Disclaimer: I do not own the show or the characters of Once Upon A Time. There's no profit except writing practice being made here.


This is me just playing with a voice I'm not used to writing with.


Emma didn't take her hand off his elbow as she directed the pirate back to his room. She didn't want to be touching him, not at all. He was warm and still smelt like the sea and whenever she closed her eyes she saw him lying on the pavement, groaning in agony - heartbreak more than pain - when she said the worst thing she could have. "Leave him." Her words haunted her in the silence as they waited for the stranger to wake. How could she say that about another person? That didn't surprise her so much, but one who had genuinely helped her, who she'd already left for death by Cora? After all, the man hadn't been lying when he said he'd stolen the cuff from the Queen of Hearts. Maybe he'd been horrified by her killing of the townspeople and run from her, only to be cuffed to a Beanstalk by Emma and then somehow worked his way back into Cora's good graces instead of being killed.

No, that wasn't right. Not somehow. He stole Aurora's heart. And no matter what Aurora had said to her in the quiet of the night, Emma couldn't trust Cora wasn't manipulating them. Plus, he shot Belle. That wasn't something she'd forgive. Then again, she'd seen him take her gun from her belt and shoot an ogre in its eye from quite a distance in the pitch black of midnight in their stay in the forest between meeting him and taking him to the beanstalk the next day. He was a hell of a shot, accurate when his foe was invisible and further away than Belle had been. Perhaps he had missed Gold. Or was trying to nudge Belle over the line so she would forget the Dark One and his hold on her, start fresh, and, in his own way, end his own life when Gold went after him. He had been laughing like he'd won something when Gold had attacked, and not even fighting back.

He said nothing as they walked down the bustling halls, eyes darting wildly around the hospital as the nurses and nutrition staff delivered breakfasts. He was surveying the place, looking for exits, enemies. Wait, breakfasts?

Emma chortled, surprised. "Where did you even get this?"

He was limping beside her, keeping time with her as though it was nothing even though Emma was certain the doctor had mentioned something about a broken leg when she was explaining his ailments. That was probably the drugs he was on killing his pain very effectively. He had only just gotten out of a three hour surgery to set and splint his bones. The only indication that he was unwell at all was that he hadn't made a comment about her grip on his arm. He was hookless, in a foreign place, surrounded by strangers, injured, but he wasn't throwing up a wall of flirtation to distance her from noticing his vulnerabilities.

He'd done it to her mother at the bottom of the beanstalk, and the comment about the catfight he was envisioning was so obviously his desperation to keep distancing them from Cora shining through. He wasn't hard to read. Or difficult to trust. No, Emma understood Hook all too well. She knew all about distancing people with callous words, and how putting up a front of sex made most people uncomfortable enough that they stopped scrutinising you. She did it herself.

"Down three left hallways," he explained easily, "A set of swinging tavern doors right before a clearly marked exit that seemed to home too many people. Swan, surely if you intended to keep me here, either for my safety or for your town's, you would not have left me in a building with so obviously marked exits."

Emma rolled her eyes, careful not to let her eyes land on him. Keeping Hook in her peripheral was the healthiest course. But that didn't stop her from feeling his gaze, hot and heavy on her. He hadn't stopped looking at her - not side on like she was eyeing him, but determined and unwavering. No one had ever looked at her like that. Well, Jefferson had, but he was both certifiable and desperate for her to do something for him. No one ever looked at her without needing something from her before.

Emma met his gaze, curious as to what he was implying in her silence. She startled at the blue of his eyes, pressing her lips together so that her emotions weren't obvious.

How long had he been wearing white? Without the pirate leather and stylish high collar, rolled sleeve and chest on proud display, the man looked like far less of a fantasy than he had in those leather pants. Still handsome, Emma Swan wasn't blind, but if she was as easy to read as he was, then she'd have to hide that tingling emotion. But those piercing blue eyes - oceanic. He couldn't hide that he was a man straight from a fairytale with those eyes.

