A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed, favorited, and followed this story of mine. This story will focus on Regina as much as the last centered around Emma, so I hope I can keep getting her emotions and voice down.

As before, Laurathechef worked magic getting this ready for you to read. I claim no ownership of the show, situations, characters, or plotlines. Any resemblance to any real people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there! Hope you had a wonderful day to rest and enjoy your families.

I wanted to get this chapter uploaded earlier, but relatives visiting over the weekend changed a lot of plans. Here it is now, though!


"Why did we decide to walk over here?" Charming grumbled, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets and trying to burrow further into his coat. One thing he'd missed out on by spending 28 years in a coma was acclimating to Maine winters. Snow looked positively radiant among the falling snow, he snorted at the irony, while he felt like the chill went right down to his bones.

"Because we could both use the exercise since Neal was born, and it's not that bad outside," his wife chided with a gentle smile.

He grunted. "Yeah, but it is January in Maine. The Enchanted Forest never had winters like this."

She softened. "We'll pick you up a warmer coat," Snow promised.

Thanking her with a smile, he pulled the library door open, holding it for Snow to enter the library before him. She rewarded him with a small smile, but as with every time since they'd found out about Emma's actions, it was missing almost all its usual warmth. A pang shot down his spine at the sight. Snow was a shadow of her former self, with only her drive to help Regina get through Emma's barrier spell and wake their daughter up keeping her going at times.

"Thank you," she said, slipping past him into the silent building.

The random thought that popped into his head stuck with him as they went inside and he saw just how quiet it really was. Belle appeared to be the only person in the building until he saw Ruby studying a scroll at the far corner of the main desk. The librarian was examining a book of her own, oblivious to the periodic glances Ruby kept throwing her way. Frowning, Charming tried to figure out the subtext, but with a shake of his head, he re-focused on their primary reason for being there. "Belle?" he asked in a quiet voice, not wanting to startle either of the women.

"Oh! Sorry, David. I didn't see you come in," Belle apologized after a slight startle at his voice. When she continued, he noticed a tremor in her voice and a suspicious shine to her eyes that belied a level of emotional turmoil. Given how she'd sent the love of her life over the town line, it was more than understandable. "We were just studying some manuscripts for possible ways to break through Emma's barrier."

Snow moved around him, approaching the desk. "Oh, thank you, Belle. We actually came here to talk to you about something different," she explained.

Ruby's attention, shifted from the scroll at their intrusion, zeroed in on them. "What's going on, guys?"

"How are you doing with everything?" David chimed in. "You've been helping us so much with Emma that we're a little worried about how you've handled things with Rumpelstiltskin."

Belle pushed her lips together in a flat line and nodded. "It's been hard. Nights are the worst. When I'm used to reaching out for him and he's not there, it's so discouraging. Helping you guys with Emma has been a wonderful distraction. Ruby's been a rock, too. She's been here every day, helping to cheer me up when I got down." She smiled for the first time since they'd arrived, sliding her hand atop the Ruby's and giving it a soft squeeze.

For the briefest moment, David saw a look of pure anguish flash through Ruby's eyes before she schooled her face into a cheerful mask and smiled back at Belle. Suddenly the looks he'd noticed approaching the desk made sense, and he felt a pang of sympathy for the waitress.

"Anyway," Belle went on, returning her attention to her visitors, "with Rumple banished over the town line, things have calmed down quite a bit. I have the chance to be my own woman for once. Not who my father tells me to be and not 'the Dark One's girl', so once I get over the loss, I'm sure I'll start having more fun than I've ever had in my life," she said with a weak grin, but at least it approached her eyes.

Ruby moved to distract from the heavily emotional moment. "How's Regina doing with the barrier spell?"

With a sigh, Snow shifted from one foot to another. "No progress yet. She thought she had a way through it earlier, but Emma must have really mastered her magic when she made this decision, because nothing Regina can do can even scratch it."

Belle grimaced. "I had no idea Emma had that much control over her magic."

"None of us did," David replied, "We all thought that Regina was the stronger. With Regina unable to break the spell, we're just not sure how to proceed."

