a/n: this was initially conceived and begun as a one-shot. 23.7k words later and i am still determined that this a one-shot, dammit and as such it is being posted as one. more seriously, this was originally going to be my version of the upcoming (presumably-hook-centric) episode featuring blackbeard, although i recognize that it's considerably darker than the show would be. it got a little out-of-hand.

i would apologize if i felt any remorse.

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"Blackbeard."

Emma blinked several times in quick succession, leaning forward and tilting her head in case she'd misheard Regina, and repeated herself — "Blackbeard. As in… As in Blackbeard."

Regina sighed and buried her face in her palm, turning the mirror around so she could see the ship, still far out to sea, apparently making straight for Storybrooke; from Emma's vantage point, it was just a big, dark ship, like something that sailed out of Pirates of the Caribbean — in fact, in her opinion, it was more likely to house What's-His-Face Barbossa than an infamous pirate from the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Especially coming to Storybrooke, where fairy-tale characters were more likely visitors than historical figures.

She wasn't the only skeptic, either.

"Blackbeard," Killian said in an odd voice. "Captain Edward Teach, commonly-known as Blackbeard, of the Queen Anne's Revenge."

"In the flesh," Regina drawled, shoving the mirror at him; he looked at it like it was covered in poison, "or… something."

David groaned and muttered, "You're joking," under his breath; she and Killian met each other's eyes, but where she was confused, he looked… almost scared.

"Captain Teach is dead," Killian snapped, and everyone glanced at him.

"Yeah, that's… you don't know the story?" Regina asked, tilting her head a bit suspiciously. "The infamous pirate doesn't know the story of that other infamous pirate?"

"Neverland," he explained shortly, through clenched teeth. "And I would quite like to learn it, if you would please."

Mary Margaret and Regina glanced at each other; Mary Margaret started, a bit hesitantly, trying to remember, "Well, there are… a few different versions. I've heard that he angered a sea god… or goddess, and was, um, cursed to sail the seas for eternity. There was also… an oath, something about an oath?"

"He made a deal," Regina mused, "a truce, or a surrender, I don't remember, something under a white flag, but the other guy sunk him anyway, got some magic or god or… whatever to raise him back up for revenge."

"What about cursed gold?" David offered, rubbing his face. "I remember something with cursed gold."

"No, that was someone else…"

"That was Pirates of the Caribbean," Emma cut in, vaguely smug at having an answer they didn't, "not a real cursed pirate."

Regina raised an eyebrow, "You draw the line at Jack Sparrow? You're talking to Captain Hook."

"Not bloody much, you're not," the man himself muttered, standing with deliberate carelessness and, in her opinion, entirely too much agitation. "Don't worry yourselves over Blackbeard, you've got enough on your hands with Zelena there."

"You're going to take on the immortal ghost-pirate and his whole crew alone? What do you think you're going to do — get your own ghost crew to man the cannons?" Regina scoffed, rolling her eyes and opening her mouth to go on, probably to suggest blowing him out of the water with magic.

But Emma cut her off with a sharp, actually-personally-offended, "Regina!" She had the presence of mind to look a little contrite (as much as Regina could be when it came to barbs traded with Killian), but that was a hell of a low blow.

His reaction was surprisingly subdued — she'd sort of expected him to pick an outright fight at that — he only clenched his jaw and turned halfway in the door.

"You're the witch," he hissed, "you deal with the witch." He stalked to the door before continuing waspishly, "I'm the pirate. Let me deal with the pirate."

And without another word, he left.

.

He didn't come back.

.

Maybe it was some sort of weird ghost-pirate magic, or maybe it was some weird green-witch magic, or maybe it was just early spring, but a nasty storm was starting to brew by the time David gave into the curiosity (and vague concern) and went to find Hook.

The inn was a bust — according to Tink, he hadn't been around, and she wasn't even sure he had a room — which left him heading for the docks, where the Jolly Roger… wasn't.

He looked around, as though a full-size brig could have just gotten up and tiptoed around the bend, torn between rising shock and sinking betrayal.

Hook left?

Hook left? Over Blackbeard?

After all this, after everything, after Neverland and the Wicked Witch of the West, it was Blackbeard — the pirate, the one that he'd said he would deal with — that made him drop everything and run like a bloody coward?

"What the hell?" he shouted, angrier than he'd expected to be — he'd been disappointed when he'd left them last year, he'd sort of thought they were friends, but at least in the Enchanted Forest, there hadn't been a direct threat to them when he'd gone; at least in the Enchanted Forest, he'd said goodbye; at least in the Enchanted Forest, he wasn't leaving Emma — but this — this —

"I'm right here," Hook's voice drawled from somewhere behind him, startling him; he was coming down the docks from the north, a bag hitched over his shoulder. "I had to move the Jolly before Teach gets anywhere near here, first thing he'll do if he lays eyes on her is sink her. And then me."

"Oh," he said lamely, a little (but not very) embarrassed at his quick assumption, but Hook was too distracted to notice the awkward atmosphere anyway.

"You and Blackb—Teach know each other?"

Hook looked at him for a moment in blank scrutiny, before apparently making some firm decision. "Aye," he replied, glancing up to the sky critically; David narrowed his eyes, "ran into him a few times… back when he was alive, I suppose. We weren't friends."

"I'm getting that," he answered, crossing his arms. "Now tell me the truth."

"That was the truth," he countered coldly, and hitched the bag higher on his shoulder to walk past David.

"Why the bag?" he asked; Hook sighed heavily in what was either resignation or irritation or both.

"I just said, if he lays eyes on my ship, he'll sink her. I can't be sure she's hidden well enough, so I removed what I would be most loath to see at the bottom of the bay."

"Captain not going down with his ship?" David asked without thinking, and then hastily: "I didn't mean that like — "

"That applies to the crew," Hook snapped, glaring at him, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that David had accidentally implied that he hoped Hook would die. "It isn't that the captain commits bloody suicide when his ship sinks, it's that he's the last man off her when she does. The captain goes down with the ship because he will be looking for any remaining crewman, to be certain they all survive, and if he is certain, then he may leave. Which is," he added with an ironic, insincere laugh, "precisely what I'm doing."

There was that self-loathing again, that David had only glimpsed a couple of times; Hook was usually so good at the arrogant swagger that he sometimes forgot that maybe there was a reason he drank like he did. The loss of his crew, that he had only ever mentioned in passing, must have been a much sorer spot than he'd thought it was.

And Regina definitely hadn't helped with the nasty comment earlier, although he hadn't shown it at the time.

Come to think of it, he wasn't showing much at all except the desire to get away from him. David would have thought the potential of losing his ship, at least, would be distressing him more than this.

It was almost like he was shutting down.

"You're just… leaving it — her to… whatever fate?"

Hook looked up to the sky in what was definitely a prayer for patience, which David felt was a bit unwarranted — the Jolly Roger was his home, it was what he'd left them in the Enchanted Forest to go find because it was the only thing that had ever been constant in his life. Why was he so frustrated that David found his attitude confusing? "I have taken every possible precaution to protect her. At this point, staying on her is not only taking an egregiously unnecessary risk, but actively counterproductive."

He started to stalk away, clearly done with the conversation, but David wasn't; in his firmest, most no-nonsense King-of-the-Enchanted-Forest voice, "Hook, who is Blackbeard?"

This time he hesitated — there was that pause, that weighing his options, obvious even from this vantage point — until finally he glanced sideways back at him, and replied, in a very low voice,

"Who do you think he is?"

like it was an obvious answer, and then shut him out entirely before stalking away.

David blinked.

Who did he think he was?

.

He was halfway back to his truck before it hit him.

.

He caught up with Hook a block away from the inn, after breaking a somewhat-embarrassing number of traffic laws to get there, parked on the curb and stepped out to lean on the passenger door, waiting for him to pass.

Hook just sighed; again, caught between resignation and annoyance.

"Your father," David said, morbidly fascinated. "He's your father."

"Say it a bit louder," he replied coldly, "I think someone on the other side of this bloody town didn't hear you."

"I — how — "

"Well, your highness, when a man and a woman love each other very much…" he started in false brightness that was only barely shy of an open snarl.

"Stop it, you know what I mean."

"No, I'm not certain I do," he countered, jaw clenched almost to the point of being unintelligible. "What is there to answer? How is he my father? He fucked my mother."

The venom in the sentence (as well as the curse itself because when the hell did Hook — look-at-my-shiny-vocabulary-that's-so-much-bigger-than-yours Hook — outright curse? and how!) was so forceful that David was pushed a step back just as surely as though he'd been shoved.

He stared, but Hook didn't look the least bit apologetic, although his facade was starting to crack — underneath the cold dismissal and pragmatism, something that might have been panic was beginning to show.

There was a reason for the all-systems shut down: he was scared, but of course Captain Hook would never admit to being afraid. He was like Emma, he'd get furious so he didn't have to be frightened.

"I get the feeling you need to talk about something," David said slowly, feeling vaguely like a lion tamer trying not get his throat torn out by a very angry cat.

"Leave it," he snarled. "I told you, deal with your own problems, I'll take care of Blackbeard."

"Yeah, alone?" he countered, crossing his arms — father or no, if Hook's reaction to this was any indication, and if half the stories he'd heard were true, going up against him alone was tantamount to suicide, especially if he had a particular vendetta with Hook. "Regina was out of line, but she has a point — you can't do that alone, you need backup."

"There is nothing you can do," he hissed, knuckles white around the bag. "He is my problem, not yours. And if I go mad and decide that I want your help, I will bloody well ask for it."

He paused, torn between giving in or pushing forward: if he gambled and won, he'd get the story out of Hook and hopefully convince him not to do anything too stupid, but if he gambled and lost…

Very angry cat, and with a sharp damn claw to boot.

But he might not get another chance.

"Hook — "

"Drop it."

"No!"

He froze, seemingly at a loss for words, but if the tilt of his head was any indication, he was about to find some choice words, so David went on hastily, with increasing force —

"Look, I don't know what issues you and Barbossa-wannabe over there have to deal with, and, frankly, I don't care," he lied. "But if you rush into this and do something stupid and get yourself killed, I'll be the one who has to pick up Emma's pieces and I swear, if you die on her too, I will go into the underworld and find your soul so I can beat the life out of you, all right?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Beat the life out of my immortal soul?"

David glared defiantly, refusing to be embarrassed by the transparently-stupid (and clearly empty) threat.

The wind chose that moment to pick up again, bringing with it the smell of the sea and a vague, maybe-imagined rot. Even David, with no personal stake in this and a firm pragmatism regarding the supernatural, was getting unnerved; Hook's attitude definitely wasn't doing him any favors. "So are you gonna accept my help or not?" he asked in a low voice that brokered no argument.

Hook clenched his jaw and looked away, the brief levity dissipating with the wind. If he knew anything about the man — and he was starting to think he did — he was weighing his death-grip on his secrets against the potential of seriously hurting Emma, and David already knew which he'd choose.

(Or, he damn well hoped he already knew which one he'd choose.)

"Fine, you win," he answered sullenly. "Why don't you begin with giving me that powerful magical amulet of protection you've got?"

He blinked in confusion. "I don't… have any…"

"Really? That so?" he replied, and David scowled, catching on a second too late. "How's it you plan on helping me, then?"

"Information," he offered. "You don't even know what the legends surrounding him are. You knew him when he was alive, it's different now."

"You had him confused with Hector Barbossa," Hook drawled, clearly irritated beyond belief. "Sorry, mate, but I'm disinclined to trust your information."

David took a deep breath that was intended to be calming, but failed at its job. "I'll go to the library," he said, shrugging with forced brightness. "Actually, no, we'll go to the library," he went on, but Hook glanced away, biting at his lip in that vaguely sarcastic way he did sometimes.

"Don't think the librarian is a particular fan of me," he replied airily; David gritted his teeth and decided to go on like he hadn't said anything.

"How long do you think we have till he gets here?" he snapped. Hook shrugged.

"Until dawn, I should think," he answered, tone gratingly flippant. "I doubt a ghost ship is subject to the tides, and he would choose the most dramatic possible entrance. I prefer it that way anyhow," he added. "Gets it over with."

David was fast moving past the concerned confusion and into the throttling frustration.

The way he was talking… he honestly didn't seem to care. He didn't care to get information, he didn't care if they left him to die alone at the hands of his undead father — whom he had only just found out was, in fact, still kicking around the sea — he didn't care if his ship was sunk, he didn't care if he didn't see the sun come back out after this storm, he didn't seem to care at all about any of it. The only way David could force him to put forth any effort to actually act was to bring up Emma.

It was a total system shut-down; it was like he had no intention of even trying. The man could have been confused with the Black Knight from Monty Python — David would have bet every single dollar in his bank account that he had still attacked Rumplestilskin immediately after losing his hand — and all of a sudden he was refusing to put up a fight?

What the hell had this man done to him?

"What did he do?" he asked; Hook raised an eyebrow at the non-sequitor. "Blackbeard. Teach. Your father. What did he to do you that's got you acting like this? Who are you, and what have you done with Hook?"

For a moment, Hook just stared at him in that same scrutinizing way, once again trying to decide whether or not to tell him anything.

