Chapter 12: Gone Baby Gone

The truck burned around the corner on the minimum of its available wheels, and Leroy stamped hard on the brake. While he was still laying rubber to the road, David threw open the door and flung himself out, sprinting toward the green road sign that marked the Storybrooke boundary. He fetched to a halt just inches from it, staring at it with a look of utter desolation, hands held up to the air like a mime doing the "trapped in a glass box" routine. His sword was strapped around his waist; after delivering her bombshell and a further offhand comment about where he should go to retrieve his daughter's remains, Cora had dropped it carelessly on the doorstep and dematerialized. But there was nothing here. No enemy he could fight.

"Son of a bitch!" David exploded, kicking a rock, whirling around, and punching the nearest tree. "It can't be! It can't!"

"I'm sorry." Leroy shook his head. "She's not here."

"No. No, she is not dead. I won't believe that. I can't." David spoke in bursts like staccato artillery fire. "It's the family promise, I have to find her. . . there has to be a way. . ." He spun back around, eyeing the invisible line on the road that finally, torturously marked the limit of where he could go to search for his daughter. Beyond it, bizarrely, trees were tilted, the pavement cracked, and power wires down, like a localized bomb had gone off. "Maybe I should go through. Aren't parents supposed to give themselves up for their children?"

"Be smart, man," Leroy urged. "We gotta do something, sure. But you can't just run through it. We saw what happened to Sneezy, and what happened when Snow drank that potion back home, to try to forget you. You remember how horrible that was. And this isn't what Emma wanted for you. If she is still alive, you don't want to make her handle that."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right." David brushed a distraught hand across his eyes. "Oh God, what are we going to say to Henry? To any of them?"

"I wish I knew. I'm sorry," Leroy said again. "But we have to go back, get Snow, and find someone who can go through that."

David's head jerked up. "There's someone else who's come to this town recently. I don't know who he is, but I do know he's staying at Granny's. I've seen him around. Any strangers in Storybrooke, they stick out like a sore thumb. Why didn't I think of it before?"

Leroy nodded grimly. Apparently he knew too. "Oh yeah," he said. "That guy."

The prince and the dwarf looked at each other for a moment longer. Then they raced each other back to the truck, and would have made a NASCAR driver proud on the way home.

(8888888)

"Charming, please." Mary Margaret was almost in tears. "There are too many things completely out of our control. I – I don't know how it happened. How could Hook have come here, stolen the sword and Emma out from under our noses, and gotten her. . . wherever he took her?"

"I don't know either." David rubbed his temples. "Leroy and I had an idea that we could track down the stranger, the guy I've seen in the park a few times. I stopped by Granny's to ask, she said his name is Neal, he arrived here from New York about a week ago. But – "

"Strangers don't come to Storybrooke," Mary Margaret insisted. "We'd have to tell him who Emma was, we'd have to do all kinds of lying to get around the fact of why we can't leave ourselves, and as I said. . . if he is here, it's because he's looking for something, or he wants something. We could be exposed, David. There's a whole world out there that we've never been to, but if they heard about us. . ."

"What's more important? Is there anything more important than getting Emma back?"

"Of course not," his wife said warningly. "But I should mention, I haven't seen Kathryn around for quite a while."

"Wha – ?" The change of subject to his ex-wife left David baffled. "Do you want to?"

"No, I don't." Mary Margaret's voice was even sharper. In that moment, it was left to both of them to recall that even though they were now blissfully reunited and living in honest matrimony, they had both slept with other people while under the influence of the curse – David with Kathryn, and Mary Margaret's one-night stand with Dr. Whale. They considered it to not necessarily be their fault, but they hadn't really talked about it. After twenty-eight years of being apart, they didn't want to drive any more wedges between them.

"At any rate," Mary Margaret continued, "I thought she might have gone to law school in Boston, like she was planning, after she was released from the hospital. And while I don't really want her back in our lives again, I can at least admit that she was a good and decent woman, and I'd prefer to have her help us look for Emma, rather than this mysterious man, this Neal, we don't know anything about."

David raked a hand through his hair. "But you know Kathryn is Princess Abigail in our world. She can't leave Storybrooke any more than we can."

"Maybe she did," Mary Margaret said quietly. "What was her fiancé's name – Frederick? He's not here. Maybe it wasn't so bad for her to cross through the boundary and just become Kathryn, maybe she didn't want those old painful memories anymore. Especially after everything that happened to her here. But she'll still know you, even as David instead of Charming. If we could track her down in Boston. . ."

