A/N: Episode referenced: S1E20—The Stranger

Chapter 53

Emma and Neal exchanged a startled look. Then, with a raised eyebrow, Emma picked up the walkie-talkie. "Henry? What's going on?"

There was a pause. Then, still whispering, Henry said, "Meet me at Granny's. It's an Operation Cobra Emergency."

A wave of relief washed over Emma. She'd take Henry's fantasy life over Regina's machinations any day. "Your father and I were just heading over there for takeout," she said. "Give us five minutes?"

"I'm in the corner booth by the door to the motel," Henry said. There was a faint crackle of static as he cut the communication.

Emma turned to Neal. "Well, you heard him," she said with a shrug. "Let's go."


It was a nice night and the supper rush wasn't over yet at Granny's so they decided to walk over. "So, you're serious," Neal said. "We're going to do this. Take Regina on over Henry."

Emma turned to look at him. "Are you saying we shouldn't?"

"No!" Neal exclaimed. "I want him with us. But a custody battle could get messy. We suspect Regina's pulled off some shady stuff, but we haven't got a shred of hard evidence. Whereas anyone who does any digging on either of us will turn up our stints in Arizona, our con games, the petty theft…"

"And he's still our kid and all of that was a long time ago. We've done our time and we've cleaned up our acts over the last decade or so."

"I know. But if Regina has a good enough lawyer, it could look pretty bad for us."

"Which is why we need a better lawyer," Emma pointed out. She raised an eyebrow. "Last night," she said slowly, "you were starting to tell me about your past. We've established you didn't kill anyone but… is there anything I need to know?"

Neal swallowed hard. "There is," he said. "I wish I could say it won't impact a custody fight, but I just don't know for sure."

"Neal?"

"Regina tried to have Sidney dig up dirt on me, just like he did on you."

Emma stopped walking and leaned against a street lamp, putting a hand on Neal's sleeve to stop him. "Okay, so what did he find?"

"Nothing," Neal said. "That was the problem."

"I'm not following."

Neal took a breath. "Look, my dad had some… issues. He didn't have a lot of use for society in general and… He raised me off-grid. At first my mother was in the picture, but when she couldn't take it anymore, she ran off with another guy she met. I was four."

Emma's eyes were wide. "You never said a word," she breathed.

"I know. Thing is, if anyone starts digging into my past, they're going to find out that there are no real records of my existence from before I was about fifteen. My birth wasn't registered. I didn't see a doctor until I was almost eighteen. My father taught me how to read and write and a bunch of survival skills, but I've never been to school. I left home when I was fourteen. For a while, I hung out with a bunch of other kids who didn't have any parents or guardians in the picture. Eventually, I ditched them, too. I tried to get a birth certificate—they call it a delayed birth registration when the birth isn't filed by the kid's first birthday—but the office I went to wanted a whole bunch of documents I didn't have, so they turned me down." He winced. "They told me I needed a court order to get one without the paperwork, but there was a fee for that and when you're panhandling for your next meal, scraping together another hundred or so isn't something you prioritize. Plus, a little of my father's paranoia about the government must've rubbed off on me and I didn't want to push too hard." He shook his head. "After I'd been on my own for a while, I got to know some people who made halfway decent forgeries, and they fixed me up with the basics: birth certificate, SSN, my first driver's license… But when Sidney started checking into my background, he found the rejected delayed birth application and he didn't find anything else. That… could be a problem."

He'd been watching Emma's reactions carefully as he spoke. He'd been prepared for the confusion and dreading the anger, but by the time he was done, both had faded, and when she spoke, it was with some measure of annoyance, but also with a kind of weary resignation.

"We can figure this out," she said heavily. "I think the first thing we need to do is talk to a lawyer. Maybe none of that's relevant, or maybe he or she can help. I would think that growing up off-grid, like you're saying, they might cut you a little slack for… not getting your paperwork done through the right channels. Plus," she added, "if we can find anything concrete on Regina: if we can prove that she strong-armed the lab to say that the heart Ruby found was Kathryn's, or that she blackmailed Sidney into confessing, o-or that she's been stuffing the ballot boxes at every mayoral election, that stuff's going to be more recent and more serious than your using fake ID."

