For a moment, all she sees is blue. Sparkling, churning, living, blue. And then he blinks and she can only hear the rush of air he swallows and releases, in and out, alive. Alive. He is alive.
A thousand thoughts are pummeling her at once and as she tries to sort through them and organize her mind so she can make sense of one single thing she only comes to realize she can't. Everything is flying around warp speed and she's only catching glimpses. Her heart feels as if it is beating unevenly, almost as unsure as the rest of her. But she clings to one very solid fact that slowly lifts her from the shock.
Hook is alive.
He is lying in front of her, blinking up at her in a confused daze. She knows that he's trying to add things up, she can see it in his creased brow and his troubled eyes that are now trained on her. She abruptly remembers the crying, and runs the back of her hand immediately across her cheeks, hopefully too quickly for his still reeling brain to register.
Her own brain still is caught in a stupor, still adding and twisting and figuring, and it presents her with another unhelpful nugget, one that she immediately shoves to the very back of the cloud of confusion.
Later.
There are more important things, pressing matters, and she's sure that everything else can wait because now she's remembering where they are and the situation surrounding them. The dungeon will be raided by monkeys in the next few minutes, and that needed to be dealt with.
But there is only one reason he is alive right now.
"Can you walk?" she asks sharply, pushing back everything bubbling inside her. It can wait. It has to wait.
He is watching her with a strange look somewhere between concern and complete and utter confusion. He begins to lift himself to his elbows, cringing with the effort.
"How," he pauses, taking a sudden sharp breath. She knows he's hurt himself and his pain reaches her as well, stabbing her heart. She holds out a careful supporting hand, touching his shoulder as he pulls himself into a sitting position. "How'd you find me, love?" he finally finishes, and even pulls off a halfhearted smirk.
"It wasn't hard," she answers, rolling her eyes. She knows he's tucked a question within the question. He's smart and he knows that something is going on. But she can't bring herself to confront that. "Have a nice nap?" she adds instead.
He glares at her.
He's shifting into a crouch, trying to pull himself to his feet. As soon as she realizes it she rises to her feet, offering him a hand that he takes gratefully in his own calloused palm. He holds tightly and pulls hard, cringing all the way up. His hook, she notes, is not on his opposite arm.
"Alright?" she asks carefully, releasing his hand as soon as he's stable. Hurt flashes just behind his eyes and she chews on the inside of her lip.
"Never better," he assures her behind a grimace.

"Good," she reaches to her sheath, bringing out the second sword they'd brought and pressing it into his palm, before drawing her own weapon and turning to face David, relieved to no longer stare into the confusion and suspicion in Hook's eyes.
"Which way out?" she asks, staring hard at her father and hoping he only answers her question. They don't have time for anything else. She can't face the anything else in so little time. She still feels faintly numb from the utter terror she'd been in only moments earlier, and she just can't allow her mind to wander because she knows it'd never come back.
"We have to take the second route, they're coming from where we came in," he mutters, motioning to the right. He then glances over her shoulder at Hook, "Good to see you again, mate," he says, then looks back at Emma with a touch of confusion but compliance. He doesn't prod her, but continues to the both of them, "Follow me, and keep your swords ready."
Hook motions for Emma to go ahead of him but she shakes her head. She doesn't want him to fall behind, or injure himself without her knowing. She doesn't want to let him out of her sight again. He hesitates and she can see the uneasiness in his eyes. He's still confused, still debating if he can trust her. Debating whether or not it's a trick, she realizes with a bit of a start. Her heart contracts slightly, and she bites her lip. But finally he sighs and gives in, following David out of the cell and only giving her a small backwards glance. She turns at his heels, hands shaking as she reaches for her sword. He's limping, and she's sure he's hurting much worse than he is letting on and all she can think is what a stubborn jerk he is.
They hurry uninterrupted for a while, weaving through the halls that David seems to navigate easily. She can hear the monkeys following at their heels, but they seem to drift further and further behind with every corner. She feels her guard going down, just slightly, clouded by all the thoughts and confusion she has shoved to the back of her mind. But then she's watching him and he's is moving with more stiffness the further they go and she wishes she could reach out and offer to help him but she knows it would be strange and awkward for both of them. She can't just watch him suffer (she won't admit its making her miserable) so she steps forward, coming in pace beside him.
