With The Tide - Chapter 10 - And Some Are Alive
Rating: M
Characters/Pairing: Emma Swan/Regina Mills, Emma Swan/Captain Hook, Emma Swan/OFC, Snow White/Prince Charming, Belle/Rumplestiltskin, assorted other characters.
Warnings: None.
Authors Notes: Many millions of thanks to my beta reader youngmachines.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time does not belong to me, nor their characters or plots. The plot of this fanfiction belongs to shikabane-mai, and the artwork she drew can be found: post/46770603575/captain-emma-swan-and-her-former- bounty-mark
Chapter 10
And Some Are Alive “Guilt is a powerful affliction. You can try to turn your back on it, but that's when it sneaks up behind you and eats you alive.” - Kenneth Fink
Captain Swan’s blonde head re-surfaced for what felt like the hundredth time since she had begun her search of the Lagoon for Rumplestiltskin’s dagger. (Unbeknownst to her, Regina had kept count, almost drooling from the corner of her mouth at the sight of tendrils of blonde hair clinging to damp skin, like a mermaid. She had only re-surfaced fourteen times).
“The coral is clear!” Emma yelled back at her, diving back under water to search some loose gravel underneath the reefs. This was miserable. Why would Rumplestiltskin ever hide his dagger in such a beautiful place? Although, she admitted, there would be something faintly poetic about it all.
It was as she accidentally cut her finger across a sharp piece of rock that she heard muffled sounds from above the surface. Emma found firm footing on the ground and pushed off, propelled through the depths quickly and breaking the surface in a second.
And then, much to her surprise, she saw Allison, the whore from Tortuga, floating gently in the water next to her. A siren… great. They were supposed to take on the form of someone you desired so badly that to not touch their lips with your own would cause physical pain. However, this one hadn’t quite hit Emma accurately.
However, Regina, standing on the bank, looked dazed and lustful. “Emma?” She called out, sounding almost inebriated. “Why are there two of you?”
Emma fought back a fit of laughter. The siren had taken on her own form for Regina, which was quite the compliment. Did the Princess really find her to be irresistible even in the face of death?
The siren, who still mimicked Allison the whore’s features swam through the clear waters towards her. “What’s wrong, Emma?” She asked huskily. “Don’t you want me?” She lunged forward, but the Captain stopped their lips making contact with her fingertip.
The siren frowned at her and then her features began to swirl and change almost nauseatingly. Allison’s hair shrank back into the siren’s head and her features sharpened, becoming more and more angular until Killian Jones stood before her, dripping wet and undeniably handsome.
“I’ll give you the best lay of your life, love,” he promised her in that charming, cocky tone of his. “All you have to do first…” he got in close. “Is kiss me.”
Emma shook her head again and backed away, smiling. “Try again.”
But just then, there was a loud splash from the other end of the lagoon and Emma shot a worried look at her captive. Regina was wading towards them as fast as she could, weighed down by sodden clothes. “Daniel!” She gasped, choking on salt water. “Daniel, come back to me!”
Quick as a shot, the Captain drew a clawing siren into her arms and put a knife against her throat. “Stop playing with her. I’m your victim.”
“That’s right…” The siren turned her head, which was no longer all cheekbones and thick eyebrows. Instead it was plump, full lips and wide eyes staring up at her. “Save me, Captain.” The fake Regina begged endearingly. “Save me from the monsters.”
The real Regina was closing in on them, still seeing somebody else. “Daniel,” she murmured, tears and splashes of salt water merging together on her cheeks.
Feeling only momentary guilt, Emma slit the siren’s throat with her belt knife. She exhaled long and slow as the woman, now revealed to be a redhead with odd purple eyes, fell dead into the water with a splash.
“You okay?” She turned to ask Regina, who stared at the place where the siren had sunk below the surface, red blood still billowing from her corpse.
“What was that?” The Princess asked, eyes wide. “It was you, but it wasn’t you. Then it was…”
“Who?’ Emma prompted, curious as to who the girl had seen to make her lose her mind like that. Daniel, she had been calling out for. A special friend in Neverland? An old lover from the Springlands?
Regina seemed then to regain control of her normal faculties. Whatever or whoever had shaken her out of her normal composure was gone now, and so was sensitive Regina… for now. “None of your business,” she snarked, then turned on her heel and stamped towards the shore (admittedly difficult to do in a lagoon, but the Princess pulled it off.)
“Hey, Captain! Princess!” Charming appeared at the edge of the forest, Belle in his arms. “We found Rumplestiltskin’s dagger!”
The way Belle told the story was that they had spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out if the tree was hollow by knocking on the wood, then feeling for hinges where there might be a secret compartment. However, in the end it was Charming, leaning on the tree tiredly after long exertion that caused the force-sensitive latch to trigger and reveal the dagger, tucked away in the bark.
However, once Emma got her father away from Belle and Regina and took the dagger from his possession, he admitted to the truth. He and Belle had spotted the tiny compartment within minutes of first inspecting the tree and had spent a good twenty minutes trying to figure out how to open it. Eventually, much to their humiliation, they had found a tiny knot in the wood which depressed and opened the compartment.
“Don’t tell her I told you,” the Boatswain begged her. “It’s humiliating enough as it is.”
“I won’t,” Emma promised him, just as the other two members of their party rejoined them. Belle spotted the dagger in the Captain’s hands and her face fell. Emma smiled at them all, ignoring her Navigator’s obvious indecision about the situation she had found herself in. “Time to tell Hook I’ve done his dirty work for him, I think.” She reached for the tattoo of the compass on the inside of her left wrist.
Part of the charm of Neverland was the magic which was sold so freely on stalls and in marketplaces in all the big towns and cities. Magic was a fickle friend. It worked in Neverland and the Sea of Monsters, for Rumplestiltskin in his little merchant house in Tortuga and on both The Bloody Blade and The Jolly Roger. But for most of Evermore, magic was a figment of imagination and about as real as old King Midas’s gold-tinted hair.
The magic she had in the tattoo on her wrist had been woven by a hedge witch on the streets of Anise, which was the capital of Neverland. Emma had been assisting Hook on one of his little trips into the city - which usually ended in somebody dying. Such were the consequences of earning a living as an assassin.
