Ch.73: Enter Dark Katherine
Although, they went to Camelot to find Merlin to have Merlin get rid of the darkness once and for all, it didn’t work. So, when things were all said and done, she brought them all and herself back to Storybrooke, but with her own plans. She was back to her old ways because of the darkness, aiming to hurt people around her. Her being The Dark One, was almost as bad as Rumple. She was back to how she was when she’d been a vampire. They just didn’t know what she was planning. Hook believed though, that whatever she may be planning, he could stop her because of their love they had. It had failed though. True love’s kiss hadn’t worked to bring her back from the darkness. She’d embraced the darkness as part of herself. Now they had to find a different way to save her from it and find out what she was after. The trouble was though, they only knew the human version that had shown up in town a few years ago. They didn’t know the version she’d been before appearing in Storybrooke.
It was a dismal night, as Dark Katherine stood in the house that Zelena had once used as her own. Katherine was making plans there. Everyone was trying to find a way to save her from the darkness, but she didn’t want to be saved, so she was going to do everything she could to stop them from trying to save her.
Meanwhile, the good guys were trying to figure out what she was planning and how to save Katherine from the darkness. They didn’t exactly have any idea though, how to get the darkness out of her. They’d tried to do that in Camelot and that had failed tremendously. They didn’t know her before she’d come to Storybrooke, so they only knew her after she’d come to Storybrooke and what she’d told them of her past life, as well as what the book told them. She’d been a bad person as a vampire and now, it seemed, she was reverting back to her old ways. They knew they had to somehow save her from herself, but they also needed to find out what she was planning.
The next night, Katherine found Whale. They were looking for a way to save her. Since she didn’t want to be saved, she used Whale as their punishment. Then she captured Ruby and sent a black bird with a note, to Snow.
Snow, Charming, Regina, Robin, Hook, and Henry were thinking of a plan to find out how to stop her, when a black bird came to the window.
After she opened it, Snow took the note and the bird flew away. The note Katherine had sent to them read, You should’ve left well enough alone. Now Whale has paid the price for your actions. Would you like to see someone closer to home pay the price? This is who I am, so accept it and move on. Snow was the one that read the note out loud to everyone.
While everyone was discussing the issue, Hook left the apartment to go find Katherine. He didn’t want anyone closer to home getting hurt. Maybe he could help her.
Meanwhile, Katherine was in the basement of the house with Ruby. She was informing her what her plan was for her; why she’d taken her.
“Don’t worry. As long as they leave me to my own, it will all be over soon,” she assured the werewolf. Then she went upstairs to plan for the next step in her plan. She was doing all of this for Hook. She had to fix her mistake. She couldn’t let him remember that she’d turned him into a second Dark One. She had to fix it to save him. That memory was the only thing she’d made them all forget. They had to forget so everyone would be spared from Hook’s wrath.
She walked over to the table and looked at the dreamcatcher there. Then, because she and Hook were connected by the darkness, she heard Hook calling her name. It sounded desperate, so she magically disappeared from the house and reappeared on a street by her car. That’s when she saw him on a rooftop.
When she saw him on the roof, she magically made him appear in front of her.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Katherine inquired of him, once she’d saved him.
“Well, I’m either optimistic or desperate or both. I need to know what happened between us in Camelot. Just tell me,” he replied.
“It’s not that easy,” Katherine informed him.
“It can be. Whatever you did, whatever you’re trying to atone for, I already forgive you. Come clean. I assure you, you’ve done no worse than I. I was a pirate for hundreds of years.” He held up his hand showing him a ring. “You see this? It belonged to a man named Barnaby. Called me One-Hand Jones. I killed him in front of his wife, took his ring.” He held up another finger that held a ring. “And this one. Edgar. I caught him drinking the captain’s wine. I drowned him. Every ring is a sad story.”
She stood just inches in front of him, holding the ring he’d given her in Camelot in her hand.
“What about this one?” she wanted to know.
