A/N: Thank you to everyone who clicks on this story, follows it, favorites it, and comments on it - I can't tell you how encouraging all those things are! I hope you enjoy this chapter as much I did writing it!


Chapter 3: A Son


No one ever comes to see him. Not anymore. Rumplestiltskin stares up at the ceiling that he imagines, for his own peace of mind, is far above him, and he tries to remember what stars look like. They are bright, he knows that. They are tiny, and sharp-edged, and lead to terrible places, that he knows above all. But aren't they also beautiful? He seems to remember thinking so, once upon a time, but now, he can't visualize them.

How long has it been since he's seen them?

Well, that's a useless question. The sound of his own laughter, manic and barbed, echoes in the cave. The cackles are the truest sound he can make anymore, but still no pathway opens across the chasm that separates him from the rest of Neverland.

"Safe," he whispers to himself while his hands spin endless invisible thread, golden and brighter than any star could hope to be. "Safe in here. Safe apart. Safe for now. Safe forever. Never more to leave. Never-Neverland."

And he laughs again.

The sound reverberates back painfully against him, as if the cave is gorged and too full and so vomits back this delicacy onto Rumplestiltskin.

It wants truth. But not just any truth, oh no, the Echo Cave wants only the deepest, darkest, most painful, most debilitating, most divisive, most cutting truths.

"Greedy, aren't we?" he murmurs, but he curls his lips around the words to hide them from the stone walls that encompass him in their maw. He's learned his own forms of revenge, petty though they may be, in the long, long…well, the time that he's been trapped here.

Stories are lies, after all. And all Rumplestiltskin has to tell himself anymore, all he can believe there really exists, are stories.


It all began, he chants to himself, teeth gritted to the point of pain to keep from handing Pan any more verbal ammunition, with a boy…


Baelfire has always been a good boy. The best, Rumplestiltskin knows. So when he looked at his papa and said, "I want my father," it salved some wound deep within Rumplestiltskin that was inflicted when he was just a boy himself and had been exacerbated over and over again throughout his life.

Rumplestiltskin didn't want to give up the power he'd never had before. He certainly didn't want to go back to being a weak, cowardly cripple. But to hear his son—the son he's given up so much for and done so much to save—say that what he wants more than anything is his father?

Well, he gave in, didn't he?

"If I find a way for you to get rid of the power—a way that doesn't kill you or hurt me—would you do it?" his beautiful boy asked.

And Rumplestiltskin said, "If you find a way, I'll do it."

The deal is struck.

So when Bae comes to him with tales of fairies and another world and the freedom for them to be together, Rumplestiltskin doesn't back out. He wants Bae's happiness above all, of course he does.

Just like another little boy wanted his father's happiness, and told him of another world, and dreamed of a place they could be happy together.

When Bae drags him into the woods, excited and talking a mile a minute, and pulls a bean from his pocket, every muscle in Rumplestiltskin's body locks up.

"You made a deal with me," Bae said. "Are you backing out?"

No. No, of course not. He shattered his ankle for his boy. He lost his wife for his boy. He took on a dark curse for his boy.

He will not abandon him now.

The bean hits the ground and tears a hole open between realms. It screams and roars and sucks up everything in its hungry pull, and Rumplestiltskin doesn't know how he ever managed to leap into it when he was a boy.

"No, no, no! It's a trick!" he tries to warn his son. "It'll tear us apart!"

That's the only thing magic beans can do. He knows.

"It's not! It'll be okay! I promise!" Bae cries. So comforting. Reassuring. Everything a little boy shouldn't have to be for his papa.

Rumplestiltskin tightens his hold on his son's hand—but something inside him, dark voices taunting and screaming, guide his other hand to draw the dagger.

It hovers there, over the ground, an anchor waiting to be created. Something to be held onto.

"Papa, please!" Bae screams. "It's the only way we can be together!"

The only way.

If they stay…Bae won't. He'll go. Maybe not to another world, but he'll run, he'll escape his own father, and then Rumplestiltskin will have committed the ultimate crime: he'll turn his son into himself.

