A/N: This chapter contains strong language. Also, I don't think I need to do this repeatedly, but I do not own the show or the characters. This fic is structured in a way to take the rather omniscient viewpoint of the show and put it into a third-person limited POV. I include original scenes, but I have never claimed this is an original story because it's not; it's fan fiction. It's the same thing as those books out there that tell Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's viewpoint. This is meant to celebrate the show (as most all fan fiction is) and to analyze and get into the head of a character I particularly enjoy precisely because I would find his thought process complex and fascinating in its own right. I welcome reviews and greatly appreciate the attention my stories receive, but if you are not interested in a retelling of the show's events from the perspective of one person, this probably isn't for you. That's all I'm going to say on the matter, and if it becomes an issue, either you as the reader or myself as the author will go elsewhere.
He'd promised himself he'd always find her. He thought he had been, that he'd done everything in his power to help her with the burden of being the Savior, so immersed in the happy endings of others...due to fate or her own heart...or both...she had given up on one of her own. He'd promised her in his head so many times he wouldn't let her down, that he would be there for her and now...now his legs can't flee fast enough from the apartment. Something feral takes over his mind, blocking rationale for run faster. Run faster! FASTER, damn it!
He has to stop this. Before she makes a deal with him. He begins screaming hoarse protests before he even storms into the pawn shop, slamming the bell into the door. He roars for Rumpelstiltskin while his legs wobble, torrents of dizziness threatening to make him still himself and catch his breath.
A dark patch that looks out of place quells the dizziness better than any rest could have. Creeping up to the counter, he realizes it's a handprint.
"Emma."
He shakes his head, seeing it all too clearly—how she felt she had nowhere else to go, how even here with some semblance of a plan she couldn't gain enough control over her magic to stop searing her mark into the space. It means she's already made a deal with him. Whatever the Dark One has told her, she's already listened to it and is still lost. Because he didn't find her. Because he didn't let her find him, a voice in his head corrects him as he tries to call her again.
"Hey, this is Emma. Leave a message."
Fuck! His body twists and jerks in every conceviable direction. About to allow the fury to take over and just destroy the first thing he comes into contact with, he closes his eyes and inhales as deeply as he can.
"Swan, it's Killian again. You have to listen to me. I know that you've been to see Gold. I saw what you did." His voice cracks as he paces the floor, hoping, just hoping she'll pick up at the last minute and he can tell her directly. No, no, talk, damn you! "And if he's promised to get rid of your powers, don't listen to him. He doesn't want to help you. He wants, he wants to collect your powers in a bloody magic hat and when he does, you'll be sucked in, too."
It sounds so bloody mad. How could he know such a thing, she'll wonder, giving him that look, that look of not wanting to believe him that is hesitation and doubt incarnate and he hates it so much...
"I-I don't know what he's planning, but I know that he's been lying to Belle. The dagger he gave her is a fake. I only know all this because..." Because you couldn't simply change, he scolds himself, biting his lip. Tears well in his eyes. Because you don't belong here and have absolutely nothing to give her—not magic, not competence, not even a love strong or true enough to fucking give her the truth. "Because I'm afraid I've been lying to you, too. Gold blackmailed me into helping him. He knew..." Running his tongue over his lip, he can visualize it, Swan backing away, recoiling at his words, the trust and love she'd finally allowed herself to feel drying up in an instant.
"He knew I'd do whatever it takes to be with you, and he used it against me. I just wanted to be a better man for you, Swan. But I failed, and now, because of it, I might lose you." No one has failed her like he has. Not her parents, not Neal, not the countless people who called themselves her guardians or protectors; none of them failed her so completely it resulted in her demise. His breath hitches. He can't live without her. He'd barely lived without love before and Emma Swan...pick up the phone, love. Please. Please just pick up the phone and yell at me.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "But I hope you never forgive me because that means that you'll get this in time to save yourself."
Something wanted them apart, something greater than the two of them that, whenever a chance to really have a future together came along, it tore in with a tempest so violent it ripped them away from each other. Worlds, time, villains... No. No, you idiot, it's you. Fate landed you in her path and you are the one who squandered all the opportunities. Now the best-case scenario is her existing.
