Once Upon Another Time

by Anti-Kryptonite

"Kill me," Zoso hisses. "No," Rumplestiltskin decides. (Rumplestiltskin controls rather than kills, Bae negotiates rather than runs, Cora delegates rather than confronts, Regina cooperates rather than rebels, and still the curse is cast, the Savior comes, the boy believes, and worlds are torn apart by a father's love. How much really would change if one decision was altered?)

16. Going Outside

-Flashback-

---

Henry was four when Regina first realized that his place here in Storybrooke was untenable. Every kid currently in preschool had been in preschool for over twenty years. None of the children would age with Henry. Any friends he made would be left behind, over and over again; Henry would always be alone.

As she mucked out stables with warm horses as her company, Henry giggling and playing with his toys in an empty paddock, Regina wondered why she had thought adopting a son would be a good idea.

(If you had a child, Regina, you could do anything.)

She couldn't let him grow up alone. Her little boy didn't deserve to ever be lonely (or forgotten, or ignored, or hurt). But there was only one way out of this curse, and that was still a long way away…if it would ever come. Regina didn't have the same kind of faith as Rumplestiltskin did. She'd seen too many schemes fail and plans fall and futures topple to think that just because a single prophecy declared a savior would arrive in the nick of time, she actually would.

"Henry," she said after she'd bathed all the birthday cake and sugary residue off his newly five-year old body. "How would you like me to tell you a story?"

"A story?" His eyes shone with excitement as his little hands reached for her, pudgy arms winding around her neck, love (so earnest, so true) offered her unabashedly. Regina cuddled him close and focused all her attention on not clinging too tightly (she would never be like her mother). "Please, Mama, a story, a story!"

"Once upon a time, there was a queen so evil that she ripped out her own heart so she could never love again," Regina began, and relished the way Henry snuggled up closer as he listened.

That was the beginning of the stories. Every night, Regina wove the tale of their old world new and bright and real for Henry, which became easier once Mr. Gold gave (sold, he claimed, but there was no money exchanged) her a storybook filled with familiar faces and stories she knew before this world.

Every night, Regina taught Henry more. She told him of the curse and the way they were sentenced to a land without magic, where time stood still, where they awaited a savior. She told him just enough to keep him from asking too many questions when he started kindergarten and then moved to first grade and none of his friends moved with him. And above all, she made certain he knew just how important it was that he never mention their stories to Grandmother (Operation Cobra, he called it, and Regina let him have the fun of conspiring while she bore the sting of it).

Not that he ever spoke to Cora more than the barest minimum. Regina did her best not to make him grow up in fear (as she had), but he was so intuitive, so clever, and Regina couldn't always hide the bruises and the tears fast enough to fool her kind little boy. On the worst nights, she'd retreat to her room, and when she came out in the morning (for Henry's sake, the real Henry who loved her and chose her and would never hurt her like her father had), she'd always find him sleeping in his little sleeping bag outside her door, little wooden sword near at hand (so ready and willing to be her champion).

Regina loved him more than she'd ever loved anything in her entire life.

So it was easy, in a way, to be brave and to sacrifice everything for his sake.

The first sacrifice, of course, had been her loyalty (what little there was left of it) to her mother, when she'd first dealt with the Spinner—no, with Mr. Gold, for her son.

The next had been her dignity, when she begged her mother, on her knees, for a place to live in the mayor's house. It was a prison that also stole the tiny hints of freedom the curse allowed her, but it gave Regina access to all the magical items she needed to pierce the veil between Storybrooke and the world outside—like the globe.

A drop of blood was hardly a sacrifice, but acknowledging that Henry wasn't truly her child (that there would always be someone out there who shared his blood and might so easily steal him away) was so painful the prick she made on Henry's finger felt like a gouge straight from her own heart.

But magic didn't work here, and that was where the hardest sacrifice was required of her.

Regina stood over the globe with her hands clenched into fists and tried to talk herself out of this insane theory of hers. What was she even basing it off of? A throwaway comment from Mr. Gold? He didn't even remember who he was (maybe, maybe, she still had to walk so carefully just in case he did). So what if he'd mentioned, when he put her son into her arms, that his mother was her salvation? It might not have meant anything.

Except Mr. Gold was also Rumplestiltskin, and Rumplestiltskin had been able to see the future, and there would have to be a reason for the Savior to come to town, and Mr. Gold had given in to her demand so easily (he'd asked of her only what she'd already committed to him in the old world), and Regina could still remember the look of that little wooden boy holding an infant in his arms and crying as if his heart had broken and all his terrors had come to life.

Henry would never look like that. Not if she had anything to say about it.

So, slowly, intently, Regina unbent her fingers and slipped the golden ring from off her knuckle.

The image of Daniel played within its looped frame. A green hill. A towering oak tree. A girl on a horse. A boy (he'd seemed so grown up, so noble, so strong, to her back then, but he'd been just a boy and she'd been a fool) standing to greet her. And the look on his face…

She'd clung to that look. That love. Some days (most days), it was all that kept her going. All that kept her trying even when it hurt.

But she had a different look, a different face, a different kind of love to cling to now. And she'd be cursed a thousand times over before she let Daniel's fate befall Henry.

Regina tried to memorize every slope, every ridge, of Daniel's face (tried to remember what it had felt like to still know hope and to be enfolded in that hope's arms), and she kissed the ring. A last kiss in place of the one Cora had never allowed her (a kiss of True Love, but those only worked for other, better people).

And then she slipped the ring onto the spindle topping the globe and watched its imbued magic fade and wither as the globe began to hum and shine with otherworldly light. Regina took the band-aid she'd saved from around Henry's finger and smeared the blood onto the smooth surface of the blank world.

Gradually, images began to form. A map. A dot. A location and an address and a path straight to the only person who could break the curse imprisoning her son in a lonely cell.

The only person who could so easily take Henry away from her, leaving Regina with nothing.

"Mama?"

Startling so badly that she pricked her own finger against the sharp edge of the globe, Regina pocketed the useless ring, snatched the band-aid off the coffee table in this unused sitting room where Cora kept the globe, and hurried out to greet Henry.

"Henry! How was school today?"

"Mama!" Henry ran to greet her, and though he didn't hug her (he was growing so fast), he took her hand and swung it between them. "You'll never guess what happened! Ms. Katharine said we were going to learn to read and when I said that you'd already taught me how, she said that I could come up front and be her helper and so I was!"

"You're so smart," Regina told him, cupping his face in the palm of her hand. "My clever little boy."

"Mama?" Henry's smile melted away into a pinched little frown. "You're bleeding! You need a band-aid. I can help you!"

Regina let Henry fuss over her, let him put the little dinosaur (at least it wasn't a dragon) band-aid on the little prick to her finger (the most minor little wound she'd ever received, but he cooed over her and kissed her finger to make it feel better), and knew that every sacrifice she made, everything she risked…it was all worth it.

Henry was worth everything she was and more besides.

Which meant when it came time to send off that first postcard, Regina didn't even hesitate.

"For Henry," she whispered, and winged her hope into the world outside.

---

-Storybrooke-

---

"I knew you could do it!" Henry says for the dozenth time since he woke to her kiss, stared in wonder, hugged her, got dressed, greeted all the people looking shell-shocked and staring at each other as if it were their first time. Emma, silent and shell-shocked herself, had mostly just drifted in Henry's wake until they'd encountered Mary Margaret and David outside the hospital.

(Snow White and Prince Charming. The fairytale couple come to life and standing just in front of her. Her parents.)

"When we find Mom, we have to tell her that Grandmother is safe." Henry frowns and stares up at Emma. "Where is Mom, anyway? I thought she'd be here by now."

"She…" Emma shakes herself and turns her back on the dispersing mob. Not the strangest thing she's dealt with here in Storybrooke, though she wishes she could believe that they were all leaving simply because the sheriff had told them to (wishes she hadn't seen the obvious respect on everyone's faces when Prince Charming and Snow White had stepped up beside her). "She had to go do something with Mr. Gold. But don't worry, Henry, she'll be back as fast as she can to make sure you're okay."

Henry's frown disappears, and he nods. "Right. If she left, it had to be something important for the curse. We'd better wait for her here, though. I don't want her to worry about me."

"Oh, Henry." Mary Margaret runs a hand through Henry's hair with a soft smile. "Of course she's worried about you. She's your mother."

Emma feels like she was just punched. Isn't Snow supposed to be her own mother? And even she seems to know that Emma couldn't possibly have raised her little boy. Even she thinks that Henry doesn't belong to Emma.

"So the curse is broken," Emma says abruptly. She fixes her eyes on David. He looks the same. Kind of. A bit. Okay, so he looks healthier in the sense that he looks healthy, and his eyes are clear of pain (well, physical pain, anyway) as he meets her gaze, and come to think of it, his eyes are very nearly the same color as the ones she sees in the mirror and…

And this is so weird.

"The curse is broken," he agrees. He takes the tiniest, slowest step in her direction, and if she were really the hero they all think she is, she wouldn't be bothered by it. She's no hero, though, and she flinches back. "Thanks to you, Emma."

A flash of anger sears away her uncertainty, and Emma draws herself up. "No. Let's not pretend any of this has anything to do with me. This was the plan all along, right? Everyone was in on it except me—I'm no Savior. I'm just a puppet who happened along at the right time."

"That's not true!" Mary Margaret protests so hotly that she looks completely divorced from the meek schoolteacher Emma somewhat knew. "Emma, the curse was coming one way or another. But you…you were the only thing that gave us hope. If it weren't for you, we would have had nothing to—"

"If I gave you so much hope, why did you send me away?" Emma demands. "I showed up here in the woods. At night. In winter. Don't act like you were trying to save me. You only wanted to save yourselves."