The man who ran.

He'll leave his son fatherless.

Rumplestiltskin wraps his hands tighter around the dagger but tightest around Bae's hand, and he lets himself fall into another world.

He only prays this one will be better than Neverland.


"Stupid, crazy, ridiculous, fool of a decision," Rumplestiltskin lectures himself. "You should have held on. Should have stayed. Should have never trusted a bean."

Something in the cave groans with a sound like shattering. A bit of the pathway forming itself, bridging a foot of that chasm.

Truth.

Instead of screaming like he wants to, Rumplestiltskin giggles.

"In Neverland," he croons, "if you believe something, you make it true."

For how could he have ever lived with himself had he let go of his boy?

No, Neverland itself is a lie. How can he expect it to recognize the real truths? How can he be surprised when the only reality it recognizes is one that separates a boy from his father?


The Land Without Magic is a nightmare.

His ankle hurts like it hasn't in nearly a year. His hands shake. His knees quiver. He's cold, and he's hungry, and he's exhausted all the way down to his bones, and he'd forgotten how all these things feel. But his boy is depending on him.

Rumplestiltskin tries to hide his terror as first one place, then another, then another turns them away. The first night, they hunker down in a stable near some friendly horses. Bae sleeps, tucked up close against his father's side, under his arm, and Rumplestiltskin counts his breaths, fidgets his fingers against his thumb, and tries not to panic.

He can't feel any magic. Not in the air, not in the ground, not anywhere. Not even within himself.

The dagger is safe in his belt, between his tunic and his undershirt, and Rumplestiltskin traces the shape of it through the layers of cloth. It still bears his name. He looked as soon as he could distract Baelfire. It has his name, but it's nothing more than a pretty object, and one he doesn't even dare try to sell.

Useless. Just like him.

Zoso's voice, the others that echoed his words like a shadow chorus, they're all gone. Rumplestiltskin is alone. Alone, and all by himself, he doesn't know how to take care of his boy in this strange world. As much as the power, the strength, the confidence, the curse gave him, Rumplestiltskin is surprised to learn that he loved knowing there were others he could depend on. That he would never be alone.

All gone now.

He wishes he'd never come. He wishes with all his heart that they could go back home, where the air is thick with magic and the ground seeps it in and overflows with it. He wishes and wishes and wishes, but no Blue Fairy comes to grant his desire.

"For Bae," he reminds himself, and he curls his arm tighter around his son and vows not to let him down.

He vows that Bae will never know how much Rumplestiltskin wishes these past days undone.

In the morning, he tickles Bae's nose to wake him before the owner of the horses can find them, and once they're out in the rousing streets, he feeds Bae the bit of his dinner he'd had sense to tuck away.

"I'll just find a job," he says, "and we'll earn coin that way."

"Okay," Bae says agreeably.

It takes them a while, and Rumplestiltskin is searingly conscious of every sideways glance at their out-of-place clothing, but they find an innkeeper who offers to let Rumplestiltskin work in his stables for three days in exchange for a place in the hayloft and one meal a day each for him and his boy. Bae looks as if he wants to argue, so Rumplestiltskin is quick to agree and hustle him away.

"We have to start somewhere," he says, and wishes he could believe himself as much as Bae pretends to.

It's hard work, and horses are quite a bit different than sheep, but together, he and Bae manage to figure it out. Rumplestiltskin tucks away as much of his dinners as he can force himself to, and hoards the tips given him by the few kind customers. But then, the second day, Bae gets sick. He sniffles and coughs and turns away his dinner after just a few bites, and new terror sings through Rumplestiltskin.

He cannot lose his son. Not now. Not after all this. He'll be less than dust here. And Bae only came because of him. His son is only in this position because Rumplestiltskin couldn't control the darkness as well as he thought.

Every moment since they've arrived, since Rumplestiltskin landed in a new world for the second time in his life and crumpled to the ground as a useless cripple, he's hated this world. Now, with Bae feverish and tossing restlessly in his sleep beneath a too-thin blanket, Rumplestiltskin despises this world. It's taking everything from him: his magic, his self-respect, and now his boy.

