Chapter 12

"No," Mary Margaret said, and clenched her fists.

Gold glanced over his shoulder with every simulacrum of his usual chilly, precise politeness, but the look in his eyes was savage. "I beg your pardon, dearie?"

"I said no." Mary Margaret stepped in front of her husband, who was trying to clutch her arm. "We're not leaving. I don't care about your shop. There is nothing more important to me in this life than my daughter, and if you think we're running away and abandoning her while she – "

"Funny choice of words there. In this life. Your daughter's fine, she's not dying. Yet. In fact, if you're at all interested in productively furthering her recovery, you'll be accompanying me." Gold's voice was very low, a soft and sinuous hiss. "Are you saying, Mrs. Nolan, that you're breaking our deal? Do you really want to go down that road? I seem to recall there's that document in my shop, the one that prevented you from tragically losing your home in unfortunate financial circumstances. If any damage comes to the place, and it should disappear. . . well then, it would no longer be binding, would it?"

Mary Margaret went as white as snow. "How dare you."

"I'm not the one threatening to throw away a signed and sealed agreement, dearie. You and your lummox of a husband, now. . . think carefully about this. Think very carefully."

Mary Margaret threw an imploring look at David, who appeared irresolute. He glanced agonizingly back down the hospital corridor, away toward the ICU where Emma still fought for life. Then, drawing his wife close, he murmured in her ear, "I can't be positive, but that turnover they showed us. . . doesn't it look an awful lot like the one Regina offered us once upon a time? And what with Gold said about protecting us. . ."

"You can't be believing him!" Mary Margaret's expression turned aghast.

"I. . . I just think there's something back in Storybrooke that we need to look out for. Something dangerous. And us. . . the house. . . I just. . . I'm sorry, honey. I think we should."

"What about Emma?"

David sighed heavily. "The doctors said she's stable, at least. We'll have them call us immediately if anything changes. And. . .. and. . . Here."

With that, ignoring the shocked look from Mary Margaret and the black one from Gold, David turned and strode across the waiting room to Killian Jones. He took his work notepad and pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled a brief note, then handed it to the professor. "Here. Give this to Emma when she wakes up. Tell her we didn't leave her willingly. Tell her we love her."

"I'll be sure to do so." Jones' voice was soft as well, but it brimmed with depthless malice as he stared evilly at the pawnbroker. "Mate."

David jerked his head in acknowledgement, then turned away. The police still appeared stupefied, or else had decided that everybody involved was hopelessly cracked and it would thus be of no use to arrest them – though one of the officers did remind them that a civil citation for frivolously wasting the force's time would not be out of the question. Shaking their heads, they turned their attention to the lab tech and his poisoned pastry; at least there they had tangible evidence that an actual crime had been committed. To which, as the door closed behind Gold and the Nolans, Killian turned to them and said lightly, "You won't find her, you know."

"Scuse?" The sergeant glanced up wearily, clearly begging him to bugger off. "Find who?"

"The woman who gave Miss Nolan that." Killian gestured. "Name of Regina Mills. Mayor of Storybrooke, Maine."

"St – " The female officer glanced at him, as females tended to do regardless of whether or not they were sheriffs with shiny badges clipped to their belts. "Are you saying you know the suspect, Mr. . .?"

"Jones. Professor Jones, history and English at Boston College. Here's my card." Killian proffered it, as to prove that he at least was not invisible, a faceless man from a rootless place. Except I am. "You'll never find Storybrooke on your own, officers. Not unless you hurry down right now and follow them. You'll find her there. Regina. She's hard to miss. And perhaps some evidence of other crimes as well."

"This is very serious, Professor. We don't have time to go haring off into Wonderland on wild goose chases. Are you sure that – "

"Yes," Killian said, with utter, frigid finality. "Perfectly."

The officer gave him a long, considered look, but glimpsed something in his face that made her frown and turn back to her colleagues. After a brief discussion and another radio conversation that he did his damndest to eavesdrop on without appearing to, it seemed that the decision was made. At a signal, the remaining officers holstered up and headed out.

