Chasing after an ever-growing trail of ice doesn't leave time for speculation. All Killian can do other than replay Leroy's roaring account of his vess—car freezing is keep his eyes on it, glistening in the sun. It winds down the street and ends at a swinging door. They follow it to an odd assortment of junk, stacks of metallic and wooden objects strewn about like gigantic pieces of litter. Emma's drawn her gun, but he won't draw his sword just yet. A wooden fence encloses the little yard. No other door or gate and no notches or foot holes—they've backed it into a corner and, as useful and versatile his sword may be, close-quarter fighting with no discernible exit didn't feel like the best course of action.
He asserts himself behind Emma, keeping close watch as to the goings-on behind them. For a moment, it strikes him that it could be a ploy of some kind and the real threat lies outside, not in here. Piles after piles of the bric-a-brac and yet nothing stands tall enough to conceal a human being.
Emma stops suddenly, so he peers around her at the ice trail, a dead end with a swirling wind of snow flurries before them. The howling storm condenses into what could be the rocky outline of a giant human, but then it clears away leaving a hunched, gargantuan...snow monster in its wake.
"Well that's a new one," he murmurs. It grinds against the ground as it edges toward them, its growls growing louder.
"We don't want to pick a fight!" she tries with her hands out. The way it tightens its stance, still snarling, he's not sure it cares.
"Swan..."
"I just want to see what it wants," she whispers back to him, steeling herself for a confrontation. The snow monster seems even larger than before, clenching its fist. A sudden roar erupts out of it like a blizzard, blowing both of them to the ground. He lands flat on his back, Swan right on top of him, and the monster's bellows not stopping.
There's barely time for even a quick look at each other. Scrambling to their feet, they take off through the door back onto the street.
It's impossible to not look back, and not to see if they've lost it. The thudding footsteps, biting cold surrounding it, and its roars more than enough evidence that indeed they have not even begun to outrun it. Almost colliding with Leroy and his friend, he takes advantage of the opportunity to catch his breath and look back at the thing tearing it way through the infrastructure.
"Evil snowman!" Leroy announces in his ear-splitting way, and he can't blame the passers-by from starting a frenzy. They scatter in all directions screaming and shrieking. It seems to disinterest the monster, however.
"I think the noise is scaring it," Swan notes, watching it turns its back to all the potential bloodshed and tromp away. "It's headed for the forest."
David's caught up to them and all it takes is one look before the three of them chase after it, again allowing no time to think where it came from, what conjured it. Try, he tells himself, puffing just a little as they speed to an incline on their way into the woods. As far as he had seen, Regina worked in fire...as well as the odd poison here and there, but never ice, and even if she had decided it was the opportune time to change elements, that didn't explain the trail of ice, or the car. Or, for that matter, why it didn't just knock Swan to the ground and do away with her from the beginning. Why all the growling beforehand? No. This wasn't some manifestation of hate. He almost stopped in his tracks at the thought it was actually more akin to fear than anything else.
Almost.
Robin and his men camped in the woods, had since the curse had brought them here. They couldn't be too far from this opening in the foliage. Maybe they could help. Or add to the blind panic sweeping the town. At this point it was a toss-up.
"Why didn't we just drive out here and head it off?" David panted next to him.
"Big yellow Beetle's easier to squash!" she yelled back to her father and thank the gods what looked like tent poles appeared on the horizon. Speeding up to close the gap between himself and the Merry Men, he entered the camp with the rest of them and fought an irrational feeling of resentment at all of them, Marian included, just sitting there oblivious to all that was going on.
"What is it?" Robin springs up, Marian, the boy, and the others quickly following suit. David fumbles for the words.
"Some kind of...snow monster," David blurts with an unsure hand gesturing. Not so ridiculous when it's close to trampling you to death, he thinks, but Robin's promise of assistance is drowned out by crunching debris in the distance, hundreds of leaves crackling and twigs snapping under one footstep.
