A/N: I thought I should go ahead and put out there that there are only two chapters left. Please let me know what you think after reading with a review! Special thanks to everyone who has left one, especially those who review every chapter. They mean a lot.

Rumpelstiltskin lowered himself to the ground once he reached Snow and Charming and waved away more of the tiles until, standing right below them, Bae, Mulan, Aurora, and Philip could simply extend their arms for the others to pull them up.

"Bae."

"Hey..." he said, his eyes alternating between relief and horror at his face. "You, you're here. Tamara took Henry. Don't ask how I know that right now, but he's in trouble."

"He's here," Snow said, trying to gather him and Aurora to her. "He's fine. In fact, he was the one who told us you were here." She turned to Aurora, a good deal more well-rested and self-assured than when they were last together. "Thank you. Your heart?"

"Where it should be." She smiled.

"We should get you down to your son," Mulan said to Bae in her abrupt way, taking a few steps towards the door.

"Hold on. Regina! Greg!" Snow called, hearing their footfalls in response. He'd forgotten them, honestly, his eyes not leaving Bae. It would all be different this time, he promised, and a different kind of promise this time since he'd broken previous ones. This time his magic would only be used in pursuit of one more bean. They would find a way to bring Belle here. She would end this curse for him and then they could be a family. He could start making amends. Speaking of which...

"I'm sorry, son," he said, shuffling as close to him as allowed. "It's my fault you were sent here, that you've had to rebuild your life again and again in world after world." He paused, taking in the sincerity in Bae's face, an expression he'd seen every day when he'd been a boy.

"It's thanks to Rumpelstiltskin we were even able to leave Neverland," Snow just chimed in...unable to keep her mouth shut as always, he thought.

"So Tamara?"

"Dead. Hope the ring was insured." Just shut it already, he warned himself.

"And Henry's okay? Emma's okay?"

"Someone's coming," Charming said, unsheathing his sword. Regina tensed her arms, locking out her elbows and focusing on the doors, magic ready.

A hoard of people, Emma, Henry, Hook, Ruby, and Belle...sweet gods, Belle, raced towards them. Henry all but flew straight into Bae's arms and so he watched them share a tearful hug. He'd wanted it the way all parents wanted it for their children, to find love and have children of their own, but he'd also dreaded when he would have to share him with all those faceless specters of conjecture. Once it was actually happening, it didn't seem so bad. Belle followed a wave of his hair with her thumb and index finger.

"Sorry you had to see me like this," was all he could say.

"It's nothing I haven't seen before," she said with a little laugh. That was his girl. Perhaps now was as good a time as any to ask her for a kiss, a kiss to end the curse once and for all. It was easier to fight off the seduction of the power now, now that they were all in the same room. He opened his mouth...

A blast shook the entire treasure room, towers of coins jingling to the ground. Smoke filled the air, black and hot with a stench of sulfur accompanying it. Everyone tried not to move, to instead listen and squint through the smoke in search of an explanation. He smelled them first.

The smoke cleared to reveal the Blue Fairy, still a human nun in a drab but tight dress and sweater with her curls pinned into a bun. Row after row of fairies, or women who had once been fairies, stood behind her.

"Good. Everyone's where I want them. Almost." With a snap of her fingers, Henry vanished right out of Bae's arms. Magic beckoned him to the fairies where he reached his arm out for the boy a second too late. Amid all the voices of rising panic, he looked through a transparent wall at Henry struggling in the Blue Fairy's arms. With a roar, he hurled every spell he knew at the wall, the others' swords clanging, frantic digging with nothing but fingernails into the floor nothing but faint echoes to him.

"Thank you, ladies," the Blue Fairy addressed three fairies, dressed in pink, green, and blue. "You told Aurora the very place we needed them all to go."

"Flora! Fauna! Merryweather, how could you? I trusted you!" Aurora screeched, charging for the wall, but stopping.

"Sorry, Princess. You'll just have to watch him die like everyone else."

"Take me instead!" he heard Bae yell to her. "Come on!"

"You? Why would I want you?" she asked, her soothing voice without even a ripple.

"Because Peter Pan wanted me. I don't know why, but he tried to take me and he said it almost worked. I'm all grown up now. You don't need a kid. I'm stronger now than what I was." He opened his arms, tears welling.

"Oh, Baelfire." She shook her head, giving off something Rumpelstiltskin wanted to assume was pity. "You've always been so courageous. Your body does have a strength to it and you are leverage." She looked over at Rumpelstiltskin briefly. "But I'm afraid you're not the product of True Love. You just slept with it. Now, Rumpelstiltskin. You've lived far too long as the Dark One. It's time to end that. Go get your kiss from your True Love."

