I really do have to thank you all for sticking with me here -- as you may have noticed, there's now a final chapter count. Three more chapters, and an epilogue. The end is near! Thank you all for reading, commenting, messaging, liking, and all that -- please never stop.
Summary: When a curse is going to send the inhabitants of Enchanted Forest, Captain Killian Jones, husband to the Princess, must take their daughter through the wardrobe to save them from the curse and give her the ability to break the curse when the time comes.
From the Beginning: ao3
Previous Chapter: tumblr // ao3
This chapter on AO3
The regular crew: @shireness-says@wellhellotragic@flyflyangel@stahlop@superchocovian@kingofmyheart14@drkeldonmd@darkcolinodonorgasm@profdanglaisstuff@pirateherokillian@captainsjedi @let-it-raines @ultraluckycatnd @cocohook38
Emma reaches down and covers Hope’s hands with her own, quickly snuffing out the small ball of magic before turning to look around her, making sure no one saw what she just did. But when she finds the only pair of eyes she finds on them are Killian’s — are her husband’s, watching them through the window over the sink.
The smile on his face gives it away. He saw what she just did, ensuring her that it was not all in her mind. He saw what she saw, saw the little ball of light held in her daughter’s small hands.
Whatever is happening in the kitchen must stop immediately, because Killian is out of the line of the window within moments, replaced by David’s confused face finding nothing exciting in the backyard. But moments later, Killian pushes through the back door of the garage and into the yard, rushing to fill the space between them before scooping Hope up in his arms.
“Oh, my little cygnet!” he cries, smiling at Emma as he wraps his arms around their little girl.
“You saw then?” Emma asks, even though she already knows the answer to the question, and he just nods excitedly. “What does this mean, then?”
Killian pauses for a moment, honestly not sure what it means, but their conversation is halted when David and Mary Margaret join them in the back yard.
“Is everything alright out here?” David asks, genuine concern in his voice, and Emma smiles brightly at him as a response.
She opens her mouth to speak, trying to come up with an excuse, but Killian beats her to the punch.
“I just remembered that we had promised Grace and Jefferson that we could meet them for ice cream tonight, and if we don’t leave soon we might miss them completely.”
“Jefferson?” Mary Margaret asks, her hands on her hips. “That guy that owns the bar down town?”
“His daughter and Hope have become fast friends over the summer, and they’ll be in the same class come the start of the school year.”
David’s face lights up at this revelation. “You’re — you’ve decided to stay?”
Killian smiles back, his hand resting on Hope’s shoulder. When he looks down at her, she is smiling, too. “Indefinitely,” he says, but stops any response from David or Mary Margaret with, “But for now, we have to go.”
“Jefferson, what the bloody hell does this all mean?”
“Daddy, watch your language!” Hope yells from beside him, hitting his broad forearm with her small hand, which elicits a small chuckle from the table.
“Don’t you understand?” Jefferson asks, his eyes wide as he leans across the kitchen table towards them. “This is it! I didn’t — I couldn’t see it before, it wasn’t in any of the books, but now it all makes sense! That’s what this all means, and now we know how — what — we need to do.”
“Jeff, please,” Emma begs, reaching across the table and placing her hand on his arm. “Slow down. Explain. You’re just rambling again.”
He stares at her for a moment, as if he doesn’t understand her, before his face softens and he leans back in his chair. “The curse,” he whispers. “This is it, this has to be it. How we break it.”
When he doesn’t continue, Killian prompts him with a wave of his hand. “The book — it says that one of the things Regina was sure to have in this world when she wrote the curse is her crypt, where she keeps her magic supplies, her collection of hearts, and her mother’s coffin.”
“Woah, woah, woah, her collection of hearts?” Emma asks, at the same time Killian exclaims “Her mother’s coffin?”
And then, from Hope: “That’s so cool!”
Henry giggles beside Emma, and when she turns to him, eyes wide, Killian turns in the other direction, down to Hope. “You and I will be having a conversation later about the meaning of the word cool.”
“How does her magic connect to the crypt?” Emma asks.
“According to the storybook, there are two ways to get into the crypt. Blood magic and light magic.”
“Why would she do that? Why would she give us that advantage?”
"I'm not sure if that was something she wrote in, or something that the Curse corrected itself. But she also never expected magic to follow her to Storybrooke, especially not through the little princess." When Jefferson says this, he mailed down at Hope, who beams up at him. No one had ever called her the princess before, Killian realizes. But that's exactly what she is, he realizes at this moment.
"And what do we do when we get into this… vault?" Emma asks, her voice still dripping with uncertainty.
"That's where the dagger is," Jeff says cooly, as if it's supposed to make sense to Emma.
But Killian gets it, leaning further on the table. "Wait…" he says slowly, his eyes growing wide. "You mean, like, the dagger? The Dark One's dagger?"
Jefferson nods, somehow the only thing he does not do quickly, and Emma is starting to lose her patience.
"Can someone please explain to me what this all means?"
Jeff opens this month to speak, but Henry beats him to it. "Can I?" he asks, his voice small, as if he is afraid that he will get yelled at.
"Of course, lad," Killian says, and Henry's face lights up.
"The dagger controls the Dark One. Whoever controls the dagger can tell him what to do, and he has to listen to them."
"And you think we can get this dagger by breaking into her vault? And she won't realize it?"
"That's the point, though, mom," Hope says, and Emma feels her heart soar just as it does every time her little girl calls her mom. "She'll realize it, and by the time she gets there, there will be nothing she can do about it. We'll get the dagger, we'll get Uncle Liam's heart, and then we can defeat her. Both of us, together.”
Emma smiles at the sureness in her daughter’s voice, but it does not last long when she realizes a hitch in Hope’s plan. “There’s an issue with this, though,” she says, her smile quickly turning into a frown. “I don’t have my powers. I don’t have magic.”
The room grows silent for a moment, before Killian wraps his arm around the back of her chair, pulling her closer with the end of his brace. She turns to him, worry spread across her face, but she is surprised to see only genuine confidence on his features.
“But you do.”
“Come on,” she says. “I haven’t had magic for twelve years, since Regina cast this curse and sent us all to Storybrooke.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have it,” Killian says softly, pressing a kiss to her temple.
“Then why hasn’t it come back? After all we’ve gone through here, all the shit Neal and Regina have put us through, why hasn’t it come back to help me?”
“Magic doesn’t always work like that,” Jefferson says, flipping through a few pages of the book in front of him. “Sometimes it simmers beneath the surface, just waiting for something to help it burst through.”
“Like when you guys kissed in the hospital,” Henry helpfully comments.
Jefferson nods, his eyes never leaving the pages. “Exactly like that, actually.”
“What can we do to fix it?” Killian asks.
“I mean, True Love’s Kiss didn’t work for you, that would have been too easy, anyway,” he mumbles, the words coming quickly. “And there’s the possibility of Hope being the key to it all, but you said that you’ve already come in contact with her magic, so that rules that out.”
“Have you tried to conjure your magic while Hope is using hers? Maybe they’re tethered together, and once one of you is using them, the other one can tap into it, too.”
It’s a brilliant idea, really. And it might actually work — but Emma barely heard any of it. Because she’s too focused on the movement of his hand. His hand, which has hooked its pinky into one of the rings on the chain that has fallen out from under his shirt.
“The rings,” she says, almost under her breath, though she feels as if she’s discovered the answer to all of their questions.
Killian just looks confused. “Pardon?”
“Your ring, Killian,” she says, pointing to his hand, which is still pulling her wedding ring back and forth across the band. “Or, should I say, my ring.”
It takes him another moment, but then his eyes grow comically wide, his gaze turning down to the ring between his fingers. Not his mother’s plain gold band, but Emma’s small silver one, with the large sapphire in the middle, between two smaller emeralds. The one that he designed and had made specifically for her.
The one that —
It’s as if they remember it at the same time, turning to each other, eyes wide, meeting glances before they both look down at the ring. Killian pulls the chain over his head, disconnecting the ends of the chain so he can hand Emma back her ring.
Sliding it back into its rightful place on her left ring finger, it’s like the pieces of a puzzle falling into place, the warmth all over her body that feels familiar and strange all at the same time after being missing for twelve years. As she feels it spread through her body, she closes her eyes, allowing it to spread through her, into the tips of her fingers and her toes, brightening the edges of her vision — but it’s not quite right. It’s like pieces falling into place, but the pieces aren’t all there yet.
“Is that—” Henry asks, at the same time Hope says, “What just happened?”
Jefferson smiles. “Brilliant,” he whispers, staring at the two of them before he turns back down to the pages.
Emma turns back to Killian, who is carefully watching her every movement. “Did it work?”
She tries to smile, but even though it doesn’t cover her face, she hasn’t lost hope entirely — she has another plan.
It’s raining by the time they make it across town and onto the Jolly. Killian was hoping that the rest of their group could wait on the main deck while he and Emma went into the captain’s quarters to do what needs to be done, but with the large, hot summer raindrops falling around them, he can’t bring himself to ask them to stay behind.
Which doesn’t make it any easier when he watches Emma close her eyes, focus written into each small detail of her face as she runs her hands against the back of one of the storage drawers next to the bunk, waiting to hear the pop of the lock of the false bottom.
But after a few long moments, nothing happens, and he watches as her shoulders slump.
“Hope, honey,” she says, pulling one of her hands out to wave their daughter over. “I need your help.”
The girl rushes across the room from where Jefferson was keeping them all at the bottom of the steps, excited to be of help. Standing between Emma’s outstretched arms, Hope does just as her mother is doing, placing her hands on the bottom of the empty drawer, her eyes squeezed shut.
“Just like that,” Emma whispers, barely loud enough for Killian to hear. “Focus on the warmth in your fingertips, you feel that, right?” Hope nods, even though Emma’s eyes are now closed again. “Focus on that warmth, and on something happy, on having our family back together, yeah?”
Hope nods again, squeezing her eyes shut harder, and Emma’s face does the same.
The clock on the bookshelf ticks a few times, suddenly audible to Killian over the pounding of the rain on the deck above them. Once, twice, thrice.
And then he hears the bottom of the drawer come loose, Hope and Emma cheering together as Emma pulls out what she finds there, which pulls a gasp out of Hope first, then Henry and Grace when she turns enough for them to see.
His heart. His bright, pounding, beating heart, right where he and Emma put it a few days before the curse was cast, before Blue shrunk his ship.
Before their lives got absolutely flipped upside-down.
“Would you two, uh, like some privacy?” Jefferson asks, a hint of a smile in his voice, and Emma’s forehead falls against Killian’s shoulder. She doesn’t even try to suppress the laugh that rises through her body.
“I, uh, hate to ask,” Killian answers, his voice dark, deep, in a way that makes Emma’s magic hum. “But I would really appreciate that.”
A moment passes.
“Grace, Hope and I want to show you and your dad the rest of the ship!” Henry says excitedly, taking Grace’s hand in his own — a gesture Emma definitely doesn’t miss, even as they turn away and head back up the steps. Jefferson is the last one to turn around, winking at the two of them before leaving them behind in the captain’s cabin.
For a moment, the only sounds are the ones that come from the ship: the creaking of the wood, the water lapping against the side, the slowing raindrops on the deck. Emma feels the pounding of his heart in her hand, her other pressed against where it belongs.
“We’re going to fix this, alright?” she asks, but his eyes are set on the beams of the ceiling above them. “Killian?” she asks softly when he still does not respond.
“And then what?”
“Excuse me?”
Finally, he drops his eyes to hers. “What are we going to do once we have this figured out? Once we break the curse, once and for all? Are we going to stay here, in this stupid little town, where most of your memories are lies? Or somewhere, out in this world, where we have to hide who we really are?”
“Killian, what are you saying?”
She watches the muscles in his jaw tick, his eyes squeezed shut, as he takes a shaky breath, his hand on her shoulder.
“I want to go home,” he says softly, almost a whisper, and he rests his forehead against hers. “I miss Misthaven, and the life we had there. The happiness we found, it’s like… I’d never had that before. And I want to have it again.”
“Is Misthaven even still there? Did it disappear when the curse was cast, or has it just been… sitting there? Empty?”
“I don’t know, Emma. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just know that those years that we spent together there were the happiest of the centuries that I’ve been alive, and after all of this, after everything we’ve been through since we learned about this curse, that’s what I want more than anything in the world — to be back there, living the life we had to leave behind, raising our children in the castle and on the water and throughout the Enchanted Forest.”
Emma takes a deep breath. “Okay.”
Killian pulls his head back, staring down at her. His love, his wife, the mother of his children, all these years later, and she’s still standing here, surprising him. “Pardon?”
He watches as she nods. “Yeah, okay. I haven’t — I haven’t thought about it until now, but I want that, too. There are some things I’ll miss about this land, of course, you know, pizza and smartphones and cars, but if that’s where you want to be, it’s what I want, too.”
He leans down to capture her lips with his, a soft, gentle kiss. He has missed this woman more than anything, more than it should be possible to miss someone, but he also loves her more than he ever thought possible — even without his heart in his chest.
“Can I have my heart back so I can kiss you properly?”
Emma laughs, then holds his heart up against his chest, above where it belongs. “Just be gentle with me,” he whispers, his lips almost touching the shell of her ear, just as she slams the beating organ back into his chest, very much not gently. He takes a few wobbling steps back, his hands steadying him against the edge of the bed. Once he finally gets his footing back, he stares up at her, eyes wide with amazement.
“Sorry?” she says with a shrug, but she is unable to keep the smile from taking over her face.
He surges back towards her, a growl escaping from deep in his throat as he wraps his arms around her, pulling her tight against him as he slams his lips into hers. This kiss is everything the last one was not — heated, hot, mere moments until Killian is pulling her back towards the wall next to the bed and sliding his tongue into her mouth.
He doesn’t want to stop, and if he couldn’t hear the footsteps of his children and Jefferson moving above them, he probably wouldn’t have.
“Come on, darling,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady even though he doesn’t fully pull his lips from hers. “We have a curse to break.”
When she pulls away, she finally feels it for the first time, the warmth that has finally reached the edges of her body, of her soul, of her vision, the piece of her that was hidden with Killian’s missing heart — the final piece of herself coming back together. She reaches down and takes his hand, staring up into his ocean-blue eyes for a moment before she nods. But, turning away from him, something on the desk catches her eye, something that she thinks might be helpful for their next task, and she reaches out to pick it up, the cool metal familiar between her fingers.
