Chapter 7: The Definition of a Clusterfuck

"Killian Jones," said David Nolan.

"Aye."

"That is your name?"

"One of 'em."

"Other alias Captain Hook?"

"Correct."

"And yet. . ." The prince blew on his scraped knuckles, which Killian's face had just had the misfortune to run into. "You have the gall to walk up to my front door with my wife and my grandson in my home, and think that I'm going to do anything else than assume you're up to something involving the threatening of my family and my daughter?"

Killian brightened. "She mentioned me?"

"She and her mother have told me all about you, mentioned that you were making advances on her, and that if I was to see you, I had permission to clean your clock." The bloody deluded dunderhead clenched his fists again, apparently in expectation of doing just that. "I don't know if you think that I was born yesterday, but I am not running out to – "

"Oh, please," Killian snapped. "Spare me the overcompensation for your failures as a father, my liege. If you're interested in actually helping your daughter, you'll come with me, out to my ship. Cora's taken her and tried to make it look like my fault."

"And you want to help my daughter why?"

"I – " That question was a trap, and he'd almost stepped in it. He adopted a flippant, bored look instead. "I don't know what you really think of me, though I can likely guess. But if you think I'm keen to see Cora blow this bloody place to kingdom come, you're mistaken. Don't like her, don't care for her, not inviting her to my next fancy to-do, take your pick. If she succeeds in conquering this world, our own is next. And as your lovely wife and daughter have also surely told you, it still exists – barely. Don't tell me you haven't thought of going back there and finishing your noble work. Ruling the kingdom, having your happy-ever-after. Eh?"

"And what's in it for you? You're a pirate. I know how pirates think."

"Clearly you don't, otherwise you'd have expected me to show up here. And not everyone eats their vegetables, says their bedtime prayers, only ever sleeps with their lawfully wedded bride, never says the word shit, and wears sensible underpants like you, Your Highness, but that doesn't mean we're all no better than the ogres. Your dearly beloved womenfolk will have told you at least that they would never have gotten home without me?"

That gave the man pause for a moment. Then he snapped, "Fine. Fine. I'll go with you. But don't think I'm taking my eyes off you for a second."

Killian blinked. "Like father, like daughter indeed." Then he called to Snow, "Don't worry, love. I'm not at all into that sort of thing. It's only your lass I want."

She looked as if she was about to throw something at his head. Killian, with Charming now loathingly in train, took that as his cue to leave.

(8888888)

Keeping low, shooting as many glances to as many sides as possible without growing a second head, Emma Swan moved out of the safety of the boathouse and started her advance down the pier. She felt ridiculous, like an actress in a movie going against a monster the techies were planning to digitally insert later, which was currently just a tennis ball on a stick. She couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, only the typical assortment of fishing boats, catamarans, and other private craft that populated the waterfront. Certainly nothing that looked remotely like a big-ass pirate ship. But Cora had said that Belle was on board, and Emma couldn't think of another logical place to find a ship in this town. Even knowing that this was the move the witch wanted her to make wasn't enough to stop her. Belle was a citizen of Storybrooke, hence it was Emma's responsibility to rescue her, and she damn well needed to show some responsibility after the way she'd drunk herself to blackout and let herself get into that bad situation last night. Besides, if Gold found out. . . fell for Cora's frame job at the station, or just took it as an excuse. . . knowing what he'd said about Hook, telling her to leave the pirate to him. . .

Yet again, unhappily, Emma asked herself why it mattered to her that this was a possibility. Hook was nothing but an exasperation in her life, and even if she didn't plan to let Gold flay him into a million little pieces, that certainly didn't mean she wanted him around. She wanted him to get back to his own world, killing people and ravishing wenches and hoisting the colors and ravishing wenches and burying treasure and ravishing wenches and whatever else it was that unscrupulous pirate captains got up to in their spare time –

(Why did it bother her so much when she thought about him ravishing wenches? Not that he necessarily did. He probably didn't have a hard time finding women eager to leap into bed with him, and he hadn't ravished her. Not that there had really been opportunity. And not that he didn't seem interested in the idea. Not that she was interested. But he had been. Of course. He was a pirate. Who ravished wenches.)

