Chapter 4

Jolly Roger 1:54 pm

Above deck, the Lost Boys are enjoying the taste of adventure and the freedom of the seas (even if they aren't exactly open). Bae half-listens as Nibs, Curly, the Twins and Slightly catch up, comparing notes on their careers, their spouses, their cars and their ongoing battle with middle-age spread. They pass a bottle, which Bae declines, and Slightly claps a hand to Bae's shoulder. "We'll get him there in time, Petey. We got a good wind and a good crew."

Bae nods tightly, his eyes fixed on the horizon.

Below deck, Emma and Gold wait for a phone to ring: hers, his or even Henry's; it doesn't matter as long as Snow or David is on the other end. Emma's given up the struggle to keep Henry away; he sits now beside the cot, dabbing Gold's sweating face with a damp cloth, pulling the blanket up when Gold shivers. Emma paces and stares at her phone.

"Why does she want you to die, Grandpa?" Henry asks.

Emma stops her pacing and cautions, "Henry, that's not. . . appropriate—"

"Death seldom is." Gold's teeth chatter as a wave of nausea passes through him. When he gains control of body again, he corrects, "Not 'she'; 'they.' Both Regina and Cora would prefer me out of the way, permanently. A great many other people would as well. As you yourself have said, Henry, I'm evil. Not to be trusted."

Henry hangs his head. "I'm sorry I said that."

"Don't be sorry for speaking the truth as you see it. When you get older, though, you'll learn that everyone has some good and some evil in them. For most people, it's a matter of choice which aspect of themselves they'll listen to. Every day brings a new choice."

"And a chance to change?"

"For most." Gold settles deeper into Bae's pillow.

"What about the others?"

"Some are overtaken by madness or a curse; they have no choice. Some are so deeply entrenched in evil—or in good—that they can't change, no matter how hard they try."

Henry dares to ask the question his mother longs to hear answered. "Gramps and Grandma Nolan are the kind that can't change from being good, aren't they? Which kind are you, Grandpa?"

"One of a kind, yet to be determined."

Storybrooke 1:54 pm

They look like sisters in their black pantsuits and matching magic. In tandem—or so it would appear to an outsider, but deep down Regina knows they're actually competing—they blast through Gold's protection spell. As Regina pushes the door open, avoiding touching the now heated knob, Cora sighs in satisfaction and wiggles her fingers. "That was a pleasant exercise. Are you ready for the main event, darling?"

"After you, Mother." Regina permits Cora to enter first. She finds apropos one of many quirky folk sayings from this world: Age before beauty. Regina steps over the threshold and flips the light switch.

Regina heads purposefully for the workroom, but Cora remains in the store. Every so often she exclaims over some object she recognizes. As Regina beelines for the cupboard Gold told her to search, Cora wonders aloud how Rumple found the time to gather this large, diverse collection in the weeks before the curse, and how he managed to transport it all to Storybrooke, and at a time when he had no memory of his Enchanted Forest past.

As Regina opens the cupboard, Cora's tone suddenly changes to anger: "How dare he! This is mine!"

Regina has no opportunity to inquire into the nature of the purloined object, because the back door flies open, compliments of David's foot, and the acting sheriff, his wife and the deputy burst in, weapons blazing: a sword for David, a bow for Snow, and a police revolver for Grumpy. Simultaneously, the remaining dwarves (Tom Clark excluded, but replaced by Anton the former giant) rush the front of the store with weapons ranging from pickaxes and shovels to a crossbow borrowed from Granny.

"You have one chance to surrender, Regina," David barks.

Regina is more embarrassed than alarmed: they've caught her bending over, their first view of her being her derriere.

"Time's up," David decides.

Regina yawns—delicately, behind her hand—then with a single blow sends all three intruders flying in different directions. Snow's bow cracks and David's sword clatters to the floor. Grumpy scrambles to his feet and without warning fires his revolver, but the bullets stop in mid-air and drop like cold lead to the floor. Another flick of her hand and Grumpy smashes into Gold's worktable. The bullheaded dwarf hauls himself to his feet again, and he and David rush Regina from opposite directions.

