Stop! Before you read: Neverland is not exactly the same as Once's Neverland, and this is AU. For a more comprehensive guide see end notes.

1.

Neverland was colourful the first time. It was filled with flowers and green leaves and mermaids ready and willing to plait your hair.

Emma was ten the first time she went to Neverland. Stuck in home with particular crappy foster parents, she needed a break. So the shadow came for her and Peter Pan welcomed her - to stay as long as she wanted.

She didn't stay for long.

Even at a young age she was too stubborn to believe in magic (if there was magic why was she still an orphan, passed from house to house of families that didn't care).

But he asked her to stay for a while, so she did, wanting to see what the Island had to offer her.

That's where she met him.

A boy not much older than her (in appearance, in reality he was old, much older), all messy black hair and hopeful blue eyes as he stared.

"Hi." She smiled, wiping a muddy hand on her jeans.

"Hi." He responded warily. He was dressed weirdly, Emma thought, black leather trousers and boots strung on.

"I'm Emma." She nodded to him, since this was a dream, it wouldn't do anyone any harm to know her name.

"Hook."

"Hook's not a name." She argued stubbornly, crossing her arms. He gestured at his left hand to prove his point. "Oh. But you have to have another name."

"Killian. Killian Jones." He told her timidly.

Emma smiled at Killian, her dimples popping as she did.

"So Killian. Killian Jones, show me around." She demanded with all the authority that a ten year old possessed.

2.

When Killian had first arrived in Neverland, he was twelve and optimistic, prepared to face whatever got in his path. He was searching for a cure for his brothers illness, and had heard of the wonders and magic of a far off place, of Neverland. He'd thought he'd struck gold, when he met Peter Pan and and he offered him the cure.

"The price is tiny, nothing compared to your brothers life." Peter had smiled and clapped his shoulder, "You'll come back and tell me if it works, here take my shadow."

Killian had thought that the older boy was his saviour, he could save Liam from the incurable disease, he could put his family back together.

He;d gripped the shadow with one hand and the vile with the other as he flew over the Enchanted Forest, he was going home.

3.

She went back home soon after her adventure, her new 'parents' not even noticing that she was missing for days.

Emma fought with them, because she was too headstrong for her own good and Killian had cared about her so why couldn't they. They told her to go back to her fantasy.

So she did.

Or at least she tried - she sat at her window, she called for Peter and Killian and the Shadow until she ran out of energy. She packed her bags and ran.

It was another three months until she made it back to Neverland, eleven now, and she's lived on her own, on the streets, so there isn't any more time for fairy tales and dreaming.

But she does it anyway.

Killian smiles this time, bright and toothy, complaining that Emma's almost caught up to him in age.

"You're not that old!"

"I'm older than you think," He told her wearily, too wearily for the twelve-year-old body he was frozen in.

"How old?" She looked at him suspiciously.

"Too old."

"That's not an answer."

"I know." He gave her a tight lipped smile, shifting away from her. He rubbed his hook against some sticks to make a fire, she didn't realise until he lit it how dark it had gotten. "Maybe you should get some sleep."

"I'm not tired." She pouted.

He chuckled, "No, but if you go to sleep now, I'll show you the secret parts of the Island tomorrow, the parts that Pan barely lets anyone see."

"Then why would he let us?"

"He wouldn't. But we will."

Emma shuffled, covering herself with a make shift blanket, thinking that she liked being with Killian, that he makes her feel safe.

She fell asleep. She slept the night through.

4.

Killian had fed the antidote to Liam, and Liam got out of bed. Killian hadn't been able to get back to Peter fast enough, so overwhelmed, so grateful for his brother's good health that he didn't even think twice.

The Shadow had come when he called, eager to bring the boy back, and the boy smiled, baring his white teeth in the moonlight, his brother was safe, he told him, his brother was alive.

The Shadow didn't respond but he didn't care, he snuggled deeper into his coat as he watched the forest disappear beneath him.

Peter told him the trade.

A life for a life.

"You've taken the very life out of Neverland, you have to replace it with your own."

"But I didn't know." His bottom lip wobbled as tears fell from his eyes. He'd never get to see his brother again.

"Would you have killed your brother instead?"

"No! But - he's my brother - you-you have to - let me see him - again." His words were choked by sobs.

"I'll offer you a deal." Killian looked up through his bright blue eyes, as innocent as the child he was and Pan cut off his finger. "All I need is something with your essence for now."

Killian's sobs were the only sound heard in Neverland that night.

And every night for three hundred years.

5.

Emma woke up in a police holding cell where there's a man that's making a call to a children's homes in the area and she hates herself for trusting him.

Later, when she riffled through the stuff that the policeman gave back to her she finds a scrap of paper, a simple I'm so sorry Emma scribbled across it. It's in the bin before she even has time to think.

And then Emma grew up, baby fat fading into puberty and teenage rebellion, shifting into adulthood as she has her own son. She's nearly twenty-eight before she went back to Neverland.

She didn't go alone.

He' was sitting in the waiting room of the doctors office, flicking through a magazine. She wanted to walk out, avoid him forever, pretend she was never young, never trusted him, pretend that he was just a vivid dream.

But Henry's loud and vibrant, drawing attention to himself even when he doesn't mean to, and soon she's staring into those blue eyes again.

She bit her lip and steered Henry to him.

"Hi."

"Emma." He breathed and she felt it, resonating in every part of her body, felt him - so much more than a dream.

"Kid, this is my old friend Killian, Killian, meet my son, Henry." She barely looked at him, instead focusing on her boy.

"Hi!" Henry chirped, reaching out with his left hand to shake Killian's (because while he was the son of two thieves, he thought manners were very important), and Killian shifted awkwardly to grab it with his gloved hand, when Emma realised.

"Henry why don't you go and check us in while I catch up with Killian, here, okay?" She waved to the desk that was in her line of sight and Henry scuttled off.

"Prosthetic is a step up from a hook."

"It's not prosthetic. It's wooden," When she raised her eye brow, he continued, "After many years of living somewhere like Neverland, it's hard to go to all this strange technology."

She nodded, still barely believing it was him.

"Look, Swan, I wanted to talk to you about that day-"

"No, It's fine - I'm fine aren't I?" She shrugged pathetically.

"Please?"

So they get coffee, and they talked. He told her his story, told her the ending that she'd been searching for for seventeen years.

"I was planning on escaping, it was coming closer to the time when Pan would need to take a part of me again - I wanted to get you out of there before he used you instead."

"How?"

"The Shadow. It isn't Pan's, it just answers to the ruler of Neverland. I convinced it that that was me."

"So you now own Neverland?"

"Yes."

She took a sip of her coffee before smirking at him almost dangerously.

"Let's take Neverland."

They take Neverland and they change it. They make it beautiful and green, not just in the alluringly it had seemed to trick children. They made the Island safe for animals and people - using it as a safe haven instead of a trap.

Killian and Emma get married in Neverland. But they don't need to stay.

So I changed the water thing, instead of someone having to stay in Neverland forever, Pan only needs the life source - but he's the one who needs it, not the Island, because he feeds off of life. By the time Killian escapes Pan's only taken his hand because he only takes one body part at a time (e.g. fingers, palm). Also, the Shadow is not Pan's shadow, but Neverland's.