Here we go, ladies and gents! Less than a week before "Once" returns for season four, and I had one more idea in my head that I just had to try to get out. I'm sure the show won't really take things this way, but I couldn't get how heart wrenching and dramatic it would be out of my mind, so I had to give this a shot. I actually hope they don't take things this direction, because it would be almost too painful to watch, though it would provide huge character developments for Emma.
There will probably only be three parts total, and this first one is fairly short. I'll try to get it all posted before Sunday's premiere, though I'm not sure how many are going to be that concerned one way or another. I've not gotten a whole lot of feedback on my last few stories, but hopefully someone will enjoy this. Let me know what you think of it!
I still don't own them; I definitely wouldn't have to wait nearly four months to see them if I did!
"Cold as Stone"
By: TutorGirlml
i.
She should have known something was wrong the first time he didn't answer her call.
True, he was a one-handed, 300-year-old pirate to whom cellular technology was quite the foreign concept, more than a bit tricky to master, and strangely off-putting for one so fond of hearing his own voice – Emma Swan smirked to herself at that one – but Henry had gladly taken to showing him how the "blasted contraption", as Killian referred to it, was operated and the many things it could do. When Captain Hook had finally cottoned on to the fact that he could speak to her – and ask her questions, annoy her, lob unending innuendos at her – even when they were apart, his protests against his own cell phone had ceased.
Since then, he had never failed to answer the phone for her calls – often before it could even reach a second ring. The fact that she had called him half a dozen times in the last three hours with no response or call back, and that David hadn't seen him either, was not lost on Emma. She hated that she had tried him so many times, that she was frantic to find him, and that the panic was churning in her stomach as she slammed back out of Granny's – the last in her line of Killian's haunts where he was nowhere to be found. She did not want to be that needy type of girl that she had always despised. Yet she couldn't let it go. At that point, she sensed something wrong – simply felt it in the same way that one senses she is being snuck up on from behind or that a storm is coming even before the first rumble of thunder.
The brisk bite to the air as she plowed down the street again only worsened the chill of foreboding in her gut. It might have been autumn in New England, but it was downright icy, and much too cold for September. She tried to bury her chin into the collar of her coat and think of another place to look for her erstwhile pirate, when right up ahead of her on the street, Killian Jones himself strolled around the corner of the building – leisurely, unconcerned – and not at all appearing to look for her.
Emma stormed toward him, feeling as though there might be actual steam pouring from her ears. She was so ridiculously worried about him – thinking some new baddie had come out of the woodwork and taken him as their first victim, that he had electrocuted himself by getting his hook caught in the toaster, or that he had been hurt, or lost… She wanted to smack him upside the head for making her so crazy, or handcuff him to her so he couldn't disappear on her again. It would serve him right for standing there looking so smug, so unfairly gorgeous, and as if he had not a care in the world.
"Something I can do for you, Lass?" he asked blithely, a devilish smirk quirking his lips. "You're staring."
It was only then that Emma realized there was something strangely off about her sailor. His voice and manner were as effortlessly flirtatious as ever, but the light in his smile was absent. The love and concern behind the play, the things that made him her Killian as well as the consummate pirate rogue, were somehow missing. While his ocean eyes usually reminded her of flames hot enough to burn blue, now they were crystalline shards of ice. A stranger was looking back at her from behind them. Emma's breath caught, and she stumbled backward as if she had been struck in the chest.
He looked at her with puzzled curiosity, but not the immediate desire to help or make it better that she had finally come to depend on from him. This was her Killian…and yet, it was not him at all. "Should I know you, Darling?" he said harmlessly. "You look as though you've seen a ghost."
And that did it; she shook her head blindly as tears began to fall, already freezing on her cheeks in the cold, as she pressed her hand against her mouth to hold back the cry of anguish.
Yes, she should have known something was wrong, but how could she have imagined this? Her True Love was standing right in front of her…but he no longer knew her at all.