In the Back Office

Rumpelstiltskin gave his two visitors a quizzical look. "Excuse me?" Bae repeated what he said. "What do you mean? Is Belle safe?" Bae blanched and choked on his own words.

Morraine stepped up to his side and said. "She's been taken, along with Jefferson. The struggle woke us from sleep, and Jefferson instructed us to stay in the upper level and keep together. That was the last we heard of them. One of the thugs stayed behind and came for us. We left him back at Jefferson's, wounded in the shoulder."

Rumpelstiltskin walked over to the shelf, opened a small rectangular box, and removed his knife. He turned to face the kids again and said, "This is the last you'll see of him." Bae moved toward him, but Morraine lay a hand on his shoulder.

"Let him go," she whispered. He took a step toward her and watched his father breeze past them and out of the office.

OUAT

Gold parked in front of the mansion and slipped out of the car. He didn't bother with his cane. He didn't want to make any noise while he worked.

The front door was ajar, and he glided through it without too much movement of the door in question. The mansion was silent, but several shelves, tables, lamps, and other miscellaneous items were disheveled and broken, strewn about the foyer floor in all but a few places. He picked his way to the stairwell when he heard the faint sound of someone whispering on the phone. "I tried to get to the kids, but they're Robin Hood's lot. They found a way...Okay, so my patch job is supposed to be enough? I got shot with a frickin' arrow. I could be infected...No, I don't want to be fired. You know how much Gold charges for rent?...Oh, fine. I'll do it."

The man snapped his phone shut and gingerly pulled the washcloth away from his shoulder. His gaze drifted up to the door as it creaked open, and his eyes widened.

Standing in the doorway was Rumpelstiltskin, knife in one hand and a wicked smile on his face. Rumpelstiltskin approached him, grabbed him by the collar, and slashed his throat.

OUAT

Emma adjusted the jacket on the back of her chair and shifted her position before returning to sorting files. Two footsteps came from the office door, and he looked up at a young woman with blond hair and a bow and quiver strapped to her back. "This is the right place, right?" she asked.

"For what?" Emma asked.

"I asked where I could go to report something bad, and the nice woman at the restaurant pointed me here."

"What do you need to report?"

"A kidnapping."

OUAT

Bae and Morraine walked around the back office, examining the shelves and the odds and ends that they contained. Many were objects neither could recognize, much less name, but some look like wands, spindles, or small statuettes. Bae reached out and tried to feel anything on the objects, but nothing doing. Everything in the room felt completely mundane.

Something flickered at his awareness at the same time the bell at the front door rang. Bae and Morraine exchanged looks and then turned toward the doorway and the bead curtain, behind which was the rest of the shop. "Hello?" August asked, and Bae relaxed.

"We know him," he whispered, walking through the curtain.

"Hey, kid." Morraine appeared beind Bae. "M, I take it?"

"That's what they call me," Morraine said. "I take it you finally did become a real boy, for a while, at least."

"For a while. I haven't exactly been a good one, though."

"What're you doing here?" Bae asked.

"Henry needed a lift back into town. Regina's thugs appeared at the lumber yard, and he needed something fast."

"But don't you have to be hidden? A talking, human-sized puppet is a tad...unusual, magic or no."

August shrugged. "They're all gonna find out eventually. I can't exactly hide the fact that I'm a walking puppet forever.

"Well, I gave you my reason. What're you doing here?"

"Jefferson and Belle have been kidnapped," Morraine said.

"Wait...who's Belle?"

Bae walked around the counter and led August to the back office. Morraine shot him a look, but he said, "We want as few people knowing as possible." She nodded in understanding. Once all three were back in the office, Bae turned August to face him and said, "Belle is my father's girlfriend, to be as simple as possible, which makes her a target of Regina's, because it seems she's still desperate to maintain her hold on Storybrooke and make sure she still comes out on top."

August nodded in understanding. "We're talking about the woman that shot you in the shoulder, right?"

"How'd you know about that?"

"Henry told me."

"Henry? Who's Henry?"

