Chapter Twenty-Six: Water and Fire

Belle ran a finger idly over the pendant on her necklace as she stared blankly at the menu in front of her. She had no appetite, and sitting alone in Granny's diner only served to remind her of Ruby's absence. That, combined with memories of Hook attacking her in the library, left her uneasy and confused.

Rumple's pendant had saved her, and she was grateful for that. But Ruby was still locked away in prison, and the townspeople were at each other's throats. How much more damage would Cora do? How much more damage would all the people she cared about do to each other?

Wasn't her father's death enough?

"May I?"

She glanced up in surprise. "Oh… Dr. Whale."

He made her uncomfortable. It wasn't his fault that she'd been imprisoned, of course, but it had still been his hospital. Every day for twenty-eight years, she'd been trapped in a cement cell, and trapped in the haze of her own amnesia. Time had blurred together while she was living through it, but now that she could remember everything…

It was hard to look at Dr. Whale and not shiver with fear. And anger.

But it wasn't his fault. None of it was.

She set the menu down on the table and nodded vaguely, and he slid into the seat opposite her in the booth. "Victor, please," he said with an easy smile, all charm and attraction.

She blinked, surprised. "Victor? Oh, I didn't…" She cut off the sentence with a frown. What could she say? I didn't realize you had a first name? That even sounded stupid in her head. Instead, she cleared her throat and asked, "Who were you? You know – before?"

Something dark flickered through Dr. Whale's eyes, and he shook his head. "No one."

It was obvious that there was a story there, something that Dr. Whale did not want to talk about. And as curious as she was, Belle decided it would be kinder not to press for details.

Still, she wasn't entirely sure why he would want to talk to her. She'd never interacted with him, but what little she had learned from Ruby suggested that Dr. Whale was interested in only one thing from women. He had to know he would never get that from her.

He jerked his head towards the window. "It's... strange, isn't it? What's happening out there."

Strange wasn't exactly the word she would have used.

"I walked by the ruins of the home belonging to Margaret – sorry, I mean Leah, Queen Leah," and he gave a little sardonic smile at the use of the fairytale name and title. "There were several people gaping at it. The whole place in ashes."

Belle studied his expression closely, surprised to see amusement flickering briefly in his gaze. "You find this funny?" she demanded.

But Dr. Whale shook his head. "No, I find it hypocritical at best," he answered coolly. He leaned back in the booth, a distant expression on his face. "Leah is furious, and Stefan has commanded the Blue Guard to find those responsible." His eyes snapped back to her. "Tell me – do you think they will have any more luck with this than they did with finding your father's killer? Or perhaps you believe Ruby Lucas is responsible for the fire as well?"

Belle raised an eyebrow at the harsh mocking in his tone and at his careless and thoughtless mention of her father's grisly fate. Then the meaning of his words set in, and she asked in surprise, "You don't believe Ruby is responsible for my father's death?"

Dr. Whale shrugged. "I don't know. But there is a rumor floating around the town that you don't believe it. And we certainly know Mary Margaret and David's opinion on the matter." Again, he gave the same mocking smile.

Belle pulled the menu back into her hands and stared blankly at the options, trying to ignore how unsettled she felt by Dr. Whale's entire demeanor.

"It isn't hypocritical for Leah to be upset," Belle said finally. "She has the right to feel safe in her own home."

"And what about everyone who doesn't feel safe in their home because of her?" Dr. Whale demanded sharply, leaning forward and giving her an intent, piercing look. "If this is really about making the town safe again, why don't we feel safe? Why aren't we safe?" He gestured angrily with one hand, encompassing the entire diner, the entire town. "And why don't we get a say in anything?"

Belle swallowed back her immediate, defensive retort. She took a breath, looked away for a moment, gathered her thoughts. "We do get a say," she said reasonably. "Leah will listen to us."

