A/N: Sorry about the lateness of this segment. I had originally planned to post it last weekend but things got in the way of that happening. Instead of one chapter this weekend, you all get two (which should be considered the norm from now on for updates). This is the last of what I consider the 'setup' chapters, which means we will be getting into the heart of the story (complete with SwanQueen).
High above the trees, Snow White observed the council members gathered in the war room and recounted the first days, of the battle against her stepmother, when she had first called for their advice. In those days, life had been simple; good was good, evil was evil, and Regina was out for her blood. Now though with the addition of her daughter, the same child left abandoned on the side of the road to escape the Evil Queen's curse, Snow White found herself reluctantly pondering the potential outcome of her decisions; of the council's decisions.
As a Queen should, as Regina had once taught her, she carefully observed those around her, looking for the weaknesses among the bunch. Granny, though armed with a trusty crossbow and deadly aim, could prove to be a liability should she be faced with the decision to fire a bolt in the direction of her lost granddaughter; the dwarves would swear loyalty for a shiny sliver of diamond but would soon trade sides as soon as their interest waned in the face of actually receiving compensation for their efforts. Even the guards, those that remained in the frozen land when the curse hit, had proven themselves less than loyal to the kingdom. The first traitor being the man who had willingly sacrificed his own life and limb to ensure the deposed queen found freedom on one cold and blustery night.
With potential traitors surrounding her, Snow turned to face the council. "There are weak spots in the kingdom; places that have been allowed to crumble in favor of more advantageous battle ground. Should George find them, my family will fall. The kingdom will never accept Emma as their new Queen and she will be exiled, quite possibly executed if George's warnings are to be heeded. There is no heir to the throne," she declared quietly and lowered her eyes in defeat. When the curse had delivered them into their kingdom, she had held hope that those that made up its constituency would recognize Henry as their young prince, forgive the side of his family tree that would forever tie him to the Dark One, perhaps forget that for ten years he was educated under the watchful eye of the Evil Queen. "Should the kingdom fall-"
"We can fight!" A lone soldier towards the back of the room declared. His body was concealed by the dark shadows cast about the room, save for the fleeting glances of black leather aglow from the torches.
At first glance, he looked like a man, tall and proud, but the Queen cast a wary eye into the shadows to find that he was not much more than a child. His lanky frame, much like her grandson's, had yet to mature and develop the physical intimidation of a soldier. He was gangly with stooped shoulders, thin-framed, and roman nosed. He was the boy from the bakers in one of the neighboring towns.
"How do you propose we defeat King George and his armies? The hardened soldiers who defend the Forbidden Fortress in the dead of winter when only the wolves dare to leave their retreats?" Snow advanced on the boy, feeling no sympathy towards a child out to get himself killed because of foolishness. She had once possessed something similar, back when she had believed her stepmother to be a kind and loving woman; somewhere before the posters appeared in the Enchanted Forest that branded the young princess a traitor to the crown. "What do you suggest we do when the Evil Queen unleashes her powers perfected on the kingdom? Do you suggest that we march to our deaths? Perhaps beg for mercy from the sharp blades held at our necks as we are tried as traitors?"
The boy appeared to shrink in on himself, shoulder slumped further as he retreated to a place near the baker who had taken him in. "I merely-"
"Yes," Snow interrupted as she advanced. "You merely thought that enthusiasm would defeat the armies that will fall against our walls; you merely thought that if we lifted our spirits and forgot about the nasty things that might happen should we fail that it would stop the advancement of the soldiers. If you intend to live, then you should learn to fear the sound of hoofbeats against the ground, tremble at the sound of king's ordering soldiers to advance through our defenses, and scream in terror when my stepmother reaches for your heart."
"Your Majesty," a guard called from the open doorway. Behind him, a young man grinned at the Queen, meeting her gaze full-on without so much as a blink of terror at being held in shackles. "We found a trespasser on the grounds. He was conversing with the Princess in the fields."
At the news, Snow turned away from the baker's boy and strode across the room to where the guards remained stationary, the prisoner held between them. "What is your business here?" She asked, addressing the dark-haired boy. "What business did you have with my daughter?"
"Delivered a gift to the Princess, your highness," he replied amiably, though not without a lack of grace when addressing the reigning monarch.
