A/N: Some dialogue lifted from S1E1: Pilot and S1E2: The Thing You Love Most. Neal's musings on Alaska temperatures are in Fahrenheit. For readers outside the US who are used to Celsius, it's -16 to -25.

Chapter Eighteen

From the shock on both faces, Emma found herself wondering whether she'd made a mistake. Maybe Granny's Bed and Breakfast was some landmark historic house and not a functioning motel. But if that were the case, Emma thought to herself, then surely she couldn't be the first tourist to have made that error. It probably happened often enough that her query should have brought apologetic smiles and explanations instead of this stunned surprise.

The older woman recovered quickly though. "Really?" she asked, her fury of a moment ago vanishing. "Would you like a forest view or a square view? Normally, there's an upgrade fee for the square, but as rent is due, I'll waive it."

Emma didn't really care one way or the other. She was exhausted and, as long as the room was clean and had a bed, she'd be fine. Actually, at the moment, she'd settle for the room having a bed. But since the woman seemed to think the square was preferred, she replied that it would be fine.

The woman—Granny, Emma guessed—asked her name for the register and Emma gave it. As soon as she had, she was startled to hear a voice exclaim behind her, "Emma! What a lovely name!"

She whirled to see a slight, wiry man who appeared to be in his fifties smiling at her. Something about that smile unnerved her. Just as Granny and the younger woman had seemed a little too surprised when she'd asked to check in, this stranger with the burry Scots accent seemed a little too pleased to meet her. Maybe this exuberance was normal for Maine, Emma thought doubtfully, as she thanked the man.

Meanwhile, Granny had reached beneath the counter and was now thrusting a wad of bills at him. "It's all here," she said nervously.

Looking somewhat distracted, the man took them, assuring her that he didn't doubt it. He wished Emma a pleasant stay, putting a disconcerting emphasis on her name when he repeated it. Then he was gone. Emma looked at Granny. "Who's that?" she asked.

Looking just as apprehensive as the older woman, the younger one answered, "Mr. Gold. He owns this place."

"The inn?" Emma asked.

Granny shook her head. "No. The town. So, how long will you be with us?"

Driving along the Alaska Highway at 4:10PM local time, Neal was frantically trying to remember everything August had told him on the night of the arrest. A bit over seventeen years ago then, the evil queen had cast a curse that had brought everyone from the Enchanted Forest over to this realm and plunked them down in a town it had created for them in Maine. 'Everyone', Neal knew, meant his father was there, too.

There was no magic in this land, Neal thought to himself, but that fact was exactly what had frightened him about August's tale. Because the last time he'd seen his father, he'd been trying to take him to a land without magic and Papa had protested that he'd never heard of such a place.

Peasants like he and Papa had been in their own land, they'd never dreamed of travel to another realm. Well, Neal knew he hadn't, beyond a vague 'Wouldn't it be something to see a place like that, Papa?' and Papa had always said more or less the same thing in response:

Life may be hard here, Bae, but it's what we know and there's safety in that. What I've seen of this land outside our village's borders hasn't a great deal to recommend it and people are much the same wherever you go. It can be good here, and there's comfort in knowing what each day holds for you. Why search afield?

Papa had kept right on saying that until the day the soldiers had come for Morraine.

A lot happened between that day and the day he and his father had parted ways for good, but Neal knew that if his father even suspected that the two of them were now in the same realm, Papa wouldn't rest until they were reunited.

Would Papa know, though? After all, all of that had happened over two centuries ago. If it hadn't been for those years in Neverland, Neal knew that he'd be long dead by now. And with no magic…

With no magic, Papa would still find a way. If the curse broke, then this town in Maine wouldn't be cut off from the rest of the world. Papa would have had twenty-eight years to learn how things worked here. He'd hire investigators, he'd check old records, he'd go onto one of those websites that showed you how a fourteen-year-old's face might look at twenty-five, and thirty-five, and so on.

Maybe he was getting ahead of himself, but when it came to his papa, Neal knew that it was safer to overestimate him than the reverse. Especially after August had finished his story and Neal had asked him a few pointed questions.

"Wait, so the evil queen still wants to stick it to Snow White and she's decided that the best way to do it is to curse everyone to come here? How does that even make sense?"

August hesitated. "I might be getting this part wrong. You know, I was just seven and this was more than fifteen years ago, but… Okay. Okay, after the battle for the kingdom, Snow White and her husband captured the queen. They were going to execute her, but at the last second, Snow White stopped it."

"Go on."