Dr. Whale gave her a brief, laughing smile. "How can you be so sure?" he challenged. "She hasn't done it yet." When Belle didn't have an answer to that, he added quietly, "You're deluding yourself into seeing what you want to see, not what is actually there."

Belle shifted uncomfortably in her seat and said nothing.

"So, what's on the menu?"

"Uh… what?" Belle asked, baffled by the sudden change in topic.

Dr. Whale tapped his fingers on the menu. "What are you ordering?"

"Oh… I don't know. I hadn't really…" Belle trailed off. "I hadn't picked anything yet."

Dr. Whale looked past her towards the door. "You're not waiting for anyone, are you?"

Belle reached up and touched the pendant at her throat. "No," she said quietly, "I'm not waiting for anyone."

"Well then, let me buy you lunch," Dr. Whale offered. Belle raised both her eyebrows at him, and he shrugged and said, "You've heard my opinion of the state of Storybrooke. I'll buy you lunch, and you can tell me why you were sitting alone in a booth staring so glumly at the menu."

Belle hesitated.

"Come on," Dr. Whale pressed, giving her that easy smile once more. "What could it hurt?"

"You're not going to get what you want from me," Belle said firmly, fingers closing around the pendant.

Dr. Whale laughed. "What makes you think I want anything?"

Belle pushed away the menu and stood up. "I'm not hungry anymore," she said by way of an excuse, an apology.

As she turned to leave, Dr. Whale caught her arm. "You said you were convinced that we would all get a say – that Leah would listen to us. But Leah gets to choose if she wants to listen to us, and she gets to choose who she listens to. That is how a monarchy works, isn't it?"

"Are you arguing to overthrow her and her husband?" Belle countered, freeing her arm from his grip. "Set someone else up as queen or king?" She narrowed her eyes at him, accusing. "You, perhaps?"

But Dr. Whale shook his head. "Of course not. I just don't see why we should have a king or queen at all."

Henry leaned against the windowsill in his bedroom and stared out at the perfectly manicured lawn. He remembered the last time he had been trapped here. His attempts at escape had resulted in being captured by the branches of the tree outside his window. This time there was nothing physical, nothing magical, that kept him inside - he could walk through that magic barrier if he wished - but he was just as trapped.

His mother and David were arguing again. Their voices floated up the stairs, and though they were too indistinct to make out the words, he could tell they were raised in anger.

Their anger matched the general feeling in the town. He was not as naïve or as oblivious as his mother seemed to think, and though she had quickly bundled him to and from Mary Margaret's apartment, refusing to let him see much of the town, he could still feel the simmering unrest and tension everywhere. He might not know the specifics of what was happening, but he could imagine. Cora was destroying this town.

And it was all his fault.

"How can you even think that about Emma?" David fumed, pacing back and forth across the floor of the immaculately clean kitchen.

Regina leaned against the counter, a glass of cider in one hand, a bored expression on her features. "Because it is true," she answered coolly, one eyebrow raised as though daring him to argue. "Magic is addictive."

David paused in his pacing long enough to give her a pointed glare. "Dark magic is addictive. What Emma has – what she's doing – that's not dark. It is different from what you can do."

Regina rolled her eyes. "There is no difference between light and dark," she snapped back. David responded with an incredulous look, and she sighed and amended her statement, "At least, there isn't as much of a difference as you would like to think." She pushed herself off the counter, a wry smile curling her lips. "All magic comes with a price."

David huffed impatiently. "Whatever price Rumpelstiltskin – Gold – demanded from us in the past, that was for his magic. Dark magic. You can't possibly compare Emma to him."

"I don't," Regina agreed. "I'm not." She placed her glass on the counter with a sigh. "But that imp did not mean that magic only has a price if he demands it. All magic comes with a price because it is magic. Surely you know that by now?"

David frowned. "What about fairy magic? What price does that demand?" he countered. He knew that Dark magic came with a price, and that the price was more than whatever Rumpelstiltskin requested. But fairy magic, the epitome of good magic, was different. It had to be different.

