Regina was busy working when her father's secretary buzzed her to let her know Daniel was there to see her. She paused before telling her to let him in.

Daniel was Emma's cousin and married to Emma's best friend. While she had always gotten along with him, she doubted his unannounced visit was anything good.

She didn't bother getting up as he entered, already feeling like she was on edge.

"What, I don't get a hug? Has it been so long that I don't merit a friendly greeting?"

She smiled as she got up, feeling a little more at ease. Daniel always had the ability to make her lighter. She hugged him and they took seats on the chairs in front of her desk.

"What brings you in for a visit?"

"Emma."

Suddenly the uneasiness was back.

"You could have been upfront with her."

"Daniel, this isn't a conversation we should be having."

"No, it probably isn't, but I love Emma. Even if she wasn't my cousin I would be her friend. And when I see a friend suffering I can't just sit still. When you and Emma broke up right before prom and you were the one crying with your head in my lap, I was there for you. The other night I had to be there for Emma when I found her drinking her sorrows away at a bar because her heart had been broken. You should have told her that you were involved with this Neal guy."

"Look, I need to talk to Emma about this. I do owe her an explanation, but it's not the explanation you think."

"What does that mean?"

Licking her lips, Regina considered what she should say. "I need to talk to Emma," she said. "She deserves to hear what I have to say from me and not second hand. I was waiting for her at Granny's this morning hoping she would come in so I could speak to her, but she didn't."

"If speaking to her is only going to hurt her more, then maybe you should reconsider what you are going to say to her. She doesn't need a rundown of your relationship with Neal and where it is headed. Perhaps you should apologize to her and leave it at that. We all know that you have no plans of sticking around town, so as your friend I'm asking you not to do anything more that could hurt her."

"I have no intention of hurting her, just as I didn't mean to hurt her in revealing Neal," Regina said. "And that's on me. I have to take responsibility for my actions and see if she can forgive me."

"What she needs to know is if you can forgive her."

Regina turned away from him a moment, but was brought back around by him touching her hand.

"It's been so long, surely you don't want to hold onto this anger over the mistake she made for the rest of your life."

"I really thought she and I were going to be together forever," Regina said. "You know when your young you think about such things when you meet your first love. It all seems like it will be perfect."

"It wasn't going to be perfect," Daniel said. "You know this. Especially when you left you knew it wouldn't be."

"So what, we're back to this being my fault because I chose to go to college."
"No," he said quickly. "You made your own choice, she made her own choice. I'm just saying that what did you think was going to happen when you left to go to college?"

"I thought she would follow me there," Regina said. "I thought that she loved me enough to come after me."

"You thought that but you didn't love her enough to stay for her?"

"I almost did," Regina said. "When I came back that first summer after my freshman year, I had decided I had missed her so much that I didn't think I could go back to Michigan State without her. And if she still said no, then I … I was going to stay."

"You were?"

"Yes, I was. I was in love and the idea of not being close to her any more was unfathomable to me," she said. "And then Killian happened."

Daniel's hand slipped from her arm as he considered this new information.

"I do need to speak to her," Regina said after several heartbeats of silence. "Sooner rather than later. Do you know where I could find her later?"

"I have a pretty good idea, yeah," he said.

….

Neal rubbed his eyes, knowing he couldn't keep this up much longer. After leaving the diner that morning he had scoped out the pawnshop but hadn't entered it. Instead, he went to the public library and that is where he had been for the past couple of hours, parked in front of the microfilm machine doing research.

"Are you sure there isn't something I can do to help you find whatever it is that you are looking for?" said the librarian Belle who had set him up on the machine. He had been going through old newspapers on microfilm. It was called the Mirror which he thought was an odd name for a paper.

"I'm not looking for anything," he said, smiling at her. She was cute. "I do have a question, however. Why do the papers only go back 15 years?"

"Oh, there was a big fire here about 17 years ago. The paper's office went up in flames and the archive went with it because the family that owned it never got around to digitizing it."

"So have you lived here all my life?"

"I have," she said.

"Then you could probably tell me if there is a pawn shop around here. I always like to check them to see what kind of guitars they might have."

"You are a musician?"

"I am," he replied. "Obviously not a famous one, but I do ok."

"They do an open mike night at the Rabbit Hole on Wednesdays. Perhaps if you and Regina are still here next week you would consider playing a few songs."

"You know I am here with Regina?"

"I think the whole town knows," she said. "Small town and all."

"Yes, Regina did warn me."

"How is she?"

"Do you know her? I mean beyond the whole small town thing?"

"Yes," Belle smiled. "She and I used to be quite good friends."

"I heard a past tense there."

"Well, she hasn't been around much since she left for college. It's kind of hard to maintain a friendship when the other person is far away all the time," Belle said. "But you don't want to hear about that. Let me give you directions to the pawnshop."

He wrote done the directions even though he already knew where it was at.

"The owner, is he a good guy, you know fair in his deals?"

"Mr. Gold is … well not everyone knows how to take him, but he has always been good with me."

"That's good to know," he said. "Thanks for your assistance, Belle."

"You are welcome."