Killian stood watching them go, feet feeling rooted to the floor. This was it. D-Day. Go, or stay. Pursue the whole tiresome lot of them back to Storybrooke, or remain behind and do. . . and do what? It certainly wasn't as if he'd be of appreciable use to the doctors, and he could undoubtedly tell the police a fair few intriguing bits of information in their hunt for an accused murderess. Have his chance to lay to rest, once and for all, the specter that stalked his past and imperiled his present, cast a dark and depthless shadow over any dream of his future. Against that, what was one unconscious girl in a hospital bed? A girl he didn't even care for?

He looked down again at David Nolan's hastily scribbled note. I promised him. But Killian Jones had promised so many things to so many men in his long life, the word began to lose its potency after a time. It was a debased currency he traded in, promises, and nor did he need to loiter about here like an anxious lover – the one impression he absolutely had to avoid projecting any more than he already had. It was done. Finished. He'd held up his end of the bargain.

But what if Wendy found out he'd gone after Gold? Again?

How long, how bloody long, did he have to drive the stake into his own heart?

Clutching the note so tightly in his fist that it hurt, Killian glanced down the hospital hallway one last time and made his choice.

Emma Ruth Nolan was burning.

Whenever she wasn't burning, she was falling. Sometimes it was both, a terrifying formless tumble into a never-ending void, as she screamed with voiceless desperation and clawed her fingers to shreds trying to beat down the darkness, but the only spark of light kept receding further and further away down an endless tunnel until it was only a flicker, and then devoured completely. No matter what she did, she kept falling. Down a rabbit hole, down a whirlwind, down a maelstrom. The pain raced down after her, trying to keep up, as she smoldered and sparked and shook and burned, as she kept looking for the source of the fire but could never find it. Down and down and down and down. Head over heels over head over heels, she plunged. She had always heard that if you hit the bottom in a falling dream, you died.

Panicking, she ripped at it, trying to slow her momentum. But it was useless; gravity gulped her up like a stone down a well. And in the darkness now, she began to see other things, other scenes, from a life that did not belong to her. She saw that brief flash of whatever vision – hallucination – had struck her when she'd kissed Killian – only this time she saw the bloodstained, wounded man reach the wardrobe and shove the baby inside it. Saw herself, she was that baby, she was in a crib in some grim industrial children's home, a little red-haired boy was sadly walking away from her. . . with a family, a family she didn't know, but she was happy, so happy and then they gave her away. . . a broken childhood with more of the same, from home to home, school to school, place to place, a child that the state paid for until they didn't. . . suspensions for being dirty, for being late, for not doing homework, until she ran out into the street and didn't look back. . . crowbar, breaking into a yellow Bug just like her own, Neal popping up in the backseat and telling her she could have just asked him for the keys. . .

No! Emma tried to scream as the dream turned even more vivid, more demented and improbable. What was this – this wasn't her, why were they doing this, living out of the back of the Bug and robbing convenience stores – where were her parents? Why weren't they helping her? Why weren't they here? Why had they left her – why hadn't they – no, no –

– watches, something to do with watches. Taking watches from a locker in a train station, doing it for Neal, waiting for him, a phone ringing but never answered, a police officer telling her to put her hands up – but that wasn't what had happened, that wasn't right, she'd been arrested for drugs but she hadn't done it, but she was still going to jail and someone had sent her the keys and there was a pregnancy test in her hand, there was –

– god no what was happening what was happening, just knowing she'd been abandoned they'd left her there all of them they weren't there, what was the matter with her, why was this still happening, she was writhing on a narrow cot in a prison infirmary, panting and gasping and groaning, she was in labor – then a baby screaming, a baby in her arms for just a moment and her lips brushing over the soft head, she wanted to hold him, she wanted to keep him, but she couldn't, she didn't know why only that they were taking him away and it felt like ripping her own heart out but she couldn't stop them –

falling still falling and gaining speed, this was it, she could see the bottom racing up at her, could see it coming and she didn't know how to stop, say her prayers, tell my family I love them –

but she had never had one –

And then there was no more falling. No more burning.

Only darkness.

She was dead. Or maybe she wasn't.

