In life, he'd heard theories of mirror dimensions, worlds that resembled other worlds perfectly save for maybe one key element. Maybe there was a dimension that looked identical to the World Without Magic, same landmasses, same clothes, same ideology, but perhaps that dimension's difference was that it had magic. It was a theory, at least it had been when he'd last been standing in Storybrooke. But now, here, he was beginning to think it wasn't a theory at all. After all, what was a dimension, if not a different realm? And if this realm was one of the dead, who was to say it wasn't a mirror dimension where everything was perfectly copied except that the residents here were all dead instead of living? Perhaps it was just a theory, but it was one that he wanted answers for. And he could think of one great way to test it.

In life, his shop had been the starting point for everything. The number of relics and artifacts he had there always provided him with options for dealing with problems. Even if he didn't use those tools at his disposal, they at least gave him ideas for where to go and allowed him a place to sit at his spinning wheel and think. If this truly was a mirror dimension or realm, then his shop was the first place to go in order to solve this problem.

He put the ball he'd acquired from Gorgon in his suit pocket, then took a breath and emerged from the ally beside Granny's. It was odd how strange walking could feel when he was trying to do it right, when he concerned himself with blending in and looking just the same as everyone passing by. But, in truth, no one he passed by seemed to notice him. Though he felt oddly disjointed and separated from his body, he chalked it up to nerves and tried to keep his eye on the prize. The second he got through Granny's patio and gate and onto the sidewalk, he looked down the street and nearly lost his breath at seeing it.

There it was. His little blue building. The sign was damaged. It was busted and had holes in it, not to mention the parts that remained looked like they could use a good cleaning which would probably destroy it entirely. But it was there. "Mr. Gold Pawnbroker and antiquities dealer." Or at least that's what it would have said if it wasn't missing half the "l," the "nb," and all of "antiquities." Still, it was remarkable this world. He wanted desperately to know how it all worked, but the ball in his pocket reminded him that he had other things to worry about at the moment. He could figure out how things worked after he'd fixed them or as he went along, but now was not the time to stop and smell the roses. Even in death, it seemed he couldn't rest, just keep moving.

So he moved.

He moved down the street, eyes fixed on the sign in front of him, watching as it loomed bigger with every step, calling to him as though it was a safety beacon. He had no keys to the place, but it said "open" in the window, as if it was waiting for him. And when he turned the knob, it gave way permitting him into the front space.

If this was a mirror dimension, it was a fucked up one. The idea that all the dead came to live in this realm or world or whatever the fuck it was…that he could live with! But this…this was just odd.

Instead of wandering into his shop and finding the perfect vast space of his front room floor, there were pedestals set up. Placed upon them were objects; some that he recognized and others that he did not. A genie's lamp he'd never seen before sat on one of them. There was a significant dent in the side of it, and jewels were obviously missing, but no magic came from it, indicating its owner had long since been freed from it. Now it was just a fancy relic. On another pedestal rested a familiar object. It was a hat, flattened and burned but still recognizable. It was Jefferson's hat, the one his grandfather had made him to traverse the realms. Unlike the lamp, there was still magic attached to the hat, suggesting that it might work, but to what extent without repair, he couldn't begin to fathom.

But there, scariest of all…there sat a corn husk doll in a blue jacket.

He gasped and moved to pick it up but instead found himself colliding with another pedestal he hadn't noted. It sent him reeling as he reached out to catch the object that threatened to slide off it when it tilted. He managed to catch the object before it went too far, but when he did, pain seared in his palm, and he had to fight the instinct to drop it all over again. It was sharp, what he'd caught. And he felt a sting in his palm before his magic quickly worked on healing it.

He opened his hand to identify the offending object-

And he lost his breath at the sight of it.

It was small. A triangular piece of white porcelain. Aside from the spec of fresh red blood, there was the slightest hint of light blue. He recognized it instantly.

The chip. It was the chip to Belle's chipped cup. The chip that had gone missing long ago.

And his childhood doll.

And Jefferson's hat.

And a lamp and a broken flask. And a charm that had water trickling off it…

"What the hell is this place?"

"Hell indeed, Laddie."

He spun on his heel, gathering magic into his hand as his entire body recognized the voice and registered the unexpected threat.

He didn't think it was possible for his blood to chill in this place anymore than it already had. But that was really the only possible response he could ever have when confronted with an evil like Peter Pan.

