Chapter 31: Tiny
Later that morning Gold returned to the apartment and saw Emma and shockingly Henry getting ready to leave. He asked about the kid and Emma just told him that she wasn't going to leave him behind with Cora around.
"I'm not leaving Henry here with Cora lurking about." She turned to her parent with a frown. "I trust you guys, but you have enough as it is."
Mary-Margaret frowned and looked at her hands, squeezing them in anger and frustration. David put an arm around her shoulders and nodded to his daughter. Between Rose, Cora and the stranger, they were going to have their hands full. It was better for Henry to go with Emma.
"So either we both go, or we both stay." Said Emma to Gold with firm eyes.
He sighed and nodded. He explained how he was going to pay for all of their plane tickets. David tried to warn Gold about protecting his family, and he didn't take it very well, Gold went straight to attack him. David didn't even flinch and just old him to take care of his family, because he would be devastated if smoothing happened. Gold nodded.
"I promise no harm will come to your loved ones as none will come to mine. After all, we have a deal."
At the hospital Rose was sprawled on one of the couches in front of the TV. She was bored out of her mind. The doctors had confirmed that she was okay but that due to her lack of memory they wanted to keep her there for observation. Rose was getting fed up about everyone telling her she had amnesia.
Everyone kept telling her to try and remember, but no one would answer her questions. She hadn't even seen Emma yet. When she finally saw her best friend, she was going to kill her. Or at least give her a good punch. Seriously, what kind of friend would leave without checking if you are okay?
Rose sighed and changed the channel. She wasn't really angry with Emma, she knew her well enough to know that if she didn't come by was for a good reason. While she was surfing the channels for something to watch, she heard someone approach.
"Hey." Said Ruby with a sad smile. "You don't remember me, do you?"
Rose twisted her neck to look at the person, but when her neck and back protested about the position, she decided to sit up and give the woman a sheepish smile.
"Nope. Sorry."
"I'm Ruby. You used to come into my Granny's diner a lot. I thought you could use some comforts from home. You told me about your expeditions and your adventures. You even recommended some books for me, so I brought you my favorite The Alchemist." She said handing her the book.
Rose smiled and opened it. She saw the writing on the first page and gasped. This book was hers. She read the inscription and smiled with tears in her eyes.
'Rosalind, my dear girl. I hope you become the great woman I know you can be. Even being only three, everyone can see that you have a free spirit. I know one day you will leave in search of adventure, but don't forget to find yourself along the way. Love, Mom.'
Her mother had bought her this book when it came out and had left it aside to give it to her on her first adventure. She died when Rose was five, so she never got the chance to do it. Her father brought her to some of his own expeditions, but he too died before she went on her first real one. When she was sixteen she went on her first real expedition. The day of her departure, Reginald, the man that was supposed to be the family butler but had always been treated as a family member, gave her the book. She read it on the way and it had magically survived the whole ordeal.
If Rose had given Ruby this book that meant that she really thought of the woman as a good friend. It meant that she really had forgotten the past year. At that she frowned, set the book down and turned to Ruby.
"If I gave you this book, it means that we were friends. Are friends?" She asked a little confused; she shook her head and kept going. "Never mind semantics. You should tell me the truth. I got shot a man came and healed me somehow, and then he made a fireball."
"The nurse said that the tranquilizers can give you wicked nightmares." Said Ruby with a sheepish smile. She knew Rose wouldn't believe that.
"Don't patronize me." Said Rose with a glare. "If you really want to hide the fact that there is something weird with this town, then fine. People would believe what they want to believe. But I have seen weirder things, so I have no problem accepting this."
The nurse came and told Rose to go back to her room. Rose gave Ruby a final glance. Ruby sighed. She knew that Rose wouldn't be fooled. She may not remember, but at least she knew they were friends. Ruby picked up the book and saw Greg approaching. He asked if everything was okay. She nodded and asked about him. When he said he was getting better she smiled.
"Well, then, rest up. The sooner you're better, the sooner you can be out of our quiet little town." He wanted the man out of there, so they could focus on bringing Rose's memories back and deal with Cora without having to worry about revealing themselves to this man.
