"Step to, lad! You ought to have reached the top and touched back down before I could have even snagged one coconut!" he yells from the top of one of Neverland's tallest trees. His arms hanging over one of the limbs, he glances down and grins at Bae, not that far from stretching a leg to just the right place and wedging himself between the trunk and a sturdy branch.
"We do it next time, what will you give me?" he pants. Straddling a branch, he leans his back against the trunk.
"Respect," Killian teases with a laugh. He reaches up and, with his hook, lets a coconut drop into his hand. He performs the now-memorized burrowing it takes to open one up and offers it to him.
"Thanks."
One can't see the whole island from the top...the flimsier branches obscure too much and shaking them into a new arrangement can be deafening...but the peaks of the mountains look closer than ever. The sparkles from a few freshwater springs glitter in the perpetual afternoon along with a mermaid tail or two. It's up here, with him, that he wonders if this revenge obsession is nothing more than a mistake, one he won't be able to work his way out of... Milah would surely prefer this, her two young men gazing at a landscape together, one she would have traded their last jewels for just pencils to sketch.
"So how does a sailor with a hook for a hand get to be a climber? It's not the kind of thing that seems to become you," Bae inquires after a long sip and swishing the milk around in his mouth.
"Nay, sailors have to be adept at climbing up the rigging. I would do it every chance I had. You see things more clearly, can interpret things better."
"There's nothing to interpret. We're not talking about anything," he counters, squinting.
"Silence can be as easy to read as talk, lad, if you take the care to try."
Bae laughs and offers the coconut back to him, his lopsided smile and big brown eyes melting something in him. It's melting the rage, he knows, looking away back at the mountains. He doesn't forget it's a hellish place; he just...it's so damn frightening at times to consider letting it all go.
"I like it up here. Just the two of us," Bae says. The silence adds something to it. "Like a family."
It tugs at Killian's eyes at the same time his blackened heart longs to run away. It's too charred to truly love anyone now, and it's just as well. The boy speaks in ignorance. If he knew everything, he'd know just how impossible it would be to have the perfect family.
Regina had wanted to walk back into town. Swan hadn't allowed it, wisely mentioning that such an action with a madwoman on the loose that had already attacked them once would be "asking for it," so she'd consented to being dropped back off at her vault.
"Research is research," he says again as Swan unlocks the door to the sheriff's station and flips on the lights.
"Yeah, and when Pan got in there, he didn't leave with just research material," she scoffs, grimacing at the boxes of paperwork still all over the place. "I just don't think she works best alone."
"Let's hope Elsa and Belle have made some progress then, especially since their research site was a little more...conventional." Risking it, he sweeps behind her and wraps his arms around her, his chin on her shoulder. The back of her head leans back against his face, enticing him to close his eyes.
"I'm so tired of looking at all this crap," she murmurs, relaxing a little in his arms. "Want to just say 'screw it' and go get some cake?"
The sound of rushing footsteps down the corridor echoes into the room before he can agree. He banishes the notion of whisking both Swan and cake from Granny's into his room and bolting the door as Elsa marches in, hugging a tome to her chest.
"Emma, we have a problem."
"It's Storybrooke. We've got more of those than we've got...I don't know. I'm tired." She takes her jacket off and ties her back out of her way as Elsa sets the book onto the desk, opening it to the precise page she wants.
"What's this?" Swan asks her.
"It's a clue as to what this is all about. This is family business."
He raises his eyebrow at that.
"The Snow Queen—she's my aunt," Elsa sighs, a tensing of her shoulders indicating she's been fighting acknowledging it for a while.
"The Snow Queen is your aunt?"
"According to this heraldry book I found in the library," she says, nodding. She turns the book around so he and Swan can see it. "Her name is Ingrid. I didn't even know my mother had any sisters. I'm as surprised as you are."
"Spend a little more time in this town, love, you'll realize just about everyone's related," he quips. Really, it should have been their initial lead. Swan's silent laugh confirms it. Swan's foster mother, Elsa's aunt...no wonder the two of them have hit it off. By Storybrooke standards, they're practically sisters.
