Title: come cast your light on me softly
Summary: AU from 3x12. Hook doesn't remember the year back in the Enchanted Forest. All he knows is he cannot find peace until he finds her. Captain Swan, Daddy! Killian (in an unexpected way perhaps).
Notes: In this ficlet, Hook can't remember the year back in the Enchanted Forest and Walsh is just a furniture shop owner (what's with New York settings and furniture shop owners?).
part i – find me
He has a new locket around his neck.
She doesn't even know how she knows this. She understands that her memories have returned, that the particulars of her life, feelings – and there are feelings, even if she's good at repressing them – are now back as though they have never been cursed away. She does have a second set of memories in her head – the good ones that Regina had gifted her – which makes things a bit confusing, but that has nothing to do with her memory of Hook. She knows that the locket is new though it looks old. And she hadn't realized until now that she could remember him in such detail that she would know this.
She doesn't ask about it during the long drive from New York to Storybrooke. She tries not to look at it. But he keeps fiddling with it, rubbing the back of the pendant with his thumb, rolling it around his fingers, pulling lightly at the chain. And she can't help but notice how plain it is, how much it contrasts with the rest of his oversized gaudy jewelry. The simple oval pendant is on a small linked chain and the entire thing looks worn but maybe because of the material. It looks like it is made of pewter perhaps, or some other inexpensive material, and there's a feminine quality to it. The moment she thinks it she knows the locket once belonged to a woman.
No one remembers. No one knows. What is going on, how they got here, what is real and not real. All they know is time has passed because now Mary Margaret is pregnant and the few children of this town have grown. It is all Emma has to go by. And her gut. And her gut tells her something is wrong. Very wrong.
On top of that, she is full of conflict and guilt. She can't help but think that at this time just last week, she was in her apartment in New York, having pancakes and hot cocoa with her son, thinking about work and her date with Walsh later that night. Now she's looking at the bottom of her cold diner coffee trying to figure out what's so wrong about everyone being back, minus a few other realm memories. She should be happy to be back – she hadn't wanted to leave in the first place – but her life in New York had been pretty good until Hook came to wake her up and she had to leave everything behind.
She thinks she should be angry at Hook but she isn't. She had told him she had Henry, a job, a guy she loved. And he had told her that she would still have Henry and that was most important of all. And the job – sure, turns out being part of the one-woman Storybrooke law enforcement force is not as lucrative as being a bails bond woman had become for her but the job is essentially the same. "Just" with magic. And then, there is the guy she loved. She frowns as she considers this. She cares about Walsh, thought she loved him, but now that her memories are back, fiercer feelings are back too, forged by a harder life, more challenging fights and a love that crossed realms. Her feelings for Walsh now feel far too muted against the wild backdrop of her storybook life. It doesn't make her feel less badly about how it ended, how it had to end. But she feels better now that she has stopped to consider what exactly she has left behind. And perhaps it's not that much at all. Perhaps there's a man she… But she can't dwell on that, she decides; she definitely has a problem (of another kind) in front of her.
"We have a problem," Hook says without preamble as he slides in the booth across from her.
"Tell me about it," Emma mutters sardonically but she has trouble keeping the side of her mouth from quirking up. It's ridiculous of course but it was almost as though Hook had been planning for the right moment to say what she was thinking. It was just a coincidence. Though Henry might call it fate. Emma shakes her head and tries to focus on the present once again.
"Aye, so you've heard then?"
"Wait, what?" she asks as she breaks her stare-down contest with her coffee. "What have you heard?"
Hook doesn't even blink at her obvious inattention. Instead, he leans forward and his hand is fiddling with that necklace again.
He tilts his head at her. "What?"
It takes her a moment to realize that he notices – of course he would notice – that something is off with her. That she should be thinking of curses and memory loss, danger and evil, but she can't focus on anything except the damn necklace around his neck. "Where did you get that?"
He follows her gaze to his own hand and opens his fingers to look at the locket lying on his palm. He blinks at it once – slowly – before he shrugs. "I'm a pirate. I acquire things."
His eyes flicker back up to her. But she can tell he is preoccupied with the locket.
"Milah's?" she asks before she can bite her tongue. She knows what a bad wound it is so she does not know why she would bring it up. A part of her whispers that it is to get his attention, to know, and it makes her feel ashamed because she thinks that it is true. She knows she hurts him when she doesn't mean to. She should not hurt him by picking at his scars.
Turns out though that Hook is really distracted because he barely reacts. "No..." he says, gaze away from her and now entirely focused on the locket in his hand. "I would've remembered."
Eventually, he says, "Regardless, we have more important things to do." But she notices he has not let go of the necklace. "People have gone missing."
It is difficult to catalog the missing people as the Enchanted Forest didn't exactly have a registry that came to Storybrooke when it was created and recreated. They suspect that there are actually more people missing than have been reported. But the list they have is already daunting and it only continues to grow. They have searched abandoned homes and the woods, the warehouses by the docks and decrepit structures along the beach.
