Author's notes: Takes place after "Created in You." As usual, I'm taking liberties with canon, but that's the show's fault for not making much sense or explaining things properly!

I didn't tag for rape/non-con (since it doesn't happen to the main characters), but be warned that Zelena does appear, with all her disdain for other people's lives and free will. Nothing graphic, but she does what she does — don't expect a redemption arc for her in this story.

Rumplestiltskin's hope for a peaceful life lasted only a few weeks past his wedding. The guests had all gone home (including the Avonleans), Rumplestiltskin and Belle were enjoying their honeymoon, and Rumplestiltskin and Baelfire were getting to know each other again after their long separation. Their broken trust was beginning to heal. Maybe that was why Bae choose now to make his request. His son wanted evidence that his father had changed.

What started as a quiet family breakfast devolved rapidly when Baelfire asked Rumplestiltskin to rescue the Lost Boys from Neverland.

"I can't just wave a hand and steal them to the Dark Castle," Rumplestiltskin told his son, hating the look of disappointment in Bae's eyes when he hadn't immediately agreed. But he couldn't hide any more. "I don't... I'm not that powerful."

"Why not?"

"Everything on that island falls under Pan's Shadow. Every soul it carried belongs to him, to live or die at his whim," Rumplestiltskin explained. "And has he ever let anyone go?"

Baelfire shook his head. "No."

"Except for Bae," Belle pointed out. "He let Bae go."

"He didn't," said Bae. "The captain hid me on his ship."

"Bae was dropped by the Shadow into the pirate's custody originally." And that had been a painful story that Baelfire had finally felt safe enough to share with them. Another of fate's tricks that the Dark One had been blind to, another way he had failed his son. If only he had known, if only he had seen... "That's why Jones could take him away."

"And the others were carried directly to Pan," said Belle, nodding in comprehension.

"And while Pan lives, the Shadow obeys only his will." If Pan had still held Bae, then Rumplestiltskin would have had no choice but to pay the price to save his son, but Bae was free. Why should he sell himself for the sake of a handful of strangers, just when he had begun to believe that there was a chance of happiness for him, for his family? Better for them all to cut their losses and move on. He forced back the guilt at his own cowardice. "His power over Neverland is absolute."

"Then you have to kill him, Papa," said Bae abruptly. "He deserves it."

"Surely there's another way," Belle protested.

"You don't know him!" Bae glared at Belle, and Rumplestiltskin was too lost in his own turmoil to defend her. "He's worse than Papa ever was. Worse than Gaston! Do you know how many boys died in his 'games'?"

Belle shook her head. "Too many, but Baelfire, you can't ask that of him."

"Why not? He's the Dark One. He's killed plenty of people before." Bae glanced at his father grimly. "Aren't you supposedly the most powerful sorcerer in this realm? Can't you defeat Peter Pan at all?"

Rumplestiltskin looked down at his hands and answered softly, "Yes, I have the power to kill him."

"Then do it! You said you wanted to use the power to save all the children, not just me. You have to stop Pan, and if killing him is the only way, that's what you have to do!"

Rumplestiltskin sat silent, at a loss for words. He wanted to, because his son had asked, but the idea filled him with dread, dread he was afraid to reveal.

"Please, we have to save them. The Lost Boys. They were my friends. Even the ones who — weren't — deserve better. They have no home. It's not fair that I get to go home and they don't!"

Rumplestiltskin sighed. "You're right, son."

Belle touched his hand. "There's something else, isn't there? Please, Rumple, whatever it is, you can tell us."

Archie had advised honesty. Rumplestiltskin feared it, but he trusted the cricket more than himself in this. The darkness corrupted his thoughts, and he knew that, but he had to try to see past its paranoia.

Pathetic. Once they know how weak you are, they'll turn against you, warned the darkness. They'll know you're a useless coward.

He ignored it. They already knew. They were still here, and so they deserved the truth from him. He forced himself to speak.

