Timeline: Post-S3, but pre-S4. (Started writing this during the hiatus between S3 and S4, before we found out almost no time passed between the two seasons. So, just think of this as an inserted timeline. No Elsa or Snow Queen will pop up to save/ruin the day.)
Ships: Captain Swan (Rumbelle is a big part of the plot, but it's not really a romantic element, per se.)
Major use of an original(ish) character: "Lillian/Tiger Lily". (Nothing to do with the fairy Tiger Lily, this was published long before that season aired.)
EDIT: 11/21/18. In the effort to get back into the swing of writing/editing, I and have been making some minor edits to this story, mostly for clarity and to edit out some of the redundant bits and making it fit more seamlessly with the canon we got after this story was completed.
"To die will be an awfully big adventure."
-Peter Pan
Chapter One: Ghost Ship
Killian blamed the rum.
Not that it was actually the rum's fault, but he blamed it all the same.
Sure, the rum took the edge off of his midnight walk along Storybrooke's boardwalk as his mind raced with—he still couldn't believe it—that kiss. The rum also blurred in his head the time portal and the Crocodile, Swan in tears, a burning stake, fresh memories of times long past and green eyes bright with new-found hope. But even the rum could not have explained why, sure as sober daylight, the Jolly Roger loomed above the docks, soft candlelight warming the windows of the captain's quarters.
His mind knew this wasn't likely to end well, but his legs, being attached to an idiot, took him toward the ship anyway. He justified his investigation on the basis that obviously the ship shouldn't be there, someone should find out why, and that someone should know where the ship should be, which narrowed down options significantly. That this was yet another impossible thing in a day of impossible things and impossible things tended to involve him courting doom seemed a distant technicality.
Again, probably the rum talking. Or rather, walking.
A blackbird screeched as he stood at the edge of the dock, staring at the stairs up to his former vessel. Good form dictated that he announce himself, no matter how many centuries he'd lived under the Jolly Roger's sails, but then there was the pirate thing. Piracy, he had to underline, was not just a way of life, but a surprisingly effective way of staying alive and his every black-leather-and-red-flag instinct screamed in warning almost as much as they ached with longing to feel her deck under foot again.
Another screech interrupted his thoughts and, before he could decide one way or the other, light and fire flashed around him, a great roar sounded above him, and all thought dissolved into burning heat and his own hoarse howl.