Bigby rushed into the Mortar and Pestle first thing in the afternoon the following day. He had to find Helen and tell her what he now realized!

He threw open the door, rushed to the bar, and stopped dead. Brown wavy hair on a much shorter female Fable made it clear this was not Helen. The Fable turned to him and smirked.

"Gee, thanks, Bigby!" Jill drawled at him wryly.

Bigby blushed in spite of himself. His surprise and disappointment at not finding Helen and instead finding Jill (of Jack and Jill fame) must have been a bit too obvious. "Sorry. I didn't realize you worked here."

"I manage things behind the scenes usually. Cooking the books and all that. But Helen's visiting the Farm today so I'm here."

"Oh..." Bigby realized that was why he had never seen Helen at the Business Office; he had seen Jill plenty of times instead. "Do you know when she'll be back?"

Jill pinned him with her brown eyes. "You finally catch on?" she asked.

Again he could feel his neck and ears heating up; it was telling that Jill was aware of his memory lapse. Helen had clearly been bothered by it enough to talk to Jill about it. "Less gracefully than I would like to admit, yes."

She smiled, releasing him from her penetrating gaze. "I'm sure Helen will be glad to hear it no matter what. She was happy when you turned up."

"I never realized -"

Jill held up a hand, cutting him off gently. "Save it for her. She should hear it first. See you tomorrow, Sherriff."

The next day was chaos with the Woodsman causing more trouble in his apartment and having to be brought in (with great force) and then having to deal with Bluebeard still trying to intimidate Snow into getting his way even though she had been in charge for months now.

Bigby found himself looking forward to escaping all this for a drink, to being able to talk to Helen about what he had remembered. When he pushed open the door and saw the familiar honey colored braid he couldn't help but smile. She grinned at him in return as he approached.

"Hey..." He pulled up a stool at the bar. "I remember you..."

She looked a little stunned and a little relieved. "What do you remember?"

"I remember a princess who agreed to go with a Grey Wolf. I remember failing her..."

Helen stared hard at the bar top with her hands in loose fists, but Bigby could feel her pulse pounding and could scent the strength of emotion she was trying to hide.

"I remember these as well," he said, reaching out and gently brushing her wrists with his fingertips.

Helen's heart raced and she could not decide if she wanted to pull away from his touch. She had waited for him to remember and now that he did it was almost too much.

"I missed you..." she murmured. This was a huge understatement. When he had showed up, her heart had wrenched and when he gave no indication of knowing her she had drowned her sorrows. She would have recognized him anywhere and she he'd never even seen him in human form!

"I'm sorry, Helen. I should have recognized you."

Bigby felt her hands twist and catch his fingertips in her hands. She gave them a squeeze before releasing his hands and dropping hers to her sides.

"I didn't know where you might have been. I assumed you would go north," he pressed on.

"Why would it not occur to you to look?" she asked, keeping her eyes on the countertop.

"Why would I go looking? Who would ever want me to show up at their door?"

Their eyes met and he could see she understood. But he could also see, quite clearly, that she still wished he had. He had again disappointed her. Again he had arrived too late, but this time hundreds of years too late.

"So..." Bigby leaned in, determined to turn the conversation, "where have you been these last three hundred years?"

Helen laughed and he was glad to hear the sound, now ringing back through his memory to the days of the Homelands.

"I did go north for a while. When you led me to the gate there weren't a lot of non-native people on this continent, so I went north and joined with the French for a while. I married a fur trapper before I realized what a terrible idea that was. I didn't realize the mundies don't age like us. We had a kid and I had to leave them. I pushed further north and moved around as a trader until I heard about Fabletown from one of the Tourists. Then I moved back here and I've been doing this and that ever since. Had the bar for about seventy years now."

"Know what happened to your kid?" Bigby asked, genuinely curious. He had heard of Fables who had married mundies in the early days before regulations and the community, but had never met one.

"She married a sailor and went with him back to France. I don't know much after that, but I believe she had a relatively long life there." Helen smiled more easily, leaning her chin in her hand. "How about you, Grey Wolf? What have you been up to the past three hundred years?"

Bigby grinned wolfishly at her. "Well I'm going to need a drink for all that."

She poured him a beer, placed it in front of him, and settled in.