Snow has seen it coming for a while.
Of course she has.
She wishes she could tell herself it was maternal instinct, but truthfully it has less to do with being a mother and more to do with just being a woman.
She saw something spark between them from the start, felt an extra jolt of anxiety sending Emma up the beanstalk alone with him, spent time wondering about what was said and unsaid when Cora had trapped them in Rumpelstiltskin's cell. And since they've been in Neverland, it's only gotten stronger. More intense. He's constantly at Emma's side, not-quite flirting with her, and just watching her. A dozen times she's planned to say something to Emma, though she's never quite sure what she would say.
A part of her wants to warn her daughter. He's a pirate, she wants to say, you'll only end up getting hurt. Haven't you been hurt enough?
But things have changed since they'd rescued Neal — Henry's father, the man she'd thought was Emma's True Love, though she now wonders why she had assumed that in the first place. Now that she's finally had a chance to see them together at close range, she's come to a different conclusion altogether.
Now she finds she wants to say something entirely different.
And she doesn't want to say it to Emma.
She waits until Charming's breathing evens out before she slips away, sitting silently beside Hook, who's leaned against a large tree, keeping first watch.
The camp is silent; everyone else is sleeping soundly after a long day's hike. It doesn't surprise her in the least that Hook's planted himself in the best location to watch over Emma's sleeping pallet across the camp.
It takes several minutes before he finally speaks. "Is there something I can do for you milady?" he asks, his eyes still on Emma, the fingers of his good hand drumming soundlessly on his knee.
As a girl, Snow had been taught diplomacy, and the art of working her way around to a difficult question. She'd never really enjoyed it, though, and sees no reason to beat around the bush with the pirate. "I was wondering," she says softly, "just how long you've been in love with my daughter."
His fingers still, the only sign he's even heard her.
She holds her breath, and her tongue. Another lesson learned from her father is that people — most people — will rush to fill a silence, often revealing things they might rather keep hidden.
Hook, though, isn't most people, and she begins to think he won't answer at all before she hears him huff out a laugh.
"I honestly don't know," he says finally. "Perhaps it was the moment she saw right through me and held a knife to my throat."
She smiles a little at the memory.
He turns to her slightly, and she notices the fingers drumming again. "Something about women and weapons," he muses, sending a faint leer her direction.
"Hook."
He sighs, turning back to Emma's sleeping form. "It sounds foolish; I had just met her."
"Not so foolish," she says, looking at her very own Prince Charming, snoring away nearby. "I won't say it was love at first sight for us — 'Charming' was a nickname I gave him ironically — but it wasn't long before I knew I'd never love another like I love David."
"Hmmm. Touching." She supposes he means to be sarcastic, but he just sounds sad. "However, let's not forget. The prince loves you in return."
She hunts for the right words. She wishes she could say she knew her daughter's heart; wishes she'd been her confidant all the years Emma was growing up, falling in love for the first time. She wonders if she would know better now what to say, if things had been different.
"You know, something I've noticed," she says, watching him carefully. "We've ... I've been trying so hard to reach her, to be her mother, and she just has all these walls that are so ..."
It's harder than she thought it would be to put into words, so she just clears her throat and cuts to the chase. "She smiles. Around you, she smiles. It's nice to see."
He turns to her, looking surprised.
"That's all I wanted to say," she finishes, pushing to her feet in a crouch beside him. "Except ... she doesn't smile for him, either." She nods in Neal's direction.
He nods slowly, seriously, before the usual smirk takes over. "Angling for a pirate son-in-law, are you?"
She laughs quietly, then shrugs. "Angling for a happy daughter."
She smiles, casts a last glance at her sleeping daughter, then returns to her husband's side.