So I started this oneshot quite awhile ago, intending for it to develop into something a little longer. But then life happened and the new season started, and I had other fics I was working on, so this one sat in my Writing folder, waiting its turn. And tonight, I opened it up again and read through it, and I didn't want to make any changes to what I'd already written. I didn't want to add or subtract from it because I think it's a complete work the way that it is now. Like many of the fics I've written, I don't actually remember writing most of it, so it was like I was reading it for the very first time. I hope that you enjoy reading!
Alone. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime – and he knew a thing or two about lifetimes – Captain Hook was alone. Standing at the helm of his ship, maneuvering her through the waters of the one realm he'd sworn to never lay eyes on again, while the other members of his unlikely crew slept below deck. Yes, the infamous Captain Hook was alone, the way he preferred to be. But, it seemed, Killian Jones wasn't.
Everything he thought he knew...thought he wanted...had changed, back in Storybrooke. When he stood in the very same spot he occupied now, magical bean in hand, ready to face whatever world awaited him through the portal it would create. Alone. He'd been alone since the very moment that Milah's lifeless hand fell away from his cheek. Since he'd dedicated the rest of his life, every breath left in his body, to avenging her death.
And then in a single moment, he was pulled from beneath a pile of corpses by a beautiful blonde with an attitude to rival his own, and he hadn't felt alone for a moment since. He didn't know what it was about Emma Swan, but she shook him at his very core, awakening a part of him that he had sent into the sea with Milah's body, sinking to the crushing bottom of the ocean. Even after she betrayed him, left him chained atop a beanstalk with a giant, she had left something behind that would ultimately be his saving grace. Hope. Hope that he could feel again. Hope that after all of the lifetimes he'd spent alone, abandoned, and broken that he could be a part of something that would make him whole.
You can join us and be a part of something, or you can do what you do best and be alone.
Being alone was what Captain Hook did best. Not Killian Jones.