Disclaimer: I do not own the show or the characters of Once Upon A Time. There's no profit except writing practice being made here.
"I suppose we're lucky we wound up here," Hook grumbled unenthusiastically, offering her his hand so she could stand. Emma gripped it, her left hand stuffing the scrap of his sleeve into her back pocket. "We could've appeared in the middle of the Ogre Wars or smack dab in the belly of a whale."
They sounded like references to stories, but Emma got the distinct impression Killian was speaking from his own experiences. She wished he would do that more, open up to her. She didn't blame him, Emma knew all about walls, and she knew enough about the pirate that he wasn't going to open up for just anyone. He'd been burned before and carried those scars for centuries. For a moment, Emma wondered if she should have been thinking about that when they entered the portal, perhaps then she'd learn something new about the enigma beside her. Then again, that would be discovering about him without his permission and probably some invasion of privacy or consent or bad form, at the least.
"You don't seem happy."
He cast her a furtive look that Emma interpreted as being lost. She knew that feeling but she also knew the pirate captain spent his years on foreign shores, perpetually learning of new cultures and immersing himself in them, lost or not lost, he was probably very good at pretending he knew exactly what he was doing.
He never said, 'Your world,' Emma had noticed. Not 'mine' either and Emma wondered if that was genuinely not seeing a problem with their cultural differences or a calculated choice not to spook her and remind her how different they really were.
"This world is a strange one, Swan," he announced, gazing up. "All the beauty is hidden by infrastructure. And the birds are monstrous."
"Birds?" Emma frowned over at the pirate before following his gaze.
She had to agree most of the natural world was hidden by buildings, although she remembered the mayor calling to change that, but Killian was missing the key element. The buildings were structured with beauty in kind. It wasn't trees and ocean or fields of flowers, but they were beautiful of their own accord. Emma blinked at the thought, she'd never thought anything remotely similar before, always hating the buildings of the city, the concrete on all sides but the unattainable up.
"That's a plane. Like a, an air ship, I guess."
"Ships fly here?" His face softened with wonder, eyes turning wide. It made him look young, much younger, completely unsullied by the pain and darkness that normally weighed the man down. "Without magic?"
Emma nodded, "They run on the same stuff my car does."
She supposed that would seem like magic to someone who hadn't grown accustomed to it.
"Your vessel," Killian's head whipped to look at her, "Does it fly also?"
Emma smiled no.
"What of the larger ones then?" he inquired.
"What larger ones?" Emma frowned, turning to face Hook. "You mean trucks?" She pointed at the busy street and the big four wheeler that lumbered past as though one wheel was flat, to help her try to clarify. "Like them?"
There were hardly big moving trucks like that in Storybrooke, Emma wondered where Killian would have seen one.
"Aye," he nodded grimly, "The trip to Storybrooke in that vessel was far swifter than it was in yours."
"When were you in a truck?"
Killian arched an eyebrow as though he was amazed she hadn't observed it herself. "The lass, Tamara, brought me to Storybrooke in such a machine."
"So then you know it didn't fly?" Emma felt her eyebrows pull together, completely opposite to Hook's upward expression.
Killian chuckled. "I didn't exactly have the prime first mate seat in the carriage as I did in yours, love. The seat in the back, like a dark room."
Emma blanched. How did she not know this?
She'd never asked, was the easy answer. Killian knew she wouldn't like the answer even if he wasn't sure what had happened except for darkness, and so had kept he truth to himself, never intending to tell her.
"God, Killian." There must have been vines constricting her chest, it was the only explanation for why she couldn't breathe all of a sudden.
"So," Killian asked when he realised Emma wasn't going to elaborate on the difference between the machines and clearly now trying to distract her from the images she'd conjured of the broken-ribbed, concussed pirate captain being manhandled by the woman into the back of a van, hurt and scared and lashing out because of it but too injured to break free.
The thought made her sick. Emma was glad for the conversational distraction.
"When are we then, Swan?"
""Well," Emma considered what had happened. "I was thinking about going back to New York," Emma told him.
