In the blink of an eye, he finds himself in their meadow, the permeating scent of the flowers a cruel reminder of the last time they'd both stood in it. Only this time, they were both dark imitations of what they used to be, could have been.
...once magical, full of hope, possibility. Now look at it. Dried up, dead, useless...much like you. The time for making deals is done, just as I'm done with you.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know how else to get you here," Swan apologizes.
"You could have given me a choice." Now he had one—revenge, or flail about, pretending they can truly make each other better.
"We need to talk about this."
"Do you have any idea how it feels to not be in control of yourself?" Killian challenges. "The last time a Dark One controlled me, I had to watch as Rumpelstiltskin almost killed you! I had to kneel, powerless, while he almost crushed my heart!"
"I know exactly how it feels!" Something raw in her voice gives him pause. "All my life, everyone I loved abandoned me!"
"I didn't abandon you."
"I know," she says, and he almost finds her whisper soothing. "But I was about to lose you to the Darkness. When I'm scared—that's when my walls go up. That's when I stop trusting the people around me. You know this!"
"It doesn't make it fair, Swan." Turning away from her, he longs to just trudge straight ahead and see how long this new, magic-fueled body will go before every fiber in it screams at him to stop and rest. Does she not realize how much sooner they would have been together if she'd actually tried to do something about those damned walls of hers? Why is it all right for her to stop trusting him on a whim? Had she trusted him in Neverland...hell, if she'd trusted him on the beanstalk. He'd been ready to scoop her up in his arms and kiss her just for retrieving that compass, and he knows he'd have never been able to stop.
"Killian, wait!"
His heels dig into the grass mid-step.
"Ugh! I didn't mean to do that!" she cries out in a hoarse voice. Funny how his dreams of kissing her always faded away to a reality where he can't move closer to her.
"Aye, but you did, and that's my point!"
"That's not why I called you here! I called you here because I do believe in you! I do trust you to control your own fate! It's yours if you want it!" Roaring right back at him, she holds Excalibur out to him with all the ferocity of a lioness. Ineffectual, Rumpelstiltskin had called her, but he knows Emma Swan and how only a fool would dismiss her as ineffectual. Maybe she wouldn't have controlled him, maybe she would have trusted him...just maybe, but this Dark Swan will do the unthinkable every time. And he'd fall for it like he always does, wrapped around her little finger, at her beck and call.
"We are going to get the Darkness out of both of us. We are going to do it together," she says, watching him place Excalibur in his sheath. Looking up, he sees the real Emma behind the Dark Swan veneer, eyes shining at him. "I promise you I will never try to control you again. I love you."
I love you.
His hand takes hold of her outstretched instinctively, his heart stilling at the words. There is no swirling black tar about to take her away, no life-or-death journey...just the two of them, standing in their meadow with her walls all the way down. Perhaps she can beat the Darkness, overcome it the way she overcomes everything else. See? He asks himself as his mind wakes back up. See how unworthy you are of her? That's why it will never work.
"What?" she asks. He can end their relationship with dignity, letting her know what they had had been real, rather than have it all go up in a cloud of red smoke.
"It's just—I'm usually the one that has to say it first."
The smile she gives him still does things to him. "Yeah, well..."
"I love you, too." It just hadn't been enough. Reeling her in, he wraps his arm around her waist and kisses her, feeling her fingers carding through his hair, feeling the warmth of her lips, feeling her very heart beat in time with his one last time.
"...if you want to destroy the Darkness, then you must...the Dark One's found me already."
Killian wonders if Rumpelstiltskin found scheming this easy. Snow, David, and Regina all passed out of his way without question, Emma waits for him outside, and here kneels Merlin the Sorcerer with some special brew that can be a Dark Curse with just a flash. With a flick of his wrist, the door locks itself for him. Wide-eyed, Merlin stands up and...walks toward him? Where has he hidden all the swagger he possessed when they'd freed him? Why doesn't he engage in grand spectacle like his magical duel with Emma? Bloody sot, unwilling to give them enough information that they could have rerouted their plans.
"Heard you preparing for the worst-case scenario. I'm sorry, mate. It's already here."
He reaches in without thinking of the strangeness of it—how nice it feels to be on this side of a heart-pulling! Merlin's skin and everything else makes way for his hand, shifting around just so he can take hold of something squishy and hot—the very symbol of someone's life.
"Careful, dearie!" Rumpelstiltskin's voice drowns out the pathetic gasping of the Sorcerer. "That's the oldest heart in all the realms! Let's cut it open and count the rings!"
"You're too late." Merlin, still clutching his chest, staggers along the counter. "I've already left a message for the others."
"Well, they can't do anything to stop me, not while I have this." His hook taps the hilt of his new tether, no one's but his.
"Excalibur. What do you want?" Merlin demands.
