He doesn't even have time to return to the docks, where he said he would be, before he hears a relieved "Killian!" crying out for him. Twisting around, he finds himself bombarded by Swan, throwing her arms around him and dipping her head down into his collarbone. A sparse amount of snow flurries linger in the air, clinging to the shorter strands of hair that frame her face. Fortunately, he doesn't have to think to wrap her up, burrow into her neck, breathe a sigh that, once again, she did what no one else could. All would appear to be well, only a shudder from her alerting him that something's wrong.
"The Snow Queen's defeated then?" he asks, his hand stroking upward to her shoulder. She's not ready to meet his eyes. Rather her forehead rolls against his bones followed by a deep inhale, like she's fighting off trembling. Ah. "You remembered her."
"Yeah," she whispers into him, hardly more than a breath. And she had loved her. Another person in her life who couldn't choose her without fail, who left her. He forces himself to hold her tighter despite the knowledge he'll just be one more soon enough.
"You said you were going to chain yourself at the docks," she says after a moment's pause, long enough to sniff away an urge to cry. He tears his eyes off her and glances up over her head at her entourage, larger now with Anna and their male companion. Beyond them, Henry, David, and Snow, more people embrace. He commands his mouth to turn up into a grin.
"Pirate, love. You forget I'm not a stranger to bondage." She stifles a giggle and takes his hand, leading him toward Elsa and her sister.
"We found her, Anna. Well, Elsa did, and a fiance, to boot. Who knows my dad. Still working that one out myself, so no questions about that," she adds, stepping to the side with her hands on her hips, expecting him to introduce himself, perhaps indulge in a bit of small talk before the next crisis. "We need to get them on their way home. You're with me in the bug. Right?"
"Right, lass," he says, glancing over at Henry with a raised eyebrow. Would he know? The Dark One's orders prevented him from letting anyone know about his heart, but that didn't necessarily exclude anyone finding out on their own. He bounds up to Henry just before he opens the door to Regina's car.
"Oh, I, I was going to ride with her because, because of everything with..." Henry trails off, casting his eyes down on the pebbles in the street, some still wet with melted snow.
"Henry, about my attempt to take you from the office..."
"It's okay."
"What?"
"And, and I'm sorry, too. I don't think you're a dirty pirate," he says, unable to resist laughing just a tad at how absurd it all sounds. "I know you wouldn't have come after me if it wasn't some spell making you." He pauses, his face growing more sheepish. "How's your back?"
So much for a spot of hope, he thinks, curling his tongue in his mouth. Not the boy's fault, though. Nodding, he gives him a wordless pat on the arm and rushes back to Swan's car.
"That's Anna's fiance then." Just to make sure he has it right, he asks again. She doesn't want to talk about Ingrid, not yet, and he supposes there's really not that much to discuss. The woman took care of her, tried to love her, and lost her. They follow David's truck although Snow drives it now, carrying their Arendelle friends to the town line, Henry and Regina following.
"And Anna wasn't affected."
"Magical rules for you," Swan says with a shrug. Her eyes keep darting over at him, almost to the point he considers reminding her she needs to watch the road. "We're good, aren't we?"
"Why?"
"I don't know. Back there, at the station, something felt...what the hell?" she cuts her sentence short, looking up into the mirror that allows her to see behind them. Swiveling as best he can, he sees Regina's car stop and Henry hop out. He raises an eyebrow, but that's all this partial sense of confusion can allow him. It would be apathy, he supposes, had his brain ceased from dealing out reminders that he should care about this or that. How cerebral of it, he scoffs at himself. Before he knows it, Swan has stopped and Henry slides into the back.
"Mom's got an errand, like, a thawing Marian errand, so...Operation Icebox draws to a close?"
"What?"
"It's what I've been calling it in my head. Operation Ice Box, because we were all trapped within an ice wall and the Snow Queen can freeze everything—it's not one of my better names," Henry says.
"Well, the wall's not down yet, kid," Swan says, smiling as she stops the car. "You've got another two minutes or so until Elsa ends the whole thing."
A feeling generates, in the pit of his stomach first. Not quite nausea, it stirs around in him, alone, until it pounds on his forehead. A dull thudding headache materializes out of nowhere.
Get to the shop first chance you get.