“I think you might need this,” she says, smiling at her husband as she holds his hook up between them.
Killian just smiles, a silent laugh passing through his lips, and he holds his arm out towards her. “If you’ll do the honor, my love?” he asks, and sparks fly from her fingertips as she twists the hook into its rightful place.
a/n: Oh, hey! I'm back! With another chapter, that contains some emotional trauma and a few cute Swan-Jones family moments, because I'm not completely heartless. Enjoy! As always, thanks for reading -- we're almost to the end, folks!
Summary: When a curse is going to send the inhabitants of Enchanted Forest, Captain Killian Jones, husband to the Princess, must take their daughter through the wardrobe to save them from the curse and give her the ability to break the curse when the time comes.
From the Beginning: tumblr // ao3
Previous Chapter: tumblr // ao3
This chapter on AO3
The regular crew: @shireness-says@wellhellotragic@flyflyangel@stahlop@superchocovian@kingofmyheart14@drkeldonmd@darkcolinodonorgasm@profdanglaisstuff@pirateherokillian@captainsjedi @let-it-raines @ultraluckycatnd @cocohook38
Emma spends the time Killian sleeps beside her to continue to look over the notes that they have so far about the curse, but there is one piece of information that she keeps coming back to, one that started as a nagging whisper in the back of her mind as she turned back and forth between the sets of pages, but she does not realize that just the thought of it has overtaken her mind until she sees the dark spot on the page in front of he from where a tear has fallen from her nose.
Neal is the Dark One.
Neal is the reason she has spent the past twelve years separated from her love, from her family. The past twelve years living a lie, believing that she was in love with him.
Forced to believe that she was in love with him.
Forced to believe that she was in love with the man who tore her family apart.
But now that she knows better, all she feels is hurt. Pain. Anger.
Because now that she remembers everything, she remembers everything. She remembers the curse being cast, saying goodbye to Killian as he took their daughter through the wardrobe, and falling in her father’s arms when she tells him the secret she kept from her husband. Remembers the purple smoke billowing around them as her mother found them in Hope’s nursery and joined in their embrace.
She remembers waking up in Storybrooke, beside the man she was led to believe she was in love with for twelve years. The man that she was supposed to believe was the father of the child she was carrying. The man that made her live a lie.
A life that she now realizes was a lie. Every moment spent with Neal, every kiss, every night spent in his bed.
The moments she thought she loved him the most.
A sob tears through her chest, one she wishes she kept inside as soon as it bursts through her lips, because as soon as it's out, Killian stirs beside her.
"Are you okay, darling?" he asks before he even manages to open his eyes.
She opens her mouth to say yes, to tell him to go back to sleep, but another sob slips through the cracks instead. all she can do is shake her head, stretching the aching muscles of her back when she leans over the side of the bed to rest her for head on his chest.
His fingers begin to move softly through her hair, the weight of his hand warm on her back, and when he speaks, his voice is soft, caring — everything that's been missing from her life for the past twelve years, she hates to admit, but realizes it's true. "Emma, my love, my darling, I've got you," he promises, and she is thankful she knows for sure that he's right. "It's going to be okay."
He doesn't pry, doesn't try to get her to talk. Even after the years they've been forced to spend apart, he acts as if he has not spent a day away from her, as if he still has her every movement memorized. As she tries to calm herself, focused on the feel of him under her fingertips, the way he is gently caressing her hair, he continues to mumble encouragement to her, and it only takes a few minutes for Emma to feel calm again, ready to talk to him about her realization.
"He used me," she says finally, her voice much steadier than she figured it would be, though she assumes it has ever thing to do with Killian's calming presence and not her own strength. "Everything he did was a lie, all the time he spent with me, with Henry, it was all... Everything he did to me it was... he was using me. I was just a tool he used in his revenge game."
She turns her head on his chest so she can look up at him, but he stays silent, has nothing to add, and Emma feels his breath get stuck in his chest, right below where she has her ear pressed. "All because of me," he says, though there is barely any sound behind it.
Suddenly, she feels as it all the air has suddenly left the hospital room.
As unfair as it all is, though, he’s still right. Everything Neal has done to her since the curse was cast, the nightmare her life has become in the past twelve years, and especially in the past two, was because of his vendetta against Killian, a vendetta that goes back centuries.
“All the shit that’s happened to you since your baby girl and I went through that wardrobe was because of Baelfire's need for revenge against me.”
“Neal is a monster, Killian. Please don’t —"
She lifts her head off his chest, but keeps her arms where they were, the feel of her hands against his chest keeping him from disappearing in his anger, his regret, his inability to know how to comfort his wife for the first time, and in a moment when she desperately needs him; and his hand on her back still somehow calms her, even as her anger turns towards her husband.
Which is insane.
"I can't even imagine what you had to go through, love, living with that man, being in love with him, and you had to do it all because of me."
"Killian, come on," Emma begs, reaching up to press her fingers against his cheek. "You couldn't have known."
“You're right,” he says, his voice heavy with the anger and the anguish he feels in this moment. “If I would have known, if I could have come sooner… I would do anything for you.”
“I know,” she says, her voice no stronger than before, but she's hoping that the smile she tries her best to flash at him is strong enough to calm him.
“I love you,” she whispers as he pulls her knuckles to his lips. It’s a gesture he’s missed immensely, and he intends to make up all of the times he should have been doing it over the past twelve years.
Though when she says “I love you” in return, threading the fingers of her free hand in the hair along the nape of his neck so she can pull her lips to meet hers, he decides that he needs to make up lost time in that way, as well.
Things between them aren’t perfect. After twelve years apart, living their lives separated, it’s difficult for them to just go back to where they were before the curse was cast, especially since there has been no sign of Neal since his disappearance following Killian's attack.
Much of their time is spent as a family on the Jolly, Emma telling David and Mary Margaret that she wants Henry and Hope to be able to enjoy the last few weeks of summer before it’s time for them to go back to school.
What she doesn’t tell them is that the open sea is the only place that she can kiss her husband without the prying eyes of the small town, and she really likes kissing her husband.
A week after his release from the hospital, they are standing together on the deck, with Henry and Hope out of the sun in the captain’s quarters below, watching something on her laptop. She is leaning against the helm, looking out over the water, with Killian’s arms wrapped around her waist, his lips trailing across the back of her neck, her shoulders, her back.
“Gods, Emma, I bloody missed you.”
She laughs, a gentle thing that warms his whole body, though when he nips on her earlobe, it turns into a low groan that warms a very specific part of his body, and it’s no help to himself when he tightens his grip around her waist and pulls her tighter against him.
“Can I ask you something?” she asks, crossing her own arms over his so she can thread her fingers through those on his right hand, her other wrapping around his elbow.
“Of course, darling,” he mumbles, gliding his lips across the back of her neck.
“When we weren’t — when you were, you know, over the past twelve years, did you… were there ever… any other…” She finally trails off, and when Killian turns her in his arms so he can look at her, he finds her eyes set on the deck and her bottom lip pulled up between her teeth.
“Emma,” he whispers, placing his index finger under her chin to pull her gaze to meet his. Her green eyes, brightly reflecting the midday sun, are filled with worry, slowly filling with tears, and he presses a gentle kiss to her forehead and each of her cheeks before looking down at her again. “Not a moment of the past twelve years has passed without me missing you. I have never, once, stopped thinking of you, stopped loving you, or stopped being loyal to you.”
It’s not a lie, and Emma can tell this in his eyes. Even if he had not been raising their daughter on his own, he would never have been able to look at, think about, nonetheless touch another woman without the memory of her sitting heavily on his mind.
“Of course,” she says, her voice soft, as if it would break if she tried to speak any louder — and he fears this is exactly the truth. She nods. “Of course, that was a stupid question, I never should have—”
“It wasn’t a stupid question, love,” he says, his voice as gentle as the press of his fingertips against her cheek. “You have every right to know. You’re my wife, my true love, and the only thing I’ve wanted since I walked through that bloody wardrobe was to have you back in my arms.”
Her head drops as her gaze falls to the deck, her forehead pressed against his chin. He does not try to move her, allows her the silence he knows she needs in these moments, and when she speaks again, he can hear the trembling in her voice.
“Even after what I’ve done because of the curse?”
He doesn’t answer at first, pressing his own eyes shut as he struggles to hold himself together, anger and sadness coursing through his veins.
“Because I haven’t been loyal you. I didn’t even have a memory of you to be loyal to in the first place, and I—”
“Emma,” he says finally, and her words stop immediately. “I will tell you this as much as you need to hear it before you believe it, but I don’t care. What you did under the curse was no fault of your own, and should not be something you need to apologize for. You were tricked, forced to believe a lie, and if you think that makes me love you any less, then I will do whatever I need to prove to you otherwise.”
“I want,” she says, then stops, slowly running her tongue over her bottom lip, staring up at him as she wraps her arms around his neck. “I want to stay with you tonight.”
“I thought you were staying with Mary Margaret so they don’t get suspicious.” He’s not sure where the words come from, because he wants nothing more than for her to stay the night, but he does know that they have been trying their best to not make it look like whatever they’re doing is a relationship, for fear that people would just believe that she’s using him as a rebound, as a way to distract herself from what Neal has done.
“I don’t care, Killian. I don’t care.”
“Believe me, love, I don’t care either, but we’re going to need to convince Mary Margaret to keep the children for the night, or else she’ll come to the worst conclusions—”
“The right conclusions.”
“Yes, of course, but she doesn’t have to know that, her or your father.”
Emma laughs, like physically giggles, and Killian feels it light up his whole soul. That might be a bit extreme, he realizes, that doesn't make it any less true.
Being back with Emma, having her in his arms again and able to treat her as his wife once more, is the greatest feeling in the world. Before all this, before the curse and their separation, he knew that loving her was the greatest thing that ever happened to him — but this, their re-connection after so long, has replaced that.
Even more so when the door to the captain's cabin creaks open and their children — bloody hell, their children, he can hardly believe that they're all back together, gathered on the deck of his ship — run up, joining in their embrace.
“When can we eat?” Hope asks, and Emma reaches down to run her fingers through her bright blonde hair.
“Yeah, mom, I’m hungry,” Henry adds, and Killian smiles down at him.
“Yeah, mom,” Killian says, turning to his wife, a smile on his face as he pulls her hips closer to his. “I’m hungry. Can we eat?”
“Daddy, are you making fun of me?” Hope asks, and when Killian turns his smile down to his daughter, Emma can swear that she has never seen him happier in his life.
“Of course not, cygnet, I’m just hungry.”
“Well, as soon as your father gets us back to the coast, then we can go to Mary Margret and David’s for dinner.”
Cheers commence on deck, not just from Henry and hope, but from Killian, as well, and when Emma smiles at all of them, Killian is sure that her smile is brighter than the sun.
After dinner, Killian stands first to help clear off the table, but is stopped by David’s hand on his arm.
“Actually, Jones, if you wouldn’t mind, I could use your help with something in the backyard.”
Emma smiles as she watches them walk away, remembering just how close Killian and her father were in the last years before the curse. With the kids set in front of the TV watching a movie, it just leaves Mary Margaret and Emma in the kitchen, cleaning up the rest of dinner. They're both quiet for a while, and while Emma is just fine with it, she can tell that Mary Margaret has something she wants to say.
She breaks when she catches Emma starting out the window at Killian, watching as he helps David move gardening equipment back into the shed and failing to pay attention to the already-clean plate in her hands.
“Emma, what are you doing?”
“I'm washing dishes,” she answers quickly. She knows it’s not what she means, but she was hoping to avoid questions about anything else, though Mary Margaret disagrees.
“No, no, with Killian. With Neal.”
Emma hands her the plate, refusing to turn towards her and meet her eye. “Neal and I are done. I thought that would be obvious enough after everything that’s happened.”
In the silence, though, Emma decides to turn towards her — towards her mother — but Mary Margaret looks as if she has no idea what Emma is talking about. “You're not going to give him another chance? He is the father of your child, doesn't he deserve at least that?”
Emma almost breaks, wanting to tell her everything, to spill the truth, but she can't. “No, he doesn't still deserve that. He doesn't deserve anything from me.”
“So you're just going to give up on him, move on so quickly to this new man who you've known for just a few weeks.”
She drops the dish sponge into the sink, turning fully towards her mother, though doing nothing to hide the anger on her face. “I wish you would stop talking like you know what's best for me, for my son. There is so much more to this than you know. If I want to leave Neal behind, then that's my decision.”
Suddenly, David's voice comes from beside them, where he's been standing for a few moments after coming back in from the garage. “I never liked him much, anyway.” Emma smiles over at him, leaning so casually back against the door frame.
“David!” Mary Margaret yells.
“Thanks, dad— … vid,” she tries to save it, but it's too late. She hopes that Mary Margaret’s outburst covered her own up, but she’s pretty sure it doesn’t work. Even if neither of them heard it — and by the look on David's face, he heard it — her quickly-changing face gives it away. “I'm, uh, gonna go check on the kids.”
Once she is out of the room, Mary Margaret turns angrily back to David, throwing her dishrag down on the counter. “You could have had my back there.”
“Listen, I've dealt a lot with Neal in the past few weeks, I think I —”
“What does that mean?”
David snaps his mouth shut, exceptionally confused. For a moment, he tries to convince himself that maybe she really doesn’t know about everything that’s happened, but then he remembers that she sat right beside him for some of it. “Mary Margaret, you were there in the diner the other day. You heard how Neal treated her, and then —” but she looks so confused, so terrified, that he can't bring himself to tell her anymore. “Let's just say that after everything he's done in the past few weeks, I don't blame her for not wanting to be with him anymore.”
In this moment, Killian comes back inside, needing to wash the dirt from his hands, and both of them snap their mouths shut, turning to him. Before he even has a moment to get a word in, Mary Margaret starts the interrogation
“What are your intentions with Emma?”
“Mary Margaret!” David yells, his eyes wide as he turns to his wife, but Killian is paying no attention to either of them.
Instead, his eyes are fixed on the window behind them, through which he can see into the back yard, and he watches as Hope holds a ball of light in her hands — magic. His little girl has magic.
