Chapter 20 : Lost Time
In which Emma and Blue argue, Neal and Ralph meet someone, and Belle is appalled by Blue's behavior.
Emma felt trapped. Henry had lured her here, her parents had betrayed her! Who could she trust in this nasty world?
"Emma, just please listen… Do it for us." Her mother begged. "Please before something worse happens? This feud is getting out of control and should stop…"
Emma glared at her. "You planned this!" she shouted, "you and her! And to use Henry for something so despicable as well! Turn him on his mom!"
"Emma," her father tried to sound stern. "It's precisely for Henry's sake that this needs to end… You don't want him to see you angry all the time, now do you?"
"Emma," Blue began. "I apologize for everything I have done. I did have your best interest at heart by sending you through the wardrobe. I wanted you to be safe."
Emma snorted: "A baby on its own is never safe."
"I couldn't oversee the consequences, nor could I know the hardships you've had to endure…" Blue continued. "You had a role to play, a very important one. I didn't think it would…"
"You didn't think! Exactly! Like when you tied the blade and him, your lover, together. Made his soul almost immortal…"
"It was the biggest mistake of my life! Do I still have to suffer for it, all these ages later?!"
"You don't see people. You just see duty. You don't care about individuals and their lives. It's so easy for you to sacrifice their happiness!"
"Not on purpose! Never on purpose!"
"You act like you're so smart!" Emma had only just begun with her accusations. "Like you can't make mistakes, like you are God! Like you can see the future and decide everyone's fate. Mother knows best…" She ended in a sneer.
"I cannot see the future. If only I could… I do have much life experience, but that doesn't mean I'm never wrong…"
"No, because you are! Quite often!" Emma calmed down just a little. "You play people on this giant chessboard and do as you please. Who do you answer to? That is the real question."
"I serve the people. I serve the world." Blue answered.
"Emma," Mary Margaret stated. "Blue answers to us, to all of us who trust her, and who have aided her and who she has helped in return."
"It's hardly equal. She has great powers and lives like forever. She can manipulate, use her powers to change fates…. It's no contest really. She could have you killed in a mere moment…"
"Yes, and she hasn't!" Mary Margaret continued. "Do you honestly think we don't know that..? Regina has always been the one to murder people, she and her mother. Rumplestiltskin was a force to be counted with. Blue has done nothing but good and always has had our best interest at heart."
The Prince nodded and so did Blue. Emma wasn't convinced yet. "She created the Dark One! Who knows what else she has done? What horrors she may be responsible for!"
"Look, Mary Margaret, I have tried…" Blue sighed as she wanted to walk out of the door.
"Not so fast!" Emma stopped her. They stared in each other's eyes, both seething with anger.
"Please let me pass." Blue managed to sound civil, but only just.
"And if I don't?"
"I'll be forced to hurt you, which will only lead you to question me even more. I cannot win this battle of distrust. I have your parent's trust and no idea how to gain yours…"
"You're absolutely right. I do not trust you at all!"
"We'll just have to agree to disagree then, don't you think? Have a truce, for your family's sake?" Blue extended her hand.
Emma hesitated. She looked at her parents and Henry who were holding their breath, longing for this to end.
"Very well. Only for their sake," she replied. They shook hands on it, but their eyes still betrayed their mutual distaste.
Two days before Emma's confrontation with Blue, Neal and Radolph were on their way North. Ralph's leg had been tended to and they had taken a flight to Maine. Now they were on the road headed to… not to Storybrooke. Radolph's memories hadn't returned and he gathered that he came from somewhere in Maine but wasn't too sure about it either.
In Maine lived an important man. Not so much politically or financially. Not someone who would change the world in any spectacular way, yet he might have the power to change their lives forever…
Ralph was still angry at Neal's betrayal, but they had had plenty of time to talk. He agreed, reluctantly, with Neal that they did feel a strange connection. He had felt it, after all, even though he was pretty pissed off at his young protégé. Neal had told him very strange stories. Of another world, beyond this one. Of his childhood where the dagger played an important, albeit very damaging, role. Ralph didn't know if this Neal, or Baelfire, was for real or very psycho. Neal never let the dagger out of sight, so any attempt to get it back was futile.
