Chapter 9: A Task
Obtaining the Wonderland mushrooms is easy, with Emma's pouch of gold and silver, though it takes them several late-night trips to a few different witches and sorcerers before finding one with a large enough supply. Neal treasures every second with Emma—the way their hands reach for each other and hold on rather than just letting go and falling away; the laughter she makes it so easy for him to find; the way every time he looks for her, she's still there—but hates the horses they have to ride in order to make it to their destinations and back before sunrise. He and Belle rode only a few times to meet and interview volunteers for their suicide mission to Neverland, and the practice hasn't grown any easier in the intervening years.
"All right," Emma tells him one night, when they have nowhere to go and nothing to do. She stands over Neal, who sits on the edge of their fountain, and sets her hands on her hips. "I have everything ready. Bags are packed, the stableboy is bribed, and I have excuses in place."
"Are you sure?" Neal asks. He wants to look at her, to drink her in, but his shame has him staring down at the fountain's rippling water. "You said the beanstalk is a three-day journey from here. No way for you to get back before sunrise."
He sounds more bitter than he means to.
It's not that he cares what secret Emma is hiding. Not really. Not usually.
It's just that…he'd rather pick a fight than admit that he's still terrified to think of having a way back to Neverland.
And somehow, like the miracle she is—like the mirage he sometimes wakes gasping from nightmares thinking she is—she seems to understand what he's doing.
"Neal," she says as she sits beside him. With his front curved toward the water, she just drapes herself over his back, hooks her chin over his shoulder, lets her quiet words whisper over his ear. "Only when you're ready. Okay?"
"Okay." He grabs hold of her hand and presses it to his lips. It still amazes him that she lets him touch her like this—that he wants to and that she seems to want him to and that together they are happy—but he's growing more comfortable every day, hesitates less before reaching, holds on longer before letting go. "When I'm ready."
"And in the meantime," Emma says, her tone so teasing that Neal shivers with anticipation and turns too quickly toward her, "I'm sure we can find other ways to occupy ourselves."
"Oh, yeah?" Neal smiles at her. "Stargazing?"
"Something like that." Her smile is so beautiful, can anyone blame him for kissing her and for not stopping until the sun threatens to invade their tiny courtyard?
This time, Emma barely tears herself away, and Neal tries not to imagine a world where he gets to keep this future rather than the one beckoning him to Neverland.
In the end, it's not any one thing that makes Neal decide the time has come. One morning, he realizes he can't even look at himself in the mirror. Another day, he realizes that it's been months since he's seen his papa, which means it's been a little longer since he's seen Belle. And then he hears the rumors that there's a Lord Maurice offering money for news of his daughter—apparently, Queen Snow sent him word that Belle might be coming through with the pixie dust Neal smuggled her.
Neal waits another couple weeks, but King David tells him there's been no news of a kind noblewoman falling back into this land—she hasn't shown up in the woods, or in a hamlet, or on a boat, or anywhere—and he knows that he can't be a coward any longer.
"I'm ready," he tells Emma as soon as she slips through his door that night. He's prepared for her smile, but not for the way it disappears so suddenly, or for the way she throws herself into his arms and clings harder than she ever has before.
"Tomorrow night," she whispers. "Tomorrow, we'll go."
"You and me, right?" he asks.
"Yeah. You and me."
But that's not the way it ends up going. When Neal slips away to the stables, carrying a pack of clothes, blankets, a couple stolen knives, and that strip of fabric from his papa's robe, retrieved from a Neverland beach, he doesn't find Emma alone in the stables. The hush of furious whispers alerts him before he can adjust to the torchlight, so he ghosts silently around the stalls and finds Emma bristling at a dark-haired man who's rolling his eyes in response.
"Your 'plan' never would have worked, Emma!" he says. "You think your parents would really believe that you were holed up learning how to work with wood?"
"Yeah? And what's your plan? You can't possibly think Jiminy is going to lie for us?"
"There a problem?" Neal says, stepping into the light. Maybe Emma doesn't want this man with blue eyes and dark stubble to know about Neal, but he's not about to hide in the shadows anymore. He's done doing that.
"Neal." Emma actually looks relieved to see him, and he feels his heart warm when she crosses immediately to his side. "You made it."
"So did you. And so did…who is this, exactly?"
The man smiles at him, a friendly sort of smile that still comes off as incredibly neutral. "I'm Pinocchio. And you must be Neal. Emma's told me so much about you."
"Yeah, right." Emma rolls her eyes. "You followed me, you annoying busybody, and figured out the rest all on your own."
"Well, you wanted me to lie for you—for weeks!" Pinocchio's easy manner falls away beneath the force of something that might be trepidation but looks much more like fear. "You know I'm not allowed to do that."
Beside him, Emma's stiff shoulders sag. "You're right. I'm sorry, Pinocchio. I shouldn't have asked. But you still can't come with us."
Neal's throat tightens. Emma's talked about Pinocchio far too much, in his opinion—though less in the weeks since they first kissed—but the idea of him coming along with them terrifies him.
He only gets to spend time with Emma when they're alone. She never stays, never settles in, never holds his hand, when there might be others around.
"Then I'm going straight to your parents and telling them," Pinocchio says.
"Pinocchio!" Emma cries exasperatedly, but Neal darts forward, his pack falling to the straw-covered floor, and heaves the taller man up against the side of a stall. The horse inside whickers and snorts, and Pinocchio looks back warily.
"What are you doing, man?" he asks, his tone conciliatory.
"I think it's going to be hard for you to go around carrying tales to anyone if you're tied up and trapped inside a well," Neal says. He's not proud of this voice, this manner, the remnants of Baelfire rising from the depths Neal's buried him in, letting out the ruthlessness Pan taught him. But if Pinocchio's going to endanger Emma… "Didn't Emma say something about you getting swallowed by a big fish once? A well can't be any worse."