He steps up next to them and peers down at the book that does indeed smell like it came via the library. His eyes widen and he arches an eyebrow at the portrait in the middle, a strong, proud face in contrast to the demure ones of this Ingrid and the one on the bottom, the youngest sister. Her hair parted just the right way, pale buttery waves falling down her shoulders, the narrow, delicate features—she's not quite a duplicate of Emma, but there is more than a passing similarity.
"This book traces the lineage in Arendelle for generations. That's Gerda, my mother, and this is Helga, my other aunt." Her fingertips linger on the middle portrait.
"Bloody hell, look at this one. She looks just like you." The swift terror overcoming her face as she snaps her head back down at the portrait drives him to thinking out loud. "Maybe that's why she was so obsessed with you, why she kept all those relics from your childhood."
Elsa abandons the heraldry book to pick up the scroll, but he finds himself not asking her to translate the text. It's far easier for his mind to contemplate a chilling fantasy of this woman replacing her sister. With Emma.
"She came to this world looking for blondes? There's a lot more than just me," Swan argues. He could have told her that. New York alone harbored so many it was a bloody wonder he hadn't run up to each back shouting her name.
"Don't I know it?" He does so like ruffling her feathers, that faux-shocked look breaking both of them out of their morbid minds for a split second.
"She wasn't looking for a blonde. She was looking for the Savior," Elsa gasps, the scroll completely unrolled and in her hands.
"What?"
"This scroll. The writing is Runic . It's a prophecy. It says, 'The name of the Savior is Emma.'"
"She knew?" Swan breathes.
"Before you even did. She knew you were powerful."
"But why?" she asks him, and, again, he wishes he had an answer. Power, perhaps. That is the default answer, but it's more than that. This Ingrid woman has made it all too clear it's more than that.
"It says right here," Elsa continues. "'And the Savior shall become...Ingrid's sister.'" She flushes, batting her eyelashes as if they can block out the information.
"What the hell does that mean?" Swan demands.
"Well, my mother died, and her other sister—she's not around anymore. I think Ingrid believes in this prophecy. I think she's looking to replace them."
They should have all jumped at the door opening and Belle marching toward them with tear-stained cheeks, but they can't move, not until Belle utters a small, weak "Elsa." Replacing her sisters with Emma and Elsa. How? Take them? Spirit her away in some blizzard while he can do nothing but stand there and watch?
"I am so, so sorry, but-"
"What?" Blinking his way out of his fears, he notices she's taken Elsa's hands.
"I-I've been keeping a secret. I know your sister, Anna." She ignores the elated expression on Elsa's face, which can't be a good sign. "She helped me once, but when I had a chance to help her, I let her down, and because I did, she was captured by the Snow Queen."
"What?" Elsa snaps, a cold fury taking over her face...but no ice walls, no snow monsters. Not even a sprinkling of flurries. "Where did this happen? When?"
"Arendelle, a long, long time ago, and I have no idea where she is now." Swan looks about ready to pound her fist into the desk at the constant head-shaking going on. The trail literally going cold before they could even begin to traverse it. "But, uh, I'm afraid we have a more pressing concern."
She takes a breath, rounding her mouth to steady herself.
"The Snow Queen has a mirror, imbued with terrible magic that can do terrible things."
He's had enough. Too many foreign folktales...and, sadly, too many real instances...of mirrors used to travel, mirrors used to spy, mirrors used to remember, forget, bloody rule worlds.
"A mirror? Easy enough, let's just go smash it," he says, mustering a shrug.
"It's not that simple," Belle argues. "Rumple told me it's part of an awful spell—the spell of Shattered Sight."
He's never heard of it and he's sure his unchanging expression is adding to Swan's frustrations.
"If she casts it, its magic will make everyone in Storybrooke turn on one another."
And there's the how...and it's not at all comforting to know it.
"Bloody hell, the entire town will destroy itself," he nearly gasps at the simplicity of it. No blizzards, no freezing people slowly over time, just—kill them all off, except for the two she wanted kept alive.
"And there'd be no one left," Belle finishes.
"Except us," she says, turning to Elsa, who nods, swallowing hard.
"What makes you think she'd spare you and Elsa?" Belle asks.
