…so…it's been a minute. I'm sorry, I honestly don't know how it happened. I hit a roadblock and then my inspiration dried up and then I got all jaded about OUAT and I kinda forgot why I even started writing this story in the first place for a while. Naturally, once I remembered I was absolutely disgusted with myself for leaving it as long as I did. Fortunately, I never stopped writing completely. This would probably have taken twice as long to write from start to finish if I had.

Anyway, enough about me. Time for some angst, yeah?

The fairy was awoken by a dream. It was the same dream she had had in her cell for the previous three weeks. It always started the same way: she was at home.

One moment she could clearly see the cottage she was so familiar with – the dry flowers hanging from the ceiling, the pots and pans dangling from hooks on the walls. The next moment she would be surrounded by a swirl of colors. There were deep sky blues, vibrant forest greens, serene pinks spilling from her own wand, and stark white filling the gaps in between. Then the colors would begin to meld together into two distinct shades. Midnight blue encircled the fairy in its velvety grasp, but the sharpness of the white bled through, as if reminding her that it was still there to guide her.

And then green.

It wasn't a forest green, however, not like the magic she had seen mere minutes before. This was a radiant, almost cheerful green. Once the shock of being in a strange place had faded, the fairy realized it was grass. When she lifted her head to look around she saw that she had arrived laying on her stomach in a meadow filled with the same unmarred shade of green grass, broken only by a little house. It was her own cottage. But how could it be here? Her home was in the forest.

Suddenly, but slowly, the wooden door to the cottage swung open. There in the doorway stood a dark man against a dark background. He wore a dirty white uniform. An orderly of some kind. The fairy was immediately filled with dread, but she felt weighed down. She could not bring herself to stand, even when she heard the orderly's voice.

"Time to see the warden," it said, yet the orderly standing in the cottage had not parted his lips. The fairy watched his mouth twist into a sick smirk as the darkness from the opening around and behind him spread. This time there was nothing to break the purple-tinged blackness that was beginning to envelop her. And this time it was spreading slowly, practically taunting her. She could hear her own voice in her head, screaming at her limbs to move, begging her legs to let her stand and run. But they remained more still than they ever had. The darkness moved in overhead. She could no longer see the grass around her. A shadow fell over her and in the stillness – the silence of the purple and black sea – she heard a quiet laughter. The more she tried to struggle, to stand, to fight, the louder the sinister laughter grew, pressing in on her ears, helping the darkness suffocate her until there was hardly anything left of her to suffocate–

When her eyes sprung open she gasped a harsh, ragged gasp. Faintly, the fairy realized she must have stopped breathing in her sleep. She bolted upright, her hands landing on an unforgiving slab of springs and coils. A mattress? Then she took a few deep breaths, smoothing her thin blanket out under her sweaty palms and frowning. She knew she must still be in the manor, but where within it she had no idea.

Normally when she had bad dreams like this, she could go to her kitchen and make herself a cup of tea. Maybe someone else in the house would find her and she could comfort herself in the presence of another person, reminding herself that it was only a dream. That it was not real. The trouble with this one, however, was that it was very real – or at least, parts of it were. She had been torn from her home and had landed in a strange place. But the place at which she had arrived was a dark estate, formerly used as an asylum by a cruel warden. The asylum had housed many prisoners, including the warden's personal enemies and a stuttering groundsman named Henry Jekyll, who was still there and had at one time been a doctor. According to Dr. Jekyll, the warden employed his orderly – Poole – primarily to keep the patients in check and to prevent Jekyll himself from escaping. While Jekyll had not told her much about the warden, he had mentioned that his name was Mr. Hyde.

