Hampton, Virginia

June 2004

The rough sketch Emma drew up, concerning her future with Baelfire, minutes before leaving Neverland might as well have been scribbles on a shoreline. Not only were her plans unintelligible, they were written in a place where the course of life easily erased such notions. When she had willingly returned to the system, Bae by her side, and watched social services cart him away to give his entire record-less life the once over, she had naively believed he would be "okay." Not awesome and definitely not happy but fine. In all the homes and orphanages Emma resided in, she had always been the rough definition of fine. The system sucked, yes, and the foster homes were awful to the point of running away, but she, herself, had always been fine. Miserable, angry, frightened, and sad but alive and functioning. Emma assumed he'd learn to adjust. He survived Neverland. He sure as hell could survive something a little less wild.

Social services had to give him the works, meaning stacks and stacks of paperwork. He had no identification and no proof of existing, but he sounded American and had a belly button. During this time, Emma had been sent to Virginia to another foster home. She kept her head down, didn't run away when it was only too easy, and went to school.

Once Baelfire became Neal Cassidy, which was close to the end of Emma's junior year of high school, he was sent to Minnesota. In response to his letter explaining where the system was taking him, Emma wrote that Minnesota was cold and to look out for crazy blonde ladies. The place the system sent him was a boys' orphanage, and he lasted six weeks before running away with three other miscreants. He and the boys made it to Arizona before Bae called her by payphone and confessed what he'd done and maybe this hadn't been such a bright idea.

Emma had wanted to be angry, but she didn't really blame him and was able to persuade him to contact his social worker before he found himself in too much trouble. Later, he told her that he was already in trouble when he called but was too much of a coward to tell her the extent of it. Apparently, Neal and his abandonment issues had started to express themselves and to cope with all that, he started stealing.

Like, a lot.

Emma was no stranger to the five-finger discount, but it wasn't her crutch. Stacking up on the bitter seemed to always work better for her. Though it left her pretty much friendless and unlikeable by everyone, being a bitch wasn't illegal.

Neal returned to Minnesota and stayed there until the end of the year until he was transferred to a foster home in Portland, Maine. Surprisingly, he stayed with the Bradfords until he graduated. They liked him a whole lot more than he liked them, according to Neal's emails and phone calls.

In other words, they didn't put up with his shit and made him go to school and church, at the same time letting him have second helpings at dinner time and as much ice cream as he wanted.

Those people were actually trying to be parents, and Emma hadn't known whether to feel sorry for him or be jealous. Considering that she had just attended his high school graduation that morning and was forced to take a whole bunch of pictures of him and said foster parents, it was probably the latter.

Resisting to give him the stink eye and stick her tongue out at him for being so damned likeable despite him being as pleasant as she was, Emma picked up a piping hot slice of delicious sausage, olive pizza and brought the cheesy, gooey tip to her mouth. Right when she took a bite, Neal put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. He kissed her on the cheek and said, "You know, I kind of like them."

Mouth full, she frowned and said, "Fourteen hours later after you see them." She swallowed and sipped at her Coke before adding, "My contacts are in the mail. Don't worry about it."

Neal scoffed and raised a hand. "Emma, I like your glasses."

"No, you don't."

"I do."

"You're lying."

"You know I'm not."

Emma made a face. "Eat your damn fries."

"They make you look like a hot history tutor."

Emma's frown deepened, and she set down her slice of pizza on her little pan and wiped her fingers on a napkin. "Is that something you're familiar with?"

"Probably as familiar as you are with math tutors."

Oh, no he didn't! "Really? You're going to bring that up now!"

"How is Andrew Asswipe or whatever his name is?"

"Seriously, we're having dinner. Together. At the same time. In the same place."

"At the same table," Neal added dramatically, rolling his eyes and then kissing her forehead. "I know. It's rare."

Heart fluttering at the sweet gesture of affection, Emma relaxed into his side again. "It's new. Let's just enjoy what's left of our Friday night. This is supposed to be a happy, joyous occasion. I did not ride on a Greyhound all last night to Portland, sit on a rock-hard, metal chair for three hours, and ride the bus back for you to act like a total butt face."

"Yeah, you smell like a bus." Emma punched him in the thigh and then in the side, and he laughed, gathering her into an embrace and kissing the side of her face. "I like your glasses," he mumbled into her skin.

