Chapter 2: A Hope
It's not been an easy time of it, Belle thinks, arranging a meeting with the newly coronated King and Queen of the Enchanted Forest. For a while, it seemed that Queen Regina would keep the kingdom divided forever, but now, locked in her palace under house arrest with the fairies as her guards, Snow White and James—David? Belle's heard both names used for the new king—are finally accepting audiences.
As a minor lady from a small kingdom most often forgotten by inland countries, Belle knows that it's probably curiosity on the royals' part more than anything that has led to her audience being granted so soon. She was prepared to wait for six months or so before they made their way down the list of waiting dignitaries before finally reaching her. She's beyond grateful—for Bae's sake, if nothing else—that things are moving along much quicker than that.
Belle hardly feels like she's inside at all when she's escorted to a beautiful room with open balconies leading out into the summer air. Linen curtains flutter in the breeze and soft cushions lend coziness to the intricately carved wooden furniture. Birds sing outside the windows, and occasionally fly in to swoop low over the Queen's head.
"You'll forgive me if I don't stand to greet you," Snow White says with a warm smile. "I'm feeling a bit unwell this morning."
"Please, don't trouble yourself on my account," Belle murmurs as she sweeps a curtsy more graceful than most she's attempted. "I'm honored and grateful that you've chosen to see me at all."
"We don't often meet anyone from the Marchlands," Snow White says. She gestures to the chair across from her and adds, "Please, sit and have a cup of tea with me. Doc insists that ginger will help settle my stomach."
Belle wonders if she should offer congratulations for the newly announced pregnancy, but before she can decide, a man sweeps into the room with a tray full of tea things. Though she leaps to her feet, he gestures her back to her seat.
"Okay, all the ginger tea you could possibly want," the man says. If it weren't for the soft light in Snow's eyes when she looks at him, Belle wouldn't be able to tell he's King of the largest, strongest country. He's dressed simply, wears no crown, and seems much more interested in pouring Snow's cup of tea than making an impression on his guest. "If this doesn't work, we'll have to go to Granny."
Snow grimaces. "Let's wait a while before we invite her to set up camp, shall we? David, this is Lady Belle of the Marchlands, Maurice's daughter."
There's no glimmer of recognition in David's eyes, but he offers her a friendly smile nonetheless. "A pleasure to meet you. I hope you like ginger tea, I'm afraid I didn't bring any other kind."
"It sounds delicious," Belle says with a practiced smile.
She likes these two. They're far from regal, too familiar with each other in public, down to earth in a way Belle's not used to seeing inside palaces. She didn't expect to like them. It makes things…a bit more complicated.
After a cup of tea and the two biscuits David coaxes her into eating, Snow does have some more pink to her cheeks, and she looks more awake as she sits up straight in her chair. Belle takes a last sip of her own tea—not her favorite, but certainly better than many she's tried on her long journey from the Marchlands to Snow's realm—and makes sure not to take another bite. She won't risk having a mouthful when she's finally allowed to bring up her reason for being here.
"I have to admit, Belle," Snow says, "we were quite puzzled as to the purpose of this audience. Your letters were vague to the point of elusiveness."
"I apologize for not being clearer," Belle says, "but I'm afraid that the request I must make of you is of…a sensitive nature."
"Oh?" Snow and David exchange a quick look. "If you're in some kind of trouble—"
"It's not me," Belle interrupts. She's rehearsed this a dozen times with Bae, and he has played the part of the royals in a myriad of ways in order to give her ideas of how to direct this conversation, but now that it comes to it, she thinks the straightforward truth might be the best way. "I'm traveling with a young man by the name of Baelfire."
"Is he here?" David asks slowly.
"He's waiting for me back at our inn. I'm here on his behalf. You see, he's been trapped for many years in a terrible realm known as Neverland."
"Neverland? I don't think I've heard of it," Snow says.
David frowns. "I might have. I seem to recall my father mentioning it once or twice. Something about dreams he'd once had." He blinks and catches himself, looking to Snow. "My real father," he says quietly, and Belle takes an ostentatious sip of her tea as excuse for affected deafness.
"It was once a dreamworld," Belle says, "but from what I understand, a man made a deal with the shadows that live there and somehow became the ruler of that world. Whatever he imagines becomes its new reality. And since people are so rarely content to rule without subjects, this child-god began abducting children, boys, to take back with him. He torments them with painful games and emotional manipulations, convincing them that their parents never loved them, all so that he can make them fanatically loyal to him."
Belle feels guilty simultaneously for two very different things. One, for spilling so many of Bae's secrets, hard-won over their long days of travel and nights of a shared room. But two, because she's still lying, covering up much of what Bae has told her. She cannot make this realm seem too terrible, after all, or the monarchs might decide it's too risky to send help with Bae.
"That's awful," Snow declares.
"How can we stop it?" David asks.
"You might have heard of the city of Hamelin? That's where Peter Pan began his abductions, several centuries ago, and they were able to curtail them only by warning their children never to listen to shadows."
David scoots his chair closer to Snow and slings his arm around her shoulders, his other hand coming to rest over her stomach. Though she melts into him, Snow's gaze is strong as she meets Belle's regard.
"Does this Baelfire wish for aid in rescuing these other boys?"
"He does," Belle says slowly, because Bae might never have admitted such a wish, but she thinks that anyone who longs to be a hero as much as Baelfire does would not be averse to saving the Lost Boys as well as his papa. "But more than that, he wishes for help to rescue his father."
"His father?" Snow frowns. "I thought this Peter Pan took only children."
"When Bae was stolen, his father leapt from the window after him and refused to let go of the shadow. Pan has kept Bae's father locked up all this time, threatening him to ensure Baelfire's obedience."
"How did Baelfire escape?"
Belle takes a deep breath and remembers Bae's coaching. Keep it simple, he told her. Let them know it's possible, but don't make it sound too easy. You have to find a good balance.
