A/N I just finished watching OUAT 5x3 and something started rolling round my head and insisted on making its way out in a stream of consciousness sort of fanfic.
We know how much Hook loves Emma; he's proven it time and time again, gone across time and space several times to bring her back, so what could he have perceived that would make him turn his back on her? What could make him claim not to love her? What could make him use the past tense?
I started writing, and this came out…
Broken
Her brokenness had never bothered him.
Within that brokenness, within her jagged pieces, he had recognised a kindred spirit.
She had been cool and remote, like pearls away from skin too long.
And he had longed to rouse the fury and beauty beneath the cold veneer.
xxxx
Her brokenness had never bothered him.
He loved every piece of her.
The shiny, dauntless hero, and the damaged, angry orphan.
The stirring, fire-filled speeches and the prickly, cutting words.
She made him believe once more in honour, then broke his trust and broke her word.
It had only made him love her more.
How could he not?
When her pieces made him whole.
xxxx
Her brokenness had never bothered him.
Her wholeness shattered his heart.
xxxx
She stood before him. So nearly Emma.
The difference was the breadth of a single strand of hair; once silver-gold, now pewter.
The difference was the distance to the nearest star.
She thought herself healed, whole, perfect.
She claimed to be better.
But the glue that held her together was darkness.
xxxx
Emma was light.
Through and through.
Even when she was angry, even when she was cold, even when she was irritated and bad-tempered and feckless and selfish, she blazed with gold.
The Dark One was cool, silver, sinuous, perfect.
She burned like hot ice, yet lacked the fire that been her own.
She looked like Emma, moved like her.
Had her memories and words.
But he could not see the cracks.
xxxx
The man he was today had been formed by Emma.
She was the binding that had pieced him back together.
She was too damaged to be perfect.
But her broken light had left him forever changed.
xxxx
Turning his back on her hurt more than the times she had walked away from him.
But the blow was of her own making.
The man she had helped to form could not love the Dark One.
The woman he had loved wouldn't want him to.
fin