It was Mr. Hyde who had, upon her arrival at his estate, locked her in a cage which prevented her from using her magic. No matter how she protested, how she insisted she did not know why he believed her deserving of imprisonment, he simply would not listen. He was certain that she was working for the Dark One. And so, for three weeks she had lived in fear that Poole would forget to bring her thin soups and tepid water, or that when he did come to her cage it would be to interrogate her. The fairy had seen the baton he carried in action, only three days after her arrival in this strange land. Poole had caught Dr. Jekyll visiting her. His heavy weapon crackled with a light she had never seen before, and when it struck the doctor…she would never forget the noise he had made when he cried out in pain. Nor would she forget the shock that had coursed throughout her own body when she reached out to try to help him and her hand touched the metal bars of her cage. The white hot tremor that had shaken her to the marrow in her bones. But it paled in comparison to the expression of agony when it contorted Jekyll's features.

He had not returned to see her for four days after that. When Jekyll returned, he had no answers for her. He did tell her that she seemed to be a strange case. The warden would allow him to speak with her, but not to tell her anything he deemed important. So after three weeks without magic or warmth or solid food, the fairy still had no idea which realm she had fallen into.

And then, three weeks and two days after her arrival, the warden had finally come to see her again. She had not seen, nor heard directly from him since he had locked her inside her cage, but her memory of his appearance had not faded in the slightest. Mr. Hyde was tall. His hair was darker than the doctor's, his complexion paler. But what struck her the most were his eyes. They were dark and bloodshot and when he tapped his knuckles to her cage to wake her, the dim light seemed to liquefy his irises. The moment she saw them, her heart leapt to her throat. Some part of her knew that it was ridiculous, that the worst thing that could happen to her already had, but she could do nothing to stop the way that her stomach caved in on itself. The way her heart made it impossible to swallow. All it took was one look at his face – direct and firm – at the way he held himself with all of the confident swagger in the world, and she was frightened. His voice had not rung in the darkness, but rather it shot straight through the bars of the cage and found its target in the imprisoned fairy.

"My orderly tells me that you have yet to relinquish your story of how you came to this realm." The fairy was afraid to stand, but her neck was screaming at her to stop craning it so far. Slowly, she raised herself up on freezing feet. She had thrown her shoes off into a corner somewhere. They were probably still there. "He seems to think you expect us to believe you don't know." His hands were held behind his back. She swallowed hard.

"I don't," she rasped. Hyde had chuckled darkly, as if he somehow found her amusing.

"You must think me so naïve." His tone could almost have been called a lament. The warden stepped forward, coming closer to her metal prison, and the light shifted across his eyes so that there was only a glint in them. "Which brings me to why I'm here." The fairy's hands had started shaking at that, but she held her ground and tried not to consider that her unwavering stance may have more to do with her frozen feet than any confidence lurking beneath her fear. "You see, I've been looking for a way to best handle the problem of you from the moment you arrived, and it occurred to me that perhaps what we need is a little magic, so…" he pulled out a candle – burned down so far that it was nearly gone – from behind his back, "…I procured this." The candle may have been grey, or it may have been blue. There seemed to be some sort of symbol carved into the wax around the blackened wick, but from more than three feet away, the fairy could not see what it looked like. The foreboding never left her stomach, but a curiosity found its way in alongside it. She tried not to let it show on her face, guessing that this warden would respond better to dread than inquisitiveness. Still, she had had to ask.

"What is it?" Quiet though her voice was, the dry rasp seemed to be clearing away. Not for the first time, she was thankful that she had had Dr. Jekyll to talk to. Otherwise, her only words over the previous weeks would have been the errant plea to the orderly, Poole.

"A memory spell." She could not tell if Mr. Hyde was looking forward to the discomfort he would no doubt be causing her or if he was proud of himself for finding this solution.

Or for making me suffer while he looked for one. The fairy shuddered involuntarily. Hyde smirked.

"All of the memories you have concealed in your mind are going to play themselves out, and you are going to let them…" He seemed to grow taller somehow, his voice taking on a threatening edge. She shrunk back, wide eyes fixed on him. "…or remain here." The warden did not need to ask if she understood. He knew that she did, but she nodded anyway.