"Emma," David says, so softly, so reasonably, that Emma wants to lunge at him (to hit him or to hug him, she's not quite sure). "We had to send you here. For your sake. You were just a baby."

"I know," she grits, and points at Henry where he's pulled the book from his backpack. It looks right, there in his arms, half as big as him, clutched tight in spindly arms, lit by the belief shining from his eyes. "I read all about it. But if you hadn't sent me away…we could have been together."

"You would still be a baby," Snow White murmurs. "Time was stopped, and it only started moving again when you arrived in town. You'd have been trapped as a baby forever, Emma."

"And Cora didn't exactly let many families stay together," David adds as he looks down to Snow. To Mary Margaret. The teacher he loved from afar…who's really his wife.

"And you couldn't have saved us!" Henry interjects. "How could you be the Savior if you were trapped here with everyone else? How…how could I have been born?" His eyes widen, and Emma's anger sizzles and dies like a lightning flash vanished before the thunder can roll. "You didn't want me to be born?"

"Henry, no! No." Emma kneels before Henry and sets her hands over his, the book solid and unmoving beneath their combined hold. "I would never wish you away."

"You said you gave me away to give me my best chance," he says, so earnest that Emma can't tear her eyes from him. "If that's true, then how can you be mad at your parents for doing the same thing?"

Emma thinks of that first home she had, fuzzy memories of warmth and love (not enough, though; not enough to keep her there when their real baby came along). She thinks of the endless foster homes after that, the cold nights, the hungry mornings, the isolation at countless schools, the raised voices, the patronizing suspicion, the blows she dodged, the alleys she slept in after running away.

And she thinks of a couple on the run. Hunted, their lives in danger, their futures at stake. She thinks of a whole world enveloped in green smoke and swept away. She thinks of the picture in that book, of Snow White falling to the ground, wracked with sobs, and the tears trailing down Prince Charming's tortured face as the doors closed in an enchanted tree.

"We love you, Emma," Snow murmurs from just behind her. "We've always loved you. So much."

David says nothing, but his hand falls, lightly, carefully, on her shoulder, pale replica of the hug she'd given him on his doorstep, when she'd thought he might not make it through the night. Her head tingles with the memory of the soft kiss he dropped on her like a benediction (like a last farewell from the Sheriff Nolan who welcomed her to town and befriended her and taught her so patiently and believed in her enough to step aside for her).

Emma's eyes burn, but before she can break down (before she can collapse under the weight of so many conflicting emotions), she hears someone shouting.

"What now?" she asks, rising to her feet and pushing Henry behind her.

Luckily, it's not another mob (or another curse). It's just Leroy shouting at the top of his lungs and pelting toward them, a whole pack of men trailing behind him.

"Grumpy!" Snow exclaims. "Doc! Happy! Sneezy!"

Blinking, Emma backs away just in time to avoid being trampled by the seven men (dwarfs? They're not as short as she always imagined them) converging around Snow (and David, who doesn't budge from his wife's side) in a group hug as Snow finishes reciting the list of ridiculous monikers.

"It's so good to see you again, Snow!" Tom Clark exclaims, even though Emma's pretty sure she saw Mary Margaret shopping at his pharmacy the night before.

"But there's terrible news!" Leroy interrupts. "Tell them, Sleepy."

"I told you," one of them snaps, "my name is Walter. What kind of pills did you all take?"

"We went to the town line," Leroy says. "Sleepy stepped across and now he only has his cursed memories."

"He doesn't remember home!" Tom says, and then sneezes.

"He doesn't remember us," one of them in a bright purple hat adds, so sadly that a few of his friends (brothers?) slip their arms around him.

David and Mary Margaret exchange a look. Emma opens her mouth—

"Leroy, you have to go back and make a line across the border," Mary Margaret suddenly says. No, she commands. "You and your brothers need to form some kind of border patrol to keep people from leaving. We've just seen exactly how scared people are of Cora—we can't risk anyone trying to run and losing everything that makes them who they really are."

"Round up as many people as you think you need," David adds with a firm nod. "If you can find other dwarfs to help, that would be best. And get the nuns—I mean, the fairies—to set up a station—at the school?" he asks Snow, and at her nod, continues. "Yes, a station to hand out necessities to anyone who's been displaced. We'll need to start a list of real names and addresses for anyone who's looking for their families."

"And we'll talk to those who need reassurance." Snow smiles as she looks back at Emma. "Nobody needs to worry. Our daughter already has the Heartless Queen in custody, and we'll figure out a way to get home again."

"Whoa, okay, stop right there!" Emma backs up. Her hackles are up, and she's so furious she almost can't register the hurt she feels inside. "I'm not going anywhere. Henry's here, and…and this is my world."

"But it's not," Snow says, so gently Emma bristles in immediate response. "Emma, you're a princess of the Enchanted Forest."

"None of that sentence makes any sense!" she exclaims. "This isn't who I am! I'm nobody's savior, and I'm sure not a hero, and there is no world in which I'm a princess!"

"Emma," David starts, and then suddenly stops. His face goes white and he sways in place.

"Charming!" Snow exclaims (she really does call him that, Emma thinks in some distant corner of her mind). "What is it?"

"I'm just…" He leans heavily on Snow. "I just got dizzy all of a sudden."

"You need to let Dr. Whale check you out," Snow says firmly.

"Snow, I told you, I'm—"

"You're not fine!" she cries. "Whatever Cora cursed you with doesn't seem to be wearing off. What if you're still sick? What if—"

"You kissed me," David says stubbornly. "I'm not sick anymore."

But he sways in place, and Emma doesn't feel like a sheriff anymore. She feels like a little girl facing the dissolution of yet another home.

Emma steps forward and takes one of David's hands. He goes completely still. "Please," she says.

And David's resistance melts away. She sees it shrink and fade, watches all his stubbornness leak right out of him as he nods resignedly and follows them into the hospital. Emma notes the way his shoulders tighten once he's inside, but she doesn't let that stop her from hunting the halls for Dr. Whale.

Which isn't hard. He's standing just inside the lobby, staring out the glass doors, his hand shielding his eyes as if from a bright light.

"Dr. Whale," Snow calls, "we need you to test David. We want to know if there's any trace left of his cancer or if it was all part of the curse."

Whale doesn't respond. He just keeps staring, nearly catatonic.

"Hey!" Emma snaps, and grabs his arm to swivel him toward them. "We have a possibly sick man here, Whale, and we need you—"

"My name isn't Whale," he says hotly. He pulls his arm from Emma's grasp and steps backward. "And I'm not actually a doctor from here, remember?"

"Please," Snow says plaintively. "We need you."

Whale's eyes are shuttered as he begins to turn away.

Emma grabs him again. "You're the closest thing to a doctor this town has, and there's going to be people who need you! So you have to get over whatever's eating at you and help."

"You're not my princess," he says coldly. "I'm not from the same world as the rest of you. You have no authority over me."

"Maybe not," Emma says. "But I'm still sheriff, and we're still living in this world."

"Dr. Whale…" David breaks off with a cough, and something shifts in Whale's eyes.

He straightens and turns his full attention onto Emma. "Fine. I'll run your tests—if you answer one question."

"Shoot."

"Why are you protecting Cora?"

Emma glances to where he was staring (the steps where she faced down a mob and it wasn't enough until her parents, two people she doesn't know, backed her up; where her son named her a Savior to a town full of frightened people looking for someone to blame as much as to save them).

"They were going to tear her to pieces. I had to do something—"

"Why? You have no idea what atrocities that heartless—"

"Careful," Emma warns with one hand over Henry's ear (his hair is soft, his neck so fragile, his pulse beating steady and sure; alive, when just hours before he was dead).

"That monster," Whale says testily, "has nothing good or redeeming left inside her. You want to know how I met her? The Spinner brought me to the Enchanted Forest through a magical hat and Cora met me to ask if it was possible to tear someone's heart out of their chest, give them another heart—stolen from an innocent—and then crush the original. For her, that was a regular conversation, and she had the vault full of stolen hearts to prove it. Hundreds of hearts she used to manipulate people like puppets, kept locked up like trinkets. And even after I told her it wasn't possible, you want to know what she did? She shrugged and said it had been worth a try, but she couldn't change her plans just to save one man. That's the woman whose life you just saved."

There are so many things wrong with what he just said that Emma can't even parse through it for anything useful. All she gets from it is that Whale has a serious grudge, their world was messed up, and Emma doesn't want to go anywhere near a Cora with magic.

"We're not murderers," Emma says. "Do you really want to stoop to her level?"

"She made it impossible for me to save my brother," Whale hisses. "I became a monster just to save him, and she ruined my last chance to bring him back. You think I really care what I have to become to make sure she pays for her crimes?"

"I think you need to back up," David says, and he's suddenly there, pressed against Emma's shoulder, tall and looming and so overprotective that Emma's torn between feeling smothered or comforted. "Cora will pay for her crimes, Whale, okay? But not at the hands of a mob and not before receiving a fair trial. I don't know about your world, but at least in ours, that was still the norm."

"Fine," Whale says after a moment. "If you promise that she will get what's coming to her."

"She will," David says. He sounds so confident, so absolutely unshakable, that Emma doesn't blame Whale for relaxing.

"Let's get to those tests, then."

"I'll come with you," Mary Margaret says. She reaches for David's hand, and he lets her take it, but only to squeeze it once before letting go.

"No, it's okay. You stay with our—with Emma. I'll do this alone." He shrugs, his eyes hooded. "I'm used to it."

Whale and David disappear behind a door, and Emma finds herself standing with her son on one side and her mother on the other.

"He never would have said that before," Mary Margaret says in a small voice. "We faced everything together."