They have made absolutely no headway.
Then children start going missing. The Lost Boys, the nuns report.
Hook pales when he hears the news, his fist clenching and unclenching and Emma is suddenly reminded that Hook, in his own way, is a man of honor, that he has a code, that there are lines that he has never and would never cross, even though he is a pirate. More than that, he, amazingly enough, seems to like children. He is natural with Henry and Robin Hood's son, Roland, open in a way that he isn't even with her.
"We need to find them," he grits out.
"We will." Her hand unconsciously moves towards his but she stops herself in time.
Hook unclenches his fist slowly, only to reach up to clasp the locket tightly, holding onto it like a lifeline.
She doesn't see him for three days and she fears that he has become another name on her list, another failure she must accept. But she does not accept it, her search becomes more frantic, her wits fraying at the ends.
She feels silly when he wanders into the diner one day. But it is overshadowed by her sense of relief. She didn't realize she had been holding her breath.
His eyes scan the diner until they land on her. As he nears, she can see he looks like hell, like he hasn't slept in three days. She probably looks the same – she also hasn't slept in three days. It's as though they are running along parallel lines, mirroring each other. She tries not to think too deeply about this.
He slides into the booth across from her. He is the kind of man that looks you straight in the eye. Today, he looks over right shoulder.
"I have a favor to request."
He seems nervous, so unlike him, that she immediately agrees to help. His anxiety seems to cause her anxiety and she swallows hard.
He picks up the pendant around his neck and her stomach suddenly plummets. She knows what he is going to ask.
"I need your assistance to locate her," he says as he holds onto the necklace.
Emma sighs. She wants to help him – she really does – even if it hurts her, because that's what he does every day – helps her even though it pains him – but she does not know how. "How?"
Hook pulls out a scrap of parchment and slides it over to her. It reminds her of dinner in New York, when Hook had taken Walsh's vacant seat, and given her Neal's address. Though she spent a whole year in New York, her memories of the city seem to be mostly of Hook.
She looks at the parchment. A spell is written in his fancy old-fashioned hand. "Regina helped me find this. It's a locator spell. Using an object that is meaningful to find the person you lost."
He doesn't have to mention the locket.
"There's no magic here, Hook," she sighs. She tries to tell herself there is no relief in it.
"Maybe. Maybe not."
"Even Regina can't..."
"Regina can't access magic, I know. But you are magic." He has so much faith in her. And she realizes that she is scared of failing him. But she doesn't want to disappoint him, she doesn't want him to disappear again, she doesn't want to be the source of his misery, even if helping him will hurt her.
"Okay, okay, I'll try."
"Thank you, lass," he breathes.
"Who is she?"
Hook smiles faintly. Only his smiles can contain so much grief. "I don't know. I just know I will not be at peace until I find her."
"Come with me, lass."
She had started shaking her head. She has no right to come. But in the end, she agrees because she wants to know, needs to know, not only who has earned Hook's heart, but how she feels about it. Because as hard as it is for her to accept love and happiness, it seems she can't turn away from tragedy.
"There," he says, his hand going to the locket. They are deep in the woods, in a dense area that they have sworn they've cased before. But now there's an old rundown cabin with no lights on.
She nods towards him and they creep forward, her gun drawn, his sword in his hand. The door is locked and Hook takes a step back before running towards it and shouldering his way through. His sword is up, her gun is up, she sweeps the room with her flashlight.
They have found the missing children.
Children.
She swallows hard at the sight of their dirty thin faces. She glances at Hook and is arrested by how very pissed off he is. His fist is clenched in that way of his – because she knows him that well – and the rest of his body is shaking in anger.
Suddenly, Hook stills. His eyes clear and Emma knows he has found her. She follows his line of sight to a familiar face, to wide dark eyes that light up in recognition.
"Father!"
And Wendy Darling is hurtling through the crowd and Hook is trying to make his way too without running into the other children and it is like a fairybook ending the way Wendy jumps into Hook's open arms and he spins them in a circle, in a beautiful world of their own.
A/N: I originally had no plans to write any Captain Swan fanfic as they are already ruining my life but I just couldn't resist any longer. The idea of Hook adopting Wendy has been running around in my head for some time (John and Michael wouldn't be alive). I don't know how this thought initially entered my head – I suppose I'm a sucker for Daddy! Killian with a daughter. In any case, I pictured this occurring after they returned from Neverland while Emma was studiously ignoring Hook and Hook needing a way to heal while giving Emma the space she needed / giving Neal a chance. But having this occur during the year Hook is away from Emma works too. Next part addresses Emma's reaction to Daddy! Killian and the changes to their relationship now that he remembers his adopted daughter and has her back (in other words, feels and admissions).