Chapter 10

Storybrooke, Maine

Yesterday Afternoon

"You have no idea what you're asking, dearie." Robert Gold remained where he was: stationed firmly behind the pawnshop counter, the model ship on one side and the mobile on the other, a mobile that seemed faintly familiar to Mary Margaret, but she immediately dismissed it as coincidence. "I've no notion how your daughter managed to get herself arrested for – what was it again?"

"She didn't say." Most of the time, Mary Margaret was a mild-mannered elementary school teacher, but right now, she looked fully capable of pulling Gold's vitals out through his nose, Xena Warrior Princess in a sweater set and pearls. "But we – I got a call from her earlier today. Actually I missed it, I had to pick it up with my messages. But she said she's been arrested, they took her cell phone, and they're holding her at a detention center in Boston. Frankly, I don't care what it is. I know she didn't do it. It's some kind of horrible misunderstanding."

"Doubtless you can explain it away, then? Pair of charming folks like you." Gold turned away and began to pace down the length of the glass-topped counter, cane tapping a deliberate rhythm on the floor. "What exactly is the impediment? Surely you can simply bail her."

Mary Margaret clenched her fists. "We can't pay it."

"There's an entire bail bonds industry out there willing to help you with that little problem, dearie." Gold stopped in front of an old wooden case, snapped it open, and began to ostentatiously polish the tarnished brass sextant inside, clearly a sign that to him, the conversation was over. "Can't see what it's a thing to do with me. Good day."

At that, David moved forward. "Gold, you son of a bitch. Decades of 'fixing up' any problem that anyone in this town encounters, and all of a sudden you don't have the time of day for us? You like Emma, you've always taken an interest in her. And now our daughter is in jail on some God knows what setup, might be losing her entire future and her academic career and her good name and…" He hesitated, clearly fighting his primal impulse to deck the smaller man with one fell swoop. "All right. What's your price?"

"For once, it's not about my price." Gold continued to polish the sextant. "I haven't left Storybrooke for a day. Not in almost twenty years. All the while, I've watched you merrily trot to New York for Christmas, and to Martha's Vineyard for summer, and taking Emma to college in Boston… watched it and never said a word, watched it and endured it somehow. And how do you repay me? Digging in my business and meddling with what should be left buried, and now asking me to throw away the last vested interest I have in keeping you – and your darling daughter – safe. I could have been much more uncivilized about turning you down, but I have always been a man of culture. So." He pointed. "There's the door. Don't let it rudely collide with your nether aspects as you make your exit."

David and Mary Margaret exchanged baffled, frantic glances. They didn't understand half of what he was saying, especially his cryptic inference that his not leaving Storybrooke had something to do with keeping them – specifically, them – safe. But from who? Their life, while not without the dramas endemic to families and small towns, had been consistently and sincerely happy. Emma was their pride and joy, their marriage solid as a rock, their lean financial circumstances never standing in the way if they wanted to make something special happen. They owned their historic Victorian home and had always had steady jobs, the respect of their colleagues and fellow citizens. To suddenly learn that there might have been some lurking shadow threat, held at bay all these years but never vanquished, was a shock.

"I don't understand," Mary Margaret admitted at last. "What are you talking about?"

"Only that you already owe me a debt you have no chance of ever paying off. And indeed, I did it for Emma, but the timing's all wrong. I have another eight years before I can afford to let my protection end. Fancy fending for yourself all that time? Didn't think so."

"Gold." David placed one fist gently on the counter. "You have exactly thirty seconds to tell us what the hell you're talking about, or so help me I am breaking everything in this shop."

"Once a peasant, always a peasant." Gold tipped a one-shouldered, magnificently dismissive shrug, but put the sextant down and swiveled around like a deck gun. "Very well. Your daughter has a destiny, and it's meant to happen when she is twenty-eight. At least, it was; I confess that I am no longer entirely certain. She was supposed to escape what befell you, but she didn't. It permanently changed the structure of the entire thing, and left me, if I ever wanted to see it undone at all, with no other option than to protect you. That's why you have your happy ending here, instead of the misery you were meant for. It's because of me. And in return, I expect that Emma will play her part, and return when she's supposed to, to do what must be done."

The Nolans continued to look blindsided.

"In other words," Gold concluded delicately, "this is nothing more than a bump on the road, and I see no reason to endanger myself for it. Indeed, if your daughter loses her life in the world, perhaps she'll be more inclined to come back here. Farewell."

