Thank you once again, lovely reviewers, followers and favouriters.
Once settled into a booth at the diner, Killian tried not to stare at his lover's younger self. The large glasses swamped her pretty face, she looked too pale and despite the night's sleep, still too tired. She looked like she had not entirely recovered from the birth, let alone the attempt to take her own life. This Emma had hit rock bottom, and yet he needed to recruit her into a war against a powerful sorcerer. More or less immediately.
The plan, in its essence, was simple: wake Emma up to magic ten years early; eliminate Merlin together; and return to his Emma, preferably long before his child was born. However, vagueness dominated the plan, and he had only sketchy ideas about how some parts would be enacted. Like this part, right here, where he had to convince a stroppy, heartbroken, grieving, unstable teenager that she was a warrior princess with living, loving parents, and that she was in love with him.
She barely looked at him once the food arrived. He had ordered a side of hash browns that he had no intention of eating because he knew his Swan, and not even the gut-busting pile of eggs, bacon and pancakes in front of her was going to satisfy her when she really had a hunger on. He slid the plate silently towards her, and it disappeared without a word of acknowledgement. Some things, he mused, never changed.
"So," he smiled warmly, earning him a look of barely concealed disdain between bites, "I suppose we should discuss how I'm going to return you to your family."
Emma's fork paused mid-pancake and she sat up slightly straighter. "No family to return to, and wherever I'm going, I'll go alone." She took a swig of orange juice.
"Here," he picked up a mug of hot chocolate and set it down before her. "Whipped cream and cinnamon."
She shot him a strange look, but accepted the drink. Killian could read Swan better than any language he had learned, and he saw the cracks. Her perception of reality was letting through the light from other realms, a bit more with every push. He gripped the table and readied himself. What was it she had said to him when she had roughly plunged his heart back into his chest? Like ripping off a bandaid…
"Emma Swan, you have a mother and a father and a whole extended family who love you very much." She froze across from him. "I must confess, I was not in that parking lot by accident; I had come looking for you." She dropped her fork. "I've come to bring you back to your family." She began gathering up her belongings and sliding out of the booth. He reached across the table to take her hand, but she pulled away with a squeal that drew a few stares. "Emma, please hear me out."
Eyes wide and heart racing, Emma slid to halt at the edge of the booth. "So, you are stalking me. You admit that."
"No, I saw you for the first time in your life just after you had taken the pills." There was a truth to that, she was 10 years younger than when he had first met her. "I didn't want to tell you all of this after what you have just been through, but time is pressing, and…"
"Time is pressing? What the fuck?" Emma hissed at him. "I have been an orphan for 18 years, but suddenly my birth parents need to see me immediately? After abandoning me as a newborn?"
Killian inhaled deeply and breathed out the next words almost too quickly for her to hear: "It's not just your parents. Your son needs you…"
Emma actually jumped with shock, then stood so abruptly that she bumped the table. Two plates and at the near-empty glass of orange juice shattered on the tile floor. "Do not follow me," she ordered, gathered her rucksack, and made for the door of the diner. Killian threw some cash onto the table and followed her anyway.
They made it to the parking lot of the Travelodge before Emma turned around. Her eyes were big with tears. "How dare you follow me and speak about my, my…" she couldn't quite finish her sentence, and her shock and sadness segued straight into rage. "How do you even know about him? Who the fuck are you?"
"Killian Jones," he answered, trying to move a step closer, "just like I told you."
"But who are you?"
"Okay, this is going to sound insane," he put out both of his hands in a calming gesture, casually reaching to steady her. Something in Emma's eyes stopped him and he froze, hands still in the air. It was as though, just for a moment, he saw his Emma, a spark of recognition. She took two tentative steps towards him, then pulled his right hand in front of her face, turning it this way and that. She ran her fingers over his rings. Given that she had been avoiding looking his direction as much as possible up to that point, her sudden desire to touch him seemed suspicious. She seemed to consider something, and reject it. She was still holding his hand in hers like she was conducting a scientific enquiry.
"Well?" she prompted. "Who exactly are you?"
Killian gave it to her straight: "I'm your husband. Or rather, I will be just over 10 years from now."
Emma blinked rapidly. She let the silence draw out for a moment, the rural New Mexico morning cold and bright and shining a harsh light over the scene. "Right," she finally quipped. "Obviously." She hadn't run, however, or even let go of his hand, so he held out hope.
Evidence, Killian thought. "Emma, I am your husband. Use your superpower. Am I lying?"
Killian was taking a chance there – he had no idea if Emma had classified her lie-detecting abilities as a superpower at this young age. But she looked unsettled. Unsurprisingly, using his knowledge of her produced exactly the same reaction in teenage Emma as it did in the Emma he had rescued from New York.
