When both Stable siblings arrived at Granny's the following morning, the only other people around were Ruby and Mr. Gold, Mrs. Gold, and Kayla, all dressed in their finest.
"Good morning," said Henry when he saw them. "Everything okay? The place looks deserted."
"Most people in town are on their way to church right now," explained Mr. Gold. "We prefer a quiet Sunday brunch. I've never been too fond of nuns."
"Me neither!" yelled Leroy, a.k.a. Grumpy, as he ordered his second beer of the day.
"Would you care to join us, Mr. and Ms. Stable?" asked Mr. Gold.
"No, thank you," said Henry. Then, seizing the opportunity to be around most of the town's people in one place, he went to ask Ruby for directions to the church while Helena gave him a look behind his back.
"How about you?" Mr. Gold asked Helena.
"Sure." It wasn't like she had anything better to do.
"You seem surprised that he's going," Mr. Gold remarked as Henry thanked Ruby and headed out the door.
"My brother's been an atheist his entire life."
"Well, people change," said Mr. Gold. "Isn't that right, darling?"
"Of course," said Mrs. Gold, who wasn't really paying attention.
"Are you ordering chocolate chip pancakes again, Kayla Belle?" asked Mr. Gold.
"Mhm," responded Kayla, who was writing something down in a notebook.
"Homework at Sunday brunch?" Helena remarked. "You must be busy."
"It's not homework."
"Then what are you doing?" asked Mr. Gold.
"Making a list of every type of item you have in the pawn shop."
Mrs. Gold sighed. "Kayla, why don't you put that away for now?" Reluctantly, she did.
"So, is Kayla named after anyone?" asked Helena in an attempt to make conversation. "Neither of you ever told us your first names."
"No, she's not," said Mrs. Gold. "My first name is Rose, but hardly anyone calls me that anymore."
"What about you?" Helena asked Mr. Gold.
He frowned and glanced off to the side. "I really don't remember my first name anymore. Do you, darling?"
Mrs. Gold frowned and shook her head. "No." Helena raised her eyebrows but didn't say anything.
"So, Ms. Stable," Mr. Gold turned to her. "Have you been enjoying your stay in our little town?"
"It's…yep, it's been an interesting experience."
Mr. Gold smiled. "Storybrooke might be quite different from what you're used to. But I can assure you that if you look hard enough, it will turn out to be one of the most interesting towns you have ever been to."
"You've just been looking in all the wrong places," said Kayla with a smile.
"Maybe not all. I met Sleeping Beauty and Prince Phillip the other day."
Kayla's eyes widened. "You...you're part of Operation Zebra, too?! And you found them? Where?"
Helena smiled. "Down a rabbit hole."
Kayla giggled. half-smiled. "That's enough Operation Zebra stuff before breakfast. Why don't you go tell Ruby our order?"
"Mkay." Kayla hopped up and gave Helena a high-five on her way to the counter. Actually, Helena had no idea what Operation Zebra was, but secretly she did wish she could spend more time with Kayla. Not just because she liked her, but because this was only the second person she'd ever met in her living memory whom she was biologically related to. But, for the most part, she didn't want to get in the way of Henry getting to know his daughter. And none of that changed the fact that she found his decision to move to Storybrooke absolutely insane.
Priest, Snow White's father. Mother Superior, Blue Fairy. Other nuns, also fairies. One of these was the one who had made Grumpy Grumpy, Henry couldn't tell which from the fifth pew back. Elderly blind lady who came in with a plate of cookies, probably the blind witch.
"Let us all stand and take a moment of silence to thank the lord for everything He hast given unto us," said the priest, aka King Leopold. Henry joined hands with the strangers on either side of him but didn't close his eyes. Instead he glanced around the room for the minute to see if Mayor Mills or either of his parents were around. He didn't spot them, but he did notice David's mother Edith Nolan, aka Ruth, and was a little startled at the sight of the familiar face. He tried to force himself to concentrate on his mission. This was no time to let himself feel anything. Except maybe a little guilt over knowing that he was responsible for the fact that Mary Margret and David were sitting together while Kathryn sat alone just one row away.
