So I have decided to update again today. Mainly because I am excited by what is happening so I wanted to get the next bit written and since I have gotten three reviews since I posted the last chapter I figured there was interest. I would still love to get more reviews. What I said in the last chapter still holds true. I just want to know what you think, good or bad.
Also I changed things and in order to get to NYC they (Gold, Emma and Henry) are driving not flying, because by driving to Boston and then flying to NYC from Maine you save a little less than two hours. And that is not including the time it takes waiting around in an airport/security etc. And also doesn't include speeding and all that good stuff. So I think they should have just driven to New York so that is the new plan in case you are confused by the next chapter.
Enjoy
The trio passed a sign green sign on the side of the road that proudly read, Welcome to Massachusetts
"Glad to be home?" Gold asked turning and looking at Emma
"To be honest, I'm not sure where home is anymore" Emma replied, Henry smiled in the back seat at this comment.
Gold was about to open his mouth and reply with some sort of clever comeback but instead found his head filled with another voice. Rumplestiltskin I summon thee. He shook his head but the voice came again, Rumplestiltskin I summon thee. And with the voice came a sense like he was being pulled back in the direction that they had come from.
"Gold are you alright?" Emma said as she continued to drive.
"I'm being summoned." He responded.
"You're being what?"
"Summoned, I am the dark one, Rumplestiltskin, it is what people do, they summon me."
"But I thought we had left Storybrooke, that there wasn't any magic."
"It isn't as strong, almost nonexistent. But just like there is a faint pull of gravity in the middle of outer space, there is still magic in me and out here, faint and unusable, but here."
Emma shook her head, she never understood Physics, and magic was just something that she had recently accepted to be a reality so she just decided to go with whatever Rumplestiltskin was saying. "Well can you tell where it is coming from?" she asked.
"Storybrooke." Gold responded.
"Well I could have figured that much out on my own thank you very much, I meant where in Storybrooke, is there a way to tell who is summoning you?"
"Oh yes, I know who it is" Gold responded. Emma just glanced over at him, she had long ago gotten sick of his games, the way he forced her to ask questions when he knew just exactly what she wanted to know. And the way that he would provide commentary when she would just rather him keep his mouth shut. After a moment, sensing that he was not going to win this round Gold finished his thought.
"It is Cora, she is at a 108 Mifflin street."
"Cora is back?" Emma asked
"But that's my house" Henry responded from the back, "what do you think it means?"
"I don't know kid, but Gold you can't just go if Cora calls, aren't you on a mission or something."
"Oh I wasn't planning on responding to her call." Gold responded.
"But what if it has to do with my Mom, what if something happened, we can't just abandon her."
"Henry we have no idea why Cora would be calling." Emma tried to reassure Henry. "Gold did you know Cora was back."
"Yes, she is how I know where to go." He responded.
"So she spoke to you, before we left?" Emma questioned.
"Yes" Gold replied, "and it seemed like our dealings were quite finished, but now she is calling, when I have better things to do."
"It could be because my mom is in trouble, please let's go and check. Then we can go back to find your son" Henry pleaded.
"Henry we're three hours away at least." Emma tried to reason with him.
"Then we better turn around now." Henry replied. Before adding in, "for me"
Emma looked at Gold, Henry had certainly sold her, and if she wasn't with him he knew the trip couldn't be successful.
"Fine but then we leave again. We will cross the town line, I will magic myself to Cora, see everything is fine and then we can turn back around, do we have a deal?" Gold asked.
Henry nodded and Emma pulled off and the next exit and made a U-turn.
Regina had started to have small fits in which she would thrash around an hour after Cora had summoned Gold. Her body was covered in a layer of sweat and her breath sounded labored. Every once and a while she would suck in air as if she only had the one chance to fill her lungs for the rest of her life. She had become lucid a couple of times, and explained something about piercing eyes, the library and Danielle. Cora was not sure what to make of it, other than she feared she would lose her daughter after everything that she had done to get her back. She considered bringing her to get help elsewhere, but the only people she knew of where the Charmings and she was quite certain they would not be in the helpful mood. She knew nothing of this land or what to do so she just sat by and watched as her daughter unfurl in front of her.
