The text from Swan just sets the foundation for a wall of questions. Must be a blue moon. Jail occupied. He takes that to mean she arrested someone, but that that someone isn't the Snow Queen. He glances back down at his hook, where he'd had a hand just minutes ago. It had served so many purposes over the centuries, but none so wretched as that of a mark of shame, and not even due to all the distasteful things he'd done with it. A mark of stupidity, misplaced pride, grossly underestimating someone he knew all too well...
Lost in thought, his hand finds the stem of the hook and twists it, presses his thumb into the cold metal. Not that he would ever lie to Swan...her superpower shutting down even the temptation to do so...but he ponders the fact that there isn't even a valid excuse he can give for why he's latched to this bloody thing again. Up the steps and down the long hallway with the salt-and-pepper flooring to the sheriff's station, he enfolds it into the hem of his shirt and gives it a makeshift polishing.
"Where were you?"
"Sorry, love, I just got your message..." He had barely registered walking into the station, let alone the self-righteous thief from last night staring him in the face. It would be the cruelest form of irony if all that had been orchestrated by the Dark One as well.
"It's okay. I just need another minute here." She turns back to the thief. "You were about to tell me who did that to your face."
Not opposed to the pregnant pause...at all, the thief's enormous eyes stare at him with a cold detachment.
"It's a bloody mystery to me. Your guess is as good as mine. Must have been some party, eh?" he recites, only his eyes second-guessing the intelligence of lying. But all three of them know she doesn't have to believe he's telling the truth. The truth, not just about that damned punch that truly hadn't been worth it, hadn't been worth anything, only needed to be concealed. As long as she doesn't dig much deeper, the thief has her at a stalemate. Her scoffing sniff acknowledges it.
"Well, if you remember anything, I'll know where to find you," she counters.
"You're just going to keep me in here because I broke into a bloody library?"
"Because you crashed my date," she snaps back in the same tone. She finally turns to him with that coy smile and languidly takes hold of the sleeve of his jacket. "Which turned out pretty good despite the rude interruption...what the hell happened to your hand?"
Don't lie, he warns himself, and he won't, but now's not the time to be a burden to her. The Snow Queen's on the loose, Anna's still missing, and this thief seems hell-bent on tormenting Sheriff Swan every chance he gets. His own stupid actions acting as nothing but a plank for him to plummet from can't take a priority.
"It appears the Dark One's magic wasn't all I'd hoped it would be," he settles on, watching her scrape her finger down to the tip of the hook.
"Emma. There's something I need to talk to you about," David calls to her from one of the desks. She gives his hook a casual stroke, no different than scratching a dog's ear, and meanders over to her father.
"Well make it fast. I want to go after the Snow Queen before the trail gets...cold." She winces at the unintended pun.
"The name the Snow Queen's been using in Storybrooke? Sarah Fisher? That name doesn't appear anywhere in the census records."
"What does that mean?"
"You're right. She didn't come here by any curse."
"Then how did she get here? What the hell does she want with me?" she wonders out loud, her eyes darting to him, then her father, and back to him again. Stumped. He needs to push everything that happened this morning out of his mind. She's at a bloody standstill and he's been preoccupied with his hook of all things.
"We won't uncover any of those secrets here," he says. "If the records of the curse don't shed any light on who she is, perhaps we ought to venture out. Her identity appears to be the keystone to all this."
Swan crosses past him and unlocks one of the drawers in the second desk and whips out the phonebook, flipping through the pages with a more practiced dexterity than he has.
"Not in here," she groans. "Okay. She wants to do things the hard way."
Elsa stands and moves over next to Swan, peering down at the phonebook and watching her turn page after page.
"The only listing is for the ice cream shop," Elsa says, her braid falling off her shoulder as she watches Swan sift through stiff tan envelopes, the tops opened and labeled.
"Only listing, but probably not the only mentioning of her..." she trails off, pulling out one of the envelopes.
"What's that?" he asks, curiosity distracting him for the time being. He goes over to the envelopes and reads the labels in faded pencil.
"Case files Graham kept during the curse. He had to have a job, but nothing all that serious ever happened. And, as it turns out, Leroy was as much of a big-mouth as he is now. Here," she says after a pause, pulling a piece of paper out of the file. "Grievance filed against Happy...figures...right outside the ice cream shop."
"The Snow Queen was a witness," David concludes, his eyes widening.
"Yep. Made a statement and everything in...2004." Pointing to a boxed-in section on the paper, she smiles. "That's the address she had then, and since that kind of stuff doesn't change much around here, that's where we should start."