Ruby leaned forward. "We have technology here that wasn't available in the old world. Is there anything we have here that might help at least get her out of that basement? If she was somewhere a little more accessible or familiar, wouldn't that help?"

Snow looked thoughtful. "It might. That's not an idea we've had yet. Charming, don't the dwarves have a backhoe or something like that?"

"They might, but to get down to Emma we'd have to knock the whole house down first. I know that barrier spell is strong, but I'd want to get Regina's confirmation that we could do that without endangering Emma," he answered, rubbing his face.

"She is the expert," Snow agreed.

The other women shared a look before Ruby chuckled. "Times change. Would any of us have ever thought thirty years ago that we'd be sitting here talking about trusting Regina with a question of your daughter's safety?"

Snow's eyes got very round. "I never thought of it that way! I've spent so much time thinking of her as the Evil Queen, but now she's just Regina. We have so much tortured history, but that's all it is: history. It's been changing since the curse broke, but I think Neverland was the turning point. We were all working together to save Henry. That's when she became Regina to me, instead of the Evil Queen."

"And now she's helping us rescue our daughter," Charming finished. "She's family."

"Speaking of Regina," Belle interjected, "Do you think Regina would be willing to come out of that basement and come take a look through Rumple's books? I've been through them, but I'm not a magical expert and some of these are in languages I've never seen. I can't exactly Google-translate them, either."

A smile dawned bright and clear across Snow's face. "That's perfect! I've been trying to get her out of the basement in the daytime for a couple weeks now, but she's resisted. Even Henry couldn't convince her to leave."

"She's almost as pale as Snow here," Charming chimed in, "even during winters here in Maine, that's saying something."

Giving her husband a mock glare, Snow slugged his arm. "He's not wrong. I want to get Emma out of that sleep more than anything else, but after so long, I know she's safe. She wouldn't want Regina to waste away trying to break her magic, either."

"What about suggesting Henry sit with Emma while Regina's at the pawn shop?" Ruby offered. "If she knows Emma's safe – and we all know Henry wouldn't let anything happen to her – that might help her be more comfortable with leaving."

"That's a wonderful idea!" Belle exclaimed. "Tell Regina I'll be waiting in the shop for her."

Snow and David nodded in unison. "I'll do that," she promised.


Henry walked down the stairs into the farmhouse's basement with his grandparents following, bracing his steps against the added weight of his backpack. No matter how many times he came down those stairs, the same heaviness settled in his chest. He couldn't say whether it was the evil Zelena concocted in its dank corners or the knowledge that his birth mother now rested there under a cursed sleep she chose for herself that caused the feeling. Either way he never liked going down there.

What he found at the bottom took him by surprise. Instead of poring through book after book in a feverish haze or standing off in a corner testing out another spell, his adoptive mother was asleep at the table, face down on a tattered leather cover. He smiled at the sight, knowing how hard she'd been working. Walking slowly up to her, Henry started calling her name in ever-increasing volume. "Mom?"

She jumped awake when he was a few feet away still. Looking around wildly for a moment, her eyes cleared when she saw him. "Oh, Henry! You scared me."

"Sorry, Mom," he apologized, "But I came down here to get you out of this basement for a little while."

Deflating in on herself, she shook her head. "I can't do that. I need to keep working on a breaking spell."

"That's actually why we're here," Snow interrupted, moving to stand next to Henry, "Belle found some books of Rumpelstiltskin's that she thinks might have something in them, but she can't translate them. She figured that since you were his star pupil you would be able to make sense of the words."

Henry watched as his mother set her jaw. "I can't!" she protested, eyes turning frantic even as a tremor in her voice betrayed her fatigue, "I need to keep working on how to get Emma out of there! I'm the only one who stands a chance of breaking that spell without killing her."

"That's exactly why we're suggesting this. With the Dark One and Ingrid gone and none of this town's white magic users able to break the barrier spell, she's as physically safe as can be in that bubble," Charming answered, putting a comforting hand on Snow's shoulder as he joined the conversation, "But if it will make you feel better about leaving, Henry can stay here and do his homework."

