They First Make Mad
Spoilers: Through S3.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4, 650
Warnings: Meta fuckery, attempted murder-suicide, some kind of surreal forced institutionalization.
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to ABC.
on Ao3 | on tumblr
Vengeance for Milah is not in the cards. Hook can accept that. What he can’t accept is that no one-not even Rumpelstiltskin-believes him about how she died.
“I was telling the truth, you know,” Hook informs Bae-informs Neal-after several too many beers. “About… her. About your mother.” He wouldn't have said that even one beer ago, he reflects as Neal’s face pales and crumples just the way it did when he was a boy.
“Killian,” Neal says.
But Hook does what he always does when he realizes he’s wrong: He keeps going. “I loved her,” he says. “You don’t have to believe me about that, but I did. You have to believe-you have to know I’m telling the truth about how she died. I would have traded places in a second but it was her-it was her he was angry with. Your father killed Milah,” he forces the name free like a slice of apple coughed from his throat, “and she deserves that you know it.”
Neal’s face is drawn tight and pale, the stubble gray on his chin. He looks like a stranger. But he stands and slides beneath Hook’s arm, the one with Hook’s namesake skewered to the wrist. He looks like a stranger and smells like cologne instead of salt and sap, but he helps Killian to Granny's stairs with the curve of the hook nestled against his throat and never flinches. “Let’s get you to your room,” he says. “You've had too much to drink.”
*+*+*+*+*
When Hook wakes the next morning with his brain pulsing against the walls of his skull, he can see that he was out of line. He did, after all, swear eternal vengeance upon the Dark One; it looks suspicious to rave drunken imprecations to his son. And he doesn't want Bae-not Bae-to think (again) that Killian is using him against his father.
But he swore vengeance for Milah, for her. Bae is the wrong place to start, but he does have to start somewhere.
*+*+*+*+*
It is extremely difficult for him to see Belle in any kind of privacy. Once she catches on to the fact that he is trying to see her in privacy, the opportunities vanish entirely. He is grateful that she doesn't outright tell Rumpelstiltskin about it, until he realizes she has another monster on a leash and has simply told that monster instead.
He waits until the pawn shop looks all but dead before he hurries into the library. It’s a gamble, but then, talking to Belle at all is a gamble. Either it looks dead because Rumpelstiltskin is here, with her, or because he’s in the back of the store and not watching the library door; Hook will have to find out the hard way.
Rumpelstiltskin is not in the library. The leggy waitress from the diner is, instead, sitting on Belle’s desk. They’re chattering when he comes in, heads close, dark hair and red smiles. They look up, identically friendly and helpful until they see it’s him.
Belle’s face closes with a dignified refusal to be afraid; the waitress’s lips pull and curl. Her teeth are sharper than he remembers.
“Unless you’re here to get a card and check out a book, you should leave,” Belle says. “And since you’re not actually a resident of Storybrooke, I don’t think you’re entitled to a card in the first place.”
“Now, ladies,” he says, smiling. “I may not be here to obtain information, but I am here to share it. Strictly non-violent business, my word of honor.” He holds up his hook in place of a hand with which to swear an oath, and it’s not his fault her boyfriend chopped it off.
“We’re not interested in anything you have to share,” the waitress says. Ruby, he remembers her name is, because her lips are scarlet and he can't help but look as she lingers over the ‘anything.’ “If you wanted to chat with Belle, you should have thought of it before you shot her.”
“Fair enough, only while we’re discussing the murder, attempted or otherwise, of innocent women, I would like to throw another name in the ring: Rumpelstiltskin.”
Any hint of curiosity on Belle’s face disappears. “Hook, aren't you supposed to be rehabilitating yourself? This isn't helping.” Her eyes are huge and liquid and there’s honest pity in them.
“Why should I lie about this?” Hook says. “You know I hate Rumpelstiltskin, it’s true, but why do you think I hate him? Why do you think I followed him for three hundred years across three different worlds, for my health? I spoke to you about this before; did you even ask him to vouch for his own innocence, or did you just assume the 'Dark One' sobriquet was a joke?”
Belle shakes her head. “It was only a hand," she says. "Let go of this." Her face is smooth, unruffled by what he’s said.
“And while you’re at it,” Ruby says, from much closer than he’d realized she’s gotten, “keep away from Belle.” It occurs to him, now that she’s so close, that “leggy” also translates to “tall.” She is spindly and awkward as a young girl but she is not small and her eyes are not forgiving. In fact, they’re… yellow. He remembers the rest of what he’s heard about her and nods, stepping away.
“I know when my information isn't valued,” he says. “I’ll, ah, see myself out.”
*+*+*+*+*
He’s not even sure what he means to accomplish by going to Regina. On the one hand, her experience of Rumpelstiltskin is more likely to lead her to believe what Hook says. (Belle and Bae have seen the Dark One at his worst, at some sorts of worst, but only because he cares for them. Regina knows what it is to see the other parts, what he lets show when he doesn't care at all.) On the other hand (as it were), it doesn't matter. Regina has plenty of ammunition against the Dark One and no desire for more. She probably doesn't even know Milah’s name. But they worked together against Rumpelstiltskin once, which must be worth something.
The Evil Queen fills her doorway, deeply displeased to see him. She plants her heels in the entrance, all but spiking into the stone. “What do you want?” she says. “And it had better not have anything to do with my son. Emma lets you see far too much of him as it is.”
“As foreign to the lad’s life as a bad influence would be, I hope I’m not that,” he says, smiling broad and sweet.
“That worked on my mother,” Regina says, and her answering smile is poisonous. “It’s not going to work on me. Tell me what you want quickly, or decide that you don’t want it very much after all.”
