It has been almost 12 hours and Emma Swan is still missing. By dawn, when no new lead came forward and they hit dead end after dead end– even bloody Reginia came up nothing– James reached out to the state department for Emma's ward of the state file. During a few of their many conversations she had hinted at some gruesome things from her past, James wondered if one of them came back to haunt her.
Of course, those files were sealed. He wasn't allowed to look at them without a warrant, but her old case worker was, and an old case worker did.
And the old case worker emailed him a photo of one Ingrid Johansson with the attached note: "The only alarming incident from Emma Swan's past that I know of is with her last foster parent. The last day Ingrid Johansson was seen was the last day Emma Swan was in the foster system when she was fifteen. Emma didn't pop up again until she was seventeen, under a very distressing situation. Johannsson was never seen again, however, leaving the other children in her care abandoned. Some as young as 8 years old. She was in the process of adopting Emma when they both disappeared. In my notes I have that Emma Swan, when found, refused to speak about her last foster mother. I wrote down her reaction, and remember it vividly. At the mention of Ingrid's name Emma began to visibly shake, terrified at the very thought of her. From my own memory of that house I recall Johansson only had interest in Emma, and no one else. Good luck."
The hairs on his arms stood on end as he read the note, but it wasn't until he opened the photo file that he felt his heart freeze.
Suddenly a familiar face was staring back at him.
Ingrid Johansson ran the local ice cream shop. Or did.
It had closed a few months ago.
Approximately around the time Emma Swan came to town as far as James could recall.
"We've called everyone, gone everywhere, and no one knows anything about this woman?" James could not believe it. He could not bloody, fucking, believe it. A small army of volunteers spent all morning and afternoon calling everyone in town, going to their doorsteps, and checking public records. Ingrid had no home address. She had no known friends. She had no phone. Had no family.
She was completely disconnected from everything and everyone.
James threw the coffee mug he'd been holding against the wall.
They all stared in silence, fear and anxiety riddled their faces. What happened to Emma? What is happening to Emma? Staring at the cold coffee dripping down Mary Margaret's walls, at the small flecks of exposed plaster and broken ceramic, James throat closed up and his eyes began to sting.
What if it was already too late?
What if Emma was already gone?
It was Ruby who broke the silence with a question, "What do we do now?"
God, what do we do? James hated this. Hated that Emma went missing in the first place. Hated that he didn't know what to do now. Hated that he let his emotions get the better of him just now and broke a perfectly innocent cup that didn't even belong to him.
What would Emma do? James can't remember seeing Emma angry. He has seen her pissed, has seen her refuse to back down when she or someone she cares about had been treated unfairly, but he has never seen her lose her temper.
Emma always tried to take care of herself, of her mental health. That's what she'd tell him now. That he needed a breather. That he needed food. And a nap.
James closed his eyes, blocking off the shattered mug from view, and took a deep breath. For a moment he just focused on relaxing his throat and drying his eyes before he told them, "Go eat. Go sleep. Take an hour. Take more if you need it. Then come back when you're ready. We're no good wired like we are and Emma…" His voice caught again, but he forced out the rest anyway. "Emma wouldn't want us to torture ourselves over her." He covered the wetness on his face by crouching down to clean up his mess. One-by-one they all did what he ordered, leaving only Mary Margaret, David, and James who stayed hunched up with his broken mug longer than he should have to pick up a few pieces of broken ceramic. Mary Margaret and David didn't rush him, letting him take the time he needed as he calmed his shaking shoulders.
Frankly, they weren't much better than he was.
It took him fifteen minutes, but James finally stood up, cradling the shattered pieces in the crook of his left arm as he held his right hand over them to keep them from falling. "I'm sorry that I broke your mug."
Whatever Mary Margaret's response would have been was lost to the ringing of James' cell phone and him unceremoniously throwing the pieces to the floor in order to answer it.
"Hello? This is Sheriff Jones."
"I know where Emma Swan is." Three truths hit James at the same time in that moment. The first was that the voice was most certainly of one Graham Humbert. The second was that that means Graham never left town and he wanted to punch him for leaving them. The third was that James, without question or thought, knew that this lead would actually bring him closer to Emma.
"Where?"
"Mansion deep in the North Woods. Hidden from sight. Not many people know of it, and I don't know who the owner is, but I found a small patch of skid marks and human tracks on the road."
James swiped his keys from the table and marched out the door, Mary Margaret and David unquestionably in tow. "Thank you, bloody thank you. I'll be right there."
"I'll show where it is, but I won't be going any further. I hope you understand." He didn't, but that wasn't important now. "And Jones?"
