A/N: Some dialogue lifted from S2E22: And Straight On 'Til Morning. Also brief exchange taken from J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan.

Chapter 44

Bae awoke with a splitting headache. His throat was dry and his tongue felt like damp cotton, sticking to the roof of his mouth. He ached all over and he really needed something to drink, but the way his stomach was roiling, he didn't think he could keep anything down. Maybe water, but food? He curled up as tightly as he could in the confined space. Just the thought of eating made him queasier.

He squinted at his surroundings. This wasn't the room he'd been taken to after he'd been brought aboard. This wasn't a room at all. It was more like a-a box, with no windows and no—wait, the roof over his head had a small metal plate bolted to it. He couldn't see very clearly; the only light in the cramped space was what filtered in through the chinks between the wooden boards that made up the roof of his prison. However, he had been in a storm cellar before when a hurricane had threatened his coastal village. It had borne a plate much like the one now overhead, at least on the inside. There had been an iron ring for a handle on the other side. Bae raised his arms, fighting the urge to groan as he did, placed his palms flat on the rough wooden boards, and pushed. The boards shifted slightly, but shove though he tried, he couldn't get them to move more than a fraction of an inch.

If that roof was a trap door, it would open upwards, but he couldn't be sure because if it opened upwards, he wouldn't see hinges on the inside; if it opened outward, the hinges had to be outside.

Or there were no hinges, and he'd been nailed into this box and that pirate captain meant to row out to the open sea and drop him overboard like in those penny dreadful adventure stories of which Robertson Ay and John Darling were both so fond.

Thinking of his friends now sent a wave of homesickness crashing over him so violently that Bae almost wanted to take his chances in the waves of the Neverland Sea instead. Almost.

And then, he heard a sharp rap overhead and harsh voice whispered, "Boy! Keep still and make no sound till the danger's past. It's all our lives if you don't."

And then, he heard a second voice saying, "He may still be sleeping it off, Captain."

"Ay," the first voice, now recognizable as Hook's agreed. "That's the risk, Mr. Smee. But even if the lad does reveal himself, Pan's boarding party numbers but three. I think we can take them if we must."

"But if we do…!" 'Mr. Smee' gasped, and Hook cut him off smoothly.

"Ay. It would mean an all-out war with Pan. Well, much as I'd prefer to avoid that until I've a better understanding of the foe we're to face, I'm not about to let his band of striplings scuttle this vessel nor see our crew put to the sword. We'll defend ourselves to a man and face what consequences we must."

"They're almost here." Mr. Smee still sounded fearful.

"Well," Hook grunted, "alert the crew. And tell them to say nothing of the lad. It'll be two dozen and keelhauling for any who disobey."

"Aye aye, Cap'n."

Bae curled up more tightly in the cramped compartment and did his best not to groan. He wasn't sure he trusted Hook, but he did trust Papa. And Papa had told him that he was better off here than in the hand of Pan. He only hoped that Hook's crew wouldn't betray him.

"Captain," Smee urged in a whisper, "we have to give them the boy! They've killed for less. The sooner we give them what they want, the sooner they leave us alone."

Hook drew Smee toward the bow of the ship, out of earshot of the aft compartment where he'd stowed Cassidy, or rather, Baelfire. "No," he said tersely. "I can't part with him now, not when I know he's the Dark One's son. It can't be chance that brought him here. Providence must be at work. He is the key to my revenge," he said, dropping his voice even lower as the crew of small rowboat began scaling the netting over the side of the Jolly Roger, climbing nimbly to the main deck. He strode forward to greet them, even as he added, "I won't lose him."

He locked eyes with the lanky teen in the center, a stringy-haired youth with a feral gleam in his eye, who moved with the grace of a wildcat. "Do you know who we are?" the youth asked with a nasty smile.

Hook nodded. "You're the Lost Ones. You work for him."

The youth nodded back and his smile turned predatory, as his words took on a taunting, sing-song quality. "We're looking for a boy that was seen adrift nearby. A boy he has a particular interest in."

Hook sniffed. "Then I'm afraid I'll have to send you away disappointed. As you can see, we're only men here."

The youth in charge was still smiling and his voice was almost friendly as he replied, "Then you won't mind if we search your ship."

