Remember how I said back in Chapter 1 that there'd be some slight changes to a certain thing in canon beyond just the obvious Emma insertion? So. Here it comes.

Flashbacks from the pilot and Queen of Hearts included in this chapter. Y'all know what's coming.

"Tell us what you know," Snow commands, but Emma can see her hand snake out to David's where their cloaks touch in the dimness of the dungeon. Emma wraps her arms around herself instead and waits.

It's been half a year since Regina's announcement at the wedding. Henry is two and a half now, stumbling around in the woods and speaking more and more. Snow has been queen, David king, Emma an outlaw in the woods, and Regina is all but silent in her castle. She's waiting, but what for they can only suspect.

Rumplestiltskin had been captured only weeks before by some quick-witted new princess whom Emma had probably robbed at some point, and Snow had insisted that they go to him for guidance on Regina. "He can't be trusted," Emma had warned her. Even in Jasmine's protected cabin, she's slept next to Henry most nights and kept her bow close. She's wary of Regina but Regina is wary of the Dark One, and that has Emma on edge.

"He's helped us before. Whatever his reasons, he says he's invested in my future," Snow had insisted. "It's worth a try."

Now, though, she looks as though she's reconsidering, Rumple's dark cackle making her squeeze David's hand tighter as the Dark One demands a price. And then she gathers her strength, stepping forward. "What do you want?"

Rumple's eyes flicker down to her flat stomach and Snow presses her hands together in front of it, looking uncomfortable. Emma knows that she'd decided to hold off on children until she could be sure that Regina's promise would go unfulfilled, and Rumple's eyes gleam like he knows something about it. "Nothing you can give me," he says. "She has no use for you yet, then."

"She?" Snow asks, but Rumple is already moving on, scanning the darkness where they lurk.

"But you…Lady Swan, you have something of worth."

This was a mistake. Emma shouldn't have gone down here with them. She draws her bow and nocks an arrow onto it. "And what's that?"

He twists his hands, waves one outward. "Oh…the name of your son's father?" he suggests.

Emma's eyes narrow. "Deal. Now tell us about Regina's plans."

He leans in close enough that his face is nearly out of the bars of his cage. "The queen has created a powerful curse," he begins.

"Created," Emma repeats dubiously. She'd been there for both exchanges, knows exactly which curse he's talking about. Knows exactly who'd given it to her. "Tell the truth."

Rumple sneers. "Soon, you'll all be in a prison. Just like me, only worse." His voice lowers to something dark and menacing. "Your prison, all of our prisons, will be time. Time will stop, and we will be trapped someplace horrible- where everything we hold dear, everything we love, will be ripped from us while we suffer for all eternity." He goes on, clearly enjoying his captive audience. "While the Queen celebrates, victorious at last. No more happy endings."

Snow moves closer to the cage, face determined. "What can we do?"

Rumple shakes his head. "We? We can't do anything. It's the boy, the truest believer, who can find the savior." And slowly, horrifyingly, his eyes move back to Emma. "Your boy," he says. Emma's jaw sets so violently that it cracks in the quiet room. "Little Henry is our only hope."

"No." She almost laughs. They've gone to the fucking Dark One, what else should she have expected? Henry will not get involved in some war against Regina. She turns to exchange disbelieving stares with David and instead finds him gazing at her with building hope.

"Yes." His eyes glitter with malicious excitement. "Get the child to safety. Get the child to safety and on his tenth birthday, the child will force the savior to show her hand and the final battle will begin." He sounds positively gleeful about it, and Emma fires her arrow, lets it whistle just past his ear as he chortles.

"Emma," Snow says warningly, and Rumple turns back to Emma, eyes suddenly sharp and too knowing already.

"My name, if you please, Lady Swan."

"Some guy named Neal," she says, and takes savage pleasure in how his face darkens measurably as she storms out of the room.

The Blue Fairy is fluttering around behind Emma, making disapproving noises as Emma shifts in her seat, and the rest of the room is fixed on her, too. Henry is safe on her lap and her bow is on the table and her fingers are running across it, not quite a threat but not quite not one, either. "Absolutely not," she says again.

