Chapter 6: A Shadow
"You lost," Pan said, "and you know what that means. You must forfeit a penalty."
Bae tries to be brave. To be strong. To act as if his years away from Neverland have armored him in some way. But even in Neverland, he can't believe that enough to make it true.
When the Shadow drops him down into the red-tinged, light-sucking hole that is Dark Hollow, Bae stiffens in panic. He lands hard, and forgets to roll to minimize the pain, so just lays there like a sheep ready for sacrifice.
He's back. It's like he's never left.
Dark Hollow.
Suddenly, Bae is a flurry of motion. He's on his feet, running, tearing through the long, naked branches that rip and slash at him, slowing him, tripping him, tangling him up in their thorny hold.
"Let me out!" he shouts. "Let me out of here!"
His only answer is a laugh.
"This is how you protect someone, Pan?" he yells. But Pan is long gone, content to revel in Bae's punishment from a distance, and Bae is all alone.
Well, alone save for the shadows he carries with him.
"So, this is what I left behind."
Bae shudders, his back tensing until he feels as if it is one solid knot, and refuses to turn. The ground crunches beneath the weight of this person's steps, and if he turns, Bae knows what he will see. He knows exactly who he will face.
And he can't do it. Not right now. Not ever again.
"You're just like your father," the woman hisses behind him. "A coward through and through."
"Papa's not a coward!" Bae retorts, and then, because he is brave and because he is fighting for more than just himself, Bae turns to face his personal nightmare.
Milah sneers at him as she steps right up to him, toe to toe, her eyes even with his. Though he longs to throw himself back, Bae refuses to move.
"You know," she says, "I used to dream about coming back for you. I made so many plans on how I'd get back to our old world and find you, invite you to come live a life of adventure and glory aboard the Jolly Roger. But then I always remembered: you are your father's son."
"Yeah, and what are you?" Bae retorts. "Just some bitter old woman who let life get the best of you until you ran around to playact some kind of childhood dream of yours. And for what? You're just as much a prisoner here as I am."
"Rumple used to sneer such things under his breath too. Oh, not to me," she waves her hand dismissively, "that would have meant finding the courage to stand up to me. But he always did have such a way of cutting the people in our village down to size—so long as they weren't around, of course. Kind of like you, I suppose. Here you are, able and willing to say all these things to me as long as you think I'm a Shadow. But how long have I been sailing the seas around this island? How many decades have you refused to come see me? How many years has it been since the real me heard a single one of your defiant words?"
"That goes both ways, you know. Seems you weren't really serious when you said you meant to come find me, huh?" Bae's heart is racing so fast he's surprised it doesn't show through his soft leather jacket, and every moment he's not running away from this confrontation is a moment that his legs grow heavier, like anchors, keeping him locked in place. "Seeing as I'm only a stone's throw away."
Milah laughs. Her hand comes up to cup his face, and for an instant he will never admit to, Bae allows the touch. It wakes up long buried memories, hazy flashes of when he was tiny, when his mom hugged him close and drew pictures just for him. But then she says, "I left you once already, Baelfire. Why would you be worth my time now?" and Bae jerks away from her.
Inexplicably, he finds himself thinking of Belle. He remembers that moment, in that little sitting room, with a teacup destined to be chipped in his hands…and Belle reaching out, alighting her hand oh-so-gently on his wrist. The slightest touch—the kindest moment Bae had known in so very long.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he keeps that moment clear in his mind and says, "I don't need you. I never needed you. Papa and I were better off without you."
"Oh?" Milah's voice dances through the air and sounds like it's coming from a mere inch away from his ear. "But didn't you run off on him too? And unlike me, you did it more than once."
Bae swings wildly with his fist, but he knows even as he does that it's useless.
This time—unlike the time long ago, when he was trapped here last, when he thought it was a Shadow and instead it was the real Milah, come to play games with him just to free her pirate lover from Pan's latest trap—she's only a trick of Neverland and fades to smoke.
Around him, the darkness grows.
Trapped once more on Deadman's Peak by the dagger's command, Rumplestiltskin paces in tight lines. He pretends not to notice that every revolution takes him nearer and nearer the dreamshade bushes hiding a tiny pond of magical water. Of course, he does notice. How can he not when the pond's magic glows, so tempting, calling out to the power in his own fingertips that he cannot reach?
Pan is smarter than Felix, and rather than commanding him to be still, he commanded him not to use magic.
So now he paces, no longer a cripple but every bit just as useless.
His son is out there somewhere, probably afraid, probably hurting, most definitely disappointed in his papa. Twice now, Rumplestiltskin has been allowed to see his son, and twice, he has been forbidden to touch him, to speak with him with anything but Pan's scripted words, to let him know—in any and every way possible—that his papa loves him.
