A/N: Hope the delay wasn't too awful for you, here's chapter 20!

A Gambit in Trust

Emma VI

Emma crossed her arms and watched as her prisoner stared at the cell ceiling with an absent, forlorn expression. Greg Mendel had next to no useful information to offer save for the possible names for the two newcomers that Hook had described.

John and Michael Darling.

She half wondered if Wendy was behind everything.

But on everything else he had been useless, offering nothing more than they already knew. The pressure behind Emma's temples grew and she slammed her eyes closed, resisting the urge to vent her frustration on the man in a tantrum that would have made the Evil Queen blush. The knowledge of what Mendel did to Regina made it a next to impossible temptation to resist.

There has to be something we've missed.

"How long's Henry been missing?"

August had been quiet the entire ride back to the sheriff's station, his solemnness a far cry from the cocksure writer he was before he had reverted to his wooden form.

"Too long," she said, and marveled at how her voice scratched at her throat as she spoke.

A wooden hand landed on her shoulder, not quite squeezing. "If there's anywhere I can help…"

Emma found it next to impossible to make out an expression on August's face, but his tone held a note of urgent determination that he had used whenever he had tried to convince her magic was real. She almost smiled at the memory.

"Just keep your eyes open," she said, eying the gouges all over his body where Mendel tried to shoot him and the scorch marks all over his stomach. "And try not to get killed."

He smiled in a way that might have been meant to be wry.

"After we get Henry back home," Emma said, trying to sound sure of the outcome, "we'll work on figuring out how to get you back to normal."

August shook his head. "There's no cure for this," he said. "I broke a promise with the Blue Fairy. No going back from that."

"There's always a way." Emma filed away a thought to ask Regina about it later. "And you used to be the one who embraced the impossible."

August shrugged, noncommittal, and shot a look toward the door. "Someone's coming."

Emma heard the footsteps a moment later, three sets racing down the hall. Her parents burst through the double doors first, out of breath, followed by a pale, sweaty, and grim faced Regina.

Adrenaline spurred her to jittery focus, her heartbeat thundering and part of her mind recoiling at the idea of more bad news. "What's going on?" She slipped around her desk and latched an arm onto Regina's, bracing the other woman's unsteady balance. The former queen accepted the help without issue, worrying Emma even more as she guided the woman to sit on Ruby's desk. "And how are you even up, Regina?"

"Things have taken a turn," Mary Margaret said in Regina's silence. Emma kept a hand on the woman's should as she turned to face her mother. The schoolteacher looked frightened in a way Emma had not seen since before the curse shattered. "There are more strangers in Storybrooke."

"I know," Emma said with a brief embrace of relief. She gestured toward the cell with her free hand. "That bastard told me everything."

"I doubt he did." Regina's voice sounded worse than Emma's. Her eyes were squeezed closed as she gathered herself, blinking open to linger on Emma's hand before meeting her eyes. "Whoever these strangers are, they've stolen the most dangerous artifact in town."

"They got into your vault?"

Regina shook her head, but it was David that spoke, "The mines. They stole a trigger from the mines that could destroy Storybrooke and everyone in it."

Emma's blood turned to ice as she considered the possibility. "Why is that a thing? How is that a thing?"

"The curse," Mary Margaret said, sending an inscrutable look Regina's way.

The former queen grimaced and looked away. "It was built in, a failsafe." She gathered herself and met Emma's eyes once again. "Once it's activated, there's no way to stop it."

An incredulous laugh tried to bubble up Emma's throat, but she crushed it with the last dregs of her will.

"How… how quickly would it happen?"

"A few minutes at most."

Emma closed her eyes and swallowed the urge to scream, cry, and hit something at the same time. We're so fucked, she thought.

"If they have Henry and a way to destroy the town, then there's got to be a reason they haven't acted yet," August said, drawing three surprised looks his way as Emma's parents and Regina realized he had been standing off the corner.

"August?" Mary Margaret asked, her hand covering her mouth and brows furrowing in concern. Emma imagined the wooden man meant to grimace at the attention.

"I think there's a chance they don't know how to activate it."

