Chapter 50: Instinct

"What happened to you kids?" Mary Margret asks.

Immediately she had snapped into mother mode, had both of the kids sit down in some of the dressing room chairs. She pulled out the first-aid kit and began helping treat the kids' wounds. She found an instant cold pack, usually used for sore muscles or sprained ankles due to heels, cracks it and helps apply it to Crystal's eye. Once the cold compress is in place, the formerly fairest of them all get out some antiseptic wipes to treat the cut on the girl's cheek.

Crystal winces in pain while still holding the ice pack. It was interesting to think that even though Henry was the target of the gang, his companion was more beat up than him, but that was probably because she's the one who fought back.

"We got jumped by a gang," Henry says. He too has an ice pack under his chin, where the leader had slammed his jaw, likely by accident but it still hurt.

"Which one," Mary Margret mutters, searching for band-aids in the kit.

"No idea," Crystal says. Again, she wishes that she had her magic so she could heal herself. At the same time, she felt glad that she was being taken care of by her surrogate mother, someone she'd missed dearly while in New York. While Snow White could never replace Lillian Miller, the former princess managed to fill some of the mothering roles that Crystal had longed for. Snow, Regina, and Belle were all considered maternal figures that the daughter of the Dark One could look up to for advice and support whenever needed. It was reassuring to see that the curse had not destroyed Snow's capacity for love. "They seemed to have a vendetta against Henry."

"They had tried to rob me the other day, but my grandpa stopped them, beat them with his cane even. I'm guessing that is hard to forget when you're humiliated like that."

"Doesn't justify going after two teenagers like this," Mary Margret reasons. "Honestly, what has this world come to?"

"Depression, hatred, despair, hopelessness; you can take your pick," Crystal mutters sarcastically.

The exotic dancer frowns.

"Sorry, sarcasm is my defence mechanism," the young adult explains.

"I am inclined to agree with you overall," Snow nods, handing a band-aid to Crystal. "But I do try to look for the positives in every situation. Keep hope alive." She then turns her back to put away the kit.

Henry and Crystal shoot knowing looks at one another and smile contently. This is the Snow they know and love. Always talking about hope… while repetitive and sometimes tedious, the speeches about good triumphing over evil and remaining optimistic were uplifting, especially considering how hopeless their situation seemed to be at the moment.

"It's a good philosophy," Henry agrees.

"If you don't mind me asking, what are your names?"

"I'm Henry," the author says.

"And I'm Crystal."

"Those are great names. Are you brother and sister?"

The two share a look of flickering panic; technically they're on the run and hiding from the Black Fairy so they will have to come up with some kind of lie to tell people, even if it is a family member. Their brunette hair could allow them to pass as siblings.

"Yeah, I'm twenty and he's fourteen."

"Quite an age gap there. Now, what the hell were you two doing out after dark anyway? If you live in the city, you have to know how dangerous it is at night."

The use of a "curse" word seemed so bizarre coming from the princess's mouth, so much so that it shocked them a bit.

"We knew," Henry says. "We were actually on our way home, but we… stopped at a food truck for a snack and got attacked."

"Well, do you have your phones with you so you can call your parents? You're not going to leave this building until you are picked up by trusted adults."

"Our parents are gone," Crystal blurts out.

Henry looks at her like she's lost her mind, but the daughter of Rumpelstiltskin knows that they can't continue breaking the curse without reuniting their family. If they left now, who knows when they might see Snow again, or if Fiona might try to do something to her… After what happened with Belle, they couldn't risk it. They needed to stay together.

"Oh…" Mary Margret says, her face filling with expressions of sympathy. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be too sorry," Crystal says. Her ability to improvise was not the greatest, but she hoped that Snow would buy it. After all, she didn't have the lie-detecting superpower that Emma had. "They were both awful addicts and neg in every sense of the word. My dad skipped town a long time ago and our mom died of an overdose about two years ago. But since I'm twenty, I'm his legal guardian."

"We only have each other," Henry adds.

Just then a raspy voice barks into the dressing room.

"ICEY WHERE ARE YOU?!"

Snow freezes in place and looks towards the entrance to the club at the other end of the room. The three of them can see the source of the voice's shadow against the far wall. The boss's form flickers and changes frequently, probably due to the different coloured lights on stage and in the bar. The loud and erotic sounding music drifts into the previously quiet room.

"Mr… Mr. Tenormin, I'll be right out…" she tries to shout over the sound.

"YOU'RE ON BAR AND ANOTHER PARTY WANTS A DANCE! GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE!"

"I just need a few more minutes…"

"NOW!" he bellows.

Snow's eyes are filling with tears. She doesn't want to leave these kids here, but she also doesn't want to lose her job. She looks at them and they can see that she's torn over what to do. Her mothering instinct is overriding the desire to make the meagre living that this second job could give her. A teacher's salary in this awful city is never enough to pay the bills, and even with her job as a stripper, it can barely make ends meet. There was a strange feeling of kinship with these two and her gut was telling her that she needed to help them in some way. How, she wasn't sure yet, but she always trusted her instincts.

"ICEY!" his sharp voice says again.

"Can… can you guys wait until my shift is over? I-I don't want you to go home by yourselves… I promise I will drive you two home, but maybe wait in the back room so the other… dancers don't see you."

"Oh…okay," Crystal says. Secretly, she was relieved that they were going to stick around and hopefully help Snow White.

"But don't leave. Promise me that!" she insists.

"We promise," Henry nods.

"Okay…" Snow says, pleased that the kids would still be around. She stands up, adjusts her awful looking outfit and fixes her hair before heading towards the entrance to the club. She gives them another quick look before vanishing into the insanity of the strip club.