He seemed to be satisfied with this response because he looked away from her. Mr. Hyde pulled some sort of metal device out of his pocket and held it over the candle. The fairy flinched as it clicked once, twice, three times. Then, suddenly, a flame came bursting to light on the wick. Hyde replaced the device in his pocket but kept his eyes on the candle, which the fairy could see was purple once illuminated. The top layer of wax melted quickly, but in the flickering light she could see that the symbol etched into it looked like a capital letter B, closed with a swirl at the upper left corner. She could not help it. She drifted closer. Still being mindful of the bars, she leaned that she could see it better. As wired as she was, the edges of her vision were blurred. Yet with her eyes fixed on the candle, she could see it clearly. The way that it threw off light flared with magic. Through the bars she could feel the heat it emanated. The flame was warm like a bubble bath or even the first rays of the morning sun were warm, like it was trying to replace something she had lost for the moment. Belatedly, she realized that that was exactly what it was trying to do. To give the memories living within her mind a new life.

Suddenly, Hyde lifted the candle and blew the flame gently towards his prisoner. His breath should have extinguished the flame. Instead it wafted the scent towards her. Rosemary.

At first, neither of noticed the changes in the large room. Stiff as the fairy was, it was Hyde who first saw how the high ceiling was slowly fading into a lighter shade of grey. Then brown. By the time a close roof had begun to form, the fairy saw the walls shifting as well, drawing inward. Or were those walls? It was the strangest sensation; if she looked hard enough, she could see the bars of the cage she had been forced into by the man before her. She knew they were still in the manor, but the longer she went without blinking, the harder it was to distinguish dirty wall from homey open shelf. Hanging bunches of chamomile, lavender, and sage were close enough that if she reached out she felt sure that she could touch them. When she raised her hand, however, she immediately felt the urge to drop it. Like she had no business being a part of the scene she found herself surrounded by. No business standing on the uneven wooden floor, beside the arched door.

"My cottage," she gasped. The fairy felt more than saw Hyde glance at her sharply.

At that moment, three women came bursting in through the door. All of them were brunette with olive skin and one of them was her. Just as she thought her eyes could grow no wider, she realized that at least one of the women must have walked through her, and the other two had to have walked through Hyde. And yet she had felt nothing, so perhaps they had narrowly avoided her? Either way, none of them seemed aware of their presence.

Hyde watched them intently while the fairy beside him turned away. She knew this scene and could not bear to see it play out any more than she did within her dreams.

"Where is the book?" the tallest of the three asked sharply. She was dressed in green and looking to a short, plump woman in blue.

"How should I know?" the shorter woman asked defensively, her face set in what had to be a familiar frown.

"You were the last one to use it!" the tallest woman retorted. The third woman Hyde recognized as the fairy who stood beside him, dressed in pink and standing at a height between the others'. They all shared a similar expression. There were lines formed around their eyes, deep with worry. Their movements were frantic, rushed, and he could hazard a guess as to why. Outside, what had first appeared through the small windows to be a tranquil, sunny day had begun to cloud over. Hyde heard a rumble in the distance and though he knew the chill he felt was an effect of their true surroundings – the drafty room where his prisoner was held captive – his mind found it easier to attribute it to the gathering darkness.

"I see it, it's on the table!" Not once since discovering her on the grounds of his estate had Hyde heard his caged fairy's voice sound so strong. She was comfortable here.

Surely enough, when the tallest of the women – who seemed to be the leader of the others – followed her pointing finger, she found what she had been looking for. Held up in the dimming light, the book appeared to be a much darker grey than it truly was with faded black lettering on the front. The letters were too faint to be read, but the book itself crackled with a power that would frighten anyone unaccustomed to it.

"I'll find the spell, you two get ready, we don't have much time." The woman spoke with a controlled strain, like she was trying to keep fear at bay.

"We're not gonna make it," the short woman said without cynicism. She was scared.

"Don't say that, Merry!" the woman in pink insisted. "We'll make it, we'll be fine."

