initiala:

With his brother’s life on the line, Killian Jones finds himself on a quest for a cure in the form of a mythical bird. What he finds instead is Princess Emma of Misthaven, bound and cursed to serve Lord Rumpelstiltskin. Together, he and the princess make a pact: she will cure his brother and he’ll return her home. But the road is a long one, with surprises along the way, and feelings can change…

Rated: T
Warnings: 

depictions of illness, enslavement, mild violence 

Here it is at last, my contribution to the Captain Swan Little Bang! Please be sure to check out the artwork and gifset done by the fantastic @fairytalesandtimetravel and @sailingcaptainswan that goes with this fic. I may have cried.

Many, many thanks to ALL of the authors and artists involved with the CSLB for making this so much fun to work on, keeping spirits up and listening to complaints and commiserating about how hard writing is.

Special thanks to @emmaswanchoosesyou and @idoltina for beta’ing this and helping me beat it into shape and also keep it to the word count.

on AO3 and FF.net

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Tales are told in taverns. In some ways, the breath spent telling tales keeps the tavern walls up far better than the gold spent on ale and hunter’s stew. If tales in taverns ceased, no new adventures would be had, no songs written, no maids lured into bedchambers that weren’t their own.

Killian Jones has grown up hearing all sorts of tales. The ones his mother told, then his father, then the captain that spun a tale of why Brennan Jones sold his children into slavery. Then it was sailors’ tales, ones speaking of krakens and mermaids, harpies and sirens, white whales and storms that could only be caused by the wrath of the gods.

Birds that healed any illness.

This particular tale, the mythical healing bird, is what keeps Killian in his seat. His head hangs low, his hands keeping warm on this chilly night by cupping his warmed cider. There’s plenty of tales to be told in this tavern, all of them in increasingly thick burrs from the bawdy men around him, and Killian’s fingers tighten around his tankard when the group nearest him bursts out laughing.

He’s had too little sleep in too many days and his nerves are frayed worse than the lines on the Jewel after a storm.

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alexandralyman:

I was recently asked how long Emma and Killian had been living in the same city in Between Heaven and Hell and how that came about. While I keep some details deliberately vague, I did say that there was some backstory I could write about. Here’s a little flashback about how their current “arrangement” came to be, with a teeny bit of smut.

Having (literally) all the time in the world and little (if any) in the way of scruples was a tidy combination when it came to acquiring wealth.

Spending it was even easier.

Killian Jones had everything he could possibly want, a closet full of impeccably tailored bespoke suits, a different watch for every day of the year, newer, faster cars whenever he got bored with the old ones, fabulous antiques that had been new when he bought them, the finest spirits and a wine cellar that any sommelier would sell his soul for (again, literally) and a real estate portfolio that spanned both continents and centuries. The London house and the Boston apartment, the chateau in France and the place in Malibu, and that was just some of the residential properties. He also owned nearly a block of downtown New Orleans, in the heart of the French Quarter, colonial villas and rundown warehouses in the Caribbean, high-end strip clubs in Montreal, and a controlling interest in a new hotel currently being built in Las Vegas, with a suite specifically designed to his own taste for when he visited the city built on sin.

Money was no object, not for him.

Except…

He tossed the velvet jewelry box aside with a sigh. Diamonds, pearls, emeralds, he’d tried them all and every time they were returned. It had been awhile since he’d sent her a pair of earrings or a necklace, finally accepting that his angel would not be tempted by the best Cartier or Asprey & Garrad had to offer, but he’d been in a bit of a mood lately. Emma had been gone for weeks, taking off with nothing more than a hurried phone call to answer someone else’s prayer. Someone handsome, perhaps, dark-haired and blue-eyed like him (he knew she had a certain fondness for that) but with the one thing he’d always lack, that no amount of money could buy.

By the rules of the Holy Book, demons couldn’t be redeemed.

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mahstatins:

Emma Swan went to Britain looking for family. It should have been a Hallmark movie, a Christmas miracle waiting to happen. Instead she’s stuck in a grimy London ‘flat’, with the worst next door neighbor in the world.

Well, maybe not the worst.

Ok, here it is! My contribution to the @captainswanbigbang ‘s little bang! Thank you so much to all the mods for organising it and for all your hard work. Specifically I owe a blood debt to @phiralovesloki for being an awesome beta, my heart on a platter to @katie-dub and @killiancygnus for cheerleading and, of course, a million thank yous to my incredibly talented and lovely artist @shady-swan-jones who sent me a prompt a year ago and had to wait a reaaaaally long time to see it come to fruition in a way she almost certainly didn’t expect! The fact that we were paired together makes me grin like a loon Sophie, I hope I did you proud.

As well as the beautiful banner, @shady-swan-jones has also created X this gorgeous artwork for the first half and this X beautiful spoilery piece too! I am a spoilt writer.

Thanks for the title Death Cab. And the tears.

Wordcount: 14999 (yep, that close!)

Rating: M

Other Pairings: Snowing, Outlaw Queen

Warnings: Excessive drinking, swearing, sexual situations.

AO3

Emma Swan has never really been one for romantic comedies. They aren’t made for the likes of her – a woman described as prickly by her friends and rather less flatteringly by the vanishingly few dates she’s had over the years. No, romantic comedies are really more Mary Margaret’s thing, full of hope and joy and promises that things will get better if you believe in yourself, Emma.

(She believes in herself just fine, as it happens. It’s other people she struggles with.)

It makes sense, then, that her vague memories of watching one such movie years ago are of being curled up under a blanket on Mary Margaret’s college futon, her attention carefully focused on the television and not on the way David’s hands roamed over Mary Margaret’s knee. Public displays of affection were even less appealing to her than some stupid movie’s ideas about the perfection of true love, and that’s why she remembers most of it even now. There were lobsters, for sure, and something about pornography that made Mary Margaret gasp. (She hopes that was the reason. Maybe her memory blanked that part out.)

And at the end, a beautiful airport reunion that made David sniff surreptitiously against Mary Margaret’s shoulder.

Her experience of London’s Heathrow is nothing like that.

She arrives on a miserable foggy November night, clutching her single case and blinking grit from her eyes in the overly bright arrivals hall.

She steps through the late night crowd waiting for loved ones and out into the darkness, struggling to read her new address from the back of an aircraft napkin in the dim glow of an orange street light.

(Peckham. Mary Margaret had said, a little furrow between her brows even as she tried to smile. Sounds fancy.

If you’re a chicken, maybe. David had muttered, pulling Emma against his side. Do you have to go?)

She did.

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