They had been checking out an escape route down an alley when the witch had dangled out of her window and offered them a communication system. They already had the tattoos - Emma on her wrist and Hook on his shoulder blade. The witch charmed them so that whenever one of them rubbed their own tattoo with the ball of their thumb, it would make the other’s tattoo burn. For centuries, when Emma and Hook had separated, that had been how they had summoned one another for a catch-up.
But just as Emma was about to place the ball of her thumb on the centre of the inked compass…
“Wait -” Belle grabbed her arm, leaning so far forward that Charming almost unbalanced and fell over. “If you give Captain Hook that dagger… my - I mean, Rumplestiltskin will die. For sure.”
“I made a deal,” Emma told her, not insensitively. “I can’t go back on my word. If you want to help your lover, I suggest you do so when the situation is not quite so iron-bound.”
“I understand,” Belle muttered, releasing Captain Swan’s arm. Freed again, Emma gently rubbed the ball of her thumb over all the points and the centre of the compass, knowing that somewhere, Hook’s shoulder blade was burning.
It was then, while Emma was holding the Magician’s dagger and feeling the fierce flame of victory, that Belle fell unconscious.
“Shit,” Charming swore, shaking her from side to side. He shot a panicked look at Emma. “We left it too long.” Emma was at his side instantly, her head cocked and ear close to Belle’s open mouth. Smiling momentarily when she heard and felt inhalation and exhalation, she straightened back up and nodded to her father.
“Back to the dinghy,” Emma ordered. “As fast as possible!”
Charming took off, his long legs stretching out and pounding the forest floor. He was gone from view almost instantaneously. Emma herself only took a moment to stuff the dagger through her belt and make sure that Regina was running too, before she also took off.
It felt good to run again. Emma was essentially fit, swimming most days. But she spent most of her life at sea, and it was only when she made port that she got the chance to run. Her neglected leg muscles stretched out and burned underneath her. Careful to watch her step, Emma bounded past trees and bushes, searching for the open sky, the sand and the sea.
Then she was breaking loose of the tree line and jogging down the sandy beach towards the dinghy, where Charming was a speck laying his friend down in the wooden sanctity.
“Still okay?” Emma enquired breathlessly as she skidded to a halt by the dinghy. The blue tinge Belle had boasted before had worsened and she was clearly in pain, even while unconscious.
Charming looked conflicted. “Do you think we should remove your tourniquet?” His hands hovered over the leather buckle of her belt, as if to undo it at a second’s notice if required to. Emma could easily understand his fretful anxiety - if they left it on too long Belle could lose her injured leg.
“No,” Emma decided. “If we take it off, she could bleed out. Let’s just get back to the ship as quickly as possible and Bug can do his best for her.”
As if on cue, Regina arrived behind her, coughing and spluttering wildly, red-faced. Emma couldn’t hide her surprise at the normally staunch and stoic Princess attempting to cough up her innards onto the soft white sand. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Regina doubled over, gasping for breath. She mumbled something that sounded like ‘fucking pirates’ and ‘fucking running’, but Emma knew she must have misheard. The Princess never indulged in profanity, despite now being surrounded by bad influences.
Emma began to push at the dinghy, where Charming was holding Belle against his chest in a futile attempt to stop her from being jostled. “Get in,” she ordered Regina, but the girl merely shook her head, looking too exhausted to even walk, let alone clamber into a rackety old wooden boat. Growling in frustration and worry for her Navigator, the Captain grabbed Regina’s underarms and hoisted her up and into the boat. The Princess squealed in surprise. “If you must act like some over-developed ape, at least have the grace to set me down gently!”
“My apologies, your Highness,” Emma snarked back, giving the boat a heave and feeling relieved when it finally slid away from the wet sand to bob gently on the tide surrounding Hollow Isle.
She leapt over the side and onto the wooden floor, using only one hand to propel herself and still graceful as a gazelle. Emma pretended not to notice Regina’s gaze fixated on her, in anger, lust or envy she didn’t know. Instead, she grabbed an oar and handed the Princess the other, pushing the instrument into the water at as fast a pace as she could manage.
Oddly, Regina managed to keep up with her the whole way back to the ship. Emma, solely out of curiosity, snuck a peak at her arms. But of course, the loose dress she wore masked them. Then a tidal wave of guilt rushed up within her. There she was again, as selfish as ever. It was her biggest flaw - Emma only ever truly cared about her own fate. Here was one of her own, a woman she’d casually identified as a younger sister… and she was contemplating the biceps of an attractive captive!
Gritting her teeth, Emma pulled the oar longer and deeper, burrowing away into the deepest corner of her dark mind she could find until the burn in her hands was a dull throb and the sting of fresh air on her battered skin made no more than the barest impact.
“Emma,” there was a hand tapping her shoulder lightly. “Emma, we’re back at the Blade.”
With an intensity and speed that was almost frightening, the Captain snapped out of her deep, dark recessive corner and winced at the light reverberating off her retinas. “Where did you go?” Charming asked her, attempting to be glib.
“None of your business,” Emma snapped back, not as in control as she posed to be. She didn’t want another life on her conscience - and there she went again… selfish. Making Belle endanger her life to find a weapon that would kill the girl’s lover, all so Emma could pay a debt. Selfish. Enabling marital rape for money. Selfish. Abandoning her own son to learn the identity of one of her parents. Selfish. Selfish. Selfish.
Emma wrapped an arm around Belle’s waist as Charming did the same on the other side and together, they hauled her up the rope ladder that had been thrown down for them to board the ship. As soon as the trio were slumped on deck, two with over-exertion and one unconscious, people surrounded them. Belle was taken down to Bug and Charming was beginning to recount their story, but Emma just wanted to get away from it all.
Remembering the 50,000 gold coins and hating herself for it, she only took a moment to whisper to Red to keep an eye on Regina before she was stumbling down the steps to her Quarters.
Slowly, gingerly, Emma took stock of herself. First she unbuckled her soft leather boots. They were sodden and stiff from being dowsed twice in salt water. Then she undid her breeches. The lower left leg of the fabric had been ripped away to expose the wound in her calf, so they were useless now. Emma lobbed them off the edge of the bed, uncaring as to where they landed.
Then came her linen shirt. Torn in two places, it was mendable. She folded it onto a chair, perhaps for Granny to darn later. Now Emma was all but naked, the only material left on her body was the leather she usually used to bind her breasts. Instead, it was tied around the re-opened wound on her calf. Wincing, she loosened the knot and began to unwind the leather.
