He followed Milah across the street to…

He smirked at the sight of it. It was a beat-up VW van from what looked like the '70s. There was a large dent in the side, the paint, which had apparently once been bright orange, was missing in places, and one of the back windows was shattered. It looked like it had been in an accident, which was probably what brought it to this world if his theory about "dead things" rang true. Someone had probably totaled this piece of garbage in The Land Without Magic decades ago. And yet there was Milah, getting into it and putting on a seatbelt…like it mattered.

He moved around the van, ignoring the peeling peace sticker on the backside, and tried to open the door only to find that it stuck. It wouldn't open. He was about to use magic when he saw Milah lean over in her seat and stretch to pull the handle from the inside and give it a little push for him. Without a word from her, he climbed in and examined the interior. The seats were nearly worn through, the curtains in the back looked as though they were moth eaten, and it smelled like mold and water. Perhaps it hadn't been an accident that did it in. Maybe it drowned in a hurricane, or someone had simply grown weary of the thing and pushed it into a lake for the insurance money after claiming it was stolen. That was what he probably would have done.

Beside him, Milah let out a judgmental huff as she put the key in the ignition. "Shut it!" she ordered at him with a roll of her eyes.

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to," she snapped. "It's written all over your smug face."

That comment only made his smirk grow. When she'd known him, he had no talent for acting or putting on a show. Now he was an expert at it. Nothing showed on his face unless he wanted it to. Not that she knew that.

"My apologies, it must have slipped out," he commented as she attempted to turn over the engine. It shuttered but quickly died.

"We can't all live in fancy mansions or have magic…" she rambled on as she tried again. It made him look past her to the place where his "mansion" now sat. Well…there was a failure on his part. He would hardly have called it "fancy" when he'd stumbled upon it, but after the repairs that he'd made, even he had to admit that it stood out. On a street where every house was boarded up or had broken windows, fallen roofs, and chipped paint, his now felt like it let out a soft glow of newness in the morning smog. Perhaps he hadn't been as discreet as he'd wanted to be in fixing it. But he had to admit...he was rather proud of it.

"Certainly a long way from a hovel, wouldn't you agree?"

Milah let out a small huff before looking over at him with a glare that would have frozen his blood when they'd been a couple. "I'm sure it's just as overrated as the hovel was."

He stilled his face and fought back a grin. Words like that two hundred and some odd years ago would have hurt. He'd poured his heart and soul into building that hovel and only ever wanted to make it something for his family to grow into. She'd hated it, of course, though she'd been conservative in her opinion back then and never said the words. That was a good thing. Years ago, that comment would have scarred his very soul. But over the years, he'd grown to despise it just as much for what it represented, just as he'd come to hate her. But now, all she had to throw at him were harmless words and silly insults that a schoolgirl could come up with. He wasn't impressed with her, or her wishy-washy indecisiveness. A mansion was too much, but the hovel was too little…he knew a fairy tale that started like that.

"I'll endeavor to be more average then," he commented as she turned the key again and finally got the van started.

"Do what you want…" she muttered as the car jerked forward.

It was an awkward ride, bouncy, he figured, due to poor suspension, and rough, probably due to a lack of alignment in the wheels, but that was also just his guess. He didn't bother to speak his suspicions out loud, just let Milah drive them through streets and roads that were both familiar and yet not as he took in his surroundings, making mental notes for later. It seemed like almost an exact copy of Storybrooke, right down to the houses and mailboxes, hell even the street names were identical. But the dilapidation he saw…it was like what Storybrooke would look like if it was completely abandoned.

His breath caught at that thought. Storybrooke had been abandoned. If Regina had done things right, it shouldn't be there anymore. It should only be the forest it had been before the Curse took root. But then again, if Regina had done things right, Emma would be with Neal right now. For all he knew, this reflected the real Storybrooke, and that, unlike Milah's words, truly did bring an unexpected pang to his chest. He'd known that he'd cared for his home. But he hadn't known he'd cared that much.

"The cemetery?" he questioned as Milah pulled to a stop just inside some gates that looked like the Storybrooke cemetery only…it wasn't. Finally, there was a difference. The Storybrooke cemetery was small, it was easily traversable, full and crowded with stones and plaques, but this…this was different.

It seemed unending, this cemetery. It looked like it could go on for miles. There were headstones as far as the eye could see and yet so much room for so many more. And in a world where everyone was already supposed to be dead, it didn't seem necessary.

"I don't understand," he admitted.