“I want,” Hook says, but he doesn't know, quite, because Emma complicates things. “To make you aware of something you may not be. A gift from me to you, knowledge being power, and all that.”
Regina arches an eyebrow, settling easier on her heels as she loses interest. “Talk faster.”
“Rumpelstiltskin’s wife, Neal’s mother. I want you to know he killed her.” He says it and realizes it’s true, that it is that simple. He doesn't want to be the only one who knows.
Regina rolls her eyes. “To what pathetic pass have you come, Hook, that you can’t dredge up an actual crime from the past of Rumpelstiltskin? The man has more skeletons in his closet than I have dresses in somber colors.”
“I was there,” Hook says. “He took my hand, and he took her heart and crushed it right before her eyes.”
Regina scoffs. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I have redemption to earn in the eyes of my son, so I will not be playing it with you. And if you want to do the same in the eyes of Emma Swan, I suggest you let go of this vendetta over your hand.” She turns to go into the house, but glances over her shoulder. The curve of her hair echoes the curve of her cheek, and he can’t see her eyes. “We’re not the only ones trying to redeem ourselves. Rumpelstiltskin has Belle and Neal to think of, you know.”
The door slams white and gold in his face.
*+*+*+*+*
There were a few things off about his conversation with Belle, and a few more about his conversation with Regina, but it’s when he speaks to Emma that he wonders whether something is wrong.
Emma Swan has a collection of defenses and suspicions coiled around her like a wall of thorns around a castle, and she is careful about whom she lets inside with her. Once they are there, she is even more careful about what happens to them. Hook isn't sure that anyone but Henry has ever truly made their way there, much as he hopes to prove to be the exception. What Hook is sure of is that Emma would never risk Henry’s safety. This, in fact, is his best hope; she trusts Killian with Henry, ergo she trusts him.
It is demoralizing to find her alone at the sheriff’s office and, upon asking where the boy is, to learn that he’s “with his grandfather.” At least, it is once he remarks on the benefits of having a king as a babysitter.
“Oh,” Emma says with the grimace that accompanies talk of royalty in relation to her and to her son. “No, the other grandfather. He’s with Mr. Gold.”
“Is he? And his father, too?” Hook says hopefully. Emma would have mentioned that, he thinks, but perhaps she meant to spare his feelings the mention of Neal. They had not always behaved their best in relation to each other, around her.
“No,” she says, drawing the word out, eyes gone watchful. “Gold’s taking him for lunch, then to the library till Regina picks him up. Any special reason you need to know?”
“Henry shouldn't be alone with that man,” Hook says, words tumbling in a rush of sincerity foreign to him. They sound insincere.
Emma frowns and leans over her desk, fingers lacing together. “Is this about that prophecy junk? Because I think even Neal is over that stuff. Gold proved he was trying to help the whole time, he'd never hurt Henry.”
“It’s not about the 'prophecy junk,’ no.” Hook sits in the chair across from her, eyeing the paraphernalia on the walls, flags and stars. “You’re the law here.” A good clean pain sparks deep in his chest. “That’s what I need. The law." He grins until it hurts. “Officer Swan, I wish to report a crime.”
Her spine straightens and her face transforms, all distant concern. It's an expression he remembers from the service, a 'calm the civilian, take care of the problem' expression he could never master so well as Liam. "What crime would that be?" She lifts her eyebrows and mischief destroys her professional expression; she is Emma again, only Emma, which hurts his heart in an entirely different way. "Do you have intimate knowledge of this crime because you perpetrated it, by any chance?"
"I did nothing of the sort. I was an innocent bystander." He tries to match her in mischief but feels his face pull tight and unsure. "It's a murder, the crime in question. Well, and a maiming," he brandishes his hook, "but I'm more interested in the murder."
Lines etch themselves down Emma's mouth. "I'm listening."
"I don't know that I ever told you this, but the reason Rumpelstiltskin cut off my hand was that I'd absconded with his wife and the mother of his child." He smiles painfully. "Hard to blame him there. What I do blame him for is that he killed-Milah. Her name was Milah. She ran off with me to be a pirate, so when he caught up to us as the Dark One." He stops smiling, which is difficult, for some reason, but he knows that it's gone grotesque on his face. "When he caught up," he repeats. "He killed her. In front of me."
Emma sinks back into her chair. She flicks a pencil back and forth between two fingers. "Hook..."
It has not occurred to him until this moment that she might not believe him. Incredulity snaps tight inside him. "Swan, I wouldn't lie about this!"
"Okay, sure, but the thing is... you'd lie about a lot of stuff." But she isn't angry, only cajoling, as if he's committed a minor infraction, perhaps picked someone's pocket as a joke. She will convince him to give back the wallet, as he intended to do all along, and they will laugh about it together.
He sits silent and pulls a few of his thoughts together, the rest scampering away from his grasp. "Then-supposing I were lying-you're not bothered I'd lie about something this serious? About Henry's grandmother, about a woman I loved, just to...?"
Emma nods. Her expression is placid. She is humoring him. "It's not a great character recommendation, but you're a pirate. I knew what I was getting into."
"Yes," Hooks says, and stands. "I see. Sorry to have wasted your time."
"Wait, you're going?" Emma gestures to the empty office and silent phones. "Things have been pretty quiet. You don't want to hang around until I have to get a kitten out of a tree or something?"
This is when Hook's misgivings solidify into something heavy and dread-filled. Emma Swan, behind her coil of defenses and suspicions, has never in her life dismissed an accusation so offhandedly, and would not do so when it touches on the safety of her son. But even if she did, she certainly wouldn't offer moments later to make light conversation with the man who'd leveled those accusations against a member of her family. This woman once gave him the silent treatment for two days running because he made a joke about Mary Margaret's suitability as a babysitter, given she'd put her last charge in a box.
