Title: and she dreams through the noise
Author: andromeda3116/cupid-painted-blind
Rating: High T for dark subject matter, a lot of alcohol, and a whole lot of angry cursing in the first half
Characters/Pairings: Do you have to ask?
Summary: Killian is drowning his sorrows in alcohol, while Emma is just drowning. Set immediately after Emma returns from New York, bouncing off some popular and highly-likely theories.

A/N: Okay, so this is not particularly nice to Neal. I try to be more sympathetic toward him, but, regardless of my feelings about him, both of the point-of-view characters, at this point in time, loathe him. This one is hard angst, too. Lyrics are from Recessional by Vienna Teng.

.

.

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and I know I don't want this, I swear I don't want this
there's a reason not to want this, but I forgot

.

The alcohol was, as far as he was concerned, a fucking necessity.

Her Royal Majesty the Queen Snow White had claimed that the wind was "gusting" in their direction, and he'd almost laughed at her because holy shit was she wrong about that — and he'd acted accordingly because, while he loathed everything about Cora up to and including her taste in fashion, he needed her as an ally and he sure as hell didn't want her as an enemy.

And so — of course! — she had turned on him; the betrayer betrayed.

How poetic.

How dearly he wanted to cut off her fucking head and hang it next to Rumple-fucking-stiltskin's.

Now he had nothing but enemies and he didn't even have a safe place to sleep because he'd somehow thought that the princess's heart had been a sufficient repayment for the beanstalk thing (and how well that had worked out for him too, really worth the trouble it had caused). He was starting to think he was cursed, that some ancient god had taken out a personal vendetta against him and had been working to dismantle, piece by piece, every single plan he made.

He was having real trouble coming up with a reason not to just sail off into the goddamn sunrise and see whatever this world had to offer a pirate with an enchanted ship (if anything), except that he wouldn't because he didn't have Cora's and Rumplestiltskin's heads nailed to the mast to keep him company.

…shit, but he got mean when he drank gin. For the sake of not being kicked out of the only place he'd found where no one bothered or recognized him — this town's only real pub, not that saccharine family-friendly diner — he decided to switch to his tried-and-true rum.

It was a pretty bad indication of the direction his life was going in, that the rum being good was the best thing that had happened to him in weeks.

.

The alcohol was, as far as she was concerned, a fucking necessity.

This was a nightmare — no, this went past nightmare, straight into something so awful that it could only be reality; the mind couldn't have conjured up this situation.

She'd always dreaded the thought of Neal showing back up in her life, which had, for years, been her worst nightmare: she would be driving a car and bam! There he'd be, again, popping up from the backseat like he'd never left. And then when Henry became a constant in her life, it built onto that nightmare: not only would Neal pop up from the backseat, but Henry would be in the front.

But this? This was — this was just cruel. What the hell had she done in a past life to earn this much bad karma? Not only was Henry present when Neal popped back into her life, but he was Gold's fucking son and that meant he had to come to Storybrooke and Henry was so hurt and so mad at her for lying to him and she couldn't tell him the truth now because he was so curious about meeting and getting to know his father and —

And Emma was trapped, forced to deal with — every day, from now on — the man who had single-handedly broken her, and she had to smile and play along and tell him that she forgave him and act like she didn't want to collect his fucking balls for what he did to her and she couldn't even beat the shit out of him because Gold would take it out of her skin and this wasn't happening, this couldn't be happening.

She couldn't go to the diner, either, because she couldn't explain this to anyone who cared because they wouldn't listen because they were all so happy that Henry's father was back in their lives and how romantic and perfect this was, the broken family getting back together, true love conquers all.

How heartwarming.

How dearly she wanted to scream.

So she went to the town's only actual, dim-lights-and-live-music-and-a-food-menu-featuring-fries-and-nachos-and-nothing-else bar, a place she'd only been to before to break up disturbances the bouncer couldn't handle alone — the only place she could safely hide from everyone who knew her.

She knew it would only draw attention to herself, but she was starting to get hysterical, and a little more every time she thought about the smile on her mother's face when she'd reluctantly introduced her to Neal; even so, she walked up to the bar and said, in as low a voice as she could speak while still being heard: "I want you to take a Collins glass and fill it with the strongest liquor you have, and give it to me."