"Neal, it's okay." Emma's soft hand on his arm pulls him back. "It's all right. He's annoying, but he's harmless. It's okay. You can let go."
The instant he backs up, his hands falling to his sides, Baelfire fades away. And then it's just Neal, not quite able to meet Emma's wide eyes—until she weaves their fingers together and offers him a slight smile.
"Let me come," Pinocchio says. "I left a note saying I was headed for the craftsman festival, and I told Jiminy that I hoped you wouldn't follow me. When he tells your parents that, they'll immediately assume that you're trying to keep me out of trouble yet again."
"That festival is a four-day trip," Emma muses.
"In the opposite direction," Pinocchio finishes for her. "Come on, Emma, it's a better plan than yours. Besides, you're both going to need someone to watch your backs while you're haggling with a giant."
Neal exchanges a look with Emma, and he knows that she's going to agree. Part of him mourns the thought of uninterrupted days spending time just with her, but the shrewder part of him recognizes that more resources to utilize in a tight spot is never a bad thing.
"Fine," Emma says ungraciously. "But you have to do whatever I say."
Pinocchio laughs. "Don't I always?"
If Neal was worried about Emma's relationship with Pinocchio, he shouldn't have been. The two bicker like siblings, argue like rivals, and take each other for granted in the way only family can.
"You didn't mention Pinocchio was your brother," Neal mutters to Emma on their first night of camping down around a fire from which Pinocchio keeps a healthy distance.
"He's not!" Emma protests. "We just…I don't know, we grew up together. For a while, we were the only kids in the palace. But he's not my brother. I'm not claiming him for life."
"You don't have to," Pinocchio says teasingly. "Papa's already gotten your parents to agree to give me his job after he retires, so you're stuck with me like it or not."
"Yeah, well, things may change when I'm in—" Emma suddenly stops, her eyes narrowed, before she looks to Neal and, almost awkwardly, says, "When I have anything to say about it. That's what I meant. I'm obviously not going to be in charge of everything, that would be ridiculous."
Neal looks up from his perusal of the fire, distracted, and frowns at her. "What? I don't know. You seem like a natural leader."
Better than Baelfire, anyway, who only managed to keep his team hidden in trees just long enough to let them retreat decades too late.
"Hey," Emma murmurs. "You okay?"
"Sure, yeah."
The silence is stilted, broken only by the crackling of the flames and the stomp of one of the horse's hoofs, but Neal doesn't know how to fix it. Emma's watching him, worried and unsure, but Pinocchio's too close and Neal can't tear his mind free of all things Neverland.
"How about a story?" Pinocchio asks suddenly. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm not tired enough to sleep yet. Papa used to always tell me stories until I got old enough to start making up my own. Stories," he adds hastily, "not lies."
"A bedtime story," Emma repeats scornfully. "Really?"
"It'll take our mind off other things," Pinocchio says. He stares at Emma, the fire between them, until Emma concedes.
"All right," she says. "Fine. A story. But I'm telling it. You always make them too convoluted."
"I'm choosing to ignore that lie." Pinocchio turns to Neal. "What story do you want, Neal?"
"Uh…" Neal remembers the tales Belle used to tell him, her lilting voice chasing away the shadows in the darkness of their shared rooms. "One where the heroes win."
"I know just the one," Emma says.
It all began, she says in a voice Neal can't help but latch onto as a way of evading his own nightmares, with a miller's daughter…
And so, on the first night of their journey, Emma—with frequent interruptions, clarifications, and additions made by Pinocchio—relates the story of the Evil Queen. About her mother who grew up poor and hated the very thought of kneeling, until she was trapped in a tower and told that unless she made good on her boast of transforming her father's flour into gold before sunrise, she'd be executed.
"She wished for a fairy," Emma says, "but not just any fairy. Cora hated fairies—she'd never have trusted them. But she'd heard word of a dark fairy who despised the forces of good. So she called for her, and some magic inside Cora sent the cry out into the ether."
"Or else Maleficent was already there, waiting, ready to seize the opportunity," Pinocchio says.
Emma scowls at him. "Shut up. I'm telling the story. Anyway, yes, as Pinocchio already gave away, Maleficent shimmered into being in the tower cell and told Cora that she could teach her how to shapeshift not only the things around her, but also herself."
"Maleficent's more recognizable in her dragon form than her fairy wings," Pinocchio said to Neal.
"Excuse me," Emma snapped. "Telling a story here."
"Of course, go ahead." Pinocchio waves a hand magnanimously.
"Anyway, Cora learned enough magic to save herself from the greedy king and earn the hand of his son. But in secret, she apprenticed herself to Maleficent. No one knows exactly what happened between the two after Cora learned she was pregnant—"
Pinocchio leans forward. "Maleficent wanted a sisterhood, an order of dark fairies to balance out the light fairies, but Cora just wanted to rule, and the best way to do that was to produce an heir. Which meant she betrayed Maleficent's plans, and the dark fairy didn't take that—"
"Seriously?" Emma glares at Pinocchio. "Would you let me get through even a bit of this story without trying to take over?"
"Well, tell it better," he advises, and Emma throws a twig at him, which he ducks, laughing.
"Anyway," Emma says, turning back to Neal, "Cora gave birth to a daughter she named Regina, who grew up in a terrible household with a mother who saw her only as a ticket to greater things and tried to control every facet of her life. When Regina fell in love with a stableboy, Cora couldn't have that, so she ripped out the heart of the stableboy and crushed it in front of Regina, all so her daughter would be forced to marry a king."
"Wait." Pinocchio looks serious this time as he leans forward to interrupt. "I didn't know this part. When did you learn about this?"
Emma gives him a level stare. "While I was on assignment. At the summer palace. You know."
"Oh." Narrowing his eyes, Pinocchio says, "I didn't know you talked to her."