Hissing angrily, Emma reached the end of the pier and looked up and down. She still saw nothing, just murky blue-grey water. Had Cora been flat out lying, hoping to lure her here on her own? But if so, why hadn't she said the cabin in the woods or something, where it would be easier to get rid of her with nobody watching? Emma still wasn't frightened of the witch, not exactly, but she would be extremely foolish to underestimate her. What if Cora's inability to take her heart was a one-time thing? What if she'd found something else that gave her the power?

Disheartened and confused, Emma was just about to turn around, head back to the sheriff's office, and try to trace Cora from her disappearance there, when she noticed that the waves lapping at the pier were acting strangely. They weren't lapping at all, in fact. They were spreading out to either side as if a stone, a very large stone, had been dropped into the harbor. Or as if something else – a very large something else – was sitting in the middle of them.

Emma sucked in a quick breath and looked around yet again for potential witnesses. She didn't want, for example, Gold to come charging down the jetty breathing fire, but it wouldn't hurt if someone was nearby to pull her out if she fell in from trying what she was about to try. In either case, there was no one. Baby Jesus have mercy on her, she was in this all by herself.

She backed up a few dozen feet, took a running start, and launched herself into thin air.

For a horrible moment, there was nothing but the water underneath her, and she winced, wondered if she could convert a bellyflop into a cannonball in time, and thought that this was really going to hurt, not to mention be very cold and wet. Then she slammed into something solid in what looked like empty air, something that felt very much like wood, and a tangle of wet, rough hemp beneath her clawing fingers. Winded, gasping, she hung onto them like a monkey in the zoo, flashing back to climbing ropes in gym when she'd been with a foster family that bothered to send her to school. She'd gotten good at doing it, because it was a way to escape the bullies who teased her for her dirty clothes, her sullen demeanor, the fact that she had no parents and no friends, her only intermittent completion of homework and assignments, and her total lack of awareness about anything that was "trendy." The last time she'd faced it, she'd told the bullies to go fuck themselves, and rather than take another suspension, walked from the school out onto the streets and never returned. She met Neal three months later.

Oh God. I thought I'd forgotten that. Emma bunched her legs under her, and got a better grip on whatever was there – she still couldn't see anything. But she put one hand over another, and started to climb.

As she did, she began to see traces in the air, sketched in as if an artist was drawing it in pencil. Something that looked like a bow, a gunwale, a slender etching of mast. A furled sail, a figurehead, and something that was very definitely a cannon – she felt cold iron when she touched it. It was here. And so, then, must Cora.

Emma put every other thought out of her head and concentrated on climbing, feeling oddly piratelike herself – give her an eyepatch and a peg-leg, and she could be a rival buccaneer boarding on the high seas. The further she got, the more it came into focus, until she was hanging by both hands just below the railing of a very real and very present pirate ship. It looked like something else out of a movie ("fifteen men on the dead man's chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum," she mumbled) but it was no laughing matter. Belle was somewhere on here, probably hurt, and Cora was lying in wait. Gold couldn't be far behind, heaven knew where Hook was or what he was doing, and her parents had surely gotten concerned by now.

The word clusterfuck was invented for situations like this one. Emma worked up some momentum, then swung over the railing and landed with a thump on the deck, which didn't move an inch beneath her feet. For some reason she'd expected this to feel like a wobbly little play boat on a bathtub, but it was deep and sturdy as a house. See how well she holds together when the hammer comes down, I guess.

Emma looked from side to side. The ship was apparently deserted. Either all the crew members were below, tied up in the bilges, or it was just Hook and Cora that had come through. Not that this was at all a comforting thought, since those two were bad enough on their own, but it did imply that they had no backup to call on if things got hairy. She still had no gun, but she did have a nightstick, which was the only weapon she'd been able to locate in the sheriff's office; no way was she going back to her apartment to root around for a kitchen knife. Speaking of backup, I could use some.

That, too, was going to have to wait. Emma set off at a purposeful stride across the deck, toward what looked to be the captain's cabin at the stern. He barged into my place, I'm going to barge into his. She had to determinedly push away the horrible thought that had just occurred to her: that Cora had packed the hold with gunpowder, and now that she had her nemesis aboard, was going to blow both Emma and Belle sky-high. But no. Cora wouldn't want to take the risk of destroying her ticket back to the Enchanted Forest. Whatever she was doing here, it was just a prelude to even bigger and badder things back home.

The elaborate door wasn't locked. Emma frowned. This was getting too easy, and she had every reason already to believe that it was a trap. But still. . .

