Freya leans into the scrubbing motion in a futile attempt to get all of the sticky beer off the bar's gritty surface. When the bell chimes announcing a visitor she starts to tell them their closed, but then looks up and smiles at the unexpected guest.
"Killian! I thought you were having an early night?"
She watches his smile – normally so easy, but there's something rigid about it tonight. Sliding seductively out from behind the counter she swings her hair back and saunters over to the love of her life. Determined to banish the nagging of her intuition she reaches her hand into his black hair and pulls his mouth to hers. Rigid. Damn.
"Babe, what's the matter with you? You've been off ever since Dash got arrested." He doesn't answer, but his eyes flash so she figures she's on the right track. "This isn't your fault, babe. He turned dark before any of us knew better, and now he's better off where he is – we're all safer without him around, Killian."
He clears his throat as if to adjust his voice, "so you're glad he got caught? You're better off – happier – without Dash around."
Freya smiles and swings around to head back towards the bar. "Of course. Aren't you? It's not like he never tried to hurt you – us." Only a hollow silence comes in answer, and then a searing pain in her spine. Screaming she contorts backwards and crumples to the floor. "Killian – what – are you –?" She doesn't get to finish her question.
The next pain is even sharper, and the man who looks like the Killian she loves comes to lean over her. The closer he gets the more she knows something is wrong – something in his aura that doesn't make sense. Wendy would know if she were here. "Stop, please," she sobs before the third pain takes her breath away. It's like a thousand little needles drilling into the nerves along her spine, and each time they go deeper until she can't see for the pain.
"That's it Freya – beg. You used to beg me not to stop; you used to love me; you left me for my brother! But now you are mine." He sends another pain with a few whispered words when she tries to muster the energy to fight back. "I am going to make you suffer for every day since you walked out on our wedding. And then I am going to kill you. I am going to kill you and then Killian will know how it feels to lose you forever."
"Dash? Where's Killian?" Freya focuses on her own energy, but Dash or whoever he is beats her down again and again until she can't fight for consciousness let alone muster any magic. Blackness over comes her just as a loud bang echoes through the bar.
Joanna blanches to see Dash looming over Freya's limp body, and her grief sends a powerful wave of magic through the bar with a bang. Killian's face with Dash's hard eyes jolts up at the disturbance and he turns to face them. Those same eyes go soft for a flicker of a second when Ingrid runs in behind her mother, but not for long. Driven by long fermented hate he can only focus on ending the woman he blames for his decline. Every part of it he blames on the unconscious Freya Beauchamp. He turns back to her and prepares for the final round of pain, and he binds Joanna to the wall with the help of the power he has been sucking from Freya. Only Ingrid stands dismissed as non-threatening. Slowly, she creeps up on her old lover and raises her shaking hands. The red head almost looses her nerve when her fingertips brush her stomach, but then Freya lets out a soft groan and Dash prepares to make it her last. Ingrid Beauchamp knows the curse from her books, but a death curse always sounds worse when you say it with intent. She recoils at the taste of the bitter words on her tongue, but the deed is done. Killian's body goes limp, and Dash's eyes go glassy as he topples over onto Freya's still limp form. Released from the dead man's hold Joanna runs to her youngest daughter and pushes him aside to take Freya in her arms. Ingrid, though, can't help the trickle of salty tears that make trails down her face as she leans down to kiss Dash one last time. And then he wakes up. All the fairytales of her childhood flash before her eyes, but once she looks into the eyes of the newly animated body Ingrid knows that is is Killian before her, and Dash is gone.
