A BAT IN STORYBROOKE:
Chapter 3
Mr. Gold sat on a chair at the hospital the next morning, fidgeting his fingers as Dr. Whale was checking on Belle in the next room.
This couldn't be happening. He couldn't be a father again. After all the things he'd been through with his own son Baelfire and his own father, Rumple had come to the conclusion that no matter what he did, no matter how much he tried to do the impossible, he'd always end up as a coward and fail on his duties towards his family. He even couldn't protect his own grandson Henry while trying to kill him at the same time when they were in Neverland.
Dr. Whale came out alone and motioned Mr. Gold to come inside with him. The latter nervously followed him inside, where Belle was waiting for him, sitting next to a computer that showed a scanned image of a fetus.
"Well, Mr. Gold. I'm pleased to tell you that your wife is indeed pregnant. The gender is undetermined yet, but it's in a healthy condition." The doctor smiled as Belle went to hug her husband.
"Rumple! Can you believe it? We're going to be parents!" Belle cried with enthusiasm.
Mr. Gold gave an uneasy smile. His wife noticed it and a concerned look appeared on her once happy face. Dr. Whale took the liberty of cutting in: "I must tell you though that we noticed something abnormal with the baby."
This got the attention of the future parents. "What do you mean?" Mr. Gold asked.
Dr. Whale nervously clasped his hands together. "Well, you see, the examination revealed that not only is the child going to be born in two months from now, but it's also been a month since Belle started being pregnant. Therefore, it results with a pregnancy of only four months. Yet, a usual pregnancy period lasts nine months at the maximum until the fetus is well developed and this one is in the developed status of a 5-month old fetus, despite being in its mother's womb for barely two months."
"I…I don't understand. How is that possible?" Belle looked at her husband.
Mr. Gold's uneasy face got filled with dark anxiety.
"It only occurs when the child in question is born from the union of a mortal and an immortal. If that's the case, our child is the child of the immortal I once was… the Dark One. And the chances that it might inherit the Dark One's dark magic are high."
In the meantime, at the Storybrooke Public School, Mary Margaret's class was working with a class full of 3rd graders today. Each of the eldest students was assigned to one 3rd grader in order to help and tutor the young one in a field where he or she wasn't so good.
When Mary Margaret and the 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Robert, assigned Henry Mills to help a little named Rosetta Anubisia Romanov in Social Studies, Henry could have sworn that he saw all the 3rd graders looking at him like he was being buried alive.
Nothing seemed wrong about Rosetta to Henry. Sure, she had black hair with strokes of red, brown sand skin, and cyan blue eyes, but this was Storybrooke. Strange people were everywhere. However, Henry eventually found out that Rosetta was singled out from her peers due to her "abnormal habit of pretention" and thus needed a psychiatrist; thanks to his grandmother, Henry in Social Studies will tutor Rosetta instead of going to Dr. Hopper's office.
He learned of her "abnormal habit" in Study Hall, while he was helping her understand the conflict between the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War. Rosetta was trying to pay attention to what Henry was saying, but she couldn't help fidgeting and nervously clutching a notebook other than the one she brought for the tutoring in her hand.
"If you want, we can stop for today. I think we've done enough," Henry told her gently.
The little girl froze. "I'm sorry, Henry! I didn't mean to be rude! I… I just have a hard time focusing nowadays."
"Family issues at home?"
"No, nothing like that," Rosetta hesitated. "More like… assumptions."
Henry looked at her in a confused way. "I don't understand."
Rosetta trembled as she passed the book she was clinging on to Henry. "Please look at it first before you call me crazy."
Henry glanced at the 3rd grader before he opened the book and skimmed the pages, full of crayon, pencil, and marker drawings. However, Henry stopped at almost each page when he saw their contents. They were showing past and present events that occurred to everyone in Storybrooke, just like in his book ONCE UPON A TIME. He saw an image of Rumplestiltskin, his grandfather, ripping out the heart of his ex-wife Milah in front of Killian. He saw another one where his maternal grandparents, Snow White and Prince Charming, in front of a tree with Maleficent, Ursula, and Cruella De Vil.
It went on: the casting of the dark curse, the meeting of his parents, Regina adopting Henry, Regina squeezing the heart of Sheriff Graham, Henry falling under the spell of the poisoned apple turnover, and more.
Two of them scared him the most: when Peter Pan tried to rip Henry's shadow on the Jolly Roger when they were escaping Neverland and Emma Swan being possessed by the darkness of the Dark One.
"You're a seer?" Henry couldn't believe the words he just said.
Rosetta slightly shrugged. "It's mostly things that I see whenever I don't want to. Like during class time, or a quiz, or when my parents argue. Whenever something bad is about to happen, I see something about the past, the present, or the future."
"Did you see something then?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
She grabbed her notebook and opened on a new page and started a new drawing. Henry watched as she moved her pencil back and forth until she was done. The drawing represented an angry Killian holding a bleeding Emma as a bat-like shadow loomed over them.
"I saw an old enemy of Killian Jones and he's in Storybrooke right now, searching for him in order to get his revenge, even if it means killing anybody in his way. And his name is… Fitzgerald Denada Cortés, also known as… Fidget the Bat."