David and Snow had upended their apartment into the headquarters of a battlefield within the span of a night. The news of the Snow Queen's plans had frozen their faces into expressions of pure terror for a split second before they began...he'll call it banter, albeit a very no-nonsense banter, a back-and-forth dialogue only the two of them seem to fully understand. One will talk and the other will build upon the idea and the whole thing becomes a volley of connection until they draw a conclusion.

Snow packs up Neal quicker than he'd ever seen her before, the pram, the bottles, the bag of supplies that bulges more by the day and yet never explodes, and sets off for the mayor's office for an "emergency broadcast."

"A what?"

"You can televise a message for everyone to see on their TVs at home, a mayoral privilege," Snow says with a bit of a lilt in her voice. "We can post the photo Sidney took of her and Emma and then everyone in town will know who we're looking for and can report to us if they see her."

"Will it work?" He leans with his elbow on their counter, too familiar with the expression that answers him.

"It's a long shot, but one of the reasons the Snow Queen's gotten away with all this is that she's given everyone distractions. The ice wall, Marian—now she's got the spotlight on her and someone will be bound to see her."

He supposes that extends to the woods as more than a few denizens of Storybrooke prefer the more rustic way of life similar to the Enchanted Forest, and he feels filthy for even trying to slip into the Snow Queen's head, but if her endgame is some paradise reserved for only herself, Swan, and Elsa, she has to have a destination in mind. One doesn't isolate two women into sisterhood and then ask them where to live...

"Come on. You're with me," David says, tossing him his jacket. He has his keys ready, which means a trip in the truck.

"Where to?"

"Rounding up dwarfs and werewolves for what they do best."


At eleven o'clock at night, there is no movement at the town line, just as there wasn't any at ten. In fact, the most boisterous event of the night so far had been Leroy grabbing his ax off the wall and bellowing on about making an ice sculpture out of Ingrid's face. Sad day when he and Leroy share the same sentiment.

Ruby had given David a tight embrace on her way out of the diner before sprinting off in the direction of the woods, her form hunching over and growing bulkier in the dark. Her howl echoed through the night. At least Killian was sure if she did find anything, she would be able to let them know.

The truck sat, "parked," in the shadows of the trees off the road, and had been doing so for two hours straight on the off-chance the Snow Queen needed to place herself there for any reason. It stood to reason, the place being a magical hub, but he saw out of the corner of his eye that David's posture mirroring his own this would be to no avail.

"Bet you don't have many stake-outs under your belt," David breathes into the dark, making an effort to try to find something out past the windshield.

"Pirates plot their course and go, mate. Waiting for the opposition to come to them would be counterproductive." It strikes him that a prince normally wouldn't be accustomed to it either, but he refrains.

"We staged a trap for Regina once, Snow and I. It felt like we were waiting all night until she showed up, and then Snow and Blue played their parts and we had her. Just like that. All the waiting, all those empty hours—it was like they were gone from our memory."

"A feeling you're all too familiar with now," he digs.

"You could at least play along, Hook, you know, actually add to the conversation so it doesn't feel like we're just sitting here doing nothing while the whole town's at stake, not to mention my daughter."

Ah. He should have known how potent a distraction repartee could be. Gods, had it really come down to this, sitting in a truck hoping to catch a glimpse of such a threat? Swallowing, he rolls his tongue into the roof of his mouth and runs his fingers over the glass next to him.

"Is that what you want to discuss?" he asks. He casts his eyes down, but the pirate in him sweeps them in David's direction to gauge his response. Nostrils flaring, his head bent...like being in Neverland with him all over again.

"Emma's spending the night at the station with Elsa."

"Waiting on Belle to give them the neutralizing spell," he finishes.

"Snow and I asked her to watch Neal tomorrow. I'm not sure if she wanted to do it or if she wanted to want to do it."

He's clearly going somewhere with this, Killian thinks, or he should be. Staying silent, he lets his hand fall back down from the glass, waiting for the thought to finish itself.

"She's too close to this, this...I don't even know what to call it. It's not an investigation, and it's sure as hell not a case, not anymore. We both thought she could use a few hours to step away from it, and if she's with Neal, we can do something. We can contribute. We can..." His head slumps backward into the back of the seat. "We can actually protect her."

He needs to answer, so he flexes his jaw, the wording crucial to the rest of the night's mood.

"Emma feels the most protected when she's the one doing the protecting," he says. "At least some of it."

