A/N: Some dialogue quoted verbatim from S1E21: An Apple as Red as Blood. Some details referenced from S5E19: Sisters

Chapter Ten

"Mo—" Henry caught himself at the last second. "Lady Wilma!" he exclaimed, as the guards dragged them along. "What's happening? What's going on?" The ink was drying on the back of his hand, making the skin feel uncomfortably tight, but he ignored it.

"It's gonna be okay, kid!" Neal said, managing briefly to grasp his son's shoulder. The dark stain his palm left was barely noticeable. "This has to be a misunderstanding!" A lie, as he very well knew, but Henry was scared enough as it was. And if they got the chance to explain themselves, then maybe it would be okay. At least, for them. And at once, Neal felt a wave of shame. Yeah, Regina was the Evil Queen and if Henry's book was to be believed, she'd done any number of monstrous deeds. But he was the Dark One's son and if it had been Papa being threatened, he knew he'd want to save him, too. And for the first ten years of Henry's life, Regina had been the only mother Henry had known. How could Henry not feel the same? Neal promised himself that, if was at all possible, he'd do his best to get Regina out of this jam—for Henry's sake if not for hers. He turned his head to look at her and was startled to see a tiny smile playing on her lips. What the hell was she so happy about?

Regina couldn't move. Her captors carried her forward, her feet barely an inch off the ground, her body stiff as a board, but for the first time since Emma and her parents had locked her up in the sheriff station holding cell, she felt a surge of real hope.

The guards hadn't taken any chances with the newcomers. She'd only been the first whose skin they'd dabbed with squid ink. But she was the only one it had immobilized. The ink only had that effect on those who wielded magic and it had worked on her. Despite their predicament, her heart was soaring. She still had her magic. She had to! And once she figured out how to unlock it, she and Henry would be as far away from this place as she could teleport them.

Emma woke up to the sun shining through her bedroom window the following morning. She yawned, stretched, smiled to hear the birds singing outside, and reached over to the space beside her. The empty space beside her. Her smile drained away as she realized that it had all been a dream. She wasn't back in Arizona exploring Salt River Canyon the way she and Neal had always meant to but never actually had time for. But in her mind now, she had vivid images of the drive down Highway 60, the narrow hiking trail, the…

It was all slipping away and she wanted to hold onto it. Because Neal had been with her, the weight of his arm so right around her shoulders, his infectious laugh, his heartbreaking smile… It couldn't have all been a dream. She'd been reading the road signs, for crying out loud. Wasn't that supposed to be impossible in a dream, something about dreams happening on one side of the brain and reading on the other? It had to have been real!

But if it were real, then she would have awakened in Arizona, not Storybrooke and Neal would have been right beside her when she did.

Emma closed her eyes. Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe if she fell back to sleep, she'd get back into that dream again. Or a different one; she didn't care, so long as she didn't have to face another day without Neal.

The doorbell rang and Emma groaned. Who could be calling at this ungodly hour? She glanced at the clock. It was almost half-past ten? She groaned again. Then she sat up, swung her feet out of bed, shrugged into a bathrobe and went downstairs, half-hoping that whoever it was would be gone by the time she got to the door.

The iron door closed behind them with a clang. Neal took a moment to look around. They were sitting in, what appeared to be a root cellar, stout wooden beams buttressing the earthen walls and the sod roof above them. One wall—the one to which the door was affixed—appeared at first glance to be made of daub-and-wattle like the hut in which he'd lived his first fourteen years, though he'd need to get closer to confirm it. As he, Regina, and Henry, were now secured to the wall opposite, that wasn't something he was currently able to do. Actually, discovering what that wall was made of wasn't half as important as being able to reach it.

Neal waited for the sound of receding footsteps before he used his right foot to ease his left shoe off. Then, with his manacled hands, he bent forward to ease the lock-pick out of the collar of the shoe.

"What are you doing?" Henry asked from the corner to his left.

"Shh!" Neal said at once. Then, apologetically, "The light isn't great here and if I lose this, I might never find it again."

"S-sorry," Henry said at once.

"Nah, I didn't mean to snap." His eyebrows shot up. "How close can you get to me?" he asked.

For answer, Henry scooted forward, the long chain that fastened his manacles to the wall clanking at every move. For his part, Neal did his best to move closer to Henry. When he realized that their chains were long enough to allow them to touch, he grinned. "Great. Hold up your wrists and let me unlock you. Then you can do me."

Henry started to obey. A pained grimace sprang to his face. "Do they have to be so heavy?" he asked.

Neal sighed. "It's a dungeon. It's going to be secure." He paused for a beat. "Plus, with our hands restrained, if we had magic, we wouldn't be able to use it."

"Is that why they used squid ink on all three of us?" Henry asked curiously.

