Despise her resolve to get too comfortable, the minute Emma laid down on the bed in Mary's loft, she could picture herself living there. She slept dreamlessly until rays of sunlight hit her face and Mary's birds chirped and sang to greet them. Normally, Emma hated birdsong, but this morning it put her in a good mood. She went over to the large cage that housed them, laughing as they gazed at her curiously.

"Emma?" Mary mumbled, her voice thick with sleep. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize they'd wake you up. I've gotten used to their singing so I barely notice anymore."

Emma assured her, "Really it's no problem. Why don't I make breakfast?"

"You shouldn't because you're my guest and I'm you're host," Mary rose from bed and joined her in the kitchen.

"I like making myself useful." Emma insisted.

"Fine. We can both make breakfast."

While Mary prepared pancakes, Emma started the coffee machine and set the table. The birds continued singing in their cages, though they occasionally paused to observe Mary and Emma having breakfast. As they ate the sun began rising, filling the apartment with pale sunlight.

"I didn't peg you as a bird person." Emma admitting after swallowing a bite of pancakes.

Mary shrugged, "I don't know, it just feels like I've always had them. So, your boss didn't mind that you've taken this extended vacation?"

"I'm my own boss," Emma stated proudly. "Besides, I can do my job from anywhere."

"Which is what, exactly?"

"Private investigator, though sometimes I work with police departments on missing persons cases. I have a knack for finding people."

Mary took a sip of her hot coffee. "That sounds exciting."

"It's really not," Emma snorted. "Shifting through mountains of paperwork, dealing with unhelpful bureaucrats and social workers, clients calling at all hours of the night demanding progress reports - I've needed a vacation for a while, actually."

"Have you ever dealt with adoption cases?" Mary inquired.

"You're asking because of Henry and Regina?"

"I didn't mean to imply-"

"It's okay," Emma made herself smile so Mary wouldn't feel bad. "Yeah, a lot of my clients are birth parents or adoptees, or both. And a handful of adoptive parents searching on their kid's behalf. Though I had one case where a couple actually wanted me to spy on their children's birth mother to make sure she wasn't trying to contact them."

"Wow," Mary's eyes widen. "Why didn't they want her contacting them?"

"I didn't ask; spying's not my forte so I turned them down." Emma explained.

Mary ruminated on Emma's words for a minute before asking, "So what are you going to do while you're in Storybrooke?"

"Just hang around, I think. I haven't really found anything interesting to do here."

"The burden of living in a small town," Mary joked. "Is Henry doing alright?"

"I don't think so." Emma shook her head, "Do you know someone named Priscilla Jefferson?"

"I know of her."

"She came to the diner yesterday and started telling Henry the curse was real and that she believed it."

Mary frowned, "She's a bit of recluse, from what I hear. I wonder what she wants."

"I don't know," Emma shook her head. "I was hoping to ease Henry into the idea that he might be taking the story too seriously, but now Priscilla is actively encouraging him to."

"Maybe you should talk to her." Mary got up and began putting the plates in the sink. "She lives in a mansion on the outskirts of town. Inherited from her parents, I think."

"You're right. I should probably tell Regina, too. As much as I hate dealing with her, she is still Henry's mother."

"If you don't mind me asking, why is Henry so important to you?"

Emma looked down at her hands, then back at Mary, " He reminds me a lot of myself when I was his age. I just feel responsible for him, like if I left I'd be failing him."

"But you're planning to leaving in a couple of days anyway, aren't you?"

Emma didn't respond.

Mary dropped her line of questioning and refilled the bird-feeders as Emma finished her breakfast.

After she showered and got dressed, Emma drive to the mayor's mansion and knocked, hoping she'd get a chance to see Henry before taking to Regina. Fortunately Henry answered, and, upon seeing her he broke out into a grin and hugged her.

"Hey kid, is your mom home?"

"My mom?" Henry's nose wrinkled. "Why would you want to see you her?"

"I need to talk to her about... grown up stuff."

"But we're supposed to be making plans for Operation Cobra."

"For what?"

"You know, the plan to break the Evil Queen's curse."

Emma tiled her head, "I'm pretty sure cobras have nothing to do with fairy tales."

"Exactly! She won't suspect a thing." Henry beamed.

"Speaking of your mom, where is she?"

Regina's voice floated from upon the staircase. "Right here." Emma and Henry waited until she reached them. She smiled maliciously, "To what do we owe this pleasure?"

"I need to speak with you in private Madam Mayor."