"Exactly, and if there's one thing everyone here should know about, it's the cemetery," Milah suggested on her way out of the van. He got out of the car and followed after her as she took off to a specific corner of it where the graves looked…pathetic, to say the least. They were old. The rocks were worn and rough with age. Nearly all of them were either cracked or toppled over, and most of them had moss or other wildlife growing on them. And then Milah stopped. She looked over a gravestone, one of the few that was still standing, and kneeled before it. He watched suspiciously as she wiped it down, and almost tenderly plucked some grass from around its edges as if it could help. He moved to stand beside her, and it took everything inside of him to contain a gasp of surprise when he saw Milah's name printed on it.

A gravestone with his ex-wife's name on it...

"What the hell is this place?" he muttered.

"Well, it's not hell, that much I can tell you," she explained, standing up. "This is the town directory. Everyone who comes to this place, every soul that passes through, gets their very own tombstone. People think that they're random, but I've noticed there does seem to be some method to it. Look over there…"

She pointed out a small tomb with a large crack through it. The name was nearly worn out of it, but he thought it looked like…

"That's my father," she confirmed. "And over there…" this time, she pointed to another tomb, perhaps a row or two away from her father's. There wasn't so much a crack in it as a crevice, it was practically in two. "That's one of my brothers. But if you look that way, it's hard to see from here, a long one, laying on its side…that's my mother. Age, geography, and connection all seem to play a role in where these tombs pop up. I figure that if I'm here, then you'll probably be here somewhere too. Though it is odd, usually new stones look new. A brand new one like yours should be easy to pick out."

He heard the suspicion in her voice but ignored it. And for good reason. "Everyone who comes to the Underworld gets one?" he clarified.

"Yes," she answered, beginning to walk among the rows. He followed her, feigning interest in the names he saw. If his theory was correct, then he most certainly would not have a tombstone in this place. But only if it was correct. This might be the perfect way to see if his theory was right! Though looking out over the vast amount of them…he wasn't sure it was possible to search the entire place.

"They're all so damaged," he commented, realizing that Milah's was about the only one in this section that still stood upright on its base, her name still legible. Most of them were destroyed or had fallen down and were becoming part of the ground.

"That's why this is an accurate directory and not just a cemetery," Milah explained as they walked. "This isn't hell, and thank the gods, it's certainly not heaven. We call it the Underworld because it's more like an outpost for both. This is the place where every soul with unfinished business comes after death. The Ferryman picks us up and brings us here, and then…we work through our issues."

"Your unfinished business..."

Milah nodded. "After you've worked through whatever issues your soul might be grappling with, you then go on to Mount Olympus or to a place much worse than this."

Heaven and hell, he had a feeling he knew which one awaited him, and he had to admit that if that was a place worse than this, he couldn't blame his father for not being in a rush to get there.

"Can't imagine a place worse than this," he muttered.

"Well, it hasn't always been like this. The design changed recently. Before it was…"

His mind knew that Milah was saying something important, knew that he should probably focus, but in walking by the tombstones, his eyes landed on one that made his heart stop and his mouth go dry. It was an old stone, and it lay on its side with moss growing over it like a blanket that kept the impression of the name clean. His instinct was to reach down and wipe it off, but there was a certain serene beauty to it that stopped him. It reminded him of how she looked the few times she'd ever accidentally fallen asleep beside him.

"Margery…" Milah commented, breaking his concentration. Apparently, as he'd been staring, she'd wandered over and now looked at the stone herself. "Why does that name sound familiar?" she questioned with genuine confusion that made him want to reach out and take her heart again. Of course, she wouldn't have remembered Margery. She'd only had an affair with her husband!

"She was Rolf's wife," he commented through gritted teeth.

"Margery…the meek little thing who lived down the road."

"Oh, she wasn't meek," he spat back out at her. "She knew herself far more than you ever did. She was…" he had to stop himself, physically bite his tongue to hold in his words. He wasn't going to defend her against Milah. He'd already spent too much time telling Belle there was no comparison. He wasn't going to keep comparing apples or oranges to a sour old raisin.

"Hang on…" Milah squeaked out before he could drop the conversation and move on. The suspicion in her words rang out clearly, and he wanted to kick himself. He'd said one thing too many. Fucking emotions…

"You…you slept with Rolf's wife?!" she accused, forcing him to lift his eyes up off of the tombstone and onto the face of his ex-wife, who looked at him as though she'd just been slapped.

"It was after you'd gone," he clarified, though he was greatly aware that he had no need to. "Not that I need to justify it to you, given your behavior."

