Chapter 9: The Threshold


"No response. Is the defibrillator charged? Do it."

"Clear!"

A whir, and a discharge pounded into the young boy's chest. He jolted and flopped back to the bed like he was a CPR doll. His eyes stayed closed and his jaw hung slack beneath the breathing mask. The colour was already starting to fade from his skin.

"Clear!"

Another shock, and the monitor kept flatlining.

"Come on, Henry..."

"Clear!

"Clear!"

Henry was out of the coma dream, dissociated at the top of the room. Down below his body grew steadily paler even as Dr Whale and the others around charged his chest with electricity. They were trying so hard, even calling to him as though it might help him fight for life. But they didn't know, that wasn't him on the hospital bed. What lay there now was dead and fading.

"Clear..."

"You are going to die. Accept it."

Maleficent's voice in his memory, echoing into all the other things she meant when she said it. You will never see Emma again. What you wanted in life does not matter. I do not care. You will find no solace with me.

Maleficent, turning away to seat her dream throne. Gripping his chin and mocking him. Studying him with coldest eyes. Dancing his life through her spindly fingers. Maleficent, the girl fallen over her mother's body, resurfacing inside the monster she'd become, to let herself see this little boy with the slightest shard of hope. The disappointment she tried to hide behind a wall of her hardest tones, when she discovered he was to die after all.

Maleficent, caught in the void of a nightmare all her life, in the anguish of a coil twisted around her heart. A lost little girl staring out at the stars, turning in circles. He saw straight through to her soul.

"Clear..."

Henry turned down to the scene below. When were they going to stop? It was already over.

It was August next. Aloof, suave, not to be trusted, because behind the show, he didn't trust himself. A different persona in the solitude of his room, writing frantically by the light of a single candle. So tired, wanting dearly to just walk away, but pulled back in every time.

"So... everyone's giving up."

"I'm afraid I don't have a choice." Resting his forehead against the door; August didn't believe it, but then, he'd never chosen this for himself to begin with, so why should he let himself have a choice now? Wouldn't it be easier to leave it in the hands of one more lone child? Had anyone done any better for him? "I'm sorry, kid, but... I'm out of Operation Cobra. Now it's up to you."

It all came and went like August's entire life had been an artist's master collage, of secret feelings kept from the world or even kept from himself. Until they slowed down, slowed to a stop with him lying in bed, made of wood. As though it was all he'd ever really been, as though the noise of his life had finally ceased when it was done dragging him back, step by exhausted step, to the silence of no motion.

"What this world needs is a hero. That's what a happy ending takes. Well, now it has two."

But I failed.

Mary Margaret next. A delicate soul whose trust in people was a kind of courage. She was one of the few who weren't afraid to feel, even when it cut deep. So the curse had hit her the hardest of all, because deep down she knew something was wrong with this place, and she refused to hide from it like everyone else. She believed in true love, and in a world where it no longer existed, she held fast to innocence and ideals. She was fighting a losing battle against despondency. Henry witnessed the moment to come when it would finally break her, falling apart at his funeral, a small coffin, an image to start her down a long and dark road.

"Clear!"

Regina, who destroyed one thing after another trying to soothe the frustration – and when nothing worked, the pain got worse, as did the anger. She was a whirlwind long past the possibility of consolation, collected behind a proud and dignified veneer worn so convincingly, she almost believed it herself.

"Too late. We lost him… Call it."

There were others. Emma, who wanted to wear her heart on her sleeve, but it was broken to pieces. Graham, who he saw liberated in an embrace with Emma, the light of memory gleaming through his eyes – only to have all light crushed entirely, because he could never, ever be free. Even Mr Gold held fast to the agony of unfulfilled desires that seemed to stretch back for centuries, and yet it was easy for him to block everyone else out, because he didn't care what happened to them, he only cared about...

Dr Whale had his finger on the boy's wrist. He was announcing the time of death.

Was that all this world was, just pain and unsatisfied longing? It seemed such a horrible way to finish, but Henry's mind had never been clearer, and he saw no happy endings here.

He floated up through the ceiling, drifting far far above, leaving Storybrooke and the whole world behind, until he was somewhere else.

It was lighter, here in nowhere. The earth and everything that mattered was gone. His entire life seemed like it had been nothing more than a dream.

Little scenes from that life came and went. Regina driving him to school, at a time when he'd only felt a little distant and confused towards her. Later, on the bus with a mess of noise from the other kids, he was gazing out the window unsmiling, with the seat all to himself. Mary Margaret was taking him aside once the classroom cleared out, to tell him she was looking out for him. A book lay open on his bed, and his eyes grew wider as he turned the pages, until he sat upright with a deep breath and gazed around his room as if seeing it for the first time.

A gloom hung over it all. There had been people who really cared for him, who'd be sorry he was gone. Towards the rest he felt a desperate longing, a want for a life he could have lived, a life that might have been.

The scenes slowed down and faded out. He managed to glimpse Archie following him into the mine, and Graham sitting with him to look through Once Upon a Time, before they became too hazy to see. Henry wanted to reach out, back to Storybrooke, and somehow return to his body again. He felt terribly alone. But that world and life seemed more and more unreal, and he was drifting into who-knew-where.

Suddenly, he was seeing one last memory from afar. Henry was sitting on the castle playground, swaying his legs over the ledge. Emma was there with him, trying to cheer him up, but he wrung the walkie-talkie through his hands and stared off in consternation. He was telling her it was better she didn't believe in the curse, because that way she wouldn't get hurt.

