based on artwork and prompt from cocohook38 ( cocohook38 tumblr com/post/162357639556/so-as-said-yesterday-my-brain-decided-that-doing)

What was that pirate phrase again? The one everyone liked to repeat, particularly when feeling malicious?

(In that respect, he'd never been a very good pirate. In any respect, for that matter.)

Oh, right—dead men tell no tales.

If that was true, then perhaps Killian Jones wasn't as dead as he thought. For though his heart resided outside his body, he still had quite the tale to tell.

There was another phrase: all magic comes with a price. And it seemed that whatever curse he now bore was the ultimate price for the magic of having love for once in his godforsaken life.

There wasn't much love to go around for a slave boy on a merchant ship. Well, there had been, but then Liam left.

There was even less for a one-handed man on a pirate ship, especially when he only ended up there as a result of a lost bet. But he could handle it now. Though Blackbeard always had some barb or another for him, his skin was thick from years of such torment, both verbal and physical, so it never had much impact.

His jaded, aimless existence was relatively monotonous, and he expected it to be that way until the day he died, however long or short that might be. (It was seemingly without purpose, too, but frankly, he was just too cowardly to die.) Until the day it wasn't—until the day he met her.

Milah was everything he wasn't: spirited, brave, determined, fierce...he didn't know enough adjectives to accurately describe the amazing woman he'd met in a tavern. She'd ignored the catcalls of the rest of the crew and settled herself near him, and he was a goner. And somehow, she fell for him, too. To the point that she stowed herself away on the ship one night in an escape mission, hiding in the cargo hold until she saw him and begging for his help in running away from her husband.

He agreed—of course he agreed; he was far too weak to deny her anything—and suffered the lash once Blackbeard discovered the stowaway. But dammit if she wasn't a better pirate than he was, and soon it was she looking out for him instead of the reverse.

Those few years were easily the greatest in his insignificant existence, and it seemed like he might actually have something to live for.

But then, one day, the skies turned black, and the sea churned, and a fearsome ship of myth rose from the depths—the Flying Dutchman. Any good sailor knew to avoid that ship of death and the damned souls who sailed it, captained by the one and only Dark One.

Who, as it turned out, was Milah's husband. And he was angry.

He magically appeared in the ship in a haze of smoke, every bit as fearsome as the legends foretold. Scaly green skin covered what they could see of his body under the leather he wore, and if Killian wasn't mistaken, a crocodile's tail trailed behind the demon—fitting for such a reptilian man. The term "crocodile smile" took on new meaning when the man bared his garish teeth, a sinister grin taking over his features and reaching his unnaturally gold eyes.

Blackbeard looked scared; Killian had never seen the man so frightened. But he attempted to do his duty as captain and drew his sword on the Dark One, questioning his uninvited presence on another man's ship.

Quicker than anyone could react, the Dark One plunged his claw-like hand into Blackbeard's chest, ripping out the pirate's heart and crushing it to a pulp. Blackbeard barely had time to cry out before his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed on the deck. The Dark One shook his hand free of the remains of the other man's organ and turned his attention on Milah.

"You thought you could hide from me on the seas, dearie? You didn't think I'd be able to track down my heart?"

Reflexively, her hand went to the pouch tied to her belt; she'd never told Killian what was in it, only that she had to make sure it never fell into the wrong hands. He instinctively shifted closer to her, sliding slightly in front to shield her. It was the first time in his life he'd ever felt protective, but he'd be damned if he let anything happen to the best thing to ever come his way.

"Imagine my surprise when I arrived home only to find it empty and abandoned, my wife and son gone," the Dark One continued monologuing. "A decade I've waited! Ten years! And then—nothing?"

"What did you expect, Rumple?" The man flinched, clearly unused to hearing his given name. "Did you actually think we'd wait contentedly without you that long? That I'd be happy being your little wife at home while you sailed the seas off on adventure?"

"It's not an adventure; it's a—"

"I know damn well what it is and I know that you've abused it. Look at yourself. You're a monster."

The Dark One fell silent at the insult, and Killian took that opportunity to firmly place himself in front of Milah. The crocodile's angry eyes shifted between the couple until a look of realization took over.

"Oh, so that's what this is." His expression turned giddy. "Wait, wait, don't tell me—it's twu love!" he sing-songed, teasing.

Shakily, Killian drew his blade and held it aloft. Around the deck, others followed suit. Milah continued to stare the demon down.

"Well, well, seems like you've found the family you could never have with me." Milah's silence was an affirmative answer. "I suppose that makes you a pirate, eh?"

Killian spoke, with words coming from some unknown and as-yet untapped place of bravery deep within. "Aye, she's one of us, and we look out for our shipmates."

A wicked grin slowly took over the Dark One's face. "Then that makes you sailors."

