A Gambit in Trust

Neverland I

Neal II

The humidity hit him like a vice around the throat.

Neal landed heavy on his back with a squelch of displaced earth, gagging as he swallowed the heavy air. The stench of festering mud and musty rot filled his nostrils, urging his unsteady stomach to give up and retch out the cocktail of beer and prepackaged food he had subjected it to. He yanked his side free of the mud with enough force to roll over to avoid puking on himself.

The wonderful scent of vomit joined the attack on his nose and Neal heard the telltale of someone else losing their lunch as well.

His mostly sober mind struggled to a focus and he lurched to his feet with an unsteady balance of standing ankle deep in the same thick oatmeal of mud and decay that clung to the rest of his back. The towering trees, thick underbrush, sound of thousands of insects buzzing away, and the sight of the foreign sky told Neal exactly where he was.

It was all he could do to avoid getting sick again.

"How the hell did you get us in the fucking swamp, John!?" One of the men who had taken Henry yelled toward the other while using the leverage of his bodyweight to rip a hiking pack out of the muck. Tamara stood at his side, mud clinging through her hair and covering her face even as she poked at her nose and shoulder, almost in wonder.

The last man, John, stood steady between Neal and the other three, a shiny silver gun pointed at the former vagabond, freezing him in place.

"Accuracy was thrown off by the unexpected passenger," the armed one said with a disappointed glance down at himself. His pristine suit was as covered in the crap as the rest of them. Neal would have smirked if not for the barrel of certain death pointed right at his face.

"What? Oh, fuck!" The first one shouted upon spotting Neal before searching around with panic in his eyes. Neal noted that he had lost both his sidearm and sniper rifle in transit.

"This is Home Office?" Tamara asked, doing everything in her power to avoid looking at Neal. He felt and oddly smug sense of satisfaction that acted as a brief balm to his heartbreak. "Where the hell are we?"

Neal couldn't help himself. "Take my hand," he said, singing the words out to a beat.

Out of habit from the dozens of drunken singalongs and karaoke nights or just plain out of pity, Tamara picked up the song, even as the two kidnappers and Henry looked at him incredulously.

Neal hid a wince, thinking how he had to introduce the kid to good music if they got out of this.

"…off to never never land…" Tamara blinked and finally looked to Neal. "Neverland?" She rounded on her boss. "Home Office is in Neverland?"

Henry's eyes lit up and he started looking around, excited despite the situation, and Neal had to envy his ability to take wonder in the world.

"Surprise," John said, deadpan. "We almost good to go back there?"

Tamara pressed her thumb and middle finger against her temples, eyes screwed closed as if she had just gotten a sudden headache.

"Can't find my damn guns," the other man said, kicking at the muck like a dejected child. John closed his eyes and let out a long suffering sigh, but Neal could not take a step before the man's attention focused back on him.

"Still have your reserve of pixie dust, Michael?"

"Yeah, but—"

The man – Michael – kept talking but Neal tuned him out, realizing who these people were as memories great and sad flickered across his mind's eye.

A kindly couple, offering a place at their table to help a starving kid who would have just as quickly stolen the food as join them for a meal.

A bright girl, inquisitive and naïve about the world at large but still ready to take it by storm.

Two little boys who idolized their older sister and welcomed a strange boy into their hearts without question.

"—make do with it for now. Now, you—"

"John," Neal said, cutting the man off. He choked on the name, a feeling not dissimilar to when he realized Henry was his son pressing against his chest. What they had done left his mind, and for the briefest moment, Neal saw a child standing before him rather than a man. "It's me. Baelfire."

"You know them!?"

John ignored Tamara's outburst, "I know who you are." His finger slid from along the guard to over the trigger and Neal took an instinctive step back. "You left us, Bae. Left her."

Wendy, the name came easily to his mind with a time-corroded sense of sadness.

"She made her choice," Neal said, shaking his head. "How do you… how are you two even alive? God, it's been at least a century."

"What!?"

Tamara had apparently hit her limit, getting the pinched expression Neal had learned to recognize as the sign to shelve their argument for a later time.

"I thought you just had to use magic as a means to an end." She bowed her head, eyes darting back and forth as she put together clues Neal had no knowledge of. She backed toward the tree line, every one of her muscles tense. "But if you're that old you had to have been using magic for decades." Her head snapped up, glaring at John and Michael in turn. "You're no better than the rest of them!"

"Always the clever one," Michael said with sarcastic flavored contempt.

