"Roland," Liam's voice was a half whisper, as Gold watched Roland turn in the direction his lover was facing. As he turned as well, his heart slammed against his ribs with a pain he hadn't felt since Bae's death.
Kneeling in front of his Belle, was a small young woman, no more than her late teens or early twenties. Her long rich, auburn hair cascaded in thick, spiraling curls in every direction that pooled around her on the golden hardwood floor. Her emerald dress, with painstakingly detailed gold brocade, showed her to be thin boned.
She was clutching Belle's hands, but as Roland broke away from the group, he watched her, his heart breaking.
First, she jerked her hands from Belle's, bringing them under her breast protectively. As he watched, one hand fell behind her as she slid off her ankles, kicking back at the slick floor with golden slippers as she struggled to scoot away from Belle's shocked expression. Her strangled sounds of shock and fear, brought his hand to his chest.
"Mummy." It was not a pleasant tone, instead filled with longing and fear mingled together as complicated as her childhood must have been.
She pushed back again and gained a few more inches space between herself and her mother.
"Anna!" Roland approached her from the side, and she turned in just the right direction for Gold to see her face. Her features were round and soft, no sharp lines. Large oval eyes just slightly too close together, in an oval face.
Her blue eyes instantly filled with tears, and her tiny boned arms came up before her, reaching for her advancing lover. "Roland!" And then she dissolved into a fit of torrential sobs.
The dark haired man was at her side instantly, drawing her forward as she threw her chin over his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his neck in a death grip. "Shhh, Anna, shhh, I have you. I have you now. It's alright," Roland crooned, but she seemed too overwhelmed to notice, and sobbed harder, hiccupping his name.
The wrongness of what he was seeing hit him squarely. Regardless of the circumstances, she was far too old to be crying in such a manner. It was like watching a young child break down, and a sharpness came to his senses as he realized what he was seeing.
As Roland picked her up effortlessly, Gold's eyes traveled over to Belle, who was looking confused. Overwhelming anger surged through him as he watched her right hand settle protectively over her stomach. It was as Apple had said, his beautiful wife was pregnant, and her hatred towards him had caused her to poison their child.
"There, there, now Luv, no more tears." Liam had slid into place next to Roland who now stood surrounded by his friends and sister. Anna lifted her tear stained, childlike face, and dissolved into another fit, this time crying out Liam's name and throwing herself from Roland to Liam, who quickly took her from the other and into his own arms. Smaller than his partner, he moved to a nearby wide couch and sat in the middle. Roland settled on one side, while Apple took the other, Neal standing over the back protectively.
"She changed."
He jerked around, his eyes falling on Belle, who was staring at their daughter, still unmoved from the floor. "She looks…different now."
Neal turned in her direction, his brow furrowed as he glanced between Belle and Anna. The former continued to sob into Liam's shoulder, while the son of Hook expertly comforted her.
Hook's son. He'd let his daughter pair up with that pirate's son; and Regina's apparently. It turned his stomach to think that that sea dog's boy was holding his daughter, but he couldn't deny that in his arms, she was calming, or that his softly spoken words to her were obviously more than simply pretty.
Roland too seemed equally troubled over Anna's outburst, his large hand rubbing clockwise circles her in back while he whispered to her words of love and safety. Roland he could understand. He liked the boy, and imagined he would have encouraged their interactions; not to mention he'd always had a soft spot for Regina, so it made sense. What was troubling was Roland's violent temper, and he resolved himself to watching the man's interactions with his daughter very closely in the days to come.
His daughter. It still didn't seem real, but there was no denying that while she had Belle's coloring, those corkscrew curls and thin frame were obviously his. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about it all just yet, and remained far away from the couple on the couch while he continued to assess the situation.
"Can magic help her?" Regina asked quietly, having noticed as well the childlike drama before them and attributing the cause. Her words were spoken without malice, and when he turned towards her, he saw sympathy and anger in her expressive eyes.
Surprisingly, it was Ursula who spoke from her left; like Regina, she whispered so as not to be heard outside their circle. "Magic can't be used to directly alter a Fate. I heard that Hades tried it once and things did not end well for him." Her words seemed to pain Regina, and he was surprised when she turned to look at him.
"I'm sorry, Rumple, truly."
Any reply he was prepared to offer was cut short by a broken, watery voice from across the room. "Papa's here?" His heart clenched painfully in his chest to hear her call him 'Papa' to know she was searching for him. As Liam nodded, she turned to confirm this with Roland who also nodded and then pointed over the back of the couch at him.
When her blue eyes met his, he had to lean more fully on his cane. Her soft face crumbled, and the two arms once wrapped tightly around Liam's neck shot out towards him over the back of the couch, her fingers stretching to reach him, and her high voice, sounding so much like his, cried out through her fresh tears, "Papa! Papa! Papa!"
His feet moved instinctively towards the sound of his calling child, and his vision swam with tears as he rounded the couch and her whole face followed him. Apple quickly gave up her place beside her friend, and he sat down, to immediately have a lap filled with a sobbing child he now realized, couldn't be more than five feet tall.
"Papa!" She buried her eyes in his warm neck, her hot breath dampening his collar. Without a thought one of his hands wound up her neck and into her hair, and the other rubbed comfortingly across her back. She was as light as a feather, thinner than he'd imagined, and with his hand around the back of her neck, he knew her to have bird bones at best.
"I was so," her voice caught, "so lonely, Papa."
And he crumbled, pulled her tight against him and buried his face against her soft auburn curls. He rocked her slowly, and the rightness, the feeling of this being familiar stole over him, until he was humming softly to her, a tune he'd sung to Bae in his youth. "Shhh, Sweetheart, shh now. You're safe. You're safe. Papa has you."
