Rumpelstiltskin acted first, summoning a fireball over his open palm. Hurling it into their direction, the creatures squealed to each other.
Another leaped onto the sail.
Charming raced out of the cabin with armfuls of swords, passing them to whoever he could. Turning, he faced the one clinging to the sail, spying fangs in a pronounced female mouth. Sword readied, he swiped at it and watched it scramble further up the sail, its torso almost right above him. Stay focused, he told himself. It didn't matter how many might be toppling over onto the deck if this one dropped down on him. The very thought of touching it nauseated him more than a lurching ship ever could.
It unleashed a sudden wail, its body flailing for a moment. He had to make sure his sword was in the right place. Straightening it until he held it perpendicular to the deck, he swayed back until the creature fell right into the blade.
Its thrashing covered him in water and blocked his view of the deck. The odors of fish and blood blending together right above him clenched his stomach. He roared as he threw the sword over his shoulder, sending it and the creature onto the deck with a loud thud. Prying his sword out of its ribcage took more leverage than he'd expected. He placed a hesitant boot onto its torso to help him pull. Echoes of swords clanging behind him gave him extra motivation. He turned just in time to see one of them drag Snow, then another drag Regina, into the black abyss below them.
"No!" he heard Emma scream. She sprinted towards the bow and he followed, stopping when she did at a coil of rope.
"I'm going down!" she shouted over the wailing, now a chorus of anger and strategy, he guessed.
"Here!" Taking the rope, Charming fastened it around her waist before grasping it. "Gold! Cover us!" Through the darkness, another fireball whooshed past them right into another one of the creatures hoisting itself over the rail. His heart skipped a beat watching Emma hurl herself into the water. The rope slid in his fists, burning his skin, until it grew taut. He peered down but the ship cast a shadow over the water, the moon on its other side. Not knowing what else to do, he counted the seconds.
"One...two..."
The ship lunged forward, nearly sending him overboard.
Emma gasped for air, having to remember how to swim all over again. They couldn't have taken them that far down, not yet. She flipped the wet strands of hair out of her face and swallowed, preparing to take a breath and go back down, unsure how she would be able to see much of anything.
"Emma!"
"Mary Margaret!" Her mother held onto a notch in the ship's hull, waist out of the water. Swimming towards her, Emma held the rope out in front of her.
"Where's Regina?"
"I don't know. I shook the one off of me."
"Climb up the rope. Help David." Each grain of salt on her lips felt like a nail through her coffin. "I'll find her...go."
"Emma!"
"If I don't find Henry, I want you to!" she spat, the salt making her mouth more slack. She spun around while treading. The outline of heads bobbed close by. There would be nowhere to hide. The ship moved too fast for her to brace herself against it. The round shadows emerged into Regina and one of the creatures, the latter trying to pull her under. It had latched itself behind her, restraining her arms so she could barely move. Emma tried to think, tried to pat herself down as silently as she could in search of something on her person to use. Great, just great. Regina's panting grew louder. She'd be too drained to fight much longer.
There was nothing else to do. Emma pulled her turtleneck up over her head and lunged out at the figures, wrapping the shirt around the creature's head. A webbed hand smacked the side of her head, hard enough for her to see stars, but she shook it off and tightened her grip more.
Regina dog-paddled closer and pushed its head into the water, nodding at Emma to pull more. Emma straddled the creature's back, wondering, hoping, the flaps she'd seen for not even a full second on its neck were gills.
"Snow!" Charming called, unable to extend an arm to help her over the rail. Hook had had to let go of the wheel to ram his hook into one of the creatures that had been inches away from trying to drag him overboard, but even then Charming couldn't bring himself to tie off the rope. The image of it snapping was too much. Snow ran to his side and pulled.
"I'm pulling her up," he said.
"She was so close to Regina. Give her a second to signal us."
Signal? Pretty sure it would take both Emma's arms to fight off one of those things, he thought, a sudden jerk of the rope giving him the sensation of ripping his arms from their sockets. But then...he peered down as far as he could. A flash of blonde was all he needed.
"I'm pulling her up!" he said again, heaving with Snow next to him. The longest five seconds of his life passed until Emma and Regina's hands fumbled around the rail. Rumpelstiltskin hobbled over to them to help them over with one arm, his other busy conjuring a silvery wind of some kind.
"Hold on!" he shouted. The light blinded Charming, knocking him off his feet and onto the deck so hard he couldn't tell if he lost consciousness or not. White. Black. The hisses and clicks of the mermaids swarmed through his mind until they evaporated into the air. Bringing himself to his knees, he looked around. Emma lied close, soaked to the bone, and...good lord.
