The Life We Will Fight For

Who are you?

He woke up in the middle of the night with a gasp, instantly looking around in panic. He felt the soft fabric of the bedsheets underneath his fingertips, and slowly the outline of their bedroom back in Storybrooke took shape in front of his eyes. His chest was heaving as he tried catching his breath, but the more he became aware of his surroundings, the more nervous he got. Bloody hell, what was this now??

Then, he felt a tiny body move next to him in bed, and soon after he heard a well familiar voice, deep and raspy and sleepy. „What's wrong, honey? Can't sleep?"

He turned his head and looked at her as if he'd just seen a ghost. „Wha... you? What... where am I?"

She frowned. „What are you stammering about? You're in bed? Did you have a nightmare?", she gently stroked his back, but everything about this felt wrong.

There she was, right in front of him... the love of his life, the woman he had been wanting to get back to for about a week now, and yet... what the heck was going on??

He checked his hand and saw the scratch. He knew for a fact that he had gotten that scratch from a bloody bush somewhere in that darn swamp, searching for wood that was dry enough to light a fire. That's where he had gotten that scratch. Or... had he? If not there, where else?

„I, uhm", he began, then swallowed, „I was just... back in the Wish Realm..."

„The Wish Realm? Well, not very recently, at least. You were here in bed, next to me. We had dinner, a glass of wine...", she brought her lips so close to his ear that he could feel her breath on his skin and it instantly sent not one, but multiple shivers down his spine.

He turned his head towards her and almost violently grabbed her face with his hand, pressed his hook against her cheek and brushed his lips over hers, desperate to feel her, kiss her, taste her, hold her again... how he had missed her! Had all this really just been a dream? If so, they could continue right where they had left off, and this entire ordeal of being separated from Regina would be behind him – if it had ever been real at all.

Hungrily, he started kissing her, and she didn't lose a moment to kiss him right back. She wrapped her arms around his neck and climbed on his lap, pushing him down into the pillow. Out of habit, he didn't wait long to turn her around – she knew very well that she was supposed to be on her back, even if his queen didn't like it. But when he saw the briefest flicker of confusion in her dark brown eyes, it all started to make sense. He had been right from the very beginning, all of this was wrong... somehow.

„Wait...", he gasped, pulling back from her for a moment until she reclaimed his lips.

He had to properly push her away in order to be able to speak. „What did you say we did tonight?"

She looked at him, completely puzzled and somewhat annoyed by his resistance. „We had dinner?"

„And...?"

„And wha... a glass of wine?"

He jumped out of bed and reached for the first thing he could get his hand on that could serve as a weapon, in this case, a nightlamp that was still plugged in by the cord, hindering him of knocking his opponent unconscious right away.

„I don't know who you are, but you're not my Regina! My Regina has not touched a drop of alcohol in weeks! You also don't feel like her or taste like her or kiss like her."

The woman in front of him shouted back. „You're delusional, Killian, come back to bed! You had a nightmare, you're confused, you don't know what you're saying!"

„WHO THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU?!"

He was slashing at her with his hook in rage, but she was faster than him, sending him flying across the room so he hit his back against the wall and fell limply to the floor, wincing in pain. As he struggled to get up, panting, he realized that the ground beneath him felt nothing like what it looked like. There was no soft carpet, no smooth parquet flooring, instead it felt like cold and naked stone. And bit by bit, the bedroom in Storybrooke around him started to disappeared, revealing his true whereabouts to be what he assumed to be the royal bedchambers of the Evil Queen's palace in the Enchanted Forest. Or... the Wish Realm? Maybe he hadn't left after all. He remembered now... He had been there, standing in front of it, together with Robin, but then his memory started to fade.