AN: Hey guys! So right after I first published this fic I started this next chapter, but I lost my Hookfire muse until now, with the season premiere. I'll have you know that this ENTIRE fanfiction has been plotted extensively, and will *hopefully* have weekly to bi-weekly updates coming along shortly! Here's to hoping time allows it though! I am in college, so they might not be /on the ball/. I'll do my best!

He was falling again.

Disappearing. Fading, in and out of consciousness. Through the dark and bright lights of the worlds. Thunderclaps, magic warping around his form. A dizzying, vomit-inducing display. He was barely coherent... but internally, he was screaming.

What had he done to deserve this? He ran from magic for a reason... And yet it kept finding him, pulling him back in to pay prices he couldn't afford.

Images floated through him, around him. Emma... Henry... Tamara, how could she? Neal didn't trust easily... How could he not have seen the deceit in her eyes? Colors... shapes... hard to make out. Fading...

He couldn't breathe. Pain coursed through him, the rapids of his blood overflowing in his veins. He was rushing, breaking... His skin was prickling with cold... Caresses of finest silk ran over his cheeks, his palms. Where would daylight be, if he opened his eyes from the darkness?

Water, filling his lungs. He saw nothing but water, vast and never-ending. The salt stung his eyes, but he hadn't seen water so blue since...

He was weightless. Thin ribbons of blood polluted the water from his still open wound. He was struggling to maintain consciousness again. His fingers bobbed in front of him, distorting the ribbons, mixing them into the water as if red smoke dissolving into air. If he could breathe, he would have possibly sobbed.

Neal was lost again... Fading further still...

… And then... a voice. Its calling to him caused his eyes to roll back, a shudder flowing through him. It kept singing, kept begging him to hold on, though the water was flooding his eardrums. It sounded so far away, and yet it felt so close...

A body pressed against him. Neal attempted to break free from the shadow's grasp, but he was too weak. Perhaps he might sink... Yes, sinking would be better than this. Frightened and drifting... falling... Could he fall further...? Or would he be raised from the deepness of the sea...

Darkness before sunlight. Neal had momentarily blacked out before they reached the surface. He felt cold, clammy hands holding his face and his torso, the voice still whispering to him like a lifeline. These were not human hands... no, he'd felt these hands a long time ago...

Couldn't breathe. Choking, coughing... As he was pulled along the exterior by his savior, he watched as the sun was setting on a land he knew only too well. His sobbing became more choking, nearly leaking blood and tears.

… No... no please... not again...

His relaxing head dipped into the water, the voice continuing to whisper sweetness. The tug was universal now, the pulse that dragged him to some unknown shore echoed all over his body. Just a little further...

"Just a little further, sir... Please, hold on..."

The voice was so quiet now, as if it wasn't near him at all, but at a distance. If he could swim at that moment, he would find the voice again, for it was the only thing keeping him...

A loud splash reverberated in his ears. He awoke again from his painful and brief slumber, groaning as he was pushed upon the wet sand by that mysterious body that had saved him. He rolled over on his side, his face contorting in measures of anguish. The sobbing was still choking, and the voice didn't know what to do.

"Please, don't die!" he barely heard. He moaned again, dizzy and disoriented. Where was he...? Was this Neverland again? No, this wasn't the land of immortality... he could feel it... this shore was home.

"No... No! Henry... Emma..." Neal reached out a frantic, limp hand and clawed the clumped sand. The frigid hand clutched his again. His face pressed against the earth, he opened his eyes slowly, wincing every few seconds just from the merest movement. As his consciousness began to fade, for the last time, he watched as the sun illuminated the shadow of a figure, kissing the back of his hand.

Day dissolved into night.

Neal opened his eyes to a fireside.

The vision was unclear at first. He was seeing stars fizz around his brain, and it took him about ten blinks to rid himself of them. His eyes watered, but soon the image became defined.

He lay on his side, the night stretching before him in a dark sky. His brow furrowed as he looked down and saw blankets drawn up to his chin. He groaned incoherently, leaning his head back on whatever makeshift pillow he was given- for it certainly wasn't a bed of swan's down.

Abruptly, Neal felt hands and a cool washcloth touch his face. He reclined his head upward to find two women stooping above him.

The first, the one tending to his forehead, was a very young woman with porcelain fair skin, a woven crown of hair, and clear blue eyes. She might have been a princess, and knowing what world he was in he was sure she was.

The second woman was clad in armor. Her asian heritage was evident in her hair and skin, and she looked upon him with such intense focus. Neal wasn't sure if it was worry across her eyes, or something more threatening...

He tried to sit up, but both their hands reached down toward him to keep him against his pallet. "Be still," the brunette woman said. "You're in no shape to move about."

Neal sighed, nodding slowly in agreement with her statement. The woman moved around, lifting his blanket and checking his wound. He winced when she touched a sensitive area, and the warrior woman rolled her eyes. The princess grimaced, muttering a sorry under her breath.

"You've been out for twelve hours," the warrior began, kneeling beside him. She was scrutinizing his face, as if she expected it to betray something about himself. "At least since we found you."

Slowly, Neal brought his hand to his face and rubbed a bit of the aching out of his head. He groaned again, feeling so stiff and jaunty like a board. If only he could move, could walk around, could do something.

"Emma..." he muttered, trying to form some sort of sentence that informed them of who he was... but it just wasn't happening.

Somehow the both of them got the message. Their eyes widened, and they looked at each other in bewilderment.