No. No, he won't let this happen. Never again.

All the coins Rumplestiltskin saved, as well as a few he owes in advance, disappear in exchange for the medicine he procures. He feeds it to Bae, spoonful by spoonful, night after night, and prays with every cell in his body.

Three days later, shacked up in another hayloft for another innkeeper, Bae finally wakes, hungry and bright-eyed, and Rumplestiltskin smiles at him, gives him his saved meals, and then stumbles outside where he breaks down in the dirt and sobs his relief.

For every menial job Rumplestiltskin finds, for every tiny coin he is given, there is just never enough. He remembers how to be hungry—his body adjusts quickly—but Bae is a growing boy, and in the manner of children, he was quick to grow used to frequent meals and occasional snacks. Though Bae never complains, Rumplestiltskin hates that he can hear his son's stomach making hungry noises all through the nights where Rumplestiltskin himself is kept awake by the constant pain in his ankle.

That he had grown used to being without. The never-ending pain of it is enough to make sure he never forgets, even for a moment, how far he rose—and how quickly he's fallen to an even lower state than before.

Now, he's not just a poor spinner.

He's a useless beggar.

The stiffer his leg gets, the fewer jobs he can find. One day, when he sends Bae to beg at a baker's who hasn't grown too familiar with their faces, he finds himself down at the docks. Often, he's too hungry and exhausted to pay attention to any conversation besides Bae's, but he's heard enough to know there is a fearsome navy here and that there are wars being fought at sea. He's also heard enough to know that gangs roam the docks looking for men and boys they can kidnap and sail away with, forcibly conscripting them as sailors. Some, he's heard, will pay for freely offered work.

"It's just a contract," he tries to tell himself. "You could do it."

A boat. Like the one where Milah was taken and brutalized and murdered. Like the one where Rumplestiltskin was humiliated and sent away with his tail between his legs.

But for Bae…for Bae, he'd do anything.

If only he could be sure there'd be pay sent back to his son rather than pretty lies to keep him working as hard as his leg and the tickle in his throat lets him.

Or is that only the excuse he gives himself in order to not have to face the merciless ocean?

Defeated, as much a coward as always without the Dark Ones to bear him up, Rumplestiltskin turns to head back into the city.

And he resolves never to let Bae come down here on his own.


"Should have gone. Should have sailed. Should have let the boy fly free."

Rumplestiltskin waits for the caves to recognize that as truth, but it doesn't. It won't. Neverland knows nothing of putting someone else's needs first. He wonders if it ever did, or if it's the god it chose for itself that has corrupted its morality.

"Strange to have a sentient land," he muses. And waits.

Company always comes eventually, and soonest of all when Rumplestiltskin recognizes it for what it is.

Time doesn't pass here, but Rumplestiltskin spins an entire spool of golden thread out of air to stock with the rest of his invisible collection before it finally arrives.

There are lanterns at the mouth of this cave. Of course. You can't have shadows without light to cast them.

Rumplestiltskin first becomes aware of its presence when there is a sound, like the rushing of a breeze, and then when one of the lanterns flickers. Just for an instant. Little more than an eye-blink.

"Come out of the darkness," he croons. "Come into the light. Stop hiding. You think I don't know you're there?"

"Dark calls to dark," comes the reply, and then it emerges.

A black silhouette, blanketing a man-shaped piece of the light so that Rumplestiltskin sees Neverland in personable form.

"Ah, but shadows are drawn to the light," he counters.

"We both know there's no light here anymore."

Pain stabs deep. Rumplestiltskin has to drop his imaginary thread to place a hand against the clenching of his heart. A keening sound escapes him.

"My boy," he breathes. "My beautiful boy. Gone, gone, gone. No light in Neverland anymore."

It amazes him, really, that he's still alive. Still cursed to live while his boy is long gone. How can he breathe without Bae existing somewhere?

"Tell me," he demands of the Shadow, as he always does. "Is he alive? Did he escape?"

