Emma had received a call at 2 am from the fishing shop owner to report someone lurking around the harbor. She had to go and take a look in case it was someone trying to steal a boat. That was the reason why she was getting out of her car near the docks in the middle of the night with no back up and only armed with her flashlight and her gun.
She walked toward the alley near the dock where the caller had said seeing the intruder disappear. When she got closer she saw a flickering light in the distance, carried by a shadow.
After thinking about the situation, Emma decided to wait until she got closer before calling the lurker, there was too much distance between her and the light for her to catch them if they started running now. She pocketed her flashlight and started moving forward discreetly. Her shoes were making no sound and Emma was patting herself on the back for changing from her heeled shoes before taking her shift from David, who had taken up the sheriff thing quite well while she had been gone.
Clink, her foot had accidently hit something on the ground, Emma looked towards the light and she saw that the silhouette was running. She stopped caring about the noise and started running through the alley.
"This is the sheriff and I'm ordering you to STOP!" Her hands searched her pockets to take the flashlight out but it was stuck, she stopped staring at the silhouette for a second to extract the flashlight out of her pocket. When she raised her head again, she could not find the silhouette anymore, there was no flickering light either. She slowed down to a walk and caught her breath quietly to see if she could hear anything. It was eerily calm, there was no sounds of footsteps or anything that could have helped her. The alley was so dark she could barely see her hands in front of her, she turned on the flashlight but there was nothing in front of her. She turned it off and tried to walk forward towards the end of the alley.
"SWAN!" Her shadow was appearing at her feet, and she could hear the intruder's voice calling her from behind her. He had managed to catch her off guard, and she knew exactly who it was.
She slowly turned around, "Hook –" However she stopped talking the moment she saw that he had a gun pointed at her.
He had a gun in his good hand, his brow was caked with blood and he looked furious. The light that he had been carrying was coming from a lantern that he held with his hook.
"Did you miss me?" His voice was as flirtatious as it had been on the beanstalk but she could tell that he meant no word of it, he was not smiling but looking at her angrily with a frown on his face. His finger was on the trigger and he would not hesitate to shoot her – she knew it thanks to her former job as bounty hunter, many of her contracts had tried to shoot her but she had always had a back-up plan, yet this time she had none.
"Hook, what do you want? How did you even get here?" She was skimming through her memories to see how he could have come here. The bean, it had to be the bean, she thought.
He was going to answer but she spoke first, "You used the waters of the lake to revive the bean's magic!" Then her mind jumped to the most important question: "Did Cora come with you?"
"Well lass, if you stopped talking for a second", his mouth spat the last word and she could see how he was restraining his anger and decided to stop pissing him off, "you'd know that I did not let Cora know about my little plan B and that your lad is safe. Now that you have had some time to think about it, your stupid little brain must have now figured out that I was helping you at the lake but you knocked me out anyway, and left me there to rot when I am the GODDAMN REASON YOU ARE STILL ALIVE!" His hand shook as he yelled the last sentence and she instinctively took a step back from Hook.
"Hook, I… I didn't know, I couldn't have known. I had to protect my family. I'm sorry but I did what needed to be done."
"YOU DIDN'T KNOW?! How could you not know that I was throwing the damn fight?! I am a sword master and you are a little girl who can't even hold a sword correctly! I could have killed you a thousand times out there BUT I DID NOT!" He was pacing around, the lantern swinging on his hook, the candle inside throwing weird and scary shadows on the alley with its movements. The gun was still pointed at her, she could see that it was a gun coming from her world and she had no idea how he had found it.
"You know what? Never mind, I did not come here for that, you owe me a life debt Emma Swan and you are going to pay your debt to me now. You are going to take me to a safe isolated place and from there you will use one of your magic thingy to allow me to talk to The Crocodile. And if you try to screw me, I will end you if I have to."
After looking into his eyes she knew that he was entirely serious and that trying to stop him from his revenge would get her killed and then Henry would grow up without her and he would think she abandoned him. She could not bear the thought of doing that to him, or to Mary Margaret and David, her parents with whom she had just got reunited. And Gold had used her and manipulated her again and again, he had put Henry's life in danger when he stole the True Love potion from her and God knows what he would do to her family again.
She had not forgotten the favor she owed him either and she could not bear the thought of having to do anything he would ask of her. What if he asked her to kill someone? Or make her do something that would put Henry or her parents in danger? She could not trust the man, and he would not be regretted.
She looked him in the eyes and nodded, "I'll help you get rid of Gold. I don't want him anywhere near me or the people I care about if I can help it. There is a cabin in the forest, it's very isolated and I'll be able to call Gold from there. What is your plan? If you plan on using me as hostage you should know that he won't come for me."
He lowered his arm, put the gun inside his jacket and crowded her toward the wall behind her. He searched for something in her eyes for a moment and must have liked what he saw because he finally smiled, but it was not the smile Emma had seen in Fairytale Land, no, it was a much darker smile. She could finally see the man thirsty for revenge, he had shed his playful façade and now she understood how this man could be the infamous Captain Hook.
He raised his hand and fiddled with the collar of her coat.
"You have no idea of how important you are love, don't you? You have broken the curse that was upon this land and you have also helped brought magic to it. It is your existence and your magic that allows Rumplestiltskin and the Queen to have access to their magic, so if I threaten to kill you, you can bet that this coward will move his ass to save you."
"How the hell can you know all that?"
"Mine to know and yours to wonder. Come on, let's go to this cabin so we can move forward with the plan, I have waited three hundred years for this day, and I am not waiting for another day to pass. So. Where to?" He stepped back and made a show of raising his arms and looking again delightfully innocent and carefree like in the Enchanted Forest but Emma knew better know.
"We'll take my car, come on."