For a long couple of minutes, Emma watched through the window, Henry's phone pressed to her ear, as Killian trudged through eighteen inches of snow. It wasn't so bad when she could still see him, though the difficulty he seemed to be having maneuvering through the heavy white groundcover sent her heart into her stomach.
Even though Killian was the one doing all the activity, she had a funny feeling they were both in for a very long half-mile walk.
It was after he disappeared from her view that she started to get antsy. She crossed the room and plopped down on the couch with the phone. Snow had spread out the picnic blanket on the floor in front of the fireplace, and she, David, and Henry had all gathered in front of the fire with Neal. It was done under the guise of giving the baby tummy time but Emma knew they were mostly trying to give her some privacy.
Not that there was a lot of privacy to be had in a tiny little one-room hunting shack but Emma appreciated their effort.
"You're supposed to be talking to me, Hook," she said into the phone when she realized he'd been silent for over a minute.
"I'm back to Hook now?" he asked in a mock wounded tone.
"Got you to answer me, didn't I?"
He chuckled. "Too right, lass. What am I meant to be talking to you about?"
"I don't know," she shrugged. What he talked about wasn't important. She just needed him to keep talking so she knew he was okay. "Anything, I guess."
"I don't ramble well, love."
She rolled her eyes. "You were a pirate for how many centuries, Killian? You can't tell me you don't have entire anthologies full of stories you could tell. Just start talking."
Killian sighed into her ear but somehow she could tell he wasn't really annoyed with her. As a matter of fact, she would bet that an indulgent little smirk was on his face at that very moment. And sure enough, after letting her hang for another moment, he did indeed start talking. "It was the first storm I'd weathered on the sea ..."
Emma noted with relief that he sounded all right. Yeah, he'd only been gone a few minutes but he sounded completely normal. There was no hint in his voice that he was shivering or even cold yet – though he had to be at least a little chilly – and there was no hint of sluggishness or over-exertion.
She idly wondered if he'd spent much time at all traipsing through heavy snow. If he'd truly spent most of his life in Neverland, she didn't see how he could have. The climate of Neverland didn't exactly lend itself to winter weather, at least not from what she could tell from her few days there.
Still, she kept listening for any indication at all in his voice that he wasn't okay. Any little hint that something was wrong. Plus, she was hoping that if she kept his mind on telling her stories, he wouldn't notice the cold too much. He did need to pay attention to it but she didn't want him fixating on it.
In all her mental wandering, she'd lost track of the story his accented voice was still murmuring through the phone. As such, it took a moment for what he'd said to register. "You're making that shit up," she said when it finally clicked. "There is no way in hell it rained six inches in twenty minutes."
Of course, prior to today, she hadn't thought it was possible for eighteen inches of snow to come down in forty-five minutes, either. But still.
"Just wanted to see if you were paying attention, Swan," he chuckled into her ear. Emma rolled her eyes even as a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Damn pirate. "Where was I? Oh, yes. Six inches of rain had fallen in twenty minutes, and let me tell you, swabbing a deck with that much water on it is nigh on impossible ..."
She let him tell her the rest of his ridiculous – and ridiculously embellished – story without interruption. She didn't call bullshit on anything, even when he mentioned that one of the crew had swiftly constructed a toy boat to sail across the deck. It took pretty much all her willpower, but she did it. When he finally finished, she sighed and asked, "Was any of that story true?"
"The bare bones of it, perhaps," he admitted.
"So, what, the only real part of it was that you'd once weathered a storm on the sea?"
"Aye." She could hear the smirk in his tone, that ridiculously smug smirk of his that managed to both raise her hackles and make her smile in equal measure. Once again: damn pirate.
"Oh, bloody hell," he mumbled so softly he probably hadn't meant to be heard.
Panic rose in her throat. "What? What is it?"
"I've arrived at your mother's land vessel, Swan, but attempting to find an access point ... is not going to be easy."
Aw, shit, she thought.
Bloody hell indeed. How in the hell was he going brush eighteen inches of heavy snow off the car without so much as a crappy snow brush? Snow like this needed to be shoveled off the car, for crying out loud, and he had nothing to use but his arms.
She had just started to tell him that the rear would probably be the easiest place to get in when she thought of a better way. A glance over at her parents proved that although they were trying to pretend they weren't listening, they were keep at least half an ear on her side of the conversation. Not in a nosy, eavesdropping kind of way, she didn't think; they just wanted to make sure Killian was okay – and, by extension, that Emma herself was okay.
Of course, when they saw her looking, they both looked caught from a moment. David quickly shifted his gaze back down to Neal but Snow furrowed her eyebrows slightly, silently asking Emma if everything was all right. She nodded – because, in the grand scheme of things, it was. Snow smiled and shifted her attention to Neal as well.
Which was really just as well. If either one of them figured out what she was about to do, they'd kill her. She was already going to be hearing it from Killian when he came back; she didn't need it from them, too. Getting Killian into the car and out again as quickly as possible was paramount, though, so they were all just going to have to deal with it.
"Hold on a second," she murmured into the phone, then shut her eyes and went for it. Once the magic was burbling in her stomach, she envisioned her mother's car parked along the shoulder of the little access road they'd taken into the woods. It was harder than with the tree branch because she couldn't actually see her mom's car but she imagined that the snow surrounding and on top of it made it look like a big white car-shaped lump along the side of the road.
Once that picture was in her head, she envisioned all the snow falling off of the car and to the ground below, unearthing the vehicle so Killian could get inside quickly and easily. As soon as the inner warmth hit just the right temperature, she said, "Stand back."