"No, stop it," David snapped. "Stop picking and choosing what you're gonna say and just tell me the truth. If I'm putting my life on the line to help you, I deserve to know everything."

"Hiding your curiosity behind concern," he replied quietly, a slow poison under his words, "how kind of you. I neither requested nor desire that you put your life on the line to help me, so no, you do not deserve to know anything."

And for the third time, he walked away.

I've followed him twice, he thought, he doesn't want my help, he won't accept it. It's not worth it. It's not worth it.

He's not worth it.

He thought of Emma laughing at something Hook had said, actually smiling for once.

He thought of Emma, always left behind, always thrown away, always abandoned by the people she dared to love.

He thought of the look on her face when she'd said that Neal was dead — but him, she'd lost years before. Him, she'd cried over more times than David wanted to think of. Him, the pain he'd caused her — she was used to it, knew its shape and color. She wouldn't have any idea how to deal with this, especially how fast— one morning, they're all drinking coffee and she's hiding a laugh behind her cup and the next he's dead, with no explanation.

She'd be blindsided, absolutely crushed.

Emma was worth it.

David followed.

.

David made up his mind to lie if it came to it — lie, tell her he'd fought, tell her he'd tried, tell her he'd done everything in his power to get back to her. Lie to soften the blow. Lie like Hook had refused to lie, dragging him up that mountain, because Hook had lost a lot of people but he'd always been the one in pieces at the end of it, not the one picking them up.

At his best — at his very best — he was a captain, and had probably been a good one once; maybe he'd even been someone's champion — from what he'd gathered of his relationship with Milah, he'd been something of that to her — but he wasn't a champion, it wasn't his nature, a role he fell into by default.

But Emma needed a champion who wasn't her father, who could be there in ways David couldn't — and Hook had taken up that mantle the moment he'd offered to take her to Neverland, he couldn't let her down now, he wasn't allowed. Emma was strong, but everyone had an upper limit — and Hook had offered.

He couldn't do that to her — he couldn't offer her his support or make stupid, grand gestures of love and then snatch it away because he was scared of his damn father.

David made up his mind to beat the snot out of him.

He caught up with him in the hallway this time and wrenched him by the shoulders forcefully, shoving him with all his strength against the wall, arm pressed just under his throat.

"Listen to me," he growled, "listen. I am not putting up with this. Emma has never been allowed to keep anything she's loved, anything she's wanted. People always promise her everything and let her down, promise her a home, or love, or family, give her all this hope that maybe things are finally going right for her, and then they turn around and leave her anyway." He shoved Hook harder against the wall; he seemed speechless.

"But you came back," he snarled, choking up a little, "you, the pirate, you came back, you took her to Neverland to find Henry, you went to New York to find her, you — you and Henry — you're the only ones who've ever gone after her, the only people who've ever made any effort to find her. And you know what? I don't like it, I never liked it, that the only guy who puts her first is someone who hit me over the head with a crowbar, but that's how it is. Fine, I accept it, and you know, I kind of thought we were getting to be friends. So what the hell do you think you're doing?"

He took a deep, shaky breath to get it under control before going on, much colder.

"I don't care about your daddy issues, I don't care about whatever you're so scared of, I don't care that you don't care whether you live or die. What I care about is that Emma cares whether you live or die, and I am not going to stand aside and let you break her too. I am done with seeing my daughter cry, and I am not letting it happen anymore, so snap out of it right now because I am not putting up with any more of this shit!"

A long, ringing silence fell; Hook wouldn't meet his eyes, again, so unlike him — no defiance, no argument, no scathing counter.

Instead:

"Right," he muttered, "the library."

David released him and stepped back. "The library."

.

"It isn't that I don't care," Hook murmured, as though the words were causing him physical pain, and idly ran his fingers over a shelf. "But if I don't go to him, he'll come to me."

"And?" David replied, pulling out a book at random, but not entirely sure what exactly he was looking for. "Maybe that would — "

"No."

David paused and looked uncertainly to Hook, who was facing in the entire opposite direction.

He'd said it quietly, but with a huge weight that he couldn't identify; he wasn't sure he'd ever heard that tone before — it wasn't anguish, it wasn't anger, it wasn't fervent or melancholy or pained — it was just a very low, very final no.

"All… right then," he said after a painfully long, awkward moment, "what's the plan? Challenge him to a duel when he gets to the harbor?"

Hook shrugged. "It's as good as any. If he doesn't shoot me on sight."

"Hook — "

"It's simply realistic," he snapped back.

"What about his honor and the pirate code and… all that?"

Hook stilled for a moment before taking a deep breath and looking at him, a mirthless smile on his face. "With regards to Captain Teach and myself," he started, with ironic emphasis on 'captain', "all bets're off… or at least they are now."

"Now?"

Before Hook could (refuse to) answer, Belle appeared from somewhere in the depths of the library with a decently-old-looking book titled, in the sort of cheesy text that was popular in the sixties, Ghost Stories from Davey Jones's Locker. Both he and Hook gave her matching looks.

"I know what you're thinking," she said hastily, making a face. "But this is the only book in the library that has anything about Blackbeard as anything other than an historical figure. Here," she went on, opening the book on the table and flipping gingerly through the pages until she reached the relevant chapter.

Whoever had designed the book had clearly had such high — and such misplaced — aspirations for his or her art that it almost made David feel bad about how ridiculous and distracting the giant, boxed first letter of the page was; what he needed to be more concerned with at the moment, though, was the portrait of the man on the opposite page.

"Is that him?" he asked, and Hook raised an eyebrow.

"I fail to recall any explosives hidden in his beard," he deadpanned, and then, with some acid, "although it has been a moment or two." He sighed and straightened up. "This is useless. No offense, milady," he added, directed at Belle, who looked at him with an unreadable expression, "you've been more than helpful. I apologize…" he started slowly, looking back to the door — the storm that had been threatening them hadn't gotten any better, but at least it didn't seem to be getting worse — and then finishing, a bit lamely, "for… wasting your time."

Because it was Belle, and because Hook could not hide his emotions even if he was wearing a mask, she got it, and even smiled, albeit tentatively. "No trouble," she replied, and shrugged, turning a less-forced smile to David, "It is, after all, my job. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help."

"No no no no no, wait," David said, holding out a hand to stop them from awkward-ing each other to death, "we haven't even looked at this."

"It's not him — " Hook started, in suspicious desperation.

"Captain Edward Teach of the Queen Anne's Revenge, commonly known as Blackbeard," he read, shooting Hook a pointed glare. "They got his picture wrong, so what? It's the only lead we have."

Hook wasn't pleased; he was so agitated that it was practically seeping into the air around them. Even Belle seemed to picking up some of it.

The first page was general historical backstory — born in this year, took up piracy in that one, died in this year — but the next page started to get interesting.

"'Contrary to popular belief, Teach was not killed in a skirmish with a group of navymen — in truth, his ship was sunk on the open seas!'" He glanced at them, Belle looking politely confused and Hook's expression wooden, and made an attempt at levity: "I guess the exclamation point is important."

It fell flat, and he turned back to the book in discomfort, coughing lightly. "Um… Let's see… 'He was offered an armistice by a long-standing personal rival who raised the white flag first, which he agreed to, if the other captain would swear on the name of the goddess Calypso and seal it with blood. Teach had reason to be paranoid, as the other captain, immediately upon finalizing the arrangement, returned to his ship and — still flying the white flag — fired upon the Revenge, sinking her and her entire crew.

"'Firing upon a ship who is either raising the…' yeah, war crime, breach of honor… Okay, here we go: 'Also, having made a blood oath on the name of the goddess, Teach convinced Calypso to raise him, his ship, and his crew to seek out revenge upon the oath-breaker. But it was not to be: either the man had been killed in an unrelated incident or he went into deep hiding, because Blackbeard never found his killer, nor avenged his own death. After a certain amount of time had passed, he began looking for his killer's sons, then grandsons, then great-grandsons… To this day, he searches the seas relentlessly, ruthlessly for his betrayer's blood, leaving no man alive nor any stone unturned, as he is unable to take his final rest until he kills his murderer or his murderer kills him…'"

He stared very hard at the page and determined very carefully not to jump to conclusions, but it was unnecessary:

"You asked why he'll shoot me on sight?" Hook muttered, and stalked out the door.

.

"Do you know what's happening with Hook and David?" Tink asked hesitantly, sitting next to them at the diner; both Emma and Mary Margaret turned sharply.

"This time?" Emma asked, but the expression on Tink's face didn't leave a lot of room for jokes, even weak ones. "I don't know, David went out looking for him earlier… Why?"

Tink made a face. "I sort of ran into them — or, well, narrowly avoided running into them — in the hallway at the inn. David was yelling at him about something, I didn't catch much of the conversation, I thought…"

Mary Margaret looked at Emma and then back to Tink with dangerous curiosity. "What… exactly did you hear?"

"Something about New York, a crowbar," she started slowly, "I heard him say your name " — she indicated to Emma " — a couple of times, then something about him not caring about a lot of things, he kept saying that — he said," she paused before going on with a clear tone of this is what I'm actually asking about, "that he didn't care about Hook's daddy issues. Does that make any sense to you?"

Emma wrinkled her nose and, without thinking replied, "Daddy issues?" incredulously, before it started to sink in. She looked at Mary Margaret, who was blinking rapidly.

"Daddy issues."

"Daddy issues," Emma repeated, as they both scrambled to get up, leaving Tink calling out to them to come back and give her an answer.

.

Hook didn't try to get rid of him this time — he was standing right outside the library's door, leaning against the wall and looking at the sky like it owed him money. At least, it seemed, he'd finally gotten through to him at the inn.

"Gonna explain why?"

"No."

David sucked on his teeth for a moment before glancing at him out of the corner of his eyes. "You're a lot of things," he said carefully, "and not all of them pleasant. But firing under the white flag doesn't sound like you."

"There's a rhyme and a reason for everything, mate," he replied woodenly.

"Why make that deal if you were planning to sink him?"

"I had no intentions of sinking his ship, nor causing him any harm whatsoever, when I set foot on the Revenge."

"What changed your mind?"

For a moment, Hook didn't say anything, but finally turned to him with a slightly-manic smile and a matter-of-fact, "His eyes."

He recognized the sound of that sentence — it was a lie, but it wasn't a lie. The truth said in such a way as to make him assume Hook wasn't taking him seriously, that he had just come up with a ridiculous sarcastic answer to make him shut up.

It was true, but it would only make sense in retrospect… the most frustrating possible answer he could have gotten; David mulled over it in the blustery silence.

Nothing was going to come from rolling it over and over and over again in his head, so he decided to drop it for the moment. "Well, we got something from the book at least — you can kill him."

"Just confirmation of what I already suspected, mate," he murmured. "More importantly, he dies if he kills me, or at least becomes mortal… never specified, did it?" He laughed once, breathy and mirthless. "That would be perfect, I die and he gets to live out the rest of his days like a king…naturally."

"Well, you… are the oathbreaker," he replied tentatively. "He's the one who didn't do anything wrong."

"What makes you think he did nothing wrong?" Hook countered, voice stretched taut like a bow. "Do you really believe that I would compromise my honor, damn my soul to whatever hells an angry goddess can concoct, and sink my own father's ship because I wanted to?"

David paused; Hook wasn't quite finished.

"I always knew I would pay for it, and dearly," he went on in a low, vaguely-haunted voice. "What I didn't know was that he would be able to use it as leverage to get he and his ship raised from the dead."

"You feel guilty about it?"

"To tell the truth," he replied, "I haven't come around to guilt yet."

"At all? Did you ever even felt guilty for killing him in the first place?"

Hook looked at him, expression unreadable, and replied evenly: "No. I never felt an ounce of guilt for killing him."

David blinked, tilting his head, more confused than anything else. "So you and him… never liked each other, I take it? You never loved him?"

He laughed, low and dark, and pushed off the wall, massaging the bridge of his nose; he started to answer, caught himself, and then laughed again, glancing to David as he started to turn away. "Much to my eternal chagrin," he replied easily, serenely, and with absolutely no light behind his eyes, "I always did."

.

They had to come back to the little cottage eventually, they had to — at least David, who either she or Mary Margaret could force into telling.

"That's why K — Hook was acting so weird," Emma muttered. "I thought he looked kind of scared, but… It's Hook," she said, as though Mary Margaret was engrossed in listening to her frustrated musings, "since when is Hook scared of anything? I don't think I've ever seen him scared."

"If he is, he wouldn't show it," Mary Margaret replied absently. "It makes sense, if Regina is right… that would be why he could never find him, he went to Neverland."

"But why would David be yelling at him about it? Why would he have to? If he and his…" Emma paused, catching on the word and finding herself unable to say it, "Blackbeard have history, why wouldn't he go after him?"

"Tink did say 'daddy issues'. Maybe there's — " she stopped when the door opened and David walked in, followed by a somewhat-distracted Killian, who had a bag slung over his shoulder. She smiled brightly, which, instead of fooling anyone, gave everything away. "Hi, David… Hook."

He paused for a second before rolling his eyes. "How much do you know?" Killian asked sardonically, gingerly setting the bag down behind the couch with suspiciously-intense concern.

