As it turned out there wasn't much to the story of how Henry became the author. It was as simple as picking up the special quill Isaac, the previous author, had used. It glowed, revealing that he was the chosen one. Since he'd been the author he used the quill to write them all out of the storybook that Isaac and Rumple had cursed them into and when he got back he'd broken the pen. Regina had taken him to her office and given him a present, one she'd been saving for a special occasion, but then had apparently seemed more appropriate, and when she'd left for Granny's he'd stayed behind. He and the Apprentice had talked and he'd snapped the pen in half.

"It was too much power for one person to have," he explained. "Besides…I got something out of it!" Henry said reaching into his pocket. He pulled the little rectangular ipod out of his pocket and wiggled it between his fingers. "This thing is better than deciding everyone's fate and writing down their stories. Now I can have my own and add a soundtrack to it if I want. This thing holds everything-"

"Henry!" they both looked up across the suddenly black clearing before them at Regina's call. All at once she'd realized what happened. Henry had turned his ipod on.

"No light…" he groaned. "Sorry mom, I didn't mean to, I forgot-"

"No, it's fine, leave the lad alone," Kilian stated as he looked over the abyss as if he could still see it before him. "I have what I need…"

Killian took the paper he'd been using to chart, the one he'd drawn the map on and the others followed him into the diner "to plan". She remained. It was a nice night out, cool, but with her cloak on she barely felt it. And her talk with Henry…it had been more than she'd expected to encounter today.

She pushed herself off of the steps and let herself wander. Down the steps, across the clearing, over the peaks and hills that once represented mountains and hills, and finally over to the well they had. She set her bell jar atop it, pulled a bucket of water out and drank from the gourd within it. It helped, but not as much as what she really knew would help. She'd done nothing but have a simple conversation and yet suddenly the world felt like it was spinning around her. Or maybe it always had been spinning and she was just now beginning to catch on.

"Show him to me." The glass had already begun to melt before she'd said the words. The flower was wilted and dying. There was no doubt about that, but it still had its petals. Not all of them, clearly. Many of them were floating around the surface of the jar in various stages of decay. The urge to go home was strong. Perhaps the strongest she'd ever had but impossible. Even she knew that. They'd promised to go home if she asked them to, if things got desperate, but somehow she knew that even if she marched in there now and said that things were desperate they wouldn't do it. They were so close, too close, to making all of this work…they wouldn't let her go and see him. Not now. They wouldn't help.

She stifled a cry and held the jar closer to her chest. "Don't go," she cried. "I'm still here, please don't leave me."

"I sense that jar you seem to be attached to is more than it appears!" She jumped at the sound of Merlin's voice behind her. "Sorry, didn't mean to frighten you. Sometimes I forget to be loud, being a tree for a couple centuries will do that to a person."

She quickly wiped the tears off of her cheeks and shook her head. "No, no, it's…it's fine."

"And yet I also sense it's not," he commented coming to rest against the wall beside her. "So tell me…what is it? What does it do? I've been curious since the moment I saw you with it and could sense the magic coming off of it."

"It uh…well it's…it's a rose," she stuttered as the glass cleared and the flower inside revealed itself. "The Blue Fairy gave it to me. It's linked to my…my…my beast," she settled. It was the best she could do. And how awful was that, really?! Suddenly she was back to not knowing what to call him. "Husband", "Ex-husband", "True love", "Former true love"?! Nothing but "Beast" really seemed to fit anymore.

"Rumpelstiltskin, the former Dark One…"

She glanced up at Merlin with wide eyes at his pronouncement. How had he-

"Don't worry, I'm not a mind reader. My visions into the future are rarely clear, more often than not they are in bits and pieces but I'm familiar with the former Dark One, and the one you call Granny was quick to suggest he was your former husband. Perhaps it was my imagination but I think she'd be quite happy if the two of us settled down somewhere after all of this."

Her eyes widened for a completely different reason. No! Granny hadn't said…she hadn't actually tried to…

She rubbed her head with her hand and looked away at the lights coming off of the diner. "How mortifying!"

"Not quite the reaction I was anticipating, but never fear, much like yours my heart was taken long ago."

She nodded, desperate to talk about anything that wasn't…that! "Nimue," she settled.

His smile vanished from his face much the same way she imagined that her own had only a moment ago. But then it returned, he glanced out at the world around him, into the blackness and she noticed that the smile wasn't natural anymore. It was forced. "Now it appears it's my turn to be perplexed. How do you know about Nimue?"

"I read about her, in your journal when we were searching for a way to free you," she admitted with another blush. "But I haven't read it since, it-it's sitting in the back with the rest of the books, you should-you should probably take them back."

"Probably," he agreed, staring out into the forest with a look of deep sorrow on his face. The look was appropriate considering what she knew and didn't know about the situation.

"I don't mean to pry but…your journal never really said what happened to her. Was she kidnapped or…"

"The Dark One took her from me, much the same way the Dark One has held your Rumple captive for the last few centuries."

She shook her head. "It's not the same," Rumple was the Dark One, he hadn't been taken by anything he hadn't wanted to be taken by like Nimue had. "I'm sorry…about her and you, I mean."

"I'm touched…though Granny will be a bit disappointed I expect," he mentioned as his natural smile returned and he turned to face the well. "So what about yours? That rose tells you how he is…I don't mean to offend you but he doesn't exactly look good."

She felt her chin wobble and tears strained at the corners of her eyes, but she managed to hold it in. "I don't know," she said turning to lean with him. "The rose tells me how close to death he is but I don't know anything beyond that. I just hope…I just hope he's not alone. I mean, of course that I hope I'll make it back to him before…but thinking about him all by himself in his shop is what really tears me up. When I came out here it wasn't supposed to be for weeks I thought it would be a day, two at the most! And now Rumple..." She couldn't finish her sentence. It hurt too much.

