A/N: Chapter revised 12/30/2023.

Chapter 7: Life and Death

The world is dark, but memories are flashing across my mind.

A melody floats back to me across time, a lullaby, hummed by a beautiful, soothing voice. I remember the feeling of peace, safety, warmth. I drift off to sleep.

The music and sensations fade, and my surroundings change. I'm four or five years old, so young that the details blur and distort in the memory. Tor and I sit next to each other in an alley, and I curl into his side; it's freezing cold, and our clothes are worn and thin. My older brother has his arm around me, trying to keep me warm. My stomach growls loudly, and Tor hugs me closer to comfort me. We both know that he can do nothing else. Some amount of time later we see a man standing in the exit of the dead-end alley, watching us. Tor and I jump to our feet, my brother pushing me behind him and drawing the only item he has from our birthplace: a curved castle-forged dagger. For one long heartbeat, we all just stare at each other.

Then the man walks towards us. Tor points the knife threateningly, and the stranger stops and hold his hands out to the side, both in placation and to show that he's unarmed. It does little to assuage our fears; a full grown man could just as easily harm a four and eight-year-old unarmed as he could armed. The stranger doesn't try to come closer, though.

"Where be your parents?" the man asks gently.

"They went to get a room at the inn, an' they'll be back any minute now, so just move along." Tor bluffs, his voice sharp and threatening.

The stranger is unfazed, and he strolls closer; my brother brandishes the knife when he gets within five feet, swiping it warningly and startling the man enough that he pulls back. The stranger recomposes himself and crouches down, putting him at eye level to us. This close, I can see a kind face and fatherly blue eyes, but it doesn't help his case; the most successful criminals are the ones with faces you trust.

"You two are skinny as beanpoles. What would you say to a good dinner?"

Tor backpedals, pushing me back. "We have nothin' to pay for it with." Then he remembers his bluff and adds, "And our parents won't like us wanderin' off with some stranger."

The man's face is gentle as he speaks. "I have some chores you could do to pay it off, lad." He gives us a sympathetic look. "I've seen you two around town. I know you've got no parents. Now, I know that you don't know me, but if you don't come with me the guards'll haul you off eventually."

Tor and I shift nervously. The guards are required to turn any streetrats over the the orphanages, and the orphanages around here… the others say that the mistress beats them by day, and that monsters haunt the shadows at night and carry off children off, never to be seen ago. After a second, my brother makes up his mind.

"Dinner would be nice, sir." he says respectfully. The man smiles, but Tor adds, "But if ya try anythin', I'll cut ya open", and hoists the knife pointedly. The stranger chuckles.

"Noted, lad."

The stranger turns to leave, looking over his shoulder at us, and we fall into step behind him, Tor still clutching the knife but letting it hang loosely at his side.

"What's your name, sir?" Tor asks as we walk; he's turned respectful since we're getting a meal out of the bargain.

"Darius Jones. What be yours, lad?"

"Tor Pellinore." he responds, wincing at his surname; he'd told me, when I'd asked once why we didn't have parents, that we're something called 'bastards', which I've taken to mean from his reactions that there's something wrong with our last name. "This is my half-sister. I, uh, don't know her full name."

That is technically a lie, but he has always called me 'sis' or 'sissy' when he came home for those few weeks in the spring and summer. I've tried to tell him my name, but he refuses to call me by it. I asked Mum about why he was so strange once, and she only looked at me with sad eyes and said that castle-folk have to do things differently.

"How do ya not know her name?" Mr. Jones asks, sounding concerned. Tor shrugs.

"'Er mum-" Who is also his mum, but he rarely refers to her as such, "Didn't tell me."

That is more blatant a lie than the last one, and I decide that it's time to pipe up. "I toldja, my names Faolan."

"An' I told you that there's no way Mum named ya something like that." His young face goes stony, and he adds, "That'd be a cruel joke."

A short while later we reach Darius's home. A boy around Tor's age stands in the doorway, awkwardly balancing a dark-haired toddler on his hips.

The images fade again, and a new memory comes into focus.

