Disclaimer: I do not own OUAT.

Summary: Emma had never met someone as infuriating as the captain of the Jolly Roger in her 28 years of being a talented thief. When he requires her help to find a dagger to "skin" the Dark One as he likes to say, what she's really agreeing to is late night fights, breaking her walls, falling in love, oh, and winning the war with her parents she knew nothing about. Emma Swan doesn't know what she should be mad about. How about that coin purse he tried to steal that started this whole thing….

Warnings: This is AU. There is no Curse. Hook returns to the Enchanted Forest from Neverland when Emma is 28. Emma is still an orphan. Reasons being that I prefer her to have that lost boy/lost girl connection with Hook. Henry does exist and will be explained for as the story progresses.

A/N: Happy Thursday! :) Big chapter with lots of feels ^_^ YAY ENJOY!

Emma leaned her back against the mast with her arms and legs crossed as she stared at the captain's door. No one had seen him for days. She hadn't seen him at the galley, he was no longer near the helm. It was almost like he vanished alongside the siren entirely. She knew he was still alive at the very least. Smee or Jameson would enter the captain's quarters, sometimes with food, and would exit with a shake of their heads.

That siren was brutal on his guarded memory it seemed. Emma huffed and licked her lips.

She wasn't worried. Most definitely not. She just…

She understood.

Did she understand any better than his crew? She wasn't sure. Actually she was almost positive she didn't. These were his mates. They sailed together for centuries. She was just his passage. A quick chapter in his life.

Henry himself tried to coax the captain from his prison. But there was no luck with the boy either. Henry had admitted to her, that although she never agreed to him taking lessons from Hook, he saw him every morning until the incident, practicing. Feeling bad for her son, Emma trained him herself in the privacy of their cabins until Henry earned himself a bruise on the desk. They then moved to the bow.

She taught him how she was taught how to fight: being quick, nimble, using the weight of the opponent against them, and using tricks. Every now and then, a deck swabber would pause and watch, offering a bit of advice before nodding in approval of Henry's lessons being resumed.

The crew was quite taken with Henry, even though he had threatened their captain almost a month ago. They jested with him and showed him the ins and outs of the ship. And Emma couldn't stop herself from smiling from afar. Henry, unlike Emma, made new friends with such ease it almost made her jealous.

This morning, Henry was finally able to get into the captain's quarters, and when he left, he looked so depressed that Emma wondered if she really wanted to help the captain.

"He's hurt real bad mom…"

"She didn't even cut him, Henry, I'm sure he's ok."

Henry shook his head. "No, mom. He's hurt like how you're hurt on my birthday. When you remember my dad…" Henry ducked under the covers when she stared at him with her mouth agape.

It was true though… For Henry's birthday, she would have to fight really hard with herself to just be happy that it was her son's big day. But all she could think about was Neal. How he left her alone. How the action had made her edges so jagged. Why he left, what she did wrong… the list of questions and self-loathing would go on until she had to excuse herself from her son's side to rein in her broken heart.

Even Henry knew that she understood what was going on in Hook's world. The only difference was, by the sounds of it, Hook lost his love while Emma's left her. It still hurt nonetheless.

Emma couldn't imagine what would happen to her if she had to relive the pain again.

She leaned forward and squinted at the doorknob. It was an intricate brass handle, but the key hole was still just a keyhole. She knew his door would be locked, and she could just pick through it, but he'd probably just throw her right back out, furious at her forcing her way in.

She would have.

Emma shook her head. She had to stop making comparisons between him and herself.

Not finding anything good from just standing there, Emma applied pressure with her foot and kicked herself from the mast. She walked to the cabin with her head held high and her shoulders squared with determination. She reached his door and grasped the handle to give her time to question herself. Yes, she was going to do this. She clenched her hand and raised a fist to knock until she noticed that the knob was turning with little pressure.

