A/N: I added a cheat sheet of the characters below the chapter. If I missed anyone, let me know!
***
Chapter 3: Confined And Freed
***
“So, they’re from the outside, but they don’t *know* that anything’s different here. Do you know what that means?”
Charming grinned down at Henry and resisted the urge to ruffle his hair. The kid had given him allowances so far because he was just happy no one thought he was crazy anymore and Charming was the only family he had now--even if a Grandpa wasn’t as good as his mother, Emma--but sooner or later, Henry would surely tire of the physical affection. Besides, much as Charming wanted to spoil the kid and treat him like the grandson he was, Henry often came up with important points. So, restraining his grin, he asked, “No, what does it mean?”
“It means that *anyone* can come into town now!” Henry exclaimed, earnest and excited, his hands waving in time with his words as he half-jogged to keep up with Charming. “We’re not safe from the outside world anymore! And if they find out there’s magic here--if they find out that *you’re* Prince Charming…” Henry frowned suddenly, slowing to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. “This isn’t good, Gramps.”
Charming set his hand on Henry’s shoulder, bent a bit to give him a level stare. “Then we won’t let them find out.”
“Good! They’d think we’re crazy, and…that’s not a good feeling.” That look he got sometimes, the one Charming--or rather, his Storybrooke identity, David Nolan--remembered seeing him wear quite often under the curse, when he alone of everyone in town had known they were truly from the Enchanted World, reshaped his features, and Charming wanted nothing more than to wipe it away forever, make him smile instead. He hadn’t had the chance to be a father, not really, not unless holding his newborn daughter in one arm while he fought through dozens of the Evil Queen’s soldiers to get to the enchanted wardrobe that had sent her here--to grow up alone and unprotected--counted as qualified experience. And yet, with Snow and Emma gone, with Regina only barely trustworthy…he was all that was left. Henry needed him.
“It’s okay, Henry,” Charming promised him solemnly. “We’ll get their car fixed, get them out of town, and get Emma and Mary Margaret back. We just have to have faith.”
“Right.” Henry nodded and gave him a hint of his small, lopsided smile. It made something warm and soften inside Charming, something he’d felt quite often during Snow’s pregnancy but never at all during the year of the curse he’d been awake for. “You’ve been following them, right?”
“All day,” he said with a rueful grimace as they once more began walking. He’d thought Henry could spend the afternoons after school at the stables with the horse Charming had bought for him, but after what had happened the day before…well, suffice it to say the stables weren’t the safest place. Neither was Mary Margaret’s apartment with Regina watching over him, but Charming didn’t have much of a choice. Ruby was nowhere to be found, her Granny was busy with the diner, and the dwarves were working down in the mines--where Charming really should be seeing as how he’d promised them his help. So, in the end, Charming had called Regina.
“What have they been doing?” Henry pressed, craning his neck to look up at Charming, eyes wide and innocent.
“Exploring the town--an awful lot of it,” Charming answered. He nudged Henry’s shoulder to get him to turn into the apartment building and up the stairs toward the apartment they’d taken over since the curse had been broken by Emma’s maternal kiss of true love to Henry’s brow. “I’m pretty sure they know I’m following them, though, so I doubt they’d poke their noses anywhere too suspicious.”
Henry’s brow furrowed while Charming pulled the keys out of his pocket. “But what are they doing *now*? You’re not watching them anymore.”
“Well, I’m hoping they *think* I’m still watching them. But if not, I’ve got people calling to give me updates if they see them headed anywhere dangerous. None of us are too thrilled about the idea of outsiders messing up what little we’ve reclaimed of our lives.”
“Of course not.”
The keys dropped to the floor with a clatter when Charming’s hand flew to the gun holstered under his arm. The sight of Regina, standing on the white floor in the middle of Snow’s living room, didn’t exactly make him want to take his hand off the weapon. But Regina had been trying to redeem herself, trying to make herself worthy of her son, trying to show Henry that she could change for the better. Charming couldn’t help but see the evil Queen who’d locked him up, taunted him, made Snow take the sleeping curse, and tried to kill him a dozen times when they’d fought to take the kingdom back from her. But David Nolan…well, David Nolan saw the mayor who’d saved him from a cold road, watched over his decades’ long coma, supported him during that terrible business with Kathryn and Mary Margaret, invited him over for lasagna.
