#piratefic

It was always the nighttime really, that the emptiness would find its way to her shivering body, curled close to the worn, stained leather of the backseat of her bug, holding her jacket tight around her shoulders.  

Loneliness has a knack of working its way through even the smallest cracks in armor and gnawing you down from the inside out.  And no matter how much leather armor Emma buried herself in, the emptiness always found the ways in.

Now she wakes up breathing the smell of sweet leather off his bare shoulder and curling tighter to a warm body that holds her close and presses kisses into her hair and utters beautiful words gently into her ears.  She kisses him back and holds him captive until he insists they’ve got to bloody get on with it or never leave bed again.

(He sneaks out before her parents wake even though they crossed the point of secrecy long ago).

And she hums as she dresses to face the day, choosing cozy bright sweaters that combat the icy chill of Storybrooke far better than her leather ever did.  She washes her face and she grabs a banana and passes up the coffee her mother offers her with a grin, thinking of bright eyes and smiles warmer than the cup he presents her with ever is.

And he is waiting for her, of course, right on schedule, coffee in hand.

It is their routine.

She has never liked being stuck in a loop.

But every time he lowers his lips to her and captures her sweetly against him it is like she is falling in love with his ridiculous innuendo and waving brows all over again and she never wants to let him go.

It’s the nighttime really, when he holds her close on the couch-- those are the part of the routine that she likes best.  Her parents laugh in the kitchen with her son and bright, warm light floods the darkness and keeps it held at bay in the shadows and out the windows.

  “Coffee tomorrow morning?” She asks sleepily, head pressed against his shoulder, breathing in strong, steady leather with every gentle lift of her chest.

xxxx

When she'd seen the ad on craigslist, she laughed as she wrote down the number.

Tossing and turning in bed that same night, she gave in and reached for her bedside table and found the note and her phone.

She was an idiot.

She called anyway.

"Hullo?" A groggy voice dripping with sleep picked up on the other end, and Emma inhaled sharply, glancing at the clock.

It was 2 am.

Damnit.

"Oh my God, it's 2 in the morning," she replied, horrified, at the same moment a very sexy groan came from the other end of the line. "Oh, you're… I—"

There was awkward silence a moment in which the horror and embarrassment Emma felt only grew.

"Oh, Gods no. I was only stretching."

The voice carried a dangerously melodic lilt, and was still heavy with sleep.

"What can I, er, do for you?"

This was so ridiculously stupid.

"This is so embarrassing. I should've looked at the goddamn clock… I just… saw your ad?"

She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, mentally berating herself for going through with this. She knew better than to make big decisions at night-there was not one she had made that she had not regretted in the morning.

So much for shutting her prying family up.

"Ah, a dinner date then?"

She could swear she heard a smirk in his tone.

"If you're going to laugh at me, I can find someone else," she hissed, feeling her cheeks go red. This man's voice was extremely attractive and she absolutely hated that she did not want to make a bad impression on him.

"Oi, no, not laughing, feisty," he answered, and she certainly heard him chuckle now, "You're quite bloody demanding for calling me at 2 in the morning."

She leaned back into her pillows, taking a deep calming breath and opening her eyes to stare at the childish stars that still painted her ceiling. He'd helped her put them up. Bought them one day on a whim and told her that they were going back to her place, that he wanted to put the universe on her ceiling.

What he wanted wasto get in her pants. He found her stepladder and put up two stars before things escalated. She had finished putting them up that night alone after he'd spouted some excuse of why he couldn't stay. There had always been some excuse.

"Still there, 2 AM?" He asked then, dragging her back to the moment.

Dragging her back to calling some self-declared felon desperate enough to place an ad for dates.

She was desperate too.

"Yes, Killian right? I need a date for Thanksgiving dinner."

xxxx

He is hot. She'd printed off the photo included with the damn ad as an afterthought before leaving the house, frenzied and more than a little convinced she was walking into some form of a trap. Men that look like him don't place ads for dates on craigslist.

Hell, men like him don't place ads for dates.

It occurs to her that studying his picture when he turns up likely isn't going to make a great first impression and she crumbles it into her purse as she glances at the watch on her wrist. It's the type that looks fancy but is made of cheap plastic and paint that starts chipping as soon as you put it on, and when it proudly displays that it is 8AM she lets out a groan. It is absolutely useless.

