I'm soooo sorry for not updating earlier! But between university and stuff… well… I'm not sure how I'm going to do it when I have to study for the exams.
Anyway; this is not a sad or difficult chapter (YAAAY) and I think you will like it. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Thicker than water.
"As I said you should go to sleep."
Lily bit her lip. "I can't sleep," she told him.
Killian sighed and stared hard at his daughter sitting on the pedestal in front of the helm. "Nightmares?"
"What else?" she looked down.
Both father and daughter had spent the last few weeks plagued by nightmares, and it hadn't helped with their trip to Neverland.
"I just wish they stopped crying," Lily said looking at the island. "They only make it worse."
"At least here it isn't so bad. I bet on land is even worse."
Every night they would hear the Lost Ones crying, calling for their families. Not all of the crew could hear them and that was what puzzled most of them.
Father and daughter were both broken into little pieces trying to put each other together. But it wasn't working all that well.
"It's a good thing we can't go on land, then," Lily said.
Killian grimaced. It really wasn't. They were running out of supplies on the ship and the water (and more important, the rum) was running short.
The first day a boy had greeted them at the shore, like the last time Killian was there. And then he told them Neverland was his land and they couldn't step foot into his island if they wanted to stay alive.
He should have thought it better before going there. After all it wasn't only his life that was in danger.
"Lils! Lils!" Jim came bouncing. "Jamie says we can go up the crow's nest! Come on! We can watch the s-"
His words were cut short by the scream of a boy falling from the skies. He fell into the water with a splash and didn't come back up.
"Well…" Killian said. "That isn't something you see every day," he shook his head. "Come on! Somebody throw him a line!"
X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X
"Tayler, look at me."
She huffed, crossing her arms and looked the other way. Marco sighed, defeated and put a hand over her shoulder.
"I'm doing this for your own good," he told her.
She glared at him. "I think you can go now," she said coldly. "Don't you have to get me a straitjacket or something?"
He opened his mouth to reprimand her but thought it better. "I'll come for you in an hour."
Her face softened. "You don't have to; it would cut your work right in the middle. I can come back walking by myself," and then, as if she realized she had lost her bite she scowled. "That's it if you don't think I'll be killing everyone who crosses my path in a mad rage."
Marco knew he couldn't do anything else and so he sighed once again and stood up. His hand clenched her shoulder and he turned to the door. He knew that if he tried kissing her forehead he would probably end up with a black eye.
Ahhh, kids! What's not to love?
And so Tayler waited there, glaring at the door of Archie's office like it had personally offended her and wishing for everything to be already over.
"-session. Have a nice day, Henry. I'll see you tomorrow."
The door had opened and Henry and Dr. Hooper left the office. The young boy seemed really surprised at seeing her there with a sullen look on her face.
"Tayler! What are you doing here?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" she spat.
Henry seemed taken aback. "Oh, er… sorry. I didn't mean to…"
Dr. Hooper looked at them funnily and a strange look came over his eyes. "Hey, Henry, I have to take care of a few things. Why don't you stay with Tayler for a little while until I can star her session?"
Henry looked scared at the thought of spending some more time in the company of the moody girl but gulped and nodded, sitting next to her. With a sufficient smile, Archie went back to his dark hole.
Tayler sighed and deflated on her seat. "I'm sorry," she told Henry. "It's just I'm not really happy about this and I'm also nervous and…" she trailed off.
"Why are you here?" Henry asked.
She grimaced. "My dad thinks I have some anger issues I have to work through."
"Well," Henry smirked. "He might be right. You did break Mark's nose and Richard's wrist."
Tayler huffed. "Hey! I sprained his wrist," she corrected. "And I was saving your arse! Don't you be ungrateful!"
"No, no. I'm glad you saved my arse," he put especial emphasis on the word. "But I think you enjoyed it way too much."
Tayler sniggered. "Well, at that you might be right."
X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X
"Papaa," Lily whined. "Come on! Where is he?"
Killian hid a smirk. "Asleep. It's pretty early and he didn't have much sleep tonight."
"Please, please, please? Who is he? I know you know something!"
Jim intervened from over his cousin's head. "Is he gonna stay with us?" he asked.
"For a while," he conceded.
Lily pouted. "Then why can't we know his name?"
