Time was passing. Faster than it should have. Or at least that was the way that it felt.

They were working. Diligently working. And their work was paying off. She'd checked the ingredients. Twice. Three times. The apparatus they'd put together was complete! Everything was ready. Perfectly ready! Except of course for two things.

Her husband, who was still sitting in the corner where she'd left him, dutifully guarding her bag and coat as he watched the flurry of fairies move around him almost nervously. But then again he wasn't the only one. It hadn't escaped her notice the way that the fairies scuttled away from him, sometimes walking the entire way around the table just to avoid getting too close to him. Or the way that they eyed him suspiciously from the corner of their eyes. But her husband was the least of her worries at the moment.

It was Anna, the last thing that was keeping this scene from being truly ideal. They needed Anna's hair. As soon as they had it they could complete the spell and begin distributing the cures to the citizens of Storybrooke. But they just didn't have it yet, despite the fact that she'd texted Emma, as promised to tell her where to bring her friend.

"Belle…we need that hair," Mother Superior whispered to her as she completed her fourth check of everything in the last fifteen minutes. "We can't wait too much longer for it."

"We can," she assured the woman. "We have time left. Everything is ready once we have it this should only take minutes to finish. We just have to be a patient a little while longer. As soon as they find her, they'll bring her here."

"Find her?" Mother Superior exclaimed. "I thought they just had to go and get someone, you never mentioned that they had to look for this person!"

Hadn't she? This was why she preferred to discuss information to people in large groups. Something always got lost in translation after the story had been told too many times to remember. "Anna," she finally sighed, "Elsa's sister, she hasn't been seen for thirty years but we found mirror dust in her necklace, that's how we know she was affected by the curse. They're using it right now with a tracking spell to locate her. If she wasn't alive then the tracking spell wouldn't work. They'll find her in time."

But Mother Superior's eyes had gone round at her explanation. "We don't need her," she muttered suddenly.

"What?" she questioned. Had she just her that correctly? They didn't need Anna?!

"The necklace, you didn't mention that before either. But it had mirror dust in it, from a previously cast curse, from the Snow Queen, you're sure?" Sure? No, of course not, she couldn't be sure until they actually found and talked to Anna but at the moment she couldn't think of anyone else that would have cast that curse. Not to mention the coincidence involved if Anna had run into another person that had cast the spell over her and forced her to lock her sister away other than Ingrid.

She nodded. Maybe she could be sure. "Then we don't need Anna," Mother Superior breathed. She glanced up at the clock, then turned back to the room. "Girls! There's been a slight change of plans! We're going to need a few more things! Get everything you can together for a magical extraction. Quickly, hurry!" The room seemed to buzz once more with energy as they followed Superieors orders. She turned to question what was happening but only found herself face to Mother Superior herself!

"Belle, listen to me!" she stated grabbing her by the arms and looking her dead in the eye with desperation. "I need you to locate that necklace."

"The necklace?"

"We don't need hair if we have the curse itself, so long as we're confident it was cast by the same person, it'll carry the same magical signature. But we need to move quickly. Extracting the curse will take more time than just adding a few hairs to the batch."

Oh, she was breathless as she recalled the one fact she'd let slip through her mind at the first thought of seeing Anna again so soon. How could she have been so ignorant and forgotten so quickly! They could use a piece of the curse itself! That had been her original plan! To get Elsa and Emma to somehow collect a bit of the curse floating above their heads. They really had the answer this entire time?! They could really remove it from the metal.

She fumbled over to Rumpelstiltskin for her bag, pushing everything away to locate her cell phone. "How long will you need?" she questioned. "To pull the dust from the necklace, how long will it take?"

"Well it's not a matter of how fast we can pull the curse from the necklace as it is how fast we can destroy the necklace to get to the curse."

She paused. They had to destroy the necklace. The one chance they had to get to Anna? They had to destroy it? "Belle," her hand was suddenly enveloped in Rumple's warm one, his tone gentle as his thumb moved over the back of her hand. It wasn't good news. "The Dark Magic in those dust particles will have bound themselves to the necklace. They'll have to destroy the metal to be left with the raw material of the curse," he explained. Her jaw dropped. Maybe she didn't know Dark Magic as well as she thought she did yet.

"But then…how will Elsa find Anna?" The answer was written very clearly on his face. "They won't, will they?" But the moment he opened his mouth to answer she found her hand pulled from him by Mother Superior?

"They will," she insisted. "They will find her because if we get that necklace we'll have all the time in the world to search for her. But right now, we need that necklace. It'll take time to get to the curse and if we get it in the next few minutes we can make it work. I'm sorry, but it's Anna or the town."

Anna or…

Here she was at a crossroads again. Either or. Anna or her memories. Anna or the town. Last time she'd chosen her memories and Anna had suffered. She'd regretted the decision ever since. This time. This time was different. Then she had chosen wrong. Anna had been the right choice before but that didn't mean she was the right choice now. She didn't like it. This felt like betrayal all over again but for the lives of the many, Anna had to suffer again. She hoped they'd find her one day. She hoped that she'd get to apologize for then and now. But from where she was standing right now…it could be a long time.

Sadly her fingers moved over the buttons on her phone. David. She could always get David. And he always had a way of delivering bad news, though as much as she justified it, this time around it felt like an act of cowardice.

"David, the spell is ready, I don't suppose you know if Emma and Elsa found Anna yet?"

"Soon," David responded. "They need a few more hours."

Hours. If only he'd said minutes. "Anna's necklace…they still have it?"

"Yeah, the tracking spell works, we just have to get through a couple of walls and we'll be able to keep going." Hours, not minutes.

"Listen, I...I made a mistake," she explained. "We need that necklace. We need the mirror dust inside of it. If we use that then we don't need Anna, we can inoculate everyone in the town and begin to distribute the cure, but it'll take a while to extract the magic from the necklace. We need it now!"

"Wait a minute when you say 'extract'…?"

Sometimes David could be smarter than he looked. "That's the catch. The necklace won't survive. It'll be destroyed. But the town…everyone will be safe." She stood there and waited for a response, for a question, an outburst, anything. But all she got was silence. "David?"

"This is the only way?" he questioned, his voice in a hushed whisper that told him he was trying to keep the news from whoever happened to be around him at the moment. "You're sure? You need this necklace now? It can't wait a few more hours?"

She swallowed as she gave a nod he couldn't see. "I'm sure, this is what it comes down to. We need the necklace now."


Poor Belle...I wanted this to be just as difficult a decision for her as it was for Elsa and Emma. I hope that came through just fine here. I know it's hard, seeing Rumple lying and returning as a villain...but I have to do it. Alas...I'm doing the best with what I was given and I do hope that it's easy to see that while Rumple is a villain he is still a loving husband. I do believe he genuinely is sad for Belle when she learns the necklace will be destroyed.

Thank you to Kagi-chan2, Ladybugsmomma, Kathryn Claire O'Connor, Raizen Yusuke, and Skitzoeinhoven for your reviews on the last chapter. Stick with me there is more to come. Peace and Happy Reading!