Granny knits faster. Lancelot purses his lips. David sags. Snow says, "Emma, he'd be spared the curse. He'll be safer that way."

"Gepetto will make a wardrobe from the enchanted tree," the Blue Fairy agrees. "But there is only power enough for one in it. He will travel to wherever the curse takes us, but he will be immune its effects."

"Wherever the curse takes us," Emma repeats. "I am not sticking my son in a box and hoping for the best."

The Blue Fairy hovers close enough that Henry can reach for her, poking at her until she flies back from him. Emma smiles tightly. "Hope, Emma, is all we have now. You must have faith."

"Faith in you? Why the hell would I have faith in you?" Emma demands, her eyes narrowed. "You're telling me that I have to give up my son to…who knows what kind of life he'll have? Kids like us don't get fairy godmothers looking after them," she says, settling Henry down on the floor and standing. "He used to have someone…but now he just has me. And I won't let him suffer because of your kingdom's needs."

Snow speaks again. "Then we will lose." She looks pleadingly at Emma. "No more happy endings, that's what Rumplestiltskin said. You would condemn us all to this life to keep Henry from uncertainty?"

"Damn right I will." She softens her voice, reaching for Henry's hand. "Henry, it's time to go."

He holds her hand obediently and waits until they're out of the room to ask her, "Why do they want me to go in a tree?"

"Because a mean man told them to take you. Don't worry about it." She squeezes his hand and imagines Regina in the room with them, eyes flashing and fireball ready in her hand as she protects their son. And daringly, she says, "Your mama would never stand for it."

He watches her solemnly, unblinking, before he speaks again. "You never talk about Mama."

"Yeah." She struggles at it more often than not, at pushing Regina from her mind and heart and focusing on her only as the threat she poses. It doesn't work, and she's more and more reticent, leaving Thea to keep Regina alive for Henry in stories.

She wants to believe that Regina will let all the anger and hatred ebb away, that she'll become someone who doesn't make Emma wary for all of them and Henry will be able to greet her someday with open arms. But instead, Regina's cooking up new curses and hasn't wavered for nearly a year since her almost-execution, and Emma fears that there will be no end to this. She doesn't want to give Henry hope for Regina. She's spent over a decade hoping for Regina and it's never changed a damn thing.

"Okay, so you don't want to have hope," Snow says from behind them, pushing the doors to the hall closed behind her. She walks across the room, turning and doubling back to face Emma. "Fine. But Henry's going to be affected by this curse. We'll all be affected by this curse. And without him, we'll never escape."

"At least we'll be together." Snow wouldn't understand. Emma's spent her entire life alone, has never had family until Henry and Regina and her and David. Emma had been cast aside for the good of the rest of her family when she'd been a baby, and she'd never do that to her son. Seven years. Like hell. "Frozen in time doesn't sound that bad when you're frozen with the people you love, okay?"

Snow watches her, brow creasing. "Is this about Regina?"

"It's about Henry, Snow. It's about me protecting my son instead of letting you turn him into a martyr."

"He's all we have," Snow urges her. "He's our only hope. I wish I didn't have to ask you this, but what choice do we have? If it's destined to be this way…the future won't change, Emma."

Henry clutches her hand even more tightly. "Ma, I don't want to go."

She crouches again, puts her hands on his shoulders and speaks slowly for more emphasis. "You're not going anywhere. I will never let you leave me, okay? It's me and you and no one is going to change that." Henry nods, his stiff little shoulders relaxing, and Emma breathes, flashes to herself as a girl just a bit older than him being handed away in this very castle and flashes back to the present. Never again. Never to him.

She rounds on Snow again. "What would you do if it was your kid you had to abandon? For the sake of the kingdom? Would you do it?"

Snow hesitates, and says without confidence, "I would do whatever had to be done. The Blue Fairy is right. We have to believe that he'll come back to us."

He'll come back to us. It's everything that happens before that that has her stubborn and terrified for him. He's two and a half. She isn't sending him off to suffer his way to heroics.

"You're a fucking liar," Emma snaps, lifting Henry up into her arms. "You wouldn't. No mother would even consider this crap." She grits her teeth, done with this conversation and the idiocy of sending Henry away. "Goodbye, Snow."