"The only way for Pan to die, is if I die," Rumplestiltskin confessed. He glanced up at last to meet their shocked eyes. He hoped they would leave it at that, as one of those arbitrary magical twists impervious to ordinary rhyme and reason. No such luck.

"But why? How does that work?" Belle knew too much by now to accept any prophecy without question. Even where magic was concerned — especially where magic was concerned.

And Bae, Bae was looking at him, disappointment seeping into his face as the implications sank in. Rumplestiltskin could guess what he was thinking. What was this except another excuse for his coward of a father? He had asked one thing of the Dark One, and Rumplestiltskin's stomach sank, knowing what the cost would be.

He should have known villains never lived happily ever after.

Baelfire looked sick. "Is that... is that why you never came for me? Because you were afraid of Pan?"

"No! No, I never knew!" Rumplestiltskin couldn't get the words out fast enough. "I couldn't See you and I assumed that was because you were in a land without magic. I had no idea Pan's Shadow could travel there."

"Rumple, we'll find another way," said Belle softly. The sympathy in her eyes shamed him. He was shaking under her gentle touch, knowing he didn't deserve it. "But you have to explain to us, or we won't be able to help you."

"How do you know Peter Pan?" asked Bae abruptly. "Were you a Lost Boy once?"

"It was my father who told me about Neverland." Rumplestiltskin stared down where Belle's hand met his. Honesty, he reminded himself. He could be brave, for them, for his family. "He made it sound like a wonderful place. 'Think lovely thoughts,' that was what he said."

"Wonderful for Pan, maybe," said Bae. "Not so much for anyone else!"

"Did the Shadow come for you, Rumple?"

"No. We had a magic bean."

"Like the one I had?" asked Bae.

"Exactly like that. Someone gave it to me. Told me that I could use it to make a new life for myself in a new world."

"Oh, gods," whispered Bae. "Was it a fairy?"

Rumplestiltskin shook his head. "No." But even as the word left his mouth, he wondered. How had two poor spinsters come across something as rare and valuable as a magic bean? Had there been a fairy involved? But it was too late to wonder about it now. "I don't know. Not directly."

"So you used a magic bean to get to Neverland," Belle prompted. "Then what happened?"

Rumplestiltskin took a deep breath, trying to order his thoughts. "I went there with my father. He was the only family I had." He didn't dare look at his son.

"Did Peter Pan kill him?" asked Bae.

"Not exactly. The thing is, I brought Peter Pan to Neverland." He paused, hearing Belle and Bae gasp at the revelation. "Peter Pan was...he..." Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes, summoning the memory to his hand. He showed his family the crude straw doll, dressed in its scrap of a blue jacket. "My father gave him to me."

"I don't understand," whispered Belle.

"He told me to give it a name," Rumplestiltskin said slowly. "Because that would make it real. So I named the doll 'Peter Pan'. He was my friend when I had no other. My father never stayed long anywhere, you see. We had to leave when people...when word got around about him."

"Your father, was he...?"

"A cheat, a liar, a thief," muttered Rumplestiltskin. "A feckless layabout. A coward and a deserter." Like father, like son, hung in the air. "But he was my father. When he said Neverland would give us everything we wished for, I believed him."

"But what does that have to do with Peter Pan?" asked Bae.

"The problem was that Neverland was spun out of children's dreams." Rumplestiltskin remembered how his father's eyes had lit up as he described his one escape from the misery of his childhood, then the crushing disappointment as the truth became clear. "And my father was no longer a child. He couldn't stay."

"But he wanted to?" asked Belle.

"More than anything. He was willing to pay any price." Rumplestiltskin smiled grimly at the recognition on his son's face. Baelfire knew better than anyone the dark paths that any price led to. "The Shadow is... I suspect it was always the spirit of Neverland. It sensed my father's desperation and whispered a solution in his ear."

Belle looked at him with dawning horror. "What... what solution?"