A/N: The other day, I got this terrible idea of a cursed universe where Killian is Henry's father but neither of them knows it, and this is what happened. It's going to be very slow-going because grad school, but it's HAPPENING. I'm hoping to get a chapter out every few weeks or so, but if you want to be tagged when it does update, just let me know. I completely scrap every bit of canon once the curse is cast (and even before that). Good luck.
@shireness-says , I hope you’re happy. This fic wouldn’t exist anywhere outside of my mind if it weren’t for your insistence.
Summary: When a curse is going to send the inhabitants of Enchanted Forest, Captain Killian Jones, husband to the Princess, must take their daughter through the wardrobe to save them from the curse and give her the ability to break the curse when the time comes.
Also on AO3!
“There is nothing okay about this plan, Emma!” Killian yells, the heels of his boots practically echoing on the stone floors as he pushes his fingers through his hair, a movement that he's done so many times during the course of this conversation that parts of it are standing straight up.
“It's the only way, Killian,” she says, not for the first time, and hangs her head, refusing to turn around and look at her husband.
“It can't be the only way, and I won't — I won't do it, Emma. I'm not leaving you here.”
“There's a curse coming. A curse that's going to break us all up, take away all our memories. The wardrobe will only take two people, and I'm the princess of this realm. I can't leave my people behind.”
“But you can leave your daughter behind? Leave me behind?” She expects him to be angry, upset, incredibly pissed off — all of the things he's been throughout their whole conversation. But what she doesn't expect to hear is the sadness in his voice as it cracks while he asks this question.
Finally, she turns to him, but his back is to her, staring out the window over the ocean. By the time she makes it across the room to him, she can see his shoulders shaking as he tries to hold himself together, as he tries to hold in his sobs.
This is still something that amazes her whenever she sees it: Killian Jones, the former Captain Hook, the most villainous pirate in all the realms, who has since shed his moniker, his treachery, and his position to be with her, to marry her — showing emotion. When she met him, his only care in the world was his revenge against the Dark One, and he was willing to do whatever was necessary to finally get it. He was a hard man, an unbreakable shell of an exterior, but it did not take Emma long to get through to him and see him for what he really was: a broken man.
It had taken her a year to make him believe that she saw his true self and not the revenge-driven mask he'd worn for far too long. He's always been much more than a pirate, but it had been a few hundred years since anyone saw him that way. But as soon as he realized that she wasn't fooled by him, that she saw him for who he really was, he had already been in love with her for a few months. She was incredibly attractive, yes, absolutely the type of woman that he would have brought home to his ship for the night, but to be in love with her? That's something he hadn't thought was possible.
It took another year after that for her to realize her feelings matched his, that he was someone she was allowed to have feelings for, though it took her father a while to see it the same way. (Though Killian offering to give up his Captain Hook moniker and life of piracy in exchange for a position as naval advisor definitely helped. He was in the Navy once upon a time, of course.)
But two weeks after King David had given Killian permission to wed, they exchanged their vows in front of the whole kingdom as Captain Killian Jones and Princess Emma of Misthaven.
“Killian,” she says gently, setting her hand on his shoulder and he turns to her, startled that she is suddenly so close to him. "You know that's not true, right?"
"Well then, what is it, Emma?" The pain in his voice matches that in his eyes, and for a moment, Emma is not even sure that she can produce an answer strong enough to pull him out of his sadness. Thankfully, as her tongue seems to return to its normal size, he continues. "What is it about me and our daughter that makes it so easy to let us go while you stay behind to be cursed by the Evil Queen?"
For the briefest of moments, she wants to tell him the whole truth, the only secret she has ever felt the need to keep from her husband after five years of marriage. But she knows that it would just hurt him more, break his heart the rest of the way open knowing they have to separate, and she bites her tongue before all the words fly out. But when she doesn't produce an answer he turns away from her, back to the window, and all she can do is wrap her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his back.
"You need to keep her safe, Killian. Once the curse is cast, she will be all you have. And you will be her whole world. She's too young to remember me, and the curse will wipe all our memories, so I won't remember either of you."
With her ear pressed to his back, she hears him take a deep, shaking breath, running his fingers through his hair once more before turning in her arms, wrapping his own around her waist.
"Why do you have to be right all the bloody time?" he asks, his voice still recovering from his sobs, but he tries his hardest to smile at her.
And she tries to smile back. " Just comes with being the princess, I guess."
They stand in silence for a few moments, simply breathing in the presence of the other. But Killian's need to have his questions answered quickly wins importance over this moment.
"How long do we have?"
"Blue estimates a few weeks, at most. Geppetto is building the wardrobe as quickly as he can, it should be finished in the next few days."
"And when will the fairies come back from their journey?"
"As long as she was right about how long it would take, they should be back tonight."
Killian flicks his tongue out of his mouth to wet his bottom lip, nodding slowly, and if Emma hadn't learned that this particular combination signified her husband lost in his thoughts, she would have leaned forward to capture his lips with her own.
But after a moment, his eyes find hers again, suddenly much brighter than they were just moments before. "Do you think your mother would be able to watch our little lass tonight? So we can spend one last evening on the Jolly, one last evening to ourselves before we get have to separate?"
Emma smiles up at him, always amazed at his ability to find a silver lining in every situation. "I think I could probably talk her into that."
The next afternoon, everyone is gathered in the council chambers, Killian holding their swaddled daughter in his arms, everyone waiting for Blue to begin, having called the meeting immediately upon her return.
"First thing first, Geppetto will be delivering the wardrobe tomorrow with some of his most trusted men. As he originally intended, it will hold enough magic to transport two people to another realm, away from the curse. Have you decided who is going to join the child?"
Killian and Emma share a glance, a soft, sad smile on her lips, and she watches him as he turns back to the fairy hovering above the center of the table. "Aye, I'll be taking her through the portal."
Emma looks across the table and meets her mother's eyes. She seems surprised at this answer, even though Emma gave her the very same excuses she gave Killian: her dedication to the kingdom, her need to stay with her people. But, also like Killian, she has kept her secret from her mother, the real reason she is too afraid to go through the portal herself and be with her daughter, even knowing that Killian would do anything to find her again.
“Good,” the fairy says as if it were just another meaningless decision like the ones that are usually made at this council table and not the hardest thing Emma has ever had to do. “Do not leave this room before I can speak with you, Captain Jones,” she adds. Killian nods, and Emma watches as the muscles of his jaw harden as he grinds his back teeth together. “Next, it seems the Evil Queen is a few days closer to casting this curse as we originally intended.”
“How many days?” Emma asks quickly, voicing the question on everyone’s mind.
“Quite a few, actually. We can probably expect the curse to be cast by the end of the week.”
“The end of the week?” Snow asks, amazed by just how quickly everything is falling apart, and a few others around the table voice similar concerns, but Emma just keeps her eyes fixed on her husband, who turns to face her, his expression awash with sadness.
“What do you mean the end of the week?!” Grumpy, the loudest of all the dwarves, jumps out of his seat, slamming his fist against the table. “You said we had a few weeks left, and now you’re giving us no more than a few days!”
The expression on the fairy’s face stays unfaltering. “I apologize, I really do,” she says as loudly as she can, trying to regain control of the council room, which only takes a moment. “We were not expecting the Evil Queen to act this quickly, but now that we know she has, we can take all necessary precautions and be as prepared as we can when the curse is finally cast.”
The room erupts into chaos once more, everyone in the room talking at once — except Emma and Killian, who sit silently next to each other, Emma’s hand on Killian’s leg as they both stare down into the bright blue eyes of their daughter.
Even if her life depended on it, Emma is not sure that she could recall any of what happened at the council meeting after that, besides the fact that every few minutes, it erupted into a cacophony of screaming voices outraged at the news Blue was sharing with them. But it is not until the members of the council begin to file out of the room that Emma even realizes that she was no longer paying attention, focused intently on trying to memorize every feature of her daughter’s face, of her husband’s.
Because, in a few days, no one could be sure when she would see them again.
If she would ever see them again.
“Captain Jones, I have a few things I would like to tell you in private if you don’t mind?” Blue asks, her wings carrying her slowly towards them across the table.
“Of course,” Killian says softly, not sure that he has enough in him to say much more, and holds the swaddled baby out to his wife with as much of a smile as he can muster, though it barely lasts a moment before it fades. Once Emma has closed the doors of the council room behind her, he turns his attention back up to the fairy, who is now hovering just a few feet from his face.
“Your journey is not going to be easy,” she says, and Killian barks out a laugh.
“Aye, really? Leaving my love behind to get cursed, knowing that our little girl is going to be raised without a mother? History sure has a damned ironic way of repeating itself, doesn’t it?”
“This child will have you , Captain. And you will have her. But one day in the future, she will be the key to breaking the curse, to finding your family and being together again. Do you understand?”
Killian swallows as a sudden chill inches its way down his spine. This is new information for him, knowing that it is on him to raise the little girl who will piece his life back together. “How will I know when it is time?”
“That is a question I do not have the answer to. All I can say is that when it is time, she will let you know. Keep hope close at hand, Captain. The day will come.”
“Excellent. Nothing like incredibly cryptic messages from a bloody fairy.”
“I am sorry I cannot be more straightforward with things of this nature. But find solace in the fact that she will break the curse when the time is right.”
Much to everyone’s dismay, only five days pass before dark purple smoke is seen on the horizon, moving quickly towards Misthaven.
The time has come.
Killian collects the few things they have decided to bring with them packed in a satchel slung over his shoulder. But before he turns to the bassinet where their daughter is sleeping, completely unaware of the chaos that her life is about to become, he turns to his wife, standing unmoving in the middle of the room, paralyzed by shock.
Quickly, he fills the space between them, resting his palm against her cheek just in time to catch her first tear with his thumb. “I will do everything I can to find you, darling,” he whispers, trying to will her eyes to raise from the floor and meet his, needing to take one last look into the entire world hidden behind them before he can depart. After a moment, she does just that, her chin quivering against his hand as she is unable to contain the tears that have welled in her eyes.
She opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Instead, she lunges forward and hugs him as tightly as she can, burying her face in the crook of his neck, trying to breathe as much of him in as she can. He does the same with her, deep breaths through his nose trying to memorize the smell of her, the feel of her hair against his cheek, as much of her as he can, just as he has been trying to do since the curse was first announced to them.
“I knew you were going to have to leave, have to take her with you, but I didn’t — I was trying to avoid believing that I was actually going to have to say goodbye.”
“Aye, love, I know how you feel. I cannot begin to express just how damned much I will miss every single thing about you, you know that?”
“I love you,” she whispers, her lips wet with tears but finding his anyway.
He couldn’t care less, just focused on feeling her against him, her lips against his for the last time in who knows how long. “I love you. Not a day will go by when I don’t think of you.”
She laughs, though it quickly turns to sobs. “Good.”
He pulls her tight against him once more, knowing that they are running out of time, but he never wants to let her go.
“Emma, darling,” he mumbles finally, no part of him wanting her to move a muscle.
But reality quickly sinks in when the door to their room crashes open, David’s face red and the king breathless.
“What are you still doing here?” he yells, and Killian pulls himself away from her, the single hardest thing he has ever had to do, letting her turn instead to her father. “Take her and go! You’re running out of time!”
Killian nods at the king, a man that he has grown closer to than he ever would have thought possible, then reaches down and pulls his daughter out of her bassinet, turning back to Emma and David for one final look before he pulls the door to the wardrobe open and steps through it, closing it behind him. For a moment, it’s just dark, the smell of freshly-felled wood thick in his nose, but then the world begins to spin around him and all he can do is hold his daughter against his chest as tightly as he can.
“Don’t worry, darling, I have you,” he whispers, his eyes squeezed shut, and then his feet are on hard ground again. When he opens his eyes, all he can see is trees.
It worked.
Back in Misthaven, as the purple smoke begins to weave its way through the castle, Emma clings to her father, finally voicing the secret that she so desperately wished she didn’t have to keep from her husband: “I’m pregnant. I couldn’t tell Killian, he would have refused to leave, would have refused to let me stay here, but I couldn’t — I was too afraid, and now this baby will never know his father.”
Her emotions are finally too much for her, and even though David is trying his best to hold her up, she collapses to the floor, her sobs echoing off the cold stone of the castle as the curse reaches the deepest depths of the realm.
a/n: Hey, hello, what's up! I'm back and here with another (shorter, but important) chapter, now that my semester is over! We don't have too much longer before this story gets wrapped up, so stick with me, guys!
Read me on AO3!
Emma has been at the Nolan's for less than five minutes when her phone begins to ring in her pocket, and she answers it to find a very distressed Graham on the other end, his words running together in a breathless rush.
“Emma, you need to come to the station right now, you and David, something has happened with Neal and he just — you need to come here now.”
Emma has so many questions, but his haste makes it obvious that he has no time for any of them. But she tries anyway, goaded on by the curious expression on David's face.
“Graham, I need you — I need you to slow down, okay? Can you tell me what's happened?” She raises her eyebrows at David, who is watching her from the couch, but she gestures towards the door to the back porch, moving towards it as he nods. “You said something about Neal?”
Moments later, once David has closed the door behind him, Emma puts her phone on speaker and sets it on the table in front of her, pacing beside it as Graham tries to collect his thoughts. “Neal’s — well, Em, he’s gone. He just… disappeared, literally, in a cloud of smoke.”
“What do you mean he disappeared?” David asks, eyes wide as he looks up at Emma, pulling at the tips of his hair with his fingers. “People don’t just disappear.”
“I’m watching the tape right now, boss. And he did. He just disappeared, like magic or something.”
Filled with an overwhelming mixture of frustration and fear, Emma can’t even form a coherent comment, running her hands over her hair before dropping her eyes to the ground. As some form of mantra, she keeps repeating David’s last comment in her head over and over again, hoping that makes it true: People don’t just disappear.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” David’s voice is filled with rage, perhaps more than Emma’s whole body.
“I didn’t — I don’t…” Graham tries, but he can’t quite get the words out. “I don’t know what happened. The mayor showed up, and —”
This makes Emma’s head snap up to meet David’s glare, her eyes wide. “Regina?”