"Well, I had wondered when I'd see you here, Laddie," the boy stated casually from the threshold of his back room.

The boy. It wasn't his father. It wasn't Malcolm. It was Peter Pan, the boy that had tormented him all his life, who traded him for his youth. He was standing here now in a fresh, clean, pressed suit, solid black rather than green, but…

"You're dead…" he felt himself whisper in astonishment.

He was a child again, but he hadn't been a child before…before when he'd…

"I killed you," he insisted.

He'd taken his dagger, the very one within his breast pocket right now, and stabbed him. Peter Pan had become Malcolm once more, but now…

"And yourself in the process," Pan responded. "It was a selfless plan that I'll admit I didn't see coming. Well done, Rumple. I honestly didn't think you had it in you."

"I'd do anything for my family."

"I see. A key difference between us, then. Well, the fact that in the end, both you and I would end up in the same place makes my hellish afterlife a little jollier."

Hellish afterlife…

The shock was beginning to wear off. Now he was able to make note of Pan standing there before him, perfectly calm. What had he said before? He'd wondered when he'd be seeing him there. Fuck, Peter Pan hadn't been a thought in his head since he arrived, but that made it sound as though he'd certainly been in Pan's head. He recalled the way Bae and Belle had been camped out, the ease they'd shared in the brief scene he'd seen that hadn't properly registered until now, and suddenly...something was wrong. The realization was fast and overwhelming, but he managed to keep himself at ease through it because he'd be damned if he let Pan get a whiff of his realization. But something here was wrong. Pan had been here longer than he had been, Bae and Belle were close, hell, even Henry had looked settled, and...he'd grown. It hadn't dawned on him when he first saw him, but he'd looked taller when he'd seen him; taller and more slender. Growth spurts could happen quickly, but not overnight. There was only one conclusion he could draw.

Time had passed.

Not in minutes or hours. One couldn't make a statement like Pan had made when less than a day had passed. Bae and Belle couldn't be that friendly with each other in only a day. Henry and Emma couldn't be settled as they'd looked even in a week.

He was missing time.

But how much of it? And if he was really in hell, why hadn't it worked for him as it had Pan?

"How is this possible?" he managed to question, even as his danger felt like it was burning a hole through his shirt. He knew how it was possible. He wasn't just an average dead mortal. He was the Dark One.

"Such things aren't for us mere mortals to know. Or apparently even mere immortals," Pan commented, glancing at him with his nose turned up. "It's a decision of the gods, this place. A hell designed by Hades himself."

"Regina," he corrected automatically. He couldn't be sure how much time ahead of him his father had here, but he was wrong about one thing. This wasn't the creation of Hades, not exactly. Though what exactly it was supposed to be, he didn't know. "Regina designed Storybrooke. Why would a god use her design?"

"A question you should perhaps consider asking the god who did the plagiarizing. Leave me out of it. I'm busy."

Well, not that his father was ever actually invited to go or do anything with him in the first place, but all the same, he found himself snorting at the humor of that. "Busy," what the hell was that supposed to mean in a place like this?

"Doing what? Tormenting people? Collecting relics from my past? Being a pawnbroker?"

"You say that like it's a difficult task," he commented, moving to the front case where a nearly identical cash register sat with an aged book beside it that his father pulled closer to him. He'd bet his entire fortune that book contained inventory. "What I'm doing here is none of your concern, but for your information, I'm making my way in this realm. Deciding whether or not to finish my unfinished business is my decision. And where I end up will be a fate of my own choosing, not some judgmental pit. This life may not be perfect, but I've seen that bridge of theirs, and it's better than the alternative. So, like so many other villains here uninterested in looking to the past, I'm using my time to keep myself from growing bored. Eternity is a long time to exist without a hobby. The sign had my son's name on it, and my son was nowhere to be found, so here I am. You are, of course, welcome to join me. It could be a Father-Son thing; a family-owned business, as they say in that place you called a home!"

"Not a chance. Find your own niche in the world."

"I already have. Finders keepers, son."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that this is my new island. This shop. I asked around when we first arrived. You were nowhere to be found. To be perfectly honest, I thought perhaps you'd skipped over this state because you were the Dark One, but apparently, I was wrong. Now that you are here, you are welcome to stay, of course, but I'm not going anywhere, so it's my rules we'll be playing by."

