Rumplestiltskin felt it as Alix picked up the dagger, the jolt of her magic as strong as if she were pressing her claws against his skin. He could feel fire and the warm damp of Zelena's blood.

She turned around and walked towards him. Her hair hung calm and limp around her, no serpent flames hissing out, fangs bared, nor any images of lost souls in torment around her. Everyone—Regina, the Savior, Belle, and the entire town—watched, holding their breath.

Alix reached him and knelt down, head bowed. She held the dagger up like an offering. "Dark One, I return to thee thine own."

Rumplestiltskin snatched it from her as if she might change her mind—or as if someone else might try to get it first. He handed the staff to Bae and felt the familiar rush of power come back to him. Power and freedom.

He took a deep breath, not quite sure he believed it. "Thank you."

X

Belle was the one who finally had the courage to come up and talk to her. Alix was sitting on the curb trying to look more worn out than she was. She figured it would be reassuring to the people around her if she looked weak and drained. Sure, I took down the witch the entire, combined might of this town couldn't beat. But, boy, am I tired.

The sheriff and her family, after a brief interrogation (with the promise of a more in depth one later) had gotten busy trying to clean up the street and check if anything more dangerous than a waterline had been broken. Alix could have told them not to worry. The power lines were safe from the water and none of the gas lines had been broken. A lot of fresh water had gotten into the sewer but, luckily (yes, by all means, call it luck. Alix didn't know about Rumplestiltskin, but she was ready to look innocent if anyone asked), not the other way around.

"Thank you," Belle said.

Facetious answers went through Alix' mind. No problem, I enjoy a challenge. Or, Hey, just returning the favor. You should have seen what Rumple did the last time he was in my neighborhood. Or, maybe, No, thank you, I really enjoy a chance to kill things. Or even, Thank Rumplestiltskin. I like the way he parties.

"You're welcome," Alix said.

"You saved the people Zelena transformed," Belle went on. "Some of them would have died if you hadn't put them to sleep."

Because Zelena had had no mercy for her servants. Wounded or killed didn't matter. Once they were incapacitated, their bodies dissolved into a small cloud of dust, then nothing.

Alix didn't want to discuss the moral differences—or the lack of them—between her and Zelena. At least, I know I owe something to the ones who serve me. Instead, she gave a disapproving sniff. "That woman had no idea how to do transformations." Right, professional critique mixed with being snotty. That was always a safe route. "Where's the fun in destroying something like that? They were amateurish." Flying monkeys. How gauche.

Belle looked a little surprised but even more amused. Well, she must be used to Rumplestiltskin. And she wasn't buying it from Alix anymore than she would have from him. "Amateurish? Really? That's why you didn't destroy them?''

Alix rolled her eyes. "A decent transformation has balance. My people see magic as patterns. A bird is shaped to the pattern of air. A fish is shaped to the patterns of water. If I wanted to turn a bird into a fish, I wouldn't just change its form. All you get that way is a confused bird. I wouldn't just give it a limited command structure, either. You know, a list of does and don'ts it has to follow when it goes swimming without any ability to think for itself. If I wanted that, I'd buy a wind-up paddle-toy and let it loose in the tub. I'd touch its pattern. I'd let the bird see how moving through water was like moving with wind.

"And, if I had a fish I hated for some reason, I might turn it into a desert creature and leave it in the sand without giving it that understanding. But, if I was being really nasty, I'd strengthen its pattern so it never forgot its longing for water." Or she might touch its pattern so it could become a creature of the desert, but it would know it would lose all chance of going home once it forgot what it was to be a creature of water. Or stay itself and suffer.

That was what Zelena had tried to do to Rumplestiltskin, Alix thought. Let him become what the witch wanted, the man who loved her, the man who was deliriously happy not to care about anyone else so long as Zelena got what she wanted, and the pain would go away. Give up his love for Belle and Bae and anything else in his soul that didn't suit her, and the hurting would stop.

Nope, not sorry she killed her.

"These were just people stuck in a form the witch picked on a whim. It was like ramming every round and square peg into a pinhole. And all they did was bare their fangs a little and do whatever Zelena told them. Boring. The average five year old can imagine something scarier under their bed any night of the week."

"And I suppose you could do something worse without thinking about it?"

