Here's the next chapter! Sorry for the long wait. Finals week is next week and it is a total bitch! I would like to thank to all my lovely reviewers who brighten my day, especially DoubleDee068, who never fails to review on any of my stories, and Tentacion Prohibida, who reviews every singe chapter. You guys are awesome!
Emma sat, shaking and wet, on her straw bed with a towel wrapped tightly around her. Her hair was soggy and stiff with mud and her skin was coated in a thick layer of puddle water. The dress Hook had given her (and she wondered where indeed he had gotten it) was heavy with water and Emma was feeling a tad homicidal. The man that had pushed her down into the muddy puddle was at the moment pulling his boots off in preparation for bed, humming to himself all the while. When he began pulling his shirt off, much to Emma's unadmitted delight, she asked him in a straightforward and curt tone, "How did you find me, Hook?"
He turned towards her, bare chested and unashamed, as if he were boasting, and gave her a confused look, as though the question was absurd. "I'm a pirate, love. Finding treasures is what I do." He paired the flirty comment with a wink of the eye and began to riffle through his bag, searching for his shirt with absolutely no sense of urgency. Emma, however, would have none of his cock-and-bull evading tactics; he had found her inhumanly fast. And how had he even known that she was gone?
"There was no way that you found me that quickly on your own. Someone or something must have helped you." she stated stubbornly. Hook shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, "Sorry to disappoint, but it was all me."
"I don't believe you."
"That seems like a 'you' problem."
"What you did was physically impossible! How did you know that I left even?" Emma asked angrily, standing up from her position on the bed. The towel fell to her feet and the dress she was wearing was revealed in all its muddy glory (along with some of Emma's other scantily concealed features...)
"My heart aches when you're far. I can feel your absence." Hook replied in an airy voice, placing his hand (and hook) over his chest. He was mocking her.
"Cut the crap. Be honest and own up." the blonde ordered. Her hands were placed on her hips and her eyebrows arched in a superior fashion. She was bringing out the 'mom' move she had mastered so well with Henry. Hook, however, seemed to be immune to her motherly ways and replied easily, "I am being honest, love."
Emma scoffed, "Honest my ass." and picked the towel up from the floor. She was too drained to fight with the infamously stubborn captain Hook. She would try again in the morning.
"Gimme my other clothes, Hook. I'm gonna go to sleep."
Hook didn't respond, only fished the jeans and blouse out of his bag and handed them silently to Emma. She accepted them equally as silently and turned away from him, undoing the buttons of her corset.
"Those blue pants must be terribly uncomfortable to sleep in, darling. I have something else you could wear?" Hook offered sweetly, the question being genuine and slightly uneasy. Emma scoffed at his words (again) and turned back to him, careful to keep the corset closed. "What? Like nothing?" Hook shrugged his shoulders and said slyly, "If you insist..." Emma just gave him an unamused frown and turned back away from him. Hook sighed, turned back towards the bag and pulled out his largest shirt, plain white and simple, and walked up behind Emma. He placed it over her shoulder, careful to keep a proper distance (for fear of her kneeing some vital parts of him if he didn't).
"In case you decide you want to actually sleep tonight." he mumbled, turning back around to find his own sleeping clothes. When he looked back up, he saw Emma wearing his shirt, bare from mid-thigh down. She refused to look at him, probably out of spite for his being right, but Hook himself could stare all he wanted. In fact, he could...
"Good night, Hook."
The man's gaze shot up from her thighs to look at her face. She was wearing a tight-lipped smile, riddled with emotion behind the empty expression. Despite what he'd done to her that night, and numerous nights before, she felt something growing between them. It was less than friendship, but greater than nothing. She was trying to decipher it, what their relationship might have surmounted to. She decided finally that it was something akin to amiable companionship. There was a level of familiarity between them, a level of tolerance. They didn't quite understand each other, how could they? But there was endurance, acceptance. They could live side by side, standing the other, even if they did occasionally (or on a daily basis) try to attack one another.
"You're staring, love."
Emma shook her head and pulled herself out of her deep revelry, the world coming into focus once again. She had, in fact, been staring at Hook all the while and blushed a light, rosy pink with the realization. She must have been really dazed, too, because instead of a snarky come back, she just mumbled, "Sorry" and crawled into bed.
