Breathe.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Simple.
Or not?
A noose is forming and there's nothing she can do to stop it.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Time is a very fickle thing. And now she's drowning on dry land in the center of a twisted fairytale where things just keep going to shit.
Not to mention the dead woman at her feet.
Looks like what goes in a time portal is the only thing that can come back. Down a rabbit hole built for the same set of travelers. The Mad Hatters hat. Starkers. She's going mad. No wonder Alice drank the Kool-Aid. Took the drugs. Went on a trip of fantastic proportions.
A laugh bubbles up, threatens to explode but everything is tight and shiny and oh so very bad, so its boxed away in that stupid box of hers where everything that can't be handled goes to stay and die and kill pieces inside of her.
Magic certainly does come with a fucking price.
This time she does laugh, one short barking sound that doesn't just verge on hysterics, its gone nuclear.
She never knew the dead woman's name.
"Swan, look at me. Damnit Swan!" Suddenly she can't see the body anymore, the picture of twisted features that were warped and attacked by a vengeful magic portal, instead there's piercing blue eyes that look not only concerned, but also scared.
Weird.
Pirates aren't supposed to fear things.
Another snort escapes her, but she blinks into focus black leather and eye-liner and considers letting go of control, just for once in her life.
Down the rabbit hole to hell. Personal hell that is.
Go away, she means to snap out but instead what burbles through is, "I killed her."
(A part of her, a part of her that's buried so deep down is screaming that this is misplaced guilt, to listen to Killian because it knows what he is going to say is right. But that part is buried far to deep beneath the overload of shock and stress and everything that's happened in such a short span of time. She's too emotionally wrung out to find that part, so she exists within the twisted version of autopilot)
Exhale.
"No Swan, you didn't," Killian tells her forcefully and there's true fear in the way he looks at her, as if she's about to explode into a million little pieces. So bloody strange to receive that look. In her numbness, she can't understand why he'd care.
"Emma," he tries again when she ignores him in favor of studying the slowly seeping blood pool that creeps out from behind his form. She never understood just how much damage magic could do to flesh until this instant; after watching it tear away at flesh in greedy little bites can quickly change a perspective.
"I killed her," she repeats with cold finality, finally clamping down the lid on the insanity threatening to break free. The noose stops tightening but remains a steady threat.
Inhale.
A swell of magic from her core catches her off guard and she lifts a hand on instinct alone. There's an instant of touch as the pirate tries to stop her, as if he knows what she's going to do even as she doesn't, but he leaps away when the power leaps away from her skin and nips at his only hand, leaving its mark seared into his palm.
She almost feels guilty. But to feel guilt would mean to feel everything else and she can't do that now. Elsewise, cue implosion.
A stream of white light blazes from her fingertips and races to cover the dead woman who's features are still twisted in agony even in death. It pools about her until she can no longer be seen through the brilliance of it.
And just as suddenly, the light dies and the body is gone, leaving nothing but a small pile of ashes in its wake. A pile of ashes that is quickly swept up by a small gout of wind that appears from nowhere and takes all that is left of the stranger off into the night.
Huh. Looks like the magic in her has a sense of self-preservation, the Sherriff part of her notes. Revolution roles through her; isn't she supposed to be the goddamn Savior?
The hero in this ass backwards fairytale land?
Cause a Savior certainly doesn't kill an innocent nor does a hero cremate the body with magic she can barely understand in order to hide what she had done.
Exhale.
Things in her head are starting to calm, to quiet, especially now that she's viciously stuffing gags into the darkness that resides in the depths of her mind. The darkness that was once reserved for Neal after he left, her parents for abandoning her, countless foster families for shoving her back into the system and the nameless things that linger in the night. But that darkness is all too happy to chant murderer in her ear now.
Killian is still staring at her, true concern now outweighing the fear in his gaze and that's nearly her undoing.
He opens his mouth to say something but she cuts him off. "I have to go," she forces out, stepping backwards as he makes to move to her.
Something in the way she says this stops him and something inside her breaks at the sight of his tortured expression and the way his hand drops to his side. Even from here, she can see the blistered burn on his palm. But the part of her that breaks was already shredded when she realized what had happened to the woman she thought she rescued.
Her Savior heart is crumbling.
Had she been in any clear state of mind, she may have noticed that something was seriously wrong inside her head, something more than just incredible measures of guilt.
But she is Alice and Alice is lost in Wonderland.
Inhale.
Stop breathing.
Run.
So that's what she does.
After all, she's damn good at running.
.
A/N: Want more? Let me know.
Note: Due to tweaking (if I continue), there will be no Elsa. I have something much darker up my sleave.