A/N: Thanks go out, as always, to my beta reader, Raams, for looking over this chapter! I hope you all enjoy it!
Although there were still a certain amount of holes in Killian's memories regarding Emma Swan and the exact nature of his past relationship with her, he sensed with a certainty that quiet reticence was not a natural component of her personality. And yet, she had hardly spoken more than a few words to him since they had ordered dinner. Something had happened since the last time they had been in each other's company to make her withdraw from him, and Killian knew intuitively that it had something to do with him. He wasn't fool enough to believe she wanted to end their barely-begun courtship. Her demeanor had been untroubled when he had dropped by the police station on Monday morning to bring her one of those hot, sweetened chocolate drinks she loved; she had readily accepted his invitation to dinner later that week, smiling and finding excuses to linger in his company -giving him a tour of the small station and showcasing a number of baffling contraptions with cords and buttons -before returning to work with her father.
No, whatever troubled Emma Swan, Killian was positive that it wasn't anything that he had done, so much as it was something that affected him. But what could have happened in the two short days since he'd invited her to dine with him at Tony's to account for the change in her?
Studying the worried crease of her forehead in the candlelight, Killian frowned. He reached across the checkered red and white tablecloth and laid his hand on Emma's arm. Startled, she glanced up at him, her expression full of confusion, and then chagrin. Lacing her fingers through Killian's she offered him a small smile of apology. "I'm sorry, I have a lot on my mind."
"I can see that, love," he replied with concern. "Care to unburden yourself to an old pirate?"
"Oh, four or five centuries isn't that old," she teased with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Rumplestiltskin has shoes older than that."
Killian felt a peculiar prickle at the name. Rumplestiltskin? He puzzled over the name briefly, wondering why it sounded so familiar to him, and then narrowed his eyes at Emma. "It's three centuries, you little minx, and I'm still sharp enough to know when I'm being baited to avoid answering a question."
"I'm not avoiding anything," she insisted as the server arrived with their appetizers, setting the hot dishes between them.
They had decided to eat family-style, sharing the small selection of dishes between them, on Snow's recommendation. Emma's mother had been all too happy to help him select the restaurant and help him make the reservation, when Killian had called on her one afternoon.
He hadn't even intended to end up at the Charmings' apartment. He had been wandering around Storybrooke, re-familiarizing himself with it and hoping to recover more memories into the bargain. The pawnbroker's shop was of particular interest to him. Killian had stood across the street, glaring at it, for a good half an hour before he'd forced himself to move on, trying to determine why the sight of it filled him with such irrational loathing.
Uneasy and distracted, he'd found himself outside the apartment Emma shared with her parents and Henry a short time later. Killian stared at the door, disturbed that his feet had carried him there so readily when his mind had been so distracted. He'd only been here once that he could recall—when he'd picked Emma up for their date. Yet clearly some part of him knew the path to Emma's home well enough to bring him there when all of his attention had been consumed with other concerns.
Snow caught up with him during his musings, arriving home from work, and Killian hadn't been able to say no to her insistent urgings to come in and join him for tea. Plying him with almost as many cookies as questions, Emma's mother was delighted to learn that Killian intended to reciprocate and ask Emma out for the next date.
"Oh, you have to take her to Tony's!" Snow insisted after Killian asked for the names of some of the best dining establishments in Storybrooke. "It's small, but it's so romantic! They have a violinist that will come and serenade you, and the food is to die for!"
The memory melted away, and Killian reached for his fork. "Oh? It sounds like you're avoiding the question to me."
Emma picked up her wine glass and held it close to her, as if it were a shield. "More like trying to steer the conversation around to a difficult topic." She took a long drink from her glass and frowned. "You know that uneasy feeling you have near Gold's pawn shop?"
Killian nodded. "You said he and I were… not on good terms."
"Well, you and he have a definite history, to say the least. A very long one," she added. "And while I'm not privy to all of the details—I wasn't even alive when all of it started, for one thing—I know you blame him for the loss of your hand."