The four of us are gathered in a small meadow just outside town. The sun is reaching it's peak overhead as Tor and Liam go at it with weighted wooden training swords. Liam is losing drastically to the boy a year and a half his junior, while I, now eight, wait for my turn and watch a six-year-old Ian climbing a tree.

Across the meadow, Tor is shouting taunts.

"This's pretty sad for a boy o' thirteen, Liam!" My brother ducks easily under a wild swing. "You're gonna need better form than that if you want'ta make it in the navy!"

We live in a medium-sized port city, and our father works at the docks, loading and unloading cargo and going on the occasional two-week voyage. He and his two blood-children all share a love of the sea, and Liam has been dreaming aloud about joining the navy for years now.

Tor Pellinore- he opted to keep his last name, even when I was officially dubbed a Jones- tires of toying with our older brother, and knocks the sword from his hand with one solid swing.

"Your grip's atrocious, mate." Tor says, picking up the wooden weapon. Liam, being nearly an inch taller than the victor, scowls down at him.

"How'd you come by all this, anyway?" he asks, motioning to the swords though referring to the skills; the swords themselves were a gift from Uncle Dorian, the captain of the local guard. Tor smiles but doesn't answer, to Liam's eternal displeasure; the two are close, and it seems to be an annoyance to our eldest brother when Tor keeps things from him.

"Ellyn, want ta spare wit' Liam?" he calls, and I race over to them from beneath Killian's tree. My blood brother tosses a weapon to each of us, and we take up our positions.

"Beat 'em up, Ellie!" Ian hoots from a nearly-horizontal tree branch, his legs swinging less than five feet from the ground. Tor has been teaching me what he knows- really teaching me, not just goofing in the meadow- and I'm fast, though not strong, enough to almost hold my own against my second-eldest brother now.

Tor counts down from three, and when he reaches zero Liam and I leap for each other, swords flashing. I duck under his swing and whack him gently on the hip with my training blade, dancing back as he tries to retaliate.

"Ya missed, Liam!" I taunt. Annoyance flashes in his eyes, and he looses a flurry of blows. I block each blow deftly, though my arms jar from the force and panic reaches into my chest. He's getting a little worked up.

"That the best you can do?"

"Whatever, Davey." he sneers, drawing out his nickname for me. Pops named me Ellyn Davina, and Liam always jokes that I'm the odd ball out in a group of all boys. Hence the creation of the masculine nickname. I tolerate it the same way Tor does his surname: with mild annoyance, but an unwillingness to actually change it.

We spend the hours in the grassy clearing, playing and sparring. The day isn't all that different or extraordinary from those childhood years, but I guess that's what makes it special to me. It's my favorite memory.

My surroundings fade to black before coming back into focus.

I'm ten years old, hunting in the moonlight next to Tor's and walking in the shadow of his gangly teenage form. A bow is something that only the two of us seem to be able to handle, and when we tire of fish or are unable to pay for chicken or mutton, Tor and I go hunting. We're almost always successful, but we are, technically, poaching, and have to avoid the lord's men as much as we have to stay hidden from our prey.

We creep along in the shadow of a massive fallen oak, and a deer suddenly eases into the middle of the game trail in front of us. Two arrows are fired into it's heart at nearly the same instant, and my brother and I glance to each other, grinning from ear to ear. We stand and stroll to our kill, and as we cover the distance we pass into a patch of moonlight that shines through the canopy. Tor stops in it, and I turn to watch him questioningly. His eyes are closed, a small smile on his lips, seeming to soak in the light. When he opens his eyes, they're no longer the same near-black brown as mine.

They're gold.

I look at him more closely, concerned, afraid to know if he's sick; that's the only reason I know of for a person's eyes to change color.

Tor looks at me and smiles gently. "I want to show you something, Davey. But you've gotta promise not ta get scared."

In the back of my mind, I wonder if he'd be scared is he knew the thing I want to show him. But curiosity overrides caution, and I nod. "Promise."

And for the first time in my life, I watch my brother change into a wolf.

I don't know quite what to do, how to react; this thing only happens in legends. The dark-brown wolf is as tall as I am, and he cocks his head to the side inquisitively, waiting for me to react.

You can't get scared, I remind myself.

"You're huge." I finally say. Then I crack a grin and add, "I could ride you into battle, mate."

