AN: Thank you to all of you who reviewed the first chapter; I'm sorry I never got around to sending replies. I was going to do so tonight, before I posted this, but I was feeling a little unwell and I'm tired now. So I'll try to reply to you reviewers this time around, if I can, assuming you still feel like reviewing, of course, lol.

"M-m-matches," stammered Emmeline, holding out a charcoal stick and waving it about in air as she stood in the main square of the marketplace, trying to get folks' attention. "Matches for s-s-sale!" She willed her teeth to stop chattering so violently, but they would not obey, the bitter cold giving them a will quite of their own, very separate from even her mind's most direct of orders.

No one paid her mind. People went by, most of them not glancing her way. Those that did, for she was not unpleasant to look at, if one could overlook the fact that she was visibly in poor health and even poorer clothing, gave her a brief pitying stare then quickly moved on and forgot about her. It never occurred, not even to the more decent passersby, to buy matches and help ease her misery; it never so much as entered their heads.

Why would it? After all, they all had half-decent cottages to go home to. And, if they lived near enough to have heard her cries at night, to know and dislike her parents, they thought something ought to be done but that was as far as it went. Yes, something should be done, the poor girl... Now would someone be so good as to blow out the candle before turning in? Wouldn't do to burn, stupidly and in so humiliating a fashion, to a crisp in their beds while they slept; would not do at all!

A kindly child did stop, blink at Emmeline's sooty, pitched face, and hand her a hot bun.

She smiled and swallowed it (it was small, no bigger than a clenched fist, more air than wheat and flour), prepared to thank the child graciously. But then she noticed a scowl on the little chap's crumbling, disbelieving face, and realized. He hadn't meant to give her the bread; he was used to his mother blowing on it for him so it wasn't so hot, fresh from the bakery, but she had left him a moment, to enter a hat shop and talk with a friend she'd spotted and felt the need to greet. So the poor boy-child, noticing that the match girl seemed nice enough, had handed her the bun, never thinking any explanation was needed.

Oh dear... Emmeline blushed at her mistake (even if it wasn't very discernible, since her face was already gone as red as it possibly could from the cold).

The boy had a sister, a little older, who came up next, sputtering out some nonsense. Emmeline liked her immediately, but it was the little brother she felt she had to keep from crying; she'd just eaten his treat, not his sister's.

"There now..." Emmeline knelt down on the frosty ground, placing down her charcoal stick in a light dusting of pure white snow. "Hush, child, hush. It's all right. I'm sorry; I thought you were giving it to me. Don't cry, I'll tell you a story."

The boy looked mildly appeased, the bun probably forgotten in favor of a new friend, a new idea, but the girl's eyes were lit up. She loved stories.

Emmeline rattled off an old tale her grandmother had told her, about a man who stopped children from having to be carried off to fight in the ogre wars but suffered a terrible price; he had the magic to stop the wickedness done to the children, to give them their childhoods back, but in turn he had to take on a power that all but controlled him, evil taking root.

It was a deliciously scary, exciting, magical, and intriguing story. The girl loved it; the boy seemed appropriately amused.

"I didn't know all that," said the girl, mouth hanging agape. "I knew Baelfire's Pa was the Dark One, but I didn't... Had no idea... 'Bout the war and all! And you tell it so nice!"

Emmeline was stunned. She thought what she was telling was only a made-up story, an urban myth at best, nothing real. Grandmother had never said Rumpelstiltskin was an actual person. And who was this Baelfire?

"Baelfire," the girl repeated, as though she thought everyone who wasn't a half-wit should know who he was and was rather thrown that the clever lady who'd told such an exciting story honestly didn't. "He comes through here sometimes." She frowned. "He's a boy," she added, slowly, as if suddenly speaking to a simpleton. "A big boy, much bigger than me and him." She nudged her brother. "Thirteen or fourteen, I think." Then, "Everyone's scared of him, cause of his Pa, so's they's used to leaving him alone mostly. He's the one from your story. But he's not bad, Baelfire. He's nice. Gave me a peppermint stick once."

Emmeline's dark eyes lightened considerably, almost to a caramel-like shade. Baelfire. A real son of the Dark One. Near here.

She regarded her matches; the matches she was utterly unable to sell; the matches she'd just wasted time (depending on how you looked at it) not even trying to sell, on account of trying to comfort the boy and then getting lost in the telling of the story.

Was there some way she could find, and strike a deal with, 'Baelfire's Pa'?

