Rapunzel stared out the window as the sun rose from the horizon. Since she first became trapped in her tower, she had enjoyed sleeping during the day and rising with the sunset. The sun made its grand entrance and Zela set aside her paints, canvases, and brushes before she prepared for bed.
She had been up in the tower so long that her hair grew long enough to circle her tower room several times over; in fact she kept most of it hanging from the from the exposed rafters, leaving just enough to let her move around the room without issue. There wasn't much reason to leave. She closed the great glass windows of her tower room and draw the heavy, black curtain, blocking out all light.
But when she lay her head down to rest, a sense of unease gnawed at her stomach. She sat up in bed, and there in the corner Mother Gothel stood, her dark hood pulled low over her face.
"What do you want?" Zela growled, though she knew Gothel wouldn't answer. Gothel glided around the spacious room, her feet making no sound as Zela stared. Ever since she ran away from home and stumbled upon the cursed tower, Gothel has kept her prisoner, isolated and helpless, and even though she wouldn't let Zela leave, she didn't seem to have a real purpose for her for her to be there. "Just leave me alone."
Gothel walked over to the window, placed her hand on the thick curtain, and walked back down the stairs. Zela dropped back on the bed with a dull thud as her captor vanished into the dankness, but despite her tiredness, sleep didn't come to her. As Zela lay in bed, she heard an odd noise start at the base of the tower and gradually move upwards, before it stopped with a crash and a yelp of pain.
She rose and threw the window open. A young man, not much older than her, groaned to his feet. His richly-dyed, bejeweled clothing revealed his status of a high-ranking member of the aristocracy. Most people in this area avoided the tower, knowing it to be cursed, so he had to have come from somewhere far away.
The stranger gazed up at her, his mouth falling open in surprise. "My lady, are you alright?" he shouted.
Zela couldn't help but smile at his concern. "I've been better," she shouted back. "You're either very brave or very foolish to come here."
"I'm very lost," the stranger replied. "May I take shelter in your tower."
"You don't want to come up here," Zela warned. "This tower belongs to a wicked witch who been keeping me trapped here for years."
The stranger's face and tone became serious as he assessed her circumstances. "Is she here now?"
"I don't know." Zela admitted, "She comes and goes as she pleases, and I have no idea what she does or what she's capable of."
"If I can find a way into the tower, I can rescue you. What is your name?"
"Zela." She licked her lips nervously. Since running away from home, she had used her nickname instead of her true name, Princess Rapunzel of Misthaven, but for the first time she felt guilty about withholding the truth from someone.
"I am Prince James, though this is a long way from Misthaven. I'll do whatever I can to help you."
His expression was so earnest, so sincere, that Zela's guilt only grew.
"Don't risk your life on my account, your Highness," she cautioned him; the words stung her lips.
"What sort of man would I be if I left you to this fate?" Prince James argued. Before he even finished his sentence he tried again to climb the tower, but as always Gothel's magic threw the intruder off. "Do you have a rope I can climb?"
"All I have is my hair, though it might be long of you to grab a hold off," Zela shrugged.
"Your...hair?"
Zela bit her lip cheekily. She had never had the opportunity to show someone else. "Wait," she told him. Zela climbed a ladder to the mezzanine that occupies the southern wall of her room and untangled the majority of her hair from the beams, though she kept some up to counter the prince's weight. After she threw her obscenely long black braid out of the window, she saw Prince James' eyes and mouth open in astonishment.
"H-how long have you been up there?" he gaped.
"I've been here so long, I don't remember," Zela admitted. "Do you really think you can climb it?"
"I have to try," Prince James stated. He grabbed a fistful of the coily, black hair and pulled as hard as he could. "Does it hurt?"
"Don't worry, I don't feel anything."
A genuine smile bloomed on Zela's face as she realized that Prince James might succeed in rescuing her. He worked his up using her hair as leverage, climbing the tower higher and higher until he made it the top. By the time he reached her window and Zela helped him inside, his breath came fast and heavy and sweat glistened on his forehead, but he stood tall and confidently.
He gazed around her living quarters with a hand on his sword, "Now we just need to make the witch release you. What does she want with you?"
"I have no idea," Zela answered truthfully as she pulled her hair back in from out of the window and Prince. She didn't mentioned that she had sought out Mother Gothel in hopes that the witch could resurrect her beloved brother, who had died to save her from drowning, but she didn't know why Mother Gothel had trapped her in the tower instead of either helping her or turning her away, so she saw reason to mention that.
