if you live by the word, you die by the pen -- CH13 (AKA The Conclusion)
SUMMARY: It’s just another day with bad coffee, the day that Sheriff Swan enters Detective Jones’ precinct.
The fact that his life is about to come apart at the seams is purely incidental.
With apologies to Dashiell Hammett and James Ellroy, i’m playing in their sandbox and i’m taking the bucket and the shovel. You guys can keep the rake.
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|CH1| CH2 | CH3 | CH4 | CH5 | CH6 | CH7 | CH8 | CH9 | CH10 | CH11 | CH12 |
AO3 (if you want decent formatting, because tumblr does not).
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A/N: OMG. i did it. IT’S DONE.
i realize in the grand scheme of things this means nothing - especially not these days, but--- hey, you take your wins where you can get them and---
i. AM. DONE.
(i feel like a full orchestra should have accompanied that last sentence.) 😂
i am giving you the entire rest of the story, epilogue and all, because i have made you guys wait enough. Seriously. i can’t believe you’re still with me. You are the awesomest.
And watch out. This may be the most furious battle i’ve ever written. Strap in, because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride to the Happy End. BUT. i promise you - promise you - that bit of darkness i’m going to run you through? It will be worth it in the end.
So, to all of you - but especially my lovely @jennjenn615 - trust me one more time, OK? Please?
All right. HERE WE GO.
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Thanks first and foremost to @profdanglaisstuff who holds my hand every time i go off the deep end, but most of all - this is a story chock full of linguistics, and she is a linguist, and it would not have happened but for her. Guys - if you enjoyed this ride, thank her.
Also all my love to @katie-dub who is my Isle of Man connection and all-around superwoman, and @ohmightydevviepuu who on most days makes Hercules look like a lazy bum and has waited nearly a year for this to get finished. Does anyone even remember that this was her birthday fic?
i DO.
i’m sorry it took so long, honey.
And thanks to everyone, every single one of you reading -- lurking or flailing, quiet or loud -- THANK YOU.
Thank you for coming on this ride with me. If you need me, i’ll be over there with a shot of whisky.
💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕.
With extra love for @captainsjedi, for the incredible art that started it all.
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If you want on or off the tag list, let me know! (And seriously - if it’s ‘off’ - please don’t worry. Absolutely no hard feelings.)
@mariakov81 @stahlop @thejollyroger-writer @snowbellewells @captainsjedi @toomanyfandomstochoosefrom @xarandomdreamx @tiganasummertree @mayquita @ohmightydevviepuu @sals86 @karenfrommisthaven @kmomof4 @kday426 @superchocovian @jennjenn615 @facesiousbutton82 @suwya @spartanguard @capnjay21 @shardminds @carpedzem @girl-in-a-tiny-box @ilovemesomekillianjones @lfh1226-linda @artistic-writer @teamhook @katie-dub @shireness-says @qualitycoffeethings @cluttermind @fragilebeautifulchaos @optomisticgirl @klynn-stormz @winterbaby89 @ethereal-madnesss @scientificapricot @fragilebeautifulchaos @anxioussquirrel @killianjones-twopointoh @captain-emmajones
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CHAPTER 13
They’re on the roof.
On the roof.
There is a clock tower in the distance.
The wind howls around them, thunder rolls so hard her bones rattle, the lightning cracks as if rending the fabric of space-time itself, and Killian---
Killian.
He’s standing with his arms around her, holding her while the world around them tears asunder, and she has never been this afraid. This is terror the likes of which she could never have fathomed, because she realizes in a long, slow, excruciating moment that to fear for another person is infinitely worse than to fear for oneself, and she is so
so
so terrified for the man wrapped around her.
He’s looking at her, blue eyes calm and steady, even in this absolute cacophony, looks at her and holds her tight and lets warmth pulse through both of them, warmth and strength and the first sliver of hope, and then----
With a deafening crack the air around them splinters .
A long tear, blacker than the thunderclouds overhead ratchets down an invisible seam and grows larger and larger until it is a bubble wrapped around the rooftop, dark and ominous and howling, and through the darkness comes a figure
the figure of a man, no---
the figure of
a boy.
A blond boy, tall and skinny, not far into his teenage years.
“Ah,” he says, stepping down to the concrete. “Finally.”
He is dressed like the hunters in medieval fairytales - brown and green clothing meant for camouflage in verdant territory, leather and wool and rough linen and he lifts up his hand and the howling, the lightning, the thunder all stop .
The bubble holds, a ball of iridescent, swirling black, blocking out the town around them, wrapping them in a silence so complete, it does not seem part of this world. All Emma can hear is her own rapid, frightened breathing, and Killian’s lips next to her ear whispering, “Steady, love.”
There is no sound but what they make.
The boy walks up to them both as if he were taking a stroll down the well-manicured lawn of a country estate, blithe and carefree, except that his swagger has a touch of gunslinger to it. He looks at them both. His smile is wide and utterly vicious.
