Emma Swan emerged from the lake she'd just been pushed in. She spat out mouthfuls of water. Her stomach swam as she swallowed the bile that raced to gush past her lips.

"Lily," she growled with what little breath she had left in her piercing lungs.

Her whole body hurt, but her lungs hurt an eighteen on a scale of 1-10. She barely noticed how much pain it caused her to perform normal blinking next to her lungs.

Hoisting herself up the side of the lake, she glanced blearily at the waterfall she'd been dragged down. A log had smashed on her head halfway down. She'd been too confused to lurch to the surface for some time. When she'd clawed off her confusion enough to realize she was breathing lake water, she couldn't figure out which way was up or down. Instinct had saved her, not brains.

Her head spun in dizzy ovals. So clogged up she was that she didn't feel anything in her head except certainty Lily in her dragon form threw her from a cliff and into the hands of a waterfall.

Hacking up mouthfuls of lake water, seaweed, and shellfish, Emma crouched on all fours. The worst was what gushed from her nose. Not painful enough to feel more than a dull sensation next to the stabbing in her lungs. She had to have been a second away from dying if her lungs ached this much.

Her red leather jacket was utterly destroyed, but that was the least of her problems. Stiff and brittle, she'd have to discard it when she had a chance.

In the real world, she had a closetful of them. She doubted Isaac was kind enough to bless her in this alternate universe.

She needed to stagger to the hospital…somehow. No one was willing to help. They avoided her eyes.

Except—

A white horse halted. The helmeted figure looked familiar yet wrong.

Emma knew this was not his normal attire. But as she fainted in his arms, she had no idea what his name was. Though her subconscious was tickled by the attempt to remember.

Rrrrrr…Rrrr…

Emma's roommate at the hospital was the legendary Robin Hood.

She spat out her tea when she recognized him, which she did because he told the nurse, "Mornin'."

His head was bandaged all around his forehead. His smile was sheepish, as if to say, "Look what a scrape I licked myself into."

"Robin Hood," Emma blurted.

He tilted his eyes uncertainly at her before announcing in a jolly manner, "I see my reputation precedes me."

"Where's Regina?"

"Hmm? The wanted bandit? She's not one of my Merry Men, I promise you that."

A more pressing matter nuzzled her. "What happened to your head?"

"I made a rather careless move on a raid. As a result, I got an arrowhead burrowed into my skull." Wincing, he stated, "They operate on me tonight. I'm on these funky drugs that numb my head, but I'm still able to think straight. Little John got a hornet's stinger in a vital artery. He died."

Emma couldn't remember meeting Little John. Therefore, she wasn't upset in a personal way. She mumbled, "I'm sorry," for protocol.

"It happens. You live, do something worth dying for, you die. I am going to miss him, but at least we live our lives doing what we feel is the right thing. We're not afraid to live, you know? Might live a hundred years if we fear death or live thirty being our honest selves. I'll take thirty."

Emma glanced at the chair where her water-logged jacket lay, awaiting its funeral.

"I answered a bunch of your questions." Robin rubbed his hands together. "My turn to do the questioning. Who are you?"

"The Savior."

"Never heard of you—sorry."

Hmm. This was a strange world. Lily as a dragon had used her tail to swipe Emma from a cliff and plunge her into a lake—right where a waterfall would seize her. Before that, the last thing she remembered was being in Storybrooke, so she figured that's where Isaac brought her in.

Isaac…she wondered if he was man enough to fight her…

Aside from that, Robin didn't seem to have met Regina in person, and the Savior was no longer a well-known title.

Tossing her hair back, she suavely asserted, "I see my reputation does not precede me." She burrowed the back of her head against the pillow and subconsciously clenched and unclenched her IV-ridden arm. "I'm Emma. Emma Charming."

Interestedly, Robin inquired, "Are you related to Prince David?" The way he stared at her made Emma's spine shiver. He looked like he wanted to rob her of her delicious jewels.

"No, no, no," she corrected. Thinking swiftly, she blustered, "James was my father."

"But that was the Queen's love before Regina's actions led to his death."

"Huh?"

Robin studied her face from across the room. His bottom lip trembled—a side effect of his medication. "Have you been living under a rock? You aren't related to the royal couple."

"Fine. You win." Playing with her hair, she agreed, "I'm not related to the Royal Family. I'm an orphan. And I'm not from around here. My land is far away. I heard stories about brooks in this land and decided to travel here, check it out. Got a good library?"

"Wow, aren't you a tongue-twister?" Robin blinked, trying to keep pace with the slippery change in subject in spite of his attempt to hold it straight. "If you're from a far-off land…how did you arrive?"

