"It's going to take a few more days."
Emma looked up sharply.
"What?"
Despite his size, Tiny faltered under her severe stare.
"The – the beans… they aren't ready yet. It's going to take a few more days."
For the past six months, a frown had never left Emma's face. When she was not one hundred percent focused on the elaborate scheme they were planning to win her son back, she was distant and distracted, haunted by the memory of him and the last time she had seen his face, however half-conscious she may have been at the time.
The people of Storybrooke were nothing but sympathetic. They too grieved the loss of the young, bouncing prince who had saved them all. His curiosity had nosed his way into every corner and crevasse of town life, so that they all felt his absence, and all felt for the woman who missed him the most.
Emma stood around a makeshift strategy table in the back of Gold's shop. She had been leaning over it, studying a crudely drawn map, when Tiny had interrupted her. Behind her, Neal stood leaning against the back wall. Snow sat beside her daughter, and Charming stood, clearing having been pacing. Emma leaned on her fists as her harsh glare bore into the giant.
"You said they'd be ready a week ago," she accused, her voice quiet but frustrated.
"I thought they would," Tiny offered in a small voice. "I'm not used to the farming conditions here. I didn't think they would need this long, but they are slow to grow. It's so cold."
Emma looked back down at the cluttered table, pressing her lips together to stifle a flare of disappointment.
"Of all places, why did she have to send everyone to Maine?" she muttered under her breath. Her eyes flitted at the spread of items laid out before her. A large sack of fairy dust stood in the center of the table – the dwarves had been mining day and night. Beside it stood a large top hat with a blue ribbon, which Emma had acquired from Jefferson when she visited his mansion for information. Gold's globe stood white and blank as ever. If Henry and Regina were in this world, it would have shown where they were, Gold had explained when Emma had pricked her finger and fed her blood to the orb to no avail. She wouldn't have stayed, though. You don't need an orb to know that. She can't do magic in this world outside of Storybrooke. Magic is her power, so she wouldn't have gone anywhere that left her powerless.
That ruled out Transylvania, Whale had reported. His world and this one shared a lack of the supernatural in common. Emma, Snow and Charming had done a survey of the town to discover just how many possible worlds were represented, in order to understand how vast their search would need to be.
After their abduction a year before, Emma had had very little interest in involving Jefferson, but seeing as he seemed to be the only resident who had any familiarity with Wonderland, she had been forced to pay his large, dark, twisted mansion a visit.
"I don't know if that's the best idea," Snow had cautioned when Emma had confided her intentions to her parents. She cast a quick sideways glance at Charming before taking her daughter by the shoulder and sidling out of earshot, warning her in a pressing whisper, "remember what happened the last time we were there?"
Emma saw Charming eyeing them curiously and lowered her voice as she responded.
"Well, it did turn out that all the things he said that made us think he was mad were in fact true," she countered.
"That's no excuse for tying people up and holding them at gunpoint!" Snow insisted. "His thoughts may have been accurate, but that doesn't excuse the violence of his actions! He proved himself an extremely dangerous man."
"He was fighting to get his kid back," Emma argued. "He was passionate and desperate. I know the feeling." Emma and Snow's eyes locked for a moment. "And from what I understand, Henry is the reason Grace, or Paige, or whatever she goes by now, is back with him, so he owes him a large debt. Well, I'm cashing it in for him."
"What's the problem over here?" Charming had come barging into the conversation, his patience having run out.
"Nothing," Emma had said, holding her mother's gaze one final moment before exiting the store for Jefferson's house.
"What was all that about?" he asked his wife.
"We just… have a complicated history with Jefferson," she explained vaguely. "Emma and Mary Margaret do, that is." She turned back into the room and sidled towards the table, leaving Charming to brood in confusion over the vagueness of her explanation.
Jefferson had not invited Emma inside, but Emma would not have wanted to enter anyways. They had a brief and tense, though helpful conversation at the door, and Emma reported back to a full room in the back of Gold's shop.
