Chapter Text
Present Day
Even after all this time, Killian felt something of a chill run down his spine as his Chevelle sped over the town line.
He had kept himself driving through the night, only stopping once for gas a little ways outside of Portland as he’d felt it would be better if he stayed focused on the road; that way he wouldn’t linger on the reason why he’d packed a few meagre belongings and gotten in the car in the first place. Naturally, with the long, empty and deathly still roads of upstate Maine rolling out in front of him, it had backfired completely and the only thing he had been able to think of since his journey began was the destination that awaited him. It was difficult not to mull on the anxious tone of the voicemail that David had left him, babbling and nervous and unsure. Impossible still to not dwell on its subject.
There’s something – I have something you need to see.
For the last hour the roads had been slippery, the rain-slicked tarmac a reminder of the storm that had hit the area earlier in the day, and a considerable amount of his attention was spent ensuring his back tyres didn’t slide out with every tight corner. Fatigue nestled around his shoulders like an old friend, urging him to shut his tired eyes and relax, but he did his best to ignore it. In the dark, the trees towered over the road in distorted, twisting shapes and the shadows cast by his headlights were just barely visible through the mid-autumn mist.
No, Storybrooke was exactly how he remembered it.
Suddenly the car radio burst to life and Killian jolted at the sudden disturbance, his movement causing the car to swerve dangerously onto the other side of the road as the tyres jerked to follow him. One hand scrambled with the volume on the radio as the other wrenched the wheel to regain control, and after a brief moment of wrestling with both he managed to restore the tentative peace he had endured for the last few hours, only his hammering heart an indicator that he had lost it to begin with.
The low, barely distinguishable synth of Yaz’s Only You was still pouring through the tinny speaker.
Killian, far more alert now and willing his racing pulse to slow, flicked it off.
It was an old car and often prone to such dysphoric outbursts, but that didn’t lessen the way the hairs at the base of his neck stood on end.
Piss off, he thought mutinously, ghost.
God, he needed to sleep.
Before long, the winding country road began to recede, and a taste of the Storybrooke suburbia began to trickle forth with a few dwellings by the side of the road, sporadic lots that quickly opened out into fully-fledged streets lined with house after house. He had agreed to meet David as soon as he got into town, although he doubted the man anticipated it being quite this late. Still, he didn't wish to waste any time. After a minute or so of tracking down the familiar turns, Killian was soon pulling his Chevelle into park outside a large, two-storey house. Once a brilliant white, dirt and age had weathered the paint until it was scratched and peeling. A single windmill lay spinning in the front yard.
Killian tapped a brief message into his phone, before stepping out of the Chevelle and leaning against the bonnet while he waited. He didn’t wait long. After a few moments, the front door opened and David Nolan emerged, careful to shut it behind him as quietly as possible. Undoubtedly there might be a person or two inside not quite as thrilled to see him as the young man rapidly descending the stairs. He was wrapped in a thick coat and his breath was coming out in quick bursts of condensation.
To Killian’s surprise, the first thing David did when he reached him was pull him into a fierce hug.
He’d been expecting a lot of mixed emotions, certainly – trepidation, anger, disappointment. It had been a long time since he’d left the town under a similar cloak of night to the one currently slung over it. To his shame, he realised the entire drive there that he hadn’t once considered that David might be pleased to see him. Once again, he hadn’t given the man enough credit. Hesitantly, he returned the gesture with as much warmth as he could muster.
Some things, then, could still feel like home.
“Thanks for coming,” David said, once he pulled back.
“I’m sorry it’s so late.”
The other man waved away his apology. “Don’t be ridiculous… you look exhausted.” David tilted his head, as if finally noticing the way his eyes were desperate to wink closed again. “Were you driving all night?”
Killian let out a breath of mirthless laughter. “Something like that.”
Try all week.
David gestured to the house behind them. “Do you want to come inside?”
Tempting, certainly tempting. Still, he shook his head. “I doubt that’s wise.” While he might have been wrong about which reception he should be expecting from David Nolan, he was positive where the rest of his family was concerned, his suppositions were entirely correct. For a moment the conversation stilled, and as Killian stared out into the dark road behind him he decided there was little point in not being upfront about the reason he had been summoned back to Storybrooke.
“So,” he began, “is it her?”
David’s countenance changed, a stiffness settling in his shoulders while his expression morphed into one of reluctance, of uncertainty. David Nolan had always been dreadful at masking his emotions, it made perfect sense that two years apart wouldn’t have had any impact on his attempts at duplicity. His lips parted, as if trying to perhaps voice a hesitant refutation, but Killian didn’t let him.
“You wouldn’t have called me if it weren’t.”
The other man shut his mouth, folded his arms. The wind whistled down the wide, empty street, sending gusts of curling, copper leaves up into the air. Killian waited.
David seemed to reach a decision. “It’s late,” he said, instead of an answer. “Let’s leave it for the morning, after you’ve had some rest.”
