Emma remembers her parents. Or at least, she thinks she does. She remembers pale skin and long, dark hair like soft midnight between her fingers. She remembers strong arms around her and kind smiles. She likes to think they're memories of her mother and father, but she's never entirely certain. (She remembers screaming as they're ripped away from her.)
She mostly remembers the ocean. It's comforting, a soft, strong presence all around her. Other children have mothers or fathers or both, but Emma has the sea. It seethes and roils beneath other children's feet, but it only wells up quietly around her. Blue and green and white, the ocean is a far better thing than any other person could be to her. (She tries not to think about how the other children laugh at her.)
The other adults on the island tell her her parents were taken by pirates. She's seven years old, and she hasn't seen her parents since she was two. She still thinks the sea is alive. They tell her she'll never see her parents again, and she runs back to the ocean. There are several other children there, and they laugh as she cries. It makes her angry, and they laugh even harder. They push around, and she kicks them. They push her under the waves, and she screams desperately. The water rushes into her mouth, through her lungs and heart and blood, and it makes her feel strong. The other kids grimace at the taste, moan about how horrible it is, but to Emma it's more sugar than salt, more lemon than kelp, more life than death. (She doesn't fight the water, only the hands forcing her into it.)
She is ten years old, and the other children want to be pirates. She scowls at them, the feel of soft midnight bitter on her fingers. They enjoy the chase, following her around and poking her with wooden swords until she decides to run away. She dives into the sea, and they're too afraid of being swept away to follow. She laughs at them now, how pathetic these pirates are, frightened of the very sea they claim to own. (She opens her mouth widely, drinking in the seawater as though she could breathe it.)
She is still ten years old. The other children have hung up their pirate hats, tossed away their wooden swords. They're all in bed, tucked carefully away by caring mothers and strong fathers and warm houses. Emma lifts the latch on her window and slips into the cold. She walks slowly and calmly through the chilled sand, soft beneath her bare feet. And there, at the end of the path, she sees the lost hopes of pirating. Of owning the sea and scaring away the land. Of gold and treasure and salt-soaked wooden houses that float with the breeze. And she lifts a false sword, dons a pirate hat. (She thinks of who she'll be in ten years. Decides she'll be better than this.)
She is twelve, in another house with other children. They don't have parents, not any of them, and Emma feels a strange sort of camaraderie with them. Most of them are boys, and they run about, in circles and loops around the island, as she leads them back and forth. It's a merry game of chase, and she's always laughing, always smiling. And then they disappear, just gone, in the middle of the night. They blame Emma, call her a witch, mutter and sob for those poor lost boys. (She doesn't tell anyone about the shadow who stole them in the night. She doesn't tell them how glad the boys were to go.)
She is fifteen and upset, banging fruitlessly against the cellar doors. They'd locked her just within reach of the tide, and when it comes in, she knows it'll slip through the crack. She's seen it before, poor kids locked in by teasing classmates who forgot them there, left them and didn't return by high tide. She remembers pale, vacant eyes and white-washed skin, glossy with salt and tears. She bangs one last time on the doors above her, and the crack opens a bit more widely, just in time for water to come rushing over her face, eyes, nose, and mouth clogging. It's suffocating, and she falls back, gasping. The water keeps rushing in, floor quickly covered by murky green water. Soon, not even her little corner was safe. The water had risen past her knees, and Emma feels distinctly hopeless. A little bit betrayed, as well. The ocean had been her sanctuary, her haven. And now they were going to kill her with it. It's only then she notices that the water is over her head. She smiles widely, kicks up, his the cellar doors, once, twice. The third time is, in fact, the charm, and they crack open, a piece of one door still attached to the other. (She never tells them how she survived, and they never ask. They do, however, turn a very pale grey whenever she walks past them.)
Emma is seventeen, and, at present, stealing a horse. Okay, maybe she's stealing two. They're tied very, very securely to a post, fancy knots and everything, but Emma's always liked a challenge. There is a string of complicated knots arching from one side of the paler horse's saddle to the bridle of the dark one. She starts with the side at the saddle, and she's doing quite well. The strings separate easily in her hands, and the farther down she gets the easier it goes, until she suddenly feels fingers under her hand. She lets out a yelp and falls back.
"What the hell?" The other set of hands step out from behind the dark horse, and they become a man, short and ruffled and almost as confused as her. They stare blankly at each other for a moment.
"Which one were you trying to steal?" He asks eventually, and Emma feels immediately like punching him.
