A/N: Okay, guys. I think it's way too late in apologizing for how long it's been. Things happen. Fell out of love with OUAT around season five. Fell back in love with it just recently because after watching all that there was to watch in 2020, I figured why not? Why not rewatch it again? Found myself revisiting this unfished piece of poo, and though my writing style has changed a bit, and I might even go back and tweak some of the content in earlier chapters, I'm giving this fic a chapter 18. I hope to post more. *crosses fingers*

Enjoy and feel free to leave a comment, even if it's to curse me for abandoning this fic where I did.


"Emma?"

In a blink and a click, she pointed a peculiar pistol at him. One she brandished from a holster belted around her waist. The weapon blackish gray and unlike any he'd seen before.

This entire hamlet of Storybrooke is unlike anything he'd ever seen before.

And so was she. She was nothing like the woman who'd been plaguing his dreams. There was nothing sensuous or coy or soft about her. Callous rigidity and taut muscles have settled into her bones. Beautiful and young as she must've been, her pinched brow and expressively downturned mouth told him two things. The last eleven years have been incredibly kind to her physically but not in anyway else.

The second, was that she still so clearly hated him.

"Emma—"

"Get the hell away from him, Hook."

Hook exhaled, Regina's words about the Savior registering. Aggressive, strong, and slippery. Blonde and no confusion about who else she could be. "You're the…no. That's not possible," he muttered to himself. Blind sided and out of sorts, he pressed his thumb and fingers into his eyes. Perhaps he was asleep. Dreaming again about her.

"I won't say it again—"

"Let's just talk for a bloody second—"

A pop sound deafened him and then red, hot pain erupted in his left shoulder. The boy slumped to the floor out of Hook's arms. Hook jolted backwards, grabbing his shoulder, warm blood spilling onto the kitchen floor.

"You…you shot me." He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to keep them open through the pain. He clenched his teeth and was dimly aware of Emma's presence closing in on him.

He managed to peel one eye open to see she wasn't even looking at him. Her eyes were on the boy. Red painted fingers caressing his face and then his neck, searching for a pulse. The volatile red drained away from her cheeks, her eyes widening in horror.

"What did you do?" she hissed.

He closed his eyes again, head coming to rest on the hard tile beneath him. He lets out a strangled breath, managing a weak, "Regina." He was losing too much blood.

"Regina did this?"

His eyes burned and chest stuttered. He swallowed thickly. "Swan, please."

The pain began to fade, and blackness dotted his vision. He stared up at the ceiling. "Where's Bae, Swan?"

In his peripheral, he saw her rise, the boy in her arms. She stood for a long while. He heard her cries. Her figure swayed, her arms jostling like she was soothing a contrite babe. Seconds. Minutes ticked by. But finally, she spoke. Her voice was thick and mangled.

"I don't know." And she walked away out of sight, leaving him to bleed for his betrayal.


Emma settled Henry against her breast as she drove away from Regina's mansion. She gunned the engine, peeling onto the street and heading straight for the hospital.

Hook.

Hook was here.

She blinked a few times, coughing out a sob. Her grip on the steering wheel whitened her knuckles. Pulsing anger radiated from her, paying no mind to Main Street's streetlamps combusting as she passed by them. People were clustered among the sidewalks, undoubtedly talking about the purple cloud that had engulfed the town.

She all but drove her car right into the ER's triage. Her bumper and front wheels on the curb. She sprinted into the facility, screaming for help.


August frowned at the open door of the Evil Queen's mansion and the tire marks on the driveway. He didn't see her or Emma's car anywhere, and this was where he tracked her phone to.

Magic. A cluster of cloudy tingles whirled through him, and for a minute, he believed she had somehow did it. That she broke the curse. Yet, his leg remained wooden. He tried calling her, but she didn't pick up. He went limping into town as fast as he could, hoping to see the citizens of Storybrooke waking up from their twenty-eight year fog.