"I think so," Neal nodded. "They don't know who we are or if we have magic, so they're playing it safe and not taking any chances." The sight of too many drawn blades pointed in their direction had ensured that they hadn't struggled when the guards had borne them aloft, carried them here, and connected the manacles on their wrists to longer chains that ended in rings set in the wooden support beams of their dungeon wall.

A sniff came from the corner to his right. "You sure you want them to know you carry thieves' tools?" Regina asked acidly. "If I were you, I wouldn't want to show my hand this early in the game."

Neal's eyebrows drew together in a frown as he realized that Regina might have a point. If they knew he had a lock pick, at the very least, they would confiscate it. They would also know that he was something of an escape artist and they would treat him with far more scrutiny. Besides, even if they did get free of their chains, they'd still have to get out of the cell and out of the apparently-misnamed Safe Haven when anyone who spotted them might attack on sight. "What do you think, Sport?" he asked Henry. "Can you manage with those bracelets a little longer?"

Henry nodded. "They're kind of uncomfortable, but they make it easier to stay awake."

Neal winced at that, but he pushed the lock pick into the pocket of his jeans, where it would be easier to retrieve when the right time to use it presented itself.

Emma fought the urge to snarl at her parents. It wasn't their fault that Neal and Henry were gone. She felt a pang. Henry was her son, but it had been Neal she'd been dreaming of last night. It was Neal she'd handcuffed to a cell door at the sheriff station four days ago. Or was it five? Was that all the time that had passed? She felt like she'd lived years in less than a week. She loved her fiancé and her son, but Henry hadn't been in her life until less than six months ago and it was Neal she'd been coming home to each night for more than eight years. Still, her tone was barely civil when she asked, "What's going on?"

Mary Margaret smiled at her nervously. "Your father and I wanted to know if you'd like to join us for coff—" She suddenly seemed to take notice of Emma's bathrobe and her bad case of bedhead. "—For breakfast," she amended, barely missing a beat. "At Granny's. Unless you'd rather it were at the loft…?"

"We thought someplace neutral would be better to start," David interjected. He frowned. "Of course, if you'd prefer—"

Their uncertainty was equal parts endearing and annoying. They were trying, though. In both senses of the word. "Granny's is fine," Emma cut him off. "Gimme twenty minutes to shower and get dressed." She was about to shut the door when she realized that expecting them to wait that long for her outside was a little bit ruder than she wanted to be, even if they had stopped her from getting back to a dream she'd woken up from too soon. "Uh, I'll meet you there." Something about the way their smiles dropped made her say, "Unless you'd rather come in and wait?"

Broad grins greeted her offer and she sighed inwardly, even as she opened the door wider, so that they could enter.

"Henry?" Regina called softly.

"I think he's asleep," Neal said. "Finally."

There was a moment's silence. Then, "I suppose we can hope he doesn't have one of those nightmares."

Neal sighed. "Like he won't be in one when we wake up. How are you holding up?"

"I can move again, if that's what you're asking," Regina replied pleasantly. There was a moment's silence. Then, "He's your son," she said abruptly.

In the dim light, Neal blinked. "Yeah. I know."

"No," Regina said. "Just as we discussed." She exhaled. "I don't know what's going to happen to me and whatever it is, I'll face it with as much grace and dignity as I can. But Henry's not part of this. As close as I've grown to him, he has to know," for an instant her control faltered and Neal heard the tremor in her voice, "that I'm not his mother. Pretending otherwise won't help anyone. You need to make him understand this." She let that sink in. "Are we clear?"

Neal swallowed. He had a pretty good idea of what it must have cost Regina to choose those words, words that wouldn't reveal the truth to anyone who might be eavesdropping on their conversation. He was fairly sure that there were no guards outside the cell door, but that didn't mean that nobody was standing outside the barred windows and it didn't rule out magical methods either. "We're clear," he confirmed.

Regina sighed. "Thank you." Then, softly, "He's still asleep?"

"Yup?"

"Peacefully?"

"So far, it looks like it."

Regina sighed again. "If it stops looking like that, wake him up."

He didn't need her to tell him that, but he only nodded in the semi-darkness and said, "I will," in case she couldn't see him.

They heard someone fussing with the lock and both tensed, bracing themselves for what might come next. Four guards entered and approached Regina's corner. "Come on, your majesty," one of them sneered. There was a clanking sound as he fussed with her chains

"Hey," Neal called, struggling to rise. "Where are you taking her?"

"Your turn will come," another guard laughed. He gripped Regina's arm and hauled her up from the straw-strewn floor. The first guard tugged on the length of chain still attached to her manacles. "Move, you!"

Neal watched as she was marched away, her head held high despite the clanking chains. Then the door slammed shut and locked once more. Neal slumped back down in the straw, scooting a bit closer to Henry, as he tried not to think about what lay in store for them.

