Emma was dressed in ribbons. She remembered this dress now, it was made of golden ribbons and she had worn it when she fell asleep on the flight from Storybrooke to Manhattan. It had twenty minutes but she had been in the dream with Killian for hours. This time, however, her dress wasn't fluttering around her as if caught in a breeze, the ribbons hung down around her sadly, and her hair was bound up so tightly it hurt. She blinked her eyes open and saw the room she was in, it was a great ballroom that had seen much better days. Where it had once been a pristine white, the paint had faded and shredded to a troubled gray. The wood floor under her feet was warped, dusty, and cracked. Turning about she could see where once there was such beauty in the room it was nothing but a pathetic memory, a reminder that nothing good could stay. Emma was utterly alone in the massive room.
Her breath hitching, Emma pressed a palm to her chest in an attempt to slow her racing heart and catch her breath back, the ribbons were tight and constricting this time. Steeling herself against a vague fright, Emma made her way towards the once grand staircase and padded up it. She glanced behind her as she climbed, swallowed worriedly when she saw that her ribbons were moving just as much as they must as she moved. She could only suppose that her dream was reflecting how she felt when she drifted off, Neal's reappearance had more than knocked her out of sorts. All the memories he had brought back had poured back through her, making her feel like a nervous seventeen year old girl again. Reaching the top of the stairs at last, Emma hurried down the first corridor she came across.
She wanted to leave this broken mansion more than anything, but based on how painful her hair was pulled and the ribbons around the rest of her were, Emma doubted that she could pinch herself out of this dream. The hallway she was slipping down was even more depressing than ballroom, the only illumination here was from an occasional lonely lamp in a wall sconce. Those gave Emma enough light to navigate down the hall with and see the paintings that hung on the wall. They were all portraits of families that should have been happy, but there was always a tense look on everyone's faces and someone was always faded out. Some of the paintings looked shredded, some seem to have just fallen apart. Whatever the hell this place was Emma never wanted to get back to it, her mind was now swirling with images and thoughts of her own family. Emma would do anything to have someone with her in this place, her anxiety was growing and there were odd noises starting to occasionally crop up. Emma broke into a sprint when she heard a snapping noise behind her and a quick glance back told her one of the lamps behind her had gone out.
Turning a corner she could see a light farther ahead, but a little shape in the right side of the dark hallway pulled her up short. She could just make out a doorway with a rusty handle in the gloom. Glancing back down the hall, Emma could almost feel the light calling to her, the little doorway screamed a warning to get away from it and Emma made her decision after another loud snap came from back on the other side of the corner. She reached out and wrenched the rusty knob, yanking the door open and whirling through the opened escape and slammed the door behind her. Painfully gasping for breath Emma took in her new surroundings, she was at the top of an enormous, spiraling staircase. The domed roof had a great skylight cut in the shape of a peculiar looking star, the shape tingled at some part of her memory but refused to do any more so she ignored it. Emma set off down the stairs at as quick of a pace she could manage, her dress still keeping her from breathing as deeply as she would have liked. The entire way down down was scattered with small photographs of people, they looked as if they were half developed and frightened her for some reason, so the blonde dared not pick one up. There was also a large amount of feathers scattered all over the steps, Emma had tried picking one up but as soon as she got close a breeze would catch the feather and snatch it away from her. When one of these feathers was tossed through the air in front of her, Emma froze, finally recognizing what bird it was from. Every one of the feathers was from a swan, her namesake. Her heart thudding in earnest now and a headache from her hair threatening her, Emma sped down the stairs faster. The noises had started again at the top and she knew she had to get away from whatever was making them.
After a long flight down the stairs, Emma pulled up short. She was about forty stairs away from the ground and all but the last ten had crumbled away. Emma swallowed hard, looking at the gap she thought she could make it, the stairs were steep enough that it wasn't that great of a leap to get across the gap. Retreating in order to give herself a good start, Emma's thoughts drifted to Killian, wondering what kind of advice he'd have for the jump, or compliment for when she made it. Taking as deep a breath as she could, Emma charged forward and leapt. She hung in the hair for too many fearful seconds, she landed heavily on the top step. Emma quickly crouched down and rocked forward, catching herself with her hands to stop herself from falling forward. A quiet, mad laugh escaped her throat as she pulled herself to her feet and started forward again, pushing open the door at the far side of the room that lay at the bottom of the stairs.
The door drifted closed behind her and Emma was blinded by a sudden light. Shielding her eyes, she moved away from the door until the light dissipated and blinked the afterimage away. Catching her breath, she saw she was in a room at least three hundred feet long, the ceiling was only ten feet high at most, and the entire place was filled with full length mirrors. They were of every shape and type imaginable, but every single one of them was at least seven feet tall. It was a mirror maze.
Emma's mouth grew dry as her reflection suddenly greeted her hundreds of times. Her dress and her expression and her tied back hair truly made her look like a scared girl again, and try as she may she was unable to school her expression into anything different. Emma tasted bile in the back of her throat as she realized she looked so much like she did when she had been in love with Neal. The snapping sound of breaking wood on the other side of the door made her start and she found herself able to move again. Her journey through the mirror maze was torturous, she had remembered only to take the right sided paths, remembering some random fact about that being the most likely way to get yourself through a maze. Her only companions was the crushing silence and her own anxious reflection.
