A/N: Seriously guys, I am SO SO SORRY for the awful lateness. I have been very busy this past year, studying abroad. But I really wanted to end this story which is my baby, the longest story I've ever written. So please forgive me! I hope this chapter (+4,000 words) will make you forget the wait... Without further ado, here it is!
An alien wetness woke her up, thin droplets following the curves of her cheeks and melting in the crook of her neck. She winced and groaned, the delightful warmth of the two big arms around her far too comfortable for her to let go. Not already. Not now she finally got to feel love rushing through her veins. She had waited for this moment her entire life, without even being aware of it. She had spent her childhood wondering what love was, how it felt like, why people could not seem to live without it. Deirdre and Naoise. Her parents. Now it was all crystal clear: love is what makes you feel alive. All right, it might sound a little bit cliché. Okay, it sounds really cheesy. But Emma knew it was true. She was not one to dream about love and wait for her knight in shining armor to come and rescue her. She had taken care of herself pretty well all these years, especially considering her lack of... well, heart. And yet, here he was, her pirate with his shining hook. She had not asked for this.
But her heart had.
This radiant and lonesome heart sheltered by a crystal cave, lost in the Neverland sea. All these years it had sung and beaten to the rhythm of a desperate need of love. This feeling was the reason she was whole now. It had brought emotions back into her life, and this was not nothing. Killian had put her heart back in her chest and kept a part of it in the process. A year ago she would have been terrified, anything but willing to leave somebody see her bare and capture her heart. And now she was tangled up in him, her palms pressed against his heaving chest, whole.
"Emma?"
A far off voice made its way into her head, raspy, familiar... His. She smiled silently, remembering the 'enjoyable activities' they had practised earlier. The scent of his skin, the hotness of his breath, his callous hands worshipping her body... Her smile turned into a smirk: the sole thought of doing this over and over again was enough to make her happy.
"Emma? Come on love, I know you're awake. This knowing smirk of yours doesn't lie."
She sighed and pouted before tucking her head against his chest. Her eyes flitted open as a deep moan escaped her mouth, her eyebrows narrowed in an adorable way. "Killian, we've been asleep for barely two hours..." she whined against his skin.
She heard him chuckle, his chest vibrating with laughter. "But the sun's already rising."
"This island is crazy, it just set!"
He smirked at her exhaustion. "Sorry I exhausted you my love, next time I'll go more smoothly."
It didn't fail. Emma sat up all of a sudden and glared at him. "Don't you dare," she let out before kissing him.
Killian smiled against her lips and wiped away the droplets of water glistening down her face. All the things they had been through seemed so insignificant now. The years lurking in the dark, seeing her with Baelfire, the agony of these six months after she had left him on the Jolly Roger... He didn't regret any of it. Because it had led him to this moment, right to the warmth of her fleshy lips. She was far too good for the wretched Captain Hook. But she was no angel. She had killed, lied, hurt. And now she loved, with all her heart and all her soul. And she loved him. He thanked the Gods and Demons and all that had thwarted him, because now, he knew this love was meant to be.
When their lips finally parted, he opened his eyes and frowned. Something was wrong. He gazed up at the sky above them and noticed it had darkened, the horizon black as coal engulfing the ocher sun. The rain literally echoed on the stones around them, creating a melody of its own, metallic, electric. The sky cracked open, revealing a large streak of light flashing through the clouds. It looked all too familiar to the pirate. The last time a storm had broken out, Milah's ghost had almost killed Emma. This was not promising.
He sat up without warning causing Emma to startle. "Killian, what's wrong?"
"Storm," he simply let out. "And not of the natural kind."
"How do you know?"
He closed his eyes. "I can feel it." Well, she had to trust him on that.
"And is it... bad?" Emma asked, unsure.
He chuckled darkly and cocked an eyebrow at her. "Last time you almost got yourself killed by my late lover."
She sighed, remembering Milah's hands round her neck. "Well..."
"Get dressed, we have to find a shelter," he said as he got up.
They quickly found their clothes and and started to run down the peak. The wind slapped their faces as their shapes pierced through the air. Killian took her hand and squeezed it until he felt her blood pounding in her veins. Faster. Faster. Faster. That was all he could hear with each pulse. They needed to run faster. They needed to escape the island. And, more than anything else, they needed to stay together.
Suddenly, the ground shook under their feet. A low and deep sound rose from the soil and thundered underneath the surface.
"An earthquake, really?" Emma screamed with exasperation. But Killian shook his head knowingly, and closed his eyes. A waltz of painful images flashed under his eyelids. His father, a shipwreck, an unforgiving storm.
"It's not an earthquake Emma. A portal is about to open up."
