This is something I wrote right after the finale aired, and I finally got around to editing it. Yay! I only included the spoilers about Emma's appearance and who tries to summon her after she disappears, and the rest is pure Captain Swan angsty non-canon pain. Truth be told, this was originally a whole lot darker, but I though this version was just…better? More true to the characters?

One-Shot. Canon Divergence.

Rating: I'm thinking PG-13 / R-ish?

Waxing Light

He woke with a sharp ache in his back and a pounding heart, but his wakefulness brought no relief from the vivid panic of his nightmare. It had been quite some time since the familiar sense of overwhelming dread had plagued him, the despair and hopelessness near consuming. It was almost as though the last two years hadn't happened at all, that he never really managed to drag himself up from the mire and filth of his villainy. The things he'd wanted to do to Rumplestiltskin…even as the toothless old dog remained in his comatose state, even knowing what it would do to Belle.

Killian wanted to hurt someone. The plain truth of it was terrifying in its simplicity. He wanted to bash in something with his fist, take his final vengeance on the cause of all his suffering, her suffering. He battled with himself constantly, thoughts turning black as the miasma that had consumed her, taken her away from him. Even as he paced the library's floors, listening to the incessant chatter from her parents and Regina, heard their conversations circle back to the same conclusion over and over again, he couldn't drag himself out of it.

"Why the hell can't we rouse Rumplestiltskin, and make him tell us what we need to know?" he said at one point, flatly interrupting something David had been saying. It had been three days since Emma disappeared, and even after he had attempted to summon her with the dagger, there was no sign. He'd nearly lost it when Henry had tried next, pleading with his mother to just come back, that it didn't matter if she were the dark one, that he had hope and loved her and she just needed to come home.

The stillness of that wretched night had been far too telling. Silence the lad's only answer.

"Didn't you hear a word of what I just said?" Regina snapped, exhaustion coloring dark shadows under her eyes. "If we try to force him awake now, it could kill him. Like it or not, he doesn't have the Dark One's power inside him anymore. We can't just..."

"Well, look who's turned into quite the hero?" he'd replied, sarcasm lacing his words. "You'd go to hell and back to save your lover, who for a time enjoyed your sister's company over yours, but when it comes to the woman who saved your ass and this town's, countless times over, you're just as scared and selfish as you've always been."

"That's enough," David said sharply, the slide of his chair echoing in the quiet space. "We're all doing the best we can, Regina included. I get that you're frustrated, we all are, but Emma wouldn't want us hurting someone else – "

"Do you even bloody well care about your daughter? Should we all just stand around preaching about the damn greater good and saving murderers' lives while she suffers? Wake the damn Crocodile up, keep him alive long enough to tell us what we need to know, and to hell with what happens from there!"

"Listen to yourself," Snow exclaimed, her voice quite but firm in anger. "You sound just like you did before, when you didn't care if anyone lived or died so long as you got your vengeance. I thought you'd changed, Killian. Think about what it would do to Belle, and he's still Henry's Grandfather – "

"Oh yes, the evil, bitter man who murdered his wife, the woman I loved, and Henry's true grandmother? Explain to me how important it is that he remain a part of the lad's life?"

"I don't think that's your decision." Henry emerged from a row of books, four thick tomes teetering in his hands, his face set in stubborn determination.

Killian felt his anger slipping away, an intense shame immediately replacing it.

"Henry, lad, I didn't mean – ,"

"Yes, you did. And I know my grandfather killed Milah, I know he's hurt a lot of people, including both of my moms. He's the reason Mom's gone now, and I'm angry. Probably angrier than even you, but that doesn't mean I want anyone else to suffer. She's alive, I know it, and probably more powerful that Gold ever was. But it isn't just about finding her. She has to find herself too, and how is she supposed to do that if we give into the darkness she's trying to fight? How could that possibly help her?"

For a moment, it had almost been as though Emma was there, standing before him. Henry's words had been so full of bloody hope and reason that it was like seeing the first glimpse of light in the longest night of his life. Killian had immediately stepped away, ashamed and apologetic, but the thrum of his fury was a force not unlike the sea in a cyclone. He'd never been easily calmed, and even then words like naïve and foolish flashed in his mind. As he stood there, Henry between his grandparents and Regina moving to place her arm around the lad's shoulders, he'd never felt more out of place in his whole life.

Emma had been wrong. Clearly this hero thing really wasn't something he was made for.

Killian had left them then, apologies quiet on his tongue and fist tight. Perhaps there was something in his own personal collection that could help. He'd read all of the books on the Jolly more than a hundred times over, but he could have always missed something. At least, that was what he'd said. He could go back to digging through old tomes with the Charming brood in the morning. For now, he needed space, time to think.