Emma looks down at Henry, half-hoping the kid will field this one for her. But he's prying open the storybook and flipping through the pages with an intent air that doesn't fool her for a second (she recognizes a cornering tactic when she feels it closing in on her).

The kid always has seemed to think manipulation tactics are fair and square when it comes to family.

"Yeah, well," she begins, awkwardly. "Things are different now, I guess. It has been a long time."

"But it doesn't feel like it." Mary Margaret faces Emma. "We lived the same day over and over again until you first set foot in Storybrooke. I know…I know you're twenty-eight now, but to us, it's only felt like…like a few months."

"Well, trust me, I've lived a whole life here and it feels like it."

Though she's faced away, Emma can see Snow out of the corner of her eye. She notices the slight pause Snow makes (she imagines it's a quiet voice counseling her to patience), and knows the second Snow shakes her head impatiently and steps toward Emma anyway.

"I'm sorry we couldn't be there for you, Emma."

Emma doesn't look at her (she can't).

"You know, when I first found out I was pregnant…I was so scared. My mother was…" Snow takes a deep breath (Emma almost feels it reverberate inside her own ribcage). "She was amazing. And so good. So kind. But I lost her far too early. And when I realized that I would be a mother…I was so afraid I'd never be able to live up to her ideal. But then…one night, you moved. I could feel it, inside me, and that's when I knew you were mine. I loved you so much in that instant that I swore that I would never let anything bad happen to you. I mean, Charming and I were on the run, our kingdoms turned against us, the Heartless Queen out for our blood…but I knew, I knew, that I would do anything for you. And I did."

There's a whisper of movement behind her, the warmth of Snow's body a hair's breadth from her own.

"I gave you up. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. It nearly killed me, to let them take you away, only moments after I got to see you for the first time, and send you to another world. But I did it, because I had to believe that I was giving you your best chance. And because I knew, one way or another, you'd find us. Or we'd find you. And we'd be a family again."

The tears sting in her eyes, shrink her throat, make her hands shake in their useless fists.

"But you still gave me up," she chokes out. "You held me, and you looked at me…and you could still let me go."

She hadn't been able to do the same. They'd offered. They'd asked her once, again, again, if she wanted to hold her little boy. If she wanted to look at him and see just how perfect she already knew, instinctively, that he was. But Emma had never agreed. Never given in. Because she'd known: if she'd looked at that little baby (at all the best parts of herself and of Neal mixed together), if she'd held his warmth close to her heart (if she'd remembered, then, what Tallahassee felt like, what the promise of family and togetherness could offer her), she would never have been able to let him go.

But Snow White had. And Emma can't decide if that makes her more cold-hearted…or stronger than Emma could ever be (a mother's ideal she'll never be able to live up to).

"Emma…"

It's the helplessness in Snow's voice that would have broken Emma if given another moment.

It's Archie's arrival that saves her.

"I'm sorry to just burst in like this," he says as Pongo barks and rushes to Henry's side, who greets him enthusiastically.

"Have you heard from Mom?" Henry asks, making Emma's heart clench tight in her chest.

"No, I'm sorry, Henry, I haven't." Archie looks up to Emma with a crease in his brows. "In fact, I thought she'd be here with you. It's one of the reasons I came." He smiles as Henry hugs Pongo around the neck in an effort to hide his own worry. "I knew this moment might be difficult for you all."

"What's difficult about it?" Emma asks sarcastically. "Just another normal day in Storybrooke, right?"

Archie waits for Pongo to claim Henry's attention again (or at least, for Henry to pretend he's distracted; Emma's long since learned how good the kid is at eavesdropping) before he steers Emma and Mary Margaret to one side. "Regina has always held a fear that Henry will be taken from her. And I think we know, Snow, just how easy it might be for Regina's conscience to be outweighed by that fear—and where she would then go."

"Excuse me," Emma says. She won't be pushed aside like she was before, not when she's still responsible for this town (not when Henry's future—and hers with him—is at stake). "Who exactly are you? In…that other place?"

With a slight smile, Archie shakes his umbrella. "I'm Jiminy Cricket. A bit taller here."

"Oh, Archie, what are we going to do?" Snow blurts. "Emma is Henry's mother, but Regina…we can't let her lose him."

"This will have to be handled carefully." Archie glances around. "Where is Regina?"

"Nobody knows where Mom is?"

Emma whirls to find Henry standing alone in the middle of the lobby, scared and young and…not hers. (He'll never be hers. She gave him up. She let him go. She had her reasons, but in the end, she walked away, and now he'll always belong to someone else.

Even this tiny piece of Tallahassee, the only bit Neal left her, is denied her.)

"I'm sure she'll turn up." Snow takes a deep breath. "But maybe I should try calling her."

"She doesn't have a cellphone," Henry says.

"I'll call the house."

"While she does that," Archie meets Emma's eyes, "I was hoping you could tell me where Pinocchio is."

"What's going on?" David walks up to join them, sliding his jacket back on, his face neutral. Whale is nowhere in sight, but Emma doesn't miss him.

"You done?" she asks.

"Yes," he says shortly. "We'll just have to wait on the results."

"Pinocchio is the man who arrived in town with you, isn't he?" Archie asks. "August? I didn't want to mention it to Marco just in case, but I thought… Where is he?"

David smiles. "Pinocchio. Of course. I need to thank him."

"Thank him for what?" Emma asks bitterly. "For lying to me my entire life? For tricking me here? For making himself scarce when the fallout hits?"

"For protecting you," David says, so simply, so unabashedly, that Emma's struck speechless. "We gave a little boy an impossible task, but he stayed with you. He made sure you made it back home to your family."

"Geppetto's worried sick about him," Archie says. "In fact, he's already making up fliers to post around town. Quite a lot of people are, actually. No one's sure where all their loved ones ended up here in Storybrooke, and our dual sets of memories aren't helping anything."

"Geppetto," Emma says faintly. Of course. Marco. The Italian accent. The carpenter shop. The way August never complained about being stuck here in town once he got a job helping out there. I think he might be my father, he told her, bars standing between them. He'd been so scared and she'd thought it was because he was facing trial for murder, but maybe it was only because he knew exactly how close (exactly how far) he was from his father.

It's going to be all right, he told her, because we're here. We're together. And that's enough. We're not alone; we're family. The rest will see to itself.

The bastard. He'd known all along just what he was saying. Just what she was facing. He'd known. He'd been waiting for her to become the Savior she could never be. He'd been depending on her (and she'd let him down, over and over and over again). He'd never done anything but lie to her (just like Neal).

"I'll try to get a hold of him," she says shortly, and walks away as she dials August's phone.

How many times has she called him? Not nearly as many times as he's called her—keeping tabs on her. They've spoken more through phone calls than they ever have face to face. But she still remembers the last time (when he hung up on her).

As many times as she's called him, August has never failed to pick up. Not on a call from her. Her voice is usually dipped in either irony or sarcasm when she calls him her guardian angel, but there's always been an underlying note of truth there. Whenever she's needed him (whenever she's been the most alone, the most afraid), August has always answered.

The phone rings. And rings. And rings.

He doesn't answer.

"Anything?" David asks when she walks back to them.

"Nothing." She swallows hard and tries not to look as worried as she feels. "I can't get a hold of him. And this isn't the first time I've tried."

"Where is he?" Archie asks.

"He's…out of town."

"Because I sent him."

Everyone jumps and whirls to face the newcomer, though Emma knows who he is immediately.

"Mr. Gold," she says.

That's not the name everyone else uses.

"The Spinner," Snow gasps.

"Rumplestiltskin," David says.

Mr. Gold gives the imitation of a bow. "All one and the same."

There's something different about him. He's as well put together as always, though the handkerchief he usually has poking out from his breast pocket is missing. He still has the cane and the air of competence that repels anyone from possibly getting too close.

But still…something's changed. Maybe it's the dark look in his eyes. Maybe it's the way he bares his teeth like a feral animal. Maybe it's just the way he walks, a smooth prowl that would be more fitting on a tiger than a pawnbroker.

The Spinner. All those stories inside that book—and he's at the center of them all, a dark, shadowy figure pulling strings and coercing favors, always ten steps ahead.

And he sent August away.

"Everything you said," David says, "it's all happened."

"Not surprising when one can see the future," Gold says, which is just…no. Emma's not going near that one with a ten foot pole..

In contrast to Archie, Henry, and even Snow, David doesn't look afraid at all. He actually steps forward, nearly encroaching on the invisible boundary that keeps Gold separate from the rest of them.

"Emma didn't have to fight the Wicked Queen?" He looks so grateful that Emma feels uncomfortable for him. "All those times you promised me she'd be okay, I could never really believe because I thought the Final Battle would be between her and Cora. But all she had to do was kiss Henry?"

"A kiss born of True Love, bestowed by the product of True Love itself." Gold shrugs. "Come now, Shepherd-King, you must know how it works."

"But why are we still here?" Snow asks. She steps forward and slips her arm around David's waist. Emma blinks at how natural the move looks (at how envious she is of their starkly obvious bond).

"All magic comes with a price, and all curses come with consequences." Gold narrows his eyes. "You don't need to be the Dark One to know that."

"You actually call yourself the Dark One?" Emma asks incredulously. Every time she feels as if she might reclaim a bit of her balance, something else happens to throw her off, and this…this just feels like too much.

(She wonders: is it better to be called the Dark One than the Savior? Or do they both come with equal drawbacks?)

"It's complicated," Gold says. The darkness in his eyes grows, a shadow stretching outward to Emma so that she shivers and fights the urge to step back. "But the truth, Sheriff Swan, is that I'm here in search of you. You remember that favor you owe me? I've come to collect."

