They tied him below in the hull, where only the strongest rays of light streamed in through a random slat here and there. Chains and crates kept him company, a bucket for...whatever he may need it for, scraps of food—Snow would say this for this odd assortment of crew, they did know how to treat prisoners.
She volunteered to question him, or rather, the process of elimination volunteered for her. She had heard of Rumpelstiltskin and Hook's methods of interrogation, had experienced Regina's, and neither Charming nor Emma seemed capable of restraint at the moment. Emma had retreated into Snow's bunk immediately after they'd appeared on the ship and pulled Henry's book out of the backpack. The studious tunnel-vision wrinkles on her forehead warned Snow to address her later.
So she sat on another bucket in this dark belly of the Jolly Roger with the man whose life they had spent an entire night hoping to save. Allowing herself to wring her hands and wonder if that had been the smartest choice or if hindsight was in fact twenty-twenty, she exhaled and smiled.
"Greg."
He jolted at the sudden noise before staring down at the floor again.
"Greg, we welcomed you to Storybrooke. You were the first outsider..." Bad word choice, Snow, she winced. "...in a long time, and we were so worried you wouldn't make it after your crash. We hadn't done anything to you. Whatever happened exactly between you and Regina and your father...Greg, she killed my father, too."
His face gazed into hers, a searching expression, trying to read if she was being straight with him.
"I don't know the circumstances of how that happened to yours, but all I know is sometimes even those horrible things have to be pushed aside when something even bigger is at stake. Henry is my grandson. I don't know how much you know about our lives, Greg, but I never had the chance to see my daughter grow up. I always thought that at least I would get that chance with Henry and any other children she may have down the road." Taking his silence as a sign he was listening, that just maybe the words were getting through, she leaned forward and held his hand in both of hers. "Henry is a smart, observant, fun boy. He reads comic books, collects clocks, and is getting pretty good with a wooden sword. Please. Please give him back to us."
His mouth fell open, lips cracked. Unable to guess what he would say, still afraid he would deny her any information, she held his hand tighter.
"We're from different lands, I know, and magic, magic takes some getting used to. But we're not so different. I mourned my father the way you mourned yours. I worry for Henry the way you might worry about someone you love. I love...we all love, the way anyone from your world may love."
"I, I don't have him anymore," he coughed.
"Whatever you can tell me."
"It was supposed to just be about finding what happened to my father." He grimaced in such a way Snow blinked, hoping he did not have to use his bucket.
"I'm listening, Greg."
"Owen."
"Owen."
"The Lost Ones have him, on the main island. Tamara is one of them."
"Is that who you work for then?" she asked.
"I worked for an organization that strove to rid our world of you vermin!" he moaned. "Magic ruined my life. I didn't have my mom. I didn't have my dad. Do you have any idea how it feels to grow up in the system? To go from one foster family to another?"
Snow gulped, tears beginning to sting her eyes.
"I finally had friends. I fell in love. I was closing in on the woman who took my father from me!" His arms moved within the ropes, would have punched something if they'd been free. "And then everything changed. They wanted Henry. I thought it was for experiments. I don't think there's another kid that was born in our world but to people not from our world." He shook his head, unleashing a desperate laugh. "As soon as we got here, Tamara showed him to the Lost Ones."
"That's who she works for?"
"That's who they worship. Pan. The whole damn time, working for Peter freakin' Pan!" he wailed, tears gushing down his cheeks. With her sleeve wrapped over her hand, she stepped up and wiped his face.
"Hey."
Emma didn't answer, turning a page in the book instead. Her fingers ran across the page like a typewriter, ensuring she didn't miss a word.
"I came to see if you needed any help doing what it is you're doing." Snow crawled onto the foot of the bed across from where Emma sat Indian-style, the book between them.
"I don't even know what I'm looking for." She all but swatted at a strand of her own hair falling into her face. "I can barely think. Henry must be so scared..."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Well, I was looking through here for anything about Neverland to start with, and then it turned into needing to know more about the fairies since it turns out Peter Pan isn't just some kid with issues." Emma paused to massage her temples. "What's the difference between 'fairy' and 'fae?' I see both words in here."
"There's no difference, really, except in context. Fairies are kind, helpful little creatures and faes just sort of, uh, screw with people."
"Screw..."
"Mischief makers," Snow clarified. "Impish things, like the stories where they get you lost in the forest on purpose."
"Fantastic," Emma heaved. She turned the page. They peered down and read, Snow taking longer due to upside-down words. Out of nowhere, Emma gasped.
"What? What is it?"
"You gave the book to Henry," she said.
"Yes?"
"Where did you get it?"
"I..." Snow bit her lip, eyes darting all over the small cabin for an answer. "I don't know. I remember, I remember it just being on my bookshelf the day I decided Henry should have it."
"Did anyone say anything to you, planted the idea in your head to give it to him?" It sounded like Emma already had some idea of what happened, or was puzzling together a story of some sort. Unfortunately for all of them, implanted memories weren't easily sorted from true ones.
"All I know is that once Henry was in my class, it was like he'd always been in my class," she said with a tilt of the head. "He seemed so lonely that I got home and saw the book on my shelf and thought, 'That is what will give him hope.'"
"Well, there's no way Regina's responsible for that," Emma huffed. "The book was the first thing that brought me to his attention-" she trailed off, eyes widening. "They wanted to break the curse."
"Who?"