Cautioning herself to care, Belle begins to speak.
It began, she says, with a flower that blooms pixie dust…
It's Papa's idea. Bae's not sure if, while they were hanging from the Shadow, flying terrifyingly high over the jungle landscape, Papa saw the flowers and recognized them, or if he's simply heard stories about them. He'd seemed to know who the Pied Piper was in their old world, after all, and Neverland doesn't appear to be as much a surprise to him as it is to Bae. Sometimes, Bae thinks that Papa might have been one of the boys who dreamed himself into this sleepscape, but if so, something happened to make him realize it for the nightmare it is, long before he and Bae are dragged, against their wills, past the second star on the right.
It's the matches in Bae's pocket that free them from the Shadow's icy-cold grip. When Bae shouts a warning, Papa maneuvers until he's holding onto Bae rather than the Shadow. But then, when Bae thought they would fall to land in the water near a sailing ship, Papa keeps hold of the dark silhouette for just a moment longer—until they're past the ship that coasts below them, white sails nearly glowing against the dark water. Then, like stones in lakewater, Bae and his papa fall from the sky.
When they land, the water is so cold that it shocks Bae into a near-stupor. He can't move, can't think, can't breathe! But Papa's there, his hands clutching at him, jostling him, and gradually, limb by limb, Bae remembers how to swim.
They've landed at the mouth of what looks to be a secluded cove, and by the light of a too-bright moon, they begin making their way to shore. Splashes from behind alert them both to the fact that the ship they avoided is headed their way. Shouts echo over the waves.
"Bae!" Papa cries, and he knifes through the water to get to him. "Stay quiet," he orders. "Don't let them find us."
Disoriented and freezing and scared, Bae doesn't think, then, about the fact that Rumplestiltskin has lost his cough, his shivers, his weakness. He is only happy to not be alone. Scared, yes, but if Papa is here with him, then they'll get through this. He never imagined they'd become realm-hoppers, but it's exciting in its own way.
"A-are th-they pirates, P-Papa?" Bae asks through chattering teeth.
"Aye," Papa says. "It's the Jolly Roger."
Bae's heart goes as cold in his chest as his feet feel. The Jolly Roger. Papa never told him the name of the ship that stole Mama, but Bae heard the whispers anyway. And because he knew it, he always stopped to listen at any mention of that ship. Before he grew too focused on finding a cure for his father to listen to any more gossip—before everyone in town grew too frightened of Rumplestiltskin's wrath to risk speaking in front of Baelfire—he'd heard that the Jolly Roger was forced to flee to another world, dogged by the wrath of a king looking for blood as payback for the destruction of some priceless sail made entirely of Pegasus feathers.
But Papa's teeth are gritted, and Bae cares more about reaching shore and finding some way of warming up than he does about a crew of murderous pirates that he can't do anything about.
"Come on, Papa," he says.
"Yes, yes."
Together, they swim deeper into the cove, and Bae doesn't question the heavy darkness that falls between them and the ship. By the time he and Papa drag themselves out of the questing waves, the ship is too far away to catch sight of them climbing up into the overgrowth.
"Pan flies," Papa says as he helps Bae to his feet and removes his own robe to wrap it around Bae's bathrobe. Bae clutches it gratefully, some dim part of his mind wondering at the fact that it's dry. "Watch the skies. He can come from anywhere. This is his world and he is master here. Neverland obeys his whims."
"H-how do you know all th-this?" Bae asks, but his papa is already gone, searching out firewood with not even a hint of the limp that's followed him from world to world.
A cold void in the pit of Bae's stomach opens up.
"Papa?" he says, desperately.
And Papa turns back to him, eyes wide and worried—and brown. His face is lined and hollowed out by exhaustion, but ordinary. No scales. No magic. No Dark One.
No more weak, brittle coughing.
"What is it, son?" Papa asks.
Bae offers a wobbly smile. "I'm…I'm just glad that you're here with me."
"Oh, Bae, I'd never leave you." Papa comes back and gives him a tight hug that Bae accepts gratefully and wishes could last longer. "Now, as soon as it's light out, I'm going to start a small fire. We'll get warm, find some food, and try to think of a way out of here. Okay?"
"Okay."
As dawn turns to day around them, Bae and his papa huddle together around their tiny fire for several hours. Papa sharpens a few sticks to points with a rock he chose out from the sand, and then, when Bae is feeling better, they wade into the water and try to spear fish.
"Believe that you can," Papa keeps saying, but he laughs out loud when Bae loses his step and falls backward into the surf. The fall actually stings. Bae doesn't care. It's been…ages…since he's heard Papa laugh. Ages and ages, and now he wants to hear it over and over again. So he pretends to be upset with Papa for not helping, then pulls him down into the water with him, and together, they roll through the sand, their laughter broken up by the waves washing over them.
The day is so warm that Bae finds it hard to remember how cold he was the night before. They scared all the fish away with their noise, but Papa finds them some oysters and teaches Bae how to eat them.
And there, sitting by the fire, shoulder to shoulder with his papa, who's healthy and alive and smiling so softly at him, Bae thinks that being a hero isn't too bad. He saved Wendy and her brothers, and now he's here, with Papa, in a world where he's not dying and Bae doesn't have to leave him. This is all he wanted. This is the reason he called on the Blue Star.
"Bae," Papa says softly, and wraps his arm around him. He insisted on bundling Bae up in his own robe as well as his pajamas and bathrobe, so Rumplestiltskin's only in his tunic, not so nice now as it used to be, but cleaned well enough with seawater. "I think I know how to get us out of here."
"Okay," Bae says. Truthfully, right then, he's having a hard time seeing why they have to ever leave, but Papa's voice is somber, his eyes devoid of all the laughter Bae savored.
