A/N: Warning: This chapter is going to be quite dark. It takes place right at Piper's start as the Pied Piper, just after she's decided to embrace her darker tendencies fully, so it'll include some references to using oneself as bait to destroy undesirable people, murder, torture, and instances of burning, the aftermath of torture, and suicide :(

~8~

Experimentation

The Pied Piper let out a long breath as she came to a stop on her journey through the woods, dropping the small pack she had to the ground beside her as she sunk to her bottom, leaning back against a tree. She hissed slightly as the wound on her thigh tugged with the movement. She looked down at the bandage wrapped around it, more a strip of cloth she'd torn off the bottom of her clothing to bind it with. Not for the first time she cursed the Blue Fairy for ever putting fears of her music's nature in her mind, for leaving her with that lingering doubt about her own soul and place in this world to the point where she hadn't immediately used her music to protect herself from brutes who deserved far worse than what she had dealt them.

She sighed, leaning over, tugging her leg closer to untie the cloth, wincing when it stuck to the congealed blood more than she expected. The wound had stopped bleeding at least, a good thing considering she was in the middle of the woods and any number of animal could be attracted to the scent. She looked around, trying to find something, anything, that she could use to help clean it a bit more. She may not be a physician, but she knew that open wounds were supposed to be cleaned. There was no stream she could see and she had little water with her, not enough to warrant using the last of it on a bit of clean. She moved back against the tree, trying to think…when a faint gleam caught her eye.

The sun was just beginning to rise, the morning glow sparkling on the leaves of the bushes nearby, drawing her gaze to the sparkles themselves. Dewdrops. Well, it would have to do and it would have to be enough. She moved onto her knees, shuffling over, too exhausted to actually get to her feet, and tore part of the makeshift bandage off the edge, using it to soak up as much dew as she could, until the cloth was damp enough to at least make some difference. She twisted, looking down at her thigh, holding up part of her dress with one hand as she dabbed around the wound with the other. It wouldn't help her if she wiped right over the wound and it just smeared more. She cleaned the dried blood as best she could, turning the cloth this way and that to try and find some sort of clean edge to it for the final dabbing of her wound. She would have put more effort into it, maybe even examined the flora around her for anything that would help a cut, yarrow or something, she was sure she'd heard the physician mention it once…but she had no idea what it looked like so it wouldn't have helped anyway.

She wasn't overly worried about infection, she had had other cuts before, from falls from her horse or mistaken glances of a sword when training to use one when Snow had gotten a taste of 'fighting' and 'weapons' and talked her into learning the blade with her. The physician would worry about it, but her mother's nature had proven useful in that she was harder to take down than an average human. Wounds that might have got infected didn't, fevers that should have leveled a grown man were a mere annoyance to her. She could still catch a cold though, odd though it was, there were a handful of other maladies she could be consumed by, but infections weren't one of them unless the weapon was enchanted. Her mother claimed it was the salt of the sea in her blood, not that she was sure she truly had literal salt in her blood, but that the sea, the properties of it, helped her withstand many things. She cleaned this wound more to not destroy what remained of the dress she'd stolen than the infection that wouldn't happen.

She'd bitten her lip as she'd dabbed at the wound, so much that it throbbed when she finally released it and cast the blood-soaked rag away, retying the bandage in a different area to cover the wound. She shuffled back to her pack, to the tree, and fell against it, closing her eyes and trying to still her breathing. Just because she couldn't get an infection didn't mean the wound itself didn't hurt terribly. If she had been home, if she had been with her family and been hurt, her mother would have laid her up in bed and stroked her hair and hummed a little tune to take her mind off the pain. It was a tune her mother had taught her, claiming that, when she had her magic, when she had been connected to the sea, it would dull pain, numb it, perhaps, in some cases, even erase the feeling of it entirely.

Piper's eyes opened as she considered that.

