TITLE: "Remember Me"
FANDOM: Once Upon a Time
GENRE: Het Romance
PAIRING: Captain Swan
RATING: M eventually
COMMENTS: Takes place after "Going Home"
DISCLAIMER: Not mine

xxXXxx

She is lost.

This is how it is in all her dreams. There is nothing but blackness, and she is swallowed up in it. She is moving, hands outstretched in front of her, stumbling in a blind, dark panic.

All she can hear is the sound of her own uneven breathing. And then there is a voice. She strains to hear it. It comes again.

"Emma…"

It's like an embrace. Soft, comforting. Maternal. She turns toward the sound. It seems just there, beyond the reach of her fingertips. And then it is somewhere else. Coming from behind her this time.

"Emma…"

There is another voice. Deeper and richer than the first

"Emma…we're here. Find us."

"I'm coming," she hears herself say in a high, frightened voice she barely recognizes. "Where are you?"

They call again, more insistent this time. From all sides, she can hear them. Two voices, and then more, blending and rising to a persistent peak.

"Help us, Emma…we need you…"

"Please!" she says into the void. "Please tell me where you are. I can't find you! Please help me!"

There is a crescendo. Desperate, faceless voices calling out to her from all sides.

"Please! I'm lost! I can't find you!" There are tears in her voice. She stumbles in the darkness. "Please!"

She moves forward with uneven steps until she finds herself in her blindness on the edge of a precipice. Her arms windmill at her sides, and then as if in slow motion, she feels herself begin to fall into the void.

This is how it has always been since the dreams started. This is where it ends. This is where she wakes, heard pounding with fear.

She feels herself fall, arms flying out from her sides, a foot stepping off the ground.

And then there is a hand on her wrist, pulling her back away from the edge.

There is someone there. The force of being pulled back has sent her spinning around, and she lands against his solid form. She rights herself with hands on his shoulders, and she can feel one arm slipping around her back, steadying her.

"I've got you," his voice says. The familiarity of it sends a small shiver snaking up her spine. "I've got you."

In the dream, she blinks her eyes. There is a sliver of light coming from somewhere in the distance. A ship. She has become accustomed to the dim, and the stranger's form begins to take shape. His hand moves, tracing the small of her back, the curve of her breast and cupping her face.

"Who are you?" she murmurs. There is no fear in her voice.

He strokes her cheek with his fingertips and leans in towards her. She can feel his heat against her face as he pauses there for a moment, and then there is the softest brush of his lips against hers.

"Remember me, Swan."

"Yes…" is all she can say as his mouth finds hers. She pulls him in closer, both of her arms around him, her hands tangled in his dark hair. "Yes…"

"MOM!"

Her eyes snapped open, and she blinked herself into awareness. She could still feel her heart racing in her chest. Her apartment. She was in her apartment. With Henry..

"What! What is it!" she said in a rush and pulled herself up to sitting. There had been a library book lying open across her chest, and it fell with a thud to the floor.

Henry was sitting at the table with his math book open and his pencil poised above a piece of paper. He was frowning at her with concern.

"Nothing. You just fell asleep on the sofa and were having a bad dream, that's all."

"Oh. A bad dream." She could feel the pink heat of a blush burn across her cheeks. "Right. Sorry."

"You've been having a lot of bad dreams lately," he said looking over at her with narrowed eyes. She didn't respond but ran a hand over her hair to smooth it. "This must've been a bad one."

"Why's that?"

"You were…I don't know…" He lowered his pencil back down to his paper and began to write. He was silent for a moment, as if he weren't sure he should go on. "You were sort of…moaning."

She swallowed hard and stood up from the sofa. The image from her dream of the stranger's hand brushing across her bare shoulder flickered in her mind. This wasn't something a mother should be discussing with her soon-to-be-teenage-son. She casually fussed with the magazines on the coffee table to change the subject.

"Hey, I think we're out of bread and milk."

He pushed his chair back. "I'll go."

"Nice try, mister. You've got algebra to finish."

"But it's Saturday. It's not due until Monday."

She headed into the bathroom with a sympathetic smile. "Tell you what. I'll shower, run down to the corner, and if you're finished by the time I get back, we'll order pizza for dinner. Deal?"

"Deal." He smiled at her and dropped his attention back to his homework.

