1. Arrival

Time is fluid here.

'No,' with a swift move of his feather, the gray-eyed man erased the first sentence of his... biography, so to speak, for the twenty-seventh time.

Writing about time being fluid was beyond his capacities. He needed something more personal, more... down-to-earth.

He giggled at that thought. Down-to-earth, of all things. To Earth!

He put the feather down and scratched his five-day beard, barely aware of the hustle and bustle around him. As the tips of his fingers touched the hair around his chin, he wondered how long had it been since he last shaved... After all, things were different where he was now - all those humanly chores looked millions of years away.

'And it might have been a million years since that day,' he pondered. How would he know, anyway? There was no more day, or night, or clocks, or minutes, or getting old, not there.

There was no more time.

"I am not beginning it with 'time is fluid here'," he muttered, as if fighting a stubborn voice inside his head while he picked up the feather again with a slight frown.

What happens to people when they die? Do they just... wake up somewhere else wearing white? Black? Red? Nothing? Do they still have a face, a voice, a name?

Memories?

Do we get another chance? A new life as someone else's child, or lover or is it... Is it just the end? A black screen without the credits, a last appearance, the definite exit from the world? Do you just cease to exist? Regardless of your good or bad deeds among the living, is death the place where we all meet? Or do we go to different places?

If so, where? Why? What comes next?

What happens when we die?

I had always wondered what death was like... until the day it finally came to me.

And it was unlike anything I had ever expected.

At last, a beginning he was happy with. He put down his feather, this time allowing a smile to curl his lips as he looked at the words in ink before lifting his eyes to the huge screen ahead of him.

And if he still had a heart, it would have skipped a beat the moment he finally understood the scene it was showing.

"How did this happen?" he whispered, after standing up and approaching the tall woman wearing a leather overcoat.

She, however, remained silent, her jaw clenched so tight it seemed on the verge of breaking.

"Did his name show up in the missions?" he asked, eyes still glued to the familiar face of a woman he had never forgotten. "Did we miss it?"

"No," answered a boy, who was staring at another screen filled with millions of names that kept rolling in and out of sight. "I haven't blinked. There hasn't been a request for help."

"Bracelets?" the older man asked, his voice quiet as he again searched for the eyes of the woman next to him.

But again, there was no response. If anything, he had better chances of receiving an answer from a statue.

The boy shook his head.

"Nothing."

And then, all eyes in that room were fixed in the exact same people.

Emma Swan, amidst trees and rocks, holding Henry's father in her arms as life left his body.

"This cannot be," said the woman, her voice no louder than a whisper. "It canno-"

She was interrupted by a loud beep and the announcement of an angelical female voice.

"Individual detected in the Arrivals lounge."

"Well I'll be damned," said the boy, raising an eyebrow with the shadow of a snicker on his lips. "Baelfire is no more."

"How did this happen?" asked the woman, her fiery green eyes wide open as she turned to look at the man by her side. "How? Regina Mills breaks a nail and her name pops up in multiple requests for help. My son is dead and his name didn't even flash on that screen, why?"

"I don't know," answered the man, and he meant it. "I don't make the rules. Maybe his name showed up somewhere... only, not in our district."

"His name belongs in our district," the woman hissed, her face contorted in a most unusual display of anger.

"You can't tell for sure."

"Oh, please, Graham. I have seen his life since he was nothing but a kid. Every time he was helped, he was helped by the ones in this room. I saw the moment his eyes closed, he was alone."

Her last word seemed to echo across the crystal white hall, reverberating in each and every wall and forcing its way into their ears, and souls.

"Yes, alone," said the boy, after crossing his arms. "And as you two argue, he is waiting outside."

Graham Humbert had yet to open his mouth to speak when Milah cut him short.

"You should go get him."

"Me?" he exclaimed. "He doesn't even know who I am. Milah..." he took a step closer to the woman before continuing. "He should be welcomed by a familiar face, someone he knows, someone he l-"

"I can go."

It was the boy's turn to butt in.

"Why not?" Pan went on, returning Milah's glare with a smirk. "I'm his grandfather, after all. And now that his mother will let him down again…"

"Well, I'm a familiar face too..."

The three heads turned to look at the other woman that had showed up behind them.

"See?" snorted Pan. "It's either me or Tamara, at least I didn't shoot him."

"Graham, please…" Milah whispered, and her eyes were so full of panic that he really had no choice.

He shook his head, feeling sorry for the poor fellow that had just joined them.

"You know that sooner or later he'll see you all," he said.

"Yes, but it doesn't have to be now," Milah responded. "Please go get him."

And so, he did.

From the looks of it, Neal Cassidy was not going to catch a break even after his death.