The pain would not do well to have, she knew, it would distract her, slow her, making it obvious to anyone who would try to take advantage that she was hurt and more vulnerable than she would wish to be. She had to be rid of it and quickly if she had any hope of continuing on. She was sure, by now, by sunrise, the village would have found the men who had attacked her…she would guess they might go hunting for whatever had done it and if they found her, injured of a knife wound and saw the knife on the ground by those men…even the village idiot would make the connection.

She took a breath and closed her eyes once more, thinking back to that tune, and humming it herself. She didn't know if it would even work, if her magic could affect herself, she'd never experienced anything like it before when she would use her songs but she was rather desperate right now for the ache in her leg to be gone. And so she continued on, singing the light melody of her memories, hoping the fire burning on her side would dissipate…nothing happened though.

She was just about to stop singing when she heard a twig snap.

She was on her feet in a moment, her pack in hand, spinning around to see what it was, animal or human or some other manner of beast.

A man stumbled through the woods, scruffy of beard, dirty in cloth, eyes bloodshot, she could smell the reek of the drink on him even from a few feet away. She would have thought him out of his senses by the look of things, blamed the drink…except she had seen her fair share of drunkards, and she had seen the look in their eyes…this was not the same thing. The man was smiling a bit, dazed, like he was in the middle of a very nice dream, his gaze hazy, eyes glazed, he wasn't walking uncoordinated the way drunks did but more shuffling and loose, stumbling in a way of someone distracted.

She watched him a moment longer, unsure of what he would do or why he was there…when the man began to blink in the silence around them. She saw how his expression began to change, to scrunch in confusion, looking around, lost, the dazed quality of his eyes falling away as they cleared…and then he caught sight of her. The leering grin he gave her was enough to turn her stomach, especially after the night she'd had.

"Well now, lookie here," he grinned lecherously, starting to amble towards her.

Even his walk was different now, less sluggish and shuffling, more truly uncoordinated as though his world were spinning on an axis of alcohol.

She rolled her eyes, done with this, done with men and the way they thought, the way they thought they could approach her. And put her fingers to her lips, letting out the shrillest whistle she could, infusing it with her magic to the point where the man cried out in pain and stumbled back, clutching at his ears.

Unlike the men from before, this one had the good sense to run away from her and not approach again nor attack.

She took a breath and turned to go herself, the man likely would run back to the village and she needed to be far gone by the time someone thought to listen to his drunken ramblings and came after her.

But as she walked, she thought back to the man, to the way he'd appeared to her, and how…light he'd appeared, as though not a care in the world, nothing soured by alcohol, but as though he were floating. Painless.

She paused for but a moment, before pushing herself on.

Her song had not affected her, nor had she truly expected it would, but apparently the man had been near enough to hear her and HE had been caught in the sound of it all. She hadn't intended it to be, to go that far and…how far did her song travel? How far away could she be to still ensnare someone without them realizing? How soft or loud would she need to play for the song to work? Would the volume affect how long it took for someone to fall under it? That would be useful to know.

Her thoughts drifted back to the village, to the men, to what she'd done to them. She'd never really used her music like that before, to harm others, even though her mother had taught her all the songs she knew, those of pain and madness along with those of care and soothing. She'd always held back using the 'darker' of the songs, only ever having sung them back to her mother, without the magic needed, to make sure she had done so correctly, and then never again. The Blue Fairy's warning always so present in her mind that she'd hesitated to ever use such songs with her magic infused. But that didn't mean she had forgotten them, and back then, in that moment, she'd used the first one of her mother's that came to mind.

If that was the result of the song WITH magic…what else could she do? What other songs would work? HOW would they work? To what extent? And what songs did her mother not teach her that existed? Could she create her own that would work on people and not just animals? Did humans react differently than animals? What could she make others do and how much magical energy would that take?

She felt a smirk starting to grow upon her face…despite the hell her life had become, all she had lost, she couldn't help but feel…this would be one thing to entertain her as she went.