"Yeah?"
"The tracks had been kicked around, like they had been waiting for her to come down the road."
Johansson only had interest in Emma, no one else.
"Were the tracks a male or females?" If what the case worker said was true then Emma never would have gone with Ingrid, but if she was working with someone…
"They belonged to a man, Hook." James wished he had a hook right now.
God damnit.
God, no.
Nonononono.
No.
He was too late.
There was Emma. Arms and legs bound next to a man in a lopsided top hat, madly waving a gun around.
And god, there was a car. A car that was picking up speed, racing towards Emma.
Oh god. Oh god. He's too slow.
He knows he's too slow.
Oh god.
And Emma. Emma knows that he is too.
She's looking at him like she is trying to carve his face into her soul so can carry it with her into the next life.
Oh god.
The man in the top hat is trying to shoot him.
James doesn't care.
Oh god.
He'll be dead before he stops trying to save her. And even then, he wasn't sure if Hades himself could stop him.
Oh god.
He watched as Emma threw her body into the man, knocking him over. James felt like he was stuck in slow motion while everything happening to Emma was too fast, too quick for him.
Oh god.
She scrambled to her feet, but the car was barrelling down on her. An ungodly, animal noise ripped through him as everything around Emma finally slowed down.
Oh god.
Her body went effortlessly over the hood, smacking the windshield before flying over the roof of the car and was roughly carried by the momentum across the ground.
Her body was still.
God, she was so still.
The paramedics wouldn't let him in the ambulance.
They said he was too frantic.
James told them they'd be frantic with a hook in their necks.
Mary Margaret and David had to pull him away, back to the cruiser where the lights were still flashing.
David drove while he and Mary Margaret sat in the backseat, clutching to each other in companionable feelings of fear and failure.
The staff tried to stop them at the hospital. "I'm sorry, but none of you are family. You can't go any further."
Mary Margaret all but yelled at the nurses, "That's ridiculous! We are her family!"
"I understand you feel that way, ma'am, but you cannot go with her to the emergency room and you cannot have access to her room later. It is hospital policy."
James slammed his badge on the counter in front of the nurse, "How is this for hospital policy?" He ground out.
Turns out, it worked pretty well. It didn't get them into the emergency room, but they were shown to Emma's room when she came out.
Dr. Whale told them that is was a miracle Emma was here with them right now. Being hit by a car like that, head on and without any sort of protection, she should be dead. And yet, here she lay, alive and with minimal injuries compared to what she should be. Broken ribs, a cracked femur with deep bruises, a sprained wrist, and a rough bump on her head that should have caused a concussion.
Now they sat, numbly staring at Emma's unconscious form, all three reliving the last twenty-four hours. Questions came in from newspapers, which the hospital kept at bay, and emergency personnel who wanted to know what do about the missing Jefferson,– whose name they only learned by searching his home– wrecked car, and the dead Ingrid.
While James and Mary Margaret had focused on Emma and her well being, David had thought about the car and the driver in it. Unfortunately for Emma, he wasn't very quick with a gun, but he eventually did the job. It took all eight rounds of the pistol James had given him, but finally one landed, and landed fatally.
The crime scene crew found the drug used on Emma and her personal effects, evidence of multiple struggles, the telescopes, and most curious of all– a room full of top hats.
James left all of this to the crew, remaining firm at Emma's side and deferring all trivial and most serious matters to the crew head. He couldn't leave her. Wouldn't leave her. He was awash with relief, frustration, love, and feelings of inadequacy. So he sat next her bed and held her hand, moving her hair with his fake one every now and then when it would fall back into her face.
He didn't have much time for the crew anyway after Henry came running in, tears streaming down his face. He ran straight for the bed, climbing over the railing to get to Emma. James grabbed him and pulled the boy to him as Henry cried "mom" repeatedly, asking for her to wake up. He curled into James as Regina snarled from the doorway. "That's enough Henry, I've brought you. Now it is time to go." But still, he clung to James. Henry had accused her of trying to kill Emma and told her that if she didn't do it then she'd take him to the hospital to see her.
He snapped at her, "You go! I'm staying here!"
So here he sat, with a packed bag, leaning heavily into James' side when Regina saw that she couldn't get him to move yet. She finally left, an idea forming in her mind, when Henry's anger and fear moved onto someone else.
"Why can't you all just listen? Why can't you all wake up already?"
"Henry?" James was exhausted, mentally, emotionally, and physically he could not handle this today, but he knew Henry couldn't deal with it either. So James listened.