"Both," she sighs, getting to her feet. She's refused to wear a dress for the last six years, and she can feel his eyes tracing her legs.
"Go for a drink with me," he says, as though this isn't unusual at all.
"No," she scoffs.
"Please?" He wheedles, and she thinks about saying no again. But then she thinks of the gold so obviously in his pocket, and she thinks of how easy it will be to get him drunk, let him pass out. Steal everything he has.
"Fine, then," she huffs, and takes the arm he offers her.
She doesn't steal his money, but the next morning they take the horses and run. They take what they want, sweep over the land with laughter and smiles, flirting and charming their way into and out of things. And three months later, he kisses her, full on the mouth. She's shocked for a moment, frozen in place, but then he pulls away with this guilty, shocked look on his face, and she just smiles and pulls him in to kiss him once more. And so they continue, partners in crime, taking what they want, (and sometimes that's each other), and she's eighteen soon enough, and she thinks about home, the ocean and her parents and how much she'd like to go back there.
He brings her a map of the land, tells her to pick a city to land. She chooses the little island that used to be home, all sea and surf and sand. He tells her they'll go there, make a home, live honestly. She kisses him, this time, and in the flurry of what happens next, the map falls off the bed and lands under her bag.
He comes to her a week later, tells her he's made a mistake. He stole a box of rubies from the Royal Bureau of Timepiece Repair, rubies that were supposed to go into the giant clocktower being constructed in the capitol. He tells her to go, to run and never look back. She won't go. She tells him she'll help him, that they're in this together. She tells him that she loves him, and he hesitantly says it back.
He gives her one, a brilliant red ruby that gleams like fire. She ties it on a ribbon and wears it around her neck. He kisses her good luck, and she waits as he leaves to drop off their latest find. She fiddles with her necklace and muses on their past escapades. Like the time they stole a star and hid it in a lighthouse, or the way they ferried the Poravian crown jewels across the Drunian River in a box of potatoes. She smiles, strokes her necklace. Jumps when she hears a voice most definitely not her partner's. (She realizes, now, that there was never a happy ending for this.)
She sits in her cell and thinks unkind thoughts. She carves the seashore into her cold grey walls. It is frighteningly dull in the cell, and Emma is surprisingly fine with that. She feels cold and grey and dull, and bitterly angry. At him, at her parents, at the world, but mostly herself. She's eighteen and alone, and-
Her thoughts break off as she looks at the guard standing outside her cell. He tosses a tiny piece of metal at her, and she recognizes it as a piece of her horse's bridle. It is a circle, a swan trapped in it's boundaries, and she thinks it a fittingly spiteful gesture for him to make. (She thinks she'll wear it, just to spit in his face.)
She finds out that she's pregnant a month into her stay in prison. She panics, retches into the corner of her cell. She's not old enough for this, not ready, not kind enough. She has no idea how to do this, has no clue what having a child entails. So when the guards tell her the child will be given to another family once it's born, she's grateful, almost relieved. Four months later, she's alone in her cell, the child, her son, being carried away from her, and she isn't so grateful anymore. (She's never felt so alone as she does now.)
She's released a year later, alone and unafraid. She's seen the worst of this world. She spins the swan pendant around and around, and she decides to go to the docks. The path is rough, full of sharp stones and filled in with sand and dried salt, flaking off of docked ships and drying sails. She breathes in the ocean, lemons and life and sugar flowing through her hair and nose and over her tongue. She smiles widely, and steals an apple off a passing cart. (She feels like a child again.)
She signs on with the first ship's captain who'll take her. He looks at her a bit oddly, but that's nothing new to her, with her long blonde hair and men's clothes. The other sailors tease her a bit, but after a week or two in her company, the most they can say about her is that she's a hard worker with a boundless love for the sea. The last bit does rouse a few laughs, no matter what, but they're more understanding than mocking. (She has friends again, and she feels like a twelve-year-old girl, leading a group of boys in and out of the tide.) She sails with them for five years.
The first mate is named Graham, and he's sweet. He's kind and funny and shy, and they become friends very quickly. He doesn't remember anything before coming aboard the ship, and one day he tells her he can't feel much. She kisses his cheek, and he feels her. They go through his belongings, looking for clues. Any sort of idea of who he might be. That night he kisses her, on the lips this time, and he feels it. He falls to the ground, writhing in pain, and no medicine they have can save him. (She cries that night, and many after it.)
