Title: Heathens

Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon A Time. If I did, Adam & Eddy would be fired and picking up litter by the side of the highway.

Summary: Companion piece to the final chapters of "The Outstanding Balance of Morality" that focuses on Neal/Baelfire and Merlin and their quest to free the Lost Souls of Tartarus. [Neal/Merlin (non-romance), implied Swanfire and Merlin/Nimue] (rated M for language)

Genre: Adventure/Bromance, Supernatural/Horror

Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.

Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".

HEATHENS

"[Tartarus is] as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth."

- Zeus in The Iliad (c. 700 BC)

CHAPTER ONE

ABANDON ALL HOPE

(a not so long time ago)

The young children of The Underworld gathered around as their guardian sat in her uncomfortable metal crossing guard chair and opened a book. The woman, Milah, had come here long before they had and long before there were even metal chairs and crossing guards or things called "playgrounds" that for some were new experiences and for others had become common place in the town of Storybrooke where their childhood's had been put on hold for twenty-eight years before magical catastrophes or just ordinary accidents tragically ended their otherwise short lives.

Looking after the children who had no one to watch over them had been Milah's assigned task after she was murdered three centuries ago and found herself here. While she had been furious at first over Hades' punishment, she had felt enough guilt not to try and find a way out of it or fall into a deep denial that it even was punishment like some had. She had visited Killian's brother at his bar several times over the years, for instance, but even after even more time here than she had, Liam still seemed rather happy owning his bar and having liaisons with various women - and men.

It had never seemed to sink in with that pompous bastard that he was running a bar because knowing their father's predisposition toward drink and knowing that Killian had both the looks and ambition to otherwise outshine him, he had systematically turned his little brother into an alcoholic and further introduced him to a certain sort of woman as soon as he was old enough to get it up. Killian had thus became a drunk plagued with syphilis that diminished his mental capacity - and probably enhanced whatever psychopathy he might have shared with Liam as an unfortunate hereditary flaw.

Yes, Milah knew she had taken advantage of both and gotten Killian to believe he was rescuing her and then in love with her enough to obsess over revenge for three hundred years. In the beginning, it had felt like some small vindication that her lover, however much she had been using him, would set aside even his hatred of the man who killed his brother to seek revenge on her husband for her death.

But that was long ago. The years had passed, tethered to these children who had far more tragic stories than she did. Who reminded her of her son. A few had come and gone who'd met Baelfire, who informed her of his being trapped in Neverland, being actually handed over to Pan by Killian out of spite for his having withheld his relationship with Milah - and the manner of her death. Yes, Killian was not a good man, but she hadn't considered he would betray her son - as she had.

It was that horrible woman Cora who'd informed her that Neal had left Neverland some time ago and was now grown with a son of his own, though Milah had suspected he'd left some time ago when children who came here stopped mentioning him. It was Rufio, one of Killian's victims and a friend of Baelfire's who'd told her that her son had a plan to escape, and that poor boy had sacrificed himself in a dual with the pirate to distract both Killian and Pan.

Milah wasn't clear on the specifics, though she had learned that Pan was actually Baelfire's grandfather and even after being murdered by his own son, that little shit had bragged about what he'd done to her son and almost succeeded in doing to Baelfire's boy. He'd even found it amusing to brag that he'd put certain ideas in Killian's head to encourage his interest in perusing her grandson's mother, the woman her son apparently still loved, that being a pirate, Killian, of course, had no honor in leaving alone.

One more way she'd failed her boy.

Milah had never wanted to cause her son pain. She'd just wanted to escape the life she'd been born into and had tried to fit into even though it was always too small and stiffing for her. In truth, she never should have had children. She didn't dislike them, but she was not a maternal person by nature, and it seemed that all bringing a child into the world had done was give him a life of suffering. She had called her husband a coward for the majority of their marriage and thereafter, but she had been a coward first for marrying him when her parents had that matchmaker set them up. She should have just left town, found the life of adventure she'd wanted since she was a small girl, but instead she'd ended up ruining lives by trying to do and be what was expected for happiness even though her heart had always known it would not bring her happiness.

The chance of ever finding that now seemed unlikely to Milah. She had done enough horrible things in her time as a pirate that on top of abandoning her son in the middle of a war and child-killing genocide that even she managed to make it to Elysium with her son's eventual forgiveness, it would be in some servant role, not much different than the life she'd fled for being so dull and stiffing. Of course, she wasn't that brash, reckless, and selfish woman anymore. Her punishment here wasn't glamorous or adventurous. It was the task those qualities had kept her from with her own child, an obvious intended irony, for though Hades was not a kind or compassionate god, he was observant and insightful, and he did not punish without some intended lesson like the demons of Tartarus... at least generally speaking. There was always collateral damage when he was having a tiff with his older brother, and this recent "replica" of some cursed town in another realm was apparently related to that. If one good thing ever came of that family feud, it was the shifting of facades that resembled some real place a reflection in a cracked mirror. And, really, anything was better than Oz.

There were quite few souls here, who'd been killed while cursed into flying apes by a witch from Oz, including some children like the girl in the back row with black pigtails who seemed far too small to be of any use as a monster, which was apparently why the witch had killed her instead of just turning her back when she got bitten.

