We all know that four months is way too long to go without OUAT, so here is yet another fic to quench your thirst as you wait for the return, starting from the season finale's send off. Hope you enjoy.
This story will take a few chapters to get started. I need some space to bring everything from where it was left off in the finale to where I need it to be to continue with the plot I've spelled out in the description. Please stick around, it shouldn't be more than 3-4 chapters at most, and I promise to make them full of fluff and family tension that all serve to set up the more actively-paced plot nicely.
A few disclaimers. First of all, please disregard the scene in which Neal washes up on shore in the Enchanted Forest. For the purposes of this story, he was last seen being sucked through the portal in 'Second Star on the Right'. I didn't want to have to waste more space getting Neal over to Neverland before I began the story I wanted to tell.
Secondly, while the first scene written below is Captain Swan heavy, this is not a Captain Swan fic. It will pick up with the relationships where left off, and probably lean more towards Swanthief, but as always there will be some Captain Swan flirting and sexual tension, and the characters will weave their own versions of their relationships as the story unfolds.
Enjoy!
The blade of Emma's sword slashed into the wooden pillar of the ship's main mast, bouncing back brusquely as it elicited a loud clang and left a deep, dark gash. She swung again. And again. Her lessons were pulsing through her mind. Stand side face, shoulders back, feet braced wide, knees bent, wrists loose…
Every few moments, other thoughts would threaten to penetrate her mind. Sour memories of the past few days. The feeling of Neal's hand slipping out of hers as she tightened her grasped on the plank of wood she held, digging splinters into her palm, and he fell and was swallowed by nothingness. Regina with her hands around that growing diamond, sucking electric blue power from its evil source. The feeling of that leather pouch when she dug her finger into it and found it was empty. That sad, abandoned backpack, broken at the strap, draped across the iron bars and wooden planks of the out-of-use mine railroad. Henry's terrified face as he had looked up frantically at his mother, sprinting as fast as she could towards him down the docks, just before he was tugged viciously forward into the portal and ripped away from her.
Stand side face, she repeated in her mind, forcing her new training to attack these memories until they retreated into some part of her mind she could not access. Knees bent, wrists loose, shoulders back, feet braced wide…
That's why she was doing this, after all. Why she had nearly refused to put a sword down since boarding the ship. Why it was the middle of the night and everyone else was below deck, but she was here, practicing her strokes one swing of the blade at a time. To help give her mind something to focus on, so it would not focus on those wide terrified eyes, cast in that unnatural green glow, those small hands bound as he struggled against the pair who had captured him…
Knees bent, she all but whispered out loud. Eyes forward, stand side face. Wrists loose, feet braced wide, shoulders back, and...
Her blade met metal with an unwarranted cry. She blinked, searching for what she had hit. She hadn't been looking really, hadn't even been paying attention. As she squinted in front of her, she saw her sword caught at the end by something curved shining in the starlight, before she felt it wrenched in a circle and thrust backwards. She caught herself before she stumbled with it as Hook stepped further into the light. Emma breathed a sigh of relief and frustration.
"You scared me," she said.
"Well, you're scaring me, lass," Hook said, folding his arms and cocking an eyebrow as he leaned lazily against the scarred wood of the mast. "You haven't stopped swinging that sword for hours. What did my ship's mast ever do to you?"
"I thought you went to bed," Emma panted, turning to look at her sword. Now that she took the time to notice, her hand was sore and blistered, and the blade was worn and dented. As she released the grip on the hilt and stood the sword against a box at her side, she felt like she was peeling off her own skin, as if the weapon had fused itself to her hand from overuse.
"You know a ship is made of wood, right?" Hook said. "And that wood absorbs sound? There's no way any of us can get any sleep with you hammering away up here. The others are just too noble to say anything about it." Hook smiled slyly. "But don't worry, you never have to worry about nobility with me."
Emma turned away from him in a huff with a strong urge to kick something. When she found nothing suitable, she strode angrily over to the edge of the ship.
"There's no room on this damned boat!" she lamented.
"Ship," Hook corrected quietly. Emma continued as if she had not heard his quip.
"Nowhere to hide," she continued, reaching the railing of the ship, leaning on both of her hands and speaking to the wide, vast ocean in front of her. "No place where someone can get a minute to breathe and just… be alone."
