(Nobody is more surprised by this than me, but my muse assaulted me and kept me up late when I really really should have done other things tonight. This fast of an update isn't going to be a pattern, but here you go. ENJOY THE PAIN.)

Chapter 16: Marry The Night

Three hundred years was, by anyone's measure, a bloody long time. Especially when, in fact, it had been even longer. As noted, arithmetic was not Killian Jones' strong suit, but he'd been twenty-eight when he met Milah, thirty-two when she was killed and when he sailed down the whirlpool to Neverland, and then the almost three centuries he'd spent there – a reckoning he'd only worked out when he returned to the Enchanted Forest and got a nasty shock. It hadn't felt like three hundred years, but that was Neverland for you. Then there was the twenty-eight years he'd spent frozen, trapped on that little island which Cora shielded from the curse – which, again, hadn't felt like that, or maybe it was just that he was so good at wasting unearthly amounts of time in pursuit of vengeance that he didn't notice. Thus, totting up the thirty-two years of his natural life, plus his three hundred years in Neverland, plus twenty-eight years waiting for the Swan girl to get to Storybrooke, he was in fact closer to four hundred years old than three.

Accordingly, Killian had faced more than his share of sticky situations. The infamous confrontation that had given him his nom de plume topped the list, of course, but there had been others, such as the Tortuga incident that he had quite pointedly reminded Smee of; the bugger had attempted to slip off the Jolly Roger and join the crew of some up-and-comer named Barbossa, who had recently mutinied himself into command of his own ship and was promising abundant gold, women, and more gold and women. (It was lucky for Smee that he'd bungled that one as badly as he had, since Barbossa and his minions had somehow ended up soundly cursed, and Killian had enough bloody curses to deal with.) He'd considered kicking the recreant off his ship after that betrayal, but Smee was popular with the crew, potentially because he made such a splendid scapegoat for their own indiscretions, and Killian had been persuaded to let him stay. (Besides, a penitent Smee had then procured valuable items faster than a dwarf could shit, so Killian was convinced of the financial aptitude of this decision.)

All of this was to say, therefore, was that if anyone could be trusted to gauge the all-round horribleness of a situation, Captain Killian "Hook" Jones was your man. (Your man for a number of other useful things as well, but never mind that.) And this one was, in his professional estimation, even more horrible than most. When his hospital room went to hell in a handbasket, he could do nothing but watch. He almost tore the handcuff off the bed trying to get up, but an unholy blaze of pain burned through his ribs and rendered him flat on his back, gasping.

Although Killian had been intimidated by running water when he first came to Storybrooke, he had had time to get used to most of this world's eccentricities by now. But the shrilling of the machines and boxes surrounding him, pumping their esoteric poisons into his veins through their tangled tubing, the flickering lamps and the distant crashes of breaking things, the strange noises and bitter scents. . . he was bloody terrified, and since there was currently no one else present to see, he didn't bother disguising it. He lay stiff, too frightened to bat an eyelash, as the contraptions beeped and screamed and howled like a demon was coming through. Which, to judge from the commotion, one might be.

Killian strained to hear any sound of Emma from beyond the door. She had scarpered after Rumplestiltskin the instant he'd left the room, and it was a bloody miracle that she'd arrived in time to save him in the first place. He didn't even know why he'd shouted for her, much less expected her to hear or answer or any of it, but in that moment, when it would have been the easiest thing to die, he somehow, for some reason, didn't want to.

All right. There was no bloody mystery. It wasn't a somehow. He knew damn well what it was, and it was only now he was finally owning up to it. But in the middle of his long-sought vengeance for Milah, he had told himself that while he could enjoyably flirt with beautiful blonde arse-kickers all he wanted, going further was absolutely off the table. He certainly hadn't been celibate for those three hundred years without her. He was a man and a pirate, and hence was not accustomed to living a chaste and virtuous life. But that was just crudely physical; he rarely even bothered to ask the woman's name. Yet when he crawled out from under that rubble, playing the role of cowardly blacksmith, and set eyes on Emma bloody Swan. . .

Killian had never intended for what had happened with Milah to happen. In fact, he'd half hoped that Rumplestiltskin would be brave enough to fight, prove he was a suitable husband, and take her off his ship. He'd allowed her to come with him in the first place because he was intrigued by the salt and sass she'd shown in the tavern, and he always had a weakness for brassy women. But he fully expected that he would have a few romps in the hay with her, tell her a few tall tales about seafaring to whet her appetite, and then bundle her unceremoniously ashore in the next no-account little pisspot of a town they docked in, never to see her again. Yet within hours of coming aboard, she was already ordering his crew around like she was born to it, and she was so eager for him in bed that it didn't even feel like a conquest.

