Angry, frustrated, exhausted, humiliated and frankly hungry – why had that son of a bitch pirate chosen now to stop feeding her nonstop? – Emma raged through the captain's quarters, sweeping maps and ink and books to the floor, scavenging his neatly stacked belongings from their neatly ordered drawers and flinging them across the cabin. She was just starting up a magical bonfire in the centre of the room when the hatch above banged open and the son of a bitch in question sauntered calmly down the steep stairs.

"Making yourself at home, love?" He cast a cautious eye over his scattered belongings. "Is this a glimpse at my happy home life with you?"

Emma threw herself at him full force, both hands aimed at that conceited, infuriating smirk. He caught her hands, but the speed of her attack knocked him back against a bookcase. He spun her, pinning both hands above her head with his hook anchored firmly in the wall of the cabin. He leaned in so close that Emma could see the smirk still front and centre, his eyes roaming down her neck and the top of her dress. He licked his lips and pressed himself against her, pinning her to the wall.

"I've come home victorious in battle, darling, and this is my welcome?" He let his hand slide along her curves and settle on her waist. "I like to believe that my True Love would be somewhat more pleased to see me safe. More… accommodating. Grateful."

Emma narrowed her eyes and snapped at his face. He backed off an inch or two. "If safe was what you wanted, you bastard, then you shouldn't have locked me up like an animal. I would take that stupid smile off your face permanently if it didn't endanger the future existence of my child."

"Do you really think you could hurt me, woman?" he grinned, and his hand was moving again, his hook digging into her wrists. She winced at the pain. Then she realised that it was no longer his hand sketching her hip and thigh. Somehow he had slipped a knife into his hand, and he was running it up and down her body, as if looking for the best place to cut her.

Emma stopped struggling and followed his eyes. He was focussed straight down her cleavage. She nudged her forehead hard against his to regain his attention on her face, and she stared hard into his blue eyes. His expression was unreadable. Emma let the energy of her magic release around her, lifting every object in the room that wasn't nailed down into the air, letting them float and swirl around them. He let his gaze flick to the right and left, enough to see his possessions hovering around them. She breathed against his face, "Bring it, pirate. Let's see how you fare against my magic."

Hook looked back at her with practiced boredom. He released her wrists and stepped back, carefully avoiding the hovering books and clothes and glasses. He waved them aside, seemingly perfectly at ease with this scenario. He opened his desk drawer, retrieved something that she couldn't see and suddenly threw it towards her. Emma was immobilised. Everything clattered and smashed to the floor.

"Squid ink," he smiled victoriously. "You think I'd hunt an evil wizard for this long without arming myself against those who would hide behind magic?" He strode over to Emma and picked her up roughly, then seemed to remember her pregnancy, and gently set her down on his bed. "Relax, love, it will wear off in an hour or so, and if you're the sweet, obedient wife that I know you can be, I won't use any more on you."

"Fuck off, Hook!"

Hook grinned and settled into a chair next to his bunk. "Looks like I didn't marry you for your gracious manners." He leaned forwards in his chair, considering her. "And there will be no fucking. I may be a pirate, but I won't take advantage of a trapped woman."

So Killian hadn't been lying about that, when he told her that his crew would be punished for rape. This man had an underlying moral code, one that would eventually make him hers. "I am not just some woman. I am the mother of your child."

He tilted his head to one side. "So you keep saying." He let out a sigh, a sound she had not expected. "I suppose I'd best feed you, then, now that you're under control." His chair scraped harshly as he stood up. "I'll be back with a meal and some water." Emma could do nothing except lie there in a bed she'd shared with Killian and watch him climb the stairs to the deck, tears starting to roll down her cheeks, and wait for Hook to return.

David locked the door of the last house in town, having corralled twenty villagers into it. He'd questioned them all, counted every one. Two hundred and thirty-seven men, women, children and infants. All under lock and key and careful watch, separated into groups of no more than twenty. Every last one of them seemed to be in a hazy enchantment, controlled by the wizard in the invisible castle, but compliant and harmless failing his orders.

Killian and Mac were standing near the village market hall, swords still drawn and alert for attack. The little town crackled with possibility beneath its quiet, dull exterior. David swept his eyes over the surrounding grassland.

"Snow and three of your cousins are still sweeping the grassland for anyone we've missed," David reported, "But we have all we found locked away."

Killian looked over towards the castle. He couldn't see it anymore, not without Emma to guide him, but he knew its exact location and appearance. He couldn't see her, couldn't feel her presence and he couldn't stop the gnawing worry. He was about to explain his plan to take some men around the far side of the castle, when something… changed… in his head.

