Killian Jones is taken to the Underworld but refuses to take it lying down, much to the annoyance of Hades and company. I decided to do a lighter take on the combination of spoilers and wild mass guessing regarding 5B. Happy Halloween everybody!
The ferryman is not easily surprised. He has done his grim duty for longer than living memory and has seen everything death has to show him. But the former pirate seated at the back of the boat is surprising.
"Can we turn back now? I paid the price and went with you willingly. Any chance we can forget the whole thing? Please. I need to live. I made a promise to someone that I would."
"I do not simply forget my duty, child. I have heard every argument, every plea and I am unswayed. I have carried out my task from long before you were a twinkle in your father's eye and will continue long after those who remember you are dust."
"How long?" the man asks.
"For two hundred years I have ferried souls claimed by magic."
"Aye. I suppose you believe I should respect or possibly even obey my elders?"
"That is the idea."
"Good. Then you can go ahead and turn the boat around, Lad, because I admit I look young for my age but I have been captain before the mast of the Jolly Roger for some three hundred years. Captain Killian Jones at your service."
As the man bows, he takes the chance to slip his hook beneath the Ferryman's throat. "Now, I haven't been a pirate for a while now, but as I said, I made a promise to someone."
"Many others have tried to sway me with the same tale. You made a promise to your lover and you believe, contrary to all evidence and all precedent, that yours is somehow stronger than death."
"As happy as I would normally be to talk about her, you will have excuse me if I am not entirely keen to discuss people I love with a Ferryman of lost souls. I'm commandeering this vessel. And shouldn't you have more pressing concerns than my motives?" he asks, pressing the hook a little more firmly against the Ferryman's throat.
"I have very few concerns now. I can tell the sort of man you are. You need to rage against the dying of the light or similar. Get it out of your system by trying to kill me. It will not work and we can stop this nonsense."
That was when the pirate did something unexpected. He slashed at the Ferryman's throat as expected but then he jumped overboard. No one, not once in two hundred years, had ever jumped out of his boat. No one thought it reasonable to attempt to travel the waters between the realms without the boat's protection. But Killian Jones dove overboard like it was a reasonable thing to do. The Ferryman sighed, something he'd had no cause to do in a long time, and pulled the boat around to pick up his wayward passenger.
This repeated for most of the trip, punctuated by occasional attempts to seize the boat by main force. Doing the same repetitive and somber task for centuries had given him a remarkable stoicism but this was beginning to annoy him.
"Have you ever been in love?" his passenger asked, dripping wet after another unsuccessful foray into the dark waves.
"I have taken many lovers down this way. You cannot sway me with tales of sweet and sad love. However true your love, it cannot reach you here."
"That wasn't my question. Have you ever been in love?"
The Ferryman sighed again and gazed out over the water. "Yes," he said finally. "But that was a long time ago."
"Tell me about her?"
"She was wild and beautiful as the sea…"
And Killian Jones pushed him overboard. If it weren't for the magic binding him to his boat and to his task he would have been entirely left in the wake of his own boat. As it was he was able to whisk himself onboard the boat again with a mere thought.
"Do I have to tie you up?" the Ferryman asked.
"You could try," the man said with a shrug. "But one handed pirates are ridiculously difficult to tie up because I am good with knots and you can't tie my hands together."
He tried mutiny again, tried to hit the Ferryman with an oar. However, the Ferryman was good at his job and mostly immortal, which put the technically mortal pirate at something of a disadvantage in a fight, leaving the pirate bruised but not deterred.
He jumped off the boat again.
"Really?!" the Ferryman objected as he swung the boat around again to pick up his wayward passenger. Departed souls did not feel things as deeply as the living and in two hundred years this was the first person he wanted to yell at. Or possibly re-kill.
By the time they reach the shores of the Underworld they were both soaking wet and pettily refusing to speak to each other. The pirate was fairly bruised but not badly injured from several mutiny attempts and had to be exhausted from all that swimming.
"You're late," Hades said calmly.
"My apologies, My Lord," the Ferryman said with a bow. "This one proved more difficult than anticipated."
"I can see that." He smiled. He didn't get the caliber of guests he once did and sometimes the greatest heroes are the most resistant to their fate. He admired that to a point, and all accepted it in the end.
"You're in charge here?" the man said.
He could feel Persephone's presence in the room even as she stood behind him, bringing warmth and life to the chilly dock.
