Well, this chapter was some time coming... apologies! Next one will be quicker. Yes, it will.
It wasn't drowning this time. It was freezing.
By the time he woke in the Enchanted Forest, his body temperature had plummeted far past the point of shivering, past even panic, his heartrate so slow that he could hardly struggle to blink. He could see his Emma, snuffling peacefully in her sleep, right next to him. Merlin had landed him on her snug bedroll and almost-but-not-quite against her warm body. Killian felt quite pacific so near her, his life slipping away in a numbing preserve of frost.
It was the younger Emma who saved him this time. She had magicked them back via the Eternal Spring stones around her neck, which meant that– absolutely critically – she did not have to kiss him. Because the way this emotionally injured teenager looked at Killian had him scared to death. His Emma loved him, True Love apparently, and she trusted him with her life, but she never looked at him as though he were The Solution descended to earth. His Emma had too much experience to ever look at another human being that way again.
But the teenager, who came to nearer Will than Emma, quickly woke the thief and half-screamed at him to help. Will stumbled over and roused Emma, and she threw herself at Killian, half-conscious, to kiss him back to life. The pain – released from death but not, immediately, from the cold – sank in the moment her lips left his. The shivering began then, and the panic – hers and Will's, now David's and Snow's and Regina's and Mac's. They piled on blankets and Emma pulled him close, toasty as one of those electric heaters back in Storybrooke, then Mac built up a fire and they moved him near it. Slowly the heat seeped in to the chill that ran deep through his bones.
He couldn't speak to introduce Emma the Younger, so he looked on silently as David and Snow drew her into an anguished embrace, and his own Emma looked on with a curious smile. Mainly though, she pressed warm kisses across his face and rubbed her hands over his arms and legs to jumpstart the bloodflow with her magic. Everyone moved quietly, not wanting to alert Merlin or his spies.
Finally he regained his speech. He reached a hand up to Emma's face and smiled at her. "Did you miss me, love?"
Before she could respond, he felt a sharp jab to his ribs, where Emma's bump was pressed into him. "Someone knows Daddy's home," she grinned, and kissed him again.
Killian dropped both hands and his face to the baby. "Hey, little love, I'm here. Did you even notice I was gone? Have you been letting your Mum rest?" He pressed a kiss to Emma's belly and felt another kick against his left hand.
"She noticed you were gone, but damn, babe, that was fast. I spent 3 weeks trying to convince Hook to let me go. I can't help feeling a little deficient in comparison." She sat cross-legged on the floor next him, stroking his hair as he regained his strength. Mac wandered over and nonchalantly handed Killian his flask. He grinned up at his cousin and raised his head enough to take a swig.
"You're more cooperative and pleasant than he ever could be," Mac commented.
Emma extended her hands to Mac, whose long experience of pregnant sisters-in-law meant that he knew without being asked that she was looking for counterbalance to get off the floor. "Mac, are the doors and windows sealed?"
"Yes, princess, and we have checked thrice for reflective surfaces. We can't keep his minions out forever, but we are fine for now."
Emma leaned into Mac. Killian could see the signs of exhaustion in her eyes even from his pile of blankets and pillows on the ground. Will crouched down next to him. "The Queen and her parents have kept her mostly to bed, to soothe the headaches and stress, but she hasn't slept well, not really, and she wouldn't let Regina put her under magically." He shook his head. "She's been eating, but not much as you'd like. It's been hard on 'er, though nowhere near as hard as it was on you when she was with Hook."
Killian watched his wife as Will updated him: she was thoughtful and calm. She laughed suddenly, watching her parents with her younger self. Killian pushed himself up on his elbows, then his hands, even while Will clucked against it and hissed at him to rest. He struggled to his feet, Will more or less holding him upright. He stumbled the two steps to Emma, working all the while on righting himself properly, and threw his arms around her with the small strength he had left.
"Killian! You should be resting, recovering," she chided, moving her arm around to support him.
"And ye should not be propping your sorry arse up on a pregnant lady," Will added crossly, moving to hold him up in what was becoming an awkward three way hug.
