A rustle of leaves roused Hook from sleep.

It was an unfortunate side effect of his time on this wretched island; he'd learned to be alert, even when asleep. Pan often traveled in near silence, and taught the Lost Boys to do the same. Being a light sleeper saved his life on more occasions than he could count.

His eyes snapped open, his hand instantly going for his sword, laid on the ground beside him. He scanned the darkness around the camp as he grabbed the sheath and threw off the blanket, alert eyes roaming over David, his Queen and Baelfire, stopping at Emma's empty bedroll.

His heart picking up, suddenly afraid that she'd been lured out of the camp by something, Hook drew his sword and quickly stood. The rustle he'd heard came from his right, so he dove into the trees, instantly awake.

Heart beating fast, Hook's eyes searched the darkness frantically. "Swan?"

It wasn't until a few moments later, his heart pounding so hard in his ears, that he heard it.

Crying.

Hook's features shifted a little, far too used to hearing the cries of the Lost Ones. He seldom heard them so close, however. Hook lowered his sword a little, following the cries. His heart picked up a little. Emma must have heard the cries as well—she was the child of abandonment like he was himself—and come to find the Boy. He kept his grip tight on the weapon in case it was some sort of trick.

Hook followed the sound of the voice, heart twisting a little at the pain in it.

The trees thinned out, opening into a clearing, and in the light of the stars, Hook could make out the small figure, huddled at the edge of a shallow lake—the same one he let the group refill their canteens with earlier—facing away from him, curled in around themself, shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.

He felt himself sigh.

There were only a few times he's happened upon a Lost Boy while they cried. And he found that they were not Pan's warriors when they did; they were just lost children, wanting a home, wanting parents, wanting to be wanted.

He knew the feeling all too well.

So when he did happen upon them, he gave them something Pan hated.

He attempted to give them hope.

Because for all he'd tried to ignore them when he saw them in that state, he couldn't help but be reminded of himself at sea, curled in his cabin for days, weeks, months after his father sold Liam and himself.

Liam had been that voice of hope for him, and something made Hook feel the need to give the Boys—Boys like Felix excluded—that same reprieve, even if it only lasted them a night.

So when he stepped out of the trees, he lied gently, "It's all right, lad. You'll find your way home."

The Lost One froze, quickly whipping around.

Hook felt his breath catch.

Emma.

It was Emma.

Now he could see her clearer in the starlight; long golden locks pulled around her shoulders, the familiar gray tunic and the slender form he's memorized all too well.

He stared in shock.

He had been both correct and incorrect in his assumption. It had been a Lost One's cries.

Just not a Lost Boy.

"Swan?" he breathed, nearly wondering if what he was seeing was some elaborate illusion. Somehow he knew it wasn't.

But he suddenly wished it was.

Tears streaked down her face. Her eyes were red and pain showed bright in them, but not the kind of pain that left outward scars. Pain he's seen in his every reflection since the day his father left them, only deepening after Liam and Milah took their own leave.

Something ached in his chest at the sight of her, playing back the pain in her cries that he'd thought were of a Lost Boy.

The moment she saw him, she caught her next sob in her throat, refusing to let it out. He could still see her chest heave with the need to release it, but she didn't. She almost seemed more startled, more afraid when she realized it was he who found her, rather than Pan or some other enemy.

Instantly her arm came up to hastily wipe the tears from her cheeks, and she tried to compose herself.

Hook felt his heart clench at her desire—her desperate need—to hide her vulnerability.

He had the horrible realization he was intruding on a moment he shouldn't be, but an urgent part of him was suddenly afraid she was hurt or something was very wrong—as it had to be for her to be so openly upset—so he ever so carefully stepped toward her.

"Emma?" he said gently, her first name seeming to fit the delicacy of the moment more than her last. His brows furrowed. "Are you... all right, love?"

"Please just go away, Hook," she whispered, her voice a little wobbly and shaky. It lacked the heat her voice usually had. It wasn't a demand. It was a plea.

