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Uma has never felt so bad in her entire life.
She wants to run away and never come back. In a way, she is running away.
She thought her plan was perfect. It was all so improvised, but perfect. She was one hundred percent sure that, this time, nothing could ruin it for her. But Mal played her for the second time in a row and she just had enough.
She left Cotillion and has been wandering in the sea for a couple of hours now, unable to gather the courage to go back home and find out that she let down every single person on the Isle.
The only reason she doesn’t admit to herself that she’s crying is because she’s underwater and she can’t be totally sure that tears are actually running down her face.
Uma is not ready to go back to the Isle, living of leftovers, running a ship that can never sail, wearing a necklace that has no power, walking around thinking about how free she feels when she’s in her true cecaelia form.
Uma is not ready to see the faces of the little kids and all the good people she was fighting for, the people to which she promised a new life, a better one.
Uma is not ready to see the disappointment on her crewmate’s faces, she’s not ready to tell them that their dream of sailing away and explore the seas can’t come true and probably never will.
Uma is not ready to face Harry. He got so angry when she explained the plan to him. He was angry because she had to go alone and mostly because she had to play lovebirds with Ben. The only reason he didn’t throw himself into the water following her was because she had promised that once they were free, everything would be back to normal. Gil, Harry and her. Together.
But now everything’s changed. They’re not free. She broke her promise and she doesn’t know how to face everyone.
Uma has never felt so bad in her entire life.
But now that she thinks of it, it’s not just her feelings that are aching. She feels dizzy and lightheaded and… can you feel like you’re going to throw up even if you’re under the sea?
It doesn’t take her long to understand that she’s probably abusing of her powers and that she should swim to the surface and go back to her human form. She’s been swimming around, avoiding to go back to the Isle, for way too long, and she feels her strength wearing out. She doesn’t even make it to the surface that her tentacles are already gone, replaced by her legs. She starts frantically shaking them until she finally comes out of the water and fills her lungs with fresh air.
She looks around, trying to locate herself in the sea. Only now does she notice that the water is really cold and her lips are shaking.
She’s near the barrier. She swims until the evanescent wall starts sparkling, then she mumbles the few words she has memorized from Mal’s spell book to open the magic barrier. She knows that once she’s passed it, she has no chances of coming back to Auradon, but it doesn’t really matter now. It’s not like she can go back there now, after she tried to steal their beloved future queen’s place. And, she says to herself, she’s just too tired. She wants to go home.
She swims past the barrier and sees the reflection of the light on the waves fade away as the magic stops working and the passage closes down behind her back.
She looks at the dim torches that light up the Isle at night.
Uma has never felt so bad in her entire life.
She’s tired and cold and she’s starting to lose feeling in her toes, but she swims anyway. It’s so much harder now with legs instead of tentacles.
It looks so far away.
Harry is upset, but he doesn’t really know how he feels exactly.
He is still a little bit angry from the discussion he had a couple of hours ago with Uma. He knows she definitely didn’t like the tone he used with her, but he also knows that there was a reason if she let him talk and didn’t just call him out on raising his voice with his captain. He knows that basically their whole crew and a few extra people witnessed their discussion, even when it started to get more personal and less professional.
Even when he told that it was him that Uma was supposed to take over Boradon with, not Ben.
But she went anyway, promising him that nothing was going to change. And when he saw her in that beautiful dress dancing with that idiot beast-boy, he thought he could explode of jealousy at any moment.
So yes, he is angry. But also bitter, because he never liked fighting with Uma and he likes even less leaving things hanging. He wants to apologize, tell her that he shouldn’t have brought up their personal stuff in such a public discussion – he knows she didn’t like that – and he wants her to apologize for leaving him behind.
So, he’s angry and bitter. But he’s also sad, because in the end Uma didn’t succeed in her mission. When he heard that Ben announced that he was going to take down the barrier, for a moment Harry swallowed his jealousy and felt truly happy. Because he was going to be free. They were all going to be free. But that didn’t happen. They’re still trapped on this rotten island and they’re probably never going to see the real world.
