One ought to make himself useful when waiting, the gentlemanly thing to do, and he supposes he is, guarding Henry; however, if David and Snow truly wouldn't know Swan, he doubts she would have stayed and ranted about. She would have returned, a little defeated, but just as determined, and a new plan would have been formulated by now. Her prolonged absence can only be a good sign. Prolonged absence. You dolt, he huffs to himself, it's been fifteen minutes and you've gone a whole year without her. To busy himself, he starts wiping at a smear on the glass with the sleeve of his coat.

Her running footsteps, though, prove a welcoming sound and he smiles when she returns, already looking a little more at ease.

"They remember. It's okay. Come on. We're meeting them over at Granny's." She opens her door and slips into the car, her hurried state making him wonder if she'll "floor" the car as David had done.

"They remember how they ended up back here?"

"No, that's the crazy thing. On top of all the other crazy things," she adds, tilting her head. "The last thing they remember is when I went across the town line."

"How..." he swallows, trying to phrase the bafflement in his mind into a question. "How then, are they aware of how much time has passed?"

"Oh, you'll see," she sings, but in a dry, unsure way, pulling in just down the road at Granny's. He waits at the back to gather the bags while she nudges Henry awake.

"Sorry! I must have fallen asleep. Are we here?" he yawns, stretching and hoisting his backpack over his shoulder, scooting out of the car. Emma wraps her arm around him and leads him up the walkway into Granny's, the warm pink-gold lamps emitting from the windows and David's truck resting behind them giving him the odd, still-new feeling of familiarity.

"I can get my own bag," she says, stopping at the front door and holding out her arm.

"Well aware, love, but I assumed you might want to make Henry comfortable for the night?"

Before she can answer, Granny opens the door and throws her arms around Emma, a blessed domestic sight, someone so glad to see her while Henry wriggles free and tries to gain his bearings.

"Oh, could we sure use someone to make things make sense around here!" Granny sighs, ushering them in and bustling over to where she keeps room keys. Henry's head keeps bobbing, one minute snuggled against Emma's arm and the next straight up and making an effort to stay awake. "I got you in Room 1, Em—I mean, Miss Swan, and your, uh, associates are just finishing up some coffee."

"Thanks. I'll be right back down," she says to him, whispering to Henry and guiding him up the stairs.

"A room for myself as well, please," Killian asks when they are out of sight, a few gold coins still in his pockets.

"Sure thing. So she remembers, but he doesn't?"

"For now."

"Hook!"

Turning around, he finds Snow and David departing from the diner portion into the parlor, a very engorged bump capturing his focus. Ah, the way to measure the passage of time then.

"Congratulations," he says, his hand making large, but idiotic gestures at her baby bump. Smiling at him, they work their way into the back of the parlor to a sitting room with a crackling fire and all the pink and lacy trimmings that graced his room upstairs last year.

"Okay, Henry's asleep upstairs. If he wakes up, you two are helping me with the case," Swan says, descending the staircase and pointing at her parents. Snow has settled into a high-backed armchair, just as well since he knows little about babies and yet even he can tell she's not that far from giving birth. "Okay? So what the hell happened here? I mean besides the obvious."

"We don't know," Snow says, her arms resting over the bump, a position he finds awkward and yet tranquil at the same time. "We watched you drive over the town line with Henry, Regina started to cast her spell to take us all back to the Enchanted Forest, and then...everything went black."

"The next thing we remember is waking up in our bed like it was any other morning in Storybrooke," David says, shaking his head.

"Except it clearly wasn't," Snow adds, opening her arms to show off that infernal bump, as if anyone's forgotten it's there. Calm down, mate, he thinks, unsure why he's so put off by it. Wouldn't be the first pregnant lady he's ever seen. It's not his place, but he desperately needs to lighten the mood.

"Almost harvest time but you can't remember the planting? That's bad luck, mate." He saunters closer to David but remains along the perimeter of the room, unable to ignore Snow rolling her eyes at him...or the urge he has to smirk when she does so.

"Clearly a year has passed," Swan says. "I was in New York. I know that it did."

"We don't know where the hell we were. We don't even know if we left Storybrooke," David says. Even with remembering who they are, they won't be much help in the matter, at least not yet. He can shed some light, but he knows from experience a little teaser of something badly desired only leads to wanting more.

