He should have asked questions. He wished that he'd asked questions instead of staring into the light after the Seer, too mesmerized to speak. He should have roared when she'd gone away, demanded that she be returned to him, to give him the answers that he sought. Instead, he'd inched his way closer to the bridge, the one that returned to being only a diving board-like plank after the light had died down. He'd taken only the most delicate timid half-step onto it before he'd backed away with a shake of his head.

The light had been blinding and overwhelming. There was something about it that his soul desired in a way he couldn't quite put words to. But he wasn't ready for it yet. The Seer had been so sure and at peace with it. He felt neither of those things. Curiosity and fear were top of his mind, they kept him from venturing any further out. Curiosity, fear, and one other fact he could not deny.

He still had business to conduct. The Seer was never wrong.

The trouble, of course, was that while the Seer was never wrong, she was rarely ever clear. Years of having her in his head confirmed that more than seeing her in person. Now the experience was over. Now he was right back to sitting in this world's version of his house, his new castle, holding the crystal ball in one hand, no foresight to speak of, and a riddle to solve.

"There are two who are one in this world who seek your help! You will not provide the help, and yet you will succeed because of the help you give without giving. The consequences will be most unexpected, as unexpected as the presence of the living in the land of the dead. Father will be reunited with daughter, Muse will be reunited with muse, and the Dark One shall be reunited with his heart as the darkest curse of all finds its rest in a guardian without corruption!"

Part of it made sense. The more he thought about it, the more he was able to put the pieces together, and clarity arose from where there had been none before.

Two in this world who would seek his help…

There were already two who had come to him, at separate times, asking for his help because someone had told them to go to him; two who had sought him out individually to help not a "me" but a "we".

The girl from the clearing, the one he thought had summoned him in the first place and been chased away by the demon dog.

And Orpheus in the diner.

Oh, he'd been such a fool. Two separate events that felt strange, he suddenly realized, were connected.

Orpheus had said Eurydice was kept under lock and key in Hades' dungeons. And the girl that he'd met was clearly afraid and being hunted. Escaping from the clutches of her captor, who might just think to send the demon dog right out of greek mythology to retrieve her, would likely do that.

That was all the proof he needed to believe... the girl who freed him had been Eurydice.

And she'd said…she'd said so much. But he'd been so confused, much of what she'd told him was muddled. Had she mentioned Orpheus? Yes. Not by name, he was sure he'd remember if she'd given a name, but she'd mentioned her love. And she'd mentioned getting out of this place, not being able to rest until he was at rest, and that he would never rest until she was. She hadn't mentioned anything about escape, but she'd had the paper with the symbols drawn on it and…

Fuck.

He ground his back teeth together as he started, for the first time since he'd been here, to replay that encounter and found all the fucking information he needed. It was a struggle not to toss the crystal ball across the room in anger at his own ignorance. All these last weeks or days or however the fuck long he'd been here might have been avoided if he'd just fucking listened to those kids!

Eurydice had the paper upon which the symbols for his vault had been drawn. She'd said that she'd been sent to him and given the summoning by a woman with no fucking eyes!

Fuck!

And now that he thought about it, the boy had said the same damn thing! Not that a girl who had no eyes sent him but rather that a blind girl had told him that he was the key to helping. Oh, he was a fucking moron sometimes! They'd been in the diner when they had this conversation, he'd assumed it was the Blind Witch he'd been referring to! Fucking Seer…she'd had her hands in this from the very moment he was summoned to this world. Hell, probably longer than that if she spoke the truth when she said that she'd seen what had unfolded in that cavern before the pair of them had ever crossed paths. And, of course, he had no choice but to believe she'd spoken the truth because he had no reason to think she'd ever lie. She'd lived in his head for centuries; she never lied! Did she speak in annoying riddles and frustratingly inconvenient half-truths that concealed sometimes, sometimes until an opportune time, yes. But lie…never.

Oh, she was lucky she was well and truly dead now because otherwise, he'd go back and kill her a second time! And take that damn gift back while he was at it! He was sure there must have been visuals that went with it, that might help him at this moment decipher the rest of the riddle she'd offered because right now, the rest of the prophecy seemed like gibberish.