"It's getting closer. It's coming from the North." Precious little it does them, the monster stomping around into view.
"There!" The one who had been bitten by the flying monkeys fires an arrow despite Swan's protestations into the monster's shoulder, affecting it no more than any of them would be by swatting away a gnat.
"It only attacks when it feels threatened," he adds. Rather useless information now, he thinks. It already feels threatened and here they all are gathered in a row with weapons of every kind pointed right at it. "Pistol, sword, hook, my cunning wit—I don't think we have what it takes."
"Emma does," David breathes looking over at her. Of course.
"What?"
"Your magic, love."
"Right," she says with a sharp inhale. She looks down at her hands, a brief flash of fear in her eyes.
"You can do this," he says. The fear thaws into puzzlement, as if she's pondering how she'll dispatch it, and then a decisive head snap to meet the monster's eyes before her hands send out a blinding white disc of light that hurtles into it. It stops mid-step, addled, her naming it Frosty reassuring. They ought to try speaking to it now, but without warning, spikes shoot out of its back, thick icicles that match the smaller, but just as sharp, fangs protruding from its mouth.
"Really?" she cries out, from using her magic or the situation, he doesn't know, but he hopes it's the latter since another blast could at the very least buy them time.
A deafening roar overpowers him, the back of his head somehow the first thing hitting the cold hard ground. He sees nothing but swirling blackness at first, body fighting to not go completely unconscious.
It's not working...
It's a sudden quiet that jerks him out of whatever limbo his mind had been in...muffled voices, the soft scraping sounds of people staggering to their feet. His eyes flutter as he wakes with a shiver, remembering the cold burst of the monster...it's gigantic craggy paw hurling into Emma...
His head jolts up, looking for her, not breathing until he finds her heaving herself off the ground like everyone else.
"Maybe you're not a monster." It's Marian's voice. That much registers with him as he rubs the back of his head and takes in the sight of Regina and the lack of monster. It doesn't take deep philosophical conjecture to figure out what's happened; perhaps it would be prudent to give Regina the benefit of the doubt in the future. They spend the day searching for her and she turns up only to save their lives.
"Maybe I'm not," Regina murmurs, as if she too is rearranging her view of herself. "Welcome to Storybrooke, Marian." She gazes over at Robin with a twinge of longing breaking through the composure and, with her head high, he might add, she heads for the edge of the woods.
Emma hesitates for only a fraction of a second until her body pushes her forward.
"Regina, we've been trying to find you. We need to talk about-"
With a wave of her hands, nothing is left of Regina but a whirl of purple smoke.
A few wry remarks from David concerning the paperwork protocol in regards to ice monsters falls on only polite ears, Swan barely smiling and not bantering back. He leaves the Merry Men standing around in their confusion and follows her to where the monster had stood, a few chunks of powdery snow its only remains. She stoops down and gathers some of it, rolling it around in her palms before tossing it into the tree trunks. Even with only her profile in view, he can tell she's tucked her lips into her mouth, brow's furrowed, stance and posture harried—perhaps in need of some levity. He creeps up as soundlessly as he can until he's only a few feet from her.
"So, crisis averted," he announces to a face just as frustrated as before, but not entirely without amusement. Her little snort of laughter he takes as a sign she wants to let go of whatever thoughts were running through her head but questioned if that was a good idea.
"Now you want to go home and see what's on Netflix?" Tone, a bit sarcastic. Context, not a bloody clue.
"I don't know what that is, but sure!" He doesn't care that he's shuffling around, too many ideas requiring his concentration. Possibility wasn't something Killian Jones normally bothered with when it came to the day-to-day, but he has half a mind to ask her to hop on a boat with him and spend the day on the water and half a mind to start slowly and see about sharing a drink first before they tackle this Netflix.
She chuckles a bit at his reaction. "Killian, someone created that snowman. This isn't over."