The rest of the service was spent trying to profile the rest of the "characters" in the book while remaining as inconspicuous as possible. Meanwhile King Leopold went on and on about how blessed everyone should consider themselves because they were fortunate enough to live in such a blessed town with blessed neighbors and everything good that happened to them should be considered a blessing. Considering that they were actually living in a cursed town, there was something freakishly ironic about this. Eventually the sermon devolved into a mournful monologue about how much the priest missed his first wife, and how beautiful she was.
After the service was over, Henry spotted David walking Mary Margret to her car. "Hey, David!" Henry called. David held up his hand, said something to Mary Margret, kissed her on the cheek, and went back over to Henry.
"You were right," said David. "She said yes! And she's amazing, we have so much in common!" Henry inwardly rolled his eyes. They hadn't even been dating for twenty-four hours yet.
"I'm happy for you, man," he said truthfully. "Just curious, does the mayor ever come to church?"
"Of course not. She hates any social gathering that involves the attention being focused on someone other than her."
"Why am I not surprised?" Henry responded. "What about her daughter?"
"She isn't allowed to go." Henry clenched his jaw and bit his tongue. "How's Kayla doing?" asked David.
"Doing better," said Henry. "I'll see you later." He left before David had a chance to ask him what he meant by 'better'. It killed Henry that his parents were in the same town as him for the first time for twenty-eight years, but he knew that moving in on the evil witch too fast could be detrimental. He needed to know for sure who she was. And he needed something he could use against her.
"Thank you for agreeing to take a walk with me, Philip." Aurora linked her arm around his, rested her head on his shoulder, and let out a contented sigh. "Those wizards and nurses at the infirmary are so rude. All they want me to do is sit around in bed doing nothing unless I'm being 'supervised'. They treat me as if Maleficent burned my skin off with her flames and then clawed me half to death or something. It was just a sleeping curse. They should know that a princess who's been through what I have is strong enough to get back on her feet after being woken from a simple sleeping curse."
Her beloved smiled in amusement. "They're probably surprised because most people don't recover from…uh…sleeping curses as quickly as you have. You have a lot more stamina than anyone expected you to."
"Are you sure I was only asleep for two years?" Aurora questioned as she looked at a passing car. "The carriages have gotten so strange, and the number of commoners I've seen communicating with each other by holding shiny enchanted boxes up to their ears is simply astounding."
"I'm positive." The man turned and waved hello to a woman standing twenty or so feet behind him, then stopped and waited for her to catch up.
"Who's that?" asked Aurora.
"I'm Helena," the woman introduced herself.
Aurora curtseyed. "So pleased to meet the brave woman who helped my prince to rescue me!"
"How are you feeling, Eleanor?" asked Helena.
"Oh, it's Aurora. Princess Aurora."
Helena turned and looked at Kevin, who half-smiled. "It's going fine. She has her first session with Dr. Hopper tomorrow." Helena nodded.
"Is the session some sort of royal meeting with a knight I didn't know about? What happened to Maleficent? Is she dead?"
"Of course she is," Helena assured her. Kevin raised his eyebrows. "Obviously. If you're Phillip, that means that you killed the dragon with your sword. Haven't you seen the movie?"
"What's a movie?" asked Aurora.
'Phillip' squeezed her hand. "Don't worry about it. Let's just get back to the infirmary before they start worrying about you."
Kevin had his practical reasons for staying with Eleanor, to be sure. He still felt guilty about being the cause of her ailment, and he wanted to come to her first therapy session so that he could find out how much of this mindset was his fault and how much had already been there. But beyond that, he was finding himself unexplainably and intensely drawn to her, despite the fairytale delusion.
"You remembered the book, right?" asked Kayla as she led Henry to the back entrance of Mr. Gold's pawn shop.