"Correction," the leader interjected, staring down at the page before her. "One of us will make it." The gazes of the other two women could not have snapped to her faster.

"What are you talking about?" the middle woman asked.

"This spell only works for one person. Only one of us will make it through the portal." At this, all three women exchanged wide-eyed glances. They were silent for a long moment, their leader's fingers holding tightly to the spell book, the one called Merry clutching a small vial of some dark liquid. Finally, the tallest of them turned fully to face her pink-wearing companion. "It's going to be you."

"What?" the other two chorused.

"Flora, no." The woman in pink was shaking her head and looking as if she might cry, eyes wide and glassy, imploring. "There has to be another way, we'll all go through together, we–"

"There is no other way!" the woman she had called Flora posited, sounding like she rarely raised her voice. "You are the strongest of us. No matter what happens to us, you'll be able to get to her. You'll find her, you have to." Her voice was cracking and Merry seemed shocked to hear it. Another long silence.

"…but you'll both be cursed." It was a weak protestation, voiced by someone who knew they were going to lose.

At that moment, another low rumble sounded. But this time, it was so close it may have come from only a few yards away. It seemed to jolt the leader in green into action.

"Wands, fairies," Flora commanded. She and Merry immediately pulled theirs out. The woman in pink hesitated, seemingly shell-shocked by the noise and the thought of having to leave her companions. But eventually they were all stood in a tight circle, wands held up before them. All of their wands were white and seemed to glow in the growing darkness, each with a gem set just above the sloping handle, corresponding with the color of their dresses. Green, pink, and blue. "Aim at the door." They spread out in front of the table, pointing their wands from arms stretched out towards the wooden door.

Hyde and his prisoner had the sense that they were pointing right at them, and both moved backwards, farther away from one another. Strangely, it was as if they had never moved. The angle from which they were viewing the scene did not seem to change, though they knew they were away from the door and out of the path of any stray magic.

"Clockwise," the leader said simply. The other two must have understood her, however, because they all began swirling their wands as one, moving clockwise. At first, only a few sparks trailed from their wand tips; green, pink, and blue. Gradually, more and more followed, then a steady flow of multi-colored smoke. The smoke seemed to change color just in front of the door and a large, flat, dark blue circle appeared. It rippled in midair and contained strains of white. Once it seemed it could grow no larger, the woman in pink lowered her wand, looking uncertainly first to her left at Merry, then to her right at Flora. Both women looked back at her, and though Flora's eyes were the only ones that held no tears, her face was a mask of distress. "Find our goddaughter, sister."

"Take this with you." Merry pressed the vial she had been holding into her sister's hand, clasping her fingers around it and hanging on, unwilling to let go.

"Be careful," Flora cautioned. The woman in pink nodded, tears leaking from the corners of her hazel eyes, and took the taller fairy's hand in her own. For a brief moment, the three sisters stood hand in hand. But then the moment was shattered when they heard a crack of thunder directly overhead. When the middle sister looked up, she saw dark smoke filtering in through a weakening ceiling. "Go!" There was no more time to argue. She dropped her sisters' hands and strode forward toward the portal. With only a fleeting glance back at them, she found herself swallowed up in a whirl of midnight blue and stark white. But not before she saw a bolt of blackness shoot through the ceiling, striking the portal and firing a white burst of magic back into the room. Two streaks of light reached out like greedy fingers, hungry for magic and finding two fairy wands, still raised to help the owner of their sister wand.

The last thing the fairy saw was both of her sisters seize up, then fall to the floor.

"No!"

That scream echoed around the hall, reverberating around inside the cage and bouncing off of the walls like they were rejecting it. The imprisoned fairy's throat had never known anguish like it before, and it was through eyes burning with tears that she saw her captor stumble back a step. The warden caught himself just as he teetered on the edge of one of the stairs leading to the cage. He was holding the candle stand between two tension-white fingers, the flame having gone out only moments before, judging by the wisps of smoke still loitering around the wick. The symbol he had carved into the wax had melted completely away and the faint smell of rosemary hung in the air between him and the fairy, who had also fallen back a step. She was barely standing, recognizing for the first time that night that she was exhausted. She had lost her sisters, been thrown into a cage, and had no real food or shelter for what had been weeks, but had felt like months.

