P.O.V. Change
Mary-Margaret had snuck out while everyone had been distracted and was now on her way to Regina's Family Mausoleum to retrieve Cora's heart, to curse it with the candle.
If she got this right, she could finally have revenge for her mother and get rid of a major threat. She would be killing two birds with one stone.
She threw herself against the door and was overjoyed when it opened easy, there was no spell to stop her from entering.
'If I'd known that earlier I may have just crushed the heart then'
No spell showed sloppiness.
Mary-Margaret searched for the entrance to the Vault, lifting urns and pushing at stones in the wall.
She sighed looking to the floor in discouragement and noticed that the dirt had been shifted. She pushed against the crypt which slid away to reveal a hidden staircase.
She was down into the vault in a matter of seconds looking left and right thinking 'If I were a heart, where would I hide?'
Looking to her left she saw, through an archway, numerous cases and trunks.
She sighed to herself throwing down her hat and scarf on a trunk.
'It's a good place to start I suppose'
P.O.V. Change
'No matter what's she's done to me, she's still my mother! I don't want her to die!'
She saw Henry and Ruby.
"Henry! You're back! Where's the grave yard?" She yelled as she approached them but she didn't slow down.
He pointed in a direction "That way. Why?"
"I'm gonna do something I might regret later!" she shouted over her shoulder as she ran in the direction he pointed.
'I'll definitely regret it when Regina finds out I broke the floor!'
P.O.V. Change
David awoke on the cement outside Gold's shop gasping and groaning he sat up, his first instinct to call his daughter, who was trapped in the shop with Neil and Gold with Cora nipping at their heels.
She answered with a quick "David?"
"Are you safe?"
"For now. I've got the spell up in the back room!"
He picked himself up, voice straining as he did so as he was still sore from being thrown from the shop "Is Mary-Margaret okay?"
"She's not with you?" Emma asked him confused
"No. Where the hell is she?"
P.O.V Change
She heard it. In one of the standing trunks. A soft thumping...a heartbeat.
She opened the case and found some small boxes, one was glowing a pulsing red. The heartbeat was evident now.
She pulled the little box out by its handle carefully and placed it on top of one of the other trunks, unlatching it and opening the lid.
There sat Cora's heart, glowing bright and beating, as if it had never spent a day out of her body.
She closed the lid, mentally preparing herself for what she had to do, breathing heavily and evenly through her nose before she threw the lid open again.
She lit the candle Rumplestiltskin had given her, at both ends, and allowed the hot wax to drip over the heart.
She whispered Cora's name over the top of the candle and it's flames.
She whispered the name again, the magic of the candle making her voice echo through the Vault and then abruptly blew out the candles flames.
P.O.V. Change
"I don't think I've ever run so much in my life!" Watcher said aloud to herself
"Keep going! You're almost there!" Johanna Conscience shouted to her as she ran past
"That's easy for you to say! You're a ghost!"
"Technically, I'm you"
'I'll have to remember to deadpan later' Watcher noted.
She rounded a corner and fell flat on her face.
'Why am I always doing that?'
She rolled onto her butt and picked herself up, stumbling at the stinging sensation in her ankle. She sat down on the side of the path she was on, rolling her ankle
"Damn it Regina. You did a great job of healing it!" she yelled at the sky.
P.O.V. Change
Back at the shop, Cora was still trying to get through Emma's force field.
Behind the force field Gold was slowly dying with Emma and his son watching over him.
Neil lowered his sword.
"It's getting weaker" he said, referring to the force field.
He turned to Emma "She's gonna get through"
"Maybe it's for the best" Rumplestiltskin said from the couch, monitoring his breathing, trying to reduce his pain.
"At least this cursed power will pass from this world"
"No. No, you're not dying" Neil told him.
"I am dying. That much is certain. I need to talk to Belle" he breathed labouredly, addressing Emma.
"Emma, please" he held out his hand, silently asking for her phone.
"Who's Belle?" Neil asked.
"Your dad's girlfriend" Emma answered.
Neil eyed her disbelievingly, then turned his questioning gaze to his father as he watched him speak to this, Belle.
"Hello Belle. It's Gold" there was a pause as Belle answered him
"I...I...I know, I know. It's just uh..." he exhaled heavily trying to think of what to say next...and trying not to die over the phone.
"Sweetheart, I'm dying" he paused again.
"I know that you're confused about who you are. So I'm gonna tell you"
Tears began to gather in his lashes "You are a hero who helped your people. You're a beautiful woman who loved an ugly man. Really, really loved me. You find goodness in others, and when it's not there, you create it. You make me wanna go back. Back to the best version of me. That never happened before"
Neil was now starting to tear up. The sound of his father's deathbed confessions stabbing him with guilt in a place in his heart he had long closed off. A place where he thought he could never feel or trust again.
He listened silently as Rumplestiltskin, his papa, continued to praise the woman who had brought him back from the darkest depths of his soul.
"So when you look in the mirror and you don't know who you are...that's who you are" Gold's tears fell freely.
It felt almost alien, having not felt and done so properly in centuries. But that was what Belle done to him, she made him feel...she made him the man he was...that man he wanted to be again, but now wouldn't get the chance.
"Thank you, Belle" he whispered into the phone, and then hung up angry, tired and ready to admit defeat.
'Maybe I have been here for too long. Maybe now, it's time to sleep.'
P.O.V. Change
Regina stepped carefully down the stairs into the vault, looking around before her eyes landed on Snow...with Cora's heart in hand.
They gasped in surprise as they saw each other.
"You have no right to be here" said Regina threateningly.
"And you have no right to that!" she yelled.
Mary-Margaret looked her dead in the eye, mind moving quickly to formulate a plan.
"I was going to give it to you" she said finally.
"What?" Regina questioned, confused and shocked.
Snow moved forward with her words "She can't love you, you know. She doesn't have her heart. With it, maybe she can"
Regina processed her words.
"That's why you've never felt she loved you. She doesn't have her heart, But I do"
Regina looked at her suspiciously "You're doing this for me?"
"Think about it. What would happen if Cora had her heart back? Back inside her?" Mary-Margaret insisted.
"She told me she took it out to protect herself"
"And did it work? The person she was before, do you think that person survived?" Mary-Margaret shook her head to insist on her point
"She can't love, so she can't love you"
Her words sank in to Regina's skull. She could actually see the logic.
Snow White could see a sad, lonely hurt little girl, but she didn't believe it for a second.
Regina shook her head.
"She always wanted the best for me" she insisted.
Her voice broke as she said her next words "That's love!"
"Imagine real love" Mary-Margaret whispered dramatically.
"You'd have a mother, and a start on making a family Henry could be could be part of"
Regina thought on that, her desperation for Henry overcame her mind, senses and thoughts. Like a consumption.
Mary-Margaret looked down at the box in her hand "Or, you could have her be the Dark One"
She looked back up to Regina holding out the box to her "The choice is yours"
Regina stared at her hard, then the box...and reached for it