Killian Jones had met his share of unhinged men. He knew the lengths to which they'd go for even a modicum of Fortune's favor. He'd used many such a man's motivations against him, had delighted himself in doing so.

"This isn't right." Alistair turned another circle in the emptiness to which he'd sent Killian against his will. If he thought that offense would go unreturned, he was about to discover how forgiving a man Captain Hook was not. "Where are the flames…?" Alistair stepped left twice, forward three times, as though this sequence would solve the mystery of their location. "This isn't right."

Killian Jones knew when someone was at the end of their rope. Just one misfortune away from putting themselves out of everyone's misery.

Alistair had passed that point long ago.

"Emma should be here."

"Well she isn't," said Killian. "So if you would be so kind as to return me to my body—I'm about three centuries late for an appointment."

Alistair paced, pausing periodically to drum his fingers along his lower lip and mumble to himself about what could've possibly gone wrong.

Had he chosen the wrong ingredients? Mixed too much of one, too little of another? Should he have used a strand of Emma's hair instead?

"You said it yourself, mate. This was a long shot to begin with. We tried, we failed. A man should know when he's beaten."

Alistair scoffed. "And here I was thinking you'd become a hypocrite after you sold your soul to the Council."

Killian bristled, reaching instinctively for the sword that wasn't there. "Care to run that by me again?"

Alistair pulled an expression of pure ire—deeper, more absolute than their present contention warranted. Something about it was older than the handful of hours they'd been acquainted.

He was pretty good with faces, but nothing about Alistair stood out in his memory as belonging to a former foe. But Alistair seemed to know him. More than that, he seemed to despise him to his very core.

"What is it you hope to accomplish by seeking out Rumplestiltskin after all these years? If anyone should know he's beaten…"

"I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"No, of course, how could I forget? You're the only who has ever suffered loss in the history of the worlds. The only one whose love had her heart ripped out and crushed in front—" Alistair took a beat to regain his composure, pinching the bridge of his nose as he forced a steadying breath. "Do me a favor, Jones, and keep your whingeing to a minimum. We may be here a while."

He returned to his previous occupation, leaving Killian a bit mystified by the tragedy they apparently had in common. Had Alistair's come by way of the Dark One, as well? Or had it been this Director he wouldn't shut up about?

"Might be where for a while?"

"I'm loath to say for sure…"

Alistair felt along one of the four walls that held them trapped. Grey in color, stone texture if Killian had to guess from a cursory glance. The room was cold but not completely dark. Enough light shone down from recesses in the ceiling to reveal the harsh truth of their predicament: they were alone in a room with no windows, no doors, no hope of escape outside of waking up.

A truth his partner in this nightmare wasn't keen to accept.

He pressed at various points along each wall but none betrayed the button or switch or magic door for which he searched. He attempted several sequences on the floor tiles, stepping, jumping, skipping like a child sent outside to seek diversions that wouldn't disrupt his father's plans for the day. Nothing yielded the desired results.

Growing bored, Killian sat himself in the corner farthest from Alistair and pulled the collapsible knife from his pocket, tempted by the thought of chucking it in the other man's direction. Briefly. But was ultimately halted by the uncertainty surrounding that action.

If someone perished while under a sleeping spell was it the same as actually dying? Kill the mind, kill the body? Did anything they did in that room affect reality or was it like any other dream? Forgotten as soon as their feet hit the floor.

Killian settled in for a long wait, using the knife to carve four intersecting lines into the floor beside him, and filling the center square with a cross. To his surprise, a nought appeared in the box to its immediate left, glowing red at first and then fading as it cooled. Testing that his mind wasn't playing tricks on him, Killian made his next move and laughed when the floor responded in kind.

He lost the first match. And the second. Didn't get irritated until the third.

Blasted enchanted room—why was he surprised? Magic in itself was a cheat.

"Ridiculous," he muttered as he cast the knife aside.

This entire undertaking was—

An X pulsed in the center square of a fresh game, but Killian didn't take the bait. He crossed his arms and the lines surrounding that X shifted, transformed. Twisted and stretched and curved to create mountains, rivers, valleys. Suddenly that X marked the spot on a map Killian had read a thousand times. Its twin lay as a permanent fixture of his quarters aboard the Jolly Roger.

The X blinked in rhythm to Killian's beating heart as his vengeance was reinvigorated.

So it was there. He fucking knew it.

