This is actually the sequel to a somewhat longer fic that I'll be posting someday. I'm sorry for the wait with updates, real life got busy and I had to go on a HIATUS when I lost my laptop. Feel free to send me any prompts if you've got some!
Prompt: "I've missed this"
A flash of magic.
Henry, Henry dying, Henry smiling, "You did it."
Killian, Killian's smile fading, Killian's words, "Well done, Swan."
Mary Margaret, mom, her mom crying, "Emma."
David, dad, her dad holding her, "Emma."
Emma, Emma the orphan, Emma the savior.
The curse was broken, it was back to their happy endings for everyone, but Emma couldn't join in the festivities, even as they locked Regina and Rumpelstiltskin away, even as her son thrived under the love of his grandparents.
Everyone picked up where they left off, like they hadn't spent twenty-eight years under a curse.
It didn't feel like twenty-eight years, they would say when Henry asked.
Maybe that was the crux of the matter. It didn't feel like twenty-eight years for them, they woke up remembering a little girl all innocent and new and who would love. Instead of their dreams, they got Emma. Emma, who remembered their twenty-eight year long absence like a physical ache, who couldn't pretend like the rest of them like nothing happened, because the curse wasn't their entire lives but the curse was most certainly hers.
Why were they pretending that it didn't happen?
A pleasant jungle sounded as the door above the diner opened and she heard Ruby call a greeting to Mary Margaret and David, who smiled and waved back. Emma lifted her head, surprised to find that the clock read eight o'clock rather than six o'clock and that her mug of hot chocolate was long cold.
As if second sense told them she was here, they both turned simultaneously, seeming to know where she sat, a furrow of determination to both their brows. It was so... familiar and she couldn't figure out why for the longest moment, or she denied it, until Mary Margaret tilted her head and she could see the angle of her nose was identical to Henry's.
Henry had Mary Margaret's nose.
Mary Margaret, her mother.
These people were her parents.
Her parents, her parents, but they weren't her parents, were they? They didn't...
She lurched to her feet, knocking the mug over, and spared only a brief glance at the mess with wide eyes before she sprinted out of the diner.
Twenty-eight years without them and Emma couldn't be in the same room as them.
What kind of person was she?
She darted away from the loft she shared with them, heading down to the harbor instead. Nobody spent time there, the rickety dock a hazard more than anything, and if she wanted any privacy, she figured that was the place to go. They wouldn't look for her here, they thought her sanctuary would be her bug, but even that seemed wrong.
Twenty-eight years of aching for more and she couldn't stand to be around them, needed a few minutes of privacy because she felt she might scream. Henry was all she could handle, she hadn't been lying when she told August that before everything went to hell. Now she didn't even know where August was and she couldn't yell at him, the only one who knew how time passed, the only one who remembered before and during and after.
Figured she wouldn't get much of a choice in the rest. Nothing was ever her choice.
She figured she would hate herself later for being stupid, for snubbing the family she had always dreamed of, but as she reached the harbor, the breeze off the ocean a much needed chill, she let her have this moment. She didn't cry, somehow she couldn't make them come, but she shook like she was, her lips trembling and her shoulders shaking, not a tear in sight.
"You'll catch your death out here and I imagine that would put a damper on the festivities, lass."
She didn't jump at his voice. Truthfully, she had heard footsteps, but ignored them, hoping Mary Margaret or David or whichever well meaning civilian would take a hike. That voice though, she hadn't heard it since before the curse broke and she turned almost instinctively, frowning. "Killian?"
His hair was a mess, like he had spent a long time running his hand through it for less than savory reasons, purple bruises beneath his eyes to match hers, like he couldn't sleep since the curse broke anymore than she could. She could see the fire now, the one she had seen from the beginning, hidden beneath the fear. That must have been the real him. This must be the real him: the leather, the vest, the necklaces and charms, the hook where his prosthetic used to be.
She remembered, briefly, asking who he was in the other land, never receiving a response from anybody. She couldn't ask him either; he vanished from Storybrooke as soon as the curse broke, clearly not wanting anyone to find him.
