Day one.

I've started over. Not much point in writing month by month when my life has very much just been slated to start anew.

I feel anew. I am.

Yesterday morning, at oh-eight hundred and twenty two hours, I heard my son's primal scream and that sound alone swept through me like the sound of a thousand mermaids chanting my name, luring me into the ocean. I am in love once more...

Blast it, I've gotten so bloody emotional, it's hard to even write these lines.

Emma was admitted at eighteen hundred hours the day before. According to Dr. Whale (whom, I have to say, has finally earned my trust after the fete he pulled with my Swan), she had already started labor a few hours earlier but neither of us had quite realized so. After a few tests she finally got a room and continued to painfully endure the hours, minutes and seconds it took for her to be completely ready (they all kept talking about dilation; being a gentleman, I still rather blush, thinking of it, natural as it may be). Poor dear Swan. I held her hand as she huffed, breathed, inhaled, exhaled, wept, twisted, turned, screamed and settled, waiting for the pivotal moment when she would be deemed ready to start pushing.

Now, being from a completely different time and as much as I love my wife, where (and when) I come from, childbirth is a no-man matter; the wife is in one room, with a midwife or two to take care of the process and the father is notified of the arrival of the child after the deed is completed, so it could be said that being in the same room as Swan while she endured the process was awkward at very best. I still held her hand though the process (the scabs left by her nailmarks on my thumb are evidence to that; should have given her the hook to squeeze, instead), but even she realized that, given my particular rearing, it would probably be best that, once the process of birth started, it would be better for me to wait outside.

I heartily agreed.

By one in the morning, she was ready. The last I saw was how some bloody nurse put a hole in her spine and stuck some sort of device in it to inject a liquid that seemed to hurt more than the labor pains themselves, supposedly to "ease the pain". But when I saw her squint hard and scream the roof down, that's when I just quit. I unceremoniously exited the room, reached the nearest trash bin and, in the same fashion as my dear Swan in the early stages of her expectance, I regurgitated all I had merrily ingested hours earlier.

From then on, it was a long wait. Mary Margaret and Red were the ones to stand by her while the child was born, while David, Henry and myself sat around waiting. Charming and the boy exchanged words, played games and dabbled around in all sorts of nonsense; I, on the other hand, wished I hadn't forgotten my rum flask back home. I was desperate. At some point, David came to sit by me and reassured me that delivery in our day and time was very safe and that I should not worry... but again, my rearing had taught me differently. It was hard to overcome years of growth in places where one hears of three out of five women perishing during the perilous process of delivery.

I insist; only Rum is good for this sort of thing.

I used that time to ponder... ponder on all and everything the Swan and I have been through together. It made me grin to think of the first time I ever saw her, clad in those horrid blacksmith rags and with my hook hidden in my satchel, peering from beneath a pile of carcasses from Cora's earlier rampage. Cora had told me of her; how she and her gang of friends were seeking a portal to go back home, and she expressly wanted me to get close to her to find out about Storybrooke, because her daughter Regina dwelled there. I expected a fast and easy job; I truly didn't expect to be greeted by the face of an angel and the heart of a lion. And I certainly didn't expect her to outwit me! I will remember that beanstalk forever... how we exchanged words... and hearts. She didn't know it then and it's awfully likely I didn't, either, but I now believe that was the moment both of us knew we would, somehow, always gravitate around each other. I can actually place my finger on the exact moment I fell for her. It took me a while to come to that particular conclusion, but I believe that it was the moment we engaged in swashbuckling. Who knew a woman so fair could hold such a good form. I never intended to harm her (if I recall I even used the opportunity to try to seduce her, even then!); but she hit me hard, a solid upper cut. And I fell... but pretended to be down, if only to provide her with an opportunity from there on I never got her out of my mind. I also remember her drowning as she jumped ship during a storm in Neverland; How I held my breath, looking at her lying limp in her mother's arms, hoping, praying for her to inhale... and how overcome by relief I was when she finally did. From that moment on, I could not get my eyes off of her. It was also then that I decided I'd do right by her... privately, quietly, without expecting a thing in return... until the Echo Cave incident.