Killian sighed and knew it would be a bad idea to let Baelfire introduce himself to his sister (not that he knew that). The Captain knew the lad wouldn't be happy and he wanted to keep Lily away from the explosion that was most likely to come out the boy. After all, he believed that a pirate –Killian most likely– had killed Milah.
«Do you know what it was like walking home that night to tell our son that his mother was dead?» the demon had said.
"Jim, do you mind manning the helm for a little while? Just keep going west," he said.
Jim bit his lip, wanting to know the identity of the stranger but also dying to steer the ship. "Lils?" he asked.
Lily rolled her eyes. "Aye, aye, I'll tell you everything."
Jim smiled. "Okay, then," and he grabbed the wheel.
Killian couldn't bit back a smirk and led her daughter to a quieter place on the stern. "His name," he said. "It's Baelfire."
It took Lily a few seconds to register that. "Baelfire?" she asked. "Like my brother Baelfire? Like Mama's son?"
Killian nodded. "The same."
"He's my brother?" a huge grin came over her face. "I can teach him how to sail and how to spar and… It will be like Mama isn't entirely gone," she said lowering her gaze.
A lump formed in his throat. "Lily," he coughed to clear his voice. "Lily, you can't tell him anything!" he said.
She blinked confused. "What? Why?"
"He believes his mother was killed by a pirate and I don't think he will take it kindly if he discovers that his mother abandoned him but she kept his sister."
She stared hard at the floor. "You're right," she said after a long pause, raising her watery eyes to meet his. "He won't be happy. But it's just that… I always wanted a big brother and Jim is close to one but he isn't really and I've been dreaming about what I'll say to him for years and now I he can't even know it because he will probably hate me and…" she sniffed.
His heart broke. "Oh, Lily," he hugged her close. "Maybe after a while we can tell him," he muttered into her hair.
.
.
She was tired after all the running with Jim. The crew that was left (because most of them her father had forced them to leave because of their families) looked at them with exasperation while they chased each other through the ship.
"Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen," Jim was chanting.
Lily decided the hatch behind the helm would be a good hiding place, if only because her father would warn her when Jim approached.
She was in such a hurry she stumbled in the stairs and almost fell face-first. Luckily young arms caught her and steadied her.
"Careful there," a voice said.
Lily looked up; it was her brother. "Yeah, thanks!" she squashed her excitement like a bug.
"You have to be more careful, Flower. One of these days you'll open your head," her father told her shaking his head.
Lily grinned. "You've been saying this for years and nothing ever happens. Anyway, Jim must be almost over," she rushed towards the hatch. "Warn me if he comes here, Papa!" she called before disappearing below.
"Papa?" she heard Baelfire question.
"Aye, that's my daughter, Lily. She's eight," Lily could her the warm smile on her father's voice.
"Is a pirate ship the best place for a little girl?"
Killian laughed. "Oh, don't let her fool you. She may look innocent and sweet but she is a pirate after all. She's a good fighter, too."
"She's a kid," Baelfire said suspicious.
"Would you like to duel with her? I'll have to warn you; I've been training her since she was five… every morning."
"You know what? Never mind."
Killian laughed again. "That's more like it."
And then new footsteps joined the two men. "Hey! Uncle, have you seen Lily?"
"Nay, she's not here. Have you checked the crow's n-"
The hatch opened and Jim's smiling face came upon her. "Gotcha!"
Lily pouted. "How did you know?"
Jim smirked. "The first place you check when you seek it's always the next place where you'll hide," he told her. "Wanna go again?"
Lily glared at him and stormed to the bow, Jim chasing behind her with mocking remarks. Killian smiled softly at the sight of them.
"Uncle?" Baelfire shook his head. "Are you a pirate captain or a nursemaid?"
X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X
"Die! Die! Diieeee!" Tayler screamed. "Nonononono! Stop! Arghhh! I'm dead," and she let herself fall to the couch.
Henry snorted and looked at her with a hidden smile. "You wanna play another round?"
Tayler left the PS2 controller back on the table. "No, we probably should get started on that assignment… thing."
"You don't know what we have to do, do you?"
Tayler looked at him sheepishly. "It was something about a story? I'm sorry, I was playing hangman with Finn."
"I see you are very interested in English class."
She smiled. "Yeah," she rolled her eyes. "For me English is very boring; well, school is. I just need to keep moving, you know? So, anyway. What do we have to do?"
Henry looked at his school planner even though he knew the assignment by heart. "Here it says we have to draw a comic about something. It has to have at least ten panels but there's no maximum."
