Dark is the Night
He was so cold. No matter how hard he tried in this place, he was always so bloody cold. It followed him, that chill deeper and more cutting than any he had felt from an angry tempest on the roiling ocean. So damn cold. The house he lived in was more alive than he was; it breathed, sighed and groaned when he walked along the empty hallways. Every day (or was it every day? The sky was always gray and cloudy here) he would wake in a bed too large for just him, reaching across where he knew she should be, but wasn't. Sometimes her side was warm, like she'd just gotten up to fix them breakfast (Impossible. She could sleep through the apocalypse, that one). He liked to entertain the thought of her making coffee for the two of them in the kitchen below. It brought the shadow of a smile to his lips before the tears began to fall.
He would get up and dressed, walking through the rooms and listening to the house breathe, like it was waiting, prepared for life to start where it never would. Not anymore. Not for him. There were pictures on the walls, memories. In one they were dancing; she'd never looked so lovely as in that scarlet dress, when he could see it in her eyes that she thought he was a prince. In another, he and the boy were looking up at the sky from the helm of his ship. Sometimes when he took that one down to look at it he could smell salt in the air, and hear the faintest cries of a gull. The furniture was everywhere he'd wanted it, exactly as he's always pictured, and echoes of what may have been were always taunting him, snickering over his shoulder. He could hear the crackle of the fireplace at times, see the faint glow of the embers of a fire just put out. He'd walk into the living room and the fabric of the recliner he never sat in would be wrinkled, as if someone had been sitting. And if he stopped, and listened very carefully, very intently, he could hear the most beautiful sound from behind a certain door.
A lilting, gentle voice crooning a lullaby. He would close his eyes press his forehead to the door as he listened, trying to hold on to the whisper.
I see the moon, the moon sees me
shining through the leaves of the old oak tree
Oh, let the light that shines on me
shine on the ones I love.
But if he dared to open the door, there would be nothing but a slightly rocking chair sitting next to an empty cradle, underneath a slightly turning mobile that little swans swayed on. That room was the worst in the house. He could never stay in there for long. But whenever he would walk out, he'd see the full-length mirror at the end of the hall and the top of the stairway. He hated that it was there, making his presence so glaring to himself after he always tried so hard to be a simple ghost. He didn't want to look upon those sunken eyes once so bright, the lines of sorrow etched into his face like cracks in pavement. But the only true ghost was her. He looked in the mirror and if he didn't focus too hard she would appear beside him, eyes twinkling and playful as the smile on her rosy lips. If she could coax a smile from him, he would feel the faintest breath of warmth on his cheek, and her lips on his skin for only a second. Then she'd be gone again.
He hated that part, when the only thing he could feel here aside from cold was suddenly gone. Once, it got him so mad that he couldn't hold it in, and with a roar the mirror was flung down the stairs and smashed into a thousand pieces. He could hear a scream and at the last minute before it shattered saw her shocked face. But it was too late, and he had to live with what he had done. Or simply exist with it. He was long past the point of living after all. It was probably only right that he ended up in the Underworld. Here, in the house where he'd planned a future that would now never come with a woman he would only see in faded photographs and his dreams. Killian Jones was stuck in his own personal Hell.
He supposed he had better get used to it.