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piracytheorist · 5 years

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To Give One’s Trust (1/1)

Note: Written for @csrolereversal! I must admit that I'd nearly given up and dropped out of the event, but with the help and encouragement of @darkcolinodonorgasm and @artistic-writer, the latter of whom also provided the magnificent art above that inspired this story, I managed to set a smaller, but more attainable goal and finish just in time to participate!

Summary: Captain Hook has been a werewolf for centuries, in control of his wild state. When he gets kidnapped and experimented upon, his desperate actions to escape have dire consequences for him. When Emma Swan meets a feral werewolf on a night with a full moon, she can sense that there's something more to that creature. Perhaps, with the right amount of trust, she can help him help himself.

Warnings: Violence (yep, there's whump), blood, and near the end, a minor character death that’s a bit graphic.

Word count: ~6k AO3

In all his centuries and past torments, Captain Hook had never imagined he’d be brought to such a horrid state.

He’d known better, of course, than to make hopeful dreams for his future. He’d turned pirate because of his brother’s death; he’d surrounded his thoughts with a thirst for revenge because of Milah’s death; he had nothing more to live for...

Except, ever since that damned werewolf bit him, dying had stopped being an option.

And his current tormentors seemed to be aware of that. Actually, he wouldn’t call them tormentors, not exactly. Sure, they spared no sympathy for the pain they were causing him, no reaction to his screams, but overall they were only... testing. Potions, spells, curses, incantations, anything dark magic could conjure up.

They were of course aware of the fact that he couldn’t die and that his healing abilities worked ten times faster than of a normal human. So after they were done experimenting on him for the day, they’d leave him rest, curled up in a pool of his own blood, shivering, as he waited for his multiple wounds to heal. Then they’d come back the next day to continue their experiments.

He could swear that the worst was during the nights he turned. All of his senses were heightened then, as well as his healing, and the experiments got even worse - besides, they had to try the different application of some of them on a three-legged canine.

But that wasn’t the worst.

The worst was the Dark One watching.

He never laid a finger on him as his minions worked on the experiments he was ordering. He only watched, standing outside the cage Hook was kept in, sometimes even smiling at him. Sometimes he stayed after the other men had left, and watched him as Hook struggled to keep his sobs quiet, to not let the Dark One hear them.

Two months being experimented upon and most nights with Rumpelstiltskin watching he managed to keep quiet; that he considered a small victory.

He had made peace with his werewolf nature; thanks to meeting a werewolf pack during his first months of being one, he’d managed to learn to control himself, and for centuries, the night of full moon was just another night. Sometimes, seeing the moon grow larger could even bring him some excitement. The joy brought by running as a wolf could easily come close to the one of sailing in the open seas.

Now, that same sight only brought a reminder of a harsher, more painful night.

Some nights, when his body hurt too much for sleep to claim him, he’d look at the moon peeking outside the window and wonder how long he’d have to endure that.

It didn’t take much longer. Just one night before his third full moon there, Rumpelstiltskin got too close, and Hook was just too desperate. With surprising agility, considering his injuries, he plunged his hook into the Dark One’s arm... who was too keen on gloating about the pain he’d been ordering on him to notice Hook’s eyes dropping to the dagger on his belt.

It only took two swift moves to pull it out and bury it deep inside Rumpelstiltskin’s chest.

It was the moment Hook felt his mind stop working. He could watch. He watched Rumpelstiltskin fall on his side, dead. He watched a blast of magic leave him, destroying his cage and incapacitating - killing? - his tormentors before they had a chance to run. He watched the environment change around him as he moved - ran? - outside, to who knew where.

But he wasn’t seeing.

His senses were being assaulted by memories; all the deaths he’d witnessed, with the pain they were accompanied by, striking as if brand new; his torments, from as old as the ones in his childhood, to losing his hand, to the one he’d suffered just that day.

And the most intense of it all, hearing his name whispered around him.

Killian Jones. Killian Jones. Killian Jones.

It was daytime when he woke up. He was lying in the middle of a forest, with the bloodied rags he wore in the torture chamber, but all of his wounds healed up, way faster than even his werewolf healing offered.

He wanted to wonder how that could be, but he knew it would be simple denial now.

He was the Dark One. The cursed dagger was in his hand, Rumpelstiltskin’s crusted blood still on it, the name Killian Jones engraved on the blade.

He could already feel something pulsating under his skin. He could hear birds chirping a little too loud next to him, and he was overcome with an urge to kill them. He wanted... something. He wanted to burst out on someone, and the damn forest was too deserted.

The violent thoughts kept coming and coming, and had it been any other day, he’d have simply ignored them or drowned them in a flask of rum.

But that night there’d be a full moon. He’d turn by the first moonbeam, and if his thoughts were already surrounded with an urge of violence, how could he be sure they wouldn’t get even more intense after he turned? Everything was more intense in wolf form. Sight. Hearing. Taste. The taste of flesh.

First, the dagger. The safest place to hide it was his safe at the Jolly Roger, as the only way to open it was with his hook, and his hook always disappeared to... wherever, when he turned, so it would be safe until he turned back into a human.

He held the dagger tight, closed his eyes and thought of his cabin. When he opened them, he was there.

His cabin was as tidy as he could remember leaving it. He didn’t allow any emotions over the loyalty of his crew over the nearly three months he’d been missing; he had to be quick lest someone saw him.

After he secured the dagger, he spent all afternoon building a special cage to keep himself in. Hard, thick steel bars, heavy chains around his limbs and torso, enchanted to stay stuck on his skin and not break by brute force, completed by a blindfold as soon as the sun set.

He lay down, conjuring up thick vines to keep his body pinned to the ground, trying not to think just how easy it was to use magic, and focused on his breath.

I am the wolf.

I am in control.

I am...

Emma sighed as she conjured up a few more flames, stoking the campfire. She looked at it, trying to concentrate on the dancing colours to keep her mind off their plans for tomorrow. There was no use worrying over it now, she had already volunteered to help invade the Evil Queen’s castle to bring her down. She didn’t fear her; but she had no doubt she would have doubled her defences, maybe even hired more magicians to help her fight Emma and her parents’ army.

But again, all she should do now was try to relax as much as possible. She was already losing sleep with all that stress, and she needed to be strong tomorrow...

A pang of guilt rushed through her when she heard footsteps behind her. Damnit, now they’d start acting like she was a child, and why isn’t she asleep yet, and Emma, you need to rest, we need your magic...

Instead, she only heard an exaggerated gasp. “Shouldn’t you be asleep, young lady?”

Emma bit her lip to stop herself from laughing. She turned around, finally losing it at Elsa’s over-the-top dramatic face. But Elsa quickly dropped the mockery and sat down next to her.

“At least we can chat to pass the time,” Elsa said.

“Yeah.”

Elsa seemed to notice Emma’s nervousness. “Hey,” she said. “It’s gonna be alright. We’ll have the castle by this time tomorrow.”

“And I’ll take my rightful place as ‘Princess of Misthaven’.”

Elsa simply smiled softly at her, taking her hand in hers. “I’ll always be here, you know. If anything, I know what it feels like to not believing it when people keep telling you you have a place with them.”

Emma nodded, staying silent. The famous lost princess of Misthaven, separated from her parents as soon as she was born, only being found after more than two decades of not belonging anywhere... it’s not that her parents pressured her in anything. But she appreciated having someone to get what she was feeling. Her parents had spent all that time loving her, hoping to find her, while she had spent that time hating them, thinking they’d abandoned her. Such dark thoughts weren’t easy to let go of after so long of having been part of her.

“Thank you,” she said eventually, blinking away a tear.

“So,” Elsa said, “maybe we can lighten up? Play something, a word game or-”

Both their heads perked up towards the bushes at the sound of rustling twigs. They got up, preparing their magic, focusing on any other sound of their attacker. Before Emma could conjure up more flames to help them see better, they saw a dark figure lunge towards them. Emma shrieked, releasing a wave of force magic as Elsa raised a wall of ice in front of them. Through it, they saw the figure hit a tree behind it, then fall gracelessly on the ground. Emma finally conjured up those flames, immediately noticing the form struggling to get up.

“A wolf?” Elsa said.

“No. It’s something... more. I can feel it’s magical.” Emma walked towards it.

She spotted Elsa looking around at the sky. “It’s full moon. A werewolf?”

“No. I mean... yeah, probably, but... I feel something more.” When she was just a few feet away, the wolf jumped up, growling at her and preparing to attack.

Elsa conjured ice around his apparently three paws, keeping him in place. That only lasted a second though, as the wolf looked down at the ice and it immediately melted away.

“He can use magic?!”

Emma closed her eyes, focusing on the deeper magic inside of her as she extended her arms. The werewolf lunged again right then, but a magic sphere appeared around him, immobilizing him mid-air.

“I just need a few seconds,” Emma said. “Keep him frozen somehow so that I can create a magic cage around him.”

As Elsa struggled to keep him immobilized, continuously creating ice around him as he made it melt away, Emma concentrated on her magic again. Somehow, this wolf seemed to have quite powerful magic, and more magic than usual was needed to restrain him. Thick bars appeared around him, enclosing him in a cage wide enough for him to move and even stand when he’d turn back into a human, and Elsa let go.

Immediately, the wolf went for the bars, biting and swatting at them with his paws, but they wouldn’t give. He stepped back, curled inwards, then a blast of force magic left him and struck the bars, but again, nothing happened.

Emma and Elsa sighed, feeling a bit weary after the fight, and kept watching as the wolf, almost without rational thought, kept attacking the bars with force and magic no matter how fruitless his efforts were.

“Go and try to sleep,” Emma told Elsa, whose shoulders were noticeably slouched. “I’ll stay to make sure he doesn’t escape. Though I believe the cage will be strong to hold him overnight.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

Emma just nodded. As Elsa walked away, back to her tent, Emma turned her attention back to the wolf. She stepped towards the cage, close enough to see him better, but far enough to make sure he couldn’t reach her.

A magical werewolf. Actually, an extra-magical werewolf, since such creatures were already considered to have magic in the first place. He growled at her when she got too close, actually backtracking in the cage.

Huh. Perhaps there was some sense left in him after all.

She could barely feel tired, even after having used all that magic. There was something about this wolf, and she just couldn’t stop imagining all the questions she’d ask him once he turned back into a human.

Technically, she could sleep. The cage proved to be strong enough, and she would need the rest, but she was simply too alert to relax now. She sat back on the log she was sitting on before, watching the poor wolf slam himself into the bars and exhausting himself with magic, again and again and again.

Until he nearly collapsed on the ground, trying to curl up into a ball... and weeping softly.

It was that, no doubt. He was crying, and Emma couldn’t help wondering if it was from exhaustion, pain after hitting the bars so many times... or pure despair.

She wrapped her arms around her torso and leaned forward, trying to will away her memories of feeling so desperate she cried.

She woke up with the first sunbeam. She jumped up, panicking momentarily until her bleary vision cleared and she saw the wolf still inside the cage. When the beams reached his cage, a thick black cloud surrounded him, and when it dissipated, a man was at its place.

Emma stepped closer, taking a good look at him. He didn’t appear to have a left hand; in its place was a metal hook, secured on a brace that was wrapped with leather loops around his left arm. He looked tired, and even in pain, if she judged by the crease between his eyebrows. And - holy crap - he was barefoot, dressed in filthy, torn, blood-stained rags. But he didn’t seem to have any wounds, from what she could see.

Suddenly, his eyes popped open and he gasped, scaring her enough to elicit a short yelp, which in turn seemed to scare him, as he scrambled to his knees and arms and tried to move backwards, again gasping when he hit the bars behind him.

“It’s alright,” Emma said. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“Where am I?” the man said.

“Just a few miles off...” she almost said “the Evil Queen’s castle” but thought better of giving away their plan. It only then occurred to her that he could have been a spy. “... Misthaven,” she ended up saying. “What’s your name?”

The man looked around the cage, then his face turned sober, serious. “Why am I in a bloody cage?”

“For our protection. And most likely, yours too.”

She saw him swallow hard. “Did I hurt anyone? As a...” His voice trailed off.

“A wolf? Not as far as I know.”

He looked away, a discomfort settling in his features. He seemed to grow more uncomfortable the longer he looked at the cage bars around him.

“Let me out of here,” he said finally.

Emma straightened up, assuming an authoritative stance. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Not until you answer some of my questions.”

“Are you bloody serious?”

“You were out of control of your werewolf state. You could have harmed my people, for all I know you hurt innocents who crossed your path last night!”

The man fixed her with a stare, then simply stood up, straightening his shoulders too. He raised his hand, conjured up a fireball in it, looked at it with what she could swear was disdain, then hurled it towards the bars.

Emma managed to not flinch. There was a part of her that was uncertain of the effectiveness of the cage now that he was human, but she managed to keep a straight face as the man looked at his hand in surprise.

“What?”

“Yeah. You were just a bit of a nuisance yesterday night. I had to make things a bit more difficult for you.”

Though he seemed to register the words, he conjured another fireball, hurling it towards the bars, then another, and another. He then simply walked to the bars and looked at her angrily. “Get on with your questions, then!”

“What’s your name?”

He seemed to think for a moment. “Captain Hook.”

“Hook?” She looked briefly at his namesake appendage, then back at him. “Were you really out of control last night?”

He seemed confused at that. “What do you mean?”

“One can never be too careful. How do I know you’re not just pretending you have no idea what happened last night?”

“How would you know if I lied?”

Emma smiled. “Try me.”

Hook just looked at her for a moment, before his angry face relaxed a little. He sighed, then said, “I was out of control. I suspected it would happen, so I tied myself with chains, but apparently it wasn’t enough.”

Truth.

“You were using magic, even as a wolf.”

His eyebrows raised at that. “What?”

“After I trapped you in the cage, you kept trying to force your way out of it with magic.”

He looked down at his arms. “This must be how I managed to escape last night.”

Emma opted not to tell him that restraining him had required more magic than she was used to using. “You probably needed someone else’s magic used against you to keep you down.”

He shivered at that, his shoulders slouching forward. “Are you done with your questions?”

“Well, obviously, I can’t let you go without knowing you won’t be a danger tonight as well.”

“So what now? You’ll keep me here all day? I suspect you have better things to waste your time on, lass.”

He looked at her with an almost exhausted expression. For some reason, the way he said and worded that cut deep in her.

“How did you get your magic? I might be able to at least use a spell that will contain it when you’re in wolf form.”

“You keep your bloody magic away from me.”

“Oh, is that so? Perhaps you would like to spend the day in the cage, after all.”

Hook sighed. “I was cursed with it. Both the lycanthropy and the magic. I was in perfect control of my wolf form, but I was... recently cursed with magic, and so it seems, I lost control of the wolf because of it.”

