Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time

Chapter 10: Real intentions

It's amazing how simple the action of walking really is. We are not born with it naturally, as we are with breathing, yet it's one of the first things we learn after we are born. Place one foot in front of the other, repeat over and over again, and that's all there is to it.

It's amazing how something so simple could've become so hard for me to do these days.

Ever since Bae left, it's as if my energy is being gradually sucked out from me, leaving me with nothing more than tired legs and a sense of exhaustion I can't seem to get rid of.

I can still walk, though, just not as much as I could before he was gone.

I'm walking now, deciding to ignore my aching tiredness and force my legs to keep moving, because anything it better than being with Pan. He has thankfully been giving me some space lately, understanding that its better not to push me when I'm trying to let Bae go, get him out of my head.

But the thing is... I can't.

The whole island is filled with his aura, and every little thing reminds me of him. I can't stop wondering how he is doing, if he is happy, if he is alone. Every time I think of him my mind takes me back to the last time I saw him, back when the shadow was grabbing his wrist and they were both flying away, disappearing into nothing but two specks in the horizon. That image hunts me every night, taking my sleep away and invading my thoughts without mercy.

It's almost impossible to think about anything else, no matter how hard I try.

I'm just not ready to let him go yet. I don't know if I'll ever be.

When he was here in the island, even if I barely got to spend any time with him, at least I felt like I had someone I could count on, someone I could trust and hold onto. He made me feel safer. He was the one thing I saw as what would prevent me from letting Pan win and making me lose who I am, because he was constantly there to remind me of who I was before I came to Neverland.

He was one of the few persons who truly knew me.

I was so lost in my thoughts and timeless misery, I almost missed her.

Of course, if I had my magic, this never would've happen, since I would've sensed her aura long before she appeared in front of me. But I don't have my magic anymore.

Everything thanks to Pan.

The blond woman had emerged from my right, making us both stop dead at the sight of each other. For a moment, the two of us stand completely still, only a meter or two between our lithe bodies. We prepare to strike if anything goes wrong, in case one of us suddenly decides to attack the other.

But as I get a better look at her young face, her red cheeks and her blue eyes, so gentle and vastly different from Peter's, I find myself relaxing immediately, already knowing that she's harmless.

"So you are the new one," she says bitterly, her body already being far too relaxed for my liking. Her flat tone catches me off at first, but I manage to recover quickly from the shock. She looks so...nice, I really wasn't expecting her to act like this around me.

But, then again, that's what this island does to people. It tears them apart from the inside until there is nothing left of their personalities, until they are not more than mindless soldiers. I don't think she is a soldier, though. I don't think she is in Pan's side at all.

She just looks like a someone who has been through hell to survive, and has end up losing herself in the process.

I guess we have that in common.

"You could hardly call me that, since I've already been here for quite a while," I reply, keeping my voice with as little expression as possible.

I've been in this island for six months and I've never seen her before, never even heard of her. This means that she must be new. Maybe she just arrived to Neverland. But I immediately push that thought away, figuring that if that were the case then she wouldn't be so calm; she would be desperately asking me for a way to get out of here. A woman like her, I predict, has at least been in the island for a few years.

Probably much longer.

"But you don't look like you are new at all, how is it that we haven't seen each other before?" I ask her. I wonder why Pan never mentioned this woman existed. What else is he keeping from me?

"I've been here for a really long time, Zoe. Long enough to know how not to get myself into trouble, and that means staying away from you. We haven't met before because I didn't want to. I still don't, actually." But why wouldn't she? I hate that she is acting so mysterious.

Of course she doesn't trust me, but I don't trust her either. For all I know, she could be working for Pan to find out stuff about me or put things in my head.

And she knows my name. I can't help to feel annoyed about that, because if she knows my name and I don't know hers it automatically makes me be in a disadvantage, and I'm not used to that. I'm not surprised that she does, though, since Neverland is not that big of an island and word troubles fast around here.

