FYI, I did have to go back and add a few things to the last scene of the previous chapter (the scene with Bae and Rumplestiltskin in his pawnship), and there will be references to that scene in this chapter, so it might be worth a reread if you don't want to be confused. Sorry about that!
As to this chapter...it kind of got away from me. There was so much that needed to be done and so many characters that deserved their moments! So, I apologize for the length, but hopefully the quality makes up for it? :) I am so excited to have gotten this far - there's only an epilogue left and I hope to have it posted well before the New Year! As always, I hope you enjoy and please feel free to leave me a comment letting me know your thoughts! (This is now, also, officially the longest thing I've ever written - even longer than any of my original novels!)
Chapter 22: The Love Of The Truest Heart
-Flashback-
Once upon a time, there was a boy who had a papa that told the best stories and a mother who…
Well.
Once upon a time, there was a boy. The boy loved stories of brave heroes but found it easier to learn his numbers and sums than to read squiggly letters. He hated being cold, he adored minstrels and their clever wordplays, and he longed for a home he wouldn't have to leave in the middle of the night. But that was only a dream, because this boy had a papa who often woke him in whispers and rushed them, sneaking and quiet, from whatever newest town they'd barely had a chance to learn. It was just the boy the papa woke, though, because the mother…
Well.
Once upon a time, there was a boy whose mother had died a nice, peaceful death in her sleep, just slipping into dreams and never waking again. Or there was a boy whose mother had been killed by an ogre that had eaten a village and then swept Mama up as a toothpick before Papa could chase it away with derring-do (the boy wasn't quite sure what 'derring-do' was, but it sounded exciting). Or his mother had left on a long journey to procure the boy the best present in all the realms—a blanket made of every color that ever existed—and it was just taking her a long time to weave together a piece of the sapphire sky above endless ice-fields, the scarlet sand dunes at high noon, the yellow of gold found only in a cavernous dragon's hoard, the green of an enchanted tree deep within the Forgotten Forest. Or his mother was secretly a fairy who'd disobeyed every rule of her people because she loved Papa and wanted a little boy just like him, but she'd had to run away to keep the fairies from taking her back to their miniscule courts and finger-high throne.
Or maybe she'd just decided one day that she didn't want a husband and a little boy and had walked away without ever looking back.
Whatever the truth…once upon a time, there was a boy whose mother was a mystery, a figure of the stories that spilled from his papa's lips, words enough to fill the void a person (unremembered) left behind. She was an enigma he'd never unravel, a collection of clues he couldn't form into a solution—kind of like the reasons for why he and Papa were always moving from village to village, mostly in the dead of the night with tummies growling and voices stifled.
There were few constants in this boy's life, but there was one, and it was more than enough, so solid a foundation that the boy never questioned it, never doubted it, never examined it.
Once upon a time, there was a boy, and he loved his papa.
Papa who told him endless stories, each more glamorous and sparkling than the last. Papa who played games with him until he couldn't keep his eyes open, who found the boy quiet places to rest while he made a few coins to earn them a loaf of bread. Papa who stayed (didn't walk away, or leave on a journey, or flee to a heavenly realm). Papa stayed, and he never left, and so Rumplestiltskin loved him more than anything in the world.
Once upon a time, there was a boy whose father loved to tell stories (stories, the boy would later learn, were just another word for lies).
"We'll sail all over the world one day," Papa declared, and Rumplestiltskin set aside thoughts of four walls and a warm bed and safe friends in favor of imagining endless oceans (cold and salty) and billowing sails (blisters on his palms and a still-empty tummy).
"We'll see every world there is to see, just you and me," Papa promised, and Rumplestiltskin ignored the scary dark woods all around them and his aching feet to sing songs with his papa, songs they made up, imagining what different melodies from alien worlds might sound like.
"We'll make our own adventures, laddie," Papa said after angry men roused them from their newest lodging and searched Papa's things for more coins than Rumplestiltskin had known they had. Rumplestiltskin tried not to think about the girl he'd met earlier who'd been kind and funny, or the bread he'd set aside for breakfast (crumbled to nothing under the boots of those angry men), or how cold his hands were. Instead, he slipped his cold hand into Papa's and made himself think of adventures (made himself believe this was what he wanted, even after Papa pulled his hand free to close his cloak tighter around himself).
"We'll be together forever, right, Papa?" asked the boy whose only certainty was his dreaming, laughing, angry father.
But Papa was looking far away, his eyes already alight with some new plan, and he didn't answer Rumplestiltskin.
Once upon a time, there was a boy who left a warm home with cozy walls and stew simmering over the fire and the love of two mothers willing to give him all they had (mothers were abstract puzzles, there one moment, gone the next, not to be trusted next to the certainty of his papa). The boy left everything he secretly wished for, all so he could take his papa's hand and fly with him to a brand new world.
He was returned, unwillingly, alone and screaming and terrified of every shadow (especially the ones that moved).
(Unwanted.)
There were no more adventures. No more dreams of far-off lands or daring sword fights or happiness in disguise. There was no more Papa.
Instead, there was only Pan. He visited Rumplestiltskin in his nightmares, and dogged his steps, a constant reminder, a strawman turned real and ugly and frightful.
(Unimportant.)
Rumplestiltskin returned to the spinsters (who'd bought him, he'd come to realize too slow; the Shadow was not the first , and would not be the last, to whom Malcolm sold that too-trusting boy). From them, he learned a trade, and how to help when their hands grew gnarled, and how to spin thread rather than credulous fantasies. The spinsters loved him, in their way, and Rumplestiltskin was careful to always be useful and quiet and cheerful so they wouldn't find reason not to.
(Unworthy.)
When they died, Rumplestiltskin inherited four sheep, four walls, and a new batch of loneliness, so he ignored the shadows pulling at him and smiled at the tall, beautiful girl who'd only recently moved to town with her ailing parents.
She smiled back, and in favor of believing in a happily-ever-after, Rumplestiltskin forgot what his fate had always been…and always would be.
(Unloved.)
Once upon a time, there was a boy who became a man who dreamed of being a better man than his father.
He failed, over and over again, and every day he realized it more with each new small slight and spat epithet and cold shoulder. His wife left him for an adventurer who sailed the wide seas and visited far realms (and told lies like stories that everyone believed because they were better than reality). But even that was all right because Rumplestiltskin had a son, the most beautiful boy who'd ever lived in any world.
"Where's Mama?" Baelfire asked, and Rumplestiltskin thought of his own childhood mystery. All the questions. The unknowns that made him cling, in turn, to a monster he called Papa.
That would not be Bae's fate.
"Your mother was beautiful," Rumplestiltskin told the son that was everything to him (the one person who loved him back, unstintingly, unconditionally, more than anyone else ever had or ever would). "Dark hair, blue eyes, and so very brave. A real hero. She loved you, son. She loved us both. She'd tuck you into bed at night and tell such stories, amazing tales of curses broken by beautiful maids and dragons conquered by kind words. And when you woke from nightmares, she'd hold you close and rock you back to sleep with better dreams. In the morning, she used to cook the most delicious breakfasts, the best eggs-in-a-basket you'd ever taste. And the sheep loved to hear her voice, always eager for her fond attention. But you, Bae, were her little lamb, the thing she loved most, and she never would have left you if given the choice.
(If he closed his eyes, he could almost believe these stories into truth, like a little boy pretending away homesickness and starvation in favor of dreams that were nothing more than lies.)
"Or you, Papa, right?" Bae asked. He slipped his little hand into Rumplestiltskin's, so small, so warm. (There, for him, holding on and not letting go.) "She loved you too, didn't she?"
"Of course," Rumplestiltskin said, shoving aside memories of Milah (of tavern visits and harsh insults and shoves that left behind bruises). He conjured up different images, hazy pictures of another (kinder) woman, a blue-eyed brunette who smiled and teased and comforted. She was dreamed up by sheer will-power, but was quickly becoming Rumplestiltskin's favorite story (lie) to think on. "Of course she did, Bae. She was your mama, like I'm your papa, and both of us are so proud of you."
Bae laughed and hugged him, and Rumplestiltskin counted the deception worth it for the happiness in his little boy's eyes. In fact, he told the lie so often, imagined it so well, that he nearly believed it himself—until the truth behind those pretty lies came back and stole their son away.
(But then, Rumplestiltskin had never deserved him anyway.)
Once upon a time, there was a monster who dreamed of being a hero (and failed). A coward who dreamed of being brave (but wasn't). A cripple who dreamed of a better life (and lost it). A boy who imagined he could escape his father's shadow (then fell headlong right into it).
Once upon a time, there were lies (stories) upon which Rumplestiltskin built his life. Until one day, in another world, all his lies came crashing down atop him. And all that was left was a little boy disguised as an old man staring at an old man (Papa) disguised as a little boy.
"Rumple, laddie," Pan crowed.
And Rumplestiltskin knew: he'd never stop loving his papa.
And he also knew: he'd never ever be enough for Malcolm.
-Storybrooke-
Rumplestiltskin's hand stings. Not where he cut himself to bleed out once more for his papa. No, the sting is all over, but primarily along his palm, the heel of his hand, his fingertips—everywhere Bae touched. Tightening his prickling grip over the head of his cane, Rumplestiltskin takes one last look around the interior of his shop. The map still shimmers over the north woods. With a slight smirk, he waves his hand to banish the illusion so that Pan's true location is revealed.
(No need for Bae, always so brave, so willing to dive into danger, to know where the true enemy lies; no point in Belle thinking she knows how to help and rescue and save him yet again, for the thousandth time.)
Rumplestiltskin stares down at the map and tries not to be afraid. It's an impossible task, but he attempts it anyway. The location, glittering scarlet and black, is as familiar to him as the bump in his nose and the color of Bae's eyes.
It's here. Upstairs.
His papa's waiting for him.
Slowly, Rumplestiltskin locks the front door of his shop. It was hard, to send off Belle and Bae with so little farewell (with only the hope that they know what they mean to him), to speak calmly, when all along, he knew Pan was hovering over their heads, biding his time, ready to jump out with a Boo! and a gloating laugh.
But they're gone now. Safe (or safe as he can make them in a town that holds Pan within its borders). And it's time for him to stop being a coward.
(He wishes Zoso were here. A presence held tight within his bones to prevent him from being alone. To give him reason to pretend to courage.)
"Papa," he says at the foot of the stairs, and Peter Pan laughs and laughs and laughs.
His shadow comes down first. Rumplestiltskin can't help the way he flinches back, a stumbling retreat he regrets but cannot change. Pan flies down next. Not literally, strangely, but his prowl is so graceful, his stride so quick, that it might as well be flight (Papa's never been one not to twist the screw in tighter, after all). Rumplestiltskin eases the weight from his bad ankle and does his best not to hunch.
"Rumple, laddie!" Pan throws his arms wide. "A real family reunion, isn't it? What is this? Four generations all together? Be honest—you never thought this day would come, did you?"
"You won't be here long enough to enjoy it," Rumplestiltskin says. "Why are you here? I thought Neverland was everything you could ever want—enough to trade away the only person who's ever loved you."
Pan flicks that away with a roll of his eyes. "No need to be so dramatic. You know, when you came to my little domain, I really rolled out the welcome carpet for you. Dolls under every leaf, your favorite breakfast on the fire, gifts in abundance. Have to say, your welcome is a bit lacking in comparison."
"That doll is your ghost, not mine," Rumplestiltskin grits.
"Is it?" Pan arches a skeptical brow. "Well, maybe you're better at pretend than I always thought."
"I'm not pretending anymore." A deep breath swells Rumplestiltskin's ribcage, almost like Zoso used to, when he needed that extra encouragement.
(He wishes Bae were here, to hold his hand, to hug him tight again and call him Papa and let him think he might be forgiven one day.)
"Really?" Pan prowls the interior of the shop, plays with figurines, sweeps over glass ornaments, flicks one of the vials so that it tinkles. "And what exactly is your plan here, Rumple? We both know your magic could only be a match for mine if it were unrestrained—still got that dagger right at your side, though, don't you? Safe and sound. A collar's always suited you, I thought. But without unleashed magic, without some ace up your sleeve, there's not really anything you can do to stop me from starting a new round of games here."
"I don't need to fight you." Rumplestiltskin swivels in place, careful to always keep Pan in sight (carefully, with each swivel, setting himself nearer and nearer his workbench with the vial holding the squid ink). "I'm going to offer you a deal."
"A deal?" Pan flutters a hand over his heart and makes an exaggerated face of shock. "For me? Well, I suppose we both knew you could never follow in my footsteps. It's something that you've modeled yourself after the Shadow instead. Deals are always such a delight, aren't they?"
Bile burns at the back of his throat. Rumplestiltskin keeps his face impassive, though at the cost of burning eyes, aching hands, tense muscles.
"Word from the pirate is that you need a boy. A specific boy. Need him badly enough to send out agents for decades—if not centuries—and now to come yourself."
"Overhearing conversations I'm not invited to is something of a specialty of mine too." Pan tilts his head. "I heard the delightful tidbit about this Henry being your grandson. Don't tell me that you are going to follow in my footsteps after all?"
"I'm not offering you the boy," Rumplestiltskin spits. Fury hazes his vision and it takes him a moment to realize he's lurched a step toward Pan (a step farther from the ink that will immobilize Pan). "I would never do that. I'm not you."
"Aren't you?" Pan glides closer, revolves in a circle around Rumplestiltskin, studying him from every angle. "You wanted power—I wanted freedom. You desired magic—I desired flight. You blinded yourself to Zoso's maneuverings and lost your son, which left you free and clear to be Dark One, the most powerful being in your little land of fairytales. While I…well, I listened to my own Shadow and traded my son for a kingdom of my own."
Suddenly, all Rumplestiltskin can think, all he can picture, is Pan whispering these lies, these intimations (these truths-from-a-certain-view) into Bae's ear. In his mind's eye, three centuries roll by, each one flavored with these poisoned intimations, accusations, stories.
Suddenly, despite all the love still preserved so carefully, so neatly, in his heart for the papa who stayed, who teased, who played…suddenly, he hates Pan with an immediacy he's never been able to capture before.
Rumplestiltskin turns his head and surprises Pan with a straight look. "If you need a boy with the heart of a true believer, it means you're dying." At Pan's guarded expression, he tilts his head. "What? You think I didn't learn everything about Neverland I could? The Dark One's accumulated millennia of history. Fairies talk when the alternative is their wings stripped from their backs. Even Ogres still remember the time when Neverland and our world were linked—the nightmares that once came through the portal, memories that make them tremble even to this day."
Pan claps theatrically (and now, too late, Rumplestiltskin knows where his own showmanship came from, the parts he played, the facades he wore). "So the little boy thinks he's all grown up and ready to play on his own."
"If so, then I've certainly surpassed you," Rumplestiltskin says with a thin, bitter smile. "The point is, you've drained Neverland of its magic. I'm sure you could limp along a while more so long as you snatch up more boys to drain dry of their imagination. But even feeding on the husks of their endless gullibility can't sustain you, can it? You need a new heart. One stronger and better than you own has ever been."
"The heart of the Truest Believer," Pan says, and in his voice, the phrase becomes a talisman, an incantation, as if magic lies in the utterance of them.
Perhaps it does. If so, Rumplestiltskin claims it for himself by repeating them.
"The heart of the Truest Believer. Henry's heart."
"So prophecy says." Pan's smile is wide and as sinister as it is cheerful. "It might have been Baelfire. I wished it was. The poetic symbolism of it alone… But alas, it's your grandson instead. Close enough."
"I can give you the heart of the truest believer," Rumplestiltskin makes himself say. There's a peculiar burning in his ankle, like a reminder of the last time he tried to make a deal using pieces of himself as currency.
"You're not a believer," Pan says flatly. So unimpressed, attention already moved past Rumplestiltskin, that it hurts.
(He wishes Belle were here, to support him, to encourage him with her beautiful blue eyes, to remind him that he is loved.)
Pan gives Rumplestiltskin a dismissive once-over and snorts. "You've never been a believer. The best you could ever dream up were food and a hut, some ordinary villager's wife, some sheep—mediocrity. That's all you've ever really been: a disappointment."
"And yet, you're still here. Standing here. Talking to me." Behind his back, Rumplestiltskin's hand closes on the vial of squid ink.
