The sky was almost a painful sort of blue with its intense sunlight beating down on the docks, even the yellow banners streaming in the wind trying to escape. The sharp tang of salt an honest comfort, he couldn't seem to stop taking deep breaths, and they weren't just for nerves. His time preparing for the King's navy had been the longest he'd ever been away from these waters, and now here they finally were again, ready to set the maiden voyage of The Jewel of the Realm under her new captain.
Most of the crew were getting along with high spirits, jokes twisting this way and that among the rum barrels and the lines being drawn in, ready to pull anchor the moment his captain called. A quick count revealed one man missing though, and he turned back to the docks to see the straggler with two sacks at his feet. Prying himself free of his task with stern delegation, he made his way over with a sharp crack on his tongue of lollygagging when his eyes focused.
Sauren Milso was to be the cook on their voyage, and indeed he had a few last minutes supplies clutched in one hand, a potato peeking out of the top. The other though was not a squirming live feed, but a little girl. Her coloring rare for this part of the land, she smiled up at him with wide dimples and a toothy grin without fear even as her father snapped to attention.
"Apologies sir," was his quick response as he ran a bedraggled hand through his hair and then gestured to the wee thing. "Her mother is due any moment to collect her, then I'll be aboard post haste."
"Aye, see that you do," he could only manage half as stern a look as was deserved though when he bent down to smile at the little lass. Her smile turned shy and she hooked a hand into her fathers pants leg, giving an unneeded crease to the starch material.
In a soft little voice barely heard over the roar of the currents trying to pull into harbor behind them and the crew working furiously, she managed to ask with a determination he was unable to ignore, "when's my daddy coming back? He says only the captain will know."
"Oh I'm not the captain lass," he gently corrected, his smile only increasing at her assumption rather than her father shifting uneasily and waiting for the sharp reprove he'd expected. "I can't give you a date now, but I shall promise you-"
"Sorry, so sorry I'm late!" A woman burst onto the scene, hiking her skirts in an almost unlady like fashion as she sprinted forward, her hand at once going to her daughters shoulder.
"It's alright love," Sauren told her with nothing but affection in his voice. He swooped in for a quick, yet somehow still lingering kiss for her, one more gruff hug to his little girl, and then his bag was over his shoulder and he was, as assured, on board with the rest of his men.
Killian followed without trying to look back. The sea had always been his home and he'd never known otherwise, but somewhere in the back of his mind he sometimes wondered how it would feel to have someone waving him goodbye rather than his brother joining him.
...
The lad took to life aboard with such ease, Killian was beginning to doubt himself this was the same Baelfire of his beloved Milah. Even if they did share the same smile, and the boy carried her spirit even as far apart as they'd been for so long, here was a young man destined to be on waters for how quick he came to know everything there was to know of sailing. The longer the boy acquainted himself in this life, the more Killian regretted every day this hadn't all been so much sooner in his life.
The ache for Milah was always less dim when Bea was at the helm, listening with wide eyed fascination to the tales Killian offered about past explorations. The longer this went on, the more another kind of ache grew, to include tales of his mother. For Baelfire to know the kind of woman she really was outside of his fathers cowardly life. This boy deserved at least one parent he could look up to, for even if he did not know how the separation between him and his father had happened, he was sure it was that old cripples fault for once again unwilling to fight.
He hadn't meant for it to happen, he'd never in his life resorted to harming children and he'd never meant to start with the love of his life's babe. Like all things in his life though, the moment Killian had started to believe he could look out for this boy in the most important way there was, his secret was discovered, he'd been given no time to explain himself, and Pan would give him no chance to.
...
There was a stowaway aboard his ship.
He knew this old girl as surely as he did a treasure, often times it was as if they could speak to each other. There was a layer of frost already settling along the harbor and threatening to crack her mooring, it was the dead of night and he was the only one still aboard while the rest of his men had enjoyed a leisurely time.
Yet it was not Smee or anyone else coming back early that had made such a noise below decks, and Hook was quick to draw his sword and see to it whoever this was froze faster in the water overboard than the sharks could feast.