The surprise at her genuine response that lacked both offense and bitterness was evident on Hook's face but he let the matter drop. Changing into a nightshirt and a matching pair of trousers, he kept a watchful eye on Emma, ready to pounce if she so much as sneaked a peek. However, she remained in the same position the entire time, her back to the bed with hands placed rigidly on stomach, tucked tightly under the blankets. She was looking pensively upwards towards the ceiling, a look of focused consternation on her face. Whatever she was thinking, it was serious and worrisome.
"Anything on your mind?" Hook asked would-be casually, careful to keep his face a nonchalant blank. Emma looked disinterestedly over to his bed, which he was now laying on top of, hands tucked under his head which was, coincidentally, staring at the ceiling like hers. She shrugged even though he couldn't see it and replied, "Oh. Just Henry." Hook sensed a guarded undertone in her voice and realized that she wasn't telling the truth, but said nothing of it.
"Your boy?"
"Mmm-hmmmm."
"What's he like?"
The question took Emma aback and she sat partially up in the bed and looked over to Hook who was still staring determinedly at the ceiling.
"What do you want to know for?"
Hook chuckled lightly at her ready skepticism and raised his hands in surrender. "I was just asking a question, darling."
Emma gave him a disbelieving look, as if to say I know you're up to something, before collapsing on her back and replying in a weary tone, "He's a sweet kid. Smartest one I've ever met, too. He figured something out that an entire town of adults couldn't."
"And brave, is he brave? I've always thought that that was the most important characteristic a young boy could have."
Emma giggled softly and said dreamily, "Yes. He's brave. A lot braver than me at that age, let me tell you."
"Sounds like a wonderful lass."
"He was." Emma replied airily before she realized what she had said. "I mean he is. He is a wonderful boy." She stumbled slightly over the words, refusing to allow herself to lose hope. If she started thinking like that then she was never going to make it back to him.
A brief moment of comfortable silence passed between the two before Emma asked quietly, "Tell me about Rumpelstiltskin." She shrunk slightly into the bed when she said it, fearing that she had incurred his wrath, as she heard his teeth grinding from across the room, but his reply was simple, if a little dark. "He's a monster."
Emma rolled her eyes and shifted to her side, laying her head on her palm so that she could look directly at Hook. "But what makes him a monster to you? He has his foibles with everyone. He killed this man's cousin, stole this man's money, condemned that woman's daughter to slavery. But what exactly did he do to you?"
Hook said nothing for a long while and Emma figured that he wasn't going to answer, but just before she turned away, Hook said in a low, sorrowful voice, "He took my hand and my heart. He took Milah."
Emma felt a rush of sympathy for the man, even though she had figured as much before. It was hearing the pain in his voice, seeing the pain it caused him that made it real.
"Who was Milah?"
"My love."
"And he...killed her?"
Hook bit his lip and weighed his options. Did he want to share his story with this woman, with this otherworldly sheriff who knew nothing of corsets or love? Could he? The answer came to him easily...yes. He could. And for some inexplicable reason, he would. He started on the painful story...
"Milah had belonged to him before she met me. She was his wife, before he had gone and sold his soul to whatever demon. He was a coward even then, and she wanted out. I, with my dashing good looks and endless adventures, offered her a spot on my ship. She accepted it just as soon as I had made the suggestion. She was always eager to learn, always eager to see more of the world...like me." Hook chuckled. Emma heard in his voice a calm and peace that she had not yet heard from him. She saw on his face, so distant, a happiness and joy that he had never dared share with her. She realized that whatever she had though she felt for Neal, Hook's love for Milah was a hundred times more powerful. "One thing led to another and soon enough, we were head-over-heels for each other. She was my woman and I was her man. All was well. All was...perfect...until Rumple returned." A black shadow dawned on the brightness of Hook's face and his voice darkened along with it. "He hadn't the courage to fight for her when he was just a man, when he and I were equals, but when had every advantage, magic and immortality, then he fought. He challenged me to a dual, a sword fight. I accepted...foolishly...and I payed the price. He cut off my hand and he ripped her heart out. Right in front of my very eyes."
Emma's expression was one of both pity and fear, for Hook was shaking with the effort of controlling himself. His story was blindingly sad and Emma did not blame him for wanting to kill Rumple. It had hurt enough when Neal left her even when she knew that it was on his own accord, but the fact that Hook had lost his one and only true love because of someone else? That was unbearable. She tried to come up with the words to express her condolences, to show that she wasn't as heartless as she could sometimes seem, but she drew a blank. She was left with the barren, over-used, "I'm sorry."
