Jefferson pulled the door closed behind him, but he wasn't quick enough to spare Belle the cold. She'd taken the first passenger seat rather than her customary perch in the galley, and was seated directly adjacent to the main cabin door

"The exterior checks are complete, Blue-Belle," he announced. Jefferson brushed the snow from his parka, but didn't remove it. No sense in it, considering he'd just have to put the giant, puffy coat back on in a minute. Oh well, no harm in a little showmanship first; David might even take the time to reflect on his mistakes and learn something.

"That was very quick," Belle remarked, looking up from her book. "We're not even on-stand for another half an hour. Then again, I suppose it is February in Iceland. I can't imagine why you'd want to spend any more time than necessary out there."

"Aye," nodded Gold, limping from the galley with his customary glass of scotch. "It's twenty bleeding degrees below zero outside."

Normally, Jefferson would never miss an opportunity to remind Gold that he was getting crotchety and old, but he had a more entertaining prospect waiting (almost literally) in the wings.

"Celsius, Rum," teased Belle. "It's twenty degrees below zero Celsius. That's really not much colder than we get in Storybrooke."

Goldie took a long gulp of his whiskey in response.

"Ah, whiskey! Just what I needed," Jefferson sighed, throwing in a bit of dramatic flair for fun. He made a melodramatic pass at snatching Gold's tumbler from his hands, and wasn't too bothered when the older man thwarted him.

"Oh yes," Gold sneered back. "A pre-flight drink: that's exactly what I want to give a pilot before embarking on an international flight. Try again, dearie."

The First Officer smirked. That really could not have gone any better. "Seriously, Mr. Gold, I need it. It's very important."

"What the hell do you need my whiskey for?" the older man glowered.

Jefferson tried to hide his pleasure as Belle set her book aside and turned her full attention to the ongoing debate. He just about had them hooked; David would never live this one down.

"Well, on my walk-around, when I was inspecting Juliette, I did notice one tiny problem… the Captain is stuck to the side of the plane."

Wait for it…

Gold swore violently, and Belle leaped to her feet.

"How did that happen? Is he okay?" rushed Belle, pushing through to the galley. She re-emerged a moment later with the first aid kit.

"Well," Jefferson began, ensuring that not the faintest hint of urgency entered his voice, "I imagine it has something to do with the fact that he took his gloves off to close the hold door, and – being as it's really quite cold outside – his hand stuck to the metal."

He made another pass at snatching the whiskey, but Gold evaded again.

"Should I get hot water?" Belle asked. "How long has he been out there? If he gets frostbite—"

"There's no need to panic, Belle," Jefferson assured her. "And you don't even need to put the kettle on. Alcohol has a very low freezing point, so it shouldn't be too difficult to unstick him. I'll… take… that…"

His third attempt to deprive the Scott of his beverage resulted in Mr. Gold downing the entire glass in one gulp.

"Rum," Belle pleaded. "David needed that!"

"David can have some vodka, not my $500 Scotch."

Their little Blue Belle pouted adorably as she realized that, perhaps, she'd let panic lead her right up to the border between urgency and foolishness. Jefferson jumped on the pause in conversation to scoop up a gleaming bottle from the galley and saunter back outside.

"Zip up tight if you're coming to watch – it's cold outside!" he called over his shoulder, not bothering to shut the door behind him this time. They were coming – of course they were – making fun of the Captain was the M3P National Pass-Time.

The wind bit into him, forcing its way up the cuffs and down the collar of his parka coat, but Jefferson didn't mind. Life was entirely too good today to let a little thing like the cold put him off. He could hear Belle and Goldie behind him, muttering to themselves about the temperature. Well, that was their problem; they should have forgone the sleek, wool jackets they preferred and picked up something heavier.

"Never fear, Captain, I'm here!" Jefferson cheered, holding up his bottle of vodka.

"Jefferson, that is our best Belvedere!" Gold snapped behind him.

The First Officer smirked and took great pleasure from dumping the expensive liquor over the trembling Captain's hands. David gasped in relief when his hand broke free and immediately shoved the offending limb back into a heavily padded glove.

