Upon hearing that Henry's father was in the hospital, Nick wondered if there was some grain of truth to Henry's wilder fantasies. There had always been an air of mystery about the man behind the portrait. The stories told in the Enchanted Forest about Sir Baelfire hinted at some puzzle never solved. What was the secret behind his return to life? Who was he, really, in the Land Without Magic? Had he been living here as Neal Cassidy all the time Henry thought him dead?
Now he had been injured in the course of some hush-hush investigation he was supposedly helping the police with. Nick hung back, nursing his suspicions, while Roni and Henry offered moral support as the doctor fitted a cast over Cassidy's wrist.
"Just a minor fracture," Cassidy assured his son.
Nick glanced over at the detective who had brought Cassidy in. Weaver was the name he had given, but something about the man niggled at the edges of Hansel's memory. Then the detective shifted, and the turn of his head gave it away. The shape of the nose, maybe, or something in his voice as he spoke to Henry.
Hansel's heart skipped a beat. He's the Dark One! Gods. He couldn't breathe. He had to get away. Nick mumbled something about water and fled the room. What was the Dark One doing here? Was he cursed, or did he remember? Was he responsible for Neal Cassidy's resurrection? Why? He had made a deal with Henry to help him. Was this his idea of 'help'? Why Henry's father rather than his mother?
Then he saw another face that struck straight to the heart of Hansel's memories.
She wore the white coat of a doctor, striding confidently down the hospital corridor past Hansel, taking no notice of him. Did she know who she was? It didn't matter, because he knew her. She was the herbalist who had sent Gretel to Gothel. Rishika. That had been her name. Gothel's procurer. How many girls had been slaughtered because of her 'recommendations'?
So absorbed was he in thoughts of how best to murder the witch that he barely noticed when two more visitors squeezed in to see Henry's father.
Tilly showed up at the precinct to report her findings (not much so far) and to claim another marmalade sandwich (Rogers was prepared this time).
"Where's Weaver?"
"The man won't sit still, even though he's meant to be resting," grumbled Rogers. "I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up hospitalized again."
And in fact, a text a few minutes later placed his partner back at the hospital. It was the next one that gave him pause. "Cassidy broke his wrist?" Or had it broken for him, Rogers thought darkly. What was Weaver up to? Was this the result of one of his 'enhanced' interrogation techniques?
"Who's Cassidy?"
"I wish I knew." Rogers herded Tilly out the door. "I thought he was a suspect, but maybe he's one of Weaver's moles now. It's time I checked in with him in person."
"Me too," Tilly said brightly. When Rogers gave her a dubious look, her grin grew even wider. "Come on, detective, the more the merrier."
Rogers sighed, capitulating. Perhaps it was irregular, but he was secretly glad to let her tag along. With her skewed outlook, as if she lived in a different world from the rest of them, Tilly seemed to see things no one else did. Whether they were true perceptions or not was beside the point; they provoked Rogers himself to take a fresh look at what he thought he knew.
They arrived at the hospital to find that Weaver was not alone with Cassidy. The detective had been crowded back into a corner while Cassidy's son and Roni visited.
Weaver's eyebrows rose. "Rogers. Tilly. What's up?"
"Can we talk somewhere quieter?" Rogers gestured with an up-tilted chin at the exit.
Weaver nodded, ungluing himself from the wall to follow Rogers to an empty room just down the corridor. Tilly, distracted by nothing extraordinary as far as Rogers could see, lagged behind.
"I've borrowed Tilly," he told Weaver. "She's going to ask around, talk to the street kids for me."
"Is this about that Eloise Gardener case you're obsessed with?" Weaver scowled. "You should drop it before it consumes you."
"Are you kidding? When I finally have a hint of a lead?"
"You think Tilly will find your missing girl for you? It's been years." Weaver sounded almost hostile.
"You always say she's your best informant. There's got to be a reason for that."
"Well, I'm happy to see you two hitting it off," Weaver said, more gently this time. "But you need to be careful. You don't know what's going on."
"Try telling me, then!" Rogers demanded. "Is it something to do with this Neal Cassidy? What happened to him?"
"He fell," said Weaver dismissively, but his expression was not quite the hard mask Rogers was used to. "Don't worry about Cassidy. Leave him to me."