"He's exactly where Pan wants him," the Shadow says, as he always does.

In a grave? Rumplestiltskin should ask it. He wants to know. He needs to know.

But like the coward he's always been, he cannot make the words escape from behind the cage of his teeth.

Better to imagine his son escaping back into another world—any world. The Land Without Magic where there's a whole, healthy, full family to take him in. Even their old world, which Bae must miss now that he doesn't have to worry about his monster of a father following him back to wreak bloody mayhem. Better any world at all than this one.

But oh, does Rumplestiltskin miss him.

"Just let me see him," he begs. "Just one more time."

Sometimes, after all, the Shadow is merciful. Sometimes, it will reform and coalesce into a different shape. A beloved shape.

But not today.

"I'm bored," the Shadow complains. "Tell me something new."

Rumplestiltskin retreats the few inches his cage allows him. "Stories," he scoffs. "Lies by any other name, and all the more damaging for the hope they offer."

The Shadow drifts closer, heedless of the abyss beneath its floating feet. "Then tell me a sad story."

With a giggle, Rumplestiltskin says, "That's the only kind I know."


It's the deaths that keep him awake. He tells Bae it's his ankle, knows his son thinks it's his empty belly, but it's really the deaths.

He counts them, hour by hour, desperate not to forget even one.

Hordor and his soldiers.

The ogres by their thousands.

The Duke and his men who came to try to wrest the dagger from him.

The butcher with his heavy fists and his quick temper.

The noble who came to try to entice him to his castle, and then the noble's retinue when they thought to use Baelfire as incentive.

The man with the cart that made Bae bleed.

The mute maid.

The two strangers who snuck in at night while Bae slept in search of the dagger.

Rumplestiltskin counts them on his fingers and runs out of fingers, out of numbers, out of guilt.

Because he doesn't care.

Oh, he does in a way. Under the curse, with Zoso in his ear and darkness in his veins, none of them had seemed a crime. Every death had seemed only reasonable, ordinary, even simple. It had baffled him, that Bae hadn't seemed to understand that.

But here…crashing onto the forest floor with darkness on every side, Rumplestiltskin had felt simultaneously unburdened and chained down with these murders that, in a second, became the tragedies they had always been.

But he saved Bae. He protected his son, the very thing he can't do at all in this world, and even without the Dark One in his head, Rumplestiltskin has a hard time feeling as bad about his crimes as he knows he should.

In fact, in the middle of the day, when his son is forced to dig through trashcans, when people spit if they bother to see him at all, Rumplestiltskin wishes for the power back. The magic. The Dark Curse. The evil in his heart. At least, then, Bae would be safe. He'd be full. He'd be healthy.

Coughing into his elbow, Rumplestiltskin tries to sit up to ease the tightness of his chest. It doesn't help, and eventually, he sags back down to the dirty ground. Bae found a bit of a ragged blanket to lay beneath them, but it does nothing to cushion the cobblestones.

Wrapping an arm around his own side, Rumplestiltskin traces the edges of his dagger under his shirt.

He misses magic.

He misses being someone worthwhile.

"Papa? Papa, I'm back."

Instantly, the dark thoughts flee. It's bright and too hot in his robe, but Rumplestiltskin feels as if the alleyway is lit with a glow when Baelfire scampers forward to join him beneath the little bit of shelter they've scrounged up.

"Bae," he says, and smiles.

His son is alive. He's here. They're together. It's enough…for now.

"Are you feeling any better, Papa? Here, I brought some water." Bae is helpful, so eager to please, happy to contribute anything. If he left his broken father behind, he could probably find work. Maybe an apprenticeship. Baelfire is bright, and friendly, and industrious, and Rumplestiltskin cannot imagine that anyone would see his bright spirit and not invite him to stay.

If only Rumplestiltskin weren't bound to him like a millstone around his neck.

He wishes his son would, just once, look at him with all the blame he must feel. It's hisfault they're here, after all. Bae had to flee an entire world just to get his papa to stop murdering people, and even though he's always wanted to be a hero, it must chafe at him, that even in another realm, Rumplestiltskin is still so pitifully weak.

