ᴡᴇ ᴘɪʟʟᴀɢᴇ, ᴡᴇ (plunder) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-12-10 19:33:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, killian jones (captain hook), regina mills (evil queen) |
Who: One-Handed Wonder Killian and Gigi McTits Regina
When: Today
Where: Killian's hospital room
What: Food and talks of villainy + cheerily bonding over watching their first loves die in front of them
Rating/Warnings: Mostly low
Status: Complete
Hospitals were dreadful, dreadful places. It could be sterilized a thousand times over, flooded with bleach and sanitizer but it wouldn’t rid the smell of something festering, disease and death. Unless, of course, you were in the maternity ward welcoming new life - but alas, that’d be a visit for a much later time. This visit would be to a survivor in less than desirable circumstances, one with the unfortunate luxury of experiencing particular physical trauma again. Another cycle of life cursed with the same affliction. Killian had lost his hand just as she knew he would and from the moment he had stumbled into her lawn Halloween night, Regina knew this event was inevitable. She knew the hourglass had flipped to empty the sand, that the clock had started ticking for him without an ounce of mercy. Heels clicked and clacked against the linoleum flooring, an echo through the halls that drowned the background noise of beeping machines and oxygen hissing in tubes. White flurries fell from the outside and Orange County’s climate had significantly dropped for this wintry (bullshit) miracle - hence the fashioning of a leather jacket over the cowl-neck shirt, comfortably warm and at a length appropriate for fleece-lined leggings. Casual for ware for the queen, but she’d yet sacrifice the heels. Unless Princess Elsa lost her shit (again) and covered the area with sheets of ice, her choice of footwear was still acceptable. Regina did her best to enter quietly. No additional voices that meant he had company came to her attention. Killian seemed to be alone, and under her arm was a totebag with sustenance that had actual flavor. None of this bland and poorly processed hospital food crap they were likely trying to force feed into his mouth. Knuckles knocked against the wall, just for a little noise to glean his attention. “Hey,” came her quiet greet. “It’s just me.” Killian didn’t like the hospital. He felt far away from everyone else, and the surroundings? Well, he couldn’t care less about the lack of opulence, fine silks, or crystal chandeliers - no, what bothered him was being segregated. That was all he felt, a sense of being wrenched away from whatever tethered him to this planet, along with pain, shame, loneliness. Like a useless skin, because he was a man without a purpose - what would he be good for now, lacking a hand like he did? Physical therapy, changing the bandages, medicines, endless bills he would probably never be able to pay off. It was all a jumble of mush in his scrambled-eggs brain as he stared out the window of his room, not really looking at anything, not even registering the dismal parking lot view. When he heard the knock he turned his head on the pillow, to see who had come to visit him in all of his crippled glory. That doped up expression was certainly splashed across his face, tired eyes flagging - those same eyes that were washed out, more the colour of clear marble rather than blue velvet thanks to the wonder of the IV drip taped to the back of his good hand. “Just you,” he managed a grin. Somewhat. “Pull up a chair. Though I can’t guarantee I’ll be a brilliant conversationalist.” Why there was an uncomfortable knot stubbornly lodged in her throat at the sight of him, well, the former Evil Queen couldn’t tell you. It wasn’t fair. None of this was, and despite her warning he stayed and what good did it do him, really? Besides landing him in a hospital bed with only 50% of his fingers and morphine. Stubborn pirate. Regina didn’t know whether him staying was a stunt of bravery or stupidity, but there was no turning back when you were this deep in it. It didn’t matter what the answer was in the scheme of things. “You were never much of a brilliant conversationalist anyway, I won’t be too disappointed,” she smirked, yet the quip of sass didn’t mask those troubled eyes. The chair would be pulled close in a minute - she came to his side first, helping that scruffy chin tilt up with the aid of her fingers. “You look like shit, by the way. If the nurses aren’t treating you well, now’s the time to let me know. I’ve got an arsenal of words to exchange.” You shouldn’t have stayed, was what she wanted to tell him. It’d be wasted breath. Dwelling on the what-ifs was pointless when it wouldn’t change reality and nothing - not even her magic - could bring back what he’d lost. Normally he’d have a quip just as snarky at the ready, his tongue as sharp as the blades he wielded effortlessly, but now Killian simply snorted dryly. And let Regina cradle his face how she liked, examining, though clearly she wasn’t pleased with the assessment. He knew he looked like shit, and it wasn’t just because of the heavily bandaged stump tucked beneath the scratchy, uncomfortable hospital blanket. But also due to the fact that he wasn’t