Once Upon a Time fic: The Silent Saying and Saying
Story Title: The Silent Saying and Saying
Fandom(s): Once Upon a Time
Rating: G
Word Count: 5,933
Summary: She didn’t plan on falling for him. In fact, between the trauma of losing Daniel and Robin and the whole he-looks-exactly-like-her-son’s-stepfather thing, the very notion was so preposterous as to not even occur to her. And then Alice shows up, and he almost dies, and things become a little less clear.
Author’s Notes: H/t to @spartanguard on Tumblr for this most excellent tattoo headcanon, and to @queen-mabs-revenge and @bleebug who (I think) originated most of the Mama Jones headcanons in this. Might at some point write parts of the other 10-plus years they spent together, but for now this is a standalone.
She doesn’t put the pieces together at first. Coming across Drizella had distracted her, diverted her attention, so she hardly thinks about the tower itself until she wends her way back into the camp. She spies Hook engaged in a combat lesson with Henry, grins on both their faces, and her heart sinks into the pit of her stomach as the realization sets in.
That wasn’t just any tower in the woods. It was Alice’s.
Alice’s, and razed to the ground with no sign of the girl herself. Hook had told her of its impenetrable enchantment - blood magic, the strongest magic there is - so if Alice is no longer there … the possible explanations are not good.
It’s easy to deflect, when later he asks her where she’d been, for all she has to do is mention that she’d met Rumple. Since this Hook’s only experiences with any Rumplestiltskin have been antagonistic, it has the desired effect and he goes off to brood. But like most things, it only delays the inevitable. Her escapade that night to try to stop Drizella from killing her mother does not go unnoticed.
“Tiana told me the scouts saw you going off alone to Lady Tremaine’s castle,” Hook chastises the following morning. “You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie,” she says. “I omitted. What I told you about meeting Rumple was the truth.”
“Not the whole truth.” There’s hurt mixed in with the irritation. “Since when do you keep secrets?”
From me, hangs unsaid in the air, and it’s that which convinces her to regale him with the encounter in its entirety.
Well, almost. She needs time to think of a delicate way to break the worst news, now that she can’t avoid it completely, so she carefully leaves out where she’d had the encounter, simply that it was a dilapidated structure. Unfortunately, Hook is too curious for Regina’s own good, made more so by the fact that he knows every single inch of this particular section of woods they’re currently camped in. A boon for the resistance; not so much for Regina.
Wariness drips from his voice when he asks, “Say again, where did you find her? Some random building?”
“Well, it … it wasn’t just a building, exactly,” she admits. “It was a tower.”
Hook instantly seizes upon that. “A tower?”
“Yes.”
The wariness devolves into dread, blood draining from his face. “And this tower that you went to … you say it was in ruins?”
God, what she wouldn’t give to spare him this. “Place was completely destroyed.”
The pure devastation that overwhelms him pricks her eyes with tears. He deserves better than to be kept in the dark, but she wishes she had, if only to not shatter his hope. She has no idea what to say, what to do. Would he even want comfort from her? Her who told him of this, her whose child is with her day in and day out, whom she can hug as tightly and as often as she wishes?
She’s debating her next move when -
“Papa?”
They are no longer alone: A beautiful young woman with tangled curls and a shy smile stands in the clearing, Henry and Ella trailing behind her. Regina doesn’t have to wonder long who the girl is. The resemblance she has to her father is undeniable, as is the love between them.
“Alice?” Hook breathes. “Alice, is it really you?”
“Yes, yes it’s me!” Alice sounds like she’s not sure whether to laugh or cry. “But is it really you? You’re so young.”
“It was magic, I just -” Hook circles her at a distance. “Alice, what happened? How did you escape the tower without me?”
“It’s a long story, Papa, but … well, I’m here now.” She takes a step towards Hook, arms outstretched. “Come here.”
He all but jumps away. “No, no, don’t. You know my heart is poisoned. You can’t come near me.”
“No, it’s okay!” Alice exclaims. “I found a cure. I’ve been shielded.”
“A cure?”
“Yes, Papa.”
Hook breaks into a grin so full of joy and relief that Regina’s never seen its equal. Without any further hesitation, he goes to wrap Alice up in his arms the way he’s longed to do for decades. “I’ve missed you so much.”
No sooner do they embrace than he is flung backwards with such force that Regina can hear the air shift.
She moves before his body hits the ground. “Hook!”
She drops to her knees at his side, hands fluttering over him not entirely sure where to settle. He’s screaming in pain; she doesn’t want to hurt him more. Alice is screaming, too, confused by her purported cure not working, wanting nothing more than her father and the hug they nearly had. As the green lighting up Hook’s chest glows brighter, Alice runs off with a heartbroken sob.
Regina’s eyes remain trained on Hook as she commands Henry and Ella, “Go after her! I’ll take care of Hook.”
How exactly she’ll be able to do that, she doesn’t have a clue. She knows hearts, better than probably anyone alive, but his is beyond her. It’s like there’s a lock on it she can’t pick, whose only key is in Gothel’s hands. Regina had even tried removing his heart to circumvent the curse, the way she did with Marian’s, in the hopes that while it would only be a temporary solution and not without its downsides, at least he’d be able to be around Alice without dying.
For a moment, she’d thought it worked. She’d reached into his chest and closed around his heart - and then it was like her hand was set ablaze, his heart turning white-hot in her grip, and she herself was flung backwards. She’d tried again, once, twice, thrice, making no more progress than the first time, until Hook finally took hold of her arm and told her to stop.
It’s not often that she’s rendered helpless, and she hates it.
With Hook’s chest still glowing green, albeit slightly fainter than when Alice was near, she places her hand on his cheek. “Hey, you still with me?”
“Alice. Where’s Alice?”
“I sent Henry and Ella after her,” Regina says. “They’ll find her, I promise. Now, we need to get you help. Stay here, I’m going to bring the doctor.”
“She can’t do anything for me. This is dark magic, not science, you know that.”
“I’m not just going to sit here and watch you suffer. Don’t move.”
Without waiting for him to reply - frankly, she doubts he could move very far even if he wanted to - she sprints the length of the camp and barges into the medical tent. The doctor is in the middle of stitching up a cut on someone, nearly stabbing the person in surprise at Regina’s abrupt arrival.
“Your Majesty, how can -”
Impatiently, she waves her hand and the patient’s cut is healed. “Hook needs you,” she urges. “Alice came here, she thought her heart was shielded.”
The doctor’s eyes go wide. “Surely they didn’t touch?”
“Yes. Briefly. He’s … I told you, he needs help. Please.”
Barely waiting for her to grab her medical kit, Regina all but drags her to the woods, where Hook has managed to prop himself up against a tree. He looks half a corpse, his skin white as a sheet, his face and chest sheened with sweat, his breath coming in rattling gasps. Regina watches the doctor go through the motions of checking Hook’s pulse and breathing, and palpating his torso for any other wounds.
“Some superficial contusions, from the fall,” the doctor concludes after what feels like hours. She sighs, gravely glancing first at Regina then at Hook. “It’s your heart I’m worried about, captain. It has an irregular beat. From my research and what you’ve told me in the past about this poison, I believe once the impact from this latest wound subsides in a day or so, the irregularity will be manageable. However, I fear if this happens once more, twice if you’re lucky, your heart will give out permanently.”
