I had always loved the gently rolling of a ship out on the vast open sea. It normally soothed and calmed me because it told me I was home. At least what I had called home for over three hundred years since my father left me in the middle of the night on board a ship. Now here I stood leaning against a shroud in the stern on the starboard side looking out over the blue green water of the bay. Sea gulls squalling overhead provided my only physical companions as questions and doubts played through my mind.
I had known why I came back to Emma Swan and that tiny, seaside town she called home. I hadn't berated myself for the choice I made nor had it annoyed or confused me. She had offered the one thing I had wanted my entire life but had always alluded me. She had also been the only person in over three hundred years with whom I had found myself wanting to fulfill that wish in spite of myself. It was an offer I found myself unable to refuse in the end. I returned to her after having had begun to leave with the bean I had made her think I gave her in that little black satchel I handed over to her in that little strange, bright tavern. She told me then that she thought I only cared about myself. I had for centuries after too many attempts to allow others close had ended with nothing but pain, rejection and betrayal including Emma herself. Yet, I wanted so badly what she offered that I had taken the risk once more.
That led me to where I found myself that day staring over the mid-morning bay alone while the others now on my ship were below deck after they ushered me away. The bloody Crocodile refused to reveal any information he might have known while I was in attendance. The Prince sharply turned towards me and told me to go above deck; his voice dripping with hostility. I schooled my face into indifference as I turned from the scene in the barracks. The Crocodile who wore a smug grin as he stared coldly into my eyes. I barely caught the look on Emma's face as I quickly spun on my heel and hastily left. She had cast me a grimace but I had already turn the corner before I could have seen anything else.
What I had feared the most when I made my choice to come back had begun to come to pass. They had already begun to exclude me from whatever we were all becoming and doing together. They were already pushing me out. I drew in a shaky breath as I closed my eyes from the burning wetness I felt developing in them and bowed my head trying to stop it. I had lost track of how much time had past before I heard heavy footsteps approaching from below deck jerking me from my thoughts.
"Asshole son of a bitch," Emma fumed as I turned and caught sight of her slender frame coming towards me. I felt my eyes widen as she side stepped or stepped over the various lines that ran across the deck.
"Swan? What are you doing up here?" I asked as loudly as I could manage.
"They threw me out of the barracks," she deadpanned. I felt my eyebrows raise and my mouth fall open.
"Why?"
"I threatened to punch Gold in the face." she explained with a shrug of her slender shoulders. I stared at her dumbfounded for a long moment. "What? It's the least he deserves. He's been nothing but a total ass this whole time. It's not like I haven't told I was going to do that before. One of these days there's won't be anything that will stop me from actually doing it."
She quickly turned her head away from me to look out over the large bay. The sunlight danced off of the water's ripping surface and reflected the bright rays in multiple directions. The action barred me from studying her eyes and granted only her profile to my gaze. I found myself unable to say anything while I tried to discern the real reason as to why she challenged the Crocodile. Just as it had been in that little tavern, she was hiding her true motivation behind her actions but that time she clearly hadn't wanted me to know what they were. I would've pushed the matter if it hadn't been for the untimely arrival of the others from below.
The Prince led the way towards us. Severe tension had been clearly visible in his frame and a deep scowl etched onto his face; the skin having gone red. Every few seconds, he looked over his shoulder and gave the Crocodile a glare before he returned his focus forward as he shook his head slightly. Snow and Regina had been keeping up with the Prince's determined, quick pace with the Prince and had been only a step or two behind him. The Crocodile brought up the rear; purposely strolling slowly forward. He looked at me with a soft half grin on his face and a malevolent gleam in his eyes as he closed the remaining distance to join the rest of us.
"So, now that everyone's ready and...cooperative," the Prince said as he threw a sharp look at the Crocodile who only stood in the place he had chosen beside the starboard side of the wheel with a neutral expression on his face, "we can begin this meeting. Since Hook has been here before, he knows the realm better than any of the rest of us. We've already scouted the coast line of the closest island and further inland but no sign of Henry or Greg and Tamara."
"Well, our current approach of random and frantic searching has been working about as well as looking for a needle in a haystack. It's been over a month and still nothing. Switching tactics to something that relays less on pure dumb luck might be the best course of action," I responded with a deep, long sigh.
"And, you had this opinion but didn't say anything until now?" the Prince fired back, his jaw clenching.
"You never asked."
"I assumed I didn't have to."
"Assuming is never a good thing."
"Hook," Emma called out firmly while holding her hand up towards her father halting the comeback he had been about to say. "When you're a part of something, you don't have to wait for someone to ask. You can just come right out with it. I know this is a new thing for you. Been there myself not too long ago. Just so you know, it's actually expected of you when you are accepted as part of a group." She cast a glance at her father whose demeanor had changed with what Emma had spoken. "You're apart of us now. You're one of us. So tell us what you have been thinking all this time."
