Double Trouble 55

A/N: Dear OUAT, time travel is much better when it's SQ. Sincerely, me.

Hi lovely readers, thanks for reading and supporting the story up to this point. This is what I've been working towards for ages. There are lots of answers coming up in this chapter (and the next one). Let me know what you think. Enjoy!

Also, I have a new short story, it's called Snakes and Tales. Part 1/4 was posted tonight. Check out my profile for the link. I also have links there to the fabulous fanart that has been created for this story (especially helebing who has a lot of Em/Ri stuff), and there's a link to sultrysweet's documentary on SQ that I am in. I'm on tumblr (princesscharming1983) if you want to come say hi over there.

Happy Mother's Day to Emma and Regina! HMD to my actual mother :).

Chapter 55 'Revenge'

"Why don't you both come in out of that nasty weather?"

Gold barely finished the words before Emma pushed her way past him into the shop, followed by Regina. He shut the door behind them, causing the bell above to ring and the noise from outside was hushed. He flipped the sign in the window over to display 'CLOSED' as though he could turn away the storm like an angry customer.

"What do you mean my curse wasn't broken?!" Regina demanded.

"I thought I broke the curse," said Emma, confused. "When I kissed Henry at the hospital there was a pulse of light. People got their fairytale memories back. The Blue Fairy said it was True Love's kiss."

"She was wrong, as she often is. Do you have a romantic interest in your son, Miss Swan?" asked Gold.

Before any of them saw it Emma's fist made contact with the pawnshop owner's face. The smack made a sickening crunch and caused Gold's head to snap back. Emma glared at him in disgust, not at all sorry for what she'd done. He had needled them for long enough and she finally snapped. He had it coming.

Regina was furious at the implication as well. "Of course she doesn't you despicable imp! What the hell are you talking about?"

"Bastard!" Emma spat. She nursed her hand and breathed out heavily. "You know you deserved that."

Gold held a hand to his jaw and it began to glow as it healed magically. Emma sure was a quickdraw now that she could consciously access her magic. He hadn't been able to avoid it even with all his power.

"Explain your reason for asking such a thing," Regina demanded.

"Very well." Gold's tooth glinted like his namesake. "The curse wasn't really broken because Henry is not Emma's True Love, he's her son. Familial love, though powerful enough in its own right, is not as powerful as True Love. It was Emma's own magic that saved Henry and restored people's memories. But it wasn't enough to break the curse properly. She needs help for that formidable task."

"I didn't know what I was doing," said Emma defensively. "I didn't know I was 'breaking' the curse the first time. Now I have to do it again? The magic border maintaining the town and people's real identities is shrinking. Is that why this is happening?"

"Yes, it is the curse. It wasn't really broken like everyone assumed, it was merely damaged. Regina's magic is now out on its own in the world and, like her, it wants revenge for its injuries. The curse is coming and it is out for blood."

"Revenge? You're making it sound like a person. Like it can think."

"Magic from a powerful enough creator has a certain sort of sentience," said Gold. "So yes, in a way it can think. Apparently this magic thinks like Regina does, it's self-destructive and vengeful."

Emma remembered back to the first time when she'd heard that magic could think. That was what they were saying at the Council meeting: 'Beware of magic, in case it turns and head straight for you.' She remembered Regina out in the woods with a bloody nose insisting that she refrain from attacking the border with magic, then only five minutes ago Regina's cheek had been cut when the wind picked up a single shard of glass from two blocks away to strike her with.

"When Regina and I went close to the border it picked her up into the air and threw her back. It's not trying to protect her from leaving is it. It's coming after her."

"Yes." Gold nodded. "It's coming for its creator and it will destroy everything in its wake. Including the life she created."

"We have to stop it. What do we do about it?"

Despite the threat to her own life, Regina was calm. "There's no benefit to you if the town and its magic is destroyed, Gold. You know how to get things done. You always know everything. Tell us how to fix this."