Hiding like a coward, this unfortunate soul who dared be here without the captains permission was only making their situation worse. Hiding out in the galley was possibly the worst, and last choice of their life. The sharp point of his blade snagging more than a gunny sack, he prodded as hard as he could, eliciting a yelp of fear, pain, or both, that was somehow more high pitched than he'd expected.
"Up! Now!" He barked in a tone that had sent full grown men quacking and running for cover. The command was compiled, and a mop of brown curls came tumbling out head over heels to land on his boot.
He did not lash out in disgust, continue running his sword through, or do much of anything but stare at the suddenly wide eyed youth before him. When he did find his tongue, he was in fact quite grateful there was no longer anyone around to hear his voice cleave in surprise more than anger. "And just what are you doing here?"
"Please sir!" The accent was native to their current port, his voice cracking with waning youth. "I haven't taken anything, I promise! I, I wanted to help, I was going to-"
"To stowaway on my ship," he interrupted, but still his look was not as malevolent as he'd hoped. The boy flinched anyways, twiddling his thumbs and shivering on the spot, though likely more from the cold than anything Killian was doing.
Like a fire kindling to life, he suddenly looked Killian in the eye and stood up straight, all traces of nerves gone except his hands tucking behind his back still twitching just slightly. "I hate it here! My parents have my life all planned out for me, to be a baker like my father and marry this child in town. I don't even like her, let alone want to marry her! I want to be a pirate!"
For just one moment, Killian considered the proposal. Who was he to deny anyone a chance to escape a dreaded life, when he himself had set a course to do the same. He was no fool, his run in with the Dark One in his future would be his last day as surely as his foes. Swallowing and finally sheathing his sword, the words were on the tip of his tongue to get the lad into a cabin, when he made the mistake of meeting the boys eyes.
The image of Baelfire sprung to mind, that boy who was always meant for more and Killian had almost denied him that by keeping him here. If that lad had been better off on Pan's island, where he'd found his own escape without anyone's help, than so was every other man in the world.
Tensing his jaw and grabbing the scruff of his shirt with his hook, he dragged the boy fighting and protesting all the way to the gangplank, giving him an unceremonious push that nearly toppled him into the port below. "Get out of here, run along home, while you still have one."
Those brown eyes burned into Killian with a petulant glare, and struck a nerve deep inside him he thought he'd long since buried. He didn't care about anyone else, nor should he. Reaching out swift as any oncoming wave, he grabbed the boys wrist, and before he could shout in fright of losing it, instead Hook snagged a gleaming ring from the boys finger.
"No, don't! That's-"
He did draw his sword back then, casually slipping the new addition onto his thumb with his hook before settling into an easy stance meant to cause sailors to piss upon deck and then scrub it away before Captain Hook changed his mind. "A lesson learned I hope young man, no one gives you a pirates life, you take it." Pressing the sharp point inches from those too bright eyes that reflected everything back at him, he bared his wrist for one flick, and the boy finally left.
...
There was no day he decided it. He certainly didn't awake this morning with the realization this was coming. It had been as gradual as his life altering change to the hero Emma needed, this bond he was forming with Henry.
They were working on an art project.
"It, it's sort of like, taking a bunch of pictures, and then you hit the fast forward button and they go really fast to make a- you know what, it's easier to show you."
He leapt from the table and sped over to Snow White's drawers, plunging without abandon until he came back to his side with a pad of sticky notes in hand and a pencil.
Brow furrowing in concentration, he took a few moments doing something on several different pages, before turning proudly to Killian. With a quick use of his thumb, be ran it along the whole notes edges, and as he watched it was indeed like a little moving picture before him of a ball bouncing back and forth along each page. Taking the little object curiously, he balanced it upon his wrist and did it himself a few times with genuine fascination, before taking his time and examining each page.
"It's called stop-motion," Henry repeated.
"And some teacher of yours wants you to make a whole movie like this?" He demanded with astonishment.
