Chapter 24
She was exhausted, had never been so exhausted in her life, and yet Emma swore she would not sleep, would not even close an eye. Her throat was sore and sticky, her eyes bloodshot, and she felt overall as if she'd just been kicked in the chest. Staring at herself in the mirror of the marble-palace bathroom, which was probably larger than her entire apartment, she saw only a haggard ghost staring back, a ghost that had grieved too hard and burned too hot, the marks of Killian's mouth red on her throat and shoulders. Hair coming down in tangles, skin sheened with sweat, lips bruised and swollen. She couldn't have looked more as if she'd just gotten laid if she tried.
What the hell had she done?
If it was just sex. . . that, at least, Emma could have understood. One-night stands were, after all, her preferred method of operation: sleep with some hot douchebag, get him out of her system, kick him out if he wanted to cuddle afterward, and never see him again. Granted, this one was in fairly sketchy territory due to the fact that she was supposed to be seizing him, not screwing him, but she still had time to amend that mistake. It was past midnight here in London, but only a little past seven in Boston, and James would definitely be waiting for her status report.
But she had done something far worse. She'd let Killian see her vulnerability, given him too much of an idea of her weak point. If he was telling the truth. . . You were called Emma Nolan, then. Six words to completely mind-fuck her, turn her world upside down. Broken her, thrown her into the tempest, to her landing in his arms. She'd just clutched onto him, and fallen. Cried until there were no more tears left, and he was stroking her hair and murmuring soft Irish nothings. Yeah. Just what he signed up for. James had been completely right to be reluctant to send her. She quite literally was not herself around this guy. He undid her – body, mind, and soul. Her judgment couldn't be trusted, her professional capacity severely suspect. All this time, Jones had almost certainly been playing her, taking advantage of their obvious animal attraction, hoping either to sway her to his side or to stupefy her and run.
But why, then, tell her about her former self? Why spend all that time simply holding her?
He's clever, Emma reminded herself miserably. He's a step ahead of everyone. Even if it would have taken some kind of world-class seer to arrange all this, it was safer to revert to that explanation than the other one: that Killian James Jones, dark and dangerous as he might be, was at heart as broken, lost, and lonely as she was. That they might truly understand each other, that they could make quite a team, that they could defend each other's weak sides from a world that had been nothing but cruel to them. Even –
No. No romanticizing this shit. Emma had no time for girls who hung around with bad boys on the futile hope that they could get them parting their hair on the side, paying a quarter every time they said damn, and attending church on Sundays. Killian was a criminal and a murderer, and right now, she was going to go out and get her phone and place a call. The Met could have this place surrounded in minutes. It wouldn't be hard to arrange extradition to America. Take him down. Shove him away. Prove it. Protect herself.
Emma turned on the water in the sink and splashed away her ruined makeup. Washed slowly and methodically, taking her time. She toweled her face off and combed her hair, gargled with the complimentary toothpaste, and prepared herself. Opened the door, laying a track of golden light across the dark hotel room, and stepped out.
He was still there.
God. Why wasn't he getting the hint? Instead of making the least preparation to flee, he was sitting on the bed where she'd left him, though he'd put on a minimally decent amount of clothing. His eyes were very blue in the glow, watching her, barely blinking. He indicated the quilts next to him. "Come here, lass," he said softly.
Emma didn't move. "Sorry."
"Pardon?"
"Sorry." Emma moved to her bag, bending to unzip it and extract her phone – she'd bought an international mobile at Heathrow, since Tamara had destroyed her old one. "I have to," she breathed. "What you said the first time was right. I'm here to arrest you. Sorry."
She straightened up, readying to punch in the number, when his hand caught hers. She had barely even seen him move. But instead of wrenching the mobile away, his fingers closed gently over it, and his other hand moved to tip her chin back. "Really, lass? Really? Do you expect me to believe that, when you're standing in front of me telling me what you're doing, all but bloody begging me to stop you? To give you a reason not to?"
"Let go of me." Emma had already started to tremble at his touch, like a spooked horse. "Let go."
