Y'all, let me tell you, life has been crazy. Between the Sickness and the technical difficulties, I have genuinely been trying to get this chapter up, but it's been rough. Tbh, I wanted to make it longer, but a, I wanted to just post it already and b, I was afraid I'd end up making it too long. I think the longest chapter in this thing will end up being chapter 8, unless something crazy happens…*wink*, so I'm gonna try to be careful with these chapter lengths from here on out.

He had been getting close to finding them – he had to have been. Every morning he had dragged himself off of his cot or the pile of rags he had slept on the night before, had surrendered his wrist to his friend so that she could check his unpredictable pulse every afternoon. His heartbeat, it seemed, was always erratic these days. But Aladdin had felt himself getting closer and closer to the thing he sought.

It had only been two years since he had left the capitol of Agrabah, but it felt as though it had been two decades. Aladdin felt old, like the sand had worn lines into his face and slowed the gears that had once run his joints as smoothly as a flying carpet ride. He could not run as fast as he could just months before, or slip through crowds as easily. The worst part, though, was the ever-present tremors.

At the time he had done it, leaving those damn shears in the Cave of Wonders had seemed an excellent idea. He had no doubt Jafar could find them, but he had been so sure he would defeat the sorcerer before any more real damage could be done. And the cave was the perfect place for the shears. It was out of the way, difficult to find, and nearly impossible to steal from, unless one happened to be the best thief in the world. Or the Savior.

Thirteen months after leaving Agrabah's capitol, he had sent a message to Princess Jasmine to meet him there through a young palace servant. He had not wanted to be seen roaming the streets, afraid that Jafar would find him. When he told her this, she asked him why he would risk seeing her at all. He told her that it was because he needed help freeing a genie. The truth was that he needed to see her.

For three days he managed to fight off the tremors that had just begun shooting up his arms. He remembered what Jafar's oracle had shown him, remembered the feeling it had left him with. Just over a year later, it took a few paces and a stern mental pep talk to shake that feeling off. From what he had seen in the red bird's eyes, he knew it would only grow more and more difficult to do, so he had seized the first excuse that he could to see Jasmine again. Of course, she had seen straight through it, seen that it truly was an excuse and that he, the Savior, could surely free a genie on his own. But though she had told him off for distracting her from her royal duties, she had not seemed to mind much. And they had succeeded in freeing the genie before Jafar could get to him. That was not the first time Aladdin had seen Jasmine since first leaving the capital, but it was the last.

It was not until she was safely back within the palace walls and Aladdin had made it to the Agrabahn Gulf that Jafar managed to find him. By the time he did, Aladdin had thrown the empty lamp into the sea and seen the genie off, wishing him the best in his endeavor to see the world. That was simply another in a long line of battles he had fought against Jafar. But when Aladdin came away from that fight, he had to ponder just how narrow his victory had been. Had Jasmine softened his heart? His will to defeat Jafar once and for all? Not likely. Jasmine was the person who had first told him that that was exactly what he needed to do. He considered everything from the possibility that Jafar's power was growing to the weather – both quickly dismissed ideas. The only thing left to ponder was the future the bird had shown him. And the tremors.

For the first few weeks after that fight, Aladdin felt guilty for putting his grand quest to save the world on hold. He still saved people, though not nearly as many as he had before. Agrabah was surviving, but only just. Jasmine and the Sultan were doing their best to help their people, but as long as Jafar was at large, their kingdom was vulnerable. There was only so much reasoning Aladdin could do with himself before he accepted that he was, in truth, ignoring his responsibilities. He had meant for it to be a quick trip to the Cave of Wonders to retrieve the shears. He would not use them until he absolutely had to, and then he could go and find the next Savior. Perhaps he and Jasmine could do that together, if her father did not need her. What could be a more important royal duty than locating the Savior? But the moment he arrived at the cave, all thoughts of showing the princess the world fled from his mind.

The cave was empty.

Aladdin spent an entire day and night searching, until he finally fell from exhaustion, but there was nothing to be found but sand and rock. It could have been plunderers, but even if thieves had been able to find the cave, there was still the matter of getting inside. He knew from experience that that was not as easy as it seemed. Had Jafar emptied it, taking away any chance he had at surviving both in life and in riches? He would bet all the treasures that had been in the cave that that was what had happened, but it hardly mattered anymore. From that day, his focus became finding the shears. After all, how could he save Agrabah if he could not even save himself?