He pastes a smile on. "The temptation is a chasm at my feet, Swan, but just this once I shall have to forgo the leap."
*+*+*+*+*
If revenge or even justice are out of reach for the moment, he still doesn't want to be the only one who knows. And after all, to Regina and Emma, whatever else the Dark One is, he's also the grandfather of their son. He tells himself that he's only been going about this wrong. Perhaps he's tried the wrong people.
He puts his ear (Smee) to the ground and locates some of Rumpelstiltskin's old associates. People who've helped him commit atrocities and who will have no difficulty believing he's capable of killing a woman. Given Rumpelstiltskin's habits, these are people he has probably betrayed in some way, which should make them at least passingly interested in the Dark One's misdeeds.
He starts with Whale.
The good doctor taps papers into order at his desk and gives Hook a fish-eyed stare. "That's a serious accusation," he says.
"Yet you don't seem to be taking it seriously," says Hook.
Frankenstein steeples his fingers and smiles, flat as a painting. "I don't make it a habit to take the word of pirates, so... no. Not particularly."
So Hook, beginning to feel he's beating his fists against a wall everyone else insists isn't there at all, tries Jefferson.
"I'm sorry, this is meant to have happened before my head was cut off, Grace was kidnapped, and two lives were shoved in my head at once?" he says. He never looks away from his daughter, playing on a nearby swing set. "Because I sometimes don't recall that period of my life with any particular clarity, oddly enough."
Hook feels that this is a bit dramatic, as most people in Storybrooke have had near-death experiences, lost loved ones, and labor with two distinct lives in their heads. "Still," he says aloud, "I'm only warning you of how entirely the Dark One can turn on those he once considered his friends."
"Don't be so dramatic," says Jefferson.
*+*+*+*+*
At this point, Hook could begin to have doubts about the wall against which he's wearing himself out. He chooses to believe in the pain in his fists rather than, say, Frankenstein and the Mad Hatter. He tries some people who are even less useful and even more likely to believe him.
"He stole your child," he reminds Ashley Boyd.
She dandles the child in question on her hip and blinks her pretty blue eyes as if the entire conversation is confusing her. "He gave her right back."
"Because Swan forced him to!"
"I pepper sprayed him and knocked him out," she admits.
"Well..." Hook pictures this, vividly and in several possible incarnations. "Good."
"I mean, I think we're even?" She sighs and checks the clock. "I have to get lunch ready, Sean has his break at twelve."
"And with such a fascinating day lined up, it's no wonder you're distracted from my petty concerns. But do you believe me?"
"About what?" She rummages in a cupboard, standing on tiptoe. Her little girl glares at Hook over her shoulder, tiny fat face drawn in like a fist. "Oh, Rumpelstiltskin? I don't know, it sounds a little extreme even for him."
Hook stomps out.
"I don't think you have an appointment," says Dr. Hopper when Hook barges into his office.
"Yet I need to talk about my feelings, and I understand there is an entire profession dedicated to just that need, and that you are such a professional. It's a quandary!"
"I'm very uncomfortable being alone with you. You kidnapped me, remember?"
Hook shrugs. "I'm willing to bet you've been alone with Rumpelstiltskin since he used you as a patsy to turn people into puppets."
"True, but I didn't remember he'd done that at the time. Our conversation was very heavily veiled."
"I promise not to kidnap you anymore." Hook gives as dazzling a smile as he can summon. It doubles as threatening, and Hopper looks resigned.
"What specifically did you want to talk about?"
"Actually, since it's already come up, I'd like to talk about the fact that Rumpelstiltskin used you as a patsy to turn people into puppets." Hook stalks between walls and file cabinets, scorning the couches and chairs. He feels he has a fuse running through him and burning down to ash. "I'd also like to talk about my first true love, Milah, and how her husband killed her before my eyes. You get one guess who that is."
Hopper's eyes grow several sizes. "I'm terribly sorry."
Hook makes a mental note to spend less time with former victims; it can throw off a conversation to have a vivid sense memory of how a man looks soaked in the sweat of sheer terror and begging for his life. "But the husband."
"You were serious about guessing? I... really couldn't say."
"Are you serious? Rumpelstiltskin! It was Rumpelstiltskin. In all this hunting for her son, he never mentioned so much as her name?"
He watches befuddlement settle like a haze over Hopper. "Sorry, who?"
"The Dark One! Mr. Gold! Rumpelstiltskin."
"Yes, I mean, I did hear you. I just..." Hopper spreads his hands and gives a helpless smile. "That doesn't sound like him. Are you sure you're not just angry about, you know..." he nods to Hook's left side with a wince. "Your hand."
*+*+*+*+*
This is magic. It has to be. (It has to be.) Without Cora, Hook has no one to turn to but Regina, so he tries her again.
"You think Rumpelstiltskin did what?" she asks.
The fuse inside him goes out.
*+*+*+*+*
He spends the last day with Emma. Every second of it rips at him, because he loves her and believes, when he's with her, he can be a man she would love back. Or could have been, if it weren't for this.
But Emma has Henry, has her parents and Neal. Milah has no one but Hook. The only thing he can do (again) is (try to) give her Rumpelstiltskin.
*+*+*+*+*
Hook has spent nearly three hundred years trying to kill or otherwise destroy this crocodile. He has no particular hope of succeeding this time. Still, at least he has a method he's not yet used. And when it fails, it will likely make Rumpelstiltskin uncomfortable for a time.
He means to ignore the prospect of Emma and Bae not knowing why he's done it. Their incomprehension slicks the back of his throat like oil on water. He'd like to spare them the pain, but then, he'd have liked to spare Milah hers as well.
As a pirate and as a former inhabitant of Neverland, he knows enough to nick a vial of the ink produced by squids on that island whenever it's within reach.