Emma laughed and gave Will a friendly shove. "The pregnant lady's fine. If you want a hug, Killian, I'll come to down to you, but Mac and Will are going to have to hoist me off the ground again later."
Killian shook his head, "No, I want to move around a bit. I think it'll help. And your neck is up here…" he added in a whisper. A whisper that Will still heard. He stepped back, causing Killian to buckle unsteadily under his own weight, and tilt slightly into Emma.
"I'll leave you to it," he huffed, and wandered over towards Snow, David and the alter-Emma.
Emma knew precisely what her husband was about, trying to distract her from his probing, exploratory hands by kissing her neck. He was worse that a set of digital scales, and she swore that he could divine her exact calorie count for the past few days just by skimming his hands over her ribs. As he was doing right now.
"Don't even say it, Killian. I have been eating, and I know I may have lost a pound or two, but…"
"Emma, you should not be losing any pounds. Quite the reverse," he said quietly, resting his left hand over the baby. "You are big with child and you should be getting bigger."
"I've read all about this, Killian. The baby takes all it needs, before my body gets a look in. She's fattening up nicely in there and, as you can see, my belly IS getting bigger."
Feeling more stable, he leaned away from her, enough to look her in the eyes. His hands slid down her sides and over her hips and thighs. "All of you should be getting bigger, Emma, because you should be eating plenty and sleeping plenty and not engaging in murderous feuds with power-crazed wizards. And I should have been here. I should have seen that attack coming."
Ducking beneath his shoulder support him, Emma harrumphed. "You do a good line in self-hating bullshit, don't you? Any of us might have seen it coming, but none of us did. Anyway, you're back, and you have brought my own self as back-up. What's she doing here?"
Killian stood up straighter, his legs feeling more certain beneath him now. "Love, you have to believe me, nothing has happened between…"
"You haven't wiped her memory, Killian. I remember what she remembers, and I know damn well you haven't touched her. Hook got farther," she admitted.
"He wasn't half your age. Nor nearly as fragile."
"She's a tiny fraction of your age, and so am I, even now. You're super old."
"You know what I mean, woman." Feeling almost back to normal, Killian pulled her in close and kissed her breathless, kissed her until she felt her arousal rising. "Am I too old for you, Emma?"
She giggled – he was still the only adult in any realm who could coax a giggle out of her – and drew him back for another kiss. From across the room, she could feel young Emma's eyes on them, uncertain and awestruck. "I guess I need to have a chat with… myself," Emma sighed. "Is the universe going to implode or anything if we talk?"
Killian shrugged. "I punched myself and we're all still here." He offered her his arm – he adored doing that, as Emma would still roll her eyes, just this almost imperceptible gesture of disarmed amazement that she was in a situation where men thought she needed assistance to walk from A to B, whenever he did it – and she slipped her hand across the inside of his elbow. He allowed himself a satisfied internal smile as he led her across the room.
While teenaged Emma catalogued every detail of her future self, Snow and David stood misty-eyed behind the daughter they finally meeting 10 years before they ever thought it possible.
"You're pregnant." The teenager's tone – flat and pragmatic – gave nothing away. Her guarded eyes flicked to Killian but rested mainly on Emma. Mainly on Emma's bump.
Temporarily stunned that Killian had not mentioned this, Emma paused. "Um. Yes. A bit over six months now. I know I'm bigger than I was with Henry at the same time, but..."
"Henry. My baby's called Henry? How do you know that? How did you find him?"
Regret washed Emma, wired as she was into the younger woman's memories. Henry had been sent back to the relative safety of the Jolly Roger weeks ago, where Killian's crew of relatives were watching over him. Gently, Mary Margaret took the young woman's hand and patted, but Emma sensed the futility of that. Elder Emma may have – mainly, usually – forgiven her abandonment, but this version of her had not. The teenager snatched her hand away and the walls went up.
"I don't want to know. It's better if I don't know. We need to plan our attack anyway, don't we? Should we start?"
