I know that this isn't the actual meaning of the song, but I listened to to it and inspiration struck. And thus, this angsty little thing was born.
Let me know what you think!
Killian had expected drama when he first got signed with Red Apple Music. He'd expected the loss of a lot of his personal life, he'd expected to be recognised as he bought a morning coffee. What he'd not expected was to fall in love with already critically acclaimed, award winning singer, Milah. It had been strange when they'd first met. Killian was new to LA after pulling himself out of a pit of grief over his brothers death and had only just managed to get himself a deal for his music. And then there she was, all charming smiles and thick brown hair. She was beautiful, Killian thought, everything that he'd ever wanted. And like everything else in his life, it was not built to last.
Killian had always told his brother how he'd dreamt of being a performer, how moving to America may have been the best decision that they had made together, and he'd stuck by that, even when his brother was no longer with him. They'd lived in a town called Storybrooke in Maine. It wasn't exactly the place to rise to stardom, but when it all began that wasn't what Killian was looking for. His mother had died when he was a young child and his father was a fugitive, tarnishing the Jones' name. He and Liam had gone into the system after their father had abandoned them, right up until Liam was old enough to become his little brothers primary guardian. He and Liam had simply been looking for a fresh start, to wipe clean their slate and begin again. The sleepy little seaside town had been the perfect place to do so. Liam, who was eighteen at the time, had begun working on the docks while Killian ,who was seven years younger, continued his education at the local school. It was the life they had always wanted, albeit short two parent figures. They didn't have a lot, but it was enough for them to get by comfortably, even if Liam did give up his dream of joining the navy to care for his little brother.
It wasn't until Killian was twenty that everything began to fall apart. Liam had been working at the docks like he had been for years. Hell, Killian was willing to bet that his brother knew his way around a ship blindfolded. And yet, accidents happen, ones that can't always be explained. Liam had been injured, the dock master had told Killian that December, that something had gone wrong while Liam was working and he'd been knocked into the water and believed to be unconscious. By the time they'd managed to fish him out, it was too late. Liam had passed away and left Killian alone. Not entirely alone, of course. Killian still had Liam's girlfriend, Elsa, who had begun living with them in their small flat above the Rabbit Hole, and her sister too who lived just a few houses away with her own husband, but Killian felt that he spent more time reassuring her then the other way around.
There was Belle, as well, the sweet bookworm who ran the Storybrooke library that Killian had become close friends with. He'd help her open up when she was too busy bailing her twin sister, Lacey, out of jail for god-knows-what drunken mishap she'd gotten herself into. There were even days where Killian would volunteer at the library to sing stories to the children of the town, giving Belle and chance to tidy up and meticulously organise her books. She'd been a great help during the grieving period, letting Killian hide in the library when Anna's casseroles began to stink out the apartment, or the sound of Elsa's crying reminded him once more that his brother was never coming home.
David and Mary-Margret were a great help too. They were a young couple who lived in a loft just around the back corner of Granny's diner. They were everything anyone who wanted to get married would strive towards. They were bright and smiley, forever holding one another's hands and planning out their perfect little future with one another. They were supportive in the way Killian had thought he'd needed. Mary-Margret would probe for him to talk about his feelings while also tying to ensure he ate enough, while David became his personal drinking buddy, always willing to seat himself on a bar stool and try and keep Killian from doing something he'd regret. It was a nice attempt, Killian could admit, but it wasn't what he needed.