The last vestiges of the fabric were stuck to her wound, glued by blood and Emma grimaced as she eased it away from her marred skin. Then, steeling herself and re-enforcing the thought that she had seen much, much worse, Emma inspected the damage.
It was ugly. There was at least a four inch gash in her calf and it already looked inflamed. That would become infected very quickly. Knowing what she had to do, Emma removed the tankard of rum from her belt. She unbuckled the sheath of her dagger from her belt and shoved it in her mouth to bite down on when the pain came. Then, squeezing her eyes shut, she poured the alcohol over her injury.
The pain was immediate and burning. Had Emma not been biting down with all the force she possessed on her dagger sheath, she felt certain her screams would have brought the ceiling down. Her nerves in her leg were on fire and her whole body was trembling until the pain abated enough for her to remove the makeshift gag.
Almost as soon as she had done so, Emma chugged the rest of her tankard, then yanked open her bedside drawer to find another. Her other injuries were not so serious. A spear had skate off her arm earlier - it had scabbed over already and wouldn’t likely be giving her any problems. Likewise, the cut in her finger from scrabbling around in the gravel at the bottom of Hollow Lagoon was insignificant.
The stitches in her side had held, thank God, and the wound on her other arm would also heal in time. Emma sighed in relief at the receding of the pain. It seemed like it was coming from all over her body in one relentless piercing throbbing sensation. The rum was good, but tonight it wasn’t going to cut it.
Limping over to the portside of her Quarters, Emma pulled up a loose floorboard. Underneath, she found the bottle she had been saving for a rainy day like this. The Nevic vendor which had sold her this on the black market had boasted that it was infused with dark fairy dust, which would make her redefine ‘oblivion’.
Now, Emma popped off the cork, poured herself a skin of the stuff and raised it up to nobody in particular. “To Belle’s good health,” she toasted, ashamed that she was consumed with her own pain like always. Then she wrapped her lips around the opening of the skin and drank deeply.
It was daylight.
Emma knew this because her eyes felt like a burning volcano had just decided to erupt behind her retinas whenever her eyelids fluttered open.
Her mouth was dry, oh so very dry. Emma tried to wet her tongue and found the acrid taste of vomit there. She grimaced and almost gagged disgustedly. What had happened to her?
Her leg hurt like all hell, her arms were both aching, her side felt like she had been impaled on a stick to be roasted and the worst of the lot was her temples… which were throbbing so hard Emma felt sure they must be vibrating.
Ever so slowly, she lifted her head up off the floor to inspect her surroundings. She was in her Quarters, good, and alone… even better. Hopefully that meant nobody else had been privy to the horror Emma had made of herself last night.
Beside her there was a pool of her own vomit on the floor, as well as a little blood. Had she re-opened her stitches? Emma panicked as she checked her side, noticing that she was stark naked in the process. No, her stitches were still intact - almost a miracle considering what she had put them through in the last twenty four hours.
The smashed glass over by the porthole was what completed the story for Emma. It was scattered all over the floor, but there were no liquid stains on the floor so - Emma clutched a dramatic hand to her forehead - she had drunk the whole bottle. Well that explained the nausea and the headache.
Feeling the aching stiffness in every joint, Emma hauled her throbbing, battered body off the floor one limb at a time. She hobbled over to her dresser and began to weakly search a drawer, looking for the bandages she knew were stowed at the bottom. Finding what she was looking for, she tore a length and wrapped it securely round her calf.
It was only then that she dressed herself, flinching every so often at the taste of vomit in her mouth. When she had re-buckled her belt, Emma reached for the canteen of water clipped there and glugged half of it. The clean fluid washed her mouth out and it was almost a merciful sensation.
There was a loud knock on the door and Emma winced as the sound reverberated through her head, bouncing off her temples. “Come in,” she called weakly, remembering she hadn’t had a chance to clear the vomit and smashed glass off the floor just yet.
Her door swung open and, it was red-streaked ebony hair and inquisitive eyes that met her gaze, not her father, step-mother or somebody even more embarrassing like Bug or Regina. Emma blinked twice. Hadn’t Red sustained a head trauma? Was this a hallucination? “Are you okay now?” She croaked.
“I’m feeling much better…” Her Master Gunner trailed off as she took in the vomit, the smashed glass and the way her Captain walked stiffly. “Belle’s awake. She’s asking for you.”
Emma twitched as a flood of memories swept through her brain. The tourniquet she had tied. Just a little bit longer, she had kept saying to herself. Belle… unconscious and blue-tinged. The dagger… reflexively, Emma checked her belt. The dagger was still firmly stowed there, thank God. She shook herself and refocused on the present. “Is she okay? Did Bug have to…?”
“No,” Red shook her head in the negative. “But he said just twenty or so minutes longer and she’d have been dead.”
Emma let a low exhale. She’d always known she was reckless and selfish, but this was a new low, even for her. “I-I’m sorry… Red… I didn’t-“
Red held up her hand, coming to sit on the bed next to her. “Don’t apologise to me. I understand a little bit about being careless with other people’s lives. Apologise to Belle.”
Emma lingered a little on the bedspread, but after a second or two, got to her feet. Red ushered her out the door. “Don’t worry about the mess, I’ll clean it up. Go! Go on.”
Wondering when she had become a slave to the wills of her crew, Emma dragged her weary feet up the steps towards deck. Wincing in preparation of being blinded by the sunlight, Emma slipped above the surface of the ship.
She waited a second, and when it became clear she wasn’t going to be borderline assaulted and demanded an explanation of, she scurried across the deck and down the spiral steps towards Bug’s little medical bay.
Belle was obvious from the moment she stepped in the room. This wasn’t because she was the only patient, although that helped, but because half the crew were gathered around her bed murmuring words and chit-chatting. Emma cleared her sore throat. “Alright everyone, back to your stations. I’d like a word alone with Belle, if you please.”
Some nodded assent immediately and left. Others looked more grudging about doing so and there were a few who even shot Emma resentful expressions on their way out. She made note of their faces so she could track them down to talk later and try to justify her actions. Emma didn’t blame their sudden distrustfulness towards her - if she’d been careless with Belle’s life, who’s to say she wouldn’t be so reckless with any other member of her crew?