"Tink overheard a… conversation," Emma replied, watching Killian carefully. For once, he wasn't looking at her at all. "Or, some of it. Apparently, you two got into a fight at the inn?"

"'Fight' is not the correct word," he said, and leaned back against the couch with his arms crossed, deliberately facing in the opposite direction from her.

"Anyway," Mary Margaret said, looking from her to Killian and back, "she said something about… Hook's daddy issues."

Killian shot David a dirty glare, but he just held up his hands, making himself either useful or scarce by rooting through a closet for a blanket and pillow — apparently, Killian was intended to sleep on the couch, something that he didn't seem to have agreed upon of his own free will, and which she doubted Granny would approve of. "It's not like I went around telling people for fun."

"Maybe if you had an ounce of discretion with regards to where you decide to attack me — "

"Oh, please, you deserved — "

"Children!" Mary Margaret snapped, cutting off the argument before it could fully start. "The point is, Blackbeard is your father? So, Regina was right? He's here for you."

"Yes," Killian shouted, turning now to lean forward on the couch, voice rough with open antagonism, sounding more like a true pirate than he had in a while. "Hence why I assured you that I would deal with it. In fact, I distinctly recall explicitly telling you not to get involved with my affairs."

David looked at him a bit mutinously as he threw a blanket and pillow on the nearest chair, but Killian pointed at him before he could speak.

"And don't start, don't you dare start."

"Okay, so, whatever argument you've been having is clearly not over," Emma drawled disapprovingly, glaring at Killian, who still wouldn't look at her. "Care to let the rest of us in on it?"

"Not particularly, no," Killian replied through gritted teeth. "It has nothing to do with — "

"It absolutely — " Emma started, but Mary Margaret cut her off before she could go on, very quietly.

"Hook… just how, exactly, did you plan on dealing with him?"

A ringing silence fell, feeding a slow, creeping sensation as it rose in the back of Emma's neck, a thought she didn't want to form. Finally, he answered in a low voice, "It appears I'm the only one who can harm him at all."

"So, just… challenge him to a duel? Sneak onto his ship and kill him in the night?" Emma asked, sinking back into the couch and watching him carefully.

But he was looking at David with a silent — and severe — warning on his face.

"He'll arrive around dawn, I suspect," he replied. "I'll meet him there. What happens after… well," he added with a mirthless smile half-directed at her, "if it's any comfort, the last time we crossed swords, I bested him."

"So, why is he alive?" Mary Margaret asked. He raised an eyebrow.

"Strictly speaking, he isn't."

"You know what I mea — "

"You know, it's been a long day," Emma snapped, looking pointedly at her parents. "You two must be tired."

They glanced at each other and, after a beat, David reached out and took Mary Margaret's hand to help her stand; as he started to walk away, he shot her a meaningful look, the sort that said he would have told her something important if she hadn't been standing three feet from Killian.

Killian, who had now turned his face to the ceiling, white-knuckled hand clutching the back of the couch. She waited until she heard the door close to stand and face him with her arms crossed, but neither of them spoke and he still wouldn't look at her.

Finally, finally, after what must have been five full minutes of total silence except for the ticking of the clock, the awkwardness got to him.

"What do you want from me, Emma?" he asked quietly; she clenched her jaw.

"Let's start with why you can't look me in the eyes."

He flinched, turned to the floor instead, and replied enigmatically, "It isn't shame, if that's your concern."

This wasn't getting her anywhere — Killian was never especially forthcoming about his past, but he seemed particularly reluctant to start now, and pushing like this would just make it worse.

Time for the Emergency Scotch.

She indicated to the couch and ordered, "Sit," maybe a little sharper than she'd intended, before making for the kitchen to root the bottle out from where she'd carefully hidden it upon arriving here.

There were, she felt, plenty of times and places for Johnny Walker, but there were — very occasionally — some rare, horrible situations that called for the 21-year-old single-malt that came in a polished box with a goddamn certificate of authenticity.

Sharing it with Killian and Killian's notoriously unreal alcohol tolerance was a bit of a risk — this bottle had cost more than the down payment on her apartment in New York — but if there was anything that could make him spill his tale, it was Scotch that had been aged long enough that it could buy liquor of its own.

Emma set the two glasses down on the coffee table with a purposeful clink and poured them each a double, before handing Killian his — which he took with a slightly dirty glance up at her, which said he knew damn well why she was giving it to him — and taking a seat on the chair opposite him that Mary Margaret had just vacated.

"You won the last time you fought him," she started, figuring that was the closest thing to a chink in the armor she could find. "But you didn't kill him. Why?"

It took him a moment, and a slow sip, to respond. "He didn't kill me any of the previous times I'd foolishly engaged him."

"Why?"

"Did he not kill me?"

"Did you fight him," she clarified. He gave her a sardonic really? look, which she ignored, rolling her eyes into her own glass. "I mean specifically."

He sighed and leaned back into the couch, right arm propped on the back of it and gently swirling his whisky. "The usual tale, I suppose, at least for such as you and I," he replied. "I was eight. He took me aboard his ship, promised me… adventure, sailing the high seas and traveling to other realms, father and son. And then I awoke one morning, maybe a fortnight later, alone at an inn in what I would soon learn was a slaving city."

"You were enslaved?" she asked incredulously, but he shook his head and took a drink.

"No, I left as soon as I found out, stowed away on a pirate ship and — miraculously — was not discovered. Of course," he went on with a little laugh, "I was then left in a foreign city I knew nothing of, and wasn't even certain what country I was in."

"What about your brother? Where was he?" When he clenched his jaw and glanced away, clearly unwilling to say anything about it, she went on quietly, "Look, you've gotta tell someone eventually."

"And where is that law on the books?" he countered, less venomous than imploring.

"Killian," she sighed, and started to say more but changed her mind at the last moment; it wasn't like she'd be saying anything he didn't already know.

And anyway, it worked — he seemed to deflate, looking away again. "Liam was twelve years my senior," he explained reluctantly. "He was at one of the royal naval academies, I tried to make my way there. Of course, when he suddenly stopped receiving letters, and when he discovered that I was not, in fact, traveling with our father, he began searching for me."

"How long did it take?"

"Seven years," he replied on a heavy sigh. "Give or take — big world, we kept missing each other. When we were reunited, he took over as my legal guardian and enrolled me in the academy in an effort to give my life some direction." He paused, mulling it over for a moment. "Liam was far more a father to me than Captain Teach — " said with a sneer " — ever was, and a far better man… I sometimes wonder how I would've turned out had he never found me."

"Where was your mom?" she asked, and struck a nerve. He turned sharply away and drained his glass, a little compulsively.

"Dead," he answered shortly, setting the glass back on the table but making no move to re-fill it. "Her death was what prompted my father to take me aboard, and, in retrospect, likely the reason behind his promises." He shot her a mirthless smile. "I was a child who'd just lost his mother, I imagine he found my presence wearying… until he discovered he could shut me up with lies."

Emma watched him carefully, wondering what part of that to read into — the way he said shut me up with lies, or the way he'd turned her question about his mother into an answer about his father?

Finally, she decided: "How did she die?"

It was the right question, and simultaneously the wrongest possible one; his hand clenched into a fist and, for a moment, she thought he was about to explode at her, but instead he just grabbed the bottle and poured himself another drink in the same compulsive way he'd finished the first. He damn near drained the glass in one go before finally deigning to answer, in a slightly strained voice, "She was murdered."

She waited for the rest of it with a raised eyebrow — his reaction had been too volatile for the answer to be that simple — until he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, looking away.

"Badly," he finished quietly. "Very badly. In her bedroom."

"Please don't tell me you found the body," she breathed; he rubbed at the bridge of his nose with the back of his thumb, never putting the glass down.

"I wasn't the first," he replied in that same strained tone, voice a little thick — good, the 101-proof was sinking in; he was drinking too fast for even his liver to catch up. She'd be concerned if it wasn't starting to get her real answers. "A servant girl did, woke the whole house up with her screams, but my room was just down the hall and I was already awake…" He raised the glass and seemed to hesitate about taking another drink, before deciding that he did. "I only caught a glimpse," he went on, staring sight-unseeing at the bottle, "before my father was there, dragging me away… he was saying something, I don't remember what, I honestly don't recall much… about it. But that sort of sight…" he trailed off for a moment before going on, in that same vacant tone, "her eyes had been cut out. That detail, I never — before we left, my father told me he'd found the men responsible, that they had paid tenfold for their crime. I had no reason not to believe him."

Now she was the one compulsively finishing her drink; it was what he wasn't saying behind it — in her bedroom, men responsible… shut me up with lies.

"But it was him," she inferred. "He did it."

"Arranged it, at the very least," he replied, setting his glass on the table before sitting up straight, finally seeming to come back to the present. "As for participation… I can't say. But I'd be surprised if he didn't."

"Why?"

"She was going to leave him," he answered, matter-of-fact, "take me with her. She had… arranged it all with Liam, he had found a place for us to stay, paid for our passage on a ship… In retrospect," he went on, biting his tongue, "it seems obvious. She loved cosmetics, had such a penchant for long sleeves… even my name." At her confusion, he explained, taking care in choosing his words. "Depending on what scholar you ask, Killian may mean either sanctuary… or strife. The last time I saw her, she was acting strange, kept saying that everything she did was for me, and she called me that — sanctuary. Her sanctuary. Those were her last words to me."

"You were close to her?" she asked softly, but it wasn't meant as a question; however, he surprised her when he replied —

"Not especially, no," and shaking his head. "She and I never had any disagreements, we simply didn't spend much time together. I was always hanging onto my father's leg," he explained, with an ironic, slightly self-loathing smile. "I… idolized him. She and Liam had gone to so much trouble to preserve my childhood and insulate me from the truth… I suppose it worked a bit too well.

"I loved him more than anything," he went on, reaching again for his glass, "and he cared so little for me that he left me for dead in a slaving city. For a while, after I learned he was a fugitive, I believed that he'd simply left in such a rush that he'd forgotten, or was unable, to take me with him… I spoke to someone, a tavern maid or prostitute, I'm not sure, I was still young and did that sort of thing, and — the only part of the conversation I recall, she looked at me with such… pity and she said, 'the only thing worse than being abandoned deliberately is being of so little consequence to someone you love that they forget you when they leave.'"

Emma knew it wasn't the same thing as her leaving Storybrooke, but she flinched a little anyway; if he noticed, he didn't comment. "I don't know if I agree with that," she mused, swirling her drink in her glass and taking another sip. "If it's just that they forgot you, it means they didn't realize they were hurting you."

He laughed a little. "Aye, but if they do it deliberately, it means they were at least thinking of you in the first place."

Emma conceded the point with a small shrug. "I guess it doesn't really matter in the end."

"No, not in the end," he murmured, "but at the time, it did."

"That's why you kept picking fights with him," she said, tilting her head in comprehension. "You wanted to make him remember you."

"I was young," he replied with an apologetic shrug, "I still thought that if I could…" he trailed off in thought before looking back at her, now out of the dangerous water surrounding his mother's death and into the comparatively safer water of his father's betrayal. "If I could show him that I had made something of myself, that I didn't need him… maybe then he'd regret it, in the last moment before I killed him, he'd finally realize what a mistake he'd made. But he kept winning," he went on sourly. "Every time I challenged him, he'd take me down, albeit with increasing difficulty as I matured. And he'd always send me off with this condescending, 'take what's left of your pride and go', used to piss me off more than anything else… But then came the day that I did win, had him disarmed, at my mercy, sword at his throat…"

"And you couldn't do it," she filled in for him. He nodded slowly.

"Like I said, I'd loved him. And he knew it, he saw it the moment after he'd lost his sword, he knew I'd never be able to do it. I could never look him in the face and kill him. I don't even recall what he said, only feeling… tired," he sighed. "He would never be the man I'd thought he was, never be half the man Liam was, and there was no amount of swordplay I could engage him in that would change that. He simply… wasn't worth it."

"…And that's why you made that truce?" she asked tentatively, not even entirely sure she was referring to the right story, but he nodded once.

"Came up on his ship a few months later, and… I decided to be done with it," he explained, shrugging, and finished his glass. "I raised the white flag, and we came up with a mutually… well, I won't say beneficial, but an arrangement: we'd leave each other alone. Completely. If one of us spotted the other's ship, he'd turn the other way, if one of us walked into a pub where the other was, he'd leave and find another. Never see each other, never speak to each other, never interact in any way, ever again.

"I would say that it stung how quickly he agreed to it, but honestly, I expected nothing less. He's the one what brought blood oaths and sea goddesses into the equation, though, said that… if we were to agree to this, it meant that we were no longer family and no longer bound by the mercies and protections we'd each quietly shown each other, and so word alone was worthless. I agreed," he shrugged. "Didn't have any reason not to, in fact, I thought it was a capital idea."

He stopped talking then, right on the edge like he'd been before she'd pressed the question about his mother — it had been easy, relatively speaking, to discuss his father and his abandonment issues with the eternally-abandoned Emma — but the rest, far less so. She wondered if he'd ever told anyone.

