Chapter Six—"Power Over Distance"

"Miss Swan, it's so good to see you ag—"

Emma hit him, of course. Killian had more or less figured that he'd have that coming, and had even tried to brace himself for the blow. But he'd forgotten what a mean right hook Emma Swan possessed, and the punch sent him reeling. His back smacked against the wall across from her apartment's door before he could catch himself, too. Hard.

"Ow," he complained, rubbing his jaw. But he straightened immediately; a man did have his pride, after all. "May I come in?"

"You bastard," Emma swore. "You used my son to trick me into drinking your memory juice? I ought to have you arrested!"

Well, that wasn't exactly an auspicious beginning. Killian cringed. "In fairness to me, I somehow doubt that a newly skeptical Emma Swan would believe my tale—evidenced by the way you greeted me two weeks ago—and a wise man uses the tool most suited to the task—"

"Oh, so now my son is a tool!" Emma thundered. Henry snickered.

"Should we invite him in before the neighbors start talking, Mom?" the wise young man asked.

"Oh. Right." Some of Emma's obvious anger deflated, and she gestured Killian in. Then she snapped: "I'm still angry at you, though."

He grinned. "You usually are, love."

"Didn't you hear me?" she snapped, planting a hand in the center of his chest and shoving him backwards as she closed the door. "I said 'angry.' Not 'feeling romantically inclined' towards marauding pirates. Angry."

"Oh, come now. I only kissed you because I hoped it would restore your memories," Killian tried to argue reasonably. Of course, Emma's eyebrows went up.

"Only?" she challenged him.

"Well, I did want to kiss you. Can you blame me?" Seeing his chance, Killian swept in, figuring that the worst another try for a kiss could bring him was a knee to the groin, and he'd suffered far worse in the name of love. It was worth a try.

Thankfully, Emma only shoved him back again, dodging past him and into the living room. "Angry, remember?"

"Pity."

"Can we get to the Enchanted Forest part of this conversation?" Henry interjected, clearly uncomfortable with the way Killian was trying to romance his mother. The boy did have a point, Killian figured, so he took a deep breath and vowed to try again later. Perhaps once he had Henry near Regina. That would distract the lad well enough to give him a chance to properly woo Emma.

"That's probably a really good idea, kid," Emma replied, shooting Killian another glare. But he could see that she wasn't really angry; she was just frustrated. "Last time you said something about my family being in danger. Was that just you being all dramatic?"

"Alas, no." Killian sighed. "I'm afraid that I'm going to be the bearer of bad news. Again."

"What happened?" Henry asked before he could go on. "I thought that with the curse broken, everyone going home would mean things went back to the way they were, and…"

"So we hoped," he cut the lad of, sitting down on the couch. "Unfortunately, we were wrong. We returned to a conquered land. A Witch of great power came from another realm, and in the time between when you and your mother were back in the Enchanted Forest and our return, she used creatures of unimaginable evil to conquer every kingdom. The few people who remained behind—and there were more than we thought—have been forced to become her slaves. Your parents, Miss Swan, have of course been leading the fight against her. But it hasn't been easy."

Emma eyed him uneasily. "What aren't you saying?"

"We fear that it's only going to get worse," Killian grimaced. "There was a seer who tried to help us before the Witch had her killed. She foretold that 'original powers are rising' or some such babbling, and that the 'original darkness will seek to cover the land.' I don't recall the exact wording; they've got it written down at home. But we need you. It's not just your family that's in danger. It's everyone, love."

"That sounds…pleasant," Emma ground out between gritted teeth. Then she gave Hook a sharp look. "Why'd they send you?"

"Aside from my devilishly handsome looks and irresistible charm? I volunteered."

"Yeah, but why you, Hook?" Clearly, Emma wasn't going to let him charm his way out of giving a complete answer, and she pressed onwards. "Why not, you know, one of my parents? I'd be less inclined to punch them."