But it's an ambush of which Gold would be proud, for while Regina's preoccupied with the men, Snow sneaks in behind her and raids the cupboard. She extracts the blue vial from its jewel box and starts to work the stopper out—

And for her pains receives a slap of magic from Cora, who's already dispatched her would-be arresters.

Cora sighs as she surveys the unconscious. "It would be so much easier to dispose of them all now."

"No," Regina blurts. "I'll never win Henry back if you do."

Cora steps over Grumpy, kneels for a moment to pet David's blond hair. "So pretty. Remind me, just before I kill him, to play with him a little."

Regina looks with longing at Snow's inert body. Finally she steps over it. "Soon enough, I suppose," she mutters.

"Did you get the medication Rumple described?"

Regina bends from the waist to examine the floor beside Snow—and then as Cora clicks her tongue, remembers how unladylike this posture is and kneels instead. She has to push Snow aside to find what she's looking for: shards of glass and a small pool of blue liquid soaking into Snow's blouse. "She saved us the trouble."

"Mission accomplished." Cora pats her mussed hair back into place. "And the prognosis for our patient: DOA."

Regina mumbles, "You were watching television last night, weren't you?" She conjures a vial identical to the broken one and slips it into her jacket.

Jolly Roger 1:59 pm

One of these days, these crazy people are going to push her over the edge, yes, right over the edge, Emma thinks. How in the burning halls of Hell did she fall in with this bunch, anyway? She glares at her phone, willing it to ring.

In the rhythmic creaking, swaying of the ship, in the dankness of its bowels, Gold drifts. Henry looks back and forth from Emma to Gold; he isn't certain if Gold should be allowed to sleep, but he realizes Emma doesn't know either so he doesn't ask. He sits on the creaky chair and frets.

Gold wanders into one of the bright, airy rooms of his mind. His red cloak hangs loosely about his shoulders and his ankle doesn't ache, so he knows he's turned back into the version of himself he thinks of as Rumplestiltskin III. Under his boots is dirt; above him, blue sky; behind him, four straw-and-clay huts and a stone cottage, the latter belonging to him. The slight wind carries the scent of cook fires, stews, sheep and dung. Standing beside him is shaggy-haired, puppy-eyed Bae. Not the tall, hard-edged Bae who threw him out, but the Bae who still looks up to him a little and loves him a lot.

He is speaking to a man driving a hay cart. "Well, I suppose it won't happen again."

Bae speaks up for the carter. "It won't."

"What's that?" the Dark One's dancing in excitement; he's going to get to come out and play now. Rumple indicates his son's scraped knee.

The carter starts to apologize but Rumple turns the situation over to the Dark One. As Bae begs for the carter's life, with a small audience listening in, the Dark One rearranges the carter's DNA, transforming him into a snail. The Dark One lifts his heavy boot and there's a satisfying crunch as the child pleads for mercy.

The Dark One is bored already. He slinks back to the corner of Rumple's brain in which he's claimed residency and waits for the next opportunity for a little excitement. He's occupied this brain less than a week and although he senses incredible potential here, he's got to get Rumple out of this one-horse town.

Rumple feels the eyes of his neighbors upon his back. He turns quickly and they hastily pretend to look away. Vaguely he recalls something he heard somewhere, perhaps a line from a poem: "And now abide hate, magic and fear, but the greatest of these is fear." Oh he's got it, all right: not just the hate and the magic, but the fear. Already he's aware of the law of limited resources that all mages must obey: when you take from the well of magic, you must replenish in equal or greater worth. As long as he can arouse this much fear with such a tiny expenditure of magic, staying within the law will be no problem. Yeah, he's got this thing down pat.

He leads the boy inside to tend his wound. But the boy waves away the offer of healing magic, and instead he asks, "Which one are you, Papa?"

Jolly Roger 2:01 pm

Emma's phone rings. She reads the text, sends a reply, reads the reply to her reply. Closing the phone, she clears her throat. "Uhm, Gold?"

He pries his eyes open. Through the slits she can see a glimmer of tears. It makes it all the harder to say what she has to say. "Regina and Cora got away."

"And the squid ink?"

Emma takes a moment before answering. "The vial broke."

Gold allows his head to fall back on the pillow (Bae's pillow; it smells of aftershave and hot dogs and pizza and car fumes—it smells like New York).