"I'll make you a deal," said Gold, with his usual hint of mischief as he adjusted the stinky scarf around his neck. "If you help to restore Belle's memories I will help you with your magic problems."

Seeing that Emma was about to blindly accept his deal, Regina jumped in first. "DON'T say anything. Never trust him. Gold, we're not agreeing to anything until you explain what we have to do."

"You need to make a True Love potion. Similar to what was bottled up inside the egg which was inside the dragon last year."

"The one that you stole from me!" accused Emma. She shuddered at the memory of fighting the dragon only to lose the precious egg minutes later. "After I fished it out of her."

"Yes. The one that I used to bring magic to Storybrooke by dropping it in the well in the woods. The potion was made from a selection of rare ingredients, including a hair from the head of each of your parents, Snow White and Prince Charming."

"Like a polyjuice potion?" Emma was too worried to be amused by the connection to one of her and Henry's favourite books. "So we make another potion from their hair. We're safely supplied with potions until Mary Margaret and David go bald?"

"It can't be done. A True Love potion can only be made once from any given True Love pairing. Otherwise we'd be making them all the time to solve our problems."

"What about you and your Stockholm victim, Belle?" said Regina.

"Currently she's not Belle. We need to find someone else." Gold's hand darted out and plucked a long curly blonde hair from Emma's head. "This is a good start."

Emma yelped. "Ouch! What the hell? Do you want another punch in the face?"

"Not particularly, Miss Swan. You will need this to make your True Love potion."

"But who is her True Love? Is it Neal?" said Regina. She was clearly not very happy about that possibility, though she would have refused to label the emotion as jealousy.

Emma rubbed her scalp with a sullen grimace. "Tell me it's not Neal, cos I am so not going there again. What is True Love anyway?"

"It's magic," said Gold by rote. "The most powerful magic of all in fact."

"No, I mean, how is it different from regular old ordinary love? How do you know if someone is your True Love?"

"You just know. The hearts will seek and find each other and once they do, they find it difficult to let each other go. True Love is not platonic. It must be a romantic sexual love. Not every coupling or marriage involves it and not every person has a True Love out there somewhere, in fact, it's quite rare. True Love simply means a love that survives the random events that occur in our rather unpredictable realms. The couple is destined to meet, every other variable in time or history can vary but not that. They usually fall in love and no matter what befalls them or stands in their way, no matter how they seek to avoid each other or how they are separated in time or space, the fates will keep throwing them in each other's paths, rewriting the timeline to ensure they meet up time and time again. You see now why the Evil Queen's plots to separate your parents would never have worked."

"Who is my True Love then?" said Emma blankly. "If I even have one. How do I know?"

"By now I should think you know exactly who it is, Miss Swan. She knows."

Emma shook her head once, ignoring his pointed stare. "It can't be. Her True Love was Daniel. Losing him devastated her. She loved him first."

"Really, dearie?... Did not the two of you meet as teenage girls and fall in love at first sight? There's never been a fairytale quite like yours before. No-one from the Enchanted Forest has ever even heard of this happening, let alone a True Love pairing between two women. It seems the fates have a sense of humour. They worked through mortals to bring us all here to make it possible and to throw you two together. It seems you missed your chance the first time around. Think of it as an intervention. They must want you together very badly. Or think you need a lot of help to stop your bickering long enough for you to fall in love. The rest, however, is entirely up to you."

Gold produced a shorter strand of dark brown hair out of nowhere. He twisted the light and dark strands and they held together as though they were meant to stay entwined. The long curly blonde one was coiled protectively around the shorter brunette strand. He held the twisted pair out for Emma to take.

"Who's hair is the other one?" asked Emma.

Regina narrowed her eyes at what she assumed was a strand of her own hair and then looked at Gold with accusing eyes. "It's mine. You took that from me. When you were in my office, asking me all those questions about my relationship with Emma and why I never let her leave Storybrooke last year. You took a hair from my blazer."

