Five years pass, much the same.
Julia is bright, and mischievous like her father, to the point that Melinda starts forcing her to help Ruby with the baking in a surprisingly-successful attempt to channel her energy and curiosity into something more immediately useful than teaching herself to read from the erotic novels Melinda has hidden under her mattress.
She's also almost-worryingly friendly, but then, she lives in a kitchen where everyone who interacts with her regularly adores her and Emma has worked very hard to keep her completely sequestered from the count.
The problem is, when parties are going on that require everyone's attention and Julia is told to stay in her room and out of trouble, it's hard to explain to her why she can't go exploring the castle and why it's dangerous to be out alone. Emma — along with Melinda and Ruby — has gone well out of her way to ensure that no one has ever hurt Julia.
Until the day he does.
He's drunker than usual, and apparently was already in a violent mood before running into them, because he gets handsy and stumbling, and when Emma tries to tell him that he really ought to be going to bed, he explodes.
And Julia, naively brave, runs in to defend her mother, shoving the count away with all the force an angry six-year-old can muster, shouting at him to leave them alone. Emma's already on her way to grab her, but the count is closer and backhands her across the cheek so hard she falls to the floor; he sneers and begins to stumble away.
She has to choose between running to help her child or running to kill that man, which isn't really a choice at all, and so she lets him go.
"Julia, look at me," she says quietly, hands shaking with rage, a plot already forming in her head — because this is the last straw, the absolute last fucking straw, no one ever lays a hand on her child, ever. There's another fete tomorrow, she'll be stuck at it all night but the count will be drunk when he leaves, and an easy target, and no one will notice he's dead until late the next evening, they'll chalk it up to him being stuck in bed with a hangover. She's never killed anyone before, but she saw Killian do it several times and knows how it's done.
Julia looks up with tears in her eyes and Emma touches her cheek. "I'm sorry," she replies, but Emma shakes her head.
"You don't have anything to apologize for," she says fervently, taking Julia's hand. "Don't worry," she goes on, trying to mask her fury with the also-intense concern. "This won't happen again."
.
Victor was right: they're fantastic pirates.
He gains a bit — actually, quite a bit more than a bit — of a reputation as someone not to cross, but who's more concerned with hunting treasure than amassing a fleet, so if you leave Captain Jones and his crew alone, he'll leave you and yours alone too. It only takes a couple of captains challenging him for that to become solid; their crews, he tells to do whatever they like, their ships, he sells and splits the gold among his crew.
For the first time, he is actually, legitimately rich, and for the first time since she left, he's actually happy.
(He still dreams about her, and in every city he still scans the crowds for her and says he isn't.)
They stop in a little port town on the eastern coast, where word on the street says a count with a wealth of gold and a terrible drinking problem lives, and he decides to scout it out on his own, see if it's really as easy pickings as they say. The rest of the crew is fine to mull around town and stimulate the local economy, leaving him on his own to do as he pleases.
He crashes the party for a little while, scopes out the crowd — wow, can these people put wine down, damn — and spots the count, an older man with a face as red as the drink in his glass. Everyone is concentrated in the dining hall, and even the guards are nipping at the drinks; clearly, no one's ever robbed this place before.
Easy, easy pickings.
He slips back out of the party without speaking to anyone and makes his way through the halls in search of the countess's quarters — surely she'll have her jewels in there — and he's several corridors away, far enough that he can't hear the party's noises anymore, when he starts to think he's being followed.
Killian turns sharply, but the hall is empty and a quick search of the shadows turns up nothing, so he tentatively decides he's just being paranoid and keeps walking. He only gets one more hall down before it pricks at his neck again, and he identifies the source: the soft, almost-silent rustling of clothing.
"Hello?" he asks suspiciously, and the chirpy female voice that responds comes from the ceiling.
"Hello!"
He's starts violently and stumbles against the wall, looking up. The rafters, he realizes. She's in the rafters.
It's dark up there, so he can't see much of her, but she's small, and when she sits down and lets her feet swing back and forth, he can see that she's dark-haired and smiling and either the shadows are hitting her strangely or half her face is bruised.
"Who are you?" she asks him, and he raises an eyebrow.
"You're the one following me," he replies, a little reproachful. "I think I should be asking that."
"You're the one who doesn't belong here," she counters snobbishly, "that means you should be answerin' me."
"Who says I don't belong here?"
"I do."
He tilts his head. "Are you the count's daughter?" he guesses, but she wrinkles her nose.
