A series of linked one-shots chronicling the hiatus when the Storybrookers are likely turning over every rock, leaf, and spell book searching for a way to find Emma and bring her home (And also coping with her being gone in their own ways). Told from Lily's perspective because as the outside view and newest 'citizen' to Storybrooke she has the freshest view on everyone's interrelatedness.

Note: There's absolutely nothing canonical about Lily having or not having tattoos, but my head canon is that she has a couple meaningful ones that kind of match her birthmark (I read somewhere that Emma's wrist/flower tattoo was also seen on a crest in one of David's EF outfits? Idk).

Update, Nov. 9, 2015: Huge shout out and thank you to Nath8 for the cover art to this story and all the support! Thanks a million Nat!

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Walking out of the Rabbit Hole that evening, barely two drinks deep and her feet already tripping over themselves, Lily was sure of two things. The first was that bad things always happened when she was around, and in her mind the vanishing of Emma Swan only a week before was no exception. The second sure thing was that there was not enough alcohol in the lone bar to drown the sorrows of the entire town over their missing sheriff (Or Savior, or Princess, or whatever the hell they wanted to call her, Lily thought with forlorn disdain), even if the town's populace seemed more than eager to challenge that claim when they weren't feverishly pouring themselves into ancient books and funky smelling yellowed scrolls and potions.

It was the weirdest mix of devoted gumption and unmatched sorrow Lily had ever seen in such a large population of people.

But two drinks were all Lily could find it in herself to stomach that evening. She had spent too many years drinking herself into oblivion at the state of her life, and something in her insisted that now was not the time to fall back into destructive habits, no matter how much she wanted to use liquor to chase away the loss of her friend.

Were they friends? Friend enemies? Lily didn't honestly know, but she was starting to let herself believe Emma's bullshitty nonsense about coming back into each other's lives for a reason, and so far she really didn't like the reason.

Lily guessed she could have gone to Maleficent to talk about the melancholy and depression she was feeling, but the idea of having someone to talk to, especially a blood relative, was still so new to her that she immediately nixed the idea. She didn't want to be alone with her thoughts back in the eerily silent rented room above the diner, but she didn't have anyone she trusted yet to talk to about Emma either.

So she let her feet carry her around Storybrooke, telling herself it was better than drinking alone and trying to fill her head with the sounds of small town existence that permeated the evening. She followed the mostly empty streets and ducked her head when anyone passed by, avoiding eye contact and interaction as she had most of her life. The night air was brisk and Lily used it's chill as an excuse to wrap her arms around herself in comfort, feigning warmth.

Lily didn't pay attention to where her feet brought her, so when she finally looked up and realized she was near the docks she was a little surprised. Emma had mentioned during the car ride to Maine that the docks were a good place for thinking and hardly anyone went there, but Lily didn't necessarily like the ocean.

She didn't hate it, per se, just didn't seek it out. If she wanted somewhere out of the way and near nature to be alone she would have preferred the forest. Something about the sound of wind rustling through the trees and the earth-scented atmosphere was more soothing to Lily than salty waves lapping noisily against a dock.

So why had she ended up here? Glancing over the darkened pier, she took note of just how many ships and boats there were, and how many of them seemed so out of place in a modern setting. Motorboats and modern fishing vessels were docked next to wooden ships that looked like they had been taken straight from a museum display. Lily half expected to see information signs in front of the vessels, describing the age and history of the floating wood, but the only sights that greeted her were the seagulls perched indiscriminately on all the ships.

She wondered if that was part of the whole Storybrooke curse, that not just people but also their possessions came from their world to this one. More questions to ask nobody, Lily mused, growing just a little frustrated not for the first time since she had come to this ridiculous non-existent magical town.

One ship in particular caught her eye, docked by the end of one of the nearer piers with it's sails tied away. There was no other way to describe the colorful heap of wood in Lily's mind then as a very old, and highly decorated, pirate ship. As Lily walked closer to inspect the vessel, she quickly concluded that was exactly what it was, a pirate ship with the name Jolly Roger emblazoned on its bow.

"The fuck?" Lily muttered. "It's not enough that Captain fucking Hook is real and dating Emma, his ship has to be here? There better not be any giants in this town too. I don't think I can handle that."

"Well do pardon me for existing, lass," An exasperated, accented voice slurred from behind her. Lily whirled around and caught sight of the famed captain himself (Jones, Lily reminded herself, Emma said his name was Killian Jones), slouched on a bench with a flask in hand and the smell of rum heavy in the air. "Although quite honestly, shouldn't I be the one questioning your existence? Dragons are hardly commonplace, even in the Enchanted Forest."