An enemy or a friend. Both of them powerful and dangerous, but the woman standing in front of him, giving a tentative smile to her adopted son, was even more dangerous than the other versions of herself. More dangerous because she had magic again, because she didn’t have to hide that she was a powerful witch, because she would do anything--*anything*--to keep Henry by her side. Right now, that meant good deeds and seeing Dr. Hopper to curb her addiction to magic and helping Charming try to find Snow and Emma, but there was no telling when that would change.
“Mom.” Henry managed a short smile, then hesitated for a very long, awkward moment before walking forward and giving her a hug. Regina closed her arms around him almost reverently, carefully, closing her eyes and smiling. Henry pulled back and looked up at her. “I heard what happened with Daniel…I’m sorry.”
Regina flinched but forced a fragile smile. “Thank you, Henry. I…I had to use magic to…to give him an end. I know you don’t like me using magic, but--”
“It’s okay,” Henry assured her. “I know you were just trying to help.”
“Well.” Charming shifted, drawing Henry’s attention and looking away himself; Regina looked far too fragile, too broken, at the moment, as if she might shatter into a million pieces. “I’ve got to get back to making sure our visitors don’t disturb what tranquility Storybrooke has to offer. You’ll be fine here?”
“Of course,” Regina said, almost managing not to roll her eyes. Obviously, she’d regained her composure, Charming thought dryly.
“We’ll be fine,” Henry reassured him. “I can make us some hot chocolate.”
“That’s all right,” Regina said. “But you go ahead and have some.”
Charming looked away, his throat tight. Mary Margaret--*Snow White*, his wife, his True Love, the woman who’d been snatched away from him only hours after he’d gotten her back--had liked to serve hot chocolate, always with a stick of cinnamon in it, usually with a plate of cookies alongside. He’d get them back, of course he would, he knew he would, but…but sometimes it was hard to remember that past the pain of her *not being here*.
“Be careful, David,” Regina said, snapping his attention back to her. She stepped closer to him and lowered her voice; behind her, Henry rummaged in the kitchen in his search for the hot cocoa mix. “Magic’s back, and Gold’s been squirreling away magical items for probably the entire twenty-eight years of the curse. If these strangers find any of those items, if they stumble down to the mines and find any of the leftover detritus of our old world, it could be catastrophic.”
“I know,” Charming said with a sigh. “I’m working on it. Tillman said it’d take him at least two days to fix up their vehicle, though, so until then, we’re stuck with them.”
“Don’t be so sure.” At Charming’s frown, Regina arched a dark brow. “What? You think Gold’s just going to sit back and let them ruin whatever schemes he has simmering? If they get close to anything, I can guarantee you that he’ll act--and he’s never been that averse to spilling blood to accomplish his goals.”
Letting out a mirthless chuckle, Charming manufactured a grin. “Great. Things just never let up around here, do they?”
Regina’s answering smile was just as mirthless as his.
With a last wave to Henry and a warning look to the woman who’d once been his arch-enemy, Charming strode back outside and set off in the direction of Gold’s pawnshop. The imp was almost always there, especially since Belle had moved out of his house and into the apartment over the library.
He’d barely gotten half a block away, though, when his phone rang with news that the two visitors had been seen heading into the stables. Charming hung up, and for an instant, he wanted to just back up until his spine hit a literal wall to match the metaphorical one, wanted to slide to the ground and set his head on his knees and just sleep. Or cry. Or both. But while he was wishing, he might as well wish for Snow back in his arms. For Emma back safe and sound and maybe even with a smile for him instead of more recriminations about his and Snow’s decision to send her to this world to protect her from Regina’s curse.
But wishes didn’t come true, not anymore, not until the dwarves found the diamonds that the fairies could use to replenish their own magic and power their wands.