They get caught in a dead zone, where the wind is nonexistant and the waves are weak. Emma takes watch, sitting in the crow's nest and scanning the blue, blue sky for any sign of help. It is she who sees the black sails, and it is she who scrambles down to take word to the captain. He claps a hand on her shoulder and looks wearily into her eyes.
"Thank you, Swan." He walks past her, vacant and tired.
The others stand ramrod-straight, some afraid, some resigned. Pirate attacks are an occupational hazard, a necessary evil, and they've all seen it coming at one point or another. Emma breathes in lemons and sugar, and thinks how glad she is to die at sea. The ship grows ever closer as they strap swords to their sides, hide daggers in their boots and in their shirts. Write letters to their family, their lovers, their friends. Emma doesn't know how she'd get the letter to her son, much less where he'd be. (She tries not to think of what his name might be, or how tall he is, or what his favorite color is.)
The pirates, as it turns out, are actually rather averse to killing. Which is one of the funniest things Emma has heard in a long time. She cracks, laughs so hard she has to bend over and catch her breath. The pirates look slightly offended, and her crewmates look about as dignified as she does. The pirate captain sweeps over, and Emma catches her first clear look at him. He's tall, dark-haired. Scruffy, good cheekbones. Blue, blue eyes. He's only got one hand, and the hook set on his left wrist shines silver under the sun. (She tries not to think about how blue is her favorite color.)
His name is Killian, she finds, and he's rather polite. He's also infuriating, arrogant, annoying, and very, very confident. He also may or may not have looked a bit too closely at her chest. She'd quite like to hit him. In the face. Or between the legs. Either would do. A few days pass, and the pirates find themselves getting quite friendly with the sailors. Emma herself sees the gold, the treasure, and remembers being seventeen and stealing. She remembers how good it felt, to be powerful and rich and beautiful. She remembers her parents, screaming in the surf, being ripped from her. She remembers wanting to be better.(She remembers abandoning that dream.)
They join the pirates, learn to steal, to fight. She learns how to keep her hands to herself, how to not slap Killian every time he says something annoying, how to take tiny pearls from their plunder and string them on her hair, how to steal from thieves and amass a treasure of her own. Killian knows, she knows he does, but it's a game between them, and if he says anything he shows his hand. She takes small things, amethyst buttons and golden coins. Pearls and ruby earrings. She keeps them in a box, thin and flat and wide. (She thinks of going to shore, finding her son. Living in luxury together.)
She's never told anyone about her son. Not ever. So it surprises even her when she tells Killian. She's a bit drunk, a little less guarded, and she tells him, and he looks at her, eyes soft with sympathy and sorrow. He tells her how he lost his hand, how the woman he loved died in his arms. She tells him about Graham, about Neal. They trade sadness and grief in the candlelight, and she thinks, later, that she might love him. (She thinks she does love him.)
Emma stays for three years, stays until she can't take it anymore. Until that lost love in his eyes doesn't stop burning through her when she looks away. He accepts her decision, solemn and confused, and she smiles, tight and painful. She kisses his cheek, and the press of his arm around her waist is both comforting and chilling. She has to stand on her toes to reach his cheek, and as she pulls away she can see a tear fall. She holds onto the small details, tiny pale pearls in her box of memories. (She wants to stay, but she leaves.)
She comes ashore and waves goodbye, doesn't turn away until the mast is a speck of black that falls right over the horizon. The sand is warm and rough beneath her shoes, and she has to ask the man at the edge of the docks where she is. He tells her she's in Ofrania, and that she's in luck. The Queen herself is visiting the city with her son. Emma smiles and nods in thanks. (She thinks of her own son, and her heart constricts.)
She moves further in, noting the harried, terrified civilians and the gossipping girls, twisting string and leaves into baskets. They talk about how the Queen's son was taken from a woman in prison when she couldn't have one of her own. How the Queen had supposedly murdered her husband. How she employed a band of pirates to steal people away from their homes, including her step-daughter and son-in-law. How her former lover had run far away and disappeared into the sea. And the more Emma hears, the more her own story begins to make sense. (She felt a cold anger settle into her bones.)
She watches from the crowd, stares down the Queen, whose cold brown eyes seem to smirk in triumph at her. She gazes sadly at the little boy, the same age as her own, and thinks absently how much he looks like Neal. She rents a room in the inn, runs her fingers over and over the box of jewels she'd stolen from Killian. She thinks about how he'd as much as given them to her, for all the fight he'd put up. Thought about how she missed her son. (How little she missed Neal.)