"It's an idea," David admitted. "But that's no guarantee. We still need to do something now, and that's why I think we should – "

"No. No, I don't want to do it."

"Fine! So what do you propose?"

Engrossed in their argument as the Charmings were, they almost didn't hear the footsteps on the stairs. Steps that didn't sound like Henry's. Then they did, however, and spun around – and stared.

David was the first to recover, though by no means quickly. "What are you doing here?" This morning was getting stranger and unhappier every minute.

"I'm sorry." Belle flushed. "I. . . couldn't help overhearing. I know your daughter is missing, and I needed to tell you. . . she did leave here on her own free will. Nobody kidnapped her. She took the sword and snuck out, but she ran into me on the front porch."

"But she," David said weakly. "She promised."

Mary Margaret had other concerns. "Why were you on our front porch?"

The young librarian's blush deepened. "I. . . left Mr. Gold," she said, awkwardly but firmly, though her chin was trembling and tears were welling in her eyes. "I wasn't going to let him get away with what he was planning, and I decided that as bad and terrible as she is, Cora was right in saying that I couldn't keep sacrificing myself by trying to change him. When he becomes the Dark One, it is what he is. And I. . . ran."

David and Mary Margaret exchanged a look. As shocked as they were by Belle's presence in their home – though they both already understood that it must have been her they had seen asleep in Emma's bed, rather than Emma herself – they were aware that this presented a sudden new opportunity. Rumplestiltskin, alias Gold, was a complex, untrustworthy, dangerous, subtle man in this or any world, but the one thing he truly loved was Belle. And if she had separated from him, and taken up with them instead. . .

David broke the silence. "Leroy," he said, glancing at the dwarf, who had been sitting on the couch and worriedly observing the marital spat. "Grab your keys."

(8888888)

Fifteen minutes later, David and Mary Margaret were standing at the counter of Gold's pawnshop and jangling the little silver bell until the clapper appeared likely to detach. They had left Belle behind at the house to keep an eye on Henry, who was still asleep – it was not yet 8 AM – and also because they wanted to pungently impress on Gold the fact of her absence. The door to the shop had been locked, in fact, but that wasn't a problem to Leroy, who jiggered it in impressively quick time. They had bigger things to worry about than being cited for breaking and entering, not least because the sheriff's vanishing was the cause of their problems and the deputy sheriff was one of the breakers and enterers. Leroy himself was stationed just outside with his pickax, to be called upon immediately in the event of things going sideways.

Repeated abuse of the bell having produced no effect, David raised his voice. "GOLD! We know you're in here! You better come out now!"

For another agonizing few moments, there was nothing except the quiver of the crystal droplets on an antique chandelier. Then at last, the curtain rustled, and Gold emerged. He was still dressed in his customary dark pinstriped suit, black collared shirt, and purple tie, but it was crumpled and dirty as if he had never taken it off, and his face told a similar tale. He couldn't have looked less delighted to welcome a pair of brimstone-belching, pitchfork-wielding demons.

"Your Highnesses," he said precisely. "To what do I owe this. . . pleasure?"

"We need to know what you did last night." Mary Margaret set her jaw.

Gold smiled faintly. "And you know anything about where I was last night, or why?"

"No, we don't. But we do know that our daughter and a certain pirate captain disappeared at the Storybrooke boundary, so we know you were there."

"Clever." Gold came to a halt behind the glass case. "You know this how?"

"Cora." David bit off the word. "She appeared at our house this morning with my sword and she had something very interesting to tell us."

Gold cocked one eyebrow expectantly. "And?"

Deciding it was better not to get into the gory details, Mary Margaret cut in. "We need your help." She choked on the words, but there was no other choice. "For obvious reasons, none of us can go over the boundary, and it's. . . it's very possible that Captain Hook took Emma across. We have no way to follow them."

"Ah." Gold's eyebrow lifted further, along with his lip, which curled back in a snarl. "So you have now realized just what it feels like to be trapped in this place, unable to go out in search of a dearly loved and missed child. Congratulations, Your Highnesses. I hope you have a chance to feel it much further. Good day." He started to walk away.

"Wait!" Mary Margaret reached out after him. "Are you really going to do this? Are you going to give up any chance of getting Belle back?"

Gold hesitated, then stopped. The expression on his face when he turned back was even more unholy. "And," he enquired, "you know she's missing how?"

"She's with us." David kept one hand on the hilt of his sword. "She's safe, but she's not too interested in coming back here. And no, we're not saying anything else."