At Granny's, everyone was talking about the cloud and nothing else. He went to Gold's shop, the sign turned to closed. August had peered through the glass door. Aside from damaged cases and objects, there was nothing or no one of interest to be seen.

August had been tempted to break into Gold's shop, but refrained. The chances of Emma actually being there were slim to none. He had to track her phone.

August exhaled, the mayor's open door not boding well with him.

"Emma, what were trying to do?" he whispered to himself.

Quietly, he hobbled into the mansion, his phone telling him Emma—or at least her phone—wasn't far.

"Emma?" He chanced it, sort of ready to get attacked by the Evil Queen or her Huntsman.

Silence.

He creeps into the kitchen, startled at the sight of…

August spotted Emma's phone not far from the bleeding, unconscious man and stooped down to pick it up. He pocketed the device, frowning down at who could only be Captain Hook. Emma never told him about the pirate or spoke of Neverland, but Baelfire had. He had told August what had happened on Neverland. This man betrayed them. Handed them over to Pan.

At the time of Bae's tale, the story seemed cut and dry. Now, with his and Emma's child here in Storybrooke, the adopted son of the Evil Queen and the unknown grandson of the darkest and lightest of powers, it was destiny. All of it.

The guilt August had been carrying since discovering Emma had a kid while incarcerated lessened but only slightly. If he had known she was pregnant, he would've approached hers and Baelfire's situation differently. How, it was hard to say. It was tricky enough dragging Emma to Storybrooke from Boston when she had nobody but a nosey neighbor playing big brother. If she'd had already settled into a family of her own making, she wouldn't have come with him to see where she came from because it wouldn't have mattered anymore. Priorities change. Curiosity and the need for more wane when one is already satisfied.

Fate.

Everything unfolded the way it had to.

August crouched down, checking for a pulse on Hook's neck, feeling the faintest thrum.

Even finding this man alive, here with Emma's forgotten phone meant August had to do the right thing and get him help.

Despite how tempting it was to leave him for dead for what he did to Emma and Baelfire.

Unsurprisingly, neither Sherriff Graham nor Emma answered at the police station, so he had to call the hospital directly for EMS. Eight minutes later, he was riding in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, watching as the EMTs stripped Hook of his leather jacket, vest, necklaces, and the hook.

"I'll take that," offered August. The paramedic clicked off the hook from its brace and hands it over to him, her expression bewildered. He winked at her and pocketed the nifty trinket.

The codriver radios the hospital, wanting the OR and Dr. Whale prepped for emergency surgery regarding a bullet wound.

August could've called the ambulance and left, but it wouldn't have been fair to the innocent folks of Storybrooke. Someone in the know had to keep watch over Hook for when he woke up. August had enough foresight to know he was going to be an awful patient, and truthfully, August had questions. Why was he here? How was here? Who else was here? And Neverland? What really happened there to Emma? She hadn't talked about it and probably never will.

He followed the EMTs into the hospital from the ambulance receiving bay next to the ER which the responders bypassed completely but picked up a few nurses along the way. From his position, he hadn't seen the bumper of Emma's yellow Bug brushing lips with the triage when skirting through a neighboring hallway on the heels of Hook's gurney.

In the Same Day Surgery waiting area, August found a chair and the TV remote, thieving it from a man, maybe a dwarf. Probably Sleepy. He was slouched a few chairs away, well, asleep.

Grabbing a bag of barbeque Lays from a vending machine and making himself comfortable in his chosen seat, he flipped through the channels and settled on Ferris Bueller's Day Off.


In hindsight, Regina shouldn't have been surprised.

But it had hurt her all the same.

After she and Rumpelstiltskin made their quiet agreement in his apartment, the magic soon enveloped them and their surroundings. It settled into her skin, her blood, her bones, and sings. She may've not needed magic these last twenty-eight years, but she had missed it.