His hand? Killian thought with a frown. Yes, the doctor had mentioned that Killian had lost his hand in some sort of disagreement involving Milah, although Killian had no memory of its actual loss himself. But Milah? He had much clearer memories of Milah—the way the breeze played through her hair; how she inhaled the strong, salty sea air and looked as if her soul had been reborn every time they left port to sail again; her scent as she curled close to him in the darkness of his quarters after they had made love; the way the sunset crowned her head in a multitude of breathtaking colors when she took First Dog Watch. Milah had made him feel whole in a way that Killian hadn't known he'd needed after his brother died.
"A sword fight," he said suddenly, re-living the event with sudden clarity, "He came looking for Milah one day, and I challenged him to a sword fight, but he refused to fight and prove his devotion to the woman he said he loved. We thought we were free of him after that, but after a time he came back. He was powerful. The Dark One." Killian frowned, straining to fill in the gaps as his memories became choppy and lost clarity, "I tried to fight him, but the scaly little coward cut off my hand with a sword. He wanted something, but we wouldn't give it to him."
But what? Killian wondered. What had his enemy wanted so badly that he'd been willing to fight for it, when he had never been willing to fight for Milah? Killian's disgust for the reptilian little man increased. He simply could not imagine placing any material object, no matter how highly it was valued, above Milah or what was in her best interests.
"That's right," Emma smiled encouragingly, looking pleased, "He wanted a magic bean that Milah had given to you, and he cut off your hand to take it from you."
Killian mulled over this information. "This difficult news you have to tell me," he began, "it has to do with my enemy, Gold." She nodded, and Killian took an intuitive leap. "He's the one who impersonated the doctor and tried to tamper with my ability to recover my memories, isn't he?"
"Yes."
Something about her answer was off. Although Killian sensed she was being forthright with him in her answer, he knew somehow that she was hiding something from him. Something very important. "There's something you're not telling me."
"A few things," she admitted with an apologetic frown. "I'm sorry. I want to tell you certain things, but I can't. It's part of the deal I struck with him."
"A deal?" he growled—a bit too loudly, from the annoyed looks other restaurant patrons cast in their direction. "What kind of deal?" he asked in a more muted and even tone. "The man is dangerous, Emma, and he'll do anything to get what he wants."
"I know," she agreed, "but I made a deal with him to teach me magic, since mine isn't coming back. And he has accepted."
Killian stared at her. "Of course it's coming back," he protested. "That day in the hospital, you blew out the lights and all those other contraptions."
"That wasn't me who blew out the lights and broke all of those machines," she repeated patiently, "that was you."
"That's absurd," he argued, "I haven't a single drop of magic running through these veins."
"Well…" Emma set her wine glass down, her expression becoming somewhat guilty. She smoothed out the napkin in her lap. "That's the thing. Now you do, actually."
"What do you mean, now I do?"
The waiter returned to their table just then, interrupting with solicitous goodwill as he brought them a basket of fresh, piping hot breadsticks. The breadsticks were accompanied by a buttery garlic sauce for dipping, and the next few minutes were spent in relative silence while they rearranged their table space. After refilling their wineglasses and assuring them that their main dishes would be ready in just a little while longer, the waiter left again, and Killian peered across the table at Emma.
"When you were injured in Neverland," Emma said in a low tone, resuming the conversation as if they had never been interrupted at all, "I used my magic to heal you."
"The doctor mentioned that briefly," Killian agreed with a slight frown.
"Well, what he didn't mention is that your injuries were so… extensive… that I shouldn't have been able to heal you at all."
Killian's brow drew together as he analyzed her words. "What do you mean?"
"I shouldn't have—I didn't think—I just acted—"
Her words were choppy, and Killian could see quite plainly from the enormous amount of pain that was reflected in her eyes that she was having great difficulty even speaking about any of this. Reaching across the table to take her hand in silent reassurance that no mere words could ever drive him away from her, Killian felt a flash of familiarity. And for just a moment, he was overwhelmed with impressions of a blistering heat; standing in close quarters with Emma; sharing nips of rum; the vulnerable, lost look in her eyes; and saying something… something he hadn't said to anyone, much less believed in a long time…
The exact words eluded him, frustrating Killian, and he grasped Emma's hand more firmly, grounding himself in the present moment as he tried to listen to her words.