He raised her hand to his lips, mouthing the knuckles, warm and wet. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"I don't care what you're going to do. I have a job to do, and I've already fucked it up, so to speak, enough." Emma wrenched loose. She could see the tattoo on his forearm, and that was the last thing she needed. Who cared if his girlfriend was dead? Sane, well-adjusted men didn't go on a murder spree just because that was the case. She could feel herself scrabbling desperately for any shred of certainty, anything she knew at all, and only felt it falling.
"Emma." His voice was low in her ear as both his arms came around her, holding her tightly, pulling her to his chest again. "Darling, it's late. Come to bed."
"I am not going to be seduced into forgetting about this. And I am not your darling."
She thought he might have smiled, even more bitterly than her. "No, I suppose you're not. Come to bed, regardless. We both need to sleep – about a thousand years or so would do nicely. I won't be going anywhere, I promise. In the morning, if you wake and decide you still want to arrest me, you can. You're right. I'll bloody well deserve it."
Emma hesitated agonizingly. The phone was still in her hand, waiting to be dialed. If she was so sure about this, why hadn't she just done it already? Why not?
Why the fuck not?
Slowly, loathingly, she opened her fingers. Set the phone down. And came to bed.
Emma slept only shallowly and sporadically, watching Killian like a hawk. He was slumbering deeply, but clearly not peacefully; his brow was furrowed, his teeth clenched, and he uttered small pained noises as if clutched fast in the grip of bad dreams. She was possessed with an absurd urge to wake him, to tell him that they were just nightmares, to smooth the anxiety and care away. But she didn't. She just lay next to him, staring at the ceiling, sometimes slipping under into a hectic doze. When she woke from the last one, his arm fell over her waist, and he mumbled something and drew her up against him, bodies warm under the quilts.
She should have rolled sharply away, but yet again, she didn't. Her back snuggled into his chest, spooning comfortably, and her breath came short, an entire clan of butterflies rioting in her stomach. She just lay there with her eyes closed, every muscle tense, until the slow advent of cold grey light announced that it must be dawn. Then, and only then, did she slide Killian's arm off, pad to the window, and peer out through the curtains.
She could only see a few feet in the mist and murk. Raindrops as heavy and silver as mercury beaded the pane and lashed the pavement; the few pedestrians out were bobbing along like brightly colored islands beneath their umbrellas. Apparently, that wet English summer the newscasters had been talking about was back in full force.
Emma muttered a curse and shut the curtains again. Now was the time. He was still asleep. Call, get him taken care of, head back to Oxford and do a final intel collection, then jump the next flight out before Britain started asking too many questions about what exactly an undercover American agent had been up to in their jurisdiction. She didn't think she'd caused any international incidents, especially as MI6 had certainly been clued in by the FBI to be on the lookout for Killian if he should happen to appear back in his homeland, but still. She just –
"Lass?" His voice came from the bed, low and hoarse. "What time is it?"
Emma cursed again, this time out loud. "Fucking early. Go back to sleep."
He grinned. "If by that you mean you desire privacy to make your all-important phone call, you can always step into the bathroom."
"Yeah, and let you get away? Nice try."
He tipped a one-shouldered shrug. "I gave my word not to escape."
"Bullshit."
"Why? I am a gentleman. My word is my bond. You see me still here, don't you?"
She did, damn it. At least if he made a break for it, she'd know that he was lying, and everything would be easier. She'd given him ample opportunity, but he was stubbornly hanging around. Maybe he really did have a death wish, or was just simply fifty shades of fucking done with the entire mess and nonsense. That made two of them, then.
When she didn't answer, Killian swung out of bed and crossed the room to her. Took her hands in his, rubbing warmth back into the cold white fingers, gentle and methodical. Said nothing at all, no pleas or wheedling or promises or attempts to cut a deal. Just the same silent, steady comfort as when she'd broken down on his shoulder last night. Their faces once more were too close, their bodies too woken, speaking too sweetly to each other, and for all that she'd vowed this was it, that this wasn't going to happen again –
It happened.
It was past noon by the time Emma and Killian turfed themselves out of bed again, tousled, sweaty, and starving. They'd made love again, had a fight, called each other all sorts of names, hit each other, kissed each other, then straight-up fucked a third time, harder and rougher and hotter than Emma had ever had it in her life, him throwing her on the bed and taking her until she saw stars, until her fingers clutched at the quilt and almost tore it, her legs wrapped around his waist as he filled her to the hilt, as he thrust and cursed and gasped her name, every nerve she had unstrung and jangling and broken, as she climaxed so hard she thought she'd turned inside out, until it was several moments until they could disentangle themselves and sort out which body belonged to which. She felt almost as if she had broken in half when he pulled out of her, blood tattooing a drumbeat in time with her madly racing pulse.
