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In the end, it’s a tree that gets her.
Yes. A tree.
There are many ‘nevers’ in Neverland. They have to do with the fact that time passes without being spent, the fact that things always stay the same, indefinitely, eternally.
The madness in the eyes of the Lost Boys is not just the madness of the disenfranchised. It is also the madness of lessons not learned, of experience not gained, of lives lived on repeat, lives which never move forward.
He has that look in his eyes sometimes, she has seen it. The look that both guides and enslaves the Lost Boys under the yoke, under the tyranny of the everlasting present. The power of youth is the unquestioning knowledge that life is eternal and you are invincible, and it is the fact that neither is true which gives youth its power.
But in Neverland life is eternal, and it turns this power into oppression, into subjugation, into the iron choke-hold of infinity.
She has seen it in his eyes, now that they are back here in this cursed land; flashes of fear in the face of this fantasy. He is no longer under its spell, but he is afraid.
There is the ‘never’ of A One Time Thing. (We will never do this again.)
The ‘never’ of Echo Cave Confessions. (I never thought I’d be capable of letting go of my first love.)
And the ‘never’ of I Have Yet To See You Fail. (You will never be found lacking.)
She holds on to that last one with both hands.
Until she gets to that tree.
Neverland is never quiet. It’s not so noticeable during the day, but at night the jungle explodes into the cacophony of creaking branches and calling nocturnals and chirping crickets. Millions of crickets.
It’s a wall of noise.
She climbs up to a bluff above their camp, away from the people sleeping below her, because doubt and confusion and despair are playing on a loop inside her head, and the wall of noise just amplifies her worry, and the crickets are deafening, and she is losing her mind .
She looks out over the edge of the cliff, down into the endless valley below, black and pulsing with wildlife and danger, and when she turns around, she sees a tree in the clearing,
just a tree,
and she simply steps forward and starts to punch it.
Hard.
With both fists, like it’s a heavybag, like it’s a Lost Boy, like it’s Pan .
It’s excruciating and liberating and immensely satisfying and then suddenly a voice from behind her says, “Swan. Stop.”
It’s not loud, his voice. It’s not horrified or startled or accusatory. It’s quiet and soft. “Please, Swan. Stop.”
The moment she drops her hands the pain becomes nearly debilitating. Her hands are bloody and he catches her wrist with his hook and leads her away, makes her sit down at the edge of the bluff. Sits down next to her, and gently takes her other hand.
Puts it on his thigh and then carefully inspects it with the slightest of touches. And then looks up.
“Swan,” he says. “This is serious. Can your magic heal this?”
She shrugs.
“Because otherwise I think I have to go and fetch Regina.”
She’s in pain now, real pain, but somehow the soft touch of his fingertips on her abraded skin and the honest worry in his eyes come together, unlock something inside her, and golden light erupts past agony and doubt and uncertainty. It is so effortless, the way her magic flows when he is near, all warmth and energy and perfect balance, and she has to force herself not to lean into his touch.
When the light fades the pain is gone, and her hands are undamaged.
He smiles. “Well done, love.”
And then he falls silent.
He does not ask whether she is all right. He does not ask what this was all about. He doesn’t pry and he doesn’t intrude.
Just nods and then looks back out into the dark valley below. Still holding her hand.
She looks at his profile and he smiles again, and then turns back to her.
“I know it seems daunting,” he says. “But you will prevail. I know it.”
How does he do that?
How does he know her so well that he can just sit here and say the perfect thing, the only thing worth saying; at the edge of this cliff, surrounded by jungle and wilderness and Lost Boys and dark magic and and a tree smeared with her blood behind them?
How?
Something inside her clicks into place, a realization of how they fit together, of how he somehow always gives what is missing, a knowledge that cannot be put into words.
Yet.
But it can be put into action.
She leans forward, presses her lips to his, pulls him closer by the lapels, just like the last time, just like the first time, but this time he doesn’t respond, stays rigid before her.
She leans back and his eyes are wide, and unhappy.
He very gently pulls her hands off his coat.
“No, love,” he says. “Not like this.”
Tears spring to her eyes, whether of sadness or frustration she cannot tell. Probably both.
“Emma,” he says, and wipes her cheek. “Please don’t cry.”
She shakes her head.
“You must know that I do not mean I don’t want you , love. Surely you know by now that nothing could be further from the truth.”
Her voice is a whisper. “It feels like it.”
“Emma.” He looks at her and smiles. It looks sad. “Please listen. Please hear me when I tell you that in a perfect world I would take you right now and show you just where 300 years of experience can take you.”
He cups her cheek.
“But not like this.” His voice is now a whisper as well. “Not as an outlet for fear and anger. Not to release pressure.” His shoulders sag and his thumb brushes her jawline so gently she fears she might break from the sheer reverence behind it. “I need it to mean something.”
-/-
It’s not standing at the bow of a ship that brings them together, a league above the choppy waves of an unfamiliar ocean, sailing through thin air on the whim of a shadow, parents and former lovers and a son below deck.
He’s quiet in the moonlight, pensive and silent, just looks to the waters below, black and teeming with wildlife and danger. And then he turns.
“Swan,” he says, and then watches her, studies her, while time grinds to a halt. When he finally speaks, his voice is low. And gentle. “What are you thinking?”
“What am I thinking?” She repeats to herself. And then sighs. “So many things.”
Images rise before her mind’s eye, of Henry, of her parents, of Neal. Of the swirling mess her life has become.
Will become.
She exhales a long breath. “I’m thinking about how I don’t like complication. I think I prefer danger, even.”
