Once Upon Another Time

by Anti-Kryptonite

"Kill me," Zoso hisses. "No," Rumplestiltskin decides. (Rumplestiltskin controls rather than kills, Bae negotiates rather than runs, Cora delegates rather than confronts, Regina cooperates rather than rebels, and still the curse is cast, the Savior comes, the boy believes, and worlds are torn apart by a father's love. How much really would change if one decision was altered?)

21. Child Of Darkness

A/N: This chapter was HARD, so apologies for the slight delay, but climaxes don't, unfortunately, just write themselves. Just know that I am working hard on finishing up this behemoth of a story. I hope you all enjoy this chapter - Bae's flashbacks have turned into some of my favorites to really get to delve into. Thanks for sticking with me as we close in toward the end!

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Chapter 21: Child Of Darkness

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-Flashback-

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Never trust anyone, not even yourself. Of all the lessons Baelfire had learned, that was the most universal. Beggars on the side of the road were cursed sorcerers in disguise all too willing to manipulate kindness into murder. Mothers were kidnappers looking for bargaining chips. Pirates would never be fathers and would sell you sooner than love you. Brothers were nothing more than Lost Boy gangs little better than hyena packs with their brutal politics and shifting loyalties. Boys who flew might as well be vultures, feasting on your heart even before you were dead.

(Papas who loved and cared and cried existed only to hurt you. To taunt you. They weren't actually for you. Not for Baelfire, who'd become Pan's shadow and turned into everything that Papa hated.)

"I told him you ran," Pan said, savoring every word, when he finally released Bae from his torment. "I told him that tales of the Spinner—his father, the Dark One—terrified you so badly that you ran far and you ran fast just to escape him. He cried, as he always does, so I offered him a parting gift." Peter's shrug was casual, triumphant. "It's not my fault that he didn't take it."

Bae had been trembling, hunched on his knees, his abrupt exit from Pandora's Box back into Neverland (the sudden, impossible cessation of horrors) so abrupt that his mind couldn't process it, let alone take in what Pan was saying.

(Not then, anyway. Not yet.)

"Truthfully, though," Pan crouched down to look at Bae. "I think hearing that you hated him was something of a relief. Now he can be guilt-free about giving up on you while he turns his attention to amassing that power he likes so much. Guess the giants shouldn't expect a visit after all."

Pan spoke on, but Bae let the words wash over him. He found himself staring, entranced, at the details of Pan's face, so close that Bae could see eyes the same color as his own staring back at him. Peter Pan—this ageless boy Bae had been so terrified of that he'd sentenced himself to agony he couldn't imagine. This old man too afraid of death to face it like every other person.

A boy, but an ancient, trapped in his old ways, stuck in a rut.

Pandora's Box was still in Pan's hand. A silver box with a red jewel winking out between illegible script. So close. So solid. So easy to imagine in its every particular when Bae had spent untold lifetimes throwing himself against the interior confines of that box screaming for mercy that never came.

Not there. But in Neverland…ah, in Neverland, if you could imagine it, you could create it.

Bae curled in on himself and imagined (a fake box in Pan's hand, the real one hidden in his own hands, balled up between his stomach and his knees).

And he kept imagining. Hadn't that been his deal with Peter Pan? He'd play, and he'd play to win.

So he did. For decades. Until he'd carved out new maps and fashioned a prison for the Shadow that constantly dogged his steps. Until he learned, in his own turn, to manipulate Pan (Peter should have remembered his own lesson: never trust anyone).

Easier, now, after Bae's time in Pandora's Box.

After all, inside its confines, trapped with the greatest darkness known to humanity, all Bae had seen, all he'd experienced were might-have-beens. Could-have-beens. Should-have-beens. Regrets on a cosmic level, played out in concentric rings of despair (there was no greater pain than regret; no vaster grief than hope squashed; no deeper wound than the ones you inflicted on yourself). Bae had seen (had lived through) a thousand different ways he could have avoided Neverland. A hundred variations of his life before the Dark One, only some of which ended on a battlefield as Ogre fodder. Multiple iterations of how he could have saved his papa, saved himself, lived a full and happy life without ever getting mixed up in magic. Even a few (so very few) possible ways he might have defeated Pan entirely, might have made his own deal with the soul of Neverland and become its new god. He'd played a million billion games with Pan and learned his moves, and though the mind was a slippery thing, Bae's memory like smoke, wisping away in the night air, he retained enough.

Enough to win a reprieve. To flee Neverland with a sword and a coconut and a flame (and a box) and find himself right back where he'd started before second stars and never-dawning mornings.

The world without magic. But different than he remembered. Faster. Louder. Brighter. Too much. In fact, everything was too much. Tastes exploded on his tongue, sights stung his eyes, smells made him sick, and every hurt pierced so deep that he remembered, constantly, that death would be a lot easier to achieve here than it had been in Neverland.

He ended up on the streets again, but Bae had learned a lot between this time and the last. (Never trust anyone, not even yourself.) And this time, he wasn't a good boy, raised to be kind, to be brave, to be helpful. No, now he was a feral creature, wild and untamed, and here, finally, was the silver lining to all Pan's cruel games, because now Bae could take care of himself.

Stealing food was easy, pickpocketing money from unsuspecting strangers mere child's play (though he kept waiting, each second, for his latest marks to turn into krakens or mermaids, sirens or reptilian predators; kept expecting this entire world to melt back into the darkness of Neverland while Pan crowed his vicious delight in this new game). By using both his imagination and his honed wits, it was easy to come up with ever better ways to steal. To get ahead. To both win himself freedom he never quite trusted and ensure he was never the dupe in someone else's games.

(Pirate, Bae named his reflection whenever he couldn't avoid it. This wasn't what he was supposed to have been. Shepherd. Spinner. Even weaver. But not this, thief and liar and everything Rumplestiltskin would have flinched from.)

(Rumplestiltskin. Papa. Creature from another world, as fantastical in this world as Dark Ones and flying boys. Gone forever. Outside Bae's reach. Baelfire put Papa aside, locked him in a box in his mind and kept him there, like a piece of hope trapped in Pandora's empty, terrible container.)

Never trust anyone. Bae didn't. He didn't even trust the ground beneath his feet, or the sky above his head, the solid objects in his hand. Anything that can be imagined can be created, and Pan's imagination had always been strongest of all.

(Or was it? What, then, was the point of all the boys he dragged back to power his faltering mind?)

Bae trusted nothing. He looked over his shoulder constantly, prowled in the darkest of corners or strode through brightest sunlight, anything to avoid the shadows that crept up behind him, reached out with thin, incorporeal fingers to drag him back to torment and pain. He searched every stranger's eyes for glints of mischief, hints of recognition, signs of Pan.

Trust no one.

(Not even girls who broke into cars and smiled at him. Especially not girls with golden curls and clever fingers and a heart that had not learned yet that trust is a wound waiting to bleed.)

He kept moving. Always, always moving, changing, sleeping somewhere different every night, searching in every direction for the pursuit surely just on his heels.

Until…until he began to see it. The thing he'd hardly dared to believe might happen for him. The only hope on the horizon that he'd ever thought might actually permanently succeed.

Time.

It passed.

And Bae started growing up. Aging. Getting older.

Suddenly, he couldn't find enough mirrors, couldn't look at his reflection often enough. No matter how many times he checked, the progress continued, real and solid and undeniable: he grew taller (not too tall, though; Papa had been short, he thought he remembered). Broadened. Bulked up. The angles of his face changed, the proportions of his weight shifted, the feelings and thoughts in his mind altered, bit by bit. A beard grew on his chin and his lips, and he left it there, desperate for the tactile reassurance that time was still moving. And then, one day, he even saw tiny little creases around his eyes, around his mouth—mark of where wrinkles might form, one day, if he were allowed to stay within time's constraints.

That was the day Bae finally let himself cry.

He'd done it. He'd won. He'd escaped Pan's clutches. He wasn't a boy anymore, no longer a Lost soul Pan could collect and hoard and torture.

Bae curled up on the back seat of a car that had been left unlocked, and he cried and cried and cried until he thought maybe his tears were the elixir he'd been waiting for to wash the last of Neverland's taint from him.

He was free.

And when he woke to find his stolen car being stolen by a girl who walked like a duckling and sparkled like a swan, he forgot not to trust.

(He forgot that the one he couldn't trust, above anyone and everyone, was himself.)

He let himself trust. Let himself hope.

"Emma Swan," she said, and he smiled and named himself too.

It wasn't the first time he'd used the name, but it became his real name, his only name, because Emma said it back to him (because Neal Cassidy had wrinkles around his eyes and gray in his hair, even if prematurely, and he would never be a Lost Boy). He loved the way Emma said it. At first suspiciously (Never trust anyone), and then tentatively, and then (his favorite) happily.

She gave him hope (sometimes, he wondered if his soul recognized hers immediately, latched on so quickly, because he'd seen her in Pandora's Box; he wondered if she was the speck of hope left behind in that tiny prison, the only comfort he'd known in his eternal hell). She offered him an escape from the nightmares he couldn't catch (Flypaper for nightmares? he asked, so desperate to believe, wondering if he could imagine its effectiveness into being), and then became that escape when she told him the words he'd long thought would never be for him.

"I love you," she said, and Bae couldn't love her (he was broken, he was a fugitive, he was an ancient, moldering skeleton deep within the form of this new man she'd helped emerge from his cocoon), but Neal could.

"I love you too," he said. The words tasted foreign on his tongue. They felt like a line for someone else.