"My revenge, and for that, I need to get back to Storybrooke." As if the others could stop him anyway. The royals hadn't even been capable of evading a curse to save their daughter from growing up alone.
"Do you want to cast a curse? It's not possible, not without crushing the heart of the thing you love most."
Killian can't even answer, for if he opens his mouth, he'll burst into laughter. Explain it away, Sorcerer! Tell me how you saw something in a vision but didn't bother to do anything about it! Looking over at Rumpelstiltskin, he motions with his head to just take over wizard-sitting.
"Which is why I'm not going to crush it. But someone else will, someone who might actually have feelings for you, dearie, and that's not me," the imp chuckles in a thicker brogue than usual before the Darkness changes it shape into Nimue. Ah. He prefers that Dark One anyway.
"But it is me," she says, and one might just think Merlin's heart still beats in his chest if they happened upon the shocked look on his face.
"Nimue," Merlin breathes.
"Remember? I am all Dark Ones." She gives him a cobra-like head tilt in annoyance. "It's romantic, isn't it? After all that's happened between us, you're still the thing I love most. And I do love you. I always have."
He can't take much more of this sentiment, not now.
"But you're not really here," Merlin whispers with tears in his eyes.
"Aye, mate, but she is," Killian counters. "She lives in all Dark Ones, so when I crush your heart, so will she!" It's perfect. So simple and yet so unexpected. There's an intricate beauty he hadn't seen to all of this before, plotting each step toward the goal that not only bypasses the others but in such a covert way that no one sees it coming. He's a coded book, there in plain sight and yet unreadable by all.
The door swings open, jangling the bell, Emma marching in as if he had never locked it.
Well, unreadable by all with one exception.
"You were playing me the whole time." Dare she look hurt? It's restrained under all that swan-like grace, but he sees it just the same.
"Once you lied about Excalibur, all bets were off. I knew it was just a matter of time before you tried controlling me, and now...no one will ever control me again!" Not even you, he says with his eyes. Relishing her cringe after she's read his face, he knows he has to read hers before he can enact the Curse. What will the Savior do? Break her promise, of course; go after Excalibur.
"Go back from whence you came," he orders the sword. "Back to the stone."
"I don't understand." She says it not to him, but to Nimue. Once she watches the sword vanish, she charges for her. "Why are you helping him get his revenge?"
"Don't be naive, Emma. Dark Ones never do anything without getting something in return."
"What do you want?"
"You're a Dark One. You know what we want. You want it, too."
In that instant, he knows. He knows just how the Darkness will snuff out the light. It's as clear as if Nimue spelled it out for Emma, who clearly needs it spelled out from the looks of her baffled face. The fallen Dark Ones will take up residence in Storybrooke, just like all the other villains had wanted to do, only this time, they'll make their presence permanent. It's perfect. The Dark Ones will win, he'll win, and, more importantly, Rumpelstiltskin will lose.
"No," Emma breathes. "You can't."
"Yes, we can. And we will," Nimue assures her. Smirking at her, he drinks in the sight of her horrified expression.
"Killian," she says, so quietly, so gently...like the last thing on her mind before drifting off to sleep. "Your revenge is not your happy ending. I am. You told me that." Placing her hands on his shoulders, she leans forward, hoping his forehead will bump hers. "If you destroy this heart, you will destroy your happy ending along with it."
No. His distraction will be destroyed, the delusion their love, in and of itself, had been its own brand of magic. He leans down, wanting her to suffer, wanting to snatch peace away from her at the last second just as she had done to him. His eyes betray him for the briefest of seconds, veering down to her lips, but he quells that. It's just desire, good old-fashioned lust, nothing more.
"No, Killian Jones told you that, your lovesick puppy dog," he murmurs to her. "But that man died the moment you turned him into a Dark One." From the corner of his eye, he spots Merlin, spying on them, probably hoping she'd be able to bend him to her will yet again. Mocking the ever-growing fright in the Sorcerer's eyes, Killian lets out a few taunting breaths and crushes the heart in his hand, not pausing when Merlin slumps to the floor.
Rolling his eyes when Swan releases him and runs to the dead man's aid—always choosing someone else over him—he saunters to the cauldron and lets the ash that was once a human heart sift through his fingers into the mixture.
When he emerges from the back, he doesn't see Merlin's body anywhere. Emma must have magically buried it or give it its last rites or some otherwise noble and a waste of her magic. And still she stands there, looking at him, like she can talk him out of casting the Dark Curse. She still is under the impression she holds any sway over him.
"It's over, Emma." Everything between them must be over.
"I told you I would never abandon you. I am not going to start now," she says, facing him, with a low but nevertheless commanding tone. He snorts a silent laugh.
"I'm sorry, love. Once a curse has been enacted, you can't stop it."