Ever quick to respond to Emma's walls, Killian took a step away from his wife and reached for the defensive girl with half an apology and half an explanation already half-delivered, but her arms were wrapped tight around herself, her hands tucked where nobody could take them in theirs and offer pointless comfort. She stepped back from Killian as he moved forward, but the retreat backed her squarely into David's chest instead, and he instinctively wrapped his own arms around her, stopping her future husband in his tracks. David knew as well as anyone that his realtime daughter was safe as houses with the pirate, but this Emma needed his protection. Without a thought, David dropped his head down to her ear and whispered, "Don't worry, sweetheart, Daddy's got you."
Emma cracked open from the inside. She wondered if it was possible to actually feel your personality shatter like porcelain on a marble floor. She slid down on a heavy sob and would have hit the floor for true had David not tightened his hold on her. He was still murmuring to her, the cadence comforting and sincere, though she caught not a word after his first, devastating sentence. He led her away from the little group of strangers, from her older and more assured self, and settled her down on a soft pile of blankets and pillows in a dim distance of the warehouse. She closed her eyes to block it all out, for once actually wishing for the sanctuary of the Bug, but her father hunkered down next to her, seated at guard duty with one hand rubbing circles into her back. She tilted into him.
Assaulted by the memories even at a decade's remove, present Emma gripped hold of Killian. Her husband had tears in his eyes watching the scene: he had pushed to bring her here, pushed to save his own Emma and their baby and their future together, and this young girl had papered over her cracks to follow him, to be their saviour. And now here she sat, slumped against a dark wall, sobbing and hiccupping into her father's shirt. He should have taken things more slowly, given her a chance to recover before stealing her out of a hospital bed and away to Neverland. What had he been thinking?
Emma tugged Killian from his thoughts, leading him to a fire by Mac and Regina and Snow. Will handed him a warm mug of coffee and rum. Snow forced him into a chair and told him to listen up. This was the queen's voice, not be misunderstood or ignored: "Killian, stop it. You did the best you could. She needs David right now, and to be honest I think David needs her. You brought her right where she needed to be."
….
Eventually, sleep. Young Emma cried herself to sleep on David, with Mary Margaret finally allowed to snuggle down with them. Mac and Regina drew their bedrolls up to the fire, and Will dropped into a pile of blankets across the threshold of the main entrance. Killian and Emma tucked themselves into the shadows and whispered strategy long into the night. Killian explained his plan: to re-enter Merlin's castle with both Emmas and destroy him with Excalibur. Emma turned the heavy, ornate blade over in her hands.
"How will we keep her safe in there? He's like fighting a ghost, Killian. Inside that castle, he has power…"
"But he can't actually kill you, or her, or apparently me. If he could, he would simply have done that. He has tried everything to break our love, and he has failed. But he will simply keep trying. And Emma…" - he slipped a hand beneath her top and stroked her belly – "we will soon enough run out of time."
"There's plenty worse than death, and I'm sure that sick fuck can come up with something to torture us if we fail." Killian did not mention the foul magic that Merlin had sent after them in Neverland, which his father had assured him was one of the many options for 'worse than death'.
"Then we won't fail," he said with finality. "In the morning, we will explain the plan to Emma. We will have the element of surprise over Merlin for once."
…
Well before sunrise, Mac woke and took a turn around the warehouse. He satisfied himself that young Emma and her parents were well, then Regina and Will. He poked about in the shadows, nearly stumbling over a wide-awake Killian propped against a wall, Emma asleep in his lap. He crouched down near his cousin and gripped his shoulder.
"I've come to wake everyone, and here I find you not in need of my services," Mac rumbled quietly.
Smiling vaguely in admission, Killian shrugged. "Might be the last chance I have to hold them. I'd rather not waste it on sleep."
"Cousin, soon we'll back in Cath Harbour, celebrating our victory and, before long, the birth of your firstborn. I swear it."
Killian nodded silently. He waved Mac in the direction of David and Snow. "You wake them, Mac. I'll wake Emma."
…
Merlin could not hide from Emma's magic or from her knowledge of his castle with no entrances or exits. So he didn't try. When Emma materialised from the soft white smoke of her magic with the pirate, Merlin could not hold back a heady laugh.
