Regina held her hands out as they glowed, undoing any enchantments, wards, and traps she'd placed on her vault. When she was done, Fang walked to the doors and opened them with ease.
"Thank you, Regina," She said. "You can go back to whatever you were doing."
"Right," She said, as though all they'd done was met up for coffee and they had to get back to work.
"Wait, Mom…!" Henry continued to protest, but at this point it was futile and he knew he wouldn't be able to convince his mom of anything wrong. "Uh, can I stay with Fang? You know, continue catching up with her?"
"If that's okay with her."
"It's fine, Regina," Fang said. "It'd be nice to catch up."
"Okay then. I'll see you later."
Regina walked off, and Henry hurried after Fang into his mother's vault. She pushed the tomb of Henry - Regina's father, that is - to the side and walked down the staircase. Henry followed her with reluctance, realizing that he didn't have much to defend himself with if Fang found what she was looking for and unleashed some kind of monster onto him.
Fang went around casually, humming a tune as she searched without a care in the world.
"What exactly are you after?" Henry asked.
"A trinket, like I said," She responded, pulling a small scroll out of one of the shelves before slipping it back in place.
"But what kind of trinket? What does it do?"
"Releases a friend of mine."
"A friend?"
He couldn't tell if there was a hint of malice in her voice or not, whether this "friend" was hostile or not. She didn't seem threatened by his questions, no careful tone. She spoke like she would if Henry was her annoying best friend that was asking her whether she had a crush on someone or not - she didn't flat out say it and danced around the subject, yet still managed to keep a perky and unaffected face.
"Yes, a friend. Are you deaf?"
"What does this friend do? Is he powerful?"
"Yes, very powerful," She said, looking through a cylinder that might've been some kind of telescope or pipe. "As for what he does, he brings stuff to life."
"As in…revives the dead?"
"If he wants, sure."
"Why would you want to free him?"
"He was locked up under horrible circumstances. Wrongfully imprisoned. I want him back."
She uncorked a vial and sniffed it before recoiling and quickly slipping the cork into place.
"What exactly are you planning once he's freed?"
"Ah, a villain doesn't reveal their plans before…well, actually, sometimes they do, but the point stands. The information's confidential. Once I've got what I want, we'll leave and you'll not remember anything that's transpired."
"Then what's the harm in telling me?"
"HQ always had eyes on everything that goes on, especially in a world like this. There's someone watching me and everyone else here in this town for their job."
"Well, they…must be getting quite a show."
"Yeah," She muttered half-heartedly while reading a scroll. "It's not much different from your storybook, Henry. Somewhere out there, in another dimension or whatever you want to call it, your lives are documented in a book or movie or TV show. Call it breaking the forth wall or whatnot, but it's true. You guys make an interesting drama show. There are separate people out there that watch over field agents like me to make sure we don't go rogue and do our jobs right, and give us some info from HQ if we're stumped on what to do."
"Doesn't that make you feel…I don't know. Violated?"
"Not like someone's stalking me or anything, and our agents all agreed to things willingly. As for if you're asking whether I like having my every move watched, I really don't mind. We're all family, and no one's gonna judge me for if I make some kind of embarrassing mistake or something."
"What about privacy?"
"It's not like I work 24/7, Henry. I have privacy, and it's not like I'm doing anything embarrassing on the job. Even if I, for some reason, do, then no one watching judges me like a bunch of gossiping teenagers."
"It still doesn't sound…right."
"You do you, Henry. You're not a Writer, and I agreed to all this. I mean, imagine if one of our kind went rogue and tried to change the world to their needs like Isaac did. We Writers have more power than Authors, and we could make things foolproof if we're smart enough and plan stuff out, being a real pain in the neck to others of our kind if they're powerful enough. We don't want that happening, do we? We try to make sure that nothing like that occurs."
"So, you're a good guy?"
"Eye of the beholder, Henry. My intentions could be called pure from one angle, but to another, they are pure evil, not good. In the end, everything's gray. This isn't a world of black and whites. You'd best learn that quickly, if you want to be an Author. Now then."
She snapped her fingers casually.
"Then what's the harm in telling me?" Henry asked again, the last minute or so of his life erased.
"I'm not an idiot," She said simply, before pulling out a book and smiling. "Well, that's good enough for me."
