A/N - Cora's protection of Hook didn't keep him from getting sucked away. It just kept him from getting sucked to Storybrooke.
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Emma loved her apartment. Well, except maybe her front door. One night she'd stood outside for a full fifteen minutes trying to decipher the text and numbers so carefully designed by what she decided was an insane interior decorator, but could make no sense of it. Gibberish, plain and simple, about spells and curses. If it weren't for the beautiful apartment that lay on the other side, it almost would have been enough to turn her off of the apartment entirely.
Oh, but once she'd opened the door it was all a different story. It was shiny and new, unlike anything else she'd ever had in her entire life, and it would all be hers. Her one true love: a spacious kitchen, floor to ceiling glass with a view, and hardwood floors. Oh, and a bathtub she could lose herself in for hours. She'd never had a home, but maybe this could become one? She worked hard to earn a good living, and spending money on somewhere she could relax and call her own was priority number one. She pictured herself coming home from long days at work running after god knows who, and kicking off her shoes, turning on the fireplace, yes, there was a fireplace, and relaxing with a glass of wine and a maybe even a book. When her application was accepted, she happily wrote the check for the exorbitant rent and moved her belongings in.
So last night when she got home and she went to start her long, long overdue laundry and found that her machine was broken, she felt betrayed by her one true love. And on her birthday too. That was the real kicker. Another banner year, indeed.
Honestly, last night hadn't even been her worst birthday. Catching the skip provided a healthy paycheck, and the cupcake she treated herself to was delicious. The tiny glimmer of hope ("I wish I didn't have to be alone") was just that, a tiny glimmer. She never actually expected her wish to come true. The days of her worst birthdays were long behind her. Those were spent in the foster system, where every birthday meant she was another year older and less likely to ever be adopted. She tried not to let it get to her, and eventually she hit a point where it got better. Every birthday was another year closer to getting out and being on her own.
Not that being on her own had gone too well for her at first, but she didn't dwell on that anymore. She knew that it affected all of the decisions she made when it came to personal relationships, but she didn't actively let it occupy time in her brain. Go to work, catch bad guys, come home, relax. It was her routine and she was content with it. It kept her from asking questions she wasn't prepared to know the answers to.
So when she found herself packing up laundry to go to the laundromat the day after her birthday, she was decidedly out of sorts. This was not in her plan. Having a washer and dryer was part of the beauty of the apartment, so she didn't have to go out to do these things. Luckily she found a place open late the next block over, and she wouldn't have to deal with parking. Just with people.
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Friday night at the laundromat, just like every friday night. The fluorescent lights, the hum of the dryers. The thunk of an unevenly loaded washer.
He stood leaning up against the counter, half reading his book, half watching the countdown on his dryer. He wasn't looking forward to the buzz, as that always meant folding. He couldn't even remember how many years it had been since he'd lost his hand, and he was adept with his hook prosthetic, but folding just was the most draining of the tasks in his mundane life. At least it signaled the end of laundry, and he could go home, grab a beer and settle in for the weekend with his book.
He turned the page and looked up to see that the count was now down to nine minutes left, and that's when he felt it.
Everything changed. The lights stopped flickering. The fog he seemed to permanently live in began to lift. The air smelled fresher. The constant ringing in his ear suddenly stopped.
He put the book down and stood a little straighter, closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
As he opened them, that's when he saw her. His heart hit the front of his chest when his eyes settled on the blonde. He instantly knew she was responsible for whatever had just happened to him. How the presence of one person could have changed everything the way she did, he could not explain.
Silently he pulled the clothes out of the dryer and put them in the washer, hoping she didn't notice. He needed to start the routine all over again. He needed time to figure out how to talk to her.
Up until just now, everything in Killian's life was monotony. Wake up, go to work, lunch at noon, come home. Tuesday night was for grocery shopping. Wednesday night for the library. Friday night for laundry. Now, with this woman standing in front of him, he was kicking himself. How could he talk to her when he had nothing interesting to say?
The more he tried to think about it, the more confused he got. Why couldn't he think of anything? What if she asked about his hand? He didn't remember how he lost it. In fact, now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember anything. Panic started welling up in his chest.
He looked up and saw her again. As soon as his eyes passed over her blonde hair and the red leather of her jacket, his heart calmed. As long as he stayed focused on her, the panic was at bay. He felt the fresh, cool air, so devoid of the previous fog, passing through his lungs and knew he needed to talk to her. She was the answer to everything, even if he couldn't figure out why.