"It appeared a popular place, and seemed like it would be empty from the ample people that ambled out of it."

Emma hummed at the logic. She knew that tactic. She'd spent her childhood in state homes, numerous ones, following crowds was a safe way to find food, avoiding them was a great way to stay safe. Those homes had trained her for life on the streets before Neal and prison after him.

"You found the kitchen. You know, don't have to steal food here, Hook," she told him. She knew that sort of a line wouldn't shake the muscle memory of ducking behind corners and taking crumbs of discarded plates, but coming from a trusted voice it might. Trusted? She didn't honestly expect him to trust her after she'd smacked him in the face with a compass regardless of how he was taking it easy one her, did she? Would she trust Neal if she ever saw him again? That was a resounding: NO. But she had been young and naive and desperate for love and convinced she was feeling it, desperate to pull him back when he wanted to leave her for the safety of Canada. She'd been independent her whole life and had jumped at the chance to depend on someone, older and wiser and just as broken as her, it hadn't even mattered to her that he'd been moody and brooded and laughed at her naivety, shot down her ideas of how they could run away together but he said he cared and no one had said that to her before, not even Lily.

But her and Hook hadn't been involved in anything but a tentative allegiance where she knew he told the truth about stealing from Cora and desiring safety, and he knew she couldn't trust herself around him or the world around her. They had no intimacy, no baggage of years dealing with the fallout of the betrayal. They were even. They could start fresh. He could forgive her for the beanstalk and the compass and leaving him to Cora's clutches and she could let him explain why in the hell he had looked at her, Cora right behind him, listening to every word, right in the eyes and showed her a magic bean that didn't have magic just like she didn't, that the giant had kept around his neck as a reminder of the way he was betrayed and hurt and isolated himself because of it.

"They're going to visit your room six times a day with more meals than you've ever seen," she told him. "Let's get you back there."

He winced as they rounded the corner, eyes still roving the side of her face. "What is this place, Swan?"

"A hospital."

"Aye, I gathered as much," Hook hummed beside her. Emma doubted it. Obviously, to be a notorious pirate, he had to be observant and worldliness was an occupational hazard. He'd probably visited more cultures that Emma could dream of, and he was quicker to strategise and slower to dismiss an opinion - quietly nodding and expanding her idea up on that beanstalk when he bandaged her hand - than anybody she'd ever met, but Emma still half expected him to be confused by this new world.

"The bright lanterns and the pristine walls and the enormity of the building. How many sick people does this place hold?" he sounded awestruck, like when Peter and Olivia had first walked into their father's house, or when Henry had looked at her with his big, round eyes like she was his hero when she became sheriff. Grown men had no right to be so enamoured with the world. This man in particular. Wasn't he meant to be jaded and exhausted with people, the ancient pirate captain?

"No, Swan," Dammit, she must have said that aloud. How could he laugh, didn't he have four broken ribs? It was a nice laugh, light and airy and not at all villainous like Gold's or creepy like Regina's. Were they laugh lines? Was he happy once? Or were the smiles forced for his crew? Where was his crew? "New realms are always fascinating, regardless of how long you've lived."

Emma begged to differ. State homes were the same no matter what state she was in. Kids were bullies the entire nation over. Men liked her starved body regardless of where they met her. Other women freaked out no matter how long they'd known her when they found out her past. And Tallahassee was exactly the same as every other damn state even when she hoped and prayed it might be a place she could start over.

"You're wrong, love."

Emma was certain she hadn't said anything but that didn't stop Hook from leaning close and smiling knowingly, a little sadly, and far too smugly, at her, straight, healthy teeth on full display. Dimples too, beneath that scruff. When had she ever thought of teeth as healthy before? Probably when the pirate smiled at her and didn't have punch-chips and scurvy yellow teeth like she'd expected.

"People are cruel. Individuals." He didn't mutter or mumble and his posture was ramrod straight, confident. She could see him on the deck of a ship so clearly, sprouting eloquent prose to rally his crew of scallywag soldiers. "But the collective can create quite the masterpiece."