But they were true. He felt them in every bit of his growing-older body.

And he was free now. And he could be happy, in a home, in Tallahassee (like a magic word, a mythical land, but better, because there was no magic to destroy it). Maybe. (He'd never seen this, in Pandora's Box, but then, he'd never seen himself fully escape Pan either.)

He was such a fool. Such a stupid, foolish idiot.

Because Pan never let anyone go. Because Bae was never allowed to be the winner and Neal was nothing more than make-believe and Neverland's reach was longer than he could have ever imagined.

"Hello, Baelfire."

Those were the words that destroyed Neal. That shattered apart the fragile wisps of the new life he'd constructed around Bae's decaying skeleton. That reminded him of what he never should have forgotten.

Captain Hook smiled at Bae, his hook glinting silver in the moonlight, and Neal forgot about the watches (about the timepiece he'd clasped over Emma's wrist because time moved, with her, it wasn't stuck, wasn't trapped, wasn't a prison but a world of possibilities).

"No," he said, but of course, it was.

"I've been looking for you for a long time," Jones said. He lounged, playing a part, setting up the play.

But this wasn't Neverland. It was a world without magic, without time for games like the ones Pan and Hook loved to play, and Neal knew how to live in it.

He attacked immediately. He tackled Hook to the ground, hit him over and over again until the pirate's body went slack, and then Neal was up and running.

Running far. Running fast. Never looking back.

(Because if he looked back, Pan would too. If he admitted what he wanted more than anything, Pan would use it against him. If he dared to try to say goodbye, Pan would make sure that no goodbyes ever lasted and that both their tortures would continue—forever.)

So he left Emma behind, sent her money and a car and a keychain (and a box).

And he became everything he'd ever hated (thief and liar and lost boy and runaway and abandoner and alone).

Never trust anyone, he should have told her (instead of I love you), especially me.

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-Storybrooke-

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Emma's not the biggest fan of being in charge of a whole town (which is technically an entire world, but, nope, not going to think about that), but after one doozy of a kiss that she can't regret (hard as she's currently trying, Emma can never regret anything to do with Henry), it seems she doesn't have much choice. Like it or not, they all consider her the Savior and one crisis after another leaves her little choice but to keep scrambling (and failing) to live up to that title. A title she's never wanted. A title forced on her by the one person who should have known just how badly it fits her.

"August, open up!" she yells, banging on the door of this overgrown trailer deep in the woods.

Nothing. Just like there was nothing but Marco's inscrutable silence at the workshop and Archie's useless platitudes at Granny's and Sister Bleu's selective memory loss when Emma asked around for any sightings of a walking, talking life-sized Ken doll.

"August!" Emma yells. She bangs a few more times against the rusted door before letting her hand splay out against it. "Please," she whispers.

The door creaks open an inch. When Emma pushes against it, though (her heart rate picking up because this is how horror movies herald the newest impending death), it catches against something. Her badge weighs suddenly heavy on her belt. She realizes all over again how fa from town she is, how isolated the trailer stands—she wonders exactly how vulnerable a man made entirely of wood and magic really is.

"August?"

"Don't come in."

Through the years, Emma's heard August sound a lot of ways. Jaded, falsely wise, cocky, caring, angry, wistful, teasing…a lifetime played out through the emotions coloring his voice, comfort derived through that familiar, audible connection between them. And now, with a door held half-open, half-shut between them, Emma finds herself (despite her flickering anger) clinging to that voice.

And finding so little familiar in it.

It echoes. Thrums. A human voice transmuted through wood. Worse, it sags. Defeated. Resigned. And only now, in its glaring absence, does Emma realize how much hope was routinely packed into August's every action, decision, word.

(An abandoned boy, pressed by the responsibilities of an entire world, alone and trapped in an alien environment. Always looking ahead. Missing the dad he could remember. Desperate to be proved sane. Never able to fully integrate into this new world, forever remembering the world that gave him magical life. Hounded by reminders in the form of his own transforming flesh. Salvation always just in arm's reach but unobtainable, cynical and defiant and never afraid to let him know how much she hates everything that matters to him.)

Without conscious thought, Emma finds herself pushing insistently against the door. It doesn't budge, held as if rooted in place.

"Emma, stop. Please."

She falls still.

"I don't…you shouldn't have to see me like this. I don't want you to see me like this."

"This is stupid, August," she says. "Let me in. You should be happy I'm here and that I'm still willing to talk to you after all the lies you've told me."

His laugh actually hurts to hear, the bitterness scraping all her raw edges. "Oh, trust me, I remember every lie. Impossible not to when each one's claimed a square inch of my skin."

Selfless, brave, and true. Isn't that how the story of Pinocchio goes? She knows she read the story in Henry's book, once, before her own encounter with poisoned apples and magical sleep, but back then, the story didn't stand out to her. Next to all the others, it hadn't mattered.

Now, it matters (and now, she can hardly remember it, and isn't that just a common theme around here?).

"Doesn't magic care about extenuating circumstances?" she finally asks.

He's quiet a long time before asking, "Do you care about extenuating circumstances?"

And just five minutes ago, her anger would have answered for her. But now…now there's a grain of hope, a tiny drop of familiar wistfulness in his voice. And Emma's anger is no match for that.

"Yes," she says. "I care. I have to. Henry forgave me for…for a lot, and all because he seems to realize I had reasons. So…I think I can do the same for you. Just, please," she adds, "please, August, just…tell me your reasons."

Silence is her only answer. Of course.

"August!"

"For what? What do you mean?" he blurts. He's just behind the door. Now that she's not expecting a crisis and anticipating a body, Emma can feel him leaning against the door, keeping it from budging an inch. They've never really faced each other completely open, have they? Never fully transparent, always with their lies between them (August with all…this, and Emma with her stubborn insistence that she's fine and independent and unscarred, whole).

"I can't do this," Emma breathes, and she sags against the door, her bluster fading like the magic she unleashed with her lips (seriously, what is her life?). "I'm no Savior, August. You know that better than anyone. This isn't me. I don't do heroics and epic battles and fairytale crap. I do…I do leaving and being on my own and finding bad guys who use fake IDS, not magic wands. Why did you bring me here when you had to know all I'd ever be able to do is disappoint everyone?"

The door rattles (but doesn't open).

"Emma." Her name, in his voice, is the most familiar sound of her life. It's the backdrop to her childhood loneliness, the accent to her teenage rebellions, the one thing she missed while on the run and learning to dream of Tallahassee, her lifeline after she gave up her baby and got a car and a stack of money in return. It's the only family she's ever been able to depend on.

Emma closes her eyes and imagines a phone between them instead of the flimsy door, pretends the hollow thrum is due to a bad connection rather than his own newly wooden chest.

"Emma," he says, "I brought you here because I never doubted, not even for a second, that you are the Savior. I knew you would break the curse because Rumplestiltskin told me you would and he can see the future. I knew you were my only chance of finding magic enough to keep me alive because Jiminy Cricket told me, just before I stepped through that enchanted tree, that no matter what happened, taking care of you would be the way to save myself. But…" He pauses. Emma strains forward, desperate for something, anything, to hold onto that isn't prophecy or magic.

"But," August says, firmly, "I kept coming back to you, and I kept calling you, and I stayed with you because…because I love you. Because you're my family. And because I know. I know that you, Emma—your stubbornness and your tenacity and your brash kindness and your heart that you give away and refuse to ever fully take back no matter how badly it's mishandled—you will never disappoint me. Or Storybrooke. Or your parents. Or Henry. You are what I banked everything on. What I'm still banking on. And you've never, ever let me down."

For the first time in weeks, Emma doesn't see Mary Margaret crying in David's arms after the curse was broken and they came face to face with Emma. She doesn't see the pain lines bracketing David's eyes and shadowing his hollow cheeks with something she can't help. She doesn't see Henry's shocked face when she told him his dad was alive and real and here but that he couldn't depend on him for anything. She doesn't see Neal, hunched and alone in a hospital corridor, on an empty street, staring at a car that couldn't mean anything to him, looking like a lost little boy.

Instead, when Emma closes her eyes on her new reality, she sees August. August as flesh and blood. August visiting her in prison, a spark of color, offering her a refuge. August smirking to introduce her to a new small town. August bringing her to her son and watching her meet her father and waiting for her to save him from murder charges…and leaning, wooden and alone, against a door just to encourage her.

In her life, Emma's found so many people. Most of them were undeserving of the time and attention it took, but she tracked them anyway, hunted them down and confronted them to get them where they needed to be. But for the first time, she realizes that August is the only person who's looked for her. The only one she's never had to search for because he's always been there. The only one who never lets her stay hidden away, but who tracks her down and finds her and gets her to where she belongs.

"I'm going to find a way to save you," she promises. "If I really am a Savior, then…then I'll be yours."

It's easy enough to say. Quite a bit harder to actually follow through on. Emma hangs around the trailer for just a few more minutes (more procrastination, really, than any belief that August will open the door for her; he's done as much as he can), then heads back to town.

If she's going to actually seek out magic—if she's going to learn just how far this whole Savior business goes—then she knows exactly who she has to talk to.

And if she wants to talk to Gold, there's only one thing that will get her in the door.

"Emma!"

The amount of surprise in Neal's face is so much as to be comical if Emma weren't busy slathering on endless layers of unconcern and apathy and indifference and numbness (anything to cover up the way she can't help but care about the first man she ever fell for, the man who made Tallahassee into a dream she still hasn't managed to attain).

