A/N: There is a very subtle reference to The Empire Strikes Back in this chapter, dialogue-wise. See if you can spot it. I don't do every single little scene, but I was going to do the pawn shop one since any and all Hook/Rumple scenes are interesting in their own right. The problem, however, was that I have no idea what the little snow globe thing was all about. I know the scene was cut short, but there is no explanation of it and I couldn't find where Colin O'Donoghue mentioned it in the commentary transcript that was released. So...I had every intention of that scene being kept in, but it's an off-screen(print?) moment here that is just referred back to.


"Let's not jump to any conclusions," David says, although the wariness with which he still regards the puff of smoke that used to be Merlin's message doesn't reassure anyone.

"The most powerful wizard ever just said the Dark One was coming after him," Regina snaps, arms folded. "That seems pretty cut-and-dry to me."

"Merlin can't help us," Henry sighs. "This was all for nothing."

He should weave around the others and throw his arm over the lad's shoulder, take him back toward the front of the vault and ask about Violet, remind him she could still use a friend in such a turbulent, strange land, but the new development he mentioned keeps echoing in Killian's head—Merlin can't help. Did she kill him? Hide him somewhere so he couldn't be found? The Crocodile's modus operandi would have Merlin scurrying around Storybrooke as a rat; surely Emma hadn't sunk that low.

"There's only one other person who might know what's going on—Arthur," Snow says. Her bottom lip doesn't fall from the top when David's hand brushes the gun on his hip, still in its holster.

"Well, I'd say we've got him on impeding an investigation. Hook? You in?"

"Gladly."

Henry darts toward them, mouth open just a sliver, but then he hangs back with his mother and grandmother. Just as well. Killian's not sure he would want the boy to watch what will unfold. Turning back to him, he offers him only a wink before following David up the steps and out of the vault. The cemetery encased in darkness, David's voice seems to be disembodied as he speaks into his phone, alerting Robin on the situation. At last, along a row of streetlights, Killian spots David's beaten-up, long vessel with the storage area in the back. Right under a circle of white from a streetlight amid all this death, it gives off the impression of a guardian angel in disguise.

"I just called Robin," David says, hopping into the driver's side and starting the engine, the entire...truck humming. "We're picking him up and then heading out to where the Camelot settlement is."

"Just how social a call do you intend for this to be?" Killian asks, not to prepare for their own actions, but for Arthur's. A wily king, they'll need to try to avoid as much hostility as they can. However, the pirate in him guesses that, once they amicably escort him to the sheriff's station, the wily king might just earn a few broken bones for all his cooperation...

"We're nabbing the son of a bitch."

"Good answer."

Picking up Robin takes no time, the thief waving them down outside David's apartment with a bow and a quiver of arrows slung over him.

"Ready?" David asks him as they all squeeze together to make room, Killian scrunched in the middle.

"Right now I feel like I can take on the entire settlement myself." Slapping both knees at the same time, Robin squares his shoulders as best he can in the crowded truck and focuses on the road straight ahead. I know what you mean, Killian thinks.


They pull up to the settlement in relative silence, only routine nighttime noises in addition to a few crackling fires. The occasional car going by won't startle anyone. They haven't discussed a plan, and, knowing David, he'll be fine with the "guns blazing" approach. Not that Killian cares...so long as Arthur is left in passable-enough condition to answer questions. What did he know that would have motivated him to not talk to Merlin? And then lie about it?

"That's Arthur's tent." Nodding over at a tent with a few crests on it—humble—David cocks his gun so casually he might as well be lacing his boot. "I'll go in first. You two stand guard."

"And if our dishonest king should put up a fight?" It's not that much of a question. Robin speaks as if he's used to duplicitous kings.

"We'll make him wish he hadn't," he answers. There's a slight smirk on Robin's face, as if he's used to that, too.

David enters the tent without hesitation. Leaning in closer, Killian listens for any hints as to how ugly this going to turn.

"David! Good to see you, my friend. Come, sit. Join us!" he hears Arthur announce with a congeniality that may or may not be feigned. "Us." So Guinevere must be with him. Shaking his head, he continues to listen. From what he's seen of the queen, she won't factor into this at all. Over the years, Killian's never actually met a woman who hunkered down and cowered when her husband or love was attacked. Most fought...some more expertly than others...and a few tried to come between the scuffling and plead for reason to win the day. But if he's to hedge his bets, this queen will do nothing...and he has no idea why.

"Why don't you explain why you lied to me? Why you tried to burn the Crimson Crown?"

Killian can do nothing but smile at the Prince's famous frankness.

"So, you found me out," Arthur says after a beat.

"Yeah, I found out...friend."

"Now, that part was real-"

"Ah, it doesn't matter, not anymore," David sighs dismissively. "But I want answers. See, there was a message in there from Merlin. It said there was only one person who could destroy the Dark One, named Nimue. You tell me. Who. That. Is."

