juliet •peter pan•

EIGHTY-NINE

STORYBROOKE

The group sat in Granny's, waiting for Hook and Regina to arrive so that they could figure out a plan to stop Zelena. The first out of the two to arrive was Regina, walking through the door with a smile plastered on her face. Mary Margaret chuckled. 

"Regina." She exclaimed. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you look smitten." Regina scoffed. 

"Well, if I didn't know any better, I'd say Häagen-Dazs is smitten with your stomach." Juliet snorted. Regina folded her arms. "Can we get started?"

"We were waiting for Hook." Emma answered. Regina frowned. 

"I don't have time to wait for the handless wonder. We have to figure out how to destroy my sister." David nodded.

"For once, I agree with Regina. Stopping her plan is the priority." Emma sighed. 

"There's one thing about this plan that doesn't fit." She looked up at Regina. "Regina." 

"I'm the point of it." Regina argued. "So she can take my life for herself." Emma nodded. 

"Yes. But why bring you back to Storybrooke? Why bring any of us?" Regina shrugged. 

"Well, no one's ever succeeded at traveling through time. Perhaps something from this world makes it possible." Juliet racked her brain, trying to figure out what it could be. But she couldn't think of anything. "But what's almost as troubling is that she was able to cast the curse to bring us all here in the first place."

"Why is that?" Emma asked. Regina sighed, looking at Juliet.

"To do it you have to give up the thing you love most. I would think that if she did that, Juliet wouldn't be here right now." Juliet scoffed. 

"Yeah, well I guess she doesn't love me as much as I thought she did. Which doesn't surprise me at all." An almost awkward silence fell over the room. 

"Selena's smart. Strategic." David chimed in. Juliet was glad he ended the silence because she really did not want to think about the fact that her mom didn't love her. "Perhaps we discovered something in the missing year to stop her." Mary Margaret nodded.

"And then the only way to stop us from interfering was to bring us back here and wipe our memories. So if we get our memories back, we might already know how to defeat her."

"We just need to break this curse." David agreed. Mary Margaret smiled, looking at her daughter. 

"Well, thank goodness we have a savior." Emma sighed.

"I would love to, but there's one problem. Last time, all it took was me believing in magic and kissing Henry. Since I've been back, I've done both, and nothing." Regina's eyes widened at that last sentence. She seemed to have realized something.

"It's the belief. Henry. He needs to believe. In this new life, he doesn't." She explained. "We have to get him to believe again."

"So what, we put on a magic show?" Emma asked. Regina shook her head, answering Emma's question with another question.

"How did you believe?" Emma thought about it for a second.

"The book. The story book." Regina nodded.

"That's what started Henry on his original path. And what got you to believe. It's the key. In him believing. In him remembering. Remembering everything." Emma sighed.

"That's not necessarily a gift. He's been through a lot of tough stuff." Juliet nodded in agreement. Giving Henry his memories back only for him to remember his dad right after he died is going to be tough on the boy. 

"And some good stuff." Regina added. "Either way, it's our best bet." 

"She's right." Mary Margaret muttered. 

"I know." Emma responded. "Let's find it."

David went to call Belle to ask if the fairytale book was in Gold's shop. When he came back, he sighed. 

"Gold's was a dead end. That was Belle. No book in the shop." Mary Margaret turned to Regina. 

"Regina you said the last place you saw it was Henry's room?" She asked.

"Yes. But it's not there." Regina responded. "Swept away by the last curse." David put his hands on his hips. 

"A book can't just disappear." Mary Margaret sighed.

"But it can just appear." All eyes turned to her. "The first curse. It just showed up in my closet when I needed it. Or, more accurately, when Henry needed it." Emma leaned forward in her chair to rest her arms on her knees. 

"What do you mean?" 

"He was going through a rough time." Mary Margaret explained. "He was realizing he had been given up. He didn't feel like he had a real family." Both Regina and Juliet frowned at that statement. 

"He did." Regina argued. 

"That may be, but Regina, he wasn't feeling that way with you or with anyone." Mary Margaret reasoned. "He needed to believe in happy endings again. That's what the book gave him." Regina sighed, getting herself together. 

"Well, he needs to believe again. In fact, I think we all do." She looked at Mary Margaret. "What do you say we go check your closet?" Mary Margaret nodded.