Tor pulls his lips back from his teeth in a wolf's smile. Now's as good a time as any, I think.

"If we're sharin' secrets and stuff, I've got something you need to see." I say. Tor lowers his haunches to the ground, sitting there alertly and watching me with interest. For a minute I consider a small demonstration, but pride wins out, and I take a deep breath, preparing myself for the side effects. Then I hold out my palm and concentrate; a flame flickers to life, twice the size of a fist and crackling violently. Tor's wolf eyes go wide.

Then I slump forward onto my knees as a wave of dizziness and exhaustion sweep over me. My brother's there instantly, his giant head next to mine as he looks at me with concern. I pant for breath.

"At first I could just make leaves smoke, and only when I was mad." I explain in between pants. Tor looks at me knowingly; most of the time when I get mad, it's because of a group of local kids who think they can pick on me or Ian. I brawl with them almost every other day. "I've gotten better at it. Still takes alot out of me."

Tor shifts back, and once I regain my strength, we set to dressing and quartering the deer and hauling it home. On the way he mentions, just once, that I need to tell him when I start to be affected by the full moon in a few years. The thought of makes me nervous, but that's a worry for the future, and at the minute, I'm simply elated. Everyone always talks so fearfully of magic and of sorcerers, but my brother accepted it without question; given, he can't say much about me being weird when he can turn into a giant canine, but still, I'm happy.

That night around us shifts and comes back into focus. I lay on a cot, the room dim; the bottom deck of a ship doesn't receive much lighting, especially since the lanterns have been put out. For a minute the gentle swaying of the ship almost puts me back to sleep. I might prefer the forest, but the sea does have it's advantages, and a sleep aid during calm weather is one of them. Tor has been far less happy with our current situation than I am. He gets seasick when the ship rocks too much, and he hates being wet, and that's a combination that does not make for a happy sea voyage.

Then Pops is there, kneeling next to my bed. I prop myself up and blink the sleep from my eyes.

"Everythin' alright?" I ask as I sit up, voice slurring slightly as sleep slowly releases my mind. Across the room, exactly opposite of me, Tor mirrors my posture, obviously already awake and watching us with sadness, his eyes gold; the moon is nearly full, and because I'm almost fourteen, I feel it's pull as well.

"Everything will be fine, lass." Pops soothes gently, his voice soft so as not to wake my other brothers, who sleep on their beds in the other two corners of the small room. "I'm going to be gone for awhile, and I need you to take care of your little brother for me. Can ya do that?"

I rub the heels of my hands against my eyes as I nod. "'Course, always do." A thought strikes me and I ask, "Why're you telling me this?" Whenever our father's had to gone away on trips in recent years, an almost-seventeen-year-old Liam has been in charge of the household; when he's unable to get time off from his Captain- he joined the navy as a cabin boy a year ago- then Tor's in charge.

Pops smooths my hair back from my face. "Liam is going to be deployed with his crew soon. And Tor-" he glances over his shoulder with a small smile, "Yer brother's not cut out for life on the sea, and he's got a restless spirit. He won't always be able to stay on the ship with you."

Something about those words strikes me wrong; won't always implies something I don't like. "How long are you gonna be gone?" I ask.

Pops smiles gently, his eyes sadder than I've ever seen. "Awhile, lass. A good long while." He wraps me in a hug, and I cling onto him for dear life. "Goodbye, Davey. I love you."

Sadness and fear sweeping over me; this goodbye seems final. "Love you too, Pops."

The man who has been my father rises from me and crosses to Killian's bedside, brushing the boy's unruly dark hair from his face and pressing a kiss to his forehead. I hear his lips move, but I cannot hear the words. Then Darius Jones swings a backpack onto his shoulder and steps from the room.

We never see him again.

The next day we find a note on his bedside table. Liam picks it up first, and his expression goes from confused to grief-stricken. He refuses to talk aloud, looking like something's choking him, so one by one we pass the note around and read Darius's handwriting. The letter tells us that he can't come back for us, that he'd gotten on the wrong side of dangerous people and couldn't drag us into this life. That this is goodbye.

