we are not always what we seem
He feels like he is dying.
Hook is no stranger to the perils of the drink - thought he had built up a tolerance long ago, but the sun is too bright in his eyes and his head throbs in a way that it hasn't since the first time he drank himself into oblivion after Liam's death.
He knows Emma is not dead, knows that she is somewhere in her realm happy with her son, but this separation is as final as any death. He will never see her again. She will linger in his thoughts each day but he will never see her again and so she is as good as dead - as lost as Liam, and Milah, and all the names that he carves on his body and soul in remembrance.
His stomach reels, and he limps to the chamber-pot in the flea-bitten inn where he's staying, barely making it in time.
When Hook is done worshiping the porcelain bowl, he stands shakily and pours himself a glass of water from the pitcher nearby, trying to avoid looking at his reflection in the mirror (he does not want to see what he looks like, so wretched and desperate, because it may truly break him). He considers the cost of the room, and wonder if he should pay for another night, drown his sorrows in more rum, but he remembers the prince as he left. If he says in one place for too long, the prince might find him (he know he was growing on the man) and seeing the sorrow in his eyes, and that of his wife - it is too much for Hook to bear. They at least had some claim to Emma; he had none. He will never have any claim to her, even if he told her - even if she -
He will never know.
It should not matter.
It does, and it always will.
He wonders if he should have stayed with her family, tried to make something for himself there, but the space where Emma and her lad should be would always exist, and nothing could fill it. He could always return - the prince would welcome him back, he's sure - but his sadness is tinged with embarrassment. It is too presumptuous for him to mourn her when she was never his.
No, he can't go back.
Hook wipes his mouth with his hand, dares glance up at the mirror at the wretched man that looks back at him. This man is not a man of honor, he thinks. He is not a man the Savior could love. The man whose reflection stares back at him is a broken man, and a pirate. He is a traitor and a liar, a lost soul and a villain, and this is his unhappy ending.
After all, villains don't get happy endings.
…
He spends the better part of a week buried in the bottom of a tankard of ale, and the better part of the next week trying to sleep off the repercussions of his actions. He has enough coin (courtesy of the prince) to allow himself a modicum of privacy and comfort, and so the innkeeper doesn't toss him out – yet.
Hook lingers in the tavern, listening to the gossip from the port. He makes inquiries about his ship but there are none who have seen it. He tries to not let the lack of news dash his hopes – Regina said it would be here, and he does not doubt the queen (and, as he told the prince, he can always find another ship. It would not be the same, but nothing is when everyone you love is as good as dead).
What the townspeople do talk about are the flying monkeys.
Hook has never seen a flying monkey but he has heard enough ridiculous stories from townspeople that he doesn't take it seriously (also, he has been drinking, so he may be prone to hyperbole of his own…)
There are also whispers of a witch but they are just whispers, so when he retrieves his horse from the stable and sets off to another town and another harbor, the only thought on his mind is that he must get farther and farther from Emma's family and their kingdom. There is nothing for him here, and there might be at sea.
Or so he hopes.
(Perhaps he did learn something from Emma and her family after all.)
…
He does find the Jolly Roger after all, but not before someone else tries to lay claim on his ship.
How he takes the ship back is a story in and of itself – or so he tells the crew he acquires. He softens the rough edges, embellishes the details, and threatens that anyone who challenges him can walk the plank (and he does love a challenge, Captain Hook, so better learn that lesson now, men or…well…).
The real story is that the would-be captain was a scoundrel and a thief and made the mistake of manhandling a young blonde serving girl at a tavern where Hook just happened to find himself that evening.
When he goes below deck to the Captain's quarters, he thinks about the fact that he let the other man go, which he would not have done at his darkest but which he did because the serving girl had green eyes the color of sea glass. When she looked at him, lip cut and eyes terrified, all he could see was Emma climbing the beanstalk and Emma in Neverland, feels the muggy air of that jungle against the back of his neck, and think this is not all that I can be.
There is more to him than villainy, more to him than cruel acts and revenge. Emma showed him that he was capable of more than just treachery and even though he once thought his heart could be whole with her, he will not let its fractured state dictate all his choices.
That is why, even when he leaves the man unconscious and chained outside the magistrate's office, he does it with a shred of hope in his dark heart that maybe all the good that Emma did for him has not completely disappeared.
