A/N: A completely unfounded (and slightly cracky) piece of speculation as to how things could possibly go, in rescuing Emma and Snow from the Forest. Well, okay, I don't really think they'll go this way. I just kind of would like it if they did. Also, I had to go back and rewatch Hat Trick, because I said so.

The Felt, The Block, The Pins, The Scissors, The Hands

"Oh." Emma's hand over her eyes, fingertips biting deep, utterly distressed, distraught. Decidedly unhappy, which is weird, because she's all of seconds away from being rescued from one of the worst situations she's ever been in. "Oh, Henry, you didn't."

"I had to, Mom," her son pipes. Always piping, that boy. Apparently he doesn't know how to speak any other way. "He's the only one who knows how to make a hat portal."

Her hand drops away and she directs a glare at him. "Not the only one. I managed to get through, didn't I?"

"Through my hat," Jefferson clarifies. "So I make the door, and you open it. Two-part process."

Emma turns away from him, clearly disgusted. "Just when I was thinking things couldn't get any worse."

Jefferson jingles the ring of keys at her. "You'd also probably better hold my hand," he says. "Just so you know."

Truth be told, the situation's dire. Or has been, till they showed up. Now, less so. He still doesn't like it, but he hasn't liked much since he got trapped feet-first in Wonderland, in fact he thinks he may never really like anything again, so it doesn't matter, so he can forget about the not-liking for the moment, and think about Henry three steps in front of them, leading the way, and Snow a few steps behind him, watchful, guarding, and Emma at his side, Emma at his side, Emma at his side.

Train of thought, derailed.

They're moving quickly and quietly as possible, mindful of enemies on either side. Enemies who think Emma and Snow are still behind bars. Wooden bars, but bars nonetheless. Enemies who think that this corner of the Forest is the last bastion of civilization. Enemies who have never heard of Storybrooke, Maine, and who don't want to hear of Storybrooke, Maine, and who, if he ever tried to tell them of Storybrooke, Maine, would first put their fingers in their ears and then try to kill him.

And Emma. Who is at his side.

They reach the portal, which is still swirling, though the purple is now more of a magenta and there are gaps through which he can see the dark woods on the other side. It's also making sputtering noises, which are unpleasantly loud. From behind them come the shouts of the awakening enemies. Shouts and other noises. The enemy takes a variety of forms, not all of which are entirely human. He could swear he saw a rabbit with nunchucks in there somewhere, but he's unsure what the story is behind that.

"Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse," says Emma. This seems to be her new mantra.

"What do we do?" pipes Henry, clutching with both hands at his hair. Jefferson purses his lips at him, sourly.

"My advice?" he says. "Jump."

"There's not enough magic! I can see through it!" Again with the piping. "It's a funny color, too!"

Jefferson hovers between asking him exactly what color he thinks an inter-dimensional haberdashery-based portal between worlds should be, and actually doing something useful. The only useful thing he can think of to do, though, is to take Emma's hand.

He takes Emma's hand.

She shoots him a dirty look, like he's on the other side of a phone line asking what she's wearing. He responds with the widest, most charming grin he can muster at the moment. The potency of it resonates all the way down to his toes till he feels he is nothing but bright shiny teeth and a sentient dimple.

"Magic," he says. "I don't like to say I told you so, but—"

Actually he doesn't mind saying I told you so, but pulling them all through the suddenly-rejuvenated portal works just as well.

On the other side, Emma's hand is still in his, and he finds that he likes it. So there goes that theory.

Inside Jefferson's hotel-like house, Charming is waiting. Charming, or David. David and Charming. Charming David. Or, as Jefferson has suddenly decided to call him, Darming.

"One Snow, as ordered," Jefferson offers, stumbling sideways from the purple-misted exit of the hat. The spin has settled, but it seems to have passed on to him. He feels dizzy. He still feels Emma's hand around his, though in fact she unclamped it a moment or two ago and gave him a look like he was an oyster. Or a stalker. Whichever was more unpleasant. An oyster stalker. "Didn't I tell you I could do it?"

