The island smelled like lemons, Killian noted, setting foot on the spongy soil. Lemons and oranges and rain. Although it had been years, centuries, since he'd traversed this particular island, he led the way, the starlight once again bathing every thick tree and bush in a faint silver-purple glow. Now would be the time for some rollicking little tune to pass the time, he thought, if not for the ever-growing feeling it would disturb the island somehow.
"Why is this one inhabited and the previous ones weren't?" Regina asked behind him, heaving just a fraction while they made their way up a slope.
"The fruits, I'd imagine," he said, pausing a moment to snag a lime the size of his hand from a low-hanging branch. "Care to partake?" He tossed it to Regina, who dodged it and let it splatter onto the hill.
"Watch it," Swan scolded, bringing up the rear.
"We were just debating whether or not these delightful little things warranted eating." Her nose wrinkled at the mess on the ground.
"It's probably one of those things where if you eat the fruit you're stuck here," she muttered. Imaginative, if morbid notion. "Maybe you guys can debate about the next one without me having to worry about them flying at my head."
"Oh please," Regina scoffed. "All we're doing is walking."
"And searching."
"Yes, two things, walking and searching. Now I would ask you to please stop talking, but that would be three things and I'm not sure you're capable of that," Regina snapped. Killian couldn't resist glancing back to see Swan's reaction. Mild annoyance and a shake of the head, realizing the insult wasn't worth her time. Ah, the high road.
Scattered twig huts came into view, all forming a zigzagged path towards the temple, a stone labyrinth not tall, but long, like a serpent winding its way around the land. The fireflies seemed to prefer the huts.
"Shouldn't we be knocking on these doors, asking some questions?" Swan called to him, not to Regina, but him.
"Start at the top of the hill and work our way down," he said. Nothing? No arguing? Something seemed a tad off.
"Emma?" Regina called. Killian spun around to find only the two of them. Swan had disappeared.
"What happened?"
"I don't know. I heard a shuffle and when I turned around she was gone. Emma!"
"Swan?" Even centuries couldn't expel the dread of disappearing, of all of them vanishing one by one into the night. Something seized at him, his blood drawing cold. If...would Henry even want to leave if Emma...
"I'm...okay," he finally heard.
"Where are you?" he hissed at the muffled grunt of a response. She sounded far away and close by at the same time.
"I'm...uh, down here?"
They crept off the path into the tall grass where a sudden drop-off into a trench awaited them. There she was, a bit of grass in her hair, but in one piece. Feeling like a fever broke, he laughed, the smudges of dirt on her trousers the extent of her fall.
"Let's bring you up out of there." He started when Regina caught his arm.
"No, lower me."
"You can't lift her out."
"No, but I can't lift you and her out," she said.
"Wait." Swan stood with her arm out, staring in the direction of the temple. "This goes up to that temple. I can just follow it there."
"Here." Regina crouched onto the ground and scooted with an awkward precision down to the trench. "Hook, you can meet us up there."
Hook, do this. Hook, do that, always someone's lap dog, he winced, considering rolling down in with them out of spite. Convenient at times, certainly, but so constraining, leaving one without chances to feel worry, fear, relief—sometimes in a ten-second span. It left nothing but resentment, resentment at their power, resentment at their potency. He'd wanted to feel for Regina when she told him of Cora's passing, but all he could really muster had been the generic polite sympathy given to anyone who might lose a mother. He'd hated Cora, that she had so much and squandered it all, that and her magic. He was a practical-enough man to not have a problem with magic per se, but its prices were too high even for him. Magic took from him without him ever even using it-his father, Milah, Bae... An empty, empty life, he thought again.
The trench broke off into two near the temple wall, one path to the left that looked like it had been sealed off long ago and a path to the right. Onward then, he told himself, spying the path resembled a tunnel more and more, an underground stone entrance to the temple itself. If the trench led right in, what had really been the point of the path, he wondered. Following the snaky wall around, it came to a heavy wooden door. All that remained now was for them to come out.
"Hook."
"Ah!" A ball of yellow light the size of a fist hovered so close to his face he blinked. "Do you mind taking it back a few notches, Tink? Sensitive eyes."
The little fairy acquiesced, but crossed her legs and glared at him. Fairies being so small they can only contain one feeling at a time, he braced himself for an assault.
"Just out taking in the moonlight?" she spat, matching the sound of tinkling of bells from far away. "Just up and leave Neverland without saying goodbye to a soul only to turn up later whenever you want?"
"I thought short and sweet to be best, lest a woman see me cry." How exactly had she ever expected them to work, anyway? Her entire leg was half the size of one of his fingers. Besides, he had heard enough horror stories from acquaintances who had had crazy former lovers that drove them mad, and not in a good way. Tinkerbell, miniscule beauty that she was, could have torn those crazy lasses to shreds.
"What are you doing here? Looking for a crew?"
"In a way, yes." He'd backed up against the door, only to feel a nudge. Fumbling around behind him, he flipped the lock, hoping Swan and Regina would take the hint. Clearing his throat, he tried to speak louder and still sound natural. "I'm looking for a boy, actually, taking him back to his mother."
"Then you're missing out," she sang, doing a spin for him. The leaves covered as little of her as they did before.
"He wouldn't have been here very long," he continued. "About eleven years old, brown hair."
"Yes, yes, the one on the main island."
Fighting the instinct to smile at gained information, he raised an eyebrow to show surprise.
"The main island? Why?"
"You know how Peter is. One minute so focused on one thing and the next all over the place, flying across moons." She wagged a finger at him, the rage being channeled into playing the coquette. "Of course you'd want the one boy impossible to take."
"And why is that?"
"This is the boy the Lost Ones have been looking for, the boy of the prophecy. You, you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, do you?" Flying over, she ran a tiny hand through his hair. It gave Killian the sensation of a gnat flying too close. "Have you even seen Peter Pan?"