He was talking about culture, obviously, but Emma couldn't help but think he might have meant something else too. Something a lot like what Mary Margaret had been pushing on her since she found out she was her mother.

Why was it easy to swallow when he saĆ­d it?

"Who was the lass you were with?" he smirked, a sliver of his pink tongue poking between his lips.

And then he went and said things like that. Emma could have growled. God, he was infuriating.

He was being sexual and flirty to hide something, Emma knew that. But hiding from her? Probably because you abandoned him to a bloodthirsty witch he'd stolen from when she'd promised him safe passage for his help?

Why she was averse to his flirting with a woman not her was a whole other question.

"She was beautiful."

She rolled her eyes, opening the door to the hospital room and waiting for Hook to pass through the doorway."Say that to all the girls?"

"Just the willing ones."

Emma ignored the fact that she could hear his smirk even as they faced opposite directions, her surveying his room for escape routes and he doing the same. One hoping to get out, the other hoping he'd stay out.

In the far corner, just in front of the closet that had not been angled that way before, nor a chair pressed right against it's side last night when she had sat on his mattress and watched him sleep after his surgery. He'd moved the closet to be underneath the sliver of a window. He'd probably fit through it too. Maybe that's how he'd gotten out of the room without the nurse stationed at the door of the opposite room (Emma wasn't so stupid as to post a guard outside Hook's room, that would only draw Gold's attention). What had he landed on on the other side? She wondered, because it definitely would have dropped him into another hallway, not outside of the building.

She should probably tell him about his things being in the cupboard there. Not his hook, of course. That was tucked away safely. Emma nearly told him about his possessions, his clothes, really, in the room with him, but didn't want to deal with the mention of his pants, and the reminder that he was pants-less, and any snarky comments about his naked legs or helping him pull those too-tight leather trousers on. He did look good in those pants.

Not too shabby in the white robe either.

Emma winced at her own thought. She wasn't allowed to think things like that anymore. Not now that he's in town. Right within reach. Then Emma caught sight of the tubes and wires hanging limp by the bed.

"My God,' she whipped around to face him, glad to find him having listened to her instruction and lying atop the covers. "Did you rip out your IV?"

In a rare display of bad manners but a tone that almost made Emma smile, Hook frowned, happily displaying his confusion: "My what?"

Emma had never met a man like that - except maybe David - who had all the breeding and world-knowledge and hard-won superiority but still was open enough, confident enough, to display when he needed help with something. She hadn't expected that, least of all from a one-handed pirate captain, who probably needed to use whatever fear he could instill in others and always wear a front of omniscience to keep his crew in line and make sure no one saw his physical vulnerability as a handicap.

Emma gestured with the hand that wasn't rubbing her temples. "The chords," she translated, "They were giving you blood and medicine - for the pain and probably a few vaccines, or at least something for the infection-"

"I'll have you know," the pirate stammered with indignation, haughty even sprawled in his hospital bed, "I have suffered from infection exactly twice in nigh three hundred years. I won't succumb to it now. But no one administered me with any potion to drink or salve to dress my wounds."

Emma all but collapsed onto the foot of his bed. Okay, not quite the foot. But she was no higher up the bed than she had been last night. She sat in line with his thighs, just as she had last night. Only he'd been prone then and was sitting now. There wasn't much of a difference.

There was a huge difference.

"Actually, Hook," she informed him, she should have taught him all this yesterday, "They do all that for you here."

For a brief moment, Emma was glad Hook wasn't a modern man. "A little nurse outfit's a sexy choice," some hook-up had announced, killing the buzz of liquor. She hadn't even been dressed as a nurse. "I don't know. Might be nice to have someone doting on you," Neal had offered and Emma had prickled at the thought. She'd lived in rich houses with cleaners, and houses where she'd had to scrounge for a scrap of soap and she was a girl, most families liked to make her their unpaid housemaid. She had no intention of ever coming close to that profession again, not that she told Neal any of that, just smiled and let him finish his explanation of the future he saw for them.

