THE ENCHANTED FOREST, TEN YEARS AGO.

"You're Cinderella?"

The woman's eyes narrow and flash her well-cloaked nervousness. "You know me?" she queries slowly and carefully, but alarm seeps from every pore in her face. She'd already dismounted, but she begins stepping backward, away from the rather impressive fire Henry had succeeded in poking and prodding.

He places a careful hand in front of him, palm up, and does his best to give a reassuring, charming smile--one that he knows likely comes off as more of a grimace. "No, no - it's a 'my realm' thing. You're kinda popular there."

Her eyes widen in curiosity, and she takes a careful step towards Henry. "What do you mean?"

"It's nothing, it's just a movie," he shakes his head, biting his cheek in an attempt to remain serious.

She draws closer, eyebrows knitted together. "Movie?"

"Yeah, like a --" he begins, then frowns when he realizes he has no idea how to go about explaining the topic to a woman who grew up in a completely different world, one whose life is more than likely much different than the stories he's used to; and especially to a woman who is so beautiful he can hardly form a coherent sentence. "-- you know what? Never mind. Sorry."

She cocks her head to the side, then shrugs with a small laugh. "You're very strange, Henry. Henry ...?"

Henry looks towards her with wide eyes before realizing her question. "Oh. Uh -- Mills."

She smiles, sitting on the opposite side of the fire and gazes at him through the flickering flames. "Henry Mills."

---

"Tell me about your realm, Henry Mills."

Henry glances at her from his reclined position on the other side of the charred wood where the fire had been burning an hour or two ago. The sun was low in the sky before he had worked up the nerve to suggest they camp here for the night, with plenty of fresh grass for Kaladian to graze and the shelter of tall evergreen trees. To his surprise, she had only taken her pack from Kaladian's saddle and began clearing a space for her body as a way of expressing her agreement.

Dusk now paints the sky and brings a coolness that refreshes them from the hotness and humidity of that afternoon. He shrugs and brings his hands behind his head to get more comfortable. "Oh, god. I dunno--there's more buildings and roads, way less green spaces and nature. There's more 'headless horses' like my bike, lots of restaurants and bars," he sighs, rattling off whatever comes to mind. Then he catches her eye and smirks. "And movies."

They share a laugh and Ella smiles in wonder and curiosity. "That sounds very strange. Strange, but interesting."

Henry tosses a stone up into the air, catches it, then tosses it again. "It's different, but people are the same pieces of shit they are over here."

She snickers softly and flops onto her back to mimic his position. "I see. So, not so different, hm?"

He turns his head towards hers and smiles. "Guess not."

The silence is broken by the sound of hooves thundering down the path, becoming closer and closer as the seconds tick past. Henry can feel the sensation on the hard ground and in his core as he scrambles to a stand. Ella has already sprung up and begun fumbling with the knot in her horse's reigns against the tree trunk. When Henry's eyes meet hers, he finds pure, unbridled panic in every inch of her expression.

"Mierda! They'll find me," she breathes out in a terrified whisper, already one foot in the stirrup to mount. Then, casting another glance at Henry, she shakes her head, her curls swaying with the movement. "I've stayed too long."

"Stayed too -- what do you mean, they'll find you?" He demands, watching helplessly as she mounts and, after a moment's hesitation, reattaches her pack to the back of her saddle.

"I have to go. I'm sorry, Henry," she turns once more towards him, shortening her reigns and preparing to run. He sees real regret and remorse in her eyes, as the thundering hoofbeats grow ever louder. Her heels squeeze and Kaladian springs to life.

"How will I find you again?!" Henry shouts after her, his heart in his ears as she gallops away.

Ella looks over her shoulder as the wind whips through her and gives him a weighted, communicative look he can't begin to understand, and then she's gone.

He barely has time to process what had happened before the sound of muted footsteps belonging to more than one man reaches his ears. His body springs into action before his mind catches up to it, scuffing his boots over the matted grass where she had been laying and stomping on the last dying embers hidden deep in the black logs. Instinctively, he reaches to the small of his back where he keeps his dagger, but it's not there and his fingers close on empty air. His heart drops, mind flashing to the moment when Ella had "tripped" behind him while they searched for more firewood and her hand had brushed against his back, and how he'd laughed, and he'd been so taken with her --

No.

