Note: I said Grace was just a minor character, a one chapter POV. She was in and out. That was it. I was wrong. Again.

What can I say? Stories have minds of their own.

X

Music. It seemed to always be about music.

Another place and time, without a great divide
And we could be flying deadly high
I'll sell my soul to dream you wide awake

Grace had told him about the songs that had followed her, sending her onto a mad mission to a tomb. Like father, like daughter.

Now, songs haunted him, though he ignored them, just as he ignored the blue rose hidden in the heart of his home.

Mercy, like water in a desert
Shine through my memory like jewelry in the sun
Where are you now

Another place and time...

I'll dream you... wide awake

He pretended not to hear them. He didn't look them up or going searching for ghost messages on his phone. There were other things to think about. The self-proclaimed heroes and their murderous friends were back.

The Dark One and his bride had come back after the heroes return. No one knew why, except that the princess of Avonlea was expecting a child (rumor traveled faster than the speed of light in this town. Even Jefferson heard it).

There was another thing Jefferson had heard, something he still didn't understand. Grace had been in the diner when Belle walked in and went off with the pirate (madness. She had walked off with the man who had tried to murder her, her true love, and everyone else in this town). Grace had told him what she heard the sheriff say when she saw the Dark One's lady.

"Belle, you're awake."

Grace said she'd sounded surprised. Why? What reason, sane or mad, was there for saying such a thing?

I'm wide awake
And now it's clear to me
That everything you see
Ain't always what it seems
I'm wide awake
Yeah, I was dreaming for so long

He watched the goings-on in the town and the paths leading to his home, trying to ignore the music while the memories of it played through his mind. That's what he was doing when he saw Grace running into the house, angry and upset. He could have told how bad it was even without his telescope, and that worried him even more. Since the day at the queen's crypt, he'd seen how rarely Grace seemed upset about anything—how rarely she let herself look upset about anything, especially when he might see her.

She'd gone to invisible friends, the kind who could have gotten her killed, before she'd gone to him.

He heard her rush in and the door slam behind her. She didn't call for him—she never called for him when things went wrong. Instead, she just ran, but the sound of her footsteps weren't going towards her room.

The safe room. She was going to the safe room.

By the time Jefferson reached the hidden door, it was already closed. During the curse, it had been behind a mirror like the one between worlds that led into Wonderland. He didn't know if that was Regina's joke or just another petty cruelty from the curse. During his twenty-eight years of watching and waiting and going mad—madder— in this town, he'd seen so many ways it poured salt on forgotten wounds.

When the curse was broken, he'd moved the mirror himself. He'd sealed off a different room, leaving a different, hidden door for the mirror to hang over. If Regina had made the mirror and ever came after them, she would be looking in the wrong place. He hoped.

In its place, he'd put a wardrobe. It was anchored against the wall, but he'd carved the back of it to have its own, hidden door that slid open on the entrance behind it. He'd fretted no end over that. The safe room was almost impossible to find even without the wardrobe if you didn't know it was there, but this hid it completely. Yet, it would take precious seconds to get through the wardrobe to the door behind it. Still, it was always safer never even being seen. Wasn't it?

Jefferson went in and found Grace, pale and upset, looking at the blue rose. Panic welled up in him. Was someone after her? Some thing? He wished again for his hat, for a way out of this world, wishing he could grab his daughter and run. His fingers twitched for a weapon (there were several stored in the room), to prepare to defend themselves.

Instead, he took slow, deep breaths, closing and securing the door behind them (he had to have the door closed behind him before he could speak without the terror showing in his voice. But, he could keep calm once he'd closed it. He could).

Trying to remember the things Dr. Hopper had told him about dealing with the fear (keep calm, breathe steadily, don't panic. He repeated it over and over to himself. Even when he could feel the fear closing like a rope around the red scar on his throat, cutting off air and blood, he wouldn't panic). "Grace," he said, proud of how steady his voice sounded. "What's happened?"

He saw Grace stiffen. Her pale face grew tighter, like a mask. "Nothing, Papa," she said, trying (and failing) to sound unconcerned. "Everything's find."

She was trying to protect him. It shouldn't be this way. He was supposed to protect her. On his good days, when he could see her doing it, he tried to stop her, but the gods knew those days were rare enough.

"It's not nothing, Grace," he said, trying to sound gentle instead of scared. "Please, tell me what's wrong. Is it your . . . friend?" Not the name he would have chosen. He might have used the man who wasn't there (even if Grace thought it wasn't a man)or the thing that goes bump in the night, but he kept to the name Grace used.