"You're going to have to help me climb up into the trees so we can harvest some pixie dust. It's the pollen of the flowers that grow in the highest treetops. If you have pixie dust, you can fly—and that's the only way for us to escape here."
"Oh, laddie, don't tell me you still believe in those old wives' tales. A lot's changed in Neverland."
Bae leaps to his feet, a sharpened stick in his hand, and finds a boy, only a little older than himself and dressed entirely in green, lounging casually against a tree. He wears an easy smile and looks familiar.
Aside from reaching up to latch his hand on Bae's sleeve, Rumplestiltskin doesn't move at all. He stares at the boy as if he's seeing a ghost, his cheeks ashen-pale.
"We both know you can't fly," the boy says as he studies Papa. "You couldn't summon up the necessary thoughts even as a boy, could you? Don't tell me you intend your son to carry you out of here? That'd be ironic, wouldn't it, considering you carried him away before I could have him here for a visit."
"You're the Pied Piper," Bae blurts in sudden realization.
The boy chuckles and steps closer. Too close. Bae can feel his father's hand like a bony talon on his elbow, trying to urge him back. The whole scene reminds him uncomfortably of another world, a road they tried to travel by night, a pursuer who spoke secrets over Bae's head while Papa shook in fear of them being separated.
"Baelfire," the boy proclaims with arms opened wide. "I'm glad you've finally accepted my invitation."
"We were stolen!" Bae says hotly. "A Shadow brought us here against our will."
"Did it?" Pan's smile is gleeful and cunning and smug all at once as he looks over Bae's shoulder to Rumplestiltskin. "Well, seems to me you must have wanted to come. After all, as soon as you entered Neverland, dear old Papa reclaimed his curse. All that magic. All that power. If Rumple didn't want you both here, he could have simply summoned that silly poofing smoke of his and carried you back."
And there it is. The truth Bae hadn't wanted to see.
Heart pounding in his ears, Bae jerks his head around toward Papa. It's still him, though. Still Papa. Papa as Bae wants him, if too thin and now looking far too scared.
"Papa," he whispers. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, son." Finally, Rumplestiltskin stands, tugging Bae back to stand wedged up against his side. Bae realizes for the first time that he's as tall as Papa. Without the walking staff they used to measure his growth, he hadn't realized. "Don't listen to Pan. He'll con you out of your soul if you let him."
The boy laughs. "You've learned a bit of bite with magic as your shield, haven't you?"
"I'm not staying any longer this time than I did the last," Papa tells the boy. "You don't want me here, we both know that. Just let us go."
"You're right," Pan says. "I don't want you here. You're more than welcome to leave by any means you can find. Perhaps a deal? A trade?" There's something cruel about the smile he shoots Papa. Bae feels the answering flinch reverberate through his father. "But I do want Baelfire here. He deserves a chance to see what life's like when he's not weighted down by a coward for a father."
"No!" Bae slides his arm around his papa's sharp waist. "I'm not leaving Papa. We belong together."
"Do you?" Pan cocks his head, leaving Bae wondering how he ever thought coming to the Pied Piper's call was a good thing. "Strange. My Shadow tells me you've already abandoned your father for a new family. A wise decision, my boy. You're hardly the first to make it."
"How dare you?" Papa spits through bared teeth. If he had scales, Bae might have been afraid, but as it is, there's a young part of himself that thrills to think Papa will protect him. Papa will find a way out.
"Oh, Rumple." Pan laughs. "You're always so far out of your league. You can't play the game if you don't know the rules."
"What rules?" Bae asks. If all they have to do is win themselves a ticket out of here, he'll play whatever game Pan wants.
"Well," Pan says as a dozen boys suddenly surround them on every side, emerging from the undergrowth, the trees, even the water. "Rule number one is that, here, I'm always the winner."
And though Bae fights tooth and nail, kicking and screaming, though Papa unleashes a burst of power that knocks out half the attacking boys, they are still dragged off in opposite directions.
The last thing Bae sees of his papa is Pan grabbing his hand and smearing something over his chest that glows purple and leaves Papa frozen in place.
Then a bag goes over his head, something hits him on the temple, and Bae drowns beneath darkness.
"How long has Pan kept this poor man prisoner?" Snow asks when Belle pauses to take a sip of tea. It's sharp on her tongue and bitter when she swallows, but perhaps that's only the sadness that grows and grows the more Belle comes to know Bae. The more she learns to hate whatever hurts him.
Bae is a grown man, and prickly at the best of times, but there's something so childlike about him too, a broken innocence that makes Belle want to take him and wrap him up in blankets and tell him bedtime stories that end only in 'happily ever after.' It's a strange dichotomy that Belle has stopped questioning considering she doesn't like any of the answers he gives her.
"Time doesn't move in Neverland," she answers the Queen. "It's impossible to say, really, but from what I can gather, Baelfire was born sometime during the first Ogre's War."
Snow and David both exchange a look, David's stunned, Snow's skeptical.
"These lost boys," David says slowly, his hand once more on Snow's stomach, "do they know that their families might all be dead by now? If we rescue them, do they…do they know how much time has passed?"
"I highly doubt any of them remember their families at all by now," Belle says. "That's what Pan does, you see. He rewrites their reality with one of his own making."
"I want to see my father," Bae says, as he always does when he emerges the champion in the bloody games Pan plays to pit his Lost Boys against one another.
"Ah, Baelfire, your lack of imagination is beginning to bore me." Pan shakes his head and circles Bae. He's too close, smells of smoke and fire and dreamshade—and squid ink, Bae's least favorite scent of all. "The champion is granted a boon—anything you can imagine at all. Felix over there once asked for the skies to become the ground and the forest the sky. Now, that was an adventure. But you…you always ask for the same thing."
"It's my reward," Bae says staunchly. "I get to choose. And I want to see Papa."