In her peripheral, she saw Rumpelstiltskin stand. "That's better," he muttered and lifted a hand. He disappeared into a whirling cloud as did Belle, and the knife dropped from Graham's grip, the bloodied blade clanking against the porcelain of the tub. The then free hand touched his chest and his other cupped his head. He groaned.

"Give me his heart, Mother. They're gone," Regina said, extending her hand.

Cora turned to face her daughter, a displeased look on her face. "We'll have to figure something else out, I suppose."

"Mother, please." Regina flexed her hand, her darks eyes sliding to Graham's prone form. "He hasn't been well these last couple of days. He needs rest."

The older woman cocked her head, a curious expression on her face. "You may be right. There's magic in this town now, and with both of us whole again, we'll get that dagger."

She removed the heart from the velvet string purse around her wrist, and Regina replied, "And what about Hook? He's not going to be able to kill him now."

"That sounds like his problem, Regina."

"You had a deal with him, Mother, and I don't want him making a nuisance of himself in my town trying to kill the pawnbroker."

"He's hardly a threat to us now. We have magic." Cora retrieved the heart from the pouch, smiling at the pale, panting man not far from her feet. The heart, red and bright and beating, throbs in her grasp. "He was your huntsman back in the Enchanted Forest, and you still have him after all these years. You have yet to grow tired of your pet. I visited his apartment, and your touch is all over the place. You…take care of him."

"Mother, please," she whispered, coming closer. Her cellphone rang which she ignored.

"Of course." Cora extended the heart towards her daughter's hand in offering, hovering over it.

And then her fingers clench.

"Mother, no—!"

Glassy dust slipped between Regina's fingers, and she watched helplessly as Graham clutched the fabric over his chest and sank backwards. His body sprawled and motionless on Gold's bathroom floor, and she lunged at him, falling to her knees and cupping his face. Tears blurred her vision, and she wept, burying her face in his chest.

Her cellphone rang again.

"Why?" she choked out. "He didn't do anything to you."

Her mother crouched down beside her, stroking her hair. Regina batted it away, glaring over her shoulder. "Don't touch me."

"He was a weakness you could afford to lose."

"Like Daniel was," she hissed.

Rolling her eyes, she stood and crossed her arms. "Are we really going to go there again? Your precious huntsman was compromised, Regina. I held his heart and had his secrets. He didn't love you. He wanted Emma. His darling little deputy and…the Savior who's here to break your curse and destroy all your happiness you worked so hard to get."

Crippled by sorrow, Regina couldn't bring herself to say anything more. Again, she lowered her head to his chest, and squeezed her eyes shut.

"All right," her mother said, exhaling. "I will leave, but you'll come to me, Regina. Your curse is being ripped apart at the seams and when it does finally break, and you lose the town, your people, and your son, I'll be here to help you get it all back."

In a flourish of purple smoke, her mother left, and Regina would've stayed there with Graham for as long as she needed to, but her phone kept ringing and beeping. There was an emergency.

Sniffling, she brought the phone to her ear and listened to her first message, absentmindedly caressing Graham's chest.

She didn't listen to the next three messages but darted to the toilet and dry heaved until she almost lost consciousness.


Dr. Whale left the room reluctantly. An emergency waiting for him in the OR. Emma caught from one of Henry's nurses that it was a gorgeous gunshot victim who'd been found at the mayor's house, but she wasn't going to bring herself to fret Hook would live. If she had really wanted to kill him, she would've aimed for his face.

He would survive. She wanted him, too, and in time, he'd regret she even showed him mercy. Hook may have not been directly responsible for Henry being in a coma, but he was in league with Regina. He was at her house and holding Henry like he had any right to.

Henry.

He was able to be resuscitated. They tried chest compressions first, and Dr. Whale noticed the slight discoloring on her son's chest and asked if she had tried CPR on him. She had shaken her head no, thinking of Hook who'd been holding him when she got to Regina's. Dr. Whale then ordered a defibrillator to be used which did jump start Henry's heart and pulse, albeit to a concerningly low and slow rate.