"Don't 'Henry' me! This wouldn't have happened if you were awake Killian! Emma would have you! Her lieutenant and Captain Hook!" Aggressively point at Mary Margaret and David, "AND her parents! Snow White and Prince Charming! Instead, she's still alone!" Tears were rolling again, "She still doesn't have a family that can protect her! I'm only ten! I can't do it! You're her parents! And you're her true love! You're supposed to be the ones protecting her!"
Henry's loud cries and damnations pulled Emma from her slumber, quietly she tried to whispered his name.
He didn't hear her. "Does she not mean anything to you?!" He started throwing things at them, "Do you– not– love HER?" He yelled at James as he chucked tissue and glove boxes at him. He turned on Mary Margaret and David, starting down the same tirade when James forged the tornade of medical supplies Henry was hurling to wrap him in his arms.
"Shhh. She's going to be okay, lad. She's going to be okay." Henry resisted him for a moment, but at James' reassuring words he crumpled. Welting, hot tears rolled down cheeks that he pressed into the crook of James' neck. His fears and anxieties came to the surface. With each one that came forward, James offered a soothing comfort.
By this time, Emma had almost fully awoken, aware now that her son needed her. All the attention in the room was on Henry, and Emma was no different. She wanted to see her son, to hold him and reassure him that she was alright, that she wasn't leaving him so soon.
Her movement of struggling to sit up caught David's attention, who moved to help her as Mary Margaret was now kneeling next to James and Henry. 'Don't move so much, Emma. Your ribs are broken."
Mary Margaret turned at David's voice and shook James and Henry when she saw Emma trying to move.
Emma ignored both of them and called for her son in a stronger voice, "Henry." His big, child eyes were on her now, "Henry. I'm alright. I pro–"
Henry launched himself into his mother.
"Umpf," Emma grunted when he made contact with her shoulder. Her arms wrapped around him, ignoring the stabbing pain in her side and the rebellion coming from her shoulder.
Dr. Whale had said that she was lucky to be alive, that nothing short of magic could explain her limited injuries.
"I–was–so–scare–d–d–d," Henry bawled into the crook of her neck.
Emma didn't know what to do and the drugs weren't helping. Her arms were around Henry, but that was the only thing they were doing. Slowly and sloppily she tried to both pat and rub his back at the same time.
She failed at doing both.
But Henry cried himself out pretty quickly anyway, a ten year old can only cry so much in one day.
Henry tucked himself into her side, Emma wiped the tears off of his red cheeks. "Better?" His face was still scrunched up, but he shook his head 'yes' at her. He was scared, of course he was. "Hey, Henry?" Emma's voice was quiet and groggy, and Henry looked at her with wide, still afraid eyes. "I love you, kid." Her mouth felt like mashed potatoes.
This moment, this hospital bed, with these broken ribs, and injured shoulder, was the first moment in ten years that Emma Swan told someone that she loved them.
A grin broke over his face, his eyes shined like stars in the sky. "I love you too."
Emma's head fell back against her pillows. She kept her hand on Henry's cheek, moving it to sloppily run her fingers through his hair. "Do you have your storybook?"
She smiled at his, "Who do you think I am?" and asked him to read it to her, which he immediately complied to do.
Emma was lulled back to sleep by the rhythm of her son's voice.
Regina came for Henry that evening with a promise that he'd be back tomorrow. In front of his mother Henry defiantly gave the still asleep Emma a kiss on the cheek and walked out of the room, leaving his storybook on the bedside table.
It was Mary Margaret who broke the silence left in his wake. Reaching for the storybook she said, "I can't believe it was in front of me the entire time."
"Mary Margaret?"
"Why Emma made sense." Mary Margaret was responding to David, but her voice sounded far away as she opened the book to its end. "Why her being here was so normal, so right."
James sat quietly, clenching his fist as David questioned her. "What do mean 'made sense'?"
"I couldn't explain it before, but everything about Emma made sense. Her presence. Her story." Slowly Mary Margaret ran her fingers through the torn edges that remained of the final pages. "Wanting a complete stranger to stay. To move in with you." Looking at James, "To want her to work alongside of you. There's no reason why any of that…" Her voice dropped off as her fingers twirled the fringes of ruined paper.
"Should feel right." James finished for her. "There's no real reason why Emma should feel so right. From the very beginning, Emma just made everything… full somehow."
"Full…" Mary Margaret repeated, a small smile curving her mouth. "Like our hearts are more complete because she's here."
David shook his head at their insanity. "But Mary Margaret, you heard Henry. She's supposed to be your–our– daughter. That we're really Snow White and Prince Charm–" In the middle of his speech David reached for the storybook.
What happened is what stopped his disagreement.