"And I'm done. I thought we might finally be able to put the past behind us, but ah, laddie, you just don't deserve my time."
It shouldn't. Not after all these years. Not after everything that's already happened between them. But it hurts anyway, like a slap across the face.
Rumplestiltskin tosses the vial of squid ink to Pan, who catches it without missing a beat. At the snap of Rumplestiltskin's fingers, the vial disappears and the ink smears across Pan's hand.
"Oh, Rumple, Rumple, Rumple." Pan laughs. "You never could use your imagination, could you?"
And from behind him, Rumplestiltskin hears a sound—a footstep.
He turns, magic wisping around his hands, but too late.
The pirate smirks and says, "Gotcha, Crocodile," and a cuff snaps into place around his wrist.
"Follow the Lady," Malcolm says in a child's sing-song voice. "Now you see the pirate, now you don't."
"This is for Milah," Hook hisses, and he slams his fist into Rumplestiltskin's face.
Rumplestiltskin falls. Hook comes after him, another punch, two, three, he's losing count, scrabbling for magic that evades him, and all the while, the hilt of the dagger digs into his ribcage. Terror (an old friend, his most faithful companion) overwhelms Rumplestiltskin as lights spark in his vision and bruises slam into being under his skin. The cuff around his wrist burns cold as a star, poisonous as fairy dust.
The beating lasts forever. Or near enough. Long enough, anyway, for the squid ink to wear off and for Pan to move, eyes curious, as he stares down at his son, whimpering on the floor.
"Enough, Captain Jones. Don't make me take back the tongue I just returned to you." Pan lays a hand on Hook's shoulder and pulls him off Rumplestiltskin. Hook protests, but falls back anyway. Even he's afraid of Peter Pan.
Rumplestiltskin doesn't blame him. He's terrified of him too.
Pan kneels to look down at Rumplestiltskin. With one hand, long-fingered and thin (so different from the hands that used to pull out tricks from a deck of cards or a few shells or from behind Rumplestiltskin's ear), he reaches out and draws a finger down the trail of blood leaking from Rumplestiltskin's mouth, connects it to the blood pouring from his nose, links that to the bruise over his temple. The remnants of squid ink burn on Rumplestiltskin's skin.
"I remember the first time I saw you," Malcolm says. "The littlest babe. Helpless and all mine. Those big, big eyes full of tears…pulling at me. Pulling away my name, my money, my time. Pulling away any hope of making my life into something better for myself." His finger presses harder, deeper, digging into the bruise until Rumplestiltskin winces away, his free hand scrabbling at the cuff over his opposite wrist. "This pink, naked, squirming little larva that wanted to eat my dreams alive and never stop!"
"I loved you," Rumplestiltskin panted out.
"I know. But I…" Peter holds up his hands and stares at the blood staining it (the blood that binds them, connects them without a doubt, that points from father to son unerringly). "I never loved you, Rumple. All I wanted was to be rid of you. And yet here you still are, refusing to die."
The dagger's hilt, pressed against his ribs, keeps him from catching his breath, but Rumplestiltskin doesn't care. He dares not move, can barely breathe anyway, so afraid that Pan or Hook will take the dagger.
And control him. Use him like a puppet (like he did Zoso). Send him out to kill Bae and capture Henry and destroy this town.
He can't let that happen.
"Well, now at least your death will be useful. I think it's fitting, don't you, to snuff your life out along with this little town you created? I know you, you see. You're a coward, always leaving yourself a little backdoor out. Never ready to fully commit. You never would have allowed yourself to be cursed into this world if you didn't have a way to destroy it all and send yourself back to a world of magic. Just think of it—the power that will be unleashed when a town made of pure magic explodes. The portal it opens between worlds will be so big, so irrevocable, that nothing will ever be able to close it.
"The Shadows, you see, are as hungry as I am."
"No," Rumplestiltskin gasps. "You can't! Everyone here will die!"
Bae will die. His son, newly returned to him, so close (is one hug all he'll ever get after their centuries of separation?). And Belle, he only just realized she's alive, only had so few days with her, so few nights (has wasted so many of them in useless plotting).
They'll die. They'll die and it'll be his fault.
"Every great game requires a few sacrifices." Pan smiles. "Don't worry, Rumple. To die will be an awfully big adventure."
"No!" Rumplestiltskin lunges for him, but he's too slow. Too weak. Too scared. (The real story of his life.) "Papa, please!"
But Malcolm's already turned away. Already walking away. Already consigned Rumplestiltskin, yet again, to the past.
"Papa!" Rumplestiltskin yells.
Pan doesn't turn. Instead, as if Rumplestiltskin is beneath his notice, he leaves him behind, cuffed and helpless.
Useless.
(And Rumplestiltskin is so glad that Bae isn't here, that Belle's far away, that Zoso is dead, so they cannot see him as he truly is.)
The map shimmers in Belle's mind. She sees it clear as day, so bright, so unequivocal, that she can't help but to doubt it. The shine was too bright, the location too obvious, and if there is one thing Belle's learned in her time with Rumplestiltskin, it's that magic always has a loophole, a double edge, a hidden price.
"Come on, come on," Bae mutters. They're moving as fast as they can through the town, both of them unsuited to jogging but giving it their best effort anyway. Belle's having a hard enough time keeping her feet under her, but she can't help but to keep throwing covert looks to the boy.
Rumplestiltskin's son.
It seems so strange, to look at this man who is a stranger and see pieces of her True Love winking back at her. His intensity. The gleam of cunning that shines in eyes dark and nearly golden. The hint of a smirk hidden in the corner of his mouth.
Rumplestiltskin's son.
And so angry. So lost. So hurt.
It really is like looking at an echo of Rumplestiltskin sometimes.
"What?" Bae snaps when he catches Belle's eyes on him.
"I'm so glad he found you," she says simply, and yet for some reason, it makes Bae go rigid. He stumbles to a halt and stares at her.
"He didn't find me," he finally says. "I came here for my son and found him."
"But still." Belle takes a brave step closer to him. "He's been searching for you ever since he lost you. You should have seen the way he held onto that baby blanket of yours, like it was the only thing that could keep him together."
"His magic does that for him," Bae says, looking away.
"Rumplestiltskin likes not feeling powerless," Belle agrees. "But that's only because he wants to be able to protect the people he loves—and he knows what it feels like when he can't."
"The people he loves." When he turns back to her, Bae's expression is nearly as awed as her own must be when she sneaks glances of him. "Which includes you. You know he doesn't know how to love by measures, don't you? It's a dangerous place to be: the Dark One's heart."
"He's more than just the Dark One," Belle says, "and that's where the strength of his love comes from—in the man who's used to losing everything. The man who's been left too many times before. The man who just wants to believe that someone, just one person, will choose him over anything else."
Bae flinches (as if he hears only accusations rather than reassurances). "Well, I can't. Even if he deserved it, my priorities have to be with Henry. With Emma. They have no idea what Pan is like."
"So you've said." With a smile to soften her words, she says, "But it sounds like you think exactly the same thing as Rumplestiltskin: that there's only room for one person in a heart. Don't you believe that love can encompass a multitude?"
With a shrug, Bae resumes walking. "Not really."
"Then I feel sorry for you," Belle says. Bae's shoulders hunch forward, but they both decide to save their breath for their near-run.
Only when the stables come into view do Bae's steps slow. Belle catches her breath and (before she can think herself out of it) says, "Just because he loves you doesn't mean he loves me any less. And just because you love your own son doesn't mean the love you hold for your father evaporates."
She might as well not have said anything. Bae makes no reaction, and whatever Belle might have said to press the point (meddling, really, but how can she help it when she's felt Rumplestiltskin's trembling as he holds her at night and yearns for his son? when she can clearly see the pain hidden there in the creases around Bae's weary eyes?) is swallowed up by the sight before them.
The stables are just as they were the last time Belle saw them, a quick point and nod when Rumplestiltskin showed her the town. It's the glowing yellow dome that cuts the stables in half and rises toward the sky before curving back to the ground that is new.
"What the—" Bae starts to flat-out run. Though she tries to keep up, Belle quickly falls behind, her shoes nearly twisting her ankles. At the sight of Bae running straight for that dome (at the imagined look of heartbreak in Rumplestiltskin's eyes should she come back without his son), Belle tears her shoes from her feet, tosses them aside, and runs as fast as she can. She's just behind Bae when he twists along the curve of the dome through the sliver of door left uncovered (thankfully, the large stable doors were open, she thinks) and into the gloom of the rows of stalls.
"Emma?" Bae calls, and it's only then that Belle realizes they haven't been headed toward Henry but to Bae's own (true?) love. "Emma!"
"Neal?"
At the sheriff's shaken voice, light flares through the stables, emanating from the dome that glows golden and carnelian. The tableau it lights nearly makes Belle stumble yet again.
A crowd of people (dwarfs, Ruby and her granny, David and his wife) all stay huddled behind Emma, who stands alone, her arms upraised over her head, her fingers taut as if holding something—like the dome that crackles outward from her fingertips and cuts them off from the solitary figure standing outside the magical shield.
"Neal," Emma says, her panic barely contained, "I don't know what to do. I can't turn it off. It's just…it just showed up and now I can't move and I think…I think it's magic!"
"It's definitely magic," Regina says from her place set apart. Her face twists with something Belle can't quite read in the eerie light. "Well, Snow, looks like I'm not the only one using magic around here. Maybe this will buy me a little less judgment?"
Belle ignores whatever the princess answers in favor of inching her way around the dome in Regina's direction. Maybe it's all the stories she's read about underdogs and the trampled rising up (maybe it's the memories of all those times in their old world when it was Rumplestiltskin alone against a mob, an army, the whole of public opinion), but she hates the way this scene is set up. Hates that there is one person, alone, against all the might Storybrooke can summon up (without Rumplestiltskin's help anyway).
"Emma," Bae says, and his voice is so calm that it slices through the rising terror spilling from everyone else. "Magic works by emotion, right? So you just have to calm down."
"Calm down? Calm down! Regina is holding our son hostage and I'm suddenly Harry Potter—she was throwing real live fireballs—and I'm the one who should calm down! Neal, you arrogant bastard, how dare you—"
"Emma." Bae steps forward, again, again, until he's pressed right up against the golden shield, his hands laid atop it, his eyes peering straight through it to Emma. "It's okay. I know how to find Henry."
"Henry?" Regina repeats shrilly. "What's wrong with Henry?"
Another clamor as multiple people call out their answers (accusations, denunciations, it's nothing Belle didn't hear a hundred times during her people's war with the invading ogres), another chance for Belle to inch her way closer to Regina. It's subtle, really, but Belle likes to think that even the unconscious recognition that she's no longer standing alone helps Regina.
"You're holding Henry captive here!" Snow White shouts above all the rest.
Regina's eyes go wide. "What? No, I… He came here, a few hours ago, and he saw me doing magic. He…he didn't let me explain. Didn't let me tell him why I needed it. He just snapped at me and—"
"What did you do to him?" Emma demands. The shield expands, pushing Bae back, crackling with electricity that raises the hairs on Belle's arms.
"I didn't do anything!" Regina cries. "He ran off, okay? I tried to follow him, but I couldn't find him. I waited at his castle for hours. He never showed up, so finally…I came back here. Daniel needs me."
"Daniel?" Belle asks softly. She makes sure that instead of facing Regina head-on, she stays shoulder to shoulder with her, and she doesn't make eye-contact, just the suggestion of it. (She's tamed beasts before, and knows the steps to this slow dance.) "Is he safe?"
"Not if the 'Savior' keeps throwing magic around every which way," Regina snarls with a poisonous look aimed at Emma.
"Daniel?" Snow exclaims. "You can't mean…"
"He's the stable boy." Regina locks eyes with Snow. "The one Cora told you had run away. She told me he was dead. That it was my fault. That she had to rip out his heart and crush it just to keep him away from me. But all along he was locked up, kept trapped within his own mind, unable to speak or think or remember anything at all."
"The strong one," Belle gasps. She thinks of the basement she walked into with Phillip's hand in hers. Thinks of the dead nurse (Regina's fury over a threat to her loved ones, perhaps, doesn't look so different from Rumplestiltskin's) and the empty halls. Of the last door in that corridor, farthest from freedom, cracked open, the cell itself empty. She remembers the repetitive thumping that used to strengthen her, remind her that her heart was still beating, and she nearly collapses in her relief that he didn't die, that he's still alive, safe and rescued and looked after by someone who clearly loves him.
She didn't fail him. She wasn't too late. He has someone who loves him and came for him and is his hero in the way Belle wants to be the hero for her True Love.
"You…you know him?" Regina stares at Belle, all her anger subsumed beneath sudden astonishment, an almost desperate hope.
"We were neighbors," Belle says. "I didn't know who he was, or what he looked like, but we helped comfort each other with what noises we could make. His was a thumping sound against the walls."
Regina takes a shaky breath. "He still does that, here, sometimes."
"He'd tap the sides of the cell walls, keeping time for Aurora's singing, offering encouragement for the stories I told."
"He wasn't alone?" Regina asks (there's a strange, overly effective pitifulness to Regina's hope, just like there is to Rumplestiltskin's when he can't hide it away; monsters, Belle thinks, are the most endearing at their weakest, and the most in need of love, of pity, at their strongest).
"We all helped each other," Belle assures her. She can't resist taking Regina's hand and squeezing it, once, before quickly letting it go (best not to make beasts think themselves trapped). "I'm so glad you found him. I'm glad he's okay."
"Well, he's…he's not all the way better yet. But I've almost broken the last of my mother's curses holding him prisoner inside his own mind."
Behind them, the magical shield evaporates into nothing, and when Belle turns, she sees Bae stepping over that vanished dome to take Emma's hand in his.
"I know how to find Henry," he tells her, so gently, as he places the jewel-like tracker in her hand. "Hook captured him for Pan. And Pan's here to collect him. But we can save him before that. You can save him. This jewel will grow warmer the closer you are to him. Follow it to our son."
"Pan has him?" Emma stares up at Bae. Her hand closes tight around the jewel. "What will he do with him?"
"Nothing good." Terror flashes across Bae's expression like a cloud, blocking the sun, before it's gone. He smiles at Emma (Belle recognizes that smile, has seen it before on a different face, watched Rumplestiltskin give it to her just a little bit ago, when he told her goodbye without saying the words, and sent her off to a danger less than the one he planned on facing himself). "You have to save him."
"We'll save him," Regina says. She, too, steps forward, past the faded line separating them. When Emma meets her eyes, Regina says, "He's my son too."
"I know," Emma says after a long moment.
"We don't only have to find Henry," Belle says. "Pan's here and he's intent on destroying this town."
"Not just destroying it," Bae says. "Pan wants access to all the worlds. He's not content just to play his games in Neverland anymore. He'll need a way to blow open all the worlds, give him a way to enter any of them and pick and choose his newest recruits."
"The self-destruct," Regina says. She straightens at everyone's attention. "Mother said that Rumplestiltskin would never give her a curse he couldn't control in some way. She worked with…with an ally of hers to find the self-destruct trigger. And then she separated it from the curse to hide it. If Pan really wants to destroy this town in a way that will open the gaps between worlds, he'll need that scroll."
"Do you know where she hid it?" David asks her.
"In her vault, with the rest of her doomsday curses."
"Then we need to keep it safe."
"Can you retrieve it?" Snow asks, her tone careful as she studies Regina.
Regina's eyes go shuttered and dark. "No. I'm going to save my son."
"We can get it," David says. "Right, Snow?"
"You'll need a key." Regina strides into the tiny apartment's open kitchen, opens a drawer, and pulls out a knife. Before the dwarfs can do more than spring forward around Snow White, Regina draws the blade down her own palm. The line of red that springs free is garishly bright in the illumination cast by the apartment's lone lightbulb (so dim in comparison to the glowing dome). Belle's attention is caught by that line of crimson.
By the fact that when Bae's finger bled from the needle in his papa's hand, Rumplestiltskin's own, ever-present handkerchief was missing. It was Belle who'd given Bae something to staunch the bleeding. And Rumplestiltskin who kept his shoulders curved around whatever it was he did to find Pan.