"Yes." Blinking, she breaks eye contact, and he can see the cogs in her mind turning. Finally being able to stand back and observe her objectively, he finds it fascinating, how she charts courses in her head. "I might not be able to stop it, but I can make you forget why you cast it."
He wakes up to rumbling, his back off the floor of Granny's, like it's trying to push him up off of it. Night's fallen, and he has to depend on the light from the street stabbing its way through the blinds to find the inside of the diner in shambles—chairs overturned and bodies all in a heap. David sits up in a doublet he was most definitely not wearing back in Camelot. Back in Camelot...
He sits up, scanning the room for Henry. The lad wears apparel more typically found in the Enchanted Forest than in Storybrooke. They all are.
Zelena, he thinks, snapping his head over to the witch, but she looks just as disheveled and confused as the rest of them. The door opens and the dwarves gape at them, the one who sneezes all the time in an ill-fitting leather jacket...is that Emma's? The first to his feet, David helps up Snow and they check on the baby together. Everyone appears all right; but—hadn't it been daylight? Hadn't they been just outside of King Arthur's castle? Had it been a dream?
"What are you guys doing here?" the dwarf and his companion rush toward them, far more concerned than a dream would warrant.
"What happened?" Snow breathes.
"We're back," David says.
"Bloody hell," he murmurs as he stands up, not that that provides any help. What's this coat he has? Heavier than the clothes he bought here, it reminds him of his pirate coat, but it's not. It's newer, a bit worn here and there, like he's fought in it, but new.
"This doesn't make any sense. We were just walking into Camelot," Regina begins with the tone of someone attempting to retrace her steps, only to draw a complete blank. He can't see her face, but the way her head bends down and examines her red gown assures him he's not the only one whose head is swimming as they try to piece together what happened.
"What the hell are we wearing?" Leroy asks, clad in Enchanted Forest, er, Camelot...foreign clothing as well. Hadn't the cyclone pulled up the diner? Hadn't they all buckled down and braced themselves to be whisked up into the storm?
"Sneezy, what happened? How long were we gone?" Leroy asks his brother.
"Six weeks."
Killian stops dusting himself off.
"What?" Regina blurts. His sentiments exactly. There must be clues on his person, a loose thread or patch of dirt enough to jog his memory. Other than their mysterious origins, this new clothing presents nothing but the fact his sheath holds no sword. Perhaps there had been a battle and he'd been disarmed? Then why aren't any of them injured? Where are their captors? Where's Emma?
"Our memories—they're gone," David sighs.
"Again." Snow echoes his helpless tone. Enough of this. Someone has to know something.
"Where's Emma?" Killian asks the group.
"Relax. I'm right here," comes a harsh, low voice from the doorway. Standing against the streetlights, Emma creates a striking silhouette—one that can't possibly be hers. The color gone from her face, she looks like a doll, or, rather, some creature of the night, given the rigid, almost spidery way she holds herself. She doesn't look entirely human.
"Mom? What happened to you?" he hears Henry gasp.
"Isn't it obvious?" Emma asks, practically gliding into the diner, each movement controlled. The muscles in her mouth seem determined to not strain themselves. "You went to Camelot to get the Darkness out of me." Pausing to brush the backs of her fingers against Snow's cheek, she gives her mother a deliberate stare. "And you failed."
He can't take his eyes off her, this-this imitation parading around in her skin. That's the only explanation. This is either a ruse, or not her at all. The woman who defied the Darkness and held onto him for dear life—six weeks ago, apparently—that was Emma Swan. Not this glaring, alien thing with a hard, terrible beauty. She snaps her head in the direction of Sneezy unleashing a quick, frightened sneeze. Glaring at him, she looks him over, demands to know what he's supposed to be, and jerks her hand in a semi-circle. The dwarf instantly hardens into stone.
"There is no Savior in this town anymore," she murmurs, possibly to herself.
"Emma, stop." Regina steps in front of her. "That's enough."
"Or what?"
"Or I'll do exactly what you asked me to." After a silent stare-down between the two of them, Regina's hand shifts to her side. Then her other one. Patting herself down, her back tenses.
"Looking for this?" Emma holds up the dagger. Bloody hell, she'd wrangled the dagger from Regina somehow? After it had been her idea to have Regina possess it in the first place? None of this made any sense. Six weeks sounded like an eternity when the dwarves had first announced it, but, looking at her, it sounds like the briefest of seconds. How had she changed into this in six weeks? What had happened to force something so extreme?
"Nobody is going to touch this dagger but me." She saunters over to him, suddenly turning to avoid his eyes, addressing the rest of the horrified group. "Now, for what you all did to me, you're about to be punished."
"Emma," he says, and he half-expected her not to answer. She gives him a cold stare and that's what terrifies him the most—he can't read her face. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because I am the Dark One," she says, simply, and vanishes.
A/N: Coming up? The most violent piggyback ride ever.