"Oh no," Henry quickly corrected. "Just a short little thing, hell I could turn that in if I wanted to, but I want to do something a lot more cool! I was hoping you could help. See, I got the idea when we were out on the Jolly Roger last weekend, and I was watching the shadows of the sail on deck and how it sort of reminded me of two shadows fighting, and-"
He went into far more detail than Killian really had a hope of understanding at this time, but he listened attentively and watched Henry do a rough sketch of a ship and tried to shade it in with the shadows he was imagining in his mind's eye upon every page. As Henry had asked it of him, he felt no tentativeness as he corrected the lad on where something could be added for detail or where the sun was most likely to hit on that bit of deck.
When Henry declared himself done for the day, needing a break before his own hand fell off and he'd have to replace it with a hook as well, Killian laughed in surprise. It was all still so new to him, even just the idea of having such a light conversation with a lad who could look up at him with those wide eyes of Baelfire once more.
...
"Papa! Papa no, you shouldn't be here, it's too danger-"
She stopped in surprise, her mop of blonde hair and his own eyes staring back at him as the fear wore off, surprise took its place, and then a sharp decisive look he himself had used countless times to snap his crew into action.
"You're him, aren't you? You're not really my Papa, just, just that other one that exists."
He scratched uncomfortably behind his ear. He didn't have a good reason for being here, hadn't even been able to explain it to Emma, let alone himself. He'd just needed to see her, a daughter of his out there, no matter how truthful her words were. She wasn't really his.
With his own wife now expecting, he couldn't shake this feeling though. For more years than he'd care to admit he'd always had a love of kids, but every time he came close to them he seemed to ruin their life in some way or another. Apparently any alternate realities of his that existed were no better, that deep set look in her eyes of abandonment. He didn't know the story here, but he wanted to. He wanted to offer this girl his home and be the man she so obviously wanted him to be, but before he could even begin, she gave him a disgusted look and tore out of here, away from him. He deserved that, he knew it, for playing such an awful trick on the lass, but as always he hadn't meant to ruin someone else's life.
Whatever he'd been hoping to come of this exchange had not been fulfilled, but he did make himself a solemn vow as he watched some daughter not really his dart out of sight. He would not leave another child.
...
Three days old, and his daughter was already in a fight for her life. Cradled into her fathers chest, his hook resting uneasily against her flesh as his sword was drawn in defense. He would lose his life before Blackbeard took another step towards her.
"Come now Hook, you didn't really think I'd give up and not collect?" The scoundrel gave a mirthless laugh, trying to edge around to his unprotected side. He longed to tense and parry away the blade, but feared any sudden movements and the blade attached to his hand would do more permanent damage to his newborn than the one in his actual hand.
"I never would have thought even a blackard like you would come along with a babe on board," he admitted, to stall, knowing Emma would be back very soon.
Not soon enough.
Hope began mewling in his arms, a cry of distress he already knew better than any noise in the world in her short span of life. He would not let this be her last. Backing up until his back was to the ridge, he shifted as imperceptibly as he could, and still Blackbeard followed, feet tracing his every pattern. Right where Killian needed him to be.
Block for block, swing for strike, Blackbeard's footing grew more and more unsure as Killian had positioned him right over a pile of unstrung ropes before launching into this duel. His daughters wails in his ears his own little bubble of hope he would not fail this most important fight in his life.
His moment came, he gave one harsh kick and sent the man sprawling, but before he could pin his blade and spill the guts of his glory, the man was blasted even farther away with a blinding white pulse. Still high on adrenaline, he spun and prepared for his next opponent even as Emma came bursting forward without a single trace of fear for her husbands misunderstanding.
"No offense Killian, but I think murder while holding our daughter is a bad first impression."
"Aye, love," he quickly agreed, still breathing rather heavily as he sheathed his sword and didn't protest any further as she made quick work of binding up that pirate, hopefully for the last time in their life. He'd go to Rumpelstiltskin if he had to to find some way for that blackard to never show his face in this town again.
He finally managed to use his actual hand to reach up and rub a soothing hand along his daughters back, trying to quell the tide she kept pouring into his ears. Trying to shift her with his good hand, her small little grasp only tightened now along the gleaming metal he'd so feared would harm her while trying to protect her. Those bright blue eyes of his shone up at him like he was seeing the sea for the first time, her mother's blonde curls already windswept in his favorite way. Of course she was okay, he assured Emma as she hustled over to them, she was their Hope.