Chapter 27

Mayor's mansion, 6:05 am

Regina needs a sense of normalcy right now, so regardless of how anyone else may feel about it, she's going to back to work. And who's to say she isn't doing this for the public good? There was never a recall election, nor has anyone dared call him- or herself mayor in these months since David "asked" her to abandon her office. By law, she's still the mayor, and the work of the municipal government must go on.

So she gets up, only five minutes later than usual, starts the coffee maker, and slips out of her nightgown and into the shower. She does everything in the exact order and in the exact way that she did them before the curse broke. If she keeps moving, if she lets muscle memory take over, if she concentrates on city business—it will soon be budget planning time; she needs to meet with the department heads—if she keeps her mind and her hands constantly busy, she won't feel anything. If, if, if.

One cup of coffee, black; two slices of wheat toast, dry; one bowl of oatmeal with slices of apple. Bush the teeth, brush the hair, put on the make-up. One black pencil skirt, black silk blouse, black jacket. A newspaper on the porch. Car in the drive. Four point five minutes' drive to City Hall. Sort through the morning mail, since her secretary seems to have abandoned the job (must have remembered that in the old country, she was the pampered daughter of a wealthy importer and gone off to find Daddy). Turn on her computer and scan the email. She's in the midst of an answer to the head of the Department of Sanitation when something about the way he says "hydraulic lift" tears at her heart and she begins to sob. She runs to the door that separates her office from the secretary's and slams and locks it, just in case someone wanders in. Returning to her desk, she snatches at a tissue, only to find the box is empty; she throws the box at the trash can and misses and that makes her tears start all over again. She conjures a handkerchief.

But on the heels of the sobs come messy bubbles of laughter. What the hell? She's always been so decisive, so sure of what she wants; yes, she'd even cop to single-mindedness, so why can't her heart pick one emotion and stick with it? But she's got to clear out these conflicting emotions before she can move on, so she rides the waves as they come: crying, laughing, raging. By the time she's wrung out, her nose is stuffed and her eyes puffy and her mind is soggy. She walks away from her computer, stares out the window at the awakening town: the cricket walking his dog, the old woman setting out the sandwich board for her restaurant, lights going on in the shops along Main Street. There's surprisingly little traffic—and then the church bell rings and she remembers today is Sunday, and she sinks into her chair and cries all over again.

Why didn't she cry like this when Hook brought her mother's (supposedly) dead body back from Wonderland? She decides it must have been the curse: she had a curse she was working on, a grand scheme, a hope (even if her wish was the degradation of her enemies). She has nothing now, not even the damn compass to get her back to the Enchanted Forest. Just a pile of beans in the safe behind her refrigerator.

And yet, if there were anyone in Storybrooke that would dare to ask her—anyone, that is, that she could confide in (an impossibility, of course: even if she hadn't cast the curse, she's a queen, and with no king and no court to cocoon her, she will allow no one to see her vulnerable)—she would admit that way beneath the grief, she's feeling. . . a sense of freedom. Yes. Is that horrible? Is it heartless? But nevertheless, it's true. She is free now. She, not Cora, will define who she is, will set her own goals, will judge her own success. If she decides the burden of leadership is too heavy, she can walk away from it if she chooses, and who's to say no? And most importantly, marriage, if it happens, will be on her terms.

And so she laughs as she cries. She is unanchored; she will chart her course from now on.

Granny's B & B Room 8, 6:10 am

"So we need your legal advice, I guess. Maybe I'm being overcautious but I—" A knock at the door interrupts Bae's phone conversation with his father. "Hang on a minute, some—Oh!" He pulls the door open to find a fully dressed and fully alert Gold in the hallway, and there's a woman—the smiling woman from the photos in Gold's house—on his arm. She too is fully dressed and ready for the day.

"How—you magicked over here, I suppose." Bae looks annoyed. "You know, we could've just put you on speaker phone."

"No, I walked. I was next door." Well, it's technically true.