Ian cries for hours, curled into me on my cot. When he falls asleep that night, exhausted from emotion and lack of food, the ship's captain convenes a meeting with my older brothers. I use lycanthrope hearing to listen at the door. Liam is able to leverage his navy connections, and it is agreed that we will transfer to the ship Liam serves on. If Liam agrees to docked wages, and if Killian and I make ourselves useful, they will likely allow us to stay until we reach an age to officially join the navy as a cabin boy and girl.

When I return to our quarters and curl up with Ian, he rolls over to face me.

"I'm scared, Davey." he whispers. I know what he means; scared of change, scared of having to face life ourselves, scared for the future we're going to have as orphans. I'm terrified, and I'm just shy of fourteen. He's barely twelve, and in that moment I'm struck with the fact that despite all his bravado and pre-teen brooding, he's still so young. I hug him tightly.

"I know. But it's going to be okay. You're going to be okay. I'll protect you." When he drifts off to sleep, I add, "To my last breathe."

The scene distorts, shifts, but as new surroundings come into focus, the lighting doesn't improve; the tavern is just as dimly lit as the ship. Tor and I hover near the doorway, scoping out the crowded building in search of a table. My blood-brother has been absent for several weeks, having split from us at a port city and met up with us here, and I need some place away from the crew and from our younger brother to be able to talk freely.

"Think he's gonna notice we're gone?" I ask anxiously. Ian fell asleep below deck about half an hour ago, and I don't want him to feel left out; it's been less than a year since I was orphaned for the second time, and my younger brother isn't quite healed from it yet. It'll be a while before he does, I know, but the crew loves him like one of their own, and that coupled with finally being able to sail the seas means he's slowly inching back to normality.

"No." Tor answers shortly, evidently spotting a seat, because he shoves forward and wades through the crowd of people. I follow close behind, acutely careful to not touch anyone, my nerves already spread thin.

As we sit down, I quickly find out why the small table is untaken. It sits in the corner, far from the bar and right next to a window with a freezing-cold draft. Tor waves the waitress over and orders two glasses of rum. I shoot him a questioning look.

"It'll help ya calm down." he explains, and when our drinks come he has me down mine. "Now, what's got ya so riled up?"

I shift uncomfortably in my chair. "It's my magic. I can't- I'm having trouble turning it off." My brother looks at me quizzically, and I explain further, "I can't control it when I get worked up. When I mean to do it I can stop, but when it's an accident… I just can't turn it off."

Tor runs a hand through his hair. "Alright." he says slowly. "How bad is it?"

I look away. "I woke up from a nightmare and nearly fried Ian."

Tor's shoulders tense as he fights to hold on to his stoic demeanor. "What'd'ya mean, nearly fried 'em?"

"I mean he almost took a fireball to the head, and I couldn't stop makin' flames for a half hour."

My brother is quiet. "That's a problem." he finally says. I scoff.

"No, really? I had no idea." I snap dryly. Then the energy leaves me, and I put my head in my hands. "I'd do anything to protect him, Tor. If this is putting him in danger…" I trail off. It already is putting him in danger. So where does that put me? Should I leave him like our father did? Everything in me screams out against the idea, but if I hurt him, there'd be no choice. I'd rather us both live with a second abandonment than to see my little brother dead at my own hands.

Does that make me selfish or selfless?

I don't know; all I know is that, with all my soul, I want to be able to control my powers. I want to be able to stay with my little brother.

"We'll figure out something, Davey." Tor soothes after a long pause, but I doubt those words. He and I, you could say we're a resourceful pair, but not when it comes to magic; that's so, so far out of our area of expertise. I rest my head on the table, staring down at the wood grain, and I hear Tor rise and feel him pat my shoulder.

"I'll go get you something to drink." he says, and I pick up the sound of his feet retreating. It's only acouple seconds later when someone sits down heavily in the seat across from me.

"That was qui-" I begin, looking up to find that the person sitting across from me is not my brother.

The stranger is clad in a nearly-black, navy-blue traveling cloak, the hood thrown up to cast shadows over his face. Now he sits facing the fire, so I can make out his features: a square, average, almost fatherly face, with eyes a similar color to mine. Under the table, my hand goes to the bone-handle hunting knife Tor gave me for my thirteenth birthday.