"We can rule out Wonderland," she told them all. "Apparently Regina told Jefferson more than once how much she detested wonderland. What's more, apparently that's where she banished her mother to live right after she became queen and learned how to use her powers. Doesn't sound like a place she'd be desperate to go just days after her death."
"Right," Charming had said, crossing off 'Wonderland' on a list of possible destinations that sat on an easel in the corner of the room. The list had once included such fantasy realms as Middle Earth, Atlantis, and even Hogwarts.
"You know none of those are real, right," Neal had told her under raised eyebrows as he surveyed the list.
"How am I supposed to know?" Emma had asked, rounding on him. "The Cinderella's Kingdom is a real place, but I'm the crazy one for adding Hogwarts to the list?"
That just left the Enchanted Forest and Neverland. After nearly a week's worth of late nights debating and arguing which was more likely, neither had a strong enough case to rule it out.
"Regina knows the Enchanted Forest is the first place we'd look," Red had pointed out. "A perpetrator never returns to the scene of a crime."
"What's waiting for her in Neverland, though?" Emma had pondered. "Why up and move to a completely new land she has no ties to? Unless there is something we don't know about past with that land."
"Or there is another land we are missing," Neal added, a comment to which Emma shot a beleaguered look.
"Don't even start," she begged. After narrowing down the list of possible destinations she may have chosen, the last thing Emma wanted to do was add more to the pile. Choosing between two was difficult enough.
"Regina has extremely strong emotional and nostalgic ties to where she grew up," Snow contributed. "She would either want to return there to be in a familiar place, or she would want to avoid it at all costs, but I can't be certain which."
"That is supremely unhelpful," Emma had sighed.
In the end, after talking themselves in circles, they decided that the only way to do it would be to scour both lands.
"So, what, we go to one first and then the other?" Charming had asked.
"That will take too long," Emma said, standing to pace out her frustration. "Even if we can figure out a way to get to either one of these places, there's a whole lot of ground to cover. What, we just flip a coin to decide which one comes first and, if it's the wrong one we waste God knows how much time before we realize we were wrong?"
"We could search them simultaneously," Snow suggested quietly. Emma stopped her pacing.
"You mean split up?" she asked, intrigued and hesitant at the same time, taking her seat next to her mother and leaning forward.
"And how would we let each other know when we found Regina and Henry in one place or another?" Red asked. "How would we communicate?"
"The same way we did last time we found ourselves in separate realms," she said, looking apologetically at her husband as she said it. She took his hand.
"The fiery room," he confirmed, an unpleasant tone in his voice. Snow nodded.
"If one of us were to go to the Enchanted Forest, and the other to Neverland, we could bring poppy powder to induce a sleep that would allow us back into the netherworld brought on by the sleeping curse. We could schedule regular meetings for updates."
"I can't ask you guys to split up again," Emma said, leaning back in her chair. "You've spent too much time apart already, it's not…"
"You're not asking," Charming told her as continued to hold his wife's hand. He looked back at Snow, who smiled a small, sad smile. "We're offering."
"But what about…?"
"We would do anything for you and Henry, Emma," Snow said, shifting to look her squarely in the eye. "You know that, right?"
Emma was silent for a moment.
"I do, it's just… something I'm still getting used to, I guess."
So it was settled that Snow, Emma and Red would use the fairy dust on the Mad Hatter's hat to take them to the Enchanted Forest, while Charming and Neal would point the Jolly Roger towards the second star to the right and sail straight on 'til morning. Charming and Neal had cast each other an awkward, uncertain glance at the pairing, but considering Neal would have to go to Neverland, since he was the only one who had been there before, and Snow was the best equipped to go to the Enchanted Forest because she had the most intimate knowledge of the queen's past with that land, there wasn't much of a choice. Emma had reminded herself to have a chat with her father before they all departed to make sure he wasn't too rough on her ex-boyfriend while they were gone.
The only thing left was to find a way to get one party back to the other in whichever land they actually discovered the queen and Henry had fled too, and getting back home afterwards. And for that, they needed the beans.