He’s always dreamt of sailing and exploring the seas, like his father’s crew did in the tales that they told him when he was a child. But all he has now is an empty dream that he has no chance of realizing.
Harry is upset. He’s angry and bitter and sad. But now, mostly, he’s worried sick. All that thing at Cotillion has happened about three hours ago. And Uma still isn’t back. He’s been walking around every little street of the Isle, unable to go to sleep. There are a few people partying around and drinking, but not that many. His guess is that the news that Uma’s mission was a failure bummed out a lot of islanders and they don’t feel like having fun tonight like they usually do every night.
Something could’ve happened to her. She could have been captured or attacked or who knows what else. There’s another option on the back of his mind – that she’s just decided to run away and never come back – but it’s just to painful to even think about that.
He gets to Pirates Bay for the third time tonight. Gil stayed on the Lost Revenge, on his favorite spot on the nest, but Harry thinks that he just fell asleep up there, because he can’t see his bandana peeking out against the dim light of the moon. The few people still hanging out near the sea probably think that he’s straight-up crazy now, since he’s been wandering for so long. And he feels like everybody knows what’s on his mind and that’s why they avoid talking to him.
He goes to a more private spot, a place hidden by the trees where the rocks turn into a pebbly beach. Here is where Uma taught him how to swim, almost ten years ago. He never got too good at it, but at least he can survive if he ever has to get into the water.
He detangles his hat from some branches it got caught into and takes a few steps towards the beach. And that’s when he sees it.
There’s a weird, greenish glow on the beach and he can’t quite pinpoint what it is. But then he takes another step and he recognizes the dress that Uma was wearing at Cotillion and his heart just stops for a few seconds. She’s lying on the pebbles, the moon reflecting the water drops on her turquoise gown. Her hair is not in the top bun she had at the party anymore, it probably came loose while swimming. She doesn’t look like she’s moving.
When he finally realizes that something’s wrong with her, Harry races by her side.
“Uma? Hey, Uma?” he calls out, but as he figured earlier, she’s unconscious. He slides his hands on her face, trying to get a look at her, but he shivers the moment he touches her skin. She’s freezing cold, almost like a dead body. He has to check her pulse to make sure that she isn’t actually dead. He feels a very slow heartbeat, but he feels it.
“Uma, honey. Come on, wake up” he whispers.
He drags her upwards on the beach, so that the tides can’t reach her and soak her dress even more. He realizes he can’t do much here: he needs to take her someplace warm and get her dry clothes. He ties his hook to his belt, so that his hands are free. He takes off his leather coat and slides it around Uma’s body, then takes her in his arms and goes back to the Bay, looking for help.
Harry is upset. Earlier he was angry and bitter and sad and worried. Now he’s just scared to lose his Uma.
Uma thinks she’s dead. She’s cold and stiff and can’t even gather enough strength to open her eyes, so she just has to assume that she’s dead. She’s dead and, somehow, she ended up in heaven instead of hell, because there’s no way hell smells this good. All she can smell is a strong scent of seaweed mixed with sandalwood. She’s heard stories that in heaven you relive the best moments of your life, so it just makes sense that this is heaven, because what she’s smelling is her favorite scent in the world: Harry’s.
Now she’s hearing something, too. She’s hearing voices, some are somewhat familiar and other are not, or maybe she just can’t distinguish them. She tries to concentrate and identify what memory she’s reliving, but nothing significant comes into her mind.
She grunts when she feels someone moving her around, then she feels something soft underneath her. She’s a little bit warmer, but not too much. She still feels frozen.
Uma thinks she’s dead, but she still tries to open her eyes. She’s in a room and there’s people walking around, but her vision is blurry and she can’t focus on any face. She tries to speak but the only thing that comes out of her mouth is a gasp.
Somehow, somebody hears her, because she sees a shadow coming towards her.
“Hey, love” the shadow says. “You’re awake.”