"…think when I used my magic to heal your injuries in Neverland, I…overextended myself," she was saying. "I—we—that is, Gold and me—thought I'd burned all my magic up."
Killian felt a flicker of surprise at the implications. "My injuries were that extensive?"
Emma hesitated. "Yes," she finally said. "You were in very bad shape when I found you."
"And that's why you believed your magic had been burned up completely?"
"All magic comes with a price," Emma answered with a sardonic twist to her lips. "I thought losing my magic was that price. I didn't mind the idea too much. I had everything I needed otherwise. A home; my family, finally, after years of wishing and disappointment… and close friends, like you."
Friends? No, that wasn't quite right, Killian decided. Something felt off with that description. It didn't feel like a deliberate lie, and yet it certainly wasn't the truth. Emma was hiding something from him, he realized, without trying to lie to him outright.
Emma continued before he could question her about it. "But my losing my magic wasn't the real price," she said with a regretful shake of her head, "even if I did give it to you by accident rather than burning it up. It was only a consequence. The real price was that you don't remember me, or us, or what we've been through together."
"That's not entirely true," Killian spoke up with a certain amount of chagrin. Emma stared at him in surprise, and he hurried to explain, "Something happened a few moments ago, when I reached for your hand. You were in pain, and I want to make it better, to reassure you that nothing you could say would drive me away…. And I had the strangest feeling that I'd experienced a very similar situation before."
"Déjà vu," Emma murmured, looking interested. Her green eyes were alight with new hope. "Of what? What did you remember?"
"I didn't remember anything, not exactly," he said with a single shake of his head. "It wasn't like the way that it was with Henry, where I recalled specific events. It wasn't as substantial as that. It was more like… not pictures… impressions? Intuition?" He flexed his hand, his jaw clenching in frustration as he struggled to put it in to words. "I just—knew." Glass shattered, splattering wine onto the checkered tablecloth.
Killian stared down at the wreckage of their broken wineglasses in dismay.
"Well," Emma said under her breath as two of the wait staff hurried over to check on them and clean up the mess, "I guess that answers my question about whether or not anything else strange has happened in your presence."
He opened his mouth to object, but their waiter, who had returned with their food and found the table covered in glass and wine stains, directed them to another table so that the staff could clean up the mess properly and dispose of the stained tablecloth.
Scouring his memories of the past several weeks, Killian realized with a sinking feeling in his stomach that there had been a number of odd or unexplained occurrences—a harsh gust of wind whipping through his cabin, where there hadn't been a hint of one before, and the sudden shattering every bit of glass in his room; a wave of warm air, almost like a breeze, filling his cabin when he clinked his cup of rum with Emma's; sparks, white-hot, like lightning, exploding from the strange metal contraptions and overhead lanterns of the hospital room when rage coursed through Killian at the thought that someone in Storybrooke had been tampering with the recovery of his memories; the warm, animating feeling that spread through him while he'd held the flowers that he'd brought for Emma on their first date, and the remarks afterward about the extraordinarily robust smell of the lovely blooms…
"How did this happen?" he said in quiet dismay, after they had been re-seated at a new table and their platters of food arrayed on the table before them. Promising to return with a new basket of breadsticks, since the previous one had been littered with shards of glass, their waiter left, and Killian shook his head. "I mean, I know how it happened in the sense that you overextended yourself, I just don't understand it in the larger sense."
"Philosophically, you mean?" Emma inquired, dishing up some lasagna onto her plate.
"More like mechanically," he disagreed. "What caused your magic to react that way and bind itself to me?"
"Well, ah," Emma took a bite of her lasagna. She looked somewhat embarrassed, even guilty. "No one's really sure," she hedged, after swallowing her food. "But now you see why I need to take lessons from Gold."
"No," he argued in a firm, even voice, "I don't see. Surely there is someone else who could teach you and help you to learn the skill."