As totally ruled by his heart as Killian was, very often to the detriment of his head, and as desperate as he was for a woman to love him, he'd fallen hard and fast within that same short amount of time. Milah was his partner in the truest sense of the word. He'd taught her how to handle a sword and reef a sail and drink anyone under the table and cheat a cheat at cards and stab a man in the kidney so he dropped like a stone. She'd been part mother and part lover and part best friend to him, the lonely lost boy. No wonder he'd needed her so much.

Emma was not Milah. But she was here. And he didn't want her to be Milah. He wanted her to be Emma. He wanted her. Wanted her for good.

He couldn't. He shouldn't. The last, the last thing he should do was go this way with another woman who the Dark One clearly had an eye on cutting down to size. Cora had let slip that she couldn't take Emma's heart, but Cora, no matter how bad she was (and that was damned well bad enough) was still an eternal second fiddle to Rumplestiltskin, her teacher and master. Just because she couldn't do something, didn't mean he couldn't.

But after seeing Emma face off with the crocodile like that. . . after seeing her arm, after this. . . if something else didn't come up and make another attempt at his miserable tatty life. . .

Killian lay in a fretful haze for what felt like hours, but was likely only minutes. He was hurting too badly to move, even without the handcuff impeding him, and the strange screaming contraptions had desisted to supply him with whatever was stopping the pain. The tempest in his room had finally tapered off, so apparently he wasn't about to be sucked down another portal, but things were still making a bloody racket and flashing lights and unfamiliar symbols at him, so he could quite easily be mistaken about such conjectures. He reached out crossly and swatted at them with his stump, but only succeeded in knocking them over, adding to the mess.

Now the tubes were yanking on him, needles straining in his flesh, and the pain was so bad he was seeing stars. Killian grunted and whimpered, squirming on the bed, roaring in frustration as he jerked at the handcuff one more time, but whoever had fastened it had known what they were about. He was twisted in half, panting and moaning, a circumstance which would have been far more pleasurable if a woman was involved. As it was –

That, of course, was when the door opened.

(8888888)

The pirate looked a dozen different kinds of miserable, but intact. That was the first thing that struck her as she stepped in, feeling numb and lightheaded and sick and desperate to get this over with and run. She couldn't take what this was going to do to her, but facts were facts.

"Oh, Hook," she said in a voice part disdain and part sympathy, taking in the ruin of his hospital bed – much of which it looked as if he himself was responsible for. "What did you do?"

He turned an agonized blue gaze up to her. "Get me out of here, love." He reached for her with his free arm, that queerly shortened stump without a hand. The pain and confusion and fear in his voice tore at her heart.

Emma swallowed and glanced away. Moving to the bed, she stood at the foot of it, maintaining a reserved distance instead of sitting on it as she had earlier, waiting for him to wake up – what had she been thinking? She meant to tell him what she and Gold had agreed upon in the conversation outside in the hall, but what she did was to reach out inadvertently and smooth his hair out of his bruised, battered face.

He reached up and pressed his wrist hard against her fingers, as he'd reached for her when she knelt down next to him at the site of the crash. This time, however, he didn't even have a hand to do it with, and she flinched as if he'd hit her. Pulling away, she bent down and began to pick up the fallen monitors, mechanically putting his room back in order.

"Emma," he said softly. "Love, look at me. What's wrong?"

She concentrated on replacing his IV stand, eyed up a display, wondered if a simple reboot would stop its insistent pinging. She probably shouldn't be touching expensive medical equipment, but the noise was going to drive both of them mental. So she did, hoping she hadn't just terminated something vital.

"Emma," he repeated, forcefully enough that she had to look back at him. "What is it?"

"I. . . Hook, just. . . you know something happened. Out there. And I need to go help deal with it. It's. . . partly my fault. So. . ."

"Yes," he said shortly. "I heard. I was in this bloody room when the crocodile was berating you for leaving that portal open, after all. Please, for the love of the gods. Get me out of here, I can't stand it. I'm not meant for this place."

"Where are you meant for, then?" She began to tidy his pillows, fussing like an old biddy with a favorite cat, straightening out the Medusa's knot of tangled tubes. "Besides, you're hurt, you can barely stand up. What use are you to me now?"

He looked up at her, and their eyes locked. Soft as a breath against her skin, he said, "Love, you know we make a good team. I could help you. The giant, remember the giant? There's plenty more I could tell you about Cora. Join me. Against her, against Rumplestiltskin. . . why not? Both of us, together. Side by side, for the rest of our lives. We'd be bloody brilliant."