Regina shook her head at David's idea. "If they knew it existed, they know how to activate it."

"How they knew about it is another question," Mary Margaret said, pushing off her worry for August to level a look toward Regina.

"Are you accusing me of somehow telling them?"

Emma stepped between the two. "That doesn't matter. The only thing I can think of that would stop them is if they need something else. If we can figure out what that it is—"

"We can use that to stop them," Regina finished, her jaw tightening. Emma nodded.

"This asshole," she said, jerking her thumb to point to Mendel, "went after Henry to get to you. So what would his bosses be—"

Her phone's ringtone cut her off and Emma scrambled to answer it without bothering to check the call ID, her heart skipping a beat hoping that it might somehow be Henry.

"Hello!?"

The beat it took for an answer to come lasted an eternity and Emma's brief hope was dashed as it was Ruby that spoke rather than Henry.

"Emma!" The werewolf was out of breath and the line seemed garbled with static. "The Dark One's picked a fight with the dwarves and he's done something—" Ruby let out a small yell and a string of curses. "Get over here!" she yelled, and the line went dead.

"Can it all just fucking stop for a day?" Emma pinched the bridge of her nose, desperately holding onto the fraying edge of her calm.

"Emma…"

She took a breath, did her best to push her emotions off, and snapped to a focus.

"David, Mary Margaret. Find Belle and get her to track down Gold." They looked as if they wanted to object, but Emma cut them off with an emphatic, "Go!"

David nodded, pressed his phone to his ear, and headed down the hall with Mary Margaret on his heels, casting a worried look over her shoulder.

"They need a portal," Regina said, removing Emma's hand from her shoulder in a gentle grip and standing, somehow steady. "So they made a deal with the Dark One."

Emma wondered how Regina managed a smile that radiated nothing but anger.

"The beans shouldn't have even been ready." Emma shook her head and addressed August. "I need you to get with your father, Archie, and the fairies. Anyone whose word will get people to listen."

August closed his eyes and looked away before nodding. "Prepping for an evac, right?"

"Yeah, if they use the trigger…"

"Better amnesiac than dead," Regina finished as Emma trailed off.

"Right. No time to waste then," August said, looking between Emma and Regina with his impossible-to-read expression. He gave a halfhearted wave, lumbered off, and Emma frowned after him, sparing a silent wish for his reunion with his father to go well.

"He's right Emma, we need to move."

Regina made to walk by her, but Emma caught her by the arm and stared her down.

"You good?" She asked, knowing how inadequate the question was. Regina had been tortured for nearly a full day and Emma could not imagine how she was back on her feet with so little time spent recovering.

For the briefest of moments, Regina's shoulders sagged and her eyes closed. "No," she said, but when she opened her eyes to meet Emma's stare, they had hardened with a fathomless determination. "But we need to go anyway."

"Okay." Emma breathed out a sigh, squeezed the woman's arm, and tried to put her lessons to good use. "Brace yourself."

Emma waved her other arm around them, focusing her mind to a clear focus. Smoke the color of pale daisies whirled around them and Emma's stomach roiled as if she had just gone down a rollercoaster's first drop.

The feeling passed a moment later as the smoke cleared, dropping them in the aftermath of chaos.

The beanfield had been torn asunder, chunks of earth ripped out of the ground as if clawed by a giant beast. Six of the dwarves, Ruby, and Neal lay strewn about, hopefully unconscious, but Emma's heart sank further at the blackened remains of the young, magical beanstalk fallen on its side, gangly roots exposed to the air.

Anton knelt beside the dead plant, its blackened remains coming up to his chest, and he stared at it with a look of pure anguish as tears streamed from his eyes.

"Check on the others," Emma said, already running toward the giant. He glanced up at her approach, features twisting in a rage that stopped Emma short, her hand coming to rest on her gun.

"Humans!" he shouted, skin going splotchy in his anger. "Every time it's the same. Look what you've done! LOOK!" His eyes trailed back onto the stalk and his mood swung back to despair as fresh sobs shook his shoulders.