"The queen was being held captive in one of the towers at the palace. I was a kid. I liked to explore things and sometimes, I heard things I maybe shouldn't have. And I'm still not sure I got it right. Anyway, I was hanging around the tower cell. Okay, I was curious. I wouldn't have actually spoken to her, I don't think. Even if the room she was locked in was supposed to block her magic, I didn't want to take a chance that it might wear off. You know that part in the movie about me where I started turning into a donkey? That actually happened. I didn't want to risk getting changed into anything else. But… I dunno. Morbid curiosity? Before they brought her out to be executed, I snuck up the stairs a few times and peeked through the keyhole. That last time, though, she wasn't alone. I heard voices inside. Snow White was talking to her, pleading with her to make a fresh start. I tried to get closer, but the prince and some guards were between me and the door, trying to be just as quiet as I was. I couldn't let them see me, so I held back.

"I heard the queen say something about killing Snow White with the blade that Snow had meant for her and a minute later, the prince and the guards went into the cell. The prince said that Rumpelstiltskin had made a protection spell and the queen couldn't hurt them anymore in this land. That land. At the time," August continued, "I thought it was just fancy-talk, like grown-up nobles did. But what if it wasn't? What if the only way the queen could hurt them was if she brought them to a different land?"

Neal considered that. He had to admit it made sense. And it was an elegant bit of wordplay that would put Snow White and her husband's minds at ease, sure that the queen was no longer a threat, when… A cold dread seized him. He knew someone who thought like that.

"So, my father was on Snow White's side against the evil queen?" he asked.

"I guess so," August shrugged. "Funny, I think the Blue Fairy told Papa once that he also taught the queen magic and that was why she went so Dark. That was when she was sending her troops through the villages trying to capture Snow White. We were lucky. She just paraded some poor woman in front of us as an example of what would happen to anyone who helped the princess. I heard she massacred another village a few days ride from us."

"What happened to the woman?"

August shook his head. "The queen took her back to the palace. I never saw her again but, based on what I know of the evil queen, either she took her heart, or she executed her. She… really wasn't big on long-term imprisonment."

Neal shook his head, but his thoughts were spinning. Papa had taught the evil queen, and then he'd turned around and helped the very people she most wanted to harm. And the next time anyone heard from the queen, it was because she was about to cast a curse that would carry everyone—including Papa—to a land without magic, which was the one thing he knew about the land he'd refused to travel to when he'd had the chance.

Papa was trying to follow him.

For an instant, Neal felt a slight surge of hope. After all this time, Papa still missed him!

Good, Neal thought in the next instant. Good, he deserves to. After choosing power over me, after holding onto his dagger and letting me go? Serves him right.

If his hunch was correct, though, then once Emma broke the curse, Papa would be looking for him. But would it be because he was sorry? Or would it be because he didn't want his valuables lost? Neal remembered seeing the struggle in his father's face at the last. The terror when the bean had opened the portal and the indecision as he'd gripped his son's hand in one clenched fist and his dagger in the other. That Papa had ultimately valued power more didn't mean that he hadn't valued his son at all. Yeah, Papa was going to want him back. A long time ago, the Reul Ghorm had told Neal that the love Papa had for him was the 'little light that still glowed'. Did Papa still have that light even now? Or had the centuries extinguished it? Did Papa still love him in some dark, twisty way, or was he just out to retrieve something he'd lost, just like he would any of the treasures that he'd come to possess over those last months? Neal told himself it didn't matter. Whatever Papa's reasons, Neal no longer wanted anything to do with him. Hadn't for years. Sure, sometimes he still had nightmares about falling through that portal screaming for Papa, but he was an adult now. Maybe his life wasn't the greatest, but it wasn't bad. Things were finally looking up. And if Papa showed up now, it would turn everything upside-down and inside out and reopen wounds that were still barely scabbed over and—

"So," he'd said to August, "if Emma doesn't break the curse, then I don't have to worry about him turning up on my doorstep one of these days."

He'd never told Emma any of this. Obviously, for the first three years after the arrests, it hadn't been possible. And after that, well, August had seemed so sure that the only way for Emma to fulfill her 'destiny' was for the two of them to break up, that Neal had sometimes thought that their getting back together would be enough to derail things on that score. Of course, that hadn't been why he'd stuck with her. He loved her. He wanted to make his life with her and he knew she felt the same way about him. They were so right for each other, and if years apart hadn't wrecked the relationship, Neal didn't think anything would now. Most of the time, he didn't think about the curse. It was easy enough not to think about it; it wasn't the kind of thing that came up in everyday conversation.