Snow's lips close and her eyes are hard and unfriendly for the first time since Emma's known her. "Don't do this, Emma."

She ignores her, marches from the hall and flees the castle at once.

They persist. For weeks after the Dark One's announcement, Emma avoids the war council when possible, dodges Red's gentle prodding when she visits the camp and changes the subject when David brings it up again and again. The Blue Fairy hovers around their cabin, looking speculatively at the door and windows and tapping to be let in, and Emma refuses to answer her call at all. She still comes to meetings when she's summoned, but she doesn't leave Henry alone anymore, wary that…

She doesn't really think that anyone here would take matters into their own hands, does she? These are the good guys. She's finally fully aligned with the people who'd been right in the battle against Regina and now all she can think is Regina would never accept this. Regina would have set them on fire for even the idea of putting Henry at risk. And Emma doesn't care if it's selfish- how the hell is it selfish to refuse to send a two-year-old boy off to save their skin?- not when Henry is involved. Maybe it's the right thing to do, but Emma's not quite sold on their right way.

"We have to assassinate Regina," Snow says abruptly from the other end of the table, further firming that thought process.

Emma says, "What?" before she looks around and sees the bulk of the room nodding in agreement. "What?" she repeats again, keeping her voice down.

"Well, if we can't end the curse, we can stop it before it's cast." Snow, at least, looks unhappy about her decision. "I made a mistake by letting her live. She's never going to stop coming after us."

"We have no choice, Emma. If you won't put Henry in that wardrobe, what else can we do? Any ideas?" David isn't quite meeting her eye and Snow's frown deepens further.

Emma throws up her hands. "I don't know. You can find convenient enchanted trees in the woods but you can't pick up some kind of curse stopper? Aren't you some kind of all-powerful being?" she demands, twisting around to glare at the Blue Fairy. "You can't stop a spell?"

The Blue Fairy flies away from her, settling daintily at Snow's side. "We have laws governing our use of magic," she says. "We can only do so much."

David clears his throat. "Emma, I'm the last person who would condone this sort of assassination, normally. This isn't something we're proud of."

And suddenly his avoiding her eyes and Snow's discomfort make a horrifying kind of sense. "Oh gods. You aren't just bringing this up, you've already set it into motion." Emma gapes at them. One of the dwarves snickers. "Do I have to spend the rest of my life keeping you three from killing each other?"

She stands, studying their faces with narrowed eyes. "How long ago?"

"Emma–"

"How long?"

Snow sags. "The assassin was to leave at sunset tonight."

It's an hour after sunset, and an assassin will be cautious. Emma can still intercept him.

She's halfway to the door when Snow speaks again. "You didn't object to her execution."

The execution she hadn't been informed of until hours before it had been scheduled. Emma's beginning to sense a common thread here. "Yeah, well, I thought it was moot. That it was justice. But I'm figuring out that I don't give a damn about what you people think is right." Right is seeing a big picture that will strip Emma of more people she loves, and Emma's beginning to discover that she subscribes to a very different kind of justice.

Snow looks hurt, a determined scowl settling onto her face, and Emma sees the spoiled princess, I felt like you chose Regina over me, merging with the queen who's learning in her desperation how to be ruthless. "You know she's not going to change. You took your son away from her because…I thought you'd given up on her, too."

"Our son," Emma corrects her unspoken implication, uncomfortable in this room with so many hostile eyes on her. "Mine and hers. And I took him away because she was…You were there." She'd been hidden in the shadows and Emma had hoped desperately that she would see Regina as a mother, as someone who would choose Henry and would be worth freeing. Instead… "She was willing to die to spite you than live for him." She probably isn't helping their case here.

The Blue Fairy is whispering something into Snow's ear, but Snow's eyes are still on Emma. She tries for a softer tone. "I don't think she knows who she is without her anger. And maybe she'll figure that out…" Emma still wonders if she might, if time and distance really are the answer, and she hates that she wonders it with a curse coming and Regina as persistent as ever. A loveless childhood of rejection has meant that her faith in people has always been easily broken, shattered and cast aside with betrayal. She doesn't know what it is about Regina that makes her want to keep believing.