"Close your eyes," Merlin ordered out of the silence.

"What?"

"That magic I might not know anything about but my own…close your eyes. Think of him and only him." With a thick swallow she did just that. She stood up straight, shut her eyes tight, and thought of her Rumple, her beast, at first only as she'd seen him last, but then as she'd seen him on their wedding day. It wasn't on purpose, the imagine had just popped into her head and before she knew it she was staring into the face of the man who had cried as he'd married her; the man she wanted above all.

She felt a tap against her forehead. "You can open them now." When she did she was a wisp of white held between his thumb and forefinger. She watched as he slowly reached down and placed it in the well then moved his hand over the surface. It flashed white before turning to blackness again.

Suddenly from the inky blackness she saw a faint glow. The water rippled and waved and before her eyes the image of Rumpelstiltskin, still asleep on the cot in the back of his shop came clearly into view. He was still asleep. His hair hadn't been touched since the last time she'd pushed it back, his chest still rose and fell before her eyes and while that sent a sense of relief racing through her, that wasn't the thing that made her relax. On a chair beside the bed there sat a woman she'd never seen before, dressed in blue, crucifix around her neck, reading glasses settled on her nose, and book in her hands. One of the nuns. Mother Superior had sent someone to watch over him in her absence. It wasn't her, it wasn't much at all, but still...

At least he wasn't alone.

"Thank you," she choked out as the image faded suddenly aware that she was crying.

"Hold your rose close Belle, and know this...if the need should arise, if the situation should become dire, you have my word that I will send you home to your beast no questions asked. If he should leave the realm you have every right to be by his side when he does. There is not much in my life as a tree that I regret, but not being with Nimue when she finally departed is one of those regrets."

She nodded and tried her best to wipe her cheeks so that she wouldn't spring forward and hug him. It was…a tremendous gift. Certainly it wasn't comparable to being there herself, but it was enough to get her through the last leg of this journey and home again, whether early or right on time. But home again to what?

"You uh…y-you said that you see the future?"

"Fragments of it, yes."

"Do you…do you see anything in my future?" she questioned with a blush. She certainly didn't know where it was going, perhaps a bit of guidance?

"I see only a decision," Merlin answered confidently. "A very hard choice to make lies ahead of you."

But of course he couldn't tell her what the choice was. That would somehow break the imaginary "rules" they'd crafted for the future and she didn't even bother to try to question him further about the decision but…what about something else. "Will I choose right?" she questioned instead.

"That all depends on what you want to happen."

Her throat tightened as she imagined what she and Neal had talked about that first night in Camelot. "What if I don't know what I want?" she finally managed to squeak out.

"I suppose that's what makes it a difficult decision."

Right. Of course. There was little help in what he'd told her. In a way it was nothing she hadn't known before, but it was nice to get an answer for a change instead of silence and lies. No matter how confusing that answer had been. Riddles, she'd been living with them ever since she met Rumpelstiltskin so she knew the answer was in front of her, she just needed to work it out for herself.

"We uh…I suppose we should get back inside," she suggested.

"Yes of course…wouldn't want Granny to get the wrong impression now would we?"

Mortifying as it was she laughed. It wasn't the first time someone had tried to set her up with someone and failed; whether or not it would be the last…

"Don't forget this, then," Merlin reached behind her and then presented her almost foolishly with the bell jar. It wasn't likely she'd ever forget it. "It's a clever and unique piece of magic you carry with you Belle, guard it carefully."

Merlin took a step forward and reached out a hand to pull her with him but she stopped as she suddenly realized something she hadn't before.

"Wait you…" she looked between her jar and well, then around her as if she could find the words to confirm what she was thinking, what she feared. "When you first came out here…you didn't know what this was? That it was magic?"

"I sensed it was magic, I just didn't know what kind of magic it was until you taught me. Knowledge tends to work that way you see."

He was trying to make a joke but suddenly she felt like her nerves were on fire because there was nothing funny about what she'd just realized. "Could you do this?" she questioned stepping forward and holding the bell jar up to him. "Could you make this magic like the Blue Fairy did?"

Merlin eyed it suspiciously for moment then shrugged. "Sure, not that identically, it would be a similar spell, my own version, but not necessarily that. My magic is different than the Dark One. I didn't learn my magic through instinct, it was something of an accident. It took me many years to master my craft. I'm well versed in my own tricks, but these newer, more modern influences baffle me, at least until I can learn them for myself."

She was speechless because she didn't need to know magic well to understand what he'd just said and the meaning was clear.

They had a problem.

I love this chapter! The Belle/Merlin friendship in this turned out to be one of my favorite relationships in this fiction. It's close to how much I love her with Neal but I think that one will still take first in my book. This one is more Mentor/Mentee. Also, I fixed the timeline again. Anyone else notice the problem with how Henry got his ipod? Henry says Regina got it for him as a gift for defeating the author. However the timeline for that was that the curse was broken at sundown and then when the sun finally went down there was a party at Granny's before Belle stepped in, and Emma became the Dark One. So...what...Regina just up and said "Hey I know we just broke the curse and there's a party at Granny's but you know what Henry needs right this very moment? An ipod!" ::Eye roll:: Come on A&E think about your own timeline a little!

Thank you Grace5231973, Kathryn Claire O'Connor, Fox24, and Ladybugsmomma for the amazing reviews you left yesterday. Oh I'm so happy that you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it! I hope that this chapter is as well received. The next chapter might get an interesting reaction but after that we are on to 5x06! I hope that so far you feel it's going better than what we saw on screen! Peace and Happy Reading!