He had no sodding clue.
One moment his daughter stood motionless, watching her mother's double choking the life from him, and the next…
Gods, what the hell had he just seen?
She closed her eyes and Beth was gone, replaced by blinding light. A screech, as deafening and as destructive as a Fury's cry flooded his ears until it was no longer a question of if they'd bleed, but when. And then, nothing.
Silence and ash and a gaping chasm where his room had been. The witch was gone, disintegrated if he had to guess.
He opened his mouth to respond—or had it been agape this whole time? Awestruck by what he wasn't sure he'd seen? But before coherent words could form, Henry ran up behind Beth, followed closely by Regina. They peered over the edge and into the flat below. Killian, all the while, thanked the gods their neighbors weren't home this particular morning, as he tried not to focus on the miniscule corner of support his daughter had left him. Only it and the square upon which Beth was stationed remained in this portion of the loft.
"Beth, sweetheart, I don't suppose you could conjure a bridge?" He said.
Regina waved her hand, and a moment later Killian was in their midst. The front door slammed, and each of them braced themselves for combat: Regina readied a fireball in each hand, Beth went rigid, hands fisted at her sides, Henry moved to the hall closet and retrieved David's sword, tossing its companion to Killian.
But their panic was for naught.
David, Mary Margaret, and Neal surveyed the field of battle they'd recently called home, stepping carefully between piles of rubble and upturned furniture. Neal set aside his electronic device to study a sizeable hole in the brick wall.
"Someone want to explain to me what the hell happened?" David said with hands on hips.
"Your daughter tried to kill her husband." Said Regina.
Mary Margaret gasped.
"Mom." Henry chided. "It's more complicated than that."
"She wasn't Mom." Said Beth.
Hand to her heart, Mary Margaret voiced the question on all their minds. "Who was she?"
—
"Clearly she's someone who's studied Emma, to impersonate her with this degree of success." Said Regina, sounding almost impressed. "It's one thing to look like someone, but to master her mannerisms and syntax so that even her own husband—" Catching Killian's eye, she cut short her praise.
"Why?" Said Mary Margaret. "Why would someone do this?"
Regina's eyes drifted to Beth, seated under the protection of her father's arm, an action not lost on Killian.
"Why do any of them do anything? To take things that don't bloody belong to them."
"Did you really think it would be that easy?" The witch chortled; the sound echoed like the comingling of two voices from the same mouth. "That you could just waltz in and take what you wanted?"
Killian thought back to the moment of their escape, to the awareness that it'd all been too simple, to the voice of reason screaming in the back of his thoughts, and to his ignoring its insistence because his wife was alive. They'd found Emma and the sight of her, the feel of her arms around him, her scent intoxicating his senses—these things were better than any dream or memory his mournful mind retained.
"And here I thought the legendary Captain Hook would prove a challenge." A triumphant grin parted her lips. "But they were right about you—you've gone soft. You're pathetic. An empty shell of a man, clinging to false hope like a child chasing stars."
"I think you're overlooking a vital detail." All eyes locked on the former evil queen. "She's dead, whoever she was."
"So where's Emma?" Said Henry.
"What have you done with my wife?"
She leaned in close, whispering in his ear. "You know the answer."
"You're lying—you've hidden her somewhere. Why else go to the trouble of tricking us?"
The witch exaggerated a frown. "If you aren't the most precious sap I've ever seen." She latched her hand around his jaw, drew him forward, and kissed him with excessive force, overwhelming his tongue with a taste like death—and he'd been near its gates enough times to know. His veins were flooded with cold, his heart with darkness deeper than the Never Sea. And all he knew in that moment was an all-encompassing melancholy. "That's what you wanted, isn't it, Captain?"
Regina looked at the expectant faces all around, hesitant to answer. "I don't know, sweetheart."
"She's in your mirror." Said Beth.
Regina's gaze drifted to Killian, as though silently requesting permission to respond. Killian nodded.
"Elizabeth, dear, that was very likely a trick by the woman pretending to be your mother. She wanted to lure you to her lair, and when that didn't work, she set a trap for the rest of us."
"But what if Mom's there and the witch was using her to…" Beth's words trailed off at her family's pitying looks.
"Remember what happened last time you said 'what if' and the rest of us listened?" Asked Neal.
Confusion flooded her eyes, the irises of which covered the entire spectrum of possible colors in a matter of minutes. The longer she stared, the angrier she became. She loosened her iron grip around his jaw and reached toward his chest, curling her fingers in a fashion he'd seen before—first from the Imp and then Cora, and far too many times thereafter.
When nothing happened, she looked up to see Killian smiling. "Something wrong?"
With a loud cry, she struck the bravado clean off his face. Wrenching him toward her once more, this time with a crushing grip on his throat, she growled, "I tortured your wife until the only thing she knew was your name. She repeated it over and over until finally pleading for me to end her suffering. I'll not be as merciful to the girl. And trust my word on this: I will have her."
"I'll kill you first."
"It's sweet that you think so, Captain."
She was across the room before the smoke settled, moving about with each shot fired from David's gun. With three rounds left, Killian reserved one for each eye, and a third through the heart for good measure—but the demon was too fast.
Seeing Beth's frown, Regina said, "I suppose it's worth one last try. Just to be sure."
"Really?" Beth sat up straight, eyes alight with hope.
"If it's okay with your father."
"Daddy, can we?"
After a moment's contemplation, wherein Killian considered the consequences of nurturing and of quelling his daughter's undying faith in her mother's survival, he said, "Aye. Just to be sure."
Gods forgive me.
—
"Elizabeth, if you would." Regina gestured toward the looking glass and the child obeyed.
