Sometimes I want to rip out your throat, Daddy, for all those things you said that were mean.

[undealt]

Who: Peter Pan (boyhood ) and Son (undealt )
Where: The... woods. Pan's secret camp is also Dark One-proof and Gold did not learn anything from Neverland.
When: B-backdated to Gold's arrival, so... sometime before the event ends.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Gold heard Pan was here, so he hunts him down like a dog- I MEAN... goes to find him, so they can have a civil discussion. Over tea. And no one is going to cry at all. RIGHT??? Of course right.
The Story:

Pan is here.

Suddenly, Gold's frustrations have zeroed in on this one irritating little fact. It doesn't matter that he's stuck in bloody Wonderland or that Belle and Neal are elsewhere- though safer than they would be here with Pan running wild- or anything else, really. All that matters is finding Pan. He'll worry about the rest later- assuming he survives.

The woods seem the safest bet (a touch of something old in an otherwise unfamiliar new world), but the Dark One's magic has never been a match for Pan's, even when they're both on unsteady ground. He gets turned around as effectively as if he were back in Neverland and that leaves him grimacing at the treeline.

"There's no sense hiding," he lilts, hiding any trace of anxiety he might feel. He successfully destroyed Pan once, even if he went down with him. If he has to pull the same trick twice, he'll do it. "I know you're here."

The drama of that statement was going to be lost completely if it turned out Pan was holed up in his room or eating lunch at the mansion or something- for now, Gold will trust his gut, which is telling him that Pan's just biding his time.

Comments

[boyhood]

The woods are indeed a smart bet. If there's one clear-cut thing about the mercurial man who once fathered the Dark One and became a boy, it's that he's fond of the natural world without any pretensions.

But a safe bet? No. You don't go looking for the father you failed to destroy once with a power blocker on your arm.

Fools truly do walk where angels fear to tread.

"And I know you're here," says the voice Rumple should remember well from before his self-sacrifice stripped it away along with the rest of Neverland's magic. Without a warning, without so much as a ripple in the air to announce himself, Peter Pan stands behind him, under the shadow of a tree about ten feet away. Everything is the same, down to the well-worn boots and the comma of brown hair on his forehead.

Those green eyes, though, are cold.

Peter had suspected all along--reluctantly so--that if he could find himself here, so could Rumple. He has so much to say to the son who'd stabbed a dagger into his back, leaving him with the phantom sensation of pain that twinges in his unguarded moments and a memory of a mocking kiss to the cheek.

Rumple had done that. Rumple had tried to trade his own life just to kill him.

He finds in the moment that he doesn't have as many words as he thought, just as he hasn't in the time since Rumple's arrival. He's kept his distance, but here Rumple is, choosing to close it.

"The question is, why? Wanted to be sure the rumors are true?"

[undealt]

In hindsight, perhaps Gold should have considered asking someone to remove the band before he came out here. He was riding high on a victory- the taste of blood still lingering on his tongue (his own, granted, but that was the price of the spell). Seeing Pan as he was, he doesn't feel particularly victorious- the man is gone again, back to the boy-god that haunted his darkest nightmares since he was only a child. The one thing Rumplestiltskin feared more than death and, of course, death was the only way to stop him.

Despite his obvious disadvantage, Gold straightens, eyes burning just as cold. He has his dagger tucked away in his jacket pocket, but he can't count on the same trick twice. If anything, he might be playing Follow The Lady with something he really shouldn't be playing Follow the Lady with. That way lies disaster.

"I just wanted to make sure you didn't sneak up on me first," he responds- probably the first time Gold's been openly honest about anything in awhile, as far as his father is concerned, anyway. "Given the situation we just left, I'd rather have you in front of me."

Which are awfully big words from the man who stabbed his own father in the back, but he's a firm believer in the cost of magic and the cost of magic is often karmic in some way. The favor can be returned and he doesn't plan on letting it.