Emma's brow wrinkled. She twisted her wrist, the knob giving away to her. She inhaled and pushed the door in. As soon as she did, her nostrils were attacked with such a powerful odor she almost choked. It smelled like a human wasting away: rotten food, dried sweat, rum, and something else she couldn't place her finger on and wasn't sure it she wanted to.

Emma entered the quarter with caution, it was a mess. There were bottles—full, smashed, and empty—scattered everywhere. Papers were thrown around the place, books were knocked to the floor, maps torn and tattered, and the bed, still covered in red satin sheets, was flipped over, the pillows strewn around it. Emma gulped and closed the door behind her, flinching at the sight of it. On the door were blood splatters and dents speckled in the wood, each dent different in size and depth. She exhaled and called his name.

"Hook?" The floorboards creaked under her feet as she walked carefully through the mess. She scrunched her nose as she came closer to the center of the room, where the stench was strongest. There was no sign of him. He had his curtains drawn, making the room dark and all the more suffocating.

Unable to stand it, Emma skipped to the windows, dodging the daggers that were dug into the floor. She landed on the windowsill on all fours and turned the latches. When she shoved the windows open and she inhaled the fresh air with a sigh. It was going to rain soon. She could taste it in the air along with the salt water. She tied back the curtains and opened the others, allowing the stench to exit.

As she tied the last curtain down, she felt a few fingers splay themselves along the flesh of her hipbone that had gotten exposed. Emma shriek and flipped herself around, poised to kick the intruder until she remembered there was only one in the battered room she chose to enter. And he looked as chaotic as his cabin.

His black shirt was tattered, like he had been struggling with it feverishly. His hair stuck out in odd angles and his scruff had grown quite a bit, dark against his pale flesh. The kohl was gone from his eyes, wiped away roughly no doubt, exposing red rims that made the blue in his eyes stand out as much as the black forced it. His boots were gone—she didn't understand how he could walk barefoot with all the broken glass on the floor—and his pants hung loose on his hips with the laces barely tied. There was a large bottle of rum in his hands and the old smirk back on his face.

"Hmm… don't tease me like that, love. Bent on all fours, arse in the air… Not nice at all, I have a mind to take you for myself." He reached for her again. Emma flinched and swatted away his hand.

"You're piss drunk, Hook." He shrugged and took a gulp from the bottle.

"Aye, now c'mere love. Let me show you how good a pirate can make you feel." He took a wobbly step towards her and her foot shot out, keeping him in place and away from her.

"Whoa, we are not taking a step in that direction." She was cornered, her back against the sides of the window. She wasn't at all worried. If things got bad she'd just toss herself out the window and shimmy up to the poop deck. But she was confident enough that she could handle Hook being drunk. "Give me that bottle, Hook."

The captain gave her a lazy grin. He, surprisingly, handed her the bottle. Once she pulled it away from him, however, his hand landed on her thigh, slowly trailing down, over her knee and cupping her calf where he massaged the tensed muscle. She pursed her lips and glared at him. She was not about to let a drunk man rouse her in anyway.

"You're so…responsive Emma." She winced at him slurring her name.

"What the hell, no I'm not."

Hook smirked, wrapped his hand around her ankle, and pulled until the crook of her knee rested on his shoulder with such speed she couldn't believe that he was drunk at all. Her bottom grazed his hip and his eyes drooped at the contact. She yelped and raised the bottle to throttle him with it, but at the angle she was now held at she couldn't reach his head. He turned it and kissed the inside of her knee. "Your body says otherwise. I can see the blush in your face, the way your chest heaves when I touch you, your hand tightening around that bottle."

"I'm trying really hard not to hurt you!"

"Oh? You've done it before when you were in a less…compromising position."

Emma huffed. Fine. They can play the same game. "Alright, you win. Perhaps I am responsive. Perhaps we should take advantage of it."

Hook's brows shot to his hairline and Emma smiled sweetly before using her other foot to kick him away from her. He grunted and stumbled back onto his desk with a crash as everything left on top of it fell off. Emma inhaled.

