Author Note: Wow, this one is going off the rails and getting huge ! I thought I could finish in 10 but I'm going to need maybe 12 to sew it all up, but I think the ending will be much more strong if I allow myself that length. Thank you so much everyone who is following & giving such encouraging reviews. This has been such a growing experience for me as a writer.
Regina's hands are coursing with purple lightning like Tesla coils. The outside of Granny's should also be glazed over with purple static since Regina cast a powerful magic protection spell on the diner once we were all inside. I never thought I'd be the subject of a magical healing less than ten feet away from the cake stand and till that I work at every day, but it just goes to show: small towns have their charms. My eyes are going in and out of sepia, meaning that I'm still on the cusp of changing, but Regina doesn't seem scared. She tells me the magic will feel like a cool breeze.
"You may feel an itchy feeling. It's your skin growing back over." She tells me. I gulp and nod. I see what she means as her hands hover over the raw torn patches of skin, the sensation is cool like menthol soap, weirdly clean and calming. I stare up at our ceiling fans and the dirty ceiling of Granny's diner as my body gets knit back together by the customer I used to mentally refer to as Ms. Earl Grey.
"Hurry" I said with difficulty. "I'm need to get to Belle."
"I promise this is as fast as I can go." Regina says with a shred of impatience.
Then the feeling of cool healing flickers, and she makes a sound of surprise. Regina moves her hand again, the healing feeling comes back for a moment and then disappears again, like a neon light buzzing on and off. There's a loud cracking sound behind us, Regina whips around and looks at the door to Granny's, its blown in and wind howls. I prop myself up, painfully on my elbows and watch purple magic flying from the roof and the corners of the building like fallen snow blown off of fresh drifts in a blizzard.
"He's calling it back." Regina says, her voice alarmed. "Gold's calling all the magic back from Storybrooke."
I stagger to my feet, stuffing myself into the jeans and red flannel Granny had brought down for when I'd finished healing. "That means he's leaving and taking Belle. Granny, I need your crossbow-"
"You can't face off against him, Red." Emma clutches my shoulders. "You're not even fully healed. You should be in the hospital-"
I stare back at her, and the crease in her forehead deepens, but her hands release my shoulders, and her eyes fill with sad acceptance. "Okay, I know better than that." She says. "Well, you're not doing this alone."
"That's right." Regina swallows hard. Purple magic, like glitter, is being wicked away from her hands, from her hair, from her eyes, sucked like all the other magic in town in an inexorable whirlpool whose vortex is undoubtedly Mr. Gold. "You're- you're like, leaking glitter." Emma says, the levity of her words thrown off by concern.
"No Miss Swan, I'm leaking magic." Regina stares down at her hands, almost amused. "I might just be an ordinary woman soon."
"Hardly ordinary." Emma says, putting her weight on one hip. "Look, if he's taking magic away from you then you should stay here too. Me and Ruby can handle this. It'll just distract me if I think you could be hurt." The last part is almost a whisper. Regina gives her an arch look, folding her arms. "I appreciate the heroics, but I still have a few tricks up my sleeve." Even if her magic is leaking away, she still has the bearing of a Queen as she stares at Emma, and then turns and bends low to talk to her son.
"Henry, you stay here-" she's using a commanding , reserved tone, but Henry throws his arms around her and, after a moment of surprise, she clings to him, burying her face deep in his shoulder. "Remember, if anything happens to me-" she looks up at Emma, then back at him. "Then be good for Emma. Except when she tells you its okay to skip brushing your teeth once in while because its 'like camping'. That's her own personal quirk."
Emma smiles through a chin quiver, and then links her arm through mine when she sees me wobble on my hurt knee.
"Let's get your Belle back." Emma says fiercely.
It's impossible to be close to the woods without feeling the beanstalks growing. Their roots churn the soil, erupting through the surface in places like whale tails. We watch through a cover of trees, the police light and siren off. A few work lights are scattered at the base of the beanstalks, sending light the three stories of the ropy, fleshy stalks. None of them have grown yet. At the base of one of the stalks are a handful of Storybrooke locals who have decided to go up despite the ogres-there's about eight of them, not including the dwarves, hardened, tough looking types. Snow and James are working together to bind them to the base of the stalk, their eyes flitting apprehensively between the unsavory crew they're roping tight and Mr. Gold, who is standing with both hands upraised, directing the cloud of purple magic to move upwards, circling and winding its mass of clouds into an upside down hurricane into the sky and up into space, back into the Enchanted Forest, to presumably wait for him there. At his feet, I see delicate white lace peep from under Belle's coat. She's knocked out, lying on the forest floor.
