"Neal." Baelfire gave her the same name he had given the mage, his voice only wobbling a little bit. "There's no need for all this..."

His captor snorted. "Not up to you right now, is it?" It was a girl's voice, confident but not cruel. She forced him down to his knees, then tied him securely with a rope — a tricky feat one-handed, but she managed it with style — and a bit of magic. Baelfire could feel it prickle against his skin.

Finally the blade left his neck, and the girl came into view. Baelfire recognized her, the youngest of the crew he had seen during the tour two days ago. "Y'know, Neal, the folks on this ship don't take kindly to stowaways. They told me they feed 'em to the beasts. Now, maybe that's just a joke on the new girl, but maybe not. Guess we'll find out if they were pulling my leg..."

Baelfire scowled. "They're not just 'beasts'. At least, not all of them. Some of them are people! People you've kidnapped into slavery. You can't pretend it's ok by covering it up with stupid jokes."

The girl looked at him thoughtfully. "Huh. You're smarter than the average rube..." She leaned forward, lowering her voice. "Listen—"

"Hey, new girl! You still alive down there?" a man's voice called down into the hold. "Those cages aren't gonna clean themselves!"

"Shit." The girl hastily dragged Baelfire behind a pile of crates. She called back. "I'm on it!" Then in a near-whisper, "Stay put. He always comes round to check."

Baelfire nodded. He had no idea why the girl wasn't turning him over to the rest of the crew, but this wasn't the time to argue. He watched from between the crates as the girl mucked out the rows of cages. As she had predicted, a man came down midway through for a cursory inspection. A short exchange of words, a nod, and he left again, apparently satisfied.

The last cage contained the dragon. A small dragon was still as big as a heavy draft horse, and even with the magic-blocking collar on its neck, it looked dangerous.

The girl walked inside without a trace of fear and removed the collar.

Baelfire gasped.

Then the dragon shrank, morphing into a human girl to match the other, but with dark skin rather than fair, and black hair rather than blond. They had a low, muttered conversation, then both of them approached Baelfire.

"Whaddya know, you're right, some of them are people!" the blond girl said, laughing. "Neal, this is Lily, and I'm Emma." She turned to her companion. "From what you said, he seems to be here for much the same reason we are, so there's no reason we can't all work together."

Lily studied Baelfire, frowning slightly. "Except you lied about your name, Baelfire."

"Wh-what?" Baelfire stammered in shock. How could she know? And as far as names went, Emma? Then he shook off the thought. It had to be a coincidence. "Who says my name is... is Baelfire?"

Lily rolled her eyes. "You just did. You're a terrible liar. I thought that was who you must be, from the way the griffons were watching you."

"Wait, but where did you know the name from? And what do the griffons have to do with it?"

"My mother knows your father, apparently. She gave me your name, just in case."

"He's the Dark One's son?" Emma sounded surprised. "But he looks so normal."

"Thanks so much," hissed Baelfire, feeling more lost than ever. "Who is your mother?" Though a suspicion was creeping up on him, he wanted to hear it from her mouth.

"Maleficent, of course," answered Lily. "She said your father might show up here sooner or later, something about your stepmother being the heroic type."

Of course. But if this "Lily" was Maleficent's baby daughter, then that Emma was the Emma they had been looking for, never mind how years could have passed by in a blink. Had Baelfire stumbled across one of the elf roads without noticing? He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"What?" asked Emma.

"What are you doing here, on this ship, with these people?"

"Like I said, probably much the same as you," said Emma. "You're here for..." She looked at Lily.

"The griffons. Not that they'll admit anything to me." Lily smirked as Otulissa emitted an indignant squawk. 'Give it up. Maybe you can fool a nose-blind human, but I'm a dragon."

"Not much of one if you got caught by a bunch of humans," muttered Baelfire under his breath, but apparently dragon hearing was as keen as their sense of smell.

"Oi, it was all part of the plan." Lily and Emma took turns explaining. It seemed they were friends of the phoenix (so that's what that bird was, Baelfire thought) and the tortoise, who was actually a seer of some kind.

