Things go well, mostly; they've worked together for most of the time she's run with him, and that doesn't change, except that he starts asking for her input in his ridiculous scheduling — which she, somewhat jokingly and somewhat honestly, says is proof that he really loves her.
They both prefer to take on the more dangerous heists themselves rather than trusting anyone else to get it right, since he knows what'll sell and is better at the actual going-in-and-getting-it part, while she's faster at picking locks and finding escape routes. She also challenges him when he's making a stupid decision and he stops her when she's not thinking before she does something and they argue over what to do and sometimes he concedes and sometimes she does, but ultimately they make each other better, one disagreement at a time, even when they're so annoyed they can't be in the same room.
(The sex is also fantastic. So there's that.)
They're not changing the world or rewriting history, but they're living and keeping everyone else alive and it works and for over half a year, it seems like everything is going right. In retrospect, that should have been a sign.
It's coming midsummer when things change.
There's supposed to be some royalty visiting from some other country soon, and so the police are cracking down much harder than usual, and with a worrying degree of competence.
On the surface, they're both confident that the group will be just fine, and though they warn everyone to lay lower than usual, she assures the younger ones that it's a precaution, because there's confident and then there's stupid.
But in the dead of night, she and Killian work out contingency plans, what to do if — more like when, they both realize but don't say — the law catches up to them. They settle on a place to gather outside the city, which routes to take through the gates and forest outside the walls, and how to split the group so that everyone will be safest.
The information gets passed around quietly in the night, with nothing written that can be found later and used against them, and it's as good as they can get it while waiting out the calm.
The storm begins with a speech given by the magistrate, a portly man in silk clothes that barely seem to hold him in and an arrogant countenance that makes even respectable people kind of want to punch him.
"As you all know," he declares loudly to the square as a whole, "we have been cleansing the city in preparation for the upcoming visit of the Queen Regina. This has been a long and arduous task, and we are not finished. In particular, there exists a gang underground in one of these districts — " she glances to Killian, who glances to her " — which has been allowed to fester for far too long. You may have heard of their leader, they call him their 'king'," he pauses to let the derisive laughter pass, and her hand finds his. "These criminals have had free rein over nearly half the city for almost a decade, and this is unacceptable.
"And so to you, the people, I implore you: give me any information you have regarding this gang and their leader that will aid us in capturing them and bringing them to answer for their crimes." He looks around to the assembled group, mostly businessmen and merchants and low nobility, all people who hate them with a passion. "How many of you have been victims of this conspiracy?" he calls out, and receives a somewhat-embarrassingly-loud cheer. "They steal and kill and take what they have not earned. The noose has been waiting for them for far too long."
He goes on, but they've heard enough, and slip away from the crowd and into the darkness of the alleys, both thinking the same thing.
"It's time to go," she says at the same time he says, "We need to get everyone ready to leave."
.
The next week, word goes around that the magistrate is so pleased, that they've caught a long-time fugitive who stupidly came back around to this port — maybe he thought they'd forgotten about him — and how they're going to hang him at dawn; it's a perfect, tangible warning to back up his verbal one, and something of a consolation prize for how none of their crew have been caught yet or even spotted.
Killian comes over odd when he hears about the man and gets his description, and says he needs to go see the arrest warrant that's on display (so everyone can see his crimes and agree that he should be dead) but Killian has never bothered to see who's going to be executed.
But then, he's been on-edge lately — they all have, really — and far more than everyone else, since thirty some-odd lives are resting on his ability to outrun the law. It's getting to him, and the lack of sleep isn't helping. She does what she can, but she feels like she's just staving off the inevitable.
"Are you all right?" she asks tentatively, going with him more because of the high police presence than because he wants her there — it's obvious this is something personal, and he doesn't want company at all, but even he can accept that it's stupid to run around alone right now and if he has to have someone with him, she's the only one he'll take.
"I'm fine," he lies tensely, and she doesn't call him on it.
They reach the square around high noon, when it's so hot she could die, and no one is on the streets, not even guards, having chosen to sleep through this part of the day rather than melt through it. He looks over the lists intently for a long moment before he finds what he's looking for.
He doesn't say anything, of course, but she can tell from the way his expression flickers into something vulnerable and then stone that it isn't good.
"What is it?" she asks quietly, and he turns away, looking at the ground and shaking his head a couple of times. She isn't prepared for the answer he gives her:
"It's my father."