Bae's always deserved better than him.

Which means that when he comes with news of a house full of food, a family willing to take Baelfire in, Rumplestiltskin swallows back his terror and his resentment and his desperation.

"You have to accept," he tells Bae, and tries not to mind the terrible tragedy his life has become, that he must convince his son to leave him, tell him how unworthy he is, argue for Bae to abandon him the way everyone else in his life has.

"You need a home," he says, and though Bae is good enough to think Rumplestiltskin deserves one too, he allows himself to be swayed. Oh, he promises to come back. Of course he does. He's a hero. The best soul Rumplestiltskin has ever known.

But Rumplestiltskin watches him leave, and he knows: the seer's long-ago promise has finally come true.


"I already know this story," the Shadow says. "You think I wasn't watching the whole thing happen?"

"Oh, I have no doubt you were," Rumplestiltskin says with a smile that feels like a snarl. "Peter Pan loves to gloat too much to ever leave me alone completely."

"He wasn't there for you," the Shadow says with almost casual malice. "He was there for Baelfire. He needs the boy, you know."

Rumplestiltskin doesn't move. He doesn't even breathe.

"Well," the Shadow shrugs, "not Baelfire, so much as what Baelfire will provide for him."

Bae is alive.

He's alive. If Pan needs him, there's no way he would have killed him.

His son is still alive. He must have escaped, at Pan's sufferance or not, and he's probably happy. Rumplestiltskin hopes he's not hungry. He hopes he's found someone to love him even a fraction as much as Rumplestiltskin does.

"Your Papa's here," he croons to himself. To the memory of that baby in his arms. "Everything's going to be okay."

The Shadow huffs and drifts even closer, within arm's reach if there were spaces in the cage's bars to let Rumplestiltskin reach out and grab hold of that cold inkiness.

"Why does he leave you alive?" asks the Shadow, as if to itself. "Why hasn't he ended you yet?"

But Rumplestiltskin isn't listening anymore. He's learned what he needed. He has what he has been spending eternities trying to drag from the Shadow.

And maybe his story isn't entirely a tragic one.


Bae keeps coming back. It's a miracle, and one that Rumplestiltskin doesn't question. Every time he gets to see his boy is a gift, and he treasures it as it deserves: wholly, unconditionally, and always expecting it to be the last.

He should have known even that little piece of solace was too good to last.

One day, his alley is invaded by others. They search him for anything to steal, take the bread Bae left with him, but when one nearly finds the dagger, Rumplestiltskin wakes from his daze. He fights like an animal—a beast—kicking and growling, even biting at one point, until they give him up as a lost cause and run away.

All but one. That one lays against the wall now stained red, his neck twisted to an unnatural angle, his eyes blank.

Proof that even in the Land Without Magic, Rumplestiltskin is a monster. Even here, half-dead, the curse still has its hooks in him. After all his son has sacrificed, Rumplestiltskin is still a murderer.

Bae must never know.

It takes all his strength and more than to drag the body to a different alley, cover it in trash, and scuttle back to his usual spot. Rumplestiltskin doesn't have much in this world, but this alley is where Bae knows to find him. If he's driven away…he'll never see Bae again. If the dagger is taken…who knows what could happen. Maybe nothing. Maybe Rumplestiltskin's last tether to his half-life will be loosed and he'll drift into death and when Bae comes—if he comes again—he'll find nothing but a body.

His son doesn't deserve that. He doesn't deserve to be fatherless.

Of course, Bae has a new father now.

Rumplestiltskin shakes the thought away, curls back up in his regular spot, his heart beating too rapidly, and traces the shape of the dagger, pressed tight against his ribs with hands that aren't clean in any sense of the word.

And Bae comes, and lays his head in his lap, and tells him he loves him. It's like a reward, for fighting for what belongs to him, and Rumplestiltskin thinks that maybe this doesn't have to be the end.