"No, I live in the kitchens. But I know everyone who comes here, and you're not one of 'em." Her whole countenance brightens up suddenly. "Are you a pirate?"
The eagerness in her voice makes him smile a little. "I am," he answers, and sweeps into a bow. "Captain Killian Jones, at your service."
"Kill-i-an," she repeats, and he doesn't have the heart to tell her about how his title is Captain. "I've never heard a name like that before."
"Well, I've never heard a name like yours before."
"I haven't even told you my name."
"Exactly."
This brings the little girl up short — she opens her mouth to reply and then closes it with a pout — and he tries (badly) to suppress a grin. He can't help it; he's always liked kids, it's one of the reasons he amassed such a following of them, he could never turn away a child in need.
She huffs melodramatically, but answers, "Julia," in a slightly petulant tone.
"Ju-li-a," he repeats, mimicking the way she'd said his name and earning himself an adorable glare. "Pretty name, that. It was my mother's."
"Really?"
"Really," he answers, and crosses his arms. "What are you doing up in the rafters, Julia?"
"Safer up here," she replies immediately, and a little thinly, in a way that makes the hairs on the back of his neck rise up.
The amusement he's felt thus far begins to fall away.
(It's definitely a bruise.)
"Safer from what?" he asks, but she shakes her head. "Why don't you come down here, angel?"
She shakes her head again, and repeats, "It's not safe," firmly, like it has personal meaning to her, and he doesn't like that at all. He thinks of the drunken, maybe-belligerent count, stumbling through the halls to get to his room, or else maybe a bad-tempered cook for whichever parent she lives with — but the "unsafe halls" suggest the former. "Besides," she goes on hastily, "there's only one good way to get down from here, and it's forever back that way."
"You could jump," he says, quickly becoming more concerned about the girl than the money. "I'll catch you."
Her legs swing back and forth nervously, and she glances around. "You promise?" she asks anxiously, and he smiles.
"I promise."
She takes a deep breath, nods to herself, and jumps, straight into his arms vertically, so she lands with her arms on his shoulders, and he sets her down to her feet, kneeling so he's at her eye level.
Her eyes are blue — very blue — and the shape of her face is familiar, if marred by the ugly bruise on her cheek. He touches it gingerly.
"What happened?" he asks, and she winces.
"The count," she replies quietly. "Last night. He was mad and my mom tried to tell him to go to bed but he got madder and it looked like he was gonna hit her so I ran at him and shoved him away and…"
"He hit you," Killian infers, and she looks away, lips pursing. "Why'd you step in? I doubt your mum would want you to."
"Someone had to," Julia says, frowning. "She thinks I don't know, but he's a bad man. He hurts people."
The look on her face stings him deeper than it should; she's frowning just like Emma used to frown when she was worried, wrenching up memories he's spent seven years suppressing.
"Brave of you," he comments quietly, and she huffs — just like Emma — and rolls her eyes.
"Aunt Ruby says it's just human decency."
"Who's Aunt Ruby?"
"Granny Lucas's granddaughter," she replies, and then smiles brilliantly, and familiarly. "She's my aunt. I mean, not my real aunt but may as well be."
"What about your dad?" he asks slowly, the girl's smile lingering in his mind along with a deep-seeded and slowly-growing horror.
"Haven't got one," she answers, shrugging. "Mom doesn't talk about him. I think it makes her sad."
She just up and left one day, few months back now.
The color of her eyes, the shape of her face.
Julia.
Oh… shit.
"How old are you, sweetheart?" he asks, mouth going dry.
"Six," she replies, holding out as many fingers, and then — as if to twist the knife further — adds, "and one-quarter!"
"Six and one-quarter, eh?" he repeats, smiling in spite of the hard knot forming in his gut — it's ridiculous to think… but the timing matches up and she looks just like him but smiles and frowns and talks like Emma and no. No. No. "How's it you already know fractions?"
"Granny Lucas teaches me," she says, and then giggles impishly in a way that makes his gut twist. "She says it's way better than havin' me teach myself to read on the books she keeps in her mattress."
"On the books she — oh," he says, catching on, and has to look down to stifle the inappropriate laughter that threatens to bubble up at that. A little girl teaching herself to read on porn, that's amazing, that… sounds exactly like something a child of his would do.
Oh, gods.
(Please, he wonders, or please no?)
"Can you tell me something, Julia?" he asks, and his voice is weak in his throat. She tilts her head.