The diagnosis was expected, nothing any of the rest of them couldn’t have guessed, but hearing it aloud from someone who knows what they’re talking about makes it all the more real. “So there’s nothing you can do?” Hook asks.
“I can give you something for the scrapes, but no, there is nothing I can do for the poison without an antidote. I am truly sorry.”
Hook turns his head away, though not before Regina sees tears welling in his eyes. From pain or misery, she doesn’t know. Perhaps both.
To her, the doctor gives a small bottle of gin (high-proof, from the smell of it) and a few squares of fabric. “For the other injuries.”
The woman is trying to be helpful, so Regina refrains from reminding her that Hook has lived for centuries, during which time he’s been stabbed and sliced and beaten and had his hand cut off. There’s a better chance of him using the supplies for tinder than for himself.
“It’s okay, we’ve got all of that here.”
The doctor opens her mouth to say more, but Regina can’t conceive of anything that could possibly make the situation better, so with a flick of her wrist and a purple puff of smoke, she returns her from whence she came.
Regina walks over to Hook and kneels down beside him. “You should lie down. Here, let me just -”
“I can do it my own bloody self,” he snaps. He’s about as stubborn as she is, so she lets him give it a shot with only a raised eyebrow to show her doubt. Predictably, he only barely pushes himself up off the ground before crying out.
With that, she magicks them both into his tent, finessing off his coat and settling him down on top of the pallet covered in furs where he sleeps. Right as she reaches for a pillow, the tent flap opens to reveal Henry and Ella. She’s not surprised to see them so soon. When it comes to the people he holds dear, Henry doesn’t let anything stand in his way.
Hook looks up at him with the smallest glimmer of hope. “Henry … Henry, lad, did you find Alice?”
“We did.” The finality in his tone tells her Alice isn’t with them. “She wants you to know that she was just trying to protect you. Drizella tricked her into thinking that she was cured.”
“Why would she do that?” Regina asks. It was a cruel trick, but she hadn’t been under the impression that Drizella particularly cared about Hook or Alice.
“So she could poison my heart.”
Regina glances down to see Henry holding Ella’s hand tight in his. Amid all the heartbreak - literally - it seems there still are some rays of light. “I’m glad to see she failed.”
“Um, Hook,” Ella says, bending down to hand him a chess piece, “Alice wanted us to give you this.”
Hook takes it, but his voice is filled only with despair. “It’s the white knight. I gave her this to remember me by.”
“She said she doesn’t need a reminder. You two will be together again. She knows you’ll find a real cure.”
“It was worth it,” he murmurs. “I’d go through that pain a thousand times over just to see her again.”
Aware they have nothing else to offer him, Henry and Ella show themselves out. Hook clutches the knight to his chest, his knuckles going white as though if he squeezes hard enough it will make a cure materialize. A tear falls down his cheek. It all feels too intimate a moment for her to intrude upon, so Regina gets up to let him grieve in privacy.
“No, don’t,” he says. “Stay.”
She sits back down. He doesn’t speak and she’s not sure whether she should. After a while, his eyes flutter shut, and she thinks his tattered body has allowed itself to sleep at last. Except it is a grimace, not peace, that remains on his face, and he keeps shifting around trying to find a comfortable position.
She assumes it’s the aftereffects of the poison, or maybe the emotional anguish, but rather than rubbing at his temples or his chest, it’s his shoulder that appears to affect him.
“Are you okay?” He opens his eyes to look at her with incredulity. “Other than the obvious.”
“I’m all right, love.” She might be convinced, if she weren’t so familiar with the way his alter-ego sounds when he’s pretending. She glares him into submission. “It’s my brace. It’s not meant to be slept in, but I can’t reach it without my heart feeling like it’s going to bloody explode.”
“So let me help,” she says. “You’re not alone anymore, Hook. You have people who care about you.”
There is gratitude behind the nonchalance when he replies, “If the lady insists.”
If it hadn’t been clear before, the immediacy with which he gives in telegraphs how much he’s hurting. With a grunt (and some assistance), he pushes himself into a sitting position. She disengages the hook from its socket and sets it aside, then pulls his shirt over his head to properly access the brace.
It only now dawns on her that despite knowing the other Hook for years, and this Hook for one, she’s never seen him in anything less than a long-sleeved shirt, let alone no shirt at all - and that includes the handful of dalliances they’d had back in the day. Spectacular dalliances though they were, they were too wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am to bother undressing any more than necessary.
Which is all to say that she’s also never seen much more of his brace than the very end of it. She’d never had particular reason to wonder how it was constructed, so she’s intrigued to discover it’s not so much a simple attachment as it is a harness. Bronze buckles secure thick leather straps that band his arm, cross his back, and wrap around both shoulders. It doesn’t look very comfortable, but it does look like it stays in place, which she supposes is what’s most important.
“Start with the ones at the top,” Hook instructs.
“I’m getting there.” She begins to do as bid, unfastening each buckle in sequence. “I didn’t think this would be such a … contraption.”
“What did you think it would be?”
“I don’t know, just tied to your forearm or something.”
“If I did that, it’d fall off the second I tried to use it as more than a letter opener. It has to be anchored.”
“Yeah, well, I never really cared enough to ask the other you,” she defends. “We’re not exactly BFFs.”
“BFFs?”
“Best friends forever.”
She wonders if the Hook back in Storybrooke has retained the same setup as this one, or whether the availability of modern technology has led him to make some improvements. For his sake, she hopes the latter: As she pulls the brace off fully, she sees both shoulders and his left arm are worn red, and his skin has imprints where the straps had dug in.
When he twists a little to get the kinks out of his arms, it allows her a glimpse of his back. An unexpected wave of revulsion washes over her as she takes in the latticework of jagged, raised scars that mar it. A handful are various severities of sword or knife slashes, and one or two from bullets, all standard fare for a pirate who’s lived as long as he has. The others, however …
She’d known his father had sold him and his brother into slavery, that he’d spent years on a ship serving a ruthless captain, and that his smart mouth got him in trouble as often as out of it, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d have been whipped. From the look of it, a lot more than once. She has half a mind to ask him about that part of his life, to learn more, but she has a feeling “So, what was it like to be horribly abused?” might not be the best conversation starter.
She opts instead for, “Do you need anything else?”
“Actually, there’s a tin of salve on my sea chest,” he says, nodding in its direction. “Could you …?”
“Why bother with medieval Bengay when I have magic?” she laughs.
“I don’t know what that is, but I think I’ve had enough magic for one day.”
Swallowing her objection to having healing magic conflated with heart-poisoning magic, she retrieves the tin he requested and unscrews the lid. The viscous substance inside is pungent but not particularly unpleasant, smelling mostly of cayenne and menthol with a hint of rosemary. She wonders if it actually works.
“I didn’t know you had to do all this every night,” she comments.
“Not every night. Usually only when I strain the straps, like after a fight.”
“Or being supernaturally thrown fifty feet across the forest?”
“Aye, that would do it.”
