"Hey. Long John Silver," the cop, he thinks they're called here, calls to him, tapping on the bars. Rolling his eyes, Killian stands up and saunters over. If the private aside is only to cram another sordid slice of bologna down his throat, he might actually have to commit assault while he's here. "Got a question for you. What do you really do for a living? Huh? I mean, no ID of any kind."

"I believe I was told I have the right to remain silent."

"Yeah, well, you're free to go. Charges dropped."

"Charges dropped?" That sounds an awful lot like Swan changing her mind, the best news in a long while, but fate has so liked toying with him as of late he won't hope or dread just yet.

"Yep, bail and all. What'd you do, knock her up?" the cop asks as he opens the cell door and leads him around the corner to where bright green letters spell "exit." He'll take advantage of his right to remain silent, though, as "knocked up" must be slang for having assaulted Swan after all. There's little ceremony about this grave mistake they've all made and the way he's addled their brains with his very existence. One more of them points at the front door.

Even as gray as New York appears, the sun still manages to force him to blink once or twice.

"Hey! We need to talk!"

Grinning, he bounds down the steps, almost laughing. Giddiness threatens to overwhelm him at his rescue from that place, as dank and murky as any dungeon. She doesn't share his carefree lease on life at the moment, but one thing at a time.

"Swan! I knew you wouldn't let me rot in that cage! I've been in my fair share of brigs, but none as barbaric as that. They force-fed me something called bologna." For a moment, he expects her to look up in horror, confirming that the bologna combined with the hot dog from earlier had brought on the queasiness and certainly not the looming fear that he would be trapped there indefinitely. It can't be a coincidence that that lingering notion hadn't really entered his head until he'd chewed up that slimy piece they assured him was meat and gulped it down.

"What the hell are these?" She's shuffling the little square portraits that had graced Henry's room, not the same ones, of course. A closer look reveals they're of her and Henry at various places in Storybrooke and at the airport. Heartbreaking, really, actual happy moments she and her son had had together and they're as foreign to her as this land is to him. "We never lived in a town called Storybrooke. We never took a flight from Boston to New York. We never did any of this!"

"So you believe me then?" It had never crossed his mind that she might agree to go to Storybrooke without her memories, just belief. One step at a time, he thinks, resigned, the idea that her memories could return later pitiful consolation.

"I don't know. You could have photoshopped these pictures."

"Photoshopped?"

"Faked," she clarifies, and here he was so sure they weren't paintings. One can paint whatever one wants, but faking actual moments in time? He shakes his head at the train of thought, realizing the conversation has begun that same circular dance it did back in the park.

"If you think these are forgeries, then why did you spring me from the brig?" he asks, noticing how she straightens the pictures over and over in her hands, aligning the corners that have already been aligned, her eye contact breaking... "Because as much as you deny it, deep down you know something's wrong. Deep down you know I'm right."

"That's impossible. How could I forget all of this?" It sounds like belief, fearful and confused, but belief. What must be going through her head...

"I promise you there's an explanation." One that, unfortunately, requires her memories to make sense to her, and if she had those, they wouldn't be arguing on a crowded street when everyone else is in danger.

"Not one that makes sense," she says, as he knew she'd say. Maybe now she'll take the potion willingly. They are right in front of the law enforcement office, after all, and he really would have to be a dangerous mad man to give her something poisonous right in front of it.

"If you drink this you will." She stares at the vial like it's the enemy. He'd given that same look to the encroaching curse, outrunning it, so desperate to outrun it...

"If...if what you're saying is true," she says, closing her eyes, inwardly cursing herself. "I would have to give up my life here."

"It's all based on lies."

"It's real!" the curse insists. "And it's pretty good! I have Henry, a job, a guy I love."

It doesn't matter, he tells himself. None of this is for the two of you to be together. It's to bring her to her family.

Good, she'd said, so accepting and encouraging, inspiring thousands of possibilities.

"Perhaps there's a man you love in the life you've lost," he tries quickly, shamefully. Even if...and he loathes this scenario as much as is titillated by it...she drinks down the potion and admits her one word to him was her own declaration, it didn't negate whatever she had with the man she was having dinner with last night, and judging by the way her eyebrow tilts, she's well aware of his line of thinking.

"Regardless," he continues. "If you want to find the truth, drink up. Do you really want to live a life of lies? You know this isn't right. Trust your gut, Swan. It will tell you what to do." Beyond this, he doesn't know how to reach her.

"Henry always says that," she murmurs.

"Then if you won't listen to me, listen to your boy." He won't say anything else, won't interrupt her while she's reading his face, the horror nowhere in sight. Instead, there is a fight in her, inquisitiveness against the familiar. It's mind-boggling that she already believes, that this last fragment of hesitation is due to how, how content she's been. If she were her entire self, if Emma Swan curse-free told him she was happy, that her life was so good, he tells himself he would end his pestering. But it's a moot point. Then she wouldn't be her.

She downs the contents, and then her eyes begin darting all over the place behind closed lids, like she's deep in some frantic fever dream. No part of him can reach out or even move when her eyebrows lift, eyes following. If it weren't for how widened and lucid they looked all of a sudden, it really would resemble someone waking from a dream.

"Hook." He can't help but smile.