"What?"
"Your mum, what's her name?"
He isn't sure what he's hoping, but when she says, "Oh, Emma," his heart still comes nearly to a stop.
She's here.
Here, in this castle, this little town hundreds of miles from home, the place he stopped in to rob because it sounded easy, almost passed up because it seemed too easy — here — a few halls or a few floors away from him and — and probably unaware that her daughter — his daughter — their daughter — has been roaming the castle on her own through the rafters and definitely unaware that he's here because if she knew he was she would have come to find him or — or maybe she wouldn't or — and —
It all makes sense. For the first time in seven years, it makes sense.
She found out she was pregnant, and she couldn't tell the group because none of them knew anything about pregnancy or childbirth but she thought he was dead — although why she refused to consider that maybe he wasn't actually dead, or why she didn't think to leave a goddamn note — and so she went looking for someone who would give her a steady home and payment and found it in the cook and that fucking count —
He's torn between the desire to pull Julia into his arms and never let go and to hunt that bastard down and strangle him with his own insides.
"Did I say something wrong?" she asks, and when he looks up at her, she looks worried.
"No, not at all," he replies tightly, with a thin and maybe desperate smile. "I — "
But before he can come up with something, there's noise a couple of halls back, footsteps staggering, and Julia freezes up. "It's the count," she whimpers, and he thinks he might die. She's looking around desperately and snatches his hand, tugging at him. "We can get back up into the rafters, he won't know we're here, we've gotta go."
"Julia," he says firmly, in as neutral a tone and expression as he can manage while his blood is boiling over in his veins. "It's all right."
"No, it isn't!" she cries, and he pulls her closer to him, a hand on either side of her face.
"Julia," he says again, "he is not going to hurt you. Or your mum. Ever again, understand?"
She blinks in surprise and asks, "Are you gonna hurt him?" and there's really nothing for it.
"Yes," he replies without shame. "I am going to hurt him badly."
"Can I watch?"
Yeah, he thinks, with mild hysteria, definitely my child.
"No. What you can do is find your mum for me, tell her Killian sent you to get her, she'll understand."
But the count turns the corner before she can say anything else, and he stands quickly, drawing his sword in the same motion; Julia grasps his leg and hides behind it and he's sure he's going to die.
"Who the hell are you?" the count asks, and he tilts his head.
"Who the hell do you think I am?"
"A bloody pirate is what it looks like," he snarls, and opens his mouth to cry for guards probably, but he shuts up when Killian's sword appears at his throat and pushes him back toward the wall. He's moving as little as possible, so as not to upset Julia, but he doesn't have to move far anyway.
"As a matter of fact, yes," he replies brightly, and sweeps into an ironic half-bow, sword never wavering. "Captain Killian Jones. Ah," he says, smiling at the way the man's face pales, "I see you've heard of me. Good, that makes this easier. Now, look a bit closer, mate," he continues, dropping the cheerful act and letting some of his pent-up malevolence show, "and tell me: who do you think I am?"
The man's eyes are drawn to Killian's left hand, which has found itself — quite without his input — resting on the back of Julia's head and pulling her closer, hiding her better; if it's possible, the count pales further.
"Julia doesn't have a father," he says faintly, and Killian's fingers tighten on the hilt. He feels her head tilt as she looks up at him and he refuses to meet her gaze.
"That would be because Julia's father didn't know he had a daughter," he replies silkily. "But you've heard of me, so surely you've heard of how I… react when people I love are harmed or threatened?"
"You just met her, you can't possibly — " the count starts, and Killian cuts him off unceremoniously, digging the sword into his throat just deep enough to draw a bead of blood.
"Do not presume to know what I can and cannot do," he snarls. Without looking away from the count's wide eyes, he says, "Julia, remember when I told you to find your mum?"
"Are you really my dad?"
"That's not an answer," he counters tightly; it's taking all of his willpower not to have the very first impression his daughter has of him be murdering a man, and he's running very, very short on willpower at the moment.
"Yes," she answers hesitantly, "tell her Killian sent me."
"Good girl," he replies. "You should go do that now."
"Are you gonna kill him?"
"Now," he says sharply, and she heaves a short sigh before running off; he wonders if he should be concerned that his daughter is annoyed that she can't watch him kill someone.
But then, she's his daughter, so maybe he shouldn't be surprised.
…gods above, he has a daughter.
.