"I need you to come with me," she says bluntly. She doesn't sit down across from him at the booth he's claimed, doesn't look around to see just how many people are watching this altercation (the one thing more annoying about Storybrooke than magic is how fast gossip spreads).

"Okay," he says, and though he drags the word out, he stands and winds his scarf around his neck without the slightest trace of hesitation. "What's up?"

"I need to talk to Gold and you're my ticket through the door."

And here comes the hesitation. Neal actually stumbles over his own feet as they leave Granny's and head into the chilly air. There's a strange gracelessness about the way his hands fall to hang empty at his sides before he seems to realize how much they give him away and he stuffs them in his pockets. Emma wouldn't use the word grace to describe Neal, but there is an easiness to him, a fluidity to his movements, as if he's ready to run at the slightest instant (and he is, isn't he?), as if he walks on the balls of his feet and could fight or fly without any sign of transition between the two. But now, at the mention of Gold, he's flat-footed, weighted down, all his escapes too far away to make a move for them.

"Why do you want to get mixed up with him?" he finally asks.

Emma doesn't look at him. "There's quite a few people I'm mixed up with that I'd rather not be, but here we are."

"Emma." Neal picks up his pace so he can get in front of her. Emma just keeps moving, forcing him to walk backward. "Seriously. What do you want with Rumplestiltskin?"

"Nothing," she snaps. "But in case you haven't noticed, there's a lot of magic going crazy in this town, and the only one who seems to be in control of magic is daddy dearest."

Neal actually flinches. "He's not in control of it," he says dully. "And no matter what's happening in this town, magic isn't going to be the answer."

"Oh, yeah?" Emma stops in place and sets her hands on her hips. "That's easy for you to say, Neal. You can pick up and leave whenever you want to. Just disappear back to wherever it is you disappeared to last time. But I can't do that, okay? David's dying and it's something no medicine can fix. August is stuck as a wooden puppet and the fairies don't seem to be able to help him. Henry won't leave until he figures out why everyone's trapped in place here instead of in some magical fairytale land. So don't tell me that magic isn't the answer when there's no way in this world without magic to fix any of these problems!"

Mist drifts between them, expelled from her heavy pants as she stares at Neal. And this is why she hasn't looked at him. Why she's looked at his ear or his neck or past him entirely. Because now that she's looking (now that she can't look away), she sees the signs of age. Of wear and tear. Of sleepless nights and long days on the run. Of regret and pain and hope he doesn't dare believe can be for him.

(She wonders, like she's tried so hard not to, if he still gets those terrible nightmares of his. She wonders if he still keeps a dreamcatcher around. If he can go back to sleep without her curling around him and whispering his name and that she loves him and that he's safe. She wonders if he sleeps at all or if, like her, he's kept awake by imaginings of what could have been if only he hadn't run.)

"I'm not going to leave," Neal says. It's such a quiet statement, so anticlimactic, that it takes Emma's breath away. "I can't. You may not believe me, but leaving you was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I won't do it again. Not when I have a son depending on me."

And just that, the easy way he says son, the simplistic method of claiming Henry without even an attempt at weaseling out of the responsibility, makes Emma believe him. (Maybe one day she'll regret it, maybe one day he'll prove her wrong by disappearing again, but then again, maybe not. Maybe he'll stay.)

Neal turns around and starts walking. It's not until he looks over his shoulder and says, "You coming?" that she realizes he's headed in the direction of Gold's shop.

He's going to help her.

Relief sits heavy and silken inside her, like ice cream sundaes and peanuts and cotton candy and all the other treats Neal got for her (so many of them he didn't seem familiar with, and Emma wonders how many of those she was actually introducing him to).

"Thank you," she makes herself say.

"You're right," he says. "No more running. I guess it's time to make a stand."

Anyone else might think the words as blasé as his tone implies. Emma sees the clench of his jaw, the waver of his hands, and recognizes the terror behind his mask.

"Neal," she says slowly (she's not really sure she wants to open this can of worms; she's not sure she's ready to believe whatever his answers are). "Why do you think Peter Pan is hunting you?"

"Besides the fact that it's what he's done my entire life?" Neal looks away, only his profile left for Emma to read. Unfortunately for him, Emma once made a study of every inch of Neal Cassidy, and no matter what name he goes by (no matter how many years she's spent convincing herself that she hates him), she knows what it means when his eyes are tight, when his jaw is locked, when his hands are stuffed deep in his pockets.

"Neal," she says, and he sighs, his shoulders rounding, smoothing out every angle, every edge, everything that might give him away. Camouflage, she thinks, and wonders just where he learned it.

"Hook was there, like I told you, that night with the watches. So I ran. Hook came after me. So I ran farther. There were these two men. They ambushed me later. I barely got away. And for a while, I thought I was safe. But I should have known better."

"You think he's coming to Storybrooke?"

"I think I'd be surprised if he's not here already." Neal shoots her a sideways look. "I got complacent, Emma. With you, I had an excuse. It was the first time. I'd…I got older. I thought I was safe from him, too much of an adult to be a Lost Boy anymore. But Pan never lets anyone else win his games. And I should have remembered that. Instead, I let it happen again. Just a year or two ago, I thought he'd forgotten about me, or, I don't know, found a new plaything. I got a job, an apartment, and…there was a woman. Tamara."

Emma looks away. She doesn't like how close Gold's shop is already. Doesn't like the bite to the air that makes her shrug deeper into her jacket. Doesn't like that she has to be here, walking side by side with an ex from the past. (Doesn't like this woman, or the immediate rise of emotion in her own breast at the sound of Neal saying this name Emma's never had cause to think of before but that she abruptly decides she hates.)

"She was kind. And an adult. And so firmly grounded in this world. And I…" Neal shrugs and jams his hands impossibly deeper in his pockets. "I let myself think I could belong here. But then August found me, said that you'd been wondering where I was and he was there to find out once and for all. And he knew my name. And when he saw Tamara…he knew her."

"She was from there too?" Emma scoffs.

"No. I don't think so. All I know is August saw her picture and he said that he'd met her once in Hong Kong. Both of them were looking for magic, and he says she betrayed him and left him for dead."

"Magic. In Hong Kong." For all her skepticism, Emma remembers August's visit to Hong Kong on the trail of some story about a magical healer, remembers his phone call to her reminding her of their plan to visit some little town in Maine called Haven for her birthday. She remembers that when he came back, he was unusually reticent about his recent vacation but also overly zealous about their trips to little towns.

"After August left town, I asked Tamara about him. About Hong Kong. She tried to kill me. Or capture me. I didn't really ask a lot of questions. The fact that she knew my name was Baelfire was answer enough."

"What happened?"

Neal swivels his head to meet her eyes. "I killed her."

What?

He keeps walking, but Emma doesn't. She stops stock-still and stares after him.

Neal Cassidy is a thief. A fugitive. A traitor. A coward. But for all she's talked herself around to all his bad points, Emma's never once considered him a murderer.

"I told you," Neal says without looking back, "I didn't get the luxury of picking what fairytales I got to inherit. The truth is, my childhood was coopted by the Dark One. I was kidnapped by pirates. Stolen by Shadows. Raised in a nightmare world where learning to be a monster was the only way to survive. And I've had to do things dark enough to blacken even your Savior heart just to keep Pan from swallowing this world the way he did Neverland. And I can't be sorry for it. Not while he's still out there trying to find a way in."

Bold words, but he still hasn't met her eyes. Still hasn't turned to face her. Still can't look away from the lit sign with his father's fake name emblazoned over it.

"Sure," Emma hears herself say. "Keep telling yourself that."

"I'm not proud of it. But it was her or me, and I…I'm not good at losing. Not anymore."

Emma feels a scoff rising in her throat, an immediate response to such a cocky declaration. Only, it's not a declaration. It's a shamed whisper, a self-loathing confession, a quiet secret that has Neal finally showing an edge in his exposed throat.

"Don't look at me to judge you," Emma says with false indifference. "I'm not exactly a saint myself."

"Aren't you?" he whispers.

Emma ignores that and yanks open the door to Gold's shop. Over her head, a bell rings a chiming melody.

"Gold!" she yells. "You in here?"

"Well, it is my shop," Gold snarks as he emerges from the backroom. The sneer on his lips dies a quick death at the sight of Neal stepping up beside Emma.

"Bae," he whispers (Emma still thinks he doesn't even realize he says it, like the name's as natural to him as air and he can't keep it in indefinitely).

"I'm here to make sure you listen to Emma," Neal says shortly. "That's all."

"How hero-like," Gold says caustically despite the shaken look in his eyes. "Already graduated to using real people for leverage, Sheriff Swan?"

"Don't tempt me," she snaps, and isn't sure why she relaxes a hair at the answering smile just barely curving Gold's lips.

"And what is it you wish to talk to me about?" Gold waves one hand through the air. "Don't tell me. Your charming father is at death's door. Your wooden brother is trapped and hiding away. And your mother is caught in a web of lies spun by the oh-so-virtuous fairies, all set on destruction to cover the gaping hole in her life that you've left by avoiding her. And somehow, you think I have the solution to all these problems."

If Emma were given one wish, she decides right in that second that she would, without hesitation or regret, immediately wish that she was never in a position to have to talk to Gold again.

"Well, it seems like you're already ten steps ahead," she says with a bitter twist to her mouth. "Do you also already have solutions ready, then?"