~8~

Piper stood at the edge of a market in another nameless village a mere month later, her green eyes keen as they looked around for her next target. She was very particular about the ones she sought, for there was still that lingering warning niggling in the back of her mind, the Blue Fairy's warning still interfering with her life even now. It grew fainter and fainter with each experiment she made with her music, but it had not faded entirely. She would have to work more on that, but for now, she had another goal in mind and a way around that warning to get what she needed.

There was a loud cracking noise that sounded to her right and she looked in that direction, diagonally across the small market, to see a man, tall and portly, bald but with a beard, in a butcher's apron, had backhanded a small boy in a matching apron to the ground. She gave no outward sign of her irritation with the sight before her, with the man belittling the child who clutched at his cheek, the man spewing curses at the boy as his eyes teared up, the abuses he shouted while the boy hung his head. She watched on, seemingly unmoved, as the man grabbed the boy by the scruff of his neck and shoved him back towards the small booth they had set up.

The only thing that gave away any semblance of emotion, of the horror the man would be in for later, was the quirk of her lip at the corner in the beginning of a smirk.

He would do nicely.

~8~

Come nightfall, Piper stood before a small campfire, a good distance away from the village, absently polishing the pipe in her hands, her gaze flickering to the lump across from her on the other side of the fire, waiting. It was how she started each experimentation she did, waiting and timing how long the effects of her music lasted. It was truly so easy, to reach this point she was almost disappointed at how quickly she'd uncovered this method.

Luring a person away with her song, having them follow her, was not much different than when she would call animals to her to entertain her cousin. And once she had them in her clutches, a mere lullaby was all it took to put them to sleep.

It got boring after a while, so she experimented with it. How far away did she need to be for the lure to work? How far ahead could she be for them to follow her? How long would they sleep for depending on how much magic she put into the song? Did the length or speed of the song affect how long they slept for?

Now that was useful to know, and with each new specimen she learned a great deal about her power and the effect it had on people, whether it was different for men and women or children too.

She would save this for the night though, for there was more danger of being caught and noticed in daylight, people bound to see someone missing and search for them. During those hours she would use the animals around her, testing what she could make them do, to what lengths she could control them. She had always been able to control the beasts of the woods since she was a child. It was one of the first things she learned from her mother, how to control the minds of simple creatures before she would one day work herself up to humans. Her mother had passed before they could truly reach that point in the lessons, her magic needed to be stronger, her control sharper. To sway a human required more finesse and concentration, it had to be honed. Children were easier, their minds malleable, but adults...that was the challenge.

She had lured a child or two away, never for anything terrible, just to see if they would follow and how much more quickly or easily they would than an adult. She would do the same with other ages, seeing at what point their control of themselves began to interfere with her control of them. But the adults…certain adults…they were fair game to do with as she pleased.

The irony, she found, was that women were, in fact, harder to sway than men, if only by a fraction of an amount though. Men would claim far and wide that women were weak and emotional and too easy to manipulate, but she found men to be thick and proud and that they thought much of themselves, so much so that they were not on guard. Women were constantly wary of those around them, men were not. Therefore her music could wrap around a man sooner than it would a woman, but she would get a woman none the less and with not much more effort.

The luring was simple, easy, the lullaby just as much, each specimen she'd taken had the same reactions to it if in different lengths and amounts. Once the brute across from her woke, the butcher she'd seen hitting the boy, then the fun would truly begin.

This was the only way she could teach herself what she could do, how far she could go, how long her magic would last and the damage it could do. If she wanted to frighten someone, she could not kill them. She needed to know the control she had, how much to give, how much someone could take, what signs would appear to signal she needed to ease off lest she risk killing the unfortunate soul.

How much of her magic did she need to make a difference between simply swaying their thought or belief or agreement to one thing, compared to truly controlling every aspect of their minds? If she wanted to haggle for food or have them give it to her, what did she need to put into her voice to get it without them realizing? If she wanted someone to defend her against those who would attack her, how much magic did she need to turn them so? Especially if those attacking were their allies or friends?