David and Mary Margaret stared at each other, destitute and furious. Neither of them had the foggiest idea of what to do next, how they could possibly help their daughter, and David shook his head. "I bet it was that Neal kid," he muttered. "Never got a look at him, always some excuse or another. Never liked that he was always running away and – "

Gold glanced up sharply. "Neal?"

"Neal Cassidy," David said, confused. "Emma's boyfriend. That's all we ever got to learn about him, because he… yeah, like I said, he was always on the lam. And I didn't really feel comfortable with the way she was looking at her history professor, so – "

"History professor?" Gold interrupted.

David glared at him. "For someone who explicitly announced his intentions not to help her, you suddenly seem very interested in my daughter's personal life."

"Can't help it if you talk too much for your own good, dearie. Who was this man?"

Neither David nor Mary Margaret felt entirely comfortable with the direction this conversation had just taken, but they had both grasped that something had changed in the last minute. Not only that, but there was a chance, however slim, that this new information was altering his previously stated intent to leave them high and dry. If that was the case, he could have the complete family history and any skeletons in the closet that he wanted. "I… I think his name was – oh God, something Irish – wait, Killian. That was it. Killian Jones."

"Killian Jones?" The way Gold repeated the name, almost in a snarl, left no doubt whatsoever that it was intimately (and deeply unpleasantly) familiar. "Well, well. You don't say."

"What?" David began. "I don't understand, how do you – "

"First rule, dearie." Gold held up a hand. "If you want me to help you in this, which I am abruptly considering doing after all, you don't get to ask any questions. It would be far better for your own safety if you obey. Because by leaving, I'll be breaking a certain deal I made, as well as my ability to protect you both and your daughter. Is that really what you want?"

"Please," Mary Margaret begged, close to tears. "Please just help us."

Gold divided a long stare between her and her husband, reptilian and unblinking as a crocodile lying in wait in the rushes. "Very well," he said at length. "As any good lawyer should, I am obliged to inform you that I cannot be held liable for what comes next. As well, I am only able to leave Storybrooke for three days. And if I tell you that we need to come back, we are damned well going to come back, regardless of mitigating circumstances."

"But why?"

"That rule about questions, dearie." Gold flashed what would have been an amiable smile, if not for the bared teeth. "I really wasn't joking."

With that he turned, opened a safe behind the counter, and removed two items: a mangy brown scarf and a chipped porcelain teacup. He placed them on the glass as reverently as if they were holy relics, an intent, exultant look on his face. Without looking up, he sensed the Nolans' stupefaction and, for once, took pity on them. "They're both from true love, and the only artifacts I have left with any power. Therefore…" A pause as he concentrated. "It should do."

Despite knowing that she was in line for a curt rebuke, Mary Margaret still opened her mouth, desperate to ask, to make some sense out of this entire godforsaken situation. And then, the words on her lips curled up and died squeaking.

As carefully as a street magician performing some elegant feat of legerdemain, Gold drew a beautiful, long-stemmed red rose out of the teacup. He placed it on the counter, where it hovered upright without support, and put a glass dome over it. "By the time the last petal falls," he said, as casually as if he had done nothing more remarkable than make a cup of tea, "I must be back in Storybrooke. Which is, as I said, approximately seventy-two hours – there is no more magic left than that. If not…" He smiled again, twistedly. "Let's just say nobody's going to enjoy it."

"Magic…." One could almost hear the circuits burning out in David Nolan's brain. "That's a pretty impressive parlor trick, I'll grant you, but…"

"Tick tock, dearies." Gold draped the ratty brown scarf around his neck and moved the chipped cup closer to the rose, taking his hand away slowly, as if he could not bear to let go. Yet his voice was crisp. "Are we going to waste time in palavering, or are we going to save your dearest daughter?"

"The latter."

"Excellent." Gold took a better grip on his cane. "You're all going to die now, so I suppose it's best for you to enjoy what time you have left. Well then. Your car or mine?"

Graham Humbert had been the sheriff of Storybrooke for almost twenty years. At least he thought it was going on twenty years, because every time he counted back in his head, tried to fix the first day on the job, if he had ever done something different in his life, it continually fled like a shadow in a hall of mirrors. There were times when he felt certain it must not have been that long, because otherwise he would have been practically a teenager when he started, and he didn't feel (or look) as if he was almost forty. Other times he had the oddest sensation that he was dreaming, had been dreaming longer than he could ever imagine, and that he was about, finally, to wake into a brave and terrible new world.

His job had been as boring as only the sheriff of a small town's could be. Rounding up curfew-breakers, the occasional underage drinkers or graffiti vandalizers; there'd been a month a few years back when the toll bridge was hit up every other day. But he'd found an excuse to drive out there jut recently, simply on the ridiculous basis that in his latest wolf dream, he'd been running in the woods out there. Running in search of… something.

