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It was the rust that did it, in the end.
They’d been back from the Underworld for, oh, two weeks, and he’d started to notice things. Strange things. They were infrequent, at first— odd, but nothing to worry about.
Then they began to add up.
One of the first things Killian had noticed was the sweet scent of decay. Only the briefest whiff, and then it was gone. He’d be making toast, or taking a walk with Emma, or training Henry in swordplay, and there it would come. The first few times, he asked if anyone else smelled it. He quickly learned to stop asking— and so the mystery remained.
That sickly scent had been taunting his nose—just here and there—for something like a week when he found, one Tuesday, that his fingers outright refused to obey his commands. He realized with a slight shock that he couldn’t even feel them. And then, just as quickly as he’d noticed it, they “came back online,” as Henry might have put it.
It happened again two days later. When he regained feeling in his fingers this time, he noticed—to his instant chagrin—that they were cold as death. And, as if on some haphazardly answered cue, the sweet odor of a body’s decay wafted at the edges of his senses.
Now, perhaps if it had been only those two things, deeply unnerving though they were, it might have been alright, in the end; he might not have found himself teetering on his mind’s thinnest edge.
Then the rust came.
The next evening, while he was undressing back in his cabin on the Jolly Roger (and not at Emma’s, for a change), something caught his eye. That’s… odd, he thought.
There, on the inner edge of the tip of his hook, was a flake of rust.
It could have come from anywhere. Nothing to panic about. He’d simply scratched something rusty without realizing it; he would have to check the old girl’s rigging for those spots of corrosion that bloomed periodically.
He took a deep breath, because this was ridiculous. This was entirely ridiculous. It was not related to the smell. Or to the numbness. You’ve come back to life, mate, he told himself. There are bound to be some adjustments. But when he let the deep breath out, he directed the exhale—casually—in the direction of his hook.
The flake didn’t move.
It’s nothing. Stop being daft . He reached up to rub it away.
It still didn’t move, although the outer layer had disintegrated onto the pad of his thumb. Fuck, fuck. His heart began to pound.
When he scratched at the flake with his thumbnail, the rust came away— finally— and he breathed a sigh of relief before looking once more at his hook.
The metal was marred.
His breath caught in his throat; his jaw muscles worked even harder at their bones. His hand went instantly to the spot to be sure. The metal was marred. The rust hadn’t come from elsewhere— it had erupted on his hook, which was absurd. He took fastidious care of the implement. He always had.
He took a sailor’s pride in keeping clean and dry this weapon of death, this appendage with which he often caressed locks of his love’s golden hair, this tool which he had, over the centuries, come to see as simply an extension of his arm. And, somehow, it had begun to rust anyway.
It opened a door to madness.
——————
He should never have entered the damned deal, in the first place. He’d known immediately that he should never have taken it. But how the hell was he supposed to have turned down the chance to go back? To be with Emma again? To have a future with her again? (Gods, they had barely started talking about such things when their life together quite literally went to hell.)
So, he’d taken the deal. He’d reached out hesitatingly, at first, and then plunged his hand into Hades’ like a lightning bolt— too quick and reflexive a movement for his own muscles to second-guess it.
And all at once, he’d found himself standing behind Emma, in the graveyard. Staring at her beloved, unusually straight blonde locks pulled back into a pony…tail? (He thought that was the term of this realm.) Perhaps it was some kind of mourning ritual. He’d been unexpectedly touched— not least by the fact that he’d found her standing at his grave, laying his enchanted flask at the foot of the fresh mound of dirt. (Strange, to have been looking at his own grave, he mused later.)
”Swan?” he’d asked, and you know the rest. Except for this: As she kissed every inch of his joyous face, three words in Hades’ voice were ricocheting like an errant shot between his ears.
Don’t. Look. Back.
——————
Fine. Yes, he knew what it meant, now. What it must have meant. For as he now turned over in his mind the uncanny sensations that had followed his return, one ghastly temptation took root.
You see, it sprouted from the seed of a question. It was a question that occurred to Killian quite innocuously: When he had been returned from death, had he also been returned from the grave?
That is, what had become of his body? Did it still linger beneath his headstone? Was it, at this very minute—that body that he had called his own, from the moment of his birth until his death hundreds of years later—still decomposing there? He didn’t actually know the specific terms of the deal, where the mechanics of his resurrection were concerned, he realized now— the deal he had taken so quickly, so foolishly.
There were questions he needed answers to. It was far too late to ask them.
He had some clues, but they were wildly insufficient. Some of his scars, for example, were missing. Some were present and accounted for, but still others had been… relocated. It was disconcerting. And it indicated to him that this was not, in fact, the body he had previously inhabited. No— this was something new. And that realization had precipitated even more questions (for which he would likely never get answers).
Such as: What if the deal had gone wrong? What if the body in the grave— his body, his grave—wasn’t actually the one decaying? What if all of these strange, deathly omens he was haunted by indicated that some terrible mistake had been made? That perhaps he—in this new body furnished him—was the one slowly decomposing? Even while breathing, even while walking the earth?
Don’t. Look. Back.
Yes, he knew what it meant. And he loathed it.
Don’t look back at the old you. Don’t look back at the version of you that actually had all of your scars in the right places. Don’t look back at the very real, physical representation of who you were. Who you have always been, but are no longer after this strangest of rebirths.