Sometimes, though, late at night, Emma sleeping beside him, he'd wondered and worried. Just a bit.

And now? He was almost back to Fairbanks after another day of tracking. His quarry was still giving him the slip, but the net was tightening. It was just a matter of time.

It was raining now, the drops streaking on the windshield of Neal's rented Impala. He glanced at the clock on his dash, and as he did, the digital display changed from 4:14 to 4:15. As it did, a jagged bolt of lightning split the sky. Seconds later, thunder roared overhead and the rain became a torrent. Neal turned on the wipers and concentrated on the road, resolving to phone Emma as soon as he made it back to the hotel.

It had been an exhausting day. Emma took her overnight bag up to her room and then came back downstairs to the restaurant for a late night spaghetti dinner. Only when she went back upstairs did she check her messages.

There were several from Neal:

Call me.

Emma? U there?

?

Where R U?

U OK?

She shook her head. Poor guy had to be worried sick. She looked at the last message.

Emma, please call ASAP.

She was tired. She just wanted a hot shower and bed. But after all those texts, she couldn't leave him hanging. She called his cell. She was only mildly ashamed of the relief that washed over her when the call went to voice mail. "Hey, it's me," she said. "Sorry if you were worried. I'm okay. So's Henry. Our son," she added, not sure if she'd mentioned his name in one of her earlier texts. "Anyway, I'm going to hang around here for the next week. Call me tomorrow; I'm pretty wiped out. Love you." She ended the call, grabbed the neatly-folded stack of towels from the dresser and headed for the bathroom.

Glancing out the window, she frowned. The tower clock showed twenty-five past nine. She could have sworn Henry had told her that its hands never moved…

Regina opened Henry's door and peered inside. Reassured that her son was indeed safe in his bed and sound asleep, she closed it once more and went back down the hall to her home office.

She hesitated only a moment before calling a familiar number. "Sidney," she said crisply, "I have an assignment for you. I need you to find out everything you can about a woman named Emma Swan. And Sidney, I need it yesterday."

She ended the call and leaned back in her armchair with a sigh. Emma Swan was the first stranger to have entered Storybrooke since the time of the town's creation, and Regina found her appearance worrisome. At best, the woman was a threat to the life she'd created with her son. At worst…

At worst, she was a threat to everything else she'd created, too.

She hoped Sidney would come through with answers for her sooner rather than later.

Neal hated driving on unfamiliar roads with bad visibility. He went slower because of the rain, now sheeting down in a way that his colleague at the bounty office had assured him was rare in Alaska's interior at this time of year. "Bet they tell that to all first-time visitors as some kind of joke," he muttered. The rain, bad as it was didn't worry him, but this was Alaska in October and the temperature often dipped below freezing. It still wouldn't be anywhere close to as cold as the state could get in the winter—in January, Fairbanks averaged three degrees for the high and minus thirteen for the low. All the same, Neal worried about the possibility of ice patches forming on the road. "As long as that's rain on my windshield, not snow, it's fine," he told himself. Fine, at least, unless he missed his exit or took a wrong turn.

His phone rang, but he couldn't pick up when he needed to concentrate on getting back safely. Even if he'd had Bluetooth, he wasn't sure he wanted more distraction at the moment.

Besides, it was probably some telemarketer or whoever that person was who kept leaving voicemails in Mandarin that he couldn't understand. If it was important, they'd leave a message or call back.

It was just about six when he finally parked in front of the hotel.

And that was when he found out that the message had been from Emma. He tried phoning back at once, but evidently, she hadn't been kidding about being wiped out, because she didn't pick up.

Neal passed a hand over his eyes and wished that, just this once, there was magic in this land and that he knew how to cast a transportation spell, so he could talk to Emma face to face and stop playing phone-tag!

Sidney Glass never disposed of old research files, and tonight, he was glad of it. It wasn't hard to find out about Emma Swan's more recent past. She had an up-to-date LinkedIn profile, and was reasonably active on Facebook and Twitter, too. He raised an eyebrow. Recently, she'd opened up an account on eHarmony, too. He brought up her Facebook account again. If she was 'in a relationship,' why did she have a profile on a dating site? Maybe it was an open relationship. Maybe it was over and she hadn't updated. Or perhaps, she was seeking something on the side. He made a note of it.

She was on file with a number of adoption reunion registries, both as a birth parent and as an adoptee.