"And I like your…" She shifted her gaze down to his attire. "Why did you have to wear khakis and a tie again?"

"Janice made me. I didn't even want to go. Like you said, three hours, but her and Richard felt obligated or something."

"Well, at least they try," Emma said and finished the rest of her pizza and put a slice on his small plate. "Eat your food and put to good use that new fake ID Dillan got you."

"You sound like a hypocrite."

"I just don't care for the people you choose to call friends. They're a bad influence on you."

"Dillan isn't a friend. More like someone who has connections. And you're not one to judge. Your roommates."

Ah. He was referring to the weed underneath Elena's bed, and the booze fest in the apartment refrigerator when she and none of her five roommates were twenty-one yet. "I can't choose them, and I wouldn't call them friends. They eat my ice cream and steal my Midol. Friends don't do that."

"Moving on to another subject, please." Neal dunked a fry into a large pile of ketchup and said, "So…is Elena going to be in tonight?"

He tried to sound casual, but the implication was there. It had been there during his spring break when he came down from Maine to visit her for a few days. Before then, even, during his winter break, and she went up for Christmas. The mood had been broken, unfortunately, by his foster parents. When Neal had told them his girlfriend wanted to visit him, they had been hesitant but complied and planned a pleasant Christmas Eve brunch, expecting a junior or senior in high school to show up on their welcome mat. Instead, they met her in all of her twenty year old, nanny-working glory. Despite her sufficient salary and plans to enroll in Hampton University that following fall semester, Mr. and Mrs. Bradford thought she was a harlot, driven to corrupt their foster son with her cutesy, blonde nanny visage or something.

Actually, they probably invaded Neal's privacy and hacked into his email account and found those emails. Not the vanilla "how's the weather in Maine" ones, but the "other" ones.

The naughty ones.

After the meal, in not so many words, they instructed her not to darken their front door again, and Emma hadn't. Her relationship with Neal was still solid, but she didn't want to cause a rift when he was so close to graduating. She kept her distance which wasn't exactly hard being nearly twelve hours away.

The reason why nothing happened during Neal's spring break was because of Andrew, a math tutor. She was paying him in preparation of her placement test in late May. After a few meetings, Andrew made it pretty obvious he'd do just about anything to get her to cash in her v-card at his bank. Neal had met him when the guy insisted on walking her back to her apartment after a session at the Hampton U library, and Neal got all jealous because Andrew was 6'2, a Marine, a med student, and built like a god.

Emma wasn't blind. Andrew had the package, and she was flattered by his attention, but he didn't do it for her. He reminded her too much of someone she wanted to forget.

"I don't know," Emma said. "Maybe I could ask her to stay somewhere else tonight or sleep on the couch."

Following dinner, they walked the mile to her apartment, and Emma was relieved to find all her roommates gone for the evening. No one but she and Neal were there which meant that something definitely was going to happen. They had danced around the subject since he turned eighteen in early December. She supposed even before then, but she refused to consider going all the way with him until he was the big one eight.

For reasons of her own.

They went to her room, and she told him she needed to use the bathroom and scampered across the hall to wash her face, brush her teeth, comb her hair, steal a spritz of Elena's perfume, and checked her most girly part to make sure her home-done wax job the morning before hadn't somehow caused any problems or failed to remove the main ones.

Emma washed her face again. This time with cold water and patted dry her flushed cheeks, sticking out her tongue at her reflection when seeing how uber freckly her freckles were at that moment.

"Go away," she growled and chucked her cloth at the mirror before stomping back to her room before she lost her nerve. Neal was sitting on her bed reading one of Elena's Cosmopolitan magazines. He blushed and pointed to something on a page. "Am I supposed to do this to you?"

Emma took the rag from him, closing and tossing it towards Elena's side of the room. "Only if you want to get slapped," she said lightly and placed her hands on his shoulders, using her grip as leverage to straddle him. This was a familiar place for them. They could start here and make gradual adjustments on the way. Regardless of all the colorful things she wrote in her emails to him over the past year, she wanted to keep their first time simple. There wasn't need to try anything risqué, so when their clothes were gone and Neal's lip started drifting lower than her chest, lower than her stomach, she yanked his hair and shook her head no.