Once the first few weeks had come and gone, and months began passing by, Aladdin felt himself giving in to the truth. He was out to help himself now, saving the odd person along the way. A part of him still felt enormously guilty, and it was a voice that grew more and more difficult to ignore once he met Rahma. He stumbled into her village, dehydrated and shaky. Rahma was a short young woman with amber skin and dark hair. She would have been largely unremarkable, were it not for her kindness. She could not fight or run or steal, but she could bind his wounds and soothe his thoughts when he needed it. Her family had been part of a caravan, selling spices and small trinkets. When she was only fifteen, the caravan had been attacked by thieves far more vicious than Aladdin had ever been. Why she had trusted him, knowing how he made his living, he would never understand.

Another thing he quickly learned about Rahma was that she was sometimes exceptionally clever. Not in numbers or wisdom – in fact, she was fairly illiterate – but in scheming. He had not even realized that Jafar's red bird was following him until she presented it to him, caged and miserable. Iago, she had called him, after a particularly ornery goat she had once met in a neighboring village. That was the only reason he had allowed her to remain by his side after she healed a head wound he had suffered, pushing a child out of the path of a horse in her village. Aladdin certainly did not invite her along on his journey because he needed her perspective, her strength, or her skills. Of course not.

So, Aladdin and Rahma traveled across desert and dry grassland, searching for a way to rid him of the title of the Savior. They brought Iago with them, in case Jafar tracked him to her village and put them in danger. They searched the far reaches of the continent, all the way back to the center. They followed each whisper they heard, investigated every rumor, visited collectors and dealers, monasteries and speakeasies, until there was only one possibility left: Jafar had them. He always had. And now that the Savior was no longer a threat to him, shaking and scared or otherwise powerless, Aladdin very much doubted he would ever get another chance to use them.

But just as he had finally given up all hope, Rahma heard something new. A man called Cyrus, all the way back in a village just beside the capital. When Rahma told him, she was surprised to find that Aladdin – in all the time he had spent in each of the villages surrounding the capital – had never heard of this Cyrus before. They were both suspicious, but what choice did they have when they were twice as desperate? With little more than a shrug and an oh well, they were on their way back to the heart of Agrabah.

They only made it one day before Aladdin collapsed. He fell from the flying carpet and plummeted to the sand. With the last of his magic, he conjured a small house for them – a hut, really. The walls were strong and the roof was sturdy. There were rags inside that Rahma used to cover the door and the windows, but she had no help from him. In a word, Aladdin was useless. Even when his friend, the one person who had been by his side through everything that had happened over the past months, was hurt.

He should have expected Jafar to find him. When the sorcerer arrived, he was not surprised. What did surprise him, however, was how easy it was to do what he did next.

"It took becoming a hero for you to completely come apart. But that's what always happens to Saviors, isn't it?"

Despite Rahma's best efforts, Aladdin had not been able to still his trembling hands for months. But with Jafar drawing closer, and with his singular focus on doing just that, he somehow managed it.

"It's the fate of the Savior."

Just a little closer…just a little farther forward…Aladdin's right hand darted out of his threadbare cloak. He withdrew it before Jafar ever noticed he had reached out at all.

"You give and you give…and for what? They pick the fruit, they cut the branches, and all that's left is this shaking, useless stump."

Jafar had watched him like a serpent, angling his head this way and that. Two years earlier, Aladdin would have been fighting to remain emotionless. Now he was too tired to try. Then, so quickly that he would never have seen it coming, Jafar lashed out with his staff, striking Aladdin in the knee. As he buckled, crying out, Aladdin had the thought that perhaps Jafar did notice what he had done. But the sorcerer only stood above him, brow placid as ever.

"And he lived happily ever after."

With that, he turned and strode out. Aladdin could faintly hear him flying away on the carpet, but it hardly mattered to him now. He raised his right hand, the shears in their leather sheath held tightly within his grasp.

What would Jasmine think when he disappeared for good?

There were plenty of things Henry had expected to hear on a perfectly lovely Saturday afternoon. It could have been that there was a rainstorm coming. Perhaps Fox had changed her mind about Mr. Hyde and needed help moving him to the asylum. Maybe Belle had found an apartment and wanted help moving in. But Emma calling him and Regina to tell them that Princess Jasmine of Agrabah had been found in the woods, running from the body of her fallen friend had not even been on the list of possibilities.

Yet, there he had stood in his grandparents' loft, watching the maroon fez hover in the air for a moment before falling resolutely back to the table, unable to locate its would-be owner. And there he had waited for one of his moms to walk through the door. And there he had stood when Archie came to force Emma to reveal her newest secret. Her visions, the tremors, her death.

