Chapter Nine—"Strange Bedfellows"

"Mom!"

Looking dirty and disheveled, Henry came running into the great hall, where Emma and Hook had been pouring over maps of the various kingdoms of the Enchanted Forest. Emma would be the first to admit that her geography was shoddy even in the world she'd grown up in (after all, why else pick a place to live by blindly stabbing at a map?), but she had a feeling that she'd actually need to understand borders and countries and such in the crazy world her parents were from. So, she'd grabbed Hook, who seemed to be the least busy person in the entire Dark Castle, and demanded he show her a thing or to.

She hadn't really been counting on the fact that Hook only looked at the borders between kingdoms when said boundaries touched the water, or that he'd spent centuries more in Neverland than he had in the Enchanted Forest. He was from here, of course, but apparently hadn't ever paid any more attention to geography than she did, which meant he was somewhere around zero help. Ruby had pulled out some maps for them, however, which at least meant they could take a stab at educating themselves. Emma figured she'd have a thousand and one questions for her mother later, but at the moment Snow was busy mediating a dispute between representatives of King Midas and someone else. Trying to keep the various royals straight was enough to give Emma a headache, but at least her mother managed well enough. From what Emma had gathered, Snow was the glue that kept their disjointed "Grand Alliance" together, and hardly a day went by when someone new didn't tromp on up to the Dark Castle to have Snow settle some problem or another.

Maps forgotten, she spun towards her son. "What's wrong, Henry?" A split second passed before she remembered where her son had gone off to, and more importantly, who he had gone with. "Where's Regina?"

"Gone," Henry panted. His hair was sticking up in the back, and were those leaves tangled in it? "Maleficent must have set some kind of trap, or something, and when I woke up, Mom was gone! We have to go find her!"

"Hang on a sec, here, kid," Emma interjected before Henry could get too far ahead of himself. Walking over to her son, she put a hand on his shoulder. "Where were you, and what exactly happened?"

"We were about a mile away. Near the road. I ran back."

No wonder Henry was breathing hard.

"We should go investigate immediately," Hook put in before Emma could reply. "Regina might not be far."

"She's not there! I looked," Henry glared at the pirate.

"We should go anyway," Emma reasoned. "There might be clues to where she is now."

Henry looked up at her, his brown eyes huge and watery. "It's my fault," he whispered. "I distracted her. If I hadn't been there, she'd have seen Maleficent, and she could have done something."

"Oh, Henry." At thirteen, he was almost too old for comforting hugs, but Emma wrapped her arm around him, anyway. "It's not your fault. And I know Regina won't blame you, either. Let's just go find her, okay?"

Henry nodded as Hook asked: "Hold for one moment, love—isn't Maleficent the name of that dragon you slew, and the same nasty spirit that Regina left lurking underneath the library in Storybrooke?"

"Yeah. So?"

"I do remember her quite well, but she wasn't particularly dangerous when I last encountered her. Her spirit was an angry little beastie, but hardly the sort Regina could fail to overcome." Hook shrugged eloquently, his handsome face creased thoughtfully. "So, I hate to doubt young Henry, but might we be dealing with someone else?"

"Mom said it was Maleficent, and I saw her. She looked just like she did in the book," Henry retorted.

For the first time ever, Emma actually missed Henry's storybook. While she certainly believed that Henry had all but memorized it back in Storybrooke, a year had passed, and she didn't recall Maleficent being a major character. Heck, she hardly remembered her as anything other than a dragon, and Emma had only learned her name later, anyway. Much later.

"Then perhaps someone is impersonating her," Hook replied, oblivious to the fact that Henry was glaring at him again.

"Look, it doesn't matter," Emma interjected before her son and her whatever-he-was could get into a spat. Was Hook a boyfriend? She wasn't sure. She was attracted to him, sure, but she'd been attracted to plenty of men over the years. They'd only kissed once, and even if it had been rather extraordinary, it was only a kiss. "We need to figure out what happened no matter who did it. So let's get moving."

"You're going to need some help with that, dearie."

