A semi-Christmas gift for Madison (the-savior-swan), who wanted Puff the Magic Dragon backstory in OUAT. For science.

"I've got a job for you, Captain."

Pan says this like it's a strip of meat and Hook is to balance on his haunches and beg like a dog, but Killian hasn't begged Pan since Liam collapsed at his feet, so the closest he gets to humoring the mad lad is a disinterested "Do you now?"

Pan takes this as acceptance and clasps his arms behind his back, slowly pacing the length of the fallen, rotten tree on which the captain sat, like a general bolstering a brace of forlorn hopes with his speech before sending them to die. Hook only rolls his eyes and wraps his lips around his flask.

"But first, the rules. You don't tell anyone about it. Not your sniveling lap dog in the red cap, not the fairy, no one."

"A secret mission. How refreshing," Killian lies.

"You're to retrieve something for me. And to ensure you bring it back to me, I'm sending a friend along."

Pan lets out a long whistle to the jungle.

Killian sighs in boredom because Pan's Shadow lurks behind him on every mission, like a needling nursemaid, intimidating but entirely useless-they both know he's chained to Neverland tighter than any canine-but it's still too sharp a truth to admit out loud, so he only pouts.

"What, you still don't trust me?"

"Oh I trust you, Captain," Pan replies. "I trust you to serve your own interests."

A roar loud enough to shake the branches above sounds from the jungle around them, followed by a succession of terrible rumbles like the steady felling of trees, growing closer with each of Killian's breaths until, not a shadow, but a reptilian head covered in deep green scales, poked through the trees beside Pan.

"Just as I trust him to see you come home, Hook."

The creature growls a rippling growl and its exhale fills the air with a thin smoke that takes Killian back to the hour he christened the Jolly Roger with a torch and smelled the burn of magic. Hook rises to his feet and stuffs the flask safely in his coat, bright red eyes following his every move.

A dragon. Pan had a pet dragon.

"Is the shadow on holiday, then?"

Pan sneers in an attempt to look fierce—it fails, but not for lack of effort. The dragon imitates him, though, and it's only by sheer force of will that Hook doesn't take a step back at the ferocious teeth this exposes. "To get what I want, you're going somewhere my shadow can't. The next time your men dock for supplies, he'll take you where you need to go."

"Doesn't having that follow me around rather defeat the purpose of 'secret mission'?"

"The secret part is what I want you to retrieve."

"And what would that be?" Killian asks.

Pan smiles.

-0-

To his credit, Hook broke into the sea-side castle just fine. Breaking into the dragon's lair beneath it, however, might have gone a little more smoothly had he known a sleeping Maleficent looks almost indiscernible from a pile of rocks.

Needless to say the fireball hurtling at him from the throat of one such howling she-beast clarified the matter entirely.

It would have—should have—been his untimely and highly embarrassing end had not the blessed beast Pan sent along dove in then, curling a wing around him and stemming the blast. (Bloody hell, was he really thanking Pan's guard dog?)

No sooner do the flames recede but Pan's pet leaps at Maleficent, their sharp cries piercing Hook's ear drums as he scrambles to escape the tossing and tumbling of the giant, snarling bodies. He rolls into a shallow alcove in the stone to await a safe moment to run. When Maleficent turns her back to him and flings the much-smaller dragon against the wall, knocking it out, he thought he might have just the shot to scramble for the exit. Before he takes more than three strides, however, the greater dragon dissolves in a whirl of smoke, and all he sees is a large staff through the haze before his feet freeze to the ground-not from fear, but from magic.

"What kind of coward hides behind a child?" she hisses in a voice so cold he feels ice gather down his spine.

"Seems to me like Pan is hiding behind me," he scoffs, "not the other way around."

"Pan?" her voice quirks in a way that is both surprise and confirmation. "Of course. What else would fall under his sway but a helpless little boy."

"I'm by no means helpless, milady, and I'm certainly not a boy."

"No," Maleficent pointed the head of her staff at the dragon. "But he is."

Hook takes in the unconscious dragon, it's short neck and stubby limbs and tiny claws. "That's-?"

"A child. One you just made me hurt." She brings her staff back, pointing it at him while the orb at its head glows with threat. "What have you done to him?"

"I've done nothing. He's here to make sure I bring back what Pan wants. But if you're willing to take him off my back, I'll happily walk away."

"I have no intention of letting you walk anywhere."