Killian sighed. "I'm probably not the one to tell you this, Miss Swan"—and wasn't that the understatement of the last year—"but your lady mother is pregnant, and apparently travel by magical portal is inadvisable for women in such a delicate condition. And your father's off leading armies like the prince or king that he is. Baelfire's with him, and we can't exactly spare Regina. She's the only good sorceress we've got, strange though that sounds."

Emma might have heard the rest, but judging from the look on her face, she was still stuck on the first part. And the fact that the shocked look on her face was exactly mirrored by her son's expression only made it more priceless. Killian would have laughed, were the situation not so very serious. That, and he thought Emma might hit him again, and one bruise on his face was enough for today.

"My mother is…pregnant?" Emma managed to demand after a long moment of silence, just as Henry gaped:

"I'm going to have an aunt or uncle that's thirteen years younger than me?"

"Right on both counts, I'm afraid."

I should have let them send Baelfire, Killian thought for the first time. Awkward Charming family conversations were better left to others. Even though he got along with Snow and the Prince these days—most of the time—this conversation was growing more uncomfortable by the moment, and he was quite certain that Baelfire deserved such discomfort more than he did. He had fathered the lad, after all. Or Regina. Regina would have sneered and asked her what else she might have expected, and Emma wouldn't have hit Regina. Or maybe she would have. Killian distinctly remembered having heard something about the two of them coming to fisticuffs back before the first curse was broken. He was terribly sorry he'd missed that sight; it had probably been completely alluring.

"Okay. Um. Wow," Emma said after a few more minutes in silence. "So. I'm the savior, right? So that's why you need me."

"Well, I do imagine that will help," he answered with a shrug. "Although honestly, no one is quite sure if the whole 'savior' business holds over with the curse broken. Regina says it probably won't, but her motives might be a tad suspect."

"Then why come all this way to get us?" Henry demanded.

Killian took a deep breath, and braced himself to be punched again. "Because there are indications that the Witch wants you both. Or possibly just Henry. And we can't let that happen."

At least Emma didn't hit him, though she did wind up swearing to tear the Wicked Witch of the West to shreds if she dared touch one hair on Henry's head. (For the record, the lad did start looking rather unabashedly excited at the thought of combat in the Enchanted Forest, although Killian was careful not to draw Emma's notice to that fact. She was something like a rapid mother bear where protecting her offspring was concerned, and although he found that unaccountably sexy, he was not foolish enough to bait the beast, either.) Thankfully, convincing Emma to return was much easier than he'd anticipated, probably because she knew enough about magic to understand that if Hook could make it through, the Witch's followers could, too.

That meant Emma only wanted a day to tie up loose ends, which meant they were still running ahead of the schedule Snow had laid out for their return. Emma said something about paying her rent and quitting her job, not to mention packing a few things that she and Henry really didn't want to lose. She did immediately accept that they might very well be gone for forever, too, which was one of the arguments Snow had anticipated he'd have to have with her. Fortunately, Snow didn't seem to know everything there was to know about her daughter. Killian found himself absurdly pleased by that; the others might not have thought he'd manage to bring Emma back earlier than their best-case scenario, but he was happy to prove them wrong.

He really hoped she hadn't found love in this world, again. The last thing he and Baelfire needed was a third man with a legitimate claim to Emma and Henry. Matters were already complicated enough as they were.

Three minutes. By his calculations, that was all they had. Perhaps four, if they were lucky, but probably not that long. Luck didn't seem to be something he had in abundance lately, anyway.

"That's just power?" Regina asked dubiously. "Even you couldn't have done that—well, before your curse was broken, anyway."

Rumplestiltskin shot her a nasty grin. "I never said that was human power, dearie. You should pay closer attention."

He knew in his bones that it was her. Somehow, and he wasn't as surprised by this realization as he wanted to be, she knew that rescuers had come for him. Obviously she had no desire to come out personally and make an issue of it, but when capable of throwing power like that over long distances, why would she need to? Rumplestiltskin could feel the oncoming rush of darkness, could feel the power vibrating down his spine and through the very earth they were standing on. It was an impressive display of magic, made all the more impressive because the lighting flashing in those clouds was not for show. That was destruction, pure and simple.