It sounded ridiculous, it was ridiculous, and for more reasons than that alone, he had done his best to keep his excursions quiet from Regina. He wasn't sure it was aboveboard for law enforcement to be so literally in bed with the mayor, and he likewise wasn't sure how he had ended up there in the first place. She had some hold on him he couldn't explain; she could tell him to do something and he would, regardless if he wanted it or not. It was dangerous for him to pull the leash as much as he had, stealthily slipping David and Mary Margaret into the records office, but their daughter…

His wolf dreams had something to do with Emma. He couldn't possibly have said why, yet he knew somehow that she was his only chance. But that wasn't something you said to the nineteen-time winner of the Most Overprotective Father Award. It was all a giant mess.

At the moment, Graham was sitting in his cruiser, scarfing his usual dinner of sandwich and cold decaf coffee. He was fiddling with the radio restlessly in hopes of picking up the rock station in Portland; he'd always wanted to go to Portland, which even though just over a hundred miles away, felt like the other side of the world. He'd wanted to leave Storybrooke for a while, in fact, but for some reason he never had. He couldn't remember if he ever had.

What is wrong with me? This isn't normal. The more Graham tried to think critically about his situation, the more holes he discovered. Other people must have left Storybrooke; the Nolans had certainly left Storybrooke, taking their daughter to college in Boston. But when he'd tried to consult the town psychiatrist, Dr. Hopper had told him gently that this was probably just a midlife crisis and he could use a vacation. Sound advice, so far as it went, but –

Hold up.

Graham sat up straight, nearly dropping his BLT in his lap, as a sleek black boat of a Cadillac powered past him, down the road beyond. He'd seen that car before, parked in the driveway of the solitary mansion on its serene treed street, where he'd been making extra patrols on Emma's request. While he couldn't be sure, as his glimpse had been only fleeting, he had been almost certain that it was her father in the passenger seat. And if David Nolan was leaving town with Mr. Gold, it was beyond doubt that Mary Margaret was as well.

I could follow them. Drive after them. Just to see. The idea seized Graham with a sick, giddy hope, and for an instant, he actually thought he could get away with it. But instead his hands were already reaching for the dash phone, following orders as dutifully as if they had been programmed. Regina had told him long ago that he was to call her immediately if he ever saw Mr. Gold leaving Storybrooke for any reason, and Graham had simply chalked it up to her paranoia. Everyone knew Gold never left, ever. But he'd agreed, of course, and now…

The phone rang, once and then twice. Just when he'd started to pray she wouldn't pick up, it cut out and Regina answered, all business. "Mayor Mills."

She had to know it was him, as no one else ever called her on this line, but Regina was always convinced of bugs and wiretaps and other nefarious devices. So very well, he'd play her game. "Mayor, Sheriff Humbert here. The target was just spotted leaving."

Regina was silent. He could hear her breathing quicken, fast and sharp and excited, her voice darken with lust. "Are you sure? He crossed the town line? He actually went?"

"He hasn't come back." Graham peered down the road, just in case, but the black Cadillac was long gone. "It was definitely his car."

"He left," Regina repeated, sounding as delighted as a child on Christmas morning. She seemed to have completely forgotten that Graham was on the other end. "He broke our deal? He knows what happens now. I can go after them, I can go after all of them. Foolish, very foolish. I never thought he'd miscalculate that badly."

"Mayor?" Graham frowned, wrinkling his brow. "What are you talking about?"

Regina caught herself. "Nothing. Well, Sheriff, thank you very much. You've done extremely well, and you can have the rest of the night off." He could hear her gathering up her things. "I'll be taking an early evening as well."

"Where are you going?" Graham put the cruiser in gear and pulled the wheel around. A night off. He almost didn't know what to do with himself.

"Just a few errands." Her heels clicked on the parquet. "Have to drop by the hospital. And then… and then. It so happens, my dear, that I am going to do a spot of baking."

Boston, Massachusetts

This Evening

Killian Jones unlocked his office door and pushed it open, dim glow striping the dark floor. It was a bit more of a mess than even he recollected leaving it, papers heaped on the desk and his books looking distinctly as if they'd been rummaged through, packing tape slit on the boxes he hadn't got round to unpacking and file cabinet accordioned out – all in all, one of the most bloody obvious search-and-ransacking jobs he'd ever seen in his life (and speaking as a professional who'd conducted more than a few of them himself). Eyes narrow, keeping a firm grip on the hook in his breast pocket, he advanced inside and hit the lights.