“How were you cursed?”

He didn’t respond for a while. He looked around the cage, biting his lip, clenching his hand into a fist, until he looked at her and said, “Perhaps I would enjoy that night in that cage.”

Emma felt a shiver down her spine. He seemed too reluctant to share the details of his magic, and that wasn’t a good sign. Especially since he seemed to prefer a whole day of imprisonment over sharing it.

“Well, that won’t do then. If you couldn’t control the wolf yesterday, who’s to say you’ll manage that next month? I may have to keep you locked up until you manage that.” She cocked her head. “Perhaps that’ll motivate you.”

He sighed and looked away. “This is bloody ridiculous.”

Before he could turn back towards her, Emma leaned in between the bars and grabbed his hand in hers. He gasped, turning towards her, but didn’t snatch his hand away.

Emma, however, couldn’t let go from the shock. “You’re the Dark One.” Her eyes darted to a tattoo on his arm, a heart with the name ‘Milah’ written on it. She looked up at him, feeling yet another shiver.

His face turned grim, and he finally snatched his hand away. “What of it?”

“What of it?! You killed Rumpelstiltskin? How... when?!”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“The hell it does!” Without any assistance from Rumpelstiltskin, the Evil Queen had no hope against them.

She hadn’t realized she was slightly smiling until Hook said, “You seem quite amused at the news of his death.”

She straightened her face, and her stance as well. “Well... let’s say he wasn’t the best around.”

“That’s quite the understatement.”

“Is that why you killed him?”

“How did you know, anyway? That I am the Dark One?”

“I... well, I sensed it. I can’t really describe it.”

“Hm. Well, in any case, you’ve had your answer, one way or another. Can you let me go now?”

Emma crossed her arms, too uncertain of his intentions. Again, for all she knew, he was the Queen’s minion, sent to kill Rumpelstiltskin so she could assume control of him. “Who’s Milah?”

He swallowed hard, turning his arm so she couldn’t see the tattoo anymore. “Someone from long ago.”

She would never mistake that look on his face. The look of heartbreak, of unspeakable loss. “That’s why you killed him. Rumpelstiltskin.”

He stayed silent, only looked at her, then away again.

Emma looked back at her camp, seeing people having woken up, occasionally throwing glances at them. Elsa was awake too, probably having informed all of them of their current prisoner.

It was almost time.

“I’m still not convinced I should let you go.”

“Too busy planning the attack on the Evil Queen?”

Emma blinked. He simply shrugged at her response, pointing at his ear.

“Wolf hearing. It has bought me my freedom more than once before.”

“Well, for all we know, you could be a spy of hers.”

“I don’t even know the woman.”

Truth.

Damn it.

Wait, what? Why did him not being a spy make her mad?

“Maybe one of her guards hired you,” she tried.

He sighed, exasperation starting to show on his face. “I am not a spy.” He leaned forward, resting his forehead on the bars. “I am not working for anyone. I just want to find a way to get rid of this bloody curse on me.”

Emma just looked at him, at his blood-stained rags, then back again at his face, tired and barely hiding a desperate expression. He mustn’t have known that killing the Dark One would transfer his powers, and thus his curse, onto him.

She sighed, thinking he couldn’t be her responsibility now. She conjured up one of their anti-magic cuffs. “This will block your magic when you wear it. Put it on before sunset and make sure you’ve gotten yourself somewhere where you can’t hurt anyone when you turn.”

He took it, studying it curiously. “Everything I wear disappears when I turn. Won’t it bring the magic back when I turn?”

“Your stuff doesn’t just disappear. You kinda... you’re kinda still carrying them with you. It’ll be alright.”

“You trust me?” He looked up at her, and her stomach coiled at his face. He seemed surprised... but accepting of the sentiment. “I’m the Dark One.”

“Keeping you locked up won’t do any of us any good,” she said, taking a few steps back and raising her hands. “Maybe it can be a peace offering. If I trust you, you don’t cause us any trouble.” Before she had the time to change her mind, she willed the cage to disappear. She opened her eyes, and he was still there, looking at her, with a visibly more relaxed expression.

“I didn’t even get your name,” he said.

“Neither did I yours,” she said, smirking at him. “But I’m about to help claim our kingdom back, and you’re the Dark One. Something tells me our paths will cross again.”

He nodded. With a swift move of his hand, he was covered in dark red smoke.

She had expected him to teleport away, but instead, when the smoke cleared, he was still there, only he was now dressed in lustrous black leather, from the tip of his boots to the long coat over his shoulders.

If that wasn’t enough, he looked up at her and smirked. She felt her stomach twist as he walked past her and said, “Farewell, your Highness.”

She looked behind her as he walked away. Her magic told her it wasn’t a trick; he was actually leaving, to Gods knew where.

Well, she thought, sighing. Let’s hope I didn’t screw this one up.

It was a harder, longer, and more bloody fight that they’d expected. Somehow the Queen had managed to gather enough magic energy and armed forces to rival them in both accounts.

Before she knew it, Emma found herself on the ground, defenceless, held at swordpoint by the Evil Queen.

“This is the end for you, Princess,” she sneered. She drew her sword back, ready to strike, and Emma closed her eyes in defeat.

Her eyes snapped open as screams were heard from outside the vast throne room. The Queen turned her head just a fraction towards the door leading outside, but it was enough for Emma to reach forward and grasp the hilt of the blade the Queen held.

Screams could still be heard outside as the two women fought for the sword that would very likely end one of them tonight.

They both turned their heads at the door as it opened, looking startled as one of the Queen’s guards stumbled inside, covered in blood.

“Wolf... feral... attacked... has magic...” he managed to mutter before he collapsed.

They stayed frozen, looking at what was now probably the guard’s corpse when suddenly the Queen snatched the sword off from Emma’s grasp.

“Now,” she said, “Where were we?”

Before she could raise the sword again, they heard a deep, loud growl coming from the door.

A wolf walked in the throne room, stepping steadily towards them, its paws leaving bloody footprints on the floor that glimmered as the moonlight shone on them.

It was... it was he. Hook. Hadn’t he worn the cuff? Or had he... and it didn’t work after all, after his transformation?

“Hey,” Emma said before she could think twice on it. She turned to him, slowly taking a few steps towards him.

The wolf let a louder growl, baring his teeth.

“It’s me,” Emma said. “You remember me.” You have to.

The wolf stepped closer, with more tense steps.

“I know this isn’t you. I saw how shocked you were at knowing you’d lost control. You must have worn the cuff but I was mistaken. It doesn’t work, after all, when you turn.”

“What is this? You took talking to animals from your mother?” the Queen said.

Emma ignored her. “I was wrong. You trusted me, and it led to this. I should have helped you...” she found herself kneeling down, folding her hands on her lap. “I know what it’s like, to have magic you don’t want and can’t control. I know how it hurts. And I know I should have helped you, the way I wished someone would help me when I was having trouble with my magic.” She reached out with her hand, her palm upwards. “My name is Emma Swan. And I can help you now. You don’t have to keep facing that pain anymore.”

The wolf walked more slowly now, but still steadily, towards her.

“I know you’ve been in pain. I saw it on your face. And I can’t claim to be able to help with that, but... I know how that feels too. And I trust you. I know you can find yourself.”

The wolf reached closer, then stopped, still in a position ready to lunge. However, it only leaned his nose forward, sniffing at Emma’s hand.

Emma smiled, but then the wolf looked up and lunged.

She merely blinked in shock, feeling time freeze around her. She looked at her still outstretched hand, panic overcoming her that she was done, over with, killed.

But then she heard the Queen scream behind her. She turned, seeing the wolf pin her down, his teeth burrowing in her neck.

The Queen didn’t scream anymore.

The wolf let her go, looking down at her corpse, then turned his head towards Emma.

“She was going to kill me,” Emma whispered. “You saved me.”

The wolf hung his head, however. Emma immediately offered her hand again and he stared at it for a few good moments, before he walked back to her with tired, slow steps.

“I’m here,” Emma said.

The wolf smelled her hand again, then rubbed his snout against it.

“It’s alright.”

He let out a soft whimper, before he slumped on the floor, slowly resting his head on her lap.

Emma hesitated; he seemed to be back in control now, but she couldn’t be sure how much touch he’d be comfortable with at this point. Deciding it was worth a try, she lowered her hand, letting it rest on his head. He seemed to... sigh? So she started brushing her fingers through his fur, stroking back and forth in what she hoped was a relaxing manner.

He’d saved her. He had found his control back with her words, and took the action to save her life.

And now, he was trusting her.

She was yet to see, though, what damage he’d caused while out of control.

His skin felt as if it was burning.

It must have, for the room was full of fire, and he was trying to escape, slamming his body against the burning walls in a desperate effort to bring them down.

But every time he hit a wall, another shriek sounded. Men, fearing for their lives. Screaming as he buried his teeth in their skin or slashed it open with his claws.

But it hadn’t been them he’d been looking for. He, or whatever it had been that had led him there.

He knelt down, clutching his arms against his chest, whispering to himself the only thing that brought him comfort amidst the screams and fire.

Emma Swan. Emma Swan.

He opened his eyes.

He still felt exhausted, though he had slept, apparently.

On Emma Swan’s lap.

“Hook?” he heard.

He looked up, and there she was, looking at him with worry.

“Are you alright?”

He closed his eyes, then opened them and forced himself to pull away from her and sit up. They were still in that throne room, the bodies of the queen and the guard having been taken away.

“What’s the damage?” he said without looking at her.

“Smaller than I’d expected, to be honest. My people said you just ran by them, only attacking people who actually stood in your way. All of them were the Queen’s guards, and you didn’t kill any of them.”

“I bit and clawed at them.”

“They’ve had worse days.”

“There was a... a guard, and the queen...”

“The guard will make it. Will stand trial, of course, but he’ll be fine. As for the Queen... I can’t say I wasn’t about to do the same to her.”

He hung his head, covering his eyes with his hand. “I didn’t... I... wolves don’t just kill. We kill to... eat.” After a short pause to give her time to process that, he continued. “This time was different. All my instincts led me to tear her throat open.”

“You saved my life.” She put a hand on his shoulder, and he nearly jumped up. He looked at her, his heart stopping at her soft smile. “It was a hard thing to do, yes, but if it weren’t for you, I would be dead, and our kingdom would be lost. And, Hook... you controlled yourself.”

He lowered his head again. “Killian,” he whispered.

“What?”

“My name, my real name, is Killian.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her smile widen. “Do you know what brought you here?”

He shook his head. “I blacked out from the moment I turned, next thing I remember was being here, you talking to me.” He swallowed hard. “You helped me.”

“You trusted me back.”

Aye, that he did. Both silent for a moment, he looked into her eyes, wondering how it all came together like this. She had helped him, offered a way to possibly control the wolf, and though that had failed... her trust had been enough. It felt enough.

“Why did you trust me in the first place?”

She licked her lips, making him shortly but intensely shift his focus on them, then said, “I know what it’s like, to feel out of control. I thought that... if I gave you what I wished I had been given, we could avoid difficult consequences, for you, for me, and possibly everyone.”

“I didn’t want to become the Dark One,” he confessed. “I still don’t... want this.”

She reached out, taking his hand in hers. His stomach clenched, and he nearly felt tears in his eyes.

“I don’t know a whole lot about the Dark One,” she said. “What little I do know I didn’t dare share or look into, out of fear that Rumpelstiltskin would find me and...”

He squeezed his hand around hers without thinking. “You think there’s a way to fix... this? Destroy the curse?”

“We can try. That darkness hasn’t done anyone any good.”

He thought of his dagger, carefully hidden in the safe. It was what gave him this curse, what could control him and his magic...

But he wasn’t ready to risk losing all control again. It would take a month before his next time to turn. “You think you could help me again? Next time I turn?”

She nodded. “I know we just met, and trusting each other sounds weird...”

It sounds right.

“But if you’re willing to stay and let me help, I think we can work together towards a cure. Or something.”

“What if it gets worse? What if I lose control and escape before you can stop me?”

She leaned forward. “I guess I’ll have to find you, then.”

Once again, they looked into each other, and Emma wasn’t pulling away. His eyes dropped to her lips again, this time slightly parted, and now leaning even closer...

“Emma! We’re going to need-”

They pulled away as if in shock, letting go of each other’s hand as a couple entered the room.

“Everything alright?” the man asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Emma said, standing up. “Uhm... Hook, these are my parents. I guess now it’s Queen Snow and King David.”

He didn’t feel like standing up yet, only acknowledging them with a nod. He’d still have some way to go before bowing down again.

David reached out with his hand. “Your arrival on the battle was quite the shock for everyone, but it ended up being to our benefit.”

Killian nearly scoffed. Guess that’s enough to make the nightmares worth it, he thought.

“And you saved my daughter’s life. For that, I’ll always be grateful.” He then knelt next to him, still offering his hand. “And at your service.”

Shocked at the apparent King’s humility and gratefulness, Killian found himself shaking hands with him.

“As soon as we fix the castle, you’re welcome to find yourself a room here,” the new Queen said. “We can work out the rest as we settle down here again.”

When they left, Killian finally stood up, looking at the cuff still on his wrist.

“You can take it off anytime, you know,” Emma said.

“They know I’m the wolf.”

“Well, they kinda came in seeing said wolf sleeping on my lap, then as soon as the sun rose, you turning into a human.”

“You didn’t tell them my real name.”

“Well, when they saw you turn back, they started asking questions, and that was the name I knew of you at the time. And now I guessed it’s up to you to share it with them.” She then leaned closer, whispering, “I didn’t tell them you’re the Dark One either.”

He looked at her in shock.

She merely shrugged. “I told you. I’m trusting you. It’s your choice to tell them, if you want them to know.”

Once again, he hung his head. “Thank you, Emma.”

“We’ll find a way. We can get rid of the darkness, then...”

He looked at her as she was apparently searching for words. He couldn’t blame her; a big part of him wanted to stay, already trusted her, but it was all too complicated...

He took a big breath, and as if waking up from a slumber, he assumed the bravado he’d worn so casually over time. He leaned forward, looking straight into her eyes, saying,

“Then, that’s where the fun begins.”

#Captain Swan #captain swan ff #cs ff #cs role reversal #csrolereversal #piracytheorist writes

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hollyethecurious · 5 years

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Doppelganger on the Docks by @theonceoverthinker

A CS Poem for @csrolereversal and @cshalloweek

Summary: Even in Storybrooke, the town where most anything can happen, Killian doesn’t expect much chaos when he and Emma go sailing together. But hey, for good or ill, that’s their town, right?