The next moment, four uniformed palace guards enter his field of vision. The one in front signals with his hand and they spread out, searching the clearing. Then, spotting him, they make their way towards him. His heart still racing, he crosses his arms in front of his chest and does his best to appear at ease.

"Can I help you, officers?" he jokes, trying to judge their expressions behind the shade cast from their helmets.

"You seen a woman around here today?"

Henry swallows, a chill running through his bloodstream. Surely he didn't mean..? He gives the guards a small, relaxed smile. "Woman? You might have to be a bit more specific, friend."

His smooth talking doesn't have the calming effect he'd hoped for either on himself or on the men in front of him. Stoney faced, the one who Henry assumes to be the commander steps closer to him and places a careful hand on the hilt of his sword. "We're talking about the runaway princess here. She's been on the run for years."

Henry's smile falters. "Runaway princess?"

"You're not from around here, are you? Cinderella. We've been trying to put her away since she ran off."  Henry feels himself blanch. "You okay there, mister?"

"Yeah, I - I'm not from here. I've never heard of her."

"Hey!" One of the guards calls near the place Kaladian had been grazing. "Horse has been here."

"You hear that?" The commander directs towards Henry, raising an eyebrow. "Fresh hoof prints. You sure you ain't see anyone?"

The guard who had noticed the evidence of Ella's horse steps towards his commander, holding a very familiar object. "Found this, too."

Henry's throat had gone dry during the last set of questions, but he finds his tongue when he notices what's in the guard's hand. "Hey, that's my dagger," he exhales in relief, sidestepping the commander's question and inspecting the knife. H.M. had been engraved in gold lettering on the handle, a going-away present from Mr. Gold that demonstrated the extent of his grandfather's thoughtfulness. "Those are my initials," he explains to them as they hand it back to him. "I thought I lost it."

The guards regard him with a new sort of respect, as if they can't imagine anyone who isn't important owning a personalized object. Henry bites his tongue to keep from smiling. At some point, she must have decided against stealing from him and left it for him to find--maybe they really had made a connection, and this was her way of communicating that to him. It's not exactly a glass slipper, but he'll take it.

"Alright, Sir, just be sure to report it if you see her." The guards nod in a near-unison, and the commander begins to lead the group away.

Henry almost lets them go, but a biting curiosity slides past his lips. "You - you said you've been trying to 'put her away' for years. What did she do?" He asks, watching them freeze in their tracks as a shiver runs down his spine. He finds himself fearing the answer he might receive.

The commander turns back to him and pulls a folded-up piece of paper from his belt. "I'm surprised you've gone this far without seeing one of these," he says, handing Henry the paper. "My advice? If you see her, run in the other direction. Bitch is dangerous."

The guards have disappeared from view and the last of the color in the sky has faded before he finds the nerve to unfold the piece of paper. When he does, he really wishes he hadn't.

The poster shakes in his hands as he stares at the drawing between the words; the drawing of the very woman he had begun to fall in love with holds his eye contact until he can no longer stand it and he crumples the poster and casts it to the forest floor.

WANTED: Princess Cinderella of Tremaine Manor for MURDER and TREASON.

---

Anxiety courses through Henry as he paces the open clearing underneath the hazy starlight. He'd battled for hours over what he should do with this newfound information: if he should run like hell even though his heart is pulling unrelentlessly at him to stay.

He doesn't even know if she'll be coming back here. And if she does, what force is compelling him to remain where she'll find him--if she's really so dangerous? He grips his dagger in his fist, fingering the blade with his other hand. Yes, she'd stolen from him, but she'd also put it back where he would find it--and although he hardly knows the woman, even less so now than he imagined he did a few hours ago, he can tell she's not careless enough in nature to accidentally drop his knife in the grass seconds before securing her pack to her horse's saddle and racing away. His quickly-turning mind had pieced this conclusion together multiple times over, but the in-between is killing him, of whether she really will come back to find him when she feels it's safe enough to do so or if he'd been wrong about this, too. He doesn't know how he would handle that. He feels that lately he's made too many mistakes, and once something finally feels right to him--his heart drops in his chest when he considers the possibility that everything had been a lie.