It wasn’t such a bad suggestion. He was exhausted. The answers he so desperately wished to claw from David Nolan could wait until he didn’t feel like any stiff wind might knock him over. He conceded the delay with a nod and a tight smile, one that David gratefully returned, and pushed away from the bonnet. As he tugged open the door David retreated a few steps back up to the house, wrapping his coat even tighter around him.
“It’s really good to see you, Killian,” he said, offering him the ghost of a grin that was almost – well. Almost sad. He then opened the door and slipped inside.
“Likewise,” he murmured to the shut door, and dropped down into his car.
The engine growled to life underneath him as he made to pull away from the curb, but as he paused out of habit to check behind him for any oncoming traffic, he thought he saw the trail of something white disappear behind one of the trees. It was brief, like the flash of colour from a light blinking out of sight. The trail of a dress disappearing from view. He was sure enough that he’d seen it to give him pause, for his hand to drop to the handle of the door as if he were making to get out again, but not quite enough to follow through. His hand tightened for a moment, but soon gradually released it.
It was late, he was exhausted, and he was seeing things. Or, as was often the case with him, he wasn’t, but whatever he’d seen he didn’t want to be dealing with until morning. Screw the brave thing to do; he was staying in the car. Giving the spot he had seen it one last lingering look in the mirror, he drove away.
The clock on his dashboard read just a little time before midnight, and while he considered spending the night in his car – it would be far from the first – truthfully he wished to avoid any run-ins with the Sheriff’s department where possible, at least until he’d reacquired his bearings. That left only one establishment that would remain open for a new patron so late into the night, and he realised with a jolt that his hands had steered him down the familiar roads before he'd really had a chance to think too much about it.
The exterior of Granny's Bed & Breakfast was barely visible, but from what he could make out nothing really had changed. It was made of the same chipped brick and shattered tile, the brush around the entrance long overgrown after decades of ill attention. The proprietor had always behaved like it was a complete mystery that business was never doing well, but hidden away behind the diner as it was and sheltered by woodland, most newcomers to Storybrooke would scarcely even know it existed.
Killian pulled into one of the parking spaces towards the back of the building, taking only his rucksack from the boot and leaving everything else. Although wary of such a choice at first, he felt everything else would probably be safer in his car than at Granny’s, not to mention aside from one disappearance presumed-murder several years ago, the crime rate in Storybrooke was almost non-existent. He clambered the steps and moved inside.
A loud bell rang out heralding his entrance, and he winced at the volume of the sound. Granny never wished to miss out on any potential customers. It was for that reason that the very same woman came bustling down the stairs with almost alarming speed, broad grin in place ready to welcome whomever had disturbed them so late into the night – until she realised who had done so.
Granny Lucas, small as she was, was a formidable woman. When her eyes narrowed with distinct venom, Killian immediately wished he had just decided to stay in his car.
“I have the right to refuse service to anybody that comes in here, just so you know.”
This was much more the kind of reception he had been expecting to receive from David, but it was late now, and he was tired, and he wasn’t ready to fight.
“Please,” he said. “I’ll pay whatever rate you deem is fair. Just for tonight. I can find somewhere else to stay tomorrow if need be.”
“If it’s that easy sunshine, you can stay somewhere else tonight, too.”
“Granny!”
He heard the admonishment before he saw the person who gave it, but a moment later Ruby Lucas had thundered down the stairs and emerged to join her grandmother.
She glared at her, fiercely. “You think business is good enough to turn anyone away?” The young woman immediately reached behind her grandmother to retrieve the heavy, cob-ridden guestbook and dropped it with a thud in front of Killian. She smiled at him, kindly, handing him a pen. “Particularly a friend.”
“A friend?!” Granny blustered.
“Here,” Ruby began rummaging for a key behind her, “you can take the square view.”
Killian hastily began writing his name in the book, before Granny Lucas either had a chance to assert her authority or pluck the pen out of his hands. In his haste, it became little more than a scribble. The ink smudged across the page made him think of the flash of movement he had seen by the Nolan house.
He needn't have worried. Granny Lucas let out a highly disgruntled noise, before clearly deciding she wished no part in it and stalking into the back room.
“Thank you,” Killian said, once she was gone. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Ruby gave him a look; a rueful, warm thing. “Don’t be silly. This is your home, too.”
The key she had handed him was the same as any other the inn provided, but it still made him ache. It was hung on a large metal keyring, the engraving of a swan at the top of it before receding into carved silver roses and thorns.
“Come see me in the morning,” she suggested, “I’ll make sure we get you something good cooked up for breakfast.”
Killian thanked her again before mounting the stairs. He later realised, on closer inspection, that the silver swan was also engraved with another message.
Welcome to Storybrooke.
“Well,” he muttered, slipping the key into the lock, “we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
-/-
October 14th 2014 – 5 Years Ago
Emma’s desk jolted as two strong hands thwacked down on it with force.
