Emma woke up in the middle of the night, unable to get back to sleep, and listened. On their last visit to Neverland, she had been so consumed with worry over Henry that she had found the environment nothing but hostile. Now, with the Lost Boys had been moved into suburban homes in Storybrooke and Pan defeated, their heartrending cries no longer overshadowed the background music of Neverland: a chorus of insects and the scurrying sounds of small animals, a gentle rain and a breeze that cooled the air in Tinkerbell's treehouse.

She had woken hungry – she seemed to want food every four hours or so now, no matter the time of day or circumstances. She carefully slipped out of Killian's grasp. He snorted adorably and rolled over, taking the blanket with him. Well, she supposed it was his blanket, and she smiled to herself to think that even the feared pirate captain was lulled to a deep sleep by a Pan-less Neverland. Emma tucked the blanket more securely around him. She picked up his jacket and pulled it around her against the night air, then crept down the ladder to the forest floor.

Fireflies darted and dove around Emma as she took in the forest. The moon shone brightly here, and she could see almost as well as on a heavily overcast winter's day in Storybrooke. The rain was light and only slightly cold, refreshing, she thought, after their trek and their near-fatal encounter with the fairies. Emma described her surroundings to the baby. She hadn't done this so much with Henry. She had been traumatised and frightened then. But now, she never felt alone, like she was always carrying a companion with her, someone to talk to. So she explained to the baby that she remembered a fruit, a yellowish oval one, quite small and utterly delicious.

"Your father is the expert on this place, but he's no good to us at the moment. We don't want to wake him, do we? He needs his sleep. I know it grew around here somewhere. He gave some to me, and we weren't far off Tinkerbell's place." Emma kept up the chatter, wandering in concentric circles around the treehouse, not straying far enough to lose her way. She was so enjoying the serene beauty of the night sky, bizarrely cloudless despite the rain, when a shrill little voice nearly made her jump out of her skin.

"Saviour!" An energetic light, several times bigger than the fireflies, appeared before her eyes. Emma felt in Hook's jacket for a blade. "Saviour, what are you doing up at night and alone?" The fairy swooped onto her shoulder and peered curiously into Emma's eyes. "Are you ill? Do you need help?"

Emma brushed the interfering little mite from her shoulder. "Help? You all were trying to execute my boyfriend just hours ago. No, I don't want your 'help'."

"I know," the little fairy hovered before her, shamefaced. "I don't think Clarion's reign will survive that. To think that she might have left that little baby fatherless." The fairy shook her golden head. "We're all so very, very sorry."

"Killian's told me plenty of times to stay away from fairies. Now I believe him."

"Please, Saviour, please let me help. What do you need? I can help!" the fairy pleased, her yellow curls blending into her petal-yellow dress.

Emma huffed in annoyance. "I'm hungry, that's all. And call me Emma rather than Saviour. I was looking for a fruit I remember. Yellow, not quite round, very sweet, almost like a grape but a bit more tart."

"Oh!" the little fairy zipped the left, then down a path. "Got it!" She flew back slowly, lugging two of the little fruits on a twig. "Is this it?"

Emma beamed at her. "Yeah, that's the one." She popped one in her mouth and chewed. "Yup, that's exactly the flavour I remember. Umm… thanks." Emma patted low on her abdomen, too embarrassed to talk to the baby with company about but still wanting to let it know that their late night quest had met with success.

The fairy fluttered her wings and stood before Emma in human form. "Let me get a few more for you." She disappeared around a bend in the path and came back with two handfuls of the fruit.

"Thanks again," Emma sighed, eating a few more. She decided to save some for Killian. "So are you allowed to be here, helping me?"

"Oh, yes, Clarion's the one in trouble."

Emma looked her over for signs of untruthfulness, but found nothing. "Thing is, we need some information. About Merlin."

"Merlin!" The fairy clapped her hand over her mouth when the name slipped out. "Oh, we don't like to say that name around here. He can hear," she whispered. "But he's not here, no," she added quickly, noticing Emma's concern. "If you need to hear about… Him… I can arrange for you to meet with an older fairy than me. She knows all there is to know about Him. Tomorrow morning? You could come to Fairy Hollow…"

Emma gave her a sharp look. "I don't think so. We're never setting foot there again. This fairy, and she alone with you, can come here tomorrow morning."