Hook smiled back. "Be my guest," he said expansively. Search the boys did, and far more thoroughly than he would have liked. He sent Smee below decks, certain that the boatswain's nervousness would give the game away, even as he watched the lads at their craft. The boys' leader kept sending smug glances in his direction, as though he knew that Baelfire was aboard and exactly where he was hiding, but in the end, he and his companions had to admit defeat.

"Told you," Hook said, hoping his relief didn't show in his voice, "no one here but me crew."

The youth didn't seem at all put out. In fact, he had the air of one who had found precisely what he'd intended to. "You're new to this land," he drawled, "which means I should warn you. Do you know what happens to people who lie to him?"

"No," Hook said pleasantly. "But I gather it hurts."

"It does. He rips the shadow right from your body." His smile broadened as he drew out his next word for emphasis. "R-r-r-r-rip. If you find him, you know who he belongs to. Goodbye, Captain." He and the other boys disappeared over the side of the ship. Hook waited until their rowboat was almost to the mainland before opening Bae's hatch. The boy gaped at him in astonishment.

"I thought pirates only cared about themselves," he blurted.

Hook clapped him warmly on the shoulder. "Well, you've a lot to learn, young Cassidy," he returned, taking care to use the name the boy had provided and not the one he knew was truly his. "And it will be my privilege to instruct you."

Bae couldn't say how much time had passed. He knew that every day he spent here was one more day that he wasn't home with Papa and he was worried about him. Except that the longer he spent in Neverland, the less real London seemed. Yes, of course he wanted to get back. And Papa must be out of his mind with fright for him and so ill, for all he tried to hide it. Bae would do anything to get back there! Anything.

And yet, somehow, it all seemed so remote.

He told himself that he was learning the skills he'd need to make good his escape from this place. Every time Captain Hook brought him to the wheel and showed him how to steer the ship—an easy enough task in deep water, but more challenging closer to shore with rocky outcroppings that could rip holes in a keel that passed over them—he paid close attention. And when he succeeded in bringing it ashore at low tide with only a minor leak and few scratches to the paint, he'd glowed in the captain's praise. And spent a good part of the rest of the day patching and repainting, but knowing how to repair a ship was important too.

Yes, he was learning quite a lot, but he was no closer to finding a way out of this realm. There had to be one, though. If the Shadow could cross over, then leaving was possible. Bae just had to figure out how.

"We did try when first we arrived here, lad," Hook told him one evening, when he'd broached the subject. "I like the open seas and a wider array of places to put into port. But the mermaids do Pan's will and they've a song can overpower the minds of men and women and lead them to scuttle the vessel on the shoals."

Bae frowned. "I read a story about creatures with that power," he said thoughtfully. "The ship's captain had the crew stop their ears with wax…"

"A good plan, Mr. Cassidy," Hook nodded. "Sadly, these mermaids can't be so easily neutralized. Their songs ensnare not only ships and crews but weather and water denizens." He shook his head. "We'd gone scarce a dozen miles from the coast when up sprung a gale and when we steered to avoid it, we found ourselves on course for a bloody maelstrom." He shook his head. "I know something of marine life, lad. While sharks do roam these waters naturally, there's a species of fish known as piranha that hunts in swarms. Enough of them can strip an animal to bones in minutes. I'd thought their reputation overhyped," he added. "Their shoals rarely number more than a hundred, and while a smaller quarry might fare ill, or a wounded one, I didn't think a human had much to fear, even from a hundred. But then, I saw a swath of water that shone like bright silver. It took a moment to realize that just below the surface swam a bloody horde of them, easily a thousand strong or more. Don't ask me how a freshwater fish was able to survive in these seas, nor how so many of them came to congregate before this vessel. I've no answer other than… Well, they bloody well did. A riverboat captain I had occasion to meet once told me that it would require four hundred of more of the things to eat an ox. A thousand?" He took a breath. "Let's just say that in a storm that fierce, the crew had an additional incentive not to be washed overboard. We had the maelstrom before us, sharks to port, piranha to starboard, and the gale growing fiercer with every oar-stroke taking us farther from the coast. We had no choice but to steer back to safer waters. And," he added, "once we were within half a league of the coast, the storm died down and the seas calmed. And we've never seen fin nor scale of those razor-toothed demon fish since. We have seen a lone shark every now and again," he added, "but certainly not a school of them."

"So the only way out…" Bae ventured.