He couldn't get the songs out of his head. I'm wide awake. I'll dream you wide awake.

Shut up, Jefferson thought. Just shut up.

"I don't know. Not really. It's Henry. I saw something and I thought. . . . I don't know what I thought. It was just a reflection. But, when I stopped to look at it, Henry saw me. . . ." Grace began to tell about their meeting.

She liked Henry Mills, Jefferson realized. His daughter liked a boy. Or she had liked him. Until today.

Jefferson felt a small twinge of sympathy for Henry. Jefferson at that age had thought he was cutting quite the dashing figure when, in fact, he was being an obnoxious, self-centered fool. It was a wonder more of the girls he'd been trying to impress hadn't taken a club to his head.

But, then, Grace started to cry, and the tiny drop of sympathy turned to dust and blew away. "He nearly killed Belle," Grace told him. "She's his family—she's going to have a baby—and he nearly killed her. And he didn't even care! He was proud of what he'd done!"

Jefferson started. "Belle was under a sleeping curse?"

Grace nodded. "It happened when they were in the Underworld. But, Rumplestiltskin freed her."

Belle, you're awake.

That's what the sheriff had meant. She had known Belle was under a curse. And she'd been surprised that Belle was awake. She'd known and she'd done nothing.

Oh, the "Savior" had left her mother's Dwarf-friend trapped over the town line, but she'd been cursed and the whole world seemed to be falling apart. Besides, they'd figured it out on their own. Eventually.

But, Jefferson had seen her through his telescope after the curse, going to Granny's, hanging out with her family, meeting the pirate. There'd been no mad dash to the library or the Pawn Shop, looking for answers. There'd been none of the mad activity he'd seen when the Savior decided to drag everyone off to the afterlife. Life had gone back to normal (or as close to normal as Storybrooke ever got).

God knows that I tried
Seeing the bright side
But I'm not blind anymore
I'm wide awake

He looked at the blue rose. Belle, it had to have something to do with Belle. The rose, the ghost whose only words were stolen from books and songs, it all tied back to her.

He thought of a song from their world, And from her heart grew a red, red rose. . . . Regina stole hearts (or she had. She'd told everyone in the town how she was over that now. Why, she hadn't stolen a heart for weeks). She stored them in her tomb, where the rose had been.

Paranoia, it was one of the things Dr. Hopper had him working on, the mad moments when suspicion leaped to cold certainty without waiting for any proof to bridge the gap. Jefferson knew he was mad.

And yet—and yet—

Was this rose grown from Belle's heart?

It was madness, a lunatic thought, a flight of imagination that meant nothing. And yet, he remembered the certainty he'd felt—the relief- when he'd seen Emma Swan crossing the town line and knew that the curse would be broken at last. . . .

"Why?" Grace said. "Why would Henry do that? What's wrong with him?"

From her heart grew a red, red rose. From his heart a briar. . . .

"I don't know," Jefferson said. He put his arms around her. "I could tell you all boys are stupid when they're Henry's age. But . . . I think there's more to it than that. His mother, Regina, never worried about consequences." He'd learned after he'd been trapped in Wonderland how Regina had been the one to transform her father and let the Queen of Hearts steal him away. Then, once she'd calmed down, she'd thrown Jefferson to the wolves to take him back. She'd told him it was his own fault, too, saying he wasn't loyal enough to family. How long had that been before she'd decided to kill both her parents?

But, it wasn't just Regina, was it? Bits and pieces were coming together and he wanted to pray it was his shattered mind making them line up the way they did. "But, something may have happened to him," and all his family. "Maybe it's something from his adventures. He isn't seeing consequences anymore. Whatever's happened, be careful of him, Grace. Be careful of both his mothers. . . ."

Storybrooke was a nightmare. He would do keep Grace safe from it, if only he knew how.

Wide awake, he thought, swallowing a mad laugh (that wouldn't comfort Grace). I'd sell my soul to dream you wide awake.

X

Note: The songs in this chapter are "Wide Awake" by Katy Perry and "Dreaming Wide Awake" by Poets of the Fall. If you watch the videos, "Wide Awake" looks like something that could be from Once in its prime (especially with what happens to the prince, who reminds me of Hook). "Dreaming Wide Awake" is more tragic but seemed to fit a more positive spin on Rumbelle. It's about death and grief, but it's also about holding onto love when it seems like everything is lost. Also, if you watch the video of this, the woman looks a bit like Snow.

The line about the red rose and briar are slightly altered from the ballad "Barbara Allan."