Surprise, surprise. I'm not dead! Hoping to finish this puppy by the end of this hiatus. And to keep me on my mark, I've agreed to a challenge with Madison (the-savior-swan on Tumblr, "the savior swan" here on ) : if I don't finish this story by the time the S5 premiere airs (local time) I have to eat at least once slice of pizza with honey on it, and for every month it is late thereafter, I have to eat a hot dog with ketchup on it. BELIEVE ME THIS WILL KEEP ME MORE THAN MOTIVATED.

"All are keeping a sharp look-out in front,

but none suspects that the danger may be creeping up from behind."

-Peter Pan

Chapter 21: The Crocodile

(Neverland: Future)

In the cavernous dark of Skull Rock, low-burning candelabras flickered, the piles of soft wax beneath them testament to another night—endless never-nights—of searching for a way through the savior's walls, for a way to send Henry home. Aged pages crinkled under Rumplestiltskin's fingers as he flipped through a worn tome, pulled from a decimated Oz, its margins crammed with notes in Zelena's immaculate hand.

He tapped a finger on an ancient passage, discerning "courage", "wisdom", "love" and "innocence" and his hands twitched at the memory of digging, digging, digging. He could do this, take the reins of time into his own hands, but for the Ripple Effect. Blast the Ripple Effect. If distracting Snow White was a pebble in the smooth pool of destiny, defeating the past scourge would be an avalanche. The infinite realms rescued from destruction all pouring infinite realms of possibility into the timeline. Interweaving streams of decision and repercussion, chance and mischance.

Ripping apart time served him no purpose if he lost everything again in the alterations. He had to be sure…

He left a finger there and flipped open another book and there, among diagrams of baubles and pendants—four gems and four witches and the complicated craft of amplifying magic—he discovered why Zelena couldn't kill Emma outright all those decades ago. With the magic of happy endings bottled up inside her pendant, amplified, a witch of Zelena's talent could not only change the past, but change fate. She didn't just need Emma stripped of her magic, she needed Emma's magic.

Rumple's eyes drifted to a pedestal nearby, where two candles burned, not for light, but for lights lost. He watched their flames dance slowly in the still night air and longed for a time when he burned no candles.

-0-

(Storybrooke: Present)

As Gold zipped the last of his necessities into a duffel bag, the door chimed. He followed the sound through the curtain from his office to the shop. Belle crouched behind one of the counters low enough that just the top of her head showed above the countertop, but his attention fell to the center of the store, where Lillian sat in her wheelchair, her chain and hook in her lap. Her hair lay loose about her shoulders, not deep brown but red-gold.

"What's this?" he asked.

"The others are next door getting ice cream," Belle began, oblivious to his confusion. "I thought I'd stop in and see if I couldn't find a replacement for Lillian's broken chain, but none of these are the right weight."

Belle stood, her movement swirling dust motes in the shaft of light around her and a slice ran through Gold's gut. Light from the window poured in on her as if through stained glass, coloring her features with hues as if from another world. Her dress was wet and dark with blood. Her eyes, dull against the too-pale cast of her skin. Her fingers, blue, picked through a display of simple chains. Gold looked from Belle to Lillian and back, neither showing any regard for the revelations around them.

Not another world, another time—a vision, evidence of the ripples they had caused already shifting time beyond the paradox—weakening it until his future-sight glimpsed the world beyond. A world where Lillian Jones still lived and Belle Gold did not.

"Rumple?" Belle asked when he stayed silent too long.

He needed more clues and so, in a play for time, did the very last thing he wanted to do in that moment.

"Perhaps I can help," he offered a hand to the girl.

The broken chain clinked as Lillian lifted it from her lap. She held the hook tightly, but at an encouraging look from Belle, handed it over. When the smooth metal dropped into his palm, Gold felt faint warmth in it, not from Lillian's body heat, but the distinct hum of magic. When he looked up from the steel in his hands, the light outside shifted, like a cloud passing over the sun and, as the light on Belle darkened, the wounds faded from her body.

More. He needed more.

