Chapter 14 – Wednesday

Emma left Tuesday alone and came back on Wednesday morning. It was hard to believe that this had all started last week. It both flew by and crawled by. This time Rogers was with her. She told him it wasn't necessary, but he had volunteered after their conversation the other day and insisted. She gave in and here they were. At least he could give her some helpful insight again. He knew Killian as well as he knew himself.

"All systems go for Operation Nightlight?" He asked from his seat where he had a book ready to read.

"Aye, aye, Sir." She replied and laughed a little. It was clear that he spent a lot of time with Henry, and that her son rubbed off on the second pirate.

"It will work this time, lass."

"Yeah, I have that feeling too."

She took a deep breath and proceeded with the routine she had done three times before.

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CS

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This time Emma found herself on the pier at night, and she assumed she was in the Enchanted Forest. A man stood at the edge of the pier, a she knew it was Killian, so she made her way towards him.

"I'm not going to jump if that's why you're here." He spoke once she arrived next to him and leaned against the rail.

"That's good to know." She replied casually. In reality she was very glad to know he wasn't thinking about that, and she wouldn't have to talk him out of it. "You're still alone on a pier, with a flask full of rum, and staring at the horizon. What is it this time?"

"What is it this time?" He repeated her words. Then he turned to look her in the eye. "Are you getting tired of me, love? I never asked you to appear during my dark moments you know."

"Of course I'm not getting tired. Except maybe when you're getting on my nerves, but even that grew on me eventually." She assured him and then realized she got a bit sidetrack. "I just don't know what's going on right now. First it was after your mom, when you started drinking, and Neverland is enough said."

"And I thought you were all-knowing of my life, especially the miserable moments." He scoffed and looked back to the moonlit horizon.

"I don't know everything, Killian, but I know more than that." She told him and then went further to prove it. "I know how hard you worked to get through the navy training and give up rum. How proud you were to be serving with your brother."

Killian opened his mouth, and Emma figured he was going to make some comment about the king he once served or the fact that he was far from a navy man now. But she didn't give him a chance and kept going.

"I know how much it meant that you could shuffle cards again after you lost your hand. You sing when you're happy, or you're thinking about your mom. You once killed a sea monster that was destroying a village. It was eating or scaring away all the fish, sinking ships, and attacking swimmers. They put a plaque in the tavern for you after that. You love reading, and you have incredible writing skills and penmanship. Do you need more because I can go all night?"

"I believe you're stubborn enough to do just that." He chuckled and shook his head.

"Takes one to know one." She shrugged in reply.

"Indeed." He nodded in agreement. "Well, as stubborn as you may think I am I have listened to you before. You told me love is strength. I had that when Liam and Milah were by my side. Not only are the both gone, but they were killed in cruel ways. Ways to hurt both them and me."

"Yes, you're hurting, Hook. But can you say you wish you never had their love so you could never be hurt? I used to think the answer was to keep people out, but even my answer has changed."

This wasn't something they had talked about a lot, at least from his perspective. She knew what his answer was though. They understood each other, and he felt the same way that she eventually did about her family and letting love in.

"Last time you asked me what I would choose." He commented before answering. "In this case, I would say no. As much as it hurts, I'm grateful for every moment with Liam and Milah. As for last time, I think you know what I chose."

"I thought you said you listened?" She called him out for beating himself up. "I just said you can change your decisions, Killian. It's not too late."

"Perhaps I will one day, as you've said before. But there's another…one that is too late to ever change." He admitted and hung his head.

He didn't give any further detail. And just when Emma felt she was getting somewhere. Now she felt back to square one. If he wasn't talking about his continual decision to choose revenge, then what was troubling him now?

"You once told me I would always have my mother's love." He began after a few minutes of silence. "I don't have many memories left of her, but what I do remember involves her singing to me. It's something I would never want to lose. And yet, I took that same thing from a young lady a few nights ago."

"What happened, Killian?" She asked. She wasn't quite sure what he meant, but she had a feeling.

Killian confirmed it a moment later when he began telling his story with Ursula. The deal he made, and the promise he broke. He had started off with good intentions, but in the end he did take her voice. The temptation was too strong. That wasn't how the story really ended though. Emma knew that he had an opportunity to right that wrong in Storybrooke. He did, and she was proud of him for it.

"Killian Jones, Captain Hook, you are a villain and a revenge-seeking pirate." She stated, but not in an accusing way but simply as fact. "But there's a difference between you and other villains, and it's what's going on right now. You feel regret. You know what you did was wrong, and more than that, you care. I believe you would make it right if you could, and you will."

