Chapter 28

Emma Swan was not one to advocate abusing one's authority. Heaven forbid. She'd never do something on the shady side of legal. Of course not. Not her. All those hacked computers and think-like-a-crook-to-catch-a-crook tricks and black market tracker drives were barking up the wrong tree. All right, all right, maybe she wasn't so clean that she squeaked. And fine, so she was presently tearing through Storybrooke's main drag at twice the posted limit of thirty miles an hour, knowing that being one of two cops in town meant that nobody was going to pull her over, and utterly dead set that if Gold had laid a finger on her kid, she'd take him down so hard that they could plant a flowerbed in his ass. Her mind was racing. Coming up here to stay. . . probably not the smartest decision ever, but the only way to face up to this phantom that had been haunting her for years, the whispers about a curse. Just a curse of morons, it appeared. And a curse of curses, considering what she was muttering under her breath as she gunned the Bug around the corner, squealed past a slow-moving biker, and –

And had to slam on the brakes, burning rubber as she wrestled to a stop, staring at the sidewalk bench outside the ice cream parlor, where David was happily enraptured with a chocolate cone practically the size of his head. Gold was sitting next to him, looking for all the world as if he was out to enjoy the warm autumn day. He barely turned a well-groomed hair as Emma slammed the car door and came barreling up the steps. "What the hell is going on here?"

"You have a very suspicious mind, Miss Swan." Gold pushed down his sunglasses with one finger and gave her a long, cool look. "Moving is such a complicated process, I only hoped I could assist in making it easier for you and your lad. Against the law to buy him a treat?"

"You could have asked me before you just whisked him off like that. Especially since he's developed this really terrible habit of getting into cars with men he doesn't know."

Gold grinned. "Ah, an adventuresome one. Just can't stop him when he takes it into his head to do something foolish, come hell or high water. Must get it from his father, eh?"

David looked up, mouth full of ice cream, blue eyes wide. "Do you know my dad, Mr. Gold?"

On the list of conversations she did not want to be having with her new landlord, this was A-number-one. "No, he doesn't," Emma interrupted, reminded all too well of the look on his face when he'd seen David for the first time. Yes, he does. It was another of those circumstances that made her certain she was a horrible mother: the fact that she was proposing to settle down with her young son in a freaky-ass town pretty much owned by his father's mortal enemy. "And I swear, if you run off with a stranger one more time, I am grounding you until you're thirty."

David looked startled. "But Mr. Gold – "

"Promising you ice cream is the oldest trick in the book, kid. I know you think you're onto something, but really. You can't keep acting like we're living in this fantasy world, where you can just do whatever you want and everybody's good and happy and trustworthy. That's not the way it works. You can finish your cone and say thank you, and then we're going home."

"I need to be getting along as well." Gold got to his feet. "I apologize for worrying you, Miss Swan, truly. I miss my own boy very much, that's all. No harm meant."

Emma returned to him the same cool stare he'd given her. "I'm going to come by your shop later tonight. We need to talk."

"Oh, indeed we do, dearie." The pawnbroker ruffled David's hair and smiled. "Listen to your mum, lad. I wish you all the best with your new home." With that, he limped down the steps and into his car, reversing out and vanishing away down the street.

Shaking her head, Emma retrieved David, stuffed him into the Bug, and hauled him back to the apartment, wiping his sticky chocolate-stained paws so he didn't make a mess of everything she'd just spent all afternoon unpacking. As she was engaged in so doing, and he was protesting, a dark head peered around the door. "Oh, you found him. That's great."

"Yeah. Whether he'll stay found is another story. Listen, I really hate that I already have to ask you to do this, but would you mind watching him this evening? I have an errand to run."

"I wouldn't mind at all." Mary Margaret smiled at the child. "Hi, sweetie. I'm your new neighbor, Mary Margaret."

"I'm David. You're pretty."

Emma rolled her eyes. "The ladies' man already. Ever smooth. Be careful he doesn't schmooze you right out of the house, because I bet he's going to try." She shot him an evil-eyeball. "If you get up to anything while I'm not here, mister, anything at all. . ."

"I'll be good," he promised, looking as beatific as possible. An angel's face with a devil's soul. God, why did he have to be so much like his father? "Really."