"Here," he said, throwing his jacket over her. "Gold, come on. Something dry and, and..." He gestured at the general area where his daughter lied gasping for air in her bra.
"I'll take that as gratitude," he said with a wave of his hand. In an instant, everyone's clothes were dry, the emerald turtleneck Emma had on under her coat earlier thankfully intact.
Emma had never had a migraine before, although she sometimes felt she was entitled to one, so the dull throbbing all over her head, her father's face still a blur when he pulled her to her feet—she tried to remember what worked for migraines and if her mother had any of it in the backpack. She squinted until the lines of the deck's floorboards sharpened and then looked over at Regina. There really wasn't anything to be said, her eyes darting away from hers once they'd made contact.
"Where are we?" Mary Margaret asked, slipping an arm around her.
"Closer to land," Hook said from the helm, trying to kick off a mermaid carcass while still holding onto the wheel.
"I thought I'd save a shield for another time," Gold said. "This was nothing more than launching the ship at super speed."
Making the jump to light speed is what Henry would call it, Emma thought. For a moment, she allowed her head to sink down on Mary Margaret's shoulder. That's teamwork for you...wait...
"Why another time?"
"Because that's the nature of magic here, Miss Swan, so we will all have to tread carefully. Neverland demands a price for magic upfront. Once a spell is cast, it cannot be cast again while we are here."
"You mean you wouldn't be able to launch the ship like that again if we needed?" Regina had braced herself against the rail to catch her breath.
"Well, you could do it, and you could," he said, pointing at Emma, "if you could get past this reluctance you have to wield it, but I can't do it anymore as long as we're here." With a sigh, he turned back towards Regina. "We'll have to tread carefully with what we choose to use and not use while we are here."
"Just as well," Hook called from the helm. Now that the carcass was gone, Emma could look in his direction. "We'll find a suitable place to anchor for the rest of the night and then the rest of your magic can dry up in the morning."
Room assignments on the ship couldn't have been all that different from college dorm assignments, or maybe summer camp assignments, Charming had thought the night before when they'd had to square away the mundane before anything else. Aside from the captain's cabin, there were three smaller cabins right below decks, each with two bunks, and then, another level down, hammocks for the lowest ranking of the crew. Rumpelstiltskin kept the starboard one himself, he and Snow at port, and Emma and Regina in the middle, which made him uneasier than ever.
Emma had volunteered for a shift, and Rumpelstiltskin had been forbidden from touching the helm, which now left the queen alone in the middle cabin. Charming knocked, sighing at the gesture.
"Yes?"
"We're going to talk," he said, barging through the door, forcing her back, her smug, self-righteous face trying not quite hard enough to show concern was the same.
"So talk," she said.
"How many times is my daughter going to risk her neck for you?"
"If you think I let one of those things take me on purpose, I'd have been more than happy to have switched places with you-"
"I need to know you'll do the same." Tears welled in his eyes and, damn it, he couldn't dry them up, not right now. "You love Henry. I get it. But we're a team now, and by now I'm sure you know that we would risk our lives to help you. Gods know we've done it enough. Are you going to risk your life for us? Tell me!" She was up against the bulkhead now, her eyes cold. The darkest part of him wondered if, if the worst happened and he lost them for good, if he would still risk life and limb to help her. The best part of him wasn't even surprised that he couldn't answer that right now.
"I will do everything I can to keep everyone here safe." She said it in a way that she might as well have been reading stereo instructions.
He'd been in favor of execution. He understood why Snow hadn't been, but how he'd hoped she'd change her mind. Their entire lives seemed to revolve around debating whether or not Regina could be trusted, with their lives, with their grandson's well-being, with the entire town's well-being. He felt as if he'd spent his whole life wondering if she could be believed.
"See that you do," was all he could say on his way out. He didn't bother to close her door for her. He lingered in the narrow corridor. Could they even reach Henry, wherever he was, without killing each other? Charming believed they could, believed people could rise to the occasion, believed truces could be reached in favor of the greater good. But then he'd just confronted the one person he just might genuinely hated and made demands of her. Leaders without followers tended to clash, he knew. Without any answers, he entered his small cabin where Snow stood with her arms folded.
"We could have lost her," she whispered.
His instinct was, had always been, to go to her, and this time was no different. Wrapping his arms around her, he breathed a sigh of relief that with her, he didn't need to answer any questions for now.