Alright, here we go; there's this chapter and there's chapter 25, then I haven't written anymore. Hope you enjoy them!
Rachel did not know if she should call it morning or night when she drove past the sign that marked the town perimeter. Welcome to Storybrooke, that was what it had said, and for some reason she felt like she had come home. Strange what a year like this could do to you; suddenly a cursed town inhabited by fairytale characters and evil witches felt more like a home than the apartment she had left in Sweden. Now she planned to stick around here for a while. Maybe once the current problem was solved she could start working at the school; she knew Mary Margaret had done that before but since their return here she had been, well, a little bit busy with being pregnant and giving birth.
The forest cleared away and she drove along the deserted Main Street, past the clock tower. The clock face that Regina had been thrown through during her stand against Zelena was covered in tarpaulin; apparently no one had managed to repair it yet.
She steered the car into an empty space outside Granny's Bed and Breakfast, spotting David's familiar truck across the road by the diner. A glance at her phone confirmed that it was still early in the morning – roughly half past three – and there was no way Granny or Red would be awake now, so sleeping at the B&B was out of the question. In fact she should probably settle for sleeping a few hours in the back of her car.
She unfastened the seatbelt and moved to crawl into the back when a light flickered on further down the road. It came from an apartment window at the top of a two-story brick building, its entrance facing away from the main road, but that did not matter; she knew perfectly well whose apartment that was and it was enough to make her step out of the car. She had been unable to fix the lock mechanism on it, so she used a locking spell to make sure no one stole it from her. Then she hung the strap of her shoulder bag on her left shoulder and started down the street. Nothing moved as she crossed it and walked around the red brick building, opening the old door. Her steps up the stairs seemed to echo in the otherwise silent hall until she reached the green door at the top, marked with a 3. There was soft light spilling from the apartment, appearing through the narrow slit between the door and the floor, and she thought she heard someone softly humming inside. Mary Margaret, most likely. She must be trying to get the baby to go back to sleep.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, Rachel raised her hand and knocked softly on the wood with her knuckles. The humming from inside stopped at once. Moments later a shadow appeared in the light spilling out from beneath the door.
"Who is it?" came Mary Margaret's voice, tired and uncertain.
"It's me", Rachel replied. She could hear Mary Margaret's sharp intake of breath even through the wood. Then the door was unlocked and pulled open.
Mary Margaret Blanchard Nolan, the Storybrooke counterpart of Snow White, stood in the doorway, illuminated by the soft light of one lit lamp behind her. She was dressed in a pale blue bathrobe atop a pair of cream white pyjamas and her feet were stuck into a pair of fluffy white slippers. She still held some of the roundness of her pregnancy, apparent in her face and stomach region, but she seemed to have lost a lot more than what was healthy to lose in less than a month.
That was all Rachel was able to register before the slightly shorter woman stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her.
"It's you", she whispered in her ear. "It's you, you're back, you're here."
Rachel smiled, feeling the burn in her throat signalling unshed tears as she hugged back. The hug confirmed that Mary Margaret was, indeed, much slimmer than she should be.
"Are you all back?" Mary Margaret asked as she pulled back. "Where are the others? Are they at..."
"It's just me", Rachel replied with a faint smile. "For now. The others will come as soon as possible, but I... had to go before them."
"Oh."
Mary Margaret frowned slightly, before stepping aside and allowing her into the apartment. It looked the same as it had a month before, perhaps with the exception of additional baby objects, other than the crib. A glance towards the bedroom half of the apartment gave Rachel a glimpse of her sleeping brother. She nearly gasped at the sight. If she had thought Mary Margaret looked like she had lost weight, David looked half-dead. His skin had a slightly greyish tone, there was an unkempt beard growing on his chin and his arms, resting on top of the covers, looked thin.
"What's happened?" Rachel asked and turned towards Mary Margaret. "Is everything alright?"
"It's... a long story", Mary Margaret replied with a sigh. "The time after you all disappeared has not been easy for us."
"Apparently not", Rachel noted. "Do you mean everyone's like this?"
"Not exactly like David, no", Mary Margaret said, "but we've all felt this sort of... emptiness. As if something's snapped inside of us."
"The connections", Rachel realized. "Damn. Ollivander should have told us this could happen."
"You met him again?"
"He's the reason we disappeared in the first place, I guess", Rachel sighed. "Or, well, Clarissa and Wolf went with Emma and Hook to the past, but they got back here again, didn't they? So if Ollivander had not messed with the rest of us and made us leave... this would not have happened."
"Well", Mary Margaret said with a smile, "seems like you're all coming back now. Everything will turn out for the better then, won't it?"
Rachel was about to point out that the message Rumplestiltskin had sent them had talked of grave danger, but then she realized that that danger was not yet here. It was in the future.
"Yeah", she therefore said with a nod, "everything will be good."
"Emma's not here tonight; she's staying at Granny's", Mary Margaret said with a smile, "so you can have the whole loft to yourself tonight."
"I'll be fine sleeping on the couch", Rachel reassured her. "I haven't got anything to sleep in; I'd planned to sleep in the car and buy whatever I might need tomorrow, until the others get here."
"But..."
"Mary Margaret", Rachel interrupted, "go back to bed. You need to sleep. Everything will get better now that me and the others are coming back here, right?"