Artist Note: I won’t deny the squeal that left me when I was assigned Jenna as the author for this art piece. While I’d had a vague story idea in mind when I created it, I told her to go where inspiration led because I knew she’d come up with something I never could.

And she did not disappoint!

@theonceoverthinker, I LOVE what you wrote! I know you were worried about not meeting expectations, but love, this exceeded every expectation I could have conjured. The story, the prose, the rhymes, I adore it! You more than did this piece justice, and I will happily collaborate with you ANY time.

(Also, a quick shout out to @artistic-writer for adding Killian’s eyes to the lower right image. Thank you, my person!)

#csrr #csrolereversal #cs art #cs ff #doppelganger on the docks #theonceoverthinker #art by hollye

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snowbellewells · 2 years

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Self-Promo Sunday: “The Case of the Heart in Armor”

Okay, so this week I am featuring a fic which some folks may have already discovered recently via the @CSFicReads Discord group (I was so honored they chose it as a selection!!) Still, with the encouragement that group’s feedback gave me, I thought perhaps I should post it again on Tumblr, as there are lots of new writers and readers in the CS/OuaT fandom who might not have been around when I posted it initially and might not be in the Discord group either. It’s one I’m particularly proud of, as I love the Victorian time period in which the fic is set, and I really made an effort to weave a mystery into the story’s threads. It was originally part of a fall fic and art event called @csrolereversal , and I am still incredibly grateful I got to be a part of that and be paired with @courtorderedcake whose artwork originally inspired the story. (Her artwork can be seen with each of my original Tumblr chapter posts or HERE)

**The other reason I wanted to feature this fic this week though is because @apiratewhopines created fic coverart for this story, and I was completely surprised and flattered (and don’t want to stop looking at it) so I thought it should be shared as well. <3

Summary: Killian “Holmes” Jones is rarely surprised or shocked anymore, but that all changes when he meets one very stubborn - and very beautiful - pickpocket, and trouble brews in the distance, hidden by the London fog…

Can also be found from the beginning on AO3 or here on Tumblr

Part One

Almost instantaneously, Killian “Holmes” Jones knew something had happened. There was very little that escaped his notice - ever - and the fact that someone had just nicked the gold pocketwatch he always wore was immediately evident, despite their having one of the lightest touches he had experienced in his time walking the seedier London streets. An expectant hush lingered in the air, as if his very surroundings waited to see how he would proceed, and if he could pinpoint just who had divested him of his valuable.

At first glance, the dingey, fog-shrouded and mostly deserted street looked the same as it ever did. There were distant sounds of carriage wheels and horses’ hooves clopping along the cobblestones a street over, the echo of vendors crying their wares, and the distant puff of trains pulling in and out of the station at Marylebone, but in the street where Jones stood, not far from his favored pub, where he was to meet Graham Watson and his older brother, once Liam had left his cushy government office for the night, to share some dinner, things were comparatively calm and still.

That was, until a flash of golden brightness caught his eye, winking from the drab surroundings of brown and grey. The flower cart girl just behind and to his left had not caught his attention when he passed, had not seemed of any particular interest. Even now that the arresting color of her blonde tresses were peeking out of the rather flat, bedraggled hat atop them, she seemed to be busy at her own work, not noticing him at all. And yet, there was something almost too casual about her stance - a marked avoidance of his gaze, as if she were carefully watching him without wishing to seem so. Perhaps some movement had tipped him off unconsciously, but whatever the reason, Killian sensed she was his culprit. Or, if not, she had at least seen something she would rather not share.

Striding purposefully toward her cart of flowers for sale, Killian’s mouth formed a stern line as he prepared to confront the slip of a woman for her thievery. She was still concertedly paying him no mind, though he was certain that she tracked his path warily from the corner of her sparkling jade eyes.

Opening her mouth, she called out the flowers she had on offer along with their prices, pointedly turning away as he came to stand before her. Her voice rang out across the cobblestones clearly, if somewhat tangled by the thick Cockney accent that lay heavy on her tongue. Even if he normally cringed at the harsh sounds of the street vendors and ruffians of the area, he found himself somewhat charmed by the unabashed and almost proud bit of rough he sensed in this one.

Reaching out, he snatched the handful of carnations from her grip, and turned abruptly as if to leave, knowing it would get a rise from the intriguing guttersnipe.

“Oi! Get yer bloomin’ ‘ands off me merchandise if ya don’ mean ta pay!” she cried, her temper riled like a hellcat on the turn of a dime, much as Jones had expected it would be.

Swinging back to face her, which brought them practically nose-to-nose , as she had begun to charge after him, Killian waggled his brows insolently, making the challenge plain, even before he spoke. “Perhaps I might return them… in exchange for my watch, eh Lass?”

Jerking backwards, the impudent young woman eyed him warily for a second as if trying to gauge the true meaning of his words, to discern if he were just fishing for information, or if he really knew what she had done, and then she narrowed her pretty eyes at him, slamming a wall down over the openness he had glimpsed for a moment, allowing him to see past the scruffy interior to something more vulnearable, something (if he were even a bit more gullible) which might have seemed sweet. “Lookit Mister, don’t think that fine hat and pipe and your sharp suit gives you leave to muck about with foolish accusations. I ain’t about ta take none o’ your guff, an’ I don’ ‘ave your filthy watch, so just move on along why don’cha?”

Whether she realized she was doing it or not, the blonde had stepped right back into his space, nearly as soon as she had pulled away. The ridiculous chit actually had the pluck to act like an offended innocent, when Killian became all the more certain with each passing second that she had his pilfered watch hidden on her person even as they spoke. Her pointer finger jabbed into his chest next to the top button of his waistcoat for emphasis, and she wasn’t backing down an inch. She had fire, he would give her that; he was almost as impressed as he had initially been irked.

However, now that his challenge had been taken up, Jones felt his competitive nature roar to life within, and he intended to prove her wrong, to show her just whom she had trifled with and that he was not her average fool. He leaned forward as well, his lips nearly brushing the shell of her ear as he murmured, “Perhaps you’d allow me to search you and verify your statement?” Allowing his eyes to rove down from her face slowly before trailing back up again, his tongue poking into the inside of his cheek suggesting the sort of shameless liberties he would never actually take with a lady, no matter what her situation or social status. He might play at a bit of dashing roguishness, but he still considered himself a man of honor at his core.

Those green eyes flashed the same sort of warning color the sky out over the Thames took on when a storm was rolling in and the wise knew to run for cover; the sickening chartreuse of a deep, bruised wound and every bit as risky to provoke or fail to heed. Snatching back the finger that had been pressed against his breastbone, his beguiling nemesis raised her hand, clearly intending to strike him for his cheek - which, admittedly, he quite probably deserved - if he had not caught her wrist in a firm grasp that stalled the motion.

“Easy now, Love,” he murmured, enjoying her gumption too much to leave well enough alone. “Let’s not have you doing something we’ll both regret.”

“I am NOT your love!” she spat back, wriggling in his hold and looking livid enough to claw his eyes out if he let her free to do so. “And if you don’t unhand me…” she hissed, the threat clear now, even as a glimmer of fear also surfaced beneath the fire in her gaze. Killian had no doubt that she would follow through on whatever threat she was about to make, but that flicker and the slight quaver it allowed him to hear in her sharp voice told him she also didn’t know what might happen to her in the meantime, before she could make good on her words. And that hint of trepidation, that she didn’t know his true intentions and felt in herself in danger, quickly doused the fire he’d felt rising in his blood and his own fun in their back and forth.

Quickly, he retreated a step and released her arm, though his boxing reflexes were at the ready, knowing he might well be ducking a slap or punch in the very next moment.

To Killian’s surprise, however, the infuriating lass pulled herself up to her full height, smoothed her rather bedraggled skirts, and eyed him disdainfully as was possible under the circumstances. “Right wise choice you made there,” she snarked, huffing her annoyance as if she hadn’t been the one to start the whole debacle by picking his pocket in the first place. The very real worry he had sensed in her only seconds ago had vanished as if it were never there. “You’d be sorry had I gotten me brother on the case. He’s Chief Inspector, and he don’ take kindly to blighters like you harassing me.”

“Wait a minute now,” Killian interrupted, holding up a hand as he considered her rant, for the first time in their entire interaction feeling a bit out of the loop. “You don’t mean Chief Inspector Nolan? Of Scotland Yard?”

“The very same,” she snapped, arms crossed in front of herself. “What of it?”

Killian’s mind - rarely ever puzzled or caught by surprise, and so all the more intrigued by the seeming anomaly before him - struggled to catch up with and match this saucy baggage before him with the straight-laced knight-in-armor type he sometimes counseled in particularly complex criminal investigations. Inspector David Nolan was as by-the-book, simple and solid as they came, not by any means dense, but certainly not possessed with as cracklingly sharp wit or tongue as the angry sprite squared off before him. The Inspector had also never mentioned any family whatsoever beyond his sweet, fresh-faced wife and newborn son, but then again, it wasn’t as if they were ‘mates’ either. Jones couldn’t exactly see himself kicking back for a pint of rum with the man, even if they did tolerate each other in the name of justice from time to time.

He was about to tell the feisty harridan before him that he didn’t bloody care who her brother was, he would be having his watch back, when she stunned him once more, her chin jutting up imperiously as she added, “What? Din’ think a street rat like me ‘ad friends in higher places, eh?”

“On the contrary, Love,” Killian countered, purposefully emphasizing the endearment he had simply used out of habit before but now meant to annoy her, as he tapped the brim of his hat in the semblance of a bow. “I think you must have some remarkable friends indeed, or someone would have taught you a lesson in manners by now.” Her mouth opened and closed, floundering for a sharp retort no doubt, but he wasn’t yet finished. “Like it or not, I know you have something of mine, and I will see it returned.”

Nearly growling in frustration, she whirled away from him, turning her back and quickly moving away with the rest of her wares.

Jones watched her go troubled, curious, and stirred all at once; a curious cocktail he hardly recognized it had been so long since last he felt it. Though he didn’t have time to stand there long before he hurried off to meet Graham and Liam, sure that he would now be the one late instead of his elder sibling.

He didn’t notice - yet one more uncharacteristic slip in his usual near-omniscient awareness - the strange rosy glow in the twilight darkness of the now deserted street where he and the flower cart thief had argued. From around the corner of a packed nearby alley, narrowed dark eyes had watched the entire encounter, tracking either Holmes or the girl with avaricious interest. The reddish light glowed brighter for an instant as the excitement of its possessor swelled, so bright that for a moment if anyone had still been present it could not have been missed. Then, the red beacon was shuttered, going out like an extinguished flame. Once more there was only a nondescript London street, and the unseen watcher off on their sinister mission, having seen what was needed, unbeknownst to those who were observed.

Tagging a few who might enjoy: @jennjenn615 @searchingwardrobes @kmomof4 @whimsicallyenchantedrose @laschatzi @courtorderedcake @apiratewhopines @let-it-raines @cosette141 @cocohook38 @hollyethecurious @darkcolinodonorgasm @winterbaby89 @ilovemesomekillianjones @tiganasummertree @optomisticgirl @revanmeetra87 @teamhook @spartanguard @therooksshiningknight @xsajx @deckerstarblanche @stahlop @elizabeethan @donteattheappleshook @the-darkdragonfly @sotangledupinit @justanother-unluckysoul @thisonesatellite @shireness-says @drowned-dreamer @blowmiakisscolin @anmylica @kday426 @mie779 @wefoundloveunderthelight

#self promo sunday #csrolereversal #the case of the heart in armor #cs Victorian au #cs au mc

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wistfulcynic · 5 years

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Happy Halloween!

The second chapter of my @csrolereversal and @cshalloweek based on @allons-y-to-hogwarts-713’s stunning art, which STILL gives me a little thrill each time I watch it. I can only hope I’ve done it justice.

Summary: “…for we all have stripes, and we all have horns, we all have scales, tails, manes, claws and thorns

and here in the dark is where new worlds are born…”

It’s Halloween, when all the weird and wondrous beasts of the world creep out of the shadows and throw themselves one hell of a party. For Emma Swan and Killian Jones, witch and shapeshifter respectively, it’s a chance to kick back, get high, and watch the mayhem unfold…

Chapter One on AO3 and Tumblr

come sit at our feast - 2/2

Moonlight slanted through misty trees as they slipped through the back door of her house and into a forest imperceptible to human eyes. He shifted back to dog form and walked beside her, pressing himself firmly against her leg, his every sense alert. He disliked this forest—or rather what the forest contained—and all her mocking laughter and quoting of Terry Pratchett made no difference. Even scary things are scared of things.

The forest was dark despite the moonlight, despite the eerie glow of the mist itself, the twisty trees hung with moss and creeping vines and inhabited by other creeping things of a different nature. The mist grew denser and its glow began to pulse as they neared their destination: an ancient, gnarled oak tree with a knothole in its trunk that oozed with a sickly light.

She gestured with her hand and the knothole began to split, widening, brightening, slashing reality as it grew and grew, the ragged edges of their world curling back in outraged horror, recoiling from the impossible gash in the fabric of everything that was. Her other hand rested on his neck, fingers curling into his thick fur as they stepped through this crack in the worlds and into nowhere.

“Emma, Killian! How good of you to join us!” said a haughty voice.

The blinding brightness of the portal dimmed as it closed behind them. As their eyes adjusted to the lower light the shadowy figure belonging to the voice resolved into an elegant, black-clad woman with a menacing glint in her eye and a wide smile revealing the most even teeth Emma had ever seen, framed by two very, very sharp fangs.

“Regina.” Emma’s lip curled and Killian shifted, draping an arm around his wife’s shoulders, his face fixed in a sneer. “Why do the vampires always act like they’re in charge of these shindigs?”

Regina patted her cheek condescendingly. “When you’re nine hundred years old, you can play host,” she said. “Until then mind your place, witch.”

Emma hissed and Killian’s arm tightened around her shoulders, urging her away before she could start a fight with Regina. Again. “Now, love, remember last year,” he soothed. “You can’t keep hexing the vampires, it just annoys them. Let’s go talk to the were-creatures, instead, shall we? I see Robin over by the punch bowl and I’ve just recalled he owes me money.”

He steered Emma towards a long table formed of slender, twisted tree trunks and loaded with platters of meats and cheeses and loaves of bread, cakes and cookies and odd-looking fruits, bowls full of steaming hot liquids and ones whose vapours came from ice instead. It sat in the middle of a clearing in a forest exactly like the one they had just left, and also most decidedly unlike it. The angle of the sky was not quite right, nor the way the light fell, nor the mountains that rose above the treetops in one distance while the sound of waves pounding on a rocky shore came from another. Music flowed throughout, as though the air itself were singing, and creatures of all shapes and sizes—horned and furred and scaled, some with limbs and others with wings and still others with no body at all—mixed and mingled in time to its tune.