They flared on to reveal nothing – or at least no one apart from himself, which he'd expected. Nonetheless, he expelled a frustrated curse and rocked back on his heels, turning in a circle as if he expected the miscreants to have dived out the window, but considering it was the third floor, it was a plunge that even an inebriated fraternity brother would have thought twice of. Fortunately, Killian didn't keep of anything of outstanding value in his office, or even in his apartment; he'd left most of it back in London. Back with the only person in this world he trusted a brass dam, and who would probably chuck all of it out on the street with the rubbish, if she got wind of what he had just done.

No matter that. Someone had been fingering his stuff, and he didn't intend to let it go unsolved. Still, the reason he had come back to his office now had nothing to do with further vigilante justice. He had his literature class to teach tomorrow morning, and what with the unavoidable distractions recently present in his life, he'd already welched once on giving them back their essays on the social dynamics of Dickens. He had to at least try to get them done.

Killian put on his reading glasses, draped his leather jacket over the back of the swivel chair, and uncapped his red pen as if drawing his sword (he'd have to find some way to get back to Storybrooke and retrieve it, something that made his head hurt even to contemplate). Hook kept in easy reach in case its use should be suddenly called for, he sat down and pulled off the first essay from the stack, noticing the student's name neatly typed at the top. Alice Carroll. Well, and speak of an appropriate moniker for a Victorian literature class. It made him wonder, suddenly.

Killian marked steadily, time whiling away on the old clock on the wall. He immediately demerited any poor sod dim enough to begin their essay with the Webster's dictionary definition of anything; it was one of those cop-outs that any professor worth the paper their degree was printed on couldn't stand. It still amazed him that he'd taken so well to the academic life, but in certain matters, he had a first-person insight that even the most detailed textbook couldn't match. There wasn't much call around here for a pirate, unless it was in some place called Disneyland, and he had more pride than that. During his acclimation in London, he had learned that this wretched place had certain … ideas of him, all of which he found deeply insulting.

He had almost knocked out the lot when he heard the sirens. Faint at first and then coming closer and closer, until he frowned and got up and peered out his office window, could see blue and red as they arrived across campus, up St. Thomas More Road by the look of it, up near…

Bloody hell, no. No shred of good reason to think they were going to Walsh dormitory, and even if they were, that it had anything to do with her. Especially here in Boston, where every other twenty-something was a college student, there was very little surprise in the city's emergency rooms as to what could be and had been snorted, smoked, shot up, or slammed down, and even a Catholic school had plenty of partiers. Killian had flirted with the religion during his time at Trinity; Irish Catholicism was its own world, its own set of rules, and while he was well aware of the problems with it, it had given him enough refuge from his dark and twisted mind that he considered himself one at least nominally. He'd befriended a priest about his own age, Father Michael Kovak, who'd served as spiritual counselor and drinking companion on occasion, but still had no idea of his true past. Kovak had urged him to be baptized, as it wasn't usually the case that you could take Catholic communion without being officially sprinkled, but Killian held back. He didn't take communion anyway. That or holy water might finish him off. Whoever said that the sacrament forgave all sins clearly had never met him.

Lips tight, Killian told himself to do something useful, such as finishing the essays. He'd spent enough time being distracted by Emma Nolan recently, strange tough vulnerable intriguing smart fragile young woman that she was, and he really did intend to stop… once she got him to what he wanted, that was. Time and again he reassured himself that he was only drawn to her by virtue of what she represented, but time and again he failed at convincing himself. If only she wasn't his student. But even if not, she was over a decade his junior and from there, with them… he wasn't sure who her parents were, exactly, but if they were from Storybrooke…

He didn't want to think about what he'd seen when she kissed him. When he kissed her.

Killian was far from an inexperienced, fumbling boy. He'd had a few flings at Trinity, but cut them off if they ever verged remotely on turning into something more serious. He wasn't the kind of man who normally kept a cold bed, needed the strength and softness and sweetness of a woman, but he'd lived as celibately as Father Kovak (or at least as he assumed Father Kovak did, having not gone prying into the priest's dirty linen) trying to prove a point to Milah's ghost. And then before her… I've had many a man's wife. Every time he broke down so far as to actually sleep with a woman now, however, he hated himself even more than usual.

It was something he had instructed himself savagely to get over, in his process of having a new life here. But he'd never quite been able to do it, and had taken to wearing a wedding band even though he had never been married, both in memory of Milah and to fend off any enquiries. He didn't want to move on, had been clutching at the last possibility of revenge, even though it looked more and more unlikely every day. No matter what he told anyone, no matter what he did, the job he'd taken here, he was only living for the chance.