So, determinedly, shoving his exhaustion and his grief down deep inside him, Charming jumped into his squad car and drove to the stables as quickly as he safely could. He arrived just in time to see the two strangers exit the far shed and move, purposely and quickly, into the stables where, just the day before, Charming had yanked Henry away from Frankenstein’s newest monster.
“David Nolan,” he reminded his reflection in the rear view mirror, and then he opened the door and swung outside. A normal person, an ordinary sheriff. How *did* one of those act? Not suspiciously, or at least, he didn’t think so. Not overly suspicious, anyway. Actually, the only ‘normal’ sheriff he remembered was Emma, and he had a feeling that most of what had happened while she was sheriff in Storybrooke hadn’t exactly been normal fare by this world’s standards. So, he’d just have to fake it.
When he entered the stables, squinting a bit to adjust to the sudden darkness after the sun’s glare, he found himself facing both Lois and Clark. They were standing next to each other, looking straight at him. Clark was wearing the same polite smile he’d worn the day before at their introductions, but Lois was narrow-eyed and tight-lipped.
Abruptly, Charming realized that he was all alone, in dark stables, no witnesses anywhere nearby, and facing two strangers who could be here for any reason at all. The weight of his sidearm was comforting, but it didn’t seem enough. Guns just weren’t as solid, as useful, as swords. With a sword, he had beaten dragons and armies, witches and sirens--but a gun? All a gun could do was shoot tiny bullets that went harmlessly through the *really* dangerous things, like the wraith that had taken Snow and Emma from him.
“Interested in stables?” he asked inanely, to hide his sudden uneasiness. He didn’t smile, because any smile he tried would just look fake, but he did his best to look neutral. Above all, he did his best not to look past Lois’s shoulder to the stall where Daniel had lifted Henry’s small body in bloody hands, where Regina had beaten ineffectually against Charming’s shoulder to keep him from shooting her long-dead love, where he’d had to leave her alone--to greet these strangers, ironically--to face and eventually destroy the man she’d wanted to marry, so very many long, unhappy years before.
“Just sightseeing,” Clark said, still with that same polite smile. It didn’t look fake, and he looked harmless with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slumped, but this looked like a normal town too, from the outside, so Charming really didn’t trust appearances too much.
“Not much to do in small towns,” Lois said, a hint of sarcasm layering her words. “So we’re just exploring a bit.”
“Ah. You know, we have quite a few hiking trails, scenic woods, even a bit of a beach past the harbor.”
“Really?” Clark raised his eyebrows, so innocent and genuine that Charming felt the hackles on the back of his neck rise. He wasn’t a prince by birth and had been a king for less than a year, but he’d been a shepherd before that, and he’d learned to trust his instincts. It was when things looked calmest that the wolves attacked.
“Well, we’ll have to try those places tomorrow,” Lois said. Her smile was more suspicious than Clark’s, but it calmed Charming a bit. It was normal to be suspicious in these circumstances--he was a sheriff who’d been following them all day and had cornered them in a dark stable, after all--and her skepticism, her wariness, was what he had expected. No one, on the other hand, was really as naïve as Clark was pretending to be.
They were hiding something. Or at least, Clark was.
“You know,” Charming said, acting on impulse, “I realize that Storybrooke isn’t the…quintessential Maine coast-side town. We’re pretty far off the beaten track and we don’t get many visitors. So…folks around here, well, we get to where we’re afraid of anyone new. Anyone we don’t know. I’m sorry, if we’re coming across as…I don’t know--”
“Creepy,” Lois filled in for him.
Charming managed a smile, even swallowed a chuckle. “Yeah. We’re really not bad people. We’re just…close-knit.”
“I understand,” Clark said, and for the first time, Charming thought he might believe the genuineness of his voice. “I’m from a small town myself, and we can be protective of our own against outsiders.”
“Good.” Charming nodded, took a deep breath of the hay-strewn air, dust-motes dancing in a ray of sunshine just to his right. He turned to the door and held it open for them, silently grateful when they walked out without qualm. “You want a ride back to town?” he offered.