"I'd like to search her shop, if you don't mind," Elsa speaks up. "David had said it ran off of her magic rather than anything this world has. Even though she's shut it all down, maybe there's something there I can sense or detect. After all, she and I are-"
"Don't say 'the same,'" Swan interrupts her, her gaze intent.
"I was going to say 'similar.' Besides, you're the one with the more investigative background. Maybe you should search the house."
"Sounds like a plan," Swan agrees. "David, you were there before. Can you stay with Elsa while I take the house?"
"What about our jailbird?" he asks, cocking his head in the direction of the cell.
"I can hear you!" the thief retorts.
"He's not going anywhere." She pats her father's arm as he cradles the back of her head and kisses it as he always does before escorting Elsa out. "Killian, ready to see a Snow Queen's house?"
Not saying anything, he smiles at her, hoping they'll find something pertinent enough to keep his mind on the threat at hand.
White wood with a row of turquoise shutters and trim stares at them from the shaded front porch of a stout little house, made to look even stumpier by the elegant black tree trunks behind it. He remembers creeping up to Zelena's hideout, that one trying so hard to look inconspicuous it almost pleaded for attention. This house lives up to the humble ones on either side of it. Hidden in plain sight. With a toss of her hair, Swan looks over at him, her eyebrows and mouth straight, her train of thought similar.
"She won't be here," she mutters to herself as they walk up the step to the front door. He veers off to the side to inspect the back. It's a little yard with a small square patio, empty. No chairs, no tools or trinkets left out...
"You want the upstairs or the downstairs?" she calls to him, the creaking of the door loud enough for him to hear from the side of the house.
"It's small enough we don't need to separate to cover everything," he says. It takes more of an effort than he would like to clear his mind of last night and this morning.
"I've got to pick Henry up from school soon...and I have a feeling we're not going to find anything."
They stare into the living room, the majority of the downstairs. It winds around to a rather large kitchen, and, other than that and a small door to their left, that's all there is. Nothing adorns the wall on his way up the staircase except for a milder amount of natural light from all the windows. He comes up to a gigantic bedroom, so square he just spins in a singular circle before commencing a search.
He starts with the bedside table's drawer, small and white and with a thin veneer. It matches the white lacy blanket atop the brass bed. Nothing in the drawer, he sinks down and feels around underneath the bed.
Not finding anything could in fact be something, he thinks, crossing over to the white dresser. He raises his eyebrow at the faux-diamond knobs. Garish and overly large, it gives it the appearance of a child's piece of furniture. Not a total stranger to what women can keep in their drawers, he inhales and opens the top drawer to find one, two...six pairs of socks and six drab undergarments next to them. All right, moving on... The lack of clothes gives the illusion of even more depth in the drawers, a scant amount of shirts and trousers made for what he assumes sleeping—short, no lower than the knee, of a thin material.
It's as if the Snow Queen arrived to Storybrooke with only the clothes on her back, he thinks with folded arms. Staring at the dresser, his lips purse together in thought. Closet, he decides, crossing to the mirrored doors in front of the bed. He slides it back and finds a few pastel shirts, some collared, all solid, hanging on a rack. So bare, the long wooden bar looks even longer. No extra boxes. Well, that oddity could have been summed up by the curse taking care of the hardships of moving into a place. But the others who were cursed—they established lives here. Lives built on lies, but still ones planted with such care they still could claim roots. This woman could have just as easily arrived here yesterday.
Heading back downstairs and turning the corner off the front door, passing the bathroom that would have been on the left, he eyes no souvenirs or keepsakes on the shelves or desktops. There aren't any pictures anywhere to provide clues. Swan is still rummaging in the kitchen, skittering her fingers through cards in a small box.
"Recipes," she says with her head reeled back in disgust. "Ones that bring back memories."
He's never known her to grimace at food before, so he crosses over the bare living room and peeks down at the unsavory words "corn dogs" written on the top of a white lined card. His eyes follow her fingers as she drops the card down to the next one, "chili dog."
"Had one too many hot dogs as a kid." With a lump in her throat, she adds, "Cheap, quick, filling—good stuff for people taking on way too many kids." Closing the box, she stares at it for a moment before angling herself back to the living room. "I found something else really weird, too."
He follows her over to some built-in shelves next to the fireplace, only a few books giving the house any personal touch. She pulls one out and holds it by its diamond-patterned spine. Cocking his head, he raises an eyebrow at the boy straddling a broomstick.
"'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,'" he reads.
"I read this series as a kid. All the books here are ones I read as a kid."
Stepping forward, he skims the spines—The Giver, Howl's Moving Castle, Anne of Green Gables, The Princess Bride...basic words that feel like a foreign language. Swan read these books, is looking at them right this minute with the affection of old friends, and he should be able to uncover some other facet to her through them. Glancing back down at the bespectacled lad on the book, he flips it over and back again.