But eventually, they all left except Bug. Belle levelled soulful eyes at her and Emma fought away the guilt that clutched to her with desperate claws. “You look like hell,” her Navigator said evenly.
“Well the nuns who raised me always said, if you can’t find solace in Christ, find it at the bottom of a bottle,” Emma attempted to joke.
Belle raised an eyebrow. “Did they really?”
“No,” Emma sighed. “That’s just something learnt from personal experience.”
She pulled up a chair to sit beside her Navigator’s bedside. “May I?” Emma asked, pulling down the sheet covering Belle’s injured leg. The tourniquet she had tied was long gone, but there was still bruising all around her thigh from where it had been. There was a neat bandage wrapped around the wound, so Emma couldn’t see it, but it hadn’t bled through at least.
“Can you still feel your leg?” Emma enquired and wouldn’t deny the blissful relief she experienced when Belle nodded once.
“If you’ve come to apologise,” Belle said after a time of sitting there in comfortable silence while Emma tried to work up the courage to say two simple words. “Don’t bother. I knew what I signed up for when I joined a pirate crew. You did what you had to do.”
“I don’t have the right to play games with your mortality,” Emma protested, having found her voice once more.
“We both knew what we were doing,” Belle said reasonably. “You weren’t the one to cut me open, Captain. You were the one to save my life.”
Emma leant forward, resting her head on her hands. “How can you be so okay with this?” She asked, muffled. She had spent every minute since Belle had first fallen unconscious struggling with her decision to keep looking for the dagger… and her Navigator was fine with yesterday’s events?
Belle’s fingertips danced lightly over her hair. “You forget; I love a man who has killed repeatedly and yet feels no remorse. I love a man who is the most wanted for his crimes throughout all lands. How can I resent you for something so simplistic as the ‘ends justify the means’?”
Nodding, even though she still didn’t fully understand the girl’s neutral perspective, the Captain stood up from her bedside and touched a brief finger to her cheek. “If you want…” Emma offered tentatively. “You can go with Hook when he takes the dagger. To persuade him to spare Rumplestiltskin. To say goodbye. Whatever you like.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Belle smiled at her. Emma shook her head at the oddity of forgiveness and left the medical bay.
She only got as far as the stairs before she was forced to stop. Because at the bottom step, a Princess perched. And she looked as pissed off as Royalty could be. “Sweet Jesus,” Emma sighed. She leant on the wall next to the staircase so when Regina gave as good as she got, at least Emma’s back would be covered. “Who set you free?”
“Red,” Regina replied simply. “Right before she went to knock some sense into your aching temples.”
“How do you know…?” Emma questioned, trailing off. The only way Regina could possibly know that she was very hung over was if… “How bad?” She quizzed tentatively, not sure she wanted to know.
“I couldn’t understand much of what you were saying,” Regina admitted. “You asked for forgiveness.”
Emma closed her eyes briefly, ashamed. She took responsibility for her actions and lived with the consequences every day. She had never wanted absolution for her crimes and had never asked for it consciously. “For what?” She asked, faux casually.
“For Belle,” Regina shrugged. “For your son. It was odd,” a little smile quirked at the corners of her mouth. “It helped. To know you feel some element of guilt for the things you do.” Emma didn’t know what to say to that. But then Regina broke the curiously tense atmosphere. “And then you danced around the room as naked as the day you were born, bellowing some pirate ditty.”
“Shit,” Emma said, without meaning to. Betray no emotion, her mind ordered her. Especially not the shame which is creeping up your face.
“I thought you were going to tear your stitches,” Regina confided in a stage whisper and they both broke out in laughter, the Princess almost doubled over and gasping for breath.
“You mean to say,” Emma choked out through sporadic giggles. “I was there in all my glory - and all you could think about were stitches?”
The resulting laughter went on for another minute at least, until Emma found the tears of laughter that were streaking down her face were sorrowful and the choking in her throat was a sob, not a chuckle. Then suddenly there was a hand in hers.
Emma looked at it, tan, delicate knuckles, tiny calluses decorating soft palms where there should have been none. Her gaze followed long sinewy forearms and muscles until it reached a shoulder, a delicate neck and then a face. Regina’s eyes were still guarded but for the first time her face was open; it was asking - no, endearing Emma to trust her.
This whole business was screwed up. Who was fool enough to get close to a captive, a bounty? It was the mother of bad decisions.
“Can I trust you?” Her voice was disturbingly open and vulnerable. This was a mistake. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to take it back.
Regina paused. Emma could see the indenture of her tongue running along her top teeth. She inhaled and exhaled twice. “Why would you?” She said eventually. “What would you entrust to me?”
Emma chuckled low, without amusement. “It’s too late,” the girl whispered. “You’ve already seen my tears.” She couldn’t say if she trusted the Princess in her care. It was dangerous. And Emma Swan loved danger, but not like this. Not when it was her emotions on the line.
You’re in way too deep, her sub-conscious was screaming at her. You’re giving everything away to this girl. If you trust her with your tears, which you haven’t shed for anybody else in two centuries, what else will you find yourself losing to Princess Regina?
Unthinking, Emma’s hand went to her chest, where she rubbed at the skin there, just above her heart. “If I trust you,” she said to the girl brusquely. “You’ll take advantage. Escape again. I may not even try to stop you this time. And the more I trust in you, the greater opportunity you’ll get.”
She barged past Regina sitting on the step and sprinted up the steps as fast as she could, leaving the girl behind her. She strode purposefully across the deck, making for her father - sweet, simple Charming.
Emma needed simplicity. She needed it like oxygen, like rum and adventure. She lived for herself and by herself. And no smug, spoilt Princess could change that for a second.
“How far?” Emma demanded of him, leaning on the mast behind the wheel. She didn’t look up to where Belle would normally be standing, looking out in the crow’s nest. Not going there.
Charming was his usual commanding, serious yet caring self. “We’re less than three hours from the map line surrounding the Sea of Monsters. Hopefully when we clear it we’ll be out of danger and…”
“Hook will be waiting,” Emma nodded. God, she needed him right now. Things on board the Blade right now were unnecessary complex and entangled, her emotions were messy and unstable. Hook was a rock. He was her past, as long and glorious as it was. He was adventure, riches, glory and infamy.
And if she saw a dejected Princess slink below deck to spend time with her son when she took over the wheel, Emma made a good job of pretending not to care in the slightest.
