Regina

Sure. I train and practice for years in order to enact a curse that someone else comes up with. But Swan? Oh no. She's green as a leaf and she just feels strongly enough that she sends her own personal brand of pain to anyone she holds responsible for it. A full blown, multi-person, focused, multi-dimensional curse. On her first try. Sometimes I wondered if this girl was for real but then I remembered all that true love drivel her parents made me watch and I remember that levels of disgustingly annoying this high were indeed possible. It was a damn good thing I wasn't evil anymore or this Princess would have another thing coming in regards to competition. She had talent, but I had skill. (And, of course, I was kind of an evil genius back in my day – not to brag or anything.) Of course just because I was turned light side didn't mean Darth Vader was on his own. (I really had to stop watching movies with Henry.) Emma had just enacted a curse. A damn powerful one at that, but still, a dark curse wherein pain was inflicted most heavily on her subjects. That didn't scream 'white magic' to me. This was bad. Really, really bad. This was, The Savior goes dark, bad. And I was going to have to stop it. I knew better than anyone how losing true love could hurt, but it looked to me, that Emma hadn't just lost her true love, she'd lost her soul mate. Because the idiot had gone off and sacrificed himself. For her. Because he loved her. God they were annoying. I turned to Mary Margaret who was fluttering over David.

"I'm going to go stop her. Or help her. I don't really know which yet."

"What do you mean?"

"Until Emma is happy again she's going to keep going down this dark path. That means all these people keep being cursed. Keep in mind, they're not the only ones in pain. It looks as though she's projected her pain onto them which means everything they're feeling here, is only a reflection of what Emma is feeling." Mary Margaret's eyes widened and she looked to David and the others.

"So Emma is…"

"In a lot of pain. Yes. That's why she enacted this curse."

"Curse…" Mary Margaret breathed out the word, tears welling in her eyes.

"I won't let her go dark, Mary Margaret. I promise." I squeezed her shoulder and nodded before turning on my heel and taking off in the direction Emma's energy flowed from. I was getting better at sensing her magic – even now with the edge of darkness to it, Emma Swan's magic had a very distinct flavor that couldn't be disguised. Of freaking course. The docks.

"Swan! Hold up!" I called out, chasing after her.

"Go away, Regina."

"Swan. You know damn well that of everyone here, I can understand your pain. That of everyone in this town, I get it." She hesitated but only for a moment.

"I'm stealing a ship and sailing to another real in another time." She said bluntly, sizing up the options before her. "If you're on board with that, then you can come. If not, then I suggest going back into town and pretending you never saw me."

"Like hell I'm going back. What am I supposed to tell Henry when he comes back from New York and his mom has gone back in time, screwed something up and get back?"

"What's Neal supposed to tell Henry when he finds out both his moms have gone back in time and screwed something up and now neither of them are coming back?" I snorted.

"Please. I don't screw things up. I'm a genius. And this way I can save your ass and bring you home."

"Whatever you want, Regina. This's your decision and I don't want to hear you complain about whatever I've dragged you into."

"Complain? Me? I'm the Evil Queen not Maleficent." Emma frowned at the prospects before her and I understood completely. Besides Liam and Ponytails' ship, they were all tiny fishing boats, and they were all at least somewhat modern. They were going to stick out like a pole in…well, wherever we were going. "Come on, Swan, are you a sorceress or not? It's called magic. We can use it. We can make any one of these floating embarrassments into the kind of ship that makes the Jolly look like a canoe." She blushed.

"I don't really know how to do that." I sighed.

"Don't know how to transfigure a boat but can curse half a dozen people without even trying. I kind of hate you sometimes, you know?"

She spun around impatiently and glared at me. "Can you do it, or not?"

"Turn around Dumbo." I pointed to my quick work. "Let's fly away, shall we?" As she inexplicably got the boat ready to sail (Hook must have taught her a while ago because this was not a nervous plebe on their first solo outing, she really seemed to know what she was doing here.) she was silent and I got increasingly nervous. "You do have a plan, don't you? We aren't just going to sail about and happen upon a time portal?"

"Killian got back. So can we."