"Well, if you haven't noticed, I'm very busy rubbing a town and raising my son, not that you're familiar with having responsibilities, so make it quick." She glanced at her son, "Henry, if you don't mind."

The boy rolled his eyes, but left to another part of the house.

"Do you mind telling me what you're doing here?" spat Regina.

Emma ignored her abrasive attitude. "I don't presume to know what's best for Henry, but I'm trying." She checked behind Regina's shoulder, then dropped her voice to make sure Henry couldn't hear. "This woman, Priscilla Jefferson, told Henry the curse was real and I thought you deserved to know."

"I wish I could say I'm surprised," Regina sighed. "Miss Jefferson is unstable; has been for years. You'd do well to stay away from her."

"Oh."

Regina smirked, "I did say that I like to know what's going on in my town. Is that all?"

Emma nodded, "Uh, yeah..."

Regina slammed the door in her face.


As Ashley walked home from the grocery story, she heard the sound of crashing from her apartment building. As the building came into view, Ashley saw her stepmother callously tossing her things out the kitchen window into the streets below, her face cold and expressionless as she glared down at her.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Ashley shrieked. May ignored her and closed the window.

Hands clenched tight around the bags of groceries, Ashley climbed the three flights of stairs leading to the apartment she would no longer share with her stepmother and half-sister. Inside Julie stood awkwardly in the living room, looking helpless and miserable.

"I tried to stop her..." Julie muttered.

Ashley walked past her and into the kitchen, where May had paused to take a cigarette break.

"Really, you're gonna do that here?" Ashley recoiled in disgust.

May shrugged, "This is my home isn't it? And there won't be any babies in it anyway. Either you go through with the adoption like we planned, or you can try parenting from the gutter."

Instead of responding Ashley dropped the groceries on the counter and went to her and Julie's room to salvage what she could. Her clothed remained untouched, fortunately, but May had destroyed or discarded everything else. She packed what she had left in a suitcase.

"What are you doing?" May demanded as Ashley zipped up the suitcase. "Where the fuck are you gonna go, huh? You are six months pregnant and you have absolutely nothing. Are you seriously doing this?"

Ashley gathered what didn't fit in the suitcase, placed them in a plastic garbage paper, and made for the front door.

May grabbed her arm as she reached for the handle. "Don't be stupid Ashley."

Ashley snarled as the odious cigarette smoke assaulted her senses, "Let go of me."

I know this doesn't seem fair, but I have only ever done what's best for you."

"You've only ever cared about yourself," Ashley hissed.

"You're not fit to raise a child; you're practically a child yourself!" May tightened her grip. "I'm always looking after you, always fixing your mistakes. What do you think I'm doing now? I'm not the bad guy here. The only way I can ever get through to you is with tough love."

"This isn't love." Ashley wretched her hand free and left. As she moved toward the ancient stairs with their peeling paint and rusted handrails, she felt like she was walking on clouds.

When she exited the building, she returned to Earth.

A few things had survived the fall - her books, some cases of makeup, bits of jewelry - but the rest was unsalvageable. As she bend over to pick through the heap for what she could keep, police sirens blared and came closer. Sheriff Graham stepped out and inspected the scene.

"I got a noise complaint from some of the occupants," he stated.

"That was just my stepmother kicking me out," Ashley explained. "It's over now."

Graham grimaced, "I'm sorry to hear that."

"I'll be fine. I'm just gonna stay art Granny's for a while." Ashley replied.

"Okay. I'll let you off with a warning this time. If you ever need something, you know where to find me."

Ashley gave him a small smile, touched by his offer. "Thank you."


Priscilla heard the car long before she saw it, though for a second she wondered if she just hearing what she wanted to hear. Not once in all her years in this miserable realm had anyone ventured to her remote prison.

A gilded prison, but a prison nonetheless.

She sat on the front porch starting down the narrow lane, whose end seemed to be swallowed by the forest's leafy maw, as a yellow dot few larger and nearer. Priscilla rose from her white wicker chair and walked to the driveway to greet Emma Swan.

"Hey," Emma greeted her. She gazed up at the house, "This is your home? You must have a pretty big family."

Priscilla forced down the bile that was rising from her throat. It wasn't Emma's fault; she didn't know the details of Priscilla's unfortunate relationship with the concept of family. "I live alone," she corrected without emotion in her voice.

"Oh. I need to talk to you about yesterday. What you said to Henry wasn't okay."

"What's the issue?"

Emma crossed her arms, "You outright told him magic was real."