Next to the table stood the were-fox with his sharp ears and cunning eyes, chatting to a man whose beard and hair were formed of lush green leaves, framing a face that appeared hewn from the trunk of a tree. Each held a flagon of beer that, though they both were drinking deeply, was never less than full. Wherever the Green Man went, things were endlessly renewed… whether you wished them to be or not.

“Well met Robin, August, how are things?” asked Killian, taking two empty flagons from the table. As he handed one to Emma both began to fill with beer. Emma’s stopped just as the liquid reached the edge of the rim, but Killian’s surged up in a wave, overflowing onto his arm and down the front of his jeans.

“Oi!” he cried, setting the flagon down and shaking droplets of beer from his hand. “Watch what you’re doing, mate!”

August gave him a look that was strangely stony for a man with a wooden face. “Payback for last Halloween,” he said coolly. “You know what you did.”

Killian brushed futilely at his drenched jeans. “You’re a tree, mate. I’m a dog. Drink was taken. It was all but inevitable.”

“I’m not a tree,” snapped August, “and it better not happen again.”

“You’ve got leaves growing out of your head,” interjected Robin, who was watching the scene unfold with unbridled glee. “You’re made of wood. How exactly are you not a tree?”

“That’s precisely my point—”

“That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of—”

Emma rolled her eyes and waved her hand over Killian’s jeans to dry them, kissing his cheek as she did. He turned to her with a grin and a nod of understanding, then dove back into the argument.

She slipped away, disappearing into the throng before Robin’s band of merry were-creatures could catch sight of her and rope her into another drinking game that would end, as they inevitably did, with arrows lodged in places where no arrow should ever be. Will Scarlet was a menace with his bow and this lesson at least Emma had managed to learn from Halloween parties past.

She avoided the vampires though her fingers itched with hexing magic, and made her way towards a mournful ghost she could just see through the milling crowd, hovering atop a tree stump, pale and translucent in her white gown, with long hair loose and flowing down her shoulders to frame the oozing stab wound in her heart. Tears flowed gently and unheeded down her cheeks as she attempted to show her book of poetry to another white-clad brunette, this one with a pretty face and a sweet smile just beginning to strain at the edges. Emma stopped short as she spotted the danger, wondering if there was still time to intervene. If Belle didn’t shut up soon, Aurora was going to… oh no… no, it was too late. Aurora’s smile crumbled away, caving into her face as her mouth fell open in a cavernous O, stretching her countenance, lengthening it, her eyes sinking deep into her skull and gaping wide and black and empty.

Emma quickly performed a sound-dampening spell around her head, fixing it in place just as the bloodcurdling shriek began. Aurora’s wail rent the night and the eardrums as she rose into the air, white gown flapping madly as she swooped through the clearing. Creatures ducked and leapt to avoid her, food and drink flying every which way as they clapped their hands over their aching ears. To no avail. The cry pierced their skulls and echoed in their bones and for a single terrifying moment tempted them to madness.

And then, with a final wrenching howl that shook the treetops, Aurora whirled off into the darkness.

The silence that fell in her wake was hollow and tremulous. Slowly, cautiously, everyone began to rise and dust themselves off, blinking and shaking their heads to quell the ringing in their ears. The music flowed again, cautiously at first, and Emma tapped her temple to dissolve her spell.

“I suppose there’s no way her invitation could be lost in the mail next year.” drawled a familiar voice behind her.

“That would be unnecessarily cruel, don’t you think?” she replied, turning to address a tall, sharply dressed woman. “Aurora looks forward to these things more than anyone. I suppose banshees don’t get much company.”

The woman smirked and her hair writhed, hissing. “She’d want to try living in a cave. The sad fact is that none of us gets much company, darling. Except perhaps you. Tell me, how is that delectable husband of yours?”

“Still delectable.” Emma’s eyes sharpened as the woman’s lips curled in a predatory smile. “Still under my protection,” she added.

“Darling, you surely don’t think that I—”

“There’s almost nothing I’d put past you, Zelena. And I prefer when only one part of Killian is rock hard, thank you very much.”

“Oh?” Zelena’s eyebrow rose over the frame of her mirrored sunglasses. Her hair slithered up, beady eyes focused on Emma, forked tongues flicking. “And which part would that be?”

Emma laughed and shook her head. She never could manage to out-brazen Zelena.

Just then they heard the drumming sound of hoofbeats in the distance, dozens of them, advancing on the gathering but from which direction it was impossible to tell.

“Bloody hell,” snapped Zelena, spinning about and peering into the shadowy depths of the forest beyond, her hair thickening, lengthening, hissing furiously as beside her Emma began to glow with magic. “Must they do this every ye—” She was cut off as the horsemen burst through the trees, careening through the clearing at a full gallop, small men on huge black horses with hooves like knives, waving spears and swords and howling fit to raise the dead.

Which was exactly the point.

This time the creatures were more or less prepared, the Wild Hunt unlike the banshee being an expected if irritating yearly occurrence. With her senses heightened by the magic flowing through her Emma was aware of all the forces gathering: Elsa brandishing her ice-shard sword and Tink’s demented giggle as she pulled razor-sharp throwing daggers from the empty air; Killian shifting and falling back on his haunches, coiled to spring with teeth bared and hackles raised; Robin notching a vicious looking arrow in his bow, his were-creatures similarly armed and primed for battle at his flank.

Emma herself raised a shield of shimmering magic just in time to deflect the enormous pickaxe that came flying straight at her head.

“Damn it, Leroy!” she shouted, whipping away the shield so she could shoot a burst of light at the manically grinning dwarf. He dodged it easily and spun about to make a second pass at her, axe raised high, eyes wide and bloodshot red, full of furious insanity. She strengthened her shield just in time as Leroy swung his axe down, striking it with such a force that sparks of magic went flying, sizzling into the night. Emma thrust a burst of energy through the shield that knocked him back into his saddle, and before he could rear up for another swing an arrow struck him in the shoulder and he nearly dropped his axe.

“What the—” His eyes narrowed in fury. “You!”

“Don’t even think about it, dwarf,” sneered a petite brunette with hair tangled and wild about her shoulders and an arrow trained at Leroy’s head. She sat atop a centaur, Emma was amused to note, a gorgeous palomino with a flowing blonde tail and a much better haircut than when she’d seen him last. It seemed things were really progressing between Snow and David.

Leroy howled in frustration, waving his axe wildly between Emma and Snow. “One of these days, sister!” he shouted. “And you— other sister! One of these days I’m gonna catch you both off your guard!”

“ENOUGH.” Regina’s voice boomed through the clearing and everyone fell silent, all eyes trained on the haughty vampire. “You’ve had your fun, dwarves, but you know the party rules,” she snapped. “No battle steeds, and try to keep the murdering to a minimum. Now get those damned horses out of here.”

With a snarl and a flourish of his axe, Leroy spun his horse around. “I’ll be back, sisters!” he cried, and galloped off.

“Don’t forget the ale!” Snow called after him.

Emma released her magic and rolled the tension from her shoulders. The Wild Hunt was decidedly not her favourite Halloween tradition. But the dwarves insisted, and the special ale they brought when they joined the party properly did make up for a lot.

She turned to her friends with a wide grin and a somewhat successful attempt to imitate Killian’s eyebrow waggle. “Well well,” she said, “Horseback riding, eh?”

David flushed red as Snow slid from his back and gave his flank an energetic pat. “It’s not what it looks like,” he mumbled, but Snow returned Emma’s wicked grin.

“I’m pretty sure it’s exactly what it looks like,” she said. “And I’m here to tell you that everything you’ve heard about horses is true. Everything.”

“I’m not a horse,” David protested weakly.

“Key parts of you are,” smirked Snow.

“Ugh, guys, please, keep it in the barn,” Emma protested.

“That’s inappropriate, Emma,” said Snow primly, as though she hadn’t just been making some seriously bawdy innuendoes. “And a bit species-ist. I don’t make jokes about Killian and doghouses.”

“Well, you do—”

David cleared his throat. “Speaking of Killian—” He looked pleadingly at Emma.

“Over by the table with Robin and August, last I saw him.”

David scanned the clearing. “Ah, yeah, there they are. Um, ladies if you’ll excuse me.” He cantered away, clearly trying not to gallop.

“So,” said Emma. “Really?”

Snow shrugged. “Love is love. The heart wants what the heart wants, Emma.”

“And your heart wants a centaur?”

“Says the woman married to a dog!”

“He’s not a dog all the time.”

“He still licks your face.” Snow’s eyes glinted with an odd light. “And other parts of you I’ll bet.”

Indeed he did. Emma smiled as a particularly fond memory sprang to her mind. “Yeah, well I might not mind that.”

A wave of heat surged around them, accompanied by a whiff of arcane magic. The smile fell from Emma’s face, replaced with a suspicious frown. She glanced at her friend. Snow’s cheeks were bright pink and her eyes looked feverish.

“And I,” she crowed, “might not mind David’s hu—”

“Shhh!” Emma put a hand on Snow’s arm. The odd heat had begun to prickle under her skin and insistent, lascivious urges were rising up in her. Urges to tell Snow everything about her sex life, all the intimate details of the passion that burned so hot between her and Killian, all the ways they liked to tease and pleasure each other. Then to find Killian himself and do all his favourite things to him until he was desperate and begging for her. No matter if everyone was watching.

Especially if everyone’s watching.

Emma sighed. The woman was not subtle. “I know you’re there,” she said, not bothering to disguise her exasperation. “You can come out now.”

A shadow shifted at the edge of the clearing and a woman sauntered into view. Tall and slender and dressed in skintight black, with fishnet stockings and impossible heels, her long dark hair streaked with crimson. “Aww,” she pouted, lips full and glossy red. “Just as it was getting good!”

“Ruby! Are you kidding me? Did you…” Snow waved her hand. “Influence us?”

“Well, naturally.”

“I can’t believe you would do that!”

“It is literally the purpose of my existence, Snow.”

“But we’re your friends!”

“Which just makes me more curious about what you’re up to! If you would call once in a while—”

“I live in the damn mountains!”

Ruby’s reply was drowned out by the music as it began to swell, right on schedule. The Wild Hunt had ridden and all formalities had been observed. Now the party could really start.

The music rose up loud and heavy, thrumming through the trees and into the earth, shimmering in the air. It was a wild and haunting melody with a frantic beat that made feet itch to dance. It was ancient and primal and it called to Emma, as it did to all of them. To the essence of them.

The dwarves reappeared, on foot this time and rolling barrels of ale which they hoisted onto the table—now cleared of food—and tapped with great ceremony as a roar of approval rose from the crowd. Emma accepted a brimming flagon and a gruff nod from Leroy and drank deeply. Its rich, bitter tang coated her tongue and flowed through her, sank into her, until she could feel the pulse of blood through her veins and the moonlight on her skin.

Ruby pulled Emma and Snow into the centre of the clearing where a dance pit was already forming. The hot tingle in her belly told Emma that Ruby was exerting her sinful influence over them again but this time she didn’t care. She let the music pound through her, let it lighten her, fill her with a loose, wild joy. All the other nights of the year she had to hide what she was, and what Killian was. She had to practice her magic in secret and hex nosy townspeople like Jefferson who tried to threaten her, to blackmail her with exposure. But tonight… tonight she was free.

The dance pit pulsed and grooved and heaved with bodies as lights flickered into existence and began to strobe in the sky. Emma swung between Elsa and Anna as they twirled and dipped each other, and she shimmied in a dirty grind with Tink and the other dark fairies. She laughed as Aurora swooped down and coaxed Belle into a dance, the two of them waving their arms, white gowns flowing, and she laughed harder at Zelena and Regina, determinedly trying to one-up each other with their moves.

Killian watched her, entranced. He loved seeing her like this, his cautious and self-controlled witch just letting herself go, her hair flying in chaos around her head and her hips shaking. She was luminous, breathtaking, and he needed to touch her. He tried to take a step but found that his body moved forward while his feet did not and he went tumbling to the ground, landing hard on his shoulder with his face in a pile of crisp autumn leaves. He groaned, pushing himself up on his elbow and glaring at his feet.

His shoelaces were tied together.

“Smee!” he roared.

A little man appeared, his round face all gormless innocence, his red hat pulled low over his ears. “Sir?” he said, politely attentive.

“What the bloody hell are you playing at?” Killian snarled.

“Nothing, sir,” said Smee. He pulled a pipe from his pocket and clamped it between his teeth, then offered Killian his hand. “Can I help you up?”

I wouldn’t hurt a fly, his expression said, but Killian knew better. From harsh experience. “You absolutely cannot,” he snapped. “And begone. Take your tricks elsewhere.”

Smee backed away from his vengeful glare, straight into a young woman with auburn hair and mournful eyes and water dripping from her every pore and orifice. She had a long, sharp spear in her hand and at her heels an empty man. Smee spun around and bowed to her, apologies tripping off his lips.

“Madam,” he said. “I beg your pardon. Do allow me to—”

“Don’t even think about it,” she replied, raising her spear menacingly. The man behind her stirred in a vaguely threatening way though his eyes remained blank and glassy.

Smee changed his trajectory a second time and headed for where August stood with David and two of the dwarves. Killian made no move to stop him. He untied his laces and retied them in the correct fashion, then accepted Ariel’s drenched hand to help him up.

“Not dancing?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “Not really feeling it.” She smiled her sad smile and Killian squeezed her hand. He said nothing, though. There wasn’t much you could say, really, to a woman who’d consumed her own true love’s soul.

“You should go dance with her,” said Ariel, nodding towards the dance pit, and Emma.

“Are you sure, lass? I can stay—”

“No. Thank you. It’s enough for me just to be here. Really, it is. And Eric likes it—” She broke off, glancing at the man. Killian carefully kept the pity from his face. “But please do come to visit me, the next time you’re wandering,” Ariel continued, with an attempt at her old brightness.

“I will.” He squeezed her hand again, then impulsively bent over it with a flourish and a gallant kiss. “Milady,” he said.

She smiled, as he’d hoped she would, and he turned away with a smile of his own, plunging into the dancing throng in search of his wife.

When he found her there was manic colour in her cheeks and her eyes were wide, the green a thin ring around the black pupils.

“Heeeyyy,” she said, pulling him close by his jacket collar and wrapping herself around him for a consuming kiss. She tasted of bitter dwarf ale and her own sweet essence, and something else he couldn’t identify. Something that made his tongue tingle and his head spin.

“What are you on?” he asked her breathlessly when the kiss ended.

“These.” She waved her hand and a pile of deep orange berries appeared on her palm. He frowned.

“What are they?”

