Summary: Intending to return to Neverland after his quest for revenge comes to an abrupt end, Killian Jones finds himself in Duodenary, a realm whose existence allows Neverland, and the people therein, to live forever. After months of trying and failing to find a way to go home, a princess comes looking to him for help.
Notes: Thanks again to all who read/favorited/followed/reviewed! Part Four goes up on Friday.
"Are you sure this is going to work?" Emma asks, yet again, as he busies himself on deck.
Earlier in the day, when the stars were still bright, they'd stopped back in Duo Eleven, Killian dropping a handful of stone into the pockets of the first child that he'd seen. He'd told the boy to find a stout man with a red hat, to tell him to keep the crew busy for the next several days. Emma had told him that it was the season for cider, and so Killian's certain they'll spend the next several days thoroughly sloshed, forgetting there ever was a man called Captain Hook. Once they'd left his crew behind, they sailed just to the edge of the current, dropping anchor until the sun had risen, the long sunrise tapering into the overbright light of day.
"No," he answers her. She seems dissatisfied, even more so when he gleefully unfurls the sails, speaking hushed endearments to the ship from time to time, when his strength alone is inadequate, and the magic in the wood she's hewn from stir to life, raising anchor for him, pulling the rigging, and so forth.
"Then why are we doing it?"
He frowns at her when he passes her by. He leaps up to stand on the bowsprit, and here from the edge of the great current of Clockwork Bay, he watches the sun roll around the perimeter of the great atoll from one sunset to the next. He wonders idly if the sun will ever come closer, if it's like a marble dropped in a bowl, racing towards the bottom, or if the inimitable magic of this curious place will hold it where it lies.
"Is that your standard for action, Swan?" He throws a smile over his shoulder, and the Swan in question rolls her eyes. He beckons her forward, and she comes slowly, lazily, in a bit of a zigzag, arriving as if it were her idea all along. Royalty indeed.
"Must you always know the outcome beforehand?" he continues, reaches out to steady her with his hook when she finally joins him astride the proud, jutting cut of enchanted wood. "If so, I'm surprised you sought me out."
He smiles, then, not without mischief. He expects her to smile back, but she takes a step, then another, until she has to crane her neck to look up at him. With the angle of the wood beneath them, Killian towers over her, and there's something about it that sets a gentle fire in the pit of his stomach. He wonders if she realizes, if she can see read the flare in his nostrils, the way that he licks at his lips. She considers him, carefully. She opens her mouth, and again, he expects harsh words, serious words, something to chastise the joy he carries when he rides the waves.
But again – and he seems to remind himself at least once an hour – she doesn't conform to expectations. She reaches up, and her fingers drag lightly over his jaw. His mouth drops open, and when he sighs, his breath stirs the stray hairs falling out of the knot she's tied, curling by her ear. She smells of leather, of course, and bears the faint scent of the sea, a sweet rot, sometimes cloying, always comforting. She pushes forward, and her nails scratch over his nape, until she's grasping tufts of his hair, and tugging, just enough to warm his belly, to make his trousers a growing discomfort. And while this is certainly not what he expected, he feels as though it was an inevitably. He thinks on destiny for a moment, wonders if something is pushing them together, if it's bound in the stars. Then again, when she pulls harder, the only thing currently bounding him to her are her hands on his clothing. If another life had brought them here – if all their lives had brought them to this moment, where her breath tastes like salt and spices, then so be it. In the end, it's he that chooses not to pull away, she who leans further still.
"Emma," he says.
"Killian," she answers. She pulls back, but only for a moment, before she steadies herself enough to grab the lapels of his coat. She pulls him, gently, until she's speaking directly into his mouth. "I only wanted to see. I wasn't going to ask you help me."
He finds it's nearly impossible to speak when he can feel the shape of her mouth ghosting over his. But he swallows – once, twice, then thrice – and then he says, haltingly –
"What changed your mind?"
She shakes her head, and her nose bumps against his.
"I knew you," she says. "I know you."
Killian hums.
"Not like…know you. I've never seen you before. But there's just something…" Emma pauses, and breathes, holding to his coat, the leather squeaking beneath her fingers. "…just something about you."