And twice, he has been forced to leave his son behind. At least the first time, Bae was surrounded by well-armed allies. This second time…
Rumplestiltskin groans aloud and presses his thumbs to his eyes, so tempted to blind himself if only it means that he could forget the sight of his son being yanked away by Shadows, a cry of terror torn from deep inside him. He'd reached out, with straining arms, for his papa—
And Rumplestiltskin—did—nothing.
Now, who knows what torments his son is facing, and it is all Rumplestiltskin's fault.
"Don't let her leave the hill," Felix commands from somewhere behind him, prompting Rumplestiltskin to spin gracefully toward this newest threat. But all the Lost Boy does is push a small, trembling form ahead of him and shove her to the ground. As she lands in a heap, her cloak falls away to reveal hair that shines like chestnuts in the moonlight.
Belle.
Rumplestiltskin waits until Felix has faded back into the jungle before he hurries forward. At the last moment, he remembers that he's the Dark One, and a stranger, and that he merely sat without lifting a single finger to help when the Shadows took her, so he slows and hovers, uncertainly, two paces from her.
"Belle?" he asks softly. "Are you all right?"
She blinks those too-blue eyes up at him, and he startles when she manages a soft smile. "You're talking," she says.
"An oversight on Pan's part, I'm sure," Rumplestiltskin says snidely, though he's actually not sure this isn't part of his father's plan somehow. "Are you okay? What did they do to you? Did you see Bae?"
Belle shakes her head and lifts her hand up. Rumplestiltskin stares at it blankly for a long moment before he realizes that she wants his help getting to her feet. She. Wants. His. Help.
Belatedly, Rumplestiltskin takes her hand in the lightest hold he can manage and helps support her. As soon as she is steady, he pulls back. Surely he imagines the way she seems to hold on, just for an instant longer, to his hand in hers.
"I didn't see Baelfire," she says. Her eyes are soft as she meets his worried gaze. "I'm sorry."
"I saw him," Rumplestiltskin admits. He doesn't want to, but this woman loves his son—his son loves her—and Rumplestiltskin knows what it is to love someone you can't see. "Pan took me to him."
"Is he all right?" Belle gasps.
His hand is on fire. It burns. Rumplestiltskin blinks down at it and finds Belle cradling it in both of hers. Strange, really. Her fingers are cold, her hands chilled, and yet…yet her touch blazes new warmth all through him.
"He's…" Rumplestiltskin blinks and looks back up at her. "No. Pan took him. He's so scared, Belle. He wanted me to help him and I couldn't do anything."
"It's not your fault," she says fiercely. "It's the dagger."
He looks away. Some part of him is scornful, knowing that this young noble lady has read too many books, lived too sheltered a life, trusts too much to kindness and goodness. But the rest of him…well, he longs to believe in those same good things. He yearns to have reason to hope.
"Here," he says, reminded that she is trembling. "Come, sit."
"I'm just a little chilled," she says. When she notices his worried look, she smiles at him. "They didn't hurt me. They're…a little rough, maybe, but still children, and a stern word or two has them falling in line."
"What did they want you to do?" He dares to take her elbow as she sinks down and leans back against his tree. It's where they sat before, and after a brief hesitation, Rumplestiltskin sits down beside her. Not too close—he doesn't want to scare her—but near enough that maybe his warmth will help ease her shudders.
"They wanted me to tell stories." Belle smiles wryly, though her eyes are closed, and now he thinks he understands why her voice sounds so hoarse. "And tuck them into bed. I think they had grand plans for a lullaby too, but too bad for them that I can't carry a tune."
"Did…" Rumplestiltskin clears his throat. "Did you ever tell Bae bedtime stories?"
He jolts at a touch to his hand, lying flat on the ground, but even before he looks down, he knows what he'll see: Belle's hand resting over his, her fingers curling under to tuck beneath the curve of his palm.
"I did," she says. "Not in the same way, but…" She shifts to make herself more comfortable—Rumplestiltskin thinks, too late, that he should have put his coat under her—and somehow ends up nearer him. Her shoulder rests just beneath his, her side pressed against his arm, and he holds himself absolutely still when he feels her head come to rest, ever so softly, against the side of his throat.
"In what way?" he hears himself ask in a croak.
"Well, we had to travel pretty far to reach sympathetic rulers, and neither of us had too much money, so we often shared a room at inns. He'd make himself a pallet on the floor, and I'd make him take a few blankets from the bed, and then we'd try to sleep."
Rumplestiltskin is amazed at his own arm for sliding around Belle's shoulders, cradling her close against his chest. It helps distract him from the pinch behind his breastbone. "He has nightmares?"