"Now this is how it was supposed to be in the first place," he boomed, watching Emma reach Killian's hand. The couple shone so brightly that he almost had to look away, and when their fingers touched, the aura that surrounded them burned hot enough to raise the temperature of the room. He knew that most people could not sense the heat from them, but he took a step back to avoid scalding himself. Breaking them would cause a spectacular explosion, he assured himself.
"I always expected you to arrive together. It would have saved months of mucking about with time travel."
Positioning himself just in front of Emma, Killian assessed the wizard in front of him. He was too gleeful, too cocky. Killian had seen the type before, in endless sword fights and fist fights and tavern brawls. Merlin was beatable. Teenaged Emma was hidden nearby, and that advantage could well undo an overconfident adversary.
"So here we are then. Are you planning to kill me?" Killian goaded.
"Kill you?" Merlin huffed. "And send you down to your Dad, who will immediately send you straight back? No, I don't think so. I don't need you dead, just split apart from her."
Merlin stepped forward, something in hand that Emma couldn't identify, but when he threw it towards them, her pirate sank to his knees, then into an unconscious lump at her feet.
Emma dropped to her knees next to him, desperately feeling for the pulse at his neck. Before she lean forward to kiss him awake, she felt herself being hauled back to the marble wall by an unseen and unbreakable chain. Just enough distance to keep her from touching Killian, but she could see his chest rising and falling weakly with every breath.
Merlin crouched in front of her, crowding out her view. "He's not dead, princess. I've explained already: I need to break your love, and killing him won't work. So I'll try this instead: you can swallow this potion and join your pirate in his dreamworld. You will be together until the end of your natural lives, when these bodies can no longer support life. But I'm afraid your baby would not survive for long - you couldn't give birth, of course, lying unconscious next to your love. It would be a grim death for the baby, I fear, and inevitably for you." Merlin gave her an oily, triumphant smile. Emma felt her magic boiling beneath her skin, but it couldn't shatter her restraints.
"Or, you walk away. Go home to your parents. Give birth to your baby. Live," Merlin shrugged, magnanimous, "happily ever after."
Shuddering, Emma blinked tears away from her eyes. "That is not a test of true love. I would continue to love him, to mourn him. I will love him forever."
Merlin just continued to smile. "They all say that, princess. But time heals all... your love for him would fade, bit by bit, and then one day, not really all that far into the future, you would let go just enough. And I'll be free." Merlin rose to his feet and looked down on her with pity. "I have waited centuries already... a few more years won't hurt."
Emma stretched her fingers as far towards Killian as she could. He looked at peace, not in a place of fire and torture. "Give me the potion," she demanded coldly.
Merlin's face moved through shock and into anger. "How can you make that choice? You and your baby would die! What kind of mother would sacrifice her child for her lover?"
"Give me the potion," she repeated. "You had to offer me the choice, right? It has to be my choice to break our love and leave him here. So give me the potion."
"You will kill your unborn child! For him!"
"Give. Me. That. Potion."
Merlin whirled into a black wind and swept over her and through her. Emma sat on her heels and folded her hands over her lap and watched Killian's breathing to calm herself. She said nothing to give herself away. She cleared her mind of thoughts that Merlin might access. He rematerialised before her.
"Change your mind," he commanded, the marble walls shaking with his anger and volume.
"The potion," she replied, quiet and still.
They stared each other down for an endless moment, Merlin's rage blackening his eyes. Eventually, he relented, and handed her the bottle. Emma popped it open and swallowed it down without a word. She collapsed, her bindings shattered, but still too far from Killian to touch him.
...
Silent as the runaway she was, Emma waited patiently in the empty corridor. She listened for the soft sound of her older self sinking to the marble tiles, fast in a netherworld. She crept forward, enough to see Merlin crouched between the two bodies, his back to her, blind with rage. She hefted Excalibur from the scabbard at her waist.