Which brings her back to that shimmering map. The spot marked in brilliant magic. The way Rumplestiltskin sent her off into danger without hesitation.
You're so good at rescuing people, he told her. And then he sent her away from him.
You can't believe in happiness for yourself. Hadn't she told him that once, the last time he sent her far from him in order to keep her from the thick of his dangerous plans?
"Here." Regina sweeps a finger around the cut on her palm and tosses a glowing orb surrounding her liquid blood to David, who catches it with an uneasy expression. "Blood magic. It will get you into the vault. Look for a tiny scroll. She never let me in to see where she kept things, but I imagine it will be near her collection of hearts."
David and Snow exchange a look, then nod. "Regina," Snow says, halting, but Regina looks away.
"Someone needs to stay and guard Daniel," she says. She's turning to Belle (who's frozen, caught between wanting to protect her cellmate and knowing that she needs to do something very different), but stops when Ruby steps forward.
"I'll look after him," offers the waitress. "You said he's innocent. I…I'll make sure nothing happens to him. No matter what."
Regina pauses, clearly torn, before nodding. "Protect him with your life," she hisses. "He's…"
"I know," Ruby says, and for an instant she looks older than she is, as if whatever blood she sees stained on her hands has conveyed the weight of ages. "I'll keep him safe."
"He…" Regina's brow creases as she fights for composure. "He gets startled by loud noises. And he likes looking out the window."
"He'll be safe."
"We need to go," Emma says. "Who knows what they're doing to Henry?"
Regina and Emma are the first ones out the door, Neal at their heels, David and Snow White just behind them. The dwarfs exit too, though they don't go far. Leroy directs his brothers to set up guard posts around the stables, and Granny sets herself in the door with a crossbow in hand.
Belle exits last. Lost in thought, she drifts forward slowly, scarcely noticing just how cold her feet are.
The blood on Regina's palm is bothering her. As is the fact that Belle's here, apart from Rumplestiltskin, when she knows that he's in trouble (that he fears being alone; that he thinks he deserves to be always alone). When she met up with Phillip and Mulan to save Aurora, she hadn't told Rumplestiltskin where she was going because she knew he'd try to stop her. He has such a terror of losing the people he loves.
And yet he sent her here. To face Hook, if not Pan. Hook, the man who shot her, who nearly killed her out of some overwrought vendetta against Rumplestiltskin.
There's only one reason that Rumplestiltskin would let her go—and that reason doesn't explain why he let both her and his precious son see the glaring red X marked over Pan's location.
Unless it was a lie.
There's no one, she knows, better at misdirection, at pretending one thing while doing another. At saying something that's wholly truth to cover the real truth that matters.
And so when Bae stops Emma with a hand on her sleeve, when he says, "I can't go with you," Belle already knows what she needs to do.
After all, she didn't come back to Rumplestiltskin (over and over again) just to lose him now.
She's always wanted to be a hero. But now she knows: more than anything, she wants to be Rumplestiltskin's hero.
It's the hardest thing Neal's ever done to make himself stop in place and tell Emma he can't help her save their son.
"Someone else needs me," he says, and it's the truth and it hurts and it costs him everything to say so he knows it's the right thing to do.
"Henry needs you!" Emma snaps.
Neal bites his tongue. (It's everything he's wanted her to say, everything he's dreamed of her admitting, and it doesn't matter at all because he can't act on it.)
"Henry needs you," he says. "You and Regina. He needs you to rescue him. But getting him away from the Lost Boys isn't going to help at all if we don't stop Pan himself."
"But…" Emma gasps in a heaving breath. She doesn't quite meet his eyes when she says, quietly, "You said Peter Pan was the most dangerous thing in all the worlds."
"He is. Which is why I have to stop him."
"And you know how?" she asks. Her eyes are clear. Direct. So truthful and earnest and intense that Neal, for the first time in over a decade, feels seen.
"I do," he says. "When I had to leave you, I knew that I couldn't leave you unprotected. I couldn't risk Pan finding you, not unless you had some way to fight back. That's why I left you the car."
"The car?" She shakes her head, confused and worried and so beautiful that Neal wonders how he ever made himself leave her in the first place. It all seems like such a waste now, the years apart, the loneliness inflicted on them both, the scars that layer their hearts.
So necessary in the moment. So regrettable in context.
"I hid something in the car. The only thing that can stop Pan."
"I…" Emma grabs his hand. "Neal, we can stop Peter Pan together. Once we save Henry, we'll—"
"Once we save Henry, it'll be too late." Neal can't stop himself from reaching up with his free hand to brush his fingers over the swan keychain she's turned into a necklace. He noticed it immediately, in that hospital, August wooden and silent between them. The charm that had been all he could give her at the time, a tiny useless stolen memento, and yet she received it like a diamond and has kept it all this time, hanging over her heart.
It's the only thing that's kept him hoping (even when he knows, he knows, how awful it is to hope, how much hope gives you to lose all over again).
"Pan wants Henry," he says, mainly to remind himself. "He's been searching for him for years. He's never going to stop coming after him. And once you have something Pan wants…he never lets you go. So, you and Regina save Henry. Get him somewhere safe. I'm going to find a way to stop Pan once and for all."
"Neal…"
"I thought I only knew how to run," he tells her. His hand moves from the swan necklace to her throat. Then, when she doesn't stop him (when she looks at him with eyes as wide and unblinking as the first time she told him she loved him), to her cheek. "But it wasn't true. I do know how to fight—when the people I love are in danger, I know how to never stop fighting for them."
Her fingers curl tighter around his, and Neal fights to etch this moment (her panting breath against his cheek, the tear sliding under his fingers, the touch of her hand in his, the love swelling outward from that broken cocoon to rip him free of the stasis he's been trapped in for decades) inside his heart so that he'll never forget it. Even if he's trapped in Neverland for centuries more, he will still remember this instant, this eternity, locked in her heart, and he will never stop fighting to get it back.
"Emma, save Henry," he says. "I'll find you afterward, I promise."
"Not if I find you first," she says, and then she pulls him into her and kisses him. It's a quick, fierce kiss that resonates through him like truth torn from a heart in Echo Cave, and in it, Neal finds everything he needs to cling to the hope slipping from him like shadows from a broken coconut.
He clutches her close, eyes squeezed tight…and then lets go.
And this is the hardest thing he's ever done. Or is it the next moment? And the next?
Nothing's ever easy in this life. He didn't need Pan to teach him that.
Emma's parents give him quick looks, Prince Charming shares a quick nod with him, before they're gone too. Neal stares after them all, disappeared into the night where Shadows will too easily blend and where anything could swoop from the skies to snatch them away.
"I'm coming with you," Belle says from behind him.
"Have you heard of Pandora's Box?" he asks without turning. Somehow, even though he's only known her an hour or so, he's not surprised at her insistence.
"In stories. They say that whoever's trapped within it is trapped for eternity with only their regrets to keep them company."
"Close enough," Neal says while trying not to flinch. So many of the possible pasts, the potential futures, that he saw in that box have trickled from his mind. But enough is left behind, impressions and nightmares that visit him constantly, to leave him cold and shaking at the thought of touching the box he imagined away from Pan and brought with him to this world without magic. "How many regrets do you think Pan has?"
"He'll have one more if we can get him inside that box," she says, and Neal actually cracks a smile at such blatant determination.
"We have to get the box first," he says. "Then we have to find Pan."
"Before he hurts Rumple," Belle adds firmly.
"Before he hurts anyone else," Neal says, but he can't help thinking of Papa alone in his shop, trying to be brave, holding onto him so tightly and letting him go so quickly.
(Holding on isn't the hard part, Neal's learned; it's always the letting go that's the hardest.)
"He's not north of Storybrooke," Belle says as they set off for the diner.
Neal glances sideways at her. "That's where the map showed."
"That's where Rumple made us think the map showed," she says, and Neal's breath catches in his throat.
Of course. He should have known. It's like all those times when he was a kid, when Rumplestiltskin emptied the soup pot into Bae's bowl and said he'd eaten earlier. When he told him stories of a loving mother and hid the truth of Milah from him. When he went alone from a burning castle to the dark woods to face the most powerful being their world's ever known.
"Oh, Papa," he hears himself mutter, and doesn't realize his hands are fists until Belle brushes her fingers against his knuckles.
"We'll save him," she says.
"From Pan?" He scoffs. "It'll take a miracle."
And yet, for some reason Neal can almost believe in those now (after all, Emma kissed him, and looked at him like she used to, before he abandoned her to save her). The yellow bug sits parked in front of Granny's Diner, bright and shiny and everything it was when he was first drawn to it. It looks the same, when he jimmies the door open, as that first night he slept on its backseat, tears of relief wet on his cheeks as his hands clutched the gray in his hair. It smells like Emma, like sugar and cinnamon and hope, just like the first time they kissed, when he finally dared to believe that this was real (that he wasn't still trapped in Neverland, playing some elaborate game of make-believe).
And there, beneath the back floorboard, dusty and smelling vaguely of motor oil, is Pandora's Box. Neal's hands shake when he pulls it free of its wrapping and brushes clean the red jewel on its top.
"I never really thought I'd see this again," he whispers.
Belle stands a respectful step away. Her eyes are soft (too kind, too knowing) as she asks, "Will this work?"
"It will. If we can find Pan."
"I've been trying to think of a way we can, but…" Her brows draw down. "I don't think any of the simple locator spells will work, not for a creature as devious as Peter Pan."
"I think I know how to find him." Neal swallows and pretends it takes all his attention to tuck Pandora's Box inside his coat pocket. "Rumplestiltskin found him, you know, even if he didn't let us see his true location. And he only needed one thing to do it."
Belle's eyes widen as she darts a look to Bae's finger, still prickling where Rumplestiltskin's needle stung.
"A drop of blood," Neal says.
"He said Pan killed his father."
"I think I've been known to say the Dark One killed mine."
Their eyes meet, and suddenly Bae is fiercely glad that this woman is with him. She knows what it means that Rumplestiltskin used blood magic to track Pan. She knows what it means to Neal that his blood can track Rumplestiltskin.
And Pan.
Pan left Papa, Bae thinks. And I was taken from Papa. And I left Henry. And now Henry's been taken from all of us. They're trapped in what seems an endless cycle, having and losing and getting only to lose again.
But it has to end now. For Henry's sake. For his own sanity. For Papa's life.
"We can use my blood," Bae says, "to track Papa. Then, when we find him, we trap Pan in this box. And we never let him out."
"Never," she agrees. It's a solemn vow between them, an oath as strong as any Bae has ever made.
And he doesn't care if it's not the morally right thing to do. He doesn't care if some black-and-white hero might argue that even Pan deserves some kind of trial or appeal. If he could do it, he'd kill Pan with his bare hands and never lose a wink of sleep over it.
Maybe he's not a hero. Maybe he's a monster. Or maybe he's just too much like his papa after all.
"Belle," he says. It's the first time he's said her name, and he lets himself think on the fact that if Rumplestiltskin hadn't brought back magic (the thing that darkens his soul and binds him to the dagger and makes him so achingly vulnerable), then Belle would be dead now. Bae would never have met her. His papa would never smile that soft, tender smile he'd given her when sending her to relative safety.
"Yes?" she asks.
"Just…I'm glad Papa found you. I'm glad you didn't give up on him."
"How could I?" She smiles to herself, memories Bae shares no part in dancing there in her heart. (For the first time, Bae sees the power of True Love, played out before him, laid bare in her tone and her eyes and the strength of her heart.) "When someone loves you so deeply that he's willing to burn the world itself… Well, it makes me feel guilty to admit this, but it's intoxicating. And when he doesn't believe you can love him in return…it just makes you want to prove him wrong."
"Yeah, well…" Neal shifts uncomfortably. "I wouldn't go that far."
Or would he? Once, the world did shift on its axis due to Rumplestiltskin's love for his son. Once, everything they knew changed simply because Papa refused to let go of him. Maybe…maybe it is time for Bae to do it for Rumplestiltskin in return.
He really is his father's son, it seems, and maybe another world will burn to ensure the people he loves are safe and cared for.
"Let's get to his shop," Bae says. "A drop of my blood and we'll find him." He turns, but the light of the diner spills over them and he notices Belle's bare feet. "What happened to your shoes?"
"I couldn't run in them," she says.
His hesitation is so slight it might as well not have happened. "We'll drive there," he says, and he slides into the driver's seat, finds the keys where Emma hides them under the seat, and starts up the car.
It threatens to send him sliding back in time, a fresher, more hopeful time, when the only thing he had to fear were his own nightmares and the shadows that never seemed to stop moving.
But he wouldn't change a thing. Never. He's here, in their car, Emma's scent surrounding him, her kiss still burning on his lips, their son safe as soon as she reaches him, and Papa's here and loved and trying be brave. How could Bae dare to ever imagine anything more for them?
Sometimes imagination isn't enough. Sometimes make-believe just becomes resentment, kindled and nurtured and grown into hatred. Sometimes, he thinks, reality is more than enough, warts and all.
Bae clenches his hand over the steering wheel and considers pricking his finger so another drop of blood will fall over that map. It will work, he tells himself. Of course it will. He has no doubt of it.
After all, he's Rumplestiltskin's son, and not even the blackest of shadows will stop him from saving his family.
There's a curious nature to freedom: it keeps being taken away from him. Hook sneers at the golden rope that the grown-up Bae tied around him, shudders despite himself at the tilted-over jar where the Dark One had stored his tongue, and stares at the door to this shop he can't quite seem to walk through.
"Go on, what are you waiting for?" Peter mocks from behind him. "I thought you wanted your ship."
"I got the boy for you," Hook says cockily. "That was our deal."
"Was it?" Pan tilts his head and smirks. "I seem to remember finding a pirate locked in a cell without his tongue. I also seem to remember something about rescuing him, giving him back his tongue, and setting him free. That doesn't all come cheap, you know."
The door stands in front of him. So easy to reach it. Child's play to pull it open. Bliss to walk through it, slam it closed behind him, and never look back.
But then there won't be a ship waiting for him in the harbor. There won't be a crew or a sky waiting to be sailed through. There'll just be Pan, forever and ever after him, never letting him go.
"Fine," he grits through a smile. "A favor for a favor. What do you want?"
"I want Baelfire to pay for all the times he's mocked me. Refusing to play my games by the rules is a fate punishable by death. And I don't need him anymore. Besides," Pan looks over his shoulder to the backroom where they can hear the scuffling sounds of the crocodile trying to pry the cuff from his wrist. "Killing his boy will hurt Rumple more than anything else could. Why make his last moments of life comfortable?"
Well, Hook's all for that. How many centuries has it been, yet he can still see Milah, so vivacious and clever and ambitious, falling like a straw doll, limp and slack and forever silenced. He still sees Rumplestiltskin, wreathed in lightning, with black dust coating his hand. Uncaring. Not mourning Milah at all. Never sorry for everything he took from Killian.
No, if there's anything Jones wants (if there's anything besides Neverland that's been keeping him alive all this time), it's the desire to pay Rumplestiltskin back for that unforgivable crime.
But Baelfire…
Baelfire is just a boy (no matter the man's body he now wears), just a lad caught up by a parent he couldn't choose. If Milah had taken him with her…if Hook had been able to convince the boy around to their way of thinking before they snatched him…if Pan hadn't threatened him and Bae hadn't repudiated him and his ship hadn't been on the line…Baelfire might have been as good as his son by now.
"Baelfire has to pay," he repeats slowly.
"Of course." Pan studies Hook closely. "You want to hurt the crocodile, don't you? Nothing can do that as effectively as attacking his son."
"Right. Well, revenge is sweet." Hook smiles his most vicious smile, polishes the hook Pan retrieved for him, and says, "Tell me where he is and consider it done."
"I'm not doing all your work for you." Pan turns on his heel and heads for the door. "You're getting rusty at playing, pirate. Hide-and-seek is the simplest of games. Find the boy. Do what you must. And your ship—and your freedom—are yours."
"And you?" Hook can't help asking. Bae's words about all the worlds being playthings for Pan bother him (not because he believes them, but because he fears them, and he hates fearing anything). "What's your plan?"
"Oh, just immortality. Fun. Adventures. The usual." Pan laughs and disappears out the door.
Leaving Hook alone with Rumplestiltskin.