Characters/Pairing: Emma Swan/Regina Mills, Emma Swan/Captain Hook, Emma Swan/OFC, Snow White/Prince Charming, Belle/Rumplestiltskin, assorted other characters.
Warnings: None.
Authors Notes: Many millions of thanks to my beta reader youngmachines.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time does not belong to me, nor their characters or plots. The plot of this fanfiction belongs to shikabane-mai, and the artwork she drew can be found: post/46770603575/captain-emma-swan-and-her-former- bounty-mark
Chapter 10
And Some Are Alive “Guilt is a powerful affliction. You can try to turn your back on it, but that's when it sneaks up behind you and eats you alive.” - Kenneth Fink
Captain Swan’s blonde head re-surfaced for what felt like the hundredth time since she had begun her search of the Lagoon for Rumplestiltskin’s dagger. (Unbeknownst to her, Regina had kept count, almost drooling from the corner of her mouth at the sight of tendrils of blonde hair clinging to damp skin, like a mermaid. She had only re-surfaced fourteen times).
“The coral is clear!” Emma yelled back at her, diving back under water to search some loose gravel underneath the reefs. This was miserable. Why would Rumplestiltskin ever hide his dagger in such a beautiful place? Although, she admitted, there would be something faintly poetic about it all.
It was as she accidentally cut her finger across a sharp piece of rock that she heard muffled sounds from above the surface. Emma found firm footing on the ground and pushed off, propelled through the depths quickly and breaking the surface in a second.
And then, much to her surprise, she saw Allison, the whore from Tortuga, floating gently in the water next to her. A siren… great. They were supposed to take on the form of someone you desired so badly that to not touch their lips with your own would cause physical pain. However, this one hadn’t quite hit Emma accurately.
However, Regina, standing on the bank, looked dazed and lustful. “Emma?” She called out, sounding almost inebriated. “Why are there two of you?”
Emma fought back a fit of laughter. The siren had taken on her own form for Regina, which was quite the compliment. Did the Princess really find her to be irresistible even in the face of death?
The siren, who still mimicked Allison the whore’s features swam through the clear waters towards her. “What’s wrong, Emma?” She asked huskily. “Don’t you want me?” She lunged forward, but the Captain stopped their lips making contact with her fingertip.
The siren frowned at her and then her features began to swirl and change almost nauseatingly. Allison’s hair shrank back into the siren’s head and her features sharpened, becoming more and more angular until Killian Jones stood before her, dripping wet and undeniably handsome.
“I’ll give you the best lay of your life, love,” he promised her in that charming, cocky tone of his. “All you have to do first…” he got in close. “Is kiss me.”
Emma shook her head again and backed away, smiling. “Try again.”
But just then, there was a loud splash from the other end of the lagoon and Emma shot a worried look at her captive. Regina was wading towards them as fast as she could, weighed down by sodden clothes. “Daniel!” She gasped, choking on salt water. “Daniel, come back to me!”
Quick as a shot, the Captain drew a clawing siren into her arms and put a knife against her throat. “Stop playing with her. I’m your victim.”
“That’s right…” The siren turned her head, which was no longer all cheekbones and thick eyebrows. Instead it was plump, full lips and wide eyes staring up at her. “Save me, Captain.” The fake Regina begged endearingly. “Save me from the monsters.”
The real Regina was closing in on them, still seeing somebody else. “Daniel,” she murmured, tears and splashes of salt water merging together on her cheeks.
Feeling only momentary guilt, Emma slit the siren’s throat with her belt knife. She exhaled long and slow as the woman, now revealed to be a redhead with odd purple eyes, fell dead into the water with a splash.
“You okay?” She turned to ask Regina, who stared at the place where the siren had sunk below the surface, red blood still billowing from her corpse.
“What was that?” The Princess asked, eyes wide. “It was you, but it wasn’t you. Then it was…”
“Who?’ Emma prompted, curious as to who the girl had seen to make her lose her mind like that. Daniel, she had been calling out for. A special friend in Neverland? An old lover from the Springlands?
Regina seemed then to regain control of her normal faculties. Whatever or whoever had shaken her out of her normal composure was gone now, and so was sensitive Regina… for now. “None of your business,” she snarked, then turned on her heel and stamped towards the shore (admittedly difficult to do in a lagoon, but the Princess pulled it off.)
“Hey, Captain! Princess!” Charming appeared at the edge of the forest, Belle in his arms. “We found Rumplestiltskin’s dagger!”
The way Belle told the story was that they had spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out if the tree was hollow by knocking on the wood, then feeling for hinges where there might be a secret compartment. However, in the end it was Charming, leaning on the tree tiredly after long exertion that caused the force-sensitive latch to trigger and reveal the dagger, tucked away in the bark.
However, once Emma got her father away from Belle and Regina and took the dagger from his possession, he admitted to the truth. He and Belle had spotted the tiny compartment within minutes of first inspecting the tree and had spent a good twenty minutes trying to figure out how to open it. Eventually, much to their humiliation, they had found a tiny knot in the wood which depressed and opened the compartment.
“Don’t tell her I told you,” the Boatswain begged her. “It’s humiliating enough as it is.”
“I won’t,” Emma promised him, just as the other two members of their party rejoined them. Belle spotted the dagger in the Captain’s hands and her face fell. Emma smiled at them all, ignoring her Navigator’s obvious indecision about the situation she had found herself in. “Time to tell Hook I’ve done his dirty work for him, I think.” She reached for the tattoo of the compass on the inside of her left wrist.
Part of the charm of Neverland was the magic which was sold so freely on stalls and in marketplaces in all the big towns and cities. Magic was a fickle friend. It worked in Neverland and the Sea of Monsters, for Rumplestiltskin in his little merchant house in Tortuga and on both The Bloody Blade and The Jolly Roger. But for most of Evermore, magic was a figment of imagination and about as real as old King Midas’s gold-tinted hair.
The magic she had in the tattoo on her wrist had been woven by a hedge witch on the streets of Anise, which was the capital of Neverland. Emma had been assisting Hook on one of his little trips into the city - which usually ended in somebody dying. Such were the consequences of earning a living as an assassin.