The man blinked at her. "You… want a Collins glass full of straight liquor," he said flatly, and she nodded.

"Fill it like you would a glass of water, except I don't want ice."

"That's, um. That's something like seven shots."

"Is it?" she said, with near-manic desperation. "That sounds absolutely lovely."

"I'm not sure I can do that," he said hesitantly, looking at her like she'd grown another head. She leaned forward.

"Then give me seven shots and a glass I can pour them into," she replied, articulating sharply, a smile usually reserved for axe murderers on her face. The bartender got the point.

"One Collins glass of 151," he said, backing away in horror, "coming right up."

"Bad day?" the guy in the seat next to her asked, in that universal hitting-on-you tone. Her blood pressure shot up.

"No," she replied coldly, on the verge of hysterics, "I'm having the best day ever. In fact, it's such a good day that I'm here to celebrate how good a day I've had with a drink and a total stranger."

"Wanna talk about it?" he answered, because he was either clinically insane or tragically stupid, or else his brain actually was in his cock.

Emma just stared at him blankly for a second, but before she could eviscerate him, the bartender returned with her glass of light-orange salvation, which she picked up and made a rather impressive (if she said so herself) attempt at draining the thing in one go.

She managed to get a little less than half of it down, and when she opened her eyes, the bartender was just staring, looking from the glass, to her, and back. "What?" she snapped, and he jumped, backing off warily.

"Man, your day must have been one hell of a doozy," the barfly commented, leaning in closer — tragically stupid and featuring only a downstairs brain — and just as she was about to turn and forcefully throw him away from her, someone appeared like magic between them.

"Word of advice, mate," the new man said, in an uncomfortably familiar accent, "there's a time for persistence, and really, I give you credit for bravery, but now is not that time."

He glanced at her and she groaned, running a hand over her face.

"Oh, god, not you."

.

He only noticed her when he saw the bartender walk over to his side of the bar, face white like he'd seen a ghost, and began filling a large glass with some orange-ish liquor; Killian naturally assumed, at first, that he was mixing a drink, but he didn't actually… stop filling the glass until it was, well, full.

Killian Jones was certainly no stranger to hard liquor, but damn — when the barman walked away, he leaned over and looked for the proofage of the drink he'd poured, eyebrows flying up at the 151 — over three-quarters alcohol. Who the fuck would drink that much of that stuff straight? Even he wasn't that stupid.

He got his answer when he followed the drink down the bar, to an uncomfortably familiar head of blonde hair; he was torn between utter awe and absolute horror when she took her first drink and made it through almost half the damn glass.

What the hell had happened to make her do that?

As he made his way over to her, he heard what were possibly the boy next to her's last words and decided to be a good person (for once) and intervene before he inevitably (and literally) lost his head.

"Word of advice, mate," he said, sliding right in between Emma and the idiot just as she was turning toward him, "there's a time for persistence, and really, I give you credit for bravery — " or, more likely, drunken imprudence " — but now is not that time."

He remained where he was, simply turning to tune the boy out (and create a wall between him and the irascible Emma) and glance sideways at her. It wasn't especially surprising when she groaned and lamented the fact that it was Hook who'd stepped in to protect her from hanging for murder, but it did sting a bit.

Emma was (had been?) the only person who treated him like he was a human, rather than a playing card or a talking monkey.

"What do you want?" she asked tiredly, resting her arms on the bar and leaning forward so her chin was on them. He raised an eyebrow.

"To have a drink in something approaching peace," he replied, glancing pointedly back at the boy and his stool, inciting him to suddenly find said stool deeply unappealing, and taking the now-empty seat. "Preferably without bloodshed."

She laughed once, and then another couple of times, increasingly hysterical, and took another horrifyingly long drink to stop it. "No offense, but you really don't have room to talk."

He did take offense, but didn't show it. "Yes, but you've considerably less blood on your hands," he said, with slightly acidic kindness. "And they're so lovely, it would be a shame to sully them so."

"God," she cried, finally looking at him despairingly, "do you ever stop?"

Killian wouldn't admit it, even with a sword at his back and nothing but a plank and two miles of ocean under his feet, but those words hurt. "Well, until this moment, you've never asked me to. However, if it pleases you, I'll be on my way," he said, forcing his voice to remain neutral and not viciously cold; he still didn't want to hurt her or make her feel manipulated, even — no, especially, with the raw pain that was drawn all over her face — now.