“Rowan berries. I mean, sort of. But like, insanely strong ones.” She widened her eyes for emphasis then giggled, swaying on her feet. “Probably crossed with something else. Snow brought them from the mountains. I might use some in my winter tea. Here, try them.”

He took the berries from her hand and popped them in his mouth. They burst on his tongue with a bright, fresh flavour and the spinning sensation intensified. A tingling warmth spread across his skin and he could swear he felt Emma pressed against him with each individual cell of his body. He could taste the music. It was delicious.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered.

“Right?” Emma pulled his mouth to hers again kissed him hard, her fingers tight in his hair. “Reminds me of that night we spent in Norway. Those draligonberries.”

“Aye.”

He curled his arm around her waist and his hand over her ass as they began to sway in time with the pounding rhythm, moving to the music that they heard with their eyes and tasted in their skin, grinding heedlessly, shamelessly against each other, genuinely not caring who might be watching them because they knew no one was.

How long they danced he had no idea, time held no real meaning here and what little attention he was able to focus was all on Emma. They danced and they kissed and they laughed, drifting gradually towards the edge of the clearing until they were tucked against a tree, his hands roaming under her skirt, her mouth on his neck. Through the fading haze left by the berries he could see the others still writhing in a dance that now more closely resembled an orgy: Ruby with her mouth on Elsa’s breast, Anna’s legs wrapped tight around Will, Tink drawing her ragged fingernails roughly down Little John’s neck, Regina with her fangs sunk deep into Robin’s. She sensed Killian’s eyes on her and looked up, her own eyes wild and blood dripping from her crimson lips. She smirked at him and ran her tongue along them.

Robin grabbed her hair and pulled her back down to him, holding her still as he dragged his nose across her cheek and licked the rest of his blood from her lips before kissing her, and Killian realised he’d seen enough.

“Emma. Look at me, love.”

“Hmmmm?” She blinked rapidly, trying to focus. “What is it?”

He brushed a lock of hair back from her face. “Let’s go home.”

“Now? Why?”

“Fuck until sunrise, remember?”

“Mmm, goddess, yes, I want that,” she purred, twining her arms around his neck. “Want you.”

“And I you, but—” he broke off as she kissed him, rocking her hips against him until he could barely think. He pressed her hard against the tree and let himself get lost in her, let the berries still lingering on her tongue carry him away as they kissed, deep and wet and needy.

Fuck it, he thought, we’ll just fuck here. Everyone else is.

The sound of David’s hooves on the forest floor jolted him back to awareness of just where here actually was, and he pulled his mouth from Emma’s in time to see his friend galloping into the forest with Snow on his back.

He shook his head, trying to clear it. They needed to go home, to their own bed, and they needed to do it now before things got any further out of hand. “Emma, darling—” he began.

“Yeah.” Her eyes were sharper now, and she had also seen Snow and David. “Let’s go home.”

She waved her hand, slashing through reality once again and their portal opened. He shifted as they stepped through it, letting her lean against him, her fingers sunk deep into his fur as they walked home through the moonlit night. They slipped silently past the garden gate and through the door and up the stairs to their bedroom. Killian shifted again, half wishing he could shed his clothes as part of his transformation, but when he moved to unfasten his jeans Emma reached out and stilled his hand.

“Allow me,” she said softly, and removed both their clothes with a snap of her fingers. She smirked at him and he growled, grabbing her roughly around the waist and tumbling them both onto the bed.

“By the goddess how I love you, Emma Swan,” he breathed.

She cupped his face in her hands, tracing his cheekbone with her thumb. “I love you too. Happy Halloween, Killian.”

“Happy Halloween, my love.”

―

“A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest… because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.”

― Terry Pratchett

―

a/n for anyone wondering what exactly the OUAT characters were meant to be (and MASSIVE thanks to @thisonesatellite for helping me figure that out): Regina- vampire Robin- were-fox Will- were-ferret Little John- were-bear Anna- dark elf Elsa- valkyrie Aurora- banshee August- Green Man Smee- Klabautermann Dwarves- Wild Hunt Tink- dark fairy Ariel- ondine Snow-oread David- centaur Belle- ghost Zelena- gorgon Ruby- personification of sin

#csrolereversal #cs halloweek #captain swan #cs fic #cs ff #cs ff au #magic au #halloween #halloween party #monster mash #come to our feast #profdanglaisstuff #allons-y-to-hogwarts-713

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thisonesatellite · 3 years

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A Self-promo Sunday game

i was tagged by the ever fantabulous @profdanglaisstuff --- thank you so so so much! 💖💖💖

Rules: Just for fun this Sunday, let's talk about our personal favourites of our own fics.

Not the ones we necessarily think are the “best.” The ones we go back and reread again and again (because if you don’t reread your own fics what are you even doing?), or the ones we wrote for something or someone special, or the ones that were most difficult to write and just make us proud when we think about them? Whatever criteria you choose, just talk a bit about the fics of yours that you really like.

All right, here we go!

it's our scars that give us character

This is only the second fic i ever wrote, but i think it still holds up, and i just really like this version of Killian. Plus, this was the first time a character -- in this case: Ruby -- stomped, yes, STOMPED out onto the page and demanded to be written, and it was So. Much. Fun.

i go back to it 80% for the sassy!Ruby, ngl. And 20% for the Killian.

OK. 70/30.

FINE. 50/50, but that is my final offer. 😂

This is not the End of the World - series

Look. i love me a good dystopia. That is no secret. But -- even though this may be the bleakest world i ever created -- the two oneshots in this series somehow ended up being the softest and most connected version of E&K i ever brought to the page and i just-- i kinda like it, you know?

All The Darkness In The World

This is a fic i wrote for @csrolereversal - where i was paired with the wonderful @darkcolinodonorgasm. She made a pic set that just sent me down a rabbit hole, only to come back up with 1238 words of my take on Darkness (and a happy end).

i go back to this sometimes simply because i think i managed to turn a few nice phrases and images, and because it's a sandbox in which i don't usually play.

we kill the flame

i don't know that i will ever be able to combine world-building, characters, complicated plot boa constrictors, pace, beats, setup, climax, and payoff in quite that way again. Every MC of mine so far has been the product of blood, toil, tears, sweat, and all of the above, but this one just--- sings in a different key. i don't know how else to put it.

i go back to it sometimes when i feel like nothing i write amounts to anything and need to remember why i do it.

And last but not least, "the time i was funny". 😂 AKA -- The Parquet Man and ...between a rock and a bark place, (and its sequel Astairway to Heaven).

Pure crack, all of them, but honestly - if you've never written CS from the POV of a dog or a hardwood floor, HAVE YOU EVEN LIVED?

Also, interestingly enough, of the two, a dog POV is much harder to write. (My darling "floor" came out of the gate all fabulous bitch at 180 mph. Ginger -- the dog -- i had to really work at in order to not make her too anthropomorhized and "preserve her canine essence", if you will.) Also - Parquet got a wonderful companion piece from Killian's POV, written by the fabulous @profdanglaisstuff. What more could one possibly want!

i go back to these to laugh. Out loud.

THANK YOU SO MUCH! This was so much fun!

Tagging: @katie-dub, @stahlop, @kmomof4, @ohmightydevviepuu, @shardminds, @winterbythesea, @eirabach, @captain-emmajones, @searchingwardrobes, @spartanguard, @snowbellewells, @winterbaby89, @courtorderedcake, @thejollyroger-writer

#self rec Sunday #tag game #ask game #asked and answered #thisonesatellite #shameless self promotion

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capnjay21 · 4 years

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A House is Never Still 6/6

Five years ago, Emma Swan disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Killian Jones’ disappearance, well, not so mysterious – given the denizens of Storybrooke all but blamed him for her murder. Drawn back to town by a series of strange events, he soon realises the story of what really happened the night she vanished is beginning to unravel, and what’s more: it isn’t over.

A/N: and here is the conclusion! I’ll ramble a little more at the end, but for now, please once again accept my repeated and evermore wildly gesticulated thanks for @hollyethecurious for this beautiful aesthetic which made the fic - I literally would not have done it without it! also hollering at the kids from the @csrolereversal way back when for starting the event that I originally signed up for, it was so much fun to be part of and while I’m a lil disappointed with myself for finishing so much later, life happens! thanks all!

and now - story happens!

Rating: T

Warnings: mentions of suicide, canonical character death, and some Spooky Business™.

Continuing the teeny tiny taglist - but if you want off this list for the epilogue (pending), just let me know and I promise I will not be offended! <3

@snowbellewells @carpedzem @kmomof4 @optomisticgirl

AO3 | one | two | three | four | five

-/-

6 - when the first man awoke in the night

Present Day

There was a pervading sense of strangeness to seeing them all in the same room again.

It was like listening to your favourite song for the first time in years, but the lyrics were now backwards. Instead of humming along in that easy, thoughtless way, it felt jarring to the ears and forced you to really consider what exactly you were hearing, line by line, word by word.

Killian couldn’t stop thinking about every word he offered up into their shared space now; everything felt permanent, nothing could be taken back. What they said in this moment would mark how every moment after it would come to be. He was sure of it, and he was sure the other three felt the same, which was why very little had been said since Mary Margaret had warily invited he, Regina and David over the threshold and into her loft.

Regina had taken a position nearest the door, arms folded, expression neutral, leaning steadily against the wall. She looked like someone trying desperately to imitate the pose of one unaffected, but the tension in the set of her shoulders gave her away. Killian had perched on the stairs that led up to the upper floor, and David stood in the centre of the room shifting his weight from foot to foot and glaring sadly around him, as if he had no idea where he fit into this room anymore and imagined any of her items of furniture might have been the one to oust him. Mary Margaret sat at the side of her dining table that allowed her to face all three of them at once, hands clasped tightly together over the tabletop.

Mary Margaret had offered them tea and they had all declined.

It was the distance, Killian decided, that was most difficult to take in. It was the closest they had been to each other in five years, but the space between them had never felt wider.

The tape recorder was clutched tightly in Killian’s right hand. It was a little slick with sweat from his palm, but he refused to let it go.

“Is this about Emma?” Mary Margaret asked, and while she asked politely, the edge in her voice was unmistakable. She did not want her house of cards to come down around her. When they didn’t immediately reply she offered with a wry eyebrow raise: “It’s not likely to be about anything else, is it?”

“It is,” Killian said, seeing no point in drawing it out. “It’s about the house.” He and David exchanged a look. “It’s back.”

Something ticked in Mary Margaret’s jaw. “I don’t know how to make this any clearer – I don’t want to know.”

In that moment, Killian couldn’t see anything but Emma in her – except he had always had an instinct for how to scale Emma’s walls, but with Mary Margaret he floundered.

Fortunately, there was someone else in the room who knew how far better than he.

“Hey,” David started, gently, in that tone so earnest and warm that none of them had ever really been able to ignore. “You know who we are, you know what this must be. Just look at us.” No matter what else had happened, there they all were. “This isn’t something from nothing – we wouldn’t do that to you.” He gave her a sad sort of smile. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Mary Margaret stared back up at him, and not for a second did Killian believe their story was as over as they had both claimed it was. “What is it, then?” she asked.

“It’s this.” Killian stood up, opening his palm to reveal the tape recorder inside. It was sturdy and blocky, resembling a clunky child’s toy more than the instrument that had brought them together that night. He laid it on the table, and before she could ask he cut her off. “I recorded this five nights ago, in Brooke House.”

The tape immediately began to crackle and scratch, and Killian fast-forwarded just long enough until it started. It whirred, and it tck-tck-tck-ed, and eventually there was a voice.

‘Emma?’

His voice. Cutting through the static. There were a few thumps. A rustle as he’d stuffed the recorder in his pocket, some creaks as he climbed the stairs within Brooke House. Through the recording, Killian could relive the second night he had gone to the house since coming back to Storybrooke, the same way both Regina and David already had.

‘Emma?’

There was a crash, and the unmistakable tear of book bindings. Except, where Killian had heard Emma’s voice that night, the tape recorder had picked up nothing. Instead it sounded as if Killian had stood in silence, waiting.

‘Why didn’t you show yourself to Regina?’

Another thud, as another book was hurled against the wall. Otherwise, quiet.

‘Come here,’ the Killian on the tape said, ‘let me look at you.’

Mary Margaret was frowning, and lifted her bemused gaze up first to Killian, and then the others. “What is this?”

“Just wait,” Regina answered quietly from her place by the door.

The Killian on the tape let out a long breath. ‘I’m so sorry.’ A pause. ’All of it.’

Killian bristled at the memory, felt the cold touch of her lips like a steel edge. You couldn’t tell from the recording what had happened, and Killian had not been quick to fill the others in on his actions during that particular interval. But even as the seconds passed, his pulse began to race – he had listened to this recording a hundred times already, listened to Emma’s spectral presence like a non-entity, had initially resigned himself to having caught nothing of measurable value to show she was there at all.

Except right then –

‘Killian?’

Emma’s voice was unmistakable.

Mary Margaret’s reaction was instant, and visceral. She almost bolted out of her chair. In fact, she looked so suddenly pale and faintly ill that Killian nearly offered to fetch her something to throw up in. What were you supposed to do when you heard the voice of your long dead friend, five years after the fact of their dying?

But it was just that one word – then it was Killian promising to help her, and then there was nothing at all.

“There’s more,” he said grimly, but he had a feeling Mary Margaret wouldn’t have been able to form words just yet anyway. Killian clicked a finger on the fast forward.

He had completely forgotten about that recorder after Emma had kissed him – it had sat on those bookshelves for five days, running continuously in the study on the landing. He was fortunate it was such an old, robust thing. Even without attention it had continued diligently fulfilling his purpose, and his only regret was that it had run out of tape after a day and a half.

But in that time, it had caught enough.

Having wound the tape to this point so many times, Killian stopped it once more and let the noises trickle out.

A rustle of fabric, something scratching on old floors. A faint, but tangible sigh.

‘Killian?’

Emma, again. Killian shut his eyes. He let the sound wash over him.

‘Killian?’

There was nothing for a minute or so here, but Killian left it running. They all needed time to process it, and together they listened to the soft sounds of Brooke House murmuring quietly. Ancient wood groaned, the stairs told the bannister that someone was coming, the wind pushed doors open and closed them. But eventually, reverently, they heard her speak again.

‘Yesterday, I dreamed…’

She hissed out a breath. Her voice was quiet, and terribly sad. Killian’s heart seized to hear it, because he knew it was his Emma. This voice wasn’t rich with delighted, dark secrets. It was hollow and resigned and a breath of condensation across frosted glass.

‘I don’t know where I am. I thought I heard your voice.’

Something fluttered, possibly the pages of a book. Then there was only silence.