He finds her again in the kitchens, talking animatedly to an older, severe-looking woman so rapidly that he can't understand her; when the the woman looks up as he walks in and startles, her chattering stops abruptly and she turns to him with a brilliant grin and he is already dead.
"Well," the woman says. "And here I thought she was making it up."
"Told you!" Julia cries, running to him and grabbing his hand (he's suddenly glad he took the time to clean the blood off), dragging him closer to the woman who is probably this Granny Lucas. "I know Mom is in the dining hall somewhere, but I can't find her," she grumbles, "so I got Granny instead."
"I don't think I'm a good substitute, Julia."
"No, but you can get her! And then he's gonna take us with him he has a pirate ship we're gonna go all over the world on a buncha adventures you gotta find Mom."
He blinks in surprise, but then, it isn't really that surprising; of course she'd jump to that conclusion, she's never had a dad before, but probably always dreamed about him — about him, shit — and if she's anything like him — and it seems like she is — she's adventurous and wants to explore (of course she does, why would he even consider that she wouldn't, he found her in the goddamn rafters), and so stumbling upon her father, who happens to be a pirate of all things, is literally a dream come true.
But pirate ships are no place for little girls, and if Emma ran all this way to have his child without him, she probably won't want to see him at all. The thought makes his blood pressure rise with both anger and pain — she doesn't owe him her love, or her future, but she does owe him an explanation.
"Julia, you don't know that…" Granny Lucas says tentatively, looking up at him, but he's not looking at her — Julia turns to him with wide, thin-ice eyes, but he's the one who cracks.
"But he's my dad," she says in a small voice. "You are gonna take us with you, right?"
He's answering before he can even think about it, "Depends on what your mum says." He glances up to the older woman, who's watching him in calculation. "But I'd like to."
What an understatement; especially when the girl's whole face lights up with another grin.
And then it hits him that he didn't bother to do anything with the body. "Actually," he starts, with a hard wince, and her face starts to fall, but then he goes on, "it might be a good idea to leave the castle right now."
"Why?" the woman asks sharply, and he runs a hand through his hair, wincing again.
"Without admitting anything, I have it on good authority that the count has suffered an untimely and rather bloody demise on the third floor."
He glances to the bruise on Julia's face, and Granny Lucas doesn't need to ask for more.
"Good riddance," she mutters, and then sighs mistrustfully. "But that does make this trickier. A lot of people know about Emma's feud with him, and if they think she did it, they'll execute her." She doesn't say it, but he knows enough about the laws in these parts to know that they'd probably kill Julia, too.
(Of course, they'd have to do that over his dead body, and he's reasonably certain that even that wouldn't be enough — he'd come back as a goddamn vengeful spirit to stop them killing her, eternity spent wandering the earth or no.)
"How do we find you?" Granny Lucas asks.
"She's the only brig in the harbor, you can't miss her."
When he looks at Julia, he sees wide-eyed fear on her face, and wonders why before it hits him where he's seen that before — the first time he went away to get supplies and Emma looked at him like he'd never come back, like he'd abandon her just like everyone else. They all had that moment of doubt.
He kneels down so he's eye-level with her. "You want to come with me now or wait for your mum?" he asks, already knowing what she'll say.
He's right. "I wanna go with you," she answers in a tiny voice, and he nods before looking up at Granny Lucas.
"Probably better that way," he says evenly, picking Julia up almost unconsciously because maybe he's a little afraid she'll disappear the moment he lets go of her too.
Granny nods slowly and mistrustfully, picking up a large, familiar-looking bundle, already all made-up and neatly tied just like he taught her to, and handing it to him; when he looks at it in confusion, she explains in a low voice. "You didn't really think Emma would take that lying down, do you?"
Oh.
The count was never going to see dawn anyway.
Well, then.
"I'm not sure why I did," he mutters, although he is — she disappeared on him so he wouldn't know anything about his own damn child, he isn't really putting anything past her at the moment. "Don't tell her it's me," he adds, and Granny Lucas raises an eyebrow. "Just say it was pirates."
"Want to make sure she'll go?"
"Yes," he replies honestly; he isn't sure that she won't run away again if she finds out he's here unless he has someone she'll definitely come running for.
"Fair enough," she mutters, but doesn't look very comfortable with it. "One condition."
"Name it."