Henry panicked. What was he supposed to do if he couldn't stop her and she had what she wanted? If she could revive the dead…who knows who she could bring back? And what if they were under her control when she revived them? There were so many bad people that he and his friends and family have had to work so hard to defeat, and if they were revived, possibly all at once…that wouldn't be good.
"Oh, wipe that look off your face, Henry. I haven't gotten all I need yet."
She closed the book and stuck it into her cross-body bag before walking out of the vault.
"Hey, wait!"
He hurried out and up the stairs before Fang pushed the tomb back into place behind him. He was confused. Did she plan to trap him down there, or did she actually just let him come back up?
"Not gonna kill off a boy as important as you," She said, as though reading his thoughts. She ruffled his hair, as though he was her son, and he quickly backed away, trying to fix it.
"Why are you doing this?"
"What do you mean? I only want to be reunited with a comrade."
It was hard to tell whether she was being sarcastic or not. Her smile and confidence said she was obviously doing something that wasn't good, something vexatious and/or malicious, and she wasn't afraid of someone getting in her way. With her ability to mess with people's minds and memories, it was understandable that not a lot could stop her.
"Is that all?"
"Yes, Henry. Now, you can come with me if you want as I continue my search, if it makes you feel any better."
Henry didn't know if he could trust her, but what options did he have left? If she wanted, she could probably turn all his friends and family against him in an instant, and there'd be nothing he could do about it. She'd barely have to lift a finger and all the people he knew would stop him from doing anything against her. He'd never seen someone as powerful as her. Everyone always had something that limits them, some kind of holes in their plan that could be exploited, but so far, Henry couldn't see anything, and she didn't seem to be nervous about him finding something either, if she was inviting him to tag along.
So he followed her back into town, trying frantically to come up with something based on what he knew about her, but coming up blank.
"Where are we going now?" Henry asked. "What else could you need?"
"I still need that trinket I told you about. The book was just a surprise. I planned to look for it later, but it seems I have it now. Good luck, I suppose."
"I thought you said there was no such thing as luck because of your ability."
"I can't control every little thing at a time. If I did, that much information would make me either go insane or kill me. There are an infinite amount of tiny factors that go into life. Every little molecule in the world has the opportunity to change and be shifted. If just one molecule could be moved just slightly out of place, then a whole new scenario is played out. You follow?"
"I think so."
"Someone like me, a Writer in general, can change bigger events, especially ones that have big impacts on one's life, and only truly skilled ones can handle smaller events too that will have little effect on the bigger picture. However, when it comes to the lives of ourselves, Writers, our lives are our own. Sometimes we're using our abilities, sometimes we're not, and we just let life take us where it takes us. I suppose you could say that there's someone else out there writing or watching some show about me, a Writer, being in existence. And maybe there's someone else writing about that someone writing about me. That can go on for an infinite amount of times. What we believe to be reality may just be a dream to someone else. We may believe that we are the top tier, the people who live in a world where they are in control and no one's writing about them, their will is their own, but you can never know, right?"
"That sounds…depressing."
"Maybe. But that's only if you choose to perceive it that way. I just live my life, believing that I'm the one in control, that maybe my actions are my own, that there's no one writing out my story. I do what I want. And I'm gonna find my trinket. I know I will, no matter what anyone says."
"This trinket…how exactly does that book fit in?"
"It helps me activate the thing, sweetheart."
"And…and what happens when you release this friend of yours?"
"Who can really say? Anything can happen, right?"
Still without a clear answer, Fang stopped in front of a building. A familiar pawn shop, to be precise.
"Gold has what you're looking for?" Henry asked.
"He has what 95% of what the magical world is looking for," She argued. "Is it really a surprise that he stole a trinket from me?"
Thinking about it, Henry admitted that Gold did tend to have a lot of things that he'd taken from people over the years as the Dark One, a large number of things that the rest of the people in Storybrooke sometimes needed or lost, and therefore it wasn't a surprise that he might have something of hers.
"You stay out here," Fang ordered.
"What? Why?"
"Can't tell. Take the Writer's word for it, you're staying out here whether you like it or not."
Before Henry could protest, she slipped into the shop before he could take a step forward and shut the door behind her. He looked past the blinds in the door window to see her walk into the back room before he lost sight of her.