"Anton, I am sorry," she said, approaching with cautious steps and trying to sound as genuine as she was able. "I don't know if we can fix this, but I need to know what happened. Was this Gold? The Dark One?"

He nodded, resting a reverent hand on the deadened plant. "He didn't say a word, just blasted us all away like we were less than nothing," he spat the word as a curse. "I don't know why I wasn't knocked out, but I saw it all.

"He did something to the beanstalk, and, for just a second, it was beautiful." His watery eyes turned to stare her down. "It flowered," he said with a strained smile. "I was never sure it would, but it did, and I thought he was performing a miracle. But…"

A fresh cry of sadness ripped from the giant's throat and he hunched over the dead plant. Emma wished she had the words to ease the man's burdens, but forced herself to turn away from the sight as she came up empty.

Awful as it was, she had more important things to worry about.

Regina stood across one of the divots in the ground, shoulder to shoulder with a revived Ruby as both glared down Neal.

The dwarves, she noted as she jogged toward the trio, were still knocked out.

"—didn't even have a chance to try and convince him." Neal's words slurred and Emma doubted the red in his cheeks was due to the cold. "Couldn't stop him."

She grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around in one smooth motion, pinning him with her sternest look.

"Explain what the hell just happened."

Neal couldn't meet her eyes as he spoke. "Tamara called." He flexed his hands in and out of fists. "Wanted to make a deal with the Dark One." He let out a laugh tinged with anger. "If he could get her a way out of this realm, she'd give Henry back."

Emma's heart skipped a beat. It was a trade she would make a thousand times over, but the why of it still bothered her. What the hell were these people's motivations?

"And you decided to tell Gold before anyone else?" Ruby asked in disbelief.

"He heard the call and he didn't hesitate," Neal said, shaking his head. "Said he would fix everything. And, well…" He gestured to the destruction around them.

"Where was the exchange going to happen?" Regina asked, her face and tone inscrutable.

"The docks. My father was supposed to go alone."

"Definitely not a trap," Emma noted dryly.

"There's a chance it could work out." Ruby looked as if she doubted her own words more than Emma did.

"Nothing ever does when the Dark One is involved."

"Then let's get after them."

Emma's heart warmed to the werewolf as Ruby's eyes glinted in determination despite the clear exhaustion weighing on her shoulders. The woman had been bearing too much of the police work on her own the past few days, and Emma pushed away the guilt that she was going to ask for more.

"No Rubes, you need to meet with August and help get people ready for an evacuation. If this goes belly up, I need to know you guys are getting everyone you can safe."

Emma could see the questions burn in her deputy's eyes, but the brunette only gave a sharp, reluctant nod before running off to rouse the dwarves.

"Emma, I—"

"Help her, Neal," Emma said, holding up a hand and not looking toward the man. Anger and frustration roiled in her gut and she feared she wouldn't be able to hold it back if she gave him the time of day. "If they have to cross the line, somebody who knows the situation is going to have to be with them."

"Emma—"

She grabbed Regina's arm and let her magic flow.

The second transportation spell went as smooth as the first, but Emma was able to mentally prepare herself for the jarring sensation and gained her new bearings in an instant.

The Jolly Roger rocked to the beat of the harbor's choppy current, water spitting up in the air on its sides in a spray of salt and grey. Beside her, Regina sagged into her shoulder, eyes squeezed shut and her pallor green.

Emma braced the woman's weight with a panicked motion, fresh worry over how close to empty Regina was running blooming at the fore of her mind.

"Regina—"

"Warning next time, Swan."

The former queen took the better part of a minute to regain her feet and Emma scanned the wharf, locking onto a trio at the center with a hitch of her breath.

Between a bespectacled man in a pristine suite and a haggard and disheveled Tamara stood Henry with his hands and feet bound, a blindfold over his eyes, and duct tape covering his mouth

The amount of rage and relief Emma felt all at once staggered her and drew a sound halfway between a sigh and a growl from her throat.

There would be no way to approach on foot without being seen, so Emma reached out with both hands, her magic answering her call with an instinctive need to see Henry safe, but Regina yanked her arms away and flinched from Emma's resulting glare.