She probably knew who I was since I arrived, which brings me back to questioning how is it that I missed her presence. She said she didn't want to meet me, so she must have been avoiding me for all this time.

But its really not that easy to avoid someone for that long in a place this small. I had to meet her at some point eventually, and its happening now.

"You think I'm trouble?" I ask cautiously, disguising how anxious I truly am to hear her answer, to know what she means.

"Well, Pan already told me a while ago to stay away from you. You see, he has been letting me live alone in the island without bothering me, and if I don't follow his wishes that could easily change," she then moves her head from side to side, as if worrying that we are being watched. When she faces me again, she is not calm anymore; she is rushing through her words, eyes wide and anxious.

"This is why I should go now," she begins walking past me before I can react, almost sprinting away from me.

I sight in frustration. "Why does he leave you alone when I can barely get any time for myself?" My voice makes her stop walking, though she continous to face away from me.

And I ask her because I truly don't know what Pan sees in me that makes him so obsessed. It's just unfair that I have to put up with Pan every day and she doesn't; it makes me almost jealous of her. Being trapped in the island already sucks, but it is not nearly as horrible as also having a demon breathing down your neck and having to worry about surviving his games and not getting hurt.

I need to worry all the time about not breaking, about not giving in to him.

"I don't know. I guess it's because of your magic. I heard it's special somehow. Pan has always loved to collect rare things," she says, only making my frustration increase.

So what if I have magic? It doesn't make me special, it just makes me different. I've always loved my magic, but since I arrived to this bloody island I've wished I never had it in the first place. It would've saved me all this trouble. He is making me hate what makes me who I am. All because I hate that it makes Peter want me that badly.

I wish he could just leave me alone for good.

Maybe, if I didn't have my magic, Pan would've let me return to the Enchanted Forest like if everything were just a simple mistake. Or he would still make me stay here but at least he would leave me alone, like he does with this woman.

But if Pan wants me that badly because of my magic, then I don't see why he still does when I can't even use it anymore because of the cuff. I know that he intends to remove the cuff at a point in my life, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Not as long as he knows I haven't broken.

"But he took that away!" I yell, allowing my voice to get out of control. I really don't get how his mind works. I truly don't. Maybe if I could understand his way of thinking I could accept it and I wouldn't be so frustrated about the whole situation.

She turns around completely to face me, seeming far more interested in our conversation than before. "You mean…he removed your magic?" She asks with a raised eyebrow, as if she didn't know doing that was even possible.

"Well, only temporally. But yeah, he did," I reply, slightly worried about how serious her voice has turned. She then walks closer to me and looks me up and down, as if searching for something. There's curiosity twinkling in her eyes.

"How?" I hesitate at first, but it's her determined tone what finally makes me lift the sleeve of my jacket, revealing to her the cuff. At the sight of it, her eyes widen and her hand reaches for her mouth.

She whispers something I can't quite catch and breathes out heavily, as if trying to keep herself together. Then she is lifting my arm up so that she can get a better look at it. Her fingers reach for the cuff, but it's like she can't bring herself to touch it, so she ends up letting my arm fall at my side and taking a step back.

"I know what that is," she states, her voice so serious I'm almost afraid to hear what she has to say. "Unlike what you may think, this cuff hasn't always been Pan's possession. I came from the Enchanted Forest just like you did, and back then I was a fairy. The cuff is so dangerous; it was my duty and the other fairies' to protect it from the wrong hands. One day it was stolen. We never knew who did it, and we never saw it again. But now it's here."

I don't get how someone can stop being a fairy from one minute to the other. She must have done something bad to deserve that, something truly bad. Not like that's even what matters right now, but I can't stop wondering about her past now that she just told me we come from the same realm.

The Enchanted Forest, my home. I'm not even sure that place exists anymore because of Regina's curse. I don't know what happened to any of the people who lived there; Rumple, Snow White, James, they may all be gone.