“I’ve found it.”
God, just when she was beginning to make progress.
Unimpressed, she lifted her gaze from the calculus textbook in front of her, after all this time still a puzzling, blurred mix of numbers and symbols that was only just starting to penetrate her mind, as easily distracted as it often found itself. Given she had left a desperate plea on the sign by the quiet study section of the library that she was not to be disturbed, she fixed her would-be guerrilla opponent with an irate stare.
There, with his dark hair stuck up at all angles as if he had spent the last hour running through it with an agitated hand, eyes wide and bright but distinctly pleased with himself, like the cat that had worked out just which dressing complimented diced canary perfectly, stood Killian Jones.
Of course he’d be the one disrupting her precarious peace.
“Don’t tell me – it’s hot cocoa, with cinnamon, and you’re about to hand it over.”
She held out her hands expectantly, offering him the sweetest smile she could muster.
Killian didn’t buy it for a second, and when he made to continue with that same eager glint in his eye, she cut him off.
“—Because that is the only reason I’ll accept you bothering me right now! Killian, you know how much math is kicking my ass, I have to work.”
“I know, but this is –”
“‘This is more important than hairspray to Regina’ better be how that sentence ends.”
“Aye, it’s—”
“More important than hairspray to Regina, say it.”
“Swan—”
She waggled her pen up at him threateningly.
“Say it.”
“Oh bloody hell,” Killian snapped, snatching her pen from the air with a huff of impatience. “Yes, it’s more important than – hair products, or – or David’s truck. There.”
David’s truck was a brand new (second hand) 1973 F-Series. It could manage nought to sixty in eleven excruciatingly painful seconds, but David could not be prouder of it if he’d birthed the thing and raised it himself, rather than receiving it as a seventeenth birthday present from Ruth.
Emma surveyed Killian carefully, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms. “That’s a pretty serious allegation you’re making, Jones.”
“Aye, and I mean every word of it.”
“I caught him singing to that truck the day before yesterday.”
“Every. Word.”
After a pregnant pause, Emma decisively shut the textbook.
Immediately pleased, Killian reached hurriedly behind him and scraped a chair across the vinyl floor so he could join her at the table.
“I found it,” he said again, and he had that same excited, agitated look on his face, like the news was practically spilling out of him to tell her.
“You’re going to need to be more specific.”
“It,” he continued, “Brooke House.”
Whatever jest had been waiting to spring from the tip of her tongue died immediately on parted lips. She watched him for a few seconds, trying to check the sincerity of the remark the same way she always did – but no, Killian wasn’t trying to trick her. Whatever he’d found, he genuinely believed it to be Brooke House. Which was impossible.
“Brooke House,” she said carefully, knowing how much of a touchy subject this must be for him, “doesn’t exist.”
Killian shook his head fiercely.
“It’s there. In the north woods, just like Liam said. I was hiking on the White Pine trail when I heard –”
“You were hiking?”
“Yes, when I heard –”
“Like, honest to God, timberlands and a windbreaker, hiking? You?”
Killian let out an exasperated sigh, and Emma could see she was rapidly getting on his nerves, causing him to react far too violently for her to continue the passing jest. While ordinarily she would enjoy getting her friend so riled up, there was nothing ordinary about Brooke House. Especially, she realised, since whatever he had stumbled across he sincerely believed to be the missing piece of a puzzle he had lived for years without.
With that in mind, she sobered up quickly. She should give him the attention he deserved.
“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching out to squeeze his hand. “Carry on.”
He couldn’t even spare an ounce of his nervous energy on feeling grateful.
“It was so strange, Emma. I don’t even remember when I left the trail. I must have been walking for at least ten minutes or so off-road – that’s how long it took to get back – but I suddenly heard this… creaking. Like the way the sign for Gold’s shop moves.” With an almost supernatural precision, the sign for Mr. Gold’s Pawnbrokers had a tendency to rock back and forth at the same pace, no matter how high or low the wind whistled down Main Street. “And I just… knew. So I followed it and there it was – Brooke House. Near the edge of the ravine.”
Emma chewed on her lip. “Okay.” Killian wasn’t a liar, or she’d never known him to be. So, he found a house in the woods. That didn’t necessarily make it anything more than a holidaymaker’s cabin. “How do you know it’s… Brooke House?”
“There was a sign.”
Emma sighed. “Oh, well that’s convenient, isn’t it?”
Killian frowned at this, but she knew at least one of them had to point it out. Killian had searched those woods a hundred times, more – the whole town had given a crack at it once the Storybrooke Mirror had sensationalised the whole affair, and nobody had ever found it. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that this was all some elaborate prank from somebody caught up on the story – somebody uninterested in the emotional weight it carried for those to whom it meant more than a spooky episode in the town’s history.
Those like Killian Jones.