"You think time portals work like any other sort?" He asked her. He had more of a frame of reference than she did. A year and a bit ago, she'd never heard of portals at all, and even now she's only travelled - oh, quite more than she realised, Emma discovered as she counted the return trips she'd done - Enchanted Forest, Neverland, now - the number was getting quite high for someone who had never heard of a portal before she'd arrived in Storybrooke. "They take you back to where you're thinking of?"
"I was thinking about the life Henry and I had here," she admitted, gazing around to find a familiar street sign so she could pinpoint exactly where in the city they had ended up.
"In your false life?" It was an old game by now, how he had to correct her in an attempt to keep her in Storybrooke and she had to pretend the very same idea hadn't been the first thing she'd objected to back when they were standing by the town line and Regina said she and Henry could be happy in their new life with the memories she gave them.
Still, Emma felt the anger bubble in her. "I get it, Hook. It was a life based in fiction. But it was a good one. We were happy."
"And you're not now."
Emma startled, flinching at how quiet Killian sounded.
It wasn't a question, pleading her to answer that she didn't know and would use finding out as an excuse to hide the fact that she was running away now that the danger had stopped and the future, the happiness, was tangible, and it upset Emma to know that Killian wasn't playing anymore, that he wasn't biting or fighting or all that surprised to say those harsh words.
"We were safe," she reiterated.
"Ah."
That all too familiar knowing look of his shadowed Hook's face and Emma turned away from his gaze lest he read more of her heart. Only Emma got the feeling he was wallowing now, not quite understanding she'd been clarifying not confirming.
"But how can we even be sure that was a time portal?"
"An excellent question, lass." Killian turned around in a semicircle but with no obvious regime or natural symbol like a flower that only bloomed every hundred years, Emma wasn't sure what he would find or, indeed, what he was looking for given that he wasn't familiar with this world.
"Don't move," Emma told him.
They were in the middle of a long street, residential and a little familiar, and Emma couldn't see any street signs to identify what street exactly they had landed on.
She raced down the end of the street where there was a news stand and grabbed a paper from the rack. As she turned back around and strolled back toward Killian, she watched the pirate, standing out like a dark blotch of ink on pristine white paper. He was unmissable and unmistakable as something strange and at odds with this world but still two New York natives in grey suits, one with a briefcase and the other with a phone in their hand, bumped into him on their way passed.
"Watch it," the first man said as Hook stumbled with the force of the accident, blaming the stationary man for being in the way rather than apologising.
Emma could see Killian's hackles rise, his shoulders lowering like he was taking a deep breath, his hand sliding down the strap of his satchel across his chest and then settling against his belt.
Before the pirate could say anything, the second man ploughed into him, knocking his other shoulder and spinning leather around in an arc.
"Oi! Mate, I'd-"
"What are you meant to be?" The man had the audacity to snicker at Killian, eyeing him up and down. "A pirate? Pirates are-"
"I'd not finish that sentence if I were you, unless you desire to be run through." Emma thought Killian said. She wasn't so good at lipreading, but his accent, whispered though it was, carried to her on the wind. She was very much trained to hear that voice as clear as day even when the street was bustling with cars and the sound of a coffee frother going off somewhere nearby and a train whistling beneath them.
Up on his toes Killian became slightly taller than the man, only an eyelash or two, but it had the intended affect as Hook got far too close to be comfortable, threatening the man with his stance alone. Emma saw the office worker shiver.
She did too but for an entirely different, altogether alarming reason.
And then she saw the man's thumb slide across the screen of his phone. These new phones were tricky and Emma knew, from experience with deadbeat alimony skippers, that 911 was all too easy to dial secretly. Easy, and yet still quite a hassle to call without looking.
Emma strode over to the men and gripped Killian's elbow. She'd hoped he'd move with her, but he seemed to be glued to the floor - he probably a very steady, very low centre of gravity from years on a moving pirate ship but still it surprised her that not even her body weight would make him budge. So, instead of simply pulling him away, she found herself saying, "Isn't it a great costume, my son's going to love it. He's turning thirteen and-"
The man lost interest and ignored the rest of Emma's explanation, walking away from them and returning his eyes to the phone in his hand as he did so.