"You really are a stalker…" she whispered, dropping his hand.
"How would stalking you help me to know that?" he batted back. "If you're going to deny the evidence in front of you, at least be logical about it."
"Logical?" she laughed bitterly. "You want me to believe you're some pirate from a dream…"
Killian held up a hand to stop her. "Pirate? What dream?" He tilted his head slightly and spoke very calmly. "What did you see in this dream?"
She waved her hand toward his. "Your rings. I saw them in a dream last night. There was a pirate ship, and you were there."
"The Jolly Roger," he whispered, and a little smile began to play at his lips. The magic of their love must be bleeding through into this realm, he thought. Emma's own unconscious was providing evidence.
The conscious Emma, however, scoffed. "This is insane. You are insane. It's not possible. I saw your rings, and it sparked some thought of pirates, and triggered the dream."
"What if I could describe something in the dream, some detail that I could only know if it was a memory rather than a dream? Okay… you were on my ship. She would have seemed very old to you, like something from another time. All wood, enormous sails. She's painted and always glorious, blue and yellow and white… Ummm… tell me what I should describe for you."
The sex, Emma couldn't help thinking, tell me what you did to make me feel like that. Out loud, she said, "The cabin… how do you enter, and what's there?"
"My quarters? You have to climb down a steep ladder. The bunk is off to the left, a table that serves as my desk directly in front. When you enter, you face the windows. I have a lot of maps and books… no electronics at all, of course, as we didn't have any."
Emma held up her hand to stop him. She had gone quite pale. "What were you wearing?"
Killian stepped closer and took her hand again. "My coat, most likely. Long, black leather." Emma pulled her hand away and gasped. "What did you feel, Emma?"
Satisfied. Safe. Adored. "I felt happy. You were mine," she stumbled on her words. Honesty was the last thing he had expected of her, but he gave it straight back.
"I am yours, always," he nodded, no hint of smirk this time, and held her gaze. "Wherever, whenever you exist Emma, I am yours."
This, he thought, this right here is where she pushes him away and runs. But Killian had not reckoned on teenage Emma's vulnerability. Those near-impenetrable walls he had met had been built up over ten years. But this Emma was raw hurt, childish curiosity and open desperation for someone to love her. She stood in the parking lot, squinting against the sunlight and shifting from foot to foot, turning the evidence over in her mind.
Finally, she tilted her head at him to indicate the front door of the motel. "Let's go sit by the pool," she said, "and you're going to explain everything."
…
Emma agreed to let Killian pay for another night in the end. The story was long and complex, as he was forced to tell it without mentioning fairy tales or allegedly fictional characters. This had been the most difficult part for his Emma to accept, he remembered. She might be convinced by the existence of magic, or even by time travel, but Neverland, The Enchanted Forest, Snow White, Prince Charming, Captain Hook… no. So, he couldn't lie (she would notice) and he could not tell the truth (she'd reject it outright). So, Storybrooke became a modern, uncursed town and he became a sailor. Her parents – a schoolteacher and an animal control officer - had been attacked by a woman who wielded powerful magic and had forced them into abandoning her (he was careful to avoid trigger words like witch or evil).
She was curled up on a plastic chaise lounge by a murky winter pool, too cold to dip a toe in, even during the height of the sunny day. And by now the sun had long since sunk into the dusty distance. Emma had piled up one, then two, then finally a small stack of thin motel pool towels over her thin frame in an effort to keep warm, but despite being engrossed in Killian's somewhat skewed tale of their relationship, she was shivering.
"So the pirate ship, the way it looks like it's from another time…"
"You're seeing one of our incarnations."
Emma looked unconvinced. "Incarnations? Like past lives?"
"Something like that, yes." Killian tried to sound like the voice of logic and reason, not a pedlar of magic and fairy stories. He wordlessly removed his jacket and reached across the rickety metal and glass table that separated them to arrange it around her shoulders.
"Thank you," she smiled. The gesture was, rather sadly, amongst the nicest things anyone had done for her. He had now bought her dinner, breakfast, lunch and another dinner, on top of the cost of their rooms and, oh yes, saving her life. But this was to be expected, if any of his crazy story was true, because he was her husband. In practice, Emma had no idea how husbands were meant to behave; she had precious little first-hand experience with such beasts. Most of her foster parents had been single women, and the few husbands had been creepy, or strict and unapproachable. Certainly she had come across a few nice men, but in her experience, enough were untrustworthy that it was best to approach with caution.
"You now look both tired and cold, love. Do you want me to continue this story tomorrow morning?"
That, for example, that right there. Emma struggled to recall anyone at all in her past – up to and including Neal – who noticed her unvoiced discomfort, let along did anything to remedy it. This man told the most ridiculous tales, and she wasn't sure if she could believe a word of it, but he seemed so sincere ("He seemed so honest, officer. What a shock when he pulled out that gun and shot seven people dead in the lobby!") and concerned and she really, really wanted to believe that this man loved her. Some her, older maybe, but still her.
