AN: One of two one shots I wrote for heavenlyswan for Captain Swan Secret Valentine on tumblr. Warning: there is some depressing stuff and a brief mention of rape and murder.
Emma and Killian
They don't know it, but they've loved each other in a hundred different lives.
In one they meet, and it's so very simple. He's a blacksmith's son and she's the sweet faced daughter of a shepherd. They're sweethearts and he courts her under the careful watch of her mother and the matrons to smile and whisper about young love behind hands. They marry and settle into a life of simplicity.
Then the wars come, and with them come the raids. He tries to stop the men, but he's a blacksmith, not a warrior.
He watches them rape and kill her as he bleeds out slowly on the floor of their small house, the one where they planned to create a family.
Reset.
In another, he is a warlord and she's the niece of one of the men he invades. When first they meet, it's over her uncle's dead body and she spits in his face.
The men want him to give her to them to do with as they please.
He, however, is enchanted by her spirit.
It's a harrowing courtship, one she disdains and sneers at. Until he saves the life of a shepherd boy, for no other reason than the boy is his and he will always protect that which falls under his protection.
They marry and have children – strong boys to carry on their father's legacy. Girls with their mothers eyes that charm all the boys. And it all gets destroyed when her cousin seeks revenge. He kills her husband, her children, and then tells her that she is finally free.
She throws herself from her tower room. The grief of her husband she could have perhaps withstood, but she never managed to wash away the blood of her children that she imagined stained her hands.
Reset.
In a third, they meet but once. It's at her engagement ball to a Lord, and he is a thief hired to steal her wedding jewels. He steals more than just the jewels, however. And when he hears that she was arrested and executed for infidelity to her cruel fiancé, something indefinable in him breaks.
They met only once.
Perhaps he should have let her be.
There are happy lives as well, free of the pain of loss and heartache.
They marry, have children, and live lives un-extraordinary, except that they're lived together, and that's what makes them special.
Another never occurs, because fate works in odd ways and rewrote what the story was meant to have been.
She was to be the princess, the beloved daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, spoiled beyond belief and wise beyond her years despite that. He was to be the jaded Pirate Captain, far too old for her.
But Princess Emma always got what she wanted, and when she sees him for the first time – standing amongst his crew with a cold face and eyes as wild as the seas he captained, she simply knew. It mattered not that he was as old as her father, because like recognized like and she was never meant for ball gowns and glass slippers.
When they marry it's the scandal of the century. The princess abducted by the pirate that would become her husband. She never returns to the Enchanted Forest, never asks him to give up his piracy.
But for her he gave up centuries of revenge, and she gave him a son with her golden hair and his wild blue eyes that they would name Liam for the brother once so beloved.
When the storm takes the ship, takes his princess, Killian Jones takes his son to his grandparents. He is broken hearted but determined that his son should know the only living pieces of his beloved. He is arrested on charges of piracy, but when he escapes, no one hunts him. And if anyone questions the sudden appearance of the new man on the Queen's Guard, the one that always wears a hood and shadows the young prince that will someday be King like a faithful dog, well… the King and Queen merely ignore those questions.
It never happens, because fate works in mysterious ways, and she was never meant for ball gowns and glass slippers. But the possibility still reverberates through everything they are.
Instead, of Princess Emma, she becomes Emma Swan, and when she meets him for the first time he still looks as old as her father, but so does she, and when he sees her for the first time, it's as though he's seen the light after far too long in the dark.
"I'm the black smith," he says, and wonders where that came from, except that something about that echoes, and for a split moment he sees her not as she is now, but as a fresh faced girl with flowers in her hair and sparkle in her eye just for him.
Then it's gone and she's holding a knife to her throat, and Killian thinks that look suits her far more than flowers ever would.
"You bested me," he says, and it feels like echoes of another life unlived –
"You bested me, Darling," he says as he kisses her for the first time. It's not the first time they've kissed, of course, simply the first he has kissed her.
She's kissed him plenty.
"I always knew I would," she replies, and she has fire in her eyes, but a smile on her lips.
-and then she's walking away, leaving him to ogres, and fanciful notions of knowing her go out the window in favor of self-preservation.
It's the beginning of the end for him. He fights against it, but the pull is too strong. A hundred different lives lived, each pushing them together. And though they're different people, each has one thing in common.
They were meant for each other.
The black smith and shepherd's daughter.
The Warlord and the Warlord's niece.
The Thief and the Lady.
The Pirate and the Princess.
And a hundred more, because lives are infinite and they had lived many.
So when she kisses him, tells him that it's a onetime thing, they both know it's a lie.
When he tells her he'll think of her every day she's gone, they both know it's simple truth.
And when she kisses him after finding out he gave up his ship for her, it's like coming home.
In this life, they'll never be normal. It won't be a life where they simply marry and live out their lives as lives are meant to be lived. She is the Saviour, and he is a 300 year old pirate captain. But it won't end in the heartbreak of loss, either.
In a hundred lives, they always found each other, even if it was only for short periods of time. They've been lords and ladies and thieves and warlords. They've killed others and each other in the name of their love. But as they sit outside Granny's, finding each other for what seems, to them, to be the first time, no past life matters.
In this one, they are simply Emma and Killian.
AN: And there it is. I'm considering writing another one shot that expands on the "could have been" scenario from the Enchanted Forest. Cause I think it could be fun. Thoughts?