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capnjay21 · 3 years

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The Wind Blows White 1/6

It’s been two years since Killian Jones and Emma Swan managed to escape the clutches of Brooke House, two years of waiting for it all to catch up to them and two years of pretending the cracks in their happy ending don’t show. But when the vision appears to Killian of a young boy unearthing the dagger and the darkness they had long since buried, it’s a race against time to try and stop another innocent from befalling the same fate. If they have the strength to face it.

Sequel to ‘A House is Never Still’.

A/N: Here it is, happy (slightly early) Halloween everyone! :D Confession time, I’ve actually been kinda nervous about posting this for a little while? Fretting over whether this one won’t be as good or scary as the original - but I am officially making a concerted effort not to care about any of that, because this is how the next part of the story goes and I’m excited to tell it! I hope you guys like it <3

***Editing to include the AMAZING art done by the lovely @hollyethecurious - I love it so much and I’m so excited by it. And for those that don’t know, she created the art that inspired the original fic so this is EXTRA cool!

Updates will probs be every other week to allow me to stay ahead. If it’s any consolation, they’re usually over 10k words, oof! Enjoy!

AO3

Rating: T Warnings: Mentions of canonical character death and some certified Spooky Business™.

Taglist: @carpedzem @optomisticgirl @snowbellewells @kmomof4 @lfh1226-linda @phiralovesloki @hollyethecurious @stahlop @peglegsjones @mariakov81 @seasailia @courtorderedcake @jonesfandomfanatic @wyntereyez @mrtinski @thisonesatellite @klynn-stormz @teamhook

If anyone would like on, or off, the taglist, just let me know!

-/-

1. i won’t die in my sleep.

-/-

It was 2:17am.

The whispers woke her, as the whispers always did.

It took her a few dizzying moments to emerge completely from sleep, the vivid and fraught images of her restless dreaming spilling out into the darkness of the room. As usual, she could not move. Her muscles had seized, curled tightly around her stomach like a clenched fist, trembling with strain while her eyes blinked out into the dark. She could see the forest. The broad, sweeping trunks of old red oaks sprawled from the ground upward, their leaves stained crimson by blood while their bark wept tears the colour of potted ink. Only once observed did she really consider that there was so little in nature truly black, as pus the same shade as crows dribbled and oozed down the spines of every oak she could see.

Slowly, the numbness receded from her aching limbs, the reckless smears of her wakeless mind gave way to the shapes her eyes could make out, could confirm as being there, and like a prayer she whispered aloud every object she could see and smell and know was real.

“Chair,” she croaked, “desk. Lamp. Computer. Window. Gold –”

No. No gold. The basket of spun gold twine was the final little spill, tempting her to return to a nightmare it could kiss back into a dream.

She refused.

It disappeared.

The whispers had woken her, but once she rose she was alone in the dark.

Emma patted the bed beside her, and found the sheets bare and cool. He had been gone for some time already, then. Trying to suppress the growing tide of unease that always came from waking alone, she stood slowly, then stretched out her sore muscles. Sore from being clenched so tightly for what felt like hours. Usually Killian woke her before it reached this point, but clearly he hadn’t even been there for its beginning.

She sighed. Thought about calling him. The clock on her nightstand winked in and out. 2:17am.

There was no point, anyway. She knew where he’d be.

-/-

It was 2:17am.

As usual, it was raining.

Beyond the stretch of porch in front of him, sheets of water fell in a relentless assault on the sodden ground, and Killian mopped at his already sweaty brow. The air was thick and moist, even this early in the morning, the height of an unusually punishing June. He let the downpour carry on for another few moments before ducking out into it, bending to lift the wide bowl he had left sitting on the grass a couple of minutes earlier. Now filled to the brim with rainwater, he brought it back underneath the shelter of the porch and laid it down on the ground.

He'd had that dream again. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

There was a noise from not too far away, the screech of metal on concrete in the dark and the answering leap of a car horn out into the night air, but he tried to push it from his mind. This would never work if he couldn’t clear his thoughts. Folding his legs underneath him, Killian leant forward until he could see his reflection staring back at him from the bowl.

The surface of the water was inky black, the faint caresses of a breeze brushing ripples across the surface and making his reflection appear distorted, but he tried to see beyond that. Beyond his tired eyes and the hurt and the heat, to something more. Silently, he willed the dark pool to show him something else.

Show me the boy, he asked out into the dark. Show me the boy at the creek with the dagger.

Even just the thought of the dagger, the curling blade they had sent hurling into the ravine, brought forth a rush of unwelcome and jarring memories. The dagger, floating in the middle of their circle, summoning a storm of black lightning and hurt and that nothing, that awful nothing, and Killian could feel something tugging at the centre of his chest, beckoning him forward.

He couldn’t see his reflection anymore. The surface of the water was blank.

Not like this, he thought furiously, wrestling for control.

It wasn’t interested in his control. If he wanted to go deeper, he had to let himself fall. This was the bargain.

But –

He thought of her at home, in their bed, resting fitfully.

This was the bargain.

Emma.

Killian gasped for air, which was when he realised the tightness in his chest was because he hadn’t taken a breath in a long time. He almost fell forward, and his right hand shot out to the deck of the porch to stop his face from crashing into the bowl – which was when he realised it was just a bowl of water again. His reflection stared back at him, breathing heavily, eyes wild and afraid.

If he wanted to go deeper, he had to let himself fall.

In his mind’s eye, he could see it perfectly. The sparkling summer day. The boy, knelt with his right arm in the creek before he pulled it out, and the dagger with it.

Dragging his eyes away from the bowl, he reached into his pocket for his phone. The clock on the display ticked onto 2:17am.

Still? He thought, bewildered.

“You should be used to this sort of shit by now,” he muttered, before emptying the bowl onto the grass.

-/-

It was 2:17am.

Henry only knew this because it had been 2:17am for a really long time already, but every time he checked the clock it was the same.

“Gotta be broken,” he mumbled, letting it drop back onto his nightstand. He told himself to roll over, to go back to sleep, Mom was making pancakes tomorrow and he didn’t want to be too tired to enjoy them, but something kept lingering at the edge of his awareness. Like a movement that was too quick to spot, or a sound too quiet to take shape, or that sensation after someone had taken a deep breath and they were waiting to speak, but wouldn’t utter a word until he looked at them.

Something was different, and it niggled at him like an itch he couldn’t quite scratch.

Somehow, he didn’t feel alone in his bedroom anymore.

He rolled over again, and this time his eyes instantly locked onto the shoebox he had stuffed under his dresser. He didn’t know how he knew, but he just did. Whatever he was feeling – it was coming from there, and the object he had hidden inside.

The dagger he had found at the creek.

It was… whispering to him.

Come, it hissed out into the dark. Listen.

Henry’s hand tightened on the covers. Then he gently pushed them back and sat up.

-/-

It was 2:17am.

Robert should have been home hours ago, and Belle couldn’t sleep for worry.

Her heart stuttered into hopefulness with every shadow that passed in front of the pawn shop window, but each one merely reached the other side with barely a glance back at her. She thought about calling the police, but surely they would dismiss her concerns so early into the morning. It’s normal, ma’am, they would say, and laugh about wives wondering after their wandering husbands. But this was different.

There was something about the way he had looked tonight, something wild and dangerous and careless in his eye, that had made her want to take three steps back every time he opened his mouth to speak. His tongue had lingered over softer sounds, tickled by a secret that only it knew. Like an animal, his sharp eyes had followed her around the shop as they closed, and when he kissed her it had sent a shiver down her spine.

It had frightened her. He had frightened her.

You’ll see, he had said, when she asked where he was going. You’ll see.

Belle didn’t want to see. She just wanted him to come home. Her mind railed against the truth that had already started to creep into the corner of her heart.

Tonight, he had gone to Brooke House.

And Brooke House did not want to give him back.

-/-

Liam Jones didn’t care what fucking time it was.

Aching and exhausted, he kicked open the screen door and stepped out onto the porch. The air was dank and cold, and smelled faintly of mildew, and he wrapped his coat tighter around him. Killian had needed three blankets before he could get to sleep earlier, the act of being inside the house only slightly warmer than the harsh early spring outside, but still sweat pooled at the base of Liam’s neck. His hands felt clammy with a layer of grit that he could never wipe away, and the moisture on his skin froze the moment he walked out into the night.

But under his skin, he burned with cold fury.

He’d have to pretend to be Brennan and call the school again tomorrow, there was no way he could go in if he needed to be up for the rest of the night. He could send Killian over to Smee’s, that was one problem dealt with. The older man would take him into elementary school; but even that solution summoned the familiar rush of dread that came to Liam whenever he thought of his little brother moving into middle school next year. That would make everything so much more difficult to hide from concerned and nosy neighbours alike.

How had he let this happen? Again? They had been making so much progress.

Liam rubbed his eyes tiredly. He should just hurry up and drop out. He was good with his hands, he could make a living doing carpentry jobs, move to some quiet town upstate maybe –

I’m just trying to prepare you for life’s big question, Liam.

What kind of man are you going to be?

A quiet town upstate? He was really setting the bar low for pipe dreams these days.

Then there was always the chance Brennan might be himself again by morning; maybe he could call the school. Could drive Killian in. Maybe he’d be up before the sun rose like he used to, whistling a sea shanty and cooking them eggs over easy.

Now there was a pipe dream.

What time was it? A distracted pat of his jacket let him know his phone was still inside, but he wasn’t quite ready to go back in yet. It had to be late. Or early. Wednesday. The recycling went out on Wednesday. Which mean they were two days closer to Friday, which was the eighteenth. Water bill went out on the eighteenth.

