I don't own OUAT, but if I were so lucky it would be Sleeping Hook all day and all night, with a heavy dose of Jefferson for kicks.

Smee was not confident in his Captain's ability to pull off the latest scheme to exact revenge on the Dark One. The plan was too complicated, too risky, too final and he didn't like it, 'I don't like it Cap'n,' not one bit.

'Too many things could go wrong sir,' Hook eyed the man he held in highest confidence onboard, the nerves were apparent in the twisting of the red hat in Smee's hand. Only Smee would dare talk against his plans and not worry over losing his tongue, well Hook would consider taking his tongue, who needed a tongue really?

'Do you think me a fool Mr. Smee,' Hook grinned cheekily, Smee stuttered a no, 'Do you think me incapable of wooing a lass,' Smee shook his head emphatically no. 'Then what could go wrong?'

Hook knew lots and lots of things could go wrong. Pixie dust was unpredictable at the best of times and he had no real idea how twenty year old dust dug up from a grave of a half-mad fairy would work.

Fighting off the shudder, he had seen first hand the effects of dust gone wrong, but there was not time to find another option. He pushed aside the doubts, the dust would work, it had too. Hook had worked to hard and waited too long for his revenge for this not to work because this was it, he knew it in his bones, that this was his one last chance to skin his crocodile.

A fortuitous trip to Neverland to see a mermaid about a tail had kept himself free of the Evil Queen's curse. Thinking that his chance had passed when the Great Spell washed over the Enchanted Forest, taking all of its inhabitants somewhere else, including the damnable Rumpelstiltskin Hook had taken to drinking and plundering, hoping to quench his need for blood in that of others and his own.

Now that spell was cracking if he did not move against the Dark One, he never would. Meeting the fair-haired warrior and the One True Queen had been an unbelievable stroke of luck, taking him into their confidence only after he had convinced them he had survived the massacre by the Mad Queen, he had stumbled onto the encampment quite by accident and had only meant to pilfer a few items no one would miss since they were dead.

They had spoken of this Storybtook at length he had thought them both mad at first until the Princess had shown him images on a tiny screen that could only be from not here.

With the air ripe with strife and a war looming Hook needed to be in the best position possible. A crew full of marginally loyal pirates on a patched together ship was not going to cut it when the walls fell and the war began.

Tucking himself away in his cabin with a bottle of rum and a pouch ripe for smoking, he considered his options, assessed and weighed all of the information he had gathered to predict as many outcomes as he could until one path revealed itself.

'Well come on then Smee, we've dallied long enough, my Princess needs waking, I've got royalty to marry into.'