Tension flooded her body as she waited for the arrow to strike, but what greeted her ears was not the slicing of air that an arrow made, but the calming sound of lapping water. It was quiet and still. She opened her eyes and looked around only to discover…she was at the docks?!

Magic!

And the reason for it was before her.

Rumple.

He'd rescued them...but apparently he'd rescued them from danger that he helped create! Danger he had never seen fit to tell her about, and even worse, lied to her about every time she'd asked!

"So…you killed Gaston, my fiancé and never thought to tell me?!" she assumed looking him over.

"It was an arranged marriage I was doing you a favor!" he argued childishly.

A favor! Murder?! He'd already had her out of her father's care and living with him where was the harm exactly?! And that wasn't even the worst of it. He'd lied to her again! Years ago when she'd first arrived in Storybrooke, she had Rumple bring her art supplies so that she could create missing posters for her father and Gaston. She'd told him that she just wanted to find him and check on him, not that she felt anything for him because she hadn't. After she'd made the posters Rumple had told her that he would "take care of it" and she'd never seen them again. He'd never once mentioned that Gaston was dead! Only that he'd never seen him in town! Had he been dead all this time and he'd known about it? Had he really never told her?! One lie only ever seemed to lead to another. How could he not see the harm in this?! How could he think this magic made him a better person?! How could he think this lifestyle made them stronger or that it was safe for their child?!

"This…this was a mistake, once again I've let my optimism cloud my judgment!" And where was she supposed to go from here? Was she supposed to leave? She couldn't leave, this baby meant that she couldn't be apart from him even if she tried! Walking away would be selfish. Bad for the baby, good for her, only suddenly bad for the baby meant that it was also bad for her.

Her head was spinning.

Overnight her world was upside-down again and she knew who was responsible.

She couldn't do this. They couldn't! They weren't ready to be parents! He clearly wasn't ready to consider a child before everything he loved, including his magic, and she wasn't used to thinking this way, to putting a baby first! She'd never have gone back to him if he'd still been the Dark One, she'd never have gotten pregnant, she'd never have come through that portal…she would never have had to see him again. Right now she could be in a New York City Suite designing dresses or exploring bookstores or even traveling around the world! And instead, she'd made a choice to return and get pregnant, unknowingly subjecting their child to his deal! If he'd only told her…

"His threat is real you know," he stated sadly. "I may be immortal, but Hades forged these arrows in the river of souls, a river which flows right into this very sea in fact. Now, immortal or not, one scratch…and I'm trapped in these waters forever. And I won't be able to help our child."

She took a deep breath and worked hard to stunt her tears. Well…she couldn't walk away from that either! It was cruel and she couldn't imagine him…what was it that tied them together now? Was it this baby? Was it love? It certainly didn't feel like love but then other times it did. Couldn't he see how his actions and lies tore her in two? Didn't he care?

"Hades is clever," he insisted stepping forward. "He's sent Gaston, because he knows you won't let me hurt him." Well that was absolutely true. Depressing and infuriating, but true. "Let's prove him wrong. Let me use a little bit of Dark Magic, just enough to take care of Gaston."

She shook her head. "No!" Absolutely not. He was standing before her asking what he'd asked her the other day, to make the choice to be "okay" with something so vile…no. He might be able to do it, but she couldn't and wouldn't let him do it. But she believed in Light Magic, now more than ever, and recalled the conversation from last night. There was another way to get Gaston out from between them and Hades. They could free him. And hurt Hades in the process. "That's not how we're going to defeat him; we're going to do the opposite. We're going to help him. We're going to see to it that he finally moves on from this infernal place."

"Belle, please, he's not worth it."

"It's not just about him," she argued, resisting the urge to tell him that he was the last person on earth to be the judge of who was and was not worth any kind of happy ending or eternal peace. A snap like that wouldn't help them. Her information would. "Hook said when his brother moved on that it affected Hades somehow…weakened him. So, by helping people move on, maybe that's how we defeat Hades."

"And how exactly do you suppose we do that without magic?! Ask him nicely as he takes aim at both of us?!"

"I don't know?!" she yelled back. It was like the books in the pawn shop all over again! She was tired of being the only one actively working on this. But if her work was the only thing that was going to keep Gaston alive…she knew what his methods would be and how they would end. She had to be the one to think through this. "Alright well…he's still here, and the others have helped people here move on-"

"Yeah, and they've painted a target on their back doing it."

She glared at him and crossed her arms over her chest. "You've already promised our child to Hades, I'd say we've already got a target on our backs, Rumple. What more do we have to lose?!" He didn't say anything, he didn't even try to have the last word or fight her accusation. Finally, she had rendered him speechless. And for good reason. She knew what he was talking about, she remembered what the others had said about the graveyard and their names on tombstones. But she could also remember what Robin Hood had said. If Hades did rebel, if he hated what she would do and decided to place her name on a tombstone…well at least their child didn't have a name yet. Their child would be safe. And if she was trapped here then that only gave her more time to figure out how to defeat Hades deal and save their child. Imprisonment in hell so her baby could have a normal, safe, and free life. She was willing to do that for this child, for her child. Everything really had turned on it's head.

"The other's stories prove that it is possible to find something beyond this place once problems are worked through. Gaston is still here so he must have some unfinished business. We'll figure out what that is and either help him finish it or help him to let it go."

A small muscle twitched in his jaw as he took a step closer to her. "That still doesn't answer the question of how we do that without an arrow striking us first."

Yes, that was a problem. In all the time that she'd known Gaston she'd never gotten him to really open up and talk to her about anything particularly deep. In fact she'd always believed that he was one of the most shallow men she'd ever known because she could never find anything that he really seemed to care about except himself, his appearance, and hunting. If Archie were here he'd have some advice for getting someone to talk but she just wasn't sure that she could get him to talk about something this sensitive while he was "firing arrows" as Rumple had said. No, they had to have some kind of upper hand in this. And staring at Rumple she knew exactly what she was going to do.

"We use a spell to take us to his home, to the place he spends his time, he has to have something around that might point us in the right direction.

"Well a spell like that requires something of the victims."

She nodded, ignoring his choice of words as she stepped up to him. "Fortunately for us you grabbed something of his on the way out," she pointed out lifting the hand that was clutched around the arrow Gaston had fired at them.

Rumple only smirked. "So, I can use magic to snoop, but not to actually stop the problem."

"This will stop the problem," she assured him. "Besides, I'm only asking for a simple Locating Enchantment. It's neither light nor dark, remember?"


Yeah, sorry again this is just another example of how the chapters here really are just super choppy. There was a lot of movement in this episode, and whenever that happens, the chapters tend to come out short just because there are natural break points. But some of the breakpoints are actually pretty stupid and pointless, as I will point out by the end of this week. Honestly, I don't even think A&E think about where they place their characters after this episode. They just want it to look cool. I suppose they are doing that, but I'd much rather them go for accuracy than "cool factor".

Big thank yous to Grace5231973, Fox24, and Teresa Martin, for the reviews on this fiction and really also just for sticking it out this long with me. Honestly, the way this half of the season went I didn't think I'd have any readers by now. Frankly, I'm worried that when ML&U goes live (the 6A fiction) I also won't have any readers. It's not really fun to relive the moments that are really painful, but it means a lot to me that you've stuck it out and stayed with me. Peace and Happy Reading!