I own nothing of Once Upon a Time.
Thomas Rosa was camped out in the woods in Maine that night because of a feeling.
He got them, sometimes. Not really useful ones. They were mostly things that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck and seemed to nudge him into doing something or not doing something, choosing one road over another one, stuff like that.
There is, he knows, no magic in this world, not really.
But, he's in this world and he's a part of it, isn't he? So, don't take rules too literally.
So, he was surprised – but not too surprised – when the strange, horrible light rose up out of the ground.
He pulled out his dagger, wishing he'd had the sense not to have his sword packed with the rest of his gear.
He also found himself reliving a lot of memories of things that came close to killing him in the past – and things he'd learned about but hadn't met yet that might kill him – wondering if this is another of them.
Something spat of the eerie light just before it vanished.
A boy, thirteen or so, he guessed.
Tom had seen enough weird things that he took this in pretty quickly. He also took in the other things. The boy's clothes were not anything anyone local would wear (ooh, big surprise, there). Maybe medieval, maybe just different.
They were also hand woven yet well made.
Tom knew what that usually meant. If you're from a place where cloth is still woven by hand, the better made it is, the more wealth – and, probably, importance – your family has.
Meanwhile, the kid was frightened and upset, cursing an absent "Papa," although Tom was having a little trouble sorting out "Papa's" sin, other than not being there.
He cleared his throat. "Uh, hi."
The boy froze and whirled.
Hmm, good defensive posture but not reaching for any weapons. Probably had been in his share of scraps and maybe had some actual training, but not a soldier or anything.
Good thing. Tom knew something about being sent off to fight when you're just a kid, and it wasn't something he wished on anyone.
"I'm Tom, Tom Rosa. Who are you?"
"Bae," the boy said. "Baelfire."
"Baelfire. Hi, nice to meet you. Uh, I suppose you know you just appeared out of a big, creepy, glowy thing that appeared out of nowhere in the forest?"
Baelfire blinked, obviously a little thrown by Tom's reaction to "big, creepy, glowy things." "Uh, yes," he said. "I guess . . . . You saw it?"
Tom nodded. "Yep. Pretty spectacular. You do that?"
"No – yes – sort of. I had a magic – a, uh, a piece of magic. It opened the gate."
"Oh, one of those. That would explain it. So, you running away from home or you looking for a way back?"
Baelfire stared at him. "I didn't – I was told – there's not supposed to be any magic in this world."
"Oh, there isn't, not really. We get the occasional traveler coming through, not that most people believe it. My uncle was one of them, so I've seen stuff." And that had to be the most abridged, grossly misleading summary he'd ever given of anything this side of an essay test for a book he hadn't read. "So, you were looking for a world without magic? You have magic problems, I take it?"
"Not me," the boy said. "My papa." His face crumpled, but the boy didn't cry. "He wouldn't come."
"Uh, just curious, but did that gateway look as psycho on your side of the universe as it did on mine? Cause, I got to tell you, I'd have trouble jumping into that head first myself. Or feet first. Or any other way."
"He promised."
"Yeah. Well." Tom tried to think of something else to say. Nothing came to mind. Maybe if he knew more. "So, what's up with your dad and magic?"
A confused, tangled story spilled out; but Tom eventually got the gist of it.
Magic powers passed on by an evil curse. Papa needed the powers to save his son. Papa had saved his son. Papa had also saved a bunch of other kids, too (good for Papa, Tom thought).
But, it had also changed Papa. Papa was now not only one of the most powerful beings in the world back home, he was at least as scary as Uncle Nick – maybe even as scary as Auntie A (the less thought about, the better).
Tom nodded though, as he heard the symptoms. It was a little like the curse of the Gloaming, he thought, so maybe Aunt Stella could help? Only, not really, he decided. The Gloaming, after all, took away your memories of the past and also sort of separated out your soul. You still had a soul – which was what stopped you from being an undead monster – but it was separate enough that you didn't really act like a person with a soul, pretty shy on the empathy and moral reasoning (they still told stories about what Grandpa had been like before Aunt Stella sorted him out).
But, Papa didn't really seem to have that. Tom listened to Baelfire's description of some of the things his papa had done. The guy could be a perfectly normal person one minute – willing to speak politely and appropriately to a cart driver who had almost caused an accident in the street – then, the polite forbearance vanished the moment he realized Baelfire had been hurt by the cart. Next thing he knew, Mr. Man-with-a-Cart was Mr. Squished-Snail-in-the-Road.