A chill ran down Killian's spine. They all knew what the Dark One did with sailors who ran afoul of him. Before he could shout "No!", they were engulfed in a cloud of magic.

The next moment, they were on the deck of a different ship. But it took only a brief glance at the aged wood and barnacle-encrusted crew to know they were on the Dutchman. The fear that had so briefly left him was back full force as he saw the unfriendly faces all around, save for one that looked oddly familiar.

He couldn't focus on it long before the Dark One spoke again. "How's this, then? I let you live, but as members of my crew. It's a bit different than what you're used to, but...it grows on you." Several crewmen (if they were indeed still men) chuckled darkly.

Milah squeezed Killian's arm above the brace of his hook, gave him a reassuring look, and stepped forward. "Your issue is with me, Rumple; leave him out of it."

"So, you're going to save your twu love, the pirate." He began to circle them. "I'd never realized the power of true love before. It is impressive. I'd hate to break it up." His cheeky grin as he mocked them quickly turned dark. "Actually, no; I'd love it."

In the blink of an eye, the Dark One's hand was now inside Killian's chest, squeezing his heart. He'd never felt such agony, and collapsed against the deck. He could feel his heart pounding against the intrusion, blood seeping from the wound, but still the Dark One didn't let go.

"Rumple, stop!" Milah shouted, her pleas falling on deaf ears. "Wait. I have something you want." Through his blurred vision, Killian could see Milah dangling the pouch she had long protected.

Suddenly, the pressure on his heart was gone and the Dark One removed his hand. Killian slumped against the deck and pressed his palm to the wound over his heart, sure it was fatal, but he had to make sure Milah was safe.

"The heart in exchange for our lives," Milah begged, gesturing to the parcel.

"You'd really do that?" the Dark One asked, voice full of awe. "You'd give me that power?"

Killian sat up as best he could to watch the scene unfold. Milah nodded. "Do we have a deal?"

"I want to see it first," the demon demanded.

Finding Killian with her eyes, Milah opened the satchel and produced a human heart, still beating despite its unnaturally dark color and the obvious fact that it had been in a leather pouch for well over a decade.

The Dark One made a move to grab it, but Milah was too quick and tossed it to Killian; his reflexes were never great, but at least they didn't fail him now. With a hiss of pain as he removed the hand that was covering the hole in his chest, he caught the morbid organ.

"You asked to see it; now you have," Killian stuttered out, wheezing through the pain. The Dark One was staring daggers at him.

"Do we have a deal? Can we go our separate ways?" Milah asked, drawing his attention back.

The hole in Killian's chest began to throb again and agony began to blur his senses. He could see that Milah and the Dark One were in some kind of standoff, but it took all he could to remain conscious, let alone hear their conversation. Slowly, he got to his feet, rising just in time to hear Milah tell the man, "I never loved you."

A tense moment passed as the former couple stared at each other. And in the next, without warning, the Dark One plunged his hand into Milah's chest.

"Milah!" Killian shouted, stepping forward, until some unseen force shoved him back and lashed him to the mast with the ship's lines. The jolt made his chest ache even more, though whether it was the gash or for what was happening to Milah, he didn't know.

Dramatically, the Dark One pulled out her heart, examining it. Milah collapsed on the deck, finding Killian with her eyes. He struggled to get to her, but the ropes held strong.

He could see her lips moving, saying "I love you," and then her face contorting in pain as the Dark One crushed her heart.

Oh so cruelly, the ropes then gave way and Killian surged forward, but it was too late; she was gone. He collapsed at her side but she'd gone still. Now he knew the pain in his chest was due to heartbreak.

The Dark One's sinister voice broke through his grief. "I'll have what I was promised now."

"You'll have to kill me first." Killian didn't recognize the angry voice that came from his lips, but he didn't give himself time to think about it.

"A wound like that, you're going to die anyway. Painfully, too, just like she did."

Bile rose in Killian's throat and he saw nothing but red. Filled with a rage he'd never experienced, he launched forward at the evil man, weaponizing his hook for the first time as he dug it into the Dark One's chest.

The man flinched, but then started laughing. Killian removed the hook; it didn't even have blood on it.

"Killing me's gonna take a lot more than that, dearie."

Then, Killian remembered what was in his hands: the heart. In a moment of brilliancy—or, more likely, lunacy—he dropped the heart on the deck and stabbed it instead, pinning it to the planks with his hook.

It worked; the Dark One let out an unholy scream as he stumbled back, clutching his chest. The heart itself began to shrivel in front of Killian's eyes, its beating growing staggered and inconsistent, until it stopped altogether and turned to dust. The Dark One followed suit, collapsing on the deck and disintegrating into little more than seafoam.