Now, however, as he sat perched on the edge of his bunk, visions of his nightmare and Emma's tears still fleeting behind his eyelids, he decided that the solitude wasn't as comforting as he'd hoped.

Light had yet to shine through the windows of his cabin, so he imagined it was likely just before dawn. His flask was long empty, and his throat drier than burlap. The familiar sense of unworthiness overcame him as he considered the hours of potential research lost while he slept, so he rose as quickly as his aching body allowed, feeling his true age as he did so frequently now. He fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, choosing a black over his usual blue and patterned ones. Emma had acquired it for him, something about the color sparking a lustful gleam in her eye, one he'd returned with a knowing smirk. She liked him in black, almost as much as she liked him in the red shirt he'd yet to wear in front of anyone but her. They were the same colors he'd worn for centuries, and yet she preferred them. It had never failed to make him smile when she'd finger his collar, usually before trailing her nails down the open front and tugging on his necklace.

"Damn it, Swan," he muttered to himself, clasping his hook in place, averting his eyes as his cabin's last remaining candle flame shone red across the metal. He hadn't even said it back, that she was the light of his life and he loved her, too. He hoped she knew, damn well prayed to whatever deity might listen that she did. Whether she was ready or not, he'd been ready for months, nearly years. Killian knew there would be no one but her for the rest of his days, so why hadn't he just been able to say it?

It was useless to dwell, though, and he knew it. He stepped above onto the deck of his ship, the black of the sea melding into the lightening line of the horizon, and closed his eyes. Emma had been with him, near in the exact same spot only a few days before, showing him the constellations of this realm on her phone device, pointing out the names of Aries and Taurus the Bull and Orion as the screen mimicked the sky above wherever she pointed it. For a moment, as he stood there now, he could almost smell her perfume, feel the brush of her hair against his neck and cheek as she leaned against him, heard her laugh as he deemed himself quite a more worthy navigator than her silly device, awed as he was by it.

It was as though she were suddenly there with him, lips inches from his as he breathed in the scent of cocoa and cinnamon and his rum, arms warm around his neck and the softness of her breasts pressed firm against him. He could practically wrap his own arms around her, feel the solidity of her form as he now tasted her on his tongue, sliding across her lips as they parted and she tasted him –

He jumped back, eyes opening and immediately squinting against the bright light of day where the dark of pre-dawn should have been. His hand grasped warm and real flesh, the sight before him far more substantial than the phantoms of memory and nightmare.

"Em – Emma?"

He could still taste her, really taste her, and as he looked upon the woman he held at arm's length before him, there was no mistaking it.

"I did it," she said, the words barely above a whisper. Her smile was brighter than any he'd seen before, her eyes dancing. "I actually did it. Killian, this is amazing! This power, it's a hundred times more than what I had before. I can do so much! I mean, it took some working to figure out how to get you from Storybrooke to the Enchanted Forest, but I did it!"

She was in his arms again, her lips against his, hands tugging at his hair as confusion overran his brain. The haze lingered from the copious amounts of rum he'd consumed only hours earlier, and he wanted to blame that for the easy way he fell into her embrace. He hadn't even gotten a word in edgewise, much less been able to ascertain that she was indeed his Emma, but gods but did she kiss like before though, if not with more fervor and passion than ever. She demanded entrance, bit his bottom lip rather sharply when he didn't immediately grant it, and it awoke something in him. Something feral and possessive.

He began to kiss her back, treasured her sigh when his tongue slid along hers, and practically crushed her in his own arms as her nails raked across his scalp and down his neck, the kiss quickly turning into something beyond the pure excitement of reunion. Nimble fingers worked at the buttons on the front of his shirt, before she forewent ceremony altogether and ripped it apart as easily as if she was tearing parchment.

The strength he felt in her now, the way she held him nearly too tight, the spark of power that was practically tangible in the air…

"I thought you liked this shirt, Swan," he breathed, trying to grasp onto something that might bring back his sanity, because this was indeed mad. He didn't even know where they were, and she seemed much less concerned with other things, more important things, like Henry and her family. The situation suddenly wasn't making sense, she wasn't making sense, and when her lips moved to his jaw, down the line of his throat, he took a breath and a blessed moment to observe their surroundings. They seemed to be in a clearing, forest trees circling around the meadow tightly, the grass tall in some places, and yet perfectly groomed where they stood. He felt undeniably exposed, and not just because her teeth and tongue were blazing a trail down his chest.

"I do like this shirt," she answered, just before biting a mark into his collarbone. He groaned, the mix of pain and the silkiness of her tongue as she soothed it nearly undoing him then and there. "But I think it looks better like this."