"Is with Pan's permission. And even if he were to grant it, such a boon would come at a high price."

"Why?" Bae asked. "What would he want?"

Hook was silent for several moments. Then he said, "One thing that I've learned in my time here, lad. It's never good to let Pan know what it is you're seeking. He'll see it as a great game, helping and hindering you in your quest as the mood strikes him. But the rules of his game are wont to change when the outcome isn't like to go in his favor."

"You mean, he cheats."

"It's not cheating when you're the one making the rules and one of the first rules of any game of his is that he can alter them at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all. Can you fault me for not wanting to play?" He shook his head again. "No. One day, we will find a way to be free of this place, but attempting to secure Pan's permission is an exercise in futility."

"But if it's the only way…"

Hook's face darkened. "It's the only way I've heard of, but all the tales I know tell only of those who died trying to earn his favor. I've yet to hear of one who succeeded. There must be another way out of this place, but I'm damned if I know what it is."

"Well if it's there, Captain, we'll find it," Bae said firmly and the pirate smiled.

"Aye, lad. That we will," he rumbled. "That we will."

Two weeks. It had been two weeks since Bae had stormed out of their lodgings and Rumple hadn't seen him since. He hadn't been back to work since that first day either. He imagined that, by now, both his position and Bae's had been terminated.

He was behind on his rent, he knew. So far, the Robertsons hadn't pressed him for it, but it was just a matter of time before he found himself out on the street with no references and no prospects. He imagined he'd die there—or in the workhouse. He'd passed that building on the corner of Bishop's Way and Waterloo Gardens many times, often with a shudder and silent thanks that he was gainfully employed and unlikely to be sent to the place. For though he'd never personally experienced such an institution, he'd read enough Victorian literature to have some idea of the conditions one might expect there. Given a choice, he rather thought he'd prefer the street.

As it was, he kept to his room, hoping Bae might yet appear. He didn't come down to meals. He told himself that he didn't want his presence to serve as a reminder to his landlord that he wasn't paid up for the room, but in truth, he hadn't much appetite now.

All the same, he was touched when early one morning, as he opened his door to steal off to the privy, he found a tray by the threshold with a half-loaf of bread, a small crock of jam, and a bowl of porridge—cold but sweetened with brown sugar and encircled by a moat of milk. It took him two days to finish it and would have been more, had he not worried that the crisp autumn temperatures wouldn't keep the milk from souring had he left the bowl on the window ledge any longer.

He wondered how long it would be before the bailiffs came to turn him out, but really at this point, it was idle curiosity. Without Bae, he didn't much care what became of him now.

The longer Bae stayed aboard the Jolly Roger, the more he understood what Mama must have seen in the pirate. That didn't mean, of course, that he thought she'd been right to abandon her family, or that Captain Hook had done the right thing in giving her the opportunity. He supposed he could understand, though, how she could have been tempted. At least, sometimes he could. Just like he could understand how Papa could have become the Dark One, even if it had meant killing someone to do it. Killing was wrong; Papa had known that then. But he'd still done it, hoping to stop the war and save everyone. He could still hear Papa's voice at times saying, "Imagine me with those powers. Can you imagine me with those powers, Bae? I could get to redeem myself. I could turn it towards good. I'll save all the children of the Frontlands – not just you, my boy." Had he been a bit more sure of himself, and a bit less sure of Papa, Bae might have pointed out, even then, that murder unlikely to lead to redemption and that such an evil beginning would almost certainly not have a good ending. But he'd been fourteen and nervous, worried about his best friend who'd already been taken to the front and whom he might never see again, worried about the day that he too would be taken, and Papa had always known what to do before.

Well, maybe part of growing up meant realizing that your parents could make mistakes—really bad ones; and even when you knew they were wrong, you could still sort of understand why they'd done what they had. It didn't mean what they did was okay… but maybe it meant that forgiving them was the right thing to do. And if it wasn't, well, maybe it wasn't just parents who made mistakes and if forgiving his was a mistake he'd one day have to pay for, then to hell with the cost.

"Yo ho ho, matey!" one of the crew called from the rigging and Bae, jerked out of his thoughts, smiled up at the figure halfway up to the crow's nest.

"Aye, sir?" he called.