"A gift? For my daughter?" The pixie-haired brunette cocked her head to further study the young man. Far too young to be a suitor, and though his attire was of high quality it was not that of a prince or king. "Who sent you?" Could it be George with a warning, or perhaps the beginning of his plan to destroy all traces of the White kingdom?
The boy grinned again. "A gift of precious value, something suitable from my Queen."
Snow White closed her eyes against the sudden burst of pain that thrummed behind her temples. A part of her wished it were Maleficent who sent spies into her midst, but the sorceress was hardly known for venturing from her keep to concern herself with the actions of those who remained far away from her. Suspicions confirmed that there was only one who could have possibly been responsible for such a gift, she opened her eyes to face the latest traitor to enter into her court; a spy from Regina, it seemed, had made it past the guards at the gates and into the fields so close to the castle. "Who is it you serve?"
One final question and one final admission to seal the boy's fate by their law. Should he utter any other name but her own or James', he would perish in the dungeons below; a fact that had older, wiser men aligning themselves with her name to escape the harsh punishment they would receive otherwise. Snow turned chocolate brown eyes on the child and silently begged him to lie to her, to not force her to enact such a fate on a boy who, by all rights, could have been her grandchild if not for the slight height difference and subtle facial disparities.
"The rightful Queen," he murmured proudly. "Queen Regina."
Snow exhaled harshly against the silence that surrounded them, feeling expectant eyes from the council members behind her and the partially hidden gazes of the soldiers awaiting their next orders. "To the dungeons," she whispered softly. "For acts of trespassing and treason."
"No!"
The Queen stepped forward at the sound of her grandson's voice from down the hallway, hearing his desperate plea at the fate announced. She stepped forward to grab lightly at his arm and turn his away from the prisoner about to be dragged down to the dungeons; it was a sight he did not need to see, not when his innocence had already been plundered by those of his adoptive mother in rags. "Henry, please."
"He didn't do anything wrong!" Henry protested, fighting against the grip that held him back from the guards and the young man who had ties to his mother. What could he have done to warrant being placed in the dungeons for an indeterminate amount of time? Was it because he gave Emma a horse on behalf of his other mother? "He didn't do anything! He gave her a present!"
"What was it, Henry? What did he give to Emma?"
"A horse," the boy replied easily, casting a glance out the far window inside the war room that overlooked the fields he had been ordered from. From his place in the doorway, he couldn't see if his mother was still there but he hoped she had gone to get help; to find someone willing to find his other mother. "He gave her a horse."
Snow gripped his shoulders, turning him until he forced to look at her instead of the window. "Henry, what is done is done. He's trespassed on our land, committed treason against us. He works-" She paused her line of thought, unsure if she should inform the boy of his mother's ascension back to the throne she had once ruled from to the North.
"For my mom, I know." Henry smiled broadly, a brief reminder of the happy child in Storybrooke so convinced that everyone was a fairy tale character and if the savior would only break the Evil Queen's curse then everything would be right again in the world. "Now he can go back to her and tell her that George wants to do bad things. She'll come help, I know she will."
She was reminded of a time when she, too, had held blind faith in the brunette woman he referred to. There was a time when she thought Regina hung the moon and made the stars come out at night, but then something changed. The young woman who had saved her from a runaway horse had transformed into a cold, unfeeling Queen who ruled with an steel determination to rid the kingdom of her husband's child. "She won't come, Henry!" Snow hollered. "She would rather see us all burn than come to help. Don't you see that, Henry; she is the Evil Queen from your storybook."
The boy become impossibly small in her grasp, shuddering at both the sound of being chastised and the realization that the cruel words and titles he had flung around so easily in Storybrooke would forever haunt him in the Enchanted Forest. He had foolish notions of reuniting his mothers together, watching them rule the kingdoms together, and putting an end to the age old feuds that resided in his family line.
"Take him to the dungeons," Snow reminded the guards, indicating the young man who appeared far too interested in her conversation with her grandson for his own good. She absently wondered if, perhaps, that was why Regina had sent him to spy on her; to find out the intimate details of the royal family and exactly what it would take to rip them apart to make it easier to ascend the throne without massive casualties on the battleground. She gripped Henry's shoulder and directed him into the war room, wondering, not for the first time, if Regina would ride to Henry's rescue or if she would confine him to the contempt she felt for the rest of Snow White's bloodline.