"She doesn't have anyone else to talk to."
"Guys?" Neal raises his hand a bit. "If you need me to leave you alone for a bit to talk about more secrets you don't want to tell me, I can just—"
"No." Emma loops her hand around his elbow and presses her side against him. "No, sorry, I just… I was telling you a story, right? Where was I?"
"Regina is probably about to kill her mother in revenge for losing the love of her life," Neal says. "She is the Evil Queen, right?"
"She was," Emma says slowly. "But…well, yeah, she did kind of lose it for a while. Desperate to escape her mother's control, Regina stole her mother's spellbook, which was originally Maleficent's, and called on the dark fairy. Maleficent came and saw a new opportunity to start that sisterhood Pinocchio claims she wanted, and she agreed to teach Regina dark magic. But magic, especially the dark kind, is addictive and destructive and—"
"Believe me," Neal says, a shudder running through him that he knows she can feel. "I know exactly how damaging dark magic can be."
Both Emma and Pinocchio look at him, but Neal has eyes only for Emma. She offers him the suggestion of a smile as she squeezes his hand. Which is distracting enough to pull him free from thoughts of his papa and the dagger and the Dark One.
"Well, Regina went down an incredibly dark path, and she blamed my—Queen Snow White for telling Cora about her stableboy in the first place, so she declared war on her and hunted her and tried to kill her—"
"And killed a lot of other people along the way," Pinocchio says.
"But eventually, together, Snow White and Prince David were able to build an army of their own, and with the help of the good fairies, they defeated Regina and locked her up so she couldn't hurt anyone else ever again."
"You skipped the whole part with the poisoned apple and glass coffin and," Pinocchio's smile widens gleefully, "True Love's Kiss."
"Ugh." Emma rolls her eyes and turns her face into Neal's shoulder. "Everybody knows that part."
But Neal doesn't, not more than vaguely. Years ago, when he was with Belle, she probably told him the story, but back then, Baelfire was entirely fixated on Neverland. And now…now he's entirely focused on not thinking of Neverland—or his papa and the way he let his hand go and the fact that Bae abandoned Belle there—and too caught up in Emma and her closeness, her warmth, the way she sets her bedroll right next to his and rolls close in her sleep and nuzzles her nose into his neck and smiles at him in the morning, so bright and beautiful in the sunlight he's so rarely been allowed to see her under before… He has too many better things around to worry too much about an old story concerning the king and queen who have helped him, yes, and been kind, but that are nothing at all compared to Emma.
The next night, though, Emma lets Pinocchio tell the story—with plenty of her own interruptions, mainly telling him to hurry up and skip all the boring parts—and for all she rolls her eyes and huffs and grimaces during the part about the legendary kiss, she leans her weight wholly against Neal, and he doesn't think he imagines the gleam in her eyes as she steals glances at his lips.
The third night, Emma and Pinocchio tell funny stories about pranks they pulled together, adventures they wandered off to, and though it tugs at something lonely and deep inside Neal—Baelfire had adventures too, once upon a time, but his were always with his papa—he can't help but smile to see this new facet of Emma revealed. In these stories, more of his Emma is revealed: a girl raised to idealism and heroism, chafing at the restraints placed on her due to love and protection, seeking her own way, as stubborn as she is altruistic.
She shines so brightly. No wonder, Neal thinks, she slips away at sunlight. With her brilliance combined with the sun's, he'd be blinded.
And then they crest a hill and see the beanstalk growing up from the ground, reaching so high up it disappears into the sky. Up there, Neal knows, there is a giant. There are magic beans.
Neverland awaits.
It's his fate, and it is inescapable.
Rumplestiltskin stands, immobile, his eyes fixed on the tree ahead of him. It's hardly changed at all in the years since he last stood here and stared at this exact same tree. He was scared then, too, so terrified that he actually admitted it to his father, though he'd expected to be mocked or rebuked. Instead, his papa had comforted him, and then climbed up into those branches himself, as if he could be his boy's hero.
What would have happened, Rumplestiltskin cannot help but wonder, if I had just been brave and clambered up myself?
He wouldn't have made a deal with the Shadow. He would have come down with pixie dust, and Papa would have flown—and they could have been happy.
If only he'd been brave.
"I call it my Thinking Tree," Pan says from behind him.
Rumplestiltskin would flinch if he were allowed to move.
"I've always made my best decisions here."
The echoes of a child's frightened screams, desperate pleas, echo through Rumplestiltskin's mind. His eyes fall, so naturally, on the spot of ground where he dropped his one toy.
It's still there. A small doll, made of straw, dressed in a blue jacket.
Peter Pan.
The original. The first. Or was it Rumplestiltskin who was the real doll, the boy-child's life-in-proxy that his papa had lived vicariously through before Rumplestiltskin's timidity and cowardice disappointed him too much and he found a way to be a boy again himself?
"Ah, yes, I remember this." Pan bends and scoops up the doll as carelessly as if he hasn't trampled over it a thousand times in the centuries since it fell to lay there. "I made this for you, you know. You can't pretend I never gave you anything, Rumple."
"Oh, you gave me plenty," Rumplestiltskin snarls, thinking of the legacy of a coward, of a fatherless boy abandoned, of a man who only makes selfish decisions. They're grafted into his very blood, branded onto his bones, and for all the desperate acts of insanity Rumplestiltskin has committed in his desire to escape the shadow of his father…he has only ever fallen further into line with him.
"You know, you're not a lot of fun to be around." Pan sighs and acts as if Rumplestiltskin has disappointed him. Like that's anything new for Rumplestiltskin. "Maybe this is why Baelfire keeps finding ways to be apart from you."
"He came back for me," Rumplestiltskin reminds himself. Usually, Belle would do that for him, but she's not here. She can't be here—Rumplestiltskin will beg, on his knees, if need be, for Pan to never bring Belle here to show her the depths of Rumplestiltskin's shame. So he has to remind himself. "My son came to save me."