“No--” Clark started, but Lois interrupted him.
“We’d love one. Thanks. Oh, and by the way, mind if I ask you a question. Yesterday, I thought I saw a man without an arm. As if he’d just lost it. You know anyone like that?”
*Gold!* Charming barely bit his tongue in time to stop from grimacing and letting out a disgusted breath. Fortunately, Geppetto had called to tell him he’d heard from Archie that Gold had healed Whale’s arm, reattaching the limb Daniel had torn off in his zombie-like rage. Unfortunately, Charming didn’t have any kind of explanation for why a man who hadn’t had an arm the day before had one today--not one that people from this world would understand anyway. But if Lois and Clark saw Whale again, they’d certainly notice that he’d healed quickly. And miraculously.
“Dr. Whale had…an accident.” He spoke slowly, choosing each word carefully. Gold would have been better at this; he was able to spin words and truths so adeptly that he never once lied and never once conveyed the absolute truth. “It was pretty bloody, but he’s…he’s better now.”
“Dr. Whale,” Lois repeated with a slight nod. “Huh. Okay, then.”
Charming breathed a sigh of relief as he waited for the other two to get into the car. Lois took the front passenger seat while Clark sat in the back, a position that Charming would have traded if he could. Lois spent the entire trip asking seemingly innocuous questions that had him sweating and fumbling his words, while behind him, he could feel Clark’s unblinking gaze on him. And his eyes--they gave off the same kind of feel that the siren’s had. She had stared at him, watched him, spun her silver-cobwebbed words, and read his very soul. She had offered him his deepest desires--Snow, in his arms, kissing him, telling him she loved him--and all the time, she had watched him with eyes that saw so deep, so true. Saw right inside him.
This Clark Kent had the same kind of eyes.
Charming was beyond relieved when he reached the diner and pulled the car to a stop.
“Thanks for the ride,” Lois chirped. She’d seemed to grow more and more cheerful the more questions she asked, which didn’t help alleviate Charming’s concerns. Everyone in Storybrooke was depending on him, after all, to protect them, to keep them safe and together, to get them back home. On a good day, he was never sure he could live up to their expectations; on bad days like this, he was *sure* he was going to fail them.
“No problem,” he lied. Abruptly, just before Clark closed his car door, Charming leaned forward and said, “Oh! And both of you, it might be a good idea to stay inside after dark. Like you already noticed, we do have wolves--safest not to go around at night.”
Lois wrinkled her nose. “Wolves. Right. The joys of the country.”
Clark chuckled and nodded at Charming. “Thanks for the warning.”
Charming leaned back in his seat and watched them enter the diner and slide into a booth. He was deathly afraid they had a nefarious purpose for being in town, so maybe that was why he saw everything they did and said as a threat. Maybe it was only his own fear talking.
He wished he could believe that.
“I could really use some good news,” he said aloud before starting up the car and pulling out into the street, headed once more for Gold’s shop.
And maybe wishes still did come true, because before he could get there, his phone rang and Grumpy was telling him that the dwarves had found their diamonds. The fairies were going to get their fairy dust. The fairy dust was going to restore Jefferson’s hat so that it could open portals to other worlds again.
He was going to get his wife and daughter back.
It seemed a little too good to be true, but he certainly wasn’t going to complain.
***
Storybrooke hid a multitude of secrets, and every bit of digging they did revealed another mystery, but Clark was beginning to think uncovering anything else might be a mistake.
“I can’t believe you, Clark!” Lois exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air. He was sitting on the bed, their notes strewn in front of him, while she paced back and forth across the wooden floor, her steps muffled by the red and gold rug atop it, and she was most definitely forgetting to keep her voice down. “This was *your* lead! *You’re* the one who insisted we come all the way up here! And now, *now*, you decide that maybe we shouldn’t be here? Shouldn’t be investigating? Shouldn’t be doing our job? There was a man who had his arm torn off two days ago and today…*today*, a man was found ripped in half! And you think we should just leave?”