There's the sound of furniture toppling over, possibly being thrown. Shouting, a frantic "He's getting away," heralds a ripping sound from the back of the tent. A leg emerges, and then Arthur wedges himself out. Don't worry, David, he thinks, breaking into a run. I've got this. The pompous bastard still clad in armor, still new to the surrounding woods—it shouldn't take too long to run him down. And then...then he'll handle him.

Only a few yards in front of him, Arthur collides right into a fallen log. Idiot. A quick blow to the forehead with the hilt of a sword should subdue him long enough to load him into the truck and lug him back to the station. In fact, Killian wagers he could carry him there himself; he's not even winded from the pursuit. Grinning down at the disposed king, he supposes it would be good form to at least offer the man the chance to come without a fuss.

That's when his legs give way. Crashing to the ground, he can do nothing but grunt as Arthur stands up, wearing the same arrogant grin he wore mere seconds ago. Bloody hell, he refuses to allow such a high-and-mighty sot win by tripping him. Where's his sword? Rolling over and tensing his arm, he feels the tip of a blade far too close to the side of his face.

"Look at that," Arthur sings with a sneer. "Seems you brought a hook to a sword fight."

"Actually, I brought a sword, but I seem to have misplaced it." He points behind him at the sword for effect.

"Shame. It's always the simple mistakes that get us killed."

He can dodge this blow as he's dodged countless others. Someone as ridiculous as Arthur isn't worthy of killing him. Holding his breath and digging his heels into the dirt, he sees another blade block Arthur's sword, one with the twisted, wavy edges of Excalibur, or the dagger, or both. The darkness next to Arthur seems to materialize into Emma in the blink of an eye, her face pale and indomitable, even when Arthur's arrogance crumbles into fear. Kicking back off the ground, Killian lifts himself onto his knees, then onto one foot, then the other.

"Excalibur," Arthur gasps. "It's whole."

"Yes, it is," she notes with such a matter-of-fact tone it was as if she was trying to relearn humor. "But it's not going to help you. This sword doesn't control anyone now." She flicks her wrist as if swatting an insect, and Arthur slams into a nearby tree trunk, hitting the ground with a heavy thud. Well, he won't be bothering them. Perhaps now he can find out the answers with more pleasurable company. Slightly more pleasurable, given the circumstances.

"I suppose I should say thank you," he says to her back, hoping—hoping-she won't walk away from him like she always did in the past.

"You don't need to say anything. Just don't do that again," she says quickly, quicker than she's been speaking these last several days. More like the real Emma. Maybe it's a sign he can talk to her.

"I should apologize for what I said that day aboard my ship." Would she understand? Would she understand he said it to avoid being swept up in the lies the Dark One was feeding him, not to avoid her?

"For when you refused to accept me, or when you said you do not love me?" He'll take the bite in her words over the pretty pandering she'd given him that day on the Jolly Roger. It means she feels. It means...gods. It means he'd hurt her, but now they can come back from it. Now they can talk, and he can help her.

"It's a bit more complicated than that," he starts.

"It doesn't matter. I'm the Dark One," she snaps, her shoulders on the verge of shrugging. No. It's grayer than that. He can be there for her as the Dark One, just as he's sure he was while they were in Camelot, as long as she's fighting.

"You're more than the Dark One! You're still you! You saved me. That was Emma."

"What do you want from me?" she murmurs, eyes shimmering, the wooden, mechanical facade beginning to fade.

"I want to help you, and I need your help to do it. Who is Nimue, and how can she defeat the Darkness?"

Her back goes completely rigid. He's said the wrong thing, but a lack of memories puts a damper on one's inner filter.

"Nimue doesn't matter anymore. This will all be over tomorrow."

"What will be over? And why do you need that damned sword?" She cocks her head at him, exasperated with his questions, struggling to contain the terror he fills her with, the terror he'll leave her when she opens herself up. Bloody hell, when is that finally going to be over? He understands, but she has to know by now how bloody infuriating it is, how frustrating, how insulting it is that she still doubts him. So afraid of losing the people she loves that she pushes them away. What a laughable irony. He's still talking to Emma, but to the worst parts of her, enhanced by the Darkness.

"Ah!" he laughs, biting down on the sound. "All this power, and you don't even have the courage to answer one simple question—why do you need Excalibur?"

Glaring at him, she does a sharp turn and starts walking away from him.

"I know you're still in there, Emma! And I know that despite everything, you always have your reasons!"

"You're right! I do!" she shouts, almost barks back at him as she faces him. There's a raw quality in her entire being that floors him. The sadness from that day inside her house, the stubbornness tonight, the look of absolute loneliness that's plagued her ever since she appeared to them that night at the diner to tell them they failed her. "You want to know why I'm doing all of this? I'm doing it for you." Dark smoke wraps her up and spirits her away before he can even let out a breath.


