All Magic Comes With A Price

The Truth Will Set You Free

"If I gave you the truth, would it keep you alive/Though I'm closer to wrong I'm no further from right" -- Seether

Rumbling from Henry's stomach made him look up from where he sat in one of the hospital chairs, and he wondered where Dean was with the promised dinner. It had been an hour, and there was no way it took that long to get some takeout from Granny's. He was only eleven and he at least knew that much. Something was wrong, and by the way Emma was drumming her fingers against the armrest, she knew it too. There was no way for them to tell what kind of problems Dean had run into until he other called or showed up, so they, and the bedridden Winchester brother, were left to worry.

The trio heard Dean in the hall before they saw him, complaining grumpily to someone they couldn't see. "Really. Silence all the way here? Seriously?" Sam wondered who in the world he could be talking to, and a moment later, he walked in, his foul mood apparent, accompanied by a petite woman dressed in white from head to toe, a quiver and bow strapped to her back. "Can someone please explain to me why there is a freaking Ent Man in the woods?"

The shorter woman reached up and slapped the back of Dean's head, and Sam had to bite his lip to keep from chuckling. He took a closer look at her, and then down at the large book of Henry's that still lay in his lap. She bore quite a resemblance to the figure of Snow White in the book's illustrations. "Dean, calm down," he said vaguely, distractedly, as he looked in the book once again, flipping through the pages.

"Calm down?" Dean asked, staring at his brother incredulously. "I just saw 'Snow' here talking to Pinocchio!"

At those words, Emma and Henry exchanged a significant glance, and then Emma looked at Snow the same way. Now Sam was definitely paying attention - Dean had just called the woman Snow and she was definitely the spitting image from the book. Something very wrong was happening in this town. "Pinocchio, Dean?" Sam asked, skeptical.

"August?" Emma chanced, her eyebrows furrowed in Snow's direction. "You saw August?"

"Can we all just back up and explain what is going on here?" Sam asked, still not having been filled in about the unsuccessful dinner trip between Emma, Dean, and Henry over an hour ago.

"Yeah, I can help in that department," said a new voice from the doorway. Sam looked and his eyed widened, his pulse speeding up - things were never good when the Trickster was around. And there the tiny archangel stood, leaning against his hospital room door. "Hiya, Sammy. Miss me?"

"How the hell are you still alive?" Sam asked, feeling like his jaw had dropped to the linoleum floor.

"Trickster. God, does explaining that to you geniuses get old." Gabriel rolled his eyes and walked into the room, taking a seat and tossing his feet up leisurely on the end of the bed.

"Wait, you know Gabe too?" Snow asked, becoming more confused.

"Lady, we don't know what's going on here at all," Dean said, taking a spot against the wall, crossing his arms and watching everyone in the room. "So somebody start spilling the beans. We dished our details, so now it's time to own up to yours."

Another glance between the Storybrooke locals proved that they were in for quite a tale. "Are you sure we can trust these two?" Snow asked in a low voice, but not low enough to escape Sam's ears.

Emma looked up and she locked eyes with Sam for a moment. "Yeah. Yeah, these two are good people."

"Okay, we get it, everybody here is a trusting twit, time to move on already," Gabriel said, a grin on his face. "And I mean that in the most caring way," he sassed, noticing the affronted look that crossed over Snow's features. "Well. Let's start at the beginning, hm?" He clapped his hands together for effect. "This is the story of how I died."