When he'd tried to dig a bit deeper, he'd found virtually nothing on her until a decade ago. She would have been eighteen then. But if this was Henry's birth mother, then it wasn't the first time that Regina had asked him to do some digging. Doubtless, she still had the information he'd given her at the time, but since she hadn't mentioned it, he might as well be thorough.

It didn't take him long to dig up the earlier records. Now, he remembered. Emma Swan had done a stint in juvenile detention in Arizona. She'd been released on probation, violated it within weeks, and been returned to custody to finish serving her sentence. When Mayor Mills had adopted Henry, she'd still been there.

He smiled. Emma's juvenile record might have been sealed when she turned eighteen, but he had the information. He didn't know how relevant it was now, ten years later, but it gave him a thrill to know that he'd be able to deliver something to Mayor Mills that she wouldn't have uncovered herself, had she the time, patience, and internet savvy to type the right keywords into Google. Or Bing, for that matter.

Sidney was humming a bit to himself, as he organized his findings, anticipating how pleased the mayor would be when he came through for her again.

Had Emma still been a kid in the system, she'd have been on her way out of Storybrooke the next morning. Back in those days, she'd kept her head down, tried not to cause trouble, and cut and run whenever things got too rough—if her social worker hadn't turned up to take her to a new placement before she got the chance.

She'd barely got up and was still half-dressed when she'd answered a knock on her hotel-room door and opened it to find Regina there with a basket of apples and a strong indication that she thought Emma had overstayed her welcome. Maybe Emma still would have taken the hint; ticking off authority figures was generally a bad idea. (At least, she'd been prudent enough not to correct the mayor's misapprehension that the basket contained Honeycrisp apples, when anyone with eyes could see that they were Red Delicious!) But this woman had adopted Henry. Henry wasn't happy. And the mayor seemed to think that putting Henry in therapy was the solution to everything.

It wasn't that Henry didn't need that kind of help. In the short time since she'd met him, she'd learned that he had… issues. But Regina's whole… attitude… seemed to suggest that putting him in counselling had solved the problem, when it clearly wasn't getting the job done.

There was a text from Neal. She hadn't had a chance to check her messages before Regina had shown up. She looked at the time. It wasn't even five AM in Alaska right now. Too early to phone, but not too early to return the text. She shook her head. Neal thought she could come home now.

That woman sounds dangerous. Better we talk when I come home. We'll meet with a lawyer then and plan our next steps.

It sounded like a smart strategy. Her teenaged self might have gone along with it. But she wasn't thirteen and on the run from a bad placement, unwilling to risk the next one being even worse. She was an adult; twenty-se—no, twenty-eight years old, now, and she'd spent a decade investigating people from all walks of life. No, most of them hadn't been authority figures or municipal politicians, but the few she'd had to track down had proven to be people like everyone else. "Bet she puts her Jimmy Choos on one talon at a time, like anyone else," she muttered. "Anyone else who can afford thousand-dollar shoes, anyway." In her line of work, she couldn't allow herself to be easily intimidated. More to the point…

If she's dangerous, I'm not leaving Henry with her and I can't take him with me. Anyway, Henry asked me to stay a week, and I'm going to. Love you.

She sent the text. Then she grabbed the rest of her clothes out of her overnight bag to finish getting dressed. She was going to have breakfast. And then… She was going to call on Archie and see if she could get some insight into what her son was currently going through.

It was weird to be front-page news, Emma reflected. She told herself that this was a small town and knocking over a sign, however 'historic' probably was the biggest news this place had had in a decade. As she bit into her apple, though, she thought she could feel the other customers staring at her she hunched a bit lower in her chair. Her cheeks were probably as red as the fruit she was holding, she thought ruefully. A soft thud on the table beside her made her look up in surprise. The desk clerk from the night before—who obviously worked as a waitress during the day—had set a mug of hot cocoa down before her. "Here you go," she said with a smile. If she'd noticed what Emma was reading, she gave no sign.

Emma finished chewing the bite of apple; it might not be a Honeycrisp, but it was surprisingly flavorful for a Red Delicious. "Thank you," she said, when she'd swallowed, "but I did not order that."

"Yeah, I know," the waitress—Emma remembered now she'd introduced herself as 'Ruby' last night—said, still smiling. "You have an admirer."

Puzzled, her eyes darted about the diner and settled on a familiar face, several tables over. Picking up the mug, she stalked over and set it down before him. The sheriff looked up. "Ah," he greeted her. "So you decided to stay."

Emma snorted. "Observant. Important for a cop."

