Title: Dark One, I Summon Thee (Why Don't You Answer?)
Rating: T
Word Count: 1250+
Summary: Post finale. Killian has a difficult time dealing with Emma's absence and falls back into some of his milder habits of handling grief.
Killian doesn't feel the sting of the rum or taste the spice of the liquor anymore as it slides down his throat. Neither does the burn of the remainder of the drink settling in his empty belly give him pause, his brain fuzzy and his tongue thickened and numb as he swallows each swig mechanically.
The edge of her bed is warm and yielding beneath him and the pull of his drunken body urges him to sink into it, to wrap himself in the Emma-smelling linens - her bed of roses - as he's done every night since her disappearance and simply cease to exist for a few moments. He yearns to sleep, to dream of her touch and the tight warmth of her thighs gripping his hips as they once had and then more, to hear the sweet whisper of her telling him that she loves him (safe in his arms, here perhaps, rather than just as she's being torn from him).
He tightens his fingers around the neck of the bottle - something the label professes to be called Captain Morgan, though what self-respecting captain would lend his name to such swill is beyond him – and his arm wavers, knocking the lip against that of his glass with a clink as the last of the brown liquid sloshes into it.
It isn't going to be bloody enough, he thinks to himself.
Nothing feels like enough to ease the pain of her absence or what this particular absence entails. Days of searching, days of looking through damned books for clues, talking with that bloody Apprentice who seems to tell them enough to gather their hopes, only for them to be dashed when pieces of the puzzle are still missing and they're left where they had begun.
It's ironic, he considers with a half-crazed chuckle. He's spent a majority of his life chasing after the Dark One and that journey is yet to end, even as the bloody object of his former covetous desires rests before his eyes. He stares at the god-forsaken dagger sitting beside the glass, every curve of it, every cruel, black letter etched to form her name making what would have years ago been a godsend look crueler, nastier than it had ever appeared to him before that night.
Killian huffs out a breath through his nose and throws back the final sip of the rum as if it were water to a man parched, his gaze unwavering on the cursed thing all throughout, ever hesitant for the vessel, which holds her life force, to ever leave his sight or touch.
(If only it did more than declare her name across its belly like an agonizing brag.)
"Why doesn't it work?"
He growls the final word loudly, standing and slamming the empty glass onto the white nightstand beside Emma's bed in a sudden move that would cause one to jolt hadn't he been alone.
"Where are you, Swan?" He whispers, his words cracking with emotion as he rocks unsteadily on his feet, speaking to the air. "Come to me, love, just come to me. We can help you! You're the Savior, there must be a way out of this."
Killian's eyes burn with unshed tears and his chest tightens like a vice rests around it, slowly squeezing. The compulsion to sob into her pillows just as he had once sobbed into his brother's lifeless neck drove him to a certain feeling of pure weakness that far surpassed anything the Author and Rumpelstiltskin had dreamt up in that false novel of theirs.
He takes a stumbling step forward, feet tripping over themselves until he falls to his knees, his elbows digging into her mattress as he struggles to steady himself, dagger curled beneath ringed fingers. He stares at it, blinking rapidly, as if the name inscribed there were some trick of the light or the drink. Of course it isn't, but the idea never kept him from hoping at his feeblest of times. He tightens his fist around the weapon, closing his eyes and drawing in a slow, shuddering breath.
"D-Dark One… I summon you," he utters faintly, desperately, as his blue eyes flutter open, burning into the sinister, iniquitous lettering, reading the name of the woman that he so desperately wants to see, regardless of her form. He waits a moment, an agonizing pause as his head continues to spin and his body begs for him to let it fall where he kneels. "Dark One, I summon you," he repeats, this time louder, steadier.
He forces himself once again to his feet, holding the dagger high in front of him, and waits. Again, there is nothing. No flash of light. No crackle of magic. No surge of power coursing through his veins. Emma Swan doesn't instantly appear before him. The ache in his heart doesn't ease.
(She's still lost to him.)
His breathing speeds a pace, panic rising in his chest and he chokes.
"God damn it, Emma, I summon you!"
He shouts it now, voice high and stretched thin until it snaps, shattering into the thousand pieces, dissolving into a desperate sob as he sucks in a heaving breath. He waves the dagger wildly towards the nearest window as if it were one of those bloody talking phones and she simply couldn't hear him well enough.
"Why?" He gasps out brokenly. "What is this magic? Does-does it mean… mean that perhaps… it isn't true?" he slurs, wondering briefly if the room was spinning because of the dagger's power or because of the second bottle of rum.
She can't be gone. She can't be dead. She's the Dark One and her name yet remains upon the cursed dagger. There's no other explanation other than that the rules have changed since Rumpelstiltskin passed on the mantle of darkness.
(Passed on to his Swan.)
"Why? Why did you have to do that? Haven't we established that I'm supposed to be the one making the daring rescues, Lass, not you? It's alright for me to die," he babbles on, waving the knife. "The world is alright if I'm gone, don't you bloody understand that? I'm not the Savior!"
The dagger falls from his hand to the floor with a clatter as he drops to his knees, stilling, if only to keep him from the opposite. He has the urge to throw something, to thrash about, to kick like a madman until the room that reminds him so much of her is but a pile of rubble – but he can't. He can't.
(To his things, perhaps, but never to hers.)
(She's coming back to it, after all.)
"Hook?"
He hears the familiar voice, feels the vibrations in the floorboards of quick footsteps moving towards him, but he doesn't move from his crumpled position on the floor. He doesn't make a move to help the strong hands snaking under his arm and around his back, lifting the dead weight of his drunken self unstably to his feet and back into bed.
"I think you've had enough," comes the firm reply to his unspoken request, and nothing else.
Killian looks up, vision blurred and spinning, and even in this state he catches the lingering scent of whiskey on the prince's breath. Even the Charming's aren't immune, a thought that might be comforting in any other state.
David is gone almost as quickly as he arrived, the dagger safely tucked into his coat with promises not to let it out of his sight until he comes around. The curtains close, his footfalls fade, and then the loft is dark and empty and all Killian can bear to do is close his eyes and picture her face until sleep calls to him.