Spinning around, Emma was surprised to find Gold walking down a nearby set of stairs. He was dressed rather like he'd been in Neverland, except the odd leather outfit apparently came in shades of brown in this world, right down to freaking leather pants. Rather like they had in Neverland, though, the clothes suited him in an odd way, and Emma immediately noticed that there seemed to be something different about him here. Perhaps it was just the lack of a cane. Emma would never get used to thinking of Gold without one. Then again, she might have had more of a chance to get used to the sight if not for the fact that he might as well have been on another planet since the day they'd both returned. So far as Emma knew, no one other than Belle had seen much of him, which wouldn't have bothered her one bit if the man wasn't Henry's other grandfather.

So she scowled at him. "What, are you volunteering?"

Because of course he wouldn't. Although Emma had never really managed to define the relationship between Gold and Regina, she knew that while Regina was obviously trying to do the right thing and fight with the good guys, Gold wasn't the type. No, he'd rather sit on the sidelines and watch. Maybe he'd try to manipulate others into doing what he wanted. Even in Neverland, when he'd claimed to be along to help, he'd only gone off on his own. Not a team player, Gold.

"Indeed I am." He smiled thinly.

"Why?" Apparently Hook shared her suspicions.

"Because unless our dear Miss Swan has developed her magical talent during the last year, someone is going to need to determine if Regina's disappearance was Maleficent's doing or not," Gold replied, wearing his maddening I-know-more-than-you expression.

"I've been in the Land Without Magic, Gold," Emma glared. How dare he try to put this on her? "And without my memories. That didn't exactly give me a lot of time for magic practice."

He blinked, seemingly taken aback by what she'd said. A flicker of confusion crossed his face, making Emma scowl even harder. Not that she didn't relish the opportunity to catch Gold off guard, but she didn't appreciate having done so by accident. This is just weird. Gold, however, recovered quickly, and soon he was wearing the same passively thoughtful look that was absolutely programed to drive her insane, right down to the all-knowing twitch of a smile.

"My point exactly," he said smoothly, as if nothing had disturbed him at all. "And you really should get used to using my name, dear, because I assure you—it's not Gold. Particularly here."

"What, you actually go by that mouthful you call a name?" she shot back.

Gold chuckled softly. "Oh, I most certainly do."

So, that was how Emma, Hook, and Henry wound up tromping down the road leading away from the Dark Castle with the most infuriating man Emma had ever met—and since she'd had a meaningful relationship with his son, that was saying something! Hook wasn't above shooting half-wary, half-hostile looks at Gold/Rumplestiltskin (did he really expect people to call him that?), but given the history those two had, Emma wasn't surprised. And she didn't blame Hook, either, because she had enough history with Gold to not trust him at all. Even when he was supposedly on their side.

He'd proven damn trustworthy when it came to getting rid of Pan, but Emma figured that accepting Regina as a good guy—which she'd done—was enough metal gymnastics for now. Regina at least had motivations that Emma could understand. Gold was a whole lot more cagey, and even if Regina had told them where he'd apparently been for the last year, Emma wasn't sure he could be trusted. He'd played them far too many times back in Storybrooke. Henry, of course, decided that now was a great time to have a conversation with his other grandfather.

"Can you really help find my mom?" her son asked quietly.

"Of course I can, Henry," Gold replied, and not for the first time, Emma was grateful that he was always nicer to kids than he was to adults. Then again, Henry probably had a bit of innate protection, being the man's grandson and all—from what Neal had told her, Gold did feel family was important, despite the many problems father and son seemed to have. But at least those problems seemed to be in the past. For Henry's sake, they'd better be! Still listening, Emma pushed aside a sudden pang of longing to see Neal again, telling herself that she missed him for Henry's sake.

"But I thought you wouldn't have magic with your curse broken." Leave it to Henry to voice the thought everyone was having; apparently even Regina hadn't gotten a straight answer on that front, though Belle probably had.

Gold chuckled, and his voice took on an odd sing-song-y note when he replied: "Well, I do like to keep people on their toes."

"But did you know you'd have magic? And if you knew, why wouldn't you want your curse broken sooner?" Henry pressed.

"That's a complicated question," Gold replied. "Some curses—particularly the more powerful ones—take on a life of their own over time. Depending upon how they were created, they either want to be broken, or they want to survive. Take the Dark Curse, for example. That curse wanted to be broken. I made sure of that when I wrote it."

"Really?"

"Why do you think the curse created your book?"