"Starkey and Skylights are bringing up the day's beer. Get ye a mop and swab after 'em, there's a lad." Jukes' tone was kindly enough, but Bae recognized an order when he heard it and, as the youngest and newest member of the crew, he knew he was bound to obey it. The Jolly Roger's hierarchy might be a bit looser than it would have been on a legitimate vessel, but it existed and Bae was flatly at the bottom of it.

"Aye, Aye, sir!" he yelled back with a grin. Then he went to fetch the mop before heading down to the galley.

"Captain, please," Smee sounded almost as though he was about to cry. "It's only a matter of time until they find out we're sheltering the lad. We must turn him over to them."

"And give up the key to my vengeance?" Hook retorted.

"You heard the boy," Smee protested. "His father's already dying."

"But not by my hand," Hook said grimly. "No. If Fate's delivered the boy to me, then perhaps it means to keep that wily crocodile alive long enough to meet his end at my hand." He paused and held up his hook. "Or, well, this," he added with a slight smile. The menace returned to his voice. "But to make my vengeance complete, the boy must guide me to him. And he must be at my side when we have that meeting. Think on it, Smee. The last sight the Dark One will ever see will be his boy standing at my right hand… and my left sliding just past his ribs. He'll die knowing that he's not only lost that which he most held dear but that the chain followed the anchor: his son found a better mentor, just as his wife found a better man. The same man, in fact," he added, his smile growing broader. "That knowledge might just finish him outright."

All at once, the galley door crashed against the outside wall with a bang. And a furious sixteen-year-old seethed in the doorway, "I'm not guiding you to within a hundred leagues of my papa! Face me, villain! Unless you fear an opponent who can fight back!" As he spoke, he slid into a fighting stance, brandishing his mop as he had a quarterstaff back in Pen Marmor.

Startled, Hook took a step back. "Whoa," he said, holding up his hands. "What's this all about Bae—Cassidy?"

Bae's eyes narrowed. "How long have you known who I am?" he demanded. "Answer me!"

Hook's eyes fell on his cutlass, hanging in its sheath, the sword belt slung diagonally over the chair beside him. He took another step back, ready to grasp it if necessary. "Since your first night on my ship," he said calmly. "Your mother spoke often of you, you know."

"My mother abandoned me," Bae gritted. "After she met you. She and Papa may have had their problems, but she'd never have left us if you hadn't come along."

"Or had your papa had the liver and stones to fight for her. Did he tell you he had the opportunity but turned tail and ran?"

Bae's face twisted in rage. "He told me you challenged him to a duel that would have been a slaughter if he'd accepted. Tell me, Pirate, what kind of fight is it for a seasoned swordsman to take on an untrained fighter with a crippled ankle who hadn't held sword in fourteen years and never used it when he had?"

"And hadn't the courage to use it to defend what he stood to lose!" Hook snapped.

For a moment, Bae's eyes widened as the pirate's words sank in. Then he leveled the mop and advanced another step. "He thought about what I stood to lose. Your actions would have killed a father, stolen a mother, and left a four-year-old to starve on the roads!"

"Your father thought only about saving his own skin, boy!" Hook said. In a flash the cutlass was in his hand. "Something you might consider. Now, stand down, lad. I've no wish to harm you, but attack me on my own ship and I shall."

"Then so be it!" Bae snapped. He leveled the mop and advanced. "Dark and sinister man, have at thee!"

With an inward sigh, Hook resigned himself to the inevitable. "Well then, proud and insolent youth," he said, readying the cutlass, "prepare to meet thy doom."

"It's good of you to call, Pip," Robertson Gee said. "He's not been himself for some time now. Even before the boy up and left."

"Would he see me, do you think?" Pip Gargery asked.

Mrs. Robertson sighed at that. "He keeps hisself to hisself, 'e does," she said. "Never comes downstairs. Emmy brings up food and two days later, it's less than half finished when she comes to collect it."

Pip shook his head. "Come now, Mrs. G," he said with false heartiness. "You've allus been generous with your portions, you have."

"Not more generous than I can afford to be," she returned, but the tartness in her voice was mellowed by the worry in her eyes.

"Would he see a doctor, d'ye think?"

Robertson Gee shook his head. "I seen his state afore. Ain't I lost me own da to consumption when I were a lad not much older than the boy he's just lost? No, if he had the coin to pay a doctor to tell him what he already knows, I think he'd use it to settle accounts with us."

Pip Gargery frowned. "Behind in his rent, is he?"