"He's a ten-year-old, the mayor's adopted son and the Savior's biological son. Oh, and he's able to leave if he wants, like me and Emma, but I doubt they're going anywhere."

"The Savior and Emma are the same person, correct?"

"Yep."

"Besides everyone's memories, which have been restored, what else needs to be saved?" Morraine asked.

"Remember Jesse's time?" Bae asked, turning to her. "There was a golden age ending with the curse, and then an age of ice. It could very well be that once we finally return to the Enchanted Forest, or what's left of it, we have to try to find a way to restore it, if there is anything left, or forge a new Enchanted Forest."

August's eyes shifted between the two kids. "Sounds like you two are really thinking ahead and trying to process a lot of things at once," he said. Even to him, it sounded like a shot in the dark. "If you need help trying to figure any of this out..."

"You said Emma was the Savior, and I'm to assume Emma is Emma Swan, who visited us at the inn when we first came here," Bae said, turning toward August. "What do you know about her role?"

"Easy. She breaks the curse, we're all supposed to go home. And if true love's kiss can't break a curse..."

"Trying to kill the caster will," Bae replied in a low, dark voice.

"What happens when the curse is broken? Do we go home?" Morraine asked hurriedly.

August shrugged. "That's the theory."

"The other theory is that we get sent to a world full of ice and snow, much like the one said to lie beyond the Black Forest," Bae said.

"Anybody care to fill me in here?"

Bae sighed. "Why bother? It might not even matter whether we fall into the Black Forest or not. We might end up back where this curse started, for all we know."

"Seriously, what the hell is going on?"

"What does it look like?" Morraine snapped. "We're trying to figure out what would happen to us after the curse is broken, especially given the manner in which we showed up: in the middle of a night rainstorm, after the Ring was broken. Clearly we're a special case."

Bae held up his hands and stepped between them, his eyes on Morraine. "There's no need to fight those who, at least for the time being, are on our side. Infighting does us no good when we need men and arms." She stepped back, and he turned to August. "According to Rumpelstiltskin, a war is coming, and we as bowmen may be needed. Perhaps you will, as well. Odds are we won't make it back alive, but if we need to fight, we have to be able to fight."

"I guess some things don't change."

Bae spun toward the doorway, just in front of which stood his father. His eyes drifted across the dark stains along the front of Rumpelstiltskin's suit, and he barely managed an "Um" of some length before Rumpelstiltskin snapped his fingers and the stains disappeared inside a small cloud. "Of course. Sought your revenge?"

"Started to."

"You know what? I'm not even going to say anything. We've got other things to deal with than your...tendencies."

"We do?" Morraine asked.

"Regina operating from her prison cell, the kidnapping of Jefferson and Belle, and any potential attempts by Regina to break out of prison and take your knife and kill me or Belle or both or somebody else, or all of us, just to win this fight and have her happy ending, which really isn't all that happy, come to think of it. Anyway, we can deal with Papa's tendencies when we finally get this curse broken, if he lives through this war."

"Rousing speech, kid," August said.

Rumpelstiltskin's eyes moved to the puppet. "Pinnocchio, alive and well, I see. The Blue Fairy must have need of you for some reason." Bae stepped toward Morraine. "Either way, as long as you associate with my son, if he is in any way even remotely harmed because of you, I will not hesitate to kill you."

"Papa," Bae said.

"Because of him doesn't necessarily mean on his watch," Rumpelstiltskin said, turning his gaze toward his son.

"Still. Just...don't do it unless you really need to?"

"I won't," Rumpelstiltskin whispered with a curt nod.

"Alright, the matter's settled, for now. We have to find kidnap victims, and something tells me you're not likely to stop until you finish having your revenge or you have a comparable reason, so for now, we'll let those go hand in hand," Morraine said. "The only theory we have at this point-and due to the lack of evidence we have to treat it like a theory-is that this is Regina's doing, so we have to think like her. Where would we keep two valuable hostages?"

"The mental ward," Bae, Morraine, and Rumpelstiltskin said together.