"So, you thought I was dead off with Killian, and you were shacking up with Rolf's widow!"

"It wasn't like that," he argued, though he knew Margery likely would have argued it was exactly that. "And I'll remind you that while you allowed me to think I'd sentenced you to certain death, you were 'shacking up' with Hook, who you found as a replacement for Rolf, in the first place."

"How would you know about that?"

"Oh, Milah, the entire village knew about that. You weren't exactly discreet."

Milah let out a huff and crossed her arms over her chest "Well…were you and Miss Meek any better, or did you marry."

"You can't honestly be jealous right now."

"Don't be stupid. Jealous of you and Margie together? I'm just trying to figure out how the two quietest people in the village managed any conversation."

"We weren't exactly talking most of the time," he lied with a wicked sneer just to see her nose turn up. With an opinion like that, there was a part of him that was dying to let her know how loud he could make Belle scream, but it was a fruitless masculine urge that he denied the beast within. Belle would be one secret he'd keep here.

"Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Did you marry her?" she pressed with wide eyes because she could apparently go off and have her affairs, but if he did it, then it was adultery.

He didn't know why, he owed her nothing, but all the same, he let out a sigh and shook his head. "No. No, we never married, though there was a time I wanted to and a time I suspect that if I'd asked, she'd have agreed. But I waited too long. She moved on, and found another man to marry her."

The memory of their encounters played over in his head. Memories of how their interactions changed and their relationship had grown. The warm place he'd once held for her in her heart seemed to glow once more as he recalled their brief private dalliances and the way he'd worried terribly the day that he'd said goodbye to her before she took her kids and went to marry in another country. He'd worried so much that he'd nearly done something stupid.

"I checked on her a few years later and found they were happy, and she was pregnant." And he'd stayed in the shadows, too worried about what she'd think if she could see what he'd become in her absence. Now that he had Belle, he was happy to admit that their encounter had been a good thing. He'd rather have Belle and he was certain that Margery belonged with the man that she'd married. They were better off living their best lives with the loves of their lives rather than two people stuck together just making it work as he and Milah had done for years. But still, the memory of that night made his throat swell with sorrow to think of it. To think of what she'd wished for him in her own happiness...

"Her one and only hope for me was that I'd find someone just as she had..."

"And have you?" she pressed.

He refused to answer. There was nothing he could say that wouldn't point her in the direction of Belle, so instead, he decided to just stare back down at Margery's grave as if she'd been everything to him and let her interpret his own personal moment of silence for loneliness and regret.

"Well, I suppose the fact that she's moved on is a compliment, then."

"Excuse me?" he questioned, trying to decipher what the hell she'd just said.

"The tombstones...they tell a person's story here in the Underworld. When you arrive, you get one, and it stays there, intact as long as you are here. Then you work through your unfinished business, and once you've finished your journey, you leave. Tombstones with a crack through them mean they moved on to the worse place, but stones that have fallen over, like Margie's here, indicate that they've moved on to Mount Olympus."

Mount Olympus. Heaven. Margery was somewhere good. She was at peace. That made him release a sigh that he didn't know he'd been holding onto only…

"Why exactly is that a compliment?"

"Because if she was ever really worried about you, then you would be her unfinished business, and she'd still be here. The fact that she was able to move on shows that she didn't worry you'd find someone because she knew you would, with complete confidence. It's amazing the things the mind can convince itself of," Milah sneered before turning away.

He nodded, choosing to ignore the backhanded remark and instead focus on the good thing that she'd said. It sounded like Margery. She always believed that he'd find someone. It had taken him hundreds of years, but he finally had found the right person to spend the rest of his life with. And if he was right and he still had a life to live, then he had to get back to it so he could spend it with her.

So once again, we have a chapter that is really just Rumple getting the opportunity to harvest knowledge for the upcoming trip to the Underworld in Season five. I wanted him to have access to that understanding of the gravestones and what they mean. I also wanted him to have a better understanding of "unfinished business." That knowledge will, of course, grow as the fiction goes on, but I really wanted Milah to be the one to get to show him the gravestones. Even if she was Milah being Milah.

Thank you to Jennifer Baratta and Rsbeall12 for reviewing the previous chapter. I know I have at least one reader who will appreciate Margery's name being dropped back in here. I'm sorry that she couldn't appear in person. Truthfully, I did consider it, but I felt that having her cross over and Rumple having the knowledge that she was secure and confident that Rumple was going to be okay was a good way to end her story. It's not an appearance, but for me, it did signal a happy ending to a character that was very influential for Rumple. Peace and Happy Reading!