After nearly a year on the sea, Calliope found land almost uncomfortable. Strolling next to Killian through the dark streets, the man stood tall in his black leathers and shiny blades, she couldn't help but feel out of place. They'd come to the port town for shore leave. But Calliope didn't feel like relaxing.

With each day that passed, she could feel him slipping away. Many nights with Killian had revealed the layers beneath the roguish young man, riddled with guilt, insecurities, and enough anger for ten. Some came from his perfect brother. Some came from his neglectful father. All were tied to loss.

But he continued to scorn pity. Calliope risked a glance right as they walked side by side. Soft glows from lit windows spilled out onto the cobbled streets, highlighting his shadowed profile. The mostly empty rum bottle gripped in his right hand acted as a prism. She couldn't smile. Foreboding filled her heart.

"You're staring, love," he said. He smirked at her, turning head on. He got more brash by the day. "Like what you see?"

Calliope just forced a smile of her own and shook her head. In her bare, empty hand she felt the ghost of the touch of his own and pushed away her doubts. "Just wondering what's going on in that head of yours."

Killian laughed. "You tell me. You're the Muse. A bloody demigod."

They came to stand before the tavern door. Two crossed bottles surrounded by a braided circle had been carved into the sign, and a window to either side looked inviting. A few of the men had been earlier and spoke highly of the rum. Killian had insisted they go there.

Calliope would've preferred to stay on the ship. But she didn't trust Killian enough on his own, not those days when he seemed ready to spring at any slight against him and found himself deep in a bottle more often than not. He'd asked her to come, anyways. Despite the arguments that had become more frequent, he wanted her there. That was why she stayed.

That, and the memory of Liam's glassy, vacant eyes, stolen because of the poison from her own island.

He grabbed the wrote iron handle and pulled it open. A chorus of cheers and dissonant voices assaulted their ears, smells she couldn't even identify wafting to them alongside that of rum and cooked grease. She wrinkled her nose. Calliope missed the sea air. She missed the rain.

Marco and Frederick, two crewmembers of the Jolly Roger, waved them over with tankards of mead spilling in the air. Killian grinned, raising his hand in response. Two rings flashed on his finger in the light of the many candles and fires. There were many others that night, too. Mostly men, but some women, all gathered around stained, worn wooden tables and sloshing alcohol.

Calliope found a table next to a window. It comforted her to be able to turn her head and look out into the night, the crescent moon shining high above crowned by stars. She could also look inward, at Killian chatting up a barmaid and dropping a handful of coins into her apron in exchange for two drinks. He'd already had a lot to drink. A pit formed in her stomach as he downed a gulp of alcohol on his way back over.

"Tired, love?" He slipped into the bench across from her. Pushing the beer her way, he tried to smirk his way into her heart. It usually worked. "Or just looking for some rainstorms."

With a tiny laugh, she accepted the wooden tankard. Running her finger over the outside, she just shrugged. "You know how I feel about taverns, Killian."

"Ah, but taverns have drinks and dice games!"

He pulled his set of dice from his pocket and showed them to her. They were weighted. Calliope had seen him bragging to his first mate on more than one occasion. It seemed with each passing day, what passed as 'good form' for him expanded. Calliope's smile faded. He was already drunk. They shouldn't have come.

"Fine." As she didn't respond to his joke, he slammed his drink back on the table, sloshing it. "Stay here. I'll go have fun."

Fun. Killian moved through the tavern, leaning over tables to check on cards in players' hands and the amount of alcohol in various tankards. She watched him chatting up the various groups, some blowing him off and others rising to the challenge. A game of darts came first. Then a round of cards. Calliope soon turned away. She preferred the view outside.

Clouds had started drifting through the night sky. She could hear Killian on the other end of the bar, bragging about the shipment of gold his crew had wrestled from a traveling prince's ship.

His crew. When it had stopped being her crew, she didn't know. Calliope let out a deep breath through her nose. She wanted it to be her crew. But with each stop, they took on more pirates who craved violence and lost the men who had set out to rebel against a dishonorable king. With each port, they traded goodness for glory.

"You want to rethink that, mate." Killian's sharp voice cut through the noise of the crowd sometime later. His anger was palpable.

The tavern quieted as wooden chair legs scraped against wooden floors. Calliope turned. Killian stood from the table where he'd been playing a game of dice. Marco and Frederick stood from theirs and came to flank him. On the other side of the table stood a man with a dark bearded, his blue eyes wide at the aggressiveness of the pirates. He couldn't have been a pirate himself. He looked more like a common blacksmith than even a deckhand.

"Open your hand before I bloody make you," Killian growled.

The terse silence broke as the man sputtered. But he did as asked, opening his hand. Out tumbled a pair of dice that landed with a definitive thud on the table. Weighted dice.

"It's bad form to be cheating, mate." Moving around the edge of the table, Killian put his palm on the hilt of his sword. "Especially when playing a pirate."

The air left the room. The man scrambled to justify himself, getting angry at first but then as Killian came nose to nose, staring down at the slightly shorter man, descending into frantic begging to be forgiven. The other denizens in the tavern had gotten up from their seat as well, moving away from the leather-clad pirate that inspired more fear than rebellion those days.

Calliope didn't move at first. She just sat at her table by the window, deep set frown only deepening by the minute. When a scramble to the right and a shout interrupted the silent stand off, though, she did scoot away. She didn't see who started it. It could've been anyone, a lowlife stealing coins or another sailor trying to pull a fast one. But within seconds, the tavern exploded into punches and groans.