She goes still. Killian has never once — not to Vic, not to her, not to anyone anywhere ever — said a word about either of his parents or his childhood. Of course, no one really asks, because the stories are mostly the same, but even when it comes up in conversation in the dead of night and bottom of the bottle, he says nothing. He doesn't even acknowledge that he had parents once.
"Your father?" is all she can croak out, and he glances at her. "You've never said anything about him."
"He's not worth the breath," he replies, in a tone that suggests he wishes he had been. She doesn't push; his mood is delicate, and while she hardly thinks he'd get violent, she does think he'd push her away and go off on his own and make everything worse.
"Are you all right?" she asks again, and he looks back up to the warrant, carefully expressionless.
"No," he whispers, so soft that she can hardly hear it, almost swallowed up in the oppressive summer silence, but before she can try to do anything that might make this better he straightens and turns away. "Let's go back," he sighs. "This was a mistake."
.
She expects it, but around midnight, he's suddenly nowhere to be found. Emma shakes her head at Vic's questioning look and makes her own way through the streets to the jail.
.
It's a risk, it really is, to walk right into jail when the police are at their most obnoxious and he's a very wanted man, but he — he has to. He can't let this go, he tried to make himself let it go — if not for himself, then for the knowing concern on Emma's face — but it's eating through him like acid.
He's always wondered why his mother never wanted his father around.
He has to know if it's true.
Killian finds him in the farthest cell in the corner, and he looks almost exactly like he remembers — maybe a little grayer around the temples, but unchanged otherwise — and he looks up at the footsteps and stands sharply when he recognizes his visitor.
"Killian," he breathes, beckoning him closer with a wan smile; he ignores it. "You're here, you're — you're all right."
"Of course I am," he replies coldly. "No thanks to you."
His father sighs and hangs his head. "I'm sorry, Killian, I — " but he's in no mood to listen to platitudes.
"Yeah, you're sorry, everyone's sorry when they're looking at a noose."
"But I'm not looking at one," he says fervently, brightening. "I'm not going to…" he trails off at the way Killian's expression doesn't change. "That's why you're here, isn't it? You're not going to let your own father hang."
"You tell me," he answers, waspish and calculated to sting. "I had a look at the arrest warrant for you. Quite long, that." He pauses, but the confusion doesn't fade from his father's face. He feels sick, like he may actually throw up. "Most of it was rather repetitive, stealing from Lord A, stealing from Lord B, piracy under this crown, that crown, but one in particular stood out."
The confusion is replaced by careful blankness, and Killian takes a step closer, hands on the bars.
"Deny it," he says softly. "Look me in the eyes and tell me it isn't true."
He hides the please under layers of cold anger.
It takes his father a moment to respond, sighing and looking down and if it wasn't true, he wouldn't even know what Killian is referring to and his blood is too cold to boil.
"It was a long time ago," is what he lands on, and his blood pressure spikes in the back of his head, fingers tightening on the bars. "You have to understand — son, I was — "
"Don't call me that," he snarls, so ferociously that his father actually takes a step back.
"Please, listen to me — " he starts to implore, but Killian's self-restraint cracks and finally shatters.
"I idolized you!" he shouts, completely unconcerned with whether or not he's heard. "God! I begged her to come out with you and me, to be a family, I begged her to come out with her — " he cuts himself off and stares down to the ground, and there are actually tears in his eyes; he hasn't cried in almost a decade.
"Killian, please," his father says desperately, no doubt seeing the writing on the wall. "I can redeem myself, we can be a family, you and I, just don't leave me here."
"Why shouldn't I?" he asks, dark and empty as the pit of rage opening up in his mind. This is the wrong time, the worst possible time, with the magistrate's threat hanging over his head, with the escape plans that are going so much slower than they can afford, with everyone looking to him and asking him to do something, fix everything, save everyone, and they don't understand that he isn't sure he even can.
And now this.
"I'm your father, Killian," he begs, and he shakes his head.
"I don't have a father."
There isn't any emotion in the words, even though they kill the young boy deep within, still holding out that tiny hope that Dad would come back for him. He turns and as he begins to walk away, his father tries one last appeal.
"Killian, they're going to hang me — "
He glances over his shoulder, halfway back to his face.
"Good," he says, but before he can leave, he throws one last parting shot that brings him up short:
"You know, we're not that different, you and I." Killian stops, but doesn't turn around, which he takes as leave to continue. "I've heard of you, your highness — " said with wounded disdain " — and your list of exploits, nearly as long as mine. You're a wanted man, aren't you? Theft, fraud, murder…"
"In the name of protecting — "
"Your crew?" he cuts him off, and it takes all of his willpower not to turn around and break him out just so he can kill him himself. "Your friends? The ones who need you? Did it never occur to you that maybe I had a crew I was willing to die for, too?"