"That seat's taken, mate." I warn, mixed emotions making me fall back heavily on the accent of my hometown.

"I will not take much of your time." The stranger begins; his voice is deep and one of the gravelliest I've ever heard. "But I expected a warmer welcome from a fellow magician."

His words take a moment to register in my mind. "Fellow magician?" I ask. "You know magic?"

The stranger smiles. "No. I am a master of magic." he corrects, and he nods to his left, where a drunken young sailor is fighting his way back to his table. He begins to sit down, and out of the corner of my eye I see the man make a motion with his hand. The sailor suddenly finds himself on the floor, his drink splashed all over him, his chair having moved back a good half-foot. I suppress a smile at the dumbfounded look on the kid's face.

"That's a cruel trick ta play on a man in 'is state." I say. The 'fellow magician' smiles back.

"Perhaps. What can you do?"

I blink owlishly. "What do you mean?"

The stranger makes a non-commital motion with his hand. "I've shown you a taste of mine. Give me an idea of yours."

"Uh… flames. And moving things without touching them."

The stranger cocks an eyebrow and fights down a smirk. "Really?" He drawls. "You don't seem so sure of that." I cross my arms over my chest, lifting my chin in an I-can-to posture, and the man adds, "But by all means, prove me wrong. Show me something."

I glare at him for several seconds before looking away; at the moment, I don't trust myself to be able to control even the simplest of flames. A demonstration is out of the question. The man chuckles.

"Ah, control issues. The bane of all young mages." he says. My head snaps back up.

"You've gone through this?" At his nod, excitement flares to life in my chest. "Then you can teach me! You can show me how ta turn it off!"
His eyes flicker over me, evaluating, calculating. "I might. If you could prove your potential."

My excitement wavers, dampened by a mix of fear and desperation. "I just need to know how to turn it off." Resolve sweeps through me. "You have to teach me."

The stranger studies me for a moment longer "I do not take students for a lesson or two. The world is already full of magicians with more ambition than discipline. You are proposing an apprenticeship."

"So be it." I say instantly; I don't have any particular desire to excel at the craft of magic, but if a full-blown apprenticeship is what it takes to give me control- to give me the assurance of Ian being safe around me- then I'll learn all the stranger has to teach.

It takes a minute for the logical part of me, the part that only vaguely remembers my time as an orphan but clearly remembers that I'm the adult of the family now, to wonder what the cost of this apprenticeship will be. A monthly fee, like the local duke's kennelmaster? A percentage of wages for two years after graduation, like the blacksmiths in our hometown? I can't afford any of that. My hope and joy dies almost immediately.

"What would it cost me?" I ask warily.

The man leans back in his chair, seeming to contemplate something. He apparently makes up his mind, because a second later he begins to speak.

"I'm in no need of gold, but there is something else. You see, I make my living with deals. If someone desperately needs something done, then I can do it- for a price. There's a man in this town who's refused to pay."

"So, what? You want me to get some coin out of 'em?"

The stranger chuckles, a dangerous, mirthless little laugh, a sharp smile coming to his face. For the first time, something about him sends a chill down the back of my spine.

"Of course not. I want you to kill him." He waits only a heartbeat before adding, "The bloodier the better. Something that will send a message."

I blink at him in shock for a second, but I like to think that I gather myself quickly. The idea isn't all as out of the question as it should be to me. If you had told a relatively-innocent, wide-eyed, four-year-old me to kill someone, I might've objected that it was illegal. But things have changed since then. I've been hardened by bullies and abandonment and the responsibility of a parent; I've watched my brother and myself turn into beasts and tear apart unfortunate creatures with far more blood than was necessary; I've seen the only man who has ever been a father to me turn and walk away; and above all, I realized something about myself.

I am nothing without my family. They are all I have in the world.

Beasts kill all the time; doing this for my brother would be nothing. Just a drop in the bucket of everything I have, will, and would do for him.

Still, Liam has tried to impose on Ian and I a sense of morality, and I don't say yes right away.

"Who's this unfortunate bastard?" I ask. Seeing that dangerous, creepy smile making it's appearance on the stranger's face, I add, "I'm not saying yes, mate. I'm saying maybe."

