Hope's father had once told her a story about a sea monster. One that lived so deep under the sea that it had never seen the light of day. And how the mermaids feared going so deep as to meet him, for any being that did became lost in the dark forever and could not see their way back to the surface.

In the story Hope's father told, there was a beautiful mermaid and a sailor who fell in love. And one day when the sailor rowed out to the middle of the sea to meet the beautiful mermaid, a great storm came in and swept him overboard. He sank and sank right into the sea monster's home in the darkness, never to be seen again.

The fish and sea creatures who saw him fall, rushed to tell the beautiful mermaid what had happened. But she would not take any of their condolences, for she would not just give up on him so easily.

You see, she was also a very clever mermaid, and she swam right up to the surface, grabbed hold of a sunbeam and laced it in her hair.

Then the brave mermaid with the sun in her hair swam deep into the ocean, and even as it got darker and darker, she was not afraid. For the sun in her hair still shone bright.

And when she reached the sea monster's home in the dark, dark depths, she could see all around her. She found the sailor right away and carried him back up to the surface.

But what she didn't know was that the sailor had been in the darkness so long that the light from her hair had blinded him as she came to his rescue.

The darkness had been replaced with eternal brightness that blocked out everything else.

And the mermaid began to cry, for she realized that the sailor could never see her beauty ever again. But the sailor told her to stop crying because he could remember exactly how beautiful she was. But most importantly, she had saved his life by risking herself in the darkness. And that was more beautiful than anything.

And as in most of her father's stories, the sailor and the mermaid lived happily ever after.

This story came to mind because Hope had never truly been able to fathom the sailor's plight until she was in that damned magic box. All around her there was nothing but darkness, she could barely cling to her own mind to keep her sanity. Time lost all meaning, it could have been ten seconds or ten years in the box and Hope wouldn't have known.

She had trapped herself in the sea monster's depths and could only hope the mermaid would come for her.

At first it was just a light, and then Hope's body began to gain feeling again. She could feel the shape of her limbs and her hair falling across her shoulders. She could feel the pain of every slash and scratch Rowena had left on her.

And then the light became so bright that Hope shut her eyes, and she didn't dare open them until she felt something solid beneath her.

When she did open her eyes, she empathized with the sailor in the story even more, for it was so bright she couldn't even register where she was.

There were voices and sounds all around her but her mind couldn't sort them out. It was like there were fifty audio files being played on top of each other while she looked at every frame of a movie at once.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to gain control of her breathing. It was like she had been put back inside her body and hadn't remembered how it worked yet.

Assess what you know she told herself.

I'm on the ground

Outside

My name is Hope

The ground is made of wood

Hope Milah Swan Jones

There are people here.

Everything hurts

It smells like salt water.

My father is a pirate.

Why does it smell like salt water?

I think I know this place.

I'm on the docks.

Storybrooke docks.

And with that she remembered everything.

And she realized that her plan had worked. Not that she ever thought it wouldn't.

So she forced her eyes back open and blinked until the sailor's brightness went away.

What she saw was that her mother had a gun pointed right at her.

"Okay I kind of expected this reaction," Hope said, her voice sounded gravelly as she lifted herself into a seating position with a herculean effort. Emma Swan kept the gun trained on her the whole time.

"Go ahead, ask me questions to prove my identity," Hope's eyes then processed the crowd behind her mother. Her entire family towered over her, looking at her with relief and suspicion. And then, there behind Hugo's left shoulder stood William, his entire being practically begging to run to her, only blocked by her parents.

As a momentary silence fell over the group, Hope had to suppress a very uncharacteristic whimper as the pain from her wounds threatened to overwhelm her into unconsciousness. She looked up at her father, begging him to recognize her, she saw pain and desperation written across his face.

"What do you order at Granny's and how do you eat it?"

Once again it was Hugo who broke the silence, the pain of a little brother evident in his voice and face. His parents regarded the woman on the ground with skepticism, but Hugo saw only the big sister he needed and loved.

"French toast. With strawberries. I put the syrup on and then I eat all the strawberries. Then I eat the french toast,"

Every word seemed to bring her pain, but as she did, Hugo regained all of the light that had left him the day William had arrived. He tried to rush forward but his father held him back. Emma lowered her gun but didn't put it away.

"Where did we share our first kiss?" This one came from Stefan, and even drifting towards unconsciousness, Hope wanted to roll her eyes at his persistence of being close to her.

"The Jolly Roger,"

She mustered, her hand had gravitated to her side, which she realized was bleeding. Not enough to kill her, but enough to be concerning. Their kiss on the Jolly Roger was not an unpleasant memory. Hope had wanted to kiss Stefan, he was sweet and handsome and had just called her the coolest girl he knew. But kisses shared with Stefan had long ago ceased to matter very much in her mind.

"What happened in Madigan Forest after we got caught in the net?"

A hush fell over the crowd as William spoke. Hope nearly burst into tears at the sound of him alive and well, but she managed to control herself.

"Really? My entire family is here and that is the question you ask?" Hope asked, her voice was still riddled with pain but had become slightly more steady and had regained some of its typical annoyance.

"What happened?" William had pushed himself to the front of the crowd, no one stopped him as he knelt down to face Hope. Evidently, they were all willing to confirm Hope's identity through William's analysis.

She swallowed, trying to bring some moisture to her dry and cracked throat before answering.

"We fought and we argued and you said I was stubborn and then..."

Hope paused, and in the pause he knew it couldn't be anyone but her.

"Then what?" William reached a hand out and placed it on Hope's cheek. Her head almost automatically leaned into him, as if she couldn't even support its weight. A small smirk graced his lips, his Hope would loathe to admit what had happened next.