"With the magic pen of a villain."

"Ah. I figured horse or Pegasus." Smiling sheepishly, the affable bandage-headed man admitted, "I hoped you'd say dragon."

Emma's face squelched. "Have you met Lily?"

Nodding rapidly, Robin made a mirthful noise. "And her mother, Maleficent. There's a whole herd outside the city walls. Lily belongs to the Evil Queen though."

"Regina." Emma's voice dripped with conviction.

Robin's face wrinkled. "Regina?" He scratched the underside of his chin. "What kind of muddled place do you come from that has snippets of our land and gets them all switched around? Hooligans, I tell ye."

Oddments of recollection slithered in Emma's brain. Seeing Belle then a flash of Mulan with Ashley.

Her stomach plummeted painfully. Were these oddments her real memories or from a dream? Her head rang and ears chattered as she reached within herself.

Reality was shaky and bemusing. She now deduced some of her short-term memory had sailed from her mind.

Whether it had been the icy lake, branch smacking against her cranium, or Lily's large tail, Emma had no idea what drove her true arrival from mind.

All she knew was she couldn't keep her facts straight.

"Excuse me," she told Robin Hood quietly, gripping her head between her hands. "I got struck on the head. I don't feel so—" She twisted her neck and vomited on the floor right before passing out cold.

In her sleep, she twitched and begged Hook to take her in the wild. Not caring who would see.

Turned out, someone seeing wasn't the problem. Someone hearing was.

When her talking woke her, she prayed no one overheard that foul word exit her lips.

Her hope was dashed when she noticed Robin Hood had earmuffs over his ears. Because of his bandage, the plastic bit that goes over people's heads was below his chin.

"My ears were cold." Robin lifted his ring finger off the blanket covering his thighs.

Emma couldn't work up the proper shame. She missed Hook like an empty hole in her heart. Maybe it was merely the imprint of the dream, but she longed to run her hands through his soft, dark brown hair and suck on his bottom lip. Forget the complications she was surrounded by.

To somewhat distract herself, she asked Robin, "Are you dating Marian?"

Wrinkling his nose, he pondered, "Why would I date Little John's widow?"

"Oh." She was just sticking her foot in and out of her mouth repeatedly, wasn't she?

"Granted, she had a wee crush on me." Robin shrugged. "I'm not ugly. She noticed. But she's no spitfire and certainly no one I can feel a deep, gushing love for. Even if we'd kissed in curiosity, I could never fall in love with her. It's got to be more than the teenaged, 'Your face doesn't hurt my eyes' thing. I'm not dating a woman who doesn't pizzazz with me. Pretty girls are a dime a dozen. You're beautiful, for example, but am I attracted to you?" He made a buzzing noise. "No."

"Who brought me here?"

His eyes sobered up. "That's right. You were out of it when you arrived. It was the Ogre Slayer."

"Who's that?" smirked Emma. "A dancing mouse?"

Lifting his eyebrows, Robin commented, "That's strange. I would've thought his reputation preceded mine."

Randomly, she remembered that she had traveled many lands before reaching this one—on foot, not by magic pen. Isaac hadn't written any conversations for her, she recalled, rubbing her eyelid. Though she could remember traveling through heat barefooted with fog surrounding her.

Suddenly, she froze. The oddment of a tête-à-tête she overheard between Ashley and Mulan darted through her brain. Emma mused, "How can the Queen own Lily? I saw her in a restaurant."

"That restaurant belongs to the Queen. Lily does whatever work Queen Snow wants of her."

Emma's heart beat like a jack rabbit. She yelled, "My mother is the Evil Queen?"

Then she remembered the ghastly posters of Regina being wanted for treason. Signed Queen Snow White.

Her cheeks pinkened. Deftly, she hid her face behind her palms and closed her eyes.

Nervous breakdown. She was going to have a nervous breakdown right here in the hospital.

Crazy enough to learn at twenty-eight her mother was Snow White and the Evil Queen had adopted the baby she gave up.

Now Isaac had created an alternate universe in which everything she accepted as fact was a lie.

"You do look like a combination of them," Robin confided consolatingly. "But she doesn't have any children. She barely lets him look at her." Squinting, he added speculatively, "And you could be her fraternal twin sister but certainly not her daughter. You're her age."

Dropping her hands, Emma remarked flatly, "Yeah, I know. Sorry, a branch smacked me on the head in a waterfall." It felt like she was going to be saying that a million times in the next few days. "Not all the lights are on upstairs."