"What one person has, another person can steal. Isn't that the way of the world?" Rumplestiltskin closed his fingers, letting the illusory doll vanish back into memory.

Baelfire frowned. "He took your doll?"

"What it represents. In magic — and Neverland is steeped in magic — symbols and reality are intimately linked." Rumplestiltskin hadn't understood until he had become the Dark One and took it upon himself to study magic. "Peter Pan was once part of me, but my father took the name for himself, and with it, whatever youthful innocence I came to the island with. He... he changed..."

"Into... into Peter Pan? He's your father?" Bae stared at him in shock.

Rumplestiltskin nodded. He forced out the words before he could choke on them, "He became a child. And because a child can't have a child, he threw me to the Shadow. I was cast out of Neverland..."

"He abandoned you?" Belle wrapped her arms around him as he shook from the memories, so rarely brought to the surface. "I'm so sorry, Rumple."

"I'm just like him," Rumplestiltskin whispered. "I tried so hard not to be, but... but I did the same thing. I'm sorry, Bae."

"It's not the same," Bae said after a long silence. "It's not."

Rumplestiltskin shook his head. He knew it was, and by the appalled expression on Bae's face, his son knew it as well. Power, immortality, it meant more to them than their own children. They had let themselves be changed into something dark and cruel.

"You were willing to give it up." Bae was too forgiving. "Because I asked. You made a mistake. But you tried to make it right."

Rumplestiltskin sighed. He clung to Belle, infinitely grateful for her support.

"But Rumple, why does all this mean that you have to die in order for Pan to die?" Belle asked gently.

"It's because... it's because... Peter Pan was part of me, and still is. My youth. As long as I live, he lives."

"Then we have to make him let it go."

"He won't," said Rumplestiltskin.

Bae nodded. "Papa's right. He likes his games too much."

"Nothing's impossible." Belle was ever optimistic. "There must be some way to subdue him, or weaken him enough to free the Lost Boys."

Rumplestiltskin felt himself infected by her optimism. Was there hope? If she believed it, maybe he could, too. It was just difficult to think clearly where his father was concerned. "Perhaps... perhaps we can contain the Shadow. That will cut off most of Pan's powers and... and give us leverage."

Belle smiled. "I knew you'd think of something!"

Bae was more wary. "And how would you contain the Shadow?"

"Some time ago, I came across something called 'Pandora's Box.'"

"Oh, I've heard of that!" Belle's eyes brightened. "It's real? You have it?"

Rumplestiltskin couldn't help but smile a little at her enthusiasm. "It's in my vault."

Baelfire nodded. He said resolutely, "Then I'll summon it here and you can catch it, Papa."

"Bae, no..." Rumplestiltskin's first thought was that it was too dangerous, and he was not risking the son who had so recently come back to him. "You can't..."

But Baelfire was brave as his father had never been, and insisted. "I've done it before."

"How do you know it'll come?" asked Belle.

"It will, because Pan hates to lose his toys," said Bae grimly. "He'll want me back."

Rumplestiltskin winced at the irony. As a child, he had longed for the Shadow to take him back to his papa, but it had ignored his tearful pleas. In the end, he had given up, grown up, and not seen his father again until Rumplestiltskin had a child of his own and had become the Dark One. "I'll make sure it doesn't touch you..."

"You have to stay out of sight, or it'll suspect a trap," said Bae. "And we should use a different house, as if I'm hiding from you."

And Rumplestiltskin knew if things had turned out even a little differently, his son might very well have truly run and hid from him. He lifted his hands in concession to Bae's plan, saying quietly, "As you say, son."

Catching the Shadow went smoothly. The difficulty came when Rumplestiltskin tried to convince Belle and Bae to stay behind.

"You're not going alone," stated Belle firmly, and Bae grunted in solidarity.

"The whole point of this plan is for us to have leverage over Pan," argued Rumplestiltskin. "If he happened to take either of you hostage, then I would be at his mercy."