Emma's son turned wide eyes on his grandfather, thoroughly distracted away from his worry for Regina. "Wow. That's really cool."

"I'll admit that I didn't expect a story book, but I did know the curse would do something. I never anticipated you, though."

"Why not? You can still see the future, can't you? I didn't think that had anything to do with your curse."

"I can. But the ability to see the future isn't like watching a movie. It's more like having the pieces to a hundred different puzzles and not knowing where each piece goes, or even which puzzle that piece belongs in. It takes a lot of practice to get it right, and even then, you never see everything," Gold admitted.

"That sounds really complicated."

"Very."

"So about your curse," Emma's son turned back to the subject she was most interested in as she and Hook walked behind the pair. Bless his curious heart. "Was it one of the ones that didn't want to be broken?"

"Oh, yes." Gold's face twitched suspiciously. "The curse of the Dark One is, at its core, absolute darkness. It might even be the oldest curse in the world, though our history of magic is spotty at best."

Emma exchanged a glance with Hook during the impromptu magical lecture; she really wasn't interested in big picture magic any more than Hook was, but Henry looked absolutely enraptured. And knowing if Gold's curse really was broken—and what that meant—was useful, too. Under other circumstances, she might have tried to put a stop to the conversation—magic wasn't quite what Henry needed to be learning—but at least it was working to distract Henry from his frantic worry about Regina. At the moment, that counted for a lot, too, even if Hook was rolling his eyes while she tried not to snicker. Henry looked so solemn and fascinated, though, and Emma couldn't bring herself to laugh at him. Or even to let him think she might be.

Finally, they reached yet another bend in the continuously winding road that led away from the gates. The trees were starting to grow a little closer to the road, now—before, they'd seemed to form some sort of unnatural corridor, almost as if afraid to grow too close. Henry pointed off to the right as the direction he and Regina had headed, and the quartet turned that way. Emma and Hook drifted a bit further to the right than the other two; exchanging another silent glance of agreement. If trouble showed up, they were undoubtedly better suited to deal with it than Henry or his recently-back-from-the-dead grandfather. She'd snagged a sword from the armory back at the Dark Castle, and Emma already knew Hook was handy in a fight.

"Shouldn't the fairies know what happened in the beginning?" Henry asked next, and Emma didn't miss the way Gold's eyes narrowed in distaste when she glanced over her left shoulder at the pair. "I mean, the Blue Fairy is pretty much from the beginning of magic, isn't she?"

"That she is." It definitely wasn't Emma's imagination; Gold's voice had gone a bit sharper on that answer.

"So, why don't you ask her?"

Gold chuckled, but this time his voice was low and absolutely lacking in mirth. "You might say that Reul Ghorm and I don't precisely see eye to—stop walking, Miss Swan."

Emma stopped cold, grabbing Hook's arm so that he did the same. A moment passed with no explanation, so she turned and demanded:

"What the hell, Gold?"

He wasn't even looking at her, and he certainly didn't seem to be working magic, either. Instead his gaze was fastened somewhere in the middle distance, unfocused and probably not seeing the trees he was staring at. And there was nothing to stare at. Emma couldn't feel anything, either, even when she strained with her senses or with the magic she often wished she didn't have. But there was nothing. Sneaking another glance at Gold, she noticed that he still hadn't done anything other than stop, either.

"This isn't funny," Emma snarled.

"Nor should it be," Gold finally replied, his voice blasé again. "But another few steps and you would have walked into a trap of rather impressive magnitude. Here. Allow me to help you visualize."

Smoothly, his right hand came up from his side, palm up and fingers flicking outwards, as if Gold was tossing something very gently. A moment later, light leapt into the air about fifteen feet in front of Emma, sparkling purple and black and red. It hung in the air, looking like long and thick threads that were laced intricately together into a giant loosely woven tapestry. No, it's two tapestries. The first hung vertically, almost like a wall, ready for Emma and Hook to walk unknowingly into. The second hung perpendicular to the first, hovering behind it in the air, looking like a net. It wasn't moving, but somehow Emma got the impression that the net was designed to drop down and trap someone.

Probably us.

"What is that?" Hook asked from her right, sounding almost a little awed.