getting proper rest, for one thing, beyond being sedated into a state of unconsciousness. “Oh, the nurses are all delightful, I even think I’ve got one fellow who rather fancies me,” he chuckled - his throat was dry, he hadn’t spoken in awhile, so he reached for the water cup on the tray conveniently attached to the metal bed rungs. Once he swallowed, and it didn’t feel like he’d scraped over his esophagus with sandpaper splashed with acid, he took a moment to study his visitor. A sight for sore eyes, indeed. “Have you still got that backless dress? It’s navy blue. I think it must be velvet. You were wearing it the night we met.” Obviously, he remembered now. But it was a good segue into talking about those blasted dreams. Backless dress, navy blue. An odd detail to bring up of that memory (considering what she’d been asking him at that time - and how she’d enchanted his hook), and one of her shapely brows rose. Huh. “The one with the silver - down the middle, around the waist? I have it. Why, were you interested in trying it on?” Her nose scrunched in his direction, lips parting to grin with those pearly whites. “You don’t have the hips for it.” Regina’s garbs of queenly malice. Even if she tried to forget all those over-the-top fashion choices she’d fail. Horribly. Tote bag propped onto the tray, she began rummaging through the contents. Containers that were still warm with all sorts of eats - there was the spicy lasagna, mashed sweet potatoes with melted marshmallows, some garlic seasoned chicken among the selections. She didn’t know if he had a preference to anything specific so options were important. “And if you’re up to that point, I doubt my sense of fashion as reigning queen is the most interesting detail to recall. But before we get bogged down with that talk, are you hungry? I didn’t bring all this for me, obviously.” “I don’t think I’d fill it out as nicely as you, love. Next time you come visit, you ought to wear it,” Killian flashed a smile in return, but it didn’t quite seem real - it was as brittle as his sanity felt these days. The smell of food was dizzying - a whole assault, everything mixed together, and he couldn’t even begin to pick up on the individual notes. Garlic, certainly. Something sweet, a whole lot of savoury - carbohydrates and comfort food he probably needed, but for some reason it made bile rise up in his throat. Not like he’d eaten anything lately either - that could be part of the problem as well. So was he hungry? Technically no, but Regina had come all this way to bring him nourishment - he ought to at least try to eat. “Aye, I suppose. Anything’s alright - I’m not picky.” He even shifted a little in bed, sitting up, pressing the button on the handy control to help him do that. The pillow behind him felt like a brick, but he reached around to stuff it a bit further down to provide some cushion against his back. Bloody hospital gowns were the worst too - he wanted actual clothes, as soon as possible. “At any rate, I’m actually a bit past that point, but I haven’t dreamed much here. The drugs make it difficult.” Especially when they knocked you out into fake sleep, nothing but a black hole of unconsciousness. Ask her and she’d insist that comfort food did have healing properties. Killian looked too sickly, weathered and worn, and she couldn’t imagine him eating much with the physical trauma he’d endured. Not to mention what he had saw in his sleep. Rumplestiltskin as the Dark One, and MIlah’s death, all things that added salt to the (literal) wound. “Me agreeing to be eye candy for you can be discussed later,” she rolled her eyes, but she supposed she could appreciate the light jest. Seemed more him, even if he felt nothing like himself. There was flatware she’d brought, actual silver, and pulled out an insulated soup thermos too. If solids didn’t sit right, maybe some tomato basil soup would go down easier. Try the chicken first, maybe? Regina carefully settled at the edge of the bed - the closeness would help if he needed it - and opened the lids. “You saw a lot in a short amount of time, then. Rumple. Milah.” Neal’s parents. She’d mention Baelfire in a minute, but she observed for a change in his face. Because she remembered what it was like to see Daniel’s heart ripped out like it was nothing, turned to dust between Cora’s skeleton fingers. It wasn’t the kind of thing you’d just forget - not when it was the one act that spiraled her down a path of darkness. Actual silver? How ridiculously fancy. But soup, alright, Killian could handle soup. He started with that first, twisting the top off one-handed and pouring some into the lid which doubled as a cup, he supposed. Actions such as these made the ache and odd burning sensation where his left hand used to be flare up - phantom pains, or something, it had to do with the nerves and severing that connection. It’d be awhile before all that went away, according to the doctor - if it ever went away, and hopefully it would. Without the use of antidepressants or fucking brain surgery. In response to Regina’s inquiry, he didn’t respond at first - just held out his arm, flipped it over so the belly of his wrist faced upward. There, a bit above that, was the tattoo. Milah, in