A light giggle and a soft, unintelligible murmur. Killian smiled, already knowing who the sound belonged to as he approached the door at the end of the hallway, pushing it open gently so as not to disturb its occupant in doing whatever seemed to be providing such entertainment. The back of a head full of long blonde hair faced him as he peered in to find his daughter in the floor, staring intently into a full-length mirror. She wore the widest of grins as she reached out to touch the glass.
"Admiring yourself, Princess Ella?" he finally broke the silence as she spun around and he was met with an all-too-familiar pair of blue eyes…accompanied by an even more familiar mischievous gleam sparkling within them.
"No, Daddy," she scoffed with a wave of her hand in his direction, though she cast a hurried look of concern between the mirror and Killian, as if expecting something to happen.
"Well, I think you're quite beautiful, either way," he mused, unsure what figment of her imagination had found its way into the seemingly empty glass before him. To have grown up in the so-named "Land Without Magic," his daughter was the most imaginative person in all of Storybrooke. He attributed it to the many volunteer babysitters she'd found herself spending time with in only 4 short years of life. From Granny's stories of wolves and crossbows to Leroy's mostly over-exaggerated gossip about the whole town to the Charmings' constant retelling of their very own love story and even, he was willing to admit, a couple of his own swashbuckling stories, she was truly a child of fairy tales. And she wanted it all. She was a pirate and a princess in one, tougher than Emma and Killian combined with an elegance and grace that bewildered them both.
"I know," she grinned in response to his compliment, and in that moment he saw more of himself in her than he ever had. She was Emma made over, from the golden locks to the chin they'd both inherited from Snow White. But to Killian's great surprise the first time he'd held her in his arms and she'd looked up at him, she had his eyes, a notion that thrilled and terrified him. To see a piece of himself in her…his child…it was everything he never knew he'd always wanted. But with those bright blues came her father's knack for charm and tendency towards mischief, which led him to those fleeting moments as she grew older when he thought she might have a bit more pirate in her than he ever would have dared hope for.
"I'll leave you to your thoughts, then, Princess," he said with a bow of his head in her direction as he pulled the door shut and started down the hallway.
"It's Captain Princess, Daddy, my more colorful moniker!" her muffled voice yelled in response, to which he responded with an "Aye, Captain Princess, my mistake!" and immediately found himself baffled at her use of his very own words against him, despite him never telling her the details of his first days with her mother. Emma must have told her the tale, or Snow White, for that matter, he reminded himself as he shook his head and walked down the hallway, chuckling to himself.