There's blood on his knuckles from the blows he landed earlier, on his boots from the kicks he gave the coward writhing on the floor, and he still remembers with satisfaction the look of shock in the crocodile's eyes when he snapped that cuff over his wrist, preventing him from using magic.
And now the Dark One, powerful and calloused, the murderer, lies helpless on the floor, and Hook could so easily kill him. One strong plunge with his hook. One twist of a neck between his hands. One spark and a match laid out over an oil-soaked body. The possibilities are endless.
But then it'd be over. His quest would be complete.
(And what is Hook without that constant thirst for revenge? What is there left of Milah if her killer is finally avenged?)
No, that would be too quick. Too easy.
Jones turns his back to the door and heads into the backroom. Rumplestiltskin doesn't notice him at first, all his focus on the cuff around his wrist—that, and the axe leaning in a corner amidst a variety of swords.
"Wouldn't that be a sight?" he murmurs, and Rumplestiltskin goes stiff. "The Dark One with a stump for a hand. You'd be just like me then, wouldn't you? Chop off the hand and see what's left behind. Not revenge, oh, no, not for you. But magic? You think that'd be enough to fill the void?"
"Hook," Rumplestiltskin nearly spits. His face is a battered mess, a look that suits him. "Surely you don't want to let Peter Pan loose on the worlds."
"I don't really care," Hook says with a shrug. "As long as I get my ship back—as long as you pay for what you took from me…I'd say all is right."
"You'll never be free," Rumplestiltskin grits through the blood that spatters out from his mouth with every tortured breath. Hook smiles and prowls closer, enjoying the growing tension in the coward's body as he nears him. He tosses the axe away, rifles through the swords, caresses a vial resting on the counter that he recognizes from a deal with a witch long ago. "As long as he knows what you love, Pan will always control you."
"I don't hide what I love," Hook snarls. He kneels and peers into Rumplestiltskin's face. Strange, really. After all these years, he's built up this image of the crocodile, this larger-than-life mythos around him, but here, a hand's width away…it's just the village coward he laughed about with Milah. The crippled spinner who couldn't save his son without leashing the Dark One.
"I know what you love too," he whispers, and watches Rumplestiltskin fall still. The terror on his face comes closer to finally laying Milah to rest than anything else ever has, even shooting that girl he loves across the town line. "Your son. Returned to you safe and sound. What would it be like, I wonder, for you to lose him just when you finally found him."
"No!" Rumplestiltskin gasps. And this is it. This is his revenge. Pan's right. Hook can't leave without making this permanent.
"I'm going to make your son pay for your crimes," he promises, whispering it right into Rumplestiltskin's ear so that he can't escape. "I'm going to take away what he loves and I'm going to destroy him."
"No! Hook! Stay away from him! Please!"
Just like Baelfire, on that dock, begging for the lives of their family.
Well, Hook never begs. He never pleads. He may be a pirate, but he has his honor. And now, he'll have his revenge.
With a final kick in the ribs for luck, Hook stalks through the door that means nothing to him anymore, though not before snatching up that vial he recognizes. He knows exactly where Bae will be—headed for Henry, desperate to save his son in the way Rumplestiltskin was never able to save him.
Not that Hook plans on killing Bae. No, Bae's a boy, and what's more, he's Milah's son. Hook won't be the one to kill him. But then, Pan didn't say to kill him, did he?
Rumplestiltskin isn't the only one who can use loopholes. Pan said to make Baelfire pay, and oh, Killian knows what it is to pay for mistakes. He knows what destroys a man utterly.
Watching the woman he loves die in front of him.
And for Bae, who loathes magic above all (for Rumplestiltskin, who looks on magic as his savior), watching the woman he loves fall under an unbreakable curse…well, that will destroy him, completely and utterly.
Pan will be happy. Bae will be miserable (but alive). Rumplestiltskin will know the pain that has followed in Hook's wake all these centuries.
And Hook will have his revenge, his ship, and finally, his freedom.
They follow the warming jewel to the docks and then below them and down into the mines, through close tunnels, forgotten mine shafts, and finally into a cavern that opens up in a way that seems impossible for as close to the surface as they are. It's a reminder, an unwelcome one, of the cavern where Maleficent lived in her draconian form (and where her ashes are now spread).
Regina would have walked right into the open, but Emma snatches her arm and pulls her back. It's all she can do not to snarl at the so-called savior as she wrenches her arm free.
"What?" she hisses.
"You don't know what's out there," Emma says, "or how many there are or—"
"Unlike you, I know how to use my magic," she spits back, which is mostly true. Most of the time. At least better than Emma, who didn't even know how to let go of the protective shield she erected between herself and Regina's own magic. "Nothing out there is going to stop me from getting my son!"
"Okay, okay, let's…let's not fight each other." Emma takes a deep breath, which ironically makes Regina angrier (as if she's nothing more than a child Emma has to deal with; as if Emma is the saint for dealing with Regina). "Look, it can't hurt to survey the situation first, right? That way at least we know what we're walking into."
"And exactly how many sons have you rescued from immortal children with delusions of grandeur?" Regina asks caustically.
"Probably as many as you," Emma snaps back.
It's Regina's turn to take a deep breath (which does, actually, help). "Fine," she says. "What do you see?"
"I don't know. A cave?"
"Great. Glad we stopped long enough to survey the situation."
"Wait!" Emma grabs her arm again, and is lucky that the sound of approaching voices penetrates Regina's anger before she can let loose the fireball tingling in the palm of her hands. "Look, how many are there?"
"Two."
It does look like only two men guard the cavern (Henry? then why is there no sign of him?), both short, one wearing glasses, the other a long scarf that reminds Regina of the scarf Henry loves. The one she knitted for him before Cora told her the pastime was ridiculous and to give it up. The ends of it are getting frayed, she remembers, and she's been thinking of getting out her needles and trying again. Or she'd been thinking of it, until recently. Until Daniel.
Regina studies Emma out of the corner of her eyes. Finding Daniel alive is a miracle and one she will never regret. But…but finding him, now, has given Emma nothing but time to cement her place further in Henry's heart (not that she needs it, not when their kiss breaks curses) and, apparently, bring in his long-absent father.
"Where is Henry?" Emma mutters.
"If I know him, he's in the center of it all," Regina says softly.
Emma looks taken aback, the crease in her brow easing. "Yeah," she says. "That's true."
"Is he coming, John?" one of the men asks the other.
"Yes. Someone just tripped the wires at the entrance."
"Well. Then we should get the boy ready."
"Do you think he's brought her with him? Or is she still there?"
"Do you think she'll recognize us?" the other replies, and they both fall silent as they head down a side tunnel. Regina exchanges a look with Emma and they fall into step behind the two men. Holding her breath and hoping it works, Regina casts a small spell over their footsteps, dulling the sound and preventing them from echoing. If Emma notices, she makes no sign of it.
Eventually, after so long a time Regina begins to think the men know they're there and are leading them in circles, they come to a small alcove where a bundle rests on the floor. As the men approach, the bundle moves, and Regina recognizes it as Henry, bound and gagged and wrapped in a large cloth.
"We're so sorry about this," says the man with glasses. "I know you don't understand, but we have to do this."
"It's the only way to save our sister," the other says.
Henry looks defiant through the gag, and Regina's heart cries inside her chest, pattering frantically against her breastbone, desperate to reach him.
"Enough surveying?" Regina asks.
"Definitely," Emma says, and as she steps into the open, she draws her gun and aims it at the man with the scarf. (Regina, secretly, is relieved to be able to turn her attention to the man with glasses). She aims a fireball at the other man and holds it there, crackling, in her palm.
"Mom!" Henry cries through the gag.
"No!" the men shout, and they dive for cover. Regina sends her fireball careening after them, but Emma doesn't shoot, instead moving sideways to stand beside Henry.
A wave of Regina's hand undoes his restraints, and Henry falls into Emma's arms.
Regina stares, frozen. Motionless.
Emma's closer to him, of course, but…but she's the one he went toward anyway. Not Regina.
She's lost him.
"Are you okay, Henry?" she asks anyway because she has to know (because her maternal heart roars inside her).
"Yes, I'm okay," he says, and he pulls himself free from Emma—hesitates—then hugs Regina. "Thank you for coming for me."
"Of course we came," Emma says. She's still holding her gun, but she's not looking behind her. Regina, purely by happenstance, is.
She sees the light of the torch left behind by Henry's captors glitter off silver—not the silver of glasses, but the silver of a curved hook.
She sees a vial in Hook's free hand and the expression on his face and the way Emma has her back to him. She sees him raise the vial, aimed for Emma's back, and then, as the cry of warning chokes in Regina's throat, caught between being swallowed or released, she sees him pause. Waver.
And lower his hand.
He backs up, one step, then another, then another, looking all around as if missing something.
Regina could warn Emma. She could tell her that the pirate's aiming for her, that she's in danger. She could. Maybe she should. But…Hook didn't do it. He backed away. He's gone now.
And if he can be reformed (if he can earn back the respect he's lost in his wayward path), then can't she?
Maybe Henry didn't turn to her first today, but tomorrow? Or the next? A year from now? It could be her that he calls Mom and wants to stay with and loves most of all.
So Regina closes her mouth over whatever word it is trapped in her throat, and she smiles down at her son—and she says nothing.
"Let's get out of here," Emma says. "Those men could be back with reinforcements and I'd rather we not meet them in a dark cave."
"Stay close to us, Henry," Regina says, sweeping him behind her with one arm as she holds her other hand out, her magic ready for the slightest sign of danger.
"Where's Dad?" Henry asks. "Didn't he come too?"
Emma tenses. So does Regina, though for a different reason.
Earlier, in the stables, she wasn't so caught up in the situation that she didn't notice the strange man daring to take hold of Emma's hand when magic still fizzled there. She definitely noticed the kiss Emma branded onto his mouth and the look in the man's eyes when she walked away.
Henry's father. There's a complication she really doesn't need.
"He wanted to," Emma says. "In fact, he's the one who gave us the way to find you. But he was needed somewhere else. He had to go stop a very dangerous person."
"It's Peter Pan, isn't it?" Henry says matter-of-factly. "I heard John and Michael talking about him. And Captain Hook said he was coming."
"Did you know Peter Pan was a bad guy?" Emma asks. "I don't remember seeing him in the book."
"He was the pied piper," Henry says, "remember, Mom?"
Regina's heart flutters when she realizes it's her he's looking at. "Yeah," she says. "I remember. In Hamelin."
"Right. He came for a boy, but the boy couldn't hear him. The Dark One made a deal with the piper to send him away."
"I don't remember a deal," Regina says (is it petty of her to try to keep this conversation that Emma's not a part of going?). "I thought the piper told the Dark One their time would come and he left."
"But he said he'd leave only if Rumplestiltskin remembered that he could have stolen the boy."
"Yeah," Emma says, her voice so hoarse she has to clear her throat. "I'm pretty sure that boy was Rumplestiltskin's son. Your father, Henry."
Regina stumbles to a dead halt. "What?"
Eyes wide and earnest, Henry holds his hands out before him as he faces Regina. "I meant to tell you. Really, I did. You see, my dad, Neal Cassidy is his name. Or…at least it is here. But in the other world, his name is Baelfire."
"Rumplestiltskin's son. Rumplestiltskin is your grandfather?"
A blood relation. Even the Dark One is related more closely to her son than she is. Regina wants to scream. She almost wishes there were another dragon loose to confront them just so she'd have an excuse to unleash her magic and sob, choking in the ensuing ash.
"Is this really the time?" Emma asks. "I don't know about you, but I'm having a hard time remembering the way out of here."
"Two rights and a left," Regina says. She takes a deep breath, then shakes her head. "You really know how to pick them, don't you, Ms. Swan?"
"Mom," Henry starts, and that's when the ceiling caves in on them.
Emma ducks, instinctively pulling Henry beneath her.
Regina, however, doesn't flinch at all. With a twist of her hand, she freezes the stones in the air, then sends them blasting backward hard enough to blow through the surface. Above their heads, the night sky peers down at them, stars winking in the dimness.
"What do you know?" she says. "I've found the way out."
Afraid to look at Henry and see that twisted expression he last wore in the stables, Regina dusts her hands off with faux-interest. But then she feels it, a warm body bumping up against her, clumsy and off-balance…but not afraid. Henry starts up over the rocks without a single flicker on his face to signal revulsion. Regina breathes a quiet sigh of relief and begins climbing.
They've scrambled up only half of the way when John and Michael (the Darlings, she assumes with little interest) come out from behind their manufactured cave-in, a small gun clenched in John's hand.
"Stop where you are," he calls, his voice shaking. "We don't want to hurt you, but we do need the boy."
"Over our dead bodies," Emma calls back.
"Why give them ideas?" Regina mutters, and lends an extra push to Henry (hoping he won't notice it's magic propelling him rather than her hand).
"You don't have to do this!" Henry exclaims, twisting to look back at the men. "I know you're afraid of Peter Pan, but whoever it is he's keeping from you, we can help rescue her. Trust me, we're the heroes. My mom is the Savior."
Well, that feels like a knife in her heart. Regina does her best to breathe through the pain and hoists herself clear of the rubble. As soon as she has her footing, she pulls Henry close behind her.
"You can't fight Pan," Michael says grimly. "Trust me, we've been trying for over a hundred years."
"Is everyone over a hundred years old in your world?" Emma demands exasperatedly.
"We're not from that world," John says. "We're from here. But when Pan took Wendy…he told us we'd never get her back if we didn't help him."
"Shut up!" Michael hisses. "What if he's here already?"
The mere thought of it blanches the color from both men's faces. Regina doesn't like that. She knows what fear looks like, and the differences between the unknown fear and engrained terror (the kind that speaks from long experience and the slow draining of hope). She knows what it means that these two men, though clearly hating what they plan to do, can't help but to flinch from the very thought of failing their master (like she did her mother).
"Watch the skies!" Emma commands, panicked, her own eyes darting upward. "Neal said the shadows come from the air."
"What?" Regina starts to ask, when she feels Henry tugged from her grip.
It's almost midnight, the sky dark, the stars dim, the torch below guttering. But none of that matters. Between the sparks of light, darkness swells. Grows. Expands. And swoops down from the air. Henry shrieks as his arms are caught up in the grip of two shadowy hands, yanked up into the air. Two bright, hellish pinpricks mark the eyes of the Shadow, and though its face is uniform in blackness, Regina can hear its malicious laugh in her head.
"Henry!" she cries.
Emma leaps upward, straining for Henry, but she misses him. The Shadow pulls him farther up, heading for the stars (the second star to the right?).
"NO!" Regina screams. Magic is a fickle friend here, sometimes within reach, other times dancing away. Regina doesn't care. She grabs up the magic inside herself, pulls it—kicking and screaming—into her chest, and then, with a yell that tears her throat, she sends the magic like a lasso around Henry.
Snatched from the Shadow's grip, Henry falls. Regina's magic barely cushions him, and she dives forward, letting him land on her, her heart in her throat, the air knocked out of her, but her arms locked like steel bars around her son.
"I've got you," she whispers, the boy in her arms conflating in her mind's eye with the infant that Mr. Gold placed there, so vulnerable and trusting and hers. "I've got you."
Above them, the Shadow goes still as it stares down at them through burning eyes. Regina meets its gaze and refuses to look away; she feels half-caught, half-defiant, as she matches glares with this monster out of stories. More than anything, she wishes she had needle and thread right then, so she could sew the thing to a rock and throw it into the deepest ocean, drowning it beneath the pressure of countless tons of water.
Then the Shadow blinks, and laughs again.
"Child of Darkness," it says, a rumbling voice that skitters across Regina's skin like nails over a chalkboard. "You're not the one the prophecy warns of. Your darkness is weak and already past. Your shadows are little more than specks of ink on a glowing heart. The boy protects you from a true path of darkness. But without him? What might you become?"
The Queen's Shadow. The Mayor's Shadow. How long has that whispered name followed her? But she is no shadow. She is not an echo or a construct. She's free to choose her own fate, and has been for longer than she's fully believed, and Henry's not her conquest or her victory. He's her son, and she's his mother, and that is who she chooses to be.