“It’s the saddest story of all. It belonged to my brother, Liam.”
“You can have it back now,” she offered him, knowing what it was like to lose someone very close to you.
“Keep it. I used to wear these rings as trophies. Now they’re a reminder. All sins can be forgiven when someone loves you. Perhaps I was absolutely wrong before. I love you, Katherine Pierce, no matter what you’ve done.”
“So you really want to know the truth, no matter how awful,” she said.
“I do.”
“Then there’s something I need to show you.”
She entered the house with Hook that she was staying at.
“I’ve already seen your house, Pierce. Why are we here?”
“The truth is tricky. You have to look for it,” she explained to him.
“Alright, I’ll play your game.”
He went over to the telescope and looked into it.
“Well, I guess being the Dark One has its perks,” he commented, once he’d seen something that he wasn’t exactly expecting. It was a perfect view of the ocean.
“Back in Camelot, you said the ocean calmed you. I thought you might want to see it.”
“You made yourself a fine home, I’ll give you that,” he commented.
“I didn’t pick it. You did.”
He turned around to see a newspaper folded on the table, which had the house circled and writing on it.
“That’s my handwriting,” he said.
“You said this was our future. Everything I’ve done is to keep that future alive.”
“Well, I guess this is the moment you tell me the truth,” Hook told her.
“Almost there. Almost,” she replied.
A moment later, they were kissing.
She pulled away a few minutes later.
“I can’t tell you everything until it’s all over,” she informed him.
Hook later woke up in the basement chained a small distance from Ruby. After some talk, they got themselves free of the chains and Ruby left, but Hook stayed behind.
When Katherine came into the room and he’d found the squid ink, he used it on her so he could get her to tell him what he wanted to know.
“Sorry, luv,” he apologized. “I have no choice. Regina was right. You are a villain now. Now you’re going to tell me what happened in Camelot to make you that way.”
“How would you make me do that?” she inquired.
Zelena walked in, having figured out what Katherine had been up to.
“With some ideas,” Zelena answered her. “I see you found the squid ink, Captain.” Zelena stabbed him with a blade and he pulled it out and she held up a dreamcatcher, telling him to restore the memories that Katherine stole from him. “I found this outside.”
Hook told Zelena, “Do it,” wanting answers.
After the memories were returned, Zelena walked away to stand a ways away.
“I’m so sorry, Killian,” Katherine apologized to him. “I did not have a choice.”
“There has to be some other explanation,” Hook said, not wanting to believe what the dreamcatcher had shown him.
“Are you finding the truth hard to swallow?” Zelena asked him. She then picked up the Excalibur sword from the floor and walked over to him, handing it to him. “Here. Have a look at the sword.” She waved her hand over part of it and said, “Cloaking spell.” She chuckled at that. “It was there the whole time, right under your nose, and you didn’t even see it. Oh, I suppose it’s not The Dark One anymore, is it? More like The Dark Ones.”
“So, that’s why you saved my life twice tonight,” Hook commented. “I was never in any danger. You just wanted to keep me from the truth.”
“I wanted to fix it to make up for what I’ve done,” Katherine informed him. “Everything I’ve done since I got back to Storybrooke was to try and save you, Killian.”
“This is saving? How could you do this to me?”
“I’m sorry.”
“So much for our future, Pierce.”
She was silent, not having anything else to say about what she’d done to him. There was a good reason why she’d done what she had, though they weren’t good things that she’d done. All she’d wanted was to save him; fix her mistake by making someone else the Dark One.
Later that night, Katherine informed them of everything at her place, so now they had to figure out what he was going to do. She knew he was beyond angry at her, but she didn’t know what he was going to do.
The next day, after Hook’s visit to the shop to inform Rumple that he wanted to sword fight with him on the Jolly Roger at noon, where it all began, Belle and Rumple went to the others and informed them so they could figure out a way to stop him.
