"Oh, get a room, that's disgusting."
Killian's eyes focussed just in time to see a woman in a heavy wool coat unlocking the driver's side door of a red pickup truck and staring in frank distaste at the scene inside the car in the next space over. He narrowed his eyes to bring her into sharper focus. She was shaking her head as she pulled the seatbelt across herself and started the truck's rattling engine. He raised his head to look around himself; somehow, he had expected to find Emma in the driver's seat, as he had always seen her, but he found her instead curled in upon herself in the narrow backseat. A tumble of long, blond hair obscured her face, but the two empty pill bottles in the footwell behind the driver's seat were clear enough.
Killian blinked up and saw a run-down little diner across a small parking lot, the lights through the enormous windows illuminating the interior of the Bug.
According to Emma's telling, a woman had seen Emma passed out in the car and mobilised the whole diner into action. So, he reckoned, a woman stretched across the backseat unconscious and alone inspired pity and assistance. Apparently, however, a woman stretched out across the backseat unconscious and in the company of a man was a woman to be judged and scorned. He had been in Emma's life for less than 5 minutes, and already he had ruined her reputation.
As the truck pulled out of its space, Killian felt the air leave his lungs. That woman was supposed to save Emma, and she was gone, irretrievable. He scrambled his arms through the gap between the front seats – "Emma! Love, wake up." – then pressed his forehead into the headrest of the passenger seat in order to think things through. Not Emma, he didn't know her, she didn't know him, and certainly not love.
Emma had told him that a doctor in the diner had helped her. He wrenched open the passenger door and throttled the passenger seat until it slumped against the dash. He tucked the two bottles into his coat pocket and wedged Emma carefully out of the backseat and into his arms. He saw an old canvas rucksack beneath her feet and grabbed that, too. Maybe Emma had a wallet or id and then he could legitimately know her name.
He carried her at a run and kicked open the door of the diner, calling for help. A waitress not much older than Henry helped him settle her on a long, low wooden bench in the entranceway. She shouted, far more effectively, for help, while a middle-aged man in a cook's apron appeared in a kitchen doorway. He picked up a phone on the counter near the till and rang for an ambulance. The doctor appeared from a booth, as Emma had related, a grandfatherly type who took her pulse and asked Killian questions that he shouldn't really know the answer to. Killian handed over the two bottles of pills and the doctor whistled low. "You are a quick thinker, son. Did you see her take these?" Killian shook his head.
"Is she going to die?" he asked on a rushed exhale.
The doctor shrugged. "Touch and go. Depends how long before you found her, and I guess we won't know that unless she wakes up. The ambulance is on its way. Do you know her, son?"
Killian shook his head again, more decisively this time, and tried to look less horrified and heartstricken than he felt. "This bag is hers, though. I thought it might have some id." He dug through the front pocket and found a two dollar bills, loose change that didn't amount to a full dollar and a driver's license for Emma Swan, aged 18.
The doctor gave him an appraising look. "You a detective or something? You got an eye for evidence. The police will be pleased as punch to have someone so observant to talk to."
Not a detective, no, Killian explained. A sailor. The doctor had just voiced the question about what a sailor was doing so far from the sea, when the ambulance pulled up. Killian was trying to think of an excuse to follow her into the ambulance when the elderly doctor pushed him toward the paramedics. "Take this guy with you," he said. "He found her, and the police will want to hear what he has to say." They had Emma strapped onto a gurney and were pushing her out the door, shouting at Killian to move it, get in, come on now. He clutched Emma's bag to his chest and obeyed, slipping onto a jump seat at the far end of the ambulance. A paramedic had already attached an oxygen mask and was taking her pulse and blood pressure. He was shouting information into a sort of microphone attached to a box, and Killian briefly wondered why he didn't use a cell. He rifled through Emma's bag again, looking for a cell phone, as he'd never seen her without one. Nothing.