Tears pouring down her face, Emma watched helplessly at the numbers on his monitor.

"We've called the mayor," said one of the nurses. "We could only leave messages…"

"Henry…" His name fell from Emma's lips, and she knelt beside him. The two nurses then took their exit, giving her privacy even though she had no real, legal right to him.

She would take it, anyway. He was hers and should've been the moment she found out about him. How could she have done this? This was her fault. If she hadn't been selfish. If she'd been brave and kept him. Even looked at him when he was born. Emma knew it would've changed everything if she had. Other women in jail—hard, regretful, heartbroken mothers— told her looking at her newborn would make her love it, and she'd change her mind immediately about giving it up for adoption.

"Henry." She clasped his tiny hand. A tiny hand that had been even smaller and had been inside of her. His little wriggling form squirming and kicking and pushing into her bladder in the middle of the night. How he had kicked her in the ribs when she'd eat the jail's off-brand Fritos smothered in mystery meat chili and butterscotch pudding for dessert.

After he was born and she returned to finish her sentence, her mind and body and soul felt hollow. And the physical and mental pain. Emma hadn't felt such depression since…since first arriving to Neverland. But even then, she found the will to fight for her life. While recovering in the facility's infirmary, she had considered killing herself. It was a feeling she couldn't shake, even when released. She was out of sorts for a while.

Emma heard Regina before seeing her. The sound of her heels clicked on the floor. Emma glared up at her, about to tackle her to the ground and rip out her throat, but the woman took care of that first part herself. She lost her footing and hit the floor and makes no move to climb to her feet and brush off the wrinkles of her clothes. Instead, she only moved to sit. Her hair was disheveled, and it wasn't just from the fall. Her face was flushed, wet from tears.

"Oh, God." She placed a palm on her chest and a sob wracked her body.

Emma stood. Her fingers fisted the sheet of Henry's bed. "What was it you gave him?"

Her question seemed to snap something into place for Regina who clamors to her feet. "It was for you! You were supposed to drink it and stay the hell out of mine and my son's life!" Her eyes fell to Henry, her hands clasping over her ribs. "He must've thought it was juice."

Emma lunged, throwing Regina against the wall. "What was it?"

The woman pushed herself out of Emma's grasp, wiping her face and glaring. Her voice turns low and thick. "This is your fault. Just like your mother, you ruin everything, Swan. I'm going to kill that Mary Margaret. Slow and bloody, until she begs for it. Then I'm going to rip out David Nolan's heart. Your precious daddy." She sneered. "I saw the footage. You woke him with that little kiss. How did you know about any of this?"

"It doesn't matter. When Henry wakes up, I'm taking him and leaving. If you come after us, you're going to see how the real world works and what a real court and attorney means."

"Wake up? Don't you get it?" Regina hissed, a fresh wave of tears streaming down her cheeks. "That was a Sleeping Curse he drank. He's not going to wake up."

Emma brought her hands to her mouth. Her thoughts flashed to Henry's storybook. Of Snow White in her glass coffin. Sprinting to trash, she vomited.

What had she done? How could she have given up Henry to this? She should've kept him. She should've looked at him and loved him and did everything she could to be the mother he deserved.

Emma went to the sink, washing out her mouth. "Henry's six years old. He doesn't have a True Love to fucking wake him up? As much as I want to bash your head in, Regina, you have to wake him up. You have to find a way to reverse it."

"There's not. Even with magic…" Her voice trailed off, her brow furrowing. Wiping at her cheeks with her back of her hand, she continued, "Magic is here. The cloud. Then maybe—"

"Was magic?" Her heart dropped into her stomach, and she has to sit down on a visiting chair. "Gold said it would break the curse, and I fell for it."