She pushed it open. Dim amber light filtered through the diamonded-glass windows of a lushly appointed cabin – Hook wasn't one to scant on the material comforts, apparently. Why should he? He was a pirate, the pirate, he could afford anything that stolen gold could buy. The claw-footed mahogany table was cluttered with a careless array of charts, sextants, half-burned candles with wax stalactites spilling over their sooty brass holders, tarnished goblets containing some sort of liquid (rum, rum, or rum) and various small daggers, which Emma was pleased to see. She darted forward and grabbed the first one off the table, then glanced around.

A curtained bed was built to the right side of the cabin, big enough for two or three. What did you expect? It probably was wench-ravishing location number one. Emma shoved that thought out of her head again and listened hard; she could just hear a faint noise coming from behind the red drapes. It was definitely female. It didn't sound like Cora.

"Sheriff," Emma hissed, and broke into a run across the creaking floorboards.

She pulled the curtains aside. Even though she'd expected what was behind it, she still recoiled. Storybrooke's young librarian was lying inside, tied up hand and foot with a gag in her mouth and an ugly red gash across her cheek, where Cora had clearly acquired the blood to paint on the sheriff's station wall. At that moment, Emma wondered if Hook had actually been as compliant in the plan as the witch claimed, but he had at least kept her deliberately out of the way, and been up to no good while doing so. This wasn't the time to exonerate him.

Belle, seeing Emma, began to make short, urgent noises. Emma whipped out the dagger, mouthing reassurances, and began to saw through the ropes as quickly as she could, having cut the gag first. Then she helped Belle sit up, using her sleeve to wipe the blood off the young woman's cheek. "Oh my God, are you all right?"

"Fine." Belle winced. "I have to learn how to kick somebody's arse. I'm tired of being used to wipe the floor all the time."

"Can't blame you, sister." Emma shot a glance over her shoulder. They had to get out of here before Cora. . . "Did you see who attacked you?"

Belle's expression darkened. "It was a man with a hook. There can't be two like him."

"Man with a hook," Emma repeated, her stomach sinking. So it had been Killian after all. She didn't want to think about it, she knew it was probably true but didn't want it to be. . . yet she remembered just then that Cora could change shape, that she had disguised herself as Lancelot to follow them to the wardrobe. This excuse-the-man, blame-the-woman bullshit was as old as Adam and Eve, as old as the fact that a sexually active guy was called a stud and a sexually active girl was called a slut, but Emma couldn't let her feelings for Hook, whatever the hell they were, get in the way of investigating this crime. "How do you know him?" She'd heard one version from Regina, but she had to see if Belle's matched up.

"I. . . he broke into my cell when I was held captive in her castle." Belle's mouth tightened. "He said he was going to rescue me, then I told him I wouldn't help him hunt down Rumple, and he knocked me out. I don't know what happened to him after that, I never saw him again. Until now. This is. . . this is his ship, isn't it?"

"Yes," Emma had to admit. "I'm not sure who's behind all this, him or Cora. Either way, it's bad. Well, come on. We have to get out of here. Do you need help or something?"

Belle shook her head stubbornly. "No, I'm all right. I don't want Rumple to find me here. It'll make him angry, it'll make him so angry, and I'll. . . lose him. He'll try to get revenge on them, it'll turn him back into a beast, and then. . ."

"You're a better person than I am, in that case," Emma admitted reluctantly. "I'd want to kick the shit out of the creeps that did this to me." She helped Belle roll off the bed, trying to suppress the desire to look back at it, to think that Killian – that Hook – had slept there, and who else might have shared it with him. Not that she cared. She was just curious. That was all. If he'd really meant what he said to her, or if it was just an act he put on with all women. At least the ones that were useful to him. Belle's tale confirmed that he didn't have any hesitation in hurting the ones that weren't.

For the last time. He isn't a good man. Emma grasped her nightstick in one hand, and Belle's arm in the other. The two women took exactly one step toward the door of the cabin.

Emma sensed it before she saw it, a cold grue down the back of her neck like sleet. She grabbed Belle as the door slammed shut and the purple smoke whirled into existence, blowing a wind through the cabin like the breath of winter. I should have known. I did know. God damn it.