Now was the time to learn.

Because now was the first time she truly did not care for the outcomes when she went too far.

These people would condemn her as a monster? Fine, then let her be a monster. She would show them all just how much of one she could be…but she had to be careful, for now, she had to learn, she had to take time to practice and hone her abilities.

It would not do to overestimate herself now.

She looked over, tilting her head when she heard a grunt to see the butcher was slowly waking, pushing himself up to sit and looking around with a squint, rubbing at his eye.

Hmm…that would be another thing to look into, could her music affect the senses in a physical way? She knew it could cause pain, but what else? She knew she could deafen a person, but how much and for how long? Could she cause them to go blind? How much could she fracture someone's mind when she intended to? How much would it take? To drive someone mad? To drive them to that emptiness that came when the mind was just gone and nothing remained but a shell?

She would have to play with that next time.

"What…" the man began to grumble as he looked around, frowning when he spotted her, "Who are you? What are you…what am I doing here?" he got to his feet, immediately reaching for his waist, to the belt she'd had him leave behind that held a carving knife on it, "What did you do to me?"

She hummed, "That is a poor question," she remarked, "It is not what have I done to you that matters…it is what shall I do to you?"

The man scoffed, "You?" he sneered at her, "You'll do nothing to me," he eyed her up and down, starting to smirk, "But me?" he chuckled, "I could do many things to you."

"You could try," she mused, "You would fail. And then my fun would be over."

That had been the first thing she'd learned to do with the first few specimens, how to kill. How to stop them attacking or harming her in the fastest, most permanent way possible.

Snow White, she knew, would be both horrified by that thought, that her cousin had killed, but also equally horrified by how she had lured those particular people to her. She had not used her music for them, no. She had merely heard whispers of loathsome men who did terrible things to young women and made sure to catch their eye, before walking into the woods. She felt no guilt nor remorse for killing those men, knowing what they had done to other women, it was a service to the land that she removed them.

Still, she knew how to kill them now, what note, what pitch, would cause their heart to give out in their chest before they could take a step towards her. She knew what piercing tone to hit to send them to the ground in a fit so bad their eyes would roll back and their skin would pale and they would relieve themselves before they stopped breathing entirely.

One particular attempt had shown her she could, with the right inflection, the right touch of magic, the right biting tone, kill with a single word. That man had gotten too close for comfort but she dealt with him. It had been a desperate attempt for he had gotten his hands on her throat and she could muster the energy, focus, and breath for only one word…which had later been experimented on more to perfect.

She could kill easily now if she had to, she had that defense. But there were times where death would be too swift or perhaps when she might need information from someone who would not talk. She heard tell around that Regina was hunting Snow White, and she had seen a handful of the woman's Black Knights here and there. If she had her skills more sharply focused, she might be able to get information out of them…or perhaps sway one to kill Regina so Snow might retake her throne. She wouldn't know though until she learned more.

"Perhaps there was intelligence to your question," Piper mused, shaking herself from her thoughts though she had not been distracted by them, she could not afford to with the man before her and his threats. She eyed him, "What are you doing here, I wonder?"

The man's leering smirk fell as he looked around, as though just realizing he truly was somewhere he didn't recognize, with no memory of how he'd even gotten there in the first place.

She took a great deal of pleasure in watching the man twisting and turning to try and see more clearly where he was, how he turned in a full circle, trying to recognize the part of the woods. He would never know he'd walked near 10 miles without realizing it, before sleeping for another 3 hours. If she was right, she would have about 2 or 3 more hours before sunrise, plenty of time for her to test her limits…even if it would never be enough time to punish the man for his treatment of the boy.

Ooh, perhaps she'd keep him, see if she could dull the senses enough for him to not hear or see, see if she could paralyze his voice with just her song…then she'd have the rest of the next night to deal with him and see whether he might fall to her spell faster having been under it previously. There was a thought.