"What could the darkness make of you?" asks the Shadow (her own shadow, the ghost of her mother, of the terror that controlled her in Cora's presence)
"I'll never find out," Regina says lowly. Henry's arms wrap around her waist, holding on so tightly she has to fight to breathe (a constant battle for life, proof that she's unbeaten, that she remains, that there is someone who finds her worth holding onto).
Like a spark of flame, the Shadow dives. Regina blasts it apart with a rush of fire that lights the night into day and has her blinking golden sparkles from her eyes for moments.
When she can finally see again, the Shadow is gone. And Henry's here, still holding onto her, his eyes shining as he looks up at her.
"You saved us," he says. "You're a savior too, Mom."
Regina blinks, and blinks again, but the glow from that compliment doesn't diffuse. Instead, it grows stronger, warmer, settling deep, deep within her until it is all she can hear, all she can see.
Her son, looking at her like a hero. Safe. Whole. (And not afraid of her.)
"I love you, Henry," she murmurs into his hair as she breathes in the scent of little boy and dirt and flame.
Around her, the world might be burning. Regina doesn't know, doesn't care, doesn't move.
In this moment, with Henry in her arms, she's happier than she's ever been.
Turnabout is fair play. Isn't that the saying? Well, August has never felt the truth of it so strongly until now, dragging himself one ungainly step at a time through town, the stares and the whispers following him without fail.
He felt so guilty, when he first arrived and began to recognize the true people behind the fake facades, to see them against their wills, to interact with personalities that were forced on them. He felt like a voyeur, seeing more than they willingly volunteered.
Now, it is him who is stripped bare and paraded before the town against his will. Him, whose sins have been carved over his human flesh, his crimes petrified and frozen solid over his slow-beating heart.
August keeps his eyes straight ahead, ignores the screams from those afraid of puppets, the gasps from those who recognize him from this world's stories, the knowledge that they know, now, what he really is.
A liar. A coward. A failure.
The visits from Geppetto have been bad enough. He hates his papa seeing him like this (hates that Papa knows just how little Pinocchio deserves the gift he carved into him), but craves his attention and his presence and his memories too much to deny him. Jiminy's visits have been harder, made bearable only by the fact that it's nearly impossible to recognize the cricket who scolded and inspired and lectured and played with him in the man that this world has made of him.
But Emma's visit…
Well, Emma's visit lit a fire within him, and August can no longer sit hidden and sheltered in the woods (though isn't that where wood belongs, even wood masquerading as a man?).
She needs him. He knows that—has always known it, really. Emma doubts herself and questions her own worth and wonders what she can offer that no one else can do better. But she just needs one person to believe in her.
And that's always been August.
I have faith. He's told her that a million times, and for all it makes her roll her eyes and huff and mock him, it also makes her back straighten, her shoulders unfurl, her brow smooth out.
One person. It's astounding how much it means—for anyone—just to have one single person in their corner.
Are you planning on helping her? Neal's question rings in August's hollow head.
"I'm coming," he whispers. Or tries to, anyway. The simple task of getting his carved mouth to move, his hinged jaw to drop, his splintered tongue to shape words, is more difficult than he's used to.
Of course, now that he's completely bare to his list of crimes, he supposes he shouldn't feel even guiltier about what he had to do to find Emma's current location. Tracing her phone isn't nearly as bad as lying to her for their whole lives, is it? If it is, he supposes it's just another reason for him to deserve his fate.
Whatever guilt he might have felt about the invasiveness of his latest unworthy act disappears when he arrives at a city street where there appears to have been a sinkhole—and he sees just how close he came to being too late.
All that time hiding in shame. Looking for a way to atone for his actions—not because he was truly repentant, but just because he wanted to be flesh and blood again. All those days, the weeks, he wasted when he could have been helping Emma, making amends with Jiminy's help, fully embracing his Papa…begging the Blue Fairy for something, anything, to help him.
That is his true crime, he thinks in the split second when he sees Emma, watching Regina hug their son. When he sees the pirate behind them, his arm upraised with some sort of weapon in his hand—and realizes that Hook's target is Emma.
"Emma!" August cries.
She doesn't hear him (wood doesn't speak).
The pirate says something (something about Neal, about revenge, about payment; none of it matters). He opens the vial.
August curses and tries to run. He can't. It's impossible for him (all his life running, hiding, only halfheartedly trying to do the task he was given; all catching up to him now). Still, he tries (that's the only good thing anyone can say about him; it should be carved over his stumped flesh: he tried, for all the good it did him). He throws himself forward, narrowly avoids falling time and again, stumbles forward, grateful for the slight decline.
The next moment feels as if it lasts a hundred years (or at least twenty-eight). Hook's mouth is still open, his sentence barely uttered. Emma's still turning. Regina's busy twisting so that her body is between Henry and any danger.
And August half-falls, half-lurches between it all.
The open vial falls away. As if all of time is moving as slowly as a leaf buds, August sees the vial tumbling end over end toward the ground in slow motion: empty.
Gray powder hovers in the air, guided by the pirate's breath.
Gray powder. August knows that powder. He saw it, in that book of Henry's, of Emma's, one of the pages he flipped past. Snow White and Prince Charming, on their honeymoon, facing a Medusa. The gray dust, lined with silver-black hints, looks exactly like that stone monster.
Stone. Even denser, heavier (more useless) than wood, entirely unmalleable.
His time runs out. August doesn't bother taking the last step, just lets himself lean and topple as his uneven weight overbalances.
A wind howls from behind him, originating from Regina.
It's not enough.
Half the dust is blown backward (toward the pirate, he thinks dimly), but half of it still gets through.
He can feel it hit him. He can feel it. Like cold and weight and ice in his veins (if he still had them). It settles over his varnished skin, sinks deep into the cracks riddling his beautifully carved limbs, slips into his mouth and along his throat and deep, deep inside him.
The transformation isn't instantaneous. Maybe because only half the dose reached him. Maybe because the curse already affecting him slows it down. Maybe just because he doesn't deserve a quick end.
"August!" Emma's there. He can hear her, as if from a great distance, though he knows she's close, watches the world tilt and swirl as she drops to her knees and pulls him up into her. "August, no, what did you do?"
Not enough. Never enough. His best was just never what she needed. But maybe, here, seeing that she's still alive (still flesh and blood, breathing and living), maybe he's made up for all that. The very thought that he didn't have to be perfect every moment of every day is enough to take his breath away (or is that his chest transforming from pliant wood into stern stone?).
"Why did you do that?" Emma demands of him, and he thinks she shakes him, though he can no longer tell when his inner balance shifts.
"Emma," he manages to say. It's his talisman. The one solid thing in his world. The reason he didn't turn out like Lampwick did in their old world.
"August, no." She's crying. He can no longer feel the breeze, or hear Henry's desperate voice (though he sees the boy's mouth moving), or even care about the statue behind them all, frozen in place with a sneer on his lips, his hook no longer gleaming silver, but now dull gray. But he can feel her tears, slipping from her cheeks to his, the only warmth he's felt since the curse broke and he was condemned to wood in a hospital hallway. "I'm supposed to save you, remember? If anyone deserves for me to be their savior, it's you."
"You did," he tries to say. Hopes she hears it. Hopes she sees it in whatever's left of his face.
He hopes she puts him down, lets him sink to the ground alone, before he freezes in place on her lap.
"No. No, I can't lose you too. August, please."
And she kisses him. A tiny, trembling kiss to his cheek, and then, when nothing happens, to his brow, and then, as she starts shaking apart, to his chin, his hand, his temple. She's begging, he can see the word shaped on her lips, but his attention is caught, instead, by the stars over her head, shining so bright they halo her golden hair.
He's seen Emma broken. Lost. Bereft and grieving. Hardened and bitter. Laughing. Crying. All the disparate pieces that make up a life, all shared with her. And for the first time, August considers that maybe he didn't fail after all.
She's here, in Storybrooke, and she broke the curse, and she's fighting to save people, and she's been reunited with her son who loves her, and he even brought back Neal for her (he knows she loves the thief; she can't hide anything as big as that from him).
So maybe…maybe, in the end, he did exactly what he was supposed to.
(Now it's only his father he'll fail, the papa who told him that all he wanted was for Pinocchio to live.)
"The potion." It's the light in Emma's eyes that snatches August's wondering attention. His legs are immobile, his arms so heavy they might as well be buried under the weight of worlds. "Gold's potion. He said it would clear out any curse you were under. That you could choose. August, you have to drink this, okay?"
Whatever she's holding up to his lips, August can't open his mouth. She sets the potion aside and pries his lips apart, angles the vial over the tongue he can't lift.
If liquid dribbles down into his stone cavities, he can't taste it, feel it, or sense any change.
The stars seem to be growing even brighter. It's not such a bad last moment, he thinks.
"August, concentrate," Emma says. The sky is shimmering, brilliant, blotting out the sight of her. All he can hear is her voice, the final lifeline between them. "You have to decide what you want to be. Who you want to be."
Hers.
That's what he is. It's what defines him.
Hers, and Storybrooke's too, in a way, if only because he's spent his entire life knowing that they're depending on him.
"You didn't fail me," Emma says. "You never left me alone. You always reminded me that there was someone out there who believed in me. That matters, okay? That matters more than the lies, or the tricks, or…or what you said about Neal. You've always been there for me, and…and I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't been."
"Emma Swan," he tries to say, but he doesn't hear his own voice so probably he only thinks it.
It's true nonetheless. Emma is so unapologetically, unequivocally, herself that nothing could have changed that.
Although…it would be nice to see how she fares against the whole of a magical world butting up against her cynicism.
It would be nice to see Papa again, and actually feel his hug.
It would be nice not to feel like a criminal just walking through town.
The sky explodes into golden fireworks, and fire encases August in molten heat.
When it spits him back out, there's nothing of stone or wood (or failure) left in him.
Instead, all that's left is the person he's been all along.
Someone who tries. No matter what.
"This is creepy, right?" Snow asks. David nods without turning, one hand on his gun in its holster, the other opening each successive door they find in Cora's vault. The lighting, all red and pink throbbing like the beats of a heart, doesn't do anything to make the oppressive surroundings any more welcoming.
"When we've saved the town," he says, "we need to find who all these hearts belong to and return them."
"We should have thought of that before," Snow says, somewhat guiltily.
Ordinarily, David would rush to assure her that they've had their hands full and that they can't do everything all at once. But now, fresh from watching (helping) her confront Regina without a speck of proof, he says nothing. Because they should have explored this place earlier, should have done everything they could to clean up after Cora—including checking on Regina and letting her know that she still had friends. Still had family.
"There they are," he says, nodding toward the dead end ahead of them where a wall of tiny containers resembling a bank of lockers pulse with multiple heartbeats. "Any sign of a scroll?"
He can feel Snow's eyes on him for a long moment before she finally says, "I'll look."
"I'm going to check around, just in case."
Not that he wants to walk alone down any of these terrifying twists and turns. He's already seen a mirror that made him duck away quickly as if it could trap him within its reflection; a spinning wheel with a spindle that shone dully crimson, covered in blood; the head of a troll, perfectly preserved in a glass case, its eyes following their movements as they passed. Anymore, and he might not be able to keep his roiling stomach in place any longer.
"David," Mary Margaret exclaims from behind him.
A knot of tension starts up between his shoulder blades, a rigidity that keeps him from turning back toward her.
"Are you mad at me?" she asks.
"Mad?" he replies. "Am I allowed to be mad at you?"
"What does that mean?"
"It means," he says, turning half toward her but not looking, not yet, "that you never listen to me, so what good would being mad do?"
"I listen to you," she says.
"When?" he demands, and this is his mistake because in his frustration, he's moved too far and his eyes meet hers and now he cannot look away and this confrontation is actually happening. No matter how sick he feels, how much his tired muscles ache, or how little prepared for the fallout his heart is, he can't avoid this conversation anymore. "When do you listen to me, Snow? I told you that we needed to give Regina the benefit of the doubt. You attacked her anyway. I told you that I wanted a wife, not a hero, and still you keep looking for magic to save me. Why should I keep telling you anything when all you ever do is ignore me?"
"So what?" she demands, so fierce, bristling and defiant, that David feels the defeat of this argument before it can even play out. "I'm supposed to just let you die? Just let the Blue Fairy's warnings go unheeded? You're so…so complacent, sometimes, that it infuriates me!"
"Of course, so it's better just to ignore me completely. Why even pretend this is a partnership at all."
"That's not—" Snow takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.
There, in that moment, with her stubbornness veiled, David looks at her and remembers what it is to be Charming. The stable boy so uncertain about his aptitude for rule that—despite his confident bravado—he turned over all major decisions to Snow, who was raised to lead. The man so grateful, so relieved, that his kiss brought the woman he loved back to life that he scarcely noticed the little aggravations, the pinprick hurts, because none of them were as terrible as seeing her dead in that glass coffin. The husband who hardly had a chance to enjoy the moment before they were once again embroiled in battle, before there was a child he was destined to lose.
They've had so little chance to simply be, and even here, with his sickness between them—and Snow's helplessness—it's hard to remember that they didn't even have the chance to celebrate their second wedding anniversary before they were ripped apart and remade into others' images.
Maybe he's being too hard on her. Maybe he's spent so long letting the little things go that he can't blame her now for not realizing that he's ready to be a part of their partnership rather than simply falling behind her. Maybe these are just the common arguments between two strong-willed people trying to entwine their separate lives into one.
All he knows is that he looks at her, and his heart aches with his love for her, and he wants to catch her up in his arms and kiss her until they're breathless—and yet, he also wants to shake her, to demand she listen to him, that she trust him as much as he trusts her.
"Snow," he says in a softer voice. "I don't want to die, all right? I'm not choosing to leave you. I would never choose to do that, not of my own free will. But I don't want to be your enemy. Okay? I don't always want to be on the opposite side of you. Can't we both be on the same side?"
"I don't know," Mary Margaret says with an odd sort of bitterness to her voice. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather be on Regina's side?"
David blinks. "What?"
Abruptly agitated, Mary Margaret begins to fiddle with the boxes in front of her, opening each one and slamming it closed with unnecessary force. "I mean, no matter what I say or what the topic is, you always defend her! You want to be on the same side? Then why do you always side with her? Why are you more willing to give her the benefit of the doubt than you are to me?"
"I don't…" David shakes his head, trying to make anything she's saying make sense. "Are you…jealous? Of Regina?"
"Don't laugh at me!" she snaps. "I'm not imagining this!"
"I don't…" He holds his hands up between them. "Snow, I love you. You're my wife. You're everything I dream about and the answer to all my prayers. Given the choice between you and anyone else, I will always choose you."
"But Regina needs time to grieve. Regina needs our support. Regina doesn't have to help us because she has her own problems. Regina is Henry's mother, not Emma. Regina—"
David catches Snow up in his arms (swallows his laugh because he doesn't feel like spending the next few moments pulling an arrow from his side) and kisses her.
She loves him. She loves him, and it's not disdain or apathy or disinterest that's making her shut him out. It's vanity, jealousy, fear of losing him—and that…that's everything he needs to know.
"I love you," he whispers into her mouth. Her hands, fists against his chest, relax before tightening again, clutching at his jacket to bring him back down to her lips.
"I love you too," she says fiercely. "And I'm sorry. I don't mean to ignore you. I just…I'm so scared."
"And I'm sorry," he says. "You are my priority, Snow, always, no matter what. Regina's my friend, yes, but only because she's your sister. Taking care of her…it's a way of taking care of you. But if it hurts you—"
She cuts him off with a bruising kiss. "I love you," she says again. "I don't want you to care less—I don't think you can. I just…I miss you."
"I'm right here," he says.
"For how much longer?" she asks, and David's breath catches in his throat.
"Forever," he promises. And for the first time he doesn't let his exhaustion or his hurt or the draining thought of getting up every morning when he feels this bad dull the desire in his heart to live a full and long life with his wife. "I'll stay with you forever."
Snow smiles, then laughs through her tears. "I'm holding you to that."
"Well, then, we'd better find that self-destruct scroll."
The sinister surroundings barely register on him when he reluctantly lets go of Snow to rifle through all of Cora's magical belongings. He relishes every time he and Snow brush against each other in the close confines, lets his hand brush hers when they reach for nearby boxes or drawers to search. And when they finally find the miniature scroll, wrapped up in a bundle of straw, strangely, and tied closed with a crimson thread, silken but worn and frayed, they grin at each other.