Henry used the distraction to start edging away from the distracted adults, and Neal tried his best to not look in his kid's direction to give him the edge on maybe getting away.

Tamara weaved her hands into mud-and-blood-soaked hair, eyes skyward but unseeing. "We were supposed to end it. Set the world right. Three years of my life. Three!" She whirled on Michael as he let out a bellow of a laugh. "What the hell was the point of all this if not to end magic!?"

Neal blinked, surprised that that was her motivation.

He wondered if he would have even objected to it, a few weeks ago.

She turned her glare from Michael back to John and advanced on the man, eyes glinting with frustrated anger. "I thought it was a bluff, but would have let the Dark One kill me!"

John sighed and turned his shoulders to aim the gun at Tamara, stopping her cold. Anger bled from her eyes, replaced with fear.

"Yes," he said, and Neal could hear the smile in his voice.

Neal would like to have thought he took the opportunity for just the perfect opening it was rather than any lingering instinct to protect the woman, but his first thought was that John was attacking someone he loved and needed to be stopped.

He pushed the ill feeling the thought created to the back of his mind as he sprang toward the gunman, willing himself to sort out his screwed up emotions later as he caught John around the middle and pulled him back just as the man squeezed the trigger, sending the bullet flying safely to the sky with a deafening bang.

Neal spotted Henry staring at the pair with wide eyes as they fell, and managed to scream at him to run before John landed an elbow to Neal's jaw and they both hit the mud hard.

The muck tasted worse than it smelled.

He spat a mouthful of gunk in his opponent's eyes and grappled for the gun, but John was wirier than he looked as he managed to keep hold of the weapon as the rolled around each other, each trying to leverage an advantage. Neal's muscles protested as the initial surge of adrenaline faded and the days' worth of fighting caught up to him and made him sluggish.

Despite throwing around enough magic to rival the Dark One, John did not share his weariness and Neal found himself growing familiar with the force of the man's palms striking the side of his face, sending the world to spinning.

The barrage stopped shy of Neal losing any teeth, but it took precious seconds before his brain could register anything other than blaring pain from his jaw. By the time he blinked back to focus, John stood over him, one lens of his glasses cracked and the other caked in mud but glaring at Neal with a crazed hate all the same.

He raised his earthen-covered gun and pulled the trigger in one smooth motion.

Neal's breath caught as he flinched into the mud, but the gun did not so much as click.

John looked at the weapon in betrayal and Neal knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, swinging his leg up with as much force as he could muster from the ground to kick his would-be murderer straight in the nads.

He pitched forward without even screaming, which Neal found odd until the man fell on top of him, unconscious, and Neal spotted the shaft of a hand carved arrow sticking out of his back. The bright green, purple, and red feathers used as fletching gave away the attackers and Neal fought to draw a breath.

The swamp filled with the undulating battle cry that had been second nature to him so many years ago, but filled him with nothing but anxious fear.

The lost boys did not suffer adults.

He heard their feet approaching, running and skipping through the muck, just as he pushed John far enough off of him to swallow a mouthful of the disgusting air.

"RUFIO!" He shouted at the top of his lungs, annunciating each syllable with a forceful breath. The war cries and charging steps came to an abrupt end save for one pair approaching from behind.

A teenager – older than Pan's typical followers – entered Neal's field of vision. Thin features and acne-scarred skin exaggerated his scowl and Neal could see the contempt in his dark eyes despite the limp dirty blonde hair hanging in his face.

"Rufio doesn't live here anymore," the boy said in a quiet, measured voice that set Neal's hackles on edge. He moved to speak, but the boy raised a boot and smashed him in the face, and Neal knew nothing but black.

Henry IV

Henry tried to run, but the undergrowth was as tall as his waist and so thick in places it may as well have been a solid wall. So he shuffled his way to freedom as fast as he could, ignoring the guilt in his belly by repeating his dad's desperate shout for him to run over and over in his head. He stumbled over branches, skinned his elbows on trees and rocks, and found that trying to keep your balance with your hands tied really sucked.

"Henry!"

Being chased at the same time sucked more.

"You won't last out here on your own, kid!"

Henry felt a flash of anger at the woman's use of the familiar term. She had betrayed his dad, gotten him kidnapped, his mom tortured, him kidnapped again, and brought him through a portal to Neverland (which might have actually gotten her brownie points), and expected him to listen to her?

She was out of her mind.

"They won't stop chasing you, you know that!"

Henry chanced a glance over his shoulder, and only registered that the woman was able to make easier progress through the undergrowth than he was before his foot caught on a root and he sprawled forward, slamming into a prickly plant face first.