"Did you miss me?" he asks, savoring the tiny swallow she's not even aware she's done.

It does things to him, the way she keeps glancing back at him, making sure he's still right behind her. Every few steps, Swan cocks her head back and exhales when he gives her the slightest indication he's real. All the way to her apartment, in fact. She hasn't said much aside from a brief "we need to talk somewhere in private" before marching back here. While she finds the key and unlocks the gate, a thought hits him.

"Where's Henry?"

"He's out with a friend right now, spending the night." They look at each other at the same time, in perfect unison in spite of how involuntary it had been. Not even in Neverland has he been alone with her the way he will be once they're inside. Not that...that would happen, he scoffs, but still.

"...frankly I was bored, had a life to get back to, a pirate's life." It's a rather unsatisfying answer to her question as to what happened all this last year while she brings glasses and a thick amber bottle to the table. Unfortunately, the dissipating of the purple smoke, his departure from her parents, and that last vague statement will be all he can summon up to tell her about for now.

"Glad to see you haven't changed," she whispers at the neck of the bottle, pouring, yes, rum into the glasses. A braver man much less tainted than himself would go ahead and pour his heart out now, a future opportunity unforeseeable. His fingers trace the rim of the glass. He bites his lip at the very idea of just coming out with it and spilling the thoughts he'd had of her every day out into words, that the only thing that never changed from the second he was back in the Enchanted Forest to being in this very room with her was how much he loves her...and won't that be an awkward night for both of them...

"There was nothing for me in the Enchanted Forest," he says, knowing his face threw caution to the wind and is telling her all those secret thoughts anyway. "Why would I stay?"

She pauses, opening her mouth, but he knows she'll close it promptly, which she does, quietly clinking her glass next to his.

"All was well until I got a message, a message saying that there was a new curse and everyone would be returned to Storybrooke. The message told me that the only hope was you." Always you.

"You came all the way back here to save my family?" she asks.

"I came back to save you." He takes a drink, hoping it will slow this rapid succession of heartbeats. She follows suit.

"Who could have done this?"

"Someone powerful enough to reach into this world." And that disturbs him more than anything else, as not even the Dark One had the slightest idea of how to do that for years.

"Any more specific thoughts?" Well, love, that does dwindle it down quite a bit, but it still leaves a list of blank names.

"You're the Savior, not me."

Swan stares at the table for a moment, most likely not running over a series of names she'd thought to be fictional a long time ago and questioning the likelihood of each one being real, being capable of casting such a large-scale curse, and being sufficiently motivated to do so. A dark smile flashes across her face.

"You know what I was yesterday?" she asks in a wistful tone, her shoulders rising. "A mother. Until you showed up and started poking holes in everything I thought was real." She's not angry, at least not with him. He'd know that too well. This is that regret from before, when she hesitated before drinking the potion, accepting every pleasant, domestic little moment she'd ever had with Henry—reading children's books to him, bathing him, his little body curled up in her lap never happened. If it were him, he would mourn that he'd missed his chance for those moments all over again. "Drinking that potion was like waking up from a dream, a really good dream."

There's nothing to apologize for, her happy life nothing more than a cloud of Regina's imagination, and expressing any hint he could relate would taste a lie. Swan's taught him a number of things, one being to feel her soul with his own, see a situation through her eyes, process it with her mind. The most he can do is imagine a siren or something taking on her shape, tempting him to leave a rotten, empty life without her and sink into an illusion. Woe to anyone who would tell him it wasn't real. No, no, what would do her the most good to hear is that there is something steadfast and good in her real life.

"Well you have what matters most. Your son." She smiles.

"Now I have to figure out how to explain this to him."

"Alas, I could only scavenge together enough for one dose of memory potion." That, he can apologize for. How lovely it would be, how much of a relief to her, if the next morning when Henry comes home, she could just give a dose to him and they would all be on the same page.

"I better start figuring out what I'm going to tell him," she says with a nod.

A few muffled footsteps and a knocking interrupt.

"Who's that?" he asks. Henry would have no need to knock.

"Walsh," she breathes, so sunken. "Henry invited him."

"I can get rid of him," he offers, twisting out of his chair and freezing up at her stopping him. That might be for the best, the most logical portion of his brain hammers into him. He would certainly have no polite method of shooing the bastard away, a complete innocent who would be scorned and berated just for being in love with Emma. A little hypocritical, aren't we?

"My memories may not be real, but he is. So are the eight months we spent together," she sighs, heaving herself out of her chair as if she's an anchor. Her breathing is shallow, looking so haggard and tired he'd rather she just let the man continue to knock while she rests. "I owe him an explanation."

"What are you going to say to him?"

"I don't know." Well, they are in agreement she having to resume her Savior duties by returning to a magical town inhabited by her long-lost parents, son's adoptive mother, among others to do battle with some as-of-yet unknown foe doesn't quite constitute as a passable explanation to anyone from this world. So that means she will have to break his heart, and hers. "But I care about him too much to drag him into all this. Wait here."

Well, Killian, he thinks, refilling his glass. Becoming quite skilled at separating lovers, aren't we?

A/N: Short chapter, but that's why I updated quickly. A longer one is on its way. Coming up? Road trip!