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.
"Dad, you have to go."
The five best and worst words spoken to him in the last month. Tilly had said them exactly twice and used the phrase completely unfairly both times.
"Dad! You can't just call like this, it's date night. Seriously, Dad, you have to go."
And the more recent:
"So, other you was just showing off his little girl and he casually mentioned that he knows where your Emma is."
"Alice," he warned, fading off with nothing he could rightly say. There was so many issues with the entire premise of Killian and Emma of this world forcing him into a blind date with the Emma of his world. Insurmountable, the mountain of reasons why the quest was ridiculous.
Yet his daughter stomped the list down and burnt it until those declensions were nothing more than smoke in the wind.
"You're lonely, old man," she giggled,
"I'm alone, love. I'm not lonely."
"And when I'm on my honeymoon, who's going to look after you? Make sure you eat?"
"I can bloody well look after myself, Tilly."
"But you don't have to." Her eyes were as changeable as the sea, tranquil like the sky or navy with rage, "She's out there. All alone too. Waiting. Dad, you have to go."
So here he was, following the map the man with his own face had drawn him. It was the darndest thing, king of the pirates, Killian Jones was, yet he had decoded the man's map in half a heartbeat. Rogers suspected it was because they shared many of the same experiences, that the key the pirate used was easily accessible, but that didn't stop him from reprimanding the other Killian Jones for his laziness.
Trekking through the dense underbrush was nothing short of dismal. Alice had sworn she'd see this through to the end, accompanying him on his journey to save the princess - Killian promised himself he wouldn't press for more. That was the deal he had made with his daughter, there were no assurances on either his nor the lost princess' side that his rescue of her from the tower she was trapped in would result in any form of friendship, let alone anything more.
Father and daughter had parted ways not a day before, Robyn - who had not wanted to accompany them, perceiving the trip as a father-daughter journey until Alice had insisted - had come across a small cottage and posited that cleaning the place would result in a nice place to rest both overnight and once they had the princess in their band. It was a sweet little villa, humble. The previous owners were long since departed, the furnishing covered in dust and cobwebs that proved difficult but not impossible to clean. Surrounding the property, was endless forest and flowers galore and a neat fence line with what seemed to be rich-enough soil as the corpse of crops long dead still peaked out from overgrown weeds. Alice hinted that it might be nice as a more permanent residence. Rogers was particularly proud of his little apartment back in the Heights and all the modern conveniences that came with it, but he wasn't totally averse to the idea of tilling soil and watching seedlings sprout in the springtime sun, stoking the fire in the winter. It didn't so much as bother him where they settled so long as they were near.
Supposedly, the tower with the lost princess was just beyond the cavern, a paradisal nook behind a curtain of leaves.
Parting the leaves with his prosthetic hand, Rogers took in the sunny alcove. It was spacious, like something out of one of those movies the girls liked to watch on movie nights in his apartment - the ones with the too-bright colours and hand-drawn characters.
Birds chirped in trees that lined a wide paddock, flowers sprouted in all the colours cast by sunlight on sea spray. Right in the middle of it all stood craggy stones stacked between veins of moss, brick hidden by a sheen of foliage, and sandstone toward the bottom, crumbling as though time was running out on the structure.
Past the massive column, Killian could see the horizon, blue meeting blue signalling this tower was not simply an isolated prison without another purpose, as another tower he'd been fated to frequent had been, but a signal for sailors, a guiding beacon.
Hope, for those on the high seas.
A gust brought the salt of the ocean - low tide, a swell collecting to the east as a storm brewed - to his nostrils. With it, came the scent of turned earth and berries, despite the fact he hadn't clocked any fruit in bloom in his scan of the environment.
Rogers gripped the hilt of his weapon, preparing to pull his sword from his scabbard but thought twice of it. Instead, he opened his satchel. Inside lay a handful of morsels and a bladder he'd half-drunk during the heat of the day. Beneath the provisions lay a measure of thick rope, although not much, and a shining curve of silver. It was a relic in this realm, but as useful on this day as it had been three hundred years ago.
He made slow work of the ascent after swapping his prosthetic hand for an ancient sailing tool and used his hook to climb the side of the tower. Rogers had years of practice, Emma had been correct in assuming he was the right man for the job. So much so, that he made light work of scaling the side of the building, almost half-way up the side when a voice startled him from below.
"Oi, you up there!" A woman called, her voice carried up to him on the wind. "What do you think you're doing?"
Rogers braved a downward glance and with it, lost his hook-hold, silver sending sparks down the stone as he slid downward before catching on the vines that strangled the base of the tower.