"This is really not the time for you to go on about the fae, Rumple," Regina spat. "I'm starting to wonder if you lost it entirely in there."

So am I, he didn't say, still surprised by the quietness in his own mind. The curse really was gone, silent, broken; but then where did this power come from? Where did the magic he could feel racing to his very fingertips begin? More importantly, what was the price to be paid for it? There was always a price, and no one knew that better than he. And yet—

A glance at the dark clouds rolling towards him made Rumplestiltskin wonder about the answer to that very same question. What was the price for power such as that? Every bit of magic that had ever been cast had a counter; there was nothing unbreakable, nothing unstoppable. Power though that darkness held, it also was only magic. Fae or not, the same rules applied. Much of the cost for fairy magic of any sort was consumed by fairy dust, but not all, and what remained was always the weakness of any spell. The price for magic was always its weakest point.

However, he must have spent a moment too long in contemplative silence, because Regina continued when he said nothing, her voice growing sharper.

"We need to get out of here."

Rumplestiltskin shook his head as Belle and the two outlaws rushed up to them. "There isn't time."

"We can't evacuate the entire town by the time that gets here," Robin pointed out worriedly.

For the first time, Rumplestiltskin bothered to look around himself. The stone hut stood near the center of a small town, one not unlike the place he'd once lived. Worried people were beginning to creep out of their houses, probably drawn by the outlaws' shouts; either that, or the approaching dawn meant the start of a work day for most of them, and they couldn't afford to sleep in. Rumplestiltskin didn't really care about these people—but Belle would, and besides, he'd never been one for the wholesale destruction of towns and their inhabitants. After all, he'd once been one of the 'little' people who lived in such towns, and he remembered far too well what it was like to be trod on by those with greater powers than yourself. Generally speaking, Rumplestiltskin had left the common folk alone, unless one of them was desperate enough and interesting enough to call upon him, and even then he usually extracted far less of a price from them than he did the nobility. Perhaps it was the poor spinner in him shining through even the depths of the curse; once he'd left Hamelin and stopped tormenting his old neighbors, he'd never really started again.

"We have to try," Belle pointed out rather predictably.

"The longer we stand here arguing, the less time we have. Get everyone moving away from the clouds," Regina ordered Robin, her face pale in the moonlight. "I'll see if I can't slow it down."

Well, wasn't that interesting. Regina knew that it might kill her, and yet she'd try anyway. His student really had come a long, long, way. This kind of courage had always been inside her, of course; Rumplestiltskin had just done his dead level best to force her down a different road. He'd succeeded, yet he was still rather satisfied to see Regina turning back to the type of woman she'd been meant to be—and would have been, had he and Cora not messed her up so thoroughly between the pair of them.

"You can't," he told her quietly before Belle could say anything to him, the words coming with surprising ease. Regina twisted to stare at him, but Rumplestiltskin only shrugged. "Get back with the rest of them. You, too, Belle."

"Are you crazy?" the queen snapped. "You want me to run away and wait for that magic to snap you in half? Whatever power you have is no greater than mine now that your curse is broken, and you've just lived through a year of hell. I'll take my chances against that, thanks."

Rumplestiltskin chuckled softly. "No need."

He wasn't going to argue with her. There wasn't time. The clouds were closer now, the lightning within them burning bright and deadly as townspeople fled towards the south end of the town, doing their best to get away from the magic as Robin's outlaws tried to impose some small sense of order on the situation. They were a quiet bunch, the people of Bremen. Well cowed? That was not his problem. Tinker Bell was trying to help, but the fairy looked dead on her feet already, and there would be no magic help from her. Not that he wanted it.