"What the bloody hell happened out here, Captain?" Gold spat, snatching the now empty bottle out of Jefferson's hands.

"Ah, well, you see…" David blushed and strung together a few syllables that didn't make much sense.

"I believe that gallant Captain is trying to say he wasn't able to shut the hold door with his gloves on." He demonstrated the clumsiness of that statement by securing the hold door (with gloves on) while he talked. "So, to get a little extra dexterity, he took his gloves off. And when sweaty palms touch frozen metal, well…"

"Are you fit to fly?" asked Gold. Of course he'd completely miss the point (that they were about 2 feet away from reenacting A Christmas Story on the runway) and get straight to the bottom line.

"Of course he's fit to fly," groaned Jefferson. "The vodka went on his hand, not in his mouth, and he wasn't out here long enough to get frostbite."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Madden, I didn't realize that you were a medical professional."

"Rum, be nice. David, are you okay?" asked Belle. She huddled closer to the side of her grumpy old boyfriend, and Gold wrapped an arm around her. Jefferson gagged and made a face at them.

"F-fine," the Captain champed through clattering teeth. "But I'd like to go back inside now."

…

Once they were all safely warmed up in the galley, David proved that his hands were still perfectly capable of flying the plane despite Jefferson's medical knowledge not being quite up to snuff. He definitely had a little bit of a cold burn on his skin, but there was no discernable nerve damage and he'd warmed back up again.

It only took three mostly unpalatable gulps of Belle's coffee, brewed now to the bitterness preferred by Gold rather than any sane human being, and a few nervy moments avoiding his boss to get everything squared away. And, now that they were up in the air with no bothersome passengers to tend to, he could finally put the whole mess with the hold door behind him.

Just because things hadn't gone smoothly on the ground was no reason not to do things properly in the air. He was a pilot after all; a professional one.

Bing-bong.

"Hello folks… er, hello Mr. Gold and Belle. There was a bit of a cross-breeze on the ground, but all the post-take-off checks are complete and we should be landing in Maine… er, some time tonight."

"How the hell do you not know what time we're scheduled to touch down?" Jefferson teased, sure to get his own voice onto the intercom. "It's your flight plan, isn't it?"

"Well, I—"

"Shut up!" Gold shouted from somewhere in the cabin. David released the microphone and tapped the console light twice just to be safe. It was well and truly off. Their little fiasco over Africa wasn't something David felt keen to repeat.

"So, Rhyming Journeys?" Jefferson offered after the companionable silence weighed on them a little longer. They'd only been in the air about 10 minutes, so at least the First Officer's attention span hadn't been injured by the Icelandic winters.

David assumed it would be some sort of a game, but he hadn't the foggiest clue how to play. Jefferson was only too eager to provide examples: Rome to Nome, Bangkok to Woodstock, Salt Lake City to Mississippi, Nantucket to…

"No, no, no," David groaned. "You always do this. You always think up a hundred examples before you announce the game. Give me a minute to think. Um… Los Angeles to… to… the Antilles?"

No, that didn't quite… "Shit!"

A score of warning bells and buzzers began going off all at once as the plane lurched in the sky, heralded by a thumping, grinding noise. Engine fire, number two engine! Engine fire check list: number two thrust lever; number two fuel control switch, cut off; number two fire handle pulled…

Several of the alarms stopped, and Jefferson picked up the radio while David fought to maintain control with one engine off-line.

"Mayday, mayday, Juliette-Lima-Yankee-Romeo-Golf-Romeo, suspected bird strike. We have one engine on fire, request immediate return and priority landing Reykjavik."

Air Traffic Control cleared them to return and Jefferson programmed in their landing instructions.

"Fire's out, Captain," Jefferson reported. "David, do you need me to land her?"

"No," David paled, finally finding the right balance for the stick. "I'll do it."

"Okay."

…

"Rum, it's safe. We're safe on the ground, and everyone's fine," Belle soothed, rubbing circles on his tense shoulders. Having an engine explode mid-air had sent her love (already frightened of flying, even on the best of days) into an out-and-out tailspin.

"We could have died."

"I know that, sweetheart, but we didn't. We're all okay. So just try taking a few deep breaths for me?"