"That may be the case this time, lass, but Ursula isn't the first person that's been collateral damage in my quest for revenge and serving Pan. I've done a lot in my extended lifetime, and usually I don't think twice about it before or afterwards."

"I'm not finished, Hook. I don't care about the other times in the past because tonight alone is enough proof." She insisted and hoped he would listen. She also hoped the point she was trying to make actually made sense.

"Proof of what?" He questioned her impatiently. He acted ready to walk away from her and the conversation, but she could tell he was also curious and wanted to know.

"That somewhere inside you're still a good and honorable gentleman. It's buried, but you're a pirate, and you know all about treasure. It's buried for a reason, but it's also unburied for a reason. It doesn't happen easily, and it doesn't happen overnight either. A man must be willing enough to fight to find it again."

"Touché, love." He admitted and bowed his head before raising it again to look her in the eye.

This time he was the one to have the final word.

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CS

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Emma opened her eyes and sat up. She looked around and saw that Rogers wasn't there. Had he just stepped out to use the bathroom or go to vending machine? Or maybe something big had happened? She checked her phone, and she didn't have any texts or voicemails. He came back a few minutes later before Emma could wonder or worry too much.

"Sorry, I stepped out for a call." He explained as he took his seat again. "Welcome back."

"Thanks. Likewise." She nodded. "Is everything okay? You can leave if you need to."

"No, everything is fine. Alice just called to talk." He assured her that life outside the hospital room was still normal.

"I thought maybe you left to check on your swordtails." She teased a little bit now that she knew things were okay. "How is Alice?"

"She's enjoying her adventures, but she hopes to return soon. I do as well because I bloody miss her. I know she's safe though, and that we can share the biggest hug when she returns. I imagine your Killian will do the same with Hope when he wakes up for good."

"That's a sight I can't wait to see." She replied with a smile at the thought. Hope had never been away from her daddy for too long. "But I need to do this one more time. After what I saw today, I think I've covered all the different points that I can, like you suggested to me, all of them but one."

"I take it that's good news. What was it you came across today?"

She filled him in on what happened. She gave the setting of where/when they were and what was on Hook's mind.

"I know I haven't reached a point where there is no darkness, or a point where he's no longer a villain. I'm not expecting that next time either. But I saw his regret this time. In seeing that, I also saw a bit of the light that I've been trying to show him. That change is how I know this is working."

"Henry once told a story. He said Ursula came to Storybrooke and worked with Maleficent and Cruella. Until Killian gave her, her voice back and thus gave her, her happy ending. Is that true? Not that I doubt Henry, but I just…" He trailed off searching for the words.

"It's true. You can ask Killian for more details later, but here's the gist of it." Emma began to explain. "He kept the seashell. He tried to restore her voice in exchange for information. It didn't work though, and Poseidon had to be the one to do it. With some help, he made that happen. Ursula's voice was restored, and so was her relationship with her father. She gave the information we needed, and then she left Storybrooke."

"That wrong may be righted, but if I ever encounter her, I will apologize myself." He vowed to himself, and Emma realized he had many of the same struggles that Killian did. He hid it well behind a twenty-first century façade, but he couldn't hide it from himself, or her. "My encounter with Ursula was similar to what happened with Bae. It was a crossroad, an opportunity to turn a different way. Her voice took away the pain. It was like hearing my mother, but it was also like nothing I had ever heard before. In that case though, it was my own decision that ruined things, not my reaction to another's. I gave in to the temptation presented to me."

"That sounds like my first adventure with Killian. We were on a beanstalk, and I didn't trust him. Well, I wouldn't let myself, even when my gut said otherwise. I left him up there. He found us later, and he was back with Cora. We were trapped in a cell, and he said that he wouldn't have done the same, but now he was done with me. Yet when we were fighting against Cora at the lake, he helped us, and he let me take him out of the fight." She gave him the abridged version, assuming he had heard it before.

"When you punched him with the compass in hand, aye?" He asked, and she saw the grin that he couldn't hide.

"Yep." She replied, not hiding her smirk either. That was still a small moment of pride for her.

"A tough lass you are." He shook his head and laughed.

"It's strange, to look at it after hearing your perspective." Emma started and brought things back to a more serious discussion. "My leaving him on the beanstalk should have been another crossroad where he went on the same way as he had before. The change wasn't immediate, that didn't really happen until Neverland, but that's when the path started to divert."