"Aye, you did. I was with you all," he says. Sure enough, Snow leans forward as best she can, her eyes lighting up, asking about the Enchanted Forest. "Regina's spell brought us back. We spent a brief time with a prince and princess named Philip and Aurora. But I wasn't feeling the community spirit, so I ventured off on my own. The last I saw of you lot, you were making your way to Regina's castle." There. Truth. Nothing more will help, nothing more need uttering now.

"And now you're cursed," Swan says, stifling a shudder. "Why doesn't that surprise me?"

Snow shakes her head. "Regina seems as clueless as the rest of us. I'm not sure she was involved in this."

"So she says," Swan counters, but he can't share her suspicions.

"I don't understand. If you left the Enchanted Forest before the curse, how did you know to find Emma and come to Storybrooke?" David asks him and might as well be driving a knife into him. Swan's looking over at him. A more detailed answer than before will be a requirement.

"As I was sailing the realms, a bird landed on my ship's wheel with a note instructing me to retrieve Emma and bring her back here. There was a small vial of memory potion attached to its leg."

"Who sent it?" Snow asks.

"I assumed you did."

They pause and he holds his breath.

"A message via bird. It does sound like you," David comments, about to say more when the dwarf Leroy and...oh, he can never remember the rest of them. Happy, is it? He almost always looks happy.

"We lost another one!" Leroy blurts out, his entire face wrinkled in frustration. "We're down to five now!"

"Four, actually. Bashful's not answering."

"Wait, what is going on?" Swan asks right about the time he'd like to. It sounds like now will be the time they both hear the true brunt the curse has brought upon everyone because, when compared to what could have been, being back in the town they've called home and all together with only one year lost hasn't sounded so horrendous yet.

"Thank God you're back, sister!" Leroy greets her with an imperative face.

"It's not just our memories that are missing," Snow says, cryptically enough that he and Swan both gaze over at her in horror. "Ever since we woke up, people have begun disappearing."

"Whoever cursed us is picking us off one by one," Leroy adds. Well, he and Emma back in this place together notwithstanding, he will continue to associate the term "home sweet home" applying to Storybrooke with a dash of irony.

"Who exactly is missing?" He wonders if she ever had that expression or that tone of voice in the last year, so anxious and horrified. She would have had she truly displeased that Walsh fellow, he reminds himself, her words of gratitude from earlier echoing back to him.

"Aside from those dwarfs, we're not sure," David sighs. "There's been a lot of confusion over the last few days. It's hard been hard to keep track of everyone."

"Wait," she says after a pause. "Neal. Is he here?"

"Well we haven't found him yet." Snow's attempt at reassurance appears to be fruitless.

"So he might have been taken too," she whispers.

"Smart money's on 'yes,'" Leroy chimes in, Happy nodding.

"Leroy!"

"He'll turn up, Swan. He always does," he says, noticing she's looked back over at him. There had been rumors, stretching even out to the farthest reaches of the Enchanted Forest, that the Dark One had never died. Killian dismissed them at first since, having been there, he knows for a fact it happened, and yet some townspeople, in drunken ire, argued with each other that the Dark One had been wielding his magical hands here and there. He'd made brief appearances and therefore any whispers of Rumpelstiltskin dying at all had been squashed. Surely Neal would come to no serious harm if his father actually was alive? He and Belle might have departed on their own quest to resurrect him somehow or retrieve him from some underworld and, while Rumpelstiltskin might now have been powerful enough to stop this curse, he might have been able to shield some from it, as Cora had done. If Neal retained his memories, that could be useful, but if all that happened, he should be safe and sound and easy-to-reach.

"Some folks are starting to set up camp in the woods at the edge of town. Neal might be there," David suggests, snapping him back into the present. He'd nearly forgotten Storybrooke means a plethora of possibilities, none to be eliminated under the grounds of being far-fetched.

"Or he might not have gotten swept up in the curse at all," Snow says. There's a thought. Rumpelstiltskin could have enacted a shield and managed to keep himself and Neal out of the curse's grasp. Stop it, he tells himself. Just because one can play the endless game of "what if" doesn't mean one should.