"And if something happened to you, who would be able to help you?" retorted Belle.

Bae nodded. "I know Neverland and its tricks better than any of you. You need me."

"Cogsworth and Lumiere have offered to help," said Rumplestiltskin. "They're experienced sorcerers."

"But the Lost Boys won't trust them, or you," said Bae. "Not much of a 'rescue' if you end up kidnapping them!"

Rumplestiltskin sighed, knowing he had lost the argument. He hoped they wouldn't regret it. "Very well."

Neverland was a peculiar realm, difficult to access by adults. Its very existence was ambiguous, there being no path to Neverland from the shadow realm. Even Nevethe couldn't see it directly. It was an island that swallowed true love's magic and the darkest of evils and used both to feed the pixie flowers that were the source of pixie dust.

"How strange." Belle looked baffled at the seeming contradiction.

"It's because Neverland is 'innocent' in a magical sense," Rumplestiltskin explained. "A child's dream of adventure."

"The Shadow seems so cruel. How can you say it's innocent?"

"Haven't you ever seen a cat 'playing' with a mouse?" Bae put in bitterly. "It's like that."

"But the fairies are said to use pixie dust to do good," said Belle. "Or so I've read."

"Yes, well, that's what they'd like you to think, but their benevolence has some blind spots." In another life, Rumplestiltskin had begged the fairies for help, but they had never found a cowardly spinner worthy of their notice. "It's powerful stuff. Good or evil comes from the hand that wields it."

Belle sighed. She didn't look as outraged as he had expected, but then again, everyone knew the Dark One and the fairies didn't get on. "So how do they get their pixie dust, if Neverland is so tricky to reach?"

"The Blue Fairy arranged for children to fly there in their dreams to harvest it," said Cogsworth. "But she had to stop once Peter Pan took control of Neverland. The fairies began refining the dust from magical diamonds after that."

"As for us, we'll take the Jolly Roger. It's made the voyage before, courtesy of Pan's Shadow," said Rumplestiltskin. "We need only prod its memory, and we can retrace its old route."

Cogsworth and Lumiere put word around North Haven to hire a fresh crew, the pirates being less than trustworthy for such a mission. Rumplestiltskin promised to pay hazard rates, and the Timers picked the most suitable out of the candidates. He was surprised to find a dwarf and a fairy among their new crew.

Belle dashed up the gangplank to greet them with a wide smile and open arms. "Dreamy! And you must be Nova!"

Rumplestiltskin watched, dumbfounded, as the dwarf dodged the hug but did shake Belle's hands (both of them) warmly.

"Sorry we missed your wedding, sister," said Dreamy gruffly. "We only arrived here two days ago, but when we heard about your quest..."

"It was the least we could do," chirped the fairy.

Rumplestiltskin sneered reflexively. "Very noble, but since when have dwarves and fairies been sailors?"

The dwarf shot him a grumpy look. "What do you know about it, Spinner?"

Belle glanced back at Rumplestiltskin. "Be nice, Rumple. They're my friends."

Rumplestiltskin snorted. Of course they were. Belle had a knack for it, with a smile that was impossible to resist. Or was that just him? He held his tongue and nodded to the pair as politely as he could manage. "Well, I suppose you'll do, unless Cogsworth's standards are slipping..."

Belle rolled her eyes at him. "He means, 'Thank you, Dreamy. Thank you, Nova. I appreciate your help.'"

Rumplestiltskin flapped a hand at them. "Yes, yes, I'n sure they're more seaworthy than your other friends."

Belle's other friends had been citizens of Schlaraffenland long enough for Rumplestiltskin to be confident of their loyalties, but the Beggars Clan was strictly landbound in their duties. They were also non-magical, making them more vulnerable to Neverland's tricks than a dwarf or fairy. All that exposure to raw fairy dust had made them more resistant to hostile spells and illusions.

