In all his time in Storybrooke, he'd never spent any time in the alley beside Granny's diner. And yet, suddenly, he found it was his new safe place. Between the fence and Granny's diner, he felt sheltered and hidden away in this new but familiar land. He wasn't sure what lay beyond this spot of town, but he felt secure enough here to hold the ball between his hands and gaze into it. He was unsure how a former Dark One had gotten his hands on one of these down here. But it was just another question he would add to the endless list of them forming in his head, a list that was shoved quickly aside when he looked down at the Looking Glass before him. He knew he needed the answers to those questions, but right now, there was one thing that was important and one thing only.

His family. He had to know what had happened to them. He had to know they were okay. And his gut told him to start with Belle. She was the one he was most worried about. Bae should be with Emma and Henry in the Land Without Magic somewhere, hopefully getting their life in order. He was sure there would be problems along the way, but at least they'd have each other. Belle, on the other hand…

He had to know she was okay, that she was being taken care of or at least managing life independently. He wasn't sure what he intended to do if she wasn't sure yet. But he'd fucking cross all of hell to get back to her and fix things for her if he had to.

So, he took a deep breath, focused on his Belle, then watched as the shadows inside the crystal ball began to morph and shift into something new. The light he saw within it died as it grew darker, and a small sphere began to lighten to the precise shade of Belle's skin tone. A moment later, her image appeared in front of him. He stifled a cry of relief and amazement that it had worked, that he could see her, a bright light in a dark place just as she'd always been. But then he began to take in the details. She was lying down. He hair had been pulled free as if she wanted to sleep, but she was still in her clothes, a long white shirt of some kind and something over her shoulders like a vest he couldn't clearly make out because of the blankets on top of her. But that wasn't a bed she was sleeping in. That was dirt. She was lying on the ground. Shadow and light played over her face, a familiar flicker of firelight from something close by. Staring up at him as she lay there like she could see him above her. She wasn't frowning or crying, but there was sadness in her eyes. Her cheeks looked a little more hollow than he'd like them to look, and the circles under her eyes suggested that she hadn't been sleeping. She was grieving.

He fought to take deep breaths. He expected her to be in mourning. He predicted that she'd be sad. But why the fuck was the love of his life sleeping in the dirt by a fire? Why was she grieving all by herself? Where had the curse spat her out? He was hopeful it would be where it had gotten her from, that Regina would release her or that the others would see to her release and look after her, but…maybe he was wrong? Had no one cared to come to take care of her? Had no one bothered to look for her?

His knuckles went white with anger as he stared down at her, and…her lips moved. Not in a swallow or even a twitch. She was talking. She was saying words he couldn't make out because crystal balls didn't allow sound; he needed a mirror for that. But she was obviously speaking. To who? Herself?

No. His heart dropped as she turned her head where she lay as if addressing someone close by. Wide-eyed, jealousy surged inside him as he willed the ball to show him more. Who was it? A man? He couldn't imagine Belle moving on so fast. How long had he been in that vault? Years? Decades? Belle didn't look that much older than he'd last seen her but-

Every thought he had ceased. Every internal function, breath, heartbeat, it all stopped as the ball responded to his silent desires and let him get a better look at the scene before him. He saw. But he couldn't believe it.

Belle wasn't with another man. At least not in that way, gods, he hoped not in that way. She was indeed lying on the ground with another person, but there was a blazing, roaring fire between the pair in what appeared to be a cave where they were camping. And the person on the other side of that heat source, the one having a friendly chat with her, sharing her company, was none other than Baelfire.

He had to tear his gaze from the ball to take a deep breath and wipe the tears he hadn't realized were coming out of his eyes. He couldn't help it. Devastation and anger and sorrow roared inside of him all at once. He didn't know what to address first!

What the fuck?!

It was wrong! It was all so wrong he didn't even know where to begin!

Bae and Belle were together?! There was no way that Belle could have outrun the undoing of the Curse, not with her memories intact, and even if she had managed, she wouldn't be out in a cave, camping, in clothes that looked like that! The implication was clear. Belle had gone back to the Enchanted Forest, just as she should have. But if Baelfire was with her, then that meant...Bae wasn't in the Land Without Magic with Emma. He was in the Enchanted Fucking Forest! He hadn't gone with Emma and Henry? After all he'd done and all he'd fought for where Henry was concerned, he'd just laid back, accepted his fate, and gone back home?! That didn't make sense! It didn't make any sense. Bae would have gone with Emma and Henry, and he would have stayed with them, even if Emma refused! He'd have gone unless…unless…

Fuck.

Bae would have gone...unless he hadn't known that he could.

Oh, hell. He'd thought it had been so straightforward. It had been fucking clear to him that there would be exceptions to who would go back and who wouldn't. As someone from the Enchanted Forest, the Curse would have taken Bae back if he had stayed in Storybrooke, but he hadn't been one of the cursed. He had been able to leave, just like Emma, Henry, and hell, even Pinocchio! All they had to do was step over the town line when it hit, and it would never take them. Henry couldn't go. He'd been a child of that world, not the Enchanted Forest. And Emma would never have let him be left behind alone; she'd have protested, and Regina would have known that she could stay. It would have been obvious! But Bae...

They'd been so caught up in fighting back Pan, so concerned with other things that he hadn't realized he wasn't clear enough. He'd left them with Regina and assumed that she would get it. He'd assumed his less-than-perfect, downright slow former student would understand the inner workings of that Curse. He'd assumed she'd be happy to let Baelfire and Emma Swan sail off into the distance with her son for a happily ever after.