…

Neal stood across the street from the pawnshop still debating what to do. His mind kept telling him that it was impossible, that there was no way that was his father in there.

Yet he also knew that magic could do some wondrous things and back home his father was perhaps the most powerful magical being.

After his stop at the library, he began to think about this town and how odd it was. In most of his time in this world, he had stuck to the cities where it was easier to blend in, so his experience with small towns was limited. Still, there was something off about this place he had determined. He thought about Regina and how she felt about this place.

Then there was the whole getting here, which had been a pain in the ass as his GPS stopped working and he barely found the turnoff to get to the one road into town.

Still, the idea that his father may be in there seemed ludicrous. But he knew he had to find out.

He had spoken to Regina a little while ago, begging off dinner by telling her he had a bit of headache and wanted to go lay down. She bought the lie, just as she had others he had told her. He hated lying to her but he was afraid the truth would tear their relationship apart.

He asked her again what she was going to do about Emma after she told him about her visit with Daniel.
"I'm going to go find her," Regina said.

"And?"

"And I'm going to explain about you and apologize."

"And?" he said, smiling as he could practically see Regina bite her bottom lip before responding.

"And we'll see where things go from there."

He laughed but it was one of happiness as he thought about Regina finally putting this situation with Emma behind her and perhaps finding a way forward with her.

"Tell Emma I said hi and I'm looking forward to meeting her," Neal said. "Now go get your girl."

He hung up the phone and looked once more at the shop across the street. Perhaps Regina wasn't the only one that needed to put the past behind him. He walked up to the shop door, paused only a moment before going inside. Mr. Gold looked up from the counter where he was doing some paperwork as Neal came closer. His heart rate increased with each step closer to that counter. His mind was screaming that it wasn't possible.

He stopped as he reached the counter and stood there not saying anything as Mr. Gold also stared back at him.

"Bae?" Gold finally said.

Neal breathed out. "Father."

Gold smiled and came limping around the counter and made as if to hug Neal but Neal backed up a step. "How is it possible that you are here?" Neal asked.

"I'm here because you are here."

"What does that even mean?"

"It means when I lost you I immediately started to find you once again," he replied.

"If you are here to find me what are you doing living in some small town in Maine?"

"That is a long story," he said. "Come, I have space in the back where we can sit and talk. I'll lock up the shop and you can tell me how you've been."
"How I've been? Are you serious?" Neal said. "I don't even … are you still the Dark One?'

"Bae …"

"It's Neal. I go by Neal."

Gold smiled, "Regina's Neal. I should have guessed when I heard there was a man who followed her here. But since she was still planning on going to Georgia, I assumed Neal was just someone she met out in the world. That girl did not let me down."

Neal grabbed Gold by his shirt. "What does that mean?"

"Regina. I sent her out there to find you and bring you here."

Neal released him and backed up. Did Regina know who he was? Had she brought him here? No, he thought, he had broken into her car to steal it. He had come here on his own.

"Magic," Neal said finally. "You used magic on her."

"Technically, she used it on herself. It was the only way to find you Bae … Neal."

"You are going to tell me exactly what is happening here."

Gold ended up getting Neal to agree to come in the back and sitting down with him. The story was long in coming out and Neal was on his feet for at least half of it as his father told him about how he got Regina to cast the curse to bring them here.

"You used her," Neal said. "You used Regina. You brought all of these people here against their wills all for your selfish reasons."

"My selfish reason was to see my son again."

"You could have been with me all along if you had come up with me like I asked you to," Neal said. "But no, you chose your magic over your son."

"I was wrong. I was scared," Gold said. "But I swear to you ever since you left I have been trying to find you. Everything I have done has been geared toward finding you."

"Yes, but look what you have done to do it."

"I'm not going to apologize for doing what I had to do."

Neal shook his head, "Well at least you are no longer the Dark One. After all, you can't leave this town and there is no magic here."

Neal caught a slight downturn in his father's eyes. "What? What aren't you telling me?"

This time Gold stood up. "It was a curse that brought us here. Curses can be broken and this one was meant to be broken. When it does, it will bring magic into this town, and with it, we can return home."

"How does the curse get broken?"

Gold didn't say anything.

"How does it get broken?" Neal said more forcibly. "You tell me now or I swear, I'm getting Regina and she and I are going to leave and you will never see me again."

"True love's kiss. It's the only thing that can break it. And now that she has found you, she will no longer have the desire she once did to leave this town. I did after all make a deal with Emma that I would help her and Regina go someplace where they could be together and I always keep up my end of a bargain."

"Regina and Emma," Neal said. "You are still using people, still manipulating them. You haven't changed at all. I'm not going to let you do this. I'm not going to let you use Regina like this."

"Are you in love with her?"

Neal looked at his father, seeing the same man who he had become afraid of all those years ago when he turned into the Dark One. He thought about going through that portal, ending up in this strange world all alone because his father was a coward.

Now he needed to act quickly before his father again regained his magic.

"Yes," he said. "And I will be damned if I'm going to let her kiss Emma."

Without another word, he stormed out even as his father called after him. Once outside he took out his phone. He needed to stop Regina from talking with Emma.