No. No, no, no...it's one thing to be told what to do and know resisting it is futile, but to be compelled to do it crosses some sort of line into...
Get to the shop first chance you get, Captain. This feeling isn't going to go away.
"Swan?"
She almost spins around back to him after she's gotten out, slammed her door shut, and stared at the wall with her hands on her hips. Widening her eyes, she blinks once and waits. A quick scan of her face lets him know she's been waiting for something from him, an explanation most likely.
"Do, do you think this will work?" he blurts out, as there is no conceivable thing he can tell her that would make her drop him off at the shop. Ridiculous notion if he's ever heard of one. Bloody hell, why can't the crocodile just call him up on the phone like a regular person?
"It should. Death undoes people's spells. That's the theory I'm going off of anyway." He answers her smile before it becomes an anxious one and follows her up to where Snow already stands with the others, Elsa nearest to the wall.
"Wow, that is a lot of ice," Anna says.
"And it's time for it to come down." Elsa already appears relieved, marching up to the ice wall with a regal air and drawing back her arms. Instantly, blue vapor shoots out from her hands, the crumbling of the wall thundering the ground. They can do nothing but steady themselves and watch the blocks of impervious ice disintegrate into minuscule flakes carried off by the wind. The last of it whooshes away into the forest and it's as if the wall never existed.
"Okay! Now can we go back home?" Anna sets forth toward the ever-reliable red line painted across the road, practically skipping as she does so. He can't keep his focus on her. Every second, his head seems to be taking a backward glance at the street, the direction that leads to the shop. He has to go. It's what he's been told... Stop, mate, he booms in his head, closing his eyes. Just stop.
"Stop! Don't take another step!" Swan brings him out of himself, dashing toward Anna. "That's the town line."
"Right, but I want to leave the town. Didn't I just say that?"
"The wall may be down, but I sense that some of Ingrid's magic remains." Rather than elaborate, she stalks up to the line and holds her hand out. Her fingertips catch on an invisible net of sorts, blue cracks rippling out from the spot she had touched. "Yeah...leaving this town has never been simple, and Ingrid? She didn't change things. She wanted to be here alone with you and me. She wanted to make Storybrooke her ice castle, and clearly, she wanted to protect it."
He longs to shudder as he imagines that reality, the rest of them dead or sent across the line, unable to go in after her.
"So how do we get back home?" Anna wonders.
"Walking wouldn't get us there anyway. We're in a different realm," Elsa thinks out loud.
"We need to find a portal...or...magic beans or something."
"Okay, now I'm lost," the man says, and he doesn't blame him. But every second they stew over how to find something that's only ever there when the villains want it to be is a second he's not where he's supposed to be...
"Well, then let's get one of those things. We have to hurry!" Anna pleads with them.
"No, we don't need to rush. We need to be careful. Arendelle will still be there while we figure this out." It's not much of a reassurance, given everyone present's luck.
"It might not. Did we forget to tell her?" she gasps to her fiance.
"A lot of stuff was going on."
"Tell me what?" Elsa demands.
"Arendelle's been conquered, by Hans and his twelve brothers."
Oh, bloody hell, he needs to leave. Not bothering to listen to whatever sordid history the sisters obviously have with someone who doesn't honestly sound that difficult to defeat, he shuffles backward. The cloying feeling now applies a pressure on him, on his chest, like a massive horse hoof taking its precious time trampling him. Pressing his heels into the grass, he dips down a gully into the forest so no one will grab his shoulder at the last second, no one will ask where he's off to in such a hurry. He just has to get there, even though he knows arriving at the shop won't alleviate the pressure.
Rumpelstiltskin stands stiff as a board behind the counter, Belle curled on her side on a sofa that's been pushed out from the back room. In the same clothes as yesterday, she doesn't stir when he slams the door shut.
"What on earth kept you?" the crocodile whispers to him through his teeth.
"You can either put up with the lack of hasty traveling, or order me to learn how to drive a car. Either way, it seems we're still operating on my schedule," he retorts, flashing a grin at him. At once, the pressure on his chest returns, a stampede of invisible hooves clomping down on him, crushing, squeezing. One groan escapes before the pain disappears in an instant.
"I have no time for insolence. Why were you at the town line?"
"Elsa. She took down the ice wall, not that you care, and she and her sister are anxious to go home."
