He finds her. She's crouched on the precipice clinging to Henry, and he knows from the way a shiver ripples down her back what's happened. He knows from the way she leans forward and gazes down into the valley what's down there. Before he takes that instinctive step closer to her, he meets Henry's tear-filled eyes. They plead with him, and, at the same time, wait for him to do something. Snow and David stand nearby, just as speechless and frozen, perhaps more so.

He'll say her name, start with that. From there...

"Henry, it's going to be all right," he hears her murmur, her fingers gliding down her son's hair to the back of his neck. She rises to her feet on her own, and he sees just how bloodshot her eyes are. She flinches, almost glancing over her shoulder at what lies below the precipice, but then squares her shoulders and hurries over to him. It's been ages since she's read his face, and tears well in his eyes as she does so, scanning him to see if he's judging her, condemning her, deciding she's not worth it. Fluttering her eyelashes as if she's read his mind, she tilts her head ever so slightly. Oh yes, he thinks; he's taken lives too. But never because one was seconds away from taking his son's life. Their hands fly up at the same time, his to her cheek, hers to a tear threatening to leave a wet trail down his face.

Just like that, they're in each other's arms rubbing one another's backs, and nothing has changed.


"Swan, if you'd prefer, you're more than welcome to stay on the ship."

He'd debated in his own head about offering up an alternate place for her to stay because it would prolong reconciling with her parents, such an invitation would scare her, or she would feel she would be too far away from Henry when he stayed with Regina. Or all of the above. But the way she just sits nestled into him at the harbor, watching the horizon—he has to offer it up.

"And miss out on the guilt-tripping?" She emits a groggy sigh. Her parents had told her back in the woods...rather tactlessly...that the Author had actually taken away Cruella's ability to kill, that she'd actually been, and he quotes, "defenseless." He won't speak ill of them to her, however, so he kisses the top of her head in response.

"That's the last thing anyone would think about, you know? That someone with a gun pointed at your child physically can't pull the trigger. And since when is just not killing someone the same thing as being defenseless? She would have had no problem torturing Henry, and he would have tried to fight his way free, and then they would have both stumbled off that cliff and-"

"Protecting someone you love is not the dark, murderous thing Gold wants you to believe it is," he says with such force it jolts them both.

"Yeah, but I played right into his hands. This is what he wanted." She rolls her shoulder so they face each other, and, while she still looks haggard, it's an improvement from before. "You really want to share your ship?" He's glad the words, "with a killer," don't follow it.

"If you'd like a change of scenery."

"I need to make sure she, uh, gets buried without a hitch." Her solemn expression matches the task. "If Gold and the Author have some kind of alliance going on, this would be the prime time to have a meeting, and since I'm assuming Cruella didn't have too many friends, her burial might be a place they feel they can talk freely."

"But if you're there..."

"They won't care. I'm the one that's supposed to get corrupted or whatever." She gives him a wistful smile. "I'm not a total stranger to the way Gold operates. He wants me to stay so mad I don't get a chance to think clearly. He'll be more than happy to talk smack while I'm around." Glancing down at her hands, she looks back up at him. "So...not tonight, but, maybe, tomorrow night? Is the offer open for tomorrow night?"

"Any night you like," he says with a subtle grin.


Night passes—finally—and Killian tidies the cabin while waiting for his phone to ring, loading most of Blackbeard's pointless additions into a box he could burn later. Honestly, the man had a knack for finding treasure, but he'd shoved the books aside to make room for jewels a more discriminating eye would have known to be fake. Leather belts lay coiled like pythons under the desk, and he'd almost gone outside to grab a stick to pick a discarded shirt up off the floor. Crinkling his nose at the odor emanating from the yellowed collar and armpits, he'd balled it up and tossed it into the box.

Fortunately, Storybrooke evidently had made a vow against litter somewhere in its sordid, magical history, waste boxes lined up all around the harbor for disposing of trash. This way, he wouldn't have to walk all the way to Granny's and risk being seen with the items.