When Emma came downstairs fifteen minutes later, her lank wet hair tied back in a messy pony tail as she finished buttoning her button down, it was to find her mother stretched out on her sofa, a cushion under her head, and her eyes closed. Emma glanced at her father. "If she's really that tired, maybe brunch isn't such a great idea," she said.

Her father shook his head. "Henry's asleep and we don't know for how long, so your mother's trying to reach him."

Emma's eyes widened. "Hang on, what?" she replied.

"The sleeping curse," David explained. "It has some, um, lingering after effects. I-I don't fully understand it myself, but from what Snow—your mother—"

"Snow's fine," Emma said quickly, though she would have preferred Mary Margaret.

"Okay, whenever Henry falls asleep, he goes back to… to wherever he was under the sleeping curse. Snow's going in there to try to communicate with him."

"How?"

"Rumpelstiltskin found a way."

Emma's eyebrows drew together in an angry frown. "And he gave it to Mary Margaret instead of to me?" she demanded.

"You were never under a sleeping curse," David explained. "That place where Henry is? You have to have awakened from one in order to get there."

The cold fury that had been building behind Emma's eyes vanished in an instant. "I didn't realize," she said. She tried to smile. "So, Mary Margaret can talk to him?"

"That's what we're hoping," David nodded. "From what she's told me, it's not exactly a pleasant place to visit. Actually," he winced, "she used to wake up screaming. So, when the charm Rumpelstiltskin gave her told her that Henry was asleep, we didn't want to risk his waking up before we got home."

"No," Emma said. "It's fine." She frowned. "She can just… go to sleep, like that?"

"Rumpelstiltskin gave her some meditation exercises that help."

Emma frowned. "Why? Why's he being so…" Her voice trailed off and she slapped a hand to her forehead. She'd been so busy trying to wrap her head around her parents being Snow White and Prince Charming and Neal having kept so much of his real life from her, that she'd somehow overlooked it. "Neal's his son."

"And Henry's his grandson," David nodded. "Rumpelstiltskin may not be helping us out of the goodness of his heart, but he wants his son back as badly as you want yours. For once," he added, "I think we're all on the same side."

Emma's stomach growled and she realized that she still hadn't had breakfast. And it didn't look like they were heading out to Granny's any time soon after all. "I'm, uh, going to put some coffee on and maybe make some French toast. Want?"

David nodded. "Thanks. Your mother's probably going to want something too, when she wakes up."

"I have enough bread," Emma assured him.

It was hard to breathe. The air was stiflingly hot in the smoky room, and even when Henry waved a hand in front of his face to try to fan himself, there was no difference. There was an acrid tang to it, and the smoky haze stung at his eyes, as he coughed. Scant inches in front of him a column of flame erupted without warning, and he cried out and leaped backwards, arms windmilling out as his foot came down on something that wasn't floor.

Then another flame jet leaped upwards very close to his left and he screamed as a fiery tongue licked at the edge of his sleeve. Stop-drop-and roll, he remembered, flinging himself to the ground to put the instructions into practice. The floor was hot, too, but at least his shirt wasn't on fire anymore. He knew he'd have another fresh burn later, though.

And then, he frowned. For a second, he'd thought— There it was again!

"Henry?" It was very faint. "Henry?"

"I'm here!" he tried to yell back. Smoke seemed to fill his lungs and he doubled over, coughing. "I'm h—!"

Wiping his streaming eyes on his now-charred sleeve, he tried to head in the direction of the voice. Five steps. Ten. For a moment, the smoky miasma thinned enough for him to see… "Grandma?"

Mary Margaret gasped as her eyes flew open. "It worked!" she exclaimed. "I saw him!"

"Henry?" Emma asked, scarcely daring to hope. Beaming, her mother nodded. "Is he okay?"

Mary Margaret started to nod again. Then she stopped and frowned. "I-I think so," she said slowly. "We didn't really talk much before I was waking up, but," her smile came back wider than before, "I saw him! It worked!"

"But he doesn't know to go to Rumpelstiltskin's castle," David said, and Mary Margaret shook her head, though the hope in her eyes barely faltered.

"Not yet," she admitted, "but I'll tell him next time. Rumpelstiltskin said that the more I did this the longer I'd be able to stay under."

Emma frowned. "Can't you try again now?"

Mary Margaret looked at the brooch and shook her head. "It's not glowing anymore," she sighed. "Henry's awake now, too. There's no point my going back to try to reach him until he goes to sleep again. But when he does," she clutched the brooch for emphasis, "I'll be there."

Regina strongly suspected that her captors were deliberately dragging her along every filthy road, goat track, and brook bed within Safe Haven's walled compound. Her Burberry boots were caked with thick mud, and had she been wearing one of the long gowns or pantsuits that had been her wont before the curse, she had no doubt that their hems would have been similarly soiled. As it was, her pencil skirt, ending just about the knee, might have made walking a bit more difficult, but it, at least, was clean.