"Swan," he mutters in greeting, and his voice is pained and breathy. He doesn't turn to face her, eyes trained firmly on David just ahead of them.
"You're going to collapse," she answers, struggling to keep her own voice steady.
She wishes she could hide from him, she knows that her attempts to camouflage her fear are lost on him. Wishes that he couldn't read every inch of her. He still doesn't look at her, but the power isn't only one way. It isn't hard to tell that he knows she hasn't told him everything. Her heart flips uncomfortably.
"You haven't much faith in me, love," he says, then finally looks at her with a halfhearted smirk.
"God, this isn't a joke!" she snaps, far louder than she intended. Both men tense, David glancing worriedly over his shoulder. When she sees she's beside Hook he looks quickly away. She feels warmth rising in her cheeks and forces her voice back down. "Do you want to get out of here or not?"
For just a moment the fear flashes across his face. Frightened and naive and strangely lost. But immediately he covers it up, hides it behind his mask and shoves his walls up in her face.
"When have you ever known me to value my life?" he asks, and she wants to punch him in the face and suddenly it's only anger bubbling up inside of her, eating at her sympathy and making her skin feel itchy and hot and dammit she wants to punch him.
She tries to contain herself, she really does, but her attempts don't even begin to hamper the rage that is encompassing her. All her emotions from the whole month— worrying for him, fearing he was dead, breaking in to find he was dead, and the part of saving him she still refused to think about— it finally hits the roof and so she doesn't hesitate, she can't hesitate, as she turns on him and grabs his shoulders, pushing him to the nearest wall, hard. He humphs in pain and her heart pounds harder but she's already going now.
"Don't you dare," she hisses angrily, face just a hair from his. Her sword is still his her hand, flat pressed sideways against his chest, and she half notes that somewhere in her rage she'd been lucky not to accidentally slay him.
She can feel his heart racing under her hand and he's too shocked and likely in too much pain to respond, cringing slightly away from her and the sharp side of her sword that is fairly close to his neck and she can't bring herself to care. "Don't you dare act like your damn life isn't important."
"Emma—" David has stopped now, and she can feel his worried eyes on them. She ignores him, attention trained entirely on the man she has pinned between her and the wall, faintly aware of the fact that their noses are nearly brushing and that his lips are right there.
"Since when has my life meant anything to you?" he asks, voice strangely meek.
He meets her eyes and she's shocked at the coolness within them. She struggles to come up with a response that doesn't mean anything but she can't. Every word seems so mercilessly heavy and her mouth refuses to form anything. She very near growls as shoves off of him, continuing down the hall without allowing herself to look back. She hears him stumble slightly and her stomach flips but she forces herself to keep going. David isn't moving so she passes him as well, but then he snaps out of it and continues beside her.
"Emma…" he says again, soft enough that Hook can't hear. She ignores him, but he continues anyway. "Emma, don't you think you overreacted just a bit?" she walks faster, but he keeps up.
"Which way?" she mutters grudgingly when they reach a fork. David motions left, turning, and she follows.
"Look, it's natural to be scared-"
"I'm not scared," she says firmly. David takes the hint to drop it.

The rescue team hasn't met up with Robin and his men, as the plan was to each take separate routes back to the castle. No one says it aloud, but it's a clear tactic to minimize casualties that has Emma staying watch every night, worried and hoping the others have made it out alright.
When trekking or setting up camp doesn't take up every ounce of their concentration, Emma and Hook make a point of ignoring each other. She isn't sure who initiated it but she has no interest in speaking with him anyway. She knows that it's petty and childish, but at least it keeps her mind busy with something. Or rather, keeps it off of something else.
David hasn't prodded her about it since the castle. But she sees it in his eyes, as he gives her very frequent very worried glances, often mixed with just a touch of disapproval. It isn't a mystery what it is about, but he seems to keep his mouth shut, knowing it is her secret to share, and hers alone. Or so she tells herself.