Rose Red was back at the Dark Castle. It had been a couple of weeks since she had returned from her latest trip. Another unsuccessful one. Since Genie had told her about the chalkydri, she hadn't been able to find anything else and was growing frustrated.
After the tenth sigh, Rumpelstiltskin looked up from his spinning wheel. He saw the redheaded princess siting upside down in one of the chairs and frowned. He knew that it was difficult to find any information about these chalkydri that her powers seemed to resemble. He had sent her to numerous places where she could look for information, but up until now, none of these trips had brought anything useful. The few places that had any information about them or something similar, only said that none had been seen for hundreds of years.
Then it came to him. He thought of a place where she could maybe find some information. He smiled and started spinning again.
"If you are going to be such a nuisance, firebird, then maybe you should go find some information." He said not taking his eyes from the wheel.
"Oh, and where should I go?" She asked sarcastically, not really in the mood for his games.
"Well, if you really don't want to try, you maybe don't need the help from someone who has the power to travel to other realms." He raised his head and gave her a smirk. "Magical or not."
That got her attention, and she craned her neck to look at him. The weird position made her fall to the ground with a thud. She stood up wincing and approached him.
"You mean that this people can go where Jeff's hat can't?" She asked curiously.
"Exactly." He said with a small frown at her nickname for the hatter. "And also it shouldn't really take too long to reach them. You just have to find a giant beanstalk that disappears into the clouds."
"Wait, you mean the giants?" She asked curiously. "Of course, how could I forget? They can grow magic beans. They must have gone to a whole lot of different places."
She grinned, thanked him and kissed him on the cheek. He was surprised at the action and it took him a couple of second to compose himself.
"Before you get too excited, darling. Remember that giants are not fond of humans." He said turning to her, only to see that Rose had already left. "Oh, well. I'm sure she'll be fine."
He brought a hand to his cheek and a smile appeared on his face. He realized what he was doing and shook his head. That woman was starting to affect him. He should be furious and tell her to never come back, but for some reason he couldn't bring himself to do it.
Anton was wreaking havoc in Storybrooke. After he had been reduced by Cora, he woke up in a strange land and found James there. He wasn't going to be tricked by him again. After Regina had given him the mushroom to get to his normal size, he decided to take revenge on humans.
"Wait! You don't have to do this!" He heard someone yell and he turned around.
He saw James and got angry.
"Yeah, I do. You destroyed everything in my life. Now you're going to know what that feels like."
James told him that he wasn't really James. He wasn't convinced but let him speak. The man said that James had died and that he could take his revenge on someone that was already dead. Then the woman next to him, who had shot an arrow at him at the ship, decided to speak up.
"We're on your side, Anton! We're good! We're here because of you. You know our daughter Emma. You gave her and Rose the magic compass."
"You are Emma's parents? Aren't you too young? And how do you know Rose?" He said still not convinced, after all he had been lied to by humans before.
"Yes, yes we are too young to be Emma's parents." Mary-Margaret said chuckling. "But that's what the curse did. And we know Rose because she is my sister."
"You are Snow White?" Anton asked with a frown. Mary-Margaret nodded with a smile. "Okay then. I want to speak with them. I want to speak with Emma and Rose. If they say you are okay, then I'll stop."
Mary-Margaret, David and Leroy looked at each other. This wasn't going to end well. They told him that Emma was out of town and that Rose was not feeling well. Not surprisingly, Anton didn't take the news well.
"How convenient. Everyone I'm looking for isn't around! All you humans do is lie, and cheat, and kill, and I'm sick of it!" He yelled going after them.
They started running and trying to come up with a plan. They couldn't run forever. David told Mary-Margaret to contact Belle and Ruby, see if they could get Rose out of the hospital for a little while.
"Are you kidding me?" Said Mary-Margaret furiously. "She didn't remember him before, and now she doesn't remember having met him again without remembering him. It's complicated and confused. This is the last thing she needs."
"But maybe seeing her will calm him down enough for him to listen." Said David frowning.
He didn't want to stress Rose in her condition, but if they didn't' do anything to get Anton's attention, he would end up destroying the town. At his wife's glare, he decided to not push the idea. And came up with something else. He decided to give himself up to placate Anton and save the town.