They had been checking out an escape route down an alley when the witch had dangled out of her window and offered them a communication system. They already had the tattoos - Emma on her wrist and Hook on his shoulder blade. The witch charmed them so that whenever one of them rubbed their own tattoo with the ball of their thumb, it would make the other’s tattoo burn. For centuries, when Emma and Hook had separated, that had been how they had summoned one another for a catch-up.
But just as Emma was about to place the ball of her thumb on the centre of the inked compass…
“Wait -” Belle grabbed her arm, leaning so far forward that Charming almost unbalanced and fell over. “If you give Captain Hook that dagger… my - I mean, Rumplestiltskin will die. For sure.”
“I made a deal,” Emma told her, not insensitively. “I can’t go back on my word. If you want to help your lover, I suggest you do so when the situation is not quite so iron-bound.”
“I understand,” Belle muttered, releasing Captain Swan’s arm. Freed again, Emma gently rubbed the ball of her thumb over all the points and the centre of the compass, knowing that somewhere, Hook’s shoulder blade was burning.
It was then, while Emma was holding the Magician’s dagger and feeling the fierce flame of victory, that Belle fell unconscious.
“Shit,” Charming swore, shaking her from side to side. He shot a panicked look at Emma. “We left it too long.” Emma was at his side instantly, her head cocked and ear close to Belle’s open mouth. Smiling momentarily when she heard and felt inhalation and exhalation, she straightened back up and nodded to her father.
“Back to the dinghy,” Emma ordered. “As fast as possible!”
Charming took off, his long legs stretching out and pounding the forest floor. He was gone from view almost instantaneously. Emma herself only took a moment to stuff the dagger through her belt and make sure that Regina was running too, before she also took off.
It felt good to run again. Emma was essentially fit, swimming most days. But she spent most of her life at sea, and it was only when she made port that she got the chance to run. Her neglected leg muscles stretched out and burned underneath her. Careful to watch her step, Emma bounded past trees and bushes, searching for the open sky, the sand and the sea.
Then she was breaking loose of the tree line and jogging down the sandy beach towards the dinghy, where Charming was a speck laying his friend down in the wooden sanctity.
“Still okay?” Emma enquired breathlessly as she skidded to a halt by the dinghy. The blue tinge Belle had boasted before had worsened and she was clearly in pain, even while unconscious.
Charming looked conflicted. “Do you think we should remove your tourniquet?” His hands hovered over the leather buckle of her belt, as if to undo it at a second’s notice if required to. Emma could easily understand his fretful anxiety - if they left it on too long Belle could lose her injured leg.
“No,” Emma decided. “If we take it off, she could bleed out. Let’s just get back to the ship as quickly as possible and Bug can do his best for her.”
As if on cue, Regina arrived behind her, coughing and spluttering wildly, red-faced. Emma couldn’t hide her surprise at the normally staunch and stoic Princess attempting to cough up her innards onto the soft white sand. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Regina doubled over, gasping for breath. She mumbled something that sounded like ‘fucking pirates’ and ‘fucking running’, but Emma knew she must have misheard. The Princess never indulged in profanity, despite now being surrounded by bad influences.
Emma began to push at the dinghy, where Charming was holding Belle against his chest in a futile attempt to stop her from being jostled. “Get in,” she ordered Regina, but the girl merely shook her head, looking too exhausted to even walk, let alone clamber into a rackety old wooden boat. Growling in frustration and worry for her Navigator, the Captain grabbed Regina’s underarms and hoisted her up and into the boat. The Princess squealed in surprise. “If you must act like some over-developed ape, at least have the grace to set me down gently!”
“My apologies, your Highness,” Emma snarked back, giving the boat a heave and feeling relieved when it finally slid away from the wet sand to bob gently on the tide surrounding Hollow Isle.
She leapt over the side and onto the wooden floor, using only one hand to propel herself and still graceful as a gazelle. Emma pretended not to notice Regina’s gaze fixated on her, in anger, lust or envy she didn’t know. Instead, she grabbed an oar and handed the Princess the other, pushing the instrument into the water at as fast a pace as she could manage.
Oddly, Regina managed to keep up with her the whole way back to the ship. Emma, solely out of curiosity, snuck a peak at her arms. But of course, the loose dress she wore masked them. Then a tidal wave of guilt rushed up within her. There she was again, as selfish as ever. It was her biggest flaw - Emma only ever truly cared about her own fate. Here was one of her own, a woman she’d casually identified as a younger sister… and she was contemplating the biceps of an attractive captive!
Gritting her teeth, Emma pulled the oar longer and deeper, burrowing away into the deepest corner of her dark mind she could find until the burn in her hands was a dull throb and the sting of fresh air on her battered skin made no more than the barest impact.
“Emma,” there was a hand tapping her shoulder lightly. “Emma, we’re back at the Blade.”
With an intensity and speed that was almost frightening, the Captain snapped out of her deep, dark recessive corner and winced at the light reverberating off her retinas. “Where did you go?” Charming asked her, attempting to be glib.
“None of your business,” Emma snapped back, not as in control as she posed to be. She didn’t want another life on her conscience - and there she went again… selfish. Making Belle endanger her life to find a weapon that would kill the girl’s lover, all so Emma could pay a debt. Selfish. Enabling marital rape for money. Selfish. Abandoning her own son to learn the identity of one of her parents. Selfish. Selfish. Selfish.
Emma wrapped an arm around Belle’s waist as Charming did the same on the other side and together, they hauled her up the rope ladder that had been thrown down for them to board the ship. As soon as the trio were slumped on deck, two with over-exertion and one unconscious, people surrounded them. Belle was taken down to Bug and Charming was beginning to recount their story, but Emma just wanted to get away from it all.
Remembering the 50,000 gold coins and hating herself for it, she only took a moment to whisper to Red to keep an eye on Regina before she was stumbling down the steps to her Quarters.
Slowly, gingerly, Emma took stock of herself. First she unbuckled her soft leather boots. They were sodden and stiff from being dowsed twice in salt water. Then she undid her breeches. The lower left leg of the fabric had been ripped away to expose the wound in her calf, so they were useless now. Emma lobbed them off the edge of the bed, uncaring as to where they landed.
Then came her linen shirt. Torn in two places, it was mendable. She folded it onto a chair, perhaps for Granny to darn later. Now Emma was all but naked, the only material left on her body was the leather she usually used to bind her breasts. Instead, it was tied around the re-opened wound on her calf. Wincing, she loosened the knot and began to unwind the leather.