Chalk it up to another bad day, another tick mark on the list of people who hated him, finally leaving the other column bare.

Or maybe not.

"No, I — " she started hastily, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back; she did so a little too hard and almost made him stumble into her. The alcohol was clearly beginning to set in. "Please don't go," she said, voice only a hair's-breadth away from a whimper.

It was the look on her face when she said it, even moreso than the way she did, that made him sit back down. She seemed to regret her decision the moment he did so, releasing his arm and looking uncomfortably back to the bar, deflating further and finishing her drink. It had been less than ten minutes since she'd started it.

He almost didn't want to know.

.

She didn't know why she'd pulled him back, except that, when he'd stood to leave, she'd been seized by the desperate need to be not-alone right now, because she was so alone among her family and Hook was the only person who might (would) actually be on her side.

(And god, how pathetic was that, that the only person who would agree with her about Neal was someone who had a blood feud with Neal's father and might very well take the information that Gold's son was back in town and use it to kill him? And — and god, how pathetic was she, that she almost wanted him to?)

She just couldn't be alone anymore, and especially not right now, and Hook was — she had to admit — better company than most.

He was looking at her warily, and with a bit of sympathy, which should have looked much more foreign on his face than it did. It wasn't right, Captain Hook actually caring about her. He was supposed to be evil and cruel and monstrous and — and not looking at her like it bothered him to see her drink a very tall glass of very hard liquor in… however short a time it was she'd done it.

Finally, he raised both eyebrows and took a deep breath, turning to the bar and his drink — probably rum, because he was a pirate and pirates did rum and she suddenly realized that he was more Jack Sparrow than Peter Pan's James Hook and she wanted to tell someone this but then she suddenly realized that she didn't have anyone to tell this to. No one in Storybrooke would have watched Pirates of the Caribbean except —

Except maybe Neal.

She had felt lost in the Enchanted Forest, but Storybrooke was supposed to be home, and familiar, and part of the world she knew, only… it — it wasn't. It was a place frozen in time, that had been caught in a twenty-eight-year loop. Emma's world had never quite come to Storybrooke.

And so Emma would never quite fit in it.

She needed more alcohol, but when she raised a hand to the bartender, Hook reached out and put it down; she turned to him in furious betrayal, but his expression didn't flicker. "At least wait a bit, love," he said evenly, hand lingering on her wrist and quickening her pulse.

"I don't want to wait a bit," she snapped.

"Which is precisely why you should," he countered quietly, and then masked the concern with a smile that almost looked genuine. "Take it from the pirate — way you're drinking now, only place you'll end up is vomiting over the guardrail, and I highly doubt you'd like to add that to the list of today's pleasantries."

She looked down to his drink, now little more than reddish water, and glared when the bartender brought him another (he still looked at her like she was a bogey-man, and moreso when he saw that her glass was empty). "And how does your list of today's pleasantries look?" she replied, and it came out a little nastier than she meant it to. His hand disappeared from her wrist, leaving her cold, and he took a long drink from his glass.

"Certainly no better than yours," he answered, and she wanted to laugh at him, but was stopped by the darkness in his eyes; they said he wasn't making light of hers, and nor was he exaggerating. "I've little desire to talk of it at the moment, though," he muttered, and she buried her face in her arms.

"I feel you there," she grumbled, and maybe it was because the crowding at the bar was beginning to push her closer to him, but she felt his laugh rather than heard it.

"Ah, darling," he said softly, a little too close for her hazy self-restraint to handle, "you can feel anything else of mine you desire as well."

She couldn't help but laugh a bit at that; it was just — it was so predictable, and she was beginning to understand him and the way he used innuendo to disarm opponents or, in this case, set allies at ease. He wasn't serious, and he wasn't really trying to convince her of anything, except that he was, if only in this small, inconsequential way, on her side. If she had nothing else, well, at least Hook liked her and… had always paid attention to her. And never betrayed her, or actually hurt her, or even lied to her, now that she thought about it (the blacksmith thing not withstanding).

Unlike certain other people in her life.

(What the hell was going on in her world, that Captain Fucking Hook was more trustworthy than the father of her child? What the hell kind of stupid decisions had she made in her life?)

"This is a nightmare," she mumbled into the wood.