"Our lives were obviously different at that point. So, I cannot give you any insight there, but you're not wrong. History should have repeated itself." He replied, and Emma thought that would be all he would say on the matter. But he didn't stop there. "I can however tell you about my own experience. For me it wasn't a beanstalk, it was in a tower."

He summed up the story she had heard once before. His decision to go back and free Rapunzel, their night together, finding out that she wasn't Rapunzel after all, and finding out that he was suddenly a father.

"I could have left the tower, right behind the witch, that morning and never returned. It wouldn't have been much different than taking my father's life and leaving my half-brother behind." He admitted and paused for several moments. "I paced in that tower for hours, trying to bloody figure out what I would do. I thought about my own father and my mother, as well as Liam, Milah, and Bae. All were people that I loved, who loved me for however short or long a time. I was the man I was because I had lost them. Darkness crept in, and I made unwise and selfish decisions that were fueled by anger and pain. In that tower though, there wasn't any of that, and with those things wiped away I felt that I could see and think in a new light. Every thought came back to the innocent little girl sleeping in her basket of blankets.

"I did leave, for a short time, to pass on the Jolly Roger to Smee, and tell the Evil Queen that I would no longer be assisting her. She asked 'what is more important than revenge?' Honestly, that's a question that for centuries I thought I had the answer to, nothing was more important. But I came to realize several things in that tower, pacing and stopping to look at the precious babe that was my daughter, which led to my ultimate decision. Everything I had done in my dark, pirating days I justified because of the love I had lost, but that morning I was given something I desperately needed, something I hadn't even been looking for. A new love was brought to my life, and nothing else compares to it."

A comfortable silence filled the room, his words sinking it.

"Your stories are different, but they have similarities." Emma eventually broke the silence. "I mean, he and I climbed a beanstalk that had a magic barrier to keep people away, and you climbed a tower with a magic barrier to keep someone in. We were looking for a magic golden compass, and you were looking a magic golden flower. You gave up you revenge for Alice, and my Killian did it for Henry, myself, and also for Neal…I mean Bea, who we thought was dead at the time."

"Not to mention, we both came across strong, tenacious blondes. Each held the heart of their pirate in unrelenting grasps without even knowing it." He added with a signature smirk. From her husband it would have been flirty. But from Rogers, it was an acknowledgement of proud admiration from a friend, and she was honored to be viewed in the same esteem as his daughter.

"Yeah, us too." She nodded. "I think it means that no matter the realm or the circumstances or whatever, Killian Jones is a good man and a gentleman, deserving of his happy ending, of finding love and a family."

"Well, personally, the degree to which I've believed that has varied throughout my life. But I do believe that fact thanks to Alice, and I believe it is because of Alice that it is a fact, in my story that is." He admitted with a fond smile when he mentioned his daughter.

"It makes me wonder." Rogers started speaking again after another few minutes of silence of reflective thinking. "We started off thinking this magic affected people based on whether they were a villain or not. But then, even people who aren't classified as villains have some degree of darkness. Next, the focus changed to the circumstances and despair surrounding the bad deed or wrong choice. Now, it seems perhaps that this is about choices, specifically the choice to change."

"Like Miss Allison? She used to be a bully, but she's not anymore. She outgrew it and changed. Now she wants to help other kids." She pointed out to see if she was following his thought right.

"Precisely, and she recovered. But Cobblepot and Edwards were both thieves and outlaws, and that's what they remained to be."

"So that means Killian…" She trailed off and glanced at her husband. "He should definitely recover. Even with centuries of darkness, he has changed."

"Indeed, but this is just a theory, my own thoughts on what I've observed. I wouldn't stop what you're doing. Even if it's not essential to his recovery, I'm sure what you're doing is bringing comfort to him. This is still dredging up dark times, and it did temporarily wake him up once." He advised and she agreed. She wouldn't risk giving up now.

"It's his job to protect my heart. This is my time to protect his heart." She decided, determined to keep doing what she was doing for him. Survivors don't always have to survive alone.

Wow, times flies. Next chapter has the last of Emma's "trips". That will be chapter 15, and my goal is to wrap this up with chapter 20. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I love Killian Jones, and Rogers is great too. It was fun to draw the parallels between them. Maybe I'll do a spin off story where Rogers meets a different version of Emma next. I have many ideas, so who knows. As for what's next for this story, any guesses where Emma will end up and what she'll see? It's the longest one yet and takes up 90% of the chapter. It's emotional, but it ends on a good note. See you next week as usual.