The Magic Mirror
CS genre: Deleted Scene/Canon Divergence (2x6)
Emma took a deep breath and looked around the huge, cavernous room, trying desperately to ignore the cocky pirate at her side. Her hand still tingled where he'd held it and bandaged it with his scarf. Not that she had any intention of telling him that. The stupid pirate was way too full of himself as it was.
Still, from the looks of things around this place, she was going to have to suffer through his company for quite a while more. There was treasure and junk piled everywhere. How the hell were they ever going to find the magic compass?
"They horded all of their greatest stolen treasures in here," Hook said, picking up a golden coin, putting it to his nose and breathing it in. "Piles of jewels, and every room filled with coins."
Great. Not only did they have a warehouse full of crap to sift through, it looked like her sticky-fingered companion was going to get distracted by everything that sparkled.
"Let's get to it; the compass," she said.
Hook played with the gold coin, letting it sift back and forth through his fingers. "What's your rush."
Emma crossed her arms. The idiot was going to get them killed. "How long do you think magic knock-out powder lasts?"
"I've no clue."
"That's my rush."
Hook tucked the pilfered coin in the little pouch hanging from his belt, a satisfied smile on his face. "Too right, lass. Come, everything we need is right in front of us."
Emma rolled her eyes. Everything in the world was right in front of them. If they managed to find the stupid compass in under a month it would be a miracle.
Well, there was nothing to do for it but to dig in. Too bad she couldn't just say "Accio compass!" like in Harry Potter. But magic wasn't real…at least for normal people like her. Gold may have brought magic to Storybrooke thanks to a potion he made from her parents' true love (what even was her life?), but that wasn't going to help her find a golden compass at the top of a beanstalk.
Emma had searched for a good half hour—keeping one eye on the giants' treasure and one eye on Hook to make sure he didn't double cross them all—when she caught a glimpse of something truly odd. She caught a glimpse of herself. Sifting aside golden coins, she found the source of the image. It appeared to be a large, gilt-framed mirror with some sort of weird inscription along the top.
But it wasn't a mirror like any she'd ever seen. It wasn't showing her reflection; it was showing her standing in some sort of jungle. As she watched, fascinated, the Emma in the mirror turned around and gazed at none other than Captain Hook.
Emma gasped.
"Have you found it, love?" Hook asked, ambling over to her side.
"The compass, no," she said, never taking her eyes from the images playing out before her like some kind of psycho movie, "but I found something else. Any idea what it is?"
Hook perused it for a moment and then nodded. "See the inscription along the top? 'Et tenere in posterum'."
"Yeah," Emma said, turning to look at the words to which Hook was pointing. "That mean anything to you?"
"Aye," Hook said. "In Latin, it says 'I hold the future.' It would appear you've found some manner of magic mirror, darling, one which shows our future."
Emma turned her eyes back to the mirror itself, watching as her "future" self conversed cautiously, while future Hook swaggered closer and closer to her. "Any ideas why we're in a jungle in the quote un-quote future?"
"I've no clue, where we…oh bloody hell! That's Neverland!"
"Seriously?" Emma asked, turning to look at the current pirate standing beside her. "Neverland? The place of wonder and belief where children get to go in their sleep? We're going with that?"
"I can assure you, Emma," Hook said, "Neverland is quite real, and it's anything but a place of wonder. A bloody nightmare, more like it."
After holding Emma's eyes for another moment, Hook turned back to the scene playing out before them and abruptly chuckled appreciatively.
"What?" Emma asked, turning back to the mirror in time to see mirror Hook look at her other self from beneath deeply hooded eyes, his index finger tapping his lips suggestively. She gasped, as she watched herself grab Hook by the lapels, pull him in and kiss him. Not just kiss him, but go for a full on makeout session.
Hook—real Hook on the beanstalk with her—sidled yet closer to her, so close she could feel the heat radiating from his body, and hummed in satisfaction deep in his chest. "Despite the hellish location, darling," he purred into her ear, "that is a future I could very much appreciate. It would seem the future you is far from insensible to my considerable charms."
Emma's pulse sped up, both at the steamy sight in the mirror and at the nearness of the man beside her. He was hot, she'd give him that. He had seduction down to a fine science, but she'd be damned before she stroked his ego…or any other part of him. Time to put some space between them. She took a step back and whirled to face him, anger flashing in her eyes. "Look bud, I don't care what some stupid magic mirror says! If you think I'm ever going to give you the satisfaction of…"
Hook's gasp and widened eyes stopped her abruptly, and she turned back to the mirror in time to see the images swirl and then right themselves.
Only this time she and the pirate weren't in some jungle in "Neverland". It looked like they were on the roof of a building in Storybrooke; she could see the clock tower in the background. But that wasn't the shocking part. The shocking part was that the two of them were standing under a bower of flowers dressed in a tux and a wedding dress, Archie standing before them like some sort of officiant.
It was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever seen.
