A/N: So there was a little Neverland Renaissance over on tumblr and I was drawn into a little angsty moment. This only barely counts as Neverland… but I've never written Neverlandish stuff before soo.. this is just a little bit of character feels.

A missing scene from 3x09.

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Where my heartache and the timbers lay

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The whole concept of what's happening before him is foreign.

Before him and inside him, torn between sharing the elation of those around him - the victory, the relief - and torn against wallowing in confusion and self pity.

Henry is safe; Pan's shadow reluctantly bringing them all home; lost children, about a dozen boys being fed stew on the decks of his ship while heroes mill about easing themselves out of fight mode. It should relax him, should calm him. He has helped these people to achieve victory, achieve something honourable (for once).

Should.

But an uneasy sickness tightens his stomach because as out of danger as they all are, even as he drifts further and further away from that wretched place with every second, he is uncertain of his own place in amongst these… heroes.

She also seems so much calmer than she had been in the last few days (or as he's ever seen her), her boy safe and sound, well rested and milling about on deck talking to his father and Felix, no doubt trying to convert the unconvertible. She watches it all with a look of relief, even if there is an air about her as though she is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

His ship creaks beneath him, as aching and confused as he is, asking where it is they will go next.

But he doesn't really know.

(Well, he has an idea.)

And then there's the Crocodile, slinking about on her deck where he does not belong with his tail between his legs and claws crossed behind his back. The ghost of Milah and the past three hundred years hissing after him as he walks around without a care.

Still, Killian can't quite believe he finds himself here. The feeling of guilt was what lead him to help in the first place, but then something as alien and outlandish as hope found him in the depths of a pair of green eyes, and the strength and light sans senseless optimism that lived in the woman that kept them.

(A hope that sparked something else in the way his lips tingle when he looks at her now – a memory or her own, an urge, a disbelief, a feeling – that is also anomalous.

Too long it has been since the thought of a woman made him feel this way.

If it ever felt quite this way at all.)

However, for some reason unbeknownst to him, being up in these starlit clouds seems to cast a calm on those down below him. So hushed is it all that the flap of the sails above him ring out distractedly and almost eerily, while each person whispers in conversation, as though if they spoke any louder to match the whipping sails the ship itself might drop from the sky; the clouds are what's keeping them sheltered from harm.

She whispers too.

"Hey."

With his hand and hook on the wheel and his eyes on course he doesn't turn to look at her, but responds with an equally hushed - "Swan, what can I do for you?"

Killian doesn't intend for the words to sound bitter, they are not intended to bite at her in any way (never her), but the happy reunions happening all around him, the strangeness taking place on his ship has put him on edge.

And then there's her.

They - she and he - had been on a different kind of course to the one he now leads through the night sky. They had been on a crashing kind, every moment of interaction burning and scorching him in an unpleasant kind of sensation that quickly became addicting. He could have sworn she had felt it too, the unpleasant prickling that seemed to live restlessly in the veins under his forearms and the bones behind his lungs.

And then her heels had dug in.

Stubbornly, deeply, and with great force of will they had dug, changing her direction and leaving him to follow the old one himself. Of course, she had been focused on Henry and Killian did not want in any reality for her to change that focus, but it seemed to provide her with an excuse to leave him on that path by himself, to dig and spin her heels away.

He chances a glance at the woman beside him, turtleneck all the way up to the length of her chin, and silent. She still hasn't spoken beyond her simple hello. But she is standing there, seemingly at peace, a timid smile (small though it is) etching itself - though Killian can still tell that her mind is working at a million miles an hour.

She catches his glance and Killian does not pretend he wasn't looking, he does not shy away from being caught out – she does that for him, blinking, sighing, and licking her lips as she gazes back down the length of the Jolly. He follows her gaze, noting how she watches Neal talking quietly with his father.

"I just wanted to thank you."

He wonders what it is Emma is looking for as she continues to observe Neal.

And Killian wonders what it is she is trying to achieve by this current interaction with him now.

"Don't mention it, love. No, really, don't mention it – it's bad for my reputation."

The words have their intended effect, she tears her eyes back to his, an unimpressed glare in them as she scrunches her nose, and he grins perhaps a little deviously, yearning more than he should be allowed for their banter to return.

(Wants to rid the sour pining expression from his face if he cannot remove it from his heart.)

"We couldn't have survived that place without you."

She's staring straight at him now, eyes wide and vulnerable but determined to get the message across. However, it's the minuscule shifting she does from one foot to another that tells him she wants to use the singular 'I' rather than the plural of 'we'. And the boat creaks beneath him, easing herself across unfamiliar skies, and even though he knows there are spoons clanking in bowls beneath him, and voices hushed and chattering, all he seems to hear are Emma's intended meanings pulsing loudly disguised as the blood in his ears.

"I didn't do it for them, Swan. Henry, probably. If pushed, Baelfire as well."

She doesn't believe it for a second, arms crossed like armour across herself, but eyes all-telling, eyes all-knowing and unafraid of his bullshit.