When the stranger smiles this time, it's in an amused way. "Of course not. And his name is Per." At the look on my face, he adds, "I see you've heard of him."

Per is, according to his fellow townspeople, a cruel brute of a man. I know of him only because several members of the crew have made a point to warn me to steer clear of him. Apparently, this is not the first time the ship's been through this port, and the last time they were here, Per was being accused of a capital offense. The minute I hear the man's name, I know that of all the men I could possibly kill, this one would leave me with the least guilt. It was only years later that I would appreciate that that was likely intentional.

Pops always said that rapists are closer to animals than to men. And I've been hunting animals for years now.

"Yeah, I've heard of 'em." I mutter, and contemplate the offer for a minute. I could continue to have a happy existence with my brother, and all it would take is the life of someone who already deserves to die.

The choice is so simple.

I hear myself say, "He'll be dead by mornin'." I look up, meeting the eyes of the man across from me. "You've got yourself a deal, mate."

The stranger flashes a small, self-satisfied smile and extends a hand across the table. I shake it without hesitation.

"Ellyn Davina Jones." I say by way of introduction.

His smile grows, and his eyes soften a fraction. "A pleasure doing business with you, Ellyn. My name is Zoso."

Another memory flashes across my mind next, of Zoso and a cripple and a little town on the edge of a warzone, and this too I am forced to watch. The memory seems to go by faster than the others, though; perhaps because I've been thinking of it so often, as of late.

When that one fades, I still find myself standing in a forest. My surroundings slide into focus.

I'm walking briskly along a dirt road, following a plainly-dressed older man and his son through the Camelot pines. I am lost in thought, thinking of the woman with my same near-black eyes, who sobbed and held my face in her hands and called me Faolan. Of the woman a few years younger with me who looks a little like Tor, and of the son who hid behind her but looked at me with fascination. A sound reaches me that seems almost like a distant roar, and I am so deep in thought that it takes a second for me to recognize the sound of river rapids.

Several minutes pass, and the pair of commoners stop abruptly in front of me. I look over their shoulders to find that the forest has ended; with no discernible warning other than the now-louder sound of rushing water, the trail we stand on leads to the edge of a cliff.

I step up to the edge, peering down. Perhaps a hundred feet straight down, a cluster of rocks jut up from a river, and the water drives against them with all the primordial fury of nature.

"This is where he died?" I ask, my voice hoarse.

I'd been so close, so tantalizingly close to finding Tor. I'd followed my brother's trail across this wretched little kingdom and the next one, followed it right to our birth father, who'd directed me here.

And the locals had told me that he's dead.

"Yes." my guide says. "My son was with him."

His son, a barely-grown man, can only meet my eyes for a second; guilt and shame hang over him like a shroud. "Aye. We were tracking the Beast, and he suddenly seized up. Jerking and shrieking like something possessed."

"And then he fell over the edge." My guide finishes, motioning to the cliff. Something in my stomach twists.

I look over the edge again. I could survive the fall- and by 'survive' I mean my heart would eventually start beating again- but no mortal could. Tor couldn't.

I'd heard the boy confiding with one of the locals about the event- that's how I knew to hire them as my guides here- and something he'd said plagues the back of my mind. When Tor starting seizing, he'd had claimed that his eyes had been gold. The change from man to wolf shouldn't have been the cause of his 'seizing'. It's never taken either of us that violently before.

A phrase echoes through my mind, ones I know the meaning of but refuse to believe applies to Tor's death. Tor told me about it once, in what was a dark moment for him.

Our family is cursed, Ellyn, and someday it's going to catch up to us. It'll take me first, because I'm oldest. But it's in your blood too. You and I, we're going to meet the same fate. I'm not going to let it reach you, sis. I'm going to stop it if it kills me.

The name of that fate, the one whispered throughout my father's kingdom of Listenoise, dances around my head.

La Bete Glatisant. The Barking Beast.

I turn the thought away. I may not know why my brother died, but he died himself. That's the lie I tell myself as I turn and walk away from the only blood-relative I'd ever truly called family.