She scoops out a dollop of the salve and begins to massage it into his sore skin and muscles, eliciting a soft exhalation of relief. She’s oddly touched that he trusts her so implicitly. That he has no qualms about letting her see him at his most vulnerable, nor about showing weakness and accepting her help. It baffles her, sometimes, that she feels such an ease between them. It had taken her an eternity to consider the Hook back in Storybrooke anything more than a persistent thorn in her side, let alone a friend.
Her fingers begin tingling, prompting her to ask, “What is this stuff?”
“I made it,” he answers. “Alice used to run me ragged with all her energy, so eventually I threw a few things together from my travels and wound up with that. Just don’t get it in your eyes. Trust me.”
“Noted.”
Regina goes to finish up with the salve when a mark catches her eye. No, not a mark, a tattoo. Not the one on his right wrist, the heart-and-dagger remembrance of Milah that she’s seen dozens of times on both Hooks, nor any of the other four tattoos that decorate his body. This one is on his left wrist, apparently having been hidden beneath his brace all this time.
She knows the other Hook doesn’t have a tattoo there, as he’d detailed just the five, which means this must have been done after the divergence. Her interest piqued, she angles his arm towards her to see it better.
Immediately, her breath hitches in her throat. Right there, emblazoned in permanent ink, is a lion.
Surely there must be other people in the world who have such tattoos. Surely this is just a coincidence. But like an oncoming train she can’t avoid, Tinker Bell’s words from so long ago force themselves into her brain.
All the pain in your past will be just that. The past. Look, there he is. The guy with the lion tattoo.
Mistaking her stupefaction for mere curiosity, he explains with a bittersweet smile, “It’s a replica of a picture Alice drew there once. She went through an animal phase when she was six and read that lions represent courage and bravery. She said I was the bravest person she knew and that everyone else should know, too. She was so proud of her drawing, and me, that I had it done for real the next time I was in town. Fortunately, it stayed put when Lady Tremaine restored my youthful appearance.”
Although the design is simplistic, it’s quite good for having been drawn by a young child. More importantly, it was clearly drawn with love. What a comfort it must be for him to always have a reminder of Alice no matter where he goes or what happens to him.
Not so much a comfort for Regina at the moment.
“You’re a good dad, Hook.” His smile falters at that, no doubt once more blaming himself rather than Gothel for the reason his daughter can’t be by his side. “You may not believe it, but I do. And so does Alice.”
“Maybe. Doesn’t make much of a difference.”
Wincing, he lays himself back down on the bed and pulls a blanket over top of himself, hiding his tattoo from view.
Pixie dust doesn’t lie. This is your chance at love and happiness.
She remembers each word like it was only yesterday the fairy had said them. And Tinker Bell had been right: It took thirty years and a few thousand missteps, but she and Robin had found their way to each other. Her true love. Her soulmate. The guy with the lion tattoo had brought her love and happiness, as promised.
Except then he’d died. Counter to Snow and David, or Ella and Thomas, or Abigail and Frederick, or any of the rest, her true love had been taken from her. Twice. Before Robin held her entire heart, her body, her soul, there was Daniel, and he, too, had been ripped from her arms.
Just like Milah.
She’s witnessed the depth of the other Hook’s love for Emma, yet from the way both versions have spoken of Milah, it’s clear he loved her equally as much. How not, when he had spent a decade with her, married in all but name, then centuries trying to avenge her murder?
Regina knows the feeling well.
It makes her wonder, even though she wishes it didn’t, whether love and soulmates are different words for the same thing, or whether her love for Daniel was in truth somehow lesser-than. That Robin was it for her, and she is destined to spend the rest of her days empty and alone because the one person she was supposed to be with was killed. That if she did manage to find love with someone else, it, too, would be lesser-than. Is Hook supposed to be alone as well because the same thing had happened to his soulmate?
Or can you have more than one?
Regina considers the pirate in front of her. Even if multiple soulmates are possible, is that tattoo modeled after a random doodle of Alice’s supposed to mean he’s hers?
Her heart thuds in her chest at the prospect. Not only does Robin’s absence continue to pain her every single day, but Killian Jones is supposed to be Emma’s. Killian Jones is supposed to be someone Regina tolerates, like a bratty brother. Killian Jones is supposed to be no one special to her.
Which he is - the Killian Jones living in Storybrooke is all of those things.
But he’s also not - this Killian Jones is none of those things.
This one couldn’t care less about Emma beyond being grateful she’d saved his life. This one Regina actually enjoys being around. This one is an imperfect single parent with a rough past and a mountain of regrets, same as her. Someone she can meet on equal footing. Someone who understands.
“Hook,” she begins, not entirely sure what she’s going to say, “do you -”
The sound of his soft snoring cuts her off. She sighs, blows out the candles, and leaves him to his rest.
Rest that Regina is pretty damn certain will not come to her tonight.
She half-expects him to still be asleep by the time she gets up, what with how spent he’d been the night before. But true to form, he’s the first to rise. She finds him where he always is at this hour, prodding the fire to bring a kettle of water to boil for tea.
“Hey,” she says when he glances up at her approach. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. Better than yesterday, anyway.” He fidgets with his rings, as he is wont to do when he’s out of sorts. “Listen, I want to thank you for what you did.”
“For playing nursemaid?”
“For everything.” He coaxes the fire a little more. “I’m just not used to people …”
“Helping? Killian, you haven’t been able to get within a few yards of your daughter for almost thirty-five years and just when you thought it was over, you find out it’s not. If that were me with Henry, I don’t think I’d ever get out of bed.”
“Still. Thank you.”
“Anytime.” Feeling the need to lighten the mood, she quips, “I think you owe me one now, though.”
“Is that so? Well, I am ever at your service, my queen.” Hook dips into an exaggerated bow, then takes her hand and kisses it.
The gesture is perfectly benign. Chaste, even. Nothing Charming or Thomas wouldn’t do - or, indeed, the other Hook - for queen and peasant alike. In fact, they have done it, often. So it’s utterly stupid to feel her face warm when his lips brush her knuckles as he peers up at her through dark lashes. It’s stupid to notice how much the black powder he rims his eyes with brings out the blue.
Most of all, it’s stupid that she can’t get his damn tattoo out of her head, what it might mean.
To her relief, the water in the teakettle comes to a crackling boil, pulling her out of her burgeoning spiral. Hook quickly removes the kettle from the fire, drops a hearty pinch of tea leaves from a sachet into his cup, then pours the water over them. He repeats the process with a second cup and hands it to her.
“Thank you.” She blows on the drink to cool it then takes a sip. As ever, it’s delicious. She’d asked him once what sort of tea leaves he uses, but he has so far refused to divulge.
“I caught what you said a moment ago, by the way,” he says, taking a seat beside her. “I believe that’s the first time you’ve used my real name.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, of course it’s not the first time.” She pauses, thinking back. He might be right. After all, to date she’s pretty confident she could count on one, maybe two, hands how many times she’s done so for his other self.
“Hardly anyone calls me that anymore,” he muses. “Not even Smee, usually. ‘Hook’ is too … sensational.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I guess I do. It serves my reputation well and has been part of me for so long it would probably feel strange to drop it entirely.” Belying his words, he looks down at his metal appendage with disdain. “But it’s nice to hear something else every once in a while.”