It was still raining, and since neither of them were in any state to comport themselves sufficiently to appear in public, Killian ordered them both a late lunch from room service. She noticed that he still used his alias, Peter James; no matter how much he mouthed the platitudes about peaceably giving himself up, he wasn't going to just drop his guard. She thought about calling him on it, but by the time she got back from the bathroom, the food was there, and both of them dove into it as if it was their last night on earth.
Conversation was minimal as they ate, curled up on the bed together, the sheets hot and twisted, smelling of salt and musk and sex. Emma couldn't remember if housekeeping had come by; if so, they had surely heard the noises coming from behind the door and decided not to even bother knocking. Her face flushed at the thought, and yet she couldn't quite bring herself to regret it.
When they finished, Killian placed the dishes outside the door to be retrieved, then shut it and turned back to her. There was a gleam in his blue gaze that made her spine stiffen; she scrambled upright, not wanting to be taken at a disadvantage at wherever the hell this was about to go. "Well, love," he remarked. "I don't suppose it can be gotten away from any longer."
"What?"
He raised an eyebrow, but gallantly allowed her to play stupid. "The stalling. It's very bloody enjoyable stalling, don't get me wrong, but still. Even I have a certain degree of self-respect. So either arrest me now, or don't."
"What will you do if I don't?"
He shrugged. "Go into permanent hibernation, I expect."
She thought he was joking, and snorted. "We wouldn't want that, now would we? Well. My demand from last night still stands. I want an explanation."
"Do you? You've already found that a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing. Am I to understand, moreover, that I may be able to trade this intelligence for my freedom?"
"Depends on what you tell me."
"Tough lass," he said again, admiringly. "Still not showing your hand, are you?"
"Oh, I don't know." Emma tossed her hair. "I think I've shown you quite a bit."
Killian stared at her, then laughed, but the look in his eyes was naked hunger. "True enough. I'm so bloody drunk on you that if you keep looking at me like that, with that strumpet's smile, I may have you up against the wall or on your back again before you know it."
"Looks like we're both trying to fuck our way out of this, then." Emma flashed him another of said smiles, just to up his ante further. "Well then, there you go. There's your offer. Tell me what you know, and I'll decide if it's worth letting you walk."
"That doesn't seem very fair."
"Fair?" She stood up all at once, letting the sheets drop from her lovely, lissome, and notably unclad body, and padded over to him, taking great delight in hearing his blood pressure spike through the roof. "You really want to go here, buddy?"
Sweat was standing out on Killian's forehead. He tried, with a comic lack of success, not to look at her. "Very well," he gritted out. "But I'll give you the information on my terms."
"And those are?" Emma breathed, sliding closer.
"Nothing you – ugh – would object to, you – argh – wretched minx. Taking you – ah – out to dinner tonight. Properly. First time I've – bloody hell – been sober – in nearly – a week."
"Dinner?" Emma nipped his earlobe. "How are we going to pass the time until then?"
"Oh." Killian's grin turned feral. "I'm sure we can think of a few ways."
The rest of the afternoon passed in similar fashion. By five PM they were somewhere on the floor, having slid down there from the wall, tangled up in each other and nearly helpless with laughter. Emma couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed with a man, or laughed period, but their total inability to control themselves, spending the entire day in bed together as if they were on their honeymoon, taking delight in alternately tormenting and titillating each other, was cause for nothing but a case of the giggles. He was lying half on top of her, listening to her heart, and she was stroking his hair. Their physical compatibility was eerie. There was absolutely none of the awkwardness that usually attended when you were first getting intimate with someone new; their bodies just knew what to do with each other, and Killian finally announced that if they carried on much longer, neither of them would be able to walk out the door, much less to the restaurant he had in mind. Both of them, needless to say, had worked up a voracious appetite.