Clark sighed and looked away, caught without an answer.
It had been bad enough at the stables yesterday, finding blood on the hay in a stall, smelling the stench of tears and more blood and some kind of hospital sterilizer or fluid Clark couldn’t put a name to, seeing the dents in the wood door, as if someone had been locked inside the stall and had pounded uselessly to be let out. It had been stranger to have the sheriff approach them straight out--abandoning his earlier tactic of tailing them everywhere they went--and yet his warning about the wildlife had turned out to be true since Clark had heard wolves howling throughout the night. But what turned the town’s eccentric mysteries into dangerous threats was the morning discovery that a mechanic had been found ripped in two.
“Wolves,” Granny had told them shortly. “We get them once a month or so, coming into town. Just stay inside and we’ll handle it. Don’t go out.”
Sheriff Nolan’s added warning at lunchtime had been almost identical. “Stay inside. Don’t go out after dark. Let us take care of it--you have nothing to worry about.”
Clark had managed to keep Lois inside by insisting they write down everything they’d seen and heard and trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for any of it, but she was getting stir-crazy now--and probably hungry, too, since dinner had come and gone an hour or so before--and he hadn’t helped matters by blurting out his fear that they were just making things worse with their questions.
“Look, Lois, this town is keeping a secret--maybe dozens of them--and us being here, asking questions, is only making them more and more suspicious of us!” Clark paused, took a deep breath, doing his best to stay calm and measured so that Lois wouldn’t see just how scared he was. “You’ve heard them, seen them, and you know that nothing here works the way it does in Metropolis or anywhere normal. What happens if they decide we get too close to this secret? Or if they decide it’s better not to risk letting us drive off again?”
Lois gaped at him. “I can’t believe this! Are you trying to tell me you think we should just leave?”
“I’m saying I think we should be smart about this,” he retorted. Losing his temper never helped; he had to remain steady and rational, able to balance Lois’s love of rushing off in pursuit of whatever cause or story captured her attention. “We’re not getting anywhere the way we’re doing things. So…we back off, we pretend we’re fine with everything, that we believe them and are listening to them. And then we *quietly* go out and try to find out why everyone in this entire town thinks they come straight out of a fairytale.”
The passion was gone, suddenly, from Lois. Taking its place was a perceptive scrutiny that made Clark want to shrink away, hide behind something sturdier than thick glasses and colorful ties. He loved her drive to right the world’s wrongs, her need to be the best at everything she set her hand to, her tenacity and determination. He loved her ability to look beyond the shields and walls he threw up, too--the same ability that had allowed her to see Superman as a man and Clark as a hero. Loved it and feared it all at once. It was when the sparks faded to be replaced by this searing, burning gaze that she could strike him to the deepest part of his heart.
“This has to do with Dr. Hopper’s answer to our question earlier, doesn’t it?” she asked quietly, and despite the hundreds of questions they had asked during their short stay, she didn’t need to clarify which question she meant.
There had been a man at the diner when Granny had told them of the brutal death during the night, his manner as mild-mannered as Clark often portrayed himself to be, his patterned vest and beret marking him out in a strange, gentle way. His eyes, behind his glasses, had been kind and curious, and sad.
“Poor Billy,” he’d said, shaking his head. “So soon after he reclaimed who he…” At Granny’s sharp look, he’d quickly cut himself off and offered a pale smile. “Ah well, soon the danger will be over, I should think.”
“Danger,” Lois had said sharply. “I thought you said it was wolves.”
“It was,” Granny interjected gruffly. “And wolves are dangerous.”
“Not on purpose,” Dr. Hopper had said quietly, meeting Granny’s gaze. “Sometimes it’s simply in their nature, something they can’t control.”
Even Clark had risen an eyebrow at that and Lois had scoffed openly. “If wolves are coming into town and walking all the way to the harbor to tear a man in two, I think they’ve gone beyond pity.”
“Maybe,” Dr. Hopper murmured. “Maybe they’re just confused.”
“Either way,” Granny had said, darting a glance toward the door, something she’d done all afternoon, “we’ll have to deal with it.”
