"Be nice, Hook," they all heard Emma call out from the dock.
"Will you punish me if I'm not?" Hook asked with a promiscuous smile, crossing over the railing as he responded. "Because that's not great motivation on my end, I'll warn you."
In seconds, Charming had lept up the stairs and had his hand wrapped around the pirate's neck. There was only so much nettling a simple man like him could take.
"Emma may feel some kind of misguided sympathy for you, you haughty son of a bitch," he hissed menacingly, "but I don't. If you ever go near her again…"
"You'll what?" Hook challenged. "Kill me? Because I'm pretty sure I heard your daughter ask you specifically not to do that back there, and considering you have a life time of not being there for her, betraying exactly what she asked you to do might not be the best first step in gaining her trust."
Charming had no retort, but he still looked as if he wanted to jettison Hook from the ship immediately. He did not release him lightly. Hook rubbed his neck as Neal came to join them.
"Don't let him get to you, he's just being Hook," Neal huffed, climbing to join the pair on the upper deck. Charming shot him a dark look, Hook an amused one.
"Oh, yes, don't let me get to you," he said. "After all, I'm not the one who slept with her. He's the one who knocked her up and let her go to jail."
Charming froze and took in a deep breath to calm his rage. Neal addressed Hook.
"You haven't changed," he said, shaking his head slightly.
"You have, Peter," Hook rejoined. "Never thought I'd see you all grown up. A father, no less. Although, I don't know if knowing you son for five minutes actually counts as being a dad. To think how disappointed all those lost boys will be to learn that their fearless leader ended up abandoning his son just like they were all abandoned. Like father, like son, eh, Pan?"
Neal advanced on Hook, but Charming held out a hand to stop him, though he too glowered over his shoulder at the pirate.
"Take it back," Neal spat.
"But I guess we have an expert in our midst, so we can just ask him. What do you say, Charming? Does spending five minutes with your child really make you a father? If anyone would know, it would be you."
Charming sword was out of its sheath and racing for Hook's head in a flash, but Hook knew his ship too well. He grabbed easily at a rope hanging from the rigging near his head and swung himself of the way, landing a few yards to the left as the blade sliced through thin air.
"Someone's just jealous because I've spent more time with your daughter than you have," Hook taunted.
"Why don't you dance your way back over here and we'll see who's jealous," Charming seethed. Hook gave him a condescending smile.
"Charming you may be, but witty and poignant don't seem to have made the cut," he purred. "Wherever Emma got her astounding ability to quip snarky remarks, it definitely wasn't from you. Honestly, I don't see anything of you in her at all. But that's not surprising, now, is it? You may have found her now, but you can't make up for twenty-eight years of not being in her life. You can't go back and make the loneliness go away. No matter how hard you try, she is always going to be a little orphan at heart."
The devastating truth of the statement hung sourly in the air as Charming's shame overpowered his rage, his face falling emotionally at Hook's words.
"Now," Hook continued, "if you two are done projecting your own inadequacy onto me, I have a ship to captain."
Most of the rest of the day passed in silence, the sailing smooth and the crew members brooding in the wake of the heated conversation that had wracked the first moments of the journey. As the sky was faded from a dusk lilac to a deeper purple, effulgent stars popping out one by one, Hook settled himself sitting on a mound of extra netting, twisting his hook distractedly as his mind wandered. He did not know how long he'd been sitting there, quiescent, when he heard Neal come up from behind him.
"What did Emma say to you?" he asked. "The other day on this ship to let you release me?"
Hook glanced up at him, but then looked back out to sea, remaining silent.
"Fine. A different question then. Why do you want to kill my father?"
Hook's fidgety twisting stopped, but he did not look back at Neal, nor did he respond.
"Hey, don't worry about offending me," Neal assured him, copping a squat on a wooden box beside him. "I'm not the man's biggest fan. I know he's done some pretty terrible stuff. But what did he do to you, specifically?"
"The answers to both of your questions," Hook said, finally deigning to meet Neal's eye, his voice quiet and intriguing, "are one in the same."
Neal looked into Hook's eyes and blinked expectantly. Hook licked his lips, a hesitant, troubled expression on his face.
"But you don't get to know the answer," he said finally. He stood to walk away. Neal stared at him.
"Why the hell not?" he asked, outraged. Hook paused and looked back at him, and Neal was surprised to see that there wasn't anger or malice in his expression, only a bit of pain.
"Believe me," he said cryptically. "It's for your own good."
Neal watched him, confused and a bit annoyed, as he went to stand at the edge of the ship, leaning over the railing and staring out into the endless sky. After a moment, Charming came and took a seat beside him, avoiding his eyes, a look of sheepish and frustrated longing on his face.
"What was she like?" he asked.
"What?" Neal responded, unsure if he had heard correctly.
"Don't take this the wrong way," Charming clarified darkly. "I still don't like you, or what you did to my daughter. I can't stand having to ask you. I can't stand it that you were there and I wasn't, but that's where we are. You knew her then, so I'm asking you to tell me about her. Emma. What was she like when she was eighteen?"
"I was in love with her," Neal started.
"You don't have to go into that part," Charming grumbled, his ears growing red.
"Right, sorry," he apologized quickly. "Just – kind of hard to forget. She wasn't much different than she is now. Stubborn, quick, smart. Freakishly strong. We were both thieves – we had to be, just to get by – but she always had this kind of moral code she stuck too. She liked to collect things. Random things that we didn't have use or room for, but she'd collect them anyways and pile them in the trunk like treasures in some chest."
Charming's eyes had grown glossy as he listened, picturing her at eighteen, an vagrant bereft of any kind of home or family. The image nearly elicited a sob. He gave a subtle sniff and cleared his throat.
"But she smiled more back then," Neal continued, frowning. "I mean, maybe things weren't so screwed up, but it's not like we had it made or anything. We were living out of that bug. But still, she smiled more. She was more playful, less severe."
He looked at his hands ashamed, then squinted back up at the stars.
"I suppose I'm to thank for that shift," he said.
"You're not the only one," Charming sighed. "When I put her in that wardrobe, I had no idea what I was sending her to. I hoped it would be something better than… what apparently she got."
The pair shared a moment of wallowing as their guilt threatened to drown each of them.
"Did she ever talk to you about it?" Charming pried still further, his voice growing softer the more he asked. "About her childhood, about what it was like growing up for her in the system?"
"Not much," Neal said. "I knew better than to ask. I know she was with her first family until she was three, but then they had their own children and sent her back."
Charming's face fell. Neal wondered if he should stop, if it was too much for him to hear.
"I didn't get a tally, but it sounds like she was never in any home after that for longer than eighteen months."
"She was a lost boy," came a soft voice from behind them. They both turned to look at Hook, who was leaning pensively over the edge of the ship, his back to them. He straightened and turned to face them, catching Neal's eye. Neal nodded.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, she was."
"I thought you hated the lost boys," Charming said as Hook took a few quiet steps to join the conversation.
"That is the general trend, yes," he agreed. "But for one thing, lost boys don't tend to have long, flowing blonde hair and a mouth that won't quit. And secondly, Ms. Swan and I bonded over something we have in common."
"What's that?" Charming asked uncomfortably. But instead of looking him in the eye, Hook glanced up at Neal, piercing him with an accusatory glare.
"We've both had our hearts broken."
A chapter of testosterone-filled angst!
Still haven't decided yet which of the two avenues I want to pursue with this story - Enchanted Forest or Neverland. I will have to by the next chapter. Right now it's leaning towards going to the Enchanted Forest. If you have any thoughts, share them in the reviews so I can know the preferences as I continue!