Bae stands aside. "Come on in, then. We've got at least a two-hour wait. Tam's out running. Marathon training."

His hand resting lightly on her back, Belle enters with Gold right behind her. She still has a bit of a dazed look in her eyes: she's been through so much in the past couple of weeks, her head is spinning. But all other thoughts are pushed out of her mind in another moment when Gold says, "Belle, I'd like to you meet my son, Baelfire, known in this world as Neal Cassidy. Bae, this is Belle."

Emma comes forward to join the family. Her eyes widen as she repeats, "Belle?"

"Baelfire." The way Belle pronounces the name, she may as well have said the holy grail. Her chin quivers but her smile lights up the room. Her hands reach out as if to hug him, but he seems a little puzzled by that, so she settles for squeezing his shoulder. "Two hundred years. . . .Baelfire. It's. . . I can't tell you how wonderful it is to meet you." She leans her head against Gold's shoulder. "I'm so happy for you, Rumple."

"Me too, sweetheart." He kisses the top of her head. "I've got you and Emma and Henry to thank for it." And in a perverse way, Regina, but it may be a long, long time before he admits that.

Emma's still flabbergasted. "Does that mean—do you—did your memory come back?"

"It has." A dozen emotions jumble together in those two words, the predominant ones amazement and relief. "Just a few minutes ago. I still feel a bit—off-balance."

Emma's not a hugger, but she knows Belle is, and this is a major breakthrough, so she makes an exception. After a firm hug, Emma says, "Welcome back. The town wasn't the same without you."

"Thank you, Emma. This is becoming quite the family reunion!"

As Belle borrows Gold's handkerchief, Bae, whose social graces never did get honed, openly stares at her. "So you're the beast tamer."

She twinkles at him. "What makes you think he didn't tame me?"

"I'm glad to finally meet you."

"I'm glad you're finally meeting me too, and not Lacey," she giggles. "Emma, I think I might owe you an apology. The last few days are a blur, but I have a feeling I might have said or done something I should apologize for."

"Well. . . " Emma scoffs. "Water under the bridge."

"All I want now is to take back my life—and steer clear of Hook."

Gold opens his mouth, about to make a veiled threat—Belle won't tolerate an open one—so Emma butts in. As sheriff, it's her job, not Gold's, to protect the citizens. "We'll get him, Belle; I won't quit until he's in jail." She glances at Bae. "We're going to have to put off hunting for him, though, till I find Cora's killer."

"Cora is dead?" Belle echoes. "Murdered?"

"Yeah, looks like it," Emma says reluctantly. "Sorry you had to come back to. . . that." She was about to say bad news, but truthfully, it's a relief to have Cora gone. She shifts her thoughts to the immediate future. "Look, um, we don't know for sure that's a murder; I'm waiting on the ME's report. But to be on the safe side, I'm advising everyone to be extra cautious, and call me if you see anything out of the ordinary. I'm going to do my damnest to make sure this is an isolated incident." She turns to the pawnbroker. "Goes for you too, Gold. Watch your back, keep your doors locked. That is, if you're officially out of the hospital now."

He answers her implied question with a shrug. "A leave of absence. I'll return shortly and finish out my sentence."

"Good. If Whale does release you tomorrow, I'd recommend you not plan to open your shop. Not until I catch Cora's killer."

"I can protect myself and my family, I assure you, Sheriff." Gold's posture is all peacefulness, but Emma frowns at him in remembrance of his vigilante justice against Moe French (does Belle know about that, Emma wonders).

"Yeah, I know your idea of protection. Listen, keep your phone handy, not your gun."

"You're overreacting, Em," Bae grumbles. "You don't even know the cause of death yet and already you've got some huge conspiracy theory constructed, with Tam at the center of it. You have zilch to go on. This town may be a little kingdom unto itself, but people here still have rights. Guilty until proven innocent, remember? Protection against search and seizure? Right to an attorney?"