For so long, he had been the hopeful one in the family. Even when Snow wavered, he always had faith that everything would turn out alright. And Henry always believed in Emma – when she was the Savior and not the Dark One. So it made sense that once all the shouting and the disbelief had died down, he needed a moment to breathe. And when he noticed that Jasmine had gone from the living space, not long after Regina had left, he realized that she probably needed that too. Since there was only one place in the small apartment that she could have gone, he ascended the stairs to find her in the loft.

The loft was set up like a guest bedroom, decorated in the same distressed white as the rest of the apartment. Things had been moved around since Emma had moved into her own house. Now, when Henry stayed here, he slept on the double bed, set just in front of the window. To one side there was a dresser and, in the corner, a full bookshelf. On the other side stood a desk with even more books set between two songbird bookends. Instead of the low cot against the wall, there were a few canvas storage baskets.

Jasmine, however, seemed to be taking none of this in. When Henry found her, she was perched on the end of the bed, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief and looking as though she was doing her very best not to disturb anything.

"Hey," Henry greeted softly. "So, you can look through some of the books in here, if you want." She looked up at him, reddened eyes darting between his face and the hutch opposite the bed. There were tear tracks running down her face and it occurred to him that that was probably an incredibly lame suggestion. "…or whatever helps." At that, her brows knit together and she sighed.

"I'm sorry to intrude," she apologized, almost sheepishly.

"Oh, no, it's-it's okay," Henry insisted. He sat beside her gently. "We're all going through this together." He paused for a moment, wondering if he should voice his next thought. He would not want her to think that he had given up hope, but at the same time she might want to hear it from somebody. "I'm sorry you haven't been able to find Aladdin." She looked down at her hands and nodded her thanks, sniffling quietly.

"If your mother's visions are right…if being the Savior is a death sentence–"

"I don't believe that," Henry interrupted. In truth, he hated to interrupt anyone, but Jasmine looked so hopeless. "Hyde's a villain, and villains lie. Aladdin is still alive somewhere, I know it." The smile she gave him then was one he recognized well. It was the one Emma had given him so many times during her first year in Storybrooke, back when she thought the curse was nonsense and his fairytale ramblings were simply a childhood phase. Over the years, though, he had learned to ignore it. To wait it out; he would eventually be proven right. He hoped.

"I hope so. For both of us," she told him. Then she looked back down at her hands. Henry frowned gently at her, trying to nonverbally coax her into saying whatever was on her mind. After a few moments, she took a long breath and spoke. "You know, a long time ago, in a cave in Agrabah…I was the one who put him on that path," Jasmine admitted quietly. "He became the Savior because I told him he had to." The crease between Henry's eyebrows deepened as he thought back to an autumn night years earlier.

"I did the same for my mom." Jasmine glanced over at him, head tilted to one side. "My Savior-mom," he clarified, eyes slipping past her to gaze at nothing. "Before I brought her here, she was just living her life." Jasmine frowned sympathetically, wondering silently if there was more to this kid than blind faith. She supposed he must have been through just as much in this town as the adults downstairs. His mother had been the Evil Queen, and Jasmine could only imagine what it must have been like for him to be caught between a mother and a monster. Somehow, Henry had come through that. How much else must he have gone through to become the boy sitting beside her now? Perhaps the hope he clung to had some merit.

"Rahma said that Aladdin and I would be reunited somehow," she told him suddenly. Henry's frown took on a more confused undertone and his eyes returned to her face.

"Who's Rahma? Was she the Oracle's guardian?" Jasmine gave a small, sad smile.

"She was. And perhaps your mother is right." Henry tilted his head to the side, and Jasmine's smile grew more sincere. "Your 'Savior-mom.'" The quotes were evident in her voice and Henry had to chuckle. She bumped him gently with her shoulder, the way David sometimes did. "If we can find Aladdin, perhaps he can help her," she suggested. Henry nodded.

"Maybe."

Downstairs, Snow was pulling a chair closer to the rocking chair by the window so she could face her daughter. David knew what his wife would say to her, and he elected to stay in the kitchen. There were, it seemed, always dishes to wash and Snow was the one who had a way with words. Emma also knew what was coming, and her face was angled towards the floor. She always dreaded these conversations with her parents, especially when she knew she was in the wrong. When she had known from the start that she would be in the wrong. While she was slowly getting better about lowering her defenses and apologizing, she knew that what she really should do was simply be honest from the start. And the fact was that this problem affected her family – maybe even the whole of Storybrooke – just as much as it did her. Her mom had told her back in Neverland that she had inherited her father's tunnel vision when it came to sharing her problems, but it had grown no easier since then.