"What does this have to do with anything?" I ask her. Knowing a little bit about her past has helped me know more about who I'm talking to, and I'm grateful for that, but I still don't see how the fact that she used to guard the cuff relates with the current situation.

She sighs. "Because I used to spend so much time protecting the cuff, I know a lot about it." She pauses, as if saying her next words pained her. "I know that, for instance, if one was to wear it for a really extended period of time...it could be fatal."

I swallow hard at that.

Her tone is so determined, so convincing...but she is lying. She has to be. I've been wearing the cuff for almost three months and nothing wrong has happened to me, I don't feel even slightly different. None of this makes any sense. Besides, if Pan wanted to kill me, he would've done it long ago. He wouldn't be going through all this trouble to do so, would he?.

"You're lying," I say as confidently as I can manage with the worry swirling in my gut.

She doesn't really strike me as someone who is working for Pan, so I don't think there's a chance of her to be telling me this to manipulate me into doing what he wants. So what does she win by lying to me? Nothing. Then she must be telling the truth, but what she is saying is so out of the ordinary I still hesitate to believe her.

I don't want to.

"Am I? Of course, if you put the cuff on for just a few days then it wont do anything else other than prevent you from using your magic, but if you'd had it on for more than a month, then that's when the symptoms begin. The more you wear it, the worse they get. The process is really slow, though, so you still have a few years before it actually kills you."

But I haven't been experiencing any symptoms. I'm fine.

Unless...

I've been overly tired these past few months, and until now I always thought it was because of Bae. I thought I didn't want to try to survive anymore if he wasn't there, if it meant I would be completely alone. But maybe I've been looking at it wrong. Maybe this fairy is right. Bae left the same day Pan put the cuff on me. Maybe he has nothing to do with my tiredness... it's the cuff that's the problem.

"When the symptoms begin," the former fairy continues. "It means that the cuff isn't just preventing you to use your magic. It's removing your energy bit by bit, sucking out your life."

If I decide to ignore the fact that Pan's intentions don't match up with any of this, then she could be right. One of the first things Rumple taught me was that my magic is a huge part of me; it is what makes me who I am. And if this cuff prevents me from having it, then it makes sense that it will someday end my life.

She could be right. She most probably is right.

I could be dying without even knowing it.

"You're saying…when Pan put this cuff on me he was doing it to kill me?" He said his intention was to break me, he was supposed to remove it as soon as I was 'ready', though this wouldn't be the first time he has lied to me.

And surely it wouldn't be the last.

But what hurts the most is that I trusted him. I took his word for granted without hesitation, without even thinking that he could have other intentions for using the cuff on me other than breaking me. How could I've been so stupid to just believe him, after everything he's done?

Is it really possible that he put the cuff on me not to break me, but so that I would suffer a slow and painful death?

But would I've done anything different if I knew the cuff would kill me from the beggining?

No, I wouldn't. I would've put the cuff on anyway for Bae, even if it meant I would die. Because that's why I did this; for him. I did everything for him. I made the deal with Pan so that Bae could leave this bloody island and have a true chance of happiness.

I think that, even if I didn't know the cuff would literally kill me, I was still somehow letting myself die when I put it on. Because I knew that I would lose my freedom and any chance of getting it back, I knew that I was condemning myself for eternity and that I would most probably lose who I am over time, but I did it anyway.

For Bae. So, yes, I would give my life for him, so I would've made the deal no matter the cost.

But what pisses me off is the fact that Pan didn't tell me I would die. He ommited that small detail, because maybe he wasn't sure I would go ahead with the deal.

But why would Pan want me to die? What would he win of it? I am supposed to be his precious possesion, the only one who has a mix of dark and light magic. If he didn't think I was special he would've just returned me to the Enchanted Forest the minute after the shadow brought me here.

So maybe he didn't want me to die.