The yellow fairy assented easily. "Until tomorrow, then, Saviour Emma." She leaned down to touch Emma's belly. "Goodnight, little one." And with a tinkle like wind chimes, she buzzed away.

"So you woke in the middle of the night and wandered the forest alone? In the rain? And ate berries that some unknown fairy brought you?" Killian was growing more agitated by the minute. "And then you invited a couple of them back here for what… brunch?"

Emma reached up to grab his hands, pulling him back onto the bed with her. She reached over to a little table where she's left the rest of the berries and offered him some. "They're the same ones that you gave me last time we were here. Perfectly safe."

"Emma, that was reckless. You cannot take these risks with yourself," he scolded.

Emma drew herself up. "You mean don't take risks with the baby."

"Yes, clearly I mean don't take risks with the baby!" he raised his voice. "Becoming ill from the cold and damp, or eating the wrong thing, it could have tragic consequences."

Emma stared him down. "You think I'm irresponsible."

Killian saw exactly where this was headed. "Emma, you are the most responsible person I have ever met. You regularly shoulder the responsibility for whole towns and villages of people. But you are carrying another life in you and there is a damned good reason why it's referred to as a delicate condition."

"Uh-huh. So I'm responsible, but I'm a shitty mother."

Killian stomped over to her and gathered her into a surprisingly gentle hug. "I will not be dragged into the storm, love. You need to cede a bit of control and let me take care of certain things for you. If you are hungry in the night, please wake me before you wander into the forest alone, in the rain."

"I'm not helpless, Killian, and nothing bad happened. I wanted fruit; I got fruit. We wanted to talk to the fairies about Merlin; we're going to talk to fairies about Merlin."

"The possibility of something bad happening would have been avoided completely if you'd just let me take care of you." Killian explained, holding in his temper. "You and my child. I want to make things as safe for you as possible, love. Both of you."

Emma knew that she was building up to a good explosion. The 'my child' comment alone could keep her yelling for days. But she stopped herself. He's not from my world, from my time, she reasoned to herself. He's possessive and overprotective, a trait he shares with David. But he is a good man, supportive and loving and not controlling, so should you really force an argument with a man who only wanted to be awakened to find you a midnight snack?

Emma felt very mature for having these thoughts. The mature thing to do, certainly, would be to explain calmly that she had enjoyed the moonlight stroll in the forest, babbling about nothing to the baby and exploring. So she did just that, though she was sobbing uncontrollably through the whole thing and had a suspicion she was unintelligible. She couldn't remember starting to cry. It startled her. Killian was whispering into her hair and apologising over and again.

So Emma hiccupped, and slumped her head onto Killian's chest, and waited for the hormonal overload to pass. She would explain it all. Later.

Killian still hated Neverland. He hated it less with the lost boys gone and Pan long dead, true enough. With Swan here, he could even appreciate the mind-altering beauty of the place; the outrageously bright colours; the damp air that felt like the dawn of time; the abundant, exotic fruit and mysterious flowers. He could remember first discovering the fairies, and what it felt like to lie under an emerald sky full of golden stars with one fairy or another, his hair and coat covered with the intoxicating scent of fairy dust. Clarion could rabbit on about 'violation' all she wanted, but Killian knew full well they had drugged him often enough to get what they wanted from him. The forest had numerous trees and plants that acted as aphrodisiacs, and he knew that the fairies had used every single one on him.

So, yes, he could remember years spent carousing through across the island like gods, he and his crew drunk on the sap of the Everbright tree or the pollen of dozens of species of potent poppies. The fairies had been numerous and willing. Not much of this did he intend to share with Emma. But mostly, he remembered Liam's death.

Killian hated Neverland.

Still, pregnant women needed regular and nutritious meals, so he found himself stoking a campfire the next morning in the clearing, cooking up a sort of Neverland soup for Emma. He had hushed and hugged and finally made love to Emma last night before he managed to stop the tears. He hoped that feeding her would head off more emotional outbursts. He didn't want to end up hanging from the tallest tree on the island for making the Saviour cry.

Emma scaled gracefully down from the treehouse and dropped almost noiselessly in the clearing near him. She immediately found a stick and poked into the stewpot.

"So what's for breakfast? Have you been out killing things and dragging them back to camp for your pregnant woman?" She flashed her eyes at him. "You've had sex. Made fire. Hunted. Are there any primal urges left to indulge?"