"Did he?" Pan arches his brows. "Well, maybe so. We both know Baelfire has a hero's streak in him a mile wide. Must have gotten that from his mother. Or does it just skip a generation?"
Rumplestiltskin strains, uselessly, against the dagger's command. "You're no hero."
"Oh, but I am. I saved Neverland!" Pan stretches his arms out wide as if to embrace the whole of this dreamworld. "It was dying. Wasting away. Starved on just the dreams of boys who grew up too soon and forgot the place where they could fly. If I hadn't agreed to stay—hadn't agreed to tie my lifeblood to this world—it would have become nothing more than a husk. A shadow, if you will."
"So now you power it through the imagination of boys you steal from their homes."
"Oh, it takes much more than that." Pan leans back against the Thinking Tree, as companionable as if he and Rumplestiltskin are friends, whiling the hours away together. "Between you and me, laddie, boys aren't quite as imaginative as they used to be. The Lost Boys are a decent start, maybe, but the Shadows are still having to go out and mine the dreams of boys from a hundred worlds for imagination enough to power this place."
"I could have told them you wouldn't be enough," Rumplestiltskin says with bite he hopes would still be there even if the dagger weren't between them. "For all your grand dreams and bold wishes, you never had the imagination necessary to see you out of squalor."
Pan laughs, just like he always does when Rumplestiltskin tries to fight back. "It's not the imagination that I'm lacking, laddie. It's the belief."
There's a truth there, a secret hidden in that open statement, but before Rumplestiltskin can puzzle it through, Pan pushes himself off the tree and strolls too near him. The dagger's in his hand.
Dread pools low in Rumplestiltskin's stomach. Pan's already made him throw his boy away. The only other person here that Rumplestiltskin cares about…
She's back on Deadman's Peak. Alone. So helpless. So vulnerable.
And Pan knows that she kissed him. Rumplestiltskin can still hardly believe it, but Pan was there too quick, almost immediately, and the look in his eyes is that of someone both surprised and elated.
"Rumple, my boy," Pan says, "I think you played your parts too well. Baelfire must hate you now—long overdue, if you ask me—and that pretty princess on the hill…well, she thinks she's in loooovvvee with you." His laugh is so sneering that Rumplestiltskin squeezes his eyes closed against it.
Does she think she loves him?
Does she actually love him?
Because he loves her. He doesn't know exactly when it happened. Or how. But…she talks about Bae like he's hers. She looks at Rumplestiltskin as if he's worthy of her attention. As if there isn't blood on his hands. She draws close and cuddles closer and her stories are full of hope and possibility, and she's never, not even once, acted like she's afraid of him even though she knows about the dagger and the curse. She's so good, and so kind, and those two things so rarely go hand in hand that she seems something like a miracle to him.
And she kissed him.
Didn't she? He couldn't have imagined that. He wouldn't have. How could he have dared to imagine such a startling, wondrous possibility?
"You played the part of the power-hungry puppet perfectly for Bae." Pan strikes a pose, one hand pointing to his opposite elbow, the other swirling toward the sky. "The Dark One. The cowed spinner intent on being a bully in order to ensure he's never bullied again himself. Baelfire believes it, I saw that. It's why he let that portal-jumper take him away from you. He's given up on you."
Has he?
Why shouldn't he?
No. No, Rumplestiltskin hopes he has. If Bae hates him, if Bae has given him up, then that means he'll stay far away from Neverland. And that's for the best—even if it means Rumplestiltskin never gets to lay eyes on his beautiful boy again.
"And for the Lady, why, you played the part of the beaten prisoner, the abused survivor, so well that she pities you. Her hero's heart means she won't stop until she's 'saved' you. As if the Dark One needs saving. As if you want saving."
She is kind. And she told him herself that she longed to be a hero. Is that what he is to her? A quest? A noble task? Something to achieve and help only to be relegated to her past when the next big journey comes along?
It's still more than he deserves, of course, he knows that, but…but it hurts anyway.
"But the part you played best," Pan continues, voice dropping, eyes narrowing, "is that of a sane man with a plan. Unfortunately, we both know that's not what you are."
"Oh, I have a plan all right," Rumplestiltskin says with as much venom as he can manage. "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to tear this whole world down around you—"
"Shut up." The words aren't cruel or angry. They're simply stated. Evenly. Neutrally.
It doesn't matter.
Rumplestiltskin can't speak a single word.
"You have to do everything I tell you to," Pan says. Like Rumplestiltskin doesn't know that. Like his very soul doesn't chafe against it. "And when Felix held this little knife, he told you to pay attention. Didn't he? Just like, when I held it, I told you not to be dull. It's amazing, what those commands can force on a man who's lost every shred of sanity."
"What are you talking about?"
"You were trapped in a world where there's no magic. No power. Nothing to help along your immortality. You were sick, starving, freezing—but you didn't die. Oh, no, you lived. You threw yourself off a high window and still lived. You were kept in a box without food, surrounded by squid ink, for centuries, but you didn't die. You were locked in a cage in Echo Cave, again without food, for long years more, and still you survived. You're immortal…but you're not impervious."
"Stop." Rumplestiltskin wants to back away. He wants to run. He wants to set this entire jungle on fire and sew Pan's mouth shut and rip out his tongue and stop up his own ears.
But all he can do is listen.
"You lost your mind, laddie. I watched it happen. It leaked out of you, bit by bit, until you were laughing at voices no one else could hear and ranting to stone walls. Being free of your cage and the squid ink helped some, of course—jolted you back to awareness of yourself. But Neverland is just another cage for you, even if the door isn't locked, and you would have slipped again if not for the dagger's control."
"Shut up!" Rumplestiltskin snaps.