"Solutions?" Gold darts a sidelong glance to Neal. "I was recently told that magic is not a solution to problems. In fact, it never does anything good."

"Unbelievable," Neal scoffs quietly.

"Of course, I have magic, and thus, Belle is alive and well without a hint of the bullet wound that was killing her. While you…" Gold arches his brows. "Well, you seem to have quite a few problems piling up."

"Stop being the Dark One for two seconds," Neal demands.

Sadness turns Gold's eyes dark as he looks to his son. "I can't," he says lowly. "You know there's only one way for that to ever happen."

Neal looks away.

Emma steps forward (probably unwisely) to put herself between the two. "Look, whatever's going on between you, I don't care. What I care about is—"

"Yes, yes, the people you love." Gold comes around the counter, his cane, as ever, an extension of himself. "Let me tell you a secret about yourself, Emma."

"Another one?"

"You are the product of True Love. Such a thing is rare, and nearly impossible to predict. The one thing that is certain is that you possess something, a spark, shall we say, within yourself."

"I already broke your stupid curse."

"A mere byproduct of careful planning and forethought." Gold shakes his head. "No, this is something more. You, Emma Swan, are pure magic. So instead of asking the Dark One for help, you might well set yourself to work on fixing your own problems."

"What?" Emma blurts. She stares, round-eyed and blinking, at Gold as she tries to process his words. "What do you mean I'm magic?"

"I mean," he enunciates slowly, "you can do magic. Light magic only, I'd guess, but it's relatively easy to use. Even you should be able to figure it out."

"Stop!" Neal snaps. "Stop talking down to her. And stop—"

"What?" Gold asks, whirling on Neal. "Stop telling the truth? Stop answering her questions? Stop giving her exactly what she wants? Stop…" He cuts himself off, a wild, nearly manic cast to his face before he very obviously tucks the revealing emotions back beneath a mask.

"Stop being a stranger," Neal whispers. "Just…be my papa. For a second."

"I can't," Gold says in the same way he said he couldn't stop being the Dark One. "I can't be your papa and then just stop. I can't pretend that you're not my entire world. I can't ignore the fact that you mean everything to me and I don't care who dies or how many worlds burn so long as you are happy. I can't…I can't be anything but your papa. And I can't apologize for it. It's the only thing I've ever wanted to be."

Silence is heavy as a mountain. In the close confines of Gold's shop, it's suffocating like one too, as if the absence of sound transports them all into the deepest, most airless cave, tons of rock and stone pressing in around them.

Emma nearly flinches when the sound of Neal taking one careful step toward Gold breaks that silence, like a cave-in that might end things once and for all.

"You want me happy?" Neal says. "Then help Emma. Okay? That's what I want. I want you to help her because…because I can't. And she deserves it."

Gold's eyes narrow before he draws back as if in sudden realization. "You love her," he breathes.

From behind him, Emma sees the line of Neal's shoulders tense as he stiffens. But he doesn't deny it.

(There's a lump in her throat. A pinch behind her breastbone. A balloon of air expanding inside her.)

"Perfect," Gold says in an unreadable tone. And then he turns to Emma, his face cast in inscrutable lines. "Fine. You want to use magic as a solution, then do so. Magic runs on emotion. It feeds off the feeling inside you, the stronger the better. You want your father to live? Then tap into whatever emotion you feel most strongly about him and direct it outward."

"I can't," Emma says. "I'm not magic. I'm barely coming to terms with the Savior, now you want me to be a wizard too? There's not even a Hogwarts here!"

"Emma," Neal says before she can spiral further. Emma looks at him (desperately), then leans toward him when he sets a hand to her shoulder, a point of balance she needs. "It's okay."

"No, it's not!" she cries. "I can't be magic, Neal! I can't do this! There's…there's no way I'll be able to…I'm going to mess this all up."

Emma doesn't know what she's expecting Neal to do, but she's left gaping when he simply turns away from her. Except…his hand's still balancing her, his form solid and warm next to her, and he doesn't leave (doesn't vanish and leave her alone and lonely and missing him). He just looks at Gold and says, "Papa. Please."

And Emma knows how much those two words cost him.

I'm not used to losing.

Pan never lets anyone else win.

She knows just how much Neal gives up (for her) with that quiet, telling plea.

You love her, Rumplestiltskin said, and he doesn't lie, or so everyone claims.

Gold stares at Neal for a long time before he lets his eyes drop. In some way Emma can't explain, he looks smaller as he retrieves a small vial, fills it with water, waves his hand over it so that it gleams blue, and then offers it, laying so innocuously and so preciously on his palm.

"Give this to your father," he tells Emma. "It will clear the last remains of the curse from his body so that he can choose what fate he prefers. And if it is you giving it to him…I have no doubt that he'll choose life. No father would choose differently."

It's not Emma who steps forward to take the potion, though. It's Neal who takes that step, who takes another, and another, until he doesn't have to reach at all to touch Gold's hand (until Gold looks caught between trapped and yearning). It's Neal who clasps his father's hand with the potion between and whispers, "Thank you."

And then it's Emma who's left in the shop, staring at the wildly chiming bell as the door swings closed behind Neal's hasty retreat.

"Emma," Gold says. For maybe the first time, there's no bite to his voice, no smug assurance. Just a simple plea that does more to scare her than anything else could. "He loves you. And everyone Bae has ever loved has hurt him immeasurably. Please don't be like me. Don't abandon him."

"I'm not… I don't…"

With Gold's eyes (knowing, understanding, threatening) on her, Emma can't finish the refutation. All she can do is gape, mouth moving like a goldfish.

"Your position as Savior came because I moved every piece into play at the right time." Gold tilts his head. "But if you want to be a hero all on your own…help him. He deserves it."

It's the way he echoes Neal's words about her that really pierces her heart. The way he doesn't vocalize a threat (though she's not stupid enough to not realize there's one there anyway) that has her stumbling out of the shop. She halfway hopes Neal's long gone, but of course he's there. As soon as they're across the street from the pawnshop, he offers her the potion.

"Here."

Emma takes the potion (feels the tremor in his hand when her fingertips brush along the side of his palm).

"Thank you," she says past the lump in her throat.

He shrugs uncomfortably. "It's nothing. Might as well use what leverage I've got, right?"

"No, Neal." She catches hold of his elbow to swing him toward her, meets his eyes (ignores the cowardly urge to look away, to run, to deny that this matters, that maybe it matters almost as much as a watch unclasped from her wrist so handcuffs could take its place). "Thank you."

There are words on the tip of his tongue. Declarations ready to spill into open air. (And Emma almost thinks she's ready to hear them.) But it doesn't matter. Before he can utter any of them (before she can decide if she's tensed in preparation to run or to embrace), they're interrupted by a voice calling Emma's name.

A voice that (as Rumplestiltskin somehow knew) Emma's been avoiding.

"Emma!" Mary Margaret rushes toward them. She's the very picture of the schoolteacher Emma hardly knew: all stylish coat and hat perched cutely on her head, black hair cut to make her eyes look bigger and greener. Young and innocent and maybe a bit naïve, sheltered even, but still brave enough to befriend the Mayor's shy daughter.

It's the look in her big eyes that's different. The determined set of her shoulders that makes her nearly unrecognizable. The cant of her familiar chin and the unflinching stance and the sure steps that turn Mary Margaret into Snow White. A princess ready and qualified to lead her people. A leader unafraid of obstacles. A confident woman who's never put a foot wrong, never been led astray, who fell in love with a man that would never abandon her or lie to her.

She's everything Emma isn't (and how could Snow ever be anything but disappointed with the daughter she gave so much up for?). Everything Emma wishes she were but has always failed to live up to.

"Where's Henry?" Snow asks as she looks between Emma and Neal. Snow met Neal when they were trading Henry one day, but it's still just as awkward now as it was then. (Yes, Emma thinks, this is the man I slept with, the man who left me, another ex in a long line of them because I'm not like you, I didn't find True Love on my first try, I'm not like you, I'll never be able to be like you). "We thought he was with one of you."

Emma frowns. "He was going to visit Regina today, wasn't he? Didn't you take him, Neal?"

"I did, this morning. He said he meant to spend the day with her."

"Alone?" Mary Margaret demands sharply, her eyes like arrows pinning Neal in place. "You didn't stay with him?"

"Henry wanted to do it himself," Emma says defensively for some reason she doesn't care to explore.

"Well, regardless, that was hours ago." Snow arches a brow. "Where is he now? Regina never keeps him this late."

Emma tries to tamp down on the immediate spark of worry. "He's probably busy with some new mission or something. You know that kid's turned eavesdropping into an art form."

But neither Snow or Neal look comforted. In fact, Snow looks both suspicious and worried while Neal…Neal looks terrified. Not of Snow. Not of Emma. No, he's looking up at the sky, hunched and shivering as if expecting something to come swooping down to gobble him up.

"We'll go to the stables," Emma says. "Maybe he lost track of time. Maybe him and Regina have made up and he…" She takes a breath. "And he wants to stay the night."

"We'll go to the stables," Snow agrees, "but we're not going alone. I think we'd better get David to bring the dwarfs and maybe Red and Granny too."

"What? Why?"

"Emma," Snow says in a voice like armor and fire and a dragon's wrath. "Have you heard of the Child of Darkness?"

She hasn't. But she does. On the way to the stables, as what amounts to a motley army joins them, Snow tells of the Blue Fairy's warning, of a prophecy, of whispers of a darkness bound up in the form of a person, a child raised in darkness, caught by shadows, bound to destroy the future in some form or another.

