Twenty-eight years. It had been twenty-eight years.
Jefferson swore, picking up his latest attempt and hurling it at the wall with all his might. The hat wasn't quite heavy enough to fly that far, instead landing lightly on the floor several feet away from it. It spun there for a moment, not quite light enough to stay upright and not quite heavy enough to fall on its side.
For just a second, he saw another hat spinning there, magic spilling from it simply because he wished it so.
Then he blinked and the moment was gone, his latest failure finally tilting over onto the pale, faded carpet. "Damn it," Jefferson said, bringing his hands up to rub his tired, burning eyes. It was getting late, even for him. "I'm never going to get it to work, not here. Not in this world. Not without magic. Never going to get it to work."
He shoved his chair away from the table, ignoring how his vision swam for a moment as he stood up. Jefferson wasn't quite certain how long he had been sitting there, working and failing and then starting all over again, not that it really mattered. Time wasn't important, not here. It had been twenty-eight years, yet nothing had changed in all that time. Nothing ever changed.
Still muttering swears and curses that he didn't quite remember ever learning – what world had he picked them up from, all those years ago? – he stomped over to his telescope and jerked it toward him with more force than he had intended. It wobbled slightly, and he quickly steadied it, immediately trying to calm his breathing and force himself to relax. The last thing he wanted was to risk breaking it. It was his one key to the world outside, the only escape he had from the prison Regina had kept him in since the moment she first enacted her curse.
Resting his hand gently on the windowsill, Jefferson leaned down and carefully aimed the telescope at a familiar window. He took just a moment to look at Grace's smiling face as she laughed at something her moth- the woman who was her mother in this world said to her. His heart clenched, and he quickly moved the telescope away from the scene.
Jefferson looked through it for another moment or two, slowly swiveling it so that he could take in a wide view of the town. He was getting ready to put it aside, to turn back toward the table and begin working again, when something yellow caught his eye.
Frowning, he focused the telescope on the bright splash of color. It was a car, one that he hadn't seen before. It was probably just someone who lived elsewhere in the town, who didn't normally drive through that area, but. . . he couldn't remember the last time he had seen something new when he looked out his window at night. Not in the past twenty-eight years.
He pulled away from the telescope for a moment, glancing behind him at the dozens of hats carefully placed in their case along the wall. There were more elsewhere in the house. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Twenty-eight years worth of work, with only the best ones left out where he could see them. Where they would be a reminder of what he had lost.
Shaking his head, Jefferson turned his attention back to the telescope, toward the yellow car that was slowly making its way down the dark streets of Storybrooke, heading in the direction of the bed and breakfast that was barely visible from his home. It had been twenty-eight years. A lifetime, if a person lived somewhere where time still existed and days turned into weeks turned into months turned into years.
A lifetime if you weren't living under a curse.
Jefferson tilted his head thoughtfully for a moment, remembering whispers he had heard back in Wonderland there at the end, about Regina and the curse and a little girl who would grow up to save them all. He had thought they were stories, half-hearted tales told in the shadows where the Queen of Hearts wouldn't hear them, and had forgotten about them completely until just then.
Twenty-eight years.
He should know better than to get his hopes up, than to dare to think that anything might possibly change. But-
Jefferson glanced behind him one more time, at the pristine hats that looked perfect but were exactly what they appeared, nothing more and nothing less. Without magic, they were nothing. Without magic, he was stuck in this wretched world. Who would want to live in a world without magic, he had asked Rumpelstiltskin all those years ago. He still wondered, especially now.
There was a sudden pop, a pressure that he hadn't even realized was pressing down on him suddenly releasing.
He spun back around, grabbing the telescope and frantically searching for a sign of something, anything. The yellow car was parked on the side of the street, its driver nowhere to be seen. There was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing different, nothing to catch his attention. And then, suddenly, there was.
Jefferson's breath caught in his throat as he stared at the clock in the town square, as hands that had been stuck in the same position for as long as he could remember slowly moved. Twenty-eight years. Twenty-eight years, and-
Slowly, he straightened up and pulled away from the telescope. He walked over and picked up the discarded hat from the floor, carefully dusting it off as he placed it on the table. "I'm never going to get this to work without magic," Jefferson said softly. "Not without magic."
Then, almost hesitantly, he started walking toward the door. He had given up on trying to open the front door after the first few years, had stopped even going downstairs almost a decade earlier.
Jefferson couldn't help but think maybe, just maybe, it was time for him to try again.