AUTHORS NOTE:

Hello wonderful people! How are you today? I've had this idea in my head for a while but I was putting off writing it because I'm not a huge fan of writing fan-fictions, but I cannot shake the idea from my head, so I guess I should just give in and write it.

This is the story of Killian Jones alias: Captain Hook, and Milah's daughter Róisín (Roh-SHEEN) Ó Conghalaigh (O KAA-nuh-lee) and her journey to find her family and her happy ending.

Please note: Some on the names in this story are in different languages such as Róisín so in those cases I will put the phonetic spelling (Roh-SHEEN) so that you can pronounce it the way it should be.

Also, while this story will feature all the OUAT couples, and even one of my own, this is not a romantic novel but more of one of self-discovery and coming of age. Romance will be featured but it is not the central focus.

Just to let you know I have changed some of the timeline to make it work into the story, I know that in the TV show Emma says that Killian is around 300 years old for the purpose of this story, I am changing things slightly, in this story Killian was born early 19th century around the 1820's give or take, so he is close to two hundred years old. My character Róisín was born when Hook was in his early thirties, so around the 1850's. Róisín landed on the island when she was around 18 so late 1860's. Bae is around ten years older than Róisín and in my story he was already on the island before Róisín arrived, which explains why Bae looked younger than Róisín when they were on the island.

Correspondingly, this story will feature some pretty dark subjects such as abuse and sexual assault, in my version Neverland and Pan are a lot darker, so I'll insert the TRIGGER WARNING here. Please read at your own risk.

This story begins at the beginning of Season 3 when the gang goes to Neverland to rescue Henry.

Please ignore the minor grammar issues this is not edited at all but will be after the story is complete.

OK, after the longest Authors note ever, let's get on with the story,

Love,

Cami

PS: IF YOU NOTICE MY CHARACTER KATHERINE'S NAME HAS BEEN CHANGED TO ROISIN/ ROSALIE. PLEASE DONT LET THIS TRIP YOU UP WHEN READING THE STORY.

DISCLAIMER: As much as I wish I did, I do not own ONCE UPON A TIME or any of the characters from the TV show. They belong to their respective creators, writers, and producers; I simply own my character(s) and the storylines that I form around them. OK ENJOY!

PROLOGUE:

There are many ways to hurt a man, many ways to make him suffer, to make him bleed, to make him wish for death. There is the traditional form of torture, where one tries to break their victim by inflicting unimaginable bouts of physical pain. One can burn him with coals, and brand him so that he knows he is owned, and beat him with whips, cops, clubs, and sticks. One can also scalp him, remove his skin, his fingernails, throw acid on his body, and mutilate him with surgical procedures. One can send him to the brink of death, and bring him back over, and over again, enough to drive him mad. But in the end, all those attempts are futile, they are all for nothing, as there is one pesky little thing that can outlive and overpower all forms of physical torture.

It is something that can't be touched, heard, or seen, it is not a physical thing, but it is something we all feel, it is part of our very nature, engrained in us since birth. It has allowed humanity to do the imaginable, to create buildings larger than life, machines that run as if they were controlled by magic, for people to learn the light and dark arts, it has allowed kings to conquer lands far and wide, has won wars, saved children, allowed mothers to do the impossible to save their children from forces much larger than their own, for fathers to go on inconceivable missions to be reunited with their loved ones, it has kept us going for millenniums. And yet it is something that all of us take for granted. It is something we really don't appreciate until we no longer have it.

The mind is a very powerful tool; it allows us to escape worlds, to free ourselves from traumatic experiences, to disassociate ourselves from our bodies. To be completely free from our human troubles, it allows us to dream, to fly, to create, and when we are stuck in a place where we feel that we can no longer go on, it allows us to hope.

Hope, a beautiful four-letter word, stronger than love, stronger than medicine, stronger than life. It can take us from the darkest of places and bring us into the lightest. It can save us, when we don't have the power to save ourselves.

What would humanity be without it? How much would we suffer? There is no doubt in my mind that we would cease to exist.

Because without hope, there is no reason to live, there is no reason to breathe; there is no reason to keep fighting in this dangerous world. Without hope we become shells, empty shells that were once filled with a human soul, empty shells with no aspiration, no goals, no dreams, and no wants, nothing that makes them human. We become a living carcass that is simply waiting to die.

If you truly want to break someone, if you truly want to own them, turn them into a mindless slave, all you must do is crush their hope, take it away and everything else will eventually fade with it. Hope is a pesky thing that will fight you to the end, but once you have succeeded in destroying it; you have won.