“Look at what we have here,” he says. “The Savior.” He rolls the word Savior in his mouth like a piece of candy while his eyes flash briefly and his smile becomes wider and sickly sweet. “What a pleasure it is to finally meet you, Emma Swan.”
He knows her name.
He knows her name .
Emma can’t move.
She can no longer feel Killian’s arms around her, can no longer feel the warmth between them. She is paralyzed, petrified, frozen.
Far far away she can feel Killian’s lips next to her ear, just a breath, IAmHere .
Emma’s brain goes numb. It’s impossible. She’s not even here. She’ll wake up, and when she does she will be in her bedroom, turning over to hit snooze, because none of this is real.
The boy laughs. It’s a terrible sound. Then he lifts his hand with a look of extreme concentration in his eyes, and Emma can feel her entire body start to tingle as if a low current was running through it. It feels like thousands of ants running under her skin, tickling and stinging and almost painful, and Killian’s arms wrap around her more tightly, as if he can feel it, too.
And then it cuts out all at once, and the boy lowers his hand.
“Ahhhh,” he says, an exhale of profound satisfaction. “Now that is what I’m looking for. Your magic is---” He cocks his head and smiles, a terrifying, cartoonish grimace. “ Compatible .” It sounds like he’s tasting something delicious.
He licks his lips. Emma can’t look away.
He leans forward, his voice an intimate whisper. “And I will suck you dry of every last bit of it. Every last shred of magic I will suck from your marrow, so I really hope you’ll do better than the last one. As a matter of fact, let’s start with an incentive.”
And he flicks his hand.
Lightning strikes like the crack of a whip, rips Killian’s arms from around her, throws him backwards,
sheer momentum towards the edge of the roof, and he stumbles
and he stumbles
tries to hold on to the edge, but his fingers miss,
she can see it
she can see him
and then he
falls
And all Emma can hear is herself.
Screaming.
-/-
“What. Just happened.”
August’s voice is pure steel and when he looks at David his eyes are just as hard. David nearly flinches. And then he realizes, fuck . He’s in charge here. He is the deputy. A deputy who just watched his sheriff, his sheriff and a Boston detective disappear into thin air, and fuck .
FUCK .
He is in no way equipped to deal with this.
But he is in charge, and it’s time to cowboy the fuck up.
Now.
“Ash,” Elsa’s voice is thin, bordering on hysterical. “Check for ash, check where they were standing, please---”
She falls silent, drops to the floor and lets her hands roam the dirty station linoleum, wiping the floor with her fingers, almost manic, as she repeats, “Please, please, please----”
“Hey,” August says gently and kneels down beside her. “Elsa, stop. Stop.” He very carefully takes her wrists, doesn’t let go when she tries to pull them away. “Elsa.” He says again. “There is no ash.”
He holds up her wrists, so that Elsa can see grime and dirt on her fingers, but no cinders of any kind, and whispers, “This is not like Liam.”
And Elsa leans forward and presses her hands to her eyes.
For a long moment they all listen to Elsa’s labored breathing, and then she frees herself from August’s embrace and looks up.
“A spell,” she says. Her voice is unsteady. “It was a spell. Killian accidentally read it out loud.”
David can see Ashley shake her head and mumble, That’sImpossible , can see Mary Margaret, her mouth a perfect, round O , can see Elsa, tear tracks on her cheeks and the doctor going WhatTheFuck , and then comes right back to the flint in August’s eyes.
“Where could they be?” Elsa sounds even more unsure now, and Ashley says, “Did those two just vanish? ”
And then, like a dam breaking, everyone starts to talk all at once.
It’s a wall of sound and noise, absolute bedlam, until David can no longer hear himself think and he yells out loud, “EVERYBODY SHUT UP. NOW! ”
And the room falls quiet.
August smiles and nods at him and it gives David courage. Not much. But enough.
“OK,” he says, going to the locker by the door and opening it. In it is a bank of fully-charged walkie talkies. “We don’t know what just happened.”
He looks at August. August nods again.
“But we saw Emma and Killian fucking disappear and they have to be somewhere .”
Elsa nods.
Ashley nods.
He can’t see Mary Margaret’s face, because she’s wandered over to the triskelion map.
“Now - in case they are in the vicinity of this town, let’s look. OK?”
This time everyone nods. David starts to hand out walkies.
“Everybody switch to channel two. You guys take everything north of Main Street,” he points at Victor and August. “Ashley, you and Elsa take everything south. Mary Margaret and I will---”
“Check the woods,” she cuts him off. “Look.” She points to the map. “I didn’t realize it before, but here’s the cabin. The cabin where Leroy stayed before he disappeared. Where you found the first set of notecards.”
And then she puts a pin at the center of Graham’s triskelion.
-/-
There is a moment.
A moment of pure peace and tranquility and the knowledge that his life is complete. Because he has loved.
It strikes him then, like the hammer to a bell, that this is what his life comes down to. The fact that he has loved. That he loves . Within the presence of pain and the absence of reason, the paths taken and missed and abandoned, the faces he can no longer remember and the ones he can never forget, he has loved. He has been loved.