"And he didn't see this coming?" Baelfire eyed the creature dubiously.

Lily shrugged. "We all have our blind spots."

Baelfire wasn't entirely convinced, but he let it go. "So, this plan... take over the ship? Capture the crew and the traders? And... do what... kill them?" He knew it was what his father would have done, before... when he had been a new and terrifyingly bloodthirsty Dark One. He felt queasy to think about it, but didn't want to plead for their lives, either.

"Nah, just get them to take up a new line of business," said Lily. "One that doesn't involve kidnapping and slavery." She showed her teeth. "Whatever it takes to persuade them..."

Emma gave Lily a reproving shove. "What it takes, is stopping the sorcerer who sponsors them and supplies them with magic." She looked at Baelfire. "We came on board a few towns up the coast, and stayed on to find out who it was."

"And now we know," said Lily.

Baelfire nodded. "Simon Gittian, the Archmage of Katekh."

"Yeah," confirmed Emma.

"I've met him. He's fairly powerful." Baelfire didn't say, More powerful than you, but he couldn't help thinking it. "And you're planning to go against him? Why isn't your mother helping you?"

Emma and Lily exchanged guilty-looking glances. "Ah..."

"Oh, gods." Baelfire knew the signs. "She didn't approve of this quest of yours, did she?" They didn't say anything, but he could read their faces. "And you snuck off by yourselves anyway!"

"Hey, it's none of your business," grumbled Lily. Then, "But come to that, why didn't you ask your father for help?"

"Because I can't!" he shouted, causing everyone to flinch.

"Shhh!" Emma looked around in alarm.

No one said anything for a long time. Baelfire held his breath, ready to duck behind the crates again.

"Sorry," he whispered at last. "I... I can't, that's all."

"It doesn't matter," said Lily. "We can handle it ourselves just fine."

And she proved to be right, as far as taking control of the ship and the crew was concerned. Once freed, the two griffons grumpily allied themselves with the dragon, and at full size, weren't something the crew were prepared to fight in open battle. Whatever spells they had bottled had mysteriously vanished — Emma was an accomplished thief, it turned out.

Sailing the ship was more of a challenge than either Emma or Lily had expected, but Baelfire retained enough of the skills he had learned on Neverland to get them back to Katekh. Katekh, where Simon Gittian was waiting for them.

As it turned out, the archmage kept an eye on his investment. He was wealthy enough to afford the highest quality in crystal balls and scrying mirrors. He was wealthy enough to turn his mansion into a death trap if he wanted to. Luckily for Baelfire and his new friends, what the archmage wanted was more wealth and power, which would not be accomplished by killing off potentially valuable assets. He captured them all, instead, and threw them into his dungeon, to be released or sold to the highest bidder.

The flaw in his plan was that in order to draw out the highest bid, he had to tell buyers what was on offer. And once Maleficent heard the news, all other bidders became irrelevant.

Simon Gittian had overreached himself in his greed and called a dragon down onto his head, one too ancient and wily to be snared in his spells and traps. In terror of his life for the first time in decades, the archmage abandoned thoughts of profit and attempted to bargain with Lily's life as his currency.

But Maleficent had learned from her experiences with Snow White, and this time her fire was calibrated to burn enemies without fear of harm to those she cared to save.

In the end, she didn't kill him, to Baelfire's relief. And Emma's — he could tell by the way her smile returned when Maleficent merely cursed the mage into an enchanted sleep.

"Thanks for giving him a chance," said Emma.

"Some consider it a fate worse than death," Maleficent said dryly. "Locked in a nightmare, waiting for true love's kiss."

Lily snorted. "Good luck getting a kiss out of that pile of treasure he loves so much..."

"He did have a lot of followers," Baelfire noted. "That gatekeeper seemed awfully keen on on him, too."

But as it turned out, the followers were more interested in taking over the archmage's power and status. The disciples squabbled, split, fought over the inheritance, all while paying lip service to their beloved leader (now entombed in an expensive glass coffin and placed in a dedicated shrine). By then, Maleficent had already taken care to dispose of all the more dangerous spells and magical artifacts, as well as selling off some of the most valuable. The money went towards the victims of the 'exotic creatures' trade as a form of restitution, at Emma and Lily's insistence.