"Most people go by my more colorful moniker: Hook." He held it up, noticing where her eyes had gone, and though he tried to sound humorous, she could detect the edge of unease under his words.
She squinted at him. Captain Hook. She could see it, but she couldn't make call him Hook, it just didn't fit. She knew him as Killian and, damn it, she wanted one thing to stay the same. "Is that what you would prefer me to call you?"
His head tilted. "No," he said seriously. He blinked, the same look he did before, where his words surprised him, but rather than stutter out an apology, he smirked at her. "I do like the way my name sounds on your tongue."
She snorted. "Good to know."
"Not going to punch me or something?"
"Do you have a thing for people beating you up now? I thought you did before, because you didn't really fight for anything, but I figured that was the curse," she said absently. He shivered. She eyed his clothes, particularly the exposure of his chest and while she wasn't complaining for it, she was finally getting a glimpse at something that she had only dreamed of before, she figured that he was probably cold. "You should probably put on your old clothes."
"The hook clashes," he said tightly.
"Right because Captain Hook has a thing for fashion, I must have missed that detail in the movie. What with the perm and everything," she said without thinking. She flinched, remembering that this whole thing wasn't a joke, that he wasn't playing at being Captain Hook just to make her laugh, that he was Captain Hook before she was even born. Which reminded her... "How old are you?"
"It's not polite to ask someone's age."
"We both know I'm not polite and you're supposed to be a pirate."
"You can be polite, you just choose when to use it."
"Don't avoid the question."
He scratched behind his ear, a nervous twitch she had seen more often in his time as Cursed Killian than the flirting jokes of the real one. "More or less three hundred years."
"You don't know?"
"You lose track of time on Neverland. Plus the twenty-eight years of the curse."
"People can barely remember what happened during the curse," at least until Emma came around, but she didn't say as much. He looked at her in a way that made her think he noticed, but made no comment. "And nobody aged, I don't think it counts."
"After a hundred years, every extra time alive counts," he said, narrowing his eyes.
She waited for him to explain further, but he didn't. He looked away from her, out onto the water, and Emma waited a fraction of a moment longer, just to give him time to collect himself, before blurting out: "What does that mean?"
"Nothing important."
"Way to be vague. I thought old you was annoying."
"How rude," he said, snorting.
"Shut up."
"Make me."
"What are you, five?"
He raised a brow. "Says the one using a retort from the 1990s."
"You don't even remember the 1990s!" She said, exasperated.
"I remember enough."
And maybe he did, maybe he did remember some of the years that he was here, stuck under a curse. But that wasn't true because he didn't, he didn't remember any of the curse, he would be like everyone else expecting things to go back to the way they were, not realizing that everything had changed.
Nobody remembered before and during and after the curse.
And maybe that's why she shot to her feet, jabbing his chest with her fingers, ignoring the feel of his skin and the widening of his eyes. "No, you don't! It was the blink of an eye for you, just a bunch of days where everything was the exact same, you probably wouldn't even remember how long you were under until everyone else started spouting off how long it was based off how old I was! And now the curse is broken and you can go back to being whoever you were before because those twenty-eight years don't matter!" She sucked in a breath, because her throat hurt from yelling and her eyes burned and she realized as a tear dripped off her jaw that she was finally, finally crying.
She turned away, swiping beneath her eyes, but now that they were coming, they didn't seem to be making any attempt at stopping. Crying helped, she knew it did, but she didn't want to be facing anyone when it struck.
He caught her wrist, tugging her back over, and she only caught a glimpse of his face, the clenched jaw and the flashing eyes, before he was hugging her against him. His hook was on her back, holding her in place,but his hand ran through her hair soothingly, as he did that night after Graham's funeral. She shuddered, clutching the lapels of his jacket, her nose pressed into neck.
She didn't cry more, she didn't think she had that in her, not even around him, but she didn't stop the ones from falling, just breathing, just thinking. She had only hugged him twice, once after Graham died and another time when she thought there was no chance at saving Mary Margaret, and she thought that this would be different, that a hug from Cursed Killian would be different than a hug from Real Killian.
It wasn't.