"That's magic," Henry answered for Gold, and Emma was surprised to see the sorcerer smile slightly at his grandson. But the answer wasn't enough, so she looked back at Gold.

"Why is it visible? Why now?"

"Because I made it so," he replied. "When you grow accustomed to magic, Miss Swan, when you embrace its use instead of thinking of it as simply another tool, you can see magic. All magic."

She stared dubiously at the shiny threads hanging in the air. Back before she and Henry had left Storybrooke, Emma had just started to be able to feel magic, but only when she was trying very hard. "Are you trying to say that you see magic like this all the time?"

"See, feel, taste." Gold shrugged. "Magic isn't one of your five senses. It's another sense entirely. Some spells are simply easier to deconstruct when you can visualize them."

"Deconstruct?" Hook spoke up warily, and Emma had to agree. That…mess didn't look ready to go away. In fact, it looked damn sturdy, and dangerous, too. Now that she could see the magic, she was starting to be able to feel it, too, and it felt dark and nasty. Emma shivered.

"Of course. Believe me, this isn't the type of thing you want to leave hanging around."

Stepping towards the magical tapestry, Gold raised his right hand, curling his first two fingers as if he was beckoning the magic towards himself. After a moment, the vertical mess shivered and one thread started to separate from the others, slithering through the air towards Gold. Then his left hand came up, repeating the same process with the horizontal net-looking spell. Both strands moved slowly at first, and then faster and faster—and then suddenly both spells collapsed in on themselves, the threads falling towards the ground and disintegrating. Emma could feel the magic dissipating, too, floating off into the air and going…well, she didn't know where. But it was definitely leaving.

And then the shimmering messes of threads were gone, leaving the forest looking and feeling normal.

"Is that it?" Emma blurted out even as Henry asked:

"Is that what took Mom away?"

Gold turned to look at his grandson. "In part. That is, or rather was, Maleficent's magic. The first spell is what knocked you both unconscious, and the second one transported Regina to the Forbidden Fortress. However, the second spell was…tweaked a little bit. Anyone trying to use it to follow Regina would wind up somewhere else entirely."

"Clever," Hook said approvingly as Henry frowned.

"Then we have to go to the Forbidden Fortress, don't we?"

"The only place you're going is back to the Dark Castle," Emma told her son, cutting in before Gold could encourage him. This wouldn't be the first time she'd gone off to rescue Regina for Henry's sake, but there was no way in hell she was going to bring their thirteen year old son with her!

"Mom, I'm—"

"Not coming," she cut him off.

""Your mother is right, Henry." Surprisingly, it was Gold backing her up instead of Hook. "In fact, I daresay that no one should go to the Forbidden Fortress at all."

"What?" Emma gaped even as Hook demanded:

"Have you gone mad? I may not like Regina much, but we can't leave her there. We need her."

Gold only snorted. "If Maleficent wanted Regina dead, we would have found her body, not a trap designed to delay pursuit. Maleficent and Regina have a complicated friendship, but I assure you, it is a friendship. She won't harm her. Or at least not permanently."

"This is getting bad," David grumbled, spitting out a mouthful of dirt and stone. Or at least he hoped it was stone. The way the roof was coming down around them, he couldn't really be certain.

"That's an understatement," Baelfire muttered from his right, rising up out of his crouch long enough to peek out one of the arrow slits in the wall. "They're only getting closer, and the fires are just about out."

"Great."

The pair—along with a good portion of their army, but not as much of it as David would have hoped for, given the current situation—were stuck inside an ancient army fort, one built probably long before even Baelfire had been born. They'd co-opted and repaired the place, and its half dozen fellows, in order to form a defensive line from which to engage the Witch's forces, but David sure hadn't expected an attack within a day of their arrival. Even if I had, I wouldn't have expected ogres!

Baelfire's typical thoroughness had saved them. When the ogres had appeared—almost out of nowhere!—two hours earlier, they'd run afoul of several lines of buried oil, which the archers had quickly made ignite. That trap was quickly becoming Baelfire's trademark way of dealing with ogres, and it was the one thing, short of archers and catapults, that was always guaranteed to work. Ogres always were afraid of fire. It seemed to be part of their genetic makeup, and fire always chased them off. Had Greek Fire existed in the Enchanted Forest, David would have used that against them, but no one seemed to have invented the predecessor of napalm, though Doc was working on something like it. For the moment, however, the buried oil was the best option, and David was darn glad that Baelfire had insisted on digging that into the ground before their foot soldiers got settled in.