She left a trail of clothes from her bedroom door to the shower stall and stood under the stream for a long while, letting the water run over her.

Henry was right. She had had a lot of bad dreams lately. It had started about a year earlier after she and Henry had taken a weekend road trip through New England. It had been an uneventful trip. Barely memorable.

But the night they returned home, she had woken up at two o'clock drenched in sweat, breathless and unsettled. It had been that way almost every night since.

She had started keeping a dream journal at one point. At first, she would write everything down in great detail in hopes of exorcising the nightmares. Then when that didn't work, she would write down only the images and phrases that she could recall in those first breathless moments of waking. She had stopped eventually. Months ago. It hardly seemed worth it. One dream was just a variation on the one before.

Sometimes she was running from something, some unknown force that threatened to take Henry away from her. Sometimes it was the dream from today where she was swallowed up by the darkness. Other times it was only haunting voices and fractured images. But there was always the same feeling of being lost, alone, afraid.

But not today. Just at the moment she always stepped into the abyss, the stranger from this morning brought her back, and she felt an overwhelming sense of safety and peace.

No. More than that. Something else. Desire. She hadn't felt that way in a very long time. Had she ever?

She tried to laugh it off. It couldn't be. She had never laid eyes on him before this morning. How could she possibly desire him? A madman who shows up at her door, kisses her, and then rants about a family she doesn't have? It wasn't possible. His appearance in her dream was a random firing of synapses in her brain. One of those strange, surreal twists that happens only in dreams.

Then why, for a just a brief moment when he had kissed her, had she wanted to him to take her in his arms? Why had it, even for an instant, felt so familiar?

Even under the hot stream of water, she shivered.

She threw on clothes and muttered something to Henry as she swept back out towards the door. He muttered something in response, and she was gone. Down the elevator and out onto the sidewalk.

It was bright and loud, and she found herself scanning the street for him. There was nothing. Only the usual tourists and neighbors hurrying past her with collars turned up against the cool autumn air. She sighed and slid her hands into her pockets. He had gone.

You're disappointed?

She shook her head with a wry smile and walked on. She was right. He was just some guy who'd had a little too much to drink and had wandered in off the street. Wasn't the first time something like that happened in New York City. Wouldn't be the last.

She laughed mildly to herself and picked up her pace.

That was when she felt his hand on her wrist. It happened in an instant, before she could let out a cry. She felt herself being pulled into the alley next to her building. Before she could scream, his right hand clapped over her mouth, and he pinned her against the wall with his left arm.

It was him. The stranger from this morning. He was inches away from her, his mouth almost next to hers. She could feel the heat rise off of him as she had in her dream.

She tried to scream through the spaces between his fingers, but he pressed her tighter against the wall with his forearm against her chest. She winced in pain as the buttons of his jacket dug into her collarbone. He seemed to sense it and eased the pressure. Her chest rose up and down in heavy breaths, more in anger that he had gotten the drop on her than from the fear of him.

"I won't hurt you," he said in a rough whisper. He looked at her, his eyes pleading, and open and she knew instinctively that he would not. "Now. If I take my hand off your mouth, will you promise not to kick me in the bollocks again?"

She nodded her head up and down and he slowly slid his hand away from her mouth, moving it to her shoulder. She let her breathing ease for a moment.

"Who do you think you are?" she said, wriggling her shoulder out from under his hand.

"I told you. An old friend." There was the hint of a sad smile that passed over his lips, but then he looked away. "I know you don't remember me."

"You're damn right I don't."

"More's the pity, then," he said. He raised an eyebrow. A smile curled at his lips, but his eyes were dark.

He took a step away from her then. She could have slipped away from him easily. It was as if he were testing her, to see if she would run. She thought of it for a moment. Darting out of the alley and flagging down the nearest cop. He couldn't have caught her.

But she didn't. She folded her arms across her chest. "All right. You gonna tell me what this about, Captain Hook?"

He smiled a hopeful smile and took a step in towards her. "That's what you call me. You do remember me…"

"What? No! It's just your…thing…your hook. Like the story." He looked down at his severed left hand and moved it almost self-consciously behind his back. "Gotta admit that's a nice touch. The hook. Did you get separated from your Pirate Pride Parade or are you the lost member of the Village People?"

His eyes dropped to the ground, and she could tell she'd hurt him.

