Hey, everyone! Wow. I'm really getting back into the swing of things with these chapters. Fruit of the Poisonous Tree is an intense episode, with Regina and Henry's castle (which was SO sad!). In fact, it was so intense I didn't even add any other episodes in here, which was a surprise. I tried, but then there were too many plots going on at the same time and I was getting confused just writing it.
I did, however, bring back Gold. We get to see him chatting with Ada again. Which is always fun. Hope you enjoy!
February 4, 2012
Emma exited the cruiser as Henry came riding on his bike towards his castle- their special place. Not even Ada came here with them, really. She'd stand off by the car whenever she was near by, leaving the space entirely to mother and son. Emma was thrilled Ada and Henry were so close, but she still got somethings with Henry that were just theirs.
"Hey, kid," she greeted, but Henry went peddling past her towards the castle without a word. "Good to see you, too," she dryly commented as her son came to a stop near the castle.
"The storm!" he moaned as he saw the damage that had been done, jumping off his bike. Henry loved his castle- he thought it looked just like Snow White and Prince Charming's castle, and not only that: it was his place. Only he went there up until Emma came, and now, it was just his and hers. They didn't share it with anyone else. Henry considered it a symbol for how special he and Emma's relationship was. Sure, he didn't call her mom (to her face, he sometimes thought of it in his head, quietly, as if afraid if he gave it too much thought the Evil Queen would somehow know and find a way to punish them all for it), but Emma loved him, and had always loved him. Ada had told him so, and Henry could see it in how Emma treated him. Henry soaked it all up like a sponge, thrilled with it. Had Emma known what awaited Henry in Storybrooke, he was pretty sure she never would've let him go. She only did because she thought he'd get some great family (one with a dog, probably, and maybe after the curse broke he could get a dog with Emma...she was pretty bad at saying no to things that would make him happy) instead of an Evil Queen and a curse where only he aged.
But now the castle was practically in ruins, and Henry was scared this was some sort of sign of bad things to come.
And everything had been going so well.
"It's okay," Emma comforted him, "We'll fix it. I'll talk to Marco," she reassured him. Henry thought about it for a moment and nodded as Emma cajoled him, "C'mon- how many kids get to say that Geppetto helped build their playground?"
Henry briefly wondered if Geppetto would've built Emma a playground if the curse had never happened, in that alternate world where Regina was defeated before Emma was born and Snow White and Prince Charming never had to give their daughter up. But then Henry realized he never would've been born, so he shook of his thoughts of that lost past.
"We need to hide the book, by the way. Somewhere the Queen doesn't know about. Maybe here. We could bury it."
"What, under the mattress isn't good enough?" Emma asked.
"That's the first place the Evil Queen would look!" Henry scolded her, and Emma figured he was probably right.
"What about with me?"
"That's the second place," Henry pointed out, and Emma sighed but began to think.
"Well, Ada is the one who reads it most besides you- maybe she should hide it somewhere? Or," Emma thought more, "Ada has this one bag she uses sometimes- a big messenger bag. She could keep it in there and carry it around with her?" Emma was sure if she explained Henry's worry to Ada she'd gladly cart the book all over the world, so she felt no issue with giving Henry that option.
Henry thought about it, "That might be best," he murmured.
"So Regina doesn't know about the castle?" Emma asked and Henry shook his head, coming to stand by her and survey the castle from that distance.
"No, this is our secret."
But the secret was out before Henry even really finished speaking as Regina Mills pulled up behind the squad car and exited her own vehicle.
Emma wondered if she had a tracker on the cruiser.
"Henry? Henry!" she yelled, approaching the two, "I've been looking everywhere for you! You know you have a session with Archie this morning," she turned to Emma with an disappointed sigh, "Should have known he was with you. Henry, car! Now," recognizing an order, Henry walked away, "You let him playhere?" Regina's voice was full of derision. Emma felt the need to defend herself. Henry hadn't been on the playground, and the only reason it was so messed up now was due to yesterday's storm.