"He does," Belle says quietly. For all she is chilled and trembling, her breath is hot against the underside of his jaw. "Sometimes he was afraid to go to sleep. Other times, he'd wake up. He never screams, but he's so still, so stiff, that the jolt would wake me too. And I'd tell him stories to distract him. Sometimes, he'd even fall back asleep."
"What sort of stories does he like now?" Rumplestiltskin asks. His neck feels weak, his head so heavy, but Belle doesn't flinch away when he lets his cheek rest against the crown of her head. "He used to love the tales of knights and heroics, of ogres defeated and dragons slain and evil witches banished."
"No tales like that," Belle murmurs in such a way that her lips brush his throat, and Rumplestiltskin swallows hard. "He likes stories about ordinary people. Clever spinners, cunning tailors, thieves with hearts of gold. Just…normal people outsmarting the corrupt bullies and coming out on top through their wits."
"I like that type of story," Rumplestiltskin whispers.
His only reply is a snuffling murmur as Belle drifts into sleep.
Rumplestiltskin holds her close, treasures her warmth, and dreams of his boy as he keeps watch on the sky.
Dark Hollow is the only place in Neverland where one cannot see the gaping moon. Bae searches for it, and for the stars he knows so well he can map them nearly in his sleep, but all he can see is red and black. Black to swallow up everything outside this place, and red like the blood shed for Pan's amusement. He remembers another red-tinged sky, the blood of the Frontlands children staining the horizon, spurring devoted parents on to desperate acts.
"It's your fault," Papa tells him. His voice is soft, like it used to be, so quiet and defeated, but kind, too, and Bae hugs his knees closer to his chest, keeps his eyes shut, and tries to listen to just the voice rather than the words. "You know it is, son. If you'd only been brave and insisted on enlisting, I would have listened."
"No, you wouldn't," Bae murmurs to the inside of his elbow. "You were willing to do anything to save me."
"We ran too late," Papa says. "You were so brave. Too brave. You wanted to fight. Didn't want to run. So I kept putting it off. And in the end, what did that accomplish? Just more humiliation, more bullying, and oh yeah, we met that beggar."
"He tricked you. He tricked both of us."
"I saved you from the front lines," Papa reminds him. "I saved all the children."
"You were a hero," Bae acknowledges. "But you…you were a monster, too."
"All for you, my boy."
Bae flinches and curls in tighter on himself.
"But you couldn't just be happy, could you?"
"I wanted my papa back," Bae keens.
The touch of a hand, calloused and work-roughened, on his back has Bae's hunched posture falling to pieces. He turns, reaching, and his hands find uneven wool, thin patches, bony shoulder. He doesn't open his eyes, just keeps them closed as Papa catches him, soothes him, cradles him close until Bae's head is resting in his lap. His fingers card through Bae's hair, and Bae nearly whimpers.
"I miss you, Papa," he confesses. "I miss you so much. Sometimes, I feel like I haven't seen you, the real you, since you told me to go home while you marched straight from a burning castle into the woods to meet a nightmare."
"I just wanted to save you," Papa says. "And you just wanted to destroy me."
"No!" Bae moans. "No, I just wanted my papa back."
"But the papa you knew was tired, and hurting, and afraid, and weak. I gave you a better papa. One who could protect you. Take care of you. Give you everything you ever needed. Was that so wrong? Did I really deserve to be ripped away from the world just for loving you?"
"You…" Bae takes a deep breath that scrapes against his throat. "You were killing people. You were never satisfied. I wanted us to be happy."
"So I followed you through to another world. Was I happy there, Bae?"
Bae actually whimpers, the blow strikes so hard.
"Was I enough for you then? Did you stay with me no matter what the cost? Did you choose me over anything that world had to offer you?"
"Please," he begs. "Please, stop."
He knows he should rip himself away from this illusion. It's not Papa. He knows that. It's just a Shadow. Just a game Pan's playing. Another cut to join the thousands of others Neverland has inflicted.
But the hand in his hair is so familiar. The soothing strokes over his skull are so affectionate. The thin body cradling him calls up every good feeling Bae once knew.
And it's too hard to pull away. Can't he just take a few minutes, just a tiny sip of time, where he is wrapped up in Papa's arms?
Besides, it's not like the Shadow's lying, now is it?
"You took me to a world where I was slowly dying, and then you abandoned me for a better family."
"I was trying to save you."
"You were willing to die for that family. I always wondered….why wasn't I worth that too, Bae? Why couldn't you have stayed with me? What is it about me that makes it okay to abandon me?"