"By all accounts, I should have," he said with a shrug.
"A rare male fairy. Eyes just a little bit bluer than yours. Everyone thinks fairies have so much power, but we're so small, it's contained. It takes up so much energy. A human body, now, that's something different. We'd have all taken one a long time ago, but they don't withstand magic so well."
The door no longer thudded against his back. Perhaps that meant they were listening.
"You're not making much sense, Tink. Recall it's been a while since I've been here."
She rolled her eyes with a groan.
"Hook, everybody that's been here has had too weak a body for Peter to take. He sends the shadows out looking for one a little stronger, one that has magic in it. It's said, the prophecy, I mean, that there will be a boy who will come from True Love itself. That is the kind of body that could inhabit something like Peter."
"How's he know he has the right boy?" he asked.
"He had a vision. Centuries ago. You said you knew the mother. Is he wrong?" Tinkerbell almost gloated, so proud, so condescending, someone who had just been chomping at the bit to relay this to anyone ignorant of it.
"Suppose, just a thought, True Love hadn't been involved in his...origins," he settled on. Not wanting to talk about a past love, he could understand, too well, but denying having loved at all as Swan had done opened a floodgate of suspicions regarding the nature of her relationship with Henry's father...Baelfire. Once again, something he preferred not to think about. "Suppose his mother and father had not had True Love. That would sound like the wrong boy to me."
"That doesn't matter," Tink laughed. "The mother is the product of True Love itself. Anyone that she happens to love, anyone that happens to love her, such as a child, would have far more to them than anyone could guess. But the father, oh, you want to hear something juicy?"
Bloody hell, he wasn't sure he could hear anymore of anything.
"Always," he whispered, giving his voice a husky tone that incited a giggle.
"The father is the son of the Dark One, the most powerful entity in the realms. At least, for now. With his grandson at stake, all Peter has to do is twist the boy's arm here and there and the Dark One would work for him. Whole worlds would be at his mercy. The Most Powerful Magic of All frosted with dark magic more potent than anything here..." she trailed off, flipping around clapping her hands together.
"And nothing about an immature, childish fairy taking over worlds alarms you." It was not a question.
"Better than how things are now!" Tink cried, defensive all of a sudden. "You think I can get any sleep with those children crying night after night? It's about time he made an army of them. Do yourself a favor and count this one as lost, Hook."
"And what do I tell his mother?" he swallowed, wondering why he hadn't heard at least one of them slump to the floor in a faint on the other side of the door.
"Tell her he'll be Peter's once he returns." With that, she flew off, nothing more than a streak of light across the blackness. He didn't dare unlock the door until every trace of her light vanished into the night.
There had been too many days in a row of just standing around like a bloody idiot not knowing what to do. Regina had backed herself up against the temple wall, silently crying. Swan staggered out, gripping his coat with a weak wrist.
"Promise me," she whispered, her face and eyes lost. He didn't like frantic Emma, when her hazel-green eyes sparked gold flecks. Her bottom lip fell open, but no words.
"We will find him," he uttered back. We understand each other, she'd said. At the time, it was with reluctance that he agreed. Now, now it seemed a saving grace that nothing more required stating. "No need to question anyone," he said, summoning up some strength in his voice. "Back to the ship."
Heads held high, a good sign, he thought, this time deciding to be the one to bring up the rear. The wind whistled through the trees, the citrus scent wafted around them, along with a rustling. A patterned rustling, like footsteps, crunched a fallen leaf here and there. Killian drew his sword.
A shadow pounced out from the trees with a sword. It wasn't until he blocked it with his own and heard the clang he realized this wasn't the literal shadow minions. This was flesh and underneath flesh was always blood. From the corner of his eye, he could make out flashes of color and movement, Emma and Regina rushing to him, but they needn't bother, he thought. The opponent's style was that of a novice, choppy, a clear distinction made between the sword and the arm. Able to take the offensive, he kicked at the figure's gut, sending his bottom to the ground with a grunt. The sword thudded down next to him, the clangs still thrumming in Killian's ears.
"Hold him down!" he heard Emma yell to Regina, who lifted her hand and clenched a fist. Ropes entwined the hooded figure's waist and arms.
"Bad form, mate," he said, crouching down next to him. "You knew who you were fighting. At least grant me that." He brushed the hood off the man without much struggling.
Greg...Owen, that sleepy-eyed, puffed up man from the Land Without Magic, refused to make eye contact with him, instead choosing to try burning a hole into the ground with his eyes.
Regina interlocked her fingers and nested them under her chin, closing her eyes as if she were struggling to restrain herself. Emma made no such reservations, though, the effect of not being the one tortured by him, marched up, and promptly kicked him in the face.
"What did you do with him?" she bellowed. Her whole body tensed as she backed away from him. Blood dripped from the corner of Greg's mouth.
"Let's get him onto the ship," Regina suggested, and for once, he was inclined to agree.
"Magic us there," he added.
"Why?" Emma snapped, circling Greg like a vulture. "He can answer our questions here and we can leave him here." With her hands on her knees, she bent down to him.
"Come on now, lass, kicking him in the face is only going to feel less and less satisfying."
"Emma, a hostage may come in handy," Regina said. Wholly unnatural, he thought, that one of them flying off the handle made the other a picture of calm.
"No, we can do this now!" she screamed, nearing Greg enough to bite his nose off if she so wished.
"I think only her parents may be able to hold her back, Regina," he said, not taking his eyes off her, unsure if Emma With Murderous Rage was something he was ready to see in her. "Magic. Now."
A/N: Okay, lots of exposition in this chapter, but it is necessary. Coming up? Snow's perspective on the new captive, new clues, and her family in general.