"The storm hit it pretty hard," she admitted, "But we can fix it."
"Well, can you fix a cracked cranium?" Regina's volume rose, "'Cause that's what you'll have on your hands if one of these boards collapses under his weight. You're not thinking about Henry or his safety," Regina stated, and Emma couldn't help but think the statement was pretty ironic coming from the Mayor, "Just ways around me. Miss Swan, don't let your feelings cloud your judgement, people can get hurt."
"He hasn't gone on the playground since the storm damaged it," Emma defended herself, "He didn't get on it today, just saw the damage, and what's that supposed to mean?"
Regina tossed her hair and looked down at Emma as she replied smoothly, "You're the sheriff now, it's time to be responsible."
With that, she returned to her car, where Henry sat waiting, and drove away.
Emma's jaw flexed with anger, remember all the people Regina had hurt, including herself and Henry, and she automatically reached for her phone and pressed the speed dial.
She needed Ada to talk her off the ledge before she did something desperate.
"Don't let my feelings cloud my judgement?" Emma ranted to both Ada and Mary Margaret as they ate at Granny's, "That's all Regina ever does."
Mary Margaret shrugged, "She's just upset because you and Henry have a special place and she... she doesn't."
Ada shook her head, "She was actually able to say that you didn't care about Henry's safety? With a straight face?" Emma nodded. Ada scoffed, "That's heavy on the irony, and pretty damn hypocritical besides."
"How'd she find out about the castle in the first place?" Emma asked the room at large.
"She knows everything about this town," Mary Margaret answered, "She's the Mayor." The teacher's phone vibrated and she took a look. Ada peeked over Mary Margaret's shoulder from where she was seated next to her and saw it was a text from David.
"Ooh," she teased, "Prince Charming calls again."
She waited for the inevitable reaction from Mary Margaret: as usual when a reference to their non-cursed selves were made, the brunette looked as if she was trying to remember and then came back to the present with a small shake of her head. Ada and Emma planned to keep dropping hints to see if maybe, just maybe, one would break through. Henry approved of the plan, at least, and had great fun in coming up with bizarre ways to throw fairytale references into conversation.
"I need to go," Mary Margaret gestured with her phone, letting the sisters know who she was off to see, "But I can be late if you need me to," she reassured Emma, who shook her head.
"Go," Emma sighed, "Enjoy yourselves. What are you doing today anyways?"
Mary Margaret gave a bashful smile, "Well, we're just going to take a walk in the woods, maybe get lunch at Fort Fish and Chips or Jim's Pizza. We'll see where we go from there. Nothing's really planned." She gathered her things together quickly, obviously eager to see David, and then stood. She turned back to Emma before leaving, though, to add one more thing, "Look, if it makes you feel any better, I think you're right. I see the effect she has on Henry."
"And everyone else does, too," Ada added, nodding significantly.
Emma sighed, "I wish we could really show what she's like though. The full truth." Mary Margaret patted Emma on the arm as she left with a sympathetic smile.
Then, out of seemingly nowhere, Sidney Glass slid into the booth next to Ada, who looked at him with a raised eyebrow, clearly unhappy with his prescience. Not the least because he was so obviously drunk.
"I can grant your wish," he told Emma, not noticing Ada's warning glares.
Emma sighed, "Oh, Sidney, you want a side of bacon with that whiskey?"
"Or maybe no whiskey this time of the morning?" Ada added.
Sidney ignored both comments, "You wanna show this town who the Mayor really is? I can help."
Emma and Ada exchanged glances. They didn't know who Sidney really was, or what his motivations were. Or even if Regina had his heart stashed away somewhere.
"It's gonna be kinda hard to do from inside her pocket," Emma pointed out, wanting to be careful with how she played this game.
"The Mayor and I are done."
Ada snorted as Emma chuckled, "Sure you are."
Sidney insisted, "She got me fired from the paper. She made a fool of me in the election. So I started working on an expose' on the Mayor's Office, and I found something she didn't want found."