"She cares for you deeply, Henry," the young man said valiantly as the guards led him away. His voice resounded against the stone walls, ensuring the young prince heard his declaration. With a grunt, he followed the guards as they marched him to the stairs that would lead down to his imprisonment; followed willingly down the flight of steps now that his duties above were completed as ordered. His Queen could find no fault in his actions, of that much he was certain.
He approached the intended cell with some trepidation, unsure of what he might find amongst the hay and water pail that lay at the back of the small space. Fit for a dog, indeed, he thought as one of the guards gestured for him to enter. But even the dogs had moved onto better places, he noted as the shackles were removed from his hands, only to be replaced by a longer chain that ensured he had nowhere to run but to the back of his cell for comfort. When the guards left him, wet and utterly unimpressed with the latest development in his journey to prove himself as more than the son of his Queen's rescuer, he turned to observe his surroundings, oddly compelled to investigate the lump of hay in the corner.
In previous experience, hay did not remained stacked as it was. It often fell to the floor in scattered clumps but it didn't scale the walls as it did here. If he strained, he could reach the bottom of it and skirt about the edges with the toe of his shoe.
"Stop that," a voice ordered tiredly. A man's body appeared from the bundle of hay, haggard and worn as any twice his age.
The boy waited until the dark-haired man had shaken himself off, ridding the remnants of wet hay from his body, before he spoke. "Who are you?" An innocuous question; something that should be answered on principle alone, to identify a person by their rightful title instead of addressing them like one would a mutt who wandered into the stables at night.
"Neal," the man answered flatly, sounding almost perturbed that his sleep had been disturbed by the arrival of a new prisoner. The last had been the Evil Queen, and even she had managed to escape in the dead of night from her fate. "But you may better know me as Baelfire."
"The son of Rumplestiltskin." The young boy considered it for a moment, searching through his lessons to find mention of the Dark One's son by the queen. Neal had been a part of the other word, though not a part of Storybrooke and the curse, having left the land before it could be enacted.
Neal nodded and scrubbed at his face with his hands. Acknowledgement of his bloodline had been his only crime, aside from defiling the princess at a time when he failed to recognize who she was. The laws of this land had always struck him as odd; barbaric, once he reached the land without magic and learned to live outside the Enchanted Forest. Statute of limitations did not exist here, nor trial by jury. "Neal," he countered.
"Ian," the boy responded by way of acknowledgement. Perhaps it was better he was not sent to lie with the dogs; certainly the son of the Dark One would prove to be better company than a flea-infested hound. "You've been here for quite some time?" he inquired, observing the lack of grooming the older man displayed.
Neal loosed a crooked grin, content with having another person to speak with, and cocked his head to the side. This one was younger than the last, more male, and certainly lacking the royal blood of his former companion. It seemed, too, he was not as despised as the deposed queen had been and, therefore, not as likely to raise a ruckus amongst the others who dwelt in the dungeons. Though he did miss having her company, quiet as she was. "Since the curse broke. It appears that there were certain caveats that even the queen hadn't expected. I was not a part of the original casting, having long since gone from this place, yet I was transported back anyway."
It had been one of the few things the former queen had been willing to discuss; everything else had been deemed off limits from the moment she acknowledged his existence and significant ties to her former tutor. He should have been safe, protected in New York with his fiancee when the bindings of the curse shattered.
"Then you've spent time in the company of my Queen," Ian declared quietly as he lowered himself to the chilled stone floor. He wondered if this was where his father had offered food and water to the despised prisoner, provided companionship and assistance when it was asked for. "And you've spent time in the company of my father."
Neal studied the young boy for a long time, observing his features and trying to determine which of his captors or fellow prisoners he referred to. With nothing to do but wait until his fate could be decided, to deign which of the kingdoms would use him as a pawn against his father, he had heightened his awareness of others; carefully cataloguing their weaknesses for a time when it best suited him to strike. "You're the kind guard's son; the one who offered freedom to Regina when she requested death."
"Death?"