"I am Hades. This is my wife Persephone. We rule the Underworld."
"We don't get many heroes here these days," she said with a warm smile.
"Killian Jones. And my apologies, but I can't take you up on your hospitality. I have somewhere to be."
"Somewhere to be?" Hades asked, raising him eyebrow. "Someone who preceded you in death?"
"No. Someone to live for."
"I'm sorry," Persephone said gently. "The most you can have here is the hope of being reunited in death."
"I'm not giving up. And she'll come for me if I don't escape."
"That has only happened a few times ever," Hades said. "And it never ends well. Find a way to be happy here. You are an honored guest because you died a heroes death."
"I didn't actually die," the man objected. "And, not being dead, I don't belong in the Underworld."
"A technicality," Hades said with a wave of his hand.
"That's a pretty important technicality," he objected. "Even the Crocodile would have respected that sort of technicality."
Hades smiled. "See him to his new quarters directly," he commanded one of the lost souls standing guard. "Get him some dry clothes. After that you are invited to dine with my wife and I," he added to his new guest. "As she said, we do not get many heroes here these days."
"M'Lord," one of the guards said, hurrying in to the dining hall. "The new guest attacked the guards and is trying to fight his way to the surface.
Persephone moved to rise but he waved a hand. "Don't worry about it, my dear. I'll see to this directly. Perhaps you can calm him down over dinner."
"He might not come to dinner if I don't calm him down," she replied reasonably, standing and following her husband down the hall toward the escaping hero.
They man was outnumbered and severely outmatched. He had skills, that could not be in doubt, and he wasn't letting a petty detail like the fact that he was armed only with his hook and an actual arm he stole from a living skeleton and was battling at least a dozen guards stop him.
"Enough," Persephone said, her voice was soft but it carried through the hall. The guards and the pirate stopped. She stepped over to them, kneeling in from of the pirate and wiping away the blood on his face gently with her sleeve. "I admire a love that won't give up," she says softly.
"Then come with me," he said. "You're still alive too, aren't you? We can work together, help each other escape."
"That's sweet, but I chose my life here." She looked over her shoulder at where her mildly annoyed husband waited for her to calm the prisoner. "I chose love, just as you are. I knew that those who eat food in the Underworld are forever bound here and I chose that willingly."
The man smiled. "Did you mean to warn me of that, M'Lady?" he asked.
She smiled. "Like I said, I admire love that won't give up. But perhaps, while not giving up, you could try to not antagonize the skeleton guards." She wiped more blood from his lip. "It's not a bad place to live, especially for a hero."
"Not sure I qualify for that," he said.
"You gave your life to save the woman you love. What else would you be?"
"You aren't hungry?" Hades asked. Technically no one needs to eat in the Underworld, but old habits of life tend to linger, and it is one of the few pleasures of the flesh available to the spirits trapped here.
The man glanced at Persephone. "I know a thing or two about the Underworld. No thank you."
Hades heaved a longsuffering sigh and looked over at his wife. "And are you responsible for this knowledge, My Dear?"
"You know how much I love young love. And old love too," she said with a smile. "Don't tell me you've forgotten the wonders of star-crossed love?"
"There are no stars down here," Hades insists, but smiles. "Still, you shouldn't give the man false hope and… where is he?"
"I don't know. Don't we have guards for that?"
"Cerberus!"
His over-excitable three headed dog bounded into the hall, one head barking, the other two panting. One of the heads decided to go for the roast on the table until Persephone taped him on the nose. "Help me track down our guest."
Killian Jones hadn't gotten very far. He was trying to convince the guards that he had a pass from Hades himself to leave the premises. He might have gotten further but skeletal guards have small vocabularies and he was having to explain the word premises.
"That was your one hundredth escape attempt," Hades said, exasperated.
"Not counting trying to flee from the Ferryman," Persephone added.
"Not counting that," Hades agrees. "And you have been here for barely more than week."
"Sooner or later one might work," the man said with a shrug.
"No. It won't."
"Forgive me if I'd rather not take your word for it."
Hades sighed. "If your old life torments you so, consider drinking of the river Lethe. It's waters wash away memories of your old life, allow you to embrace eternity."
"Forget Emma and accept being trapped here forever? Not a chance in… well… you know," he waved a hand around. "If it bothers you so much you could just let me go."
"It doesn't work that way. You are meant to be here and here you will remain."
"We'll see," the man said with an infuriating confidence.