Once free of the rubbish, he checks his phone. Nothing from Swan yet. She'd insisted on paying her respects alone, knowing full well Rumpelstiltskin and the Author would be there. He crosses the street to the diner and tries to grin at the heads snapping up at him. Henry, Regina, Snow, and David obviously had expected Swan to come in. Shrugging, he saunters over to the table they've gathered at and waits, making just enough eye contact with the waitress to let her know he'd like a cup of whatever the others have. Hopefully coffee. Strong, strong coffee...

Only Henry really adds any life to the table. He watches him cut his pancakes and look over at his grandparents. Then he downs some of his orange juice and glances over at Regina. A small smile greets him, and then it's back to the food, crunching the bacon and plucking the grapes free one at a time.

Swan enters fuming, as he knew she would. Gods, how did she expect to feel after seeing the crocodile gloat over the body she helped put into the ground? If she's overheard anything, she's pushed it out of her head for now.

"I'm going after Gold," she announces. Ah, another Harry Potter-free day. "He made this happen. He needs to answer for it."

"Careful. Don't go off half-cocked," he warns. At this point, simply arresting the Dark One for, for—conspiracy, he supposes, makes as much sense as having a werewolf behind the counter sweeping the floor.

"Hook's right. He wants you angry," David adds.

"Yeah, well, I am angry. That doesn't mean he's going to get what he's after. Do I wish I could change what I did to Cruella? Yes. But that's regret, not darkness. I think we've all done things we regret." She shoots a pointed look at her parents, particularly her mother. "Right now, we need to focus on one thing—how to keep Gold and the Author from causing any more damage."

"I might be able to help with that." He's never heard her voice before. In fact, he's never really seen her in the flesh, but he knows who she is. Maleficent. Statuesque and coiffed in Storybrooke attire, she walks over to them with purpose, like someone who has a plan.

"It now appears we have a common foe—Rumpelstiltskin."

"He resurrected you," David argues.

"To help himself, not me. Cruella's death only confirmed that."

"Oh. Now you want to turn on him before he turns on you," Killian concludes. Well, he himself, for one, will be grateful for the assistance. It's not every day a sorceress, dragon, and mummified banshee all rolled into one offers her help. That and, he thinks, looking over at Snow and David from the corner of his eye, they owe her a consultation at the very least. This way he doesn't have to worry about her charring anyone in the vicinity. Win-win.

"I knew Gold couldn't keep the dragon on her leash for long," Regina says, rather cheerfully.

"What do you want?" Snow asks.

"Nothing from you," Maleficent snaps. "But your daughter, I hear, has a talent for finding people."

"Yeah, I do," she says with some surprise in her tone. She'll do it. She'll agree to whatever the dragon wants after finding out what her parents had done to her. Perhaps finding someone is a small price to pay. "Who do you want found?"

"My daughter."

Now things are looking up. He leans forward in his chair, not taking his eyes off Maleficent. The Savior finds people and gives them happy endings. A good deed after taking a life will show Rumpelstiltskin he's corrupted nothing. Swan will regain some confidence in herself, and, if his experience is anything to go by, vengeful notions fly out the window when something better comes along.

"She's alive?" Snow gasps.

"Yes. She survived the journey to this land—the journey you sent her on." As if no one else is worth her time, Maleficent turns back to Swan. "You want to prevent Rumpelstiltskin from achieving whatever he wants? What better way than leaving this town and helping me?"

"I'm not running away from Gold."

"It's not running from him. It's hindering him."

He can't argue with that. The Dark One won't risk leaving Storybrooke again, not even to chase after the one thing he needs. Rumpelstiltskin will do whatever he can to buy more time here, leaving Swan far from his influence. Killian almost smiles. They can take Henry with them if she likes, load her car, and drive off as they did when they left New York. Finding someone in this world, which must be as vast and varied as the Enchanted Forest was, will almost seem like fun compared to all this.

"What do you know about her?" Swan asks. For a brief second, the dragon crumbles, her eyes fluttering at what she's about to speak out loud.

"Just what the Dark One showed me—that she was banished to this world thirty years ago, to a place called Minnesota, where she was adopted by a couple."