"Feeling any better over there?"

Hook laughed.

Laughed and laughed and laughed until he rolled off the desk and onto the floor clutching his stomach. She winced when she noticed that he landed on shattered glass. Even then he laughed.

"God, you idiot, let's get you cleaned up…"

Emma took his good arm and swung it over her shoulders. She helped him to a chair in the corner while she set to work. She fixed his bed, putting it back into place and stuffing the pillows where they belonged, she really could care less about the state the sheets were in. It was his bed, not hers to make and lie in. When she turned to place him on it she scoffed at him. He found another bottle and was already draining the contents.

"Really!" She threw up her hands and stomped in his direction. She snatched the bottle from him. Something incomprehensible tumbled out of his mouth but she wasn't having it. She helped him up again and guided him to his bed. He was dead weight. They stumbled together, Hook's head lolling about. Once she laid him down she ripped the rest of his shirt off.

"Well lass, if you wanted have me stripped down…" he wiggle his eye brows and made a move for his pants.

Emma smacked his hand away and rolled her eyes. "Could you just calm down for a few minutes please?"

"Why would I want to do that? I have a rather beautiful woman in front of me who's been teasing me since the moment I laid eyes on her."

"Now you're just being silly. I did no such thing." When she removed the tatters of his shirt from his body she saw the entirety of the brace. "You just feel it necessary to flirt with every woman you see."

His hook wasn't in place—he seemed to have slammed it into the wall some time ago— but the brace was black and bulky with the straps clasped around his shoulder. She had never seen anything like it. She looked at his face and noticed that he was silent, looking away as if embarrassed.

Emma brought her eyes down, and noticed red ink on his good arm. Tilting her head, she saw a heart with a sword pierced through it. A banner ran across it with the name she wasn't going to forget anytime soon: Milah.

"Who's Milah?"

The muscles in Hooks upper body stiffened, he rolled himself on his side, hiding his tattoo. "Someone from long ago…"

Emma stayed silent alongside him, giving him a chance to answer. He said nothing, just stared holes into the wall. She sighed, loudly, to remind him that she was still there and made her way to assess and repair the rest of the damage. She picked up all of the parchment lying on the floor, not knowing what was meant to stay and what wasn't, and placed them on his desk, using the fallen candelabra as a weight to keep them from blowing off in the wind. She held down the wet ones near the window with the daggers that were on the floor so they could dry.

When she found the broom, she swept up the broken glass, looking at Hook every now and then. He hadn't moved since he turned from her. After she put away the intact bottles—hid them was what she was really doing—she walked back to his side and wrinkled her nose. "When was the last time you bathed?"

He shifted and she breathed. She didn't realize she was holding her breath at the time.

"I've no clue… What day is it?"

Emma crossed her arms and saw a bucket near a door. She walked over and nudged open the door open finding his barrels of water. Emma filled the bucket, picked up a clean cloth and walked back to Hook who had rolled over to watch her.

"What are you doing, Swan?"

"You reek. And since you seem too dead to take care of yourself," she pulled up a chair and pointed at it, "Looks like it's up to me."

Hook's mouth twitched before he took his place, his back to her again. Emma winced at his exposure. She never realized that pirates lived such brutal lives, but of course she didn't think about them in general She's helped Mulan tend to the wounds of fellow thieves before and some bodies looked no different than Hook's in terms of damage. Once an outlaw, you were bound to get at least one whipping in your life. Emma was just fortunate to avoid those. Hook, not so much.

She sniffed and rung the now wet cloth. While she scrubbed at his back, removing the grime, Hook grunted.

"Careful love, you'll skin me that way."