"Let's go save the town," he says.
She slips her hand into his as they leave the vault behind them. David takes in a deep breath of the crisp night air and intertwines his fingers with hers. All the dread he felt knowing that confrontation was coming has slipped away, and he feels better now than he has…well, since they were last in their old world. He looks sideways, ready to share a smile with Snow, when a shadow detaches itself from one of the graves in front of them and resolves into a man.
No, into a boy, dressed all in green and smiling at them in a way that sends shivers down David's spine.
"Good job, you two. I knew you could do it." He claps in a showy way that makes David untangle his hand from Snow's so he can reach for his gun. "Ah, ah, ah," the boy says with a tsking noise, and David's gun, when he draws it, falls apart in his hand. "There's no need for violence, is there? How about we exchange favors, hmm? I'll let you live, and you give me that scroll you're holding onto so tightly?"
"Not a chance," Snow grits (David doesn't think he's ever loved her more).
"Oh, I'm sorry." The boy widens his eyes. "It wasn't a choice. More an ultimatum."
David's witnessed—and been victim to—magic more times than the average person. He's very familiar with the cool smoke feeling of it as it touches him. What Pan throws their way is different. For one thing, David doesn't feel it at all, not at first. A flick of Pan's brow sends him flying backward into the vault door, but aside from the impact, he feels nothing.
Until he's picking himself up, and something fizzes against his hands, along his chest, over his back. A cold, metallic caress that turns into a rancidness, like the aftertaste of rotten food.
"I'll take that, thank you." Peter Pan plucks the scroll from Snow's hand before she can do more than reach for her bow, which turns, in the space of an eye-blink, to a toy bow and arrow that must weigh more than it looks because Snow sags at the feel of them before she drops them.
"You'll never get away with this," Snow tells him as David ignores the rotted feel of his own skin to rush to Snow's side.
The boy tilts his head with a grin. "I so love playing games with you hero types. The level of denial is so entertaining. So I think I will leave you alive for now. We wouldn't want things to get too boring, would we? Besides, can you imagine what it will do to you, so blind to the possibility of defeat, to watch the town you've sworn to protect obliterated in a blast of destructive power? It'll be a thing of beauty."
As Pan's looking up, imagining his violent fantasy, David lunges with the arrow he pulls from Snow's quiver, the tip aimed straight for Pan's heart.
The boy vanishes, leaving behind the echo of his laugh. "Aren't you two obsessed with finding each other?" he teases. David and Snow whirl, back to back, searching the darkness for the monster shaped like a child. "Well, come find me—I dare you."
Then silence falls, and David and Snow are left alone. They stare at each other, their hands scarily empty. He wishes he could go back to a few moments ago, when she held the scroll and his own hand and he'd been more concerned with holding his smile steady than managing his growing fear.
"What are we going to do?" she asks him (listening to him).
"We're going to find Emma," he says (choosing his wife and daughter above all), "and then we're going to stop Pan, together."
"Of course we are." Snow's eyes kindle with belief. "I have faith."
He lifts her hand to his lips and drops a kiss on it. "Me too," he says, and when he looks ahead, he doesn't see defeat or death. He sees hope. He sees love. He sees Snow White, holding his hand, smiling at him. He sees a future he'll never stop fighting to reach.
It's cold. Or hot. Whichever. He can't remember the word for it. He only knows that he's uncomfortable, in pain, and that whether it's cold or hot, he wishes it would be less so just long enough so he can catch his breath and stop the shop from spinning around him. Not that it matters too much. All he can focus on is the black band around his right wrist.
Despite the white-hot (ice-cold?) agony spiking through his ribs, along his back, aching through his face, Rumplestiltskin did manage to drag himself to his workbench. Not that it's done him much good. Squid ink has no effect. The fairy's wand is useless against it (or perhaps it's just him, separated from his magic, that can't tap into the wand's power to use it). The ogre's strength he trapped in an amulet can't rip the cuff in two.
And so here he is, still helpless, trapped, unable to drag himself to his feet, trembling all over with chills (feverish tremors?) that can't mean anything good.
And there's only one thing left to try (well, except the obvious, of course; Hook didn't actually get rid of the axe, just moved it).
Rumplestiltskin darts a nervous look to the curtain leading to the front of his shop. His father's never come back for him before, but if he ever will, it will be now, the minute Rumplestiltskin draws the dagger from its hiding place and into the open. Or Belle and Bae—if they walk back into the shop, they'll find him. They (or Belle, at least; he hopes Bae too) will do anything they can to free him, to save him, and all it will accomplish is to put them in Malcolm's sights.
He can't risk it. He has to get rid of the cuff. Now, before it's too late.
The world has shrunk, his vision ringed in black, and it takes him multiple tries to retrieve the dagger from his inner jacket pocket. Its curved blade sucks in the light, the angles of his name so sharp that it makes him flinch.
To hold this dagger is to control the Dark One. To kill the Dark One with this dagger is to become the Dark One. But if a Dark One were to cut himself with his own branded blade…what might happen?
Impossible to know. With the way he's trembling, though, he's doubtless about to find out.
Or not. Try as Rumplestiltskin might, he can't make the dagger touch the cuff. He draws it down, over and over again, but each time, it freezes, rebuffed by whatever the cuff is composed of. He tries to think of where the cuff might be from (Pan can reach some few worlds beyond Neverland, this world through the Shadow, the Enchanted Forest in his own form, any of the worlds whose magic requires imagination as much as objects; who knows what those worlds can produce with their own peculiar types of magic?), but can't think past the way it suddenly seems the cuff is shrinking, as if repelled by the dagger in its own turn. It tightens until he fears it will cut off his circulation (until it will cut right through his wrist, through skin and muscle and bone and he is left missing a hand like Hook?), and before he can think himself through to the advantages, Rumplestiltskin stows the dagger away again.
So. Only one solution left to him.
Rumplestiltskin rests his head against the leg of his workbench and tries to gather his strength. He's been here before. More than once. He's done this twice, three times really, and surely he can do it again. What matter if he loses a hand in the doing of it? Magic will grow him a new one.
Opening his eyes, he tries to focus on the blurred image that is the axe he needs. Or there are swords closer to hand. One of them will do. Rumplestiltskin reaches out, scrabbles for a hilt, finds one, closes his fingers around it, draws it to him. It's oddly heavy, requiring his every ounce of strength.
For an instant, when he stares down at the tool in his hand, he could swear it's a hammer. A heavy mallet. So heavy that it took everything he had to raise it over his head, and even more to let it drop on his ankle. As if he's reliving the moment, Rumplestiltskin feels his ankle explode with pain.
Like it did when he traded its healing for an end to the Ogre war that plagued Belle's land, all so that he could feel he offered her something worthy of her affections. All for nothing, in the end, because no sooner had he made that sacrifice than he had to sacrifice her, had to send her far away, cut her from his heart, divorce the part of his heart that loved her so that he wouldn't be tempted to trade her for his son.
Three times he's mutilated himself for his loved ones.
What's one more?
"I'm sorry," he whimpers, and then he drops the blade.
(Once, he crushed his ankle and made his son grow up under the legacy of a coward. Once, he destroyed his ankle forever and put Belle squarely in Zoso's targets, the object of his own worst temptations. Once, he let her go and nearly lost himself in the intervening decades, subsumed beneath the control of Zoso as the Dark One worked with Cora to betray him and abandon Bae forever.)
Three times, and he cannot do it again (it never helps, never accomplishes anything but to leave him hating himself more than ever).
That's how Pan finds him, crumpled on the floor, weeping at his own weakness.
"Pathetic," the boy-god sneers, and Rumplestiltskin tries to feel the shame of it but feels only cold (or hot). "You really are useless, aren't you? While you've been laying here in your own snot, I've been out and retrieved the very thing you told me I couldn't."
These words should hurt, shouldn't they? Do they? He's so numb, so overwhelmed with so much other overstimulation, that they barely register. (Later, he thinks, he will remember them, will hear them as if just uttered, and then they will hurt, surely.)
"Well, since you haven't crawled away to a corner to die yet," Pan shrugs, "you can come with me and see the complete undoing of all your work."
"This town isn't my work," Rumplestiltskin says with his swollen tongue and split lips. "It was only a means to an end."
"Kind of like you," says Pan, and this does hurt, in a way so familiar it doesn't even elicit a flinch. "Come on, laddie, on your feet, such as they are. Even cowards can stand occasionally, can't they?"
Pan's hand is like a pincer around his arm, just below the shoulder, and Rumplestiltskin can't bite back the groan when he's hauled upright.
"Such a crybaby," Pan says. "None of my Lost Boys ever made such a fuss. Course, you never were worth being one of those, were you?"
"What's the point of this?" Rumplestiltskin tries to snarl. "If I'm so beneath your notice…" He gasps for breath. "Then why waste your time with me?"
Pan's silent for so long that the world stops spinning, equaling out to a hazy sort of blur. "Maybe…I thought we could start over again. We could try again, in a new world. Father and son, reunited. Isn't it everything you ever wanted?"
"Never!" Rumplestiltskin chokes.
Pan's laughter is high and cruel. "Just playing with you, my boy. You think I'd really drag you with me? You weren't worth my time before, you certainly aren't worth it now."
It's almost enough to make Rumplestiltskin grab his dagger and take a swipe for the monster still holding onto him in some twisted parody of an embrace. Almost. But to stab someone with the dagger is to tie a piece of their soul to his (he learned that a long time ago, when Zoso told him that killing Hordor with the dagger was a bad idea; that pieces of his victims would infect him, trickling through in odd ways). If there's anyone he doesn't want to be tied to, it's his papa.
"No matter." Pan waves his hand, letting go of Rumplestiltskin at the same time, and when Rumplestiltskin falls, he finds himself on a bed of leaves, twigs, dirt. No, not a bed. The forest floor. Pan's transported him away from the shop (Bae and Belle will never find him now) and brought them to a familiar hill. Even without working eyes, Rumplestiltskin recognizes the blurred shape of the well.
"You're really going to go through with it," he whispers. He didn't realize, until just this minute, that he thought Pan was just posturing. That he thought Pan knew, in some deep part of himself, just how dangerous blowing apart the veils between realms really is.
"I never make useless threats," Pan says in that lofty way of his designed to rub everyone the wrong way. "Unlike you, I actually know how to use the power I have."
Even though it makes lightning blaze through his ribs, Rumplestiltskin tightens his elbows against his side, keeping his dagger close.
Something in the movement makes Pan leave the well to dance closer to Rumplestiltskin. "You think I don't know you're holding onto that dagger of yours?" he asks, softly, in a silken voice that slides poison through every one of Rumplestiltskin's veins. As Pan kneels before Rumplestiltskin, he reaches out with his empty hand to brush his fingers along the outside of Gold's ruined waistcoat. "Of course you have it. Who else would you trust with it besides yourself? After you kept that last one as puppet for centuries?"
"Stay away!" Rumplestiltskin blurts. He tries to push Pan away but only succeeds in losing his own balance and sagging sideways to the ground.
"I don't want your little knife, Rumple. You can keep your toys. Like I said, you don't trust easily, not even yourself. So you need that little security blanket in the shape of a leash. Me? I'm a little more confident in my skills. Why limit my powers when instead I can fly through the skies itself?"
"You're such a hypocrite," Rumplestiltskin gasps out through his disorientating relief. "You claim you want power and don't need limits, but what are those boys of yours? You tie yourself down to their imaginations because you need the adulation. The worship. You need people to love you, even if it means you rule only one world at a time."
"Oh, Rumple, wrong again." Pan shakes his head sadly. "Doesn't it ever get tiring, being such a failure? My Lost Boys don't limit me. They feed me. And Henry's heart…well, that's going to make me unstoppable."
"If only you had your own."
Pan studies him disinterestedly. "It must be terrible, being you. Always so ineffectual. Never enough for the people you pour all your pitiful little heart into. Never satisfied and yet never worth getting anything more. How could I have ever produced such a weak facsimile of a man?"
He should say something. A nasty retort. A snarky comeback. Something, just so that Pan doesn't realize how deeply he's wounded him. But then, Pan is Malcolm, and Malcolm knows exactly who Rumplestiltskin is.
"I really did name you well," Pan says, malicious and triumphant. "A rumpled, stilted bag of skin pretending to be more than the worthless failure you are."
"I hate you," Rumplestiltskin breathes, and Pan laughs as the tears sting Rumplestiltskin's eyes and the cuts in his cheeks and the splits in his lips.
"No, you don't," Pan says, "and that's the most ridiculous thing of all—that you love me even after everything."
It's true. And Rumplestiltskin hates that it's true. Hates himself for not forcing it untrue.
"What's even more unbelievable," Pan says, "is that you produced Baelfire. You know, I heard a prophecy about him once. I even passed it onto a few interested parties, though it took wings and a dress for them to believe me."
Rumplestiltskin has a flash of the seer. Beware, Rumplestiltskin, she'd told him. The child of darkness waits for you—and the final betrayal will be your undoing.
"The Child of Darkness," Pan says, savoring each word. "I tried to get him out of the way, of course, but I have to admit, I'm a little curious to know what this unmade future looks like. Should I let him touch the future just to find out?"
"Leave him alone!" Rumplestiltskin tries to raise himself up on his arms, but they give out underneath him.
"Hmm. Perhaps. Now, if you'll excuse me, boy, I've got one last thing to do." He bounds to his feet and spreads out something between his hands. A scroll, Rumplestiltskin realizes.
The self-destruct.
"How to activate…" Pan makes a show of inspecting the scroll that Rumplestiltskin doesn't doubt Cora made absurdly easy. He knew she'd hunt for his backdoor so he'd made it easy for her and gambled that he could manipulate her well enough to forestall her using it. And of course, he'd ensured that only he could activate it.
Or rather, only his blood.
Which won't be a problem for Pan, even in this new guise of his, will it?
It happens so quickly, anticlimactically so. Rumplestiltskin wastes half a second hoping the heroes will show up to stop Pan before he remembers that they are only good at saving their own and that they're preoccupied with carefully planted distractions.
So, with no more than a drop of Pan's blood dropped with the scroll into the well, it's done.
A quake shudders through the ground, small and contained for now, perceptible to Rumplestiltskin only because he's laid out against the earth like a sacrifice (though if so, only a reused one, because Malcolm offered him up a long time ago).
"Well, then." Pan dusts his hands together and smiles broadly down at the well. "A good day's work, eh? Should I go see how much more of a push your boy needs to become another Dark One?"
"Bae," Rumplestiltskin whispers. It's not voluntary. The name escapes him without permission, the one word that's remained the same through every stage of his life.
Except it's not just Bae now. It's Neal too, world-wise and battle-weary, the soldier Rumpelstiltskin tried to prevent him from becoming. But maybe, just maybe, strong enough and definitely brave enough to take on the pirate and emerge the victor.
"I'll give him your regards, shall I?" Pan asks, and before Rumplestiltskin can do more than grab for him, he vanishes without even a wisp of smoke to mark his passing.
Show-off, he thinks in a weak attempt at unconcern that lasts only as long as the thought itself.
Alone, in the dark, with trees groaning around him and stars laughing down at him in high mockery, Rumplestiltskin can do nothing but think one word.
Bae.
No. Two words.
Belle.
He couldn't protect Bae, before, even with Zoso at his beck and call. And Belle…he was her downfall, the reason for every bad thing that has ever happened to her.
And yet…
Don't die, Bae commanded him.
Promise me, Rumplestiltskin, that you'll try to stay safe, Belle asked of him.
And he meant to do both those things. How could he not (his own survival sense demands the same)? But now…now things have changed. Now Pan's intent on killing Bae, and if he finds out that Rumplestiltskin loves Belle, he'll kill her too, and nothing will stop him.
Not unless Rumplestiltskin gets up. Not unless he drags himself back to town.
Not unless he binds his soul—and his fate—to the papa who can never be rid of him enough times.
"Belle," he whispers, her name emerging with a spill of condensation (which answers that question: he's cold; she's always granted him a clarity nothing else can). "Bae."
His two names. His talismans. If ever he's needed them, it's now, contemplating a long trek and a terrible death.