"I see. For a perfect royal pair who prides themselves on fairness and nobility, you're playing quite dirty now. But your precious daughter broke her bargain with me for the sake of Captain Hook, who is only the man I hate most in any existence ever dreamed of, and if you think that makes me feel warm-hearted and paternal and altruistic. . . I'm sorry. It doesn't."

"So you're just going to let Emma stay missing?" David exploded.

Gold smirked. "Why shouldn't I?"

"Because as long as we can't cross the boundary, the curse is somehow still in effect, and that includes you. You can't leave either, and you want to. You need her."

"Do I? I had a spell all prepared to cross, and she ruined that as well, once more for the benefit of Captain Hook. She has an unnatural fixation on that pirate, by the way, and it's more than reciprocated. He's been stalking her every chance he can. For what it's worth, I too sincerely doubt that he killed her. He prefers to get his money's worth out of his whores."

Mary Margaret went white to the lips. "Don't you ever call my daughter that again."

"Your daughter? Your own special snowflake? I can't for the life of me think why the nuns haven't begged her to join their convent, she's apparently so perfect. Let me make this very plain. No. No, I won't help you, and that's the end of the story. If I have to suffer this way, it is more than fair that you have to do the same. Good. Day."

David and Mary Margaret exchanged a despairing look. Short of David drawing his sword and going after Gold, there was nothing they could think of.

Almost nothing.

"Gold."

"Is somebody talking?" The pawnbroker glanced around, feigning astonishment. "I can't see anyone here. It does occur to me as well that the store was locked, so surely no one would be as ill-mannered as to simply break in here. Ghosts, I presume." He took another step.

"Gold!" Mary Margaret almost jumped across the counter. She swallowed, trying desperately to keep her composure from crumpling. "I. . . want. . . to make a deal."

"Do you, dearie? A deal? And why am I not to think that you won't rubbish this one too, just like your daughter? Runs in the family."

"No, I swear. I won't break this one. Anything you ask."

After one more pause, Gold turned around – but it wasn't him, it was Rumplestiltskin, complete with the high, eerie cackle. "Ah, so now we're finally talking! There's always a place where the pride comes down, isn't there? How – hmm – touching. So then, Princess. What's the bargain?"

Mary Margaret held his gaze. "I want you to help us find Emma. To get her back, safe and sound, from wherever she's gone. Whether it's over the town boundary, or somewhere else entirely, and to not work for anyone else or change sides once during the course of it."

"And what's in it for me?"

She hesitated, but only for a moment. "Name your price."

Rumplestiltskin cackled again. "You must be desperate indeed, dearie! Two things, then. Just two. Simple things. Little things."

What are you doing? David mouthed at his wife. There has to be another way!

She gazed back at him sadly. No, there isn't. To Rumplestiltskin, she repeated, "Two things."

"Indeed. First, a hair from you and a hair from your prince, so I can extract and bottle a new potion of Twoo Wuv. We'll need the strongest sort of magic for this, you know."

"Done."

"Ah, dearie, but I haven't asked for the other part."

"Ask it."

Rumplestiltskin grinned. "In exchange for us finding your dearest, dearest daughter, who is going to cause me all sorts of inconveniences, I would like to be certain that she will at least not be able to cause me one. And to finish something I've so long desired. When we find Emma, you will permit me to kill Captain Hook in any way I should see fit."

David let out his breath in abject relief. I thought he was going to ask for something difficult. "Done," he said firmly, immediately. "As long as I can help."

"Oh, dearie." Rumplestiltskin's grin broadened. "Believe me, you can."

(8888888)

Regina took the key out of her pocket and fumbled it into the deadbolt, muttering under her breath. After her house had been rendered unlivable by the fire, she had rented an apartment downtown, next to Archie Hopper's office, and apparently nobody had set foot in it for almost thirty years, because the lock was sticky, the stairs were creaky, and even though she'd fumigated it and cleaned it at least a half dozen times, it still smelled like mold and something dying under the floorboards. She had filed an angry complaint, but nobody seemed inclined to do anything about it. They seemed to think it was perfectly fine if, evicted from her palatial mansion, she had to live like one of the little people for a while.

We'll see about that. Regina finally wrestled the door open and started up the stairs, sounding like an invading army. It didn't help that whenever she went down them at any hour of day or night, Archie's dog liked to start barking crazily, and the fact of living next door to him was much more intimate than she cared for in the first place. She didn't trust him to keep her secrets, and she was half-convinced that he was spying on her anyway. But at least if Henry still came here, she might get a glimpse of him every once in a while.

