AN: I do not own OUAT or any of the characters.
For most of the residents of Storybrooke, Maine, the breaking of the curse was the happiest day of their lives. As soon as Emma kissed her son and the power surged out from them, everyone was transported back into the Enchanted Forest, more or less at the exact places from where they had vanished twenty-eight years prior. The only major flaw with the return was that not everyone was accounted for. Henry had appeared with his grandparents in the castle, but his mother was nowhere to be seen. Snow and Charming had sent out many search parties in the weeks following their return, joining the soldiers and their friends when they could. After two months had passed, the king and queen had become weary and desperate as there hadn't been even the smallest glimpse of Emma Swan.
Hundreds of miles away from the castle shared by the Charmings, in a little seaside town, a woman with pale blonde curls piled on her head and light green eyes stared at her reflection in a mirror. Powder paled her skin and highlighted her eyes. The low cut of her dark blue silk dress revealed a large amount of her chest and while the skirt trailed onto the ground in the back, in the front it only fell to halfway down her thighs. She watched from her seat as the moon began to rise over the ocean and applied a bit of lip paint to make her thin lips even redder.
"Hurry up, dearie," a sing-song voice said from the staircase that led from her room to the lower levels of the building. A slight tension settled across the woman's shoulders. She could see the man in her mirror, light from below shining on the odd gold shimmer of his skin. He flicked a strand of his limp brown hair away from his face. "We wouldn't want to keep the customers waiting, would we?"
She stood and took a step towards the stairs. "I'll be down in a moment," she replied, experience masking the hesitation in her voice. Waiting to hear the click of his shoes on the stair, she turned to face the window once more. Breathing in the fresh air that would be scarce in the next few hours, she could hear the music from the ground floor drifting up to her. Men's bawdy, drunken laughter and the clink of tankards followed the music, drowning out the calming sound of the nearby sea. The laughter was a sound that she had grown all too used to, and most days she couldn't even find the energy to hate it.
Emma let out a breath. This had always been her life. She danced in a tavern owned by the Dark One since she was fourteen, given over to him by the parents she had never met. He claimed that they had owed him some sort of payment, and she was the only coin with which they had been able to pay. Rumplestiltskin had kept her in a small house by the sea during her childhood, raising her to be a beauty that could stop a man in his tracks one moment and then rob the man blind the next. She had tried to run away more times than she could count, but he had always tracked her down again and returned her to her prison. Finally, at twenty-eight, Emma had stopped trying to run away and had accepted her place as the prize of Rumplestiltskin's collection of living jewels in his tavern.
Oh, how she hated Rumplestiltskin with all her heart, remembering countless times he had shoved her at men for his own gain. He had never shown her the smallest bit of consideration while she grew up, and she could remember full days of her youth that had been spent crying because of loneliness or emotional hurt. All the same, over the past two months she had caught him looking at her differently, seeming to be weighing her worth. Emma did her best not to think about those glances. She figured he probably had some man lined up to be strategically manipulated by her until Rumplestiltskin had whatever it was he wanted.
Sitting down on the little stool in front of her mirror once more, Emma slipped her feet into the dainty, heeled slippers that matched her dress. The floor beneath her feet was rough, the walls were stone, and her tiny bed was tucked into a corner of the room beneath a small window. Her room wasn't luxurious by any means, but it was the one place where no one made demands of her. After having men stare at her all night, grope at her, and make crude suggestions, the simplicity of her room was comforting. It wasn't a home, but it was a place where she could let down her walls a little. That was all she needed.
After checking her reflection once more, Emma went down the spiral staircase and descended to the main floor to the cheers of the men waiting for her to appear.
It had been ages since he had found himself at this particular port. His crew scampered through the town, looking for a brawl, a lass, or a good tankard of ale. He followed the cobblestone streets, wandering and looking for something worthwhile. In his all-black clothing, he practically melted into the shadows. The metal hook attached to his left arm glinted in the moonlight as he paused in front of a tavern on the edge of town. A wooden sign swayed over the door, naming the place "The Jewelry Box."
Killian Jones, more commonly known as Captain Hook, stepped through the door and into a room packed with people. Men drank, women flirted and danced, and a group of musicians stood in a corner. In the center of the room, a square of the floor had been raised to form a stage of sorts. As he moved further into the tavern, a woman with blonde hair and a dark blue dress was handed up onto the stage. The music changed into something sultrier, bringing the memory of humid nights in Neverland to the front of Killian's mind.
The blonde, a pretty little thing, began to move to the music, each movement drawing the eyes of anyone watching to another curve of her body. She kept her eyes closed as the music picked up pace, snapping them open dramatically in perfect time with a crescendo. Her light green eyes flickered to Killian's dark blue ones, and he lost track of his surroundings, the music, and the chatter of the people in the tavern. For a moment, only Killian and the beautiful woman existed.
Her eyes slid away from his, and the moment shattered. Killian moved to an open table near the stage, slipping onto a chair. He ordered rum from the barmaid, delaying her for a moment when she returned with his drink.
"Who is the lass in the blue?" he asked, voice low.
The maid glanced up at the stage. "Emma. She's the Dark One's prized dancer. No one gets close to her without his permission, and even then there is an extremely high cost."
Killian watched the woman in blue as she left the stage and moved to a staircase in the corner of the room. His fingers drummed lightly on the table. As a pirate, he always enjoyed taking what others considered to be theirs. If he could take something that had been claimed by his worst enemy, who was he to let such an opportunity slip away? It didn't hurt that Emma was an attractive woman. Killian made a note to tell his men that they would be staying on shore for longer than expected. He had business to tend to.