Chapter 6

The people in Neverland are dazed by a sudden visit by some strangers. They aren't used to new people appeared on their land. Because as far as they know, nobody would want to be on this land, they all know once they got in, there's never a way out. Mary Margaret and David started their mission by visiting an old diner they first saw in town.

The diner is small, but not as small as Granny's Diner in Storybrooke. The wall is still made by woods that had eaten by time, but still looks sturdy as if it was the opposite. Mary Margaret looked around and found a middle-aged man behind the cashier, counting the money. His outfit was a bit shabby but his hair and appearance told the opposite. She was a bit concern whether they will trust him or not, but David with certainty, walked towards him, "Good morning, um, are you happen to be an old inhabitant in here?"

He gave David a doubtless nod, "Yes, of course, I am."

"Good. Then you must be know that we're new here, and we need your help." David said. "I'm David, and this is my wife, Mary Margaret."

Mary Margaret that still a bit worried, gave him a weak smile, "We're here not to stay, we're just—we're basically like a tourist, or backpacker, or whatever it is called in this land."

"Oh, I see. A visitor, huh?" His face became softer than before, realizing they were just a couple in need for a staying place. "Well, you could find a nice place to stay in at the motel two blocks from here."

"Thanks for your kindness, but we're looking for a boy and two adults who are a newcomer, too. Did you see them or just gaze past them?" David asked, wanting a concrete answer.

"'Fraid not. I'll immediately inform you if I saw them." He answered with all certainty on his face. "Maybe you should check the forest. It's incredibly popular for its exceptional surrounding."

David that still stood in front of him nodded in return. Although the answer wasn't quite promising to him, but he decided to trust him. "Will do, and your help would be very helpful, um, Mr?" Mary Margaret asked.

"Gerard. Call me Gerard."

"So, Gerard, thanks for your time." David said. "You can inform us if you found anything about them."

Mary Margaret and David left the diner shortly after. As they already walked far away, Gerard took a phone by his right. With a trembling hand, he held the old rusty phone and dialed it to someone. "They're here, yes, they came to the diner and they're looking for the boy. I told them what you wanted to. Now would you give back my sister?"

~o~

It has been four hours since they left the abandon hut, but still they haven't found any remedy to heal Hook's wound. His walk weaker every step he did. But he still acted like nothing bad ever happened. It's a pirate perks, he thought. He has experienced the worst already.

"How can you got hit by a poison arrow? I thought you know this land too well." Emma opened the conversation.

"I didn't know there is still a lost boy haunting that old place. Besides, if I didn't come out from that hut, you are the one who's going to be his prey."

She scoffed in reply, "At least it isn't a poison that you carelessly gave to Rumplestiltskin."

Hook stayed silent for a while before he planted an enormous grin on his face. "Yeah, thankfully not."

"Have you really got over your matters with him?"

"Aye, I think I've gotten over it." He said slowly, "It's strange, somehow i can feel the hope of finding the second chances inside of me."

His head turned to Emma, and he realized she has been looking right at him too. Listening deeply to what he was going to say. But their conversation was distracted by the rays of sun that irradiated their way. Emma found a sparkle of glass behind an unnoticeable bush. She walked towards it without saying anything, as the thought of something helpful will appears from it.

"Aaaaah."

A shrieked of a small thing in front of her deafen their hearing for a moment. It was as little as a bee or an insect, flying away from her. "What the hell…" Emma frowned puzzledly. "What is that?" She asked to Hook.

"I presume this is your first time meeting the fairies." Hook explained with a smug grin on his face.

"Of course, it is. There's no fairy godmother in my world." She continue strolling pas the bush, until finally that thing fallen near her feet. Now she could see clearly what the real fairy is. It was very tiny, with a flimsy and sleek wings mounted on its back. The fairy held up her head to see Emma, and right at the moment, she recognized the face.

"You're Tinker Bell, right?" Emma asked, slightly bemused seeing a character from her childhood book in front of her. "You're… real."

Hook rolled his eyes on her, hiding a coy smile. "Of course fairies are real. If kids don't believe in fairies—"

"Then its light will be gone." Emma continued Hook's unfinished word carefully after she studied Tink who's lying limply on the ground. She didn't even try to stood up and flying again. "And you look…."

"Powerless, yes." Tink finally said, "But it's not because of that matter. And, Captain. It's been a while." She gazed to Hook who remained motionless beside Emma.

"Indeed. You looked so different than our last encounter, lady Tink." He gave her a little wink that made her a little flutter.

Emma looked at them puzzledly, "Then, what is?"

"Peter Pan." Hook uttered, "Doesn't mean to be a smartass here, but he is the one who absorbed your power, isn't it?"

Tink looked away in disgust, her face changed to resentment and pain that wasn't shown clearly before. "Sort of like that."

A coldness in Emma's eyes melted as she knew her story. He looked a while at Hook before she continued talking with Tink, "If there's anything we can help—"

"Anything you can help?" She glared full of vexation on her eyes, although Emma gave her a warm look. "So that you can use my magic over your benefit?" she exchanged look to Hook as if reminding him something.

Emma turned to see Hook who's emotionless, and face the mad fairy back. "Look, whatever happened between you two. This is far different from that."

"Tell me what do you want, huh?" Her face took on a measured look, "There must be something particular if you risked your life to go to Neverland. The place where there's no way out."

Emma's eyes focused inward, she decided to let Tink knows about the purpose she went here. "Yes, I'm looking for my son. He's taken by two kidnappers from our world. And maybe I need your help, but let us help you first."

"There's no need to help me, really, Emma. You have greater magic than I do."

Memories of how his heart cannot be taken by Cora in Enchanted Forest flashed in her mind. "How did you know?"

"I've heard your name once from The Lost Boys. What's his deal with you?"