"Well, if you had taken care of yourself while you were destroying your cabin you wouldn't feel how you're feeling right now." She ran the cloth over his shoulders and arms—he moved down the straps of his brace for her, giving her a glimpse of the old, dried blood on his torn knuckles—and tried to count the number of scars on his back. She lost track at fifteen when he moved and the hard muscles rippled underneath her fingers. She almost paused to feel them but thought better of it. Least to say it was… fascinating to see something like that. She hadn't seen a man naked since Neal, and he had nowhere near the perfected muscles that Hook possessed. Emma, too exhausted to fight, allowed a small blush to rise.

With his skin red, but clean, Emma dipped the cloth in the water again. She heard him sigh and paused in her movements this time.

"Rumplestiltskin…Milah was his wife. Before he became the dark one." Her hands clenched the submerged cloth tight. Finally… she pulled out her hands and shook them dry, listening to his tale. "He was a coward, and Milah wanted adventure—she wanted to live. We met at a tavern where my ship made port. She was… amazing. Brilliant. She was older than me, but she could keep up with me and my crew. She enjoyed my stories of my adventures. Of the far off lands I had visited. She was very unhappy in her situation. She was the wife of the village coward, and she had tried for years to convince him to find a new home and start over. But he was too much of a coward to make his wife happy."

"So… you stole her? Or…"

Hook chuckled and shook his head. "No… she begged me to take her away from it all. She wanted to leave him. So we ran off together. She caught on quickly—how to be a pirate. Eventually, she became my co-captain. After that…" his biceps twitched and hardened. He was clenching his fist. "My love for seven wonderful years. We ran into Rumplestiltskin, as the dark one. I kept her identity hidden—lying, saying she was dead. I only cared that she lived. So I sacrificed myself. I took up the duel he proposed. I was ready for the sword, having said my good-byes to Milah the night before. But she showed her face, she couldn't bare losing me. She explained what happened and they argued. About their son…"

Emma twitched from the spell his story was putting over her, feeling a sore spot in her heart. "She abandoned her son?"

"She regretted it every day, every moment. Before we left port with her the first time, I challenged Rumplestiltskin to a duel, hoping, praying that he would fight for her. For even if he lost, I would have given Milah back to him. I couldn't stand the thought of another kindred spirit. I understood her son, being abandoned by a parent. But he didn't fight. So, we left. I was never happy about it myself, no matter how much I loved Milah. When their argument came to a close, he ripped her heart out, and crushed it. Right in front of me."

Emma's jaw slackened. She had heard stories of Rumplestiltskin's favorite way to dispose of people, and for some reason, this one really hit her. Sure, there were hundreds of people wanting revenge on Rumplestiltskin, but here was a man who had lost everything, and walked through three hundred years to end his pain. The fates were cruel to let him continue to wander. They should have given him something else to hang on to. Something to rein him in an breathe a brighter life into him.

"It was always about more than just your hand…" she whispered.

"Aye. The siren's song would have killed me had you not been there chanting my namesake. I received my hook at her death. It was a talisman of my revenge. It was a desire that a siren could not replicate. And so, her spell broke."

Silence blanketed over them. His story was… full of passion, just like he was—although she had to question his 'passionate' moments most of the time given his sarcasm. Emma bowed her head, feeling the urge to comfort him like she did the night the siren attacked, but was afraid that her attempts would be shoved aside just as before. She sniffled and pulled the cloth back from the bucket. She gently picked up his hand from his leg and pulled the rings off his fingers. They were coated in dried blood as well. They pulled at his damage skin, but he didn't so much as hiss. With all his rings removed, she looked at the damage. Hook had thrust his fist in that door several times, harder and harder each time, and never in the same spot. She rubbed her fingers over the split skin with a tenderness she usually reserved for Henry. It was his own damn fault, but Emma remembered the dark times she tried to lose herself, after Henry was born.

She looked around her, spotting a flask she missed while cleaning. She shook it to test it contents, satisfied when she heard some good sloshing. After popping open the cap, she bit her cheek as she poured the rum over his knuckles. Still no sounds from him, but his fingers gripped hers so tightly she thought they were going to burst. She grunted but waited for him to relax.

