AN: Sorry for the long wait. I had to make myself a timeline for all the events, to organise the text properly. Also, I got sucked into another story that I suddenly managed to write a new part of (so if you like X-Men, check my profile for "Regaining Herself", and if you liked Beauty and the Beast 2017 - see "Night Terrors").

I'm also posting this on AO3, so if you prefer their system of commenting etc, you can move there, the same story title, nick SrebrnaFH

yubima-chan: not sure what 12 seasons you're writing about - OUAT has, as of now, 7 seasons.

Upside down

Friday evening at Granny's was not a very lively time, as most youngsters used other venues for their dating - at least, that was what Emma had learnt from Ruby. Still, some grownups were attempting to kindle a romance in the rather prosaic atmosphere filled with fried cheese and onion ring aroma.

Doctor Whale looked fishy and Emma tried to suppress a giggle that seized her at that thought. He also looked way more interested in Ruby's decolletage than in Mary Margaret, with whom he was supposed to be on a date.

Emma cringed slightly at Mary Margaret's disappointed face and hid behind the newspaper to avoid embarrassing her new almost-friend even more by being a witness to the rather humiliating simulation of a date. However as Mary Margaret strolled by her, her face still and pale, she rose and quickly followed her outside.

"Didn't go very well?" she asked quietly, stopping behind the sad figure, standing dejectedly on the sidewalk.

Mary Margaret shrugged.

"I'm apparently not a very interesting person" she sighed. "And my blouses are cut in a much more conservative way than Ruby's. If she wasn't my best friend, I could honestly hate her for the effect she has on the guys."

Emma grimaced.

"If a guy goes on a date with you but stares at Ruby's boobs, he is a moron, and a… well, not a gentleman. He could at least refrain, you know, for the duration of the date."

Mary Margaret shrugged with a hopeless face.

"Can't help the fact that of all women in the town I'm the least likely to find someone" she said. "School is all-women, well, Archie is our only male staffer. And I don't really have time for much else. I volunteer at the hospital and it takes most of my off-school time. Also, I wear sensible skirts, sensible tops and terribly sensible jackets and coats. I'm completely uninteresting" she sniffed and smiled weakly.

Emma searched for a helpful remark, but nothing was coming.

"I suppose I'm destined to be a 'Miss Blanchard' for the rest of my life" Mary Margaret uttered with another sigh. "It's not like I think that only a woman with a man by her side is a valid model for family life, but I'd like to have someone… someone who would always come for me. Someone constant."

"You could adopt a child. Or foster, at least" Emma suggested hesitantly. "There are kids in the system who had been waiting for someone for ages. Single ones, too, it's not only complicated cases like us. Some are just unlucky and can't find the right home to go to."

Mary Margaret shrugged.

"That may be a solution, someday. I'd have to think about it, check the rules" she combed through her fringe with trembling fingers. "Probably being single may pose a problem here."

"It may, they generally look for married pairs" Emma nodded. "But if they decide that you are able to provide proper care… There may be some agencies willing to take the case. Single parent beats group home, I'm sure. Also, you are a teacher, so you have a good base for dealing with kids' issues."

"Hmm. I'll see. I would have to give up the hospital hours. I really like to think that I'm doing something useful there…" she sighed and then blushed. "Gosh, I won't be able to go there tomorrow, not after this disastrous date."

Emma nodded slowly.

"Speaking of volunteering…" she began. "Could I ask for your advice?"

They sat in Mary Margaret's kitchen, surrounded by wooden kitchen implements and tiny rustic-ish decorations, holding a mug of cocoa each.

"I know it's May, but I feel a bit drained after that date" Mary Margaret sounded somewhat guilty. "I make myself a mug from time to time, when my dating hits a particular low. I think today's outcome deserves one, with whipped cream and cinnamon."

Emma licked a bit of cream from the side of her mug.

"You could add tiny marshmallows. And some sprinkles, if you want to go full 'Disney princess'."

"And then die of instant diabetes, no, thank you. Whipped cream is quite enough by itself. But I'll keep this in mind in case one of my future dates actually proposes Ruby when I'm still there."

For a moment they sat in silence, sipping their beverages.

"So, what did you need advice on?"

Emma sighed.