“It’s the real deal, Emma,” he insisted, firmly. Emma remained doubtful. “I just know it. Don’t you trust me to be able to tell the difference?”
It wasn’t a matter of trust. It was a matter of knowing just how much even the possibility that it actually existed must have been fucking around with his emotional state all the way from the trembling moment he had stumbled across it to right now.
Hope had a funny way of making somebody see a ghost – they had all learnt that the hard way.
“Liam wasn’t crazy – and this is the proof.”
Emma remembered when Liam Jones had died. It had been four years ago, just prior to the first time she met Killian. He had driven his car over the edge of a ravine near the boundary of the north woods, close to the town line, and had crashed into the river beneath. The coroner had ruled that death would have been near instantaneous at the point of impact.
After an investigation, it had been declared a suicide.
Not for the first time, Emma couldn’t imagine what kind of damage that knowledge had done to Killian.
But Emma also remembered a scared, lonely twelve-year-old who, even while processing the sudden death of the person closest to him, had found it in himself to be kind to somebody even more frightened than he at all the harm the world had wrought her.
Probably without his notice, his hand had crept across the table to hers and linked their fingers together.
Emma noticed, though.
“Will you – come back with me? To see it?”
To an imaginary house in the middle of the woods, on a hunch that its contents might pertain clues to his brother’s mysterious suicide?
For him, anything.
“Of course,” she said, and Killian visibly relaxed. When he released her hand she realised it was throbbing a little from how tight he had been clutching it. “Just, erm… let me drop this stuff back to Ruth’s.”
She started haphazardly gathering her strewn out study materials.
“Thank you,” he added quietly. “I’ll meet you by the trail end?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
-/-
Present Day
Killian rose far earlier than he had been intending, but something in the town was preventing him from catching even a fading vestige of sleep. It was something in the air, a thickness, a sensation which hung heavily around him. As if from the moment he had crossed the town line he had become a pulse of disturbance, and with every twist he made in the scratchy sheets at Granny’s sent out waves of ripples out into the ether, like a beacon to his presence. He felt exposed, and he’d spent much of the last few years fighting to remain out of sight.
He had considered calling David, but even with his work at the shelter he couldn’t be expected to be as cognizant as Killian prior to six o’clock in the morning. Instead, his eyes heavy with the taunt of sleep, he had gone for a walk.
There was much of Storybrooke he wanted to see again, and the more he considered it, the less he wanted to be visiting them at more populous times.
After emerging from Granny’s Bed & Breakfast, he stopped briefly to check the handles and the windows of his Chevelle. It didn’t look like it had been broken into, and a quick glance in the boot abated his concerns for his equipment. If David was to be believed, he wasn’t sure what he’d need – possibly all of it.
The morning was bleak and grey, a dark cloud lurking towards the south of the town threatening to open up onto the streets below with little warning. Deserted, the only noticeable movement was the scatter of crisp, golden leaves across the centre of the Main Street as they were ushered further down by strokes of wind. He wrapped his coat tighter around him. The clock tower stood exactly as he remembered it, proud and unchanged, but it was the room underneath that interested him most.
The library had closed – not that he was surprised. There had been a significant decline in interest as most turned their attention to the new age of internet research and Netflix even while he had lived there, and it had been cobbling together its running costs through sparse donations from Storybrooke’s more sympathetic residents. Now it looked as if somewhere in the last five years it had conceded defeat, and the windows were now clumsily boarded up with a chain looped around the handle of the door.
Through cracks in the panelling, Killian could still spot the abandoned rows of books lining the shelves, now doomed to gather dust and little else.
Don’t tell me – it’s hot cocoa, with cinnamon, and you’re about to hand it over.
He winced.
The chain appeared weak, or a sturdy pair of pliers could probably make quick work of the lock; either way, he could definitely break his way in if need be. Given his less than warm reception from Granny the night before, he doubted he’d be able to conduct his study with any real privacy in a room at the bed and breakfast and he should be considering alternate locations. The library’s closure actually presented something of an opportunity.
There was one other place he had wanted to return to, but trepidation stayed his movements. Maybe he wasn’t ready. Besides, the town was beginning to wake, and it would be better if he got off the streets.
Going back the way he’d come, Killian quickened his pace but went a block further, rounding the corner to head into Granny’s Diner instead of the residential entrance – he sorely hoped Ruby had meant what she’d said about that cooked breakfast. The sign on the door beckoned open, so he slipped inside.
To his relief, Ruby was stood behind the counter, just beginning to tie her apron around her waist. When she saw who had entered, she offered him a reassuring smile, tying the bow off at the back with a flourish.
“Coffee?” she asked, brightly.
God, he couldn’t be more relieved people like her were still in town.
“Please.”
