After a year, the war was still dragging on. Slowly it dragged, begrudgingly. But there was evidence that there was hope on the horizon. In the beginning, it truly had seemed like it was merely a rebel uprising, but after a year, it was obviously more than that. People joined David and Snow in droves, flocked to them, really! They started in the small towns, similar to the place Regina had threatened the Princess and drew from there to make their army. For the most part, as long as that was all they were doing, George and Regina continued to ignore them. Stupidly, in his opinion. They attacked their camp on more than one occasion. Snow and David intelligently gave the order not to fight but rather to flee and regroup elsewhere. And then, one night, after their army had grown close to a thousand, George foolishly sent a small platoon after them, and Snow and David had attacked. They'd claimed victory over his army easily enough, and many of the survivors had turned for them, vowing to serve them loyally.

From there, they moved from recruiting in small towns to cities, that was when George and Regina had both realized they might have a problem on their hands and formed a stronger, more official alliance. More and more, they attacked, and more and more, David and Snow won. Even he had to admit, False Prince though he may be, David was learning the ropes faster than he'd ever thought he might. Standing at Snow's side, even if he still used James's name, he was growing into quite the leader with an eye for battle. He was becoming a prince. A true prince. Not just a foolish boy playing prince or a man engaged to a princess. He took to the role like a fish to water.

Soon, it wasn't just George and Regina's troops that were attacking; Snow and David's army was doing some attacking of their own and not just on battlefields. They began claiming land. They began governing as well as warring so that he knew when the day came that they finally took what they needed, they would slide easily into a castle, just as though they'd always been there.

Snow and David weren't the only ones learning; he was too. He learned to trust the Seer. He learned to watch and not meddle, that everything had its time and place whether he rushed off to help it along or he didn't. For instance, when George realized that he was destined to fail, fall from grace and lose his Kingdom, he'd hired a new general, an old familiar face to him but not to anyone else in this land. It was none other than Lancelot of Camelot, and he'd been hired by George not to kill Snow, but rather to capture her. He was successful. One night, just after his appointment, he captured Snow White, put a bag over her head, and took her back to King George, and that was where he'd executed a brilliant but cruel plan.

"I don't care what you do to me! I will never tell you where he is!" he heard Snow shout through a mirror the moment the bag was off of her head.

George held up a hand to silence her. "I know. That's not why you're here. Would you bring our guest some water?" he requested, looking to Lancelot. He looked confused at the command, but he couldn't blame him. The task seemed beneath him. But he was an obedient knight, he remembered that much about him, and poured some water into a goblet sitting out of the table as George walked away from her.

"Times have been good for you, haven't they? I can see a light in your eyes. Cherish that. Because that light can die and be replaced by something else–pain."

"The only thing you know of pain is how to inflict it," Snow snapped, pulling the goblet from Lancelot.

"That's where you're so very, very wrong. I've had my share of pain. I had a son that I loved, died before his time. I tried to replace him with your 'Charming,' offered him the world. But he rejected me. Humiliated me in front of my kingdom. All for the sake of true love."

"Something about which you know nothing," she stated before taking a sip and meeting him at the table.

"I know more than you think."

"You? Were in love?" she taunted in disbelief.

"Yes. And she loved me. We were happy, blissful. But then, she became cursed. She drank a vile potion that made it impossible for us to conceive a child. Family is everything, my dear. Losing all hope of having one…there is no greater misery. Charming could have been that hope for me. But, instead, he made my suffering worse. For that, death is too good for him. First, he must know pain. My pain."

He felt his stomach twist sickened in his gut as fear stole over Snow's face and into her eyes. "NO!" he shouted at the mirror, at the same time that Snow did. She was looking down into the goblet, looking for something that couldn't be seen. No.

"You poisoned her?" Lancelot realized aloud.

"I cursed her," George corrected. "She will never bear a child."

He'd fret about, panicking, telling himself he had to go, had to find a cure even though he knew there was none. The Seer urged him to stay put. He'd watched the mirror like a hawk as Snow was released, tossed cruelly back into the woods at the spot her camp had once been before George's armies attacked. But she wasn't alone for long, for out of the woods came Lancelot.

After knocking him off her horse and threatening the man, she helped him to his feet, and the pair departed for a little cabin that David had hidden his mother in long ago, before the war had even started, apparently. When they arrived, David was there, so was his mother, who had an arrow sticking out of her chest surrounded by nearly half a dozen dead soldiers of King George.

All was lost. He could see that easily enough, even before they pulled the arrow free and examined it's tip, observing the wink of poison left on the wood. The wound to Ruth's chest would be a fatal one without magical intervention, and the Seer wasn't giving him a sign to go.

But they did.

While he expected them to put Ruth into the house and stay with her for her last hours, they moved quickly, prepared a wagon, loaded Ruth into it, and left for somewhere. Lancelot and David talked in the front, but Snow stayed with Ruth in the back. While the boys were away and the wagon was stopped, Ruth struggled to pull a charm from her neck, one that he recognized instantly as a gypsy charm because he had about twenty of his own. It was a charm for women, one that predicted the sex of a woman's child. Snow was clearly uncomfortable with the conversation, but he watched as Ruth held Snow's hand out over the charm…and it didn't react. Snow nodded in understanding and exchanged what he could only imagine was an explanation to Ruth. But instead of growing concerned, the old woman grew excited. The words she said not only calmed Snow White, but they also made her smile.

All conversations ended when the boys returned, but as they walked on, he looked between the pair and often saw them cast glances at each other that encouraged smirks and grins. They were planning something. But what?

Lake Nostos. Oh, he knew the moment he saw it that was their plan but…it was a useless plan. Lake Nostos was no more. With the siren dead, it was now barren land, the lakebed drying up a little more every second. Still, they searched, and searched, and searched…until David raced to the place where Lancelot was, and he saw a single swallow of water left inside of a seashell. The men poured it into a canteen, and David took it to Ruth. David offered it, and she drank, or at least it appeared that she had…but he knew it wasn't so.

That water, even a sip, should have cured a wound like hers instantly, and yet there was nothing, no hint of getting better at all. That left him two conclusions. Either the water wasn't from Lake Nostos, just something left there from a rainstorm, or…she hadn't taken the sip.

Given the look Ruth kept giving Snow, he was willing to bet it was the latter. But…as he watched what unfolded, he began to see that there was method as well as madness to the Seer's instructions. Snow and David made themselves suddenly busy, and Lancelot bent his head low to listen to something Ruth said as she pressed the flask into his hands. A few moments later, the couple had constructed a simple arch and a bouquet of flowers. Though he couldn't hear, he recognized the wedding ceremony simply enough, a wedding ceremony that Lancelot officiated, in which, before he'd taken his place, he'd poured the small contents of the flask into a canteen.

Snow drank first, then David, and after they kissed, he wasn't surprised to see Ruth had died.

A few hours later, when David had buried his mother and held the charm out over Snow's hand, it did as he expected, and swung. The curse was lifted. He hadn't had to lift a finger. It was a good lesson to learn. So often in his life, he'd thought that he was the catalyst only to find that he was just another pawn of history, playing his part so that things could continue as they were supposed to. There was some relief in that because it meant that he was destined to get back to Baelfire. The future dictated it.

We all know this chapter, and it is what it is. I'm sorry these aren't more interesting, but I tried to give Rumple something to learn at the end of it.

Thank you, Jennifer Baratta and Grace5231973, for your reviews on the previous chapter, more Snowing ahead as we make our way towards the end. I did tell you this was my least favorite section, didn't I? Peace and Happy Reading!