Don’t look back at your body, Hades had been telling him. The one that, with any luck, simply continued to rot underground. But if he wanted to remain here—to remain with Emma, with Henry , with Dave, with Emma— he could not check. He knew the legend of the two lovers, doomed apart by one fateful, too-tempting look back. So no, he could not take the action he most longed to in order to assuage the growing dread that something awful was happening to him. To him, and not to his corpse. He supposed he would at least find out eventually whether that was the case.
But then there was another possibility, one that he might never get to have confirmed or ruled out, for as long as he lived (this time). The possibility that by some trick, or by some awful catch, Killian was being called to by his own deceased self. That his body was in fact decaying as it should be, but that it was somehow haunting him from its resting place.
He didn’t know which option was worse. One would lead to his slow and horrifying demise; the other could mean a lifetime of the slow, horrific breakdown of his sanity.
He needed an answer. Now.
But he couldn’t look back , and so he had, somehow, to resist the unshakeable urge to pull up his own grave dirt by the fistful, to let it embed itself under his shiny, new fingernails. And perhaps, in so doing, to reclaim some part of himself that he was beginning to feel had not come back with him.
No, something was not right. Something was wrong; something was missing; something was decomposing. And he didn’t know for certain what it was or how to fix it, because he could never pry open, with his inexplicably rusting hook, the casket in which he’d been lain to rest. So perhaps he would never know.
He noticed suddenly that his teeth were grinding together so forcefully he was in danger of cracking one (or three) of them. He had to find a way to stop obsessing over this question. There would be no getting around the terms; this was Hades he had shaken hands with, and the consequences of breaking their deal were unthinkable.
Don’t. Look. Back.
——————
Killian tried. Over the next few days, he tried valiantly to distract himself whenever thoughts of the subject inevitably arose. Whenever symptoms arose, too— as they were doing ever more frequently. He tried math problems. Increasingly complicated math problems. He practiced the translation of various dead languages, reaching for more and more difficult words. It didn’t work.
The conviction that something had gone terribly, irremediably wrong continued to grip Killian’s heart, and it was not letting go. His ankles had started going numb, now. And the day after that began, his entire left leg went out for a solid minute. It kept him on edge. He was constantly looking around for what he might brace himself against if— when —it happened again. He couldn’t go on like this.
And, when the next villain came—as that, too, inevitably would—what if he was unable to fight? What if he lost control of an arm while he was in the middle of trying to protect Emma, or even Henry? What if he became totally paralyzed in the moments before an oncoming deathblow he could not block?
The damned rust spot also haunted him daily. No, hourly. Possibly every waking minute. And he had, in trying to avoid thinking about it, begun to detect something almost like distaste for his own hook— something he was also endeavoring not to think about. Yet his fingers had continued to lock up at moments that were completely random, as far as he could tell. He’d had to resort to doing more and more tasks with his hook, things he would normally do with his hand. Each time, he said a silent prayer (to no one) that no one around him would notice the change. He didn’t know how he would even begin to explain what was wrong, if they asked.
My body is haunting me, he might say. Utterly fucking ridiculous. And it would only spread his own anguish to those around him— a coward’s choice.
Don’t. Look. Back.
If only he could know what was happening to him. If he could only check…
Damn it all, mate, he told himself, that is not an option.
And what if it were his new body decaying, instead? Would he slowly rot away? (Would he feel it?) Should he find a way to say goodbye to Emma— for the third bloody permanent time? Fucking hell, he couldn’t go through this again.
And what if he was wrong? What if it was all just a figment of his own damned imagination, scarred by all that he had been through? He couldn’t put Emma through a goodbye again, either, especially if he turned out to be mistaken. To simply be conjuring it all in his mind.
His mind. Maybe he should see the cricket. Perhaps that was the right move to make…
But then, having one psychologist—or therapist, or whatever the bloody hell he was called—for the entire town would decidedly not be to Killian’s advantage in this situation. Because, in the end, he hadn’t told Emma about the bargain he’d made. He had planned to, of course, and had opened his mouth to explain it in the graveyard— but then she was kissing him, and she was laughing, that sweetest of sounds, and she said she didn’t care how he got back. So, he didn’t tell her.
He was beginning to regret it. Had it already been too long? Could he still tell her? Perhaps he could explain the whole thing—why he had been a bloody coward and withheld it so long, and why he had taken the deal in the first place. And then, that being done, he could go off and consult with the cricket. Maybe by some miracle the man could help him shake this madness. Yes, that had the makings of a sound plan.
A light rapping noise shook him from his tangled thoughts.
”Killian?” Emma called softly, from outside the bathroom at her parents’ loft. “You alright in there?”
He cleared his throat. “Aye,” he said through the barrier. “Fine, love.” His eyes looked crazed in the mirror. His hair was greasy from all the raking through it his fingers had been doing lately.
He splashed some cold water from the tap—marvelous things—onto his ashen face, then slapped his cheek once, quietly, for good measure. He finished drying his hand, waving it for a moment through the air to get the spots that he could not (at least, not without risking tearing a hole in the Charmings’ embroidered hand towel, as unsteady as he was right now). He reached for the doorknob. His nose was once again assaulted by the familiar, loathed odor of rotting flesh.
——————
He was running out of time, it seemed. The scent of decay was flooding his nostrils with ever-increasing frequency. Sometimes it accosted him more than five, even ten times in a single day. You’d think a man might get used to it, at that rate— but you don’t get used to something like that, Killian supposed. At least not when your suspicion grows with every passing hour, every passing whiff, that it is the stench of your own rotting body calling to you from your own, actual grave.