Tayler blinked. "I think Miss Blanchard just wants to have a laugh."
Henry scoffed. "I think she does it for me. Because she knows I am down and this will help cheer me up. I bet you she didn't expect for me to end up pairing with someone."
Tayler nudged him. "Oh, come on! I'm not so bad, am I?"
Henry smiled. "I don't know. You're kind of crazy."
Tayler snorted. "And you're the one to talk," she shook her head. "Okay, so you like these kind of things? It will be easy then. You like to make stories?"
Henry started to blush. "Yeah, well, a little. But I don't draw very well."
Her grin was huge. "Oh! That doesn't matter. I do. You can think of the story and I'll draw," she saw a glint on his eyes. "What do you have in mind?"
Henry disappeared for a few moments and came back with a big brown book on his arms. "How do you feel about fairytales?"
.
.
Tayler blew a stray piece of hair from her eyes, concentrated on the figure coming to life under her fingers. Henry was beside her, carefully coloring the letters of the title: "Snowed Lily."
It was an adapted version of one of the tales in Henry's book. It explained the story of how Snow White and Tiger Lily met and then went on to stop the Evil Queen and rescue Tiger Lily's father, who was trapped in the Evil Queen's castle.
Once Henry had stopped writing a script for Tayler to draw and had read it to her, the girl had snorted and asked him if Snow White and Tiger Lily ended up together. Henry's eyes had widened and he'd almost chocked on his own saliva.
"No! Tiger Lily is eight and Snow is like twenty-something. Oh my God! That's so wrong! No way!" he had said getting red in the ears.
"Okay, okay, don't get you knickers in a twist," she had told him. "Alright. That's fine. But I ship it anyways," she had muttered the last part to herself.
Tayler stretched and her back popped. "I think it's coming together very nicely," she declared. "I hope we get an A+ because otherwise I'm murdering Miss Blanchard."
Henry snorted. "Don't worry. We'll be fine. It's gonna be the best one there; we could even sell it."
Tayler smiled at him. "Should I paint it? I think it looks better this way."
"At least do it with a marker," he told her.
Tayler saluted him. "Yes, captain!"
Henry's fingers clutched at the pencil on his hand and he gulped. "You know, Tiger Lily kinds of reminds me of you," he told her trying to be nonchalant.
"Because I am so Indian," Tayler snorted going over the first panel with the marker.
"But she's not Indian in this story," he said. "It doesn't matter anyway, it was just a thought."
Tayler turned to look at him. "So you think I'm Tiger Lily," she stated.
Herny blinked. "What?"
She rolled her eyes. "Dr. Hooper's walls are very thin," she told him. "And everybody knows about you and the… fairytale thing. I was wondering who did you think I was."
Henry opened and closed his mouth like a fish. "I… yeah. It fits, so…"
She smiled at him. "Soo… Tiger Lily, huh? I just hope there's no Captain Hook trying to drown me or something, I'm not very fond of crocodiles," she shook her head. "By the way, what is she doing in… um… Fairytale Land? Shouldn't she-I be in Neverland?"
"My book doesn't say anything about it. It's something I'm trying to figure out."
"Well, next time we have to do something like this we know which story we'll do."
And Henry smiled happily.
X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X
"Show me… seven!" threw the dices which rolled and rolled and… "Yes!"
"I don't know how you keep doing that," Bae huffed.
Lily hid her smirk and picked the dices (in a five and a two) nonchalantly. "You just have bad luck. Now if you don't mind…" she grabbed one of the peach pieces packed in a barrel full of syrup. "Umm… delicious."
Bae glared at her. Lily had been steadily eating away his part of the fruits. And he loved peach! The worst part is that she knew it and made him suffer enjoying exaggeratedly each piece.
"Shut up!" he scowled. "I don't know how you win every time. I can't have that much bad luck."
Jim sat next to them on the floor of the ship. "Maybe it is because she has loaded dice," he told him.
"What?" Bae gaped at the girl, outraged.
"Jimmy!" Lily scowled. "Why did you say it? I could have won at least five pieces more before he realized!"
Jim smiled. "I was feeling sorry for him."
Lily jumped at him. "You will pay for that! You owe me some peach! You know how much I like it!"
Bae smiled at the antics of the two cousins, who had been like that the three weeks he had spent on the ship, and stood up to go below decks.
"Don't you run away, you coward! Face me like a man!"
.
.
