The weather had reached an almost terrifying level of potential danger by the time Eve managed to convince Moriarty that he needed to come with her and as they raced towards the portal door, she could hear his ragged terrified breathing behind her. Even so, she never once let go of his hand out of her own fear that he would decide to change his mind and break away to meet the punishment she knew he thought he deserved.

The moment they slipped through to the other side of the portal she was met with Ezekiel Jones's wide eyed stare."Olonel-Cay aird-Bay, don't ook-lay ow-nay ut-bay ofessor-Pray oriarty-May is-way ight-ray ehind-bay ou-yay."

"Jones, speak proper English please," Eve found herself exasperated by his statement in apparent pig latin until Moriarty leaned close to her ear to whisper a translation.

"He's telling you I'm right behind you."

Although she had known he was behind her the whole time, and was even still firmly clutching his hand in her own, the way he said the words sent an involuntary shudder of pleasure through her body.

She must have made a strange expression to accompany her enjoyment, because almost immediately Flynn was practically on top of her, causing her to drop Moriarty's hand.

"Hey Eve, Eve look look at me!"

When she didn't focus fast enough, due to the unpreparedness, he seemed to assume that she was still under some sort of spell and tried something she hoped he would have given up on after the lack of response on her part the first time.

Flynn had the grand idea that true love's kiss was the one thing that could break her enchantment, and in a way he'd been right. However, even earlier when she had been under the spell she'd felt none of the correct familiarness when he'd kissed her. Instead, the first time she'd genuinely began to realize who she really was had been when she'd seen the fairy Ariel take down Moriarty with a spell. In that moment she'd flashed back to the times they'd fought in the real world, but a formerly background emotion had overshadowed her feelings for him and after she'd been forcefully separated from his lifeless body she'd knew she had to seek him out again to free herself.

Now however, Flynn was trying the tactic of assuming he was her true love's kiss and could break the "enchantment" she was under and it felt all wrong and maybe even a bit shameful especially with the actual true love's kiss standing a few feet away.

She did have some form of feelings for Flynn, maybe even ones that could qualify as romantic fondness, but it wasn't a two way street. She believed it was true that Flynn at least fancied the idea of being in love with her, but he wasn't far enough to actually have executed the concept. It wasn't that he was genuinely trying to be mean, but she felt like his mind had tried to turn love into some kind of librarian puzzle that needed to be solved by the most complex methods possible instead of random chemicals firing in a way that was entirely unpredictable.

Violently she jerked her body away from him, hoping she didn't hurt him too badly in doing so. "Stop!"

"Eve, don't you remember who you are?"

It almost felt cold hearted telling Flynn the truth. "I know exactly who I am Flynn, but also know things have to be different now."

Jake interrupted the awkward moment and pointed at Moriarty. "What part of things have to be different explains why you bought him into the annex?"

Eve found herself going out on a limb trying to explain her reasoning behind bringing Moriarty back with her. Instead of being his usual endearing asshole self, the fictional had gone completely silent as if he was still maybe a little scared, and she couldn't very well tell her team that she'd followed her emotions when bringing him with her. Eve Baird was the authoritarian mother figure of the team. In a time of crisis she had to appear as the invincible backbone, not some lovesick little girl.

"We need a way to find out what exactly Prospero is up to, and he needs a way to earn his freedom." It wasn't as much a lie as it was a partial untruth. The LITs really would benefit from any extra intel on what Prospero was up to, and Moriarty had stated in the past that he wanted to be free.

"Yeah, but what if once we help the "esteemed" professor free himself from Prospero he turns around and...I don't know, uses his new found freedom to destroy us all," Ezekiel paused before adding, "we're all in agreement that's what's gonna happen, right?"

xxx

The way things had turned out was far from surprising to him. The librarians refused to trust him. It almost felt easy to turn around and go back through the annex door and escape to whatever torture Prospero had for him, but that was what runners did. Builders fought even when the odds were against them, and he couldn't shame Eve by turning out to be exactly what he'd told her he wasn't.

Instead, he broke his silence, "I understand why you find it hard to trust my motives. However, I'm sure you trust the duchess, and she seems to believe that I have some good in me."

"Ah, but how do we know that Eve isn't still under some enchantment of your doing?"

Flynn Carsen seemed stuck on the notion of Eve being under another enchantment and this irritated him. He could admit now that his creation of Cicily had been a bit selfish, especially since he'd wanted so desperately to have Eve see him as something other than the enemy. However, the other purpose of it had been to keep her out of the danger fighting Prospero would put her in. The thought of willfully putting Eve in danger only to keep himself in one piece felt too cruel and evil even for the person he was supposed to be.

"If I'd put Colonel Baird under some sort of enchantment to help Prospero, it would be rather ignorant of me to follow her into the annex," he responded, trying to keep annoyance out of his tone as he stepped forward to stand next to Eve. It seemed like reacting in anger would be counterproductive to genuinely earning the LITs trust as he'd have to do if he wanted to remain in her life permanently.

"See, I'm not under an enchantment," Eve added with an almost scolding tone in her voice. There was something about the way she looked that made him almost want to kiss her in that moment, but he knew the timing was exactly wrong for that and any further thoughts of such actions were diverted by Jenkins chiming in.

"That's technically not proof of anything Colonel Baird. However, the amount of time it would take to test for enchantments would clearly be wasted." The old caretaker scolded back at Eve.

"Okay, but what do we do about the elephant in the room?" Jake asked, pointedly glaring at him as if he thought something about this would be intimidating.

The moment he opened his mouth planning to bite back with some scathing remark, Moriarty felt something click around his wrist. He'd forgotten that Eve still had the handcuffs from the Sheriff Baird persona at her waist. For the briefest of seconds he was in panic mode. Handcuffs were an unpleasant reminder of the past he was trying to escape from. Logic took hold after a mere second of panic though, and he immediately realized that instead of cuffing him to a stationary object Eve had placed the other cuff around her own wrist.