He was a fucking idiot. Whether it was malicious or not, the message had not been clear because he'd trusted it to Regina. And now there they were. Baelfire and Belle, together, away from Emma and Henry, away from him, away from all they loved, grieving and sleeping in a damn cave! He'd never been so angry in all his life. He'd never been so disappointed in himself in all his life for not seeing this earlier and putting too much godsdamned faith in Regina!

He had to do something. He had to fix this. He hadn't a clue how to do it, but he knew he couldn't just sit here in the afterlife waiting for the next Dark One to arrive while this injustice was carried out. He had to…he had to…

Fuck!

He had to do something, but what that something was, he hadn't a clue. This was a new world, a different kind of realm that was far more unexpected than he'd ever dreamed. He didn't know where to start. He was here. Baelfire and Belle were in the Enchanted Forest, and Henry, Henry was…

He felt suddenly calm as he took one breath after another and turned his gaze back to the ball. He'd had three people in mind when he grabbed this crystal ball. He'd assumed he'd find two of them together, and indeed he had, but not the two that he'd wanted. So then all that remained was the third. The ball was clear, the busyness of his mind preventing it from getting a focus on any of his family members, but now…now he focused once more on just one. Henry. He wanted to see Henry and needed to see his grandson. If he wasn't with his Mother and Father, he had to be sure that Regina hadn't fucked up so bad that he was alone in the world. And so he gazed into the ball nervously. Seeing into The Land Without Magic had never worked when he'd been in the Enchanted Forest, but perhaps now...?

The shadows within the crystal bent and formed to his will. The haziness cleared, and much to his relief, an image formed.

There he was. Henry. He was sitting at a table, head down, staring into some sort of calculator-looking thing he kept fiddling with. It was a single glance, but it was enough. Oh, he'd grown so much! He was taller than he remembered, his hair a bit shaggier, and his cheeks! Cheekbones were emerging, along with a chin that reminded him of Emma and Mary Margaret. He was finally shedding the last remnants of his childhood baby fat and becoming a teenager. He was becoming a man. And he knew better than most just how a boy becoming a man needed a father. Even if he had-

There she was…Emma Swan. As if the ball had heard his thoughts and shifted his focus, the image in the ball pulled away so that he could see the picture more clearly. Henry Mills sat at a table with his technology, and Emma sat beside him as they ate dinner. They seemed put together. They seemed almost happy in their home like it was just a typical average day. They certainly didn't appear confused or scattered as he would have expected them to appear only a day after Storybrooke had been destroyed. And Henry couldn't have grown that much in just a day.

He didn't know if he wanted to sigh in relief or scream in frustration. Something was wrong. It was very wrong. Regina had gotten half of the instructions right. She'd at least ensured Henry was with his mother, though he would have preferred mother and father. But the timing seemed off. He'd only just arrived, and yet enough time had passed for Henry to grow, for Henry and Emma to be comfortably settled. Enough time had passed that Neal and Belle appeared comfortable together when their last interactions were tense but cordial at best?! What kind of hell was this that he'd landed in? A time where time seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye, and his family was maybe destitute but certainly separated. It was his worst nightmare, an absolute terror!

Or maybe…

Maybe.

He leaned there against Granny's diner's wall and let his thoughts collect, let his mind begin to weave options and plots together. What he stumbled on was not quite what he expected.

Maybe this was something good. Yes, he had wanted Emma and Bae to be together with Henry, and because of that, he'd prepared his heart for the shock of Belle residing alone for the rest of her life. But maybe, just maybe, something good could come from this mistake. After all, at this moment, no one was alone. Though not ideal, Henry had Emma, and Belle had Bae. And if he could, in fact, fix this, then the solution was to either get Emma and Henry to Baelfire or get Baelfire to Henry and Emma. And if he could get Bae to them, then it stood to reason that Bae could take Belle with him. No, he knew that Baelfire might never be as good for her as he would have been, but the time for that kind of thinking was over. He could at least be family to her. It would be a very confusing, wildly unusual sort of family, but it was always going to be that way regardless. At least it would be a family. At least his family would be together.

He was in the afterlife, a very strange and odd place indeed. Getting back to his family would take an act of resurrection he wasn't sure was possible. Dead was dead, and there was no way to reverse it. But pulling strings, getting his son and True Love to another realm, that was a difficult act, but far more likely than resurrection. And he should know; he'd already done it once before.

He could do this. He'd orchestrated the moving of heaven and earth once already; he could do it again. He could make it so that Bae could get back to his son. He could make it so that the cycle of fathers being separated from their sons was broken. He could make it so that his entire family was together. He could do this. He didn't yet know how he was going to do it, not yet, but he was the Dark One, and though he was in a bizarre version of it, he was, in fact, in Storybrooke.

He knew right where he had to begin.

Filler Chapter, obviously. But even filler chapters can have reasons. You didn't think I was just going to let Rumple wander around the Underworld thinking everything had worked out the way he'd predicted, now did you? Oh, by now, you know me so much better than that! But hey, I did get to have a little fun with it. In the very last fiction for Moments, Belle's version of Chronicles, when she finally makes it to the afterlife, Arthur tells her that a special place had to be prepared for her and Rumple because they knew that if they tried to keep them apart, they would move heaven and earth to get back to each other. So it kind of makes me laugh that the first moment Rumple has on his own, he basically says, "I'll move heaven and earth to fix this if I have to." Way to give them fodder for the fire, Rumple.

Thank you, Jennifer Baratta and Rsbeall, for reviewing the previous chapters! I very much so appreciate that! I know this may be a filler chapter, and Rumple spends most of it staring into a Crystal Ball, but there were some hints in there that maybe, just maybe, things are not quite as straightforward as you might have thought they'd be with this fiction. Did you catch the adjustments? You might need the companion fiction to help you out on this one! More surprises on the way, coming up next! Peace and Happy Reading!