Regina pressed her lips thin and took the second flight. She had been out early, poking around the scorched foundation of her house, in search of any further magic, any trace, anything that could get her started on breaking the cloaking spell that her mother was using to mask her movements around Storybrooke. Knowing that she was here, and that Regina was powerless to predict when or where, was driving her insane, and she was prepared to go to considerable lengths to overcome it. But everywhere was turning up a dead end.

She reached the end of the hall and pulled out her key again. Shoved it into the lock, which seemed to be even stickier than usual; she grunted and cursed and sawed it back and forth. Until at last it gave, and she stumbled through into her dark grey living room (what a joke, she could barely live here, maybe she'd have to take a room at Granny's too and – )

She sensed it before she saw it. Or maybe she smelled it. Something about the coldness that scurried down her back. The sensation of close and present magic, competing alien magic, that curled gently over the door and locked it shut, that caressed her skin almost like a lover (another thing she hadn't had in a long time, too long, she had begun to feel sporadically guilty for killing Graham, but his death had been classified as natural causes, and so she couldn't talk about that to Archie. See how long doctor/patient confidentiality held if the wretched cricket had the chance to indict her for murder). And she went very still.

"Mother," she said, half in a whisper. "Come out. I know you're here."

Silence, just long enough for her to wonder if she was possibly going crazy. But then, with a whisper of tulle and silk and a scent like orchids, the flower of death, Cora stepped from the shadows of the curtains. "My dear. So long away, and you can't even give me a smile?"

Regina clenched her fists, feeling magic burn against them. "I'll give you a red smile."

"Let's speak as adults, please. My beautiful daughter, I have missed you so much." Cora held out her arms. "I won't hold a grudge, you know, for what you did with the mirror – my career in Wonderland was quite fruitful. I just want you to realize how much you need me, and that we should reconcile after all these years of unproductive division and hatred. And I know you don't want to kill me. You had your chance long ago."

Regina didn't answer. She remained motionless.

Cora stepped closer. "I regret what happened with your house, my darling. I didn't want us to meet for the first time like that."

"So what?" Words burst out of her at last. "You're going to tell me it was an accident? My son was in that house, and you could have – "

"Your son, yes." From the way Cora smiled, Regina immediately wished she hadn't mentioned it. "I haven't met him yet, you know. He must be such a sweet boy. I understand you named him after your father. If you're his mother, I am his grandmamma."

"You're never going to see him. Never going to get close to him. I won't let you, I won't let you hurt him, do what you did to me."

Cora arched an eyebrow. "And when am I going to have the chance? You're not exactly getting close to him either. One night, that's all the Swan girl lets you have with him even after you saved her life? She's still acting as if she has all the rights to him, even though she's known him for six months, even though after ten years of you being his mother, she thinks she can take him away from you as she pleases. Even though she gave him up."

Regina hesitated, then turned away sharply. "I don't need you telling me how to be a mother. In fact, you're the last person I would listen to in that department."

"Why, darling? Is this still about Daniel?"

She flinched. "Don't you dare say his name."

"Daniel." Cora smiled. "What are you going to do now? I've always wondered, by the way. Did you bring his body with you when you cast the curse?"

"That is none of your business!"

"Because I've been looking," Cora continued. "Down in the family crypt – I saw you did bring Papa, how sentimental of you. But I didn't see Daniel. Just a coffin that looked rather as if it had been designed to contain him. I didn't think you'd expend such beauty and care on anyone else."

"He's not here anymore." Regina stared at the wall. "It was an unfortunate circumstance. He. . . I had to. . ." Memories of seeing him in the stable, undead and bloodied, assailed her. Every dream come true, just as swiftly to turn into a nightmare. A monster. "Handle him."

"Ah. Good girl." Cora glided closer. "So you do understand, don't you? Why it was never personal? And as it happens, I've come here to help you get Henry back, and prove to everyone once and for all that it's you who needs to raise him. Not to hurt him. I've told you so many times, family is the most important thing to me."

"I don't believe you, Mother. I'm sorry." Regina felt her teeth squeak as she ground them together. But totally against her will, there were other memories, now. Seeing Cora in the coffin when Hook brought her back from Wonderland – thinking, foolishly, that he hadn't betrayed her and that Cora wasn't going to harm her any longer. Her mother. How it was not wanting to be her that had driven her to change as a mother herself, for Henry. And yet the fact remained that she so viscerally and desperately desired that connection, that she still loved her somehow, dark and twisted and trodden-on as it was.

