She comes into the world squalling – squashy and red-faced, with eyes pressed firmly shut beneath a pair of puffy lids, a misshapen head Dr. Whale insists will get better, and flailing, trembling limbs that end in ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes. And, aside from her mother, she's the most beautiful thing Killian Jones has ever seen.
The day she's born is a strange patchwork of time, everything flying by in a blur while individual moments almost seem to stand still. Like the moment he first lays eyes on her at the foot of the bed in Whale's hands. Like the moment Emma first gets a glimpse of her and glances at him with a look of tearful awe and elated disbelief at what they've created. Like the moment the nurse finishes all the necessary measuring and poking and prodding and finally hands him his daughter in a small and wriggly bundle. David has been known to say that life is made up of moments. Later, whenever Killian looks back on this day, it always strikes him that he may never have truly understood what that meant – what that felt like – until now.
At least half the town comes to pay their respects to their newest little princess, and he's grateful to Granny and Snow for graciously yet fiercely running interference in order to grant him and his new family some privacy. Family. Bloody hell, he has a family. He's had one for a while now, he supposes – a wife and in-laws and a step-son and a strange, convoluted extended family that still barely makes sense some days. But it feels different now. Like he's needed even more now. Like now it's less about him as a person and more about them as a unit. Like his ability to devote himself to someone else just raised itself to a whole different level (and for him, that's saying something).
It's terrifying.
And other than his marriage to Emma, he's never felt so eager to barrel headfirst into anything.
They haven't decided what to name her. Everyone they know seems to have an opinion on the issue, a flood of suggestions that are all (well, mostly) agreeable names. But nothing feels just right, and in the end, he and Emma elect to wait until they meet their daughter before deciding what to call her. He has it on good authority that the dwarves have a sizable pool going on the outcome.
Real quiet doesn't come until about two hours after she's born. She and Emma are cleaned up, and Emma gets through her first feeding like a champ, her gaze rapt as she stares down at their daughter with a lopsided smile that makes his stomach flip. But then the adrenaline runs out, and he recognizes the telltale signs of exhaustion on his wife's face, and he steps forward.
"Let me have her for a bit, love," he murmurs. "You could use some rest."
After nine months of the word "rest" uniformly triggering a classic Emma Swan eye-roll, he's pleasantly surprised when she merely gives their daughter a fond smile and a kiss on the head and hands her over without protest. "Time to go see Daddy," she coos.
Daddy.
He swallows the lump in his throat as Emma settles the baby in the crook of his left arm and reaches for his coat collar to pull him in for a grateful kiss.
"Love you."
"And I you. Sleep now." Killian nuzzles her forehead and presses his lips to her temple before he heads for the other side of the room, tugging a chair around so it faces the window and settling down with his daughter in his arm and his feet propped up on the radiator.
He does nothing but stare at her for many minutes, long after her soft, shuddering baby breaths even out and he can tell that both she and Emma are fast asleep. He marvels at the same things over and over again – her little button nose, her slightly pointed ears, the impossibly fine wisps of dark hair peeking out from under the pink striped knit cap she wears, the way her wrinkly red fingers wrap around around his knuckle. His eyes just continue to dart back and forth, and it feels as though he could look upon her like this forever.
He wonders if his other self – or older self or whatever he wants to call him – had the same thoughts when his daughter was born.
Killian doesn't know that other child, doesn't know the circumstances of how or when she was born. But as he looks upon this baby – his baby – he realizes he understands that other Hook a bit better now. He understands the shade and depth of this new kind of love, the blind sense of attachment and duty. He might even understand the heartbreak of losing her a little. And he suddenly feels surer than ever that the other Hook, wherever he is, will never rest until he finds his daughter again.
I will always find you.
Those five words are mantra in Emma's family – in their family, Killian corrects himself with a rueful grin. But he feels sure that, despite not also being blessed with a life with Emma or her parents, his counterpart has those words carved as deep into his heart as they all do.
"I will always find you, darling," he whispers to the bundle in his arms. "Whatever adventures await you in this realm or any other. If you need me and I have breath, I will come." He blinks back the wetness that warms his eyes. "To the end of the world or time," he adds, his crow's feet crinkling at the memory of the first time he uttered that phrase. "I promise."
A thought occurs as the minutes continue to tick by, and he lowers his feet to the floor and rises carefully, creeping around as gingerly as if he were in the presence of sleeping giants rather than his wife and his daughter. A quick one-handed rifle through Emma's bag in the corner yields the book of baby names they've spent many an evening perusing together, and he returns to the chair with a quiet sigh, levering the little paperback open on his thigh and flipping through the pages, the delicate scrape of paper on paper and the occasional snuffly, content sighs from his daughter the only sounds in the blessed silence. Vague recollection drives his search until, several minutes later, he locates the entry he's thinking of and a slow, satisfied smile creeps across his face.
He dares to whisper the word a few times, getting the feel of it on his tongue as he turns his attention back to his daughter's round, cherubic face. When she finally blinks her eyes open for the first time in response, he cries. And later, when Emma's awake and he shows her the name he wants for their daughter, she cries too.
They name her Karina. It means "found." Karina Hope Jones. The daughter of a little lost girl and a little lost boy. She has her father's initials and her mother's green eyes.
And, like his other self, Killian keeps his promise.