Once inside, Emma was taken one way towards a waiting medical team, while Killian was pulled the other, towards a waiting man with a badge. He grimaced inwardly, thinking of Emma's own badge. It took little time to explain that he had seen her through the Bug's window, saw the bottle of pills, and rushed her into the diner for help. It took a bit longer to explain the lack of his own vehicle and identification, but the sheriff's deputy seemed satisfied enough to let Killian leave, then impressed when he insisted on staying "just to see if the lass pulls through." The deputy led him down a short, blank hallway to a bank of four beds, each curtained off from the other by a flimsy length of dull, blue fabric. Killian thanked the deputy and stood awkwardly to one side. He scanned the hallway for any sort of female presence; he needed information and he knew a tried and tested way to get it. A young nurse emerged from Emma's bedside and pulled up sharply in front of him, nearly tripping over his boots. He shot out his hand to steady her, and smiled with full effect into her startled face.
"How's the young lass doing?" he asked.
The nurse smoothed her pink cotton tunic and smiled at him. "You her boyfriend or something?"
"No, nothing like that. I just found her in the parking lot of a diner, and I wanted to make sure… I don't know… just want to know that she's okay."
The nurse reached out a sympathetic hand and patted his arm. "She's not… no. She took a lot of sedatives – we've pumped her stomach but if enough has already made it into her bloodstream… listen, I'm really sorry. I'm afraid I can't say much more, not unless you're a relative. But you are welcome to wait anyway… there's some chairs over there." She nodded towards some nondescript, plastic chairs in the hallway. "We're just watching her at the moment."
Killian gripped her hand and ran his thumb just so over the nurse's knuckles. "Thank you so much. I know it must seem silly, but I feel almost responsible for her now."
The nurse gifted him with a shy smile and squeezed his hand in return. "I'll let you know straight away if anything changes." She made it to the end of the hallway and, just before rounding the corner, she smiled back at him. Killian gave a friendly wave in return, and she grinned and scurried off. His smile immediately faded.
He slipped around the curtain and found her pale and still against the clinical blue sheets of the bed. A machine beeped slow and low, and he knew enough about these situations to recognise the heartbeat as sluggish and uneven. For 10 minutes he stood stockstill and silent, watching this young, forsaken girl struggle to breathe before he finally collapsed to his knees next to the bed and rested his forehead at her hip. Merlin might already have killed her, just by introducing him into the timeline and botching her rescue. Had he caused a delay? A deadly one? He gripped the sheets and chanted prayers to every god he'd ever encountered, barely audible.
Killian heard the curtain shift open behind him. He could see a giggling, young nurse through the opening. She was gazing, starstruck, at something or someone, and was rebuttoning her blouse. Killian turned back to Emma, angry at the intrusion, when shoes clacked to a halt next to him. He considered getting to his feet, trying to cover up his tears, which would seem strange in a passer-by who had only happened on this girl by accident. As he rose, he took in the shined black shoes and pressed black trousers, and followed the line all the way up to the starched black shirt and stiff white collar. A priest, o gods, it must be bad, they've sent a priest.
"Son," the priest said in a distinctive lilt, "son, have a little faith in your old da, yeah?" Killian startled back a step and Davy Jones gave him a sad smile. "I'v.e passed myself off as a doctor - we only have half an hour until that nurse goes off duty and these people start asking questions.
"There, my boy, don't you worry yourself now. I said I would protect her, and I will. But you need to play your part, son, or these paper pushers will start with the questions that have no logical answers. Okay?" Killian nodded. Davy patted his shoulder fondly and turned to Emma, raising his hands over her. A white light seemed to pull from her heart and into Davy's palm, and Killian felt the familiar warmth of Emma's magic settle over her. Davy coaxed it from her and then reflected it back into her body.
The machine beeped strong and steady now, and the numbers showing her blood pressure and heartrate adjusted themselves upwards as Davy took his hands away. Davy stroked his hand over Emma's forehead and hair and pressed a kiss onto her cheek.