"What did you do to me, witch!?" the man demanded, turning to sneer at her.

She lifted an eyebrow at him, unperturbed by the insult, "I am not a witch," she said, slowly standing, "I…am a Siren."

He didn't need to know she was only half, no one needed to know. Being half-human meant she was half-weak, she was half-vulnerable, she was half-mortal and the other full-humans would use that against her. Let them think her a Siren, let them think her one completely, for a Siren who could walk on land? Who didn't need the sea for her magic? That would be far more terrifying than to be caught at sea with one.

The man seemed familiar enough with the lore, for he reached out and grabbed a stick from the fire, holding it out at her, brandishing it as though to ward her off.

"You should not have done that," she mused, amused even, for as much as she was wary of fire she had faith in her abilities this time, and so she began to hum.

The man wasn't even able to get his hand to his head to cover his ears when the song paralyzed him, made him feel frozen, cold, like he couldn't move.

She had perfected that quite soon after she learned how to kill. They could escape, run back for help, if they could move, she'd needed to know how to stop them moving.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," she tutted, "You ought put that down," she eyed the torch, watching as the man's eyes looked down at it, the fire licking up the sides of it, closer and closer to his hand which was frozen in its grip. She merely stood there, watching as it reached the flesh, the man able to scream for his mouth was still open in his aggressive move to keep her back, "Shall you play nice now?" she wondered, not even noticing the smell of roasting flesh, before she hummed a different tune and the man immediately threw the torch to the ground, stumbling back and clutching his burned hand to his chest, "There now, that was almost amusing," she remarked.

"L-let me g-go," the man began to beg, "P-please. Please l-let m-me go!"

"Now why would I do that?" she asked, stepping closer to him, "I let you go, you run back to the village, you gather the others…"

"N-no," he shook his head frantically, "I-I won't. I-I s-s-swear it!"

"Or," she continued as though he hadn't interrupted, "You go on with your work, one handed. You only need one hand to hit a child, do you not?" her expression turned hard at his widening eyes.

"I-I-I-I'll n-never lay a h-hand on a-a-anyone, I p-promise!" he pleaded.

"Oh, I care little what you would do," she spoke, "You see, I brought you here for a reason, and you shall only be free once you serve your purpose."

The man swallowed hard, "W-what p-purpose?"

She smirked, "Pain."

~8~

There was something oddly exquisite about the sounds of screaming, Piper had come to see. It was like a melody of itself, never the same, always changing, with different notes and volumes, different emotion in it. She enjoyed seeing if there were differences between when she would use her pipe to hone her magic or her voice.

The butcher, though, she could tell he was wearing out and quickly. His voice had gone raw from the screams half an hour ago and it wasn't useful any longer when she couldn't tell by the sounds how she was doing.

She huffed as she lowered her pipe, releasing the man from her music. It was a new song she was trying. She didn't fully understand how some of the songs came to her, only that she would try to think of an emotion or a feeling and see if she felt any music attached to it. If she felt it and heard music in her mind when she did, they maybe that was a song that would inspire such feeling in others. Other times she would think of things that angered her, think of ways she wished she could hurt someone else, wanted someone to suffer so badly that a melody would flitter through her mind and she would quickly commit it to memory to use and try.

She didn't know if it was her own mind creating the tunes, or perhaps some deep rooted Siren instinct, a species memory somewhere in her being that held the songs of her people to use. But she was unsure of that, she only had so many songs to go on from what her mother had taught her, and Sirens of the Sea were very removed from humans, who appeared to feel a wide range more than Sirens could.

Whichever the case, she was eager to try them out when they came to her. This one…this one was for pain. The sort of blinding pain where every nerve in the body felt like it was on fire and seizing, like every part of you was being stabbed by a hot knife that twisted and dug deep.

Judging by the way the butcher reacted, it was doing just as she hoped.