Perhaps if circumstance were different, he would grin salaciously, lead with his hips and make a remark that would no doubt set her eyes rolling out of her head. But he's caught in a vortex, helpless to spin around her, like the sun round and round the horizon.
"Aye," is all he manages to say.
"I…"
She huffs, holds even tighter to his coat, and then her mouth is on his. He longs to reach for her, to feel the precious metals living in her hair, to map the realms curving over her back, to press and to pull and to know her the way she claims to know him. But he has to hold tight to the rigging. He's a practiced sailor, hasn't lost his balance in nearly a century. But under the tide of her mouth – rising and falling, pushing and pulling, again and again – he feels he could very well fall. Fall and fall, through the Clockwork, out along the unforgiving salts rushing through the Pelagy. When she pauses to breathe, he wonders if that's the last he'll know of her lips, if she's already nothing but a memory. But then, she turns her head, and slants her lips back over his. Even from moments ago, she seems to taste different. Sweet, now, instead of salt. Seconds tick by – by and by and by – until he begins to realize what she means.
He knows her. Somehow. If time were to rewind this very moment, if fate were to drop them in different realms, he's certain she'd find him, or he'd find her. He knows it, just as he knows the way her hand presses gently against his jaw.
"Okay," she says, when she pulls away. "What now?"
What now, he thinks. It takes him a good while to answer, at least as long as it takes to remember his own name, then to lean back far enough to look her in the eye.
"You stand here," he says. "The back of the Jolly is all heft. Out here on the bowsprit, you'll be able to feel the change in the rush of the waters."
She hesitates, and he hopes he's not breaking some unwritten rule when he kisses the swell of her cheeks, and reassures her, "I've sailed this current for months, Swan. I know as surely as I know port from starboard, they run constant. If time is swelling, or contracting, it should be reflected in that."
"Shouldn't you be standing here, then?"
Killian smiles. "Gods but you're a stubborn lass. It's not that I don't trust you love, but this is – and I hope you'll forgive the pun – a time sensitive matter. It would take more than we have to train you at the helm."
She huffs. "Okay, fine."
He nods, and reaches up to pull down a bit of loose rigging, to wrap it around her arm.
"Hold tight, love. The current is smooth sailing, but I'd rather you be careful all the same."
Emma rolls her eyes, but complies wordlessly, clutching tight to the rope he places in her hand. It's a bit of a dance to shuffle around her and back onto the deck. So much so that his hips, if only for a moment, press tightly against hers. He feels unsteady on his feet as he walks back to the helm.
"Alright, Swan?" he shouts, once he's situated.
"Yep," she shouts back, clinging tighter to the rigging. He breathes deep, and counts to three, savoring the anticipation.
Then he taps twice upon the anchor's twining rope, and it begins to rescind. He rushes towards the helm, and turns the sail into the winds, and then they're off. The wood of his beloved Jolly Roger groans, in protest of days of disuse. She creaks at him, tutting as pushes a bit too hard on the wheel. But when they turn into the current, she quiets, aside from the rustle of the sails, rushing faster and faster with the gentle arc of the crystal waters. From time to time, the Jolly still peeps at him, wondering where he's been, throwing stray breezes at Emma in genuine curiosity.
"She's merely a passenger," Killian says.
The ship leaps over a bit of wake, nearly jostling him off his feet. Emma, he notices, easily stays upright, if only because the ship seems to unsteady in his favor, rocking him back and forth until he says –
"Fine. I'm half in love with the woman. Bloody fucking hell."
The ship steadies, seeming rightly pleased with herself.
"You are, of course, my first love, old girl."
The ship hums, before it picks up the pace, turning a hard corner in the two o'clock corner of Clockwork Bay. They steady, and Killian ties off a few ropes, some with his own hand and hook, others with an insistent thought directed at the ship herself. Then he rushes towards the bowsprit. Perhaps over emboldened by the touch of her lips to his, he presses his chest against her back. She stiffens for a moment before her head falls back on his shoulder, if only so she can get a good look at him, before she turns back towards the sea.
"Anything yet?" he says.
"Nope, not in the last like seven minutes and forty-three seconds since we left."