"I did, yes," said Gold.

Emma raised the strands up to the light and examined them. "So. If Regina and I are True Loves and we make a True Love Potion with this… then what do we do with it?"

"The well?" Regina answered first and Gold nodded his confirmation. "The waters of Lake Nostos restore what has once been lost."

"Ok, so we drop it in the well," said Emma. "Will it bring back the lost memories permanently and break Regina's curse for real?"

"Yes," said Gold. "If that's what you will it to do. But there is a catch."

"What now?"

"This True Love potion must involve the product of it's magic. Emma, you had to touch the potion made from your parents love before I could use it. That's why I needed you to retrieve it for me. And another thing-"

"There's MORE?" cried Emma.

"We must be certain that the two of you are indeed a True Love match otherwise the results could be undesirable. If you are not each other's True Loves this potion will kill whatever love there is between you. Think carefully before you decide to risk it. To be certain, you must have shared a kiss to activate the potion before it expires on the third day ... and not just any kiss, the kiss of True Love."

"Fine," said Emma confidently. "That's the easy part of the plan. Kissing is something we know how to do. But what or who is the product of our magic?"

"Henry. Who else."

Emma rolled her eyes in disbelief, remembering the fight with Regina about their son's origins. "You think he's our magic baby too? It's not biologically possible. I get that you guys are fairytale characters from a place where weird shit happens all the time, but I'm a real person and I know that it doesn't work that way in the real world. It's impossible."

"But that is entirely the point of magic. To make the impossible happen. Every act of magic violates the laws of the natural world here. Fairies violate gravity when they fly. Conjuring an object out of nowhere violates thermodynamics. You yourself have exploited magic, Emma. You know things you couldn't possibly know, such as when someone is lying or their location. I believe you can even make yourself unseeable. You've been bending and altering the science of this world your whole life."

Regina took a glance at Emma, trying to determine if Gold's arguments held any weight. It appeared that she wasn't entirely convinced but she didn't argue further. Her long-held skepticism was tough to crack. Regina wasn't going to renew their fight either by repeating her arguments from earlier since it likely wouldn't do any more good. What she suspected about Henry didn't change anything for her, but Emma was resistant to the very idea of it. Maybe Emma was afraid because she didn't want her son to be involved in anything magical. She hoped that it wasn't because Emma hated the idea of having to share him with Regina in the one way that her motherhood of Henry was more 'legitimate'. Something about it was definitely pushing Emma's escape button though.

"I have proof," offered Gold.

"What proof?" said Regina.

"Your mother's globe. It shows blood relations."

Gold went on to tell them how he used the globe to locate his son Neal in New York. "Would you care for a demonstration?"

"I've seen it before," Regina cut him off. "No, I don't need proof. I've never cared about Henry's parentage in terms of genetics. It changes nothing for me. He is my son regardless of how he was created. I'm only interested in his future. Tell us what we need to know about the potion. What does Henry have to do with it?"

"Your son is the one to brew this potion and he will need whatever magic he can muster to do so. "

Emma and Regina shared a look of alarm as they realised something they'd tried to ignore for too long. The hints had been there all along. Henry knew more than he'd let on. Whenever Emma asked him anything he was always careful to answer in such a way that she couldn't tell whether he was lying or not. He knew about the time travel stuff, he got in trouble at school for using magic against another boy, he was implicated in this too. Every time Emma tried to voice her suspicions Regina made it clear that the possibility was not up for discussion. As much as she'd willed herself to ignore the hints she couldn't help suspecting the truth.

"Henry has magic," Regina said, finally confirming the reason she'd felt an uneasy dread about him for a while. "He's been involved in this the whole time."

Gold smiled. "Yes, he is a very promising student. Why should he not be given that both his mothers are powerfully magical? He draws the magic of three from both sides of his family, light and dark."

"Magic of three," Emma echoed. "What does that mean?"