Luckily, she provided the opening. He noticed her looking around a little panicked, with a twenty dollar bill in her hands. Smiling to himself, he knew he could fix the situation. He'd arrived earlier in the evening to himself notice the "no twenties" sign taped to the change machine, and had ducked out to the nearest corner store to get some tens and fives.
"Need some change, love?" Love, where had that come from? He certainly did not address strange women, any woman, as love. He heard himself call out to her before he had even realized he planned on saying it.
She looked up and saw the extremely attractive man standing right in front of her. She'd been so distracted by getting herself situated at the laundromat, she hadn't taken time to take any stock of her surroundings. She definitely would have noticed him next. Tall, dark hair, three day scruff, amazing blue eyes, jeans and a plain white t-shirt. And the English accent. Oh, that accent. Exactly the type of guy she liked when she looked for company for the night.
"Actually, that'd be great. I didn't realize I couldn't change a twenty."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, and that's when she noticed the hook in lieu of his left hand. Well, it wasn't really a hook, it was two curved metal pieces he could manipulate by flexing the muscles in his forearm. He could no more remember getting it than he could remember losing his hand, but it was a part of him.
He held the wallet with his hook and handed two fives and a ten over to her and she exchanged them for the twenty.
She gave him a silent nod, and returned to the change machine. He picked up his book, and stood by his machine, pretending to read as he heard the plings of quarters as they hit the coin return in the machine.
He wanted to sit down, but wanted to be sure he was positioned close to wherever she settled once her clothes were in the wash. Feigning absolute disinterest in her activities, he would turn a page once a minute or so, while watching out of the corner of his eyes as she separated her items. He could wait. His wash had just begun.
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Not knowing what was coming over her, she felt compelled to talk to the man who'd given her change earlier. Obviously she wasn't going to be hooking up with a guy she met in a laundromat. She reserved her one night stands for guys she met in bars far, far, far from her apartment, to reduce the chances she'd ever run in to him again. A guy doing laundry the block over from her building? There was every chance she'd run in to him again at the grocery, on the sidewalk, or even at Jay's, the bar she liked to go to when she needed a night out. Running into a one night stand again would mean explaining why she wasn't there when he woke up. So, what was her end game in talking to him? Emma Swan didn't do friends. She didn't even do acquaintances.
But still, there was a draw. She wanted to talk to him, and she found herself doing something completely out of character.
"What are you reading?" she asked?
His peripheral vision had given him warning that she was approaching, but hadn't wanted to look up just yet. When he heard the question, he slowly looked up and smiled.
"Master and Commander. It's about sailing. I think I may have been a sailor in a past life," he joked.
"Not a pirate? Maybe Captain Hook."
"No, it's wrong." His answer had been so quick and forceful. He didn't know where it had come from.
"What's wrong?" she asked, completely puzzled.
"Peter Pan. It's wrong. The story is wrong. I read it once and hated it. Can't remember why now. But I just remember thinking it was wrong."
"Hm," was all the reply he got to that. Why had he said that. For the life of him he couldn't have actually told you when he read 'Peter Pan.' He's pretty sure if you'd asked him about it yesterday he never would have remembered he HAD read 'Peter Pan.' But today, the more he thought about it, the more it came back to him. Peter Pan was a pain in the ass.
"I'm Killian by the way." He held out his hand with a raised eyebrow, clearly indicating that her name would be welcome in exchange. He realized he needed to do something normal to make up for the crazy that had just spewed from his mouth.
"Emma." She returned the handshake.
She had taken out her phone and was flipping through images and pages of what looked to be biography information.
"What is it that you're reading, if you don't mind me asking?
"I'm looking up information on a case. I'm a bailbonds person." He shook his head as though he didn't understand. "A skip trace," she explained, using a different term. Another shake of the head. Finally she sighed and resigned herself to the term everyone knew. "A bounty hunter. People skip out on their bail. I find them. I get to keep a portion of the bond."
He eyed her with a smirk, the profession not matching the body and face he saw in front of him. "Not to sound too inappropriate, love, but how exactly does a woman like you end up in bail bonds?"
"A woman like me?"
"Beautiful as hell," he said with a smile and a wink. Again, he questioned himself, not sure if he'd ever winked in his entire life. "I imagine bail bonds is quite a strenuous job, and a woman such as yourself could probably find a much safer profession."