"There must be a reason Rumple hasn't just used his powers to end this," Regina said, turning back to look at the scene before them and Emma saw the same swirl of emotions she was feeling reflected in the other woman's eyes..

Emma blinked and followed her gaze, only then realizing Rumplestiltskin stood across from the strangers, holding up his hand so that the sun glinted off what he held. He was speaking, but Emma did not hear him until the wind changed, carrying his voice with it.

Regina shot Emma strange look, but said nothing as they listened in, creeping closer.

"—take you anywhere in all the realms, Dearie. Now tell me, how do you see this playing out?"

"You'll give my associate the bean, and we leave the kid behind when we take our leave." The man spoke in a calm tone, standing with his shoulders back and straight and his head held high. He held the confidence of a man who wanted to be exactly where he was and Emma's instincts raised their hackles.

Something wasn't right.

Gold seemed to share her disbelief as he laughed quietly.

"I've made many deals in my time," he said. "Centuries' worth of fools looking to cheat the Dark One. Do not suffer under the delusion you are any better than they."

The words carried a weight that sent a chill racing down Emma's spine, but the stranger just shrugged, unrumpled.

"If you want your grandson whole, you have little choice here. Tamara."

The woman startled, her dark cheeks flushing with surprise before she nodded. She made her way toward Gold with the cautious steps of an animal sneaking by a predator, but the shopkeeper eyed her as if she were not worth the effort it took to pay her any attention.

Gold handed over the bean without fanfare, but Tamara had not taken one step back toward her accomplice before her relieved smile was wiped off her lips when her limbs snapped to her sides, freezing her in place. She fell back, eyes wide in panic, and landed in the crook of Gold's left arm, his right hand coming up to her throat, glowing with crimson magic.

The exchange took less than a handful of seconds and Emma blinked, nonplussed.

"Now release my grandson if you please."

"Well that was just downright expected," the stranger said in a drawl, making a show of checking his watch. "Shouldn't be long before your cavalry arrives, yes?" The man asked, making air quotes around the word "cavalry" with a chuckle before leveling his bored gaze onto Gold. "Your mistake was thinking that I care whether she lives or dies."

An ugly sneer twisted Gold's features. "Let her blood be on your hands then." The fingers over Tamara's throat splayed open, the red energy glowing brighter between them. Emma braced herself for the display of gore, but a new voice stopped Gold cold and set the stranger to laughing.

"Rumple!" Belle burst from an alley behind Gold, her eyes raising from her phone, wide and worried. Emma's parents were two steps behind the librarian, David with his gun trained on Henry's abductor with one hand and his sword drawn with the other and Mary Margaret's bow knocked with an arrow keeping steady aim at the man as well.

Emma's heart soared as the odds turned more in their favor.

The energy gathered in Gold's hand dissipated and he let Tamara drop to the ground, still petrified.

"The Dark One's muzzle," the stranger said with a mock bow in lieu of a greeting.

"You alright Henry?" Mary Margaret asked without taking her eyes off her enemy. Henry shouted a muffled affirmative, but the stranger's grin just grew wider.

"You're outnumbered and outgunned," David said, squaring his shoulders as he stepped up beside Gold. "Here's where you give up."

"I count six on three," the man said and Emma's heart skipped a beat in surprise even as Regina sucked in a sharp gasp.

How long had he known they were there?

"And, well, we have the eyes in the sky."

The air rent with a thunderclap sounding in defiance of the sunny day, and less than a breath later Mary Margaret, David, Belle, and Tamara were all covered with a spray of crimson as Gold crumpled to the ground, mostly headless.

Bile burned the back of Emma's throat, and she was absolutely certain the soul crushingly horrified scream from Belle would haunt her for the rest of her days.

"Dark One neutralized Michael, get your ass down here! Tamara, the bean!" The stranger barked out the orders and grasped at the ropes binding Henry in place.

Emma and her parents through caution to the wind at the same time as both Mary Margaret and David fired their weapons on the stranger and Emma reached invisible hands to steal her son back.