It had cropped up yet again, shortly after he left the bathroom. He’d had only a brief reprieve. This time, it arose at the kitchen island— where he, the Charmings, and their daughter were still gathered around mugs of hot cocoa. (Killian had spiked his own, heavily, when the others were distracted in a round of laughter he could scarcely join in on.) Henry was off with his other mother, and Killian supposed that now was as good a time as any to try asking about it again. If he did it now, he was less likely to worry the lad.
After one more healthy swig of spiked cocoa, he found the courage to ask—as casually as possible—“Does anyone smell that?”
Three sets of brows furrowed; three noses sniffed the air. “No, what?” three voices replied, in a messy sort of chorus.
Killian’s jaw worked of its own accord. “Nothing,” he said, shaking his head tightly. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps something came in the open window,” he said, gesturing to said window when his hand was done scratching behind his ear.
David clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “You alright, mate? ” His tone on the last word was joking, but his eyes betrayed real concern.
Killian did his best impression of one of his grins, then, pulling out the one that came with raised eyebrows and a tongue in the cheek. “‘Course, Dave. Must have just been a whiff of your garbage disposer— that horror in the sink that threatens the digits of everyone within a twelve-foot radius.” He wiggled his fingers.
David chuckled. “Hey, I keep that thing in better shape than your ship. It smells like lemons and dish soap, thank you very much,” he grumbled playfully. Snow’s responding giggle was so light and free that Killian dared to hope he’d gotten away with it. (He was refusing to notice Emma’s gaze, no doubt searching for leads on his face.)
Regardless, he had confirmation, now. All the other times he’d dared to ask about the smell—before he’d known how wrong things were—he’d been either alone or outside, where it could be dismissed. But this, this was certain. Because he was not alone. And the stench was awful. And they were indoors, and no one else could smell it. It was unmissable, unmistakable. So he knew, now, that this was a hell that followed only him.
He felt a deep unease turning in his stomach. Inside him grew the conviction that, rather than bearing the reality of his body’s postmortem decay himself, he was somehow experiencing the sensations it was privy to. That he was feeling what it felt— or would feel, if it were animated, he supposed.
He held back a groan of dread, conscious as usual of the appearance he needed to maintain. Still, he had at least narrowed down the likely cause of this madness, and that was something. And the more he considered it, the more he felt it there, lurking palpably in his bones, moaning deathly in his rushing blood. There was some inexplicable, mystical tether linking the man and the corpse.
Don’t. Look. Back.
——————
He didn’t manage to hold up the facade much longer.
“Are you okay, Killian?” Emma had asked him, as they walked back to her home. Her gaze had been penetrating. He’d done what he could to avoid it while trying desperately to maintain the appearance that, yes, of course he was okay.
“Aye, of course I’m okay,” he’d said. “Why, love?”
She’d slowed her walking, peering at him until finally she stopped on the sidewalk. “You’re lying.” It was matter-of-fact, though he thought he detected an undercurrent of hurt. (Emma might have been an open book to him, but he was having some trouble reading it at the moment— concentrating, as he was, on staying upright after losing sensation in his right foot and ankle. He was grateful she’d stopped walking.)
“Emma,” he’d replied, at a loss.
Her eyes had only bored into his even more intently.
His jaw worked its bones. Fuck it. “Alright! Fine, yes,” he’d said, not quite managing to keep a hold on the temper that he knew, by now, was only flaring now out of fear and exhaustion. “Something is… something is wrong.”
Emma had only raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to go on.
“Very, very wrong,” he’d added. “Emma,” he’d gone on, his voice soft now and desperate, “I don’t know how to explain what’s happening to me.”
She had looked him deeply in the eye, then— tenderly, this time. She had taken his hand and hook in her hands. “Try,” she’d said.
——————
They’d changed their route after that, walking to the docks instead of to Emma’s house. He’d attempted to explain the whole thing: the devil’s bargain he’d taken to get back to her, the smell of death following him everywhere, the numbness, the coldness, the rust. She’d become increasingly horrified, squeezing his hand tighter and tighter (without realizing it, he could tell) as he spoke.
They were sitting, now, on their usual bench, looking out at the water. Several quiet moments passed, each of them lost in thought. Each of them treading water in the vast and only growing expanse of their worry.
It was Emma who broke the silence. “We have to do something,” she said quietly. “We can’t just wait and hope this gets better, Killian.”
“Aye,” he conceded, letting out a short puff of air. He kneaded at his right temple. “But what can even be done?” he said, waving his arm in a helpless gesture.
She thought. She offered to check his grave for him. Maybe if it wasn’t he who looked, she argued, the terms of the deal wouldn’t be broken. He staunchly refused.
“Swan, I do not want you looking at my decomposing body! It would almost certainly scar you for the rest of your life.” His face was grim.
“Not to mention,” he added, “it could taint our… more enjoyable activities for the rest of…” He cleared his throat. “…Our time together,” he finished awkwardly. He had just truly realized, in that moment, that they had no sense of how long that might be.
He heard her suck in a breath; he stroked his thumb along the side of her hand in response. “Emma, listen to me,” he went on, his voice low and sincere. “We don’t know what’s in that grave. We don’t know what it—what I—will look like. And I’ve already caused you enough pain for several lifetimes. If there’s another way, we will find it. But… please, not that one.” He held her gaze.
She met his eyes for a long moment, then released a held breath. “Fine,” she said, shaking her head. “I won’t… dig up your grave.” She looked as though she hated the very taste of the words.
“But we’re taking you to see Whale, tonight,” she said. She would brook no argument.
——————
And so they found themselves waiting in the hospital exam room, seven minutes past midnight, while Dr. Frankenstein looked over the results of some initial tests.