He sees Milah with someone else's blood on her teeth when he closes his eyes. Increasingly, he sees her even with his eyes open. She had been loving, but not forgiving.
For Emma's sake and Neal's, there are only two bullets in his gun, and only the first is smeared with ink to stop the crocodile’s heart. If he misses, he misses.
He suspected that whatever was wrong was getting worse; this is confirmed when he points the gun at Rumpelstiltskin and, through gritted teeth and numbing lips, says, "We're coming, Milah."
Rumpelstiltskin's face creases in confusion just the way his son's does. "Who?"
Emma and Neal burst into the shop together. They're too close to Rumpelstiltskin. Hook shuts his eyes. He sees Milah, and he pulls the trigger. The roar of it masks the sick drop-away feeling in his gut. Rumpelstiltskin should know his wife's name, no matter how strange a curse was on them all. If it's a curse.
There is Milah, and the roar, and the drop. He turns the gun on himself.
*+*+*+*+*
Hook tries to remember how much time he's spent in Storybrooke. It isn't enough to justify twice waking strapped to a hospital bed. His vision slides to the side without any particular intention on his part to look in that direction.
Emma is sitting in a spindly, cup-like excuse for a chair, and she is watching him. "Welcome back," she says. There are furrows down her jaw and between her brows, and her eyes are red.
"Neal?" he says as memories begin to surface.
"He's alive. He jumped in the way of a bullet, but he's alive."
Hook groans. "And Rumpelstiltskin?"
"Hey," she snaps. "I said Neal was alive, I didn't say he wasn't hurt. You're welcome, by the way. I saved your life, knocking your gun away. The bullet grazed your skull, though. Whale had to shave some of your hair for surgery and you look ridiculous, just so you know."
Hook tries to lift his hands to his head and is reminded that he's strapped down, as usual around this woman. This isn't one of the rooms he remembers, though; it's brighter and the light is false, stings his eyes and the skin around them. There are no windows.
He realizes that there is a tilt of a smile on Emma's mouth, that there was a lilt of teasing in her voice. This is not Emma disappointed that he's set himself back by trying to slaughter a man in cold blood. At least, not normally. "It didn't work," he says. "Rumpelstiltskin's alive, and you still don't-"
"I don't know, I'd kind of say it worked," Emma sighs. She stands and walks to the door. It sighs as it opens, as if it had been locked. Outside, the corridor isn't one he recognizes from the hospital, either; it's damp and gray. It puts him in mind of a cell, and he ignores it very carefully.
He lifts his head as best he can. There is a distinct draft on the right side of his skull. "It worked? You remember what I said about Milah, you believe me?"
She doesn't hear him. She moves aside so that Neal can come in. He waves at Hook with a hand swathed in bandages until it looks more like a stump than anything else.
"No," Hook says. "No, no, no...." He drops his head back against the pillow. "You took a bullet for him?"
"You're welcome," Neal says, dropping into the chair beside his bed. "If you'd killed him, we'd be right back where we started." He taps his bandages against Hook's arm. "Doctor Whale says I might not be able to use the hand again, with all the nerve and muscle damage."
"What?" Hook looks at Emma, who stands by the door and looks at them with tolerant disapproval. "Can't your doctors fix it? With all these miserable machines, surely they can fix a hand? Or your father, since I failed to kill him yet again, he could-"
"Yeah, he's pretty pissed I won't let him magic it better." Neal shifts in his chair, ill at ease in his skin as ever, expression almost shy. "But I kind of thought, you know, if I let it alone... Killian, you seriously have to stop trying to kill my dad. If you can live without your hand, I can live without mine, and our families are even."
"Even?" Hook says, unable to keep the snarl from his voice, his limbs jerking against the restraints. "He killed Milah." He's been trying not to say it. Each time he's less sure it's actually coming out of his mouth.
"Hook, come on," Emma says. "You get by fine without the hand. Anyway, chicks dig scars. Let's just let bygones be bygones here so I don't have to throw you in jail." She shakes her head. "And only in Storybrooke do I get to say that to the guy who just tried to kill a pillar of the community."
"Yes!" Hook jerks again. The cuffs around his wrists are padded, almost comfortable. They are also unyielding and they feel permanent. "Yes, I did! And you don't seem terribly upset about it; doesn't that strike you as odd?" She looks contemplative but not especially disturbed. He rounds on Neal. "Ask your father how your mother died, do me that favor. Look him in the eye and make him lie to you, at least, straight out! No dancing around the subject, make him say he didn't kill her." Do it here, he thinks. He wouldn't mind the confirmation himself. (But he’s not sure he can tell when the crocodile lies.)
Neal looks up at Emma, helpless. She shakes her head and beckons him, opening the door and holding it there.
"Okay, Hook," she says. "Look, Whale thinks it's better if you stay here for a while, okay? You're kind of... worked up. We'll try again tomorrow, see if you've calmed down by then."
Something trickles through him like freezing water. He sees a future of striking flint on stone, over and over, and never getting a spark. He'll always be this cold. Beyond Emma, out the door, the hallway is, unmistakably, this world's incarnation of a dungeon.
Neal makes his way over to her, arm stiff at his side. He looks older than Hook now, but there is so much of the boy he was in the way he moves, gawky and unsure. "I'll bring Henry by later to see you, if you want," he says. "You have him pretty worried. Seeing you here is better than not seeing you, I guess."
"Neal," Emma says. "You're on bed rest. Also a ton of painkillers. You're lucky I let you up for this." She taps her heel against the door a few times, not quite a kick. "And I have a pretty impressive pile of paperwork, but...." She brightens, and over her shoulder she bestows upon Hook a beaming smile. "Hey, I know who can bring Henry to see you-Mr. Gold."
