Inspired by the S2 deleted "jello scene" and onceuponamirror's post on Tumblr:

the second added bonus to the jello scene

is the fact that because he thought jello was a hallucination

he probably had a few real hallucinations thanks to all the pain drugs

I CHALLENGE THE CS TAG TO A FIC OFF

.

Dunno if the "fic-off" will be a thing, but here's my contribution!

(Killian experiences several different types of hallucinations in this fic: auditory, visual, olfactory, hypnagogic, and jello.)

The first time, he's not entirely sure he's awake and it's a voice. It's her voice, as vivid as if the past three hundred years never even happened, and Killian tries to turn his head in her direction but he can't seem to move. Everything's very fuzzy and unfocused. He tries to blink and it gets better for a moment, maybe. There's a lot of white.

"Killian," Milah says, sounding like the day she died, and it hurts him to breathe. He thinks it hurts. He thinks he thinks, is he even awake? He can't be. "I love you."

He tries to say it back but his mouth won't form the words. He's not entirely sure it's even moving at all, everything feels very numb and dizzy and he isn't sure what's going on. He should be able to think more clearly than this.

Milah is talking about going shopping. That seems unusual but he can't imagine why. She says he should get another red vest, that way he can match the Swan girl with her leather jacket – and Killian thinks she is smirking but he can't see her to tell, the whiteness is all one big haze. He thinks she should not be talking about Emma Swan but he isn't sure.

"I miss you in red, you aren't at all the man I fell in love with," Milah whispers, sounding very far off, almost drowned out by the ocean and some odd beeping noise. He tells her no, that isn't true, I love you, don't go, he isn't saying anything at all is he? She sounds like she's leaving though, and he doesn't want that, he's never wanted that.

"I'm already gone, Hook," Milah laughs from a great, great distance, and he wakes to a man in very odd green clothing stabbing something into his arm.

His shout's a strangled thing, more of a whisper or whimper, and the man turns to him in surprise. "Oh, I thought you were out of it. How are you feeling?"

Killian furrows his eyebrows and tries to ask where Milah has gone before he remembers he was dreaming. Or not, because the room looks mostly the same; less fuzzy but still very white. His head is still spinning, too.

"I can't feel my – me," he slurs, reasonably certain now that he's injured (the Crocodile, the line, how could he forget, and that mechanical monster—) and hallucinating.

The physician wearing pajamas confirms his suspicions. "Don't worry, that's just the drugs. You took quite a hit…"

He goes on to say something about broken ribs and Killian's not paying any attention because he isn't. His eyes drag shut, he half-hopes to hear Milah again but he doesn't really. He did not like the sound of her voice saying 'Hook.'

-xxx-

The second time, he's got a very fluffy robe on and two hands. There they are, just there, at the end of his arms. Resting on the blanket. He is in a bed, in a very white room, he is injured. He has two hands again.

Killian stares for a moment, then wiggles his thumbs. They both move: mirror images of each other. The metaphor's all the more fitting because he can only feel the one on the right. Just as he thought, another hallucination.

He hasn't had this one in hundreds of years but it's still familiar. He sits quietly and watches his ten fingers for the next several hours. Or maybe twenty seconds. Time's a fluid thing when your head is as fuzzy as the robe you most definitely do not own and you are alone in a very white room with a picture of the ocean on the wall.

Oh hell, his clothes. Someone's undressed him.

Maybe it was Swan.

Heh.

His hand hurts. Or perhaps that's his broken ribs, or his head, or his heart because the look on the Crocodile's face was one of utter devastation and it still wasn't enough. It won't ever be enough. Killian wants to see that man bleed, wants to see him cry for mercy and not receive it, wants to see him dead, simply dead for all he's done.

His hand's gone. It's a hook now, and there's blood on the tip and somehow Killian knows it's his own. His chest aches and he can't breathe. He's killed himself, why has he done this, he's killed himself too soon, the Crocodile is still out there –

-xxx-

The third time, Killian wakes up feeling much better than before he panicked and blacked out. That is to say he feels terrible, but coherent enough. There's a lot more pain this time around, but there is also Emma Swan sitting on his bed, smiling down at him.

Damn. Still hallucinating.

But he's not, he realizes as they talk, this is very much happening and she is very much real and his ribs very much burn when he flinches away from her.

Flirting hurts. Everything hurts, but smiling at Emma hurts most of all because he does not decide to do it. It happens entirely without his input, and there's something all too serious to the little smirk she offers in return before leaving the room.

Someone's dimmed the lights, so the room is at least less painfully white. Killian rolls his head to the right and stares at his arm, handcuffed to a railing on the bed. This again. She'd pick him. You chose her. He wants to laugh, it's all lining up in his head and it's not at all funny.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Emma staring through a small window in the door. When he jerks his head up, she's gone and he isn't sure she was ever there.

The look on her face sticks with him anyway: knowing, gentle, a little sad, a little lost (always a little lost).

It takes hours to fall back asleep.

-xxx-

The fourth time, he's staring at the painting of the ocean and suddenly he can smell the salt air.

He takes deep breaths until the scent fades, still staring at the painting, suddenly so very weary.