He's never heard of it, but if Swan has, and it isn't land-locked, perhaps he could ready the ship and take her there via the Jolly Roger.

"And they named her Lilith," Maleficent adds.

There's no instant agreement, no business-like directions. Something has Swan teetering on her feet, shivering.

"No," he hears her breathe.

"Emma, what is it?" He leaps to his feet.

"Lily," is all she chokes out before she races out the door.


He watches the footage at the sheriff's station by himself, this time studying the lass next to Swan, Maleficent's daughter. Two misplaced, lost children. The rich, dark features remind him of Regina, especially the enormous, shimmering eyes. They flicker with as much hope as Swan's lovely green ones, but that's not the only thing the two pairs have in common.

"Hey. You figured out the VCR by yourself."

"It's not hard when every button describes what it does. 'Play.' 'Stop.' 'Pause,'" he says with a grin, gesturing at the frozen screen. With no intention of seeing the Snow Queen's face again, he pushes the Stop button and blinks at how the tape comes out of the mouth of the machine on its own. Swan sets her keys down at her desk and stares past him up at a map on the wall.

"So, you know where to find Lily?" he asks.

"No. I know how to find Lily now, though. I'm waiting on a P. I., uh, private investigator, I know to do some investigative gymnastics for me. Owes me a favor." She grits her teeth with a hiss, tensing her shoulders. "And Regina wants to come now, too."

"She wants you to go to New York to take her to Robin." Standing up, he turns around so he faces the map she's squinting at, making room for her as she edges closer to it, pinching portions of it with her fingers so they close in on New York.

"Where's this Minnesota Maleficent spoke of?" he asks her. Without speaking, she takes his hand and guides it up to New York and back to the left side of the map, stopping at a large space near the top, names of foreign lakes all around it.

"Storybrooke is somewhere along here," she says, taking their hands and pulling them back to the other side of the map to the corner piece of land he knows is called Maine. "She won't be there anymore, though. She'd run away from her adoptive parents and everyone else so many times she'd have gone somewhere else to make a fresh start. Just..."

"What?"

"I was remembering when Henry came knocking on my door. It was enough of a shock to see my son there, but then he started telling me all these things, about a queen that cast a curse that took my parents to a new land where they didn't remember who they were—now I have to do that."

"Lily won't have any reason to doubt you," he says, knowing for all this world is capable of, believing in magic still doesn't come easily.

"Yeah, but I had decided to stop being dragged down by her a long time ago. If it were the other way around, I wouldn't want to see her."

"Swan, when you talk about her, you only talk about the good times you had with her. You've never mentioned why you two had a falling-out." That might make all the difference. She closes her eyes and lets her forehead fall onto the map.

"I was living with a foster family and everything was going great for once. They were really nice, had two little boys...they'd wanted a girl to 'complete their family' and they didn't mind that I was older. Lily came and found me. I was trying to behave and be as helpful as I could so that they would lo—I was making the best of things while she was out robbing stores. I-I couldn't have her around, not when she'd lied to my foster parents about how we knew each other. I agreed to help her get back something, a necklace, something of her mother's..." she trails off with a snort. "And when I got back, she had stolen from my foster parents and they blamed me. I had 'endangered their children.' Not..." She sighs. "Not a group I was a part of, apparently. I couldn't trust her. She had already lied to me about having a family. I mean, someone wanted her, and she... I loved her, and yet she was ruining my life."

Before he opens his mouth, her eyes snap back to the map and scan it, this time with more of a mission in mind.

"So you don't know how long you'll be gone," he says.

"No. I'd wanted you to come with me, but since Regina's going too, I-I would feel better if someone was here for Henry."

"You want him to stay with me?" They could make that work. The ship wouldn't get crowded with only two, and the boy might find it rather exciting. His eyes veer up the map, wondering if she would let him take Henry on a longer expedition this time, Storybrooke's watery border permitting. Beyond the little island they usually sailed to, they could go somewhere a little more lively, this massive Canada, perhaps.