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4, 650
Warnings: Meta fuckery, attempted murder-suicide, some kind of surreal forced institutionalization.
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to ABC.
on Ao3 | on tumblr
Vengeance for Milah is not in the cards. Hook can accept that. What he can’t accept is that no one-not even Rumpelstiltskin-believes him about how she died.
“I was telling the truth, you know,” Hook informs Bae-informs Neal-after several too many beers. “About… her. About your mother.” He wouldn't have said that even one beer ago, he reflects as Neal’s face pales and crumples just the way it did when he was a boy.
“Killian,” Neal says.
But Hook does what he always does when he realizes he’s wrong: He keeps going. “I loved her,” he says. “You don’t have to believe me about that, but I did. You have to believe-you have to know I’m telling the truth about how she died. I would have traded places in a second but it was her-it was her he was angry with. Your father killed Milah,” he forces the name free like a slice of apple coughed from his throat, “and she deserves that you know it.”
Neal’s face is drawn tight and pale, the stubble gray on his chin. He looks like a stranger. But he stands and slides beneath Hook’s arm, the one with Hook’s namesake skewered to the wrist. He looks like a stranger and smells like cologne instead of salt and sap, but he helps Killian to Granny's stairs with the curve of the hook nestled against his throat and never flinches. “Let’s get you to your room,” he says. “You've had too much to drink.”
*+*+*+*+*
When Hook wakes the next morning with his brain pulsing against the walls of his skull, he can see that he was out of line. He did, after all, swear eternal vengeance upon the Dark One; it looks suspicious to rave drunken imprecations to his son. And he doesn't want Bae-not Bae-to think (again) that Killian is using him against his father.
But he swore vengeance for Milah, for her. Bae is the wrong place to start, but he does have to start somewhere.
*+*+*+*+*
It is extremely difficult for him to see Belle in any kind of privacy. Once she catches on to the fact that he is trying to see her in privacy, the opportunities vanish entirely. He is grateful that she doesn't outright tell Rumpelstiltskin about it, until he realizes she has another monster on a leash and has simply told that monster instead.
He waits until the pawn shop looks all but dead before he hurries into the library. It’s a gamble, but then, talking to Belle at all is a gamble. Either it looks dead because Rumpelstiltskin is here, with her, or because he’s in the back of the store and not watching the library door; Hook will have to find out the hard way.
Rumpelstiltskin is not in the library. The leggy waitress from the diner is, instead, sitting on Belle’s desk. They’re chattering when he comes in, heads close, dark hair and red smiles. They look up, identically friendly and helpful until they see it’s him.
Belle’s face closes with a dignified refusal to be afraid; the waitress’s lips pull and curl. Her teeth are sharper than he remembers.
“Unless you’re here to get a card and check out a book, you should leave,” Belle says. “And since you’re not actually a resident of Storybrooke, I don’t think you’re entitled to a card in the first place.”
“Now, ladies,” he says, smiling. “I may not be here to obtain information, but I am here to share it. Strictly non-violent business, my word of honor.” He holds up his hook in place of a hand with which to swear an oath, and it’s not his fault her boyfriend chopped it off.
“We’re not interested in anything you have to share,” the waitress says. Ruby, he remembers her name is, because her lips are scarlet and he can't help but look as she lingers over the ‘anything.’ “If you wanted to chat with Belle, you should have thought of it before you shot her.”
“Fair enough, only while we’re discussing the murder, attempted or otherwise, of innocent women, I would like to throw another name in the ring: Rumpelstiltskin.”
Any hint of curiosity on Belle’s face disappears. “Hook, aren't you supposed to be rehabilitating yourself? This isn't helping.” Her eyes are huge and liquid and there’s honest pity in them.
“Why should I lie about this?” Hook says. “You know I hate Rumpelstiltskin, it’s true, but why do you think I hate him? Why do you think I followed him for three hundred years across three different worlds, for my health? I spoke to you about this before; did you even ask him to vouch for his own innocence, or did you just assume the 'Dark One' sobriquet was a joke?”
Belle shakes her head. “It was only a hand," she says. "Let go of this." Her face is smooth, unruffled by what he’s said.
“And while you’re at it,” Ruby says, from much closer than he’d realized she’s gotten, “keep away from Belle.” It occurs to him, now that she’s so close, that “leggy” also translates to “tall.” She is spindly and awkward as a young girl but she is not small and her eyes are not forgiving. In fact, they’re… yellow. He remembers the rest of what he’s heard about her and nods, stepping away.
“I know when my information isn't valued,” he says. “I’ll, ah, see myself out.”
*+*+*+*+*
He’s not even sure what he means to accomplish by going to Regina. On the one hand, her experience of Rumpelstiltskin is more likely to lead her to believe what Hook says. (Belle and Bae have seen the Dark One at his worst, at some sorts of worst, but only because he cares for them. Regina knows what it is to see the other parts, what he lets show when he doesn't care at all.) On the other hand (as it were), it doesn't matter. Regina has plenty of ammunition against the Dark One and no desire for more. She probably doesn't even know Milah’s name. But they worked together against Rumpelstiltskin once, which must be worth something.
The Evil Queen fills her doorway, deeply displeased to see him. She plants her heels in the entrance, all but spiking into the stone. “What do you want?” she says. “And it had better not have anything to do with my son. Emma lets you see far too much of him as it is.”
“As foreign to the lad’s life as a bad influence would be, I hope I’m not that,” he says, smiling broad and sweet.
“That worked on my mother,” Regina says, and her answering smile is poisonous. “It’s not going to work on me. Tell me what you want quickly, or decide that you don’t want it very much after all.”
“I want,” Hook says, but he doesn't know, quite, because Emma complicates things. “To make you aware of something you may not be. A gift from me to you, knowledge being power, and all that.”