"You should've been honest," Snow said gently.

"I didn't lie, I just didn't wanna worry you." Emma glanced around her mother to nod her chin at David. "Either of you. Not while there was a chance to find a way to fix this." She knew exactly what she was doing, could feel herself rationalizing. This never worked with Snow, but she had to try.

"But we help each other fix things," Snow shook her head. "Emma we're a family." This gentleness, this logic was somehow worse than what the Savior had been expecting. Emma had expected frustration. She remembered the way her mom had reacted to David's failure to tell her that he had been poisoned with dreamshade just a couple years earlier. Snow had been dismissive, abrupt, evasive. Now she had her focus set on the heart of the issue, and the issue was that Emma – much as she had grown over the previous months – had been unwilling to share her burden with her family.

The vision she had been having was powerful. It was not like a daydream; something she could blink away. This vision was like a waking nightmare. She could not turn from the scene, she was inside it, experiencing it, and her tremors…

She had not been entirely dishonest with Killian. Her tremors were brought on by stress, but they symbolized far more than that. That night in the asylum, when Mr. Hyde had reached for her throat, her hand had only shaken for a moment before she was able to bring it back under control. If he had not been looking for the tremor that ran through it, Emma doubted he would even have noticed it. But if he were to pull that same move now, she was not sure how strong her reaction would be, or how easy it would be to control anymore. Especially not knowing exactly what kind of security measures Fox had in place, though the fairy had assured her over the phone that Hyde was not going anywhere.

Emma's tremors were growing worse by the day. She had caught herself shaking three times since they had found Rahma that morning, and it was not just external stress anymore. Emma was afraid. She was afraid of her future, of what it might bring. She was afraid of what it would mean if they could not find Aladdin, or worse, if they found him dead. She was not afraid of Hyde so much as of what it would mean for the town if he escaped. He had implied during their chat about Saviors dying that he would not be the villain who caused her story to 'end' (which had been strangely comforting). But most of all, she was afraid that she would not live to see her happy ending. Having worked so hard to give everyone else theirs – even before she had realized that that was what she was doing – and being so close to her own now, the idea of not being able to reach it felt like nothing short of a cruel joke.

"I guess I'm just…" Emma's feet twisted beneath her chair and her fingers twisted in her lap. "…scared." The second she admitted it, Snow's brow leapt to a concerned furrow and she sighed before reaching for her daughter's hands. She held them tightly and Emma swallowed before sheepishly asking, "Can you forgive me?" Snow faintly heard David's cell phone ring as she took a breath in to answer.

"Of course I forgive you," she assured Emma, "we're your parents. We'll always forgive you. But what about him?" She glanced back at Killian and Emma's gaze flickered guiltily towards him before returning to her mom. "You're trying to build something." Emma sighed and Snow rubbed her thumbs over the backs of her hands soothingly.

Emma did not need reminding that her relationship with Killian had her parents' relationship to live up to. Snow White and Prince Charming set a very high standard and even after everything they had been through, even knowing for certain that their love was true, Captain Hook and the Savior did not quite have the same ring to it. How many times had she pulled away from telling him the full truth? So often she had been determined to solve all of her problems on her own that she had failed to consider how not telling him about them would hurt him in the long run. Not telling him that she had turned him into a Dark One had been a mistake. Not telling him that everyone she had consulted seemed to think she was fated to die – and sooner than later – might somehow be worse.

At the moment Emma's thoughts started taking a turn for the bleak, David walked over. Snow noticed him first, automatically letting go of one of her daughter's hands to reach for one of his. He gave it to her without thinking, coming to a stop beside his wife. He waved his phone once as he spoke before pocketing it.

"That was Leroy. He had an appointment with Archie, but Archie didn't show." There was a small crease between his eyes, nearly worn in by a lifetime of troubling circumstances and intense concentration on sharp, swinging blades.

"Archie left with plenty of time," Emma observed. She tried not to think about the fact that this was normally the point when Killian would drift over to see what was troubling her. As it was, he was still brooding by the bar of her parents' kitchen.

"That wasn't Archie," gasped Snow, brows lifting in shock. Emma felt herself harden. The Savior, ready for battle. As ever.