“Are you asking me to call you Killian now?”
He shrugs. “You said it, not me.”
She mulls it over. It still catches her off-guard how different the two men are despite sharing the same face and most of the same history. She would find it far too bizarre to regularly call the other Hook Killian, and anyway, he’d think she’d gone mad if she did. Yet it feels perfectly suitable for this one.
“All right,” she agrees. “Can’t promise a perfect record, but I’ll do my best. Killian.”
“Good.” His smile is soft, almost bashful. “My mother chose it, you know. She lost a brother and named me for him.”
“Your mother … she was Alice’s namesake?”
“Aye. Ailís. Her name was Ailís.” He inclines his head towards the paddock where the camp’s horses have been turned out. “She was more horse than woman, my father always said. She taught my brother and me to ride.”
“I didn’t know you could ride.” It’s hard to imagine someone so closely tied to captaining a ship on the high seas also being skilled at captaining a steed on dry land.
“You’ve seen me do it.”
“No, I’ve seen you remain upright in a saddle while the horse walked. That doesn’t count.”
“The lady dare impugn?”
“Perhaps you should prove me wrong, then. If you’re up to it.”
“Tiana did forbid me to do anything that’s more strenuous than basket-weaving,” he says. “But I suppose what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
They do not go unnoticed through the camp, as high-profile as they are within the resistance leading two of the finest horses - him, a black gelding, her a chestnut mare - but no one questions any of it.
As soon as they’re clear of the camp, they both mount up and Regina looks over at him. “Let’s see what you’re made of, pirate.”
With that, they both dig their heels into their horses’ flanks. A sense of peace flows through her as she rides, the rolling rhythm of a canter and powerful breaths of the beast beneath her bringing her back to the days where she was most carefree. The terrain only adds to the tranquility, the woods quickly opening up into seemingly endless fields dotted with wildflowers.
To her surprise, Killian is keeping pace, more or less, though by her reckoning he’s not as comfortable in his posture as she is, telling her it’s been quite some time since last he’d ridden at any appreciable speed or distance. Nevertheless, when he notices her stare he meets it, and the smile on his face is genuine.
She loses track of time, contentedly in tune with her mount as they get into a groove of trading off cantering and trotting through the colorful grasses. Eventually, she decides the horses are due for a rest, and gives Killian a nod. They gradually bring the horses back down to a walk, stopping at a creek a short distance from a grove of fruit trees.
“I concede defeat,” Regina says. “You’re a halfway decent rider.”
“Halfway decent?” Killian objects. “I do believe I was alongside you the whole time, love.”
She raises her chin imperiously. “I noticed no such thing.”
Killian rolls his eyes. “Of course.”
Once the horses are adequately watered and tied off, she and Killian sit at the base of a tree, gazing out at the horizon. Killian reaches up to one of the lower branches and wryly tosses her an apple.
“Your mother was a good teacher,” she comments. “I’m impressed.”
Killian takes a melancholy bite of his apple. “I don’t have anything tangible of hers left, so I have to hold onto the intangible things.”
“Such as?”
“Such as … she had hair the color of fire, my mother. I take after my father in looks, and when I was young, I was afraid there wouldn’t be anything of her in me. Turns out I just had to wait until I could grow a beard.” She can see it now, the reddish tint that makes his beard so much lighter than his hair. In the sun, it’s almost orange. “I remember her language, too. Over the years, I wrote everything down so I wouldn’t lose it.”
“Her language?” Regina asks, fascinated. She’d known he spoke Ancient Greek, courtesy of the Navy, and Latin as well (not that either were called as such in the Enchanted Forest), but she hadn’t been aware of any others. “What language is that?”
“I don’t know what it’s called in your Land Without Magic, but here, it’s called Gaeilge.”
He says something she has no hope of understanding. Despite the meaning being lost on her, the cadence of it is beautiful, and she realizes it’s the same language he’s used before when letting out a particularly vehement curse. It sounds far nicer coming from his mouth now than when used as an expletive. She’s not heard anything quite like it.
“I’m not familiar,” she says. “Maybe you can show me when we get back to camp. I have an ear for languages. Henry, too.”
Killian lets out a short, sharp laugh. “I would certainly love to see you try.”
“Now who’s impugning whom?”
“Ah, that would be me.”
His eyes twinkle with mirth. It’s nice, seeing him light like this, even if just for a few moments, and she’s glad that she’s the one who was able to bring it out of him. Her own good humor, however, begins to fade when she notices him toying absently with a loose thread on his left sleeve.
Because she knows that right beneath that sleeve, beneath the brace, lies the tattoo she’d spotted last night. The lion tattoo.
She wants to distance herself from him, from it, yet she can’t bring herself to move. Somewhere along the way - hell if she knows when, why, or how - he’d become one of her closest confidants. Someone who had patched her up more than once, who taught her to properly and expertly wield a sword, who can empathize, not just sympathize, with every hardship she’d endured raising a child alone.
She has other friends here, no doubt, and still others back in Storybrooke. But the thought of losing him, seeing the hurt on his face not only for the action but because she certainly could never tell him the real reason why, knocks the wind out of her. It hadn’t hit her until this very minute just how much he’d come to mean to her.
He nudges her with his shoulder to get her to look at him. “You’ve gone quiet. What’s in your head?”
“You.”
He startles. “Me?”
For one wild moment, she considers confessing everything. And she would, if only it weren’t him who has the tattoo in question. She’s not sure which reaction would be worse: for him to take it well, or for him to take it poorly. Above all, she’s not ready for him to inevitably ask her what her opinion is. Whether she’s pushing back so hard because it’s truly ridiculous, or …
In the end, she cowers. “You and Alice, I mean. I hope I’m there to see you two do things like this. Horseback riding, sailing, whatever.”
“Why wouldn’t you be there?” he frowns.
“Just … you’ll probably want to go do your own thing after you’re reunited.”
“For a queen, you think awfully little of yourself.” He takes her hand. “Of course you’ll be there.”
She looks down at their joined hands. It means nothing. They’ve held hands before, on the occasion or two they thought they’d found a lead on a cure only for it to wither into nothing, or when either of them have been injured on a mission and needed fixing. It’s what friends do, no different than Ella and Tiana.
So why, all of a sudden, does it feel different?
Like a bout of tinnitus, it niggles in her mind - the guy with the lion tattoo; pixie dust never lies; love and happiness - but she has had a lifetime of practice suppressing things, particularly things that require emotional reflection. In fact, she’d done it when she’d first seen Robin’s tattoo. She’d run away from him, too, and dragged Tink down with her.
She lets herself fall into the same pattern now, drilling a mantra into herself: It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a tattoo, a tribute to Alice. It’s nothing more than a coincidence.
Whether multiple soulmates are possible or not, it doesn’t matter. He’s someone else’s that he simply hasn’t met yet, or maybe he’s no one’s at all, but regardless, he is not hers. Therefore, she feels no compunction about keeping their hands laced as their banter resumes.
The status quo goes on just as it used to without a fuss. If she becomes aware of his presence in a way she hadn’t before, if her eye keeps getting drawn to the sparring ring when he’s in it, if her worry burrows deeper when they go off on missions, well. It’s just because they’ve become better friends, and that’s it.
