Questions to Answer:

1. Where was Zelena's cameo? Some of you guessed right: Nurse Zephyr is indeed our favorite green witch. She doesn't know who she is at the moment, but depending upon Cora's mood, that might change.

2. Why was Leroy in the asylum? Mostly because Cora doesn't like him, and finds him annoying. He's loyal to Snow, and Cora wants to punish anyone who was.

3. Will Regina and Emma get in a battle over Henry? Not this time around, but they'll face plenty of other challenges.

Warning: non-graphic references to torture in this chapter

Chapter Nineteen—"Love and Family"

"Regina, dearest, you've been avoiding me," Cora said, striding into Regina's office. She was dressed in a black business suit again, all polish and sharp edges, but did she never realize how ominous that made her look? Then again, knowing her mother, she treasured the look, even if she should have been trying to fool the hapless residents of Storybrooke into complacency. A metaphorical thunderstorm rolled along over her head, now, however, and Regina managed not to smile upon seeing it. There were only two days to go left before the elections, and Cora was getting angry.

"Nonsense, Mother. I've just been busy."

"Helping Miss Swan run for election," her mother half-snarled, her dark eyes flashing.

"Henry's interested in it. I thought you'd be happy that he's concentrating on something other than fairy tales," she replied sweetly. This was the first time she'd tried to stand up to her mother since their horrible confrontation at Graham's bedside. Regina had tried to put forth the appearance of good behavior since then, but the easiest way to do that was by avoiding Cora. Unfortunately, it was hard to do that when her mother walked in like this.

"Your impertinence is not amusing," Cora snapped. "Don't forget the consequences of disobeying me."

Before she knew it, Regina was on her feet. Perhaps she'd been on her best behavior for too long, or maybe she was just ready to snap. "Oh, I don't know. It's harder for you to murder people in this world, particularly now that you've crippled your favorite henchmen."

"You still have those you care about." The smile was sickeningly sweet.

"You won't touch Snow or David. You're too obsessed with your revenge," Regina scoffed. And you can't kill Emma without breaking the curse!

"Ah, but that doesn't protect Henry, now, does it?"

The world dropped out from under Regina, and suddenly her legs stopped working. Her rear hit the chair hard enough to make her teeth rattle, but she never noticed. Every cell in her body went cold. So cold.

"You wouldn't," she whispered, memories whirling through her mind.

"Test me, darling," said the woman who had once imprisoned and tortured Regina's True Love.

Regina swallowed hard, her temper forgotten. "No," she whispered. "I won't." Because Cora would hurt Henry. Regina had no doubts on that front—Cora had gone so far as to point out that Henry wasn't her blood not too long ago. The next words came out quiet and broken: "What do you want?"

"You'll not support Miss Swan in her lunatic desire to become sheriff," Cora replied conversationally, her tone as mild as it might be were she discussing the weather. "If anyone asks, you will voice your unreserved desire for Keith Law to be elected. Understood?"

"Yes, Mother," Regina whispered, feeling more helpless than she had in years.

Cora smiled. "Good. I knew you'd see things my way."

5 Years Before the Curse

A wave of Regina's hand distracted both guards and warped their minds into believing no one was in the poorly-lit corridor. It wasn't exactly an invisibility spell—those, Rumplestiltskin had insisted, were beyond her current level of expertise—but it was a small and important distraction which more or less made both guards believe that nothing had changed. She could have knocked them out, or let James kill them, but doing so would have alerted Cora. Regina knew that her mother had enchanted every guard who worked in the dungeons to alert her if they were in any way incapacitated; Cora did not plan on taking any risks where Snow as concerned. Of course, Regina had found that out the last time she'd tried to visit Daniel without permission, but she knew that Cora would have used the same safeguards here.

Rumplestiltskin's little spell, however, sailed right through the protections her mother had set up, just as he'd said it would. The distraction would only last ten minutes or so, but that was enough time for Regina and James to get Snow away. She'd managed to teleport herself and the prince as deep in the dungeons as she dared, close enough that these should be the only two guards she had to fool. No one came down here for recreation, after all, and—

"What was that?" the sharp-eared prince asked.

