A/N: I never intended to do a full-length fic for this fandom, due to my track record. But I hit a hard dry spell and asked for prompts, and one of them was a masquerade ball is being hosted by prince charming and snow white in their kingdom. princess emma is there, and masked hook is also there, for a (nefarious?) reason. And I liked it. And it careened out of my control. And so here we go.
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fifteen men on a dead man's chest
yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum
drink and the devil had done for the rest
yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum
Her plan had been a great one.
Emma, as a general rule, loathed formal parties, but her parents had decided that her twenty-second birthday would be celebrated in style, with a large ball that ninety percent of the kingdom would attend and a cake that was taller than she was — and she could hardly tell them no, especially since they had (smartly) sent the invitations before informing her of their intentions. But she'd had an idea, a great idea, how to get out of it:
"How about we make it a masquerade ball?" she'd suggested, and her mother had gotten really excited about it because apparently she'd always secretly wanted to go to a masquerade, and Emma had plans of wearing a really nondescript dress and mask and just kind of… slipping out the back door when no one was watching. It would have been hours before anyone would have noticed her absence (if they noticed at all), and she would have been able to go out on the town on her own (for once) and get merrily drunk with potentially disreputable people for her birthday, and it would have been fantastic.
And her godmother had completely called her intentions and retaliated by buying her a fabulous crimson dress for her birthday — explicitly to wear to the ball — complete with an elaborate (and expensive) mask. It was magnificently manipulative: not only would Emma feel obligated to wear the outfit (which she, traitorously, admitted would look downright sexy on her) but she would also stand out to the point that she couldn't escape unnoticed.
The jerk.
(At least she got the satisfaction of seeing her father turn about as red as the dress when he saw it, and realized that he couldn't say anything about it or try to stop her from wearing it because it was a birthday present from Red. And also she was a twenty-two year old woman, but he hadn't quite accepted that fact yet.)
As such, it was with more than a little reluctance that she made her entrance into the ballroom — discreetly, because what was the fun in the unmasking if you'd already entered like the princess? — and made straight for the wine, because she had never promised anything about staying remotely sober.
And that was where things started to go downhill, although in retrospect she figured that it was better sooner than later.
He was dressed in deceptively simple clothes, with an unadorned mask and a red vest a couple of shades darker than her dress, and she was almost positive she had never seen him before. He turned to her when she reached the table and immediately reached for a second glass of wine, offering it to her with a bit of a bow that sent her stomach dropping through the floor.
(He also had really pretty blue eyes and that fact was, at the moment and in her current mood, far more important to her than the alarm bells ringing in her head.)
"Hi," she said dumbly, and he smiled, taking her hand and kissing it gallantly.
"Good evening, my dear," he replied in a low voice. "To whom do I have the pleasure of introducing myself?"
(Well-dressed. Stunning eyes, perfect amount of scruff, unfair body. And also articulate, as well.
Where the hell had he come from and how could she get there?)
"Ah-ah-ah," she countered with a smile, and was really proud of her poker face, "the unmasking isn't until midnight. That's the whole fun of a masquerade," she added conspiratorially. His smile became more of a smirk, and maybe a bit… dangerous; she noticed that he hadn't released her hand. The alarms went off a little louder.
"Point taken, milady," he murmured, raising her hand up as if to kiss it again. "In that case, may I have this dance?"
No, a voice in the back of her head screamed, stay away from this man, he's too slick to be true.
"Of course."
.
"So tell me," she said softly, trying to ignore the heat of his hand on her waist or his breath on her neck, "what are you doing here?"
"Enjoying a dance with a lovely woman at the celebration of the princess's birthday," he answered easily, "what else?"
He seemed so perfect — sexy, gentleman, sexy, articulate, sexy, good dancer, sexy — and genuine, but something about him still set off those alarms, and Emma had learned (the hard way) to always trust them.
"How old is she now?" she asked, feigning curiosity.
"Eighteen, I believe," he replied, just a shade too quickly.
Her age had been listed on every invitation.
"That sounds right," she mused instead. "Shouldn't she be married by now, or something?"