“It’s a shame you can’t just call for Superman,” Lois had said casually, making Clark tense at her side.
Dr. Hopper smiled, a blank smile, as if he were confused and merely wishing to be polite. “Superman?” he repeated. “Who’s that?”
It had brought both Lois and Clark up short, and Clark had been only more surprised when further questioning revealed that apparently no one in Storybrooke had ever heard of Superman.
“It’s strange,” Clark said now, rising from the bed to stride to the window and look out at the bit of forest he could see past the curtains. “I don’t mean to sound vain or anything, but Superman’s been around for two years and has been in the news in every country. But there’s a small town in Metropolis’s backyard that’s never even heard of him?”
“You’re talking about him separately again,” Lois pointed out with the same amused exasperation she always used to remind him he was Superman.
“Doesn’t this worry *you* at all?” he burst out. “I’d think you would be more shocked by this than me.”
“Why?” she demanded. “Because I used to...have a crush on Superman?”
Quickly, he held up placating hands. “No! Just…it’s one more thing to prove that this town is hiding something.”
“Clark, we don’t need any more proof to know this town is hiding something. What we need is to find out *what* they’re hiding. I still haven’t ruled out the possibility of mass-delusion.”
He shook his head. “You know that’s not all. Dr. Whale and his reattached arm, remember? And it’s more than that…” He trailed off, trying to find a way to put into coherent words the multitude of conversations he had overheard. “There’s *nothing* I know of that could convince so many people of something so unbelievable. You can’t hear them, Lois--they *literally* think they’re fairytale characters. Dwarves going to mines with pickaxes and nuns digging out their magic wands and schoolteachers thinking they’re royalty. It’s…it’s so unbelievable that I can’t help but…”
But he couldn’t say it. Not out loud. Not in front of Lois. She barely believed a word he said after finding out how long he’d been lying to her; she’d never believe him again if he said what he was thinking.
“Say it,” she commanded softly, and she stepped up close to his side and laid a hand on his arm. “You can’t help but…what?”
“Can’t help but believe it,” he whispered, turning to look at her. “They believe it so strongly and they never break character and there are things happening here that are just impossible.”
“You believe they’re fairytale characters?” she asked. He couldn’t tell if she was listening or just mocking him.
“I…no, not that. But something. Men don’t grow their arms back and dead people don’t rise as if it’s an everyday occurrence. There *is* something…different…something almost magical here, and maybe it’s not fairytales, but it’s something. Something strange. Something…something alien.”
“Alien,” Lois said, as if she’d never said the word before in her life. As if she weren’t looking into the eyes of an alien at that very moment. “That’s why you want to back off. That’s why you’re so scared.”
He wanted to deny it. Wanted to change the subject and tell a joke and break the quiet tension blanketing them. Wanted to say he wasn’t scared without lying.
But he couldn’t.
Even if didn’t hate lying, he couldn’t have, not with Lois’s hand on his arm, not with her large, dark eyes looking up at him so openly, so earnestly. Not with this truth boiling and searing inside of him so that he *needed* to let it out, let it go. Usually, it was his parents who listened when he could keep in the secrets and fears and desires no more, but lately…lately, it had been, more and more, Lois who was there to listen and soothe and calm. It was a gift, her trust and attention, even more so because he *had* lied to her, and he treasured it. So even though he didn’t want to admit that he was terrified, he seized at this opportunity to relax his rigid hold of his private insecurities. And hopes.
“Maybe they’re like me,” he whispered. “I mean, not Kryptonian, but…but alien. Maybe they’re from somewhere else and trying to live life here on Earth, trying to be as normal as they can be, safe and unbothered. Maybe they…maybe they can do things that humans can’t and only have our fairytales to use as a way of relating. Maybe they’re hiding these secrets to protect themselves from discovery.”
Lois’s lips curved in the faintest hint of a smile. “Like you.”