---

They object. They confer. They prattle. Useless, all of them. Rumplestiltskin stands near the exit door, their hushed arguments and scanty reassurances and clumsy plans a murmur he doesn't bother to pay heed to. Instead, he stares out toward town. Toward the clocktower, lost to distance, and the dagger he didn't dare touch.

(To touch it is to give into temptation. To give into temptation is to lose himself entirely to the name etched on that blade. To do that…is to risk everything he's fought so hard to reclaim.)

The hands on that clocktower are still moving, though, even if he can't see them, still ticking, marking the seconds, the minutes, the hours that Belle once more suffers for his sake.

And the so called 'heroes' can do nothing but talk.

Still, he lets them. If they get it all out of their systems now, they'll be more likely to follow along in his wake when he tells them his plan.

"Okay, Gold, we're ready."

Finally.

Rumplestiltskin turns to see Emma and the prince headed his way. Behind them, Snow wraps her arm around Henry, both of them wearing matching expressions of mutinous discontentment.

"David and I will help you track down Belle. If Cora's really taken her."

"You gave her into George's custody," Rumplestiltskin says. "He's always been practically her lackey. Whatever you think, Cora never set one foot in your jail cell."

"We'll have to stop by there anyway," David says, stepping between Rumplestiltskin and his daughter (the child he lost, so easily returned to him, in reach, his again). "I'm not going to risk running into the Wicked Queen without a weapon."

Rumplestiltskin doesn't protest. The truth is, without magic, guns might very well be their only chance. He's carrying one himself, after all, a heavy weight in his coat pocket to counterbalance the lighter weight in his opposite pocket (the potion burns like fire against his hip, insurance lest the heroes fail).

Their stop at the police station is quick. Cora's not there (Rumplestiltskin rolls his eyes at Emma's surprise), David arms himself and wastes a minute dithering over the deputy badge before Emma murmurs something to him and he nods and clips it to his belt (Rumplestiltskin denies feeling any stab of envy to see father and child already reconciled), and then they're out the door and piled into Emma's ridiculous vehicle.

"So, where did Cora say she was keeping Belle?"

"I haven't spoken with her."

"Then how do you know she's the one who has Belle?"

Rumplestiltskin sighs (he was patient for centuries, but Emma has him running on fumes after only moments). "Because Cora always goes for what she sees as weakness—and there is no greater weakness in her eyes than the person you love. Besides, she locked Belle up for three decades just for knowing me. What do you think she'll do to her to control me?"

"You…love…Belle?" The sheriff sounds so disbelieving that Rumplestiltskin is glad he didn't go for the dagger (that the potion is in his pocket and not tumbling down a certain well). He might yet need the Savior. No need to kill her just yet.

"It will take us only two short stops to find out exactly where Belle is being held," he says tightly.

"Wait a second." Fortunately (for her sake), Emma doesn't actually pause in starting the vehicle and heading them in the direction he points. "Belle? As in…Beauty and the Beast?"

"Emma," David says quietly, a quelling tone in his voice, and Emma stops her questions, though not without muttering a few things under her breath that Rumplestiltskin decides not to hear. "Where are we headed, Rumplestiltskin?"

A thrill of power zings through Rumplestiltskin's bloodstream, as uncomfortable as it is welcome. He can't help wondering what it means, that even without magic, the utterance of his name still builds like lightning in his soul.

"There." Rumplestiltskin points to an unassuming house ahead, where a young girl argues in the yard with a confused looking couple.

Emma parks the car. "Who are they?"

"I only need the girl." Before Emma can protest, Rumplestiltskin steps out of the car. "Grace!" he calls.

The makeshift family falls silent, the girl's face open in surprise. Rumplestiltskin caught only glimpses of her in their old world; her father was always adept at hiding her away, keeping her from the attention of his many dangerous employers. Still, he recognizes the hints of Jefferson in her (can smell the tang of portal magic that clings to her skin).

"You know my real name!" she says excitedly as she darts toward him.

"Gold!" Emma snaps from over the car. "Don't you dare—"

"Of course I do. Your father sent me to collect you. I'm his attorney, remember?"

"Mr. Gold!" Grace smiles so wide that Emma's protests die, and she launches herself into his arms. "You'll take me to my father? Please, I remember—he didn't hurt me! He never hurt me! I always knew—"

"Of course he didn't." Rumplestiltskin smiles through his pain and ushers her to the car with a wave of his cane to the parents the curse bestowed on her. "Your father loves you more than anything. All he's ever wanted is your happiness."

All I want is your happiness, Bae, you must know that.

Rumplestiltskin shoves away the memory (the image of Bae he doesn't deserve without the shawl still hung around his neck; with the dagger and all that comes with it seeming more and more tempting every passing moment). Grace clambers into the back seat, Emma studies him with narrowed eyes and pinched expression (she looks so much like Snow in that moment that he nearly laughs), and they wait for David to finish reassuring Paige's curse-parents.

Finally, though, they're headed for the woods.

"Jefferson sees everything in this town," he explains shortly. "He's the one who told me about Belle last time. And there's no one he hates more than Cora." Except perhaps her husband, long dead and left forgotten save an over-compensatory grave in the cemetery to mark Cora's magicless vault. "Jefferson won't have taken his eyes off her, which means he'll know exactly where Belle is."

Belle, who's probably scared. Alone. Hating Rumplestiltskin more than ever. Wishing they'd never met. Wishing herself less brave, less clever, less kind so that their fates would never have interwoven.

Belle, who has no idea he's coming for her this time (how could she know, how could she suspect, when the last time, he never even thought to try to find her?).

"I had no idea this was even here," Emma says when she parks the car in front of Jefferson's manor.

"It's just trappings to disguise how alone Cora left him," Rumplestiltskin says. He wraps an arm around Grace's shoulders in reassurance (it's always best, when heading into an uncertain situation, to keep contingencies close) and guides her up the imposing steps. Before he can lift the knocker, the door is snatched open.

The Hatter stares at him, eyes wild, hair askew, mouth twisted in an ugly grimace.

"I did what you wanted!" he snarled. "I did it and for what? The curse is broken and still I can't remember what's what! I can't keep it all straight, it's all jumbled, and Grace—Paige—she—"

"Papa!"

Jefferson goes as still as if he's a marionette with his strings cut. His daughter pulls away from Rumplestiltskin (another child slipping from his grip) and throws herself at Jefferson.

"Daddy, I'm sorry! I know you'd never hurt me! I miss you!"

"Grace," Jefferson breathes out, and for the first time in decades, there is a whisper of peace threaded through his voice. For the first time since Wonderland, the tension in his face eases, the pain in his muscles unknots, and everything he's worked for is redeemed.

Rumplestiltskin hates him.

That should be him. The curse, everything that led to it and followed it, all the sacrifices and the compromises he's made, the risks he's dared…all of it so he can live this moment with his own son.

But behind him, the shepherd prince stands beside his daughter, led back to his side by magic. Before him, the Hatter embraces his daughter, run back to him of her own free will.

And Rumplestiltskin stands alone.

(Bae, Bae, where is his little boy? Does he know Rumplestiltskin is coming? Will he ever forgive his papa for how long it's taking him?)

"Our deal is fulfilled," Rumplestiltskin says, and if there's an extra bite to his voice, well, who can blame him? "Which means I hope you'll be amenable to another favor."

"No." Jefferson's voice is hard. Cold. So implacable Rumplestiltskin imagines anyone else might smash themselves into a thousand pieces against his will. "I'm never helping any of you again. I have my daughter back. That's all I want. Now leave us alone."

Rumplestiltskin catches the door he tries to slam, fury like a stone in his chest. "I don't think so. You see, Belle's life is at stake here, and that means nothing's going to stop me from getting what I want."

"Hey, that's enough." Emma's suddenly there, interposing herself between Rumplestiltskin and Jefferson, golden and brilliant and so ready to save (anyone and everyone but him and his).

"Rumplestiltskin," David says, and he clasps a hand over Rumplestiltskin's shoulder. The sound of his name, the thrum of power (the willing, voluntary touch), stops Rumplestiltskin long enough for Emma to turn her earnest eyes to the Hatter.

"Please," she says. "We don't want to disturb you. I can tell you just want time with your daughter, and I completely understand that."

"I won't help any more magic-users," Jefferson states. He's still wrapped around Grace, her feet hanging against his calves, both of them still as statues (Father & Child Reunited, a masterpiece carved for the wrong people). "It never comes to anything good."

"I'm not asking you to help Gold," Emma says. "I'm asking you to help a young woman who's been captured against her will. I don't…I don't think she has a father to step in and save her. She's alone. All we want to know is where she is so we can save her."

Charming's earnest empathy mixed with Snow's gentle manipulation and alloyed with Emma's own stalwart strength—a potent combination. Rumplestiltskin tilts his head and watches it work on Jefferson. Watches the Hatter's madness ease and settle, until he finally gives a short nod.

"I'll let you in to show you where they've taken her." Jefferson scowls at Rumplestiltskin. "But only the Savior. No one else."

Rumplestiltskin scoffs and turns aside. So what? Yes, the Hatter used to be friendly with him. There was a time they laughed together (when Zoso was off doing his own thing; when Rumplestiltskin remembered what it was to not always be alone with only Darkness for company). A time Jefferson trusted him. And sure, Rumplestiltskin just singlehandedly delivered him the daughter he's yearned for. But the Spinner is used to being shut out. Scorned and tossed aside when the deals are fulfilled.

And it doesn't matter. None of the people who turn their backs on him, who look down on him (who'd have him scrabbling in the dirt and kissing boots if his power were to ever be lost), are Baelfire, so what does Rumplestiltskin care? His son is all that matters, the only one who's ever loved him unconditionally.

Well, almost the only one.

No matter how conditional her love might have been, there is one blue-eyed princess who loved him too. Even if just for a few weeks, a few days, a few hours, Belle loved him (him, the weak spinner hiding behind the miasma of darkness he controlled).