"So Anna's here," he says, more to himself than to Killian. He glances over at Belle, fingers drumming on the counter. In the other hand, Killian can see his heart, the only bit of light that stands out past the crocodile's dark suit and dusty trinkets behind him. "But they aren't already gone?"
"Do I detect a twinge of fear?" he half-sings, eyebrow arching up toward his hair.
"A fleeting one," Rumpelstiltskin growls, holding the heart out between them and squeezing, just enough to cause discomfort, that sickening feeling that the random pangs one feels will inevitably lead to something much worse. "Now tell me—are they already gone?"
"They didn't leave," he groans, his hand reaching up to cup the pain, instinct telling him he can hold it in and stop it from spreading all through his body. "The Snow Queen mucked up the border. Once you...cross, there's no c-coming back."
Rumpelstiltskin doesn't react, doesn't even bat an eye when he releases him. The excruciating pain gives way to the veil again.
"If only the Snow Queen had succeeded. Everything would be much simpler."
"Yes, perfect cover for your exit," he snarls at him as best he can. "But everybody survived. Sorry for the inconvenience."
"What about our friends from Arendelle?" he asks.
"Well, they're still searching for a portal back." He won't ask why the sudden interest, his heart literally being trampled on a second time in the unappealing category...he had to have a history with her. Most everyone did. His eyes do a quick sweep in Belle's direction. Belle. She'd confessed to Elsa she'd let her sister down, done something to drop her right into the Snow Queen's hands...and if Anna knew Rumpelstiltskin as well as Belle, paths should have crossed. Dozens of scenarios race around in his mind; perhaps Anna had pursued Rumpelstiltskin, arrived at the Dark Castle and needed Belle's help. How fitting she slept now, so willing to live in this dream she has of him being a perfect, no, a passable husband, she wouldn't wake up to the lies.
"Well, that is a problem. Can't have that Anna running around town..." he mutters.
"She knows, doesn't she? She knows what you were doing, cleaving yourself from the dagger so you can leave with your power." It's true. Swan would be proud of him, how well he can spot a lie depending on the face. His tongue runs over his teeth, a lie of his own forming. "Emma told me Belle confessed about knowing Anna." There. Let him think the two women had begun a chain, that if they know, and he knows, maybe all of Storybrooke does as well.
"Still, quite the supposition," the Dark One remarks.
"Why else would you care?" Killian challenges him. "Anna's a danger to you. You can't have your blissfully ignorant wife-"
"-lose either her ignorance or her bliss," her interrupts, looking over at her. "Watch Anna. Make sure she comes nowhere near this shop.
"But if I had the choice..."
"Well, you don't. Your usefulness was unexpectedly extended. But tonight, when the stars in the sky align with the stars in the sorcerer's hat, I will finally do what I should have done so many years ago. I will crush your heart."
He says it with a smile. He'll enjoy it, killing him. He'd once thought that way, relished the prospect of the Dark One's face being the last thing he ever saw, for he knew he would die doing it. The hollowness of it, he'd realized a while ago, but the Dark One has no such clarity, no honor. He'll savor his enemy's death and then move on to the next quest for power. Bad form all around.
"And while I'm out doing your dirty work, what are you going to do?" he asks.
"I'm simply going to wake my wife and prepare her for my greatest gift," he laughs. "She's going to have the life she always wanted."
He opens his mouth to dismiss him to go keep Anna on a leash, but he hesitates, still gazing at Belle with, with...bloody hell, merely calling it fondness would make his skin crawl under normal circumstances.
"You don't really love her." He risks it. He has until dusk, when the first stars trail behind the pink and orange lines of the sun setting.
"Watching Anna doesn't require that tongue or that hand, or anything else I deem superfluous," he warns.
"You go to all this self-serving trouble and justify it by some roundabout reasoning of it benefitting her when the truth is you haven't given a damn about what she really needs ever since you bloody married her!"
"Careful, Captain. I can tell by how marred this worthless thing in my hand is that you wouldn't do any better." He eyes him, narrowing his gaze more and more until his lip twitches. "Actually, there won't be any need to watch Anna. I'll outdo the heroes on this one and find a portal for them myself. Come with me."
