Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time or its characters. I only borrow.
As the yellow car made its way out of Storybrooke, the town's inhabitants got to work on their last-ditch effort. With less than two hours to go, they had one last chance to kill Pan before he could enact the curse.
Regina ensconced herself in her vault. She was to stay out of the way, protected, in case they failed. It wouldn't do to have Pan kill the person who was going to shield the town, or at least try to break the curse later if the shield failed.
Mary Margaret, David, the dwarves, Red… pretty much everyone else (save Gold) armed up. Bows, swords, axes, a shotgun, they would use whatever they had. Most of their earlier attempts on Pan had been (well, tried to be) crafty, luring him into town or having Neal set traps outside its borders. This was going to be a head-on assault. Or it would have been, had Pan not been staying outside the town lines. He wouldn't enter Storybrooke until the curse was cast. The mob, dejected, dispersed to spend what could be their last aware moments with their loved ones.
Gold spent the time in his shop, talking with Belle and hiding away anything that he wouldn't risk Pan getting his hands on. He and Belle went with Mary Margaret, David, and Neal to get Regina and bring her to the center of town.
Just as the green smoke that carried the curse reached Storybrooke's borders, Regina raised the shield. Well, technically, she activated the spell that she and Gold had written earlier, which was both the shield and the return spell. As she poured nearly every drop of her magic into it, a faint purple dome spread over the town and everyone inside froze.
-.*.-.*.-.*.-.*.-
"You made a wrong turn," Henry told his mom an hour or so after they left town. "This isn't the way to New York."
"We're making a stop in Boston, first." Emma was tense, which Hook noticed. She kept glancing at the clock and her phone, which was sitting on the dash. Two hours to the minute after they had gotten into the car, she did something which seemed strange to both of her passengers. She rolled down the window, picked up her phone, and tossed it out. As it shattered on the highway behind them, she simply rolled the window back up and wiped a tear from her face.
"Mom... why'd you do that?"
"I'd like to know the same. I may not be familiar with some of your customs, but destroying your phone hardly seems necessary for a successful trip." Hook was looking at her with some concern. He glanced back at Henry and saw that the boy was also looking at Emma with worry.
"Two hours. When we left, Regina said they had two hours at most to stop Pan before the curse rolled in. Mary Margaret would have called me, but she didn't, so they're either cursed or they're frozen. Either way, we can't risk Pan learning a few tricks of this land and tracking my phone if he knows that we're gone… We'll pick up some burners in Boston." And she focused on nothing but the road.
"What's in Boston?" Henry asked. As far as he knew, she hadn't left anything behind when she moved to Storybrooke. Well she had, but then she'd had it shipped to her, so that didn't count.
"A… friend. She might be able to help us find someone with magic." She peeked at Henry through the rearview mirror and noticed him yawning. He'd been almost constantly tired since they had switched him back into his body. Damn cat. Gold said it would wear off soon, though. Try not to worry about it for a few more days… Yeah, that'll happen. "Why don't you sleep for a bit, we're still a couple of hours from Boston."
Henry laid down in the back, head on his pillow, and was asleep in moments. Within another few moments, Hook was asking questions.
"Who's in Boston?"
"Like I said, a… friend."
"You seem rather hesitant to call her a friend," Hook observed.
"She's more like a former colleague, I guess." Emma felt like squirming in her seat. Her former colleague wasn't someone she usually enjoyed running into. Aside from the occasions on which she had needed her butt saved, but those never count.
"Another bail bondsperson? How will she be able to help?" Hook, sensing Emma's discomfort, opted for unfolding the roadmap and pretending to peruse it rather than looking at her.
Emma sighed and scratched the back of her head. "First off, if we find her, remember that she prefers the term 'bounty hunter,' and it's a better description for her. As for helping… In the two years I knew her, she would occasionally talk about magic like it existed. I thought she was just a little crazy, which she might be, but she always looked like she let something slip whenever she said anything about it. I'm hoping she knows someone who can help us with the potions. Hopefully the price won't be too high if she can." Emma glanced at Hook. "Much like Gold, she rarely does anything for free."