From the moment they had fallen through the portal, Emma had insisted on sword training with her father. When she had worn him out, she had demanded her mother take over. She had allowed them to break only because it had given her time to hustle lessons in performing magic out of Gold and Regina. When they grew tired as well, she would call upon her parents again to pick up their swords.
"You need to rest," Charming had insisted. "Save your strength."
"If you don't use it, you lose it," Emma had retorted.
"Emma," Snow started, but the blonde cut her off.
"Don't Emma me!" she had barked. "Remember what happened the last time you Emmaed me?"
"It's amusing to see both of their stubbornness fused into one person and then thrown right back in their faces," Regina had chuckled as a sidebar to Gold, loud enough for the entire dock to hear. The trio had shot her a resentful look, and she had blinked, nearly choking down a laugh at the same piercing expressions reflected at her three times over.
As dusk grew, Emma had taken up inanimate objects as her opponents, practicing her stance and her strokes and relishing anything that took her mind off of her problems. Slowly the rest of the party had filtered below decks to sleep, and she had remained, hashing and slashing away. She actually had enjoyed the solitude for a time. There had not been much of it in the past few months, what with the four of them in that tiny loft and the town being so small and all the problems that had arisen since the breaking of the curse. If she really let herself feel it, she missed being alone.
But there was no solitude to be found on a ship, as Hook's remark had just reminded her. Her entire family, and then some, were downstairs listening to what she was doing. Not that they had much of a choice. She leaned out over the edge of the boat, catching the brisk sea breeze in her face, taking a deep, calming breath. She felt Hook's footsteps as he moved to join her.
"No, not much privacy on a ship," Hook agreed, leaning his back against the railing and facing the opposite way, folding his arms across his chest. Emma snorted a laugh. Hook raised his eyebrows. "Something funny?" he prodded.
"Irony, is all," she responded, surveying the rolling landscape of the waves that extended farther than she could see as they reflected the pointed lights of the stars above them, making them dance. "I spent my entire childhood alone, wishing I had a family, and now that I'm stuck on a boat with them, all I can think about is finding some place to be by myself."
"Yeah, well, spend enough time on a ship and you'll learn that it's just as easy to feel lonely when you're surrounded by people as it is when there's no one around," Hook recounted, turning to mimic her stance and looking out into the ocean as well. Emma did a double take at the bitterness she heard in his voice. She saw it mirrored in his eyes as he stared out at the blue nothingness before them, a slight breeze bristling his hair. She opened her mouth as if to respond, then found that she didn't quite know what to say, so she shut it again and turned to mimic his gaze. The pair stood in a comfortable silence for a few moments.
"Are we at least somewhere close to Neverland?" she eventually asked, scanning the dark horizon for any sign of land.
"Trust me, love, finding Neverland isn't going to be the problem," Hook assured her cryptically. "The problem will be landing there without detection."
"Detection?" Emma repeated, looking sharply at him. "By whom?"
The pair shared a look of great gravity that suspended long in the cool breeze of the oceanic evening. Hook seemed about to answer, but then to struggle. Her eyes were already so sad. He didn't want to give her any more news to grieve over. Before he could make up his mind the best way to respond, however, a third voice joined them.
"Everything alright here?"
Emma and Hook turned simultaneously to find who had spoken. They had not heard Charming's footsteps coming up the stairs or through the door that led below deck. He stood by the mast, a few paces away. Emma could tell by the way the vein in his neck pulsed as he eyed Hook that it wasn't just the moonlight that had his face so pale. Hook blinked, then looked down at the wooden planks beneath his feet, smiling a crafty grin. He glanced up at Emma.
"That conversation's best left for the morning, love," he said quietly. "Best get some sleep. We've got a long hunt ahead of us." He strode past Charming, whose narrowed eyes followed him. "Impeccable timing, as always, Charming," he goaded as he passed. Charming's eyes narrowed still further, but he let the quip slide. When he reached the doorway that led below deck, Hook looked back with a sly smile on his face and added, "if you get lonely in the night, Swan, you know which cabin is mine."
Charming took an angry and protective step forward, but Hook had already slipped through the doorway and Emma called his attention away from the pirate.
"Don't rise to it," she warned, "he's just trying to get under your skin."
"He's becoming increasingly apt at that," Charming assured her through gritted teeth.
