A/N: Hi. Me again. All of this was written between the hours of 2am and 5am, over the course of two weeks. It has been The Little Chapter That Wouldn't, and it shows. This was going to be the last, but things didn't really work out like that. The next, and last installment will be up very soon.
HAPPY SEASON FIVE!
If Emma thought about it logically, maybe it wasn't entirely out of the question that Hook still harbored some kind of... thing... for her. She couldn't deny there had been looks. Furtive glances across the diner when he thought she hadn't been looking. "Accidental" run-ins all over town. The almost kiss in her bedroom the night of their return from Neverland. Then there was the thing with the shoes. She still had no idea how he'd gotten into the Sheriff's Station, and out again, without setting off the alarm.
And then there was the indisputable fact that he was still there.
It was a decision that had never made sense to Emma, with all she'd known of the man. Not when doing so meant making peace with the man who had killed his love, and giving up his seafaring ways. What was Captain Hook without his revenge or his life of piracy?
Ever since he'd turned his ship around and come back for them, since Neverland, Emma had been trying to work that out. And if she was honest with herself, the answer she'd been considering frightened her a little.
Because the answer to who Hook was when he wasn't giving in to his darker impulses, the man Emma had seen glimpses of in Neverland, and maybe even before that, was someone who could mean a whole lot to her, if she let herself.
But... would she? Was it even in her to try?
Emma had been up so late replaying her conversation with Neal over and over in her head, that when she finally came down for breakfast the following morning, she was too blurry-eyed and distracted at first to see the signs.
That is, until halfway through her stack of pancakes, she noticed that a chocolate sauce smiley face had been drawn on every one. Reaching across for her hot chocolate, she was just in time to see the remains of dusted cinnamon heart dissolving into the whipped cream.
Something was up.
For the first time since she'd mumbled them a "Good Morning", she spared a glance at her parents. They were both already dressed for the day, in sharp contrast to Emma's flannel pajamas, but that wasn't the intimidating part. The intimidating part was that the both of them were focused solely on her, with a laser-like intensity, their own pancakes uneaten, hands clasped tightly together on the table top.
Something was definitely up.
"Mom? Dad?" she asked, a hint of nervousness creeping into her voice. It still felt weird to say. But in that moment, she never felt more like a kid on the verge of being grounded.
They hadn't heard about her decision on Neal yet, had they? She couldn't see how. The Storybrooke rumor mill was fast, but it wasn't that fast, even if Granny's was run by a woman with wolf-like hearing. Granny hadn't mastered text messaging yet, had she?
David cleared his throat, and her parents shared another significant glance.
"We, uh..." he began, faltering when he raised his eyes to meet Emma's own.
"I'm pregnant," Mary Margaret blurted out suddenly.
Ignoring her husband's pointed look which clearly said she'd gone off-script, her mother continued to look expectantly at Emma, reaching down below the table to rub her belly in a way that seemed unconscious.
"Oh."
Emma wasn't sure what to say. It not like she wasn't expecting it. She'd heard Mary Margaret's confession in the Echo Caves. Hell, she'd been making vain attempts to soundproof the loft against baby-making noises for months. But at the same time, she still felt like she'd been punched in the throat.
Intellectually, Emma knew it wasn't about her. She knew that. But she couldn't quite stem the tide of rejection that washed over her at her mother's announcement.
The Swans had sent her back when they'd had their own kid. They hadn't wanted her. Her parents were going to have a kid they could actually raise. A kid who would grow up to be as optimistic and heroic as they were, without all the hang-ups and abandonment issues. They wouldn't want her. Why would they want her?
"Congratulations," she choked out, plastering a smile on her face. But when she saw her parents link hands again, and Mary Margaret's eyes well with tears, she knew her reaction had been just a little too late, and a little too forced.
David leaned forward to rub Mary Margaret's shoulder as she bit her lip to stop the tears spilling over. "I know it's a bit of a shock..." he began.