"You take my granddaughter with you," she says immediately. "Not necessarily for good, but for right now." She takes a step forward, and he leans back, honestly a bit intimidated. "That little girl is, for all intents and purposes, my granddaughter, and if you think I'm going to just let some man carry her off — father or no — you're a fool. Also," she adds, with some vindictive pleasure, "Ruby happens to be a werewolf, and has been known to eat people. Not that that has anything to do with anything."
He blinks several times in quick succession; that is one hell of a warning. He can honestly say that this is the first time anyone has ever threatened him with violent cannibalism should he hurt someone.
"Absolutely," he replies fearfully, as though there was ever any other answer he could give.
.
When he meets Ruby and they make their way to his ship — Julia refuses to get down from his arms, even when they start to get tired and he kind of wishes she would — Killian wonders if maybe Granny Lucas was bluffing him: Ruby's as sweet as they come.
On the other hand, it's always the ones you'd least expect.
"You know," he says slowly, fishing a bit. "Assuming you can control it, having a werewolf on board would be something of a… let's say a boon."
"Oh, gods," she sighs. "She told you about that? Did she tell you I'd eat you if you hurt Julia?"
"Heavily implied, more like," he answers, relieved for about three seconds before she goes on.
"Good. Because I will."
He's torn between wondering what the hell Emma was thinking when she shacked up with these people and wanting to congratulate her on making such a good decision.
"Aunt Ruby doesn't really eat people," Julia says, with childish exasperation. "It's just to scare you."
"It's effective," he mutters, and Ruby laughs.
"Don't worry," she says kindly, "I don't think you're going to hurt her at all. And yes, I can control it, and yes, I had intended to join up with you whether you liked it or not."
"Oh?"
She glances at him, much more sober. "Emma isn't the only one with a reputation for trouble with the count. I hope you have room for a cook, too, because we're a package deal."
He thinks about that for a moment — gods, having a real cook on board would be nice; the only person on crew willing to get into the galley tends to make dinners so salty they could kill an oceanfish.
Before he can answer, they've reached the docks and the ship, where he can hear a couple of people mulling about, but most of the crew is probably still haunting the brothels or taverns, and for that, he's grateful. He isn't sure he's prepared to explain this to everyone just yet.
The first person who sees them is, of course, Victor, who reacts to this development in the exact way Killian thought he would: "You're back earl — hello — wait a second…"
Julia waves, and Vic's eyebrows fly up as it hits him.
"Oh," he says bluntly. "That's why she left. I am wondering when she turned into a gorgeous brunette, though."
The hand not holding his daughter rises almost of its own accord to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration; however, Ruby seems to find it amusing, and holds her hand out to shake.
"Ruby, new resident werewolf."
Victor — either utterly desensitized by now to, well, everything or too captivated by her appearance to care — just takes her hand like she didn't say anything odd at all. "Victor, resident first mate and first-rate ladykiller."
At least someone finds him funny.
.
Melinda finds her near the banquet table filling glasses of wine.
"Emma," she says fervently, and the look on her face almost makes her drop the bottle, "you have to come with me, right now."
"What happened?" she asks, terror rising. "Where's Julia?"
"Pirates," Melinda replies, voice nearly breaking. "They've killed the count and taken her, I couldn't catch them, they took her, you have to — "
She drops the bottle and bolts before the glass can even break, not bothering let her finish her sentence.
.
Emma, followed by a huffing Granny, makes it to the docks in record time, and is relieved (for a certain definition of "relieved") to see the ship hasn't left yet; when she gets closer, however, she hears a voice that makes her stop dead in her tracks.
"Victor," Killian is drawling, "I swear to everything you hold dear in this world, if you drop that child, I will kill you."
She staggers against the nearest pole, and Melinda coughs a bit.
"I might have left something out."
"You think?" she hisses in a strangled voice.
She hears Julia give a cry of dismay, and then another familiar voice: "Sorry, sweetie, but when you're soft and chewy, you do exactly what the papa bear tells you to."
She can't breathe.
Of course. Of course he'd get a ship and become a pirate when he'd finally had enough of that city, that's exactly — that's just like him and of course they'd follow him, they'd all follow him to the grave and how the hell did he find Julia and why the hell did he think it was a good idea to kidnap her and force Emma to — oh.
She's shaking as she walks up to the gangplank, and it's Vic who sees her first.
"Long time, no see, stranger," he says cheerfully, and Julia grins and waves and starts to babble about look, look, Mom, look who I found, but when she does look to Killian, his expression is blank and wooden.