He'll take it. He'll take that over anything.
"Goodbye."
A single tear falls from each eye as he brings the phone down from his ear, an eerie calm taking hold of him. She could check her phone, he thinks, just to make sure her family hadn't tried to contact her on the way to wherever the crocodile had told her to go...
His eyes veer back to the counter. A map lays splayed out on it with a series of penned-in circles around a peninsula of some kind, a white boxy shape indicating a structure there, one close enough to the coast to where one could see the water from it.
A house. A house in the middle of nowhere far from the rest of the town. His eyes and hand know how to calculate, how to chart a course. Without being fully aware of how he's doing it, he commits the landmarks between here and there to memory, checks the coordinates, takes into consideration the scale—and leaves.
Night falls over the woods. He has to go through them to reach the reclusive house, has to fumble over gnarled roots kinked up out of the ground, has to blindly break through thorns, has to simply tolerate the branches reeling back and smacking him in the face. The sound of the ocean ahead of him keeps him from despairing that he's too late. This isn't the impenetrable ice wall that all but laughed at his hook chipping away at it. This is nothing but a secluded house just within reach.
Through the silhouettes of leaves, he at last sees straight, man-made lines ahead of him. A glint here and there of moonlight gives way to a spacious house that might as well be constructed out of light, the only part encased in night the cathedral-like steps leading up to the door. Windows everywhere, she should be able to hear him.
"Swan!"
"Watch your step, Captain. The terrain's a little rough around here."
So smug. Acting so sure of himself when the only reason he ever wins is because he brings everyone around him down...
"Get out of my way, crocodile," he snarls at him. "I'll die fighting before I let you use that bloody hat on Emma."
A gust of wind slams his spine into the bars of the black metal fence around the house. It sucks the air right out of him as a long, serpentine rope winds itself around him, squeezing his wrists and legs into the cold metal behind him. No. No, he can't take more magic! Victory can't be that easy for the crocodile!
"Death can wait," Rumpelstiltskin growls back at him. "How about before you depart, I'll treat you to a front-row seat and we can watch her use that hat on herself?"
"No," he breathes, gritting his teeth and flinging his arms out as far as the coils will let them.
"Oh, and, uh, in case you were counting on Emma getting your message—don't." He holds up a white-cased phone he's seen her use before. Stop paying heed to him and twist out of these ropes, he commands himself, writhing his limbs every way they will go.
"I'm not one for loose ends," Rumpelstiltskin continues as he approaches him. His smirk dominates more and more of his face. "Don't worry. You'll get over her...just like you got over Milah. How many centuries did that take? Oh, it matters not. This might even add a little fuel to your fire."
He can't help looking at him and wondering, wondering what he's really staring at. He'd been restrained before, by Pan, and would have believed the whole thing some ridiculous dream—his own cowardly, conniving nemesis willingly laying down his life, and he knows then he'd seen him as a human for the first time...possibly ever. If there had been any remnants of desire for his blood, that day had scrubbed them clean. Life's strange way of doing things had taken his revenge for him, and he'd done penance for all his sins by being swept up in that blasted purple smoke to a meaningless life. Now? Now he had no clue where the crippled man who'd pleaded for Milah on her son's behalf had gone. Something, something beastly had taken his place, and it terrified him.
"Don't tell me you haven't missed the taste of vengeance?" he asks Killian.
"She's mother to your grandson, Gold! Don't do this!"
"I wish I didn't have to," he says with his arms out, as if it's all out of his control. As if Henry, Milah...Bae never meant anything to him at all. "But I need Miss Swan. Surely you understand that."
His head snaps back, past the crocodile, to the house and the horde of windows with so much light radiating out of them it could be Storybrooke's lighthouse. In one of them would be her, and she could glance out the window, for one fleeting second of doubt, and see him. See that someone came after her, wanted to find her. If only she thought she was worth finding.
A piercing whiteness burns out what he thought had been light before—with that scent, cinnamon and sunlight and what's he sure a rainbow smells like. Then, then, all of a sudden, it looks like a normal house.