Belle's voice echoes through his mind, his heart. He wishes he could hear her declaration of love. Her promise to stay with him. The instant she told him, without a shred of dishonesty, that she was devoted to him.
But he's not that lucky.
Instead, he hears the last words he thought she'd ever say to him (her dying words, he believed for so many years).
We could have been happy, Rumple, she had cried, backlit in brilliance, so fierce despite the tears on her cheeks. But you can't believe in happiness for yourself. You won't let yourself be anything but the villain you think makes you strong.
But Zoso hadn't made him strong, only dragged him down on a search he could have ended with one visit to a giant's beanfield. And magic did give him strength, but at what cost? What terrible price would it ask of him next?
All this time, all along, since the first he heard tell of him from a seer's mouth (terrified and pretending he wasn't, trying not to imagine the battlefield awaiting him), it's been Bae that's given him strength. Lent him bravery. It's been Belle who's given him the impetus he needs to be more, be better, try harder.
He'll never make it. He knows he won't.
But then, he doesn't count on Maleficent's thorn in her side (Phillip? Or is this one Thomas?) and his warrior friend finding him in his premature grave.
"Something's happening to the town," says Phillip (yes, he remembers now, a deal for a spindle and the ever-unreliable sleeping curse he always made a pretty penny off of, though Zoso scoffed at the efficacy of it for an already established couple). The prince helps Rumplestiltskin off the ground. "We may not be able to do anything, but I know you can."
"For Belle," Magnolia adds, taking his other arm (the black cuff brushes her shoulder, but she doesn't notice). "We owe her, and for some reason, she thinks you're more than the stories make of you."
"Belle," he whispers as the world goes white around the edges when they move him.
"Yes, Belle," Phillip says. "Can you save her? Can you save all of us? Tell me Aurora didn't make me leave her and bother Jefferson to find you for nothing."
He's never been a savior before (or rather, he has, but only incidentally, and never called such: monster, beast, Dark One, Spinner, but never hero. Never Savior). He'll fail them just like he has everyone else.
"Bae," he breathes, and hopes that's answer enough.
When they drag him back down to town, he blacks out. His last thought is that he hopes he can regain consciousness long enough to see Belle one last time, if only to thank her for saving him yet again.
"If the map shows us the north woods," Bae says with an attempt at a grin, "we'll know that it's not working."
"Right." Belle's smile is tight, frayed at the edges in a way Bae hates to see. "But wherever he is, that's where we're going."
"Right." It's his turn for a strained smile (he wonders if she doubts him; if she thinks he might decide not to go after his own father; he wonders if it makes him a terrible person that he's tempted, to search out his son and Emma rather than the man who's half figment of his imagination, half dulled memory).
The bell over the shop door rings out so unexpectedly when they enter that Bae nearly curses. "Always forget that thing," he mutters.
"I think he has it so he doesn't forget," Belle says quietly.
Bae looks at her (Belle, bright and tinkling and beautiful, and doesn't have to think hard to see the connotations his father might have attributed to the bell).
"So." Belle straightens to her full height (not much to speak of, not that Bae can cast any stones). "A drop of blood over the map and the leftover magic will do the work for us."
"That's the plan."
There's a dark feeling twisting like a shadow in the pit of his stomach, but Bae doesn't let it stop him from striding into the backroom. What brings him to a halt is the sight of the mess where before, when they left, there was a chaotic sort of order to the place.
"Rumple," Belle gasps.
But he's not there. He was, they can both tell that. All that's left now is blood on the floor and his cane, rolled under his workbench next to a discarded sword. The jar that held Hook's tongue is gone too, Bae notes with a strange dispassion.
Belle tries to compose her expression as if he can't see through its paper-thin façade. "He's hurt."
"Yeah," he says shortly.
This makes it easier, he knows. He won't even have to use his own blood to track his papa. He can just retrieve some of that spilled out under his feet (as soon as he left? how long did Pan wait before he left his hiding spot to beat his papa down just like everyone else in Rumplestiltskin's life?), take out all the uncertainty, go straight for the source.
Easy.
So why does he ignore the bloodstains to stride to the workbench? He sweeps away the detritus of magical items that have been knocked over the map. It's simple enough to take up that sword from the ground and nick his finger along the blade.
But then…it's like everything elongates around him.
In the amount of time it takes for his blood to fall from his finger to the browned map of this young town, Bae sees a thousand moments, a hundred different occurrences, precious memories he once took out every day in Neverland's eternal night to pore over before he learned to tuck them away, locked up safe and sound behind a barrier he hid from even himself.
Rumplestiltskin, smiling as Bae, in maybe his earliest memory, toddles toward him. His laughter, when Bae falls into his waiting arms, rings through Bae's chest until he laughs too.
His papa, showing him how to pet their sheepdog, Gentle, Bae, don't frighten him, he'll be your best friend.
Both of them walking side by side toward town, Rumplestiltskin tight with tension Bae didn't understand then, Bae eager to see his mom, wondering if they'd all stay in the bad-smelling place with the loud men where they always found her.
Bae's arm, learning to stay stiff, an extra support for his papa on the days after he came back from negotiating with the butcher for some lean cut of meat.
The lullaby Bae begged Papa for before he grew out of it.
His papa's voice as he dared to dream of invading a castle, setting it alight and walking straight into its bowels, but his eyes falling when Bae asked if he'd run from battle. The plan he shared so openly, the way he accepted Bae's help but sent him to safety, the dagger he offered repeatedly to his son, the openness between them.
I'm your best friend, aren't I? Bae remembers asking him when he finally agreed to move away from their little village to a new city.
You're everything, Papa had said, and Bae had known that no matter what Zoso did, what whispers he curled through Papa's insecurities, it would always be Bae and Rumplestiltskin against the rest of the world. His papa would always choose him, no matter what.
(When did that turn from reassurance to nightmare?)
"Papa," Bae says—and the crimson drop hits the paper.
Magic shimmers, dull and wavering. Flickers, fades, nearly goes out (Bae's heart clenches in his heart). Wavers and disappears (No! his heart cries. He is my papa!). And then flares into being. Blood calling to blood. Father to son (and a grandfather, there, too, a second presence, and a son, nearing those first two converging on each other, all three coming together).
His papa.
"He's outside the library," Belle says. "That's just down the street!"
"Let's go," Bae says, his voice coldly implacable.
Pan made him doubt, over and over again, the memories he held of his papa. He wriggled his grip beneath the tiny cracks Zoso had planted, and he scoffed and mocked and doubted until Bae himself questioned whether he'd made up the papa who loved and sacrificed and adored. And all along, Pan knew. He knew that Rumplestiltskin loves, that he's loyal, that he never gives up on the treasured few he loves.
He knew because he's one of those few.
The shadows in Bae's stomach writhe until he has to clamp his mouth shut to avoid vomiting up his revulsion at the idea that he is descended from Peter Pan.
Bae tightens his fist over the sword he used on his own finger and decides to bring it with him. Rumplestiltskin won't kill Pan, not if he really loves him. But Bae? Bae doesn't love Pan. Bae hates him with a fiery vengeance that nearly envelops him. Bae won't hesitate to stab this sword through Pan's chest and then send him careening into Pandora's Box where he'll be eternally dying, eternally haunted by everything he might have done differently.
"Here," he says as they head for the door. He pulls the box from his pocket and hands it to Belle. "I've had a lot of practice at distracting Pan. I'll keep his attention, you get the box behind him. All you have to do is twist the jewel and the top opens. Anyone you point it at will be sucked inside. Once you're being pulled in, there's no escaping it."
"If you're distracting him," Belle says, "won't you be right next to him?"
Bae casts a look back to the map (to the tiny spot representing Henry, so vulnerable, such a target). "If it comes to a choice, I've survived this box before. Do what you have to do and we'll worry about getting me out later. Got it?"
Her breath wavers, unsteady, nearly a sob. She looks back too, but rather than the map, she looks at the floor where Papa's blood stands as reminder of his suffering. "I can't," she says with evident effort. "Rumple would never want me to sacrifice you—and you don't deserve it, Bae."
"You have no idea what I deserve," he says. He thinks of centuries of cat-and-mouse games in Neverland, of Lost Boys used as playing chips, pawns, wagers won and lost; he thinks of years on the streets of this world, treasured objects stolen, crimes committed. He thinks of Tamara, the woman he imagined he could love (dreamed up more by his own fantasy than reality, as if he'd learned nothing from Pan), the way he'd lunged at her, holding nothing back, when she pointed that gun at him. He remembers the sound her neck made when it snapped. The way he ran and burned another alias, another life, just to get away from the sight of her blank, staring eyes (the pain of yet another betrayal).
He's not a child anymore. The regrets Pandora's Box will show him are going to be so much more than he could have imagined the last time. But…that tiny trace of hope…
Emma's kiss burns on his lips. Henry's smile is etched into his mind. Papa's I love you rings in his ears.
He'll survive. He'll endure. He's done it before. He can do it again.
"Just do what you have to do," he says. "We can't let Pan loose on all the worlds."
After a tense eternity, Belle nods, reluctantly. "Just," she says, "try to stay out of his way."
It reminds him of the promise she pulled from Papa and causes Bae to smile at her. They've known each other less than a day and he already thinks he could love her.
(He remembers stories Rumplestiltskin told him of his mother. Of a dark-haired beauty with kindness shining from her eyes, fond and clever and willing to do anything for her son. He wonders if Rumplestiltskin knew all along. Did the seer tell him of Belle along with Bae?)
There's no more time for bonding, though. Not when the ground rumbles beneath their feet and makes the windows in every shop around them rattle and shake. Not when they race down the street and see two figures ahead of them. Well, first he only sees one, a dark shape against a sky that shows its dawn lightening only in comparison to the hungry darkness of the boy-god. Pan stands with his hip thrown out, his eyes alight as he stares up at the shadow hovering before him.
For a second, Bae thinks that maybe this will be over quickly. If they can just open the box, direct it his way, this can all end in a moment.
He's not surprised when that hope dies as quickly as it appeared.
The shadow sinks into Pan, and from behind him, a second figure steps into the open. Or rather, shambles awkwardly, painfully, toward Peter Pan.
"Papa," Rumplestiltskin says, and the sound of it makes something crack and shatter inside Bae.
"No!" Bae screams.
Too late. From the street across from them, Emma and Henry run forward, flanked by her parents and Regina—and August, human again, shoulder-to-shoulder with Emma. All of them together: a huge blinding target for Peter Pan.
Pan crows his laughter and throws his arms open wide. "I see the party can finally get started."
Under their feet, the earth rumbles and groans, belatedly rejecting this foreign transplant attached to its stony flesh.
"Bae!" Pan arches a brow at him. "Still alive and kicking, I see. How disappointing. You've grown boring, laddie."
"And you're repeating yourself," Bae says. He makes certain to keep Belle half behind him, hiding the box in her hands from Pan's view. "Don't you think it's about time you got some new material?"
"I think the addition of a thousand worlds to my repertoire will do wonders for my stock in trade," he says. "Unfortunately, you're not invited. Right, Rumple? There's never any point on dragging dead weight with you when a portal opens, is there?"
"Stay away from him," Rumplestiltskin grits. Bae can't take his eyes from Pan, not unless he wants to lose this stand-off, but the sound of Papa's voice is so grated, almost destroyed, that Bae can imagine just how badly hurt he is. His fist tightens over the hilt of his sword. "You don't get to touch Bae. You don't even get to talk to him. And you certainly don't deserve to say his name."
"What's this?" Pan laughs as he turns his back to Bae (a mistake, one Bae's surprised he makes). "Has the coward finally grown a backbone? Or are you just pretending?" Pan looks between Rumplestiltskin and Bae—and Belle, standing behind him. "Don't tell me!" Pan gasps exaggeratedly. "Have you found yourself another little plaything? Cora's not even cold in the ground yet."
"Don't worry, Rumple," Belle calls out. "We're here for you. You're not alone."
"Well, isn't this a surprise?" Pan laughs again and steps closer to Papa. "Someone else to use against you. You never do learn, do you, my boy?"
It makes Bae's vision haze red and black to see Papa flinch away from Pan. To see the way his eyes drop, fall, cowed and broken (the first lost boy Pan ever made, the broken soul he modeled every future Lost Boy after).
"Hey, Pan," he says loudly (anything to keep Pan from Papa, from Henry and Emma, far too close, trying to keep their balance against the quakes growing ever more regular). "You know how I promised to fight you with everything I have? Well, I'm keeping my promise. And I win."
Pan's laughter trills through the growing dawn, infecting it with darkness. "Well, at least you have the confidence down. That's something little Rumple never could get a handle on."
"You want the heart of a true believer?" Bae asks, and this, this, finally, is what captures the whole of Pan's attention. Bae's movements forward while his back was turned, Regina's magic flowing around her hands, Emma's drawn gun, even Rumplestiltskin's fear—none of that gave Pan pause.
But these words, from Bae (the only true opponent he had in Neverland), is enough to erase Pan's smile and lock his eyes on him alone.
"You're not the one," Pan says. "I tried, believe me, but you're just too pragmatic, Neal."
"Yeah? Well, you're not the true believer either."
It happens so quickly, the flash of sheer rage that steams through Pan (nearly as strong as Bae's own). He masks it with a laugh, but too late. Bae's seen it.
"Let's try a trade," Bae says. "A heart for a heart. You first."
He drives the sword straight for Pan's chest, slightly to the left, above his ribcage.
His sword vanishes from his hands and it's Bae's own hand that lands on Pan's chest.
"Bae!" Rumplestiltskin shouts, and then he's there, his hand on Pan's shoulder, turning him, pulling him from Bae, and Bae wants to scream, wants to explode, because Belle will never open that box when Rumplestiltskin is in the way.
Of course, there was very little chance that Belle was ever going to open that box. Belle's a good person. A hero. She wants to save, but not at the cost of her own soul.
Bae knew that. He's known all along that it would be up to him.
He just didn't know his papa was going to be the collateral damage.
"I'm not going to let you touch either of them," Rumplestiltskin tells Pan. He can't even stand upright, but he doesn't flinch. His eyes lock on Pan's and for once, Pan doesn't seem able to look away.
"The worm has teeth," Pan mocks.
"No. Just a heart. The one thing you never had."
"Come on, Rumple, don't embarrass yourself."
"I'm sorry, Bae," Rumplestiltskin says. "I'm sorry, Belle. I thought I could keep my promise."
Terror sheers through the rage keeping Bae in place. "No," he tries to say, but he can't. It's stuck behind the sudden, leaden lump in his throat.
"Pretty words," Pan says, "but you still don't have magic and the town's still falling apart around you."
"I don't need magic," Rumplestiltskin says (the little boy still trapped inside Bae, the last remnants left within that shriveled, torn cocoon, keens and sighs at this). "You see, like you said, I have limits."
And from somewhere (Bae misses the movement, too busy reaching behind him to wrest Pandora's Box from Belle), Rumplestiltskin has the dagger in his hand. The sun crests the horizon just in time to cast a last sheen of light over the curved blade with Papa's name—and then Rumplestiltskin wraps his arms around his papa and plunges the dagger into his back.
"NO!" Bae screams. "No, Papa!"
Because Rumplestiltskin's the Dark One now—because to stab someone with the Dark One's dagger is to tie their fates together, to let pieces of their soul merge with his own—because Papa doesn't deserve to be lashed forever to Pan.
(Because Bae has the box in hand, and his fury, his thirst for revenge, casts shadows over everything, and he can't let Pan free, can't risk Henry's life on a chance.)
Rumplestiltskin doesn't hear him. There's a golden bubble expanding around him and Pan. Or…him and the man in his arms. It's not Pan—not the Pan Bae knows. Instead, it's a man, older, worn and shabby, ghosts of Papa in tiny pieces, little glimpses here and there, none of them stronger than the flashes of inky blackness writhing in and out of Pan. It's face, when the Shadow appears, is a rictus scream, burning eyes dying spark by spark.
"Rumple, please," the man begs. "We can start over. Just remove the dagger and we can have a happy ending."
Papa's smile is so bittersweet, so melancholic, that Bae's fury roars back into being, immolating his terror. "Ah, but I'm a villain. And villains don't get happy endings."