And the knock on her door went almost unheard. She opens the door on the second knock, sees an empty space in front of her. A small noise makes her look down, and she sees the Queen's son.
"Hi. You're Emma Swan, right?" She nods numbly. "I'm Henry. I'm your son."
He sweeps in the door under her arm and continues to explain to her how that theory makes sense. According to him, Regina, the Queen, had taken him from the prison after she found she couldn't have a child of her own. Using what birth records the prison had, he had connected himself to Emma, and then after seeing her earlier, followed her to the inn. (She tries not to think of him as her son.)
"You can't stay here," she says softly. He looks up at her and smiles.
"I don't have to." She opens her mouth to ask what he means, but he continues quickly. "You live on a pirate ship, right?"
"Not anymore," Emma snorts, "I kind of quit."
"Why?" Henry asks, flopping onto his back over her bed. Emma sighs and flops down next to him.
"It's complicated."
"Explain, then."
"I sort of kind of fell in love with the captain who was still in love with his dead girlfriend who used to be married to a really creepy guy who killed her." Emma spits out in a rush of words. Then she blushes when Henry looks oddly at her. "What? It's a legitimate reason to leave!"
"Is it?" Henry flips over onto his stomach. "Why not just tell him?"
"You're too young to be giving me advice on my love life."
"You have a love life?"
"Shush."
Emma falls to his charm and her long-held love for her son, and three months later she knows when Killian and her friends will be back in these waters. They depart in the night, running through the village and across the beach. They dash across the docks, past merchant ships, fishing boats, dinghies. At the very end of the dock, The Jolly Roger rises proudly, dark even against the night. She sends Henry up first, lets him scramble up the ladder before her, still glancing over her shoulder to be sure there are no guards behind them. (She tries not to think of how this conversation will go.)
Henry is completely awed by the ship. Its tall, towering mast, the flowing sails bound up in rope, the wide deck. It's paradise for any child, but Henry's insatiable curiousity made this an especially fitting escape. Killian emerged from his cabin, and after a hurried talk with the cabin boy, he beckoned the two fugitives over. Henry practically skipped over, ecstatic to meet the infamous pirate. Emma was swift but uncertain, still reluctant to admit her draw to this man. (She would never admit to worrying how her hair looked at that very moment.)
Killian and Henry strike up an unlikely friendship, and in five minutes they're thicker than thieves. He sends Henry ahead into the cabin, tells him to explore all he likes. His smile fades as he turns back to Emma.
"Is this why you left?" It's not an accusation. It's an honest question, and the sheer understanding in it makes her want to break down.
"No." She swallows, doesn't look away from his eyes. They're blue, very blue, and she knows they're both on the verge of tears. It's been too long in coming for both of them to come out unscathed, unhurt, unaffected.
"Why, then?" His voice breaks, and there is pain in his clenched fists.
"Because you still love her." And it hits him, right in the heart, and he understands, completely. His jaw moves, his mouth opens, and his whole face slackens. And then there is very suddenly a vicious, painful love in his face.
"I love you." He says firmly, and throws himself forward as though he can make her understand this with sheer force of will. His hand pulls the back of her head, and his hook arches with his arm about her waist, trapping her. He kisses her, and it's not a surprise the way it was with Neal, and it's not sweet like it was with Graham. It's pain and passion and misunderstanding and loss. It's love. She smiles into the kiss, and her arms arch up around his neck, her fingers twine in his hair, and they aren't two separate people, two broken pieces. They are one whole, and there is room enough for Henry and Graham and Milah and all the love in the world.
And Emma thinks she might have made herself better after all.
That night she sleeps in the same bed as Killian, curled up together like a pair of cats in the sun, and Henry smiles a little too knowingly at her, and she reminds herself to never ever assume she's alone ever again. Henry collapses, (as only the young can), on a pile of blankets and pillows and refuses to rise for a proper bed.
That morning they leave the city of Griem in the kingdom of Ofrania, and Henry climbs to the tip of the mast and laughs as he calls down that the Queen's Guard is attempting to swim after them. Killian introduces Henry to the crew, and when someone asks if Emma'll be having her old bunk back, he smirks smugly at them and pulls Emma into a very public, very sweepig kiss. That question is never asked again, and Emma does not, in fact, punch Killian.
They run, from port to dock to island, and Emma has never felt better. She drinks in lemons and sugar and life, and fights and sails and steals and loves.
(She dons a pirate hat and picks up a wooden sword, and laughs.)