For a long time, they sipped the Scotch in silence; he had to know that he couldn't get away without explaining it, but he also seemed to be dead-set against volunteering any information.

Finally, she conceded. "What changed?"

He stared at the bottle in a vacant sort of way that either meant he was drunk — possible, but doubtful — or slipping into the past, or both, and didn't reply for at least a full two minutes. When he did, she had to strain to hear him: "In his quarters, there was a jar… on the shelf with… a pair of eyes in it, I didn't even think… I picked it up and he turned and he said 'oh, is this my cue? You have your mother's eyes.'"

He paused again, though not for quite as long, either to let that sink in or find the words to say.

"I had put it all behind me," he breathed. "I'd had nightmares for a few months after, but it was in the past, over and done with, she'd been killed and her killers had paid for it and that was it. But it had been him, all along…" he trailed off for a moment before reaching for the bottle, only to change his mind and stop — he knew her ulterior motive behind the Scotch, and maybe he figured it was time for a break before he started telling her even more secrets. "I think I asked him why he'd taken her eyes, I swear I asked, but I can't recall the reason he gave, if he gave me one at all. I can't… I don't remember leaving his quarters, or going back to my ship, I don't recall making the order to fire, I was standing on the Queen Anne's Revenge with my mother's eyes — staring at me, and then I was in my own quarters being violently ill."

Emma had never been much good at comforting, and anyway, how the hell was she supposed to respond to that? She cast about the room, searching for something — anything — to say, but kept coming up short.

I'm sorry.

That sounds terrible, I can't imagine.

I would have killed him, too.

Now I understand why you drink like a fish.

Now I understand why you didn't want to tell this story… "Now I understand why you didn't want to tell anyone that," she murmured, and he let out one of those breathy, vaguely derisive laughs. "But what I don't understand is… why aren't you angry right now?"

He didn't respond, so she went on.

"No, seriously, you should be pissed. He did that, but he gets to come back and hunt you down for revenge? God, he did something like that and got to come back at all! He should be burning in hell, not sailing around like it never happened, that isn't fair."

"It is when intent is removed from the discussion," he replied quietly. "And what does the sea care for reasons?"

She clenched her jaw and poured herself another, but didn't drink from it just yet. "That doesn't answer my question."

He ran his hand over his face before simply leaving it there to cover his eyes. "Emma…" he sighed heavily, before pouring his own fresh glass and draining about half of it again. He stared at the amber liquid while he spoke, "I said, it was in the past, behind me. Chapter closed, book sealed, it was done with. But then… it wasn't. Then, the nightmares came back with every — little — detail in a new light, reviewing — everything about that last conversation, that morning, picking it all apart with all the things I should have noticed — "

"You were just a kid — "

"And what does that matter to the sandman?" he sneered, and finished his drink with a bitter wince; it took him a moment to go on. "To this day," he murmured, actually slurring a bit, although it was hard to tell if it was definitely the alcohol or just the effort of forcing the words out, "that image still sometimes haunts me."

He poured another, but shorter, and seemed to re-think drinking it almost immediately, instead running his thumb over the outside of the glass with an unreadable expression.

"But," he whispered, "I consoled myself — when I awoke nauseous, in a cold sweat — I told myself that it was only a dream, it would only ever be… a bad dream. Because he was dead. It would never happen — to anyone else, it would never happen — " his voice broke a little and he was looking anywhere but at her " — he could never do it to anyone else I loved."

The breath in her lungs turned to smoke; he'd left so hastily after she'd piped in about Pirates of the Caribbean, he'd refused to look at her when he came in, he still couldn't meet her eyes — her eyes, of course not — it isn't shame, if that's your concern --he'd gotten so angry at them for trying to get involved — that image still sometimes haunts me — he wasn't just scared, he was terrified.

Because his father had come back specifically to get revenge on him — and what better way to make him suffer?

"Killian…" she breathed. "I can take care of myself, I have — magic, and a lot of — "

"And if something goes wrong?" he countered fervently, finally looking her in the eyes, desperately defiant. "Anything. Any tiny detail fails and you fall into his hands? My mother was less than twenty-four hours away from both I and her being rid of him completely. She'd taken every precaution, had it all planned out to the letter, spent months arranging it, and it all fell apart and she died an unspeakable death because he came home five minutes earlier than she expected. Trust me, love," he went on, voice shaking with badly-concealed panic, "I know you can take care of yourself. But you can't account for everything."

That crawling dread that had slid up her spine when Mary Margaret had asked him how he planned to handle Blackbeard came back, threading along her nerves, a gaping horror that only grew as she stared into his eyes, beseeching and mournful, until he finally looked away.

"You're not even gonna try," she said slowly, the realization settling hard in her gut. "You don't have any plan to take him on because you're just gonna let him kill you. You're that scared."

"Yeah," he replied shortly, like it was obvious, and now she was sure he was drunk — there was no way he'd admit to that sober, and especially not so casually. "I am. I am that frightened. I will do anything up to and including slitting my own bloody throat to make good and damn sure that it isn't you your son finds like that in the morning."

She shook her head. "That's ridi — it's over if you kill him, too. Why — why not fight him, why jump to — "

"I told you, Emma," he growled, leaning back against the couch, head resting on the back of it, arms slung out and the still-half-full glass sitting precariously in his fingers. "I can't look him in the face and kill him. Maybe now, maybe knowing… but if I'm wrong? If I still can't? What if he captures me and decides he'd like to make me suffer first?"

Her hands were shaking violently — this, this was what he and David had been arguing about: David may not have had the story, but he'd found out about Killian's lack of a plan, and he'd gotten angry at him over it — I heard him say your name a couple of times — David had tried to make him fight back by bringing her up, he'd tried —

Because David was the more perceptive one, he'd seen it coming a long time ago, and he'd never —

David would never let his baby girl lose someone else she loved.

But she was about to, in a matter of hours, because his self-confidence didn't extend far enough to deal with his father, not here and not now — for once, the arrogant bastard wasn't sure he could win a fight, the reckless idiot considered the price of losing too high to take a chance, the selfish asshole was too concerned with someone else's suffering to save his own skin.

"You can't do that," she whispered, shaking her head again as though she could shake off the demons settling there. "You can't just — give up, you can't — " do this to me (the words caught and tangled in her throat). "You — " can't leave me like this, not when I've just decided to believe you when you say you won't.

He raised the glass and pressed it to his forehead, but otherwise not moving; her name escaped his lips on a remorseful sigh.

The last time she'd felt like this was when she'd signed the adoption papers, realized that she would have to watch something slip away before she could hold it, thinking the anticipation is worse, it won't be that bad when it comes around —

Without stopping to think about how bad an idea it was or how wrong the timing, she gave in to the crushing weight settling on her chest whispering you'll never get another chance, and she stood, snatched the glass out of his hand — startling him into opening his eyes — and grabbed him by the face and kissed him, hard, full on the mouth.

He was surprised for a second, gave a half-hearted attempt to pull away, and only got part of the way through "What are you doing?" when she pushed him further into the couch and straddled his hips.

And if he saw it for what it was — whatever that meant — he didn't show it, responding and matching her fervor, desperate like a drowning man's last gasp.

.

Emma knew he was watching her — of course he was watching her, she was half-naked — but didn't look at him, instead casting about the room for her underwear; when she turned a little, she ran right into him, eyebrow raised, the article of (torn) clothing dangling from his hook.

She took it with a little smirk, and his fingers traced her side as he tried to pull her back against him, but she resisted.

"Emma, there's only tonight; please… for once, let me hold you," he murmured fervently, trying again to pull her closer — and she wanted to, more than anything; the look on his face, kind of lost and pleading, was breaking her heart.

But there was a reason she hadn't let the doctors give her Henry after he was born.

Emma was so sick of losing things she was never given the chance to have.

"Why should I?" she choked, pushing his hand off of her and grabbing the blanket and pillow from the chair David had left them in. He looked hurt and resigned,what she could see of him through blurry vision in dim light, as she shoved them forcefully into his arms and began to stalk away.

"You're just gonna leave me in the morning."

.

He wasn't foolish enough to sleep — the images were vivid enough when he could see through them — but fell into something halfway between sleeping and waking anyway, which sort of snuck up on him; his mind was firmly locked on Emma, the taste and texture of her skin, hot under his lips, the desperate way she'd pulled him to her to — what? She'd gotten him drunker than he'd been in a long while and managed to coax him into showing her his worst scars and then practically jumped him — why?

There had been tears in her eyes when she'd pushed him away… she'd kept saying he couldn't give up.

Why should I? You're just gonna leave me in the morning.

Was she trying to give him incentive to fight, or was she saying goodbye?

"Both," a voice said, and he jerked up, "and no, you're not dreaming."

He sat up and leaned back into the couch a bit; a woman with olive skin, thick, dark blonde curls, and a neutral — if somewhat disapproving — expression was lounging in the chair Emma had been in earlier. She raised an eyebrow and rested her chin lightly on her fist.

"Do I need to tell you who I am?"

"No."

"Good."

Calypso watched him for a while in scrutiny; after an indeterminate amount of time, she tilted her head. "No pleas for mercy? No excuses for your action?"

"I can't imagine you lack the details," he replied, and she nodded slightly in acknowledgment. "And I don't beg."

"No? Even now?" she asked, but didn't sound especially curious. "Your pride will be the death of you."

"My pride is the only thing that can't be taken from me without my permission."

She searched his face for a moment, but whether or not she liked what she found, her expression didn't change. "I have a question for you," she said softly; he raised his eyebrows in anticipation, so she went on. "Why do you — a man with seawater in his veins — think me unmerciful?"

He blinked, brought up entirely short. The only answer he could think of was, "You have… something of a reputation."

"So do you."

He tilted his head, trying to figure out the shape of this conversation, but her neutral expression and tone made it difficult… which was probably the point. She didn't wait for him to respond.

"Several, as a matter of fact," she said, running her thumb along her other fingertips absently. "As Captain Hook, that of a violent, ruthless murderer. As the legendary oathbreaker, a degenerate, double-crossing hypocrite. As Killian Jones… honorable to a fault, entirely too compassionate for your own good, and an unbearably arrogant — if, in general, ultimately decent — man.

"So tell me," she continued, "which of these is true?"

He hesitated; every fiber of his being wanted to say the last, anything but the others, that he was still a man of honor — but if he'd ever had one consistent virtue, it was self-awareness. So, with a little laugh and glance away, he answered honestly, if a bit bitterly, "All of them."

If it was the right answer, she didn't give him any indication, only watching him with calculating eyes.

"What I am, above all else," she said slowly, "is fair. Indiscriminate. A hurricane may sink any ship, a favored wind may fall upon slavers and rescuers alike, and a broken oath is a broken oath, regardless of the reason it was broken. But I am not without mercy, nor without empathy."

She paused, and he watched her carefully, looking for anything that might give him a clue, but she was unnervingly unreadable, and seemed to be waiting for him to say something. He landed, somewhat lamely, on: "Where… precisely… are you going with this?"

Calypso blinked. "I choose no favored champion, nor any favored victim," she explained, raising her chin. "I grant no boons and set no curses. However," she continued, tilting her head again in scrutiny, "in certain cases, when the die lands on an edge, I may… nudge it in certain ways so that, of two possibilities determined by a thousand tiny factors, I control the one that occurs.

"Your broken oath allowed your father's return," she went on, and it took him a second to catch up with the sudden shift in topic, "the reason you broke it determined the hapless state he exists in. You've made no attempt to escape the consequences of that action, and, in fact, are willing to actively pursue it if it will protect the woman you love; he takes comfort in the price you'll pay after your death — I believe you called them 'all the hells an angry goddess can concoct', and trust me when I say that I can concoct quite an unpleasant afterlife…" she trailed off for a beat, glancing away and then back to meet his eyes.

"Your fears are not unfounded — after centuries of fruitless searching for your nonexistent descendants, he's gone quite mad; I think he will not well react to finding that you've been alive all this time. He much desires your suffering, and knows how to cause it in more than one way, perhaps more than you think."

"How pleasant," he murmured, gut twisting in several directions but sticking, somehow — even now, after everything — on gone quite mad.

"But," she went on, as though he had said nothing, "while I grant no favors, I do give one what one has earned, and this is what you have earned; consider it a gift, and not only to you: if he kills you, or you do it yourself, you will suffer your expected fate. However, if you kill him in a fair fight, he will suffer your expected fate. After all," she added in a soft, almost-waspish voice and, for the first time showed a hint of a smile, "aren't parents supposed to make sacrifices for their children?"

He glanced down and away, laughing with little humor. "Well, it would be the first…"

But when he looked back up, she was already gone.

.

Hook was, to David's surprise and relief (and vague suspicion), actually on the couch with the blanket and a pillow — though they didn't look to have been used much — but he wasn't laying down, instead sitting there with his head down, hand on his forehead like maybe he was praying or maybe he was just horribly hungover.

"You ready for this?" he asked, and Hook jolted, looking up in surprise and shaking his head a bit to clear it.

"What?" he replied distantly, but before David could clarify what he meant to his apparently-hungover friend (and then scream at him for being in this state in the first place), he sat up fully. "You're not coming."

