It was like a switch had been flipped; all of a sudden, the cold and callous pirate captain had been replaced by the dashing stranger she'd met at her birthday party — because, she tried not to think, she wasn't going to die anymore and so it was safe to care.
She'd tried to come up with another plausible reason, but come up short every time.
After all, he had said he liked her.
It made her vaguely uncomfortable to think about, even though she wasn't some teenager with low self-esteem who couldn't imagine someone possibly being interested in her — and, frankly, she would have had to be blind and deaf to believe that he wasn't interested in at least getting her into his bed — and she wasn't so pure and noble like her mother to be horrified at the thought of catching a pirate's eye.
It was just… it wasn't safe.
He was perceptive, clever, sharp as a needle and just as good at getting under her skin. Attractive like a whirlpool, inexorable and inescapable, but she was trapped in this game with him and there was no shore to swim to; it left her nowhere to go but down. She was usually good at keeping men at a safe distance, ever since — ever since she'd grown up some and gotten involved with them outside of her parents' protective arms, but Killian…
Emma almost wished he'd go cold on her again, shut her out, because she found herself unable to do it to him.
She'd gone down this path before, and she knew it was a dead end, always a dead end with her, one way or another. Usually, it was straightforward: they wanted to use her power, they wanted to make her theirs, they wanted her body, they wanted her heart, men were always wanting things from her they couldn't have. It was never the other way around, except the one time it was.
It didn't feel so good on the other side, being not good enough to earn someone else's love, or even their time.
It didn't feel so good, being the one getting left behind.
And Killian was bound to leave her behind sooner or later; it was inevitable, he would go back to the sea and she would go back to the throne and there was no happy ending, there was no getting what she wanted. It wasn't worth it, he wasn't worth it.
No one was worth it.
She told herself that she preferred Captain Jones over Killian, but the lie was pathetic, even to herself.
.
"We'll be landing before long," he said lightly. "A few hours at most."
Emma made a face, looking around the ship; everywhere, the sailors were preparing to disembark, doing things she took on faith were necessary or at least preferable, while she stood up on the quarterdeck with the captain, feeling far more awkward than she would ever admit.
Killian — Jones — Killian (she sighed) was busy giving orders, although mostly it seemed like everyone already knew the drill and he was just talking to keep himself occupied, that same odd, effusive energy he'd shown a few times before.
"I'll start praying to all the gods I've heard of that Regina isn't there," she drawled, half joking and half considering it. He glanced back at her, eyebrow raised.
"Forgive me if I'm wrong, my dear, but you don't particularly strike me as the pious sort."
"I'm not," she replied, "but it can't hurt, and, hey, what else can I do?"
For a moment, it looked like he was going to contradict her or maybe give her a job to do so she'd feel less useless, but all he did was shrug. "Fair enough," he said a bit lamely, looking away before sharply turning back at her with a smirk. "If you're longing for something to do, love, I'm certain we can come up with an… enjoyable activity. Or several."
She was not going to find anything about any part of that attractive or enticing in any way. At all.
(A few hours is more than enough time, she thought, entirely against her will.)
"How many lines did you reject before that one came to you?" she asked in a careful deadpan, drawing a laugh from him.
"Quite a number," he admitted, without a hint of shame. "Most were too crass for even your not-so-delicate sensibilities."
"I don't know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult."
"What, that I don't consider your sensibilities to be delicate, or that I believe you've a limit?"
She paused, thinking about that. "The second one," she replied finally, and he snickered. "I like to think I can hold my own with pirates, thank you very much."
"Of that, darling, I've no doubt."
They fell into a short, companionable (if vaguely embarrassed, on Emma's part) silence; she could now see the darker line of the horizon, where land met the sea, and a rush of maybe-irrational fear hit her.
What if Regina was at the dock? What if Blackbeard, by some miracle or pirate magic, was at the dock?
The actions that had seemed so clear and righteous in her livid haze yesterday now seemed like a really great way to get eviscerated by a pissed-off pirate captain with a burnt-out ship. It was slowly dawning on her that — in spite of the fact that she'd successfully escaped and crippled Edward goddamn Teach's ship — even a dyed-in-the-wool pirate like Captain Jones thought she'd gone too far.
She wasn't sure if she should be proud or ashamed.