Suddenly out of the chilly silence of the afternoon, she hears the healthy roar of an antiquated engine. It is distant but certainly coming closer and she finds herself reaching for the print of the page again, squinting again through the words she already knows by heart.

29 years old, no college degree. Very talented liar. Will platonically accompany person in need to family or friend gatherings and pose as dedicated boyfriend to ward off those nagging aunts and uncles. In exchange, I ask only for a filling meal and perhaps a tale or two. I am a starving artist who works a bar to pay his bills (and does have a criminal record in petty crime)—but I am overall a rather charming fellow. Please call with requests (preferably not at 2AM).

She cannot help but roll her eyes at the final line. It's been added since her night of bad judgment and she knows it is meant for her. She hopes it is meant only for her and tries not to think of him discussing the lunatic girl who called him in the wee hours of the night with his laughing friends.

God, she does not want to go through with this.

She squints down the road anyway, in the direction the engine is growing from and finally sees the red car definitely speeding towards her. She clutches the crumpled piece of paper nearer to her as she watches.

"I drive a red 1970 Monte Carlo. Real beauty, she is. Look for her, tomorrow. Can't have some other bloke picking you up for nefarious purposes."

"And your purposes aren't… nefarious?"

He'd laughed at her and hadn't answered.

The car slows as it approaches her and while she has no knowledge of cars whatsoever, she knows it is him. He kills the engine at the bus stop (which she is certain is incredibly illegal), and is out of the car before she can peer in the window at him.

"I don't think you can park here," she says, voice edging on annoyed because he already seems like an asshole, and if the first guy she 'dates' after this long time is a jerk, the aftermath with her mother will only be worse.

When she sees him, her suspicions are tragically confirmed.

He is beautiful and carries himself like he knows it. He is all mussed black hair and scruff, sauntering towards her with a lazy sideways smirk that irritatingly makes her insides turn. She's beginning to think this is all some big joke that is going to make her late to her parent's dinner.

"2 AM?" He's reached her now and crooks a dark brow as he very clearly takes her in, head to toe and everything in between. His accent seems even stronger in person, playing crookedly off his tongue and dancing between them. "I'm afraid you never did tell me your name."

She watches him with narrowed eyes. She is not in the business of being wooed by good looks and tousled hair. She knows where wooing leads and she is no longer a wide eyed little girl.

"What are you getting out of this?" She asks, and interrupts as he opens his mouth, "And don't you dare spew that 'tale' shit, because I'm not buying it."

She's mostly broke and it's a dangerous gamble, seeing as she very literally isn't buying anything.

The smirk softens on his face, and he offers her a careful shrug of the shoulders that she certainly hasn't noticed are extremely well-trimmed.

"Anything else would be a lie, love."

Very talented liar.

She is a very talented polygraph machine and his lines do not so much as flicker.

He smiles again, wider, and her heart thuds.

"Have I earned your name yet then, darling?" He asks brightly. She rolls her eyes but her only thought is that something about him feels startlingly trustworthy.

The notion frightens her but she allows herself to be lulled into it anyway.

She knows better than to let anything go too far.

"It's Emma."

Again his smile becomes something gentler and he studies her face with a strange sadness in his eyes that is gone as quickly as she sees it.

"Well, Emma," he winks, and it actually complements his good looks rather than cheapens them, "I do hope your Thanksgiving includes alcohol?"

She cannot help but snort at his hopeful expression that leaks obviously into his tone.

"Is there such thing as Thanksgiving without at least three drunk uncles and a small civil war?"

He reaches for the passenger side door of his car, grinning and watching her all the way.

"I am already rather fond of you, 2 AM Emma. Shall we discuss the details of our relationship on the drive over? If I recall, your parents supper starts—" He glances at his own watch, which seems at least as old as his car. "Five minutes ago."

"Shit."

It is as she brushes hurriedly past him to slip into the seat he's offered to her that she notices his eyes—too blue and bright and in tune—and she swallows heavily as she looks away and falls heavily into the worn leather of the car.

xxxxxxxxxx

She calls David on the way to the library.  Not because she is frightened or because she thinks anything is out of place, she tells herself.  But because backup is smart and backup is reliable.

Right now she could certainly use something reliable.