-xxx-

The fifth time, the Swan girl is straddling his lap. His eyes are closed and he knows he's about to wake up and that she is not really here, but at the same time she is placing a hand on each of his shoulders and leaning forward. Her hair is dragging across his chest.

"Killian," she breathes into his ear and he can feel himself shuddering but knows he isn't actually moving. She repeats his name, lips dipping to press gentle kisses down his neck.

She's leaving little drops of fire behind her; everywhere she touches she's burning him. She's everywhere but his lips: gentle, slow kisses with an open mouth.

"Just trust me," she whispers against his skin and he finds himself nodding, mouth opening in a gasp as she licks at his neck. Gods, she's everywhere but still inches away.

"Emma," he moans, eyes fluttering though he knows they're really closed. She hums against his skin, delicately rolls his earlobe between her teeth and he loses all thought for a moment. He opens his eyes and she's smiling openly. "Emma, kiss me."

She leans forward and hovers just over his lips, so close, not close enough, and he can't move to close the distance. He wants to but if he moves he will wake up, he knows how this goes.

She nuzzles her nose against his and it's far too innocent a gesture, he feels something in his chest twinge. She kisses the air just in front of him, smirks: "You first."

She's ruining him, she's ruining him on purpose but he can't resist: he leans forward despite knowing it will break the dream, just hoping there will be a single moment of contact first –

His ribs ache, his eyes open, he's awake and she's long gone.

-xxx-

The sixth time, he really did think he was done. He's been awake for a while, and he certainly feels lucid enough. A pretty young nurse has brought him a tray of food, and he manages to successfully charm her into uncuffing him partially so that he can eat, though her compliance may have more to do with the fact that she seems extremely busy and unwilling to feed him. Apparently Sheriff Swan (that was an interesting surprise) had left the keys with the staff, in case they needed to move him for medical reasons and she wasn't around at the time.

He asks about his hook, but it seems she wasn't foolish enough to leave that in anyone else's care. She is, however, apparently still in the hospital: "They're all in the visitor's room," the nurse explains, pointing down the hall, "waiting for news on the outsider's surgery – the man who was driving the car."

Killian's gathered from Smee that a newcomer is rather a significant event, so he isn't particularly surprised by this news. He is a little disappointed, but Swan doesn't have any reason to wait about for him – not if she believed him about not knowing where Cora is. She should believe him, it was the truth and he knows she can tell when he is lying, but then she hasn't always believed herself about him. Even when he tells her the truth and she knows it she won't trust him.

(He's not bitter.)

The nurse rushes off to deal with some other emergency, and Killian does consider escaping. However, Emma did have a point – he's weak, hurt, and has dealt great harm to the emotional welfare of the Dark One. At this point he would die in any encounter they might have. Better to stay here at least until he's less woozy, and then he'll be free to skin his Crocodile once and for all.

Thus decided, he turns to the tray with every intention of eating.

And there it is.

It's blue, very blue. Sort of square, or like several squares dropped on top of each other. He can see through it.

He pokes it.

It wobbles alarmingly.

Killian does look for the nurse. He does, but she's long gone. He heaves himself out of bed, wincing heavily and gritting his teeth from the pain. Standing upright is much more difficult than he'd expected; walking even more so. But there is nothing else on the tray and this hallucination felt real under his fingers.

This world does have many strange things. The 'cars', Killian's intimately acquainted with. People seem to hold small rectangles to their ears and talk into them on a frequent basis. The lights on the streets and in the buildings are encased in small glass bulbs that glow seemingly on their own, not a candle in sight. Not to mention all the odd beeping and blinking machines in this hospital.

But this… thing. Killian picks the plate up off the tray and the blue squares start wobbling again. They don't seem to be alive but it's hard to be sure. He sniffs them and they are off-puttingly sweet. He holds the plate out at arm's length, wrinkling his nose.

It is possible this is not a hallucination. Dizziness, exhaustion, constant pain, and inability to stand under his own power for very long aside, Killian feels pretty good. He doesn't feel like he's hallucinating.

But then he looks back at the blue wobbling thing and, well. What else could it possibly be?

Swan probably knows.

Killian stumbles off in the direction his nurse pointed towards as the 'visitor's room', looking for Emma. There are lots of people in the halls he could theoretically ask, but they all seem very busy. Besides, he's not sure he trusts them not to… he isn't sure what he doesn't trust them to refrain from doing, but he doesn't anyway. Emma, he can trust not to… whatever he doesn't trust them to do. Oh, he can trust her to glare at him, and to not trust him, and to chain him back up again.

(He's going to pretend he escaped on his own. That's sure to get her scowling his way.)

Killian can also trust Emma to be fair, though, and to treat him as an equal. Even when betraying him she didn't deny him that. He can trust her to be infuriatingly beautiful and to draw him in as he's only ever been once before. He can trust her to understand him, even if she doesn't want to, just the way he understands her, and he can trust her to haunt his dreams, his thoughts, almost every bloody hallucination of the night before this latest – and strangest.

Surely he can trust her at least to explain this plate of blue goo.

-xxx-

(She does.)

(Jello.)

(He's still not entirely sure it isn't alive.)