He laughs. "You Duodenarians and your obsession with time."
"You Neverbeasts and your obsession with eternity."
He laughs harder, nudges his boot between both of hers. He can feel her tense a moment, then relax, then tense again, as though she's having a wicked, silent debate. It occurs to him, then, that he's behaving rather ungentlemanly, especially when she shifts, and her lower back brushes lightly over the front of his trousers. He leans back, and looks down, even though she can't see him.
"Pardon me, love," he says, near to her ear. "I'm afraid you're right. I'm a Neverbeast of the highest order."
She's silent for a moment before she answers, genuinely, "No you're not."
Killian's not quite sure what to say. He thinks on his past, thinks on the hook he bears for a hand, the number of men and women's he's dispatched with the carefully sharpened tip. He thinks of the blood he's seen, the blood he's borne, and then looks down to see goodness personified telling him he's not a monster.
The contradiction is overbearing. Her grumbles not but half a response and returns to the helm. He shakes the tension from his legs when he grasps the wheel, keep them steady on the current. He's never been one to fear death, but he's no desire to see the Jolly lost to the center – to what the residents of the realm refer to as the Gear – of the Bay's inimitable gyre. He can't quite see the current, but he can feel it beneath his feet, can hear it in the crackle of water against the hull.
They sail on for at least an hour more, chasing the darkness as the sun turns counterclockwise about Duodenary, they following the current clockwise. They pass from Duo Six to Duo Five, all while Emma stands tirelessly at the end of the ship. She watches, and she waits. He imagines he'd have a great deal of trouble finding his focus, what with the siren's hair fluttering through the wind, bearing the salt spray like she was borne of the Pelagy. But there's an untenable rush that accompanies the speeds of the great current, and he finds his mind falling blank of all else but the quiet, creaking language the Jolly speaks to him out on the prow.
"Killian!" she shouts, after some time, when they begin their approach to Duo Four. He whispers to the ship, compels her to keep steady while he bounds to the bowsprit. Emma turns, and here on the edge of twilight, standing above him, and framed by the war between starlight and sunlight, he's quite certain he's never seen treasure before, never seen gemstones, no gold or diamonds, no beauty at all except for the turn of her smile, the glitter in her eyes. He forgets their purpose for a long, stuttered moment, grinning freely up at her. The humidity in the three o'clock is typically something of a nuisance, but it emphasizes the sharp smell of palm and pine, and of the faint whiff of indeterminate spices Swan seems to carry on her skin.
"Killian," she repeats. She reaches down to steady herself on his shoulder as she steps on the deck. "You alright?"
"Aye, love. Never better."
She hums, regarding him with an unreadable expression before she points to land.
"Here," she says.
He nods, and turns back to the bow. "Let's weigh anchor, then."
"Are you sure?"
He throws a look over his shoulder as he climbs the quarterdeck. "Are you sure? It's your judgment we're trusting, darling."
"Really?"
Killian stops, all at once finding her endearing and exasperating. He towers over her, standing astride a flight of stairs. She looks up at him, uncertain. The smile drops from his face, and he wonders –
"Now who was it that convinced you to be so unsure of yourself?"
She looks down at her feet, and something rises in his chest, not unlike the bile that accompanies a night of reckless drinking. But this settles, burning, somewhere near his sternum. His fingers curl tightly around his belt, and his sword suddenly feels a little heavier at his side.
"Perhaps we should quest for revenge first."
Emma laughs, then, quiet, but fierce. She looks back up at him, quirks a delicate brow, and he wonders, or hopes rather, that this particular ship has already sailed straight to hell.
"Save the world now," she says. "Tragic story time later."
Killian concedes, if only because she gives him a sharp look when he opens his mouth. So he silently begs the Jolly Roger to do up her sails as quickly as she can. The ship creaks and sways, but gives no lip, and he watches as the ropes do themselves up in spectacular fashion. The anchor he saves for last, allowing her to drift a while longer, in towards the shore, before he pulls a hefty lever, and the sail falls with a muted splash into the water. He waits for the telltale thud, the very same he feels down in his bones every time the anchor drops into the seafloor, and when it does, the ship drifts a bit more, before it lurches to a stop.