Brennan hadn’t worked in weeks. They’d be short.

No heat and no water. The only things he could rely on in this house were the bricks and the mortar.

Why him? Why did it have to be him?

Liam resisted the urge to scream. At the night, at the cold, at whatever curse had captured his family and refused to let them go.

It was 2:17am.

And Liam wasn’t alone on the porch.

Once alerted to the intruder he stumbled backward, fumbling around for anything he could use as a weapon.

“Liam?”

Liam froze, his fist having clenched around the shard of a shattered flowerpot Brennan had destroyed last week.

The stranger hadn’t moved, stood silhouetted against the porch light.

He blinked. Willed his racing heart to slow.

“Who are you?”

-/-

It was 2:17am.

Except, no, it wasn’t.

Emma frowned and looked at her phone again, and the correct time stared back at her; 10:41am. How had she thought it said anything different?

She shook her head. Shit, she really needed to get more sleep. Her foot resumed tapping its restless beat on the floor of the almost empty corridor.

The entire hall was almost completely deserted, only the low murmur of conversation ricocheting against thin walls and tall ceilings, and everything was beige. Beige walls, beige floors, beige murals; she fucking hated beige, it was such a non-colour. Just pick something a bit more appealing and stick to it. But in her not-all-that-limited experience, most government buildings seemed to default to beige, and it was no different in the Seattle equivalent of the DMV. They had been led up to the customer service desk almost half an hour ago, but nobody seemed to care about how goddamn important this was, and her anxiety was climbing with every unattended second that ticked past.

Somewhere down the corridor a door opened, and Emma immediately whipped around to look at it. A broad, cheerful man offered her a bemused smile at the sudden sharp attention he was being given, before disappearing out through another door.

“You need to calm down,” Killian mused.

A glance at him confirmed his eyes were still closed, head tilted to lean back against the wall with his hands folded over his stomach, but her impatience had to have been obvious even without looking at her. She huffed in a way which she knew made her sound puerile, and the corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement. From the moment they had been seated there he had stayed silent, and it was only fuelling her irritation that she couldn’t settle on whether that was because he was bored, tired or just giving her room to complain and agitate to her heart’s content. She preferred to know exactly what Killian was thinking.

The memory of waking alone the night before still smarted, and she had to keep reminding herself that it wasn’t Killian’s job to always be at her side on the off chance she didn’t sleep through the night. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, and she knew whatever had caught his attention this time had kept him up at least an hour or so after she had summoned the courage to climb back into bed. She had still been awake when he slid back in beside her, but she had pretended to be asleep.

He had probably known she was doing it, which was why he had kissed an apology into her shoulder and held her a little tighter than usual.

It was hard to stay mad at him when he hadn’t technically done anything to make her mad – and he was already sorry about the thing he shouldn’t have to be sorry for.

Which just made her feel even worse.

“I hate beige,” she grumbled.

Killian let out a breath of warm, ticklish laughter, something that growled pleasantly in his throat. Some of her temper ebbed away. “I know,” he said. “I’ll take you somewhere pink after.”

“There’s that big hotel in Hawaii that’s totally pink, right? What do they call that?”

He opened his eyes and arched an eyebrow. “And maybe when our next skip is the Queen of England, we’ll be able to afford to go there.” Even less than thirty seconds of talking to him, properly, she could feel her mood lifting. He reached one of his hands into her lap, seeking hers, and she let him thread their fingers together. “I was actually thinking donuts. The strawberry glazed kind?”

Emma sighed happily. “Make it chocolate and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

He smiled warmly and squeezed her hand. “Whatever you want.”

His mood seemed light, but she wasn’t fooled. The way she would catch his eyes flickering carefully between her and the customer service desk in front of them told her all she really needed to know about the direction of his thoughts – they probably shared the same sinking feeling that had washed over her since they had arrived.

That this almost definitely wasn’t going to go her way.

“Ms. Swan?”

Immediately Emma was on her feet, bolting over to the desk as quickly as polite company would allow, Killian close behind, all traces of mirth evaporated from his expression. The man who had come to meet them wasn’t the same one who had led them up to the desk earlier, and a quick glance at his nametag told Emma they were speaking to a Mr. Heller. He resembled every bureaucrat that had ever taken residence in her imagination, thin in a sickly way and sort-of feeble-looking, but with a snide tug at the corner of his mouth which suggested he was not going to tell her what she wanted to hear, and he was enjoying the prospect immensely.

The sick feeling in her gut deepened.

“Thank you for waiting,” he said, in a bored tone, skimming the file he was holding. Emma tried to lift herself a little taller to take a look at it, but it was angled slightly away from her. “We were able to track down the license plate you requested in your application, but it was recalled eleven years ago. The vehicle it was registered to is no longer in use.”

It was easy to push back the first wave of disappointment – a setback, but not the most important thing. “But you know who it belonged to?”

Heller sighed heavily, and let the folder close. “I’m afraid the Washington State Licensing Department has denied your public records request regarding the owners of the plate.”

It was like a punch to the stomach. She could feel the warmth of Killian’s palm splayed against the small of her back, gently reassuring.

This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be another dead end.

“On what grounds?” he was asking, and she felt a rush of gratitude for him as she hadn’t quite been able to form her mouth around the words.

“Not enough evidence,” Heller continued, in that same flat tone that was beginning to grate. “We reviewed the article you sent, about the circumstances of the abandoned child at the edge of the road. There isn’t a lot of information available regarding the incident, even at the county level.”

“Well, it happened,” Emma replied hotly. “It’s me. I was the kid.”

Another banner year, right?

What?

We’ve all got ghosts here.

Heller quirked an eyebrow. “Then the department offers their sympathies. But there is no reason to suggest the plate you requested belonged to the vehicle involved.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Maine is a long way from Seattle.”

But she had seen it.

She had experienced the moment that changed the course of her life hundreds, thousands of times at the behest of a malevolent demon, while to the rest of the world she had been missing for five years. Even before that, the very fact of her being abandoned on the side of the road as a baby had cast its shadow over her entire life. Achieving any measure of answers about it had been unobtainable. She had made her peace with that a long time ago.

But then she became trapped in Brooke House.

And Brooke House had given her a few more pieces of the puzzle.

It felt like a dream, now. Like the scatter of smoke, or déjà vu. Something she couldn’t really be sure had happened. She had spent five years of her life suspended in a place that showed only her regrets, her fears, her desperate desires; anything that would make her pray for deliverance. In the two years she had spent free of it all, her ability to conjure up and consult those visions waxed and waned. The images it had shown her sometimes dribbled back like the trickle of a raindrop down glass to her waiting, thirsty mouth, but nothing was ever enough. While that feeling, that sensation of being left again, and again, and again remained seared onto her mind forever, the actual, physical details of the day her parents abandoned her were scarce. The vision was difficult to bring into focus.

Two months ago, a nightmare had caught her so tightly that Killian hadn’t been able to wake her for six minutes. Just when he had been reaching for his phone in a panic to dial 911, she had burst free; gasping, aching – awake and alive. The details had been so vivid. Before her eyes, her parents abandoned her at the side of the freeway; only this time she had spotted and could recall the plate of the car that had left her.

They had packed everything they owned into Killian’s Chevelle and made for Seattle in a matter of days.

This couldn’t be the end of the road. Not after everything she had been through to get here. She deserved answers, damn it.

“That’s the thing about cars,” Emma replied coolly, “they drive. And if you’re abandoning a kid, you’re not likely to do it on your own doorstep, are you?”

Heller looked bored. “You’re welcome to make an appeal against the department’s decision, so long as you do so within four to six weeks.”

“But I saw – we have a witness!”

“A witness?” His tone was disbelieving, and he fixed her with a hard stare. “Why didn’t you say so before?” Emma opened her mouth, but Killian pinched the side of her waist sharply and she hesitated. When she didn’t immediately confirm her declaration, Heller’s eyebrows rose victoriously. “Would they be prepared to come down here and make a statement?”

“We can ask,” Killian replied smoothly, before she could say anything. He whipped a notepad and a pen from his pocket. “Is it the same address we submit the appeal to, or –?”

Emma fumed quietly at his side. She knew why he had cut her off, before she could dig herself into a hole that would ensure state officials labelled her as halfway to crazy town, but it was infuriating. She couldn’t very well say their witness was her and the visions a haunted house halfway across the country had given her – a house which they had no physical evidence even existed, as it had since disappeared.

Silently, she smouldered.

Killian reached absently for her hand. She tugged it out of his grip.

Heller and Killian confirmed the logistics of an appeal process, but before long they were being thanked dully for their time and invited to leave. Emma stayed quiet for their entire walk out of the building, and she could sense Killian intentionally kept some space between them to allow her to adequately process what had happened in there.

Nothing. Nothing was what had happened in there.

Emma could feel the tide of something tight at the top of her stomach, like her insides were cramping. It was how she felt when she woke, uncertain, in the middle of the night.

“We’ll find another way, Emma,” Killian spoke gently as they stepped out into the morning sunlight.

Emma waved a dismissive hand and tried to focus her gaze on the particulars of the street. The chequered red, blue and silver line of cars parked along the sidewalk, the scent of wet asphalt and the hum of traffic whizzing by. They were far from a forest here – but she could feel the quiet whisper of the trees against her skin.

“I know, I know, I just –” She curled her toes in her boots, felt the stiff concrete beneath her feet. “I’m – tired of hitting brick walls.”

“We’ve got a little cash in the bank,” Killian pointed out, “maybe for the appeal we could hire a solicitor, just see if there’s anything else we can do to help our case.”