What he needed was Emma Swan. She was a waitress at Granny's Diner where Killian would play and sing a couple of nights a week and likely eat every other. She was as much an outsider to the small town of Storybrooke as he was. Everyone knew who Emma was, but no one knew anything about her. She'd moved to Storybrooke when she was eighteen, just a year before Liam had his accident. No one had known where she'd come from or why, only that she was alone without any family. She and Killian had hit it off at the get go. They bumped heads an awful lot, of course, but both of them knew what it was like to grow up in the system (even though Killian did make it out) and she seemed to understand him in a way Belle and David couldn't. She knew what it meant to be lonely. Yes, Killian had his brother, who he loved most in the world, but that didn't change the fact that Liam had started making a proper life for himself in this town. He had a job, a flat, a group of great friends and a girlfriend who loved him. Killian had a couple of friends and guitar to get him by. Emma hadn't tried to comfort Killian in the ways the others had. She hadn't sat him down and asked him to bare his heart to her and she hadn't told him that she understood what he was going through. Emma Swan gave Killian exactly what he needed because she gave him nothing. She told him once that she was sorry for his loss and that Liam was a great guy as well as the gift of a bottle of rum and the promise that she'd help him drink it, but that was all. After that she seemed normal. She didn't step on eggshells when he was in the room and she didn't watch what she said on the off chance her words might break him. She was a welcome and very needed distraction. She was Emma, and she didn't tried to numb his pain, but she did help him deal with it because she herself was no stranger to tragedy. And then she was gone too.
And that was what Killian's agent, Regina, had told him to dig into for his music. The break up with Milah had been messy. And not spilt milk messy as Regina Mills had referred to it. No, this mess was not easily cleaned it. It was an explosion of a mess, nothing but rubble and volatile gas lines left hissing around broken power lines just waiting to spark. It was a wonder, he often thought, that he'd made it through alive. Milah hadn't just dumped Killian, she'd left him for another, older and far more successful man. Her producer, Robert Gold, a man referred to in the industry as the snake in the grass. He made people famous, that was for sure, but he was still shadier than a beach umbrella, but nothing he'd been accused of had ever been proved. He also seemed to have become Killian's personal thorn in his side. His and Milah's break up had been plastered on at least half of the magazines Killian could name and the others he dared not think about, but every story was the same twisted lie. The articles told of Killian, the damaged little orphan who ran off to LA after his brothers death to hit the big times and how that loss had left him unhinged. They spoke of out of control drinking, partying and multiple affairs, all of which was grade A bollocks. But what could he do? Milah was as much of a snake as her new lover and she'd do whatever she could to uproot Killian's career if it fed hers. She lived for the drama of it, for the cameras and paparazzi, while Killian hid away with a bottle of rum and no one but himself for company.
That had been over a year ago. Now, Killian's fans – and even more so – his agent, were getting antsy. He'd not released a new song since the break up and he hadn't been seen preforming since before even that. There were a lot of expectation beginning to rest on Killian's shoulders. Regina wanted new material and a comeback that put Britney Spears to shame and the fans wanted music and perhaps to know that Killian had indeed not died in his own bathtub. And so, he'd set to work.
"Mills." Regina answered the phone, her voice business-like and stern as ever as she sat, undoubtedly tapping away emails on her computer.
"Regina, it's Killian," Killian said, his voice far from welcoming as he ran a hand over his face, opening the curtains to his apartment for what may well have been the first time in months,
"Well, nice to hear from you, Guyliner." Regina quipped, the tapping of keys still not ceasing as she spoke.
"About that comeback," he said, surveying the bombsite that his apartment had become. Killian saw himself as an independent person, and so he refused multiple offers of a cleaner for his apartment, but now he'd just about kill for one. The couch cushions were not on the couch and the coffee table was strewn with notepads and screwed up pieces of paper. And the kitchen – Killian dared not step into the kitchen. "I think I'm ready."
"Are you now?" She sounded sceptical. Killian didn't blame her. The last they had spoken, Killian had been on the back end of a drunken night and had been anything but friendly to the stern woman before hanging up on her and refusing to answer anymore of her calls. Any other agent would have dumped his ass months ago, but not Regina. And for the life of him, Killian didn't know why. "Do you have any new songs for me?"
"I'm working on that."
"You're working on it," She echoed, her voice dripping disdain even through the poor connection of Killian's mobile. "I'm going to need a little bit more than working on it."
"I just need some time to get the right inspiration," Killian said, holding his phone between his chin and shoulder as he filtered through mindmap after mindmap of ideas that he'd already shut down.