"No," says Prince Darming, when he can get his mouth free of his erstwhile wife. "No, actually, you said you couldn't."

Jefferson frowns. "Did I?"

"In no uncertain terms."

"Ah. I underestimated myself, it seems. I really should learn not to do that." He totters back the other way and fetches up against fetching Emma Swan, who is standing arms folded and looking not in the mood to put up with any of his fetching, or his madness. Or his hatterness. His mad hatterness, if he would. "Is this your fault? The portal's— the portal was very—"

"Awesome!" pipes Henry. Jefferson clutches at his head.

"I need some tea," he mutters, and stumbles off towards the kitchen.

Emma gives him a dead-eyed stare from the doorway. Jefferson, one eye squinched shut against the light, sips demurely.

"You're more of a coffee drinker anyway, aren't you," he says. "You look like a coffee drinker. Kind of milky brownish, café au lait, or a bad tan. Or maybe I have my eyes closed. Yeah. That's probably it."

"We're talking," says Emma. "We're talking about important things."

"Tea's important."

"Regina is holding the town hostage. We're the last hold-out. She doesn't know where we are, but the moment we step outside—"

"Oh God, not again," Jefferson burbles into his cup.

"We need a plan," says Emma, who probably didn't understand him anyway, what with the burbling. Jefferson lifts his head.

"You could try holding my hand again," he says. "I'm not kidding."

Emma just gives a disgusted sigh and moves back into the hallway.

"I wasn't kidding." The tea has restored him. He enters the living room with a sense of purpose and confident, manly strides. "About the hand holding, I mean."

"This doesn't sound like something I want to hear," says Prince Darming, who— that's right— is her father. Ah. Well. Right.

Jefferson gives a dismissive wave.

"Your daughter has magic. Just like I tried to tell her before she hit me over the head with my telescope— which doesn't seem to work anymore, by the way—"

"Which was right after you threatened me with a gun and a pair of scissors," says Emma. Glaring again.

"Which is after you tried to sneak away—"

"Which is after you drugged me and tied me up and what makes you think that gives you the moral high ground?"

They're all staring at him. Jefferson purses his lips and frowns thoughtfully for a moment, but after the end of the moment, they're still staring at him, so he has to go away for a little while.

"Like I was saying," he says after the while is up, marching back into the living room with a tea tray, "I'm quite serious about the hand-holding."

Emma leaps to her feet and whirls away from him, slamming the door behind her.

"You've sure got a weird notion of when refreshments are appropriate and when they're really, really not," says Prince David Charming Emma's Father, staring at him. He looks quite impressed. Or it's disbelief. Perhaps it's disbelief.

"Give him a break," says Snow, and they turn to gape at her instead. "The man's lived in complete solitude for twenty-eight years. He's bound to be a little unhinged. And he did help us, after all." Her husband protests, and she holds a hand up to stop him. "I'm not saying it excuses what he did. I'm saying we might have to move on from that, focus on what we're doing now." She settles into her seat, and her mouth closes in a grim line. "And put off the punishment till later."

"Well, gee," says Jefferson. "Thanks."

"What about the hand-holding?"

It's not as fun to talk about it without Emma here, getting irritated. He resigns himself to disappointment.

"She's magic. Strong magic. When she held my hand, the portal—" He shakes his head. "It's never been like that before. It threw me off balance, and I know this may sound hard to believe, but before I was— unhinged—" A deliberate heavy-lidded glance in Snow's direction. "—I was very hard to unbalance. She's the key. She's always been the key."

Emma at his side; Emma holding his hand; Emma through the telescope; Emma in his dreams.

"She's always been the key," he repeats, to make himself keep believing.

"Maybe you could write her an apology," pipes Henry. "That always works!"

Jefferson does not ask what his frame of reference is. Instead, he shrugs and goes to look for paper, though he has second thoughts when all he can find is the left-over roll of wallpaper in the attic. He has third thoughts when Henry pipes up from behind him, "That's great!"

He looks at the fat roll in his hand, and shrugs again.

"Go big or go home," he says, "and I'm already home."