The last vestiges of the fabric were stuck to her wound, glued by blood and Emma grimaced as she eased it away from her marred skin. Then, steeling herself and re-enforcing the thought that she had seen much, much worse, Emma inspected the damage.
It was ugly. There was at least a four inch gash in her calf and it already looked inflamed. That would become infected very quickly. Knowing what she had to do, Emma removed the tankard of rum from her belt. She unbuckled the sheath of her dagger from her belt and shoved it in her mouth to bite down on when the pain came. Then, squeezing her eyes shut, she poured the alcohol over her injury.
The pain was immediate and burning. Had Emma not been biting down with all the force she possessed on her dagger sheath, she felt certain her screams would have brought the ceiling down. Her nerves in her leg were on fire and her whole body was trembling until the pain abated enough for her to remove the makeshift gag.
Almost as soon as she had done so, Emma chugged the rest of her tankard, then yanked open her bedside drawer to find another. Her other injuries were not so serious. A spear had skate off her arm earlier - it had scabbed over already and wouldn’t likely be giving her any problems. Likewise, the cut in her finger from scrabbling around in the gravel at the bottom of Hollow Lagoon was insignificant.
The stitches in her side had held, thank God, and the wound on her other arm would also heal in time. Emma sighed in relief at the receding of the pain. It seemed like it was coming from all over her body in one relentless piercing throbbing sensation. The rum was good, but tonight it wasn’t going to cut it.
Limping over to the portside of her Quarters, Emma pulled up a loose floorboard. Underneath, she found the bottle she had been saving for a rainy day like this. The Nevic vendor which had sold her this on the black market had boasted that it was infused with dark fairy dust, which would make her redefine ‘oblivion’.
Now, Emma popped off the cork, poured herself a skin of the stuff and raised it up to nobody in particular. “To Belle’s good health,” she toasted, ashamed that she was consumed with her own pain like always. Then she wrapped her lips around the opening of the skin and drank deeply.
It was daylight.
Emma knew this because her eyes felt like a burning volcano had just decided to erupt behind her retinas whenever her eyelids fluttered open.
Her mouth was dry, oh so very dry. Emma tried to wet her tongue and found the acrid taste of vomit there. She grimaced and almost gagged disgustedly. What had happened to her?
Her leg hurt like all hell, her arms were both aching, her side felt like she had been impaled on a stick to be roasted and the worst of the lot was her temples… which were throbbing so hard Emma felt sure they must be vibrating.
Ever so slowly, she lifted her head up off the floor to inspect her surroundings. She was in her Quarters, good, and alone… even better. Hopefully that meant nobody else had been privy to the horror Emma had made of herself last night.
Beside her there was a pool of her own vomit on the floor, as well as a little blood. Had she re-opened her stitches? Emma panicked as she checked her side, noticing that she was stark naked in the process. No, her stitches were still intact - almost a miracle considering what she had put them through in the last twenty four hours.
The smashed glass over by the porthole was what completed the story for Emma. It was scattered all over the floor, but there were no liquid stains on the floor so - Emma clutched a dramatic hand to her forehead - she had drunk the whole bottle. Well that explained the nausea and the headache.
Feeling the aching stiffness in every joint, Emma hauled her throbbing, battered body off the floor one limb at a time. She hobbled over to her dresser and began to weakly search a drawer, looking for the bandages she knew were stowed at the bottom. Finding what she was looking for, she tore a length and wrapped it securely round her calf.
It was only then that she dressed herself, flinching every so often at the taste of vomit in her mouth. When she had re-buckled her belt, Emma reached for the canteen of water clipped there and glugged half of it. The clean fluid washed her mouth out and it was almost a merciful sensation.
There was a loud knock on the door and Emma winced as the sound reverberated through her head, bouncing off her temples. “Come in,” she called weakly, remembering she hadn’t had a chance to clear the vomit and smashed glass off the floor just yet.
Her door swung open and, it was red-streaked ebony hair and inquisitive eyes that met her gaze, not her father, step-mother or somebody even more embarrassing like Bug or Regina. Emma blinked twice. Hadn’t Red sustained a head trauma? Was this a hallucination? “Are you okay now?” She croaked.
“I’m feeling much better…” Her Master Gunner trailed off as she took in the vomit, the smashed glass and the way her Captain walked stiffly. “Belle’s awake. She’s asking for you.”
Emma twitched as a flood of memories swept through her brain. The tourniquet she had tied. Just a little bit longer, she had kept saying to herself. Belle… unconscious and blue-tinged. The dagger… reflexively, Emma checked her belt. The dagger was still firmly stowed there, thank God. She shook herself and refocused on the present. “Is she okay? Did Bug have to…?”
“No,” Red shook her head in the negative. “But he said just twenty or so minutes longer and she’d have been dead.”
Emma let a low exhale. She’d always known she was reckless and selfish, but this was a new low, even for her. “I-I’m sorry… Red… I didn’t-“
Red held up her hand, coming to sit on the bed next to her. “Don’t apologise to me. I understand a little bit about being careless with other people’s lives. Apologise to Belle.”
Emma lingered a little on the bedspread, but after a second or two, got to her feet. Red ushered her out the door. “Don’t worry about the mess, I’ll clean it up. Go! Go on.”
Wondering when she had become a slave to the wills of her crew, Emma dragged her weary feet up the steps towards deck. Wincing in preparation of being blinded by the sunlight, Emma slipped above the surface of the ship.
She waited a second, and when it became clear she wasn’t going to be borderline assaulted and demanded an explanation of, she scurried across the deck and down the spiral steps towards Bug’s little medical bay.
Belle was obvious from the moment she stepped in the room. This wasn’t because she was the only patient, although that helped, but because half the crew were gathered around her bed murmuring words and chit-chatting. Emma cleared her sore throat. “Alright everyone, back to your stations. I’d like a word alone with Belle, if you please.”
Some nodded assent immediately and left. Others looked more grudging about doing so and there were a few who even shot Emma resentful expressions on their way out. She made note of their faces so she could track them down to talk later and try to justify her actions. Emma didn’t blame their sudden distrustfulness towards her - if she’d been careless with Belle’s life, who’s to say she wouldn’t be so reckless with any other member of her crew?