When she pulls up in front of the building, though, he is already there pacing.  She does not like the look on his face one bit.

She takes another heaving breath before slipping out of the bug and cautiously approaching him.  He gives her a single look-over and concern immediately fills his expression.

 “Is something wrong, Emma?” he asks, and she lets out a frustrated puff of air because she is beyond sick of hearing those words.

“Long day,” she mutters, and manages a shrug, “Please say you’ve got good news.”

“Depends on what you classify as good,” he answers sheepishly, and the look in his eyes tells her more than words possibly could.

Her day is about to get a whole hell of a lot longer.

xxxxxxxxxx

“You are with her now?”

It is no more than a moment from when the door closes that she speaks, turning on him with carefully focused eyes, folding her arms uncomfortably across her chest.

It is strange seeing her in Emma’s clothing, past and present somehow thrown frantically together in ways they were never meant to be.  It leaves him more than slightly uneasy. But he’s felt uneasy since she reappeared, since she embraced him in the street and since he realized that it all was truly happening.

It is all so bloody wrong.

“Aye.”

He is shocked when a smirk forms on her face.

“I cannot say I ever imagined the day you’d court a sheriff.  I suppose your days of pillaging are quite over, then?”

Even though she is smiling, he can see the touch of sadness still there, sloppily masked from view.  He doesn’t know what to say, how possibly to remove the deafening awkwardness from the air.  So instead of answering, he motions to a chair.

“Perhaps we ought to discuss what’s happened,” he says stiffly.

The smile drifts from her lips as she obliges, holding her arms tighter against her chest as she steps to the seat and lowers herself tentatively into it, staring back up at him through her eyelashes.

He doesn’t mean to be cold, though he knows that he is.  This world and life she’s been brought into… it is not one she is meant to be in.  That at least is quite apparent to him.  He feels remarkably selfish for the thought, but he hates that his past has come back forth, the past he’d worked so long and hard to overcome, to finally reach a solid place, a happy place, for one of the first times in his life.

The darkness he’d left behind is a dangerous drug, and the last thing he wants is to regress.

He remains standing, watching her, still struggling to grasp at all the pieces.

“It was when Rumplestiltskin took my heart, wasn’t it?” she asks gently as she bites her lip, “That’s when I died?”

“It was,” he answers, and remembers the instructions Emma left him with.  To find out what he can.  He takes a shaky breath, “What is it you remember? After that?”

She smiles sadly, and shifts ever so slightly.

“Nothing, Killian,” her voice is soft and careful and nearly grown up, quite unlike the wild lass he’d once loved, “That is why I reckoned it must’ve been my last moment.”

“Ah.”

Silence again creeps awkwardly between them.

“You don’t need to be so bloody distant, Killian,” she finally says, uncrossing her arms and dropping them to her lap, “I may’ve been dead but I wasn’t born yesterday.  I know you’ve gotten over me, dear.”

He grinds his teeth together and dedicates every ounce of his strength to holding on, to keeping quiet… but it isn’t enough.  The frustration simmering in him is quickly heating and bubbling up in the pit of his stomach until the words are spilling angrily from his lips.

“And you think that was bloody easy, do you?” he snaps, because she says it so calmly, so simply, like it’s nothing more than a change of tides. “You think you died, carrying our child at that, and I just moved on to the next lass with pretty eyes?”

“Killian,” she concedes, standing back to her feet slowly, moving to reach towards him, but he is stepping back from her, still not finished.

“200 years, Milah.  That is how bloody long it has been.  For 200 blasted years I mourned you every passing day.  Sought to avenge you, using every resource available to me,  Milah, for 200 years you never left my damned mind,” his head is spinning and his eyes are burning with tears but she stops moving toward him, instead watching him quietly with wide eyes beneath lowered brows. “Aye, I moved on from you.  But you’d best never say that I got over you.”

“200 years is a long time, my love,” she only speaks when she is certain he is finished, when the silence has stretched nearly to the point of discomfort. She watches him carefully, reading his expression. “Is she who changed that, then?”

He does not have to ask her who she is referring to before he nods.

xxxxxxxxxx

He is sitting on the edge of a seat in the library like a nervous teenager as she approaches.  Her heart  is pounding in her chest.  It’s him, David has assured her, and the moment she sees his mussed hair even from behind she knows it’s the truth.