The crumpled poster stares up at him from the earthy ground, seeming as if to mock him. Murder and treason. She wasn't just on the run, she'd killed. His blood chills and he glances behind him, in spite of himself. He imagines them gathering more firewood in the forest after she'd pickpocketed his knife and himself holding kindle in his arms and turning to speak to her--

--and then Ella siding up next to him and using his own weapon to slit his throat, nice and easy and slow, listening to the gurgling blood and the choking and his inability to draw more air as spots cloud his vision and red paints the forest.

The air seems to ring afterwards, even though he hadn't spoken a single word out loud. He grips his knife tighter and tries to relax. He's not naive enough to believe that everything is exactly how it seems, and if his long, convoluted family history is anything to go by, it rarely ever is. He thinks of the old Book, tattered and hidden away in his room, and the pages filled with Snow White's own wanted posters with the very same accusations. And while his grandmother has her own share of sins and shortcomings, she'd never taken a single life during the years she spent on the run from Regina.

"Henry."

Despite his attempts to rationalize the fear gnawing inside of him, the voice startles him greatly, even more so when he realizes to whom it belongs. Snapping to attention, his eyes sweep the space around him until he finds her figure in the shadow of a tree. This time, she hadn't come in a saddle.

He begins walking toward her, his mind flashing a warning sign in front of his eyes all the while. Wherever his mother is, she's probably just suffered a mysterious heart attack. Still, he walks, and she meets him somewhere in the middle. She smiles up at him, but he doesn't return the gesture.

"You stole my dagger."

She glances down at his fist, watching the moonlight reflect off the metal blade. "I gave it back," she counters, and this time, Henry does smile.

"You're not wrong," he chuckles, returning his dagger to its place and crossing his arms. "I suppose I should be grateful."

They share a laugh, but Henry finds himself looking away from her piercing gaze, too many questions on his lips. Without warning, she walks a few feet to the left of him and picks up the paper partially hidden in the tall grass.

Henry's pulse quickens and he curses inwardly. Why did he leave it in plain sight? He watches anxiously as she calmly walks back to his side, smoothing out the crinkles before regarding her own wanted poster.

"So, now you know," she says quietly, still fingering the paper in her slender hands.

"Only what that poster tells me," he responds, his voice coming out stronger than he'd expected it to, and when their eyes lock, he attempts a smirk. "You come back here to kill me?" He's only half kidding.

She swallows hard, folding the poster into increasingly smaller squares, so as not to meet his gaze. When she speaks, there's a small tremor in her voice. "I've never killed a single soul," she begins, but when she finally looks at him, her eyes are wet. "But I deserve that title."

Henry draws his brows together and steps closer. "What are you talking about?"

Ella opens her mouth as if to answer, but after several moments of hesitation, she shakes her head so that her curls cloak her face in shadow. "I barely know you."

"You're right, you don't know me. I'm just some random guy you met because he wasn't looking where he was going and he made you crash your horse, one who has no way of finding you again, and one who's from a completely different realm. I'm the perfect therapist."

Confusion flickers across her features for a moment, but she returns his grin. "You are the strangest man I've ever met, Henry Mills."

He smirks, then finds his hand moving of its own accord to gently brush a curl from her eye. "So I've heard."

---

Together, they build a newer, larger fire just where the other had been, silence stretching between them as the wood pops that somehow isn't uncomfortable in the slightest. All the while, a small voice in the back of his mind nags and asks what he's doing here, but a louder voice pushes it away and answers that he thinks he knows the answer to that, anyway. Henry sits cross-legged in front of the fire, watching Ella move ever closer to its warmth and somehow, with every movement, it's one ever closer to Henry. It's so slight that it's something that wouldn't be noticeable to someone who wasn't looking for it--which Henry definitely isn't--he's observant, always has been.

