A Dangerous Game: Part III
A Once Upon a Time Fanfic
The boy is in Neverland, according to her tracking spell.
He hadn’t thought he it was possible to get drunk enough to willingly come back, but for his revenge, he’s done far worse.
It takes several days to circle the island to the place her spell indicated, sailing wide enough to hopefully discourage the Lost Ones from trying to reach them. (Yet.)
The princess spends the first two avoiding him entirely, either hiding away in his cabin (he assumes she’s sleeping since she doesn’t seem to do so at night), or mingling with the rest of the crew. He tells himself it’s not jealousy that coils in his chest every time she comes up on deck, seeking company that isn’t his.
Anderson seems to be her favorite, the cabin boy who’s closer to man than boy by now, and in terms of years in this world is certainly far older than her, but she sits with him, laughing and talking in a way that, if Killian didn’t know better, would make him think she has children of her own.
The attack comes at night.
It seems it only took a few months of freedom to let his guard down, and the Lost Ones are climbing over the sides of the ship before he realizes it.
There’s no time to send her to his cabin before she grabs a sword (Baelfire’s sword, a small voice says, and he wonders how she found it), and leaps into the fray. He only has time for a quick glance to make sure she knows what she’s doing before he turns back to the boys surrounding him.
When her scream comes, his heart stops, and he can’t explain away the panic that drives him to her side.
But when he finds her, kneeling beside Anderson’s fallen form, it takes only a glance to realize the blood covering her dress is not her own. Steel-colored smoke trails from her hands, drifting over the boy’s prone form, but for someone so inexperienced in magic, he’s sure healing this is beyond her capabilities.
Felix stands above them, blood dripping from his sword, and Killian steps in just in time to disarm him before he runs it through the princess as well.
She turns, eyes flashing, and too quickly for either of them to react, thrusts her hand into Felix’s chest, pulling out his heart. In one swift motion, she crushes it. He’s dead before he hits the ground.
She freezes, as though surprised by her own actions, then looks up at Killian with black eyes. He blinks, and they’re back to green, making him wonder if he imagined it.
The Lost Ones scatter after that, though he doesn’t know if it’s the knowledge that Felix is dead, or how he died that chases them away.
The princess vanishes soon after. He wants to follow her, but there’s too much to take care of. Like Anderson, who should be dead, but instead is scurrying around the ship like usual. He sends him to the surgeon to be checked over, just in case, but he suspects whatever the princess did truly managed to heal him. Several of his other men go to get their injuries checked as well, and he sends Felix’s body into the sea.
When he finally goes down to his cabin, he finds her sitting stiffly on his bead, something he can’t read on her face.
“Thank you,” he says, and she jerks back as though he slapped her.
It’s only then that he realizes she was expecting his fear, like her parents who refused to let her train her magic. And perhaps he should be afraid, after watching her kill someone the same way Milah died, but he watched her desperate, panicked healing of Anderson, a boy she barely knows, and he can’t be afraid of her.
“For saving Anderson,” he explains. “Thank you.”
She closes her eyes, her mask cracking enough to reveal something so raw he fells guilty looking, so he turns away to remove his coat and hook, preparing to sleep. Just as he’s about to go to the hammock, she catches his wrist.
“Please,” she whispers, tugging him back to the bed. “Please, Hook. I can’t hear them when I’m with you.”
He knows he shouldn’t, but he’s all too familiar with ghosts, so he climbs in beside her, putting out the lamp.
“Killian,” he says softly into the dark. “My name is Killian.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and then, “Emma.”
His men come to him the next day, begging him to send her away.
“That white hair is unnatural for someone as young as she is,” See insists. He appears to be the chosen spokesman, and Killian wonders if he’s been too soft with him. “And she’s always talking to herself like she’s possessed. How do you know she isn’t an evil sorceress who brought us here for some dark reason?”
Killian grits his teeth. “Enough of this. I’m not sending her to her death on Neverland.” He pushes through the group, glad to see that Anderson, at least, is not present.
He understands their fear of magic, but really, evil sorceress is quite a leap, and, despite their claims, he’s never seen any sign of possession.
“But Captain–”
“I don’t want to hear it!”
He walks away to their whispers about what sort of enchantment she has him under.
When she pulls him into bed that night, curling into his arms in a way that feels far more intimate than any lover he’s taken for a night, he thinks perhaps his men are right about one thing: perhaps she has bewitched him.
The thought doesn’t frighten him like it should. It’s far better to drown in her than any of the substitutes he’s found over the years.
She sticks close by his side the rest of their time aboard the ship, and he finds himself relearning the pleasures of a life at sea. She asks questions about his ship, and he teaches her about sailing and tells stories about his travels.
She lures him into bed every night, pressing kisses into his skin until he can’t keep his eyes open any longer and drifts into sleep. She never tries to take things any further, and he thinks that’s probably wise. She ruined him with a single kiss, and he’s sure it will break him when they go their separate ways.
“I don’t want to lose you,” she whispers into his mouth one night.
He wants to say, you won’t, but he can’t, so he buries his hand in her hair, kissing her back with every bit of desperation he feels.
Later, as he’s drifting off, he could almost swear he feels her fingers run down his face as she says, “I don’t want you to hate me.”
They reach land far too soon, and he decides to look for the boy alone. He never should have brought his crew back here, and their best chance is to stay together on the ship.
He really shouldn’t be surprised when Emma insists on coming.
“I don’t want to just wait for you to get back,” she says. “Besides, you can’t find him without me.”
“I can, if you just give me the spell.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t have magic. You won’t be able to read it.” It seems odd for a tracking spell, but her magic is limited, and she might not know how to perform the common types.
He doesn’t like it, but he can’t hold up against her arguments, and the two of them set off into the jungle.
Their trek is too quiet.
Nothing about Neverland is safe, of course, but every moment they don’t come across wild beasts, traps, or Lost Ones has Killian more and more convinced that they’re playing right into one of Pan’s games.
Every few minutes, Emma checks the handkerchief she put the spell on. It doesn’t glow or float like he expects, doesn’t seem to do anything, really, but she seems confident every time they change direction.
When he finally hears footsteps running toward them, it’s almost a relief to finally have something to fight. But the figure that crashes through the brush and almost runs into them is too tall, too old. A grown man on an island of children.
The man’s eyes widen as he stares at Killian. “Hook?”
Killian blinks several times, wondering how the man knows him, until he realizes why those eyes look so familiar. “Bae?”
But Baelfire is already looking past him, and the blood drains from his face. “E–Emma?”
Killian turns, a sudden certainty that something is wrong filling him, and he finds Emma, face hard, with a sword in her hands.
It’s Bae’s sword, he realizes, the one she used during the Lost One’s attack, glowing as it points at its former owner, like a tracking spell would.
Baelfire takes a staggering step back, holding up his hands in surrender. “Emma, I–”
She ignores his words. “Where is my son?”