A/N: Didn't I say there would be more? I just didn't get the soon part right. (Sorry!) To compensate, two chapters for you guys in a row.

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Chapter 6:

Mr. Gold, and he preferred to be addressed as such nowadays, was already behind his counter, silently waiting for the search party to make their way back to his shop. By now, there were few souls on Storybrooke who hadn't heard of the Queen's disappearance and if she had been easily found, the spell he had given his grandson would have accomplished that already. No… Regina was gone in more ways than one.

Emma entered first, more subdued this time, an arm around Henry. Snow and her stumping husband soon followed, looking both angry and confrontational. Always so self-righteous. Always acting like they stood higher than the rest, even if they had come to him one too many times to count.

Gold had to agree with Regina on this one, they were idiots.

"Gold…" Henry's hand on his mother's arm stopped whatever she had meant to say and it was probably for the best. Emma had a tendency to demand answers, forgetting most of the time, that he was not - and had never been - obligated to say anything.

"Mr. Gold…"

It was a strange fluttering in his chest that made him pause. Bae still wasn't talking to him and having Henry there, always so open, left him feeling an yearning for family. His family. He thought that maybe, someday, the boy could even come to call him grandfather. Or grandpa.

Someday.

"Mr. Gold, the spell you gave me worked and we found out where my mom was taken, but she's not in Storybrooke anymore. She was taken through a portal". Henry approached the counter and Rumple had to hold in a smirk at the way Emma held herself back from restraining her son. "Is there some way that we can find out where the portal took my mom?"

Gold surveyed all the faces present before nodding his head. "Perhaps."

xxxxxxx

The dwarfs, the Charming couple, Emma, Henry and the werewolves all stood around him, as Gold leaned on his cane and watched the drawn circles on the dirt. His gaze kept going to that house, though. He had no need to be told what had transpired in that house between Regina and Jefferson. The taste of it still lingered in the air and made shudders traverse his body.

Horrible business, that.

Maybe a small part of him that was more man than dark lord felt responsible for Regina's plight. He had, even if indirectly, participated in the chain of events that ended up in that house and in those screams, captured by walls and reverberated back to his ears. But, no… it was all about choices. Jefferson had chosen this road long before he had met Regina.

"Mr. Gold?" Henry was at his side, the only one in the group not looking at him, but at the ground. "Can you trace this portal?" Rumple met his gaze.

"No, Henry." The man turned, using his cane to face his grandson fully. "It has been too long and the vestiges of the portal no longer exist for me to track. The scar is has made to this world has already healed."

"Scar?", the boy frowned.

"Yes… When a portal opens, it tears into the fabric of two worlds, connecting them. As it closes, it leaves a scar that eventually heals and then fades", Rumple explained, not quite sure why he was being so straightforward and why he had taken such a shine to the one person - the one boy - who had long ago been prophesied as his ending.

He wondered if he hadn't grown tired and, in some part of his mind, willing to let it all go.

"So, that's it? We can't find my mom?" Henry was neither mad nor dejected. Face serious, he watched his newly found grandfather, hoping for answers that would indicate their next course of action. There would be no giving up.

"Actually, dearie, I don't need to see the scar." Rumple glanced once more at the house. "I know where Jefferson would take her."

"Where?" Emma and Henry asked at the same time. The rest of the group's attention was now solely focused on Gold.

"The Land of Damnation."

The imp felt Henry shuddering and was proud by the way the boy accepted the answer without looking away as others in their group had done.

"How… How is it like there?"

"Hell", David whispered, bring the attention of everyone to his ashen face.

"Yes… something to that effect." Gold agreed. He slowly turned using his cane and started to make his way to the parked car not then feet away.

"And how do we go there, so we can bring back my mother?" Henry shrugged off Emma's attempt to comfort him and stepped closer to Gold. "You don't have to come, just tell me how to get there!"

Rumplelstiltskin admitted to himself, finally, that he was tired. And weary. And, in a way, sad. "You can't. Only the desperate can. Only the souls which have already given up can enter that land. And once you have given up, Henry, you don't even try to leave."

"I will! My mother will!"