Uma squeezes her eyes and tries to focus on the person sitting next to her. He must be an angel. He has the smile of an angel. And an accent that sounds like Harry’s.
She’s still cold, but she thinks that the angels are doing something to fix the situation, because she thinks she’s hearing the crackling of a fire. She can’t keep her eyes open for longer than a few seconds, so she switches between closing her eyelids and trying to focus on the faces surrounding her. She believes there are at least four people in the room, two boys and two girls. Someone is taking off her dress and she doubts that stripping down somebody who’s freezing is the right thing to do.
“Are you sure?” one of the boy angels asks, the one without the beautiful accent.
“Yes” one of the girls answers. Then she adds something about Uma’s clothes being wet. “Somebody, please help me and hug her from the front” the girl adds.
Uma blacks out for a few seconds and when she comes back, she feels warmer and she’s back to smelling that delicious scent.
“I’m still cold” she manages to rattle. She feels a pair of arms tightening their grip on her body, while what feels like two pairs of hands stroke up and down her arms and torso to warm her up.
“I know, darling” the Scottish angel says. “We’re working on it.”
She looks up and notices that the angel not only sounds like Harry, but he looks like him, too. If she wasn’t so sure that she’s dead and Harry is not, she would say that the one hugging her to raise her body temperature is, in fact, Harry.
She realizes she’s only wearing her underwear, and so are the boy holding her and the other girl who, she understands, is hugging her form the back. She remembers she’s heard somewhere that, when a person is freezing to death, the fastest way to warm them up is through human warmth, so that would explain the slightly inappropriate lack of clothes.
Or, you know, maybe it’s just how they do things in heaven.
Uma is now pretty convinced that she’s dead, because snuggling against this Harry-like looking angel, filling her nostrils with his scent, is something that really feels like heaven.
Harry is calmer now.
He brought Uma back to Pirates Bay and found Gil: he had seen them from the nest of the Lost Revenge and was coming to help. They though they should bring her somewhere with a fireplace and the first thing that came into Harry’s mind was his house.
For a while now he has been spending most of his nights and days on the Lost Revenge, just because things with his father aren’t always the best and he feels like some independence would only do him good. But it was Uma’s life they were talking about and he would have begged his father on his knees if needed just to get her someplace warm and save her life.
Luckily, he didn’t have to do it. His sister Harriet got the door and, together with Desiree, who joined Harry and Gil on their way to Hook’s house, was really helpful in providing them with everything they needed.
They set Uma down on the big couch in their living room, in front of the fireplace. Gil took care of reviving the fire, Harriet gathered some blankets and got started on cooking a hot soup. Uma kind of woke up at that point, but Harry is convinced that she wasn’t really conscious. She could barely talk or move and her eyes were flickering around, not really focusing on anything. He’s sure she didn’t even recognize him.
Desiree said that the fastest way to warm Uma up was through human warmth so, after they took off her drenched dress, they stripped down to their underwear themselves and hugged her, Harry from the front and Desiree from behind, so that their clothes didn’t block the warmth of their bodies. Gil and Harriet were really skeptical, but the trick actually worked and they managed to warm her up fairly quickly.
Then Uma fell asleep again and the boys went to keep an eye on the soup, while leaving to the girls the task of changing Uma out of her wet underwear and into some dry clothes.
Harry is calmer now.
He’s lying on the couch in front of the fireplace, a blanket over his body and a sleeping Uma snuggled against his side. He has to admit that he’s really enjoying this warm downtime, because he got pretty frozen himself wandering around for so long.
He hears a noise and raises his head, noticing his father passing by in his nightgown with a glass of wine in his hand. Hook glances at his son.
“You’re smitten” he states, but not in a rude tone. If Harry didn’t know his father, he would say that there is even a slight note of affection in his voice.
He smiles. “I guess I am, yeah” he admits, tightening his arm around Uma’s shoulders.
Hook smirks, sipping on his wine, then he shakes his head lightly and leaves.
