Author's Note: Hi everyone. I'm very sorry for the delay in and quality of this chapter. I am heartbroken to say that I lost a very precious family member when I was halfway through writing it and it's been terribly hard for me to continue with him being gone. I decided to make it a bit shorter than I typically like, and I hope I'll make up for it in the next chapter, because he liked that I wrote and I certainly don't want to give up on my passion now. Thank you all for sticking with me and this story!

The old mirror was heavier than it looked, and larger than its tattered half-covering betrayed. As Regina swept herself and the others away from Mr. Gold's shop in a plummy fog, David strained to support the artifact in his arms. At least he didn't have to for long—the once evil queen's magic worked quickly, and in a fraction of a second, the russet walls became cream, and he realized they were standing in the middle of Killian and Emma's bathroom.

Motioning for Robin's help, the two men lifted the mirror into place. It looked nearly worthless as it hung on the wall. A thin dust veil blanketed its surface, no matter how many times Mary Margaret smoothed her dainty hands across it. Cracks stretched from its corners like spider webs, thin and foreboding. It couldn't even offer up a proper reflection: the images it portrayed back were dim and unfocused, like it couldn't see into the world right in front of it.

If Mr. Gold were to be believed, that was exactly the point.

He'd told them everything he knew of the old relic, his bitter tongue merciless at the dagger's behest. The mirror was from a faraway land he knew not the name of, infused with an ancient blood magic that allowed cross-realm communication between its users as long as they shared familial ties. It was everything he could have ever wanted in his quest to find Baelfire, but it came into his possession many decades, mistakes and a dark curse too late.

Following Gold's instructions, David reached out to the wreath of metal thorns around the mirror's edge. One of the curved pieces jumped to life and jabbed his thumb; he winced as a red ribbon dripped down the length of his finger. The strange artifact siphoned his blood as if through a straw. A reddish tinge spread through its dark frame, coloring the metal not unlike the Underworld's gruesome sky.

As the thorns turned copper, a tremor rolled beneath their heels. It caused Mary Margaret to shout, and Regina to snatch up Henry in her arms. The house rattled with violent urgency. For a dragging moment, the band of heroes wondered if it would give way to the rapacious sea.

Just as suddenly, the shaking settled into an eerie calm. Trading wary glances and nursing bruised nerves, the group turned to the mirror as its dull reflection began to warp and change. The haziness cleared like a parting of clouds, revealing not sunlight, but a macabre version of the room they stood in. Decorations hung crookedly on cracked, fading walls; the very air was colored the Underworld's signature red.

Gasping, Mary Margaret reached out to the glass, pressing her fingertips against its cool surface.

"Emma?" she asked, her voice scarcely a whisper. "EMMA!"

Shouting and banging, she cried out for her daughter, for the man who was as good as her son, for the grandchild she hardly knew of, but already loved with her whole heart. Her husband's deeper voice joined with hers, his knuckles smashing against the glass so harshly that any other mirror would have cracked beneath the force.

"EMMA!" yelled David. "Emma, can you hear us?"

Emma could hear something—and the closer she crept to the door, the more certain she was of what was on the other side. Her heart beat rapidfire in her chest, echoed in her eardrums, pulsed in her veins. Some logical part of her cried out, reminded her that this could be another one of Mephistopheles' tricks; or maybe she was just hearing Killian, who rushed to her before she threw open the door.

She saw them and they saw her, and tears and shrieks made up their semblance of a reunion. Emma lost herself in the strange mirror she was sure she never put there, entranced in a reflection not of her own self, but of her parents and her son. She pressed her hand against where Henry's was flattened on the other side of the glass, holding in her throat something between a shout and a sob.

"Henry?" Emma whispered. "Henry, are you alright?"

"Love?" Killian sounded concerned. He shadowed over her, staring at their fuzzy reflection in the mirror. He slipped his arms around her waist, holding her carefully. "Are you alright, love? Why d'you think you're talking to your boy?"

"What?" Emma jerked up her head, looking between Killian and the mirror. In a happier, safer frame of mind, she would have asked him when his last drink of rum was. "What are you talking about? Don't you see them?"

"See who, Emma?" he asked, cocking his head and brow.

"Emma?" Mary Margaret's voice was soft. "Is Killian there with you?"

"He's uh, right behind me," said Emma, screwing her face up. First Killian, now her mom and dad? She gazed into the strange mirror and couldn't keep from noticing the wicked thorns that curled around her parents' faces. "You can't see a six foot pirate dressed in black leather?"

"Excuse you Swan, I'm at least six-two," said Killian, causing Emma to bat his hand.

Mary Margaret shook her head, laughing faintly at what she was sure was an adorable reaction between the two—even if she could only see one of them.

"It uses blood magic," she explained, and Emma looked relieved. She'd seen enough things in her head when the Darkness wore at her sanity in Camelot. As she quickly told Killian, Mary Margaret continued, "Robin and Regina are here too."