"There's only one way we're going to figure all this out," Swan says, standing. "We need to get your memories back."

"How are we going to do that?"

"By figuring out who took them in the first place."

He's not one to turn down a chance at a shower, so he took one after their meeting with Snow and David last night and then another one in the morning for, well, he felt like he deserved one. Ordering a few eggs, toast, and hot chocolate at Ruby's suggestion, he eats in his room, wondering how the process of integrating Henry's grandparents back into his life is progressing. At a jerky pace, he thinks, sipping the hot chocolate and narrowing his eyebrows at the unique taste...Ruby's added something to it, a faint bit of cinnamon. It isn't all that bad.

An urgent knocking prompts him to throw his legs off the bed and go to the door where Regina stands, arms folded, looking more distraught than he's ever seen her.

"Well, long time, no see, my queen..."

"Where did you get it?"

"I called the number Ruby and Granny instructed me to call if I needed anything and they made it for me, but I've already finished or I would have offered you some..." he says, smirking at her.

"The potion! I know you didn't make it, so where did you get it?"

"A bird brought it to me. Its origins beyond that remain a mystery." He makes a show of attempting to close the door. Unladylike, demanding help with such a tone.

"But if whoever sent it wanted you to bring Emma and Henry back to Storybrooke, why weren't you given more of it?" she pleads, tears in her eyes, so he exhales. She must have seen them downstairs.

"Other than knowing what it was meant to do, I really had, and still don't have, a clear idea about how it worked," he sighs. She purses her lips at this.

"But you made sure your girlfriend would definitely remember."

Stepping out into the hallway, his hand firmly on the doorknob, he considers telling her just how little he missed her presence.

"I find it humorous you think there was much choice in the matter. Let's assume I did give it to Henry. Persuading a grown woman to drink an unknown liquid from a stranger is questionable enough, but you really think I could follow a child around trying to talk him into taking a drink from me without anyone suspecting the worst?" He's getting through to her as she's backed up a step or two, but he continues. "And then suppose I did succeed in returning Henry's memories to him. You really think he and I could kidnap Emma and bring her here without her escaping or causing delay upon delay, especially considering neither Henry nor I can drive her car?"

"Okay. Point taken," she says, her voice shaking a little. "I'm sorry. It's just...seeing him here, after all this time, and he doesn't even know me..."

"It's torture."

A cluster of men in Storybrooke clothes stand around the town line, the visible vapors of their breaths wafting in the crisp air. He hasn't seen them before, here or any other land. A snarky corner of his mind finds the idea of introducing David to taking roll amusing. Honestly, was this really what all the newcomers to this world were doing—hiking around in the cold?

"This, this is where he was taken," their leader, Robin, he believes he's introduced himself as, says, pointing near the sign, the only thing not covered in frost.

"I wouldn't step over that line if I were you," Swan warns, quickening her steps over to him. Maybe after they take roll, someone should begin construction on a wall...

"You think Little John was carried away because he tried to cross over that line?" There's no disbelief or challenge in the man's tone, just a sense of urgency, a more than understandable desire to find his missing companion and calm his followers. It's an intelligent-enough of a demeanor that Killian shrugs to himself, willing to accept any effective assistance at this point.

"It makes sense. The dwarfs were out checking the line to see if anyone was coming or going when they disappeared," David murmurs with a frown. "What exactly took Little John?"

"We didn't get a good look," Robin sighs, shaking his head at his inability to give a detailed description. Rest easy, mate. He has the feeling they'll know the culprit when they see it. "Some manner of beast with wings."

Carried away...Swan had described Walsh as a flying monkey. How large would one have to be to carry someone off?

"That sounds a lot like the monster that attacked me in New York," she says. So detached, Swan, he thinks. So objective in your conclusion...he smirks.

"You mean the monster you were going to marry?"

He shouldn't adore the way she rolls her eyes as much as he does.

"You were going to marry someone?" David places his hands on his hips, a belated interrogation of sorts, he supposes, the standard questions a protective father would demand of his daughter...well, calling it a moot point would be an understatement.

"Did you just miss the part where I said 'monster?'"

"We need to find Little John!" Robin orders, ushering them all back to the current situation.