Neal exhaled. "I hope you're right, but now you know why I'm worried."

Emma gripped his hand. "Hey. We'll deal with this and anything else that comes our way. Now let's go find out what Henry wants." She took a breath and shook her head sadly. "The baggage we carry…" she murmured. Then she gave him a gentle smile. "I'm glad you told me."

Neal squeezed her hand and smiled back, letting a bit of his relief show. He'd told her what he thought she could accept and it looked like it had been close enough to the truth not to trigger her lie detector. Or maybe it wasn't as accurate as she thought it was, but he wasn't about to complain! They continued on their way to Granny's, neither one spotting the man who had ducked onto a side street at their approach, and had heard every word of Neal's confession.


As it turned out, Henry's emergency wasn't nearly as urgent as they'd been led to believe from his call, but it was worrying. "Someone changed my book!" he said in a loud whisper, as soon as Emma and Neal sat down. "There's a new story in it."

Emma frowned. "Why would someone add a new story?" she asked.

"And when?" Neal interjected.

Henry frowned. "We've been keeping the book at the sheriff station. Nobody's supposed to know that besides me and Emma and now you," he added, giving Neal an apologetic look.

"Yeah, but the station's almost never locked," Emma admitted. "Someone could have got in. I'll check the tapes."

"Maybe it wasn't so recent," Henry said. "I've read it cover to cover a few times, but lately, I've been mostly reading the Snow White parts. Maybe when the book disappeared after the storm, someone got hold of it then and I'm only just now reading the new part."

"Again," Neal said, "why?"

Henry had clearly thought about this before he'd called. "To tell us something we need to know about the curse."

Emma raised an eyebrow. "And what would that be?" she asked with a faint smirk.

If Henry noticed her skepticism, he pretended otherwise. "I don't know," he admitted. "The story isn't finished."

Emma and Neal exchanged a dubious glance. Emma frowned. "Why would someone go to so much trouble to add a new story, and then not bother finishing it?" she asked, still looking at Neal.

Henry glanced down at the first page of the story he claimed hadn't been there before. "That's what's weird," he said. "The story's about Pinocchio. Everyone knows how that ends."

"Do they?" Neal murmured.

"Well, maybe that's why it was left out," Emma said at the same time.

Henry gave his father an approving look. "Or, maybe, there's more to it," he said excitedly.

Emma sighed. "Henry, I hate to say it, but don't you have a session with Archie in a minute? You'd better get a move on or you'll be late."

Henry sighed. "Yeah. But Operation Cobra never takes a break. If you come up with any theories, I want to know!" He snapped the book shut, shoved it into his backpack and hurried off.

His parents watched him go fondly. "You heard him," Neal said to Emma.

"I also think I just heard my stomach rumble," Emma said. "Let's get supper."


Neal drove Herbie to Marco's workshop the next morning and clenched his teeth when he caught sight of the motorcycle parked across the street. At least, there was no sign of its owner. He pulled around the corner, not wanting to chance another meeting. This was a small town and, sooner or later, his path would cross that of August W. Booth again, but hopefully, by the time it did, he wouldn't still want to slug him. Last night, he'd thought he'd got that out of his system, but the more he thought about what August had pulled, the more his anger started spiking again.

Good thing Henry's comic books are fantasy, he thought. Or I'd probably be glowing green and stomping down Main Street in a pair of ragged purple pants smashing everything in my path by now.

He'd just gotten out of the car, when a hand came down on his shoulder, and voice said quietly, "You know a custody battle with Regina won't solve anything."

Startled, Neal twisted free and realized, with almost clinical detachment, that when push came to shove, he was able to control the urge to flip the puppet over his shoulder and slam him into a lamppost. "Still spying on us?" he snapped.

"Not intentionally," August said quickly. "I am staying at the inn. Stands to reason I'd be hanging out in the vicinity."