"I know you don't believe me, but you have to listen, Swan."

"I don't have to do anything, buddy. And are you gonna tell me how you know my name?"

"We knew each other once. And now I need you to come with me. Your family's in danger."

She jerked her chin in the direction of her apartment building. "My family is upstairs doing his algebra homework, and he seems pretty OK to me."

"Yes, Henry. This is about him, too."

In a flash, she had the lapels of his leather coat in her hands. The force of it caught him off guard, and he stumbled backward to where she pinned him this time against the opposite wall of the narrow alley. "What do you know about Henry?" she said through clenched teeth. "Leave him out of this. You stay away from my son."

"Henry is in no danger from me. I've risked my life to save his. More than once." He raised his arms as if in surrender. "You said to me once that you had a way of knowing when people were telling the truth. Look at me now, Emma. What do you see?" His voice was soft and pleading. She loosened her grip on his coat. She had seen enough in her line of work to be able to read people like him. He wasn't exactly an upright citizen. Of that she was certain. He was devious. Dangerous, even. But he wasn't crazy. And he certainly wasn't drunk.

She scanned his face. His blue eyes were full of such an imploring sadness that for a moment she forgot to breathe. Whoever he was, he wanted her, needed her to believe him. When she spoke, it was in soft tones that matched the stranger's. "I believe you think you're telling the truth."

"It's a start," he said, one side of his mouth curled up again into a smile.

She folded her arms against herself again. There was no earthly reason why she should still be here, but something was keeping her rooted to the spot. "You've got about five minutes to tell me how I'm supposed to know you and what the hell you want from me before I call the cops."

He stood up with a deep breath and ran a hand over his rough beard before. speaking. "All this…" he swept an arm in front of him and out toward the street. "It's a lie. The memories you have of the last decade of your life. You and Henry. It isn't real."

She let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "What, so you're saying Henry isn't really my son?"

"No, he is. You gave birth to him." He looked away. "But then you gave him up for adoption. You didn't see him again for ten years. You didn't raise him, Emma."

She should go. She should run and not look back. She would have done it if there hadn't been a small part of her that believed him. Something in his voice. Something about him. She found she couldn't move.

"No no no no no," she said with a finger lifted to her apartment window above her. "You're…you're wrong. Henry's mine. I raised him. I know I did."

"No." He shook his head once. His voice was tinged with a gentle sadness. "You only think you did."

"It's not true." She stumbled backwards. It couldn't be true. Could it? She had held him in her arms when he was a newborn and had never let go. She had raised him. Almost thirteen years of memories.

"Think about it, Emma. What do you really remember of Henry's childhood? Did he break any bones? When did he take his first steps? What did you do on his first birthday?"

"That's easy…" she started firmly, and then stopped herself. Suddenly the memory of it seemed more like something she had read in a book than lived. She went on in a thin, uncertain voice. "We had cake and ice cream."

"Where? Who was there? Did you help him open his presents?" She searched her memory for something. Some small detail. All the Christmases and birthdays and first days of school. It was all a blur. She knew it had happened. It must have. "You can't remember, can you? Not really."

"Stop!" She turned to go this time, to leave him there as tears started to flood her eyes. But he caught her wrist in his hand again.

"You know it's true, Emma. Some part of you knows it or you wouldn't still be here" he whispered. He was closer to the truth than he knew.

She drew a steadying breath. "None of it's real?"

"From the time Henry was born until about a year ago."

A year ago. When the dreams started.

The alley began to spin around her, and she shut her eyes tight against it.

"Something happened a year ago, Emma. Didn't it?" he said in realization. "You suddenly found yourself driving down a road in the middle of nowhere not entirely certain how you got there or why. I'm right, aren't I?"

She nodded up and down once, her eyes still shut tight. It was true. The weekend road trip through New England. It was if she had been awakened from a long sleep and plunked down in someone else's life, already in progress. She knew who she was, who Henry was, but she couldn't quite piece together how she had gotten there. She thought she could remember leaving home the previous Friday. The motel where they had stayed. The diner where they had eaten dinner.

But she couldn't remember anything else. The meal they shared. The conversations. The little inside jokes between mothers and sons. She blamed it on the after effects of a bad head cold and too much Nyquil and swept it into a dark corner of her mind, never to be thought of again.