[boyhood]

Peter's lips thin. Rumple shouldn't feel victorious--victory, as he'd thought he'd taught Rumple, is reserved for those who've made their play and unequivocally brought their opponents to their knees. Rumple had played a dangerous game with his own life, and he'd lost. Here they both are, no worse for it...

Except for the fact that Peter's wised up to the trick and Rumple's lost the element of surprise.

"You mean the situation you just left." He tilts his head, a product of repressed anger and generous condescension. Peter believes in karmic debts as well--he's learned too much of magic, seen too much of other worlds, and believes too much in possibilities to think otherwise--but only ever to an extent. He owes nothing, and he refuses to think his own undoing intertwined with his son's is the result of the harm he's put into the world coming back home to find him again.

People make choices, people make mistakes, and Rumple's misstep had been choosing to cross Pan.

"If you're hoping to continue what you left off, you're going to be disappointed. I thought you knew better--but then, I thought you knew better than to try and kill me. You had your chance and now you've lost it, yet here you are without your magic... You really think you're going to get another opportunity?"

[undealt]

"I don't think I need one." A bluff, to be certain. But Neal and Belle aren't here and while he has other family to worry and fret over to whatever extent he bothers worrying or fretting over people he's not as close to as those two, Pan can't touch them. He can afford to take risks he might not otherwise take. Emma and Regina will take care of their own- let him take care of his.

"You've lost the home field advantage, as they say," he goes on, tilting his head. He doesn't smirk- he's not posturing, just laying out the facts with the confidence of someone who doesn't expect that he'll be corrected. The trick is that he is hoping Pan's pride will step in and he'll know what the bastard's ploys are here in Wonderland.

He'll find a way to topple him. It will just take time. Time he might not have, but he'll burn that bridge later. Right now, he just needs to figure out what's what in Pan's little world and go from there. There's no rest for him otherwise.

[boyhood]

Peter tilts his head the other way. "Do you think your talk is convincing now that we're here?" The snideness in his tone increases. "Or did your little stunt grow you some confidence?"

He shifts his weight, even so relaxed a motion sending a warning. Pan doesn't need to posture, either, not unless it's for his own amusement, but the difference here is he knows that Rumple is nothing but false colors. Revealing your hand and having it fail is a bad move, as they say.

"So have you--but then you never had it, and I don't need it. You should have taken more time to think this out. Haven't you realized where we are yet? Time's stopped here. My time's stopped here." He spreads his arms, gesturing at the world around them. Even as jollity brings a new light to his eyes, it never softens them. "What do I need the home field for when I'm more powerful now than I've ever been? I don't even need to worry about your little dagger anymore. But you..."

He takes a step forward, moving from shadow to light. A flick of his finger brings attention to Rumple's newest fashion accessory.

"Well, just look at you. More helpless than ever, I'd say. You couldn't do it, could you? You couldn't cut it off. You didn't have it in you there, or here."

[undealt]

Gold remains bitterly silent through the jeers. The problem of Pan is he almost rarely says anything he doesn't perceive as the truth and sometimes there's just enough actual truth there to be difficult to swallow. The one upside is not rising to Pan's bait is the only advantage he has at the moment.

But no amount of biting his tongue against Pan's mockery can prevent him from having a hand to cover the band on his wrist, fingers dragging along the rough leather as if he'll be able to rip it off now like he hadn't been able to before. It doesn't budge an inch and his look of distaste deepens, while his eyes never leave Pan's.

"You would call it cowardice," he mutters. Crippling himself was what branded him a coward- doing it again, even if it was only until he could heal the bloody thing, would further damn him. Choosing magic and survival over his own family. That time had passed, but leave it to Pan to not comprehend the weight of the sacrifice. He was the coward that started it all.

"So that leaves us in something of a bind, doesn't it?" His tone is conversational, but with a bitter weight of irritation. "What are we to do?"