He unlooped his scarf from around his neck and dropped it on the counter, hastily warming up from the space heater Granny liked to keep on full blast above the counter as the months turned colder. The older woman had always been a little tight with her purse, but while she invested in central heating for the bed and breakfast at the behest of many a desperate customer, she had insisted the heat from the griddle and oven should be enough to keep the diner at a comfortable temperature. The space heater was the only concession she made, which usually kept the barstools constantly occupied at peak times and otherwise.
Ruby soon approached with a mug and a pot of steaming coffee, and Killian thanked her as she handed it over.
“You’re up early,” she mused. “Granny said she went to wake you about half an hour ago, but you weren’t there.”
Granny went to snoop, more likely. What kind of proprietor tried to wake their customers before seven? He shared a knowing look with Ruby, who had the good grace to look a little sheepish on her grandmother’s behalf.
“I didn’t sleep much.”
“Is it the guilt?” called a sharp voice from the kitchen.
“Granny!”
“Worse,” Killian bit back loudly, “your mattresses.”
Ruby looked part irritated, part flustered, and cast an angry glare at the door to the kitchen. “I’m so sorry,” she said to Killian, “just give me a sec.”
She disappeared through the door into the kitchen, and Killian watched through the pass as she exchanged some harsh words with the elder Lucas, who soon huffed and stormed out of sight. Killian thought he heard the connecting door to the inn swing closed.
“Sorry about that,” Ruby continued, marching back out to the counter, a forced cheeriness there that barely masked the fury he could see dancing behind her eyes. “Granny’s got some work to do, but Floyd will be here in like, ten minutes, and he’ll kick off the breakfast rush.”
“Fine by me. She’s, ah, still the firecracker I remember.”
Ruby sighed heavily. “Wouldn’t let a silly thing like a triple bypass slow her down.”
Killian smiled over the rim of his coffee. “Of course not.”
They passed a few contented moments in silence, Ruby running a cloth across the counter and switching on the milk steamer, and Killian had just about settled himself into it when she spoke again.
“So,” she began, “what brings you back to town?”
He was tempted to suggest Granny’s snooping should have given her an indication, but the words stopped dead on the tip of his tongue once he turned to look at her. She was concentrating perhaps a little too hard on the glass she was currently polishing, staring fixedly at the way the dishcloth had folded in on itself as she pushed it inside, determinedly not looking at him. It was too nonchalant, and everything else in her posture suggested her attention was still aimed solely at him. Lowering his coffee back to the counter, he realised why.
“You know,” he observed, “don’t you?”
Ruby refused to meet his eye.
“You do. Maybe I should be the one asking you questions.”
“I don’t know anything,” she insisted. “No more than anyone else in Storybrooke.”
Killian clicked his tongue. “I’m hardly what you’d call a local anymore, love.”
The waitress seemed more reluctant still, throwing a wary look at the door out to the kitchen. Granny Lucas hadn’t reappeared.
Eventually, she decided to continue.
“I’ve just – heard things. Rumours, mainly. People have been losing stuff they have no sense losing, hearing things they have no right hearing. Nobody has hiked in weeks because of some freak weather, and people are saying the trails are haunted. You know how Storybrooke gets in October.” Like most rural towns, every other house seemed to have a ghost story of its own.
Although, Killian thought to himself, at least one of them was true.
“Then there’s what happened to David, but I bet you already know about that. The moment he told me I had a feeling you’d be back.”
She wasn’t wrong, but Killian had a feeling there was more to this than she was letting on. He told her as much.
“It… it was only once. But as I was locking up two nights ago, I thought – well,” she bit her lip, “at the edge of Main Street, I thought I saw –”
The loud clanging of the bell over the door, along with the slide of the shutters against the glass, startled them both. Ruby almost dropped the glass she was holding, and Killian merely willed his racing heart to slow. Most importantly, he wanted her to continue talking.
“What did you see?”
Ruby shook her head tightly, quickly moving across to the other end of the counter to serve the new customer.
“Ruby –”
“Two coffees to – oh!”
With a start, Killian recognised who had just walked into the diner at the exact moment she realised he was sitting there.
Clad in a soft, lavender coat wrapped tightly around her, a grey scarf wound around her neck and a familiar looking beret atop her cropped dark hair, Mary Margaret Blanchard was staring at him wide eyed, a gloved hand having flown to her chest in surprise at the sight of him.
Gone were the softer edges of her jaw that he remembered from the last time he had seen her, replaced by the distinctive shape of womanhood, the muted hazel of her eyes just a little darker than he remembered them being. Clearly she was no longer the girl he had known when he was scarcely a boy himself, and this woman stood in her place, staring at him as if he were a ghost.
He wondered what she must see when she looked at him.
“Oh,” he echoed her, once he’d gathered his wits, “hello.”
“Hi,” she greeted weakly, uncertain. Five years had passed, and she was just a little less sure of them than he was. “Um two – two coffees to go, please.” This she directed at Ruby, who was happy to have an excuse to busy herself away from Killian’s inquisitive eye.