Hence, they peeled themselves off the floor, went to take a shower, ended up doing quite a bit more than taking a shower, and had to stagger themselves for the sake of time. It was past seven by the time they'd both washed, dressed, accessorized, and otherwise done their best to put up the impression that they actually hadn't been banging each other senseless all day. Then they took the elevator down to the lobby, and stepped out, hand in hand, into the London evening.
The rain had cleared away, and the sky was a glorious palette of candy colors, rose and lavender and gold and grey, the air fresh and cool. Black cabs and buses swept past, pedestrians hurried under the dripping trees and streetlamps, but Emma felt utterly at peace. She had to admit, it was fun to play make-believe, to imagine that she was out for a date night in one of the most glamorous cities in the world with her rich and gorgeous boyfriend, and had to sternly tell herself not to get it mixed up with reality. Beside her, however, Killian seemed just as relaxed.
After a lovely stroll of ten minutes or so, they arrived at some exclusive Parisian-style bistro with a name Emma definitely recognized; it was the kind of place where you usually had to make reservations six months in advance or know somebody on the A-list. But Killian drifted over to have a discreet word with the maître-d, and by the speed with which they were shown to a candlelit corner table, she guessed that the name "Wendy Darling" had somewhere entered the conversation. They were supplied with menus and a wine list, and a solicitously attentive waiter.
Emma glanced over it and promptly experienced an episode of sticker shock; she had never seen entrées priced in three figures, or bottles of wine in four, but Killian told her that she could have whatever she wanted. Their appetizers had just arrived when she said, "All right. Start."
"Start where?"
"Anywhere. You said you knew me when I was Emma Nolan."
"I – I did." A faint blush colored his high cheekbones. "We met when you were a sophomore at Boston College, an all-American girl from Storybrooke, Maine."
That name again. Every time she heard it, it was as if she'd been kicked in the gut. But she managed to keep her face neutral. "And let me guess. Because of what just happened, you were very interested in me."
"Aye," he admitted. Just then, the waiter popped up like a jack-in-the-box with a taster of the house red, and Killian sniffed it expertly and took a sip before pronouncing himself satisfied. Then he went on, "You got yourself into a spot of bother with your old boyfriend, one Neal Cassidy, whose guts I will gladly make into garters for you if I should lay eyes on him again. The details of the affair are a bit of a bore, but you wound up in jail, from whence I sprang you, and the two of us took a small excursion to Storybrooke. Whereupon we found Gold gone, having made some sort of infernal deal with your parents to go down to Boston and try to release you themselves. This complication led to us being detained by some interfering scruffy ponce named Graham, and one Regina Mills, who gave you a poisoned turnover. Upon eating it that night, you fell into a deep coma, were rushed to the hospital, and seem to have lost all memories of your old life, waking convinced that you were, indeed, one Emma Swan. In the meantime, I was shanghaied by one Wendy Darling into helping with a particularly delicate problem, here in London. I solved it, if it can be called that, but decided to stay. I've been teaching at Oxford ever since, awaiting the moment to return and complete my revenge."
Emma had been following this scrupulously, hoping that her lie detector hadn't chosen this particularly inconvenient moment to conk out again, and she frowned; she didn't think he was BSing her. The only problem, however, was that she indeed could not remember a single blessed detail. It sounded plausible, but it only connected to scattered, jagged flashes of memory in her head that were oftentimes totally indecipherable from dreams. Do I believe him?
"All right," she said after a moment. "Both of us have been in Storybrooke recently, or at least I think we have. There's something fucking weird about that place, and I'm not really sure I want to go back, but while I was there. . . I met somebody named David Nolan, all right? I've heard from a few people that that's what my dad's name is, but this guy was too young to be my dad, and he was married to a woman named Kathryn, which is not my mom's name. I asked them if they had a daughter, but they said no. So I still think it's just some kind of strange urban legend."
"Ah." Killian nodded at the waiter, who had returned to pour them both a glass. "About that."
"Is this where you say something about a curse?"
"So you have heard of it."
"Heard of a lot of things." Emma sipped her wine. "What did Wendy want you to do for her?"
"Bit of a ticklish business. But. . . do you remember our meeting in the Wadham gardens?"
"Yes."