When he didn't respond, she turned to look at him without raising her head from her arms; he was just watching her, and it took her a second to realize that he was waiting for her to go on. To talk in her own time, when she wanted to.

But she didn't want to say anything else right now, didn't really think she could anyhow. So for a while they sat together, silent in the bar's white noise and the indistinct song the band was playing, and it was sort of nice, or at least not horrible.

And at this point that was all it took to be 'nice.'

.

He didn't know if she was going to elaborate on what her nightmare was, but he wasn't going to push her; she might lash out, and he didn't particularly want to face an irate, drunken Emma Swan — her right hook was bad enough when she was sober. Besides, if he pushed her, she would close off and push him right back away, and he didn't want the only person who tolerated him to shut him out completely.

"Have you ever — " she started, beginning to slur a bit and scowling when she noticed, "have you ever imagined the worst-case scenario, worst possible thing that could happen to you, and then it — it happens, but it's even worse than you imagined?"

"Yes," he replied immediately, glancing at the fake hand that was occupying the space his hook (left hand) should have been. She followed his eyes, never picking her head up from her arms.

"What happened?" she asked softly, and when he didn't reply or even look at her, she sighed. "I heard the story Gold gave Neal," she said, confusing him — who the hell was Neal? — apparently without realizing it. "But I find it really hard to believe anything that comes out of that man's mouth."

"Oh?" he said neutrally. "What story was that?"

She sighed again, turning back to the bar so that when she spoke, it was a little muffled and a little more slurred. "You… kidnapped his wife and somehow she died and he got revenge by cutting off your hand. The implication was that you killed her."

His jaw locked up so tight that he couldn't have responded, even if he'd wanted to. She glanced back at him.

"Yeah," she said, deadpan and sarcastic, and it somehow made him feel a bit better. "It seemed a little fishy."

"Approximately no part of that is true," he hissed, releasing his drink hastily before he broke the glass. He didn't elaborate, but she did, reading his face like he was usually so good at reading hers.

"She chose to go with you, didn't she?" Emma said evenly, leaning away from the bar just a little bit, arms still stretched out over it. "Or else you wouldn't have her name tattooed on your arm. You don't do that for someone you kidnapped and murdered. And he killed her for it," she murmured, and he flinched, turning away. "I don't know where the hand comes in, though."

"Awfully perceptive," he said tightly, "aren't you?"

She made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "I think it runs in the family," she muttered, again confusing him. "Neal can't accept the blame for what he did, either."

"Neal?" he asked, trying desperately to turn the subject back to her even as some small part of him said not to — Emma believed him. Trusted him, in this tiny way. Didn't think his heart was black and cold.

(And what the hell was that, anyway? His heart was black and cold for trying to avenge the woman he loved, but Rumplestiltskin still had good in him when he'd crushed his wife's heart because she didn't love him? How fucking blind was that girl? She was better off now, he felt, now she'd gotten away from Rumplestiltskin scot-free, had a chance to start her life over and maybe make better decisions this time. He'd done her a favor, much more than what that coward had done for Milah.)

Her head fell back onto one arm as she raised the other and pointed, without looking or vocally calling the bartender, to her glass. When he got to her, he hesitated, and Killian stepped in. "Give her what I'm having," he said quietly, and she must have been in an even worse state than she looked, because she didn't argue with him, or even acknowledge that he'd said it.

"Neal," she sighed finally. "Neal, Neal, Neal." She picked her head up when her new drink appeared and quickly began disappearing, leaning back and looking at the ceiling. "Neal is Mr. Gold's son," she said distantly, voice dead. "And Neal is Henry's father," she continued, sending an electric jolt of horror through his body, which faded when she sneered. "Not that he knew, or would've cared," she muttered, taking another, longer drink.

He didn't say anything. He wasn't sure he could, at the moment.

She laughed, breathy and despairing, dry like autumn leaves. "He's such a — " she started, caught herself, and then laughed again, sounding on the verge of tears, "god, he's such a coward. You know," she said, turning to him, and he wanted to shake her for the way her eyes were wet — she shouldn't cry over any man, but certainly not this one — "you know, when he heard my voice, you know what he did?"

"What did he do?" he asked slowly, and she looked at him for one moment longer before turning back to the ceiling.