She was rising. Slowly, slowly, slowly. She felt scraped and charred and raw, beaten inside and out, as the shadows dancing on her eyelids cohered into sense, as consciousness returned in jagged chunks. She could hear sounds whooshing past, dim and distant as if they were underwater, and the steady, persistent beeping of a monitor. Her eyes were still closed, heavy and sticky, each breath aching in her chest ; there was some kind of tube threaded through her, measuring them out, that monitor keeping pitiless time. But she didn't understand. How she'd gotten here, what had happened, anything besides the utter mystery.

With the greatest effort known to man, Emma peeled her eyes open.

She was in a room. A hospital room, to be exact. Crowded with steel machines exuding an eerie green glow, charts posted up on sterile white walls, her body sprawled out like a broken toy, swaddled in gown and sheets and blankets. She tried to raise her right hand in front of her face, but couldn't. It was cuffed to the bed.

A queer, giddy terror took hold of her. She rattled it, trying to get it loose, but she was so weak that her struggles barely even registered. Her hand was emaciated, the bones standing out sharply beneath the parchment-pale skin, and when she held it up to the light of the monitors, she could almost see through it. It dropped to her side, shaking.

Emma reached out with her other hand, which at least was free, fumbling at the bedside tray. There was a cup of water on it which she promptly knocked over, soaking the scrap of paper that had been left next to it. Ink ran, turning the note into a soggy mess, and she made a face, cursing herself for her clumsiness. Her throat was as dry as a desert and she was desperate for a drink, for balm to smooth her cracked lips. How long had she been here?

There was nothing left in the cup by the time her feeble fingers caught hold of it. She moaned in frustration, trying to curse; her lips felt numb and thick and could barely shape around human words. She groped around for something that looked like a nurse-summoning button, and in the meantime, put another hopeful but doomed effort into loosening the handcuff. Why would they cuff her? Was it the watches? Where was Neal? What had any of –

She finally found the button, and banged it with a vengeance.

A few minutes later, she heard rustling at the door, and a flustered night nurse hurried in – then stopped, clearly shocked. "Miss Nolan? Miss Nolan! You're awake!"

Emma frowned, trying to push herself upright with her one good arm, but it gave out and she crashed back down, presaging a flurry on the nurse's part to order her to lie still while she checked the vitals, the dosages, the life support – life support? It was all too confusing, and she meekly lay still as further specialists flooded the room, all professing similar amazement to see her returned to the world of the living. They informed her that she was still extremely weak, that she shouldn't overexert herself, and hooked up various bags of fluids to the IV needle inserted in her right arm. She was still desperate for something to soothe her throat, but she couldn't speak with the tubes, couldn't give voice to the increasingly frantic confusion inside her.

She made desperate gestures, trying to communicate in sign language, but they kept telling her not to move. At last, when she started gagging, they unhooked the ventilator, then had to hold her hair as she threw up. It was wrenching, filthy, the worst she'd ever been sick in her life, but she felt marginally better when she was done. They gave her a cup of water to rinse out her mouth. She gargled and spat, then sank back into the hospital bed, trembling.

"What. . . happened?" She barely recognized her own voice. It sounded like a ghost's, barely louder than a whisper. "Why. . . here?"

"Miss Nolan, we just want you to take it slow. You've been very ill, sweetie, and we're very lucky to have you back." The nurse smiled, presumably meaning to be comforting. "Someone's gone right away to call your parents."

"My parents?" At that, Emma wasn't so sure that she'd woken up after all. "Yeah. . . good luck with that."

The nurse frowned. "Honey?"

"I've. . . I'm an. . . orphan." As always, the word stuck in her throat. "I was abandoned at birth, I grew up in the foster system. I don't have parents. I think you might have switched charts or something." She fumbled at her hospital bracelet, and was furtherly unsettled to see that it too bore the wrong name. The hell was going on? It was like some cut-rate cable medical drama, mysterious patients and exotic illnesses and everything. "I – I'm not Emma Nolan."

The nurse frowned. "Sweetie, calm down. You've been in a coma. You're confused."

"I'm not confused!" Emma's heart was starting to pound. "I know who I am, all right? My birthday is in two weeks, I go to Boston College, I'm a student there. I don't remember how I got here, but my memory's fine. Really. I just. . . what happened to me? And. . . my baby, I want. . ." All she could remember was the sound of him screaming. The pain of him being taken away. How long had she been asleep, oh God? "I had a baby. What did – what did you do with him?"