It's not until Emma turns to exchange a disbelieving look with Neal that she realizes he's not there anymore.

(Again, he disappears, gone when she needs him.)

(Except there's a potion in her pocket and a memory of his mouth opening to drop heavy words to her, and this isn't abandonment.)

Watch out for shadows, Neal told her, when they both thought she'd never speak to him again. And beware the sky. Don't let Henry out of your sight.

"What are you doing?" David calls as he joins them. Before Emma can even open her mouth, he's grabbing Snow's shoulders. "I told you we shouldn't do this. We don't know that the prophecy is talking about Regina."

"She still has Henry, Charming."

"She's his—"

"Don't say she's his mother. I know she is, but I know why she is." Snow puts her hands over David's where he clasps her shoulders and meets his eyes defiantly. "She thought if she had a child, she could do anything."

"I know," David says evenly. Emma wonders if he notices the way Snow's eyes narrow dangerously at this. "She wanted a reason to defy Cora. A reason to break away from the darkness holding her."

"Or she wanted a reason to give up on trying to be good. She's keeping secrets from us, David. Why won't she let us visit? Why does she never open the doors to her apartment? Where is Henry? Why haven't we seen him since he went to visit her?"

"You're jumping to conclusions. Regina's helped us dozens of times, Snow. She's your sister! We should wait until—"

"Look," Emma jumps in before Snow can explode on him. "I don't know what's going on, but there's no harm in going to see her. If Henry's really missing, maybe she knows where he's gone?"

"Have we checked his castle?" David asks, a hint of defeat in his voice (it reminds Emma of the potion in her pocket, of the magic that can heal him if only she could break this strangely intense back-and-forth he and Mary Margaret are caught up in.

"I did," Ruby says. "It didn't smell like he'd been there for several days. And…" She hesitates. "I don't think he's here either. His tracks are a few hours old."

"Enough waiting." Snow breaks away from David's hold to stride forward. "We have to find out where he is."

"Let's at least only approach with a few people," David says quickly. "Nothing good is going to come of ambushing her."

"She knows how to use magic!" Snow cries. The declaration acts like a bombshell exploding between them. The dwarfs are instantly militant, Granny severe, Ruby shocked but determined. Even David stumbles at this revelation. "Without Cora holding her down, who knows what Regina might be planning?" Snow lowers her voice and leans into David. "She wouldn't use it to save you. I begged her, but she wouldn't."

Magic. Emma hates this town. There's magic everywhere she looks, and all it does is continually make her feel out of her depth. Left behind. Not enough.

But August believes in her. Neal begged for her. And Gold told her she could be a hero.

And Henry is missing.

So, okay. Magic it is.

"I can do magic too," she says (she sounds approximately one hundred times more confident than she feels about such an absurd declaration). "And I don't care what Regina can do. Nothing's getting between me and my son."

And then. Then… Then.

Snow looks at her. And the look in her eyes. It's The Look. The Look Emma's craved her entire life. The Look she's seen in other mothers' eyes when their daughters gave a valedictorian speech or won an award or when their sons were cleared of all charges and allowed to walk free without worry for bail.

The Look. Of pride. Of wonder. Of happiness that this was their child.

The Look Emma's never received in her life.

But now…there it is. In Snow's eyes as she looks at her daughter, and maybe she sees a Savior, maybe she sees the baby she lost returned to her. But above all she sees Emma—and it makes her happy. Makes her proud.

If magic really is powered by emotions, then Emma knows she has nothing to worry about as she heads into the stables to face down the Child of Darkness for her son. Nothing can possibly stand in her way now.

With her proud mother at one shoulder and the dad she gets to keep at her other, Emma strides forward into battle.

---

Once, Daniel was strong and competent, absolutely assured as he approached skittish horses (or wary daughters afraid of their own shadows) to calm them. Once, he spoke eloquently, soft words that compelled all around him to answering softness (invoked happiness unlike any known before). Once, he smiled so openly, laughed so kindly, offered his heart so unconditionally (accepted the shrunken, battered thing given him in return, and treated it as if it were precious and whole and beautiful).

Regina doesn't want Daniel (or herself, or them together) to be defined wholly by 'Once upon a time.' She wants it to be now, today, every day, forever.

"When do we get our happily ever after?" she whispers as she locks the apartment door behind her.

But tired (sad) as she is, cold and stiff from sitting in Henry's castle for hours hoping he'd show up there, Regina knows there's no time for self-pity. Not now, when she's so close to getting Daniel really back. Not now, when she turns from the door and finds Daniel standing in the kitchen, waiting for her. His eyes actually look at her, not through her, though they're still glazed.

"Daniel?" she asks, quietly so as not to startle him (sounds do that, she knows intimately, and she never wants him to be frightened again).

In answer, Daniel turns.

Every evening, Regina's been working to free his mind from the stasis spells Cora layered over him. And every evening (sometimes afternoons, too, if she can't curb her impatience any longer and risks being found out by the few who come to see her, like Henry), she sits Daniel in the chair by the window overlooking the fields while she kneels before him, clasping his hands and staring up into dull eyes.

Now, Regina has to stifle a gasp as Daniel, of his own accord, takes a seat in the chair and positions his hands palm-up on his thighs.

It's working. He's coming back to her. (Once can become again.)

Regina covers her mouth with her hand as she tries not to make any sudden moves, any unexpected sounds. Not all this process has been pleasant. At first, it was Regina's own horror, her squeamishness, that had her working only in tiny stretches. The totality of what Cora did to Daniel is so disgusting, so inhuman, that the meager flickers of grief Regina had felt over her mother's death turned to vengeful ice (now, she regrets that Cora's dead only because it means that Regina cannot layer this same, slow-death stasis over Cora's mind). Then, as her determination grew (as memories of Daniel began to rouse and overflow from the tiny corners she'd long since been forced to relegate them to), Regina delved wholeheartedly into prying sections of the curse off Daniel's mind.

One night, she gave him back the ability to smell. Another, the wonders of taste. Some nights, little by little, the only progress she's made is freeing his thoughts so that he can dream, can imagine, can think beyond the gray fog that is all he's known for decades. Other evenings, she's lucky if she can even find a corner of the curse to pry at. This afternoon, though…oh, this afternoon started out as a victory. She'd recovered his hearing, but the transition was so startling, so terrifying (Regina's heart keens to think of Daniel trapped in a silent prison punctuated only by long repetitive noises, like humming or thumping), that he reacted violently, even viciously (and if anyone knows what a wild animal, a feral creature, an abused soul, looks like when backed into a corner, it is her).

He hadn't frightened her, of course (how could he? Him, her sweet stable boy?). But of course, because this is the way her life works (not charmed, but cursed), that is when her young son decided to find her.

Magic. Regina doesn't remember the first time she saw Cora doing magic. It was simply an established fact of her life that her mother could cast spells and curse her enemies and tweak events in their favor. She doesn't remember every time she felt the cold lash of that magic (hurting her, imprisoning her, controlling her), but she still wakes, sometimes, from nightmares when that magic is back, dark and overpowering and frightening.

Henry, when he saw her with Daniel, looked at her the way Regina imagines anyone else might have looked like Cora (if they weren't raised with it, reared to expect it and consider it normal and routine).

Unlike Cora, Regina only uses magic to help, to soothe, to save, but it doesn't matter. Of course it doesn't. Cora was allowed to employ her hurtful magic for decades without punishment while Regina…well, her son ran. He pronounced her as evil as Cora (renounced her as his parent in favor of this new father, crushing all her ephemeral, half-formed dreams of Daniel and Henry and herself and what they might all make together) and he left her behind.

Just like Cora (like Leopold, like Daddy, like Snow), Henry didn't listen. As if nothing she could say would ever matter. Could ever matter. As if it's easier to throw her away than talk to her.

There's a huge part of Regina, even now, after a long few hours of searching for her son, that strains to go after him (to employ an easier, darker magic, cast a tracking spell, follow him no matter what he wants, wrap tree roots around his feet until he cannot move, make him listen to her, sway him to her way of thinking). After all, she knows exactly where he is, doesn't she? He's tucked up nice and cozy with his mother, with his good grandparents, with his father, content to listen to their denunciations of her (perhaps, she wonders, to add his own now?).

And Daniel is waiting for her. She is so close and Daniel deserves his freedom, and…and Henry is safe (looked after by so many heroes who don't know what it means to fail and hurt and hate like she does), and Daniel has only her. She can't let him down. She will never be able to just leave him trapped and helpless.

"I'm coming," she murmurs, soothingly, and she crosses the room, kneels between Daniel's feet, takes his warm hands in her cold ones, and dives deep, deep into his mind.

There's nothing of softness, or kindness, or the steadiness she always so associated with him. Not in here. Not at ground zero of the crime Cora committed against him (against her). Instead, it is a seething, riotous mess of swirling debris and floating traps and pieces of his memories she knows she can't get sucked into but that prove a constant temptation (his happiest moments or his worst, she wants to know them all, wants him to realize he is not alone anymore). Regina fights to keep herself cohesive, sets herself in place, and begins tidying as best she can.

This piece of his mind, layered in the aroma of hay and horse, he can keep. Lovingly, she slides it, like a book onto a shelf, with the others pressed in the atmosphere of the stables. That piece, edged and sharp, she catches carefully and folds into nothingness; when it vanishes, it leaves behind smoke scented in despair. A sinkhole appears, sucking in light and color until all appears dull and distant, abstract, unreal. Regina waves her hand, lets purple smoke fill in the hole, paper it over, build a solid foundation, sturdy enough to hold new pieces, new memories, old senses, that she saves for him.