"The person or. . . thing that was following you." Killian waved his hand, as if in search of a suitable adjective. "The shadow. It was after me, and I. . . I didn't want to bring it after you, in which I seem, naturally, to have failed. I hoped that by keeping my distance, I could keep you safe. I have been hunting it all the last two years, trying to ensure it wouldn't go for you."
Emma opened her mouth to deny this, but she was remembering meeting that boy – meeting Henry – all too clearly. My son. He wanted to take her to Neverland. Come on. If he was anything more than a hyperrealistic hallucination, he wasn't exactly a Bond villain. And Killian thought he needed to protect her from him?
"You're a lit professor," she said finally. "Or at least you've worked as one. I'm sure you've heard the expression 'tilting at windmills?' "
"Very well. You still don't believe me."
"I think I can take care of myself against a shadow, thanks."
"Not that one." He shrugged. "Nothing out of the ordinary, then? No unexplained noises at your house, nothing strange at the window?"
Emma was about to confidently tell him that of course not, but was caught short as she remembered both the recent instances where she thought she'd heard somebody in her apartment in Boston. Seeing the window open, hearing noises outside the door, thinking that nobody could get up to the second floor unless they could fly. "I'm pretty sure it was just random."
Killian's gaze sharpened at once. "So there have been?"
"It's not a big deal."
"It is to me, Emma."
"Oh?" She laughed. "That's cute. I suppose now you try to excuse yourself and claim that you were still protecting me?"
"I make no such claim." Their steak and pommes frites arrived, and they picked up their knives. "I'm not a good man, and you have no reason to forgive me. If it wasn't for me, nothing about your life would be the way it is. I've been a bloody bastard, and that's merely that."
That took Emma aback. She was used to people, if they tried to justify themselves at all, immediately trying to paint themselves in the best light possible, flatter and wheedle and guilt her into forgiving them, trying to make it look as if they'd suffered just as much or more than she had. But still, from where she sat, there were plenty of men who'd happily do a spot of murder themselves to be in Killian's position. Maybe not the international fugitive from justice part, but the drop-dead gorgeous looks, the comfortable faculty position at a top-ten world university, an in with some fabulously wealthy literary heiress, clearly a good deal of disposable income of his own, wining and dining a quite attractive (if she did say so herself) young blonde at one of London's VIP restaurants after having passionate sex with her all day at an equally exclusive and luxurious hotel. . . "Is that really what you think about yourself?"
"The worst human alive," Killian said bitterly. "I don't deserve any of this."
"Why?"
"What you've already worked out about me, lass." His smile was weary. "My heart is rotten to the core."
Emma had to admit, he hadn't seemed that exultant when she found him. More like he'd been trying to drink his sorrows away for days, but could never succeed. Like he was, in fact, what she'd said to James: not some big-time criminal mastermind, but only a lone wolf out for justice, who had lost sight of himself completely along the way and knew it, hated himself still more for falling so far. This was some kind of quest, and it made her wonder. "How old are you?"
His eyes flickered. "Are you sure you want to know?"
"Yes. Why?" He couldn't be older than about early thirties, and this bespoke a ridiculous amount both of dedication and odd temporal anomalies – how had he had time to establish a successful education and teaching career in the middle of a single-minded hunt for vengeance? "Unless you're going to tell me that this is like Interview with a Vampire."
Killian was silent.
"Wait." Emma wasn't sure she liked that. "It's not, is it?"
"No," her dinner companion answered at last, "insofar that I am, at least so far as I know, not a vampire. But if you want my actual age, lass, it is in fact somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty years old."
That, to say the least, rocked her. She did the only thing she could: come back with a quip. "You must have a great plastic surgeon."
He barked a laugh. There was no humor in it. "The best."
"So. . . Milah." Emma noticed Killian's slight flinch when she spoke the name, and had to fight the urge to apologize. "If you've been trying to avenge her all this time, find Storybrooke and do whatever to Gold. . . she's been dead for what, probably at least a hundred years?"
"Thrice that." Killian drained his wine glass and beckoned for a refill.
"She – she what? Three hundred years?" Emma couldn't believe the words, and even more, she was flattened by their implications. That one man could love that passionately and that well, could live that heartbroken and that long, could transcend physics and mortality and time and death itself. She felt cold, almost faint. "But then. . ." With her. . . today. . .