"On one side he is the third in a line of powerful dark sorcerers: Cora, Regina, Henry. On the other side he is the third in a line of children from successive True Love pairings: the first is Snow White because King Leopold and his first wife Queen Eva were True Loves, the second is Emma Swan, as the child of Snow White and Prince Charming, and then there is Henry. The child of yourself and-… well, I think you get the idea. Three is a powerful magical quantity."

"So he's special?"

"More than you know. The odds of descending from a family tree like his are rather long. Such a child will never be seen again most likely."

"And that's why he has magic?" said Emma.

"Yes, because he is three times descended from both dark sorcery and the magic of True Love, which is also known as light magic. That's a lot of power for one little boy."

"But it took me years to learn magic," said Regina. "Longer than Henry has even been alive. How can he wield such power already?"

"He's been coming to my shop for lessons. I taught him a few things but I believe he's been experimenting by himself. Henry cast a curse and it brought your younger selves here."

"A CURSE?" the two women said in perfect unison. It seemed the shocks today weren't yet finished with them.

"Henry cursed us?" said Emma. "But we're his parents!"

Regina gritted her teeth. "He's grounded."

"Hell yeah. Forever."

Neither of Henry's mothers wanted him to have magic: Emma, because she had grown up with raw uncontrolled powers that she had struggled with and hadn't understood and Regina, because she was deathly afraid of her son following in her footsteps and the dark road she'd gone down. Emma's power was innate and Regina's was learned but neither of them could escape it anymore. It was part of each of them and had been for a long time.

Now that it was confirmed, it seemed like they'd known it all along.

Regina pinned a deathly glare on Gold and stepped up in his face. "This is your doing. You've been teaching him how to use dark magic. It's dangerous. You've corrupted him like you did me! He's a good boy, he's not like you and I. Now his heart has been darkened and for what reason?"

"As the product of True Love," Gold explained. "Like Emma and Mary Margaret as well, Henry's heart is protected from any darkness spreading through it. It is too pure to be completely corrupted by dark magic because the light side always fights back. Henry is especially powerful because he can perform magic at no cost to himself or others."

"But he cast a dark curse didn't he? There must be a price for that."

Gold made a 'so-so' gesture with his palm. "It's more of a light-grey curse. Not all curses are as terrible as the Evil Queen's and require such a heavy sacrifice. In this case, the Curse of Reflection brought your younger selves out into the open. Like the dream where you walk into a highschool exam wearing nothing but your good looks, if you have them. Like the world's worst yearbook picture brought to life, wandering around to remind you of your past regrets and mistakes. It gives one a mirror to hold up to one's self and most people do not like what they see."

"But it hasn't been that bad." Emma twisted her mouth, unconvinced. "It's nothing compared to torture and murder. Having the girls here has been more like constant mischief than evil. Why is this reflecting spell called 'dark'?"

"Because it imposes a situation on another without their consent. Some people who look into the mirror of their past are driven mad by lost opportunities and regret. Others fight with themselves for dominance and so they both lose. Still others ignore what their reflection has to teach them and never heal. This curse is not to be treated lightly. No curse is."

"Where did Henry get this Curse of Reflection?" Regina demanded, highly suspicious of her former teacher. "Did you make it for him like you did mine? You know as well as I do that curses have to be cast from originals, not copies."

"You seem upset, dear. I would have thought you'd be more pleased, given your affinity with mirrors, especially magic ones. Your son is progressing very well as an apprentice of sorcery. He is extraordinarily talented. More than you were at twice his age, for instance."

"Where," Regina repeated her question firmly. "Did Henry get the curse."

"From your mother's book. I may have hinted something about it. He was the one responsible for bringing your teenage doubles to Storybrooke to show you your reflections."

"But why would Henry even want that?" asked Emma.