She'd heard it, too, footsteps approaching from a corridor off to the right. "I'll deal with that," Regina said, thinking quickly. "You go get Snow out. I'll meet you there."

"Right."

"Here. Take these." She held out the key ring that the Huntsman had turned a blind eye to her stealing; she really did rather like the poor man, and he often tried to rebel against her mother in small ways. Regina knew that her mother was planning on using the Huntsman as her executioner—Cora loved to watch him hate killing when the whim hit her—so he was more than willing to help her as subtly as he could.

"Thanks," James said, and quickly jogged down towards Snow's cell. Regina turned away, slipping into the shadows and readying that little distraction spell once again. Rumplestiltskin had shown her how to adjust it, how to use the spell to make someone turn and walk the opposite direction with just a tiny push.

There. The spark leapt out of her hand, and soon enough, the footsteps faded into the distance. Regina did not stop to see who it was; there wasn't time, and she didn't care. Instead, she turned and followed in James' path, coming around the corner in front of Snow's cell just in time to hear a horrible thunk and hear James hiss in pain before crumbling to the ground. Rushing forward and grasping magic in her hands, Regina prepared herself for the worst. If her mother was down here, she'd have to throw caution to the wind and fight her, because Regina wasn't going to let her sister die. Not like this, not ever, and certainly not to satisfy her mother's insane thirst for revenge. Snow was her sister, and Regina would protect her. She came out of the shadows with her hands full of fire, ready to attack—

Only to find herself face to face with her horrified sister.

"James?" Snow gasped, standing over the dazed prince with a rock in her hand.

Of course. They'd both been wearing hoods, and Snow hadn't been able to recognize James until after she'd brained him with a rock. But his impact with the floor must have made James' hood fall off, because now he was blinking dizzily and Snow was staring at him in horror. A sudden wild spike of amusement made the fireballs in Regina's hands sputter out; it was all she could do not to giggle. The stalwart warrior prince had been felled by a princess who was a half a foot shorter than he was…and a rock.

"Hello to you, too," James said unevenly, looking woozy.

"What are you doing here?" Snow demanded, and then went a little red. "I'm so sorry!"

"I came to rescue you, but I think you were doing okay by yourself," the prince replied, struggling to his feet. Snow reached out to help him, and Regina could almost physically feel the spark travelling between the two; magic resonated around them and filled the air with sweetness.

Snow smiled, and James smiled back, and Regina could see them falling even further in love. True Love, Rumplestiltskin had told her once, she remembered with a pang in her heart, is the most powerful magic. But it has to be fought for.

"Enough, you two," she interrupted, clearing her throat to push away her own traitorous feelings. "You can get all lovey-dovey later. Right now, it's time to get you out of here."

Snow started. "Regina?"

"Were you expecting someone else?" she grinned at her sister, pulling her hood down. "I told you that I wasn't going to let it end like this."

Suddenly, her arms were full of her sister and Snow was hugging her tightly. Regina returned the embrace, and felt Snow shake with emotion. "I never doubted you," her little sister whispered.

"I bet you didn't," Regina replied, but she felt herself smiling. "Now, let's get out of here. I can't teleport the three of us very far, but I can give us a head start to where James and I left some horses."

"Your mother is going to be furious." Snow pulled back to look at her.

"Let her," Regina declared, gesturing the prince closer.

Moments later, purple magic swirled around the trio, pulling Snow out of the dungeons and away from her pending execution.

Lacey had vague memories of voting in elections in Storybrooke, but she couldn't recall a turnout like this. It seemed like the entire town had shown up to vote in the elections for Sheriff, and everyone who wasn't talking about how Graham would never walk again was still talking about the mysterious asylum that Emma Swan had found underneath the library. The mayor, of course, had gone on record immediately to say that she knew nothing about this, and she'd even had Keith Law arrest one Miles Beauregard. Blame was being dropped right on Beauregard's head, even though he claimed at first to be nothing but a security guard. Today's edition of the Daily Mirror, however, said that he'd confessed to creating the asylum and locking all kinds of innocent people up in it.