"Death," Neal confirmed, recalling the look of anguish upon the former queen's face when she was delivered roughly back into her cell. She had long grown tired of being displayed to the royal family and humiliated before her son, and had finally reached her breaking point. The slightest pressure from one of the guard's swords through her ribcage would end her suffering, she had argued; a trip or fall down the stone steps. "But your father offered her freedom instead. In the dead of night, he afforded her the luxury of leaving her cell and the assurance that he would do everything he could to conceal her flight should she use her magic to disappear. He kept that promise as far as I know."
"He was executed today for his part in the plan," Ian replied. "She kept her promise, though, and I was educated in her courts once she reestablished herself."
"Then she did it," Baelfire whispered into the silence of the dungeon. He stared at the cell beside them, what he had long since deigned as the Queen's cell, and recalled their stilted conversations through the bars. The look of resignation that had fluttered across her face when she told him of her son's refusal to acknowledge her presence in the throne room; the times he offered what little fabric was thrown into his cell as covering for the harsh winter nights so she could bandage the wounds inflicted rough flooring. "What she set out to do, to conquer the Winter Castle, and establish herself as one of the primary powers in this land."
Ian grinned and puffed out his chest in a childlike exuberance for being a part of that plan, albeit the beneficiary of certain benefits that came along with being allowed within the castle.
Neal shook his head from side to side, expelling wet hay from his overly long hair. "Is there news? For me? Did she send a message?"
The boy reared back at the intense look in the older man's eyes, for the son of Rumplestiltskin his alliances could not be trusted on principle alone. But there was a fire in her eyes that alluded to a sense that perhaps he had been wounded by the world he had been thust back into, by those he should have been able to trust, and that made him an unlikely ally in and of itself. "The plan is in motion," Ian replied quietly, content that his final orders had finally been carried out. The man in the dungeon, the one who had offered some companionship, was informed. "War will soon be on Snow White's doorstep."
"Then we should prepare for it," Neal declared valiantly, more so than any man should when confined to a prison cell in the dungeon of what could be considered an enemy of circumstance. Had he not been consider a danger and potential pawn by the ruling Queen, he might have offered his knowledge and service to the White kingdom, but as it was he found himself more willing to assist those who saw beyond the blood that lingered in his veins. There was a saying in the other world- that blood was thicker than water- but sometimes water prevailed over the unfortunate ties that bound blood together. Hadn't he run to a world without magic to escape his father? He would have thought, in another lifetime, that the fact he had would have been enough to justify his release. "Has Emma been informed of the plan?"
A soft snort in response. The savior had been given the means to sort out a plan, to come to her own conclusions regarding which army to lay her odds on, but by no utterance by his own tongue had he revealed any part of the unfolding plan to her, not even the insignificant parts he had been entrusted with. "She's been given a mount who will lead her through the Enchanted Forest," he remarked.
"Without a weapon or knowledge of what lies beyond the castle walls? She'll soon find herself in the belly of the wolves," Neal countered, scowling at the thought of his former girlfriend alone in a world where the very present danger of being executed based on title alone reigned. With war on the horizon, having the daughter of an enemy as prisoner could be a very valuable bargaining chip.
"Do you truly believe the Queen would allow the savior into the world without some sort of plan? That she would allow someone else to take the victory of procuring the demise for the woman who broke the curse?" Ian sat back against the wall and waited for a response. Surely the son of Rumplestiltskin wouldn't be so dense as to not believe that there was more to ensuring the princess acquired a prize mount from the Winter Castle. If anything, the Queen would want her stallion back safe and sound.
Demise. Baelfire reclined against the mound of hay that had been his bed and source of warmth. The woman he had known in the dungeon had wanted freedom, something that would ensure the continued safety of her son and by extent his other mother, but he had not stopped to consider that she might want the boy all to herself, even at the cost of starting another war with Snow White.
"Or she might wish to thank the Princess for showing compassion," the boy continued after further thought of his queen's plans for the blonde woman he had met in the fields. She had seemed anxious for some sort of reprieve for the quandary she found herself in, faced with a potential death sentence from a neighboring kingdom or bowing to the will of the one who had cast the curse in the first place. How eager she had been to take the offered gift without question, without concern that it was anything other than a means to assist in the continued well-being of their shared son.
"Then our fate rests on Emma's decisions," Neal remarked as he lay back against the stone wall of his prison, resigning himself to waiting longer for whichever outcome would take place outside of the walls.