Killian grabbed her around the waist and hauled her close. He fixed his most unimpressed stare upon her. "It's vegetable stew. I lit the fire with a match I found stuffed in my pocket – I picked the matchbook up from that deli down the street from our place in New York. But if you want me to prove my virility, then I'll have you up against that rock right now. I can always knife some defenceless animal beforehand if it'll get you off."

Emma's eyes widened. She grinned. "Yes to the rock, no to the knifing. But I'd like some breakfast first."

He smiled back, kissed her full force and turned back to the fire. They had just dished up and sat down together - Emma on a log and Killian on the ground, leaning back against it – when the fairies arrived. Three of them fluttered elegantly into the clearing, settling down in the low branches of Tink's tree.

"At least make yourselves a reasonable size – I hate that feeling that I'm speaking to a dragonfly," Killian called to them.

The fairies transmogrified both because of and despite his impolite request, standing before Killian and Emma in their candy-coloured dresses of petals and leaves in orange and yellow and pink. They looked like a half-eaten pack of Skittles, Emma giggled to herself. The arranged themselves on the ground, but somehow levitating above the level of the dirt by millimetres. Emma felt clumsy and outsized and dirty in comparison. She shot a quick glance at Killian, briefly wondering if any of these three had figured in his long sexual history. He had maintained his casual pose against the log and was taking in the fairies with a cautious gaze.

"Saviour Emma…" the yellow fairy began nervously.

"It's just Emma. Or Ms Swan if you absolutely require an honorific," Killian corrected.

The yellow fairy flustered again, her little hands fluttering about her skirt and bodice as she tried to calm herself.

"Emma," she smiled, "this is Rose…" she gestured to the pink fairy, "and Gemmie…" another twitter of her fingers towards the orange fairy. "They know about Merlin, so maybe they can help you."

Emma smiled. She felt kindly towards the little yellow fairy, who she could not imagine ever having sex at all, much less with a pirate captain. The other two, well, Emma wasn't so sure. "Merlin created a portal in our town, Storybrooke, a few months ago. That portal dragged us to the Enchanted Forest. We have not been able to return to Storybrooke, even though we can travel easily between other realms. We have been told that Merlin has blocked our way back, but we don't know why or how we can break it. This only seems to apply to us and not to others from Storybrooke."

Rose and Gemmie looked at each other thoughtfully. "We've spoken with the fairies in the Enchanted Forest. They have been searching for Merlin and for answers. They have found him, and he is in the Enchanted Forest. He lives in a hidden castle, only visible to those he invites insides, about a day's walk from the place you first entered the Enchanted Forest through his portal."

Killian sighed. "Why didn't he just come after us, then? Too lazy to leave his castle?"

"Too trapped," Gemmie explained. "He can't leave, and that's why he involved the mad king of Camelot to chase you."

"Why would Merlin want us dead?" Emma asked in frustration. "I didn't even know he was real until the fairies in the Enchanted Forest suggested it."

Rose looked a bit worried now. "Because Emma is the reason he's trapped. The moment you found your power, the moment the clock began ticking in Storybrooke again, the castle locked tight around him and imprisoned him."

Killian sat back thoughtfully and looked at Emma. "Well, it wasn't a conscious decision on your part, clearly. Nothing you did or spell you cast."

Gemmie continued: "We think it was somehow built into the curse that created Storybrooke, or possibly into the loophole that created you as Saviour."

Emma took Killian's hand and squeezed. "It wouldn't be Regina. She would have said, if she knew."

"The Crocodile," Killian growled. "Again. It was his curse that Regina cast, she probably didn't know all of the possible side effects."

The fairies looked apologetic. "We have not been able to reach Merlin and we have no way to ask him what he intended by his association with Arthur. He may have meant to kill Emma, but we are honestly not sure."

"Killian, your father seemed to think that confronting Arthur would require a fight," Emma said. "Do you think he knows any more?"

"Honestly, love, I don't fancy drinking poison or any such rubbish in order to go ask him," he turned to the fairies. "Can Merlin harm Emma from within the castle?"

"Yes, probably vicariously. Working through pawns like Arthur would be simple enough, but he could also cast spells directly." Rose paused. "But he's not done so. Which makes me wonder. If Merlin had wanted Emma, he should have been able to cast a spell against her. Maybe he doesn't want to, or for some reason he cannot."