“I didn’t know you – how are you, Killian?”
He smiled; Mary Margaret’s first thought was always one of kindness. “I only got into town last night. I’m well, thank you.” Mary Margaret returned his smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Remarkably, she looked rather like she’d prefer to be anywhere than the tiny space of air three feet away from Killian that she was currently occupying.
Odd, he thought, when they had all once been so close.
“And yourself?”
“Oh, I’m – I’m good, too. Great, really. I work at the elementary school now.” Her body pivoted, as if intending to point out of the window but realising halfway through that it was pointless, as the school was all the way across town and, besides, he knew exactly where it was. “As a teacher.”
He almost said it. He almost did.
Emma would have loved that.
Instead, he offered his own congratulations. “That’s bloody brilliant,” he grinned. At least one of them had been able to get exactly what they wanted. “Amazing.”
“Thank you.”
“Cream?”
Mary Margaret wrenched her gaze away from Killian. “Uh – sorry?”
“Cream,” Ruby repeated, not unkindly, “did you want it?”
“Oh, yes. Thanks.” She reached absently up to straighten her beret.
Deciding to take the encounter as an act of providence, Killian figured he might as well make the most of it. If even Ruby had been detecting something had shifted in the air, then somebody like Mary Margaret had to have almost as many explanations as David.
“I was hoping to run into you,” he began, “I was wondering if I could ask you –”
“Killian, I’m going to stop you right there.”
To his surprise, her interjection had been decisive, and left little room for argument. It was the sort of voice she had always saved for when she wanted to put her foot down, when things were ever getting a little too far out of hand and she had decided to put a stop to it. It probably served her well in the classroom, and the sparsity of its use had meant they had always taken her seriously when she used it.
And she had used it now.
“Alright,” he said, tilting his head to the side and encouraging her to continue.
Mary Margaret hesitated, as if searching for the right words.
“I’ve put it behind me,” she said eventually, with the same directness. “All of it. And I want to keep it there.”
She could do that? Like it was even possible?
“So if that’s the reason… if that’s why you’re back in town, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk to me. Not until you’ve found your peace, too.”
Peace, that was what she called it. Putting a lid on something too painful to carry and shutting it away where it couldn’t hurt her – if that was peace, he wanted no part of it.
“Have you?” she asked, almost hopefully. Found your peace?
In answer he merely shrugged, rueful and tired. “What do you think?”
Two coffees were placed on the counter in front of Mary Margaret and after a long moment she broke eye contact and reached forward to take them.
“Take care, Killian.”
She turned to go.
He made to go back to his own coffee, now lukewarm and bitter since being left untouched for a number of minutes, but paused as he watched Mary Margaret hesitate, then pivot on her feet to take one last look back at him.
She smiled, and he knew this was genuine.
“It really is good to see you. I’m glad you’re okay.”
He returned the sentiment, and before long the door was chiming and clanging shut behind her, the shutters bouncing off the back of the wood.
Killian couldn’t work out how he felt. It would be decidedly easier if he was angry, and for a number of moments he tried to be. Tried to be furious that she could leave it all in the past, that she could throw everything they had all been to each other into a place where she couldn’t see it, David included. But the fury wouldn’t come. Only the same tired melancholy he had carried with him for years, begging for him to let it all go. Not everybody could carry a torch as enduring as that, and it had been draining him for almost a decade – first Liam, then Emma. He couldn’t resent Mary Margaret for wanting to preserve her strength for the next phase of life, not the last.
It just wasn’t that easy for him. Or for David.
Which just left Regina.
After a moment, Killian suddenly remembered Ruby had been about to tell him something, but when he turned back to the counter he found Ashley, another waitress, in her place.
“Where’s Ruby?”
“She said she had to go prepare a couple of rooms in the Inn for some guests checking in later.” Ashley grinned, and proffered a fresh pot of coffee. “Refill?”
Rather dazedly, he realised the tired jukebox in the corner was now spitting out the second verse to Only You. Once he noticed it, he zeroed in on the sound. He gritted his teeth.
Shaking his head at Ashley’s offer, he rose from his stool. He had work to do.
-/-
October 27 th 2014 – 5 Years Ago
A large mug of a bitter, foul-smelling liquid was placed in front of him.
“There,” Sheriff Humbert said, settling into the seat across him. “You said you were tired. There’s a coffee for you.”
With difficulty, Killian raised his tired eyes from the steam curling out into nothingness from the mug, and tried to stare the sheriff down. He was sure the effect was less than pitiful, what with the dark circles that had settled uncomfortably underneath his eyes, red-rimmed and barely blinking open. Sometimes when he tried to focus on the Sheriff, he found his gaze drifting six inches or so to the left, and his thoughts were becoming muddled and bleary.
Only one thing remained crystal clear in his mind. Over and over, the scream that battered and ricocheted around his skull.
(Killian – Killian, don’t –!)