After what felt like hours, her frustration and helplessness pushing her nearly to tears, Emma had grown so sick of seeing her hair pulled back that she stopped to tear at the ribbon that bound it up. The only thing she succeeded at was pulling her own hair and after several tries she screamed with frustration and furiously shoved the mirror in front of her. Emma hadn't expected anything to happen, but the base must have been rotted or cracked, because with a snap the mirror fell backwards. She had apparently been at the far end of the maze, because the space behind the mirror was empty save for a door against the right side of the wall. Laughing, Emma raced towards it and hauled it open, silently mocking the noises behind her. She didn't care how much closer they were this time, she was winning.
Emma sped down a plain gray hallway, thin carpet puffed up dust as she ran, and the paint was peeling off the wall. After a few minutes of running, Emma skid to a stop and slammed into a bannister. Thinking it was another stairway, she turned to start down it only to be met with the bannister again. She whirled around and at meeting the bannister a third time, she realized it was a balcony. Peering up she saw the same domed roof as before, the same star carved into the roof, but no stairs. Cracking wood behind her caused Emma to whirl around, she she finally saw the source of the noise. A great beast was making its way up the hall, snapping its jaws at her and its feet snapping the floorboards under the carpet with each step. Emma could see the light reflecting off its hide, it was scaly and metallic, not something she had a way to beat. She could see a great tail behind the beast swishing back and forth like a metronome, wait, exactly like a metronome. She could hear in her head a quiet tick-tock to the beast's tail swiping back and forth. The familiarity of the star before finally came to her and Emma whirled around to look at the one in this room. The second star on the roof was offset to the right, there was no doubt in her mind now. Emma climbed onto the banister and leapt, sailing into the open air and straight down towards the floor a hundred feet below. She heard the crocodile behind her lunge forward, snapping at her, then roaring in frustration as she escaped it.
The ground rushed towards Emma at a frightening speed, but there was no fear in her mind now, the bottom of this room had a faded carpet with a very worn spot right where her feet were going to hit. Emma smiled as her feet touched the carpet, then she tore right through and fell into darkness.
Emma came back to her senses lying on an extremely comfortable white bed that she immediately recognized from her last dream. She rolled over and sat up, her head swiveling around the room looking for Killian. She finally spotted him glaring at her while he was sitting next to the wall, his hand held above him and chained there by the same manacle she had trapped him in at the top of the beanstalk. Anxiety swooped into her stomach as she pulled herself off the bed and strode towards him, his eyebrows lifting as he noted her still tight dress.
"You cannot be comfortable in that, love," Killian commented, his eyes traveling up to her face, "And why is your hair pulled back?"
Emma stopped in front of him, biting her lip, his reminding her of how she looked bringing back her earlier nervousness. Killian pulled himself to his feet, the chain retracting with him and keeping his arm held aloft, and inspected her closely.
"Emma, what's wrong?" he asked quietly, eyes full of concern.
"I'm afraid, Killian," she confessed quietly.
Killian scoffed, "Now what could ever frighten someone as fierce as you, love? You outwitted giants, witches, and a pirate. You frighten things."
His words brought all her memories of her adventure in the Enchanted Forest back to her mind, he was right. She was frightening. At her realization, her dress loosened back to what it should be, no longer constricting, the ribbons fluttering in the breeze that teased at her trapped hair. The knot of fear and anxiety in her stomach finally loosened and she visibly relaxed. Killian smiled widely at her and she couldn't help but return it, his smiles always made her want to smile right back.
"Do you want your hair tied up, love?" She shook her head in response, she hated her hair like this, and he reached out with his hook towards the ribbon binding it up. "Then let me help with that, beautiful." After a moment's pressure, the ribbon snapped and fluttered away, her hair caught up in the unfelt breeze that suddenly caught the rest of her dress. Emma felt like herself, she also felt like she had gone quite long enough without kissing her pirate, so she stepped forward and pulled him towards her. Their lips met gently at first, but then quickly their kiss deepened into something rough and passionate.
After a few seconds, Killian pulled back and jerked his head towards the manacle around his hand. "How 'bout a key for that, love?" he growled, his eyes drinking in the sight of her greedily, his restraint quickly fading.
Emma glanced at the manacle and the metal cracked in half and fell away. "Don't have a key," she teased as he grabbed her chin and pulled her in for another kiss, she nipped his upper lip and he chuckled, pushing her back towards the bed at the center of the room, his hand sliding underneath one of the ribbons and trailing up her spine. She shuddered against him and and slid one of her hands under the waist of his pants, her knuckles ghosting along his upper thigh and eliciting a groan from him. Killian freed his hand pulled hers from him then hoisted her up by her thighs and pitched her back onto the bed.
Her gasp turned into a laugh. "What was that for?"
He stepped onto the bed and strode towards her, "That was for smashing me over the head." He dropped down over her, catching himself with his hand and hook, his arms right over her shoulders, and kissed her gently. Her whole body tingled as she felt him pour himself into this kiss and she shuddered with pleasure. So she responded in kind, deepening the kiss and wrapping one arm around his neck. She trailed the fingers of her free hand over his cheek, savoring the feeling of his smile against her lips.
Killian pulled back slightly and whispered against her lips, "I mean to have you, Miss Swan."
"I mean to take you, Mister Jones," she whispered back.