He reached out for Mac, holding his cousin's shoulder for support. A vision, then dozens, shifted behind his closed eyes. A battle that he remembered… King George's ships… but the details were muddied and … no, he supposed that's how it always had been. He'd killed the lot of them, single-handedly, because they were frozen? Logic argued against that.

"Killian?" Mac and David were shaking him. Was he on his knees, on the ground?

There was a girl, wet and bloody and her hair shone like gold in the sunlight. Her necklace blinded him, the direct sun reflected back into his eyes from the polished stones around her neck. Killian gasped. Emma. Emma on the deck of his ship. Emma scared and cold and injured.

"David!" he rasped. "Emma's on my ship. She's on the Jolly Roger."

"What? How… has Merlin sent her there? I'll get a horse, make for the harbour…"

"No!" Killian grabbed a fistful of David's jacket. "Not now. I mean, she's not there now. She was there, years ago, before she was born, before the curse." Shit, his head hurt, he couldn't open his eyes. He scanned his memories, but everything was shifting and uncertain, like an earthquake beneath his past. He's pinning her to the wall of his cabin, leering at her with his crew, dragging his hook through a man's innards in front of her. The stench of the Jolly after a battle overwhelms him as though it were yesterday: body parts drying on the wooden planks, his crew unwashed for weeks on end, festering wounds and pus, dumping saltwater over his own head to wash off the gore. And Emma witness to it all. Witch that she is. His own child, his unborn daughter, a witch. Like Regina. Like Rumplefuckingstiltskin. And he, Captain Hook, commander of his own ship, his own destiny, pinned like a bug on corkboard by True Love.

David watched as Killian collapsed completely into the dirt, clutching his head. Mac knelt over him on the other side. Eventually he raised his head, his eyes opaque and hard as stones. "Merlin has sent Emma to me, to my past. She's not in the castle. She's on the Jolly, in my cabin and I'm holding a knife to her." Out of the corner of his eye, Killian saw David grip the hilt of his sword. "What bloody difference is killing me now going to make, prince?" Killian sneered. "It's me roughly 30 years ago that should concern you."

David's jaw tightened. Every concern he'd ever had about the pirate not being good enough for his daughter came rushing back. Emma had been so quick to dismiss his past, to insist that Killian be judged on how much he had changed. And now here she was, at Hook's mercy. "It does concern me! Do something about it."

Mac and Killian both shot him twin looks of incredulity with their matching blue eyes. "Memory only works one direction, Dave," Killian sarked. His whole attitude seemed suddenly as infused with Hook as his memories. "Hook has my wife and my baby. And I can only sit here and watch as he fucks up my life. So lay the hell off."

…

Three weeks. Emma had been on board this ship – or boat, as she sometimes called it, just to mess with him – for three long, uncomfortable, blood-sodden weeks. Hook had taken another naval vessel a week ago, gutting every last man aboard, then two merchant ships full of cloth, gold and spices. His men had stored the most valuable cargo into the hold of the Jolly Roger and tossed the rest overboard, to be certain the George didn't profit from any of it.

They had made port hours ago, and Hook had immediately found her a room at reputable inn just beyond the waterfront. Not one he usually frequented, she could tell. He'd actually been accosted by women in the streets as he led her through town, women shouting greetings and lewd offers and referencing past shagging. Emma nearly drilled a hole into his head with her livid stare. 1,000 was looking like a very fucking conservative estimate from where she stood now.

She was actually shaking with rage even hours later. The inn-keeper's daughters had brought her in a large metal bathtub and filled it with rose-scented water. She steeped in the floral infusion for 20 minutes, rubbing soap through her hair and sweet almond oil over the ends to detangle it. She scrubbed every inch of herself with lavender soap, finishing with a thin coating of the comforting oil and an extended brushing session for her hair. She glowed. She was still wrapped in a linen towel, ensuring the last of the dirt was removed from beneath her toenails, when she heard the metallic knock on her door. Hook. Subtle, not.

Emma tucked the towel around herself more securely and opened the door. His jaw dropped temporarily at the sight of her, skin damp and pink and smelling like a flower garden in high summer. He recovered quickly enough, handing her a linen package tied in a ribbon.

"Some fresh clothes," he said, staring unabashed at her belly beneath the linen towel. She looked decidedly second trimester now, she knew. Fairly obviously pregnant. She took the package with a disgusted sound at the back of her throat. "How many died for this?" she wondered aloud.

Hook only shrugged, walking past her into the room and settling himself in one of the armchairs by the window. It overlooked the harbour in the distance, and he could keep an eye of the Jolly Roger as it was unloaded. "Can't say I've ever bothered to break down my takings by lives lost."