"So, we're married," she restated. He had already explained this – how they'd met, fell in love, how stubborn she had been. "You're not wearing a ring on that finger."
Killian raised his left hand for her perusal. "No, we haven't really gone down the traditional route with our marriage. To be honest, your parents still want to throw us a lavish wedding." He smiled at her, relaxed and a little shy. She smiled back at him without a trace of scepticism. Talk of her parents made her more nervous than his explanations of time travel or magic or marriage, so he dropped them into innocuous places in the conversation, trying to make them seem normal. "I think your father has visions of walking you down the aisle."
Her smile faltered a bit. She pulled his jacket around her shoulders and suppressed a shiver, while Killian suppressed the urge to pull her into his lap and let her lean her head on his shoulder until she warmed up. "And someone is trying to use magic to break us apart? And you need my help to stop him?"
He looked deeply into her eyes and answered solemnly, "Yes, that's why I've come here. Your future self is in danger, and we need to go back together, to save her." She didn't balk at this information, and it was the fourth or fifth time he'd said it. Maybe he should show her, throw all the evidence out there in hope of overwhelming any doubts. "You know, we haven't exchanged rings, but I did give you something, to celebrate our union." He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and felt for Emma's necklace, hesitated for a moment, then drew it out. The stones caught the muted moonlight and dim lamps in the bare motel courtyard. They concentrated the light and cast it back out into Emma's wide-open eyes. "May I?" he asked, standing and gesturing to her neck with the open chain.
Emma watched the light refract in the stones. She swept up her hair without a second thought, and he stepped behind her to fix the clasp over her spine. He managed the entire procedure without letting his fingers so much as brush against her skin. The clasp snapped closed, just as his Emma had assured him it would. The magic of their True Love transcended time and the necklace worked on any form of themselves, it seemed.
"It's beautiful," she stammered, running her fingertips over the intricate stones.
Killian sank onto the chaise beside her, but not so close as to touch her. "It's also magic," he explained cautiously.
She looked up abruptly, the distrust back in place. "How so?"
"Well, only the one you love can fix it into place, and only he – well, I in this case – can unclasp it."
Emma's eyebrows drew together in consternation. She reached back for the clasp but found it completely locked in place. "What have you done?" she asked, the anger and defence back in her voice.
"It's nothing dangerous," he laughed, and reached around the back of her neck to unhook the necklace. "See?" He dangled it in front of her with a pasted-on smile to cover his nerves. He closed the clasp again and let the necklace settle over her chest. "Go on, there's no trickery, try to get one of the women behind the reception desk to attempt it." Emma stood and strode into the lobby with determined steps. He could see her entire interaction with the two women at the desk. They tried to open the clasp, but of course they couldn't. Emma stormed back out into the chilly night and sat across from him in a plastic chair, staring hard into his eyes.
"Take this thing off," she demanded.
Killian lifted his hand to scratch behind his neck. "Aye, I can do that. But first I should explain that the clasp isn't its only magic. The stones can transport you, too." He watched her every muscle tense. He hadn't expected to arrive at this moment so quickly. He had expected to win her around somehow, but now he saw an opportunity to bypass all of her objections. Time was pressing – every moment his daughter was growing - and now he had the chance to jumpstart the process of convincing young Emma that everything he said was true.
"Transport me? What do you mean? Where to?"
He needed to tempt her closer for this to work. Killian laughed as genuinely as possible, praying her radar would not penetrate his attempts to persuade her over to his side. "You're facing the wrong way." Killian patted the spot on the chaise that she had vacated earlier. "I can point it out to you from here."
Killian could feel her tension, her disbelief. But as long as those stones stayed around her neck, he didn't need her to believe. Suspicions fully in place, Emma moved around the metal table to sit next to him. He held out his hand to her with his most winning smile, and nearly melted in relief when a slight stumble forced her to press her hand into his. His fingers closed deliberately lightly around hers as he pointed up to the night sky. "Right there," he whispered, drawing her just a little closer. Emma was curious enough not to resist. He used their joined hands to gesture to the brightest star in the sky. "Do you see that star almost directly overhead?"
Emma followed his gesture, and she found herself leaning into him almost against her will, all of her attention on the star. His fingers remained loosely tangled with her own, the gesture casual and unthreatening. "Now, I just need you to focus on the second one to the right…"
Listen, I could use some help if any of you are willing to give it. Can anyone come up with a better summary for this story? I've tried several and feel they've all been unsatisfactory. Any thoughts, I'd love to hear them. Also, I promise that this behemoth is segueing its way towards a conclusion. Honestly.