Once they're alone, Crystal feels the need to throw up. It's so bad, that she needs to lay her head back to try and quell nausea. Both her and Henry's heads are spinning, and it's not from pain or the fight. They sit in silence, the muffled sounds of the music pounding around them.

"Why did you lie like that?" the teen author finally asks.

"I don't fully know why," Crystal answers. "I just wanted to have a reason to stay around longer. After what happened with Belle, we know that splitting up is not going to work. To break the curse, we have to stay together. It's love that weakens it."

"That or your sonic blasts," Henry mutters. "But how are we going to explain to her that we don't have a place to live. All we have is your room at Granny's?"

"That's the beauty of it. Once Snow sees that we're living in a motel/bed and breakfast, she'll offer for us to stay with her. That can be our base of operations for the time being and hopefully, get Emma out the asylum and find David and the others."

"So we're manipulating her so she'll let us stay with her?" the teen asks.

Crystal grimaces and bites her lip. "I know, I don't like it any more than you do. I feel guilty just thinking about it, but Snow has the kindest heart and there's no way she'd let two teenagers be out on the streets or without a proper home. I hate it, but we need a place to stay since the mansion is gone and Granny's is not going to cut it. I have a feeling it might be one of the first places Fiona will look for you once since the clone is gone and you are missing. That wicked worm would set fire to the place if it meant keeping the curse intact."

"I guess you're right," Henry says. "But what if Fiona comes after Grandma?"

"We're talking about Snow White here, the bandit princess. She can handle herself. Curse or not, she can hold her own."

"I hope so…" he mutters.

The two hear voices of other strippers approaching the room, so they pick up their stuff and slip out into the back hallway. They go to the far end, almost out of sight so any vagrants or dancers would not notice them until such time as they wanted to be seen.

They wait for a long time, sitting on some old crates, remaining silent the whole time. They end up waiting until past one o'clock, nearly nodding off several times in exhaustion.

It isn't until they hear some of the stripper's voices in the hall that they know that the place is closing down. The two stand up and go towards the dressing room again, being careful to remain in the shadows and avoid any looks from people other than Snow.

They for what feels like another hour when loud voices can be heard within the room. Several dancers bolt to the exit, but Henry leans in and he realizes that one of the voices is his grandmother's.

He looks at Crystal and they peer through the ajar door to see Snow and who they presume to be the manager yelling at each other. The bandit princess is dressed in regular clothing now and her bag and purse under one arm, showing that she's to leave, but the bald-headed weirdo in a cheap suit and who's smoking cigarettes has a firm grip on her arm.

"I told you I was sorry. My ankle was sore and I had to put ice on it."

"I don't care if you hurt yourself, you don't leave in the middle of a shift!" the man barks, blowing smoke in the woman's face.

"I left for five minutes, it wasn't a big deal."

"It is a big deal if you lose money in revenue from clients. You're my girls, you are my income, and those men are expecting a show."

Both Crystal and Henry's stomachs turn. This guy as misogynistic to say the least, thinking his employees were his girls. The way he holds Snow is disgusting; it's violent and aggressive like she's a doll that he can just throw around. The way she fights him, there's no doubt that she will have bruises on her arm tomorrow.

"Just let me go home," she begs. Gone was the tough and brave hero of Snow White, back is the meek and seemingly helpless Mary Margret, willing to be manipulated and pushed around by anyone with more power. Crystal begins to doubt her theory that her surrogate mother could take care of herself.

"No, I'm docking your tips for the time you were gone," the boss keeps a firm grasp on her. He tries to reach for her purse.

"You can't do that! It's not legal and I need that money to pay my rent!"

"Too bad, you're my girl and what I say goes," he growls. His meaty hands forcefully try to grab the woman's purse; she pushes back, struggling to get free.

"You're a bastard!" Snow says, trying to escape the situation.

Finally, with summoned courage, the exotic dancer knees him in the groin to make him let go.

He keels forward in pain and Snow attempts to run for the door, but the guy recovers quickly. He grabs the back of her coat, causing her to make a choking noise as he pulls. Once she's in his grasp again, he puts his hands around her throat and begins to squeeze. Mary Margret tries to scream, but the air is slowly being forced from her body.

"You little whore…" he hisses, gritting his teeth.

In an instant, Crystal acts.

She bursts into the room, filled with rage.

"HEY ASSHOLE!" Crystal shouts.

She charges right up to the guy and socks him across the face, so hard that he goes down to the floor and doesn't get up. Snow stumbles back into a wrack of costumes, coughing and gasping for air. Tears are in her eyes and she's shaking like a leaf. Henry rushes over to her and helps his grandma maintain her balance. The two look at Crystal in shock and amazement.

"Wow, one punch," Henry says, very impressed.

"He deserved so much more," the young woman says.

"Let's just get out of here," Henry insists.

The three hurry out the entrance, leaving the horrible excuse for a human being on the filthy floor of his establishment. They go through the exit, the cold night air biting them as they go.

Snow/Mary Margret leads them to her car, happy that the kids were still around and had helped her in a time of need. While this likely means that she was fired, there is a great sense of relief inside herself. It's as if she was just released from some kind of shackles and was free of the desperate and humiliating existence she'd led in the place. It was empowering and liberating for herself and her life. As she gets the keys out of her purse and unlocks her car so they can get in, she wonders where these kids came from. They seemed to appear from out of nowhere and they almost seemed familiar, as if she'd met them before. Also, after what they'd done to help her, she knew her gut feeling was correct and she'd done the right thing in helping them.

"I guess it's safe to say I'm never working there ever again," she says as they drove away into the darkened and sinful city.

A/N: Sorry it's been so long. I have a teaching job so it takes up a lot more time. Please float me a review if you can, it's so great to read them.