To: Maddie
Rating: PG
Brief summary: Part two section one of the fic Maddie (maddiebonanafana) requested a while back of WickedFireSwan. I can't find part one at the moment, if you're reading this now and want to read part one message me and I'll fanmail the typed version LOL. I keep taking forever with it and it still may not be done, but here's section one of part two for you! Happy late Valentine's Day Maddie!
Once they arrived at Regina's old castle, the Wicked Witch put Neal behind bars. He wanted none of this, to be here defenseless, but he had no other choice. Either he stayed here or he could put the rest of his family in danger by running off. He wasn't going to take that risk. He had to stay there, he thought. When the Wicked Witch finally did make an appearance, he had been accustomed to bad people trying to make him feel bad about himself when he was down from living in Neverland with Pan for hundreds of years. He stayed there for a few days to buy Belle some time, and then stood up and waited for the woman to say something.
"You're quite the fearless one, aren't you? You act as if this has happened to you every day of your life, being....trapped." The witch laughed to herself a bit. "Oh, that's right, you were. How did you ever manage to go through such an ordeal?"
This only angered Neal further. He really didn't need his past up his ass right now, and especially by the Wicked Witch...of the west? He wasn't sure, he'd only ever seen the first Oz movie once and that was with Emma, he was busy trying to figure out where their next meal was going to come from then anyway. "Look, I don't like traps as much as the next guy. Really, I don't. But I'll have you know I'll do whatever it takes to get out of here, you hear me?"
The Wicked Witch rolled her eyes and made some grapes pop out of nowhere using magic. She plucked a red hair from her head and put it on one of the grapes, making it wither into a rasin. "Do you see what just happened, Baelfire? If you're all alone without social interaction for too long, it'll make you go mad. No friends to talk to, either. All you have is...a free person near your company, reminding you every moment what it's like to be free."
Neal interrupted her mid-sentence. "Being free isn't something I care about. What I care about is family. You wouldn't understand that, would you? In the four days I've been here, I haven't seen one person enter those doors. You like to keep the doors open here so you can know if I'll escape right away, but that also means I can hear you. All the people you care about are gone, aren't they? You don't have to hold people prisoner because you feel alone. You could have just asked me to be friends with you." His face had grown a bit concerned. He knew that feeling of not having anyone, of having no friends, and having to sit it out alone. Feeling like the whole world was against him. He would never wish that on his worst enemy, or even a supposed "villain". Everyone had their own story, family...they at least had something in their lives to remember, right? He couldn't control if anyone had a good or bad childhood, but he could tell a broken person when he saw one.
The Wicked Witch also mirrored the same look about her. She wondered, for a moment at least, could there be other people with worse-off lives than she? People that have seen their loved ones torn from them, little by little, having them brought back and to never see them again? No, she thought. You're important, you matter, people will never understand you. Those wore the words she could remember for as long as she could remember. But who had told them to her? She couldn't remember her mother's face, didn't know her father at all, but...who could have told her that? Was it something she herself made up as a little girl? She walked over from the shadowed part of the cave and to Neal, behind the cell bars. She grasped Neal's shirt collar, pulling him closer to her even though there were bars between them. For a moment, she considered letting him out to find his family and let him be. For a moment, she wanted to befriend this kind man. Oh, what was she thinking? She pushed him further back into the cell and backed away herself from him. Men are only fools! She didn't need them! She never even knew her own father's name, why should Baelfire be any different? "This is not the end." She spoke as she poofed herself away from his vision, tightening the lock further as she did. Neal sighed and fell to the floor, knowing he'd gotten himself into a pickle.