Which is a reason he can attribute to the fact that he isn't speaking. As he spends more time with her, he can gradually read her more closely, and he knows far better than to poke and prod. Either she'll talk, or she won't, and he's working on being okay with either outcome.

But his Author powers have yet to fail him, and he doesn't read a single line of danger written within her; as he looks at her and memorizes her features, he realizes that even if he never knows the full truth of her past, he wants to stay for her future.

"I grew up in the palace those guards are hunting me to protect. My father was a nobleman, but when he married my mother, a princess from this kingdom, he became royalty. I was born here, and my mother died before I reached ten years of age."

Henry hadn't moved his eyes from the fire since she began her story, but when she pauses, he lifts his gaze to hers. She doesn't look up. Her face is drawn and unreadable, and the flames flicker and disrupt the shadows on her frame. He doesn't realize he isn't breathing until he's nearly out of air.

"He remarried when I was fourteen years old. Her name was Lady Tremaine, and her daughters--"

"Drizella and Anastasia?" Henry guesses before he can stop himself.

She finally turns her eyes to him, and he thinks for a moment that he sees a shimmer of airy light behind her dark eyes. "Let me guess. Another 'your realm' thing?"

Henry smirks and tries to ignore the way his heart is slamming in a way he hadn't experienced since he was a star-crossed teenager with hormones that could make him jump out of his skin if he even thought about them the wrong way. "I knew you'd catch on." She smiles, and Henry has to bite the inside of his cheek to forcibly find his way back to the topic at hand. "I'm sorry, I interrupted you."

She waves a hand in casual forgiveness, and Henry could swear that when she stretched out more comfortably, she shifted closer to his left side. "They despised me. All three of them, but above all, my stepmother. I think, looking back, she couldn't stand the way my father loved me more than he loved her. He never made it obvious, at least he never tried to--he was the sweetest man I've ever known. But she knew.

"She made my life a living hell. She humiliated me in ways you couldn't begin to imagine. She was a sick sort of artist; there was a creative, new way to her madness, so that I could never expect or plan for the way she would destroy me next. But I lived through it all, because my father loved her, and I never told him a single sin she had committed against me. He'd never fully healed from my mamá's death, and I feared he was going, too.

"That's why the kingdom wasn't surprised or suspicious when he suddenly died late in the winter of my eighteenth year. It was a tragedy of the highest order, but there was no doubt of the fact that it was of natural causes and an underlying cause of heartbreak. But I knew better."

She pauses again for a moment, and for the first time since she began, Henry notices the thin tracks of tears staining her cheeks. A sinking, sick feeling grows inside of him when he realizes he has an idea of where her story is headed.

"Ella," he whispers, but she doesn't look at him. Instead, she covers her face with her hands for a long moment before sniffing and clearing her throat to continue in a strangely matter-of-fact manner.

"She killed him. Lady Tremaine, queen of the castle, his wife, murdered my father. I watched her strange behavior for days. I saw her long, pacing walks around the grounds and in her study. In the last years of their marriage, my stepmother and my father took to separate rooms while they slept. But that last night, she went into his chamber. I heard her sweet murmurs that it was to make amends. But my father never walked out of that room again."

A deep breath later, she's continuing, more fearless than Henry could imagine. "Something broke in me that winter. I was never the same. Her behavior towards worsened tenfold after my father no longer there to witness it, but I was numb in my grief and my rage. I lived, breathed, and fed on my anger. I was so far gone I no longer recognized myself in the mirror. All I cared about was my revenge in my father's name. That's when I reached the point of no return. I escaped from the castle one night and paid a villager in a tavern a great sum to tell me the location of the fabled voodoo doctor, known by the locals as The Shadowman. I had heard tales of him ever since I was a little girl. I knew him to be an evil sorcerer, a dabbler in dark magic, but a very powerful one, and one who would make dark deals to exact revenge on enemies. Lady Tremaine was my enemy, and I was desperate. Desperate enough to make a deal with the devil.

