A/N: Yeah, yeah, you probably all thought that I disappeared. Sorry about the summer-long hiatus. I've been busy with some other projects. But I promise you that this story is still very much alive! I appreciate your lovely reviews very much!
"Kayla?" whispered Mrs. Gold softly. "Are you still awake?"
When there was no answer, she opened her daughter's bedroom door. Kayla was asleep on top of the comforter, a notepad in her hand. Mrs. Gold held the notepad close to the light of the bedside lamp and read.
Day twenty-seven: man in Storybrooke attacked along with dog, man disappears
Victims: Jiminy Cricket, Pongo
Suspects: The Evil Witch, King Midas, anyone who hates Jiminy Cricket or any of his patients
Mrs. Gold went on to read a description of everything related to the incident that Kayla had picked up on as well as detailed profiles of the victims and suspects. It was smartly worded, other than the Once Upon A Time of it all. Mrs. Gold was confused as to whether this was supposed to be Kayla's version of what had really happened that day with everyone's fairy tale "identities" in place of their names or if it was meant as a fictional interpretation. She preferred to think the latter. She tossed the notepad to the side and wrestled the comforter over the top of the child's sleeping body.
Mrs. Gold exited the bedroom and found her husband-whom she was still a bit cross with-leaning against the windowsill of a window with open curtains. He was starring off into the distance at nothing in particular.
"What are you thinking about?" asked Mrs. Gold. She startled him a bit as she edged up to him cautiously, but when he saw the concern on her face he relaxed and pulled her into a side hug.
"In a fruitless attempt to put the tragic events of today from my mind, darling, I'm thinking about a deal."
She went along. "What kind of a deal?"
Mr. Gold was silent for a moment.
"I'm not sure how to explain. It's become so much more complicated than what I, as a businessman, ordinarily consider a deal." She looked to him with round worried eyes as he continued. "It's more of an intricate web of transactions spun across a lifetime of regret. There are only a few more pieces left now. Only a few more contracts to be signed. And then all I have to do is make sure that someone is in the right place at the right time."
"What are you talking about? You aren't making any sense."
He kissed her on the cheek. "Don't worry about it, darling. There's no need for you to concern yourself with the business side of things."
Belle never would have stood for such a notion. But the cursed Mrs. Gold nodded, held onto him for just a moment longer, and went to bed. He hoped she would understand the way he was leaving her in the dark after she got her memories back. After all, it wasn't like he could explain to her that he had a son two centuries older than her and had cast a curse to get back to him that was almost ready to be broken. Just a few more chips needed to fall into place.
"Not too much longer now, Bae," Mr. Gold whispered as he pulled the curtains shut.
At approximately five o'clock the following morning, the notepad Mrs. Gold had found was shoved through Eleanor's mail slot. It was open to a page with a personal note written on it.
Dear Princess Aurora,
Something bad happened to Dr. Hopper. Here are the details. No one has ever gone missing in this town before. It's time for Operation Zebra to take action.
By the time it was found a few hours later, Kayla was back at home having breakfast with her unsuspecting parents.
Never having been a religious woman in her twenty-eight years of life, Helena opted to go out of her way to attend church that day.
"It just feels right, you know? To be around everyone else today?" she said to Virginia as she fastened simple gold studs in her ears.
"Do you think the priest will mention Dr. Hopper?" asked the other woman.
"He'd better. Everyone in town is talking about it. I talked to Ruby a little while ago. She and Graham still haven't found any sign of him."
"That's horrible. Can I come with you?"
"Of course," said Helena. "Did you know Dr. Hopper?"
"I went to see him once, a few days after I left my mother," Virginia confessed. "I told him how nervous I was about leaving our room and going out in public, and he said, 'It's important to remember that the enemies of your enemies are your friends'."
Helena smiled at the thought that if it was true, all Virginia had to do to make everyone in Storybrooke her friend by default was continue to refrain from speaking to her mother. She knew that she'd heard that tip before but couldn't quite place where.
The nurse presiding over the front desk of the psychiatric ward scanned the mysterious visitor suspiciously.
"You're here to do WHAT with Henry Stable?"