"Well," Pan shrugs and makes some face at the Boys that makes them all laugh. It's nothing new. They all laugh at Bae, mock him, hurt him, gang up on him—do anything they can to punish him for having a grown-up around to remind them all of what they've lost. "If this is what you really want. It only hurts Rumple, but I suppose you don't care about that. He deserves it, doesn't he, after everything he's done to you."
Bae knows Pan is baiting him, but this is bait he will never fail to rise to. "He loves me," he snaps. "Papa gave up everything for me."
"Did he? It seems to me Rumple has gotten everything he could ever want. He has your devotion, his magic, and no consequences at all. We both know that he could find a way out if he wanted to. That he doesn't…it just means he doesn't want the burden of being your father. Far better this way, where you can be with me and my Boys. We can go on all the adventures we want. Not really Rumple's thing."
"I want to see him," Bae grits.
And since Pan won't be seen as a liar in front of the Lost Boys—since Bae's beginning to think that these intermittent visits really do hurt Papa as much as Pan says they do—he leads Bae down the path Bae's taken a thousand times before. Only this time, with Pan as his guide, the path opens to a clearing lorded over by a tree that spreads its canopy in all directions. His Thinking Tree, Pan calls it. From one of the mighty boughs dangles a woven cage. It's too small, even for Papa, and when Pan snaps his fingers to make the cage float to the ground, when the front of the box unhinges, Papa can only sit there, shoulders hunched, blinking against the twilight. His fingers play endlessly against each other, as if searching for thread or roving, and even when Bae falls to his knees and snatches up that hand in his own, that nervous twitch never ceases.
"Papa!" he cries. "I'm here. I'm still here. I love you, Papa."
"Bae?" Papa's eyes are unfocused, but slowly, by degrees, they come to rest on him. To see him. He's too thin. Too pale. Too wasted. And he stinks of squid ink. The whole cage is washed in the ink, every strip of it coated in the purple glow, all to keep Papa helpless. Powerless.
Exactly like Bae wanted him to be.
"I'm only doing what you wanted," Pan told him the first time Bae saw the cage and understood what squid ink was. "This isn't the Land Without Magic, but it's the next best thing. Didn't you want him to be the helpless coward he truly is? No Dark One to fall back on. No pesky murders to have to deal with. Consider it my gift to you."
"Bae," Papa breathes, and his free hand rises, like it always does, to cup Bae's face.
Despite himself, Bae's eyes fall closed. In Neverland, you can never entirely trust what you see. You can never be certain that you're alone and unobserved and safe to let your guard down. But here, Bae can trust the feel of his Papa's hand on his cheek, can depend on the note of love in his voice, and doesn't care that Pan watches the whole thing.
"You're hurt," Papa gasps, and only then does Bae remember the blows Felix had landed on him, the blood he spit from his mouth into Felix's eyes, the rock that had gone from dashing against his knuckles to being dashed against Felix's chest.
Slowly, with trembling hands, Papa rips off a section of his tunic—or tries, Bae has to help him when his strength isn't quite enough—and uses it to dab lightly against Bae's hurts. "You should be more careful, son," he says.
"I had to see you," Bae murmurs. His papa's hands tremble so much that he's causing more hurt than soothing, but Bae doesn't care. He doesn't ever want Papa to stop touching him. To stop caring.
"It's not worth this," Papa says. "You should be more worried about getting out of here."
"I just have to win enough games," he tells him.
It's what Pan promised, after all. If he can win more games than anyone else on Neverland, he gets to take Papa and leave this world for good.
Only, it's been ages and Bae's only just begun winning games and Pan will never let him actually succeed.
But it's the only hope they have. The only glimmer of a chance that Bae can find.
"Oh, Bae," Rumplestiltskin says, so sad, so defeated, that Bae rushes forward to hug him.
His papa lets out a quiet moan of pain, but he returns the embrace and holds on just as tightly as Bae does.
"I'm so sorry," Bae whispers into his ear. This close, his nostrils are clogged with the stench of squid ink. He breathes in deep anyway. "I'm sorry, Papa."
"No, no," Rumplestiltskin tries to say, but then Pan is there. He yanks Bae away with a single move, and then he's in his place, inches from Rumplestiltskin's face, his eyes locked on Papa's.
"How nauseatingly sentimental," Pan observes. "You really are desperate to believe anyone's lies, aren't you? Just so long as you don't have to take responsibility yourself. A seer with news that you have reason not to be on the frontlines. A pirate all too eager to tell you how he's rid you of the wife who scorns you. A beggar who just so happens to have knowledge of the Dark One's curse. And a boy who pretends to love you just to keep you contained. Safe. A coward rather than a monster."
"No," Papa keens. "No, that's not…"
"If Baelfire really loved you," Pan says, "he'd free you of this cage. I've told him how to do it. All he has to do is one simple thing. Easy as that, you'd be free. Filled with magic once more. Given plenty of time to search for a way out of Neverland. Maybe those flowers you keep trying to mention oh-so-subtly to Baelfire. But he won't do it."
"Stop it!" Bae yells. "Stop talking. Don't—"
"It'd be sooooo easy," Pan says. He's whispering directly into Papa's ear, but his eyes are locked on Bae's, the smirk on his lips entirely for his benefit. "One…little…thing. But then you'd be a monster, wouldn't you? And Bae doesn't love monsters. Little Bae refuses to be the son of a beast. He only wants a good man." Pan leans in closer, heedless of the way Rumplestiltskin cringes away from him. "But then, we both know you were never that. You've never been anything worth anyone staying for, have you?"
"Get away from him!" Bae shouts, and he lunges at him.
Quick as a flash, the cage is sealed and back in the canopy, Pan's on his feet, and Bae is sprawled on the ground, arms empty, heart filled with bitter rage.
"I didn't tell him anything but the truth," Pan says. "You claim to love him. You spend your days telling me how you won't leave him. But we both know you had your chance. You've had multiple chances. And every time, you have chosen something else over your father. You've attempted to change him into the perfect mold you want."