Graham huffs, loud enough to be audible over the phone, before continuing: “Yes, Regina. She showed up and talked to him for a couple minutes, bit it’s like I was frozen, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything, and then she left and I turned to follow her but I heard Neal laughing in the cell behind me, and when I turned back to look at him, he smiled at me and disappeared in a cloud of grey smoke.”
The sinking feeling that started in Emma’s stomach when she answered the phone turns to a ton of bricks, and it takes everything in her not to collapse into the nearest chair. She tries to do what she always does when the world is about to collapse around her: formulate a plan.
“Well, we should start at the station,” David says. “Let me see this damned footage of Neal to see if we can make heads or tails of anything. There has to be a reasonable explanation for all of this, it’s not like magic or anything.”
Jefferson.
Emma straightens her back, looking around David’s backyard as if she’s going to find anything there, but David is too busy on the phone with Graham to notice. But in her head, it sounded like… no, that’s impossible. She remembers something Jefferson said in passing, something that made no sense then, but now… well, it still makes no sense now, but perhaps a little bit more than a few hours ago.
“You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants some magical solution to their problem and everyone refuses to believe in magic.”
Jefferson.
There’s no one in David’s back yard whispering clues in her ear, especially not Killi—
Killian.
This time, the voice is her own, calm and collected and understanding the severity of the situation. Because if she were Neal and had somehow — (no, certainly not magic, there’s no such thing, right?) — escaped from prison, who would she go after? The answer is obvious, and realizing it, she feels her heart pounding in her chest harder than it ever has before.
Why?
Because you care for him, you idiot.
Because he’s in danger and he doesn’t even know it. Because if she were Neal, escaped from prison and out for revenge, the person she would go after would be the man that helped Emma escape from his grasp, that showed her the truth and made her see that she was never really in love with him in the first place.
(Damn, that’s harsh.)
Killian.
“Graham, listen,” she says, cutting off whatever thought David was in the middle of, not caring about the glare he sends her way. “I’ll meet you at the station in a couple of minutes, as soon as I can, but I need to call someone, okay?”
“Were you not listening to anything I just said?”
She shakes her head, too scared and overwhelmed to care by this point. “And you need to stay here with the kids, okay? Keep them safe, protect them if the need arises but pray that it doesn’t. This is where you need to be.”
He opens his mouth to speak again, but snaps it shut when he realizes she’s right. “Yeah, okay, but keep me in the loop! I want updates as often as you have them.”
“Of course, boss,” Graham says over the phone, but Emma just nods, trying her hardest to smile as David leans in to kiss her cheek.
“I’ll be right there, Graham, alright?” she asks, but doesn’t give him time to answer before she ends the call, moving as quickly as she can through the house and her phone to pull up Killian’s contact, pressing the call button just before throwing the door open and running to her car.
Voicemail.
She curses technology as she climbs into the driver’s seat, opting for a quick text instead of a voicemail in hopes it means he would see it sooner: Call me ASAP. Urgent before pulling away from the curb.
When she bursts into the station, Graham is sitting at his desk, the security footage pulled up on his computer. He’s just restarted it, probably for the hundredth time, when she steps up behind him, and she watches the events unfold just as he described them on the phone. Regina walks in, holding something in her hand as she holds the other out towards Graham, freezing him as he turns in his seat to face her. Once he is frozen,
She holds the item in her hand, a long, intricately-carved dagger, out in front of her, approaching Neal’s cell. Emma watches on the screen as his eyes go wide and then narrow before he begins to speak, and she curses them for not opting for the audio recording devices they discussed a few weeks back.
“Did you hear what they were saying while you were…” she pauses, searching for the right word, and decides on “frozen?”
He turns in his chair to look at her, and she can tell that he’s taking this pretty hard.
“I mean, I obviously don’t remember it word for word, but sort of? Something about it coming back, which they were both pretty excited about, and then she commanded him to “find the pirate” and “end it” before she left, and by the time I was… freed… she was gone.” As he finishes his recollection, he gestures to the screen just as Regina turns to walk away and out of the shot of the camera. When Graham is able to move again, he turns towards the back door — towards the camera — and then back to the cell where Neal is laughing, flashing Graham a wicked smile before — literally — disappearing into a cloud of smoke.
Graham is silent as he watches the next movements play out on the screen — as he jumps out of his seat, pulling his pistol from his hip as he fills the space the desk and the cell, but Emma already knows that there is nothing there to see.
She sees him hang his head in defeat as the video on the screen restarts, taking a deep breath before saying, “I don’t even know what to do, Em. I don’t — I was useless against him before, and not he can just… disappear? Does that mean he has magical powers? Is that even possible?”
Emma shakes her head, hoping her hand on his shoulder is consolation enough for what he must be going through. “I really don’t know, Graham, but I think — I think we need to start with finding this bastard, yeah?”
Graham nods, his eyes lighting up with a flash of excitement, which Emma wishes she could share. Instead, she’s just drowning in worry: for her family, for Henry, for Hope and Killian. Graham’s right: Neal was dangerous before this new addition of “magic” or whatever… who knows what he might be capable of now.
They decide to patrol the town, Graham heading towards the center while Emma starts on the outskirts. She doesn’t know why (or, she does and chooses to ignore it) , but she feels pulled towards the docks, taking her time to check every nook and cranny. But she has just parked her car when she hears Graham over the radio:
“Suspect seen exiting alleyway behind the Rabbit Hole. He looks… son of a bitch, he looks like he’s covered in blood, but he doesn’t seem to be injured. I’m going to investigate.”
She slams the car back in drive, peeling away from the docks.
Across town, Graham exits his car slowly, hoping to go after Neal, but just as he parks it along the curb behind the bar, he disappears again, in the same cloud of grey smoke as before. So instead Graham investigates the alley from whence he came, shining his flashlight against the dark brick walls to find a man leaning against the building, sitting on the ground and severely injured. A few steps closer, and he can see that it’s Killian , bloody and battered, with a knife sticking out from between his ribs, just below his chest.
“Jones, holy shit!” he calls out, filling the space between them, worried that he’s too late — but Killian’s still breathing, though it’s incredibly labored.
“I need an ambulance!” he calls into the radio. “Civilian down, with a stab wound behind the Rabbit Hole. Ambulance, now!”
He gets a response almost immediately, but it’s nothing compared to the state of haste that Emma finds herself in as she jets across town.
She beats the ambulance there, her heart pounding on her chest, and with each deep breath comes a struggle to keep the contents of her stomach where they belong. But that’s nothing compared to actually seeing him there, blood dripping from his mouth and the gashes on his face, not to mention the knife that must have narrowly avoided his heart.
“Oh, god, Killian,” she mumbles, falling to her knees in front of him, thankful for the rise and fall of his chest beneath her fingertips.
But that’s all she gets before the ambulance pulls up behind her and she has to move away from him to let them do their job.
To let them bring him back to her.
“Have you called David?” Graham asks, and she knows that he is trying to distract her, but she’s still thankful for it.
“No, but I’ll do it now.”
“You’re going with him.” It’s not a question, but it’s not an order, either, and Emma’s not quite sure how to respond, so she just nods before turning away.
David picks up on the first ring, doing nothing to hide the fact that he was most likely sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring.
“Yeah?”
“Graham spotted him behind the Rabbit Hole but he disappeared again. Killian’s here, but he’s been beat up pretty bad, and, uh, stabbed.” How her voice stays as calm as it does is beyond her.
“Christ almighty. By Neal?”
“That’s the assumption.”
“Go with him to the hospital. Mary Margaret and I can stay with the kids, but text me with updates and call me in the morning.”
“Okay,” Emma agrees, but stops herself before she moves to hang up.
After a moment, David speaks again. “Emma?”
She hums in response, suddenly unable to control the quiver of her lip.
“He’s going to be alright.”
“Thanks, David,” she breathes, hanging up her phone before turning back to the collection of people behind her, the medics gathered around Killian. She only has to argue with one paramedic before she’s strapped into her seat in the back of the ambulance, her hand wrapped around Killian’s.
She thinks that sitting beside him in the ambulance, watching the paramedics try to save his life is bad enough — but being forced to wait in the waiting room while Killian is in surgery, not being able to feel him alive beside her, is much, much worse.
But until Dr. Whale pushes through the door and tells Emma that Killian is out of surgery, still recovering and asleep but should be up before the morning, the only thing she has to hold on to are the rings that usually hang around his neck, given to her for safekeeping by one of the paramedics.
a/n: Here's a bit of a shorter chapter for you, but it comes with a twist -- my favorite twist of the whole story, actually, and something I've been waiting to share with you since I first thought it up. Its been a long week, and I don't want to keep you guys waiting any more, so here you go!
Start at the Beginning: tumblr // AO3
Previous Chapter: tumblr // AO3
Also on AO3!
As always, you can find the entirety of the story under its tag on my tumblr.
The next morning, Granny’s is silent. Emma can tell that people want to ask her about what happened — hell, even though it was already late when everything started happening, it seems like the whole town already knows about the tension that has taken over Emma’s life before she can even order her coffee.
She suspects it has something to do with Granny, given the glares Emma did not fail to recognize when she would bring Neal with her. She can’t prove it, but she would be willing to bet that she’s right.
But whenever anyone has the nerve to approach her, all she has to do is turn to them, narrow her blazing green eyes that may have a darker red around them than usual, and the question seemed to disappear.
And it’s not just that day. It continues like this for a few days, a week, curious questions on the tips of everyone’s tongues about why Neal Gold is suddenly in Storybrooke jail and their house very quickly up for sale.
Not that there was ever another choice. There was no way that Emma was ever going back there, besides to pack up what was left of her belongings there, piling them in David’s garage until she could afford her own place. Mr. Gold even came one day for some of Neal’s belongings, knowing that Emma was intending to sell. Emma could tell that even he had some questions on the tip of his tongue, but he had the decency to keep them to himself, the only words shared with her a brief greeting and an assurance that he would lock up the house when he’s finished packing up Neal’s office.
But it is through this that Emma realizes just how little she actually owns. Sure, she has clothing, a nice collection of books that she’s gathered herself, and some sentimental things that Henry made her in school. But that really is the end of it. It’s enough to fit in just a few boxes, and that thought is much sadder than anything she needed to pile on top of everything she already feels.
The only light in her life is the dinners that she has started to spend with the Nolans and the Joneses, all of them gathered around Mary Margaret and David’s farmhouse table a few nights a week. Mary Margaret and Killian have started cooking together, dreaming up the fanciest meals Emma has ever eaten. Emma almost suggests that the two of them should open a restaurant, but then she thinks about the impact it would have on Granny — and the impact that would subsequently have on her, being the one to offer up the idea — and she keeps her mouth shut, simply smiling up at Killian as he sets one of the dishes in front of her with the most subtle wink she has ever seen.
One of these nights, Mary Margaret asks Henry if he is excited to go back to school, and Emma watches a wave of realization cross Killian’s face across the table from her.
“Back to school,” he mutters under his breath, so quietly that Emma would not have heard him if she hadn’t been watching him, especially over Henry’s enthusiastic response.
Later that night, when Hope has, once again, fallen asleep on the Nolan’s couch, Killian is sitting outside with Emma and David, a bottle of beer in his hand as he stares up at the stars. For a while, he says nothing, which does not go unnoticed by his companions, and Emma finally snaps.
“Killian, what’s on your mind?”
He does not respond right away, his eyes still focused on the sky, but then he takes a deep breath. “The summer is almost over. Hope needs to go back to school soon, and I should really start looking for a job for a little bit of extra income.”
“Just stay here,” Emma says, the words out of her mouth before she can stop them. As both David and Killian turn to her, the latter’s eyes wide, she’s thankful for the darkness around them as it hopefully hides her blush. But since she can’t take her words back, she can at least continue to argue her point. “You told me that you never had much in Boston, beyond Hope. But you — the two of you have been here for a few weeks now, and I think that you’ve found a good place here in Storybrooke.”
He’s useless against her argument. She wants him to stay here, to continue to be with her (though not in the way he so desperately longs for). There’s nothing else he can say, and he hopes the smile on his face is enough to make that obvious.
“I’ll have to run it by Hope and make sure that it’s okay with her, but I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be.”
(He asks her the next morning, and she hugs him and says that he’s been waiting for him to ask since they first got there. They fill out the paperwork that day to register her for sixth grade at Storybrooke Middle School.)
However, searching for a job that he both wants and is capable of is a whole different story. Jefferson offers him a position as a bartender at the Rabbit Hole, but he only has one working hand, so that does not seem like the right choice. Granny even tries to get him there as a chef, but he’s sure that he and the old lady would butt heads on lots of things — the first being her lasagna “recipe” that he can tell she buys frozen but has been able to keep his mouth shut about it. He's glad he's starting cooking with Mary Margaret regularly, since it was one of the things he missed the most about Boston.
But when he walks by Smee one morning mumbling under his breath about how he could use more help but “nobody in this town knows anything about ships,” he knows he’s found his place.
Smee is more than happy to help him out, sharing some of the open hours with him in a makeshift schedule that can continue to change as Killian’s schedule changes, and he shakes his hand once they have finished all necessary paperwork, Killian hoping to get back to lunch at the Nolan’s in time, when Smee smiles at him for the first time.
“I suppose this is your official welcome to Storybrooke then, captain.”
Killian’s breath hitches in his throat. “Ex-excuse me?”
The already red-faced man blushes deeper. “I just — you captain that vessel over there, it would do her a disservice to refer to you as anything less.”
Though his heart still seems to be pounding at a mile a minute, threatening to burst out of his chest, he manages to smile at the man, nodding. “She and I both appreciate that, Smee. Perhaps one day, I would be able to give you a tour of her.”
Smee returns his smile with a nod of his own. “I would be grateful, Mr. Jones.”
“I’ll see you the day after tomorrow for my first shift, I can show you around her when we’re going over the rest of the job, if that would be alright?”
“That would be perfect. I suppose I’ll see you then.”
Killian turns on his heel, still on his way back to the Jolly to grab a few things before heading back to the Nolan’s, when something catches his eye.
Someone.
His mind tells him who he thinks it is, but it’s not… it’s not possible. No way.
He follows him around the corner, down the docks, and right up to the Jolly Roger, where he stops as Killian approaches. They both stand there for a moment, Killian too afraid to move, and then the man he was following turns around and finally faces him.