"You know Emma?" the princess asked, ringing out the washcloth in a basin and dabbing his heated forehead again.

Neal blinked, licking his lips and squinting his eyes. "Do you?" he asked, pleased that he was able to form an actual question, albeit in a cracked and weak voice.

The warrior leaned into his line of vision. "Emma and Mary Margaret journeyed with us some time ago. We helped them return to the land without magic. What is your relationship with them?"

The princess tilted her head at the warrior's question. "Mulan, one thing at a time! Don't overwhelm him!" She turned back to Neal and smiled. "I'm sorry, we should introduce ourselves. My name's Aurora, and this is my friend Mulan. My husband Phillip is around here somewhere, gathering firewood I think. We carried you to our campsite and I have been taking care of your wound."

"Er… thank you," Neal said to her. 'Good way to not overwhelm me,' he thought sarcastically, but he inclined his head toward Mulan. He'd rather answer her question than process all the information he was being given at once, in his delirious state. "I… knew Emma a long time ago. We were… sort of together, I guess."

Aurora sucked in a breath, and she and Mulan exchanged glances. The princess turned back, spouting out in a rapid burst, "Are you Henry's father?"

Neal hardly expected this to come out of her mouth, but he nodded. "Y-yeah… how did you know?"

Aurora's eyes fell to her fingers where she picked underneath the nails. "When Emma and Mary Margaret were here, Henry and I connected with each other in a nightmarescape. We were both placed under a sleeping curse once, and so we helped your friends get back home."

The woman looked stricken by memories of this time. He smiled at her as he suffered through the pain of breathing. "I'm sure they already thanked you but… helping them means a lot to me too."

She smiled, and her face brightened already. Her eyes, however, drifted away from Neal to a figure approaching near them. "Phillip!" she cried, her smile widening as she jumped up and raced toward his form.

Neal watched as Mulan watched them go, but he neglected to turn his head toward them. He knew the headache would get even worse if he did.

"Why are you here?" Mulan said sternly, her attention now focused entirely on him. It would seem the woman had little patience for him already.

Neal groaned, swiping a hand through his hair and kneading his aching forehead. "I don't… I don't know. I mean… It all happened so fast." He forced himself to slide up in the pallet so that he could at least look at her properly, and made it to a semi-sitting position. "I was… I was trying to find Regina with Emma, David and Mary Margaret… Emma had thought that my fiancée Tamara was lying to me and had kidnapped Regina… but I didn't believe her, until…"

He sighed, continuing to rub his forehead with grief. "Go on," Mulan said beside him, her eyes briefly glancing up to the talking couple a few yards away. She nodded in encouragement.

Neal's mouth twitched from the painful memory. "Until Tamara shot me. That's when I finally believed Emma." He looked to the side at the slowly dwindling fire. "All this time she was telling the truth, and I… I trusted a stranger."

Coward. He'd truly been the lowest of cowards. He'd been afraid Emma was telling the truth, because deep down he already knew she was. He wanted to believe that a land without magic could grant him happiness, but in the end… All he ended up doing was returning to the magic and falling for it all over again.

"Emma could always tell when someone was lying," he continued. "It's one of her gifts. She probably knew I was lying when I said I was happy with Tamara… even if I didn't know it myself. I don't know what I'm happy with anymore…"

Mulan breathed deeply beside him, her eyes closed in contemplation. Neal leaned his head just slightly. "Look, I'm sorry for unloading all that on you… I…"

The warrior raised her hand and smiled. "It's… fine. We all have our demons we must conquer."

Neal nodded, turning back to the fire and folding his hands. It was then that Aurora dragged her husband over by his arm, both of them smiling. Philip set the wood he'd collected by the fire. "Philip, this is Neal. He knows Emma and Mary Margaret!"

She looked so happy to simply be introducing a stranger to her husband. Neal couldn't understand her blind optimism, but in any case her husband smiled, as Mulan got up and retreated to the other side of the camp. Philip leaned down his hand for Neal to shake. "It's an honor, sir. Your friends saved my wife and my friend for more times than they could even recount to me. For that I am in theirs, and your debt."

Neal shook his hand, though he didn't feel very deserving of this praise. "No, I mean… That's just Emma, you know. She'll do anything for people close to her."

Philip nodded, putting an arm around Aurora. The couple was so happy… Why couldn't Neal be happy like that?

"Be that as it may," Philip continued. "But any friend of theirs is a friend of ours, and you are welcome in our party for as long as you'd like."

Neal smiled at this, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Thank you, all of you. I… might be dead right now if it wasn't for you."

Aurora frowned. "No more talk like that, alright? I'll make sure you're healed soon, so that you can get back to Emma, and tell her you love her."

He blinked, his brow furrowing. He avoided the question "how do you know I love her?" and instead asked, "How am I supposed to get back? Do you know of a portal?"

The princess grimaced, looking at her husband with dismay. "Er… no. But I'm sure we'll find a way! There's always a way when love is involved."

Neal looked away, burrowing back into his pallet. "Wake me up when you find it," he joked. All but Mulan laughed, and he locked eyes with her. She had to have seen something in his eyes, because Neal felt some unspoken thread of thought coming from her that made him inwardly shudder.

He closed his eyes, feigning sleep as the trio moved about the campfire, building it up and settling in for the night themselves.

Neal hadn't wanted to tell them… But Mulan already knew.

He didn't know if he even wanted to go back.