Confusion—that should fall under "emotions," should it not? He stops midstep, the main street's grayness dissolving around him in a haze, snippets of the pawn shop popping through it, like bubbles in a boiling pot. He was told, told...rubbing his chin, he knows this isn't right. One shouldn't be able to just forget the instructions of the one who still holds his heart captive. And yet, why is he in the street? Think, think through it, he tells himself, clenching his fist. He'd gone back to the pawn shop to divulge Elsa and Anna's plight to find a portal. After that he'd gone with the Dark One to the Sorcerer's house, and a portal had indeed revealed itself. Hadn't it? Closing his eyes, he tries to summon up a mental picture of the door...it had been a door...with flowers...colors...
Straightening his back, his eyes narrow at the entrance to the diner. Miss Swan and her Arendelle companions, including that meddlesome Anna, will be in there. Perfect. But he needs to gain control of this pirate's swagger first, jaunty but not too jaunty. From the corner of his eye, he sees her in a booth as he enters, and it takes a formidable amount of control to keep from smirking.
"Swan," he calls to her. She looks up at him. "Come celebrate, for I may not be the Savior, but I've just saved the day."
There's something hesitant about the way she gets up, holding out her hand to the others to not follow her. What would he be doing, how to busy this hand...rum. The sea shanties lauding it don't exist in a vaccuum, and he keeps a flask with him most of the time, therefore this is natural, correct. He opens it and pours the contents into two coffee cups as she approaches.
"Okay," she says warily. "What, exactly, are we celebrating?"
"The portal to Arendelle," he says, lifting the cup as though he's proposing a toast over it, although he might as well. It's in their best interest to go through it and return home, back to where they belong, as it's in his.
Is it?
"I found it. So, bottoms up." He needs to concentrate on the words, speaking them slower. Watch her, he tells himself, her astonished face barely registering the fact he's tinkled their cups together. He downs the rum in one swig, wretched stuff. How does he normally wash it down his gullet like water?
"You..." Miss Swan doesn't finish her thought, jolting a fraction at his knee-jerk reaction to the stinging liquid. "Found a portal?"
"Well, I found Gold, and he told me where to locate one. A door in the ballroom of that lakeside mansion." He gestures, hand illustrating thought to thought to make sure she's keeping up, and, judging by the way her eyes widen at the statement, she is. Excellent. "Yes, it appears that our Rumpelstiltskin has turned over a new leaf."
"Apparently dozens of leaves," she snarks. "You sure we can trust him?"
He doesn't understand this expression on her face, trying so hard to make it look like she's not, not reading something. Well, he'll just have to ignore it.
She's reading you, a thought comes crying out through the back of his head. Why's his face contorting? Why's he cocking his head? He should be warning her...
"Positive. The crocodile truly has changed. He gave me a long-winded explanation about a portal, about how it brought the, uh, Snow Queen into this land...which I don't recall..." Rumpelstiltskin never had explained it, had he? Since when has he had trouble recalling information, especially important information? Swan, stop listening. Don't do this. The portal can wait. The crocodile can't.
"But the important thing is it works. All they have to do is walk through it," he adds, disliking this look she's giving him more and more.
"Then we should go," she says.
"Brilliant. You do that. I, alas, bruised myself during the curse...really need to get it seen to."
What the bloody hell? He wouldn't just leave. Swan, stop me from talking, love. Stop me. See through it.
"Hey, Killian." Her hand taps his shoulder once and then immediately flies up to his cheek, her fingers spreading so she can stroke him, just as warm and alerting as when she strokes his hair. It always wakes him up, so it has to now. "What's wrong? You are acting strange."
He can't open his mouth. It's turning up into a grin of its own accord.
"Nothing. I'm fine."
He should kiss her. They do that more often than either one of them might admit, kiss whenever the mood strikes them. Even if they don't, it's a safe bet to try it now. They scarcely leave each other's side. Leaning forward, he plants a kiss on her, a peck that lingers on her bottom lip just long enough so she shouldn't feel like inquiring any further. But his eyes stay open. Because bloody Rumpelstiltskin is kissing Emma Swan like he's entitled to it, like it's his right, the ungrateful bastard. He pulls away, slower, slower, slower, and dismisses the worry etched all over her face.
"See you round, love," he says, smug codpiece and his body is being forced out the door again. No, not this time. Reaching out, he latches onto Emma's wrist, curling his fingers into the taut fabric of her sleeve.
Let go.