"I see the future. I told him that I saw the two of you becoming romantically involved. He was rather taken with the idea of the two of you not fighting anymore and having a family together. He wanted you to have some time to get to know each other and fall in love. To do that you had to understand and come to terms with each other's pasts. This is what I meant by the fates altering the timeline, they did it through Henry."

"The girls," said Regina. "They're not here from the past? It was never about time travel, it was only a curse. Nothing we told them was ever going to affect the future."

"They are pure magic, your mirror images. They are figments of the past, so in fact they aren't even really here."

Emma regarded him suspiciously, noticing that he was hiding something. "No. I don't think you're telling us the whole truth, Gold. They are real. They're physically here. We can touch them and talk to them. Other people can too. They're in photos. Their presence here has changed us, it has already affected our future. I don't believe they're not really our younger selves. I think the time travel is real."

Regina let her fingers brush against Emma's to get her attention. She could tell she had it even though Emma didn't look back at her. She spoke softly, "If they are really us and they go back to the past then everything that's happened to them since they came to Storybrooke has always been part of our pasts. We were them, we just don't remember it that way for some reason."

"Which means…" Emma stared forward, but she was acutely aware of the touch. She let her thumb graze Regina's index finger in return and spoke as though it were only to her.

"...It means that when I was Em's age I was already pregnant with Henry and didn't know it. He always has been our son in every way, in the future and the past. But you and I don't have those memories. When we went back to where we came from we didn't remember, but our hearts were so full of love for each other that we each glommed onto the first people we met in the past - Daniel and Neal - to cope with the loss. Our memories are wrong. You cast the curse because you were heartbroken over me, and I gave up the baby because I was alone and depressed over losing you. Our hearts remembered."

Gold seemed impressed that she had figured it out. He cast a shrewd glance at Emma.

Regina smiled sadly towards the end of Emma's explanation and then she turned back to Gold. "How did Henry manage to do this?"

"It's lucky that he did," said Gold. "Otherwise we all would've had some problems. He asked her but the Blue Fairy refused to grant him a wish. Just like she refused all of yours, Regina, on the basis that you are of the dishonoured Mills family. Henry wasn't eligible until Astrid volunteered to be fairy godmother to the newest Royal family, the Swan-Millses. After he cast the curse, he used his wish to ensure that the two of you would bring him into existence. If he hadn't then he would never have been born in the first place. It took a curse and a wish to bring Henry into the world, a combination of light and dark magic. Just like the two of you."

Emma side-eyed him. "Henry cast a curse and made a wish that resulted in his own birth? How can that be? Doesn't that contradict itself? It's one of those things-"

"A paradox," said Regina.

"No, it's not a temporal paradox," said Gold. "He was already here in existence as an eleven-year-old, so therefore he must've been born in the first place. He knew he had to do it because he had already done it. Time is not linear but it is self-consistent. The future, the past, and the present are all one and the same."

Emma groaned, "Oh my god. You're hurting my head."

"If your boy had never been born then Storybrooke, its residents, and its Mayor would've been doomed to their unhappy fates for all eternity. Luckily for all of us Henry was indeed born and he grew up and found the Saviour who will soon be instrumental in finally breaking the Queen's curse. And now here we are."

"If you can see the future, Gold," said Emma, giving the wily imp a winning smile. "Tell us what's going to happen. Do we succeed? How does this end?"

Gold chuckled like she was a child that said something endearingly funny. "Oho, dearie, it doesn't work like that. Not everything about the future has been determined. I can only see a few things that are immutable, everything else is obscured. Some events must happen, but the rest is wiggle room. My power of foresight is not like reading a day-old newspaper. What I see is open to interpretation. It wouldn't do you any good to know what I know. Trust me on that. The ending of this story is up to you."

Regina glared at him. "You planned this whole thing didn't you. You wanted all this to happen."

"If I did the first part of the plan would have been not telling you about it."