Killing him won't solve anything- even if he could find a way, which, again, time he didn't have. Pan could kill him anytime he liked, which was a disadvantage Gold may well be at for awhile now. The idea of a compromise made his gut twist unpleasantly, but his options were awful either way.

[boyhood]

"Wouldn't you?" Where Rumple is concerned, Peter tends to accusation and inflammatory tones, always reminding the boy where he comes from, always leaving a mark to fill the gap left by long-forgotten gestures of affection. Here in the moment, though, his voice goes soft like a guttering flame, almost frank, at odds with the anger coursing through him. He looks at Rumple like he's expecting a real answer, though there's none to be found. "There hasn't been a day you haven't called it your birthright. Coward father, coward son."

My son and you tried to kill me compete for dominance inside him. The latter wins. It does every single time there are eyes on him and he can't afford to acknowledge the past. There's more to resent than there is to regret, and now... now, everything's changed.

You tried to kill me, my son.

"The thing about a legacy like that, Rumple, is that killing me wouldn't set you free from it." Back to challenging, but this time with a flicker of his anger attached. Bitterness at a comeuppance that he'd well earned, but had hoped never to suffer. "My death doesn't wipe your slate clean. You'll always be what you are."

A coward, and his child.

"There's begging for my forgiveness, but I'm not so sure I'm willing to forgive you." The way he presses his lips together in mock thought says enough that there's very little sincerity in his words. "Well, not any more than you are me."

[undealt]

There's an almost childish expression of petulance on Gold's face that looks entirely wrong on a man grown, but Pan brings that out in him. They're playing fathers and sons, but the parts have been miscast.

"Which is why we both had to die," he sneers, finally, because that is the part that's missing here. The part Pan isn't acknowledging- they both went down. And, in the end, the Dark One's legacy would have a chapter that wasn't all about mistakes and loopholes and desperate gambits to remain on top and survive. It was a final, true sacrifice. "It was the only way for either of us to be truly free of the other."

But that time is gone now. They're stuck here- together and alive. Perhaps Fate never meant for them to be free of one another. Or perhaps they're both spectacularly unlucky.

"I stopped begging you for anything when I was taken from Neverland." This time, his tone is more of a snarl. "And yeah, it seems we are quite past the point of forgiving and forgetting, aren't we, Papa?" His expression turns grim. "We're at an impasse. And murdering each other won't solve anything."

He steps forward, a daring move that goes against his instincts to remain as far a way from Pan as polite conversation will allow. "Perhaps it's best if we simply left one another alone. An illusion of freedom is better than nothing at all."

[boyhood]

"No, Rumple, that's why you aimed too high," Peter counters.

I'll be free of you soon enough, is what he thinks to himself, self-directed solace for his misbegotten flesh and blood threatening to uproot the entire family tree. He'd tried to offer distance as a solution--he had Neverland, and Rumple could have whatever world he chose--he'd even offered up a place in Neverland, but no, never enough for the lost son, is it? If they continue to stand at odds, he'll have to get rid of Rumple more permanently, more permanently than Pandora's box, but the thought of having to dispose of Rumple like a common threat doesn't bring him much satisfaction.

He doesn't like it, this sense of betrayal. He should've listened to his own advice and been more careful of those closest to him. Irony abounds.

The sniveling turns the line of Peter's jaw hard. Beating the same old drum! How cocky a distant dream of redemption and a failed murder attempt can make a person. "Look at you, speaking for the both of us like you have all the cards. I'd be impressed if you weren't talking to the one person who knows better." Rumple could speak for himself, in other words. Maybe Peter can't dispose of him now, but that doesn't mean he can't put Rumple out of action and deal with him later.

In light of this, the fact that the next words out of Peter's mouth are words of agreement should set off alarms.

"Oh, you'll get your illusion. Consider it a time to reflect on your mistakes." He taps the toe of his boot against one of the tree's roots. "Why, your precious family and I have already reached a new arrangement. Feel free to join them."