Absolutely bloody impossible, he thinks to himself, but too many absolutely insane, impossible things have happened recently for him to pass it off as his imagination, because there, in jeans and a light grey henley, smiling at him, is Liam.
His brother.
His brother, who died in his arms.
His brother, who died in his arms, almost three hundred years ago.
“Liam?” he breathes, but Liam does not answer.
He just smiles, opening his arms to his brother, who can do nothing to stop himself from stepping into them. “Hello, little brother,” he says finally, his thick arms wrapped around Killian's back.
Killian breathes a laugh. “Normally, I would have corrected that to younger, though unless you’re somehow not a figment of my imagination, I believe that’s no longer true, is it?”
Liam does not answer, just holds Killian in the hug, until the “younger” Jones brother backs away, staring into eyes that he never imagined he would ever see again.
“How are you here, brother?”
With every word he says, Killian’s disbelief grows larger. “After I died, Pan sent his shadow for my body. For as long as I was in Neverland, the magic of the island would keep me alive. Pan kept me there for lifetimes, his prisoner, alive only to do his will and unable to do anything but follow his orders. And then the Evil Queen made him a bargain for my body, just a few years before the curse was cast, and brought me over to be used as a pawn, but you must be getting closer to breaking the curse, because I was able to break free.”
“How do I know this is not just a scheme by the Evil Queen to get me to trust you, only to have you stab me in the back?”
Liam smiles softly at him, shaking his head the way he always did when he knew Killian was wrong. “If that were the truth, brother, why would I ever have told you about her in the first place?”
With his mind filled to the brim with questions, Killian certainly doesn't understand the entirety of what Liam is telling him, but he is too overcome by excitement to question it any further.
Killian nods just as his cell phone vibrates in his pocket, which he pulls out to reveal a text from Emma: Waiting on you for lunch.
Killian claps his hand on his brother’s shoulder, relieved to feel his hard muscle under his hand once more. “I have some people I would like you to meet.”
The entire drive to the Nolan’s, Killian listens to Liam explain that he has been hidden in a room in the basement of the hospital to remain a secret, and that is why he has not seem him in the weeks since he came to Storybrooke, but Killian is paying more attention to his own mind, trying to come up with the plan of just what he is going to say to Emma.
He is just two blocks away when he decides what he is going to do, a decision that becomes necessarily almost as soon as they sit down at the table.
“So what brings you to Storybrooke, Mr. Jones?” Mary Margaret asks.
Before Killian can stop him, Liam corrects her: “Captain, actually.”
Killian watches the confusion pass over David’s face, just as it did when Mr. Gold called Killian the same thing, but all Mary Margaret does is smile. “Oh, okay. Captain Jones.”
Thankfully, Liam finds his gaze out of the corner of his eye, remembering that the truth is not the thing to tell these people — at least, not yet.
“Liam’s been in the Navy since I was just a boy, and this is the first time he’s been able to come overseas since Hope was just a baby girl, but since I’m not in Boston, I just told him to come here.”
The table shares a nod, seeing his lie for the believable story it is, and lunch carries on as usual.
a/n: this is a HUGE chapter, both length-wise and content-wise, so as a gift, I want to thank each and every one of you that have stuck with me this far for your time, plus those who have joined along the way. You have no idea what this means to me, and without this story and all of you lovely people, this semester probably would have been very different for me.
Summary: When a curse is going to send the inhabitants of Enchanted Forest, Captain Killian Jones, husband to the Princess, must take their daughter through the wardrobe to save them from the curse and give her the ability to break the curse when the time comes.
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The regular crew: @shireness-says@wellhellotragic@flyflyangel@stahlop@superchocovian@kingofmyheart14@drkeldonmd@darkcolinodonorgasm@profdanglaisstuff@pirateherokillian@captainsjedi @let-it-raines @ultraluckycatnd @cocohook38
The Jewel of the Realm rocks peacefully on the waters of Misthaven, her sails blowing softly in the warm breeze of the sea. The sun beats down from the clear sky, and there are seagulls perched on the sails of the ship.
All is quiet in the world.
Well, that’s not technically true: all is quiet in Killian’s world, though he knows that somewhere on the ship, the crew is rejoicing, but he fails to hear it. All he can hear is a deafening nothingness, an eerie, ear-piercing silence as he holds his brother in his arms. He knows there should be sounds: the waves crashing against the sides of the ship, footsteps from the crew on the deck above them, and the cheers - they made it out of Neverland, back to the Enchanted Forest, something none of them — especially not Killian himself — thought was going to happen after the chaos of their journey.
And maybe somewhere, in the very back of his mind, he does hear these things; but all he can focus on at the moment is Liam, unmoving in his arms, the only pillar of his life that he’s always known to be solid. All he has now is… nothing. No family, no possessions beyond the small trunk of clothing sitting at the edge of his bunk. He remembers the words he said to him just moments ago: “I would follow you to the ends of the earth, brother” - and it is true. Was true. He would have followed his brother to the very ends of the earth, through every kingdom and realm known to man and those unknown. He would have gone through hell for his brother — but sitting here, holding his lifeless body, is a hell worse than any he has ever imagined.
Because now, he has no one to follow, a fact that becomes exceptionally clear as he watches Liam’s body hit the water, the burial at sea that he always wanted - though not at so ripe an age.
When one of the crew hands the sextant to him — “This belongs to you now, Captain,” — he doesn’t know what to say. He never wanted to be captain, never wanted to be in charge of his own ship — all he ever wanted was to sail the seas with his brother.
And then, running his thumb over the patch attached to the sextant bag with his brother’s name — his name — he has an idea: he may no longer be able to sail the seas with his brother, but he can surely sail the seas for his brother.
Taking a moment to look out over the crew, he can feel his heart pounding in his chest, hears it even over the sound of the waves against the hull of the ship. It is time to rally his crew.
“We are sworn to serve the king and the realm. They sent us to retrieve an unthinkable poison, one that killed our dear captain. Never again shall we take such orders, serving the king, fighting his wars. That is the way of dishonor! And all you who disagree flee now, or walk the bloody plank!” No one moves a muscle, other than to look around at the others, everyone staying true to their new captain. “For those who stay will be free men, and I will be your captain. We’ll sail under the crimson flag, and we’ll give our enemies no quarter. We’ll take what we please! And we’ll live by our own rules, for that is the best form of all!
“Our kingdom is corrupt and immoral. They took my brother from me, and now I’m going to take everything they’ve got, starting with this ship! Bring the paint from below! It’s time we rename this vessel!” He points to a crewman, who immediately goes to follow his orders. “We no longer sail as The Jewel of the Realm , we now sail as the Jolly Roger !” Now he is truly enraged, and removes the jacket of his officer’s uniform, tossing it overboard and into the waters of the corrupt realm, following the body of his lost brother. “When they come for us, I want them to know exactly what we are — pirates! For at least among thieves, there is honor!”
His crew begins to cheer, then chant his name: “Captain Jones! Captain Jones!”
Adrenaline rushes through him, and he clenches his jaw. He may have lost a brother, but he has gained a crew, a crew that has decided to stay true to him, even after he turns against the corrupt King.
But as the newly-renamed Jolly Roger sails back towards the sea port owned by their corrupt king, a dark shadow of a man dives into the ocean behind them, not far from the burial at sea that just took place on the deck of the ship. The shadow, backed with the strongest forms of dark magic in the universe, pulls the still-sinking body of Liam Jones from the water as it flies back towards the horizon, disappearing in the sky just as the stars begin to twinkle.
When it sets it's feet down on the ground, it's owner smiles devilishly, hands on his hips.
“Good job, shadow!” he cheers, and the group of boys gathered behind him join in the cheer. “Now, all it should take is…” His words trail off as he pulls the canteen out from under his belt, popping off the cork and kneeling down to pour some into the man’s mouth, the other hand moving in slow circles over his chest.
Expectantly, he leans back, his eyes glued to the man’s chest, which should start moving at any moment.
Except, it doesn’t.
“Tinkerbell!” he yells, jumping to his feet, and a woman — the first woman to ever be on the island — pushes through the line of boys, her arms crossed over her chest. “You said this would work!”
She rolls her eyes at him, and he sneers at her. “I said it might work, Pan. Bringing people back from the dead isn’t the easiest thing.”
Suddenly, a cloud of smoke appears behind them, and each of the boys draws their weapons as a face appears out of the smoke.
“Good thing that I know how to help you!”
“We don’t want help from you, Dark One!” Tinkerbell yells, but Pan’s eyes just go wide as he stays silent. “Why would you want to help us anyway?”
The Dark One begins pacing in front of them, wringing his hands behind his back. “There will come a time when I will come to you with a favor regarding this man in particular, and his dear younger brother, whose face will become one that you all know very well. And because I have helped you resuscitate him, you will owe me that favor. Without me, this man will never come back to life and you will never be able to do… well, whatever you’re bringing him back to life to do.”
“We would never accept help from you,” Tinkerbell yells, but Pan holds up his hand, staring down the man in front of him.
“Yes, okay,” he says, and Tinkerbell’s eyes widen in disbelief as the Dark One smiles. “I accept your help, Dark One. What do I need to do to bring Captain Jones back from the dead?”
“Hand me your canteen,” he commands, pulling a vile of sparkling black liquid out of the satchel around his waist, which he pours into the container before handing it back to Pan. “Now do as the fairy told you to.”
Pan stares up at the Dark One for a moment before pouring the liquid carefully into the sailor’s mouth, his hand moving in slow circles over his chest.
Nothing happens.
Then the Dark One snaps his fingers, and Liam Jones comes back to life.
— — / — —
Baelfire pushes through the line of trees in front of him, slowing only when his feet reach the sand of the beach. He finds the ship on the horizon, right where he knew it would be — right where it always is. He is the first of the party to make it to the beach, so he sits in the sand, his fingers digging holes into it at his side.
They meet under the cover of darkness, Bae begging to universe, the gods of fate, whoever — if anyone — is watching over him to let him get away without Pan’s knowledge, or at least without Pan's intervention.
Which is difficult on an island that Pan controls.
So much has happened since what must has been months ago, when he decided he needed to leave Neverland before Pan tried to kill him.
Again.
Tried to kill him again.
As always when he sees the Jolly Roger swaying peacefully in the waters of Neverland, he wants to be angry, but is instead just sad. When he found himself on Killian’s ship all those years ago, he really thought the man had come to care for him. Even if he was the man that tore his family apart, that took his mother and killed her when she tried to leave, he thought maybe the pirate still had a heart. But he has been here for dozens of years, and the damned pirate had never even tried to help him. He knows the Jolly can travel realms, and escaping would be that much easier if Killian wanted to help him.
But he doesn’t. Tink must have shared their plan with him by now, knows that she spends time with the pirate. The man just doesn’t care, which shouldn’t surprise him as much as it does.
Shouldn’t hurt him as much as it does.
Tinkerbell and Wendy push through the treeline, and Bae snaps his head towards the sound, thankful that it is his friends and not any of his enemies.
“Do we have enough?” he whispers, still trying to get used to the way his voice has dropped in the past few weeks. After being fourteen for so long, the magic that keeps time from passing in Neverland has stopped working for him, and he has grown a few inches, started to find some peach fuzz covering his face, and, of course, his voice.
It turns out that when you stop calling Neverland home, when you long to leave the island and live somewhere else, Neverland stops being your home. For this, Bae is almost thankful, save the fact that it’s been terrifically difficult to hide from Pan.
Tinkerbell reaches into the bag slung over her shoulder and pulls out a small jar filled with glittering powder, her fingers gripped tightly around the glass. “I collected as much as I could find without him getting suspicious.”
“But is it enough?” Wendy asks.
“I…” she starts, then presses her lips into a tight line. “I honestly have no clue. No one has ever tried to use fairy dust to leave Neverland before.”
Bae nods, reaching out to slide the jar from Tink’s grasp.
“Thank you, Tink,” he says softly, and instead of taking the jar from her, he pulls her in for a hug, his rapid growth more obvious now as he stands a few inches taller than she does. “You risked everything for this, for a whim. And one day, I will come back and take you away from this wicked place as a thank you.”
“Just get off the island for now, Baelfire,” Tink responds, a small smile pulling at her lips.
“Go somewhere he can never find you,” Wendy whispers in his ear when he moves to hug her. “Stay safe.”
“Thank you, Wendy,” he whispers back, pulling away from her just enough to look into her eyes. “In another life, things would have been different between us.”
“Perhaps, but we will never get the chance to find out.”
“Please come with me,” he pleads, for what must be the hundredth time.
“You know I cannot, Bae. Who knows what he could do to my family if I left here.”
Bae has so much more he wants to say, since the two standing in front of him are the only friends he has ever had — but a rustle in the bushes behind them replaces all of these thoughts with terror instead, and he pulls the jar from Tink’s hand, quickly unscrewing the lid and pouring the contents of it over him.
“Go, Bae!” Tink yells. “Close your eyes and think of where you want to go.”
“Be safe, Baelfire!” Wendy calls as his feet leave the ground just as Pan pushes out of the clearing, his shadow and the other that follows his commands already flying after the boy.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t know what you’ve been up to?” Pan asks, his voice a low growl, and both Tink and Wendy take a step away from him. “You’ll pay for this, you know.”
High in the air above them, Bae screams as one of the shadows takes a hold of his ankle and the other his arm, but they do not stop moving. A smile spreads across Pan’s evil features, but it fades away when Bae disappears from the sky, replaced with a momentary sparkle before the sky grows dark again.
“It worked,” Tinkerbell breathes, a smile taking over her face, and when she turns to Wendy, she finds that the girl has a smile of her own.
“Son of a bitch!” Pan yells, his shadow and the shadow of the young Captain moving back towards him, and he turns towards the girls, pointing his finger in their faces. “This isn’t over. This is far from over.”
When Bae’s feet hit the ground, his whole body crumbles. Every inch of him hurts, his face and his legs badly bleeding, his arm most likely broken, and his head pounding.
Thankfully, he is not alone. “Baelfire?” a voice asks from behind him, the crippled man moving as quickly as he can towards the body that he somehow knows is his son even though he hasn’t seen him for decades, though he has aged about ten years since the fairy dust swept his feet off the Neverland beach.