"The Queen has him. Of course she does," she said sardonically. By now, David had learned to ignore that tone, but Snow still gave her a look. Emma paid no mind to it, standing and lifting her red leather jacket from where it was draped across the back of her chair. She slid her arms through the sleeves, already moving to the door. "I'll be back."

"Wait, Emma, where are you going?" Charming asked, following her. His hand only slipped from Snow's for a second before she was up and beside him, grasping it once more. Neither of them really noticed.

"Swan?" Killian inquired, looking up from where his gaze had been doing its darndest to drill a hole in the floor. Henry came down the stairs from the loft, followed shortly by Jasmine.

"I'm going to find Archie."

"Emma…" Snow began.

"Mom, you have to go meet Regina," Henry interjected. Hesitantly, Emma stopped just before the apartment door, turning around to face her son.

"It can wait," Emma reasoned. "Aladdin's not gonna get any harder to find in one day. Who knows what could happen to Archie if we leave him with her any longer?" Jasmine's brow knit together immediately, and she took a breath in as if to speak, but her mouth seemed unable to form words. Catching the distress on her face, David spoke up.

"Alright, so Snow and I will go out and look for him. You can still go and find Aladdin." Emma looked at him, raising her hands in what fell just short of an appeal, jaw tightening in frustration.

"What are you gonna do if you find Archie? You guys don't have magic, the Queen could kill you."

"We can handle the Queen, we've been doing it for years," Snow defended.

"Go meet Regina, we'll take care of this," David insisted. Emma sighed, but nodded.

"Okay. Be careful." Both Charmings nodded back at their daughter just before she opened the door and stepped out of the apartment.

"Wait!" Jasmine called out to her. Emma stuck her head back through the door to acknowledge the princess as she moved closer. "I'll come with you. If there is a chance that Aladdin is here, I want to be there when you find him." The Savior nodded in agreement. Henry thought for a moment before stepping forward as well.

"I'll come too."

"You sure, kid? We don't know what's gonna happen," Emma cautioned. But Henry brushed it off.

"We still don't know what Hyde meant about those untold stories playing out. If this is one of them, don't you think the Author should know about it?" he reasoned. In spite of herself, Emma smiled warmly at him and nodded.

"You're right," she conceded, holding the door open wider for Henry and for Jasmine to step through. Before she could even begin to close it again, Killian finally moved from his position by the kitchen.

"So it's an expedition, then?" He spoke with only a shadow of his normal sanguine demeanor, but his movements were not entirely hollow. "Right. I'm in. Hate to miss anything." He gave Emma a brief but pointed look as he stepped past her onto the landing. She did not catch her parents sharing a look of concern.

"Right," she echoed, following him and finally closing the door behind her. Henry gave her a sympathetic look, which she returned with a half smile, but it faded quickly, and she followed the group down the stairs and out onto the street.

The walk to Regina's vault was tense and no number of reassuring smiles from Henry could make the silence any less frigid. Killian refused to so much as look at Emma. He seemed a bit too focused on sulking, squinting straight ahead, sunlight be damned. In truth, Emma would much rather simply poof them all to the mausoleum, but with everyone as on edge as they were, she was afraid of what might happen if she tried to use her magic. Seeing that she was unable to might upset Killian more, though that was not her main concern. She had not seen what would happen if she made it halfway through some magical maneuver before it stopped working, and she wanted to be as far from her family as possible when she found out. Going after the Queen alone would have been one thing; the woman was a villain who took joy in tormenting her parents and had the audacity to wear Regina's face. Going after a fellow Savior surrounded by people who wanted nothing more than to see her succeed was another thing entirely. Emma had done everything alone for most of her life and though she loved her family more than anything, sometimes she missed the days when all she had to worry about was making sure her jacket did not get scratched too badly.

Now she was the Savior. Her mom was right; she could not keep any more secrets from them. Her dad, however, was wrong. There were still some things she would have to do alone. In her vision, she fought whoever was underneath the hood alone, regardless of who was standing by her. The truth was that she had a son and a pirate and a town full of people to carry and to protect. But the question remained: what would it cost her?

When she reached the vault, Emma went down alone – sheerly for the sake of limited space. It was most certainly not because she needed a break from Jasmine's nervous energy and Killian's brooding expression. That would have been absurd. Once she descended the steps, however, it became clear to her that Regina was just as nervous as the princess aboveground, if for a different reason.

"You took off kinda quickly," Emma observed, rounding the corner at the base of the stairs and shuffling into the room. She remembered the first time she had been down here, not so long ago as it felt. Back then, Henry had been in danger and his brunette mother had been unconscious on the floor. Now, she was very much awake and clearly flustered.