With both he and Mary Margaret holding the storybook a light emitted from it, momentarily blinding one and all.
The missing pages came with the light and stayed when it left.
Staring up at them was an image of a baby girl wrapped in a fleece as white as snow blanket, with the name 'Emma' threaded it through it using a purple ribbon. The man who was holding her looked exactly like David Nolan.
In the time leading up to finding Emma they had all seen that exact same blanket draped over a chair next to her bed.
The whispered "Bloody hell" by James pretty well summed up how they all felt in that moment.
"Do we tell her?" David asked softly in the dim lamp light. Night had fallen hours ago, but none of them could force themselves to pry away from Emma.
"We shouldn't."
"James is right. She didn't tell us, tell me, for a reason and we should respect that. All of this has already been so hard on her. To finally have found her parents after all this time... but not being able to talk to them, to really see them, has to have killed her. If we tell her that we know who she is, but don't remember anything she'll still be stuck in the same place, except this time we might be adding more pain than comfort."
"What have you, Emma, and Henry been doing to break the curse?" James asked.
"Playing the long game. The curse separated everyone from their loved ones and twisted who they were. We thought that the best tactic would be to bring people together, trying to bring out who they really are and…" A blush rose to her cheeks, "we thought that reuniting Snow White and Prince Charming would break the curse." She marched on when David tried to stop her, "But I don't think that anymore. Emma escaped the curse for a reason. It's all right here in the book, she's the Savior. Emma thought she was here to reunite people and that someone else would break the curse. That's wrong. The only person how can break the curse is her."
"And how does she go about doing that?"
Mary Margaret stared James Jones in the eyes and declared with no small amount of uncertainty, "With true love and that's you."
"That's impossible. We're not– Emma can't–"
"Is that you talking, Jones? Or the curse?"
James sat in silence, wrestling with the uncomfortable feelings coming to a head inside of him. He's had dreams of Emma. Dreams of long blonde hair and emerald eyes dancing under the moonlight on the deck of a wooden ship.
"Come with me," he always dreamed of asking.
"Come with me," James said out loud now, testing the words in his mouth looking for a muscle memory.
"Come with me," he repeated. The words were right and the dream was wrong. The certainty settle over him, James knew that those were memories.
James gazed at Emma. It was real? He and Emma were true love? "So what," he asked "I just kiss her and this whole curse is over?"
"I don't know," Mary Margaret told him. "I don't know how any of this actually works. All I have are guesses and it's the same with Emma. I think she's the key to this, she has to be, but magic I'm betting is tricky and there's probably more to it than just a kiss."
James looked at Mary Margaret and David, at Emma's parents who couldn't even remember being married or having the daughter that lies before them. The daughter that had to grow up completely alone and unloved. So much time has been wasted, so much time has been lost. James cursed everything in existence and said fuck it as he stood up. He leaned over Emma and numerous unnamed emotions flooded him as he bent down to plant a kiss on her forehead.
Nothing happened other than the constricting of his heart. It's not the answer, he cursed himself as he sat down in desolation.
David and Mary Margaret both tried their turn at kissing Emma's forehead, and both failed. They thought that being her parents would guarantee them a true love's kiss and therefore their memories… both were incredibly disappointed.
All three sat in solemn silence. The idea of Emma being more to all of them than she was, of being someone so important, someone who they loved and loved them, had caused their hearts to swell.
But that swelling became constricting when they all failed.
"How could we all have failed?" Mary Margaret asked.
"Maybe you're wrong…"
"Shut up, Dave. You know she's right mate." James leaned his head back against the wall and gazed at Emma. He had almost lost her. If the curse is true, he did lose her. He lost her long ago. From the moment he saw Emma Swan he knew he loved her, but he had been so afraid of it. Afraid of her, but was that really him? Or had it been the curse that made him skittish of her every word? God, what did the curse do to them? His heart hurt, physically is ached and he couldn't remember a time when it didn't.
Except when he was with Emma. His mind was erratic and cautious around her, but his heart… his heart was always at ease.
It was her.
It had always been her.
This just wasn't their moment.
"It's Henry. If it's none of us then it's Henry."
"But how do we–"
"We wait it out." If what Henry said was true, that he was a two hundred year old pirate, then fate had to have played a part in reuniting him and Emma.
Fate would break this curse.
"Fate is on our side." James declared to Mary Margaret and David.
Later, when Mary Margaret and David fell asleep huddle uncomfortably together in their chairs, and all was quiet except for the machinery in the room, James could hear the ticking of the wall clock.
He preferred to think of it as a metaphor for Fate's clock running down.
Tick Tock.