AU/potentially canon-compliant ghost story set during the missing year, in which Killian hears stories of a ghostly lady in white who roams the seas in search of her lost love. But she isn’t real. She can’t be. (Based on this edit I made which I always meant to follow with a fic, it just took me a while!)
Sailors are a superstitious lot, no matter which side of the
law they fall on. It’s a little more pronounced among pirates, he thinks, the
fear fuelled by a guilty conscience and giving wings to imagination.
And it’s lonely out here, on the open sea. The stories give
it a little character, make it feel like a living entity, populate it with
mermaids and sea devils and broken hearts.
Killian has not needed stories for that for a long time.
When he first hears about the lady in white, he scoffs.
“It appears the fishwives have been quite productive in our
absence,” he remarks with a sneer, cutting Smee off before the man can really
get going. “I’ve not heard that one before.”
“That’s because no one’s seen her before.” Smee is earnest
as always. For all his tendency to fear everything and everyone, Killian
considers, the fellow does love his ghost stories. “They say it’s the ghost of
a dead woman. She’s haunting the seas, looking for her lost love, and she lures
sailors to their deaths with her beauty.”
His first thought is of red hair and pleading eyes, and his
heart, ever traitorous, gives a little lurch in his chest. It’s only a story,
he reminds himself, but that doesn’t help, because in another realm, he is just a story.
Not for the first time, he wonders if Emma knows his story,
in the new life that Regina has invented for her and the boy. Does she read it
sometimes, or watch it in that strange vision box? Does some part of her
recognise him?
It All Starts With a Dance 