When her breathing was more even, when she was contemplating pulling away, he said, "I remember only what the curse let me. I remember having a brother and I remember having a woman to love, I remember losing both. I don't remember anything different between the first year of the curse and the tenth year of the curse or even the twenty-seventh year of the damn thing." He paused. She didn't feel much better and thought about telling him he needed to take a class on it. He continued before she could, "But those years did matter."
She frowned, lifting her head some, her hair catching on the rings on his hand. "You just said you don't remember."
"I don't remember all of it," he amended. "I remember enough to know the man I was before, while cowardly, was probably a better man than the one I am now, but I have no wish to return to him. Those years matter because it reminded me of Liam, of Milah, of what they meant to me and sometime over the past three hundred years-"
"Give or take," she added.
"Over the past three hundred years, give or take, I've let revenge become the only thing I could think of. I barely remember the sound of his voice or the color of her eyes, I don't remember how they laughed, I don't remember how they yelled. I only remembered how they died."
"I don't understand."
"I didn't think I could ever let go of them until the curse, until the curse showed me how it would be if I cared little for them when they died."
She pulled back more, his hand falling from her hair to rest on either side of her waist. "How is that a good thing?"
He smiled, his eyes turning wistful. "Now that the curse is broken, I remember more than how they died. I remember things from before the curse and I remember things from during the curse, even if the latter are false."
She didn't know why he was telling her any of this. "I don't understand still."
"I'm really buggering this up, aren't I?" He let go of her, nearly scratching his nose with his hook before seeming to remember how bad of an idea that was. He let it drop down again. "I'm telling you this because no matter what you think, I can't go back to the way I was before. Too much has changed since then."
She stared, speechless, but he continued before she could say anything. "And I'm fairly certain the rest of your family can't either."
"They don't remember any of it. They just woke up as Snow White and Prince Charming again, they're looking for the baby girl they put into a wardrobe maybe two weeks ago. But it wasn't two weeks ago." She tried not to sound bitter about that, she really did, but it leaked through anyway.
"No, but you've got the rest of your lives to make up for lost time, aye? Seems they just don't want to miss out on anything else."
"...I know." She did know. That didn't make it any easier. These weren't foster parents, if they sent her back they wouldn't just be another name in her book of disappointments, if they decided they hated or that she was worthless or that she was the disappointment then... Well, that would be it for her.
She didn't know if she could survive that. Twenty-eight years of living without them, but craving for them meant she didn't know what to do now that she had them. Late, but better than never.
They didn't remember time passing, but they saw the evidence of it. In her, in Henry.
She sighed, leaning her forehead on his shoulder. He stiffened for a moment, but relaxed into it, running his hand through her hair again.
They stood there for a long time, not speaking, until at last the sun was high above their heads, the heat of it burning her neck. He chuckled, gently pulling his hand away and pushing her back. "Perhaps time to head home. I imagine your family will be looking for you."
She had left the diner in a rush quite a few hours ago and she had been ignoring her phone as it vibrated in her pockets, but Emma was reluctant to leave. "Yeah," she said anyway, clearing her throat, shoving her hands into the pocket of her jeans. "I... I should probably go. Thank you for... being there."
"Truthfully, I've missed this," he said quietly.
"You missed having some random chick cry at you?" She joked weakly, tilting her head away to hide her blush.
"I've missed having a reason to be close to you. Our... friendship was important to me." She didn't think he meant friendship, but she also didn't think she could add his feelings for her onto of everything else she needed to do now. Maybe in the future.
The fact that she was entertaining that idea at all is one of the reason she knew that she had to leave. She offered him a tentative smile, because even if she wanted to run from it, she didn't want him to do the same, she didn't want him to give up on her.
"Don't hide anymore. Wherever you've been hiding," she said instead.
"Aye, I'll try to remember that."
"That was supposed to be a hint about you telling me where you've been."
"Maybe another day, love, you can't use me as an excuse to avoid them."
She laughed, the sound croaky after crying and sitting in the wind, but more truthful than anything she had done in two weeks.
"See ya, Killian."
He nodded, lifting his hook in farewell. Emma might have looked back over her shoulder the entire walk back to the loft, even when he long disappeared from sight, but she wouldn't admit to that.