To say Hell is not what she expected is a bit of an understatement.
She supposes after nearly three years of Camelot, Neverland, Oz, and the whole freaking bippity boppity Enchanted Forest, Emma Swan should be used to this.
But no—every damn time they traipse off into a new land it always throws her for a loop. Finding out that Peter Pan is a suppressed sociopath, wondering if Rumplestiltskin planned an elaborate curse in lieu of shopping for moisturizer, realizing King Arthur is the biggest dillhole to cross her path since her bailbonds days—
Just once, she would like one thing to go at least marginally according to plan.
But as the smoke clears and as she takes her first tentative step off the ferryman's barge, all she can do is curse becauseof fucking course.
She's already established with herself that she should've known better, but Hell—or the Underworld, sorry—was one of those places she'd been a bit more confident in. It's not like she was expecting the valley of the shadow of death to literally be, say, Death Valley, but she did have some idea of what it might be like.
Underground, for one thing.
Maybe some fire pits. Lots of people in chains, or at least maybe drunk. Maybe Hell was just one long party.
She whips around, narrowly stopping herself from jabbing her finger in Gold's face.
"What the hell is this?" She hisses, only growing more furious when his lips lift at her inadvertent pun; it's a quiet, mocking thing. She wants to punch it off.
"The Underworld, dearie," he replies, clearly nonplussed.
She looks around, and as the others step forward, she's pretty sure she hears her mother gasp. "This is a trick," Emma seethes. "You took us in a giant cosmic circle!"
"Afraid not," Gold smirks, pushing past her to step out onto the dock. "This is the Underworld."
"This is…Storybrooke," Regina says from behind, her voice flat and unamused.
"Ah," Gold simpers, holding up a lone, silencing finger. He leads them away from the docks, towards the main square. "No. The Underworld is…like a mirror. It reflects wherever you enter it from."
Emma shivers. She senses the magic here and doesn't like it, doesn't like it one bit. Something feels very familiar—besides the obvious—something in the air. It's heavy and smokey and foggy and—
Everyone falls quiet the closer they get to the center of town. It's, quite frankly, a wreck. The clocktower is wedged between the road like someone big casually just pushed it off the library, every single car on the street looks like it was freshly delivered from being wrapped around a tree, and and several street lamps are flickering ominously, just teetering on a burnt bulb.
"This is awful," Mary Margaret says quietly, looking around.
This is psychological, Emma thinks, frowning.
"Alright, let's quit wasting time. We're just here to get your pirate boyfriend back and then get the hell out of here," Regina snaps, sneering at the fallen clocktower.
They decide to split up. Regina looks chagrined, but agrees to stay with Gold and make sure he doesn't ditch them in the Underworld. Robin goes with them in the direction of the pawnshop (if the Underworld is indeed the same layout as Storybrooke). Her parents take Henry towards Granny's, and Emma…well, Emma heads straight to her house.
She doesn't really expect it will be so easy to find him, but as the night air whistles around her exposed skin, she feels charged, her mind clear.
She will find him.
.
There is a light on in the house. It's the tallest room, up in the turret, the one Emma had thought might make a nice…well, it doesn't matter what she thought.
What matters now is that someone is in her—their—house and she can't stop herself from hoping.
She marches up the steps, and chances a look around. All of her roses are there (pink, Middlemist roses she'd magically regrown around the fences not five minutes after returning from saying goodbye to Killian and coming home to an empty house), but here, they're wilted, cracked and dried.
The house looks…well, it looks a bit decrepit, as everything does in this town. The porch has a hole in the floorboards, there's a splinter in the front window, and the paint is chipped to the degree that she could tear off whole handfuls, if she wished it.
She wants to cry, but before she lets herself, she reaches out and rings the doorbell.
For a moment, the house remains quiet. And then she hears a shuffling and thumping of feet coming down the stairs.
"Now's not really the time, Li—" Killian says as the door swings open, blinking at her, "—am. You're not Liam."
Emma feels like her heart is about to fall straight through her ribs into her stomach.