She knows something is wrong, knows it, and he knows it because his Swan is an open book and it's taken her a good while to accept it, but she can read him just as effortlessly. It's why she's not jerking her arm away from the death grip he has on it.
Let go.
He lets go and steps outside without looking back.
She's acquiesed to his question, one Killian knows will only bring trouble. That's what a Dark One does, isn't it? Bring trouble? Scores of people would agree with him if the stories are to be believed, and the sober way their pupils stop dilating, the way their tomato-red faces turn ashen...the stories are to be believed.
"What do you want to know?" Milah's asked, standing between them. He longs to reach out, grab her arm, and pull her back, but his brow furrows at the possibility that will only incense the Dark One more.
"How could you leave Bae?" he accuses. Seeing what the coward's become had washed away the insecurities he'd kept to himself over the years—that he'd stolen her, broken up a family. Most of the time, he knew better, but sometimes, sometimes...he rolls away from her at night and turns over on his side. He'd tempered his desire for children with heavy amounts of practicality. They'd gone after him, a few times, and always Milah changed her mind. For years the lad hadn't been old enough and Killian had nodded reluctantly, strummed her bare back with his fingers, and reminded himself her love was enough. Now the boy was too old. He would just hate the both of them. But seeing her, her husband now, a great surge of validation comes over him. She'd left when she could. Bloody failure of a man wouldn't even go to a new village for her...
The rigging snaps loose and flies up so hard some of the ropes smack the main mast. The sky around them darkens with no sign of wind.
"Do you know what it was like walking home that night-"
"-Rumple..."
"-knowing I had to tell our son-"
"Please!"
" -that his mother was dead?" he hisses at her through gritted teeth. Something cinches inside him. He vaguely knows of how fierce a parent's love could be, how even the most docile of parents...perhaps even the simpering crippled variety...could grow more ferocious than the wildest bear or wolf, and this one was rabid.
"I was wrong to lie to you," Milah tries. She knows him, he tells himself, lived with him. Surely she knows some way to placate him. "I was the coward. I knew that."
"You left him!" he spits at her, his finger pointed right at her forehead. "You abandoned him!"
"And there's not a day that goes by that I'm not sorry for that..."
"Sorry isn't enough!" He flails his hands in some dramatic fashion. Killian takes a step forward. She's failing. The Dark One is too far gone and she's failing. Heart pounding, he wants to look anywhere but at the two of them, standing there fighting on the deck like they must have every day during their marriage. "You let him go."
"I let my misery cloud my judgment," she says, almost sputtering. Her head shakes in the way it does when words leave her, when she's trying to control that artist's temper in her.
"Why were you so miserable?" It's a challenge, not a question. Please. Please, love, don't answer.
"Because I n ever loved you!" Milah screams at him, and then her eyes flash regret, pity, even as his enormous fish bowl ones reveal hurt for one brief second. Then, then nothing but rage. His hand dives right into her chest, purple sparks flying out. Magic.
"No!" Killian shrieks, barely able to lift his foot, much less break into a run for her, when another dramatic motion sweeps him into the mast, ropes winding around him with a crushing pressure. She can't even writhe, she's in so much agony.
And then he sees it—her heart, pink and glowing and pulsating so innocently out of her body.
"No!" he screams again, his hands searching all around him for something, anything. The hook strapping the ropes over him will do. There's not time to tackle this magical demon for her. No. He needs to run to her, look at her, memorize whatever he might not have in the last seven years. Gods, seven more years than he'd ever thought he'd be happy, and then he'd rescued this fiery, vibrant woman who could do nothing now but slump to the deck.
He catches her just in time for them to fall together, her weight limp and sending him to his knees. His lips dry, and he knows he should be murmuring words of comfort to her. Instead, she's the one carressing him, her pale lovely eyes gazing up at him...the same way they do in the moments before they swing onto whatever ship they've just overtaken.
"I love you," she whispers. He doesn't realize he'd held her hand until her eyes close. Tears well in his eyes and yet he can't sob, can't call out her name. Too late. It's all too late and she's already gone. Gone, after she and this damned thing had had a deal! She hadn't attacked him, had not even made a bloody threat, just told him the truth, which she wouldn't have had he left them alone. Gone, the thought of drawing her sword probably never even entering her head.