"Thank you, da," Killian murmured, too nervous of being caught touching an unconscious 18-year-old to move any closer. But he gripped his father's hand and held tight.
"She'll love you, son, just as she always has. Just give her a bit of time. And know that I love you," Davy whispered back. Then he turned on his heel and disappeared around the curtain. Killian smothered his relief and went back to the plastic chairs, to wait for the doctors to discover another of Emma Swan's miraculous medical recoveries.
….
Emma had not been exaggerating when she told him they did not keep her in hospital for long. Once the doctor on duty pronounced her fit to stand unaided, he saw them pressing discharge papers into her hands and blithely suggesting that she access the local mental health charities. Emma looked stunned, frightened and tired, and nothing whatsoever like the fierce, sharp woman he fell in love with a decade later.
He waited for her at the front door of the ER, and the nurse – still charmed from last night - introduced him to Emma. The introduction seemed to smooth the way, and Emma accepted the nurse's story about the concerned bystander who had rescued her.
"I can take you back to your car," Killian offered, then reached into his jacket pocked, "here, I kept the keys."
Emma snatched the keys from his hand and huffed. He sensed that was all the thanks she would consider giving. She clutched her rucksack tight to her chest and shifted her eyes this way and that.
"I don't need your help," she announced archly, and made to march through the hospital doors, then seemed to remember that she did not know how to get from the hospital back to her car.
"No, of course you don't," Killian responded calmly. "But my car is in that parking lot too, so I thought it made sense for us to share a taxi back to the diner."
Emma shrugged at this, but followed him to the taxi. She eyed him with a bravado that spoke volumes about her underlying fragility, and if it was possible for Killian's heart to shatter into even more pieces, it might have when he noticed her wobble unsteadily on the short walk to the taxi's door.
The driver called back a rough 'Where to?', and Killian made an impulsive decision.
"There a decent motel around here?" he ventured.
Emma's eyes opened at that, wide, affronted and aggressive. "What the hell? Have you been waiting all night so that you could take me to a motel room? You are sick, oh my god."
Killian cut her off mid-rant. "You're in no condition to drive, lass, and I haven't had much sleep myself. I am going to get us each our own room, nowhere near each other if that makes you feel better. But I am not sending you back to sleep in your freezing cold car after that very situation saw you downing a bottle of sedatives."
Emma's eyes narrowed. "You stay the fuck out of my business."
Killian bit back a sigh. He had forgotten how bonedeep exhausting it was managing Emma's walls. Emma in love, he briefly mused, was a creature entirely different to this Emma, who combined the scattershot temper and confident suspicion of the version he'd met on the beanstalk, with the vulnerability of an abused child.
"Aye, I'll stay out of your business the moment I'm convinced it won't land you straight back in hospital," he responded in his tried-and-true Speaking Reasonably to Emma tone. Emma might listen to reason, but not if it was presented to her wrapped in sympathy or pity.
"Why do you care?" she asked, genuinely puzzled and still angry. "I am no one to you."
Killian paused for a moment, trying to think how to explain away his concern. "I feel responsible. I feel like I forced life on you when you had made a different decision, and now I just need to see you make a start. Sleep. Food." He threw his hands out in a gesture of blamelessness.
Emma started to argue that she was just fine, when the taxi driver turned around. "Listen, girl, I don't know anything about you or him, but he's right… you look like death. I'd take him up on the room for the night and catch some z's." The driver turned back to face the road. "Just sayin'."
Fortunately for Killian, she chose to direct all her wrath at the meddling driver, because Killian would not have been able to cover his shock when he recognised the driver as Jonathan. He couldn't help a small, inward smile, and he realised that he needed to make his peace with his father. Emma had been right about him.