When he spoke, the words scratched the back of his throat and his voice was hoarse – he had been yelling all night, and in the pastel pink glow of morning that trickled through the barred window, he needed to rest.
“You’re not letting me go?”
The sheriff folded his arms. “I’m not satisfied yet.” Bloody fuck this man was coming after him like a rabid dog. Emma was – Emma was – gods knew what had happened to Emma, but Killian would have much preferred he was out there looking for her and not trapped in here under the doubtful scrutiny of the town’s only detective. Damn Mary Margaret and her insistence on this.
He knew at this very moment the woods were being combed through by any of the denizens of Storybrooke awake and aware of what had happened, and he longed to join them.
“So, let’s go over it again,” the sheriff continued. “You and your friends are out in the woods in the middle of the night for – well, god knows what. Then Emma Swan just – disappears?”
Her wrist stained red, angry welts erupting across her forearm. Eyes as dark as obsidian.
Killian wanted to cry. Already had. Had wept for hours as they tore through the forest.
Killian – Killian, don’t –!
“Yes, she disappeared.”
“Your friends say she was with you when she went missing. That you were the last one to see her.”
“I was.”
The sheriff spread a hand, inviting him to continue. When Killian was not forthcoming, he pressed. “So, what did you see?”
“I didn’t see anything,” Killian snarled, even as his voice trembled and cracked. “Aren’t you the police? Shouldn’t I be asking you for answers?”
A wave of nausea rose from his gut to his gullet, and with difficulty he pushed it back down as he pressed a hand to his forehead. It came away wet, drenched in sweat and dew.
“Why were you out in the woods?”
He took a deep breath, tried to force himself to sound normal. “We were just messing around.”
“At midnight?” The sheriff stared at him doubtfully. “Near a ravine?”
The ravine, he knew he wanted to say. No use in either of them being coy about just why Killian, a seventeen-year-old, had become a target in this investigation.
“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Were you drinking?”
“No.”
“Had you been drinking?”
Killian’s gaze snapped up angrily. “No.”
Sheriff Humbert clicked his tongue. “Had Emma Swan been drinking?”
Without planning to, Killian’s fist swung down and slammed on the table, hard.
He’d not let an asshole like Humbert disparage her.
“Nobody was bloody drinking, alright?”
“What other reason do five seventeen-year-olds have to venture into the woods in the middle of the night?”
His wrist was still sticky with blood, and he knew he stank. His leather jacket had been flung onto the floor within five minutes of him being shut in the interrogation room, but his shirt was still foul with sweat and earth. He knew how it looked, but he hadn’t been thinking of that when the four of them had finally agreed to admit this had spiralled far out of their control.
Emma was gone. And they needed help.
But they shouldn’t have come here.
“Emma is missing,” he spat at the detective, fury and misery overwhelming him, and he felt the humiliating sting behind his nose that he knew would preface hot tears as his shoulders began to tremble. He had always felt things too deeply, that was his problem.
I’m not finished, Liam had snapped, don’t you walk away from me.
“You should be out there bloody finding her, not grilling me!”
“Emma is missing,” the sheriff agreed sharply, “and I assure you, I’m doing everything in my power to find her, but for that I need you to stop fighting me.”
Killian could scarcely remember a time when he hadn’t been fighting.
Don’t tell me – it’s hot cocoa, with cinnamon, and you’re about to hand it over.
The sheriff drummed his fingers on the table. “Are we on the same page, Mr. Jones?”
Wiping his eyes, he nodded mutely.
“You and your friends reckon she disappeared around midnight, is that correct?”
“Yeah,” he croaked.
“Then why did no one come to alert the station until five?”
(Bring her back. You bring her back right now, Jones, or I swear –!)
Killian swallowed. “We were – trying to find her.”
“You were trying to find her,” Sheriff Humbert repeated.
“We didn’t think it was serious. At first. We thought she’d just wandered off.”
The words tasted like ash in his mouth.
“And you say no alcohol was involved?”
“No.”
“Then why in god’s name weren’t you a little more concerned that your friend had just – disappeared? If you had told us sooner, we might have –”
The door to the interrogation room burst open.
Dr Archibald Hopper (MD) stood in the doorway, quivering with a barely suppressed rage which he directed solely at the sheriff. Killian, far more overwhelmed and relieved to see him than he had ever been in his entire life, finally gave way to the weariness of keeping his emotions at bay and felt tears begin to spill down his cheeks. He quickly covered his face with his hands, but could hear the furious exchange between the social worker and the detective.
“Sheriff Humbert, I must insist you stop this instant. Killian, don’t say another word.” A pause. “How dare you?”
The sheriff was unapologetic. “He’s a witness.”
“He’s a minor, Sheriff, need I remind you. And he has been through quite enough today already.” Killian dropped his hands, and he could tell the moment Archie realised he’d been crying. “Do you have any idea what kind of irreparable harm you may have already caused this poor boy? Killian, get your jacket.”