“Papa?” Bae whispers, barely strong enough to speak, and when Rumple finally reaches his body, he barely has the energy to smile at the one man he has wanted to see for far too long. “Please, help me.”
“I — I don’t know how,” he chokes out, trying to stop the sob that comes tearing through his chest.
“You idiot,” a voice in his head that is not his own retorts. “You know exactly how to save him, but you’re nothing but a coward.”
He shakes his head as tears begin to stream down his face. “I — I can’t!” he responds out loud, but Bae has lost his consciousness, so no one hears him anyway.
“You must,” the voice responds. “You must, or you will lose your son.”
“I can’t lose you, Bae,” he sobs, flicking his hand through the air, and a dagger appears. “And if this is what I have to do to keep you at my side, then I will do it.” He holds the dagger over Bae’s chest, which is barely moving anymore. “Baelfire, I make you the Dark One, I transfer the Darkness from me to you.”
A blinding flash of light radiates from the dagger, and Rumple drops it on his son’s chest, knocked back by the force of the blast.
Momentarily paralyzed, Rumple watches as Baelfire sits up, an evil smile spread across his face. “Thank you, papa,” he growls, taking the dagger in his hand and disappearing in a cloud of grey smoke.
— — / — —
“Rumple!” Her voice travels through the house, but no one hears her. “Rumplestiltskin!”
Finally, the man in question opens the door to the library, and when Regina realizes that he is carrying a pile of laundry, her eyes go wide, a confused smile spreading across her features.
“What a sight,” she comments, gesturing towards her. “The Dark One fulfilling his domestic duties.”
Rumple opens his mouth to speak, but Bae appears behind them before he can say anything, a piece of parchment in his hands and his boots resting on the edge of the table. “That's because he's not the Dark One anymore,” he quips, failing to raise his attention from the parchment in front of him.
“Excuse me?”
“He's no longer the Dark One,” he says again, slowing down his words as if that were the issue, and then raises his eyes to meet hers. “I am.”
Regina crosses her arms over her chest. “And who are you, exactly?”
“Baelfire,” he replies, and Regina turns on her heels to face Rumple again.
“Baelfire, as in your son? The one you became the Dark One to save?”
Once again, Rumple opens his mouth to speak, but Bae's words come first.
“It turns out that the way he was to save me was by making me the Dark One after the shadow of Peter Pan and that naval captain he brought back from the dead almost tore me apart as I was trying to escape Neverland.”
Regina blinks at him a few times before shaking her head. “There's a lot to unpack there, and I don't really have time to go through it all. But if you're the Dark One now and not your father, I suppose that means I now need your help and not his.”
“Why should I help you? My father offered his services because he thought he would find me in this Land Without Magic your curse would take everyone to. Since I am obviously not there, we no longer have a need for your curse.”
Regina's eyes go wide, and she takes a few steps towards Bae, seated at the table, leaning forward against the chair beside him. There's not anything you want?” she purrs, smiling at him. “If you help me in the same way your father was going to, you can write whatever you want in the curse. Tell me, Baelfire, what do you want most in the world?”
There is not even a moment's hesitation before the words fall from his lips. “Vengeance. Revenge against Killian Jones, the man who killed my mother and tore my family apart.”
After widening with an idea, Regina's eyes sparkle as she turns to the shelf behind Bae, her slender fingers moving across the items she finds there until they finally reach the one she is looking for: a small handheld mirror that she runs her hand over before smiling down at it and handing it to Baelfire, whose eyes grow wide with a devious grin when he sees what she is showing him.
“You mean Captain Killian Jones, betrothed to the Princess of Misthaven? Marrying the daughter of the very people whose lives my curse is written to destroy?”
Bae finally tears his eyes from the mirror, the image of a proper-looking Killian Jones — no doubt the same man he met years ago, since he looks exactly the same — with the arm that ends in a hook wrapped around the shoulders of a beautiful blonde woman and his hand holding a glittering chalice as they talk to the people gathered around them. He smiles up at Regina.
“How, exactly, can I be of assistance?”
--/--
At first, he swears it must be a dream. Another dream, like the ones that have filled his mind since he slipped into unconsciousness in that alley. Or perhaps it is instead the entrance to whatever afterlife the world has planned for him. The last thing he expects it to be is reality, because it is the last thing he deserves after everything he has done.
But when he begins to move, tries to reach his hand out and is instead met with searing flames of pain across his body, he decides that either he has instead descended into hell, or is somehow still alive after everything that happened with Neal in that alleyway.
He almost hopes it is the first option.
Until she stirs, realizing what is happening in front of her before reaching out the hand that she must forget is wrapped around the chain in her hands to press it against his chest. Even hell would not be this cruel to him, using the perfect morning sun coming through the curtains to light up his wife’s peaceful face.
“Jesus, Killian, don’t try to move,” she whispers, and if the incessant beeping coming from the machines around him weren’t already making it obvious, he can swear that his heart is pounding hard enough for her to feel it with the hand still resting on his chest.
“I’ve worked that much out on my own,” he croaks out, his voice sounding nowhere near as smooth as he hoped it would, and the laugh that escapes his chest at this sends tremors of pain through his whole body.
“What do you remember?” she asks, her voice soft and soothing and everything he’s been too afraid to think of her as since he left her behind and went through the wardrobe.
He closes his eyes, focused on the beating of his heart and the warmth radiating from her hand resting right above it.
“Neal,” he tries, but it comes out as a whisper. Taking a deep breath, he swallows slowly, then tries again. “He’s — he’s more dangerous than you ever could have known, love. He wants to kill me, to kill my girl, and now that he has his powers back, he’ll be even harder to stop.”
He hears Emma suck in a breath beside him, and he opens his eyes to look at her. Her gaze has fallen to the bed, and when her hand starts to slowly fall from his chest to meet her other resting on the mattress beside him, he stops it with his hand, wrapping the chain around some of his fingers.
“His… powers.”
It is not until she speaks these words that he remembers how much she is unaware of, and he tightens his fingers around her hand, opening his mouth to speak but realizing he does not have the words.
“You mean, like, the disappearing thing?” she asks in the silence, and though her eyes are still avoiding his gaze, he watches as she pulls her bottom lip up between her teeth, slipping her hand out from under his so she can run both of them through her hair.
“Aye,” he whispers. “That’s just the beginning.”
“And he’s working with Regina.”
“He told me that, too.” Finally, she raises her gaze and finds his again. “He monologued a bit before he stabbed me,” he says, then attempts to laugh again before the pain becomes so strong all he can do is wince.
“Be careful, you have a few broken ribs, and a large laceration.”
“That must be why it hurts when I laugh.”
“You’re lucky you’re not dead, Killian,” she says, her voice more sincere than he was prepared for.
“I’m a survivor,” he comments, trying not to reveal just how much the fact that she cares gets to him, but it’s nothing compared to the overwhelming wave of pure adoration that rolls through him when she speaks again, so softly that he almost did not hear it over all of the machines running around him.
“I’m glad you’re not dead.”
“Thank you, Emma.”
A moment passes between them, Killian’s focus on the emotions crossing her face as her eyes search the room to look at anything besides him.
“Can I—” he starts, and he can barely meet her eyes before they’ve darted away from him again. When he reaches out to place one of his hands on top of hers, resting against the edge of the mattress, though, she keeps his gaze. “Why are you here, Emma?”
She opens her mouth to respond, but all that comes out is a long breath. When she tears her eyes from his this time, they turn down to where their hands are joined, his thumb moving slowly across the soft skin on the back of her hand. How does she tell him everything going through her mind, when it all seems so insane?
But everything that’s happened over the past few weeks is so insane anyway, so the least she can do is attempt the truth.
“Everything else in my life is falling to pieces, and even though I’ve only known you for a few weeks, you seem to be the one constant that holds everything together.”
He does not know how to respond, wants in this moment to tell her the truth more than ever before, so instead, he pulls her hand to his lips, and as he kisses the edge of her knuckles, she sees a flash of a memory in her mind — or a flash of something, because it certainly cannot be a memory, can it?
How can she have a memory of the man before her, years younger, wearing the oddest outfit she has ever seen — is that leather? — a smile on his face with one hand on his sword and the other — no, not another, there’s something in place of it — on the railing of the Jolly Roger, wearing the largest smile she has ever seen as he leans down to kiss her.
What the actual fuck?
But, as quick as it came, it’s gone again.
Killian must see something change on her face as the vision fades, as she pulls her hand back from his grip.
“Emma, love, is something the matter?” he asks, his voice caring and sincere and things that it certainly cannot be in this moment.
“I can’t — I have to go.”
She jumps to her feet, the chair sliding against the floor as it moves away from the bed, but Killian reaches out to stop her, his hand wrapping around her wrist.
“Please, love, don't—” he says, but she pulls free of his grasp, staring down at him for a moment before quickly leaning to press a soft kiss against his cheek and —
Wrong move.
This certainly can’t be a memory: Killian is there again, wearing the same leather jacket from before, but this time he’s in the middle of a bright room, surrounded by flowers and people and music and she is —
A wedding ceremony.
“Emma?” he asks softly, pulling her back to reality, but she is even more terrified of whatever is happening to her, frozen with fear and curiosity and something much deeper that she’s too afraid to try to give a word to.
She leans forward against the bed, steadying herself against the mattress, and it’s all she can do to not fall to the floor. And then there is something else, Killian’s hand resting against her arm, his bright eyes still staring up at her, trying to decipher exactly what is happening, except her head is spinning and traveling in a million different directions at a time, because none of that can be real, it’s absolutely impossible, she knows what’s real and what’s not, and she’s only known Killian for a few weeks, so none of it can be anything other than… visions.
In her heart, she knows this is a lie, and this scares her more than anything else.
“I can’t deal with this,” she says, and though every muscle in her body is screaming for her to leave, she still finds herself completely frozen in place. “I can’t do this to a man who has a family and a — a wife that he’s trying to find to get his family back together, trying to raise his daughter —”
“Emma,” he says again, and all she can do is look down at him as he stares at her with the most intense expression she has ever seen — but she feels like she has seen it before. “Trust me, love,” he whispers, then reaches up to press his hand against her cheek.
She doesn’t know what this is supposed to mean, but she finds herself unable to fight him, unable to do anything besides trust him, as he wipes away the tear that is falling on her cheek before leading her face down towards his so he can press a soft kiss against her lips.
No, no, no, this is wrong , she tells herself. He has a family, has someone he loves, I can’t—
Suddenly, everything is flooded with a bright flash of light, her entire body growing warm for just a moment, and it disappears just as quickly. When it clears, Emma is still right there, inches away from his face, her eyes wide.
But something is different.
Everything is different, and the brightness in her eyes that was missing just moments before is restored.
“Killian,” she breathes, smiling as she finds his lips with hers again, her hands moving to cup his face. “Thank god, Killian.”
“I had no idea if that was going to work,” he comments, trying to laugh again, and somehow it seems to hurt less than it did before. “Bloody hell, did I need it to work, though.”
“You did it, Killian,” she says, kissing him one more time before sitting back in the chair, one hand still pressed against his cheek while he laces his fingers through the other. “You broke the curse.”
When David pushes through the doors a few moments later, they both turn in anticipation of the same excitement they share.
But it does not come.
“How do you feel, Mr. Jones?” he asks, showing no sign that anything has changed.
“I’m alive, at least,” Killian manages, trying to keep his confusion off his face. “Any updates on Neal?”
“We’re still searching for him,” is all David has to say, hands in the pockets of his jeans as he stops to stand behind Emma. “Though it’s increasingly difficult to catch a man who can disappear into a cloud of smoke.”
“You’ll keep me updated, though?” Emma asks, turning around to face him.
“Of course.”
A beat passes, none of them sure of what else to say.
“I’m going to go find your doctor, Jones,” David says finally. “And I’ll send the rest of the crew in.” Smiling at them, he turns on his heel and walks out of the room, only to be replaced by Henry and Hope.
As soon as David is out of earshot, Emma jumps up out of her seat to wrap her arms around Hope, pulling Henry in after a moment.
“My sweet girl,” she whispers, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“Does this mean—” Henry starts, but Emma’s nod, and then Killian’s when he turns his attention to the bed, is enough of an answer for him.
“We broke the curse, lad.”
A smile breaks out across Henry’s face, then Hope’s, but it does not last very long. In just moments, it has disappeared from the younger boy’s, turning instead to a worried, and very confused, knit of his brows.
Emma realizes how much this look resembles the same look on his father — his real father— and her heart soars.
“But then why didn’t David act any differently towards us?”
“If the curse was broken, wouldn’t he know that he’s our grandpa?” Hope asks, her own look of worry spread across her face.
“It’s only been a few moments since it happened, darlings,” Killian explains, and Emma leads them all over to his bedside. “We’re still trying to work out the details of it all.”
“But you’re right,” Emma adds, when none of the worry drains from the looks of her children.
Her children.
“If we really broke the curse, the whole curse, my father wouldn’t hide it from us.”
“But then what are we going to do?” Hope turns her bright blue eyes up towards her parents, full of more worry than a twelve year old should be able to understand.
Neither Emma or Killian know what to say to calm her nerves. “Come here, my cygnet," Killian says, opening his arms to allow the little girl to crawl up the bed and rest her head against his chest, trying to hide his wince when the pressure she puts against his ribs causes him pain.
“We need to find out how to break the curse,” Henry says, and for the first time in what actually feels like forever to a man who has been alive for centuries, when Emma pulls her bottom lip up between her teeth, Killian reaches out to set his hand on her leg, finally able to comfort her.
“We need to talk to Jefferson,” Killian replies, Hope nodding in agreement against his chest as the other two sets of eyes turn towards him, full of confusion.
“Jefferson?” Emma asks, and Henry adds, “Like Grace's dad Jefferson?”
“Aye, he's not cursed. He traveled here not long after it was cast to collect information on it and try to learn how to break it.”
“Then I guess I'll give him a call,” Emma replies, still a bit awestruck as she moves to stand, but the weight of Killian's hand on her leg keeps her where she is. “Who else knows?”
“Well, the four of us in this room, Jeff and Grace, and Regina and the Dark One. Neal. Baelfire. Whoever he is in this world."