It takes all her strength to coax herself forward, move herself towards him and when she finally comes up to him and his wandering eyes land on her they light up with a relief that almost makes her insides stop twisting.  Almost.  His face is tired and lined and every atom of her being aches because he is somehow alive and she is sure that today is the worst hell she’s gone through yet.

“Graham,” she mutters, studying him carefully and swallowing a hard lump that rises in her throat.    She’d told David to stay outside, to keep watch, and Belle had left as soon as she’d arrived.

“Emma,” he answers, the corner of his lip twitching ever so slightly upwards.  It makes her heart stutter and she quickly looks away, a feeble attempt to halt the overpowering flood of emotion pouring down over her.  The memories that come with the smile are just too much, too painful (she’s never managed to enjoy a bear claw the same way since).

Now in her avoidance of his eyes she notices the wrinkles in his clothes.  The same clothes he’d been wearing that night.  Same vest she’d clung to as she sobbed out of control until she felt she might be sick. Same button torn slightly out from her frantic attempts to resuscitate him.  Same everything.

An unwelcome chill races down her spine.

“Emma, I needed to tell you something,” he says, pushing up onto his feet.  She bites her lip when she finds her eyes on his, that awful night still so damn clear in her mind.

She would be lying if she said she did not still have nightmares about his lifeless grey eyes, about helplessly breathing air into his empty lungs.

She shivers.

“So do I,” she mutters, mostly under her breath.  He raises his eyebrows quizzically at her so she continues, “You’d better go first.”

He twitches slightly and nods, meeting her eyes, and she’d forgotten just what they did to her, so wide and open and honest—they open a direct line to her already weeping heart and nearly split it in two.

“I should’ve told you sooner.  Should’ve told you last night, probably.  Around… you know…” she does know and she’s beginning to feel nauseous all over again. “But, well.  When we kissed, something happened.  I had these… memories… return.  And this is going to sound absolutely insane, and I know we decided it was insane, but Emma—”

She begins to interrupt because she knows where this is going, knows she has to tell him just what he’s missed, but he raises his voice to finish.

“I remembered Regina taking my heart.”

Whatever words she had prepared slip off of her tongue.  Suddenly her legs feel strangely numb and natural causes suddenly sounds a hell of a lot like bullshit.  She sees red.

How the hell hadn’t she realized sooner.

“She… took your heart? She had it?”

“Er, has it, I reckon,” he answers with a slight chuckle, and she can see the relief that so visibly fills him when she doesn’t call him crazy and she is absolutely tearing herself apart internally for it all over again.  She still hates herself for everything that happened that night.

But now she has someone else to blame.  She wants nothing more than to drop everything, to drive the bug out to Regina’s house and confront her, to tell her that she knows, that she hasn’t just gotten away with it after all.

That for once she will face the consequences of her actions.

But there are more pressing matters and she forces herself to swallow back the white hot rage that is nearly blinding her.

Damnit.

Emma bites her lip hard, bringing herself back a moment.  She has to finish this.

“Um, about that…” she mutters, and has to squeeze her eyes shut before she can continue because she refuses to watch the light leave his, not again. “You… died, Graham.”

When she reopens them, he is only staring at her, smile slowly sinking from his face.

“I… died?” he repeats after a stretching, painful moment.

“It’s been six years,” she confirms softly as he sits heavily back down into his seat, dazed.

“Is it just me?”

The question takes her off guard, and she raises an eyebrow.

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“Well I definitely can’t be the only one Regina had the heart of,” he answers, and she feels like a deputy all over again.  Even if she knows far more than he does, she knows she could certainly use his help, no matter how strange it feels to have him suddenly there, suddenly back again.  She is capable of using her resources, no matter how weird.  Or, more appropriately, dead.

“There is only one other, so far,” she tells him carefully.  Iit is selfish but she doesn’t think she wants to get used to him being there, really, not when they know so little. Not when he could be gone all over again at any given moment.  “We’ve been keeping it on the down low but if there are more…”

“There might be a pattern,” he concludes, still very clearly in a slight daze, eyes zoned entirely out.

“Exactly,” she agrees softly and studies his distant expression carefully.   “You don’t have to jump right back into this, Graham.  You were dead.  That’s gotta take some sort of period of adjustment.”

He shakes his head, and seems to simultaneously shake himself out of it.