"Well, the king is a vocal supporter of true love," he said, shrugging. "Perhaps he places his daughter's happiness above politics."
"That doesn't seem like a good way to run a country," she muttered disdainfully, and he smiled.
"It's not my throne," he said, and that, at least, sounded truly innocent. "And he still has years before a lack of heirs may become a problem," he added, causing her to suppress a wince. "After all, there is something to be said for romance, wouldn't you say, love?"
"I'm not what you'd call a romantic," she replied honestly, and he stepped back a bit; the look in his eyes might have been sympathetic or patronizing or disbelieving — the mask made his expression hard to read.
"My dear, I've found that everyone becomes a romantic in… certain situations," he said ambiguously, pulling her a little closer and spiking her heart rate. "Perhaps you simply," he murmured, mouth brushing against her ear, "haven't found yourself in the correct one."
Half of her wanted to call him out on the obvious seduction, but it was working magnificently on the other half.
He was just so damn beautiful — it would never have worked if he didn't have those — those eyes.
But the rational part of her brain seized control again in a flash:
Why was he trying to seduce her?
He had crashed this party for some reason, and that reason certainly hadn't been so benign as bedding a pretty stranger — why waste his time on her if he had other plans up his sleeve? Unless he actually did know who she was, and she was the plan.
She decided not to panic, to play along for the moment — after all, the night was still young, and it was possible he was waiting for something and had just decided to dance with her while he did so. And whether or not his plan involved her, if she went along with it, she could stop it.
"If I didn't know any better," she whispered lightly against his ear, mimicking his tactic, "I would say you were trying to seduce me."
"And what, precisely," he replied softly, hand sliding slowly and subtly up her waist to her ribcage, "makes you think I'm not?"
"You don't even know what I look like," she challenged a little desperately, and she felt him smirk.
"I fail to see how any flaw your mask may conceal would change the assets your dress scarcely does," he murmured, fingers lightly tracing circles against her ribs, "although what I see of your face suggests unparalleled beauty."
"You are smooth," she breathed, trying to stop her hands from shaking. Either she was in way over her head or she was going to drag him to a broom closet and make a scandal out of her birthday party, or both.
"And you're trembling."
Too smooth.
"I'm also not that easy," she said bluntly, louder, and stepped away from him entirely, smirking at the confusion all over his body language. "Thank you for the dance."
She walked away before he could say anything else, and maybe make her resolve crack.
.
Emma almost confided in someone about the ominous stranger, but couldn't quite find it in herself to — her sense of danger just couldn't overrule the (large) part of her that desperately wanted to handle this one on her own.
She was twenty-two years old, and she'd been a sheltered princess for most of that time, except when she had sneaked out and gotten into trouble — but even then, she'd always been The Princess, and there was only so much harm that could befall her in her own realm. She'd grown up on stories of heroic princes and daring princesses, but in her experience, royal life was more diplomacy than swordplay.
But this was a chance to actually do something, prove herself, even though no one really seemed to think she had anything to prove, except Emma.
Her mother was a formidable archer and had survival skills that were frankly disconcerting, and her father was an expert swordsman who had killed dragons — dragons — and her godmother was a werewolf and Emma… had really great penmanship.
She'd trained for things, she could use a sword (a bit) and shoot a bow (much better) and make use of hunting and throwing knives (to a degree that worried her father deeply), but she'd never had the chance to actually test any of those skills in the real world, always locked up in practice rooms.
At least she could really kill a straw dummy.
No, the stranger was Emma's quarry, and she would deal with him on her own.
.
This was probably not her best idea ever.
"So you think me a scoundrel, do you?" he said, leaning casually against the wall with a tiny, mocking smirk.
"You don't really hide it well," she replied coolly, crossing her arms and shifting her footing uncomfortably as his eyes flicked down a bit, either to her lips or her neckline (and either would be somewhat unwelcome and immensely gratifying).
"What gives me away?" he asked, but in such a tone that suggested she was somehow wrong and he was only asking so he could refute her points.
"You're too slick," she answered, shrugging carelessly like she wasn't starting to really worry about her immediate future; something about him was both magnetic and malignant, making Emma feel vaguely like she was trying to sail past a siren. "And you weren't invited to this party, or else you'd know how old the princess really is."