Could Regina be right? Was this nothing more than the Dark One's manipulations? Shaking his head, he continues down the street toward the shop, toward the only other person who knows how a Dark One thinks. He knows Emma Swan. When you love someone, some things you just know. Besides, why manipulate him into believing he had a more personal stake in all this than he did? That would just make him more involved. This couldn't just be about destroying light magic. Emma didn't operate like that. Regina was wrong. Snow was wrong, insinuating the Emma they know may be gone. Too much sorrow inhabits the woman he'd confronted in the woods. He needs his memories. He needs answers. He needs her.


If you want to find out what Emma Swan is after, find out what she's atoning for.

Can a Dark One atone? The very thought boggles Killian's mind as he climbs up to the rooftop across from the pawn shop. When he'd first arrived in Storybrooke, he'd loomed over this street, surveying the strange town, listening, watching. If someone had told him then he'd be reduced to asking Rumpelstiltskin for advice, he'd have slit their throat for such audacity. He'd murmured her name right outside the pawn shop door, hoping it would be enough, but their meeting earlier in the woods must have left her skittish. She'd only appeared when she needed to save him—perhaps one can take the Darkness out of the Savior, but not the Savior out of the Darkness—so it stood to reason she would return if he required saving again.

"Emma Swan!" he calls her name into the night. His head snaps in all directions in search for any movement, any flash of that waxen face against the blackness. Stepping up onto the ledge, he knows without a doubt she is calling his bluff. "Emma Swan!"

"I guess we'll have to do this the hard way," he mutters to himself, forming a fist. Inhaling, he throws himself off the side, only to end up on the street with Emma, hands behind her back, eyebrow arched, and looking rather bemused about the whole thing.

"You were sure I'd save you?"

"Well, I'm either optimistic or desperate or both." The Crocodile says she's atoning, the Dark One says she's doing this all for him—did she wrong him? Did she wrong her family? Everyone, even Zelena, returned from Camelot no worse for wear except for six weeks' worth of lost memories, so she couldn't have done much more than steal that lass' heart and trick Henry. Hell, Arthur's treachery had even been left alone, the man alive and well with his memories intact. It's time to be done speculating. "I need to know what happened between us in Camelot. Just tell me."

"It's not that easy." She shifts, indicating a possible crack in her black leather armor.

"It can be. Whatever you did, whatever you're trying to atone for, I already forgive you."

"I don't need forgiveness," she half-hisses at him, eyes boring into his.

"Then come clean," he says, trying to be firm but encouraging at the same time. The small twitches of her lips, the tensing and untensing of her jaw—he's close, close to talking her out of this secrecy business, close to allowing herself to be forgiven. "I assure you, you've done no worse than I. I was a pirate for hundreds of years."

"And you think it's the same?" The incredulous tone shames him. She's seen some of his villainy first-hand, but he's only told her snippets of the long, sordid tale that is his life at sea. She knows of the servitude, the loss, the obsession, but all the murder, all the disregarded lives...his own father...not with his hook, but with his dagger, so Brennan Jones could truly die by his son's hand. Lifting his hand, he turns it so she can see the jewels of his rings.

"You see this? Belonged to a man named Barnaby. Called me "One-Hand Jones." I killed him in front of his wife, took his ring." He emphasizes another. "This one? Edgar. Fine sailor. I caught him drinking the Captain's wine. I drowned him. Every ring is a sad story."

She freezes, not in fear, but in contemplation. Finally taking a step toward him, she opens her hand.

"What about this one?" she asks, holding Liam's ring, still on its chain. Relief washes over him in spite of standing across from the Dark One. It hadn't disappeared, wasn't waiting for him in another land. It had always been where it had needed to be.

"You have it. I thought I lost it in Camelot."

"You gave it to me to keep safe," she says. Then Camelot must have left them in a dire situation, life or death. Had he made the right choice? Or had history repeated itself and he'd just stood there while something happened to someone? Just foolishly arguing while magic damned the least deserving person around. The shame of it, living all those centuries with nothing to show for it but Liam's certain disappointment weighing on his shoulders. But he had failed again. Emma being here in this capacity proved it.

"It's the saddest story of all," he whispers. He can barely look at it in her hand. "Belonged to a better man than I...my brother Liam."

"You can have it back now," she says quickly, holding it out to him.

"Keep it." He'd given it to her for a reason. Whether that reason came with a kiss, a promise, or a proposal, he had no idea, but he'd given it to her, so she needs it more than he does. "You know, I used to wear these rings as trophies. But all that changed when I met you."

There she is. Emma. Her head tilted in sympathy, eyes reassuring, her mouth opening up to give him something short and sensible, but also something supportive. Uplifting. Loving. Tears well in her eyes as she stares at him like he's about to be hauled away from her at any second. Memorizing his face the way he's memorized hers. She does love him, underneath the Darkness. It hasn't dried it all up. She loves him.