Anton jumped and stomped on the ground, making a big hole. They got up and saw that Anton had disappeared. Once they approached the hole, they saw Anton hanging from a pipe. They called everyone to help rescue Anton. Once David had convinced him to take his hand, and they were back on the ground, the giant asked about his friends.
"Are you really Emma's parents?" David and Mary-Margaret chuckled and nodded. "You said that Rose wasn't feeling well. What happened to her?"
"Well, you know how she lost her memory?" Asked Mary-Margaret and Anton nodded. "It happened again. She doesn't remember when she and Emma met you in the Enchanted Forest."
He asked to see her, to make sure that she was okay. On the way to the Hospital, they told him everything, about the curse, about Rose's memories, about the town line. In exchange, they asked him how he had met Rose the first time.
"It was the night James killed my whole family." Anton said with a frown.
Rose Red had found the giant beanstalk but saw King George's men there. She knew what that meant. They were attacking the giants. Her best guess was that George wanted the beans. She frowned and urged Strider to run faster, she had to help the giants.
Unfortunately, she was too late. She arrived just in time to see Prince James leave with his men. She started to climb the beanstalk. She wanted to check on the giants, see if any had survived. They didn't deserve this. They were peaceful people.
When she reached the top, the sight horrified her. The courtyard was filled with dead bodies, giants and human. She entered the palace and saw a woman dead with a sword near her with the name Jack engraved.
Rose frowned. She had heard of her. Jack was a mercenary always ready for a challenging fight, sneaky and with no compassion. Rose wasn't surprised to know that she had joined forces with George and James. But it seemed that this time Jack had been bested.
A sob caught her attention, and she saw a giant kneeling over another fallen giant. She frowned and approached him carefully.
"Excuse me?"
The giant turned around in surprise and angrily started to attack her. Rose just dodged and tried to get him to listen to her.
"Stop! Please! I'm not like them!" She was dodging and teleporting all over the room to avoid being crushed.
"No! You are a human. They are evil!"
Rose frowned and decided to make him listen. She took a deep breath and extended her hands towards him. A multicolored light emitted from her hands and filled the room. When the light dimmed out, the giant was on the floor breathing heavily.
"What did you do?" He said softly with no trace of anger on him.
"I don't really know." She said looking at her hands. "I wanted to make you calm down, maybe stop your movements or something. But it seems that the angry tones in you have turned down."
"I, I don't feel angry anymore." He said confused. "I mean, I'm angry, but not as much as before, just the amount I feel when my brothers tease me. Teased."
He looked around and as much as he tried, he couldn't get angrier. He looked at the woman with redhead and asked her who she was. She smiled softly and sat down in front of him.
"I'm Rose Red, but everyone calls me Rose. I'm sorry we couldn't meet under better circumstances." She frowned also looking around. "I'm sorry I was too late to be of any help."
"Why are you sorry? You are a human. Your people did this." He saw the frown on her face and for a moment he pondered. She arrived there after the others had left. She hadn't asked about the beans, and she hadn't paid attention to the treasure in the room. Up to that point she hadn't been like the other humans.
"They may have done this, and they may be humans, but I can't consider them my people. My people are those that fight to find themselves, that accept their faults as well as their virtues." She looked at him with a soft smile. "Human, fairy or mermaid. I don't care what you are. If you are true to yourself and accept who you are with all its consequences, then you are my people."
"That's a nice way of thinking." He said looking at her curiously. "You are different from the other humans. You are weird."
"Thank you!" She said with a big grin. "So, you need any help putting your brothers to rest?"
Anton smiled softly and nodded. After a couple of hours, they had finished burying Arlo in the destroyed bean field. Rose asked if he wanted help burying the others or at least getting rid of the humans. Anton shook his head and told her he would do it later.
"What brought you here? If you weren't with James, then what did you want with us?" He asked her curiously.
Rose told him about herself, her powers, her family, everything. And Anton told her about his life, his brothers and his dreams to live among humans and listen to music, maybe even learn to play an instrument. Rose and Anton may not have known each other for more than a few hours, but they made a quick friendship.