Milah had accepted her own happy ending was forfeit, but the children, they had a chance to escape this place to a better one where families would take them in, perhaps even be granted a boon from the gods to grow up in a fashion, find love, foster children themselves. It was not a perfect system, of course, and she had long heard whispers that it was all really just a false construct by Zeus that trapped them for his entertainment, kept their souls from whatever Afterlife or rebirth truly came after death. But she was no philosopher. Her duty was simply to give these children hope, to help them deal with the traumas that often surrounded their deaths. Children were more perceptive than adults gave them credit for, more than Milah ever had in life, which only increased her guilt as it became clear Baelfire had been well aware how she'd neglected him for men at the local tavern - only to be told by his father that she'd been raped and murdered by the pirate she was seducing. A child should not have to know or believe such things.

But life was not fair or censored, and these children with their sad, frightened faces, clutching tattered and broken replicas of items that once brought them comfort reminded Milah that even if children didn't deserve to suffer so in life or death, they were also stronger than adults believed. Even if guilt and regret lingered, they found hope again more easily, often in something as simple as a story. And so Milah looked at little Anthony clutching his mutilated stuffed bear and little Dolores with her burned blanket and all of the rest and knew she had the power to restore that hope for them so they could leave this place and the tragic ending of their lives behind.

Opening the thick cover of the book in her lap, Milah began, "'Once upon a time, there were three primordial deities: Chaos, everything that was before, Tartarus, from which the Light and the Cosmos were born, and Gaia, who brought forth Life. From this Life and Light were born gods who wanted order and monsters who wanted destruction and disorder. They fought many battles until the gods were victorious.'"

The children sat in rapt attention as Milah turned the page.

'"'From their victory they the gods fashioned three realms of their own for mortals,'" she explained, "'beyond the ones created by the ancients. There was Elysium, for those with purified souls whose lives were lived doing acts of charity. And there was Tartarus, named such for it was a prison for those who seek to snuff out the Light, a constant reminder of that which they can never destroy but also never again feel. It is a truly horrible place!'

"'And then," said Milah as she flipped another page, "there is The Underworld, where those with unfinished business reside, awaiting either bliss or torment... or attempting to hide from it. Ruled by Hades, brother of Zeus, it is a fractured image of worlds mortals once knew, fractured just as their souls have been by pain and loss, but selfishness and misdeeds. It is a place that welcomes both those who have been harmed and those who have caused it, and so there are always dangers in The Underworld. But in those dangers the ones who have suffered can find their strength, their justice, and the ones who were selfish and cruel can find redemption and mercy. And so it is a dark place, but not one without hope. For though many monsters were unleashed into the world by Pandora, hope did not flee this place.'"

She paused to take a breath and Dolores raised a hand and asked, "Is there hope in Tartarus?"

Milah set the book down before answering. "Tartarus is a place for the worst souls who cannot be redeemed, who defied the gods or laws of magic and committed horrible atrocities. Hope... the only hope in that place one must bring with them."

(present day)

In his left hand Merlin held a torch that glowed blue as Hades' hair while his right gripped the rear rudder of the small gondola.

At the front of the boat, Neal stood with gloved hands stretched out to touch the gate that sank beneath the neon green water and the clearest voice he could muster began the incantation etched into the metal in ancient, seemingly indecipherable ruins:

"Through me the way to the city of desolation,
Through me the way to the eternal pain,
Through me the way through the lost creation.
My maker was divine authority
Wrought me: the power, and the unsearchably
High wisdom, and the primal love supernal.
Nothing ere I was made was made to be
That deathless as themselves I do not die.
Justice divine has weighed: the doom is clear.
All hope renounce, ye lost, who enter here."

Slowly the gates to Charon's Cave creaked open and the small gondola eased forward, pulled by an unnatural current into the darkness that swirled with poisonous fog so thick it nearly choked even the glow from beneath. With the darkness came screams that echoed through the cavern, off the barely visible jagged rocks that would shred any vessel not meant to traverse this route.

As both men sunk to sit inside the boat another scream, louder than the last, made Neal shudder and remember that this was route by which Zeus sent Ixion of Lapiths on a spinning wheel of fire for crimes against the gods. Apparently, the rumor was true that magic had absorbed his screams and replayed them endlessly. Neal wanted to believe it was also true that Orpheus had succeeded in using it and returning through it to rescued his wife Eurydice. Of course, that was the cave when it still existed as a portal to The Underworld, not since it was relocated as a portal to Tartarus. Obviously anyone could find a portal to the former and get out. Tartarus? Not so much.

The Underworld was full of reluctantly repentant and pitiable sinners who might yet be saved but Tartarus was the land of the damned with those who failed to cleanse themselves and so were sentenced to join those who'd shown such inhumane malevolence in life that their trials were immediate and their transfer and sentence from the Halls of Justice sometimes carried out by Zeus himself. Like Ixion.

A muffled roaring sound approached and Neal sunk into the boat, instinctively holding his breath against the toxic vapors even though he was dead. The last of the water's green glow through the mist faded, the magical properties of the river changing just before his stomach bottomed out. Merlin had let go of the torch and it fell eerily beside the boat, gravity even in Hell pulling them down at the same rate.

The fall seemed to take forever. It probably was not nine days as in the "myth", but it was long enough that Neal began to wonder if it would ever end. Which was exactly when they smacked into the water bellow. To say it hurt was an understatement. Being whacked by the damn ore didn't help either.

When Neal broke the surface with a gasping breath - yes, he was dead, but you could worse than die in Tartarus - the darkness had been replaced with blinding light and water was simply gone. Both he and Merlin were laying on an immense salt flat along with the overturned boat.

"Welcome to Hell," Neal sighed.

AN: Neal's incantation is from the gate to Hell in Inferno, the first part of The Divine Comedy by Dante.