Bit by bit, one tiny molecule at a time, Regina forces order into the chaos. Imposes stability where it's been ripped away. Bandages up what wounds she can, kisses the scars she can't erase, makes everything as close to what it once was as she possibly can.

It's hard, and never-ending, and exhausting, but not without its rewards.

Like the slight breeze that whispers through and smells of the perfume her Daddy gave her for her sixteenth birthday, filtered through Daniel's affection. Like the mirrored piece of glass that reveals a green hill, a girl in a blue riding coat, so much more beautiful in his recollection than she's ever felt. Like the papers that swirl and flutter until she stacks them even, weights them down with a smooth stone from the river beside his childhood home, and sees that scrawled across the pages of time are frozen moments: his first horse ride as a small child; a quiet afternoon when he struggled to read and dreamed of a future of happiness; the first time he saw Regina, quiet and pretty and so much like a skittish horse that Daniel's desire to help, to be a spot of good in her life, colors the whole page.

Regina looks up from the fragile memories for the next piece to deal with…and sees nothing.

Everything in sight is quiet. Peaceful. In order.

There's more, she knows, waiting around this corner or that mindset, but…but for just this moment, in this corner of his soul, she's given him back a haven of peace.

"Daniel," she whispers.

Outside his mind, his hand tightens over hers. A squeeze, as if he heard his name, recognized her voice, and wants to respond.

Regina blinks back to the physical world so she can look up at him. And there, behind the fragmented glaze, she sees the sharp blue of his eyes. Sees the traces of recognition. Feels his hands caress her palms, her wrists, her fingertips.

"Regina?" It's his mouth moving, his tongue shaping her name, and though the sound that emerges is cracked and unfamiliar, creaky with disuse, slurred like a child learning to speak, it's still the most beautiful sound Regina's heard since Henry looked at her and spoke his first word (Mama, like he'll never call her again).

"I'm here," she says. "Daniel, I'm here. I love you."

In stories (once upon a time), that and a kiss would be enough to salve the rest of his tortured mind.

But here in Storybrooke, site of her mother's cruel vengeance, it is nothing but a too-short interlude, broken by the sound of banging at the door.

Daniel's entire body flinches. His hands tighten like vises over hers, until she has to wave him to sleep and watch his body slump, once more unresponsive and closed to her, back against the chair. Before they slid closed, his eyes no longer saw her, but only terror and despair.

Rage sparks inside Regina like a lightning storm.

She was so close. He was right there.

And then…

The pounding comes again, this time accompanied by the sound of her name being called in several voices.

Regina recognizes them all.

The heroes.

The good guys.

The winners.

(Everything she isn't.)

Carefully, Regina floats Daniel to the bed, arranges the blankets over him, smooths his hair back from his brow, and presses a kiss on his cheek (hopes it accompanies him into his dreams so that he will not forget the name he just reclaimed). Then, her face steeling, her heart armoring itself, Regina closes the bedroom door and waves her hand to allow the heroes inside.

In they come, spilling through like a trickle of molasses, clogging up everything in their path.

"Guests," she says with a twist to her mouth. "How delightful. If only I'd known you were coming, I might have had some apple pie ready for you all."

"This is no time for jokes, Regina," Snow says sharply. "We know what you've been up to."

Despite herself and the fury scaling her body with ice crystals, Regina blinks in surprise. "Really? Then you know why I had to do it. You know it's the right thing to do."

"The right thing to do," Emma butts in, "would be to give us Henry and leave him alone."

There's a tingle in Regina's fingertips. It's a strange tickle, almost enough to distract her, except that she knows it's magic—and it's begging to be released. Telling her to just. Let. It. Go.

"Why," Regina says slowly, dangerously, "would I ever give up my son?"

"He's my son too, lady," the Savior says, "and you've got to know that he wants to be with me. Keeping him locked up with you isn't going to help anyone."

"Let's ask him, see what he wants," Snow says, and she's halfway across the room, nearly to the bedroom, when Regina materializes right in front of her.

There's shock, briefly, widening Snow's face, before she turns as stern and unyielding as she knows how to be. "It's true," she says with a tremble to her voice. "You really are turning into your mother."

"You know nothing about what my mother was," Regina hisses. "How could you? The favored daughter, the princess who would be queen, the apple of her father's eye. What do you know of bruises layered over skin, of bones that crack and snap only to be healed in the blink of an eye so no one knows. What could you possibly know about vile words whispered in my ear, the way my own words were always twisted back on themselves until I thought I was the damaged one? Tell me, Snow White, what do you know of staring at a grave and knowing it holds your true love and that no kiss could ever bring him back, while your mother stands at your shoulder and tells you it's your own fault for loving him?"

"I…" Snow's brow creases. "You had a true love?"

Regina's laugh is brittle and mirthless. "How can you stand there and pretend to judge me when you don't know the first thing about me?"

"We're sisters."

"We're strangers," Regina counters, "until it suits you and you need my help, and then we're sisters."

"Stop. Please. Both of you."

David's voice is jarring. It sets Regina back a pace. All her attention was focused on Snow, on Emma, so that she completely missed the fact that David is here too.

The betrayal she feels is so abrupt, so overwhelming, that smoke wreathes her head and gloves her hands and fills the room. The magic calls to her, no longer a tingle, but a flood, drowning her beneath it.

"You too?" she breathes. "I guess all those promises to help me, to save me, that you were my friend, were all nothing more than lies."

David's eyes are as earnest as ever (the traitor, a snake in the grass, a friend with a knife sliding between her ribs). "Regina, I'm sorry we've come like this. But if you have him here, then please, let us see him. Maybe we can come to some kind of—"

"No one," she says, "is stepping in that room. If any of you try, I promise you, there will be another grave in the cemetery."

Snow's shocked breath is so loud it echoes through the apartment. "Regina," she whispers (like she's dead, like she's standing over Regina's body, like Cora won after all).

"Give me my son," Emma says, and her voice is a threat, her hand is on the butt of her gun, and Regina wants to laugh at her. A little girl playing pretend in a world she doesn't understand, backed by the unwavering faith of her parents, untapped magic left to rot inside her.

Useless. Pathetic.

"He's not your son. He hasn't been your son since you gave him away without even a single second to look at him. You signed papers that said you never wanted him to know you. And lo and behold, just like the rest of your family, whatever you want, you get."

"Child of darkness," Snow says. Her voice sounds formal, as pretentious as her father could sometimes get, in between ignoring Regina and shaking his head sadly when Cora wrapped her hand too tightly around Regina's wrist. "Birthed by darkness. Raised in the shadows. Destined for dark acts."

"What are you talking about?" Regina snaps. "All I want to do is save Daniel. And you can't take Henry away from me. I love him! I love them both! How does that make me evil? Why does that make me the villain?"

"Daniel?" asks David.

"You can't force a child to stay with you," Emma says.

"If all you want is to save who you love," Snow says, "why won't you save who I love?"

A mess of voices, points of contention, all coming at once. The magic is clogged in her throat, eager for release, and Regina swallows it back, swallows again, while all along her hands burn with the flames eager to be unleashed.

And then Snow reaches for the bedroom door.

Regina screams—and lets loose of the magic.

---

The street stretches out before Neal, elongates so that it seems like he's trapped in a dream, always moving but never reaching any solid destination. Of course, that might be because he doesn't want to reach it. And since he's only ever visited with nightmares rather than dreams, all too soon, Neal finds himself at the end of the street and facing the harbor. The sea.

The dock where, if Hook had everything he wants, there would be a familiar ship swaying in the waves.

"I know you're here," Neal calls out. His voice is snatched by the wind (better than shadows) and whipped away (a whisper from a lost boy rather than the battle cry of a grown father).

Nothing. Not yet. Hook's always been more of a showman than he likes to admit. He'll wait for the opportune moment, and then…

Then he'll reveal himself.

Hello, Baelfire.

It was quite the shock, driving into Storybrooke, trying not to hate August, and seeing the pirate that haunted his night hours, seared into the backs of his eyelids. The might-have-been. The almost-was. The never-again.

He'd gone after him, but Hook's clearly learned, in the last years, how to navigate this world. He wouldn't be taken by surprise so easily again. Neal had chased him down several streets before losing him and heading back to the hospital (to Emma; to the son he didn't know about).

But Captain Killian Jones has spent the majority of his stunted life in a place where time doesn't move (stuck in as much of a rut as their child-god himself), and Neal knew where he'd find the pirate (the kidnapper of lost children).

"Hook," he says loudly, over the susurration of the waves, the beating of competing breezes, the pounding of his stressed heart. Then, quieter, he says, "Jones."

Still nothing.

"You have to know," he continues as he forces one reluctant step after another down to the dock until his feet thump audibly over wood (like the deck of a ship that he once dared, so briefly, to imagine as his home). "That Henry's my son. My boy. But he's not Lost. He's not for him. Please."

"Please." Hook's behind him. The mocking word makes Neal jump, and he tries so hard to make himself small and nonthreatening as he whirls to face his one-time abductor (tries and fails because he's made himself forget, since fleeing Neverland, how to be prey rather than predator). "How low the mighty have fallen."

It's him.

As soon as the thought hits him, Neal almost rolls his eyes at himself because of course it's him, he's been expecting him, looking for him, but…but it's him. Unchanged. Still tall and lean, black-haired and ice-eyed and hook-handed, smirking and looming, mocking and yet, somehow, a note of genuineness there behind the façade.