For the first time, he leaves the alley and ghosts after his boy. He's been selfish, trying to protect his own heart by letting his boy come and go like magic, but finally, he follows him back to the house Rumplestiltskin couldn't give him. He watches Bae slip through the back door of a huge place, two stories high, curtains fluttering inside glass windows.

He should leave. It's not good for either of him for him to linger here, to be either kidnapped by pressgangs or picked up by the Bobbies or just seen as the riffraff he is and chased away in front of his boy.

But he can't leave. Not yet. He wants to see Bae, just one more time. One last glimpse to get him through the long days until his boy comes back.

Or maybe he'll finally do the brave thing and disappear. Stop dragging his son down. Let him move fully into his new life without having to worry about the bag of bones—the murderer—waiting for him in an alleyway.

Rumplestiltskin is still trying to convince himself to stop being selfish when he sees the Shadow—so familiar, so haunting, like his childhood nightmares come to life, which…it is—float to the window. Panic makes the next moments into a blur hazed in hysteria. He knows that his ankle twists and burns when he throws himself at the wall. He knows that his hands are scratched and mangled by the handholds he digs for as he climbs toward that window. And he knows that for the first time in his life, he isn't afraid of heights at all when he sees his boy being carried out of the window by a shape all too familiar from his nightmares.

Without even a flicker of self-preservation, Rumplestiltskin throws himself at the Shadow. Throws himself at the very creature he'd fought with all a young boy's strength to escape. It pays him as little heed this time as it did back then, simply flying up, up, up to the stars.

It takes him—him and his son—to a world he's been in before. And Rumplestiltskin feels it: magic.

On the very day he killed someone like he's still the Dark One, the curse is returned to him.

It's only fitting, in a way, but Rumplestiltskin knows that Bae can never find out—not that Rumplestiltskin killed without the Dark One. Not that there is a tiny piece of him that wonders, somewhere buried beneath his love for his boy, if he leapt for the Shadow because he knew it would take him back to a world filled with magic. Bae can never know.

If he does, he'll know that all his sacrifices were in vain. He'll know that trying to save Rumplestiltskin is nothing but a fool's endeavor.

And he'll leave.


"But Baelfire did leave."

The new voice breaks through Rumplestiltskin's reverie. Shatters the story into pieces.

Rumplestiltskin doesn't mind. He wishes the story had stopped there in reality. But it didn't. It still hasn't. It drags on in eternities of anguish and new torments.

Pan's laugh doesn't echo. Instead, the cave soaks it in. Truth.

"Pan," Rumplestiltskin grits. He always has to say the name, just to make sure the truth of who Pan is doesn't slip free.

Another laugh, this time at Rumplestiltskin, and Pan sits on the half-completed bridge, cross-legged and unbowed by any care or worry.

"You know, Rumple, when I put you in here, I didn't expect you to stay quite so long."

"I'm not surprised," Rumplestiltskin sneers. "You've always tried to get rid of me as fast as possible."

"Not still bitter about that, are you? You need to learn to let things go. Oh, wait…" Pan holds a finger up in the air as if at a sudden thought. "I guess you did—your son."

But Bae is alive and Rumplestiltskin won't let anything ruin the triumph of that revelation.

"You know, there is an easy way out of here." Pan looks down over the ends of the bridge, as careless of heights as the Shadow that's disappeared. "I really thought that you'd have been able to speak enough truths to finish this bridge by now, but you're getting there. I'd say one big truth should do the trick. Just one."

"My father abandoned me," Rumplestiltskin says with a growl to his voice.

But it's a truth he's said too many times before, and the cave ignores it.

"No, no, a bigger truth than that. The one truth that has dominated your entire life. Just say it—admit it—and your cage will open, the bridge will be complete, and you'll be free to go."

"Go where?" Rumplestiltskin asks. He tries to sound bored, but now that he knows Bae is alive, free, out there, there is a new prickling stealing over his body. A sudden urgency to go, to search, to find, to hold.

"Anywhere you can get to." Pan grins at him. "I won't stop you. All you have to do is speak your most basic truth."