"I don't believe in fairies!" Emma blurted, her eyes bulged. He could hear her heartbeat, skipping beats and pulsating like mad.

"It's a good thing I'm not a fairy yet. Go! Or there's no reason to leave this body completely in one piece." She began to press her wand into Henry's throat.

Powerless. Impotent. No one liked those feelings, he knew, but every step away from Henry and towards Belle made him relive each failure, which seemed to be the running theme of his life—too little a name to become rich off his talents, an aborted attempt to be a war hero, a marriage crumbled, parenting at a standstill in the name of lustful power.

A heart in a box.

Failure after failure after failure of obtaining the right ingredients for the curse.

An empty heart and a chipped cup...

Then he was before Belle, tears streaming down her face, bottom lip quivering.

"I'm sorry," she managed to whisper through a stifled sob. "It wasn't a boy who was your undoing. It was me."

"No." He shook his head. "No, don't ever think that." This was for Henry, the Dark One's undoing—he bent his head down and kissed her, unable even now to resist savoring the taste of her lips. Warmth coursed through his veins, an inside-out cleansing ritual with all the black bile in his blood, in his heart, washed clean by the magic of True Love. Opening his eyes, he brought his hand up to eye-level, lips still touching hers, and saw flesh, true flesh, not gold flakes, no green leathery texture.

Gone.

"It's about time," the Blue Fairy said, her voice sending him spinning back to face her. No wonder she'd kept herself isolated so much after the curse was broken, busy little bee needed the most powerful spells of the realm to keep him at her mercy. Stroking Henry like a cat, she grinned, just about to slip her fingers down into his skin, when all of a sudden, Henry threw himself out of her arms and kicked her in the face, hovering six feet above the floor. Her concentration broken, the sound of shattering glass filled the room, cracks spreading through the invisible wall like the flames of a wildfire.

They charged. Swords above their heads, bows and arrows positioned, and, after a frozen moment of eyes glazing over, fangs sprouting, transforming into a wolf—they tore at the band of fairies, a few of them shrinking and reverting back to their fairy forms. There wasn't much he could do now, not by any means feeble, but one swipe at just the right place on his bad leg...

"Rumple!" Regina bellowed at him, wielding something similar to an umbrella for the flying hexes to ricochet off of. "Get the Lost Boys out of here and protect them."

"But-"

"I have to trust you." They've never trusted each other, not even the first night they met. Naïve, she'd been, stupidly optimistic, but always only half-trusting him, and that had been their best.

"You aren't going with them?"

"I, I have to help Snow and David," she said. "They've fought one too many times while I just stepped back and let them." He saw it, bravery. The choice to atone. He'd made it at the harbor, risking all he knew, his own life, for Henry. Snapping out of it, she barked at him. "Go!"

Snow wedged herself in between two tall wardrobes that loomed over her like giants themselves, near a trip wire. She was your friend, she thought, tears prickling. But there is no time to think of that. All that remains in a brain in a battle is prayer and strategy, survival instinct ever present. Plenty of nuns are still human, still able to run. They scouted her out, two of them close to her hiding place. Picking up a coin, she tossed it over the wire towards the middle of a cleared walkway. The two women heard it at the same time, heads snapping towards the same direction. The first one who had broken into a run tripped the wire, sending the cage slamming down on both of them. Thank goodness for muscle memory, she thought, her body knowing how to breathe and how to flex her arm and fingers to fire two arrows in quick succession.

Regina chanted silently, pulling vines off the beanstalk with magic and sending them into the halls like a virus. They tripped anyone in their path, springing up at the fairies and coiling around them from ankles to waist. The tips of their wings buzzed, but no flight, just a quick plummet to the floor. She considered stepping on them. She considered willing the vines to cinch tighter and tighter...

An awful way to die, she decided, at last sweeping her arms to the side. The vines in turn slammed right into the wall, the fairies falling out of the coils and thudding to the floor in lifeless slumps.

"I don't believe in fairies," she said, for good measure.

"Mom!"

"Henry! How are you doing that?" He flew straight over her, weightless and out of harm's way for the moment.

"There was a little bit of fairy dust left on the ship! Just a little. I thought it might come in handy, though!"

"Go with Mr. Gold and Belle, sweetheart. They're taking all the children out of here." Instead, Henry lifted a chest and carried it over to where he hovered right above a fairy. He let go, dropping it right on top of her.

She should not have stopped to watch him. A searing ache in her side prevented her from thinking much else. Turning, her wrist flicking in hopes of summoning a fireball, she gasped at how close Greg had come to her. Holding her wound with both hands, she spotted blood between her fingers before he pushed her to the ground.