“Swan, I really feel like thi—”
“Nope,” she responded instantly. It went on like that for some time before she finally allowed him to speak.
“Emma,” he began, “I know what the good doctor is going to say. ‘Nothing is wrong! Have some medicinal jelly and go home!’” Neither of them laughed.
“How can medicine diagnose the stench of death haunting only me?” he went on, keeping his voice low. “Or the mysterious appearance of rust on my hook?” Or the certainty that my own dead body is calling out to me, he did not add.
“You don’t know —” she whispered back, but the doctor’s return cut off her retort.
Whale looked through the chart on his clipboard, flipping back and forth between pages. He looked up at them. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m sorry, Hook,” he said, his face sympathetic and sincere. “Everything on the medical side looks completely normal.” He shrugged slightly with his clipboard. “This looks like magic to me, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever encountered in my, ah… pursuits. Have you tried going to the fairies?”
Killian raised his eyebrows in Emma’s direction, silently pursing his lips. Told you, love. (He couldn’t help it, even in this sorry state.)
She groaned. Gods, he loved it when she made that face— the one that was clearly “over his shit,” as she’d put it once, a long time ago. Under normal circumstances, it was an expression he loved to elicit from her.
She turned back to Whale, ignoring Killian’s hint of a smile. “We’ll go there next,” she told the doctor. Then, “Thank you, Whale. Really.”
“Well, thank me when the bill comes in,” he quipped. He left the room.
When they were alone again, Killian turned back to Emma and pleaded for sleep. They both sorely needed a good night’s rest, he argued, and the fairies wouldn’t be awake at this hour anyway.
She gave in, after a few volleys. Her own eyelids were drooping. She groaned, for the tenth or so time that night, then concentrated her remaining energy and poofed them into her foyer. “Sorry,” she said, in reply to his startled “oof.” “Faster than walking.” She yawned.
“I texted Henry to tell him we’d be home late,” she went on, softly. “He should be in his room sleeping, by now. Let’s… let’s try not to wake him, okay? And, Killian—” she said, grabbing his arm—“we will figure all this out in the morning.”
He agreed. He kissed her. His nostrils flooded again with the smell of rotting flesh. Part of his throat had gone numb. He really just wanted to get some fucking sleep.
——————
He stared at the ceiling for hours.
Why had he thought he’d be able to sleep? The very thought of it was absurd, after everything that had happened tonight. But, gods above, he really did feel like a dead man walking.
Dead man lying in bed , he corrected himself.
He thought of his body— because, of course, he could think of nothing else. He imagined it now, like him: lying just as helpless, in the same position, but staring up at a much closer ceiling. Feeling… nothing, he hoped. Or perhaps feeling… lost. As lost as the little boy abandoned on a ship, all those years ago; as lost as the man who’d just watched his beloved’s heart crushed before his eyes.
All of those things that had happened to him inside that body, not this one. Perhaps it now felt bereft, deprived of its essence, of that very life that had called it its only home for so very long. He felt as if he had stolen something from it, and perhaps in a way from himself. Something both parties desperately seemed to want back.
Killian shifted restlessly. He glanced at the clock on Emma’s bedside table. Strange things, those “digital” clocks— glaring at you in the dark while you’re trying to sleep. It was two thirty-one in the morning. He was sure he would never get to sleep again. His entire hand was numb to the wrist. When it came back, he raked it through his hair, letting the chill of death sooth his sweating scalp. He couldn’t stand this gnashing, helpless feeling much longer.
He rolled over onto his side, turning away from Emma to stare at the wall. He dragged his icy hand down his face. He sighed. (A mistake.)
“Hmm?” Emma mumbled.
Maybe if he didn’t reply, she would go back to sleep. At least one of them should get some rest.
Instead, he felt the bed move, and he knew that she was propping herself up on an elbow, toward him. Her hand came warm against his tense back— and gods, did that feel lovely. What he wouldn’t give for one more normal night with this woman he adored so fiercely. He knew he would never get it.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked softly.
“Not a wink,” he replied. “But you should,” he told her, with that specific tenderness he reserved for her alone. “Don’t let my sleeplessness make both of us miserable.”
“Oh, Killian,” she sighed. Then he felt her hand still for a moment, as if something had just occurred to her. “Is there… anything I can do to help you sleep?” Her voice carried just a hint of suggestion. She moved her hand in slow circles on his back.
Suddenly, he was overwhelmed once more by the odor of human decomposition— and it was stronger, more vile, this time than any before. Lovely timing. He barely held back a gag. Emma felt it through his back, and she withdrew her hand.
He shook his head as vehemently as he could without triggering the vomit that threatened to erupt. “Not you, Swan,” he choked. “The smell. Decay. Getting worse.”
“Fuck.” She sat up. “How many times is that today?”
“Lost count around fifteen,” he rasped between staggered breaths. “Sometime after your parents’.”
She swore again. “No, fuck this.” She threw off the covers. “You can’t sleep, and I won’t be able to, so we’re wasting our time here.” She swung her legs off the side of the bed. “Come on,” she said to him, pulling on the nearest clothes. “We’re going to the fairies now .”
He should have felt better, hearing that. He should have been hopeful. But that tug he had begun to feel in his mind—the call from his corpse—had only gotten stronger, seemingly in concert with the worsening smell.
Killian reached over to retrieve his hook and brace, picking them up by the hook from the bedside table that was slowly morphing into something like his.