"I'm a father," Rumplestiltskin tries, though he already knows it won't work. "I love Bae more than anything."

Pan waits with an insultingly expectant expression before he shakes his head sadly. "Not quite. Afraid a lie like that just doesn't pass muster."

Rumplestiltskin curls his hands around the slats of cage and hates him with every fiber of his being.

"Say it," Pan says. "You know what truth I'm talking about. Just say it and be done with all of this. You could be living a life out there. Your magic back, the Dark Curse to hide your weakness, whole worlds open before you—all you have to do is say this one truth."

"I hate you," he whispers.

It's a truth, but the cave doesn't care about it. It's not nearly painful enough—more evidence that his father never loved him. If he did, it would hurt him to know how much Rumplestiltskin now loathes him.

Instead, he just laughs. "You want me to say it?" Pan asks. "I can. I've always been able to see the truth of you, after all. It's why I made the trade I did. You remember the one."

Rumplestiltskin wishes for the Shadow back. Wishes for solitude. Wishes he were anywhere but here with Malcolm.

"Fine," Pan stands and steps forward until his toes are over the abyss, as if he waits for the bridge to be completed. "I'll say it. This is the truth you must admit, the one most fundamental to your whole self. Repeat after me, laddie: You…deserve…every…abandonment…you've…suffered. Baelfire is better off without you."

Rumplestiltskin grits his teeth, clamps his lips shut, lays his hand over his mouth, and turns his face away from Pan.


Neverland is a nightmare, and squid ink is a new type of torture. Rumplestiltskin endures it because the alternative is Bae's own imprisonment. Pan taunts him, gloating and laughing and rubbing salt into open wounds as he's always been able to do. Though Rumplestiltskin tries not to listen, every word bites deep and festers.

It's the Shadow who surprises him. He comes to Rumplestiltskin's dangling cage, every night, with news of Bae.

"He's settling in with the Lost Boys," it relays one time. "Actually laughed a bit with Devin over dinner."

"Pan's impressed by how well he plays. His imagination is vibrant. We might have brought him here even without Pan's direction."

But it's when the Shadow brings news that Bae has won a game that Rumplestiltskin's entire life changes.

He hates the cage Pan's forced him into, dangling high from the trees Rumplestiltskin was too scared to climb as a little boy. Hates the feel of squid ink turning him sluggish and stilted. Hates the Shadow that took his papa from him and now relates to him the slow loss of his son. But above all, he hates that Pan stole his dagger from him.

When Bae comes to see him, Rumplestiltskin tries to be the papa his boy deserves. He remains calm, and does his best to comfort him, and attempts to give his boy hope. Every time Pan drags Bae away, Rumplestiltskin reminds him of their half-formed plan. He hopes for the best, but he knows: it's useless.

"Bae's not going to be visiting anymore," Pan tells him one day during a twilight that's lasted so much longer than Rumplestiltskin thinks it should. "He's outgrown you, even in a place where time doesn't move."

"Tick-tock," Rumplestiltskin murmurs. "Time may not move, but things still change."

"If I want them to," Pan agrees. "But you see, Bae still hears the music."

Rumplestiltskin breathes in, very carefully, and doesn't choke on his heart.

"We had quite the celebration last night. Lots of dancing. Lots of games. Bae won a couple. Do you want to know what he asked as his boon? He asked for me to play him an extra song. Looked quite thoughtful—you know, until he could no longer resist joining in the merriment."

"You're lying," Rumplestiltskin says. He knows he shouldn't. He's just playing into Pan's game. But it's too late.

"I don't think I'll make him forget you," Pan says thoughtfully. "I think it's for the best if he remembers exactly who you are. That should give him plenty of motivation to stick with me. After all, everyone who knows you always comes to the same conclusion, don't we? We're better off without you."

But Bae is good. He's pure. He loves Rumplestiltskin—the only one who does. He chose his papa over an entire world. So Rumplestiltskin doesn't believe Pan. He won't.