Ada sighed, "I seem to recall Regina making a fool of herself in the election. You were just her puppet."
"Sidney, you're drunk. Go home, sleep it off. Be grateful that you don't have to answer to her anymore," Emma advised, wanting to get rid of the washed up reporter.
Sidney whipped out a card and offered it to Emma, "Call me. Storybrooke deserves to know the truth about her," he averred.
Emma sighed and took the card, watching Sidney leave Granny's, stumbling.
"Okay, even with everything else going on: do you really want the help of a drunk?" Ada interrupted Emma's thoughts.
"He could be waking up, ready to rebel, this could be something else that weakens the curse," Emma suggested.
"Or," Ada countered, "He could be just as much in her pocket as ever and not even realize it. We don't know."
Emma sighed, obviously conflicted, and then turned her gaze onto Ada who slowly put down her coffee cup as she saw her sister's expression.
"What?" she asked suspiciously.
"There's one way to do some research," Emma implied.
Ada sighed, "Fine." She picked up her fork and continued eating, before noticing Emma's incredulous glance, "What? I'm not going now. No way I'm dealing with Gold on an empty stomach. Let me finish my breakfast."
Ada hadn't been to see Gold since she had figured out he was Rumpelstiltskin. It was one thing to read about a character in a book and appreciate his cleverness while bemoaning his darkness. It was another thing to know that character was actually very much real and walking around the town where you lived. And it was still yet another thing to know you had talked with that character, that he had taught you chess, that you had admired the brain behind him.
And you already owed him one favor.
Ada took a deep breath and reminded herself that not only was this Gold, who she had known as a cut throat lawyer with his finger in every pie in town, but this was also Rumpelstiltskin, master manipulator who was hundreds of years old and known as "the Dark One."
She needed more than her A game, she needed an Ivy League School A game. But Rumpelstiltskin wanted this curse broken, for one reason or another, and doing that involved having Emma defeat Regina, so for now, their purposes were united. Their motivations were not.
The bell chimed as she entered the pawnshop, her eyes absorbing the items around her anew. Those puppets- were those Geppetto's parents that Jiminy Cricket had inadvertently poisoned when he was first human? That mobile- was that a part of Emma's nursery that she had never gotten the chance to use?
"Hello, dearie," That pawnbroker- was that really a scaled imp cursed with a dagger to bear his name? "Been quite a while since I last saw you. Have you been keeping away?"
Yes, yes it really was.
"Well, I've been busy setting things up; we're in crunch time."
"And why do you say that?"
"Because strangers can now enter Storybrooke."
Rumpelstiltskin- and it was unmistakably Rumpelstiltskin, not Robert Gold, looked up at Ada sharply at that.
"Cutting right to the chase, are we?"
Ada shrugged casually, trying to keep her head straight as she slowly took a seat at the table with the chess board. Rumpelstiltskin came to sit across from her, lowering himself slowly into the chair as he accommodated his bad leg. "I know the curse is real," she began, "I know you're Rumpelstiltskin, and I know you remember exactly who you are, unlike everyone else in town. Except for Regina. I'm betting she's always remembered, but I think you only woke up when Emma first said her name to you. You created the curse, and whatever it is you're trying to accomplish with it, you can't do that without remembering, so you set it up that Emma's name would be a trigger to bring back your memories. That's why you bargained for it with Snow White all those years ago."
She moved one pawn forward two spaces.
"Your move."
Emma, having received a panicked call from Henry on the walkie, pulled up quickly to the location of their castle. Spotting Henry right away, she rushed forward, feeling panicked.
"Hey. What happened? I came as soon as I could," she looked across towards the castle and saw why Henry had called her- a crew was tearing it down as Regina watched from the sidelines.
Emma was sure she was very pleased with herself right then.