"Yes, I am," he snapped, and the look of annoyance that passed over Hook's face was more familiar than anything he'd seen yesterday; maybe it meant he had finally come to his senses. "Every duelist needs a second."

"David," he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "You can't do anything to him."

He looked away, biting his tongue.

"You said yesterday…" he started hesitantly; he'd been thinking instead of sleeping last night and had had a revelation, one he didn't especially like and very much didn't want to say, but one that would put Hook at ease, "that maybe killing you wouldn't kill him, might just make him mortal. So," he said, patting at his holster, "if that's the case… and it comes to that… he won't make it three steps."

The look on his face was the same he'd worn in Neverland when David had insisted on telling everyone that Hook had saved his life, the sort of embarrassed gratitude of someone who didn't receive much kindness, and didn't know how to respond. "Thank you," he murmured, but then stood and smirked, looking much more like himself. "But it won't come to that."

David grinned, more relieved than he wanted to admit. "I was wondering when the obnoxious pirate was gonna come back. I never would have thought I'd miss you being a pain in my ass."

Hook actually laughed a little at that, something genuine and a bit cheeky, although he was clearly still anxious, and he glanced up the stairs a bit longingly when he thought David wasn't watching.

"She knows how you feel, Hook," he said seriously, and then caught himself, "Killian."

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at him with an ironic smirk. "I'm fair sure everyone does, mate. I've made no attempt at subtlety."

"Do you even know what that word means?"

He quirked an eyebrow, but otherwise didn't respond, instead busying himself with adjusting clothes in what looked like an attempt to rid himself of some energy than anything else. "All right," he murmured, looking up with a surprisingly open expression on his face. "Let's get this over with."

"Not taking your coat?"

"Can't afford the weight, I don't think," Hook replied, making a face and fingering the collar wistfully.

"Since when?" he asked, a bit incredulously. "I don't think I've ever seen you without that thing, it's never been an issue before."

Hook sighed and winced. "Unless death has been very unkind to his figure, my father is quite a bit larger than I, and strikes hard. I need to be quicker, it's how I bested him last."

From not even wanting to look the man up in the library to accounting for the tiny details that might give him even the smallest advantage — David wondered, but wasn't sure he wanted to know, just what Emma had said to him. He opened the door and motioned for Hook to follow him through.

"What if he doesn't want to fight you?" he mused, and Hook glanced at him sideways without tilting his head.

"He wants to fight me."

"I don't know, after all this time, what if he just wants to recon — "

"He wants me dead," Hook snapped. "I am a more forgiving man than he's ever been. My only concern," he went on, looking critically at the eastern horizon, where there wasn't even the faintest hint of light, "is, as I said earlier, that he'll shoot me on sight."

The docks were dark, lit only by a few streetlamps, foggy, and plagued by an ominously-chill wind — yesterday's storm finally seeming to be kicking its heels in — while, in the distance, lantern lights on the Queen Anne's Revenge cast a faint glow. It was like something out of a horror movie.

(Then again, he figured, they were more or less living in a ghost story at the moment.)

"You got that flask?" David asked in a low voice; the tension and anticipation lingering in the air was starting to get to him, but Hook surprised him when he cringed.

"I left it behind," he muttered.

"What?"

He coughed a bit and ran his hand over his face. "Your daughter used an uncanny amount of alcohol in an effort to get me to tell her my life story, I'm quite averse to touching anymore of it at the moment."

"An uncanny amount? Exactly how much is that?"

"More than I've had in longer than I care to admit," he answered, leaning back against the wall, "or quicker, at least."

David raised an eyebrow. "Did it work?"

Hook didn't reply, which probably meant that it had… and anyway, it was Emma, all she had to do was ask nicely and Hook would bend over backward do whatever she wanted. He shouldn't have even bothered to argue with him yesterday, he should have just gone to her in the first place.

"Why is his name Teach, but your name is Jones?" he asked abruptly; when Hook just stared at him for a moment in blank, vaguely confused silence, he shrugged in slightly-sullen discomfort. "Or we could stand here and play the quiet game."

After a beat, Hook took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair. "Jones was my mother's surname," he explained, with more than a little reluctance. "When… my brother enlisted in the navy, he did so as Liam Jones; when he enlisted me later, he did the same for me."

"So, your name is actually Killian Tea—"

"My name is Killian Jones," he snapped coldly.

Right. Touchy subject.

"Sorry."

Another awkward silence fell as muted light slowly began to brush the horizon, obscured by fog; the silhouette of a large ship began to appear as a smudge against the sky, bordered by the yellow lanterns. It wasn't far, but it wasn't making a sound, no matter how David strained to hear something.

The tension in the air was almost as thick as the fog, and far heavier. He rubbed his hands together to warm them. "What if you shoot him first?" he asked without ceremony, turning to Hook. "You said he might do it to you, why not head him off?"

It was a moment before he responded, in a slow, somewhat distant tone, "Fair fight."

"Come again?"

"Had a bit of a… conversation, I suppose you could say, with the relevant offended party," he replied delicately, and it took David a second to catch on.

"Wait, like… Calypso? The whole vision-of-a-god thing?"

"That is what you find unbelievable about this?" he countered, turning to him with a slightly exasperated expression. "Tell me, what, precisely, will you people have to see before that skepticism will pass?"

"I think it just did," he muttered, and rubbed the back of his head. "What did she say?"

He hesitated, then ran his hand over his face. "It's to my benefit to kill him in a fair fight."

"I thought you said all bets were off with him."

"Not anymore, they aren't."

David considered trying to get any more information out of him, but before he could make up his mind, he spoke again.

"He's almost here."

He glanced back to the water; it seemed like it was still pretty far out, although the silence and darkness made it hard to tell… but if the lifelong sailor said the ship was almost here, he figured that meant the ship was almost here.

"Listen, David… if I don't win this fight — " Hook started in a low voice, but David cut him off.

"Tell her yourself, Hook."

There was a beat, and then Hook took a deep, slightly-irritated breath, before going on through gritted teeth, "As I was saying, if I don't win this fight, there's a key and a map in that bag that will take you to where I've hidden my gold. It's yours. Or… your family's, I suppose it's the same thing."

"Oh," David said lamely. "Send us on a genuine hunt for buried pirate treasure?" he quipped in a semi-desperate attempt to alleviate some of the tension, and it seemed to help — Hook snickered, although he doubted the sincerity.

"Well, stashed pirate treasure at any rate," he replied. "Burial is a bit difficult with only one hand, and frankly more effort than I was willing to go to. And, well," he added, shrugging and glancing away, "the boy would enjoy the adventure, don't you think?"

"No," David answered soberly, looking at Hook in spite of the fact that the other man wouldn't look back at him. "Henry wouldn't enjoy it at all if it meant you were dead."

Hook flinched; the impact this might have on Henry was one that hadn't been brought up (unless Emma had said something) but probably should have been — the twelve-year-old seemed to have decided that being friends with Captain Hook was the coolest thing ever, and he'd lost enough lately. David wondered exactly when Hook had managed to integrate himself into their family like this, without any of them really noticing how much of a constant he'd become.

Hook was just… there, he was always there, making some joke or inappropriate comment or opinion, backing them up or talking to Emma in a low voice or making Mary Margaret roll her eyes in exasperation or…

"You're not gonna die," he said in a low voice; Hook hesitated, but then —

"No. I'll not be dying today."

"Good," he replied, staring hard at the lantern lights on the water, less conspicuous as the sun rose but cast little light in the silence; even considering the setting, the encroaching storm seemed to be keeping dockworkers inside. "I'd hate to have to kill you."

He laughed a little, but again insincerely, and leaned heavily back against the wall with arms crossed. "You should probably step aside," he said quietly; when David glanced at him, he went on. "I'd rather he not see you and decide to bring friends of his own, might make my life a bit too complicated. Best if he not see you."

"Right," he muttered, looking around and finally ducking into the nearest alley, where he'd still have a good view but hopefully remain unseen, assuming that Blackbeard's attention wouldn't be wandering to their surroundings too much.

Water lapped softly at the shore as a small rowboat slowly materialized from the mist, making David feel a little stupid — of course the ship looked like it was still far out, its hull was too deep to sail right up to the docks, obviously. The rowboat didn't have any lanterns on it, and only one occupant.

He would choose the most dramatic possible entrance.

It was just getting light enough to reliably see by when the boat docked and the man stepped off it, walking very slowly forward, head tilted in a dangerous sort of curiosity.

David had never thought of Hook as being small — hell, they were about the same size — but compared to his father, he looked diminished: Blackbeard was, as warned, quite a bit larger than him and, appropriately, carried himself in such a way that he came off as larger than life, the sort of man that would be remembered as a giant, who innkeepers would swear was eight feet tall and three feet wide across the shoulders. And if Hook dressed to impress — the jewelry and the leather and the coat all suggesting cultured rogue — Teach dressed to kill.

Hook had never seemed harmless, but he certainly didn't look anywhere near as openly threatening as his father did.

The vaguely waterlogged-corpse look only made it worse: the infamous beard was soggy and stringy, his face unnaturally pale and subtly swollen with a greenish tinge, eyes just too large and prominent to be normal. The overall effect was more unnerving than anything else, probably because it wasn't overwhelming; he looked just barely inhuman, and in the gloomy weather and low light and silence, even David was feeling the chill.

"Killian," he said tightly, face flickering with a vicious expression before he masked it with false affability. "I admit, you're the last person I expected to see here."

"Likewise," Hook replied. "Last I heard, you were sinking to the bottom of Davey Jones's locker, not coming back to haunt me in a whole new world."

"How are you alive?"

Hook laughed, opening his arms expansively and, David felt, a little recklessly — Teach did have at least three weapons on open display, after all. "A good diet, plenty of fresh air, you've heard the — "

"Silence," Teach snarled. "It's been centuries, you're dead."

"Actually, I'm quite alive," he countered cheerfully, seeming to feed off his father's barely-contained rage. "And if we're slinging mud over that sort of thing, you've no room to talk. I must say, I like the seaweed accessories, they complement the outfit nicely."

"Watch your tongue, bo – " he started, but then paused, tilting his head, before asking, in a bizarrely concerned tone, "What happened to your hand?"

"I felt a hook would be more convenient," Hook replied, lightning-fast. "They're terribly comfortable, I imagine they'll be all the rage soon enough."

Teach wasn't amused, and the brief interest — brief flash of clarity, maybe remembering what it meant that Hook had been his child once — passed as quickly as it had come.

"It suits you," he said coldly; the man's more or less cultured accent quickly turning… saltier with anger, and harsher, as he slipped back down. Hook shrugged.

"It does give me a suitably-intimidating title, I'll admit," he replied, showing no outward signs of emotion other than vague amusement. "People do tend to recall 'Captain Hook' more than 'Captain Jones'"

Teach smirked cruelly. "Still trying to fit into Papa's shoes, aren't you?" he asked lightly, and if it affected Hook, he didn't show it. "Turning pirate yourself, naming your ship after my flag, now picking a nice, scary name so people'll remember you. Shouldn't've changed your surname at all."

"We have been over this," Hook snapped through gritted teeth, the petty insult apparently grating at his composure. "I did not name my ship for your bloody flag. You've no claim over the term, and I had my own reasons."

"Right, spiting her former owner," Teach sighed, still smirking at having struck a minor nerve. (David made a mental note to ask Hook later exactly why did he name his ship the Jolly Roger.) "By choosing a phrase I made famous."

"The 'famous' part of that was my concern," he growled. "You didn't cross my mind at all."

"Now that is a lie," Teach replied softly. "Maybe you've forgotten about me in the past centuries — I imagine," he added, glancing to the hook with a look of pure cheer, "you've had other concerns on your mind. But not then."

"I was thinking more of Liam, then."

"Yes, who I imagine would have approved so very much of your lifestyle change, wouldn't he?" he said, with a scathing smile. "Perfect Liam, always following the law and the Way of Right and Good. What would he think of you now?"

"Stop talking," Hook hissed, and David cringed — no, he thought, don't let him get to you, he's trying to rile you up, don't let him succeed.

"And what about your mum, what would she say?" he went on. "Her little sanctuary, all grown up a terror on the high seas just like dear old Papa."

"I suppose we'll never know," he replied tightly; Teach grinned, manic and wild-eyed and knife-edged, like Hook on his worst day.

"Face it, son, I'm the only one you've ever loved you haven't disappointed."

"What makes you think that?" Hook countered, and although he didn't show it, David felt like he knew Hook well enough now to know how deep those words had cut.

"You're here alone, aren't you?"

"I came alone," he snapped, "of my own volition."

"Did you?" Teach asked, sounding genuinely curious; Hook's expression soured further at the realization that he'd walked right into giving away too much information. "In that case… just who's it you're protecting?"

"No one you should concern yourself with."

"That so?" Teach walked closer and Hook tensed, hand twitching. "I think I should be concerned who's important in my son's life."

"And I think you should stay the hell out of it," Hook growled roughly, reaching outright to his sword.