"Bloody hell, Swan," he grumbled into her ear.
"I trust you can get in now," she said as she opened her eyes, a smug hint to her voice.
"Yes, I can, and you are brilliant, but I thought we discussed this."
"We discussed me not poofing the stuff from the car here. We never said anything about me not being able to magically clear off the car for you. I have no desire to go out looking for a pirate-turned-snowman, thank you very much."
"That was unnecessary, but thank you. Do you feel all right?"
A wave of tiredness had descended on her, reminding her that her parents and Killian were probably right about her not having the energy to poof the stuff from the car, but she saw no reason to tell him that. She could handle some tiredness. "I feel fine."
"Hmm." Okay, so apparently he didn't quite believe her. He really could read her like a book, couldn't he? Still, he didn't press her on it. She heard a creak as he pulled one of the car doors open. "I have to set the talking device down to gather the supplies," he told her instead.
Sometimes his lack of use of the names of the most simple things amused the hell out of her. "It's called a phone, and make it quick," she said, allowing a smirk but only because he couldn't see her.
"Aye, love."
She heard a rustle on the line as he set the phone aside. Holding her phone away from her mouth, she said to her family, "He found the car."
"Thank goodness," Snow said, letting out a breath of relief.
David smiled at Emma, and Henry hollered, "Awesome job, Killian!"
"Thank you, lad!" Killian hollered back, making Emma choke back a snicker. Apparently he didn't quite understand that although he'd heard Henry, Henry wouldn't be able to hear him.
"He says thanks," Emma murmured to Henry, who grinned.
For a long moment, she listened. The panic that had been rumbling in the pit of her stomach since Killian had walked out the door grew as the silence stretched out. Oh, why had she let everyone talk her into letting him go alone? Someone should have been with him … safety in numbers, and all that.
Just as she was getting ready to say something into the phone to capture his attention, he came back onto the line. "I've gathered the blanket, four heavy shirts, and your mother's bag of snacks. I just need to lock up the vessel and I'll be headed back."
She could heard it in his voice now, the cold and the exhaustion. Damn it. He'd been fine while he was walking but the inactivity of standing at the car to find all the stuff must have made the cold catch up with him. Wincing, Emma pulled the phone away from her face to check the time.
Almost thirty minutes. He'd been gone almost thirty minutes, which meant he was at least another thirty or minutes from getting back to the warmth of the shack. Damn it, damn it. She pressed the phone back to her ear just in time to faintly hear the car door close. "Tell me another story, Killian. A real one this time."
"That story was real," he protested.
"Yeah, like ten percent of it. I want a one-hundred-percent real story."
He sighed, most probably due to his weariness. A moment later, though, he found the joking tone he'd been using with her since he left. "All right, if you want a real story … how about the first time Liam left me at the helm all night by myself? I ended up sailing us two days off course."
Emma snickered, as much in relief as actual amusement. "Big bad Captain Hook sailed off course?"
"I wasn't 'big bad Captain Hook' yet, love," he explained, making a smile pull at her lips. Of course he would clarify just how young and inexperienced he'd been at the time. "I was little more than a cabin boy but as the captain's brother, I was allowed certain opportunities."
Yep, just as she thought.
He wove the story in that lovely, accented voice of his. Liam had let him take over while he went to bed for the night. At some point in the wee hours of the morning, Killian lost his heading and, in trying to regain it, miscalculated their positioning in relation to the stars. By the time Liam returned to the helm at first light, Killian had sailed over thirty miles in the wrong direction. "Add in the storm we sailed into trying to regain our previous heading and it took us close to two days to get back on course," he chuckled. "Liam said he would never understand how I'd managed to run us thirty-six hours off course in just seven."
Emma smiled. "I take it he wasn't mad."
"Not at all. He'd known it was a possibility when he left me at the helm. We never told the crew, though. Some of them wouldn't have been nearly as understanding. I believe the explanation they all heard was that I'd been trying to outrun the same storm only to have it change course and double-back on us."
His voice was even more weary now. Another quick glance at her phone revealed that they still had another fifteen more minutes, give or take. Damn, damn, damn.
When the silence on the other end stretched out, Emma said, "Tell me another one, Killian. You probably won't get another chance to tell me all these stories at once, so you should take advantage of it while you can."
Much to her relief, Killian chuckled at that. "How about the time we managed to capture three treasures at once?"
"This is another one of your embellishments, isn't it?"
"Does it matter?"
Not in the slightest. The story itself didn't matter at all, just as long as it kept him talking. "Carry on," Emma said, making him chuckle.
And so she allowed his weary voice to fill her mind with images of pirate captains and treasure chests and tall-masted ships. She didn't believe a single damn word of it, but she didn't care.
"Swan?" he asked.
The utter exhaustion in his voice shattered the mental image he'd created for her. Panic once again leaped into her throat. "Yeah?"
"Can you open the door? I'm bloody freezing."
Oh, God, was he hallucinating? Were hallucinations even a sign of hypothermia? She was just about to ask him what door he needed her to open when it registered. In two seconds flat, she leaped off the couch and dashed over to the door of the shack. She pushed it open and there stood her exhausted, shivering pirate with a tote of Snow's, which must have been in the car, stuffed to the gills with the food, clothes, and blanket hooked over his shoulder.
"I told you I'd come back to you, didn't I, Swan?" he said, smirking smugly as he stepped over the threshold and handed her the phone.
Emma heaved a mildly exasperated sigh as she pulled the door closed. How she could want to hug him and smack him at the same time, she would never understand.