Because of everything she’d done, she’d lost their trust so they didn’t want her help. They told her to stay home while they dealt with figuring out how to stop Hook. Regina did have Merida guard her though, just in case. That didn’t work when Hook arrived, since he magically put Merida to sleep.
“A broken knee isn’t like a broken heart,” he began. “Isn’t that right, Pierce?” Then he made a comment saying that he didn’t expect her to be alone, but instead expected her to be researching with the others to find out how to stop him.
“That’s not why you’re here. You’re here because you still have feelings for me,” she assumed.
“Of course I still have feelings for you. Hatred, disappointment.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“You tethered me to the Excalibur. You opened my eyes. I now see you for what you really are. An anchor. And I see clearly now that you are nothing more than a pretty, brunette distraction. But guess what, Pierce? I’m a free man now, and you’re never holding me back from what I want again.”
“The Darkness is using you,” she informed him. “It doesn’t care what you want. It only cares what it wants.”
“Well, you’re only a pawn if you don’t know that you’re being used. As long as I get what I want, I don’t care about the rest. And you of all people should understand that.”
“What I did, I did for you,” she reminded him.
“You see, that’s your problem, Pierce. You’re so afraid of losing the people that you love, that you push them away. That’s why you’ll always be alone. You don’t need some villain sweeping in to destroy your happiness. You do that quite well on your own.”
“Why are you doing this?” she wanted to know.
“Because I want to hurt you like you hurt me.”
She watched, as he walked away and left.
Later, she and Henry found out where the dreamcatchers were at, which was the clock tower and because she was willing to help save the day, he began to trust her again. Then they got the dreamcatchers so they could give everyone their memories back.
At noon, Rumple and Hook dueled and Rumple got the Excalibur sword and won. So, Hook vanished from the deck and Rumple met Belle at the well, as he’d promised her that he’d do if he won.
After getting their memories back, they realized what Hook was planning to do.
At the river that led to the underworld, Hook brought forth the former Dark Ones; all of them.
Katherine went to the river by herself to confront of him and tried to stop him from allowing the former Dark Ones to have a permanent foot in the living world. When she tried to persuade him, Neume magically began to choke her.
Hook was silent, looking at her for a few minutes, before turning to face Neume.
“That’s enough.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked him, still magically choking Katherine, but looking at Hook.
“Being the man I want to be.”
“You can’t stop us,” she replied.
“Yes, I can,” he replied, and raised the Excalibur sword, making the Dark Ones that had come from the underworld, be sucked into the sword.
Katherine knew what he was planning to do.
“Killian, you can’t do this,” she pleaded to him.
“We both know there’s no other way, luv. We have to hurry. The Darkness won’t stay trapped inside Excalibur much longer. Take it.”
“No,” she replied.
“You have to help me, Pierce. Take it.”
“I can’t lose you again,” she replied.
“Your family needs you. If anyone deserves to go to the underworld, it’s me. You’re right. I was weak. So let me make up for it by being strong.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” she replied to him.
“And I don’t want to lose you,” Hook replied to her. “You have to let me go. Let me die a hero. It’s the man I want you to remember. Please.”
She stepped towards him and took the sword from him and then told him, “I love you.” Then she kissed him.
“I love you, too,” he replied.
She pulled away from him a distance and looked at him.
Because she hesitated, he said, “It’s okay.”
She knew that he wanted her to remember him as a hero and to kill him, but though she hadn’t had trouble killing Whale, she couldn’t kill someone she loved. Technically, although he was a Dark One, she still was too. Because she could never kill someone she loved, no matter how much they wronged her, she had a different idea. After all, this wouldn’t be the first time she’d be doing this, though it would be the first time of using an Excalibur sword to kill herself and save everyone else, including those she cared about.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized to him. “I can’t.” Then she killed herself with the sword, instead of killing Hook.
A few weeks later, after being rescued from the underworld by Hook and the others, she returned to Storybrooke with them and they got their happy ending, for good this time.
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