i am selfish when i need you
Now that they were settled in a new normal back in Storybrooke, the thing about her pirate was-
He was only a few miles away in one manner of speaking and a whole universe away in another. Sometimes he crossed over that distance to be with her, but he always went back to them.
(One of these days Emma might just grab him so tightly he'd never even think of leaving.)
She had memories of him waiting for her time after time, of him being the one left behind while she walked away, too scared to stay, but now their roles were reversed. She trusted him to be enough for her, but he said he didn't love her anymore.
He would change his mind, though. It was only a matter of time.
"What were you thinking, Hook?" David snarled, refusing to make eye contact as he paced back and forth. "You couldn't just wait until I got there to attack Arthur?"
"Not really, no," Killian muttered. He stared at the ceiling, over the head of the nurse who was taping up a new layer of cotton on his abdomen. "You were halfway across the bloody town." He winced when a small movement tugged at his fresh stitches.
David rubbed his face, sighing. "You know, Hook, there's a reason why we tend to work in groups." The prince seemed too nervous to stay still, and Killian had to make a conscious effort not to follow his progress back and forth across the room; he'd strained something in his neck going down, and he was of the personal opinion that he was in enough pain already. The other man wouldn't quiet. "The lone ranger thing? It doesn't work."
"I just got stabbed, Dave, and for some reason I'm still bleeding," Killian told the ceiling. "Don't lecture a dying man. Thank you," he added on, nodding to the nurse as she bustled out of the room.
"You're not dying," the other man said, too quickly.
"Then why did Regina make a distressed face and walk away uselessly?" Truth be told, it was the concern that had affected him. In his experience, Regina only showed concern for him when whatever was imminent for him was truly terrible.
"Belle's researching," David insisted. "We'll find something. We always do."
Killian's eyebrows rose and fell, as if recalling a few exceptions to that rule, but he didn't push the subject.
His stitches felt wrong, but he vowed not to complain unless he started bleeding though the bandage, again.
He'd been sleeping better lately.
While it ran, the insomnia had scared her more than she liked to be scared, and it was all terribly ironic that such a thing disturbed her considering her newly permanent state of sleeplessness, but dark circles had entrenched themselves beneath his eyes, which she hadn't liked.
(It was quite fortunate that she'd decided to keep an eye on the proceedings when she released that bear that had come over with the curse and ended up in a cage in her basement; she couldn't really care when it was merely terrorizing the town, but she saw her pirate jump in front of Henry's little girlfriend and Regina's distracted fireball wouldn't have hit the target without a little guidance, so she gave it, and she hadn't panicked, no, not at all. The point is, the bear had gone down with a strangely un-bear-like shriek and her Killian had escaped unclawed, if a bit shellshocked, and that was what she wanted anyway.)
Even after that unexpected debacle, he barely slept that night, neither while she was tucked against his side nor after she pretended to leave and was sitting above decks, leaning against the mast, listening to the sound of his breathing.
(Some nights he slept once she had left his bed. Some nights his dreams sped his breathing and thickened his lungs until he sounded like a lifelong smoker, struggling to inhale until he awoke with a gasp.)
(Some golden nights he fell asleep with his skin touching hers, his face relaxed as he pulled her closer; those nights were few and far between, but she was increasingly confident that those nights would become permanent.)
Recently, her worry had reached a point that she decided it was necessary to do what he had specifically asked her not to do and begin using a simple spell to make him sleep. She used it sparingly, only on the truly bad nights, but its effect seemed to reach the other times as well. Sometimes he'd even fallen asleep before she made it to the Jolly, and she was okay with that.
Her pirate was doing better; that was enough to satisfy her.
And they called her selfish.
"What was he stabbed with, again?" Belle asked, wiping a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
"That blade was normal, as far as I could tell," Regina said. One side of her suit's collar was unevenly folded, which would have bothered her had anyone let her know, and she was sweating slightly. "I think there was some sort of enchantment on it that came off with the use."
"Poison?"
Regina shook her head, flipping open one of her mother's old books. "He's not weak, and Whale's tests have been coming back clean so far. He's just not healing, at all."
"It could be it's just taking a while to show up- it's only been two hours, right?"
"I'm sure the prince will call if something changes. I swear, sometimes I think he loves that man just as much as he loves his daughter."
Belle chose to take it as a joke, and smiled faintly. "I've got nothing here."
"Same so far." Regina slammed the book closed, ignoring the puff of dust released. "What could have happened to make Arthur do this?"
Glancing down another table of contents, Belle shrugged. "I'm pretty sure you know more about it than I do, Regina."
Regina kept scowling.
"No," Mary Margaret said for what must've been the twentieth time. "We're not doing that."
"Why not?" Henry repeated for his own twentieth time. "If she can't do it, no one can."
"We don't know why Arthur even did what he did. She might've been behind it."
Henry wanted to laugh at that, but he couldn't, he really couldn't. "That's impossible, Grandma."
"She has done a lot of things which I thought were impossible for her to do." Neal began to whimper, so Snow began bouncing on her heels. "At this point I might not be surprised."
Henry shook his head. "She wouldn't hurt him, not this bad."