Hook turned momentarily towards her and smiled tightly at her; it seemed the barren and over-used was that way for a reason. He twisted back around so that he was facing the ceiling again and let out a long, tired sigh, then asked,
"And you? Who was it that you might have been in love with...once?"
Emma was surprised by the question, surprised that he had even remembered, but decided that if he had shared told her his story, she might as well pay him the same respect.
"His name was...Neal. He and I, we were...thieves...together. We lived on the road. I thought that we were gonna spend forever together, just he and I." Emma thought carefully about what she was going to say next; she didn't want to reveal too much to her captor. A companion he might be, but his intentions were still questionable. "He promised me that we could settle down, find a home. Start a family. All I had to do was steal something back for him. I was young, I was stupid. I fell for it. He took the money and let me take the fall, all while I was pregnant with his baby. Let me tell you, prison sucks, but being pregnant in prison? That's bordering on hellish."
Emma forced a light chuckle at her comment as she could sense the mood in the room darken with every bitter word. She had tried to keep it light, tried to tell the story so that it didn't make her seem so vulnerable and tortured, but there was no good way to tell a story like that. There's no good way of telling the story of how you were abandoned by someone you love. None.
"That's harsh..." Hook said simply and Emma smiled at his bluntness, not expecting him to continue. "...and a man who would do that doesn't deserve you."
The comment took Emma aback; had he just complimented her? Or was it more of an insult towards Neal? Either way, it was not a blatantly sexual innuendo nor a mockery, which meant progress.
The two laid there for a while, in blissful, pensive silence, until the warm whispers of sleep crept up on Emma and began to lull her into unconsciousness. When she stood in the threshold between alertness and dream, she heard Hook whisper next to her,
"An enchanted necklace."
It seemed a random comment and Emma scrunched her nose in confusion, keeping her eyes closed all the while, and asked drowsily, "Hmmmmm?"
"It's how I was able to find you. Cora enchanted it so that whenever you were too far, I would be able to find you. It's how I found your group so easily in the Enchanted Forest." Hook explained.
Emma nodded slowly, hardly grasping onto the words he was saying, before she succumbed to the sweet temptation of sleep. Hook was soon to follow.
The next morning found the two on the road again, belongings wrapped up in Hook's seemingly bottomless bag, heading towards the docks. For some reason, he had his sights set on finding Cora, and Emma went along with his little game as long as need be.
Despite their uncharacteristic upheaval of past tragedies and loves the previous night, Emma still distrusted the man she called Hook. Every piece of the puzzle fit into place...all except one. Why had he taken her? She was compelled to simply ask (what was the worst that could happen?) but something held her tongue. She did not wan to anger Hook, though she supposed that he had enough patience for at least one question. The real reason she didn't want to ask was because she feared what the answer might be. She had locked him up in a giant's tower, ultimately trying to tear him away from his goal of revenge on Rumpelstiltskin. Directly after that, he had captured her and drug her along on this journey of his. The two things were certainly related, and Emma doubted that he had brought her along just for the company. Whatever reason he had, it was bound to be bad.
"What's with the silence? Normally this is about the time that you like to berate me with what you consider to be insults." Hook said conversationally sneaking a glance at Emma's face. She looked up dazedly at him and replied, "Um...nothing. Just thinking."
"What about?" Hook asked curiously. He had managed to pry open his companion's perpetually closed mind last night, had heard her story. For whatever reason, he was eager to hear more, eager to understand the riddle that was Emma Swan. He wanted to know her thoughts and and her past and...everything about her. He had to settle, however, for analyzing her expression, as he had no magic powers to see into her head. It was...conflicted...to say the least. She looked as though she were debating with herself whether or not to do or say something, which made Hook only the more interested. Was it some juicy revelation that she was considering sharing? Some horrifying tidbit from her past? Was it something about him?
Finally, Emma simply blurted out in a dazed rush,
"Why did you capture me after the Giant's Castle? What are you going to do with me?"
Hook opened his mouth briefly, trying to think about how he was supposed to answer the question, but closed it just as soon. At the beginning of the journey, it had been so clear. He wanted to see her face the second that hope died, and she was stranded in Neverland. That had been his ultimate intention, his perfect revenge. But now? Things were different. He didn't want that anymore, and couldn't find it in himself to say the words to her. He didn't want to hurt her that way.
But what did he care about hurting others? He was a pirate. A heartless, loveless pirate...right?
Revenge was confusing.