"If we are going to get Henry back, you two are going to need to accept the fact that you are on the same team and learn to work together," Emma chided, feeling a bit like the roles of this twisted relationship were reversed; that she were the parent and Charming the child.
"I don't like the way he looks at you," he seethed, casting a dark glance at the door through which the pirate had disappeared. When he looked back at his daughter, he saw that she as well had a curious smile on her face. A thought dawned on him. "Do you like him?"
Emma shook her head, her smile growing. "No. He baits me and I bite back, but no. We just… understand each other is all. I think he likes that I can keep up with him, and I can't say I don't find it amusing myself. But what I do like is you getting all protective and defending my honor."
"Anywhere, anytime, Princess," he offered with a grin, striding up next to her and draping an arm around her protectively, pressing a light kiss into her golden hair. She allowed her head to droop onto his shoulder and for a moment father and daughter stood comfortably looking out across the dark, rolling water.
"You should cut him some slack," she said, her voice drooping with exhaustion. "He's family too, you know."
"How so?" he asked, vaguely curious.
"He's Neal's stepfather."
Charming pulled back and looked down at Emma, who tilted her head up to meet his eyes and confirm what she had said with a glance. His eyebrows were raised in disbelief, demanding that she explain further.
"He and Neal's mother fell in love and ran away together. That's why Gold wants to kill him. And Hook wants to kill Gold because after he became the dark one, Gold killed his ex-wife for leaving him and Neal, and Hook swore revenge on his murdered love."
Charming blinked at her, taking in everything she said and rolling it over in his mind until all the pieces made sense. He let out a long breath as he looked back out at the water.
"What are we, on some kind of TV show?" he breathed, pulling Emma back into his embrace as their resumed their familial stance. "That's soap opera level drama, that is."
"You forget that on some level this entire thing is a whole big Disney movie to me," Emma laughed. "Snow White and Prince Charming. Giants and magic beans. Pirate ships and Neverland."
Charming smiled. He was constantly in awe of everything about his daughter. Her strength, her resilience, her goodness despite all the bad she had experienced. He himself had been attempting to keep his own slew of terrible recent memories at bay from the past few days. The wound where Tamara's gunshot had grazed his bicep still irritated him as it rubbed against his shirt sleeve. The way Emma had looked at him after she had found the pouch empty in that mineshaft and the way she had muttered 'Dad' in a terrified whisper and trembled as he held her for what he thought would be the last time. How she had struggled against him when he had grabbed hold of her desperately to keep her from vaulting through the portal after his grandson, who was already far beyond their reach. He gave her thin form a soft squeeze, as if to remind himself that she was still there beside him.
"Hook was right about one thing though," he said softly, "much as I hate to admit it. You really should get some rest."
"I can't sleep," Emma told him. "Every time I close my eyes, I see his face. His white face and his terrified eyes as they pull him through that swirling portal."
"We will find him, you know," Charming assured her. "You, your mother and I, we are very well-practiced in finding each other."
"I never would have pictured this is how this would happen," Emma continued. "Not in a million years. Even after the curse broke and I found out the truth and even when I first start suspecting Tamara, I never would have guessed that this is how this would play out. An entire world away, with very little chance of ever getting back, on a wild goose chase through Neverland. It's – it's not fair."
She felt childish saying it, but it was how she felt. On some level, standing there in her father's arms, she felt like a little girl, young and naïve and about to embark upon a journey of which she had very little knowledge or certainty. She took a deep breath and blinked in the stars dancing in the water around her. She looked up into her father's face.
"Once more unto the breach?" she asked, quoting Shakespeare. Charming blinked down at her, then smiled and paternally tugged her still closer, resting his cheek atop her head.
"I couldn't have said it better myself."
Some Captain Swan and Daddy Charming feels to start us off! Lots more feels to come with all members of the family, and a faster paced plot within the next few chapters, I promise, just setting everything up.
Also, just so you know, I also intend on writing another fic centering around Storybrooke. I love the dynamic of the town and am sad the main characters have left it behind for what seems like the foreseeable future. I'm not sure what form this fic will take yet, it will probably an alternate version of how season two could have gone from the beginning, but it is hard to picture the story without Neal and Hook, so I'm not quite sure yet. Still working on it, but be on the look out for it.
Please read and review! I am really motivated by feedback. Let me know what you think.
