Sorry for the delay, guys, but this will be the last chapter. I will not be writing a sequel.

Thank you so much for those of you who reviewed, who followed, who clicked 'favorite,' you have brought me many smiles and I hope that this ending meets your expectations. As soon as the massive list of stories to finish in my profile is complete, I will come back to this and edit it so it makes more sense and I apologize to those of you who had to deal with the Evil vs. Good Pocahontas issue.

I love you!

Keeper

"This is all my fault," Rumpelstiltskin whispered as all of them sat in his shop, mourning their chances of survival.

"No," Belle insisted. "You did what you thought was necessary to protect your family and so did they. Now all we have to do is find this Grandmother Willow and convince her to give us this eternal flame-"

"That's just the thing," He interrupted. "Old Willow died a century ago after relinquishing the flame to someone else. She doesn't have it."

"Then why would she tell you to find her if she didn't have it?" Henry asked.

"Perhaps she didn't know about the death," Neal suggested.

"No, she had enough time in that veil to know what happened to her family," Rumple hummed in thought for a long while until Emma spoke up.

"Pan did have one last thing he wanted me to tell you," She said and recited his last wish perfectly. "'Tell him one last lesson, from father to son, Peter Pan says that to die would be a great adventure, but to live would be an even greater one.'"

"'Peter Pan'?" He scoffed and shook his head. "The selfish git even referred to himself in..." His eyes widened and locked with Neal's. "Unless..."

The two men stood up simultaneously and began ripping the store apart, bit by bit. "What are you doing?!" Snow exclaimed.

"Found it!" Neal shouted and pulled out a doll, handing it to his father who flinched at touching it.

"My father gave this to me when I was a boy. It was made from the wood of Grandmother Willow and I had named it Peter Pan. To die would be a great adventure, but to live..." He pulled apart the strings which held the doll together and in the place of a heart was an amber stone small enough to fit a dozen times over in the palm of his hand. "The eternal flame was with me the entire time, that's why I couldn't destroy the doll."

Mama Odie snatched the jewel from him and seemingly peered at it thoughtfully. "Don't feel upset at yerself fer what ya did to them, young man," she said to Rumpelstiltskin. "Dey were gonna die anyway, dere wasn't 'nough time."

"What do we do now?"

Silence overcame them. What was there to do next?

"When I was a boy, I escaped they island by catching Pan's shadow in a lantern I had fashioned from a coconut. Shadows are attracted to light, if we use the eternal flame to catch it before it can do any harm." Neal suggested.

Rumplestiltskin dug around his shop until he found a music box, small enough to fit in his hand, big enough to contain the flame. "Now all we have to do is-"

"Lure the Shadow." Mama Odie finished. With a sigh, she reached her hands towards the box, "Bring it 'ere, boy. It's bout time this old hermit makes er last stand."

"What are you talking about?"

"Me, dying. What d'ya think I'm talkin bout?" She snatched the box from the Dark One and waved one of her withered hands over it. "Don't say nothing to me bout it. Da flame needs life essence to burn, and I am all but essence now. I'll tell yer folks ya say 'hi,' Rumpie."

"Ma'am-" Mama Odie shot an empty, yet scary, glare to David and he quickly amended. "Mama Odie, what makes you so sure that you are the one to-"

"Don't question me, boy, these old eyes have seen more than you ever will!" She whacked him with Juju. "Now, old friend," she said to the snake. "You take good care of little Henry, ya hear?" The snake nodded and somehow frowned, as though producing human facial expressions was nothing. He slithered to Henry and curled around his feet.

"If y'all excuse me, I'm gonna summon a demon."

They all watched through the windows as the elder woman took a couple random, seemingly useless, items and drew a pentagram upon the ground in the middle of the town. She had placed the flame in the music box which sat with its lid open in the center of it all. She was chanting.

Storm clouds sat silently above, as if waiting for her word to tell them to rain. A black cloud materialized at the center. The Shadow.

"You've been bad," Mama Odie chided. "I'm not going to mind dis trip at all." She murmured something else and touched the amber flame, which slowly began to spark into a steady glow.

"What can you do 'Lizabeth?" The Shadow taunted. "My greatest enemies are dead, their spawn, soon to follow, for my master has been remade and he is putting them back in their places."

"I'm afraid my only problem is you. I was so proud of ya, boy; den ya had to go messin' with black magic. 'm sorry it had to end like dis."

"End?"

Mama Odie cast aside her glasses and in a matter of seconds, she seemed to age backwards. starting out as the dying old hermit, to a younger old woman, to a beautiful adult, to a gorgeous teenager, an innocent child, a wonderful toddler and then, nothing. Nothing but ash.

And as her body endured the strange feat, the eternal flame burst into light and flickered and moved as a fluid, burning and not burning; attracting the Shadow who screeched as he was sucked into the music box which closed its lid and captured the demon forever.

10:13 pm

The Docks

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

Rumplestiltskin nodded and pulled out three items from his jacket. The entire town had gathered to the docks when their own evil villain had built a raft made of wood with his own bare hands. Not a drop of magic was used.

The whole of the town watched in fascination at the monster-the man's-display of sympathy.

He placed Peter Pan the doll, the compass and Mama Odie's glasses upon the raft. "My mother, Shanti...she never wanted us exposed to magic. She knew it would be the end of us. She was right."

He sighed and pulled out a box of matches, striking one up and lighting the raft before shoving it into the pit of black that was the bay. The only light came from the moon, as the storm clouds had shrouded most of the sky in darkness. Nobody needed the sky to know that the second star to the right was no longer there.

The town was silent in mourning until Henry called, "Hey, look!"

Up in the sky were three new constellations. The clouds moved rapidly, scrambling to get out of the way for them to see. Rumplestiltskin smiled. "One of the last stories my parents told me was that of the constellations. An old myth, that if you burn the right objects, you preserve the memory of the deceased, forever."

The sky glowed with a pair of strange glasses, a spinning arrow and a little doll made of willow wood.

The Shadow Man cackled darkly as he approached the well, tossing in the proper ingredients and smiling darkly as the smoke rose, smelling the sweetness of revenge and ressurection. Pity he wasn't there to see the deaths of his dear friends. No matter. He would hunt their leeches of family after sending them back to the old hunting grounds.

"Goodbye, Storybrooke." He grinned as a single light sparkled on the water. "We'll be in touch, Rumpel."