"And a years worth of heartbreak isn't enough?" She asked and Killian could already feel himself regretting calling her. Regina was a great agent, that was undeniable, but when it came to the creative process she was slightly lacking. Regina was a business woman, and she always would be. Trying to get her to understand Killian's creative process was about as easy as teaching a rhino the cancan. "Why not try something a little less lovey." Killian knew what she meant. Most of Killian's songs while he had been with Milah were all about love and how much she meant to him. Needless to say that she was getting tired of love. "try find something that matters to you. A friend or a memory. Hell, write about your dog for all I care." She said but Killian was already getting an idea. He was slapping himself for not thinking of it sooner.
"I've got it," He said and already rising from his couch and heading to his bedroom that he hadn't slept in in months, favouring the couch and it's lack of memories involving a certain brunette musician. "I'll get back to it."
"Great. Don't take too long. Your fans are getting impatient." She said and then Killian hung up, throwing his phone onto his bed as he headed for the closet. It wasn't as stocked as most people would believe a celebrity's wardrobe to be, but it was certainly large enough. But it wasn't clothes Killian was after. On the top shelf of Killian's closet was a couple of boxes that had been all he'd brought to LA par a duffel bag of clothes. Grabbing the closest one, he pulled it down, placing it on his bed before returning to retrieve the other.
The first box was everything Killian had from his childhood which, to be frank, wasn't a lot. There were baby pictures of him and Liam together in Ireland, an old teddy bear he'd had since he was born, a photograph of his mother and father at their wedding folded to cut his fugitive father out and a few other knick-knacks from his and Liam's time in Storybrooke. The other box had been the one he had been looking for. There wasn't a whole lot in it – as with the other box – but it was everything he had wanted to keep. There were a pair of black framed glasses, a cheap teddy won from a claw machine at the Storybrooke fair, a hell of a lot of polaroid pictures and a red and white waitress' uniform kept for the simple reason that it was all Emma Swan had left behind. That was all the inspiration that Killian needed.
"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Regina asked as she walked Killian to his dressing room backstage, clearly not missing how he kept running his fingers through his hair.
"Aye," Killian said, catching his hand in mid-air when he spotted Regina's perfectly sculpted, raised eyebrow.
"Are you sure? The song hasn't even been released yet and recordings are still ongoing," Regina may have been on top of everything, and Killian was incredibly grateful for that, but at the same time, he wanted to take her phone and throw it to see how far she'd chase it. He was saved the trouble as she halted, slipping the phone into her blazer pocket and spinning Killian to face her. "I mean it, Killian. If you're not ready we can cancel."
"It's fine. I'm fine." Nice Regina was not someone who was easy to work with. She always caught Killian off-guard and reminded him that she was indeed human. It was the same Regina that Killian saw when Regina met with her husband, Robin, and his son. It wasn't unwelcoming, just slightly unnerving. "I can do this."
"For your sake," Regina said, poking him hard enough in the shoulder that his upper body began to twist. "I hope you're right."
"And now ladies and gentleman, performing his new single for the first time live, please welcome, Killian Jones!" Even the cheers that rang out at the mention of his name wasn't enough to quell Killian's nerves as he stepped out of the wings and out onto the stage, into the view of the applauding crowd.
"Good evening, everyone!" Killain said when he reached the mic, smiling widely at the sight before him. Somehow in his isolation, Killian had forgotten this feeling. How the cheers could awaken something inside his heart that he never knew was sleeping. This, after all, is what Liam had wanted for him. Minus the heartache and alcoholism, he was sure, but that's what happened when you dealt with loss. "Thank you for having me!" He called out before accepting his guitar from one of the stage hands with a smile. God, he hadn't even realised how much he'd missed this. "This is my new song about someone who was once very close to me." He said, but was greeted instead by almost silence. He knew his and Milah's relationship was anything but private and yet, by some miracle, his newest song had nothing to do with her. He was counting that as a silent victory. "This is, 'She Used To Be Mine'," The cheers erupted but this time, instead of welcoming them, Killian tuned them out, focusing instead on his fingers as they ran across the strings the way he'd been doing since he was ten years old and stuck in a room with his big brother after lights out.