While she was still extremely dubious, to say the least, she shook her head and pulled together dinner out of what little food there was. Mary Margaret ended up staying, as it didn't make sense to send her back to her apartment only to fetch her again, and the three of them ate together, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Watching her son and Mary Margaret interact, Emma could tell that the other woman was already quite taken with him, but it didn't creep her out, as it had with Regina. It seemed almost. . . natural. Easy. Familial. But she didn't want to go that far. Not until she talked to Gold.

After dinner, Emma grabbed her keys again. "Yeah, so, I hope this will only be an hour or so, but I don't know. I – I can pay you if you want – "

Mary Margaret shook her head. "No, you don't have to. I don't mind at all." She glanced at David. "Hey buddy, you got any board games you want to play? Or books to read? I'm open to suggestions. Let's have some fun."

Seeing that they were off to the races – Mary Margaret was an elementary school teacher, she could probably handle herself just fine with young kids, even rambunctious six-year-old boys – Emma pulled on her leather jacket and trotted downstairs. It was cold enough when she emerged into the night that she could see her breath; it was the end of October, and they were pretty far north in Maine. It was also quiet, something she was very unused to after years of Boston clamor, and there was something lulling about the stillness. As much as she'd been in motion, frazzled, freaking out, running across half of New England in pursuit of her damn kid, who seemed determined to give her a heart attack before the age of thirty, there was also something. . . real. True. Good. Like it mattered that she'd come here, and that she'd stayed.

It wasn't much, perhaps. But it gave Emma the strength to climb into the Bug, start it up, and flick on the headlights, then rumble down the street, through town toward the pawnshop.

There was a light glimmering in the window when she pulled up. It felt an awful lot like going on one of her bounty-hunting busts, and she opened the glove compartment and took out her gun, making sure the safety was on before she stashed it in her jacket pocket. She didn't really think she'd have to use it, but she remembered very well what had happened the last time she was here – with Gold, Belle, Greg, Tamara, and Killian. She'd be crazy to go in completely unarmed.

Emma expelled another slow breath and got out. She headed up the walk and tried the door, expecting it to be locked. It wasn't. She stepped inside.

"Hello, Miss Swan." Gold barely glanced up from where he was standing at the far end of the counter, methodically polishing something. "Punctual, aren't you?"

She couldn't decide if that was an insult spoken in a compliment's tone, or a compliment spoken in an insult's tone. Either way, this night promised to be interesting. Probably too much so. "If you want to call it that." She strode closer, the heels of her boots rapping on the hardwood floor. "What the hell was today actually about?"

He glanced up, guileless as a lamb. "That's where you start? I told you. I miss my own boy and wanted to buy your lad a treat. Welcome him to town. Must everything have an ulterior motive?"

"Bullshit. You wanted to get my attention. All right. You did."

A strange little smile twisted the corner of the pawnbroker's mouth. "Admirably direct, dearie. I'm glad to see we understand each other. Since you are, I shall feel comfortable being likewise. Where is young David's father?"

"He's. . . gone. Dead."

"Really?" Gold arched an eyebrow. "Don't expect that you're the only one here who thinks they have a knack with lies, my dear."

"I don't know what you're talking about. David's dad was. . . just a guy I met while I was working for ATF in Boston, right after I graduated from college. We met at a bar, had our fun, and went our separate ways. Few years later, the cops knocked on my door in the middle of the night. They'd fished him out of the Charles River and wanted to know if I knew anything. I didn't. He's probably still in the cold cases file if you want to take a look. I wasn't too broken up. We were never in any kind of emotional relationship. Like I said. One-nighter. But I don't think the kid really needs to know that."

"That is an impressive fable, I grant you." Gold continued to polish the item: a mahogany case lined with crushed velvet, containing a sword. A pretty good-sized one, not your average aluminum stage prop. It had a golden crosspiece and hilt, a tapered and fullered blade, an edge still sharp enough to cut that gleamed when he lifted it and turned it. The threat was implicit. "Now may I have the truth, please?"

Emma hesitated. "Why?"

"Because unless I'm much mistaken, you're here to ask me a few things. About what I know. About this place. About your destiny. And unless you want your answers to be as much nonsensical rubbish as the one you just tried to peddle off, you'll tell me where Killian Jones is."

