They've just finished filling the canteens when he hears it. A familiar rustle somewhere behind him in the jungle, the same noise that kept him on edge for years in this hellish place, the one that left him looking over his shoulder for centuries. He glances over at Emma to see she's oblivious, capping the water and adjusting the satchel over her shoulder, her ears not as attuned to this place as his are.

"Swan," he whispers. She turns to face him and he raises a finger to his lips, tilting his head in the direction of the noise.

They stand there frozen for a long moment listening, the only sounds the occasional call of a bird or the chirping of an insect. He's just about to relax when he hears it again, and by the tensing of Emma's shoulders she can as well. She looks toward the noise and back at him, instinctively reaching over her shoulder for her cutlass.

The cutlass she'd given back to Baelfire.

Her eyes widen, and the first tinge of panic starts creeping up his nerves. Emma glances around for something, anything she can use as a weapon as he draws his own sword, stepping between the noise and Emma. It could just be an animal, or one of their group wondering what's taking them so long, or -

The Lost Boys appear, faces slowly emerging from the jungle. First just in front of him, and then to his right, and his left, swords glinting in the sunlight and arrows dark-tipped with poison.

A dozen weapons against one.

He spares the quickest of glances back and sees Emma frozen, still empty-handed. He turns back to his attackers, one last sweep of the landscape as he considers their options. There's only one.

"Run."

There's only a split-second before they both turn and sprint, splashing over the shallow stream and barreling headlong into the jungle. They need to put some distance between them and the Lost Boys, take advantage of their longer strides and find some kind of hiding place to wait it out as they go by. But as his legs and lungs first start to burn as they duck and tumble and run, dodging arrows the whole way, he realizes what Pan's crew is really doing.

They're being herded.

He's knows it's some kind of trap and he knows it's useless to try and avoid it. Stopping to fight means instant death - if Emma only had a sword they could chance it but it's impossible with the arrows in play. Running means they at least have a chance, and so he ignores his tiring legs and runs as fast as they can carry him.

They can't quite put enough distance between them and their attackers - arrows still fly, whizzing by their heads as they navigate the jungle at breakneck speed. He's dimly aware of the trees thinning but focuses on forcing his legs to move, forcing himself to keep breathing. It's only when the trees disappear completely that he lets his himself slow down, stunned at the sudden change of scenery and skidding to a halt when he realizes where they've been driven to.

They're faced with open air, the ground in front of them stopping on a sheer cliff and giving a foreboding view of the jungle below.

They've only a few seconds until the Lost Boys catch up and he runs to the edge, looking down to gauge the length of the fall. It looks to be hundreds of feet, jagged rocks along most of the face of the cliff, but -

A few ledges poke out on the way down, some only a few feet wide and others the start of new cliffs themselves. A long, extended piece of rock sticks out below, perhaps twenty feet down and as deadly as it looks it's something, a possible temporary escape. A hand grabs his arm and he looks up, Emma's face trained down at their possible salvation, her features drawn and tight.

"We can - "

Her words are cut off with the sharp whiz of an arrow cutting through the air and her choked-off gasp as it pierces her flesh. He can't see much, just that it's somewhere in her abdomen and he moves on autopilot, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her over the edge as he jumps. The fall feels longer than it actually is, a horrified suspension of time as they drop and he hopes they haven't overshot the landing, hopes the last thing he sees in this world isn't Emma's pained face.

The ground hits him with a shock, a searing jolt through his ankles as he tries to roll out of the landing and keep Emma within his grasp at the same time. His legs briefly go numb before the pain sets in but it's such a relief to simply have survived that he forgets himself, resting on his back for a brief moment as he catches his breath.

He's hardly had a second to recover when a face peers over from the cliff above, a Lost Boy who waves his compatriots over to join him. He's barely registered what's happening when three sets of arrows are drawn, pointed down directly at he and Emma both. She cries out when he grabs her and rolls them towards the wall, a hollowed-out space into the cliff that takes them out of the fire, arrows clattering against the stone as he rolls them both from view of the boys above. He winces in sympathy when he sees the arrow stuck in her - in her side, perhaps an inch or two in from the curve of her waist - and how badly it must have been jarred in the fall and the way he rolled them into this little cave without a thought.

"Shit," she swears, curling up into a fetal position, her hands shaking as they draw up to her abdomen. She looks up at him, her face gone gray, and her eyes widen the longer she looks. "Hook… are you…"

He turns in confusion, following her eyes until he sees the tip of an arrow just by his face. He's startled until he realizes the arrow struck through the shoulder of his thick leather coat, a quarter-inch from piercing his flesh but embedded in the leather instead. He yanks it out quickly, not caring about the tears in the fabric as he tosses the arrow aside. "No, Swan, I'm fine."