He flinched, dropping it back onto the table. His hook hit the surface with a loud knock. Both of them jumped. Killian rubbed his fingers together, then, feeling the grit of flaked-off rust. More had bloomed.
The room began to swim around him. Hades’ words rang once more in his ears. They were not a warning anymore— they were a taunt. He hated them. He detested his weakness; he rued the foolish moment he shook that hateful god’s hand and sentenced himself to this half-existence.
Don’t. Look. Back.
——————
Killian was relieved that dropping his hook on the bedside table hadn’t woken Henry. Emma had been too worried, at the time, to smack him softly in the arm or to give him A Look, but that fact in itself had only driven him deeper into the muddy grave of his mind.
They were almost out the door when they heard a cracking, sleep-rough voice call to them from the top of the stairs.
“Are you guys gonna tell me what’s going on?” Henry asked. He was already dressed.
Killian and Emma exchanged looks, neither of them sure what to say.
“No, seriously,” he went on. “No getting your stories straight; no ‘oh, kid, don’t worry about it, we’re taking care of it, everything’s gonna be fine.’” Henry fixed Emma with a look of his own. “I’m not a little kid. I deserve to know where you’re going, and I deserve to know why, and I want to come with you.” He had descended the stairs during this speech, and now pulled his shoes from the front closet. He stopped, then, staring at them, shoes in hand, eyebrow raised.
“Oh, kid—” Emma started, then winced. “Right, sorry. But Henry, it’s…” She trailed off and looked to Killian for help.
Killian cleared his throat and looked at Henry. “Lad, I’m having a bit of a… gruesome problem,” he started haltingly. At the teenager’s worried expression, he went on: “It’s, ah, it’s to do my return from death.” He scratched behind his ear and glanced quickly at Emma, half-repentant. “Things haven’t gone exactly as expected, and we’re going to seek help from the fairies,” he finished.
Henry’s eyes bugged a bit. Killian supposed he hadn’t been expecting a straight answer— or any answer, for that matter. He felt for the lad. The young man . He had been through so much; he had saved his family—and Killian—from the mad author, had taken on the mantle himself, had dealt with his mother becoming the Dark One, had come to the very Underworld for Killian. And that was in the last year alone. Killian figured Henry deserved some credit.
Emma, however, had turned her head to look at Killian, her bugged eyes looking remarkably like her son’s. He shrugged at her in apology. He felt his left arm go numb below the elbow. The room filled with the odor of his rotting corpse— though he knew he was the only one who could smell it.
Emma saw the change in his expression and turned back to Henry. “Kid, we gotta go,” she said, then paused, as if deciding. She huffed out a sigh that turned into a groan. “Fine,” she said. “Put your shoes on. But it’s not… it’s not a pretty situation, and I really don’t want you to be any— more— traumatized—” She was faltering, the way she tended to do when she was overwhelmed and didn’t want to finish her sentence. Killian tried to swallow down the guilt that flooded him. He also tried to swallow down the vomit that had flooded his throat in reaction to the worsening smell.
“God, Regina’s gonna kill me,” Emma muttered, resigned, as she turned toward the door.
The three of them headed out.
——————
They had woken the Blue Fairy— or, rather, the first nun-slash-fairy they’d come across had woken her for them. They sat across from her now in the sanctuary.
Henry had, just barely, been persuaded to wait in the hall. (Given that most of the fairies were still asleep, he was listening at the door. He knew how to take advantage of a lack of supervision.)
“This… this is indeed magic,” the Blue Fairy said, having held her hand to the air in front of Killian. “But I’m afraid I can do nothing for it.”
Beside him, Emma dropped her head backward. Then she seemed to realize what she had done, and picked it back up sheepishly. “Sorry. Tired, and just… frustrated. Go on.”
Blue held her gaze on Emma silently for a moment, then nodded. “This is a god’s magic,” she went on. “It’s something beyond the reach of even fairy magic. The magic of gods can only be undone by the magic of gods. I’m sorry.” Her face was slightly troubled— which on the Blue Fairy’s visage was concerning, given how placid the woman usually was.
Killian nodded, feeling half-alive. “Thank you, anyway. Thank you for seeing us at such an ungodly hour,” he said. He scratched behind his ear. “No, ah, pun intended, of course.”
The head fairy nodded in return. “I hope you find some resolution,” she said. She, too, sounded sincere. Interesting, he thought, these well wishes from the townspeople. It was strange to him that the people of Storybrooke seemed to genuinely care what happened to him. To wish for his well-being. If he lived much longer, he might have to come back to that train of thought and work out what it meant for him.
But not now. Now, they were walking up the aisle between the pews, toward the door. (Henry had closed it again when he saw them get up from their conversation.)
“Any thoughts, lad?” Killian said when they exited into the hall.
Henry made a face that Killian supposed was meant to look innocent. It’s hard to school one’s features—he knew from experience—when one is sleep-deprived and haunted by worry.
He smiled softly at Henry (who, despite all of Killian’s reservations, deep-seated fears, and impending demise scenarios, was also starting to feel something strangely like his ). “Come on. You can’t fool a pirate, mate, at least not with that expression.” Killian was exhausted, but he put his right arm around Henry’s shoulders as they walked. He didn’t know how many more times he would get to do this.
Henry hesitated to answer. He glanced at his mom, then back to the street they were now headed down. “Well,” he started, “she said you need the magic of gods. So, where do we get you some god magic?”
——————
“Miss Swan, it is the middle of the night,” said Rumplestiltskin through the phone. “How dare you disturb me at such an hour?”
