WARNING: Mild spoilers for the finale. Although really, if you haven't seen it at this point you should just drop everything you're doing and click over to Hulu for a bit to watch that shit because it's fantastic.

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She was small, smaller than she could ever remember being, spinning round and round in someone's arms. She felt safe there, in spite of the clang of steel on steel and the harsh breathing of the man who held her. David, she realized. No, not David- her father. Protecting her from men in dark armor, only blackness where their faces should be.

The image faded and twisted and suddenly she was in the woods, on all fours while crisp dead leaves cracked and crumbled beneath her hands. She knew somehow that it was the clearing with the wishing well, though she couldn't see the well itself, only had the vague impression of it being somewhere at her back. Mr. Gold was standing before her, of all the people her brain could decide to dream about, but he didn't quite look like himself. His skin almost seemed to glitter, his eyes so dark none of the whites were visible, and there was something dangling from his hands on a long golden chain.

"Tick-Tock, Miss Swan."

Emma jolted awake and all but fell over backwards as she scrambled away from the woman she had been sleeping nose to nose with. Regina, thankfully, didn't stir and Emma stood panting in the pale dawn light that was only just beginning to filter through the window, unable to place at first exactly what it was that had her so upset. Then the last of the residual strangeness left behind from her dreams finally slipped away and her brain caught up with her.

'Murderer. Murderer.'

'But I love her. She's different. Whatever she is, she's not that.'

'Murderer!'

God, she just needed to breathe. She needed to breathe and she needed to be somewhere else.

When Emma slipped into the back yard, arms bare and shivering because she had neglected to don her jacket in her haste to dress and get out of the house, she expected to be assaulted by the brilliant contrast of red and green that was the Mayor's garden. The first time she had seen it she had whimsically likened it to Eden, and Regina more of a serpent than an Eve. The apples, however, were no longer a shining, healthy crimson. They hung heavy and blackened from their branches, in various degrees of rot.

The stench of the rotting tree ruined whatever rejuvenating effects the brittle morning air might have given her and Emma squeezed her eyes shut, willing the headache developing somewhere behind her temple to go away.

It would be easy to just keep walking. Across the lawn, past the hedges to the street beyond and never look back. She could find somewhere new to live, where the curse and all it entailed would be nothing more than a distant memory. Somewhere on the west coast this time, maybe. She could walk barefoot in the sand, maybe learn to surf.

Of course, she couldn't really. The roots she had put down here had dug in too deep, gotten too entangled.

The screen door snapped as it opened again and Emma didn't need to look around to know who had joined her. She could almost feel her. What was that all about, anyway? She had never been in love before so she had nothing with which to compare it, but she couldn't imagine this intense whatever it was was entirely normal. It almost felt as though she didn't have any say it and she found that particularly disturbing.

"An unfortunate side effect of your arrival, I'm afraid. I've had that tree my entire life." Regina said finally, breaking the silence.

"I did this?"

"Your weakening of the curse did this."

It occurred to Emma then that Snow White had famously been poisoned by an apple. Snow. Her mother. God, that was just too much to deal with. "Is this the tree? That the apple came from? The poisoned one? Are they all poisoned?" Henry had certainly seemed to think so, the one time she had tried to eat one. She hadn't thought much about it since.

"Of course not, dear. I use these all the time-I used to, anyway. That one was special, imbued with a sleeping curse. There isn't another like it."

Emma felt the ghost of sensation, hands hovering over her shoulders as the woman behind her debated on whether or not to touch her.

"Don't. Just- Don't touch me right now. I love you but I'm not ready to deal with you yet."

"It's a lot, I know-"

"Let's just get on with it, alright? Get your-" She couldn't even bring herself to say it. "It back and then we'll worry about everything else. What do I need to know?"

"There is one other person in this town who knows- About magic. About everything."

She didn't need Regina to say the name, Emma realised. She already knew. It made all kinds of sense, actually. At least in so much as anything did, at the moment. The man who pulled all the strings, the person the entire town seemed to fear even more than the Mayor. "Mr. Gold."

"Actually, he goes by Rumpelstiltskin."

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Sending Henry off to school was a small battle, but they had mutually agreed it was the safest place for him. Emma finally fed him something about keeping an eye on 'Snow White' to get him to concede but it was only after he'd exacted a promise from her not to kiss his mother until he got home (Which she agreed to largely because she didn't understand why it mattered to him so much) that he willingly went.

They waited, together but separate, until he had disappeared in a throng of children on the school's front steps before furthering their discussion of their next move forward. Emma plunged her hands into her pockets as they walked down the sidewalk, lest she give into the temptation to twine her arm around Regina's. Her body still wanted the closeness regardless of her inner confliction.