"I love you," Bae whispers. It's the only response he has, the only defense he can make, but it's not enough. Papa's love is shown through utter self-sacrifice, through absolute absorption, through unconditional devotion. But Bae's love? His love is only proved through abandonment, through absence, through sacrifices that never ever amount to what they should.
"And yet you left me here with Pan." Papa's voice is hushed. His hand falls still in Bae's hair. "You sentenced me to a fate far worse than death."
"No. I…I wanted to save you."
"Maybe your version of salvation costs too high a price," the Dark One trills, and with a jerk, he shoves Bae off his lap.
Bae curls into a ball on the ground, afraid to look up and find the Dark One looking back out of his papa's twisted face, and for the first time in centuries, he breaks down into terrible, wracking sobs.
"I'm sorry!" he cries, over and over again. "I'm sorry!"
But Papa says nothing, and when Bae can bring himself to look, he finds himself alone.
This time, he's the one who's been abandoned.
Time passes in the only way Neverland allows: slowly. Unchangingly. Interminably. Always, it is night, and always, it is hopeless, and always, Pan is there, in the edges, in the cracks, in the center of it all, laughing at his cruel games.
Every while or so, Belle is ripped from the peak, taken away to play the caricature of a mother—never with rules, or enforced bedtimes, or lessons to pay off during adulthood. Just to bandage scrapes—and gaping wounds, and whip-marks and bites gouged out of too-young, too-old skin—and to tell stories of ever-greater heroics before tucking a blanket around each boy and blowing out the candle.
"Not for me," Pan tells her the one time she dares to drift toward him. "I've never needed a mother. But the boys are made of weaker stuff. It's a nice diversion while we wait."
After the Lost Boys grow tired of being forcibly fussed over, when Pan thinks of new games for them, Belle is escorted back to Deadman's Peak where Rumplestiltskin paces in endless grids, his eyes alternatively on the stars and down the slope which Belle is forced to climb up with Felix always breathing down her neck.
She never sees Baelfire. She asks, occasionally, when she is feeling particularly brave, and she knows, though she never tells him that she was forced to watch, that Rumplestiltskin has gotten on his knees, and kissed Pan's boots, and begged to see his boy. But Pan only laughs, only sneers, only vanishes into the jungle, and listen as she might, try as hard as he can, they find no sign of Baelfire.
"He's strong," Belle whispers to the night, when she's wrapped in both her cloak and Rumplestiltskin's leather coat. "He's endured this place before. He can do it again. And he's not alone this time."
Rumplestiltskin rarely says anything. Gradually, bit by bit, he grows quieter. Smaller. More cowed. Belle begrudges every moment she is forced away from him, and despairs whenever she thinks on what Pan might be doing to him in her absence.
Occasionally, very occasionally, Belle finds herself thinking of her father. She wonders if he regrets how he let her go with only words of anger as his parting gift. She wonders if he's changed his mind and misses her and longs for her return.
She wonders if she longs for her return.
In real life, grand quests take so much more time and cost so much more in personal sacrifice than her stories ever conveyed.
But then, none of her stories had Rumplestiltskin either.
She's long since told him everything about Baelfire she can remember, has passed on a recounting of every day she spent with his son, every night they were on the road together, every nuance she read in his face and voice and silence. But still Rumplestiltskin flits near her each 'night,' hesitant and skittish until she touches him, then slow and careful as he lets her pull him close. Still he asks about her time away, holds her when she's lonely and tired, spins his own stories for her when she cannot bring herself to speak. These stories she never shares with the Lost Boys; they are too precious for that, private and close, treasures she tucks away only for herself.
Baelfire spoke of his father often, but never in obvious ways. It was all in the way he'd stare at a particular dish of shepherd's pie, the wistful yearning he couldn't hide whenever he caught sight of a father with a child, the catch to his voice when he told her about unique patterns in wool and how to shear sheep. In the year she had with him, half of it traveling, the other half seeking volunteers to accompany them through Jefferson's hat to Neverland, Belle learned that Baelfire's papa is kind, quiet, a shepherd and a spinner, and that he loves his son more than anything. She also learned, through tiny flinches and bitter remarks and the Blue Fairy's own word, that his papa is the Dark One, full of dark magic, twisted by a curse, lost to all sense of proportion, but still in love with his son in a way most people can only envy.
But here in Neverland, with Rumplestiltskin as her only real companion, Belle learns so much more about him.