"So let me get this straight," said Emma, taking a deep breath to summarise everything. "You taught Henry magic and told him that you saw his mothers together in the future, encouraged him to play matchmaker, and then threatened him with being ret-conned out of existence if we didn't get together. You gave him the idea so that he'd find the curse in Cora's book and bring the teenagers to Storybrooke so that they'd fall in love with each other instead of with Daniel and Neal, contradicting our memories which we now know to be incorrect. That meant that Em and Ri would learn from each other the love and strength that they needed in order to go back to the past to do what needed to be done to save everyone in the future.

"Otherwise Regina wouldn't have cast the curse, Henry would never have been born, Storybrooke wouldn't exist, and Regina and I would never have met. All of which would contradict the need for us to come here as teenagers in the first place, thus creating a paradox. But the girls did come here and everything happened the way it happened. It helped Regina and I to understand and accept each other long enough to fall in love and become a new True Love pairing… so that we can make the rare True Love potion which can only be made once for each couple … so that we can use it to finally break the curse for real and bring back everyone's memories permanently."

Emma blinked. "That is the most convoluted plan I've ever heard. Why'd you do this?"

"I did what I had to." Gold seemed sincere for once. "For Belle. I want her to remember who she is, who I am. Do you think there's an easy solution to all magical problems just because you want there to be? Do you think you can just sit back and wait until the Blue Fairy comes up with something out of thin air? Powerful problems require powerful fixes. We're talking about defeating the curse to end all curses. True Love is needed for this."

"You are the absolute grandmaster of Insanely Convoluted Plans, you know that right?"

"I'll take that as a compliment. Now, do we have a deal?"

Regina was still suspicious of the deal and repeated its terms. "What you're saying is we have to make this potion to save Storybrooke. To do that Emma and I have to determine whether we are each other's True Love. But if we are wrong and we try to make this potion then we will fall out of love, the town will be destroyed, and-"

"Henry will be killed in the process of it," said Gold. "He is the literal manifestation of your love, he is the love you created. Without him it could end badly for us all. Good luck."

The stakes were never so high as they were now and both women knew it. Their son, their family, their town... everything important was at risk.

Emma's eyes unfocused for a minute as she thought it all over. "Now we know why the girls are in Storybrooke and how they got here but that still doesn't answer the main question. The curse isn't broken but what made the border start to shrink in the first place?"

Gold's answer was accompanied by a shrug. "That I do not know."

"I know someone who does." Regina's eyes darkened. She turned on her heel and fled the shop.

Emma ran after her and paused in the doorway, standing between the calm inside and the storm outside. She looked back towards the counter where the pawnshop owner was standing. He was calm and apparently unrattled by the threat to the Storybrooke's very existence. He was content to let them handle everything without interference? He had given up answers and explanations easily and seemingly without a price so far…

What was he up to? Was he telling the truth? Was he really on their side, helping them?

"Gold," said Emma, from under a fierce brow. "If you try to swindle us, or if what you just told us turns out not to be true, or if anything happens to my family... I won't stop at one punch next time and after I'm done I'll let Regina go at you. Clear?"

"As crystal," said Mr Gold.

His blase reply did not give her confidence in his sincerity but she was too short of time right now. Emma left the shop letting the door slam and the bell rang with a clatter when the wind rushed in. Out in the street she accessed her magical sense to feel for Regina's location and rushed to catch up to her, all the time wondering where the hell they were headed next.

Note: The definition of True Love and True Love's Kiss in this story is different to that of canon (mostly because they haven't actually defined it at all). Their use of TLK is inconsistent. How come Regina was able to TLK Henry when he didn't remember her but Charming wasn't able to do it in the flashback when Snow took the potion to forget him? And why couldn't they break the curse with TLK when they were MM and David? And if it's not True Love's first kiss then can't they just kiss every time they need to break a curse? And if can Emma and Regina can give TLK to their son, can't every parent do that to their child as long as they truly love them? Or do they have to be magical. Why are they breaking the concept of TLK by making it apply to something other than romantic love? SO MANY QUESTIONS.