The warmth inside him explodes, wraps around him like a cocoon of pure happiness and an armor of strength as he stumbles, backwards, with force,
through no will of his own
pulled
pushed
and then----
It’s all right, Emma.
I love you.
He hears a scream, hears something tear behind him, hears a whoosh and a crack and then
he’s
falling
-/-
“Do you hear that?”
Mary Margaret holds up a hand and David stops in his tracks to listen.
“I don’t hear anything,” he says.
“Exactly.” Mary Margaret’s brow furrows. “This isn’t quiet. November woods are quiet, obviously. There is much less animal activity in winter, but this is not quiet.” She looks at him. “This is silence .”
David tilts his head and tries to pay attention and realizes that Mary Margaret is right. There is no wind nor rain, no creaking of branches nor cracking of underbrush, and no trace of the thunder and the lightning they heard back at the station. Listening to his surroundings is like falling into a well; an oppressive, muzzled, claustrophobic absence of sound.
Mary Margaret takes his hand. Squeezes it like she’s holding on to him and he squeezes back just as hard. There is something out here, something unnatural and sinister, keeping the very air around them in a choke-hold, waiting for---
Whatever it is, it is not good. He knows that much for sure.
“Let’s get to the cabin.” All David can manage is a whisper.
It looks like all Mary Margaret can manage in return is a nod.
Then she lets go of his hand and turns to lead them away from the toll bridge, away from the river, and into the woods. David loses his bearings in less than a minute. The surrounding trees block out any view of the sky, not that it would have been of any help; it’s cloudy and the light is diffuse, coming from everywhere and nowhere. There are no shadows. It’s impossible to tell the direction of anything.
And then there is the silence which is just getting worse.
He can hardly hear Mary Margaret’s movements, and she’s only a few feet ahead of him.
Can hardly hear his own breathing, his own footsteps; even the fabric swish of his clothes is muted, off, distant. It feels like his body doesn’t belong to him.
“Hey,” he tries to say, but it comes out garbled, a sound without meaning, and he feels a spike of panic. Mary Margaret is speeding up, walking faster though terrain familiar to her, but not to him, and he is falling behind. Trees have already obscured her twice.
“Wait,” he tries again, but again there is no word, there is just muddled frequency, like the mumbling of adults in children’s cartoons. In front of him Mary Margaret is not slowing down, he can see the sleeve of her red jacket loping slightly left and he tries to catch up, but he can’t, not quite.
Panic spikes harder and then he lunges, takes two running steps, three, and then launches himself forward, catches the hem of Mary Margaret’s anorak, just barely, but he can feel fabric, closes his fist around nylon and gore tex and they both go down hard.
“David!” Her eyes are large and worried, and her body feels very small underneath his.
Her exclamation gets swallowed by the air around them. There is no resonance at all. No reverb, no echo, the sound does not carry. He is inches from her face and almost doesn’t hear her.
She stares at him, fear creeping into her features, as he tries to catch his breath.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. He can hardly hear the words inside his own head. Then he leans down to whisper directly into her ear. “Something is out here.”
He feels more than sees her shake her head.
“No.” She has put her own mouth to his ear in turn, and he feels her warm breath tickle. It’s such a small, mundane thing, but it’s comforting.
She takes a deep breath, and then adds, “This is not the presence of something. It is the absence of something.”
-/-
“Will you stop that ,” says the boy standing before her, and snaps his fingers. Emma’s scream is cut off like a clipped string, and she gasps.
“Don’t worry,” he goes on. “He’s not smeared across your pavement.” The boy smiles. It’s vicious. “Yet.”
He licks his lips, grins at her. His features, his limbs, his body give the illusion of a male not yet in his twenties, but the square of his shoulders, the arrogant ease of his bearing, the twist of his cruel mouth all beg to differ. In his movement is power, in his posture command, and his eyes--- his eyes are ancient.
This is not a boy.
This may not even be a human being.
He points up at the tear, blacker than black down the sides of the iridescent bubble, and says, “No, Emma Swan. Your boy is somewhere else entirely.”
Emma feels cold, colder than she ever has, feels the absence of Killian like a physical thing, like a soul-sucking, bone-chilling vortex of despair, and she can’t move a muscle.
Killian fell, fell like he did in every single vision, and she couldn’t stop it, should have stopped it, and what does he mean, somewhere else entirely ?
How on earth does he know her name?
He cocks his head as realization hits Emma and smiles his vicious smile again. There is an odd, childlike glee about him, which supports the impression of boyishness while it emphasizes how very much he is not one. It’s completely unnerving.
“What do you say we dispense with the pleasantries,” he adds with a casual wave of his hand, “and get down to business?”
And Emma finds herself nodding.
“Good,” he says. “Then let me introduce myself.” His smile becomes genuinely gracious for a brief moment as he takes a mocking bow. “My name is Peter. Peter Pan.”
Everything inside Emma constrics as if squeezed by a gigantic vise. Her heart actually skips a beat, and then stutters as it starts to beat twice as fast as before.
“Ahhhhh.” Pan raises a mocking eyebrow. “I see you’ve heard of me.”
