Dear Belle,

I've worried for some time the gods or whoever truly runs this multiverse view our lives as being little clay dolls to mold and shape and eventually break, yours on one side of their table and mine on the other. I had begun to hope I would see you again. Speaking to you through the mirror was more than I ever could have expected and now I fear it's all over. We've returned home. Real home.

I couldn't sense it before, my mind on the spell to master flight, the fighting, and then just the joy of recovering Henry and the news he told us—Bae is alive! And he is in this land. It's for that reason everyone will believe I am responsible for our detour, but I'm not. An enchantment has been placed on the ship, before it ever went into the portal. I would be inclined to blame Greg or Tamara, but after what all you told me, the Blue Fairy seems the likelier candidate. At least it's rather validating since I've always despised the fairies.

As much as I miss you, I'm glad you can't see me as I am now. I awoke to find in the mirror the greenish-gold coloring and leathery, flaky texture that had overtaken my body in this land before. My eyes are like fish bowls again, although the limp is gone. I didn't need to look out a porthole for an explanation.

Miss Emma Swan received a rather nasty surprise, but I would say she deserved it for barging into my little cabin. One look at me and she shrieked and tumbled back into the door. Let's not be too hard on her, however. She inherits her tact from her father.

"Holy shit! What the hell happened to you?"

"Oh this? Well, it's not an allergic reaction I can promise you that!" I had to be careful here. The power coursed through my veins faster and with more vigor than it ever did in Storybrooke, even after I brought magic back. I wanted to leap right over her and pounce from bulkhead to bulkhead like a panther.

Our Majesty reached us first, which is rather disconcerting as I would have preferred Emma's parents or even Hook to have explained it to her as he and she seem to have a calming effect on one another.

"This again?" Folded arms, unruffled, always a hint of a smirk—there's our Regina! "Emma, this is-"

"Rumpelstiltskin!" I bowed, which disturbed her more than if I'd snarled at her. "Speechless, dearie? That's a first for you, isn't it?" I had to compose myself. Before, the drive to find Bae kept me grounded and made me discipline myself. But the thrill of knowing he and I were in the same land and that nothing, absolutely nothing, could keep me from him forced me to try a little harder. Fragments of various futures, names, so many names...fantasies of what all I could do spiraled around in my head. We would have to get moving and for the good of my soul, for the good of us, find a way out of this land as soon as possible.

"You brought us back here so you could have the full scope of your powers, didn't you, you son of a bitch?" Regina asked.

"What, what's up with Mr. Gold?" Henry asked, his two mothers doing their darndest to shield him from me.

"Uh..." was all Emma could choke out.

"Careful, Henry, you broke her brain!" I laughed. "Now, come. We shall land this ship and find my son."

"Are you...okay to do that?" Emma asked. I really don't know what she could have been struggling to find comparisons to, but it wasn't as if I needed a designated driver. The power had been so dormant compared to now, and the first thing that was imperative to everyone was that I make sure the one person who could keep it in check knew to keep it in check.

"Your Royal Majesty, if you would be so good as to take the tyke elsewhere, I must speak with my protege."

"There's no way in hell I'm your protege, magic or not!"

"You wound me, Miss Swan! And here not long ago you had insisted we were family!"

She nodded to Regina to take Henry out.

"Say what you're going to say and then let's get going."

"Now we're talking, dearie. All I want is to make sure you're fully aware of your power and are willing to use it." I rattled incoherent sounds at her when she opened her mouth to speak. "Nuh uh, wasn't finished. You are in the land of your birth now. You have another rescue to participate in, and you being the epitome of True Love may be the only thing that can help Bae."

"Me? What about you? You're supposed to be limitless," she argued. Argue, argue, argue. Did the woman ever leave adolescence?

"More or less," I said, beginning to feel like myself again. "True Love, however, can break any curse, and..."

"You keep saying I'm the epitome of True Love. That's the source of my magic?"

"Now you're finally getting it. People from our world aren't born with magic. They are born with a knack for it, or they are not. Those with the ability must practice, practice, practice as the adage goes if they ever want to do anything with it. The love your parents have for each other is so strong, though, it manifested itself in you in ways no one has ever seen before. Throw in how strong your love for certain parties is, your boy, for example, and you are an anomaly. You have been able to do more with magic than people who have studied it their entire lives have done."

"That just means the price for using it will be higher," she said.

"Some things are worth paying a price."

"So you're saying just be on my guard and do what I have to do to help Neal and the people helping him?"

"Let's just say Bae won't be happy to see me this way."

"Yeah, I don't think anyone's happy to see you that way." She paused. "Then...you didn't bring us here?"

"No, dearie. I suspect others."