Parents.
And the scary thing was, according to Baelfire, his father had patiently explained afterwards when Baelfire protested, that it was his job to protect his son.
So, something like moral reasoning was still going on, but the guy was having real troubles seeing how to apply it to scale.
Hmm, maybe a little like what happened to Uncle Nick. He wondered . . . . "You wouldn't happen to know what Dark Powers started this curse, would you? I wonder if anybody I know could fix it."
Baelfire's eyes went dark and shuttered. "I don't know anything about how the curse works."
And you don't have a clue how to play poker, either, Tom thought. Oh, well, at least, the kid showed some caution. He'd begun to wonder, what with him talking this freely to the kind of odd stranger Tom had to admit he was when theyd just met in the middle of the forest in the middle of the night.
He had to push a little more – going carefully, now that he'd spooked the kid – to get the other details. He got the kid to tell him what that "piece of magic" was that got him here. It had been a – "Sorry, what did you say?"
"A bean," Baelfire said. "A magic bean."
"Magic bean. Right. I guess I've heard of those. Keep going."
And Papa had freaked at the last minute when the apparent gateway to hell opened up and hadn't gone through before it closed.
Having seen the thing on this end and wondered if he'd be having to stop Lovecraft's Elder Gods from trying to devour Maine (although they'd probably move on once they discovered what the winters were like), Tom felt more than a little sympathy for Papa – especially since Papa had tried to stop Baelfire from going, too.
And, even if the bean (magic beans? Seriously?) had worked as advertised, what idiot sent a couple of people with no training, no aid, no money, no backup, no anything into another world where they don't even know the rules? Even a couple hundred years ago, when no one expected you to know word processing and how to drive – not to mention knowing what a car was – it would have been hard getting on in the new world without even an ax to clear trees and help you build a log cabin.
The real question was whether the solution would have worked and stopped Papa's curse – or at least made it dormant. Given the less than stellar planning of the person handing out magic beans, Tom had to wonder.
He remembered that bizarre town he'd been in a few months ago, Storybrooke. They were from a magical realm, too, and hadn't brought much in the way of magically charged batteries to keep their idea of "normal" going. Not that any of them (apart from the mayor, aka "wicked queen") even knew who they were or where they really came from, thanks to a curse (and Tom thought his life was complicated) so the magic thing didn't really matter to most of them.
Tom sighed, remembering all the trouble there'd been. His girlfriend, Silver, had passed through Storybrooke. Silver was another one of those transients from world to world. Up until Storybrooke, Tom would have said Silver was lucky. Her magic was elemental in nature. So long as there was starlight, moonlight and/or a few other things in the world, she basically metabolized them into magical energy, the same way most animals ate food and made vitamin C, unlike humans who had to find something that already had it.
But, strangers never came to Storybrooke, not beyond drivers of delivery trucks and a few other folk like that. Wicked Queenie had noticed Silver. Worse, Queenie had realized what Silver was and locked her up in the town's psychiatric hospital, taking bits of her hair and blood and what not as needed to fuel her spells.
Tom had come looking for Silver and nearly gotten killed a couple times himself before accidentally waking up the memories of one of the other people in town, a really scary guy called Mr. Gold. Gold, apparently, had his own plans. The curse on the town would run its course in time and Regina would get hers – but, first, the curse had to be allowed to run that course.
Tom hadn't really followed all that plotting stuff, but Gold had helped him get Silver out and then gotten them to a sort of magic well outside of town. The well could do magic if it had magic, one of those circular reasoning messes. Of course, all it could do was return what was lost. Tom hadn't thought that sounded too useful at the time. But Gold insisted.
Silver had been looking pretty sad about then – sliced and diced was more like it. Usually, Silver kept her not quite humanness hidden under light bits of illusion, but Queenie had figured out days ago Silver had claws instead of nails (Silver admitted Queenie might have clued into this from the time she tried to use them to take Queenie's throat out). Or had had claws. Till they'd been removed.
Her hands had looked mutilated, as had a lot of the rest of her.
But, Silver reached the well. On Gold's advice, she cut off and dropped in some of her remaining hair.