"Come on, Weaver. We're partners. Your choice, that was," Rogers said, unable to keep the resentment from leaking into his voice. When he had first learned that Weaver had actually chosen him, Rogers had allowed himself a sliver of hope, if not for something he knew could never happen, then at least to be trusted, to be seen, to be valued. "I know you're a secretive bastard, but if you don't trust me, why did you want to work with me?"
Weaver was silent for a long moment, his face turned away from Rogers. "I don't distrust you."
"Then talk to me. I can't help you if you keep me in the dark. Please. Who is Cassidy? Why did you suddenly change your mind about him?"
Weaver sighed, his fingers rubbing against each other, a sure sign of agitation that Rogers had come to recognize. This time he did glance at Rogers when he reluctantly answered, "He's someone from my past, from so long ago it took me..." A pained look crossed Weaver's face. "Let's say it wasn't easy for me to remember."
"Someone from your past? Someone you trust?" At Weaver's slow nod, Rogers fought back a surge of jealousy, but he couldn't help giving voice to his sudden insight. "Someone you care about..."
"Yes." Weaver looked at him, a ghost of a smile on his lips. "Oh, not like that. Take your mind out of the gutter, dearie."
Rogers shivered, suddenly speechless. Something about the smile and the way Weaver inflected the word "dearie" shot straight through him.
Then Weaver's brow furrowed in apparent concern. "Rogers. There are things I truly can't explain to you now. Someday I promise you'll understand."
And Rogers was reminded of Cassidy, leading them on a wild goose chase through the underground.
It's just... difficult to explain.
"And the Eloise Gardener case?" Rogers found his tongue at last.
Weaver gestured vaguely, his hands encompassing a world of secrets. "Everything is connected. Trust me, it's safer for you to forget her."
"I won't abandon the poor girl just because you're playing God knows what game, Weaver!" Anger and distrust flared again at his partner's callousness. "I think you're losing sight of what's important. For what, politics? Money? Influence?"
Weaver grimaced. "Oh, trust me, I only have the best interests of Hyperion Heights at heart. Contrary to popular opinion, I do have one, tarnished though it may be."
"What about Faye Lipson, then? Did you give up on her, too?"
"Oh, she's as well as she can be, all things considered." Weaver smiled again, this time with a predatory edge that Rogers found disturbing.
"What the devil is that supposed to mean? Have you been in contact with her?"
Weaver shook his head. "Not me. Cassidy. Though I doubt she'll be returning to her previous life. She's gone about as far from Hyperion Heights as one can go."
Rogers scowled. "That sounds like exactly what you'd say if you'd murdered her and dumped her corpse at the bottom of Puget Sound."
Weaver smirked. "No, Rogers, I didn't kill her. Nor did Mr. Cassidy. Sometimes people take a look at their lives and decide it's time for a change."
"Are you saying it was some kind of mid-life crisis?" asked Rogers incredulously.
"Close enough." Weaver's focus shifted past Rogers, and he nodded at the door. "Come on. They're leaving, and the hospital will be wanting this room back, sooner or later."
Rogers followed his partner into the corridor. He looked up and down, but Tilly had disappeared, and she wasn't in the room Cassidy had just vacated, either. "Tilly?"
"Tilly has something of the Cheshire Cat about her, don't you think?" said Weaver from behind him. "Or is it Schrodinger's cat?"
"She's quick, I'll give her that." Rogers remembered her vanishing act at the stone troll.
"She'll come back when she has something for us," said Weaver. "Meanwhile, we have a list of people we need to question for the Hilda Braeburn case."
Rogers was glad that for once Weaver didn't seem to be hiding anything, allowing them to work together properly to investigate an unquestionable crime committed against the people they were meant to protect, rather than chasing after some nebulous mystery or interrogating suspects who turned out to be old acquaintances.
Ivy was stuck with baby-sitting duty again. Not that Stacy needed it, being old enough to be the one doing the baby-sitting. As she had done — when Ivy had been the younger sister. When she had been Drizella.
Now, with two sets of memories, Ivy just felt weird, unsure of what it meant for her relationship with her sister. With Mother working late (or whatever she was really doing), it fell to Ivy to prepare dinner for herself and Stacy. Stacy was old enough to learn to cook, too, but generally only made salads (healthier and more eco-friendly, she claimed) while Ivy didn't care for eating raw leaves. Pasta with a garlic marinara sauce was her concession to Stacy's vegetarianism.