David would have never expected Baelfire to make a general, but Henry's father had a habit of pulling off surprises. He hadn't expected to like the (sort of) younger man this much, either, but by now they were more than a smooth and efficient team—they were friends. In fact, although he'd come to respect Hook during their time in Neverland, he liked Baelfire a great deal more than he did the pirate, and David hoped like hell that Emma shared his opinion. Knowing his stubborn daughter as he did, however, David had no intention of telling her. It would only make Emma contrary.

"We've got to do something about this. And about the damned monkeys. Who taught them to drop rocks on us like this?" Almost on cue, a rumbling noise came from above the pair. The fortress was only three stories high, and they'd abandoned the top floor an hour ago when parts of the roof started caving in, but pretty soon there wouldn't be enough space for everyone inside. Baelfire made a rude gesture at the ceiling and continued: "Man, what I wouldn't give for a shotgun right now."

"A machine gun would be better. But to be honest, I'm more worried about the ogres," David said, listening to the second rumble carefully. At least it didn't sound like the entire roof had collapsed; apparently, flying monkeys could be trained to drop big rocks, but not to aim them very well.

"Yeah, they're not exactly acting normally." Baelfire snuck another look out. "I think our boys are running out of arrows, and the ogres don't seem as afraid of fire as they should be. It also looks like something is controlling them."

A shiver ran down David's spine. "Are you sure?"

"Come look for yourself."

Heaving himself up off the floor—the second to last group of rocks that the monkeys dropped had knocked both of them off their feet—David stumbled over to where Baelfire crouched next to the archery slit and peered out.

Their archers had given up firing in volleys some time earlier; they were each shooting individually, now, trying for the critical shot to the eye that would take an ogre out. But Baelfire was right; they were clearly running out of arrows, because the rate of fire was dying down quickly. But that wasn't really what caught David's eye. No, what captured his attention was something much more worrisome. It was impossible, utterly unheard of and went thoroughly against everything David knew about ogres. He'd been fighting them—with more success than any other general in history—for over a year. David knew them, knew what ogres were capable of. Yet he'd never seen anything like this.

The ogres were in a battle formation. And were those some sort of shields they were carrying? David resisted the urge to swear under his breath.

"You have got to be kidding me."

"See?" Baelfire asked quietly. "I told you they were acting weird."

Weird didn't begin to describe how the ogres were fighting, but David supposed that really wasn't the most important issue at the moment. The bottom line was that the few hundred soldiers they'd brought to this place really weren't enough to fight off a few dozen ogres under any circumstances. The particular situation only sent things from bad to even worse, but they were going to lose even if the ogres started acting normally that very instant.

"We need help," David breathed.

Baelfire didn't argue. "I'll go down and see if we can't slow them down. You write Snow and tell her to send Regina."

"You got it."

I sure hope Regina is feeling feisty today, because we're going to need all the anger and fire she can summon up. David didn't even want to think about the irony of calling on the Evil Queen to quell evil creatures, particularly given the fact that said Evil Queen had locked him in a dungeon, fed his fiancé a poisoned apple, tried repeatedly to murder him, invaded his wedding with threats, and then cursed David and everyone else he knew into the worst world she could possibly imagine. Yet, despite everything, Regina was also the woman who with whom he had risked everything in Neverland, and who had raised his grandson.

He was okay with depending upon her. More than okay, actually. David wasn't sure when that had happened, but he pulled out the tablet and started to write:

Snow—David here. We're at the old fort seven miles east of Weselton. Under attack by ogres, need Regina fast.

There really wasn't anything else to say, so David shoved the tablet back into the pouch on his belt and headed down to join the fight.

A/N: Question time! 1) What do you think Maleficent intends to do with Regina and (in case it slipped your mind) 2) Do you think Snow and David are going to have a boy or girl?

In the meanwhile, stay tuned for Chapter 10: "A Stain on the Soul" in which Baelfire and Rumplestiltskin finally reunite, the Blue Fairy expresses some doubts, and you find out the answer to question #2. Please do take a moment to review and let me know what you think!