"It's not that shocking," Emma pointed out, stabbing at the last chocolate smiley face with her fork. "I do live here, you know, and you guys are not half as subtle as you think you are."
Mary Margaret's lip curved into a ghost of a smile, but Emma still saw a single tear streak down her cheek before it was hastily wiped away.
No.
They cared about Emma. They wanted her to feel loved. They made her feel loved. And they were scared, so scared, both of them, David with his carefully stoic expression, and Mary Margaret with her tears. They were scared of her reaction. They were scared of screwing up. They were scared of wanting this, scared of losing everything. Again.
That single tear was the last little push Emma needed to do what she should have done in the first place, to rise from her place and walk around the table to throw herself into her mother's waiting arms.
"It's going to be great," she whispered into her mother's ear, her own tears beginning to form as David joined the hug, crushing all three, no, all four of them together into one weepy mess of a family. "You guys are going to be so great."
They were careful around her for the next few days, she knew. Her parents were being just a little too attentive, a little too affectionate. For some reason, this mainly manifested in the form of hot beverages. Every morning when Emma woke there had been a hot chocolate sitting on the stairs by her room, a custom shape sprinkled with cinnamon dust into the cream. She stopped accidentally kicking them over and soaking her pajama leg in cocoa on the third day. Her desk at the Sheriff's Station was permanently littered with Granny's to-go cups, a new one appearing every half hour or so, accompanied by an increasingly sheepish grin from David.
A part of her wanted to tell the pair of them to get a grip, and remind them she was almost 30 years old. Another part, and she could maybe admit it was the larger part, kind of enjoyed the attention. But when they'd spent five nights straight watching DVDs in the loft as a family, Emma knew she had to get out.
It was Friday night, and Henry was with Neal for the weekend, so sneaking off to the Rabbit Hole for a drink seemed as good an idea as any. And if she happened to run into a certain Harbormaster... But he wasn't there. Ruby was, flagging her down as she stood by the bar, ushering her over to her table in the corner, where Emma was kind of surprised to find the waitress nursing a beer beside none other than Dr Victor Whale.
Emma raised her eyebrows immediately, but Ruby gave her a low-key shake of the head, and Emma put her fighting words away. If Whale was a mistake that Ruby wanted to make twice, that was her business.
"Whale," she said coolly, as she sat down with her drink.
"Sheriff," he replied stiffly, with a nod.
The three of them sat for an extended moment, pretending to be engrossed in their drinks, until the awkwardness was just too unbearable.
"Mary Margaret's pregnant," Emma blurted out.
Ruby made a delighted kind of squeak, pulling Emma into a quick hug, but Whale choked on his mouthful of soda, spraying Coke in all directions. It was only then, when Ruby broke their hug to thump him on the back until he'd stopped spluttering, that Emma remembered that back when they were cursed, Mary Margaret and the good doctor had had a thing. Which was... so not something she wanted to think about. Ever.
But she figured that temporary panic was the standard reaction when you found out a one night stand was pregnant, even months after the fact.
"Yeah," she said, giving Whale a pointed look as she wiped the table down with her napkin. "They're pretty excited about it. Maybe a little... too excited about it? Every spare inch of space in the loft is covered with pregnancy manuals and parenting guides. And Mary Margaret has been making us watch these videos..." Emma shuddered at the memory. "It's like they've never done this before."
"Well..." said Ruby considered this, twirling her straw lazily between her fingers. "I guess they kind of haven't?"
"Yeah, but they already had a kid in the Enchanted Forest. And they didn't even have, like, antiseptic or real doctors." She motioned charitably at Whale. "I guess I figured they'd be more relaxed about it in this realm. If anything, the opposite is true. Mary Margaret woke me up in the middle of the night last night to ask me if I had ever heard of cradle cap. She was convinced the baby was going to have scales."
"Cradle cap's not dangerous," Whale interjected. Both Ruby and Emma turned to look at him, half surprised to find he was even listening. "And it goes away on its own in a few weeks..." he finished, noticing their identical looks of disbelief.