Mary Margaret studied her for a few moments more before she nodded.
"Alright", she said, "we'll talk more in the morning."
Rachel nodded with a small smile and sat down on the couch, pulling off her boots and setting them down on the floor before unfolding one of the blankets hanging over the back of the couch and wrapping it around herself.
"Good night", she heard Mary Margaret say from the bed, before she turned off the light.
"Good night", Rachel murmured back, before she closed her eyes and allowed herself to drift off into sleep.
David Nolan woke up to the smell of pancakes, the sound of his wife's laughter and his son's happy gurgling. There was no ache in his chest, no matter how much he tried to find it, and while blinking up at the ceiling he tried to decide if that had all been a dream. He had lost count of how many times he had been rushed to the hospital in the past month, either barely conscious or completely out of it. Whale had done everything he could to determine the cause of it but had not been able to find one. It was not a series of heart attacks – in fact his internal organs all looked fine – and with Regina hiding from everyone and Gold away on his honeymoon there was no one available who could confirm or deny the doctor's suspicions that this had to do with magic.
But now the ache was gone, completely. There was not even a trace of it. How had that happened?
"Wait", he heard Mary Margaret say, "you mean you actually ran a café in the middle of New York using magic? In Neal's old apartment?"
"Well, not exactly in the apartment", a familiar voice replied. "We didn't..."
David was out of the bed faster than he thought was humanly possible and stumbled over his shoes, causing the two women by the breakfast bar to look up in surprise. He stared back, taking in the scene. A plate of thin, Nordic-styled pancakes. Bowls of jam. Three glasses of orange juice and three cups of steaming hot tea. It should be a completely normal breakfast scene, in most families, but this was not a normal family.
The young woman seated opposite Mary Margaret slowly put her cup of tea back down onto the bar and slid down from her chair. There were shadows beneath her eyes, telling him that she had not had a full night's sleep, and her clothes looked rumpled as if she had slept in them. Other than that she looked good. There was a healthy glow about her, one that he almost felt jealous of because he knew he looked nothing like that, even though he had refused to look at himself in a mirror for quite some time now.
"Hello David", the woman said, her lips quirking up in a small smile. That was all it took. He marched forward and crushed her to his chest, breathing in her familiar scent while fighting back the tears.
"You came back", he whispered as he pulled back slightly to look at her. She shot him a smile and reached up, removing some of the tears he had been unable to keep away from his cheeks.
"Did you ever doubt I would?" she asked. He smiled back.
"I had my moments."
She grinned at him before pulling him into another hug.
"It's good to be home", he heard her murmur. He smiled and kissed the top of her head.
"It's good to have you home, Rachel."
Once he had collected himself they both sat down. David felt a gnawing hunger in the pit of his stomach, something he had not experienced since his childhood, before Rumplestiltskin showed up and told him to take his twin brother's place as prince. He therefore started gulfing down pancake after pancake, much to the amusement of his wife and sister.
"So what's happened here?" Rachel asked once he started taking it a bit slower again. "Mary Margaret's told me that everyone who was a connection to one of my friends experienced some sort of... bond breakage or whatever we should call it."
"Yeah", David agreed and paused his frantic eating, "but I guess that's not all that's happened."
Rachel frowned slightly at him and then at Mary Margaret, who was squirming slightly in her chair.
"What? What's happened?"
"Well, the good news is that Gold and Belle are married", Mary Margaret said and smiled widely. "They're away in a secluded location somewhere in Storybrooke on their honeymoon. Crossing the town line comes with far too many complications for us."
"You sure?" Rachel asked. "I know you said that during the last curse people forgot their fairytale selves if they crossed the town line, but this curse is different. Isn't it?"
"Well, I doubt Gold would want to risk it", David replied. "Belle was one of those who was affected last time and her Storybrooke persona was quite... different."
Rachel nodded and sipped thoughtfully on her tea.
"You said those were the good news", she said, "and since I already know about people being affected by us leaving I'm guessing those aren't the bad ones. So what are they?"
David glanced at Mary Margaret and saw that she was fidgeting. Rachel noticed it as well.
"Was it something that happened because of the time travel business?" she asked, putting her cup down on the table and staring them both down.
"Actually, yes", Mary Margaret replied.
"But not anything that you guys were involved in", David quickly filled in. "Emma and Hook said you all disappeared from their heads before... this happened."
"So that means this happened after the Evil Queen almost toasted both Snow and Clarissa?"
David nodded and glanced over at his wife again.
"There wasn't much that happened after that", Rachel thoughtfully said, obviously going through the events in her head. "They escaped from the castle, the Blue Fairy showed up and restored Snow, then there was the event at the Troll Bridge and your sweet little talk on the road, and then Rumplestiltskin's castle..."
She paused, blinking down at the liquid in her cup. Then her head shot up.
"Is this about the woman Emma decided to save from Regina?" she asked. David nodded, causing his sister's eyebrows to rise in surprise.
"She's someone important, then? Someone that should have died back then?"
"Yeah", David sighed, "she's Lady Marian. Robin's wife."
And as you might have figured out; the breakfast scene in this chapter takes place at roughly the same time as when the gang in New York listens to Rachel's voice mail.