"We need to find something to do in town" she finally blurted out. "We do our work remotely, all three, so we don't really need jobs - we are comfortable enough. But we'd like to participate. Something that would let us integrate with the rest of the town. Hospital volunteering sounds like something Elena could do. Elsa is bored enough to offer low-cost lawyer advice to people who don't have funds to hire a lawyer for standard fees. I'm not sure what I can do because I can't really count on someone needing computer help in a constant way…"

Mary Margaret pondered the question for a moment.

"I'll see what I can find. I'm sure there will be something - if nothing else, the school can always use one more person for afternoon activities, even if just to monitor the soccer games or something like this. And you could bring Henry with you, so he could get to know the kids and the school grounds."

"Sounds nice. And knowing other kids will definitely make it easier for him to start the next semester - if we stay."

"You know where he is?" Elsa exploded the moment Emma walked in.

"What? Who? Henry?"

"Henry is with Elena, in the park. She promised him a visit to the singing fountain, and it's supposed to have pretty lights after dark, so they are staying until he drops. I meant August. You know what he did?"

Emma pondered this for a moment.

"Got so scared of what we may find he shut down his phone and hid somewhere?"

"No. But close."

"Got married?"

"NO."

"Ok, so no idea."

"He's in bloody China. He actually got so anxious he boarded the first plane to Asia he could find. He says he's looking for some magical doodad that could supposedly help him with his leg, but I'm reading between the lines. That's also why we couldn't reach him - reception there is crap. So, I told him we've identified his father, and by the sound of it, he almost fainted. He said he'll be flying back any day now, he just had to finalise some businesses with the local magical-ish community. He also says he has a present for Henry."

"Dear me. I wonder what that would be…"

"Probably a mummified lizard or some other creepy pseudomagical thing. Anyway, he says he'll try to join us as soon as he's ready."

"Which means probably next year" Emma sighed. "I'll call him tomorrow and try to bully him into coming the day he lands. At least he won't be able to lie to me if he decides to avoid us."

"There's that" Elsa rubbed her eyes. "Also, he says that finding Red and Granny is a good start and that whenever he comes, he'd try to help us - as much as he can remember everyone."

"Maybe he'll be able to tell us which one is our mother" Emma brightened up hopefully. "That would help."

"Or not, if you go all psycho on her and try to make her wake up before you break the curse."

Emma rolled her eyes.

"Seriously. Me, going psycho on my supposed mother."

"I would" Elsa shrugged. "If someone pointed a woman out to me, anywhere in this town, and said 'Elsa, that's your mother, and she's been in this suspended life for the last three decades', I'd probably set up a camp on her lawn."

Emma snorted.

"Ok, maybe I'd go a bit psycho, too. But I hope by the time he comes we'll have at least partial map of connections between people, so we may actually work it out by ourselves."

"You high on something? How are we supposed to work this out, if we even don't have an idea who is supposed to be here. It's not like a jigsaw puzzle, we don't have the edges to start from! Also, they don't know who they are, so the connections will not be the same as in their old world."

"We know that Snow White and her husband must be here. We have Ruby and Granny and Marco and Ruby and Granny are stuck together. That is a start. And we have Regina and mind my words, there's something wrong with her."

"She seems nice…" Elsa looked at Emma quizzically.

"And she is not supposed to. She is supposed to be that nasty, vengeful woman. Someone who tried to kill our mother, not someone who takes in random orphans from the woods and worries if she isn't hovering too much."

"If you say so… I think I prefer her as a nice person than her trying, I don't know, to run us out of the town."

They sat in silence for a moment.

"I'm kind of thinking something is wrong with more than just her. I thought people were supposed to be miserable here, and they look happier than average found in any city we've seen. And there are only a few persons that I get the false vibe from, including mister Gold, so nobody is just acting happy, they are actually happy."

"I'm not sure wishing people to be more miserable is the right attitude for a Saviour."

"Eat ice."

"Volunteering, at a hospital?" Elena frowned. "Why?"

"Because it's a good way to join the local community and it's needed. You can take Henry - Mary Margaret says kids from school help her decorate the hospital, bring flowers to the patients, sit with them and talk. This way the patients without families don't feel like nobody is thinking about them, so they actually get better quicker."

Elena nodded reluctantly.