Killian knew this quiet stretched the tape for a few hours, so again he tapped his finger to fast forward, until they could hear her speak again.

‘It’s – it’s the car. I don’t want to see it anymore. Is David there?’

David dropped heavily down into a seat at the dining table. The Emma on tape continued, oblivious.

‘I thought I heard your voice. We have to finish it. It’s…’ Something scratched loudly, and the four in the kitchen winced at the sudden volume of the sound. ‘Killian? Is that you? I’m so cold. I –’

The recorder clicked, sputtered and stopped. It had reached the end of the tape.

Then they waited.

It had been enough to convince David; it had been more than enough for Regina to let go of her scepticism about whether Emma needed rescuing. For Killian, it had lit a fire under him. Not only was Emma, their Emma, trapped in Brooke House somehow, but she was cognizant. He had seen it. In those breathless few seconds after their lips had touched, his Emma had bled through like a blot of ink stretching across paper, and she had asked after him.

Now he intended to answer.

But they couldn’t do it without Mary Margaret, not if they needed what he thought they did – three pairs of eyes turned to look at her.

Killian was unsurprised to notice she was crying. Her shoulders shook, and she did not resist David when his hand came over to rest atop hers. In fact, she curled open her palm and allowed him to thread their fingers together as she let out a tremulous breath, her eyes misty and fighting for clarity.

“Please tell me this isn’t real.” She sounded as miserable as she looked.

“It’s real,” Regina answered.

“Our girl is in there,” David urged. “We have to get her out.”

With her free hand, Mary Margaret furiously wiped her face with the back of it. When she spoke, her voice cracked. “How?”

Killian brushed a finger across the edge of the tape recorder, and for a wild moment considered rewinding it and letting it play again just so he could hear her voice.

“The ritual. The same one we started five years ago.”

It had always bothered Killian, had niggled in the back of his mind for years. If the sole purpose of that ritual had been summoning a malevolent spirit in order to control its power, then why had Liam Jones allowed himself to become embroiled in it? Liam was honesty, integrity, and fierce loyalty. It didn’t add up.

“It was never about bringing something evil out – I should have recognised the signs the moment I came back, but I was too busy thinking about Brooke House now to worry about then.” Turning abruptly to the coffee table, Killian plucked a pen and ripped a page from a notebook that had been lying there and brought it back to the dining table. On it, he carefully sketched the five-pointed star he had drawn into the floorboards at Brooke House. “History lesson. One of the earliest known uses of the pentagram is actually as a Christian symbol – its points are supposed to represent the five wounds of Christ.

“Then, as time goes on, you start to see a rise in occult practices, and they pretty much liberally borrow as much symbolism as possible from anywhere they can. Particularly the pentagram – which, if you turn around –” Killian swivelled the image so the tip of the star was pointing down, and the two points jutted out upwards. “—Has been known to represent the two horns of Satan, here. The rejection of heaven and all things spiritual. That’s what I thought I was looking at when I saw it needed to be in the ritual.” He’d spent a few days absorbed in old library books, researching what Liam had written down and left in his toolbox.

He had allowed himself to be influenced by Belle Gold, by all the talk of evil, and as a result had only bothered with one interpretation of the symbol – which was reductive, and a potentially fatal error.

“But way, way before all of that, you have its uses in Taoism, with Pythagoras and the Greeks, in early iterations of paganism. Some perceive it as a representation of the elements, but most agree that it’s about balance. It’s perfection in mathematics, the human body, words; it makes its uses in religious ritual and magic basically inevitable. But by the time the pagan revival begins – well, mostly a re-invention or re-construction of older practices – it’s become so strongly associated with malevolence and Satanism that it’s a little difficult to adopt as a symbol of faith. So, what do you do?”

Killian grinned.

“You turn it the right way up and draw a big fat circle around it.”

He rotated the paper again, so the single point was facing upwards and drew a circle around its points, connecting each one.

“It’s a different symbol. It’s what most modern wicca practices call a pentacle, it’s supposed to represent a physical object used in ceremonial evocation – the act of calling upon a spirit – for protection. It’s a talisman. Liam wanted the circle made from salt, which is a common ingredient in purification spells. There are candles at each point to give energy, but –”

“You should have left one unlit,” Regina cut across him, eyes widening once she’d put the pieces together.

“Exactly.”

David and Mary Margaret, for their part, looked entirely nonplussed by the turn of the conversation. Killian winced internally – perhaps he’d spilt out the word magic a few too many times for them.

David blinked. “What – what are you talking about?”

“One candle should have been unlit to let energy out,” Killian explained. “This isn’t a ritual for summoning or capturing a demon. It’s a ritual for banishing one.”

Mary Margaret dropped her head in her hands.

“Years. Years of therapy. All undone in a single evening.”

“Did you hear her?” Killian pressed, tapping the tape recorder emphatically. “Did you hear her calling out for us? She said it herself. We need to finish this. There’s no moving past it until we do.”

“I can’t. I just – I can’t.”

Killian could feel frustration mounting, but David laid a hand on his arm before he could burst out something furious and likely detrimental to their cause. They could attempt the ritual without Mary Margaret, but without a person sat at every point of the pentacle the spell would be weaker. It had to be her – there was no one else.

“Mary Margaret,” David began. He shifted his chair a little closer. “Mary Margaret.”

Miserably, she raised her head, hands clasped on the back of her neck.

“I think you need a little of something that you used to give all of us,” he smiled. “Hope.”

Her eyes welled with fresh tears, and Mary Margaret shook her head. “Hope – hurts.”

“Only when we give it up.” To Killian’s surprise, it was Regina who had spoken, pushing away from the wall to stand at Mary Margaret’s shoulder. “I thought I could bury this beneath the way the world had opened up. That it was the price for new eyes.” She locked eyes with Killian, offered him a nod of understanding. “I was wrong. And… I’m sorry. We should have supported each other, stayed together.”

“Regina’s right,” Killian continued. “And this is on me, too. I should have been here. I shouldn’t have missed… everything I missed.”

He had missed the service for Emma, he had missed old Henry Mills’ passing, he had missed David and Mary Margaret going their separate ways, he had missed the coda of their friendship with Regina, he had missed Archie leaving town, he had missed the library closing its doors for the last time, he had missed, he had missed, he had missed.

Killian had thought leaving Storybrooke was the best decision he had ever made; that without Emma, all that was left was walking in the dust.

Admitting that he had spent five years missing Storybrooke was like releasing a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding.

“Emma needs us,” David urged, taking one of Mary Margaret’s hands in his own. “One last time. All of us – together.”

They were all pieces of the same, scattered glass. Some edges sharp, some smooth. All Killian knew was the completed image was soft and golden, and he ached for it so harshly and so tenderly that he couldn’t bear it if the night ended any other way.

Mary Margaret took a steadying breath.

Her fingers clasped around David’s.

“Hope,” she said, and it settled it.

They were doing this.

-/-

The sky above Main Street was a deep, midnight blue, the winking light of stars only clearly visible if you fixed your gaze on it for longer than a few seconds. All appeared still, other than the stirring of crisp and deadened leaves in an unhurried brush down the road, and long shadows cast by the bronze streetlights were black in the way the sky should have been.

In the corner of Killian’s eye, everything seemed to shift. Every few metres it felt like something flashed at the edge of his vision, just out of sight, daring him to turn and look, trying to pull them from their singular focus of getting to the edge of town as quickly as possible. He was sure it was Brooke House. The dagger felt cool against his chest from the inside of his jacket. How did Emma put it? Testing the boundaries? Stretching her limits? A spectre at the edge of Main Street, a shadow at the end of David’s bed.

He could feel her all around them watching, waiting, trying to deter them from coming any closer. Perhaps she knew of their intent. Streetlights flickered overhead, and the groan of steel scarring tarmac could be heard distantly.

Killian felt so exposed. The others had huddled in close, walking swiftly as a unit – maybe they could feel it too.

He was so involved in wondering after the otherworldly, that the reality of a car pulling up beside them didn’t even register until the occupant was already climbing out. The door slammed definitively, purposefully, and it drew them to a halt. Once Killian had identified who now stood there in the gloom, features lit by the fading amber light of the street, he let out a string of murmured expletives.

“I knew it was only a matter of time before the whole gang was back together again,” Sheriff Graham Humbert growled, his voice as melodic and dangerous as it had been when Killian was just seventeen, frightened, and exhausted beyond belief on the night that had started it all.

Killian fought to keep his voice level. “It’s been a long time, Humbert.”

“Long enough that you’re ready to finally give me the truth?”

“Graham,” Regina began quietly, and it was the way her tongue curled around Graham, it was the intimacy of it, the sheer fact that they were on a first name basis that sent Killian’s mind into a tailspin, cataloguing a few more ways the town had continued to tick without him.

They were all adults now, weren’t they? So why not? Why not Graham?

Because he didn’t like it.

“Don’t,” Humbert said shortly. “So where is it you’re off too? The ravine, maybe?”

He looked older than when Killian had seen him last. He had only just been elected the month before Emma had disappeared, gruff but bright-faced and enthusiastic about his future turning over small town misdemeanours. Then he had been thrown into a missing-persons-assumed-murder case, and nothing about Storybrooke had felt small anymore. Had Emma’s disappearance given him those lines, pulled taut at the corner of his eyes? Could the unhappy curve to his mouth, the adamant line of his jaw, be because of Emma, too?

He had only wanted to find Emma, it was all any of them had wanted. On any of the countless nights Killian had lain awake, unable to dream of anything but the night that Emma had vanished, could Graham Humbert possibly have been doing the same?

Not to mention his instincts were correct. The four of them did know something more about it than what they had told him. It must have churned him up inside to know that, and not be able to do a single thing about it.

“We’re going for a drink,” Mary Margaret offered, and she surprised Killian with the smoothness of the lie. “Just old friends catching up.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Humbert snapped. His badge glittered in the dim light. “You were up to something then, and you’re up to something now.” He folded his arms. “I’d like to invite all of you to come down to the station and have a chat, seeing as you’ve got the time.”

At the end of the street, a bulb blew in a shower of orange sparks. Glass rained musically down onto the sidewalk. Killian thought he saw the flutter of white fabric dart around the corner.

Watching, waiting, daring.

“We don’t have time for this,” Regina muttered. “Step aside, Graham.”

“Fine, go. I’ve got no problem with it. The way you all look tonight,” Humbert stared at each of them in turn, scathingly, “I have a feeling you’ll lead me straight to her.”

He had only ever wanted to find Emma. That, Killian reminded himself, they had in common.

Movement flickered at the edge of his vision, and for a moment Killian was certain once he turned his head he’d see another spectre of Emma, dirty white and terrible, but it was David, David had surged forward and his fist was swinging and Killian heard the crack of Humbert’s head hitting the sidewalk before his eyes had even processed that he was witnessing his crumpled form falling backwards. Out cold.

David was hissing with pain, shaking out his hand and wincing.

The other three were blinking, astonished.

“Sorry,” he offered to Humbert’s motionless form. Then, turning to the others and noticing their expressions, he suddenly grew defensive. “We’re in a hurry, aren’t we?”

Inside a convenience store, a radio burst to life. The scattered notes of Only You could be heard scratching across the quiet street.

Killian narrowed his eyes. Yes, they were.

The four of them stepped carefully around Humbert, and continued their brisk journey into the night.

Given their intent, Killian had half expected for Brooke House to be gone by the time they got there, like when they had returned on the first night to look for Emma. After the ritual they had scattered into the trees, tearing off in different directions to try and find where she might have gone, voices hoarse with their continued calls out for her. By the time they had returned to the site of the house to regroup, faithfully following the trail of Killian’s orange string, it had gone. Taking Regina’s Ouija board, Mary Margaret’s scarf, David’s Apollo chocolate bar wrapper and Emma with it. A piece of all of them lost to the maw – some bigger than others. It had feasted on what it could and disappeared into the night.

Perhaps, Killian thought, as he stared at its broad foundations, the beckoning creek of its front door, the gasping cavern of its insides, it looked at them all like an unfinished meal.

It waited, it watched, and it dared them closer to finish them for good.

Killian’s hand tightened on the hilt of the dagger.

Emma needed them. And she had waited long enough.

As one, he and Regina stormed up the steps and headed inside. Behind him, he could hear Mary Margaret whimper, the urgent, hushed tones from David pushing her forward, but he paid them no mind. They each had a job to do here – this was his. Regina immediately pulled out a black marker and began tracing the shape of the pentacle on the floor, while Killian rummaged in the rucksack they had brought for the salt. He started sprinkling it in a perfect circle around the edges, and it wasn’t long before David had coerced Mary Margaret through into the sitting room. She had her palms over her eyes, as if by not looking at the aged walls of the house she might not have to acknowledge she was stood there.

Something crashed upstairs. David and Mary Margaret jerked towards the sound, the latter dropping her hands. Killian and Regina exchanged grim looks.

“It knows,” she said.

“Get the candles.”

There were other loud bangs of protest, like the sudden opening and slamming of doors, and at every noise it brought the four of them closer together, until Killian could feel Mary Margaret’s small hand clutching tightly to his upper arm. He spared her the briefest of glances – in the gloom she looked completely pale, but her features were set into something determined. The house could screech and moan, but she would not be so easily spooked anymore.

This was the girl he remembered. The one who could be both; afraid, and brave.

Killian fumbled with the matches, but not a single one would light. Killian stuck his finger into the packet and found, bafflingly, that the tip of every match was damp, even though they had been tucked away in his pocket. With irritation Killian thought of the damp wall and the wallpaper, and he thought he could hear laughter. It might have been the wind whistling past broken glass, but it was something.

“Here,” David said. He’d pulled a lighter from his pocket.

At four of the five points they set a lit candle, and at the fifth they set a final one – unlit, for the release of energy they had intended. Quickly they took their places behind a flickering flame, leaving the gap between Killian and David where Emma had sat all those years ago.

Killian’s pulse raced, his heart felt jagged and stuttered; hope, that treacherous notion, couldn’t help but imagine that at the end of all this, she might once again be sitting there.

“Ah,” came an icy voice from over his shoulder. Killian shut his eyes, knowing who it was at once. “You finally brought my dagger.”

“Ignore her,” Killian said firmly, refusing to turn around, but the others weren’t paying attention to him. Their stares, slack-jawed and stupefied, were fixed on the phantom that had just entered the room.

David’s voice was hoarse. “Emma?”

“David,” Killian barked. “Take Mary Margaret’s hand.”

“David,” Emma’s voice was honeysuckle and thick. “David, it’s me. Come on, come away from there. It’s time to go, don’t you think?”

Mary Margaret snatched his hand from where it had been hovering near her, and in a daze, David turned his head back towards her.