Lily would have laughed at that, the idea of a fairy tale character questioning the existence of a magical creature, but that would have meant acknowledging that she herself was a thing from a children's book, and there was absolutely nothing about that train of thought that Lily wanted to even remotely think about.

He shifted in his seat, working to sit up straight but only succeeding in slouching even more as he spoke. "And I'll 'ave you know Anton's a dear friend, so however you plan on 'handling' him I would discourage you from tampering with his garden of beans. The giant does dote on his beans, magical or otherwise."

She stared at the pirate, quiet, not knowing how to respond or if to respond at all to the obvious drunken ramblings of a sorrowful man. The quiet must have stretched on too long for his liking though, because the look he sent her was impatient and exhausted.

"Well aren't you quite the conversationalist," The pirate bit out sarcastically, his blue eyes boring through her with a distracted intensity. "No quips then, lass? No snappish one-liners? For a friend of Emma's I'd have thought your tongue would be just as sharp. Not to worry, I've silver enough in my tongue for both sides of a conversation."

For someone so clearly drunk the man was remarkably well spoken, and if he weren't still mostly a stranger that Lily had grown up believing to be a notorious villain then she would have let herself be impressed. As it was, Jones kept talking, annoyance and anger rising in his tone.

"You can speak, you know. I'm rather bloody tired of people tip-toeing around me. Like they assume I'll either break down in tears at the mention of Emma or I'll go on a violent spree the likes of which none have seen since my earliest days of piracy."

Lily watched the pirate bring the flask up to his mouth in a too-smooth motion that she recognized all too easily as one of a frequent and practiced drinker. But she watched in fascination as the bottle failed to reach his lips, stopping short before falling back into his lap.

His blue eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, darkened by what had to be too many sleepless nights and too many tears. She knew her own eyes were just as darkened, but definitely not tear-streaked. All the moments of waking she experienced in the middle of the night left her feeling partly empty and like she was cut in half, but there was nothing sad about it, not really. There were still too many questions about the state of her and Emma's 'friendship' that needed answering for her to know if 'sad' was even a feeling that qualified for those waking moments and nothing would be solved unless Emma was found.

It was then Lily caught sight of a piece of paper under the pirate's hand, wrapped around the flask. Jones noticed the shift in her gaze and his anger seemed to melt away, pure sadness and loneliness falling over his features.

"Ah, that's… I'd meant to show Emma…" He let the flask fall to the ground, cap undone, clattering noisily on the dock. Lily noted distantly that he barely seemed to register the falling flask and that hardly anything spilled from it, leaving her to wonder just how much the man had drunk earlier and how quickly, given that she had spotted him scouring library books and maps just as feverishly as the rest of the town only a matter of hours before.

Jones held the paper in his hand lovingly, running his thumb along the page in a sweet caress. Lily realized he wasn't going to offer to show her, and took several slow, measured steps until she was standing directly in front of him, looking down at the paper he so gently held. The paper had clearly been folded and unfolded countless times, and the ink had begun to run in scattered spots that closely resembled teardrops, but the image itself remained strikingly clear. An outline of a swan with a crown of five-petaled flowers on its head, its long neck curved gracefully in a gentle swoop that mirrored the curve of the visible wing.

"Is that a…"

"A tattoo sketch, aye."

"It's nice," She replied after several quiet moments. Jones barely acknowledged her reply, and began elaborating on the details of the picture.

"I'd thought to add some bean leaves to it," He explained, "For our first excursion, but I rather prefer the flowers. It would be a match for her wrist tattoo then."

Lily opened her mouth before she could stop herself. "Captain Hook wants a matching couples tattoo?"

As soon as the words left her mouth she realized her mistake and cringed.

The glare he shot her should have burned her alive, and in that instant Lily thought she would understand what it was to feel the pirate's wrath, but could only feel a wave of jealousy roll through her, jealousy over Emma Swan who had someone like Killian Jones, someone who obviously cared about her deeply, and would defend her to the last.

Lily thought maybe Emma had cared about her that much once, that their friendship had meant something to her the way it had to Lily, but now Lily wasn't sure of anything regarding Emma.

Jones' glare softened into sadness almost as quickly as it had risen to anger, his gaze dropping back to the swan picture. "Apologies, I uh…" He trailed off; silver tongue turning to lead as he let silence engulf them both.

"Um, Emma has a wrist tattoo?" Lily found herself asking, knowing the answer already but wanting to move past the jealous clenching inside her.

Jones seemed to want to move past his prior anger too, and nodded toward his hand. "Aye, inside her left wrist she has a flower with five petals," He said. "A flower she told me she got not long after meeting you. The odd thing of this flower though, lass, is where else it comes from."