He was frowning at the note he had scribbled down during their conversation with Heller, his mind already four or five steps further ahead, and Emma felt a rush of affection for him. For his solidness and his patience. His tenacity was well documented, he had spent five years searching for answers about Brooke House and had never once given up on the idea that he would find them, and her along with them – even now he refused to let any speedbumps hamper their progress. It was so easy for her to get struck down by the first sign of resistance, but Killian persisted in a way she could only ever hope of emulating.

Nothing in the street felt tangible beside the resilience and vibrance of Killian Jones. Sometimes it felt like he was the only real thing she had found outside of Brooke House.

Like dust, the cars and the concrete and the chorus of the Seattle summer drifted away.

She reached for his hand and squeezed it tightly, praying for an anchor.

“How are you always so optimistic?”

“Because I know what you’re capable of,” he replied easily, although it felt like he was speaking to her from a great distance. Emma fought to inhabit this moment. “And I’ve yet to see you fail.”

Killian was smiling, which had always done its best to keep monsters at bay.

In a blur the noises returned, like a radio slowly tuning into focus.

“Emma?” he queried softly, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Are you still with me?”

The wet splatters of rain against the yearning canopy receded as it stretched for the sky.

Down the street a car horn blared, and she let it shake her firmly back into the present.

In Seattle, the sun was shining, and Killian was here. Standing so close to his warmth made her feel like a thief, but she couldn’t stop herself from reaching for him.

“Donuts,” she managed, nodding firmly. “I need a whole lot of donuts.”

He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed it. “You read my mind.”

-/-

Killian railed against the idea of calling Elsa’s home a house.

It was a huge, sprawling behemoth of a structure, with vast corridors that led nowhere and innumerable superfluous rooms that all looked identical, with walls scaled by books and furniture shrouded in neat, ivory sheeting to protect them from dust and age. More than once he had found himself completely and utterly lost while attempting to find the bathroom, which he was convinced changed locations every time he visited it, and that wasn’t even mentioning the size of the grounds which circled the outside of the house.

Embedded deep within the winding roads of West Bellevue, he was grateful for the opportunity to interact with something a little less urban than the busy street he and Emma had rented their flat on, and Elsa had opened up her home to all assortments of waifs and strays long before he had ever come on the scene. Truthfully, it was sheer coincidence that they had even met, crossing paths in downtown Seattle late one night – but then, he didn’t believe in coincidences anymore. He had been searching for something more, and she had been offering something for him to find. The rest was inevitable.

Clear night, isn’t it?

The room in which he spent the most time was the large dining room – the long table that would ordinarily occupy its centre was, as ever, pushed to the side against one wall and loaded with edible treats already half depleted, clearing the way for Elsa’s guests to arrange themselves on the floor in any number of styles depending on what the evening requested of them. The windows always remained open, so the room was immersed in the earthy scent of the outside, of wet moss and woodsmoke and pine, and the rain from the night before somehow made everything so much more pervasive.

Aurora stood in the centre of the room with her eyes closed, her hands held palm up with a pinecone resting atop them, while the rest of Elsa’s guests sat spread out across the room with their palms turned to the ceiling, mimicking the same position.

Killian sat at the edge of the room, notebook resting open in his lap, and observed.

Elsa stood, made her way over to Aurora, and placed her hands over the other woman’s.

“Child of earth, wind, fire and sea,” she spoke clearly out into the silent room. “We welcome you into our lives, into our homes, and into the waiting embrace of this powerful, caring woman. Think fondly on her, and choose her, as we have, to be part of your family.”

As Aurora opened her eyes, Anna stepped forward holding a candle in one hand and a ceramic bowl scattered with herbs in the other.

“Light it,” Elsa encouraged her, and Aurora held the pinecone over the candle until it caught.

The flame grew rapidly, Killian remembered reading somewhere that it had to do with the natural resins so near to the surface in pinecones, and soon Aurora dropped it into the bowl. Once there, the contents of the bowl started to gently smoulder and the scent of sweetgrass and sage began to float out into the air.

Killian took a deep breath. Let it wash over him for a few quiet, tender moments.

He wasn’t sure why, but he always felt closest to Liam here.

Aurora was smiling, and Elsa grinned back.

“Blessed be,” she said warmly. “And good luck!”

The group echoed a fractured but delighted blessed be, in response, before breaking out into a smattering of claps and spirited cheers. A few jumped to their feet to envelope Aurora in a loving, haphazard embrace.

No, house didn’t really cover the breadth of what Elsa’s home had become to this community, or the reality of what Killian had found there.

This was a covenstead.

It wasn’t the first coven Killian had ever encountered – his first had been in Pennsylvania a number of years ago, but they had been intensely private and suspicious of strangers, and their association had not extended more than a few weeks. Long before now it had become his habit to deliberately seek out suggestions of the world that existed beyond what they could see. It had started because of Brooke House, because of the mistakes they had made when they were seventeen and naïve and frightened; after Emma had disappeared, Killian had searched for answers anywhere he could. He had five years to cross the globe, to pursue every lead and overturn every stone that might hint at something more, with varying levels of success.

Now, Killian had spent so long searching that he wasn’t sure he remembered how to be anything else. Getting Emma back, rather than being the end of his fascination with the otherworldly, had only fuelled it. There were still so many questions he didn’t have answers to, with Liam being chief among them. His brother had been involved in all this, had known about this barely perceivable double life that some among them were living, but Killian still had no idea about the how, or the why.

Emma was his life now. Everything he had ever wanted. For so long, his sole focus had been in making this world as right for her as possible, in giving her the tools with which she could build her new reality and hoping desperately that she still wanted him in it; while privately wrestling with that disquieting sensation that accompanied stepping away from the bizarre and the unexplained for the first time in a long while.

It was difficult, he had realised, to come to terms with the fact that everything you wanted wouldn’t stay everything you needed for the rest of your life.

And Killian needed something.

On their third night in Seattle, he had met Elsa. The very same night he had first had the dream about the boy and the creek and the dagger.

He didn’t believe in coincidences anymore.

Soon after Elsa wrapped up the ceremony, the group began to disperse, some aiming for a few treats to take for the road while others went to collect coats and bags from the hall. For his part, Killian took more care than necessary slipping his notebook back into his already overpacked bag and began shrugging on his jacket. The ending of these meetings always left him feeling oddly bereft, like although every week he walked in with no idea what he would find, somehow his expectations were never met. Or perhaps it was the realisation that always came when he watched the members of the coven at its conclusion, mingling and trading smiles and stories about the week that had just passed.

He wasn’t one of them. They were all kind enough, and they liked him, but he wasn’t part of them. They wondered why he was there as much as he did.

Watching them, his heart throbbed for the one place that had always been home; for that warm, golden light, for Regina’s lasagne and David’s terrible jokes and Mary Margaret’s helpful reminders to enjoy happily ever after. His chest hurt for the wanting of it.

The clerk at the DMV the day before had been right: Maine was a long way from Seattle.

He turned to leave.

“Killian, hi there.” It was Elsa, calling him back, and he fixed on a cheerful smile as he pivoted on the spot to face her. “I hope today wasn’t too women-centric for you.”

Aurora was trying for a baby with her husband; as a result, they had focused the evening on fertility. The lighting of the pinecone was a ritual from Elsa’s book of shadows, and had followed a relaxing evening spent sharing poetry and prayers and best wishes about family.

(At the very least, that probably explained why he was feeling so homesick.)

“Not at all,” he assured her, not least because he didn’t feel fertility was an exclusively female pursuit. There were plenty of men there tonight. “It’s a pleasure to observe. Thank you again for inviting me into your home.”

“Anyone is welcome here, there’s no need to thank me.”

He was reminded, again, of how different Elsa’s coven were to the one in Pennsylvania; Elsa made a point of opening up the covenstead to anyone at any time, not just during their meetings. It was Elsa’s home, but it was also effectively a refuge or meeting place for any of its members whenever they needed it. The grounds in particular were always accessible, and something Killian himself had taken advantage of more than once.

Especially when he wanted to – well. Dip his toe into something Emma would never approve of. The covenstead felt like a safer place to explore those private desires.

If he wanted to go deeper, he had to let himself fall.

“You know,” Elsa was saying “if you would like to participate rather than just observe, we’d be happy to invite you to join us.”

For a moment he could see it; himself, sat on cushions with the rest of the group, palms up and eyes closed and waiting for wonders to begin again.

The image immediately fell apart as visions began to swim of a pentagram penned in black marker, scattered salt and a dagger rising above the swell of a storm.

This was the bargain.

“Oh,” Killian let out uneasily, trying to find the best way to refuse without sounding impolite. “No, that’s alright. Really.” Elsa looked a little disappointed, and he hurried to reassure her. “I’ve… had some experience with the miraculous. It didn’t exactly go well.”

Killian – Killian, don’t –!

A wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm him.

“I wouldn’t say what we do here is miraculous,” Elsa replied, but he could see she was quietly pleased by the comparison. Awkwardness settled like dust between them, neither considering the conversation finished, but before they could continue a few people cut between them on their way out of the dining room and into the hall. They called out their goodbyes to Elsa as they passed, and she returned them warmly. Killian lingered until they were finished, fiddling with the strap on his bag.

Once they were gone, she took a step towards him.

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

Killian shrugged. “By all means.”

“Why is it that you come to our meetings?” she clasped her hands in front of her, in a gesture Killian couldn’t help but interpret as deliberately nonthreatening. “And if you say Anna’s fruit loaf I might believe you, but I don’t really think that’s what it is.”