"You're upset because I told him something that was true?" Priscilla tried to imagine why Emma would want to convince Henry that magic wasn't, but no explanation came to mind. She may not have had much experience with it since no one in this realm could use it, but she had have used it as some point.

To her surprise, Emma looked astonished. "You don't honestly believe magic is real, do you?"

It was Priscilla's turn to express shock. "Next you're gonna ask if I believe in the stars, or gravity, or True Love."

"You're not making sense." Emma stepped forward, "His fixation on the curse and the fairy tale realm isn't healthy. I'm trying to help him see that, and you're not helping by encouraging him. He's not gonna give this up if anyone just tells him to, so I'm playing along for now, but giving him false hope will only hurt him in the long run."

"You're the one not making any sense," Priscilla accused. "How could you not believe the curse is real? Henry's book clearly explains what happened."

Emma's mouth hung open for a moment, before she choked out, "It's a book. It's all made up."

Patience wearing thin, Priscilla asked, "You know about the Civil War, right?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"How do you know it was real? You weren't there. Did you read about it in a book?"

"That's different," Emma insisted. "This is the real world, not a story."

"A real world. How arrogant are you to believe yours is the only one?" Priscilla corrected.

Emma stepped back, her hand gripping the car door handle, "Well, I can't say that Regina didn't warn me."

Regina. Fuck.

"You're spoke to the Evil Queen?" Priscilla gasped. "What did she say? Did you tell her I was awake?"

"I... that's private."

Priscilla shook her head, "You did, didn't you. I bet she told you not to trust me."

Emma frowned, "Look, just be careful with what you say to Henry."

"I always do," Priscilla announced quietly, watching as Emma got in her car and drove away.


Dark grey clouds hung low in the sky as Mulan made the solitary trek back to her home village. No one else could be seen for miles and the silence fed a growing sense of unease. She had only her horse for company. As the pair reached the gates of their village, Mulan surveyed her surroundings her any signs of life.

No farmers in the fields, no merchants, no artisans, no carts or wagons, no children playing the streets; nothing.

The balloon of dread popped inside her like a blister. Mulan urged her horse faster and raced to her family home as the unbearable silence followed her like a shadow. The modest house remained intact, with no signs of a battle or attack. She hitched her horse to a post as quickly as she could before running inside, shouting for her father, mother, brother, and grandmother. She tore through each room, and when she had checked everywhere, she ran to the fields behind the house, heart pounding, and called for them again. By now sweat and tears covered her face and she could barely see because her disheveled hair kept falling into her eyes.

'What good is a warrior who could protect her kingdom, but not her own family?' she berated herself. She had gone to war to keep her father from answering the emperor's summons, since her brother was too young to fight, but in doing had left her family without a protector.

She search behind every tree and boulder, to the edges of her family's property, but found nothing. She might as well have dreamed they'd ever been there. As dusk closed in Mulan surrendered and limped back to the house, too tired to cry.

"Big Sister!" a high, clear voice called out to her. Ah Ping, her baby brother, darted through the tall, light brown grass with all the grace of newborn puppy, stumbling and nearly falling every few seconds.

She ran to him and held him close as he cried in her arms. "What happened?"

He wept, "Some bad men came and made everyone leave with them. I hid in the cellar and they didn't find me. Big Sister, I was so scared!"

Mulan smoothed her fingers over his fine black hair, too emotional to speak. She immediately thought back to the day he was born; a tiny, needy pink thing that kept everyone awake with his crying. After years of being the only child, she had felt jealous of the unexpected addition to the family, but now she couldn't imagine not loving him. A tightness of his arms around her neck and the warmth of his cheek against hers grounded her.

She took him back inside, and put him to sleep in her bedroom, before stabling her horse and packing supplies for a long journey. Wherever she turned, she thought she saw her mother, or father, or grandmother standing at her side. The emptiness of the house made her ill at ease and when she finally let herself rest, sleep evaded her.

After her years in the army Mulan had become accustom to waking before dawn but she let Ah Ping sleep a while longer as she retrieve and saddled her horse. She thought of what must have happened to the rest of her family and her heart squeezed painfully at the thought of never seeing them again. When she finally woke her little brother, she washed his face and fed him a simple breakfast of rice and fruit.

"Are we going to find Father, Mother, and Grandmother now?" asked Ah Ping.

"First I need to find somewhere safe for you," Mulan told him. "But I promise, we will get our family back."

Ah Ping frowned. Her answer didn't satisfy him, but he didn't argue.