Oh, intelligent questions! No wonder Rumplestiltskin liked this woman. She deserved an answer just for asking (and for only looking curious while she did it instead of watching Alix as if she were a monster [even if she was]).

"Oh," Alix said airily. "I have done something worse. Lots of somethings."

"You said. . . ." Belle hesitated. Ah, the distinctive moment when someone was looking for the tactful way to say what wasn't tactful. "You said you . . . ate you father."

No, no tactful way at all.

And still not looking at her like she was a monster. She was wary, certainly (she wasn't stupid, after all). But, there was none of the all-too-familiar tang of terror in the air.

Alix wasn't sure she wanted to change that by giving an honest answer. "Did I?"

Rumplestiltskin had come closer during their conversation. He was watching her with something like concern. "You did, dearie."

Had Belle been his stalking horse? Let the tactful, compassionate one lead up to this? Or did he just know when to step in?

Alix looked at him, weighing truth against silence. "Old news, friend. What does it matter?" Except, it did matter, didn't it?

And Rumplestiltskin knew that. "You always thought it was him. But, you didn't know."

Alix hunched over, studying the puddles in the street. Water, keeper of memory. There was no escaping it here.

The past is a disease.

"Who else would they have used?"

Rumplestiltskin nodded. "Who else indeed? But, you were never certain. Now, you are."

Alix was silent a while. "My brother got married. Did I tell you that? Surprised me, too, when I finally caught up with him. Our track record on relationships. . . . Well, never let it be said we back off from insane, suicidal risks. He had three sons. And, in the way of all good fairy tales, two died and one survived. You know the drill." She saw something flash in the eyes of Rumplestiltskin, the man who had spent three hundred years searching for his son—who had died for his son—only to almost see it come to nothing at the end.

But, he didn't say it. And she would have pretended not to hear if he had, not on the open street surrounded by people who might or might not take it the way he would. "I've stood over their graves," Alix said. "And now I know. . . . I know what the blood of my family smells like when it's mortal and lost." She had never known them, the little ones who faced nightmares too soon to win against them, but she felt the gaping wound of their loss.

She looked at Baelfire, who was listening silently. She'd been half-expecting him to give her grief over killing Zelena, half-expected him not to understand. The witch had tried to murder her friend's son—had succeeded, if you thought about it—and Alix had stood over enough children's graves. But, he understood enough.

Rumplestiltskin, for his part, put his hand on Bae's shoulder as she spoke. She saw his fingers tighten, reassuring himself the boy was there. And alive. "I'm sorry, Alix."

She shrugged. "It was a long time ago." The past infects the present.

Belle, however, frowned, following the details. "I don't understand. Someone transformed your father?"

Alix laughed. That was the problem with people who asked intelligent questions. What could Alix say to that? It was all an innocent mistake? Don't worry. I may have killed him, but it was an accident. "Oh, no. Someone transformed me.

"It's a boring story, really. I'm sure you know the type. Evil overlords exploiting the peasants and killing them by inches, really gory inches. The people cry out for a savior. They get one. Or two, in my case. My brother and I are twins. Evil overlords try to murder the saviors as infants and fail. Said infants are whisked off to safety, relatively speaking, and given time to grow into their strength." Alix grimaced. "The problem, in our case is what whisked us to safety. There was a monster the lords kept in their menagerie. Sentient, I suppose. For a given value of sentience. Kind of the way a really hungry werewolf in killing frenzy is sentient. Technically, yes. Practical application-wise, not so much.

"He broke loose from his chains and whisked us away. Took mortal wounds doing it and died, but not before he got us to a very old and powerful one of his kind." And don't explain what 'one of his kind' was. Nobody here needed the nightmares. But, Alix let her hand shift, becoming flame colored and taloned, flexing her claws. Then, she shifted it back. What was it she had heard Zelena say her father told her? We must put our best face forward.

I wear a mask, Alix thought. But, I try to make it something more than just a mask.

"Magic is patterns," Alix said. "And my brother and I had a gift for feeling them, shaping them, becoming them. That was when we first changed, becoming like the creature who raised us. A little. Enough. I suppose it kept us hidden from the ones looking for us. For a while."

I hunted prey with nothing but my teeth and claws before a human child could stand. I learned to strike quickly with no mercy.

