3 hours, 45 minutes
Hope.
It was buried, by grief and sadness, but it was there. Small. But there. Burning. Alive. And now that she had it, now that she could feel something besides a bottomless pit of unending sorrow she had to hold onto it. Cling to it. It was a lifeline…just like Neal.
She was walking, but she'd barely noticed. David. He'd said they were leaving and the group of them had followed after him, a group that seemed to be growing by the second! Every step they'd taken, people had emerged from the trees, more and more were returning to the Enchanted Forest from Storybrooke and each time someone had happily waved and told them to come along. And Neal…
Neal!
Neal was supposed to come back to the gazebo for her, she was supposed to wait for him, but she hadn't! She'd walked off with the rest of the group and hadn't seen Neal since. Did he figure she didn't want his help because she'd done that?! He'd told her when they ran away that she didn't have to stay with him, but that he wanted her to still be with the group. Did he just assume that was what she'd decided? She looked around her but there was little to see. She'd fallen behind, too consumed with her new found energy to notice that they were all walking ahead of her. So she picked up her head, and her skirts, and moved quickly back up to the group.
The faces were unfamiliar, but she couldn't let it distract her. The flame within her was weak but she wouldn't let it die! She needed to find Neal! They'd keep it alive together, burning bright! She wound through the people, all the strange faces, and voices she didn't recognize until she found…there, just up ahead!
Baelfire!
But he didn't look as she remembered him only hours ago. He'd looked strong then, his back had been straight, she hadn't been able to recognize the look in her state but she did now. He'd had the hope that she'd lacked. But somehow, when her back was turned, everything had reversed. No, she couldn't see his face, but she knew the way his shoulders slumped forward in a defeated posture wasn't hopeful. She knew the weight that he seemed to carry in his neck and hung head wasn't hopeful. And she knew that the unsteady shuffling, the aimless wandering he was doing as he followed the flow of people just as she had, certainly wasn't hopeful.
What had happened to him? How had he changed so quickly? The last time she'd seen him he'd seemed hopeful and determined, just before he talked to-
David. He'd asked David how to get to the Dark Castle…and yet here he was with the rest of them heading to the Queen's palace instead of the castle. Perhaps David and Mary Margaret-Snow hadn't been as helpful as he'd hoped, as supportive of his going back to get Emma and Henry. Yes, that had to be it. The hope that had held him up, as he'd held her, was Emma and Henry. They'd crushed it and now he looked nearly as aimless as she had been.
She didn't know where the castle was, not from here. She couldn't get him there. But she could offer him the same thing his words had given her. Small and fragile as it was, hope could be contagious and powerful. His had been for her.
"You will see them again," she commented, stopping up beside him and placing a supportive hand on his shoulder, "Emma and Henry." She spoke normally again, without pain. She felt steady, stronger, and when he didn't pull away or flinch at her touch she managed a weak smiled. It was the first that she'd done that since they realized Pan was loose, since the pair of them had left his shop for home. He was gone. For now. But it was amazing what a little hope could do…for both of them she hoped. She'd seen how determined he'd been at the town line, Rumpelstiltskin had had it too about his own son once. There was no doubt in her mind that he could be just as successful in his quest as he had been, as he'd be again.
"Yeah, well, let's hope I don't have to curse an entire Kingdom to get back to them," he muttered beside her.
No. That was the wrong kind of hope, the wrong kind of determination. There was a right way and a wrong way to go about this, Rumpelstiltskin had done what he had to in order to get back to Neal and it had cost him dearly. Neal couldn't continue on with that cycle. But she knew, he'd said it which only meant that he'd already been thinking about curses and wickedness and evil. The wrong way to do this!
He'd been right earlier, she knew it! Hope wasn't gone! They could get Rumpelstiltskin back and when they did he would help them! She just needed him to see it, to believe as she did that there was another way. If Rumple had taught her anything it was the value of taking things one step at a time. Emma and Henry weren't the next step, they were the goal! Before they could get them back they needed Rumpelstiltskin, and before they could get him back they needed his dagger.
And if it was gone or they couldn't find it-
No! No, she wasn't going to think about that, not until she had proof of the contrary. One step at a time. And right now, until they got Henry and Emma, until she had her Rumple back, until the dagger was safely in her hands, the right step was looking after his son…even if that meant saving him from himself.
Hope. He needed hope. The right kind.