"There's a good girl," he says, quietly, down at the wood beneath his feet.
The flag atop the mainmast flutters in reply, and he returns to the quarterdeck, where Emma watches out over the railing. Killian stops at her side, perhaps closer than he should dare, for she looks warily up at him. Not for the first time, he feels as though he's been plunged in unfamiliar waters. Their kiss, shared hardly an hour ago – he can still taste her on his tongue, can still feel the pressure of her lips against his. But now, she seems rather distant, if not fearful, as she fiddles with her fingers, tugs at her hair. So, silently, he shuffles away, and looks out at the land on the horizon.
"Where are we, then?" he says.
He feels her tense beside him. "Duo Two."
"And this is the source of whatever magic is fouling up the Rise?"
Emma frowns, scratches compulsively at her wrist. "I don't think so. Duo Two is nothing but forests and lakes. A few towns here and there. We use it for wood and as sort of a…reserve water supply. Several of the Lordships take their holidays there."
"Do your parents?" He stops and thinks for a moment. "Assuming they're still alive, I mean."
She tilts her head. "Yeah. Yeah, they're still alive."
Unlike yours, are her unspoken words. Not that it's difficult to figure out, given that he's told her how old he is.
"And no, to the vacation thing," she says. "I can't remember the last time they took a holiday. They just hang around Twelve all the time."
"How dreadfully dull."
She smiles, then, and Killian counts it as a victory, shuffling just that bit closer. When she looks up at him, now, she's wary still, but smiling. Though it's only faint, he grins back. Perhaps he's giving himself away. But then again, he's only one life to live.
"Just like Duo Two, honestly," she says. "I'm kind of surprised this is where time is all…" She gestures, searching, before, "…wonky."
"Wonky," he repeats, mostly to himself. Then, "Dull, is it?"
"Dreadfully," she parrots, and he smiles.
"Ah, but perhaps the perfect, nondescript location in which to stage a bit of a coup."
"A coup?"
"What is any nefarious plan, but a struggle for power?"
Emma's nostrils flare, and she turns to regard him. Here on the silent seas, outside of the current, the water is a bit like glass. He's reminded of the night of the Rise, when up was down, when he first lost himself in the sound of her voice, and in the way the water seems to respond to her. Unlike that night, there's no ripple in the waves, no mourning beyond the fear she seems to carry from one dawn to the next. They're anchored barely a mile offshore, outside of the range of the young, tender grasses that grow just beneath the surface. She sits aside the bowsprit now, and he wonders if she's growing uncomfortable, what with the way she shifts, but when he'd offered her the captain's cabin, and he the bunks below deck, she refused.
Now, they commiserate beneath the stars. Or above the stars. It could rightly be that they're hanging from the sky, and he wouldn't know the difference.
"But where is it coming in?" she wonders aloud. She chews on her thumb, pausing only to brush her hair over her shoulder again and again. It's as stubborn as she, it would seem. He would brush it away, but she seems lost in thought. They can straddle the fine line they're walking on the morrow.
"A river?" he guesses, when she grows silent.
She shakes her head. "There aren't any rivers. There's only the one harbor on miles of coastline."
"Who's the Lordship?"
Emma wrinkles her nose, then. She sighs, and flops rather unceremoniously back on the bowsprit. Only now does it occur to him to ask whether she spent much of her youth aboard ships. After all, she displays a marvelous ability to act as if she's not perched rather precariously, several dozen hands above the sea. But his curiosity will have to wait until later. She's a story on her tongue, and an expectant waggle of her brow sets her talking.
"Regina," Emma says. "She used to want to kill me, then she actually kind of helped save me at one point. I think she's sort of neutral on me now." She pauses, and shrugs as she plays with the ties on the V of her shirt. "She and Robin are the Lordship, now. I'm honestly surprised she doesn't mind being stuck out in the middle of nowhere all the time."
She looks up at him, and the expression on his face must give him away, because she laughs so hard that he compulsively draws her closer, fearing a tumble into the shallow waters below.
"That didn't make any sense, did it," she says.
"Your business is your own, darling," he answers. "Although, I can't imagine befriending the woman who tried to kill me. Or you."