"I need to speak to him about an urgent personal matter. I'm afraid I can't tell you what it is."
"Can I see some ID?"
"What's an ID?"
The nurse smiled at the young woman as if she were a three-year-old in costume.
"I'm afraid we don't have any visiting hours on Sunday. And our patients in the maximum security ward aren't allowed to have any visitors other than spouses and blood relatives."
"Nurse Tachter?"
The severe nurse turned around to address her superior.
"Yes, Dr. Aras?"
"Have you spoken to the sheriff yet?"
"Deputy Lucas informed me he's unavailable," said the nurse. "I assume the investigation is keeping him busy."
Dr. Aras granted her an understanding nod. "Callous as this may seem, I need you to look into the red tape that will be involved in obtaining the files for Dr. Hopper's patients if...just so that we're prepared."
"Of course," said the nurse. "May I ask which patients specifically?"
"John Doe and Henry Stable."
The nurse jotted down the names, said goodbye to the doctor, and turned back to see if Eleanor was still there. She wasn't.
The church service began with a prayer for Dr. Hopper's safety followed by some musings from the priest about loss and hope. It was twenty minutes before he began rambling on about how devastating the loss of his first wife had been, which was nothing new to those he was preaching to nor was it of any comfort whatsoever. The few who continued to pay attention to him began to tear up. Most tuned him out and either leaned into a loved one for comfort or gazed out the one open window at the calm everyday scene of a brown bird chasing a jumping cricket across a clear meadow.
It occurred to Aurora as she made her way down the street to Dr. Hopper's empty office with a small knife in her hand that very few princesses could say they had ever engaged in small-town crime. Fewer still could say that they had done so for the greater good. She hoped she would be one of them.
Aurora checked the address she had written down on the slip of paper she was carrying, and then she looked around. The town center was virtually empty on Sunday afternoons except for Granny's, where a handful of people chose to have Sunday brunch. Unfortunately, the diner happened to be directly across the street from the therapist's office. Aurora could count six people inside: Granny, Mr. and Mrs. Gold, Kayla, Leroy, and Astrid. If she could see them, that meant they could see her, too. She discreetly snuck around the side of the building and found a window that led directly into what seemed to be the doctor's office.
Aurora closed her eyes, pulled her shawl over her face, and punctured the glass with her knife until she created a space big enough to climb in.
From there, things got very simple. Aurora's therapy file was open on the table along with Henry's and Daniel's. A few minutes of reading told her that Henry had found his father, that Dr. Hopper had triggered some of Henry's father's real memories, and that Dr. Hopper was beginning to see the similarities between his unrelated "delusional" patients. The dates on the records showed that Daniel's second hypnosis session had taken place two days previously. Kayla was right. It couldn't be a coincidence that something bad had just happened to the doctor.
But at least now maybe Aurora had a way to prove to the one person who had a way to communicate with Henry that he wasn't crazy.
All who had attended church that day walked away from the building in silence and with heavy hearts. Virginia and Helena stayed close together as they made their way past the parking lot and towards the path they would use to walk home, taking comfort in each other's quiet presence. The silence was stolen when a young woman in a yellow dress charged breathlessly out of the bushes, startling Virginia for a split second. The woman's hair and dress were covered in leaves and smudged with dirt in places, and she was clutching a stack of papers to her chest.
"Everything okay, Eleanor?" asked Helena, straining to keep her tone and expression from giving away her disgust.
"I need to talk to you. It's about Henry. I have proof."
"Proof of what?"
"This is…" Eleanor glanced at Virginia. "It's sort of private."
"Anything you have to say, you can say in front of my friend."
"Well, alright then," said Eleanor. "First off, I need you to be completely open to the possibility that everything Henry, Kayla, and I have ever said to you about the curse is real." Helena sighed. "Can you do that?"
"I'm sorry, Eleanor. I don't have time for this. Maybe you should see if you can talk to…" Helena froze when she realized that the woman's therapist wasn't currently available. She felt Virginia look at her sympathetically. "Okay. Fine. I'll do it."
"First, take a look at this."