The bright little rooms in his mind are beckoning again, promising retreat from the pain and the worry. He finds himself drawn to one, and his heart aches so because it's the kitchen of the Dark Castle, and it smells of baking bread and roasting pheasant, and stirring a bubbling sauce on the stove is a young woman in a robin's egg blue dress. He wants so to go in, slip his arm around her waist, kiss the nape of her neck, stay there forever. But he's not allowed; for all his crimes against this woman, Destiny will not permit him to join her in eternity. The cruel bitch will make him pay, over and over again, tantalizing him with an open door but refusing him admittance.

Lady Belle and Belle French forgave him—and forgave and forgave him. Lady Destiny forgives no one.

Aw hell. If he were in Destiny's shoes, he'd probably do the same. He promised to protect Belle, and what did he do? He followed his own selfish, fear-driven path, dragging her along for the ride, barely listening when she needed to talk, barely talking when she needed to be taught. Just hours after her release from the asylum, he threw her out again—again, providing no money, no references, no alternate home, not even an explanation of where they were and how to survive here. When she needed him to take care of her in her amnesiac state—a condition that was his fault from top to bottom—he freaked her out and then, in patented coward fashion, he ran out of town, leaving her once again to fend for herself when she couldn't even say who her self was.

And now he's dying on her. What a son of a bitch.

"Gold?" Emma gives his shoulder a shake. "Is there any more squid ink? Fairy dust?" When he doesn't respond she shakes him harder. "Gold? Where would Regina go?"

He jerks awake. "Belle!"

"What?"

He waves wildly at the phone in her hand. "Tell them—the hospital! Belle!"

"Oh my god," Emma moans, and her fingers fly across the tiny keyboard.

Storybrooke 2:05 pm

Regina whisks them to Sidney's empty apartment. It's stuffy and dank, and the bowl of fruit on the dining table rotted long ago and has become a haven for spiders and cockroaches. With a disdainful swish of her hand, Regina airs out the place.

"Where are we?" Cora rolls her finger through the layer of dust on the wet bar. "And why are we here?"

"We're here for a news report. This is the home of an old friend," Regina has no interest in explaining her relationship with Sidney to her mother. "No one will think to look for us here. No one thinks of him."

"He needs a maid."

Regina snaps, "He's deceased, Mother. Now if you don't mind, I'd like a moment to gather information."

A mirror in an antique frame hangs just to the left of the front door. Regina walks to it and stares. Mirror magic is one of her specialties; when she had first apprenticed with Rumplestiltskin, she specifically asked to develop skills that her mother had not. Rumple had steepled his fingers, well pleased with the request, and when she had conquered the basics and had fortified her arsenal with the common weapons—fireballs, lightning, cyclones, ice—she delved deep into mirror magic. The day she managed a perform a stunt with mirrors that Rumple himself could not—using the mirror to foresee the future—she pronounced her apprenticeship over and walked away from him.

The split proved temporary, of course. She's leaned on him far more than anyone else in all the years of their acquaintanceship. Strange to say, he's been the steadiest influence in her life. At the basis of the revulsion and rivalry they've come to feel for each other is a bizarre kind of love not unlike that she feels for Cora.

Now she's asking the mirror to show her what her life will be without him.

"What do you see, darling?" Cora comes up behind her.

She's not about to answer honestly. But just in case Cora has studied mirrorology during her exile, Regina hastily orders Sidney's mirror to change its focus. "The two idiots, the dog, the cricket, the midgets—they've resumed their door-to-door witch hunt."

"All that for little old us?" Cora sounds flattered. "How unsubtle. I suppose they'll be using battering rams next."

"And a waste of time." Regina glances over her shoulder. "Are you ready to leave, Mother?"

Cora shrugs. "Why? Let them come. We'll drop kettles of boiling tar on them. An oldie but a goodie." She enters lecture mode. "You mustn't let them think they can get the better of you, Regina. Not for a single moment. We decide when and where we will go, not them."

Regina tosses her head, patting down a stray lock. "I'm way ahead of you, Mother. I've already decided when and where. It's now and it's to room 302 in the hospital."

"Why? What's there?"

"The Dark One's heart."