"Ah, laddie, you can't still think I don't care for you? Not when me holding this dagger is the only thing keeping you together. Don't you see, son? I'm saving you. I am your hero, the only one you'll ever get."
And there's a gleam in his eyes. A twist of triumph. A spark of zeal.
"You're lying," Rumplestiltskin says dully. "You're trying to twist everything. Trying to mess with my mind."
"Oh, I think your mind is messed up enough." Pan places his free hand on Rumplestiltskin's shoulder, and Rumplestiltskin tries to believe that if he could move, he'd shrug it aside. Except…it's so warm. And gentle. A father's hand. "Laddie, believe me—I'm doing all this for you."
"Sending Bae away? Making him hate me? How could—"
"You love him, Rumple. But being around you…that's like being around poison. You would have destroyed him. You know it. I know it. So I saved him for you."
"Don't think for a second that I believe you ever cared for me—"
"But of course I do. Why do you think I called myself Peter Pan?"
Even in the grips of his immobility, Rumplestiltskin is shaking.
"I never forgot about you," Malcolm says. "But you're slipping again. And what kind of father would I be if I let you go mad and destroy the only other thing you care about?"
Ice pricks slivers through his bones, like tiny knives slipping under his fingernails and through his eyes to cast hooks over every vulnerable spot in his body.
Belle.
"I can't let you hurt her again," Pan says.
Rumplestiltskin can't think past that single word.
"What do you mean: again?" he asks, and he sounds like a helpless spinner. "I didn't—I would never hurt—"
"Ah, laddie." Pan shakes his head, his expression so downcast, his hand still so warm on Rumplestiltskin's shoulder. "You're losing it. You can't even see reality anymore, can you? Tell me, what do you think Belle was doing when you kissed her?"
"I didn't…"
She kissed him. Hadn't she?
Or did he…? Did he lean in first? Did she try to scoot away? When she said his name, was she warning him away? It was raining. Maybe he didn't hear what he thought he did.
And really, what's more believable? That a woman as amazing and beautiful as Belle would deign to love him? Or that he wished her—willing and kind and understanding—into being for his own selfish comfort?
"Don't worry, son," Pan says. "I'm going to take care of you."
"No!" Rumplestiltskin blurts when the dagger is raised between them. "Please, Papa, don't—"
"Remember," Pan commands.
And Rumplestiltskin disappears beneath the deluge of every memory he's ever accumulated in his life. Every torment, every tragedy, every tiny moment of annoyance—all like new hammering down on him in an avalanche. Every instant of joy, every passing hope, every resulting disappointment—all washing him away as if he is nothing but dust. The endless hurts and scrapes and bruises and aching hunger, the shock of his ankle crushed into uselessness—all of it, everything, a too-long lifetime, all at once.
If his screams eventually stop, it is only because his voice gives out.
Maybe it's because Neal's been listening to stories for three nights—or, really, for all his life—but he can't help but think of their ascent up to a whole new land like some kind of tale. The trek is as much of an ordeal as any questing adventure he's heard, taking him and Emma hours and hours while Pinocchio waits below, not without protest. They have to tie themselves upright and doze for a few hours, letting their arms and legs rest, before they finally make it to the top.
There, the place is desolate. It doesn't look like anyone could possibly still live there, and for all Neal doesn't want a way back to Neverland, his heart quells at the thought that he doesn't even have the option.
In the beginning, stumbling over the skeleton still holding onto the sword with its poison fatal to all giants, Neal thinks this quest is an adventure story. He should be a knight, and Emma the hero, ready to take up the weapon so conveniently at hand and use it at just the right moment to vanquish the monster and win their reward.
But even as the part of Baelfire still trapped in Neverland demands that he pick up the magical weapon, the part of him that remembers a spinner's hovel, and Belle's kindness, and the look in Emma's eyes when he threatened Pinocchio all combine to make him look up at Emma and say, "It's his home we're invading. And we're here to make a trade, right?"
"Right," Emma says after a long hesitation. So, together, they leave the sword where it is, and he draws her away from a tripwire just in time to avoid tripping it and letting the cage swinging over their heads come crashing down around them.
"So he might not want visitors," Neal quips.
"We'll have to charm him," Emma agrees with a smile, and they continue on, carefully searching for traps before each step.
"We could have been thieves," Neal muses. "Your knowledge, my cunning; your charm, my distractions—we'd make quite the team."
"I think we already make quite the team," she says, and takes his hand.
Neal holds on as tightly as he dares. In fact, he holds on even tighter a moment later, when the ground shakes beneath the tread of an approaching giant and he tries to pull Emma back behind him. Not that she goes. Not that he was really expecting her to.
He's all set to hide, half of him calculating the quickest path back to that magical sword, when Emma steps out into the middle of the room and calls for the giant's attention, waving her arms wildly.
"Emma!" he hisses.
"What? If we want to make a deal, we're going to need to introduce ourselves."
And that's when Neal realizes that this isn't an adventure story. It's the type of tale that Belle used to tell him, the sort where the humblest, most ordinary of people can become the hero simply by being clever or kind or going out of their way to help someone.
Not that the giant starts out to make things easy. But by the time Emma's promised him a way of not being alone, and Neal's recovered from being grabbed in a sweaty hand and nearly squished to death, Anton and Emma seem well on their way to being friends. Anton even turns to include Neal in his general well wishes, and Neal shakes off the last of his fear—it's not like this is his first or last close call—and hands over the bag of Wonderland mushrooms.
"I'm just really sorry I couldn't give you a bean that actually works," Anton says, sounding sincere.
Neal freezes. Emma looks up from the bean Anton had pulled from his own necklace to give them. "What do you mean?" she asks.
"Well, it's all withered up. It's just a petrified husk, really. If you were looking for a way into another world, it's… Well, I'm afraid there aren't any left."
Neal should feel relieved. He doesn't know why he doesn't. The only thing he knows is that, when he locks eyes with Emma, neither one of them are going to give up.