Both bullets and arrow struck upon an unseen shield that blinked into a bright translucent green on contact that Emma barely registered before her magic was rebounded with such a force that struck her across the chest with a strength that rivaled Anton's, sending her up into the air and overboard, Regina's shocked cry ringing in her ears.

The water hit her like a thousand stinging needles to the back, stealing her breath and leaving Emma stunned until a wave crashed her into the barnacle covered hull of the Jolly Roger.

She latched onto the sodden wood and forced her bearings back to center as quickly as she could. "Jesus fuck," she muttered as her head cleared from the pain. "Still fucking bullshit."

She said as she used her own magic to port her back onto the dock in a whirl of yellow-white smoke, assessing the situation in a split second.

Belle and Tamara grappled near Gold's body, fighting over – she assumed – the bean, while David and Mary Margaret kept a steady stream of fire on the stranger, worrying her with how close he was to Henry.

But the man just laughed as every attack bounced off his light green bubble, and Emma now spotted a ring of whirling energy rotating around him and Henry, low to the ground and nearly invisible, reminding her of the spell that trapped Anton those weeks before.

She gathered energy to her palms, seawater steaming off her as the power flowed through her, and aimed to destroy the shield without harming Henry.

Before she could, Regina appeared behind the duo in her violet cloud, immediately dropping to one knee but still managing to get a hand on Henry and Emma's heart soared in a roaring thunder of triumph before it was ripped away from her.

"Not quite your majesty!" A whip of green, sparkling energy slithered from the man's hip with the speed of a striking snake, wrapping around Regina's neck. Emma saw Regina's eyes widen in shock for the brief moment before she was ripped from the ground and sent across the wharf like a ragdoll. She landed in a heap and did not move.

Emma screamed, rending the ground with her magic and sending a fissure rocketing toward the bastard's feet. If she could break the shield…

But he met her attack with a laugh, the strange green energy lashing out from his hip in a dance matching his hand motions, meeting her spell meters away from his person and she felt as the energy was leeched from it, sending her to his knees even as the man spun on his heels and sent the combined power in a shockwave that knocked the approaching David and Mary Margaret into the ground with an audible thunk.

Only when they started to move did Emma realize her breath had hitched in pure terror.

She looked back to the stranger, hatred and fury burning in her, but he just grinned at her even as he ripped Henry's blindfold off. Her son blinked, took in the carnage around him, and let out a muffled yell with tears blooming at the corner of his eyes.

Emma was on her feet and charging a moment later, magic held out in front of her in a shield of her own, but the man never lost his smile as he braced an arm across his chest, the power he wielded rising to meet his call.

She lowered her shoulder and braced for impact as magic met magic in a brilliant flash of yellow and green light. Emma's momentum was stopped dead as she pushed all her weight against the invisible barrier separating them.

"Power is useless without preparation, oh mighty Savior." The man flashed a perfect white grin and reared back his fist.

She had less than a moment of warning before her spell was broken and the force took her in the gut, sending her through the air in a jarring loss of direction that she could not overcome until she landed in a heap next to her parents and Regina.

Sheer willpower had her climbing to her feet a moment later even as her parents and Regina still struggled to regain theirs.

"Storybrooke's mightiest heroes!" The man mocked, holding onto a struggling Henry by the scruff of his neck. "Look how they struggle, Henry. Look how they use every bit of determination and willpower they have to save the day. Look, and remember how they failed."

"Did we!?"

Belle's accent had never sounded so sweet to Emma's ears as all eyes snapped in the woman's direction.

The librarian had somehow gotten ahold of David's sword and held the weapon to Tamara's back with one hand and hoisted the tiny jar containing the bean in the other. She sported a bloody nose, black eye, and bruises lining half her face, but she grinned, flashing bloodstained teeth.

Tamara was worse off as she stood ramrod straight with the blade pressed at the base of her spine, her nose crooked and pouring blood beneath wide, terrified eyes.

Emma gaped at the sight.

"Yes."