"Not yet," she told him. "I'm not ready for you to do that."


The next morning Emma woke to Elena stomping into the room. Her roommate lifted an eyebrow at the scene. Yawning, Emma brought a finger to her open mouth and shook her head, silently telling Elena to shut up and go away.

"Fine, but you owe me details." The girl grabbed some fresh clothes and left the room, and Emma slept for another hour until Neal woke her by accidently rolling off the twin bed. They tiptoed awkwardly around each other for all of three minutes before Emma huffed and said they were both acting stupid and dragged him to the bathroom, quickly finding out that shower sex was either not all that cracked up to be or they needed to work on a few things.

After they dressed, Emma dragged him out he door as fast as she could before her roommates in the kitchen could get a word in.

"We are going to be late for our appointment," she reminded Neal. They had a meeting with a landlord about an apartment closer to Hampton University. Twenty minutes later, they stood in a tiny, hideous one bedroom flat a block away from campus while the landlord droned on about fees, fine print, and damages. The landlord was in the middle of deposit negotiations when Neal's phone rang. Emma scowled at him, and he excused himself into the hallway, leaving her to read over the contract. When he came back, he was clearly upset about something.

"Sorry," he said to the landlord and took the contract from Emma. "We're going to have to pass on this."

"Neal?" she said.

"I need to talk to you." He grabbed her hand and led her outside near a bike rack.

"Is everything okay?" she asked. Stupid question. Obviously not judging from his behavior.

"No…uh…" He scratched the back of his neck and said, "That was Mitch."

Emma frowned at that bit of information. Mitch was one of the boys from the home in Minnesota Neal took off with to Arizona. "I wasn't aware you two kept in contact."

"We have an understanding, all right? Anyway, he was going through Tucson, and he spotted a wanted sign."

"And you were on it." she finished, sighing and rubbing her forehead. "For the watches."

"We both were. It's a grainy image. Taken from the security cameras, but it's enough. I lied. I told him the watches were long gone. He's running to Canada anyway. Emma, it's only a matter of time before it makes it back to Janice and Richard, and they tell the police I'm here. I have to go."

"There's got to be another way. Where'd you stash them? You need to tell me this time, Neal."

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and scuffed the toe of his sneaker. "Back in Portland in a locker at the train station. I dumped them there before my social worker met me."

"Shit."

Neal chuckled bitterly and got out of bed, pulling on his pants. "Yeah."

"No," she groaned and kicked a metal bar of the bike rack. "You can't go to Canada. What about me? What about us? We can finally be together, Neal. You were…" She huffed and lightly shoved him in the chest. "We are apartment shopping. We have been planning this since September. Arizona wasn't supposed to follow you.

Fear invaded every inch of her. She couldn't lose him. Not now. Not after everything. Their future was a couple of floors up and waiting for them to sign the dotted line. It wasn't London yet, but one day they would have it. One day they would go, and it would be their home.

A year ago, when he finally told her about all the shit he did in Arizona, she told him to find a large body of water and dump the watches, and he told her he would.

A blatant lie, but she didn't call him out on it.

Neal didn't lie to her all the time. No more than any other boyfriend that lies to their girlfriend, and no more than she did to him.

Emma disliked his habit, but she wasn't a saint, either. She had stolen things before, but thievery wasn't hounding her ass like a drug.

She was quiet for a moment and folded her arms, glaring at the sidewalk beneath her. A moment later, she said, "You're not leaving. Not without me. We'll fence the watches, change our names, and go to London with the money."

His laugh was sharp and incredulous. "You just got accepted to college. You're not backing out. Not for me. Not for this. I did this."

Emma cupped his face. "I love you. We can start over. A brand new start. A better one than last. We'll be together this time."

"You're going to stay here and go to school. When you're done, we'll find each other, okay?"

"In four years? No. I'm going with you." She swallowed and timidly added, "We can get married. Let's get married. There's no one else. We're it for each other. You know that, right? There's no one who will understand, Neal." She paused and dropped her voice to a faint whisper. "Baelfire. We're going to London. We're going home."


