Work Text:
He didn’t want to leave, but, in the moment, he felt done. It was a rare feeling. Even tripping over the threshold of tipsy and into oblivion, Killian was still dogged by the tattered rags of all he should have done, all he should be doing.
The person he should be, and was not.
So unprecedented, this stillness. As a lone heron on the hunt, staring into the depths. The scent of Emma, strange for the poison of darkness and yet still alluring. The scent of grass under a cold sun and of flowers, perhaps melancholy. The sky overhead made by a Stranger-God.
But it was alright. Nothing mattered. Everything would go on without him, and he was done. Calm. He let go.
Then, serpents. His body was not his own. Was this death?
In death his body was rendered inside-out. His vision was dark and yet he had a powerful sense of the rendering. Red flesh, black serpents. Or spirits. Body torn asunder and somehow reassembled, and he had no tongue, no vocal cords to scream out his agony. Don’t fret, whispered the serpents. You are not alone.
No, he wasn’t alone.
Killian stood at the shore of a lake so vast, he could not see the other side. It was a small ocean. It had its own waves and made its own weather. Storms. It was sloe-black, as was the sky, but the sky was spangled and twinkling with stars.
The Dark One was beside him. No. The Dark One was inside him. Both things were true.
Overdone as always, the Ghost-Imp raised a dramatic arm to the arc of the sky, the river that might have been the Milky Way. Killian’s head was cluttered with thoughts he’d previously neglected to think. The brilliant strangeness of a moving, spiral galaxy was in his head, a new vision, and he wondered if disparate, layered worlds shared a universe. He almost saw the movement of the galaxy in the river path, above, and in the black water that swallowed all. It was disorienting, as if he might fall into a deep, dark hole. Into the belly of a whale, just beneath the surface.
“This is how the ancients contemplated the soul, dearie. Gaze into the night sky and imagine all of its vastness, neatly tucked inside you.”
“I have a soul, do I?”
“Oh, indeed.”
Killian, sly and sidelong, a somewhat secretive nature fully realized in death, in transition, looked at the Ghost-Imp.
Greenish, glittery, glamorous and weird. He couldn’t even be there.
“Are you certain, mate?”
Serpents. Snakes. Why did it seem to always come to the wriggle, the determined, nauseating motion of serpents? The darkness that had violated him and torn him all to pieces was made of writhing, twisting ropes of serpents. The sword that now bore his name was shaped like them. The Kraken that wanted to pull him into the cold, cold depths wielded long tentacles, like runaway, monster serpents. They bound. They invaded.
Killian marched through hinterland and fen, into thicket and forest. Swale to rugged rock and beneath a heavy, leafy canopy that allowed for little undergrowth. All along, the Ghost-Imp trailed behind, jibber-jawing about serpents.
“Begone, Imp!” Killian intoned. He swished an arm in mimicry of the Imp. He played at an authoritative voice from childhood, but then found it funny.
The subtlety of the serpent. Its physical reality, low to ground, hidden in trees or in water. Its whip-quick ripple of movement, now felt inside himself. A sly creature made only of muscle. Unreadable at eye, alien and unknowable; Did it think? Did it feel?
“What drives its passions?” Ghost-Imp asked… of Killian? Of the air? Of himself? “What core components are Reptile Brain?” Fight. Flight. Survive. The scent of blood.
After a risky bout of time travel, Emma had declared Rumplestiltskin reminded her of Beetlejuice. Killian had been mystified by this, as by so many things. (Microwave? Central heat and air? Aeroplanes?) Henry cranked up his magic box and showed Killian, then Killian could not stop laughing.
No. It wasn’t quite on the mark. And yet.
The Imp knew everything he was thinking, a benefit of being in his head. Or… soul. Whatever.
Ghost-Imp said, “Trouble with the living?” Then tittered and hopped. They were, indeed, a troublesome lot.
But he wouldn’t let go of the serpents. Perhaps it was the broken sword Killian carried that needled at him, so. Endless questions, Imp-voice dropping octaves in contemplation.
“Why is it a serpent who fertilizes and splits open the cosmic egg? … Who must surely be a goddess… “
Was the Ghost-Imp talking about sex? Oh, the humanity.
“It’s phallic.” Killian offered, then frowned into the gloom of the faerie-dark forest. Why must he engage with the creature?
“Certainly. The penis is mighty.”
… Said with such sobriety, Killian couldn’t help but snicker.
“But honestly, dearie. Were it only that, we might have mythologies full of untoward cucumbers and conquering bananas. No, there’s more. There must be a reason the serpent is the very devil. He spoke the truth and led mankind to question authority.”
Killian knew some version of this. Some tale, long buried by magic and magic users. Superstitions of sea-faring men. He looked at the serpent-sword. So, now he was a devil. Yet… he’d always lied. He did not know the subtle ways of serpentry the Ghost-Imp knew…. Using the truth to lie. Manipulation behind the back of manipulation.
Something flickered within him, felt in alarming ways. It might have been a serpent tongue.
Things began to seem less clear. For a time, Ghost-Imp followed along like a puppy, no matter that Killian began to rave, speaking loudly over the Imp’s words. To stumble and slur, as if drunk.
He was drunk. He was intoxicated with a darkness that was like blood-wine, sticky with honey and red cherries, salty with tears, a wild taste of sexual oblivion and a feeling so empty, he could hear the wind, howling through it.