"Why do I have to go with the giant?" Pinocchio demands.
"Because you're the one we didn't invite along in the first place," Emma retorts. "Come on, Pinocchio, he's not used to our land and I promised him he'd be safe. Neal and I will head to Lake Nostos and then we'll meet you back home, okay?"
"You wouldn't have even thought about Lake Nostos if it weren't for me," Pinocchio says. Which is true. Neal had never even heard of it until Pinocchio mentioned the legends about how its waters could bring back what was lost.
Emma had groaned and said she should have thought of it, but then a moment later, she was making new plans. Neal can hardly tear his eyes off her. It's been so long since he's felt so cared for.
"Maybe I should go on my own," he offers. He doesn't want to—he never wants to leave Emma—but it seems like it might be the right thing to do. After all, Pinocchio looks genuinely worried, not teasing like he's just trying to give Emma a hard time. "I could meet up with you as soon as the lake restores the bean."
"No!" Emma cries. "I'm going with you. Pinocchio, you promised you'd do whatever I said."
"Emma—"
"If you don't, I'm going to tell your father that you want to be a storyteller instead of a craftsman."
Pinocchio gapes at her, speechless for the first time Neal's known him.
"I will," Emma says, her tone resolute.
"You can't," he says quietly. "It would break his heart."
Emma wavers for only a second before her expression firms. "Then you'd better do what I say. Take Anton back home. If you get done early, you can come meet up with us."
"Yeah, sure," Pinocchio scoffs. "Like your parents are going to let me go any time soon."
Emma only shrugs.
"Fine," Pinocchio gives in, though with little grace. "But this is the last time you get to use that threat. I never would have told you if I thought you'd blackmail me with it."
Even in the dark, Neal can read the remorse slowly filtering in through Emma's eyes. "I'm sorry," she says. "But this is important, Pinocchio. You know that, right?"
"I know you're risking everything. Have you even told him the truth about who you are?"
Neal looks away. He's not an idiot, not that it takes exceptional intelligence to be able to tell that Emma doesn't want him to know much about her. So far, he's been fine with that. There's certainly more than enough things about his life that he doesn't want to tell her, and anyway, she's always happy to see him. She likes holding his hand and she kisses him back when he leans into her and she cares if he lives or dies, and that's enough.
That's everything.
He doesn't have to know who or what she is. He loves her—and nothing can change that.
Thankfully, Anton and Pinocchio take the horses with them. Neal and Emma set off on foot, Emma sure that it will only take them a day, two at most, to reach the lake.
"Someone I know once went there," she tells him. "A bit of the water was enough to break the spell of Midas's touch for a knight who'd been turned to gold."
"I'm surprised there's any lakewater left if it's that useful," Neal says.
"Oh. Well, there…there was a siren guarding it. Da—well, the person I know, he actually had to kill her in order to get the water. And that was a while ago."
"How long ago?"
"Before I was born," she says shortly.
"So…there might not be a lake anymore. And if the siren is what made it magical, it might not—"
"The siren is not what made it magical. Sirens are drawn to places of magic, they feed off of them, but they don't make them. But…they do…kind of cultivate them."
"So…the lake might be dried up."
"Maybe," Emma admits. "Look, it's worth a shot anyway, right? What other option do we have?"
Not Jefferson, Neal thinks. He can never ask Jefferson for anything again, not after all he's cost him.
"Right," he says, looking away. "It's our only shot."
Emma drifts closer to him. "You…still want this, right? You're still okay with this?"
"I can't leave Belle trapped there," he says as firmly as he can manage.
"And your father?"
Neal grits his teeth and doesn't answer.
He doesn't know.
They reach the lake at nightfall. Or at least, they reach a vast tract of land, roughly circular in shape, that is empty of vegetation and completely dry.
Neal stares at it in the moonlight—a moon that's growing uncomfortably close to full for his comfort, too much like Neverland's—and tries to decide what he's feeling.
Mainly, he thinks, he's feeling numb.
All this build-up, all the courage he's forced himself to reclaim, and for what?
The bean is useless. Just like him.
"We'll look around in the morning," Emma says, tugging on his hand. "Maybe there's still some water underground or something. The legend says the water's source comes from the foundations of the world, so there might still be something below us."
"Okay," he says dully.
In short order, he has a fire started and Emma has a meal of bread and dried meat pulled from their packs. It's tasteless in his mouth, but Neal's just happy to have food, and water to wash it down with. The night seems extra cold, or maybe that's just him, and he crowds close to the blazing fire.
"You know," Emma says as she scoots closer to his side, "you haven't told any stories yet."
"Stories." Neal snorts a bit. "I think stories trick us into thinking we have any choice at all in our own lives. We think just because the hero decided to do good, to take the right fork rather than the left, to give the last of his coins to the pitiful beggar, that we can decide too. But what if we can't?"
"What do you mean?"
"I just…" He turns to her. "Do you believe in fate? Destiny. Whatever you want to call it."
"No," she says, her answer so immediate that he is awed by her certainty. "I don't. I make my own decisions."
"We think we do." Neal looks back to the campfire, letting its brilliance blind him and the smoke give excuse for the water in his stinging eyes. "But no matter how hard we fight, it's like we always still end up in the same places. What if Maleficent hadn't come when Cora called? What if someone else had answered her? I think she still would have found a way to survive no matter the cost, and Regina still would have turned into the Evil Queen, and Snow White and her charming prince still would have found each other. The players might have changed, the sets may alter, but we're all just still playing the parts picked out for us."
"That's ridiculous." Emma sets her chin on his shoulder and scrubs a hand back through his hair. "Our choices matter, Neal. Who we choose to be is what matters, not what we're born to be. You could decide tomorrow to run away and never look back, never even think of Neverland again, and that'd be your choice—not some weird mystical force forcing us into things. And I can prove it."