The next time they wanted takeout, Neal resolved, they were definitely going for sushi. Or Italian. Or hell, if there was another place in town that served grilled cheese and bear claws, that would be fine, too, and Emma would raise fewer objections. "Just stay the hell out of our business," he warned.

For answer, August rolled up his pants leg. "Getting Emma to break the curse is my business," he replied. "She has to see the big picture. Unless you can get her to recognize what she's up against, she's not going to beat Regina."

"So you say," Neal retorted. "The way I see it, once we take Henry over the town line, even if she can follow us, there won't be a whole lot she can do. Emma may not know the truth about this town, but I do. I can use that." He smiled. "You know how we beat Regina? We make sure people know she's claiming to be the mayor of a town that doesn't exist. She claims to live at an address that's not on any map. She doesn't have a record of any kind in any government database, and she's claiming that she has custody over our kid. Now, the Curse may have fixed it so the deck's stacked in her favor, but that's only true here in Storybrooke. We leave the Curse boundaries and things start tilting our way."

"And you'll leave everyone else trapped under the Curse."

Neal winced. "I don't think Fate's going to let that happen," he said.

"But you think it'll let you take Henry out of town."

"I don't know!" Neal snapped. "I do know that without something big that Emma can't explain away, she's not going to buy into any talk about magic or curses or the supernatural or what have you. I'm not even going to waste my breath trying."

August absorbed that. Then he took a deep breath. "Then let me try using mine," he said. "Look… maybe you're right. You take Henry out of here, everyone else is stuck under a partly-broken curse, where time's moving again, but nobody can leave or knows who they are… except me. If the curse doesn't break, I'm dead. I may not be your favorite person in the world right now, but I don't think you want that on your conscience."

Neal took a breath. "What are you planning to do?"

"I'm planning to tell her the truth."

"She's not going to believe you."

"You don't know that."

"Actually," Neal said, "considering how well I know her, I do."

"Let me try anyway. Look, if she doesn't believe me, at least we'll both know I tried. Otherwise, you'll have to live with wondering whether there was anything you could have done that would've saved me. And not just me. Everyone."

Neal shook his head. "I'm not in charge of Emma," he said finally. "We both know I can't stop you from talking to her. If she listens… if she starts believing… I won't try talking her out of it."

"But you won't help convince her."

Neal hesitated. "I didn't say that," he said. "But… no promises."

August exhaled. "I understand. And thanks."

"I didn't say I'd help."

"But you're not hindering," August said, already walking toward his motorcycle. "That's something."

Neal watched him get on—a bit more stiffly than usual, he noticed—and drive away, before he walked around the corner toward Marco's workshop.


"I'm sorry," Kathryn said. She was sitting up in bed now, and looked to be in far better shape than she had the last time Emma had come to the hospital. "It's still pretty much a blank."

Emma nodded unhappily. "If there's anything you can remember, anything at all…"

"I'm sorry," Kathryn said again, shaking her head. A puzzled frown came to her face. "I overheard some of the staff talking… They were saying something about Sidney Glass…?"

"He's confessed to your kidnapping," Emma nodded. "That's why I was hoping you could either corroborate or contradict."

"I can't believe it," Kathryn breathed. "Sidney?"

"It seems to have surprised everyone," Emma nodded. "Did you see…?"

"I don't remember seeing anyone," Kathryn said. "I was behind the wheel of my car… I lost control… tried to brake… and the next thing I knew, I was in the dark, kneeling on… I-I think it was packed dirt. There was food close by. Water," she added with a frown.

"Chains?" Emma asked, remembering something Sidney had mentioned at the station.

Kathryn shook her head. "I don't remember those. I had a blanket. A-and there was a bucket for… I guess you can imagine what that was for. I think there must have been something in the food to knock me out, so I wouldn't be able to tell who was holding me. I'd eat, I'd fall asleep, and when I woke up, there would be fresh food and an empty bucket." She heaved a sigh. "Sidney. Really?"

"He's confessed," Emma repeated. "He might not have been working alone, but he hasn't named anyone else."