“Wait.” For a moment, her body is stuck, completely frozen, overwhelmed by what Killian has just revealed to her. “Neal is the Dark One? I thought Rumple was the Dark One?”
“As did I, but when he was monologuing to me as he tried to kill me in that alleyway, he revealed otherwise. Turns out when he escaped Neverland, around the same time you and I met, he was almost killed by Pan's magic, by Pan's shadow, so to save his life, Rumple was forced to transfer the Darkness to him, making him the Dark One.”
Emma takes a few moments to think over this revelation, nodding slowly. “So when Rumple helped us find the kids when Neal took them…”
“Turns out he was actually trying to be helpful, aye.”
“Maybe the man has a heart anyway.”
“That seems a little drastic, don't you think, mom?” Hope asks, turning her head away from Killian's chest to look at Emma.
Emma smiles down at her, running her fingers through he blonde curls. “You've been waiting for quite a while to call me that, haven't you, Hope?”
The little girl nods, and Emma turns her eyes up to her husband, her memories slowly coming back to her. “So you went with Hope, huh?” she asks, Hope slightly confused, but Killian just smiles when he realizes what she means. “I think it's perfect. You named her for a prophecy about herself.”
Killian wants to pull her lips down to his, wants to give her every kiss he has missed for the last twelve years, but has no choice but to pull away from her when David comes back around the corner, his eyes widening a bit in surprise at the four of them, all crowded onto the small hospital bed.
“Dr. Whale wants to keep you for a few more days to make sure your healing goes as planned, so because we haven't yet caught Neal Gold, I'd like to continue to have police protection watching over you. I can call Graham to relieve you, if you want, Emma?”
“No!” she says perhaps a bit too quickly — and definitely too enthusiastically, given the look that covers David's face. “I'd, uh, I'd like to stay here with him,” she tries again, reddening just a touch.
“Yeah, okay,” David responds, running his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Of course, that's fine.” He lets out a deep breath, trying to keep the smile off of his face as he changes the subject. “Do you want us to go get breakfast from somewhere? I don't want to make either of you eat hospital food if you don't have to.”
“Thank you, Dave,” Killian responds. “I know it's early still, but I would, uh — I'd really like a cheeseburger, if that's okay?
David smiles, shaking his head. “Of course I can get you a cheeseburger, Mr. Jones. And for you, Emma? Your usual?”
Emma just nods before wrapping her arm around Henry's shoulder. “You guys go with David, okay? Killian and I will be here when you get back.”
“Okay, mom!” he replies, hopping down off the bed, closely followed by Hope.
“Thank you, David,” Emma mumbles, catching herself before accidentally calling him “dad” — which is a very odd feeling, having a family after believing for so long that all she was was alone.
As soon as David closes the door behind him and the two kids, Emma turns on the mattress, re-situating herself so she is laying next to him, her arm wrapped around his shoulders so he can rest his head against her chest.
For a few minutes, they are silent, simply happy to be back together in the way they were destined to be, Emma carding her fingers mindlessly through his hair.
Finally, Killian is the one to break the silence. “Gods, love, I missed you so damn much,” he whispers, pressing his lips against her collarbone, her neck, her shoulder. “Every day I had to live without you felt like an entire lifetime.”
Emma laughs, a light giggle that might be the greatest sound Killian has heard in twelve years. “That's saying a lot for a man who's lived a few hundred years.”
“I'm serious, Emma,” he replies, his whole face holding the same sincerity as his voice.
“I know.”
He has so much more he wants to tell her, to apologize to her for, but instead of trying to piece the words together, he finds his lips with hers, putting all of the words into the slide of his tongue against hers.
“I love you,” she breathes, pulling away just far enough to say the words against his smile.
“And I you."
They allow the silence to overtake them once more for a few more minutes.
“We should move to a less confusing position for when David comes back with food,” Killian whispers, and Emma nods, her forehead knocking softly against his.
“And call Jefferson, apparently.”
“Aye, yes, love, that, too.”
When David does arrive back, Emma has returned to the chair beside the bed, a notepad spread out in front of her as they try to work out everything they know so far about the curse — though when David comes through the doors, Emma flips to the page before it, where they have started to write all the information they could think of about Neal, which would make more sense to everyone who still has cursed memories.
Lunch passes quickly in the hospital room, Killian practically inhaling his burger while Emma barely picks at her bear claw, and David is trying to find the politest way to excuse himself when Killian yawns just as one of the nurses enters the room.
“I think we should let Mr. Jones get some rest so he can heal better, don't you think?” David asks, smiling at the nurse, who nods in agreement.
“I would like to check on his wounds anyways, so I'm going to have to ask you all to leave the room.”
Hope turns to hug her father before hopping down off the side of the bed, and Henry flashes him a sad smile, wishing he could do the same.
“Keep me updated, Emma,” David commands gruffly as the nurse leads them out of the room, closing the door behind her.
“You know it.”
With another clap on the back from David, plus a hug from both Henry and Hope (the second leaving tears in her eyes), the three of them head down the hallway, leaving Emma behind to watch them until they turn the corner to the elevator.
After a moment, her phone begins to vibrate in her pocket, and she pulls it out to reveal an incoming call from Jefferson.
“Emma!” he cries as soon as she answers the phone. “Is everything alright?”
“Killian's getting his bandages changed, so he's not available at this exact moment but I —” Just thinking of the fact that she can reveal this to someone, that she even knows what it means, pulls a smile across her lips. “I have my memories back. True Loves Kiss worked, but it only worked for me. We have no idea why, and we're trying to figure out where to go from here.”
“That's… That's certainly interesting, Emma. I'm glad you have your memories back, of course, but this just makes the curse that much harder to break now.”
“Any ideas?”
She can almost see the way he furiously shakes his head at her question. “I'll look through my books and see if I can discover anything else.”
“Thanks, Jeff. And be safe out there, we still don't know where Neal went.”
“Thanks for the warning. I'll let you know when I find anything.”
As she slides her phone back into her back pocket, the nurse opens the door behind her, and Emma turns towards the noise.
“How is he?”
“His wounds are much better than we thought they would be when he came in. His broken ribs are going to take a while to heal, and the scarring along his ribs may never disappear. But he's alive, and in a much better state than we anticipated.” The smile the nurse shares with her is genuine, and she tries to place this woman's face from the Enchanted Forest — Dorothy. She wonders if they had ever met, if she had ever even seen her before.
“Thank you, Miss Gale,” Emma replies, needing to stop staring at her before suspicions arose — and needing to get back to her healing husband. “I appreciate all the work you've done.”
The nurse walks away after flashing another small smile at Emma, so she returns to the chair next to Killian's bed. “I talked to Jeff on the phone, he's seeing what he can find about the curse now that I have my memories back, or if anything of his has changed.”
“That's good,” he says, his voice soft, and though he tries to hide his exhaustion, he fails miserably.
“I should let you get some rest.”
“Please, stay here,” he whispers, reaching out to cover her hand with his.
“I'm not going anywhere, Killian,” she responds, leaning forward to press her lips against his cheek. “Never again. I promise.”
a/n: I left everyone on that cliffhanger for much longer than I meant to, but this weekend got the best of me. To make up for it, here’s a bit longer of a chapter, drowning in thoughts and feelings. I wish I would say we’re through the worst of it, but, uh, that would be a lie.
Start at the Beginning: tumblr // AO3
Previous Chapter: tumblr // AO3
Also on AO3!
As always, you can find the entirety of the story under its tag on my tumblr.
They share one more quick glance before Killian jumps out of his chair, dashing towards the counter to pay the bill while she gathers her things, meeting him as he turns around and following him out the door.
When he reaches between them and takes her hand in his, she does not even question it. She’s not even sure that she realizes it right away, too overwhelmed by the obscene turn her day has taken — hell, her whole life. The turn her whole life has taken.
Killian’s hand is still shaking when he shifts the car into park, and he slides the fingers of his prosthetic into the apparatus attached to his steering wheel, created for him to make driving with the prosthetic easier, resting his hand on the shifter between them. Emma must notice the shaking of his hand, or simply be craving his touch the way he has since he first saw her again, because she rests her hand on top of his, wrapping her fingers around his palm and giving him some warmth, something he feels is lacking in his life knowing that his Hope could be in distress.
In her other hand, she calls David, putting the call on speakerphone and holding the device in front of her.
“Oh, hello, Emma!” Mary Margaret answers, none of the urgency in her voice that Emma feels coursing through her veins. “David and I were just talking about you and what happened today —”
Very quickly, Emma loses her patience. “I need to talk to David.”
“Why, Emma? What’s the matter?” She still does not seem to pick up on the worry in Emma’s voice, and it takes all she has not to yell back at her through the phone.
“Please, Mary Margaret, now.”
Emma practically sees the older woman’s face fall, even over the phone. “Okay, of course,” she says curtly, and Emma hears her moving in the background, then some incoherent mumbling as the sound of a shower stops abruptly.
Another moment, and then, “Emma, what’s wrong?”
“Meet me at the station as soon as you can. Something’s happened.”
“Emma, what — with Neal? Oh, god, with the kids?” Emma opens her mouth to speak, but before she can get anything out, David says. “I’ll be there in just a few minutes. Anything you can tell me?”
Emma’s throat is suddenly dry, and when she tries to answer the question, nothing comes out. Instead, she feels Killian squeeze her fingers, sharing a sad glance with her before he takes over.
“Hope has my phone, but it’s probably been turned off. She said that Neal was making them get into the car, and then Neal found the phone. We don’t want to picture the worst that could happen, but it’s damned bloody difficult when that man has our children.”
David is silent for a moment, trying to wrap his head around this whole situation. “Yes, of course,” he says finally, and they hear the rumble of his old truck coming to life in the background. “I’ll see you soon, okay? We’ll work this all out.”
“Okay, thanks, mate.” Killian says, taking his eyes off the road long enough to look over at Emma, who is worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, practically willing her eyes to keep from watering.
He doesn’t push her, knowing that speaking would only make the tears fall faster (though that is one of the things that she has no idea he knows about her, so he keeps it to himself, biting his lip to keep the slight smile he feels from stretching across his face thinking about the life they had together in Misthaven.) But he can hear her trying to steady her breaths: in through the nose, hold, out through the mouth, as slowly as she can, just audible over the almost-silent Dave Matthews whispering out of the speakers. He can also hear when the deep breath in grows shakier as she struggles to hold herself together, and he tightens his hand around the fingers resting in his palm as she wipes her cheek with the other hand.
“What have I done?” she whispers, her voice breaking as sobs begin to shake her shoulders.
“Oh, no, no,” he breathes, releasing her hand to wrap his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer, and she turns towards him, her elbows resting on the console and her head hanging in her hands. “You can’t blame yourself for this, love. None of this is your fault.”
He knows that she is not going to want to believe him, but the harsh words that she spits back at him are far from what he expected. “Of course this is my fault, Killian. You don’t need to lie to me. I could have fought Regina against leaving Henry with him. I could have just taken him myself, to hell with the consequences. Regina might be the mayor, but she’s no lawyer, and I’m at least a cop. There are so many things I could have done to avoid this, starting with the first time Neal raised his voice to me, yet here we are, not only my son in danger, but your girl, as well. And it’s all because I couldn’t stand up to Neal and Regina myself.”
“You never could have seen this coming, Emma. You can’t blame yourself for not expecting this, because no one would have. Please, Emma, don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Finally, she seems to take his words to heart, the deep breath she takes a little less shaky than the others, though Killian continues to rub small circles over her back with his hand. But when her head practically shoots up to look at him, he sees the flash of motion out of the corner of his eye, and he takes advantage of the straight road before him to look at her, perhaps for a moment longer than he should have.
“How are you not a wreck right now?” she asks, eyes narrowing towards him, and he cannot stop the edge of his lip that pulls up into the beginning of a smile.
“Because I believe wholeheartedly that, like me, you will do anything to get our little lad back, and I have yet to see you fail.” His cheeks begin to redden with his accidental slip-up, but if Emma notices, she does not respond.
After a minute, she straightens her back against the seat once more, groaning as she stretches the muscles, but when she relaxes again, her fingers find his, curled once more around the shifter knob, her eyes focused on her phone as if she does not even realize what she has done.
When they reach the police station, everyone is already moving. David is pacing across the open space, not even trying to hide the scowl that covers his face at the words of whoever is on the other end. Graham is sitting at his desk, tapping angrily away at the keyboard with the receiver from the office phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder. Emma sits down at her own desk, trying to call Neal’s cell phone — an idea that popped into her head for the first time when they were getting out of Killian’s Subaru.
And Killian? Well, somewhere between his driver’s seat and the door to the station, Killian has completely lost control, suddenly becoming a bundle of nerves under the harsh fluorescent lights of the main room.
“Have we made any progress, mate?” Killian asks David, moments after the phone leaves the man’s ear, and he can see the tension in his jaw before he even answers.
“I just got off the phone with Regina. She says there is nothing we can do for now, since Henry is Neal’s son and you gave him permission to take your daughter with him.”
Killian feels his own anger coursing through him in an instant, and it takes every ounce of self-control he has to not spew the truth then and there, that Neal is not Henry’s father, that he is Henry’s father and he just wants both of his children back, thank you very much.
He grinds his back teeth together to stop himself from saying any of it, though, and it is in this silence that the other two fill David in on what they have learned.
Emma goes first, plain and simple: “Neal’s turned off both his and Killian’s phones. I’d be surprised if Killian’s is even still in the car with them.”
That man is not smart enough to have thought of that, Killian thinks, but he keeps the comment to himself.
“The phone company is making me jump through hoops, and I need to verify my identity as a police officer before Mr. Jones can verify his own. If you can think of another plan, Dave, this might take too long to even get to a point where it would be helpful.”
Killian turns away from the three of them, tugging on the ends of his hair so roughly that his scalp begins to hurt. He tries to tell himself that he shouldn’t be as worried as he finds himself in this moment, but he can’t help it — that monster of a man has not only his daughter, the only pride and joy in Killian’s life over the past twelve years, but also his son, though everyone in this town save a choice few believe Henry to be Neal’s.