"He's a witch?" he tries.
"He's a wizard...it's pretty good." He tucks the book into his arm and savors the look of surprise on her face as she folds her arms. "Taking some homework with you?" Answering her with just a grin, she sighs.
"Well, he's a friendlier looking wizard than what I'm used to. It's all the personal touch this house seems to have."
"Yeah, the curse gave everybody a life. Mary Margaret had photos of her doing things with her students and everything. This is almost, almost like she came here and put her life on hold." Flapping her arms at the books, she gives them a glare. "The only things that give this place any kind of character are things that have more to do with me..." He doesn't respond as she's pulled out her phone and stands frozen staring at it.
"What are you doing?"
"I was going to call Regina and ask if this Sarah Fisher had ever acted suspicious. I mean, twenty-eight years, I'm sure Regina got ice cream at least once in that time. But she's not talking to me, so it doesn't matter."
"Perhaps she'll talk to me," he says, placing his phone on the counter and gesturing for her to do the same with hers. Wary, she nevertheless does so, her questioning look priceless.
"Just don't get your hopes up. You don't seem to be one of her favorite people, either," she warns. However, she looms over his phone and hits a button called "speaker" as it rings.
"Hello? Who is this?"
"Regina!" he says, taking a moment to marvel at not having to put the phone up to his ear. "I'm ransacking the Snow Queen's house."
"Oh dear god, Hook, I...am I on speaker?" she demands. Swan opens her mouth, but he holds up his hand.
"So that's what that button does! Well, since I have you, I was hoping you could assist in the investigation." Looking up, he locks eyes with Swan, her smirk on the verge of giggling.
"Hook, I have no desire to speak to Miss Swan whatsoever."
"And Emma's not here, so I fail to see a problem."
"You two are attached at the hip and you're telling me she's not there?" Regina scoffs. His heart starts pounding, but he can't help but try to gauge Swan's reaction. Her face remains stoic, objective, but her cheeks redden and there doesn't seem to be an end to the blushing.
"Come, come, love, the enemy of my enemy and all that. Was the Snow Queen part of your curse or not?"
There is a pause. He waits for the click to indicate she's just chosen to end the conversation. At last, he hears a sigh.
"I didn't know her personally, in our world or this one, but if she wasn't part of the curse, she certainly played the part well."
"And how would you, in your expertise, surmise she did get here?" he asks.
"I don't know. You brought Elsa here in an urn. Maybe you or your meddling girlfriend brought this one here in a UPS package or some Tupperware," she snaps.
And there's the click, he notes.
"That's it then," Swan says. "There's no way this doesn't have something to do with her knowing me. She knew who I was, she's got my books on her shelf, she nearly took me off the road."
"What?"
"She iced the road while I was driving in this morning. They aren't kidding around when they tell you to steer into the skid."
His hand finds her hair and winds a strand around his fingers, brushing the lapel of her jacket.
"You realize, love, the only time neither of us has been in danger lately is when we're on a date?" he breathes, his forehead dipping down and brushing against her hair. She looks up at him and he's near enough to feel the muscles in her face manage a smile.
"Subtle hint we should go on more," she sighs. As she breaks away from him, her eyes lower to his lips before she blinks herself out of it. He won't dwell on how nice a distraction a kiss would have been. "Uh, I've been meaning to ask you...Henry, well, you guys had a nice time together and maybe now...you know, you'd like to take him out again?"
"You have to ask it as though you're unsure?"
"Hey, you look like you could use a break, too," she says. "Down because of your hand?"
He looks like he could use a break? What the bloody hell did that mean? She didn't find him helpful? He'd looked like he'd been stewing over everything but what she needed? Should he agree just for the sake of her behest? Had the hook truly been irking him that incessantly?
"It's just...I think it would be a good idea if you two got to know each other a little better," she says quickly, and perhaps it's his imagination, but the way she looks up at him, her features appear to relax and allow themselves to be read, the storm clouds always circling over her clearing.
"I'd be delighted to, Swan." He does need a distraction, at least until he can figure out what the crocodile will want from him. It suddenly sounds so tranquil, taking Henry out on the water again, the steady rhythm of the waves clearing his mind. "Henry's up for sailing then?"
"There are boats down there to rent, you know," she says, her smirk masking relief. Grabbing her keys, she starts for the door, nudging his arm a little as she passes by him.
A/N: I did put a year in this chapter, part of my vision of how the original curse worked. You can PM me if you feel it's too much of a distraction from the story and I can go into more detail. Coming up? Mood whiplash!