"I've known Sidney forever," Kathryn murmured. "I can't believe he'd be capable of this. Any of it."

Emma was nodding, but she was also remembering that Neal had caught Sidney apparently tampering with her brakes. And Kathryn had just told her that her brakes hadn't worked. Maybe she shouldn't be so quick to assume that Sidney wasn't involved.

"Hey!" Both women turned as one to see a young man standing in the doorway, a teddy bear in one hand and a foil helium balloon in the other.

Kathryn's lips curved in a welcoming smile. "Jim!" she exclaimed warmly.

"Am I here at a bad time?" the gym teacher asked. "I can leave these at the nurse's station and come back."

"Oh, no," Kathryn exclaimed. "Sheriff Swan was just leaving, I think. Right, Emma?" she asked, and Emma couldn't help but see the pleading look in her eyes. Clearly, Kathryn was moving on from David and from the little she'd seen of Jim, he seemed to be a good guy.

Emma rose to her feet. "Sure, I guess we're done," she said. "But if you remember anything else at all, no matter how little…?"

"I'll contact you," Kathryn nodded. Her smile dimmed. "I'm sorry. I really do wish I could be a bigger help, but the memories just… aren't there."

"Traumatic amnesia," Emma nodded back unhappily. "It's not your fault. Sorry to start your day out like this," she added.

"You're just doing your job, Sheriff," Kathryn assured her. "And," she added, glancing in Jim's direction, "my day can only get better from here."


Rumpelstiltskin was not having a good morning. The events of the previous night were still weighing on him. He couldn't believe he'd been such a fool. He'd let his guard down, poured out his heart to the man he'd thought was his son, and all the while, Booth had been after the dagger.

Who the hell was the man anyway? If not Bae… who else knew about the dagger?

Rumple frowned. That was the question, wasn't it? Back in the land of his birth, the dagger had been, if not exactly common knowledge, nowhere near as large a secret as he would have liked. True he'd never known of the thing's existence before old Zoso had told him, but he'd been a peasant spinner who might have yearned for the power to do some real good in the world, but had no hope of actualizing such a dream. How much had he known of magic back then? He'd had a bean once and squandered it on his father. He'd been traded away for magic—or at least for the magical gift of eternal youth. But as for magic's rules and parameters, its components and artifacts, the knowledge he'd had in those matters could have been writ on a scrap of birch bark the size of his finger and had space left over. It was rather a different matter when it came to mages, scholars, archivists, and those who might employ them. Had he been a royal, or even a noble, he might well have been taught such matters. Had he had magic, then almost certainly.

Very well then, he thought to himself. Whom did he know who might fit that bill, and not come over with the Curse? An image of Merlin's Apprentice surfaced in his mind, but Booth was hardly he. And if the Apprentice had merely hired Booth to steal the dagger, well, he—like the Reul Ghorm—preferred to tell their associates as little as was necessary for them to accomplish the task. No, if the Apprentice wanted his dagger, he might have set Booth to procuring it, but he wouldn't have told him its true power.

Reul Ghorm. He frowned. She might well want his dagger, were she awake enough to know what it was and who he was, but she, like most of the rest of the town, was still very much asleep. No. Either Booth had been acting alone, or he'd been hired by someone who was awake, whether inside the town or outside it, but for Booth to have been able to pass Storybrooke's boundaries on his own, he would have to have come from Misthaven as well.

His frown deepened. Magical objects retained their power in this world. Magical spells did not. Whoever Booth was, the face he wore was his own, untainted by glamor spell or illusion. Six-leafed clover of Oz… No. Zelena might well be capable of such subterfuge, but she couldn't have followed him here. He'd sent Jefferson to Oz to procure those slippers she'd used to reach the Enchanted Forest, only to discover that they'd already found a new wearer and a different realm.

His eyebrows lifted. There was one person he knew of who hadn't come over with the Curse. He'd thought he'd accounted for him already, but perhaps not. Perhaps Neal Cassidy was just a denizen of this realm who had been smitten with Emma Swan and whom Ms Swan had brought here. Perhaps…

Well, at least there was a simple enough way to test this new theory.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, turned it on, and began scrolling through his contact list.