Upon that, if nothing else in the world, it seemed she and Hook were in agreement. He cursed softly, watching as the Hook in the mirror obviously spoke vows filled with love and emotion. (They may not be able to hear the scene before them, but Hook's eyes, his expression, his whole demeanor was unmistakable.)
"What the devil am I wearing?" Hook said when he was finally able to speak.
Emma rolled her eyes. "I see you're focused on the important details."
"Swan that attire is bloody ridiculous!"
"Hook, that 'attire' is normal wedding wear," she said, "and believe it or not, you can survive without unbuttoning your shirt to your navel. Your chest hair won't suffocate."
"I'm not willing to take that chance."
Emma rolled her eyes again, then looked back at the mirror where her future self looked up at Hook with love and joy in her eyes as she spoke her own vows and then slid a ring on his finger.
But it wasn't her own expression that shocked her most, it was future Hook's. He gazed on mirror Emma as though she was the sun and stars to him, as though she were everything to him. She wouldn't have even guessed it was possible for a man to look at a woman with that much adoration.
And for a brief moment she wanted it, wanted it more than she'd ever wanted anything. Oh not that she wanted Hook, of course. She could live just fine without Captain Innuendo, thank you very much. But she wanted the kind of love she saw in his eyes. She wanted to matter to someone; really matter to someone. Ever since Neal, she'd given up on the idea that love, true love actually existed, at least not for someone as broken as her, but this mirror…well it seemed to tell her that maybe love was possible after all.
Hook gasped, cursing once again as mirror Hook kissed mirror Emma, dipping her slightly, and then moving directly into their first dance. Reality intruded once again.
"Look, Hook…" she started as the mirror swirled yet again. "This isn't our future. This can't be."
"Aye," Hook said, troubled expression on his face. "Quite right, love. Though I'd hardly object to you having your wicked way with me, as the first images seem to imply, I'm afraid the second scene is quite impossible. I shall go to my grave mourning my first love, my Milah. There's room in my heart only for vengeance now."
"I get it," Emma said, turning back to the mirror and watching the images continue to swirl together. "Love like that isn't possible for me either. Some people just aren't meant for the epic fairy tale 'true love conquers all' story."
He hummed in agreement.
"And as for that jungle makeout session," she said, frowning, "in your dreams buddy. Despite what you may think, you're not God's gift to women."
"Oh you've no idea just what a gift a man as skilled in the art of coupling as I am can be," he said, his voice turning once more silky, seductive.
Emma rolled her eyes yet again, watching in both anticipation and dread to see what the mirror might show them next. But when the swirling images righted themselves this time all Emma saw was the reflection of her and Hook standing in the giant's lair looking into an ordinary mirror.
The inscription along the top abruptly shuffled and changed.
"Futurum nunc est occultatum," Hook muttered. "The future now is hidden."
Emma opened her mouth, intending to ask what the hell that meant when a pleasant fuzzy feeling overtook her. Suddenly the images from the mirror dissolved in her mind, an uncertain fog taking their place.
"What…" Emma asked, turning toward Hook. "What was it we saw in that mirror? What was the supposed future?"
"I…I cannot recall love," he said, frowning in obvious confusion. "It is all a blur."
"I guess that's what the mirror meant by 'The future is hidden'," Emma said.
"Aye," Hook said with a shrug. "To know the future one runs the risk of destroying it. It would seem we simply must wait and see what our future brings."
Emma's breathing caught at his use of the words 'we' and 'our', and her reaction made her angry with herself. "There's no 'us'. There is no 'our future'. Now all I care about is finding the damn compass and getting home to my son. You going to help?"
"As you wish, Swan," he said bowing slightly, as he turned back to the pile of treasure at his feet and began sifting through.
Notes:
-Happy Friday everyone! Today's story was the fulfillment of a prompt by Soul_of_Ink on ao3: Season 2 fic about Emma and Hook getting a glimpse in the future of season 6. I thought what better place and time to set this fic than where it all began—on the beanstalk!
-I obviously expanded the prompt to include not only a glimpse of season 6, but also a glimpse at their first kiss in season 3, because my philosophy in life is that one should relive the Neverland kiss whenever s/he has the opportunity. :-)
-As for the "genre" of this story? Well, I'd say an argument could be made for either deleted scenes or canon divergence scene, so I considered it both.
-Up next: Yet again, I don't know where I want to go next, feel free to let me know what genre (deleted scene, canon divergence, future fic, AU, Lieutenant Duckling) you'd like to see next. I have prompts from all of those categories. Also, stay tuned! The muse is in overdrive right now. I've got two MCs currently in the works (and by "in the works", I mean in the very, very early planning stages at the moment). One will be a "what I wish we could get for season 7 although I always knew it wasn't going to happen" story about Emma and Killian's honeymoon to all the different realms they've visited over the course of the show. The other is my first foray into the genre of Captain Duckling. When the Black Fairy curses all of Misthaven and then plans to kill Emma, the only one who can break the curse, Snow and Charming enlist the last person the Black Fairy would suspect to transport their 21 year old daughter to safety: The infamous pirate Captain Hook.oo