"It never is." Gods, even after time traveling yesterday if someone had said he'd be running from the snowman from hell he'd have questioned their sobriety. But bloody hell, they were alone together, in a forest that was actually quite pretty when it didn't harbor a slew of threatening creatures, and the sun was shining and she's never more beautiful than when she's just laughed. She always looks so surprised after she's done so, completely in awe there was a reason to laugh in the first place. "All the more reason to enjoy the quiet moments, and right now..." He tugged on the hem of her jacket, not stopping until they were inches apart. "We have a quiet moment."
"I know," she whispers, pulling free just as her thin smile and quick glance at his lips had just convinced him she wouldn't. "I just got to do something."
Patience. Aye, but patience at what cost?
"Right. Of course. Go ahead." He shuffles and gestures, nerves revealing themselves through the frustration, and yet, a little voice in him keeps reassuring him it's all right to be frustrated this time. She's not going to give him that look of horror. She's not going to walk away. Liberated, with only a slight inhale, he lets himself continue. "Don't tell me you're not avoiding me anymore because I'm actually quite perceptive and this? This is avoiding me."
And sure enough, she isn't walking away. There's in fact an almost sheepish smile on her face as she stares at the ground to form her words.
"I know. I know I am. I just feel..." she trails off, but starts over again. "Right now I just feel too guilty."
"Over Regina?"
"She lost someone she really cares for because of me."
It's out of her mouth a little too quickly, her eyes averting contact just a little too much. Cocking his head, he apologizes to her in his head for needing to read her face, but he has too little to go on now. It doesn't matter, though. He can read her with such lightning speed by now it takes a fraction of a second to see there is something else she's not ready to discuss.
"No, there's more to this than just Regina, isn't there?" After all this time, the fact that some barrier still remains between himself and her trust is crushing, like a slow hard punch to the gut. Not trusting him enough—he didn't know what else it could be. She didn't trust him enough to talk about it with him and she didn't trust him enough to be, to be in whatever they are in.
She gives him a hesitant look, edging just a little closer to him until their lips touch, the softest brush that lingers just long enough for him to close his eyes.
"Be patient," she says, licking her lips after she's pulled away, a bit reluctantly, he notes.
"I have all the time in the world," he says to himself, watching her go. "Unless another monster appears and kills me."
He spends the afternoon at Granny's, in his room, showered and eyeing the folded stack of clothing Granny placed on the corner of the bed.
"What's all this?" he'd asked when he'd bustled up the stairs and was just about to place the key in the lock.
"Lounge pants and a t-shirt," she'd said in a curt, frank way, jostling the blue checked-patterned trousers that just looked like a loose fit with a matching blue shirt on top of them. "They've been in the Lost and Found a little too long. Don't worry. They're washed."
"Where were they before here?" he'd inquired out loud, pinching some of the fabric between his fingers. It was so cottony it felt as though he could peel off a layer of it.
"Judging from how long they've been here, that's more a question for Ruby," she'd scoffed, and then, with a tilt of her head, she widened her eyes. "Look, I don't know what you were sleeping in before and I don't want to know. It's for helping get rid of that damn witch and I won't take no for an answer."
So that was how they wound up on the foot of his bed, a folded-up square of masculinity amid the pink fluffy quilts and the floral wallpaper. With his arms behind his head, he sinks deeper into the comforter and guesses at a price on the "space heater" on the television.
He'd given up on taking notes on the, the "filmed" play that was on; how else would he have been able to pay attention? It seemed too good to be a true, a play that seemed intended for someone like him, new to this world. An announcer described an object, half of which Killian had never heard names for before, and then four people placed bids on how much the object cost. Incredible. In the span of an hour, he could learn what iPods did, who made them, and how much money they were. He could do without all the garish interior color schemes and flashing lights, not to mention the obnoxious "Come on down!" every time someone new needed to run down to the bidding row, but the sleek black cars and motorcycles made up for it.