Emma's jaw dropped. A portal? Opening up without a bean? How was that even possible? But she had forgotten about the very nature of the island, as she always did. Anything was possible in Neverland, and death was never far. "How can a portal..." she began.
"Emma," Killian muttered, "now is no time for questions. It's a spontaneous portal, to my knowledge it only happened twice in our history, and the last time it did I lost my father. So don't talk and run, got it?"
She let go of his hand. How dared he? "I've spent my whole life obeying my own rules Killian, and I am not about to accept your bossy tone."
Killian chuckled. Darkly. "Really Emma? Really? Do you think now is the time for your to go all I'm-an-independent-woman-who-does-not-need-a-man on me?"
Were they having a fight while a deathly storm was about to kill them? "I never said anything like that!" She rubbed her forehead and stared at him. "Look, I know you're afraid of losing me, but you owe my an explanation! Why should we run from a portal when we've been looking for a way out of this island?"
Killian's look softened and he grabbed her hand again. "Because spontaneous portals tend to be lethal, love. And I am not losing you. We'll find another way to get away from here. So please, if your bright new heart loves me, just run."
She stroke his cheek and nodded. But deep inside, she knew this portal was about to appear for a reason. Their quest was done, the island wanted them out. There was no escaping it.
All of a sudden, she heard him scream. Gravity pulled her down, down, down. She felt her body giving up, absorbed by a powerful force she could not quite describe. "Love, hold on, please," she heard Killian plead. She looked at their fingers still laced, and then her eyes landed on his face. A wince distorted his mouth, from which moans and screams flowed. Everything had led them to this moment. It was written after all. Her heart was her downfall. She was not meant to love, not meant to feel. Tears started to spring out when she realized that everything she had been craving her whole life was about to be taken away from her. Oh yes, she loved this man. She loved him with every fiber of her being, from her blood to her cells, from her heart to her brains. She had become this romantic sissy she had always mocked, the woman who needs a man to survive, whose life is not hers anymore. But was it weakness? Truth was, she had never been so brave. She needed him. He had become a part of her. Yet, she did not feel bad about this. She felt whole at last. But he was about to suffer. No matter what happened, he would be in pain. If she fell through this portal, she would leave him, probably forever. If she did not, something else would happen and separate them, as the curse stated. Her heart had been stolen, it had never been hers. It was all bound to end in chaos.
"Killian..." she started.
And then, it all went black. She hit the ground with a powerful strike and felt the mud underneath her body. Everything hurt. From her back to her heart, pain seemed to wave under her skin with an incessant flow. The last thing she had tasted, was the salt of her lover's tears on her mouth, falling from the tip of her nose. And the last thing she had seen, a bolt of lightning striking him.
And then, it all went white.
She woke up as she had collapsed: in pain. Her eyelids fought against the blinding light, eager to set her pupils free. Her whole body was shaking. Killian's face bathed in a white light flashed before her eyes and she could still see him being struck... He could not have survived that, could he? Something had broken into her. And it hurt, it hurt so much.
After a few seconds of intense battle and despite the tears, her eyes flew open and she tried to make out her surroundings. In the eerie whiteness of the day, she recognized the area without being able to name it: sure, it was a forest, as the abundant amount of trees showed, but the taste of the air was uncannily familiar... It was like waking up from a dream, the kind of dream in which you are with a person during your sleep and you know you were acquainted with them before, and yet you cannot put the finger on it...
Emma tried to stand up when she realized she was already on her feet: a tight rope threatened to pierce her belly and forced her body to embrace what she took for a tree. Her hands were solidly held together by another rope in front of her. There was no doubt, she had been tied up to this tree. But by whom?
"You've finally woken up from your beauty sleep, your Highness?"
The voice had lacerated the air like a knife, sneaking into her ears with the whistling of a snake. "Who are you?" she inquired without an ounce of fear. She hurt and she had lost the love of her life : nothing could possibly be worse.
"Don't you remember me my dear?" answered the voice. "I am truly wounded. I'm usually remembered."
"I am usually not tied up to trees."
The voice shook with laughter. "Fierce as ever I see. Yet our last encounter is not that old princess. Come on, try harder. Who am I?"
She sighed and frowned. She was tired and could not care less about what would happen to her or to the world around her: if thousands of men, women and children were to be slaughtered before her very eyes, she would not blink. Not because she was heartless, but precisely because she had a heart, and this heart had been broken beyond repair. Nevertheless, this insufferable voice was familiar, and it killed her to be unable to recognize it, just like she had been unable to keep Killian by her side. "Don't you know who you are?" she sighed. "Why don't you just tell me, then you can do whatever the fuck you want with me?"