Hook.

Instantly, Neal is Bae again. Bae, terrified and shrinking away from the woman who claims to be his mother, who holds onto his elbow with a pincer-like grip.

Bae, running, disappearing into a strange world where every breath is heavy, unaided by the scent of magic in the air.

Bae, falling from the sky on yet another world, landing aboard a ship, peering up at his kidnapper-cum-rescuer. The laughter shared between them, the lessons offered so freely, and then…the offer of fatherhood. Bae's refusal.

The betrayal.

And Pan.

Hook there, in the shadows through it all, playing the villain in all of Pan's games, just as much a puppet as the rest of them, but still a creature of hatred because once he claimed to love Bae, and yet, it was never enough to soften the blows or dull the betrayals.

"So. Henry is your son." Hook studies Neal head-to-toe. "I can see it. And I've met Swan. Little wonder you were drawn to that, eh?"

"Shut up," Neal says, cold as the depths of the ocean. "Where's my son?"

"Still, you left her, didn't you? It's that look in a woman's eyes—that guardedness once they've been abandoned. I saw it in Swan's eyes. Recognized it, too, even though Milah never had reason to wear the same look."

"Leave Emma out of this."

It's a mistake to say her name. Neal knows it even before it fully falls from his mouth, but it's too late. It drifts between them, a telling caress that gives Neal's heart away.

(And this is why he left Baelfire behind. Why he refuses to let Rumplestiltskin turn him back into that bereft child.

Because Baelfire has never been a winner. Baelfire always cares too much, and tries too hard, and loses everything.)

"So that's the way the wind blows, is it?"

"Hook. Henry is Milah's grandson." Neal takes a step closer to the pirate. "Do you really want him to have any piece of her?"

"That boy, if you're telling the truth, is also Rumplestiltskin's grandson." Hook lifts his hook and polishes it with his opposite hand. "I'd pay quite a lot to take a pound of flesh from that crocodile."

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Neal had forgotten that Hook used to call Rumplestiltskin the crocodile. He wonders what it means, that Pan freezes time and his papa makes it go on and on and on unceasingly, the constant tick of immortal ages, relentless, unflinching. One of his hands drifts over the lock of gray in his own hair before he catches himself and drops it back to his side.

(He should have remembered that Hook was more than willing to give Milah's own son to Pan; why should her grandson give him any moral problems?)

"Henry's innocent. Just like I was when you sold me to that monster."

"Afraid to say his name, laddie?" Hook sneers.

Neal flinches (Play the game, laddie, Pan's crowing endorsement rings in his ears).

"Aren't you?" he asks.

Hook spreads his arms wide. "What's to fear? Once he gets here and I hand him the boy, I get everything I've ever wanted—my ship, my revenge against the crocodile, and a release from Neverland."

"You really trust him to honor his promises?" It's Neal's turn to sneer condescendingly. "You always were his most willing puppet, weren't you? You wanted immortality. Wanted a place to hide. Wanted a purpose that let you pretend to be the biggest and baddest. Wanted—"

"I needed to live long enough to kill that father of yours—or at least make him hurt as much as I have. I needed a place where he couldn't hunt me down and slaughter me—though he never has been man enough to do what needs done, always breaking down and crying over something, the coward. And I don't need a fake reputation. I have a real one. Best pirate in a hundred realms."

"Best puppet in all of them," Neal counters. He hesitates (he doesn't want the answer, then asks, "Is Pan really coming here?"

Hook's smile vanishes. His bravado, never far away, seems nothing more than a memory. "Afraid so."

"For Henry?"

"Aye." Hook meets Neal's eyes. They stare for a long moment before the pirate grudgingly adds, "There's a drawing of the boy. We thought it was you, at first. But when it wasn't… I don't know, Bae. Pan's always been interested in you, but after that drawing so closely matched…he was never going to let you go."

"And yet I escaped."

"Did you?" Hook cocks his head. "Because from where I'm standing, it seems you've never stopped running. And he's always been just that one step behind you, breathing down your neck, clipping at your heels."

"What's important about the drawing?"

"Whoever that boy is, Pan needs him. Needs him so much he's willing to trade me my ship and my freedom. That's all I need to know."

"And if Henry's somehow the key to giving him unlimited power?" Neal takes that last step to place himself in arm's reach of Hook. "What's the point of your freedom if Pan rules every world, every realm, you could possibly reach?"

From the looks of it, this is the first time Hook's considered that little loophole (he's always been more concerned with attacking Rumplestiltskin head-on than learning from the Spinner's reputation for fine points and trapdoors). While his eyes are still widening, Neal punches him.

Hook lands on his back, but his fist and hook are up when Neal dives atop him. The blow to his ribs leaves Neal breathless and robs his follow-up punch of much of its force. They roll, scuffling, dangerously close to the edge of the pier, before Neal forces Hook's stump up toward his own face. The broad side of the hook glances across his jaw, Hook recoils backward, and Neal punches him as hard as he can on the side of his head. The pirate's body goes slack.

Neal stands, wary in case Hook's pretending, before disconnecting the hook from his stump, throwing it hard into the ocean, and then dragging the unconscious pirate up the dock toward the little shop on the corner with the name of a substance Rumplestiltskin could only have dreamed of owning as a poor spinner.

After their confrontation outside the hospital (after the sight of that dagger, curved and dark, etched with his papa's name rather than Zoso's), Neal swore he'd never set foot near his father again. But here he is, for the second time in a single day, voluntarily pushing through the front door of his papa's shop.

The tinkle of the bell doesn't surprise Neal. What does is the absence of spinning wheels. The scent of dust and oils and paint rather than sheep and lye and straw. The cluttered corners and overflowing counters and stuffed cabinets—wealth untold, dumped here and there as if meaningless, all topped by a thin layer of dust that glitters in the rays of sunset struggling through the covered windows.

It's so different from their little hut, sparse and rickety and decorated solely by drawings rather than belongings. Or from the manor, where they finally had things, but all of it still spinning wheels and straw, or toys and books and cloaks for Bae himself.

This…this is the home of the Spinner. The Dark One. The part of Rumplestiltskin Neal doesn't know.

And it makes him uneasy.

Neal dumps Hook in the corner and uses a lasso of rope, eerily gold, to tie him up. If the shop itself is enough to discomfit Neal, the fact that Rumplestiltskin hasn't appeared yet is enough to scare him.

He opens his mouth to call out for him, then freezes.

Papa?

Rumplestiltskin?

Spinner?

Dark One?

Mr. Gold?

So many choices, and not a one of them right.

"Hello?" he finally settles for calling. Ignoring Hook's groan from behind him, Neal ducks behind the curtain separating the back of the shop. It's even more crowded and seemingly unorganized than the front, but empty of people. A set of stairs leads up to a second story. Hesitating, Neal glances around once before tentatively easing up the steps.

He hears voices before he reaches the top. His father's, soft and familiar, and a woman's, accented in a different way and firm as she replies to whatever Rumplestiltskin just said.

"You can't think like that, Rumple. He'll come back. You just have to give him time."

"Time is the only thing I have to give," his papa says, and Bae recognizes this: the crushed hope, the weary resignation, the desperate hope he can't quite hide, all mingled there in that voice that once sung him to sleep with old lullabies. "But he doesn't want it. He's not like…"

"Like who?" the woman asks (Neal's heard whispers, of course, of the girl rescued from a cell, the one who made Mr. Gold human, who has the Spinner wrapped around her little finger; the woman who nearly died, and the magic that brought her back, and the princess she rescued, the monster she's half-tamed. He's heard, but he didn't really believe).

"It doesn't matter. You didn't hear him, Belle. The way he…he begged me. Like I was…like I was Hordor, telling him to kiss my boot. Like I was a monster."

"You're not a monster," this Belle says, with the practiced air of someone who's repeating a truth oft-said.

(Neal thinks of this world's fairytales, of beasts and maidens, of curses that could be broken and love that could conquer all. Baelfire thinks of a tiny hut with only one bed, and the form of his father, solitary and alone, spinning late into the night, tired as he dragged himself out of bed to make Bae breakfast, as he laundered their clothes and mended their tears and soothed Bae's nightmares, all alone, without a wife there to help.

Altogether, he wonders what his papa ever did to make every world betray him so badly that he'll always be left out in the cold, alone and solitary, his curse unable to be broken by anything but murder.)

"I'm his monster," Rumplestiltskin says lowly.

Belle doesn't speak again, but there's the sound of movement, of fabrics meeting, and Neal's cheeks burn as he intentionally stomps his feet against the steps.

"Hello?" he calls again, extra loudly, and still, they are all surprised when he enters what looks to be a tiny, cramped apartment (so much like the hut he remembers, scarce and poor and decorated with spinning wheels and flowers in vases) and finds Rumplestiltskin leaning half on his cane and half on a young woman who's wrapped her arms around his waist and holds him up even as she presses against him.

Neal blinks. Rumplestiltskin stares. Belle gasps, then smiles a wavering smile.

For a moment, the tableau is frozen, trapped in time like Neverland, filled with endless potential but trapped apart from them all.

"Bae," Rumplestiltskin breathes, breaking the stasis (tick-tock, tick-tock).

"I need your help," Neal blurts.

The open wonder turning the Spinner into his papa vanishes, sealed off, an impenetrable mask left in its place.