She half expected that that sort of thing was ingrained in the DNA of the species, not the foundation of her modern, fairytale-free world. But Hook never even blinked at the prospect of a woman doting on him, didn't even smile, let alone praise the idea.

"I'm rather unsure if I'd like a stranger folding my sheets and darning my socks."

"You sew?" That wasn't the point at all.

That salacious grin was back. He flirted over the most ridiculous topics. Who flirted by announcing their impressive craft skills? What sort of woman fell for it?

You know exactly the sort, Emma's mind betrayed her, returning his charming smile. The same sort of woman who ties men they like to the top of a beanstalk.

"All that stuff that's going to make you better is in those tubes. I'm calling the nurse so one of them can put them back in. In the meantime," Emma gestured to the little bowl of jelly she'd deposited on the tray that had been left for him - a croissant and eggs that Emma couldn't know how long they'd been sitting out for, open like someone had thought Hook was only in the bathroom and was trying to be helpful. She took the tray away and deposited it on the bedside table and then pushed the movable table so it was positioned over Hook's body. "Eat."

"Swan," his voice was pleading; young. "Such a shade is not a colour found in nature."

Emma smirked, kicking her legs out so she could cross her ankles. But not her legs. She was careful not to invite his distracted gaze. Then again, Hook's jello-blue eyes hadn't drifted from her face once. She put it to him: "Maybe not in the land of chimera jerky. But surely you've travelled somewhere there was something like this, something foreign you'd never seen before."

"Not in any realm bar Wonderland," he corrected himself. "Even there, 'tis the colour of poisonous critters."

"Like I said," she grumbled, spooning a bite from the bowl and shoving it in her mouth. "You eat it. Even kids can do it."

He stared at the bowl for a moment, his forehead creasing between his brows.

In the blink of an eye, Emma watched Hook wrap his arm, the bandaged one around the bowl, dragging it against the table and pressing it against his chest for leverage. His hand picked up the spoon she'd put back against the table and he sampled the jiggly dessert.

Emma had to bite her lips together at the expression he pulled.

"Not good?"

"I can feel it in my bloodstream." Whatever that meant, probably something akin to a sugar rush that he wouldn't know the term for. "And the youth of this realm consume this regularly?"

"Sure," she told him. And then she tagged on something that someone wiser than her had told her once: "It's a hospital, Hook. Everyone here is out to help you. Ask for food if you want it. There might be rules about what you can and can't eat, like maybe only soft food for a bit, but you should be well-fed while you're here."

She didn't think he was too worried about someone trying to poison his meals, but Emma had worried about that when she'd had her tonsils out, afraid the Collins' boy might be trying to use the opportunity to get rid of her. Hook had way more enemies that the eight-year-old who liked magnifying glass fires, and the worry that the state might just like the idea of having one less mouth to feed. But if it had crossed her mind at age twelve in a place she knew, it was definitely something that crossed his while he was in a place he was unfamiliar with.

Hook nodded as though he understood her silent message. He took another bite of the jelly; a bigger one than before.

"How long will I remain here?" No mention of this prison she'd trapped him in. Progress.

"Probably only a night or two." Emma didn't know what was normal for broken bones. "Then we'll work on getting you a place."

"I have lodgings." She didn't want to know what that meant. Emma had spent months sleeping in her Bug, so she knew about saying you had a place to stay when you didn't.

"Let me finish," Emma smirked. "Like a gaol cell."

He smirked right back at her; unkind but also amused.

"Hook," she warned. "He doesn't know what room you're in. But he's here waiting for Belle to be released."

"And?"

Emma rolled her eyes. "And he'll kill you."

Emma imagined he would have shrugged if he'd been able to move his shoulders without hurting his ribs. She wasn't going to interrogate why that offended her so much. Are you taking issue with his blase reaction, or with your ease of understanding him?

They sat in silence for a moment longer while Hook poked at his jello. Was it Jell-O, the brand? she wondered, Or is it just jello?