"That's a lie."
"Is it?" Pan arches an eyebrow. "You wanted your father to be brave, didn't you? Baelfire is too much a hero to run from the war that needs him. You were so willing to fight, weren't you, little soldier? But then your dear papa made a plan that meant he'd be brave, be the hero you wanted him to be—and what did you do? You went along with it."
"He'd have done it anyway," Bae says, though he can't help the sliver of doubt lodged suddenly in his mind. Papa had told him about burning the castle, and then he'd…he'd waited. For Bae's answer. For his approval.
Could Bae have stopped him from walking into that burning castle? Could he have told him not to try for the dagger?
"And what happened when your father became a monster rather than a coward? You rejected him, Baelfire, over and over again. Healing hands, conjured jewels, warm house, your very wish his command—and you found a way to strip him of all that power he wanted for your sake. You sentenced him to a slow death by illness, by starvation, by being only half a person with so much of himself bound up in the Dark One that couldn't exist in that other world."
"No," Bae says. But it's only habit. Because it's all true. He did take his papa into another world, without magic, without money, without supplies, and then…
"Then," Pan says, like the voice of his own buried thoughts, "when he was nothing more than a beggar, you left him. Just abandoned him out in the street like the trash while you found a new family. A better family. One actually worthy of you."
"I was going to save him," he tries to say. It sounds like a lie. Like an excuse. Like a dream.
"But now he's here, once more with magic, and what is your plan now, Baelfire? To flee with him back to that world that was killing him. Your final act of transformation upon your father—always such a disappointment in life, you will turn him from living papa to dead father. Then you'll be a true orphan, not just in your heart, but in reality. Finally, Rumplestiltskin will be the father you deserve. One that is dead. It was always his destiny, after all, to leave you fatherless."
"Stop talking!" Bae demands. "This isn't…it's not true. I love him. I love him no matter what."
Pan smiles, a thin, close-mouthed smile that fills up his whole face. "Well then?" He spreads his arms wide. "I'm waiting."
And Bae stares. One thing. One little thing Pan wants in exchange for Papa's freedom.
And Bae cannot do it.
Instead, he runs, deep, deep into the jungle, but never far enough to escape Pan's mocking laughter.
"What did Pan ask of Baefire?" Snow asks.
Belle's mouth twists. "It was a trick. Baelfire knew it. It would have destroyed both him and his father."
"A creature like Pan wouldn't have kept his word anyway," David says decisively. "Would he?"
"I don't think so, no. But that's the thing." Belle's hand drifts to the satchel at her side. Inside, she keeps something fragile, wrapped in several layers of cloth. A tiny teacup, already damaged, a chip taken from its rim. And yet…she can't help but keep it. Carry it with her. Reach for it in times of stress.
Her entire life, since meeting Baelfire and deciding to hear his story, has been nothing but stress. She hasn't slept all the way through the night for weeks, can barely bring herself to eat most days, and finds her mind drifting, constantly, to the man who's trapped in a nightmare world, thinking himself abandoned, believing his son lost to him forever. It tears at her, deep inside, leaves her stumbling out of bed, abandoning meals, reaching for more books to scan through with burning eyes, desperate to save him.
Desperate to soothe the yawning anguish in Bae's eyes.
"No matter what Baelfire did, he was playing into Pan's hand," she tells the royal couple. "If Bae did what Pan wanted, he became Pan's puppet. But if he didn't, then both Baelfire and his father remained Pan's playthings. Either way, he won."
"What did he ask of Baelfire?" Snow asks again.
Belle closes her eyes as she answers.
Everywhere Bae goes, the dagger is there. It's in wherever he chooses to bed down at night. It's there among the weapons they can choose from for their duels. It's in the treetops to which he climbs in search of flowers that release a golden pollen he can gather into a coconut he's carved into a tiny treasure chest. It's in his clothes when he washes at a river and reaches to pull them back on. It's even on his plate, one night, when Pan offers him his dinner.
"I don't want this!" Bae snaps and throws it at Pan.
Pan catches it, quite casually, and tosses it back down to Bae's side. "I know," he says. "That's what I keep telling Rumple, laddie. You're never going to want it. You don't want anything connected to it at all. His loss, I'm sure."
"I wish you'd stop talking to him," Baelfire mutters.
"Like you have?"
Bae flinches.
"No, I'm his only visitor, Baelfire. Surely you're not so cruel as to deprive him entirely of conversation?"
"Does he…" Bae knows better, but suddenly he's desperate to know anything, everything, about his papa. "Does he ever ask about me?"
Pan rears back in surprise. "Ask about you? Why, laddie, he thinks you're gone."
The jungle is completely silent. For some reason, it's been night an unusually long time, but even the nocturnal sounds fall away. Bae stares at Pan. He can't make those words into something comprehensible. Can't do anything but try to rearrange them into something else.
"Gone," he finally says. "What do you mean?"
"You were only ever here for a visit," Pan says. "That implies a certain temporary status. And when you stopped coming to see him, he assumed that meant you'd moved on."
"You mean you made him assume that," Bae says as rage grows and grows inside him, a seed long since taken route, now unfurling, blooming, spreading, pollinating until it fills his every cell, every thought, every breath.
"No, actually, he came to that conclusion all on his own." Pan chortles and pats Bae's shoulder. "Rumple's always been dreadfully good at assuming the worst and hoping the best—means he assumes you left him as he always knew you would and hopes you got away because it helps him live with his own guilt in the matter."
Bae knocks Pan's hand off him, careless of the consequences. "He has nothing to be guilty about! None of this is his fault!"
"Tell that to the families of all his victims."