Really.
Fandom(s): Once Upon a Time
Rating: G
Word Count: 5,933
Summary: She didn’t plan on falling for him. In fact, between the trauma of losing Daniel and Robin and the whole he-looks-exactly-like-her-son’s-stepfather thing, the very notion was so preposterous as to not even occur to her. And then Alice shows up, and he almost dies, and things become a little less clear.
Author’s Notes: H/t to @spartanguard on Tumblr for this most excellent tattoo headcanon, and to @queen-mabs-revenge and @bleebug who (I think) originated most of the Mama Jones headcanons in this. Might at some point write parts of the other 10-plus years they spent together, but for now this is a standalone.
She doesn’t put the pieces together at first. Coming across Drizella had distracted her, diverted her attention, so she hardly thinks about the tower itself until she wends her way back into the camp. She spies Hook engaged in a combat lesson with Henry, grins on both their faces, and her heart sinks into the pit of her stomach as the realization sets in.
That wasn’t just any tower in the woods. It was Alice’s.
Alice’s, and razed to the ground with no sign of the girl herself. Hook had told her of its impenetrable enchantment - blood magic, the strongest magic there is - so if Alice is no longer there … the possible explanations are not good.
It’s easy to deflect, when later he asks her where she’d been, for all she has to do is mention that she’d met Rumple. Since this Hook’s only experiences with any Rumplestiltskin have been antagonistic, it has the desired effect and he goes off to brood. But like most things, it only delays the inevitable. Her escapade that night to try to stop Drizella from killing her mother does not go unnoticed.
“Tiana told me the scouts saw you going off alone to Lady Tremaine’s castle,” Hook chastises the following morning. “You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie,” she says. “I omitted. What I told you about meeting Rumple was the truth.”
“Not the whole truth.” There’s hurt mixed in with the irritation. “Since when do you keep secrets?”
From me, hangs unsaid in the air, and it’s that which convinces her to regale him with the encounter in its entirety.
Well, almost. She needs time to think of a delicate way to break the worst news, now that she can’t avoid it completely, so she carefully leaves out where she’d had the encounter, simply that it was a dilapidated structure. Unfortunately, Hook is too curious for Regina’s own good, made more so by the fact that he knows every single inch of this particular section of woods they’re currently camped in. A boon for the resistance; not so much for Regina.
Wariness drips from his voice when he asks, “Say again, where did you find her? Some random building?”
“Well, it … it wasn’t just a building, exactly,” she admits. “It was a tower.”
Hook instantly seizes upon that. “A tower?”
“Yes.”
The wariness devolves into dread, blood draining from his face. “And this tower that you went to … you say it was in ruins?”
God, what she wouldn’t give to spare him this. “Place was completely destroyed.”
The pure devastation that overwhelms him pricks her eyes with tears. He deserves better than to be kept in the dark, but she wishes she had, if only to not shatter his hope. She has no idea what to say, what to do. Would he even want comfort from her? Her who told him of this, her whose child is with her day in and day out, whom she can hug as tightly and as often as she wishes?
She’s debating her next move when -
“Papa?”
They are no longer alone: A beautiful young woman with tangled curls and a shy smile stands in the clearing, Henry and Ella trailing behind her. Regina doesn’t have to wonder long who the girl is. The resemblance she has to her father is undeniable, as is the love between them.
“Alice?” Hook breathes. “Alice, is it really you?”
“Yes, yes it’s me!” Alice sounds like she’s not sure whether to laugh or cry. “But is it really you? You’re so young.”
“It was magic, I just -” Hook circles her at a distance. “Alice, what happened? How did you escape the tower without me?”
“It’s a long story, Papa, but … well, I’m here now.” She takes a step towards Hook, arms outstretched. “Come here.”
He all but jumps away. “No, no, don’t. You know my heart is poisoned. You can’t come near me.”
“No, it’s okay!” Alice exclaims. “I found a cure. I’ve been shielded.”
“A cure?”
“Yes, Papa.”
Hook breaks into a grin so full of joy and relief that Regina’s never seen its equal. Without any further hesitation, he goes to wrap Alice up in his arms the way he’s longed to do for decades. “I’ve missed you so much.”
No sooner do they embrace than he is flung backwards with such force that Regina can hear the air shift.
She moves before his body hits the ground. “Hook!”
She drops to her knees at his side, hands fluttering over him not entirely sure where to settle. He’s screaming in pain; she doesn’t want to hurt him more. Alice is screaming, too, confused by her purported cure not working, wanting nothing more than her father and the hug they nearly had. As the green lighting up Hook’s chest glows brighter, Alice runs off with a heartbroken sob.
Regina’s eyes remain trained on Hook as she commands Henry and Ella, “Go after her! I’ll take care of Hook.”
How exactly she’ll be able to do that, she doesn’t have a clue. She knows hearts, better than probably anyone alive, but his is beyond her. It’s like there’s a lock on it she can’t pick, whose only key is in Gothel’s hands. Regina had even tried removing his heart to circumvent the curse, the way she did with Marian’s, in the hopes that while it would only be a temporary solution and not without its downsides, at least he’d be able to be around Alice without dying.
For a moment, she’d thought it worked. She’d reached into his chest and closed around his heart - and then it was like her hand was set ablaze, his heart turning white-hot in her grip, and she herself was flung backwards. She’d tried again, once, twice, thrice, making no more progress than the first time, until Hook finally took hold of her arm and told her to stop.
It’s not often that she’s rendered helpless, and she hates it.
With Hook’s chest still glowing green, albeit slightly fainter than when Alice was near, she places her hand on his cheek. “Hey, you still with me?”
“Alice. Where’s Alice?”
“I sent Henry and Ella after her,” Regina says. “They’ll find her, I promise. Now, we need to get you help. Stay here, I’m going to bring the doctor.”
“She can’t do anything for me. This is dark magic, not science, you know that.”
“I’m not just going to sit here and watch you suffer. Don’t move.”
Without waiting for him to reply - frankly, she doubts he could move very far even if he wanted to - she sprints the length of the camp and barges into the medical tent. The doctor is in the middle of stitching up a cut on someone, nearly stabbing the person in surprise at Regina’s abrupt arrival.
“Your Majesty, how can -”
Impatiently, she waves her hand and the patient’s cut is healed. “Hook needs you,” she urges. “Alice came here, she thought her heart was shielded.”
The doctor’s eyes go wide. “Surely they didn’t touch?”
“Yes. Briefly. He’s … I told you, he needs help. Please.”
Barely waiting for her to grab her medical kit, Regina all but drags her to the woods, where Hook has managed to prop himself up against a tree. He looks half a corpse, his skin white as a sheet, his face and chest sheened with sweat, his breath coming in rattling gasps. Regina watches the doctor go through the motions of checking Hook’s pulse and breathing, and palpating his torso for any other wounds.
“Some superficial contusions, from the fall,” the doctor concludes after what feels like hours. She sighs, gravely glancing first at Regina then at Hook. “It’s your heart I’m worried about, captain. It has an irregular beat. From my research and what you’ve told me in the past about this poison, I believe once the impact from this latest wound subsides in a day or so, the irregularity will be manageable. However, I fear if this happens once more, twice if you’re lucky, your heart will give out permanently.”