"And then I kissed you," She gritted out, from both pain and a reluctance to admit that she had been the one to cave and lose their game all that time ago in the forest.

This time tears did fall, partially from the pain and partially from the emotion. Hope reached forward and clung to William as he stood her up. He smiled a watery smile, his hands holding her face as if he would never let go.

"It's you. You found me." William barely choked out through tears. He couldn't bring himself to care that Hope's entire family was watching.

She was there. And she was brilliant.

Hope could see the darkness creeping into her vision from the sides as the pain engulfed her once more. She felt her knees begin to buckle beneath her.

"Did you ever doubt I would?" she managed to say before she fell.

William caught her immediately, sweeping an arm under her knees and carrying her like a princess. After all, she was a princess.

"What happened to her?" Hope's grandmother whispered as she gingerly reached a hand out to touch Hope's forehead, covered in sweat and blood.

"Nothing good," Emma Swan had holstered her gun and now looked at her daughter's motionless but living body with tears welling in her eyes. She hid them away, her husband and sons being less successful in their efforts, she had to be the strong one.

Regina approached and lifted Hope's left arm, her hook tattoo seemingly sprouting out of the leather cuff that still rested on her wrist.

"She couldn't fight back," she answered the question that so many had been asking, how on earth Hope hadn't defeated Rowena immediately. Even without her heart Hope was incredibly powerful. But Rowena had never been one to underestimate her enemies.

Her father approached now. William was powerless to do anything except hold Hope and let her family see her. Even if he knew where to take her, he was frozen to the spot, the pain on Hope's face as she spoke still etched in his mind.

Hook leaned down and placed his ear to Hope's chest, his head popped up with his eyebrows knitting in confusion almost immediately.

"She has her heart," Killian Jones knew his daughter's brilliance, but he knew better than most just how hard it was to get your heart back after someone had taken it. His own heart had only been returned after Belle had commanded it.

In all of the chaos, William had almost forgotten that for all intents and purposes, Hope shouldn't have her heart. And that there was no way to cross realms.

Hope Jones was an expert on statistics and odds, and she had just beaten all of them.

"I'm sure Hope will tell us everything when she wakes up but right now we need to address her injuries,"

This came from her grandfather, who was eyeing the still bleeding wound in her side and the rest of her body for wounds he suspected might exist.

"Yes we do, these wounds were made by magic," Rumplestiltskin made his way through the crowd, his cane making a soft clomping sound on the wood of the docks. "And therefore must be healed by magic, Hope's power was blocked so she had no way to heal herself,"

William saw Hope's parents visibly tense at the mention of magical wounds, though he hadn't the faintest idea why. He shifted his focus down to Hope, she still wore the white blouse he had last seen her in, though it was now slashed and ripped beyond repair. He saw the thin cuts extending up from her chest towards her neckline and across her arms. He could only imagine that her legs were just as bad.

Her face looked somewhat peaceful and was for the most part unharmed, but William could barely bring himself to look at it. He had told Henry that he was the one to blame for Hope's suffering, and though Emma may have tried to convince him otherwise, it was hard to believe anything else as he held her small and bony body.

Rumplestiltskin slowly waved his hand across Hope's body, a golden light extending from him to her. As he passed across her body, William saw the wounds that were exposed knit themselves back together, leaving only fine white lines in their place. Hope's shoulders relaxed in her slumber as he finished, indicating some of her pain had been relieved.

"She still has scars," Henry stated rather obviously, directing his mild anger at his sister's disfigurement towards Gold.

"And she will for the rest of her life. There is a great deal of dark magic in those wounds, they were made over a long period of time. She will heal completely, but she will always have those scars," Gold was apologetic as he spoke, clearly not thrilled with his pupil's current state any more than anyone else was.

From there William walked Hope back to her childhood home in near silence, with her family following him like some sick parade. All of them, though somber at Hope's condition, walked with a new fire in their step. She was home and she would live, so nothing else mattered.

Hope didn't stir as he laid her in her bed in the purple room with the bookshelves that William had entered all those nights ago. Nearly everyone wanted to stay with her, but Gold insisted that she would not wake for some time. So to compromise, they all positioned themselves in Hook and Emma's living room making small talk. None of them were willing to miss hearing the story of how Hope had managed her return.

Hell, most of them weren't willing to let Hope out of their sight ever again.

"Perhaps Hope was able to find the good in your Rowena,"

Hope's heart was on trial. This particular argument came from her grandmother, who sat serenely in the corner with worry lacing her brow. Every member of Hope's extended family had tried offering explanations of Hope's miraculous return, but none of them were satisfactory. It was practically common knowledge that once someone else held your heart, you were damn nearly powerless to get it back.

"Given Hope's current state, I find that hard to believe,"

An angry Captain Hook had surfaced in the usually kind eyes of Killian Jones the second Hope's slip of a body materialized on the docks.

"William is the one from her world. He knows Rowena the best."

This was one of the first times that Hope's grandfather had addressed him directly, and though he did so want David to like him, he had no answers to give.

Lucky for him, he didn't have to.

"I think one could make the argument that I hold that title"

Hope remained in the bloodied leggings she had arrived in, but had donned a large pink shirt with a drawn image of a mouse on the front. She stood on the stairs of her childhood home, clinging to the railing for support, still as gaunt and sickly as when she arrived.

But you would have thought she was in a full ball gown due to how everyone looked at her.

A/N I know this has a rather abrupt end but i've been sitting on this section for a long time and just thought id post it while I figure the rest out.