"Don't take Henry to Canada," she says, rolling her eyes. Balking at her, he waits for an explanation of how she knew. "Your eyes are popping out of your head staring at this thing. He...you know, he can stay with my parents. I just...I just want there to be somewhere else he can go, and it's too dangerous for him to go with us, not that Regina cares what kind of mess we could be walking into. Do you mind?"

"Watching Henry is never an inconvenience," he assures her. He's not sure if he loves the lad yet or not, but it's not something he's ever planned to fight, and it's for the best he stay with his grandparents. His presence either calms the adults around him into some common sense...or acts as a crutch for them to behave the exact opposite of rationally, he thinks, remembering some doddering grandfather allowing a child to ram a mailbox with a vessel.

He stares back up at the map. This world is about the same size as the Enchanted Forest, the same patterns of land and oceans, and Lily could be in any pocket of it, anywhere in the world.

"Want to help me pack?"

"Pack?" His mouth suddenly dries, his throat closing up on him.

"Yeah. I don't want to go back to the apartment alone, and I'm going to take about a week's worth of clothes. Nothing too fancy, just things I can move around in." She sways in place with her hands behind her back, summoning her coy look, intensified by the innocence she's pretending to have with it.

"As you wish."


Just like that, she's gone, the Beetle driving out of sight once again, with only the Snow Queen's scroll to come back in. Once they cross the town line, she'll be in a world he doesn't yet know how to navigate, with no magic to protect her.

You.

Him. She lives for him. Grinning, he stops walking and closes his eyes, savoring the memory of her uttering it without any hesitation, so matter-of-factly, as if the fact has always been.

And I, you. That's what's kept me on my path now. Use whatever it takes to stay on yours.

She'd smiled that beautiful smile of hers, hadn't walked away, hadn't stood there stunned and fluttering her eyelashes that someone paid her so much heed. She'd smiled and leaned into him and brushed his lips, taking her time while deepening the embrace. Before she'd let go of his hand, the words had danced on the tip of his tongue—I love you. Without the guarantee of a reunion in the near future, and there will be a reunion, he should have said it, encouraging her as well as himself.

Good.

Come back to me.

I'm going to choose to see the best in you.

You.

"Killian! Hey! Wait up!"

Henry tears down the street for him, weaving around a few pedestrians until they stand just a few inches apart with his grandparents nowhere in sight. It's as bright a smile as he's ever seen on the lad, disarming, to a point and with his backpack slung over his shoulder, he paints a rather plucky picture.

"Did you want to grab some lunch?"

"I'd be happy to, lad. Do your grandparents know you're here?" he asks him.

"I think we both know Gold and Belle have their own problems," he says without missing a beat, sprinting over to the front door of the diner and holding the door open, still grinning. Raising an eyebrow, Killian ambles toward it, his hand perched over the pocket that holds his phone, waiting.

"My treat," Henry says as they step inside. "I've been meaning to ask if you've tried an egg salad sandwich. I don't usually like them, but Granny uses just the right amount of mustard-"

"Henry, do your other grandparents know you're here?"

There's a moment, and Killian can scarcely begin to define it, both of them testing the other one in complete silence, craning their necks as if searching every pore on the other's face for some tell, some weakness. At last, Henry shrugs.

"I wanted to have lunch with you," he says, blinking a few times.

"You're a bit old to be batting your eyelashes at me to get what you want." That only works when your mother does it, he thinks. And, truly his mother's son, Henry rolls his eyes at him.

"I wanted to have lunch with you and not them because I might actually be able to get some answers from you."

"Answers?"

"Grandma and Grandpa have been acting, well, weird lately, and now Mom's not talking to them, and it can't be because Mom, Regina, has been going undercover. Mom, Emma, knows about that, so it's something else, and it all went down around the time Mom let out the Author, so what's going on?"

Motioning at the counter, Henry picks up on the silent cue they should order first if they're really going to do this. He's an observant lad, but there just hasn't been time for everyone to compare notes, especially emotional notes. They stand behind a trio of men paying the waitress and stacking one take-out box on top of the other.