"It was still a foolhardy adventure," Maleficent chided them afterwards. "You could all have been killed."

"It was the right thing to do," Emma maintained. Baelfire thought she was brilliant, and was overjoyed when she invited him to go back with them. "You're a long way from home, aren't you, Baelfire?"

Then Maleficent deflated the little bubble of happiness by saying sternly, "Dark One's son. We need to talk."

Baelfire sighed, the reality of his situation crashing in on him again. For a while, caught up in the excitement with Emma and Lily, he had forgotten. "Yeah, you're right."

In this world, Maleficent didn't live in a castle. She had settled on a farm on a high sea cliff (given up by the previous owners as too rocky to be arable), keeping a small herd of sheep for appearance's sake (and the occasional snack). Maleficent sat Baelfire down in the kitchen on a plain wooden stool next to a plain wooden table and plunked down two cups of magically summoned tea. She sipped at one while looking carefully at him.

"So. You're Rumplestiltskin's son that he sought for so long. And now it seems you've got yourself lost again."

"Yeah. It wasn't... something happened." He stared down at the table, eyes stinging. "We were coming here to, well, look for you, actually. And..." He turned his head slightly in the direction the others had gone. He cleared his throat. "And for Emma."

"Yes, I guessed you would. Well, I thought it would be the Dark One himself showing up on my doorstep, but it seems I was wrong." Maleficent's voice was even, neither hostile nor friendly. "What happened?"

Baelfire snuck a glance at the old dragon. In her current form, dressed like a well-to-do — if eccentric — farmwife of this realm, she passed for human more convincingly than the Dark One. He could imagine her as an old friend of the family or a spinster aunt (the "Auntie Mal" that Emma called her). But things between powerful, long-lived magic users were never so simple. He had heard his father talk about Maleficent, just as Lily had said Maleficent had told her about the Dark One. Rumplestiltskin had called her (a hint of laughter in his voice) the "Mistress of All Evil", and one of the "Queens of Darkness" as if it were a troupe of players and not a trio of the most notorious villains in the Enchanted Forest. Of the three, she was the oldest and the most level-headed, according to Rumplestiltskin. Sometimes vindictive, sometimes aggressively territorial, she was not so quick to murder as the Evil Queen (or even his father, before — but he had changed, Baelfire reminded himself). He started with that, telling Maleficent, "He's trying to be better. That's why..."

Maleficent nodded, her eyes flickering in understanding, "For his child's sake. When one looks into an innocent eye and sees horror in the reflection, that's... that's not something that sits well in a parent's heart."

Baelfire nodded, thinking maybe he could trust her, after all. "So I asked him... because it wasn't her fault. Emma, I mean. She should be with her family..."

Maleficent's face hardened. "But not at Lily's expense. Do you know what Snow White and her charming prince did?"

"I know," he whispered. "And if they do like you said, look in Emma's eyes and see horror and all that, that's one thing, but I thought she should have the chance, that's all. So we all came to find her. Only something went wrong with the portal. Was it... was it something you did?"

Maleficent eased back. She shook her head slowly. "No. It was none of my doing. I had not intended to linger so long in this realm, but by the time I found my child, the walls of this world had... slipped."

Baelfire frowned in confusion. "Slipped?"

"The edges of existence pulled out of alignment, spinning through the void, time knocked askew." Maleficent cocked her head as she studied him. "If I'm not mistaken, for you, it has been no more than a few days? Weeks? Since I left Regina's trial."

"But it's been years for you." Had it been years for his father and Belle? That was another thing he hadn't wanted to think about, glossing over it with the thought that they were magic, and probably both immortal. Now the tea sat heavily in his stomach. "And maybe for my father. I thought maybe... well, when I came out, I was on one of the old elf roads."

"No, it wasn't that. The elf roads have been blocked, too. Everything has, until your arrival."

"Oh."