I'm still walking in the next memory, hurrying towards the Jolly Roger. Word has spread across the docks and into the city, and I'm racing back to my brother, praying I won't find Milah dead, praying I won't find what I know that would do to him.

I dash up the gangplank of the familiar ship and stop short, my eyes locked on my brother. He stands above me, behind the wheel of the ship. Both hands rest on it, but metal flashes in the sunlight in place of flesh. When he looks down at me, I see it in his eyes.

They say it happened only a few hours ago, but already they're calling him Captain Hook. And now I know why; before, he'd been a pirate in every sense of he word, but his greed had been for treasure and women. The look in his eyes, underneath the raw pain, is greed for blood. Revenge. Powerful and merciless and self-destructive bloodlust.

In that moment, I know I've lost my little brother.

I have an idea of what he's going to do, who he's going to try to kill. I try to talk him out of it. I say that it's suicide. I say that revenge isn't going to bring her back.

I say that he has no way of killing the Dark One.

We argue, and for the first time Ian is trying to use his words, our pasts, to cut. He disowns me. He takes a swing at me.

I storm off. My last words to my brother, to the little boy I've raised and protected, is that if he's going to get himself killed, then I can't stand next to him and watch him die.

A few hours later, when I've calmed down, I go back to try and reconcile. But the Jolly Roger is gone, along with the only family I have left. I assume Killian set sail for the next port, and though I'm plagued by pain and guilt for that, I slowly begin to make my way there. I hope that once some time has passed, and the pain has dulled, I'll be able to reconcile with him.

It's the biggest mistake of my life.

The last memory is of me, nearly thirty years older, walking into a bar and taking a seat across from a man with gold skin and reptillian eyes. Then I remember nothing more.

Darkness swirls around me for a long time. My mind is slow, foggy, not awake but no longer close enough to dead to watch my life flash before my eyes. I swear I hear a person speak, a deep tired baritone sighing out the annoyed words, "Oh, you again." Then I return to the world of the living.

I wake screaming. You'd think that after how much I've done this, I'd be used to the pain by now, but it's one sensation I've never been able to adjust to. So I scream because my insides, my very blood is being set aflame as magic burns away the touch of death from my body.

I suck in ragged breaths as my senses come back to me, the agony fading slowly. I cast my mind back to the soonest point I can remember. I hate this aspect of my curse. I hate the pain the most, because that's when I'm weakest, but I also hate the disorientation, the inability to quickly ascertain where I am and what has happened.

Where the fuck am I? I think; my eyes haven't open yet, but the scents are not familiar, and that sets me on edge.

Someone touches- more accurately, pokes- my shoulder, and I react instinctively. The bone-handle hunting knife that always sits on my right hip is instantly summoned to my hands, and I lash out with it wildly, throwing myself to the right and to my feet, holding the knife defensively in front of me. Someone cries out in surprise, and it's that sound more than anything that snaps me out of the state I'm in and lets me register my surroundings.

Rumplestiltskin stands in front of me, a cut on his cheek that doesn't bleed and only knits back together as he watches me with both curiosity and annoyance. For just a second, the barest flash of a moment, the only thing I associate the man with is Zoso dead and my brother nearly so, and my hand tightens around the knife as grief flashes through me.

Then I remember everything that's transpired in the last few days. My breathing, which has been coming fast and frantic sense I was- I shudder at the ridiculousness- poked, starts to slow to normal. I let my hands fall to my side and relax out of a fighting stance.

"Sorry. I should've warned you that I would be skittish when I woke."

"No harm done, dearie." he says, brushing it off, then cocks his head to add, "I was just about to bury you, little wolf. Your heart stopped beating."

I sheath my knife. "Yeah, it does that sometimes. Just gotta give it a day or so, it always starts back up again."

As I regain more of my senses, something feels off, and after a moment I realize it's because the weight of my blade on my hip is absent. "Mind telling me where the hell my sword is?"

The Dark One smiles devilishly. "Nope." he says, making it into two syllables- closer to 'ny-ope' than the actual word- and saying it in a tone that sounds. I fight down the urge to roll my eyes and sweep a look over the room; a long dining table sits in the center, with cabinets of cutlery and various scattered artifact to my right, and a spinning wheel behind me and slightly to the left. The ceiling is high, as are the windows set into the walls. The great hall of a castle? I wonder.