Especially you, he thinks.
"Like I said, it's a long story. Love, death, revenge."
Killian hums. "Sounds familiar."
She hums back, and then turns until her hip rests against the gunwale, looking up at him until he does the same, facing her with his arms crossed over his chest. He watches her, waits, suspects she has something to say, but doesn't quite know how to say it. Typically, he might help her along. After all, he is a man of many words, she a woman of few. But the expression in her eyes is fathomless, incomprehensible. So he waits, chewing thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek.
"Does it?" she says, after some time. "Sound familiar?"
"Aye," he answers, truthfully. "Painfully so."
She nods in understanding, and that seems to be the end of it. He longs to know, to ask what it is – who it is, perhaps – that plagues her. But she twists away from him, and walks towards the center of the deck.
"It's too early to go to sleep," she says.
Killian follows her, until he stands at her side, looking up at the stars. "You can do whatever you wish, Swan. If you like, we can row to shore, set up camp on land."
She shakes her head. "I'd rather sleep on the water, row down in the morning."
He nods, and tries not to be so very obvious about watching her. Then again, she appears to be watching him, so he figures turnabout is fair play. They remain silent, together, for a while, at least until the air chills with the onset of midnight, and she starts to rub at her arms.
"Still too early for sleep?" he says.
"It's been like ten minutes."
He laughs, softly. "How would you like to climb to the fighting top, eh, Swan?"
How would you like to climb to the fighting top, he thinks to himself, derisively, when they reach the top of the mast. It is, of course, meant for but one man or woman, so he must seem either a fool or a lech. There is no configuration of two human bodies that could have them resting comfortably without touching.
"Eh," he says, scratching beneath his ears. "Sorry, love. I don't exactly frequent the fighting top." He pauses, then, and looks up at the sky, where, with the sails and masts serving as less of a hindrance, it seems an endless sea of stars. "I can go – "
"No," she says, rather quickly, loudly, startling him where he stands, cramped against one side of the nest. Then, quieter, rubbing compulsively at her elbow, "No, that's okay. I mean, we've already…"
"Aye," he says, when she falls silent. "We've already."
It takes some maneuvering, but he manages to sit with his back against the mast, and she in front of him. She's leaning forward, her feet dangling over the edge. As many times as he's climbed these ropes and sails, it turns his stomach to watch her swing her feet. So he cranes his neck instead, and watches a stray meteor or two streak across the sky. There are several moments, of course, during which he considers talking, asking her about her family, about her past. But he senses he ought to remain quiet. Either she'll talk or she won't. Meanwhile, he can breathe in the air, and soak in the silence, that latter of which he's not had much since arriving in Duodenary some months ago.
Emma doesn't seem keen to speak, either. Or, at least, not in words. She's so quiet and still that, when he closes his eyes to listen to the waves below, he nearly forgets she's there, or as close to forgetting she's there as he'll ever be.
"Tell me about Neverland," she says, and he looks down, peeks open one eye. She's still looking up and away, hair spilling down her back. As the hour grows later, the starlight grows brighter, and it seems as though she's made from the dust of the heavens, sparkling on her skin, in her hair, in her eyes when she peers over her shoulder.
"What do you want to know?"
Emma turns back to watch her feet as they swing. "Is their king really just a boy?"
Killian scoffs. "Pan is no king, love. And he's certainly no boy. He merely wears the face of a child."
"Why?"
He shrugs. "Youth. Power. Why does anyone want either?"
She scoots back a bit, and turns until she's leaning against his leg, and he finds himself holding his breath, waiting for her to realize what she's doing. But she's either oblivious, or doesn't care, crossing her arms over her chest when she says –
"Don't you want youth and power?"
"Darling, I've had more than enough of both. Even with centuries behind me, I have years to live, and no master above me. I'm content."
"Centuries," she echoes. "Must be weird, to have lived so long, and be so young."
He shrugs, and muses, "One of the perks of Duodenary, I find, is that I don't have much to explain when I confess my age."