"A simple fix," he replied. "I have the supplies in back. Belle, would you mind?" He waved between the girl and the back room. Belle took the handles of the wheelchair and marched the girl toward the back room, but even before they cleared the curtain, Gold froze them in place, body and mind. They did not see him peel back the protections around the weapon and when he did, his own face floated in miniature above the piece in his palm. Gold marveled briefly at the sight of his own face, scaled with the putrid green of the Dark One, staring up at him, ageless, and yet darkened by years of struggle, years of despair, years of life after Belle.

"Listen close, Dearie," his other-self cooed, "and both Belle and Henry will make it out of this alive."

-0-

(Neverland, the Jolly Roger : Future)

"If you ever do anything to endanger Henry's life," Rumplestiltskin hissed, "I will wipe you from existence."

Lillian struggled in her chair at the captain's table, feet sealed against the planks of Hook's—Henry's—ship.

"I didn't ask him to come after me!" The girl spat back.

"And yet he did, as he always does. So you are going to stay here, where you won't get him or anyone else killed. You've done enough damage."

She tried to stand up, but the angle of her legs wouldn't allow it. "If I could go back and undo it all, I would."

"But alas," Rumple glanced at the mess of journals splayed across the table, the hook atop a stack at her side. He leaned forward and snatched it up. Lillian lurched for it, but he held the hook out of her reach. "Time magic doesn't grow on stalks, or you'd be long gone."

The girl stilled in her chair. "Gone?"

"All magic comes with a price. The price of burning the Scourge in Storybrooke and resetting the past is that your parent's futures would flow far, far away from each other."

"Away? But everyone said it was..."

"True Love? Everyone says many things to a grieving child. But tell me, if it was true love, wouldn't she have remembered one of you by now?" Rumplestiltskin played with the hook, rolling it between his hands and letting the steel bend beams of light about the room. "True love's power can indeed overcome anything, but while Hook may have had some misguided devotion to your mother, she saw him for who he really was. Only after the Scourge took hold of him, drained him of every ounce of darkness, did she fancy herself in love with him."

He turned back around, hiding the hook behind his back. "You see, Lillian, you are an unintended consequence of the Scourge. A fluke of fate. Killing the scourge might very well kill you."

"I don't care," she shot back. "I'd do anything to undo all this."

He turned away from her, feigning interest in something to hide the dance of his fingers over the weapon. "Careful, Dearie. That sounds dangerously close to an oath."

"It is."

Excitement boiled under Rumple's skin as, unseen by Lillian, the hook warmed and gleamed with magic.

-0-

(Storybrooke: Present)

"The hook you hold in your hand," the visage of Gold's future self explained in the stillness of the pawn shop, "is enchanted with the same magic as Zelena's pendant and, like that pendant, will trap and amplify magic—in this case, the magic of another generation's savior: Lillian Jones. Magic cannot be wholly destroyed, so when the girl dissolves at the resolution of the paradox—"

"—Her magic will drift off into the air—," Gold echoed.

"—and capturing it will make you the master of fate in this realm. No one, no Scourge, no whim of fate will take Belle or Henry from you again."

Confidence swelled in his chest, lured out by the promise of a plan, the promise of protection, the promise of power.

The future Rumple continued.

"Zelena's curse on the pirate's lips, while ridiculous, accomplished one goal: she captured savior magic at its most voracious state, in a moment of self-sacrifice. You must do the same. The girl knows Hook's survival means her death, and it will, but not for the reasons she believes. The price is the same as Zelena's: once this talisman tastes her magic, Lillian's life force will be bound to it, reduced to a powerful fuel to force whatever destiny you direct for whomever you wish."

He couldn't help but look to Belle then, held stone still by his magic. A dimple nestled at one side of Belle's lip, as it always did in moments where he'd done something to make her proud. If she knew his thoughts now, though, how it would fade, as would she into the cold whim of destiny, and so he focused on the memory of blue hands and dead eyes and he let the monster loose.

Gold released the girls from their brief pause and they disappeared behind the curtain. He took only a moment to gather his nerve before following them.