Killian apparently read her mind. A corner of his mouth quirked. "Five times in a day," he admitted, "is five times more than I've had in decades."
With me. Emma didn't even want to consider what this was starting to reveal. If she was utterly, completely honest with herself, she'd been looking for a reason to let him free from the very start. She didn't want to arrest him then, and even less so now. But her dogged sense of justice wouldn't permit her to just write it off and pretend it had never been.
She didn't have anything else to say to that, nothing that seemed adequate, and the rest of dinner passed in silence. Killian ordered them dessert, some sinfully delicious chocolate mousse that (to judge from the price) probably had real gold flakes in it, and paid the bill, with his Peter C James American Express. He left a hefty tip, and they stepped out into the night. This far north in summer, there was still a residue of blue light left, spangled across the heavens like fresh paint.
They continued almost back to the hotel in similar silence. Then, just as they were about to step under the awning, he turned to her and asked, "Well?"
Emma swallowed. "I'm thinking I might. . . lose the trail. If you know what I mean."
Apparently he did, but it was hard to say what he thought about it. They got into the elevator and rode up to his room; when he swiped his key card, Emma could see that housekeeping, no doubt diplomatically biting their cheeks, had put it back into perfect order. Somewhat surprisingly, however, they had also opened the window, and the curtains were fluttering in the breeze.
Killian stopped short and threw out his arm, stopping her. He was scowling. "What's that?"
"A window?" Emma suggested. "Rooms are usually equipped with one?"
He glared at her, then turned back, eyes darting from corner to corner. "Stay here."
With that, before Emma could enter the room, he shoved in ahead of her, every muscle tense. He poked and prodded, but didn't discover anything, and she saw his shoulders shudder in an exhale. "All right, maybe I was just being a bit bloody paranoid. But I could swear that – "
At that moment, the door slammed shut.
Emma, still standing in the hallway, jumped back with a startled cry to avoid getting her fingers crushed. Then she jumped forward again – she couldn't get in without a key card, of course, and it briefly flashed through her head that this was the world's most elaborate escape setup ever. But did he need it? She'd already as good as told him that she was going to let him go, and after everything –
Inside the room, she could hear Killian swearing. Shouting. The distinct sounds of a struggle, things breaking, a thud in the wall as if someone had tried to land a punch. Crashing and banging. And something else, a whoosh of wind, an almost demonic hissing. Like something – or someone – was in there with him. Something like she'd never known. Unless she had.
The shadow.
"Killian!" Emma pounded on the door with both fists, frantically judging the prospects of picking the lock. In a place like this? Slim. Very slim. "Killian!"
She thought she heard him bellow her name, but couldn't be sure. The ruckus intensified. She froze an instant longer, then wheeled about, broke into a sprint, and flung herself down the several flights of stairs to the front desk, screaming for hotel security. They likely thought (not altogether incorrectly) that she was Mr. Peter James' high-priced call girl, but came hastening up after her, used the master key to get in, and –
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing. Anywhere. The room was silent, dark, and deserted.
Killian Jones had vanished into thin air.
It was just over an hour later when Emma, standing on the front steps of the Kensington Gardens mansion and likewise pounding until her fists were sore, finally had the door answered by a clearly discommoded butler. "Can I help you, miss?"
"Yes. Actually, you can. I need to talk with Wendy Darling, and I need to talk with her now."
"Mrs. Henley?" The butler stared. Clearly, unauthorized interlopers did not come barging up these well-bred steps and demand to see the matriarch without extensive prior protocol. "I'm afraid that's not possible. She's not well, and – "
"My name is Emma Swan. Just tell her."
The butler, evincing the firm impression that he was about to faint on the spot from the scandalous lack of decorum, nonetheless subsided ungracefully into the house. Emma waited a tense five minutes until he finally returned, made a curt gesture for her to follow, and led her through the mansion. Up the stairs to the master bedroom, until she did feel guilty that she was dropping in out of the blue on an elderly and ill old woman, but –
"Ma'am?" the butler said. "Miss Swan."
"Ah." The voice came from nearby, in the dimness. "Come here, child."
The butler excused himself, not without a final rancorous look at Emma, and she, ignoring him, drew closer. Wendy Darling was sitting regally in the queen-sized bed among a pile of feather pillows, her white hair undone and her wrinkled face looking gaunt and pale, but her blue eyes as keen as ever. "I was wondering when you'd finally return, my dear."