She could feel her knees begin to buckle. She was falling, but then he had her by the elbows, pulling her back up to her feet. She fell against him for a moment. It would be so easy….so easy just to stay here. But then she pushed him away and stood in front of him with squared shoulders.

"Then what really happened to me? Where have Henry and I really been for the last decade?"

"It's…complicated."

"Try me."

He smiled and reached out his hand for her. She stepped away from him, and he drew his hand back. "You found your son. You saved hundreds of lives." There was a beat. "You sailed with me on my ship," he murmured. She allowed him a step closer. "And now you need to come back with me."

"Why?" She lifted her chin and looked back at him defiantly. "Why do I need to go anywhere with you? Some Captain Jack Sparrow wannabe in tight pants?"

He put his hands on his hips and sighed. He looked away sheepishly for a moment and then turned to her, his eyes locked onto hers.

"Because you're the Savior."

She felt the air leave her body in a long, exasperated exhalation. "You've got to be kidding me. Is that what this is? Some bizarre pirate cult? I'm nobody's savior."

"Emma, please listen…"

She ignored him and went on. "You know what? I almost bought it. You almost had me going, buddy. The whole sincerity thing? It's really working for you." She wheeled around and started back out onto the street, but he blocked her way. "Get out of my way. Now."

"It's the truth. You know it is."

"Stay away from me. Stay away from my son, or so help me…" Her eyes dropped down to his leather trousers. "The next time I see you, it's not just your bollocks you'll have to protect."

They stood that way for a long moment, eye to eye. She could feel her knees shake, but she held her ground. Finally, he stepped aside and let her go. "As you wish." She shivered as he skimmed the back of her hand with his fingers as she passed. He went on in a husky whisper. "This isn't over, Swan. I'll wait for you to come to me. On your own terms. And you will."

She hurried on, his voice still in her ears as she numbly made her way back up to the apartment.

xxXXxx

"Where's the stuff?"

Henry was there on the sofa with the video game controls in his lap.

"Huh? Oh, the groceries." She looked down at her empty arms that hung limply at her sides. "I…got all the way through the line when I realized I forgot my wallet," she said flatly. "I'll go back out later."

He shrugged and went back to his game.

"Henry? What did we on your fifth birthday?"

"I don't know, mom," he said without looking away from the TV. "I was five."

"Do you remember anything?"

"I guess we had cake and ice cream like we always do. Every year."

"I know, but…" She sat down on the edge of the sofa next to him. "What did we do? Did you have kids over? Did we go anywhere? Chuck E. Cheese? Did you have fun?"

"I don't know. I'm sure we did something fun. I don't really remember," he said with an indifferent shrug, and then finally looked up from his game. "Does it matter?" He gave her a smile, and for a moment, all seemed right again. She smiled back.

"No. No, it doesn't." She rose and headed into her bedroom with a bounce in her step. "Why don't you order the pizza? Whatever you want. Except anchovies."

She grabbed the book she had abandoned earlier that day and propped up in bed. It meant nothing. She would simply sweep him away and not think of him again. She had gotten very good at doing that these last months.

She tried to read, turning the pages absently, not really absorbing anything. She could still sense him, the smell and feel of him against her.

The dream journal was still there where she had left it months before. Finally, she closed the book and picked up the journal from the bedside table. She thumbed through the pages. The earlier entries were full paragraphs written in a neat, deliberate hand. Towards the middle, there were hastily scribbled words and phrases, and then finally nothing but blank pages.

She stopped and skimmed through the last several entries. On one page she had written. "Apple" and "Dark One." It meant nothing to her now. It was all from a faded dream. She moved on to the next page, her index finger moving down the lines.

"Mother" and "dreamshade" and "curse."

It was all nonsense. Why had she been so afraid? It all seemed so silly now.

She moved on to the last written page, not really certain what she was looking for. Her eyes darted across the page, and then stopped. She drew in a sharp breath.

Savior.

And then the word below it.

Hook.

She slammed the journal shut and dropped it on her bed as if it had burned her fingers.

She knew him. She had dreamed of him before today. Somehow, she knew him. If that were true, then what if everything he said were true?

She curled herself into a ball on the bed and drew her knees to her chest, the sting of his kiss and the feel of his fingers still lingering.

END CHAPTER ONE