"Didn't Regina and Rumpelstiltskin give you a bag full of money? Would it really take so much to just get a name?" Hook gave up on pretending to care about the map. He much preferred navigating by the stars, and Emma seemed to know where she was going.
"She won't want money, she doesn't need it. Again, like Gold, she prefers favors. I'm hoping that she'll just want me to help her with a skip, or that she'll just make me do something embarrassing… like karaoke or something." Emma was looking straight ahead now, which was probably a good thing, since she was driving.
"What's karaoke?"
"Singing in public, usually drunk or in front of drunk people." She said this like it was an awful punishment.
"That doesn't sound so terrible."
"You haven't heard me sing."
"Why would she ask for such a price?"
"Same reason she's a bounty hunter; amusement. Like I said, she doesn't need money. She's filthy rich and gets bored easily."
"Well, if we find her, anything else I should know?"
"Her name is Kyrie. At least, that's the name she went by when I knew her. Let's see… Bounty hunter rather than bail bondsperson… Bores easily… She can be moody, touchy. Sometimes talking to her is like playing Russian roulette… With grenades." Emma saw Hook's questioning look from the corner of her eye.
Right, hard to know what Russian roulette means if your land doesn't have guns… Or Russia.
"In Russian roulette, you put a bullet in one chamber of a revolver, spin it around, point the gun at your head, and pull the trigger without knowing if that's going to be the time it actually fires."
"So… a volatile woman, then."
"She can be. If she and her boyfriend aren't on the outs again she should be in a better mood. What else… if she does get mad, it's better if she's yelling than if she's quiet. Silent anger usually means she's plotting, and that usually ends with injury."
"Anything likely to set her off?"
"Skin-on-skin contact." Hook raised a suggestive eyebrow. "Not like that… But don't touch her skin; don't even shake her hand if it's bare. Remind me to tell Henry about that when he wakes up. If you feel the need to punch her, wear a glove. She usually wears full-arm gloves and rarely has any skin showing below her neck, so it probably won't be a problem. Don't press the issue if she takes a while to decide whether or not she'll help. She loathes people trying to make her do anything, and she'll probably say 'no' just out of spite."
"Why are we seeking help from someone so capricious?" Good question. But I'd rather not say that it's mostly just a gut feeling.
"Like I said, I'm pretty sure she knows something about true magic. And despite being… unstable… Kyrie has saved my butt on more than one occasion. For some reason she dislikes me less than most people." Emma smiled a little at that. "Her exact words."
"Anything else?" Hook actually sounded wary. Truth be told, she was pretty sure that Kyrie would like Hook, despite her 'capriciousness'. Kyrie appreciated people who refused to pretend at a personality. She had once said that unless you're manipulating someone, there's no reason to act as anyone other than yourself. (This was shortly after she was nearly killed for mouthing off to a mobster. Kyrie didn't do ass-kissing.)
Best just to get the rest out of the way.
"She's a shameless flirt, she likes to be cryptic, she takes lying very personally, and she'd kill anyone who betrayed her, not that anyone would ever dare. If she decides to help, she might just give us a name. Or she might decide to come along for the whole thing, and it'd be a bad idea to refuse her. If she decides you're worth it, she's loyal to the end. Or, if she decides you're worth it, she'll make it a mission in life to make you miserable."
"I think I knew someone like her once."
"You're three hundred years old, you've probably known someone like everyone once," Emma said dryly.
They drove in silence for over an hour, Henry snoring lightly in the backseat and Hook looking contemplative.
"Why did you want me to come with you? Wouldn't Neal be better suited for a search in your world? Not that I'm unhappy you invited me along, of course."
I was wondering when that would come up.