Elsa added hot water into the teapot and poured a glass of milk for herself.

"You could also look for some first aid courses" she suggested. "With your powers, you could probably help people with broken bones, but it would be better if you knew what you're doing."

"Yeah" Elena brightened. "I was a bit worried about trying to fix anything on a living human - or animal - but if they have some kind of training for general public, that would be a lot of help" she sighed. "In our copious free time, between actual work, investigating our supposed family, Henry and trying to have a bit of maybe personal life."

"Multitask" Elsa shrugged. "We investigate anyway all the time, so volunteering in the hospital is a good way to find new connections. Also, you can observe doctor Whale in his natural environment. Emma feels protective about Mary Margaret and he seems to be a dick to women he's trying to date, so I'd feel better if we knew what kind of a guy he is on daily basis. And, Mary Margaret feels awkward now after that failed date, so you could help her in the hospital and give her some kind of cover…"

Emma poured herself and Elena a cup.

"She's nice" Elena said finally. "I don't mind looking out for her if Whale makes her uncomfortable. Especially if she is some kind of family, we should take care of her. The less bad memories everyone has of this place, the better."

"We don't really know who she is" Emma reminded them. "She can be a servant or even someone from another kingdom."

"It's still good to make friends, the more the better. And she's nice, so it won't be like I'm just trying to be kind to her because we want to trick her into liking us in case she's someone important. We can be just kind because we like her, you know."

"I just don't want us to focus on her too much. Yes, let's make friends, but not only with her. Have you seen how many people are there in this town? Our family may be anywhere. We only know Regina for sure, and she's the one we're supposed to be avoiding."

The rooms were decorated with an abundance of paper flowers, paper flags, "GET WELL" cards and other, obviously child-made objects in bright colours. As Elena guided Henry to the table where a group of smaller children carefully turned strips of glossy paper into flowers, Mary Margaret followed them with a box of string, scissors and triangles of cloth, all prepared to produce meters of bunting.

"Now, Henry, you can sit here, with Julie, and she will show you how to put together a flower" Mary Margaret helped him to a seat. "And I will show your Aunt Elena where everything is and get her the hospital access tag so she can come back later by herself."

Henry only nodded absentmindedly as his eyes were completely focused on the complicated arrangement of paper strips Julie was putting together.

"If anything tries to eat you, scream" Elena added with a grin.

"Nothing will eat me" he answered with a sigh. "If it tries, it will spit me out anyway. No worries."

As they were walking away, Julie looked up from her work and stared at Elena's back.

"She your aunt?"

Henry nodded mutely.

"Sounds weird."

"She's just making fun of me."

Julie glued another strip in place.

"Did it ever happen?"

"What?"

"Did anything ever try to eat you? I mean, in Boston?"

"Nah. The only thing big enough was the alligator in the ZOO, and it was in a cage."

"You've seen an actual alligator?" a boy across the table from Julie looked at Henry with sudden interest. "How big is it?"

Henry made an uncertain gesture with his hands.

"The one I saw was, like, eleven feet long, I think. Aunt Elsa said that it was exactly two times longer than my mum is tall, and mum is five feet five."

"Wow. And have you seen an elephant?"

"Sure. And a hippo. And a rhino."

"Wow" Julie sighed and stopped gluing the flower together. "What about zebras? I'd like to see a zebra someday."

"It's just like a small horse, but striped" Henry shrugged. "There is a bunch of zebras in the ZOO close to where we used to live."

Several children migrated quietly from neighbouring tables.

"Have you ever seen a gorilla?" one finally asked.

"He seems to be making friends" Mary Margaret whispered, as they watched Henry from the cover of the flower arrangement by the door.

"That's good" Elena answered. "He needs more contact with kids. The amount of time he's spending with us is not doing him any good. He's turning into a little grownup. Emma wants him to have a chance to actually be a kid."

"Very well. Let's leave them alone for a moment and I'll get you to the office where the badges are issued."

