Ava was on fire. She had taken a bite of the apple turnover that her foster mom had given her and promptly fainted. As if she slowly awakened, Ava felt herself growing uncomfortably warm. She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids sounds like they were made of lead. She tried to stand up, but her arms and legs would not cooperate. The air around her grew unbearably hot, Ava began to panic. She tried to move, to squirm, to do something, anything, but she was not in control of her own body.

In the dark and heat, she felt alone and tiny. Paige, her friend, had seemingly vanished. Why was she alone? Where was she? What had happened to her? Ava's torment intensified to the point that she could not even question what was going on, because all she could focus on was the intense pain. She wanted Emma and Mary to come get her, to rescue her from this prison.

Suddenly the heat began to abate. Ava felt her body slowly relax as the pain decreased. She desperately tried to calm down and figure out where she was so she could get some help. She tried to move again, but could only manage the faintest twitching of her eyelids and fingers. It was terrifying to have no control over her own body.

Just when Ava began it to believe that she might be okay, she realized that the place she was in was gradually getting colder, and colder. She started it to shiver as it became too cold, but she didn't have enough mobility to wrap her arms around herself to try to stay warm. Where it had once been painfully hot, it was now becoming painfully cold, and Ava realize that her torment was only just beginning.

The cold was so deep it seemed to burrow into her very bones. It reminded her of the winters she and her brother had been homeless, only it was worth it because she couldn't flee into an abandoned building for some shelter against the snow what kind of up with Nicky to share body heat. The cold became so intense that it felt like someone was piercing her skin with the tiny ice needles, from her scalp to her toes. She thought she might freeze to death.

And then the temperature changed once more. Gradually getting warmer, until she was at a comfortable temperature. A continuous getting warmer, until Ava found herself going hot again. Now she realized what was happening, whatever place she was in was alternating between extremely hot and extremely cold temperatures, but she didn't know why or how.

Ava kept trying to move with some limited success. She could open her eyes for about a second, and in those brief glimpses she realized that she was laying on her back and staring up at her own face. A giant mirror, she reasoned. Ava could flex her fingers slightly more and wiggle her toes, said she still did not have enough mobility to really do anything. At least it was progress.

When the heat became too much to bear, Ava stopped trying to move. The pattern was predictable enough that she no longer a panic. Yes, the heat was incredibly painful, but it would not last forever. During the periods whether the temperature was mild enough, she could try again to move and try to escape. She might be stuck in this horrible place, but she could find a way out and get back to her family.

Ava still did not understand what kind of place she was in or how she got there because only a moment ago she had been in it Paige's house. She also could not understand why she was alone, but she still tried to reason out what had happened. Everything had been normal until she ate the turnover, so her unfortunate situation probably had something to do with it. Maybe the turnover had been poisoned. Neither Emma nor Mary would ever intentionally give her or Nicky something that would harm them, because they were great moms who loved her and her brother. So it must have been someone else who poisoned it. But who?

As the heat began to recede, Ava tried to open her eyes again. She could hear them open for a few seconds at a time as she was able to confirm that she was in fact looking up at a mirror image of herself, lying on her back on a plain black floor with no one and nothing else around her. Ava squirmed a little more. Her situation was still pretty awful, but she kept herself from freaking out with the knowledge that she had the chance to get out of there. If only she could figure out where "there" was.


Baelfire was afraid of the elevator, but he grabbed his father's hand tight and held his spine straight as an arrow as he and the others made their a descent up from the underground cavern. This would be the first time leaving his prison for as long as he could remember. He had no way of measuring time or down there and time didn't seem to move in the proper way, so he could have been gone anywhere from a few days to a few years and he wouldn't have even noticed the difference.

The only person he felt really comfortable around was his father. Baelfire felt an incredible sense of guilt knowing that he had been missing and had worried his father for so long... However long that was. He had so many questions. What has changed in the time that he had been a prisoner? Who were these people who had come down with him? How had he become connected to a curse and why had that Regina woman shows in him of all people? Most of all, he wondered about his mother and whether she was still in the same state, still trapped in a sleeping curse like she had been for nearly his entire life.