Jonathan pulled up at a Travelodge. Killian considered arguing for a better hotel, but remembered in a rush that he had limited funds. He counted out some of Regina's money to pay Jonathan, who was watching to make sure Emma's attention was elsewhere. As she steadied herself near the trunk of the taxi, Jonathan grabbed Killian's left hand and stuffed a fat wad of bills into this right.
"Your father does not want you to risk arrest with thievery. We will keep you supplied with the money that you need."
Killian nodded and chased after the still-wobbly Emma as she made her way to the reception desk. He tamped down his instinct to slip his arm around her and let her lean on him. She reached the desk first and loudly and directly explained to the clerk that she was worried about the man behind her and wanted to make sure their rooms were nowhere close. After Killian produced the cash to pay the bill, Emma took her key and stomped swayed unsteadily off towards a room. Killian grabbed his own key and rushed after her.
"Lass, please," he offered his arm. "You are never going to make it up the stairs to the third floor unaided."
She pulled her body to the side, attempting to put more distance between her left arm and his offered right. He couldn't help rolling his eyes to the ceiling. Without magical intervention, trying to get Emma to warm to him might take a decade. "Stop following me, you pervert," she snapped, taking the stairs two at a time. She managed half a flight before she stumbled backwards into his waiting grasp.
"Lass, please," he repeated. "I swear to you that I only want to help. I know you have no reason to believe me and good reasons not to trust anyone, but you need help right now, just temporarily, and as the fates would have it, I'm the only one around to offer it." He righted her on the stairs and removed his hands from her.
"Don't. Touch. Me," she growled.
Killian stepped down one stair. "May I at least follow to see you safely into your room?" he asked.
She glared at him. "Follow at a distance," she said guardedly, then sighed. "I do feel a little faint."
Killian nodded his agreement to her terms, and followed a couple of paces behind. They climbed slowly to the top of the stairwell, and he could see her losing focus and pace with every step. At the door of her room, she tried twice to open the lock without success. Killian finally lifted the key from her fingers and sidled up to release the lock and push the door open with his shoulder. The movement placed him just over the threshold. She set down her rucksack on the bed, and he crossed to the phone.
"What are you doing?" she asked in a panic.
"Ordering pizza," he responded. "What would you like?" He tossed her the menu from a binder next to the phone. He knew exactly what she liked, but waited patiently for her to throw the menu back at him. "Just let me make this call, and I will leave your room."
Emma sat down on the bed and Killian finally had an opportunity to look her over. She looked so young, all big eyes and gawky glasses and knees and elbows. Even six weeks after giving birth, she appeared too thin and somewhat gangly. "Pepperoni," she said sullenly.
When he had placed the order, he scribbled his room number on the hotel notepad next to the phone, the cheap pen barely equal to the job of scratching out three digits and his name. He tapped the notepad with his pen and bid her good night, adding that she should call him if she felt unwell or needed anything.
Emma had seemed to be ignoring him, but she suddenly looked up, taking him in and forming her judgements. She almost seemed to soften just a mite. "Thank you," she finally said. "Thank you for all of this, for helping me."
"Anytime, lass," he smiled softly, and left her room, closing the door with a gentle click. He made his way through the corridor, past the bland, corporate paintings on the stark walls, until he came to his own door. He unlocked his door and let the blandness wash over him. But he'd only just managed to shed his jacket and toe off his shoes when he noticed his father lounging incongruously on an oak veneer table, his chic black suit clashing riotously with the chintz curtains and floral comforter behind him.
Jones smoothed his tie and tried not to look to important for the room. His only surviving child stood before him, looking utterly exhausted and close to emotional and physical collapse. "Son," he took half a step forward, "you need to sleep. How long has it been?"
Killian shrugged and sank onto the edge of the too-soft mattress. He mumbled that he needed to stay awake, or Emma would try to run.
"Jonathan is watching her door, ready to coax her back if she tries to escape," his father soothed. "Lay down for a bit. I promise to watch over her for you. I love her, too, you know – and she's carrying my only grandchild. I would never let any harm come to Emma."