She does not hit him with her staff, as Hook expects, but waves it. Hook flies against the cave wall, hard, and he hears only the snap of bone before darkness takes him.

-0-

When he comes to, he's on the ground and Maleficent, back to him, waves her staff over the still-sleeping baby dragon. He makes to get up, finding that, on the bright side, the spell on his feet is broken, but rather inconveniently, so are both of his legs. He lets out an admittedly pathetic sound and his concentration shifts to breathing without blacking out as Maleficent whirls her staff around, turning to face him again.

"Pan toys with magic he doesn't understand," hisses Maleficent as if in answer to a question he did not ask. "That is the only reason you are still alive."

"I thought this was a bit dismal for Hell."

"Corrupted his dreams—that's what Pan's done."

Still a little groggy from the pain, Killian squints up at the witch.

"Dragons dream?"

"All children dream," she huffs and takes a few slow steps toward the sleeping dragon, stretching out a hand but stopping just short of petting his reptilian nose as a mother might pat a child's head. "And all children wish. And some children would wish away all their young years to be grown and strong and powerful."

Her voice darkened with a growl. "Pan used that desire to amplify his ferocity until all-consuming wrath embodied him and only Pan holds the reigns to it. I can make him sleep, but not for long. He will awaken, and when he does, he will fight, and fight, and fight, until he dies. I can't cure him, but I can curse him worse. I can lock away the anger that fuels Pan's manipulations."

"Sounds rather like a blessing."

"It is the most horrific thing one dragon could do to another," she replied. Had it been anyone but Maleficent, Hook might have thought her saddened at the thought. "Locking away anger, locking away passion, takes the very fire from their throats. The pride of a dragon is in the burn of our wrath, but he will never breathe more than harmless puffs of smoke."

"And what's this to do with me, then?"

Maleficent turned back to him at this. "To draw out the innocence of a child takes the world-weary tears of a soul that has lost all of its own and yours, Captain, screams for vengeance alone."

"Afraid I'm not much of a crier."

"Tears of pain will do."

She thwacks his leg with her staff and he howls in pain, hot tears escaping his eyes. In a remarkably gentle move, Maleficent swipes one from his cheek and whirls on the young dragon, firing a beam of magic at him just as he startles awake from Hook's cry. The other dragon opens his mouth, the flame in his throat giving an orange glow to the scales down his neck, but the blast catches him full in the face and he chokes back the flame with a garbled sound. His head whips around and forelimbs dig scratches into the stone before he collapses. Even from the floor, the side of his face pressed against the ground, he tries again, jaws wide, to let loose his fire, but only a pathetic rasp comes from his mouth as thin smoke drifts from his nostrils. The smoke envelopes him then, and when it dissipates, a young child with red-gold hair and wide green eyes looked back at him, blinked, sniffed in some of the smoke, and proceeded to sneeze violently and repeatedly.

Hook gave a small, involuntary sigh of relief, which only brought Maleficent's attention back to him, the she-dragon lifting his chin with the orb of her staff.

"You have one chance—one—to tell me what Pan wanted."

Knowing himself completely at Maleficent's mercy in this moment, Hook sighs. "A dragon's egg. Or, rather, the shell. Though I don't know why."

Maleficent's eyes narrow in consideration. "The Marvelous Boy needs a dragon's shell? In Neverland?"

Killian sat forward, defying the pain to hold her gaze. "Tell me what they do and I swear he'll never lay his hands on one."

"No, pirate," she spits back. "I will make sure of it. You will crawl back to your master and tell him that this child is under my protection. And if I ever find either of you lurking around my lair or threatening another of my dragonkin again, I will find no shortage of imaginative ways to crush each and every bone in your bodies."

"He's not my-" is all Killian gets out before she waves her staff one last time and smoke swirled around him. When it cleared he was in the air, a starry sky and ship's rigging above him. He fell a good several feet before slamming his back against the deck of a ship-the Jolly Roger-amid the surprised calls of his men. Fire of a different kind shot through his body, and he must have lain at a horrific angle because he heard Smee's cry for this ship's surgeon over no small number of inventive curses from the gathered crew. Feet rattled the deck around him, but Hook paid no further mind to pain or sound, only staring ahead and above at the stars, his navigator's eye falling on the cursed star, the second to the right, and the long chain tugging him back to Neverland.

"Make sail, Mister Smee," he mumbles in defeat as arms carry him back to his quarters. "Make sail."