"Thought you'd never have to answer for anything, didn't you?" he sneered, following her to the ground and straddling her. His knee knocked into where she'd been stabbed. A whimper left her mouth. Damn him.

"Owen, Owen, please. We're all on the same side right now," she sputtered.

"Oh, are we? I don't think I ever decided that." Looking over to the side, he motioned with his head for her to follow his gaze. David was the closest, sending each of his opponents to the floor with only two of three swift maneuvers with his sword. Magnificent, Regina thought. Smiling, a forehead-first, looking-up-beneath-the-eyebrows smile, he adjusted his knife until he had it by the blade, ready to fling it in his direction.

"David, look out!" she cried. It happened too fast for her to see, David looking and dodging just before the knife hit him. Cursing, Greg spat at her and reached for the nearest thing he could, a crown. With a grin, he drew his arm back with it.

"It's fit for a queen," he said, slamming it down onto her head.

Emma lunged for the Blue Fairy with a sword, the harsh glint of steel all around her. More and more nuns reverted back into fairies, but not her, nor the ones right by her. Good, then they can take a punch, she thought. With one rushing at her, she twisted and walloped her right to the ground. Ruby was near, but Emma couldn't bring herself to look at her for longer than just seeing a flash of brown pounce and tear into another flash of pink. Mulan and Neal were further out, locked back-to-back against more of them. For a split second, she let it sink in—they could all die. Her parents could already be dead. Henry, Killian...

The Blue Fairy nicked her with a sword, finally forced into movement. Clutching her thigh and hobbling backward, she brought the sword back up to her again. Heavy, clunky things, she thought. First order of business when this is all over, tell Mom and Dad to look into gunpowder.

Not taking the time for a snarky comment here and there, the Blue Fairy snarled at her, wings beginning to tear out of the back of her sweater. Live long enough for her to change back. Live long enough for her to change back, damn it! Street-gained fist and footwork seemed no match for experience, Emma stumbling back again, this time a nick on her torso. Seriously? Just a minute longer. If she could just go ahead and become a fairy again...

"The Most Powerful Magic of All," the Blue Fairy sneered, shreds of the back of her sweater falling to the floor. If she could fly, it was all over. "Not for much longer."

Half crab-walking, half sliding out of her reach, Emma's ears prickled at the sound of the woman screeching in pain, her chin sky-high. Killian held his sword out, flimsy white strands at the tip of it, like pieces of silk until Emma could see they were the wings. Scrambling to her feet, she nodded to him and he nodded back. She found herself letting him take her by the arm and swing her right into the Blue Fairy, knocking her to the ground...and was she a few inches shorter than she'd been before?

"Thanks."

"Finish her off," he said, but then he sank to his knees, howling, cringing until a tear gushed out of his eye. She almost dropped her sword, bending and patting him over in search of a wound. Smoke rose from his legs, the combination of scorched flesh and its relentless sizzling forced her to swallow back down her own vomit. Only the laugh of the Blue Fairy could have turned her away.

"Stop it! You'll kill him!"

"That was the idea..."

"Stop, please! He cut your wings. What good is any of this? You were their friend!"

"I was never their friend!" she snapped. "How was I...or Peter Pan...going to get the body we wanted if you were just a cursed baby your entire life? You had to go through that wardrobe! How was Tamara supposed to take him to Neverland if August had been able to tell you who attacked him? This way there is no more powerful magic in the land than the magic of the fairies...except yours." Blue light glowed, blazing to the point Emma needed to shield her eyes. Just a fraction from being closed all the way, her left eye could make out a billowed blue and pink shape, with tentacle-like things hanging from it, like a jellyfish. "I'll make you watch!" she shrieked, the blue light nearing her. "I'll rip out that magical little heart of yours and make you watch me trample it!" Growing smaller, a blue aura, arms floating around out of habit...

Now.

"I don't believe in fairies!" she screamed, her voice instantly hoarse. Running back to where Killian lay, his flesh still burning, she saw Henry land and go over to him.

"Hey, you okay?"

"Get down!" he shouted to him, pulling him down and covering him with his body. Just like with Peter Pan, bursts of light and dust exploded everywhere, leaving everything within a ten-foot radius glittering with fairy dust. There was no time to shake it off her eyelashes or the tip of her nose. She stuck out her hands and rolled Killian onto his back, cringing that he was now up to his waist in pain. Knowing what to do, still reeling that it actually was the thing to do, she tilted her head and kissed him.

He exhaled, sitting up and patting his own leg, checking, eyes not leaving hers. Moved, loving, awed—she couldn't describe his face, and didn't want to when he pulled her closer with his hook and snaked his arm around her, holding. Just holding.

"You are bloody brilliant."