Emma felt her own heart, in that moment, stop. "Are you. . ." She had never heard a man say anything remotely close to what she thought he had just proposed, literally, and it scared her witless. "Hook. . . what are you. . . did you just ask me to. . ."

"Why not?" he said. Almost shyly, as if he was terrified she was going to shut him down, turn away, walk out of the door and let that be that. "Emma, I'm tired of pussyfooting about it. For better or for worse, we've been brutally, bloodily honest with each other, and I want to – "

"Hook. Hook, no. I don't know what you think we are, or what we have, but we. . don't. We don't even know each other, and you – "

"But we do, sweetheart," he said, almost pleading. "Don't tell me you don't feel the same. I know you do. Please. Stay with me." He reached out for her again.

"I. . . Hook. No. I. . . came back in to tell you something, in fact."

The look of utter intentness on his face, as if he was looking through her eyes into the back of her head, into the shadowy walls of her soul, almost broke her heart. "What?"

"I'm. . . sorry. But I'm done with you."

That took a moment to register. In fact, she couldn't tell if it did. He just remained blank, staring at her with slightly parted lips, as if in the immediate aftermath of a blow to the stomach. Then he said, "Come again?"

"You heard me. Look, you aren't stupid. You can see that I've already risked everything and everyone in my life, for the sake of trying to protect you. Because I don't think it's fair that you should die like this, so – "

"Fair?" he roared, so loudly that she flinched. He tried to sit up, then fell flat, seething, gasping in short jerking punches that must have been absolute murder on his ribs. "Fair? You're going to stand there and tell me to my face, to my bloody face, love, that you're doing all this because you don't think it would be fair?"

"Stop. Hook, just stop. I've. . . had a talk with Gold. The netherworld is a huge threat to every one of us, and if I'm so focused on you all the time, I'm not going to be able to fight back and actually be the sheriff. Gold says that there's already strange magic here, we have an outsider in the hospital as well who could expose us and destroy our lives a second time, and everything in my life is already a total fucking mess. He's right. Magic comes with a price. And I. . . I broke my deal with him. So now the bill is coming due."

"You had a talk with him." The rage in his voice was withering. It was certainly Captain Hook that stared up at her with slitted, maddened eyes, not Killian Jones, the man he'd been around her until she clicked that cuff over his wrist. She'd been seeing flashes of it again, here, but now she didn't think she ever would again. "You. Had a talk. With him."

"Yes, all right?" Her own temper sparked to life. "You should know better than anyone what a bad enemy he makes. He basically threatened flat out to kill me, to kill my parents, to kill my son, everyone I love. Maybe that's a fine way for you to live, since you don't have anyone you care about, but I can't do it. And if you took his wife, or she came with you. . . the details don't matter. The point is, she left her son behind, and I'm not doing that. I'm not her."

"No," he breathed. "No. You bloody fucking aren't. Try just a little bit more, darling. I don't think you poured enough salt in the wound the first time."

Emma took a step back. "This is the deal," she said, almost inaudibly. "I'm going to help Gold fight against whatever's coming through that netherworld portal. We agree on literally nothing else, but we're not letting this place be torn apart by whatever Cora's bringing here. He says that's what happened, by the way. That she found it, and that she can go through it without dying like the rest of us, because she doesn't have a heart. In return, he's not going to kill you. . . and I'm not going to see you again. I'm. . . sorry. That's just. What has to happen."

"Does it?" When he smirked at her, he looked like a sadistic madman. She had to restrain the urge to bolt from the room.

"If you think I'm helping you kill Gold, you're out of your mind. It goes both ways. I don't let him kill you, I don't let you kill him."

"Then you, my love, are standing in the way of the one thing I've stayed alive for three centuries for. It would be far better for everyone if you got out of it."

"Vengeance isn't justice, Hook! It's not going to bring her back!" Emma's voice cracked. "Look, I know I'm a shitty savior, but I'm trying right now, you don't fucking understand what I'm trying to do and how hard this is for me to even. . . if this is what you're going to be like, then it's my choice to be finished with you. I can't handle you like this – "

"Because you're frightened?" The withering edge in his voice could have stripped skin from bone. "Is that what? Oh, do you want the ruddy coward who left you, the one who helped Gold track me down? I did meet him, you know! At the point of my bloody sword! Neal Cassady?"