And now she could be bleeding out. She could be standing motionless, numb, her heart held, red and glowing, in Cora's hand. (No, no, of course not, not here, not as long as that potion burning through his coat stays where it is. Not as long as he remains weak and powerless and vulnerable.)

"It'll be okay," David says from behind him. "We'll find her. Don't worry."

"You and Snow White might be fine with endlessly losing and finding each other ad nauseum, but that's not quite the fate I had in mind for Belle and myself," he says testily.

As always, the stupid shepherd acts as if Rumplestiltskin didn't just snap at him and steps even closer.

"I know you're scared, Rumplestiltskin. I would be too if Snow were missing. But Emma's good at finding people. And I know just how much I owe you."

"Any deals we made were concluded at the end of our old world."

David smiles (so soft, so kind, exactly the sort of person Rumplestiltskin most despises…and exactly who he can't hate). "You helped us save Emma. And you made sure she would come back to us. I'll never stop owing you."

"A dangerous thing to tell me." Rumplestiltskin gives him the suggestion of a smile, cruel and cold. "I always collect, you know."

"Who is she? The woman you love. Who is she?"

The façade falls away. Rumplestiltskin's hand clenches painfully tight on his cane, and he looks away in a desperate bid to keep his composure.

I am devoted to you. Everything that's come between them since she spoke those words, her eyes so bright and sincere, and still they ring like a bell in his mind, a clarion call toward something he never thought could be his (and she can't, she can't, she never will be).

I chose to come here, his little mouse said, so bold to venture where none else would dare.

And he promised. He promised he'd save her from any traps that sought to catch her.

He lied. Another promise he's broken. Another loved one he's failed to save.

Always too little, too late, too ineffectual, and they both (Belle, Baelfire) deserve better than him.

(But he's all they have.)

"Belle," he breathes. "She's…light. Light I almost forgot actually existed. Light so bright it burns me but still…" He takes a deep breath, stands up straighter, carefully does not look at David. "She doesn't deserve this. Any of it. Whatever you think of me, Belle is good."

"I believe you. And you don't deserve this either."

Rumplestiltskin catches his breath, and he can't help himself: he stares at the prince. Blind faith stares back. Almost as brilliant, almost as impossible, as Belle.

"I know where she is, and it's bad," Emma says as she bursts through the front door. She pauses and looks between Rumplestiltskin and her father. "Everything okay here?"

"Fine," David says. "Does Cora have her?"

"Yes." Emma darts a conciliatory look Rumplestiltskin's way. "She's not alone either."

"Pirates search forever for lost treasure," Jefferson sing-songs from the doorway where he's still clinging to Grace, who's at least standing on her own now. "Where's his hand, tick-tock?"

"Long gone and good riddance," Rumplestiltskin snarls. "I already knew Jones was free. He trashed my shop and—"

The absence of Bae's shawl grates like a cheese-shredder over skin, but this is no time to go into it. The heroes won't care to help him in any quest of his own; they only move themselves for victims.

"A little warning would have been nice," Emma says dryly.

"A little more effective prison for the pirate would have been even better," he retorts. "Anyone else with her?"

"Her shadow," Jefferson hisses. Emma and David exchange a look, but Rumplestiltskin nearly smiles. Finally a piece of good news. If Regina's there, he already has an ace ready to play.

"And where is she?" he asks impatiently.

Jefferson closes his mouth defiantly.

Emma rolls her eyes. "She's at the town line."

"Oh," David says.

Well, this is new. And to think, once he complained about the staleness of his routines, the boredom of always knowing more than everyone else. Turns out that he definitely prefers it to being the one in the dark.

"Oh, what?" he asks. "What's so important about the town line?"

Besides the fact that it's kept him imprisoned here ever since they arrived. Besides the existence of the bag he keeps packed under his bed (before Jones ripped it to shreds and smashed everything within) filled with tracking spells and searching potions and reclaiming tokens, ready for his trip out into the world that swallowed up his son. Besides the idea that Cora might be running with Belle (imprisoned and punished, forever and always, simply for being important to him) dragged unwillingly in her wake.

Emma and David exchange another look. Whatever the reason, it's the prince who steps closer and says, "The dwarfs discovered that anyone who crosses the town line reverts to their cursed persona."

"Which means that you and David will be impaired when we confront Cora. If she knows about this, she'll have the bargaining power, and we won't be able to get close to her."

"You can, Emma. You have no cursed memories to revert to."

"But she has to know that. Won't she be expecting something to do with that?"

Words. Just words. Meaningless. A waste of breath and sound. Nothing in comparison to the breeze that whispers through the trees, the ghost of a laugh from beyond the veil.

You'll never outsmart me, little spinner, Zoso whispers. Rumplestiltskin can feel him, just over his shoulder, leaning in, looming, shadowed by his cowl, darkness oozing out of him in all directions. And the dagger, so heavy in his belt. A constant hum of temptation he never could escape (unless Bae was there, holding onto him, anchoring him as Papa, the only thing he ever wanted to be). And the curse, written out and sealed in blood, black ink covered in red annotations while behind him, Zoso laughed and laughed and laughed.

A loophole. A trap. A knife in the back with Zoso's fingerprints all over it.

Rage films Rumplestiltskin's vision. Betrayal is hardly an unfamiliar sensation, but it hurts just as bad every time. How many times will Zoso trip him up?

(How many times has Rumplestiltskin played the fool for the Dark One?)

That potion burns so hotly that Rumplestiltskin half-expects there to be the image of the curved bottle branded against his hipbone. He calculates exactly how long it would take him to reach the well from here—hardly any time at all if he steals Emma's vehicle.

"Strange," Jefferson muses from behind them all. "So strange. The hollow shell, the parts we all play—routines and ruts and holes under the hospital. Graves left sterile and stowed away for a rainy day. Usually, she goes in search of the hearts she collects. Why so far? Why so distant? Instead of ensuring her trinkets, she spins out of orbit."

Something in that mess of madness catches Rumplestiltskin's attention. So Cora has a secret hiding place aside from her vault? Interesting. That she hides it away from the cemetery implies she wants whatever it is kept from Regina—related by blood and thus able to enter by way of blood magic.

It's easier to latch onto knowledge (even potentially useless knowledge) than to spiral further into his own type of madness at the thought that Bae is still outside his reach.

(He's still a prisoner, still trapped, locked away, forever and always separated from his precious boy. Will the nightmare never end?)

Rumplestiltskin puts his hand into his coat pocket and weighs the gun in his hand. It's heavier than it looks, messier than he's used to, less of a surety than Belle needs. The True Love potion tucked in his other pocket is too dangerous (it will help Cora as much or more than him: her child already knows she's a monster; he hopes his child will never know what he's become).

In the end, he draws out his cellphone and dials a number he wishes he didn't need.

"Ah, Rumplestiltskin," Cora says from the other end, and Rumplestiltskin wishes he had magic simply so he could boil her from the inside out, carve out the hollowness inside her and feed it to her in her dying breaths. "I was wondering when I'd be getting your call. You're getting slow in your old age."

"And you're getting stupider in yours." Rumplestiltskin takes a deep breath. Another. One more, to screw up the fortitude necessary to release his next words. "What do you want?"

"You know what I want."

"Magic." He closes his eyes. David and Emma have fallen silent. The front door of Jefferson's manor is shut, the Hatter locking himself and his daughter away from even the sound of Cora's voice. "You want me to bring magic back."

"I think it's a fair deal. Magic in exchange for your favorite little toy."

"She's not a toy," he grates. "And what kind of assurances do I get for my safety once you've reclaimed the use of your magic?"

"Why, Rumple," she laughs, a sound he once thought so enchanting, but now sounds like poison, "don't tell me you're afraid of me. I thought you said I would never be able to equal you."

"And you won't. In fact, if you harm one hair on Belle's head, you won't even be alive. You know I can do it. Don't forget the last deal we made."

Cora's voice is cold, her humor vanished. "Which brings me to the next point of this negotiation. Tell me where my heart is."

"You mean it's not in your chest where it belongs?" he asks with faux astonishment.

"Don't play games with me, Rumple."

A broken cry echoes through the phone and every muscle in Rumplestiltskin's body goes taut.

"Belle!"

"This isn't tit for tat anymore, darling Rumple. I'm done being your little pupil. If you ever want to see your little maid again, you'd better bring me my heart, your dagger, and magic. If you don't, your precious Belle dies in pain, screaming, knowing you never loved her at all."

"Cora, if you—"

The dial tone rings against his ear like a death-knell.

True Love blazes in his pocket as Rumplestiltskin slowly, carefully closes his phone (he'll need it again in just a few moments). He looks up at David.

Cora hurt Belle. She's keeping him from his son. She hurt Belle (his little mouse; his valiant princess).

"New plan," he says calmly. "We need to make a quick stop at the library."

---

The town line glows bright orange, a noxious boundary that makes Cora want to laugh. How typical. How quaint. All these drab heroes and their spineless allies, marking anything even slightly different as undesirable and doing everything they can to keep the innocent well clear of it. Well, Cora has been crossing lines and ignoring boundaries for nearly her entire life (others break before her name while she remains uncowed); this one is as meaningless to her as any of the others. She has no true cursed persona, no false memories to take the place of her own—no reason not to step foot over this line and find herself completely safe from pursuit on the other side (and this is hardly her first time out here; somewhere close, though she's forgotten where exactly, there's a piece of ground fed by the bones of the father and son unlucky enough to be here when Storybrooke emerged into existence).