"The idea is to give everyone who stays in the hospital a bit of human contact. Especially the child wing, where kids stay for longer periods, is a problem, as not all parents are as attentive as they should be, and some even leave their children alone for days at a time. We try to engage the classmates to make sure patients stay up to date with their schoolwork, or at least have some social contact. For senior patients, it's usually enough if someone talks to them, or plays a game of checkers - and some of the kids are as bad at checkers as the oldtimers, so it's a fair game for both sides. And finally, some of the older ones have stories to tell, and their own children often are quite bored of these, so the kids make for a good audience. And, from time to time, we're the ones that can identify that something new is wrong with some of the patients, as with us they sometimes forget to put on a brave face and tell us things they don't tell doc Whale or the nurses. And we work with the nuns that run the retirement home and the daycare, as they also volunteer as part-time nurse aides."

Elena looked at the badge clipped to her belt and fixed its position just a tiny bit to give her hands something to do.

"What about that guy?" she asked finally, pointing to the sole occupant of a glass-walled room, hooked up to more machinery than was supporting all the other patients in total.

"Ah. This is our only coma patient. John Doe, as nobody had ever claimed him. He's being kept on the machinery support, all paid for by the Mayor. She said that since we don't know whether he's insured or not, we can't just unplug him and let him die, so she's going to pay all expenses, in hope that in time he wakes up and pays her back."

"That sounds quite decent of her" Elena provided carefully.

"Regina has her bright moments" Mary Margaret admitted. "Usually she is quite a challenge to be around, but she definitely has a soft spot for Roland, and just for that I could probably forgive her any social sin she can commit. Just the way she takes care of him makes me hope for her someday becoming a more likable person. And paying for this patient's expenses - despite making jokes about him paying back - is one more bit of proof that she is, in fact, a human being" she smiled. "I really hope one day she stops biting everyone's heads off at the slightest attempt to get closer to her."

"Miss Blanchard" Regina's voice cut through the relative quiet of the hospital room and Mary Margaret cringed. "I hope the children have someone overseeing their activities, while you're here, chatting with Miss Swan. I don't think the patients would appreciate the noise the whole group of young students can make when not supervised."

"Yes, Madam Mayor. Sister Bieta is keeping an eye on them. I was just showing Elena the areas of the hospital she would be visiting when volunteering."

Regina's lips curved slightly.

"So you're joining the brave team of volunteers, Miss Swan. That's commendable. I hope you have a more reasonable approach to the idea and will keep your attempts at cheering the patients up to a sensible scope. Unlike some."

As she marched by, nurse trailing her with a clipboard full of purchase documentation, Elena could only blink in surprise.

"I think she's bipolar" she said, sipping her scalding hot tea. "That woman in the hospital? Completely different person to the one we met at the house. She looked like the actual embodiment of the Evil Queen."

"What about Henry?" Emma looked at her son's sleeping form on the corner bed.

"He didn't see her, at all. I was kind of worried what he might see, but she never entered the room where the kids were working."

"That's good. He may blurt something out if he sees her like this unprepared - whatever this could be. We must tell him something about his abilities."

"It's not like we know a lot about his abilities."

"Yes, but at least we know some basics of how they work" Emma sighed. "He just thinks he sees stuff and that's it. Sometimes he knows he sees stuff we don't, like with August's leg, but he doesn't know how special that is."

"I'm not sure how to even start" Elsa rubbed her nose. "He is smart and he will start working out other things about magic, once we explain his part."

Elena bowed over the tiny table and rested her forehead against the smooth surface.

"It's too much. I can't make sense out of all this. I can't fall asleep, worrying about all of this... this magical mess. And even when I sleep, I dream of wolves, wizards, witches, wands, capes and weird hairdos. I seriously need more sleep than that, if we are supposed to think logically."

Elsa nodded slowly and closed her eyes.

"I'm mostly dreaming of storms. And high water. And usually I'm on a ship, trying to last long enough to make landfall. I never see the land, and I always wake up when I'm thrown into water. In the dream I can actually feel the cold."

Emma looked at both of them with understanding.

"I'm dreaming of dragons" she said finally, slightly reluctantly. "And swords, magic and bright green light. And in that light there is an island and I know I should be afraid of it."

"Great" Elena mumbled into the tabletop. "We're basically having dreams of a fourteen-year-old who had just discovered Lord of the Rings."

"Except for us it's real and there are no Grey Havens at the end of the story."

Edited the chapter for clarity. Thanks to yubima-chan for pointing it out. Apparently FFNet ate whatever I put as scene separators.