“Dark Ones don’t need sleep, Gold, you know I know that. It’s an emergency. Meet us at your shop,” Emma replied.
“Unlikely,” Gold snapped. “I may not need sleep, but what I do need is time away from you people. Good night , Miss Swan.” He added a hissed threat: “Do not even think about breaking into my shop. I promise you, you will regret it.” He hung up.
Killian’s increasingly empty eyes met Emma’s. Not even his misery—not even the loss of feeling in his torso, nor the stench of death clouding his eyes—could obscure the tiny bit of mischief he now saw dancing in hers.
——————
They broke into Gold’s shop.
“I’ll worry about him once we figure out how to stop what’s happening to you,” Emma had declared as she picked the lock. (Killian, for his part, had noticed Henry watching her small movements closely, as if taking mental notes.) (The lad’s ability to bring a smile to Killian’s face—even in the midst of all this horror—continually astounded him.)
“Come on,” Emma had said to her boys, when she got the door open. She’d glanced at Killian, ostensibly to see how he was doing. Judging by her reaction, he apparently looked horrid.
He wasn’t surprised.
They were standing inside the shop now, and all three of them seemed to realize at the same time that they had no clue where to start looking.
“Alright,” Henry said. “So, what are we looking for?”
Emma looked at him, her mouth slightly open in surprise. “I thought you had a plan. This whole thing was your idea.”
At Henry’s look of protest, she added, “Well not the breaking and entering part. But the whole god magic thing.”
“Good point,” Henry said. “Well…” He thought for a minute, looking around. “Maybe there’s something here that’s connected to a god, somehow? And maybe you could harness its magic or something?” Under normal circumstances, Killian might have nudged Henry to speak more confidently, with fewer “or something”s. But these were not normal circumstances. He said nothing. He concentrated on breathing through his mouth, instead.
That turned out to be a terrible mistake— Killian could actually taste the pervasive decay in the air. He switched back to his nose, and then he almost vomited again. There was no method of breathing that didn’t choke him further.
He really did not like the increasingly desperate way Emma was looking at him. “Okay, good thinking, kid,” she replied to Henry, without taking her eyes off of Killian. “Let’s start looking.”
Killian coughed and sputtered. He gagged. He was not a man with a weak stomach— but ever since it had come upon him on their way out of the house that night, the overpowering stench of rotting corpse had not abated for a single moment; there were only cresting, crashing waves of overpowering disgust, and opposing valleys in which he felt he could almost breathe again.
The waves were getting higher.
Still, he nodded, as if he were going to help with the search. Emma was still fixed on him with that horrified, panicked look. But he only barely registered her expression, because his eyes were flooded with tears from all of the retching he was wracked with.
Well, some of the tears were from the retching.
He felt as if he were about to pass out. And he knew that, with every cresting wave, he was inching ever closer to the edge of a sharp and deadly cliff inside his head.
In all that he had been through over the course of his long life, in all of the grievous losses he had endured, he could not remember a single time that he had felt this very close to losing his mind. (And he had come so close, so many times.) He felt his sanity slipping away through that tether in his bones, that magical link to his corpse. It was siphoning his fucking life force through this awful haunting, somehow.
He realized that he likely wouldn’t live to see the sun rise again. And, even if he could— would he want to, like this?
Hades had never offered him a deal. He had never seen fit to restore Killian to life, no matter the terms. He had only offered him a deeper circle of hell, and Killian had fallen for it.
He had to end this madness.
Don’t. Look. Back.
——————
Fuck everything about this, Killian thought as he stumbled toward the graveyard, doing his best not to drag his pilfered shovel along the sidewalk.
He was going to look back.
The tip of his hook, you see, had crumbled into rust.
The tip of his hook had crumbled into rust.
They’d been rooting around Gold’s shop, and Killian had somehow, in one of the ebbs of his mad sickness, begun to help Emma and Henry look around. Emma had looked at him with that awful concern, that deep worried look in her eyes. All over her face, really. He could tell she was barely holding back tears, and he hated— hated— that he was the reason for it. His sickness. His weakness in taking that fucking accursed deal.
But when he had managed to stand up straight, to take a few deeper breaths without choking, and to help them look, she had gradually started to divert more of her concentration to the search for something that could help him.
He hadn’t planned on leaving.
He’d been searching, looking high and low through the Crocodile’s menagerie of magical objects. He found a lamp, devoid of its genie. (Probably Sidney’s old lamp, Killian realized idly on his walk to the grave.) A magical sword— and he was done dealing with magical swords. An old coin from the same maritime kingdom as Ariel’s prince. None of the trinkets here had any obvious signs of connection to a god, and they were running out of time before he would inevitably be waylaid again by the overwhelming stench and numbness and misery.
Henry and Emma were combing through the front room of the shop, and they had only been searching there for a few moments when Killian, in the back room, had seen something… enchanting.
It was a lantern— a beautiful, ornate lantern. It felt… familiar, somehow. Had it been his, at some point in his long and storied past? Had it just been something he’d let slip away from his centuries’ worth of memories? Had he come across it in his travels? He couldn’t remember, but he found himself strangely drawn to it.
He had reached out with his hook to pick it up from its relatively high shelf. (Feeling had not entirely come back into his hand from the last episode of numbness, and so he was still relying on his hook far more than he ever had before. Heat had never reentered the hand he depended on for everything, either; he was endeavoring not to consider what that meant. Just keep looking. ) He could just barely reach the lantern’s handle, and he hooked his metal appendage—nearly covered now in rust, he noticed with a deep pang—and pulled it toward him.