"I," Mrs. Robertson hesitated. "We don't want to say anything to add to his troubles. I feel I'd need a heart of stone to press him for the money now, when I know he's not been to work in more than a month. But I won't deny we're scraping a bit harder to get by without his shillings and we can't carry the shortfall indefinitely."

"Nor should you," Pip agreed. He reached into his pocket.

"Pip, no," Robertson Gee protested. "No, we shouldn't have said anything to you and we surely never meant—"

"Course not," Pip cut him off. "No, this here thing I'm doing, this is of me own wolition, it is." He set a handful of coins down on the table. "You and your missus is right, so you are. You can't turn a dying man out, not one what's just suffered such a loss to boot. But you shouldn't lose the roof over your heads neither, else where will you or he be? So you take this here contribution I had in me mind to give you when I thought this might be the case and set your minds at ease." Gently, he closed his massive hand about Robertson Gee's wrist until the latter's hand opened, whereupon he pressed the coins into it and curled its fingers closed once more.

"I…" Robertson Gee exhaled. "Thank you, Gargery. We'll repay you for this when we can."

Pip smiled. "Course you will. But till then, the best thing you can do for me is," Gargery lowered his eyes slightly, "let Mr. Cassidy know his rent's been paid, but don't tell him it were me. Just tell him that the man's name wot done it must remain a profound secret huntill such time as said benefactor chooses to reveal it."

"But you can't do this indefinitely!" Mrs. Robertson protested.

Pip Gargery shook his head sadly. "If all you say of Mr. Cassidy is the unwarnished truth," he said, "I don't believe it'll be needful to. Let him have some comfort at the last. T'wont cost you nuthin' and t'wont cost me nuthin' I ain't happy to pay."

It wasn't much of a fight and it would have ended far sooner had Hook not gone easy on him. From the way the lad handled his mop, he clearly had some idea of proper quarter staff technique, as most peasant children in a war-torn region did. Weapons practice and mock spars quickly replaced games of ninepins and blind-man's-bluff as adulthood approached in such places. But Hook was a seasoned fighter who had led many a boarding party onto the deck of a hostile ship. He was no stranger to sword-fighting and the appendage attached to his left wrist was a deadly weapon all its own.

And for all Bae's instincts, he'd never been in a true battle before and a mop handle wasn't nearly as durable as a true quarter staff might have been. Inexorably, the tide turned in the pirate's favor.

"Come on, Baelfire," Hook said, "you've made a good accounting, but you can't win this one. There's no shame in yielding to a worthy adversary. Put down your… mop and let's talk."

"I've got nothing to say to you," Bae snarled, refusing to take the quarter offered.

"Don't be a fool, lad," the pirate urged. "You're the son of the woman I loved. Truly, I've no wish to harm you."

"I loved her, too," Bae said raggedly. "But I have another parent and he raised me long after you carried her off. And you're planning," he cocked his head disbelievingly, "to use me against him and you say you don't want to hurt me? Why not? I'm more his son than I am hers!"

The pirate lunged forward. Bae raised the mop with both hands to meet the charge, but the pirate was ready. He latched his curved hook about the shaft and twisted, ripping it out of the youth's grip. An instant later, Bae found himself with his back against the galley shelves and the point of a cutlass pressed beneath his chin. "Well?" Bae snapped. "What are you waiting for? Kill me!"

Hook shook his head. "No, lad," he said. "For your mother's sake and your spirit, I'll spare you that much." Then his face twisted into something ugly, as he caught up a length of rope and quickly bound the boy's hands behind his back. "I'd thought to spare you far more," he snarled in Bae's ear. "But if your allegiance remains with the Dark One, I'm afraid there's another fate in store for you."

He half-steered, half-dragged the boy out of the galley and down a dim corridor, until they stood before a heavy oak door with a barred window. With his hook around Baelfire's arm, he removed a ring of keys with his good hand and, after a moment, found the one he needed.

Bae's eyes widened, when he saw the small, dank room that lay beyond. "How long do you mean to keep me in here, pirate?" he demanded.

Hook released him with a twist that sent him careening into the brig. As the oaken door slammed shut and the key turned in the lock, Bae heard his answer.