"I don't…" Bae squeezes his eyes shut lest the images in his mind of blood on Rumplestiltskin's boots, crushed snails in the road, corpses crumpled in their front yard, become real here in Neverland. He still sees them in his nightmares sometimes. Still wakes shivering and gasping, afraid to look over and find the monster in his papa's body spinning in the corner.
Of course, now, Bae thinks he'd take any form of his papa.
He just wishes Papa would want him any way too, because Bae's far removed from that innocent, naïve little boy he once was.
"How do you know him?" Bae asks abruptly. He opens his eyes and meets Pan's calculating gaze. "There's some kind of history between you two. I know he was here before. What happened between you two?"
"If you ask him, he'd say that I destroyed his father," Pan says easily. "But then, I forgot. You can't ask him. Not anymore."
Every hair on Bae's body rises to attention. "What do you mean? Not anymore? What does that mean? What have you done to him?"
"Well, you yourself said that cage was too small. I moved him. To a new cage. This one's in a better, more luxurious location."
"Where?" Bae demands.
Pan's eyes go cold as he removes Bae's hand from his shirt. "Echo Cave. That's why he can't tell you I destroyed his father. Because in Echo Cave, you can only tell the truth, and the truth is the only thing that can set you free."
"You want truth?" Bae says coldly. "Fine, here it is: I hate you. I hate you so much that I am never going to stop, I am never going to rest, I am never going to do anything until I find a way to destroy you."
There's a triumphant spark in Pan's eyes. "Oh, laddie, what fun our games are going to be now. Let's start with…hide and seek."
"I'll find you no matter where you hide, you monstrous bast—"
"No, no, you hide first. And I'll give you a hint as to where you should look for that hiding place, Baelfire—if you think it's dark out here, just imagine how much blacker it'll be in the Dark Hollow, where light is the only source of food for all the shadows that live there."
Terror wipes out half his rage, though Bae tries his best not to reveal that. "Dark Hollow? Isn't that… I thought only shadows went there."
"So did I," Pan says with a crooked grin. "Let's test that theory out, shall we? Ready for a new adventure?"
By the time Bae starts screaming, his rage has all withered away, leaving him nothing but a scared boy all alone in the dark.
Snow and David are silent for a while. Both are grim and somber, so different from the content, even happy mood they enjoyed before Belle came. She regrets that, but not enough to be sorry she's here.
Pixie dust is all that allowed Baelfire escape from Neverland. It's all that will let him back into that nightmare world that still has him starting up from violent terrors every time he tries to sleep. But Belle doesn't have pixie dust, and neither does anyone else here.
Except one person. One group. An order that Snow and David have a unique relationship with.
This is Baelfire's only chance. Their only hope of rescuing his father. And Belle can't let her compassion for the new concerns carving worry lines into these royals stop her from finishing this story.
"Baelfire spent probably hundreds of years enduring Pan's torments," Belle says, breaking the silence and interrupting the birdsong. "He's… Well, let us just say that it's certainly left a mark. But the one thing Baelfire has never wavered on is the fact that no one deserves to be trapped under the reign of such an evil creature. Boy or man, they all deserve freedom, and whatever it takes to rescue them can only be a good deed."
"I agree," Snow says. Her voice is hard. "Pan is a monster."
"But we're hardly going to disagree with you," David says. He studies Belle. "No good person would."
"Exactly. But very few good people also have the ear of the fairies."
Snow's eyes widen. "The fairies? You want their help?"
"The fairies say they are on the side of good. Stories say that if you are deserving, if you are pure-hearted, you may wish on the Blue Star and the Blue Fairy will come and grant your wish. Who deserves a wish granted more than Pan's victims?"
"I don't know that the fairies will be the help you think they are," David says slowly. "They aren't human. They act only at random times, for reasons of their own, and—"
"The Blue Fairy fought for you," Belle interrupts. "She led her fairies as an army at your side, expended untold quantities of fairy dust defeating the Evil Queen's soldiers, and risked everything to win this kingdom back for you. No other rulers have ever had such unequivocal support from the fairies. But you do. If you ask her, if you present the plight of Pan's prisoners, then surely, as a being of good, she will not be able to deny such a request."
David still looks unsure, but Snow is suddenly resolute. She comes to her feet and says, "I'll ask her. You're right. It would be evil to turn aside from so many in such trouble. She's helped us before, and she will not be able to let such darkness stand. I will summon her now, and you can tell her what you've told us, Belle."
"Snow…"
Snow takes her husband's hands and peers earnestly up at his face. "This is good, David. If we're to be good rulers, then we must use what influence and power we have to help those less fortunate than us."
"I'm not arguing that," David says. "I just think this might be more complicated than—"
"What if it were our child?" Snow asks. "If our child were stolen from us, and taken to this Neverland, and put through unimaginable horrors, we would do anything to get them back."
"We would." David's uncertainty melts away into a softness that has him leaning forward and giving Snow a soft kiss. Belle tries to avert her eyes but can't quite bring herself to. There's something so beautiful, so quietly mesmerizing, about such true love so openly displayed. "All right, let's call her."
"Now?" Belle's eyes widen, and despite herself, she finds her hands trying to straighten her skirts and smooth her hair. "I… Shouldn't Baelfire be here?"
"There's no time to waste," Snow declares. "I can send someone to invite him, but in the meantime, I want the Blue Fairy to hear this."
Swallowing, Belle tries to calm the butterflies in her stomach as Snow calls a bird down to her finger, whispers to it, and then sends it fluttering back to the skies. It's a casual use of magic, even if one of the inborn, homespun ones, but it makes Belle blink in startlement. She's heard the Enchanted Forest is rife with magic of the sort that has become more tales than reality in the outer countries, but it's one thing to hear and another to see.
In no time at all, a bright star flutters in the clear heavens, grows, shimmers, resolves into a small, winged light, and then suddenly, with only a blink, Belle finds herself looking at a fairy. And not just any fairy. The Blue Fairy.