She scrambled over a table into the corner. But even as she stayed out of the way, she watched Killian. She watched the little smile spread on his face. She watched him draw the dagger from his belt. She watched as he leaned in, Marco standing behind the hustler so he couldn't run away. And she watched, in horror, as he drove the dagger straight into the man's gut.

The unrelated bar fight had been an excuse, the perfect excuse for the already drunk and constantly angry Killian Jones to exact his revenge at being cheated. In that moment, Calliope turned away. She slipped out of the tavern into the darkness. Leaving behind the shouts and curses and sounds of fists pounding flesh, Calliope took refuge in the outdoors.

It had started to drizzle when she heard Killian's laugh a few minutes later. She stood across the street by an apothecary's shop long since closed for the day. Her fingers trailed over the magic beans she kept close to herself at all times, tucked away in a pouch that never left her belt. They were smooth like glass, but softer.

"There she is!" Killian moved over, sipping at his rum bottle. "You left in a hurry, love." When she didn't respond, he turned to his crewmates and sent them on their way with a laugh. Then he walked over to her. "Come on, I got us some extra coin."

When he leaned in to kiss her, she stepped back. The air seemed to freeze, the drizzling mist around them turning cold. Killian stopped smiling in an instant. Instead, he just looked at her, inspecting her up and down.

"What was that for?" he demanded.

Calliope bit her cheek. "Why did you kill him?"

Killian scoffed. He made a fist, jaw clenched as he backed up a little. She could see the rum in his movements, the sluggishness that had become all too common those days. "He cheated me. I couldn't let that stand."

"Don't give me that, Killian." Calliope pointed at the door to the tavern where the noise of a fight still filtered their way. "He could have a family! You robbed them of that man's life."

"I'm a pirate," he bit back.

Calliope didn't respond at first. In the darkness, with his leather jacket that flared out at the bottom and his red vest indistinguishable from the blackness, he reminded her less of a man and more of a shadow. Her breath caught. A shadow, like Pan's. She backed up a half step.

"I can't support this," she said. "You, your heart turning dark."

Killian backed up as well. The rain had started to increase, Calliope hardly able to breathe. The darkness had its claws in Killian. She could see it now. She had tried to deny it for so long because the taste of his lips on her own was sweet. The warmth of his arms around her own drove away the lonely cold. Silence reigned between them until Killian slammed his fist against the stone wall beside her head. She flinched.

"You did this to me, muse," Killian hissed, the pet name dripping like poison, like the Dreamshade that had killed his brother. "Your bloody island. It stole everything from me."

Calliope choked out a disbelieving laugh. She shook her head, moving away from him. This was the rum. The rum and the anger and the guilt. "Killian, I tried-"

"And failed!"

Silence again. The tavern had gone quiet, only the sound of rain against the cobbles interrupting them. She tried to look past the darkness to see the Killian who had come to Neverland clean-shaven and well dressed with hope. But she could only see his profile in the darkness. Like a shadow.

"Killian-"

"Go back to Neverland."

Her throat ran dry. But neither moved. A flash of lightning illuminated them both, Killian's pain obvious even in his facial expressions. But hurt morphed to rage in that moment. So she nodded.

"Take this," she said. Calliope wrestled a magic bean from her pouch, one of the dozen she still had. The small, clear bean sparkled somehow even in the darkness. She held it out. "Take it."

He did.

"I wish you well, Killian Jones," she said, fighting back tears. In the rain, they were hidden. But her throat tightened painfully. "I hope you find peace."

He didn't respond. After a few moments of silence, the air still between them even as the storm picked up, Calliope turned away. She closed her eyes, choking out a tear. Then she turned her thoughts to Neverland. When the magic bean she tossed exploded into a golden portal, she spared a look back.

Killian had turned away, his attention on the magic bean in his left hand, and the rum bottle in his right. Calliope frowned. She turned back to the portal. She stepped through.

Her feet touched rocky ground. Wind whipped through her hair as the portal shut behind her, leaving Killian Jones in a storm to his alcohol and his rage. A heaviness settled in her heart as she stood alone at the top of Neverland, her wellspring just meters away behind a wild wall of Dreamshade. A moon shone far above, uncovered. Its light fell all around her, all around the place where Liam Jones's fate had become intertwined with her own.

Calliope fell to her knees. Exhaustion fell on her, a deep-set despair at having left the one friend, the lover she had stood beside for months. After being left completely alone, ripped apart from her sisters by darkness, a different darkness had stolen Killian.

"Well, well. She's finally back."

Pan. Calliope looked up, face wet with tears and hair drenched by the storm she'd left behind. He sat atop a boulder, eyes shining with mirth and a deadly smirk spread from ear to ear. Beside him, the Shadow lingered. Calliope felt her own rage redoubling.

Before she knew what happened, the Shadow attacked her. It threw her back, knocking her into the Dreamshade plant. Pain shot through her as the spines scraped against her skin. She cried out. Golden light exploded from her hands, and the Shadow recoiled.

But Pan just let out a small chuckle. "Well, looks like I'm on top now."

She stood up from the thorny bushes. Blood trickled down her arms and leg, and though it didn't take long for her to heal herself both of the poison and the cuts, fear gripped her. Pan had never been able to make her bleed before.

"See you around, Muse." As he stood up on the boulder, towering above her head, he turned away. Then he paused, and turned back. "Oh, and I brought some friends. You'll meet them soon, I'm sure. It wouldn't be fair to keep you all alone. I call them the Lost Boys." He grinned. "Let's play."

Whooping and hollering echoed through the air. Her blood ran cold. Their warcries floated on the wind, unintelligible but their intent clear. As Pan and his Shadow disappeared, she looked off into the distance. The battle over Neverland had only just begun.