The diagnosis was expected, nothing any of the rest of them couldn’t have guessed, but hearing it aloud from someone who knows what they’re talking about makes it all the more real. “So there’s nothing you can do?” Hook asks.
“I can give you something for the scrapes, but no, there is nothing I can do for the poison without an antidote. I am truly sorry.”
Hook turns his head away, though not before Regina sees tears welling in his eyes. From pain or misery, she doesn’t know. Perhaps both.
To her, the doctor gives a small bottle of gin (high-proof, from the smell of it) and a few squares of fabric. “For the other injuries.”
The woman is trying to be helpful, so Regina refrains from reminding her that Hook has lived for centuries, during which time he’s been stabbed and sliced and beaten and had his hand cut off. There’s a better chance of him using the supplies for tinder than for himself.
“It’s okay, we’ve got all of that here.”
The doctor opens her mouth to say more, but Regina can’t conceive of anything that could possibly make the situation better, so with a flick of her wrist and a purple puff of smoke, she returns her from whence she came.
Regina walks over to Hook and kneels down beside him. “You should lie down. Here, let me just -”
“I can do it my own bloody self,” he snaps. He’s about as stubborn as she is, so she lets him give it a shot with only a raised eyebrow to show her doubt. Predictably, he only barely pushes himself up off the ground before crying out.
With that, she magicks them both into his tent, finessing off his coat and settling him down on top of the pallet covered in furs where he sleeps. Right as she reaches for a pillow, the tent flap opens to reveal Henry and Ella. She’s not surprised to see them so soon. When it comes to the people he holds dear, Henry doesn’t let anything stand in his way.
Hook looks up at him with the smallest glimmer of hope. “Henry … Henry, lad, did you find Alice?”
“We did.” The finality in his tone tells her Alice isn’t with them. “She wants you to know that she was just trying to protect you. Drizella tricked her into thinking that she was cured.”
“Why would she do that?” Regina asks. It was a cruel trick, but she hadn’t been under the impression that Drizella particularly cared about Hook or Alice.
“So she could poison my heart.”
Regina glances down to see Henry holding Ella’s hand tight in his. Amid all the heartbreak - literally - it seems there still are some rays of light. “I’m glad to see she failed.”
“Um, Hook,” Ella says, bending down to hand him a chess piece, “Alice wanted us to give you this.”
Hook takes it, but his voice is filled only with despair. “It’s the white knight. I gave her this to remember me by.”
“She said she doesn’t need a reminder. You two will be together again. She knows you’ll find a real cure.”
“It was worth it,” he murmurs. “I’d go through that pain a thousand times over just to see her again.”
Aware they have nothing else to offer him, Henry and Ella show themselves out. Hook clutches the knight to his chest, his knuckles going white as though if he squeezes hard enough it will make a cure materialize. A tear falls down his cheek. It all feels too intimate a moment for her to intrude upon, so Regina gets up to let him grieve in privacy.
“No, don’t,” he says. “Stay.”
She sits back down. He doesn’t speak and she’s not sure whether she should. After a while, his eyes flutter shut, and she thinks his tattered body has allowed itself to sleep at last. Except it is a grimace, not peace, that remains on his face, and he keeps shifting around trying to find a comfortable position.
She assumes it’s the aftereffects of the poison, or maybe the emotional anguish, but rather than rubbing at his temples or his chest, it’s his shoulder that appears to affect him.
“Are you okay?” He opens his eyes to look at her with incredulity. “Other than the obvious.”
“I’m all right, love.” She might be convinced, if she weren’t so familiar with the way his alter-ego sounds when he’s pretending. She glares him into submission. “It’s my brace. It’s not meant to be slept in, but I can’t reach it without my heart feeling like it’s going to bloody explode.”
“So let me help,” she says. “You’re not alone anymore, Hook. You have people who care about you.”
There is gratitude behind the nonchalance when he replies, “If the lady insists.”
If it hadn’t been clear before, the immediacy with which he gives in telegraphs how much he’s hurting. With a grunt (and some assistance), he pushes himself into a sitting position. She disengages the hook from its socket and sets it aside, then pulls his shirt over his head to properly access the brace.
It only now dawns on her that despite knowing the other Hook for years, and this Hook for one, she’s never seen him in anything less than a long-sleeved shirt, let alone no shirt at all - and that includes the handful of dalliances they’d had back in the day. Spectacular dalliances though they were, they were too wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am to bother undressing any more than necessary.
Which is all to say that she’s also never seen much more of his brace than the very end of it. She’d never had particular reason to wonder how it was constructed, so she’s intrigued to discover it’s not so much a simple attachment as it is a harness. Bronze buckles secure thick leather straps that band his arm, cross his back, and wrap around both shoulders. It doesn’t look very comfortable, but it does look like it stays in place, which she supposes is what’s most important.
“Start with the ones at the top,” Hook instructs.
“I’m getting there.” She begins to do as bid, unfastening each buckle in sequence. “I didn’t think this would be such a … contraption.”
“What did you think it would be?”
“I don’t know, just tied to your forearm or something.”
“If I did that, it’d fall off the second I tried to use it as more than a letter opener. It has to be anchored.”
“Yeah, well, I never really cared enough to ask the other you,” she defends. “We’re not exactly BFFs.”
“BFFs?”
“Best friends forever.”
She wonders if the Hook back in Storybrooke has retained the same setup as this one, or whether the availability of modern technology has led him to make some improvements. For his sake, she hopes the latter: As she pulls the brace off fully, she sees both shoulders and his left arm are worn red, and his skin has imprints where the straps had dug in.
When he twists a little to get the kinks out of his arms, it allows her a glimpse of his back. An unexpected wave of revulsion washes over her as she takes in the latticework of jagged, raised scars that mar it. A handful are various severities of sword or knife slashes, and one or two from bullets, all standard fare for a pirate who’s lived as long as he has. The others, however …
She’d known his father had sold him and his brother into slavery, that he’d spent years on a ship serving a ruthless captain, and that his smart mouth got him in trouble as often as out of it, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d have been whipped. From the look of it, a lot more than once. She has half a mind to ask him about that part of his life, to learn more, but she has a feeling “So, what was it like to be horribly abused?” might not be the best conversation starter.
She opts instead for, “Do you need anything else?”
“Actually, there’s a tin of salve on my sea chest,” he says, nodding in its direction. “Could you …?”
“Why bother with medieval Bengay when I have magic?” she laughs.
“I don’t know what that is, but I think I’ve had enough magic for one day.”
Swallowing her objection to having healing magic conflated with heart-poisoning magic, she retrieves the tin he requested and unscrews the lid. The viscous substance inside is pungent but not particularly unpleasant, smelling mostly of cayenne and menthol with a hint of rosemary. She wonders if it actually works.
“I didn’t know you had to do all this every night,” she comments.
“Not every night. Usually only when I strain the straps, like after a fight.”
“Or being supernaturally thrown fifty feet across the forest?”
“Aye, that would do it.”