But the art of not-thinking about something is contradictory in it's own practice, and more often than not she finds herself stuck in the fog of that cell, thinking through it over and over again and finding herself unable to come up with a solid answer, or a clear direction. It frustrates her to no end, that she can sit there for hours considering one single piece of information, and get nothing from it.
Part of her, a part that she promptly cuts from the fog-thoughts, knows that it's all simple. Far too simple. It knows that information doesn't belong only to her and that there is only one place to take it, only one answer.
She's wandering, looking for firewood, when the simple-answer decides to take matters into it's own hands.
"Swan?"
Her arms are full of twigs and branches that scrape at her skin, and she's reaching for another when she hears him. She briefly considers ignoring him and going on about her job, but something in his tone stops her, and then something else twisting uncomfortably within her makes her turn and face him.
"Hook?" his name rolls off her tongue with a strange comforting ease, and she finds herself staring up into his uncharacteristically naive eyes. She catches a slight sparkle within them as he registers her response, as he realizes she no longer is giving him the silent treatment. But it's gone as quickly as it comes.
He doesn't speak at first, just steps a bit closer to her. His eyes run cautiously over her, studying her. She expects her annoyance to flare, to take over and for her to snap at him and him to snap back and an argument to start all over again. But it doesn't.
Instead an unfamiliar warmth touches her, and then she's waiting. Waiting to hear him because dammit it'd been too long.
"I just…" he pauses, eyes traveling uncomfortably about the forest. They land on the firewood in her arms and horror in his own bad manners touches the churning in his eyes as he holds out his arms and takes a half step towards her. "Let me take some of that for you, love," he offers and now meets her eyes again, gently.
She shakes her head and shifts the wood in her arms, holding it nearer to her.
"Tell me what you came to tell me," she answers firmly.
She's kept it at bay but now the thoughts are piercing her mind, the ones that she doesn't want to hear. She hasn't spoken to him and now its something like salt in a wound, but the pain simply isn't there. Like all the hypothetical thoughts she's considered the last few days are being set to reality and it's still the first few seconds before the test is really put into affect and dammit she's being an idiot.
He's talking now, but she isn't listening. She can't listen. Her head is full of buzzing, and guilt is nipping at the pit of her stomach and she can't take it. She can't do it. She feels slightly angry and it takes her a moment to realize that the upset isn't directed at him. It's more internal and scathing. Her body tenses and she finally sees him.
"Hook," she says, and her voice is so soft but he immediately falls silent.
His eyes study hers and wait for her but don't push her and she takes a gentle breath, only to pause and slowly let it out. She's trying to prepare her next words, to ready them in her mind, but there is no way to. She doesn't know exactly what to say, much less how to say it.
"Emma," he says, voice cutting into the dead silence she'd hardly realized they were in. Her heart shudders, and she didn't realize how he'd said her name, like his tongue could break it, until now. He's still watching her, eyes still gentle. "Perhaps if I finish?"
His eyes are bearing into her, reading her, and she's not sure she expected anything different, She nods, because that's all she can manage.
He hesitates, shoulders slightly squared, with those young and innocent eyes that she's almost come to expect. But then he takes a breath.
"In the castle, when we fought…" he pauses again, eyes drifting to the forest floor and back to her, "It was wrong of me to say such things at all, much less when you'd just saved my arse."
Her heart races for a moment, and her brain panics, flitting from moment to moment and trying to remember when—
"I reckon you put a deal of good men in dangers way for me and it was a right inconvenience and I've been nothing but ungrateful," and she can take a breath and try to hold his gaze.
"We would've done it for anyone, Hook," she tries to let him keep going but can't help herself, "You endangered yourself so the rest of the town could get to safety, did you really think we'd just leave you to die?"
And that was the wrong thing to say, because now her stomach is reeling and she feels like she's going to be sick, remembering his body lying there. Thinking he'd never tease her like an idiot again. The dread and the numbness is there and then a touch of the need and she feels like she's in that cell, like she never escaped. She remembers lowering her head to his, hoping on all things that his damn eyes would just open.