Landing in a heap on the thick tufts of grass, Rogers quickly rifled through his satchel. It was a strange desire, he'd worn his hook for decades without a care and he knew, firsthand, that Emma Swan wholeheartedly approved of the appendage the other him preferred. Yet Rogers, whether they be genuine emotions or memories from a cursed existence, had grown to like his modern prosthetic.
Robyn said that even though he refused to pessure the lost girl - woman, he supposed - int a romance, he still had to make a goo impression. "How long has it been since you were last with a woman," his daughter in law to be had asked, fxing his collar right before he left their little cottage earler that morning. "Dont scare her off. She's not seen another person in years."
"Don't be daft," Alice had shaken her head, pressing another hunk of bread and two aoples into his satchel as though he'd never packed for a quest before. She'd be a wonderful mother, he couldn't help thinking. "She'll love him just as he is."
"When was rhe last time you were with w woman you intended to woo, Dad," the term caught him off guard coming, as it did, from Robyn, but it settled warmly over him.
First impresions do matter, you know. She'll love you, how could she not."
"Whoa," he'd wheeled backwards, "No one's fallin in love."
Identical incredulous expressions eyed him but he held firm.
"But a woman who's not seen another person for years probably won't take kindly to a man weilding a weapon," Robyn told him, an air of knowing about her. He'd only met the woman twice, but Rogers knew Robyn got all her vim and venom and knowledge from the once wicked, occasionally still that way inclined, woman. "Take the hook, its useful, we know that. But she doesn't."
Quickly, Rogers fished his hand from his bag. He still wore his sword around his belt but disposed of the other weapon with a click, fully aware his fear of scarinvthe princess was ridiculous, that never happene in any of their stories according to the other him, the butterflies in his stomach getting the better of him anyway, and swapped it over just quick enough to turn and catch the body that was running at him.
"Hey!" she shouted. Rogers expected she meant to throw a punch, Hook had warned him she'd attempt such a manoeuvre, but found he was closer than she realised, or there wasn't enough space on her right to cock her arm backwards, too close to the tower on that side, to properly clock him.
Instead, they found their bodies collided roughly, stumbling backwards in a mix of enraged defense of property and privacy and confusion.
"Oomph," he exhaled with the force of the movement.
Between his hands, one metal and wood, the other flesh and bone, Rogers held the soft waist of a beautiful woman - the one he'd been looking for.
She was slightly shorter than he was, windswept hair curled with the salt air or as though it had been braided (Alice's hair used to do that when she wound her flaxen locks like a rope overnight, he'd return to find her hair as curled as her mother's had been on the one night they'd known each other), her lips, the top one thin, the bottom one plump and coloured with the stain of a ripe berry, entirely mesmerising.
Petite hands flattened against his chest as the pair of them attempted not to topple over with their momentum. Steadied but still swaying, tightly twined, the sun-bleached blonde hair of none other than Emma Swan tickled at Rogers' wrist as he held her, her breath sweet against his mouth.
Her hands didn't remain idle although his did, clipped nails sliding down the open dip of his shirt, making him shudder against her.
He made a low sound in the back of her throat that was far too uncontrolled to have come from a centuries-seasoned pirate. Not even the young lad Henry had been so embarrassingly bereft of vocabulary in the company of a beautiful woman.
Tender touches transformed into something harsher, green eyes hardening like the waters at the bottom of a cliff, charming and tempting but unknowable and treacherously deceptive. She shoved his chest backwards. "What exactly do you think you are doing?"
Unbidden, Rogers' voice rose. "What are you doing out of your tower?"
"What?" The princess spat, her title completely oppositional to her behaviour and her dress, a charming white gown that showed her ankles, perfectly tailored and in perfect condition. Perhaps this Emma also had magic and could therefore keep herself fed and clothed pleasantly enough. "Do you prefer your women helpless damsels desperate for a . . . what are you, exactly? Not a knight, that's for sure. Not with that coat. Do you have a problem with me being out of my tower?"
The onslaught, insult and question like relentless waves in a storm, was difficult to concentrate on to properly comprehend her questions. He matched her tone, surprise and a little bit of disappointment colouring his voice.
"You're depriving me of a dashing rescue!"
"I don't need to be saved," the woman scoffed, fire and curiosity flashing in her eyes just as it had the last time he'd met her. Did that count as her? That was the other Emma Swan, wasn't it? Then something crossed her innocent features, something lost and no longer innocent. "The only one who saves me is me these days."
"You've done a fine job of it too," he commended genuinely; a saviour in every story, it seemed, even when Regina told him that wasn't intended to be the case in this realm. "I was informed, incorrectly it seems, that you were trapped."