"The castle—she's tearing the whole thing down!" Henry was obviously distraught- that wasn't just his special meeting place with Emma, it was also his one safe place. His house was under the thumb of Regina, school was filled with people who wouldn't remember they had been in the same grade for twenty eight years and that Henry was the only one aging, the town was filled with Regina's puppets, and almost everyone was too intimated by Regina to even talk to Henry. The castle was safe: a place where Henry didn't have to think about unageing Storybrooke citizens, didn't have to pretend he was fine, didn't have to watch as Regina lied to his face and didn't have to know that the woman who raised him had killed hundreds and enslaved everyone in the town. He didn't have to face the woman who he called "mom" cast a very very dark curse because she blamed Snow White for a death her own mother had caused.
Henry was ten, just like Snow White had been, what if his mom blamed him for something that wasn't his fault, too?
The castle was safe. Now it was gone.
Emma looked at Henry's face, saw how close he was to tears, knew exactly what all of this meant to Henry, and her eyes settled on Regina, surveying the scene with a pleased look. Emma suddenly felt her heartbeat in her ears, and her hands clenched as she walked towards the Mayor.
"Congratulations, Madam Mayor" she sarcastically threw at the woman before her, "You destroyed the thing he loved."
Regina was cool under fire, and dismissed Emma's accusation easily, "A dangerous thing that can only hurt Henry and others. You see me as a villain, Miss Swan. But that's just your perception, and you're wrong. Learn your place in this town, or soon enough, you won't be in it," and with that threat, Regina walked away, leaving Emma with anger she couldn't direct, and Henry full of heartbreak.
Unwilling to stand back and do nothing, Emma pulled a card out of her pocket. She needed to do something and right now there was only one productive thing she could try. She new Ada wouldn't approve of jumping in without thinking, but Emma wasn't feeling very logical at the moment.
She dialed.
"Sidney, hi. I'm in. I want everyone to know who she really is."
Gold moved his Queen as he examined his opponent carefully, "So is your beloved sister aware she's currently residing with her long-lost mother?"
Ada carefully considered the board before her as she answered nonchalantly, "Yes. Though, that's not really our most pressing concern at the moment."
"It's not?" Gold questioned even as he waited for Miss Ward to make her move, "Well, then, I wonder what could possible take precedence over the search for Miss Swan's parents finally ending. And with such happy results."
"Happy results?" Ada questioned, her eyes sharpening on Rumpelstiltskin's face.
"Of course, dearie," he waved a hand, "Everyone's alive and of good character. The separation has a very acceptable reason- it was life or death. All in all, I'd say a very happy result. And what little girl doesn't want her long-lost parents to be royalty?"
Ada took a deep breath and refocused on the board even as Gold regained his train of thought.
"Now, what's so very pressing Miss Swan isn't focusing on her parentage?"
"Her son," Ada answers calmly, "Now that we know strangers can enter Storybrooke, we're putting some things in motion for a custody battle. I've contacted some lawyer friends of mine, and they're sending a social worker they work with to check things out here any day now. And then there's Sidney."
"Oh?" Rumple questioned as Ada finally went to move one of her Bishops. "And what is that noisome reporter up to now? Another smear campaign? Perhaps on Miss Swan's cocoa addiction?"
"He's offered to help us. Expose Regina. Claims that he's done with her, even. Apparently, if Sidney's to be believed, Regina's used him one too many times. Emma thinks he's waking up and ready to rebel."
"And what's your take on the situation?" Rumple moved a pawn carefully and Ada's eyes immediately focused on it.
"I think we can't be too sure of anything," she responded evenly.
Gold mused to himself a moment before adding, "I'd be careful around Mr. Glass, his company does not...reflect well on those that keep it."
Ada didn't miss the hints, and stood up, "Perhaps we could continue this game another time. I've got some things I have to do."
Rumple smirked, "Would you like to reset the board for next time or keep playing?"
"Let's keep playing. I think I can win this game."
Mary Margaret grinned as she and David turned a corner in the woods on their favorite trail. "You're in a rush," she commented lightly, noticing how David had been walking a bit faster than their usual stroll.
He returned the smile, "Well, I was worried the wine would get warm," he gestured forward and Mary Margaret entered a clearing where David had set up a picnic.