She scoops out a dollop of the salve and begins to massage it into his sore skin and muscles, eliciting a soft exhalation of relief. She’s oddly touched that he trusts her so implicitly. That he has no qualms about letting her see him at his most vulnerable, nor about showing weakness and accepting her help. It baffles her, sometimes, that she feels such an ease between them. It had taken her an eternity to consider the Hook back in Storybrooke anything more than a persistent thorn in her side, let alone a friend.
Her fingers begin tingling, prompting her to ask, “What is this stuff?”
“I made it,” he answers. “Alice used to run me ragged with all her energy, so eventually I threw a few things together from my travels and wound up with that. Just don’t get it in your eyes. Trust me.”
“Noted.”
Regina goes to finish up with the salve when a mark catches her eye. No, not a mark, a tattoo. Not the one on his right wrist, the heart-and-dagger remembrance of Milah that she’s seen dozens of times on both Hooks, nor any of the other four tattoos that decorate his body. This one is on his left wrist, apparently having been hidden beneath his brace all this time.
She knows the other Hook doesn’t have a tattoo there, as he’d detailed just the five, which means this must have been done after the divergence. Her interest piqued, she angles his arm towards her to see it better.
Immediately, her breath hitches in her throat. Right there, emblazoned in permanent ink, is a lion.
Surely there must be other people in the world who have such tattoos. Surely this is just a coincidence. But like an oncoming train she can’t avoid, Tinker Bell’s words from so long ago force themselves into her brain.
All the pain in your past will be just that. The past. Look, there he is. The guy with the lion tattoo.
Mistaking her stupefaction for mere curiosity, he explains with a bittersweet smile, “It’s a replica of a picture Alice drew there once. She went through an animal phase when she was six and read that lions represent courage and bravery. She said I was the bravest person she knew and that everyone else should know, too. She was so proud of her drawing, and me, that I had it done for real the next time I was in town. Fortunately, it stayed put when Lady Tremaine restored my youthful appearance.”
Although the design is simplistic, it’s quite good for having been drawn by a young child. More importantly, it was clearly drawn with love. What a comfort it must be for him to always have a reminder of Alice no matter where he goes or what happens to him.
Not so much a comfort for Regina at the moment.
“You’re a good dad, Hook.” His smile falters at that, no doubt once more blaming himself rather than Gothel for the reason his daughter can’t be by his side. “You may not believe it, but I do. And so does Alice.”
“Maybe. Doesn’t make much of a difference.”
Wincing, he lays himself back down on the bed and pulls a blanket over top of himself, hiding his tattoo from view.
Pixie dust doesn’t lie. This is your chance at love and happiness.
She remembers each word like it was only yesterday the fairy had said them. And Tinker Bell had been right: It took thirty years and a few thousand missteps, but she and Robin had found their way to each other. Her true love. Her soulmate. The guy with the lion tattoo had brought her love and happiness, as promised.
Except then he’d died. Counter to Snow and David, or Ella and Thomas, or Abigail and Frederick, or any of the rest, her true love had been taken from her. Twice. Before Robin held her entire heart, her body, her soul, there was Daniel, and he, too, had been ripped from her arms.
Just like Milah.
She’s witnessed the depth of the other Hook’s love for Emma, yet from the way both versions have spoken of Milah, it’s clear he loved her equally as much. How not, when he had spent a decade with her, married in all but name, then centuries trying to avenge her murder?
Regina knows the feeling well.
It makes her wonder, even though she wishes it didn’t, whether love and soulmates are different words for the same thing, or whether her love for Daniel was in truth somehow lesser-than. That Robin was it for her, and she is destined to spend the rest of her days empty and alone because the one person she was supposed to be with was killed. That if she did manage to find love with someone else, it, too, would be lesser-than. Is Hook supposed to be alone as well because the same thing had happened to his soulmate?
Or can you have more than one?
Regina considers the pirate in front of her. Even if multiple soulmates are possible, is that tattoo modeled after a random doodle of Alice’s supposed to mean he’s hers?
Her heart thuds in her chest at the prospect. Not only does Robin’s absence continue to pain her every single day, but Killian Jones is supposed to be Emma’s. Killian Jones is supposed to be someone Regina tolerates, like a bratty brother. Killian Jones is supposed to be no one special to her.
Which he is - the Killian Jones living in Storybrooke is all of those things.
But he’s also not - this Killian Jones is none of those things.
This one couldn’t care less about Emma beyond being grateful she’d saved his life. This one Regina actually enjoys being around. This one is an imperfect single parent with a rough past and a mountain of regrets, same as her. Someone she can meet on equal footing. Someone who understands.
“Hook,” she begins, not entirely sure what she’s going to say, “do you -”
The sound of his soft snoring cuts her off. She sighs, blows out the candles, and leaves him to his rest.
Rest that Regina is pretty damn certain will not come to her tonight.
She half-expects him to still be asleep by the time she gets up, what with how spent he’d been the night before. But true to form, he’s the first to rise. She finds him where he always is at this hour, prodding the fire to bring a kettle of water to boil for tea.
“Hey,” she says when he glances up at her approach. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. Better than yesterday, anyway.” He fidgets with his rings, as he is wont to do when he’s out of sorts. “Listen, I want to thank you for what you did.”
“For playing nursemaid?”
“For everything.” He coaxes the fire a little more. “I’m just not used to people …”
“Helping? Killian, you haven’t been able to get within a few yards of your daughter for almost thirty-five years and just when you thought it was over, you find out it’s not. If that were me with Henry, I don’t think I’d ever get out of bed.”
“Still. Thank you.”
“Anytime.” Feeling the need to lighten the mood, she quips, “I think you owe me one now, though.”
“Is that so? Well, I am ever at your service, my queen.” Hook dips into an exaggerated bow, then takes her hand and kisses it.
The gesture is perfectly benign. Chaste, even. Nothing Charming or Thomas wouldn’t do - or, indeed, the other Hook - for queen and peasant alike. In fact, they have done it, often. So it’s utterly stupid to feel her face warm when his lips brush her knuckles as he peers up at her through dark lashes. It’s stupid to notice how much the black powder he rims his eyes with brings out the blue.
Most of all, it’s stupid that she can’t get his damn tattoo out of her head, what it might mean.
To her relief, the water in the teakettle comes to a crackling boil, pulling her out of her burgeoning spiral. Hook quickly removes the kettle from the fire, drops a hearty pinch of tea leaves from a sachet into his cup, then pours the water over them. He repeats the process with a second cup and hands it to her.
“Thank you.” She blows on the drink to cool it then takes a sip. As ever, it’s delicious. She’d asked him once what sort of tea leaves he uses, but he has so far refused to divulge.
“I caught what you said a moment ago, by the way,” he says, taking a seat beside her. “I believe that’s the first time you’ve used my real name.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, of course it’s not the first time.” She pauses, thinking back. He might be right. After all, to date she’s pretty confident she could count on one, maybe two, hands how many times she’s done so for his other self.
“Hardly anyone calls me that anymore,” he muses. “Not even Smee, usually. ‘Hook’ is too … sensational.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I guess I do. It serves my reputation well and has been part of me for so long it would probably feel strange to drop it entirely.” Belying his words, he looks down at his metal appendage with disdain. “But it’s nice to hear something else every once in a while.”
“Are you asking me to call you Killian now?”