"It may lead us to everyone who's gone missing," Swan says, nodding her head. "David, take him and the rest of his..."

"Merry Men."

"Right," she continues with no intention of "Merry Men" slipping out of her mouth. Must be another fractured story she heard as a child. "Them, and run a search grid and see if you can find any sign of the missing guy."

"Are you not joining us, Swan?" he asks.

"Not yet. Regina was right. I'm not going to figure out who's behind this curse by talking to people one by one." She takes a few steps back toward her car.

"What are you going to do?" David asks her.

"I'm going to talk to everybody."

There's not much of a need to watch her drive back into town, although it proves to be a much better sight than watching her drive out of town, so he joins up next to David, who seems to be comparing notes with Robin on a layout of the surrounding forest.

"This may seem irrelevant, but can you describe Little John?"

"Yes, he's a burly man, taller and heavier than any of us, dark curly hair..." Robin trails off.

"And yet you call him Little John?" Killian asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Some people have more ironic nicknames than obvious ones, Hook," David chides him before making a fanning-out gesture with his hands. "We'll take this side of the road first. Make a line and stay within sight of each other."

Hours pass and not one glimpse of the sun, just thin lines of yellow framing the clouds overhead. He keeps his eyes mostly on the ground, however, alternating between looking out at the horizon for a human shape and scrutinizing the patches around his boots for a blood trail.

"Is it a good or bad sign we haven't come across any blood yet, or any sign of a struggle, for that matter?" he asks David, lowering his voice and sidestepping over to him.

"I don't know yet. There hasn't been a trace of anyone, no hats, no keys. You'd think if the dwarfs were carried off too that something would have fallen out of a pocket or they'd have lost a shoe...something." Sighing, he crouches in front of a broken twig and shakes his head at it, obviously not a clue. "So, Hook, how have you been this past year?"

"I've been better," is all he says, zigzagging around a fallen tree, spreading out when the line spreads out, the forest reaching further out. They keep an absolute silence, the frost crunching under their feet the only sound. He tells himself it is to be able to hear a faint cry for help, but he keeps his hand on his sword, these monkeys apparently having a penchant for bloodshed when in their feral form. He'd seen Robin hand off a small boy to one of the men who had hung back. Sneaking up on one of the beasts devouring human prey wasn't a sight they as grown men wanted to see, let alone wanted a child to see.

"Guys!" David shouts, halting in his tracks. Robin runs over to him where they glance at what looks to be a leaf in David's hands, most likely splattered with blood.

"He was dragged." Sure enough, more of the leaves just ahead of them are adorned with scarlet splashes of blood. "He's there!"

Robin takes off and the rest of them follow, hustling over to a formidable-looking man on his back and unconscious on the forest floor. Judging by how they kneel over him, at once attending to him and checking for vital signs, there is no mistaking this for anyone other than Little John.

"Is he alive?" he asks.

"Barely," Robin says, sending out reassurances to the man, hoping he can hear them. At the same time, he inspects a wound on Little John's shoulder. It's wide. Sailors don't often have many experiences with animal bites, but he's seen a shark bite once or twice in his life. The indentations on Little John's broken skin indicate something with massive, saw-like teeth. The blood is bordered by a black, almost hairy substance, like fur sticking to the wound.

"I've never seen a bite like that before," he says.

"Okay! Help me get him up! We've got to get him some help." Robin scoots around and his gloved hands hoist the man up by the wounded arm. "Can one of you use those, those horseless carriages you came here in to take him to a healer?"

"I can do you one better. We'll have them come to us," David says, holding the man's back with one arm and calling the hospital on his phone with the other.

Dusk falls as the flashing red and blue lights of the truck David said was an ambulance comes to a stop in front of the hospital. The blue-uniformed workers who strapped Little John onto the wheeled cots they use burst out and haul him into the building. They follow close behind where the darkening gray sky gives way to sharp lights and a bustling crowd of people doing this and that. If he could just recognize the wound, he would take some comfort in how promptly everyone responds here, how this world seems to have a limitless knowledge on the body and how to heal it. If he could just recognize the wound...

Little John's face contorts into an expression of pain, a few moans seeping out between his lips. Robin remains close behind him.