"This state?"

"Where exactly have you been, Laddie?" Pan pushed. "I expected you'd want a confrontation but not this far down the road."

There it was, "this far down the road," another brief hint of the time he was lacking, but there was a glimmer of hope. Along with the acknowledgment was more than a hint of something else.

Pan didn't know.

For a brief second, it had almost sounded like he had answers that he could work out of him, that he might be able to understand what was happening, but now…now he realized that Pan was just as in the dark as he was, only sometime later. He thought he'd been here the entire time that he had, just hiding and waiting in the shadows.

He took care to keep his face unflinching and unchanging at the new information. He was confused, utterly uncertain about what was going on in this world that he was newly in. However, if there was one person in all the worlds he didn't want to share that news with, it was his dear old Papa. Knowledge was strength, and therefore the absence of knowledge was weakness. He wasn't about to let on to his father that he had one of those, even in death.

"You know…" he huffed, looking around the twisted abomination that he once thought was more home than his own. Everything came with a price, including keeping secrets from Pan, it seemed. His lack of knowledge meant that he was in the lion's den. And smart as Pan was, loathed though he may be to admit it, every second he spent in his company was time that he had to derive his secrets. He couldn't be here, couldn't stay. No matter how much he wanted to. Later, when he had more information, if he wanted to come back, he could, but for now, it was best to end the encounter quickly and get some answers before Pan had the upper hand.

"I've changed my mind. Keep the shop. Do as you like with it. Just stay out of my way. You have your business, keep to it, and I'll keep to my own."

"Oh, when will you learn, Laddie?" he scowled with a bored look. "I've no interest in your business. Honestly, after all this time, you'd think that would have sunk in."

He ignored the rip in his heart that comment caused. It was easy to do these days. When he was a boy, and the abandonment from his father was fresh and raw, he'd felt every single jab like that so viscerally it often made him sick. But now…now he'd adjusted, now he simply didn't care. The pain he felt was dull, a quick, small snip of rending that was easily forgettable, just as he hoped this encounter would be.

He slipped the chipped piece of the teacup that he still held in his hand into his pocket while his father stared down at the book in front of him as if doing the business of a pawnbroker. Then sneered at his disinterest. It was a trap, surely. Surely his father wasn't about to give up this easily.

"This isn't over," he growled at his father, hoping that promise shook him to his suddenly fashionable shoes.

"There's something you've yet to learn," Pan stated, looking up at him again. "This is the one place in all the realms where everything is over, Laddie. Off you go…" Pan nodded his head, a gesture that showed him the door. He wanted to take it all. His doll, Jefferson's hat, the very shop itself. But if the chip was all he could smuggle out, then it would be all that he took with him. For now, at least. Chip safely in his pocket, he left the shop to his worst enemy in search of answers.

This chapter was tricky in all kinds of ways. I always knew that I wanted Rumple to run into his father because a very crucial piece of the story we'll be working with dwells in this shop. But this was a moment where I felt I had to walk a tightrope so that this chapter didn't contradict anything that happens in season 5. Hell, even before hitting publish, I went back to do some rereading and watching of season five to quadruple-check that everything was all hunky dory. For me, I remember watching the scene of Rumple seeing Peter Pan in his shop and thinking that Rumple looked very unsurprised to see him there. I remember very quickly and easily thinking to myself, "oh, he probably ran into him when he was in the Underworld after he died," and just like that, it sort of became canon for me that a meeting like this would occur. It does make sense. With his attachment to the Shop, I can't see Rumple spending an extended amount of time in the Underworld without going to his shop. And the way that I've written this, well...Pan's had a lot of time to stake his claim.

Missing time is the little thing that I was hinting at in the last chapter, but I didn't want to come right out and say it because I wanted you to discover things were not right along with Rumple. However, the careful observer would have noted what Rumple noted in the last chapter. Henry looked older. And he and Emma were settled, something they certainly couldn't have done only a day or so after leaving Storybrooke. But the clincher, the hint that you might need the Moments Companion fiction. That situation Bae and Belle are in comes directly from Chapter 25 in Moments Exchanged. If you took a look, you'd know exactly how much time Rumple is missing. Thank you, Rsbeall12 and Jennifer Baratta, for leaving reviews on the last chapter! If you are ready to continue, then on with the show! Peace and Happy Reading!