Didn't it?

Regina shrugged indifferently. "I don't know the specifics. But why do you think the fairies have so many rules? Why do you think those rules are enforced so…" she paused, looking for the right word, then settled on, "fervently?" Disdain crept into her voice. "I assure you, it isn't actually because the Blue Fairy is an insufferably controlling taskmaster." She turned away from David and muttered in a low voice, "Although she often is."

David considered her words. Some of what she said might be true, but there were still too many gaps in her logic. The fact that Emma had magic did not necessarily mean she was going to start down the path towards evil.

"So Emma will follow the rules. She doesn't have to turn out like you or Rumpelstiltskin."

"But that's the point!" Regina argued, whirling on him. "She doesn't know what the rules are! You saw Miss Swan playing with magic before. She doesn't know what she's doing, doesn't know how dangerous it is."

"Believe me, if all Emma has to go on is what she's seen from you and Gold, she knows exactly how dangerous magic is," David retorted hotly.

"So what?" Regina countered. "It doesn't matter that she knows it is dangerous; she's still using it." She opened her mouth to say something else, then stopped and shook her head. Choosing her words carefully, she added, "Besides, she's in my home. The entire castle is filled with magic. That room she was in is filled with magic. My magic."

"So what exactly are you saying?" David asked angrily. "That she's going to turn into you just because she is currently in your home?"

Regina didn't answer right away. Finally, she sighed and said, "Miss Swan is playing with things she doesn't understand."

"She's not playing. She's trapped in another world trying to find her way back to us!"

"That's all semantics, David, and it doesn't matter!" Regina shot back. "Don't you understand? It doesn't matter why she is doing it. It doesn't matter how vigilant she is. It doesn't matter if she knows the dangers, it doesn't matter if she is trying to be careful. She is using magic and she doesn't understand."

David was fairly certain that Regina was overreacting to this newest development, but here was something in her voice that gave him pause. He couldn't quite place it, but it stopped him all the same, preventing him from responding as he wanted.

He ran a hand through his hair and tried to think. He couldn't believe that Emma having magic was going to automatically turn her evil. But he also couldn't deny that there was some danger. Maybe he didn't believe everything Regina was claiming, but he could at least accept that magic was dangerous.

"So… what does that mean for us?" he asked finally.

Regina gave a half-hearted shrug. "It means we need to get to her quickly," she answered.

Unfortunately, that was far easier said than done.

Leah's hands were shaking.

She flattened them against the table, pressing all of her weight into her fingers to stop the tremors. She could hear her heart hammering in her chest, could hear the blood pounding in her ears. Her house was in ashes, and the relative safety of town hall did not offer her any comfort.

"Leah?"

She started and spun around. Stefan was standing in the doorway, studied her with concern. She tried to smile for his benefit, but it came out as a grimace. She could still vividly remember the acrid scent of smoke in the air, the burn in her lungs and eyes and the heat rolling off the crackling flames. She'd been frozen, caught up in a million memories from a different lifetime, and it had been Stefan who had dragged her from the house.

"I'm alright," she lied.

Stefan came to her side and slid his fingers over hers. "The Blue Guard is investigating," he said softly. "We'll figure out who did this."

Leah nodded, but didn't meet his gaze. Instead, she stared down at the table and asked, "Do you think they knew? Whoever did this? Do you think they knew about… about what happened?"

Stefan shook his head. "I don't know," he said helplessly. "Maybe. It's hard to know why this even happened – what the point was."

Leah answered with a bitter laugh. "I would imagine the point was to scare us." And some part of her was ashamed to admit that, if scaring her had been the goal – well, whoever had done this had succeeded.

Stefan squeezed her hand tightly and said almost apologetically, "There are a lot of rumors out there. Some people say we weren't home when it happened, others say they think we were supposed to die in the fire."

Leah closed her eyes.