"But I don't think it's fair to Henry to make him her lifeline while she does. That's all." He shouldn't suffer for her evil, shouldn't live with her in a world where there's only fury and hatred and a mother who puts that first. And Emma won't use Henry as a tool to instigate Regina into redemption, either.

She pushes open the double doors to the room, and Snow calls after her, "She's trying to kill us all!" And Emma has no answer to that beyond I don't care, I don't care, I don't care about any of it anymore, so she marches on.

"Emma," David says, and there's coolness in his tone that has her pause. She turns and he's watching her with undisguised sorrow, and she knows with dread what's about to happen. She's been too often argumentative, too protective of Regina in front of their advisors, and her refusal to give Henry up still hangs over them all. There's only so much they can tolerate even from her.

It comes as no surprise when Snow says gently, "We think it's best if you don't come back here. We love you," she adds at once. "We do. But…we need to know that you're on our side in this room. And I don't think you are."

"I'm not on Regina's side either," Emma says, turning back away from them. She's on Henry's. Only Henry's. And fuck everyone who stands in the way of his safety. In the way of his happiness, and his chance to have the possibility of the mother he deserves, someday.

She stalks from the room to the stables and urges Beetle toward Regina's castle at a gallop.

Emma had expected the castle to be all but abandoned, the villages around it empty and only a few lone guards left to supervise the area. She hasn't dared ride nearby in nearly a year, and she's startled to discover bustling towns and a castle bright with lights even from a distance. Not everyone had hurried away from Regina, it seems, which will make the assassin's job that much harder.

She can't believe that Snow and David would be so stupid as to think that an assassin could take down Regina. It would have to be a powerful magic user at the very least, or someone Regina would trust enough to let in. That, or they'll all have another murder on their hands.

Emma rides by rote toward the nursery balcony, hit by a sudden wave of nostalgia as she gazes up at it. She isn't fool enough to try to enter it or see Regina, but she misses it, misses the days when she'd had a family she'd loved. She'd always known it would fall apart, but she regrets none of it now.

She squints at an oddly shaped structure on the balcony, vaguely familiar but still unusual, and her eyes widen as she places it. Rappelling hook.

It's a moonless night and she has to step away from the glare of lights in the castle to see the rope stretching down from it, a masked figure climbing nimbly up toward the nursery. She draws her bow at once, takes careful aim, and shoots the intruder in the back of the throat.

He drops to the ground in front of her with a grunt and Emma sees the blood spilling already with ferocious satisfaction, sees the assassin thrashing, not quite dead, and yanks off the mask.

"Thea?" It's Henry's nanny bleeding out, squinting up at her with a scowl. Someone Regina trusts. No. Thea's been one of Regina's most loyal advocators. Thea's family had been well taken care of by Regina.

Thea had been trained to fight to protect Henry by Regina and Emma both. She's no expert like Aziz's bodyguard, but she's good enough to stick a knife in Regina's back when Regina presents it to her.

"They said…they'd keep you busy," Thea manages, coughing up what looks like new blood. "I said…I'd have an arrow in my chest…before or after…it was done."

"Why would you…how could you…you were Regina's staunchest supporter." Emma kneels down next to her, struggles to stop the bleeding out of pure instinct.

"Yeah…with Henry." Thea bats her away weakly, dark eyes glinting with amusement. "Are you…trying to kill me or save my life? I knew how this would end. I know she loves Henry." She coughs again, coughs and coughs and coughs until flecks of blood are splattered all over Emma. The arrow hadn't hit anything fatal, but Thea is bleeding out in front of her. "But I also…lived with her for a year…and wasn't in love with her. I know…what she is."

She wheezes in a few short breaths. "I do…what I…do…for my family's safety. Save…Henry. Stop…the…curse. Emma," she says, her eyes widening, and she's choking again, but this time she doesn't cough out blood, and her throat makes violent noises for a moment before she stops moving.