Lacey found that more than a little suspicious. Oh, the headline was typical enough: "MILD MANNERED SECURITY GUARD A CLOSET PSYCHOPATH?" and any article written by Francis Scadlock was sure to be sensationalized. But she found the sudden confession odd.

Not that it was any of her business. She was just there to vote for sheriff—and not for the creep that had been stalking her almost as long as she could remember. So, Lacey stepped into the voting booth, filled out her ballot, and then stepped back out once she was finished. Ruby had somehow slipped into line behind her (Whale had probably let her in so he could get an unobstructed view of her backside), and she gave Lacey a quick smile and wave as she ducked in to take her place.

Four steps later, Lacey almost ran straight into her father. She managed to stop just short of hitting him, blinking in surprise. Moe French had been smiling, but when he looked down at her he started frowning.

"Hi, Dad," she said quietly.

His frown turned into a scowl. "Lacey."

"How are you?" she asked, glad he hadn't walked away yet. He usually did by this point, and Lacey felt pathetic for craving his approval so much, but she missed him. Renee was almost four years old! Surely her father had gotten over that by now. Renee deserved to know her grandfather, and Lacey missed her father. Moe had been trying to pretend that neither of them existed ever since Lacey had refused to have her child aborted, and then compounded matters by refusing to do a paternity test to determine who had fathered "it". Her father hadn't approved of either choice, but Lacey had been an adult, and he'd not been able to change her mind. So, he'd settled for disowning her and refusing to meet his granddaughter even once.

"I'm fine," Moe replied shortly, immediately starting to turn away. "Excuse me."

Desperately, Lacey grabbed his arm. "Don't," she pleaded.

The look her father turned on her was anything but loving, but Lacey was at her wits' end. Gold's paranoia had left her strung out and lonely. Their relationship had never been what someone could call conventional, but she'd always known that he cared for her. But listening to him say that he loved her right before he hung up on her had left Lacey in terrible need of family to turn to, and the only family she had other than Renee was her father. She'd known that calling him would only result in getting hung up on—and less nicely than Gold had done—but surely running into him like this had to be some sort of sign. Didn't it?

"I have places to be, Lacey," Moe told her dismissively, shrugging off the hand on his arm.

"More important than talking to your daughter for the first time in years?" she asked daringly, willing his answer to be different this time. Lacey wasn't blind. Things were changing in Storybrooke. Surely this could change, too?

"You're no daughter of mine," her father snapped, and Lacey jerked back, blinking back tears that wanted to rise. He'd told her not to come back, but—

"Dad—" she started, only to be cut off.

"Unless you've decided to come to your senses and get rid of the brat?"

"What?" Lacey gasped, a sudden surge of fury quashing the desire to cry. She snarled: "That's your granddaughter you're talking about."

"Your brat is no relation of mine," Moe retorted. "You had a good life, Lacey. Tony would have married you and given you a respectable name, but instead you had to ruin everything, didn't you? All because you couldn't keep your legs shut."

She'd had enough. All Lacey wanted was her father to act like he once did, to love her and understand her. Instead he berated her and told her she was a whore. "I never wanted to marry Tony," she snapped. "You just wanted his father's money to cover up your gambling debts, and he wouldn't give you a cent when I sent his precious boy packing."

Her father went bright red, and for a moment, Lacey thought he might hit her. But Moe hadn't done that often, save for the legendary walloping he'd delivered when she'd told him that she was pregnant. She'd gone to him frightened and in tears, and Moe had just been worried how his business associates would react to him finding out that his daughter was about to become an unwed mother. When he'd told her to leave, Lacey had been more than willing to do so, particularly since her father never apologized for what he'd said and done that night. She'd been willing to let it go, to patch things up with him…but he wasn't worth it.

"You brought shame down on your family," Moe said defensively, and Lacey rolled her eyes.

"I thought you said that I wasn't your family," she retorted. "And Renee has no problems at all with me. She's my family." She shook her head sadly, feeling grief war with anger and knowing she'd have a good cry later. "I don't know why I tried to talk to you. Forget it. You're not worth it."

Lacey spun and walked away before her father could say another word, her head held high and refusing to look back. She'd never stop loving her father, but until he decided to act decently towards her, she was done with him. Let him make the first move next time. Lacey was through working to get close to someone who didn't give a damn about her.