Regina arches an eyebrow, settling easier on her heels as she loses interest. “Talk faster.”
“Rumpelstiltskin’s wife, Neal’s mother. I want you to know he killed her.” He says it and realizes it’s true, that it is that simple. He doesn't want to be the only one who knows.
Regina rolls her eyes. “To what pathetic pass have you come, Hook, that you can’t dredge up an actual crime from the past of Rumpelstiltskin? The man has more skeletons in his closet than I have dresses in somber colors.”
“I was there,” Hook says. “He took my hand, and he took her heart and crushed it right before her eyes.”
Regina scoffs. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I have redemption to earn in the eyes of my son, so I will not be playing it with you. And if you want to do the same in the eyes of Emma Swan, I suggest you let go of this vendetta over your hand.” She turns to go into the house, but glances over her shoulder. The curve of her hair echoes the curve of her cheek, and he can’t see her eyes. “We’re not the only ones trying to redeem ourselves. Rumpelstiltskin has Belle and Neal to think of, you know.”
The door slams white and gold in his face.
*+*+*+*+*
There were a few things off about his conversation with Belle, and a few more about his conversation with Regina, but it’s when he speaks to Emma that he wonders whether something is wrong.
Emma Swan has a collection of defenses and suspicions coiled around her like a wall of thorns around a castle, and she is careful about whom she lets inside with her. Once they are there, she is even more careful about what happens to them. Hook isn't sure that anyone but Henry has ever truly made their way there, much as he hopes to prove to be the exception. What Hook is sure of is that Emma would never risk Henry’s safety. This, in fact, is his best hope; she trusts Killian with Henry, ergo she trusts him.
It is demoralizing to find her alone at the sheriff’s office and, upon asking where the boy is, to learn that he’s “with his grandfather.” At least, it is once he remarks on the benefits of having a king as a babysitter.
“Oh,” Emma says with the grimace that accompanies talk of royalty in relation to her and to her son. “No, the other grandfather. He’s with Mr. Gold.”
“Is he? And his father, too?” Hook says hopefully. Emma would have mentioned that, he thinks, but perhaps she meant to spare his feelings the mention of Neal. They had not always behaved their best in relation to each other, around her.
“No,” she says, drawing the word out, eyes gone watchful. “Gold’s taking him for lunch, then to the library till Regina picks him up. Any special reason you need to know?”
“Henry shouldn't be alone with that man,” Hook says, words tumbling in a rush of sincerity foreign to him. They sound insincere.
Emma frowns and leans over her desk, fingers lacing together. “Is this about that prophecy junk? Because I think even Neal is over that stuff. Gold proved he was trying to help the whole time, he'd never hurt Henry.”
“It’s not about the 'prophecy junk,’ no.” Hook sits in the chair across from her, eyeing the paraphernalia on the walls, flags and stars. “You’re the law here.” A good clean pain sparks deep in his chest. “That’s what I need. The law." He grins until it hurts. “Officer Swan, I wish to report a crime.”
Her spine straightens and her face transforms, all distant concern. It's an expression he remembers from the service, a 'calm the civilian, take care of the problem' expression he could never master so well as Liam. "What crime would that be?" She lifts her eyebrows and mischief destroys her professional expression; she is Emma again, only Emma, which hurts his heart in an entirely different way. "Do you have intimate knowledge of this crime because you perpetrated it, by any chance?"
"I did nothing of the sort. I was an innocent bystander." He tries to match her in mischief but feels his face pull tight and unsure. "It's a murder, the crime in question. Well, and a maiming," he brandishes his hook, "but I'm more interested in the murder."
Lines etch themselves down Emma's mouth. "I'm listening."
"I don't know that I ever told you this, but the reason Rumpelstiltskin cut off my hand was that I'd absconded with his wife and the mother of his child." He smiles painfully. "Hard to blame him there. What I do blame him for is that he killed-Milah. Her name was Milah. She ran off with me to be a pirate, so when he caught up to us as the Dark One." He stops smiling, which is difficult, for some reason, but he knows that it's gone grotesque on his face. "When he caught up," he repeats. "He killed her. In front of me."
Emma sinks back into her chair. She flicks a pencil back and forth between two fingers. "Hook..."
It has not occurred to him until this moment that she might not believe him. Incredulity snaps tight inside him. "Swan, I wouldn't lie about this!"
"Okay, sure, but the thing is... you'd lie about a lot of stuff." But she isn't angry, only cajoling, as if he's committed a minor infraction, perhaps picked someone's pocket as a joke. She will convince him to give back the wallet, as he intended to do all along, and they will laugh about it together.
He sits silent and pulls a few of his thoughts together, the rest scampering away from his grasp. "Then-supposing I were lying-you're not bothered I'd lie about something this serious? About Henry's grandmother, about a woman I loved, just to...?"
Emma nods. Her expression is placid. She is humoring him. "It's not a great character recommendation, but you're a pirate. I knew what I was getting into."
"Yes," Hooks says, and stands. "I see. Sorry to have wasted your time."
"Wait, you're going?" Emma gestures to the empty office and silent phones. "Things have been pretty quiet. You don't want to hang around until I have to get a kitten out of a tree or something?"
This is when Hook's misgivings solidify into something heavy and dread-filled. Emma Swan, behind her coil of defenses and suspicions, has never in her life dismissed an accusation so offhandedly, and would not do so when it touches on the safety of her son. But even if she did, she certainly wouldn't offer moments later to make light conversation with the man who'd leveled those accusations against a member of her family. This woman once gave him the silent treatment for two days running because he made a joke about Mary Margaret's suitability as a babysitter, given she'd put her last charge in a box.
