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Emma is not afraid of heights. Sure, if she looks down through the hazy blue beneath her, to where clouds that ought to be overhead float like a flock of sheep worthy of Bo-Peep, her stomach churns. But that’s natural. The only natural thing, really, about climbing an ancient beanstalk in a world that shouldn’t exist.
Her body is still her body, and it still reacts to risk.
Even if she wasn’t in danger of falling, even if the vines as thick as her arms weren’t scoring and bruising her hands with their ornery magical hides, the man climbing beside her would be a risk all his own.
A smirking risk in black leather. Emma’s seen his kind before—in essentials, if not in particulars. She didn’t trust him from the moment she saw him. What’s giving her pause is that he brought that to light, just now, and flipped it on its head.
Try something new, darling. It’s called trust.
Rich, coming from him. He hasn’t said three words together that weren’t a lie all told.
He’s not—
“Careful, Swan. Easy to lose concentration when you’re almost there.” He’s a few yards ahead of her, grinning down. He hasn’t had trouble navigating the cursed climb with one hand and a hook, though Emma has to suppress a shudder at the thought of doing this with any less than ten fingers.
“I’m fine,” she grits out, meeting his gaze defiantly. She doesn’t want to admit it—doesn’t have time to consider it—but some part of her knows she’s already given too much, just by engaging with him.
Maybe in the thin, cold air up here, it’s too easy to narrow the space between spoken word and hidden thought.
(She hasn’t let Neal into her head this much in ages.)
The trouble with thinking about Neal is that she starts thinking about herself. About old selves, long dead and buried. Henry created a similar dilemma, but he was a kid—and that was worse, somehow, and oh, so much better. Maternal love has a way of shouldering through, making everything worth it.
Climbing, you might say, until it can touch the sky of your life.
Emma is not afraid of heights. Henry is still ahead; Neal is many steps behind her. The pirate beside her is nothing more than passing traveler.
She doesn’t trust him; he can’t make her.
The sun sets long before they reach the top. Or maybe, in this world, if you climb high enough you climb into darkness. Emma narrows her eyes, trying to shield her vision from the blood-orange glare. Every bone in her body aches. She’s strong, and tough, but nothing like this has ever been asked of her.
“Keep on,” Hook tells her, his voice lilting from above. “Keep on.”
It isn’t trusting to listen to someone who knows the way.
Keep on. Her ears thrum: air pressure or magic, who can say. She almost slips; she catches herself.
“You all right, lass?”
“Don’t call—call me that.” A beat. A heaving breath. “Yes, I’m all right.”
Emma is not afraid of heights.
(But she is afraid.)