Lily narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"The flower, it's from the crest on her father's shield," He answered smoothly. "She wore a family symbol before she even knew of the family she was missing."

A shiver went through Lily and she swore she felt a prickling dance across her shoulders, an odd sort of discomfort and realization flowing through her. Throughout her life Lily had gotten several tattoos, hidden from public sight but visible to her when she wanted them to be. On her ankles, her lower back, her ribcage; anywhere she felt like decorating her skin, if only to maintain a semblance of control in the downward spiral of her life. Her first tattoo, inked on her eighteenth birthday in a fit of drunken celebration and melancholy, had been a pair of dark and scaly reptilian wings stretching across each shoulder blade.

At the time, the dragon wings had seemed like the best decision she had ever made. Something about the wings inked into her skin felt right and familiar, and she had never questioned it. But since coming to Storybrooke she began to wonder if maybe there wasn't a hidden reason for that spur of the moment teenage choice. After all, nothing connected to the small town seemed to happen without reason, and Lily learning she was Maleficent's daughter and turning into a dragon was definitely no coincidence.

Lily was pulled back from her musings when she realized Jones was still talking about the flower. "… So I wanted to add it to the swan tattoo, because of what she's given me, love and hope and even a family of sorts too."

"Where would you put the swan?" She interrupted, needing to move her thoughts elsewhere and hoping the pirate's drunkenness would distract her.

Jones lifted his hook to tap against his chest. "Right here, over my heart," He said. "It belongs to her, after all."

Lily bit her tongue to stop a remark about Jones being a romantic sap and wondering why he didn't just get 'property of E. Swan' tattooed there instead. She had learned her lesson the last time she said anything like that, and wasn't eager to revisit that glare.

Jones, however, seemed to read the quip in her face anyway, despite her silence. "Aye, I've a soft heart when it comes to Emma Swan, I'll not deny that. There's no one else I'd trust to hold my heart in their hands."

"Please tell me you're not being literal with that heart holding thing," Lily snipped, responding to the pirate's declarations of devotion with the sarcasm and snark that had always kept her distant and safe.

Instead of answering sarcastically like she thought he would, the corner of his mouth tipped upward in a belligerent smirk. "There she is. There's Swan's friend. Knew you 'ad a quip in you," He smirked.

Lily snorted at that. "We're not friends," She insisted, trying to convince herself more than anyone else.

"But you are," Jones replied, just as adamantly. "Even if Emma hadn't told me so herself, I know what I've seen in your interactions. You're friends. And any friend of Emma's is a friend of mine."

"Pfft. She didn't seriously say I was a friend." After everything that had happened between them there was no way in hell Emma would ever consider them friends. But weirdly enough, Lily wanted it to be true. She wanted to have Emma as a friend, as someone to talk to about the craziness of their lives, about growing up in reality only to learn they were the kids of fucking fairy tale characters. Learning everything from the old apprentice was one thing, but actually experiencing it and living it was something else all together, and Lily was starting to realize that she didn't want to face it alone.

She wanted a friend. She wanted Emma.

Instead, what she had right now was Emma's drunken boyfriend, Captain fucking Hook, who was currently being a stubborn and insistent ass. "Is that really so hard to believe? She could have left you outside of the town line and shoved Maleficent after you for your little family reunion, but she brought you inside instead. She even showed me a moving picture of the two of you. Two friends, laughing together, forever captured in a moving image."

Lily stared at the pirate in disbelief at this slip in information. "She still has that video?"

"Aye, she does." There was a twinkle in the man's eyes that said he knew he had her attention. If Emma had actually kept the video after all these years, maybe there was hope for their friendship yet.

"Can I- Can I see it?" Lily asked, voice more nervous than she wanted.

"Course lass. Right this way." Jones stood up, stumbling only for the briefest of moments before righting himself. He took one last look at the swan picture in his hand before folding it slowly and tucking it into his jacket's inner pocket. He took several steps toward town before pausing and turning to wait for Lily to catch up.

"I believe 'enry had the device last," He explained while she stepped toward him. "Shouldn't be a problem to wake the lad, if he's even asleep at all."

As they walked away from the docks side by side, Lily's steps nervous but steady and Jones' surprisingly balanced, Lily found she was sure of two more things. The first was that Emma was gone and whatever friendship they had or didn't have anymore had been put on hold until her return. The second sure thing was that even though Lily didn't have access to Emma as a friend right now she had access to the people Emma had come to care about. It wasn't at all the same thing, and the only thing she really had in common with these people was a connection to Emma, but Lily thought she could use that as a start, as a way to break the ice, so to speak.

It was better than drinking alone.