The princess who looked so like the Emma Swan that had saved his life in a dark alley, asking him only to believe in himself once again and in the angel that she appeared to him as, and nothing like the glowing radiance of that woman who had just birthed the sweetest babe (besides his lass, Alice) that he'd ever laid eyes on. She appeared identical in silhouette as the woman he'd met all those years ago, determined to save herself despite the good form of the pirate performing his drunkenness in the woods.
Rogers couldn't even explain why that woman had so intrigued him, so altered the make-up of his psyche, All he knew was that she had shown him light when they had met, shone hope on his tragedy-darkened life. Until he had med Emma Swan in the woods that day, he'd been consumed by vengeance and rage and sadness. He wanted vengeance for Milah, retribution on the crocodile that killed her, The only thing that pulsed hotter in his veins, more important than that, was the girl who had changed everything in his life, his daughter. Killian wasn't so naive as to think meeting Emma Swan didn't directly result in him letting go of his first love, his Milah, and his search for the princess had led him to sire the beautiful lass he called his daughter.
All it took was meeting the right person and everything changed.
He should thank her for that.
Caught in his reverie, Rogers didn't realise Emma's cheeks had flushed with frustration as she continued yelling at him.
"How did you find me, anyway?" She squinted soft green eyes closed into a harsh glare, "No, why did you find me?"
Because another Emma Swan told me to.
Because I searched for Emma Swan for years to no avail.
Because your son is grown now, the could-be king, and he hasn't a mother in this realm, no lad should grow up alone. I really should have brought Henry, Rogers considered, although he couldn't think of a way to convince the boy to quest for his supposedly dead mother, nor would this lost princess probably wish to be bombarded by her grown son from another world. Then again, that Henry claimed to possess the Heart of the Truest Believer, a faith so strong he had helped the Saviour to finally believe in magic despite her residence in the Land Without Magic (how a microwave was not considered magic, Killian wasn't sure), his insistence and oration may have been beneficial. I really should have brought Henry.
"Because you are hiding on purpose and you no longer need to, Your Majesty. No one believes you killed the King and Queen anymore."
"What do they believe?"
"The truth. The Evil Queen from another realm enacted a charm on their hearts that led them to perish by her hand and you to flee once you were blamed. it's a long story, but our realm has been joined by a few others. There's an alternative reality which knew of the events from that fateful day, those people have insisted you be pardoned."
"Then they don't know the truth at all," the princess turned her chin to her chest. "Shame of the kingdom, was I, although the golden heart of my son won me over in the people's eyes. Until the King and Queen were found dead, killed by magic."
Rogers held his breath, desperate to learn about the lost princess and amazed to hear most of the story was so similar to his own. "TO protect myself from the people, I sought a wizard, green-scaled like a-"
"Crocodile," Killian finished. "Aye, I've met him."
"Then you know the deals he makes cost a price."
"Indeed."
She flicked her hair behind her ears. "Mine was my life. To be isolated truly, cloaked from the people of the realm, where I could mourn with my guilty mind in private and not endanger any of the people I had come to love, I had to spend the rest of my life in that isolation, confined to that shrouded tower."
She inhaled deeply, sea green eyes gazing up at him. Princess Emma did not seem so guilty any longer, and Rogers knew for a fact she never had to feel shame for anything, it was all in the book that it was not her fault.
"It was a small price to pay."
Her Henry, the pirate assumed, was the only regret the princess had. It was as easy to read on her face as if the woman were an open book.
"Yet you are not confined to the tower?' Rogers asked.
"I was," she whispered, "Once. It took me a long time to escape that place. But over years, I have been able to venture further. It seemed to correspond with when I accepted that while I am sorry for my actions, I am not undeserving of forgiveness."
Rogers found himself beaming. swaying far too close to the warm body of the beautiful woman as he spoke, proudly agreeing with her. "And the people wish to grant you that, love. They want you pardoned and they wish you free."
"I am free."
"Apologies, but the walls surrounding you cannot be freedom," he swept his hand past the tower to the ocean that lay in the distance. "Tower or fields, you are still trapped. To be free, truly, is the open ocean, not another soul in sight, no rules but the one you make."
"I'm free of shame and blame and the duty of royalty. If you'd kindly leave me in peace. I was happy. You have broken into this dream and dashed it. And I don't even know your name."
"Killian Jones," he bowed with a sweep of his hand, "But most people have taken to call me by my more colourful moniker... Hook. And more recently, I've been known to most as Rogers. I got rid of the hook, you see."
Emma, although she hadn't told him her name yet, perhaps assuming he knew her name as a subject of her kingdom, squinted at him. "I know you."