It was hard to imagine his father leaving his mother's side, even to find him. Baelfire knew his father loved him and would go searching for him, but it was one thing to know that and another to imagine his father leaving his mother behind somewhere, so deeply in sleep but she might as well have been dead. The thought made Baelfire's stomach is twist a little. He had always had complicated feelings about his mother and her curse, and he did not want to think of either of them right now.

The elevator open to a run-down library. Something about the moldy walls and dusty book filled Baelfire with a deep sense of unease. The building had clearly been abandoned for quite some time. Perhaps that was why no one except Regina ever came down to see him, even by accident, because no one else had any business being in this area and therefore would not have stumbled on the elevator and come down to his prison.

"So, what's the plan?" the tall black man who had introduced himself as David asked.

"I'm trying to think of one," Father admitted.

Emma, the sole woman of the group, "Is there a way to separate the curse from Baelfire? Like, make it so that something else becomes the anchor instead of him."

"I've heard of that being done when the anchor is an inanimate object, but to the best of my knowledge, I've heard of such a precedure being performed a living person," Father explained. He sighed deeply, "But I'll consider it as long as I can ensure that Baelfire won't be harmed by the process. Does that sound alright, Bae?"

"Of course," Baelfire replied without hesitation. "I'm willing to help any way I can. I don't want anyone else to suffer anymore."

"You're a good kid, Baelfire," Emma smiled warmly at him, though her eyes were sad.

"Can you tell me more about the curse?" Baelfire asked as they exited the library.

"Like I said earlier," Father interjected, "That's for us to worry about because we're the adults. I don't want to carry the weight of this burden on your shoulders."

Father opened the door to the library and Baelfire had to blink because he was unaccustomed to sunlight after being trapped in the dark for so long.

"You okay?" David asked, placing a comforting hand on Baelfire's shoulder.

"It's just really bright," Baelfire admitted, blinking rapidly as his eyes struggled to adjust.

"I have a pair of sunglasses in my car," the third stranger, whose name Emma told him was Killian, said before slipping away. He had been a lot more quiet and standoffish than David and Emma, but he still seemed like a decent enough guy.

"How long do you think it's take you to find a way to separate Baelfire from the curse?" Emma asked as Killian came back with the sunglasses and placed them over Baelfire's eyes. The bright sunlight ceased to be so painful.

Father replied, "Assuming I even can, there's no telling how long that would take. For now, check on your daughter at the hospital. As long as she doesn't get worse, there's still hope for her. In my experience, it takes years before things start to go awry, but with how erratic magic has become under the curse, there's not telling what might happen."

Baelfire caught his father's meaning straight away, "What do you mean, 'before things start to go awry'? Do you Mother? Did something happen to Mother?"

Father looked stricken, perhaps realizing he hadn't meant to say that in front of him. "Bae...I..."

"I know you just want to protect me, but please tell me the truth. What happened to Mother? Is she alright?"

"No," Father admitted, his voice strangely hollow and strained. "While under this curse, the curse Regina cast, magic has become erratic and doesn't behave properly. This has also affected your mother's curse. She became very sick. I've been doing my best to convince the doctors to continue treating her, but because of the way the curse messes with the minds of the people under it, I have faced a lot of problems trying to keep her alive. She is alive, before you worry about that, but she's very, very sick."

"And you need to break the curse so she'll have a chance of getting better," Baelfire reasoned. His eyes grew misty and his breath grew shallow. Try as he might to deny it, Baelfire had always had some hope in the back of his mind that his mother would wake up from her curse and actually be his mother. He wanted to hugs her, to hear her laugh, to read books with her by the fireplace. It wasn't fair, not to any of them, that she had trapped in an endless sleep for so many years. That she had her life and her motherhood stolen from her. Baelfire's hands balled into fists as a tear streaked down his cheek.

"Can I see her? Right now," he pleaded with his father.

Father hesitated, "Are you sure? In the past, you-"

"I know," Baelfire interrupted. "Because I was afraid of facing the fact that she was for all intents and purposes gone. But things are different now. I need to her see."

"We can take him to the hospital while you work on the curse," David offered.

"This is something he needs to do," Emma nodded.

"Every young lad needs his mother," Killian added, his voice had an edge to it.

Father looked surprised and unsure for a second, but a moment later he nodded. "Alright. Baelfire, I do think you should see your mother."