"Do you have any idea how much power it would take to shift the entire realm?"

"A lot, I'm guessing." Baelfire gulped. Was that what had taken his father and Belle? "Do you think... do you think it killed them?"

"We can find out." Maleficent waved a hand, conjuring a small, ornate brass mirror. "The so-called Archmage of Katekh had this little toy in his collection. I'll need a drop of blood from you."

Baelfire stuck his right arm across the table, palm up. Maleficent jabbed a finger with a needle, smiled briefly, then nodded at him to squeeze out the drop of blood onto the surface of the mirror. The blood flattened, drawn by magic into a thin, translucent film. Maleficent peered into the mirror, Baelfire following suit.

"The imp is alive," she said after a moment. "And see how the pattern is shifted here. His little princess lives as well." Baelfire had to take her word for it — all he could see was an intricate web of lines with branching, spiraling tendrils. "But see here, the time distortion... whatever realm they landed in, it's out of step with this one."

He wanted to ask her to send him there, wherever it was, but then he remembered their original quest. "What about Emma's parents? Can you find them through the mirror?"

Maleficent inclined her head, and said grudgingly, "Let it not be said that I am so heartless as to keep a child from seeing her parents." Then she held up a warning hand. "But while Snow White's curse persists, Emma and Lily must stay together, and I have no intention of leaving my daughter."

"Curse?" Baelfire was startled by the word. He had heard what had been done to the babies, but Snow White had never called it a curse — a curse was something cast by a villain, and Snow White was in everyone's mind associated with goodness and light. Well, not everyone, he admitted to himself, looking at Maleficent. And his father hadn't seemed impressed, nor Belle, for that matter. Snow White had apologized to them, not the other way around, so it must have been bad. Kidnapping. Working for Gaston. (But Baelfire understood how persuasive the man had been, having been fooled himself. And as the son of Rumplestiltskin, he understood being selfish to protect your own family.)

"What else would you call magic that ties darkness and misfortune to an infant, magic whose effects will shape her all her life and cannot be lifted by any means within my power?" demanded Maleficent.

Baelfire swallowed. "I see your point." A curse was a curse, no matter who cast it. But... "What about true love's kiss? That breaks any curse." He left unsaid that Maleficent surely loved her child, villain or not, and unlike Baelfire, Lily wouldn't have been overwhelmed by a sudden violent change in her parent that made their love uncertain.

"Alas, the curse has come and gone. Its effect was instantaneous, not ongoing," explained Maleficent. "Once the darkness was shifted into my daughter, no further magic was needed to keep it there. It was the same as if she had been born with it."

"Oh," was all Baelfire could manage. "I can see why you'd be unhappy with Emma's parents." An understatement, but he didn't want to make things worse.

"It's neither here nor there. This is for Emma's sake, not theirs." She waved a hand over the mirror, returning the surface to its original blank state. She shot Baelfire a knowing look. "And you may tell her so."

Baelfire nodded, eager to tell Emma the good news. He found her, along with Lily and the griffons, outside by the sea cliff, tossing pebbles in long arcs down into the crashing waves. He felt a twinge of betrayal when he found out that Emma could talk to the griffons, too.

"It's a spell," she told him. "Auntie Mal taught it to me. Maybe you can learn it, too."

"I've never really liked magic," he admitted. The truth was, he could never forget the change in his father the day he had come back from killing the old Dark One. He didn't think the fear would ever leave him. Even now, he could see in his mind's eye the expression on his father's face after he had slaughtered Hordor and his men one after the other right in front of Baelfire. And later, when he had forced his father to give it up, there had been that one horrifying moment when the darkness threatened to engulf Baelfire. That virulent malice worming its way inside his head would always be associated with magic in his mind. "It saved my life, and many other lives, but I wish my father had found some other way."

Emma shot him a sympathetic look. "Darkness isn't always easy to live with; just ask Lily."

Lily rolled her eyes and nudged Emma in the ribs. "It's not so bad as long as I have my good luck charm to hang around, yeah?"

"Anyway, the language spell isn't dark magic. I could teach you sometime," Emma offered.