"Well, I'm sorry I'm trying to save your life," Regina bit back. Emma nodded her head to one side.

"Fair enough." She slowed to a halt, finding what seemed to be a safe distance from the frothing goblet Regina was fussing over. The mayor was rifling through jars and occasionally dropping things into the cup, the names of which the Savior was not sure she wanted to know.

"How's Henry?" Regina asked without looking up.

"Optimistic." Emma sighed. "It shouldn't surprise me anymore, but the kid's just so…" she searched for the right word.

"Full of hope," Regina supplied. Glancing up at her, Emma nodded. Then she looked back to the goblet. "So, what are we making in this cup of nightmares?"

"It's a kind of locator spell." The mayor shook a blue vial of something over the goblet as Emma frowned, crossing her arms. The cobalt coloring wavered like a liquid and for a moment, the bottom of the glass cleared, despite the vial's contents being small, solid spheres that looked remarkably like allspice.

"I thought everything Aladdin had was hot property." As usual, Regina raised an eyebrow at the slang, but this time she let it go quickly. This was the first opportunity Emma had had to take note of it since coming back from New York, but the Evil Queen-less Regina seemed far less judgmental than she had been before, despite being more tense.

"I did too, but then I realized there's one thing Aladdin had that he didn't steal: his magic. This potion links like magic," she explained.

"The magic of two Saviors?" Regina nodded.

"All you have to do is drink."

"You can do that?" Emma's head dropped of its own accord, her features arranging themselves into an expression that made it clear that she was wondering if the mayor was serious. Regina scoffed lightly and raised one eyebrow, holding the frothing goblet out to the Savior.

"Let's go find Aladdin." There was something soothing in Regina's straightforward demeanor. This woman wasn't a thinker like Snow, or a talker like Arche. Regina got things done, just like Emma was inclined to do, and at that moment, that was exactly what the Savior needed. So she drank the potion. For her part, Regina had made it taste something like how a strawberry banana smoothie would taste if it had been freezer burned and then flash-thawed in a cremation chamber – in other words, not entirely awful – though Emma was unsure if that had been intentional. Briefly, she felt as though there were a battery buzzing away inside her stomach, but the sensation gave way quickly and she felt herself perk up.

"Let's," she agreed. Then she turned and led the way up the steps and out of the vault. Regina followed her, closing the door behind them and refreshing the protection spell around it.

Lately, it seemed, the Savior spent most of her time looking for people in the woods. Despite her knack for finding people and her sensitivity to magic, her sense of direction left something to be desired. More than once since returning to Storybrooke, she had found herself nearly colliding with the protection spell at the town line. This never seemed to happen when she was with her parents, but she supposed they must have their fair share of tracking experience. Though she would never admit it, Emma still sometimes dreamed of her brief time in the Enchanted Forest, when she traveled back in time with Killian. While her time there had been short and she had found a record number of mosquito bites all over herself the following morning, there had been something vaguely appealing about the realm. Still, when she felt a sensation like a hook in her chest pulling her towards the trees at the edge of the cemetery, she had to fight the urge to groan, for Jasmine's sake.

The trek through the woods was filled with nervous chatter, primarily from Jasmine and Regina – each tense for their own reason. Killian sulked as he walked just behind Emma, half listening to her as she tried to soothe both brunette women and lead the group. Still, he lent the odd word to the exchange. Henry alone seemed not to be in a chatty mood. Only Jasmine noticed, but she left him to his thoughts. She had an idea of what he must be thinking about.

Jasmine was wrong, however. Though he certainly hoped that they could find Aladdin, that he could help Emma, that was not Henry's largest concern. Actually, he was confused.

On the one hand, finding Aladdin would almost certainly help his mom find out how to stop whoever – or whatever – might be lurking under the hood in her visions. But on the other hand…something about the whole situation bothered him. It all simply felt off; Mr. Hyde coming to Storybrooke with a young woman who could help Emma decipher the visions, only to tell her that she was fated to die? A young woman who just happened to be friends with the princess who was looking for the last Savior? A young woman who had just been killed?

And who had killed Rahma? His family all seemed to be assuming it was the Evil Queen, and she could not be ruled out. But the Queen normally liked to gloat about her dark deeds. As far as Henry could tell, she had yet to say a word about it to anyone who could reach the Charmings to relay it. Even disguised as Archie, she could have dropped some kind of hint.

In Henry's experience, circumstances as connected as these were never coincidence. But what was the pattern?