"Rumple!" Belle cries. The ground heaves beneath them. Bae staggers. It's not enough to stop him, though. Bae was trained in the depths of a world that catered to the whims of its adopted king. He's used to things appearing and disappearing, stability nothing more than a myth from another realm.
Belle screams and dives for Bae, trying to wrestle the box from his hands. Bae sets his shoulder between them, places his hand on the jewel, and twists.
Pan screams (or is it the Shadow?).
An invisible wind strains for Pan, snatching at his soul, his body, and he's sucked backward, the dagger embedded in his back, Rumplestiltskin still with his arms wrapped around him.
"No! How could you?" Belle sobs at Bae.
She doesn't know: what it means to do what must be done no matter what it costs. No matter how it darkens your heart. Rumplestiltskin knows. And now Bae does too (he learned it long ago, when Hook stepped from an alley and Bae faked his own death and left the woman he loved behind just to give her the chance of survival).
After all, letting go is the hard part.
(But the hard thing isn't always the right thing.)
"Catch him," Bae whispers into Belle's ear. "Hold onto him. Whatever you do, don't let go."
Her eyes lock with his, teary and red but growing with sudden determination.
"Don't let go," Bae says again.
The unfamiliar Pan disappears into the box, only his hand left, holding onto Rumplestiltskin with every bit of his dying strength (his fingers are inky black, guided by a Shadow). Bae ignores him and drops the box to the undulating ground.
Then, with both hands, he catches hold of his papa, handfuls of his jacket, slick and wet with liquid Bae's glad he doesn't have time to think about. On his other side, Belle grabs hold of an arm too, and together, they hold him in place.
Once Pandora's Box has a hold of someone, it's impossible to stop them from being sucked into its confines.
Or at least, it is in Neverland. But this is Storybrooke, the town created from Papa's love and darkness, his desperation and his magic. This is Storybrooke and every stone is layered with Rumplestiltskin's name; the magic that imbues it was brought back by the Dark One, using True Love.
I'm Belle, your father's True Love, Belle introduced herself.
Emma's kiss saved me, Henry told him during one of their lunches, cozied together in a booth at Granny's. I guess not all True Love has to be romantic.
"Don't let go, Papa," he breathes into Rumplestiltskin's ear.
On his opposite side, Belle whispers something in his other ear. Bae tightens his grip, plants himself in place, and imagines himself immobile, rooted deep, unmoving (if willing fantasy into reality is ever going to come in handy, it is now).
"I'm never letting go," he says. "I'm here, Papa. I'm here and I'm not going anywhere."
Tears burn his eyes as he imagines himself as the little boy Rumplestiltskin has dreamed of for centuries. He's not that little boy anymore. Maybe he's not even who Rumplestiltskin wanted him to be.
He's the son of the Dark One. He's been raised by Shadows who trained him in ruthlessness and desperation. He just condemned a man to eternal living death, maybe at the cost of his own papa.
He's no hero. No savior. Just a father willing to sacrifice his own heart for his son. Just a son who won't let go even as the town falls apart around him and worlds burn.
"I love you, Papa," he breathes (the final truth locked inside him). And with those words, he presses a kiss to his papa's cheek.
Across from him, Belle does the same.
Gold flames incinerate all three of them.
There's an ocean inside Emma, flowing through her veins, its tidal currents beating to the rhythm of her heart. It roars in her ears, weights down her bones with the force of a thousand seas, but sweeps her up in its wake and carries her unfathomable distances. She wishes she could say it was birthed by the release of magic from inside her.
It wasn't.
Instead, the first salty drops of power, of this rushing elemental force, sprang into being with a kiss.
The kiss she couldn't stop herself from giving.
The kiss that has undone the work of years and set her back to the girl she was when she still believed happy endings could be hers (when Tallahassee was as much a magic word as the name of a city).
Her lips sting with salt, her cheeks are marked with salt, and when she breathes in, she smells salt and copper—blood.
Rumplestiltskin's, she thinks. After all, he's the one with wounds impressed over every inch of visible skin. The one with the dagger in his hand (or at least, it was, now it's been sucked into that box left forgotten on the ground under Neal's feet). The one with red seeping through his black jacket.
But it's not Rumplestiltskin's blood, or Rumplestiltskin at all, that demands the whole force of that ocean surging inside her.
Instead, the moon to this force, the spark that birthed it all, is Neal.
He's all Emma can see, all she'd be able to feel if Henry weren't clinging to her hand with all his deceptive strength.
Pan—or whoever he was—disappeared, sucked into that box like shrinking people into objects is a normal everyday occurrence. Now, Gold wavers, blurred along the edges, leaning precariously toward that box, his hand clutched by something black and inky that emanates from the box.
Neal doesn't let go of him, though, and neither does Belle, and if she could think of anything beyond the currents circulating through her body in place of blood, Emma would wonder at the loyalty that Mr. Gold inspires in those closest to him (would rage against it, seeing that it might cost Neal everything if he won't—let—go!).
But then, just like in some fairytale story August never got to tell her because she always stopped him before he could get much past Once upon a time, with a kiss (two, really, one from Neal, one from Belle), the inky hand vanishes, the box falls still and closed, and Gold sags in Neal's (his son's) arms. He looks like a corpse, and falls like one, too, bringing Neal to his knees in an effort to catch him up. Belle reaches for him, cradles Gold's head in her lap, and when she bends over his face, her hair encloses them like a curtain, shutting them away from the rest of the world.
Neal stands over them, looks down, and the expression on his face…it makes the ocean inside Emma leap with a tidal wave that threatens to overwhelm her.
Or maybe that's the ground moving beneath her feet. The fact that even from here, in the middle of town, if she could tear her eyes away from Neal's immobile form, she would see buildings at the edges of sight starting to fizzle and fade, like static turning into nothingness.
Magic is not Emma's strong suit. She read Henry's book, sure, but she spent more time denying to herself any similarities between it and life in Storybrooke than she did internalizing any of its happily-ever-after-with-the-aid-of-magic lessons. She never even finished the Harry Potter series, for crying out loud, books or movies, and that shield exploding from her in the stables (Gold's warnings couched in threats; the coldness in Neal's eyes when he spoke of magic) has done nothing to warm her to the subject.
Nothing…except the fact that Henry's alive because of Regina's magic. That David will die without Gold's magic. That Mary Margaret's only alive and well today because of the power of True Love—Henry's only alive and well because of it.
Nothing except the fact that the entire town's being unmade around her, trees spiraling up where they must have once been before a world was transplanted here—and the only thing that can save her son, her parents, everyone, is magic.
You, Emma, are pure magic.
And magic works on emotions. And if this ocean inside her, lunging for constraints, battering up against her heart, eroding all her control, is that magic…well, she has plenty of emotions with which to direct it.
If only she knew how.
"Regina!" she gasps. "You have to help me. Maybe…maybe together, we can stop the self-destruct from happening."
Regina stares at her. "You don't get it," she says. There's a note of something in her voice, a hollow sort of defeat, that has Henry detaching himself from Emma to reach for Regina. "This curse is the darkest thing that has ever been cast. Whoever made it"—her eyes dart unwillingly back toward the body on the ground, held by a shaking Belle, watched over by an expressionless Neal—"did something no one else ever could have."
"And what's that?"
"He combined Dark Magic with True Love. It's impossible. In millennia, in countless worlds, no one's ever accomplished it before. But he did it. The blackest of magics with the lightest of powers—and instead of destroying each other, or canceling each other out, they combined and merged to form…Storybrooke."
"What does that mean?" Emma demands impatiently.
"It means," Regina says with a flash of derision, "that only Dark Magic and True Love together could stop the destruction. But it's impossible to combine them."
"No, it isn't."
Emma whirls, desperate, toward the voice. She knows who it is, of course. She will always recognize his voice (hollowed by wood, deadened by stone, or simply distant through a phoneline). "August?" she asks, and hears the thrum of draining water in her own tone.
"I know how you can combine Dark Magic and True Love," August says. "It's easy, really. After all, you're the product of True Love."
"That's…" Like always when this comes up, Emma can't quite make her mind wrap around that concept. She also can't bring herself to look at David and Snow, holding onto each other, a step away from her, ready with encouragement whenever she needs it.
"That won't help with Dark Magic," Regina says. Before Emma can more than look at her, she clutches Henry close and says, "And I can't help with it either. You heard that Shadow. My darkness is in the past."
A Shadow's hardly the most reliable of witnesses, Emma almost says, but August interrupts.
"Neal," he says.
Emma's focus zeroes in on him. "What?"
August steps closer to her. His dark blue shirt sucks in the dawn light, bold and brilliant in comparison to the drabness around him. His eyes lock on her, full of faith and trust and a hope she hasn't seen in him in ages. "Neal is the child of the Dark One."
"The Child of Darkness," Snow murmurs behind them, a gasp caught in her throat.
"Dark Magic," David whispers, "and True Love."
"Both combined," August says. He stumbles into her as the ground revolts beneath their feet. A sapling springs to life between them, such a mark of irony that Emma and August's eyes meet with shared humor and she nearly bursts into hysterical laughter. "You can do this," he tells her.
And he's never been wrong before (crazy, most definitely; misleading, almost always; evasive, more than she likes to think about; but not wrong).
"Go," Henry says. "You and Dad have got this."
Stepping close to Henry's hospital bed, thinking he was dead, was just as hard as this, separating herself from the group that Robert and Maggie have just joined to approach Neal. Bending to kiss Henry, desperate for stories to be real after all, seems like child's play compared to the leap of faith that is reaching out her hand to slide her fingers through Neal's.
"Neal," she says. His hand closes around hers, nearly spasmodically, and the ocean in Emma roars to violent life.
She can feel it, inside herself: magic. Magic powered by True Love. And it's reaching, yearning, called with magnetic force to its answer in the dark sky.
Neal turns to her, his face pale as a full moon, his eyes desperate and pleading. "Emma," he says, and the ocean (the magic) inside her stills.
It's so obvious. So starkly, suddenly clear.
Emma steps closer to Neal.
"Magic is powered on emotion," she whispers, ignoring the puzzled crease in Neal's brow. "We just have to tap into that."
"I don't have magic," Neal murmurs.
"I do," Emma says (claims it for herself, like she's been too afraid to do until right this second).
She's not the Savior. Under the pressure of expectations a world can throw on her, she's bound to fail and disappoint them all. No human person, magic or not, could stand up to the weight of worlds waiting for salvation.
She's no Savior.
But maybe…maybe she can save this one town today. With Neal's help.
"I have magic," she says, "but, Neal, I can't do this without you. I need Dark Magic."
"I'm not magic," he says again, but his arms wrap around her, he's drawing her close, and Emma feels it in every inch of their skin that touches. In the breath that whispers from his mouth to her cheek. In the warmth of him turning her ocean gentle and life-giving.
Magic. Pure, strong emotion.
"I don't know," Emma says. She thinks of the lost little girl she used to be, the duckling with nowhere to go save the car she stole. She thinks of the partnership Neal offered, the laughter he shared, the hopes he gave her the courage to claim, the warmth of his body teaching her what it was to not be alone. She remembers that first night, when they'd snuck into a hotel room, when he put a pillow on the floor, and she picked it up and put it back on the bed, then twined her arms behind his neck and pulled him down on top of her. She imagines, one day, getting the chance to do that again, to introduce him (again) to her parents, this man she can be proud of to the father she adores, this thief (rather than a stable boy) to the mother she's learning to love (imagines Snow's pride in her that Emma did find, on her first try, the man she can spend ever after with).
"I think you are magic," she tells Neal.
Because there's Henry. The gift Neal left her, the baby she gave away, the boy who found her, the son who taught her how to save people (how to save herself). Henry, who wouldn't even exist without Neal.
Neal's eyes turn to his son, too, and whatever he sees there, in that little boy (that brave hero), is enough to wipe the desperation from his face and replace it with determination.
"It works with emotion?" he asks with a cocky tilt to his head. And for the first time, Emma doesn't look at him and see the villain she made of him in his absence. She doesn't see the grown man, the near-stranger, she met all over again in the hospital. Instead, she looks at the gleam in his eye and the bravado in his stance, and she sees the thief, the runaway, the lost boy she fell in love with.
He's not a pirate, not really, no matter what happened in his past, but he's her thief, and every ocean needs one of those.
The magic inside her surges up, up, and out. Neal holds her close, leans his brow against hers, and whatever emotion he accesses, whatever feelings he calls up (she knows, of course she does, no matter that he closes his eyes to try to hide the potent strength of them), it answers, like to like, with the magic inside Emma.
Something pours from her skin, from her heart, from the soul she binds to Neal, child of the Dark One, raised by shadows, destined for darkness, fated to change the world by his mere existence.
Smoke, golden and radiant as the sun, explodes from their merged form and swells outward, rolling over the town, a tidal wave sweeping destruction out of its way, a tsunami that heals and erases the remnants of long-covered forest, restoring the town behind it.
But there's more. Of course there is (nothing's ever simple in Storybrooke).
"It's not just Storybrooke!" Regina yells behind them, struggling to make her voice heard over the force of the magic that swirls around them, Emma and Neal enclosed in the eye of the storm. "The force of the explosion is ripping holes in all the realms!"
"Emma," Neal says. His voice is ragged, torn and buffeted by the golden wind that tears at them from all sides. Emma holds onto him tighter, presses her face into the haven of his neck. "Emma," he says, and the sound of her name in his voice resonates through her cheek, her ear, her heart. "In case we don't make it…"
"We will," she says, trying to imagine Henry saying it. She can believe things she never would otherwise, when Henry's the one saying them.
"I just…" Neal hugs her tighter to himself, so close that their hearts beat in tandem, a tattoo branded against her chest. "I want you to know that I love you. I never stopped loving you. And I know it doesn't matter anymore, but—"
"It matters," Emma says, and she opens her eyes, withdraws from her safe haven, and kisses him.
He kisses her back, and she forgot this. How could she forget this? The gentleness of his kiss, the desperation of his embrace, the awe in his eyes, the boldness in his tongue against hers. She made herself forget. She rewrote this story in her mind and forced her heart to accept its untruth. But now, so simply, all that work is undone, and she remembers.
She loves him—Neal, Baelfire, Child of Darkness, whatever his name.
Her thief. (Didn't Snow steal a ring from Prince Charming to start off their whole story? Like mother, like daughter, Emma thinks, and for once, finds pleasure in the connection rather than intimidation.)
The magic intensifies around them, straining for the sky where great, gaping rents have torn through clouds to reveal different colors, different skies. Whole worlds with magic and gravity enough to tear this one to nothing. The holes themselves are outlined in inky blackness she recognizes from that box somewhere on the tremoring ground. Shadows climb from the edges, birthed in the openings, streaming outward for all realities.
Neal's kiss swept their golden magic upward, pillars reaching to cover and seal those rents in the sky. But it's not enough. Not quite.
Emma feels her body shaking apart. The ocean has roared through her and in its wake, she's left empty, drained, ragged and frayed in a thousand places. Only Neal's arms and the kisses he layers over her cheeks and brow, her nose and lips, hold her together.
That, and the boy who breaks through the storm around them to crash into them.
Henry throws his arms around them until Neal and Emma both pull him close with an arm, and then he sinks into the center of their embrace.
There's something inside him. His heart, perhaps, that fabled heart of the truest believer. Whatever it is, it glues itself to Emma and Neal (the product of True Love and Dark Magic, she realizes, melded and combined into one miraculous person) and the magic erupts again.
Gold power pours from Emma while all around her destruction explodes only to be unmade before exploding again.
The sky above vanishes before reappearing, then vanishes again. It's too much magic for any one world to contain.
"Emma!" she thinks she hears Neal call.
Emma takes that shout (the sound of it and the emotions layered through it), and she wraps herself in it.
Imagines a world, whole and contained, birthed by that shout.
Constructs that world atop this one.
Wills it into being.
Pictures it, one mirror image of the world that gave her Neal, the world that produced her parents and Regina, the world Henry dreams of. And this world, hard and complicated and flawed and hers.
The ocean drains to nothing.
The quakes stop.
Emma falls.
A/N: Please don't come at me, Hook fans! This is an AU and I think there's probably been enough CaptainSwan stories that were fine with killing Bae off, so...you know, turnabout is fair play. :)