The sheriff smiled pleasantly. "It's good news for our tourist business. Bad for our local signage." When Emma didn't crack a smile, he shifted uncomfortably. "It's a joke," he said. "It's… uh… because you ran over our sign."

Maybe it was her annoyance about the article in the paper, or maybe she was still upset that he'd arrested her a day earlier, but she bit back an angry retort and tried to keep her voice calm when she responded, "Look. The cocoa was a nice gesture, and I am impressed that you guessed that I like cinnamon on my chocolate because most people don't, but I am not here to flirt. There's already someone significant in my life and even though he's not here with me now, I'm not interested in some… short-term fling. So thank you, but no thank you."

The sheriff blinked. Then he looked back down at the mug of cocoa. "I didn't send it," he said mildly.

Emma blinked. She'd been positive that… And now, she'd gone jumping to conclusions and her face was growing hot again and maybe she really should just head back to Boston before she managed to make an even bigger fool of herself. She was just about to stammer an apology when a voice piped up from close by, "I did." Henry's face poked up from another booth. "I like cinnamon, too."

"Don't you have school?" Emma asked, still feeling a bit flustered.

"Duh, I'm ten," Henry retorted. "Walk me."

She turned back to the sheriff to try to apologize, but he just shrugged. "An honest mistake," he smiled. "School's about twenty minutes away on foot. Better leave now or he'll be late."

By the time Emma reached the school, she was all the more convinced that taking Henry back to Boston with her would be letting herself in for a whole lot of trouble she had no idea how to deal with. It wasn't just that Regina would fight her every step of the way. Emma might not be able to afford a good lawyer, but if the media caught wind of the situation, it might be wishful thinking, but in the movies, there was always someone out there who would take the case pro bono. She hated painting herself as a victim, but to her mind, 'Mother fights to reclaim son she was tricked into giving up for adoption' was the sort of story that the press would be happy to blow up. (Technically, she'd been manipulated, not tricked, but from what she'd seen, the newspapers liked to use shorter words when printing headlines.) She wouldn't go that route yet, though. It wasn't just that Henry didn't seem to want to leave Storybrooke. It was that the twenty minute walk to school had convinced her that her son couldn't tell fantasy from reality and Emma had no idea how to deal with that kind of problem.

So, when she and Henry parted ways at the school and she bumped into Henry's teacher, she'd asked how to find Dr. Hopper. She needed a better window into her son's thought processes before she even thought of launching a custody battle that just might make things worse for him.

At 8:15 that evening, Emma's phone rang. She had never been so happy to hear a friendly voice. "Did you catch the guy?" she asked. "Tell me you caught the guy."

"Not yet," Neal admitted. "But we're closing in on him. You okay? You sound tired."

A note of steel crept into Emma's voice. "Right now? I'm seriously more pissed than anything. That woman set me up! She told me Henry was in therapy, knowing I'd want to talk to his shrink, and then she got the shrink to loan me his notes and then had the shrink call the sheriff to say I'd stolen them! I've been in this town for less than 48 hours and I've already spent almost half that time in a holding cell!"

Neal winced. Emma didn't usually get angry, but when she did… "Tell me you didn't do anything… hasty. You're not calling from jail now, are you?"

"No," Emma sighed. "Henry's teacher bailed me out."

"Well, that's something," Neal said with some relief. "So, you're ready to come back to Boston and start looking for a lawyer?"

"Are you kidding me?" Emma demanded and Neal felt his heart sink. "Neal, Henry may have issues, but Regina's making them worse. Listen she called me in for a meeting and she…" There was a pause on the other end.

"Emma?"

"Sorry," Emma said after a moment. "I'm still kicking myself. She played me. She got me talking about how… concerned I was, only she made it sound, she made me sound, like I thought Henry was… crazy. And she did it when he was outside her office and able to hear every word." She paused for a moment before saying in a lower voice, "I know. I can't believe I said it either. I've been doing… damage control for the last hour or so and I think Henry and I are okay again, but there is no way that I'm leaving town now. I can't. Not knowing what kind of a piece of… work Regina is. Ten years ago, I gave our son up, because I thought it would give him his best chance. Maybe Ross and Dani manipulated me into believing it, but I still did. I really thought he'd be okay, he'd be happy, he'd be…" Her voice trailed off for a moment, and when it came back, it had hardened. "After seeing what he's dealing with, if I leave him now, it'll be abandoning him. I can't do that. I-I won't. I'll do what I can to find a lawyer while I'm here, and you can work on it when you get back from Alaska. But meanwhile, I'm staying here. For as long as it takes."