"Yeah, but this woman, this woman's thrown her for a loop. You can see it. It's, it's doing things to her head." He shakes his head. "We can't help her if we're always at home with feedings, and changings, and rocking...and it's not that that stuff's not important..." he trails off and rubs his eyes.

Killian shifts his head around and stares at him. There truly are times when the family seems to be a veritable hive rather than made up of individuals. He wonders if Swan and her father ever think about that.

"I thought, I thought working together would help me get to know her," David mutters.

"She loves you," he says.

"Which sometimes just means she's scared we'll abandon her."


Two in the morning equates to a stop at Granny's for provisions, blocking out the woman's pleas for the two of them to call it a night disguised as complaining.

"If you drink up all the coffee now, there won't be anything for the customers...four hours from now, and Ruby and I'll be out of work and that is on you, David!"

She's not fooling anyone. For one thing, they're all too worn out to pay that much attention, and two, she's patrolling her kitchen with her crossbow. David all but collapses into a booth to drink his coffee, and so, blinking every half second, he dashes up to his room for a shower.

He doesn't remember running the hot water or gathering towels and washcloths or even undressing, nothing registering until he leans his head back and lets the water douse his face, mat down his hair. Closing his eyes, he knows he isn't really one who can fall asleep standing up, but tonight his body just might make an exception. The lowered lights, the steam, the rest of the world on the other side of the curtain...

"Hook! Hook?"

A steady rapping on the room's door brings him back to some semblance of alertness. Turning the knobs that make the water disappear, he towels off and throws his clothes back on, hoping. Just hoping it's someone to report the Snow Queen's been sighted. It's a woman's voice, not Swan's or her mother's or Regina's...

"Belle?"

Her hair loose and as unkempt as it had been in Regina's prison cell, she holds a book out between them with one hand and rubs her eye with the other.

"I've been trying to find more on the Shattered Sight spell and, well, you see this illustration?"

It burns his eyes to focus on a watercolor mirror off-center on the page, but he does so. A series of white curls seem to orbit around the circular looking glass, making the mirror wide enough to rival his arms spread out. Raising an eyebrow at it, he looks back up at her.

"I think we're agreed it's a mirror?"

"It's the only thing I've been able to find and, well..." She blushes, and he knows it has nothing to do with the fact his hair and the tip of his nose are still drenched, or that his shirt is only buttoned halfway. Pursing her lips, she shakes her head at herself. "This particular language isn't my strong suit. I was wondering..."

He picks it up and adjusts it until the script, inked in blue with more than enough flourish, clarifies itself for him. Elvish. He'd translated a little bit of it in the pawn shop, back when they had only just discovered Zelena's identity, but it could come back to him if he sat down with it and followed the words with his fingers.

"We can take it downstairs where the light's better," he suggests. "Why didn't you just ask your husband to translate it for you?"

"He's...indisposed, at the moment," she says to the stained-glass window at the end of the hall. He nods, not caring if it looks knowing. Duplicitous cur, probably off plotting with the Snow Queen right now...dealing with all their lives as callously as if it were a chess game...

"What?" she asks him, eyebrows narrowing.

"What's he doing at this hour?" he asks back, shrugging. Open your eyes, lass, he wills her.

"Working, like everyone is. I had heard you were making yourself useful...so I was a bit put off to find you bathing, of all things."

"Perhaps an attempt to seduce the Snow Queen. I'm led to believe she's rather lonely, and this doesn't just happen," he chides, gesturing at his chest down to his legs. Belle rolls her eyes. "Now, if you'll kindly let me lock the door to my own room, I shall be more than happy to accompany you downstairs and we can see what the book says about the mirror, hmm?"


Eight in the morning. He stands with his back against the library exterior, arms folded. The book Belle had brought last night...early this morning...had been a dead end, a comparison to another mirror of legend that was probably real, one that acted as a portal to Wonderland. Why anyone would want to go there remains a mystery to him. Granny had opened the diner up to the usual crowd, Leroy and the dwarfs smudged and sweaty from pacing around in the woods all night. They'd screamed for bacon and eggs, and ham, and toast, and sausage—Killian had excused himself to get some air.

Actually, he'd packed up some of the food before it could be inhaled and spooned it into some white containers, "styrofoam," and taken it to the sheriff's station. Swan and Elsa had moved desks around and pushed the boxes of paperwork up against the wall and even onto the cots in the jail cells to...well, he didn't know how to describe it...cross a stream of ice chunks with one of hot, concentrated light. Much to their disappointment, and his, magical ice and heat meeting do the same thing that regular ice and heat do when they meet. He'd volunteered to find a mop for them, but his phone rang.