Emma did not register the kidnapper's answer before another gun sounded its banging fury and both bean and sword dropped from Belle's hands as she stared at a fresh hole blooming red in her chest. She made no sound as she sank to the ground, mouth forming a silent "oh," even as Tamara screamed in pain, grasping her shoulder and whirling on the new man running across the length of the wharf, a sniper rifle hanging across his back and a handgun held in a lazy grip.

"You fucking shot me!" she shouted through gritted teeth.

The newcomer laughed, uncaring, and scooped up the fallen bean as Emma tried to force her mind around shock and move.

"Complain later; we have what we need! You alright John?"

It was Neal that spurred them to action as he sprinted in from the same direction the shooter came from – red in the face and breaths heaving as sweat stained his shirt - and bodily tackled the newcomer around the waste, sending both the bean and his gun flying through the air.

Everyone followed the arc of the bean even as Neal and the man brawled on the ground, and when it landed with the sharp crack of shattered glass, Emma felt the power in the air shift and her breath was stolen from her once more when reality ripped open with a rumble of foreboding power.

It started small, green energy whirling around the tiny thing, but it bloomed in a blink to a vortex swirling along the ground. Lightning crackled within it and the wind kicked up around the magical whirlpool, promising the same danger of an approaching thunderstorm.

The thing's existence struck some part of Emma's instincts as purely wrong.

The moment passed, and everyone moved at once. Mary Margaret ran toward the fallen Belle while David raced at the grappling Neal and gunslinger. Tamara limped toward the man holding Henry, who was cursing as he fiddled with something on his belt with a panicked hand as the waters in the harbor grew choppier with every passing second.

Emma blinked, a terrible idea sparking in her mind, and did not think before reaching out with her magic.

"Brace yourself kid!" She yelled, and pulled on the ocean waters with all her might. She felt the energy bleeding out of her at an alarming pace but grit her teeth and forced the magic to just work.

"We've done this dance already, Savior!" The kidnapper brought up his shield once more, but never looked to see the torrent of water that took him from behind and flooded half the pier.

Emma fell to one knee as her spell broke, feeling as if she had just run across Storybrooke and back at full speed. She forced her wavering attention to focus and spotted Henry scuttling along the soaked ground in their direction. Emma burst into motion, sprinting to her son with the half formed thought of teleporting him to Regina's vault when a fresh whip of energy lashed across her back, sending her sprawling backward.

John Darling advanced on her, raising a fist holding an oversized diamond swirling with black energy.

"Their deaths are on you, Savior," he said with a snarl, rearing back his free hand and moving to strike before an unseen force lifted him off his feet and him sprawling across the wharf.

Directly into the portal whirlpool.

Emma blinked as the man's defiant scream cut off abruptly as soon as he sank into the portal's depths. "Three point shot," she muttered.

She looked to the approaching Regina and flashed her a winning grin, but Regina was not looking toward Emma, but the air above her.

The ground shook with the rumbling promise of danger and Emma followed Regina's gaze to find Darling's oversized gem still hovering in the air where the man had held it, the black energy poking out of it in tendrils that waved around like growing tentacles.

The earthquake grew worse by the second and an animal instinct to run nearly overcame Emma's conscious thought.

"Get Henry and get out of here!" Regina shouted, approaching the gem without hesitation and raised shaking hands to either side of the diamond, coils of purple energy arcing from her fingertips into the gem.

The earthquake stopped in the same breath that Regina's pallor grew alarmingly pale and sweat began to pour down her face as every muscle in her body began to tremble.

"Emma! GO!"

Just speaking seemed to drain Regina of precious energy, but Emma found herself rooted to the spot, the jittery panic of the unknown freezing her in place.

"You can't stop it, can you?"

Regina smiled, sad and strained. "This was all my fault," she said with a shaky certainty. "I can give you time, Emma. Get our son, get your family, and get out of Storybrooke." When Emma didn't move, desperation bled into her voice. "Please, Emma. Let me just do this much good. Just once!"

Emma looked over her shoulder toward their son, finding Henry's eyes wide with fear as he stared at his mother beneath furrowed brows. His eyes flicked to meet Emma's for the briefest moment and saw reflected in his eyes the same need that filled Emma's belly.

