Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time or its characters; I only borrow.
Kyle agreed easily enough to letting Killian and Henry dig through his library, though it was obvious he didn't think they'd find anything useful. Emma wasn't as sure. She wasn't a big reader (who has time to read when you're going from breaking one curse to traversing Neverland to trying to break another curse?), but even she was envious of his library. It reminded her of the one in the beast's castle in the Disney Beauty and the Beast movie. Belle (both the cartoon version and the real one) would've been over the moon to see it.
As Emma got herself situated, Kyle showed her boys (since when are they 'my boys'?) to the library, trying to answer Henry's questions as quickly as they were asked. Killian lagged behind just long enough to murmur "no more bruises" and kiss her cheek. She suspected he would tell Kyle the same thing, only in a louder voice and without the kiss.
Her suspicions were confirmed when the doctor stepped into their training room. (It was a weird mix of dojo and office space. He seemed to be rich: he had a huge house full of weird rooms. One was devoted entirely to the storage of empty storage containers. Really.)
"Your pirate is very protective of you."
"He's not my pirate," Emma responded automatically. They'd been having some form of this conversation for the past week.
Kyle gave her a disbelieving 'hmm'. "Interesting that he only threatens me now. What, pray tell, may have happened that caused him to find out about your bruised hip now, if you didn't tell him about it before?" He wiggled his eyebrows at her. You're always far too interested in this subject.
"Can we just get started, please?"
"Of course. I see you completed your homework." Kyle pointed at her hands with a smile.
"Yeah, about that: you're a jackass." Emma scowled at him. "You could've warned me. Or, you know, just not have turned my hands blue. I was up 'til four fixing them."
"And you were successful, which was the point. I figured you'd be less likely to call it quits if you could double as emergency lighting." Kyle's grin didn't falter at her continued (and deepened) scowl. "On the bright side… Now you know you can do it."
Emma didn't smile at the pun. "So, what are we doing today? More absorbing? Meditation again? Or are we going back to fire-lighting?"
"What, you don't want to try the energy balls again?"
Emma hid a blush. "I'm supposed to avoid picking up more bruises today." She found Kyle's knowing smile a tad bit infuriating.
"I see. Let's start with meditation then. Hopefully now that you've intentionally used your magic you'll have a better sense of it." Kyle pointed to the middle of the blue training mat that occupied a good chunk of the floor.
"What do you usually use this room for? I keep forgetting to ask." Emma sat cross-legged at the center of the mat while Kyle dimmed the lights.
He looked around the room before he answered, maybe trying to see it as an outsider might. "Physical conditioning, mostly. Martial arts training… Sometimes sparring."
Hah, the dojo thought was spot-on, then. "Why the office space?"
He shrugged. "I like to take care of business in a relaxing environment."
Emma snorted. "And your sparring room in the most relaxing room in your house?"
"Sparring is my meditation. The traditional kind never worked well for me. Sitting, trying to clear my mind? I just always found more to think about. Martial arts, though… I have to focus on my form, not getting hurt, and anticipating my opponent's next move and how to counter it. No time to think about other things." He sat across from Emma, mirroring her posture.
She stared at him. "You could've mentioned that at any point during the several hours you had me sitting around trying to clear my mind and think of my magic as a jar of jelly beans."
"Jelly beans? Really?" She waved away his interruption.
"Why can't we try the fighting meditation thing? Sitting around doing nothing has never been my thing, either."
"If you already had training beyond basic-to-intermediate self-defense, or we weren't under the clock, I'd consider it. As it is, I'd have to train you in both martial arts and magic, and we don't have that kind of time." To Emma's surprise, Kyle was actually a bit harsh. That didn't happen. Even when he was pushing her harder or reprimanding her for her lack of focus his tone of voice never went past patiently stern. "Now focus. Try imagining a bowl of popcorn or something."
"Because that's so much better than a jar of jelly beans," Emma muttered. He gave her his stern 'no more joking around' face. She sighed and closed her eyes, trying to visualize her magic as a giant tub of movie theater popcorn.
Great. Now I'm hungry again.
-.*.-.*.-.*.-
Killian and Henry weren't having much luck in the library. A few different encyclopedias (regular, poisonous animals, and invertebrates of South-Western Europe) had told them more about the slug they knew as tergemmon. The common name was the Portuguese dancing slug (Geomalacus saltator). It really was only found in about a three square mile area of Portugal. Nothing useful about how to get their hands on one, though. And absolutely nothing on the flmbrbogn.
"What do you have there?" Killian asked as Henry carried a stack of untitled books to the table they were using.
"Journals, I think." Henry pulled the top book off the stack. "Yeah, and whoever wrote this one could have used some handwriting lessons." He set it aside and flipped through the next one. His eyes brightened. "This one's a spell book!" He handed it to Killian and grabbed another.
Killian thumbed through the spell book. "Where did you find these?"
"Behind the case Kyle told us not to touch." Killian raised an amused brow. "He never said we couldn't look behind it," Henry defended himself. "Besides, you don't think it's a little fishy that he put a bookcase off limits?"
Killian had, which was why he'd planned on looking through it the next time Henry went to the bathroom. "I think I know why." He showed Henry the page he was looking at. "Some of these spells are extremely dark. This one, for example, couldn't possibly be used for anything good." Rituals to melt a person's flesh were like that. He picked up the journal Henry had set aside. "This was written in the 1600s by Beatrice Mattison. One of Kyle's ancestors?"
"So, what, he didn't want us to know his family used to do bad things?"
Or he doesn't wish for us to know he's not a paragon of virtue himself. "Perhaps… Would you sort through these? Separate any spell books from everything else."
"What are you doing?" Henry asked as Killian approached the forbidden bookcase.