Rumplestiltskin had never been the sort to use a staff or anything else to channel his magic, and he'd only ever used a magic wand when he wanted to steal fairy dust or to show off. So now he did nothing of the sort, and if an odd corner of his mind wanted a staff for some reason or another, he pushed that thought aside. Instead, he simply dropped his right knee, felt cold grass meet with leather, and placed his right hand, palm down, on the ground. Letting out a breath, he ignored the way abused bones and muscles protested, and focused on magic.

He usually preferred finesse to raw power, but there wasn't time. So instead he would improvise, and use power of his own to meet this rising darkness, to find its weakness and exploit it. Honestly, he had no idea if this would work. Whatever power he possessed still remained a mystery to Rumplestiltskin, and years of practicing magic cautioned him that he should not test it this way. Yet he had no choice, and he knew that this would work. He just…knew. Grass was green, water was wet, and his power could meet hers and survive it.

The ground trembled under his palm; less than a second has passed since he put his hand down, and out from his fingers raced power, pure and fast, rushing outwards from his position to the edges of the town. A dozen or so feet outside the perimeter fence, it reared out of the grass and arced upwards to meet the clouds as Regina swore in surprise. Dark red met black, boiling out of the ground like clouds of fire and turning back her attack. The two clouds of power danced with one another for several long seconds, vying for supremacy as Rumplestiltskin's arm tingled. He watched the magical mêlée carefully, but not for the light show that held the others so transfixed, waiting until his practiced eye and practiced mind found the weakness—

There. Power always dissipated over distance, and this attack had been sent in a hurry. Powerful it was, but not impenetrable. Rumplestiltskin had always found magic much like weaving, and the threads of this power were not woven closely enough to prevent interference. His hand came off the ground, fingers closed, and his wrist twisted just so. Within that one movement, his magic attacked the weak points and pulled—and the black clouds suddenly collapsed in on themselves, the lightning sucked into a vacuum with one last magnificent flash, and then there was silence.

Rumplestiltskin stood, power still racing through his veins in a familiar yet terrifying manner. He felt like his fingertips should be glowing even as his body shook in protest. Even with the virtually bottomless well of power he'd been able to control as the Dark One, he had never encountered anything like this.

"What did you do?" Regina demanded, and once he looked at her shocked expression did Rumplestiltskin realize that he had destroyed the boiling wave of darkness in less than fifteen seconds.

"Magic," he replied, smiling at her to hide his own unease, smirking to mask the fact that he didn't know. Butterflies danced wildly in his stomach, and he just wanted to crawl into a corner and hide.

What the hell has happened to me?

The two armies had fought through the night, trading blows by torchlight, magic light, or oftentimes, no light at all save that of the moon. The Witch's army had found their base camp shortly after Tinker Bell had left and hadn't wasted any time in attacking. The Witch herself had been there in person, too, which was certainly a first; Baelfire didn't think she was much of a general, herself, but given that she had the Buffalo-Leather Soldier to command her armies for her, it didn't make much of a difference. The Soldier was a legend in the Enchanted Forest, long thought dead and gone, but so well known for his generalship that armies trembled at his approach. No one knew where the Witch had found him or how she had convinced him to work for her; rumors claimed that she had brought him back from the dead or from a sleeping curse, but no one knew for certain.

What they did know was that the Soldier was a superlative general, even when his armies consisted of flying monkeys, griffins, tanuki, chimeras, and trolls. The human fighters in the Witch's armies were few and far between, but the Soldier still commanded with his old skill, having easily defeated the rag-tag army that Mulan, Aurora, and Philip had gathered before everyone else's return to the Enchanted Forest. He certainly made a mess of their forces early on, too; it had taken Charming and Baelfire almost a year to start outsmarting him, and their recent successes were mostly owed to the fact that Mulan had the Soldier distracted in the south, freeing them to take on the Witch's lesser commanders and gain some ground.

Until now.