Later. . . . Later I would learn to do it slow. With even less mercy.

"Then, one day, there was something new in our hunting grounds. I remember the smell of fear, of blood. I hunted. My brother sensed something more. He tried to catch me, to hold me back. He was almost in time." Alix shrugged. "I told you our lords were evil. I don't know how they came to suspect what had happened to us and where we were—it's not exactly a likely tale, when you think about it—but they sent a man there to die. He was one of the people we'd been born to save. And I killed him. They knew we were there. And they'd scored a point. Killing changed me. I was no longer the hero I was supposed to be." Even though I remembered, she thought. As my brother pulled me off him, I remembered the darkness of my mother's womb and the first light of dawn on the morning I was born. I understood what I was and what I had done even while my humanity peeled away. Some of it. Not that I had much to begin with.

She thought of a fish in the desert, knowing what it would have to give up to survive.

"Long story short, we lived long enough to come into our strength and destroy the lords. Huzzahs all around. But, our people, the village we were born to, wasn't so lucky. I never knew what happened to my father. Not till—" She stopped and shrugged.

Alix looked one more time at the ruined street. "I was made to protect. And defend. Failing that, I avenge. And I try very hard not to be one of the things people need to be protected from. Not that it always works." And, if the parts of her that weren't human mixed in with that if her need to protect was as overwhelming and vicious as a mother crocodile protecting her nest, well, at least, that was a better outlet than some of the other things crocodiles could do, wasn't it?

Rumplestiltskin didn't trigger those instincts, Alix thought. Even when he needed her help, even when she'd felt that vicious satisfaction when she'd won and Zelena lost, she was pretty sure she'd felt it the way a human would.

The lords back home had been human.

"I guess I should get going," Alix said. "Before your little hero patrol comes after me. I don't know if I can keep a straight face if Regina goes into a spiel about 'Who killed my sister?' Any more questions before I go?"

"Two," Rumplestiltskin said. "What about Bae?"

"Ah," Alix looked at the boy. "I'm not sure. Who he was, who he became, that's still there. I think. I couldn't catch all the memories that formed it, but he's still that person inside. His self—his soul—the part I caught and wove into the bits I'd made to hold him, that remembers. And the part I made has memories from later on in his life. Just incomplete. Let him adjust. Let him form the connections between his past and his present. The parts he still carries in his soul, those might settle into the rest of him. Or not." Irritated at not being able to give a better answer, she snapped. "This isn't something I've done before." Miracles aren't supposed to be half-way, she thought. But, then, she monsters weren't supposed to create miracles. Let it go. "If he can, let him become what he was. If he can't, well, fifteen more years ought to make up the difference. And you're other question?"

Rumplestiltskin's eyes narrowed. "You killed Zelena. Why?"

"What is this, predator envy? You wanted to kill her yourself? Or do you actually think I should have let go?"

"Never. But, that's not what I asked. Why did you kill her?"

Alix stood up. The two of them looked at each other, like wolves sizing each other up for a fight. Alix leaned in and whispered. "So, you wouldn't have to."

Because, you would have had to kill her if someone else hadn't. Because, neither of us could take wounds this deep and just walk away. Because, I know what you would do to the witch who tortured you and killed your son, since I'd do the same and worse to the ones who murdered my nephews if my brother hadn't gotten there first.

And because I don't think the people who claim you as family could understand that. They would have walked away and let her live, and they wouldn't understand when that crocodile rage rose up in you and you couldn't. What joins you to them is too much like a fresh wound. It needs time to heal, time to be whole instead of tearing apart. And it's a wound you need to see closed before your life bleeds out of it.

I didn't trust them to see that.

So, right or wrong, I took the choice away from all of you.

Alix didn't say it. But, she watched Rumplestiltskin. He nodded slowly. "I see."

Alix grinned, showing her fangs. "You're welcome. If you ever need a hand, be sure to drop me a line. I love the way you party. There's never a dull moment. If your friends get upset I didn't wait, just tell them something snide. I'm sure you're up to it."

And she vanished. Not in smoke, because everyone (even Rumplestiltskin) did that. She made a spectacular exit in flames (style, when you get right down to it, is half the game).

And Rumplestiltskin was left alone on the street with his family.

Fin

X

Hope you enjoyed. Thank you for reading!