He kneels next to her to examine the wound - bloody fuck, it went straight through her - but she swats him away. "Make sure they can't get down here first."

"Swan - "

"No," she hisses. "We're sitting ducks here. Make sure we're safe before you yank this fucking thing out, okay?"

He starts to protest, but if she's feeling well enough to swear at him and think tactically she can probably survive the next few minutes. He ignores the throbbing in his ankles and approaches the ledge cautiously, just staying far enough back that he won't be visible to anyone at the top of the cliff and he waits, listening for any sounds of the Lost Boys rustling above. He hears nothing and hazards a reach with his left arm, his hook poking out into the line of sight of anyone watching from above. He expects the whizzing of another arrow, prepared to snatch his arm back, but nothing comes. He takes another step, out further, and looks up before darting back, expecting some kind of ambush, but the jungle above them is quiet, the only sounds the calls of a few errant birds echoing through the valley below.

Once convinced they're alone, he surveys the scenery around him and it's both encouraging and hopeless - nothing but a nearly-vertical cliff face to his right and left, with no way to climb up, down, or sideways. The Lost Boys couldn't get down to them if they tried, but it also means he and Emma are stuck for the foreseeable future unless someone assists them.

But he can't think in the long-term, not with Emma injured as she is. He turns and looks to her. "They're gone, for the time being at least. They can't get down here, not unless they jump as we did or bring something to help them climb down. And if they try it I'll shove them off the cliff before they can stand."

"Good." Her jaw is tense and she looks down at her torso, the arrow run through her in a manner that would look almost comical if it weren't so dangerous. "I think I'm gonna need some rum before you do this."

He's by her side in an instant, handing her his flask and trying to gauge the situation before going further. "Not too much, love. I'll need some to clean the wound, and too much of it will make you bleed more easily."

It would be sound logic in any other situation but they're both pretending, he knows. If the arrow were laced with poison -

She nods and takes a sip, grimacing before bracing herself and taking another.

"How's the pain?"

"Not as bad as childbirth, but pretty damn bad." She takes another chug of rum and coughs at the strength of it, cringing when her damaged muscles flex around the spear run through her. "Fuck. Henry."

"We're going to get Henry," he says, with a conviction that surprises him. "But right now we need to take care of this. Let me see."

He can't see much, not with her shirt pinned to her torso by the arrow. He raises his hook to where it's pierced her front and looks to Emma, silently waiting for her assent. She nods, and he tears the fabric down, leaving her tank top mostly intact but allowing him to lift the shirt to see her wound. He does the same on her other side and gently lifts the garment away.

The entry looks clean, close enough to the edge of her waist that it didn't pierce any organs, only a small dribble of blood emanating from the entry and exit points.

"I can remove this," he tells her. "They've hit nothing vital here, but it's going to hurt like hell. Are you ready?"

She trembles a bit before she answers. "No. But do it anyway. You've done this before, right?"

"Aye, several times. A few on myself, in fact."

"Good." Her head drops, resting on the stone floor. "Just make it quick, okay?" Her voice is pained, almost resigned, and he can hear the hint of fear in it.

He hesitates. It's one thing to pull an arrow from his own flesh, but the idea of doing it to Emma gives him pause. "Perhaps we should wait for the rum to work first."

She nods, still shaking. "Yeah, that's - yeah."

"All right."

They wait a few minutes, giving the alcohol time to settle in her veins. Part of him wants to take her hand, give her something to squeeze on as she works through the pain, but he suspects she'll be less than receptive. "I need to break off the end of this," he tells her, referring to the feathered end of the arrow. "I can slide the rest of it out once that's done."

It'll be the worst part, he knows, the tension needed to snap the arrow likely to pull at her insides and drag the wood against her already-damaged flesh. She seems to realize the same when she registers what needs to be done. Still, she tells him to do it.

She doesn't scream.

The arrow comes out relatively easily, one quick and brutal moment as he pulls it from Emma, and she hardly registers a reaction. A sharp breath through her teeth, but she manages to hold back from anything more. He covers the wound instantly with his scarf, him pressing it to her front while Emma holds it in back, curled up on her side.

"Almost done, love," he assures her. "Can you…?"

She nods when she realizes he needs his hand free, pressing the fabric onto each side to staunch the bleeding while he retrieves his flask once more.

"This is going to hurt," he warns her stupidly, as though they both don't know what's about to come.

"Wait," she says, her lips pulled into a tight line.

"We should get this over wi - "

"Is it Dreamshade?"

The questions stops him in his tracks. "I don't know."