His heart skips a beat, the delayed thud so hard it jolts his brain into thought. Memories of the old man pour into him and, while his being sucked in initiated a silence, this kind of quiet just feels different, perhaps due to the lingering aromas in the air. Nothing feels like it's missing.
"No," Rumpelstiltskin stifles a gasp.
Alive. Swan chose something to live for, and he'll do everything he can to remind her of her reasons until his dying breath. It's too good to be true. A fresh start. He can tell her the truth in person, and she might get angry, might lash out, but they'll overcome it. She's a survivor, his Swan, and he can't help but unleash a laugh.
"Well, I'm guessing she didn't go through with it! So sorry. Oh, but I do love the look of loss on your face!"
He can't wait for her to come out and confront him, spouting off the first thing that will fly into her head, like he tried to kill her without her permission, or if he'd been so stupid to underestimate her so. The expression of loss on Rumpelstiltskin's face, however, widens into something unhinged.
"I may not have the Savior, pirate. But I assure you, today won't be a complete loss." He turns away from him, back at the house. Killian twists his wrist, flapping out his arm. He'd hoped that the unexpected disappointment had broken the crocodile's concentration and the coils would go limp and plop into a pile at his feet. No such luck.
"I need to fill that hat with power, yes, but that was only part of the equation, because I need something else, a secret ingredient, one I didn't know about until an associate clue me in." He faces him, his vision tunneled to hone in only on him. "A heart."
No. No, there won't be any more serving him, no more blackmail or "fun." Killian Jones is, and always has been, his own man.
"Well, if you need my help procuring it, know the only help I give you is with your demise." If he thinks some wretched, altered tape can sway him one way or another, after tonight, after almost losing everything that mattered, the Dark One's not only the most cowardly creature to have ever slithered along the earth, but the most idiotic one as well.
"Oh, you're going to help me, all right."
Killian laughs in his face.
"You see, this spell is going to finally separate me from the dagger so it no longer holds power over me. But to cast it—I need someone special. Someone who knew me before the dagger, before I was the Dark One."
A lump in his throat grows until he feels he'll choke on it.
"Unfortunately," Rumpelstiltskin continues. "Everyone who fits that description is already dead, but one lives."
"No. No!" Everything in his tightens, tries to squeeze itself shut, the muscles remembering how it felt the first two times before he does...the Dark One's gold-green claws engulfing it and slowly smothering it, Cora's hand yanking it this way and that.
"Yes. As luck would have it, dearie, you're my oldest friend!"
It senses it will be taken, seizing on him a split second before the Dark One's hand rips into him. Screaming, the only thought that rises above the pain is that it's just as excruciating as before, so much so death might be welcomed. But this time, he can see his heart. Can see it, glowing bright red with gray and black swishing about in it, like seaweed wafting in the current. For only a moment, his stomach churns and threatens to retch...and then something numbs the sensation. His ears buzz, vision growing blurry—yet he doesn't faint. His fingernails dig crescent moons into his palm and yet there is no discomfort; rather, a dulled detachment, like a gray veil separates him from everything else.
"Get on with it, then! Just do it!" he barks.
"Oh no, I promised you we'd have some fun first." The crimson blur that is his heart gives way to the shiny narrow crocodile grin. "You're going to do everything I say because you're my puppet now. You're going to find another way to fill that hat with the power it needs. And then?" He clenches his jaw at him with such an intensity it trembles. "Then I'll kill you."
He waves his hand and the ropes fall into a heap at the ground. Free arms, free to lunge at Rumpelstiltskin and break his neck—but he can't. The veil hangs between him and his rage, too. The only thought he is able to cling to is that nothing he does anymore has any consequence. Hero, villain, pirate in between—none of it matters because his actions aren't his own. Even some hedonistic abandon that would normally accompany such a belief can't fully come to the forefront of his mind.
"How does it feel?" Rumpelstiltskin asks him through his teeth.
"Why don't you just save time and tell me how it's supposed to feel? I don't have a choice in the matter."