"Nice place." I say as I spot my sword leaning against the wall next to the wheel. I hold out my hand, and the blade zips obediently into it at my spell's call. "You got those chains off you, so I'm guessing you borrowed her. Hacks through steel brilliantly, doesn't she?" For a minute I'm proud enough of my possession that I almost forget to add, "Don't do it again."

"Oo, is that a threat, little wolf?"

I scoop up my scabbard, which sits against the fainting couch I was passed out on, and slide the blade home, fastening them back onto my sword belt.

I ignore the imp's comment. "If I'm not mistaken, you owe me a favor, Rumplestiltskin."

When I look up, the Dark One's face has gone stoney. He hops up to sit on his dining room table, one leg crossed over the other and his fingers interlaced around his knee.

"And what would it be?"

I smile my wolfish smile, and a roll of paper appears in my hand. I unroll the short contract and produce a quill from the air, releasing both objects to float in the air.

"Just sign on the dotted line."

Rumplestiltskin hops from the table and snatches the scroll to him, eyes darting over the page as he reads it.

"If you want the basics, it says we help each other out. A favor for a favor into perpetuity, unless we try to kill or betray the other."

"Until." He mutters a correction. I ignore it.

"It's an alliance of sorts. I'll be signing it too."

"So I see." He says, glancing at me over the paper. "Though you have more to gain from this bargain than I do."

I narrow my eyes at him. "If you're saying that I'm weak, I'm more than happy to go acouple rounds."

It's a complete bluff, but I'd like to think that I wouldn't be a pushover. I was trained by a Dark One, after all; that, and decades of practice, should put somewhere near Zoso's strenght. I'm given to understand that each new Dark One is at least slightly stronger than the one before, constantly building on the skills and instincts of their predecessors, but I hope that I'd be a somewhat-close second.

"A tempting offer, but I don't care for wolfskin pelts."

I stick my tongue out at him, to which he replies with a sneer. I feel compelled to add, "Don't act like it's not an advantage to you. If nothing else, it'd add to your reputation."

"That it will." he concedes, a dangerous smile flashing across his face and revealing his teeth.

Then he plucks the pin out of the air and turns to spread the contract out over the table, signing his name on one of the lines with an elegant flourish.

I move to stand next to him, taking the quill pen and writing three words:

Faolan de Pellinore.

I do this for two reasons; the first is that, as far as I know, Rumplestiltskin doesn't doesn't know that I'm a Jones. It's imperative that he doesn't, because deal or not, the only thing he'd want with someone related to Killian is to kill them. And it is not technically any kind of lie to use the name; I've gone by Ellyn or Davey most of my life, but I was Faolan de Pellinore for the short time I was in my land of birth, and the argument can be made that it's my 'real' name.

Rumplestiltskin cocks an eyebrow and smirks. "Faolan?" he asks, a laugh in the word.

"Yes, I am aware of the irony." A book appears in my hand, and I set it on the table, the contract disappearing so I can set it in it's place. "Now, down to business." I make a small swiping motion with my index finger, and magic has the pages flipping by at blistering speed. "I recently acquired this."

The pages stop on exactly the right page to reveal a picture that takes up the entirety of the page; the detail on the item is exquisite and shows the skull and runes engraved on it in sharp relief.

"A ring?"

"Better. A drawing of a ring."

He raises an eyebrow. "Better?"

I turn to lean against the table, my arms crossed, putting the Dark One on my right.

"You can't use that ring without knowing how. This whole book's about the thing, so we know that whoever wrote it knows about it. And then there's that picture."

Rumplestiltskin quickly catches on to where I'm going with this, and glances back to the detailed rendition. "The author has certainly seen the ring." He agrees.

I nod. "So if we want it, and we want to know how to use it, we just have to find this guy." I flip back to the front cover and point at the name of the writer, printed below the title.

Rumple turns to face me more fully, making a motion with his hand as he says, "What's so special about it, dearie?"

Hope bursts back to life in my chest, and I grin, the action simultaneously excited and lupine. "How much do you know about Death the Horseman?"