He still wears that leather coat, appears so much the same and so much more than she remembers; he's clearly done well for himself, looks more like a nobleman than half the people in that castle at the same time that he's obviously a pirate even at a glance.
And he's trying to hide it, but he's furious, furious and wounded and she hadn't — she hadn't considered the possibility that he might be alive and looking for her, or how he'd react if he found out about Julia.
"Killian," is all she can say. "You're alive."
"Of course I am, love," he replies warmly, although his eyes are anything but. "I promised you, didn't I?" He pauses for a moment to let that sink in, and she has to look away from him. "Couldn't really stay in the city, so I… adapted. Heard about a bloody rich, drunken count in this area, like to throw lavish parties, seemed like an easy mark, you'd think, no?"
"Yeah," she says tightly. "Really easy."
He nods with a little hmm that might be agreement or might be derision. "Found myself with a little shadow up in the rafters, says her mother's name is Emma and — " he laughs once, breathy and mocking " — well, she looks familiar, let's say."
Everyone on the ship has gone quiet and is watching the scene with tense interest. "It's a long story," she says quietly, which is true at the same time it's not; the part he's concerned with isn't long at all.
"I've got all night," he replies, with a knowing sort of sharpness to his voice, because it's obvious she's avoiding the question he's not quite asking. It makes her irritated, and a little desperate, and the shaking in her hands is only getting worse.
"You don't understand," she breathes, and he takes a step closer.
"Then explain it to me," he snaps loudly, finally letting his anger out in the open; she closes her eyes. "No, I don't understand, I've never understood. And now I find out — " he cuts himself off, visibly shaking and obviously hurt and he's not even bothering to hide it. "At what point did you start lying to me?" he asks in a much lower voice, stretched taut and vibrating with emotion.
She looks around at the group's feet, and there seems to be so many of them, and — "Can we take this somewhere else?" she asks, matching his tone and finally looking back up at him. Without another word, he takes two steps backward toward the quarterdeck and opens the door to his quarters, arm stretched over it to both hold it open and beckon her in. She takes a deep breath and follows, and when he closes it behind them she almost can't breathe.
.
He didn't expect to be this angry.
But seeing her standing there on his ship, older and more beautiful than he remembers and looking at him like — like she's devastated — suddenly it's all so much more real. He's found her, finally found her.
And the look on her face says she didn't want him to.
It takes everything in him not to slam the door — because Julia is watching and probably already thinks he's going to hurt Emma in some way and shit, he completely forgot she was there — and he turns to Emma, standing with her back to him. He stays by the door; the way she was looking at him on deck is something he can't stand to see again.
"I never lied to you," she says quietly, and he can't contain the incredulous laugh; she sighs. "I didn't. I meant every word."
"You'll forgive me for disbelieving you," he sneers.
"You don't — you can't understand," she pleads, and he wants to scream at her to stop saying that, but she goes on. "I wasn't — I couldn't think straight, do you have any idea what pregnancy does to your emotions? I was already worried sick, and then I found out I was — I was pregnant and the next day — the next day — we get word that the magistrate has hanged a bunch of thieves as some sort of — of warning, and I thought… I just knew you were one of them and I panicked.
"Victor tried to calm me down but I — I couldn't listen, I couldn't believe him. And… and I'd been thinking… this wasn't a way to raise a child," she explains, never turning to look at him. He wonders just what it is that keeps her eyes averted from him — fear? shame? horror? "On the streets — that's something you do when you lose everything else, I couldn't… we'd need something stable and — and safe."
"You didn't think I'd make that happen?" he says, just shy of an outright snarl. She takes a deep breath through audibly clenched teeth.
"I thought you were dead," she snaps, firm and angry and finally turning toward him and there are tears in her eyes. "Who was I supposed to expect that from, Victor? He's fine and all, but he's not a leader, not like you, and even less a father. I was terrified, and I felt alone, and I suddenly had this huge responsibility I was trapped in that no one could help me with, and you can't understand how that is."
He doesn't have a good response; he doesn't know how to react to Emma crying. It's something he's never seen before, and even in his anger, he doesn't like it at all.
"The only thing I could think of was that I needed to find somewhere safe and stable, and that wasn't in a crew of — of homeless kids living off what we could steal. And then Vic — he was trying to help, he made me promise to wait and said he would go back to the city and find news but he wouldn't let me come with him because he thought I was right, too. He thought you were dead, too, and that — it meant — I thought it meant — I wasn't overreacting. It wasn't just me." She pauses for a moment, looking away again and wiping at her eyes angrily. "And I didn't want to know," she says finally. "I didn't want him to come back and tell me it was true. If I didn't know for sure, I could always…"
When she doesn't finish that sentence for a long time, he prompts her. "You could always what?"
