Work Text:
Alice wriggled in her seat, blond curls bouncing on her shoulders. He sat next to her, far calmer and less animated, but he could see his own smile in the mirror on the wall, and the sheer force of it nearly blinded him.
Killian couldn't quite remember the last time he'd felt not only so much happiness, raw and pure in its intensity, but also such a simple stillness, content in knowing that, for the first time in years, so many more than he cared to count, there was nowhere else he'd rather be.
Wherever his daughter was, that was home.
"Will it hurt, Papa?" there was no fear in her voice, only curiosity, and when she looked up to meet his eyes, one corner of her mouth tilted up, the other following more slowly in a bright, crooked grin, and his own stretched wider still.
The bravest girl he's ever known.
"Not terribly, Starfish. Maybe a bit of a sting."
Most grown children, he imagined, would roll their eyes and scoff at old nicknames, relics of childhood long abandoned, but Alice's eyes gleamed as though he'd presented her with a gift. Perhaps he had.
The closeness was something they both needed, after so long spent separated by a poison meant to corrupt the sweetest of loves.
He'd returned home that morning from the station after a long night, going over paperwork with Weaver - bloody hell, Rumpelstiltskin, that, of all things, would take some getting used to - and found Alice perched on the couch, legs crossed, head bent low over cupped hands, crying.
The memory twisted his heart.
"Tilly, what-"
"Not Tilly. Alice. Alice! You know me, Papa, you have to know me."
He took a careful step in her direction. He remembered all too well the last time the girl had a lapse with reality, and though he believed - knew, really, though he couldn't begin to explain why - she would never hurt him, one did well to err on the side of caution.
"Love, have you been taking your pills?"
Tilly shook her head, her frustration evident. "No, of course not. She wanted me too, forced me, but she's gone now, she can't make me, I quit taking them days ago," she thrust her hand forward, uncurling her fingers, and when Rogers saw the chess pieces in her palm, his confusion only grew, "I found these. I'm sorry I went through your things, but I wanted to know why they weren't with the others and when I picked them up, I-" she stopped suddenly, her eyes latching onto his, and Rogers frowned.
Her gaze was crystal clear, and she seemed as steady as they come.
Then why on Earth had she called him Papa?
"Do you trust me? " Tilly asked, her voice soft.
What if I don't exist at all?
All she needed was someone to believe in her, that much he knew.
"Yes, Tilly, I do. Now, what's all this about?"
She pushed to her feet, flying across the room in three quick steps, and held out her hand. "Take them. You have to remember, you just have to."
He felt one eyebrow arch high, skeptical to the last, but he reached out his hand to meet hers.
Tilly held her breath and dropped the two wooden chess pieces into his palm, one white, one black, and kept her eyes trained on his.
Rogers pressed his lips together and closed his fingers around the figurines, and let his eyes fall shut.
At first, he felt nothing, and opened his mouth to tell her so.
Then, like a storm breaking over the sea, he felt everything.
When he opened his eyes, he saw his little girl.
Only, not so little anymore.
"Alice," he whispered, and stumbled forward.
Her chin trembled, but she threw out a hand. "Wait, Papa, no-" Alice's hand was shaking as she reached for him more slowly, obvious fear in her eyes, and everything in him ached to soothe.
She took a careful step forward, and when the tips of her fingers touched his shoulder and no pain bloomed in his chest, when no magical force blasted them apart, Alice's breath hitched and she fell forward, her head colliding with his chest. He wrapped her up in his arms, lifting her until her toes barely scraped the ground, and clung all the more tightly when her shoulders shook. With an entirely different weight on his heart, he held his child together while she fell apart.
His memories came back, flooding in like a rising tide. He was Captain Hook, was once the terror of the seas, the scourge of the realms, and still he felt no shame at the tears welling in his eyes, at the choked sound caught in the back of his throat as he cupped the back of his daughter's head and cried with her for all they had lost, and all they stood to gain.
They were inseparable, after that, and almost always attached - his arm flung over her shoulder, her fingers tugging on the sleeve of his jacket - and they talked.
Alice spoke of her adventures, the different realms she'd seen and how, even in freedom, she'd felt lonely and trapped, until she met Robin.
Killian told her about his second chance, how Emma Swan had saved his life and entrusted him with her son, and regaled her with tales of how Henry Mills had helped him search for a cure.
When Alice asked after the white elephant, the magic meant to keep them together, he'd bowed his head and told her the truth - that he'd given it to Ella so that her younger child would not be inescapably lost.
He remembered the way she'd lived before he brought her into his apartment, what he'd sacrificed not only for himself, but for his daughter, and cried once more.
Alice had slipped her hand into his, held on tight, and told him she would have done the same, to spare another child the loss she'd known.
She picked the chess pieces up off the coffee table, turned them over in her hands, before looking up at him with a watery grin.
The tattoos, of course, were her idea.
Alice leaned out of her chair, hanging over the space between them, and pushed the sleeve covering his right arm up to the elbow. "Did that one sting?"
Killian brushed his prosthetic over the tattoo on his forearm and offered a sad smile. "Not because of the needle, little love."
That mark he'd gotten out of misery, a brand born of his pain to immortalize his loss, but this new tattoo would be a symbol of something quite different.
They'd traded chess pieces, so long ago, to ensure neither of them forgot the other. Though it hadn't always worked, and despite the fact that Killian felt confident he would never forget his daughter again, they'd decided that, perhaps, they both needed something a little more permanent.
Something that showed they matched; whether they were Rogers and Tilly, Killian and Alice, or some variation of both, they would find their way to each other, all the same.
He looked over at his daughter, at his white knight painted on her right wrist, her black rook inked across his left forearm, and smiled.