Note: The Oxford professor of languages in the show seemed like a reference to Tolkien, perhaps the most famous professor of languages Oxford ever produced. Ronald Reuel was what the R's in J.R.R. stood for and an alias I'm sure Rumple would enjoy.

X

Maleficent pulled a musty book from one of the pawn shop shelves and began to look through it, trying to distract herself. There was a stack of more interesting things over by the counter, books of magic and history—records made by the Dark One himself—but she could guess the danger of being caught looking through those when the Dark One's wife finished chatting with the Dark One, even if she didn't know that's who the "Professor Peregrin" Maleficent had put her touch with was.

Will Scarlet, for his part, was sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing a computer game on his tablet. It played simple, chirpy music from time to time, during which Scarlet tended to look triumphant.

"Pac-Man," he told her. "One of the great games of the eighties. I had the champion score in Storybrooke for five years till the curse changed the games at the arcade."

"There's an arcade?" Maleficent asked. She didn't know the town as well as most of its residents, and the mask wasn't inclined to tell her about this. If it wasn't green or involved in growing something that was, Professor Longneaux had never heard of it.

"Nah, not that many video arcades around these days. Ours up and vanished one day and The Rabbit Hole got more chair space. But, it's one of those things you remember once the curse broke, that you know how to beat everyone in town at a classic video game. It's awful, forgetting something like that."

"Oh, yes, forgetting all the things that matter," Maleficent said dryly. She wasn't sure what to make of Scarlet. He acted like a fool, but he'd outwitted her once when he'd stolen that mirror. He'd outwitted Robin of Locksley, too. Not a terribly difficult task, that. But, Locksley usually had more sense than to take on even a normal dragon at someone else's behest.

She didn't know if Gold trusted him or not. The old sorcerer had set her down by the kitchen sink while he made whatever deal he had with Scarlet. But, she'd seen the smug, cruel light in his eyes when he was done. Whatever his deal with the thief, he'd been looking forward to the results.

Maleficent had hurried to "run into" Mrs. Gold and Scarlet as fast as she could once she got the message. It had been so tempting to tear off her mask, to seize them with magic and demand to know where her daughter was and what had happened to her.

Instead, she had—barely—been able to stay calm and use the professor's crisp voice. She'd told Mrs. Gold she'd heard back from her colleague, Professor Ronald Reuel Peregrin, who was willing to discuss some of his initial impressions of the scans and notes she'd sent him.

They'd come back to the store, Maleficent had gone in back and started the online chat with Rumplestiltskin, then handed things over to his oblivious wife. Maleficent didn't even think of staying to eavesdrop, tempting as that normally would have been, hurrying to the front to talk to Will Scarlet, who was too busy playing with his tablet to pay attention to her—or enjoying driving her insane by pretending to be too busy with it.

"My daughter," Maleficent said. "You found my daughter."

"Yeah, yeah," he said, not looking up. "You can't help her. She's under a fairy spell, not a curse."

Maleficent had managed—again, just barely—to throttle the urge to choke him. Or teach him everything she knew about curses by casting all of them on him. "I understand fairy magic," she grated. "Where. Is. She?"

"Belle's purse," Scarlet said. "We wrapped it up to keep it safe."

It? What did he mean, it? Maleficent tore through the bag and found a box. Inside, wrapped in old copies of The Daily Mirror, was a glass egg. In its heart, made of glittering crystal, was the clear form of a young woman.

No, she thought. No. Not even Reul Ghorm could do this. Not even Jaunice.

Scarlet glanced up from his game. For a moment, he even looked sympathetic and a little shame-faced at how casually he'd brought this up. "Belle thought the Blue Fairy did it to protect her. And Storybrooke. The Ice Queen's curse had people going crazy, attacking each other. This way, no one would go after Astrid. And she wouldn't go after them. Her spells, uh, aren't always that predictable."

"Astrid," Maleficent repeated. "That—that was the name I gave her." It meant beautiful goddess in a language where the word for goddess was very close to the word for star. A proper name, Maleficent had thought, for the child of the fairy once known as the Star of Fortune. "But, it's not the name Reul Ghorm gave her, is it?"

"No, they called her Nova. A new thing. Also means a star that goes and blows itself up." He turned back to his tablet, concentrating on whatever game he was playing.