Emma had already decided to give him the same answer she had given Neal. "Neal's may know this world better, he certainly knows New York better, but he hates magic. He wouldn't be able to hide that from someone we need to convince to help us."
"What's the real reason?" Just as Emma was about to ask how he knew that wasn't the truth, he reminded her, "open book, love."
Emma sighed. "Do I really have to answer that?"
"Well I certainly can't make you, but I'm curious."
She sighed again. "Can we talk about that later, then? I'm not up for it right now." I've had enough of talking about Neal for one… ever.
"As you wish." Emma smiled to herself. In addition to reminding her of The Princess Bride (as most young girls, she had loved the romantic-comedic-adventure movie), those words also brought to mind their kiss in Neverland, which had definitely not been an unpleasant experience.
"Can you grab the small bag behind my seat? We should take care of our IDs before we get to Boston."
She also instructed him to pull the envelope David had given her out of the glove box. Do people even keep actual gloves in those things anymore?
The bag held, in addition to a ridiculously large amount of cash, a packet of blank fake IDs which Gold had secured for her. She could have gotten them herself, but he was able to handle it much quicker. She didn't really want to admit it, but they were also of a higher quality than those she could have gotten. The envelope that David gave her had held a necklace, which she was now wearing, and photos. He had managed to get pictures of both Emma and Hook that could be used in the IDs. Not an easy feat. While they could just pull Emma's from her real driver's license and passport, Hook didn't exactly stand around while people took pictures of him. Since Emma hadn't thought to ask Hook to accompany her when she had decided her plan, David had had to improvise. He snuck a few photos after the fourth attempt on Pan failed, and managed to Photoshop them into looking like they had been taking officially. For someone who grew up with portraits and parchment, he's gotten good at using a computer.
Emma told Hook how to add the photos to the IDs in a way that would look real. She also told him to memorize the information on his fake driver's license and passport.
"Killian James of Boston, Massachusetts," he read. "I suppose Captain Hook would raise a few too many brows," he commented, giving her a look she couldn't quite decipher. "And Pan might look for a Killian Jones. Why Boston and not someplace in Maine? My unfamiliarity with the city might seem suspicious to some."
"Massachusetts plates on the car. If anyone asks why you seem out of place, say you've spent more time traveling than you have at home." True enough, though I suppose his ship is his home. "Remind me to tell Henry that we'll need to call you Killian in public."
There was that look again. "Of course, love."
"I'll use my real name in Boston, because I'll have to talk with people who know me, but when we leave I'll switch over to my fake."
Hook read off of her fake passport. "Emma Turner?"
Emma had given Gold a look when she had seen that. Now she just let out half of a huffy-chuckle. "There's a series of movies called Pirates of the Caribbean. One of the main characters is named Elizabeth Swann, but she gives the name Turner when she's abducted by pirates. I think Gold got a kick out of it for some reason."
"Are there perms and waxed mustaches in these films as well?" Hook asked. He seemed to be getting some amusement from it also.
Emma laughed. "Actually, the captain, or at least one of them, is much more like you than your cartoon persona."
"Hmm… I suppose someday I'll have to watch these films, judge for myself."
Emma grinned at him. "Any chance I could be there for that? I'd like to see your reaction to the Captain Hook that most of this world knows."
Hook was about to answer when Emma's grin faded. She turned on her blinker and moved the car onto the off ramp. "Henry, wake up. Sit up and put on your seatbelt." Henry complied slowly.
"Are we here?" He asked sleepily.
"Yeah kid. Welcome back to Boston."
A/N: Yeah, sorry about the long bit about Kyrie (rhymes with eerie), but it'll be kind of important later. And Hook will be back to his full-of-swagger self shortly.
Question: Has anyone else wondered why Henry-in-Pan's-body speaks with Pan's accent? Pan using Henry's accent makes sense for his deception, but accents aren't biological and there's no reason why Henry would need to use Pan's. *huff* Sorry, needed to get that out.