"She's already hurt him, remember?"
"Not like this." Henry's face was pinched. "She wouldn't do anything to really endanger him. She wouldn't have done this."
Snow stared off into the distance, her forehead wrinkling in the exact same way Henry's was. "We're still not summoning her, though. We're going to save him, and we're going to do it right."
Henry sighed and pulled out his phone in a perfect teenager sulk.
David poked his head out of the door, eyes wide. "Call Whale. He's bleeding through again, bad."
He still came over to her house every now and then. Sometimes it was because she vanished him there in a fit of loneliness, and sometimes it was because he walked there in one of his own lonely moods. It didn't much matter anymore.
He was still hesitant in his physical affection, but his smiles were enough for now (even though she really would prefer them pressed against her own mouth.)
He wouldn't shut up about the door, the one to the basement where Excalibur was, and that had frustrated her for a while until she remembered that she liked that he was stubborn, that she loved that about him, and that that stubbornness of his was quite sexy in other circumstances, so she learned to let him keep asking.
Killian, for all the piracy in his soul and the morbidity of his humor, was in some ways more pure than she had remembered. Somehow she found herself in love with that as well.
She spent the night on his ship last night, listening to his soft snores, head tucked on his shoulder.
Whale wouldn't let them in Killian's room anymore, and Henry was getting worried.
He'd only seen Killian once after he arrived in the hospital around noon with his backpack on his shoulder and Regina's assurance that she would excuse him from school (he would not be winning Perfect Attendance this year, that's for sure), and the man he'd started to see as his other mom's other half (seriously, they were like one person some days- used to be, they used to be like one person) was a bit scratched up and bloodied around the middle, but he'd been coherent, even eloquent, and Henry hadn't thought to worry.
Then Regina got there and waved her hands, and nothing happened.
Now, he could hear Whale barking about IVs and CCs, and Grandpa was quietly muttering about blood loss and unconsciousness to Grandma, who was covering Neal's head with her palm as if to shield him from the news. Regina hadn't called.
"Where are you going?" Grandma asked as Henry stood.
"I was going to get some coffee."
"I didn't know you drink coffee."
"Desperate times." Dang it, Henry really didn't want to do it here.
"There's a soda machine down the hall, get one of those," Snow said, and Grandpa handed him a dollar bill without comment.
Henry walked down the hall as casually as he could, passing the soda machine (maybe later) to duck into the nearest empty closet he could find.
"Emma Swan. Emma Swan. Emma Swan."
Her first thought was that Henry looked sad. She didn't like that, not at all, and her spine stiffened as she wondered who to blame.
In neat succession, the second thought came: I threw Regina into that shelf once; that was satisfying.
"Are you okay, kid?"
The whole situation would be much easier if she didn't still have that gentle voice, because the part of Henry that was eleven and lonely gravitated towards that tone every time.
Things would also be easier if she would materialize in a person's field of vision, not directly behind them. Henry spun around.
Emma seemed to glow in the dark, her cheekbones casting shadows on the rest of her face from the fluorescent light overhead. "Also, why are we in a closet in the hospital?" She didn't sound worried, not yet. The tilt to her head was almost amused.
"It's Killian," Henry said, and in the instant after, Emma stiffened from kind mother into a marble statue of herself.
"Tell me what happened, Henry."
Even Dark Ones have weaknesses.
They don't have as many weaknesses as your average person, granted, but that relative lack only makes their few Achilles' heels more vulnerable.
Killian is one such weakness. She's always known it, he is learning it, and it is becoming obvious to everyone else in Storybrooke.
The door blew open with a crash, and Henry couldn't help but wince as the nurses looked up at the intruders.
"Excuse me," Emma growled, her pale face twisted, and when Whale did not immediately comply she pushed him out of the way with a wave of magic that slammed him into the window blinds.
"He's not stable," the doctor croaked as Emma began removing tape and wires from Killian's unconscious body.
"Maybe not," Emma hissed, stretching a palm over Killian's pale forehead, "but he is mine."
She vanished in a cloud of grayish smoke, and when it dissipated the bed was empty as well.
"Henry, what did you do?" Grandpa breathed from the doorway.
Grandma was holding Neal tightly, and her eyes were wide with disapproval and something else, something even sadder.
Henry glanced back at Whale to make sure he was okay. The blinds looked cracked but the doctor seemed fine as he picked himself up. The nurses all looked to be in shock.
Henry turned and left, too hurried to explain.
It had never occurred to Emma to be jealous of Killian's first love. Milan was long dead and he spoke of her the same, as if she was a building block of who he was, not a real remaining affection.
Emma loved him for Milah, really. The determination, the thirst for vengeance, the dedication- they were some of Emma's favorite parts of him.
She found herself really understanding that revenge instinct now, only there was a difference: she would not lose him.
She would not lose him.
She would not lose him, and when he was safely not lost, she would hunt down Arthur and take it from his flesh.
The magic came easily all the time now, but this time it was like- like being back at the docks with Zelena's hands on Henry: she couldn't stop it if she tried.