The question felt like it should be impolite, loaded with a query that went beyond their unspoken arrangement; that he could come, and he could watch, and she, like the rest of the group, would leave him be – but he was uninjured by her curiosity. Curiosity was, after all, what had brought him there.

So he surprised himself by being honest.

“For… proof, I guess?” he lifted his shoulders in an uncertain shrug. “That the world is still – strange?” The way Elsa watched him, almost waiting for him to continue, made that answer feel inadequate. He cleared his throat and searched for more to offer. “I actually lost my brother, a long time ago, now – and I still don’t fully understand why. And my partner, she…”

So good of you to finally come and see me.

“She went through something I can’t even begin to comprehend. But she doesn’t like to talk about it.”

Elsa nodded slowly. “Sometimes what we don’t say speaks more for what troubles us.”

“Yeah,” Killian agreed, feeling oddly liberated by the opportunity to confide in someone. All he could think of was Emma in the dead of night, clenched tightly in their bed, her arms and knees curled against her chest as she fought darkness only she could see. “Yeah, it does.”

“Perhaps she’d like to come along to a meeting?” Elsa suggested. “There’s no obligation to partake. She could observe, as you do.”

“Oh, no. No. She hates all this stuff.”

Emma had already made clear her opinion on the covenstead in Bellevue, she was not interested; and he felt compelled to apologise on her behalf, seeing as they were all perfectly good people who had done nothing to offend her.

“It’s just — that something, I mentioned,” he offered. “Thank you, though. I appreciate it.”

“Well,” Elsa spread her hands. It was neither here nor there to her, he was sure. She couldn’t offer help to someone who didn’t want to receive it. “Have a good week, Killian. Will we be seeing you at our Litha celebration?”

Litha, Killian had learnt, was the wicca celebration of Midsummer, which took place on the summer solstice at the end of June. It traditionally heralded the beginning of summer, with its focus on fertility and the championing of light over darkness manifesting in the longest day of the year. The coven had planned an evening full of festivities including a large bonfire, an almost drastic amount of food and a lot of promised general merriment. Elsa had said last year two among their number had decided to spontaneously marry during the festival; in their eyes, the perfect way to celebrate new life and regeneration.

It sounded like a lot of fun. In the bleak, uninspiring, greyscape that Seattle had become to him in the last two months, it was a breath of life and the outdoors that he would be grateful for.

But he wasn’t really sure if he should. Especially with – well. With Emma.

“Sure,” he said, just to be polite. “If I can get away. That would be nice.”

He meant it. Elsa smiled understandingly, as if she knew he had no clear intention of attending but would let him maintain the charade for the sake of pleasant company – she was kind, and she didn’t really know him, but she had still invited him into her home without a single caveat. The coven respected her. Killian would like nothing more than to introduce her to Emma; he was sure whatever she refused to talk to him about she could bring before the other woman without fear of shame or regret, or whatever else she must think would come from Killian that prevented her from being honest.

Not that he was being entirely honest with her, either; she knew he came to the covenstead more often than their weekly meetings, but she didn’t know what he had been trying to do there. She couldn’t know. It was better she focused on the future, on the path ahead, on the fact that she was free, now, from the nightmare behind them.

It was lonely, he had come to realise, being the only one with unfinished business.

Clear night, isn’t it?

“Elsa, wait,” he said, before he could think better of it. A jolt of nervous energy ran through him, his feet squaring imperceptibly on the laminate floor beneath him as if they were ready to run, but he forced himself to stay where he was. “Actually, I’ve… for the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to scry.”

Elsa’s eyebrows shot upwards.

He could understand her surprise, given he had shown no interest in participating in any of the wicca crafts since he had started coming to the Bellevue covenstead. Scrying was something he had only really read about, but never seen performed; it was the practice of, at its core, looking into a suitable medium in the hope of detecting significant messages of visions. While the most notorious method of which remained fortunes told over crystal balls, the history of the craft extended far beyond recent iterations of neopaganism. Cultures as far back as ancient Egyptians and Babylonians had practiced scrying by gazing into stone dishes filled with palm oil.

Killian had never really bought into it – but its existence as a medium through which he might gain some insight had been too tempting not to at least attempt, and the results were, well. Inconclusive.

He stumbled over himself to continue. “I usually try at night, and mostly with rainwater, as I’ve heard that’s more potent? But I’ve also tried with tap water, and mirrors, too. But I’m finding it difficult to find direction.” He shrugged helplessly; his mouth felt bone dry. “It’s like staring out into silt.”

“Scrying is a challenging craft,” Elsa confirmed. “What is it you’re trying to see?”

He hesitated. Not just because he was reluctant to confirm the details for fear of sounding – well. Halfway to crazy town, as Emma would put it, but it was also this: he didn’t want Elsa to be part of it. Any of it. If he could protect one more person from the demons in his past, he would prefer to do so.

“I’ve… been having this dream,” he answered carefully. “A nightmare, really. It makes me worry someone might be in trouble because of something I didn’t finish.”

Come. Listen.

The quiet truth knocked gently. They had been naïve to assume it was over.

Elsa hummed thoughtfully. “Often, dreams are just manifestations of our anxieties –”

“This is different,” he said firmly. “I can feel it.”

Killian didn’t sleep the way Emma slept, treading that breathless line between the waking world and the rest, fumbling in those in-between spaces, sometimes needing help discerning where the truest threads of herself should lie. They had developed a number of strategies for her, routines to perform while waking to know she was no longer asleep; listing the objects she could see and smell and taste as chief among them. Anything to help her cling to the world above and pull her out.

Killian did not sleep that way. The delineation for him was clear.

Which was how he knew this was more than just a nightmare.

Elsa seemed to take his confidence at his word, and instead turned her attention back to the wider room.

“Tink, would you come over here?”

Tink was not her name, but nobody ever called her anything else, so Tink was what Killian had come to know her by. Her features were sharp, her wit just as cutting, and she had made a point of behaving as indifferently to him as possible in a way he found both frustrating and a little refreshing – somebody else acting like he didn’t belong there helped remind him he was separate, he was apart from all this. Currently, she stood looking exceptionally guilty by the dining table, three small cupcakes placed precariously on top of each other and clearly about to be tucked away in some tupperware for her return journey. Killian didn’t blame her. The lemon cakes were always especially divine.

“Tink is our resident expert on divining arts,” Elsa informed him after spotting his rather put out expression. In a few moments, Tink had joined them. “Killian has been trying to scry but hasn’t had a lot of luck.”

Tink wrinkled her nose. “Nasty business, scrying. Wouldn’t bother.”

“I’ve been having this dream I’m trying to –”

“Oh, boy. It’s amateur hour. Trouble with dreams, go see an oneiromancer. Or a therapist.”

Killian bit back a retort; he was somewhat regretting the decision to come clean already.

“Killian believes this is more than a dream,” Elsa spoke quietly, but firmly, “and it’s not our business to interpret another’s instincts. We were hoping you could provide some insight.”

When Tink turned her shrewd eyes onto him, he merely lifted a shoulder in a helpless gesture. “You said it,” he pointed at himself, “amateur hour.”

Tink looked immensely reluctant, but as her gaze flickered between Elsa’s imploring request and Killian’s discomfort, she finally heaved a defeated sigh.

“Agh, shit.”

She took a bite out of a lemon cake.

Through chews, she carried on.

“Catch me up. What’ve you tried so far?”

-/-

The quiet blip of a notification turned Emma’s attention away from the window and back to her laptop. She smirked triumphantly – finally some good news.

“There you are,” she muttered, “sneaky bastard.”

She and Killian had been tracking down the same skip for a few days – so far none of their usual tactics could draw him out, but his credit card had just been used at a convenience store around the corner from his previous place of employment. The first time she had gone to that office she’d had a feeling everybody was behaving just a little shady. Now she knew she was right to be suspicious and resolved to pay them another visit in the morning, provided Killian was alright with it.

Well, she corrected, only if she decided to give Killian a say. Emma’s gaze skimmed the empty flat. If he wanted to spend the night messing around with delusional, self-proclaimed witches, then she got to make the work decisions by herself.

She gritted her teeth at the thought of the house in Bellevue Killian liked to retreat to these days; why couldn’t he have joined a local rec team or found some obnoxious new drinking buddies like a normal guy? The group at Bellevue were all just a bunch of tree-huggers, even worse than Regina. Emma knew what real magic was. And it wasn’t dancing around a field wearing flower crowns or mumbling limericks over a cauldron.

Emma quickly jotted down the address and the details regarding the skip’s purchase. It usually helped to be able to throw everything in her arsenal at getting past the front desk of any office. Bail bonds was a career she and Killian had fallen into almost accidentally – it suited the nomadic lifestyle they preferred, and blended Emma’s instincts for catching someone in a lie and Killian’s propensity towards investigation quite well. It just worked. And they needed some way to get food on the table.

David had offered them work at the veterinary shelter more times than she could count, but she was sure that had a lot more to do with wanting them to stay back home in Storybrooke than anything else. But Storybrooke couldn’t be for them what it was to him and Mary Margaret, and Regina; not anymore. There were too many splintered memories. Not to mention half the town still thought Killian had kidnapped her and kept her in a cave somewhere for five years. The lines had to be carefully drawn.

The notes for their appeal were sat in a haphazard clump behind the laptop, and the stack looked exactly how Emma felt about it; worn, sad, and a little flustered. It had only been a few days, but something about the disappointment at the DMV left her feeling wrecked and restless all it once. It didn’t feel over, but whenever she thought about burying herself back in the endless bureaucratic process all she wanted to do was hit the pavement and not stop running until she fell off the corner of the map. She wanted to be outside. Balmy air drifted in through the open window, coloured by the frustrated yelps and the gentle roar of cars in the busy evening.