Orpheus and Eurydice…he knew their tale. He knew that Orpheus was bound to make a deal with Hades. Perhaps he already had! Orpheus had mentioned that he'd failed to save Eurydice once before, and that was how the story always went. Hades made a deal with Orpheus to lead Eurydice out of the Underworld, but he could not look back. He was mostly successful, only turning back in the last few steps that would have been required, but it was done. Eurydice was taken back to the Underworld, and Orpheus…supposedly he followed. Again? Or not yet? He didn't know.

But now it was up to him to provide…how had the Seer put it? The help he gave by not giving? Whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean. How was one supposed to do something without actually doing anything?!

And what the hell was he supposed to make of the consequences of his success?! They would be unexpected, the Seer had said. That was the only clear part about the consequences she'd listed. Father would be reunited with daughter, Muse with muse, and he would be reunited with his heart "as the Darkest Curse of all finds its rest in a guardian with no corruption."

Muse with muse…that was easy enough to understand. If Mr. Gold's memory of Greek mythology was correct, then Orpheus was the muse. Or at least he'd been the son of a Muse and…a god, maybe? A Fate? Whatever he was, Eurydice was Orpheus' muse. Muse reunited with Muse…that one was easy.

The Dark One reuniting with his heart was also easy but had a warning of complexity folded into it. The reunion it spoke of was obviously him and his family. But he hadn't a clue what to make of that last part, the darkest curse of all finding rest in a guardian without corruption. Was that his Dark Curse? Was he to pass the Curse along to someone else? Was he to die all over again? Just after getting Bae and Belle back in his life? Or a different curse, altogether? Was there some kind of chain reaction that his return was going to set off, a plan that was to be enacted? Maybe. But the prophecy suggested that it was by his rising that whatever it was coming would "find rest" so it didn't sound bad enough to worry through now.

But who the hell were the father and daughter she'd talked about? Everything else about that prophecy made sense. It was all connected. But fathers and daughters…

David and Emma? If he succeeded, was he to bring Emma back to the Enchanted Forest and reunite her with David? Or was he to take David to Emma?

It couldn't be. In an odd way, even though the words of the Seer were always vague, they were also precise. The Seer has specifically mentioned father and daughter. David would never go anywhere without Mary Margaret, not even to get Emma. Hell, even if she was pregnant, Mary Margaret wouldn't be left out of that. If the results of being successful were to bring Emma back to them, the Seer would have said, "mother and father with daughter" or "parents with child?"

With child…

Oh, for a minute, he swore his heart didn't beat as that phrase filled him up and triggered another thought within him

. It wasn't possible. It couldn't be…

His knuckles were white as he pulled the orb closer to his face.

"Show me my child…" he muttered.

What appeared before him was an image that was not helpful. Baelfire and Belle walking through the snow. Unhelpful…but the potential of it still made his skin prickle. That wasn't a denial…

"Show me the mother of my child…" he altered, quickly coming up with a way to get his answer.

An image of Milah standing at a crossroad wearing white gloves and holding a "stop" sign came to mind. She was ushering children across the street. He could take note of the irony of that some other time, but for now held his breath for another second, watching the image in the ball hold solidly before he let out a sigh of relief and slumped back in his chair.

Belle wasn't pregnant.

He wanted children with her. Truly he did. He wanted that image he'd once had of her sitting in the rocking chair, holding an infant to her chest. But he wanted to do it right. He wanted Henry back by Bae's side, and he wanted to marry her first. Now wouldn't have been the right time. They'd been so careful in the beginning, she'd watched the calendar, and he'd used magic. If this was then it wouldn't have been a question! But he could admit their last few times together certainly hadn't been as carefully thought out as they should have been. He hadn't been as careful. He'd need to remember that for the future, for when he got home. If he could dissect this fucking prophecy and get home!

But that begged the question. If the father and daughter weren't Emma and David, if it wasn't him and a child yet to be born…who?

Regina and her father would never be reunited. Now that he knew he had to do the impossible and get Eurydice, one dead soul, out of here and back to the land of the living, he felt certain that two souls being reborn were absolutely out of the question. Regina would never be reunited with her father, not until she came here or crossed over to where her father was, and he had doubts about the place the Evil Queen would wind up in. Somehow he didn't think that he and Regina would be lucky enough for that nice white light that the Seer had received. That was more a fate for Mary Margaret and her father. But those were all curiosities to be debated later.

