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Captain Hook kept a dagger pressed to my throat sending me a smirk. “You heard of me. Strange I haven’t ever seen the type of garments you’re wearing. Tell me stowaway, what’s your name?”
“Jaide, Jaide Stilskin.” Glaring at the pirate above me I slowly moved one of my combat boots kicking him in between his legs.
The pirate groaned in pain after I kicked him in his penis watching me push myself up from the harsh wooden floor of the ship. “Stiltskin - do my eyes deceive me by having the Dark One’s daughter standing before me after all these years?”
“It’s been some time since we last saw one another, Hook. But from where I’m standing it appears you have finally given up your obsession with killing my father.” Putting one hand on my hip I clicked my tongue teasing him. “I must say it was quite foolish. Vengeful for him taking your hand.”
Hook grunted getting up from the ground still wincing with some pain. “He took more than my hand, lass. Although I believe you won’t remember much after you got knocked the bloody hell out.”
“You wouldn’t give my father the magic bean that you promised him. My father had just lost my brother Baelfire and that was the only way to travel to a land without magic.” Rubbing the back of my head I somewhat recalled the massive headache I had after someone had knocked me out.
Hook chuckled, shaking his head. “I never would have guessed the woman with long blonde hair would wield a frying pan so fiercely.”
“You know my mother. You know Rapunzel.”
He smirked in my direction. “Indeed I do. I certainly found your mother to be attractive-“
“How the hell do you know about my mother!” Finding an abandoned sword laying on the ground I snatched it up. Pressing the blade tip against the pirate's throat, baring my teeth. “Why would she give you the time of a day if she knew you were planning to kill my father?”
“Because I helped her escape the Queens Black knights and return home to her kingdom before you and your father came for the bean.” Hook explained not being bothered by the blade against his neck. He locked his gaze with mine. “She hated hurting you that day but she never stopped loving you.”
Following behind my father in her red cloak I held onto the clasp of my own cloak. My heart necklace dangling from my neck that he had given to me once he had enchanted it to be magical. Allowing me to draw magic from it if I was in dire danger. “Well, well. Seems like you finally found a family… You could never have with me.” The ship was full of a lot of men who were all loyal to the man named Killan Jones.
“Papa, who is she?” Shifting my gaze to a woman with black curly hair that takes the satchel from someone that contains the magic bean. She takes the bean out of the bag and holds it up as evidence for my father. He goes to take it, but she throws the bean over to Hook, who clenches it in his hand. “Oh that’s just mean.” I scoffed under my breath.
The lead pirate who called himself Capitan caught the bean mocked to my father. “You asked to see it, and now, you have.”
The woman I didn’t know asked. “Do we have a deal? Can we go our separate ways?”
“Do you mean, do I forgive you? Can I move on? Perhaps, perhaps. I can see you are twooly in love.” My father stepped around her with his sword attached to his hip swaying. He pointed between the woman and the pirate,
She nodded. “Thank you.”
“ Just one question.” He pointed his finger at her.
She questioned him. “What do you want to know?”
“How could you leave Bae?” Several ropes anchored along the ship begin magically coming undone. And as if second nature my hand fell down onto the handle of my sword not sure if a fight was about to break out. “Do you know what it’s like, walking home that night-“
She attempted to speak. “Rumpel-“
“Knowing I had to tell our son-“
“ Please.” She begged him to stop talking.
He finished his sentence growling. “That his mother was dead?”
“ I was wrong to lie to you. I was the coward, I-“
He cut her off. “You left him! You abandoned him!”
“And there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t feel sorry for that.” She fought back.
He throws his hands up in the air shouting. “Well, sorry isn’t enough! You let him go.”
“I let my misery cloud my judgment.” She spoke up.
“Why were you so miserable?” He stepped closer to her, getting in her face.
Her next words even nearly broke my heart and I didn’t even know my brother's mother. “Because I never loved you.”
My father Rumpelstiltskin magically sticks his hand through his ex wife’s chest making me scream, clasping my freehand over my eyes not used to his dark magic yet. “Ahhh!”