"Go ahead," Swan had prompted him, bent over in a closet and throwing out a bucket.

"It's not you and it's not Henry," he'd said, hating the helplessness in his tone.

"That's when you say 'hello' and tell the salesguy you're not interested," she had said. "Thank you for breakfast."

Taking her advice had been what led him here, David following up on some lead about the Snow Queen walking through town.

He's walked the same route over and over again, certain if he keeps going he'll form a trench right here in the street. All this down time, the Snow Queen refusing to meet them before she's ready, prompts his thoughts to twist into hypotheticals and abstracts. When she was finally caught, and she will be caught, it will be rather like being thrown from the frying pan into the fire. Perhaps it's only because Ingrid is not Pan or Zelena, but the crocodile doesn't seem to feel threatened by her presence, which means his days and nights are free to scheme away while everyone else scatters themselves about. Just what will he have planned for him once this is all over?

Nothing, he decides. To hell with this stewing. In a matter of days, a snow monster, an ice wall, and a thief half as clever as he thinks he is have come their way and he's worried Swan won't take him at his word? If he speaks to her first, if he can just take that breath and be honest with her, something can be salvaged...although he's not sure what that is. His fingers play with the rim of his belt as he rolls his tongue. It did always make him feel better to be open with her, and she deserves nothing less...

His boots slide out from under him, his arm jerking out and bracing the exterior of the library the only thing keeping him from thudding to the ground. Ice.

"David," he calls to him from the opposite end of the street. David hustles around a few cars and skids to a stop before hitting the narrow ice trail. It doesn't matter how she wound up in the library, the door unlocked and the trail going all the way up to the clocktower. All that matters is that she can be cornered. "Call Emma."


It looks like the mirror in the book, illuminated and everything. Belle had said it could do terrible things and the Snow Queen had been preoccupied with it before Swan and Elsa had come running with the candle to capture her.

"We don't exactly have a lot of information on this thing," David says, folding his arms and looking at the mirror only out of the corner of his eye. "If we break it, is that the Shattered Sight spell? The shards would go flying toward everyone?"

"No idea, mate." Holding his breath, he brings his forehead up and meets his reflection. He swallows and waits. He waits for murderous thoughts, unnatural thoughts, to invade his brain. If it affects him, they'll have a starting point, a baseline. "I don't feel any different," he says after a beat.

"No need to make yourself the guinea pig. Here." David hands him his gun. "Now you've got that and a hook against bare hands." Weaving around him, David looks into the mirror and Killian keeps one eye on the reflection and the other on David himself. His posture doesn't change, his expression one of confusion and frustration, not ire.

"Any discoveries?" the hear resounding from the stairwell. Elsa climbs up toward them, her hand hovering over the rail.

"Not yet. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at the station?" David answers.

"Well, Emma seemed to think I would be of better use here...that, and I felt my temper rising so high because of that woman I could have frozen the entire station," she adds, huddling into herself for a brief second before craning her neck at the mirror. She approaches it with slow deliberate steps, like nearing a wild animal. Her movements stay fluid even as she reaches out with her arm and brushes the glass with her fingertips.

"Can you freeze it?" he tries. Perhaps with harsh frost patterns over the glass, the magic won't work. Standing back, Elsa lifts her arms and turns her wrists outward. She bends and brings her arms down in front of her.

"Ingrid's thought of that," she sighs. "Have you tried looking into it at the same time? Maybe any hostilities two people harbor against each other is what triggers it."

"I'm afraid you'll need two other 'guinea pigs' for that one, love. The Prince and I get along so well it bloody well scares us, doesn't it?" He flashes a grin at David, who rolls his eyes. With his eyes, he dips his head in the direction of the mirror for them to try. He would laugh at the incredulous face staring back at him if he wasn't so damned tired. "Come on then, mate. Frightened of a little animosity?"

"Give me back my gun."

They step up to the mirror together, Elsa wavering back into the recesses of the tower, her arms locked. Ready to freeze them should things get out of hand, he surmises. A silent count of three, and he comes face-to-face with himself again. Elsa's sound of disappointment doesn't exactly go unheeded. She returns to the mirror's glow and begins examining it.

"This is what we've been worried about?" he asks. "Shouldn't it be shaking or doing something evil?"

"Agreed. It feels like just a harmless looking glass to me," Elsa concurs, placing her hands on her hips.