Roland and Liam were both shedding happy tears, and Apple openly crying with a huge smile on her face, when Neal turned, made eye contact with Emma, and escaped the room unseen.
He wasted no time when Emma and Killian stood before him. "I think it's obvious Belle was talking to someone, and the way we found Anna when she first appeared makes it seem like it was probably her." Emma nodded, a little guarded and wary, no doubt from the hostile exchange between she and her son. But Neal had other things more pressing than this age old fight—and his own opinions.
"We need to know what Anna told her mother, but she's not going to get a fair hearing from anyone in that room," he threw a thumb over his shoulder. "We all have our reasons for hating her, and that's not going to change overnight. So you need to get her out of here and find out what she knows."
"What are you going to do," Emma finally asked, glancing into the room.
"I'm going to be there for Apple and Anna. Liam won't do anything until he's had more time with Morganna, and Roland's the same. We talked about taking Anna somewhere quiet to recuperate before we killed Marion—"
"Before you what?!" Shock colored Emma's eyes a brilliant blue as they widened. "Why would you want to kill Marion? What does she have to do with anything?"
Anger simmered deep within his chest, but he held his temper; Emma had no idea what her actions had done to their timeline. Drawing a deep breath, he tried his best to explain. "When you and Killian traveled back in time and brought back Marion that was no coincidence. The guards had been bribed to move you to a cell next to hers." Emma looked skeptical and he couldn't hold back his irritation, grinding out, "You still don't know what we're dealing with. The Sorcerer isn't just some run of the mill magic user, he had a spell for time travel, a spell he reduced so brilliantly, that even Zelena, a witch unfamiliar with Enchanted Forest magic, could cast it.
"He knew you would travel back in time, and knew what you'd do once you found out Marion was to be executed." He paused trying to hold it together and get the words out before he was missed by Apple and the others. "Bringing her back broke our timeline. The Circle Points believe the only way to reset our timeline is to kill Marion, but Anna might have told Belle more, she seemed to be listening to someone for a long time before Roland lost it. If there's a way to fix our time without killing Marion, I'd prefer that option."
"So what do you want us to do?" Killian asked, but Neal could hardly look at the man so kept his response directed at Emma.
"I want you to get Belle out of here. Take her somewhere safe and find out what Anna told her—everything Anna told her." The room behind him was starting to stir, and he knew he needed to get Belle out of there.
"Where can we take her? If the Crocodile wants her, there's no safe place for her."
He turned finally to face Killian, his eyes cold, his voice equally so. "Take Belle to Jefferson. The Hatter has a soft spot for broken things and Traitors, he'll keep her in his Relic Room until she talks."
"Relic Room?" Emma asked, but their time was up.
"Just do it, Emma!" Then he turned, walked past the still prone Belle, who had yet to move even an inch, and went to stand in front of the couch beside Apple.
"What? No hugs for your big brother and best friend?"
Anna turned from her soft hiccups into her father's shoulder to look up at him before her face shifted into a brilliant smile, "BAE! APPLE!" She was off her father's lap and into his arms like lightening, and he bent low to hold her close as Apple embraced her and they hugged each other in giddy glee.
All the while, he watched over her shoulder as Emma and Killian snuck back into the room and helped Belle and Henry to their feet before the four of them exited unseen.
"My, my, my, if it isn't the Savior, the Pirate, the Truest Believer, and the Rabbit. To what do I owe the pleasure?" Jefferson stood with his mansion doors wide open, and Henry could see Paige—or Grace as she now preferred to be called for her father's benefit—sitting at the formal dinning room table at the end of the long entrance way. Her eyes were round enough that he could see her watching them with surprise.
"We need to get Belle inside your Relic Room before Gold comes looking for her." His mother said, shoving her way past the Hatter and dragging Belle with her. "Where is it?"
His Grandmother had not said a word since they'd left, just stared straight in front of her with a blank expression. He'd tried to get her to talk to him in the car, but she either wouldn't, or couldn't.
"And just how do you know about that room," Jefferson asked with deep suspicion as he took a great leap forward to block Emma's path into the house.
"Papa?" Grace asked from her place, now standing at the table.
"It's alright, Grace, Papa just needs to talk to these nice people." He was speaking to Grace like she was still a child, which she'd confessed, her father often treated her as. Apparently, Jefferson had had more trouble than most adapting to The Curse and the year back in the Enchanted Forest.
"Look Mate, if we don't get her into that room, the Dark One is going to gut her, so unless you want to be responsible for her death, show us the bloody room."
Looking skeptical, Jefferson inquired, "Why would Rumple hurt his wife? True she threw him out, but he's dealt with worse female rejection. He should be overjoyed to have her home."
"We'll tell you the story in a minute, first, take us to this secret room Gold can't get into."
Maybe it was the desperate tone in his mother's voice, or the shaking that had suddenly overtaken Belle, but Jefferson eventually nodded and drew them deep into the massive home.
Henry elected to stop by the table next to Grace.
"Is your grandma OK, Henry? She didn't look well." Concern had Grace reaching out her small, warm hand to his arm in comfort, and he couldn't help but blush and look away.
"Y-yeah. Maybe. She just got out of the hospital, and then ran into my Grandpa, and apparently spoke to her future daughter," he paused, "and she's drunk." Grace blinked at him and he shrugged, glancing away, "So I guess I don't know, but I hope so."
"Wow, it sounds like she's had a really terrible day."
He looked over at her and smiled awkwardly, "Yeah, I guess you could say that."
Author's Note: Slowly but surely, the mystery unravels. Thanks to everyone who is sharing this story with their friends so more people know about it. Thanks for reading and reviewing!