Neal looked up as Marco approached and, seeing that the older man wanted to talk to him, turned off the power sander. "Do you have enough work to keep you busy for an hour or so?" Marco asked.

Tilting his head, Neal examined the desk he was preparing to refinish "At the rate I'm going," he said, lifting off his respirator the better to be understood, "it'll probably take me another half hour to get the old finish off. But between doing the fine-grit and applying the stain… yeah, I've got at least another couple of hours ahead of me. Why?"

Marco smiled. "Mr. Gold just called. He says he has an antique cuckoo clock that doesn't work properly and he wants me to see whether it's worth repairing. I don't think it will take me long to know, but sometimes, it's hard to tell before you examine it."

Neal smiled back. "I've got enough to keep me busy for now. I'll be fine." He put his respirator back and picked up the sander once more.

He didn't hear Marco's goodbye over the whine of the tool.


An hour later, Rumpelstiltskin found himself in a far better mood. Not only had he confirmed Booth's identity, but it looked as though he'd have another antique in fine working order before too much time had elapsed.

He had great respect for the town handyman, whose talents for carpentry, clockworks, and repairs were a magic all their own and one he sometimes thought might rival his. And if the Curse wasn't breaking fast enough for him, he knew that one day soon, it would be broken.

His phone buzzed and he pulled it out to look at it. A faint chuckle escaped him and his upper lip curled. It looked as though Booth had been correct when he'd said that the sheriff would be coming by to inquire about custody advice. At least, he assumed that it was for that reason that she intended to stop by. For the life of him, he couldn't think of any other pretext for her call. He hadn't contracted for any other infants, hadn't crossed paths with Moe French in nearly a month, and he'd taken great care to remove any traces of his presence in the cellar that had temporarily housed Mrs. Nolan—which, so far as he knew, Ms Swan had not discovered. Well. If Booth was to be believed—which was possibly, though scarcely certain—the sheriff was in need of guidance, albeit not on the legal front. And he was best positioned to provide it.

He texted his reply quickly, inviting her to pop by after today's close of business.


"Wait. Hold it one sec." Neal walked out of the garage workshop and away from the sound of Marco's rhythmic hammering and into the open air. "Okay," he said into his phone. "What happened with Gold?"

Emma's voice was only marginally calmer than it had been the first time. "He turned me down flat," she snapped. "Said that since we can't prove Regina was involved with Kathryn's disappearance or Mary Margaret almost taking the fall for it, there's no way we can win and it's just going to end up hurting Henry."

Neal frowned. "I know we were talking about that ourselves," he said slowly, thinking. Papa never did—or refused to do—anything without a reason. Unfortunately, that reason might be anything from having made a prior deal with Regina to make sure nobody took Henry from her, to Emma not currently having anything he wanted, to deciding he had better things to do with his time than put himself out, to thinking that withholding his help would somehow get Emma to break the Curse faster. And while he'd bet good money on it being that last one, he had no idea why Papa might think refusing his aid would accomplish that.

"Regina's a sociopath. There is just no way that Henry's better off with her than with us," Emma said.

"Okay," Neal said. "Then we take a day trip to Boston and talk to a lawyer there."

"That's what I'm thinking, too," Emma said. "Funny. You know, August told me that other time that if I wanted to beat Regina, I had to see the big picture. I know I'm grasping at straws, but I'm starting to wonder if he knows something that might help."

The memories of two nights earlier came flooding back and Neal fought down a fresh surge of anger. The hell with what August had asked of him. It wasn't as though he'd promised not to hinder him; that had been August's inference. He didn't owe the guy anything! "I doubt it," he said tersely.

"You're probably right," Emma agreed. "It's almost definitely going to be a waste of time, but if it isn't… if we lose Henry… I'll always be wondering if there was some piece of the puzzle he had that could have helped."

"No," Neal said. "It's not that. It's…" All at once, he realized that he didn't even have to come up with some bogus excuse. "He was in the woods when I went for that walk the other night. He didn't know I was there and neither did Gold."