"Gather your belongings, but nothing more than you can carry," Prince James commanded.
"Good morning Miss Thorne," David greeted Dawn Thorne - Princess Aurora - when he passed her in the hallway. His mother had asked him to give King George an important note he had forgetting that morning and David grudgingly agreed to.
Dawn turned with a smile, her auburn hair bounced on her thin, sand-colored shoulders. "I told you David, call me Dawn."
He returned the smile awkwardly, "Right."
An ever-present discomfort hounded him; it intensified when he faced these distorted figures of people he had known. In this realm Princess Aurora worked for King George as a paralegal, took his demands with unquestioning obedience, had an infant daughter named Pippa (he had no clue where that child come from), and didn't speak to her parents unless the circumstances forced her to. So far he hadn't seen her wife Mulan or Mulan's brother Ah Ping, so he guessed Regina had torn that family apart as she had torn apart him. She even altered Princess Aurora's appearance, turning the lively black curls into plain reddish-brown waves.
"You're here to see your step-dad?"
The word "Yes" reluctantly left his lips, though he hated to acknowledge King George as any sort of family member. David explained, "He forgot this at home." and held up the folder.
"I can get it for him," Dawn offered.
"Thanks, but I actually need to talk to him about something," David replied. "I'll see you around."
Dawn shrugged, "Okay, see you around."
David walked in the Albert Spencer's office and walked into without knocking because he knew it would upset him. As expected Albert Spencer raised his head with annoyance and glared at David; had he know who they really were, he would have done worse than that.
"To what do I owe this visit," Albert Spencer grunted as he set down his reading glasses.
"Mom told me to give you this."
David set the folder down on this desk and Albert picked it up skeptically. "Ah, I was just looking for this. Thank you David." As David opened the door to leave, Albert stopped him, "Just a second. I know you and I haven't always gotten along, but given your recent experience, I think we should put the past behind us; if for nothing else, then for your mother's sake."
If only he knew...
"So," he continued, "I'm thinking of helping you get a job here, as my associate attorney."
Under different circumstances, this would be a generous offer, but if Albert Spencer had retained any of his royal counterpart's devious nature, David suspected that he planned to use his position to keep him under his thumb. "That's kind of you to offer," David said without an ounce of gratitude in his voice, "but I'm replacing Mahmud Rahim as Storybrook's new public defender. He's getting on in years, wants to spend more time with his family."
"And it didn't occur to you that I might want to spend time with my family? That we could be working on cases together?" Albert Spencer scolded, his voice rising with each word. "You realize that now we're on opposing sides of the courtroom?"
"Yeah," David shrugged. "But it's worth it, isn't it?"
Albert Spencer sighed heavily, "I can't believe I expected more of you."
David almost wanted to laugh; instead he smirked and walked out.
Maybe he shouldn't antagonize Albert Spencer, but he couldn't help help himself when confronted with the man who had torn his family apart. He'd need better self-control when he confront the Evil Queen. His mother told him that Regina had come to see him when he was still in the hospital, but he had been drugged and unconscious and didn't remember it.
He didn't know how he would react to see his beloved Snow in her cursed form. He hoped some part of her remained until the veneer imposed on her but he feared looking into her eyes again and finding no recognition. When he woke up from nearly drowning and regained his bearings, lying in the arms of a wife who didn't know him, he abruptly pressed his lips to hers, hoping to break the curse with True Love's Kiss, but to his horror Mary recoiled from him.
"You're probably confused," Mary stammered as her cheeks reddened in embarrassment. She didn't look him in the eye the rest of the night; he'd lost his wife even though she stood right in front of him.
And Emma! Their baby girl was a fully-grown woman who had no idea who they were or where she had come from. The tiny baby he'd held in his arms and fought nearly to death to protect, all grown up in instant. When he first saw her, David thought she was another victim of the curse, but when Snow - Mary - said her name, Emma Swan, a wave of horror, grief, and love overtook him as he finally saw the family resemblance.
Her naturally black hair was colored golden-yellow, but it had the exact same thick, tightly circled texture of her grandmother's. She had his brown eyes and Snow's cheekbones; her nose and lips were almost identical to Red's. And though he loathed to admit it, there was even some of Regina in the set of her shoulders and the way she walked.
From the conversations he'd had with his mother, he knew that Emma had arrived in Storybrooke shortly before he woke from his coma (before a lot of things starting changing in Storybrooke) and David suspected that her arrival was responsible for it. If that was the case, the Dark One had told them the truth. He had no way of knowing if the Dark One was in a position to help them, or if he had even been taken along with them to the Land Without Magic, so for now David would have to figure out how to save his family on his own.