She paused, listening for the familiar growl of Killian’s Chevelle. Nothing.

With a jolt, she realised her pen was still in her hand and had been working idly against the paper. She peered over at the notepad, hoping she hadn’t doodled over her notes about the credit card – and nearly knocked over the laptop as she jerked backwards.

Scribbled over every inch of the page, completely obscuring anything underneath it, she had written her name. Over and over.

In a twisted, medieval cursive she had only ever seen in one other place.

Emma Swan Emma Swan Emma Swan Emma

The dagger swam into focus, and Emma resisted the urge to retch, clutching tightly at the desk in front of her with her left hand. Her right lay motionless across its surface, a foreign object to her now, a traitor which had scrawled out the pall that nestled around her shoulders and given it physical form. It was disquieting enough to see it there, a restless dream broken out, but only more disturbing to not remember having put it there.

She stood abruptly. Tore the page free, scrunched it up with that now untrustworthy hand, and dropped it down onto the floor.

Leaving the laptop open, she stalked out of the bedroom and across the hall to their tiny kitchen, determined to regain some control over the course of the evening, constantly clenching and unclenching her hand into a fist at her side. The kitchen was little more than two counters facing each other atop a strip of gaudy orange tiles with barely enough space for one person to pass by another, but they managed. They had never needed a lot of space, and their budget hadn’t been able to stretch particularly far. If they hadn’t needed a permanent address in order to submit the public records request, she probably would have made a case for sleeping in the Chevelle somewhere once they made it to the city.

Still, Killian had pointed out there was something nice about having a home base that wasn’t just the backseat of a car, and his suggestive glances at the bed when the realtor had taken them round had not gone unnoticed. Or unappreciated.

It was just – right then, especially without him in it, she didn’t want it. The lack of furniture, of personal affects, the rumpled sheets and the cracked plaster walls made it a gaping hole of something desolate and harsh. The jaws of something wanting in the shape of four walls and a door with a barely functional lock. She longed for the Chevelle and the torn leather seats, for something wild and alive.

At night Seattle burnt, and Emma yearned for home.

Not to mention it rained all the fucking time.

The door to the flat opened and closed, and Emma called out a greeting as she poured herself a glass of water. Killian didn’t reply. Assuming he had his headphones on, Emma allowed herself a few moments to breathe. She’d tell him about the credit card alert, let him know she was going by the skip’s office again in the morning and he could come along if he wanted, but she probably wouldn’t need the backup. Cornering a skip somewhere surrounded by friends and colleagues usually made them more amenable to coming quietly. Then she would ask as politely as she could manage about his evening and try not look too sour if he used the word covenstead again, instead of big fucking house.

Emma emerged from the kitchen, but he wasn’t setting his bag down in the sitting room like she was expecting him to be. Frowning, Emma re-entered the bedroom, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Her right hand twitched.

It felt numb, like she had been holding it in cold water for a few minutes. She could barely feel her other hand when she brushed her palms together, just the whisper of a touch instead of skin.

Her phone buzzed with an incoming text from Killian.

Leaving now – should be 30mins. Stopping for snacks. Want anything?

Behind her, the door into the kitchen creaked, and the tap started to run.

Her mind rang with the dull truth slowly, like a bell tolling at dusk.

Someone had turned the tap on.

Killian wasn’t home.

Someone had turned the tap on.

Killian wasn’t home.

Her heart stuttered against her ribcage.

Immediately searching for anything she could use as a weapon, Emma darted back over to her desk to reach for one of the hardback file folders they used for work, but as she leant across to reach for it she froze.

Her laptop had been closed, and on top of it placed a clumsily straightened, crumpled bit of paper.

Her mouth went dry at its familiar script.

Emma Swan Emma Swan Emma Swan Emma Swan Emma

Still through the doorway came the splurge from the rapidly filling kitchen sink, and Emma began to panic. She couldn’t go out there. Not now. Not now she couldn’t know, couldn’t be sure if there was anyone there to find or if she had unknowingly slipped back into sleep and this was just another spill. Her feet were frozen, dug in like anxious roots into earth, while her attention remained fixed on the hallway for every single sound or breath of movement.

As quietly as she could, Emma closed the door to the bedroom. For good measure, she grabbed the desk chair and hooked it under the handle so it couldn’t turn, the noise masked by the water as it began to sluice over the side of the sink and splatter onto the floor of the kitchen.

Then she waited.

Was she dreaming?

It didn’t feel like a dream – but then, they never did. Her pulse raced, her skin felt cold even though her senses were telling her the flat was warm, hot, but she daren’t start mumbling aloud the objects she could discern as being real just in case it heard her. It. Already something had taken shape in her mind.

It liked to stop by, every now and then, just so she didn’t forget.

It wasn’t long before the noises grew louder. With the steady stream of water came the slap of footsteps through the puddle, of the flat soles of smart shoes pacing restlessly back and forth across her kitchen, the smack of cupboards being flung open and slammed shut again.

Not here, she thought, desperately, not when I’m alone.

Then Killian called her.

The sudden loud buzzing surprised her, and the phone slipped out of her grasp and onto the carpet below. Dropping to her knees and scrambling to reject the call, she split her attention between her frantic efforts and the blocked door, hoping against hope that it hadn’t heard, that it wouldn’t –

The door handle squeaked, stopping short when it was met with resistance from the chair.

When she was seven, there had been a month or so she had avoided being alone in her bedroom as often as possible. Not, she had insisted to Archie, because she was scared, but of course, really she had been terrified. It was a new room, colder, bigger, and the first one she hadn’t shared for as long as she could remember. For so long, all she could imagine was that one day the door would lock with her inside it, and nobody would ever come back for her or care at all that she was alone in there.

After weeks of creative avoidance strategies, Archie had finally wheedled the truth out of her, and had removed the lock the very next day. Then they had spent time drawing maps of the group home together, doodling creative means for her escape from that room until she was convinced that even if the door locked, it would be pretty easy to build a hang glider out of a kite and make a break for it through the window.

Nobody can control this door except you, Emma.

Only these days, she had built the lock herself. She checked a hundred times a day that it was still secure. She buried herself behind it and when the cracks had started to form, she had piled up bricks instead.

The handle creaked again.

A desperate, fearful sound ripped itself from somewhere deep inside her chest and she stumbled backwards, reaching for anything, wanting the maps, the exit strategies, everything she had burnt the day she decided it was more important to keep things out than avoid leaving herself trapped in.

The door to the bedroom rattled against its hinges.

Thump. Again. Thump.

Her fumbling hands fell on the door to the closet, and she hauled it open and ducked inside before she could think twice. She was breathing hard, her chest ached with the force of it. It smelt of black leather and mildew inside, and once she pushed through coats and her back hit the wall, she slid down onto the floor.

Once inside, the noises stopped.

Just, stopped. Like she had stepped out of an airlock, and all she could hear now was the hard, accelerated huff of her own breathing.

Was it still out there?

Like she was seven again, she pulled her knees up to her chest. She told herself it was just like when she and Killian used to play sardines with the other kids at the group home; exploring dark, gaping crevices until they could melt into its very walls. She had been older, then. Escape was all rationalisation, she didn’t need the maps. Keeping herself hidden meant just shutting her eyes and forcing it all out of her mind until she made herself unreachable.

As long as she couldn’t be seen, she couldn’t be caught.

Something in her twinged, something that ached for wide, open streets and a crumbling clocktower, for long conversations over steaming coffee and the vermillion kiss of the New England fall. Seattle was just unrelenting, torrid heat. Noise and noise and noise and more ceaseless, callous noise. And Killian’s coats smelt like midsummer rain and spluttering exhaust fumes in heavy traffic.

She couldn’t remember calling David, but she was glad when he answered.

“My new assistant is pteronophobic,” he sighed heavily, by way of greeting.

The words sounded like nonsense to her, but she couldn’t discern if that was because they were, or because she didn’t feel like she could trust her senses anymore.

“Terr— what?”

“Pteronophobic. She’s pteronophobic.”

Emma pressed herself as far back into the wall as she could go, curling tightly away from the door.

She tried to focus on the call. “So… she’s a dinosaur?”

David snorted. “It’s a phobia of being tickled by feathers. Isn’t that ridiculous?” He clicked his tongue. “Actually, what’s ridiculous is that she knew this about herself, yet she applied for a job at a veterinary shelter.”

“Is this your way of telling me you’re the idiot that hired an assistant who’s scared of birds?”

“Feathers. And their proclivity for tickling.” She could hear him smiling down the phone, and already the pressure in her chest began to lessen. “Anyway, what’s up?”

Emma bit her lip. “Nothing, I just…” With a start, she realised the time and was amazed he had picked up at all. “Isn’t it nearly midnight over there?”

“You don’t call enough,” he reproached, but she could hear the tease in his voice. “This is like positive reinforcement.”

“How’s Ruth?”

There was a pause, a barely audible sigh. Gently, he repeated: “You don’t call enough.”

She could feel herself becoming more aware of herself, of her limbs tangled tightly at the bottom of the closet, of her hair sticking to the back of her neck, in a way that let her know that if she had drifted, she was returning now. It was nearly over.

“She misses you,” David added, “that’s all. So do we.”

“Me too,” Emma frowned, trying to remember the last time she had called anybody from Storybrooke. She had called after they got to Seattle, hadn’t she? How – how long ago was that? “Sorry.”

David made a dismissive noise, and as he always did, he forgave her.

“Everything good with Killian?”

Something in her chest squeezed as she remembered the call she had rejected.