She stormed out, looking like a storm cloud, I might add. Running after her without a limp exorcised some of this rush I was feeling. Fury in others is something I took a perverse delight in, not only because it made them more susceptible to my manipulations, but also for the sheer energy it creates. You know as well as I do that good things, love and hope, especially, give off energy, but a quicker, more seductive feeling is fury, the junk food of human emotion. She had dragged Greg to the main deck in front of everyone and it was quite amusing, them looking back and forth at her and me like a tennis match.

"Why are we here? Did you do this?" She jerked him by his lapels.

"No! I don't know any of this. We were just supposed to take your son and go."

"You better tell me the whole story, and keep in mind I know when someone is lying to me." Her eyes burned into his. "How's a guy who hates magic get in league with Peter Pan anyway?"

"It all started when my dad died," he said, causing all eyes again to fall upon Regina. It's grand fun when one doesn't have to do a thing to torment another but watch another. "I hated magic. I told everyone I could what she did, the cops, child welfare people, the press, and no one believed me. So I was shuffled around in the foster care system for the rest of my childhood."

Ah, the Savior's eyes had softened. A ship of orphans. That's what we are.

"Once I was eighteen, I decided I'd do everything I could to find my dad and master all this, sort of become a Van Helsing guy. I joined a ghost hunting team thinking that would be the best foot in the door, and that's when I met Tamara. Tamara believed me. She said she was part of an organization that was determined to rid our world of magic. It was a secret society, the Masons had nothing on it, top scientists and doctors and important people all over the world were a part of it." Greg continued. "I'd gone to all these places and seen all these things and then finally the order came to go to Storybrooke. That was the order I'd been waiting for. I was supposed to get in and gather evidence of magic."

"And was hitting me with a car part of this master plan?" Hook asked, steely-eyed the whole time.

"No, hitting you was not part of the plan."

"Neither was all of us choosing to help you at our own risk," our gallant Prince Charming brought up.

"Look, I wound up here and hospital or no hospital, I was going to do my job. I took pictures, listened in, and reported it all back to Tamara, who was still working on Neal. It wasn't until we had sent everything in that our orders changed to finding Henry."

"You didn't find that suspicious?" Emma blurted.

"Not in the least. I was going to find out what happened to my father or die trying. Tamara explained the closer we got that the organization had misled me, that it was determined to get rid of magic, just not their own magic."

"What's the Blue Fairy's role in all this?"

Clever girl. She must have deduced the fairies had something to do with all this as she and I never exactly sat down and chatted about it.

"She was Peter Pan's Number Two, the second-in-command. But we all knew she was out for herself. No one said anything because they were afraid Peter Pan wouldn't believe them, Mr. Barrie, as far as I was concerned. That was the name of who we sent all the data to. I should have seen that one. If she brought us here, then you can bet it's so she can get her hands on Henry for herself."

"Did you know who I was when we met in the forest?" Henry asked him.

"No. Sorry. I was just trying to help out then." Greg gave him a sad, pitiful face. "I'm sorry you're involved with all these fairytale monsters, kid. If I had my way, none of them would be around."

"Well, now you see where genocide gets you," Emma said, squatting and looking him right in the eye. Part of me, the Dark One, wanted to see her reach in and yank his heart right out and crush it right in front of him. I'd have done the same to Tamara myself. "You're not only stuck with all us magic people, but you're in our home court now, too. You like Henry so much because he's 'normal,' then you help us find his dad and get the hell out of here."

So we embark on another mission. The orb revealed Mulan, Aurora, and Philip, the two first ones associates of Emma and Snow White's apparently, took Bae back to the beanstalk in hopes of finding another bean or a compass or both. I fear that it will not be as simple as going up the beanstalk and opening another portal.

Belle, if it is at all possible for us to send our thoughts to one another, you must find Anton and see about the possibility of there being just one more bean. If we come up empty-handed then I humbly request you use it and come to us. Offer the people of Storybrooke a choice to return. I don't know who would take it and who would choose to stay, but I do not know of any other possibility of us seeing each other again if neither of us can move from where we are. I also worry about the prophesy. Saving Henry in Neverland did not prove to be my undoing, but he is part of our group here and we are in pursuit of my son.

My darling Belle, if everything goes as well as it can and you come here and we can all be together, I will ask you to give me True Love's Kiss as you once tried to do. I cannot suppress the urges the power instills in me for long and all it will do is drive away everyone I care about. If I perish on this journey, I want you to know you can do anything. You should find a way to see the world and have adventures as you wanted, without letting fears or doubts or the past stand in your way.

Rumpelstiltskin

A/N: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed! I appreciate them and am always hungry for more! So I humbly request, if you are reading and you like it so far, or even if you don't, send some feedback my way.