"I'm not arresting anyone; I just need to ask a few questions. I've got a town to protect, including, remember, your father, your son and your friends from New York." Emma releases a frustrated breath.

"He's correct," Gold says quietly. "Tamara has a right to have an attorney present while you question her."

"You'll stand with her, won't you, Dad?" Something in Gold's tone has cast a slight new doubt in Bae.

Gold stands stock still, staring at the handle of his cane. As several long moments pass without a reply from him, Bae becomes increasingly worried and the women, uncomfortable. Belle offers a way to lessen the tension and give Gold time to decide (or, she suspects, to come up with the right words to reject Bae's request). "You said Tamara won't be back for quite a while yet. Why don't we go downstairs and have breakfast and then talk it over? And who knows, Tamara may have ideas of her own about who she wants for her attorney."

Bae raises his shoulders in surrender. "Whatever. Go on down. I'm going to get a quick shower and I'll meet you. Order for me, Em."

Parking Lot, Granny's B & B, 6:15 am

Mr. Dove saw her leave twenty minutes ago: her, the destroyer of lives and hearts. For one so slight, she has tremendous strength. As she trots into the street in her sweats and sneakers, he studies her; something in the way she moves clues him in that she's more than a spy and a thief: she's an assassin. Dove opens his car door, instinctively ready to follow her, and then he sees the sheriff rounding the front to enter the inn, and he rethinks his strategy. Gold, weakened and distracted, may need Dove's protection.

Wherever she is running to now, Tamara will be back. Dove needn't follow her; she will come stalking Rumplestiltskin soon enough.

Granny's B & B, Room 8, 6:30 am

Naked as the day he was born—and Rumple changed enough nappies to know—Bae patters from the shower, leaving a trail of water behind. He shakes his head like a dog and water drops fly from his hair. He's moving toward the bureau when he sees his father sitting on the bed, and he stops short.

Bae frowns. "Why didn't you go down with Em and Belle?" He resumes his march to the bureau, where he retrieves clothes for the day.

"I need to talk to you, son." The old man's Scottish accent—where did he acquire that, Bae wonders—thickens. "It's about Tamara."

"I know, I know, right?" Bae chuckles, drawing on his jockey shorts. "How'd a loser like me luck into a prize like that?"

Gold doesn't answer and when Bae glances at him, he's staring at his cane. A pair of jeans later and Bae's ready to listen. Socks in one hand, a shoe in the other, he plops into the rocking chair. "All right. Yeah, the tension between you and her last night was dense as London fog, but I figured it was the Emma thing. You do get it, don't you, Dad, that Emma and I are over?"

"It's not about Emma." Gold fiddles with the cane as an excuse to avoid looking Bae in the face. "That will work itself out. It's about what I learned about Tamara. . . what my magic told me."

"Aw, s—t, Dad." Bae leans back in the rocking chair and clunks his head against the headboard.

"I know you don't want to hear it. I know it's going to be difficult to believe. My magic told me she's not what she claims to be. For one thing, she's got the blood of fairies and sorcerers in her veins."

"That's ridiculous! You're telling me she's a fairy? S—t, Dad, what are you trying to do?" Bae explodes.

"And she's been handling magic. She's not a mage her—"

"I'm not gonna listen to this." Bae slams his feet onto the floor and rises, going to the bureau for a t-shirt, which he jerks over his head. "You're—you're just coming up with this crap because you know how I hate magic. Listen, Dad, I'm going to marry that girl, so you've got two choices: get used it or we're through."

Gold's hands are shaking, wrapped around the handle of his cane, but he has to finish. Bae has to be warned. "I think she killed Cora. Took Cora's magic somehow and killed her."

"Get out." Bae strides to the door and yanks it open. Then he runs his hands through his wet hair and continues, "I got you in your lie, Dad. You told me just two days ago that fairies can't reproduce, so how in the hell can Tamara be one of them, when she's lived all her life in this world? You're losing it in your complacency, old man. You used to be a much better liar. Get out."