“What if they are?” he asked her, suddenly impassioned, as if he had stolen her earlier excitement for his own. He turned to face her fully, raising up his hands to gesture in the few inches between them. “What if…what if they’re *all* from another world? Refugees just like me? They could--”
“They could what?” Lois caught hold of his hands, held them still. “What could they do, Clark? Even if they are, somehow, from an alien world, even if they knew of Krypton--even if they somehow incredibly knew your parents…what would that do? They’d be telling you stories of a place you never knew, people you already know through the globe they left you! Even if they are aliens…that doesn’t mean anything. You’re not an alien, Clark. *This* is your home, Earth, Metropolis, out there with Jonathan and Martha and Perry and Jimmy and…and *me*. You don’t need them. You already belong.”
Clark was frozen, arrested at the open vulnerability in Lois’s eyes, gleaming with light reflected from the window, the touch of her hands tight and desperate on his own. “Lois,” he breathed, and had no more words, because she was saying the same thing she’d told him when he’d flown her up into the sky, into that frozen void between the earth and the moon, when he’d told her he’d wait for her forever. And she’d told him she did love him, secret or not. Told him he wasn’t alone anymore.
Whatever his own eyes showed, Lois smiled and tilted up her head and kissed him. She was light and brilliance and so very soft, a homecoming calling him back from the skies and the alien wildernesses he traversed in his mind. She was everything and he’d been so afraid he would lose this forever, so he wrapped his arms around her and cradled the side of her face in his hand and deepened the kiss. She’d wanted a hero first and an ordinary man next, and instead of either of those, she had *him*, but for the first time, Clark began to let himself believe that she wouldn’t give him up anyway.
“I love you,” he whispered when her lips lingeringly left his, while she was still safe in the circle of his arms and he in hers.
Her smile grew wider, and her eyes shone with a light all their own, scorning the reflected glare from the window. “I love you too. So…what do you say we sneak out and find out just what exactly goes on in Storybrooke by night?”
“Well, since I know I can’t convince you to give up finding out the truth of any secret, I say let’s go.”
She laughed, happy and sparkling and incandescent so that Clark couldn’t take his eyes off her. He loved her more than life every instant of every day, but these moments…these were some of his favorites. “Clark Kent--always up for a challenge,” she teased.
Clark had been half afraid there’d be a guard at the foot of the stairs, someone stationed there to make sure the strangers to town didn’t wander out, but there was no one. In fact, the entire town felt deserted. It was so quiet, so still, that Clark felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and he tensed, hard put to keep his feet on the ground when his every instinct was telling him to take to the air and flash ahead until he found where everyone had gone.
The howl of a wolf broke the silence, uncomfortably close, but one glance at Lois’s determined face told Clark that he’d never be able to convince her to return to their room. So, straining his hearing, looking through buildings to see what was around corners before they reached them, he continued forward.
When he found where everyone had gone, it was all at once. One instant, it was silent and still, the next there was a roar, a seething morass of sound and movement and light that pricked straight into his brain with painful intensity at the level of telescopic vision he’d been employing.
“A-a crowd,” he stammered, his head in his hands, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Up ahead--a mob. Torches an-and guns, bats, weapons.”
“What?” Lois leaned into him, rubbing a calming motion over his back as he anchored himself to the sound of her heartbeat and the sight of her worried, intent features.
“Sorry.” He stood up straight and shook off the last of the painful backlash. “There’s a mob up ahead, chasing something into an alley. I can’t tell what it is. I’d think Superman might be needed, but until we know more, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to bring him into Storybrooke. Besides, the sheriff should be--” Sucking in a sharp breath, Clark swiveled his head back the way they’d come. “He’s on his way. Come on, out of sight!”
Grabbing Lois’s hand, he ran forward to the first open door he saw, the windows lit up with the glow indicating lights were still on inside. The library, he thought, remembering seeing it earlier, looking up at the clock tower it boasted. Lois reached behind them and pulled the slow door closed just a moment before the squad car raced by, tires screeching as it turned in the direction of the mob.
Lois let out her breath and looked up at him. “Any idea what the mob was about?”