"Let go, you'll re-open the wounds more than they need to be," she whispered and dabbed away the caked blood. Some fresh blood oozed and she sighed, glad it wasn't infected in the time he ignored it. His grip loosened.

Once his hand was cleaned, Emma dug into her trousers for her handkerchief. She wrapped it twice around his knuckles, tying it tight enough that it wouldn't slip but allowed the wound to breath. A part of her was shocked at the amount of care she was giving him. It was so… out of character of her. Emma pursed her lips and placed his hand back where it was before she made a move to mend it.

There was more silence, so she cleaned the rings to busy herself. Waiting patiently. He was emotionally spent from telling her a part of his story. She would have been. But that didn't stop her from feeling so… so… So disappointed at him.

Emma shook her head. "You can't waste your life with your revenge."

Hook turned, looking at her over his shoulder. The fire was back in his eyes and it made Emma contrite, because it was for the wrong reasons. "Revenge is all I have left."

"So find something else! There has to be something else to live for!"

Hook licked his lips. "I've been back in the realm for a little under six months. My time was over three hundred years ago. Everyone I knew, except my crew, gone. Dead. Dust. Where am I going to find something else, Swan?"

"If you would stop being an ass, maybe you'd find someone who can mean something to you! Anything!" Emma stood on her feet and balled her fists tight at her side. "Once your revenge is done and dealt with, what will be there?"

"We'll find out when I get there then, won't we?" He stared up at her with a mock filled grin, pissed and alive again.

"It's the wrong ambition to take. A better revenge, would be to move on. Show Rumplestiltskin that his actions aren't ruining your life. That you aren't suffering." Emma huffed and threw the cloth at his face. He sputtered and stared at her in shock while the rings fell to the floor. "That's what I did. And I know I may look miserable sometimes, I may be cold and distant, but my son being healthy and alive is more than enough to piss off—" She stopped, feeling that she was saying too much. This was about him, not her. "He gets nothing from me."

Hook stood with such fierceness that his chair practically flew back with a clatter. He got in her face, livid and having a look in his eyes that told her he wanted to hurt her. "Have you ever even been in love, darling? Have you ever had someone ripped from you because a coward, of all things, wants you to suffer?"

She took a step closer, feeling an old, bitter flame of anger spread through her. "I was! Once! And he left me! Of his own free will! He ripped himself from me!" She raised her hands and shoved him away from her, so furious at him for thinking that she didn't understand. She was an open book to him wasn't she?!

His arm swung out and he grabbed the weight bearing post, his blue eyes wavering at her confession. Emma gasped and her hands flew to her face. Her palms were sweaty and her face was burning. She started breathing frantically and tried to calm her racing mind and heart. No. No. No. No! She was not about to collapse in front of him. She was stronger.

They stared at one another. Frozen in their last steps. When her breathing calmed a notch, she tried to find words to reach him. But, if her words couldn't reach herself, what were the chances of them reaching him?

"You can't let him win. You're still alive. Find something. Find someone."

Hook straightened slightly to lean against the post. He watch her with calculating eyes and she felt like she was drowning. Her breathing picked up again and her fingers clutched tighter at her face. Where was the air…

"Not all of us are lucky to have gifts such as your son, Swan."

"Well maybe there's a 'gift' out there, somewhere for you," unable to handle being near him any longer, Emma turned heel and started to leave. Her heart was beating so rapidly in her chest that it felt like it was purring. "You can either look or let it come to you."

In Odette's care, Emma remembered the kind woman telling her that somewhere, out there, was a perfect gift for every single person. But only some, the stronger ones, the ones who fought through trial and error, were lucky to find them. Everyone had a gift out there, it was someone who made you want to wake up every day, to test your limits, to become a better person. Gods, she didn't even want to think about it because deep down, as much as she loved her son and as much as she loved waking every morning to see his face and hear his laugh, she still felt a large, hungry, gaping hole in her heart.