Yes. Well. Emma has read the book.
Years ago in the back of a decrepit library, hiding from the psychological warfare battleground that is every middle school cafeteria, she read a book about a boy who did not want to grow up. To have this ‘boy‘ now standing before her, cruel and dirty, with his depraved smile and his eyes older than time and imbued with magic strong enough to tear the fucking fabric of reality , it’s simply too much.
Emma laughs out loud.
It’s thin and forced and lodged firmly south of hysteria, but it’s hers, and it’s sound, sound she’s making of her own free will, and it breaks the trance.
Something inside her rises, a steel core of pure will, because Killian is not out there on the pavement, he is somewhere else entirely , which means he is not dead, and she is not alone, and she is not losing him, not losing anyone to this figment of a story that should never have been told.
Because we all must grow up, sooner or later. Growing up is the point.
“I have heard of you, boy ,” she says, and hardly recognizes her own voice. Pan’s eyes narrow, but before he can open his mouth she adds, “And you already know who I am. So let’s do dispense with the pleasantries. Why are you here?”
-/-
It is dark. Darker than night.
He can just make out the tops of tall trees all around, a dark slope of hillside, and the rushing of fast water.
He is on the toll bridge.
Except that it’s not the toll bridge. This is not Storybrooke forest. It’s an echo of Storybrooke, a shadow version of it, devoid of light and life.
Killian shudders. It’s cold. He feels the absence of warmth, of Emma, of--- any living creature. The only reason he can see anything at all in this starless, moonless darkness, is because of a soft glow that comes from the railing of the bridge. He steps closer, and sees light, weak and faint, but there, emanating from the bottom of the bannister.
He crouches, remembers a different toll bridge a lifetime ago where he also crouched, where he reached for a wrist of warm skin and a pulse beating in time with his own.
Even if he didn’t know it then.
And then he leans back and looks up.
And there they are.
Runes, along the length of the railing, underneath the bannister, just like the ones up in Storybrooke, on the real toll bridge.
Ogham script runes.
Glowing.
-/-
“It’s really quite simple.” Pan leans forward. “And I’ve already told you. Not that I owe you any kind of explanation.” He quirks a vain eyebrow. “Neverland is running out of magic. The wellspring is running dry.” He licks his lips. “Your magic will replenish it.”
The wellspring is running dry. Emma can see Killian sitting at David’s desk, notecards in front of him, speaking about water eternal .
Neverland is real.
Her insides coil like a spring of a different kind. “Why not just take me then? Why kill all those people?”
Pan rolls his eyes. “Do you think I can just waltz into the Land without Magic any time I damn well please?”
“The Land without--- what do you mean?”
“Oh, you’re such a human, ” Pan scoffs. “You guys always think you’re the only game in town.”
Emma’s head is spinning, and she cannot stop thinking about Killian, and there is no spark.
“This is not like sending my shadow to snatch little kids from the comfort of their beds.” Pan’s eyes narrow. He is angry. “It takes power and skill to break the barriers. To travel between any realms is extremely difficult unless you’re a mermaid--- ” the word is loaded with almost lethal hatred--- “but to enter the Land without Magic is damn near impossible. Because, as the name suggests, it doesn’t have any magic. ”
The last sentence lands like a lead balloon at Emma’s feet, and she feels the truth of it, the inevitability. There is no magic. There never was.
“Then why are you here?” The questions stretches out into the unknown. Forever. The black iridescent bubble pulsates softly, but it doesn’t move.
There is no time here. Emma can feel it. The absence of time passing.
The absence of forward movement.
The eternal now.
“I am here because every once in a while, you do get someone with a spark.”
A spark. There is no spark.
“And if a spark of magic is powerful enough to surface here, in this realm, devoid of all forms of it, well---” He licks his lips again. “Then that is just the spark I need.”
He straightens up, looks at her with utter condescension.
“Now then, Emma, ” he sneers. “It has taken me considerable effort, not to mention vast amounts of Neverland magic and energy to breach the walls of this realm for a second time. Let’s see if you’re of more use than the last one.”
Elsa on a couch in her living room, surrounded by dozens of pictures of a smiling dead man, saying in that low voice full of infinite sadness, “It told me to unleash my magic.”
Saying, “It said it was here for my power.”
Saying, “I didn’t know and I couldn’t do what it asked, and then my husband died.”
Sobbing.
There is no spark.
Instead, Emma remembers.
Something else.
-/-
On a deserted road near the north side of the town line, a medical examiner and a psychiatrist look at each other, exhausted.
The ME picks up the walkie strapped to her belt and presses the talk button.
“We got nothing up here,” she says. “How about you guys?”
Near the southern end of that same town line, a doctor and a former detective look just as exhausted and the ex cop shakes his head. “Nothing,” he responds. “And we’ve covered every scrap below Main Street.”
“Yeah,” comes the reply. “Same here. What about you, David?”
They wait, the four of them, two north and two south, wait, but nothing happens.
Static cracks twice, leaves the silence even quieter than before each time.
And then with a burst of white noise all the walkies go dead.