3 ½ Years Before the Curse

"Do you think we should tell Papa?" Belle asked, looking at where her right hand lay on her stomach. She wasn't showing yet, but she'd missed two months in a row, and Rumplestiltskin's magic had confirmed the truth for them just a week earlier. She was pregnant. They were going to have a child. Solid proof of their love was growing in her belly, and Belle was almost beside herself with excitement.

Had someone asked her a year earlier if she would have been excited to be with child, Belle would have responded pragmatically. Back then, she would have expected that any child she carried would be Gaston's, and that she would by now be safely married to the knight and expected to act as his broodmare. She would never have believed someone if they'd told her she would now be married to her True Love and carrying his child; in fact, Belle would have told that person they were crazy and that her life was already mapped out. She'd accepted her fate, after all, even if she had jumped at an opportunity to escape the drudgery of being Gaston's properly adoring broodmare. Go with a monster and save her people, even if it ruined her prospects and carried with it a potential of death? Belle was glad for the opportunity if it let her escape the perfectly proper life her father had scripted for her.

When the beast turned out to be less a monster and more a man—despite his outer looks—Belle had been delighted. Getting to know Rumplestiltskin had been slow and tricky, but he was worth the work. Now they were married, and if Belle's math was right, this miracle child in her belly had been conceived sometime around their magical wedding in Amorveria. She didn't know, and didn't care, if the child had been conceived there or here in the Dark Castle. Belle loved both of Rumplestiltskin's forms, human and Dark One both, and she was just happy to be with him, even when the infuriating man did things like doubt himself.

Fortunately, at the moment, Rumplestiltskin was not the man who worried her. And her husband was sitting next to her on the couch, his hand lying on top of hers. She didn't care if he had blackened claws instead of human nails, or that his hands shimmered goldly and were slightly scaled. Rumplestiltskin was hers, and he was exactly what she needed right now: a shoulder to lean on when her hopes were being dashed.

"That's….that's up to you, sweetheart," her husband answered her question softly.

"He still hasn't responded to my last letter," Belle replied sadly. "For the fifth time."

"I know."

Her father had been ignoring every message Belle sent since before their marriage, and having him ignore her hurt worse than Belle could ever have imagined. She'd always known that her father loved her, even if Sir Maurice had never understood her very well. Still, he'd always been there for her, and she knew that he'd argued so strongly against her coming with Rumplestiltskin because he loved her. Belle had thought he'd be against the idea of them marrying, and had braced herself for his anger…but she had never imagined that Maurice would just ignore her instead of saying a word in return.

It had made her cry more than once. Now she was only sad—and angry, too, but mostly sad that her father had apparently decided to cut her out of his life without even talking to her. Without even writing her. He didn't even have the decency to tell her that he was doing it; Belle learned through his lack of responses. I thought I knew Papa better than that, she thought dejectedly, and then glanced up at Rumplestiltskin with eyes that started to fill with tears again.

"Oh, sweetheart," her love whispered, and before Belle knew what was happening, he'd pulled her into his arms. "I'm sorry. If it wasn't me you married—"

"Shut up," she cut him off, her voice muffled in his shoulder. Squeezing her eyes shut didn't stop a few tears from leaking out, and Rumplestiltskin's silk shirt would suffer for that, but neither of them really noticed. "It's not your fault."

"Belle, I know what I am," Rumplestiltskin objected, sounding both annoyed and resigned. "If you'd married anyone other than a monster, your father would not be acting like this."

"I don't care," she replied stubbornly. "I love you. If Papa can't accept that, that's his problem."

"I could—"

"No," Belle cut him off again, not even wanting to know what Rumplestiltskin was going to volunteer to do. She straightened to look her husband in the eye. "Promise me you won't turn my father into anything. Or do anything to him. Please."

At least he had the grace to look a little abashed. "Of course I won't. I promise."

"Good." Squaring her shoulders bravely, Belle swallowed back her grief. "My family is here," she told Rumplestiltskin, glancing significantly at her stomach once more. "Papa will come around, and if he doesn't"—her voice tried to crack, but she fought it back—"I made my choice."