"Jimmyyy," Lily whined. "Stay still!" and she pointed at him murderously with her charcoal. "And stop whining."
Jim scowled at her. "I am staying still. It's you that takes such a long time."
"These things take time, okay? I can't just… rush it."
Jim pouted. "Well, my butt is falling as-"
"I'm the captain! I give the orders!" the voice of her father made them both look up. "AND ANYONE WHO DISOBEYS CAN WALK THE PLANK AND PRAY THAT THE MERMAIDS TAKE PITY ON HIS SOUL!"
Jim and Lily had gotten behind Killian to know what all the ruckus was about when Bae stepped out on the deck, sword in hand.
"Face me, villain!" Bae shouted swinging the sword at the pirate.
Killian ducked, more surprised than anything and Lily let out a snort at the strange situation. The rest of the crew, though, got their hands to their swords, ready to defend their captain's life.
"Whoa-whoa! What is this about, Bae?"
"I found this," Bae held up the piece of paper on his hand, which was a drawing Milah had made of herself. ", on your desk. It's… it's my mother."
"Oh, bloody hell!" Lily muttered, spending all her time around pirates was not a good influence.
"HOW?" Bae demanded swinging the sword once again. "You're the pirate that killed her!" he accused trying to get another blow.
Killian caught the sword with his hook and send it flying away from the boy's hand. "I didn't kill your mother," he told him firmly. "We fell in love. And we ran off together," he confessed. "Your father lied to you. He was too much of a coward to tell you the truth!" he screamed and then walked closer to the boy. "He tore out her heart and crushed it in front of me. And I've spent every moment since then wanting revenge."
"She abandoned me," Bae stated. "Wait…" something clicked on his mind and his eyes searched the crew of the ship. "She… You!" his gaze found Lily. "You… Are you my sister?" he asked her.
"Well… half-sister," she said.
His eyes flashed. "And she stayed with you? She left me, she abandoned me but she chose you!"
Killian decided to intervene. "Bae, not a single day went past where your mother didn't regret leaving you. We talked about going back for you when you were old enough. Perhaps fate brought us together to make good on those plans. We can live the life that Milah wanted for us, as a family."
But Baelfire shook his head, already too angry to listen to the words of a pirate.
The only thing he regretted about leaving the ship was not getting to know his little sister. He had always wanted a sibling.
X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X
"Well, if your mum doesn't win the elections she can always try the fireman department," Tayler told Henry with a smirk.
Henry pushed her. "Oh, shut up."
"I'm sure she's going to win," Paige said. "I mean, between the fire and now this speech… Everybody knows she's not afraid of the Mayor or Mr. Gold, and what could you ask for a better Sheriff?"
Henry smiled. "You're right," he looked down at the floor. "She did the right thing. I have to go to Granny's! See you at school!"
Paige and Tayler exchanged an amused look. "So… you and Henry are friends now," Paige said.
"Glad you noticed," Tayler said dryly.
Paige glared at her and then her face softened. "Do you… do you like him?"
"He's a nice guy," she said and then realized the meaning under Paige's words. "Ughh! Not that way! Gods, Paige! I don't fancy him!"
She looked relieved. "You don't?"
"Of course not!" she spat. "He's like a brother to me. Or maybe a cousin," she looked at her friend in the eye. "Look, P, I know you fancy Henry and you have a crush on him; and that's okay. But you're not going to accomplish anything if you don't talk to him!"
Paige covered her face with her hands. "I know!" she whined although it came out muffled. "But I don't know how to do that."
Tayler grabbed her hands and pushed them away from her face. "Why don't you start by trying to be his friend? Like I am. Not a schoolmate, not a school friend, not an acquaintance. A friend. Get to really know him."
"How can I do that? Not everybody has therapy sessions to bond over," she said.
Tayler snorted. "That's a weird place to start a friendship. But don't worry, I'll help you. You both are my friends, so it's normal if we all spend some time together now, isn't it? And I'm sure Finn will love Henry's PS2."
"You're in love with that PS2, aren't you?"
"You should see it! It's so cool! And it was so many games! Oh, gods, it's amazing!"
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YAAAAY! Tayler and Henry and Bae and Lily bonding over. What would they be? Tiger Believer and Tigerfire? Gods, I'm bad at this.
Anyway, I'm sorry for the delay, again, but I hope this chapter made it up to you. Did you like it?
Don't forget to review!
MW.