She sighed though when he flopped on the ground, trembling, crying, tears leaking from his eyes, snot and blood running from his nose. She wondered what she would need to do to cause blood to run from the ears and the eyes as well. She felt as though her mother had taught her a song meant to do that, but she'd never used them with magic yet, she would have to test some of them. For now the man was displaying some traits worth noting for this song. His nails were broken off where he'd dug into the ground, tried to grab hold of anything and only found some rocks. There was vomit on his shirt from the times she would pause to consider a tweak to the melody and he'd turn over and hurl his sick on the ground. His clothes were torn and dirty from writing in the grass, his hands scrambling and scratching at himself when she'd tried one song at first that felt as though fireants were crawling over you.

"I thought you would last longer," she remarked, and indeed she had. She had taken to targeting bigger men, stronger ones, hoping they might last longer than the others she'd found. But it appeared no matter how strong the body, the mind was all the same and so long as they could hear her she could ensnare them just the same.

His mouth opened and closed like he was trying to say something but couldn't, his eyes rolling as he tried to get his bearings, his arms flapping on either end as he struggled to right himself.

She tilted her head, observing him, "Perhaps you shall be more fun tonight."

She lifted an eyebrow when the words seemed to reach him, the man swinging his arms out, frantic now, scrabbling for something as she watched, curious to what he would do.

Before she could even open her mouth, his hand latched onto one of the wood sticks in the dying fire, charred and pointed at the end but not aflame any longer. He did not attack her though, only let out a sob and turned the wood on himself, stabbing himself through the chest with the pointed end.

"Well there goes my fun," she remarked dryly, unaffected. She merely turned and grabbed her small pack, sliding her pipe into her boot before she walked off into the woods once more, leaving the body where it was to either be stumbled upon or to rot, for she cared little either way.

She would eventually come to another village, she would find another loathsome person to try her talents against, she was sure of it. There was no shortage of terrible people in this world, and she didn't think any would fault her for ridding them from it. Whether they would agree with her methods or not would be another story.

She went through the list in her mind, of the things she had learned from the butcher, tweaks she might make, other methods she might try. What would happen if one went from the lulled and dream state of the lure to the pain of torture? Would it snap them out of it? Would she be able to daze someone enough to damage their body without them even realizing? If the butcher had been dazed when he held the piece of burning wood in his hand, would he have noticed when it reached his flesh if she kept the song going?

So many questions, so many opportunities to find out.

A/N: Jeez that got...really dark :( I sort of feel sorry for the butcher in the end :( I will never, ever agree that hitting a child is a good thing, and he deserved to be punished for it. But Piper picked him not to punish him, per say, but more that he was just that sort of lowlife that she could get past any lingering hesitations she had about what she was going to do by 'justifying' it in her head as he was a terrible person anyway. Still, to endure that prolonged torture, and be so scared and pained in the end that he'd rather die than go through more of it...that is very harsh :( But Piper was very much not in a good place after the events that led to this, to the Rise of the Piper, she's sort of just snapped.

I feel like this chapter really sort of shows the contrast for Piper. Like this is the point where she just doesn't care any more about how she's seen, hero or villain, human or Siren, she's tired of not being who she is and she's tired of having this power and not knowing every single way it can be used. Without Snow there as a sort of Jiminy Cricket figure, the only one she'd have left to care about what she does or how she does it, she's fallen into this 'if they want a villain, I'll give them one' mentality. Meeting the Dark One later, someone who gets it and who wouldn't condemn her or see her as evil for what she does and how she responds to things, it enabled more of it.

Being separated from him, finding August, raising him, she sort of slowly got back that bit of her humanity she'd lost. It reminded her of the human half of her. We saw a much more balanced Piper in the first few stories and I feel like this chapter sort of shows how thin that line is for her and how far she's come to find that balance.

Then Snow betrays her and it's like that initial tie to her humanity was just snapped :( Such a large part of what Piper went through as a child, trying to be normal, part of it was Snow and wanting to be like her cousin, using her as an example of what she should be too, wanting to make her cousin proud and not lose her. But it couldn't go on, and Snow kept saying that she accepted Piper, only to realize, when she really was herself, that she had trouble doing so.