And now…

The sirens were still wailing, the lights still flashing. And then, out of nowhere, a searing pain erupted across his left wrist.

Killian hissed in pain, the red pen clattering from his right hand as he reached over to snatch at it. It hadn't had phantom aches like this in a long time, but this felt quite a bit more present, and far worse. Not altogether surprising. He hadn't entirely done his bit at holding up his end of the bargain, could see her face in his head as she told him under which circumstances, exactly, he'd get it back. You can't revert into Hook. Do you hear me? If you do, you'll lose it again.

He gritted his teeth, eyes watering, mouthing a few particularly colorful expletives. The thick scar felt like it was burning, like sinews or sutures were coming undone, and no, bloody no, that was the last thing he felt of a temperament to explain. Panicking, he fumbled the hook off the desk and tried to stuff it into its secret (well, relatively speaking) hiding place in the bottom desk drawer, thinking that if he could just keep on fooling everyone now, he could –

The sharp tip crinkled against paper. A note. A note left in the drawer, a note with exactly two words. A note to freeze him bloody solid.

Hello, pirate.

Hello, beastie.

And then, horrifyingly, Killian Jones understood.

Nothing seemed out of place at first. Emma felt strange, strange enough that she frowned at the turnover and wondered if she should eat any more of it, then turned back to the computer, opening her school inbox and forcing herself to realize that she had to finish the pirate project for Killian's class; it was due on Monday, and she hadn't even done all the research for it, much less typed it up. But as she was still convinced that she was going to be arrested the instant she set foot outside the dorm, she hadn't decided if she should. If someone found out, if the feds found out about her crossing state lines and avoiding being an accessory to murder by the skin of her –

That was when the first pain took her, low and hard in the belly like a punch.

She emitted a shocked whimper and curled up like a shrimp, trying to ride through it, thinking it was too early for her period, but relieved that it was coming; she'd only now thought again about Neal and her blackout and the possibility that she could be – no, she wasn't, wasn't that the sort of thing a woman was supposed to just know? She'd forgotten all about it again in the trauma of her arrest and excursion to Storybrooke in company with Professor Psychotic, but –

The second pain was worse than the first, driving her off the chair and onto the floor. It was so strong that she couldn't move or even breathe until it passed, a spasm locking her muscles and twisting her stomach in half. She could feel something hot and wet in her underpants, dripping down her thighs, and looked to see a slow leak of blood flowering in the crotch of her jeans, turning the denim dark with crimson. The third pain threw her flat again, screaming.

Emma had enough sense to realize that something was extremely wrong, but she couldn't tell if it had happened organically or because of the bite of turnover she'd taken – but why would that have anything to do with anything? Gasping and gulping in agony, she turned over and started to crawl on her belly across the dorm room, trying to reach her phone, but remembered that it was out of battery – and then was utterly incapacitated as her body locked up, wrenching and shaking as if she was having an epileptic seizure. It was then that the word occurred to her, written across her malfunctioning brain in letters like fire.

Poison.

She didn't understand how or why. Why would Regina want to poison her – or Killian, as it suddenly occurred to her might have been the mayor's actual target? There had been some unfriendly glances shooting between them, for sure… the way she'd had the sense that Killian was protecting her, trying to get between her and Regina, but… he'd been saying all kinds of crazy stuff, about the curse and about being Captain Hook and God knew what, he wasn't exactly a reliable authority, involving her in his delusions and –

Her body was completely out of her control. Emma could only sit, trapped in a small room in her mind, and watch detachedly as she wrenched, jerked, and started to retch as the toxin seared through her veins, eating into her heart. Where was Wendy? Or Alice? Or Irene or anyone or… The state she was in, she would have been abjectly relieved to see fucking Neal. Someone, anyone. Had to call an ambulance. Had to find her. Even if it it was the FBI again, if they took her back to jail –

Her heels drummed, her hands tore uselessly, beating a tattoo into the floor. Froth oozed down her chin, her vision began to fade out into white noise. Above her, somewhere, she thought she heard footsteps, and tried to summon up enough breath and strength for a scream. Wendy. Thought she heard someone open the door, utter a shocked cry of fear and revulsion.

But whether it was her roommate or not, and what she made of discovering Boston College's prodigal daughter dying on the floor, Emma never found out. A great shadow settled over her, spreading its wings, soft and silent as a diving bird of prey. Then it lifted her up, gathered her into its bosom, and she let go and tumbled into pure and perfect blackness.