"Because of this," Swan sighs, her fingers barely tracing the family tree in the book.
"She wants it to be just the three of us."
"Her perfect family." Swan kicks out the chair and rushes into it, her palms finding their way into her forehead, kneading it. He can't let yet another curse separate her from her family, worse this time because she has Henry. The boy would have nowhere to hide, all the people he trusts suddenly hounding him out and ready to pounce at the slightest sensation. His grandparents devolved into a swordsman and an archer, one of his mothers more than capable of inflicting her own reign of terror on everyone...and it would only take a relentless scrape across his throat with a hook...
"Let me see that?" Belle leans over the book with her hands on her hips, brow furrowed. Exhaling, she looks back up. "Well, what do we know about the Snow Queen?"
"She's fucking insane," Swan blurts out.
"Her powers are like mine, only stronger," Elsa offers, sidestepping until she can place a hand on Swan's shoulder. "We've seen her manage to keep the ice wall up, freeze someone, conjure up beings that can pass for people..." she trails off, shuddering. Then, she looks over at him. "And she can cancel out other people's magic."
"She said she had done that to you the day we tracked her," he says, nodding at her. "If she can learn that, you can learn that. Both of you could."
Swan's eyes dart to and fro, not focusing on anything except something she's weaving in her mind. All he can read is her pushing out the books they'd found at her house, the motherly way she calls out her name.
"I'll unlock the pawn shop. I know exactly what we need that neutralizes magic," Belle says, smiling, beaming, rather. "It's, it's a candle. I'd have to translate the instructions, but there's a book with its picture in it and the words next to it have to be a description! Elsa, Elsa, I promise you I will do everything in my power to make sure you and Anna are reunited. This is my fault, but I think I can fix it. Just, just give me a few hours and I can have it all to you by morning."
"We aren't going to put everything on hold until morning," Swan finally says, her head falling back into the air. "It's not enough to know how to capture her. We have to know where she is to do it."
"Rest easy on that, love. She's made a rather sordid pattern of letting you two know where she is when she wants," he says.
"Yeah, and I'm sick of it. We find her, on our terms, before she can cast this Shattered Sight spell. Belle, what does she need to be able to cast it? Please don't tell me someone's firstborn child or a human heart."
"Everything I've seen on it is very vague. A mirror needs to be pieced together, with what, I don't know beyond shards of glass, and it always mentions the 'harmony of three magical sisters' or something like that."
"I have a feeling Ingrid has set things into motion so she doesn't have to rely on us getting along harmoniously with her," Elsa mutters, folding her arms. Closing her eyes for a moment, she lets her arms fall to her sides and straightens her back. "Learning the neutralizing spell is the first step. When and if she wants to make her presence known to us, we'll be ready. Emma, we can practice it here. It's a much bigger space than your parents' apartment and we don't know the extent of the damage it can do, do we?" she asks Belle.
It all sounds as though it's coming together, but glancing down at Swan, still seated, doesn't incite him to hope. Her lips tight, she holds one of her hands in the other, turning it over and inspecting it, like a fortune teller.
"Swan?" he asks, kneeling down. "Swan, what's on your mind, love?" He knows most of it—being the object of an unhinged, magical woman's affections has the tendency to put one on edge, but there is something else, something that seems to cut even deeper. Opening his mouth to ask again and break her out of her trance, she stands up.
"She already had me. I was, for all intents and purposes, her kid. For six months. So what happened, she only wanted me if I could do magic?"
The lights above them begin to flicker, slowly, almost hesitantly at first, but then so rapidly it could induce a headache if it stays that way. Then, as she lets out a breath, they stop.
It cuts deeper indeed if she's grouping the Snow Queen in with all of those she trusted, loved, who left her. He won't argue with her now; she'll just seal herself back up if he does now, but it gives him a sinking feeling that the Snow Queen has taken this into account. If anyone tries to take her where she doesn't wish to go, they'll have to go through him first. Sword, hook, and heart belong to her as much as if she held them all in her hands.
A/N: I threw a 10th Kingdom reference in this chapter. See if you can spot it. Coming up? Catching the Snow Queen is a team effort.