“It’s fine,” she said, and tried to sound convincing, “I’m fine.” He didn’t have to know she was talking to him from the floor of a closet. “I just… wanted to hear your voice.”

For a little while, David said nothing. It was nice to just hear him breathe.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Emma smiled weakly, even though she knew he couldn’t see it. “Yeah.”

“Y’know, if it’s just that you’re afraid you’ll miss Seattle, I could set up the hose at the end of Mom’s porch and you’re welcome to stand under it whenever.”

“Wow, how generous,” she snorted. “It’s really more of a near constant moistness than always rain, though.”

“Or we could buy you a Subaru? You could sit in it and vape a Starbucks, or whatever it is you do there.”

“I honestly don’t know what to say to that.”

For a few moments they just laughed, until they petered back out into quiet. Emma thought about Killian returning home soon, and the fact that she really didn’t want him to find her in the closet.

“Listen, um… I have to go. I’ll call more,” she promised.

David hummed on the other end of the line. “I hope you do.”

She felt calmer now as she disconnected the call, her heartbeat still clear in her ears but a steady pound, almost reassuring, not racing away without her. With fresher eyes, she nudged open the door to the closet and edged her way out slowly. The bedroom door was still closed, the desk chair propped up against it, but the only sound she could hear was the humming of her laptop on standby and the noise drifting up from the street through the open window.

Carefully, she removed the chair and shut the window. Then she sunk down into bed, into the quiet, and buried herself beneath the covers. She felt like she had run a marathon, her muscles ached in the aftermath of pumped adrenaline, and all her body wanted to do was rest.

She didn’t realise until Killian got home, but she had forgotten about the flooded kitchen. She heard him pause in the hallway, then the patter of his boots on the sodden tiles. Once realisation struck, her entire body burned when she wondered what he must be thinking, thinking of her, her skin hot with humiliation. But he didn’t comment on it, at least not that she could hear. Instead she heard him pulling out the mop and bucket and cleaning it up.

She wanted to join him, she just couldn’t muster the willpower.

A passing thought occurred to her then, the meekest of suggestions, now that rational thought had crept back in.

Had she just left the tap on?

After a few minutes she heard Killian enter the bedroom, but he didn’t switch on the light. Instead he slid into bed beside her, still clothed, and curled himself around her as tightly as he could manage. Something in her relaxed, as it always did, a muscle coming unclenched as she sank into the safety of his arms.

This, she knew. This was always real.

He kissed her shoulder, and he didn’t say a single word.

She loved him for it, and she hated him a little for it, too.

#jay writes #the wind blows white #cs halloweek #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan #cs au #halloweek #killian jones #emma swan #fingers crossed you all like it!

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chelsfic · 4 years

Text

Accident Forgiveness - Part 2 - Bucky Barnes x Reader

Part One | Masterlist

A/N: Part two!! This is so very fun to write. I hope you enjoy! Thanks to @sabinemorans for listening to me talk about it! Reader gets a nickname in this one, because I can’t deal with Y/N.

Summary: Your wrist is finally healed after your run-in with a certain brooding freight train. You score a great deal on an adorable little motorbike and fix it up with your dad. All you want is a nice Sunday ride...what could go wrong?

Warnings: Fluff, Crack, automobile accidents...

---

The bike calls to you. It’s leaning up against a garage with a hand-written “For Sale” sign on it. It looks old, rusted, and well-used. Considering the low price scrawled on the sign you’re betting it needs some work.

You need it.

You pull out your phone and open your frequent contacts.

“Hey dad? How would you feel about coming down to the city with your pick-up this weekend?”

Your dad’s gruff voice rumbles over the line, “Sounds awful. When and where?”

---

You spend the weekend at your dad’s place in White Plains, fixing up the bike in the garage. Under the layers of rust and grime, it turns out to be a 2001 Honda Super Cub. Beyond a tune up and an oil change, the only thing really wrong with it is the body. Nothing a fresh coat of paint can’t fix.

“This is a nice little bike, kiddo,” your dad congratulates you, wiping grease and sweat from his brow with an old rag. “You gonna keep it here or ride it around the city?”

You’re perched on a tall stool at your dad’s workbench, your short legs dangling as you consider, “It’d be fun to have it with me in the city on the weekends. I just gotta convince my landlord to let me keep it in his storage shed...I don’t want to leave it on the street…”

You hop off the stool to run your hand over the motorcycle’s refinished body. You’ve painted it in a sleek two-tone pattern: red and cream. Hawkguy is going to be so jealous.

“I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

---

“Nah,” Clint waves you off as he unlocks the door to his apartment. You’ve been lurking out in the hallway waiting for him to get home.

“What do you mean, ‘nah’?” you whine, following him inside without asking. Pizza Dog jumps up to greet you, nearly knocking you down in his enthusiasm. You smile and give him a quick hug before starting again. “You still owe me, Barton!”

Clint’s head has disappeared into the refrigerator and he emerges with a Chinese food box and his mouth already stuffed with lo mein.

“Wahhh doo eein?!” he chews his food, swallowing and trying again, “Whadya mean? I threw you an apology party, didn’t I? You know how long it’ll take me to clean out that shed to fit a motorcycle inside?”

“C’mon, Clint! If I leave it on the street it’ll get stolen. Or it’ll end up collateral damage in one of your little superhero battles,” you wheedle. You walk into the kitchenette and grab his arm, looking up at him with your biggest puppy dog eyes, “C’monnnn!”

Clint sighs dramatically and finally gives in.

“On one condition...”

---

The bike struggles to reach 30 miles per hour under your combined weight and Clint’s massive form looks ridiculous clinging to you on the back of the little motor bike. But you have to admit--this is pretty damn fun.

“Weee!” Clint yells from behind you as you putter through the streets of Brooklyn with a giant smile on your face.

---

People are passing you and giving you dirty looks as you make your way over the Brooklyn Bridge. Well, futz them. You’re enjoying your Sunday afternoon ride. You feel like a real rebel without a cause in your worn leather jacket and the bulbous, cherry red helmet you bought to match your bike. Nobody needs to know the saddle bag strapped to the back is full of library books and a take-out container from your favorite bakery.

The sun is just getting low and it’s orange-red glow reflects on the surface of the East River as you chug along. The sounds of car engines and the occasional curse from an annoyed motorist are suddenly interrupted by a long, deafening screech. You glance over your shoulder and your eyes widen in alarm as a black SUV barrels through traffic, heedlessly colliding with other vehicles as it clears a path over the bridge.

“HOLY SH--”

The SUV screams past and you barely have time to process what you’re seeing before you’re suddenly, brutally thrown from your bike. You tuck your limbs into your body and slam into the cement with enough force to knock the wind out of you. You roll several feet before skidding to a stop. The leather jacket mostly saves you from road rash but your hands are a bloody mess and it feels like your whole middle is one big bruise. What the fuck was that? It felt almost like someone pushed you off but that’s--

You look up just in time to see your bike zooming--well, doing it’s best to zoom--away with a dark figure riding it.

Oh, hell no!

---

The red-wigged impostor is in handcuffs and leaning against the side of the SUV with a surly expression. Bucky glares at the woman, clearly connected with the Red Room and attempting to frame Natasha for the string of murders she committed over the last week.

“Don’t feel like talking, huh?” he shrugs, removing a knife from his belt and flipping it expertly in his hand. “Don’t worry, mladshaya sestra...I’ll help you find the words.”

The woman refuses to meet his eyes, fixing her gaze in the middle distance instead. Only the faintest sneer curling her lips indicates that she’s heard him at all.

Sam lands gracefully a few feet away and is already talking into his ear piece to call in backup.

“Lotta damage, here,” he states, glancing around at the crashed cars and the wrecked motorcycle. “You’re almost as bad as Banner, Buck. Think you can manage one mission without smashing something?”

“Hey, I captured the target, didn’t I?” Bucky rolls his eyes and slips the knife back into his belt holster.

Clint finally arrives, huffing and puffing after trying to keep up with the super soldier. He’s bent almost double, catching his breath, when his eyes light on the familiar red and cream motor bike lying mangled on the ground.

“Hey...isn’t that--?”

All three superhero’s heads snap up as you come limping up to the scene. You’re carrying your helmet at your side and your hair is an impressive tangle whipping around your head in the breeze. When you lay eyes on the wrecked Super Cub you let out a shriek.

“MY BIKE!!”

Bucky freezes in place, his eyes wide and every muscle tensed in anxiety.

“You gotta be shittin’ me,” he mumbles under his breath.

Clint eyes him accusingly. He is never going to hear the end of this…

You stand there looking down at your ruined bike and thinking about all the adventures you’d planned to have with her. You were going to take her to Coney Island...Rockaway beach...maybe even take a road trip to the Berkshires… Your poor sweet Cubby didn’t ask for this!

“You!” you snarl, marching up to Bucky with your hands on your hips. “Why is it always you!? Do you have it out for me or something?”

Clint snorts and mutters, “He’s got somethin’ for you…”

“SHUT UP!” you and Bucky both yell simultaneously.

You turn back to Bucky and arch your brow in expectation, “Well?”

The super-spy ex-assassin Avenger stumbles over his words, “I--uh, well...I didn’t mean...I didn’t know it was--”

“Didn’t know it was ME?” you finish for him with renewed fury. “Bucky! You can’t just go around shoving people off their motorcycles!”

“‘S hardly a motorcycle…,” he mumbles angrily. “More of a scooter if anything.”

“You! You...ugh!” you fall on him in a flurry of practically useless punches aimed at his chest. Bucky stands there looking bemused as you rain down fury with your tiny fists on his solid, immovable muscles.