Except…Bae never comes back. Pan eventually moves Rumplestiltskin to Echo Cave, telling him that there's no point in keeping him by the camp anymore since Bae will have nothing to do with him.

"He's escaped," Rumplestiltskin tells himself, because he's always been good at lying to himself.

But Echo Cave remains silent and unchanged, and the lie stings like acid.


Stories always end. Rumplestiltskin knows that. He told hundreds to Bae, on treasured nights over Bae's bed, tucking him in and kissing his brow and assuring him that his papa loves him.

Stories always end, but Rumplestiltskin's doesn't. He just keeps dragging on and on and on.

Until the Shadow comes and opens his cage.

Rumplestiltskin stares at the suddenly unbarred sight ahead of him.

The Shadow reaches out his hand. "Come with me," it says.

"Why?" he asks, but his hand is already reaching. He's already grabbing. The cage is already falling away.

The Shadow doesn't have to speak truths to get them across the chasm. Rumplestiltskin holds tight to its frigid iciness as they soar over the yawning abyss, and staggers before falling in a heap to the jungle floor when the Shadow drops him outside the cave.

There are stars. Rumplestiltskin blinks up at them. Of course. That's what they look like. How could he have forgotten? They stab his eyes with their sharp glints and he blinks tears from his dry eyes.

"There's a new game afoot," the Shadow finally answers him. Oddly, there's a note of excitement in its deep voice, rumbling with the tectonic movements of a world. "Strangers have come."

"Indeed they have," Pan says from behind them, and he claps his hands, a familiar look of glee twisting his features. "A bit early, perhaps, but the best games always have twists in them."

With a flick of his hand, Pan summons the Shadow until it falls into place, tied to his foot by a twist of thread. Rumplestiltskin can't help but wonder who really tied them together. Did Neverland know what it was getting itself into when it offered Malcolm a trade?

The eternal night suggests otherwise.

"Am I a part of this game?" Rumplestiltskin asks. His limbs shake and quiver, but he believes with all the faith left to him and slowly rises to his own two feet. It's too hard to try to think how long it's been since he's last seen the outside of a cage, so he doesn't bother.

"Why, laddie, you're the bait. You've always been the bait. I've just finally caught something with you." Pan rubs his hands together and circles Rumplestiltskin, looking him up and down, examining him and musing aloud, "What does this look remind you of? Too familiar, perhaps? Yes, we'll try a little something different."

A flutter of Pan's hand and Rumplestiltskin's tatters vanish to be replaced with a new set of trousers and coat, all black leather over a silk shirt of ebony. The cuffs are so thick they feel like manacles. As Rumplestiltskin shifts and feels them chafe his wrist, he half expects to feel them woven through with the infernal ink.

"Not quite enough," Pan decides, and he comes close. So close Rumplestiltskin can't help but flinch back. For the first time since Pan took his hand and coated it in squid ink, after less than a day in Neverland, his papa touches him. He takes his hand and slips a cuff around his wrist. "A new design I've been working on with some help from people in the Land Without Magic. Let's try it out, shall we, just for a moment or two?"

Instinctively, Rumplestiltskin pries at the cuff, but it doesn't budge. He looks up to see Pan's expectant expression.

"Well?" Pan says. "Try it. Let's see that magic you're so fond of."

Magic. It's been so long, he'd nearly forgotten. Rumplestiltskin tries to summon a fireball to throw at that smirk, but nothing happens except the feel of the black cuff tightening around his wrist.

"Perfect!" Pan grins and gives him yet another once-over. "I think that looks convincing enough. You'll have to play a couple different parts, I'm afraid, but ah well, we all work with what we're given."

"What are you talking about?" Rumplestiltskin asks. The madness that chafed him inside the cave is falling away, bit by bit, scoured clean by the sight of stars and the feel of the breeze and the lack of a cage.

"The final game," Pan says. And his smiles fall away to reveal the intensity, the fanaticism, beneath. "The pieces are nearly all in place. The stakes are Neverland itself. And you, laddie, are my ace in the hole."

Then, with a snap of Pan's fingers, the stars wink out.