"How did you even know how to find us?" Emma asked.

"It's what we do, Emma. We find each other," Mary Margaret said. "Are the two of you okay? Is the baby okay?"

Emma's mouth dropped.

"How do you—"

"Gold told us everything," said David. He couldn't bear telling her that he caused everything, too.

"She's fine," murmured Emma, dropping an instinctive hand to her middle. Her fingers tangled around Killian's hook, protectively pressed against the place where their child grew. She smiled sadly, knowing that she wasn't fine, knowing that thanks to her, her life belonged to a monster as much as it did to them, and if they couldn't find a way to defeat Mephistopheles or broker a new deal…

"The baby's a girl?" Mary Margaret asked excitedly. As her daughter nodded, her lips curled, catching the tears that trailed her cheeks. The life she meant for Emma danced gracefully behind her mind's eye, a world of tiaras and ball dresses and dances with handsome princes—or pirates, as it turned out. "Oh honey," she beamed, "I'm so proud of you."

"Don't be," Emma said in a breath. "She'd be safe if it weren't for me."

"Emma," mumbled Killian. He didn't need to hear the other half of the conversation to know what she was implying. He bowed his head against the curve of shoulder, kissing the part in her curls that left her skin exposed. "Don't say that. She's safe because of you. Because you're her mother and I bloody well know you'll do anything for her."

"I love you," Emma whispered thankfully, kissing his dark hair as he murmured love back to her ear.

Mary Margaret smiled as she watched her daughter's expression soften.

"Whatever he said—he's right, you know. None of this is your fault, baby. We're going to fix it."

"How?" Emma asked.

"We… don't know exactly," David admitted. "But we know leaving the Underworld isn't impossible. Mephistopheles has a child, Blackheart, who left some time ago. There's a way out, Emma. We just have to find it."

Emma made a disapproving sound

"I'm pretty sure the son of the devil has some pull we don't," she said flatly.

"Technically he's not the devil," piped Henry.

"He's sure not an angel, kid."

"Maybe not," Henry couldn't keep from smiling, "but good always wins. Evil doesn't give up, but that's okay because we're stronger! I believe in us, Mom. I believe in our family. I believe that love can overcome anything. You guys all taught me that."

He looked around at the love surrounding him: his grandparents, both his mothers and their loves—even the one he couldn't see, but could still feel—and his resolve strengthened. Henry turned back to Emma and beamed as she ghosted a kiss to the strange glass, against where his forehead was.

"You're going to be the best big brother ever, did you know that?"

"I know," he said without pause. "That's what I'm calling this one Operation Cygnet."

"Cygnet?" David asked.

"A baby swan," Henry explained, and Emma wished desperately she could pull her son into her arms and hug him for a long while.

"Alright kid. What's the plan?"

Henry grinned.

"First things first, we need to do a little research…"

Mephistopheles had a mirror of his own.

He hobbled around his vaulted room, studying the floating sphere with a sneering look. It was a seeing spell not unlike the one he used to taunt Killian with his twisted take of Storybrooke, this time magnified so he could watch the scene unfolding near the blackened seashore.

His long coat flew behind him as he made lazy circles, gnashing his teeth while he listened in on them. He had half a mind to find the soul who told them of his son and pitch them into one of the Underworld's twining, infernal rivers, but he sated himself, knowing they would never find Blackheart when even he couldn't.

Mephistopheles could venture into the world of the living when he pleased, though he much preferred his sprawling kingdom of the bloodless. He mainly ascended to earth on business, crafting and making good on deals with mortals like Rumpelstiltskin. For a time, however, he'd searched for his son in the overworld. He never returned with anything more than a few new souls for his hellish realm.

Although he called him his son, Blackheart was really no more his than any of the empty beings that wandered his grimy, sulfur-laden streets. He was born and grown in a day, birthed by no mother but by the decades' old accumulation of evil in a forgotten New York town. There was no gradualness to his being: he was the same man on the day of his "birth" that he was when he betrayed his father and fled their shared realm.

If only waiting for the Savior's child was so easy.

Nine months stacked feebly against the hundred lifetimes he'd lived, but having to wait for anything was foreign to Mephistopheles. He eyed the seeing orb, watched the mortals disperse as they set out on their next adventure. It was amusing, the way they thought they could outsmart him. He closed his gangly, heavily ringed fingers and dispelled the seeing orb with as little effort as it took him to summon it. That was the instant gratification he was accustomed to.

Still, he wouldn't stop them—not now, when they were no real threat to him or his plans. He would let them cling to their belief that they could defeat him, that the battle wasn't already won and the child wasn't already signed to him in her mother's blood. He would revel in the hope they thought they had, and when the last semblance of it drained from their eyes, he would delight in his ultimate victory.