She learns that he has a temper and snaps out at anyone who dares to draw too near him, his eyes scared beneath the anger, which only makes her shiver to think of what Baelfire's mother might have been like. She learns that he is smart, cunning and sly and full of hints about ways she can use her time with the Lost Boys against them—to win their affection, to dilute their loyalty, to pry information out of them, to hide away weapons they misplace. She learns that he misses spinning, his fingers constantly searching for roving, and that he longs for magic, his eyes hungry for the freedom to cast spells. She learns that he loves with everything he is, and that once he gives his love, it can never be destroyed or taken away, but only ever either grows or festers.
Most of all, she learns that Rumplestiltskin is not just a father. Not just the Dark One.
He's also a man. An ordinary man that seems nothing but extraordinary to her.
"What are you doing?" Rumplestiltskin asks, and Belle peers down from her place on a branch halfway up a tree to see him prowling closer, staring up at her with dark eyes that seem large in his hollow face.
"I'm tired of trying to sleep with that moon glaring down at me." Belle smiles and leans forward as she works to tear a bough from the trunk of her tree. "I thought we could weave together a canopy of sorts."
"And you couldn't find enough branches on the ground?" he asks caustically.
Belle chuckles and tugs harder at the stubborn bough. "Not of the right size. Did you want to give me a hand?"
"Not particularly," he says with a disdainful wave. "I don't need to sleep."
Thinking of the way he so often lets her curl up against him for warmth, of how he never moves until she's awake and ready to rise, Belle blushes, then puts all her strength into pulling at the bough to hide her sudden self-consciousness.
It's the wrong move.
The bough finally tears free and falls below to the ground—but so does Belle.
Before her heart can do more than leap in her chest toward any safe spot, Belle finds her fall arrested. And then, blinking, she realizes that it is Rumplestiltskin who's caught her. She's cradled in his arms, one arm wrapped around his shoulders, and her face is so close to his that even in Neverland's night she can see the amber gold in his eyes.
"Th-thank you," she says, heartfelt.
He drops her, steps away, arms swinging, his wide eyes blinking at her, and the moment is so charged with…something…that Belle brushes off her clothes and bends to snatch up the broken bough. "I guess, maybe it is a silly idea," she starts, but Rumplestiltskin interrupts her.
"No. No, it's…you should do it."
Belle bites her lip, urges herself to bravery, and says, "You could help me weave the branches together. If you wanted."
Hesitantly, Rumplestiltskin follows her to her pile of other branches, and they sit close together, facing each other, and begin to interlock the branches together. Belle longs to break the silence but can think of nothing casual enough to speak on, particularly with the bulk of her attention on the tiny fleeting glances of her hands against Rumplestiltskin's as they work together on the makeshift canopy.
"I finished adding to your book," Rumplestiltskin says abruptly.
Belle's so happy that the silence was broken that it takes her a moment to process what he said. As soon as it hits her, though, she gives him a wide grin. "Oh, thank you! Shall I read it tonight?"
"If you like," he says shyly. When he'd asked her about her book once, a testy inquiry mainly made, she thinks, to distract her from her questions about his past, she'd been all too happy to go through the whole thing with him. It's everything she knows about Neverland, all the information she could compile together from her long research, and Rumplestiltskin grew unusually intent as he devoured the book, first with her and then multiple times on his own. She often returns from her stints with the Lost Boys to find the book looking even more tattered and worn.
It'd taken her a bit to work up the nerve to ask him to add what he knows of this terrible place to the book, and she'd half-thought it would never happen, but the fact that he's actually written more pages for her—here, in this place where there are no other books—makes Belle's heart sing.
And that night, when they've finished hanging their canopy, when she draws Rumplestiltskin beneath its patterned shelter to sit next to her, when she opens the book to the final pages that used to be blank and sees his handwriting scrawled all across the blank spaces, she feels as giddy as if it's a whole library he's offered her rather than a handful of pages.
"You really think we'll find a way to save Bae?" Rumplestiltskin asks, so softly it is little more than a whisper of breath that caresses her cheek.
Belle's eyes flutter closed, but her voice is firm. "Yes," she says. "I know we will."
Then she leans up against his warmth, sets her finger to the page, and reads Rumplestiltskin's secrets, revealed just for her.
Jones comes to visit him, sometimes alone, sometimes with Milah. Bae turns his face away and refuses to speak to them.
The Darlings crowd around him, first with thanks and welcomes, then with accusations and blame. He's stolen so much from them—innocence and time and hope from Wendy and her brothers, and their very children from the parents. It's been so long. He can't help but know that they're long gone, died alone and missing their children and doubtless cursing the day they ever welcomed Baelfire into their midst.
Bae wishes for Papa to come for him, but only the Dark One ever does now, full of truths and perspective that Bae flinches away from.
The worst, though, comes after a visit from Pan.