He hissed a curse, and couldn't regain his feet before Tamara closed the distance between them, standing over him with her hands held out in a placating manner.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said, tossing a look over her shoulder and swallowing thickly.

"Just like the last five times?" Henry asked, channeling his mother's sarcasm as he scooted back. The plant tugged at his clothes, trapping him.

Tamara grimaced and clicked her tongue. "That was before," she said. "Now I have no idea what those bastards are after, and only know they need you." She bent down and yanked Henry up to his feet by his bound wrists. "So I'm not letting you out of my sight, and we're both going to get out of here, okay?"

Henry kept glaring at her, urging himself to come up with a plan to get away.

"I'm not leaving without my dad," Henry said to buy time. Tamara's breath hitched, surprising him before she spoke.

"We have no idea if he's still alive." She looked back toward the direction they came from, toying with her bottom lip. "I know it's hard Henry, but we have to think of ourselves now."

Henry fought the urge to kick the woman in the shins and take his chances running away again.

"We go back for him," he said, trying to imitate Emma's commanding tone. "Or I'm not going anywhere."

Different emotions flickered through Tamara's eyes as he looked at him incredulously, but Henry could only catch anger and frustration. He jutted out his chin, not caring and not willing to keep being dragged everywhere.

"Gotta admire the kid's spirit."

Henry flinched at the voice of Michael Darling as the man skid to a stop a few feet behind Tamara. The more unhinged Darling brother held his mud-covered gun aimed square between Tamara's shoulders.

In a flash his father's ex-fiancé dove past Henry and grabbed him from behind, an arm circling around his neck just hard enough to make breathing difficult.

Henry growled and flailed with all his bodyweight, doing everything in his power to squirm free and striking paydirt as the back of his head clobbered Tamara in the nose. Her grip slacked enough for him to slip beneath her arm and charge.

Right at Michael.

"Are you fucking kidding…?"

Frustrated and annoyed, Henry was willing to bet that Tamara was right when she said the Darlings needed him alive for some reason. His assumption was proven correct when Michael only dodged the attack instead of shooting him.

"You've got balls, kid, but—"

Henry interrupted him with a yell and charged the man again, but Michael answered by spinning out of the way and planting a boot to the small of Henry's back. He sprawled forward, tasting dirt as his back flared in pain.

"Try that again," Michael said in a deathly calm voice as Henry rolled onto his knees. The man aimed his gun at Henry's head, still as a windless day.

Henry doubled down on his gambit and lunged himself to his feet and ran toward the man again, but he hadn't made it two steps before Michael raised the weapon and fired, the echoing boom of the shot bringing Henry to a stop as his ears rang with deafening pain.

Something thumped behind him and Henry turned his attention away from a grinning Michael, looking behind him to see the sightless eyes of Tamara staring right at him. A line of blood trailed down from a small dark circle right between her eyes, but the grass behind her was awash with crimson and chunky blobs of bone and brain.

Henry looked away, hurling the meager contents of his stomach into the ground even as he wanted to scream in horror.

"I'd say that was your fault," Michael said as Henry's throat burned with bile. "But honestly, I wanted to kill her the moment we got you secure."

This is what evil is, Henry thought with a shudder as his chest heaved.

A hand gripped the back of Henry's shirt, and the boy found that all fight had left him as Michael hoisted him onto his shoulder. He stared at Tamara's body in silent horror as Michael hiked back from where they came, only blinking when the thick forest hid her from view.

"Why…?" He managed to ask, voice gone raspy.

Henry's body bounced as Michael shrugged.

"Easier than trying to get her to see," was the man's only explanation, tone light. "The dead don't screw up your plans."

Henry hung his head, breathing ragged as he found he needed to fight the urge to cry, and spotted a knife sheathed on the back of his captor's belt.

Henry held his breath as the idea came to him, unbidden.

Could he do it? Take the knife and free himself? The image played out in his mind.

It would only take a second. He couldn't hesitate.

His stomach turned again, but it had nothing left to give.

Trembling hands stretched toward the weapon, tears burning at the back of Henry's eyes at the thought of doing what he was going to do. He was tired of being used by everyone, and he was sure Emma and his mom would do the same.

The tips of his fingers gripped around the acrylic handle as Michael muttered something about him keeping still and tightening his hold on Henry's legs. He yanked the blade free, but underestimated how easily it would slide from its sheath. Most of his momentum bled into a swinging arc of the blade that sliced along Michael's back from on him to the opposite shoulder.