“Look at me,” she said, fiercely. “My eyes. Only.” David looked torn. “That is not our girl.”

“David,” Emma sang. His shoulders tense, but he did not turn to look at her again. Instantly, Emma’s tone turned nasty. “Get out.”

Killian didn’t care for ceremony anymore; he didn’t care for the weight of it all, for the ritual, for the sense of preserving the past – he felt like he had spent his entire adult life consecrating devastation. Regina’s hand was tight in his, their incomplete circle ready and waiting. The candle flames danced backwards and forwards, and Killian used his spare hand to pull the dagger from his coat pocket.

There was a loud hiss from behind him, like the hum of a cooped-up predator, and something ice cold and hard swung in front of him and gripped his throat.

Killian gasped.

Mary Margaret screamed.

He felt the air being squeezed from his windpipe, the dig of Emma’s nails into his skin so harsh he was sure they must’ve drawn blood –

With effort, Killian raised his hand –

And flung the dagger into the centre of the circle.

The effect was instantaneous. Emma released him immediately and wailed, something loud and drastic and terrible, as the air began to crackle. There was no slow build up this time, a steady gathering of wits as the room began to take in its breath, there was just the rumble of distant thunder, the storm they made to summon forming as suddenly as a tornado. The wind howled through the cracked windows; one of them shattered under the force of it and carried shards of glass towards them, hurtling around them with great speed.

Through the gap between Killian and David, Emma had stumbled backwards into the middle of the circle, and her eyes were black and furious. Right in front of them, she began to curl in on herself but it was impossible, her back had bent at a right angle and the contortions were too much, too strange, that his brain tried to tell Killian that it wasn’t happening at all. The wind whipped away her crown of flowers until it disintegrated, and her mouth gaped open in a silent scream, wide, wider, a yawning arc of darkness.

Something sharp dug into Killian’s cheek – glass, he thought, helplessly – and he reached up his free hand to try and shield himself. Mary Margaret and Regina had their eyes tightly shut, expressions scrunched up with pain and Regina’s lips were moving, but Killian couldn’t hear anything over the roar in his ears.

That was when the lightning struck.

In unison, arcs of obsidian light latched onto both the centre of Emma’s chest and the dagger, tying the two together like an ugly, pulsing artery. Again it flashed, this time onto her back, and again, her left hand, again, her right, until Emma was entirely obscured from view by the opaque jet of the zephyr.

This was where they had lost Emma before – she had thrown herself into the centre of the storm.

Killian tensed, maybe – maybe –

Regina’s hand tightened on his, as if sensing the direction of his thoughts.

Not a chance, it said, and gripped even harder.

Instead he yelled out into the darkness.

“Emma!”

The only response was rage – the door to the sitting room swung off its hinges, dropping heavily onto the floor. The wallpaper was ripped to shreds. A hole the size of a fist splintered into the floorboards behind him. Even so, on hearing him, the others took up the call – screaming for Emma to come through, to break free, to take her place in their circle and complete them.

“I know you’re in there!” Killian hollered, and his throat felt hoarse but he needed to make himself heard. “Emma, you can do it!”

And then – and then – he saw her.

Not the twisted, luminous Emma that the house had been showing him, but Emma, their Emma, staring out from the centre of the tornado. Through jets of black lighting he could see her, eyes wide, palms facing upward as if waiting for the rain to come, her mouth open in a cry that he couldn’t hear.

He couldn’t hear it, but he could see it. When she locked eyes with him her mouth formed the same words that had haunted him from the minute they’d first been ripped from her.

Killian – Killian, don’t –!

Not this time.

Killian wrenched his hand free.

“No!” Regina cried.

If you have to have someone, he thought, furiously, then have me.

Killian hurtled in after her.

For a moment, everything was blindingly white, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

Then he felt the touch of her hand.

It all fell quiet.

There was – nothing.

-/-

His heart was still beating. That was something, he supposed.

Behind his eyelids the light had dimmed, but it was still bright. That was how he knew it was no longer night. The air felt damp, and cold, and smelled faintly of wet moss and pine. The ground beneath his feet felt soft and earthy, and experimentally he wiggled his toes inside his boots. Obligingly, something squelched. Somewhere, a sparrow trilled.

Slowly, he opened his eyes. About a metre in front of him the ground gave way, dropping hundreds of feet below him in stacked and uneven layers of rock, grass and sediment. A distant roar sounded from beneath him, and pitching himself forward a little he could see the crash of the river against the edges of the rockface.

He was standing at the edge of the ravine, he realised. The ravine that Liam had driven into.

“This is what it does,” Emma said from beside him. “It makes you relive all your worst moments.”

His hand was tucked into hers, not unpleasantly. Their shoulders brushed.

“Where am I?”

In the distance something screeched, and he and Emma turned their heads towards the sound. Belatedly, he realised it was the exhausted brakes of a car accompanied by the rumble of an engine, and a wave of nausea began to rise within him. The harshness of the sounds felt dissonant with the relative peace above the ravine, but as Killian turned his eyes to the right he could remember how it had looked in the days that followed. It had rained heavily that afternoon, the police report had indicated that had wiped away most of the evidence, and everywhere mud had been churned over and over, plants ripped from their roots. But at this moment everything was still, undisturbed.

The sound of the motor grew louder.

Killian couldn’t remember how to breathe. He began to feel the light patter of rain on the back of his neck.

Not this, he begged, not this. I don’t want to see this.

“It’s alright,” Emma said, squeezing his hand tightly. “I’ll be here.”

Then the trees exploded.

Liam’s old Mustang burst through the shrub, and although Killian was anxious not to see it, he couldn’t tear his eyes away, tried to fix his gaze on every single detail in the impossibly short space of time between the car careening from the forest and tipping over the edge of the ravine. It was like watching it in slow motion. The windshield had already cracked in two places, and the Mustang swerved dangerously to the left – attempting to wrench itself to rightness before it was too late, but it was too late – and when Killian finally felt brave enough to look into the cabin, he realised something else with a chilling rush of dread.

Liam was not alone in the car.

Someone else – something else – had two hands on the wheel, and Liam was wrestling for control. Acting purely on instinct Killian surged forward, but Emma’s grip on his hand held him back. He knew, with the certainty that you knew things in dreams, that nothing he could do would be able to stop it.

Then he blinked, and Liam was alone in the car, and the Mustang had hurtled over the edge of the cliff. For a few seconds, the forest had earnt back its stillness.

Then, with an almighty crash that made the ground beneath him shake, the Mustang hit the surface of the water.

Killian couldn’t bring himself to look over the edge. On the cliff, just metres from where Killian now stood, someone else watched the car disappear beneath the walls. It was a man – or no, was it a man, his skin looked more like slick bronze, glittering like the scales of a fish – and then he was gone.

Killian reminded himself to breathe in, and breathe out. Emma reached across and brushed tears away from his cheek with a gentle finger, which was how he realised he had been crying. He clutched her other hand tightly in his own.

He couldn’t speak, and mercifully Emma didn’t seem to expect him to. It could have been minutes that they stood there together, breathing in, breathing out, or it could have been hours. It might not have been more than a few seconds. Somewhere, a sparrow trilled again. Killian began to feel a splatter of rain against the back of his neck, which was how he realised it had stopped raining the first time around.

“Careful,” Emma said. “Here it comes again.”

In the distance, he heard another screech of tired brakes.

Alarmed, Killian turned – and realised the treeline looked exactly as it had when he arrived, before Liam had burst through it.

Overwhelmed by the urge to throw up, Killian bent double and retched, but nothing came out. Emma rubbed a soothing hand on his back.

Again, he watched as the Mustang crashed through the thicket, as Liam fought for control of the wheel with the strange man – the same man who stood on the cliff afterwards before vanishing into thin air, he now realised – and skidded over the edge of the ravine. The world fell apart once more as the car pounded into its final destination.

“Where am I?” Killian repeated, in between taking large gulps of air.

The scaled man on the cliff watched the car, satisfied, before disappearing completely.

“It’s hard at first,” Emma sighed. “I watched my parents abandon me on the side of the freeway, like, a thousand times.” Her hand squeezed his own. “The car pulls over, my Mom gets out, she picks me up in my blanket and puts me down. Then she gets back in and it drives away. It was like picking at a scab I thought had already healed.”

It hadn’t, though. He could have told her that. Some scars were meant to stay with you forever.

We’ve all got ghosts here.

Somewhere, a sparrow trilled. He began to feel the weak patter of rain against the back of his neck.

“I saw the kid who found me, too,” Emma added, bitterly, “his name’s August. Not that it matters now.”

In the distance, the brakes of the Mustang screeched.

Killian was finding it difficult to process what he was seeing with what he was being told.

“They say that’s the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result? I waited for them to get back out, just once, to not just leave me there. But that’s what it feeds on. That hoping. The more you fight it, the more you want something else to happen when it never could, the stronger it gets.”

With a shudder, Liam’s Mustang broke the treeline again. It swerved, splattering mud across the clifftop. Liam wrestled for the wheel and the tail of the car swung out; hope shuddered to life within Killian, this time this time he would pull it back, he’d regain control, he’d turn before it –

The Mustang sped over the edge of the ravine.

“He wasn’t alone in the car,” Killian managed to get out, as his heart seized in his chest. “He didn’t – it wasn’t suicide.”

The scaled man on the cliff stared at the disappearing Mustang, and then vanished.

“That’s what the spirit of Brooke House looked like,” Emma said, nodding at where the scaled man had stood. “When it came to Liam.”

When it came to me, he wanted to cry, it looked like you.

Somewhere, a sparrow trilled. He began to feel the weak patter of rain against the back of his neck.

In the distance, the brakes of the Mustang screeched.

“It threatened you,” she continued softly. “It said it would kill you if he didn’t help the spirit escape the house.”

“But he didn’t,” Killian added, needlessly. Of course he didn’t.

He thought of the ritual, the one Liam had outlined to banish the demon, and he felt weak. Helpless to stop the chain reaction of Liam’s death – both in the weeks that had led up to it, and as witness to his final few moments as the car crashed into the ravine. He would have died on impact, the coroner had said. The body swept up by the rush of the water below, taken out to sea. Just like everyone had always said. That final, private wish that he had only whispered aloud once, that the lack of a body meant that maybe, maybe something else had happened, was finally snuffed out.

Liam had been in that car. It was small comfort to know he hadn’t done it to himself.

The Mustang thundered out of the undergrowth, swerved, screeched, and fell.

“He tried to banish it, but he was missing one key ingredient.”

Killian knew, with the certainty that you knew things in dreams, what that missing ingredient had been.

“The dagger.”

Emma nodded. “Right. After that didn’t work… he was always a dead man.”

But how had he known? How had he even thought to banish the demon? It seemed with every answer he got, a thousand more questions rose in its place.

“But the dagger… his name was on the dagger. Why didn’t he –?” Look like you?

If Liam had died in the ravine, just like they had always said he had, why was his name on the dagger?

Emma looked out across the ravine, darkly. “That’s just how it keeps score. Its victims. Liam isn’t trapped here, but I’d say he’s still a victim.”

Somewhere, a sparrow trilled. Killian began to feel the splatter of rain against his neck.

“Wouldn’t you?”

In just seconds, gone forever. Not trapped, but gone.

Trapped.

For the third time, he asked: “Where am I?”

Emma shook her head. That wasn’t the right question.

In the distance, the brakes of the Mustang squealed.

So instead, he asked: “How do we stop the demon?”

“I’ve already told you,” Emma sighed, airily enough that it felt as if he were just disturbing her at work in the library again. Her voice sounded faint. “God, don’t you ever listen?”

Listen.

With the suddenness of breathing, his hand closed on empty air where it had once been holding Emma’s. She had gone.

So had the clifftop.

It was like waking up, when you weren’t sure how long you had been asleep.

He was standing in the single room of the old apartment he shared with Liam, and he had always been standing there. It was smaller than he remembered; just the open plan kitchen-stroke-sitting room-stroke-Liam’s bedroom, attached to an even littler bedroom that had been Killian’s. The kitchenette was in the corner, dark and musty smelling, and Liam’s bed was propped against the opposite wall, impeccably made as always. There had only been room for the bare minimum of additional furniture – a chest of drawers for some of Liam’s clothes, the rest hung on a metal rack like the kind found in a shop, a moth-eaten sofa and a small, boxy handheld television plucked right from the jaws of 1994 perched atop an overturned wastepaper basket serving as a table. It was dark, lit miserably by a single window next to the sofa, and warm in the uncomfortable way that a gym was warm; lived in.

It looked so insignificant. Almost barren, certainly cheap. Nothing to be proud of.

Killian longed for it with something so profound that it was an almost physical ache. This was life before Liam had died.

A key clicked in the lock, and the front door to the flat was flung open with more force than necessary. Killian’s heart sank once he realised what he was looking at.

It makes you relive all your worst moments.

In tumbled Liam, exactly as he remembered him, and a younger Killian – twelve years old, freckled, dark hair askew, and furious.

“—So unfair!” The younger Killian was scowling. “I don’t want to move again! I just started making friends!”

Killian had forgotten what it was they had fought about – it had faded completely from his mind beyond the core sentiment, which had been bloody and foul, in the wake of everything else that had happened that day. Now it all came back to him with startling clarity.

This was the last time he had seen Liam alive.

“Well, tough,” Liam said wearily, setting a plastic bag on the counter next to the refrigerator. “We are.”

The younger Killian rounded on him angrily. “Why?”

“For work.”

“Has all the wood been chopped in Storybrooke, then?”

Liam fixed him with a withering look. “Don’t be facetious. It’s important, Killian. You just have to trust me on this.”

He had wanted them to leave town, he remembered now.

After that didn’t work… he was always a dead man.

He would have known, even then, that Brooke House was coming for them.

It struck the older Killian, then, just how tired Liam had looked – dark circles clung to the bottom of his eyes, and his skin looked stretched and pale. It also occurred to him how young he was. Liam had always been taller, older, wiser; even after he had died Killian had never thought of him any differently. Yet, here, Liam Jones was just nineteen years old – and he already been looking after the brothers Jones for years already. Killian had already outlived his brother’s unfairly short life by almost three years.

The younger Killian threw himself dramatically down onto the moth-eaten sofa. “I bet Dad wouldn’t make us move.”

Liam scowled, busying himself taking a few meagre groceries out of the bag and putting them away. “You don’t know what Dad is capable of.”

“I would if you just told me!” The younger Killian twisted on the sofa so he could look at his brother, bristling with indignation. “What is it that’s so bad? Why won’t you talk about him or Mum?” Liam kept his mouth set in a thin line. How that had infuriated him at the time. “How about you just tell me, and then I’ll go without a fuss. I’ll even pack tonight! How’s that?”