Had their army a little less confidence in their own leaders, they might have fled outright once they learned that the Soldier was commanding the opposition. However, between them, David and Baelfire had welded their forces into a cohesive fighting unit over the last year, and that camaraderie held against the Soldier. Although it started as a lopsided battle on the wrong end of two-to-one odds, the tide turned a few hours after midnight, and as dawn approached, the Witch's forces were hard pressed to keep up the pace. Where the Witch acquired quite so many creatures to fight for her, Baelfire didn't know—they kept killing them off, and magic couldn't bring back the dead—but she was going to have to be searching for more come the next battle, because by the time light started filling the sky, it became obvious that the Soldier was going to lose.

A lull in the battle gave Baelfire time to ride to David's side; Prince Charming had command of the center while Bae darted here and there, addressing problems and filling holes as they came up. He'd already countered the Soldier's attempt to outflank them using an obscure footpath through the mountains, but now Bae had something more significant on his mind.

David had just pulled back after leading yet another cavalry charge (Bae often wished he could convince their leader to stop doing such crazily heroic things, but he supposed that David wouldn't be Prince Charming if he wasn't prone to them), and was covered in enough mud and blood to almost make himself unrecognizable. This kind of out and out warfare wasn't exactly what the Enchanted Forest usually experienced; their heroes were more used to settling matters by single combat or through one well-timed assault than slugging it out in the mud, but here they were, playing the Soldier's game, time and time again. Bae just supposed he had to be grateful that Charming sometimes understood that you couldn't always command while you were leading a charge, and had the sense to pull back before he completely lost track of the battle.

Not for the first time, he was grateful that Thomas was still unconscious in their well-guarded camp, because that distinction was one the boy would never make. Oh, he'd be a fine hero under normal circumstances, but this game was just too dirty for him.

"I think we're going to win this one," David panted, pausing to pat his tired horse on the neck.

Bae shot him a dirty look. "You do know what happens to people who say such stupid things, right?"

"I've read a book or two, yeah," the prince only laughed, and Bae sighed.

"I think you're right, though. Conservatively. They should have retreated an hour ago, but I'm guessing that the Witch's presence means even the Soldier can't make a strategic retreat without losing face."

"You've got something on your mind." David knew him too well, and the astute observation made Baelfire grin.

"Well, I'm not much of an archer, and I wish to hell Robin was here for this, but—"

"I'm not in Robin or Snow's league, but give me a target and I'll hit what I aim at," David interjected.

He probably would, too. And there really wasn't time to argue the point, not if this plan was going to work. Thomas would have been a better choice, because the boy was darn talented with a bow, but he wasn't exactly an option at the moment. So Bae just grinned. "How about the Soldier?"

"The—ooh. Is he—?"

Baelfire wasn't sure when he and David had started finishing one another's sentences, but now was a good time to have that ability.

"Close enough? Yeah. Right there on their left flank, trying to put some spine into the few humans they have. Shoot him, will you?"

"Will that help? The Witch—wait a minute. Regina said the Witch is like her, and dark magic can't heal, right?"

"Give the man a prize," Bae grinned. He'd thought of that earlier, and would have shot the Soldier himself if a crossbow could make the shot at this range.

David was already reaching for a nearby guard's bow, his face lined with concentration. "Take over here, will you?"

"And watch the center, I know. Go on," Bae shooed the prince off, trying not to let his own hopes show on his face. This is no normal army. Cut off its head, and it just might collapse.

'Ding, dong the Soldier's dead' doesn't quite have the same ring to it, but I'll take what we can get. Most people here hadn't seen that movie, anyway.

Twenty minutes later, as David cantered his horse back towards him, Baelfire ordered the reserves into the center. Moments later, he watched the Witch's army fold in on itself, collapsing under the attack like a waterlogged sand castle. The battle was a rout from there on out, and before long he spotted the Witch herself flying away on her broom, leaving her forces to utter disaster.