"Hello, my dears," Cora said, and made a bored gesture, lighting the candles and dropping the curtains, and slamming the latch into the door until it locked with a thump. "No, I don't think you'll be leaving. Not until we've had time for a little girl talk. Please. Sit down."

(8888888)

"There," Killian Jones said, pointing proudly at the end of the pier. "There's my ship."

Prince Charming glanced at him, glanced at the water, and then back at him. "Do you think you're being funny?"

"When I'm funny, you'll be aware of it. Or perchance you won't, but now's not the time to belabor your inadequacies. You can't see the ship because it's enchanted, hence invisible. If you care to walk out to the end of the pier and take a flying leap – trust me, you'll see it."

Charming grabbed him by the collar of the expensive shirt. "Now you really think you're being funny, don't you? Do you take me for a total idiot or what? Give me one good reason why I shouldn't – "

"You. . . and your tiresome. . . do-gooding." Killian was briefly certain that he was going to have to use his sword to extricate himself, but at that moment, Charming was distracted by something behind them. Whatever it was, Killian didn't get a good look, but it did cause the oaf to let go of him. With exaggerated politeness, the pirate enquired, "Can I assist you with something, my liege?"

"I'm sure you have no idea at all why what looks a whole lot like Regina Mills' car just drove up to the harbor parking lot, and why someone who looks a whole lot like Mr. Gold just got out of the passenger seat looking like he's about to freeze hell over?"

That was enough to knock any further witty remarks clean out of Killian's head. His crocodile. . . he couldn't be entirely certain from this distance, but the spark of vengeful hatred that had jumped up in his belly needed no further confirmation. He felt almost mesmerized as he stared at the small figure, half-tempted to draw his sword and charge even though he knew it would avail him nothing against the Dark One. Even in this sad, broken, dirty world without magic (or without as much of it) he couldn't do something stupid and ruin three hundred years of planning. The tattoo on his right arm felt as if it was burning. So close now, my love. Almost there. It was what he'd been waiting for, all this time. He should feel exultant.

So why was it at this pivotal moment, he couldn't quite recall the way Milah's smile had looked? Or what she'd said when she first came aboard the Jolly Roger, or any time thereafter when he did something she judged to be dangerous and/or stupid? Or her favorite bawdy jokes or the earthy sound of her laughter, the smell of her tumbled dark curls and the sweat on her skin after they'd made love? They were all memories Killian thought he should have, and generally assumed he did, but when he went searching through the dark warrens of his head, all the boxes were empty. Did Neverland take that from me? The world where you lose your old life?

But how could he forget Milah, when she'd been everything to him? Didn't the fact that he could still remember her right now prove that he hadn't forgotten? But he had, somehow, without ever noticing when. And even more strangely, it didn't wake a volcanic rage at being robbed of everything he held most dear. Just a. . . a confusion, almost. A numbness. As if after three hundred years of a brilliant, demented fever dream of blood and vengeance, he was finally about to wake up.

"Well?" Charming's voice cut angrily into his reverie. "Are we planning to do something?"

"Yes, Your Highness." Killian shook his head, grabbed the prince's elbow before he could protest too loudly at being contaminated by a man of such coarse moral fiber, and began to hustle them down toward the end of the pier as fast as they could go. "Yes, we most assuredly are."

(8888888)

"Well, my dears?" Cora said archly. "Aren't you planning to say something? In my world, young ladies are better brought up. So the fact that you two are still gawping at me like a pair of peasants does not, I am afraid, speak much for your education."

"It's my world too." Surprisingly, it was Belle who recovered first. "It's my world, our world. And you ruined it."

Cora shook her head, smiling. "No. That was my daughter, who I imagine you hold a similar grudge against. Decades of imprisonment, and you're content to let her walk around unchallenged? All for the sake of him? I thought you were a stronger person than that, but now I see that you exist only to please your man. You treat him far better than he deserves, and let everyone else walk over you. You need to fight harder against this wretched world and what it does to women, my dear." The witch held out a hand. "I can teach you."

Belle pressed her lips together. "What Regina did to me is in the past," she said. "Someone else will see to it that she suffers. Something tells me it will be you."

"Clever girl," Cora breathed. "But you can't tell me that there is no impulse for vengeance at all. Or is it cowardice that stays your hand?"

Belle glared at her. "I prefer to call it decency."