Neal didn't have a daughter, at least none that he knew about. However, that thought sent him grappling for the crystal ball nearly as quickly as the prospect that Belle could be pregnant did. In the same way, the crystal turned up nothing but the reassurance that Henry was Bae's only child.

Belle and her father? Doubtful, he wasn't sure that there was anything that could ever be done to put those two on speaking terms again. Besides, they'd already been reunited in Storybrooke. And now that the Curse had been enacted, they'd at least be in the same world. They knew where each other would be, at least generally, and they'd be able to get there if they wanted to, just like every other resident of Storybrooke. He knew the way the Seer worked. This wasn't going to be some family reunion from just down the street, it had to be epic. As epic as a girl back from the dead, as epic as the living in the land of the dead, as unlikely as the dark one finding rest in a guardian.

He brought the ball to his head and pressed it, trying to think of some way to word a request that would give him the answer. But its powers usually only worked with the present. And he didn't know that many father-daughter duos! Outside of David and Emma, Regina and Henry, and Belle and Maurice, the only other father and daughter he could think of was…

A chill swept over his skin, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

"Oh no…" He breathed the words without giving himself permission to speak them aloud. There was one other father and daughter that he knew of, that he had a relationship with. A father and daughter who had been reunited in Storybrooke but with the return of the Curse…

Fuck, he felt like swearing even before there was something to swear about because he had a very bad feeling that he might know who she'd been talking about. Hadn't he just seen something in his father's shop that might be crucial to them?

But where to begin?

"Show me Grace…" he requested quietly of the crystal.

Immediately he knew he was back in the Enchanted Forest. As far as the eyes could see, there were trees all around, no paths, no homes, just endless, boundless wood. And there, huddled atop one of the tree branches, there was a girl who looked to be about Henry's age. She wore layers of clothes as she would have in the Enchanted Forest. She had blonde hair, and her face resembled that of the woman he'd once seen Jefferson spend time with before he'd left him. But the eyes, the eyes belonged to her father. And from those eyes, he could just barely make out the glassy sheen of held-back tears.

That didn't bode well.

"Show me Jefferson…"

Before his eyes, the image of his old colleague replaced that of his daughter. He was in a room. Or at least he thought it was a room. But it was difficult to tell what kind of room it was because from floor to ceiling the only thing he could make out around the man was hats. Hats of all sizes and shapes, all different colors of the rainbow. Jefferson sat before a table, covered in hats, with scissors and fabric and thread, constructing yet another hat that would never do for him what his old one had been able to do because it was his grandfather who had the power to create the portals, not the portal jumper. But he was trying. And he could think of only one reason that he would be trying so feverishly to get it to work.

Grace had gone back to the Enchanted Forest. Jefferson had been returned to Wonderland. He'd been put back in the place he'd been before the Curse hit. And the hat he so desperately needed in order to get back to his daughter…it was here, in the Underworld. It was sitting on a fucking pedestal in his father's shop.

Fuck.

I promised some things were going to start coming together in this chapter. It may be a filler chapter, but I think that we'll all agree after reading it that it's a really important filler chapter. Not only is Rumple now tying Orpheus and Eurydice to the Seer, but he's going through that prophecy and making the connections he needs to make. Again, with just a few sentences, not only is this fiction being mapped out, but we're even setting him up for what is to come in season seven; he just doesn't know it yet.

Thank you so much for reviewing, Jennifer Baratta, Grace5231973, and Rsbeall12! Did anyone see Jefferson coming in this fiction? It's probably not because I feel like I do remember saying after the last Jefferson chapter, "this is where it ends," but I feel like I also remember saying, "never say never." There was a moment when I realized that all the pieces worked for something like this, that with the curse reversed, Jefferson would likely end up in Wonderland, Grace in the Enchanted Forest, and with the hat gone, everything that Jefferson would have done to get back to his daughter would have been for nothing. So I liked diving into this scenario, letting Rumple see the hat early on, and then realized here that he might just have the opportunity to do something right by someone he hurt. Spoiler alert: it may not be a happy ending that has Jefferson running back into Rumple's arms, but I feel like it'll have an ending that will allow both to live with themselves. Peace and Happy Reading!