Hook hesitated. There was no way he was leaving her alone in bloody Neverland, that was for sure. Without a weapon, no less.

And seeing her—Emma—this… broken… it stirred something in his chest. Something painful. Something that had been buried for a very long time, long enough that it felt foreign. Something that made him want to grab her in his arms and protect her, whether from the dangers of Neverland or from anything.

Trying to be gentle, he shifted his weight with rare uncertainty. "As much as I would like to honor your wishes," said Hook tentatively, "it isn't exactly safe to be out here on your own."

She didn't look at him, an angry heat bleeding into her tone. "I don't care. Just leave me the hell alone."

There was the Swan he knew.

He knew how she worked by now.

It was how he worked.

She was lashing out in an attempt to push him away, hoping her abrasiveness will scare him away.

But unfortunately for her, Killian Jones didn't scare easily. And nothing—not even an angry Emma Swan—would keep him from making sure she was safe.

Bracing himself for her wrath, he sat down beside her on the grass, though still offered a few feet of space between them.

When she heard him do so, her eyes snapped open, anger blazing a hazel fire.

"Apologies, love," said Hook quietly, meaning it, since he was infringing on a part of her he was never meant to see. "But I'll take your anger with me over something happening to you." He purposefully didn't look at her, trying to give her as much space as he could offer.

"I already told you," she growled, "I don't care!"

Hook blinked.

She meant that.

She didn't care if something happened to her.

"Well, I do," he said seriously, turning to look at her. When she just leveled her glare at him, he held it, his features devoid of any kind of his usual smirk. His eyes searched her angry ones, knowing that it wasn't really anger she felt, it was hurt. Anger was just how she hid it.

Something else they had in common.

After a moment, Emma tore her gaze from his, looking back out over the water, seeming to accept he wasn't going anywhere. And seeming to realize he'd follow her wherever she would go.

He kept his gaze on her, however, wanting to find a way to coax some honesty out of her. Wanting badly to know what made her so upset, and who he should kill as punishment for doing so. Time ticked by in the silence, and he nearly felt her walls building back up, hiding any traces of her vulnerability.

But just as he was trying to find words to break them back down, she spoke.

"What you said earlier," she said quietly, her voice stronger, less shaken. But he could tell how much effort it took her to control the tremor. "You thought I was a Lost Boy."

He didn't say anything; it wasn't a question.

"Pan told me," she went on, "that only people who've been abandoned can hear them cry." Hook felt himself tense, sensing where this was going. "What happened?" she asked quietly.

Hook broke contact, finding his gaze on the water. He knew what she was doing. They both fought for blood when it came to protecting their hearts and their vulnerability, and rule number one of both their strategies: deflection.

He nearly called her out on it, but when his eyes flicked back to her face, he could see the pain she was trying hard to hide. The tears still wet on her cheeks that she hadn't managed to wipe away. She was having trouble putting those walls back into place right now, and she was trying to use his own vulnerability to distract him from hers.

Normally he wouldn't fall for such a tactic.

But he intruded on something he shouldn't have seen of her, something she would never have showed him given the choice. Not only that, he's learned about her own abandonment, and frankly, so much more. He hasn't exactly shared himself with her much at all—most of what she knew of his past was what she'd perceptively gleaned. He hasn't spoken of such parts of him for centuries.

However… no one had wanted to know since Milah.

Hook let out a breath. He had promised, not only a day ago, to win Emma's heart.

Maybe part of that entailed giving her a piece of his own.

Suddenly he felt his mouth go dry.

"My…" His throat closed a little, like his body was rejecting the words. He didn't look at her, forcing himself to release a part of himself. "My mother passed before I knew her. My father," said Hook, the word father coated in something deep and rusty, old hurt rasping it out of his throat, "was a wanted man." Keeping his eyes on the water, though it didn't calm him as it usually did, he went on, each word chosen carefully. "He sold my brother and I for his own freedom."