They mounted Mulan's horse after they had finished eating and left their home behind; for how long no one could say. Mulan distracted them both with stories of her time in the war, smiling fondly as she told him of her old comrades, detailed the battles she had fought in, and remembered the shock that overtook her fellow soldiers when they discovered that she was a girl. It kept less pleasant thoughts at bay.

When the sun had reached the highest point in the sky, the siblings stop to rest under a ginkgo tree. Before moving on, Mulan lifted Ah Ping onto her shoulders to pick some of its nuts for the journey ahead. When they had collected and put aside a sizable amount, and she let him down, the horse let out a loud sequel.

Mulan instinctively pushed Ah Ping behind her and reached for her sword, pulled out a sliver of the sharpened steel as a warning. "Announce yourself!" she demanded.

"No need to resort to violence," a man in mud-splattered rags approached them from the bushes, flanked for three others. Two of the men carried heavy axes, another had a broken scythe, and the who had spoken clenched at rusty dagger.

"I want to believe that," Mulan replied, though she didn't loosen her grip on the hilt of her sword. She knew she could easily defeat any one of them, but she was only one warrior against four. "What do you want?"

"Just trying to get from one place to another," the man shrugged and his lips pulling back in a yellow-toothed smile, "same as you, it seems."

Mulan gave a short nod, "Then we all better be on our way."

The man raised a hand, "But first...we're in need of funds and supplies."

There is was. Mulan sneered, "Then you'll have to look elsewhere." Her heart rate spiked, but she calmed herself as she learned to do before a battle. The men with the axes would be the most dangerous; a broken scythe was a clumsy weapon and not too much of a worry; but if she took out their leader first, the others might lose heart and leave her and Ah Ping alone.

The man with the broken scythe lunged for her, but in seconds Mulan effortlessly blocked his attack, flipped him to the ground, and tossed his weapon aside. She wanted to glance behind her to make sure Ah Ping was okay, but she couldn't take her eyes off her opponents.

The leader's face tightened; he hadn't been expecting a real challenge.

Mulan correctly guested the men with the axes would be after next, both at the same time, and dodged their attacks, knocking one into the other. The who had held the broken scythe barreled into her, knocking the air from her lungs, but blood erupted from his mouth and onto her face. She raised her sword in time to stab him and the red-black blade protruded from his back. As Mulan struggled to free herself from the weight of the dying man's body, the two other men dropped their weapons and fled, their frantic footsteps faint by the time Mulan got up.

The bandit leader raced to the Ah Ping's hiding spot behind the ginkgo tree and grabbed the little boy. He tilted Ah Ping's chin up with his dagger, handing trembling but eyes determined.

Mulan almost admired his resolve.

"You take another step and you're boy's dead!" he howled.

"Let him go first."

The bandit chuckled, "You must think I'm a fool."

She did.

The other bandit let out a loud, wet cough and expired, the sound of his last breath seeming to echo through the long grass. Mulan shuddered as images from a red and black battlefield resurfaced in her mind. At least those men had died for something: their emperor, their families, their homes. This man had died for household tools and a week's worth of food.

Mulan sheathed her sword and dropped it on the ground in front of her, "Take whatever you want; please just let him go."

"No, you can't surrender!" Ah Ping shouted. The little boy shoved the bandit's hand away.

In that instant Mulan felt as if someone had shoved their hand down her throat and ripped out her heart. She sprinted across the field faster than a hare fled a fox with no thought in her head but the nightmare of her brother's lifeless, blood-splattered body.

Ah Ping ducked as the bandit tried to swing the dagger at him and before he could tried again, Mulan lunged on top of him, tossed the dagger as far she could, and punched him. The bandit tried to yank at her hair, but it was too short for him to get a good grip and Mulan punched him again.

"Get the rope!" Mulan commanded her brother. "We're taking him to the authori-"

The bandit managed to twist and wrestle himself, throwing Mulan from on top of him, and tried to run, but she grabbed both of his ankles. As Ah Ping returned with the rope and the sword, the bandit reached for something in his coat, a small, translucent bean, and threw it to the ground in front of him.

A dark green vortex flourished into existence, a hungry, gaping mouth where there had once been solid earth. The smooth, strong wind sucked them in, the bandit and warrior and child falling to another realm.


AN: To Guest reviewer, thank you for your kind words and support. I'm happy to hear you're enjoying the story and speculating on things. I'll clear a few things up for you: Snowing's sons are all adopted (Emma is her first pregnancy). Rose Red and Little Red Riding Hood are the same person here; Ruby is Snow's sister in addition to being her best friend. That's all I can say for now, but more will be revealed about the family later.