Which would have been far easier had her mother and father not been present. How does a lowly pirate openly say "I love you" to a princess in front of her hero progeny?

All the same, here we are now. I must have done something right. I have better done; my old lady really put me through the wringer before I finally, FINALLY won her love. I can understand her apprehensions; She'd been hurt one too many times, a few of those by me. I even thought I might give up on her one day... I followed her back in time, I guided her through the Enchanted Forest, I (quite proudly) led her through her very first Ball Room Waltz, I held her, wiped her tears and most important, I helped her find her inner magic, which she had lost while saving MY sorry arse from drowning. I now thank Zelena for that sudden immersion and making me drown... I believe that precise moment was the instant Swan finally realized she wanted me in her life. She told me so later... she wouldn't have known what to do with herself, had I died.

Right around that second, Mary Margaret burst out into the room, smiling, bawling, being her usual princessy self, and looked at all of us in turns. "He's here!"

Through the doors I heard him cry. It hit me like a fresh gust of wind in an open ocean and I cried with him as I turned to David with a very uncharacteristic sudden hug. Now Charming is a bloody prince; he is as sentimental as a five year old lass, but at that moment, I appreciated his comradeire as he hugged me hard. "You're a dad, man!" He said. "Welcome aboard..."

I hadn't heard those words since my Jolly Roger days.

We followed Snow into the room. My love looked like the very life had been drained out of her; her golden-as-the-sun strands of hair sticking to her forehead with sweat... But the smile on her face... and the tears of joy... and the little one... bloody hell, there he was!

I gulped. How would I ever hold him, with a hook instead of a hand?

She looked at me and bit her lip. "He looks just like you..." She whispered.

I finally peeked over and saw the babe in her arms; he indeed had a brush of black hair atop his wee head and he was just starting to settle down in Emma's embrace. In a sudden blow I understood so much about meself, my life and the world around me. Both Emma and I know what it is to be left alone, to lose hope, to have to fight to be on your feet, to squander opportunities and to embrace them when they return, to make mistakes and to work beyond all possibility of success to mend them. And looking at his little face I suddenly knew that this was one opportunity I would never fail at: Giving this little one all Emma and I deserved to have. Not riches, perhaps (unless my love would want to return to live as the princess she is in the Enchanted Forest which I gather is not a plan in her particular planner), but love. Lots and lots of love.

How could we not? Little fella was bloody beautiful!

I stood, bending over my love's side, smiling at my wee son and repeatedly kissing Emma's head, telling her how brilliant, how bloody magnificent and wonderful she was, when Mary Margaret took the little one and walked around the bed, staring intently at me. "Better learn to hold him right..." She said.

I held my breath. How could I hold him with the bloody hook? I promptly removed it and placed it by Emma's side and tried to accommodate the babe in my arms...

Bloody hell... I just don't have words for this. I don't. At least not enough to adequately convey what that feels like. Nothing I can think of can measure up to this particular feeling, of holding your newborn child in your arms. Nothing at all. I won't even go there, except for the notion that it is something that can and does change a man's life. It's simply the biggest magic that there ever was or ever will be... the magic of true love.

It took at least five hours of me bawling like an old maid for me to come to terms with this new orchestration of my life with Swan and Henry. Few people if any have ever witnessed Captain Hook fall completely at the seams like this. But the appreciation I received was all too gratifying... especially when a tall, dashing Prince and future king not only shares that particular trait but is in equal disarray. Bloody David, I knew I'd win him over sometime!

All the same, I still can't think straight... Our gorgeous son, Liam James Jones (the James bit was a last minute cry from Swan... to honor her father's faux name, whilst still being a prince as opposed to David the sodding shepherd boy), was born at 19.76 inches, weighing a healthy 7 pounds and 8 ounces, has dark hair and remarkably long limbs, like his mother and screams louder than a banshee. It's early still to say who he will look like the most, but I can already tell he is one devilishly handsome little rogue.

I will write further into this log every other week. For now, I am far too thrilled to commit any further thought to print without causing the ink to run from the pathetic gushing of my eyes.