Yet, she does not move. As difficult as her gratefulness was to convey to him, she is still standing there as though with unfinished business. Killian does not push this time, focuses on teetering the wheel a little with the tap of his hook, it clanking in the darkness while she tucks at the hair blowing behind her. Emma hides it behind an ear, steeling herself for whatever it is this cool, quiet night air has inspired her with.

"What will you do when we get back to Storybrooke?"

Ah.

Now at least he knows why her eyes are so nervous.

The question, so simple, so innocent, reveals far more than she is comfortable with, still staring at him with searching eyes as though looking for a sign of betrayal. She won't find one. Although, Killian wonders if maybe that's worse for her. Perhaps, if she weren't so easy for him to read he would see it as curiosity, as plain and simple conversation but read her he does and understands exactly her concern - that he might just disappear when he drops them all off home again, job finished, good deed done, bean-theft atoned.

He lets go of the wheel after ensuring it is steady, and takes but two steps towards her, timber floorboards speaking to him as he does – in warning or encouragement (there's no way of knowing what the croaking means). It seems as though Emma was expecting this, knew that with the right words from her mouth he'd waltz straight back into her space, and she eyes him unruffled by it. So he crowds her as she remains staunch, continuing this nightly fashion for whispering.

"Well, that all depends."

She doesn't like his answer knowing that his implication involves her, arms still crossed, response suddenly stony rather than vulnerable as it had been.

Emma is resolute to keep him at arm's length, as long as that's as far he stays, and Killian isn't sure whether that frustrates him or flatters him – to know that in some sense she wants him by her, though still too scared or stubborn or aching to know what to do about him once he's there.

"On what?" Her voice now impatient and short.

"There's no need to play coy with me, Emma."

He's trying to reciprocate her prior vulnerability (the vulnerability that cuts him deeper than he cares to focus on) but that green feeling, that Neal-caused-jealousy clawing at his gut does not mix well with feeling like a stranger behind the wheel of his own ship, and his impatience shows in his tone. She's not bothered though, looks at him as though he's still playing the fool, and perhaps he is, forcing this tension between them into a strenuous thing when he needn't.

(It feels strenuous enough as it is.)

"I'm not in the mood for this, Hook, I just thought we owed you our thanks."

"You're conveying more than that, love."

She holds his stare a little longer, and up here, with the stars and the clouds, they are strangely well lit. Her eyes clear and every emotion in them visible to him in a far more pleasant green to the one in his stomach - this green showing irritation, exasperation, want, fear.

He shouldn't be this close to her, not when the feel of her hands on him, bodies swaying into one another as they grappled - in more than one sense of the word - still tinges their every encounter. She ignores it mostly, only acknowledging it when he brings it up as factual, but he can see its remnant in her behaviour, as though now doubly aware of what being this close to him could only result in. Killian would more than willingly oblige and remind her, lose his fingers in the borders of her hair and lock her lips with his, noses brushed against each others and pull the fear out of her that way.

But this option is a mere fantasy, a delusion. He knows he will not be the one to break this stalemate - not when she's fighting with herself so vehemently, not even when his heart pounds so oppressively as he notices the increased rise of her panic, the increased rate of her breath.

(The increased flicker of her eyelashes.)

And when she speaks next, it's a warning and a plea all mixed up in yet another harsh whisper.

"Don't."

She turns, sighing, ripping apart their locked gaze with what feels to him like great difficulty, causing a shattering feeling to rumble through him at the loss (a heartache he's grown too familiar with in just a few, albeit long, days).

(But he feels as though it is just the beginning of Emma Swan turning away from him.)

And Emma's boots clop louder on the wooden deck than their entire conversation had, the timbre of the timber aching beneath her almost sadly as she goes. Those boots, those heels had turned back in his direction for just a moment onto his course, and his own malcontent had pushed her away again.

Quite plainly, it hurts him, regret itching at his jaw to say something else.

Killian is too far gone with this woman already to leave the small piece of herself she offered up without returning it back safely to her. Too far gone with this feeling that has wormed and settled in his jaw, deep and stiff, settling itself into his back teeth and the ends of his sentences. Punctuating everything with a bite. That isn't the only place he feels it - this longing, burning ache - but that is where it lingers most, burrowing itself silently in the midst of conversion, waiting, niggling, biding its time as though it is simply a yawn and he's been awake all night.

He may be uncertain about where he stands with her, the feelings changing in him, and with her kind (so to speak) - however, she is just as confused. That, more than the calm night and the hushed peace onboard his ship, soothes him most. The simple act of knowing that she is aware of his limbo, and seeks him out about it - whether intentional or not - fills him with a renewed sense of hope and affection.

Even though she is too skittish to be direct about it, and even though no resolution has been made for him, for her, or for whatever may be between the two of them.

Just as she makes her way to the stairs she halts at his parting words, not whispered but softer in their delivery all the same, before she continues without reply (without a backward glance) back down toward Neal.

"It depends on how expensive mooring is in Storybrooke."