Killian unlodged his hook from the wood as shock took over. He killed a man. And not just any man—the Dark One. His breathing grew labored as the adrenaline wore off, and the throbbing pain in his chest came back tenfold. He knew he was indeed about to die, but if it meant that he'd rid the world of that terror, then it wasn't for nought—his whole worthless existence would finally have some meaning, and he'd get a long-overdue reprieve from this life.

He didn't notice the crew closing in on him as he fell back on the deck, next to the body of his love; not until they surrounded him. But he was losing consciousness fast and could feel his blood seeping out. Through the fog, he could have sworn he heard his father's voice; it had been so many years since he had, but he supposed it was appropriate as a hallucination before death. For a moment, he even had hope that he'd see Liam again.

The voice said, "The Dutchman must always have a captain." The face that matched it swam into Killian's vision, hovering overhead—the same man he thought he recognized earlier.

"Father," he whispered, not sure if he was asking a question or saying a greeting.

"The Dutchman must always have a captain," it repeated, and the figure above him produced a jagged, rusty-looking dagger that grabbed Killian's focus.

The man raised the dagger as if to strike. In the back of his mind, Killian's fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, but he was too tired to comply, and too confused. If he was about to die anyway, why would they try to murder him? An act of mercy?

Before he could figure it out, the man—his father, it had to be—brought the blade down into the open wound. And then came the true agony.

The knife seemed to be made of fire as it rooted around in his chest, and he could feel every move of the rusted metal within his flesh. He was sure his bruised heart was about to combust and was certain the skin around it was charred, though he smelled no smoke.

A tugging sensation followed and he was fairly certain he screamed in pain. To his horror, the next image he saw was of a hand pulling his heart from the now-gaping cavity in his chest. And it was still beating.

He had a moment's reprieve from the misery as he watched the surreal scene: his father was gently cradling the organ in both hands, studying it and seemingly waiting for something. Another pair of hands produced a pouch—the same one Milah had carried—and his father gently placed it inside.

After that, Killian lost all track of time and space and entered a world of pure torture.

The second his heart hit the hide of the pouch, a shock lanced through him, starting in his chest, going down his spine, and flying down his limbs. It was as if acid had been poured into his veins, and felt both like fire and ice at the same time, making it impossible to search for relief.

The next sensation was of a lash falling against his neck. He was used to how it felt on his back, but it was a hundredfold worse against the sensitive skin of his neck, and he writhed at the feeling of his skin being split open, in stripes on either side.

Meanwhile, the entirety of his skin felt as if needles were pricking it, or possibly branding irons; whatever it was, his flesh no longer felt recognizably human. It was as though he was being melted down into something new.

Through the haze of torment, it seemed as though he'd been placed on a rack and was being stretched; his spine ached with an odd pull, almost as it it was being extruded through his lower back and various other points.

And on top of it all were the unmistakeable jabs and tugs of a wound being closed. It was similar to the feeling of his wrist being sewn shut but magnitudes worse as someone closed the hole over the empty cavern that had once housed his heart.

For all he knew, the entire ordeal was instantaneous and over in a matter of minutes. But it could just as easily have been hours or days until the reprieve of unconsciousness finally arrived, and he passed out into a dead sleep.

His dreams were...strange. He was familiar with nightmares, but these weren't quite that, at least not his normal ones. Usually, he saw grotesque versions of the men he'd served growing up, lash in hand; the storm that took Liam reimagined as a vicious kraken; and now, an actual crocodile tearing out Milah's heart and eating it while he was helpless to do anything.

But then it all became twisted. Suddenly, he was the one with the lash and past crewmates recoiled in fear; Liam's ship went down at his command, despite his brother's pleas; and his hand was the one crushing Milah's heart as she looked at him in disgust.

And somewhere in his mind was his father's voice, telling him, "That's my lad." But he didn't want to be that man—he'd never been that man, never had it in him, and certainly wasn't about to.

What happened to him?

Again, he heard the voice of his father. "Killian, my boy. It's alright, I'm here." Those words brought him back to another nightmare—real, not imagined, of being abandoned on a ship in the middle of the night after hearing the same man say something similar. He remembered feeling so small and so alone, even with Liam there, and so confused and hurt by their father's betrayal.

That was what finally roused him. He'd been moved to a room below decks it seemed. The bed he lay on was far more plush than anything he'd ever touched before and the room was clean if a bit gaudy, with gold decor everywhere.

"Are you awake, son?" Killian turned his sore neck at the voice and there, sure enough, was the man he hadn't seen in decades. Fatherly concern was etched on Brennan Jones' face, which while no older than Killian remembered it being, was clearly sea-worn and dotted with algae, like a piece of driftwood.

"Father?" Killian's voice was rough with disuse, but was childlike in wonder and hurt.

"Aye, it's me." Brennan squeezed his hand. "How do you feel?"