"Gold?" Emma repeated. "You're not making sense."

"Just listen," Neal pleaded. "I overheard them talking. Gold had a kid once. They lost contact years ago, from what he was saying. August… was trying to pass himself off as Gold Junior."

There was a pause. "Any chance it was legit?" Emma asked finally.

"Nope. Gold's a wealthy guy, in case you hadn't noticed. August was pretending to be his son to con him out of his life savings."

"No way. How do you know…?"

"Because Gold figured it out before it was too late. Look. I don't know why Gold turned you down, and I don't know what Booth wants to show you, but… he's a con artist, and a damned good one I'll bet, if he could fool Gold even temporarily. You can't trust him."

Emma sighed. "I hear you," she said finally. "But I've got my superpower. That should tell me if he's lying."

"Emma…"

"I'll be careful," she assured him. "But I really do have to know."

Neal tried to come up with a better argument, but on the spur of the moment, he couldn't. "Good luck," he said finally. "Tell me later how it worked out."


She was pissed. Neal could tell that the moment she stormed into the house. "You were right," she said tersely. "That was worse than a waste of time."

Neal got up at once and poured milk into a small saucepan. He opened the cabinet to the left of the sink and took down a tin of cocoa powder and a canister of sugar, adding a scoop of each to the milk before he set the pan on the stove and turned on the burner.

Emma sank into a chair at the kitchen table. "Thanks."

"If you want to vent…"

"I'm starting to think that… No. That makes no sense."

"What doesn't?"

Emma blew air out from between her teeth. "He believes what's in Henry's book. I was going to say that whoever's controlling this town got to him, too, except Henry seems to be one of the few people here who aren't… drinking the Kool-Aid." She frowned. "Unless this whole mind experiment isn't about brainwashing everyone to believe the same thing about everything."

"Emma…" Neal's hands were suddenly sweating and he wiped them on his jeans. Then he remembered that he was handling food and turned on the sink faucet to wash them properly, squeezing out a dollop of Palmolive for good measure.

"Maybe they're experimenting, implanting different phony belief systems in different groups, to see if some last longer than others," Emma went on.

"You're back to thinking this place is some CIA testing ground?" Neal asked, with a skeptical frown.

"I don't think I stopped," Emma admitted. "I mean, it hasn't always been the first thing in my mind, but I don't think it every really went away. It's the only thing that makes sense."

Neal swallowed hard. "No," he said slowly. "No. It's not." Now. If he didn't tell her now, she was going to find out anyway. Breaking the Curse was her destiny, and as much as she was fighting it, as much as he'd tried to thwart it, Destiny was Destiny, and she was going to fulfill hers. Probably sooner, rather than later, he thought wryly. And once the Curse broke, once she knew the truth, once she found out he'd been lying to her all this time, she'd be furious. She'd be furious now, too; it was one of the main reasons he hadn't opened up to her.

Except that since he'd begun to open up to her, she'd taken his revelations pretty well. True, he hadn't mentioned anything about magic, or Neverland, or Papa being Rumpelstiltskin, but maybe he wasn't giving her enough credit.

When there's a disaster looming, sometimes the best thing you can do is try to get ahead of it instead of sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop. He winced, and it wasn't just because he was mangling metaphors.

"I… uh…" He took a breath. "This isn't exactly the easiest thing for me to say, so just hear me out."

Something about his look or his tone must have gotten through to her, because the fury seemed to leave her eyes and she said quietly, "Okay…"

"I…" He swallowed. "Henry's right," he said. "His book is right. I know because… you're not the only person who crossed over from the Enchanted Forest before the Curse hit. August did, and… and so did I."

Emma's eyes had grown wider as he spoke. The faint smile that had begun to form on her lips vanished. "Oh, my god," she whispered.

Neal nodded. "I know it's a lot to absorb, and I'm really sorry I didn't tell you before. I've been trying to—"

"Oh, my god," Emma repeated. "They got to you, too!"