Emma had hoped to have the beans in her hands by now, but Tiny's news crushed that wish. She took a stabilizing breath, trying not to count the days it had been since she had last seen her son. Every morning she woke and ticked off another day in her mental calendar. It had been nearly six months.
"We're scheduled to leave at the end of next week," Emma breathed, looking back up at a timid Tiny. "Will they be ready by then?"
"I think so," Tiny told her. "I can't be one hundred percent sure, but if they continue to grow at the rate they've been growing, then yes."
"Fine," Emma sighed. "Just let us know as soon as they are ready."
Tiny nodded his understanding and backed out of the room, ducking his head as he crouched through the door. As his hulking form waddled away, Mr. Gold stepped into the door frame.
"Are you ready to continue our lessons, Ms. Swan?" he asked in a snide, quiet voice.
The atmosphere in the room tensed as Emma looked up and caught Gold's eye. Emma had requested private lessons with Gold not long after she had been discharged from the hospital and the planning had begun. One of the conditions what that what they were doing during them remain secret. The concept had left everyone else curious, skeptical and concerned. When her parents had pushed the issue, Emma had explained vaguely, "I'm just learning what I need to know in order to defeat Regina once we find her," and left it at that.
Snow's glance bounced between Gold and her daughter. She did not like the arrangement. None of them did. She couldn't help but remember what had happened to the other people with a flare for magic that Gold had trained. Emma often came home from her sessions with Gold drained and moody, and the lessons had begun to last longer and longer. She did not like seeing her daughter so distraught, but she also knew that Emma was obdurate, and if she was set on learning something from Gold, then there was nothing she or anyone else could say to sway her.
"Yes," Emma responded, picking up the map in front of her and handing it back to Neal behind her without changing her glance. "In the meantime, please fix this. I can't make heads or tales of it."
"I told you I can't draw!" Neal protested in an exasperated voice, taking the map from her.
"Somebody help him, then," she said, striding around the table and towards where Gold stood waiting for her at the door. After it shut behind the two, a long silence followed, those remaining around the table staring after them.
"I don't like that," Charming said sourly, scowling.
"None of us do," Red agreed.
"I tried talking to her about it," Snow said. "She says she's only learning what she'll need to defeat Regina, and no more. She says that afterwards, she won't ever use magic again, that she has no interest in learning everything, just enough to see this through to the end and protect Henry. But I don't know. Everyone I've met who started with magic never learned how to stop. I don't want to lose her to it."
"We just have to trust her," Neal told them all.
"I trust her," Charming said. "It's him I don't trust. Two of his pupils have lived to destroy everything they love. He twists them until they don't know right from…"
Charming faltered as he remembered who he was talking to, and that person's relationship to Gold. The room hung in an awkward silence.
"Look, just because I forgave my father doesn't mean I'm his biggest fan," he assured them, breaking it. "But Emma's a grown woman and she can make her own choices. She's choosing to learn from Rump… I mean, Gold, and we have to trust that she knows what she's doing. Now, can someone please help me draw a map of Neverland that doesn't look like it was drawn by a two-year-old?"
"Perhaps the first step is to stop using crayons," Red suggested, and some of the tension left the room.
By the time night fell, Neal was the only one left in the room, harping over the map he had constructed in front of him and trying to make it as accurate as possible. He hadn't even noticed that it had gotten so dark until a flickering light from the front of the store caught his attention. He looked up at it, disconcerted.
"Emma?" he called out. "Dad?"
No answer came. Slowly, Neal stood from his seat. He could not help but notice each squeaky floor board as he sidled his way around the table and to the threshold of the doorway that led to the front of the shop. He surveyed it. It was silent and still, bathed in the dark of the evening that had fallen. Neal blinked. He took one step into the main shop.
"Do. Not. Move."
Before he could react to the sudden slick voice behind him, he felt the end of a small handgun pressed into his back. He froze immediately, not even daring to breathe.
"I swore I'd save my hook for that coward of an Imp, Rumpelstiltskin, but I have no quarrel with doing away with you by other means." Neal recognized the voice immediately as he raised his hands in front of him in plain sight.
"Now," Hook growled, "take me to my ship."