The salty wind whistled as it wove itself between the fickle, delicate waves of the sea, swaying the proud vessel ever so slightly as it cut through the ocean like a rusty bullet through the air.
"Aye, my boy, that's the trick," a voice encouraged softly. It was a voice that was young and full of life, but also one that had been worn rough by a hard past behind.
A male - a child, really, though not through his own eyes - stood clutching the ornate wheel in front of him with a grip that could close a man's throat. A hand came over his to guid him.
"You can ease up, Lad," the man suggested through a breathy chuckle.
His bright, marble eyes drifted up to meet his golden-haired Swan, arms crossed toward the water as she looked on to her birthplace in the distance.
"We should be back to the Enchanted Forest soon enough, Love," He called.
A face as white as the purity of Christmas Eve snow turned to face him, golden locks dancing to the siren's song of the roaring waves behind her.
"About time," she remarked with an uneasy smirk. "Careful with the kid at the wheel, huh?"
Hook lifted his hand from Henry's grasp. "What is there to care for, Swan? Bae would take the steer himself from time to time. Henry takes after good old Daddy."
Emma bit her lip. "Hook," she began. "You know that Neal doesn't..."
Hook stepped over to her in the careful sort of stride that all seamen are accustomed to, leather boots clinking rhythmically against the gently rocking ship. "I didn't mean anything by it, Emma. You know that." He brought his real hand up to gently caress her face and gingerly tip up her chin. "Neal doesn't matter anymore. Like it or not, you're stuck with me."
Emma's grin was subtle as the glint of the sun on the sea. The wind whipped through her hair, but she spoke over its whispers. "You're an idiot."
"Aye," Hook agreed. "But I'm your idiot, Lass."
Henry stood straight, entranced in his mother's musical laugh. It was a melody almost never heard, and he quite loved the sound. And he loved that Hook was able to unearth the side of his mother that he rarely saw. Behind the sarcastic smirks and the "Kiddo"s, there was still a young, neglected girl who secretly longed to be someone's princess.
He was glad that that someone was Killian.
Hook glanced up ahead with his arms around Emma's waist with a quick look of urgency.
"Henry!" He shouted, tearing away from Emma to get to the wheel. "Left, Boy, left!"
Henry snapped out of his trance and looked ahead. The shore was perhaps a football field away, but the waters had churned choppy while he was tuned out, and a rough field of jagged cataracts lied ahead.
Hook seized the wheel as fast as he could and rolled it around at the speed of light. A deafening groan came from below as the hull scraped against the rocks like nails on a chalkboard.
"Fish in a barrel," a female voice from afar mused.
Emma jolted her head up to meet an incoming cloud of the wicked witch's henchmen.
"Zelena," she muttered. "She's trying to keep us from getting back."
Emma flew to Henry's side and looked directly into his eyes. "Henry. Get below deck. Now."
"But-"
"No buts," she demanded. "Now."
Henry sprinted down to the bunkers as the first lanky primates landed on the side of the Jolly Roger. The sea thrashed up over the barriers of the ship and began flooding the vessel.
Emma drew her sword and arched it above her head, preparing to slice through them, when both of her arms were yanked to the sky. Two more flying assassins lifted her high above the sea with a force that nearly pulled her shoulders out of their sockets.
"Emma!" A strained bellow of desperation came from below.
Hook kept a hand on the steering wheel but kept his eyes following the trail Emma's attackers took to the skies. This couldn't be happening. Not to his Swan.
"Cut 'em off, and I'll catch you!" He promised, abandoning the wheel.
"Killian!" Emma screamed. It was getting more and more difficult to catch her breath, and each monkey had a sickly cold hand on her neck. "Man the ship! You'll crash!"
Hook seemed to not hear her. "Just cut 'em off!"
Emma struggled to take in a deep breath, wheezing more than anything. It took all her strength to sway her sword arm just enough to slice through the first monkey's shoulder, making him disappear in a cloud of green smoke.
She fell down a few feet with a gasp, her heart leaping from her chest with each frantic beat. This was it. This could be the end.
She cut through the second.
"Emma, no!" Hook yelled, just too late.
Her trajectory off, she plummeted down to the sea, striking a massive slab of rock at a million miles per hour.
A loud crack if several bones at once.
A limp figure of the woman he loved face-down against the boulder.
The ocean starting to tint the color of her leather jacket.
"Swan..." Hook's voice cracked.
A pirate was never to cry, never in his hundreds of years on the sea, never over a crew-mate, never over any old lass. He had known this before. He shed barely a tear over Mila when she passed, but now...
His eyes fogged with grief as he tried to take control of his ship again, but it was no use. The restless Roger refused to stay on course. He smashed his fist against the wheel in agony. Emma was dead.
Henry sat on his bunk below deck as a spike of rock blew open a whole in the wall. He restrained a scream, as he had already turned a sickly shade of green, and this was the worst time in the world to be sick.
Water rushed into the cabin, rising up an inch every second. His heart pounded in his ears. He had to get out of here.
Doubling over in nausea, he made the battle up the stairs to the main deck.
"Mom..." He murmured.
When he glanced up, he barely caught a glimpse of a pathetic Hook being lifted to the clouds by a pair of flying monkeys.
He didn't even fight it.
"Get back down, Henry," Hook said, barely loud enough to hear through the swirling winds. He swung his sickle of a hand into the heart of each primate and dropped to the water through a cloud of green.
"Killian!"
Henry dashed downstairs of the ship, tripping over the last step and conking his head against a crate of hardtack, and darkness caved in around him.
...
The water gently licked his feet.
The sand burned against his skin.
The ache lingered within his heart.
He opened his eyes and sat up on the white beach of the Enchanted Forest, staring out into the never-ending ocean.
"Killian!" He yelled, very vaguely remembering what happened before.
He stood up on shaking deer's legs. "Hey, Killian, where are you?"
Then it came back to him, hitting hard like a slap of the ocean's current.
His eyes began to water. "Mom," he realized, running out into the surf. "Mom!"
The water splashing at his ankles turned from salty and cold to thick and warm.
He looked down.
He stood in a pool of cherry red.
Henry felt as if his stomach was going to turn inside out.
A silver ring slipped through the waves. Henry scooped it up the split second he saw it. It was the ring she wore on her necklace in Neverland. The simple silver band he was to inherit when he got older.
"Mom," he whispered in one last attempt, as if there were a chance she simply couldn't quite hear him the first time.
He threw the ring into the unforgiving ocean, and retreated back to the beach, boiling hot tears drizzling across his face.
For once, the thought of a happily ever after didn't mean anything to him.