The tip of his hook had crumbled off, then. So softly. So simply. It was just… gone.
His eyes had swum with red, then, and with gray, and with the briny flood of tears yet again. The room had begun to spin. He had handled so much, in his hundreds of years; he had taken the worst kind of grief and survived. Maybe it was his weakened state that bore responsibility for his shock, his denial, but all he could think was that this could not be happening. But it was.
He’d left the lantern where it was, then, after managing not to drop it. When the room had stopped spinning, and when he’d blinked his eyes clear, he’d found that the red still pervaded his vision. He simply couldn’t do this any longer. He’d scanned the room, then, his face as grim as it had ever been.
He’d quickly found what he needed. (Ironic, really, that it should be so easily found when his salvation was not.) ( Salvation . Oh, gods. Emma would blame herself for this, wouldn’t she? He’d hesitated, then. But he really, really could not go on like this. He willed her to understand.) He had grabbed the shovel then, with his deathly cold hand— but as he turned to the back door, he faced an awful moment of indecision.
They were right there, in the next room. Trying to save him— even now. His family. After all these fucking years, he realized now, he had finally found a family he could call his .
And it was too late to say goodbye.
They would try to stop him, he knew. And he was so broken down, both physically and mentally, that they would probably succeed. They wouldn’t allow him anywhere near his grave. They would do whatever it took to save him— and, given more time, he had no doubt that they would succeed in that, too.
But there was no more time. He wasn’t Killian Jones anymore— or, he soon wouldn’t be, if all they found were dead ends. It wouldn’t be much longer before his mind and body deteriorated into rust, too.
No. Better to leave now, while he still knew who he was.
Better to look back at who he was, and to resolve this entire fucking mess he had made, while he still had the last scraps of his wits about him.
Hades’ voice had echoed again in his ears in that moment, but Killian was beyond caring what that bastard had to say. He’d heard the phrase too many times. It had lost all meaning.
He had taken one long, wistful look toward the front room of Gold’s shop, then, toward where Emma and Henry were speaking in low tones, undoubtedly discussing the possible god-related qualities of the curios collected over centuries of malfeasance. He had taken one long, wistful moment to listen to their voices, closing his eyes as if to memorize their sounds.
And then he had stuck the shovel under his left arm. Ignored the tears that welled up again. Grabbed the door handle as quietly as possible, with his barely functioning hand.
And then he had slipped out the back.
—————
He stood in front of it, now.
His grave.
He gazed at its headstone—at his own headstone—for a minute or so, contemplating his own death. Surveying the absolute farce of his resurrection. How sweet it had been, for those first few days, to smell air entirely untainted by brimstone. How truly heavenly it had been to be with Emma again. To be with Henry again, and the Charmings, and even the general people of Storybrooke.
It occurred to him, suddenly, that he had somehow managed to build a life here— on land, for the first time since his childhood. There were people who cared about him, here. There were familiar places, haunts he had grown accustomed to. A community— and one broader than the crew of a ship. He felt… grounded? He felt held . He almost felt… safe , which was an absurd thing to say about Storybrooke, of all places. But it was true.
And it was never his. At least, not this time around.
No— from the moment he had taken that first fresh breath, he had been doomed. He just hadn’t known it.
Doomed to look back.
He retched once more, the smell having resurged in the last few moments. He realized he couldn’t slump here lingering over his grave for too long; Emma and Henry might already have discovered that he was missing. He brought his attention back to the task at hand.
Killian stared for one long, dour moment at the mound of earth before him. Grass had begun to grow over it. He attempted to breathe; he tried to recall the smell of grass. (He did not find much success.)
He wondered what he would find beneath it. Then, he braced himself as best he could against the earth below his half-numb, half-living feet, and began the awkward dance of putting half of his weight on the shovel while balancing on one of those half-numb feet.
It took four attempts. But he managed it, in the end.
He broke the earth.
—————
By the time he hit casket—scratching the glossy wood in one long, misshapen gouge—half of his hook had broken away in bits and pieces. They were mixed in with the dirt he had been haphazardly tossing over the side of the grave he was standing within. He’d known the hook was likely to break off, between the severe corrosion and the muscle memory that insisted on using it for leverage against the shovel. Still, he tried not to look directly at it as he dug. He braced the shovel against his wrist instead, which was clumsy but worked well enough. He vomited three times while digging. He mixed that in with the dirt, too, and kept going.
He tried to breathe. He tried to recall the smell of dirt. He tried, he tried, he had tried. Gods fucking damn it, he had tried. His eyes were beginning to cloud with tears again. He shook himself out of it. He gritted his teeth and remembered who he was. He kept going.
The shovel struck his casket with a sickening scraping—an almost squealing noise—as it slipped over the slick surface. The tool slid off of his wrist and snapped off what had been left of his hook.
He groaned— and he noticed how pathetic even that half-speech sounded. He didn’t have much time, now. He braced the shovel against his left forearm and kept digging, this time around the edges of the casket, in order to free its lid— slowly, but surely, unearthing his own corpse.
Don’t. Look. Back.
—————
He had tossed the shovel over the side shortly afterward; without his hook, it was too unwieldy. Now Killian was on his knees atop his casket, panting desperately. Pulling up—as he had wanted to do for some immeasurable stretch of time, now—the soil of his own grave by the fistful.
Dirt was caked in under his fingernails. It was smeared over his face where he had tried to wipe away rivers of sweat. He couldn’t feel his left arm at all, but that was of little use to him right now anyway.