More or less, anyway.

"You're not going to want this," he says, "but take it anyway. Warm up your hands."

Oddly enough, she does. She takes the cup from him. She warms her hands. She sits in his chair at his work bench surrounded by the pieces-parts of haberdashery, the felt, the block, the pins, the scissors. She looks up at him with eyes dark as bruises, dark with anger, dark with suspicion.

"I've written you an apology," says Jefferson, and he unrolls the scroll. It spills across the desk and down the far side. On it is written a giant SORRY in ornate letters. Hand-written. He doesn't do things by halves. "Sorry about the paper, it was apparently all I had in the house."

"It doesn't excuse what you did to me," she says.

"No," he agrees.

"It doesn't make me forget."

"No," he agrees again.

"And I don't know why you keep harping on holding my hand."

"I explained it to your parents. They've given us their blessing."

This is, it turns out, the wrong thing to say. He'd thought her eyes were dark before, but that's nothing to what they are now. Dark with darkness.

"I never wanted to come back here," says Emma, "and I hate you, and you smell funny."

"It's musk," says Jefferson, but Emma only rolls her eyes. "Alright, it's not musk, it's the Forest. There are things in the Forest that defy explanation. There are things in the Forest that you don't want to put a name to. Things that should never see the light."

"There are things right here that should never see the light," says Emma, and snorts. "Musk."

Jefferson takes her teacup from her— still completely full, filled to the brim— and throws it across the room. It makes a Texas-shaped stain on the wallpaper, which he will not clean up because it's likely the closest to Texas he'll ever get. On second thought he will clean it up, because he's heard things about Texas and he has no interest in going there.

"I'm going to shower," he says, "and that's not an invitation."

He leaves the room.

"Musk," says Emma, in her own defense.

"I said that wasn't an invitation."

She hands him a towel. Her eyes are averted. More or less.

"I've been thinking," she says, and takes a seat on the closed lid of the toilet. She'd be hard-pressed to find an atmosphere less conducive to romance, and maybe, he thinks, that's kind of the point.

"That things couldn't get any worse?" he prompts, wrapping his nether half in the towel. What will fit, anyway. She probably should have opted for a bath towel, rather than the hand variety.

"Well, yeah, that," says Emma, "and— this." She steels herself, closes her eyes. "You're probably completely nuts, and it's probably not all your fault, what with the curse and the being two people in one head and your daughter taken away and trapped in solitary confinement for twenty eight years and getting stuck in Wonderland trying to find a way back for who knows how long and your obvious crippling social defects."

"Right," says Jefferson agreeably, hitching up his towel. He waits till he sees her open her eyes, then he does it again. He steps from the shower and leans against the wall, arms folded, eyes narrowed.

"So, so lets," says Emma, looking as though she's having trouble thinking, "chalk that one up to experience for the moment and move on."

"To where?" he says.

She shakes her head quickly, as though to wake herself back up, and sighs. "Put your clothes on and let's go into the work room."

"Can't," he says, reasonably, "they smell like musk. Or Enchanted Forest. Musky Forest, if you like."

Emma apparently doesn't like. Wordlessly, she hands him another towel. Slightly bigger, this time, and he decides to take heart from it, for no particular reason.

"So," she says, sitting across from him and watching in amazement as he finishes up the hems on a pair of leather pants, which he has magically— magically!— managed to fashion in less than three minutes. She huffs out a brief, disbelieving laugh. "Wow. Leather, huh?"

"I always feel more at home wearing something else's hide," says Jefferson, "and due to my new awareness of social niceties I'm aware of how terrible that sounded. I'm not taking it back though. Turn around."

She turns around. He puts his shiny new pants on and drapes the towel across his shoulders like a cape, because he likes capes. Bare-chested but attired like the king of terrycloth, he sits himself back down comfortably and steeples his fingers in front of him.

"You can turn around now."

Emma turns.

Emma laughs.

Dignity is a small price to pay for Emma Swan laughing, he thinks. It's worth it.

"What can we make?"