"You must be Baelfire," Belle says. She detaches from Rumplestiltskin so she can hold out her hand for Neal to shake, though Neal notices she keeps her other hand wrapped around his elbow.

Slowly, Neal shakes her hand. She's beautiful, and sweet, and young, dark-haired like Milah, kind in a way that his father was always drawn to (though it came so rarely that Bae's surprised he knows that). He's not surprised this is the woman his father loves, only surprised that there's a woman at all.

"I'm Neal," he says.

Rumplestiltskin looks away.

"I'm Belle," she says, "your father's True Love."

Neal's been long enough in this world (and longer in Neverland, where fondness is weakness, affection a death sentence, and love unthinkable) that this unadorned pronouncement leaves him stuttering.

"It's lovely to meet you," she says as if she doesn't notice his flabbergasted reaction. "I've heard so much about you."

"I've heard about you too," he finally manages. "Though more from stories than anything."

She looks questioning, but Bae feels like the crocodile's son in this moment, the clock ticking down Henry's life. So without preamble, he turns to Rumplestiltskin and says, "Hook captured Henry. Pan's coming for him. Something about a drawing of him they've been searching for over centuries. I don't know why, but Pan needs him."

Rumplestiltskin frowns.

Neal holds out his hands. "He's my son. Papa…he's my son, and he's been kidnapped by Hook and Pan wants him."

The blood drains from Rumplestiltskin's face. His hands are shaking, his cane making a strange ticking sound against the floor (another clock, another hourglass, more seconds trickling out of reach).

"Please," he says, "we can't let history repeat itself."

"Do you know where the pirate is?" Rumplestiltskin asks.

"Tied up downstairs."

Together, they troop down, Neal in the lead, Belle and Rumplestiltskin arm in arm. Belle whispers something to Rumplestiltskin and his cane stops shaking. Neal tries not to notice.

Hook's half out of his restraints, nearly to the door, when they find him. Neal elbows the air out of him and drags him in front of Rumplestiltskin.

"He won't tell me where Henry is," Neal warns.

"I don't need him to say anything. In fact," Rumplestiltskin waves his hand as Hook regains his breath and starts to speak. He doesn't even get through the word crocodile before his tongue flaps between Rumplestiltskin's fingers. "It's better if he remains completely quiet."

"Rumple," Belle says, a bit reprovingly, but Rumplestiltskin exchanges a look with her and she falls silent.

"How can you find Henry if you can't get him to talk?" Neal demands.

"Oh, I could get him to talk, but that would take time we don't have." Rumplestiltskin summons up a jar with a click of his fingers and locks the pirate's tongue inside. "Unfortunately, all my tracking spells were destroyed by a home intruder a few weeks back." His venomous look toward Hook leaves no doubt about who he's referring to. "Bae, do you have something of Henry's? A scarf? A coat? Anything?"

Neal swallows a painful lump in his throat. "No. Nothing. I…I don't have anything."

It's so new, being a father, having a son to love, and not for the first time, Neal's struck by his own unworthiness. He's already so bad at being a papa, though the love…well, that came automatically, instinctively, as soon as he heard of his existence, as soon as he looked at that kid and saw Emma's chin and bold stare, and a curious nature that was his alone.

"No matter. He is your son." Rumplestiltskin doesn't quite meet Bae's eyes as he waves a hand. Neal feels a tiny sting in his index finger and looks down to see blood welling before it vanishes only to reappear as a tiny spinning drop above Rumplestiltskin's hand. A flash of black smoke transforms it into a red jewel, bright and gleaming. "Here." Rumplestiltskin offers it to Neal.

Just hours earlier, he'd proffered a blue vial. Neal had taken it, torn between gratitude and resentment, testing himself by holding his father's hand between his and searching deep for the remnants of Bae (of that old, decayed boy, lost so many years ago). What he'd found wasn't small, or ancient, or moldering. It was new, and powerful, as if all this time, Neal was not the new person born amid the wreckage of a skeleton, but just the cocoon layered over Bae as a metamorphosis slowly took place. And then, with Papa's hand, callused and thin between his, that cocoon had twitched. Jerked. The new creature within (the Baelfire that he might have become, if Neverland hadn't trapped him in time and place and an endless rut) is trying to emerge.

And if Neal touches Rumplestiltskin again…if he takes that hand, and feels it trembling (like it did, so often, in their world, as Bae aged and grew older, closer and closer to the draft and death), then maybe Neal will disappear and leave only Bae behind.

(And Bae has never been able to do anything but love his papa.)

The red jewel flashes bright, scarlet and rich. Neal plucks it from Rumplestiltskin's hand without touching him. As soon as the jewel of blood rests on his palm, it begins to emit a steady glow, a hum that travels through Neal's bloodstream like warmth.

"It will glow brighter as you get closer to Henry," Rumplestiltskin says quietly. He still won't meet Neal's eyes. "It should lead you to him."

"You're not coming?" Neal asks. He doesn't know why he's surprised. He didn't ask Rumplestiltskin to come, after all. In fact, he's not even sure he wants him to. But…he thought Rumplestiltskin would want to.

"You said Pan is coming. If he wants Henry as much as you claim, he'll go straight for him—unless something distracts him."

Terror lights inside Neal like a bonfire, obliterating the thrum of the jewel. "No!" he exclaims. "Papa, you can't!"

And just like that, he loses the argument.

Rumplestiltskin's eyes burn between them, locked straight onto Neal's.

Papa.

"You don't know Pan like I do," Neal (or is he Bae now?) whispers. "He'll destroy you."

"Oh, trust me, son, I know Pan in my own way. And he's already destroyed me."

Neal's hand clenches around the memory of a box, capped in a red jewel entirely different to the one he finds locked inside his reflexive fist. The memory of beating against the interior of that cube rushes back over him until he can hardly breathe. Hardly think past the panic threatening to drown him.

Henry, he thinks. He fixes the image of that little brave boy in his mind's eyes (like he once fixed the image of Emma, like flypaper to guard him against his nightmares), and tightens his resolve.

"How do you know Pan?" he asks bluntly. "Just from Neverland?"

"No," Rumplestiltskin says after a slight, telling pause. "I knew him before."

His voice is implacable, his mask impassive, but Neal's heart clenches, and Belle steps closer, wraps her hands around his elbow, leans her head, ever so lightly, against his shoulder.

"He killed my father," Rumplestiltskin says, and then, while Neal is still trying to process that, he straightens. He's not, Neal notes dimly, trembling anymore. "If I go to meet him, he'll talk to me. He'll let himself be distracted. That should give you the time you need to retrieve young Henry."

"Papa," he starts, but Rumplestiltskin turns from him to face Belle.

"You should go with him," he tells her. "Neal could use your help. And you're so good at rescuing people." Though there's a smile on his lips, his finger is impossibly light as he brushes a knuckle over the side of her cheek.

Belle frowns up at him. "It'll be dangerous," she says slowly. "But you want me to go."

"You're a hero," he says. "You'd never be able to sit by while innocents are in danger."

"But…" Belle folds her lips over whatever she meant to say, and smiles up at him. Neal, who hardly knows her, sees just how fake that smile is. "All right, Rumple. I'll help save your grandson. But you have to promise me—promise me, Rumplestiltskin, that you'll try to stay safe."

It's strange, Neal thinks, as he stands between Hook, who told him stories of Milah craving adventures and running off to see the world and leaving behind the husband who she called coward, and Belle, who holds onto Rumplestiltskin before reluctantly heading out to adventure, leaving behind her instructions for Rumplestiltskin to be safe rather than brave.

Strange. But nice. It makes Neal happy in a way he doesn't care to explore too deeply.

"I promise that I'll try," Rumplestiltskin says, and Neal knows he should turn, should look away, should redirect his eyes, but he doesn't. He watches (stares) as Belle reaches up and Rumplestiltskin bends his head and they kiss.

There's no explosion of magic. No cloud of magic. No curses breaking in their wake. But there is a rightness to the sight of it, like a puzzle piece clicking into place. Rumplestiltskin (Spinner, Dark One, Mr. Gold, man) belongs there, in the circle of Belle's arms, in a way Bae's never seen his father belong anywhere.

"Follow the jewel," Rumplestiltskin says when Belle finally steps away from him to join Neal.

"What about Hook?" Neal asks.

Rumplestiltskin waves his hand and the pirate vanishes. "You don't mind if he stays in your old cell, do you, Belle?"

"Until this is over," she says (sternly? Agreeably? Neal's having a hard time reading the fine lines of their relationship).

"Until this is over," Rumplestiltskin agrees placidly.

"Hey…" Neal stops. He studies this man who is his father. There should be words. Something, anything, to say to mark the moment. Rumplestiltskin is going off, alone, to face Peter Pan. And Neal, armed with his magic, is letting him. "Be careful," he finally says.

"Bae," Rumplestiltskin smiles a thin-lipped smile that hides a wealth of tears behind it. "I love you, son. And I'm sorry I didn't save you."

That cocoon around him twitches and tears nearly in two. Something inside rouses. Strains.

(All those nights hiding, on the run, in Neverland or in this world, mind shying away from the memory of the Papa striding at the head of a storm, come to rescue him, blur and dim and dull, losing their sharp edges and their ability to wound.)

"I'm still mad," he mutters. And then he crashes into his papa, wraps his arms around him, buries his head in his papa's bony shoulder, and breathes in the scent of straw and wool and home. "Don't die," he whispers fiercely, and then he tears himself away and flees into the growing shadows of night.