In Storybrooke, Mr. Gold strives to be the man Bae used to love--until Belle is kidnapped to Neverland. If he resumes his Dark One powers to save her, can he control them? In the Enchanted Forest, Emma battles ogres, zombies and her ex to get back h...
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Jefferson (The Mad Hatter): What's crazier than seeing and not believing? (Hat Trick)
The first row of stalls Rumple and Belle visited, they were stared at, ignored, or handled with abject respect. Through it all, she kept her arm resolutely linked with his. When the quavering old man at the ring toss game asked whether his rent check had cleared, Rumple's lips thinned, and he returned a curt nod.
Belle grimaced. If I don't find a friendly face soon, Rumple's going to beg off the hamburgers. Surveying the milling fair-goers, she spotted a vaguely familiar young man: thick brown hair, broad forehead, square jaw, cleft chin, and dark mournful eyes. His long, black coat looked like it had come from their old world. A gray woven scarf swathed his neck.
Belle squeezed Rumple's arm. "There-the man I told you about. The one who freed me from the psych ward just before the curse broke. The one who told me to find you." Glancing at Rumple, she saw a smile hovering on his lips and sadness in his eyes. "You know him, don't you?"
"That's Jefferson. In the Enchanted Forest, we were colleagues."
"Colleagues? Does that mean he's-?"
"A wizard? Yeah, like his father before him. Or at least, he was. Charming, uh, David Nolan, was careless-criminally careless in my opinion-with the one tool necessary for Jefferson's magic to work. Without a charmed hat is a hatter wizard really a wizard at all?"
At first, Belle thought the melancholy young man was meandering aimlessly. Then she realized he was following a mother and father that were strolling arm-in-arm with a ten-year-old girl. That's Paige. Her favorite book is Watership Down. Like a faithful collie, Jefferson dogged their footsteps, stopped when they did, and paced about when they paused to look at something. Every now and then Paige would speak to him over her shoulder, yet he never closed the gap to walk with the family.
"If you were colleagues," Belle asked, "why did I never meet him?"
As Rumple stared at Jefferson, his expression grew more and more pained. "By the time you came to work for me, he'd gone missing, presumed dead. As it turned out Regina had ditched him outside the Enchanted Forest in an unpleasant land ruled by an unpleasant queen-a queen without a heart. Jefferson couldn't return home to his daughter. It drove him mad."
"Oh." No wonder the poor man looked forlorn. "You called him the hatter wizard. Now you say he's mad. Does that make him the Mad Hatter?"
"He's been called that. How he can appear in a tale that pre-dates his father and mother, I'll never understand. But that's Wonderland for you."
Belle watched Paige pick up a patchwork rabbit, dandle it, and set it back down on the crafts table. As soon as she and the couple resumed walking, Jefferson picked up the stuffed animal and gave it a hug. Tears pricked Belle's eyes. "Let's go say hello." It's the least we can do.