He tries to find a reason behind this, a logical reason that Neal would not harm either of his children, but if he knows that Hope is the key to unlocking the curse, it’s hard to convince himself that Regina and Neal do not know as well. Even more so when he remembers that everything Neal has done since the enactment of this curse was to get back at Emma for…
For what, exactly? As far as he’s aware, Neal never met Emma in the Enchanted Forest. The Rumpelstiltskin that Killian knew, his Crocodile, had only Baelfire, who Killian met as a young boy in Neverland, years and years before. But he hadn’t heard anything about Bae or any other spawn of the Dark One for years after that.
Another question for the next time he sees Jefferson, he guesses.
But not knowing the answer to that does not quell the fear he cannot keep from seeping into his gut, a fear that if he does not get to his children in time, he might lose his chance to save them.
His chance to have his family back.
His chance to break the curse.
Without even realizing it, he has pulled the chain out from under his tee-shirt, sliding his pinky finger far enough into Emma’s wedding ring to be able to slide it back and forth across the chain.
He is trying his hardest not to focus on the fear rising through his chest, and Emma’s hand on his shoulder pulls him from the spiral his head was taking him through.
“Those were your wife's, right?”
It is far from any of the questions he expects, and he does not understand at first what she is talking about. “What?”
“The rings?” she asks, gesturing between them, and he realizes he has pulled out the chain once more. “They belonged to your wife?”
“One of them, yes. The other was my mother's.”
She nods, silent for a moment, before she says, “You made the right choice, you know.” Once more, her words surprise him.
“What?” he asks again, obviously too overwhelmed by everything that’s happening to form coherent thoughts — possibly for the first time in his life.
“Sending Hope with Henry,” she says, her voice full of assurance, and she smiles gently at him. “You may have saved his life. I'm sure your wife and your mother would have seen it the same way.”
He tries to smile, but it does not last more than a moment. When he does speak, his voice is much darker than he anticipated, though it articulates how he’s feeling better than his words ever could. “I appreciate your trying to help me, darling, but the only way I will feel better is when I have my girl back in my arms, and you your lad.”
Not only recognizing but understanding the fear that she can see etched into his features, dripping from his voice, she watches as he releases the chain and crosses his arms over his chest. She wants to reach out to him, wants to do something to make him feel better the same way he had done for her just earlier that morning, but when she reaches out and presses her hand against his arm, a vision flashes through her mind, a vision of a younger Killian holding a little girl in his arms, smiling down at her. But just like that, it disappears, and Emma pulls her hand back from the contact as if his skin was on fire before silently excusing herself from the building.
With nothing else to do, Killian approaches Graham, still clacking away on his keyboard, just as he turns to call him over.
“What can I do to help?” he asks, setting his hand on the man’s shoulder.
“It’s a long shot, but if you can verify your identity to your cell provider and gain access to your account, we might be able to locate the phone that way.” Graham adds, “I read about a case where they contacted the carrier through the police and they were able to turn the phone back on for a location, too. No promises that it will work, but it's at least a start.”
“I'll try anything to get my daughter back.”
David takes this opportunity to step outside, following Emma, and he finds her sitting on the bench just outside the door.
“Any idea why he would do this to the kids?” he asks, sitting down next to her, and he can tell by the look that flashes across her face — a cross between sadness, worry, and guilt — that she has an answer for him.
“Well, I told you about what happened a few days ago, but I never expected him to get his own son involved, though. Or Killian's daughter. Hope just wanted to try to help Henry, had I known I wouldn't have let them do it, but I do feel at least a little bit better knowing Henry's not completely alone with that lunatic.” She knows that she should be trying to hold back tears, but even when David wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her into his warm chest, they do not come.
“We're going to find them, okay?”
She expects herself to start crying, but she doesn't. The tears don't come. While before she was upset, she realizes that she's not surprised by Neal's actions, and this realization just pisses her off. She doesn't have time to be upset now, she's just angry, but she’s going to get her son back.
“Then let's get to work.”
Killian and Graham are still on the phone with the carrier when David and Emma come back inside, arguing with the man on the other end of the phone, so no one notices right away when Mr. Gold walks into the station until he clears his throat behind them, and they all snap to face him. David is the most surprised, but even Killian can’t hide his sneer.
“What can we do for you, Mr. Gold?” David asks, and a sly smile spreads across his face.
“I believe I know where to find something you’re searching for.”
“Excuse me?” Emma asks, voicing the confusion that has taken over the room.
“Your children, Miss Swan,” he says as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “My son has taken your children, and I have reason to believe that he is planning to do great harm to them.”
“And why are you here?” Killian asks, his hand suddenly itching to remove the prosthetic and twist on the hook weighing down the inside pocket of his leather jacket.
He takes step towards Killian, his eyes never once leaving his, and leans forward on his cane. When he speaks, Killian can tell that they are only meant for him. “I may have a past full of dark secrets, Captain Jones, but even I am above kidnapping children.”
Killian stares at him for another moment, trying to decide whether the Crocodile can be trusted here. And then, just as he hears David question it under his breath, he realizes just what he has just said.
Captain Jones.
If he knows who Killian is, then he must know that Neal is not Henry's father. Why else would he come here?
“Well then, where are they, Gold?” Emma asks, causing both of them to finally break their eye contact, though only briefly.
Gold's eyes snap back to his, wordlessly questioning whether he trusts him or not; Killian simply nods, though still hoping he's made the right decision.
“I have a cabin on the outskirts of the town, in the forest. That's where he's going.”
“You're sure?” David asks, already grabbing his jacket off the hook on the wall.
Killian had expected them not to immediately believe him, but using up precious time to question him when the lives of his children are on the line is too much for him. “What are we waiting for, let's go!” he yells quickly, trying to change the subject.
But both David and Emma shake their heads at him.
“You're staying here,” David says, and he turns to Emma just as she nods in agreement, grabbing her pistol out of the drawer. “Uh-uh,” he says, but this time it's to Emma. “You're staying here, too.”
“David, no —” she tries, but the sheriff just holds up a hand.
“You're too close to this. I don't want you there.” His unspoken words echo loud enough in Killian's mind that his head begins to hurt: in case something goes wrong.
Emma nods silently, the same unspoken words written across her face.
“Gold, you're with me,” David says, pointing to him as he passes him in the doorway. “Graham, follow us in the cruiser.”
Just like that, the three of them are out the door, the station silent in their wake.
Killian, who has tried to sit in one of the office chairs, pushes himself up quickly just a few moments later and begins pacing through the center of the room, his hands unsure what to do with themselves. Emma, however, has positioned herself at her computer, trying to distract herself with other things to do, but every few moments, her eyes flash to her phone on the desk in front of her, waiting for some kind of update.
After a few minutes, Emma laughs lightly under her breath, and when Killian looks at her monitor, he notices that she is looking at a satellite image of a house in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by dense forest.
“Did he really think that we couldn't have found his father's cabin?”
“No offense, darling, but he's a bloody idiot.”
This time, Emma's laughter comes out as a bark, and she quickly moves to cover her face with her hands.
“Sorry, love,” he mumbles, sitting back down in the chair beside her desk. “That was a bit crass.”
When she moves her hands from her face, he notices her blush. “Crass, yes,” she says softly, the smile not leaving her face. “But also not wrong.”
She laughs again, an incredibly lovely sound in the midst of all this chaos, but it is cut short by the sound of Graham's voice coming across the CB equipment sitting on the far side of her desk.
“Emma, do you read me?”
In her rush to pick up the radio, she almost drops it back on the desk, and her hand is visibly shaking from the adrenaline when she brings it up to her mouth.
“Yeah, Graham, what's going on?”
“We're approaching the cabin. Neal's car is parked outside and the lights are on. It looks like he's here, I'll update you as soon as I can. Over.”
“Thank you, Graham,” she breathes, her free hand resting against her heart. “Go get our children back. Over.”
She holds her head in her hands, elbows resting on the desk, and it takes every ounce of self-control in Killian's body not to reach out and place his hand on her shoulder.
“They're going to be fine, right?” she asks, and the strength in her voice — a direct opposite to her stature and her words — is more than Killian feels. So he gives in and does the only thing he can think, placing his hand delicately on her shoulder, and she shifts one of her hands to meet his, her fingers entwining through his. She is soft and warm and everything he has missed since the day he went through the wardrobe, and when she turns to face him, distressed but with an undeniable glimmer of hope in her bright green eyes, he desperately wants to kiss her.
But he can't. He knows he can't, but that doesn't make the desire disappear.
“Of course they're going to be okay, Emma. David will make sure of it.”
She stares at him for a moment, her eyes narrowing to search his for something. And then she smiles, as strong as her mind will allow given the circumstances, and nods.
Moments turn to minutes, both of them unmoving, afraid even to breathe, too nervous for anything else. Both of their gazes are glued onto the CB receiver. Minutes begin to feel like actions, the spaces between the seconds ticking away on the clock grow longer, until —
“Emma, you still there?” David's gruff voice comes over the radio, making both of them jump off their chairs.
“Yes! Yes, yes, we're here!”
But the next voice that comes over the radio isn't David's.
“Mom!”
Emma's hand flies up to her cheek, wiping away a tear before it can even fall down her cheek.
“Hey, kid. How — how are you?”
“I just — I want to come home. So does Hope.”
Emma sighs, and Killian can feel the shaky sigh she lets out under his hand, which is still resting against her shoulder.
“I know, Henry, me too. Can I — can I talk to David for a second?”
“Yeah, Emma, what? Over.”
“David, I — thank you.” She says, her voice still quivering. “But can you… can you bring them to the docks instead of the station? I don't…” Emma's not even sure what else to say. All she knows is that she wants to avoid Neal at all costs. but David hears when she releases the button.
“Of course, Emma. We'll see you soon. Over.”
There's an actual, legitimate sigh of relief, and they both stand up, sharing a quick glance before moving into an embrace, Emma's head tucked into Killian's shoulder.
“It's alright, Emma,” he whispers, pressing his lips against her hair. “The children are fine, everything is going to be okay.”
It’s not until Killian lets go of her hand to open her car door that he realizes he was holding it.
Emma can't sleep. It has nothing to do with the ships bunk hard against her back, or the eleven year old that keeps kicking her. It doesn't even have anything to do with Neal, or anything that happened that day.
Alright, maybe it has a little bit to do with Neal. But it has more to do with that blue-eyed man whose actions possibly saved his son's life.
David probably should not have told her this, but on top of everything else, Neal was drunk, with a blood alcohol level that wasn't high enough to be illegal, but that still made Emma's blood boil knowing that he was driving not only his own son but someone else's kid around. The only man she has ever loved just kidnapped his own son, on top of all the other horrendous actions he's committed in just the past few weeks.
There are too many thoughts that she needs to be focused on right now, and not a single one of them has anything to do with Killian Jones. She lives her own life, needs to make important decisions about herself and her son, but the only thing she can think of is the way he has comforted her over the past few days, the care he obviously has not only for her, but for Henry. Henry, who looks more like him than his own father.
Well, that is certainly not a thought she needs right now. Because, even deep down, she knows that she needs to do something about Neal. Neal hurt her, hurt Henry, somehow become a monster over the past few weeks instead of the man he has been since Emma met him.
Twenty years, Emma realizes, running her hand over her face for what feels like the millionth time that night. She gave almost twenty years of her life to that man, and look what happened, all in the blink of an eye. If the person Emma had spent twenty years with turned out to be that much of a monster, how could she ever be able to trust anyone again?
Even someone as kind and caring and gorgeous as Killian Jones? Everything in her head is telling her that all she needs for now is to be alone, to spend some time with her son and get over the devastation that Neal's actions caused her life.
She can't let someone else in now, even someone like Killian. Can she?
Killian can't sleep.
The lull of the waves, the rocking of the boat, the memories of the mattress below him — and, most of all, Hope curled up next to him, facing the wall of the cabin — should all factor into his ability to fall asleep in moments within this cabin, a gift he had been granted for as long as he'd been sleeping in that cabin.
But every time he closes his eyes, he sees Emma, his wife, his love, staring back at him, and it hurts him all the more to remember why she is not with him right now. Sure, she's not too far away, but the few feet between his cabin and the first mate's feels like the years that they have spent apart all over again.
And what's worse is he knows Regina has something up her sleeve. He knows that she had something to do with what Neal did that day, and he has a terrible sinking feeling that he will not be able to break the curse until he finds out what it is.
Keep Hope Close at Hand, Chapter Sixteen: Sneak Preview
As proof I haven’t forgotten about Keep Hope Close at Hand through all the other stories I’ve published since the last update, I bring to you... a sneak preview!
Summary: When a curse is going to send the inhabitants of Enchanted Forest, Captain Killian Jones, husband to the Princess, must take their daughter through the wardrobe to save them from the curse and give her the ability to break the curse when the time comes.
start from the beginning // catch up
(below the cut)
At first, he swears it must be a dream. Another dream, or the entrance to whatever afterlife the world has planned for him. The last thing he expects it to be is reality, because it is the last thing he deserves after everything he has done.
But when he begins to move, tries to reach his hand out and is instead met with searing flames of pain across his body, he decides that either he has instead descended into hell, or is somehow still alive after everything that happened with Neal in that alleyway.
He almost hopes it is the first option.
Until she stirs, reaching out the hand that she must forget is wrapped around the chain in her hands to press it against his chest. Even hell would not be this cruel to him, using the perfect morning sun coming through the curtains to light up his wife’s face.
“Jesus, Killian, don’t try to move,” she whispers, and if the incessant beeping coming from the machines around him weren’t already making it obvious, he can swear that his heart is pounding hard enough for her to feel it with the hand still resting on his chest.
“I’ve worked that much out on my own,” he croaks out, his voice sounding nowhere near as smooth as he hoped it would, and the laugh that escapes his chest at this sends tremors of pain through his whole body.
“What do you remember?” she asks, her voice soft and soothing and everything he’s been too afraid to think of her as since he left her behind and went through the wardrobe.
He closes his eyes, focused on the beating of his heart and the warmth radiating from her hand resting right above it.
Tagging the regular crew, because you guys are the reason I do this in the first place: @shireness-says@wellhellotragic@flyflyangel@stahlop@superchocovian@kingofmyheart14@drkeldonmd@darkcolinodonorgasm@profdanglaisstuff@pirateherokillian@captainsjedi@let-it-raines @ultraluckycatnd @cocohook38