Emma gave the satiny ribbon a tug and it came free beneath her fingertips. The fabric of the shift on top was the softest material she'd ever encountered. The dress beneath was a warm but light, and a foamy green that even Killian's sisters-in-law would have nodded approvingly at. She raised an angry eyebrow at him all the same. "As you've entered uninvited, you could at least turn around so that I can dress in peace."

Hook stood dramatically and moved into the chair opposite, which faced away from her. He didn't bother mentioning that he could still see her in the reflection on the window. "Better? One wonders, Emma, how we ever managed to conceive a child with your eternal need for privacy in such matters."

Emma let the towel fall from her body and slipped the chemise over her head. It was brushed cotton, so warm and soft and free of saltwater that Emma sighed in contentment. Still facing the window and its unintentionally marvelous view, Hook grinned at the sound. "You are pleased with the purchases then, despite their mortal cost?"

He watched as Emma pulled the dress over her head and laced it loosely over her breasts and belly, sans corset. She picked up a clean pair of brushed cotton stockings from the pile and slid them up her legs. Finally dressed, she came to sit down in the chair across from him.

Hook reached across his knees and rested one hand on her belly. "And how is my little girl today?"

"She's still your prisoner, just as I am."

Hook flashed her a look that made her shudder. It disappeared almost as fast as it had arrived, and he schooled his features into indifference again. He removed his hand. "I am certain that no version of me could argue with how I have treated you. I have kept you safe and well, made sure you are as comfortable as I could possibly make you. You want for nothing."

"Are you insane?" Emma hissed. "Want for nothing? I want my husband. I want my son. I want my family. I want to go home."

"I am your husband, and this is your family," Hook stood abruptly. "And I take damned good care of you."

Emma seethed. "I am not a pet that just needs to be fed and watered and bathed – although, honestly, thank you for that bath." He smiled at that. Now she reached across to him and took his hand and hook. "Send us home, Hook. Please. Send us back to him."

She had delivered some version of this plea every day for three weeks. He had never stayed in the same room long enough to hear how he might accomplish this, always marching off in a temper. Just as he attempted now. The armchair tipped over he stood so quickly. But Emma was faster. She slipped herself between him and the silver-plated door handle, and as he always did, he took a step away from her to keep from crowding the baby. He avoided her eyes even as she sought his. This time, she touched his face. Hook sucked in a breath; it was the first unsolicited touch Emma had gifted him with. It worked. He looked her in the eyes. She rubbed her hand gently over his scruff, trying to form a connection.

Emma's voice had grown a bit hysterical. "I need True Love's kiss, so that I can go home to the man you will one day be, with his baby, and he's going to take me to proper hospital in New York, with a neo-natal unit and blood pressure monitoring and approved pain relief drugs. Doctors who can stop haemorrhaging." Emma felt the stirrings of tears behind her eyes; she was finding it difficult to breathe. "And he's going to construct flat-pack baby furniture with an allen key and paint the nursery walls while I'm out so that I don't inhale the fumes because he worries about me. He's going to be insufferable with a baby to worry about." Emma hiccupped, and Hook took advantage of her momentary silence.

"I only understood about one word in three, love. But I caught the part about kissing you well enough," Hook lingered nearer her. "But True Love's kiss? Mrs Jones as may be, I don't know you well enough to love you."

Emma just smiled sadly at him. "Yes, you do. You love me. You are incapable of feeling any other way about me."

Hook pressed closer still, this time picking up a lock of her wet, fragrant hair and twisting it between his fingers. "And you don't love me. You love him."

"Don't be an idiot, Hook. Of course I love you. I love every part of you, including," she ran her arm up and down his leather coat and over the hilt of his sword, "including this. You're no less Hook then, you know. And no less Killian."

"What will happen if I kiss you? If it works?"

"I'm not exactly sure. I should go back. I think. But it's not just any kiss. You have to be thinking of me, only me, and what I need and desire."

Hook took a step back from her. "And what if I don't want you to go back? What if I want you to stay right here, with me?"

Emma stilled. "If you didn't send me back to my son and my family, back where having the baby is safest, for her and for me… then you wouldn't love me. Not truly. And I wouldn't love you. It would break us, and Merlin would win. It's why he sent me here in the first place, to snap us in half."

Hook reached up with his hand and hook to remove her hands from his face. He reached around to the door handle. "Now that you're dressed, perhaps you would like some dinner. I shall await you downstairs. Come down when you're ready."

He stepped deftly around her and slipped into the corridor, closing the door behind him. He stood absolutely silently there, listening as she threw herself against the door and sobbed for Killian. Hook pushed away from the door, fist clenched, and took the stairs to the ground floor two at a time to stop himself from pushing the door open and kissing her, just as she'd begged him to.