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "I could always hope you'd show up someday," she whispers.
He doesn't know how to feel about that. "It didn't occur to you to leave a note?"
"No," she answers bluntly, shrugging. "I told you, I wasn't thinking straight. I mean, gods, I ran away alone and pregnant in early autumn on the — on the hope that someone would help me, and you think I was that rational? If Melinda hadn't taken pity on me, I probably would have died because of that stupid decision."
Everything in him wrenches at that thought. "Then why not send one?" he asks, making up his mind not to dwell on how he had — albeit indirectly — nearly gotten her killed. "That irrational state of mind surely passed."
"Killian…" she sighs, and tilts her head, meeting his eyes for the first time in seven years. "Where would I have sent it?"
That one sentence says more about why she felt it necessary to leave than anything else she's told him so far, and the anger starts to subside with it. The streets are no place for a baby, and even if he had gotten back before she'd left, she would have been taking a risk — they'd been homeless and poor and had the law on their backs at every turn. They would have been together, but it would have been dangerous, and she'd chosen to seek out a stable, safe place to raise Julia rather than risk her daughter's life on the hope that he was not only alive, but that they could perpetually avoid the lawmen who were responsible for his imprisonment in the first place.
But they would have been together.
"I know you probably think I'm — terrible, or — or something," she starts, looking away again, "for staying there when that count was — " she cuts herself off and closes her eyes again. "But it really was the best place for her. I think yesterday was the first time he ever even saw her, I don't think he ever knew her name. All of us, me, Ruby, Melinda, half the servants in the house, we all kept him away from her. And she was safe, Killian," she implores, running a hand through her hair.
"She had a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, and a dozen people who all adored her. She had a warm bed she could sleep in every night, and she's never gone hungry, not even once, not even one meal, and — and until last night, no one had ever hurt her in any way. I think — " she sighs " — I think that's why she thought she could attack the count, it had never occurred to her that anyone would."
It rolls around in his head and mops the anger up with it: no one had ever hurt her. She's been treated so well that she didn't even think anyone could raise a hand to her, she's never known hunger, or the discomfort of sleeping on cold stone, or the emptiness of waking up alone in a place that couldn't ever be home.
Emma has given her everything that none of them had, that even Killian at his best hadn't been able to provide.
He can't fault her for that simply because she hadn't been able to take him with her.
"Look, I — I understand how you feel," she says quietly, and he's really sure she doesn't, "and I — I'm grateful, that you, you know, killed him. I just need — if you'll just give us passage to the next port, we can stay there and… you don't have to deal with us."
He can't tell if the words infuriate him or break him.
"Is that what you want?" he asks, in a voice that fails to stay neutral as the sentence goes on. "Me, the street rat, to leave you and our daughter alone forever?"
"No," she replies immediately, a little desperately, and looks surprised at the thought. "I — this is just really sudden, and you're angry and you have every right to be and I understand if you don't want to take on this — "
"This is your problem," he cuts in, frustrated as all hell, "this is why you really left." He pauses for a moment and takes a step closer to her; he searches her face and finds her guarded, walls thrown back up again to keep him — Killian — out, and he hates it. "You think that no one cares enough about you to be hurt by anything you do. Do you think I would've been so angry if you meant so little to me? Such that I would drop you at the next port like so much rubbish?"
She doesn't respond for a long moment, and neither of them move. If she understands, she doesn't believe him.
"Do you remember the night before my father was hanged?" he asks finally, in a much lower voice, and she looks up to him.
"Of course I do," she replies, and he nods with an ironic smirk.
"Do you know why I needed you to say you loved me?"
"No," she answers softly. "I got the feeling you didn't want to talk about it."
"I didn't," he concedes, "not at the time, no." He looks away from her this time because, like she said, this is so sudden — two hours ago Emma was gone from his life forever and he had no children — and he hasn't had any time to process any part of it except that it hurts. "My father was a terrible man," he explains dispassionately, "with a list of crimes only a bit longer than mine. I thought it was the crimes he'd committed that I hadn't that were the difference between us, but the last thing he said to me made me see I was wrong."
"What did he say?" she asks, and she sounds so much like she did that night — concerned and sympathetic and intimate — that it aches.