"It's not simple to say, that most days I don't recognise me," He sang, remembering how he'd woken up one day to look in the mirror and not knowing fully who it was looking back at him. The man had been broken, his scruff overgrown and his eye solemn as he ran a hand over his paling face. It had been half of a wake up call, realising that he was changing. The other half was making a difference about it. "That those shoes and this apron, that place and its patrons has taken more than I gave them," He still remembered Granny's diner despite not having stepped foot in the place in over five years. He could still remember the owner, Granny, barking orders at her scantily dressed granddaughter as she waited tables, or the smell of onion rings from the evenings he'd played a late set and Emma was having her dinner on her break. Granny's would always hold a special place in Killian's heart and he'd be lying if he said he didn't miss the place.
"It's not easy to know, I'm not anything like I used to be, although it's true, I was never attentions sweet center," Except when it came to Emma. He'd been nineteen when he'd first met her. She'd started her first shift at Granny's on the same evening that he'd been playing after a lot of persuading to Granny via Ruby. He's wanted to approach her while she worked, but he hadn't been able to find the nerve. He'd even gone so far as to ask Ruby what she knew about Emma, but she'd been as clueless as him. But then she'd started her break as he was packing up and she'd approached him. It was bizarre, he thought. Killian wasn't a stranger to being someone's strange crush, but with Emma it felt so different. She spoke to him as someone wanting a friend. Emma had spoken to him as though she knew him already, like they'd known one another for years and were just meeting again after years apart. Maybe it was her confidence to speak out, or her take-no-shit approach, but Killian was truly in awe of her from that moment. "I still remember that girl."
"She's imperfect, but she tries," And she did try, everyday in fact. She worked hard for herself, earning her own money because she was too proud to accept 'charity' as she called it. "She is good, but she lies," Even now Killian didn't know more than and spoonful about Emma's past. When ever he'd asked – even just about her parents – she'd either spew some lie about not remembering or not answer the question at all. It was a very common occurrence and when Emma would be at her most prickly. "She is hard on herself. She is broken and won't ask for help." He'd offered, of course, to give her whatever she needed, but she always refused. Even when Killian had caught her sleeping with her head rested against the driver's side window of her car. She never accepted help and even worse, she would never swallow her pride long enough to ask for it, even if she needed it desperately. "She is messy, but she's kind. She is lonely most of the time," Emma didn't have proper friends, Killian found. Sure, she'd talk to people and she'd seem welcoming enough, but Killian always knew when she killing a conversation on purpose, something that happened more often than not, he noticed. But she would always talk to him and then they would be lonely together because she allowed herself to be kind around him, to smile like she meant it and laugh like she'd never be miserable again. But it would never last. "She is all of this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie. She is gone, but she used to be mine." And that was Killian's greatest secret. Emma Swan, for however short a time, had been his in the nicest sense of the world. She had left the confines of her car a couple of times a week to sleep in a bed – his bed and when he awoke she would still be there, blue covers pooled around her waist as he face snuggled into the pillows, her pale, bare back enough for him to marvel. It had been everything to him once upon a time, and now it was a treasured memory, shut in a box shut in a closest.
"It's not what I asked for, sometimes life just slips in through a back door," He sang, remembering when someone from Emma's past had arrived in Storybrooke, a man named August who she knew nothing about, but who seemed to know about her. He'd told Killian to be wary of her, that her life before Storybrooke wasn't all glittering gold. God, she'd be horrified when she'd overheard August telling Killian about what had happened to her in Portland. It had broken his heart to see her so closed off once more. "And carves out a person and makes you believe it's all true, and now I've got you." Of course, he had no one now, but Milah had taken up residence in the place in his heart that Emma had been carved from, a hole that had healed, but never fully closed. He still never knew why she left without so much as a good bye. They'd started the evening together, making one of the most memorable nights of Killian's rather pitiful life and when he'd awoken, she was gone, her waitress uniform left on his floor and a shirt missing from his closet. Killian had received no word from her after that. "And you're not what I asked for, If I'm honest I know I would give it all back for a chance to start over, and rewrite an ending or two." He wasn't sad that whatever he and Emma had once had had ending, he was only sad about how. The same was said for Milah. He biggest shame was how he'd let Emma go. He hadn't searched for her, hadn't called her and hadn't even tried to follow her. Killian had simply packed up his life into two boxes and duffel bag and left for LA. If Emma was leaving to find her own life, then Killian was going to go and find his own. "For the girl that I knew."