He had dug the hole an extra foot or so longer than the casket, such that he was able to then stand up inside his grave without blocking the lid. He paused, now.
He stood before it. He was inside his own grave, and in more ways than one.
He tried to breathe. He was only partially successful. If he were to think about a scent to recall now, it would be the wrong one, that most hated one. So, he didn’t try to distract himself. Instead he waited, for just a beat, to process the gravity of what he was about to do.
Don’t. Look. Back.
Once he lifted that lid, there would be no taking it back. There would be no turning around, no pretending he hadn’t seen it. Not only would he have to live—or not—with whatever he witnessed, but he would also have to bear the consequences of looking at all.
He still didn’t entirely know what they were, though he knew they entailed decidedly not staying in the land of the living. Gods, this was not like him, letting such crucial fucking details go by the wayside. Centuries of dealing and negotiating and swaggering and attention to detail had fled from him, it seemed, and in such a short time. He could barely comprehend these changes in him— but he couldn’t deny that they had been worth making. He thought briefly of Emma. Before he realized what he was doing, he tried to recall the smell of her hair.
It didn’t work. He allowed himself a jagged sob, then. Might as well, at this point.
It was strange, this not quite knowing himself anymore. He had been trying so hard to join these disparate versions of himself together into something whole, the versions of him that had existed in fragments for so very long: the villain, the man of honor, the pirate, the brother, the hero. The scourge; the beloved. Before all of this madness began, it had made some sort of sense to him, but now he felt so steeped in his waking night terror disorientation that nothing at all made sense anymore.
Perhaps it was time for him to go. Perhaps he was just… tired. So very, very tired.
Don’t. Look. Back.
——————
He heard them running to him. He heard them calling his name. Emma and Henry were in the cemetery, now, but—
But his hand was on the lid. He had planted his feet wide in the dirt. And he hadn’t heard their voices until the very moment he had begun to shift his weight to pry it open.
He heard them. He… hesitated.
“ Killian! ” they screamed in the distance— the woman and the son who both had started to feel something like his. “Killian!” Henry shouted, from much closer. Killian bit his numb left forearm to muffle the sob that broke from his throat. He wiped away the tears he was helpless against anymore.
He looked down at the casket lid.
They were getting closer. If he didn’t now, he never would.
What was it going to be?
He had come so far— He had resisted so long— He had shaken Hades’ hand— He had held on for weeks, he had held on for them — He had a family— He had lost his grip on reality— He had madness in his bones he had a tether chaining him to his corpse—
He had to know.
——————
“Killian!” Emma yelled, up ahead. They had to find him. They had to find him now.
She and Henry were sprinting through the cemetery, toward Killian’s gravesite. They both knew where it was.
They could see from a long way off that he had dug it up; Emma sprinted harder. Henry could no longer keep up with her, but he kept running as hard as he could anyway.
Emma reached Killian’s grave and stopped short of it. “HENRY STAY BACK!” she roared, putting her arm out to block her son from getting any closer. Henry, in shock, obeyed, skidding to a stop a few feet behind her. Maybe it was her tone— more serious than he had ever heard it. Maybe he trusted, for once, that this could really be something he didn’t want to see.
“Killian?!” she shouted broadly, calling across the graveyard. “KILLIAN!” she roared. She was looking around for him.
“Mom!” Henry shouted, trying to get her attention. “MOM! Is he… is he not there?” He inched closer to the open grave.
“STOP,” she roared again, in the scariest voice he had ever heard from her.
”Mom, what’s in there? ” Henry insisted.
“It’s…” she looked back at Henry. “It’s not pretty, kid. I really—” her voice broke, “I really don’t want to see it either and I can’t ever un see it and I just—” Emma was sobbing, now.
Henry inched up to her, the way one approaches a scared horse. “Mom, Mom, it’s okay,” he said softly, trying his best to mask how freaked out beyond comprehension he was at seeing her like this. He wrapped his arms around her.
But he couldn’t help it; he couldn’t resist it. He had to know. He looked.
Killian’s corpse—jesus fuck, that’s Killian’s corpse— was something out of a horror movie. The face he had grown to look up to was somehow both bloated and desiccated, discolored beyond comprehension. There were maggots in the eyes. No, there were maggots everywhere. And the smell— Was this the stench that had been haunting Killian? It was unbearable.
Emma was still sobbing, but her head had shot up when she felt Henry’s look toward the grave. “ Henry! ” she hissed. “What the fuck, kid?” she said through jagged breaths.
Henry’s eyes were locked on the corpse. He hated that he had ever looked. He couldn’t look away.
He tried to focus on the only thing in the grave that wasn’t the rotting flesh of the closest thing he had to a father— and that was Killian’s hook.
Wait, Killian’s hook…
“Mom, wasn’t… wasn’t Killian’s hook rusting?” Henry said quietly, his eyes still locked on the corpse.
Emma was hyperventilating. “Ye— Yeah,” she hiccuped between sobs.
Henry just pointed.
“That doesn’t— he sa— he said,” she started, then cleared her throat and took a breath. “He thought everything that was happening to him— was happening to the body.”
”Mom…” Henry said slowly, “I think something is wrong.”
“No,” she insisted. “No. Nope. No.”
“Mom, he looked,” Henry said, and his voice was not only breaking from puberty. “He— he looked.” He was crying, now, too.
“No, no, NO. KILLIAN!” she shouted again across the graveyard. “ KILLIAN! ” she screamed, whipping her head to scan in every direction. She took a ragged breath.
It was quiet, then, so they heard it.
The corpse in the grave moaned softly.