He tilted his head, calculating and serious. "And?"
She frowned; she didn't have many explicit reasons. "Call it a hunch," she replied quietly. "I have a good instinct for this kind of thing."
"And yet you've not alerted any guards to my evil presence," he said, stepping forward so his face was just inches from hers. "You come to confront the mysterious stranger yourself — are you so arrogant as to believe I would be no threat to you, or merely a foolhardy girl who hasn't thought her plan through to completion?"
She bristled at the last, and drew herself up taller, even though she was still a good six inches shorter than him and could never adequately mimic his intimidating aura. "I know you're a threat," she replied evenly, "and I know what I'm doing. We're in a crowded place, lots of swords and noble gentlemen who'll swoop to my rescue if you try anything. But I'm not looking for a fight," she continued, forcing herself to remain calm and composed. "I want answers, that's all."
"The threat of lawful retribution is implicit in your questions," he countered, smiling a bit condescendingly and raising her hackles further. "Who am I, what am I doing here, what am I… after," he parroted, with a disconcerting emphasis on 'after' that made her think, again, that the princess was his target. She hoped he hadn't figured out who she was yet. "All queries for a suspected malefactor, and yet I can't think of a crime I've committed sufficient to lend you such mistrust."
His words only solidified her conviction that he was bad news.
But Emma was on thin enough ice as it was; better to back off now, before she plunged into the water. She took a deep breath and looked away. "You're right," she grumbled reluctantly. "Maybe I'm just paranoid," she added in a low mutter, as if only to herself.
He grinned, easy and benign enough to make her think that maybe she really was just being paranoid. "No harm done, lass," he said, running his hand down the length of her arm to take her own. "Although I'm afraid I'm not generally a particularly forgiving man, perhaps I could be persuaded to forget this… indiscretion with another dance."
He wants you where he can see you, that voice in the back of her head whispered. He wants to make sure you don't go to any guards.
"How generous," she replied flatly, raising an eyebrow, but let him lead her out to the dance floor anyway.
.
He disappeared as midnight approached, just as she was starting to deeply suspect he would, dissolve into the crowd and wait for the unmasking so he could move on the right person; at least, she figured, it meant that he didn't know who she was, or he would've kept up the seduction act to get her alone.
…or else he'd already left to enact some other plan that had nothing to do with her.
Shit.
Could she let him potentially get away with something terrible by banking on the assumption that it really was All About Emma? Or walk herself right into danger by banking on the assumption that a sinister, mysterious, certainly-up-to-no-good stranger wouldn't be going after the princess for ransom money?
(There was, of course, a solution to the problem, but she had already decided that, dammit, this was her job and she would either do it by herself or screw it all up by herself. She was so sick of being careful.)
Emma never went anywhere unarmed, especially when she was going into crowded places — a habit she had picked up from her ever-practical mother (Father tended to be a bit overly optimistic) — but her dress hadn't given her many options for concealment. She had been forced to go to the ball with only two knives: one hidden her bodice against her ribcage and one strapped to her thigh, both light and thin and better for throwing than close combat.
But they would have to do.
She was pretty sure he wasn't in the ballroom anymore, so she slipped out into the halls and, thinking like a criminal who wanted to see the party without being seen, made for the kitchens: they had plenty of doors with one-way screens so the servants could watch banquets and bring dishes out at the right time. It had creeped Emma out relentlessly as a child, and it still made her uncomfortable — she hated the thought of people spying on her without her knowledge.
She rethought her plan not three steps from the door: every cook and servant knew who she was and would recognize her, mask or no, and give her away to the man if he was there.
Luckily (relatively) she didn't have to come up with another plan.
"You really are unreasonably obsessed with me, aren't you, love?" a voice murmured from terrifyingly close to her ear, sending a jolt of panic through her. She rallied herself, whirling around and not bothering to hide the shock and fright his sudden appearance had caused.
