Characters: Emma, Captain Hook

Description: Snow White and Charming stay behind on Neverland after Henry is rescued. Hook tries to help Emma pick up the pieces. And not crash her car.

If You Were Mine

"Goodbye Dad."

David kissed the top of her head as she pulled away from the hug. "I'm sorry."

"No, not after everything." He had been prepared to sacrifice his life to get her son back. She looked up into eyes that matched her own. "Thank you."

He hugged her again and Emma had to force herself to be strong; Neverland had shattered her already weak walls. When his arms let go of her she took a shaky breath in an attempt to fortify herself before turning to her mother.

Mary Margaret's hands gripped her hard on both shoulders, fingers digging into her back. "We will see you again, do you hear me? We will find our way back to you. Always."

She shut her eyes against the threatening tears and nodded. Her mother hugged her tight and Emma clutched onto her, afraid to let go for fear that her knees would buckle under the weight of pain and sadness.

"Emma, we've got to go."

Neal's voice cut through the damp air but Mary Margaret's hold on her only tightened. "I love you," she whispered.

"I love you too," Emma managed to choke out. "Both of you."

She felt like she were in a daze. As though it wasn't really her who was walking away from her parents, joining her son and the others on the edge of the shoreline, and flying away from the wretched island that had cost her so much.

Emma held tightly onto Henry's hand as they followed the stars back to Storybrooke. If there were tears streaming down her face, the wind dried them too fast for anyone to notice.

An uneasy peace settled in Storybrooke as those who had returned tried to sort out how the island had changed them. Hook occupied his time by fixing up the Jolly Roger but the job was slow with only one good hand and he spent more time at Granny's and the Rabbit Hole than he'd care to admit. As days turned into weeks, he turned his attention to trying to get closer to Emma, receiving for his trouble only a few eye-rolls and even fewer smiles. It was lucky for him that she was a creature of habit. Storybrooke's saviour could usually be found in one of three places: the sheriff's office, her loft apartment, and the counter at Granny's.

Rumplestiltskin taught her how to imbue an object with a message and the cheerful mermaid thief offered to make weekly trips back to Neverland so that Emma and Henry could send messages to and receive them from her parents. The two had selected some small figurine that was apparently called an "R2D2" for the task and he refused to let it grate on him that only Baelfire seemed to appreciate the joke.

Together with the queen, she and him had worked out a rotating custody arrangement, though Henry spent most nights in the loft with his birth mother. On Wednesdays he ate supper with Regina, on Thursdays with Bae, and at the suggestion of the cricket-man that Cora had kidnapped the four of them all ate together on Sunday – more often than not the meal was a dish called "lasagna" and served at Regina's.

He started his own "Sunday Lasagna" tradition and quite enjoyed the diner's version, though he still couldn't develop a taste for the jiggly substance called "Jell-O". (He and Tinkerbell flung it at each other when Granny wasn't watching.) He thought perhaps he might enjoy the taste of it more were it served by the werewolf, but the lass had begun helping Emma at the sheriff's station.

He wouldn't deny her the help, despite the stubborn refusal to accept it from him. Her parents' friends all stepped carefully around the subject of the prince and Snow White, unsure how much Emma wanted to talk about it. That answer came loud and clear one morning at the diner when Bae – Neal, he corrected – not-so-subtly tried to get her to open up whilst Henry was in the washroom. She had shut him down on the spot and was out the door before he could even spit out an apology. Hook tried to take solace in the fact that his romantic competitor was faring no better than he, but the truth was he'd rather she let somebody, anybody, in rather than no one at all.

Two weeks after they'd raised Pan's shadow up on the Jolly Roger and sailed through the skies as he and Liam had centuries before, Hook decided that he'd given her more than enough space. It was time he make his move.

"Seriously?" Emma jerked open the door to her yellow "bug" and stood with her hands on her hips glaring down at him. "What the hell are you doing in my car?"

He shifted in the driver's seat and gave her his most charming grin. "I've decided I want to learn how to operate one of these contraptions and as you're one of the few in town who've had their skills vetted by something other than a curse I thought you'd make an excellent choice of instructor."

The sheriff leaned against the open door, unimpressed. "I don't have time for this."

"Come on now, let me drive you to the station. It'll be fun!"

Rolling her eyes, she walked around to get in on the other side of the automobile, muttering under her breath all the while. She buckled herself in and waited until he followed suit. "If you kill us, you're a dead man."

"Truer words have never been spoken. You'll be safe with me, love."

She handed him a set of keys. "Put the key in the ignition, turn it away from you for a second, then let go."

"Right." He tossed the keys around in his hand once or twice before biting his lip and looking at her. "What's the ignition?"

As it turned out he was terrible at driving a car. Emma was too busy yelling meaningless things at him like "Clutch!", "Brake!", and various numbers of gears to hold up her end of any attempted flirting. When he finally parked the vehicle outside of the station and shut the engine off she grabbed the keys out of his hand before he had a chance to offer them back.