The man screamed and dropped to his knees as the knife dug through clothes and skin as easy as cutting air. Henry rolled off his shoulder and took off in another shambling run toward a new direction, angling the knife to cut off the ropes on his wrist and not looking at the red glinting off the grey and black steel.

He couldn't hear footsteps behind him, but that did not stop Henry from pushing every ounce of energy toward getting away from it all, going so far as to use the knife as a tiny machete to help clear his path. He kept his mind looking forward, trying to think of everything he knew about this realm from both the bits and pieces he'd heard from his dad and Mr. Gold, and from the Earth's children stories.

Neither of which prepared him as his entire body was lurched up, defying gravity as he flew straight up in the air in a flailing tangle of limbs and cloth. When his stomach found its way back to its proper place, Henry found himself a dozen feet off the ground, a net woven out of braids of small branches trapping his limbs against his sides.

"Are you serious!?" He cried out to the world, almost hysterical.

He could barely move the hand with the knife he had somehow managed to hold onto, but was able to get its sharp edge against the net and start cutting.

The netting proved tougher than anything else Henry had cut with the knife as minutes trickled by and he made no progress.

"How many times do I have to prove it to you lot!?"

Henry stiffened at the new voice, arcing his neck back to see below him. A woman stood beneath the net, arms crossed beneath her breasts and a glare locked on Henry's form.

"No lost boys allowed in my part of the island! What do you have to say for yourself, hm?" She demanded, and he thought it odd how she could have an accent similar to Belle's. She quirked an eyebrow as he raised silent, a wordless demand.

He only knew of two women in the Neverland stories, and the woman below him was not a redhead.

"Tinkerbell?" He asked, almost in wonder, forgetting about the horrors of the past few hours. The woman cocked her head to the side, her wavy, dirty-blonde hair she kept piled on her head falling to one side.

"Yes…" she said as if he was slow. "Are you going to pretend to be surprised? Every lost boy knows the deal I struck with Pan."

"I'm not a lost boy," he said with as much of a shrug as he could manage.

Tinkerbell scoffed. "I'll give you credit," she said with a pretty smile that was more exasperation than amusement. "No one's been dumb enough to try that one on me before."

Henry narrowed his eyes in irritation, but Michael Darling chose that moment to creep through the underbrush with a snarl, weapon raised and poised to fire upon the mythical fairy. Henry's heart turned to ice as the tumultuous emotions wrought by the horrors of the afternoon slammed back to the front of his mind.

The man fired before Henry could think to shout a warning.

Tinkerbell snapped her hand up the moment Michael had made a noise and the bullet ricocheted off a spark of green energy, flying off into the forest.

Michael gaped at her and Tinkerbell looked him up and down as if he were a particularly annoying puzzle.

"How did you get here?" She asked, dropping her arm. Instead of answering, Michael tried his weapon again and fired four shots in rapid succession.

They each proved as harmless as the first.

Tinkerbell waved an irritated hand and the netting around Henry disappeared only to reappear around Michael as an invisible force lowered the preteen to the ground slow enough to stop from breaking everything.

Michael fought the restraints with a constant stream of curses, but his gun was magic'd out of his hand and Tinkerbell yanked his feet out from beneath him with the same careless wave of her hand, sending him sprawling to the dirt.

The Darling brother's stopped fighting when his head clunked against the ground and Henry sank to the ground as well, indescribable relief flowing through him.

Tinkerbell rounded on Henry, her eyes wide and glowing with an intensity that put Henry right back on edge. "If you aren't a lost boy," she said, advancing on him. "Then you're going to help me get out of this hell."

A/N: And there we have the setting of the initial status quo of my Neverland arc. We are made aware of two power players on the island outside of Pan - Felix and Tinkerbell - and Neal confirms that yes, Rufio will have a role in this story. Said role will be revealed as time goes on :)

So Tamara is dead. I toyed with the idea of having her carrying on for some time, eventually redeeming herself somewhat before dying on later in the arc, but there was no reason for the more tempermental Darling brother to spare her, and the role I would have had her play is better off split between some of the other characters in Neverland. Her arc, such as it was, is an illustration on how not to let sheer hate for something (magic) guide your actions and make you blind to the true threats around you.

That said, Greg-slash-Owen is still alive in Storybrooke, and may yet have a role when we return there in the coming chapters.

If you're wondering where Emma and co. are during this chapter, that too will be revealed soon.

Good? Bad? Indifferent? Please let me know what you thought in a review!