His new phone buzzes in the pocket of his coat, strewn over the chest of drawers. Rolling onto his side, he stretches out for it and sees Emma's name on the little screen. Ingenious device. He's about to bring it to his ear and listen to her, when he finds words on the screen instead.
Regina still doing the silent treatment. Have to help with the baby. Later. E.
If she thinks the four, now five of them can settle back into that crammed apartment without losing their minds, she has even more tolerance than even he'd credited her with. He sees the button to push to be able to reply to her message, but the blank screen that appears with some little line flashing on and off threatens his confidence. He cancels the whole thing and follows Henry's directions from earlier, holding his breath until he hears the ringing sound that heralds he has learned how to make a phone call on this thing.
"This is Emma. Leave a message."
Voicemail! He remembered that term well enough.
"You know, love, if you'd much rather hear your own screaming than that of your brother's, I can arrange that." With a grin, he places his phone back on top of his coat and shifts his head on the pillow, closing his eyes.
He awakens to pitch blackness, not even the red little digits on the clock breaking the darkness. Sitting up, he runs his fingers through his hair and lets out a chuckle that however Swan does it, he can't recreate it. Her fingertips grazing his scalp, sifting through his hair, might just be the most rejuvenating thing in creation. That thought prompts him to swing his legs over and reach blindly in the dark for his phone to see if she left a message, knowing full well she didn't or else he'd have heard it.
One new message.
Ah. So the buzzing indicates a message, not a call. He'll have to listen for it from now on. He notes the time before he selects the message, only nine o'clock and no blurred street lights from behind the curtains.
New power outage is enough to make me scream for now, thanks.
It rings the second his face breaks out into a grin.
"Hello, love."
"Hey, well, as you can tell, nobody's got any electricity," she groans.
"I'm sure it reminds them all of their homeland that way." A quiet laugh responds.
"Dad and I are going to check out the power lines. Uh, the things that run along the road...that's a terrible way to describe that. Where are you?"
"Upstairs at Granny's," he says, his eyebrow rising. Standing up, he pulls back the curtains and pokes his fingers through the blinds to peer out the window. A full moon illuminates the night rather than the street lights and shop windows, fortuitous for starlight, but not much else. Squinting, he looks beyond the buildings toward the horizon. He can make out something shimmery, and stark white compared to the rest of the night. It reminds him of mountain peaks in the distance.
"I was just there," she huffs. "Still there?"
"What's the white substance due east of here?" he asks. He doesn't even recall hills, much less anything else. Scrambling for his boots and coat, he throws them on and almost leaps out the door. Taking the stairs two at a time, he weaves around the tables to the back of the diner and outside.
"What do you mean—what the hell?" he hears her breathe into the phone. "You're seeing this, too?"
"Hold on." He crosses the vacant black streets with only the scent of saltwater to guide him toward the harbor. It isn't long before he can hear the water smacking the hulls of the boats, the wind whistling down the sails. Their flapping could as easily be gulls or ghosts in this darkness, the only thing louder the creaking vessels rocking on the waves. He picks up a lantern hanging on the boathouse and holds it out in front of him. Sometimes old-fashioned is the way to go, he thinks, smirking at the undefeated candle inside it.
Out a half mile or so from shore stands an endless wall of ice, jagged towers of blue and white jut out from the crystalline surface.
"It appears to be a wall," he offers up. So helpful...
"Yeah, I'm looking at it now," she says. "I'm going to follow it down to the town line."
"You think that's where it started?"
"No, but that always seems to be the starting point for all this shit. Why don't you follow it on your end and meet us up there?"
"Sure thing," he says before ending the call. So much for Netflix, whatever that is, he thinks, stepping over a few discarded planks of woods, their nails catching the lantern light. He knows it's not flicking nets, that that's just what it sounds like, but he'd have been more game for that than this second act of some showoff's ice abilities.
A/N: Coming up? The sad sound of a hook chipping away at a block of ice.