Emma perched on the end of the bed. Finally, she burst out, "It's true. All of it. It's true. Storybrooke is a place that's cursed, I forgot who I am, there's a crazy shadow that kidnaps people and takes them to freakin' Neverland, and you're not just the inspiration for Wendy. You are Wendy. The real one."
The old lady didn't seem surprised in the slightest. "Yes, dear," she said softly. "It's all true."
"Jesus." Emma blew out a breath, racking a hand over her face. With that out of the way, it seemed at least nominally politic to explain why she had burst in on Wendy in her nightclothes, and she launched into a rambling, semi-coherent explanation of everything that had happened since she had unceremoniously cut all ties with the family. Leading up to tonight (she left out certain R-rated details) and the fact that Killian, after engaging in a struggle with some kind of supernatural foe, had disappeared off the face of the planet and damned if she knew where.
Wendy sat silently after this info-dump had been completed, staring at the wall for so long that Emma began to fear she'd made her have a stroke or something. Then she too let out a ragged sigh. "Revenge," she said, barely above a whisper. "So he has been after it all this time. Has been baldly lying to my face every bloody time I talked to him!"
"Yeah, I. . . I guess he has." Emma, once again, had that ridiculous urge to apologize on Killian's behalf, and she brutally forced it down. She was very likely never going to see him again. "This curse. Fine. According to a guy named August Booth, it's my bag. How do I break it?"
Wendy shook her head. "I don't know."
Emma was about to scream, but reminded herself that yelling at a bedridden old lady was not the way to proceed about getting valuable information, or life in general. She remembered something, dug in her pocket, and pulled out her flash drive. "Do you have a computer I can use?"
"Across the way, dear."
Emma got up, pushed into the dark home office, and plugged into the desktop. She booted up the drive without a problem, but when she tried to access Research – that comprehensive dossier of information Killian had assembled on the curse and Storybrooke, three hundred pages of it – she only got a series of error messages. Apparently, the file had been designed to self-destruct if anyone – such as her, say – pirated an illicit copy of it. It was yet another example of Killian's careful planning, foresight, and ass-covering, and it made her want to throw the entire thing out the window, pound on the wall, and otherwise have a nuclear meltdown.
She sat there, staring at the blank screen, for she didn't even know how long. Then she got up, ejected the drive, and stepped back into Wendy's room, trying to control her voice. "It didn't work. Killian's research. He rigged it to be destroyed."
Wendy sighed. "I'm not surprised. I can tell you, from what I picked up, that there is only one person who can break that curse, and that there is a very definite time frame in which to do so. That it was, so far as I understand, twenty-eight years."
"Twenty-eight years?" Emma's voice cracked. "What? Does that mean when I'm twenty-eight, or another twenty-eight years from now?" She was twenty-two, was she supposed to wait until she was freaking fifty, with this hanging over her like the sword of Damocles? No. No!
Wendy didn't answer. Plainly, she didn't know either. Then at last, in a voice so soft that Emma had to strain to hear it, the old lady said, "I imagine that's why it's a terrible curse."
Killian Jones did not know anything – his name, his face, his fate, his whereabouts – until he opened his eyes and stared up at an endless sheet of blue sky. Memories swanned vaguely in his battered head, but couldn't be pinned down. He had only a faint recollection of fighting for his bloody miserable life, harder than he ever had before, knowing that it was the shadow and it was here for one or both of them and damned, damned if he was going to let it have Emma now –
Fighting that thing with nothing more than his bare hands. Aye. Bloody brilliant idea. He'd barely survived with sword and fire, the last time they'd come to grips in the Darling nursery.
It had taken him. Hauled him out, overwhelmed him, beaten him as if in the maw of a hurricane. He had some idea of careering high above the dark London streets, past Big Ben and the London Eye, dragged on and on, knew that if he got loose now he'd only fall to his death – shadowy hands gripping him, gagging him, as they shot up and up and up, above the clouds, into an endless dark sky luminous with stars, on and on and on and on, stars, second to the right –
Then down, down, down, toward a green island surrounded by clouds, through sun and mist and rain and sand, down and down until he –
No. Bloody hell. No.