They'd beaten Maleficent's sleeping curse, but the dark fairy hadn't simply given up. In that final confrontation, fire had been her weapon of choice, and although Leah had been the victor, the battle had left behind more than its fair share of emotional scars.

Fire still terrified her.

"I just spoke to George."

Leah opened her eyes and glanced at her husband. "Do you trust him?"

"No," Stefan answered flatly. "He is unpredictable. I'm not sure he has boundaries, lines he won't cross. I'm not sure how much he cares about restoring peace and safety, and how much of this is just getting revenge on James. I'm not sure if he can even tell the difference anymore. No… I don't trust him."

"But?"

"Who can we trust?" Stefan questioned quietly. "If you had asked me twenty-eight years ago if I thought Snow and James would subvert justice for their own gains, I would have found it unlikely. Granted, I didn't know them particularly well, but they did not strike me as being so selfish. But was I simply blind then, or have they changed?"

"We were cursed," Leah murmured. "They were, too."

"Yes." Stefan paused thoughtfully. "We've all changed. I know there were rivalries before, but I don't remember them being quite this vehement. Thomas and Midas, for example…"

"The curse…" Leah started again, but Stefan interrupted her.

"How much of this is the curse, and how much is simply the fact that we are forced to interact so much more now?"

"I don't know," Leah replied, "but either way, we can't allow murder or arson to go unpunished." Stefan nodded in agreement, and Leah leaned against him and asked, "What did George want?"

Stefan pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. "He said was going through the phone book, trying to figure out who all the inhabitants of our town actually are - or were, before the curse. I don't know how successful he has been, or what he even hopes to gain by doing this, but…" He unfolded the paper and smoothed the crease. "Christian Stevens."

"Who?" Leah asked.

"Gabriel. King Xavier's second son."

"Xavier?" Leah frowned thoughtfully. "His kingdom was absorbed by Eva and Leopold, wasn't it?" She reached for the paper on which was written an address and phone number. "If Gabriel was still alive to inherit, why would his kingdom be given away?"

"I don't know," Stefan answered. "But," he gave Leah a meaningful look, "Xavier was Regina's grandfather."

"He was?" Leah asked, astonished. "But Regina wasn't royalty until she married Leopold. How did that happen?" She pulled away from Stefan and looked up at him curiously. "Do you think it is a coincidence that Regina ended up as the queen of land that had once belonged to her grandfather?"

"Do you?" Stefan replied. Without waiting for a reply, he continued, "I don't know what to make of everything happening with Snow and James and the werewolf, and I don't know how worried we should be about the other rivalries brewing, or George's plans, or all the unrest in the town. But we do know that Regina is our enemy." He held up the slip of paper. "And he is her family."

"Doesn't mean he is her ally," Leah cautioned. "If he was, wouldn't we have heard about him when Regina married Leopold? We were both at the wedding, and I don't recall him being there."

"True." Stefan considered this, then suggested, "So perhaps there is bad blood between them?" When Leah didn't have an immediate response to that, he pressed on, "Either way, he is her uncle. He knows her, and he presumably knew her before she married Leopold. That alone is enough of a reason to want to talk to her."

The mirror was glowing underneath her fingers. Wisps of light and color rippled over the surface, forming vague and hazy shapes. The Technicolor world shimmered on the glass for a moment, displaying rows of hedges underneath a too-bright, too-blue sky.

Emma lowered her hands from the mirror, letting the image fade, and leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes. She inhaled slowly, tasting saltwater and crushed pine on the air. A headache grew behind her tired eyes.

If she focused hard enough, she could conjure up a vision of another world. She didn't need to rely on the mirror to spontaneously show those images – she could make them appear. It was painstakingly difficult, and left her exhausted and out of breath, but she could do it.

Was this place she was seeing real? It certainly seemed like it, though it obviously wasn't Storybrooke. But if it wasn't her home, then what was it? And could she use it to get back to the real world?

Unbidden, Jefferson's words echoed through her mind.

A real world. How arrogant are you to think yours is the only one?