Mostly, the crew as a whole had decided not to really think about it, although she had caught one or two of them making a hand motion at her direction that looked suspiciously like one of those gods-protect-me-from-this-demon signs and, again, wasn't sure if that was good or awful for her immediate future.
But Killian would have to have thought about it.
The question came out of her mouth without really stopping at her brain: "What about Blackbeard?"
"He'll've put into port for repairs," he replied neutrally. "It's difficult to say how extensive, it depends on how much of the fire reached the hull, if any. He's a meticulous bastard," he added with a wry and completely insincere grin, "and is proud of his ship's beauty, but he'll sail with a burnt-out husk as long as she can float."
The rest of that sentence was left to dangle in the air: he'll limp his ship to port to hunt you down.
"Don't worry yourself over it, love," Killian said, looking at the horizon instead of her. "I'll not leave you alone to face his wrath. He may not even catch up to us."
"Thanks," she winced, shivering in a way that might have been fear or something sweeter, but which she told herself was definitely from the cold; it had been cooling down since they'd started going north, but it seemed that the storm had brought a cold snap with it. "I guess we start hoping we got lucky and drops dead halfway to Bergen?"
The grin he shot her this time was both wicked and honest. "Those who rely on luck end up in Davy Jones's locker, darling. The key to survival on the seas," he said softly, leaning in entirely too close to her ear, "is to make your own luck." He straightened up, turning back to the sea, the horizon continuing to darken like something magical materializing out of mist. "And, to be perfectly honest, I'd be terribly disappointed if the man came so far and accomplished so much, only to end up dying in such a mundane way."
"You want to be the one to kill him?" she inferred, but he just shrugged.
"That would be nice," he admitted without shame, and it slightly worried her that his casual statement of hoping to murder someone didn't worry her at all. "But I do respect him; he's an accomplished captain with a horde of gold so deep he could swim in it. He should have some dramatic exit, don't you think?"
"I guess," she mused, but the more she thought about it, the more appealing it seemed. Emma had never contemplated how she planned to die, because she was perfectly happy contemplating how she would avoid that particular pitfall for, potentially, ever, but she'd vaguely hoped for something painless, at least.
It must have been the pirates and their wanton approach to raids and swashbuckling fashion. They'd do anything to be remembered, and that sort of mindset was infectious.
"What kind of exit would you want?" she asked flippantly, expecting some sort of over-the-top response, but the look he gave her was uncomfortably sober and dispassionate, and he held eye contact for about a beat longer than he should have, gave her a little too long to decipher his expression.
For some reason, the words he never got anything he wanted rose back up in her mind, and she guessed at the answer he wouldn't give her: some form of suicide. Probably the kind that was more reckless than deliberate, the kind that ran into battle without armor or challenged the god of war to a duel.
The kind that hunted down an immortal, all-powerful sorcerer armed with nothing but a dagger.
He was, she noticed, massaging his left hand again.
.
The port city of Bergen was beautiful when it rose up to meet them, all sparkling blue seas and tall white spires, but then decidedly not beautiful at all when they actually met it, with a crowded wharf that smelled so strongly of fish that even Killian winced and a myriad of people who had nothing in common except that she was absolutely certain that every single one of them would kill her and loot her corpse at the first opportunity.
(She might have been overreacting out of anxiety.)
"Seems your prayers had some effect after all," Killian said lightly, suddenly reminding her that she was supposed to have been praying at some point; the amused glance he gave her said he knew she'd forgotten. "No sign of the queen."
"She could be in hiding," Emma replied nervously, fingers twisting in her sleeves as she scanned the crowd, like Regina would just spontaneously appear in front of her… which was, if her mother's stories were any indication, entirely possible.
"Regina?" he sneered, derisive and careless, but they were getting close enough to shore that he couldn't just stand around and chat anymore. "No, she'd come with an entourage and a ridiculous dress. She's well past the point of subtlety now… well, farther past it at any rate."
With that, he left her and began barking orders to the crew, less about how to dock and more about shore leave and not attempting to smuggle any prostitutes onboard and if you return with a horrible disease you'll be exiled to the deepest recesses of the cargo hold and looted according to rank, although the snickers among the crew suggested that he was joking about that one. It was oddly… specific, though, and made her a bit uncomfortable.
She was the last one off the ship, except for Killian himself, a habit she'd heard of before — the captain was always the last person to leave the ship, even (especially) if it meant going down with it.