"Thanks. Maybe later." Baelfire wasn't sure he even could do magic. He glanced at the griffons. Then again, it was annoying to know that they were talking and not be able to understand them. "But that's not... Maleficent says she can look for your parents, Emma. She found this magic mirror in the archmage's hoard."

Emma's eyes widened. "Oh." She exchanged a glance with Lily. "It's been so long..."

"Don't you want to meet them? They seem to love you," said Baelfire. "They were honestly worried for you, enough to go to my father when they couldn't find you themselves."

Emma shifted uneasily. "Yeah, but it's easy to love a baby. The whole reason they did what they did was that they didn't want me to be dark, but... I mean, Auntie Mal and Lily are my family, now, no matter who's related to whom. They probably won't even want me anymore."

"So what?" said Lily, affecting carelessness. "You'll always be my sister, no matter what."

"They'd be stupid not to want you," Baelfire put in. "I mean, according to my father, they are a little thick, but they're not that stupid. Anyone would want you for their daughter."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," said Emma. She turned back towards the house. "No use worrying about it unless Auntie Mal can really find them."

They all returned together, the kitchen suddenly becoming very crowded. The griffons, small again, perched on the pan rack. Maleficent collected a drop from Emma for the mirror.

This time, she looked almost amused at the result. "One foot in this world, one foot on the elf roads," was her verdict.

"Guess they didn't make it all the way through the portal," muttered Baelfire. He lifted his gaze from the mirror (as incomprehensible as before to his eyes) to Maleficent. "Are you going to bring them here?"

"If I must." She looked at Emma. "The last time they were under my roof, they were not the most ideal guests... I trust you will encourage them to better behavior?"

Emma nodded.

Lily laughed. "No problem. I think we're both a little too big to be kidnapped."

"It's something of a specialty of theirs," Maleficent said wryly. She tapped on the mirror. "But it seems they haven't had much luck imposing their company on the elves. They've been wandering up and down the gray roads for days."

It was like a haunted version of the Infinite Forest, thought Snow White, but with no sun or moon, the land always sunk in a dimly lit gray fog, it was even harder to keep track of time. It felt like an eternity (or at least a few days) since she and David had become separated from the others as they traversed the void between the worlds. Sometimes she thought it was all a trick by the Dark One, but other times she remembered the chaos and the urgency in the Dark One's wife as she shouted at them. Snow White couldn't hear the words clearly, but she didn't think it was a betrayal. Afterwards, stuck in the fog, she and David had tried summoning Rumplestiltskin, to no avail.

Sometimes, they heard voices in the distance, or torches barely visible through the gray. They tried following the voices and approached the dancing flames, but every time met only with more fog, the lights and voices receding always out of reach. The worst was when they caught the faint scent of roasting meat or baking — and were reminded of their own hunger and lack of provisions. As for hunting wild game, the birds and beasts of this land were as elusive as the ghosts behind the voices and lights and hints of cookery.

"For such an unwelcoming place, it seems remarkably reluctant to let us go," was Charming's comment. "Do you think she's here?"

"Wherever she is, we have to find her," said Snow. Emma must be out there somewhere. "We can't give up."

"No, of course not." David sighed softly. "I just hate to think of her with her. What do you think Maleficent will do to our daughter?"

"She's just a baby. Maleficent is a mother, too. She won't... I hope she won't..." Snow couldn't finish the sentence, not wanting to speak her worst fears out loud. She may be a mother, but she's also a dragon. A monster. One of the Queens of Darkness.

"Let's hope not." David crouched down to examine the ground. "Look, more white stones. I think this may be a road."

It wasn't paved or marked with wheel ruts or footprints, but Snow could see that the stones were placed in intervals too regular to be a random natural formation. "Some kind of path, maybe."

Even not knowing where it led, it was better than stumbling around blindly. It stood to reason that if someone had marked a path, there was some purpose to it, and a chance of finding the inhabitants of this realm.

Her hopes were borne out when a door appeared out of the fog. It consisted of a plain rectangular oak frame and matching wooden door — closed. She and David stopped. Stared.

