Disney's Tinker Bell in Storybrooke
A Disney Fairies / Once Upon A Time Crossover
Season 1, between episodes 7 and 8

STORYBROOKE, MAINE

Lydia kept to her word, harassing and cajoling and provoking and often times angering her clients. She applied every sleight and turn of the phrase that Albert Spencer would try. It frustrated Claire, annoyed Tina and infuriated Valerie. Only Hartley seemed able to keep his cool, though he did get tongue tied once or twice during the preparation sessions. When things got too hot Lydia would stop and remind them that this was practice.

"Listen to yourselves," she said more than once. "You do this in court and Albert wins. Regina wins. And Valerie goes to jail. Now take five minutes to calm down and we'll do this again."

There were moments when Lydia thought she would never get these four to remain collected under pressure. Intermixed with her attempts to antagonize the four, the law professional would ask questions she expected to be brought up in the courtroom and listened to their responses.

"Stop contributing," she told Tina, "Albert doesn't need to know that."

"That answer is too vague," she advised Valerie, "he will ask further questions."

"Speak with confidence," Claire was admonished, "that's a signal that you're uncertain of your answer and he will bait you into contradicting yourself."

"Don't smile so much" Hartley was told. "If he thinks you aren't taking him seriously it will undermine your credibility."

The evening before the hearing was to begin, Lydia wasn't even sure if they were anywhere near ready. She had been given so little time. Though not a trial, the hearing was crucial because it could determine Valerie's fate. If she were judged to be mentally incompetent to stand trial such a difficulty could be avoided. If not Valerie risked going to jail for several months.

According to law the burden of proof lay on the party claiming mental incompetence. Since it was the Kensington family making that claim they had the burden of proving Valerie's mental state. Lydia had all that she needed to make a solid case. Her interviews were very thorough and the medical and psychological reports were quite specific in pointing out both medical and psychological reasons for the change in personality.

All that was lacking was the lynchpin, the MRI scans which apparently showed a significant difference in Valerie's brain activity. Although Judge Bonaventure was no longer hearing the case, that didn't mean Mayor Regina Mills couldn't exert her power over the court. She had a long history of abusing her office so providing an airtight case was the only way to secure the desired outcome. Lydia prayed that the little girl working on the hospital servers would come through in time, but it seemed as if no amount of hoping and praying would help. She would have to make do with what she had.

~O~

Vidia was preparing for bed when Queen Clarion brought her some fresh under clothing to put away. She opened one of the drawers to lay in her shirts. When she tried to close it, though, it felt overstuffed. "What is wrong with this thing?" she asked no one in particular.

Clarion saw how much difficulty she was having and offered some advice. "Why don't you reorganize the drawer?"

It was a simple enough solution. Vidia began taking out all of the shirts and quickly found some kind of hard, white sheet covering something. When she removed it, underneath were several boxes with colorful pictures. Clarion took one look at them and backed away. She looked horrified and saddened, as if recalling a painful memory. Each unopened box was a model airplane waiting to be assembled, she explained.

Vidia was confused. "What's an airplane?"

The older woman knelt down right beside her and, with a hand on her shoulders, said, "Airplanes are how we travel long distances in a short period of time."

"How do they do that?"

"They fly."

It took a moment, but then Vidia's eyes widened and she replied, "Humans can fly?!"

"Yes, dear. For more than a century."

That's when Vidia remembered a brief moment when she, Tinker Bell and her friends were visiting Dr. Griffiths and his daughter Lizzy at their summer home. He was reading the local paper when he came across an article that he promptly shared with everyone in the house that day. "My word. According to this two Americans, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, built a heavier than air machine that can fly."

Humans had long mastered being airborne using hot air balloons and dirigibles, but they were ungainly looking objects and some, like the balloons were difficult to control. A photo included with the article showed two long wings in parallel, one above the other, held together with struts and wires. Attached was a lengthy framework from back to front and at each end were smaller wings, one horizontal the other vertical. A man was lying across one of the large wings demonstrating how it was operated. Vidia thought it was ridiculous. No human could ever fly like a fairy, she told herself, and quickly put the article out of her mind.

Now it turned out that the simple biplane she had seen had spawned an entire industry of worldwide travel allowing humans to not only fly across this country, but around the world in mere hours whereas before it could take weeks or even months to traverse oceans by boat and continents by train.

Looking at the boxes, each "airplane" had a different though similar look and design. Every craft looked sleek and efficiently made to cut through the air with ease, not unlike how she used to slide through the air upon donning her leggings and rudder wings.

Clarion briefly described each one, grouping them according to purpose: passenger jet liners, stunt flyers, test aircraft, cargo aircraft, helicopters and air superiority fighters used by the military for national defense.

"Why are all of these here?" Vidia asked. "Why in this drawer covered up by shirts?"

"I'm afraid that is my fault," Clarion told her.

"Your fault?"