Hyde's eyes found her just as she began swaying, looking at nothing in particular. If she had been looking at him, she would have noticed something remarkable: Mr. Hyde raised his eyebrows in something other than reproach. During none of his time with her had he done that – looked even vaguely concerned for her wellbeing, if only vaguely.

Taking his time, he gently set the candle down, and he pulled out his keyring. He turned the keys over one by one until he found a large, dirty copper key. By the time he did, the edges of the fairy's vision were blurring. Sparks danced everywhere she looked, like she was in a tunnel and only just seeing light for the first time in days. Her breath was growing shallow and echoing through her head. This could only mean that the spell had been cut short before it could finish on its own. The magic itself had been well done, but the warden clearly did not know the first thing about timing. He had invaded her mind and taken what little energy – what little strength – she had left.

Still moving as if he had all the time in the realms, Hyde pushed the key into the lock in the door of the cage and after a few turns, he pulled the door open. Just as the fairy was about to fall, he stepped forward and caught her. Had she been more aware, she may have cursed him for the smooth bastard he truly was.

"I tried to go back," she mumbled, barely intelligible to Hyde, close as his ears were to her mouth.

"Of course you did." She did not notice the sarcasm in his voice. He shifted her in his arms, half-kneeling and half-standing, trying to figure out how best to maneuver her.

"My sisters…spell should have worked."

"It did," he muttered, looking out towards the still open door to the hallway. Hyde thought about calling out to Poole, but decided against it. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, close to where Jekyll was tucked away, he realized that this was what awkwardness must have felt like.

"No," she groaned. Hyde thought she could not have known what she was saying, but she was adamant nonetheless. When he glanced back down at her, he noticed that there were tears rolling down the sides of her face. "I failed…I…couldn't find her…" And with that, she was out cold.

The fairy did not wake when Hyde made his decision to lift her fully into his arms, tucking one arm under her knees and wrapping the other around her shoulders. Her dress really was dirty, but somehow still soft under his fingertips. He must have imagined that her hand was holding tightly to the lapel of his coat. She did not stir while he carried her with ease through the halls of the manor, not once during their walk up one flight of stairs and into a room, lightly dusted from disuse but cleaner than any of the rooms downstairs. With less care than he perhaps could have, he deposited her onto a mattress with very little give, then turned away to leave. Maybe it was her complete silence behind him, or maybe it was the cold seeping into his arms where she had been only moments before, but for some reason he felt compelled to go back and drag a thin blanket over her. He would have to tell Poole to bring her a sweater. Or perhaps he should leave it to the good doctor. It had been too long since his groundsman had had anything remotely worthwhile to do.

This time, when Hyde turned to go, he managed to follow through. It was only when he had reached the bottom of the stairs and was returning to her cage to retrieve his candle that he fully comprehended what had just taken place. He stopped, one hand on the banister, and wondered at what should have occurred to him much earlier.

What the hell did I help her for?

Several hours later, when the fairy had dreamed her recurring nightmare and opened her eyes once again, it took her a few moments to notice what had awoken her. It was only when the source of the noise spoke up that she saw it. Or rather, she saw him.

"Oh!" she heard from the doorway to her right. Her head swiveled around to look at the figure standing there, inching its way back. "Er, pardon…" the man stuttered.

"Dr. Jekyll," she acknowledged, her voice even raspier than it had been the night before. Now there was light streaming through the door and patches of lackluster brightness on the floor in front of the small, grubby window. She tried to clear her throat, but it only served to stick the back of her mouth together in a silencing wall.