"I must thank you," he began, with a nod to Lillian, mustering every attempt at sincerity as he stepped through the curtain. "If I'd had my way, you and your father would be dead, as would my every hope of protecting my beautiful wife and for that I cannot be more grateful." He took Belle's hand and squeezed it. "I know it isn't much, but a common show of gratitude in this realm is to purchase a treat. How about you two join up with your grandparents for ice cream on me. The repair shouldn't take very long and I can bring the piece back to you when I'm done."

Belle beamed, dimple deepening, but Lillian shook her head and said, "I don't let that out of my sight, if it can be helped."

"Fair enough," he replied in an accommodating tone.

Belle slipped her hand, kneeling down to Lillian's level. "I could go and bring you back a cone while you wait," she offered. Lillian nodded her assent. After a brief recitation of Any Given Sundae's menu—none of which made any sense to Lillian—the girl opted for simple vanilla and Belle practically skipped out of the shop.

"I do owe you an apology," Gold added when the clang of the bell signaled Belle's exit. "I underestimated your parents, but then, I suppose even the Dark One is blind to some things," he paused for sincerity. The lies slipped so readily from his tongue.

"But I wouldn't worry too much about this fate business, with your mother so determined to save you—"

"She already has," Lillian cut in.

"Pardon?" he replied, feigning confusion.

Centuries as the Dark One left Gold a master of the darker sides of the human psyche and every faint tremble and tell of the girl's body echoed a wrestling in the depths of her soul. She spoke in just above a whisper, mumbling more to herself than to Gold.

"I wanted to hate her for cocooning herself in her magic, for leaving me out, but love—true love—is a two-way thing, isn't it? I was so willing to blame her I never stopped to check my own heart. Maybe it wasn't just her magic standing in the way, maybe it was me. Me and my rage."

"Touching, but a little beside the point now that you're here and now."

The girl pulled at her fingers. "In the future, you told me this was a suicide mission because my parents weren't true love. I believed it because I wanted to, to believe she was this creature who never truly cared about him, or me, but they proved us both wrong. So long as they both live, I'm safe as I can be, aren't I? They can stop worrying?"

"Of that, I cannot be sure," he lied even as a flare of danger that shot up his spine. Love was one of few forces fate knelt to. "Have you told them this?"

She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. "Knowing you're wrong about such a thing and admitting you're wrong are two different beasts."

"Sounds like you might need something stronger than ice cream to settle the nerves," Gold pulled open a cabinet to reveal a shelf of choice liquors. He picked up a clean glass and a bottle of rum and set it before her.

She was about to refuse when the door chimed again. He set the hook and chain on the table before her and whisked out of the office before she could lodge further protest.

"Ah, Ms. Swan," he said as he cleared the curtain. "I thought you'd be with the ship."

The shop was, of course, empty; the bell rung by a trick of magic, an excuse to leave an emotionally distressed alcoholic alone with a treasure trove of hard liquor—laced with memory potion—brought into existence just as he opened the cabinet and, by the clink of glass he heard in the office, delightfully effective.

Returning to his office, he found the girl in a daze, the bottle open and the glass still in her hand. He waved it all away. She swayed in her seat as the potion worked its magic, but wiping her memory wouldn't be enough; he needed it replaced. He stepped up next to her wheelchair and leaned into her ear, whispering lies, muddling memories and fabricating facts.

"You've held books of time and prophecy in your hands," he pressed, "smelled the dusty paper, heard the creak of its binding. The price of saving Hook's life is to forfeit your own."

Lillian drank in his words. As she did, her features greyed and her skin paled until her whole being faded slightly, a mere ghost of a girl sitting in her wheelchair.

The bell rattled again, this time for real, and a family of footsteps found their way to his office. He fixed the chain with little more than a thought and made a show of settling the chain around Lillian's neck just as Belle poked her head back in, followed by Henry and the Charmings. Belle handed her a cone with more scoops than the waffle cone should structurally allow and the girl blinked rapidly, as one awaking from a daydream. Faded fingers wrapped around the cone, the girl whispered a thank you and Belle smiled, oblivious that she had handed the girl her first and last ice cream cone.