How to make a boy see that his cause was hopeless? How to willingly take the hope of a child and crush it forever? It had been easy as the Dark One. It wasn't so easy anymore.

"Time, dearie… Time moves differently between worlds. And this land, it is special in a way that no other land is." Henry narrowed his eyes and closed his hands into fists.

"Why does that matter?"

"Because time in the Land of Damnation doesn't move, it runs forward much quicker than our time and at the same time, goes backwards. It is the closest thing to timelessness there is. Not even Neverland is like it" Gold leaned towards the boy, making eye contact. "It may have been a few days for us, Henry, but we have no way of knowing how long it has been for Regina."

Rumple moved away quickly then, fighting his own, inexplicable, despair. He suddenly felt a need to see Belle. Even if only from afar. Even if only a glimpse through a mirror.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Henry shed a single tear.

The hope, though… the hope still shone brightly in his eyes, because no matter what, Henry believed there would always be a way out.

The limping man couldn't decide if that was a good thing, or a very bad thing, indeed.

Xxxxxxxxxxxx

Henry may not have made the connection to what Gold had said and Regina, but Emma had lived too long in the real world to ignore the implication… Regina wouldn't be able to be taken to this land of the damned if she hadn't been a desperate soul herself. A soul so desperate that giving up was the only choice it could make.

Emma had seen it happen. She had seen the emptiness in the eyes of other foster kids, too broken to keep fighting, living only by mere casualty of fate. And though a week ago would have found her snorting at anyone who dared say that Regina would give up on anything - being too stubborn for such a petty thing -, the so called Savior couldn't say the same thing now. How could she hold the same certainty after seeing that room and guessing only a portion of the horrors Regina must have faced while in there.

She had seen and heard that Regina's life had never been a bed of roses, exactly. But sometimes, it only took a drop to overflow it all to hell. And that room… that room was a deluge.

A sigh escaped her lips, as they watched Gold limping away.

What was she supposed to do now?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Stripped of time. Ripped of magic. Dipped in pain. Lost in darkness. One thought flowing seamlessly into another, always filled with hopelessness. In an instant she was old, brittle bones decomposing still inside her living flesh. And then the moment passed and she was a small girl, scared and alone, who knew better than to cry out loud. There was no movement, either way. She could barely move enough to breathe. There were no more tears to cry. The cracks on her cheeks, the parchness of her lips, all testament to the endless time already spent with crying. No lack of water would do her in. No lack of food stop sustaining her life.

Is it over yet?

Would it ever be over, she wondered. Would the sweet relief of death one day wash over her with peace?

No.

That thought was not followed by another, its intensity burning through her darkened heart like fire and making her pause. It had not been the first time, such treasonous contemplations had plagued her mind. Contemplations of death and release, which had followed her after Daniel had been taken from her embrace. Thoughts of despair after the loud thud of her chamber doors had closed behind Leopold on their wedding night. Yearnings of freedom that grew with each month, each year she had been forced to remain a prisoner within the palace walls.

No. It hadn't been the first time Regina had been plagued by this. It had not been the first time she had turned these thoughts into actions, only to be stopped by her mother, by Snow, by a guard who had too much sense of timing. She had never regretted trying and she had never regretted living.

Souls were such complicated things.

Will it be over soon?

Would death be something she'd embrace, she wondered. Would death be something she'd actively seek? Would it make her scared?

Unbidden, Henry appeared in her mind, stern face directed at her.

We don't give up, Henry, because it is hard, do we?

We don't let go of something we want, just because it is not easy to get it.

Her own words echoed back at her loudly and in her mind's eye, she saw her son, as she had last seen him, looking at her and repeating her words back with almost anger in his voice. We don't give up, mother, do we? We don't give up, because if you do, that means you don't love me as much as you say you do. We don't give up, because that would mean leaving me alone.

I need you…

Regina may have been in pain for longer than she could count, even in a place as timeless as the land she now called home. She may have forgotten the sound of her own voice, maybe even forgotten how to use her legs. Her eyes no longer saw and her ears no longer heard. But Henry was her son, her heart and her very soul. And her son didn't believe in giving up.

He had knowingly eaten a poisoned apple turnover, after all.

If her son needed her… Then…

Then giving up was out of the equation.