"So... What? We're just going to march in there and ask for it? That's the exact opposite of a plan. That's a non-plan, Regina." Emma had her gun and the shining sheriff's badge at her hip, but she felt like she should be better armed for the confrontation. If she was to be a fairy tale hero, shouldn't she have something... big and pointy? A hammer, she decided, or an axe. Like that dwarf guy in the hobbit movies. She could totally rock that.

"Rumpel is a man who likes his deals, dear. He'll have done everything he can to ensure we won't be able to get it back in any other way. The ham fisted approach wouldn't work in our favor anyway, he has power over me."

"Wait-What?"

"It's stupid. I thought he would forget just like everyone else and I wouldn't have to worry about it. Just- Pray he forgets his manners."

"I don't suppose I could just arrest him?"

Regina laughed, the sound deep and throaty. "I would dearly love to see you try and explain that one in court."

"These people are all from- where you're from." Emma stopped on the street corner, waiting for the light to turn even though there wasn't really enough traffic to impede their progress. She needed the extra thinking time. "Maybe we can work something out."

"Yes, dear, but they don't know that. They're bound by the rules and norms of this world and the memories the curse gave them. If you tried to explain to any one of them how I magically removed my heart and it got stolen, they'd think you insane. And if they did believe you they'd be locking me up right along side him- ripped away the happiness of untold millions, remember?"

Emma released her breath in a deep, heaving sigh, watching it mist in front of her like so much white smoke. "How could I possibly forget?"

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Mr. Gold- She couldn't call him Rumpelstiltskin just yet, even within the confines of her own head; madness lay that way- was behind the counter tinkering with an aged looking clock when the little bell above the door tinkled to announce their arrival. Emma felt a little like a cowboy in some corny old movie, barreling into the saloon with her gun on her hip and a lady-love to save. Perhaps her sanity was unraveling anyway, just a little bit.

"Do my eyes deceive me or is that the look of a believer?"

"Where is it?" Emma demanded, covering the distance between the door and the counter in a few short strides.

Mr. Gold had eyes only for Regina, who had flipped around the 'Open' sign and turned the lock before moving forward to stand at Emma's elbow, smiling in a lazy sort of way as he braced his weight against the countertop in front of him. "Lost something, have we? Learned a little lesson about not removing things best left in their proper places?"

"Just tell me what you want for it."

"It's quite simple, really. You'll recall my potion? You know the one. I didn't use all of it, you see. I placed what remained someplace... safe, however I should very much like it back now."

Looking round at the twisted line of Regina's lips and the rigid set of her shoulders, Emma thought the woman may very well have a go at strangling the man across from her. Just how long, she wondered, had the power play between these two been going on? Had they spent the last twenty-eight years, the only two people in town with any awareness, playing constant mind games with one another?

"Ooookay, sounds easy enough. Where is it, this... Potion thing?" Emma asked with a pained wince, hardly believing she was standing in the middle of a pawn shop having a serious conversation about potions. With Rumpelstiltskin and the Evil Queen, no less.

There was a bad joke in there somewhere, she was sure. 'The Evil Queen, Rumplestiltskin and a blond walk into a pawn shop...'

Gold still didn't look at her and Emma felt mild irritation at being ignored. His eyes glinted with dark amusement, reminding her a little of a cat who knew it had its prey cornered. "Tell me, Your Majesty, is our friend still in the basement?"

"You twisted little imp! You left it with her?"

"Not with her, dearie. In her."

"In-?"

"Wait, who's in the basement? What basement?" Emma blinked between the two of them, growing more and more confused by the minute.

"In. You needn't look so concerned, I have every confidence in our dapper young Sheriff's ability to retrieve it. She is, after all, a product of the magic. It's only fitting."

"Absolutely not. It's my heart, I'll fetch your damn potion." Regina snapped, and she brought her hands down on the glass surface between them with an audible thud that sounded painful.

Emma, feeling a little like an eavesdropping child, imagined herself close to hysteria. What exactly was Gold trying to get her into? "What basement? Who's her?"

"Come now, it's more poetic this way wouldn't you agree? The White Knight, off to save her true love's heart?" Gold hobbled the short distance over to one of the cluttered cupboards behind him, retrieving a long, black case that looked like it was meant to hold a guitar. He set it almost reverently before Emma, popping the clasps and pulling open the lid with an theatrical flourish. "In any case, you'll be needing this and as I recall sword play isn't one of your skills."

An ornately crafted sword lay nestled in the box's red velvet innards, the steel of the blade gleaming in the shop's dim light. Regina took one look at it and scowled darkly. "My, Rumpel. You've been pilfering things all over the place, haven't you?"

Emma reached for the sword before consciously making the decision to do so, hand hovering over the hilt. There was something about it... Somehow, someway this blade was meant for her. She could feel it in her very bones. "Whose is it?"

"Your father's."