Reawakened: A Once Upon a Time Tale (35 page)

“Maybe she will, but she wants you dead,” Henry said.

This surprised Emma.

“Henry, come on,” she said.

“She wants you dead, because you’re the only one who can stop her.”

“Stop her from what?” Emma said, raising her voice. “What is it that’s she’s really doing? Other than fighting for you?” She took a step toward him, meaning to hug him. “This whole thing has gotten out of hand.”

She put a hand on his shoulder and knelt down to him. She thought he would pull away and fight, but he didn’t. He buried his face in her chest, sobbing. It was unbearable. She felt him stiffen then, and his head came up. He was looking at something over her shoulder. She looked, too. It was the apple turnover.

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“Regina gave it to me,” Emma said. “So what?”

He sniffed the air. “Is it apple?”

“So?”

He went to the counter and pushed it away. “You can’t eat it,” he said. “It’s poison.”

“What?”

“Don’t you see?” Henry said. “The deal? It was all a trick. To get you to eat this. To get rid of you once and for all. This is exactly how she got rid of Snow White, except this time, you don’t have a Charming here to come wake you up.”

It was terrible to hear him going down this path again. Archie had been right—he’d retreated into it. Her presence here was hurting him. “Why would she do that after I told her I would go?” Emma asked.

“Because as long as you’re alive, wherever you are, you’re a threat.”

“You have to stop thinking like this.”

“BUT IT’S THE TRUTH!” he yelled. She had never heard him so loud.

Emma reached for the turnover. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll prove it to you.” But when he saw what she was doing, Henry snatched the turnover before she could get it, and held it in front of his own mouth.

Like a threat.

“What are you doing?” Emma said.

“I’m sorry it’s come to this. You might not believe in the curse, or in me,” Henry said. “But I believe in you.”

He took a big bite.

Same difference, Emma thought.

Either way, he’d know for sure.

She waited.

He chewed and swallowed.

“Do you see?” Emma said, after she thought that enough time had gone by. “You want some ice cream with that, or can we get back—”

Before she could finish the sentence, Henry dropped to the floor.

She ran to him, grabbed his little shoulders, shook him. “Henry?” she said. “Henry?”

Panic gripped her after she took his pulse. He was not messing with her. Almost no heartbeat.

“Henry?” she cried again, her voice trembling.

One thought kept circling her mind: This is not happening.

“Henry!” she cried. “Henry!”

The hospital. screaming. frantic cries. Dr. Whale’s harried questions.

More doctors. Trying to stabilize Henry.

Tears.

Emma ran alongside the gurney, her eyes full of tears, as they carted her son into the ER. She was unable to think. She could barely answer their questions. She tried to tell Dr. Whale about the turnover, to tell him that Henry had been poisoned, but none of it made sense, none of it sounded right. She sounded like a raving lunatic, and Dr. Whale insisted that Henry had not been poisoned. He could find no evidence.

“Is anything different?” Whale said. “You have to think, Emma. What’s happened in the last few hours?”

Frustrated, she grabbed Henry’s backpack from the gurney, pulled it, and began riffling through its contents, looking for any ideas. Soon, however, the backpack spilled all over the floor, and Henry’s things were everywhere. Emma, tears in her eyes, began to look around. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”

Whale, frustrated also, went back to Henry.

And just then, Emma saw Henry’s book.

Magic, she thought. It’s not poison. It’s magic.

She remembered Henry’s words from that first day: “All the stories in this book actually happened.”

She touched the book. And as she did, she remembered… more.

She remembered…

Her mother, handing her to her father.

Her father, fighting the Queen’s men as he held her.

The wardrobe, and being gently set inside.

The woods, waking up… with August.

Emma blinked as the images flashed over her.

All of her life, Emma had been a skeptic. She’d been the person who poked holes in other people’s logic, the person who saw through the illusions that trapped everyone else. It was what made her good at her job, and it was what had gotten her into (and out of ) so much trouble along the way. This time, though, it was different. This time, she’d been the one living in a dream world. Emma, the realist, had been utterly wrong.

It’s all real. All of it is real.

All of it.

The gurney and the team of doctors reached a set of doors, and as they pushed Henry through, down the hall, they all heard a withering shriek. Everyone stopped and looked up. Regina, in a panic, was running toward him. “My son!” she cried.

Emma’s eyes narrowed. If it was real, than Regina was behind it all. And if Regina was behind it all, it was time to kill Regina.

“You did this,” she said, grabbing the woman by the collar and pushing her into a door. The door gave way, and the two of
them ended up inside a storage closet. Regina didn’t know what had hit her.

“What in the hell are you—”

Emma punched her. The rage of the last weeks flowed through her shoulder and her fist as she struck the blow, and Regina’s head banged back into a shelf. She tried to hit Emma back, but she wasn’t fast enough. Emma grabbed Regina’s arm and pushed her again, back into the shelf.

“Stop this,” Regina sputtered. “My son is—”

“Your son is sick. Because of you,” spat Emma. “That apple turnover you gave me? Henry ate it.”

Regina’s eyes showed Emma a new kind of terror. Something she’d never seen, quite honestly.

“What?” said Regina, wilting before her.

Emma stared back at her, letting the truth sink in.

“It was… it was meant for… you.” Regina barely got the words out. Emma was holding her up, and she guessed that Regina would probably fall if she let go.

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?”

Emma slammed her against the shelf one more time.

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

Now Regina understood.

“Yes,” she said. “It is.”

“Why would you do this?” Emma cried. “I was leaving town. Why couldn’t you just leave it alone? It would have been okay!”

Regina shook her head. “Because as long as you’re alive, Henry will never be mine,” she said.

“He’s not going to be anyone’s unless you fix this,” Emma said. “Wake him up. Turn off the magic.”