Her heel came down on a slick mud patch and she skidded back and would have fallen, had a guard not seized her roughly and jerked her back upright. "Keep moving, you," he snarled, and Regina shot him a look of pure bile as she did her best to move gracefully despite her chains and the general coarseness of her escort.

She heaved an inward sigh of relief as they approached one of the few stone structures, a squat, square building that formed one of the corners between two of the wooden palisade walls. Whatever awaited her in here, she doubted that it was to be a public execution. They'd passed more than enough open space for that purpose, one with several tall upright posts standing ominously on a grassless patch. She could guess at their purpose; she'd been bound to one shortly before she'd decided to cast her Curse and only Snow's weak, soft heart had saved her from the archer squad that had already discharged their lethal volley in her direction.

Burning, she thought darkly, was also a possibility. The stakes hadn't looked charred, but then there was no way to know whether they'd ever been used. Perhaps she was meant to be the inaugural victim—an honor she'd prefer to forego.

Today, however, it appeared that her destination lay elsewhere. Regina's mind sorted through the possibilities. Perhaps, this was their law court, and they intended to put her through some sham of a trial. She'd almost respected Snow for not subjecting her to a travesty of that magnitude. They'd known what she'd done. She'd known what she'd done. The combined populaces of her kingdom and King George's had known what she'd done, and the lands surrounding them had likely heard some version of it. What purpose would a trial have served when the verdict was a foregone conclusion and the sentence the only mystery?

Still, perhaps it wasn't a trial. Perhaps, they'd determined that Henry and Neal had no magic after all, and this tower was where they kept magical prisoners. No, she realized. Were that the case, then they'd all have been taken here first and Henry and Neal would have been subsequently moved elsewhere.

More likely, though, she thought, this was to be an interrogation and, if so, it was likely that she was only the first who would be conducted here. She squashed down a pang of apprehension at what such a session might involve. If there was magic here, as their previous companions had said, then perhaps this would all be rather civilized with questions asked and answered and a truth-stone to determine if an answer was less than honest. If Lancelot was a fair and just ruler, then surely torture would be off the agenda.

—After everything you've done to all of us?
—My apologies, Your Majesty, but my conscience is clear!
—You're not Queen anymore, sister!
—Tighter! She needs to feel our pain!
—You took our love and ripped it apart!
—And now, you're going to pay!

—Rotten to the core…

She tried to shake off the voices. She knew them all, but… that had been a dream, a nightmare. It hadn't been real. Her current situation, however, would not be rectified by flinging back her bedclothes and opening her eyes.

Two guards positioned at either side of the tower's doubled doors saluted her captors and opened the way before them and they passed through. Regina's eyebrows lifted. While the vestibule's wooden floor was rough, the walls were of smooth, polished stone. Her captors stamped the worst of the mud off their feet and gestured for her to do the same. She complied, stifling her urge to ask them why they'd bothered dragging her through the muck in the first place if whoever was in charge of this part of the keep was so fastidious.

Once their footwear was relatively clean, they entered a hall that was every bit as grand as the one to which Regina and the others had been brought on arrival. The walls were of royal beige marble—a familiar sight in her girlhood manor, but somewhat out of place in this rustic setting. And those white curtains filtering the light from the— She turned sharply to one of the guards. "This tower is part of the fortifications," she said. "How can there be windows here?"

The guard snorted. "When the time comes for questions, Your Majesty, it's we who'll be askin' and it's you who'll be answerin'. Come along."

They ushered her up a polished stone staircase that turned sharply several times before they reached the next level, then down a carpeted hallway with walls papered in a shade of blue that Regina found as familiar as the marble a floor below. The guards stopped before an arched door and knocked sharply once.

"Send her in," a voice called after a moment, and Regina froze as one of the men tugged at the door's iron handle. The marble, the curtains, the wallpaper… Her eyes widened. It couldn't be. But that voice…! No. No, it simply wasn't possible!

And then someone gave her a hard shove in the small of her back and she barely recovered in time to avoid sprawling forward in her chains as the door shut behind her. Her knees were still shaking with the strain of keeping upright (or at least, she told herself that that was the reason) as she took in her surroundings. She was standing in a tastefully-furnished drawing room. More blue wallpaper, those same gauzy curtains at windows that hadn't been visible outside, a harpsichord in one corner opposite a divan and a number of comfortable chairs, and in another corner, a woman sitting at a writing desk, seemingly absorbed in whatever her pen was scratching out on her vellum.

Regina swallowed hard, even as her old etiquette lessons took over and she straightened her spine, raised her chin imperiously, and waited.

The woman finished whatever she'd been writing or drawing and looked up. As she did, Regina felt the same, sick, terror of her childhood wash over her once more. "Mother?" she gasped.

Cora smiled. "Hello, Regina."