He spends his first night on his ship with the men as they set sail for the southern straits. He has not spent much time in this realm in over three hundred years and he is eager to feel the familiar breeze, and to see what riches can be found (after all, there has been turmoil here for nigh on thirty years and pickings for a pirate must be good). The crew seems to take to him immediately, though he keeps his eyes open for mutineers and hopes for the best.
Hope, he thinks, is such a loaded word, but it's all he feels as the ship rocks beneath him and the wind whips against his cheeks.
This is not the hope he felt in Neverland, hidden behind what he thought was the glimmering beginnings of love, but it is enough to get him through the night without a drop of rum, enough to push him forward towards the horizon line.
…
Even at sea, Emma haunts him (and he thought that leaving the forest would be his salvation. He is a bloody fool).
During the day, Hook spends time thinking about Emma, and her family, and their kingdom. When the waves are at choppy and there's a storm, he remembers their voyage to Neverland, her help at the helm, and he half-expects her to be on his left when he leaves the helm. He remembers it like its yesterday, because Emma's name is signed across his heart and even though he races the wind to forget her, he finds that he cannot.
Sometimes, he doesn't want to.
She was brilliant, Swan was, so full of spirit and so full of love for her family. Even the mere thought of her brings a smile to his lips during the most inopportune times, so much so that his crew fears him for being crazy and deranged, this man with a hook who pushes them onwards to the next port, the next destination, as if hellhounds are at their heels.
She would have made a good pirate, and when the blood sings in his ears as they outrace a royal frigate or the sunset shines gold and pink, he pretends that she is with him, his own personal savior hovering just out of sight. He thinks of stories that he would tell her as they go about their daily routine - stories Liam told him, stories of the sea - and whispers them to himself as he wakes. He imagines the laughter that would pour from her lips as the Jolly crashes through waves, wonders if the constant state of fight that she lived in could have escalated into something else. He'd seen it once before - their dalliance in Neverland – and even though she is a world away and he will never see her again, she is a drug that never leaves his veins, an addiction he cannot give up.
The dreams come at night and they start simple as he relives Neverland, relives the kiss, and with each passing day his lonely mind takes over. Sometimes she is pulling him towards her, deepening the kiss, lips eager. Sometimes she takes things further, all breathy moans and ready sighs as their layers are peeled away before his eyes and he sinks into her. Always he wakes to find himself hard and needy and embarrassed, because she is not his and never will be (for all he knows, she is someone else's love now, though the thought is difficult to swallow).
He knows he was not worthy of her – that he is just a pirate and a broken man, as evidenced by his easy return to his former state of being. He knows that he will never see her again – will never have a chance to be worth - and even though he's far less brutal than he once was, he is still a pirate, and Emma a princess, and never the twain shall meet.
And yet, when the sunset shines gold and pink through the windows of his quarters, he thinks of Emma, and keeps these little memories buried inside him as if the memories are a precious jewel he must protect at all costs and forgetting would be tantamount to negligence.
Hook did promise her that much, after all.
…
It is nearly a year when the first message arrives…as if by magic.
It is magic, he knows when he looks at the faint purple hue of the parchment that appeared on the table in Hook's quarters, and he reads it once – twice – before her realizes that even though it is not signed, it has been sent by Emma's people. The message tells of a dark power that threatens Emma's family and their kingdom, and it is asking for his help.
At first, he thinks he might get rid of it – hold it over the fire and watch it burst into flame. And yet, he does not. He returns to the deck, orders his men, and when he returns below it is still there, calling to him like a siren.
Hook and his crew are well beyond the Eastern Vale, and to return would take a fortnight, perhaps longer. Yet, when the second message arrives in the same location as the first the next day – a scrap of paper with regal handwriting, signed by David this time – then Hook reads and listens.
They sail hard and fast, and he hopes they can make it in time.
The third message arrives before he does.
The writing is hurried and cramped and Hook can barely decipher the instructions before he realizes that he might be too late, that Emma's family may have been ripped from their realm once again and that Emma may very well be their only hope.
(Hope again. She really has changed him, hasn't she?)
Hook orders the men to make port, to find him a horse, to help him find his way. He may be a pirate, and a broken man, but if he was their only hope…and if Emma can be reunited with her parents (and if he can find her, if he can see her smile one more time and if he can convince her to trust him…)
…well, Hook does love a challenge.