black ink, scrolled elegantly over a bleeding red heart with a dagger right through the centre. Obviously he hadn’t had that before, and it wasn’t like he went out and decided to ink himself in honour of a woman he didn’t even know in this life - but he knew her in the last, and that ached too. The dreams had once again marred his body. “I’ve never met her yet...I still miss her,” he said, picking up a spoon to dig into the soup. Her death hadn’t been the thing to push him into darkness, though. Killian had been something before that - ruthless, selfish, sadistic. A true pirate, and history did not paint them in a positive light - history was correct, you know. Those men he killed, the rings he wore - the ones he’d taken from their corpses, jewelry as a reminder. No, Milah’s death merely solidified his future as a man hellbent on obtaining one goal, and one goal alone. There was no prying an obsession for vengeance from a heart caught in craggy rocks, eroded by sea salt. “Is it like that with your own first love?” Regina hadn’t said a word about the transcendent ink - it being there spoke volumes already - and her eyes hadn’t peeled from his wrist, not even when he helped himself to the bisque. But his question, hm. “It is,” she answered in a breath of a sigh. Lips moistened, she crossed her knees and clasped her fingers over them. “Daniel and I were supposed to run off, have our happily ever after, all that fairytale bullshit that seems appealing when you’re so close to it. Mother dearest had other plans for me. Ones that didn’t involve him.” Power, royalty, her own kingdom. Married to some old king with the responsibility of fucking him, playing step-mommy to the princess that couldn’t keep a secret. All things she’d never wanted, but had anyway - and eventually took control in her own way. Not that it fixed anything. Daniel was still dead, she’d banished her mother through a looking glass (then returned ‘dead’), her own father’s heart sacrificed for a curse fueled by the misplaced thirst for vengeance. “And watching someone literally rip the person you love’s heart out, and kill them right before you very eyes - it does something to you. It stays with you. Even if you didn’t know them here. It’ll never go away, not really. But…” Regina inhaled deeply. “It gets easier to remember. You just...learn to move on, as the time goes by.” “We were all wrong for each other too,” Killian admitted, taking sips of the soup - it was hot but not unbearably so, steam wafting up from the container; he breathed it in. “Selfish and volatile. It was why we were great pirates, but not so great people. Not that it matters, of course. At least not right now - I don’t even know how to begin to understand what it means here. Or how to make up for those lives I took. And...Milah abandoning her son, above all else.” That he perhaps felt guilty over, a little. It was during the time of the Ogre Wars - the boy would have been drafted at the age of fourteen, and his mother just left. Took off with a pirate, to escape her humdrum life. “I’m not even certain I can. That hook - it’s a part of me, I already feel a connection with it and the darkness it represents.” That’s a family drama she knew all too well about - she was exceptionally close to Neal. He’d been the first person to give her a chance despite knowing her role in it all, he was the reason why she even learned to call upon a well of magic that wasn’t so deeply connected to anger, hatred. A love for a person who she considered as part of her family, made by ties by the heart and not of blood. “Baelfire is here, you know. Grown man and father, but he goes by Neal these days,” she smirked. “His dreams didn’t end too well for him, but...he’s made something for himself here. It’s a second chance for him. For all of us.” Even the pirate. Even her. Regina had left a legacy of destruction, countless murders and a curse that had changed an entire realm. She’d manipulated, tortured, taken consent and even made her own son feel like he was nothing when he insisted the stories in that book were real. There was a chance for something better, she had it in her grasp, and she wasn’t about to piss it all away. “The darkness lingers, Killian, I’m not going to bullshit you there. We didn’t ask for it, and we’re stuck with it. And you can either give in or tame it, it’s up to you, but you do have things to lose here.” A hand came over his knee. Keep the dirty thoughts to a low, Guyliner, she was trying to be soothing. “An estranged sister with glittery toilet tops, perhaps. Family’s a motivator. Hell, it’s mine. Otherwise do you think I’d ever get this nice? Let’s be honest.” Killian’s heart (whatever was meant to be such a thing, anyway, more like a mutated lump of charred coal) thudded uncomfortably in his chest, seized a little, when Regina said that Baelfire was here. Obviously he must have a different name, and he knew of Neal too - he’d made the connection in the land of dreams as well. “Family,” he repeated, icicle eyes glancing down at the hand on his knee - well, to his credit, he didn’t make a crude remark though he did smirk a little. But yes, once upon a time, he had considered Baelfire a part of his family - the boy had lived on the