Title: Losses, Gains and Returns
Author: Lokemele
Genre: Gen
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Character(s): Granny, Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Prince Charming, Regina, Hook, Belle, Rumpelstiltskin, Seven Dwarves, Blue Fairy, Tinkerbell, Emma Swann, baby boy Swann (formerly Henry Mills) and various others.
Pairing: canon pairings
Rating: K+ for character death
Warnings: language
Disclaimer: Emma and her son are copyright of whoever owns OUaT; other characters are public domain.
Summary: The events following Regina stopping Pan's Curse, including a flashback to Emma giving birth.
Author's Note (if any): Why would Emma name her son Henry? Wouldn't she name him something else? But first, a look at the Enchanted Forest . . .
As the purple smoke of the curse cleared, people blinked and shook their heads. Had it been just a dream, or had they truly spent years trapped in a land with no magic, having forgotten their original identities?
In a small cottage, Granny looked up from where she was sitting in her chair to where her granddaughter Red sat across the room. "Was it real?" the young woman asked, clutching her ensorceled red cloak around her.
"As real as anything else we've experienced," replied her grandmother.
Aboard the Jolly Rodger, Capt. Hook, once known as Killian Jones, blinked in the bright sun.
"What course, cap'n?" asked Smee.
Hook looked around at his crew and ordered, "Plot a course for home, Mister Smee."
Snow White sat up in her bed, conflicting memories of having just given birth warring in her mind with ones of saying goodbye to her grown daughter and grandson.
"Your Majesty?" Doc asked, dealing with his own memory problems.
She shook her head, as if that would settle her mind, threw her legs over the side of the bed and found her shoes. "We need to find the others," she told the dwarf as she rose, snatched up her skirts so she didn't trip over them and headed for the door.
Down in the castle's dungeon, Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. Hadn't he just died, along with his father, the self-styled Peter Pan? "Regina must have succeeded in reversing Pan's Curse," he murmured to himself. He let out a high-pitched giggle and retrieved the note he'd once left for the Savior. She wouldn't be needing it now. He blew the ink across the bars to dissolve them and quickly departed for the Evil Queen's Castle to rescue Belle.
Regina blinked away tears and sadly whispered, "Henry," as she stood in the Royal Nursery near Prince Charming as he rose from the floor. He looked over at the now empty wardrobe where he had just placed his newborn daughter 30 years ago and whispered, "Emma," in an equally sad voice.
"It worked," Regina said in a tired voice.
"We're back," Charming said, shaking the cobwebs from his mind. "I need to find Snow." He ran out the door.
"I should probably be getting back to my castle as well," Regina said, "before the Dark One tears it to pieces getting his lady love out." She disappeared in a column of smoke.
Baelfire, aka Neal, looked around at the place he'd appeared. He'd expected to be in the woods where he'd used the last magic bean to go to the land without magic, so what was he doing in this castle?
"Did it work?" a male voice asked, and then he remembered. The last time he was in the Enchanted Forest, he'd been in his father's castle. The curse must have brought him back here.
"Did you find your family?" Robin Hood asked.
"I found them," Baelfire answered, "and we managed to save my son. But Pan invoked a curse, and the only way to counter it was to leave him behind in that other world, so his mother stayed there with him."
"I'm so sorry to hear that," Robin replied, "but at least you know he's alive, and they're together."
"Yeah," the other man said, "at least there's that."
Tinkerbell felt lighter than she had in years - decades, really. She looked down at herself, startled to see, instead of the dull green, the fairy bright hue she'd had before she lost her wings. Indeed, she felt fairy light again; it was almost as if -
She looked over her shoulder, and there they were - her wings!
"I told you you'd more than earned them back," the Blue Fairy said.
Belle sank down onto the cot in her prison cell and burst into tears. Even if Regina released her, where would she go? Her Rumpel was dead, sacrificing himself to stop his father.
There was a shout from outside the door, followed by a pair of loud thumps. The door flew open to bang against the wall, and - wonder of wonders - Rumpelstiltskin strode through the opening.
"Come along, dearie," he said in that dear, sweet voice, "must'nt linger. Regina's sure to be here any minute."
"Oh, Rumpel," she cried, throwing herself into his arms, "Rumpel! I thought I'd lost you forever! How is it you're alive?"
"The only way for Regina to counter Pan's Curse," he said, "was to reverse her own. Everything - and everyone - returned to where they had been when the original curse was invoked, and if someone had died, they came back."
"But doesn't that mean Pan -" Belle began, but Rumpelstiltskin interrupted her.
"He won't be a problem for much longer," he said. "Without the heart of the truest believer, Neverland's magic is nearly gone."
He drew her into his arms and they disappeared moments before Regina arrived.
Peter Pan blinked to awareness inside Skull Rock just as the last trickle of Neverland's magic fell out of the top half of the Great Hourglass and faded out. He looked down at his hands and watched as they grew from a boy's to a man's and aged to wrinkled, liver-spot covered claws. The cataracts covering his eyes prevented him from seeing the flesh fall from them and even the bones turn to dust, but it didn't stop him from feeling it.
Soon the cave was empty of even the dust of the boy who refused to grow up.
All across the Enchanted Forest, people were reuniting and returning to their former lives. A Hatter was holding his daughter Grace close once more, and a Woodsman was reunited with his son Hansel and daughter Gretel. Celebrations great and small were held, and if some were less thankful than others to be returned to their old lives, they kept it to themselves.
And in that other world, the one without magic . . .
Emma Swann screamed and clutched the bed rails as she pushed with all her strength, feeling her child slide from her womb. She turned her face away, not wanting to look upon the child she was shortly to never see again.
"It's not too late to change your mind," the doctor said as he held the newborn boy.
Emma never understood the impulse she suddenly felt, and never regretted the decision to which it led.
"Let me hold him," she said. Looking down at this small scrap of life she had nurtured inside herself, she had a sudden change of heart. "I want to keep him!" she stated emphatically. "Please, let me keep him," she pleaded.
"If that's your decision," the doctor said, "that's what we'll do. Have you thought of a name for your son?"
Emma was at a momentary loss. A name? She hadn't really considered it.
Then it came to her. The only name that would be right.
"Neal," she said. "His name is Neal Swann."
The beginning.