"What?" Teach asked innocently, eyes glinting at the blood in the water, and David cursed to himself — Hook obviously knew what he was up to, but he'd already proven that his father could get to him in ways that no one else could, and had clearly struck gold. "You afraid I may pay her a visit when I'm through with you? I might," he went on, in a tone that said there was no 'maybe' about it, and straightened to his full height. "It's no less what you deserve."

"How's it anything I deserve?" he snapped. "What does it accomplish, if you've already killed me, to attack someone else?"

"Maybe she'll meet you there," he explained, voice softly toxic, and Hook stiffened. "With wounds like Emilia's, eyes like — "

He didn't get to finish his sentence; Hook lost his composure and lunged, drawing his sword and attacking in the same motion, but Teach had been preparing for this since he'd started talking and had his sword out just as quickly to counter it. Hook managed to mostly avoid it, but took a cut across the arm — albeit not a deep one — and turned away, cursing violently and glaring at his arm like his outburst had been its fault.

(Eyes, there they were again — what changed your mind? His eyes.)

"First blood's mine, and the fight hasn't even got off to a proper start," Teach crowed, arms open in mocking welcome. "Attacking in anger's the fastest way to lose, boy, haven't you learned anything over the years?"

"Do you ever shut up?" Hook snarled, and Teach smirked.

"As if you've any place," he replied, eyes glittering. Hook shot him a dirty look, taking several deep breaths to calm himself. At least it seemed that Teach thought he had this fight in the bag, that it was safe to taunt Hook and toy with his prey.

Hook clenched his jaw. "At least I have people to protect," he said, either lashing out or trying to do the same thing his father had or both. It didn't work.

"Again? Imitation's the sincerest form of flattery, Killian, but please, have a thought of your own."

It was a weak shot, and only made Hook roll his eyes. "I take a pragmatic approach to altercations," he replied, shrugging. "If it worked for you, why not try it?"

"Oh?" Teach laughed, sneering. "You think you can get under my skin? Boy, I've been fantasizing about killing you for centuries, been looking for your descendants purely so I can die and hunt you down in the afterlife."

"Good thing I've never had any children, then," Hook replied flippantly, with a manic grin to match his father's. "And how sad," he went on, tilting his head. "You've spent all this time obsessed with me while I haven't thought of you at all."

Teach scowled. "You've thought of me."

"You said yourself you expected that I'd forgotten," he said with a shrug. "And you were right. Until you turned up sailing for these shores, I hadn't so much as thought of your name in — gods, centuries it must be."

"Everyone else has."

"And it's everyone else's minds you were hoping to haunt, is that it?" he replied, but it didn't seem to be making much of a mark.

"You're the one who was always so insistent I remember you," Teach countered sardonically.

"And how well it worked," Hook said brightly. "Ironically, after I realized that you weren't worth the time or effort."

"D'you really believe your approval's ever meant anything to me?"

"Hers did."

The words fell to the ground like so many bricks, and Teach tilted his head dangerously, like Hook had gone much too far with those two words; the previous acidic bantering was, judging from his twisting expression, very suddenly and very completely over. "Come again?"

"Mother," Hook clarified, leaning forward a bit. "Emilia. Her approval mattered more than anything to you, and she hated you."

"Hot water you're playing in, boy," he warned, but Hook smirked.

"And here I thought that was the point," he said quietly. "The only person whose love you've ever wanted, and she wanted nothing more than to get as far away from you as possible. Say what you will about me," he went on, raising an eyebrow, "but — "

Teach cut him off with a violent, "Enough talk," and an attack, albeit a more focused one than Hook's; still, Hook blocked it easily — like his father, he'd been prepared for it.

Hook raised an eyebrow and asked in false fascination, "I haven't touched a nerve, have I? Isn't it amusing, the moment you start to lose, you demand that the game change."

Instead of answering, Teach attacked again, taking a hard offensive; just like he'd said, Hook's only advantage in the fight was being faster than the brick wall of his father, and he used and abused that advantage for a few minutes, dodging and trying to wear Teach down — probably the way he'd won that last fight with him before, it was generally a solid strategy in this situation — but it wouldn't work this time, the man was undead. David was pretty sure ghosts didn't get tired.

It seemed like Hook was getting the message, too — he was tiring himself out more than anything else, and at any rate, it was always a risk: Hook had to get lucky at every move, Teach only had to get lucky once.

The real problem was, Hook was fighting his father, but Blackbeard wasn't fighting his son — he was fighting the man he'd spent centuries hunting, the way Hook had hunted for Rumplestiltskin, mindless and focused and utterly without mercy or humanity, blind anger and reckless gusto.

(It was twisted, and a little sad, to think of — how far Hook had gone to avoid his father, how he'd hated him, how he'd ended up so much like him.)

(There was no way Hook hadn't noticed the irony, either.)

Teach made a somewhat gratuitous, flourishing move that left his abdomen briefly exposed and Hook pounced, executing a beautiful three-point attack that capitalized on his speed, moving too fast for the other man to keep up with, and Teach's sword left his hand and skittered to the stones, and Hook —

— hesitated.

Only for a second, but it was enough; the downside of Hook's otherwise flawless move was that it placed him in close proximity to his father, who seized the opportunity to draw a knife and, in the same motion, stab it sharply forward and wrench it to the side, jolting Hook's sword out of his hand to clatter off after Teach's. Hook shoved himself away and the knife broke free, trailing a thick arc of blood.

Everything seemed to go still for a moment, and then Teach grinned, wide and toothy like a shark; Hook was breathing heavily now and pressed his bad arm against the wound — it was hard to tell, between the dim light and his black shirt and leather, but it looked bad, and his eyes flicked over to David before back to his father.

There was no way — he'd had it. He'd had the fight, been a breath away from ending this, and then it —

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Hook was trying — he was fighting — that was supposed to be — after he'd come so far from the man he'd first met, done so much for them — for Emma — it was such a classic tale, the redemption of the anti-villain — he was supposed to win as long as he was willing to try. It wasn't right.

Villains don't get happy endings — but Hook had never been a particularly good villain in the first place, and if Regina, who'd done far worse than anything Hook had even flirted with doing, could get her son back, Hook should at least be able to live.

But then, they weren't in the Enchanted Forest. This was the land where there weren't any happy endings.

"I knew it," Teach breathed in crazed triumph, twirling the knife between his fingers. "You can't kill me. You never could."

"Stop talking," Hook growled, and lunged forward, fully body-slamming Teach and getting into a short wrestling fight over the knife, which he appeared to win only by the judicious use of his hook — when he pulled back away, Teach was cursing at a nasty-looking gash running from his wrist up to the space between his thumb and forefinger.

It didn't bleed.

But the success was short-lived: momentum alone had pushed Teach back to where he could pick up one of the swords, and the ugly fury melted back into ugly delight.

Hook was starting to seriously slow down now — the wound must have been even worse than David had thought — and remained in a sort of half-hunched posture with his bad arm again pressed firmly over his abdomen. He glanced to David again, and this time he got the message — get your gun ready.

To hell with that.

Instead of his gun, he reached for his phone to dial the friggin' paramedics — but it was dead.

"The hell?" he muttered; he could have sworn he just charged it…

Fair fight. Calypso had already made it clear that she was invested in the feud between the two, and Hook had even said, when he'd told David to get out of sight — I'd rather he not bring friends of his own.

It had to be a fair fight: Blackbeard didn't have anyone at his back to call in medical help, so Hook couldn't either.

You have got to be kidding me.

How fair could it be? Blackbeard was half a head shorter than Goliath and a walking corpse to boot — how the hell was the mortal, normal-sized Hook supposed to keep up anyway?

"Give it up, boy, you've lost," Teach said loudly, gesturing with Hook's sword. "See, I, unlike you," he went on nastily, "am more than capable of watching you die."

"Of course you are," Hook rasped, scowling, and David's jaw clenched.

If Hook wanted half a chance to get to a hospital, he had to end this fight now, not waste time bantering. As it was, he could probably still get him to the hospital, or at least to someone with a working cell phone — she couldn't kill all the phones in Storybrooke, could she? — and Whale was practically a magic surgeon, if he could — if he could just get him there —

"Stop talking," he muttered, "you don't have time to talk, stop talking…"

"You should be grateful," Teach went on, voice dripping acid. "Unlike you, I gave you the chance to win with honor, instead of shooting you down like the dog you are."

"Oh, spare me the pathetic excuses," Hook snarled. "You murdered your own wife in cold blood and kept her eyes in a jar on the bloody shelf as a souvenir — " did what? David's stomach clenched and nausea hit him with near-physical force (Jesus, no wonder he'd panicked) " — and now you claim to be a man of honor? This has nothing to do with honor, you wanted to humiliate me and make me suffer. If you're going to be a heartless bastard, at least admit it."

Something flickered in Teach's face before he said, in that same bizarrely-concerned sort of tone he'd used earlier when asking about Hook's hand, like maybe for a moment the fugue of rage and madness thinned and he remembered that he was talking to his son, "Killian, I've always had a heart."

"Good."

Before Teach — or David, for that matter — could catch on, he'd tossed the knife so that he was holding it by the blade and it was leaving his hand in a flash, burying itself in the middle of Blackbeard's chest, right — appropriately — in the heart.

He staggered backward, blinking rapidly in shock, but didn't get the chance for any last words before he was falling off the docks and into the sea, which rose and opened up to envelop him like a lover; in the distance, his ship shimmered against the horizon like a mirage, and then was gone.

Hook stayed painfully still, and it took David a beat to respond to the sudden end, before he was running forward to catch him before he started staggering to the side, saying, with a bit more cheer than he felt, "Nice throw," and began undoing the vest — slick with blood, bad sign — to get a good look at the wound. It was deep and long, almost parallel to his shoulders, right under the ribcage and running from his right side to about his middle.

"Save it," Hook said hoarsely, and maybe it was the wound, but didn't seem to have taken any sort of pleasure in winning the fight. In fact, he seemed empty more than anything else. "I know a mortal wound when I see one."

David looked up at him. "Maybe in the Enchanted forest," he replied, pulling Hook's right arm over his shoulder and forcing him to stand up straight, which he managed with a stifled grunt of pain; David wasn't entirely sure he believed what he was saying. "But we have surgeons here."

"Oh?" he muttered. "Can they bring back the dead?"

"Actually," David drawled, stumbling a little, "this one can. Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"Well, he's done it before, but the patient ripped his arm off and Regina had to re-kill him."

Hook glanced at him in either confusion or revulsion or both. "Quaint medical system you have here."

"Yeah, Whale's a hell of a doctor."

They fell quiet for a moment as they staggered away from the docks, but Hook was quickly getting heavier on his shoulders and so David shook him a little to bring him back around. "Come on, Hook, I know I'm impressively strong, but I can only drag you so far."

He seemed to draw on a deep well of strength and pulled himself up higher on David's shoulder, but the effect was bound to be short-lived; he gave up on getting to the hospital and concerned himself with getting to the diner — Ruby and Granny would be there already, and they'd smell this much blood from a block and a half away and call an ambulance. Probably.

(David's own shirt and, increasingly, jeans were sticky with it, but he refused to look down to see just how badly.)

Hook had done this for him once, dragged him half-dead to salvation, and maybe the dragging bit hadn't been so literal then, but he'd also been outright hostile to him the entire time, so it sort of evened out, he guessed.

"Not much farther," he muttered, and Hook grunted in response. "Killian," he snapped, jolting Hook again into standing straighter, but that couldn't stretch much further; at some point — and soon — blood loss was going to bring him down no matter how determined he might be to fight it off. "Come on, you won, you can't die on us now."

"And here I thought you only cared because of Emma," he slurred.

David glanced at him and winced, replying, a bit reluctantly, "I lied, all right? I don't have a lot of friends of my own, they're all Snow's first. It's pretty much you and Robin, but I don't know him that well. Or I don't think I do, at least," he added thoughtfully.

"D'y'mean to say you care about me?" Hook asked, and the tone made it seem like he'd intended to tease, but just didn't have the energy, and so instead it came out kind of sad. "'m flattered."

"You should be," he drawled. "My affection is hard to earn."

"How scandalous," he murmured. "What would y'wife think?"

David finally glanced down and cringed at the blood — he didn't have long. Keep him talking, he thought, keep him engaged, keep him conscious. They were only a block from the diner now, if the wind was in their favor, and if there weren't too many other smells getting in the way, and the bottom didn't drop out of the clouds just yet, Ruby or Granny should have already caught the scent, or would soon.

He hoped.

"Keep dreaming, buddy."

Hook laughed insincerely and fell quiet for a long moment, before, in a strange tone — "It shouldn't've worked."

"What?"

"Throwing the knife," he clarified thickly. "It shouldn't have worked."

"It was a hell of a throw," he replied, shrugging Hook up higher on his shoulder again; they were in sight of the diner, and Ruby had stepped out of it, apparently to see where the smell was coming from, before immediately rushing back in. Thank god for werewolves, he thought. "Sometimes you get lucky."

This time, the laugh was cynical. "Not me," he muttered, weakness making him morose. "'m never lucky. I think 'm cursed."

"Says the only person here who hasn't been picked up by any massive, world-altering curses."