She must've paled or froze because when her eyes focus again he's right there, touching her arm, looking into her eyes with those deep blue orbs that know everything about her without trying. Her heart is racing and she faintly tries to pull the firewood closer to her but that's when she realizes that she's dropped it. She doesn't care.
And the secret doesn't belong to her.
"Killian," she says, and his face pales before she realizes that she's used his real name.
But she can't stop, she has to keep going until she says it because otherwise she never will. He's searching her eyes for anything, rubbing her arm gently with his thumb and she doesn't think he realizes he's doing it.
"I haven't… I haven't told you everything," she continues, and pauses, and curses under her breath because she is not a girl who stumbles over words and because his brow is lined with worry that she didn't want. She takes a breath, reminding herself that she's an adult and that this is dumb. That she can handle a little crush.
But it's so much more than a crush.
"Killian," she starts again, now determined to finish. She doesn't like the slight shake in her voice or the unsureness in his eyes but they are all factors and she has to work around it or lie to herself and to Hook forever.
"When we found you in the cells, you…" she glances at him one more time, because once she says it there's no going back. He only urges her on, "You… you were," she chokes over the next word despite how hard she fights it, "dead," and now her damn lip is quivering and her eyes are wet and there's a tear and she can't even be angry at herself anymore because it's that image again, of him so lifeless and gone gone gone.
She can only just see his blurry expression through her tears, and the confused creases in his brow are deeper and his eyes wider and he wants to pull her in, to comfort her, but his courtesy gets the better of him.
"I didn't know what to do and David didn't know what to do and I wanted to bring you to Regina…" she chokes and this is the second time in three short days that she's crying over him, and she's fighting so hard to stop.
Now he can't take it anymore and gently pulls her against him, running his hand cautiously up and down her back. His nub brushes her wrist (as his hook is long gone, left somewhere in the shadows of the castle) and she can feel how tense he is. But being in his arms is shockingly soothing and she presses her forehead to his shoulder and forces herself to curb the tears.
He's here. He is here now. He is holding you.
"David suggested something else," she keeps her voice soft, now, partially because they're close and partially because she's afraid anything loud will bring back the flood of tears.
"What did he suggest, love?" he asks, letting her go ever so reluctantly. She feels cold, looking up at him, his eyes narrowed with what must be concern. "No deals, I trust?" and she shakes her head and he goes back to being confused and watching her.
She's scared. Her heart is beating a rapid staccato and her lip is numb where she's biting it and she can truly admit that she's scared, and she doesn't want to be but she is. And that's when he takes her hand, softly. She won't look at him, sure she'll break into tears again if she does, but he gives her a reassuring squeeze.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't wish to, love."
She can't help but look up at him with a touch of shock. She's sure he doesn't know the significance, not exactly, but he clearly knows the stress it's putting on her and that's enough for him, enough to make him okay with not knowing. Her heart still races, but the scared part of her, the one grabbing at her tongue, is gone instantly.
It's their secret.
"A kiss," her voice is so soft, and his expression doesn't change, "I… True Love Kissed you back to life," she repeats, and feels herself tense away from him as she waits for his reaction.
"Darling, I'm quite sure that True Loves Kiss isn't meant to be used as a verb," he responds after the pause, and looks at her so seriously and she wonders if the gravity of the situation has hit him. But he won't stop staring at her with that badly faked seriousness and his face refuses to crack and he has such a strong will.
"Damn you," she manages as she breaks into soft laughter, and his face finally splits into a smile upon seeing her own.
She slowly stops laughing but keeps smiling and she wants to press him, to get a serious answer from him but she can't bring herself to pull the smile from him face. She isn't used to seeing it, not a real one. But after only a few moments it's melting away on it's own.
"For the record, Emma," and her heart still pounds with how he says her name, "I didn't require a kiss to know you loved me" he isn't trying to read her, he just knows her.
She tries to think of a snarky retort, but she can't find anything and now her mind is so clear and they are so at ease and he is so alive and so many realizations are hitting her all at once that it just slips off of her tongue as quickly as it forms in her mind.
"For the record, Pirate," she mimics, but it doesn't come out as teasingly as she intended, "I didn't either."