A growl starts in my throat.
"Let him get the magic out of this world first." Regina says softly, putting a hand on my arm.
The Blue Fairy steps forward in her dark cloak, her stiff face pretty but remote. In her gloved hand she walks around the base of the beanstalk, scattering brilliant shards of fairy dust. Then she stands at the base and takes out her wand. Emma and I glance at each other.
With a quick gesture of her wrist, the Blue Fairy flicks her wrist. The ground around the beanstalk grows and suddenly it shoots upwards. The expansion of the uncoiling roots underfoot is almost deafening to my wolf ears. As the beanstalk grows, the men tied to the stalk are carried effortlessly upwards into the air, soon rising past the strong worklights and into the cloud cover, passing far higher than pictures of sky scrapers that I've seen. It's a way to save them from the incredible effort it would take to climb up the beanstalk to the Enchanted Forest- and, I realize with my knees trembling, the perfect way to get people up there whether they want to go or not.
"Holy shit!" Emma says, seizing Regina's arm. "Did you see that?
"Actually no." Regina says coolly. "Mr Gold has indeed cloaked the beanstalks from my perception. All I saw was a ring of men roped together shoot through the air…But that's good news." She looks out into the night, her eyes searching, glittering. "If he's got a cloaking spell in place, he can't afford to pull all the magic out of town. So even after most of it is gone, he'll have some small reserve hovering around him." She rests her hand on my arm again and gives me a hard look. "So don't just pounce on him, 's still a force to be reckoned with even after the purple fog has cleared."
"So am I." I manage to snap eyes are fixed on the limp figure of Belle, who is suddenly being lifted from the forest floor in Gold's reedy arms. He's dragging her toward the second of the beanstalks.
"One person to a beanstalk?" I hear Snow say to Gold, past the cover of the trees. "We only have six left and we haven't gotten Emma and Henry yet."
"That won't take long, and thanks to that bitch of yours there's about twenty thousand less of your subjects willing to return to the Enchanted Forest." Mr. Gold snarls, stepping away from the upside-down tornado of purple fog that dissipating into space. "Help me tie her up securely, I don't have any magic to waste."
I step as soundlessly as I can past Regina and Emma. They hiss at me to come back but my eyes are trained on Belle, small and delicate against the monstrous beanstalk. I spy a coil of rope, one of several heaps near me- just ten or so feet away. It will bring me within the glow of the worklights, so I move gingerly, holding my breath. I fall to my knees and crawl through the grass, grabbing the end of a long piece of rope and toe one end to the arrow in my crossbow, the other end I wrap hard around my wrist, binding it with frantic, shaking fingers.
The Blue Fairy makes a dutiful circle around the base of the second beanstalk, diamond dust falling from her small hands. Belle seems to nod in her sleep, her beautiful face immobile, perhaps feeling the energy surge in the beanstalk behind her.
"Once we get her up safely, and strip Storybrooke of the rest of the magic-" he points to the swirling vortex of purple fog, thinner and thinner now, "Then we'll get Emma and Henry, and without magic, Regina won't be able to stop us." Gold says to Snow, whose looking particularly petulant.
"And Ruby?" Snow manages.
"Can stay here and serve her slop at that greasy spoon. I won't kill her, since you insist, Your Majesty." Mr. Gold laughs. Snow's jaw clenches, but she nods, shooting a look at James, who puts his arms around her. Well, thanks for that Snow, I guess?
The Blue Fairy takes out her wand and stands before the beanstalk Belle is bound to. My heart is in my mouth. The world turns sepia before my eyes for a moment I'm so angry, but I take control of myself, breathing deeply. I can't turn into an animal right now, Belle needs me. I take aim with Granny's crossbow, thinking of my days in the woods shooting targets with Snow. I aim for the stalk, but as far as I can from Belle's nodding head, and pull the trigger just as the Blue Fairy flicks her wrist.
The arrow embeds deeply as the beanstalk surges upwards, the vegetable matter of the stalks healing around the arrow as it grows and giving me an even more secure anchor. It pulls me from my hidden crouch in the forest and send me flying into the air, pulling the rope between the arrow and my crossbow taught and dangling me over the forest floor like the end of a string tied to a balloon. Gripping with all my might to the stock of the crossbow, I refuse to look down. Any moment we'll move out from the treetops of the forest. 30 taut feet of rope are all that separate me from Belle above me, and certain death far below.