Standing straight, shoulders back, chin held high, Beth closed her eyes, and what transpired next further solidified Killian's confidence. She was a bloody marvel, his daughter.
The image depicted inside the antique frame changed from their collective reflection, huddled together in breathless anticipation—David, Mary Margaret, Neal, Henry, Regina, and him—to the vision of a single person, staring back at them with anxious emerald eyes.
Killian stepped forward and instructed Beth to stay with her brother, an order she heeded without protest.
"Killian?" Emma said in a soft voice that threatened to break his heart, more so than the silent tears that followed.
Paying no mind to the impulse that would see him giving in, see him accept this Emma as the one he'd lost without proper inquiry, he cleared his throat and spoke in as detached a tone as he could manage. "Where did we meet, you and I?"
She furrowed her brow. "The Enchanted Forest."
"How?"
"Killian, what—?"
"The circumstances of our first meeting—describe them to me."
She gave him a curious look, but proceeded to answer. "I found you—you were hiding in a pile of dead bodies—"
"Were you alone?"
"No."
"Who accompanied you?"
"Why are you asking me so many questions?"
Killian hardened his stare, clenching his hand at his side. "Who accompanied you to the Enchanted Forest?"
"You know who accompanied me."
"I'm not the one whose replicate has recently been wreaking havoc."
"My what?" Emma took a step back. "What happened?"
"We'll get to that."
The slightest irritation crept into Emma's tone. "Once I pass your test?"
Killian arched his brow at her.
"Fine." She shook her head. "I fell into a portal when banishing a wraith to what we thought was oblivion. Mary Margaret jumped in after me. We were taken hostage by Mulan and Aurora, and after killing an ogre and realizing Lancelot was really Cora, and torching the wardrobe, we went back to the refugee camp, where we found you. Hiding in a heap of corpses, under Cora's command. Satisfied?"
"Continue."
She took a deep breath, tempering her impatience. If she proved herself to be Killian's Emma, he'd have hell to pay for delaying her rescue—which he'd gladly do, if the impossible revealed itself to be true.
"You lied about being a blacksmith, and not very well. We tied you to a tree and I threatened to feed you to an ogre if you didn't tell me who you really were. We made a deal to climb a beanstalk together to retrieve a magic compass that would aid in getting us home to Storybrooke."
There was no deception behind her stare, no false information given, but Killian didn't know how to trust he wasn't making a dire mistake. What happened when she turned out to be the witch in disguise a second time? How many times would he fall for the same ruse?
He couldn't put Beth through that again. Or Henry. Or any of them.
But life was made of moments, and the witch couldn't possibly know them all.
"Atop the beanstalk, in the giant's lair, you chained me up and left me for dead—"
"I didn't—"
"What did you say to me before walking away?"
Emma smirked, looking him in the eye, and his heart pounded a new rhythm, as though waking from a seven-year sleep. "I can't take a chance that I'm wrong about you."
—
"How the hell did you come by that conclusion?" Regina demanded to know.
"I spent three hundred years aboard that ship—I'd recognize it anywhere."
"He's right." Said Emma from beyond the glass. "She kept me here for the same reason she let me watch my kids grow up without me. She thought surrounding me with my husband's things was a higher form of torture."
"I'll kill her." Killian didn't realize he'd said these words aloud until catching his daughter's eye.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves—or behind ourselves." Said David. "Are we sure she isn't dead? You said you saw her disintegrate."
"That didn't seem to stop Maleficent from regenerating."
"We can worry about her after we get my mom back."
"Henry's right." Said David.
"Only one problem, Mate." Said Killian. "The Jolly Roger is in the Enchanted Forest."
"So how do we get to it?"
"Beth."
Killian turned on Regina with a resurgence of the fury he'd felt when she'd informed him of what he'd thought at the time to be a séance. ("We used magic to communicate with Emma.")
I'll kill her, had been his first thought then, too.
"Unless you've got a magic bean I don't know about."
"My daughter has had far too much involvement in all of this. We'll find our own way to Emma."
"Like it or not," said Regina, "she's involved because her magic is more powerful than I've seen from anyone who isn't the Dark One."
Killian looked at Beth, reluctant to admit that Regina was right. There had to be another way.
"Daddy, it's okay. I want to help." She took his hand. "I want to get Mom."
Her eagerness chipped away at his resolve, but it didn't crumble completely until he faced Emma, knowing her to be his.
—
It was agreed by all that David should be the one to accompany Killian and Beth to the Enchanted Forest. The others would stay behind in case the sorceress hadn't, in fact, died. Regina set up a protection spell ("Stronger than the last, I hope," earned Killian a scowl.), while Mary Margaret took the boys to an undisclosed location, lest any of them be interrogated—they weren't taking chances anymore. If something could go wrong, Killian was certain it would.
"How does it work, exactly?" David asked Beth.
The child shrugged her shoulders. "When I was at the witch's mansion, I just thought of home, and then I was here."
"But will it work between worlds?"
"It has to." Said Regina from across the loft.
David nodded, content for now. "Anytime you're ready, kiddo."
"Hold off a minute, Dave." Said Killian. "There's something I need first."
They followed him into Beth's room, where he attempted to move the bed by his own strength. With a roll of her eyes and a wave of her hand, Regina relocated it to the opposite wall.
"No need to thank me." She said.
No gratitude was expressed as Killian kneeled, searching for the floorboard that would give under his persuasion. Removing the prosthetic he'd employed for the entirety of Beth's life, and setting it aside, he pulled his hook from the enclosure and, bringing it to his brace, locked it into position.