Wraith and Love: Broken Curses

Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time

Further Disclaimer: All opinions expressed by the characters within this work are what I view might be the opinions of the characters giving them when placed in the situations in which they have been placed. Excuse me if my personal opinions may have seeped into this work, which very well may have happened due to the nature of authorship.

A/N: Set a few months after Wraith and Love

In the Middle of the Night

Bae snapped his eyes open and stared into the darkness, willing his heavy breathing to be as quiet as possible. Half-remembered images floated at the edge of his consciousness: a knife in a woman's hand, light flashing off the blade; Regina's face, half of it cloaked in shadow; a sword swinging in a wide arc.

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make the images string together into anything meaningful. His breathing returned to normal, and his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He scanned the room, with its matching dresser and bureau, various items strewn about, and the bed.

Bae had had a hard time getting used to the bed, since he spent months sleeping on dirt and his entire life before that on a cot with a thin straw mattress. This one had metal coils inside, and while it was quite comfortable, it felt very strange to him.

Bae sat up and stared into the bedspread. Again, it was something alien to him, but he tried not to dwell too long on these things. His father and Jefferson, the man in the mansion with Belle, were keeping him out of Regina's hands.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and padded over the carpet, suddenly anxious for a dirt floor. The floor of the hallway was hardwood. Close enough. He walked down the hall to another door and knocked on it. Morraine answered almost immediately. He slipped inside. "Couldn't sleep either, I see," he said, turning to face her. Her back was to the door, her hand still on the knob.

"It doesn't make sense," she said.

"What doesn't?"

"The collection of images. You know, the knife, the woman-Regina was her name, I think-the sword."

"You, too."

"Oh, gods, Bae. What do we do? How do we figure this out?"

"I don't know. The images are from hardly-remembered dreams."

"Do you feel anything?"

Bae closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath to center himself. He took another such breath, calming his every fiber and letting his mind float. The curse that shelled the town and cut it off from the rest of this nonmagical world was severely damaged but miraculously keeping the residents of the Enchanted Forest in Maine. Within the sphere swirled magic fueled by what he thought felt like true love. The magic was there, yes, but something about this world kept it from becoming terribly overt.

And under all of that, he felt something else. The magic fueled by fairy dust that had powered the Enchanted Forest and, so far as he knew, the realms beyond. And it felt close, almost within reach.

Softly, he mouthed Morraine's initial, and she grabbed his upper arms as he ever-so-slowly pulled back into himself. She helped him to his knees, and he lay his head on her shoulder. Her cheek rested against the side of his head, and he sighed. "I assume you like me better when I'm not covered in dead wraith," he said, a dry smirk on his face and in his voice.

"Yes, I do," she replied. "No use in lying about it."

"Dead wraith is disgusting."

"I did want to puke, come to think of it, but it kind of tasted like home."

"Sheep shit, rotten crops, donkey crap," they said in unison, "all over some nice cobblestone notes, maybe some earthy tones like grass and flowers." They laughed, and Bae pulled back and looked into her eyes. She smiled and looked down. He tilted her chin up and kissed her softly on the lips. Her smile brightened and lost all shyness. She kissed him again, and they stood.

"Alright, Bae," she said. "We're not going to sleep any time soon, so let's figure out what we know."

"Right. Well, we're in somewhere called Storybrooke, Maine, which is drifting closer to the Enchanted Forest. I can feel two sources of magic: true love, and fairy dust. Regina has apparently been arrested, which may be the cause of the closeness between the two realms."

"With two sources of magic, this should certainly be interesting."

Bae nodded. "But the woman with the knife. I get the sense that the knife is familiar, but I can't tell from where. The light catching the blade is an obstacle."

"Did you see the woman's face or just her hand?"

"Just her hand."

"So I'm not the only one. We're nine now, but the prince is dead, and so is Fallon. No more wraiths to be covered in upon their true deaths." They smirked. "But Regina is still alive, and she has power here. She'll soon be free. We may drift away again. We might lose our chance to finally go home."

"No, Bae. Don't think like that."

"We don't know if this is permanent or not. The curse keeping this place together is already very fragile, but it could be salvaged." Pieces clicked together in Bae's mind, and he plowed on. "That was why she wanted Papa to kill me. She somehow figured out that he loves me more than anything else, so she must've also figured out that that's what the curse needs to stay alive, as it were. It needs the life of a caster's greatest love. Papa must've designed it, so she decided that he was her last best hope for keeping everyone here.

"The curse must've had more than one level, then. The part that sent everyone to a place without magic is most likely Papa's, if he was out to find me after letting me go, so the part about entrapment, maybe that bit about not having a happy ending and the false memories must've all been Regina's doing." Bae began pacing back and forth as he talked, and Morraine watched with a raised eyebrow. "If this is all Regina's doing, or most of it, then if she dies, we're halfway home, and if we're halfway home, it should be relatively easy to convince Papa to help us get the rest of the way there.

"But if Regina is freed and continues her vendetta, even gets Papa to kill me or anyone else just to save the curse, where would we be then? What if she doesn't get that far, and Storybrooke pulls away from the Enchanted Forest? Are we stuck here forever or-"

"Bae."

"What?" He stopped and spun to face her, his face the picture of innocence.

"You're starting to lose yourself in some hopeless train of thought in which we're trapped here forever."

"Oh. Thanks."

"Of course."

"You really got yourself going there, what with the curse and all. Did you feel all that?"

"Pretty much. The rest I guessed on."

Morraine smirked and shook her head. "You'd better have a lot of faith in your sensitivity, or else we're screwing ourselves over because of you, and you epsecially don't want me to turn on you, Dark One or no."

Bae smiled and nodded. "That's why I try not to move too quickly."

"Good." She walked past him to the window, and then she turned to face him. "Alright, then. Assuming your theory is correct and this woman Regina wants to keep this place as is, she'll have to deal with the serious problem of the two sources of magic beginning to seep through the veil separating the two worlds, if they're as close as you sense that they are."

"And she's still alive and would want that knife back. Either Rumpelstiltskin dies or I do, or Belle, or someone else."

"Which means we have a lot to discuss with the others."