Ch.31: Queen of Hearts
Katherine and Hook finally found Rumpelstiltskin’s old cell, which was in what looked to be some caves.
Katherine entered the cell, Hook following behind, but they didn’t see a quill anywhere.
Katherine looked around for clues as to where it may be and spotted a brick that looked lose, so she took it out and found a scroll. When she opened it, there wasn’t a quill. However, there was, written in ink, her name all over the scroll, repeated so many times. That’s what made her realize that he’d known her name before she’d even ended up in Storybrooke, in the first place. He must have seen that she’d be coming and that she’d break the curse. That part she hadn’t known, but then again, she hadn’t asked him what he exactly knew about her.
Hook saw her look and approached.
“What is it, luv?”
“Rumple knew me before I even appeared in Storybrooke,” she explained. “He wrote my name.”
He saw the parchment paper that had her first name written all the way to the end of the paper.
She rolled the scroll back up.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m from a world with werewolves, vampires, hybrids, witches, and doppelgangers. Anything is possible, which means it’s not impossible to see the future. I’ve known witches before that could see into the future. Let’s just go.”
She began to leave the cell, and Hook followed her.
*Flashback*
After Regina left Hook in wonderland, Hook was taken by the guards and brought to the Queen of Hearts. When the guy standing by her said that she wanted to know why he was there, Hook said that he was there to see Cora.
Cora took her mask off and stood up.
“In this land, she goes by Your Majesty.” Then she told them to leave, in which they did, and she came down the stairs. “Your name, pirate?”
“Hook,” he replied, bowing his head to her, still on his knees. Then he looked at her again.
“What a clever nickname,” she commented.
He go to his feet and approached her. “I come baring gifts, if you’ll allow me.” He took a necklace out of his pocket with his hooked hand.
“The hat. Your portal. If I understand correctly, the same number that travels through must also return. You arrived with him,” she said, looking over at the body of the soldier that lay behind them a ways. She looked at Hook again. “Who shall you return with?”
“You,” he answered her, before stabbing his hooked hand into her chest, but he didn’t feel a heart, so he dropped his hooked hand from there. “What?”
“I’m the Queen of Hearts. Do you really think I’d be so careless as to keep my heart where everyone else does? This—,” She put her hand through his chest and around his heart. “is how it’s done. Who did this? Who sent you here to kill me? Who?”
“Your daughter,” he answered her.
“Regina. She…wants me dead. You’re now going to tell me everything and do exactly what I want, because when you hold a heart, you control it. You have the power.”
*Present*
After Ruby and the dwarfs found that the fairy dust was stolen, they went to finding out where Regina and Gold had gone. Ruby asked Henry at the diner, and that’s when Henry figured out that Regina lied to him that she and Gold were going to prepare for Katherine’s arrival.
*Flashback-continued*
“I’ve told you all I know. Now have some honor and kill me,” Hook said.
Cora still had her hand on his heart.
She laughed. “Honor? For the pirate who snuck into my palace to assassinate me?”
“At your daughter’s best.”
“She should’ve come. She should’ve killed me herself.”
She let his heart go and took her hand out of his chest and he fell to the floor. She then went back up the stairs and sat on her throne again.
“Mercy seems a bit out of character.”
He got to his feet.
“I’m not mercy, Hook. You’re going to help me. Regina knows my methods better than anyone. If I was controlling you, she would know. This has to be your choice.”
“Why should I?”
“Because my dear, I’m the only one that can give you what you want.”
“Is that so?”
“This curse my daughter plans to enact? This new land she’s taking everyone to? You won’t remember who you are. So, Captain, tell me something. How do you expect to kill someone, when you can’t even remember them? I’ll make sure that you not only kill him, but you remember every single moment.”
He smiled at that and then asked her, “Well, what shall you have me do?”
“Get me close to my daughter. Then I’ll rip her heart out.”
Later, Regina thought Cora was dead, but Cora just pretended to be.
After Regina left, Hook came back and helped Cora out. He wanted to know why she didn’t kill her. She told him that there was a change in plans, since Regina’s curse was going to be upon the land soon.
After protecting themselves from the curse with Cora’s magic with a staff, Cora informed Hook that they’d leave to the new land in twenty-eight years, after the curse was broken. Then Hook would get his revenge and Regina would have lost everything, and Cora would help her pick up the pieces.
*Present*
Regina and Rumple found the well in the woods.
“This is where things once lost to us are returned to us,” he informed her. “This is where Cora’s going to come through.”
Regina looked down into the well.
“Unless it’s Katherine.”
“I doubt it,” Rumple replied. “It’s time.”
“So, what are we waiting for?” Regina questioned.