The former pirate decided to try a different tactic the next day. Oh, sure, he still tried to pick the locks on the gate and tried to assemble a skeletal army of his own out of the disassembled parts of some of Hades' skeletal guards, but he also spent the day accepting Hades and Persephone's hospitality and feeding scraps to Cerberus under the table. He even played fetch with the dog after dinner. It wasn't until Killian Jones tried to convince the dog to play fetch with the bony legs of the skeletal guards that Hades realized he shouldn't have let the obstinate former pirate bond with his guard dog.
"My lord," one of the guardians said, stepping into the room. "There appears to be…" he hesitated for a moment, trying to recall a word he had not had occasion to use in death. "The pirate started a riot, sir."
Hades threw his hands into the air in frustration. "I offer the man all the luxuries available to a hero in my realm," he fumes. "I offer him a choice of whether to keep his memories and all the joys and torments that go with them, or to enjoy the oblivion of Lethe's waters. I put up with him trying to turn my wife, my hound, and my guards against me. I listen to him complain about not being able to return and petition every single day to be returned. Thus far I haven't even punished him from his relentless escape attempts. And now he starts a riot?"
"My liege, a ship approaches," one of the guards said, interrupting Hades and Persephone's dinner.
"Like a sailing ship?" Hades asked. "They can't sail here."
"I am aware, Your Majesties. "That is why I came directly to you."
"You know who is, right?" Persephone asked.
"No, but I intend to find out."
"It's Emma Swan," she said. "Of course it is."
"It might be, at that," Hades agreed. He smiled. "I hope you're right."
They waited together on the shore for the blonde woman at the helm to jump down, a sword in one hand, a gun in the other, magic gathered around her like a cloak.
"My name is Emma Swan and I am here for Killian Jones. I'm the Savior and the sheriff, the product of True Love and the former Dark One so I have eery kind of power and my disposal and will use any I need to. Be warned I don't intend to take 'no' for answer."
Hades sighed. "I do not intend to give you 'no' for an answer. You must be his true love."
"His…? I don't think I mentioned who he is to me."
"No, but he does."
"Frequently," Persephone agreed with a roll of her eyes. "I admire determined love," she said, linking her arm with her husband. "But his escape attempts are getting ridiculous. We don't always get him back to his room before he makes a break for it again. He's been here long enough he shouldn't be trying to escape that often. It's been what, three months?"
"Three month, one week, and five and a half days," Emma said in a carefully neutral tone, with the manner of someone who could probably tell the time down to at least the minute if anyone asked.
Hades nodded in agreement. "Bring Jones here," he directed one of the lost souls guarding the place.
"You will let me leave with him?" Emma asked.
"Young lady, I have watched over the Underworld for longer than you can even comprehend, and played host to heroes and to villains and to monster, the litany of their offenses would chill your blood, but Killian Jones is the only one I have ever wanted to see the last of. Letting you leave is the least I can do for you if you will get that menace out of my kingdom."
"Sir, he isn't in his quarters."
"Of course he's not." Hades sighed again. "He's probably trying to escape again. See what I have to contend with? We tried getting him to drink from the waters of Lethe to make him forget that he has anywhere else to be but someone had to go and tell him not to eat or drink anything. Come on Cerberus, let's go find him."
Killian Jones and Emma Swan ran toward each other down the beach of the underworld. He swept her up in his arms and gave her a kiss that was really pushing the bounds of decency given that they were in public, or possibly it was simply that so few people were that fully alive down here.
"Aren't you glad we didn't give him the waters of Lethe and he didn't eat the food of the underworld?" Persephone asked her husband quietly.
"Well," he hedged. Being a romantic at heart would be bad for his reputation.
"With your permission," Emma said, "we should probably set sail for our world." She had her arm linked firmly to Killian's, like both of them were afraid to let go and lose each other again.
"Yes, yes of course. And you," he said, pointing a thin finger at Killian. "Don't come back until it's both of you. Just you is far too much work."
"I'll do my best," he promised. "Both for your hospitality and of allowing your hospitality to come to an end." He gave them both a bow and boarded the ship with his rescuer.
Hades and Persephone stood arm in arm on the shore of the Underworld, watching the ship sail away.
"Good riddance," Hades said with feeling.
"I've never seen you let anyone go before," Persephone said with a smile. "You're a romantic."
"Of course not, my dear, but one man is just not worth all that effort until it's both of them here. After all, I have an entire Underworld to run. "