The spell preventing cure showed up easily in shades humans couldn't see, and she blew it away with an outburst of brute magic; without missing a beat, the wound began to knit itself back together with so little effort from herself it felt like Killian was healing himself.
The magic didn't stop, though; it built and crescendoed and Rumple was clapping in the corner, and Emma let it loose in a flare of greedy black and blinding, painful white.
He woke up to Emma's face looking down on him and something so raw written there that he couldn't help but reach for her hand and hold it tightly. The skin of his stomach felt tight and his vision was a few degrees too bright, but he let those little facts go.
"You're crying," he murmured in wonderment.
She leaned down to kiss his forehead, like some kind of blessing from a savage creature, and she disappeared.
"Don't try to stop me, Henry," she warned.
Henry whirled around with one hand still an inch from the bars of the leftmost cell. "Mom." He'd practically run there and didn't have the breath or presence of thought to say more.
"You know what he did." Emma's face was streaked with tears. "I have to kill him."
"Is Killian okay?" Henry had a strange sense that if he broke eye contact with Emma she'd snap, so he resisted the urge to turn and see what Arthur was doing.
(It had only been a few minutes. Surely Emma wouldn't be here yet if Killian was- was dead- and if even she was, she wouldn't even pause for him. Killian had to be okay.)
Emma almost smiled for a moment. "Killian is fine, thanks to you." Then she sighed, the anger returning to her eyes. "That doesn't mean I don't need to kill this man, Henry. You have no idea what else he's done."
"Then tell me. What happened, Mom?"
"I want to tell you, Henry." Emma's face was wrinkled in nearly-genuine remorse. "But I can't." She moved forward, and Henry heard Arthur suck in a breath behind him.
"No, don't!"
She fixed him with an actual Mom Look, the I'm-not-buying-that look he knew so well from New York. "Kid..."
"If you can't tell me what happened, then tell Killian," Henry blurted in a single breath. "Tell him everything Arthur's done, and let him decide what to do."
"Please, just-" Arthur said abruptly from behind Henry, but his voice came to choked silence as Emma held her hand up and pinched her fingers with an undeniable ripple of magic.
"Shut it," she snarled to the erstwhile king, and then her attention returned serenely to Henry. "I would, but Killian's like you," she said apologetically. "More forgiving than is safe for him."
"Let him decide that," Henry said desperately. "Just- magic the cell more secure until you've talked about it with Killian and come to an agreement. Please?"
Emma hasn't been spending all her time divided evenly between plotting and playing with her pirate, not at all. There's a third variable to Emma Swan, New and Improved, and his name is Henry.
Henry doesn't need her like Killian does, but she loves him anyway.
Sometimes she drops by his school around lunchtime, concealed by a spell, and checks on him unnoticed like most moms wished they could. Sometimes she meets up with him for cocoa, usually by the docks, even though they never see Killian at that time.
Sometimes she keeps an eye on him during thunderstorms or dangerous magical events or whenever he has a substitute teacher he'd complained about in the past.
Just trying to keep him safe. There was nothing she wouldn't do to keep him safe- and happy too, preferably.
Again. They thought her selfish.
Emma caved. He could see it in her eyes. "Okay, Henry," she all but whispered, waving a hand to Arthur's cell to elicit a slight whoosh of magic.
A second wave and Henry was standing outside the hospital again in the late afternoon glow, feeling a bit queasy.
"You know I do care about you, Henry," Emma said quietly. The tear tracks had vanished with the transition, leaving her as clean and cold as the first day they saw her in her new dark state. "I truly want you and Killian to be happy."
"I know, Mom," Henry said, crossing his arms involuntarily. "I just wish you'd trust us, too."
"He what," Regina bit into the phone.
"You heard me." David couldn't stop pacing. "Then Emma showed up, blew a door off its hinges, and vanished Hook. I don't know."
"And where's my son?"
"He ran out, Regina. I actually don't know where he is-"
"I'm here," Henry said quietly, turning the corner of the hallway. "I'm fine."
"Where were you?" David nearly yelled, fighting the urge to grab his grandson's shoulders and give him a firm shake. "You scared us to death!"
Regina was demanding an explanation, but David ignored her in favor of the grandson who was steadfastly avoiding his gaze. "Well, I figured once Killian was okay she'd go after Arthur, 'cause she'd made me tell her who did it," he said reluctantly. "Long story short, Killian's fine and I talked Mom down from killing Arthur. For now, anyway."
"Tell him he's grounded," Regina said through the phone, enunciating every syllable.
When Emma got back home, her pirate was asleep on the couch.
She couldn't help the fond smile that crossed her face. He was still only half-clothed from having his shirt cut off at the hospital (she'd have to get him a new vest) and his hair was a complete mess, but he looked content in rest.
Emma unbraided her hair with steady fingers and watched her pirate sleep.
Some days it felt like giving in.
Part of him believed that even smiling at the Dark One was a betrayal of the Emma he'd fallen in love with, and don't get him wrong, he missed that Emma with a burning passion that kept him awake at night.
But there was another part of his heart that said you save a Dark One by daring to love them, and that was exactly what he was doing.
Some days it was just a strange new version of paradise.