“I can’t,” Regina said, shaking her head.

“Why not?”

“That was the last of the magic in this world,” Regina said. “It was supposed to put you to sleep. That would have been it.”

“So what’s it going to do to him?” Emma asked.

“I don’t know,” Regina said. “Magic here is unpredictable.”

Emma stared. “So he could die?”

“Yes,” Regina said. “Yes.”

“Then what do we do, Regina?”

Regina straightened up as well, nodding, thinking it through. “We need help,” she said. “There is one other person in this town who knows about this. Who knows about magic.”

Emma knew who she meant. There was only one possibility.

“Mr. Gold,” she said.

Regina nodded.

“Actually,” she said, “he usually goes by Rumplestiltskin.”

• • •

“Can we talk?”

Mary Margaret looked up toward the voice. She had a fresh cup of coffee in her hand, and she nearly spilled it when she saw David coming toward her. He was looking contrite, although that didn’t mean anything. She was tired of having a man who had to apologize for himself. All the time.

“I don’t think there’s anything left to say,” she said. She went toward her car.

“I was wrong.”

Mary Margaret stopped. She looked back at him and sighed. She couldn’t stay away. No matter how hard she tried.

“About you,” he said. “About me. About everything.”

“I’m listening,” she said.

“I didn’t believe in you,” David said. “And I wish I had a good reason why—but—well, it’s like I keep making the wrong decisions, and I don’t understand how it keeps happening.” He shook his head, frustrated. She didn’t say it, but she could relate. “Ever since I woke up from that coma… my life hasn’t made any sense. Except for you. And what I’m feeling—it’s love, Mary Margaret. And it keeps pulling me back to you.”

She tried to imagine a version of David, one that had been driven by love all these months. Through every bumbling decision. It wasn’t easy, but she supposed she could see it. In a way.

“That may be,” she said. “But I’ll tell you what I’ve felt since you came into my life. Pain.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you here, David?”

“Because Kathryn put a down payment on an apartment in Boston,” he said. “She’s not going to use it. But I am.” He looked at her sadly. “Unless you can give me a reason to stay here.”

She looked at David for a long time.

“I can’t,” she said finally. “I’m sorry.”

She walked to her car and got in, not wanting him to see her face. How many times had that happened? Too many.

Her phone buzzed again, as it had several times this morning. She had ignored it up until now, but she looked this time, mostly to distract herself. Eight missed calls. All from Emma. She called up her voicemail and put the phone to her ear.

“Mary Margaret,” came Emma’s frantic voice. “It’s Henry. It’s Henry, I don’t—Something is wrong. Something is wrong.”

• • •

It was true that Emma hadn’t known what the day would bring once she decided to leave Storybrooke. In her wildest imagination, however, she hadn’t come up with this: working together with Regina. The two of them were on the way to Gold’s shop. They hadn’t spoken since they’d left the hospital, and Emma had no plans to say anything to Regina now. She hated her, of course. But she had to work with her.

“Do my eyes deceive me,” said Gold, once they were both at his counter, “or is that the look of a believer?” He could tell, apparently. Something about her had changed.

“We need your help,” said Emma.

“Indeed you do,” he said immediately. “It seems quite the tragic ailment has befallen our young friend.” He pointed to Regina. “I told you magic comes with a price. Always.”

“Henry shouldn’t have to pay it,” Regina said.

“No, you should,” said Gold. “And you will, no doubt. But alas, for now, we are where we are.” He smiled politely and folded his hands.

“Can you help us?” Emma said.

“Of course I can,” he said. “True love, my dear. That’s the only magic powerful enough to transcend realms and break any curse. Luckily for you, I happen to have bottled some.”

Regina looked incredulous, Emma saw. “You did?” Emma asked Gold. Apparently this wasn’t a joke. Gold had a bottle of love somewhere.

This new world, Emma thought, is going to take some getting used to.

“Indeed,” said Gold. He looked toward Emma. “From strands of your parents’ hair, I made the most powerful potion in all the realms. So powerful that when I constructed the dark curse, I put one drop on the parchment. As a little safety valve.”

This made sense to Emma, actually. She didn’t know much about magic, but she knew a back door when she saw one. “That’s why I’m the savior,” she said, almost relieved that it wasn’t about religion, or a prophecy, and was simply about the manner in which a lonely old man had constructed a spell. “That’s why I can break it, too.”

“Now she’s getting it,” Gold said.

“I don’t care about breaking the curse,” said Emma. “I just want to save Henry.”

“Which is why it’s your lucky day,” Gold said. “I didn’t use all of the potion. I saved a little. For a rainy day.”

“Well, it’s storming like a bitch. Where is it?”

“Where it is is not the problem,” Gold said. “Getting it is what should worry you. It’s not gonna be easy.”

“Enough riddles, Rumple,” said Regina, and Emma was startled, for a moment, hearing her refer to him by his “real” name. “What do we do?”

“You do nothing,” Gold said. “It has to be Ms. Swan.”

“He’s my son, it should be me,” insisted Regina.

“All due respect, but it’s her son and it has to be her,” Gold said. “She’s the product of the magic, so she must be the one to find it.”

“I can do it,” Emma said. She knew it was true. If it was about saving Henry, she’d be able to do it. Everything that had happened had led to this.

“Don’t trust him, Emma,” Regina said, turning to her. She put her hand on Emma’s arm. Hearing her own name in Regina’s mouth was also disorienting, but the hand on the arm—a brief compassionate touch—was totally surreal.

Emma pulled her arm away. “What choice do we have?” she said.

“You expect me to believe that you saved a dollop of the most powerful magic in the realms, which also happens to be the only magic left in this place, and you’re just going to give it to us to save Henry?” Regina shook her head. “No. He’s up to something.”