It took me a long moment to find my voice after hearing those words from her. All I could do was stare at her in silence and wonder. I had to shake my head and clear my throat before I managed to regain my composure.
"Let's start with what should be the obvious. Magic beans work by having the land you wish to travel to in your thoughts when you throw and create the portal. That means they intended to come here. The real question we should be asking is why here of all the lands they could have gone. Especially one with magic. Their 'sacred' mission was to get rid of magic. Why bring the lad to a land that had it if they had that mission? If we can figure that out, it'll help us narrow down the locations they may have taken the lad instead what we have doing."
"They know someone here," the Crocodile announced. His steady, hard eyes locked with mine once again as he leaned slightly forward on his cane. "You know as well as I do who that is."
"Aye," I responded through gritted teeth. "I wonder why those tossers or, more accurately, that demon they work for, want him."
"And here we thought, after you spent so much time here trying to figure out a way to kill me, you would know all about that as well as...," he replied as he graciously gestured towards my hook with a shrug of his shoulders.
"Clearly your great appreciation of metal goes beyond daggers with great magical power that result in abandoning sons and doing so after cowardly not telling them the truth about their mother having left their father," I retorted with a tight lipped smile. "Makes a lad reject any offer of family and home and become one of them."
"This ship is a wonderful place to give a child comfort, security and stability," the Crocodile commented as he limped towards me. He had let his chin drop so as to carefully watch his progression. He stopped when he stood less than fifteen centimeters away from where I stood and raised his chin to lock his hard, cold eyes with mine. "A heart could truly be free and call it home. So free it can blow in the wind alongside its sails. Maybe I can offer to help you have it happen again. Even for yourself."
I could feel the heat blazing across the skin of my face and the veins beginning to pop in my temples. I felt my short fingernails cut into the palm of my trembling, tightfisted hand and my vision had begun to turn red. The retort was on my tongue as I felt my arm bend and raise. The action died just as it began when Emma quickly squeezed in the small space between us. She faced the Crocodile with her back flushed against my chest and her long, blonde hair so close I could smell the faint scent of rose and orchid within its strains.
The heat speeding across my skin changed instantly from one that made me view red in my eyesight and gave me a boiling in my veins to the blood rushing and my vision beginning to swim. Dryness spread through my mouth as I inhaled more and more of the tantalizing scent drifting from the tendrils billowing in the cool, light breeze coming in off the water of the bay. Large, fast gulps of air filled my lungs trying to fill my lungs with the air it had seemed to need in that moment yet I couldn't keep pace with how quickly and how much my lungs wanted. Tautness filled my limbs and tightness began to stretch my black leather trousers. My eyes quickly darted to where the Prince and Emma's mother stood on watchful, ready guard side by side. Their dagger like attention had been fully focused on the Crocodile much to my everlasting relief. I silently offered gratitude to any and every type of god ever known for the fact that my strong reaction to their daughter went unnoticed by them.
"Whoa! No need to go there. Let's skip the whole ripping hearts out thing, alright? And, just to make sure it won't work if you did decide to actually try it, I think I'll stand right here," Emma stated, cold, hard steel in her voice. My eyes popped open and I stumbled slightly as I took a step back from her. My heart had begun to race out of my chest when my mind registered both her words themselves and their meaning. "Why don't you take a couple of steps back and tell us what you know? You said something about someone we all should be afraid of as we were leaving Storybrooke. How about you tell us everything without the vagueness and double meanings? It would be a refreshing change for once."
The Crocodile hobbled back a few steps as she had asked of him. I moved back until I was almost leaning against the stern bulwark and slid over to the left as Emma angled her body where she could see both of us while still mostly facing him. She leaned the majority of her weight on one leg and crossed her slender arms over her chest.
"I sense a proposal coming," he remarked as an amused smile formed on his face.
"No. Been down that road once already. I have a very strong idea that it had been a trick. The squid ink on that scroll in your old cell in the Enchanted Forest. My name was written over and over on it with the ink. You got my name from my mom before the curse was cast," she stated, gesturing towards her mother. "You were standing behind me that first night I stayed in Storybrooke and overheard my name. That's when you got your memory back. From hearing my name. You then knew I didn't believe in the curse or in any of the fairy tale stuff at that time and you used it to get me to get into a deal with you because I just thought you were some creepy as hell pawnshop owner dealing in the adoption black market. You knew I wouldn't believe for a second you were really Rumpelstiltskin. Matter of fact, you knew I would think anyone who told me you were was crazy. You needed me to owe you a favor so I would have to help you with finding your son in that world since I grew up there and knew it."
It had taken me a long moment but our respective positions and the words Emma had said to seep into my awareness. A memory from long gone but not forgotten slammed into my mind like a speeding battering ram. The memory played over the scene that had been unfolding before me in vivid clarity.