He'd maintained a tacit, stoic face all the way through their emergency proceedings, but now (safely ensconced in the KEF crew cafeteria, with a pile of forms and spreadsheets in front of him) he was beginning to break down. Too much stress and not enough sleep, Belle thought. This would all look better after 8 hours.

"Yes, we're fine," said David. "Totally fine. Fine." He was on his fourth cup of coffee, and he couldn't stop fidgeting.

"It was a very good landing, David," Belle smiled. "Rum and I thought Jefferson must have done it." No, that came out wrong. "I mean…"

"No, no, I know what you mean," David twitched. "Thanks. It was good. Regulation. All fine, right?"

"Too bad we can't say the same for the goose we turned into a smoothie," Jefferson grimaced.

Rum winced.

"Hey," Belle whispered, cupping his cheek and bringing his face level with hers, away from the mountain of paperwork he was pretending to read. "We can get out of here, get a hotel room for the night, and calm down if you want to. Things might look better in the morning."

"There's quite a lot of money at stake here. I'd prefer to finish my business before calling it a night," he muttered, shuffling the papers again.

"Why, won't the insurance cover it?" David asked.

Belle wished he hadn't; David hadn't a cruel bone in his body, but he always managed to say just the wrong thing, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and reminding Rum of his business obligations gave him just the bolt-hole he needed to disassociate himself from his feelings of dread.

"Oh, we're insured to the hilt for public and passenger liability," Rum growled. He snatched a pink form from the heap in front of him. "But when it comes to random acts of nature, the maintenance for Juliette falls to me."

"So we'll just get a new engine, and—"

Belle tried to give David the universal sign for stop talking right now, please, but it was too late. She could see the processes in Rum's mind shifting over to the prospect of investing more money into the unwanted plane.

"Ach, aye, and that'll be a bargain at half a million dollars, wouldn't you say?" he glowered.

"Rum, you don't have to make a decision right now," Belle told him. In fact, she hoped he didn't. He rarely made good choices (or choices he could live with) when stressed.

"Well I'm bloody well not paying for a heated hangar in Iceland for the rest of the winter, dearie," he snapped back.

Belle winced. She hated it when he called her that.

He seemed not to notice that she was also teetering painfully close to losing her temper, and he added: "I never even wanted the bleeding plane."

No, he hadn't wanted it, but Juliette brought so much good into their lives, that Belle didn't understand how he could still despise and disdain the entire concept of M3P. Didn't the last few years mean anything?

"Couldn't you sell it and recoup some of the losses?" suggested David.

Stop talking! Belle mouthed over Rum's shoulder. David really couldn't take a hint today, and he was about to talk them all out of their jobs.

Rum looked up from his pile of paperwork and nodded at David to continue (a sure sign that he was sleep deprived).

"Yeah," the Captain carried on, growing nervous under scrutiny. "And then just buy a new plane with the money!"

He was grinning ear to ear as though his suggestion might not be the final nail in the coffin of M3P. Belle tried not to make eye contact: that had been the precisely wrong thing to say to him.

"I bloody well am not buying a new plane! What the hell would I do with it? Wait around for you to actually crash and kill me?"

Belle wished like hell he'd just let her take him back to a cozy hotel room. They'd been dealing with the fallout of the accident for hours, without sleep, and there was so little daylight this far north that they all would have been out-of-sorts in any case.

David tried to back-pedal, but mostly he just babbled incoherently.

"So I supposed you'll sell it, then?" Jefferson interrupted.

Belle gave up and slumped into her own seat. Jefferson could manage David, at least, but she very much doubted he'd be able to get through to Rum in his current state. Well, if they weren't going to try to help themselves, she was done running herself ragged to keep up. She'd need to find another job, but that didn't necessarily mean leaving Storybrooke.

Not that her father really needed her that much these days; he'd been in remission and out of chemo for almost two years now, but she liked knowing that she could get to him on short notice. And, of course, there was Rum. What they had was wonderful – like no relationship she'd ever had before – but it wouldn't really be feasible to keep things up if she signed-on to work for United or Delta out of one of the big airports in New York.