He pastes a smile on. "The temptation is a chasm at my feet, Swan, but just this once I shall have to forgo the leap."
*+*+*+*+*
If revenge or even justice are out of reach for the moment, he still doesn't want to be the only one who knows. And after all, to Regina and Emma, whatever else the Dark One is, he's also the grandfather of their son. He tells himself that he's only been going about this wrong. Perhaps he's tried the wrong people.
He puts his ear (Smee) to the ground and locates some of Rumpelstiltskin's old associates. People who've helped him commit atrocities and who will have no difficulty believing he's capable of killing a woman. Given Rumpelstiltskin's habits, these are people he has probably betrayed in some way, which should make them at least passingly interested in the Dark One's misdeeds.
He starts with Whale.
The good doctor taps papers into order at his desk and gives Hook a fish-eyed stare. "That's a serious accusation," he says.
"Yet you don't seem to be taking it seriously," says Hook.
Frankenstein steeples his fingers and smiles, flat as a painting. "I don't make it a habit to take the word of pirates, so... no. Not particularly."
So Hook, beginning to feel he's beating his fists against a wall everyone else insists isn't there at all, tries Jefferson.
"I'm sorry, this is meant to have happened before my head was cut off, Grace was kidnapped, and two lives were shoved in my head at once?" he says. He never looks away from his daughter, playing on a nearby swing set. "Because I sometimes don't recall that period of my life with any particular clarity, oddly enough."
Hook feels that this is a bit dramatic, as most people in Storybrooke have had near-death experiences, lost loved ones, and labor with two distinct lives in their heads. "Still," he says aloud, "I'm only warning you of how entirely the Dark One can turn on those he once considered his friends."
"Don't be so dramatic," says Jefferson.
*+*+*+*+*
At this point, Hook could begin to have doubts about the wall against which he's wearing himself out. He chooses to believe in the pain in his fists rather than, say, Frankenstein and the Mad Hatter. He tries some people who are even less useful and even more likely to believe him.
"He stole your child," he reminds Ashley Boyd.
She dandles the child in question on her hip and blinks her pretty blue eyes as if the entire conversation is confusing her. "He gave her right back."
"Because Swan forced him to!"
"I pepper sprayed him and knocked him out," she admits.
"Well..." Hook pictures this, vividly and in several possible incarnations. "Good."
"I mean, I think we're even?" She sighs and checks the clock. "I have to get lunch ready, Sean has his break at twelve."
"And with such a fascinating day lined up, it's no wonder you're distracted from my petty concerns. But do you believe me?"
"About what?" She rummages in a cupboard, standing on tiptoe. Her little girl glares at Hook over her shoulder, tiny fat face drawn in like a fist. "Oh, Rumpelstiltskin? I don't know, it sounds a little extreme even for him."
Hook stomps out.
"I don't think you have an appointment," says Dr. Hopper when Hook barges into his office.
"Yet I need to talk about my feelings, and I understand there is an entire profession dedicated to just that need, and that you are such a professional. It's a quandary!"
"I'm very uncomfortable being alone with you. You kidnapped me, remember?"
Hook shrugs. "I'm willing to bet you've been alone with Rumpelstiltskin since he used you as a patsy to turn people into puppets."
"True, but I didn't remember he'd done that at the time. Our conversation was very heavily veiled."
"I promise not to kidnap you anymore." Hook gives as dazzling a smile as he can summon. It doubles as threatening, and Hopper looks resigned.
"What specifically did you want to talk about?"
"Actually, since it's already come up, I'd like to talk about the fact that Rumpelstiltskin used you as a patsy to turn people into puppets." Hook stalks between walls and file cabinets, scorning the couches and chairs. He feels he has a fuse running through him and burning down to ash. "I'd also like to talk about my first true love, Milah, and how her husband killed her before my eyes. You get one guess who that is."
Hopper's eyes grow several sizes. "I'm terribly sorry."
Hook makes a mental note to spend less time with former victims; it can throw off a conversation to have a vivid sense memory of how a man looks soaked in the sweat of sheer terror and begging for his life. "But the husband."
"You were serious about guessing? I... really couldn't say."
"Are you serious? Rumpelstiltskin! It was Rumpelstiltskin. In all this hunting for her son, he never mentioned so much as her name?"
He watches befuddlement settle like a haze over Hopper. "Sorry, who?"
"The Dark One! Mr. Gold! Rumpelstiltskin."
"Yes, I mean, I did hear you. I just..." Hopper spreads his hands and gives a helpless smile. "That doesn't sound like him. Are you sure you're not just angry about, you know..." he nods to Hook's left side with a wince. "Your hand."
*+*+*+*+*
This is magic. It has to be. (It has to be.) Without Cora, Hook has no one to turn to but Regina, so he tries her again.
"You think Rumpelstiltskin did what?" she asks.
The fuse inside him goes out.
*+*+*+*+*
He spends the last day with Emma. Every second of it rips at him, because he loves her and believes, when he's with her, he can be a man she would love back. Or could have been, if it weren't for this.
But Emma has Henry, has her parents and Neal. Milah has no one but Hook. The only thing he can do (again) is (try to) give her Rumpelstiltskin.
*+*+*+*+*
Hook has spent nearly three hundred years trying to kill or otherwise destroy this crocodile. He has no particular hope of succeeding this time. Still, at least he has a method he's not yet used. And when it fails, it will likely make Rumpelstiltskin uncomfortable for a time.
He means to ignore the prospect of Emma and Bae not knowing why he's done it. Their incomprehension slicks the back of his throat like oil on water. He'd like to spare them the pain, but then, he'd have liked to spare Milah hers as well.
As a pirate and as a former inhabitant of Neverland, he knows enough to nick a vial of the ink produced by squids on that island whenever it's within reach.