The pain of it was unbearable. They were supposed to have each other. But the world had torn them apart, the first time at his birth, and now again at his death.

"I knew you were here to help me."

"That's right, kid, I am. And nothing, not even a curse, is gonna stop that."

Emma! he screamed.

He saw a far-away look on her face, as she gazed at the sky towards him, not seeing him, not knowing he was leaving. Then she, too, was gone.

Struggling against the current that swept him through dark space, Henry knew only that he had to get back there. But the last of Storybrooke was disappearing now, with void and despair setting in its place.

Until, out of nowhere, he had a body again.

Wide-eyed, Henry surveyed himself. He was even in the same clothes he'd been wearing, right down to the scarf.

He was standing on a luminescent platform, through which he could see a sea of stars. When he looked up, stars were all he saw, and they took his breath away.

Into the distance and forever on they spanned, and the closer he looked, the deeper they went. This was the edge of infinity. It beckoned on to a greater story that could never end, for out there were too many possibilities, too many paths to travel. Beginnings and endings, they became the same thing, in a masterpiece that continued evermore in all directions. Henry was dazzled.

"Quite a sight, isn't it."

Henry turned. Not ten feet away from him, in her same ostentatious dress, stood Maleficent.

It was a surprise, but compared to the majesty of the expanse before them, it didn't have that much of an impact.

"Where are we?" he asked.

Maleficent answered, "In the in-between."

"Then... you're dead as well?"

"Yes. Your mother... Well, your mother can fight."

In spite of himself, in spite of everything, Henry smiled. "Yeah. She can."

To his amazement, Maleficent smiled too.

"So," he said, "this really isn't the end?"

"Perhaps it is. Perhaps these are just visions of our dying minds, feeding us illusions to cope with the unbearable finality of it." She sighed. "I have destroyed lives. Plenty of lives. If there's more past this point, I don't doubt I'm going on to an eternity in a thousand hells."

Henry thought about the girl crying over her mother. It was strange, he knew she'd done terrible things. But that didn't seem right to him.

"Do you know," Maleficent said, with a change of tone, "it's a very dangerous thing to kill a sorceress like me."

"Why... what do you mean?"

"I mean," she said, still staring into forever, "that upon death, a sorceress releases one last great burst of power. With it she can curse her enemies. Punish an entire land, if she's strong enough. Kill the one who took her life... if she so chooses."

As her meaning dawned on him, Henry turned to her in full. "No... no, you can't. You can't!"

On the edge of eternity, Maleficent studied her fingernails.

"Emma beat you fair and square," Henry said. "She was trying to save me. I told you didn't have fight her, and you did it anyway. You can't hurt her, it isn't right!"

"I already released the spell at the moment of death."

Henry staggered back. He opened his mouth... a small sound came out, like a sob, but he couldn't speak.

"You can relax, boy. I decided to use my power for a different purpose."

"You..." Henry blinked. "You did?"

"Yes." Maleficent turned. "Rather than kill her, I gave her a blessing. Something to strengthen that magic she wants to save you with. If she gets it to you in time, it will do more than wake you up. It will revive you from the poison."

He gaped. "You mean..."

"That you will return to life. Yes. I never could have done it while I was alive in Storybrooke, but I'm not from that world, and the same rules don't apply in death. So you can consider it a loophole that works to your favour."

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "And... you're not tricking?"

Maleficent smiled. "I'm not tricking."

Henry stared at her in awe. "I don't understand," he said.

"Well," she said, "you have a good heart. So I can only imagine that whatever lies ahead of you here, it will be wonderful. If I return you to that miserable world we came from, you miss out on that. So perhaps I'm doing it out of spite."

Henry grinned. "That's not really the reason, is it."

Maleficent looked out to the stars again.

"No," she said. "It's not."

But her voice was distant, as though she wasn't quite there anymore.

Something in the beyond was calling her, and she stepped out to meet it.

Henry started towards her. "Maleficent," he said. But he faltered there.

She turned towards him one more time, and her eyes were no longer reptilian and cold. They were hazel, and afire with the blaze of stars.

Then she was a shooting star herself, vanishing into the far reaches of eternity.

Henry gazed after her. He stood poised between two worlds. One called him back. The other called him on, and on, forever.

It wasn't too late to fail, he knew. Emma still might not reach him in time.

But, Henry had never before felt so bright with hope. Good had won out. If someone as dark as Maleficent could still turn in the end, then he already knew what this endless expanse was showing him. That anything was possible.

So he would hold to faith.

Henry felt the starlight calling to him as well. Through his body it coursed, around his heart and to the tips of his fingers. It was a feeling he thought he recognised. It welcomed him, welcomed him back home.

The light was within him, the light was all around him, the light was everything. The brighter it grew, the more alluring it became. He felt something he could remember feeling, such a very long time ago it had drifted beyond recall of waking life: that all was right in the world, that everything was truly perfect.

As he went out to meet it, leaving behind all he'd brought with him, Henry felt it speak the words that every traveller hears when, like him, they cross this threshold. To them it is always a joyous song of returning, and becoming whole again. A promise, that endures beyond all the pain and suffering of any lifetime.

Perhaps, when they merge with it, what they experience is no more than one last chemical release blasted through a brain shutting down. Or perhaps it really is everything it appears to be. None who still live in this world can say for sure. But either way, to the ones who meet it there, what it shows them is entirely real. The words it speaks to them are the deepest truth.

The words are, I love you.

And when Henry heard them, the voice that spoke them sounded so very much like Emma.