What makes this line better than all the rest, however, is how terrified Rumplestiltskin will be of it. He would rather die than risk forgetting his son, not to mention losing track of all the contingencies he's doubtless squirreled away for a rainy day. Risks have never been his forte, not unless he's planned for them centuries in advance (or been driven to them by heartbreak, the ridiculous man; he'd be so much smarter, so much harder to beat, if he didn't let his heart always get in the way).

Darkness grows around them. Cora watches the gradient of shadows rise up the trees, coat the frosted leaves, and finally stretch to envelop her where she stands with Rumplestiltskin's plaything slumped at her feet. No magic is imbued within the nightfall, but Cora chooses to see the progression as prophetic anyway. Soon, she will be restored to her true self. Soon, she will no longer be dependent on the gun in Hook's hand, the ropes bound around Rumplestiltskin's little girl, or even the hesitant presence of her spineless daughter.

She thought, all those years ago, that casting the Dark Curse would win her all the power she's always craved. An entire world held in thrall to her, whole realms merged into her kingdom, thousands of souls rewritten according to her will (Rumplestiltskin her witless puppet).

But no magic.

Turns out, Cora didn't fully take into account just how much that void would chafe.

"Straighten up, Regina," she snaps as her daughter bends to clean the blood from Belle's cheek where Cora had cut a line to send a poignant message to Rumplestiltskin. "I'll never understand your squeamishness. Weakness gets you nowhere."

Her daughter huffs before shrinking under Cora's stern glare (she never listens). "I just… You're risking an awful lot on Gold being willing to do anything for Belle." Her voice is faint, her eyes downcast, her hands wringing together. So far from the picture of a confident ruler that Cora's tempted (not for the first time) to give up even trying. For all her (many) complaints about that lily-white daughter of Eva's, at least Snow White has a spine. She's never lacked for audacity and always carries an air of command about her.

Nothing at all like Regina.

"Use your head, Regina," Cora says impatiently. "He's already risked his life for her. For someone as concerned with self-preservation as Gold, that's a big deal."

Regina looks away. She's so small. So much less than she should be. For this, Cora had set aside contingencies of her own? For this small shadow she almost can't believe came from her (Regina is all echoes, dying embers, where Cora is a spark, a wildfire, a force to be reckoned with), she traveled worlds and switched out hearts and crushed beneath her heel the only heart she ever really cared about besides her own?

If she didn't like giving up, Cora would think it a waste. Regina wasn't even coming to help her own mother, after all. She was dragged along in the pirate's wake, and only accompanied them to the town line under duress (as if being on the winning side doesn't matter to her; she's always undervalued the things that counted most: like being queen, like not saddling herself with a child, like allowing herself to be taken in by Rumplestiltskin's promises).

"Thank you." The tiny voice comes from the only person here weaker than her daughter.

Cora narrows her eyes at the girl slumped only inches from the town line. Belle's blue eyes stare up at Regina, her lips curved in a friendly smile. Cora nearly laughs.

"What a pretty picture this makes," she says. She tilts her head and looks between Belle and Regina. "Shouldn't you thank her for what else she's done for you? It's my daughter who took news of your tragic death to that imp of yours. Her own idea—perhaps the only good one she's ever had."

Resentment flashes through Regina's eyes, dark and hooded as she fights for her dogged meekness.

"Don't fool yourself into thinking you're one of those milksop heroes," Cora presses (over lines, across boundaries). "Come, Regina, we've both known for a long time which side you come down on. We both know who you really are."

"I'm not like you," she grates. Another flash of rebellion.

How promising.

"No, I actually succeed at what I set my mind to," Cora agrees, pleasantly enough.

And Regina snaps (who knew she had it in her?).

"Why are you like this?" she cries. For the first time in…well, who knows how long (Cora usually has much more important things on her mind), Regina stands tall. Instead of wringing uselessly, her hands clench into fists. If only Rumplestiltskin were a bit more accommodating, there would be magic crackling from every inch of Regina.

She almost (almost) looks like a queen.

"Like what?" Cora says carelessly. "I'm your mother. Should I not try to make you your best?"

"You're not my mother!" Regina half-laughs. "You're my tormentor. A bully. My entire life, all you've ever done is hurt me. You should…you should think I already am my best."

Cora arches an eyebrow. "And how would that help anything? You'd be nothing without the—"

"You've never been anything but cruel. I'm a mother, and I would never treat Henry the way you treat me. Don't I deserve the same kind of love from you? Don't I deserve something besides cruelty?"

"Cruelty?" Cora's expression ices over. She steps forward, again, again, until Regina falls back (though she doesn't shrink, and wonder of wonders, maybe some of Cora's lessons have finally sunk in). "You stand there and call me cruel? All I've ever done is try to give you the best advantages life has to offer. Neither one of my parents ever lifted a single finger to help me, but you…you have a mother—yes, a mother—who's done things you can never imagine in order to ensure you will never be powerless, and a father who sacrificed himself so you could live."

"He didn't sacrifice himself!" Regina cries. "You murdered him!"

There's dust on her hands. Even all these years later, a world removed, Cora can still feel it, a residue she'll never escape.

Her daughter named some nobody boy Henry and thought that mattered, but Cora remembers the real Henry. She remembers the weakling he was when she first danced with him. She remembers the flashes of resentment, danger, calculation, that grew more frequent as Rumplestiltskin molded him, whispered into his ear, shaped him into someone Cora could look at with anything other than contempt. She can still taste the aftermath of all the potions she drank when Rumplestiltskin first told her of the Dark Curse. There's no potion, no spell, that can force love, but once Cora realized that she was pregnant (once she knew she'd have to sacrifice the heart of the thing she loved most), she drank of empathy, swallowed potions to help her with perspective shifts, bathed herself in lust—and all to ensure that it was Henry who died to birth this world without magic rather than Regina.

Henry chose to journey to Wonderland, chose to go mad, chose to be cruel and merciless—he accepted every punishment, drank his own dark potions, moved into a tower cell, and all so that Regina could live.

Cora carefully dusts her hands against her skirt and sneers at the ungrateful wretch before her.

"You have no idea the sacrifices we made to ensure you could stand there and look down on us," she says. "You think you love that foundling? Until you're willing to change everything about yourself, willing to fully become the monster you're so afraid of being, you can't claim to want his well-being above all else. You cannot truly be a mother."

The darkness isn't thick enough to cloak the hurt on Regina's face. Foolish child. Given every reason to be proud of her parents (to finally come into her own), she still reacts with fear.

Cora rubs a hand against her chest. Against the place where she'd thrust her own heart back into her chest (you can't love without a heart, after all) for just long enough to steal Henry's from his chest and crush it in her hands, grind it beneath her feet, laugh through the tears as the Dark Curse swallowed their old world. Her last act as Queen rather than Mayor had been to remove her heart again and place it back safely in its box.

Only, in twenty-eight years of searching, she hasn't yet managed to find that box. Which is where the girl slumped at her feet comes in.

"Daddy didn't choose to die," Regina says faintly, making Cora roll her eyes.

"The things you know about your father aren't enough to fill up even a box made for a heart," she says. "Just know that we both did what we could to try to save him—unfortunately, artificial hearts, traded hearts, borrowed hearts, none of them are enough to pay the price for a curse of this magnitude."

"As fascinating as all this is," the pirate interjects, "can we focus on what's really important here?"

The shawl he has wrapped around his wrist above his hook catches Cora's attention for a long moment. Contrary to what Regina thinks, the girl is only a back-up plan; that shawl is the real deal-breaker here. Rumplestiltskin will come to save Belle, but he will concede to Cora's demands just to get that scrap of cloth back. And Cora will let him have it. After all, she isn't unnecessarily cruel. Why not let the imp have this last reminder of his son in his final moments of life.

"And what is important here?" Regina asks. "Can you really want magic so badly that you're willing to risk Rumple—"

"Gold," Cora says quickly.

"His anger?" Regina finishes with narrowed eyes.

"Magic is power, darling." Cora shrugs and looks up the road where Rumplestiltskin should be arriving shortly. Wherever he hid her heart and his dagger, he'd have kept them close (maybe even with him?). It shouldn't take him long to get them.

"But Rumple—Gold will have magic too. How is that better?"

"I thought you wanted magic," Hook says, his voice suddenly intrigued. "Isn't that the whole reason you agreed to all this?"

Regina's shoulders hunch in toward her ears, her hands shaking. "I…I just don't like turning against Gold like this."

"Of course you don't." Cora sighs.

For this, can she really blame her daughter? Cora had been the one to make the deal, after all, her final deal with Rumplestiltskin in the old world.

"Why won't it work?" she'd asked him, after tracking him down to that old castle of his that had never changed in all the years she knew him. "I sacrificed a heart I pulled from Henry's chest. You said that if I—"

"It's not something for nothing, dearie," he snarled. Ever since his little toy's 'death,' he'd been extra impatient, as if he were only going through the motions. Cora's newest ally had assured her that Rumplestiltskin would count death as a blessing (that he'd seek it himself if only he didn't feel so constrained to keep looking for his son). "What will you give me for the answer to your question?"

"What could you still want from me?" she asked with her hands outstretched prettily.

"Don't you know?" he hissed. "I want what I've always wanted from you."

And so Cora had done it. In return for the last ingredient to cast the Dark Curse, she'd promised that Rumplestiltskin could have the thing he first wanted from her.

"You know what that is, don't you?" he'd said with a lilt to his voice that had made bitterness rime her bones.

As if she could ever forget.

Her firstborn.

(The one deal she'd ever been able to fully get the better of him, but he'd bided his time, hadn't he, and thought he could still come out on top.)

Cora had hoped the little deal he made with Regina to give her some foundling baby was the extent of it. She's pretended not to know that Regina informs on her to the pawnbroker (thought it was harmless since she'd assumed it was Zoso who retained his memories in this world rather than Rumplestiltskin). But she should have known better: Rumplestiltskin has always been one to eke every possible advantage from a deal.