The doctors exchanged glances. Finally one of them said in a measured tone, "Miss Nolan, this is going to be hard for you to accept, but – "

"Don't call me that!"

"Emma. Here's what's going on. You've been in a coma for almost two days after ingesting some kind of rare toxin. You were bleeding heavily and unconscious when you were brought in. There. . . there is a possibility that you were in fact in the very earliest stages of pregnancy, to judge from the amount and composition of your bleeding, but it was so early that it's frankly impossible to tell. If so, you miscarried. There is no baby. I'm sorry."

Emma stared at him. Her mouth opened and shut, shaping itself around useless denials, hitting her harder than she'd ever believed possible. She almost couldn't breathe for that feeling of overwhelming grief, of losing a piece of her heart. . . her baby, how could he not be real? She had felt every labor pain, every drop of sweat. . . that downy-soft newborn hair on his skull. . . the weight of him in her arms, a little bundle of blankets with a red face. . . gone. Gone. Gone.

"I'm very sorry," the doctor added again, awkwardly. "We can send in the hospital chaplain to talk with you if you'd like, but it would be better for you to sleep. You need to get your – "

"Why am I chained?" Emma burst out desperately, rattling the handcuff again. "Why am I chained up? If it's about the watches, I didn't do it. I only took them from the train station, Neal actually stole them, it was Neal, he called in a tip and set me up – "

"Watches?" More looks of utter bafflement. "Excuse me, Miss – Emma, what watches?"

Oh God. Oh God, what was happening to her? Why had she woken into a world where nothing was real, where all her memories were tilted and shattered like dishes on the floor? "The watches," she repeated, as if the force of her own belief could convince them. "They were worth twenty thousand dollars, Neal said. I shouldn't have done it, but I've been alone my whole life and I just wanted a home, I wanted a place with him, I wanted to stay with him. Please."

"Honey. We're going to give you some more medicine now. You need to sleep. Things will be better when you wake up."

"No – no, don't!" Emma's voice rose on a shriek as someone who looked hair-raisingly like Nurse Ratched stepped in with a syringe. "No! No, please, just listen to me! I'm not lying, I swear! Did Neal run off? He can tell you about the watches, he'll tell you I'm not making it up! I'll take a polygraph, or – or whatever you want – no, stop! Stop!" She rolled frantically from side to side, but with the handcuff and her own weakness, there wasn't much place to go, and two burly young male residents stepped forward to hold her down. "I'm not Emma Nolan! You're making a mistake, I'm not her! Stop!"

Too late. The nurse injected the contents of the syringe into her IV line, and almost at once, Emma felt the heavy, soporific effects of a sedative spreading through her body. She sobbed in panic, but it was already closing around her heart, her chest, easing its jerks, smoothing all out into drugged tranquility, into silence and darkness. "No," she mumbled, even as the wings of the shadow were closing around her, enfolding her to its breast. "No. No, I'm not. My name's Emma. Not Emma Nolan. Emma. Emma Swan."

Not too terribly surprisingly, Mr. Gold floored it and then some for every one of the two-hundred-odd miles from Boston to Storybrooke. The old black Cadillac swayed and juddered in protest at being asked to maintain a minimum speed of eighty miles an hour, but neither its driver nor its passengers attempted to effect a reduction. They just sat tight, lips pressed into thin white lines, as they roared up the interstate as if the police were after them (which, so far as David and Mary Margaret knew, they might well be). As a result of Gold's audition for NASCAR, what was normally a four-hour drive was sliced to under half. It was about one AM when they blew past the green Welcome to Storybrooke sign and down the road onto Main Street, never stopping or even slowing until they turned into the alley next to his shop and burned to a halt inches from the 'Reserved Parking' sign. Gold jerked up the parking brake with a screech, then threw the car door open into the night, cane brandished like an assault rifle.

Holding hands tightly and wishing for some weapon of their own, the Nolans climbed out after him, every nerve on edge. They trailed a few paces behind the pawnbroker as he stumped vengefully toward the dark bulwark of the shop, tried the door, and cursed softly when it proved to be unlocked. He shoved it open with an off-key jangle of the bell and vanished inside.