"Whoever gave you the book. Whoever gave you that knew that once Henry read it, he would know what exactly was going on and what he needed to do!"
Snow snatched the book up and poured the pages to one side to inspect the inside of the front cover. No copyright date, no publishing company, nothing. Not even an author's name.
"But we all had lost our memories. We couldn't remember who we were."
"Jefferson remembered," Emma argued.
"But he also couldn't leave his house until you arrived. No, someone else had to have known the whole time." She found herself wishing for a Storybrooke phone book. "August?"
"According to Neal, August didn't actually go to Storybrooke until after me. No," she sighed. "There has to be someone else. Let's keep looking. Maybe there's a clue in here somewhere...even though we still don't know what we're looking for."
"Emma, honey," Snow whispered, her eyelids so heavy. "I think we need to save our spot and reconvene in the morning."
"You can go back to your cabin if you're tired," was the retort. Snow sighed, wishing someone had prepared her for getting an adolescent's attitude back.
"You're in my cabin. You came in here for the book and didn't leave."
"Oh." Nodding, she clasped the book, ready to shut it, when she bent her head further down into the illustration. "What's this?"
Snow peered down to a symbol of a crescent moon with a five-pointed star next to it.
"That's the symbol of the fairies," she yawned. "Sometimes the things they influence have that on them."
"It's on the wardrobe," she said, flipping near the end of the book.
"Mmm hmm."
"It's on the stakes holding up the bean crop the giants are growing, too. Look."
"Emma, don't shove the book into my face. I told you, it's like their calling card, their logo. Things become a little more significant when they're magic things."
"But she says in the story, the Blue Fairy says in the story, that it's the last magic tree. Rumpelstiltskin's story isn't in here, but Neal's is and she tells him it is the last magic bean," she said.
"I don't think she was aware Anton and his brothers were still growing them."
"But what's with all this 'last' stuff? Other magic things are being lost and yet her calling card, as you called it, is on everything?" Emma flipped through the book for what must have been the millionth time, her eyes scanning for the symbol.
"Emma. It's time for bed."
"I don't want to go to bed."
"Then go take a shift at the helm or something different. Run laps up and down a corridor, just do something to clear your mind for a few minutes. You're starting to sound like you're accusing Mother Superior of...something."
"It's just, it's just strange, that's all." Snow took advantage of the stillness and ran a few fingers through a strand of Emma's hair.
"We'll talk all this out tomorrow when we come up with a plan for how to invade that island," she said. Relieved Emma was standing, she scooted towards the middle of the bed, ready to lay down and wait for Charming's arms to wrap around her before finally falling asleep. Blinking, she frowned at Emma standing in the doorway. "What's wrong?"
"Thanks for holding me back once we were back on board. I didn't want to lose myself like that with Greg," she chuckled at the floor. "Hook said you guys would have to do that."
"I understand." Staring up at the ceiling, Snow tightened her lips. "Emma? One more thing." She waited until she'd crossed back into the cabin. "When you were little, when boys would pull your hair and push and call you names and all that and you went and told, did a teacher or anyone tell you 'they're doing that because they like you?'"
Deer in the headlights.
"Noooo," Emma said.
"They didn't say that?"
"No, I wasn't a tattletale. We would just fight. And then I'd win." Smiling, she tiptoed back in and kissed her on the cheek, a gentle "goodnight, Mom" following.
The light snuffed from the cabin, she turned onto her side in her bunk, trying to take her own advice about clearing her mind, repeating that Emma can take of herself a few times before nodding off.
It's her birthday. Woop-dee-shit, Emma thought, legs stretched over the couch with the ripped leather. Sweatpants-clad legs, too, she rolled her eyes, taking a swig of rum and Coke. Twenty-one and no party, no night on the town with friends squeezing through the sun roof of one of their parents' cars howling down the street. Not for Emma Swan. She prefers a quiet night in a studio apartment on a hand-me-down leather couch that still smells like sex, watching Harry Potter duke it out with a, a, the big giant snake thing...basilisk. Hmm, she thought. The red bird is a phoenix, she tested herself, making sure movies and alcohol were an okay combination. Must be nice to be nothing but cinders and then be reborn into something important and heroic.
Her phone rang, probably a work call. Heaving a self-pitying groan, she stomped to the phone.
"Hello?"
"Miss Swan? This is Mr. Slight, from Social Services."
"Oh my god, did, did something happen to my s-"
"No, nothing like that."
Not your son, she reminded herself. He's someone else's. When no clarifying answer from his end arrived, she raised an eyebrow and decided this needed a take-charge approach.
"Well, what is it?"
"I just wanted to make sure we could reach you. We check on the birth parents every now and then."
"Why? You said this was a closed adoption. I could be dead in a gutter and there would be no one to traumatize with it." Say that again and you might just pull a swan dive off the window ledge, she warned herself.
"I'm sorry to disturb you, Miss Swan. I just wanted to double check your contact information and ask if you had changed your mind about being involved in the child's life. I take it your answer to the latter is a no? No plans of finding the boy and meeting him any time soon?"
Hanging up, she collapsed onto the couch in time to take in the last few minutes of the movie. What a jackass, she thought. Clearly, the guy had no life if he was still harried with cases from three years ago. It was her life, her choices. Her face crumpling, she dashed to the refrigerator to open another can of Coke, this second one two-thirds rum. Best birthday present right now would be forgetting that call, she thought.