The map disappeared but the red lines flashed along the floor, a trail of dashes leading Killian out of his corner and into the center of the room. He knelt in front of the tile where it trailed off and brushed aside a layer of dust in search of another clue—a button or switch or magic door.

Killian pressed his right palm flat against the tile to shift his weight. When he did, the red glowing lines reappeared to trace the outline of his hand before the tile gave way beneath it. Across the room he heard a quiet click. A door being opened from the other side.

"Ha!" A triumphant cry from Alistair. "Did I tell you? Beaten, indeed. Look alive, Jones—we're on the move!"

Killian couldn't make out anything beyond the door that'd appeared save for light only slightly brighter than what was present in that room.

"Bloody brilliant," Alistair clapped his hands together and continued to congratulate himself as he exited.

Killian lingered. Waiting for what, he couldn't say. Confirmation, perhaps. From whatever or whomever had let them out…

None came.

The floor was dull and uninteresting. Coated in dirt that their steps had disturbed. Nothing pulsed or glowed or directed him along to another route.

He turned back at the door, just in case. But the farther he got from that moment, the less he was convinced anything out of the ordinary had occurred.

Maybe it had been Alistair.

The only thing Killian knew for certain was that he needed to wake up.

He followed Alistair into a long corridor, a dozen doors either side and no discernible end in sight. The walls and doors were the same uninspired grey as the room they'd just left. Cold, dreary, and not at all what came to mind when Killian envisioned a Netherworld.

Alistair hadn't taken ten steps when he stopped dead. "Sometimes I really hate it when I'm right. It just made too much sense, you know? It being part of the facility…"

Killian didn't know, as Alistair hadn't explained a single bloody thing since they'd arrived. But he gave the man a minute to process whatever he'd picked up on that Killian had not.

"You know what this place is?"

"So would you if you were…you. We've both of us been here before."

"So you know the way out."

Alistair didn't answer, didn't nod or shake his head, offer anything in the way of confirmation or denial.

"Go on, then," Killian prodded.

Alistair approached one of the doors along the corridor's left side and fell into the same anxious mumbling he'd had when trying to figure a way out of that empty room. He traced the frame without touching it, his hand hovering an inch away as though appraising a sacred object.

"Well, which is it?"

"Doesn't work the way you think…" Alistair said absently, still staring at the door he'd chosen, his gaze roving its every facet, reading it as one would their most cherished book. "It isn't like walking through to your conscious mind."

"Here's an idea," said Killian, "how about you explain a few things and then we'll both know what the hell is going on."

No response. Killian might as well have been talking to a wall. Or playing noughts and crosses with a floor tile…

Perhaps it was time to appeal to the other man's motivations.

"If your friend isn't here, where else could she be?"

"Nowhere good," said Alistair.

"If you told me what we're dealing with I might be able to help. I'm assuming the sooner we find her the better…"

Alistair turned to him then, curious intensity still in his eyes. "What makes you so invested all of a sudden?"

Killian knew Alistair would find the truth distasteful, so he told him what he wanted to hear. He shifted from one foot to the other, adopted his most sincere expression when he said, "The boy…Henry. Hard as this may be for you to believe, I was that naively hopeful once. He reminds me of the boy my brother knew so long ago…" Killian smiled sadly, knowing his ruse had worked when Alistair's features softened. "If what you say is true, then this Emma is the first person I've cared about in…centuries. Makes her rather remarkable, I daresay. Guess I owe it to her—to the version of myself who was able to find some small happiness with her…"

Killian clenched his jaw, averted his gaze. As if such a thing were possible—happiness with someone who wasn't Milah? The only thing that would satisfy him now was the crocodile meeting her same fate. Watching him cower, making him beg. Feeling the final pulsating beat of his black heart before turning it to ash—

"You're aware of time travel, I'm sure," said Alistair.

There were few statements that could've broken Killian's line of thought as absolutely as this one did. "You can't be serious."

"You entered a shared dream state with a stranger by way of magic potion but this is where you draw the line?"

"Fair point."

"These aren't doors in the traditional sense, leading from one room to another. They're portals. The first portals, in fact."

"Where do they lead?" Asked Killian, interest piqued. He kept his face indifferent, but every fiber of his being itched to walk through the nearest portal to another time. "How does it work?"