"Are you sure you want to call off the search?" Emma asked, holding the phone up to her ear with her shoulder as she looked over Rebecca's file.
Her client, a woman in her late sixties, had spent about two years looking for the baby sister her father had placed for adoption. Emma remembered meeting Rebecca seven months ago. The elderly woman with soft hands and carnation pink cheeks had tearfully explained that her mother had an affair when she was fourteen and her father had forced her to place the child for adoption.
"I'm not calling it off, I'm taking a break," Rebecca clarified, "My eldest granddaughter just found she was pregnant - she's only seventeen, you know - and things are so chaotic right now. Everyone's trying to tell her what to do with the baby and it's just... We can keep searching once everything's calmed down and I'm in a better state of mind."
Emma sighed deeply, "I understand. Tell your granddaughter I'm wishing her luck." After Rebecca hung up, Emma plopped back down on her bed and looked at Graham's card. She wanted to stay in Storybrooke and knew she'd have a harder time finding clients if she left the city, but being a police officer didn't appeal to her.
Emma contemplated her prospects and Mary entered the loft and tossed her schoolbag onto the kitchen table. "Hey, how was your day?"
"You know, as well as it could be with two dozen 10-year-olds packed into a small room for seven hours."
"Rough," Emma winced. "Did Henry seem okay?"
"Mostly." Mary said as she got started on the hot chocolate and Emma walked down the stairs. "He's still really stuck on this fairy tale theory and wants to speak to David Nolan, but Regina's keeping an eye on him for once and she's trying trying really hard to curb his interest. He hates it."
"I get that she wants the best for him," Emma stated leaning over the counter top, "but I don't blame him for being upset. This is such a mess."
A knock came to the door and when Emma answered it, Ruby stood on the other side. She wore her grease-stained waitress uniform, her hair tied in a two fraying braids. "Sorry to barge in you guys like this, but I just got off my shift and I needed to talk to you, Emma."
Emma blinked, "Me?" She assumed Ruby was here to see Mary, since they knew each other better.
"Well, both of you, if you can help."
"Do you want a cup of hot chocolate?" Mary offered. Ruby nodded.
Once Mary finished preparing their drinks, the three woman huddled together on the overstuffed couch and Ruby detailed Regina's visit and threats to Ashley Bao.
"She's completely freaking out, she needs your help," Ruby finished.
Mary nodded sympathetically, "We'll help in any we can; diapers, babysitting-"
"That's great and all," Ruby interrupted, "but none of that's gonna matter if Regina sues her for the baby. Ashley doesn't stand a chance in court. Emma, I was hoping you could convince Regina to leave her alone."
"Me? Regina hates me!" Emma replied.
Ruby shifted her position so she could face Emma directly, "You're the only person who can stand up to her and you can tell her that Henry doesn't even want a sibling. You're from out of town, so you're impartial, and I think she actually respects you, in her own way."
"Hmm, I doubt it, but I'll give it a try." Emma answered and she rubbed Ruby's back comfortingly.
"Thank you," Ruby wheezed.
They hung out together for a few more minutes before Ruby and Mary had to leave because they were both exhausted from long hours of work. Emma returned to her upstairs bedroom alone, knowing she'd have to find some way to fill her time.
She looked again at Graham's business card.
Mulan nudged her little brother awake as the first hints of dawn. They had been in this new realm for almost two days, since the bandit who had attacked them used a magic bean to transport them all here and escaped while they were disorientated. So far they hadn't seen any towns and villages, and Mulan was weary of living off the local plants because she couldn't be sure which of them were poisonous, so they rationed the ginkgo seeds Ah Ping had stored in his pocket. Ah Ping stretched as he woke up and Mulan helped him to his feet. They lost their horse and almost all their supplies; they couldn't live like this for much longer.
"Do we have any food left?" Ah Ping mumbled.
"A little," Mulan gave him a handful of seeds, "But we should save the rest until later today. We'll need to save it until we can find more food."
Ah Ping frowned and stuffed the seeds in his mouth. Mulan forced herself to eat because she knew she was no use to her brother starving. And she was no use to him wallowing in doubt and self-pity, so she quashed any feeling but determination.