Killian leaned his head back against the log and spoke to the forest canopy. "So maybe he's a threat. Maybe he just really fancies a chat with my wife."

Emma raised an eyebrow. "You're really getting into this 'wife' thing, aren't you?"

He didn't move his head or glance her way, but did tug her a bit closer to his side as he thought through the contingencies. "Will I be able to enter Merlin's castle with Emma?"

Gemmie spoke up. "Not unless you are also invited, and I imagine you are not. But we can give you some fairy dust – it will get you in as long as you enter with someone who is invited. I assume that Emma is invited."

The yellow fairy stumbled forward with a vial of fairy dust and handed it to Emma. She leaned down and clutched Emma's hands. "Be strong and safe, Saviour," she whispered a bit too loud to conceal it from Killian. "Will you allow me to give the baby a gift?"

Emma was about to accept when Killian sat bolt upright and slid Emma across his lap and onto the other side of him, away from the little fairy. "No! You will stay well away from this child," he barked. Killian looked slightly abashed when he saw the tears welling up in the fairy's eyes. "I'd rather keep the baby from as much magical interference as possible, even with the best of intentions," he added, a bit more gently.

The fairies returned to their diminutive forms and called their good-byes from the treetops. The yellow fairy paused at the height of their ascent and gazed down. She smiled and sprinkled some dust over the two figures below her. "The baby will be safe, Hook," she called to him. "Safe from Merlin. He can't touch her now." And with that, she flitted off with Rose and Gemmie.

...

"We're outrageously bad party guests, Killian, you do realise that."

Emma was stretched out beside him on a bed of lush grass beneath a canopy of fragrant white flowers – plump and bold – with her fingers still trailing in the sparkling, gold and turquoise pond from which they had just emerged. She watched the beads of water slip down his naked chest and abdomen, each drop reflecting every shifting colour of the enhanced Neverland spectrum, much like a soap bubble in the sunlight. She followed one drop with her finger trailing in its wake down his hip and along his pubic bone, sliding into the grass along his upper thigh. She caught the twitch of his interest sparking.

"How do you figure, love?" he murmured, half-listening, half-asleep on his back in the shade of the flowering trees. The ground here was spongy and soft and covered in the silkiest moss and grass. Emma had wanted to go straight back after their talk with the fairies, but he had insisted that they make one last stop at his favourite place in all Neverland: this enchanted little glade and pond. The perfume of the flowers somehow imbued the water with their scent, and Emma and Killian were both soaked in the soporific, aphrodisiac water.

"We disappeared from a banquet being thrown in our honour, without a word to Oona or Mac or my parents. They'll be frantic." She was following another water droplet with her fingers, this one trickling even closer to the sight of his growing attention to her. His left hand, already loosely toying with the ends of her hair, tightened its grip a bit.

"Don't worry," he answered, raising himself up on one elbow above her, only to have her push him back down. "We'll return only seconds after we left, in their timeline. They won't have noticed we've been gone."

Emma followed the next drop with her nose, and when it fell into a small pool near the base of his arousal, she darted out her tongue to taste the golden water. Killian groaned and removed his right arm from over his eyes, readjusting it behind his head so that he could look down on her. Emma trailed her tongue along his length and giggled at his contented sigh.

"A few minutes of panicked searching will only keep them on their toes, I suppose," he said drily.

Emma lapped at him again, then took just the tip of him into her mouth and sucked lightly. A warm breeze blew across her wet skin, and she smoothed her hands across Killian's thighs, brushing away the remains of their swim. She continued to work him up, sucking and licking in every secret location of his pleasure. Killian's sighs became moans, and when they picked up a certain urgency, he wrapped her long hair around his fist and pulled gently to get her attention.

Emma raised her head long enough to look him in the eyes. "No, husband. You lie back and watch the Neverland sky for a bit. I'm going to make sure your last memory of this place is fucking amazing."

With that, Killian released her hair and stretched his left arm behind his head as well. As Emma swirled her tongue over him, drawing him inexorably towards his climax, Killian took in the flowers and water and purple-green twilight of his favourite part of his least favourite realm. By the time she closed her throat around him to swallow his seed, he was almost certain he was going to miss the place.

...

If anyone out there is still interested, please leave a review so I know whether to continue with this fic! Thanks!