"But -," Regina started to argue before Snow cut in.

"No buts. We'll even stay upstairs, so you know Henry will be safe," she promised.

The speed with which the bluster fled her was a testament to how exhausted she'd gotten. She slumped over, nodding wordlessly before running her hands through her hair in an attempt to flatten out the rat's nest that had piled up during her nap. "Okay. Fine. I'll go look at Rumple's books to see if he has a solution. Wouldn't surprise me a bit, the sneaky bastard," she snorted before her eyebrows shot up to her hairline as she realized her slip. Her fearful eyes turned to Henry as Snow and Charming tried to contain their chuckles.

He grinned. "It's okay, mom. I've heard Emma say way worse."

With a growl, she turned and started moving toward the sleeping woman on the other side of the room. "I knew it. When I get her out of that spell I'm going to give her a piece of my mind!"

Before she could charge the barrier spell, Snow and Charming lunged forward and grabbed her arms, swinging her around to the stairs. "If you could get through the spell, we wouldn't need to do this, would we?" Snow sassed.

Regina protested the whole way up the stairs, but knowing there was a chance to find a spell to break the barrier had taken any real bite out of her fight. When the door closed, Henry turned back to the desk and dropped his backpack heavily on the table. He flopped back into the chair and looked at his birth mother's still form.

The heaviness settled into his chest again. Knowing that she had felt so much pain and hopelessness that the only solution to her problems felt like an anchor weighing his heart down in his chest.

"God, ma," he breathed, "What was going on? How did I miss it?"

The sleeping woman didn't stir.

Henry stood, walking over to the line they'd drawn around the extent of Emma's barrier spell, irrelevant though it was; that somehow the people of Storybrooke had a growing expertise in tracing the boundary of magical force fields. "I just wish I had seen the signs."

Voicing the thought gave clarity to what had been muddled. "No, that's not true. They were all there, I just didn't put anything together at the time. You're always so guarded with your emotions, but I thought I was one of the only ones you showed your real feelings to. I guess there are some things you couldn't share with anyone else." Hearing his words out loud drove home the solitary desperation his mother must have felt. "Oh, crap, ma! When I think about how alone you must have felt….I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I couldn't see enough to do anything. I know what you're suffering right now in that room. If there was anything I could do to take that away from you, to be the one in that room again, I'd do it in a heartbeat. You were the one that Aurora and I saw. You were the one in the corner, protected by the fiery wall. I have no idea how you even knew to cast a spell to protect yourself in a cursed sleep, but you did it. When Mom figures it out, she's going to be insanely jealous."

Barking out a laugh of pure exasperation, Henry looked down. "Actually, I really want to see that happen. I want to see you get out of there. I want us to be a family again. I hate seeing Mom wasting away, trying to fix this, to get you out. I don't want to lose either of my mom's ever again. When we finally wake you up – and I promise we will; it's my latest operation and you know those always work out – there are going to be a lot of people really mad at you for doing this, but I think we'll all be just so relieved to have you back that we'll forgive you."

His voice broke toward the end of the last sentence as the thought that there was a fairly decent chance they might never get through the barrier spell to even have the opportunity to wake her. When he continued, the tears that had threatened to overflow his eyes finally broke free and tracked down his cheeks. "I just want to know why. Why were you so miserable that putting yourself to sleep seemed like the only option left? I wasn't allowed to read your letter, but…why, mom?

"I don't even know how you thought of all these redundant protections, but it's impressive. Just know this: I will beat them all. I will figure out a way to get through to you and wake you up. I swear on Dad's grave, I will save you this time. It's finally time for someone else to save the Savior, and when I do, this whole town is going to show you just how much you're loved and missed. You'll never doubt your worth again. I promise you, mom."

Henry wiped his cheeks and sat back at the desk. After taking a blank notebook out of his bag, he started brainstorming ideas for how to defeat a force field from his comic books, homework long forgotten.