Belle caught Rumplestiltskin's arm as he made his way aboard to meet the rest of the crew, and leaned in to reassure him, "Don't worry. They're not working for the fairies. They ran away together because their bosses didn't approve of their love."

Rumplestiltskin nodded slightly.

"It's not like that," Nova spoke up at last, flushing slightly as Rumplestiltskin gave her a hard look. But the dwarf wrapped an arm around her and she seemed to find courage to face the Dark One. "The fairy order requires complete devotion. But if we fall in love, our loyalties are split, and that would be dangerous. So that's why I left, and then Dreamy did, too."

Rumplestiltskin snorted.

Belle swatted him lightly. "Well, I think it's very brave of them."

"Fine, fine!" Rumplestiltskin pretended to ignore them and went on to meet the others, all regular human citizens of Schlaraffenland who were in need of a berth or were simply adventurous or greedy. He didn't care, as long as they did their jobs competently and didn't betray them to Pan.

They didn't immediately set off for Neverland. They took a few days in local waters for training purposes. Rumplestiltskin was pleased to find that Nova wasn't entirely useless as a fairy — yes, she suffered a bit of clumsiness, but had learned to compensate by taking extra care. With her help and that of the Timers, Rumplestiltskin was able to brew a supply of antidote to the dreamshade poison, a recipe he had researched himself after the wedding, but hadn't expected to put into practice so soon.

Bae had warned them that it was likely they'd need it. "Some of the boys are loyal to Pan. Some are just afraid, but they'll attack us all the same. They have bows with arrows dipped in dreamshade poison."

Finally ready, Rumplestiltskin bound the Shadow into the sails and they set off for Neverland.

With the dagger in Zelena's hand, her Dark One was wonderfully obedient. He teleported them to his castle on her command. This version was just as grand as the one in Zelena's native reality, except far emptier. There was only one little obstacle to her future happiness — and that was easily removed.

The maid, Rumple's captive princess, met them in the great hall with a wide-eyed innocence that made Zelena want to smack her. What did the Dark One see in her? Well, time to nip this foolishness in the bud.

"R-rumple?" stammered the girl. She clutched a feather duster uselessly in front of her as if trying to ward off the inevitable. But this Belle had no magic. "Is something wrong?"

"He's done with you," said Zelena airily. "Go on, tell her. You don't want her anymore."

"I don't want you anymore," Rumple echoed flatly, though his eyes were fixed in horror on the maid.

"What?" The girl's face fell.

Disgusted at the look of betrayal on Belle's face — what did she have to feel betrayed about? She was just the help — Zelena decided this simply wouldn't do. They needed to end it, now. Her fingers tightened on the dagger. "Kill her. Rip out that fragile little heart of hers and crush it to dust."

Rumple made a choked sound, the horror on his face turning to an agonized plea.

Zelena cut in before he could embarrass himself. "Not a word. You have nothing more to say to her, have you, Rumple dear?"

Rumple stepped towards the girl, who made no attempt to flee.

"Rumple, please! Don't..."

It was quick. Zelena watched with satisfaction as the maid crumpled lifelessly to the ground. With a wave of her hand, she reduced the corpse to dust and sent the dust away to be scattered on the twelve winds.

Rumple sank to his knees, clutching at the feather duster that was the only sign that the girl had ever existed. His face twisted and became even uglier than usual, and he made a horrible keening noise.

"Shut up," snapped Zelena. "This is pathetic. You have me, now. Forget her." At the flash of hatred that he shot her way, Zelena made it an order. "Forget her."

Rumple shook his head mutely, but Zelena could see the command take root, forcing the memories away.

"Much better, dear," Zelena purred. She arranged her pet in his chair at the dining table and stroked his hair absently with the dagger. Then the smile faded from her face. The maid was gone, but a worse rival remained. Somewhere in this reality, there was another Zelena, and if she knew herself, that other Zelena would try to steal Rumple away from her. She sat down across from the Dark One and drummed her fingers on the table. "But we have another tiny problem, and you are going to help me take care of it..."