"You have to hear this. I'm not leaving. There's a legend—"

"Aw, f—k your legends!"

"—that a certain fairy named Petronella, a godmother, grew envious of the humans she tended, and she came to long for the kind of intimacy she saw they had. She used her magic to take human form, to trick a sorcerer into her bed so she could conceive a child. She violated the laws of nature, Bae, and she was banished from her tribe and stripped of her magic and her child was taken away. I believe Tamara is the granddaughter of Petronella; it's the only explanation why she could have the blood of fairies, humans and sorcerers. Why she here's now, why she killed Cora, I don't know yet; if it's some sort of mission of justice she's been sent on by the Fates, or if it's some personal vendetta—"

Bae leans over his father, their faces inches apart. "Which part of 'get out' don't you understand? Get out before I—don't make me hit you, Dad. Get out, leave us alone, leave Henry alone, I don't ever want to see you again, case closed."

Gold hauls himself upright, depending upon his cane for the strength he doesn't have. "I don't know what she wants, but I won't let her hurt Henry or you." He makes his way slowly to the hallway, then stops and draws himself up to his full height. "Understand me, Bae. I won't let her kill anyone else." He walks away.

Mayor's office, 6:45 am

Anger, Regina has always found, is the best medicine. It gets her heart pounding, her blood circulating, her mind working, and it drives away sorrow, despair and that rarest of emotions, guilt. Anger leads to desire for revenge, which in turn leads to plans, and plans lead to action, where Regina is most comfortable, most powerful. Sitting in the leather swivel chair behind her desk will accomplish nothing.

So, to a plan. She will take the beans, the compass and Henry, as she and Cora had intended, but before she escapes to another realm, she will achieve justice and in so doing, remove her most dangerous threat. Killing Rumplestiltskin is damn near impossible, especially now that she has no accomplice, but she can cause the immortal one eternal misery, and that's the next best thing. Maybe better, since death is an end to pain.

Since she can't kill him, she will send him through a portal to another world, apart from his precious son. It will drive him crazy to have come so close to his goal, after centuries of tireless plotting, deal making, manipulation and yes, sacrifice, only to be once again wrenched away from Baelfire, and in the same manner. The glimpse of his son that he's had in this world will tantalize him forever, and his frustration and guilt will double when he remembers that he's also left his darling Belle behind—as Lacey.

The best idea of all: Regina will send Rumplestiltskin to. . . Wonderland. The perfection of the plan can only mean it's more than a coincidence; the Fates must be laughing their asses off at the deliciousness.

As she stares into space and visualizes each step in her new plan, she's provoked by a buzzing in her left ear. She swats, thinking the culprit is a mosquito, but the buzzing amplifies and becomes a voice: Poor little wee one, poor little wee one, it croons over and over.

What if he. . . didn't? The town is full of people who would have wanted to kill Cora. Oh, but who else could have? Only a mage could have taken Cora's magic. Of the four mages in Storybrooke, only one has the strength and the will to steal another's magic and then murder her. Only her mother's ex-lover, spurred on, no doubt, by the fear that Cora wished to take his power and kill him. Rumplestiltskin must be made to pay.

Poor little wee one, poor little wee one.

Granny's B & B Parking Lot, 6:45 am

There's a tap at the driver's side window and Dove shoots around. How did Gold do that, sneak up on Dove like that?

"Mr. Dove, I'm ready to end my stay in the hospital. Trouble is coming and we must prepare for it. I'll be taking Ms. French back to my house, where she and the Lost Boys can look out for one another. I'd like you to go inside, inform Granny that her crossbow may be required, and stay with her and Henry. Text me periodically with updates; call me when trouble arrives. And whatever you do, don't allow Ms. Petrocelli or Mr. Mendell anywhere near Henry. Whatever it takes, Mr. Dove." Gold doesn't wait for a reply; he doesn't have to.

Dove checks his Glock 22 and climbs out of the car.