Authors note: Really sad drabble that got into my head. Not really sure if it counts as a fic, but here it goes because I had such high hopes for Tinkfire and it crushed my heart to see her at Bae's funeral.

x ONCE x UPO TIME x

She'd known him almost forever but still felt like she barely got to know him before he was taken away from her forever.

Neverland doesn't get a lot of inhabitants. Partially, that could have been why it was the perfect location for Tinkerbell to crash land. Just her, the wild jungle, poisonous thorns, mermaids, coconuts and a handful of lost boys that acted more like serial killers. She felt bad enough for them. She watched the way they followed Pan and acted out in what they assumed was absolute freedom but the lost boys were more prisoners to this island than anything else.

Then came the new prisoners to the little tropical jail cell of doom, the pirate ship that crashed through the portal like a tidal wave, rocking on the ocean as she dreaded to see what unfortunate new comers had arrived to Neverland. Little did she know that the Captain had been here before, long before her or any one other than Pan and his Shadow lived here but it wasn't Hook that she was interested in getting to know. It was the new boy from another realm. The one who had escaped the shadow only be dropped in the ocean and assumed dead. The one who spent too many days aboard the Jolly Roger. The one that refused to be a part of Pan's group of misfits running loose in the jungle.

Baelfire. A boy of no older than fourteen with his voice still squeaking on the edge of puberty which would take him a hundred years longer than other boys in the other realms. Tinkerbell found herself giggling at that thought, perhaps because she was losing her mind from loneliness. She never had any interest in any of the lost boys or pirates, but Bae... He was different. His eyes screamed abandonment and crushed hopes as she watched him trudge through the thick underbrush and every day they seemed to grow darker.

He was the only one she would come down from her treehouse to talk to. Without Pan or the pirates to guide him due to his refusal to have anything to do with either side, he needed someone to show him what was safe to eat, how to steer clear of the Dreamshade and how to make a shelter of his own. She spent hours teaching him how to make spears, how to hunt the wild boar and fish and how to evade the song of the sirens that floated through the waters nearby.

But it was when she saw the way light and love was creeping slowly back into those deep brown eyes was when she realized that she couldn't keep him here. No matter how much she enjoyed the company, Baelfire had spent over a lifetime here. A lifetime of danger every morning and night and enough emotional scars to last an eternity. He was different from the other boys. He wasn't lost. But if he stayed here much longer he might just think that it was his home and that was something that Tinkerbell couldn't bring herself to think about. As a tiger living in captivity accepts its cage, she didn't want Bae to accept this prison. He needed to be free. Peter Pan be damned, Baelfire needed to grow up. He needed to pass fourteen and get a chance to really live his life.

All those years ago, and yet, Tinkerbell can still vividly remember the deal that she made with Pan to allow his shadow to take Baelfire home where he could grow up. She dreamt of it at night and to have seen him back on Neverland was both a bucket of cold water dumped on her and a relief to see the one person that she'd grown close to all those years ago.

All. Grown. Up.

It's Bae, of COURSE it's Bae, she knows it without a doubt the second that her eyes land on him. She doesn't need him to introduce himself. The second that she sees him and those brown eyes and the way he's so natural against this environment and knows his way around, she knows it's him. Baelfire after all these years and her eyes light up as a rare smile spreads across her lips. Sure, she'd known him. But he'd been a child. Or at least trapped in a child's body for decades. She hadn't been able to spare him a look like the one she was able to give him now as she takes in his height, muscles, and graying hair. His voice is deeper with that squeak gone and it's like music that she could almost dance to.

But it's the way that her heart flutters that scares her. Nova had once fallen in love, and every fairy knew how that story ended unhappily. But her heart thuds in her chest and she wants to be closer to Bae, to touch him, feel him, breathe him in and reconnect with him in ways that she knows she shouldn't. There was too much else to focus on with planning the attack on Pan's camp. All she could do was sneak longing glances when he wasn't looking and ponder the way she was feeling.

Surely, it was just happiness to see him again. She was just unfamiliar because she had been alone for so long. Right? It had nothing to do with the way jealousy surged through her when she discovered his feelings for the blonde Emma. It had nothing to do with the protectiveness she felt over discovering he was a father and his son was at stake. It was nothing, she kept telling herself as she kept watch over him both on Neverland, and on the Jolly Roger returning back home. Tinkerbell should have been excited to finally be able to return back to a familiar place with adults and real food but her eyes and thoughts remained on Bae, only hoping for him to find his happy ending.

He found his ending.

Long after everyone else from the funeral had gone their separate ways, Tink finally fell to her knees in front of his grave with a false name engraved on the tombstone. Neal Cassidy...no. No, he was and always will be Baelfire to her. Tears blurred her vision as she wished that she could just look at this name in front of her and pretend that it really is some stranger named Neal in the cold ground and not her Baelfire. A sob escapes her lips as she thinks of all the missed chances she had to try and be with him because she had been trying to respect his love for Emma. If he wanted to be with Emma...so Be it. It wasn't her, but at least he'd be happy. That was all she ever wanted for him from the second that she'd met him.

"It's not fair Bae." Another choked sob escaped as she tried to talk around her anguish. "You should have turned around... I've been here for you all this- this time and... And I..." She trailed off. They'd spent so much time together and yet so little. She still barely knew why her heart leapt at every sight of him and why it was so painfully broken right now without him.

Love? No, she wouldn't allow herself that kind of pain. She wouldn't believe that she had fallen in love with him too late. No love could possibly be that cruel. She only had to believe that fairy's weren't meant to fall in love, and pick herself up off the ground to try and at least make sure someone else wasn't going to make the same mistake that she had. All those years ago, Regina ignored her and ran from her true love. She was going to find Regina and force her to march up to the man with the lion tattoo before it was too late if it was the last thing she did.