-/-
The runes are Ogham but the language is nothing Killian has ever encountered. It is neither Old Norse nor Manx nor anything he’s ever seen. It seems to not even be made up of words, it is merely lines representing sound, sound without meaning, and he shudders again.
It is so, so cold.
But above him the runes are still glowing, and he shakes his head and takes a deep breath.
What does he have to lose.
He exhales slowly and starts to read them out loud.
-/-
“No,” Emma says, and looks at Pan. “This is different. You just said you breached the barrier for the second time, but--- I don’t think you’ve been here before. Not physically.”
Elsa talking about the sparks and the howling resolving into words, and all of them, every last one of the people involved with this case calling the culprit ‘it’.
None of them have seen this Lost Boy.
This is his first time in the Land without Magic.
“She was weak .” The disdain and pure hatred in Pan’s voice are absolute. “Do you know what it cost me? To reach into this soul-sucking void and siphon enough energy to even attempt to open the rift?”
“Siphon enough---” Emma gasps. “ That’s why you killed those people? For their life force?”
“What else? I needed massive amounts of energy, needed it to power complicated spells and massive magical forces, and it’s not like you have any other power source in this vacuum.” He sneers. “And then I had her, I almost had her, and she failed. ”
He looks at Emma, eyes burning, deranged.
“She was bound to your laws of physics and science. Couldn’t imagine anything outside of it. Couldn’t fathom the very concept of magic. Not even when I ripped her husband through a tear in your precious space-time continuum.” He leans towards Emma, his face inches from hers. “I thought it would bring out her spark like it has yours, but nothing. NOTHING! ”
The last word is a scream, and then Emma feels it.
A small frisson of energy, pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
-/-
In the complete and utter silence that surrounds them, Mary Margaret squeezes his hand again, hard, and David looks up.
There it is.
The cabin. The cabin where it all began.
They walk up to it together, hands linked, and David would give anything to be able to go in alone, to leave Mary Margaret out here, outside, out of danger, but he knows she would never let him. He looks at her, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed with a look of pure determination, listening even in this absence of sound, all senses on high alert, and realizes---
He needs her.
He needs her to do this with him.
He cannot do it alone.
The stand still before the entrance and she looks at him and nods. It means more than he could possibly tell her. His jaw muscle jumps as he reins himself in and then nods back and squares his shoulders.
They enter the cabin together. It looks exactly the same. Evidence numbers still mark blood spatter and fluids, thin shafts of light fall through small windows, the silence around them is absolute, and then David hears it.
Hears it.
From far, far away comes the sound. Of a voice.
-/-
He looks at her with those blue eyes and that soft smile. Like she’s the only person on the planet.
“I know you can do it, love.”
His voice is warm and sure and he takes her hands.
Emma opens her eyes and feels it
feels it
the spark, the flame, and the roaring fire,
she has power
she is power
and no boy demon with a god complex and a complete disregard for human life will tell her what to do with it. She will save those she can and mourn those she can’t and she will get Killian back from wherever Pan sent him, because she deserves this, she deserves to have this one, good, beautiful thing in her life, and because she loves---
She turns and looks straight at Pan and he flinches. He is afraid. It causes a thrum of extreme satisfaction inside Emma, and then she feels it.
Warmth.
Pulsing.
Oh, yes. She is power .
“Where is he.” Her voice is steel and flint and no mercy. “Tell me.” She watches Pan shrug, but it looks more like a shudder. “Tell me now. ”
The boy who isn’t squares his shoulders and raises his hand and Emma can feel energy, sharp and volatile, flowing from him, trying to counter her own.
“I don’t know,” he says.
It’s a lie. Emma knows lies. And his power is no match for hers.
“Tell me,” she says again, and then Pan lifts his other hand.
With a crack the tear in the bubble opens and out pours power ,
so much power,
jagged pulses stabbing at her, ripping through her, around her, tearing at her like carnivores to the slaughter, and in the middle Pan, smiling, harnessing, focusing it, until it becomes one flowing line, directed at her.
Emma can feel electric arcs flash between her fingers, a crackling of energy as her spark explodes , and then they burst forth in a solid beam of bright white light.
The warmth inside her rises, pressure so hard it pounds in her temples as she tries to control the beam, as she tries not to think, as she strains to aim it at Pan, but then---
A strike of lightning, a bolt of pure power, blindingly blue and viciously acute, hits her square in the chest.
It nearly breaks her in half.
It cuts off her breath, forces the air from her lungs, doubles her over. The energy flowing from her hands cuts out with a pop loud enough to burst her eardrums and dissipates and all Emma can feel is pain.
“Did you think I wouldn’t come prepared,” Pan’s voice hisses, “do you think you’re the first person to think of fighting back?”
Emma falls to her knees. Tries to get air into her lungs, but all around her is static, arcing in buzzing, humming flashovers, and she cannot breathe .
The force coming at her is so strong she feels like she’s being torn apart from the inside, her cells straining to hold together and not let her disintegrate into an aerosol spray of blood and lymph and lipids, and still it comes
still it comes---
“Your power is mine , Savior.” Pan’s voice seems to come from everywhere at once.