Harry is calmer now. And he’s smitten. Correction: he’s not simply smitten. He’s completely in love.
Uma wakes up and realizes she’s not dead. Even though waking up in the warmth of Harry’s embrace feels like paradise.
She looks around and realizes she’s in the Hooks house. She hears the sounds of the waves and the seagulls from outside. The sun shines though the windows and the fire in front of them is now just a few pieces of burning coal.
She wonders if Harry has slept at all, because even before she can move around or say something to let him know that she’s awake, she feels his hand stroking her cheek.
“Hi, love” he greets her. “Are you really awake now or just hallucinating again?” he teases.
She looks up to him and finds a crooked smile on his face. She can’t help but smile herself.
“I’m really awake” she says, her voice still a little bit hoarse. “And I wasn’t hallucinating. I just thought I was dead” she points out.
He tightens his hold of her and pulls her close to kiss her forehead. “Oh, come on, now. You really think I was gonna let you die?” he says. He clicks his tongue. “Not on my watch, love.”
She giggles. “Did someone ever tell you that you get all cheesy when you’re worried?” she jokes. “I lost count of the times you’ve called me nicknames in the last few hours.”
He squints but can’t hold back a smile. “No, nobody ever told me that” he answers. “Because you are the only one I get worried about and the only one I get cheesy with.”
He must have gotten closer while he was talking, because now they’re really, really close. Before Uma can even realize what’s happening, Harry fills in the small distance between them and gives her a quick, delicate kiss on the lips.
“That’s a new one” she comments when he pulls away – but not too much.
He smiles. “Yeah, I decided it was about time when you almost died on me” he says.
She lightly strokes his cheek and winks at him, smirking. “Smart decision” she states. Then she sits up and stretches her arms. She feels tight and sore, but it’s normal, since she almost froze to death and then slept all curled up on the couch. She starts moving her body while Harry tells how they managed to save her life.
She realizes she’s not wearing her clothes. Of course, they took her out of her soaking wet Cotillion dress yesterday, but they also gave her dry clothes: she’s in an old off-white T-shirt and some large black shorts. She would recognize the scent everywhere: it’s his clothes.
Harry gets up and stretches too. Uma chuckles when she notices that they’re wearing the same clothes, only in different colors: Harry’s T-shirt is red and his shorts are grey.
“Are you hungry?” he asks. And now that Uma thinks of it, she really is. “We made you a hot soup yesterday but you didn’t wake up. We can warm it up and eat it for breakfast” he suggests.
“That sounds like a wonderful idea” she agrees.
He guides her to the kitchen. Uma hasn’t been at Harry’s house in a while, since he hasn’t been home a lot lately. They usually hang out on their ship, at the Shoppe, at Uma’s place or on the shores, exploring new cliffs and beaches on the island.
She realizes that someone’s already in the room only when they enter it.
“Good morning, lovebirds.”
The voice that greets them is Harriet’s. She is standing up against the counter with a cup in her hands. Uma assumes she had their same idea and is having the leftover soup for breakfast.
Uma sees Harry squinting at his older sister, but he does not call her out on the nickname like he usually would. After all, Uma thinks, they just spent the night hugging on the couch, he’s called her ‘love’ a million times in the last ten hours and she’s wearing his clothes. The nickname is kind of justified.
“Hi, Harriet” Uma greets. “Thank you for everything you did yesterday. Harry told me about it” she adds.
She and Harriet have never gotten along too well – Uma’s favorite Hook sister is definitely CJ. But Harriet cares a lot about her brother and Uma thinks she accepted to help because she knows how much he loves her. And Uma cares a lot about Harry too, so she’s just decided to try and get along with his sister because he loves her.
“You’re welcome. I know how important you are to this brat” Harriet teases, winking at Harry and confirming Uma’s theory.
“Oh, shut up, Harriet” he talks back. “Da making comments is already enough. None of you is making this any easier” he adds, sliding an arm around Uma’s waist.
The sea witch giggles and pats his arm. “You’re still in the cheesy zone” she comments, with a low voice.