"Long enough…"

There were no windows in the brig and no skylight to tell Bae when day became night or night day. Meals arrived regularly though, and assuming they were feeding him three meals a day, Bae knew that he'd passed two days already. It was the next morning when he heard a familiar tread in the corridor and the slap of footwear rather less durable than a pirate's sea boots behind it. Two sets, Bae realized, with a sinking feeling. In his mind, he heard a child's voice proclaiming, "Three days. They'll come for me in three days." Well, here it was three days later, and Bae had a fairly good idea who had come for him before the door was jerked open.

It had been more than three years, but Bae still hadn't forgotten Felix's weaselly face from the Enchanted Forest when the Piper—his grandfather, as he now knew—had lured him and the others to that bonfire in the woods. He didn't know the other boy next to him, but it didn't matter. If Felix was here, Bae had a fairly good idea of where he was going. He locked furious eyes on Hook.

"You're turning me over to them?"

The pirate shrugged. "It didn't have to end like this, boy. The ship could have been your new home. We could have been your family."

"And you could have been my father?" Bae's lip curled scornfully. "Not in a million years, pirate. I heard you and Mr. Smee in the galley. You're trading me away for… what? Revenge? Power? Influence? My father had all that and he gave it up for me! You'll never be half the man he is if you live a thousand lifetimes!"

"Save your courage, boy," Hook retorted. "You'll need it for what awaits you." He nodded to the Lost Boys. "He's all yours. Pan will be pleased?"

The last thing Bae saw before someone slid a burlap hood over his head was the sinister smirk on Felix's face.

"Just through here, guv'nor." Rumple was half-dozing, but he snapped to alertness when he heard footsteps outside his door and then the key turning in his lock. That was Robertson Gee's voice, but who was with him. He struggled to sit up when the second man stepped into the room.

"Mr. Mousely!" he exclaimed, slapping a hand to his mouth to cover it as a cough escaped him. "Sir!"

The piercing eyes that gazed into his were kindly. "Mr. Cassidy," he returned. "I've just come 'round to settle accounts."

"I beg your pardon?"

"If you gents will hexcuse me…" Robertson Gee murmured, edging out of the room. "I'll be downstairs."

Mr. Mousely nodded absently, his eyes on Rumple. "There's a balance owed you," he said, taking a pouch from his pocket. "And since it appears you're not long for this world," the old man's voice was gentle, "I thought it was wisest to recompense you now."

Rumple shook his head. "You might as well pay it directly to my landlord. I must be far behind on my rent by now."

"He didn't mention anything of the kind," Mousely remarked.

Rumple smiled. "He wouldn't. But I still owe it."

"And a gentleman pays his debts." Mousely sounded as though he was talking about something rather more important than the small stack of shilling coins he was counting out on the table.

Rumple's eyes narrowed. "Yes, quite."

"Well," Mousely said, "I'm in yours. If you find yourself in the same circumstances with another, that's your own affair." He smiled. "It's not just gentlemen who pay their debts, you know, Mr. Cassidy. Whether one is a king, a queen, or a sickly peasant boy, whether one realizes it or not, all accounts come due in their proper time." His eyes narrowed. "Which, in your case, is neither here nor now."

Rumple's heart began to pound. "Wh-what?"

"I've actually been quite impressed by your work," Mousely continued gently. "It wasn't always perfect, of course, but still, on the whole, an exemplary service. Take heart from that. And strength, Rumpelstiltskin. I'll show myself out." Another smile and the elderly bank partner was gone and closing the door behind him.

Come to think of it, Rumple realized, he did feel a bit stronger. Strong enough, at any rate, to go downstairs and settle up his rent. And that meant getting dressed, he thought, reaching for his trousers. He'd never left his room in anything less than proper attire and he wasn't about to begin now.

It wasn't until he was donning his suit jacket that his eyes widened and his heart began to pound again. Just how had Mousely addressed him at the last? Or was he imagining things? The old man did seem familiar, and not just because Rumple had occasionally passed him in the bank's corridors. But where…?

As his hand turned the doorknob, Rumple an image flashed into Rumple's mind: Mr. Mousely, his hair longer, his beard more unkempt, his brown tweed sack suit replaced by a long, red, woolen robe trimmed in gold embroidery at the neck and black-and-gold braid at the shoulder, but with those same eyes, brown and gray and warm and piercing, all at the same time. The Apprentice!

That was the last thing he thought as he stepped out of his room… and into a swirling vortex of light and fog.