Of course, she didn't trust the little (extremely little, to be exact) she knew of magic, knowing from the story, if nothing else, that all magic came with a price. But she had nothing left to lose. Rumpelstiltskin might be a force to be reckoned with, but, then again, so were her parents. And at least the Dark One had an excuse. Her parents had nothing controlling them save their own closed-off minds and hardened hearts.

Adele woke with a start. One eye opened, taking in the cell, remembering where she was.

Oddly enough, for a brief moment, she felt happy. Truly. Happy, because she wasn't at home; she was in some other place, a place she didn't immediately resister in her mind as jail. It was so quiet. She wished she'd done something so she could stay. Would Sheriff Swan forget she didn't belong in here if she were really, really quiet? When she remembered, as anyone with half a brain evidently must sooner or later, would she let her rest a few extra days instead of booting her out into the streets, or, more likely, back to her parents' house where she still had no wish to return, right away? If she begged hard enough?

"You're up." Emma's eyes lifted from behind a newspaper she'd been reading at her desk, her gaze briefly flickering to Adele.

Rats. She remembered. "Morning," she managed, with surprising brightness for someone in her situation.

"I got you," she said, reaching behind the desk and lifting up a brown paper bag that read Granny's and a to-go cup of coffee, "some breakfast."

Adele sat up straight on the bunk. Emma wasn't sure how she managed it, seeing as she didn't even seem conscious of it, but the girl in the cell had gone from having slumping posture to ramrod straight, like a ballerina, or a girl siting on an old-fashioned chair with a high wooden back. The tip of Adele's tongue stuck out and licked her top lip quickly, involuntarily. She was totally famished.

Her good posture vanished as she jackknifed herself over the brown bag, riffled through the contents, and practically stuffed her face. She washed several mouthfuls down with the coffee.

"I wasn't sure if you were a coffee-drinker," Emma admitted. "So I took a wild guess."

Swallowing quickly, trying her best not to talk with her mouth full, though it was tempting and, really, on the whole, she only half-succeeded, Adele blurted, "No, you were right. I love coffee. When we have it at the house, I mean. Sometimes we don't; I have a headache on those mornings." On those mornings, when the cold and headaches were so discouraging, and she often had cases of the jitters, Adele hadn't even wanted to go to school when she was younger, let alone door-to-door selling flashlights. But her parents made her.

"Ms. Swan," snapped a tense-sounding voice, echoing slightly. The sound of clacking heels on the floor filled Emma and Adele's ears; Regina appeared, frowning. "Henry's school called; he's been skipping school to spend time here. I don't think I have to tell you it's-" She stopped, noticing Adele. "What is she doing here?"

"Hi," bleated Adele, sheepishly.

"You two know each other?" Emma asked.

Adele cringed and appeared to be trying to make herself look as small as possible by pressing her back against the wall and pulling her legs closer to her body on the bunk.

"Her mother is an acquaintance of mine," Regina said condescendingly, brow furrowed with impatience, as though this was something that should have been common knowledge, for whatever reason. "Why is she in jail?"

Emma grunted. "She's not under arrest, I just didn't want her to spend the night on the street."

"Ms. Swan," simpered Regina, glaring, "you should have taken her home to her parents."

"She didn't want to go," said Emma flat-out. Adele was a grown-up, however timid and child-like her demeanor happened to be; no one had the right to make her go back to a place she didn't want to be.

"Adele doesn't know what she wants," Regina told her. "Ninety percent of the time she doesn't even know what she's saying. She's suffered from a serious mental disorder since she was a very small child."

"And you know this because...?"

"Her parents were having car trouble when they were getting her diagnosed, so I gave them a lift; I was there, at Doctor Hopper's office, on the day they figured out what was wrong with her."

"Well," growled Emma, smelling a rat, "isn't that convenient?"

"She signed a document," added Regina, without missing a beat. "When she was a in a calmer state, Adele officially signed over her rights to make personal and monetary decisions. There's a copy of it back in my office somewhere, I'm sure."

"I'm sure there is." Emma's eyes narrowed.

Adele's eyes filled with tears and she stood up, crossing her arms and holding her own elbows. For the first time she had a glimmer of hope. Emma seemed to understand. Maybe she would help her. "Sheriff?"

"Yes?"

"They made me sign it." Adele swallowed at a lump in her throat. It was now or never. She had to show someone-someone who could make a difference-that she wasn't insane. "And I'm not crazy."

AN: Please review.