Her retreat seemed to break the magic binding some of the creatures to her cause; scores of them fled, vanishing into the mountains, the forest, and the sky. Several hours passed before every pocket of fighting was wiped out, but from the moment David shot the Soldier, the battle had been won. The only worrisome part of the victory turned out to be their inability to find the Soldier's body and the persistent rumors that a tall, red-haired woman clad in black and silver had swept him away into a cloud of rose-colored smoke. Still, Baelfire and David had heard stranger tales from the battlefield before. So, they shrugged those stories away like they did the others, rationalizing that they didn't exactly know what the Soldier's face looked like, anyway, and corpses suffered looting on any battlefield. Someone might just as easily have stolen the buffalo leather boots he was so well known for, leaving them unable to identify the right body.

Either way, they had destroyed two of the Witch's armies in the same number of days, and victory counted for a lot.

"You know what this means, don't you?" David asked as the two men stood side by side, overlooking the now-quiet battlefield.

"Is this where you say that we've finally turned the tide of the war?" Baelfire challenged the prince who had become his friend, crossing his arms and throwing David a cocky smile.

"We have," Charming replied earnestly. "I know it's not a promise of final victory, but between the territory Mulan gained down south and what we managed today, we finally have freed an entire kingdom from the Witch's grasp—and we've given ourselves a defensible battle line."

"I can't argue with that, anyway." But he did smile, because David was right. Oh, there would be plenty of battles left to fight, but they had actually accomplished something.

Of course, the kingdom that had been freed belonged to Thomas' father, so they'd have to watch the wily old man carefully—and keep Thomas with the army so that dear old dad didn't think about switching sides. Still, that would ease the pressure of refugees at the Dark Castle and especially that in the town in the valley below it, which looked more like Hooverville than anything else these days. And the territory between Thomas' kingdom and the Dark Castle was easily to defend; there were several good positions where they could base armies out of, which meant that the "good guys" could actually hold the territory they'd taken.

"You're a pessimist," David interrupted his thoughts jokingly. Bae snorted.

"Someone has to be with you lot."

"If you think I'm bad, you should try fighting a war with Snow at your side. Once she decides you're going to win…well, I'd rather taken on any enemy than argue with her," was the laughing response, and even Baelfire had to crack a smile at that one. Even if he did have another question to ask:

"Did Robin say why they needed Tink in Bremen?" Current problems aside, Baelfire's mind was already past their current predicament and wondering where the next snag would occur. Bremen was deep in enemy territory, a straight shot from the Dark Castle towards the Witch's stronghold, and if something was going to go wrong, it was bound to be there. "Traps do usually come in pairs…"

"It was Robin who wrote, actually," David replied, some of the cheer on his face vanishing. "Said it was urgent, and not much else."

"It better not be Regina who's hurt." A part of Baelfire couldn't believe those words were coming out of his mouth, but he supposed it was far easier for him to say than it would be for Charming, whose wife had been put under a sleeping curse by the very same Evil Queen who they all now depended upon. But David surprised him yet again, agreeing:

"If it is, and Tink can't save her, we're screwed."

"So that's it," Emma said skeptically, resisting the urge to glare at the cocky—if handsome—pirate. "We just all put our hands on that…rock, and it takes us to the Enchanted Forest."

She really didn't mean to sound so sarcastic—Henry was already shooting a pleading look her way—but Emma was no one's fool Everything she'd learned about travel between realms indicated that it was hard to travel from what she still thought of as the 'real world' and a place with magic. If you could just grab any old rock and use it as a portal, why all the fuss?

"Come now, love. After all we went through in Neverland, you draw the line at a magic rock?" Hook asked her with a winsome smile.

Emma scowled at him. She was not the swooning type, and if Hook thought she was going to just fall into his arms because he'd come to bring her and Henry to their family, he had another thing coming. She was the Savior, for crying out loud, and they had a problem to solve. She could untangle her own romantic feelings later. For the moment, she was more content ignoring them.

"No, but I know that traveling from here to the Enchanted Forest is hard," she retorted. "Otherwise, it wouldn't have taken an entire curse to take all of you back. So why can a little rock do the job for us?"