He doesn't like to think how desperate he sounds when he blurts, "How?"
"Kiss me."
"What?" he asks through a faint laugh. "That's… How is that going to prove anything?"
"Because I'm telling you to play your part. I'm giving you direction. I'm offering a form of force down one path. But whether you take it or not…that's up to you."
Neal gives in—like he was ever not going to—and bends his head to place a kiss on her parted lips. Beneath his touch, he feels her smile.
"Look at that," she says. "You chose that all on your own."
"There were mitigating factors."
"But you still decided. Forget fate, Neal. What you do…that's up to you."
He's silent, not quite sure what to say, as he processes her words. Emma fidgets a bit at his side until finally saying, "Okay, come on, a story. What's your favorite one?"
"My favorite…" Neal turns from the flames to look at her instead. She's so beautiful—by sunlight, firelight, even moonlight—bright enough to shine like she's a source of illumination herself. He's woken her with nightmares the last three nights running, rigid and hyperventilating in her arms, and still she holds him, soothes him, smiles at him, kisses him. He cannot understand how she's real.
"Come on," Emma cajoles, leaning closer, her lips curving up in the suggestion of a smile that's almost coy. "Just one story you love."
"My favorite story," he says as he reaches out to wrap an arm around her waist, "is you."
She arches her brows at him. "I'm not a story," she says.
"Aren't you? You showed up when I had nothing to live for. You took my hands and told me you cared whether I lived or died. You slipped in and out of my life in the night hours, elusive during the day, like…I don't know…some kind of black swan or something, all aloof and mysterious and so beautiful when you see it that you can't do anything but watch it flit away from you into the night."
"Neal." She sounds touched. Breathless. Wondering. Her fingers come up to play over his face, as if she's tracing him, learning him, and Neal thinks of the endless sketches he's made of her. "I'm right here," she tells him. "I'm real. I'm solid. And I'm not going anywhere."
"I don't know how to believe that," he whispers. "Nothing good ever stays in my life, and you're the most good thing I've ever had."
She grins at his awkward words. "Very smooth," she tells him. Her fingers play with the bit of beard he's left around his lips and on his chin—it gives him a way, even in pitch dark, half-trapped in nightmares, of reminding himself that he's not a kid and he's not trapped in Neverland where time doesn't move and hair doesn't grow.
"Emma," he says because he can't keep her name in anymore. "I—"
The confession is trapped in his throat.
"What?" she breathes, so close he can nearly taste her lips.
"What does your name mean?" he blurts.
"Uh…my name?" She gives her head a little shake. "I think it means…universal. Or whole. Or for everyone. Something like that."
"Huh."
"Why?"
"I just love you."
He stares at her as she stares back at him, both of them shocked. Both of them frozen.
Then Emma's smile widens. There are stars in her eyes and not a single one of them leads to Neverland. "I love you too," she says, and she kisses him—of her own free will, she kisses him, and it feels like a fate he never wants to escape. She kisses him like they've never kissed before. She kisses him until Neal is drowning in her, until he half-thinks she's a siren made just for him. She kisses him with lips and teeth and tongue, and they're lying on their combined bedrolls, the fire like scarlet and carnelian where it lights her skin, and Neal lets his shaking hand trace the shapes of each reflected flame no matter where it leads him. It looks so warm—she seems warm, hot like the sun—that he bends to press his mouth to her molten skin, and then he's lost. Lost in her. In the moment. In love birthed and ignited and soaring on all sides of him and he will never be the same again.
He chooses her—every day, every lifetime, he'll choose her. And he hopes it's fate. Hopes destiny is on their side.
"I love you," he whispers over and over again, because it's the only truth he knows. The only truth that matters. And she is the only thing that tethers him here to this world, to this life, to this future he never even imagined.
They wake tangled in each other. Their giddy smiles grow and feed off each other until they're laughing, and Neal can't even explain why but he wouldn't change a thing.
He can't stop touching her. She can't stop hugging him, or kissing his head, or tousling his hair, and each touch stirs another fire inside him until he decides to trace all the curves and secrets he found the night before, only this time by sunlight. She doesn't stop him. In fact, she encourages him, and it's several hours later that they're finally dressed and focused enough to start scouring the lakebed.
At first they find nothing. As the hours pass, Neal spends less time staring at Emma, circling the lake in the opposite direction, and more time perusing each bit of cracked land. There are bones, left exposed to the air—the siren's victims, he supposes. There's dry seaweed, rocks covered in dead algae. But no water. No sign of water.
Eventually, he and Emma meet in the very center of the lakebed. It gives, ever so slightly, beneath their feet. Emma looks up, her eyes latching on his, and smiles. "Water," she declares. "It has to be. The ground's spongy here."
So they start digging. They take frequent breaks, both because it's hot beneath the glare of the sun, and because…well, Emma's beautiful, and so close, and Neal knows better than to let anything good slip through his fingers, so he has to keep reaching out to her. And if she reaches back, well then, what harm can a few more kisses do?
By the time night shadows drive them back to their camp to build another fire and scarf down some of their food, they've managed to dig a hole nearly as tall as Neal, and the dirt is growing downright muddy.
"We'll hit water tomorrow," Emma says confidently. "It'll restore the bean, and then—when you're ready—we'll go to Neverland and rescue Belle and your father."
"My father may not want rescued," he reminds her. Or maybe it's himself he's reminding. He's been disappointed too many times where Papa's concerned. He doesn't know if he'll survive another letdown.
"He will if we can get the dagger," Emma says.
"Why do you care so much?" he asks her.
She brushes his hair back from his brow and kisses his temple. "Because you love him," she replies. "And I love you."
