Ten…nine…eight…
With each passing second, a flick of his wrist.
Seven…six…
He ignored the whispered insistence of the wind strengthening its siren call. It tempted him with promises the gods themselves could not keep. Spoke with a voice like silk to ears that still bore the horrors of the life he'd lost.
Five…
One word, like a heartbeat, echoed louder than the rest. He refused it entrance into his mind, where its roots would grow, where they would forge avenues to a heart dark and desolate. Unmade by the crushing grip of a creature he'd failed to skin.
It belonged to men who believed themselves capable of being whole again.
The only motivation known to Killian Jones—the driving force that kept him alive even now, when all evidence pointed to him being a resident of that cell for the better part of eternity—was sheer stubbornness of will.
He'd be damned before taking the coward's way.
But he sensed the wind beyond those walls, tasted the salt of a nearby sea, heard the gulls circling overhead. He closed his eyes and saw the swell of angry waves, felt them ripple up through the helm, a coursing rhythm that flooded his veins. With a deep breath, centuries of emptiness melted away.
The queen was clever, he'd give her that. It was no accident that he'd been left his hook, the instrument by which he now kept time. Why kill a man quickly when one can watch him unravel into madness? But she'd underestimated his determination, his love of a challenge amidst impossible odds.
The only sound to fill the void was the quiet clanking of metal as his hook counted down seconds against the bedframe.
Four…three…two…
Each morning at precisely five minutes past sunrise, his sentence was punctuated by the whine of ungreased wheels. And precisely two minutes following this, as the tension settled firmly in Killian's jaw, came thunderous pounding and a deep voice at the door to inform him of the hour.
"Mealtime!"
The rectangular slot in the cell door would slide open and a tray of inedible slop would greet him.
One…
Killian opened his eyes when nothing passed through the door save silence. He waited, allowing for the unlikely chance he'd miscalculated. Rising to a seated position, he held his breath. Listened.
Nothing.
He crossed the cell in three long strides, peered into the corridor through the insult of a window.
Empty.
Of sounds and carts and signs of life.
Excitement saw him pacing, back and forth and back. Paranoia saw him checking the vacant hall more frequently than all previous days combined. It was skepticism that ultimately saw him settled. He scratched behind his ear, wondering if the queen had finally won and he had, at long last, lost his grip on reality. Or if…
He shook his head, cursing that wretched four-letter word, the mere traces of which had become the bane of his existence—more so, nearly, than any crocodile ever had—and scoffing at his own gullibility.
It was growing increasingly improbably that he'd leave this cell with his wits intact—if he left at all.
As the seconds stretched into hours, Killian's suspicions, daft though they inarguably were, refused to dissipate. By the time the thunder came, he'd been set on edge.
"You're late." He said as the tray—red, not black—met his eager grasp.
"You know what they say about patience." A voice squeaked back at him, high-pitched and—
"You're a woman."
"Quick on the uptake, aren't you?" The nurse, a petite specimen of auburn hair, slammed the slot closed with a roll of her eyes.
Killian watched through the window as she continued on to the next cell.
He worked the details over in his mind, but for all his efforts he was unable to reach an explanation as to how, for the first time since he'd awoken inside that cell after being engulfed by purple haze, something—anything—had changed.