A white mist had billowed out of the well.
When it cleared, Silver was whole again.
And the town was back to normal.
Queenie didn't remember them – and neither did Mr. Gold.
All the same, Tom had an urge to call up Gold and ask his opinion on this one. It seemed like the kind of bizarreness the guy would have a knack for.
Tom pulled out his cell. It would be better to call his sister, Sirena, he thought. She'd probably find some way to tell him this only happened because he was being stupid. But then she'd come and help anyway (even if it did drag her away from accounting and the other Dark Rites of business management for a few hours).
Or maybe he could get a message to Uncle Nick – scary guy but knew plenty about other universes and what to do about them.
Or Aunt Stella, who could patch up mutilated souls.
Or even Auntie A, who was scarier than anything Stephen King ever dreamed up (especially when she decided to be sweet and helpful), but who would be sweet and helpful . . . in a psychotic, where-did-you-put-the-bodies-this-time? sort of way.
Did other people have family reunions like this?
Other than the kid in front of him, Baelfire, and his quasi-demonic dad, that is?
Oh, face it Tom, he told himself, Tolstoy was right, all families have problems.
He hesitated, looking over the numbers in his phone's memory.
Who was he kidding? He'd come here because of a gut feeling. He'd hung around and waited to see what the green cloud threw out with nothing but his dagger (a gift from his Gloaming grandpa and not bad at slaying monsters) – although he had regretted leaving the chainmail and the sword packed up with the other gear on his motorcycle – because his gut told him to.
He hit Gold's number.
"Hey, Gold, I don't know if you remember me. This is Tom Rosa. I came through your town a few months ago.
"Yeah, that's right, Silver's friend. I still owe you big time over that one.
"Yeah, I know you're the kind of person it's dangerous to say things like that to. But I'm the kind of . . . well, whatever I am who finds it dangerous not to admit when you owe someone.
"Hey, so, how's it going with the curse? You remember me, so I guess it's breaking?
"Oh, yeah? Savior finally turned up? How long it take her to get her act together?
"What? You have got to be kidding me. And I thought my cousin Hank was a lost cause . . . .
"Right, right, about the phone call. Look, I just had the weirdest thing happen . . . . Yeah, I know my definition of weird is a little stretched . . . .
"Well, here I was on a camping trip – yeah, it was one of those feelings again. Hey, what can I say? It works for me – anyhow, this kid turned up. Sounds like he's from another universe. I was wondering if you might know anything about which one or something. Seems like his dad's some dark wizard dude. Thought maybe you might have heard something.
"Oh, wait. I'll ask."
Tom turned to Baelfire, who was looking at him bemusedly. Right, cell phones likely weren't part of the landscape where he came from. Tom wondered if the kid thought he was nuts. Or maybe there were magical versions of things you held up to you ear to chat with where he came from. "Baelfire, what did –"
There was a loud explosion of noise from the other end of the phone. "Hold your horses, Gold. I'm trying to ask – Baelfire, what did you say your dad was called?"
Tom spoke into the phone again. "Rumplestiltskin. Also known as 'the Dark One.' Heh, some people just have to be pretentious, don't they – huh? Oh, about . . . I don't know, two, three hours from your town. I can check on my GPS. Why?
"OK, OK, keep your shirt on. I'll get him over there. But, just keep her creepy majesty away from me this time, all right?" He turned back to the kid. "Hey, Baelfire, good news. Some guy I know thinks he might be able to help you. He's a little weird, but he usually knows what he's talking about. Oh, and let me give you a quick lesson on motorcycles. You're going to have to wear a helmet . . . ."
Author's note: This is sort of a crossover. Tom and his family exist in some stories I've written bits and pieces of over the years but never really gotten anything finished. When the episode An Apple Red as Blood aired, I outlined the story where Tom's girlfriend, Silver, gets stuck in Storybrooke, but it was a little too dark and grim for me.
This story was the result of seeing Desperate Souls again, seeing a bit of the Addams Family and wondering what would happen if Baelfire had wound up in foster care with a family who were odder than his, and reading the Hamish Macbeth mysteries and realizing Tom had a few things in common with Hamish when it comes to a matter of fact way of dealing with odd people.
The Gloaming or Curse of the Gloaming is a Tom's story only curse. Any resemblance between it and other curses is purely coincidental.