He looks at her for a long time before he says, “You prevailed, love. You succeeded. You saved your boy, and your friends, and your family. You left no man behind.” He puts his hand on her arm, squeezes it briefly, and then lets it go. “Take comfort in that.”
You left no man behind. She thinks of David. But she is not the reason David is here, on this ship. The man before her is.
He’s also the reason Henry is here, and the reason they have a way home, and the reason she didn’t go stark raving mad in the jungle.
The last one weighs the most.
She looks up, thinks of him on the island, always a hundred percent in her corner, ready to listen and to fight and to die, and for what? The fact that they keep needling him, keep making jokes at his expense, keep calling him
a pirate
as if it were a character flaw? As if it made him less of a person? When he keeps proving them wrong.
When in the end, he is the most decent of them all.
“Hook.” She takes his hand. “I need to----”
It is unsettling, his full attention. His eyes focused on nothing but her, his expression so open, his hand so warm in hers.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for my son, and my parents, and-- everything.”
Her eyes are wet, but she blinks it away.
He just looks at her, a small, grateful smile on his lips, and she promises herself to never use the word ‘pirate’ as a denigration again.
-/-
They stumble through brush and brambles, lost in the woods at night again, but this is not Neverland. This is not a humid abyss of dangers unknown, no--- this is the Enchanted Forest inside an epic lapse of history, and if they don’t fix this mistake Emma will never be born.
It has rattled her cage much more than she’s let on, this guillotine over her head. The prospect of losing everything she has never quite had; all these promises made but never fulfilled, all these endless possibilities always just out of reach, and worst of all, best of all, the realization that---
“He wasn’t you.”
He looks up, stops hacking the underbrush for a moment. “Who wasn’t me?”
She plunks down in the middle of the roughly-cleared space and shakes her head. “Hook. The other Hook. He wasn’t you.”
He sits down next to her, puts down his sword. “Of course not, love. I’m here, after all.”
Emma shakes her head.
“That’s not what I mean,” she whispers. “You warned me, even. You told me that that man wasn’t-- wasn’t you.”
He nods slowly. “I know. This--- it was a long time ago.”
“When I looked into his eyes,” she shudders and he simply takes her hand, starts to rub it gently, but it is not the cold that is making her shudder. “When I looked at him, he was--- he was---”
“Broken,” he says. “Full of old pain and new wrath, consumed by vengeance?”
She nods.
The Hook at the tavern could not have been more different from the man before her. The pain in his eyes was still wrapped in fury, the seduction practised and empty, his charm callous and calculating. She had been a conquest and a distraction, something to while away the dead of night when memories threaten and past ghosts roam free. He had looked at her but not seen her at all, and it had nothing to do with drinks taken.
Not like the man before her now.
He has seen her, seen her , from the first moment on, seen all of her and never feared any part of it. Read her like an open book, time and time again, and believed in her, without hesitation, without doubt.
Liked her for who she was, always.
He stepped aside when he sensed his presence caused her pain, he stayed even when there was nothing for him to gain, he fought and bled and nearly perished beside her and for her, over and over, without getting a shred of hope, of validation, of gratitude in return.
He saw her and loved her and asked her for nothing.
He takes her other hand, traces his fingers very gently across where she shredded her skin back in Neverland. There’s nothing to see, not even a shadow of a scar, but his fingers follow the paths of damage from memory.
“Yes, well,” he says quietly, “That man at the tavern, he….”
His voice trails off, and he doesn’t finish. They sit in silence for a long time.
Finally Emma leans forward, catches his eye. “He what?”
She has to know.
Here, in this awful mess she has gotten them into, in this nameless clearing inside a re-forged timeline which might lead her to ruin, she has to know. Her whole life has been building to this point, this point. This one answer.
“He what?” she asks again.
And he looks at her, smiles that small, wistful smile of his, and shrugs. “He hadn’t met you, yet, love.”
And there it is.
She leans forward and presses her lips to his and his frame once again grows rigid under her hands.
She pulls back and looks at him, all iron resolve inside hopeful expectation, and she cannot do this to him again. Never do this to him again.
“Killian,” she whispers, cupping his cheek, and at the sound of his name, his real name, his eyes flutter for a moment. She lets her hand wander to the back of his neck, tangle in his hair, and waits until he’s looking at her again.
It’s still unsettling, his undivided attention.
The way he sees her.
“Killian.” This time a smile spreads across his face, wide and grateful and so, so glad. “It means something now.”
His eyes are storm clouds over a vast ocean, and he slowly runs his hand up her arm, leans his forehead against hers.
“What does it mean?” His voice is shaky and choked and gods help her-- afraid .
She has done this.
She has put fear into this man.
But not anymore. It’s time to stop being afraid. For both of them.
“Everything,” she whispers, and she feels the truth of it as she says it. She has never meant anything as much as this one, small, innocuous word, that weighs more than both of their lives put together. “ Everything. ”
His mouth comes down on hers, gentle and urgent and desperate and soft and hard and just like the first time, just like the first time ,
but better,
but more,
and she feels herself responding and oh god, it’s so perfect.
They fit .
She knew they would.
She has always known.
And it’s not in the way he slowly takes off her clothing, and not in the way she pulls at his; not in the way he enters her and she’s so ready and they come together as if they’ve been waiting for this all of their lives--- no
It’s in the way he curls himself around her afterwards, shaking and spent and with tears in his eyes, the way he wraps them into her cloak and holds on to her and doesn’t let go---
It’s in his soft kisses to her neck, and the way his hand keeps running up and down her side, and the fact that his hook is still untethered next to them, and he lets her hold his stump, shudders as she kisses it softly and then pulls it to her heart---
It’s in all this that she knows,
knows ,
that this is her timeline to write, too, and that she wants to write it
with him.