Emma’s body is screaming. Her heart is hammering so hard it may actually beat out of her chest, and then suddenly the energy changes and starts to pull from her.
It feels like everything inside her, everything she is and was and ever will be is being sucked out into an endless void and she can feel her power, her life force, her very essence torn from her straining cells like marrow sucked from a bone---
gushing
spouting
hemorrhaging
draining her down to a useless pile of bones
it hurts
so much
Emma screams.
She gasps like a fish on dry land, tiny, useless bits of air, as her fingertips sputter and fizz, as she tries to get up, as the warmth seeps from her spasming body, she howls---
a sound of pure and desperate frustration as she tries,
tries,
tries to get up ---
“I am so tired of your theatrics,” Pan says, disdain dripping from every syllable. “Now shut up and serve your purpose.”
And he snaps his fingers.
Blackness swirls out from the tear, blacker than night, blacker than death, and she can feel it wrap around her, can feel herself being sucked into a vortex of nothing, a void of silence and grief and despair and she suddenly realizes.
She is going to lose.
-/-
As Killian reads, the runes start to glow brighter, start to hum, start to vibrate and warmth, warmth starts to spread through his frozen limbs, so he keeps reading, his voice steady, his thoughts on Emma, and the warmth spreads and spreads and fills him until he feels her,
he feels her
fighting, straining, with everything she has, just outside of,
just outside of---
He can feel a presence behind him---
.
“David!” Mary Margaret screams and suddenly the voice echoes all around them, speaking words David doesn’t know, can’t place, can’t even tell apart, but the voice is warm somehow, steady, not threatening, and then----
light explodes into the cabin
brighter than sunshine, brighter than daylight, and Mary Margaret links her fingers through his and stretches out her other hand, towards the light that curls around her fingers, wraps around her arm, and grows brighter and brighter
he can feel it
pulsing
feeding off of him and the woman holding his hand, but David
is not afraid----
.
Down the deserted roads to the north and the south of the town line, two people each watch in awe as a bright white beam of light shoots straight up out of the forest and into the sky, lighting up the dark clouds, burning them away, and then curves,
curves
gracefully
towards the center of town
towards the roof of the town hall
and then something screams, loud enough for them to hear it, over a mile away
and then a black cloud explodes, wisps and wings and streams of darkness torn asunder, still screaming, dissipating
and four people break into a run----
.
Emma feels it the moment before it hits, feels a surge of warmth and more energy and then a bright beam of white light pierces the bubble and tears it to shreds and there is the howling she’s heard in her head,
there is the blackness, the wind, and the red sparks,
there is the heartbeat
Across from her is Pan, his face a grimace of pain and fury,
behind him is the tear, starting to glow
around her wrap the tendrils of light that splintered the bubble
and she can hear the outside world again, can feel that heartbeat that isn’t hears, can feel Elsa and Ashley and Victor and August out in the streets of Storybrooke, looking for her, for Killian, for them,
can feel David and Mary Margaret, love and power, inside the beam
can feel herself becoming this power
and then
she hears his voice, his voice , calm and steady and oh so lovely, as it speaks to her in sounds she doesn’t know but somehow understands and she turns
steps forward
and pushes, pushes Pan backwards, towards the edge of the roof, towards the tear that is now white light and flame pulsing
and Pan screams as she hauls him with the strength of her whole body, he howls as she throws him and the tear swallows him whole----
But it doesn’t close.
There is something inside of it.
Something reaching out to her, a heart beating with force, desperate, hopeful, until that heartbeat is everything she hears, everything she feels, and with her last burst of energy she reaches into the tear and starts to pull
pull
pull
Behind her the door to the rooftop opens and they spill out of it, Elsa and Ashley and Victor and August, but she doesn’t see them, doesn’t notice, because she can feel him now
she can feel him
and the heartbeat splits ,
separates
becomes two heartbeats
as she pulls and pulls and pulls and pulls
and Pan is still howling, trying to claw back to her side
and August is holding on to Victor who is holding on to Ashley who is holding on to Elsa who is holding on to Emma as she pulls
and pulls
her bones and muscles and tendons screaming
screaming in pain and pressure and tension, but she is not losing this
she is not losing him
and then
everything
shatters
.
When Emma opens her eyes the sky above her is blue. There’s not a cloud in the pale November sunshine. A soft, chilly breeze caresses her face.
The world is still, but not silent.
She can hear slow movement and groaning as the people around her struggle to their feet, and she sits up.
It’s an ordinary rooftop. Not even very high. There are no signs of battle.
To her left August and Victor are pulling each other up, and behind her she can hear Ashley and Elsa asking “Everybody all right?”, and in front of her, near the edge of the rooftop---
“Emma?”
She starts to sob, because he’s there, scruff and wild hair and worried blue eyes, he’s here, he’s here , getting up and wiping his hands and walking towards her and she has never ever ever seen anything as wonderful, as amazing in her whole entire life as this man who hauls her to her feet and hugs her and hugs her and hugs her until he’s sobbing, too.