Hearing the name spoken aloud, after all these years of sometimes almost wondering if she'd dreamed him, sent a freezing shot of adrenaline down her back. It was no good trying to lie to Gold, she realized. The jig was up, and he'd known the truth ever since he first laid eyes on David, had her dead to rights this entire time. "I don't know."

"Left you behind?" Gold's smile turned even more twisted. "Just like the rest?"

"Shut up."

"Touched a nerve, I see. Your anger is understandable. But I feel obliged to warn you that I don't normally permit people to storm into my shop and throw their weight around, and whether or not you're the deputy sheriff, I won't be making exceptions for you. Come now, Miss Swan. Work with me. You don't want me as your enemy, I promise, and there is so much we could do for each other. Now. When did you last see our mutual friend, Mr. Jones?"

She hesitated even longer, loathing, but finally answered. "Six years ago – well, closer to seven now. A summer night in London. I was there to arrest him. It. . . didn't happen."

"A number of other things did, I gather. To judge from the presence of young David."

Emma couldn't exactly deny that, but she still wanted to stuff a sock (or a fist) in his mouth. "Never mind that. He. . . disappeared. I don't know how. He's never been seen again. After that, I went to visit someone, and they told me that the curse, that everything, who he is. . . it's real."

"Ah." Gold's expression changed. "So you do believe."

"I wouldn't say that. I can understand it. On an intellectual level. Barely. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, and maybe there's something, someone out there that wants to screw up people's lives, but just this idea that it's a curse. . . I don't know if I can go there or not. Magical woo-woo reason for explaining why stuff sucks. It's not me, it's this curse. I've had to fight my entire life. I don't have a lot of time for people with self-pitying excuses. Especially shitty ones."

"Oh, it wasn't always like that."

"Emma Nolan." She had the satisfaction of seeing him look shocked. "Yeah, I know about that part. That I used to be her, and I somehow forgot my old life completely. That I'm not coming here for the first time. Just coming home."

"Ah," Gold said again, thoughtfully. "Are you?"

"I don't know." She spoke through clenched teeth, hating how much of herself she'd already had to reveal to him, trusting him not a whit, but knowing that finding out the truth of anything depended on her holding up her end of the honesty bargain. "I don't want to believe it. You knew about Mary Margaret. That she lived in that building."

"Knew what about her, dearie?"

"That she's supposed to be my. . . mom." The word felt strangled, burning in Emma's chest. "But if I actually let myself think that was true. . ."

"You'd start wanting it," Gold completed. "Wanting it too much. And then you'd be able to lose her, you'd make yourself weak, and then you wouldn't know how to live if it happened."

Emma was badly rocked at such an accurate emotional sketch of the situation, and she reacted instinctively, defensively, lashing out. "The hell would you know about that?"

Something happened to his face, then. That strange, gleeful, demented expression that she'd glimpsed only briefly when Greg and Tamara had broken into his shop, just as quick as a snake flicking its head out, knowing that she really didn't want to see any more, knowing that he was a very dangerous man. "You were listening to what I said earlier? About missing my boy? I know as much as anyone about the pain of losing your family."

"And yet you won't tell me how to find mine."

"Had you asked? I don't recall. And nobody told me either, dearie, so there's something else we have to suffer with." Gold gazed down at the sword again. "Nobody remembers," he said, half to himself. "Only me. So then, Miss Swan. What do you want?"

"I want you to leave my son alone."

"Something that would have been much easier if you'd never come to Storybrooke. What do you want here?"

She stopped again. What she truly wanted, she didn't know if she could ever tell him. "There's something wrong here," she said at last. "Maybe it's a curse, maybe it's not. But for a long time, I've somehow been tangled up with this place. Maybe I just need to finally get it out of my hair."

"Interesting choice of metaphor." Gold placed the sword back in its case and latched it. "Who's Henry?"

The answer she'd given Regina – David's imaginary friend – sprang automatically to her lips. "Why do I have to tell you that?"

"Why, indeed." He gazed placidly at the ceiling. "Do you want another answer out of me, or not?"