Clarion sighed. "Why don't you sit up here while I get something from my room," she instructed, patting the bed before leaving. Vidia closed the drawer and sat upon the bed. Moments later her queen returned holding two large books in her hands. She sat up on the bed next to her and said, "These are photo albums of us. You, me, Tina and your father. I want to show you something."

~O~

Claire opened the first book and showed Valerie several photos of when she was much younger. One showed her as a young teenager with braces. It was a school photo from her first year in high school. She found herself having to explain both the concept of braces and dentistry to Valerie who apparently had no concept of either.

"I looked so goofy back then," Claire admitted, now able to look back on that sad period of her life and laugh. Another photo taken less than four years later had her in a skimpy outfit with pompoms, a vest and extremely short skirt in yellow and black, yellow shoes and a full head of hair in tight curls that tumbled down over her shoulders.

"What are you wearing?!" Valerie asked.

"I was a cheerleader, sweetheart. In fact, I was the head cheerleader in my senior year. Our school mascot was the hornet and the cheerleading squad was known as the bumblebees."

"Why is your hair so…, poofy?"

"It was the eighties," Claire told her. "The era of big hair. Most women and quite a few young men wore their hair big and poofy like that."

"Whoa! Okay, so what does a cheerleader do?" Valerie asked.

"Well, we cheer on the team and promote school spirit. Y'know, I think I still remember some of the old cheers," she said, closing the book and standing in the middle of the room.

"This what we used to do back in high school," she told her eldest girl. "During a game we would stand out in front of the crowd and yell these cheers to get everyone excited so they would root for the team."

Claire stood in a pose then began to chant, prance and clap:

"East coast, West coast
We like to boast (clap, clap)

We know, they know
Canada to Mexico (clap, clap)

Hornets, Hornets
Winning is our thing (clap, clap)

Mess with us, mess with us
And you're going to feel o-our sting."

She finished by leaning over, sticking her butt out in the air and touching her finger to her backside, making a bee buzzing sound. "BUUZZZZZ!"

After a moment to catch her breath she asked Valerie, "Well? What do you think?"

Valerie had cringed and slid all the way to the back of the bed, looking absolutely horrified. "Okay, please don't ever do that again!" she pleaded.

Claire laughed as she returned to her daughter's side. "I'm sorry to embarrass you, dear. Here why don't we look at more pictures?"

The mother shared with her daughter more photos of her own life growing up, including the senior prom, graduation and going to college. Later photos had her with several young men including one she identified as Charlie. "That's your father," she informed Valerie.

In the second book were photos of her in a flowing white dress. Standing next to her was Charlie in a black tuxedo. It was their wedding. Later photos had Charlie standing next to brand new looking work truck with his company name on the door. That was the day he first started his business to support his new wife. Another picture had the two of them standing on front of the very house where they presently resided. "We were so thrilled that day," she said. "We could finally afford our own home." Indeed, both looked happy and excited.

A few pages later, Claire pointed to an image of herself holding a baby in a pink blanket. "That's you," she said. "You were so tiny that day we brought you home from the orphanage."

The post-accident Valerie had been told she was adopted, but it apparently meant nothing to her. It pained Claire to see this non-reaction. At least before when Valerie railed about being adopted and unwanted it at least showed it affected her in some way. That it held a strong meaning for her, one way or the other. Now, nothing. It was a heartbreaking reminder for Claire just what she had lost after that motorcycle accident Thanksgiving night. The cruel irony had not eluded her. The day set aside when the country gave thanks for the all the blessings enjoyed during the year and she loses one of her two most precious blessings.

There were other photos, like one which showed an eight year old Valerie dressed as Peter Pan. According to Claire, she had insisted on dressing as the iconic boy character for Halloween that year with Charlie dressed as Captain Hook, Claire as Wendy Darling and baby Tina in a cute little Tinker Bell dress complete with wings and magic wand.

"But she is Tinker Bell," Valerie protested. "And we don't use wands, only pixie dust. But Peter Pan isn't a fictional character. He is very real."

Claire, though, had become too distressed to carry on. Thinking about Valerie before and after the accident was too much for her to continue. She put the books down and made a terrible confession.

Claire picked up one of the unopened models and told Valerie what happened several years ago. "You probably don't remember this, but you were obsessed with flying airplanes," Claire said. "This room used to have several fully assembled airplane models hanging from the ceiling. Charlie bought them for you. He would come home, call all three of us to his side and each one of us would get a little token of his affections. The models were his gifts to you. He even made time to help you build and hang them."

Tears began welling up in the older woman's eyes. Charlie had promised Valerie flying lessons when she became of age, but he passed before that time came. Later, when Valerie reached that age she demanded that her mother fulfill her father's promise. Claire thought it was a foolish pipe dream and became so angry with Valerie when she would not relent that Claire tore down every single model plane, broke them and threw them all away in the trash.

"It never occurred to me until just now how much these meant to you," the mother said. "I wasn't just throwing away your dream of flying. It was like I was throwing away some of your best memories of your dad. Or maybe…, or maybe deep down inside I did know."