"Yeah," said Henry. "Hey, I thought your father was going to be here."
"Nope. Mom doesn't let him work on Sundays."
Henry hesitated. "So we'd be breaking and entering?"
"No, it's fine," Kayla insisted. "I have a key."
"Works for me." Kayla opened the door and brought them inside. Then she set her list she'd been working on and the book down on her father's desk. "You take the back room, I'll take the front room. We only have a few hours, so try to match as many of these objects as you can with their counterparts in the book."
"Anything in particular we're looking for?" asked Kayla.
"Anything that can help us defeat the evil witch."
Two hours later, Henry was examining a shelf of ceramics when Kayla came out holding a magic wand.
"What's that from?" asked Henry.
"I think the Dark One owned that whole case of them in the back. As far as I know they're too big to be fairy wands. In any case, I can't get it to work."
"Good," said Henry. "Put that wand back where you got it from right this instant, and if you find any other objects that might have magical properties, come get me immediately, understand?"
Kayla frowned slightly. "Okay."
Henry sighed and turned back to the figurines. Guess that was my first real "parenting" moment.
"Do you need help with the figurines?" asked Kayla. "I know the unicorn ones all came from King Leopold's palace."
"Was there a picture of them in the book?" asked Henry.
"Yes," said Kayla. "And I know where that angel is from, too."
Henry carefully lifted down a figurine of an angel with brown hair and a simple brown dress. It would have just been a figurine of a girl if it wasn't for the white wings on the back.
"This is where it's from." Kayla pointed to a page in the book. There was a picture of a girl and boy sitting on the grass next to a stone building. The boy was holding the angel figurine in the palm of his hand and the girl was smiling.
"And on her thirteenth birthday, Alan gave Cora a porcelain angel that cost him two weeks of wages. It was the first proper birthday gift she had ever received, and it would be the only gift from him that she would keep after believing that he had abandoned her. She never found out that the real reason he disappeared was because her uncle poisoned him with a potion that causes one to forget the person they love the most. As a result, Cora became an even more bitter person than she already was and went to Rumpelstiltskin for help. As soon as she knew enough magic to do so without harming herself, she ripped out her own heart and put it in a box. That was why she never loved Regina-or anyone else-ever again."
"I think I just found your parents' wedding rings." Henry looked up and saw Kayla holding two gold rings in the palms of her hands. He didn't need to look in the book to remember what they looked like.
"Put them back." He would approach Mr. Gold about buying them later. It was bad enough that he was about to steal the angel figurine. But that was ultimately for the greater good.
"Okay."
"Now let's drop everything else for now and look for Cora's heart."
"There are no hearts in the pawn shop," said Kayla. "If there were, we'd be able to hear them beating. I'm guessing that Mayor Mills would keep something like that either at her house or at town hall. We can go look there now, if you want."
"Not today," said Henry. "I need a strategy before going into either of those places. Let's just put away everything we pulled out and call it a day, alright?"
"Okay. I know how we can get in. I'll ring the door bell and tell Mayor Mills there's an emergency somewhere in the town, and you can sneak in while I stay outside and be the lookout."
"Absolutely not."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not taking you with me to see someone who's capable of ripping out people's hearts and controlling everything they do."
"No. She doesn't have any magic here. That means she can't rip out any new hearts."
"But maybe she can control the people whose hearts she already has. In any case, I'm going to need some more backup before going on that particular mission. And you need to stay somewhere safe while that's going on, so I don't have to worry about you. Understand?"
Kayla shook her head. "No. I don't understand. I'm tired of reading about heroes. I want to be one."
Henry smiled and squeezed her shoulder. "You were the only person who could have brought me here, Kayla. You're already a hero."
A/N: please review! :) Also I'd like to recommend a fanfic, Where Do I Belong by Metope. It's another alternate universe that involves Cora casting the curse and Daniel surviving with StableQueen moments and adorable SwanQueen friendship and it's absolutely amazing.