She turned back and moved her stance to mirror Regina's in a heartbeat.

"What are you doing?!" Regina shouted, eyes wide. "The trigger can't be stopped, only slowed down!"

"Yeah, well, I kind of stopped believing in "can't" when the kid showed up at my door."

Her magic latched onto the trigger, yellow energy swirling together with purple and circling the black, and Emma felt everything.

If asked how to articulate it, Emma would not know how to put it to words, but she was simply aware of the curse at Storybrooke's base. Bitter anger, loneliness, hatred, depression, and hints of desperate hope twisted throughout the magic running beneath the town, the lifeblood to Storybrooke's beating heart.

The trigger took every one of the emotions and intensified it, trying to pump the increased energy into the curse, and Emma could picture how quickly the delicate balance would be disrupted and Storybrooke would go up in a boom big enough that Emma had trouble fathoming it.

Everything would be gone.

She gasped, trailed her eyes away from the trigger to meet Regina's, and was stunned as she was just as aware of Regina in that moment as she was of the curse. Fear, annoyance, hurt, exhaustion, determination, hope, affection, and sheer stubbornness roiled off the former queen in a swirl of feeling that Emma wished she had the time to unravel.

The trigger pulsed, drawing their eyes back to the gem and Emma grimaced as she focused all of her will to containing the energy within. Her arms began to shake and she could feel the absolute tiredness racing in from the back of her mind as the magic within the gem fought and fought against them with everything it had.

Had she tried alone, Emma's instincts told her she would have failed, but her and Regina's magic worked in perfect sync, corralling the negative energy and compressing it more and more until it blinked out of life.

They had a moment to realize their success before the backlash from the abrupt lack of energy imploded, dragging them both off their feet, sprawling forward on the ground.

The gem succumbed to gravity, clear as crystal, and shattered upon impact with the asphalt, blowing away as nothing more than dust.

"That should not have been possible," Regina said, breathless, turning her head to study Emma as if she didn't make any sense. "It was designed to be impossible. Stronger than the curse itself."

Emma laughed, strained and tired and not entirely sure of everything she was feeling in that moment, but giddy nonetheless. "It's probably a bad thing that I'm getting used to impossible things being, well, not." She spared Regina a wry smile before doing her best to look over to where Henry had lain moments before.

He was gone and the fear she had hoped to never feel again bloomed anew when Neal shouted Henry's name in panic.

She forced herself to roll over to find Neal being bodily held back by Michael Darling, both blooded and bruised, as Tamara – blood streaming down her right arm – held Henry over her left shoulder and stumbled toward the closing portal with a victorious smirk on her dark features.

Emma forced her focus on reaching to steal Henry from the woman's grip, but no energy answered her call and she could hardly lift her arm off the ground.

Her heart turned to ice as she realized she had nothing left.

No, no, no. Please! Frustrated tears pricked the back of her eyes and Emma could do little to stop them.

"If you ever loved me, you won't do this!" Neal shouted, elbowing Darling in the face and breaking free into a sprint with his opponent hot on his heels. "Tamara, please!"

The woman did not hesitate and leapt into the portal.

The fear in Henry's eyes as he stared back at them before he disappeared within the green torrent crushed Emma's soul.

Neal roared his defiance, diving in after them, followed swiftly by Michael Darling, who barely made into the vortex before it shrank out of existence, leaving a crater in its wake.

Emma's head sank back against the ground with a thud. She wanted to scream, but did not have enough energy left for even that.

A burst of crimson smoke tinged with black lightning drew her eyes to the corner of the pier where Gold had fallen to find the man standing, head restored with pink, raw skin, and a snarl locked on his features.

How in the fuck?

Good took one look around before his expression fell to fear.

"Belle!"

He sprinted over to Mary Margaret where she sat covered in blood, one hand keeping pressure on Belle's chest and the other helping David stem the flow of blood from a wound on his leg.

Emma blinked as another wave of fear joined the assault on her emotions. When did he get hurt?