"Find out before you waste that stuff on me."

"There's no wasting here. Even if it is bloody Dreamshade, we can get out of here and give you the same water I gave your father - "

"And how the hell are we going to get out of here?" she hisses, rocking a bit where she lies on the ground.

"Your family's still here. They could find us and - "

"Just check, okay?" she asks, the fire falling out of her voice. "I just - I need to know."

He starts to argue but the words die on his lips. "All right." He first grabs the discarded arrow, studying the tip and seeing no trace of the poison, only Emma's blood. "I can't see anything here. Let me…" he reaches for where she's pressing his scarf to her front, gingerly lifting her shaking hand and examining the injury.

It's fairly clean, considering the crude method he'd used to remove the arrow, but she's not bleeding particularly badly. More important, though, is the lack of the telltale black crawling under her skin. He breathes deep, relief settling into his bones as he realizes she may not have been handed a death sentence after all.

"Well?" she asks.

His face breaks into a smile as he exhales again, and he can see the tension in her brow lift when he looks down at her. "I think you're in the clear."

Her eyes close and she laughs, just the smallest bit, stopping short as the damaged muscles in her abdomen contract. "Good," she says on a cough.

"I still need to clean this out, Swan."

"I was afraid of that," she sighs. "Just get it over with, okay?"

It's the worst noise she makes yet when he pours the rum over her wounds, a pained, strangled sound he could go the rest of his days without hearing ever again. She stays strong, though, sucking in harsh breaths through her teeth as the burning subsides. "Got a bandage? We need to figure a way out of here and I can't be bleeding all over the place."

He has nothing of the sort, his satchel only containing a few fruits he picked up on their walk and the canteens they'd filled before being attacked; everything else lies back at the camp.

"No. But maybe…" he shrugs off his coat and reaches up to his right shoulder with his hook, the thin material of his shirt tearing easily as he removes the sleeve. It's not all that long but he supposes her waist is small enough for it to wrap around; she looks taken aback as he destroys the garment and helps her sit up, draping the sleeve around her abdomen and pulling it tight. She starts to reach up to tie it but he can't help himself, leaning down to pull the knot tight with his teeth and trying his best to ignore the scent of lavender that still wafts from her skin after so many days in Neverland.

He's reassured to see her familiar eyeroll when he lifts his head and gives her a wink, her breaths evening out and her hands beginning to steady themselves. The strength of his relief stuns him, even in the wake of his admission at the Echo Caves, and it only makes his revelation there that much more real.

He swallows it down, tries to be strong for her. "Ready to get out of here, love?"

"Oh God, yes."

Wishful thinking, it seems, is useless.

They've nowhere to go. Nothing but sheer cliff faces to the right and left of them, and any hopes of continuing downward are dashed when they realize the next ledge below them is nearly a hundred feet down with no way to safely reach it.

Going up, at least on first glance, seems just as fruitless a prospect. Hook can't even enjoy the process of Emma climbing onto his shoulders, not when she's clearly still in considerable pain and not entirely steady when she stands on his shoulders and reaches up the cliff from the ledge of their little cave carved into the side of the mountain.

"No luck?" he asks, grabbing at her ankle to keep her steady as she reaches up and tries to find a handhold on the mountainside.

She gives it another few minutes of trying before stopping with a sigh. "No. It's basically straight up-and-down and there's nothing I can - dammit - there's no way to - "

The way she stops mid-sentence worries him, and he can feel her legs begin to shake as she stands on his shoulders. "Swan?"

"Get me down. Now."

The tone of her voice has him moving before she can even react, sliding her from his shoulders and grabbing her around her waist as she slips down, muttering an apology when she lets out a pained noise at being jostled. "What is it?" he asks, reluctant to let her go as she steps away from him, holding up a hand in supplication.

"I'm okay. I just got dizzy for a second."

He can tell the excuse is hollow even to Emma's ears. "You're not okay."

"You try standing on someone's shoulders with a giant cliff behind you and see how well you do," she snaps, pulling farther away from him. It's another pathetic protest; they both know a fear of heights had nothing to do with this.

Her face grows whiter and she takes a few steps back, leaning against the stone wall.

"Swan?"

She shakes her head. "It's probably blood loss or the rum or… something."

"You should sit, then. At least for a moment."

The fact that she doesn't fight him on it, simply nods and slides down, leaning back against the wall as she does so, makes him uneasy. Everything about the situation makes uneasy, something niggling at the back of mind, something he's not seeing, something he's forgotten, just -

Just what is Pan up to?

He says nothing, simply goes for his satchel and finds a canteen, handing it off to her and taking a seat on the other side of the little holed-out cave they've found themselves trapped in.