Them, on the side Peter has every intention of ensuring remains the losing side.

[undealt]

Because no one has ever accused Rumplestiltskin of flying too close to the sun- ah right, except where they have. Always. In about as many words, too. There's no confidence in his demeanor. He may as well be begging, even if he thinks he isn't. There are a lot of ways to beg- not all of them end in groveling and pleading. The mere act of asking repeatedly, as if a different result will be yielded with little more than a switch in tone, is just as pathetic.

But what choice does he have? Pan's right about enough things to make him uncomfortable and arguing with each other over whose perception of the truth is the most accurate is a waste of time and a good way to ensure someone gets stabbed. Again.

Knowing that and knowing he's not likely to achieve the desired end he wants (but trying is what he has and if Pan wants a war, then he won't be the one to have started it- he already finished it once), he is surprised when Pan agrees to the terms. Startled, even.

"What new arrangement?" He demands, mind reeling. Now it's less that Pan agreed and more that Emma and Regina made some sort of deal with him. There will be words about this. Probably some yelling. If he's feeling particularly forgiving, they might not even end up as very attractive footstools for their foolishness.

[boyhood]

Pan never fails. There's a reason those words have held so true over the years. He doesn't make mistakes, except when he'd expected to find regrets within the Evil Queen and mercy within Rumple. Neither does he kill out of compassion, or wear old hurts on his sleeve. He'd prefer it if Rumple were more like him and butted heads with him out of malice or anger, wanting him dead with whole-hearted intention because he's an enemy, but just as Rumple had failed to show him that face in his pawn shop, the arrogant resolve Peter expects (wants?) to see isn't there. Instead the air is rife with this leaden, complicated weight, bristling with so many unsaid words and dead-ends made of memories.

He'd never wanted this. If Rumple wants to kill him, why can't he just hate him instead of making him explain how he's setting down the rules to a new game he doesn't even want to play? He thinks to say as much, but he doesn't. He never does. He wears youthful ambition on his sleeve, not his heart.

Instead of what Rumple might want, Peter answers in the only way he can: by smirking and playing his advantages up like he hasn't a care in the world... which he doesn't, because he's Pan.

"Different board, different obstacles, different players... It's a whole new game, Rumple," he says with a gesture of his hand. "And as I've told them, we're on the same side of the field. You don't stand in my way, I don't make every last one of you regret having extra lives to spare. If you're done martyring yourself, you can ask the Savior for the rest of the details yourself."

His lips twitch faintly, like a frown's threatening to break that he's restraining.

"Just remember, one might already say you're due to pay an eye for an eye."

[undealt]

A game I thought I ended, comes the futile echo that keeps mocking him at the back of his mind. You thought, you thought, you thought. He thought so many things and not a thing ever turned out quite the way he planned it.

His lips curl back in a snarl that has too much turmoil to be properly angry. Rumplestiltskin's anger is furious and unrelenting, but to Pan, it's just the futile hissing of a scolded child. He will speak to Emma about this, but that won't be the end of it. As much as he'd love to believe that they're both capable of staying out of each others' way, it will never ever be that simple.

"We shall see," he snaps. This would be the point where all Pan would get is a puff of smoke before he vanishes back to the manor, but as he's still wearing that band, Pan gets the satisfaction of seeing him hesitate, look briefly exasperated, and then stalk off, casting wary glances over his shoulder.

[boyhood]

Peter watches him go, crossing his arms as he shifts his weight to his other leg. He's not above cornering someone who's been rendered powerless by one of his cuffs, especially not now--he even thinks to do it, to teach Rumple a severe lesson about confronting him and expecting to walk away unscathed--but ultimately he does nothing.

For now, he considers his moves. (And maybe doesn't want to have this fight for the deep-rooted feelings it brings.)

"Next time, be careful where you walk."

And the next time Rumple glances back to the tree Peter's standing under, he'll be gone, disappearing to who only knows where.