"And my mother?" he asks softly, because that's the chink in his argument — he would never, will never —
"Love isn't always kind," he replies, an answer he wishes he hadn't asked for, that just makes him angrier in its inadequacy. "Nor mutual."
When Killian doesn't respond, he goes on. "You think yourself so above me, such that I deserve to hang, for crimes you commit yourself. Oh, there's one or two on my warrant that you don't share, but you are my son."
"I am not you," he hisses. "It's those 'one or two' that make the difference," he snaps, walking away again, but he hears his father laugh bitterly and call after him:
"Tell that to the families of the men you've killed."
.
Emma catches him on the way out — literally, he doesn't see her and she has to grab him by the arm to stop him — and even in the low light, she can see he's a wreck.
"What happened?" she asks, increasingly worried because she's never seen him in any state even sort of like this before and she doesn't know what to do to fix him right now. He just looks at her, jaw clenched and breathing shallow, and he's not going to answer her here or now or maybe ever.
She does the only thing she can think of — maybe it's a terrible idea, maybe he'll push her away and demand to know why the hell she thought it could help — and kisses him.
It takes him a second to respond, but when he does, it's with startling force and ragged need. He shoves her back to the nearest wall and kisses her so hard she can't breathe, one hand tangling in her hair and the other on her hip, her thigh, already pulling her skirt up; she gasps when he pulls away and begins kissing her neck with the same degree of desperation as the hands tugging at her clothes. He murmurs something into the crook of her neck, but she can't even think right now, let alone hear him.
She runs her fingers up the back of his neck and into his hair, presses her lips to his jawline and tastes salt, still wet on his cheeks.
He says it again after they're done and her hands are still shaking on his shoulders, the same sentence, a plea —
"Tell me you love me," he begs, holding onto her like he'll drown if he lets go. "Tell me you love me, please."
"Of course I do," she replies incredulously, and he pulls away enough to look at her; even in the darkness, the look in his eyes hurts. What the hell did his father do to him? "Why would I have come out here after you if I didn't? Of course I love you."
Both of his hands are on her face as he searches it for some hint of dishonesty, but when he doesn't find it, he leans forward so his forehead is resting against hers and her arms are around his neck; his hands slowly stop shaking and his breathing finally evens out, and she isn't sure what she's saved him from, and nor does she want to know.
.
A day later, everyone is finally on the move, slipping through sluice gates and under bridges and hiding in carts and jumping from roof to roof to escape the eyes of the guards placed at every city gate, and most of them have managed to get out.
But either Killian was seen at the jail visiting his father, or his father sold him out before his execution, because they find him and recognize him and he barely manages to get away for long enough to reach Emma and Vic in barely-controlled panic.
"You have to go," he says fervently, grasping her by the shoulders and pushing her forward. "Right now, you have to leave."
"You mean we," she says through clenched teeth, but he looks at Victor and Victor looks at her and something passes between them.
"They're not three streets behind me," he tells Vic. "Go. Now."
"I am not leaving without — " she starts, but he doesn't listen.
"Look, they're not going to kill me, I'm too valuable. You two? You're not as important to them," he explains in a fevered rush, looking her straight in the eye, and he's afraid, for the very first time since she met him, he's actually afraid. "Get to the meeting place, I'll be there as soon as I can, I promise."
"This is ridiculous," she snaps, grabbing him by the shirt as if to pull him along with them. "There's no reason we can't all go."
"Yes, there is," he replies, grabbing her face in both hands. "They'll follow me, they won't bother to look for anyone else. It's me they want, and I will not see anyone die for me. Least of all you."
"For the last time, I'm not just going to — "
But he looks up, face twisting into regret, and nods, and she hears Victor moving behind her just before world goes black.
.
She nearly kills Victor when she wakes up on a cart, already halfway to the east gate, punching him in the jaw and hitting him several times in the chest.
He grabs her arms to stop her assault and shushes her desperately before she can start verbally beating him and — taking a risk, brave man — leans in close to her to speak. "Look, I'm sorry, but Killian and I talked about this, if it came down to it… he told me to drag you out if I had to, he wouldn't see you hanged or imprisoned with him."
"They're gonna kill him," she hisses, and he holds his hand over her mouth.