Hook sighed, and apparently settled for logical explanations now that he knew using his rather-admittedly-lovely puppy dog eyes wouldn't work. "This is the Stone of Giramphiel," the pirate replied. "It's an object of great power on its own, and the Blue Fairy was able to enchant it to also be a portal because of the power in the stone. It's hardly simple."

"That wasn't in the book," Henry objected, and Emma pushed back a smile. The last year had been different than she'd ever have expected, but she actually felt like Henry's mother these days. Her son was infuriating, brilliant, and charming in turn, but he was hers, and she was damn proud of him.

"Not everything from the Enchanted Forest is in your book, lad," Hook pointed out. "Otherwise, your book would have been a great deal larger than it was."

Well, at least that sounded logical.

"So, what does it do, then?" Henry pressed. "When it's not a portal?"

"I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but apparently it can protect you from dragons and wizards alike," Hook replied. "Neither of which is our problem at the moment, although I've heard that the Witch has a score of dragons or so at her beck and call. Still, it's the portal part that most concerns us, now. Are you ready to leave?"

"Are we ever!" Henry answered before Emma could get a word out, and she spared a moment to shoot her son a cautioning look. Predictably, he ignored her.

I'm going to kill whoever started this, she promised herself. What sane person brings a thirteen year old into a war? I may not be parent of the year material, but even I know that! Yet Hook was right, much though Emma wanted to deny that fact. She and Henry could try to hide in their world, but the Witch's followers would come after them, anyway. She could gamble on her own skills being adequate to protect her son, but what if she was wrong? What if they tried to hide, and failed, and she couldn't protect him alone? She had no right to ask Hook to stay to protect her son, and she didn't want to ask if he wanted to. Besides, if they chose that road…she and Henry might never see the rest of their family again.

And that was a sacrifice Emma wasn't willing to make.

"So…we just touch the rock?" she asked, shrugging a backpack on and watching Henry do the same. They'd given one to Hook, too, and it looked terribly out of place with his long leather coat, but Emma had insisted. She wasn't stupid enough to try to use a gun in the Enchanted Forest—not this time, anyway—but she wasn't going to leave the important bits of her life behind, either. Not if they might never make it back.

Home was where her family was, Emma had long since decided. So she was going home, even if that meant abandoning the world she was more comfortable in.

"It's the Stone of Giramphiel, Mom," Henry corrected her. He was all but bouncing with excitement, just as he'd been ever since he'd gotten his memories back. "Not a rock."

"Whatever."

Hook nodded. "Have you noticed that I'm wearing gloves? One touch will send us through—and the stone with us, so we must touch the stone together."

"Right." Emma sucked in a deep breath, turning to Henry. "Ready, kid?"

"Mom." He shot her an exasperated look of the type only a teenager could manage. "I was born ready."

"Then let's do this." So much for a normal life!

"On your count, love," Hook said, shifting the stone into the fake left hand he wore instead of his trademark hook/weapon, and pulled the glove off of his right hand with his teeth. Tucking the glove under his other arm, he held his hand over the stone, his fingertips hovering barely an inch over the edge. Emma and Henry copied the motion.

"No, I think Henry should do it," she replied, turning to smile at her son while she offered him her spare hand. Beaming, Henry grasped it. "After all, I wouldn't know about any of this if it wasn't for you."

"Okay!" His excitement was almost contagious, but Emma was damn glad that Henry was holding onto her hand as tightly as she was his. Portal travel wasn't fun, and she was damn well not going to lose him on the way to another world. "Three…two…one…

"Now," Henry said, and three hands touched down in unison.

Emma felt a distinctive pull, and then the world collapsed into a spiral.

A/N: Thank you to all the wonderful reviewers who dropped me a line after the last chapter, particularly to the anonymous/not-signed in folks who I could not PM to thank personally. Stay tuned for Chapter 7: "Coming Home" in which Emma and Henry reach the Dark Castle and Rumplestiltskin continues to try to figure out what this new magic of his is.

Now, here's my question to you: Where do you think this magic comes from? Also, did you notice where the Buffalo-Leather Soldier went?