Dark One. Darkness. The vastness of the night sky was tucked inside him, a neat trick, a soul. Along with forty-odd miles of nerves, twenty-odd feet of gut and maybe one hundred thousand miles of veins and arteries. The body was bigger on the inside. Highways and byways for legions of serpents. Rivers within that were now lively with darkness.
And magic, power.
And hunger.
For what did he hunger? The Imp, so bloody talkative, asked it of him. “For what do you hunger, dearie?”
The hunger of the Dark One was not belly-hunger. It began in a similar manner; a panicked, hollowed feeling of cavernous (soulful!) insides, painfully trying to adhere to the spine. (Up and down went the serpents… the base of the spine, up its ladder, over the head and out, into the world to work their will; flicker-flicker.)
The hunger of the Dark One was in every cell. Each cell cried out, raged and wept and spat madness into the bloodstream, into lymph and marrow. The heart, the brain… awash in madness. Cells within the skull became shrill and caused visions.
The body shrank in upon itself, vile in its existence, and Killian knew only a steady supply of the living, of magic would make consciousness bearable. In the presence of a hot thing, a juicy morsel, a stink of humanity and a tickle of magic, things happened. Cells plumped-up. A body of ash suddenly knew a liquid way of being; water was life as blood was life, all bathed in saline. Protoplasm, soul. It was all the same.
Lush, luscious. The plumping and liquid eased both mind and bone, joints slippery as though sloshed in a sweetness of rum. Not remotely sexual, the cock – nevertheless – swelled. Fingers ached and stretched. Could it be that fangs ached?
Hollow, hollow, hollow. Fill me, implored every cell. Hot, rush. And with these things, the push and pull of magic, squirming with serpents.
It was magic for which he hungered.
Rumplestiltskin’s sword, his wrong sword went through Killian. Under and up, through soft gut and out between ribs. Killian as kebab; it was funny. Feeling seductive, Killian tilted his head and said, “Ooh.” Do it again, daddy, said his serpent-riddled blood. Baby snakes. He was so close to Rumplestiltskin, it made him feel flush.
This wasn’t the Ghost-Imp, though surely the goblin was watching. He watched all, he listened and took notes, muttering to himself. Snakes followed at his heels, also muttering. Their eyes revealed nothing.
It hurt a little, actually. Body somewhat a-dangle due to the up-thrust. Weird intimacy. But it didn’t hurt a lot. The wound was not mortal, as it should have been.
“Oh, daddy.” Killian pouted, thinking of his own father in a burst of cruelty. He pulled the sword from his body and upset Rumplestiltskin’s balance. Rumplestiltskin, newly brave. That was funny, too. Killian failed to spout a fountain of blood.
Lunge and parry, sort of. They fell over each other, neither recently accustomed to the heaviness and length of a sword. Killian didn’t care. He was hard to kill and, in addition, did not care if he died.
Now, now. Do you have a death wish? Asked the Imp.
Yes, yes, yes! (Yessssssssss, said an army of black serpents). Oh, the rush! Oh, the heat! Let us die!
He didn’t care, and so he played with Rumplestiltskin as a cat plays with its prey. Killy-Cat, said the Imp, and then purred. Killian played carelessly, strangely delighted to be at this sort of play with Rumplestiltskin, at long last.
He knew things, now. Serpents were gossips. He’d already known they’d shared a woman, the same woman Rumplestiltskin had gotten a child on. Now other things rushed in… an absence of mothers, abandonment by fathers, patricide…. An appalling need for vengeance, largely unsatisfied. They had a shocking amount in common. They had more than one woman in common. Rumplestiltskin had taken his heart and held it. At Rumplestiltskin's side, Killian had watched purple-black magic unfurl and fill the sky, shimmering and violet-scented, softly humming.
Every hurtful touch was personal and even private, secretive. Killian thought, more than once, he might kiss his newly mortal enemy. It was confusing, the heat of the fight infectious and heady.
His careless play continued unabated until he found himself on his back, a snaky sword at his throat.
Oh, yes. Oh, at last. Did he give a fuck for vengeance? No, he did not. That notion was suddenly done. It was already done, Killian realized, when Emma smelled of darkness and he began to hear the words of ghosts and serpents. It was more satisfying to know Rumplestiltskin, and to be known.
“Go on.” He said to Rumplestiltskin’s haggard face. Good gods, he’d gone gray. When had it happened? “Do it.”
But Rumplestiltskin refused. Why?
Free them, said the Imp, ever at Killian’s ear. Snakes encircled Ghost-Imp’s arms like ostentatious gauntlets. Free us.
A world of darkness and ghosts. Ghost world. The blessed snuffing out of the light. Rumplestiltskin’s blood on his hook, Killian was free to pretend this was his plan, all along. He’d only acted a desire for annihilation. Surely that was so.
The blood of a man who had been to Hell and had returned. Before, the words were only words. A bit of swagger; I’ve been to Hell and back, mate. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind.
Now, it meant something. Killian had not been to Hell, but he felt its nearness. Its realness. A flicker of it, a serpent’s tongue was living inside him.
Rumplestiltskin had died. He’d died, gone to Hell and clawed his way back. His blood, said the Imp, was a key.
Well, then. Killian knelt at the shore of the lake so vast, it was an ocean. The stars bore down. He bathed his bloodied hook in dark, cold waters.
“Look.” Grinned the Imp. The dark water moved. Killian could almost see the motion of the galaxy in the movement of the water. What was beneath the surface?
Come what may, hissed the serpents, you are never alone.
THE END