The words were such odd things to leave her mouth. They were such odd things for her to think of. She couldn't believe she told him something about herself. She didn't know this man, this pirate. It was supposed to be strictly business.

But he trusted her with his darkness.

She gulped. So. That didn't mean she had to trust him with hers.

"Swan. Swan."

"What!" He grabbed her wrist, causing her to turn and face him. He was incredibly close. He hadn't pushed through her boundaries in so long she forgot how unnerving it was. She gulped and kept an eye on him.

When he realized that she wasn't going to leave, he took another step pulling her hand to his lips. The scruff on his face tickled her soft fingers while he kissed her hand. He held her eye for quite some time before his darted to her lips when she wet them with her tongue. Emma's heart beat faster. He took a tentative step, drawing his face closer to hers. And instead of going for her lips that he was staring at such a keen eye, he placed a simple kiss on her temple. The back of his damaged knuckles brushed her opposite cheek so tenderly that she felt something break within her. She didn't like this at all.

"Thank you, milady."

He released her hand and Emma jumped two steps back, feeling her cheeks burn more, especially where he touched her with his knuckles wrapped in her handkerchief. She tried to give him some better acknowledgment but found her throat thick with emotion she had no words for. So, she nodded and spun around, thrusting herself out the door.

Jameson watched with curiosity as Miss Swan ran with a bang from the captain's quarters. He noticed the dark blush on her face as she ran down the hatch, away from everyone's prying gaze. When had she gone in there? What was she doing in there? It was an odd sight, but with her having the fortune of being a woman, he was certain half the crew was taking their assumptions in a more lecherous direction Jameson had seen and spoken enough to Miss Swan to know that she wasn't a wanton woman. Some men laughed.

He looked to Smee who shrugged his shoulders. Business between the captain and Miss Swan was none of theirs.

They all resumed their work. Jameson held a map over the storage case in front of the helm. They would make port in good time after making the change of course, having lost only a day. It was no matter, their captain was a patient man. And if not then, well, he could just call forth the magic of the ship.

He observed the map for several moments, recalculating the time it would take to reach Port Royal. There were many more dangers they could encounter, especially if the mermaids were strong allies with the Charmings. They were still sailing on pirate ship, and mermaids, like sirens, enjoyed toying with such, even if it might cost them their lives.

Jameson shuddered at the memory of tossing the dead siren overboard. They ran into their fair share throughout the life in this realm as well as Neverland. They never fail to make a man quiver in his boots.

"How much time have we lost, Jameson?" The pirate jumped and looked at his captain in surprise. The man looked like he hadn't changed at all, minus the pale skin and the bags under his eyes.

"Captain!"

Hook grinned and trailed his fingers across the map, tapping port Jefferson. "Half a day?"

"A-A whole day, captain. Port Jefferson is plentiful, according to the locals in Miss Swan's village. We can restock, quickly, and be back on track."

Hook shook his hand and trailed down to Port Royal. "No need, we can take our time if we must. The crocodile isn't going anywhere. And the men are already missing the flesh of women."

Crewmen nearby chortled.

"Did you enjoy yours, captain?"

Jameson would have loved to turn and cut out the tongue of the spineless man who spoke, but instead he kept his eyes trained on the captain. Curious.

Hook's finger paused, at the Royal Castle and Jameson noticed something else. His rings were missing. In their place, a white handkerchief wrapped around his knuckles with the care and tender touch of a woman. Miss Swan…The man almost smiled. Well, wasn't that a pleasant surprise.

What was even more so, Jameson didn't see the trademark grin of when the captain had a good time in his bed. In its place, he saw something wistful. It was a start. Hook's eyes darted to Jameson. He shook his head severely, realizing he had been caught and a smirk found his lips.

"So close, Smith. So very close," Hook turned, his hand placed on his buckle. "Swan is a tough lass. It's going to take a lot more to get her to stay where I want her."

In other words, Miss Swan was his challenge, and no one could take her until he had. Jameson's smiled. Their captain, always the gentleman.

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