"I'd let you out, my boy," the demon-child says, "but what would be the point? You're too old to play games, too jaded to let your imagination soar, and you've always been too pragmatic to be much of an asset to Neverland. My shadows are sent far and wide through the realms to drink from vast imaginations and great creative minds, but you…well, that's never been your strength. But don't worry, your father and I are finding plenty of ways to amuse ourselves. Why, he hardly misses you. He's been too busy playing with his new toy to give much thought to you at all."
"What new toy?" Bae demands.
Pan blinks. "Well, he only has it because of you."
Magic.
The word is full of venom and hatred, and in that moment, if he could, Bae would erase magic from every realm, every world, every timeline, so that it could never ruin another life again, never tear apart another family, never come between him and his papa.
But he can't. He's helpless, and when Pan vanishes, Bae is left with only himself for company.
Truly. Just himself.
The first reflection comes out of the gnarled trees backlit in scarlet, cloaked in brown homespun, hair too long, hanging over his eyes, and a ball clutched in his hands. "You could have had everything," he tells the Bae huddled in on himself, trapped in a depression in the ground, squinting against the light this apparition carries with him. "All you had to do was choose Papa over everyone else."
"Or at least thought ahead," another him says, this one clothed like the Darlings, his hair covered by a cap, his coat well-made, and a smile on his lips. "If you'd only brought some gold coins, or Papa's spinning wheel, or anything rather than just running willy-nilly into destruction. So reckless. So impulsive. So stupid."
Another him steps forward, this one edged in shadows. He's still young, but his skin is covered in scales, his eyes reptilian, his movements so fluid, nearly sinuous, that Bae can't help but shudder and draw away. This reflection of himself carries a dagger in his hand, and he doesn't have to look at it to know that the name engraved on it is Baelfire.
"There was a simpler solution there all along," the Dark One says in a sing-song voice. "After all, you know that Papa's a coward. He's always been a coward. And in a coward's hands, power becomes a weapon of intimidation. But you…well, you know the difference between good and evil. You know where the line is between black and white. You could have saved more than just the children of the Frontlands—you could have saved Papa."
"Or just left him," says another Bae, this one dressed like a well-off tradesman, spindles of thread tucked behind his belt, a spinner's callous on his finger. "You could have made your own way in the world. Let Papa deal with his own sins. Why should the child pay for the crimes of the father?"
"Better yet, you could have left him and found a way to atone for the lives he took." This reflection is armored in gold, a sword sheathed at his side, a shield on his arm, his eyes cold and grim. "Why run? Why hide in another world? Why dare to take a curse? Instead, you could have fought for the weak, protected the vulnerable, been the defender you needed as a child."
Bae curls his arms around his head. "Stop it!" he yells, a muffled sound that might as well be soundless for all the heed they give him. All around him, from every side, more Baelfires step out of the twisted forest, each one a reflection of a life he could have lived, all of them straight and upright, unbowed by Neverland's torments, unscarred by Pan's malice.
"You could have done anything else and been better off. But you aren't good enough. You're not brave, or strong, or heroic, or sacrificial, or smart enough to have saved yourself this fate. You brought this on yourself. No, more than that—you brought this on Papa. On Wendy and her family. On Belle. On those warriors and on Jefferson."
"Leave me alone!" Bae shouts.
"You're nothing!" his own voice, from a hundred, a thousand, throats, echoing all around him, and suddenly, Bae's done hiding, done cowering in a corner.
In a flash, he's on his feet, his cloak in hand as he wields it like a whip, snapping it outward. Wherever it hits, his reflections fuzz away into foggy Shadow before reforming. Bae lays out all around him, wild and controlled, his vision red with anger rather than that scarlet tint, and one by one, he scatters the pieces of himself.
The innocence of the child-him.
The evil of the Dark One-him.
The ignorance of the tradesman-him.
The courage of the knight-him.
The best parts of himself, the darkest parts, all the in between parts of himself, until there's only him, a shadow himself, a fading wisp of Baelfire.
All that's left. Alone. Powerless. Exhausted.
Nothing.
This time, when Felix leads Belle away from Deadman's Peak, he doesn't turn toward the camp where the Lost Boys live between games. Instead, he leads her through the jungle until she stands on a shoreline. The murmur of the ocean waves sounds like a lullaby, if a deceptive one. For all they promise escape, a way out of here, Belle knows that as well as sea squid and kraken, beneath the pirates that patrol the coasts, mermaids live in those waters with their more seductive cousins, the sirens.
The moment Belle turns to ask Felix why she's here, she finds Pan standing behind her instead.
"You," he says, "were not part of my original plan."
"What plan is that?" she asks while tipping her chin up.