"Who'd be reckless just enough," One of Killian's greatest memory consisted of Emma's recklessness. Like the one evening where she'd swiped a bottle of rum from Granny's basement and headed to his apartment, only to drag him out and into the dark streets of Storybrooke. From there, she'd handed him the bottle before taking off at a run towards the library where she'd – surprisingly quickly – picked the lock before sneaking up to the clock tower that hadn't moved for as long as Killian had seen it. They'd spent that night drinking in the tower and dancing like a pair of weirdos as they laughed in the light of the clock face. "Who'd get hurt, but who learns how to toughen up when she's bruised, and gets used by a man who can't love," Killian had heard about Neal and it was needless to say that the man was very low on his list of favourite people. However, he was high on his people to punch list which had been growing daily. Killian considered the ma a coward above all else, a man with no honour who would rather the woman he 'loved' took the fall for his crimes than to face justice himself. It was enough to make Killian's skin crawl, but to see Emma bounce back from it made her even more brilliant than he'd originally thought.
"And then she'll get stuck and be scared of the life that's inside her," Killian could remember Emma's fears as well as they were his own, how she never let anyone close and kept her heart closed to any and (almost) all advances. And then, when she'd let Killian through, she'd been terrified. If he had to guess, he would say that it was that fear that had caused Emma to leave. "Growing stronger each day, 'till it finally reminds her, to fight just a little, to relight the fire in her eyes," He'd seen it a couple of times before, the spark that illuminated her green eyes like wildfire. He'd seen it when Mary-Margret had given birth to her new son before Emma turned nineteen. He saw it when she's just woken up in the morning and the sun would hit her back and she'd smile, forgetting for a moment that she was supposed to be angry at the world. "That's been gone, but used to be mine."
Before he even knew it, Killian's song was over. His fingers stopped playing and his voice stopped singing and there was a moment of perfect silence just before the applause where Killian could image he wasn't preforming in front of thousands of people. He was sat on his regular stool at the front corner of Granny's Diner, the tables cleared to give him space to play. Emma is there, sat next to Ruby on the bar, her golden hair tied back and her thick black rimmed glasses falling down her nose as she smiles softly like no one can see her. It all there and it's perfect and with the way that Emma as smiling at him he just knows that he'll wake the following morning with her in his arms – or perhaps it'll be the morning where he wakes up and never see's her again. And yet, he'll welcome either for a night with her. And then the applaud rings out and it's deafening, knocking the memory from his mind as he smiles and bows and waves to the fans, ready to make his departure from the stage and back into his life, ready to continue with his carer as he should have done a year ago.
Barely a week later and the song was a hit, already climbing in the charts across America just like Regina had wanted. Killian, well, he was thrilled of course, knowing that there was another piece of himself out there in the world for everyone to enjoy. He could do nothing but wonder just how many people truly understood his words, or if they simply listened for the melody, or maybe they could relate to his solemn, nostalgic words. Whatever it was, Killian was grateful that his song could be heard.
Meanwhile, back in Boston, curled up beneath a grey beanie and sat in her yellow bug, Emma Swan clicked on the radio for background noise. Stakeouts were never entertaining, but they could be managed with enough caffeine and some decent music. She'd tuned in just long enough to catch the beginning of a new song circling the world. She'd missed the name and even the artist, but she listened and for the first time in five years, Emma allowed herself to think about the sleepy little town of Storybrooke, and the man she had left behind there.