Later, it would occur to Belle that she'd never asked Rumplestiltskin to promise not to talk to her father, but by then it was too late. Her husband was very specific in the promises he made, and while Belle could count on him not killing her father (even if that was a loophole she'd inadvertently left him), she'd never specified that Rumplestiltskin was not to scare Maurice. Protective as he was, Rumplestiltskin was bound to do something, and by the time he fessed up to it, the damage was done.

He'd seen the two of them talk, and had seen Lacey march away with her head held high. It took all of Rumplestiltskin's self-control not to stalk over and tell his father-in-law what he thought of him, but he'd done that before and the fool hadn't gotten the message then, either. Moe French was a cold-hearted bastard who ignored his daughter and granddaughter. At least Sir Maurice had wanted his daughter back, even if he had not wanted to respect her choices. Rumplestiltskin had never thought that he could respect someone lessthan he respected Maurice, but Moe French had thoroughly accomplished that. How anyone could ever live with themselves for abandoning their own child was a mystery to him. Letting Bae go had been the worst decision Rumplestiltskin had ever made, and he hated himself every day for not being there for Gabi.

Renee, he told himself firmly, watching Lacey's back and aching to go to her. But he couldn't, not in public. Not for either one of them. Your daughter doesn't know you are her father, not here, and she's safer that way.

Yet he still felt like he was abandoning them both, and it burned.

3 ½ Years Before the Curse

"She deserves better, you know," Rumplestiltskin said, barely able to keep the acid out of his voice.

He had stood silently in the shadows as Maurice took Belle's newest letter—the sixth—out of the box they had sent with Gaston and burned it unread. The fool had probably tried to put the box in the fire when it showed up, not understanding that Rumplestiltskin had enchanted it to be proof against such things. So now it sat on a bookshelf in the fool's presence chamber, gathering dust until Maurice removed every letter soon after it arrived.

Rumplestiltskin was rather gratified to see that Maurice jumped, went stark white, and then spun to face him. Belle might frown at him frightening her father, but the bastard deserved every bit of fear Rumplestiltskin could instill in him. The larger man looked utterly shocked to find the Dark One in his private chambers, and the knight's eyes darted wildly around the room, searching for a weapon before he seemed to realize that going for one would be utterly useless. For his part, Rumplestiltskin just danced away from the wall, light on his feet and his posture all the more threatening because he didn't have to act overtly dangerous.

"What have you done to my Belle?" Sir Maurice demanded.

The fool had courage. Rumplestiltskin had to give him that. Most fathers would have written their daughters off the moment the Dark One swept them away, but Maurice had sent Gaston to save her, and had tried to say no to Rumplestiltskin's demand. Most fathers crumbled far more quickly than Maurice had, sending the wailing daughters off to be maids for the Dark One and forgetting them soon after.

Rumplestiltskin had plenty of experience with the type. He'd bargained for more than one maid over the centuries, and although he hadn't murdered most of them, or even driven most insane (that was just the once, and the girl really did have it coming), he found that their families never wanted them back. No, they were considered contaminated or dead, and he sent most of them off under better circumstances than they'd arrived after he tired of them. None of them had been anything like Belle, of course, but he'd not mistreated all of them. Or even most. He'd certainly never despoiled any of them! Not that it had mattered to their families. Thinking of that only stoked his temper; having had a family and lost it, Rumplestiltskin would never be able to understand how some men viewed their wives and children as possessions.

"I?" he asked sharply. "I am not the one who has refused to even read her letters. I think, dearie, that it's you who's doing the damage, not I."

Maurice had the decency to flinch slightly at that. "I read the first one," the knight said with Belle's courage. "I saw how you enchanted her. I'm not going to read things that I know you have forced her to write."

"Forced?" Somehow, that possibility had never occurred to Rumplestiltskin, and he hoped that it had never occurred to Belle, either. The entire concept took him by surprise. Why would he have forced her to write anything, even if she was only his maid?

"My Belle would never fall for a beast like you," Maurice spat.