"David," Mary Margaret whispered. "Do we have to – ?"

Her husband squeezed her hand. "Come on."

Side by side, they edged into the darkness, where it was possible to hear Gold throwing things in every direction as he rummaged madly across the counter. Even a cursory inspection was enough to see that the rose in its glass case was missing, as well as the chipped cup, and Gold's inspection was getting ever more frantic as he searched for it. He looked, in fact, more unraveled than they'd ever seen, more desperate, almost as if he was going to –

"Well, well, well. It took you long enough."

David and Mary Margaret both wheeled around, recognizing the voice, but still – for one blissful second longer – unable to connect it to sense. Still thinking that they were safe, that their desperate flight to Boston hadn't had the promised consequences after all. Then a light went on in the back of the shop, revealing Regina Mills in the flesh, perfectly groomed as always despite the ungodly hour, and beside her Sheriff Graham Humbert. He was sweating profusely, face as pale as bad fish, and seemed unable to meet their eyes.

"You." Gold straightened up. "You."

"Me." Regina gave a sleek little shrug. "Almost twenty years, Gold, and you lose it now? It's so terribly unlike you, I almost don't want to do this. Oh wait. Never mind. I do."

Not waiting to hear another word, David turned and lunged for the door.

In one swift motion, the sheriff drew his service weapon and pointed it at the other man. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Nolan. Not another step."

"Are you – " David turned back, aghast. "Are you out of your mind, Humbert? You helped us, you said that – "

"I wasn't well. As Regina – Mayor Mills – observed." Graham's finger tightened on the trigger; if that was so, he looked even less well now. "Now please don't move, or I'll have to do this."

Mary Margaret let out a whimper of despair, staring back and forth between Gold, Regina, and Graham holding her husband at gunpoint. "What's – how dare you think that you can – "

"A deal's a deal, dearie. And this one was particularly ghastly to break in regards to its consequences, as I warned you and warned you." Gold's attention, however, was only half on her. His serpent's stare was fixed on Regina. "Give it back."

She smirked. "No."

"Give it back, please."

"That doesn't work anymore, you know." Her smile had widened; she looked positively euphoric. "You don't know how many times I've imagined this day, and now it's even sweeter than I thought. You want this back? Then you're going to do what I say."

With that, Regina removed her hand from behind her back, revealing the chipped porcelain teacup cradled firmly between her fingers. "Such a fragile thing, isn't it? Eggshell china. Even squeezing too hard might shatter it."

"No!" Sweat was standing out on Gold's forehead. "No, don't!"

Regina laughed out loud. "Oh, how I've longed for the day to see you squirming at my feet. Well, Rumplestiltskin. This is only the start. The parchment. Now."

Even though he was still squarely on the business end of Graham's gun, David managed to shoot an aghast look at Gold. "The hell is she talking abou – "

Gold didn't answer. Every inch of him strung up and vibrating with fury, he went back to the safe behind the counter, spun the combination, and opened it. He removed an unremarkable, folded parchment, then held it up to face Regina. "This what you're after, dearie?"

"Yes," the mayor breathed. "Yes, that's it. Well, then. Twenty years too late is still better than never. You're going to burn that, and you're going to restore the curse to how it was supposed to be when I cast it. Our deal's over, Gold. You broke it. And when I finish the job of getting rid of Emma, it's never going to be broken. Ever. You know what this means? It means you lost."

"If you think I'm letting you hurt my daughter – " Mary Margaret screamed –

Regina paid her no attention, though Graham briefly moved as if to point his pistol at her instead. Everyone's attention was transfixed on Gold, who still had the parchment in his hand. He hadn't moved to do anything. He barely even seemed to be breathing.

"Now, Rumple," Regina said, all poisonous sweetness. "Or else – " She tightened her fingers, and everyone heard the fragile porcelain of the cup creak in protest.

"No," Gold said, barely audible. "No."

"Your choice. Burn it, or you lose your last remnant of Belle forever."