"You may be more powerful now, demon, but you're no less a coward," he snarls at him once he finds his voice. He dares to glance up at him and finds the Dark One smirking at him. Smirking! Like it's a bloody contest! There will be nothing else now. This scourge of a creature must die, and he'll be the one to do it.
"I'll have what I came for now," he orders, holding out his hand. His...he hadn't been aware of his entire body, switching hands so the bean lay in his right fist now instead of his left, his left preferring to hold her hand. Oh, he'll kill him. Somehow. Make him suffer, starting with depriving him of more infernal magic. He clenches his left hand tighter.
"You'll have to kill me first!"
"Ah-ah! I'm afraid that's not in the cards for you, sonny boy." With an unnatural speed, he's drawn his sword and swooped it downward. For less than one blessed second, Killian only feels something hot, only for a searing, dizzying pain to shoot through him. His arm contorts itself into his vest, its new lightness nauseating. Blood spurts all over the deck, dark blood. The sight of his own hand, still locked in a fist, on the deck in front of him will send him into a swoon if he doesn't look away. No! No, he will not faint in front of this wretched beast. He feels the wide blade of a sword on his shoulder. He will meet his eyes. Show no fear. He tries to still his face, but the agony is beyond his control.
"I want you alive because I want you to suffer like I did," the Dark One growls, a few seconds away from giggling. He can't let him leave! Get up! Get up, wretch, he scolds himself. It won't kill him; that would be too easy. So he will voice his intentions, draw the line in the sand...he snatches up the hook and drives it right into the Dark One's chest, unleashing some incoherent scream as he does so. He'll pay. If it takes years, he'll pay.
"Ah, killing me is going to take a lot more than that, dearie!"
"Even demons can be killed. I will find a way!" he vows, his voice gravely with tears and fury. He will. That much is a promise. Whatever it takes, he will survive. He will survive to have his vengeance, all else be damned. All else is a distraction.
"Well good luck living long enough!"
He hadn't wanted to relive that day. Someone else toying with his heart keeps him walking in a straight line towards the clock tower without even flinching at the mundane noises around him, keeps his memories set on that day, the silent order to recall as much detail as possible. He hustles up the rickety stairs to the top where Rumpelstiltskin waits for him with his hand holding the opposite wrist in front of him, a crooked smirk the only indication he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt what day plays itself over and over again in Killian's mind. Because he put it there.
"Good of you to at last make yourself useful in your last days," is the greeting he receives. The hat remains close to him, not that Killian could swipe it up under his arm and run off with it anyway. He takes his place next to him, sensing that more and more of his thoughts are his own. He'll die as himself then.
"When the stars on the hat align with those in the sky, we shall begin," the Dark One reiterates.
"You mean I shall end. Let's not start mincing our words now."
"Oh how brave," he mocks him. "I half-expected you to crumble at the precipice of your demise."
Few things can make Killian Jones crumble, and he'll be damned if Rumpelstiltskin's feeble attempts at intimidation will be one of them. But that's something the monster before him can't understand. He's bloody proven he doesn't understand much of anything outside of magic or power.
"I'm not the one who's a coward," he snaps, and it feels like a vow, one of the most serious things he'll ever say in his life. There's no need for emotions or feelings behind it, he realizes, the words too ingrained in his mind.
"Well then, you'll enjoy watching this coward crush your heart." He sees it, his heart, in the white-knuckle grip of the Dark One. The veil that still hangs between him and the rest of the world prevents the drying of his throat and the involuntary shiver from being fear and yet he'd rather not watch him grind it up into ash. On its own, it...it looks like it shows some potential.
Rumpelstiltskin waves his hand above his head to open the oculus of the clocktower, a thin slice of moon and a couple of starry heralds to the night looming over them. Swallowing, time stands still as blackness engulfs the soft purple, blue, and pink hues. Forcing himself to close his eyes, he tries to distract himself with happier memories, the last thing he'll see, behind closed lids notwithstanding, will be Emma, not each little step toward his own destruction. He should be remembering one of their more private moments, but the first memory that enters his head is the day he met her. The sun had been so blinding he hadn't even gotten a good look at her and yet he knew at the very least this woman was different from all the rest in some special, secret way...