"What did this to him?" the doctor asks.

"We don't know," David answers at the same time the massive body begins to convulse. Little John's moans lengthen into low-pitched wails.

"He's going into shock!" one of the medical staff cries, placing her palms, fingers outstretched, over his chest.

"We need to sedate him," the doctor commands, but even for a man as large as Little John, it doesn't seem natural that it takes so many people to hold him down. His head snaps over in David's direction, wondering if this is the result of the bite—an agonizing, convulsing death. He and Snow—friends of theirs could have gone through this, could be going through it right now.

There are too many white-coated people in his way to tell what changed that has turned the wails into full-out screaming. All he can see is a black, furry...gods, furry appendage whipping around, smacking the doctor out of the way. The screaming...no, it's violent shrieking, shrill, inhuman.

"John!" Robin cries out.

It's a tail. It's a bloody tail thrashing about, knocking everyone down to the floor, sending medical supplies reeling off the shelves.

"Bloody hell!"

"John!" Robin screams again as he helps him up, the man writhing so rapidly on the cot that he's nothing but a black blur...and then he isn't. The shrieking calms into an assertive sort of chattering. All anyone can do is simply stare at the bloody wings unfolding and revealing the most vicious-looking monkey he's ever seen, fanged, clawed, decked out with nothing but lean muscle that could easily lift any of them up into the air.

"Okay, I didn't see that coming," David breathes, struggling to retain his balance as the monster screeches at him and flies right through the glass window.

Shit. Shit, it's gone. Not even the silhouette of it against the now-night sky can be seen. It's faster than a hawk or a falcon, and on its way to whoever has brought these things here in the first place.

"What the hell was that thing?" David pants, everyone's shoulders heaving, Robin near-frozen in horror.

"Don't look at me. I'm a doctor, not a vet," the doctor pants back.

"We need to go back," he finally says after catching his breath. "David! We need to go back."

They disperse, Robin and his men appearing to be disappearing back into the forest on foot, used to formulating their own plans and strategies. Any other time, it would have been ungentlemanly to leave without helping secure the supplies that had been hurled to the floor, but it doesn't seem to bother himself or David at the moment. They scramble back to his truck.

"It's a story," he says as soon as the truck's front lights turn on, lighting up the road in front of them. "It has to be a story from this land. No such thing exists in the Enchanted Forest."

"I know," David says, his breath not completely caught.

"Well, what do you know of it?"

"In case you haven't picked up on this yet, this world always gets the stories wrong to a degree!"

"But it's a starting point if nothing else." Bloody hell, what he wouldn't give for some comprehensive children's book right now...

"You haven't said where we're going," Henry says, developing a half-skip, half-run to keep up with Swan, the news of a Wicked Witch of the West behind all this chaos not sitting well with her. She and Regina had shared how they had spent the afternoon and evening, the burglar's magical disappearance very well pointing to a witch.

They cross the street and stop in front of the library. In front of the door, Swan stops and shuffles through a ring of keys Regina must have given her.

She unlocks the dusty library and flips a switch that turns on the lights.

"The library? What's going on?"

"Henry, why don't you help yourself. Something you would have to read for school," she says without looking at him, marching in a ways toward the back that indicates she knows exactly what she's looking for.

"Spider-Man it is," he says with a grin.

"Oh, no, you don't. Your school isn't that progressive." She veers off from her mission and scans a row of books, novels. "Here. Of Mice and Men. You can do a book report on that while we're here."

Henry skims the summary on the back and makes a face that seems to indicate approval, a murmured "cool" out of his mouth. In an instant, Swan returns with another book and holds it out to him.

"For me, Swan?"

"Yeah. For once I didn't look like the most lost person in the room. This might help." Glancing down at the book, he squints at the cover.

"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz?" Illustrations of a little girl with a lion, a scarecrow, and some metallic statue of a man grace the cover.

"He gets to read kid books and I'm reading something from the Classic Literature section?" Henry asks.

"It's for the case," Swan says. "It's a long story...why we need it, not, not the book itself. It looks pretty standard." Biting her lip, she forces a smile. "It's a place to start anyway, right, Killian?"

A/N: Coming up? Now it's Hook's turn to learn that the stories don't always synch up with reality.