"I heard you talking to David about Rumple," she told him, her voice low enough that no one else would hear them. One thing she knew for certain, if that dagger was still around, no one here needed to know about it…at least no one that didn't already know about it. "You know..." she reminded him gently, "we never saw his knife!" Neal looked around them, taking in her observation and trying to figure out what she'd already worked out in her head. What she'd hoped he would work out. But she couldn't wait, hope was flaring in her chest again, and she wanted to pass it on while she had it. "I think we can get him back."
She watched as something sparked behind his eyes and looked at her astonished. Before she could say anything else, he'd reached out and taken her arm, pushed her to the side of the road and brought her to a standstill so that the caravan could pass them by. He glanced over his shoulder as they stopped, making sure, she supposed, that no one was stopping to question his actions or overhear them.
"You know? About the dagger?" he asked, looking her in the as if trying to sense a lie she was telling. She only nodded confidently, staring right back, daring him to find dishonesty in her gaze or story. She had nothing to lie or be dishonest about. "You know what it is…what it does?!"
"Yes, yes of course!" she answered. Anyone standing there, watching as he and Pan had…any of them would know about it but she, and she suspected Baelfire, might have been the only ones to really know about it! Not through stories, or legends, or enemies…they might be the only two who had heard of it from the Dark One himself. "We can find it Bae. We can find it and summon him back to us. He'll know what to do, he'll know how to get you back to Henry and Emma. We have to try, we have to look-"
"How do you know so much about that thing? Why do you know so much about it? You weren't around when Cora struck," he questioned almost nervously, as if she was suddenly a suspect and not the woman he'd come after hours ago. She couldn't say she blamed him. They knew what others didn't and unfortunately, they knew very little about one another. For all he knew she was the enemy and had learned about that dagger from questionable sources…for questionable purposes.
"He told me," she answered. Neal only searched her eyes further prodding, almost wanting to find a problem with her tale, wanting to not believe it. She understood that because she knew him. Ruby's knowledge of the dagger had shocked her not long ago too.
"He told you?"
"Weeks ago," she insisted, "before he left to find you. He wanted it to be safe so we hid it together. Why did you think it was in my library? Do you really think he'd put me in that kind of danger without telling me?!"
"I…" but Neal seemed speechless at her questioning. She knew that look, he was putting it together, all that he'd known but hadn't understood, everything that she'd told him…he believed her. He just wasn't sure believing her made sense because of who Rumpelstiltskin was. "I don't know what I thought, I guess I never really put it together, you know. But what I do know is that no one knows about the dagger. He doesn't tell anyone about it and getting him to tell us where he hid the damn thing to save his life was like drawing blood from a stone! People who know about it in my experience never live long."
"Because he needed the power to find you," she informed him confidently. It was why he'd let her go in this land decades ago. He needed the power to get back to Bae and if anyone had taken it from him, found that dagger and taken his will away, none of this would ever have come to pass! "He told me about it, Neal," she insisted, reaching out for his arm again, hoping he'd believe her and see what he hadn't been able to in the short time they'd known each other. She'd been as close to Rumpelstiltskin as she possibly could have, loved him as no other, and been loved by him enough to learn his secrets. Rumple had trusted her…and so could he.
"Magic like his isn't easily destroyed," she went on. "If we could find the dagger maybe we'll be able to summon him, resurrect him from the dead, and if there is anyone who could get you back to the Land Without Magic, to Emma and Henry, it's him. He'll know what to do, Neal. He can help us!"
At the delivery of her good news, Neal only took a step back and looked her over skeptically. But after a moment his skepticism faded away and he was peering at her in shock, surprise! It made her to step back, to know what he was thinking, but before she could ask what he was looking at, what was wrong, he smirked. "What changed?" he asked quietly. "This morning, when we first got here you were-"
"What changed," she interrupted, trying not to think about that, trying to keep her hope alive and in the present and future as opposed to the past, "was that I remembered exactly who we are dealing with. What he's like, all the tricks he always has up his sleeve; a man like that? Anything is possible!"
And they are moving on. For the two of them...I wouldn't say that friendship is their first "layer" (if we're sticking with that analogy). I think that friendship will come and certainly play an important role, but it's not going to be the first role. They will talk in the next chapter, but I like to call it the acquaintance talk. They don't really go deep, they only get the basics out there for them both and that's where it ends. Friendship will come, but in the next few chapters a different kind of relationship will come first. Can you guess what they might develop?
Thank you to Meredith Pechta, Kathryn Claire O'Conner, Raizen Yusuke, Skitzoeinhoven, and Katido for your unending support and gracious remarks about the fiction thus far. We are off to a great start and I'm thrilled to have all of you reading! Peace and Happy Reading!