The air thickened, and she swore somebody was fulminating and blowing their anger to her face. And in a heartbeat, a strange shape came into view. It slowly went closer, closer and closer, until its very face was lightened up by the pale sun rays. "Hello dearie."
Emma's jaw dropped. "Rumplestiltskin?"
The aforementioned smiled. "Good guess. Sadly, the prize will remain the same. I brought you here for a reason."
Emma heaved a heavy sigh. "You have nothing to do with this. Neverland opened this portal..."
"But I guided your fall. I made you land here. Because, you see, princess, I have waited for this moment for an awfully long time."
The two of them stared at each other, and it was as if the very air had disappeared, and the earth, and the trees, and the sky. They were within the darkness, with no atmosphere, just this demon and his evil plans. As always. The princess finally broke the silence. "What now? What are you up to?"
Rumplestiltskin grinned. "When I learned another Orfhlaith was to be brought to life, I knew my time had come. For years, I had hidden in the dark, away from your parents' light. But a prophecy stated that the heart of the Orfhlaith would grant unlimited power to the one who would own it. Luckily for me, in the meantime, another prophecy said that her heart would be stolen from her by her 24th birthday." He let his fingers caress one of her golden locks and she winced. "Your heart, brought to me on a silver plate."
"You could've taken my heart when you ripped it off from my chest."
"I needed your heart to be full of love my dear. For a heart that loves is the most powerful magic of all.
This made no sense. She frowned. "You could've let it into me then. I would've loved someone eventually, my parents for a start."
"You still don't get it highness. For your heart to be as full of love as possible, I needed you to want it. I needed you to feel love without your heart." The imp turned his back to her and smiled with delight. "And this stupid pirate of yours helped. You fell for him while your heart was hidden in Neverland, from what I've gathered. And never a person had loved so truly and deeply since the last Orfhlaith."
Emma closed her eyes, her mind failing to grasp the situation. "I... Why do you keep talking about the Orfhlaith?" she asked.
"You know what she did. You know who she was. What you don't know is how she did it."
Oh, she had studied this. Her childhood had been filled with the tales of the Orfhlaith, the warrior-princess whose hair was like pure gold. "She was a warrior. She was strong, so strong she defeated darkness and brought peace to our world."
"And you think it was solely her mind of iron and her muscles which made her that strong? No, no, no, dearie." He finally faced her, and his eyes glowed with a new flame. "Love is strength, my dear Emma. She was in love, but her lover had died before her eyes, killed by a siren. She was hurting so much, that her heart pulsed and echoed in all the world, like a wave. His death, her pain gave her the strength to keep fighting, and to win. And that is exactly your state at the moment. Right now, you are the Orfhlaith."
A demon had just compared her to a legendary warrior-princess. She should have felt pride, fear, terror. And yet, all she wanted was to be done with it. She peered into his eyes and, with a tired smiled, she said, very calmly: "You want my heart? Then take it."
Rumplestiltskin smiled back and took a few steps forward, until her chest was within reach. It rose and fell with a steady rhythm, as if she had accepted her fate. The princess who had defied the world and its rules, the princess who had stabbed her own sister, the princess who had lived her whole life without knowing how to love, here she was, her heart finally where it belonged and yet, so cold. He removed a part of her dress so that he could see her milky flesh, and she did not blink. He brushed it with his fingertips, almost afraid to damage her skin. As he was about to dive his nails into the marble of her chest, a hand grabbed his forearm.
"I'll do it."
Emma's eyes, which she had closed, fluttered open at the sound of this voice coming from another time. A name escaped from her lips without her will: "Bae...?"
The man's face remained impassible, but his velvety eyes betrayed the intensity of his memories. "Hello, Emma."
Rumplestiltskin broke their reunion, eager to get his hands on Emma's heart. "Are you sure, son?"
And all at once, a mountain of emotions fell apart and buried Emma alive under their strength. Baelfire, the young man she had known for so many years, the one who had tried to teach her love, was the son of Evil? Betrayal, sadness, lack of understanding and nostalgia came crashing down her world.
Seeing her reaction, the imp seemed surprised. "Oh, that's right, you two know each other. Well, I should probably enlighten you." Bae avoided Emma's look in anticipation as his father seemed to thrive from the pain to come. "I sent Bae." He stepped closer to her. "You met because of me. You fucked because of me," he whispered to her ear. "He told me everything you did after your encounters, he described your... reactions to me. I wanted to speed up the process, I wanted you to get your heart back as fast as possible. But my son didn't manage to bring love into you. Hook did. My worst enemy helped me getting what I wanted the most, and I take so much joy from this fact."