Well, she did like books, and Storybrooke was absolutely lacking in that department. Maybe she could turn that into something? Or there was the flower shop, but that (she feared) was probably a lost cause. Game of Thorns had not done well during her father's illness; it was a wonder that it stayed solvent at all.

When she tuned back into to the boys' conversation, she heard Gold bitterly lecturing Jefferson over his suggestion that he should just sell Juliette to Killian and Milah if he was so eager to be rid of it.

She scowled at Jefferson: it wasn't a bad ploy, all told. True, Rum wasn't likely to sell when he remembered there was a chance that his ex-wife could get her hands on the plane again, but it was also cruel and manipulative of him. And on top of the day they'd just had….

She wouldn't blame Rum if he lost his temper over this (in the big, horrible way he used to lose it – with smashed glass and thinly veiled threats), everyone made mistakes and he certainly had ample cause to smash a few things today; but he'd blame himself, and that would be worse, so Belle just kept trying to calm him.

That was all she could do, in the end: be there for the man she loved and support him through this. She'd been doing a lot of that, lately, with the custody hearing coming up. Belle didn't mind being strong for him, but it was different when they'd gone hours and hours into the night fueled on fear, adrenaline, and bad coffee.

"Let's just take a break. It'll keep till morning," she tried again.

"I've got to be in Storybrooke next week for the custody hearing," Rum groaned. "I'm not sitting around up here wasting time while we wait on estimates, and I'm not selling to Jones."

"Okay, repairs it is!" Jefferson preened. Belle resisted the urge to scream at him.

"Pity," crooned an all too familiar voice from somewhere behind them. "I was going to offer you an excellent price."

Four pairs of eyes turned, disbelieving, to glare at Killian Jones. Milah and Neal stood alongside him.

…

"Papa!" the little boy grinned, racing forward and jumping into his exhausted father's lap. "Papa, we saw the inside-parts of a busted jet engine!"

"Did you now?" Gold asked. He offered his son a weak smile (all he could muster in the circumstance) and listened with half an ear as the lad excitedly repeated their midnight flight over the Atlantic.

"And why did Mamma think that she could take our son out of the country without a court order, I wonder?" Gold asked. Neal didn't understand the question, but that was fine; he sent a pointed glare to Milah.

"Well, darling, I thought you'd be happy to see him! Isn't that what this whole custody nonsense is about? We heard you had a bit of trouble at take-off, and since Killian is just so generous and public-spirited, we thought we'd better fly out right away in case you needed a recovering crew. You should be thanking us." Milah managed all of that with a confident smile and an air of nonchalance, and Gold clenched his fist.

"You're not supposed to take him out of the country, Milah," he growled.

"Well there's no need to be a Beast about it, Rum," she pouted. "We're here now, and that's that."

"But Papa, we flew!" Neal chirped, as though that made all the difference in the world.

Belle patted his thigh and Gold remembered to breathe. She came all this way to upset him, he realized. To get him to do something unforgiveable. To get back that stupid plane. He wasn't going to give her the satisfaction.

"I think we'd better look at this with fresh eyes in the morning, don't you?" he asked his ex-wife and her fly boy.

"And since we brought him all the way up here to see you, I suppose you're about to insist that Neal spend the night with you?" Jones groaned.

"Well—"

"It's fine, darling," Milah smiled. "I'm more than happy to make sure you and our son get to spend a little quality time catching up. Besides, Killian and I could use a little vacation time."

Gold growled, not buying it for a minute. Still, he wasn't about to argue over getting some much over-due time with his lad. He pulled himself to his feet, just barely managing his cane, exhaustion, and son without making a scene.

In the end, he wound up paying for Juliette's hangar, four hotel rooms, and a new engine. He was damned if he'd fly back to Storybrooke on that bastard's generosity.

Instead, he tried to focus on the positives. He had Neal with him (maybe for a day or two), and Belle was just one room over (he didn't want to think about what sort of hell Milah might raise if he kept his son and girlfriend with him in the same suite, but he'd managed to get them adjoining rooms anyway). He could afford the repairs, though it was still quite a lot of money to part with in one go, and he could afford to wait a day or two for the engineers to finish rebuilding Juliette. He also had not done or said anything unforgivable in the last ten hours, and frankly that was a miracle.