Milah pulled the bean from the black pouch holding it for safe keeping and held it up between her index finger and her thumb for her former husband's appraisal. He leaned forward as he gazed greedily at it before reaching up to take it from her grasp. She pulled it away from him with a quick and fluid circle of her arm and tossed it towards me. I caught it in my left hand with ease as she returned her focus back to him with a knowing grin upon her lips.
"You asked to see it and now you have," I solemnly said to him as I held up the bean in my tight fist. He clearly had been behaving with unstable anger and it had made me both wary and afraid.
"Do we have a deal? Can we go our separate ways?" Milah asked
"Do you mean do I forgive you?" her former husband replied as he stepped towards the bow. Milah looked over at me with stormy blue eyes and a deep frown creasing her beautiful face. She rolled her eyes as she moved in between him and me taking a stance that had her leaning most of her weight on one leg and a hand on the curve of hip as she angled her body slightly. The stance allowed her to keep most of her focus on him but she could easily see me. "Perhaps, perhaps."
The haze of the memory evaporated and I found myself back to that moment. I shook my head gently to clear it the rest of the way locking my full focus on the Crocodile and Emma. Emma had made a deal with the bloody demon. I felt the blood in my veins boil once more at the mere thought of another woman I came to care for so deeply entangled with that monster. Doing so unknowingly had made the rapidly raising heat all the more worse. My fingers folded tightly making my nails bite into its palm.
"There must be a reason why you've chosen to protect the pirate from me twice now, Ms. Swan. First with finding my son. Now this. I'm just wondering how far you are willing to go to do so," he said while fiddling with the head of his cane.
My eyes widened at the Crocodile's words and I turned sharply to gaze at Emma. She maintained her stance in silence. The only movement she made was a narrowing of her beautiful blue green eyes and a defiant lift of her chin. Her lips fell into a tight, thin line as a deep red flush blossomed on her porcelain skin. Her jaw worked alerting those who had been watching her that she had been clenching her teeth as she stared the demon down.
My thoughts raced as I carefully observed the scene playing out before me. I had thought she had chosen to help him and chose him over me. Instead, she had gone to protect me from him. It was a thought that had never occurred to me given our history with one another. Once again, the unpleasant heat morphed into the warmth of something else entirely. Tingles raced across my skin and I felt the heat climb up my neck and spread across my face.
A tightness formed both in my chest and stretched across my trousers. My eyes darted to her father standing less than three meters away from me as I frantically tried to clamp it down. I had felt the Prince's fist against my jaw once before in their little abode in their land. I had no desire to feel it again. I had wondered where Emma got her adeptness with punching people when she had punched me by the lake. I received my answer when her father punched me those few weeks prior.
"Oh, cut the crap, you twisted imp!" Regina snapped, her dark chestnut eyes sharp and narrowed. The heels of her knee high boots clapped loud and sharp across the deck as she marched with single-minded determination until she stood close less than fifteen centimeters from the Crocodile. "Who the hell cares why she wants to protect him? I sure as hell don't. My son is out there possibly being handed over to the Lost Boys and Peter Pan! We know that's who you were referring to when you said we should all be scared. And, yes, we should be. We've heard about that little monster and the tales of what he can and will do to someone. If you know anything more, start talking because I damn well will not let my son be harmed by anyone and especially not Peter Pan. Get on with it!"
"The Piccaninny Tribe," I announced as loudly as I could manage. The sound of my voice had been vaguely hoarse even to my own ears. The fates appeared to take mercy on me and a cold breeze ran over the ship rustling lines, sails and the clothing upon everyone that was hanging loose and open enough to be caught by it. I cleared my throat in an attempt to play the card that presented itself and give the appearance that I might be catching a cold from the cool weather. "The Chieftain doesn't trust travelers to this land. But, he has no love for Peter more than he has the distrust of strangers. He has no greater wish than to rid the land of him. Both him and his people know the land better than even I. If we play our cards right, we might get him to help us."
"Where is the tribe?" Snow inquired softly making herself known for the first time.
"Northeast of Marooner's Rock. Just over there," I replied motioning to the left side of the bow towards the massive rock that loomed on the west of the island. The others peered at it for a long moment before returning their gazes to me.
"OK. Let's all rest tonight and we'll head there in the morning and start the journey to their village," the Prince said with a slow nod.
One by one, the others slowly disembarked back to below deck. Regina threw the Crocodile a malicious glare as she moved past him following their royal highnesses towards the barracks. The only indication he gave that he had been aware of her actions was a tight half grin before turning and following the queen. Emma kept to where she stood for several moments allowing the others to have gotten out of sight and hearing. She hesitantly looked at me and opened her mouth as if to say something but quickly closed it. She sharply cast her eyes down to her feet and hastily turned on her heel. She disappeared below deck leaving me alone with questions crowding my mind.