Fucking blackmailer. "Okay. Fine. He's. . . he's not real. He could have been, but he's not. That doesn't mean, however, that he doesn't exist. It's complicated. Basically, in my sophomore year of college, I thought I was pregnant, but I wasn't. Henry is. . . my son who could have been."

"Henry," Gold mused. "It's been quite some time since I heard that name. Belonged to a man I didn't much care for. And yet you speak as if you've met this phantom child."

"Again. Complicated."

"Apparently so. Yet whatever you deem worthy of that word, Miss Swan, is quite far from what I do. I appreciate your good intentions not to burden me with too many distressing details, but I would rather prefer them. It has something to do with Neverland, doesn't it."

Her head snapped up. "How the hell did you – "

"Please. You come in here and threaten me and act as if you are quite familiar with who I am, with what this is, and what I understand about you and your life as a whole, but you are a complete and utter novice. The boy's alive somehow in Neverland, but not here, because you lost him. Yes, that would make sense. Is the pirate this one's father too?"

Emma shook her head stiffly, cheeks blazing.

"I suppose I should be grateful for that at least," Gold mused. "But now he's coming to David in dreams, trying to goad him into goading you into breaking the curse. Yes, yes. I see."

"You see what, Mr. Crystal Ball?" Had he known this too? Or had David told him, bribed by chocolate ice cream? God damn, she was going to kill that kid!

"Oh, I've never used crystal balls. Obnoxious and imperfect things. But the curse is what's keeping Henry from finding you again – from finding this town – and naturally, he does want to. I am none so sure, however, that you should let him. If I know anything about Neverland, and the sort of creatures who exist there, it's opening the door to a darkness that could destroy us all."

Emma stared at him. "So – what – you mean I shouldn't – theoretically speaking about my ability to do such a thing – break the curse?"

"Did I say that?"

"Sure sounded like it."

"Subtlety. An art wasted on the young." Gold sighed. "What if I told you that if you did me a favor, I might be able to find a way to get you to Neverland, to deal with Henry and. . . anyone else you met there? Once that was done, you could just break the curse."

What? Emma's breath felt too short, stabbing under her ribs. She remembered her belief that the shadow had taken Killian to Neverland – but it wasn't exactly a place where you could hop on an airline's website and book a discount weekend ticket. She'd come to the conclusion that for all intents and purposes, to be in Neverland meant that you were dead. It was completely unreachable, a place where those who didn't live here still lingered on, a land of the lost, of dream and memory and grief. The times she had woken up alone in the night, the times she'd felt her heart, her soul, her entire existence turn raw with her need to see the son of a bitch just once more. Like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, the wind over the water, all the thousands upon thousands of seconds, minutes, hours, years that had gone by without him. Her hopeless hope. What she'd done, trying to retrieve even a moment of him. Having his baby. Coming here. As if she could hold up a shadow of herself and see the place it had been stabbed in the heart, marking when time stopped. When he'd left her. When he'd gone. When he'd been stolen.

Voice barely a whisper, she said, "What makes you think I owe you a favor?"

"What makes you think I'm under any obligation to leave your son alone?" Gold shrugged. "You can surely understand that I'm not in a great hurry to do any favors for the spawn of the wretched bastard who stole my wife and shot my love. Ice cream notwithstanding."

Emma wanted to scream at him for threatening David, but all that came out was a terse grunt. I forgot about Belle. And his wife. . ."Milah." Yes, this all made sense. "Killian loved her."

"Is that what he told you?"

"Nobody spends three hundred years – yes, he told me that too – trying to get revenge for the sake of somebody they hated, or even were mildly indifferent to. And your wife wasn't a piece of property. Killian couldn't steal her. If she left you, you deserved it."

Gold stared at her, then smiled. There wasn't anything the least friendly about it. "My, my. I feel my willingness to be cooperative suddenly declining. Just as if our dear friend – you refer to him so familiarly, but I cannot stomach doing the same – Mr. Jones left you, then you deserved it?"

Emma flinched. "Shut up." That had been cruel, she knew, and she also knew that she'd made a considerable mistake going after him like that, but just being able to talk about Killian for the first time in years, even with somebody who hated his guts – it had made her too fragile, put her too far on edge. "It's different."

