Chapter 2: The thing you love most
The next morning, Emma woke up with the sun shining on her face. She got out the bed and approached Rose. Now, Emma knew that her friend wasn't a morning person and that she had to be careful about how she woke her up. So, she tentatively rose on hand and shook her shoulder to see if she could get a response.
"Good morning Rose. Come one is time to wake up." But Emma just got a grunt. She sighed and tried again. This time she shook Rose harder, and she got a groan, but not one that meant Rose didn't want to wake up. No, this groan was one of pain, and Emma immediately took her hands off her friend. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?" Rose sat up in bed and smiled at her friend.
"Don't worry. It's just a couple of fractured ribs." Emma looked at her with wide eyes. How could she have forgotten that her friend was prone to return from her trips with some kind of injury?
"Okay. What was it this time? Did you go to the hospital or is this one of your self-diagnosis?" Emma knew that more often than not, Rose would take matter into her own hands and if there was no blood in sight then she would just act like nothing happened.
"Well, for your information, I did go to the hospital in Kathmandu. They confirmed that I have 4 fractured ribs on my right side and 3 on the left." Rose said while pointing at each side while describing the damage. "There is nothing to do but wait and take painkillers."
"That is not a couple of ribs! You practically broke all of them!" Emma yelled at her friend exasperated. Then she gave her a suspicious look. "And when was the last time you took your pain pills?"
Rose laughed uneasily and rubbed the back of her head. "Well… to be honest… I don't really remember. Sometime before your tumble with the city sing?" Emma sighed and went to look for the pills. More than 24 hours without taking one, she was sure that Rose was hurting.
Then there was a knock at the door. Emma went to answer and found Regina with a basket full of red apples. After a long explanation about the apples, she offered one to Emma. After the confrontation between the two mothers, Rose made her way out of the bathroom. She approached them and took one of the apples.
"Cool! This way I can take the painkillers now. Thanks!" She smiled at Regina and went to take a bite, when Regina looked at her with wide eyes.
"Rose?" She said so softly that the other two women barely heard her.
"Well, yes I am. Did Henry tell you about me?" She asked putting the apple down without having taken a bite. Regina shook her head and smiled.
"No, sorry. It's just that, you look like someone I knew a long time ago." She gave Emma another glance and left.
Rose and Emma were at the dinner, when Ruby put two cups of hot chocolate in front of them. One with cinnamon and the other with hazelnut.
"Thanks, but we didn't order anything." Emma said with the paper on her hand. Rose raised her head from her journal and saw the mugs.
"Oh! Chocolate with hazelnut, my favorite! Thanks, Em." Rose said while she happily took her cup and was going to take a sip when Emma took it from her.
"We didn't order it, so don't drink it." She looked around and saw the sheriff. She approached him with the chocolates and started to talk to him about how she wasn't there to flirt. Until Henry admitted that he was the one that sent them.
"Does this mean that I can drink it?" Said Rose taking her coco from Emma.
Henry asked them to take him to school. They agreed and Rose asked Ruby to make her chocolate to go. When she caught up to mother and son she heard Henry explaining his plan.
"First step: Identification. I call it Operation Cobra." Said Henry proudly.
"That has nothing to do with fairy tales." Said Emma while Rose at the same time exclaimed "That's cool!" Henry smiled at Rose and they high-fived.
"Okay so let's recap" Said Rose while finally taking a sip of her drink.
"Everyone here is a fairy tale character, but they just don't know it." Said Emma. Henry nodded and continued.
"That's the curse. Time has been frozen, until you got here." Both women nodded and Emma went to take a bite of Regina's apple. When Henry freaked out and threw it away. Rose laughed and started the conversation again.
"What about their past? They don't remember anything?" She asked. If she was being honest she was starting to like this little town. If what Henry said was just little bit true, then their stay would be very entertaining.
"They don't remember. It's a haze to them. Ask anyone anything and you will see."
"So for decades people have been walking around in a haze, not aging, with screwed up memories in a cursed town that kept them oblivious." Said Emma, trying to put together everything that Henry had been telling her since they met.
"Yes, and you are the only one that can help them." Said Henry excited that finally his birth mother seemed to be getting it.
"Because I'm the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming?" Said Emma disbelievingly.
"Wait, wait. You are whose daughter?" asked Rose with barely contained laughter. Emma glared at her and Henry turned to her.
"Yes. Emma is the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. And you are Rose Red, Snow White's little sister." Rose raised her free hand to signal that she wasn't going to contradict him. "My mom doesn't know who you are Emma. I took the last pages of the book. I know you two don't believe me, the heroes never believe at the beginning. It wouldn't be a good book. Keep the pages, read them and you'll see. But don't let my mom see them. It would be bad."
They finally arrived at Henry's school. And his teacher approached them.
"It's good to see his smile back." She said to Emma.
"I didn't do anything." Emma said not wanting to believe she could make that big a difference.
"You stayed." Both Rose and Mary-Margaret said at the same time. The two women looked at each other. Rose smiled and extended her hand.
"Hello. I'm Rosalind, Emma's friend and roommate." Mary-Margaret shook her hand and smiled softly. For some reason she couldn't understand, tears were welling up in her eyes. She took a deep breath to calm herself.
"It's nice to meet you Rose. I'm Mary-Margaret, Henry's teacher." She turned to look at Emma and started discussing the Mayor, until the topic of who she was in Henry's theory came up.
"Snow White" Emma and Rose looked at each other knowingly. Mary-Margaret looked at them and felt that something was up. "Who does he think you are?"
"No one. I'm not in the book." Emma said, and Rose turned to her with a smile.
"Well. Henry says that I'm Rose Red, so that makes us pretended sisters." Mary-Margaret laughed a little but felt a pang in her heart at the word pretend.