"No, I jus' get the ones leave you all alone." Before David could try to come up with a response, though, he went on. "Calypso said something…" he slurred, blinking heavily and trying to pull himself up with only marginal success, "said she nudges die rolls when they land on 'n edge."

"You think she was behind it working?"

"I know folly when I see it," he said with careful, slightly self-loathing articulation, by way of reply.

"What were you gonna do if it didn't work?" he asked, still trying to keep him engaged in the conversation, but he was slipping, and David couldn't keep going forward anymore — Hook was too heavy, and too weak now to even stagger — but he didn't have to hold on much longer, he heard sirens coming for them, and they weren't far from the hospital, if he could just — if David could just keep him awake — "Come on," he snapped, shaking him harder. "What were you going to do if it didn't work?"

Hook smiled in a slow, fading way that had nothing to do with cheer.

"Same thing I'd've done if I hadn't tried," he answered, and passed out as the ambulance turned the corner.

.

Henry was, somewhat mercifully and somewhat unpleasantly, with Regina — on the one hand, the boy was so perceptive and Emma was so incapable of hiding her turmoil right now that he would definitely notice and be concerned, but on the other hand, she needed her son, needed some sort of comfort. Mary Margaret seemed to be trying, but she was also sort of treating Emma like she was made of glass; it was frustrating, but then, she was finding Mary Margaret in general frustrating at the moment, partly because she wasn't pressuring her to say anything.

Mary Margaret — ever since the first curse had been broken, at least — had always been trying to give her well-meaning but misplaced advice on her love life, basing everything she knew on her picture-perfect, literally fairy-tale relationship with David, and couldn't seem to understand Emma or Emma's approach to life anymore, and at any rate, to say that she and Killian didn't get along would have been the understatement of the century.

But for once, she seemed to have decided on tact, and on serving her hot chocolate with cinnamon and sitting in companionable silence rather than trying to get her to talk about it.

It was the first time since that curse had broken that Emma had actually felt like she was sitting with her best friend again, but all she wanted to do at the moment was have some clueless person to scream at, no matter how unfair or uncalled-for it would have been.

Maybe she'd gotten through to him, she thought. Maybe he was going to try, maybe the prospect of her finally — finally — reciprocating his feelings, maybe that would make him fight for it. He'd spent practically every moment since he'd met her fighting for her heart, there was no way he would just… not now…

He could never do it to anyone else I loved.

Or maybe she'd made it worse.

She ran both of her hands through her hair, swallowing hard and staring into her half-full cup of cocoa and trying not to remember the desperate way he'd kissed her, or the break in his voice when he'd begged her to let him hold her, just this once.

He had to know — he had to understand. Of all people, Killian had to understand that 'just this once' was so much worse than 'never', especially when it came to Emma's heart.

But then, that was one of the few places they differed: Killian had seen so much darkness that it didn't matter how much it would hurt later, any bit of light was welcome; Emma had been given just two moments of brilliant light that lasted just long enough to make her think she could stay in it, before being shoved brutally back in the darkness, and no longer wanted the headache.

She'd always thought his point of view was pathetic and naïve, but… no one had ever loved her as hard as he did, as completely, and it was that thought process that made that sort of love possible for people like them.

And he might already be dead.

It wasn't fair.

She sat up, jaw clenched, and said, "We should meet up with Regina," startling Mary Margaret.

"Wha — why?"

Emma stared at her for a moment. "Because there's a witch turning people into flying monkeys? And a rogue Rumplesitltskin? We're just wasting time sitting here staring at the counter," she added in a dark mutter. Mary Margaret blinked.

"Are you sure you don't want to… wake up first?" she asked, transparent in the way that only Snow Friggin' White could be.

"I'm sick of waking up," she snapped, standing with force and pouring the rest of the hot cocoa out. "We're not getting anything done like this."

"Emma, it's only 6:45 — "

"And that means anything to homicidal witches? I'm sure Regina is up."

She was halfway to pulling her jacket on when the phone rang, shrill and startling them both; Mary Margaret got to it first.

"Hello?" she said quietly, and paused for a while, before: "Are you sure?" and "All right, we'll head over there now."

"Who was it?" Emma asked, the moment she hung up. The way Mary Margaret paused, weighing what to say, made her stomach twist.

"Ruby," she answered finally, gathering her bag and coat. "She said she called an ambulance a few minutes ago, caught the — well, apparently, Hook was pretty… badly injured, and David thought… and he was right, he thought that if he got close enough to the diner, one of them would be able to smell the… blood, apparently there was… a lot, and…"

"Is he…" she asked slowly, and Mary Margaret looked up.

"She didn't know," she replied, pulling on her own coat with a significant look that said we're not going to Regina's right now, and she couldn't find it in herself to disagree, although she knew damn well that going to the ER wouldn't accomplish anything. "But David said he was alive when the paramedics got there, at least."

"That's good," Emma said, determinedly casual.

It couldn't possibly have fooled Mary Margaret, but she smiled anyway and replied, in an overly-bright voice, "Yeah, absolutely."

.

She was fine as they left the apartment.

She was fine on the drive to the hospital.

She was fine walking into the doors.

She was much less fine when she saw David standing in the waiting room, left side covered in blood.

Her heart seized up in her chest and she froze and she didn't know what she'd expected, if Ruby had been able to smell the blood from outside the diner — and Mary Margaret had said there had been a lot — and obviously David had been carrying or dragging him along if he had been bleeding that bad — and obviously he would have been — and —

"Emma," he said consolingly, holding out a hand. "He's alive, it's not as bad as it looks."

"That's… not … saying much," Mary Margaret muttered, eyes wide and locked on David's side.

"I know," he replied, wincing. "But I promise — " he started, and took a couple of steps toward Emma, like he did, like he always did, always trying to help her and comfort her and be her father but right now he was covered in —

She stepped hastily backward and he stopped, looking worried; she wasn't sure exactly what she looked like — she wasn't crying, she wasn't panicking (outwardly, at least), she couldn't have looked that bad — but the way he was staring at her was like he could see her fracturing.

"Please change clothes," she said quietly and evenly, and David glanced down at himself and then back up at Emma, nodding.

"Of course, I'll — " he started, still watching her like whatever expression she was wearing was causing him physical pain. "I'll be right back."

Once he'd gone, Mary Margaret reached out cautiously to touch her arm, and asked, in a low voice that was probably intended to be soothing, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she answered shortly.

"Emma, it's… okay if you're not fine, you don't have to be — "

"I'm fine," she snapped, jerking her coat closer around her shoulders and pretending not to have noticed the slight cracking in her voice. "I'm going to Regina's, she might have found something about Rumplestiltskin. Or Zelena. Or — or un… flying-monkey-ing people."

Mary Margaret stared at her for a moment in unmasked concern before finally nodding. "Okay," she said, idly (or maybe awkwardly) rubbing her belly. "I'll tell David where you went."

"Thank you," she replied, and stalked out of the hospital.

.

David met her a couple of hours later at Granny's, where everyone seemed to be very determined to not bring up anything whatsoever about Killian, even though both of the owners were watching her warily in that same way Mary Margaret had — that it's okay to talk to me expression that she'd never seen enough of before to realize how incredibly goddamn irritating it was.

"He's out of surgery," he said quietly, sitting on the stool next to her. "In critical condition, but stable, for now."

"That's nice," she replied, and held up her hand for another coffee.

David took a deep breath and started, in that same low, concerned voice, "How are you — " but she cut him off with a brittle and whip-sharp —

"I am fine."

He paused for a moment, and their little group — Emma, Regina, Robin, Henry, Ruby listening in, and now David — fell into utter silence; finally, he nodded. "Right," he coughed. "So, any progress on… anything?"

"Not much," Regina replied, only glancing at Emma with a slight warning. "Although I might have found a way to cure the flying monkeys."

"Well, that's good," David said, voice still strained. "How do we test it?"

"We go monkey-hunting, how else?" she answered, but glanced outside critically. "But probably not today."

"Yeah, it looks like we're in for a nasty storm," Emma said breezily. "On the plus side, I don't think anyone's gonna be up to committing nefarious crimes."

"No," she drawled, "they'll just stay inside doing who-knows-what while we can't do anything about it."

She clenched her jaw and replied, in as even a tone as she could muster (which wasn't much), "All right, so what do you suggest?"

Regina shrugged. "We'll see what we can do before the storm breaks. After that… maybe we can make s'mores at the fireplace and tell ghost stories."

"Is the sarcasm really necessary?" she snapped, and David caught her by the arm.

"Arguing isn't getting us anywhere," he said placatingly, glancing sideways at her. "Maybe we can find a monkey before the storm hits and see what we can do about curing it."

"Sounds like a plan," she said, and started to rise, but Regina stopped her this time.

"You're not coming."

Emma tilted her head. "Excuse me?"

"I said, you're not coming," she repeated, articulating with irritated force. "You're not fine, you're a ticking time bomb. You won't be any help. Go back to the hospital and sit with your boyfriend."

She opened her mouth to rip Regina a new one, but Robin stepped in with a quiet, slightly-warning, "Regina," before turning to Emma. "You should stay here with Henry," he said, and glanced off to the side. "I understand, you want to be distracted and forget, but you can't focus. Your time will be better spent with your son."

Emma wanted to scream — at Regina's dismissal, at David's concern, at Robin's understanding — scream at them to stop telling her what she could and couldn't do, stop making their assumptions about her and Ki—Hook's relationship, if it could be called that — but she glanced to the other side of Regina to meet Henry's eyes and he looked worried and he tried to smile and god, a twelve-year-old shouldn't be trying to comfort his mother, she shouldn't —

"I can't just — " she started, desperately trying to hold onto the anger before all the other emotions could muscle their way in, but she made the mistake of glancing at Robin, who was looking at her with something more than sympathy.

It occurred to her that Maid Marian wasn't here in Storybrooke.

"You're right," she choked, blinking rapidly because she was not going to cry, and Robin smiled, squeezing her shoulder for one quick, almost-brotherly moment, and she turned away, running her hand through her hair and walking over to sling an arm around Henry's shoulders. "Let me know what you find."

"I will," David said, and, as he left, she heard him thank Robin.

She glanced down at Henry. "Looks like it's you and me, kid."

He hesitated for a second before nodding in a way that almost looked casual. "Yep," he replied. "We should get ice cream."

"Ice cream?" she asked, trying to laugh and nearly succeeding. "Kid, it's about five degrees outside."

"But not in here, it isn't."

Emma rubbed his arm and turned to Ruby, who was still watching in that concerned way that made her blood pressure spike. She tried to force it back down. "All right," she said tightly, forcing a smile. "Ice cream it is."

.

The storm broke — shattered, really, with sheets of freezing rain and high winds under an unnaturally-dark sky — around noon, leaving her and Henry alone at the loft where they were watching mindless action movies and eating popcorn and drinking an obscene amount of hot chocolate and for a little while, it was like they'd never left New York, just Emma and Henry, against the world.

Then David called her a little after the storm started, when she was in the middle of making a pan of brownies; she let it go to voicemail and wasn't entirely sure why — she'd picked up the phone and her thumb had hovered over 'answer' but wouldn't tap it no matter how much she told herself that she should.

Answering the phone would break the illusion, and she wasn't ready to let it go yet.

She looked up to see Henry looking up at her with big, sad eyes, like David's had been, like seeing her right now was causing him physical pain. "I — " she tried to explain, but didn't have a good one, so — a little ashamed — she picked up the phone and listened to message.

Hey, Emma, you said to keep you updated, so… we couldn't find any monkeys, I guess she's not sending them out in this weather… we went around to the farmhouse again, but she wasn't there, looks like she abandoned it. No Rumple, either. So we're gonna have to call it in for the day, I'll pick up some food and head over to the hospital with you and Mary Margaret and Henry. If you want anything special, call me back. See you in a bit.

Dimly, she was angry that he had just assumed she had gone back to the hospital; distantly, she was disappointed that they hadn't made any progress; vaguely, she was guilty that she wasn't at the hospital when it seemed like Mary Margaret was — Mary Margaret, who didn't even like Killian…

It was all coming at her through a long tunnel, or a bubble of cotton around her; she remembered feeling like this during the trial, numb and tired and being pulled along with the current… a kind of suspended fear, like she'd calmly walked off the cliff and gone several steps straight forward without noticing and just realized there wasn't any ground under her feet anymore, but not falling — yet.

(Like they did in those cartoons, Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck of Wile E. Coyote, the casual, oblivious confidence very suddenly snapped out from under her, the comedic timing, when the cartoon animal would look at the camera in panic and maybe hold up a sign saying uh-oh before — but they were just drawings, and were always fine in the next scene.)

(Emma wasn't going to be fine in the next scene.)

Ticking time bomb, Regina had called her.

"So…?" Henry asked, and she jolted, looking up pausing for one blank moment before shrugging.

"It was David," she explained, "he said they couldn't find any monkeys, and there's still no sign of the witch or Rumplestiltskin."

"What about…?"

"He didn't say anything," she replied, and it honestly, truly sounded completely casual. But Henry wasn't fooled.

"We should go to the hospital," he said quietly; Emma glanced down to the half-finished brownie mix and then to the window, where the freezing rain was hitting hard enough that she almost worried it would come through the glass.