He does a quick survey of his supplies. "Things made of pins, hat blocks, black felt, and scissor blades."

Emma gives an unladylike grunt. "Helpful. Thanks."

"You asked." He taps his fingers together. She's watching him, eyes hooded. Nearly predatory. He wonders if she knows any wolves. He wonders if she's been taking lessons from them.

"I'm still angry," she says. "So don't think I'm not."

"We're just moving on," he reminds her.

"Yeah," says Emma. "Moving on."

"To plans."

"To plans."

He shoves upwards to his feet abruptly, and she echoes him, partially crouched, wary, watching. He shakes his head instead of waving his hand, to calm her down, to ground her. Never fear.

"All your magic," he says. "What does it mean?"

"It means the curse is over, I guess."

"How do we know?"

"Because there's magic."

"But Regina's out there, and we're in here."

Emma glances to the side, out the blank black window, and shrugs. "Things will change."

Her confidence is delightful. He moves around the edge of the desk, stacking things. Things on top of other things. Some things were not meant to be stacked, and fall off immediately. He's hoping that this is not an omen.

"What can we make?" says Emma again. "You made a hat."

"And you made it work."

"Yeah." She nearly laughs, but bites it back at the last possible second. "I did. I made it work. So what else? A hat's no good, in this situation."

"Don't knock the hat," says Jefferson sternly. "It's what got you out of the mess you were in in the Forest."

Emma shakes her head, eyes closed briefly. He comes closer while she's not looking. "Not knocking the hat. Just— looking for options."

"And this was your idea? To look in my work room?"

She shrugs. "It's got good lighting," she offers.

"That's important." He's quite close now.

"Well, it's a start."

She's smiling, now, and looking at his chin. Well. At his chin, mostly. Maybe her eyes are drifting, maybe she's looking at the hollow of his throat, at the rise and fall of his Adams apple as he swallows past the lump in his throat, at the twitch and jump of his pulse. She lifts a hand. She flicks in half-hearted playfulness at one corner of his terrycloth cape, and it falls back over his shoulder and leaves him bare. Mostly bare, all bare, bare before her apart from some really nice magic-tailored leather trousers, which fit him quite well and hide absolutely absolutely absolutely nothing.

"What can we make?" he whispers to her.

"Something new," she whispers back, and because she lets him, he moves forward, steps forward, leans forward, finds a new position and a new way to breathe and it's all him and her and them and lips and teeth and tongue and all about to get very exciting indeed and tailor-made and and and—

"What?" says Henry from the doorway. "What— Em-ma!"

Emma's startled, Emma's alarmed, Emma's worried and abruptly motherly, and she starts towards the door, but Jefferson catches her just in time, fingers fitting neatly around her wrist.

"Wait," he says, softly.

"But—"

They can hear Henry making gagging noises all the way down the hall. Emma sighs, and turns halfway back to him.

"Just when I thought things couldn't—" she starts, and is silenced by Jefferson's hand over her mouth.

"So stop thinking," he says, "and give things a chance to improve."

He kisses her then, kisses her again, slides his hands down her back and under her shirt, feels the threads that hold her together, the same threads that loop the world. They'll have to make a plan— there always has to be a plan— but plans can wait and this can not. Time will tell. Time will turn. Time's such a jerk, sometimes.

He hollows out a moment or two in the midst of the hour, and they stay there.

"So we've got a plan," says Emma to her parents, and her parents look from a still-grossed-out Henry to Emma in the doorway to Jefferson standing close by her and then down.

"Does this plan involve finding Jefferson some more clothes?" David/Charming wants to know.

"No," says Emma, all matter-of-fact, "that wasn't a significant feature of the plan, no."

Her mother's still staring downwards, tilting her head to the side, examining, analyzing. What does she think it means, Jefferson wants to know. What does this mean, the hat-making portal-jumper and the erstwhile savior of the known world, standing close together, framed by the doorway, white wood and silver walls, picture-perfect, and hands. Hands, connected and holding. Hands.

There's a portal to the future in his brain, and he can see happy endings. His thoughts are colored rose.