Alistair gripped the doorknob, closed his eyes, and exhaled a deep breath. "Just think of a time and place you wish to visit," he said. "If it's somewhere you've never been, you simply walk through. Once you do, you'll always have existed there. If you wish to revisit a memory," he opened his eyes and stared straight ahead. Killian thought he saw his hand tremble as Alistair turned the knob and pushed the portal door open, "you'll inhabit the version of yourself that's already present."

Killian moved to Alistair's side and looked out onto another time, another world. A lush forest, a well worn path. Birds singing and a soft breeze blowing past. It may have been the contrast between this scene and the depressing grey that surrounded them, but the sky seemed a brighter blue. The air was fresh and inviting. In the distance, a quaint cottage. A young girl laughed as she ran around the flower patch—

And then it was gone.

Alistair closed the door and turned away, his breaths short and uneven as he rested his forehead in his hand.

"You're saying the past can be altered…"

"After a fashion." Alistair cleared his throat but the emotion was far from erased. "I've learned that some things are meant to happen—no matter your interference or good intentions, they will always come to pass. Maybe not in the same way twice, but…"

"Such as…?"

"Events on a cosmic scale, for example—the forming of the worlds, the existence of magic. Life and death. It seems a recurring, tragic pattern though, doesn't it? People trying despite knowing their efforts are doomed from the start…"

"Do you speak from personal experience?"

Alistair looked at Killian, his internal debate clear as day on his face. What to confide, what to keep locked safely away.

"I've spent my share of time in the Land Without Magic. The strange thing about mortals is that they get so many things so outlandishly wrong. But when they get something right, they get it spot on. It's uncanny."

Killian refrained from asking how the bloody hell this pertained to what they'd been discussing—he wouldn't get the information he needed if he appeared too eager—even as impatience ate away at him with every detour Alistair took around the bloody point.

"Most of what they get up to there is tedious and forgettable, especially to beings like ourselves who've been to countless realms replete with magic. But there's a line from a movie I saw recently—Emma's avoidance left me with quite a bit of leisure time—how the two of you ever got together with the sheer volume of stubbornness between you, I'll never know."

Killian wasn't about to ask for clarification as to what the blazes a movie was—probably more magical nonsense—as Alistair had enough trouble staying on topic without interruption. But he was this close to just taking his bloody chances on his own, caution be damned.

"The mechanics of time travel are still not fully understood, even by those who've seemingly mastered it. Paradoxes abound, even in the most straightforward cases. Time loops, divergent realities, what have you…"

It was around the point that Alistair started talking about men in black suits commissioned with policing alien activity on and off planet Earth that Killian lost interest. That man had no right to call anyone else tedious and forgettable. Killian wondered if every universe had its own hell and if he'd somehow stumbled into one of them. Netherworld wasn't too far off from Underworld, was it?

If he stared hard enough at the frame around the nearest door, it appeared as though someone had painted over something rather lovely. Engravings ran along the lengths, reminiscent of vines. And the doors themselves were quite something, weren't they? Hidden beneath the same unflattering paint, they were larger than the average, and fashioned from a sturdier, nigh impenetrable wood. The way their tops narrowed to a curve betrayed a regal shape—something he'd seen in his youth when he and Liam had been summoned to court.

Curioser and curioser, Killian thought.

"Where there is death there will always be death," said Alistair, and he had Killian's full attention once more. "It was rather startling to hear from a man in a metal box, masquerading as an alien—because how could they know?"

"So you've never done it?"

With this question, Killian had Alistair's full attention again. He seemed to realize too late that he'd let down his guard. It slammed back into place like a lock, sudden and succinct. Killian saw it in his eyes—the well of useful information had dried up.

"Why not use one of these portals to find your friend?"

"I told you it doesn't work that way."

"Aye. But you failed to mention why. You said if you already exist in a given time, you simply inhabit that version of yourself—I'm at a loss as to how that could go wrong."

"The Director has certain safeguards in place. The moment I cross the threshold, her forces will be upon us faster than you can say arg."

"You keep saying that name—who is the Director?"

"No one to trifle with. Leave it at that."

"So why not have me do it?"

Alistair shook his head. "I'm beginning to understand Emma's frustration…" he said to himself.

"And I'm beginning to understand why you and the other me didn't get along. Let's have it, then." Killian waved his hand in the air between himself and Alistair. "We aren't going to get anywhere with this unspoken animosity between us, so let's have it out. Pray, tell—in what unforgivable way did the Killian Jones of your memory wrong you?"

"We don't have time for this."