“I am never letting go,” she says.
“I don’t want you to,” he replies.
They stay like that, for minutes that feel like hours, his nose in the crook of her neck and her head buried in his chest, until Emma hears another voice say, “Killian?”
This is not a voice she has ever heard before.
It doesn’t belong to any of them.
She looks up and sees a man stepping forward from behind a fan casing, a tall man with close-cropped brown hair and haunted eyes and a puzzled expression on his face, a face Emma has seen smiling and laughing inside a hundred picture frames, his eyes glued to Killian’s back and then next to her Emma can feel more than hear Elsa take a ragged breath, and another, and whisper, “It can’t be,” and then August bolts forward to catch Elsa as she faints.
And at that moment the rooftop door opens and expels David and Mary Margaret, stumbling, winded, Mary Margaret trying hard to catch her breath, and then David says, “What did we miss?”
.
.
.
EPILOGUE
“As far as I can tell it’s gone.”
Emma holds up her hands. Bare hands, utterly ordinary. There is no spark.
Killian simply pulls her back against him. He has not been out of contact for the last 24 hours and if Emma has anything to say about it, he never will be. She still feels warm only when pressed against him, feels the peace of hearing his heartbeat when she lays her head on his chest, but there is no spark.
She is happy there isn’t.
“Do you miss it?” Killian’s voice is soft.
“No,” she says. “I never really had it.”
“I love you.” He smiles at her. “I love you so much.”
They are wrapped around each other on her couch, her ratty, comfortable couch, in her wonderfully comfy warm living room, and she never wants to move another muscle.
“I love you, too,” she says. “Do we have to leave?”
“You know we do,” he says quietly.
Emma groans.
But he’s right, dammit.
-/-
Everyone is already at the station when they get there.
Elsa and the tall man look like they’re trying to occupy the same space. The man briefly breaks away to give Killian a long, hard hug, and then gravitates right back to Elsa as Killian moves right back next to Emma.
There will be time for them later.
August is still wiping his eyes off and on.
“Look,” David says, because someone has to break the silence. “It’s not like we can ever tell anyone what happened.”
“Or fully understand it,” says Mary Margaret.
“Or fully understand it,” David echoes. “But I figured that maybe we want to talk about it once, while we’re all still together.”
“And have slept.” Ashley grins. “Or at least I slept. Some people in this room may not have.”
She gets up and walks over to Elsa and the tall man. “I’m assuming you’re the famous Liam?”
He nods. “I don’t know about famous, but Liam I am.”
Emma smiles and Elsa rolls her eyes, but then she returns Emma’s smile with such a brilliant one of her own, Emma is blinded for a moment.
“Look,” Liam says. “I know you all want to know where I’ve been and how I got back here, but I can’t tell you. I--- wasn’t.”
“You don’t have to talk about it here,” Elsa says.
“Or ever,” Killian adds, and Emma has to grin at the utterly annoyed psychiatrist-look Elsa shoots him.
The rest of them nod, but Liam shakes his head.
“No, you don’t understand. It wasn’t awful or anything. It just--- wasn’t. One moment I was in my living room in Boston and the next I just--- was not.” He lifts his hands. “I can’t really explain it. It’s like I was sleeping. I don’t remember being . Until suddenly I found myself on a bridge.”
Killian draws a sharp breath and Emma wraps her arms around his waist, squeezes until she feels him relax.
“It took me a long time to remember who I was.” He looks at Elsa. “Took me a long time to remember you.” His voice is quiet.
“It’s OK,” she says, and leans up to kiss him.
When they finally pull apart, there is not a shred of embarrassment between them.
“At least I think it took a long time.” Liam says. “I don’t know if time passed there.” He falls quiet. Nobody moves for a very long moment.
Then Emma walks over to the whiteboard. “Let’s look at what we know.” She points at August’s graphic. “Neverland was running out of magic, and Pan was trying to harvest it here.” She laughs and says, “There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.” From out of the corners of her eyes she can see a lot of nodding.
“Originally he found Elsa. Opened a small rift and started reaching through it to murder people and siphon their life force in order to make the rift bigger. Big enough for him to go through.”
“It’s highly likely that he’s been doing this for centuries,” Killian adds. “Millennia, possibly. Think about it. Time doesn’t exist in Neverland, but all that life force has to come from somewhere. The fact that the spells carved on the victims were mimicking human language tells me that there must have been contact, contact dating back many, many generations.” He scratches behind his right ear as he tries to harness his next thought. “And think of the lore-- all those stories of magic and otherworldly creatures, on the Isle of Man especially. There is so much of it -- in Norse mythology as well. So many similar stories and legends, all of them incredibly detailed considering they are more than a thousand years old. Some more than two thousand. I think this has been going on for a very long time.”
Emma feels a rush of fondness watching him explain, features animated, hand gestures making his points, every inch the nerdy professor, and in that moment she loves him so much it almost hurts.
When he turns to look at her again, eyes shining and so very in his element, she vows to herself that his detective days have to draw to a close.