"Right," said David after a moment. "Where's the rest of the house?"

When nothing stirred, Snow reached out warily and felt around the door frame without touching anything but mist. "It's not invisible — there's nothing there."

"Be careful. It could be a trap. Like a spider's web." That it was probably magical went without saying.

"Well, we've been wandering around all this time without getting anywhere. I say we give it a try, trap or not." Snow White raised a hand boldly, about to try to knob.

The door opened from the other side.

Met with a double cry of shock: "Maleficent!"

She was clad as a commoner (though the details of the style were foreign and unfamiliar to Snow White), but there was no mistaking her identity. The dragon sorceress favored them with a grim, ironic smile. "It's about time you showed up. Do come in." She stepped aside and gestured in invitation.

Snow saw a large, unremarkable kitchen on the other side of the door. Sunlight came in through the window, something she had missed all these days in the fog. But that wasn't important. She also saw the Dark One's son and the two griffons that had come with them on this quest. "Baelfire!" She hurried through the portal, only then noticing the two girls also in the room, but Snow's focus had to be on Maleficent. "You! What have you done with my daughter? I swear, if you've harmed her..."

David came through right after Snow, taking up a protective stance by her side. "Where's Emma?"

One of the girls, the one with the long blond hair, cleared her throat and crossed her arms. "I'm right here... Mother."

Snow White gaped. Her heart clenched in shock. "What? No... you can't be! Emma is just a baby!"

The girl (it couldn't be!) shrugged with forced nonchalance. "Surprise!"

The other girl laughed and clapped the blonde on the shoulder. "Guess they've got a lot of birthdays to make up for, huh?"

David's hand gripped Snow's shoulder. He said in a low voice, "Snow... look at her. Really look. I think she's telling the truth."

The Dark One's son spoke up, saying something about time slippage that went by in a blur as Snow stared at the girl who claimed to be their Emma. Emma. Then suddenly it all clicked in her head, the face of this Emma merging with the one she had glimpsed once in a vision, and Snow just knew. Knew that this was their child.

"Emma!" Tears in her eyes, Snow couldn't hold back any longer, and threw her arms around her daughter. "You're really Emma!"

Emma stiffened under her touch, returning the hug only gingerly. "Yeah." She didn't resist when David joined in, grinning in amazement and delight.

Then Snow pulled back, hearing something in Emma's tone. "Emma? What's wrong?"

Emma stared at them for a long moment, then burst out, "I can't believe you did that to Lily! How could you?"

Snow White flinched. "Emma, I'm sorry. We were trying to give you your best chance."

"And what about Lily's best chance? You stole that from her and abandoned her in another realm!"

"No, no, we didn't know the sorcerer would do that," protested Snow, still stunned that her baby was suddenly grown into the girl she had seen in the vision, the horrible vision from the unicorn's horn, before Emma was even born. Gods, was it coming true? Her eyes darted to Maleficent. If Emma had grown up with a villain... was it all for nothing?

"You knew he was going to curse her with darkness — that was what you wanted!"

"Only to protect you," said Snow. "We thought... we thought the darkness wouldn't affect her as much because..."

"Because she isn't human? Because you thought she was a monster?" Emma's eyes turned hard and stormy. "We've met people like that here. People who think it's fine to put 'monsters' in cages and sell them to rich bastards to use however they want."

"Oh, Emma, it wasn't like that," Snow pleaded, but she was also proud that their daughter was so fierce in standing up for what she thought right. Maybe she would be a hero after all! "You don't understand."

David touched Snow's arm gently. "It's going to take time, but now that we've found Emma, we have time."

"That's great, but what about my family?" The Dark One's son said suddenly from the corner. "I'm glad you found each other, but it was my father and Belle who made that possible, and now something's happened to them." He turned a distressed gaze to all of them. "Please. Please, we have to help them."

Snow conceded the truth in that, though she secretly wondered if it was the Dark One's doing that they had lost so many years of Emma's childhood. Was that the price he had extracted from them? Was it revenge for what they had done to Belle? But it wasn't really their help Baelfire wanted...