Up the stairs, Snow laid her head on her husband's chest as her own shook with sobs. They'd opened the door to bring some food down to Henry, but having heard his heartfelt speech, chose not to interrupt. They'd heard every word.

Henry was right: they all had a mission now to make their broken family whole again. Looking up, Snow met Charming's watery gaze. "We've done nothing but fail our daughter her entire life, David. When we get her woken up, we will never fail her again."

He nodded, unable to speak past the emotions choking his throat. "Never again," he was finally able to grunt.


Meanwhile, just on the other side of the barrier protecting Storybrooke, Rumpelstiltskin stood beside a garish automobile with two women. Two very angry women.

"You better not have dragged us out here to the middle of nowhere without a damn good reason, Dark One," Cruella de Vil growled.

"I didn't leave my fish behind to get lost in the back woods of Maine on a wild-goose chase," rumbled Ursula.

Gold put his hands up to motion the women to silence. "Ladies, ladies, please. I promise you I have not brought you out here in a futile effort. Just a few yards down the road is the barrier cloaking a town of magic. Storybrooke, Maine, wherein lies the answer to our problems. All our problems," he emphasized.

"Yes, darling. This mysterious 'author' of yours," Cruella drawled.

Gold grinned. "The 'author' of all our misfortunes, as it were."

"And since you were banished, you can't exactly see the town, either, darling. So how do you expect us to be able to get back in?"

Gold's grin took on a more sinister appearance. "Because I have this," he hissed, holding up a small paper scroll tied with red ribbon.

"What is 'this'?" Ursula asked, mocking his tone.

He turned to her with a sneer. "This is a magical scroll which will allow us to cross over the barrier. I just so happen to have purloined it before being exiled."

"The townspeople will just let you waltz back into their happy little burg without so much as a raised eyebrow?" Cruella returned his expression while somehow still managing to look bored.

"No, they won't. That's where you two come in. Find your way to Regina and Snow White. Convince them you've changed your spots, and blend in with the town. Learn all you can, especially about Regina's adoptive son Henry. He's in possession of the magical book that has all our stories. See if you can distract him and steal the book."

"You want us to steal a book from a kid?" Ursula clarified.

Gold snorted. "Believe me, my grandson is no mere child."

Two jaws dropped in unison. "You have a grandson who is the Evil Queen's adoptive son?" asked Cruella.

Ursula was more focused on the root cause of the child in question. "You had a child?"

Eyes widening as he realized his slip, Gold gave a little slump. "You haven't heard the worst of it, yet."

Two eyebrows rose as the women in front of him folded their arms and stared, expectation written across their faces.

"Henry is my grandson and Regina's adoptive son. He happens to be the biological child of my son Baelfire…and…Emma Swan, who just so happens to be the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming," replied the Dark One with the same tone one would use to describe the contents of a garbage dump.

Dead silence reigned for several moments as Cruella and Ursula tried to process that information. Then Ursula snorted while Cruella coughed. Those turned into chuckles, then giggles, and finally outright full-belly laughter.

"Yo – your grandson is also the grandson of those two goody two-shoes?" Cruella barked through her snorts.

Ursula was more direct. "You're related to that sanctimonious princess and her shepherd husband?"

"Sadly, I am, and that has forced some uneasy alliances in this town during our various travails. But the time has come to cut those alliances. Henry's book is the key, and we must get it from him, preferably without his knowledge, but if it becomes necessary, this whole operation is about burning bridges."

The two women shared a look before turning back to him. "So we go in, make friends, figure out where the kid is hiding the book, and bring it to you…where will you be hiding during all of this?" Cruella wondered.

Gold gestured to the woods off to the side of their road. "I have a small cabin in the forest west of the town. It's protected with various wards that should keep Regina and Emma from learning I've returned. I will also be working toward what I need to resurrect Maleficent. She should prove a powerful ally against Snow and her merry band. Now, standing out in the woods on a cold evening isn't exactly my idea of a good time. Shall we cross the barrier and begin to execute our plan?"


A/N: And there we go! Thoughts, comments? Constructive criticism and reviews are always appreciated.