"No, they're not. Not immediately, anyway," he says, but goes on before she can give him a scathing retort about how reassuring that isn't. "He'll have time to make an escape plan, and he's good at picking locks and getting around unseen."
"I'm better," she growls, muffled by his hand, and Vic winces.
"Yeah, that's true," he concedes, but gives her a look she doesn't like at all. "But do you have any idea what happens to girls like you in prisons like these?" He barely gives that time to sink in before he continues, and it sounds rehearsed, like Killian told him and made him remember it. "The guards at the local jail are bad enough, but at the prison? That's where they send the ones who couldn't cut it as a regular guard, who were too cruel or too awful, that's where they end up working. They'd eat you alive, Emma."
He's right, and it makes her hate him more. "We could have all escaped," she whispers viciously, tears of what she insists to herself is anger in her eyes.
"Maybe," Victor replies softly. "But he wasn't willing to take the risk that we couldn't."
"And so he made this decision without any input from me," she chokes, forcing herself to be angry at him so she can stop being scared for him.
Of course he wasn't willing to take that risk; she thinks of the way he begged her to tell him she loved him, like she was all that held him together; the things she's always known about him, even before she met him, how far he'll go for the people he loves, how no price is too high for a guarantee of their — her — safety.
"It's gonna be fine," Vic says, a little lamely. "You'll see, he'll be back in no time and then you can hit him instead of me."
.
His knees hit cold stone, a guard on either side of him, holding him by each arm as the magistrate — small man in a big body, gloating all over his face — walks up.
"How appropriate," he says softly. "The king of the street rats finally kneels to the law."
At least, he thinks, he's the only one the magistrate really cares to catch; as long as the others lay low for a while, they'll be safe.
She'll be safe.
.
Victor is wrong; much longer than "no time" has passed, a week, two, four, six, where he'd sworn it wouldn't take him a day to get out of wherever they put him.
Two months have passed before she notices that her shirts fit tighter in the chest than usual, and realizes she hasn't bled since before they left.
.
She is, even she can admit, panicking.
She has to leave.
Killian is — he's still back in the city or in some far-off prison but more probably already dead and even if he isn't, he's in prison and it's going on three months and all the reconnaissance missions Vic has sent after him have turned up nothing and even if he was here they'd still be living out on the streets and — and this is the sort of life you fall into, not the sort you're born into — this isn't something she can put a baby through, no one should be put through it at all, ever.
And what do any of them know about pregnancy or childbirth? She's a street rat, they're all street rats, no one will help her, and even if someone does, she won't be able to pay and she thinks about having this baby and trying to raise it on the street with the group but without Killian and so really without much of anyone (the hysteria rises) and she has to go, she has to leave, she has to find a steady job with a steady pay and a stable home to raise a child in, and for that she has to go far away, somewhere that no one knows her or Killian or any of them.
She can't control the panic; maybe it's the hormones (no, it's definitely the hormones, she's never this hysterical), but she can't come up with another way out.
And then — these things always come at the worst times — word reaches them that the magistrate recently hanged a whole crop of thieves as a warning to others and Victor tries — he really does — to calm her down, but she's absolutely positive that Killian was among them (because hanging him would be the best sort of warning, and the judges and lawmen have been after him for years and years, and he's a symbol, and, and) and she's a mess, the hormones and the absolute terror at the thought of motherhood and an emotion somewhere between worry and grief all muddling up inside her and setting her over the edge.
Vic gets her to promise that she'll wait here while he goes back into the city to find out — he doesn't say it, but he doesn't want her to go for fear she'll be right — but the night after he leaves, she packs up everything she has into a little bundle and heads off in the opposite direction.
.
She has to go to an entirely different country before she can find someone who will give her work — now visibly pregnant — but she strikes gold when she does: Melinda Lucas, the head of a kitchen in a count's household, is a stern older woman with a begrudgingly kind heart, who decides to take a chance on her.
The count himself is not so nice, but he doesn't pay her much attention and so she doesn't care.
She doesn't really know her way around a real kitchen, but she's a decent cook and a quick study, and two months before the baby comes, she's already made herself right at home among the servants and the cooks, some of whom sniff at her for being alone and pregnant and some of whom are nicer to her because of it.
It's not much, but it's stable.
.
"What do you mean, she's gone?" Killian asks Victor, who shrugs miserably, having either drawn the short straw or banked on his long friendship with Killian to have this conversation.