"No, you don't," he sings with an impish lilt. "And nor will anyone else since you won't be breathing a word of this to anyone. You, dearie, will not be letting anyone know about your rather unique predicament. Now, seeing as it's late and I'm back to the drawing board, you will wait for my orders. In the meantime, if I know you with your heart, you would be barging in there and showing Miss Swan how relieved you are she didn't go through with it. So that's what you'll do...in addition to retrieving my hat." With a sneer, he snaps a quarter turn to the right and strolls down the walkway down to his car. "Goodnight."
Closing his eyes, Killian waits. Swan's safe. She can wait while he sees if he can resist, but the veil only parts in a certain place, the steps. Everything else fades out of focus and closes in on him until he finds himself starting up the first step. Damn it. Damn it, it hurts to even try to turn his heel, feels downright distasteful to do so.
At least your thoughts are your own, to a degree, he thinks with a shrug, straining to slow his pace up the steps. But it results in him gasping for air and quivering. All for naught, he gazes into the front door. Tiptoeing in, he doesn't really know what to expect to find, Swan somewhere in this mahogany labyrinth, he knows, but it will surely feel wrong to look at her and not feel anything, won't it?
Feel, he thinks, sniffing. Turning a corner, he catches sight of her. Alive, with that beautiful afterglow of having used her magic, flushed and exhilerated and alive.
"Swan!" Breaking into a run, he sweeps her up and burrows his face into her hair. "Are you all right?" She'd looked so happy to see him, so pleasantly surprised to be held, but he can't feel the warmth of her flesh.
"She didn't do it. She didn't take away her magic," Elsa says proudly, and thank gods she had arrived in the nick of time.
"Wow, I've never seen people so happy about me not doing something," Swan chuckles a bit, still breathless, still alive, still the Savior, and, gods. The Snow Queen. The Snow Queen's at large and she still has to stop her.
"We'll find another way to defeat the Snow Queen. Together." He'll help her. He is happy she's still alive and that he is too and he still wants to help her, but it's all as if he just knows he's supposed to say it. Show her, damn it. The crocodile's not bloody kissing her for you. He crashes his lips into hers, harder, harder, begging for taste, begging for his heart to race. The veil won't let him enjoy it, only allowing him to know he is supposed to, that he would under different conditions.
"Mmm, easy, tiger, we've got company," she sighs into his mouth, rocking into him. "I didn't know you were such a fan of my magic."
So husky...sultry, even. He remembers what all stirs in him when she's coy, but he has to make an effort to grin, to actually tell his mouth what to do instead of just doing it.
"Why would you say that, Swan? I'm a fan of every part of you."
"Are you all right?" she asks, trying to catch her breath at the same time she rubs circles into his shoulder blade.
"Of course, love. Why?" It's not hope...he can't actually see hope through the veil...but it is a thought that if she already knows...
"If you look at me any harder, you're going to drill a hole in my head." Dazzled, she shivers.
"I'm just relieved." Her hand strokes upward to his neck, nearing his cheek, and he can't do this. He can't pretend he's free and able to respond the way he normally would when she touches him, and he knows this is one of the tenderest affections she's ever bestowed upon him. He knows her eyes well enough to know she's surprised herself with how elated she is that he's here. "You should go outside. I have a feeling there are a lot of worried people who will be glad to see you."
He steps to the side, but she blocks him, her hands still on his arms and, gods, her eyes still on his lips. He should want to heave her over his shoulder, give Elsa both their regards, and find the most luxurious bedroom in the place with all haste. But he needs to retrieve the hat. Avoiding her eyes as he leads her back to the door, he remembers the words that he needs to show how relieved he is that she's alive. So he flashes her a smile, ushers her out, and feels once again the haziness of a veil covering everything but where he has been ordered to go.
Throwing open double doors, he finds the hat in the center of a ballroom, vulnerable. If not for gods know how many people inside it, he could do so much with it. Toss it into a fire, pick up one of the fireplace pokers and smash it into pieces, run his hook into the netting and tear out each little star one by one since surely they would prefer death to whatever fate befell them in there. He can't, though. Swallowing, he tucks the hat under his arm and lodges it into an inside pocket of his jacket.
A/N: I know I'm getting too attached when I feel sick after writing a chapter. Yes, it does get worse, but the light at the end of the tunnel is in sight and I will be making it up to all of you. Coming up? Everyone should be afraid, especially the fairies.