His smile is sly and for an instant, reminds her of Rumplestiltskin's when he is feeling particularly mischievous. Only, Rumplestiltskin's eyes are always softened by a light inside him; there's nothing but darkness behind Pan's green irises.
"I am so glad Baelfire brought you," he says. "This is even more delightful than my original plan. Do you know, I never thought there'd be something that could unite both Baelfire and Rumple in a common cause. Well, not for a while yet anyway."
"They're family," she says. She doesn't like how scared she feels, or the tremor to her voice, but she keeps her eyes steady and her feet planted anyway. "Their love unites them already."
"Family." Pan scoffs. "Families are often more divided than kingdoms at war. No, no, you, my dear, are something altogether different. You allow me to play different sides in this game, and that's fun all by itself."
"I won't be your pawn!" she spits fiercely. "No one decides my fate but me!"
His eyebrows raise high even as he makes a slow clap. "Excellent. I do hope you can keep that spirit until the end. I saw how being lashed to a coward slowly drained his first wife of anything but bitterness. It'd be a shame for the same thing to happen to you."
"His…wife?"
"Why, the pirate queen of course." His look of confusion is so fake it grates. "She left the village coward behind in favor of a pirate who could give her all the adventure and globe-trotting she could ask for. They've been a staple here for, oh, longer than Baelfire has. Didn't he mention her? Milah, his mother."
Belle narrows her eyes and refuses to stoop to his bait. "Baelfire only talked about the people he loves. Not the ones who left him behind."
There's a moment during which Pan studies her so closely she feels as if he has reached out with shadowy hands, pried her breastbone open as if on hinges, and held each of her organs in his hand, turning them this way and that in the moonlight to decipher each of her secrets.
"How fun," he finally says, though his tone is more thoughtful than gloating. "Perhaps Rumple has a bit more charisma in him than I gave him credit for."
"How do you know Rumplestiltskin?" she asks as boldly as her galloping heart will allow.
"How do you know him?" he retorts. Slowly, his steps graceful, he circles her. "You latched onto him awfully quickly, and for all the times he snaps at you like the cur he is, you seem all too willing to smile and forgive. Even knowing what curse he holds, you sleep like a babe in his arms."
"We're…we're friends. Like Baelfire and I."
"Oh, I don't think the two are alike in your heart at all. In fact, I wonder…" Pan points a finger at her. "If the choice came down between the two of them, if only one could be saved…I wonder which you would choose."
Belle stares at him, unable to come up with a reply.
Pan's smile is abrupt and sharp-edged like a shark's. "But that's a different game entirely. For now, let's play a game I like to call…Motivation. I'll be the spark, you'll be the flame, and together, we'll see if we can't get Baelfire where he needs to go, shall we?"
Bae doesn't even notice, at first, when the Shadows, back to their true forms, come and lift him up by his arms. His hand tightens at his side, pressing close the rounded edge of his hollow coconut, tied to his belt, but other than that, he doesn't resist as they drag him out of Dark Hollow and back into the jungle.
His eyes refuse to process the white-tinged darkness. Every time he blinks, he sees an afterimage of scarlet and ebony. But gradually, bit by bit, as he peers out at his surroundings through slitted eyes, the bright night resolves into close-knit trees, wide leaves, tangled undergrowth, sharp-thorned bushes. Bae sags heavier in his captors' grip, lets his cloak hang over his free hand, swipes out to catch hold of some of those thorns.
Only after none of the thorns puncture the cloak to pierce his flesh through with dreamshade does he breathe a quiet sigh of relief.
"Ah, Baelfire, back so soon?"
Slowly, a bit at a time, Bae pulls himself free of the Shadows' hold and moves to stand on his own two feet. He's not surprised to see Pan standing, arms crossed, lounging back against a tree, but he is surprised to see Belle standing near him.
She's alive! She's here!
He hasn't destroyed her yet.
"Belle!" he calls before he reminds himself that a Shadow can take any form.
Her eyes fill with tears as she sees him. "Baelfire!" she says, starting toward him. "Oh, you're all right! We've been so worried. We didn't know where you were!"
A Shadow swoops between them before Bae can reach her, and they both come up short. But through the diaphanous ink of the Shadow, Bae can tell that Belle's eyes are locked on him, her face caught between relief and happiness, and he can only think that with the rest of their company hidden in trees, her 'we' must mean her and Papa.
"Is he…is he okay?" he means to ask, but Pan cuts them off.
"What a nauseatingly sentimental greeting," he says, all boredom and nonchalance. Bae doesn't trust it for a second. "Mothers. They always bring out the saccharine weakness in a boy. Even the Lost Boys have been getting soft. Must be all those little kindnesses you give them as you tuck them in at night."
Bae feels his brow wrinkle. "You've been working with Pan?"