"Welcome, welcome!" A heavy-set man with dark hair, bushy eyebrows, a big beard but a delicate moustache, greeted them to his home. The modern villa did not fit at all with the old-fashioned look and feel of the man himself. The interior was a mix between old and new; antique chairs next to a minimalistic glass table; wooden bookcases that seemed to fall apart at the touch filled with flashy modern books, but the strange assortments represented the man before them very much.
"I'm so glad you found your way here." He began. "I love doing my shows, but helping people is definitely my higher calling. It's a way to use my skills for the good of humanity rather than showing off. Though I shouldn't complain as it got me all this." He spread his hands in another theatrical gesture.
"We've heard a lot about you," Neal started the conversation, "you appear to have amazing results…"
"Yes, it's a gift, a very special one that I am ever so proud of," the man boasted. He didn't really have to say so as the walls were a living testament to his pride. Various posters stating: The Great Bamboozini Will Shock You! Or The Great Bamboozini Travels Through Time; Your Childhood Memories Revealed: Miranda Shares: The Tale of My Birth.
"Hypnosis.." Ralph said, both sceptic and scared. What was this man capable of? Was he really in safe hands? Not that it mattered as Neal could make him do anything anyway: similar to the effects of hypnosis.
"Is your name really Bamboozini?" he wondered out loud. Not the most relevant question..
The man laughed. "No, it isn't, but it sounds great, don't you think?"
"Can we please just get on with it?" Ralph replied quite rudely. He was nervous enough without having to have an entire conversation of small talk.
The man didn't take offense. "Sure, sure, that's what you're here for. A very interesting case, your story…"
They had talked on the phone to make an appointment and Neal had filled him in on some, but not all, of the details beforehand.
"Losing one's memory from one moment to the next… very interesting indeed."
"I'm not even sure if that happened," Ralph piped up. "It's what he seems to think, all based on this letter and his own strange ideas…" Neal frowned at the insult but didn't reply to the thinly veiled accusation of insanity.
"Usually some sort of trauma causes people to lose their memory like that. Perhaps you wanted to forget whatever happened when you lived out here," the Great Bamboozini—formerly known as Bart Bucket—said, using his expert tone.
"Maybe…"
Blue returned to the village when Belle and Daniel came running towards her.
"It's Regina, something very awful has happened…" Belle ran out of breath telling the story and Daniel filled in the details.
"A harp, you say?" These words piqued her interest. Surely it couldn't be? "Do you have it with you?"
"It's still with Regina in her office," Daniel said as he began to twitch slightly. By the time, they arrived and Blue got a closer look at Regina and the harp, Daniel's body began to jerk as well, and he dropped to the ground. Soon he was as pale as Regina.
"What's going on? What's happening?" Belle panicked. It was a very scary sight. Two bodies moving like puppets on strings; both of them in quartering position.
"Blue, what is it? Can you do something, can you fix this?"
"It is the harp! I never thought I would lay eyes on it! Legend tells us that it exists, but I never dreamt of seeing it myself!"
"How can you be ecstatic at a time like this?" Belle shrieked.
"Oh, I can, my dear, I can." A smile crept on her face. "This is the most wanted, sought after, interesting, and mythical artefact I have ever seen. And I have seen much! For a time, a rumor spread that Cora had it, and I never saw proof of that… but here it is!"
"Rumple got it out of a spell book, I suppose." Belle said deflated: "I couldn't keep him from using magic…"
"That is remarkable! I wish I would have found it myself. I certainly searched long enough…."
"What is it? What is going on? Can it be mended? Can we help them?" Belle didn't want to hear praises to this accursed object. She wanted answers and aid.
"Let me tell you the history of the harp," Blue began, hardly noticing the two twitching bodies and seating herself behind Regina's desk. "I promise you, it is an interesting story…"