Emma felt her face go bloodless. She jerked back her hand as if to hit him, but forced it back down with an unendurable effort. "No," she said, speaking in terse, clipped tones to disguise the gaping hole those words had blown in her stomach. "No, I do not want Neal Cassady. Yes, I am fucking terrified of you right now, as any sane human being would be, because of what three centuries of hatred has done to you. No, I am not going to apologize for who I am and what I've done and the choices I've made, and the fact that this is goodbye. I've done everything I can. I'm sorry." She turned. "I'm leaving."

"Swan!"

"What part of I'm done with you don't you understand?" She could barely keep it together. She was about to sob her eyes out or be very sick, and she couldn't stand for him to see it.

"Swan – " He ripped at the handcuff. "You're going to leave me chained up again?"

"Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, and this time, I have no regrets. You're a madman, Hook. You're a liability to the town and to my family, and I'm done defending you. If you were serious, if you meant one word of what you said earlier, you'll think long and fucking hard before you ever dare to look me in the face again."

The silence was horrible. She stood with her back to him, silently dying.

"Emma." His voice had turned softer again, desperate. "Emma, wait. Emma, no, no. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. You risked your life for me, I know it, you risked everything. You're brave and beautiful and brilliant and there's no other woman I've met, ever, who's like you. I saw you take that blast from Gold, you can resist him if you have to – "

"That's what you're going with?" She laughed, on the hysterical edge of a sob. "You really are clueless, aren't you?"

"Love, please, please, please. I haven't been anyone but Hook for three hundred years. I'm rubbish at this sort of thing now, I'm a bloody wreck and a horrible human and I know it, I know it. I want to change, I want – have I told you a lie? Have I told you one? Let me out of here, I'm yours, I'll belong to you. I don't ever want to be anyone else's."

"You belong to revenge, Killian. That's who you belong to. And since thirty seconds ago you were trying to convince me to join up with you to help you kill Gold, I can't trust a word you say." Emma knew now what it felt like, to have your heart ripped out of your chest and crushed to powder. "I'm dysfunctional and frightened and solitary and I have a lot of my own issues, but I do have a lot more pride than that. I'm not going down with you. I. . . I'm sorry."

She wished, almost, that he would cry after her. That he would say something, that he would curse her, curse her family, curse her descendants and ancestors a dozen generations on each side. Anything of that would have been preferable to his stunned, wordless silence.

She took one step, another, another. She was still upright, she still breathed, she still functioned. Surely, then, she was not unbearably damaged. The only way to know was to look, and she could not bear to. And then, as the tears began to fall, as they turned to full-out heaving sobs so that she covered her face, so that she almost staggered, she squared her shoulders one last time and walked out of his life.

(8888888)

David and Mary Margaret found their daughter later, curled up in a corner of the hospital waiting room with her hair coming down in clumps and her eye makeup sheeted in ruins over her corpse-white face. They approached tentatively, worried that she would shove them away again, but she barely even seemed to notice. She just sat, staring at nothing. Then she uncurled, put her feet down, and said in a voice like death, "I have to find Henry."

"Sweetheart?" Mary Margaret had never seen Emma look like this before. "What's. . . please, Emma, can you tell us what's going on?"

"Henry ran out of the hospital earlier, because he. . ." Emma shook with another constrained sob. "Look, I don't know any other way to say this. His. . . his dad is here. In Storybrooke. His name is Neal. Neal Cassady."

David and Mary Margaret exchanged utterly thunderstruck glances. They had, after all, briefly schemed to recruit Neal into their plans to find Emma, having no idea whatsoever who he actually was. Just knowing that he was a stranger and thus able to cross the boundary, but this. . .

"He's. . . here?" It was plain from David's voice that his first reaction to this development was to find the man and clock him into next month. "The guy who. . ."

"Knocked me up, framed me for his crime, and abandoned me in jail, yes. That's him." Emma swiped a hand across her cheeks, further smearing her mascara. She'd never told them the gruesome details before, and their communal shocked reaction was even worse. "He's all yours."

David looked like he was about to take her up on that offer on the instant, but Emma kept going. "There's more," she warned them, and launched into a brutal summation of everything that had happened since they'd seen her last. The tornado, Davy Jones' Locker, the fact that it was now an uncontrolled netherworld portal through which Cora was even more plentifully equipped to ruin their lives, the fact that there was a captive giant on the Jolly Roger, that Henry had run out of the hospital after learning of her lie in the worst possible way, and that she was now working with Gold to fight back against the swarm of beasties on their way into Storybrooke. "Don't argue," she finished, gritting her teeth. "Don't tell me that I don't have to do this. Just find my son, see if you can locate the invisible pirate ship and get the giant out before Cora comes back for him, and anything else. I don't know."