"Actually, there is not," she murmured in a tone so low that Killian strained to catch what she was saying. He frowned before he realized that Emma was probably doing it so that the other patrons in the restaurant could not eavesdrop. Given the spectacular scene he'd unintentionally caused only a few moments ago, he could hardly blame her. "Regina lost her magic when she used the Dark Mirror in Neverland so we could defeat Pan, and the fairies have a very limited and finite supply of pixie dust. I don't think they'll be of much help to me. Besides, someone needs to help you learn to control your magic, and if I don't take these lessons from Gold, how can I?"
Killian stared at her, lowering the forkful of pasta that had been on its way to his mouth. "You want to teach me magic?" he blinked, as the full import of her words hit him. He felt frightened for her, angry that she would put herself at risk on his behalf, no matter what the circumstance—but particularly just so that she could help him learn to use magic. "But if you don't know any yourself—" He stopped, inhaling deeply as he tried to calm down. "Emma, do you really think it's wise? How can you help to train me while you're busy learning yourself? How do we even know the type of magic you'll be learning will translate well to teaching me mine?"
"We don't," she admitted with a small shrug of her shoulders, "but we have to try. There are no other options, Killian. Believe me, if there were, I wouldn't be knocking on Gold's door for any help."
Killian was struggling again, feeling out of his depth as he tried to find the words to express what he just knew inside of him. He cared for this woman a great deal. Exactly how much, he was only beginning to suspect. But she meant something to him, and the instinct to protect her was strong. "Emma…"
"The deal's done, Killian. I can't change that part. But I can turn this to our advantage, maybe. Let me try."
He exhaled softly, unconvinced. "How do you mean?" he finally inquired.
"Right now Gold is the only major player when it comes to magic in Storybrooke," she pointed out. "That gives him leverage over the rest of us. And give his penchant for abuse of power, that's not a position we can afford to place him in. We need to learn magic, both of us, to keep him in check."
"Wouldn't it be a simple matter to overpower us?" he considered. "He has centuries of experience."
"If it came down to brute magical strength, yes. But Gold rarely resorts to that if he can avoid it. He wants to wield power, but he also wants to do so with as little headache about it as possible. Deep down, he's still the same coward he's always been. That's where you come in, Killian. You never needed any magic to piss him off or make him sweat. Gold has always seen you as a threat. If you were to learn magic, you would be even doubly so. I'll bet my last dollar that's why he is refusing to teach you magic. Well, that and the fact that he hates you and gets some kind of sick satisfaction out of thwarting you."
Killian inhaled deeply, weighing the pros and cons. He still didn't like any of it, but she had some quite valid points. Did any of them really want to experience life under the cruel thumb of the crocodile?
"Killian, I'd really like you at my side on this," she pleaded. "If my deal with Gold goes south, I need you to be my ace in the hole."
"Your what?"
"Sorry," she apologized. "Common idiom. What I mean to say is that if something goes wrong, and my deal with Gold turns sour, I need you to have my back and take him out. He won't know that you've been taking lessons, and you can provide the element of surprise if necessary."
Killian appreciated her strategy; certainly it was useful to have contingency plans in a situation as risky as this. The face that he was the contingency plan, however, made him uneasy. Still, what choice did they really have? He couldn't think of other workable alternatives in the face of the situation Emma had just described. And magic or no magic, he would certainly do everything within his abilities to ensure Emma's safety.
"When you put it that way," he conceded, "I see your point."
"Then we're agreed?" she clarified. "I take what I learn from my lessons with Gold and teach it to you, so we can circumvent this stranglehold of power he has designs on for Storybrooke?"
"Aye," he said with great reluctance, "for better or worse."
"Hey, either way, we're in this together," Emma reassured him, reaching across the table to take his hand. "And as you once pointed out, we make quite the team. Everything will turn out fine."
"Let us hope you're right," he smiled.
But Killian couldn't help but wonder, as he settled into the rest of their meal and the topic changed to lighter matters, if Gold wasn't anticipating their subterfuge, and they were somehow playing right into his hands.