On bare tiptoes, she gripped the heavy sword as she had seen Emma do, using both hands, and inelegantly arced it to point at Merlin's spine. She did not breathe, holding the air tight in her throat as she'd practised endless nights before, sneaking away from one foster family or another. She took a last look at Killian and Emma crumpled on the ground, then gathered her strength and rammed the point of the blade through roughly where the few biology classes she'd attended told her his heart would be. It sliced through the bone and cartilage and sinew and soft tissue as easily as scissors through wrapping paper, sinking in so far that she knew it had cut clean through. Anger rising along with panic, she twisted the blade in his chest to maximise the blood loss. Merlin gasped and tried to turn, impossible with the sword holding him in place. She drew the sword back to her, excavating as much of the sorcerer's chest cavity as she could. He managed to turn this time and look at her, too shocked even for the pain. As his eyes swept over her in bafflement, she steadied Excalibur again and drove it through his throat, taking him down to the floor, where she embedded the sword into the marble floor until the hilt rested against his broken neck. She knelt down next to him and watched the life flicker out of his eyes.
"You will not take this future from me," she whispered to his corpse. "I will have this love, even if I have to wait another decade for it."
Not entirely certain if dead-meant-dead with a sorcerer, Emma leapt to her feet and stepped gingerly across his body to reach Emma and Killian. She dropped to her knees beside Emma, her hands stilling over the baby, feeling for kicks and movement, but all was eerily still. She stood and circled them slowly, trying to recall anything and everything the fairies had told her about magic and curses. She came up blank. But she had been abandoned in front of enough Disney DVDs in her life that she knew what usually worked: a kiss. She blushed to the roots of her hair and all the way down her chest as she turned to Killian. She wasn't entirely sure how she felt about him: she could see that he loved Emma and he had been kind and protective with her. The stones worked, just like he said they would, because somehow their love had always existed. That sounded ridiculous to her – if she were totally honest here, she'd admit that he intrigued her, and perhaps aroused her, but no way did she love him.
Faith, then. She had to believe, just like Neverland, and wishing upon a star and all the fairy tale crap she'd scoffed at since she was old enough to know what scoffing meant. So Emma closed her eyes, leaned forward to his lips and imagined what he meant to her future self, how quickly she had been ready to give up her life for him. That's me, she repeated to herself, that's me in just a few more years, and I love him. I love him, I love him, I love him…
"All right there, love. That's done the trick." Her eyes flew open in widest shock and she scrambled back. Killian was propped up of his elbows, one eyebrow cocked at an unseemly angle. "You kiss me any longer and future Emma here won't speak to me for a week. She still has access to your memories, you know." Killian lifted himself into a sitting position and surveyed the pool of blood spreading across the marble tiles under Merlin's body.
"Um… is he dead?" Emma asked, still nervous that Merlin could somehow come back.
Killian shot her a funny look. "Aye, that is the deadest person I have seen in quite some time, love, and I'm something of an expert in it." While Emma was focussed on the body, trying to figure out how she felt about murdering a man, Killian reached across and caught her bicep. He pulled her closer. "Emma, do not for a second question your decision. Promise me." Then he enfolded her in a warm hug, kissed the top of her head and whispered, "Thank you. Thank you so very, very profoundly."
Emma felt tears welling up in her eyes, but brushed them away. Giving her a last, encouraging smile, Killian leapt to his feet and jumped the distance to his own Emma. He spanned both hands across her bump.
"The baby hasn't been moving," Emma said softly.
With the same dreamy, confident smile on his face, Killian murmured, "Come now, sweetheart, time to wake up for your Da." He bent down and placed a kiss just below Emma's navel. Immediately he could feel a tiny hand or foot pressing into his outstretched fingers and the lightest tumbling movement. He heaved a deep sigh. "There's my good girl," he breathed.
Teenaged Emma let out the breath she had been holding with a small sob. "Oh thank god," she shuddered.
Killian left one hand resting atop his baby and move the other to brush Emma's hair from face. She looked pale and tired and heart-breakingly, perfectly beautiful. He toyed with a strand, winding it round his finger and leaned close to kiss his wife. "I love you so much, Swan," he said as he pressed his lips against hers. This time young Emma could feel the rush of magic in the air, blowing through her soul. She looked on as her future self threw her arms around Killian's neck and pulled him closer for a deeper kiss, and he worked a hand beneath her head and pressed his fingers into her hair to draw her nearer. The teenager smiled to herself and averted her eyes, shaking her head and unknowingly repeating the only word guaranteed to break Emma and Killian apart.
"Gross."