"I don't know, she just up and left one day, few months back now. We got word that they'd executed a bunch of thieves, and she — I don't know, she'd been acting weird for a few days, she wouldn't listen to anyone. I told her I'd come find out if you'd been hanged like those others, and she promised she'd stay, but when I got back…" he trails off and looks away. "I'm sorry, we went looking for her, obviously, but she's just… gone."
She's just gone.
He can't breathe.
Yeah, it took longer than he'd thought it would to get out of prison and meet up with them, but he got out — just like he said he would — and he came back and now he finds out that she's abandoned them — abandoned him — without so much as a reason.
What the hell?
He's come all this way — she had to have known he would keep his promise, she knew he wouldn't let the lawmen kill him, how could she have — but she's gone, run off because… why?
Did she lie when she said she loved him?
"That doesn't make sense," he shouts, and both Vic and several of the others watching wince; everyone, it seems, has been expecting this reaction.
"It doesn't," Vic agrees, holding his hands up in exasperation, or the lack of any other way to expend some energy.
"No note, no explanation, nothing?" he demands, increasingly agitated. "Why would she do that?"
"I don't know."
That's the worst part, maybe — the look of sympathy on Victor's face as he tells him he has no explanation for why the woman Killian loves is gone. It's the finality of it all.
Emma is gone, and she's not coming back.
"I don't… but… why?" he says, volume dropping with every word, and the only reason it isn't a whimper is because he says it isn't a damn whimper.
"I don't know," Vic repeats apologetically. "Really, I… I don't know."
"Right," is all he can mutter.
She lied. That night, that moment, when he'd been on the verge of a death spiral, she had told him she loved him and she'd lied.
He came back for her, dreamed of her these past months, longed for her so much it made his chest ache, only to have her slip from his fingers like sand before he even knew she was gone.
None of it meant a damn thing to her.
He hadn't meant a damn thing to her.
.
Killian doesn't stay in the city.
In spite of the fact that he only escaped prison a fortnight ago and half the lawmen there are out for his blood, he decides to return to the city under the guise of hiding under their noses. It would work better if he would actually hide, but he's angry and hurting like hell and he tends to get self-destructive when left unchecked — a tendency he's only let a few people see — and he honestly doesn't care if they hang him right now.
He makes an elaborate show of not caring at all about her absence, which is such an obvious load of shit that even the five-year-old Lucy can see through it, but his volatile mood is showing and no one has been brave enough — not even Vic — to bring up to him that maybe he's not really handling this well.
"I'm bloody sick of this place," he snarls darkly to Victor, the only one currently daring to even speak to him at all after a month of this state, and glances west to the sea. The anger is shifting into a sort of blackly despondent agitation that's killing his impulse control. "You ever been on a boat?"
"No," Vic replies. "Always wanted to, though." And then, as though reading his mind: "I've always thought we'd make fantastic pirates."
"Wouldn't we?" he agrees, smiling in a way that's more teeth than cheer. "All we need is a ship, I'm sure most of the gang will come, got a built-in crew and everything."
"We've never had trouble getting anything else," Vic says, probably too worried about setting him off again to risk disagreeing with him in any way whatsoever. "I don't see why a ship would be any different."
Killian looks at him and the smile turns into a slightly-more-genuine grin. "This is why we're friends."
.
It's a girl.
Emma names her Julia.
.
It's easy to lose track of time in the kitchens, especially with a baby to care for — a baby who doesn't hardly take after her at all, except maybe in the shape of her face or eyes (brilliant blue like her father's, which don't seem likely to change). Melinda helps, along with her granddaughter — a baker in the kitchens who's roughly Emma's age and happens to turn into a wolf every full moon, a secret she goes to great lengths to hide — and Emma feels like she wouldn't be able to do this without them.
Julia is almost one and a half before the count finally takes notice of Emma.
He's decent enough when he's sober — indifferent, mostly, if condescending — but belligerent when he's drunk, and he is extremely drunk. She's in a foul mood — Julia's been sick and so she hasn't slept in three days — and it's an accident when the carafe of wine falls from her shaky hands and into his lap, and the stormy look on his face says this is about to hurt.
And Emma's in exactly the wrong mood for someone to try and hurt her right now, authority figure or no; he stands roughly, and the carafe falls from his lap and shatters on the floor, forcing her to take a step back to avoid both the broken glass and him. He grabs her by the shoulder and all-but drags her into the hall — it strikes her that none of the other people at the table even blink, and how nice is that— and shoves her up against a wall.
"Do you know what happens to little serving wenches who hurt the head of the household?"
"No, but I imagine it's painful," she answers defiantly, which actually brings him up short; probably no one has ever talked back to him before. "It was an accident. Everyone has those."