"What makes you think I'm looking for you?" she asked, trying hard to sell disgust and incredulity, and hopefully not failing as badly as she thought she was. He had done away with the mask, she noticed, and it suddenly occurred to her that most people, if taking a break from the party, would also have taken off their mask… unless they had something to hide.
"Call it a… hunch," he replied mockingly, leaning against the wall and looking her over lasciviously, making something inside of her whimper desperately. "What else would you be looking for?"
"The kitchens," she answered like it was obvious, crossing her arms. "I wanted to ask the cooks about one of the dishes."
"Surely they're rather busy, wouldn't you think?"
"Yeah," she scoffed, "busy watching the ball. All the food's been cooked and served, and it's only just starting to get time to clean up. They want to see the unmasking as much as everyone else. Although I see you've ruined the surprise."
"What purpose is there in wearing a mask with no one to see it?" he challenged, getting up even closer to her and touching her mask lightly, something glinting in his eyes.
Shit. Shit. He was onto her.
"I've made it this far," she answered, shrugging. "Taking off and putting on this mask would do bad things to my hair, you know."
"You don't strike me as a particularly fashion-concerned lady," he said, fingers moving to touch a lock of her hair, "nor do I believe your hairstyle is one to be particularly affected by a mask."
He was right; she had railed against her mother's attempts to do anything dramatic to her hair, and as such, it was more or less just doing its own thing, albeit cleanly and a bit more curly than usual. Taking off the mask wouldn't do a damn thing to it.
And she had been proud of that excuse, too.
"You'd be surpr — " she started, but the noise from the ball was quieting and it hit her how very close midnight was. She was expected.
"Very eager to do this unmasking thing properly, aren't you, my dear?" he said softly, hand trailing down to her neck in what might have been a caress or a threat; either way, she stepped back from it and swatted his hand away. "And quite nervous all of a sudden," he added, barely above a whisper.
He knew. And she was the target. And she had walked right into him. And she would have been fine if she hadn't done anything and just hung out with her dad like she had done for every birthday party until she was fourteen.
…and damn if this wasn't the most exhilarating feeling she'd ever experienced.
She met his eyes and smiled brilliantly. "That's how this works, isn't it? Everyone's wanting to see the birthday girl, know if maybe they've shared a dance with the future queen."
Two could play this veiled threat game — reminding him that everyone would be expecting to see her presently would force him to let her go; it would be downright stupid to kidnap someone right when the maximum possible number of people were looking for her.
"Is this a possibility for you?" he asked, voice lighter and amused but eyes no less predatory. "Dance with many women at this ball? If so, it's a pity I missed that."
"Of course," she replied cheerfully. "I'll dance with just about anyone," she added impishly, and he raised an eyebrow (his eyes were even prettier now she could see the rest of his face this was just infuriating why were all the pretty ones psychotic?) and smirked.
"Well, I suppose in that case, I should let you go and see if one of the many women you've cavorted with is indeed the princess," he said, doing something sinful with his tongue that made her throat go dry.
She tried to laugh but it came out weak; she shook it off and slipped past him to go back into the ballroom. "You're not coming for the reveal?" she asked innocently, turning back to him from the door to see that he was still leaning against the wall where she'd left him, watching her with an intense, almost hungry expression.
"I believe I already know who she is," he confirmed, looking her straight in the eyes, just under openly threatening.
Emma tilted her head and smirked a bit, but didn't say anything else as she returned to the ball, hands shaking out of something more than nerves and less than fear.
.
She should tell someone about the stranger.
It was stupid not to, stupid and childish and arrogant and reckless and impractical.
But the thought of it — calling her father or the guards to swoop in and take care of the threat before any harm whatsoever could come to dear, sheltered, pampered, almost-unwillingly-spoiled Emma — turned her stomach. She'd been given everything she'd ever needed and protected from every danger that her father's nightmares could conjure; just once, she'd like to know what it was like to have to rely on her own wits to survive.
She just wanted to know how much she was really worth, underneath the wealth and the power, if Emma Alone was enough to get her to safe ground.
If she was, then she felt like maybe her mother, at least, would understand her reasoning, and if she wasn't…
.
She didn't even see him. There was a hand pulling her back and a cloth over her face and then nothing.