"He ran," she replied, and his jaw locked up again. "Turned and ran away from me. And then he comes up with all these — all these excuses," she hissed, drinking again. "All these reasons I should forgive him."

He knew she was avoiding it deliberately, but asked anyway. "Forgive him for what?" When she didn't reply, he prompted her because maybe he wanted to know and maybe he wanted to rip open her wounds, too. "Leaving you, cheating on you, hurting — "

"Sending me to prison to rot for his crime."

His blood ran cold. She said it so emotionlessly, but what she didn't say was still twisted up in it — Henry's father: this Neal, Rumplestiltskin's (and Milah's — and what would Milah have done if she could see this, what would she say to her boy?) son, had sent her to prison, pregnant with his child, for his crime.

An idea, a bloodlust, formed in his mind; kill two birds with one stone.

But Emma saw it sprouting and sat up sharply. "Don't," she said suddenly, fervently, taking him aback. "I know what you're thinking, and don't, please don't."

"Why not?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"Because Henry would be devastated," she replied, striking at the only place he might have been weak; he wondered, distantly, if Henry took after his grandmother more than his father did. "And they'd all hate you," she added quietly.

It took him a moment to respond, the words ash on his tongue. "Very well," he said tightly, coolly. "I promise I won't kill him." For the boy's sake, at least — he didn't like the thought of a young boy having his father murdered, even if his father was worthless.

"Good," she declared firmly. "They'd never give you a chance otherwise."

A chance for what, he almost said, but stopped himself before drawing any attention to it — he needed allies, and badly, and if Emma was suggesting that she and her posse might be willing to accept him… But her drunken train of thought barreled on without touching it anyway.

"Oh, god, Henry," she moaned, rolling her head on her shoulders, turning away from him, and then back down to the bar, on her arms. "I can't tell him the truth. He — he's never had a father, he wants to get to know Neal and I can't — " she cut herself off desperately, choking on her words, face buried in her arms. "I can't tell him no, I can't tell him why I lied to him, and I can't get away from — from him."

I could take him away, Killian thought dimly, but she'd asked him not to, and not for her own sake, but for her boy's, and that was worth something to him, and — and he wasn't sure he could have found it in himself to kill Milah's son anyway. He could do it, if he thought of him as Rumplestiltskin's son, or as the one to blame for breaking Emma, or as the kind of coward who would run away from his guilt and try to excuse what he'd done, but none of that quite outweighed the fact that — little as he resembled her, apparently — he was Milah's child.

"And everyone's so — " she whispered, voice sharpened and jagged-edged, "so happy for me. Another broken family brought back together."

He couldn't catch the derisive laugh that escaped his lips. "Yes, because family is only those who're blood kin," he snapped sarcastically, and she turned her head to him again, smiling a little through wet eyes, cynicism painted on her face. "And blood is always thicker than water," he muttered, taking a deep drink from his own glass.

In Killian's experience, there were certain wounds that only blood kin could inflict, and the only wounds worse than those were inflicted by love turned sour.

(And Emma was being ripped apart by both… and it seemed he was the only person who knew.)

"Tell me about him," he said lightly, and went on quickly before she could take it the wrong way. "Henry, I mean." He had several ulterior motives for shifting the conversation: to bring her back away from the edge, to make her talk about something that made her happy, to learn if anything of Milah had been passed down through her family at all.

She smiled a little, shaking her head. "He's smart," she replied slowly, running a hand through her hair. "And way too nice for his own good — he likes everybody," she said, laughing. "And he — " she laughed a bit harder " — he's so dramatic, you should hear the codenames he comes up with, every time anything even a little suspicious happens, he makes up these — these elaborate plots to solve the problem, with secret messages and everything."

Killian couldn't help but laugh at that, something warming in his chest — he remembered Milah doing something similar, maybe with a bit less drama, but she could never leave a question unanswered, it would drive her mad. And Milah had always given people too many chances, too nice for her own good, too.

"And he cares," she went on, a little more somber, "about everything. He's always trying to be a hero, save the day… fix everyone," she trailed off, sighing heavily. "It's gonna get him hurt someday," she whispered weakly, and he hated it, but he agreed (after all, it had gotten his grandmother killed), "but I just… he fixed me."

He needed to meet this boy, all of a sudden, needed to see the shades of Milah in his face, needed to know that she wasn't — she wasn't completely gone, her son might not have taken after her at all, but her grandson — her grandson would have made her proud.