"Clearly. To judge by the depths of hopeless infatuation you still cherish for him, it must be quite different. If you will permit me to offer a bit of friendly advice, Miss Swan, be careful. You've come to a dangerous place, and you won't be able to work your way out of it by bluffing and snapping and posturing and pretending to be strong. After all, I know your weak spots." He grinned again, showing his teeth, and giggled. It was high, eerie, unsettling. "Dearie."

"Yeah. Thanks for your help," Emma said tightly. She'd achieved less than fucking nothing, apparently. "Good night."

She turned her back on him, determined not to let him have the last word, and marched across the floor, to the pawnshop's front door. She pulled it open and –

"Oh – I'm sorry! I didn't – "

Grimacing from where she'd collided with the woman entering from the other side, Emma took a step back, then felt her heart sink. "Regina. Strange time to come shopping."

"I had something to ask Gold." The mayor gave her a tight, plastic smile. "I see you're still running around without your son. Who's looking after him?"

"It's none of your business, but my neighbor."

"Neighbor." Regina clearly didn't like the sound of that. "The schoolteacher?"

"I assume there are several. You'll have to specify."

Regina ignored that. Her dark eyes flicked challengingly to Gold, who executed the masterpiece of a dismissive shrug. Then, clearly trying to be charming, she smiled. "Forgive me. I'm forgetting my manners. But you don't want to be dealing with him."

"I am standing right here, you know," the pawnbroker commented. "I can hear every word you're saying, dearie."

Regina shot him another venomous look. Then to Emma, she said, "He's a liar. He's known for it. Whatever he's told you about any so-called curse, it's a complete fraud."

"Funny how you assume we were talking about that."

"I know the way he thinks." The mayor shrugged. "And he's dangerous. I don't need to tell you that, I'm sure. I'd take your son and leave this place for good, while you still can. Before things have to get. . . unfortunate."

"I don't think so." Emma gripped the doorframe tightly. "And if that's a threat, I'm going to have to take it up with my new boss at the station."

Regina laughed out loud. "You think you're going to report me to Graham? Oh yes. Do."

What the hell is that supposed to mean? As Emma thought of Graham's psychotic behavior, of Regina's odd reaction to hearing David mention the curse, her rush to jump to conclusions about what she'd been talking with Gold about, her eagerness to bundle Emma out of town as soon as possible. . .

Maybe Gold, as much as she really didn't like him, was right. Maybe they needed to work together. Because this curse was keeping her, either way, from her family. From people she cared about. And, she was willing to bet a million bucks, Regina had something to do with it. Had everything to do with it, in fact. And Emma Swan, if she was now in for the fight of her life, wasn't going to back down now.

Maybe she did owe Gold a favor.

Maybe they needed to find a way to Neverland.


The Enchanted Forest

"Hook," the witch said again, making the name half a curse, as it had been on the lips of so many others through the centuries. "What a. . . surprise to see you here."

"I was thinking quite the same."

"Really?" Cora's eyebrow arched. "Oh, I suppose you were. How have these years been for you, Captain? After you terminated our partnership?"

"Is that what you call it? Partnership? When you had your hand around my heart and would have crushed it to dust? I did my part. I got you to Regina's castle. You said you couldn't control me, that she'd know. Well, pet. Pirate is as pirate does. I'm indebted to you for informing me about the effects of the curse, but I had another way to elude it. I didn't need you."

"Oh," Cora breathed. "You did? Do tell."

Hook hesitated. That had been a mistake. He should have expected that she'd hold a grudge – you didn't become a sorceress of this stature and sinister by forgiving your enemies. But he did not feel of a temperament to inform her that when he'd sold Bae out to the Lost Ones, he'd leveraged a favor in return. He had known how to barter with the shadow. The other one, at least. Not Henry. In exchange for him giving up the boy, he'd managed to secure – along with a promise to leave himself, his ship, and crew unmolested – a certain item that would allow him, if he was ever in distress in some far distant corner of some far distant realm, to travel back to Neverland. It was only good once, and truth be told, he wasn't altogether sure that it wasn't a trick, that it wouldn't do something far worse – put him in the shadow's power, gods knew. But after he'd returned from Wonderland, he had decided that if there was ever a time to take a chance, now was it. He could be swept up by the Dark Curse and lose his memory altogether, he could wait twenty-eight years, frozen under the thumb of a terrifying witch who was no friend to him. . . or he could try to get away. So he had. After delivering Cora to Regina, he'd ducked out, jumped aboard his Roger, and escaped the Forest just ahead of the curse. It was on arriving in Neverland that he had made that deal with the fairies. They took my ship, returned my hand, and sent me to London. He had never seen reason to regret the bargain, but coming back here like this. . . well, they did always say that karma was a cruel mistress. And Cora is even worse.