"Not by choice," Belle says, a bite to her tone that he remembers from encounters with too-curious-for-their-own-good travelers on the road. Belle was always better at sending them on their way than he was.
"Everyone works for me, laddie," Pan says with a wink. "And the Lost Boys have been working hard. They deserved a break. Temporarily. But we don't need any grown-ups here, particularly those who think they can thumb their noses at me and get away with it."
"I haven't—"
"I'm talking about Milah, of course."
Bae's face turns to stone. For some reason he doesn't examine too closely, he can't look at Belle.
"She and her pirate consort have been causing a bit of trouble. They seem to think that there's someone on the island who can give them an escape from this place. But their days are numbered, and I mean to send them a reminder that their time's nearly up." Pan makes a quick gesture with his hand and a map unfurls. Bae recognizes the basic shape of the island, and the dark mark that symbolizes Skull Rock, but most of his attention is drawn to the blinking icon of a ship, moving slowly through the waters.
"What am I supposed to do with that?" Bae asks, refusing to take the map.
Pan raises an eyebrow. "Well, she's your mother, Baelfire. If anyone can talk some sense into her, it's you. Unless…" He draws back with a smirk hidden in the corners of his mouth. "Don't tell me you want her dead. You, of all people, surely cannot think that the punishment for someone who abandons family should be death. Do you?"
Startling at the feel of a hand sliding into his, Bae sees Belle out of the corner of his eye. She's sidled around the Shadow and now stands just beside him. Bae resists the urge to hug her, to let his weight sink into her, to wait for her to find them a way out of this.
"I don't want to see her," he says, his hand tightening around Belle's.
"You've been allowed to dilly-dally around for quite a while now," Pan says with a sternness that seems new. "I've been lenient, haven't I? Let you have your trip to your old world. Given you a few playthings in the form of those soldiers you brought. But you're here now, Lost Boy, and it's time for you to earn your keep. Time to play a game."
"I'm done playing your games!" Bae snaps.
"Okay." Pan smiles, and the map vanishes. "So you won't hunt down Milah and her pirate for me. Then I guess Belle will have to do."
Belle's head whips around to face him. Bae grits his teeth so hard he thinks they might actually chip.
"What do you mean?" he asks—and knows that he's falling into Pan's trap.
"Well, if the Lost Boys aren't allowed to play with the pirate queen, then I'm going to have to give them something else. And they've been getting a little too cozy with this pretend mother here. So I'll give her to them. There's all sorts of games we can play with a girl as the prize."
Nausea nearly chokes him. "No!" he blurts. He pulls Belle closer through their joined hands, shoving her back behind him despite how useless it is. The Shadow is hovering over their heads and can grab her quicker than Bae can fight back. "Not Belle!"
"Bae, don't worry about me," Belle tries to say.
Pan drifts nearer, and Bae recognizes the smile he's wearing now—it's the smile he always wears when he's winning a game Bae didn't even know they were playing. It's a victor's smile.
"Then bring me someone else to terrorize."
"I'll do it," he hears himself saying. He sounds resolute. Unflinching. Determined. He sounds like he's telling the truth.
Even Pan seems to believe him.
"You'll do what?" he asks, but he's already smirking in victory.
"I'll bring Milah to you. Even if Jones tries to stand in my way, I'll get her here."
"Excellent." Pan rubs his hands together. "Then let the games begin."
"No!" Belle grabs Bae's shoulders and pulls him to face her. "Don't let him use you like this, Baelfire. It's not worth it. Your papa and I have a plan—"
Bae engulfs her in the tightest hug he's ever given her, smothering her before she can speak any secrets in front of Pan. "I'll protect you," he whispers, and maybe it's a cover, but this is the truth. "I'm going to get you back home."
"Rumple's waiting for you," she breathes in his ear.
He's not sure he believes her, but it doesn't matter. Pan's yanking him away from her, the Shadow's pulling Belle high up into the air. Their hands meet, clasp, hold, stretch—then fall away.
But it doesn't matter. Bae's grown adept at sleight-of-hand, has long since learned the art of distracting with one hand while tricking with the other, and before they were separated, he slipped the tiny pouch of leftover pixie dust into her other hand. The same hand she's keeping hidden beneath the fold of her cloak.
And at his side, hanging from his belt, still rests the hollow coconut, the same one he emptied of pixie dust while huddled in on himself in Dark Hollow. The same one that now holds very different cargo, corralled into its prison by the wild but calculating strikes of a cloak made into a whip. It's cold where it hangs, nearly frigid, but Bae welcomes the chill.
Turning from his last sight of Belle, Bae faces Pan down and smiles his own victor's smile.