(He suddenly, and agonizingly, pictured Milah with Emma's son, how they would've worked together to solve crimes and solve people and the way she would've smiled and — he wondered if Henry looked like her at all.)

"It would kill him to know the truth," Emma breathed, tears finally trailing down her cheeks, and he thought — well, at least this was a better reason to cry than what that bastard had done to her, even if it was a consequence of it. "I can't do that to him."

"So instead you trap yourself in a house with your worst nightmare," he muttered, glancing sideways at her. "How d'you think he'd feel if he knew that?"

She looked at him, and at least the hysteria was finally one-hundred-percent gone, but it had been replaced by a deep despair that was much worse.

"I can't," she whispered, and finished her drink.

.

"All right," he murmured, seeing the fall coming, and coming hard. "Come on, darling," he said, standing and taking her by the arm, bringing her unsteadily to her feet, "where should I take you?"

"Nowhere," she replied, trying to pull away and almost falling over the stool, but he caught her before she did. It shouldn't have hurt him, but it did — he remembered picking Milah up like this once, her first anniversary spent on his ship rather than with her husband, and it hadn't felt any better then. "I want — another — drink."

"Even if I would let that happen," he said quietly, trying with some success to keep her standing, "they won't serve you anymore. Something I've learned," he added, with a sardonic smile, "they stop giving you alcohol when you're too drunk to stand."

"You have alcohol," she said brightly, taking him by the shirt and looking at him with wide, barely-focused eyes.

"I do indeed," he replied with forced levity, "but I've no intention of giving you any at the moment."

"No," she cried, tugging him down and almost making him fall over — he wasn't exactly sober himself. "Please, I'm still — I wanna forget this," she implored, and he raised an eyebrow.

"Don't you worry about that, love," he muttered, but conceded for the moment and let her sit back down on the stool, "I'm quite sure you'll remember nothing of this in the morning." He motioned to the bartender and leaned in. "How much?" he asked in a low voice, with a bit of trepidation, and the man glanced to Emma, but didn't bother to ask if he meant to pay her tab as well.

"No," she groaned, now trying to stand, "you're not buying my drinks."

He ignored her; it wasn't like he didn't have money to burn or anything else to do with it, and it was a nice perk of this town and this pub, that they took both those worthless scraps of paper and gold coins (although he thought privately that almost any seller, regardless of what world they were from, would accept gold as payment). Her tab was, as expected, gut-wrenchingly awful, but his wasn't much better even though his level of sobriety was — seventy-five percent alcohol, he reminded himself, glancing at her. It was a wonder she could even speak.

She tried to pull the ticket over, taking out her wallet, but he swatted her hand away and tossed an unreasonable amount of gold to the (much-more-cheerful-now) bartender.

"I mean it," he said seriously, as he took her arm again and steered her toward the door, "where should I take you?"

"Nowhere," she repeated, managing to successfully pull off a rather impressive (particularly considering her current state) move to break his hold on her, but stumbled against the wall immediately after. "I can't go home, don't take me home."

"All right, I won't take you home," he agreed, crossing his arms now that she was relatively stable. "Where else could you go?"

The obvious answer flashed into his mind, and he tried to banish it — they all already hated him, if they showed up in the morning to find her on his ship, her father might kill him outright. But she seemed to be giving him no other choice.

"Nowhere," she repeated, agitated now and trying to straighten. "I'll just — I'll walk it off and go home when I — when I can — when I can look him in the eye," she said, voice dropping with each word, and he stepped forward, alarmed, as she pushed herself off the wall and began to haphazardly, aimlessly stagger away.

"No," he said hastily, catching her by the arm again, "that is not an option. You wouldn't make it three blocks, anyway."

"D'you need help?" a voice to his left asked, and he started a bit, turning to the source, a large man in a tight, black shirt — the ubiquitous bar-guard, although this one looked unusually kind; because, he realized in a flash, he was trying to help a falling-down-drunk woman get home rather than using the opportunity to take advantage of her.

"Thank you," he muttered darkly, grudgingly accepting the fact that he really didn't have a choice: she wasn't going to give him an address, but she was going to pass out, and terribly soon… his ship was the only place left. "But I've got her."