Regina sniffed, her chuckle mirthless. "Well, never trust the Dark One on anything, but on this, we might not—"

Jerking her head at Regina, Emma slowly rose to legs. "No." A wave of light-headedness washed over her, and she hit the seat again. Hunching over, she cupped her shaking head. "No, no, no! That's not possible! Gold is the Dark One?"

Memories of Neal—Bae—in Neverland. The whispered conversations they had together on his bunk, around the island, around the ship. He told her where he came from. Who he came from and how he got there to that godforsaken place. He never said his father's true name, out of fear of summoning him somehow. He only referred to him as the Dark One.

And that lunatic was Gold and was here and it made perfect sense and yet not at all. The greed, the need for control and power, the trinkets, and the utter creepiness of him sounded like how Neal described him. But what didn't make sense was him being here all this time. Stuck in Storybrooke for twenty-eight years without magic.

Emma looked at Henry, one of her hands clenching and unclenching. She didn't want to go back to Gold's shop or see him ever again. But if he could somehow find a way to wake Henry up…

"No." Emma shook her head, steeling herself. She stood up, glaring at Regina. "You fix this. You did this."

"I don't know how!" she snapped, exasperated.

"Then figure it out!"

"Gold has knowledge of magic I can't even…" Regina lifted her hands and formed them into fists, her eyes narrowing. "And he arranged all of this. He even got Henry for me." Her dark eyes drifted to Emma. "When you said Gold is the Dark One, it was as if you knew something. And before when you said…I dug up everything on you, Swan. Everything. How do you know as much as you do? Did you arrange something with Gold when you were in jail—"

"You think I would've given my kid to him?"

"If you know his story, then you know you wouldn't have been the first. I was on a waiting-list for two years before I got Henry with Gold handling my case. I didn't even get a single bite. No adoption agency contacting me. I wasn't even given the chance to foster, and then just like that, Gold had a baby for me to pick up in Boston. You were three thousand miles away from here when you had Henry. How is that even possible if you and Gold didn't have a deal going on?"

Emma walked back over to the sink, another wave of nausea hitting. For a brief moment, she thought that Neal must've been in Storybrooke or was in contact with…his father. But there was no forgetting the boy she met in Neverland who feared and hated his father would find him. The boy who would've rather stayed in Neverland with a man who broke his family and Pan breathing down his neck than call out for Rumpelstiltskin.

And this world, Baelfire became Neal Cassidy. A young man who came from no one and nowhere just like her. He didn't have a dad. He didn't have a mom. He just…he just appeared like she did.

Bae. Neal. He was a lot of things and had done a lot of things and was probably still doing all of the things. But whatever those things were, he wasn't doing them in Storybrooke and never had. How Gold got ahold her kid was just...Emma didn't know.

"By all means, Ms. Swan, lets take our time getting over to Gold's."

"I'll meet you there." She looked over her shoulder at Henry. The transport team would be moving him soon. Probably to the same room her father had just vacated. She touched her lips, recalling how he'd woken up and walked off. Emma wasn't his true love, and he wasn't in a Sleeping Curse, either. But he was her dad, and he did wake up.

Regina made no move to leave, and Emma figured she wouldn't. Exhaling softly, she went to Henry and smoothed the hair over his brow off to the side. Hope and determination bubbled within her. She thought of how they first met. How he knew her immediately just by her name, how embraced her immediately, and how he accepted her as his mother. Regina came over to his other side, taking his little hand in her own.

And Emma balled up her fist, reached across Henry, and decked her hard. The woman flailed backwards, and Emma wasted no time. She channeled that love and trust Henry showed her at the crosswalk and the sensations she felt when he squirmed and kicked within her those short years ago. She brushed her lips against her son's forehead, and a rush of something indescribable—something pure and perfect—pulsed through her. A prismed wave gushed throughout her surroundings. Her son's eyes popped open, and he sat up, sticking out his tongue and grimacing.

"I didn't like that juice at all."