“Hey!” Clint shouts in an excellent approximation of a frustrated dad voice. “Enough! Don’t do a hit on Bucky! That’s not nice.”

He puts his arms around you from behind and drags you away from the super soldier who looks--infuriatingly--unscathed.

“But he stole my bike and wrecked it!” you whine, finally going limp and dropping from Clint’s hold.

Clint rolls his eyes to the sky like a martyr.

“And do two wrongs make a right, young lady?”

“Pshh,” you scoff, shaking your head and leaning over your bike to check the saddle bag. You flip it open to find that the box containing your cherry pie has been pulverized and…

“MY LIBRARY BOOKS!!!”

---

The next morning you’re awoken by the cacophony of sounds coming from the alleyway behind the building. It sounds like Monty Python building the frickin’ Trojan Rabbit. You growl and roll out of bed, falling to the floor and catching yourself on your bandaged hands, cursing at the stinging pain.

“Stupid…’vengers...think they can do whatever they want...just cuz they save the world sometimes…” you’re muttering under your breath as you stagger to your feet and pull the cord on your blinds to look out your bedroom window.

The door to the supply shed is open and two guys are bent over your wrecked bike. You throw the window open in an instant and climb out onto the fire escape.

“Hey!” you bellow. “Uh--stop! That’s my bike! I know the Avengers, buds! And I can have them down here so fast--”

The two men crane their necks to look up at you. One of them is wearing a welding mask but the other one is definitely--

“Bucky?”

He looks up at you with a sheepish smile and gives a little wave with his metal hand.

“Hey, Kit Kat…” he greets and you frown in confusion until you look down and realize you’re wearing a baggy nightshirt you’d got at Hershey Park. It’s emblazoned with the Kit Kat logo. Even from two stories up you can see the gleam of humor in his eyes. You can also see...a lot more. He’s wearing a black tank top that shows off his impossibly toned shoulders and back. Your brain short circuits momentarily as you rake your eyes down his form.

The man beside him flips up the mask and you see he’s an older guy with a sharp goatee.

“Are we taking a social break or are we getting to work, Barnes? You know I gave up brunch to do this for you. Brunch,” the man voice drips with sarcasm.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, alright, Tony,” Bucky shakes his head and turns back to the bike.

Wait, Tony as in--?

“Hey!” you call down and Bucky lifts his head up to lock eyes with you. How can those blue eyes still have so much power from so far away?? “You still owe me for the library books!”

Bucky laughs and turns back to the bike.

“I mean it! I have a clean library record, Bucky! I’m gonna have fines!”

“Don’t push it, doll!” he calls as Tony ignites the blow torch.

---

A week later you scoot up to the curb on a side street near the Bedford Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Cubby has been restored to her former glory thanks to Bucky and Tony’s loving care and you give her an affectionate pat as you dismount and walk down the street toward the squat, brick library building. There may be grander libraries in New York but this is your neighborhood branch and it feels like home. You mutter and shake your head at the prospect of having to pay replacement fines for the books that Bucky ruined.

The librarian behind the desk is about your age with dyed bright red hair and a sleeve of tattoos that look like children’s book illustrations. Cool.

“Hey--um,” you roll your eyes in irritation at yourself. “I have to pay some replacement fees? I kind of...got cherry pie all over some books.”

The librarian laughs good-naturedly and pulls up your account on her computer. She asks you for the titles and frowns at her screen.

“Looks like...yeah--they’ve already been paid for,” she tells you with a shrug. “Guess you have a mysterious benefactor.”

You smile faintly and shake your head. Mysterious, my ass. You thank her and you’re about to leave when she stops you.

“Do you want to pick up your hold?”

You don’t remember putting anything on hold...but you’ve had occasional bouts of late-night enthusiasm that resulted in excessive library catalog searches, maybe you forgot...

“Uh...sure,” you say and watch as she disappears into an office behind the circulation desk.

She returns a few minutes later with a slim paperback volume in her hands. She scans the barcode and slips the receipt into the book.

“Enjoy!” she says with a smile and you thank her once again.

You glance down at the cover as you’re walking out and you let out a bark of laughter even as irritation spikes behind your eyes.

“Motorcycle Safety: Basics for Beginners”

Bucky Frickin’ Barnes...

Tags: @watsonwise

A/N: “Don’t do a hit on Bucky”-- yes that was a McElroy reference.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes fanfic #hawkeye #hawkguy #winter soldier #winter soldier x reader #marvel fanfic #chelsfic

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missnmikaelson-main · 5 years

Text

The Mummy - Hamunaptra 1

I do not own TVD or TO or The Mummy

Dr. Wes Maxfield barked orders at a group of diggers in rapid Arabic. It all boiled down to the single urge that they dig faster. It didn’t matter how often he said it though; the men were only capable of moving so fast. The door to the Temple was slowly revealed beneath its layer of dirt and rocks.

Damon waved his hand to dispel Beni’s hookah smoke and lifted his eyes from the card table they had set up to play poker at. He narrowed his eyes and watched the stray camels wandering the ruins of the city; dusty backpacks and saddlebags were slung across their humps.

“Where did all of the camels come from?” Lucien looked up from his hand of cards.

Beni drew in a deep breath from the hookah and swatted at a fly. He blew blue smoke rings and waved to the many animals with the pipe.

“They belong to the dead,” he took another drag; “they will wait for years for their masters to return before leaving.”

Damon shook his head. He turned towards the sound of distant voices and watched the woman giving directions to the men she had journeyed with.

“They know something we don’t?” He pointed to the metal disk she was wiping down.

Wes turned away from the diggers to look in the trio’s direction and scoffed. “They’re led by a woman,” he sneered, “what does a woman know?”

Kol returned from the camels with a skin of water and watched the worn down statue of Anubis warily. He didn’t like the way the ancient god was staring down at him; it was unnerving.

Nik finished tying the rope around a sturdy pillar and dropped the impressive length into the crevice at his feet that ran through the ruins in a weave. He tested the pillar by pulling with all of his strength before nodding once.

“What?” Nik cast Kol a sideways glance.

“That thing,” he pointed to the statue, “makes me very uncomfortable. There is something really off about it.”

“Be nice,” Nik narrowed his eyes. “That thing saved my life.”

Elena looked up from where she was positioning the last of the ancient mirrors along the crevice.

“That ‘thing’ gets me excited,” she grinned at the statue.

“Oh,” Nik smirked, “the things that get you excited.” His eyes sparkled when a pretty flush rose along her chest.

“According to scholars,” Elena cleared her throat and willed the blush to leave, “inside the statue of Anubis was a secret compartment. It’s believed to contain the book of the living.”

Nik nodded to the mirrors Elena was angling down into the crevice. “What are these for, love?”

“Ancient Egyptian trick,” Elena’s heart skipped a beat. It did that a lot when he called her love.

Nik nodded and shrugged before jumping down and using the rope to rappel into the crevice. He looked up and immediately averted his gaze when he saw Elena was the next to come down. He steadied the rope and did his best not to look at the exposed skin; everything was still covered but he had a feeling she would not have been comfortable knowing he could see her thighs.

Her stomach knotted when she felt her fingers beginning to slip on the rope.

“Alright, Elena?” Kol called down from the top.

“I’m fine,” a bead of sweat trickled down her spine. She gritted her teeth and used her legs to hold tightly to the rope as she lowered herself down. She stifled a shriek when she lost her grip and fell.

Nik swore under his breath and moved quickly. Luckily she hadn’t been too far above him when she dropped.

Elena gasped and wrapped her arms securely around Nik’s neck. She drew in a couple of shaky breaths and tightened her fingers in his soft curls. His blue eyes found her dark ones and stole away her breath.

“Are you alright, sweetheart?” Nik shivered in the warm chamber. His eyes darted to her parted lips when she exhaled slowly and her breath fanned across his jaw.

Elena drew her lip between her teeth and inhaled slowly. ‘Sweetheart’ was new, and much like ‘love’ it made her heart flutter. Her gaze dropped to his red lips before flickering back to his eyes.

She nodded and held his shoulders when he placed her on her feet.

“Are you okay?” Kol dropped down beside them.

“I’m fine,” she stepped back from Nik and smiled up at her brother, “just a little five foot fall.”

“It was closer to ten,” Nik cleared his throat.

Elena rolled her eyes and peered into the gloom of the chamber they had descended into. She had never been a believer in the supernatural but the spooky room sent a chill down her spine.

“We are standing inside of a room that nobody has entered in more than four thousand years,” she breathed into the stillness.

“Hamunaptra,” Kol murmured while lighting a torch and waving it in the darkness, “full of the cobwebs of ancient Egypt.”

“You’re welcome to my share of them,” Nik chuckled.

Elena heaved an exasperated sigh before striding towards a metal disk along the wall and using her sleeve to wipe away the cobwebs. She clenched her teeth and took a firm hold of the disk and spun it around. She repositioned it until the rays of the sun from outside were caught on the metal.

The ray of light immediately bounced off the disk and shot across the room. It bounced from one mirror to the next until the entire chamber was lit up and the beginning of a passage was illuminated.

“That is indeed a neat trick,” Nik nodded once.

Elena ignored him in favour of looking around the room to the tables and fire pits. She ran her fingers through the thick layer of dust and lifted an amulet that nobody had touched in millennia. She traced the edges of the heart shaped scarab that would have been worn by the deceased to guide their spirit through the underworld.

“This is a preparation room,” her round eyes twinkled brilliantly.

“Preparation for what?” Nik tilted his head to watch her.

Kol laughed when she leaned closer to Nik and spoke in a serious tone while grinning madly.