And Piper is likely going to wonder for a long time, what Snow would actually have done had they met IN the Forest during the time Regina was hunting Snow. Snow has never met THE Pied Piper at her height. Heard stories, yes, but never experienced it herself. The Piper she met was Piper the mother of 20 plus years, the one softened by a son's love and desire to be reunited with her family. The Rose she remembered was the half-Siren trying to be more-human. She accepted the half-human, eventually rejected Piper-the-mother. Piper's going to have it in the back of her mind what Snow would have done if she'd met THE Pied Piper, what would her reaction be, would her swearing of 'always loving Rose' hold up in that case? Would she have condemned her cousin faster? Was it really the 28 years as Mary Margaret that led to the falling out?

In my own personal opinion, I think Snow would have condemned Piper had they reunited in the Forest. Because Snow would have the Dwarves and Wolves and Charming and other heroes all around her, so firmly entrenched in their hero vs villain mentality, so much more so than in the real world, I think they would have been influencing Snow much, much more once the initial 'you're alive?!' shock and happiness wore off :( Piper wouldn't be her softened self like in Storybrooke, and she wouldn't be the Rose she remembered, she'd be the villain Pied Piper, this person who played with pain and killing just to learn her craft, and I think Snow would have had a very big issue with that :( Constantly having other heroes and trusted advisors telling her all of Piper's 'crimes' likely would have forced her hand, as 'Queen Snow,' to cast Piper out and not be seen being lenient to a villain or other nonsense :( Poor Piper :(

I felt like this chapter really needed to explore that void Piper fell into, that really black pit of dark that she embraced, the complete lack of concern or care or compassion for anyone else but Snow, the sort of anti-Rose of going from focusing on her human half to now fixated on her Siren side. I actually think that the Piper we got at the beginning of the series, the one who matured and raised a son and fought to free her cousin but did it her way…that is probably the Piper she would have been if she'd been herself from the start, both human AND siren instead of one or the other.

I thought this would be a reasonable follow-up from the last chapter. We saw Piper encouraging and helping Henry embrace his own unique brand of magic, and here we got to see how she first began to embrace her unique magic as well...she just did it in a MUCH darker way than Henry...which also sort of speaks to how much she loves her family, in a way, that she knows how Henry is and wouldn't do anything that would hurt or upset him and so she used a different method to help coax him than she did herself :)

Some notes on reviews...

I can say the heroes will find out about the baby before it's born, but how soon before I won't say ;)

Piper mostly believes Henry at the end of the chapter, because most of the reasons he gave were truthful. I actually think Gold might be a bit more suspicious there's another tiny reason behind Henry's drive to write the stories than Piper in that case, but they've built up a trust between all of them where he feels like he doesn't NEED to know because Henry loves Piper just as she does him and would never hurt her only help her ;) I'm glad you liked the parallel with Piper teaching Henry the way she got to teach Emma a little about magic :) David will get a swift kick in the backside eventually, and it may come from a very hard realization and a moment where he can't ignore some very big flaws in his hero-vision }:) He might begin to get a sort of mini-kick from someone in Storybrooke who has a unique outlook on heroes and villains and the divide between them, someone outside his circle of friends and allies who he might listen to just because of that distance, I won't say who though ;) I agree, I think Henry wanted to be more aggressive about it with the heroes, but they also seemed to think he'd stormed to his room to be an 'emo-teenager' and, to him, if he went too far or got too angry they might write it off as 'he's just being a teenager, he doesn't mean it' :/ I've had my parents sort of brush things off as me 'making a big deal of things' when I got too upset about them, even if I felt it warranted being upset, and I think Henry wanted to be heard and felt it could only happen if he was calmer and as level-headed as he could be so they couldn't use his anger as an excuse :( It won't be the last time the heroes have things shoved in their face though ;)