"Incorruptible goodness." Cora's lip curled. "Fainting damsel that you are. Keep getting hurt, keep getting imprisoned solely because you cling to your desire to 'change' a man who will never change. Just like the other one. Captain Hook gives you that – " she indicated the drying blood on Belle's cheek – "and I suppose you want to meekly pardon him again as well?"

At that Emma, who had been silent until now as she looked frantically about in search of an escape, jerked back around. "Tell me, Cora," she said, in the same poisonously polite tone the witch liked to use on them. "Was that really Hook? Or since you just so happened to show me back at the sheriff's office that you have that very hook in your possession, should we just so happen to think it might have you been changing shape again?" If that was the case, if Cora had been double-crossing Killian as well as her. . . well, she didn't know what the ever-living fuck it meant for her future actions. Just that there might have been some sincerity in Killian's – Captain Hook's, damn it – offer to help her. And that was twice as terrifying as the fact that she was currently trapped in his ship by an insane sorceress.

Cora's smile flickered. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Do you?" Emma let go of Belle's arm – the other woman didn't seem to need the support – and used both hands to take a better grip on her nightstick. Not that it was probably going to do her a fat lot of good, but she hoped she got in a few good whacks at least. "I think you do. It wouldn't make much sense to pose as Hook, unless you had the hook. And the last time I saw him, he definitely didn't have it."

"And since you just accused me of impersonating him. . . you knew it was the real him, how?"

"Trust me. There can't be anyone else as infuriating as he is."

"I see," Cora murmured. "And yet for all your professions of total hatred, you and your friend refuse to join me in fighting back against a man who's wronged you both. That's all I want, you know." A coaxing tone entered her voice. "I'm a mother. I want what's best for my children."

"I'm a mother too." Emma stared her down. "I can't say that it's ever caused me to have a deep and abiding desire to wreck other people's lives. And I am not your child."

"But you do," Cora said silkily. "Wreck other people's lives. Mostly by accident, I'm willing to grant you. Yet look what's happened to this place since you arrived."

"I broke your daughter's curse."

"And everything has worked out perfectly, hasn't it? No difficulties at all, no arguments, no lost families, no broken hearts? Every villain has gotten what they deserve and every apple-cheeked heroine has found her perfect prince?" Cora shook her head. "Oh, you sweet fools. That's why Regina brought you here. This is the world without happy endings."

Emma hesitated. She was supposed to say something back, she knew, but the witch had just cut to the core of all the unrest, grief, and alienation she was feeling ever since she'd come back through the portal. All her guilt at being unable to bond with her family like she should, all her turmoil about Hook, all her shock and agony from seeing – from seeing fucking Neal, all her failed responsibility and the weight of her own expectations of how she should heal. . .

Cora knew her blow had struck home. "Ah," she said softly. "The weight of that human heart is too terrible to bear, isn't it? Step a bit closer to me. I'm sure that this time, I can free you from your burden."

Emma shook her head like a horse chasing off flies, vaguely aware that she was being enchanted, but unable to form the defiant words that would save her. Her defenses were utterly down, and if Cora plunged a hand into her chest now and pulled, she wasn't so sure that her heart would stay where it was supposed to. Almost in a dream, she took a step forward. Wasn't it what she had always wanted? To be strong enough? To get rid of the pain and guilt for good?

Belle, however, had other ideas. She reached out and grabbed a candelabra from the table, then put herself between Emma and Cora. "You're going through me first."

"Ah." The witch's expression turned sour. "The beauty grows a backbone at a very inconvenient time. You're facing me with a candlestick? This one won't sing and dance, I'm afraid. It's not even going to help you. I'm going to kill you now, I'm afraid, and you are not going to enjoy it. It won't be a beautiful or tragic or romantic death. It will simply be a fact."

"Try me." Belle tightened her grip. "You told me I should start fighting back against people who want to hurt me. I think this time I will."

"Misunderstood advice. The bane of every mother." Cora shook back her gauzy cobalt sleeves. "You'd regret this, but there won't be enough of you left."

Emma jerked up as if surfacing from a very deep dive. Now, the moment was now. She had to act, had to throw herself in the way, had to get her magic going, had to do it now, had to do it now, be a hero, be the hero, be the savior, had to do it, do it right –

Cora reared back like a striking cobra. The hot ozone scent of magic and the boiling white glare of its torrent filled the captain's cabin like a falling star.

And then, the door broke down.