He gripped at her hair, straining to keep his focus. "Emma, please love, before this goes any further, perhaps we should –"

In a blink they were suddenly standing in one of the lushest bedrooms he'd ever seen, the walls covered in gilded gold and rich velvets, a magnificent canopy bed occupying the space directly beside them.

"Better, you old prude?" she asked. In the next blink he found himself flat on his back, her hands braced on his ribs as she straddled him.

"Where in the blazes are we?" he asked, his mind scrambling to keep up, overrun with sensations and questions. Looking up at her from his place on the bed, feeling the sharp scrape of nails across his skin, he finally noticed the way her too-white teeth bit into her apple-red lips, how some unnatural iridescence glittered across her skin in the morning light, the way her hair had been washed of its gold and fell in white curtains over her very naked breasts, jade eyes flashing with something darker, devoid of her usual softness.

"Who knows," she shrugged, splaying her hands across his stomach as they worked downward. "It's a place the dar – I mean the magic showed me. I put up barriers, too, so no one will interrupt us this time. This whole palace can just be ours for now."

The wrongness of it all struck him harder, twisted his insides.

"Emma," he started, grasping at her hands. She merely leaned down, her halo of white hair cascading around his face and tickling his skin.

"Yes, Killian?" she all but purred, lips capturing his earlobe and earring.

"Why am I here?"

The question seemed to catch her off guard, and she met his eyes. "What's that supposed to mean? You're here because I want you to be. I missed you, Killian."

"And what about Henry? Your parents? You don't miss them as well? They called for you, love. Why didn't you come?"

She sat up, the playfulness leaving her eyes. A chill settled in his bones, even as he searched for something, anything about her that was the way it should be. "I came to you, didn't I? It just took longer than I thought it would. There's a reason Gold had such a hard time making his rounds through the different worlds. But we're here, now, together, and my parents are back in Storybrooke, safe and sound. Isn't it enough that I wanted to see you? That I chose to bring you here?"

"Emma, you've no idea what they're going through right now. What Henry – "

"Are we really going to get into this right now?" she cut him off, raising a brow. "We finally have one fucking moment of peace to do whatever we want, and you'd rather complain that I'm not rushing back to the same people who've made this so difficult?"

Killian narrowed his eyes, the steely set of her gaze unnerving. "This isn't you, Swan. You've fought tooth and nail to get back to your family time and again. You love them. The woman I know wouldn't think twice about going back to them."

"Well maybe," she sneered, "I could send you back right now to tell them how much I don't want to see them. That I'm finally free. Would that suit you better?"

He gripped at her waist, both hand and hook, a sheer reflex at the thought of being separated from her again. "You know that this is the only place in the world I could ever want to be, by your side. All I'm asking is that you talk to them yourself. Let them know you're –" he thought at first to use the word "safe," but the more he saw, the more he realized that she really wasn't. He was beginning to really see it. Threatening to leave him behind again, writing off her family as a burden she'd rather not face, stealing a whole damn castle just so she could have her way with him…

It was her, damn it, but as her hands turned to unyielding steel against his hips, as he realized that her eyes lacked any warmth or affection, he began to understand just who he was dealing with. She was right in the sense that her family was safe in Storybrooke, far away from her. He saw what she was doing, keeping herself from them, trying to protect them.

"Let them know you're alive and that there's hope," he finally finished.

"You're asking too much," she replied tightly, as if it were a struggle to get the words out. Her stillness above him was unsettling, her chest barely even rising with air.

And then Killian saw her. Emma bit at the corner of her lip, a faint blush rose into her pale cheeks, and she shifted nervously over him, her eyes falling to the bedspread. She began blinking, the gleam of her cheeks now sunlight in tears. He sat up then, and could do nothing but wrap his arms around her. It was all he knew how to do. His very soul screamed at him to comfort her, to stop the pain, hold her closer. Do something.

"Just come back with me. It'll be alright, love. Come back to your family, your home."

Come back to me.

Her skin had chilled in the air, and it felt so strange beneath his hand, hard and unyielding, yet softer than a rose petal. Her scent was different, stronger and yet false in some ways. Like she was trying too hard to be herself. She let him hold her though, and damn it if he didn't claim that as the piece of Emma he needed to keephis own hope alive.

Her arms, gently this time, wrapped around his back, and she pulled her face from the crook of his neck to brace her forehead against his.

"I shouldn't have brought you here."

Her words, whispered though they were, echoed in his head for days after.

"Emma…"

A gull called from the sky above, and he woke on the deck of his ship, the memory of soft jade and smiling lips all he had to hold until he found her again.

For a man that had already lived centuries with far less, he knew it would be enough.