"Why?" Cora asked. "If it was just Daniel that caused you to hate me in the past, and you've managed that small issue. . . my darling, please. I want us to love each other again, to forgive each other. To change."

To change. Regina flinched again. She wanted to dismiss it out of hand, she knew Cora was lying. . . but everyone thought she was lying when she said it, and that was hard, so hard. . . if she was changed, shouldn't she allow for the possibility in someone else, even her mother. . .?

"Besides." Cora was behind her now. "I have something for you. Something that will, you'll agree, show you just how much Emma Swan really cares for the child she claims for her own, merely by virtue of giving birth to him and abandoning him. Just like she's done again, with a man we both know quite well. He's betrayed both of us now, too."

Regina tensed. "What?"

"Here." Cora handed her a handkerchief. "Unfold this. It is a direct and unaltered report of what happened at the Storybrooke boundary last night. You'll find it instructive."

Regina looked at her scornfully. "And I'm supposed to trust you?"

Cora's immaculately lipsticked mouth turned up in an amused smile. "No, dear. I'm trusting you. You have to use your own magic to activate it, and I'm dropping all my defenses. So you can either kill me, or look at what the Swan girl did."

Regina hesitated again, sorely tempted. She wanted to throw the handkerchief away from her, and she wanted to clutch it close. It's a trap. Somehow, it's a trap. I'll open it and it'll bind me up, make me a prisoner, do something, anything besides what she says.

But her own magic was starting to return in her hands and fingers. It could sense something about Emma in the cloth, something close. And him. Hook.

The Swan girl abandoned Henry again. For him? That man? And still obstinately called herself Henry's mother and thought she had the superior right to him?

How dare she. How dare she.

Fast as a snake, before Cora had time to react, Regina shook the handkerchief open.

At once, nebulous images swirled up, taking on form and color. There was no sound, but she could recognize Emma, Gold – and him, Killian Jones in the flesh, although somewhat the worse for wear. From their motions, it was possible to infer that they were conducting some sort of vehement argument, and Emma did have Prince Charming's sword. Not to mention, she was certainly taking the pirate's part against Gold.

Something else swirled into sight, in the rear of the picture. It looked very much like a. . . like a tornado. As might be expected, it caused everything else to turn blurry and vague, but Regina could still make out the shapes moving behind it. Saw Hook break free and run, stagger as Gold shot him, and saw Emma throw open her arms to catch him, clutching him as close as a lover, even dropping the sword so she didn't hurt him further, of all the unbelievable things. Saw her press her face into the pirate captain's neck, and smile as she plunged with him into the swirling vortex. It couldn't have looked more planned if they'd tried.

The handkerchief fell from Regina's hands to the floor, burst into flames, and tidily reduced itself to a small pile of ash. She looked up at her mother wildly.

Cora sighed. "I'm sorry, dear. I know you wanted me to be lying. I'm not."

"What. . ." Regina was still stunned, but fury was rising up, hot and destructive as a tidal wave of magma. "What did she. . ."

"You did see the part where our dear Hook took a bullet for her?" Cora laughed, low in her throat. "He does not do that for just anyone. I suppose it's been a long time for them both, so we could, theoretically, forgive them. But I don't feel like it. Do you?"

Regina's magic was at full roar now, surging through her, reminding her who she was, who she really was. Not the pitiful refugee who had to squat in this miserable apartment, not the self-sacrificing, denying martyr who let Emma Swan lord it over her and pull apart her life and fling herself into the bosom of Captain Hook, who she had clearly not hated at all as much as she pretended. She lied to us, she lied to all of us. No wonder Emma had ordered them all off the Jolly Roger. It wasn't to save their memories, even if she had pleaded fairly convincingly with Regina to get her off the mast. No, it was because it would have been hard to explain why she wasn't killing Hook. And she had left Henry. And if she ever did return, would once more stake her claim to him. Widen the gulf. Tear apart what little she had left any of them.

Regina was a queen. A sorceress. A mother. She could still be that. Could still use her magic. Could change. Could defeat Cora. Could get back Henry. Could become more powerful than Gold. Could make everyone see, once and for all, that Emma Swan and her sanctimonious family were total hypocrites. All of that. And now, she had to.

We could, theoretically, forgive them. But I don't feel like it. Do you?

"No," Regina said softly. Then again, louder, almost in a scream, as her magic crested and began to ignite in a flood tide. "No! I don't!"

And that was when, confirming every intuition she'd ever had that he was spying on her, Archie Hopper opened her door.