"Dear God tell me that's not your plan. Tell me we aren't just following his trail here, that you have an actual plan." She stalked to my side and opened her fist. Inside were beans. Magic beans. A shit ton of magic beans. Where the hell were all these people just coming up with magic beans from?! This was absurd. This was…were those beans changing color?!

"Magic beans feed by water that runs under Storybrook's clock tower."

"No water runs under Storybrook's clock tower. There's a library and a secret vault under there. That's where-"

"Your annoying Dragon friend lived. For like 30 years. Without water – oh wait. No. There was a whole freaking stream that ran through that vault. Then it drains out the East side of town. Right to where my parents and the dwarves are growing magic beans."

"Your parents and the dwarves are growing magic beans?!"

"Big picture Regina. That clock tower is magic. It controlled time in this realm, and the one we all came from. It made these beans far more than magic. It made them time sensitive. This is how Killian went back and one of them is going to take us back. Then we'll split up the rest, find Killian and bring him home. If we get split up, we'll both have plenty of beans, we can get back here. To Henry." I nodded. Thank the Lord. She did have a plan. A real, actual, planning for the worse possible scenario, kind of plan.

"Okay. Well, we'll look into the magic clock tower and the field of beans you've come up with when we get back then."

"Works for me."

"Stop stalling. Get this damn boat out of here. Emma threw a bean out ahead of us and closed her eyes, twisting a ring on her finger a few times. I recognized it. It was Hooks. It was a dark silver, old but unaged, just like he was. It had a ruby the size of a cherry laid in the top and a few various jewels on the sides. He wore it all the time. It was part of him. He wouldn't fade without that thing. Well there was hope in that, at least. He was going to be just fine until we got to him. Of course then he would be reunited with his ring and he could start properly fading away. And then we were screwed to all hell.

Killian – The Piratey Edition

Why wasn't anything happening yet? Surely I should be fading away by now whatever the bloody hell that meant? A tiny voice in the back of my head suggested that maybe I wasn't fading because Swan was holding onto me. That centuries later in a completely different realm, with a better version of me, she was still thinking of me, wishing I was there, loving me. NO. It didn't matter. No matter how pleasant a tale the taunting voice spun, I was doing this for her. I was going to hurt her, worse than anyone else ever had and I couldn't do that to her. I couldn't be one of the men who broke her heart, I refused to cause her pain. So she would have to forget I ever existed. And when she did, I would just stop.

I was going down without a fight but it was by choice, not weakness. Just like it was by choice that I had donned this robe inexplicably found on my ship, one I had never seen before and that no one here could explain, one that now covered my face so I could sneak aboard my brother's ship and find out who the bastard was who ruined my life. Only one problem. I had been here two nights and the only thing I had seen was him. The man I remembered coming, the man who commissioned my brother's vessel to sail off to Neverland. The man who knowingly sent us into danger while believing we were on a mission of mercy and healing. The man who killed my brother. He had left hours ago and Liam was preparing to make sail, bean in hand – regular old magic bean, no time travel for them! – ready to depart the next morning. The crew had gone out for one last night on shore while my brother and the younger, more annoying version of me were sharing stories over what could only be goat's milk with a far reaching smell like that. Ugh. I remembered those days. When drinking alcohol was "bad form". When just about anything I liked to do, was bad form. No women, no whiskey, no witty banter. Just that stupid haircut and stiff, uncomfortable clothes. And Liam.

He had Liam. That annoying little boy didn't have much, but he had Liam. I sighed. He was worth it. My brother would be alive. Emma wouldn't be hurt. Replacing Pirate Killian Jones with his perfect, naïve counterpart was worth it because Emma wouldn't be hurt and Liam would be alive. But they were about to go to sleep! And I knew Liam. He would set sail first thing the next morning, no last minute personnel allowed on for discussion. If the man in the hood didn't get here soon, they would never go forward. They would never tell me what the Seer had told them. I would never go back. Which would mean that Emma would still be hurt, Liam would still die and I would have come back here and separated myself from the love of my life, my soulmate, for nothing. And I'd be stuck here. In this time period. Liam would be dead. I'd never see Emma again. Worse still, Emma would experience a pain like no other at my hand. And time would be caught in a never ending loop of confusion. I didn't know exactly what the consequences were of that, but I could assume they were severe.

Where the bloody hell was the man in the hood?!