"Eyes open. Half the fun is going to be watching your face," he sings, keeping his own eyes on the sky. With the dagger, he waves circles above the hat so each star dissolves into tiny pinpricks of light. He sets the dagger down on a crate and lifts it into the air. It lights him up as it ascends higher and higher until it explodes into a milky grid of light. It would be awe-inspiring, a testament to his power, if he hadn't stolen every snippet of light to get it.
"It's time." And then he feels it. Fear. It may not be his heart, but something in his chest quickens. It's a release of sorts, able to inhale, quiver, on his own. A beam of light cuts through the purple grid and shines on Rumpelstiltskin's face.
"Gold, stop!"
No. No, she can't be here. He can't die in front of her. He doesn't know how Emma and her mother have arrived. He only knows she'll lose him...he'll break her heart with his last breath...
I'm sorry, I can't. I've waited too long for this, and I'm too close."
She's lifted her arm to unleash some of her magic, but the Dark One's had more practice at this sort of thing than her and freezes her in place. So she'll be forced to watch every second the same as he will.
"Well, maybe not everything has went to plan, but this next part? I'm really going to enjoy," he sneers at him.
His chest is being stomped on, constricted and squeezed to death, his own cries cut short, for he can hardly breathe. Involuntary tears burst from his eyes. His knees buckle, sending him to the floor in an agonizing pose of submission. It hurts—not even Emma's image comes through as coherently as that base thought. He should be passing out from the pain any second now, Rumpelstiltskin's legs two blurred trunks in front of him...and then it subsides into something tolerable. The pressure remains, but doesn't intensify.
"I don't understand," he mutters. Killian summons all his strength to snap his head up, unsure what to feel. If the bloody Dark One doesn't know what's going on... "Why can't I..."
"Because I commanded you not to!"
Belle. Belle with the dagger. He can't get up, but his vision begins to sharpen, more and more of the pain letting up, so much so he can see how steadily she wields it.
"Drop the heart."
It falls right out from under Rumpelstiltskin's fingers, and if one were to ask him how he had enough presence of mind to reach out and break its fall, he's not sure he could answer that. His heart beats in his own hand, suddenly so precious to him he doesn't know what else to do with it other than curl it up to his lips. His. His to beat, to choose, to give.
"Now release everyone," Belle orders. He breaks through the heady sensation enough to make sure Emma can move. Her eyes meet his, so he smiles and can stand. The grid, the stars—it all fades from view as if it had never happened.
"And now—now you can take us to the town line. Because we need to be alone for what comes next." It would send chills down his spine if it were directed at him, Belle's order, but instead it rolls right off his shoulders. He'll live. He'll live.
The moment they vanish in a swirl of smoke, Emma sprints up the steps to him, skidding to a stop and zeroing in on his heart, still in his trembling hand. All of a sudden, he fears dropping it, or that he'll grip it so hard he'll crush it and feel the dust slip through his fingers. She lurches toward him, her hands positioned on either side as if she'll catch it should he lose control of it.
She's always been so adept at reading him.
"Take it," he says, holding it out.
"I, I don't want to control you," she says to it, her eyes darting to and fro, like she's in a wakeful dream...like she's picturing something as vividly as she absolutely can. So he keeps holding it out. It's been through nothing but torture in his charge. It can only fare better with her. Finally nodding, she cups her hands together and extends them out so they are directly under his heart, so he needs to do nothing more than twist his wrist and let it go.
Swallowing, Emma sidesteps around him, balancing the heart in one hand for just a second as she presses into his back, her arms taking hold of him around the torso. He sees both her hands protect his heart before she squeezes him tighter and says, "Close your eyes."
A/N: I didn't think anyone would mind a longer chapter. I had to have him saved in the same chapter as that damned possession scene and the whole time I felt like I was, for lack of a better word, raping him, so I made this long for my own sanity. Fluffy times lie ahead. Coming up? Hook bashes one of my favorite movies. Don't worry. It isn't Star Wars. Star Wars is going to rock his world. One more note, the narrative refers to it as the Sorcerer's house when Regina later says it's the Author's house. As I'm writing this footnote (26 Mar), I don't know what all secrets lie in the house, but in the scene where Rumple and Hook go back to it and find the door, Rumple says it belongs to the Sorcerer. I know he's making an assumption and can always be wrong, but that's all Hook has to go on right now since he doesn't even know about Operation Mongoose yet. The narrative will adjust when he gains more information.