He rolled his eyes, pointing an index finger at his temple. "Some of us were cursed with Med School. That included Obstetrics, you know." He raised his can of soda to the ceiling. "Thank you, Your Majesty," he declared sarcastically, before lifting the can to his lips, and draining it in a single motion.
Emma idly wondered exactly how much of a role Ruby had played in the Doctor's new-found sobriety, and if it had occurred before or after the reconciliation. But as she watched Whale get up to approach the bar for his next can of soda, she admitted to herself it probably wouldn't be polite to ask.
"They were pretty bad the first time," Ruby's conspiratorial whisper broke Emma from her thoughts, her elbow nudging hers. "When Snow found out she was pregnant with you, they threw a ball. They were at war with Regina, and they still found time to invite people from fourteen different kingdoms and serve twenty eight different kinds of cake."
"Twenty eight different kinds?" Emma wasn't even sure she could name that many.
"Yup. It was a pretty good party, actually. Best red velvet sponge cake I ever had..." Ruby trailed off wistfully, her eyes glazing over for a moment in apparent recollection, until she shook her head and refocused on Emma. "All I'm saying is, Snow and Charming don't do things by halves. And you maybe shouldn't be surprised if there's a shindig on the horizon, for the little guy or girl. They were always such suckers for a gathering."
Ruby, it turned out, was right.
Her father ventured the topic the next morning over yet another elaborately decorated stack of pancakes, as the two of them politely ignored the sound of Mary Margaret heaving her guts up through the bathroom door.
"Things have just been so chaotic since the curse broke, we thought it might be a way to boost morale a bit," David tried to explain. He nudged her elbow with his own. "Enjoy the good moments."
"Sure," she agreed diplomatically, before shoveling in another forkful of pancake.
Emma had never been to a royal ball before. Hell, she'd never even been to Prom. But she could see it was important to her parents, so she agreed to help. And if digging out old decorations from Miner's Day, and handwriting invitations kept her from inventing reasons to extend her patrols past the docks, then so much the better.
It didn't quite stop her from writing him out an invitation though, the words of his real name springing forth from her mind along with the memory of that first encounter. Killian Jones. Tied to a tree at knife-point. They'd come a long way since then. But not far enough that she could bring herself to post it with the other invitations, when she stood outside the post office with Henry, watching Marco and little August play in the park across the street.
It's not like the Jolly Roger had a mailbox anyway, she reasoned, as she stuffed the envelope back into her purse. She'd give it to him when she saw him. If she saw him.
But she didn't see him. Not at Granny's. Not down at the Rabbit Hole. Not on her patrols when she circled lazily past the docks in her patrol car. The Jolly Roger was still moored, so she figured he hadn't gone far. She resisted the urge to ask after him with Granny, knowing the woman was shrewd enough to see right through her. That went doubly for Tinker Bell. She wasn't sure if it was the image she had in her head of the pouting, vindictive fairy from the Disney movie, but there was something about her Emma didn't completely trust.
So Emma took it as a sign, and the invitation remained buried under the mace can and handcuffs she still kept in her purse, while she focused on turning Town Hall into a place fit for a fairy tale ball in a little less than a week. Everything would be perfect, she'd assured a hormone-addled Mary Margaret, as she pried her away from the craft scissors at 3am. They had it handled.
So naturally, everything went to hell in a hand-basket. Emma thought the most stressful part of the evening was going to be bluffing her way through the waltz in impractical shoes. Emma had been kidding herself. This was Storybrooke, and something was always, always going on.
So maybe she shouldn't have been so surprised when Hook burst into the loft after two weeks of being MIA, eyes wild, chest heaving, words of dread tumbling from his lips just before the lights went out, signalling an abrupt end to the evening's scheduled programming.
It took Emma a few moments to get a handle on the situation, producing a will o' wisp from her mind so that it hung suspended in the air between them, at last illuminating the room in a swell of yellow light. Her parents had found each other across the room in the dark, David standing protectively in front of his wife, his sword already in his hands.