Misthaven

Hook stared at the freshly dead body decorating the main deck. He lowered his sword and pressed the tip of the crimson-spattered blade into the wood beneath his feet, putting his weight on the weapon as he came to terms of what he'd just done.

Who he just eliminated rather messily.

"Ah, Edward," Hook said to the body ruefully and sat down on the nearest crate. "Did you really think you could kill me?"

The late Black Beard failed to respond.

"Yes, I suppose you did." Hook uncapped his bottle of rum. After satiating his thirst, he pocketed the brew and called out, "I know you're there, darling. Why don't you reveal yourself, and we can make way towards a proper introduction."

A billowing cloud of purple swirled a few feet away from him, and Hook arched a brow at the garish theatrics. Its twin joined when the cloud revealed an attractive woman, at least twenty or so years his senior and dressed in fine, extravagant threads. Such unusual garments to these cursed times of the Enchanted Forest.

Lovely. A bloody witch.

"Milady. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

"You're Captain Jones," she said, unimpressed.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage."

"Call me Cora."

He forced a smirk and stood, bowing. "Lady Cora, may I ask why you trespassed on my ship?"

"You killed Black Beard. He was in my employment."

"So it was you who sent him to kill me. And here I thought it was because there was bad blood between the bloke and me."

"Dear Edward came all on his own and against my advice. Be that as it may, I'm in need of a replacement."

"I doubt there's anything you can offer me, love. Riches here aren't worth much and unless you can conjure up a magic bean, I'll bid you thanks and farewell."

"You wish to leave this realm?"

Hook swept his arm at the abandoned port and coastline village. "Do you blame me?"

The woman Cora seemed particularly pleased and clasped her gloved hands together. "Then you and I may have something in common. You see…I wish to travel to the Land Without Magic. My daughter is there. She is the one who cursed this land."

He sniffed out trouble immediately. For three years, he'd been in this rotted place. So much like Neverland, it was. Every now and then, he spoke to those passing through the hamlet. That was how he acquired the tale of a vengeful queen cursing Misthaven. Within minutes, the majority of the lands laid vacant and desolate with the exception of the inhabitants of a nearby island Hook avoided until he was in dire need of a woman's touch. Much of the kingdoms were entirely inaccessible for some odd reason. "The Evil Queen?"

"Regina. She has a name, and she is not my queen. Yes, what you may have heard is true, but the curse did not vanquish the people. It took them all to another realm."

Hook stepped towards her, anxious and very much livid. "The Dark One lives?"

"The Dark One?" Cora's smile widened. "I think our inevitable partnership will benefit us greatly. I take it that you don't mind in the least to travel to a realm without magic as long we happen across Rumpelstiltskin."

He sheathed his sword and asked, "When do we leave?"

"Patience, captain. We cannot leave until the curse is broken, and there is still another seven years until that happens."

"Patience," Hook repeated. It had become his least favorite word in the past few years. When he had arrived from Neverland miles and miles away from the nearest part of the Enchanted Forest, he made port and scoured the sparse lands in search of the Dark One. He found his castle, but the Crocodile was nowhere to be seen. However, he did make enemies with a bloke named Robin and his merry band of wankers. There had been a standoff, his hook at Robin's throat while the men aimed their arrows at Hook's head. The event was postponed when a small boy toddled into the room demanding some milk and berries. The wee lad's mop of curls struck Hook in the chest, for they reminded him of Bae's.

Gods, he was a sentimental fool.

In the end, Hook had rolled his eyes and begrudgingly let go of Robin, telling him and his men their next meeting would end differently if they ever crossed paths again.

"And how exactly is this curse supposed to lift? I may be a simple pirate, but I know curses aren't easy to break. Forgive my lack of faith. I'm wary, is all."

Cora started to pace. "It was prophesied that twenty-eight years after the casting of the curse, a savior would break it. The walls between most of the realms are impossible to breach until then, which is why when you returned to this one, you missed the mark. I've been keeping an eye on you for a while, Hook. Your arrival wasn't that subtle. Being the only ship to make port in the last seventeen years and with your crew running away from the ship like a plague, you weren't hard to miss."

Hook fished out his rum once more and had a drink before offering the bottle to Cora. "A drink to our new partnership, milady?"

"What a gentleman." Her painted lips curled in mild disgust, but she took the bottle and complied with his request.