Emma asked Mary-Margaret for Henry's psychiatrist. While she went to visit him, Rose decided to go to the inn and review her travel journal.
Emma arrived at their room to see Rose with her travel journal and laptop out.
"Preparing your new paper?" She asked throwing herself on her bed and starting to look through Henry's file.
"You know it! What's that?" Rose asked when she saw Emma looking through the papers.
"Henry's file. From his shrink." Rose frowned and looked at her friend.
"I don't think you are supposed to have that. Isn't there doctor-patient confidentiality or something?" Emma just shrugged and kept reading, until there was a knock at the door.
The sheriff explained how he received a call from Dr. Hopper about the stolen file. Emma got arrested again, and Rose just looked at her with a smug face.
"Told you, you weren't supposed to have that!" Emma glared at her friend with a look that said ʽnot nowʼ. "Don't worry. Sheriff, please call me when you know what the bail is, so I can pick up my delinquent friend." She said to Graham with a big smile. The sheriff retuned it with a small smile of his own and a ʽwill doʼ.
In a dark dungeon a man is alone in his cell.
"It's just us deary. You can show yourself." And in a puff of smoke a mouse transformed into the Evil Queen.
They started to discuss the Dark Curse, the way for it to be broken and why the curse didn't work.
"Tell me what I did wrong." Demanded the Evil Queen. Rumpelstiltskin just smiled.
"For that, there is a price."
"What do you want?"
"Simple, in this new life I want comfort, I want a good life. " He started to say when the Queen interrupted him.
"You will have it."
"There is more!" The Queen scoffed at that, there was always more to the deals with the Dark One. "In this new land, if I was ever to come to you for any reason, you mast heed my every request. You must do whatever I say. So long as I say Please." The Queen unamused by the imp simply resorted to the reasoning that he wouldn't remember anything if the curse took effect, but Rumpelstiltskin didn't seem bothered by it.
The Queen accepted the deal, and the imp proceeded to tell her what she did wrong. Once they finished their conversation, the Dark One looked at the Queen with calculating eyes.
"Oh dear! Just one more thing." The Queen turned to him irritated. "Just a simple question really. Where is the princess? I assumed she would have dropped by at some point." The Queen looked at him with like he wasn't right in the head, and was about to answer when he interrupted. "I'm not talking about your dear Snow White. Where is Rose Red?" He said with a harsh tone and an even harsher glare.
The Queen looked at him uncertain of why he would request that, but decided to answer anyway. She could see that lost princess was of some importance to the imp, and she would take her chance to torture him.
"Why? You are telling me that you don't know?" She said mockingly. "Oh, it's such a tragic story. The princess left to check on some problems a village was having and disappeared." The Queen took notice of the slight twitch of the Dark One. "Yes, there's a rumor that says that she was pretty cozy with an evil being and was murdered in the night. She hasn't been seen since then." She smirked and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Rumpelstiltskin sat in the floor of his cell with a far out look on his face. "That is not possible. You wouldn't die so easily. What happened to you my fire bird?"
When Emma returned to their room at the inn after taking a chain saw to Regina's apple tree, she saw Rose with the door open packing up the little things they had. Before she could ask what was going on, Granny approached her and let her know that she couldn't let them stay as she had a no felon policy.
The two friends didn't want Granny to get any trouble from the Mayor, so they finished packing up their stuff to bring them to their cars. When they got to them, they saw that Emma's yellow bug had a wheel clamp. Just then her phone rung and, surprise surprise, Regina was on the other end. Regina invited Emma to talk at her office.
When they got there, Rose decided to stay outside and let the two mothers talk. While waiting, Rose saw Henry coming up to the building. She smiled and waved at him.
"What are you doing here Rose?" He asked with curiosity.
"Well, it seems that your mom wanted to speak to Emma, and since we don't have a room to stay where I can wait… Here I am." She answered with a shrug of her shoulder, like everything that happened in the last hour was no big deal.
Henry shook his head, said goodbye to Rose and walked up the rest of the way to his mother's office. After just a few minutes, Rose saw Henry run out the office. She thought she saw tears on his face, and grew concerned for the boy. After him came Emma with a frown on her face.
After Emma told her friend what happened, Rose sighed. "Okay. I'll go talk to him, try to do some damage control. You go give Mary-Margaret your bail money back." And she handed Emma an envelope.
Henry didn't know where to go, who to turn to. Then he heard his name, and when he turned he saw Rose jogging up to him.
"Whew kid. You are fast!" She smiled at him. "I know what happened back there. Wanna talk about it?"
Henry didn't know if she wanted to talk to her. What if she didn't believe him, just like Emma?
Rose sighed at the troubled look on his face. "Look Henry. Emma didn't mean to hurt you by saying that. You may not know each other for very long, but you should have seen that she is not cruel, and definitely she doesn't go out of her way like this for anyone." She grabbed his shoulders, so he would look at her. "She accepted that you were her son. She took you here. She stayed. She went against your mother with a chain saw." At the last statement, both chuckled.
"What I'm trying to say is… Emma hasn't had the best life. She barely knows how to take care of herself, but she cares a lot about you. Believe when I say that she will do anything for you." She smiled at him. "Okay. If you ever need to talk with someone, who do you talk to?" Henry thought for a moment.
"Archie." He said in a small voice.
Rose smiled again and extended her hand to Henry. "Come one, I'll drop you off there."
It didn't take long for Emma to arrive at Dr. Hopper's office. Rose greeted her with an ʽabout timeʼ, and signaled her to go in. After burning the last pages of the book, the three of them made their way out of the office, making plans for the next steps of Operation Cobra.