Unnervingly, she appeared to be following his thoughts. "How were those years in the land without magic, after you backstabbed me?" she inquired, with poisonous sweetness. "They clearly didn't make much of an impression, considering what I see before me. You haven't changed at all, Captain. And so, I know you'll agree to help me."

"Will I?" That rocked him, more than he wanted to admit. You haven't changed at all. Here he was, pirate and blackguard and rogue, complete with the hook and the rotted soul and. . . No. He remembered, faintly, wanting to change. To be different. To get back to Emma. "Against this lot? You haven't just ripped all their hearts out yet?"

"Don't you think that I would if I could?" Cora snorted. "They know what they're doing. Look." She held up her wrist, showing a black leather cuff clamped down on it. "This makes it impossible for me to use my magic – and, therefore, impossible to retrieve the compass. They fear me too much to take it off, even for an instant."

"Not surprising. You're a fearsome woman."

As he had hoped, that made her smile – not in anger, but in prim, pleased smugness. Good. So he hadn't forgotten everything about how to manipulate her after all. "So," he drawled, after a quick look over his shoulder to check that the coast was still clear. Wouldn't do for those Home Office types to barge in here now and overhear this. "As you'll have gathered, I've been absent for some time. Who are the charming lunatics they've got running the asylum?"

"Oh, of course. You don't know." Cora made a show of looking surprised. "They're nothing to trifle with, Hook. They recruit local agents in every world they take over, instead of doing it openly, and that's why they're so dangerous. You don't suppose it was difficult for them to convince Mordred that they could be all sorts of helpful with his grievances?"

Mordred? Another unpleasant surprise. Hook had heard of the bugger, of course, but thinking of the slim, dark, sneering young man who had met him out in the great hall of the castle. . . Camelot had been in considerable turmoil when he was last in the Forest, what with Lancelot's scandal and exile, but everyone had thought Mordred's part in the disturbances of the kingdom more or less concluded. Unless he was lying low. Awaiting the opportune moment. "So he's back to attempt to overthrow Arthur again, I imagine? How many times will that be now, six? Seven? More? Someone should give the poor boy a gold star for trying, at least."

"You're missing the point. Now that he's working for Home Office, he has an entire shadowy and very powerful organization behind him, and Arthur will only be the first of many to fall. You may think I'm a horrible person, though anyone with your reputation should be careful of pointing fingers. But unless you take a hand – oh dear, how terrible of me – to help stop it, they'll destroy us all."

"I am quite amused that you seem to think I'm a hero, love."

"Oh no. I don't think that at all. I think you're a small-time, self-interested, scabrous little villain with far more passion than sense, a complete lack of scruples, and – despite his proclamations of not fearing death – an extremely abiding desire to save his own skin." Her smile this time was predatory. "Now, are you going to work with me so we can get the compass and escape, or are you not? You don't want me as your enemy, I promise, and there is so much we could do for each other."

A pause. Heavy, pungent. In his head, he could see Emma's face. Hear her screaming his name, his real name, as she pounded on the door of his hotel room, as he was locked in battle with the shadow: Killian! Killian! It seemed almost strange to even think it, now, and it made him realize that despite everything, he was forgetting after all. Sinking back into Hook like a soft black blanket, comforting in its rage and darkness. Slowly and steadily, a trickle of sand in a glass, that other self, that better self, was slipping away from him, and if it went again, it would be for good. And at last, after three hundred years and more, after three different worlds, after death and revenge, after love, after Emma Swan, he did not have time.

He glanced back to Cora. Then he cracked a smile that was just as mirthless.

"Indeed, love," he said. "I may have a few ideas."