“I don’t like being held to ransom,” Liam replied tersely. The younger Killian let out a cry of frustration, delivering a swift kick to the sofa, then stormed over to his bedroom door. “And a tantrum won’t help. So long as you continue to behave like a child, I will continue to treat you like –”

The younger Killian whirled around, hand on the doorknob and eyes ablaze.

“I hate you!”

It makes you relive all your worst moments.

“I’m not finished,” Liam snapped, “don’t you walk away from me.”

The younger Killian did not listen. He stomped into his room and slammed the door shut behind him.

Don’t, Killian begged, come out. This is it. This is the last time.

Liam had followed him to the door, let his hand hover above the handle.

Open it, he longed, pleaded. Don’t leave it like this.

He watched Liam change his mind. He watched him pick up his car keys. He watched him curtly inform the younger Killian that he was going out for a little while, but he would be back soon. He watched him wait for the younger Killian to respond.

He did not.

Liam left the flat.

A key clicked in the lock and in again came Liam, with the younger Killian in tow.

“—So unfair!”

Like the clifftop, he was apparently doomed to watch the same moment over and over – but Killian refused. Seething, he tried to think himself into being somewhere else. He didn’t know the rules here, but somehow he had moved from the ravine to here, and if that was possible then he could move from here to somewhere that was not here.

Not this time, Killian thought furiously, no more than once.

In part instinct and in part miserable fury, Killian put his fist through the thin plaster wall.

Behind his eyes, pain exploded – but it was not from his fist. No, his wrists were smarting, burning with an agony he could not see, and someone was screaming and he thought it might be him, he was back in the sitting room at Brooke House, the storm raged, a tornado of wanting and longing and hoping and nothing ever changing, and he could feel his left hand clasped around the dagger but his right – his right –

Emma was there, and she was holding tightly onto his right hand.

She looked him squarely in the eyes. “Listen!”

He was in Granny’s Diner.

He knew this because he could hear the quiet lull of patrons around him, and the faint smell of melted cheese had begun to permeate. He could feel the hard, well-worn cushion from one of the booths beneath him, and he could still taste vanilla cake on the tip of his tongue. He knew because Emma’s arms were around his neck and she was holding him tightly, and he could feel her breath on his lips. He knew because he had lived in this moment so many times, and begged a thousand times to have ended it differently. He didn’t need a demon to do that for him

“Thank you,” Emma had said, her cheeks flushed with glorious delight (he had done that, he thought fiercely). “For always knowing exactly what I want before I do.”

“You’re…” he trailed off, because he had become distracted by the bright and welcome jade of her eyes. “You’re welcome.”

All it would take was moving himself closer just an inch. He was suddenly conscious of his hand on the side of her hip, of his desire to move it further around until it brushed her spine, to use it to tug her to him, bridging the final distance between them. Her lips looked soft and pliant, a rosy pink that had spent their lives shaping around his favourite words in the entire world, because everything she said was a gift, and he loved her, God, he loved her, he loved her so much.

The jagged beat of Only You was rattling from the jukebox in the corner, and Killian Jones wanted to kiss Emma Swan more than he had ever wanted anything.

He could feel her unsteady breathing, rising and falling against his chest, and he was sure her pulse would be racing to match his – but fear gripped him. What if she didn’t want this? What if it scared her as much as it bloody terrified him? If he leaned forward and she didn’t meet him halfway he didn’t think he could bear it. He hesitated

He hesitated –

He always hesitated when it was important –

It makes you relive all your worst moments.

Killian had sailed past this moment more times than he could count, he didn’t need a ghost to remind him of all the roads not taken. For the last five years, Only You had been the song he had almost kissed Emma Swan too, days before he had lost her forever. In that moment, he couldn’t think of anything worse than watching himself, feeling himself not doing it over and over for eternity when that had been his only chance.

That’s what it feeds on. That hoping. The more you fight it, the more you want something else to happen when it never could, the stronger it gets.

Is this what Emma had done, for five years? Replay over and over the worst possible pockets of time it could think to show her, wishing ardently for something to be different, praying desperately for some hope of rescue. He thought back to the tape recorder – she had sounded lost, confused. Defeated. Trapped in an unending limbo of nothing ever changing.

It had to stop today.

How do we stop the demon?

Listen.

Emma’s eyes flickered to his lips, he felt her swaying dangerously forward. The air smelt of burnt toast, vanilla sponge and anticipation, and Killian felt untouchable.

Only You trickled out from the jukebox in the corner.

“‘Looking from a window above, it’s like a story of love… Can you hear me?’”

Killian froze.

That song had been following him around for days.

Piss off, ghost.

A taunt, he had thought. A wretched reminder of everything he had almost had. But what if it wasn’t?

I’ve already told you. God, don’t you ever listen?

The tape recorder was proof, Emma had the ability to bleed through the machinations of the demon, to touch her surroundings cautiously, gently, from inside her void of almosts and never-have-beens, and she had been hurling this moment into his path ever since he returned to town.

Maybe something in it had to change.

But if you fight it, Killian thought furiously, that only makes the demon stronger. So what was he supposed to do?

Emma’s arms tightened almost imperceptibly around his neck.

In the space of a steadying breath, he allowed himself another long look at her. Pretty, dainty eyelashes, but fierce and warm eyes of jade, capable of spitting fire and turning his insides into something weak and wanting. Her lips were parted and daring him closer, and as he entertained the thought of leaning in his heart hammered against his ribcage. God, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her more than anything.

The future was only sky. They had all the time in the world.

So maybe he didn’t fight it.

He didn’t want to, not anymore. He was so, so tired of fighting his way through life, Mary Margaret had lauded him over his stamina but that’s not what it was, not really, he just couldn’t remember what life had been like before he’d needed to throw up his fists. So he decided he was done with all that. If giving up meant he could live in the sensation of her breath on his lips, of their almost and their never-have-been, in that half a second before they decided no, then he would happily give up on life outside of this oblivion.

“‘All I needed was the love you gave…’”

Because almost kissing Emma, he decided, was so much better than living in a world where he hadn’t done it.

If you have to have someone, he thought, have me.

It was like waking up, when you didn’t know how long you had been asleep for. Suddenly mobility was possible, and he could feel his own chest rising and falling unevenly, aware of his own breath in a way that made it feel like he hadn’t been breathing before. Once he realised with awe that he could move it, he lifted a trembling hand up to brush a strand of hair behind her ear, cupping her face with the other. As his pulse raced, he just wanted to be sure that she was real.

“Emma,” Killian said, and his voice sounded far away. His thumbs brushed across the shells of her cheeks. “I’d very much like to kiss you now.”

Emma grinned, and he realised she was crying.

“You fucking better.”

Instantly, Killian surged forward.

It was everything he had hoped it would be. Emma was warm, soft, eager, and mimicking the same little sighs he could hear escaping through his own lips – kissing Emma was like kissing air. It was tightness in the top of his stomach; it was saturated mornings under the oaks; it was winter at the door, brushing its feet on the mat; it was the final ten seconds before the whistle blew in a championship game when all that was left was that startling, adrenaline-pumping hope. Kissing Emma was a race that he had been training his entire life for.

Everything was noise.

Wind surged, static hummed, someone screamed but still Killian resisted; he was determined to inhabit this moment, this second, if this was the rest of his life then he didn’t intend to stray too far. If it was just the space of a single exhale then he would breathe out, and he would breathe out, and he would learn to go without oxygen because as far as he was concerned, there was no other possible choice he could make. He heard someone calling his name. A hand scrambled at the hem of his jacket. Something fizzled like a power line coming loose and he could hear the sound of glass shattering –

Emma pulled away.

He could still feel her hands in his hair, though. That had to be something. He kept his eyes tightly shut.

He was cold, and he could smell the forest. Dry leaves crunched underneath a boot. He tasted only velvet, mist, and Emma.

“Killian,” she said softly.

Killian shook his head. He didn’t want the dream to end.

“Killian, you can open your eyes.”

Reluctantly, he did as he was bid. He was standing in the middle of a familiar patch of forest, his hands tracing the edge of Emma’s face – because she was here, and she was solid, and there wasn’t a lot else he cared about other than that – it had to be the middle of the night, as the sky overhead was a black curtain pulled taut, specks of light barely visible scattered across it. The earth looked black beneath his boots but he knew from the crackle underfoot that in daylight it would be a watercolour pad of New England autumn, but that didn’t make his being there any less disorienting.

“Where did – how did we get out here?”

Was that – Regina?

“Oh, oh – Emma!”

Killian felt the wind knocked out of him as someone came crashing into the side of he and Emma, throwing their arms around them – David? – and again they swayed dangerously, but this time someone was crushing him from behind and someone was crying and eventually his knees buckled and they were all tumbling down onto the forest floor. It was haphazard and dizzying, but he recognised their hearts just as clearly as his own; all relief, all love, all fierce, fierce joy.

Emma was clinging to David while he sobbed into her shoulder, and Mary Margaret was holding on tightly from behind and speaking in such a floundering, nonsensical babble that nobody had any idea what she was saying. Killian was dazed, and more than a little confused, but blisteringly happy. He had no idea what had just happened, but since this was the outcome he had been praying for, he chose not to dwell on it.

Regina clapped a hand onto his shoulder, and he spotted her wiping something from the corner of her eye that looked suspiciously like emotion.

“It’s over.”

-/-

Brooke House was gone.

That was what they had managed to surmise after they had finally been able to disentangle from each other. It wasn’t that they had been transported to some other location, it was that the house itself had vanished around them, leaving them sprawled in the dirt feeling more than a little shaken and more than a little relieved. The ritual had worked, they had banished the demon, and the only evidence it had ever been there at all was in their story shared, their hard-won memories, and a curving, silver dagger stabbed blade first into the earth. A close inspection revealed its edge to be flat and smooth. No names. Just a dagger. They left it there, buried in the soil. They were finished with it now.

Killian had tried more than once to explain what had happened after he’d hurtled into the storm after Emma, not just to the others but to himself – but Emma had laced their fingers together and she looked so paralyzingly pained and sweet and sad that he had stopped trying. Some things were easier not to explain.

She hadn’t spoken much on the way back, just tucked herself tiredly into Killian’s side and dropped her head against his shoulder. She was wearing the same outfit she had disappeared in, which made her look oddly like something stitched together from different times – she was a woman now, wearing the old, worn, coat and boots of a girl. David had attached himself to her other side, putting a strong arm around her shoulders and occasionally patting her hair, murmuring tender reassurances and kissing her forehead.

Killian knew how he felt. He thought he might have a panic attack if he had to let go of her hand.

Somehow, they had done it. The demon was gone and so was Brooke House, and Emma had been given back to them.

She had been amazed to discover she had been gone for five years.

“I’ll go to the sheriff station first thing,” Emma said, nodding her head like it would settle everything. “Clear your names.”

Regina looked unconvinced. “I’m not sure that’ll do it.” The fact that David had punched Humbert in the jaw was just now coming back to them, and Killian couldn’t help but agree.

“Why not?” Emma argued hotly. Then she pointed at herself. “Missing girl. No longer missing. Case closed, right?”

Killian squeezed her hand. “We don’t have to settle anything now.”

For now she was here, and it was enough.

As they turned onto Main Street he felt Emma begin to tremble, her shoulders shaking underneath David’s arm. Whether it was fear or relief or anticipation or a combination of all three, Killian couldn’t tell, but after he had asked her she reluctantly revealed that where she really wanted to go was to the Nolan house; to Ruth.

David turned away to hide a fresh wave of overwhelmed, happy tears, but Emma’s attention was fixed on Killian.

She rounded so she was in front of him, her free hand fisted into the lapel of his jacket.

“I want to see Ruth,” she said, looking agitated, “but I –”

She cut herself off, stared fixedly into his eyes. Willed him to understand.

I don’t want to be away from you.

Something warm bloomed in his chest.

“I’m staying at Granny’s,” he offered with a smile. “You could – after. If you want.”

I love you I love you I love you I love

“No, he’s not,” Regina cut in. “He’s staying with me.” When they all turned to look at her she bristled, adding lamely: “I’ll… make lasagne.”

Emma laughed and it was such a beautiful sound. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I want.”

By the time dawn had kissed the sky with streaks of pink and orange, that offer had become too tempting for any of them to resist. Regina and Killian had immediately decided sleep was impossible and had started depleting her stores of homemade cider to try and relax their nerves and carry them until morning. They talked about nothing at all, and although Killian could tell Regina was desperate to ask about what they had done, what he might have seen, itching for a chance to make a comparison to her book of spells, Killian did not give her the opportunity to do so. There would be time for all of that.

An hour or so in, Mary Margaret had arrived at the door. Wordlessly, she had proffered a bottle of Jose Cuervo, and they had invited her inside.

The sky was just beginning to brighten when David and Emma returned, which was how they now found themselves laid out on the floor of Regina’s sitting room, gorged on the perfect lasagne and mellowed by fatigue and Jose, watching the sun come up through the tall, French windows.

Emma was curled in Killian’s lap, her legs slung across his and her head resting against his chest, listening to the steady gallop of his heart. He very much wanted to kiss her again – hell, he wasn’t even sure he had kissed her the first time. But there would be time for all of that, too.

Everything was bathed in golden light. Regina was dozing on a sofa, David and Mary Margaret were talking earnestly in hushed, gentle voices, their foreheads touching. Killian was struck by something so right, so definite, that he wasn’t sure anything he had experienced since Emma had disappeared had been real. This was so clearly how everything was supposed to be that it was inconceivable to imagine it had been any other way.

“Thank you,” Emma murmured against his chest. She lifted her head up so their eyes met. They were a soft storm of emerald, rimmed with a tired scarlet edge along her eyelashes. “For not giving up.”

I love you, her fingers curled into the worn leather of his jacket, danced a pattern across his chest. Tapped a beat to match his aching heart. He could hear her. I love you.

“How could I?” he replied. “You know where Archie hides the good snacks.”

She kissed him in the dusty light of morning, and it chased the last of his ghosts away, out into the dawn.

-/-

A/N: if you made it this far - THANK YOU! I am honestly so grateful for all of the support I received for this fic, it was my first try at writing something kinda horror/spooky and I’m really proud of how it came out. I’ve honestly been blown away by some of the comments I’ve got, I am SO happy, you guys are so awesome and I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed it so far - it’s been a pleasure to make your hearts race and keep you up at night!

I’ll be posting a short epilogue on Wednesday, so keep an eye out for that! for now, turrah, and thank you so much! <3

#jay writes #a house is never still #cs role reversal #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan #cs au #cs halloweek #killian jones #emma swan #enjoy all!

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