"Then you never knew her very well at all, now, did you?" Rumplestiltskin retorted before he could stop himself, giggling nastily, with the dark voice of his curse only egging him on. Tell him how you deflowered his daughter. Tell him how she cried your name. Shoving that aside, he grinned, all rotten teeth and victory: "I never needed to enchant her."

All I needed to do was fall in love, he thought, but he'd never admit that. Not with the look on Maurice's face.

"My poor girl," the knight breathed, and the curse cackled within Rumplestiltskin. With an effort, he brought it under control.

"Indeed, your 'poor girl'," he snarled. "Poor in that her father ignores her and will not respond to even her most heartfelt entreaties. Poor in that she wishes for her father to know of her happiness, and he spits in her face by turning his back on her, even when she saved his miserable life."

"I am not—" Maurice started, but Rumplestiltskin cut him off.

"You made her cry, Sir Maurice," he said, his voice high and mocking. "I'm of a mind to kill you for that alone."

"Begone, demon, and torment me no more," was the response, and if Rumplestiltskin had not been able to detect conflict on Maurice's face, he would have killed him then and there. Yet the next words did not help him rein in his temper. "We will honor Belle's memory and her sacrifice as she would want us to honor them. I will not sully her memory with your foul words or fouler deeds."

Rumplestiltskin gaped. "You speak of her as if she were dead."

"I am sure that she will be when you are through with her," Maurice said sadly. "I have grieved for my daughter already. Why must you mock me?"

Safe. He had promised Belle—oh, so long ago—that her friends and family would be safe. Surely that covered this cretin, but Rumplestiltskin's temper, never mind that of the curse, was raging so strongly that he had to remind himself of this. Repeatedly. He had come here to try to get Maurice to respond to Belle's letters, because Belle loved this fool, and this was what he got in response? Maurice did not deserve Belle's affection.

"Mock you?" he demanded in a snarl. "If I were mocking you, dear, you would know it."

Quickly, Rumplestiltskin closed the distance between them, and was gratified to see the much larger man cringe away from him. He had never been tall, but as the Dark One, he did not need to be.

"I came here," he continued very slowly, doggedly holding back his desire to squash this fool like the bug he was, "because Belle misses you. But she deserves better than to know that you think of her as tainted and dead."

He spat the last words with enough fury that a wind was starting to whip around the room, making tapestries lift off of the walls and the windows shake in their mountings. But Rumplestiltskin did not care.

"How could I not, with what you must have done to her?"

If that was genuine pain on Maurice's face, Rumplestiltskin was too angry to notice it.

"She is my wife!" he thundered.

"Call it what you will," Maurice replied brokenly. "But I know my daughter would never willingly consent to such an unholy match, and I shudder to think of what you have done to her."

The image of a father grieving for his child—whom he was undoubtedly imagining hurt and abused—was enough to douse the worst of Rumplestiltskin's rage.

"I am not that kind of monster," he said quietly, but even as the words came out, he knew Maurice would never believe him.

Rumplestiltskin did not wait for a response; instead, he vanished in a swirl of golden smoke. The color made him think of the dress Belle had worn the day they first met, but it gave him no comfort. That is what you get for trying to reason with fools, his curse whispered in his mind. Do not care what they think. They are beneath you. Usually, Rumplestiltskin knew better than to listen to that voice, knew better than to give in to it. But in this case, he rather thought he agreed with his curse. They were all beneath him. All except Belle.

"Can I buy you that drink now, love?"

Killian had to raise his voice to be heard over the din inside Granny's; it seemed like half the town was packed in there to celebrate. Of course, had Keith Law—despicable lowlife that he was—won the race for sheriff, the party would have been at the Rabbit Hole and probably would have involved ladies of ill repute, but Killian tried not to let his disappointment show. Although that party might have been wilder and far more entertaining, it would not help him accomplish his goals. So, he had to make do with what he had.

Given how furious Cora was going to be over being thwarted like this, he rather figured that he needed all the points in his favor that he could get. Cora had told him a week earlier than Emma Swan was the one who could break her precious little curse, and ordered Killian to continue working to get in her good graces. On one hand, he was happy to do so. Miss Swan was a rather lovely looking lass, and Killian had always possessed an eye for beauty. On the other, if Storybrooke's new sheriff actually succeeded in breaking the curse, it would not do to get on the bad side of the new power in town. Killian was a pirate, after all, and pirates sailed with the wind. He wasn't prepared to abandon Cora yet; doing so would be dangerous at best and fatal at worst, but Killian believed in keeping his options open. Getting on Emma's good side—or perhaps somewhere more intimate—would serve both of his purposes.