He sees Milah with someone else's blood on her teeth when he closes his eyes. Increasingly, he sees her even with his eyes open. She had been loving, but not forgiving.
For Emma's sake and Neal's, there are only two bullets in his gun, and only the first is smeared with ink to stop the crocodile’s heart. If he misses, he misses.
He suspected that whatever was wrong was getting worse; this is confirmed when he points the gun at Rumpelstiltskin and, through gritted teeth and numbing lips, says, "We're coming, Milah."
Rumpelstiltskin's face creases in confusion just the way his son's does. "Who?"
Emma and Neal burst into the shop together. They're too close to Rumpelstiltskin. Hook shuts his eyes. He sees Milah, and he pulls the trigger. The roar of it masks the sick drop-away feeling in his gut. Rumpelstiltskin should know his wife's name, no matter how strange a curse was on them all. If it's a curse.
There is Milah, and the roar, and the drop. He turns the gun on himself.
*+*+*+*+*
Hook tries to remember how much time he's spent in Storybrooke. It isn't enough to justify twice waking strapped to a hospital bed. His vision slides to the side without any particular intention on his part to look in that direction.
Emma is sitting in a spindly, cup-like excuse for a chair, and she is watching him. "Welcome back," she says. There are furrows down her jaw and between her brows, and her eyes are red.
"Neal?" he says as memories begin to surface.
"He's alive. He jumped in the way of a bullet, but he's alive."
Hook groans. "And Rumpelstiltskin?"
"Hey," she snaps. "I said Neal was alive, I didn't say he wasn't hurt. You're welcome, by the way. I saved your life, knocking your gun away. The bullet grazed your skull, though. Whale had to shave some of your hair for surgery and you look ridiculous, just so you know."
Hook tries to lift his hands to his head and is reminded that he's strapped down, as usual around this woman. This isn't one of the rooms he remembers, though; it's brighter and the light is false, stings his eyes and the skin around them. There are no windows.
He realizes that there is a tilt of a smile on Emma's mouth, that there was a lilt of teasing in her voice. This is not Emma disappointed that he's set himself back by trying to slaughter a man in cold blood. At least, not normally. "It didn't work," he says. "Rumpelstiltskin's alive, and you still don't-"
"I don't know, I'd kind of say it worked," Emma sighs. She stands and walks to the door. It sighs as it opens, as if it had been locked. Outside, the corridor isn't one he recognizes from the hospital, either; it's damp and gray. It puts him in mind of a cell, and he ignores it very carefully.
He lifts his head as best he can. There is a distinct draft on the right side of his skull. "It worked? You remember what I said about Milah, you believe me?"
She doesn't hear him. She moves aside so that Neal can come in. He waves at Hook with a hand swathed in bandages until it looks more like a stump than anything else.
"No," Hook says. "No, no, no...." He drops his head back against the pillow. "You took a bullet for him?"
"You're welcome," Neal says, dropping into the chair beside his bed. "If you'd killed him, we'd be right back where we started." He taps his bandages against Hook's arm. "Doctor Whale says I might not be able to use the hand again, with all the nerve and muscle damage."
"What?" Hook looks at Emma, who stands by the door and looks at them with tolerant disapproval. "Can't your doctors fix it? With all these miserable machines, surely they can fix a hand? Or your father, since I failed to kill him yet again, he could-"
"Yeah, he's pretty pissed I won't let him magic it better." Neal shifts in his chair, ill at ease in his skin as ever, expression almost shy. "But I kind of thought, you know, if I let it alone... Killian, you seriously have to stop trying to kill my dad. If you can live without your hand, I can live without mine, and our families are even."
"Even?" Hook says, unable to keep the snarl from his voice, his limbs jerking against the restraints. "He killed Milah." He's been trying not to say it. Each time he's less sure it's actually coming out of his mouth.
"Hook, come on," Emma says. "You get by fine without the hand. Anyway, chicks dig scars. Let's just let bygones be bygones here so I don't have to throw you in jail." She shakes her head. "And only in Storybrooke do I get to say that to the guy who just tried to kill a pillar of the community."
"Yes!" Hook jerks again. The cuffs around his wrists are padded, almost comfortable. They are also unyielding and they feel permanent. "Yes, I did! And you don't seem terribly upset about it; doesn't that strike you as odd?" She looks contemplative but not especially disturbed. He rounds on Neal. "Ask your father how your mother died, do me that favor. Look him in the eye and make him lie to you, at least, straight out! No dancing around the subject, make him say he didn't kill her." Do it here, he thinks. He wouldn't mind the confirmation himself. (But he’s not sure he can tell when the crocodile lies.)
Neal looks up at Emma, helpless. She shakes her head and beckons him, opening the door and holding it there.
"Okay, Hook," she says. "Look, Whale thinks it's better if you stay here for a while, okay? You're kind of... worked up. We'll try again tomorrow, see if you've calmed down by then."
Something trickles through him like freezing water. He sees a future of striking flint on stone, over and over, and never getting a spark. He'll always be this cold. Beyond Emma, out the door, the hallway is, unmistakably, this world's incarnation of a dungeon.
Neal makes his way over to her, arm stiff at his side. He looks older than Hook now, but there is so much of the boy he was in the way he moves, gawky and unsure. "I'll bring Henry by later to see you, if you want," he says. "You have him pretty worried. Seeing you here is better than not seeing you, I guess."
"Neal," Emma says. "You're on bed rest. Also a ton of painkillers. You're lucky I let you up for this." She taps her heel against the door a few times, not quite a kick. "And I have a pretty impressive pile of paperwork, but...." She brightens, and over her shoulder she bestows upon Hook a beaming smile. "Hey, I know who can bring Henry to see you-Mr. Gold."