“I know” Harry replies.
Harriet takes the last sip from her cup, then puts it down in the sink.
“You said Da made comments?” she asks, failing at hiding a smirk.
Harry dodges his sister’s gaze and leaves Uma’s side to go to the stove and pour some soup into two cups.
“Yeah, he said that I’m smitten” he mumbles, handing one cup to Uma.
She tries not to laugh. “You kinda are, Hook” she says.
He glares at Uma and sits down at the table, taking a sip from his cup. She smiles and takes the seat in front of him, suppressing the instinct to sit directly on his lap.
“Okay, this exchange of looks is my cue to leave the two of you alone” Harriet jokes. “Bye and don’t be too mushy.”
They say goodbye and Uma waits for the dark-haired girl to leave to stretch her arm across the table and lace her fingers through Harry’s.
“Hey” she says, calling for his attention. “Thank you, too. I don’t remember exactly how things went down after I arrived to the beach, but I’m pretty sure you saved my life.”
He looks up at her and lightly strokes the back of her hand with his thumb. He looks absent-minded and Uma wonders if he’s reliving the events of last night in his head.
“I was walking around the Isle thinking about everything that happened. I don’t know how I ended up at the pebble beach in Pirates Bay” he tells. Then he lowers his voice and tightens his grip on her hand. “But I’m glad I did.”
There’s a couple of seconds of silence, during which they just hold hands and drink their soups. Then it’s Harry who speaks first.
“What took you so long to come back? I’ve walked around waiting for you for hours” he asks.
Uma remains silent for a little bit longer. She knew that she would have to talk about it, eventually, if not to the whole crew at least to Harry and Gil, her best friends. But she’s so ashamed of what happened at Cotillion that she’s not sure she can handle talking even to Harry, the one person she trusts literally with her life.
“I was too ashamed to come back empty-handed” she confesses, unable to look him in the eyes. She wants to go on. She wants to tell him how disappointed she is with herself, how sorry she is that she let them all down; she wants to tell him everything she feels. But she doesn’t. She stops talking, because she feels like her words are going to sound so empty and meaningless once she says them out loud.
Harry forgets his breakfast and gets up from his seat just to come and sit next to her.
“No, my love. Don’t say it” he whispers, taking her into his arms. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. You tried to free us all. It wasn’t an easy mission and you know that.”
Uma really doesn’t want to cry. She never liked crying, let alone crying in front of other people, even if the ‘other people’ is Harry. Yet, she hears herself sigh loudly. She lies on Harry’s chest, letting his caresses calm her down.
“I was your only hope and I failed you. I failed all of you” she cries.
He lets her cry on his chest for a few seconds more, then pulls away and cups her face, forcing her to look at him.
“Listen to me, love. You didn’t fail us. You tried and didn’t succeed this time. This time” he says. “We’ll have other chances to try again, together. You didn’t fail us. You came back to us.”
Her sighs slowly start to calm down. She slips one hand into his and squeezes it tight.
“I love you so much” she says. “I don’t know where I’d be without you.”
Uma slides her other hand on Harry’s cheek and pulls him down in a soft kiss. She feels his hand lightly stroking her skin on her waist, underneath her shirt.
“You don’t have to wonder that, because I’ll always be with you” he replies. “I love you.”
He rises his hand with hers, lining their palms against each other. Their hands together look so different – Uma’s is small and Harry’s is big, her dark skin contrasting against his pale skin and her colorful nails standing out near his bare ones – yet they complement each other. They fit perfectly, like two pieces of a puzzle.
Uma slides her hand slightly to the left and lace her fingers through his. He squeezes her hand.
“We’re stronger together” Harry says.
She smiles and nods. He’s right. The only reason why she failed, she says to herself, is because she was alone. She didn’t have her people with her, her crew, her best friends. Her Harry. They’re going to find another way to get out of this hellhole. And they’re going to do it together. Like the family they are.
“Stronger together” she repeats, softly.