Killian closed his eyes to take stock. While he was no longer in the worst agony of his life, he still didn't feel good. Everything seemed wrong and like it wasn't his, oddly enough save for the hook that was still strapped to his left arm. It hurt his neck and chest to breathe, and his skin felt stiff and too thick, like after a terrible sunburn. Though he lay on his side, he could feel sharp aching knots in his back and elbows, as if there was some deformity that prevented him from laying flat. And he was so thirsty.

"What the bloody hell happened to me?" was all he could manage, hoping that conveyed his feelings well enough.

"I'm so sorry, Killian." His father sounded truly remorseful, which only made Killian all the more fearful.

"What. Happened?" he demanded, more forcefully.

"The Dutchman must always have a captain," Brennan said sadly. "And now, my boy, that's you."

Killian jolted upright. Only the Dark One could captain the cursed ship, while bearing a curse of his own—everyone knew that. There was no way it could have fallen to Killian—he couldn't—he wasn't—

But then he saw his hand, where it was gripping his knee. Maybe it was just the light in the cabin, but the color didn't look right. He lifted it to inspect it, and there was webbing between the digits that wasn't there before, like he was some kind of mercreature. And the texture of his skin was all wrong, as he followed it down his forearm—it was like that of a shark, turning the color and striped pattern of one nearer to his elbow.

He gasped when he looked at the joint, straining his airways again. Deformed was right—there was now excess cartilage extending from his skin in the shape of a fin. His left arm had it too, right between the straps of his brace.

Reaching behind him, he held in a yell at discovering an even larger fin protruding from his bare back. Though he couldn't see it, it felt large and imposing. In itself, it didn't hurt, but he could feel it resist his every move and his spine didn't quite bend like it used to.

He huffed in frustration and confusion, and again felt an odd, unpleasant sensation at his neck. He reached up to massage it but wasn't prepared for what he felt there (even though he probably should have). There were raised ridges running the width of his neck, and they flared painfully with each breath. Gills; he was no better than a fish now.

Or perhaps he actually was one now. He looked down at the bed to finally address the unfamiliar feeling coming from the base of his spine. Much like the Dark One had the tail of crocodile, there lay one of a shark, gray and tapering down to a two-pronged fin. Killian could feel the warmth of his palm through the rubbery skin when he touched it. In a move that was both horrifying and oddly intriguing, he gave a conscious thought to flipping the new appendage—and it moved. So he did it again, slamming it against the cot, and the jolt from impact ran all the way up his spine, nearly knocking his breath away.

Somewhere in the back of his brain, there was a voice that wanted to panic, and normally, this was the kind of situation that would induce hysteria. But he wasn't panicking. Where, in the past, his heart might have raced and his breathing would have grown erratic, he felt unusually calm, though still perturbed by whatever had happened—even more so because of how much he wasn't reacting to it.

Then he remembered—his heart. He placed his hand over the spot on his chest as visions from what could have merely passed as a fever dream flooded back. Glancing down, he saw the jagged line that ran diagonally from his collarbone down to his sternum, carefully stitched shut. He pressed on it, eliciting an involuntary gasp as the skin pulled at the sutures, but there was nothing beneath it: no pulse, no rhythm of the organ that should be there.

"Where's my heart?" he demanded, voice darker than it had ever been.

With a forlorn look on his face, Brennan reached within his jacket and pulled out that same leather satchel that Milah had carried all those years; that cursed pouch that had held the Dark One's heart. And Killian could feel that it now held his.

"No," he shouted in horror. "No no no!" He stood, finally feeling a strong emotion for the first time since waking: anger. He had so many questions, but the only one he managed to ask was "Why?"

"You were going to die, Killian; I couldn't let that happen."

His own father had cursed him; he wanted to be surprised, but he couldn't. "You should have. I never wanted this."

"I told you, the Dutchman must have a captain! It was the only way to save you!"

"So now you care what happens to me?" Anger for the boy he was—the boy this man had abandoned—burst forth. "You've never cared about me, Father; don't pretend like you do now." Outside, he could hear waves splashing against the hull of the ship and somehow knew he was responsible, as if the ocean was reacting to the anger in his body, in tune with the boiling sea water that now ran in his veins.

"I'm so sorry, Killian." To his credit Brennan did look and sound apologetic, and that momentary rage subsided. It wasn't the first time Killian had resigned himself to his fate, but hopefully it would be the last.

He hung his head and picked up his vest from where it lay on the floor; a large rip ran through the back, likely where his dorsal fin now jutted out. He slipped it on and headed toward the stairs up to the deck, grabbing a flask of water off a table as he went.

"Where are you going?" Brennan asked, seeming confused.

Killian nearly scoffed. "Haven't you heard? I'm the Dark One now." He sighed, readying himself to pay the ultimate price for what had been the best part of his life: his now-cursed afterlife. "It's time I go captain my ship."