Yes.
Killian sat upright so fast that blood rushed to his head, nearly knocking him flat again. He was sprawled in the white sand, ice-blue waves rolling in on the endless coast, a thicket of palm trees crowning the headland and rapidly thickening into deeper jungle, a green so vivid it was almost black, rambling unchecked in lowlands and glades and valleys and then falling aside to reveal a snowcapped, cloud-crowned mountain, a formidable stony pyramid. There would be other jungles beyond it, he knew. Inlets and atolls and caves and hidden places, strange lights in the trees, strange sounds in the thickets. His numb brain was forced to realize that it was. He was here. And this was no dream. It was horribly, impossibly real.
"Neverland," Killian croaked aloud, the word falling like a stone in the hot white air. "I'm in – bloody – Neverland."
It made him want to lie back down and laugh until he lost his mind. After so long trying to escape this place, here he was again. Stolen by the wretched shadow, which had apparently had the last laugh after all. But he had to get back home – to London, to Oxford, to Boston. He had to find a way. He wanted his life, he realized. He wanted to try again. He wanted a second chance. He wanted to do something different with the time that he had been given.
He wanted Emma.
Just months ago, weeks ago, even days ago, the thought would have horrified him. But now he began to think that it was time he moved on from Milah at long last. Telling Emma just how long it had been had impressed a new awareness of it on him as well. She would have wanted him to live. Not merely to exist. Would want him to actually be the successful professional he'd masqueraded as. Would want him to be happy.
Killian pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. He was still wearing the dapper suit he'd gone to dinner in, which was risibly inappropriate for the tropical climate, and wondered absurdly if he could still dig up any of his old pirate clothes. But no sooner had he taken a step when he saw them coming fast, down the beach.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He recognized them at once, had had a number of encounters with them, mostly of the cool-to-hostile sort. The Lost Ones.
They had a new leader.
Killian stood stock still, understanding at last and horribly, as the ragged band of boys surrounded him, hooting and jeering. Then – bloody hell, it was – Pan stepped through. A lad clad in green, ten or eleven to look at him, with freckles, a mop of brown hair, and a crooked grin, a grin suddenly so familiar to Killian that it froze his blood. Bae? Had he never left here at all? Found some way to rule, to –
"Captain Hook," the boy announced. "Dark and sinister man, you are here to pay for your crimes."
Killian wanted to deny it. He couldn't. "You?"
The boy cocked his head. "My name is Henry, but you, villain, will address me as Pan. I have you at last. You've been trying forever to stop me from finding my mother and taking her here to Neverland to be a mother to all the Lost Boys, where we'd be together forever and ever and no one would separate us ever again. You're a black-hearted rogue, evil and wicked and cruel, and now you're going to pay for it."
Killian hadn't thought it was possible to be more stupefied, but this did the trick. "Mother?" Holy bleeding hellfire, no. No. No. No. No. Was this boy somehow Emma's son – Emma's and Bae's? But she hadn't said anything about a child, hadn't –
Dear gods.
Neal.
Neal Cassidy.
The one who had looked ever so faintly familiar, the one he hadn't liked, the one he wanted away from Emma, the one he had been happy to beat up when he thought it was him that Tamara was after. The one who had set Emma up for his crime and run.
Run like a coward.
Killian was having trouble breathing. He fell to his knees, making incoherent noises.
Henry surveyed him proudly. Then he ceremoniously drew his shortsword, looking down with disdain – looking at Killian's left hand. "Captain Hook," he repeated. "You seem to have forgotten who you are."
"Please." Killian heard himself begging, hated himself for it even more desperately than usual. "Please, no. Please, don't. Don't."
Henry paid no attention. With a jerk of his head, he summoned the Twins to grab hold of Killian, shoving him flat on his stomach and extending his arms. Killian struggled uselessly, could hear Henry sizing up his stroke, choked on sand, didn't see how, didn't see anything –
And then the blazing pain lashed through his left wrist, even worse the second time, through scar and skin and bone, one swift stroke. Until his fingers no longer moved, until the stump of his handless arm soaked the white sand crimson, until it was gone, everything was gone, until darkness was whirling up to catch him, and all Killian could hear was screaming.