Belle? The Nolans stared at each other dumbly. David was clearly trying to come up with a plan on the fly, but all such expressions of it were blunted by the continued presence of Graham and the gun. But Gold wasn't going to – he wasn't –

Face still utterly expressionless, the pawnbroker placed the parchment in a bowl. Then he took out a book of matches, struck it with a stink of sulfur, and put it in.

At once, the old dry brown paper caught and flared up with livid blue light. Flames leapt up, devouring it, crinkling the edges – the word written on it over and over, in some strange ink, seemed only to be one word, one name. Emma. Repeated until there was no more space on the page, until there was no more –

Mary Margaret went slack, her head drooping, as she started to sway. She breathed in the smoke, the deep purplish-green smoke, wondering where she had seen it before. David was likewise transfixed, eyes closing, as tendrils coiled out from the burning paper and engulfed them both. It was like falling, deeper and deeper into a soft suffocating shroud, until thought and name and memory vanished. Until it was only a soft dreaminess, floating.

Out of it, she heard a voice speaking. "What's your name?"

"Mary Margaret," she mumbled, wondering why. Silly question.

"Do you know him?"

Looking across the way, she glimpsed a faintly familiar-looking man – but she couldn't place him, and it fled further with every moment. She shook her head, puzzled. "No.

"Do you have any children?"

She'd always wanted them, but she had never been so lucky. She wasn't even married. "No."

"Does the name Emma mean anything to you?"

A pretty name, but. . . "No."

And when she opened her eyes in her bedroom in her spinster studio apartment, the alarm clock shrieking at her to get up and get going for another day at school, Mary Margaret Blanchard reminded herself not to eat turkey sandwiches before going to sleep. Reminded herself that whatever weird dream that had been, it was already done, over with. Thank God.

And when he opened his eyes in the master bedroom of the old Victorian, David Nolan rolled over to see his wife Kathryn sleeping soundly beside him, like always. Wondered why he'd had that dream of another wife, another child. Strange. Too much TV. Or something.

Their faces were still in his head, but fading.

It had been awfully real, but it was just a dream. It was over now.

Just a dream. He'd been sleeping. That was all.

Wake up, David.

Wake up.

Killian Jones arrived on what should be, by his extremely accurate calculations, the town line of Storybrooke, Maine, at 1:46 AM. But it was only to find a stretch of barren, empty road, no town at all, and the squadron of police officers he'd sent ahead parked in their cruisers, staring at it perplexedly. On seeing him pull up in his black Audi, one of them flagged him, breath steaming in the chill predawn. "Professor Jones? What are you doing here?"

"Had a. . . personal interest in coming along." His heart was starting to pound. "It was here. I swear it was here. This is the bloody place! Keep driving, it was right here! I got in last time, I don't know why it's gone invisible again!"

They all looked at him queerly. "You do know that there's no town by the name of Storybrooke in Maine, don't you?"

"Of course I know that! That's why I'm telling you that it's really here! You have to catch her – both of them, Mayor Mills and Gold. They're murderers the both of them, and Regina was the one responsible for poisoning – just go! God damn you, go!"

The officers exchanged looks, then as one, shook their heads. "Look. We get this has been stressful for you, sir. But we really don't have time for this kind of stuff. There are legitimate things we need to deal with. Not this. . . let me be honest, this bullcrap."

"Is that what you think?!" His temper flared, his fingers screaming to close around his sword – but it was back in Gold's house, just a few short miles away, and now as inaccessible to him as if it was on the moon. "All this time, I've been trying to tell you where to bloody find the bloody woman who poisoned Miss Nolan, and now you think I'm – "

"All right, sir. That's enough. You calm down right now, or you're riding back in the cruiser."

Killian laughed aloud, laughed in their faces. Harsh and furious and sharp as breaking glass. Nonetheless, he whirled on his heel, marched back to his car, and threw himself behind the wheel, almost blind with rage. You foolish fucking bastard. Did you think you'd ever win? Did you think you'd ever get one up on the crocodile? Did you think you'd ever be happy here?

He had. Oh God, he had. Hoped for it. Struggled for it. Like a bloody madman, which was now what he had become. Couldn't go back. Everything ruined. Had to get out before they found him. It had been so real, for a brief and breathtaking moment, but it was only just a nightmare.

Wake up, Killian.

Wake up.