Did he really just have it laying around?
The fear on their faces was evident, but there was an identical, determined tilt to their chins that said they were ready for a fight.
Killian... Hook looked a little less ready for action, leaning on the back of the couch with one arm, trying to get his breathing under control, his eyes glancing up to meet Emma's as soon as the light returned. There was a doomed cast to those eyes Emma had rarely seen, which said this was clearly a little more serious than a black out.
"Pan's shadow," Hook said coolly, his accented voice still a little breathless. "The shadow broke free and now it's terrorizing Storybrooke."
"Free?" Emma repeated dumbly, her head swimming with the implications.
"I thought it was supposed to be secure?" David turned to Hook, and Emma could hear the hint of accusation behind the words. Pan's Shadow had been on his ship, after all. For all intents and purposes, it had been Hook's responsibility.
"And so it should be!" Hook replied, straightening fully to face David and his implication head on. "Without a master, the shadow is virtually powerless. It certainly possesses no ill will of its own!"
"So it has a new master," Emma was surprised to find herself saying. The three of them all turned to look at her, and she continued the thought. "Someone with ill intent. Someone who knows how to control it. And how many people do we know like that?"
"Gold," Mary Margaret said quietly, sharing a significant glance with Emma, while David looked between them in confusion. Emma saw Killian's entire body go rigid at the name.
"Gold," Emma repeated.
It didn't take long to change out of her ridiculous ball dress, and back into clothes fit for chasing down an evil spirit. An almost disappointingly small amount of time, considering how long she had spent getting ready, really.
But when she returned downstairs, the loft had already somehow turned into Shadow Hunt HQ. Candles had been lit on every surface. A surface map of Storybrooke was laid out on the dining room table, around which Hook and David were huddled, conferring with Regina, who'd just arrived with Henry, still dressed in all their Royal Ball finery.
Something inside Emma clenched at the sight of her son in his custom tuxedo, his hair parted neatly to the side with some kind of product, but she willed it away. There would be other Balls. Other chances to see her son growing up into the man she knew he would be, before her eyes. Just not tonight.
"There you are!" David said, as Emma pushed her way into the main group. "We need to call Neal," he said, digging into his jeans pocket for his phone.
"No!" Emma winced a little at the sound, the way her voice seeming to bounce off every surface in the loft, bringing all eyes in the room back on her.
"Emma?" prompted Mary Margaret, softly, stepping out from behind the counter where she had been making coffee.
This was so not how she intended to have this conversation.
"It's just..." Emma grappled for the right words to explain her hesitation.
"My parents aren't getting back together." Emma, and everyone else, whipped around to the source of the words. It was her son, who had been sitting quietly on the couch in his tuxedo, clutching a hot cocoa in his hands, which he set down on the coffee table when he realized he had an audience. "And everyone is okay with that," he continued in that same steady tone, making sure to meet Emma's eyes, "But they decided it would be best not to see each other for a while. To make it easier."
He made an unlikely hero in Emma's time of need. More so because she hadn't yet managed to find a way to tell him exactly what was happening between her and Neal.
"Did your Dad tell you that?" Emma asked carefully, voice hushed, her focus only on Henry.
He shrugged. "He didn't have to."
Emma felt a rush of love for her son, the only things stopping her from closing the last few steps to envelop him in a fierce hug being Regina's huff of impatience and David's gentle cough.
"I get that Emma, but we need his star map to-" Her father trailed off abruptly, and Emma didn't miss the warning glance in her mother's eye.
"Actually, mate," said Killian, clapping David on the shoulder. "Neal isn't in possession of the star map any longer, so there's no need to bother him if we mean to trap the evil spirit."
"So exactly who is in possession of the item, Captain?" Regina's patience had clearly lapsed, as she rounded on him.
And to Emma's surprise, he turned to the former Evil Queen with the beginnings of a smile breaking across his handsome face.
"Why, Tinker Bell, of course."