He wasn't looking at her, so he couldn't see her face.

He didn't want to.

"Sold you?" came her whisper.

"Aye," he said, the word but a breath on his lips.

"How old were you?"

Her voice was quiet.

Her voice sounded how the memory felt.

"Five years," he said, just as quietly. He could feel her looking at him, but he couldn't bring himself to look at her. Old pain suddenly ached in his bones, and he suddenly found himself feeling his age.

They were both quiet for a moment, lost in their own thoughts. Hook felt himself sinking back into old nostalgia, tainted though it was.

So when she spoke, he jumped a little.

"I wish I never found them."

Hook looked at her.

Her words were just a whisper.

She wasn't looking at him anymore, her chin resting on her knees, pulled tightly to her chest.

Tears glistened in her eyes.

"Found who, love?" asked Hook gently, treading carefully on the thinnest emotional ice in all the realms.

Emma let out a breath, still not looking at him. "The second night we were here," she said quietly, with a little smile that held no warmth, "Pan told me that when I left here, I wouldn't just feel like an orphan. I'd be one." She hugged her knees tighter, and Hook felt his chest tighten. "I thought he was threatening them," said Emma. "I never thought they'd do it… willingly," she whispered, the last word nothing but a breath.

Her voice was so quiet, he nearly missed the words. Each word held a physical sort of pain, matching her eyes.

A pain he recognized all too well.

It took him a moment to realize what she was referring to, who them was, but when he did, he realized exactly what had broken her tonight.

The Queen's confession in the Echo Cave-her parents' choice to stay on the island.

Hook felt something shift painfully in his chest.

Emma's distress suddenly made perfect, horrible sense.

He watched the pain in her eyes, pain so identical to his own, and the starlight sparkled in tears she refused to let fall.

"Love…" whispered Hook.

"They didn't even ask if I wanted to stay with them." she said, words just as quiet, but no less painful. Her face shifted like she was actively trying to resist letting the tears fall. "I just… I thought…" Her words sounded so young. A tear betrayed her, slipping down her cheek. She shut her eyes.

Hook had been right next to Emma when her mother voiced her thoughts about her relationship with her daughter.

It reminded him of when he found his father, and learned that he'd had a new child, and named him Liam. As if Hook himself wasn't even worthy of being replaced.

The idea that his father ended up wanting a family after all, and never bothered to try to find him or Liam?

To think that, perhaps, he didn't leave kids he didn't want, he'd left the kids he didn't want.

He knew exactly what Emma's pain felt like.

Hook had been piecing together Emma's past for quite some time now, and though he understood her parents' decision that forced Emma to grow up alone, he didn't like it. Her parents understood their decision to be good, but neither of them had grown up without parents. They didn't understand that though Emma could understand their intentions, it didn't take away the pain it caused.

Not only that, her parents' elated choice to have a new child—another go at it, Her Majesty had phrased it—lifted Hook's own past to his mind. Emma had spent her whole life searching for her parents to have them practically tell her they wanted a different child. He knew that her mother would take back the words in an instant if she knew how they came off, but the fact that she said them remained.

"Love," said Hook gently. "Your parents love you. I'm sure they… I'm sure they're simply trying not to condemn you to the island, to their fate."

Heat flashed in her eyes. "Yeah, they'd just rather condemn a different kid to it." She said it with forced sarcasm, but it didn't hide the agonizing truth. She narrowed her eyes at the water, though the expression was more broken than angry. "I don't know why I'm surprised. None of my foster parents wanted me, either. No one does." A tear slipped down her cheek, the last three words spoken so quietly, Hook didn't know if she had even meant for him to hear them.

A muscle ticked in Hook's jaw.

He felt utterly at a loss for words, for a way to ease her pain.

It felt like a physical need inside him, this desperation to do so.

Her parents all-but gave up on her.

Decided she was nearly a lost cause.