"Aye," he chuckled. "We've met once."
Once, his reputation as a nefarious pirate would have made him proud, the fear of the rumour fighting majority of his battles for him before he even had to meet his supposed foe. But for a moment, Rogers feared it was the three hundred years of piracy or tales of the drunk at the docks, a helpful person when he wished to be left in peace by other seafaring men, that were the stories Emma had told of him.
"Decades ago." Her frown deepened.
"Aye."
The little pout of her ripe lips was as sweet as it was infuriating. Her silence only bothered him because he knew she was considering him, taking in his appearance and whatever rumours she recalled and that meeting from all those years ago. Hope wasn't something Killian Jones was particularly good at - another version of him might be, but that version had Emma Swan to help him along, and while he had his Tilly, he still wasn't well-practised in the art of being hopeful and trusting that another person might trust him. "You look younger. Less..."
"And?"
"You took the pillow from your poet blouse."
He laughed from low in his gut. "Pirate shirt, love." To be fair, they were interchangeable, but no one since Milah had called him anything but a pirate.
"How can you be younger?"
"I am not," he grinned, his smile unwavering from when they had bumped in to each other. "I cut my hair."
There had been magic involved, dying his hair, cutting it, giving him the same lithe form as the younger, happier him, but the princess was right, most of his image had been a disguise; a pillow to make him appear more unbalanced, hair grown long to aid in the perception he had stopped caring and didn't want company.
Then Rogers hooked his thumb into his belt and swayed too close to the woman. He whispered as though it were some secret, "I've always been devilishly handsome."
She did not shove him away as Rogers expected her to, simply spitting the term, "Pirate," in his direction. It was a good insult and would have cut him deeply if it had been his only trait as it had once been. But Rogers was more than that these days, he was a father, a lawman.
"I must say, sweetheart, I liked that fire of yours, how determined you were," he explained to her, reminding her of how she, possessed by the other Emma, had brushed off a sword-wielding pirate so easily once upon a time. "Don't get me wrong, i quite fancy you when you're not yelling at me, but I was not expecting Emma Swan to be so placid."
Her smile disappeared, cheeks tinging as though she was about to smile and turn red before he ruined it. What had he said wrong?
"Emma Swan?"
Before Killian could explain what he meant, define the alternative realms and various versions of her and him that existed, Emma continued.
"How could you know of my curse?"
"Your curse?" He blinked, careful not to step backwards. The last thing the princess needed was the first person she'd met in years to shy away from whatever shames and loves she had about her personage. "This version of you is also burdened with transformation? Hook said it was only that one Russian version of his book."
"You are a strange man, Mister Rogers," Emma told him, her lips quirking up at the edges when his eyes returned to hers.
"Captain. If you please."
"Sorry," a soft laugh exhaled through her nose indicated his dark warning hadn't influenced her in the slightest. "Captain. All those years on the high seas have curdled your thoughts. There's no such curse, people cannot become animals."
"But you said-"
"I was teasing," her skirts swished above her ankles. "It's from a book I once read my son. Your expression was quite incredulous."
"Very funny, princess," he groused. Is this what the other Emma was like to the other Killian, making outrageous remarks as though serious and then revealing she was quoting something?
She nodded, her shoulders still jiggling with laughter. "It was, captain." Her expression turned serious, the switch so quick and effective, Rogers felt disoriented. Emma certainly kept him on his toes. "So, a pirate captain? Do you have a ship?"
"And it's at your disposal, lass," he nodded. "If you should choose to leave your pretty prison of self-imposed punishment."
"I've never been on a ship that wasn't tethered to the docks."
"Princess," he hoped it was an insult as Rogers intended it, but as soft as hers had been. She was precious and pampered, but that wasn't her fault she'd never had an adventure on the open ocean, that was her lot in life as a royal - always inspecting the ship, never sailing it.
Killian rifled through his satchel, it was clear to him that she was happy here, sheltered and afraid, but content enough that she wouldn't wish to stay. Princess Emma wouldn't be leaving with him, he was sure. But he had brought something with him in preparation for such an event.
"This bottle," he handed it to her, soft fingertips brushing him, something that could only have been magic coursing up his spine, warm and homely. "It contains a little magic. You speak your message in here, add the name of your favourite pirate," he hoped his smile was charming enough and he'd been memorable enough for her to have listened to both this instruction and his earlier introduction. "Drop it in the water by your tower, and before you can say "Yo-ho-ho," it'll find the person you seek. I'll get your message and we can set sail as soon as you're ready, returning whenever you so choose."
Emma accepted the bottle, green eyes wide with shock.