“Something is up,” he says, and smiles halfheartedly at her. “It’s my job to work it out.”

She swallows the biting was that immediately rises to her tongue, instead forcing herself to nod tensely.

“I’ll get the others to meet us at the station. Just… give me a second.”

When Killian answers the phone she very nearly bursts into tears, swallowing them back three times before she speaks (and it leaves her quite glad she has gone between the racks of books for the privacy to make her call).

“What is wrong, darling?” he asks, because the idiot can even read her damn silence and it only makes her more emotional.

“Nothing,” she lies, somehow forcing the word past the rising tears.  She grasps at the fabric of her shirt above her lower, aching stomach, trying to push back nausea. “Just… will you meet me at the station? With Milah.”

“Are there others?” he asks, and she nearly nods before she remembers he cannot see her.

“There’s one,” she tells him, voice catching. She hurries to speak again, hoping he doesn’t notice. “Just meet me at the station, okay? Be careful.”

“Aye.”

Killian heaves his sword and begins to turn back to his own beast-- catching the Snow Queen’s dangerously sparkling gaze along the way.

“It’d be a shame,” he hears her soft and poisonous voice as he prepares his weapon, as Robin fires his bow again and again, searching for a weak point and doing nothing more than royally enraging the beast.  It lets out a mighty roar, but somehow the Queen’s voice still comes out sharp and clear. “If anything ever happened to your dear pirate.”

She screams his name, frantic, and time stops as he whirls around, sword still at the ready, ready to fight, to take down the threat—it takes him a precious moment to see the bolt of white in midair, halfway to his chest, and one longer to see her.  Blonde curls glistening, bouncing up as she moves on what seems to be instinct, in a moment too sudden to even conjure up her magic.    

It hits her square in the chest just as the facts are coming together in his mind and his heart gives one heaving thud before seeming to stop.

“Swan!”

He moves towards her, eyes blind to everything but her.  Her hands have come to her chest, just above her heart, clutching where the magic has hit.  Falling limply but still staring dazed at her fingers, woven tightly in her shirt.

He throws himself to his knees and catches her limp body just before it hits (bloody road tearing into him but he doesn’t even notice, cannot notice, not with her eyes so wide and green and looking at him now).  She is cold, but makes no move to curl nearer to his warmth, nearly motionless in his arms.  Her eyes, gods, her eyes are wide and though dazed she focuses on him and he finds her hand, gripping it tightly, brushing her hair out of her face gently with his hook.

“Emma,” his voice is soft, pleading.  Her fingers twitch ever so slightly in his, and she blinks, slowly.  And again.

Her eyes do not reopen and his blood suddenly feels as cold as the frigid air.

“Emma!” he is frantic, squeezing her hand tighter in his grasp.  When she still doesn’t respond he drops his head to her chest, presses his cheek above her heart.  He can hear his own heartbeat pounding in his head, drowning out the other noises of the fighting and the magic and the monster… his heartbeat is the only heartbeat he hears.

His breath catches and heat rises in his throat, choking him.

It cannot be real.  It cannot be bloody real.

He tries to say her name again, but it comes out a strangled sob as he untangles his fingers from hers, reaches for her face.  Her lips are dry and just parted, and he strokes shakily across her cheek, running his thumb down to the dimple of her chin and then resting it over her lips, tuning all his senses to the shivering digit, feeling for any movement, any air even if he knows because accepting it, accepting the truth, is simply too bloody unfathomable.  A world without her in it… he feels his body quake and drags her hand from her face, down through her hair before slipping beneath her to grasp her opposite shoulder, pulling her body nearer to him, clinging to her, playing her last cry, her last yell of his name over and over in his mind.

A drop of moisture falls to her cheek, rolling down as if it could be a tear.  In his spinning daze it takes him a moment to realize it is his.

“David got the hat and Granny told us you five had located the Queen and we came as quickly as we could!  Where is she?”

“Gone.”

“What happened? Where’s—“

“Emma?” the shrill voice feels distant, even when a hand clutches his shoulder and Snow is falling to her knees beside him.  Her small hands reach out, touching her heart, her face, searching as frantically as he had.  Then David is there and he knows he should let her go, should  give her up to the grasp of her father but he cannot move his muscles, cannot stop holding her.

Cannot let her go.