For now, however, he would continue to do as the queen bid. She was far too tricky and too powerful to cross. He would just have to time his advances properly and make sure that the Savior never knew of his other allegiances. Getting in her good graces would ensure he was able to swap sides if he needed to, and if he could make the lass fall in love with him, so much the better. He could spend his energies on far worse pursuits.

His friendly question was rewarded with a smile. "Sure. Although I think that's 'Sheriff' now, and not 'love'," Emma pointed out cockily.

"Ah, what are titles between friends?" Killian grinned. He had always liked confidence in a woman.

"Is that what we are?" she countered quickly, her wits obviously not dulled at all by the empty glass in front of her.

"Of course," he replied, waving Ruby over with his right hand. Even though he'd woken up in Storybrooke with two working hands, the left one never quite felt right. He knew that it was Cora's doing, and Killian was not fool enough to trust such a gift, particularly when he'd never been told the price. "Bring me your finest whiskey and give our good Sheriff another of whatever she is drinking!"

Ruby grinned back at him. "Coming right up," she said with a saucy wink.

Killian returned it. Now that lass was a handful, and one he'd enjoyed on several occasions. Ruby—whoever she was back home—wasn't looking for attachments any more than he was, and that meant their times together were always enjoyable. Pay attention, mate! he scolded himself. Keep your eye on the target!

While he'd been distracted, Emma had turned back to her roommate, that dumpy schoolteacher who Cora always wanted him to keep an eye on. She'd ordered him to seduce Mary Margaret boring Blanchard early in their days, and Killian had worked at that task until the stalker whom Cora had cursed into obsessing over the little teacher had tried to run him off. Then he'd cut his losses and Cora had been satisfied enough, although Killian had not enjoyed the experience. So, now he leaned in between the pair, knowing that Mary Margaret would shift away to give him space so that he could smile at Swan.

"I hear it was quite the landslide victory," he said to her, meeting her eyes as Emma turned to look at him. Ruby delivered the drinks just in time, and he raised his to her. "My congratulations."

"Thank you, Killian," the pretty blonde replied. "I do appreciate the help, whatever you did."

"I'm sure my humble contribution was hardly required at all," he said modestly. Truth be told, it hadn't been. The discovery of the asylum had done the trick, and Killian was almost annoyed by that. He'd wanted Swan to be further in his debt than she now was. "Though I was glad to do my part."

"I won't forget it," Emma promised, and Killian resisted the urge to tell her that he'd make sure of that.

Instead, he straightened, drink in hand and raising it to the other patrons pitching his voice so that he could be heard over the crowd. "I'd like to propose a toast!" he shouted. "To our new Sheriff Swan!"

"Sheriff Swan!" damn near a hundred voices echoed, and Killian met Emma's eyes before he knocked back his drink in one gulp. She matched his motion—was she also drinking liquor instead of beer? If so, he was fascinated already—and Killian wiggled his eyebrows at her, just enough to make her giggle.

Then, slamming his glass down on the bar, he offered her a half bow (the most a man could get away with in this world), and strode out of the diner. Know when to draw back and make them chase you, his brother had always told him, and Killian had distilled seduction into a fine art over the years. He permitted himself one small glance over his shoulder, just to show Swan that he was interested, and sure enough, she was still watching him and smiling.

Yes, this would work out nicely.

A/N: So, Emma is sheriff, and Snow and Charming always seem to have a blow to the head involved somewhere in their relationship. Do tell me what you think of this chapter, particularly if you think Cora will make good on her threat to Henry and what she'll do.

Next up: Chapter Twenty: "The Price of Victory," where Emma and Cora have another spat, Cora continues to manipulate Hook, and the Evil Queen hatches a nasty plan. Back in the past, Cora finds Regina while she, Snow, and Charming are on the run and everything starts to go wrong.