Maleficent looked as unmoved as ever. She listened to Baelfire's pleas, a calculating glint in her eye. But when Emma and Lily came into the argument on the boy's side, Maleficent relented. "Very well. I will give such aid as I can, and no doubt your father will return the favor someday." She plucked a wand from her sleeve and tapped it on the table. "An hour. We'll leave in an hour."

Zelena was a fool, thought Rumplestiltskin. She had broken one of the three fundamental laws of magic. You can't make someone fall in love with you.

And yet.

He was the closest to this other, twisted version of himself. Not physically, but because he was the first to be summoned. Because he had an affinity to this other, an association that resonated through this dagger. Not his dagger, but one reforged in the primordial darkness by a Dark One pushed to it by the most powerful magic in all the realms.

True Love.

Subjugated by the other dagger, he found himself drowning in thoughts and memories not his own. That was how he knew. The love was manufactured. False. A paradox that destroyed itself. And now Nevethe would follow.

He tried to fight it, but he was trapped. Truly a beast, a mute shadow. And Belle was trapped with him.

You can free yourself, came the thought from the mad Dark One. Just like all the others... And indeed there was a way to unbind a soul from the dagger, a way to unbind everything. The darkness, the truth of it, was pure annihilation. Every being disintegrated into its constituent particles, every word rendered meaningless. He wasn't freeing the other Rumplestiltskins, he was forcing them to embrace their own destruction.

Those who submitted to the command of the dagger became hollow shells, their power absorbed.

Those more desperate to be free immolated themselves, losing their names and awareness to the darkness.

Become dust.

Rumplestiltskin longed to join them. He was so tired. It would be a relief to stop fighting. There was no point, was there? Darkness before and darkness after, that was how it was, and what did it matter how long the time between lasted?

Rumple! It was Belle's voice in his head, frantic with worry. No, Belle wouldn't want him to go. He couldn't abandon his children again. If the darkness closed in, her daughter would never be born. He would endure, as himself, for their sakes.

You're a stubborn one, came the stray thought from the other.

Rumplestiltskin snarled back, a beast's bewildered resentment. Why was he doing this to himself? How was he doing this? How was he more powerful than all the other versions of himself?

She showed me the way. A mad giggle from the one Dark One who teetered on the edge, channeling darkness without falling in. So, so, much love... it leads to death, more and more, more and more.

Rumplestiltskin risked a glance at Zelena. You're doing all this for her? She was dying. Did he not realize? Nevethe would be her grave. Or perhaps he did...

The Wood destroyed her.

So this is revenge. But there was more. Rumplestiltskin groped towards whatever truth survived under the other's darkness. There had to be something that kept one last kernel of himself intact.

The Wood... An overwhelming sense of threat accompanied the thought.

You're afraid. Rumplestiltskin knew himself. He was a coward who would do anything to protect... Someone you love. There's more. Something you're hiding. Is that how you're doing this?

How are YOU doing this?

A child... A moment of sickening clarity. Zelena... A child Nevethe would not countenance to live. A child of true love was born with great power. And a child born of a false love that was as strong as any true love? A disease that they did not dare let take root in their sacred grove. As Zelena was even now planting herself in Nevethe, seeking to usurp the ancient Queen. It wouldn't matter if her mortal body was destroyed if her soul was reborn from a new tree, as a Timer rather than a human.

She has our tree.

Rumplestiltskin saw the way she had planted it within herself, fusing it with her own magic. The way she had turned green, as if leaves pressed against her skin from within, straining to spring free, the way the darkness had sunk roots anchoring to Nevethe — as if she and the sapling born of their true (false) love had twisted together into one being.

She bears your child, Rumplestiltskin thought back at him in unwilling empathy. How far would he go? Too far. Because he always had, and this other Rumplestiltskin was the same. It was a kind of strength fueled by desperation.

Soon the Queen of Nevethe would be forced out of existence altogether. The other Dark One would usher in the new regime.

Then someone burned a hole in the sky.