All thoughts Neal had, half-formed, of pulling that bit of Papa's robe from his pack and showing it to her are subsumed beneath a new purpose. Neal tugs her close, rolls her beneath him, and presses his mouth against hers. Against her heat, brought back to life by the kisses she presses hot and wet against his flesh, he thinks he can find a way to love the night, the dark, the moon—because they are no longer elements of Neverland, but of Emma. His Emma, the parts of her only he knows, the parts of himself only she will ever know.
He's woken in the middle of the night, not by a nightmare—he hasn't had a single nightmare since Emma pulled him down over her—but by the rustling of foliage outside their camp.
Instantly alert, he slides out from under Emma, grabs his knives, and slips into the darkness. It's too easy, reclaiming the habits of a Lost Boy, but then, Pinocchio is hardly as much of an adversary as Peter Pan.
"Pinocchio!" Neal retracts his arm from around Pinocchio's neck, drops the knife back to his side, and winces as he watches the other man dab a bit of blood from his throat.
"Wow," Pinocchio says. "I'm glad you're on our side."
"Are we on the same side?" he retorts. "There's no way you got Anton all the way back to the palace."
"I didn't have to," he says. "We were met by people looking for Emma—including Red."
"Who's Red?"
"Seriously?" Pinocchio lets out a mirthless laugh. "Emma really hasn't told you anything, huh?"
"Pinocchio—"
"Red's the Queen's closest friend—and a skilled tracker. She was on our trail. I managed to waylay her by entrusting her with Anton's care—and begging—but there's no way she or someone else isn't coming on my heels."
"Why?" Neal asks. He has a feeling he doesn't want to know the answer, but he can't keep not asking it forever. "Why are they looking for Emma instead of you?"
"You know Queen Snow and King David, right? You've met them? Talked to them?"
"Yeah."
"Emma doesn't remind you of them at all?"
Neal goes cold. He wishes he were surprised.
"She's their daughter, Neal. She's the princess. The heir-apparent. They sent her off to pass some weird test or something to prove her competence by guarding the Evil Queen at the summer palace, and when she got back…she snuck in to see you. Her parents tried to stop her. They don't want her anywhere near the dangers you bring her way. But she kept going back, and then she ran away with you. You really didn't know? Neal, every soldier in the kingdom is out looking for her right now. The King and Queen may never forgive you for this."
"I…I didn't know." It's a weak excuse and he knows it. He knew she was important. He knew she was too good for him. He knew he never should have tied her fate to his.
She told him he could choose, but how can he when he didn't know all the facts?
How can he choose her when doing that would only mean hurting her?
"Look, it's nothing personal, right? They're…they're her parents. They'll do anything for their kid."
Parents. Kid.
Neal wonders if he's lost all ability to think. To reason. To plan.
What happened in Neverland is so painful, such a blur all capped behind the image of Jones's staring eyes, dreamshade falling from Neal's hand, his papa pushing him into another world away from him…he's done his best not to let himself think of it.
But what did Wendy warn him about?
The heart of the Truest Believer. The son Pan thinks Baelfire is going to deliver to him. The child Baelfire swore he would never have.
And Emma. The woman he never saw coming. The love he never imagined could be his. The temptation he never could have resisted.
And now Emma thinks she's going to Neverland with him, and her parents have already helped him, and too many people have lost everything thanks to being his allies...
He can't let it happen to her.
"She's a princess," he says aloud.
"Yeah."
"Her people need her. She…she deserves to be safe."
"Yeah. I'm sorry, Neal, but she does."
Neal meets Pinocchio's somber gaze. "You have to stay with her. Make sure she gets home safe."
"What are you going to do?"
What else can he do? He's too dangerous to be around her. He can bring her only terror and torment and death. And if he marries her—as if he'd ever be allowed to marry a princess—they could never have a kid. Not ever. Pan would always be in the shadows, lurking, haunting their every move.
"I'm going to Neverland," he says.
It's better that way. He never should have left it, really. As soon as he knew that Pan wanted him gone, he should have resolved to stay.
Better for everyone if Baelfire never leaves that eternal night.
"Neal." Pinocchio grabs his arm. "You don't have to do this alone. We can find people to help you—"
"No." Neal swallows. "Just promise you'll look after Emma. Don't let anything happen to her. Try…try to make sure she can be happy."
"Neal—"
"Promise me."
Pinocchio swallows and lets his hand drop. "I promise."
Neal packs his bag in silence. Though he knows better, he can't resist kneeling beside Emma and memorizing her face. "I love you," he whispers. He wants to kiss her, one last kiss to tide him over for eternity, but he can't risk waking her. She'd never let him leave without her. Instead, he tucks beneath her hand the drawing he sketched her of a black swan, and hopes she will forgive him for the fate he's choosing.
Or is it Pan who chose it for him?
If I were free to choose, he thinks, I'd choose you, Emma. I'd choose you every time.
"I'm sorry," Neal whimpers, and then he nods to Pinocchio, just outside the firelight, and walks into the remains of Lake Nostos.
His muscles burn by the time he unearths a bit of water. The sky, what little he can see of it over the rim of the uneven hole, has lightened from navy to robin's egg blue by the time he fishes the bean out of the inch or two of water and sees it glowing translucent white.
He hates this tiny thing with every bit of passion left in his body. Its glow, its color, its existence. He wishes he'd never seen one.
But dreams don't come true and wishes aren't granted and Baelfire was never meant for any world but Neverland. And Pan must never ever have what he needs.
Bae looks up to the sky, imagines Emma's hand in his, and then tosses the bean to the ground with his mind fixed on the worst place imaginable.
The portal roars open, a shriek he hears in every nightmare. Over it, he imagines he hears Emma screaming his name, as if someone might still care to try to save him.
"I'm coming, Belle," he promises to that portal that makes him sick just to look at.
For Belle. For Emma. For Papa, he admits to his own heart.
And then, with his heart in his throat, his pack on his shoulder, and dread turning him cold, Bae leaps into the portal.
Bound to his inescapable fate after all.