He tries not to stare as she drinks and they don't speak for a while, heartbeats slowing as the adrenaline wears off. She doesn't look better after a time but she doesn't look worse, either, closing her eyes and resting her head back against the wall.

"What are we going to do?" she asks, unmoving, her words directed at the ceiling.

"Unless you've a ladder or some rope, I don't see a way to get us out of here without help. Our best bet is to wait and hope your family finds us."

Her head snaps up. "What? No."

"Pardon?"

"We can't just sit here and wait. Nobody knows where we are and the Lost Boys could come back any minute, probably with ropes. We have to find another way to get out of here."

He gestures outward, indicating the massive valley below them. "If you've got an idea, I'm all ears. But we can't climb and we can't go down, not unless you've got a ladder hidden in that satchel I don't know about. Or if you feel like climbing on my shoulders again."

She huffs. "Could you at least try and be helpful? I'm not about to sit here just waiting to die."

Worried as he is for her, her words push just the right buttons and he can't stop himself. "I'm not being helpful enough? I'm sorry, it must have been Pan who pulled that arrow out of you. How silly of me."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," she mutters. "Just help me figure a way out of here." She looks around, biting her lip. "Your hook. Can you use it to - ?"

He's about to snap at her once more, because of course he's thought of that already and dismissed it outright, but manages to bite back a sarcastic remark. "Doubtful, love. It's a useful weapon, but it can hardly carve into stone like this, much less dig in enough to allow me to climb."

She rubs at her forehead, tension overwhelming her features. "Can you at least try?"

He sighs. "As you wish."

Much to his consternation she gets up to watch rather than sit and rest, standing a few feet back as he steps carefully to the ledge on one side of the cave, sparing a glance up to ensure the Lost Boys haven't returned before reaching out with his hook and searching for any sort of weakness in the rock wall. He can't find one; the stone smoothed over from eons of wind and rain. He looks back to Emma before planting his feet firmly, setting a balance point and pulling back with his arm, swinging his hook against the cliff with all his might.

It sends off a shower of sparks when he makes contact, his hook ricocheting from the stone and sending painful vibrations up his arm. There's only a tiny chip left on the cliffside from the point of his hook; he may as well have been trying to cut into an anvil for all the dent he'd made.

He turns back to raise an eyebrow at Emma and regrets it immediately when her face falls. "Sorry, love," he says, his voice soft. "We'll figure out something else."

She sighs and looks around once more. "Is there anything we can burn? Start a signal fire?"

"Nobody even knows we're missing yet," he points out.

"Yeah, but they will soon. They're probably expecting us back right around now. We can wait a little bit, and then…"

"The only flammable things we've got are the satchel and our clothing. Or, rather, your clothing. I'm afraid leather doesn't burn well." In any other situation he'd smirk, but he can't find the will to do so, not with Emma looking increasingly hopeless as he speaks. "We don't have enough to sustain any kind of fire for more than a few minutes, and we wouldn't get enough smoke out of it for a serviceable signal, I'm afraid."

She stays quiet and looks out into the jungle, her face despondent.

"There may be another way." He's hesitant to even bring it up but the desperation in her eyes as she looks at him is enough to make him push forward. "Magic."

"Don't tell me you've had pixie dust on you this whole time, I swear to God, Hook - "

He shakes his head. "No, Swan. Your magic."

She blinks at him, disbelieving. "What, you think I can just poof us out of here like I'm Regina? I can barely light a damn candle! Even then I was only able to do it because you were -" she stops herself, looking to her feet.

He files those words away for examination later and grabs her arm. "I don't expect you to be able to teleport us, Swan, but you have conjured a flame before. If you want a signal fire, start one. I know you can do it."

She closes her eyes on a heavy exhale. "Dammit," she mutters. She pulls away from his grasp and steps back to the center of the cave. "Fine. Okay. I can do this," she says, more to herself than him. "Just… stay back, okay? I've never tried to make a fireball before. This could go badly."

He nods, stepping away from her until his back is to the wall. "You've got this."

She closes her eyes once more and his eyes drift down the makeshift bandage at her torso while she attempts to steady herself with several deep breaths. She's masking the pain well enough for now but he's had similar injuries over the course of his long life and knows just how much agony she's in. He knew she was strong, was always impressed by it, but watching her now is even more remarkable.

She opens her hands, palms facing up, and her face tenses as she attempts to summon some sort of spark. After a few moments she blinks down at her hands, confusion clouding her features before she shakes her head and tries again, her brow furrowing with her second attempt.