“Milah!” The captain cried out running towards our direction causing me to take out my sword thinking he would hurt me. Papa uses magic to bind him to the mast and pulls out her heart from her chest. “No!”
The pirate captain managed to break free from the ropes, causing one of the hooks to fall to the ground. He runs over to Milah and gently lays her down onto the deck. “ I love you.” Baelfire’s mother whispered to the pirate.
“Papa, surely we don’t have to kill her - d’oh!” Holding up my sword at the pair laying on the ground I got cut off getting smacked in the back of the head by something really hard. My sword clanked to the deck floor with me collapsing down onto my elbows and knees.
My father cried out my name. “Jaide!”
“I’m sorry, daughter.” Rolling over onto my side my vision started blurring and there was massive pain appearing in my head where I knew I must be dreaming. A figure stood above me wearing all black with braided blonde hair holding a frying pan in her hands off to the side.
“She’s - she was the one who knocked me out that day.” I released a breath I didn’t realize I was holding inside, tightening my grip on the handle of the blade in my hand.
“Aye. Now if you’d be so kind and lower the blade I’d like to have a fighting chance to duel with you. Allow me to grab a blade of my own and I can die in the pirates way.” Hook suggests to me.
Lowering my blade briefly he pulled his sword out from his belt aiming it at me. “Can I ask you a question first?”
“Fire away, little crocodile.” Hook nodded at me.
“What kingdom did she return to. What was its name?”
Hook replied. “Corona.”
Hook raised his sword and I followed his actions having our swords hit one another the first strike we took on one another. Sliding back on my boots I charged at him swinging for his head but he swing his sword underneath my foot, tripping me where I fell down harshly on my back. “A little rusty are we, princess.”
“It’s been 28 years since I last held a sword, pirate.” Glaring up at him I heard the water crashing underneath his ship remembering we were in a Iand full of magic now. Pressing my freehand down onto the deck boards it turned bright red, I gasped in rolled feeling fresh magic running through my veins.
Hook aimed the tip of his sword to my throat standing over me. “Have you given up already?”
“Not a chance in hell. Immobilus.” Raising my freehand I launched him backwards with magic, wrapping some tight rope straps around his body and the post he was shoved into.
The pirate's sword clattered to the deck floor as he winced. “You’re just as much a coward as he is.”
“I jumped into a magical portal to rescue my daughter so I’m not a coward, pirate.” Pressing the end of my weapon to his throat he gasped for air with my nose being pushed against his. “Now you better tell me where my daughter is on this ship or things are going to get much worse for you.”
“Sorry to disappoint you. But she’s not here, just you.” The pirate responded to me.
Blinking my eyes I felt some tears falling down my face, realizing that we were even more separated than we were before she got pulled into the portal. “Emma’s - she’s - she’s not here. Where the heck is my daughter now?”
Tags: major character death, character insight, inner monologue in canon scene, hurt/no comfort
Summary: When Milah is murdered in front of him, Killian watches his entire world crushed and carried away on the salt-scened wind. He barely reacts to the severe pain and bleeding of his own body.
Word count: 1 084
He has been a fool for thinking a heart twice shattered had a chance to hold together while still being made of flesh. He should have turned it into solid rock. He should have cast it in steel. He should have thrown it into the ocean deep and leave it to fossilize. Because now its shards are piercing his lungs and he cannot breathe without a stabbing pain.
The softest touch of fingertips brushes against his jaw and he can feel the life fading out of them. Once again, he is powerless to stop it. Once again, he watches the one he loves most turn into a cold, unresponsive, empty body right in his arms. One moment a person, full of life and love and with so many horizons to see, the next a lifeless cadaver. A beating heart is nothing but sand in the wind.