“For entering the afterlife,” she resisted her urge to laugh.

“This is where they made the mummies,” Kol looked around at the ancient tables.

Elena rubbed the amulet between her fingers to clean off the dust while leading them towards the narrow passageway up ahead. She dropped the amulet into her shoulder bag and bent slightly when the passage lowered.

Her hands traced the smooth walls until they came to a fork in the hall. She looked both ways before following her instinct which was screaming at her to go right.

Nik reached out and grabbed her arm after they had gone on in silence for several minutes. Elena glanced over her shoulder at him before she heard what he had. A scratching sound was coming from somewhere nearby; it sounded like nails clawing the inside of the walls.

Nik shared a look with the siblings before pulling a pistol from its holster and cocking it. Kol licked his lips as they began moving closer to the sound that was getting steadily louder.

Their steps were slow when they emerged from the maze of tunnels into a vast chamber and approached an enormous, half-buried, statue.

Elena’s lips quirked up in a grin when she recognized the bottom half of the statue of Anubis. Her blood ran cold when the scratching that had stopped suddenly grew louder.

Nik took Elena’s arm and pushed her behind him and her brother. The sound grew steadily louder and crept increasingly closer. He raised his gun and saw Kol do the same as they stole around the side of the statue.

Nik leapt around the side and swore. He took a small step back when the three faces jumped lunged at him. He managed not to pull the trigger though, and it was a good thing he did because the bullet would have buried itself between Kai Parker’s eyes.

“You scared the bejeezus out of us, O’Connell,” Kai tightened his grip on his gun.

“Likewise,” Nik smiled tightly. Nobody had lowered their guns.

“This is our statue… friend,” Damon cocked an eyebrow and looked Nik up and down with a clear challenge in his eyes.

“Strange,” Nik smirked, “I didn’t see your name on it… mate.” His eyes narrowed when Beni and the Egyptologist stepped out of the shadows with guns aimed at him; they were followed by five of their diggers.

“Ten to one, O’Connell,” Beni’s rotted teeth flashed in a grin. “Your odds are not so good.”

“I’ve had worse,” Nik gave Beni a pointed look as his blood boiled.

“As have I,” Kol smirked. Of course there were not guns involved then.

Nik cast him a sideways look from the corner of his eyes. He looked back when Beni cocked his gun and grinned.

Elena looked between the squabbling groups as the tension thickened. Her heel gently pushed a pebble backwards so it fell between the cracks in the floor. None of the men seemed to notice her actions or hear the distant clatter of the small rock.

She stepped forward slowly and laid a hand on Kol and Nik’s arms.

Nik’s skin tingled under her small hand as she pulled his arm downwards.

“Let’s be nice, boys,” she smiled as she would have with small children. “If we are going to play together then we must learn to share.” Her fingers tightened marginally around Nik’s arm while she gave her brother the look she had given him since they were kids. “There are other places to dig.”

++++

Elena stood on top of a stone block to scrape away at the ceiling with a tiny chisel the length of her hand. She was talking more than contributing while Nik and Kol used sledgehammers to bring down large quantities of sand.

“According to my calculations we should be right beneath the statue.” She pointed to the ceiling. “We’ll come up right between his legs.” She blushed when she realized what she had said.

“And when they go to sleep we can sneak up and steal the book out from under them,” Kol grunted and swung the sledgehammer over his head.

Nik wiped his wrist across his sweaty brow and looked at Elena from the corner of his eyes. “Are you sure you can find that secret compartment?”

“Yes,” she hopped down from block and craned her neck back to stare at the ceiling, “assuming that their Egyptologist hasn’t already found it.”

++++

Wes narrowed his eyes at the secret compartment that he had found at the feet of the statue. With a small brush he cleaned the seams of sand and stood up. His hand darted out to catch Kai’s arm before he could tear open the door.

“Careful,” he cautioned, “Seti was no fool.” Wes gave Kai a pointed look before nodding to the diggers.

“Sure,” Kai held up his hands and backed away. “Let the diggers handle it.”

Beni exchanged looks with the treasure hunters before they backed away from the statue where the diggers were tugging away at the seams with crowbars.

++++

“Okay,” Nik swung the sledgehammer over his head and lodged it in the ceiling before pulling down, “let me see if I’ve got this straight. They stuck a red hot poker up your nose, broke your brain into pieces and ripped it out through your nostrils?”

“That’s got to hurt,” Kol grimaced. He was familiar with the ancient techniques but hearing about them still sent a chill down his spine.

“It’s called mummification,” Elena smirked up at him, “you’re dead when they do this.”

“What if you weren’t?” Kol cocked an eyebrow.

“Even if you were,” Nik grunted, “that would be enough to bring you back.”

“You two are worse than a couple of school children,” Elena sighed in exasperation. She tilted her head back when she heard a loud crack. Her limbs froze in place.

Nik jumped down and took Elena’s arm to pull her clear of the falling ceiling. Kol dove backwards to avoid the massive stone block falling from the ceiling to the floor.

++++

Beni’s gun was trained on the floor when the sound of a crash reached him from below. Damon, Kai and Lucien had followed his lead.

Wes ignored the lot of them and continued to shout in Arabic at the diggers to hurry. His angry voice had the desired effect of making them work faster.

The tendons in the men’s backs undulated as they pulled harder on the crowbars. The compartment began to loosen before giving way. An intense spray of liquid jetted out from the seams and hit the diggers in the face.

The men screamed loudly and backed away while clawing at their skin. The flesh bubbled and burned. By the time they hit the floor they were dead and the top halves of their bodies were skeletal.

++++

Elena turned her head and sneezed as the dust began to settle in her nostrils.

“Bless you,” Nik murmured.

Elena rolled her head back and opened her eyes. A thin layer of dust clung to his skin and lay in the air like a curtain of fog. She couldn’t see much beyond his face that was a few inches above her.

“Thanks,” she whispered. Her breaths were slow and shallow in deference to the dust still floating in the air.

Shifting ever so slightly she realized her body was being pressed to the ground by Nik. One of his legs was slotted between her knees and he was using his elbows to keep the majority of his weight off her body.

The dust filled room faded in her peripheral vision when she focused on his eyes. She didn’t see when the dust began to clear; all she could see were his intense blue eyes shining in his dust covered face.

She drew in a deep breath causing her chest to brush against his.

His breath caught and his heart thudded. He only looked away when he heard a harsh cough from the other side of the chamber.

“Elena,” Kol sat up slowly and blinked at the massive stone blocking his sister from view. Fear gripped his heart when she didn’t immediately answer him; the stone was more than long enough to conceal her petite frame. “Elena!” Panic laced his voice.

She closed her eyes and mourned the loss of contact when Nik sat up. Her body seemed to cool off when he was no longer pressed against her.

“I’m alright,” she accepted his hand and let him help her to her feet. “I’m okay.” She met Kol’s eyes when she stood.

She released Nik’s hand when she saw Kol’s gaze drop to where they were joined. Stepping forwards she started examining the large stone that had sent them diving in separate directions.

“What the bloody hell is this?” Nik ran his hand over the smooth stone.

“It looks like a…” Elena narrowed her eyes. “It looks like a sarcophagus.”

“Why would they bury somebody in the ceiling?” Kol tipped his head back to stare at the hole they had made.

“They didn’t,” Elena shook her head. “They buried him at the feet of Anubis.” She tilted her head and regarded the sarcophagus with wide eyes. “He must have been someone of great importance… or he did something very naughty.”

“Maybe he got a little frisky with the pharaoh’s daughter,” Kol suggested with a wicked smirk.

Elena rolled her eyes and started brushing away at the dust with her hands and a tiny brush. The dirt was slowly removed to reveal a single hieroglyph embedded deep in the stone. She stared at the mark with narrow eyes while her brother impatiently tapped the stone.

“Well,” Kol urged after several moments of silence. “Who is it?”

A line appeared between her brows as she stared in confusion. She was fluent in the language but at that moment she wanted to be wrong. She wanted it more than anything in the world. Her voice was hesitant when she looked up and met their curious eyes.

“It just says ‘he who shall not be named’.”

Nik continued to work away at a large amount of dust and dirt that had gathered in the middle of the stone. He could practically feel the energy radiating from Elena as she muttered to herself in ancient Egyptian and English.

“There’s some sort of lock here.” He took her elbow and pointed to the box. “You said these things were made of granite with a steel interior?”

“Quarried granite with a cobalt lining,” Elena corrected while peering at the area he had uncovered.

“Whoever was in here wasn’t getting out,” Kol knocked on the stone with his knuckles.

“You’re not wrong,” Nik nodded with narrowed eyes, “it’ll take us a month to crack into this thing without a key.”

“A key.” Elena’s head snapped up. She could almost taste the steel of the man’s blade when she spun on her heel and started searching for her bag. “That’s what he was talking about.”

“What who was talking about?” Nik watched her rummage through the bag.

“The man on the barge,” she stared into the bag, “the one I stabbed with a candle, he was looking for a key.” She pulled the puzzle box out with a triumphant cry and skipped back to them. Opening it she placed it on top of the lock and grinned when it was a perfect fit.

Before any of them could turn the key they heard loud screams coming from down the corridor. Elena snagged the key and ran with them towards the shrieks, but by the time they found the wayward digger he was running headlong into a wall.

They stared in horror and drew in ragged breaths while watching the dead man warily; half expecting him to jump back up. When he didn’t Kol hesitantly stepped forward and pressed his fingers to the man’s neck.

Lifting his gaze he shook his head to signify that the gaunt man was dead.

tags @elejah-wonderland @rissyrapp20 @elejahforever @eternityunicorn @morsmornte

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