A moment later David is grasping Mary Margaret’s shaking form, pulling her up and away from the body and Killian still can only hold her and stare.  

Her face is white, so white he can nearly see the green of her eyes through the translucency of her eyelids.  Her expression is dull and utterly lifeless and every moment he expects a smile to tug at the corner of her lips, or her eyes to flutter open is another icy jolt through his system.

It is only another moment before he feels strong hands on his shoulders.

“She’s gone, mate,” Robin tugs gently at him but he only shrugs him off, sharply, “Killian…”

He tries again to pull him off of her but he shoves him off more frantically, clings to her tighter, and he lets him be.

She is gone.

He weakly lowers his head, allowing it to rest against the soft cotton of her shirt (the one just that morning he’d curled his fingers into to drag her closer in a kiss). His head drops weakly above her heart and his heavy lids sink closed.

“Emma,” her name is soft on his tongue, barely passing his lips, but still the pain stabs deep in his heart.  He plays his fingers down her arm, still so cold, pressing the palm of his hand to the back of hers and tangling his fingers around.  Hers are growing stiff and the pain shoots through him again, choking lump rising further in his throat.

He does not want a world without her. He cannot imagine a day passing that he doesn’t tangle his fingers through her sun kissed curls, where he never sees her bright eyes light up around her son, where she never smirks at him again. She is light and happiness and second chances and life without her… every attempt to fathom it leaves his body heavier and emptier until he never wants to move again.

“Killian.”

At first he is sure he is hearing things.  The wind playing tricks with him.  The voice is hers and it is impossible and the thought kills him as he presses nearer to her.

“Killian, you’re suffocating me.”

The voice is dry and soft but this time he knows it is there and it sits him bolt upright, eyes trained warily on her.  She stirs slightly, head turning in to him, fingers closing weakly around his.

And her eyes flutter open, squinting tiredly up at him.

His heart seems to start beating again, and relief floods him from head to toe, starting his fingers shaking all over again as he pulls them from hers, running them up her arm and across her chest to feel the steady pounding of her heart, before cradling her cheek in stumbling fingers, stroking through her hair and then grasping the back of her head.  He tries to hold her gently but she is alive and she is noticing his tears with wide concern in her eyes and is reaching to brush them away with her fingers, leaving his skin tingling.

“What happened?” her eyes are clouded with confusion but they are open and on him and he can hardly breath.

“Darling…” the strangled word passes his lips as he lifts her slightly, bending to capture her lips roughly in his own.  She slips her fingers down his neck, clutching at his collar, then back up to cradle his cheek.  Every touch leaves him aching and nearly stiff with relief, each something he was certain he was never to feel again.

Snow lets out a strangled cry and the rest are catching on now.  He never wants to let her go again, never wishes to stop kissing her but she means something to everyone and he reluctantly drags back from her, presses a kiss to her cheek, and her nose and her forehead and it takes all his control to stop.  Her mother is there now, cradling her face, and he starts slightly when he feels her fingers tangle into his at her own accord (because it is so precious, every touch, especially now after it had been lost to him for good).

“How is she not dead?” Regina asks, far too bemused for his liking but he lets it brush off his back when Emma squeezes his fingers (she’s smiling, if confused, at her mother as she explains, assuring her that “Yes, I’m alright, everything is alright” and he knows the words are meant for him as well).

“True love,” the soft reply comes from Elsa, and suddenly all eyes are on her.  She shifts slightly, uncomfortable under the pressure, but continues, “Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart.  The queen attempted to hit Hook with her ice, and Emma moved to block him.  To take the blow herself to save his life.  An act of true love.”

Her words clawed at his heart and though he thinks he might just break her if he clutches her any tighter, he does.  Snow is saying something excitedly to David but he doesn’t hear.  She is folding into him again, smiling softly up at him.

“Don’t you ever bloody do something like that again,” he tells her, and his voice audibly quakes and it breaks her smile into something gentler as she reaches to touch his cheek again, still squeezing his fingers with her other hand, just as tight as he is holding her.

“You were supposed to be good at surviving, pirate,” she answers, with the slightest tease in her voice, “You keep your bit and I’ll keep mine.”

“You are ridiculously stubborn, love,” he tells her, and his voice is still shaking but he manages a barking laugh.

“True love,” she corrects.