Emma kneels over her for another moment, retrieves her arrow and lays it beside her, and gently closes her eyes. She'd killed Thea to protect Regina, but Thea had also been a friend, her only in the woods after Jasmine had returned to her kingdom. Henry's adored nanny.

A new wave of tired grief washes over her. Sometimes a curse where they're all trapped in time and nothing more can change, no one more be lost…sometimes it doesn't seem that bad.

She stands and hears a dark chuckle behind her. "Hello, Swan."

"Regina." She's standing over a corpse with a rappelling rope beside her and she knows how it must look to Regina. "You're in danger."

"From you?" Regina laughs again and Emma is hurled at the castle wall, smashed into it with so much force that she's dizzy with pain. "I don't think so." She slams into the wall again, Regina relentless, and Emma gasps a wordless protest and drops to the ground.

She can see Regina as a dark figure a few feet away, sneering down at her with not a hint of fondness or concern on her face. "I told you I'd kill you," she snarls. "You won't even have the luxury of a few more months to live."

The curse. Regina's purview, the reason why Snow is sending assassins after her, the reason why Emma's afraid to leave Henry alone without Zumurrud or Little John anymore. Regina can change it all, and Emma strains to say, "Henry. It's about Henry."

There's a flash of light like a shock of lightning and Emma is enveloped in it, can feel it pulling at her skin and scorching it while she cries out in agony. "You don't use him to manipulate me!" Regina roars over the crackling and Emma's screams. "You don't say his name!"

Her skin is on fire, the world is fading around her, and Emma can feel her body ripping itself apart from the force of the power slamming into her. Regina is laughing, a full-fledged evil cackle bordering on hysteria, and Emma goes limp, accepts the pain, surrenders. Regina is alive. Henry is alive. Whatever comes next, that's all that matters. "Open your eyes!" Regina is ordering her. "Fight me!" She sounds desperate for it, for a battle to release all the fury she must have bottled up toward Emma. There's no love in her voice or in the power that has Emma in its grasp.

Her body seizes up and she breathes out as the world turns black around her.

She's surprised when her eyes open. It's light outside, her body is screaming in agony and her head feels as though Beetle's been slamming his hooves against it repeatedly, but she's alive.

She sees a guard she recognizes kneeling over her. Runs-With-Wolves. The boy who'd become Regina's knight and had saved Snow and David anyway. This may go any way now.

He says, "I've hitched your horse to a carriage. He knows the way home, yes?"

That way, then. She doesn't ask him who he's doing this for when he helps her into the carriage, if Regina doesn't know or if she does or if she ordered it. She doesn't even have the energy to thank him.

She lies on the floor of the carriage as Beetle rides back to camp, groaning in pain with every movement of the coach.

She's been all but exiled from her brother's kingdom. One of her only other friends had betrayed her and tried to kill Regina and been killed, and Regina had tried to kill Emma in return. All she has is Henry and her little band of thieves, struggling to endure in a world ticking down to a curse that will end them all.

She closes her eyes and pleads with magical forces that never, ever listen to someone like her.

Recovering from Regina's attack takes months. She has broken legs and a shattered collarbone, a wealth of cracked ribs and bruised everything, and burn scars that may never fade. Regina might not have intended to kill her (she still isn't sure if she's only making excuses again) but she'd been more than eager to leave an impression with Emma.

Her only solace is Henry, looking after her as best as a two-year-old can. He props up his toy bunny beside her and reads her stories from the pictures in his own, sleeps beside her as soon as she's bandaged up enough not to be hurt by it and gives her kisses that leave him disappointed when they don't immediately cure him. "Why won't true love work?"

"True love can't do everything, kid," Emma murmurs. "Sometimes it can't do anything at all."

Without Thea, there's only her to tell him about Regina, and she swallows any sorrowful resentment she might be feeling toward her (She's generally stuck somewhere between asshole and I deserved this and at least she has Henry, at least she still has him safe beside her) and begins to tell him the stories he's missed instead.

He's wide-eyed at stories about crossing King George and giggles when Emma describes his other mother as a stubborn know-it-all. "You call me that too!"