"Let's all keep focused on what really matters here, ey?" the pirate asks. "The Dark One wants his son"—he held up his wrist—"and his latest plaything. Until he gets here with that dagger, we don't have time for any other squabbles."

"Then watch the road," Cora says with a snap to her voice.

"What dagger?" Regina asks. "What son?"

Cora barely holds in her retort (if Regina had ever shown interest in anything other than horses and stableboys, ever reached for anything higher than a foundling boy and an imp, Cora could have taken her into her confidence years ago). Hook says nothing.

The ring of Regina's phone breaks the stillness. Belle jumps but remains silent. Hook sneers and turns away, his hand tight on the gun, his finger never far from the trigger. Cora keeps one eye on him and one on the road. Rumplestiltskin should be here by now. Unless…

Unless he's gone to get the closest thing to an ally he has (he said he only needed one, and he'd been playing with the knives on display while he'd said it).

Where is Zoso?

Cora has looked for him from the moment she woke in this world. She has peered into every face she comes across, stared at every name in every record, put up personal ads he should have recognized (but then, if Rumplestiltskin kept his memories all along, then that means Zoso didn't; only one could slip the curse's net). This town is large enough to contain a world, and Zoso could be anyone (anything, Cora thinks, reminded of Maleficent beneath the library), but she can't imagine that even without his memories, he'd be far from power.

"Who are you talking to?" Hook demands of Regina as she stares down at her phone.

"When did you get a phone?" Cora asks over him.

"It's a text from Gold." Regina slides the phone Cora's never seen before into her pocket (another string binding her to Rumplestiltskin?). There's a curious stillness to her, a frozen cast to her expression, that catches Cora's attention. "What's so important about this dagger you want from him, Mother?"

"A way to control him," she says (a truth, a needle, to pry up the reason for Regina's sudden transformation). "With the dagger, we can command the Dark One."

"Command him? Or become him?"

"What did Gold text you?" Cora asks. She steps forward, her hand held out in expectation of the phone, but Regina doesn't move.

"He says you buried something that could control me too. He says to ask you what you're keeping under the hospital."

The air solidifies around Cora.

Never count the Deal-Maker out. Didn't she know that? Shouldn't she have expected this?

But then, Cora has beaten the Spinner before. Behind a locked door, with the taste of humiliation like bile in her mouth and the smell of straw stinging her nose, the imp had appeared with the crackle of magic and the key to power such as she'd only dreamed of. She'd found him so alluring, so irresistible, the image of everything she wanted to be (she hadn't known, then, just how weak he truly was; how he shackled himself in deals, weakened himself through his insistence on not killing the one man who could deliver him personal power, ignored the best parts of himself in favor of his single-minded quest for his son). She'd leaned into him, let him kiss her, wanted him to kiss her, and listened to him tell her about his son. About the boy he'd do anything for. Felt his loneliness in every wondering move he made toward her.

In the same moment that Cora saw everything she wanted to be in him, she also realized exactly how weak he actually is. She learned immediately what strings to pull, what buttons to press, what chinks in his armor to exploit.

And she has taken advantage of that. Over and over again, all made so easily once she carved her own weakness out of her chest and locked it up where no one could reach it.

She beat him once.

She can beat him again.

"I did it for you," she starts (another truth, or is it a lie? she hardly remembers anymore), and Regina lunges—not for Cora, but for the pirate. Jones curses and stumbles over the bright orange line. Regina doesn't follow him. She just pulls. Tugs at the shawl wrapped around his wrist, and runs once it's in her grasp.

"No!" Hook rights himself, his gun raised and pointed toward Regina.

"That's my daughter," Cora snaps, swatting the gun aside.

The pirate snarls at her (Cora stares back, unimpressed) and then takes off in a run after her fleeing daughter.

No one breaks deals with me, she hears Rumplestiltskin hiss in her ear.

Ignoring the shudder rolling down her spine, Cora reaches down and hauls Belle up by her arm. "Looks like we finally get a few moments alone."

"You were angry." The girl's tone is observational. Too calm for a hostage. Too complacent for a scared tool. "A moment ago, when Regina said that about you being cruel. I didn't think you could get angry."

"Is that why you're not scared? How foolish of you."

"You don't have a heart. How can you feel anything without one?"

"I'll tell you a secret, darling: your heart isn't a strength. It's a weakness. A chink in the armor every woman needs to protect herself from all the things in the worlds that seek to drain her of power. To keep her kneeling in the cold."

"But you do care about Regina, in your own way. How, if you've removed your heart?" The girl (really, was Cora ever that young? does Rumple really have such an obvious type, young and pretty and bolder than seems wise?) studies Cora so closely, seemingly so unconcerned with Cora's hand biting into her arm, the ropes turning her hands red, the road ahead where headlights become visible around the turn.

"This world finds allowances for already-existing magic." Cora leans down to whisper in the girl's ear, "And if you're so curious about the effects of a heartless state, don't worry: once magic is returned, I'll be more than happy to let you experience it personally."

Finally, a hint of fear blanches the color from Belle's cheeks. Still, she cants her chin up high and says, "Rumplestiltskin won't deal with you."

"That's what he does, love. He makes deals. It's an addiction, I think, after all these years. And besides, he'd much rather come to an understanding than risk open battle. That's not his style."

"Why do you want to kill him so badly?"

"I promised I would," Cora says. "Only one of two deals I was ever glad to make, and the only one I've never regretted."

It had taken her a while to trust the figure who'd shown up cloaked in darkness, his face hidden, his voice eerily familiar. But starting after Rumplestiltskin returned from wherever it was he'd disappeared for over a year (Neverland, the shadows whispered), the masked figure brought her information on the Spinner once, again, again, all of it true. All of it useful. All of it everything Cora needed to recover from the ruins Rumplestiltskin had made of her kingdom before he left.

You take the power, I take my long-deserved rest, he'd murmured in her ear as she studied the Dark Curse bartered from her former mentor. I'll make the arrangements so long as you make sure you find—and keep—the dagger. I'll help you on the other side. Allies?

Allies, Cora had promised, and this was one deal she didn't plan on breaking.

The car (so bright, a caricature of the brightness the heroes always insist are their due) pulls to a halt a good distance away. The driver's side door opens first. Cora's mouth tightens when it's Swan who steps into the road.

The so-called Savior doesn't have any curse memories either. The line won't affect her.

No matter, she reminds herself. Rumplestiltskin wouldn't be stupid enough to think Cora isn't planning on following through on her threats. He'll have brought everything she asked of him.

Sure enough, he emerges from the car, slower but quite intent, his eyes fixed on Belle. Cora pulls the girl tighter against her (this is why she kept her alive, locked away, all this time; she always knew she might need leverage in a tight moment).

"Let go of her," he says. Cold. Threatening.

So helpless. A slave to his frail heart.

Cora laughs even as she peers behind him (looking for a third person in the car; one she'd recognize if he were to wear a cloak with a hood pulled low over his mottled face). "What are you going to do, Rumple? Wish her to your side? You're not exactly the first person she'd run to right now, isn't that right, Belle?"

The girl doesn't dignify that with a response (it pinches at something deep inside Cora, a tug at the hollowness inside her so that she's tempted to drive the girl into the ground and twist and poke and prod until she finally provokes a strong reaction). Instead, Belle just stares at Gold and calls, "Rumplestiltskin, I remember."

Terror slides its subtle tensions over Rumplestiltskin's face, and Cora laughs again.

"The pirate's right," she realizes. "You are nothing but a coward."

Swan draws her gun. "Hey! That's enough. Let Belle go or I'll pull the trigger."

How did Cora not guess Emma Swan was the daughter of Snow White and her charming prince immediately? She has the self-righteous tone, the insipid bravado, the useless threats, all down pat. Her eyes are even wide and earnest in the same way Snow's got the few times she caught Cora off-guard—as if Cora can't tell that Emma's finger is nowhere near the trigger on her weapon.

"You'd shoot me, Henry's grandmother?" Cora tsks and drags Belle back against her side. (As far as she can tell, there's no one else in that car. Zoso is still missing.) "You must really not be concerned with winning your place back as his mother. You have a steep battle already, but murdering one of his only family members doesn't seem the most practical move."

Emma hesitates. Of course. Some people make it too easy.

"Why don't you let us handle this?" Cora smirks. "My business isn't with a Savior pawn. It's with the Chess-master. Tell me, Deal-Maker, where is Zoso?"

"You want your heart so badly," Rumplestiltskin says, calmly (he's always been so good at masks, more even than she'd realized at first, until she'd learned that he wasn't actually the Dark One). "Funny, considering how little it took for you to discard it the first time."

"Have you brought it? Or does he have it?"

"I always honor my deals."

"We haven't finished this one yet."

"You hurt Belle," he observes, his eyes glancing across the scratch Cora drew along Belle's cheek. "You took her and you hurt her, and now you think I'm going to just hand you everything you want."

"That's not all we took from you." Cora's not sure where Hook is at the moment, or if he's caught up to her wayward daughter to retrieve the shawl, but she does know that he wouldn't stop chasing Regina long enough for her to text the Spinner that the shawl is safe, meaning Rumplestiltskin has no way of knowing where Hook is with the remnant of his precious son. What he doesn't know can only help her (and vice versa, which is, she's sure, why he's avoiding every question about her ally's whereabouts. Well, not for long). "And to show you I hold no hard feelings, I'll return that to you as well."

"I'm sure Captain Jones is thrilled about that."

"He works for me, not the other way around."

Rumplestiltskin sneers. "Have fun with that."

"Where is my heart?" she snaps, her patience running out. "Or the dagger? Or magic? Where is Zoso?"