"I've found nothing to counteract the spell yet—hey, stop!" Belle jerks his arm back away from the mirror so fast it takes him a moment to register she must have come up the steps to meet them. "Do not look in that thing! It'll make you see the worst in yourself!"

So that's how it works, what he should feel. He raises his eyebrow. He knows precisely what those kinds of thoughts sound like, how much of a disappointment he'd turned out to be, how every time he tried to do something right it only felt like he was slipping further away from some image of himself that seemed to grow more and more unattainable...how no matter how much he loved, gave, did—his actions mean nothing in the long run.

But he can look away. The thoughts fails to consume him. Problems, he may have, but suddenly deciding to go out on a killing spree isn't one of them.

"It must be broken. I've been staring at it all day and I think I'm even more devilishly handsome and charming than usual."

Belle's body can't seem to decide whether it wants to scoff, laugh, or shriek at him so it rocks back and forth between him and the mirror, the mirror winning. "Th-this isn't the same mirror," she gasps, marching toward it without fear now. Her face in the dead center of it, she's sure.

"Why would the Snow Queen risk coming all the way out here to plant a fake mirror?" Elsa wonders. Because the only thing she obsesses more about than the woman he loves is herself, staying hidden unless she's sure the objects of her "affections" will pay her their undivided attention...like being all alone with her at the sheriff's station. His head snaps toward David.

"Because she wanted to get caught," David breathes. He holds his phone up at first, but brings it back down. "Belle, how long do the effects of the candle last?"

"There's no set limit mentioned anywhere, but there's a word of caution along with it, which I would take to mean not long."

He'll pay the price. Whatever monstrous act the crocodile wants him to do. He bolts down the steps.

"You can't go to the station alone! You'll be defenseless!" David shouts, hurrying down after him with the ladies on his heels.

"We won't go alone! If she's asserting her husband's working as hard as everyone else, then he'll be more than willing to offer up his magic, won't he?" he demands, pointing at Belle, who freezes midstep. "The Snow Queen's prevented Elsa from using her magic before, but no such power exists to do that to the Dark One, is there?"

"He'll help," is all she says, avoiding his glare and looking to David.

"Elsa, be ready just the same," David says, nodding to her. He passes Killian on the stairs, his hand patting the back of his jacket on the way down. The pawn shop isn't far, a dash across the street and up the sidewalk will do the job, but David takes off for the station. About to call after him, he stops and sees he's gotten no further than the door.

"Iced. Damn it!" David cries.

Killian rolls his eyes at him and continues for the dusty cluttered hellhole where it feels as if the crocodile will be waiting for them. Of course, of course the Snow Queen had thought to do something to the doors. She's alone with Emma, what she's wanted all along. David sidles up next to him and they about slam the bell into the glass, they burst through the door so intensely.

"Ah, this kind of procession never bodes well," Rumpelstiltskin sings to himself. David comes right to the point, haste being the goal here.

"The Snow Queen iced over the locks of the sheriff's station. Emma's trapped inside with her."

"We need your help, Rumple. You must be able to get us in there," Belle adds, leaning over the counter while the Dark One, her husband, stands straight...no reaction to her stress, no change in face as she murmurs "please" to him, not even realizing she's begging.

"How could I turn down the pleas of my beloved wife?" he asks, looking past her at him. Bloody monster. He has no reason to fear the Snow Queen. The same man had tearfully bid the same woman goodbye when Pan had been just inches away from her, and now Belle was heading right towards this madwoman and he could hardly be bothered. His "after you" is so lax it nauseates him. Killian waits until the others hurry themselves out. Too many scenarios run through his head, but they all stem from the same point—a deal. There is no other explanation. The Dark One and the Snow Queen have made a deal or he is holding out for one.

"All right, crocodile, what's your game? The last two villains that came into town tried to kill you, but you seem rather unconcerned by this one. Makes a man wonder if you two have a history."

Rumpelstiltskin's face at last changes to a hateful glare, downright murderous if they had time to spare.

"You can wonder all you like, dearie. My history. My business." He waits, signalling to Killian that if they really do consider his help essential, he'll go first. Coward. As he steers himself toward the door without looking back at him, he focuses on the sheriff's station. It would almost be worth a little magical anomaly of some kind just to rile Rumpelstiltskin up.


A/N: With 4x12 airing so soon we can all almost taste it (yay!), it is possible updates may be slower. They shouldn't because I'm always a little ahead of what I post and I pace things out a certain way. I'm just saying things could slow down depending on the show's pacing. Coming up? An exchange between Snow and Charming I've wanted to do for awhile (and one I want Hook and Elsa to hear).