"There," she showed Hook the front page of the folded up newspaper, shoving it to his chest roughly and pressing it there with her hand. "Two months ago. This is the past."
"Good to know," he nodded. "We know two things: it was definitely a time portal, and it appears they share a quality with the regular sort. They don't stay open for the return trip."
Emma shook her head. "I should have left Storybrooke the instant we defeated Zelena. This is exactly the kind of thing that does not happen in New York."
"You stayed because you wanted to help your parents with your brother."
Emma rolled her eyes. "I stayed because I missed all of that with Henry and Henry wanted time with Regina and the more I let him go with her and spent time with the baby, the more it became clear to me that while I had memories of raising Henry, I had no idea what I was doing."
Those were some of the worst days of her life, Emma hadn't admitted to anyone, and that wasn't even because she shared a flat with her parents, her son, and a newborn. Henry wanted almost nothing to do with her, busy catching up with Regina. Emma didn't resent that, Regina was his mother, after all. But Emma remembered a life where Regina wasn't, where she didn't have to share custody of her son with anyone. She wanted that life back.
And the new baby only reminded her that those memories weren't real. Part of her knew how to cradle his head and what volume to speak at to help the kid fall asleep, but Emma also knew she shouldn't have any clue about any of it.
Her parents were there, doing a good job of balancing their new child with their older one and Emma loved them for making her feel like a big sister, not a nanny, and someone they needed, not dead weight. But they shouldn't have to walk on egg shells to make her feel wanted and loved, they should be focusing on their baby and Emma, even though she'd wanted nothing more than to find her family her whole life, wanted her parents to look her in the eye and say 'you can go now,' not for good, but just so they could have some time as a family because even though most of the time she felt like their little girl and she liked it, sometimes she didn't feel like she was part of their little unit. Not now when it looked so traditional from the outside.
"And real estate's much more reasonable there," Killian smiled at her.
"Don't," Emma warned, more to herself than to him, trying to stave off the laughter. He was good at distracting her with an inappropriately timed joke and Emma loved that he could redirect her attention so easily. It was something he'd probably learnt on his ship as he gave orders to reluctant crew or distracted form a particularly bad storm.
"I understand your frustration," he smiled in that charming way he did. He was too understanding, for Emma's liking, always knowing exactly what she was thinking even if she disguised it behind anger and snippy remarks. "But we've been in dire straits before. There's no need to be antsy. We have our wits. We just have to focus on being constructive. Any ideas how to go back?"
"How would I know how to get back to the future?" she snapped. It was far too easy to snap at Killian, he didn't mind or fight back. Emma hated that about him. Not that he let her get angry with him without calling her out for being unfair like her parents were likely to do, but because he seemed to believe her snapping at him was something he directly, and expressly, deserved. He wasn't surprised if she called him a pirate like it was a bad thing, or rolled her eyes at the idea of being together, instead he bowed his head and apologised for assuming he'd ever rise out of that station in her eyes. He didn't even stop to question why she immediately assumed any future she had would include him even though he'd said nothing of the sort, something that kept Emma up until the early hours. "Who do I look like? Marty McFly?"
"Marty Mc - who?" He was strangely sweet and innocent looking when he was confused.
Emma got caught up in the game, attempting to explain before she ran out of breath, again wondering if Killian was as clueless as he said or if he was trying - and succeeding - in distracting her.
"Is he some sort of wizard?"
"No, Marty McFly is not a wizard. But maybe a wizard is exactly what we need. August wrote about a man named the Dragon. We could find him."
"Air ships, moving pictures, calling someone leagues away without shouting yourself hoarse and a man who is also dragon," Hook sighed, "And you call this the Land Without Magic?" He shrugged. "Alright, where do we go?"
"First," Emma scowled at another passerby. She hadn't noticed it so much when she was ranting, her eyes closed when she was discussing Henry and her parents, but with them open she could plainly see that Killian was getting some curious, and not entirely weirded-out, looks. "We need a change of clothes."