"Well that was an adventure," he attempted with a grin and raise of his eyebrows.

"THAT... was a one-time thing." Hook ran his thumb across his lower lip with a smirk then got out to open the door for the rattled and glaring sheriff.

He drove her to work every day for the rest of the week. And the week after that.

The following Thursday her car was gone when he arrived. Hook walked the six blocks to the station only to find out from Ruby that she hadn't shown up yet. His next stop was the school. Henry had spent the night at Regina's, but he caught the two of them before the kids headed inside.

"Try the well," the lad suggested. "She likes to go there sometimes."

Getting to the well, as it turned out, was quite the walk. But he passed her parked vehicle along the way so at least he wasn't taking a hike in the woods for his own damned well-being. The path opened into a small clearing and he stopped just on the edge of it to watch her. She had her back to him, her arms resting on top of the moss-covered well as she gazed into it. A more poetic man might have composed sonnets about the way her hair cascaded down her back in loose curls, filtered sunlight making it shine like gold. Hook simply took a moment to stare before clearing his throat.

"Heard I might find you out here."

Emma jumped and attempted to shrug off her surprise by turning her back to him as he approached. "Henry?"

"Aye."

They stood together in silence for a while, she looking down into the well and he looking at her. "Someone told me once that if anything has magic, it's water."

"Like the spring that cured your father."

The sheriff shook her head slightly against the memory. "This is where we came through, after taking the compass back from you and Cora."

He raised an eyebrow and cast a glance down into the well's inky depths. "It's a portal?"

"No." She took a drink from a cup which he hoped she had brought with her before offering it to him. Hook tried a sip and winced at the lack of alcohol but she wasn't watching. "The plaque says it brings back what's been lost."

"Well if I grow a new set of fingers overnight you'll be the first to know," he said, setting the glass down on the edge of the well.

A corner of her mouth tried to smile. To hell with it, he thought.

"Listen, Emma, I know what it is to be alone. After three hundred years it's something of a natural state. But pushing everyone away like you've been doing… it can't last. Sooner or later you've got to let someone in."

"I let them in. And look where it got me."

"It got Henry back. It got all of us here. What you're doing now– it's not fair to you and it's not fair to your boy."

"Leave my son out of this." Her head whipped around and she looked him in the eye for the first time. "He is all I have. He needs me to be strong for him."

"He needs you, aye, but there're different kinds of strength, love."

"What the hell do you know about what my son needs?"

"Less than you, to be sure. But if there's one thing you hero-types have taught me it's that love is not weakness. Nor is mourning its loss."

"I didn't lose it!" she cried, throwing her hands up. "You know what? No. And what difference does it make anyway?"

"You've lost something you never thought you'd have, but your parents are still out there, they still love you. You will see them again."

"When? When I'm old enough to be their parent?"

He tilted his head, considering. "Well that would certainly add a new twist to the family tree."

Emma shut her eyes but the sad laugh escaped her lips anyway. "How are you so sure?"

He stepped towards her, close enough that he could feel her breath on his skin. Hook reached out to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear, letting his fingers linger in her locks. "If it were me, if you were mine… I'd cross all the realms to get back to where you were. I'd find a way."

For a moment he thought he'd gotten through to her; thought that she saw him and everyone else she'd been pushing away. Her lips parted slightly, invitingly, he let himself believe. Then she took a step back, crossing her arms over her chest and breaking whatever moment they shared.

"I do better alone."

Damn, but she could be stubborn. "Right. Well, you know where to find me."

Hook dropped his hand and turned away to start the trek back to town, sticks and leaves crunching beneath his boots. He refused to look back at her. She had the space she wanted, and he was determined to keep a scrap of his pride.

"Killian. Wait."

He stopped dead in his tracks. A part of him was surprised she even knew his name. It sounded like the promise of heaven coming from her lips. Hook struggled to reign in his hope and turned slowly to see her heading down the path towards him. She walked right up to him, as close as they had been before, though her eyes were looking anywhere but his face as he watched her search for what she wanted to say.

"I'm waiting, love."

Emma looked up at him from under her lashes and before he could make a quip her lips were on his. Their kiss on the island had been greedy and desperate, an explosion of her fighting her attraction and him chasing after it. This one had the passion of a slow burn, softer and less hurried but just as heated. She sucked on his upper lip as he pulled her tighter to him, the flat of his hook pressed against her back. There was no duel for power in this kiss, no dare between them. Just her lips on his and the world beneath them.

She broke the kiss but not the embrace, pulling back to look at him as her fingers grabbed onto the high collar of his coat. "How did you get out here anyway?"

He raised an eyebrow. "I walked, since you don't trust me to operate one of your mechanized carriages on my own."

Emma smiled, full and true. "Come on then, " she said, "You can drive me back. You need the practice."

Had to get this finished before it gets cannonballed in an episode or two. Emma has curls because blow-dryers exist in Storybrooke and I miss them something fierce.