Jolly Roger during a time when children were forbidden from pirate ships, and also conveniently when Pan was on the hunt for a certain Truest Believer. Being a young lad wasn’t working in anyone’s favour in those days of Neverland torment. Here, he had a long-lost sister and he was already ridiculously fond of her. “Never expected that and glittery toilet tops to go hand in hand, but alright. I wouldn’t want to lose that. Or you, I suppose. I gather we’re friends by now, yes? Friends who understand one another?” He was even almost done with the soup - maybe in a moment he could move onto solid foods. Might even be able to keep them down, but it would take a second or two before he could try. First he leaned back, head resting against the pillow with lidded eyes. “And...Swan? What about her?” Ah, there it was. A tiny, pompous smirk. Felt more like him, even if it was only a glimmer. Regina smiled crookedly, lips glossed with a more of a neutral peach color than that apple-red she wore often. “Well, since you’re asking so nicely...” Them being ‘friends’ on the other side was a generous description. Allies, perhaps, but friends? Laughable. Orange County’s damn miracle was allowing them to handle things a bit differently - not wanting to throttle (well, he has his moments) Killian was a perk. “If you need me to choke some sense into you, I’m good with that.” Yes, that was her version of ‘friendship’ with this one. Threats for his own well-being. Coddling wasn’t in her nature unless you were Henry. “And our dear savior, she’s...well. More than well, really.” Pregnant, actually, but it wasn’t her place to spill. “Playing house, being nauseatingly adorable. They’re happy. A goal reached after a year of this place throwing constant crap, anyway.” “That’s good. I’m glad to hear it.” Killian surprised himself by actually meaning it. His other self had taken to Swan right away - he oozed charm and flirtatiousness for essentially anything on two legs, but that was all a mask to cover what was undoubtedly low self-esteem, among other issues. A psychoanalyst would probably know - not like he had the time to suss it out. With Emma, it actually seemed somewhat genuine. He wanted to know her, and he did here too. But he wouldn’t get in the way of whatever was happening in her personal life. She probably would have no use for him anyway, without beanstalks to climb or Neverland to navigate. “One day, perhaps I’ll even get my ship,” he sighed. “Since I’m stuck here for awhile. I’ll take you on it, love. After I acquire a crew, naturally. What else is a dark-hearted pirate to do?” Rhetorical question. Regina’s chuckle was husky sounding, and she squeezed his knee. Her hand hadn’t left. “Most women find the brooding pirate persona attractive, don’t worry. And if you didn’t get the Jolly Roger, I’d be surprised.” That’d be a sight to behold, wouldn’t it? An entire mausoleum had transcended realms, an apple tree too - a pirate ship didn’t seem like a big deal in the scheme of things. Killian seemed done with the soup, and she took care of the rest. Twisted the cap back on, set it all on the tray with the rest of it, and then looked him over. Quiet, curious, a hint of concern. “Are you tired? I was going to ask if you’d mind me staying for a bit, even if you sleep.” Until his sister returned, maybe, but she’d brought work with her to keep her occupied if all he wanted to do was rest. Comfortable silence, whatever he wanted. “It just seems…” Her brow creased. “Lonely, I suppose, but hospitals have that effect, don’t they?” Kenzi had been by before, but Killian didn’t want her to live in this dreadful place, in a chair by his bed - though she’d probably be back later anyway, to bring him more of his things. If you couldn’t trust your sibling to bring you underclothes, then who could you trust, right? Plus, socks to keep his poor feet warm. He looked ridiculous and she’d probably force him to wear bedazzled Christmas socks with reindeer heads and pompoms as decoration or something, but at least he wouldn’t be bloody cold when he shuffled all of the three feet to take a piss in the hospital room’s closed-off toilet. And if Regina wanted to hang around, he certainly wouldn’t mind that. “Stay as long as you like,” he insisted drowsily - he’d give the solid food a go later, in an hour perhaps. But right now it wasn’t in the cards. Then he made a move to reach for her hand with his right one, a loose grasp. “I’m rather used to loneliness, but that doesn’t mean I actually like it. Little-known secret.” “I won’t ruin your image by telling a soul,” she promised, edged with the slightest bit of sarcasm - and that grasp tightened a smidge, a squeeze from her hand to his with a brief interlock of fingers. “Go to sleep. My day’s fairly open, so…” Regina’s shoulders rolled into a shrug, rising from the ledge of the bed to smooth out the blankets, help make sure he was covered. “I’ll be here for awhile.” Until he at least woke up in another groggy-like stupor, or at least until someone else came to keep him company. Hospitals were too cold. Too dreary. If all she could do was make sure he wasn’t alone - especially after being the unfortunate bearer of shit news - then it’s the least she could do. |