Gold fell to his knees by Belle, swatted Mary Margaret's hand away, and dipped his hand into Belle's chest as if he was reaching for her heart. He pulled it back after a moment, empty, and his magic glowed from his hand to Belle's chest and Gold muttered to himself.

Beside Emma, Regina somehow managed to struggle to her feet and stalked toward the group, making it there just as Belle sat up with a gasp, her skin ghostly pale as her chest heaved in a moment of panicked awareness before her eyes flickered closed and she fell back, unconscious. Rumplestiltskin grinned, stood, and did not see Regina's punch before it struck him across the chin.

Both went sprawling to the ground.

"He's gone, Rumple," Regina said in a snarl even as Gold sprang up to his feet with eyes ablaze, promising retribution. "And that's on you."

The Dark One blinked, surveyed the area again, and set his mouth in a grim line.

He waved one hand in Emma's direction and she felt as if someone injected coffee straight into her veins as energy flowed back through her.

"What happened after I was… incapacitated?" He asked in a no nonsense tone, addressing Mary Margaret even as he moved to fix David's leg.

Emma grunted and hoisted herself to her feet, feeling no more generous toward the man than Regina.

"You've fucked us, Gold." She strode over to the group, a snarl of her own twisting her lips. "They took him through the portal and now we can't follow."

Gold did not acknowledge her, and Emma waited for him to finish stitching up her father before going full Vader on him with her gifted energy.

An invisible hand hoisted the Dark One from the ground by the throat, earning a shocked cry from both her parents as they looked to her with wide, fearful eyes.

"He's alone, Gold! With monsters that were willing to do this," she gestured to the destruction around them, "to get him across realms. And we still don't know why. So why exactly should I…"

Emma trailed off as she was struck by a sense of vertigo. She fell to one knee, and Gold fell from her invisible grasp, spluttering.

"Neal followed after him, Emma." David spoke as if she had not seen it herself, weary. "And he managed to save my life," he continued, waving at the freshly healed leg. "He'll keep Henry safe."

Emma's bluster wavered, but she did not voice her doubts.

"And do not think me a fool, Swan." Gold spoke in a raspy voice after getting his breathing under control. Emma was pleased to see his new skin marred by an angry bruise. "I am never at a disadvantage."

He reached into a pocket and pulled out four more tiny jars, a magic bean glinting within each one.

Emma let out a breath and fell back onto her ass, a desperate hope in her heart.

He bent over, placed two of the jars in the pockets of Belle's jacket, took a moment to stroke her cheek, and stood back to his full height.

"We have little time to waste, then." He reared back a hand and tossed one of the jars into the crater. Emma felt the same sense of wrongness as a new portal bloomed within the hole. "If you wish to follow, keep your thoughts focused on Henry," he said with a pitiful glance to the four of them. "But do not get in my way."

He hopped into the portal, and was gone.

Regina was already back on her feet, offering Emma a hand the blonde gratefully took. They shared a look, then, and Emma could not put to words the unspoken thing that passed between them in that moment, but they both focused ahead in the next as they stumbled toward the portal with Emma's parents following right behind.

For Henry, Emma thought, and, without a plan and barely able to stand, none of them hesitated in jumping into the vortex.

A/N: And there it is, the season finale for A Gambit in Trust's take on season 2. Let me know what you thought, and what you'd hope to see moving forward into the Neverland arc. What I have outlined so far is a "yuuuuuge" contrast to canon, as the ripple effects from this version of events are approaching tidal wave levels, but I'm always interested in getting alternative perspectives.

Plus I love being on the other side of the fandom theories for a change, haha.

Anyway, I'm debating whether to mark this one complete and start the sequel as a fresh story, or just continue within this work. The PoV style is going to shift somewhat, as while most of the main cast is in Neverland, there is still plot to be had in Storybrooke (looking at you Belle, Ruby, Leroy, and co.). I'll be looking to do it more in the style of the Interlude chapters, where we'll see multiple folk's point of views in chapter, but with the caveat that we'll only focus on one setting at a time.

We'll see, still lots of planning to do.

Hope you all enjoyed it so far, and with any luck I'll see about getting the sequel going soon!