"What do you mean?"

The mother took a deep breath to steady her nerves before continuing. Her visits with Dr. Hopper were quite revealing. "I secretly hated your father. I hated him because…," she had to stop and clear her eyes before continuing. "When I graduated college my dream was to become a world class musician. A pianist. I wanted to play on the biggest stages around the world. When I met your father I wanted nothing to do with him. We were nothing alike, but somehow that man persisted and won me over. After we were married it wasn't long before he expressed a desire to start a family. I wasn't too keen on the idea, I still wanted to pursue my music career. That man could be very persuasive, though, and we started trying to have a baby, but to no avail."

A doctor's report detailed how the couple had a very low chance of conceiving a child on their own. It was a huge blow to both of them, but especially to Charlie who wanted a child sooner than Claire. Adoption became his saving grace. "That's how we came to bring you home. He was thrilled to have you in our house. I tried to be, but deep down inside lingered the hope of becoming that great piano player. Being a mother got in the way of all of that."

Deep down inside, Claire resented that Charlie had convinced her to take on the responsibility of a child before she was ready. Truth be told, Claire hated herself for not putting her foot down. Charlie wasn't a spiteful man and would have most likely understood.

For Claire, raising Valerie meant giving up on her lifelong ambitions. "And I subconsciously took it out on you, making you feel unwelcomed and unwanted in your own home. So you were right. I did prefer Tina. Not because she was my miracle baby, but because by the time she came around I was ready for motherhood. I accepted her as my own child the way I should have accepted you."

"So you didn't want Valerie?" Valerie asked in an odd third person sort of way.

That was the question Claire dreaded having to answer most. Lydia had asked her that several times in preparation for the hearing and she had always answered, "Yes, I did want her." She had convinced herself of this falsehood a long time ago. It became her truth. When faced with the unopened models in Valerie's drawers, the reality hit her like a ton of bricks.

It had been a lie. This was the reason for her late night confession. All of Dr. Hopper's family counseling had set the stage, but the models were the catalyst which forced her to accept what she had hidden for so many years. Claire's hands began to tremble along with her voice. The tears that had once filled her beautiful eyes now poured down her cheeks. Finally she managed to voice her answer. "No. No I didn't want you." There it was, the ugly truth of it all.

"It wasn't that I didn't want you specifically, Valerie. I just didn't want a child, period, at that stage in my life," Claire spelled out. "I tried to bury my feelings, as deep as I could for the benefit of my husband and baby girl, but that kind of resentment doesn't stay hidden. It finds ways to express itself and you became the innocent target. It…, I destroyed my relationship with you, my own daughter. A sweet girl who deserved better."

The mother wiped more tears from her eyes. "The funny thing is I was always resentful in the moment. But whenever I looked back I realized something. I realized how much I really loved you, how much I enjoyed being a mother. All those precious memories. Like the time when you had barely learned to walk. You had just had a bath, I was toweling you off and suddenly you darted out of my grasp and ran naked around the front yard, squealing with the joy of an impish child."

Valerie eyes widened upon hearing this, as if learning of it for the first time. Which she probably was.

"Then when you were five, you decided to give yourself a haircut and you came into my room crying because you had bald patches on your head. Or the time you came home with straight A's on your report card after working so hard to earn them. You were so proud of yourself and I was proud of you, too. And every time you and your father completed one of these models, the three of us went out for ice cream. I enjoyed all of those moments, but never as they happened. Only upon reflection. I suppose because I still resented having the opportunity to become a great musician and piano player taken away from me. That left so many unanswered questions in my life about what could have been."

Claire pulled Valerie into a warm and motherly embrace. She kissed her gently on the forehead and wept as she said, "Please don't take this the wrong way, Vidia, but I want my Valerie back. I want that little girl who taught me what it meant to be a mother. I want to apologize to her for how I treated her. Valerie deserved so much better. I know I screwed up over these twenty four years and nothing can change what has happened. But maybe if she comes back we can reconcile and be what we should have been in the first place, a family."

The grieving mother choked back her crying as she fought to continue through this catharsis. "But even if she hates me for the rest of her life at least it's better than not knowing what happened to her. She'll at least be her old self again. I just want my baby girl back!" Claire then broke down into sobs and wept uncontrollably.

~O~

Vidia listened intently to what "Claire" was telling her, and although she could sympathize a little with this Valerie person, the fast flyer knew it was all a lie. A false history placed in their heads for reasons she did not know. She wanted desperately to tell "Claire" that this was all fake. That she was Queen Clarion of Pixie Hollow, not Claire Kensington of Storybrooke, Maine. But the emotions Claire was experiencing seemed as genuine as any Vidia had experienced so the flyer held her tongue. Instead she apprehensively put her arms around her queen in act of comfort and solidarity. It was all Vidia was able to do until this evil magic could be undone.

The hearing will begin in the next chapter, along with another installment of Vidia and Wisp.