Forcing his stiff limbs into movement, Killian knocked his chair back with a loud scrape and reached for his discarded jacket. It was torn in at least three places he could see.
“This was a voluntary interview, Dr Hopper – Killian came to us. A girl is missing.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Archie replied hotly. “That girl was put under my charge long before she became your case, Mr Humbert. And I will not have you waste valuable resources in here interrogating a child when you should be out there, finding her.”
He ushered Killian to the door who went, willingly. He felt as if he might be floating, was more relieved to have somebody else take charge; he almost staggered into Archie as he was led out into the hall.
“If you approach this boy again without my express permission you’ll be hearing from my attorney.”
“This isn’t over,” the sheriff growled.
“Oh,” Archie scoffed, a hand landing heavily on Killian’s shoulder as they began marching down the hall, “it really is.”
Killian tripped over his feet as he tried to keep up, and caught only the side of Archie’s stony expression as he looked over at the man. He had never seen him like this. Ever since he had moved into the group home Archie had been nothing but mild-mannered pragmatism, had endured a thousand wild tempers from Killian over the years with nothing other than an infuriating level of understanding, to the point where it had occurred to him on more than one occasion that it wasn’t even possible for Archie to get angry.
It had also never really occurred to him that the man cared a whit for him beyond that which his profession demanded, but perhaps that had been more Killian’s tendency to close himself off to the possibility. Emma had taken a long time to penetrate, too.
At the thought of Emma, another wave of nausea rushed over him and he tugged on Archie’s sleeve as they left the station, stopping in his tracks and hunching over the flowerbed near the entrance. He retched three times, but nothing came out. There was nothing for his body to expel. He realised he was hungry. Famished. Archie rubbed a gentle hand on his back until he felt well enough to straighten.
“Killian,” he said gently, much more the man he knew than the hurricane that had whisked him away from Sheriff Humbert. He stooped to meet his eye, and Killian could see the sorrow that had settled softly behind the rim of his glasses. “I’m going to ask you this only once, because I trust you to be completely honest with me.”
Killian nodded, quivering in the brisk air of morning.
Archie’s mouth was set in a thin, concerned line.
“Do you know what happened to Emma Swan?”
Killian – Killian, don’t –!
It was a good thing Archie Hopper trusted him.
“No.”
Even if he shouldn’t.
-/-
October 20 th 2019 – 6 Days Prior to Present Day
After a few moments, David realised he was awake.
Awake, but he couldn’t move.
As if there were some yawning gap between his impulses and his actions, when he tried to rise to a sitting position or even twitch a finger, he felt nothing stir. His ears had popped or, at least, that’s what it sounded like – the regular hums of the old house, the refrigerator, the electric heater on the landing that Ruth always insisted on leaving on, were unusually muffled and a distant ringing had settled there instead.
The room was dark as pitch, only a crack of light from the streetlamp outside falling against the opposite wall, and he knew Ruth must be asleep. Once again he tried to lift a hand, unconsciously intending to mop some of the sweat from his brow, but when nothing happened a swell of panic began to rise within him.
And all at once, he understood he was no longer alone in his bedroom.
With his eyes fixed on the ceiling David couldn’t turn his gaze to the unknown assailant, lurking as they were just at the end of his bed, but he could hear the gentle swish of fabric against the floor, the beams of light from the window winking in and out as the figure passed in front of them, and he began to breathe harder. He was desperate to take deep, gasping breaths but his lips refused to open further than a sliver, and the more he tried to regain control, the more agitated he became.
“Stop,” a gentle voice whispered, “it’s alright.”
David froze and his heart soared, but was immediately clutched by an intense and terrible terror; because he knew that voice.
Something touched his right hand, cold and dead and strange, clutching onto him tight and when David tried to flinch away he managed the barest flicker of movement. Pulse racing and bolstered by the progress, David focused all of his energies on his neck, stiff and unyielding, needing to turn and get a look at the intruder.
As their grip overtook his entire hand, with an enormous effort he managed to tilt his head.
Their eyes locked for a split second, and the darkness stole his cry.
The intruder stared at him intently. They wanted him to remember.
“Bring me the dagger.”
He blinked, and like a spell had been lifted David lurched onto his right side, gasping for air and resisting the urge to retch, a clumsy hand fumbling for the lamp at his bedside and slamming the switch. Warm light bloomed through the entire room, but David was alone again.
His mind kept whirling, replaying the image over and over and trying to process what he had seen – but that stranger, he couldn’t forget them. It was a face he’d spent every single day over the last five years desperate to remember and cherish forever.
It was Emma.
Not caring for the lateness of the hour, David scrambled for his phone left charging by his bed, and called the only person in the world who might believe him.
After stumbling his way through a greeting on Killian’s voicemail, he tried to get to the crux of the thing in the least alarming way possible.
“There’s something – I have something you need to see.”