They stepped back a ways from the well and Rumple held up the dagger. A terrible thunderstorm began and the lightning struck the water inside the well, and a green whirlpool with lightning went into the well.
“No one can survive that,” Rumple commented, and they both watched.
Back at the enchanted forest, Cora had gotten the compass from Hook and Katherine the night before. Now she stood at the lake. She poured the ashes into it and a whirlpool began. She was ready to go to Storybrooke and see her daughter.
Suddenly, she was thrown a distance away, magically, and looked to see Katherine and Hook. When she was thrown, she lost the compass in the sand.
“The compass,” Katherine told Hook, and he got what she wanted him to do.
Katherine approached Cora whom now stood, as Hook fetched the compass from the sand.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Katherine told her.
“You think you can defeat me?” Cora replied.
“As a matter of fact, yes. Answer me this, though. Why do you want to go to Storybrooke?”
“Because my daughter needs me,” Cora replied.
“She doesn’t need you. She’s doing quite well without you. I suggest you stay far away from her,” Katherine replied.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” Cora replied, and tried to take her heart, but she was blasted back by something; something Katherine could only guess as some kind of magic.
Then she joined Hook.
He gave her the compass and they held hands with the compass.
“Let’s go home,” she said, and then they jumped through the portal together, before it could close, leaving Cora behind.
Regina and Rumple were still standing, looking at the well, when Henry and Ruby found them.
“Mom?” he said.
Regina turned around to see her son.
“You’re not helping Katherine, are you?”
“I’m helping you, Henry.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked her.
“You’re going to kill her,” Ruby said.
“Sorry, dearie,” Rumple replied.
Rumple magically through Ruby away, knocking her out.
Henry saw what Gold did to Ruby and then looked at his mother again.
“Mom, what are you doing?”
“I can’t let Cora come through the portal. You have no idea what she would do to us,” Regina answered him.
“Katherine will defeat her,” he told her. “She’s the one that’s going to come through.”
“Henry, your mother’s right. It’s going to be Cora,” Rumple interjected.
“No. It won’t,” Henry replied. “Good always defeats evil. You should know that better than anyone,” he added, now looking at his mother again.
“What I know is that my mother would destroy everything I love,” Regina informed him. “And that means you. And I can’t let that happen.”
“Stop it. You’re going to kill her,” Henry tried to reason with her, as Regina held him back to keep him away from the well. “They’re going to make it through. We have to turn it off. You’re going to kill her.”
He got out of her hold and headed for the well.
Regina pulled him away for his own safety.
“Henry! What are you doing?”
“Katherine is going to come through,” he replied to her. “I know this. You said you wanted to change. To be better. This is how. You want me to have faith in you? Have faith in me.”
After Henry said that, she took a leap of faith and approached the well.
“Regina,” Rumple called to her.
Regina put her hands over the well and the magic that was meant to stop Cora from coming through the well, was sucked into Regina. Then it was gone and she fell by a tree, getting her breath back from it.
Henry looked at the well and Katherine came out of the well. Then she helped Hook out.
“Katherine?” he said softly.
Katherine saw Henry and they had a little reunion. She then saw Rumple starting to walk away and Regina on the ground.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“She saved you,” Henry told her.
“Thank you,” Katherine said.
“You’re welcome. Welcome back.”
“Thanks.”
Later, Katherine entered Gold’s shop, just as he was putting the dagger back inside the box.
“We need to talk,” she told him.
“Yes, I believe apologies are in order,” he replied, turning around and looking at her.
“No. No apologies necessary. I understand why you wanted to keep Cora out of here.”
“Just remind me never to bet against you in the future, Miss Pierce.”
“That’s not really a bet when the game is rigged, is it?”
“To what exactly are you referring?”
“Your scroll. I saw it in your cell. You wrote my name again and again and again.”
“Just wanted to make sure it would stick.”
“It was there all the time. You could’ve gotten out,” she replied.
“I was exactly where I wanted to be,” he informed her. “You needed to find that so all of this could occur.”
“You created the curse, Gold. Everything I’ve ever done is exactly what you wanted me to do.”
“I created the curse dearie, but I merely took advantage of what you are. Everything you’ve done, you’ve done yourself.”
“So, you don’t know.”
“Know what?” he wanted to know.
“Cora tried to take my heart, but she was blasted back by magic.”
“Whatever that was, I didn’t do that. You did,” he informed her.
Henry approached his mother in the back of Gold’s shop.
“I was right. You really have changed.” He hugged her and then looked up at her. “Thank you.”
After everyone found out that she was back, they planned to have some dinner at Granny’s, in which Henry decided to join.
“I’ll see you later,” he told his mother, before going to dinner with the others.
Meanwhile, Cora had found a way to enter Storybrooke without the compass and now was arriving in town.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