Rheul Gorm herself.
"Thank you for coming," Snow says. "We need your help with something."
"You know I'm happy to help you," the Blue Fairy says in a voice like the chiming of stars themselves. "If this is about Regina, she's still locked safely within her palace. She hasn't learned quite enough magic to break our wards."
"No," David says. "This is something else. It's about a world called Neverland, and a man who needs our help. His name is Baelfire."
"Belle," Snow says with a graceful smile. "Tell her, please. Tell her about Pan and about Baelfire."
There's a flicker on the fairy's face, then, something that changes in her expression, but she's tiny and glowing and Belle cannot read it and this is what she's here for. This is what she and Baelfire hoped for.
So Belle opens her mouth and begins to speak.
Eternities pass. Bae grows nearly—nearly—immune to the horrors of Dark Hollow. He learns to spot Shadows when he sees them, to ignore the faces they morph into, to wall up his heart against the promises and the deals and the truths they offer. Even Pan cannot get past the defenses Bae erects around his own heart and mind and will.
Day never comes to Neverland anymore. Bae assumes it's part of his punishment, Dark Hollow reaching out to steal the sun before he can be warmed by it. In the new endless night, Bae has plenty of time after he's freed from the Shadows to crawl up countless trees. But without the sun, the flowers begin drying out. They no longer release their pollen, and at the foot of the Pixie trees, the dreamshade bushes grow ever denser, heavier, sharper.
Eventually, Bae is forced to concede defeat. He'll have to hope that he's gathered enough dust already.
He needs only one more thing: his parting gift for Pan. Bae spends painful games with the Lost Boys devising his strategy. He learns about seashells and conches from Tinker Bell, an exiled fairy who tries—and fails—to avoid attracting Pan's attention, and he learns about squid from Felix, who likes to boast about past accomplishments. He learns to endure pain, to become ever stronger, to never give up, from Pan himself.
So one night—the same night since day is something he's beginning to believe he only imagined—Bae finds himself in a secluded cove. The remnants of a tiny fire, the old robe that was his papa's, fallen to the sand when Bae leapt to his feet to stand between Rumplestiltskin and a boy dressed in green, make a lump rise in his throat.
It was all real. He didn't imagine it.
Papa is here, somewhere, waiting for Bae to rescue him.
"Get pixie dust," Papa whispered to him during an embrace on one visit.
"Do what you have to do," he breathed another time.
"Stop visiting me," he keened, over and over again, and only when Pan was laughing, distracted, did he look up through the cover of his hair and give Bae a meaningful look.
Bae got the message: do whatever he had to do in order to make Pan think he's winning. Assuage his concerns. Soothe his annoyances. Play to his ego.
Win the game by cheating.
So here Bae is, wrestling a sea squid to submission, cutting him open, retching at the smell, draining ink glands, coating his bounty onto his arrows and setting the quiver on a shoulder opposite his crossbow. Here he is, and he hasn't seen Papa in so long that his bones ache with missing him, and at his belt, he has a hollow coconut full of harvested pixie dust.
And the Dark One's dagger, as always, is everywhere he looks.
Bae caps a vial over the spare squid ink, nudges the dagger out of his way, and strides back up the sand. He nearly trips over the dagger on the path ahead of him, kicks it aside, and continues on. It took him…a long time…following Pan's Shadow to finally find Echo Cave.
He knows he shouldn't. It might give everything away. It might destroy him.
But he can't leave, not without letting Papa know he's coming back.
The caves are deceptively bright, like there are torches lit within. Bae hopes there are. When he ducks inside, he finds a cavern opening up to untold depths ahead. And across a vast chasm, there is a cage. A familiar cage, too small, woven and coated in squid ink. The whole cave stinks of it, or maybe that's just Bae himself.
"Papa," Bae whispers. His voice carries. He tries to believe he sees movement from within the cage. "Papa, I'm going to come back for you. This isn't me leaving you. This is me saving you."
There's no movement. No answering voice. Nothing.
Not for the first time, Bae wonders if this is all a trick of Pan's. If Papa died eternities ago, or was sent away and lived a whole life somewhere else, and Bae's entire reason for being is nothing but a lie.
Not that it matters. What else does Bae have to cling to?
"I'm coming back!" he shouts into the cave, a roar of defiance, but like a coward, he ducks away before he can see if the cave recognizes it as lie or truth.
This time, when he finds the dagger stuck in a tree blocking the jungle path, Bae pries it free and sticks it through his belt.
He's made it only halfway up to the highest cliff when Pan appears ahead of him.
"Going somewhere, Baelfire?" Pan asks.
Bae's tired of being afraid of Peter Pan. He's tired of waking up scared and going to sleep angry. He's tired of being alone and being hunted and being ground down under Pan's boot.
"I'm leaving Neverland," he says.
"No, see, the deal was that Rumple could leave if he could find a way. Not you."
"I'm only here for a visit," Bae says with a sneer. "And that implies a temporary state."
"Not in Neverland." Pan chortles with glee. "In Neverland, time doesn't pass."
"You remember what I told you, Pan? I told you I was going to defeat you." Quick as a flash, Bae has his crossbow in his hand, an arrow sighted, and the trigger is pulled, the arrow releases—
Pan catches the bolt just before the tip can pierce his heart. "I'm impressed," he says. "But you're still not good enough to beat me."
"Yeah? What do you call the power you wield here?" Bae smirks at him, a smile he knows is one of Pan's, but he doesn't care because Pan's a winner and for once, Bae is going to win a game. "I call it magic. And magic is stopped by squid ink. The same squid ink I coated that entire shaft with."
The purple glow that encases Pan in stillness is the most beautiful thing Bae's ever seen. He thinks maybe he could learn to love the smell of squid ink.
"I told you it was the truth," Pan yells behind him. "I told you that you'd abandoned your father. The same way he wanted to abandon you."