She laughed, "I thought we were getting lunch in town," she turned to look at him, and he sheepishly brought a hand up to rub the back of his neck even as he grinned.
"Well, I thought this might be a little more romantic, since I wanted to ask you something."
"Oh?" Mary Margaret grinned as he lead her over to the blanket and helped her sit.
"What are you doing Valentine's Day?"
February 5, 2012
Emma pulled the cruiser into a tunnel and walked out. Sidney met her in the middle and Emma suddenly got a chill up her spine.
It seemed like a scene out of a bad detective movie. Like she was meeting with a crappy version of Deep Throat.
Which, she guessed, she was.
"Alright," she said, crossing her arms. "I'm listening. So, what do you know about her?"
"$50,000," Sidney announced.
"I'm sorry?" Emma sputtered, thinking he was going to ask her for the money.
"Fifty grand out of the budget is missing, and Regina is responsible," Sidney explained.
"That's it? That's what you have on her?" Emma asked, unable to believe that was all.
"The money is just the tip of the iceberg," Sidney assured her, "We figure out what she's doing, and it all falls apart. It all crumbles, and we'll finally learn her secrets. You see what she is. I see it. All we need is a crack in the mirror to show everyone. I'm telling you, this is it."
Emma began to wonder who Sidney was in fairytale land, not for the first time. She'd feel easier about trusting him if she could guess at his motivations. "All right, what's your plan?" she took the plunge.
"Tap her phone. GPS her car. Hack into her email, dip into your bail bondsperson bag of tricks," Sidney immediately suggested.
"No," Emma shot him down. "I'm Sheriff now, I have to be responsible. I wanna do this by the book." She remembered the Sheriff election and the lesson she had learned there.
"She's gonna know that you're on to her sooner than later. Are you prepared for her wrath?" Sidney pushed.
"Oh yeah," Emma affirmed. She was ready for anything the Evil Queen could throw at her. In this land, they all may be cursed, but Emma was the freaking Savior, and Regina didn't have her magic.
"Good. Because I wasn't."
Emma's eyes narrowed as she examined the drunken coward before her, "If you thought she was so terrifying... how did you allow yourself to end up in her pocket?"
Sidney turned slightly wistful, "I used to think she was a different person."
Ada turned through the pages of the book yet again. Glass; reflect; he's a pawn.
She stopped at one illustration of a Genie trapped into a mirror as the Evil Queen smirked at the wish gone wrong, having accomplished manipulating the foolish Genie into killing the kind King Leopold.
Snow's father.
Emma's grandfather.
Ada took a deep breath. The Genie, the Mirror, whatever you wanted to call him, he was at Regina's command, twistedly in love with her for all that she used and abused him.
Ada didn't think teaming up with Sidney was going to ultimately work for Emma. The Mirror, after all, was owned by the Queen. And, ultimately, trapped.
I freaking love how when I write Ada and Gold together I can make literally every thing that comes out of both their mouths into a sort of code and then sometimes Ada just will come straight out with what she wants to say then revert back to being cryptic. It's so much fun.
And watching this episode makes me mad at Regina all over again. Like, really, you're so upset your son has a special place with someone that's not you that you LITERALLY tear it down? Wow. Low blow, Miss Mills. Not to mention much more hurtful to Henry then Emma ultimately (yet again). And with her accusing Emma of not actually caring about Henry in the same episode when she does it, I'm left shaking my head at the irony.
But we have another stranger coming to Storybrooke! A social worker. Huh. I'm not entirely aware of the proceedings for a custody battle, but I'm pretty sure contacting a lawyer is the first step, and a social worker has to check things out at one point. So for those of you familiar with the process: please forgive any inaccuracies I may write. I only really have the vaguest idea of what a custody battle entails. And it's made even more complicated by the fact that Henry was a closed adoption. Not sure how that'll affect everything.
We'll see.
Either way, hope you enjoyed the chapter, please drop a review!