Maleficent closed her eyes, remembering her beautiful, perfect child. Yes, that would have been how they saw her half-human daughter, a disaster waiting to happen, a new thing. And she knew first-hand how well the centuries old fairies dealt with anything new.

Not a curse, he'd said. But, what did Will Scarlet know? He'd thought that terrible mirror wasn't cursed, either, much good it had done him. Trembling, she lifted the cool glass to her lips and pressed them against it.

Nothing happened.

True love. Even Reul Ghorm didn't understand true love. Oh, there were clear signs in those who had it, what they would endure for each other, what they would do for each other—little as he'd spoken of the reasons for his exile, Maleficent knew Rumplestiltskin had been willing to do some terrible magic that would have freed him from his curse—and the danger it would always be to the woman he loved. But, even if they walked through the fires of hell, there were other lovers and dear kin who would had done just as much and never found that saving magic.

Was the horrible pain she felt when Astrid was torn away from her not love?

Or was it just not pure and true?

Emma Swan was the daughter of true love, of Prince Charming and Snow White. It ran in her very veins, so Rumplestiltskin said. Her child was the daughter of a fairy who had turned her back on her duty for what she thought was love, only to have it turn to dust in her hands. Was there an opposite to true love? And was Astrid the child of it, cursed by it and by her mother's blind choices?

Scarlet's tablet played its little, tinny tune, signaling the end of another round. He glanced up and noticed her holding the egg—and the lack of success she'd had with it. "It doesn't matter if it's true love or not," he told her, sounding . . . almost gentle, almost concerned. "You have to kiss her, not the shell she's trapped in. And don't try getting her out. Not with magic, not with something else. Not till we understand What Blue did to her. You might crack her apart with the rest of the egg." He cleared his throat and looked like he wasn't sure he should say what he was about to say. "Did you ever see the Star Wars movies?"

"The what?"

"Star Wars. Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Death Star—hey, is there a fairy named Death Star? There ought to be. That's be cool. She'd have to wear black leather. That's a black leather sort of name."

"There was a Black Fairy. She's dead and she never wore leather. What does this have to do with Star Wars? Is that another one of your computer games?"

"Nah, you're thinking Space Invaders. Or maybe Asteroids? I remember playing that one. Except I probably didn't. It was before the curse.

"Star Wars is a movie, a bunch of movies. And video games and action figures and lots of book tie ins—you were holed up in a library. Didn't you ever see them?"

"I never cared much for science fiction novels," Maleficent said. "The wrong people always seem to get blown up at the end of them."

Will Scarlet looked as though he were trying to decide if she were serious or not, then shrugged it off as unimportant. "Look, Star Wars is the ultimate guide for what not to do if you've got a heroic kid and you're maybe, you know, not so heroic. I've got the trilogy—the original one. The prequels were lame. Although, I can probably find them if I have to. And the Ewok movies, but that's just because I picked them up somewhere." 'Picked them up' in Will Scarlet's language meant 'stole' in everyone else's. "Trust me, you need to watch them before you try for tear-jerker reunion unless you want to wind up explaining why you lost your temper and gave your kid a real slap on the wrist because the family get-together didn't go as planned."

His tablet made a sad, tinny sound. "Bloody hell, it was supposed to be on pause!" Will said, turning back to it. "Damn, I've only got one life left."

Maleficent was tempted to make it fewer and chance the wrath of Rumplestiltskin. What was it they said in this world? Kill the messenger. Of course, they meant it as something you shouldn't do. At the moment, she thought it might be terribly satisfying. Instead, she went and looked at the books while Will Scarlet told her the history of Pac-Man. After a few moments, however, he was too interested in the game to continue talking about it.

It would go well, she thought. It had to go well. When she saw her daughter again, when she explained, surely, she would understand. She wouldn't see the monster the fairies—especially Jaunice—would no doubt have painted Maleficent to be.

She glanced through the book she'd picked up. It was one from this world, a translation of an ancient history written thousands of years ago by a man named Herodotus. A short book, she supposed. But, back then, there had been considerably less history to record. It didn't mean the man hadn't made some keen observations. Maleficent, once Fortune's Star, opened on the phrase, "Call no man fortunate till his end be known."

Will, happily hitting the screen, crowed cheerfully that he was on the next level and had all his lives back.