Maybe he put the cuff on me thinking that it wouldn't take long to break me, so there would be no risk in me dying, because he would be removing the cuff before my condition became serious.

But how long did he think it would take to break me? The fairy said I only have a few years left. Did he really think it would be that easy? He couldn't have. Peter may be a lot of things, but he is not stupid. So then, if he was expecting me to take a long time in breaking and he knew that the cuff would kill me sooner than that, what was he really trying to do?

How deep does his plan go?

"I'm not sure what Pan wants, but I can tell you this," she says. "Maybe he doesn't even know the cuff can kill you. How could he? No one has had the cuff on for that long, and the fairies and I were the only ones who knew everything about it."

It's hard to believe that the legendary Peter Pan missed something so important as this. I am supposed to be his precious practitioner of magic, aren't I? He wouldn't risk using the cuff on me if he wasn't absolutely sure he knew everything about it.

"Maybe," I reply simply, sharing my jumbled thoughts with her being the least thing I want to do right now. "But why are you telling me all this?" The woman didn't even want to know me and now she is helping me.

I wouldn't believe what she is saying about the cuff if it weren't for the fact that she would be gaining nothing out of lying to me and that everything she tells me sounds so convincing.

She sighs deeply. "Because you helped Baelfire escape. We were both trapped here together for a long time and he became a dear friend of mine. He never would've gotten out without you. This is my way of thanking you for that. I'm telling you this so you can be aware of what is happening to you, and maybe now you have a chance of saving yourself before it's too late."

I nod at her, thanking her without words. She knowing Bae hadn't even crossed my mind, and I'm glad he wasn't so alone after all. At least he had someone he could count on from time to time when I wasn't there for him. But why did he never mentioned that this fairy existed?

Perhaps he knew that if she talked to me then Pan could find out, which would put her in danger. He just wanted to protect her. From me. But that's okay, he was right in keeping the two of us out of each other's way.

"I really need to go now," the fairy says. "I've already been talking to you for too long." I get it. If Pan sees her with me, who knows what he could to her. She turns around and starts to walk away, and for a moment I let her.

"Wait," I say suddenly, making her stop and turn her head over her shoulder. "What's your name?" Thanks to her I know I'm dying, and now I can do something about it. For her own safety, I may never see her again. At least I want to know a detail of her identity.

She hands me a gentle smile. "Tinkerbell."

And then she was gone.

I lean against a tree trunk with my heart racing and pounding painfully against my chest, trying as hard as I can to breathe at regular intervals. I take in a deep breath in an attempt to calm down. I do this several times until my heart is relatively back to normal, and then the thoughts start to come back, this time stronger than before.

I know that I'm dying. Really slowly, but I am –that much has been made clear.

What I'm not sure about are Pan's intentions. I could just assume that he doesn't know that the cuff can kill me, but there's also a chance that he does know, and, if so, I don't have the slightest clue of what he is planning. Why would he use the cuff if he knew it would kill me, therefore inhibiting the time he had to break me before it was too late? It just doesn't make any sense.

Unless...

Maybe he was intending for me to die, but only if I didn't break!

Maybe he truly wanted to break me, and so he hoped that it would happen before the cuff killed me. But perhaps he was thinking that, if a certain amount of years went by and I hadn't broken by then, then there would be no hope for me breaking in the future. So maybe he put the cuff on me hoping that it would break me, but thinking that, if it didn't, I would be better off dead. So he made a time lapse and, if I went through it without doing what he is excepting of me, he would let the cuff kill me instead.

I don't really know which one of the two theories to believe. Truly, if he does or doesn't know about me dying doesn't matter. All that matters is that I need to get him to take the cuff off of me before it's too late.

That is, if I really want to live.

A/N:

I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! Any reviews about Zoe's thought process? Any hypothesis? Do you think Pan knows that the cuff will eventually kill Zoe?

Any questions? I hope you all understood this chapter since it's important for the story later on. Any feedback?

Please revieww :D