"Yes, I, er…I was just…" He hovered in the doorway, unsure of what to do or where to go. Upon closer inspection, she could see that he was holding what seemed to be a short pile of wrinkled clothing, a pair of boots, and a glass. She tried to speak again, but all she could manage was a near-silent mangled exhalation. Then she tried, again unsuccessfully, to clear her throat once more. This seemed to jolt the doctor into action. "Oh, here." He stepped forward carefully and held the glass out to her, and she gratefully accepted it. A few slow sips of lukewarm water later, she almost felt like her throat had been sanded down. It was enough for her to form speech again. "Any better?"

"Yes, thank you." Jekyll noticed that her voice was not quite back to full capacity, but it was certainly better than it had been even the last time he had seen her. Absently, he wondered just how dehydrated she was.

"Are you alright? What happened? Poole refused to tell me why you had been moved," he haltingly explained, brow furrowed. His head was angled so that he could see her better and his shoulders were slouched so as to appear less intimidating. Even still, he towered over her, and she lightly patted the unyielding mattress beside her. Hesitantly, he glanced over his shoulder, the fairy spoke up.

"Sit, please."

"I shouldn't-I…I'm not supposed to stay for long–"

"You're a doctor, yes?" she asked in a rare interruption. His questioning gaze returned to her.

"Yes," he answered.

"So act doctorly," she suggested.

"But I'm not that kind of doctor." She gave him a tempered look, which he imagined was meant to come off as stern, but only looked like a weak plea. When he paused again, she repeated herself.

"Sit down, Dr. Jekyll." He had told her before that she could call him Henry. She had ignored him each time, so he did not bother to repeat himself. Instead, he set the boots down on the floor and gingerly sat beside her, allowing her to adjust her position farther in towards the wall before rephrasing his earlier question.

"What happened?" The fairy took a short, deep breath.

"The warden came to see me. He cast a spell that allowed him to see into my memories. He wanted to know how I got here," she gestured loosely to their surroundings. Jekyll continued to gaze at her with concern.

"To the Land of Untold Stories," he inferred. He could practically see her ears perk up as she abruptly lifted her head to look at him.

"Is that where we are?" All of the color in the doctor's face drained away. "I wasn't sure this place even existed, I can't believe it's real," she mused.

"Oh no-no, no, I didn't mean to tell you that." His voice was filled with alarm and he was leaning away from her now.

"No-hey, it's okay." Without thinking, she reached out with the hand not holding her glass of water and wrapped it around his free hand, weakly attempting to hold him in place. Whether because the contact startled him or because he just wanted to stay put, it worked. "Who am I going to tell?" It was a bad joke, but he chuckled anyway, feebly. She gave him a warm half smile and went on. "Anyway, I think I passed out once the spell was over. He must have brought me here, but I don't know how."

Jekyll thought he knew. But his fellow captive had been through enough; he could spare her the details. Especially when those details shed light on a softer, more…well, Jekyll-esque side to the formidable Mr. Hyde. He cleared his throat.

"Yes, well, I am glad to see you out of that cage." He gave her a drawn smile of his own, and a flicker at the corner of her mouth renewed her own. Then he lifted his hand away from hers to place on top of the stack of clothes he had brought with him. "These are for you," he explained, setting them down on the mattress. "I have been informed that you are as free to roam as I am, provided you stay away from the lab." Her brows knitted together immediately and he seemed to consider something. "And I don't imagine you will be straying too close to that cage that the warden kept you in."

"He doesn't want me locking myself away again?" Jekyll raised his eyebrows as if to confirm it. "I would think he'd be relieved if I did."

"And I would not." It was a simple statement in and of itself, but the fairy heard it loud and clear. She knew that when people went through hardship together, they often bonded through it, but she had never experienced it herself. Not until arriving in this strange land. She gave him an even warmer smile than before. Jekyll nodded to her once, amiably, and stood. Just before exiting the room, he spoke up again. "I imagine I will be easy enough to find," he said.

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