"What are they now?"

"A reminder. That all sins can be forgiven when someone loves you. And I was absolutely wrong before. I love you, Emma Swan, no matter what you've done."

She smiles in spite of herself, but looks no more at ease. Only a fraction of the warmth she's shown him before comes back.

"So, you really want to know the truth, no matter how awful?" she asks in a hushed voice, although there's no reason for it. Out here, in the dead of night, it's just the two of them.

"I do."

"Then there's something I need to show you."

Bracing himself, he shuffles, taken aback when she extends both her hands to him, waiting for him to hold them.

"Magic then?" he asks.

"I don't want to waste any more time. I've missed you too much."

Taking her hands, letting her fingers caress his hook, he watches swirls of purple smoke behind her grow closer and closer until they're both enveloped in them.

When it clears, they stand in the small yard of her house as they did before, with only silence and a spellbinding sheen from the moon to keep them company. The light hanging above her front porch already turned on, he wonders if she turned it on out of habit or if she expected him. With a mournful look, she lets go of him and hurries up the stairs.

"I've already seen your home, Swan. Why are we here? You promised me the truth, not a bloody tour," he reminds her as she lets them in, locking the door behind them.

"The truth is tricky. You have to look for it." Only the most understated head bob indicates she wants him to peer through one of the spyglasses propped up in front of the windows. It's how Dark Ones spend their time, he thinks with a sigh. Buying houses and setting up scavenger hunts.

"All right. I'll play your game." Trudging over to the spyglass, he glances back at her before adjusting it, closing one eye, and squinting into it. He can't help but gasp at a perfect full moon, the waves of the clouds around it matching the languid waters beneath it. So many textures, such a peaceful rolling in and rolling out of the tide, the moonlight casting an illuminated trail right on the water that seemed to lead right up to him. He had no idea just how close they were to the harbor despite the gulls he'd seen earlier that day.

"I guess being the Dark One has its perks," he breathes, the tears in his eyes as confusing as they are welcoming. "That is a stunning view of the sea. There's no sight like a full moon on the waves."

"Back in Camelot, you said the ocean calmed you. I thought you might like to see it."

Turning back to her, his heart skips a beat when her face softens, but it's not yet her, and he's no longer sure she gave him this moment for anything other than to lull him into a false sense of security.

"You picked yourself a fine home. I'll give you that." Maybe...with some light and warmth and no dungeon in the basement, this could have been an actual home, one in which they could have stood out on that little terrace there and watched the stars come out one by one.

"I didn't pick it. You did." Her eyes veer to the table.

He did? Bending over, he reaches for a folded newspaper with a picture of the house on top, circled in bright red with an excited "this one" labeling it. "That's my handwriting."

"You said this was our future together," she says with such conviction, he almost does ask for a tour, an impossible fantasy entering his mind of more and more of the Darkness melting off of her with every room she shows him, the promise of a future together a cleansing fire. "Everything I've done has been to keep that future alive."

"Well, then I guess this is the moment that you tell me the truth." Like a magnet, the pull he feels toward her is irresistible, her hands on his chest searing him. Her smile so close to how she was before—just a few remnants of the burden she carries now.

"Almost there. Almost," she promises him before she kisses him. How long had it been since he'd kissed her? This hell he's endured upon coming home and realizing she's no longer a part of that home—surely a lifetime has passed since he's held her and not had to worry about anything keeping them apart. Her hand flies to the back of his head and keeps it there, as if he'll break away from his very air that is her.

"I can't tell you everything that happened between us until it's all over," she pants, the tips of her lips still touching his as she speaks.

"Why not?" he whispers back.

"Because." Something's wrong, and not just the fact she's jerked herself out of his embrace. "If you knew what I was really after, you'd do everything in your power to stop me."

What power? When has he ever really had any power over her? No, seriously...when—his eyes can hardly focus on her. He suddenly feels like the entire room is dancing. He's run uphill for endless miles, drunk from the most enormous rum barrel imaginable, endured months of no sleep—no; he's only stood here. Talking to her. Kissing her...

His body slumps onto hers, but they don't tumble over onto the floor. She catches him and holds him, laying her head on him as if this was a goodnight embrace and nothing else. No. Groaning, he looks up at her before his eyes begin to roll back into his head. It was the reverse of their previous kiss at this house, when the scents of sulfur and brimstone overtook the wonderful scents of the ocean. He smells the spray of the sea and the musty sails pushing on the fiery odor of a foreign magic, and it nauseates him to the point he welcomes the oblivion that takes over him.


A/N: Special thanks again to OnceSnow for catching all the little typos. Coming up? A major reveal that may or may not result in Zelena painting "Dark Ones" on CS' mailbox (she won't).