"It was calculated humiliation, is what it was," he snarls, leaning in closer so as to intimidate her, but she's far past being intimidated.
"If it was calculated humiliation, I would have poured it on your head," she replies in as even a tone as she can manage, and then — with a somewhat belated sense of self-preservation — tacks on an insincere, "my lord."
He catches the derision in her tone and responds by striking her a glancing blow across her forehead with nearly enough force to knock her down; he's wearing a gaudy ring, and it draws blood, which begins to drip thickly down her face. For a moment, she's physically stunned by the pain and the shock of it.
He grabs her chin and shoves her back into a standing position. "Now, this is the first time I've had to teach you a lesson, so I'm going to be very, very kind — far kinder than a bitch deserves — and let this be a warning to you." He leans in again for the intimidation. "If this happens again, if you ever speak to me in that tone again, I'll kill you and take the little whelp you think I don't know about and throw her over the outer wall. Have I made myself clear?"
She's trapped between a fury so absolute that it makes her want to tear his throat out with her fingernails and a terror so paralyzing that her very mind goes numb. The image of her daughter's body on the ground below the high walls —
"Yes," she replies tightly.
"Good," he says, and steps away from her, now holding out the hand with the bloody ring. "Thank me for the kindness, girl," he warns her, and it takes her a moment to realize that she's supposed to kiss his ring. She pretends not to know this foreign custom, and drops into a low curtsy, bowing her head; it's as much of a concession as she's capable of at the moment.
"Thank you for the kindness, my lord," she murmurs, acidically demure, and it's enough for his drunken sensibilities.
She walks away, hands shaking in rage, and plans to leave this place tonight, but by the time she gets down to the kitchens, her better judgment has come back to her.
Winter is coming on, in the fast way it does as the sun turns against them, and he'll be expecting some sort of retaliation, or he'll at least be keeping an eye on her, hunting for an excuse to make good on his promise. She might be able to pack everything up and leave before he finds out she's going, but she might not, and any risk that could end with her daughter's death is one she isn't willing to take.
And more to the point, the count notwithstanding, this place is good for Julia. There's always food on her plate and people willing to mash it up so she can eat it or feed her if Emma can't, the both of them have a secure, warm bed to sleep in every night, and she's surrounded by people who adore her at best and are indifferent to her at worst, and she has at least three people — Emma, Melinda, and her granddaughter, Ruby — who would die to protect her.
It's so much better than the way she grew up — it's even better than when she fell in with Killian, because of the stable home and lack of lawmen around every corner — and she can't take Julia away from this to go into the uncertainty of a journey in winter to a city that isn't home anymore and a father who's certainly been dead for years now. It would be selfish beyond compare.
She wipes the blood from her forehead before it seeps into her eye.
.
Ruby tends to the gash with a sharp-smelling medicinal tea and a lot of wincing. The anger is slow to subside.
"I wonder why no one's killed him yet," she says coldly.
"He's too powerful," Ruby answers, and sighs. "I'm sorry, I really am. I thought… I know you didn't want to risk him finding out, but he's not a total waste of air, I thought — we both thought — he'd leave you alone if he knew you were a mother."
"It's not your fault," she says, shrugging with transparently-false dismissal. "I'm more worried about Julia than anything else."
"I can't believe he'd threaten to murder an infant," Ruby mutters in disgust. "I thought everyone had at least that much human decency in them."
"You'd be surprised," Emma murmurs, thinking of some of the children she and Killian had found, how cruel people could really be. Ruby looks at her, and then to the sleeping baby in her arms.
"Listen, I know — it won't happen if we can help it at all, but if for some reason he… If he does decide to… to make good on his promise," she says quietly, and Emma glances at her; she sighs again. "We won't let him anywhere near her. Granny and I will both hang before we'll let any harm come to her."
It's kind, and to a degree that makes her heart clench in her chest, but it's empty: if Melinda and Ruby tell him he'll have to kill them to get to Julia, he'll just take them up on the offer.
It takes her a while to form a response. "Thank you," she says finally, and then hesitates, thinking of how much is safe to tell Ruby and what would be best. "If that happens… In Northampton… that's where her father lives, or… lived. He's easy to find, or his allies are. Ask for the king of the street rats. Everyone knows him."
"King of the street rats?" Ruby repeats, amused, and then sobers up a bit. "You've never said anything about her father."
"No," she replies evenly. "I haven't."
And even though it isn't an explanation, Ruby doesn't ask for more.