Emma did not want to explain to a complete stranger that when you're 20 and fresh out of prison, the route to employment isn't always the easiest. Plus, she resented the implication that she should have taken a different path in life based on her looks alone.
She shrugged. "I'm good at finding people. Typically if someone's run out on their bail, they don't want to be found. But I'm good at it. I've yet to lose anyone."
"I can't imagine you ever fail," he said completely in earnest. He'd known her for less than ten minutes, but he knew that this Emma was not someone to be trifled with.
He grew quiet, leaving her to continue on her phone, as an idea percolated in his mind.
She sat flipping through the images on her phone to keep her from talking more to the stranger at the laundromat. She couldn't tell you why she was talking to him. She never talked to strangers, not unless she was gathering information on a mark. So why was she so interested in him. Sure, he was handsome. Maybe that was a bit of an understatement. But lots of men were handsome. There was just something about him that got to her the second she had made eye contact with him. He looked at her as though she were everything. Ordinarily, when someone focused on her with that kind of intensity, she found it creepy. But with him, it was different. Almost comforting. So now, when he said that he couldn't imagine she'd ever fail, she nearly lost it. An absolute stranger showing more faith in her than anyone ever had in her entire life? Part of her wanted to just abandon her clothes and run. The other part wouldn't have been able to leave without knowing more about him. At least she had his name and could look him up later. Killian couldn't be a common name. Ten minutes on the computer and she'd have his complete history. She felt slightly guilty for a moment. What right did she have to pry into his past, when she would be so unwilling to share hers?
"Maybe you could help me?" she heard him say quietly.
"Pardon?"
"Maybe you could help me? You said you're good at finding people. Well, maybe you could help me. Maybe you could find me."
"Um, you're standing right there."
"That's not what I mean. If I start telling you this, you're going to think I'm crazy, but I swear it's the truth."
And here it is, she thought. The good looking, seemingly intelligent man with the accent that could almost make her swoon was too good to be true. Here's where she learned his crazy. At least he was going to be upfront about it.
"Here's the thing. I have a built-in bullshit detector. I always know when people are lying to me. Tell me your story. If I believe you, maybe I'll help. Maybe."
He grabbed her wrist and both jumped back in surprise when they felt the shock that ran through them. Emma tried to play it off as static discharge. That happened a lot at the laundromat, right? Killian knew better. It was a sign. He reached for her again, this time circling her wrist with his hook, and led her to the back, next to some of the dryers away from the other patrons. He pulled two of the green plastic lawn chairs available for the customer's use and set them up facing each other. Taking one for himself, he indicated that she should take the other.
He sat with his elbows on his knees, arms steepled to his chin. With a deep inhale he started, "so look, I've already told you this is all going to sound crazy. I'm well aware of that. But it's the truth as far as I know it. I know nothing about myself. People at work call me Killian Jones, but I don't KNOW that that's my name. It does sound right, though. I'm an engineer, at least that's what I do every day at work. I have no memories of becoming an engineer. No memories of college. An engineer should have gone to college, right? I've got a god damned hook for a hand and no memories of either losing the hand or getting this bloody attachment. One would remember that, right? No memories of family. Everyone has a family, right?" She flinched a little as she heard him say that. "Emma, all I can think is that I have amnesia. But that's ridiculous. People don't get amnesia like that. But there's no other explanation for my life. Until you walked into this laundromat tonight, it was like I lived in a fog. I went to work. I read. I slept. That's it. Nothing makes sense to me. You're the first clear thing I've ever seen. Please, you have to help me figure this out. You said it yourself, you find people." He realized that he had gotten progressively louder the longer he talked, and his intention to sound as rational as possible as he explained had failed. He finally looked to see what her reaction to the story was, but the last thing he expected to see was fear.
Emma had sat staring at him through his whole explanation. The needle on her bullshit detector hadn't even moved. And that terrified her. She wanted to tell herself that just because this guy believed his crackpot story didn't make it true. Maybe he was so unhappy in his old life he'd run and started some new reality. But why would he be begging for her help? Within seconds of meeting this man she'd felt connected to him like she hadn't felt to anyone since, well, in a long time. And allowing herself to get close then had only hurt her. So she did what she should have done all those years ago.
She ran.
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Hi you guys. This was supposed to be a one-shot, because that's really all I thought I could handle writing right now. But as soon as I sat down to write it, it just grew. And grew. More of this story is written already, and WAY more of this is outlined than what you're reading right here, and I think if the response is good I'll write the whole thing.