All he needed to do now was get back to Storybrooke without giving Milah any ammunition to use against him.

Rum slept much more soundly than he'd any right to expect (and Belle was right, a little real food, a shower, and some rest made all the difference). An early riser by habit, he was still surprised to hear a light knocking at his door at 4 AM.

"Goldie… Goldie, are you in there?"

Checking that Neal was still asleep, Rum limped to the door.

"What the devil do you want, Jefferson?" he hissed, opening the door but leaving the chain in place.

"I've got a video on my phone that I think you might be interested in."

Gold groaned but let him in. He was surprised to see David trailing behind Madden, and the three of them stepped into the bathroom so they wouldn't disturb his son.

"This had better not be another scheme," Gold yawned.

"Well, it was a scheme," Jefferson confessed. "But I think you'll like this one. I was just lying awake—"

"Keeping me awake," David pointedly remarked.

"I was just keeping the Captain awake in our hotel room, when I thought to myself: hasn't Jones been flying an awful lot of Northern circuits lately? I'm sure Mr. Smee mentioned it to me at the poker game. And then I thought, if I were him, and if I were flying a plane that had to come down to refuel pretty often, I might make quite a lot of friends in the bigger ports – Reykjavik, for instance," he grinned.

"And then I thought, well, First Officer Madden, if I had a friend with, say, a key to the heated hangar and if I really, really wanted a plane that everyone knew wouldn't be airworthy for a few days, well… I could just steal it. I mean, I'd have to be able to claim that we made a deal for it, perhaps custody of a beloved son in exchange, but I could, in theory, get access to the plane and probably get away free and clear with a bit of…"

"Jefferson!" Gold hissed "Get to the point."

"My point, Goldie, is that I suspected that Jones intended to steal Juliette tonight."

"Are you daft? She's down an engine; he'd never get her off the ground."

"But you did pay for a new one," David pointed out. "And if he could, say, bribe a crew of engineers to work all night installing it, and if he had a friend who would put him on the crew roster and maybe not pay too much attention to the flight plan…"

"Are you trying to say my plane is gone?" Gold snapped.

"No, that's the brilliant part," Jefferson grinned. "I had an inkling of what I'd do in his case, and he's not half the rascal that I am, so I called to check the flight plan, and wouldn't you know - I got there about an hour ahead of them, just after the work crew left. Watch this."

Gold stood in stunned silence as Jefferson played him a video on his smart phone. The man in the video (he assumed it was Jefferson from the ridiculously over-sized anorak and ski mask) held up his thickly gloved hands and explained that the brilliant thing about asbestos fire gloves was that they were also very good against the cold. The camera (filmed by David, if the occasional fingers in front of the lens were anything to go by) panned down to the metal casing of the control column, unbolted from the rest of the console, on the frozen ground.

The video cut in and out, but Gold got the gist of it: they took out the metal pieces they wanted, froze them solid in the Iceland winter, and reattached them at the last possible moment, only to be "interrupted" by an unwelcome guest. Then the narrator and the camera man hid in the flight deck locker until, right on schedule, Killian Jones strolled into the flight deck and sat down in the Captain's chair.

Jones flipped on the auxiliary power unit, adjusted the seat, and started screaming. His hand was stuck to the controls, and it burned.

"We called the air marshal and the airport manager for you," Jefferson told him. "They found him about twenty minutes later in a rather compromising position. But aside from the video here, which I must admit is quite amusing though probably illegal, the cabin voice recorder should prove your case."

"With any luck, that hand will go numb and fall off," Gold spat. Then he laughed.

The laugh surprised the pilots almost as much as him, and soon they were all cackling like fools, trying to keep their voices down.

"Do… do you think," Jefferson snorted, the tiredness and absurd good timing of it all conspiring to make him sound a bit like a hyena. "Do you think he…" But the laughter took him again.

"Do you think he expected to get caught with sticky fingers?" David managed through his own guffaws, and the three of them dissolved into hysterics again.