“I couldn’t quite--”
“Hello? Is anyone there? Please…please, help me!”
At the sound of the female voice emerging tentatively from deep inside the library, Clark exchanged a quick glance with Lois before hesitantly moving toward it. He tried to keep his steps slow, but Lois strode forward confidently and turned back into the shelves. Clark hurried his own pace when he heard her stumble to a halt.
“What happened?” Lois exclaimed, and Clark well recognized the sound of outrage in her tone. “Who did this to you?”
Clark came up short, too, when he rounded the corner. He stared, horrified and aghast and surprised yet again, though he’d been beginning to think nothing this town threw at him could surprise him anymore.
Standing before them was Belle, the kind young woman who’d met them at the line and helped them into town. She met their eyes calmly enough, but her breaths were edged in panic and her heart beat so rapidly he almost looked down at her chest lest it come tearing its way out of her and her pupils were dilated with fear.
She was also chained with iron manacles to a heating pipe.
***
David Nolan/Charming -- Prince Charming, husband of Snow White and father of their daughter Emma, who was the one to break the curse that brought them to our world, thus restoring their memories. He was in a coma resulting from his injuries in sending Emma to our world outside the curse, and only woke up when Henry convinced Snow/Mary Margaret to read 'Snow White' to him. His real name is David, but Snow's nickname for him stuck.
Henry Mills -- Emma's son, given up for adoption at birth and raised by Regina Mills. He found and brought Emma to Storybrooke on his tenth birthday so she could break the curse.
Regina Mills -- the Evil Queen, Snow White's stepmother, and the adoptive mother of Henry. She's the one who cast the curse in order to get vengeance on Snow, and she was mayor over Storybrooke for the twenty-eight years of the curse, when time was frozen. Since the curse has broken, she's been trying to redeem herself and win Henry's forgiveness.
Mr. Gold -- Rumplestiltskin, the devious and incredibly powerful imp who uses deals and contracts to play a chess game with multiple worlds. He created the curse and sold it to Regina with the purpose of coming to a world without magic, where his son had fled centuries before. As Mr. Gold, he's the powerful and devious pawnbroker, the only one who could challenge the mayor. His only desire is to protect Belle and to find a way to cross the town line without losing his memories so he can find his long-lost son.
Belle -- the beauty from Beauty & the Beast, who sacrificed her freedom to save her people from ogres and agreed to live with Rumplestiltskin forever as his castle's caretaker. While there, she fell in love with him, but when her kiss began to break his curse and turn him back into an ordinary human, he banished her. The evil Queen captured her and locked her away, telling Rumplestiltskin she'd been killed because of her association with him. In Storybrooke, she was kept locked away in a cell beneath the hospital; Jefferson, the Mad Hatter, released her and sent her to Rumplestiltskin, who was overjoyed to discover she was still alive.
Dr. Archie Hopper -- Jiminy Cricket, who was changed to a man in our world. In Storybrooke, he's the town psychiatrist.
Billy -- Gus the mouse, from Cinderella, who was murdered by King George. George framed Ruby's wolf-form for the death to discredit Charming and take control of the town.
Dr. Whale -- Dr. Frankenstein, who was transported from a black-and-white world to the Enchanted Forest many years ago to try to bring back Regina's murdered fiance. In Storybrooke, he was a womanizing doctor who answered to Regina, and when the curse broke, he tried to bring back her fiance in order to convince her to send him back to his world.
Ruby -- Red Riding Hood, who thought her childhood sweetheart, Peter, was a werewolf and convinced him to be chained to a tree during the full moon. Tragically, Red was the werewolf and she ate him before realizing what she was. In Storybrooke, she's the rebellious waitress who wants nothing more than to leave the small town for the big city.
Granny -- Red's grandmother, who hid from her that she was the werewolf in an attempt to protect Red from the townspeople. In Storybrooke, she owns the diner and bed & breakfast.
Snow White (or Mary Margaret, a schoolteacher) and her daughter Emma are trapped in Fairytale Land, trying to find a way back to Storybrooke with the help of Aurora and Mulan.