He caresses her cheek one last time, unable to turn away just yet. This is the work of a coward. A coward who wouldn't even put up a fight for her, who has never deserved her beautiful, bold, courageous heart. A coward that hadn't passed his test years ago aboard this ship. Only a coward could hide behind dark magic and dare to claim the life of a woman for not wanting him. He wouldn't fight for her but he would dare seal her fate? How dare he? How dare he!
Does he have any idea what he has just done? What kind of monster is he to destroy the most precious soul in the entire world? What kind of monster is he to take a life worth a thousand times his? Can't he see that he has blocked out the sun? That the sea runs red with blood and the air is turning to smoke? Can't he see that without her there is no point? That all gold has lost its glimmer and all songs have turned to hoarse, empty gasps and all wine has turned bitter and bleak and there will never be joy in this world ever again?
Can't he see, that empty arms, that still feel the remains of a dying loved one's last warmth are a curse most horrid and that he will never ever be able to shake it off? And how dare he let him live with the remains of her last breath clinging to him like frost to a tongue? Once again, he is left behind. Once again, he is forced to watch someone leave and he's condemned to survival. As blood spills on the deck and his clothes, as it runs thick and warm between his fingers as he clutches his wrist, his whole body should be writhing in pain, but he might as well be already fossilizing. He can only feel the hazy edges of it but he knows there is more. It is hanging over his head like a wave stopped mid-motion, lurking, waiting for the cue to crush down on him and overwhelm his senses with the worst agony he has yet to taste. But not yet. It is held at bay by a pain greater still. And a new-born purpose.
A hook is a weapon as good as any other. Anything that has a sharp point can pierce, anything that has a purpose can have another. He couldn't kill the poison that took his brother, but he sure as hell can and will destroy the poison that took his love. His fate is decided the moment when he fails to fulfill that new oath on the spot. And he sees that this is why he is still alive, why he has to be alive even as everyone who deserved to live longer becomes nothing but bones in the ocean and another scar. He was a fool to think happiness was in the cards for the likes of him. No, he has not survived to find a happy ending. He is here to fulfill a different destiny. He must be an emissary of death. He must be the agent of wrath for those that cannot feel it anymore. And he has enough wrath for all of them, more than his wretched heart can hold. He can feel it pouring out through the cracks. And he lets it flood him. He lets it drown out the hopeless, lost despair. And he dons vengeance like a thick, grief-proof coat. What else is there left for him to do but destroy what has destroyed those that made life worth living? A thirst like he has never felt before takes over him. A thirst for crocodile blood.
No, he doesn't need gold to glimmer or songs to sound pleasing and merry or wine to be velvety and sweet. He doesn't need the sun to shine and the ocean to glint in its light. He needs to break what has broken him. He needs the satisfaction of annihilation. He needs to rid the world of this dastardly, abominable demon.
He has loved people whom he would have followed to the end of the earth and beyond. But now they have both fallen off the edge and he is once more left to roam the seas aimlessly like a ship without a crew. Like a wind torn sail without a purpose. The time of love is over. Now there is only one course in the stars for him. The age of hatred has begun. And he will follow it to the blue unknown. He knows what his dying breath will be. A proclamation of triumph when he will have slayed the demon.
The world sways around him as its single focal point becomes the glint of the hook he is holding. And it is then that the wave of unmatched suffering crushes down in full force. His knees buckle and his head spins in haze. And he can't see anything but red, red, red and dark spots and oh, he never knew he could hurt like this.
"Captain!" somebody calls out.
Feet pound on the wood and rush toward him. He is fading. Like Milah's heart. Like Liam's smile. Like a lantern's flame in the draft. But this darkness isn't death, it is merely slumber before he is reborn from the ashes, with a heart of stone this time. He cannot die, for he isn't truly alive anymore. His is an eternal death. A death he will live out to the last weary day. The hunt for revenge has only just begun.
ONCE UPON A REWATCH | S2EP04: THE CROCODILE is now available!
In which The Narrators Three discuss Charming's blazing guns, Captain Eyeliner, Belle spills the (iced) T, Ruby never narcs on a galpal, women being used as tools to further the narrative of men and other extreme disappointments.
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