And Emma felt absolutely rejected, in the worst possible way.

He knew that pain.

He lived that pain.

Hook breathed out.

And he tried to remedy it, in the only way he could think to do so.

"You do recall my secret in the Cave…" said Hook slowly. "Don't you?"

They hadn't talked about it.

Granted, much has happened, with Baelfire's reappearance and the ever-urgent ticking clock on Henry's rescue.

Emma shut her eyes, like she didn't want to get into it. "Hook—"

"I want you, Emma." he said gently. More than anything, she needed to know someone did. He started to give her a soft smile that was more Killian than anything else.

But his smile faltered when Emma's eyes opened, and she let out a scoff. "Yeah. You want me long enough to get me in bed."

Shock made Hook physically recoil.

He blinked at her, eyes wide at the bluntness, the crudeness of feelings he had for her that were far more pure than she apparently knew. "I—" Words wouldn't come. "That's why you think I want you?" he found himself saying hollowly.

Emma didn't look at him. Just glared at the water's edge. "Why else would you?"

He stared at her, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of him.

She meant those words.

She didn't believe she could be wanted for anything else.

Of course, she was beautiful, and maybe that had been the first thing to capture his attention when they met, but it sure as hell wasn't the sole—or even the deepest—reason he wanted her.

However, he and his clever use of suggestive phrases might definitely have given her the wrong impression.

It certainly wasn't how Killian Jones would have courted a woman.

Gods, he was a bloody fool.

"Swan," said Hook when he managed to find a semblance of his voice. "Emma," he amended, clawing for words. "I think you are stunning. And that kiss…" He hesitated, the ghost of that moment tingling his lips. "I'm not going to say I'm not looking forward to another. However," he said, voice softening, "that... is not why I desire you," he stressed as carefully as he could. "I want you, Emma. You."

"Well," she said with a heat of broken frustration, "the only other people I've heard that from were my parents and Neal, and my parents are going to start a do-over family without me, and Neal had set me up for his crime and left me in jail the day he told me he loved me."

Hook blinked.

That was the history between Emma and Baelfire?!

Hook felt cold trail through his chest, even as he felt the distant urge to have a chat with Baelfire that utilized very few words.

Because Hook suddenly understood Emma.

Her complete inability to trust.

Her paralyzing fear to let anyone in.

And more than anything…

He finally understood why she had handcuffed him at the top of the beanstalk.

Hook himself had been wronged by people in his life, but those he had loved most-Liam, Milah-they had loved and wanted him until their very end.

The idea of both of them leaving him of their own accord—

The idea of a life where no one had ever shown care for him, or if they had, betrayed it—

He couldn't fathom it.

He didn't even think he'd have been able to live with it.

Baelfire had corrupted her in ways he could never imagine.

And with Emma's parents' recent admission of choosing to have a family here without her—

Hook was surprised it took Emma this long to fall apart.

He had called her a tough lass the day they met, but bloody hell he hadn't even known the half of it.

"Love..." said Hook, feeling at a loss for words, a loss of making this right. Needing her to know this time was different—he was different. Burning his gaze into her, even when her eyes were still firmly fixed on the water, Hook said, "I promised myself two things in my life. That I would never return to this accursed island, and that I would get my revenge on Rumplestiltskin." Taking a breath, he said, "I met you, Emma, and I broke both." She said nothing, her gaze fixed firmly in front of her. He sighed at her silence. It no longer put him off, however, no longer felt like a challenge. Her silences weren't disinterest. She was bloody terrified of feeling anything, and gods he so desperately wanted her to believe him. "If the Echo Cave hasn't proven the truth in my feelings for you, surely that does," he whispered.

Emma was silent.

Her gaze still firmly on the water.

He could physically feel the walls surrounding her, could nearly see the lost girl hiding behind them.

Emma didn't say anything.

"Emma," said Hook quietly. "Look at me."