He shrugs. “You said it, not me.”
She mulls it over. It still catches her off-guard how different the two men are despite sharing the same face and most of the same history. She would find it far too bizarre to regularly call the other Hook Killian, and anyway, he’d think she’d gone mad if she did. Yet it feels perfectly suitable for this one.
“All right,” she agrees. “Can’t promise a perfect record, but I’ll do my best. Killian.”
“Good.” His smile is soft, almost bashful. “My mother chose it, you know. She lost a brother and named me for him.”
“Your mother … she was Alice’s namesake?”
“Aye. Ailís. Her name was Ailís.” He inclines his head towards the paddock where the camp’s horses have been turned out. “She was more horse than woman, my father always said. She taught my brother and me to ride.”
“I didn’t know you could ride.” It’s hard to imagine someone so closely tied to captaining a ship on the high seas also being skilled at captaining a steed on dry land.
“You’ve seen me do it.”
“No, I’ve seen you remain upright in a saddle while the horse walked. That doesn’t count.”
“The lady dare impugn?”
“Perhaps you should prove me wrong, then. If you’re up to it.”
“Tiana did forbid me to do anything that’s more strenuous than basket-weaving,” he says. “But I suppose what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
They do not go unnoticed through the camp, as high-profile as they are within the resistance leading two of the finest horses - him, a black gelding, her a chestnut mare - but no one questions any of it.
As soon as they’re clear of the camp, they both mount up and Regina looks over at him. “Let’s see what you’re made of, pirate.”
With that, they both dig their heels into their horses’ flanks. A sense of peace flows through her as she rides, the rolling rhythm of a canter and powerful breaths of the beast beneath her bringing her back to the days where she was most carefree. The terrain only adds to the tranquility, the woods quickly opening up into seemingly endless fields dotted with wildflowers.
To her surprise, Killian is keeping pace, more or less, though by her reckoning he’s not as comfortable in his posture as she is, telling her it’s been quite some time since last he’d ridden at any appreciable speed or distance. Nevertheless, when he notices her stare he meets it, and the smile on his face is genuine.
She loses track of time, contentedly in tune with her mount as they get into a groove of trading off cantering and trotting through the colorful grasses. Eventually, she decides the horses are due for a rest, and gives Killian a nod. They gradually bring the horses back down to a walk, stopping at a creek a short distance from a grove of fruit trees.
“I concede defeat,” Regina says. “You’re a halfway decent rider.”
“Halfway decent?” Killian objects. “I do believe I was alongside you the whole time, love.”
She raises her chin imperiously. “I noticed no such thing.”
Killian rolls his eyes. “Of course.”
Once the horses are adequately watered and tied off, she and Killian sit at the base of a tree, gazing out at the horizon. Killian reaches up to one of the lower branches and wryly tosses her an apple.
“Your mother was a good teacher,” she comments. “I’m impressed.”
Killian takes a melancholy bite of his apple. “I don’t have anything tangible of hers left, so I have to hold onto the intangible things.”
“Such as?”
“Such as … she had hair the color of fire, my mother. I take after my father in looks, and when I was young, I was afraid there wouldn’t be anything of her in me. Turns out I just had to wait until I could grow a beard.” She can see it now, the reddish tint that makes his beard so much lighter than his hair. In the sun, it’s almost orange. “I remember her language, too. Over the years, I wrote everything down so I wouldn’t lose it.”
“Her language?” Regina asks, fascinated. She’d known he spoke Ancient Greek, courtesy of the Navy, and Latin as well (not that either were called as such in the Enchanted Forest), but she hadn’t been aware of any others. “What language is that?”
“I don’t know what it’s called in your Land Without Magic, but here, it’s called Gaeilge.”
He says something she has no hope of understanding. Despite the meaning being lost on her, the cadence of it is beautiful, and she realizes it’s the same language he’s used before when letting out a particularly vehement curse. It sounds far nicer coming from his mouth now than when used as an expletive. She’s not heard anything quite like it.
“I’m not familiar,” she says. “Maybe you can show me when we get back to camp. I have an ear for languages. Henry, too.”
Killian lets out a short, sharp laugh. “I would certainly love to see you try.”
“Now who’s impugning whom?”
“Ah, that would be me.”
His eyes twinkle with mirth. It’s nice, seeing him light like this, even if just for a few moments, and she’s glad that she’s the one who was able to bring it out of him. Her own good humor, however, begins to fade when she notices him toying absently with a loose thread on his left sleeve.
Because she knows that right beneath that sleeve, beneath the brace, lies the tattoo she’d spotted last night. The lion tattoo.
She wants to distance herself from him, from it, yet she can’t bring herself to move. Somewhere along the way - hell if she knows when, why, or how - he’d become one of her closest confidants. Someone who had patched her up more than once, who taught her to properly and expertly wield a sword, who can empathize, not just sympathize, with every hardship she’d endured raising a child alone.
She has other friends here, no doubt, and still others back in Storybrooke. But the thought of losing him, seeing the hurt on his face not only for the action but because she certainly could never tell him the real reason why, knocks the wind out of her. It hadn’t hit her until this very minute just how much he’d come to mean to her.
He nudges her with his shoulder to get her to look at him. “You’ve gone quiet. What’s in your head?”
“You.”
He startles. “Me?”
For one wild moment, she considers confessing everything. And she would, if only it weren’t him who has the tattoo in question. She’s not sure which reaction would be worse: for him to take it well, or for him to take it poorly. Above all, she’s not ready for him to inevitably ask her what her opinion is. Whether she’s pushing back so hard because it’s truly ridiculous, or …
In the end, she cowers. “You and Alice, I mean. I hope I’m there to see you two do things like this. Horseback riding, sailing, whatever.”
“Why wouldn’t you be there?” he frowns.
“Just … you’ll probably want to go do your own thing after you’re reunited.”
“For a queen, you think awfully little of yourself.” He takes her hand. “Of course you’ll be there.”
She looks down at their joined hands. It means nothing. They’ve held hands before, on the occasion or two they thought they’d found a lead on a cure only for it to wither into nothing, or when either of them have been injured on a mission and needed fixing. It’s what friends do, no different than Ella and Tiana.
So why, all of a sudden, does it feel different?
Like a bout of tinnitus, it niggles in her mind - the guy with the lion tattoo; pixie dust never lies; love and happiness - but she has had a lifetime of practice suppressing things, particularly things that require emotional reflection. In fact, she’d done it when she’d first seen Robin’s tattoo. She’d run away from him, too, and dragged Tink down with her.
She lets herself fall into the same pattern now, drilling a mantra into herself: It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a tattoo, a tribute to Alice. It’s nothing more than a coincidence.
Whether multiple soulmates are possible or not, it doesn’t matter. He’s someone else’s that he simply hasn’t met yet, or maybe he’s no one’s at all, but regardless, he is not hers. Therefore, she feels no compunction about keeping their hands laced as their banter resumes.
The status quo goes on just as it used to without a fuss. If she becomes aware of his presence in a way she hadn’t before, if her eye keeps getting drawn to the sparring ring when he’s in it, if her worry burrows deeper when they go off on missions, well. It’s just because they’ve become better friends, and that’s it.
Really.