"The man inside the metal carriage is he...?" he trailed off.

Emma leaned forward, intrigued. Did Captain Hook care for another human being? That's not surprising, he cared for your safety up on that Beanstalk, catching you when you fell. He stopped caring when you betrayed him and Cora was right behind him, listening to his every lying word.

"I've seen men in carriage distraught over trampling another, drink himself to destitution." There was something sour in his eyes, "Please convey my salubriousnes to him."

"You're going to stay here, Hook," Emma told him. She didn't say please. She didn't cuff him again but there was a twinkle in his eyes as though he wanted her to. She didn't cuff him again because of it. "You're going to stay here. Safe."

"Safe?" he arched upwards, wincing slightly. "In the infirmary with inedible slop, screaming machines and a hundred people I've never met but know my reputation same as you did."

"I never did care for safe." He cocked his head at her. "Neither do you, do you, love?"

Emma rolled her eyes. She shouldn't have. He smelt like a fresh ocean breeze under the smell of the rest of the disinfectant of the hospital room. "I'm too old for the thrill of adventure."

Hook pulled a face at her, disbelief colouring his features. He didn't look half as pale as he had before.

"I'm a mother now," Emma insisted. "I can't be irresponsible."

"But you were," he said lowly, "once."

"I was desperate and starving and lonely."

"And which did your lad's father help you rectify?"

Emma felt her jaw push forward before she was conscious of her scowl and the way she bit her teen together. Hard. All three.

Emma got up swiftly. "Eat your jello, Killian."

"Swan." His voice was deep and gruff, nearly ruining her resolve. "Thank you."

She turned to face him. "You'll stay put?"

He looked so - young - sitting there. Emma remembered how she hated hospital rooms. They sucked, as a rule, she was certain. She'd been in one twice. Once at age twelve, and once at seventeen on the worst day of her life. Third worst? There was nothing worse than being in a hospital room and reminded that there is no one around who loves you enough to check on you.

"You think it's necessary?"

Emma answered. She doubted it would influence his plans to break out again. "You broke four different sections of your body, one of which was your tibia."

Hook frowned at her.

"Your leg."

"I've survived worse." He'd said that last night, soft and serious and hopped up on painkillers that made him drowsy and delirious. They were probably still working.

"I'm sure you have."

"I'll tell you about it sometime. If you like."

That must have been the drugs.

Emma hummed. If it kept him in the hospital, she'd bite that bullet. He probably had a million interesting stories. Henry would love hearing about pirate adventures.

"Sir," a nurse knocked on the door, interrupting before Emma could respond and make a fool of herself to the drugged-up pirate who probably had a very high tolerance for painkillers if he drank as much rum on a daily basis as he had done in their brief stint together in the Enchanted Forest. "There's a Mr William Smee at reception. Says he heard you were in town."

"Smee's in town?" Emma marvelled, shocked every time a fairytale character showed up in her life, even now. "What about the rest of your crew?"

"Probably," he said, actually shrugging this time. "I ditched them to avoid the curse with Cora."

Great. One more thing to worry about. Then again, there hadn't been any reports of unruly pirates in the past. "Are they the revenge-seeking sort?"

"Doubt it," he said, a little wistful, Emma thought. "I told them to carry on with their lives, start fresh under the curse."

"You could have done the same." Except he wants to avenge his love, the flame he's carried for centuries, and then to join her.

The smile was genuine then, bright and calm and more than charming. He had dimples beneath the scruff of his beard. "Then how would we have met, Swan?"

Her heartbeat stuttered in her chest and then again when she realised she wasn't even surprised by the way her body had reacted to the man across the room from her. But Emma didn't let herself smile at that.

Instead, she pursed her lips. "No one can know you're here, Killian."

"Keeping me all to yourself, Swan," a smirk replaced the smile and suddenly they were back on even footing. "I can't say I mind all that much."

Emma rolled her eyes. "Eat your jello, Hook."