"Emma. . ." Mary Margaret reached out for her. Tears shone on her cheeks. "Emma, you're in so much pain right now. Please let us in. Please."

"I – have – to – go." Emma got to her feet, jerkily as an automaton. "I need to find Gold. I need to make sure nobody breathed a word to Greg Mendel about what the fuck just happened in this hospital – tell him it was a power surge, tell him we have weird Hz infrasound levels, tell him anything. Make sure Whale isn't drunk off his ass and do whatever else you have to do. You're Snow White and Prince Charming. Fucking fix it."

"Emma." Mary Margaret took a step after her. "In the Enchanted Forest – remember what I said? We do this together, or not at all. We've made mistakes. We admit it, and we're sorry. And I know you're upset, but I am not letting you regress and isolate yourself right now."

Emma stood still, shivers wracking through her body to her toes. "All right," she said at last, barely recognizing her own voice. "All right."

Her mother let out a long, shaking breath, but Emma didn't know what to say. She only knew that she had to, that she couldn't let herself do the exact thing she had just confronted Hook over, and let her personal demons turn her into a haunted, vindictive, tortured, wandering soul, alone and loveless and driven by rage. To confuse vengeance with justice. She had to remember the fact that even now, she was going out to meet Gold and take his side.

"We'll see you soon?" David called after her. "Emma, wherever you go, whatever you have to do. . . we're with you. It runs in the family. We will find you and. . . we love you."

Yes, you are. Just then, she wanted nothing more than to turn and run to him, to throw her arms around him, to bury her face in his chest and to let her daddy make it better. But that was for the little girl who had died when her first foster father told her, at the age of five, that they were having their own kids and sending her back to the home and he was sorry, but they weren't going to be there anymore. Yet it was in her memory, holding flowers over her grave, that Emma turned back to her real father and said only two words.

"I know."

(8888888)

The sun was coming up in a bloated, bloodstained wrack of cloud, like a pile of corpses after a battle, as Cora and Regina drove back into town. Their work, for the moment, was done. Cora had already sent into the netherworld for her first request, and it should be arriving shortly. Regina hated flying monkeys, having had plenty of bad experiences with them before, but they were singularly effective at sowing confusion, discord, and chaos, and she needed some of that. Then, she told herself, she'd see to it that they were packed back to Oz, that the people of Storybrooke saw their mayor acting heroically and defending the town from its otherworldly menaces. They didn't need to know that she'd had anything to do with them in the first place.

They were almost into downtown, having taken the back route for obvious reasons, when Regina noticed a lone dark figure lurching along the side of the road, staggering like a cripple. She felt a subterranean shock of recognition, and glanced at her mother with a start.

"Stop the carriage," Cora said, and gestured aristocratically.

Regina hit the brakes on the Mercedes, and coasted to a halt. She shot a glance at the cage on her mother's lap; after they'd gotten what they needed out of Smee, Cora had turned him back into a rat, and they were going to drop him off on the Jolly Roger as well, their all-purpose hiding place at the moment. But as she looked out at what she saw instead, she suddenly wondered if that plan was going to be altogether changed.

Cora leaned out the window. "My dear Captain," she purred. "Do you need a lift?"

The pirate stared back at them with a wild expression. He looked, to put it frankly, like sheer hell. He was dressed in his usual black leather ensemble, but it was so tattered and bloody and torn that it looked like he'd stolen it back from somewhere after being forcibly stripped out of it. The broken handcuff dangling on his wrist, the deep bloody gouge in the skin showing how hard he'd pulled to rip it out of whatever it had been attached to, told a strange and sordid tale as well, and his breath sounded cracked and splintered. Regina's magic filled in the rest. He was badly injured, on the run, half dead, and entirely insane.

Hook kept staring at them. Those blue eyes were a glazed mask, a depthless pit. He said nothing.

"Come on, dear," Cora urged. "You aren't at all in good estate right now, are you? They can't heal you with their provincial medicine, but I can. Just step inside here with us, and I'll make it better. I'll take the pain away. You still need me, just like Regina does. And then you can come with us while we search for the one thing that can kill the Dark One."

"The knife." It was the first words Hook had spoken. He swayed on the spot.

Cora smiled. "That's right." She held out her hand. "Don't worry. I've changed for my daughter's sake. I'm not holding a grudge."

Hook barked a growling, grotesque laugh. He plainly believed this no more than he believed in – well, flying monkeys, a belief that was about to be challenged before the day was out. But then he smiled back, white teeth bared in an agonized leer, and stepped forward, reaching for the car door. "You know," he rasped, and opened it, collapsing in. "I think I'll take that offer."