"Looks to me we've got nothing but time. There's no way to leave this—what did you call it? Facility—well, no way you're willing to take advantage of."

Alistair leveled a measured gaze at Killian. It was an expression Liam often favored when unwilling to admit that his younger brother was better skilled at debate.

"In the earliest days of the Council, these portals were how Guides traveled between worlds. One day a Guide was followed and the facility was overrun with mortals bent on eradicating magic and all those who wielded it. Using magic to unmake magic, as it were. It was after this massacre that Guides were assigned designated portals that blended more seamlessly with the world to which they traveled on wish-granting business, complete with doors that could not be opened from the other side without the proper identification."

Alistair pulled back the right sleeve of his coat and showed Killian a faded tattoo along his wrist—difficult to see in the scant light. In response, Killian checked under his own sleeve, and found a tattoo similar to Alistair's, darker and more defined.

"This Guide that was followed—was he duly punished?"

"Not yet."

Killian took his eyes from the one tattoo he had no memory of receiving and studied Alistair. "That's not it," he said. "What are you leaving out?"

"First Emma, now you," Alistair sighed, trying too hard to regain his previous sarcasm, but there was an underlying edge to his tone. "Perhaps my storytelling skills are starting to slip…"

"Do you think I can't see the hatred in your eyes? I did more to you than let a few bloodthirsty mortals murder your friends."

"It's in the past. I've told you everything that's relevant to our present dilemma, now if you don't mind I'm about twenty-eight years late for an appointment."

Alistair positively shook with rage but held tightly to his every pretense.

Until Killian said, "Does it have anything to do with your lost love? The one whose heart was crushed in front of you?"

Killian Jones knew how to recognize a desperate soul. A man at the end of his rope. He knew when someone wanted nothing more than to strike the smug expression from his unrepentant face.

"If these portals work the way you say they do, why not use one of them to bring her back?"

"You think I haven't tried a thousand times over? Or were you not listening when I said some things can't be changed?"

"Did it ever occur to you that you might've given up too quickly?"

"All right, Jones, you want to do this now? You see the hatred in my eyes? Well I see the calculation in yours. Did you think I forgot that this version of you is the most revenge-obsessed there is? Do you think I can't see the excitement radiating off of you with every new piece of information I provide? The reason my wife is dead, the reason she can never return is because you led the Director straight to her, and the Director, in her infinite wisdom, sealed every entry point to her timeline so that there was nothing I could do. She took my daughter and hid her away a hundred different times in as many worlds—most recently in the last remaining land without magic, trapped by a curse only your girlfriend can break. What was it you were planning to do? Knock me out? Leave me here to be discovered? Do you think you won't be caught the instant you walk through to whatever tortured memory you hope to rewrite?"

"Only one way to find out, I suppose."

He was on Alistair in a flash. Alistair may have understood Killian's desperation in theory, but it failed to prepare him for what came next. He was no fighter—not like Killian—a fact that became evident the minute he reached into his coat pocket for the vial of magic that wasn't there.

Killian had him pinned against the floor, hand closing around his throat. He held on longer than Killian would've predicted—he'd give him that—stubbornly trying to appeal to the good nature he believed the pirate still possessed.

"Jones…" he choked out as his limbs grew listless and lay at his sides, "…you don't…have to…" his lids fell slowly closed. "You're…"

"I'm what?"

"A good…you're a good m…"

A good man.

Killian laughed out loud. Maybe he had been, once. But he'd seen the value in that. All struggle and no reward. Faith. Honor. Blind trust in a governing power—these were the virtues that took his brother from him.

He dragged Alistair's lifeless form toward the nearest door. "You want a tortured memory?" He asked as he opened the portal on a dark landscape. "Hope you enjoy being a lost boy."

Turned out Alistair had been correct. As soon as his body breached the barrier between one world and the next, a screeching sound tore through that hallway. Lights flashed. Killian had only moments to act or be forever captive of someone else's nemesis.

He slammed the door on Neverland. Unclear if there was some sort of cool down period between trips, or how long that might be, he moved to the portal on its immediate left.

He closed his eyes as Alistair had done. Cracked his neck and held the doorknob firmly in his grip. One deep breath, one moment of hesitation was all he'd allow himself. There was no going back. In three hundred years he'd never come this close.

For all that magic had destroyed, it was about bloody time it offered recompense.

The last thing Killian Jones heard was the echo of hurried steps, frantic voices fast approaching as he thought back on the night that ruined his life.