Regina felt like she was floating and being attacked all at the same time. It was if she had no control over her body, the pain that had started in her eyes had grown and become all encompassing. Her head felt as if it were pulsing, her middle as if it was being squeezed, and everything as if it was being consumed by flames. Occasionally the world that was spinning around her would turn to black and she found some solace in her mind. But the eyes that she had found in the library haunted her dreams. She would be walking through a castle and see the eyes staring at her from a baby wrapped and cradled in a crib, or from a toddler who slowly waddled or to her, from in a young girl riding a horse. But every time the eyes would find her and wake her up to the world of pain. Her mother was there. She held a cool cloth to her head and asked her what was going on, what had caused it. But Regina just wished she would have the answers herself.
Mr. Gold arrived in a puff of smoke. "You better have a good reason for calling me here dearie, because I have my own business to attend to." He took in the scene around him, his attention focusing on Regina, "what is wrong with her?"
"That is what I was hoping you could tell me Rumple, it is why I brought you here." Cora replied.
"You know people call me Mr. Gold here" he replied, as he stepped closer.
"I think Rumple suits you" Cora replied, "so do you know what is wrong with her?"
As Cora asked this Regina started to thrash about again, Gold raised his hand and immobilized her in strands of green magic.
"Is that helping her?" Cora asked looking over at Regina.
"Well it most likely isn't hurting her, all that movement was getting distracting, now did she say anything."
"When I first saw her, before she got this bad she said something about 'she is real' and now whenever I speak to her she says things about a girl and eyes, seeing someone in the library. She mentioned the name Danielle a couple of times." Cora replied.
"Her daughter?" Gold asked.
"Yes" Cora replied.
"The one that she took the potion to forget?" Gold asked again.
"Yes" Cora replied, tiring of all his questions.
"Did she drink the whole potion or just some of it?"
"What?"
"The potion to make her forget, did she drink all of it, every last drop?"
"How am I supposed to know, she had sent me through a looking glass by then, you are the one who gave it to her, why?"
"Because if she didn't drink it all, if she left just a drop there could be some…consequences, the potion I gave her was one of my earlier versions, before I had worked out the kinks."
"The kinks?" Cora asked.
"The potion is meant to find and kill, destroy all memories of a particular person. But in the earlier version there was a tipping point based on how much potion was drunk. If most of it was drunk the initial outcome would be the same, it would find the memories and mask them but it would not kill them. If she had drank the proper amount the memories would have been purged, deleted, and with it the potion. But my guess is she didn't drink it all. And the potion, the magic, is in her. And now thoughts of Danielle are fighting to be remembered. You mentioned her, now she is seeing her, mother's love or whatever you want to call it is fighting back. But I don't make my potions weak, I take pride in my work for a reason. It senses that its powers are in danger and it is fighting right back. It senses her questioning and it is trying to silence it."
"Even if it means killing her?" Cora asked gesturing to her daughter.
"Either way its work will be done." Mr. Gold replied.
"Well don't you have an antidote some way to undo it?"
"No, besides it has been in her system too long, it is almost become part of her now."
"Then give her more of the potion, so that she has the proper amount or whatever?"
"That wouldn't work either. Even if I did have a compatible version of the potion, which I don't, the battle going on within Regina has already begun, if you were to introduce more troops, well I don't think you would get the outcome you were looking for." Gold replied again.
"Then what do we do?" Cora asked, hating to sound so defeated and out of control.
"She has to remember, completely without any question." Gold replied.
"Then I will get the girl Danielle and bring her here." Cora said.
"That won't work, she needs to be convinced, have memories brought up gently by people she does believe in her relationship to." Gold asked.
"Like me, and you." Cora asked.
"Yes like us, and like Snow, it is unlikely that this will be successful without her help."
"She won't help, not if I asked, I'm fairly certain they are hunting for me right now." Cora said.
"Then I will ask, I can be quite persuasive when I need to be." Gold responded.
"And what is your price for this?"
"Whatever is going on in Regina may give me the answer to how to cure Belle, I require some things from her during the process."
"What sort of things?" Cora asked suspiciously.
"Nothing that she can't do without; hair, tears, and a few drops of blood. Now do we have a deal?" Gold asked extending his hand.
Cora looked over at Regina who was starting to struggle against Gold's magical restraints, a look of pain painted across her face.
"Yes we have a deal" Cora replied and she met Gold's hand and shook it.
So what did you think? Do you like it? Hate it? Have any questions? Looking forward to a continuation?