"They are searching for Henry for some reasons we don't know yet. They even asked me about it, which concludes they haven't found him." Hook told them.

"Which means Pan wants him? If he comes with such a big scheme like this, no doubt it would be very trappy." Tink said, with a horrifically gaze to Emma.

She can read the horrific gaze from Tink without using her superpower. The look also slightly emerged in Hook's face but it was all covered up by his deadpan look from holding up his pain. "We need to find him faster than anyone else. Do you know where Peter Pan is?"

"I'm afraid, I don't know his secret quarters. But I know where his old cave in this forest, maybe by chance he was there." Tink answered.

Emma made her way first to continue their journey but Hook stood in her way, preventing her to leaving. "Why do you want to go to Pan's? It's wasting our time. We should continue our rescue plan rather than searching for Pan."

"I need to know the reason, so that I can protect Henry from whatever it is."

He still hasn't moved any inch to her. The closer she was facing Hook, the more she realized he wasn't as alright as he said. However she made no comment of it and focusing on what he was saying next. "He is far greater than you know, Emma. And I suggest you to not make any trouble with him first before you found Henry." He suggested.

"I think you need to rest. Is that right, Captain?" Tink added, reading the worried look in Emma. "You're in pain."

Hook constantly replied her with a smug on his face. "Life is a pain, lass. Anyone who says differently is selling something."

Tink studying his wound as she stepped closer to him, "The poison arrow from the lost boys, huh? Dream—"

"Why don't you stop being so knowledgeably, or without even deliberating, I'll leave you dying here." Hook lowered his voice.

"Well, I think she's right. We can rest for a minute." Emma answered. Deep down she knew Hook was in need for a rest, although her strength was all but tired. "We can build a camp here while I'm making another weapon to use against Peter." Emma walked towards the forest, leaving them. As Tink and Hook built a camp near their surroundings.

Tink walked closer to Hook when she was sure Emma was far behind them. She studied the wound carefully again. "It's dreamshade, right?"

"No one can know the truth," He glared an onerous look at her. "Especially Emma."

"Why not? She has the right to know that his boyfriend is soon to be a dead man."

He sat on a rock beside him, resting his now frail body. He cursed himself for becoming this way. Needing a rest just after a few mile, he knew for sure he would make the journey lengthy. "I don't want to be another burden to this journey, and I'm already a dead man."

"But you'd be dead by tomorrow or less! You're still going to be a burden." Tink muttered slowly.

"I'm quite immune to this, I believe it would take weeks or months. Or I can drink the water from the heart of Neverland."

She shot him with a dreadful look obviously stated on her eyes, "Do you know what will happened to you if you drink that water?"

"All too well."

Tink rolled her eyes as an answer, didn't believe Hook's confidence in his health. Although deep down, he knew Tink could be right. "Besides, no one is going to miss this devilishly handsome pirate, right?" Hook added with a wry smile carved on his lips.

~o~

Emma strolled the dark woods trying to find something that can be a weapon against The Lost Boys. She grabbed a thick stem of tree and craved it into a sharp rod. She made a few more before she finally realized she was in the Pan's old cave.

She noiselessly crept to the cave but she felt another presence staring at her from behind. Her head turning to see a teenage boy leaned on a tree staring at her chiefly, "I didn't expect you to pay me a visit here."

A sharp rod that she gripped suddenly all directed to his neck, ready to stab him until it penetrating his trachea. "Where is my son?!"

"Let me introduce myself first, Peter Pan. Besides, I haven't met him, either." He just grinned in reply of Emma's violence. "But of course I do know where he might be."

Emma kept pointing it at his neck, to make him realized not to underestimate her. "This is all your fault!"

"If you pay attention to your beloved book, you'd understand I did this to save magic." He explained more serious this time. But it didn't make Emma moved any step away from him.

She deepen her words to answer him. He sure must know not to play a game with Emma Swan. "I'm not interested in that. I'm tired of always being the one who should save the whole world but my son."

Pan instead gave her a concern look, "Even if to save the person who mattered the most?"

"I would do anything to save Henry from you." Emma finally lowered down her sword. "Keep that in mind."

In sudden, a satisfaction grin filled up his lips, answering to Emma's determined answer. Because he knows who Emma was going to lose, and it's not the person that she just thought. "That's exactly the answer I predicted from you. Alas, let me give you this one little hint, Emma. You're going to lose it soon."

"No, I'm not, when I succeed in finding Henry first." Emma said with her usual confidence that built during her bailbond years.

Pan was still giving her a grin, a devilish grin to be more specific. One of the things Emma really resent in him. "Go on, I'm not going to crush your dream."

His look now transformed to be a fake mournful, "But I forgot without it the journey will be dull and unexciting. Here is a map that will lead you to our camp."

Pan gave her a piece of folded old paper that looked like has been folded for a dozen of time. "Oh, now you're acting so helpless by giving me a map to your doom?" Emma asked with a deadpan look.

"Believe me, I did this because I'm loving this "finding Henry" game with you." He answered with a sly smirk again.

Emma still showed nothing but a deadpan look to him. "I don't believe you."

"You should. Emma, Neverland is a place where imagination runs wild. Unfortunately, yours doesn't." He told her with so much seriousness on his voice, as if what he was saying was the most important thing in the universe that she must know.

Emma unfolded the map and it turned out showing nothing but dirt. "It's blank."

"It will shows you the way only if you stop denying who you really are."

She took a step forward and looked right through him in the eye, trying to make her sentences clear. "No one knows myself better than I am. I know who I am."

He smirked in her reply, "But why the map still hasn't showed up? It means you don't. Look, all of it is not about finding Henry, it's about how you find him."

She looked at the paper, concentrating at it and when Emma stared him again, he already vanished.

"What the hell?"