"You–" Emma pokes his nose. "Take after your mama far more than I would have ever planned." She tells him about magic, makes it sound wondrous and beautiful instead of something to fear. She tells him about stealing from Regina and dancing with Regina and Regina building him a nursery in her castle and doesn't tell him about a sad queen who'd only wanted to be free.

She loves Regina, still misses her with each good time remembered, and she does actually begin to cry when she tells Henry about picnics on the castle grounds with Regina and the two of them together. Henry listens solemnly. "She'd be a great mom for you, Henry, I know it. Maybe someday…" She swallows and doesn't finish the sentence.

Henry's third birthday is less than a week away when she wakes up one night from Aziz making noise in the next room and sees Regina standing over Aziz's old cradle, her back turned away from them as she stares down at it. Emma flinches before she remembers that magic won't work in this cabin. "How did you get in here?" she whispers.

Regina turns, her fingers sinking down to clamp onto the cradle's side, and she eyes Emma with nothing but hatred and disgust. It's…familiar, and if Emma hadn't been telling Henry the story of their heist at the Dark Castle just the night before, she wouldn't have been able to place this moment. Instead, she remembers looking into a glowing orb and seeing the future in it, seeing a Regina who despised her and kissing the Regina beside her in a desperate attempt to hide from that hatred.

She flushes and Regina says coolly, "I eliminated the guards outside the cabin and walked inside. I'm here for Henry."

Henry is still asleep in the crook of Emma's arm and Emma draws him closer, reaching for the knife she keeps under the mattress. "No."

Regina sneers at her, lip curling like Emma is only a gnat to swat away. "I'm not taking him with me, not when the curse is so close. I will take no risks." There's that old shadow in her eyes, and Emma is afraid for Henry Sr. "I want to see him."

Emma sighs, sits up with a groan as her bones ache from it, and rouses Henry gently. "Henry, your mama is here." She sneaks a glance at Regina and sees that she's startled by the title, some of the hostility fading away.

"Mama?" Henry asks sleepily.

Regina crouches down by the bed, close enough that Emma recoils, and she leaves a sweet kiss on his brow. "Hello, Henry," she whispers.

"I missed you," he mumbles, eyes still only half open. In the morning, he'll think this is a dream. "Where did you go?"

"I had to make a safe place for us, sweet prince. A place where we can be together and no one can ever take you from me again." It's strange, being on the outside of Regina's love. It's almost a visible thing, stretching out from Regina to Henry like a brilliant stream of pure affection, and Emma feels small and insignificant beyond it and strengthened by seeing it at the same time.

Henry is still Regina's and Regina is still Henry's and she blinks back tears, sighs with relief and shifts back a little further when Regina eyes her, confused again. Emma pulls her legs up and winces as they twinge. The doctor who'd looked at her had said that she's healed by now, but she still has pains through both when she thinks of Regina.

Regina doesn't look away. "You didn't let him forget me," she murmurs, her face twisting again as though she isn't sure how to respond to that.

Emma shrugs. "I tried forgetting you. But that didn't work, either. So I stopped." She wipes her face clean of expression, refusing to give Regina anything.

Regina holds out a hand, touches her on the leg where she'd been crushed against the castle wall, and Emma's afraid to move, afraid of Regina and what she can do- and what Emma might do around her. "It'll all be different after the curse comes." She says it like a promise and a threat all wrapped in one, and kisses Henry one last time on his forehead. "Sleep well, little one. I love you."

She walks away and turns back at the door to the room for one moment, catches Emma's eye and is uncertain, and Emma loves her and hates her and loves, loves, loves–

And she knows when the curse is coming.

She sits bolt upright, disturbing Henry in his sleep. Not when the curse is so close. Regina had come for a last meeting before the end, and Henry's birthday is in under a week. And now that she's a desperate mother, determined to punish Snow and take Henry back by force all at once, she'd pick only one day for her new beginning.

The curse will be cast on Henry's birthday.

She hesitates for only a moment before she beckons a songbird down from its roost. "Find Snow White. Tell her the curse will come in four days." Whatever their conflict, Snow and David are family, and their safety comes before her bitterness.

The bird flutters off and Emma settles back into bed, her healed leg still tingling below her at Regina's touch.