Emma laughs, and leans harder against his leg, until she's very nearly sitting between his thighs. Rather involuntarily, he reaches up to steady her with a hand on her shoulder. But it's with this touch that she seems to realize where she is, how she's sitting, seizing up until he removes his hand. She doesn't move, though, either too frightened or too proud or too something to leave. Killian's sure he's blue in the face when something in her eyes seems to knock loose, and she leans, ever so carefully, until her side is nuzzled against his chest, her legs beneath one of his. She breathes – he breathes, for that matter – and he can hear her counting to twelve under her breath.
"What are we doing?" she says, quietly.
Not one to hedge, he remains silent for a moment while he considers her question. What are they doing? Once consumed by revenge, lost in the vagueness and haze surrounding the centuries in Neverland, now living in a realm shrouded in shadows, protected by powerful Lordships and beholden to strange, magical accords. He can hardly recall Milah's face, the sound of her voice. He'd once returned to the Enchanted Forest, only to find that the mantle of Darkness had been rescinded by the gods. Returning to Neverland, then, only to find himself bobbing on saline seas the likes of which he'd never seen before. Here in Duodenary, once again reliant on his own wits to make a living in a new realm, trying to find a way back, at least until…
Until Emma.
And now, here he lies, with a woman who is not his first and only lover. He's certainly half in love with her already, but it feels different. Before, he'd been consumed by it, restless, always wanting more, exhilarated by the touch of her hand, by the press of her lips, by the winding of her body around his.
Now, with Emma, it's quiet, a stray comfort, as though he were caught drifting in unknown waters, and given a compass, a purpose. The way he feels when he looks at her, it settles warmly in his chest. He finds himself wondering where to draw the line between love and fondness and lust, between the longing for love that he's felt for so long, and the fear that it may never return. Poets he'd met in realms afar had called it saudade, and at last, the heavy, undying yearning in his heart seems to dissipate.
I want you, he thinks. After all his deliberation, it's truly as simply as that. He considers whether or not he should say this aloud, whether or not it would offend the unknown burden that she carries.
Then –
"I…want you," she says.
He laughs, rather humorless. "You really are a sorceress, aren't you?" Before she can answer in her confusion, he reaches up to caress her face with the backs of his fingers.
"I want you too, of course," he says, in case it isn't terribly obvious.
"I don't even…" She trails off, sounding frustrated, a little fearful, a lot nonplussed. "I don't even know you. Except that…I know you?"
He smiles, faintly, "We've had this conversation before today."
"I just don't get it."
"What about fate don't you get?"
She frowns. "Fate's kind of a heavy word to be throwing around."
Killian shifts in place, until he can get a good look at her. He turns her chin with his hook, until she's looking him in the eye. "Emma, love, I came to this realm entirely by accident. You come to me on a whim, for help you never truly intended to ask for, when, by most laws of nature, we shouldn't even exist at the same time." He quiets, leaning forward, speaking with hardly more than whispers. "And when you kiss me, you feel as though you know me, as though you always have, and always will. Consider these, and then tell me fate had no hand."
She watches him for a while, until his arm grows sore, and he pulls his hook from his face. Until his back twinges as well, and he leans back. She turns her head from side to side before she leans forward, her hand laying gently against his face. When she kisses him, it's familiar and unfamiliar all at once. It's chaste, but meaningful, and she's a stubborn furrow to her brow when she pulls back.
"I can do what I want," she says.
He smiles. "Of that I have no doubt."
"Fate can try and stop me, or push me."
"She's merely presented the opportunity, Swan. What shall you do with it?"
She hums, and shifts until she's on her knees before him. His heart rises in his throat when she plants both hands on his shoulders, and pushes until she's standing. Then –
"Sleep," she answers.
Killian sighs, squirming in place until he can hear her stalking across the deck down below. He leans over the edge of the top, says –
"You take the captain's cabin, love, down beneath the quarter."
"You sure?" she says, although she's already halfway down the ladder.
"Whatever you want," he says, although he doubts she hears him, the hatch shutting above her with a quiet thud.
Killian laughs, he can't help it, and sets about climbing down the mast. When he passes over the slats above his cabin, he thinks he most probably imagines the sound of rustling, like clothing sliding off of flesh. He takes up Emma's habit, then, and counts to twelve before he too climbs below deck, to have perhaps the most restless sleep of his life.