After a moment, she did, however reluctantly. Armor had slid back over her eyes, hiding the depth of her.

Hook held her gaze. "I am not telling you this in an attempt to win your heart, Emma. I'm telling this because I want you to know that someone cares for you... that someone wants you, and always will. No matter who disappoints you along the way." Something unreadable passed through her eyes, hidden in the depth of an ocean Killian couldn't wait to dive into.

He knew she saw the truth in his eyes.

It wasn't a matter of believing him.

It was a matter of trusting him.

"I promise you, Emma," he said, voice husky with honesty and emotion and a very piece of his soul. "I will never stop wanting you. Bloody hell, love, I want you more every day I know you."

And after that kiss, after that moment, where she had kissed him, he knew she felt what he did. Even if she was fighting it every step of the way.

He was a patient man.

He'd spend another three hundred years wearing down those walls of hers if that's what it took.

When doubt clouded her eyes, even though he knew she knew he was telling her the raw truth, he reached across the space between them, touching her chin, brushing his thumb across her cheek. He could feel her flinch the smallest bit at the touch, but she didn't pull away. "You needn't believe me, love." He smiled. "I will gladly prove it to you. Over and over again if I must."

She held his gaze, something akin to confusion and disbelief in her eyes.

But it was hidden away as quickly as it came.

And it hurt him, to see someone so pure, someone so beautiful in every way, who was so, utterly afraid.

He wanted so badly to hold her, to kiss her.

Though, it would only ruin the point he was trying to make.

But then he saw it.

The smallest flicker at her lips—the tiniest smile he's ever seen—warmed her face for half a second.

It was gone as quickly as the other emotions.

But he saw it.

And he knew it so clearly, so perfectly in his heart.

He'd want her forever.

But he suddenly realized he wanted something even more.

He wanted her to believe it.

He wanted her to feel it.

He wanted her to smile, without fear.

And he would be happy to spend the rest of his life giving her a reason to.

-.-.-.

Emma and Hook returned to the camp not long after.

Everyone else was still sound asleep.

Hook had settled down against a tree by the barely-burning fire, and Emma climbed back under her thin, scratchy blanket.

She looked at him, seeing his eyes already on hers.

She held his gaze, emotions flitting through her.

Confusion.

Disbelief.

Fear.

Uncertainty.

Hope.

She didn't know what to do with them, couldn't bring herself to say any of them aloud.

But from the way his lips twitched in the moonlight, Emma somehow knew that she didn't have to say them for him to know.

Something she wasn't sure she should be afraid of or not.

His eyes were still on her.

Even as she closed hers.

And she mulled over Hook's words.

No one has ever said anything like that to her before.

No one has ever shown her such… such devotion.

Not even Neal, who had waited until she told him she loved him first to say it back.

...Twice.

Her mother's secret and her parents' choice still felt haunting, painful, damaging-but it was kept at bay somehow, like there was something muffling it. Protecting her from it.

The echo of Hook's secret played in her mind, his promise to her, and it caressed her consciousness like sunlight.

Someone wanted her.

Even as broken as she was.

Some part of her always knew that his interest in her was more than just lust. The bail-bondsperson in her, the detective searching for evidence, reminded her that he was here for her. Somewhere he hated. He'd given up a centuries-long crusade.

For her.

It was impossible to deny that he wanted her… for her.

Perhaps… perhaps she wasn't as unlovable as she had thought.

She still didn't know how to trust him, how to trust anyone. Love and wanting had been so temporary in her life.

She's experienced too many broken promises to trust.

But maybe…

Maybe when Henry was safe…

Maybe when they were back home…

Maybe she could…

Try something new.

She drifted into a sleep that was somewhat calmer, somewhat softer than usual, a warmth in her chest even when the Neverland air chilled her beneath the thin cloth blanket.

As she slipped away, she could have sworn she felt the added warmth of another blanket draped over her, the distinct scent of salt air and freedom.

But it was probably just the wind.