Emma shook the tears away. He wouldn't have this pleasure. "Just do what you've been waiting for. Take my heart. You, him, I don't care," she snarled, and her eyes sent daggers in her former lover's way.
"It won't be like the last time sweetheart," Rumplestiltskin warned. "I will then need to crush this jolly heart of yours."
She wanted the pain to go away. She wanted to forget Bae's treason, Killian's eyes, his touch, his warmth, the velvet of his voice and the way she felt loved in his arms. "Have fun doing it," she said with her eyes closed. The world around her was slowly put to rest, the darkness circling her welcomed her like an old friend. Soon, this nothing would be her home, pain would be left at the door. She felt water rolling down her cheeks in thin droplets, like ribbons of salt. The taste reminded her of the sea, of a trip to the Pirate Island and an infuriating pirate describing the night sky to her...
Time seemed to froze. She was alone with the memory of his beloved face and his heat wrapping her body like a good blanket. She did not know whether she believed in the Otherworldly, in a place where the dead wandered freely. Would she see Killian again there? Or anywhere else? Or was oblivion the only thing awaiting? She wished it was, for then she would not be conscious of her lover's absence. Death without him was not worth living.
"Emma..."
The sound of this voice was sweet and mellow, like warm honey slowly poured on a waffle. It coated her heart and its sugar tended the wounds life had caused.
"Emma..."
He was chanting her name. Was he calling her from the Otherworldly? Could it be? She could not wait for her heart to be reduced to dust. She could not wait to stare at this delicious features, scan his eyes and study the shape of his lips. Strangely, as she pictured Killian's mouth, she felt two lips pressed against hers. She could not quite understand how nor why, but this warmth was familiar. Without letting her mind do what it did best – think, she responded to the kiss and let her flesh devour the lips that were capturing it. When their lips parted, she opened her eyes, out of breath. No.
"Emma, say something love."
He was there, standing before her, and she had not even noticed her hands were free and the bark of the tree was no longer hurting her back. "Killian... Am I... Am I dead?"
The pirate smiled and cupped her face with his single hand. "I highly doubt it, for it would mean I am dead too."
She placed her shivering hands on his, taking in his callous skin and the bumps designed by his bones and his veins snaking across his flesh. Tears finally sprung out from her eyes and she was not able to control her sobbing. She did not care about her puffy eyes or being ridiculous. He had returned to her, she had felt his heart beating in the veins of his hand. He kissed her eyes and wiped the salt away. "I'm here Emma, and I'll never leave you again, I promise."
"How did you survive? The... the lightning and... it struck you, I saw it... How..."
"It wasn't lightning, Emma. It was a shooting star."
"During daylight? How is that even..." She stopped, aware of her stupidity. "Of course, 'anything's possible in Neverland'".
Killian grinned and helped her get away from the tree, his arm around her shoulders. "This star transported me here, in the Enchanted Forest, but it took me a certain time to find you."
The Enchanted Forest, of course. That was why it all seemed so familiar. After this realization, reality struck her. "But, what of Rumplestiltskin? And..."
That's when she saw him. His body on the ground covered with orange and brown leaves, his eyes wide open and empty staring at the sky. Above him, his father was crying and caressing his cheeks.
"Killian, what happened?"
The pirate took a deep breath. "Bae came closer to you to... take your heart I guess, but instead he drank something and fell to the ground. He... He died a minute later or so." Seeing the confusion in her eyes, Killian felt the urge to add: "He saved you, Emma. He knew he meant more than the curse to his father, and that dying was the only distraction that would keep him from killing you."
"Wait, you knew him? You had planned all of this?"
Killian nervously scratched the back of his head. "Aye, I stumbled upon him when I landed here. He was on his way to meet his father to try and talk some sense into him, but... He knew how things would turn out."
Emma covered her mouth with her hand, horrified. "I haven't even had the time to apologize for the way I treated him..." she uttered.
"Emma, he knew. He knew everything. From the day you two met. He felt terribly sorry for what he did to you, and... he thought death would be a good way to... atone for his betrayal."
"It's all my fault..."
Killian embraced her and kissed the top of her head. "Love, it's this demon's fault. He did this to his son. Bae did what he thought was right." Emma could not take her eyes off Bae's corpse. His brown eyes staring at nothing. Killian took her chin. "Look at me lass. I love you. And I'll thank him everyday of my life for what he sacrificed to keep you alive, by my side."
She simply nodded. The beating of Killian's heart was so soothing, it lulled her to peace. Nothing else mattered. He was hugging her, they both were alive. No, nothing else mattered but their two hearts pounding in unison.
A/N: Well, that's it. There's only the epilogue left, and it will be very short. Thank you for reading this fic after all this time. Thanks to the new readers and the older ones, thank you so much!