Come morning, they row to shore. Killian's never before had the fortune to dock at this Duo before. Only, of course, as Emma says, there's only one harbor. He wonders if he's ever sailed by it before, giving the trees only a passing glance before turning to face the sea. Considering the stark, white, glittering beaches, he doubts it. This is exactly the sort of paradise his men would bribe him to visit. When they step from the skiff, now anchored alongside a stretch of fluted corals, Emma stops to throw her boots and socks rather unceremoniously over her shoulder.
"Holy shit," she says, wriggling her toes. He watches her from further up the beach, where the water washes gently over his shoes, pulling away the muck they'd encountered between the shallow waters and landfall.
"It feels like clouds," she continues, waxing poetic for a moment about their glorious surroundings. He'd share the sentiment, were he not experiencing a rather sudden and painful nostalgia for the taste of her lips.
"Swan," he says. He stops to clear his through when nothing but gravel falls from his mouth. "We ought to head inland."
"Oh."
She sounds disappointed, like a child called in for the sake of the storm. He's amused once more, and wonders how many different emotions it's possible to experience in the span of time it takes the woman to hop back into her socks and shoes.
He snorts as they cross the tree line. Unlike the crowded underbrush of Neverland, the vegetation here is spread thin on the ground. Needles – red and green and blue, some purple, some clear, looking like delicate ice crystals – litter the ground, crunching loudly underfoot. Creatures of all sorts hover overhead. The birds grow quiet at their approach. Light eyes set in dark fur crawl on eight legs back up the crooked trees. It's both charming and foreboding, and Killian shifts closer to his companion.
Or…at least he tries. When he expects his hook to brush over her fingers, he swipes through nothing but air. He turns, and finds her cooing at a herd of white stags, no taller than his knees.
"Come now, darling," he says, looking warily over his shoulder before he stands behind her, watching the red-beaded eyes of the stags turn heavily upon him as he sidles closer behind her. "We mustn't linger."
She scoffs. "Just give me a second, I want to pet the animals."
He huffs in turn. "Are you a grown woman with magic, or are you a child?"
Emma laughs, gives one of the creatures one last pat before she rises to her feet, steadying himself by his hook. That alone is enough to throw him off balance, the casual touch, but she pushes on –
"Never thought you'd be agreeing with my father."
"I'll tell him he's more intelligent than I by spades if you agree to leave the rabid beasts behind."
Emma looks casually amused at his behest, but she complies. They put several strides between themselves and the stags before he lets out a relieved breath.
"Funny," she says. "I had you pegged for an animal lover."
"Sea animals, love," he answers, looking over his shoulder. "The creatures of these forests and plains haven't a bloody clue what you're saying."
"What you're saying," she counters.
He merely quirks a brow in reply.
"We really ought to have a word for that."
"A word for what?"
"For people who can be understood by the creatures in the sea."
Killian stops a moment, at which she regards him, rather mischievously, over her shoulder.
"People," he echoes. "As if there are more than one."
"Not many more than one."
Emma continues on, and he doubles his strides until he's caught up with her, looking down at her profile as they walk. At least, until he nearly trips over the roots of an ancient beech tree. He glares at it for a moment before he concedes with a huff, and walks behind her.
"So this…power. Why do I have it?"
She shrugs. "Why can anyone do anything?"
Killian sighs, affectedly.
"Seriously, though, who knows, especially given that you weren't born here." She pauses to duck under some low hanging branches, and holds them up for him to follow, before she adds, genuinely curious, "Weren't you wondering why the magic fetched such a good price? Especially considering most animals – or the younger ones, anyway – jump at the chance to start their life over again, memories intact."
He grumbles good-naturedly.
"Or did you really think you were that singularly charming?"
Killian laughs, then, despite himself. "How am I to know the ins and outs of this realm, eh, Swan?"
She laughs too, but doesn't answer. They walk, he behind her – as seems to be their pattern – for a good while before something occurs to him.
"And the creatures on land understand you," he says, accusingly. "How ironic."
Emma smiles –
"Yep."
– and continues on her way.