The words hurt. Pan's words always do. There's always just enough truth in them to make them sharp and barbed. But Bae hardens his heart, steels his eyes, and walks away from Pan.
When the pixie dust coats him in a sheen of magic, Bae throws himself off the cliff with thoughts of his papa firmly in his mind. He doesn't notice the dagger fall from his belt.
The stars descend to meet him.
"We…know of Baelfire and his father," the Blue Fairy finally says. "I helped Baelfire once. He needed an escape from this world to another, for sake of his father, and I gave him a magic bean that should have taken him to the Land Without Magic."
"Without magic? At all?" Snow blurts in surprise, sharing a stunned look with David.
"It did," Belle says over them. She feels a burst of defensiveness she doesn't choose to examine too closely. "Baelfire and his father ended up in that land, but it almost killed Rumplestiltskin. And when the Shadow came for a little boy, Baelfire made it take him instead. His father refused to let go and was carried away as well. That's how they ended up in Neverland."
"Rumplestiltskin was never meant to leave the Land Without Magic." The Blue Fairy drew herself up in midair. "I don't know what Baelfire told you about his father, but Rumplestiltskin is under a curse. He's the Dark One."
Gasps escape Snow and David, and even Belle can't stop herself from swallowing hard. She'd guessed, from the things Bae let slip, but to have confirmation that not only is such an evil creature real, but that it is Rumplestiltskin…it takes her aback. She once searched endlessly for every story ever told of the Dark One, desperate to find a way to turn back the Ogres from her land, and for all their differences and contradictions in names and time periods and magical skills, the one thing all the stories agree on is that the Dark One is the most evil, most twisted, most dangerous creature their world has ever known. When he disappeared, it was a great relief, a triumph perhaps unmarked but notable nonetheless.
Belle can't imagine what it must have been like, for a poor spinner worried only for his son to bear the full weight of that curse. All that darkness landing on his soul at once. The voices of the past Dark Ones taunting him, goading him, enticing him. He must have gone mad. He must have been lost under the deluge, and then lost all over again when his son took him to a place where the curse was stripped away from him.
"By sending Rumplestiltskin to the Land Without Magic, I saved our realm from his wickedness," the Blue Fairy says. "His son wanted a way to be with him, a way that wouldn't kill him, and I found that. We gave him the last magic bean known to the fairies. Whatever happened after that is out of my hands."
"But we know what happened," Snow says. "Even if this Dark One doesn't deserve to be rescued"—she ignores Belle's gasp of outrage—"all those children certainly deserve a good home. We can help them—"
"The fairies will not go to Neverland." The Blue Fairy adopts a sorrowful countenance. "I am sorry for the children, but the chances are high that all the goodness in them has been corrupted by now. They are lost. The most I can do is try to stop the Shadow from returning to our realm."
"That's it?" Belle demands. She rises to her feet and advances on the hovering fairy. "Baelfire isn't corrupted. He's good, and innocent, and hurt beyond measure by everything he's gone through. He deserves all of our efforts, as do the rest of the Lost Boys. As does the man who was cursed—cursed!—and then abandoned in another world, only to be captured and tortured in a third. The fairies hold good magic. You're supposed to be good. How can you be good if you're willing to condemn, sight unseen, who knows how many people to such a terrible fate?"
"There is much evil in this world, and even more sorrow. We cannot help everyone. We must pick and choose our battles. And a war in another world, especially a world that eats up banished fairies, is not one I can choose. We must remain above such conflicts."
"But you can fight for a single ruler? You can change the fate of our world by backing one queen over another?" Belle scowls at the fairy, now glowing so bright she can't see the woman's face at all through the glare. "How is that fair? How is that just? How is that unbiased? You're allowing your own prejudice against the Dark One to sway your judgment."
"You know nothing about the fairies, and if you are the ally Baelfire has chosen, then perhaps it is proof enough that he is corrupted. Like calls to like, and by denouncing the fairies, you denounce all good magic."
"Fairies do not own the corner market on 'good,' if I even agree with your definition of the word."
"Enough!" Snow cries. She takes hold of Belle's shoulder and moves to stand between her and the Blue Fairy.
Belle takes a deep breath, surprised to realize she is shaking and that there are tears stinging the backs of her eyes.
"Please, Blue, isn't there anything you can do?"
"And risk unleashing the Dark One?" With a shake of her head, the Blue Fairy rises back toward the heavens. "I will do nothing save remain grateful that our land is still free of that darkness."
"No!" Belle moans as her last hope vanishes into the sky. She lifts her hands to cover her mouth, her tears spilling out into the open. She's failed. There will be no help from the fairies.
How will she tell Baelfire? She's ruined everything. She's destroyed his last chance.
"I'm so sorry," Snow says, patting Belle's shoulder comfortingly. "I know this sounds terrible, but…the fairies do always have reasons for what they do. Maybe…maybe this is a good—"
Luckily for the Queen—and for Belle's future outside the royal cells—David interrupts before Snow can finish that sentence.
"I think I know a way," David says. "It's not as good as fairy dust, but it might be able to at least get you to Neverland."
Belle only narrowly avoids from leaping at him. "How?" she demands.
"Have you ever heard of a portal-jumper?" David meets her gaze. "I know a man, by the name of Jefferson, who can travel between worlds through his hat."
Hope bursts back into being, warming Belle from the inside out. "Please," she says. "Where can I find him?"
A/N: In canon, I know that somewhere between 1-3 years pass between the time when the Ogres are menacing Avonlea and when Snow becomes pregnant. But in this world, I assume that without all the magic Rumplestiltskin could teach Regina, she was much easier to defeat and imprison, so Snow and Charming were able to start their married life sooner. Also, Pan is hard to write well without him coming across as 'overacting,' in a manner of speaking, but hopefully I've captured a bit of his evilness!