"In this weather?" she countered, going for incredulity, and started to say something else, but he cut her off with a very quiet (and, she thought, very uncalled-for) —

"He would."

"What?"

"Killian," he clarified. "If it was you there, he wouldn't have left the ER in the first place."

It took her a moment to gather herself up to answer — ticking time bomb, ticking time bomb, ticking time bomb — her hands were shaking so hard and she couldn't get them to stop — obviously, he would have been there, he'd found her in New York, he'd spent a year looking for a way to get back to her, he was in lo— but she managed a tight, "I'm not Killian."

Henry just looked at her, and the longer he did, the thicker her blood seemed to be, the harder her heartbeat in her chest, the louder the white noise in her head — and she couldn't do this, not here, not in front of her son —

She shouldn't have been feeling this way at all, she shouldn't – she swallowed hard.

"All right, I'll — take a shower and get ready," she croaked, and Henry (kindly) didn't bring up the futility of taking a shower before going out into a raging storm — he knew why, but then, it was pretty transparent.

"I'll get this cleaned up," he said, indicating to the kitchen.

"Great," she replied in a strained voice, and all-but fled.

.

One semi-harrowing and extremely-slow drive later — she really shouldn't have left at all, or she should have waited for the rain to stop (it had, at least, let up some and was now a steady shower rather than a deluge) — she and Henry were walking, a little hesitantly, into the ICU waiting room, where Mary Margaret and David were sitting with two boxes of pizza between them; surprisingly, Robin was also there with them, albeit eyeing the food mistrustfully.

They all looked up when she came in, but David merely gestured at the pizza. "I got half of one with pineapple," he said lightly. "For Henry, I know you like that."

Henry grinned, and they both joined the others at the little table, Henry beside David and Emma in between Henry and Robin, and although Mary Margaret watched her in concern for a moment, when Emma refused to meet her eyes, she finally turned away to make light conversation.

"Are you all right?" Robin asked, too quiet to be heard by anyone else, and she opened her mouth to repeat her I am fine mantra, but there were ghosts in Robin's eyes and empathy rather than sympathy and — and Maid Marian wasn't here. The lie died on her lips.

"No," she replied instead, matching his volume, and he nodded slowly.

"Good." When she looked at him in slight offense, he went on: "You shouldn't be fine right now, and you particularly shouldn't be pretending that you are."

She didn't respond, but he didn't seem to expect one, and they both pretended they hadn't spoken at all.

.

Robin didn't stay long after dinner — he had to get back to Roland and it had been a long day besides — and soon after, Mary Margaret strong-armed David into going back to the loft with Henry to get some sleep, leaving the two of them alone in the waiting room and its heavy silence except for the freezing rain lashing again at the windows.

Emma had never understood this, why people did this, as though their presence could affect anything, as though it was anything other than a waste of time to sit there in a hospital for hours, waiting for news that could just as easily be relayed by phone — but now that she was here, she couldn't leave; it wasn't, she was realizing, about waiting for news, it was —

If she'd gone back to the loft, she wouldn't have been able to find anything to do with herself, no matter how many things she could have been doing — finishing those brownies, cleaning, watching movies, sleeping, reading, anything at all other than sitting… because they all would have come out to the same.

She would have been standing in the loft and she would still be sitting here in the waiting room, unable to be anywhere else no matter where she was.

"You should go home," she murmured, glancing at Mary Margaret, who gave her a strange look — almost offended — before looking back away and picking up a magazine.

"I was thinking Lenna," she said, apropos of nothing, and Emma turned to her in confusion. "If it's a girl," she clarified, glancing down at her belly.

"Oh," she replied dumbly. "That's… a pretty name, I mean it, Mary Margaret, you should — "

Mary Margaret went on like she hadn't heard. "David was talking about boy's names, but I think it's a girl. You know how… mothers just know?"

"Yeah," she answered, shaking her head in slight exasperation, "I guess… Mary Margaret, seriously — "

"Stop telling me to leave my child sitting alone in the hospital waiting for news about the condition of someone who is important to her."

Her vision blurred and she glanced away and up, resting her head heavy on the back of the chair, and for a long time, she couldn't come up with anything to say; finally, she had to accept that there simply wasn't a response to that sentence, ever, in any situation, except maybe a quiet agreement.

Instead, when she trusted her voice again, she said, "I like Lenna. I could go for a sister," she added, with a somewhat-watery smile that Mary Margaret returned. "And — " she started to say something in the realm of thank you, but it got caught and dissolved in her throat " — I know what you mean, I always had a hunch that Henry would be a boy."

"I knew you were a girl," Mary Margaret said firmly, before seeming to second-guess herself, "well… I did have a magic crystal that told me my first child would be a girl, so that's sort of cheating, but I still just… felt it. You know, I didn't really have any reason to believe the crystal anyway," she went on, a bit airily, changing her story but loftily pretending that it had always been like that. "It was just an old wives' tale."

Emma laughed for a long time at that, long after it had stopped really being funny; a companionable silence fell between them.

For a while, they sat there quietly, flipping idly through ancient magazines, until Mary Margaret took a deep breath, and, without turning away from her magazine, said, "He'll make it," very softly. When Emma didn't respond, she continued. "He's resilient. And… after everything… it can't end like this."

She stared hard at the coffee table, the still-half-full cup of watery soda that Henry hadn't finished, the used napkin covered in pizza grease, the picture of a too-thin celebrity with a forced smile, and tried to come up with a response —

Because he had fought — he had tried — she'd gotten through to him, he'd fought to get back to her — he couldn't die like this, not now and not here, that wasn't how the story was supposed to go. It was supposed to have a happy ending — if he fought at all, he was supposed to win: when the hero-turned-villain-turned-anti-hero met up with his oldest rival, the one he thought he'd defeated years and years before, he was supposed to win, unambiguously.

But her life wasn't in any storybook, and this was the land where someone could do everything right and always be kind and never stop trying to be good no matter how many awful things life threw at her, and still end up sobbing, alone, shackled to a hospital bed while the doctors took her child away from her before she could bring herself hold him.

"This isn't a fairytale," she muttered, glancing away. "This world isn't fair at all."

"No world is fair," Mary Margaret replied. "If the world was fair, you'd be the crown princess and the whole realm would adore you." She paused to swallow an emotion Emma didn't want to name, before going on in a determinedly-strong tone, "But just because it isn't fair doesn't mean everything that happens has to be bad."

"It also doesn't mean that anything that happens has to be good," she countered quietly. "You don't get to save up 'happiness' points by being a good person and surviving hardships, that you can cash in later for a happy ending. It doesn't work like that. It doesn't matter that it's a bad ending to his life story," she whispered, biting her lip and focusing on the pattern of tile on the floor. "No one's up there keeping track."

It seemed like Mary Margaret didn't know how to respond, because she just looked away awkwardly.

"Still," she said, after a painfully-long silence, "just because it isn't fair doesn't mean it's cruel."

"Yes, it does," Emma replied; Mary Margaret finally gave up on the conversation, responding by simply squeezing her hand and holding it tightly.

"I still think it'll work out," she whispered.

.

Around ten, Whale came into the waiting room, and they both sat up, Emma in trepidation and Mary Margaret in anticipation. He shrugged.

"Looks like he'll pull through," he said, raising his eyebrows. "I really didn't think he would when he came in here, but I'm starting to think he's just too stubborn to die."

All the air seemed to rush back into her lungs and tears pricked at her eyes as her head fell back in relief. "You're right about that," she muttered on a tiny laugh, and glanced back to Whale. "Thanks," she told him, and he smiled at her before leaving again.

"Told you," Mary Margaret said quietly, giving her a small, sad smile and taking her hand again. "I know life isn't fair," she murmured, "but sometimes, it gets to be not fair in your favor."

.

.

He had only spent a couple of days in the hospital, but it felt like eternity, although the storm had lasted through the following day and the sky still didn't look particularly cheerful, keeping a bit of a damper on any activity from the witch, giving them a short reprieve. But even that wasn't comforting — there was no telling what Zelena had gotten up to in the interim.

Emma suspected that he'd convinced Whale to let him out early, specifically so he wouldn't miss any of the action, even though he wouldn't be a whole lot of good at the moment for anything but advice.

She wasn't sure if she was grateful or annoyed; his presence was a relief, but he was also still injured and shouldn't have been doing anything but sleeping.

Right now, he was standing behind her in the kitchen at the loft — Mary Margaret and David having decided to go out to dinner tonight with the painfully-obvious intent of leaving her and Killian alone for a while — wearing some of David's clothes; she had intended to make some joke about how much it had taken to finally get him out of the pirate get-up, but he was still moving gingerly and she couldn't see the bandage but she knew it was there and she couldn't joke about it just yet, any of it.

"Swan," he said soothingly, but his tone didn't work on her and she refused turn around, clutching at the edges of the sink. "I'm all right."

"You almost weren't."

He paused for a moment before sighing heavily and only got through, "I know, but — " before she cut him off sharply.

"Do you really?" she snapped, now turning and looking at him and goddammit he was supposed to be a fearsome pirate but he was giving her this look like a pathetic wounded puppy.

"Believe me, love," he replied fervently, "I am quite aware of how near I came to death, thank you."

"Did you see David's clothes?" she countered, and when he looked confused, she went on. "He was covered in blood."

He winced and glanced to the side. "I know how that feels — "

"No," she cried; she had barely spoken to him since he'd gotten out of the hospital, and then only in groups and only in short, clipped conversations that were immediately relevant to the tasks at hand, for fear of this exact thing happening. "I don't think — " she started, but he cut her off with a loud —

"Yes, I do," with very pointed eye contact and shit — it had been so long since he'd mentioned her, since she'd even come into the undercurrent of any conversation, and she'd been so caught up in trying to classify her own emotions that for a moment, she'd entirely forgotten that the world hadn't been unfair in his favor the last time.

She closed her eyes for a moment in awkward guilt before running her hand through her hair. "I'm sorry, I…" she trailed off, unsure what the rest of that sentence was supposed to be, but he didn't seem fazed.

"I'm not angry," he said, and stepped forward like he always seemed to be doing, crowding into her personal space somehow without actually making her feel crowded. "In fact," he went on, raising his eyebrows with a sort of smug confession, "I'm honestly somewhat pleased."

"Are you," she replied evenly; he looked back at her and grinned like he had all the way back at the beanstalk when he'd placed the cuff on her wrist, I was hoping it'd be you.

"Mm," he murmured, leaning in a little closer. "You can't ignore it any longer."

"Ignore what?" she asked, but had a creeping feeling that she already knew.

"Look me in the eyes and tell me you don't."

She met his eyes and meant to say — something, at least — but her breath caught in her chest and her heartbeat was drowning out every other sound or thought; she knew damn well what the rest of that sentence was but she didn't know if the answer was yes but it definitely wasn't no and —

Emma couldn't look him in the eyes and say that she did love him, but she also couldn't look him the eyes and say that she didn't.

But it was Killian, and Killian could see straight through her, so he didn't seem to expect an answer.

He reached out and brushed her hair over her shoulder, one of those tiny intimate habits they seemed to have subconsciously fallen into, and she glanced down to his hand so she didn't have to look him in the face; when he slipped it up her neck to cradle the back of her head, she closed her eyes and his forehead fell lightly against hers.

She was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that both of her hands were clutching the countertop behind her in a last-ditch effort to anchor herself to something, and it was so — so like them — he would reach out to her and she'd lean into him, but could never quite reach out to touch him herself — not in this setting, not with words like those hanging heavy in the air between them — she always hesitated, always had to keep one foot on the ground.

Emma always hesitated, and almost lost him before she could even make up her mind because of it.

She let go of the counter and slid her arms around his neck; he sighed — slow and relieved, like he'd been holding his breath, waiting for her to respond — and his hand left the back of her head, instead running up her arm to pull her closer against him as he leaned forward to kiss her neck and rest there and it was this —

This was what he'd wanted, what he'd all-but begged for — for once, let me hold you — and she'd been right to refuse him then, this was too intimate to be a one-time thing, she couldn't hold someone like this — let alone be held by someone like this — if she was only going to lose them the next day.

"You can't die on me now," she whispered, and felt him snicker even as his arms tightened around her.

"Swan," he breathed, right up at her ear, "in case you haven't noticed, my greatest skill happens to be survival."

"Yeah, Whale said you're too stubborn to die," she said, picking up the humor to calm the shaking in her heart.

"Aye," he replied lightly. "I couldn't simply up and leave you now, could I?"

She smiled a little to herself, but the moment was passing as his hand moved to rest at her side, and she pulled away a little, enough to lean back against the counter and look him in the face. "No," she whispered, "you can't."

He searched her face for a short moment before smiling softly and replying, in absolute sincerity, "I won't."

"Good."

Slowly, the affectionate smile turned into an impish grin and he leaned in a little. "I promise I won't turn into a flying monkey either."

She tried to be disapproving and push him away, but couldn't quite stop herself from laughing or keeping him in arm's reach. "You will never let me live that down, will you?"

"No."

"Jackass," she muttered, and kissed him anyway.