"Get her to a safe place, all right?" the guard said, jumping and reaching out to catch her as she began to stumble, and helped him pull her arm over his shoulder when he noticed that Killian had only one real hand.

He nodded tensely, and guided her carefully toward the docks. As predicted, however, she didn't make it three blocks before she was falling heavily onto him, and stopped walking entirely.

"Naturally," he muttered, and shifted — with difficulty — so that he was carrying her on his back; although there was something to be said for the dramatic bridal hold, he had learned with Milah that it was extremely difficult to maintain for distances like this, and somewhat less dramatic when the woman involved was unconscious.

"You know, it's rather pathetic," he said to her and to no one, "but this is the best night I've had since leaving Neverland."

.

He didn't sleep; instead, he pulled the chair from his desk and propped himself up against the doorframe, checking periodically to make sure that she was still breathing and ensuring that she was laying on her side in case she started vomiting (and, with any luck, into the pot he'd placed under her and not into his sheets).

He couldn't think of another (living) person he would do this for, but Emma —

Emma was the only person who treated him like he was a human, rather than a playing card or a talking monkey, and that was worth something. Not much, but at this point, that was all it took to make him care about her.

.

She was still completely unconscious when he came looking for her around dawn. He hadn't seen the man, this Neal, but there was no one else it could be — bits of Milah around the eyes, coming around to look for Emma at this hour, walking onto his ship like he was afraid it would snap his feet off.

Hook didn't give him the chance to ask anything, or even the dignity of looking up from idly sharpening a knife.

"Get off my ship," he said simply, calmly, and Neal stepped back, confused.

"I — I was looking for Emma, she disappeared last night and — everyone else said they hadn't seen her, so…"

It turned his stomach, this man worrying over her; it was sincere, certainly, but that only made it worse. He cared for her, and he still didn't actually see her. It was a shallow sort of love, if it could even be called that, and Hook had no patience for men like him, and especially not sons of Rumplestiltskin like him.

"You seem to have misheard me," he replied, still not looking up. "So I'll say this again, and you should consider yourself lucky that I'm taking the time to repeat myself: Get — off — my — ship."

"Where is this coming from?" Neal asked, genuinely confused.

"A pirate's ship is no place for cowards," he answered through a clenched jaw. This man didn't deserve to stand in the place his mother had stood.

He paused, offense growing on his face. "So why are you here?" he snapped nastily, and Hook had to give him some credit: no one, at any point in his life, had dared to insinuate that he was a coward. He turned to the man slowly, threatening without any words. To his credit, Neal didn't back away.

"D'you have any idea how long it's been since I've broken a personal promise?" he asked softly, knives in his voice. "Much longer than you've been alive, I can say that. So you should consider yourself extremely lucky that I promised Emma that I would not kill you." He stopped for a moment, letting that sink in, before going on: "And so help me, if you force me to break the first promise of this nature in well over three hundred years, I will take it from your flesh."

"Oh, you don't break promises," Neal said incredulously, crossing his arms. "So you promised my mother you'd kill her, did you?"

Maybe he could see that he'd gone several miles too far, or maybe he felt the sudden ice-cold that had fallen over the ship at his words, but he did finally take a few steps back, uncertainty beginning to form on his face — after all, a man wouldn't be this furious over those words if they were true.

"That's what he told you, is it?" he hissed, and it took literally every ounce of willpower he had not to leap from this chair and tear his throat out with the knife clenched in his fist. "Did he tell you how she died?"

"No…" Neal replied slowly, and Hook nodded.

"An acute case of heart-crushed-to-dust syndrome," he answered, voice shaking with anger. "Now, I know you don't know me particularly well, but do I look as though I'm capable of taking a heart out of someone's chest?" (It was, after all, only partly a lie.)

"What are you saying?" he asked, in the tone of someone who knew damn well what the answer was but didn't want to.

"I'm saying that your father killed her," Hook said matter-of-factly, and with a bit of savage satisfaction. "Lashed me to the mast," he continued quietly, soft like a snake in tall grass, "pulled her heart out of her chest, and crushed it in his fist while I was forced to watch. And then he took my hand as a souvenir."

"I don't believe you," he whispered, and Hook looked at him in false, fascinated curiosity.

"Of course," he said coldly, "after all, it's not as though Rumplestiltskin would ever lie to someone who would be otherwise utterly alienated by the truth. Just like you," he added, with cheerful venom, taking comfort in the sudden flash of guilt that crossed over Neal's face.