His father's voice droned on in comforting cadence, and Killian began listing to the right. He was unconscious quite literally before his head hit the pillow, for when he tried to recall it later, he could not remember how he made it into bed and under the covers. The only explanation, more unbelievable than magic, was that his father had tucked him in.
…
When she finally fell asleep, after a long bath and three quarters of a large pepperoni pizza, Emma dreamed of pirates. The pirates chatted to her, all polite and deferential, as they tended the pirate ship with its masts and sails that billowed across an unbroken sky. The smell overwhelmed every other sense: salt, yes, but also leather, and dirt, and fish, stale water and, unmistakably, blood. Even in her dream, Emma's nose wrinkled against the onslaught. The men all seemed old-fashioned in their speech and manners, the ship like something out a children's storybook, with its bright paint and wood planking and intricately carved detailing. Emma had never seen anything so well-crafted; yet, she had, she was sure.
She followed the pirate captain down to his quarters. He was hers. She could make out the back of his dark head, the rings on his hand, the pull of his long, leather coat over his shoulders. He gripped her hips and lifted her down the final steps to his cabin. She knew without turning to see that the bed was tucked into a corner, piled with woollen blankets and pillows, that the walls were lined with books. He moved behind her, laid her across the great, solid desk. He moved his hand beneath her skirts, because she was quite certain that she was wearing a dress, heavy and long and fine. He didn't speak to her, just lowered her panties slowly to the floor and settled the hem of her dress somewhere above her hips. She was panting, both in the dream and out of it, but in the dream he had one hand between her legs, and then she could feel him moving, really feel him against her, within her.
Emma startled awake. And she could still feel him, feel the aftermath of him, like an aching soreness and wrung-out satisfaction. She had never experienced sex like that, so how could she dream something so real? Sex was no longer Emma dreamed of; not after… not any more. But here she was breathing fast and filled with longing. She hadn't kissed the pirate, though she'd meant to, and she couldn't bring his face to mind, or his voice. Just a hint of his smile, simultaneously overconfident and caring. She had wanted him, more than she had ever wanted anything in her life, and Emma had wanted for plenty. She was expert at want.
She fumbled to release herself from the heavy motel comforter and found the clock: 9.45am. A pirate? What the fuck. She had slept for more than 12 hours, which must explain the dreaming, or perhaps it was a side effect of the pills she'd taken. Either way, she decided to lift herself out of bed and take advantage of the hot shower. Who knew when another chance for warm water would present itself?
She rose to her feet, feeling stronger and steadier than the day before. The shrill ring of the phone jolted her right off her feet, a little squeak of shock escaping her. She picked it up nervously.
"Emma?" The accent. She had noticed the accent yesterday. She had no idea where it was from, but it made his voice instantly recognisable.
"Umm. Yes."
"How are you, lass? Did you sleep well?"
"Well enough," she answered cautiously.
She could almost hear him smile at this. "That's good news. I wondered if you might consent to breakfast. There's a diner attached to the motel." Emma had walked the few steps to the window and opened the blackout curtains. She could see the yellow of a Denny's sign.
"So there is."
She listened to the stillness on the line. He didn't even seem to be breathing.
"Emma, I am not trying to take advantage of you. It is breakfast, in a public place, with witnesses."
"I'm taking a shower first," she said. "I can meet you down there in half an hour." Then she hung up.
Why was she agreeing to this? The man's attention to her was creepy. What kind of person paid a motel room for a complete stranger? Serial killers, that's who. But she was full of excuses this morning: he seemed harmless enough ("He seemed so nice," she could hear witnesses saying to the television cameras), and nothing too bad was likely to happen over pancakes and eggs, and … pancakes and eggs. She was, at base, hungry. She would have breakfast, they would take a taxi back to the parking lot to pick up their cars, and then … well, she'd figure that out after breakfast.
The pills hadn't worked. She sighed. She was just going to have to live. Shower. Breakfast. Life.