"He said to tell that to the families of the men I'd killed, how I was still somehow a good man," he replies, and smiles thinly. "He was right, the fact that I refused to commit every crime on his roster was meaningless to the victims." He pauses, and has to turn away again; she's waiting for him to continue, understanding and unjudging and so much his Emma that he can't stand to look at her. "I don't know what I intended to do that night," he goes on, a little ashamed of this, "but it wasn't to return home. But then I walked out of that jail and you were waiting for me… and I realized what really set me apart from him."
She closes her eyes and drops her head. "Someone loved you," she infers, quiet and guilty.
"Someone loved me," he confirms. "Enough to come out into a dangerous place in a dangerous city at a dangerous hour because she thought I might need her. You said that was proof of your love for me," he says, and maybe it's melancholy or maybe it's hopeful or maybe it's bitter. "If you meant so little to me, why would I care that it was a lie?"
His eyes find hers in the ringing silence, watching him with a sort of wet and wounded confusion. "It wasn't a lie," she whispers, a pleading note hidden in her voice. "It isn't a lie."
Everything on her face and in her voice says she's telling the truth; his hand finds her cheek in something between instinct and habit, and she leans into it, reaching up to hold it there, and this is the first time he's touched her since he made Vic drag her away without giving or waiting for I love you or goodbye and he'd forgotten how soft her skin is.
"Isn't it?" he asks quietly, intended to be scathing but coming out more uncertain, and her fingers tighten on his hand.
She kisses his wrist and he can't — he can't stand this close to her while still being so far away. He slides his hand into her hair, pulls her to him the way he's been dying to for years, and presses his lips to her temple.
Emma is here, and he doesn't know if he forgives her or how much there really is to forgive, but she's here and he's not going to lose her again, ever.
They stay like that for a moment, until noise on the deck declares that the crew is meandering back onboard; they both start a little and turn toward the door, his hand never leaving her head.
"I should…" she starts, but he gives her a look.
"You're welcome to stay," he says softly, and he isn't (only) referring to the ship as a whole. "You look exhausted."
"It's been a long few days," she replies, and sounds it; he smiles a little (and it's more or less sincere) and kisses her forehead.
"Get some rest, then," he says. "I'll hunt down the little one."
"That might be difficult," she smirks, sounds like herself again, like the last seven years haven't taken her away from him at all. "She's always getting into places she shouldn't be. Sounds familiar."
He raises an eyebrow. "I have no idea what you're referring to."
.
"I'm not a monkey!"
He follows the noise to find Julia, along with a snickering Ruby, in Vic's cabin, where she's climbed up into the rafters again, although this time it seems more to avoid being teased by Killian's first mate than anything else.
"Sorry, but it's regulation," Vic says, crossing his arms and looking up at her, completely failing to notice him in the doorway. "Every pirate ship has to have a monkey. We've been breaking the rules for a long time now, the pirate lords are about to come arrest us for it. Lucky for us you came along."
"You're making that up," she cries, but doesn't sound convinced. "Aunt Ruby!"
Ruby holds up her hands and replies, "Hey, I'm not the pirate here," restraining her laughter with some difficulty.
"See? It's settled," Vic says brightly. "You're our new monkey. If you didn't want the part, you shouldn't have gone climbing all over my cabin."
"There aren't even any pirate lords!" she pouts, clutching the bars in what appears to be unwilling dismay.
"Oh yes, there are," Killian interjects, and both Vic and Ruby start, turning to him a bit guiltily. "They've been terribly unhappy with us for the monkey thing, too."
"Everything all right?" Vic asks in a low voice, and when he smiles it's almost genuine.
"Yeah, it's fine," he says, but before he can go on, Julia leaps down from the rafters — scaring the life out of him because that is a long drop for a six-year-old and they are going to have to do something about this — and runs up to him, eyes wide.
"You're not gonna make us leave, are you?" she pleads, all of the humor gone in a way that hurts him far more than he wants to admit, and he makes an incredulous face, kneeling down to her.
"Of course I'm not," he replies warmly, ruffling her hair. "Your mum and I just had to… catch up," he tries to explain without explaining, and it doesn't feel or sound very convincing. "Sorry if I frightened you."
"Didn't scare me," she says quickly, and insincerely, but covers it up with the kind of grin he's used to seeing in the mirror. "Where're we going?"
"On an adventure," he answers, and matches her smile, standing back up. "Welcome aboard the Jolly Roger, my girl."