"So then was the egg salad part of your ruse, or should I give it a try?"

"Oh, no. It's disgusting." Henry crinkles his nose and points to where it is on the posted menu. "You should try the chicken salad sandwich if you haven't had it already."

He defers to others when it comes to the food in this land, not much of it terrible, just the bologna and the meatloaf...and the loose, runny meat spooned onto the bread. John or Joe or something of that nature.

In no time, they carry their food to an empty booth and prepare to eat, positioning napkins, arranging their sandwiches and onion rings just so. After the first few bites, Killian wonders why Henry hasn't repeated his question yet.

"I mean, you and Mom are so close," he says, swallowing a morsel. Oh, bloody hell. Still with the buttering up? "If they've done something, Grandma and Grandpa, I mean, she would have told you, right? And no one tells me anything because I'm the kid and I should just be worrying about going to school and why my mom's boyfriend knows a dozen ways to torture people but doesn't know the blender has to actually be plugged in..."

"I'm not sure I'm the right person to tell you, Henry," he interrupts the irritating stream of consciousness...as per Henry's desires. Gods, he would play right into the child's hands if he doesn't tread carefully. "I'm sure your family will fill you in when the time is right, but, yes, your mother is angry at your grandparents right now, but not angry enough that she would condone you running away from them."

"Do you know how to contact them to let them know where I am?" he tests him.

"Why do that when I know a dozen ways to torture you?" Hell, if the boy's going to be cheeky, he'll be cheeky right back. Biting into his sandwich, he watches Henry. Instead of fuming or badgering, he nods at him and resumes his meal. Pausing to take a drink—just water since it's a little late for coffee—he rests his chin in his hand.

"Your grandmother did contact me once. I would have to find that in the phone and then put those numbers in, wouldn't I?" he asks, returning Henry's smile, a much more natural one now that he's had some food and some honesty. He leans across and gestures at the phone with beckoning fingers.

"Here. I'll help you send her a text."

"They're not going to like not knowing where you are, especially after everything that happened yesterday," he says while he watches him navigate the phone. He won't mention the words "kidnapping" or "murder" or several others spinning around in his head associated with Cruella, or Rumpelstiltskin and the Author, for that matter, but Henry's always been able to take things in stride. He was that way, too, when he was a child, always able to deal with life—until he wasn't.

"It was a close call," Henry says, glancing down at his hands. "Mom's not going to go dark for trying to save me, though. Letting me die would have been pretty evil. So she's mad at them and not the other way around? Like they're not mad about what she did? That's good," he says to himself. "You won't tell me what's going on?"

"Henry, there's a lot of broken trust in the air right now, and what people tell me, they tell me in confidence."

"So they've lied to her about something." Cunning boy. "I understand. You know, when Mom first got here, I asked her about my dad, who he was, where he was now, and she lied to me. She told me he was dead. Then, when I found out he wasn't, I didn't want anything to do with her. I already had a mom who lied to me all the time. Mom, Emma, was supposed to be different. She was the good mom, the one who was supposed to change everything so I could be with my real family...and, I was already upset the curse didn't break the way I thought it would and Reg—a lot of other things. And then Mom apologized. She just sat down with me and said she was wrong and promised she wouldn't lie to me anymore, and it was like I had never been mad at her in the first place."

He doesn't think it will be as easy as all that this time around. For one thing, Snow and David aren't apologizing for the act itself and Swan's narrowed her focus so she can only see that aspect of things. For the first time since she's left, he wonders if the search for Lily has left any time for her to think about her parents, specifically what she plans to do about them once she returns.

"I'm just saying I think things will be okay in the long run," Henry says. They smile at each other, the boy truly worthy of the title the Truest Believer, and continue their lunch. The corner of his eye settles on the screen of his phone where Snow has just returned his message.

Thank you. I was worried we had failed her yet again.


A/N: In an earlier chapter, I had assumed that Emma had wound up with Ingrid after her first encounter with Lily. Obviously this isn't the case since she was with another family when she ran into Lily again. Please excuse the error. Coming up? An entire chapter that is almost entirely a phone call.