Killian didn't answer, just inspected the case closely. After running his hand along the top, sides, and as much of the back as he could reach, he started pulling books off one by one, replacing them without so much as opening the covers. Henry shook his head and started to sort the books.
Just as he threw the last book onto the journal pile, he heard Killian say "Henry, go stand behind that door, would you?" Killian pointed at the very thick, open wooden door to the library.
"Why?" Henry wanted to know, even as he moved to obey.
"If a person goes to the trouble to conceal a door, he might also go to the trouble of booby-trapping it."
Once Henry was safely blocked by the library door, Killian pulled the small lever he had found on the bottom shelf of the case.
"Then you put me in the wrong place," Henry said as a bookcase on the opposite side of the room from Killian (which, incidentally, put it just a few feet from Henry) swung open. "At least it didn't explode," he offered at Killian's disgruntled expression.
"Stay there," Killian ordered before slowly entering the hidden room. He felt along the wall carefully until he found a light switch. Well, that's disappointing.
"What is it?" Henry peeked around Killian into the room.
"Didn't I tell you to stay put?"
"I never said I would." Henry walked further into the room. "It's empty."
"Yes, I gathered as much."
"Why bother hiding an empty room?"
"I would imagine it wasn't always empty." Killian pointed out as he ushered Henry back into the library. He pushed the lever in the case back into place, making sure the hidden door closed before he replaced the books hiding the lever. "Did you get those books sorted?"
"Yep. It looks like each spell book goes with a journal." Henry picked up Beatrice's journal and showed Killian a spell book with her name and handwriting as proof. "I think we should look through the spell books to see if any of them have that last ingredient in them."
"And if it comes up, we can look in the corresponding journal to see if there's any helpful information." Preferably what it is and where we might find an abundant supply. "Good thinking, lad."
-.*.-.*.-.*.-
Emma's concentration was broken by a low 'ping'. Relieved (two hours in, she'd tried half a dozen visualizations without success), she looked up as Kyle tapped his smartphone's screen a few times. "Problem?" she asked at his frown.
"Your son and boyfriend are snooping." He tilted his phone's screen her way, allowing her to see camera footage of Killian and Henry looking around an empty room.
"He's not-"
"Yeah, yeah. Spare me the denial this once, would ya?" Despite his frown, he didn't seem angry as he watched the screen. He clicked it off and headed for the door.
"Are you going to kick them out?"
"Nope. Keep practicing. I'll be back in a few."
"What are you going to do?"
"Sneak up on them and see how they react," he told her with a grin. He threw a wink at her just before he closed the door.
Blatantly disobeying orders, Emma got up and stretched. Two hours sitting cross-legged and straight-backed wasn't conducive to comfort. As she ambled around the room she reviewed the techniques she had tried. Popcorn, a miniature sun, a bucket of sand, a sandcastle, a jar of frosting, and a bottle of wine… Maybe I'm just in need of a beach vacation with snacks and drinks. Yeah, I could definitely go for that. The real bummer was that Kyle had been right: After fixing her hands, she could feel her magic. But she couldn't grab onto it like she was supposed to. She couldn't even find it; she could just feel it was there.
She sat back down and stared at her hands, trying to remember how her magic had felt the night before when it absorbed the enchantment of blue glowing annoyingness.
-.*.-.*.-.*.-
"I'm impressed. You made it almost two hours before you dug into the one case I told you not to touch."
If Kyle had been hoping to startle Killian and Henry, he was bound to be disappointed. Neither looked up from the books they were studying.
"I find it interesting that you intended to hide these books," Killian responded, tapping the cover of one of the journals. "As far as I can tell, they are the only books pertaining to magic which contain more than just theory."
"Yeah… And what's up with the empty secret room?" Henry added as he turned a page.
"That room's been empty since my grandfather passed the house on to my mother. I have no idea what it was used for before that. And I've been through those books. None say anything about the flmbrbogn you're looking for, and most aren't very pleasant to read." Kyle joined them at the table.
"Why did you tell us not to touch that case, then?" Killian asked reasonably.
"Because it's full of valuable first editions and I didn't want to risk them getting damaged," Kyle told them dryly. Henry and Killian exchanged a look.
"Oh. Sorry." Henry looked up at the doctor. "How's my mom's training going?"
"Not as well as I'd hoped. Emma's still having trouble getting in touch with her magic. She hasn't figured out how to grasp it yet."
"Shouldn't you be helping her with that, then?" Killian suggested. He couldn't quite bring himself to trust the doctor, much less like him. You nearly poison Emma, you bruise her, you turn her hands blue, and you hide books relating to the very subject for which we seek answers.
"I was. Then someone activated the camera in the alcove." Kyle looked pointedly at both of them.
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Henry asked.
"Not right now." Henry's face fell. "But I'll let you know if I think of anything." Kyle glanced around the library. "The only books I didn't go through after Emma first asked me about those potion components are on that shelf over there. I don't remember there being anything about magic on it, but I could be wrong."
Killian waited a full two minutes after Kyle left before searching the shelf he had pointed out. "Keep looking through those spell books, Henry. Maybe he missed something." Henry 'hmm'd in response. Going by the titles, Killian had to conclude that Kyle had been right. Nothing sounded like it would be useful. Except… He pulled a worn book with a leather cover from the shelf. Embossed in silver on the front (but almost completely faded from the side) was the title Common Items from Uncommon Lands, authored by V.K. Nachalo.
Among the chapters listed in the table of contents were "Enchanting Objects of the Enchanted Forest", "Never-before-known Animals of Neverland", "The Wondrous Wonders of Wonderland", and "What to Avoid in the Void".
What is it they say here? Jackpot?
A/N: Reviews are canceled Fox shows, and constructive criticism is Firefly, Drive, Dollhouse, and Dark Angel. (I might still be miffed about those.)