if it's so painful, why did you even come here?"

He sighed.

"I didn't feel it from outside, only once I was in here. So whatever one of you is doing, is not big, like a huge curse. Maybe it's just... I don't know. It's like in that Chinese restaurant I visited, the cook was 'helping' the dishes to stay unburned. Nothing more. So my knee itched like crazy, but only if I sat too close to the counter. By the door it was quiet."

"That doesn't answer the first question" Elena pointed out helpfully.

"Because I was created by magic, ok? And it's failing me and any time I'm close to any magician, the broken parts hurt! Will you stop asking?" he huffed and covered his face with his hands. "Yes, I'm a magical creature and I can detect it. Now will you please all move to different places so I can work out which one is making my wooden leg itch? May I add, that as it's wooden, I can't even scratch it effectively? Thank you?"

"Ok, so if we stand in different corners, or just come closer to you one by one...?"

'Wooden?' Elena's mental alarms started blaring and blinking red on that word.

"Yeah. Two can stand by the kitchen door, and one closer to me, that should work" he sighed.

Emma and Elsa rose and moved to the doorway, as Elena made a few steps towards August. He nodded slowly.

"Not you."

Elsa exchanged places with Elena and he hissed in pain.

"Ah" Elsa looked at her hands in doubt. "So it's me? But you said I'm not from the same place...?"

Emma sprinted to her and caught her hands in hers.

"You are still our sister, no matter what. And even if..."

August made a moaning sound and curled himself up in the armchair.

"Ah."

"So it seems I'm the only one without magic" Elena sounded a bit miffed. "I feel cheated, but I'm not sure of what."

They spent the next hour interrogating August - at least that was what it felt like for him. He answered to the best of his knowledge, as honestly as he could, until they finally got to "whys" of the whole thing.

"A Savior?" Emma choked a bit on that word. "Me, a Savior. Of a bunch of fairyland characters?"

"It's a big bunch" August sighed. "If everything went as it was predicted, then it's the entire population of Enchanted Forest, sent over here, to the Land Without Magic. Considering this universe does have magic, I'm a bit curious as to how the Queen is feeling right now."

"And these guys, all of them, can't just fight their way back? I'm quite sure they know more about all this magic and curse stuff than we do" Elena sounded a little doubtful. "Because if Emma is supposed to learn all of this by herself - no teacher, no help - then I'm almost sure we're not going to get there before our 28th birthday. To tell the truth, I'm still not really convinced it's not some kind of elaborate trick. What if someone lied to you? If you were sick, like you say, your memories might have gotten mixed up."

"And the wooden leg is just a joke?" August asked bitterly. "You can see for yourself."

He reached down and unlaced his shoe, taking off the sock and rolling up his trouser leg. His polished wooden leg shone in the lamplight.

"I'm sorry, August" Elsa patted his arm. "But if that was supposed to convince us, it's too pink to be wood."

"WHAT?" he moaned. "It's wooden, look. Hear!" he knocked it, the wood giving the slight door-knocking noise.

"Uh-uh" Emma shrugged in disappointment. "I see you're sure it's wooden, but we see flesh. I'm very sorry, August. I like you. You seem a rather nice guy. Really. And I see you're convinced you're telling the truth. But I think you should go now. It was fun when it lasted, but we're not taking part in whatever they told you to fool us into."

August breathed jerkily and curled onto himself where he was sitting, trying obviously to say something and failing.

"Why is your leg wood?" a tiny, clear voice asked from his side and everyone jumped.

Henry's mussed hair and his Captain America pyjamas were a bit of a contrast to his worried, concerned face.

"Does this hurt?" he prodded the wood carefully. "I thought prosthesis were plastic, one of the kids in the school has a plastic foot..." he trailed off, looking at the grownups staring at him. "What?"

"Henry, do you actually see his wooden leg?" Elsa asked slowly.

"Sure. It's kind of dark wood, a bit like that box you have in your room, on the shelf? The one with the green top? And it's shiny, like the kitchen counter."

"Henry, ale you sure? Can you tell me how… how does his ankle work? Is it also made of wood?"

Henry sat down cross-legged by August's foot and, completely unconcerned by the weirdness of the situation, surveyed the joint in question with attention.

"It's like a big wooden ball attached to both the foot and the rest of the leg. I don't see how it's attached, but…" he went very quiet and still for a moment.

August was watching the boy with alternating dread and wonder. If they had a kid, it would be all that much harder to convince them to move. But if the kid could convince them he was telling the truth…!

Henry slowly picked himself up and went to the bookcase.

"Mum?" he called finally "it looks like this."

He was holding up a book and August knew with painful certainty which exact book it was. He breathed deeply as Emma looked at the page and then back at him.

"I suppose you've grown a bit since" she finally said in a very flat voice.

"I suppose so" he coughed again, the whole situation making his asthma kick up. "It's been twenty seven years after all. I was stuck in my six-year-old body for a long time in the Enchanted Forest, but once we were sent here, I've started to grow up."

"And it's really you? I mean, you're really him?" she weaved Collodi's novel around for emphasis. "And your father…?"

"He's in there, with the others. If he survived" he added hastily. "Which is not guaranteed for any of them, except for your own family and the Queen. Her whole plan was to make their life hell, so she would have kept them alive, if only to see them suffer."

"What a delightful thought" Elena grimaced and plucked the book from Emma's hand. "Really, that's you? And the donkey and all?"

"No, Collodi added some stuff. I mean, basically what he wrote almost matches. Like all the fairy tales in this world, you know. Dwarfs do not wear slouchy hats and are much taller, your mother doesn't run around the forest in a fancy dress and the Wolf doesn't… well. You'll meet that one, too."

Elena pressed her hand to her breast in a theatrical way.

"My childhood is gone! I was sure the tiny guys were so adorable! I was in love with Grumpy for a long time!"

August shrugged.

"He's a rather nasty character, but I can tell you he likes your mother. After I got here and I started watching cartoons and reading books, I tried to match what is said here to what I knew about our actual world. I'm quite sure there must have been people moving between worlds before us, to get so many details right, but they had to either observe from a distance, or they wanted to obscure some facts, as they wrote an enormous amount of it wrong. Also, the timelines are shot, and I'm really trying not to think about it too much, as it means Collodi wrote my story way before I feel I was born, even if I count in all the years I was living as a six year old."

Henry looked from the book up at August.

"Mom?"

Emma wordlessly hugged his shoulders with one hand.

"He's really Pinocchio?"

August shrugged and nodded.

"I am. Or at least, I was when I was back home. Here, my name is August Booth and I'm a writer" he smiled sadly. "Not very successful, mind you, but still, it's a job."

Henry blinked a few times, trying to work out the meaning of all that was said.

"And… which way are you turning?"

It was August's time to think for a longer moment.

"What do you mean? Left and right, I suppose."

"No. Are you wood and turning real, or real and turning into wood?"

All four residents watched August as he quietly squirmed in the stuffed armchair.

"Ah. That is the question of the day, my boy. I'm afraid I am turning into wood. That's why I'd very much prefer if you believed in what I'm saying. Because I really don't want to see what happens when the change gets much higher."