"Where are we going?" she asked, clinging to his shirtsleeve to avoid being separated by the crowds. He glanced at her, and then at her hand, and shook it off but immediately slipped his arm through hers instead. On the one hand, it was better than clutching his sleeve like a child, but on the other, it was a very… intimate gesture. She avoided looking at their arms.
"You may believe you're hiding it well, my dear," he started, "but it's high noon and already frigid and you're ill-equipped for this weather."
"You're buying me clothes?" she deadpanned, genuinely thrown off and slightly suspicious. He raised an eyebrow.
"The alternative is giving you my coat," he replied easily, "which, while the chivalrous thing to do, would leave me to freeze to death. And, my deepest apologies," he went on with sugary and vaguely mocking kindness, "but I'll not endure frostbite to maintain your oh-so-dignified insistence that you refuse everything I offer you."
She stared determinedly ahead, biting her tongue. Damn him.
"Okay, fine," she grumbled, "but you're not choosing anything."
"I am the one with the gold, darling," he said deviously, pulling her a little closer to him, where it was warmer from his body heat and definitely not from her now-standard reaction to his close proximity. She glared at him, unamused, and he smirked.
He was in a hell of a good mood, at least. Maybe it was because Regina hadn't come to meet them.
Killian led her through the red-light district, which was both thankfully and disappointingly sleepy. She'd heard that the streets of Bergen were livid and forgetful, where a person could find anything they were looking for — no matter how mundane or diabolic, sweet or sadistic — for the right price, and forgotten or deliberately ignored the moment they were gone. It would be her luck that she'd finally get to see them, but at high noon, when everyone was still sleeping the previous night off.
But they didn't linger there; mostly, it seemed, he'd gone through the district as a shortcut or to avoid anyplace that might involve too many guards. Again, she was glad — because any clothing bought in a shop next door to a brothel couldn't possibly help her with the cold — and disappointed — because any clothing bought in a shop next door to a brothel couldn't possibly be anything but hopelessly sexy.
Before she knew it, they were in one of the more upscale markets, much more crowded with people, the sort she would have expected to look at them with disdain, but the confident way that Killian walked among them made it seem like they belonged and, in fact, this crowd was utterly plebeian.
It was ironic, that the pirate looked more at home among the businessmen and low aristocrats than the princess did.
She just hated these kinds of people.
The tailor at the store he led her to was a mild-faced older man who gave Killian such a knowing look that it was impossible to believe they were seeing each other for the first time. "You know him?" she asked quietly, and he raised an eyebrow.
"In my line of work, it pays to have friends in every port. Or at least a cache of people in your debt."
She blinked. "So you're not paying for this," she said flatly, and a little disgruntled.
"Not full price, at any rate," he replied with a shrug.
The outfit she ended up with was a fair compromise to the two facades she was already wearing — the riding pants, boots, and vest of a royal on a hunt and the shirt, coat, and swordbelt of a pirate. Killian deliberately shut her out of the payment process, although that could easily have been because he didn't want her to know how much he had spent on her or because he was threatening and/or calling in some nefarious old favor to get the tailor to haggle with him.
The friendly smile he gave her as they left seemed to suggest the former, so that was something.
"Now, then," Killian said, glancing around the square, "the topic of weapons. You're a good hand with a dirk, we've all noticed, but how are you with a sword?"
"Embarrassingly bad," she answered, although that was a bit of a exaggeration.
"Bow and arrow?"
"Better, but I'd rather throw a knife than shoot a bow."
At this, he gave her a strange glance. "Most would consider the bow a far simpler weapon to control than a throwing knife," he said slowly.
"I'm not most people," she replied sweetly. He raised an eyebrow.
"Only a fool would believe otherwise," he muttered, looking around the square again. "You've still got the dagger you stole off Blackbeard's man?"
"Not on me, but yes," she answered, and he nodded slowly.
"We'll get you a set of throwing knives, then," he said, making for a smithy, and she couldn't stand it anymore.
"Why are you doing all of this?" she hissed, slightly defensive and deeply wary. "You're spending a lot of money on me for a week's mission."
He didn't bat an eye. "A dangerous week, and one which will require a great degree of stealth and likely fighting," he replied, like it was obvious. "Keeping you alive and well-armed is in both of our best interests, if you're to keep your side of our deal."
It was all very logical, but it sounded like a lie. Or maybe she just wanted to believe it was.