Welcome to a Nightmare

Chapter 14: Drifting Minds and Alibis

"Robert are you sure he's not at the mental ward?" Fiona asks into the phone, tapping her black-painted fingernails on her desk impatiently.

The black-hearted woman had been searching endlessly for her adopted son since she got the call at 4:00 from the school saying that Henry had missed the last class of the day. She immediately had sent her biological son, Rumple and grandson, Gideon out looking for him. It was becoming even more frustrating to keep him in line. She regrets not adding an extra condition to the curse, ensuring everyone in Storybrooke had forgotten who they were. Since Henry had been born outside of Storybrooke and the Enchanted Forest, the spell put on the town had not had the same effect on her great-grandson. The Black Fairy knew that the only way to ensure the curse became a permanent fixture on the Saviour and her loved ones was to stall long enough for everything to become perpetual. Unfortunately, the dark curse still had a chance to be broken during this volatile period, where the magic was still in fluctuation; it is unstable and would sometimes reveal the parts under the dark veil. It had happened with her son's wife and this forced Fiona to break her beloved Rumple's heart and take away one of the few things he loved. Emma had also managed to see through the veil temporarily after the curse had been cast, forcing the darkest fairy to destroy the blonde's belief in love and hope by locking her away as well.

The only wrench in her plans is Henry. While Regina never had the connection with the truest believer that was her real adopted son, Emma did, and the possibility of true love's kiss was still there. The cursed true love, it's always the reason curses are broken, the one flaw in all of the magic that even the essence of darkness and evil could not overcome. So, it was up to the castor to prevent such a kiss from ever being administered and she now had to sever that connection, the sooner, the better.

Love was the enemy to all malevolence that the banished fairy lived for. It had been the fatal flaw in the Evil Queen's curse; if she had never adopted Henry due to the boredom of the curse, then he would have never brought the Saviour to the town and set off the chain of events that ended in Emma Swan fulfilling her destiny. In fact, the Evil Queen had done Fiona's work for her by cursing the people of the Enchanted Forest, draining all hope from its people, keeping them trapped in an infinite limbo of misery and darkness. But sadly, the fatal flaws in all humans are their desire for connections and their need for love. If Regina had never adopted Henry, then he would have stayed in the foster system, perhaps adopted by some other people or by the Darling minions of her late husband. Emma would have spent the rest of her life alone, never knowing who she was and never finding true love or her family. The Black Fairy would have had to find another way to come to this world, reunite with her son and she and Regina could have joined forces and reigned evil and terror down on the world forever.

Sadly, it was never meant to be, and the reformed queen would suffer for eternity like her fellow counterparts.

"Mother, I'm sure of it. None of the nurses, nor Miss Swan have seen him since this morning," Robert/Rumple sighs, tired of dealing with his mother's drama. If his grandson chose to run away again, there was a problem with either her parenting techniques or the way she was treating him. So why should he and Gideon be dragged into all of this? If Henry wanted to live on the streets of Stygian instead of a comfortable life, that should be the boy's own decision. He is a busy man, he had three casino hotels to manage in order to pay for Gideon's college fund.

It saddened the Dark One that Belle had left to travel, leaving their son with him and she would not be there to see their "little" boy create his own path. The Dark One's son was planning to go to either Princeton or Harvard, both schools he knows Belle would be proud to see her son go off to. Every time he thought of his wife, his stomach turned uneasily. The last contact he'd had with her was over a year ago, in the form of a letter and pictures of her doing relief efforts in South America. While he did feel pride for his wife going off to achieve her dreams of seeing the world and helping others in need, he wished she would just take the time to pick up the phone and call. He missed her voice, he missed holding her and he knew that Gideon missed her too. It seemed so unlike Belle to merely go off the grid like this.