She lets out the breath she didn't know she was holding as all the air feels it leaves her lungs. She immediately knows something is off, but she's so distracted by the man she loves standing in their foyer as if nothing has happened at all that she pushes past it.
He's here, he's alive, he's standing right in front of her. Something sparks in his eyes that she doesn't have time to place, something that will come back to gnaw at her.
"Killian," she breathes, moving forward to embrace him.
He reaches out to stop her, and she's rushed with pain, fear, and deja vu. And then, accompanied by the shattering of her heart, "Whoa, lass—sorry, do I know you?"
.
He doesn't remember.
He doesn't remember her.
He knows his brother, his brother is here? He obviously must have some of his memories back, but to what degree? Emma's mind races with anxiety as she runs through the worse possible scenarios her sick sense of humor can come up with.
She almost wants to crumple into a ball on their porch at the realization he has know idea who she is, but she's come so far, she's lost him before, and she refuses to give up that easy.
"No," she says, steeling herself. "But I know you." His eyes gleam with interest, and then suspicion, and she realizes she may have to approach this from a different tactic. "Or, um, I know this house. I…used to live here."
"Hm. I've lived here as long as I can remember, love." He frowns, hesitating, deliberating whether or not he believes her. For a moment, she thinks he'll shut the door in her face. She would. She has.
Instead, his curiosity wins out and he steps backwards, gesturing with his hand for her to enter. He closes the door behind her, eyes still narrowed.
As long as I can remember.
It clicks.
The heavy, fog-like magic she'd sensed immediately, the fact that he can't remember her— "Oh my god," she whispers, realizing a moment later she's said that out loud. He glances at her curiously but brushes past her all the same, leading them into the kitchen.
The interior sends a chill straight through her. This house is not their home.
Their once new appliances and comfy furniture has been replaced by old, lumpy looking things, the oven looks like it was spat out of a volcano, and the walls are stripped completely bare.
She thinks of him, alone in that tiny turret room, the one barely big enough for a twin bed. Is he sleeping in there? Has he been cursed to spend the rest of his eternity stuck in this giant, empty house with no one to share it with? Was that the fate he'd been left to?
Anger surges through her at the idea, at the fact that this man died a hero, sacrificed himself for her, loved her more than all the power in the world—all so that he could spend forever alone in the house he picked for a woman he would never remember? What kind of sick fate is that? What kind of place is this?
Another possibility strikes through her: does he even know he's in purgatory?
Is this how the Underworld works? It steals your memories and your soul, keeping everything you loved and left behind locked away, never letting you move on? Is that why Regina's curse was so awful, because it mimicked this?
Her thoughts are rattled by the sound of him in the kitchen, preparing some tea. "All the same, it's not often I get visitors who aren't my brother. Why don't you have a seat?"
She hates this so much, hates that this was almost his eternity, hates that he has had to spend any time here at all, that she's initially too distracted to absorb what he's saying. Dazedly, she sinks into a kitchen chair, immediately trying to figure out how she'll fix this.
Her body relaxes the instant he slides in across from her, passing her a steaming mug of tea. He raises it to his lips, blowing gently. "I never got your name."
She smiles, her first…since, well, since. "Emma," she says, finding her voice at a whisper. She pauses, waiting to see if it raises any recollection in him. He just blinks. "Emma Swan."
He hums gently, batting at a smile. If this curse of the Underworld is anything like Regina's curse in Storybrooke, then the man in front of her should be nothing like her Killian. And she sees this as much, in the way that his eyes dart down and around, the way he fidgets. He's…shy, here. And not bumbling like the deckhand she met in the storybook—he's just quiet and sad. Haunted.
His face looks hollow and drawn out, but as he raises his gaze to meet hers, something gleams in his eyes. It's not recognition, but it is something.
He loved her once, atop a beanstalk.
He loved her twice, inside a book.
He loved her thrice, amongst the darkness.
He will love her again, against all odds. She believes it. She has to believe it.
"Well then. What can I do for you, Emma Swan?"
.
.