He remains quiet, not wanting to interrupt her as her fingers ball into fists, her knuckles going white before she shakes out her hands and breathes deep, widening her stance before looking to her hands once more. He's surprised the intensity of her stare alone isn't enough to start a flame, but after a few minutes of trying she shakes her head, eyes gone wide.

"It's gone," she finally whispers. She looks up to him in barely-restrained panic. "I can't - "

"Of course you can," he assures her. "I've seen you do it. You just - "

"No, I mean I can't. As in, my magic is completely gone."

"What do you mean, gone?"

"I don't know how to explain it! I could… it's like I could feel my magic before, you know? Even when I didn't know what the hell to do with it or how to make it work, it was there. And now it's not. I tried to tap into it just now and there was nothing."

"Perhaps it's your injury," he says gently. "You should rest. Maybe if you take a break - "

She finally explodes. "Dammit, Hook, I can't take a break! Henry's still out there and I can't do anything about it while I'm stuck here! And we don't have a way out and I don't have my magic, and - " she cuts herself off and turns, wrapping her arms around her torso and looking out over the valley once more.

He stamps out the impulse to go to her, keeping his mouth shut and backing away as far as possible, the only semblance of privacy he can give her in this small space. He averts his gaze and waits. She's not crying, at least not audibly, but her breathing takes time to calm down, to settle into something resembling a steady rhythm.

"Okay," she finally says, and he looks up to see her eyes wetter than before but a determined set to her features. "We'll just… we'll figure something out. But if the Lost Boys are coming back, we need to be ready for that first."

Killian nods, glad for the distraction even if it means facing another fight to the death - he at least knows how to handle those. "You should take my sword, love. I've got my hook, and I'm certain I can avail an attacker of his cutlass."

"All right. We don't really have anything else, but - wait a minute." She looks up and he can see the wheels turning in her head. "That's it. That's how we get out."

"I'm not sure I follow, love."

"The Lost Boys. They'll have to find some way down here if they're going to finish us off. Ropes, ladders, whatever, right?"

He smiles as he catches her meaning. "There we go, Swan. Deal with the nasty little buggers and climb up using their own equipment, is it? You'd make a hell of a pirate, you know." And suddenly she's smiling back, only the second time she's directed such an expression at him and had it be genuine, hope blooming in his chest for more reasons than one.

Until Emma's face falls and she begins swaying on her feet. She stares at him, confusion clouding her features as she takes a step forward, or at least tries to. He covers the distance between them in a flash, catching her before her legs can give out completely. Her brings her to the ground slowly, trying to steer their momentum to the cave's wall and arranging her to sit with her back against it, a mumbled "What the hell?" against his shoulder as they sink to the floor.

"Are you all right?" he finally asks once he's gotten her situated. "What happened?"

She just stares at him, completely bewildered, almost the same as when her magic failed her.

"Emma."

She blinks and shakes her head as if to clear it. "I dunno. My legs just sort of… stopped working."

"Are you dizzy again?"

"A little," she admits.

It sounds like the effects of simple blood loss, but when he checks her wound the bleeding has nearly stopped, her not having lost nearly enough to put her in the state she is now. But she's frightfully pale and the clouded look hasn't quite left her eyes, and that same feeling creeps up on him again, that's he's forgetting something, some angle he can't quite put together.

"Don't move, just rest," he says, low and soothing, before standing to approach the ledge once more. He looks up to the top of the cliff, squinting in the sun and listening, the only sounds the odd call of a bird and the insects chirping in the jungles below.

What is he missing?

He steps back into the shade of the cave and picks up the arrow he'd pulled from Emma's flesh. He examines it carefully, more closely than he had in the heat of the moment earlier, still finding no trace of Dreamshade as expected - Emma's wound still shows no signs of it.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"Just thinking." He sets the weapon back down and his eyes drift to the second arrow, the one that'd pierced his coat but left him otherwise unharmed. He picks it up, turning it over in his hand and silently willing it to speak to him, to give him some sort of answer. He doesn't even know why he picked it up, not when it completely missed -

His blood runs cold.

"Emma," he says slowly, turning to look at her. "You thought I'd been hit with this."

"Yeah. And?"

"If you thought so, then likely the Lost Boys did as well."

Her eyes narrow, most of the dazed look in them gone. "What are you saying?"

He sighs. "They're not coming back to finish us off. They think they already have."

Emma's features pull tight. "Why? Even if they'd hit your shoulder it wouldn't have been fatal. And where they got me was… okay, it's not exactly a walk in the park, but it didn't kill me either. So what are you saying? "

He chews on his lip and sighs once more, before looking her straight in the eye and steeling himself to say the words.

"There are many poisons here in Neverland, Emma. Not just Dreamshade."