As they ate, Ivy tried not to stare too much at her younger (older) sister, miraculously returned from the brink of death. She tried a few discreet questions to see if anything of Anastasia was awake inside Stacy. There wasn't. This role reversal was their new reality. Ivy was now the responsible older sister, when that had once been Anastasia. Little Drizzy had looked up to her and known she was Mother's favorite.
Well, that hadn't changed. Stacy wasn't anything like Ana, but she was still Mother's little pet. Ivy cursed herself for ever thinking that would change. No matter who they were, in whatever realm, no matter how much she did for her mother, her mother would never love her as much as Anastasia.
"Why do I even bother to try?" she said aloud.
"Try what?" Stacy narrowed her eyes at her sister. "Something wrong? You've been giving me weird looks all day."
"You wouldn't understand," Ivy said haughtily. And since she didn't know how to break the Dark Curse, she couldn't explain without sounding crazy. Tilly's cube would be useless for waking Anastasia, who had never even met Alice before. In magic, it was the emotional resonance that imbued an ordinary object with power.
"You think I'm stupid. Just because I care about the environment and you're selfish—"
"Shut up! That has nothing to do with it."
Stacy rolled her eyes. "Then it's Mom, isn't it? You're the stupid one, slaving away as her obedient little drone. Can't you think for yourself?"
Ivy scowled. "Forget it." She stood up and took her plate to the sink. "I cooked, so you wash the dishes."
Belfrey checked the security camera footage again. Gothel was stowed away in another building now, but Belfrey couldn't feel safe when the curse was fracturing all around her. There were gaps in the record. A careful check of the timestamps revealed that much, though not the identity of the intruder. There were only a few possibilities.
Belfrey checked over her office again, but nothing seemed to be missing. The elephant figurine was back on her desk. Of course, Ivy had plenty of opportunities already to spy on her mother. But it could also be—
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Belfrey hastily made her way to the reception desk to meet—
"Bad time?" Detective Weaver swaggered out of the lift, meeting Belfrey's startled gaze with a sardonic smirk. "I could come back, if you've got something bigger on your plate."
Belfrey straightened, forcing a confidence she didn't feel into her voice. "No. Everything's fine."
"That may be a temporary condition. It seems Detective Rogers is close to solving the Eloise Gardener case."
Belfrey suppressed a hiss. Weaver shouldn't even know about her prisoner, much less break into her tower, but this wasn't Weaver. She was talking to Rumplestiltskin. She should have known the curse wouldn't hold the Dark One. Somehow he had arranged for an outsider to come into Hyperion Heights and wake him, and now he knew who Eloise Gardener really was. "And I'm sure you don't want that any more than I do. Why haven't you stopped him?"
"He has an emotional attachment to the case and won't listen to me."
"Then someone will simply have to take more stringent measures."
"Or beef up their security."
No, the Dark One didn't want Gothel free, but he didn't know where she was, either. Was he trying to bait Belfrey into giving away her location so that he could kill her? She was glad now that she had left the witch alive. Belfrey needed a pawn that was powerful enough to take on the Dark One, if it came to that. Belfrey held Weaver's gaze. "If you refuse to be be helpful, then I shall find someone more cooperative, someone who can take care of the Rogers problem... permanently. The choice is yours."
By the time Weaver left, Belfrey was fairly certain he would do as she asked, though he hid his reasoning behind the detective's mask. She didn't like it. The Dark One was as slippery as ever, and now that extended to the odd way time swirled and bent around him. A side effect of him being the architect of the curse, she thought.
But since "fairly certain" was not the same as "certain", Belfrey took out her phone and summoned Ivy to her office. "There's a detective, Weaver's new partner, who's poking his nose where he shouldn't. Rogers is his name."
Ivy sighed. She had taken her time before coming, dragging her heels as much as she dared short of overt defiance. "And this has what to do with me?"
Belfrey glared at her daughter. "I need you to keep an eye on him, and steer him away if he gets too close to any of my business."
Ivy crossed her arms and rolled her eyes like a belligerent teenager. "I don't remember 'spy' being in my job description. Don't you have other people to do your dirty work?"
Belfrey gritted her teeth. "I'm trusting you with this. Aren't you always whining at me about being promoted to bigger responsibilities? Well, this is your chance, you ungrateful brat. What do you want, a bonus?"
"Yes."
"Fine—" began Belfrey.
"Not money," Ivy interrupted. "Don't throw money at me and pretend that's love. You always say you're doing everything for the sake of family. Well, prove it. Give me something a bit more personal than cash."