"It took me several days, but I found him at the edge of this forest. My greatest shame and regret is that I went through with it--as much as I could then. I told him everything. He promised to give me my revenge, but in return, I owed him an unknown favor. I belonged to him, under his mercy. I...I agreed. Looking back, I don't know what I thought would happen, or what I thought I wanted. I wanted her hurt, yes. I certainly wanted her cast out from the kingdom, and yes, maybe for a moment then, I even wanted her dead. But I never specified what type of revenge I wanted extracted towards her, which was my greatest mistake. I stayed in his hut that night, but I didn't get a single minute of rest. The entire night, I tossed and turned and my conscience tortured me with terrible visions, and when I did manage to sleep, they were nightmares. It only took that one night for me to change my mind. I got up at the first light to tell the witch doctor that I wanted to call it off, and that I certainly didn't want her dead--but he--but he was gone. It was too late."

Finally, a sob escapes her lips, and she curls her knees to her chest as if she's attempting to embrace herself to offer her own body a scrap of comfort. "The next news I heard, my stepmother was brutally murdered, and for good measure, he had left strands of my hair and my knife at the scene to frame me--but I was responsible for her death either way.

"For the past three years, I've been on the run from the palace and from...him. I've been too scared to leave the kingdom entirely because he would know the moment I left, and I'm sure that he made a doll of me the second I set foot in that horrible place. I was a coward then, and I'm a coward now." For the first time since she had continued her story, she looks him dead in the eye. "I don't want to die."

---

STORYBROOKE, MAINE, 2022.

"When did you know that you loved her?"

The question doesn't startle Henry in the slightest. Though the air had been silent for several minutes before, he'd been expecting it ever since his mother had met his wife that morning in the foyer.

They're laying on her bed, and the king-sized mattress that had always seemed as large as an entire country to him when he was a little boy still seems to swallow them whole as they lay so close to each other that their breathing is synced. He has no idea how late it is, but he guesses it's around two in the morning--and he's savoring every single moment with his mother.

Thirteen years is a long, long, long time. So long, that when he thinks back to the vast years he spent away from this world and his other family, away from her, it scares him. It scares him even more that in the time he'd been away, it seems that hardly anything had changed in the town that had always seemed incapable of it, when everything about himself had changed. It's a scary, alienating feeling that he no longer belongs, no longer fits the way he is now in the town he grew up in, the one place he felt like he'd always belong. In all of the grand total of four years he'd been away--for them--they'd been expecting the same boy to return, and he can't give that to them.

But after more than a few frightening moments when he and his mother had failed to connect the way they had before, he drinks in their companionship now. For the first time, it feels as though it may be possible to bridge the terrible gap time had wedged between them.

So, he sighs and clears his throat to find his voice again. He doesn't have to think for a second to find his answer. "It was that night," he mutters, more to himself than to Regina in that moment. "It was that same night that she laid herself in front of me like an open book, and I realized that a twisted perfection can be found in the worst mistake someone has ever made. She became the most beautiful, dimensional person I had ever met, and in that moment, I wanted to do everything I could to take her away from her pain and make it so that she wouldn't ever have to be scared again."

He turns towards his mother, who, for someone who knows nothing of what Ella had told him that night ten years ago, looks as if she understands far too much. But, he muses, if anyone would understand what he means by that, she would. "I took her away from that place. I took her away and we started a family."

"Oh, Henry," she whispers, the sound a guttural rumbling inside of her that gives him the same calming sensation it had since he knew the sound of her voice.

There's tears in her eyes, but he has the overwhelming urge to take the pride away from her--his own greatest mistake hanging over his head in a way that threatens to drown him. "We started our family, and then I made my biggest mistake. And I still don't know what it'll yield. It's tortured me for years--I don't know what I'll do when it comes back to find me. To find my -- my family," he whispers, the words poisonous on his tongue.

His mother only grips his hands harder in her soft, small, strong grasp and presses a long kiss to his temple. "Tell me everything, my little prince."

Henry takes a breath.

---

AN: omg this chapter was a pain to write with all of that plot but I hope you enjoyed! Sorry for all the backstory, but it's necessary to move the story along.

If you enjoyed this chapter, please feel free to send me a vote or comment--this chapter literally required hours of planning :)