"Yeah," she muttered unhappily, "I get it. There are a lot of worlds out there. But I'm only interested in one."

She looked across the table at the book. She hadn't touched it since her previous experience, though the temptation was strong. When she had inhaled that ink, everything had felt easy. Simple. The world around her seemed to bend to her will, responding to what she thought instead of actual actions.

But she had also felt out of control. For all the power, for all the strength inside of her, she had felt something else, too. Something stronger than her, more powerful than her, something that would drown her if she wasn't careful.

She exhaled slowly and placed the tips of her fingers on the mirror once more.

Again, the surface flooded with light and color, and again, she saw the same brightly colored pathway leading between the same pristine hedges. She gazed calmly at the image, and it didn't scare her as it had the first time she had seen it. It did not fill her with the same rush of excitement. It tickled at her senses instead of overwhelming them.

"Can you show me Storybrooke?" she murmured. "Can you show me my home?"

There was no response from the mirror, no change in the image.

She pressed her fingers more firmly onto the glass and tried to summon an image of Storybrooke the same way she could now summon an image of this strange world.

Nothing happened.

She angrily shoved the mirror fragment away and stood up.

"This is pointless," she snapped irritably. "What do I actually think I'm playing at? I can't do this. I don't even know what I'm trying to do."

So you're just going to give up?

The voice in her head was starting to really annoy her. It might have been what kept her alive, kept her swimming even as the waves closed over her head, kept her running even with the ogre behind her, but now it was useless. What good was it if it couldn't tell her what she was supposed to do now?

Think about what you know. Think about what you've learned. Come up with a plan and get yourself home.

"Easy for you to say," she grumbled, well aware that she was merely arguing with herself.

She walked over to the window and stared out at the ocean. What did she know? Certainly not much about this land – she hadn't paid enough attention to Henry's warnings or his fairytale book to know anything useful. And Mary Margaret had told her a little bit, but most of it had been about Regina and Cora, and what good would that do now?

She rubbed at her eyes.

"Come on, Swan," she said firmly, "think. What do you know?" She tapped her fingers impatiently against the stone of the windowsill, wishing something would come to mind. "Come on, think," she said desperately. "You almost got home twice. First the lake, then the ocean…"

She stopped, the words echoing in her mind.

First the lake, then the ocean.

Water.

Both portals had existed in water. Was that a coincidence, or something more?

Why hadn't she questioned it? Why hadn't it ever occurred to her to ask why the bean had to be used in the ocean, why the wardrobe ash and the compass only worked in the lake? Why hadn't she wondered about Hook's insistence that they sail through the portal?

Why hadn't she asked about the importance of water?

Hadn't August once told her that water was special, mystical? What else had he said? Something about it being worshiped? Something about it connecting lands?

She closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to dredge up the half-forgotten memory.

Water is a very powerful thing. Cultures as old as time have worshiped it. It flows throughout all lands, connecting the entire world. If anything had mystical properties – if anything had magic – well, I'd say it'd be water.

Excitement bubbled in her chest. Was that it, then? When August said that water flowed through all lands, did he really mean all worlds? When he said it connected the entire world, did he mean it connected every world? Was the ocean or the lake or some other body of water – was that her way home?

Then she sagged. Maybe water wasn't really that important. Maybe she was grasping at straws here, wanting to see meaning in something that was just coincidence. After all, there were other ways of traveling to different worlds. Regina's curse hadn't involved water, and neither had the enchanted tree that had taken her across worlds the first time or the hat that had brought Mary Margaret and her back here.

She shook her head and turned her back on the ocean.

"Water is probably just water," she said softly, disappointed.

But what if it is more than that?

"Oh, shut up," she snapped, walking back to the table. She glanced at the mirror, but picked up the vial of dust instead. She stared at it for a long moment, then replaced it with a heavy sigh.

"I need something," she whispered, her voice breaking over the words. "Please. A clue. Anything. I just… I need to get home."

Silence.