Helena felt like she'd been punched in the stomach when she scanned the piece of paper Aurora was holding out for her. Then she yanked it out of the other woman's hand so fast a corner of the page ripped off.
"What the hell are you doing with my brother's shrink file?"
"I'll tell you in a minute," said Eleanor. "Now, take a look at this."
Helena's jaw hit the floor when she read the next piece of paper the princess showed her. It was a file for another person, a man who called himself Daniel, who had apparently reported having memories of events that took place in Henry and Kayla's story book.
"Don't you see?" said Eleanor. "Dr. Hopper was killed because he learned how to restore people's real memories. The curse is real."
Tears formed in Helena's eyes at the proclamation that the doctor was dead. She hadn't allowed the possibility to enter her mind yet.
"What the hell are you trying to pull? Are you trying to make me crazy too so that you have someone to poison with your delusions now that your therapist is gone and you can't talk to my brother? Is that it? Huh?"
"No!"
"Then what the hell do you want from me?"
"If you would just read the rest of the notes, you'd understand!" yelled Eleanor. "If you're not going to believe me, don't you at least want to know why this other guy is remembering things that…"
"Shut up!" snapped Helena. Unable to take any more of this right now, she yanked the piece of paper about Daniel out of Eleanor's hand, ripped it in half, and threw it on the ground. "What else do you have about Henry?"
Eleanor began trembling in the heat of the angry woman's glare. She surrendered the rest of the contents of Henry's file, but kept her own and Daniel's. As Helena turned and walked away, Eleanor picked up the ripped page.
"You want me to be wrong, don't you?" Eleanor finally realized out loud. Helena whipped around to face her. "You don't want to believe! After everything you've seen, why can't you just do it?"
"Because I'm tired of this fairytale garbage ruining my life!"
Eleanor lowered her gaze and clutched the remaining papers she had to her chest. Helena looked away from the woman she'd been fighting with and suddenly noticed that a small crowd had gathered at the edge of the parking lot. She scraped together what was left of her dignity, nodded curtly in the direction of the townspeople, and marched off down the path, Virginia following close behind. Helena ignored her friend but was grateful for her presence anyway. She knew she'd have someone to talk to once she managed to quiet the angry thoughts racing through her mind. How dare this woman try to tell Helena how to treat her sick brother? How dare she get her hands on Henry's shrink file? How had that even happened? Why did people like Henry and Eleanor have to have such screwed-up views of the world? Why did the real world have to be so screwed up in its own right? Why did something bad have to happen to Dr. Hopper?
"Long walk from the church to our apartment, huh?" Virginia remarked after they'd walked about half a mile. "Where's your hot date and his police cruiser when you need them?"
That got a chuckle out of Helena. She'd been wondering if Virginia had noticed the spark between her and Graham.
"We almost went out last night," Helena confessed. "I'm not completely sure I want to go there."
"Why? Do you not like him?"
Helena gave Virginia a look. "Is there anything not to like?" Helena asked. Virginia chuckled. "The thing is," Helena explained, "When Graham and I do hang out, I can talk about things other than the crap going on in my life without feeling like I'm avoiding the subject. You know all the details about what's going on with Henry, Mr. and Mrs. Gold know, hell, even Kayla knows. And I really do hope you know how grateful I've been for your support."
Virginia smiled. She wasn't used to being appreciated.
"But with Graham it's a different kind of support. Because we don't talk about my problems, he allows me to forget about them. And I don't want to lose that."
"Maybe you don't have to," Virginia suggested. "Maybe he'll be an even better distraction once you're…" Virginia paused when she saw something coming down the road, then laughed. "Well, I'll be darned. Looks like your cop in shining armor has arrived after all."
Seconds later, the sheriff's vehicle pulled up next to Helena and Virginia. Helena realized her cheeks must still be flushed and her makeup was probably ruined, so she tried to straighten herself up discreetly.
But when Graham stepped out of his car, the two women saw the devastating expression on his face, and they immediately remembered the reason why he hadn't been at church that day.
"What's wrong?" asked Virginia.
Graham cleared his throat. "I'm afraid I need you to come back to the station with me for questioning, Helena. There's been a development in Dr. Hopper's case. It involves you."