Zumurrud leaves with Aziz the next morning. "The curse will not touch Agrabah," she says with certainty. "We must make haste toward it." She flashes a smile at Emma. "I'm sure we'll find you again once it's over."

The cabin is silent that night, no noise from inside and only the sounds of Will and Alan-a-Dale arguing with each other from where they're standing guard over it, and it comes as a surprise when the door opens later that night and unfamiliar footsteps sound in the kitchen.

Emma arms herself and creeps barefoot out of the room, silently cursing Will and Alan's uselessness, and she fires once. The man sweeps away her arrow with some swift bladework, and he says, "It's me!" before she can shoot again.

"Lancelot!" She sets down her bow, then hesitates, remembering her message to Snow. If they've decided to strong-arm Emma into handing over Henry now… "What are you doing here?"

"Snow sent me," he says, sheathing his sword and lifting his hands in reassurance. "She was worried about someone coming to take Henry before the curse. The queen or…well. Some of our people have voiced some concerning plans." He winces in the dark. "I'm here to watch over him until then."

He's her constant guardian for the next two days, carrying Henry on his shoulders as they go about their business. There isn't much business to go about, really, not when the world may be ending in just days and Emma's only task before that is keeping Henry safe. The Merry Men travel from town to town, distributing food where they can and keeping quiet about the curse coming. There's no need for hysteria.

On the day before Henry's birthday, they have a little party for him, Emma and Lancelot and the Merry Men all gathered around in camp as menacing thunder rumbles over them in the clear sky. They sing old songs to Henry and Lancelot delights him with tales of Camelot and Emma holds him so close that he whines about it.

She goes to sleep when he does, still fully dressed and curled around him, holding him tight. When she wakes up, it's dark out, there's an odd faint glow to the room, and Henry is gone from her arms.

"Henry?" She slips her shoes back on and fumbles to light the lamp. "Henry!"

Lancelot is sitting at the kitchen table, eyes closed as though he's asleep. She shakes him frantically and sees something glittering like magic around him. His eyes open and the magic disappears.

"Henry!" she shouts, running from the cabin. "HENRY! HENRY!"

There's no sign of him beyond it, no footprints in the mud or a sleepy-eyed boy curled up next to Beetle. She doesn't think to ride him out, doesn't think beyond panic and terror and the curse, the curse, "REGINA!"

She runs in circles, around the cabin in wider and wider lines. "HENRY! REGINA!" and she can't breathe, she can't do anything but understand better than ever before what would have had Regina raging at her enough to kill her because Henry's been taken, Henry's been taken and there's a curse coming and it must have been Regina, she'd come before and she'd planted something and– "REGINA!"

There's a chuckle as she emerges into another clearing and catches sight of them- two women standing together in the middle of the grass, one holding a staff and the other with a hook in place of one hand. The one with the staff is Regina's mother.

"Milah, take care of that, would you?" Cora says, sounding bored, and Milah grins and stalks forward, raising her hook at Emma's head.

Emma looks up and sees the sword. Above it, purple clouds flow over them. Over, around, as though a dome keeps them from rolling over this land, and the clouds reach the point in the dome directly above their heads. Milah brings her hook down onto Emma's skull and the world stops moving.

END PART II

IT'S NOT DONE. I mean, this fic is officially done, but it's part one of two! I've just been persuaded to split this into two, which suits both fics better, actually. The next one will probably be a bit easier on the angst mostly, promise!

Anyway, I'm going to post a oneshot interlude between the two that will tell you what happened to Emma and Regina and Henry between now and the first chapter of the next fic (which will, incidentally, begin with the flashbacks of New York City Serenade). That should be out within a week or two, and the second fic will begin with Part III a week or two after that. (I don't think there's a way to make a series on this site to subscribe to, but I also don't think I'll be posting anything else here in the meantime, so you can just follow me here if you're waiting for the updates!)

I hope you enjoyed! Much thanks to all of you for reading and especially to those of you who've commented or faved or left kudos. Y'all are my LIFELINE in this whole writing thing. And extra thanks to Maia and MM for always being there to help me iron out details and make this fic make sense. 333