But before they could get moving again, a storm of hooves hitting a dirt road hit their eardrums and Mulan ran in the direction of the sound, Ah Ping following close behind her. A procession of armored knights and squires ambling down the road toward them, led by a woman with white skin and pale golden hair. When they noticed the siblings, the leader give an order her squire. The squire, a boy just a few years young than Mulan herself, galloped ahead toward Mulan and Ah Ping. From the way he eyed their clothing, Mulan know he recognized them as foreigners.
"I am Yves, squire to Sir Elizabeth of Longlake, a knight in service to King Stephan and Queen Leah of Costala. In His Royal Majesty's name, I order you to identify yourselves."
Mulan and Ah Ping bowed respectfully and Mulan answered his address, "I am Hua Mulan, former general of the Emperor of Han. My companion is my younger brother, Hua Ah Ping. Forgive us if we trespass on His Majesty's land; we are not here by choice."
By now the other members of Yves's party had caught up with them. The knight Sir Elizabeth addressed, "Hau Mulan of Han, tell me how you and your brother came to be on our king's land."
Mulan explained everything, from the discovered of her abandoned village to the encounter with the bandit, and hoped they believed her. From Sir Elizabeth's expression, she couldn't tell they didn't.
"I believe we ought to trust the king's judgement on this matter," Sir Elizabeth remarked coldly. "Bind their hands and feet, and toss them in one of the supply wagons."
As Sir Elizabeth's soldiers carried out her orders, Mulan told Ah Ping to make as little fuss as possible. If King Stephan employed a warlock, they could volunteer to drink a truth potion and prove their innocence. This was their best chance to find safety and return home to search for their family.
The march to the royal castle took two weeks, during which the soldiers gave the Hua siblings plenty of food and water. A few even made polite conversation with her and complimented Mulan on the craftsmanship of her sword, which they had confiscated. As his sister instructed, Ah Ping kept his discomfort to himself. When they arrived at the gates of the palace, a warlock was indeed summoned to ensure no curse would enter.
Mulan and Ah Ping were confined to a small, windowless room beneath of castle until the king and queen, who were curious about her request to drink a truth serum, were ready to see them. A servant girl dressed them in new, clean garments and the siblings followed a steward to the throne room, a massive chamber with ceilings as high as any tree and windows so large and wide that it was almost like nothing separated the indoors from the outdoors.
Having lived on a humble farm his entire life, Ah Ping found himself overwhelmed by all the splendor and wealth, the massive size of the room, the sheer number of aristocrats and warriors and servants fixing their eyes on him and his sister. Mulan sensed this and squeezed his hand reassuringly. "Nothing will happen to you as long as I'm here." the gesture told him. When they reached the throne of King Stephan and Queen Leah, they knelt and waited to be spoken to.
A court official placed a small silver bowl in front of Mulan's lips and she drank without hesitation. She gave her story to the king and queen, and they seemed satisfied by her answer.
The king stood and said, "Since this woman and the boy with her are not a threat to our kingdom, they may be on their way."
"Not yet," the queen piped up. The king turned to his wife in surprise and she continued, "I have a task in mind to prove we can trust them, but for now, I request they be returned to their assigned chambers."
It took all of Mulan's self-control to remain outwardly respectful and calm in the face of yet another set back.
Late that night, a guard roused Mulan and Ah Ping from sleep. "The boy will remain here and work for his keep," he looked at Mulan, "and you are to meet Her Majesty in the Rose Tower."
It was dark, barely morning, and they walked across the courtyard and up the tower steps just before the first rays of dawn rose from the horizon. The guard opened the door to a large chamber, and as Mulan's eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized it was a nursery. Queen Leah sat in a wicker chair, knitting.
"Do you remember what it was like when your mother gave birth to your brother?" The queen asked, not looking up from her work, her voice oddly gentle and the slightest bit melancholic.
"Yes." The whole village had been ecstatic for her parents, her father equal parts proud and nervous. When Ah Ping finally arrived, it was after two days in labor, and Grandmother hosted a huge feast to celebrate the birth of her only grandson. Mulan had eaten so much, she threw up the next morning and vowed to never eat sweets again.
Mulan did not offer those details.
Queen Leah didn't seem to mind. She lay down her needles and wool. "I had a daughter, years ago. A few years younger than you. Her name was Aurora."
"You have my condolences, your Majesty."
"She's not dead," Queen Leah corrected Mulan. "But I had to let her go when she was just a baby; she doesn't know who I am." For the first time that morning, she looked Mulan straight in the face. "You say you're a skilled warrior? Bring my daughter back to me, and you and your brother may have your freedom."