"You've always fancied yourself so good at uncovering my secrets," Rumplestiltskin says, his eyes finally moving from Belle to Cora. "Don't tell me you still haven't found any of what you seek?"

Heat suffuses Cora, irritation like droplets of sweat trickling down her back where she can't reach them to brush away. Rumplestiltskin never misses an opportunity to remind her of one of her greatest blunders. Irritated that her daughter had taken up dallying with some insignificant speck (Regina's one rebellion, and it amounted to nothing, went nowhere, had no potential to become anything useful), Cora had grown impatient. She'd been so sure that she knew where Rumplestiltskin kept his dagger. Why else would he keep that ugly crutch with him at all times? What other reason could he have for keeping it always at hand, allowing the semblance of weakness, unless in actuality, she'd surmised, it had been his greatest strength.

She'd invited him to open new negotiations (a surrender, she'd allowed him to think no matter how much it galled, to have him returned from a long absence and still coming out on top), and showed up arrayed in white silk and lipstick made of squid ink. It had been the work of moments to get close enough for a kiss, but there'd been nothing unusual about his crutch aside from a series of grooves cut up its length. No magic concealing its true nature as a cursed dagger. No spell revealing its base form as anything more than an obscure disguise. Nowhere was Zoso's name inscribed on its length.

Even immobile, Rumplestiltskin had laughed. The sneers, the scorn, the humiliation (the added shame when he suddenly began limping several years later, as if he really did need the crutch)—no, never again. This time, Cora would be sure. This time, she wouldn't fail.

Cora steps backward—over the town line. She holds Belle just in front of her (a human shield should the pet savior grow a backbone), the backs of her heels right up against that orange line.

"No!" Rumplestiltskin shouts. He stumbles forward (even here, the cane isn't just a semblance of weakness anymore; Gold has become nothing more than a series of failures in more ways than one). "Belle!"

"I'm okay," she says. "It's okay, Rumplestiltskin. This isn't your fault."

Cora tenses, but outside Storybrooke, she can't feel the electric charge at the utterance of his name.

"All right," Rumplestiltskin says. "Fine, Cora. You give me Belle, I give you your heart."

"And the dagger?"

A hesitation so slight Belle doesn't react. So long that Cora reaches out to tighten her hold with both hands.

"The dagger for the shawl," Rumplestiltskin says.

"And magic?"

"Magic in return for our lives once you become more than just a mayor," he grits.

The mighty Rumplestiltskin (not so mighty as he wanted people to think), all but on his knees before her. His hands shaking as he pulls a long, thin bundle of cloth from his inside jacket pocket.

The dagger.

(Zoso within reach. Unlimited power nearly hers to claim.)

Cora's breath catches in her throat.

"Gold," Emma says urgently, "I don't think this is a good idea."

"You have a better one?" he asks dismissively. He holds the wrapped dagger in the same hand as his cane and pulls out a small box with the other hand. "Release Belle, Cora."

"Bring me my heart."

Rumplestiltskin limps forward until only a few inches separate him from Belle (from the line he eyes as warily as if it were the dagger) and sets down both bundles on the asphalt.

"Now let her go," he says, his gaze fixed on Belle (on an absent son, on the Dark One he keeps always in his shadow, on anything but Cora).

"Rumplestiltskin, you're not the villain," Belle blurts (as if she knows what Cora has planned; as if she sees the pirate emerging from the woods behind Swan's car). "You don't have to—"

"That's enough," Cora interrupts (that pinch is deeper, more painful, inside her chest). She exchanges a look with Hook and then smiles. "All right, Rumple, your latest toy. A deal is a deal."

She shoves Belle forward—then bends to scoop up the box and sets her foot over the dagger (enough to count as the master of it)—and smiles to feel the blaze of magic emanating from Rumplestiltskin (True Love potion, her key to the magic she misses badly) as she steps back into Storybrooke—and Hook shouts Rumplestiltskin's name.

"You didn't make any deals with me, Crocodile," the pirate snarls.

A gunshot rings out. Cora steps smoothly to the side, letting Belle's body fall back to the road atop that noxious orange. What a shame, she thinks, that the bookish little princess wasn't nearly as skilled at crossing lines as Cora herself.

"Belle!" Rumplestiltskin cries. He dives forward, his feet up just against the line (if Cora didn't still need him to reveal Zoso's location and bring magic back, she'd shove him over that last inch; it's tempting as is), his hands reaching for Belle's foot, her ankle, tugging her back to his side. A smear of blood is left in her wake, her head lolling.

A fierce surge of satisfaction floods Cora's chest.

"Now you know what it feels like," Hook shouts (so single-minded, he's always a few steps behind).

"And soon you will too," Emma snaps, and she lunges at the pirate. They go down in a tangle of limbs.

Cora doesn't care. The box she risked her life to retrieve (the box Rumplestiltskin placed down with the assurance of his reputation for never breaking deals) is empty.

"Where is it?" she demands.

There are tears (real tears that gleam in the moonlight) on his face, and his whole body is shaking as he presses his hands down over the hole torn through Belle's chest. But his voice is cold, steady, as chilling as she's ever heard it when he looks up at her and says, "We made a deal, you and I. The last ingredient to the Dark Curse for the first thing I ever wanted from you."

"And that deal was completed. You don't see my daughter here, do you? I gave her to you."

"Oh, you lost her all on your own. Not too hard when she was hidden in the next room, listening as you thought you bargained her away in your bid for power. After that, she was more than happy to help me."

"You asked for my firstborn," Cora snaps. She tosses the box at him and watches it bounce off his shoulder to fall in a pool of Belle's blood.

"No. I didn't. I asked for the first thing I ever wanted from you." He glares, so much malice in his eyes, so much menace in his voice, that Cora begins to think maybe he hid Zoso in plain sight this entire time (maybe the Dark One is just as much a part of him here in this world without magic as he was so often back in the Enchanted Forest; perhaps, instead of a dragon, the Dark One was cursed to become a hidden backbone for the pawnbroker). "And the first time we met—you remember—you asked me who I was. Not what. Who. It startled me. It entranced me." He shakes his head and looks back to Belle. "The first thing I ever wanted from you, Cora, was your heart. Before I learned better."

Cora's hand flies to her chest where that pinching sensation is growing ever worse. Something about the gentle way Rumplestiltskin cradles Belle against his chest, the delicate touch he caresses along the scratch on her cheek, the tears still slipping down his face, makes her almost…hurt.

"You took my heart. That wasn't the deal."

"But it was. And you agreed to it. The deal was struck. So as per the terms of our agreement, your heart became mine, to do with what I will, the instant you cast this little curse."

"You think this means you win?" Cora bends down over Rumplestiltskin and grabs his chin to force him to pay attention to her. "This empty box isn't the only thing you gave me. And I know your secret."

"No, you don't," he says.

Fury like an earthquake rattles through her. Cora snatches up the cloth-wrapped bundle and tears at the cloth. The dagger inside flashes with reflected light from the car's headlights, and Cora smiles. Holds it up high (no one will ever beat her again). Slashes down (she will never kneel before anyone).

Thunder cracks. That pinching feeling grows, rips and tears through her until she thinks she's actually being stripped into pieces.

Rumplestiltskin is looking at her. His eyes are wide. There's blood spattered over his face. There's something wet dripping down the front of her blouse. There's a rhythmic pulsing in her throat, against her wrists, her fingertips.

"Get back!" someone shouts. She knows that voice. She heard it often enough, always shouting threats and commands, all useless, all backed by absolutely nothing but blind faith in a fantastical good.

The prince steps from the woods. His gun is in his hands, pointing her way (his finger is on the trigger). He looks half-determined, half-shaken, nearly the same expression he held when she upended all his ridiculous plans to try to punish her for all the ways in which she was strengthening her daughter.

"Stay away from them," Charming says, and this time, the command doesn't seem so baseless.

This time, Cora feels herself stumbling back.

Her hand is sticky. The pinch spreads. Her hands go numb. Cora looks down, past Rumplestiltskin (still staring, still cradling that useless girl, that idiot who never learned magic, never asked anything for all the danger he brought her way, all the years he cost her, all the heartbreak she still has waiting in her future), to her own hand, splayed across her chest.

Across a hole leaking blood.

Her chest is heaving as she gasps for air, but she can't quite catch her breath.

"What…what is this?" she gasps. Her legs are shaking, but she can't, she won't, fall (never again). "You can't kill me. My heart isn't here."

But then…why does it hurt so much? Why is that pulsing slowing, in tune with the gushing of the blood against her hand?

Rumplestiltskin's look is so pitying that Cora wants to scratch it from his face and leave only scars with her fingerprints behind. She wants him to shed tears for her. She wants Regina to come back. To care that she's staggering in a bid not to fall.

"Where do you think I hid your heart?" Rumplestiltskin asks her. Softly. Gently. "I put it the one place I knew you'd never look. It put it back where it belongs."

Her knees hit the cracked road. The bright line has disappeared. She's not sure where she is in relation to it (is she on the same side as her daughter?).

"Rumple…" She tastes copper. She has to look up to see Rumplestiltskin. He isn't even looking at her. "Rumple…stilt…skin."

A zing of magic drives her to her back, alone, on the ground. Powerless. Helpless. Weak.

Her eyes drift from Rumplestiltskin's profile, past Belle's still body, to the dagger she dropped. The cloth only half-covers it. She reaches, her blood-soaked hand straining.

The cloth shifts. Cora stares at the straight-edged knife with the fine point, the tiny details—the blank blade (Zoso as absent here as in every part of Storybrooke she's searched).

Somewhere very distant, Rumplestiltskin laughs. And Regina is nowhere in sight, gone, leaving her mother far behind.

Cora closes her bloody hand on nothing as her heart pumps its last beat.