They stared at each other in frigid silence for several minutes, before Neal ran a hand over his face. "Look, I — there's a lot that we need to work out, and — please, just let me take her home," he implored. As though he was allowed to share her home.

"No," Hook replied.

"I'm trying to — "

"I don't care," he interrupted, turning back to his (already razor-sharp) knife, deliberately shutting him out entirely.

"You — " Neal started, but cut himself off as footsteps sounded on the gangplank and Emma's parents walked aboard, wary but strangely calm.

"Hi," David said awkwardly, looking from Neal to Hook, clearly seeing the friction and just as clearly unwilling to get involved. "Is Emma here?" he asked, and Killian nodded.

"Yes," he replied, "still asleep, though, I'm afraid."

Both of her parents winced. "Can I — " David started, motioning to the door; he shrugged and stood up, casually moving the chair aside to let him pass. The look of offense on Neal's face was, he had to admit, terribly gratifying.

"Why is she even here?" the man snapped, crossing his arms, and Killian raised an eyebrow.

"Well, she was rather drunk," he answered in as honest a voice as he could manage, "and I am a pirate," he continued, selling it hard. "She's a very lovely woman, hard to resist when she's intoxicated and willing."

Neal looked ready to kill him, but Snow — worryingly — didn't. Instead, she blinked at him. "Why would you do that?" she asked, and he turned to her, genuinely confused at her even tone. "We talked to the bouncer," she explained, and he turned back away — well, he thought, at least he'd tried. "He told us you kept trying to get her to let you take her home but she wouldn't. He said," she went on softly, "that she tried to leave on her own and you stopped her, and he thought you probably took her to your place because she wasn't giving you a choice. Why would you lie," she breathed, looking at him in something between confusion and pity, "to make yourself look so bad?"

He didn't reply, but didn't have to — David, surprisingly without Emma in his arms, said from the doorway, sounding defeated: "So we wouldn't know she refused to come home."

"But why?" Snow asked quietly. "Why didn't she?"

"That's a question you should be asking her," Killian replied tightly, "not me."

"Why did she get so drunk in the first place?" David asked, louder and less composed, and Killian took a deep, annoyed breath.

"That is a question," he repeated through clenched teeth, "you should be asking her, not me."

"Oh come on," David snapped, honestly (and desperately) worried, "you've never had a problem selling anyone out before."

"They weren't Emma," Snow answered for him, "and they hadn't trusted him with anything that personal." You won't betray someone who's given you a glimpse into their heart, her eyes said, and he turned away from them.

That's where you draw the line.

Neal sighed. "Come on, let's just," he said slowly, "let's just take her home."

"No," David answered, startling everyone. "You can go home if you want, but I'm staying. I want to talk to her when she wakes up."

Killian almost laughed — oh but Neal was going to hurt for this… assuming Emma told David the truth. At least, he thought, at least he had the decency to look resigned rather than scared.

Maybe he wasn't an entirely hopeless case. After all, he was Milah's son, and that — that had to mean something. She had to be in there somewhere.

Killian simply didn't think it was Emma's job to tear herself up to turn someone else into the person they should have been all along. Just like it hadn't been Milah's job to change — or save — her husband. He should have had the constitution to save himself. Or at least try to, anyway.

When Neal and Snow had left his ship — reluctantly, in the case of Snow — he was left to stand, somewhat uncomfortably, against one side of the door with David not two feet away from him, leaning against the other.

"It's about Neal, isn't it?" he asked in a low voice.

Killian just looked at him, answering and refusing to answer him at the same time.

David rubbed the back of his neck. "God, we've made a mess of this, haven't we?" he muttered, but seemed to know he wouldn't get an answer. "Thank you," he said, after a while, and Killian raised an eyebrow. "For not — you know, taking advantage. And for taking care of her. You're not as bad as you tell everyone you are," he added quietly, and he was wrong, so wrong, because Emma was a special case, she was — yes, he wasn't that bad around her but that didn't make him good.

He tried to laugh. "Maybe I just like her," he replied flippantly, but didn't get the response he expected.

"That's what I meant."

.

.

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maybe it means nothing, maybe it means nothing
maybe it means nothing, but I'm afraid to move