But eventually, they all left except Bug. Belle levelled soulful eyes at her and Emma fought away the guilt that clutched to her with desperate claws. “You look like hell,” her Navigator said evenly.
“Well the nuns who raised me always said, if you can’t find solace in Christ, find it at the bottom of a bottle,” Emma attempted to joke.
Belle raised an eyebrow. “Did they really?”
“No,” Emma sighed. “That’s just something learnt from personal experience.”
She pulled up a chair to sit beside her Navigator’s bedside. “May I?” Emma asked, pulling down the sheet covering Belle’s injured leg. The tourniquet she had tied was long gone, but there was still bruising all around her thigh from where it had been. There was a neat bandage wrapped around the wound, so Emma couldn’t see it, but it hadn’t bled through at least.
“Can you still feel your leg?” Emma enquired and wouldn’t deny the blissful relief she experienced when Belle nodded once.
“If you’ve come to apologise,” Belle said after a time of sitting there in comfortable silence while Emma tried to work up the courage to say two simple words. “Don’t bother. I knew what I signed up for when I joined a pirate crew. You did what you had to do.”
“I don’t have the right to play games with your mortality,” Emma protested, having found her voice once more.
“We both knew what we were doing,” Belle said reasonably. “You weren’t the one to cut me open, Captain. You were the one to save my life.”
Emma leant forward, resting her head on her hands. “How can you be so okay with this?” She asked, muffled. She had spent every minute since Belle had first fallen unconscious struggling with her decision to keep looking for the dagger… and her Navigator was fine with yesterday’s events?
Belle’s fingertips danced lightly over her hair. “You forget; I love a man who has killed repeatedly and yet feels no remorse. I love a man who is the most wanted for his crimes throughout all lands. How can I resent you for something so simplistic as the ‘ends justify the means’?”
Nodding, even though she still didn’t fully understand the girl’s neutral perspective, the Captain stood up from her bedside and touched a brief finger to her cheek. “If you want…” Emma offered tentatively. “You can go with Hook when he takes the dagger. To persuade him to spare Rumplestiltskin. To say goodbye. Whatever you like.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Belle smiled at her. Emma shook her head at the oddity of forgiveness and left the medical bay.
She only got as far as the stairs before she was forced to stop. Because at the bottom step, a Princess perched. And she looked as pissed off as Royalty could be. “Sweet Jesus,” Emma sighed. She leant on the wall next to the staircase so when Regina gave as good as she got, at least Emma’s back would be covered. “Who set you free?”
“Red,” Regina replied simply. “Right before she went to knock some sense into your aching temples.”
“How do you know…?” Emma questioned, trailing off. The only way Regina could possibly know that she was very hung over was if… “How bad?” She quizzed tentatively, not sure she wanted to know.
“I couldn’t understand much of what you were saying,” Regina admitted. “You asked for forgiveness.”
Emma closed her eyes briefly, ashamed. She took responsibility for her actions and lived with the consequences every day. She had never wanted absolution for her crimes and had never asked for it consciously. “For what?” She asked, faux casually.
“For Belle,” Regina shrugged. “For your son. It was odd,” a little smile quirked at the corners of her mouth. “It helped. To know you feel some element of guilt for the things you do.” Emma didn’t know what to say to that. But then Regina broke the curiously tense atmosphere. “And then you danced around the room as naked as the day you were born, bellowing some pirate ditty.”
“Shit,” Emma said, without meaning to. Betray no emotion, her mind ordered her. Especially not the shame which is creeping up your face.
“I thought you were going to tear your stitches,” Regina confided in a stage whisper and they both broke out in laughter, the Princess almost doubled over and gasping for breath.
“You mean to say,” Emma choked out through sporadic giggles. “I was there in all my glory - and all you could think about were stitches?”
The resulting laughter went on for another minute at least, until Emma found the tears of laughter that were streaking down her face were sorrowful and the choking in her throat was a sob, not a chuckle. Then suddenly there was a hand in hers.
Emma looked at it, tan, delicate knuckles, tiny calluses decorating soft palms where there should have been none. Her gaze followed long sinewy forearms and muscles until it reached a shoulder, a delicate neck and then a face. Regina’s eyes were still guarded but for the first time her face was open; it was asking - no, endearing Emma to trust her.
This whole business was screwed up. Who was fool enough to get close to a captive, a bounty? It was the mother of bad decisions.
“Can I trust you?” Her voice was disturbingly open and vulnerable. This was a mistake. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to take it back.
Regina paused. Emma could see the indenture of her tongue running along her top teeth. She inhaled and exhaled twice. “Why would you?” She said eventually. “What would you entrust to me?”
Emma chuckled low, without amusement. “It’s too late,” the girl whispered. “You’ve already seen my tears.” She couldn’t say if she trusted the Princess in her care. It was dangerous. And Emma Swan loved danger, but not like this. Not when it was her emotions on the line.
You’re in way too deep, her sub-conscious was screaming at her. You’re giving everything away to this girl. If you trust her with your tears, which you haven’t shed for anybody else in two centuries, what else will you find yourself losing to Princess Regina?
Unthinking, Emma’s hand went to her chest, where she rubbed at the skin there, just above her heart. “If I trust you,” she said to the girl brusquely. “You’ll take advantage. Escape again. I may not even try to stop you this time. And the more I trust in you, the greater opportunity you’ll get.”
She barged past Regina sitting on the step and sprinted up the steps as fast as she could, leaving the girl behind her. She strode purposefully across the deck, making for her father - sweet, simple Charming.
Emma needed simplicity. She needed it like oxygen, like rum and adventure. She lived for herself and by herself. And no smug, spoilt Princess could change that for a second.
“How far?” Emma demanded of him, leaning on the mast behind the wheel. She didn’t look up to where Belle would normally be standing, looking out in the crow’s nest. Not going there.
Charming was his usual commanding, serious yet caring self. “We’re less than three hours from the map line surrounding the Sea of Monsters. Hopefully when we clear it we’ll be out of danger and…”
“Hook will be waiting,” Emma nodded. God, she needed him right now. Things on board the Blade right now were unnecessary complex and entangled, her emotions were messy and unstable. Hook was a rock. He was her past, as long and glorious as it was. He was adventure, riches, glory and infamy.
And if she saw a dejected Princess slink below deck to spend time with her son when she took over the wheel, Emma made a good job of pretending not to care in the slightest.