"And with that," he bowed with a flourish, an old remnant from his naval days, "I bid you good day."
"You're leaving?" She sounded...not quite scared, disappointed maybe, definitely breathless as she chased after him, her skirts hitched in her hands as she followed him to the edge of the glen.
"I have a daughter," Rogers explained. "She'll be awaiting my return."
Killian wondered if he should tell her he also had a step-son - the son of a different version of him that he had taken into his care for a time, a man by the name of Henry, a version of her own Henry, who had become more like a brother to this version of him while he was still the young boy belonging to the other pirate. Should he bring up the son every Emma Swan adored so much? He remembered the scandal of the pregnant princess rebelling against the crown, the shock of her pregnancy scaring her straight, the shame in the courts forcing her to forfeiting her crown to parents who should have retired and a son who was too young (except a certain Evil Queen had killed the King and Queen prematurely and Emma had gone into hiding, advisors running the realm until Henry was old enough).
He didn't imagine bringing up those memories would curry him favour.
Emma's "Oh," was whispered, barely audible beneath his continuing sentences and birdcall.
"Not with bated breath, mind you, her fiancee distracts her nicely. It's strange to have her after all these years suddenly not giving me her undivided attention."
"They grow up so quickly, don't they?" Emma sounded wistful. "I missed mine growing up. Will you return?"
Rogers grinned. "That all depends." He lowered his voice, leaning toward her as he shared the secret to what would make him come back for her. "Will you accompany me outside these gardens today?"
Emma blinked.
Before she could reject him as he could plainly read across her face, Rogers amended his statement. "I will return every day. I will not ask you to leave these walls should you not wish to."
Petite toes curled in the long grass. "And what if it's not a choice but the walls remain?"
"I'm good at climbing walls. Beanstalks too, apparently, not that I've ever tried it myself. I'll be back, princess. Every day there is life left in me, so that you will not have to be alone."
"Why?" Princess Emma did not frown this time, her expression was something else entirely, soft and broken and Killian hoped to never see her look so surprised by kindness ever again. "Why would you offer such a thing for me?"
"I was alone for a long time, too, love. Self-imposed, as is your isolation, too. I acted drunk and shoved a feather-down sack down my shirt so that I would be ignored and overlooked, anything to avoid people."
"But not me?"
He had no idea why, what it was that drew her to him, except that she was bright and lovely and hope-giving like the sun and he the moon, silver and dark and trying, forever fated to gravitate toward each other.
"Neither of us have had proper company in some time, princess," he told her, "Surely we can give each other the small gift of our time."
"I have berries, if you'd like lunch," Emma hesitated, her torso shifting as though leaning toward him, her legs moving in the opposite direction as though to find a basket of berries she'd been picking before his interruption. Anything to make him stay, Rogers hoped. "And I'm sure I have caught a rabbit should you like a proper meal before-"
Killian was responding in the affirmative before she even finished her sentence, and missed the last, important part of it.
"-journey back."
"I have bread and cheese." He waved his fake hand between them, "You'll not deplete your crop on my account."
"I'm not some fair maiden who turns lightheaded at the slightest kindness," Emma warned. The princess hiked her skirt and plopped down in the grass before Rogers had the time to shift himself from his jacket and lay it down. In lieu of laying the fabric beneath them, Rogers sat in the grass as well, spreading his coat between them and laying his satchel atop it, lifting out the square of grain-heavy bread and the hunk of cheese.
"No," he hummed, handing her the bread to separate as she saw fit. "I don't expect you would be."
"I'll not fall in love with you because you found me when no one else did."
"Nor do I expect that, love," he vowed, the same promise he'd made Alice earlier. "I have my daughter to care for and no time for other loves."
"What about the ocean? The sea? Your freedom?"
"All second to my duty as a father. If I had to choose, I'll choose Alice."
"How noble of you."
Killian shook his head at her, so quick-witted, a challenge to keep up with - one he quite enjoyed. He riffled through his satchel. "Here, I have apples as well."
"You'll forgive me if I decline the fruit," the princess held up her hand between them. "My mother was Snow White."
Rogers chuckled, "Aye, I've heard the story."
"So you've heard my story," Emma smiled over at him. Killian's heart raced in his chest, slamming against his ribs at the sight of her and how pleased she appeared to see whatever it was she saw in him. "Tell me yours as we walk?"
"Walk, love?"
Years later, Emma would tell him over the roaring tempest and above the violent ocean on their way back to Alice and Robyn from Henry's castle, that she went with him after they shared a small lunch out of fear of the magic vial not working.
"Do I call out Killian or Hook or Rogers, pirate?"