Anton didn't know anything about chalkydri, but he told Rose to feel free to look through the books that the giants had brought from other realms. He even offered to help her look. Rose smiled and spent the rest of the night and day looking at the many books in the giants' collection. There were a lot of interesting reads, and she found a couple of books that looked promising. Anton told her to keep them as he wasn't much of a reader.
That night, Rose took her books and was ready to leave. She turned to Anton on the courtyard and smiled up at him.
"It was great to meet you Blitz." She said with a smile.
"Blitz?" Said Anton confused.
"Yeah. I usually give my friends a nickname. You look like a Blitz to me." She grinned.
"What does that even mean?" Laughed Anton
"I don't know. But you look like one." Rose said joining in the laughter.
"Well then I'm going to call you Rosebud. Because of your name and your teeny tiny size." He said bringing his index finger and thumb very close together.
"I love it." Said Rose with a smile. "Well, I have to get going, but I'll come back now and again. Maybe next time I'll bring a new instrument for your collection."
"I'd like that." Said Anton watching his new friend descend the beanstalk. "I'd really like that."
At the hospital, Rose was looking at a cup of jello with disgust. She wasn't a fan of it. A man that looked pretty banged up approached her. She looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Hello?"
"My name's Greg. I'm a patient here, just like you. I'm really sorry to bother you, but I'm the one that was driving the car in the accident."
"Oh." Said Rose looking him over. "It's a stupid question, but are you okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah, they, um… they patched me up pretty good. Look, I overheard you talking. About how you saw a guy with a ball of fire."
"Yeah…" Rose saw the almost deranged look on his face and decided to bluff. "Painkillers can give you dreams out of an LSD trip. Right?"
"Hey, it's not a crazy dream. I saw it too." He said in a hurry.
Before he could say anymore, a bunch of people came into the room. Greg left almost scared.
"Hi Rose. Here, you left it behind before." Said Ruby handing her The Alchemist.
"And I brought you some more from the library." Said Belle holding up a basket brimming with books." I don't really know what you like and don't, so I brought a little bit of everything."
Rose laughed and thanked the two women. Then she turned to the other three people. Two she recognized, they were there when the accident happened. She said to be her sister and him her brother-in-law, but she couldn't remember them. The third person was a man she didn't think she had met before, and she looked at him curiously.
"You really don't remember me again, do you?" He said with a frown in sadness.
"No, I'm sorry." She was getting used to apologizing to people for not remembering them. "Wait, again? What do you mean?"
Rose saw the panic appear in everyone's faces. Shortly after the accident, they had told her that she had this whole other life that she had forgotten, but she assumed that they were referring to the year gap that she was missing. She was trying to make sense of what was happening and it was starting to give her a headache.
At that moment Dr. Whale came in and told everyone to leave. That she needed rest and that an overflow of information and new faces could be counterproductive. Everyone left, saying their goodbyes. But Rose grabbed one of the woman's arm and asked her to stay for a moment. After everyone else had left, Rose turned to her with a serious look.
"Belle, right?" The woman nodded. "I need you to listen carefully. The driver saw what happened just before the accident. If you really want to keep that a secret, I would watch out for him. Now go, before anyone gets suspicious. Oh, and thank you for the books I'm sure I'm gonna love them."
Belle nodded and left. Rose might have lost her memories again, but she was as perceptive as ever and at some degree, she cared enough for them to try and protect them. Belle smiled. If Rose warned her it meant that in a subconscious level she knew that they were important to her. Then she frowned. If Greg was asking about the magic in Storybrooke, it could mean trouble for everyone.
AN: I'm back. I admit I suck at being consistent. I get distracted easily (The Last of Us 2 and Ghost of Tsushima ;)). That's why I don't make promises of updates. I can just promise to try.
Someone said that they found Rose a little Mary Sue. I try not to make her one. At the moment you have seen her not having that much trouble with anything, because she doesn't quite believe everything that's happening. She is more or less going with the flow. Just follow along, like you do with crazy people. She will have difficulties balancing everything once her memories are restored. Two lives and magic powers. If that's hard for a superhero, imagine for someone who isn't one.
You'll see Rose taking Belle's place in some major story plots, but Belle will still have her own moments.
I'm always grateful for constructive criticism, so keep them coming.
As always, thank you for taking the time to read my story! :)