This man needs to be around books again, books, and scholars, and ivy covered walls. Or at the very least walls not spattered in blood and urine.
She nods, along with the rest of them, because he’s making perfect sense. “When we were fighting Pan asked if I thought I was “the first one to fight back”. It would support your hypothesis.”
Killian beams at her after the word ‘hypothesis’. They are going to have so much fun later, using that word in a completely different context. It will be the most educated dirty talk ever . She grins at the thought and then clears her throat to cover the heat that just shot into her cheeks and turns back to the board.
“So with each sacrifice Pan gets stronger, and the sacrifices link through the quill--- wait.” She looks at Ashley. “That’s why you couldn’t name the elements. It’s from an animal that’s from a whole different plane of existence.”
“Nicely put,” says the ME. “My supposition exactly.”
“Then what about the connections?” Emma asks. “If all you had to do to be next in line was touch the quill, why are we all connected?”
“I don’t know if this helps,” Liam says, and looks at Killian. “I remembered you last, LB.” He shakes his head again. “And I can’t explain it, but the moment I did, I got the urge to write down these sounds I kept hearing all around me. Write them down somewhere they would last, but not easily seen, so I carved them into the bannister of the bridge. On the down side.”
“How?” Elsa stares at him. “Liam - how did you write a language you don’t know, in a script you don’t know?”
“I heard your heartbeat,” Emma whispers. “The day I met Killian, I started to hear your heartbeat.”
Liam’s brow furrows. “My heartbeat? How could you possibly hear my---”
“I think you called me,” Killian says, a slight tremor to his voice. “I think you called me--- to the case, to Storybrooke, and to---”
His voice cuts out. Emma glances up at him, and oh, the look he gives her.
Sorrow and joy and pain and happiness and so, so much love.
She can’t speak for a moment.
She only snaps out of it when August clears his throat. Loudly.
“Connection,” she says. “Whatever the magic was that Pan was after, I don’t think it was just inside Elsa and me. I think it connected us all. Look at all of us, here. And all of us who---” she swallows hard-- “cannot be here, but were part of this.”
Killian takes her hand. The warmth still flows.
“It was love,” he says, his voice soft and fond. “All of it. Love is not just romantic love. Graham taking recovering addicts to find themselves in nature. Dr Boyd finding a stubborn orphan on a bench and seeing something inside her, enough to make an effort to change her life.” He squeezes Emma’s fingers, hard. “August picking up a newborn by the side of the road when he was just a little boy himself. Even Victor---” he smiles wistfully--- “finding connection and solace in a back room. Love is a very powerful thing. I think it would transcend realms and language and just respond to need.”
They all fall silent, and then Elsa clears her throat. “Were we all connected by circumstance? By a series of events? Or did these events all happen to us because we were connected?” She smiles. “Who knows? But in the end---” she looks up at Liam, who smiles down at her with the exact same smile Killian has when he smiles at Emma--- “what does it matter? We’re here.”
She kisses her husband. “We’re here, and he’s gone, and we can chop this up six ways from Sunday, and we will--- ” she looks around-- “but we may never fully understand it and I for one need a fucking drink.”
And Liam smiles and says, “That’s my girl.”
-/-
That night, after grilled cheese sandwiches and fries and lots and lots of drinks, after laughter and lightness and a moment of silence for the departed---
after August proclaims he cannot wait another fucking moment and hauls Victor up the stairs, and David says something much more polite which amounts to exactly the same thing and pulls Mary Margaret out of the diner at a near run---
after Ashley drives back to Bangor and Elsa and Liam get into a car headed for Boston and all the good-byes are finally said---
finds Emma and Killian back on her ratty, comfortable couch, in her wonderfully comfy warm living room, and Emma sighs as Killian bends down to kiss her.
“I don’t want to move again,” she says. “I am so tired.”
Killian’s lip quirks and he looks at her as his tongue does something absolutely indecent and his eyes flash.
“I could move a bit ,” he says, and then he gets up and in one fell swoop throws her over his shoulder and Emma screams a laugh.
“OK OK OK!” she shrieks, and then laughs again, because he’s stomping down the hallway to the bedroom and then he just dives them onto the bed and goes very still on top of her.
“I don’t want you to worry,” he says.
Emma’s laugh catches in her throat.
“Worry?” she asks.
“About the future,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”
God, how she loves him.
“Good,” she says, voice a little bit choked.
“Wherever we go, we go together,” he says. His eyes are large and so, so serious, and she almost doesn’t notice that the last part sounded like a question.
But she does notice.
“Together,” she says, and feels him exhale. “Together, wherever we go.”
He smiles. Smiles that soft, fond smile of his. “I love you so much.”
She smiles back. Happy and sure. “I love you, too.”
Then his grin becomes impish and he twitches his hips.
“How much?” He asks, and it sounds absolutely wicked.
“Let me show you,” she whispers, and flips them around.
.
.
.
THANK YOU AGAIN, EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU, FOR BEING SO WONDERFUL.
LOVE AND HUGS!!!!!
.💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖
