Dreams (May Not) Come True, K+

Zelena clutched his throat, holding him aloft—blatantly, in the open street—though her hissed words reached only his ears.

"Kiss her, Captain, or I send you someplace no ship, no bean can bring you back from."

Killian ranked that high on his list of "Never going to happen", right up there with shaving and raiding David's wardrobe. (Mary Margaret's showed a stronger grasp of color theory and couldn't be so readily dismissed.)

"Have it your way, then."

Nails pierced his neck and Killian braced for crush of his windpipe, but at the sound of squealing tires, the witch dropped him, dissolving in a swirl of green smoke. Killian hit pavement, fighting to suck air into burning lungs. Emma's cruiser slid to a stop beside him, but a strange, scruffy man climbed out, Sherrif's badge pinned to his chest, shouting his name as Killian slumped into darkness.

-0-

He came to in the Charming loft, stretched out across a couch, bruised but breathing. He found the lip-biting looks from a pregnant Mary Margaret and the gun-thumbing posturing from an indignant David far less disturbing than the inexplicable presence of one Sherriff Graham. When Killian asked for Emma in strained, half-coughed syllables, David's soft eyes betrayed stern shoulders and Mary Margaret wrapped him in a hug that grew cold as he noticed sprays of white lilies scattered about the apartment, the table covered in cards scrawled with calligraphy and sympathy.

-0-

Gentle but insistent hands tugged him back toward the truck. He followed numbly, but his eyes lingered on the snow swept tombstone inscribed with "Emma" and "daughter" and "mother" and that impossible word: "wife".

Regina prattled on, speculating about Oz magic and parallel realms—Henry called them alternate universes—but all he knew was that his own name, scrawled on the adjacent stone above a fresh grave, should have read "traitor" and "murderer", not "husband". He had opened her coffin with the brush of his lips and cut her down with the weakness of his own desire.

A monkey screeched in the distance, doubling Charming's efforts to stuff him inside the cab, but Killian felt every inch the beast.

-0-

They tried to keep it from him, but deception never was the Charming family strong suit—though snooping was his second nature.

Toys far too young for Henry. Baby clothes far too big for the unborn royal. Diapers hastily stashed in closet trunks.

But most damning of all, the child himself appeared—poof and all—smack dab in the middle of the Sunday morning loft, just as David poured pancakes.

Regina, panicked, poofed in barely a heartbeat later, but time enough for tiny arms to lock firmly around Killian's boot. He had her nose and Mary Margaret's chin and his brother's eyes—and Killian's heart, from that very moment.

"Daddy," asked a voice shaking with that childish brand of far-reaching hope. "Did you bring Mommy back with you?"

Mary Margaret buried her face into David's chest. Regina's lips twitched against the truth. Words failed even Killian, but words weren't meant for times like these. Kilian pulled him into his arms, rubbing gentle fingers through soft curls in the kind of embrace he hadn't known in centuries. No, not words, only a father's shoulder.

Burned pancakes sat forgotten on a cold stove before the boy stopped sobbing.

-0-

"You have to go, Hook. Now."

Waving a hand, Regina flung him, sprawling, into Gold's shop, the rattle of the bell drowned in the screeches of a half-dozen monkeys as the door slammed shut with a fizzle of magic.

"Come on."

David pulled him to his feet (the boy—Liam—slung on his back like a backpack), half-dragging him to the back room where Belle pulled a tarp from a standing mirror.

"It sends things where they belong," she explained. "Watch."

She took a bracelet off her arm and held it before the mirror. It flashed and displayed a large armoire in what he assumed was Belle's bedroom. The drawer opened, Belle tossed the bracelet through, landing in the drawer.

"You try."

Killian stepped forward and Belle backed away until only the pirate stood in frame. Immediately Emma's form replaced Killian's reflection. She crouched over the mirror, as if it lay on the ground, and mouthed his name.

Squealing, Liam wriggled off David's back and ran toward the glass, but as he neared it, the magic shut off, leaving only the reflection of Killian and the boy. David snatched the boy back out of frame and Emma's image returned, unveiling to Killian brutal truth: Killian belonged there, with her—Liam did not.

Killian looked back at the boy, red-faced and soaked with tears and screaming for this father. Screaming for him. The magic might mark a difference, but Liam didn't.

"Hook," David broke in, "you have to go or you're a dead man."

Nodding, Killian pressed against the mirror, but the glass held firm.

"It doesn't work for hearts divided, Dearie."

Rumplestiltskin staggered from the front room, struggling against himself as he held a hand toward the gathered few.

A billow of smoke and a flash of green and the Witch was there, too, holding the dagger. "Aren't you a lucky one, Rumple. You can crush the pirate's heart all over again."

Liam puffed out of David's arms, appearing again at Killian's leg, tears dried and tiny body standing between him and the witch. The cold thought crossed Killian's mind that maybe a scene just like this had played out in front of the boy before.

"This time, both of their hearts," Zelena added.

She rammed the pommel of the dagger into the mirror, sending shards flying in a burst of escaping magic. Killian knelt, swinging his coat over the boy as shattered bits bounced off aged leather. The boy trembled in his arms and Killian drew him close, nuzzling his nose into dark curls.

Rumplestiltskin was wrong—his heart was not divided, but torn in two; the part that sought Emma across sealed realms and the part that couldn't leave this boy fatherless.

He felt the crocodile's hand on his shoulder. The boy's breath hitched, but he didn't whimper. (Strong, like his mother.) Killian leaned his head down to touch gentle lips to Liam's forehead.

Light filled his vision, warmth shot through him, and the witch screamed as if the very skin burned from her bones.

-0-

Killian woke to Emma's eyes and the veil of her hair tumbling around him, warm thumbs rubbing reassurance along his cheekbones. He drifted in a daze. Was this real, or some vision he'd conjured to endure the witch's tormented world?

"Killian?" she whispered, surprised eyes blinking damp rims dry.

"Swan?" he rasped, his voice weak and raw.

She called out the door, the rattle of her shout more than enough to convince him he was, indeed, awake.

He lay in a hospital bed, one of those blasted monitor machines chirping in his ear and feeling so numb from stem to stern that he could barely shift a limb.

"You were cursed," she explained without him having to ask.

"Nightmare curse," said Regina, striding into the room, nursing a coffee cup. "Much like the sleeping curse, except fatal. Torturing the mind until the heart finally fails.

The whole tragic world unraveled in his mind, the impossibilities of its construct, so believable at the time faded as their absurdity came to light—that alternate worlds might actually exist, that Emma might actually…

"Broken by true love's kiss," she said tossing the now empty coffee cup into a trash bin with a distinct smack of annoyance, "which took long enough."

The machine chirped faster.

"Swan, you didn't."

Red rose from her collar to her cheeks and she avoided his eyes for Regina's.

"You think I kissed him?"

"You think I actually wanted three cups of vending machine coffee?" the queen spat back. "I was giving you," she waved her hands as if they completed the sentence, "space."

He let his eyes sink closed, seeing now the witch's plot—to lure the savior's lips into his tainted kiss.

"No one kissed anyone," Emma shot back.

"Then how do you explain-"

"It wasn't her," Killian breathed. He pursed his own lips, still tasting the sweat and the tears of a figment of his imagination—no, a fragment of his hopes—a blue-eyed dream, nestled among the nightmares, calling him by names undeserved. Hope, with small hands and unsteady limbs, awakening a love that loved beyond question, beyond time. "It was Liam."

Exhaustion tugged him back toward darkness. Emma patted gentle hands to his face to rouse him from perceived delirium, but she could hold only his body. Something like his soul retreated, grieving in the absence of the child who wasn't yet, who may not be, but who he loved already and with all his heart.