Belfrey stared. Ivy had never spoken to her this way before. Could it be Drizella standing in front of her now? That hint of a sneer, the challenge in her tone — Ivy wouldn't dare, would she? "What do you want, then?"
Ivy swept her gaze slowly around Belfrey's office. Then stopped. Belfrey's blood turned cold. She did remember. Ivy pointed at the elephant figurine. "That. I want your elephant."
Belfrey picked it up, held it in a clenched fist. "Why? Why this? What can you possibly gain from it?"
Ivy shrugged, feigning carelessness. "Way you reacted when it was stolen, I'm not sure you'd be half as upset if I had gone missing. I just want to know if you care more for your own flesh and blood than some trinket."
"Of course I do," said Belfrey coldly.
"Then prove it."
"Very well." Belfrey unclenched her fingers and stiffly dropped the figurine in Ivy's palm. "Now get on with the job."
"Of course, Mother."
Belfrey held her breath until Ivy (Drizella?) was swallowed up again by the lift. No, this wouldn't do. She needed allies. Allies more trustworthy than Rumplestiltskin or her scheming daughter. Belfrey opened the safe in her office, extracting a circular pendant on a silver chain. She ran a finger over the deep red stone set in the center, pondering her options. She had taken the Amulet of Rebirth from Gothel when the witch had been bound into the curse, and forced her to divulge the details of how it worked.
She could wake Anastasia with the amulet. Anastasia was her loyal daughter, the one who loved her mother. She was still young, but she had a gift of magic. Magic had somehow returned to this piece of the Land Without Magic — Rumplestiltskin's doing, she assumed. It wasn't what Belfrey had expected or desired, but she refused to let it get in the way of her plans. Hyperion Heights was her kingdom.
Meet me at the bench, came Tilly's cryptic message, a folded paper stuck under a wiper on Rogers' car. Apparently she didn't have a phone.
Rogers was mildly surprised when Weaver deigned to tell him which bench Tilly meant. His partner had to know it was about the Eloise Gardener case, but for once he didn't try to talk Rogers out of pursuing it.
The bench faced the water, with a playground behind it. Rogers was in no mood to enjoy the scenery or the cheerful ruckus of the elementary school crowd. One moment he was waiting alone; the next moment Tilly was approaching him through the playground. The dejected slump of her shoulders, her hands stuffed in her jacket pockets, and the downcast face told him too much that he didn't want to know, and perhaps she read that in his expression. Tilly immediately turned and walked away without a word to Rogers.
He hopped off the bench and gave chase. "Hey! Hey, wait! Did you find anything?"
Tilly slowed, spun around. "Yeah, but you don't wanna hear this."
"Of course I do!"
Tilly shook her head, hands still in her pockets. "No, I should go."
"Whatever you've got, just tell me," insisted Rogers.
"Ok." Tilly capitulated, but Rogers felt as though he had to drag every word out of her. She had asked around, she said, and heard of a girl. The name was different, but the poetry, the writing, the drawing — those were the same. And Tilly had a paper with a ragged edge matching the place where a page had been torn out of the journal Rogers knew too well. Eloise Gardener's journal.
She was dead. A car accident. But her name hadn't been Eloise Gardener when she died, so no one connected the dots until now.
This time Rogers was the one to turn and walk away. Eloise Gardener was dead? No, it couldn't be. Yet the evidence was in his hand, and did Tilly even know how to lie?
Later that night he returned to sit alone on the bench. Furious at himself for his useless obsession, for being too late to save the girl, Rogers brooded over the journal, the recovered page slotted back in, the colorful painting glaring back at him in accusation. He had a bottle next to him, because why not? What was the bloody point? Why not drink himself into oblivion, when it made no difference to the world whether he was drunk or sober?
His hand shook as he raised the bottle, liquid spilling onto his fingers. No. He couldn't do this. He lowered the bottle again without drinking, and touched the painting, a silent apology to the dead.
The colors smeared at his touch. It was wrong. He knew it was wrong before he could figure out why. He stared at the page, at where the paint ran at the touch of his dampened finger. He had had this book for years. It was old.
I spilled coffee on it before, he remembered. And nothing had happened. That was when he knew that Tilly had lied. And he knew only one person who could force her to lie. One person who wanted him to think Eloise Gardener was dead.
Weaver.
