Author's note: As the title would suggest, this fic was inspired by "Sleepless in Seattle," but it will be its own story, not just a cut-and-paste replica of the film.


He said it so casually, like it was just another word. And maybe for him it was. Another day, another diagnosis. But for Killian, those two syllables would never quiet. It'd been several minutes, and the ringing in his ears had only increased.

"Cancer," the man had said as he leaned across his desk, the proper balance of sympathetic and professionally detached. "I'm sorry."

"What—" Killian swallowed against the forming lump in his throat. "What do we do now?"

The doctor smiled—no, not a smile. A subtle twitch, come to break apart his façade. Come as the destroyer of hope, small though it was. Naught but a glimmer before the light was quelled by an involuntary reflex. "I'm afraid there's nothing we can do. If this was a year ago, or even six months, then maybe…"

His words were lost to that incessant ringing as Killian turned to his wife. Even now, she was the portrait of composure, her eyes clear of redness, her back straight, shoulders squared, but not stiff. He took her hand—more for her comfort or his own, he didn't know. When she didn't look over, despite the vise-like grip on his hand, Killian knew that he was her breaking point.

She'd wait until they were alone to fall apart.

The doctor blathered on about "final arrangements," and "making the most" of the time they had left, but Killian stopped listening around, "approximately six weeks," his mind racked with an unanswerable question.

What were they going to tell their son?

Liam was braver than Killian gave him credit for, even as they lowered the sleek black casket into the ground, and he didn't know which was more potent: the swell of fatherly pride or the ache in his chest. No one so young should have cause for this kind of courage. He twirled the white rose between fingers, waiting his turn. At Killian's unspoken signal, the lad stepped forward and said his final goodbye.

"I don't want to move."

Killian massaged the bridge of his nose as he set aside the book he'd given up reading at least twenty minutes ago, when Liam's complaint had been that he'd heard dreadful, terrible things about America.

"What do they even eat?" He'd scrunched up his face at the very idea.

"Food, same as the rest of us." Had been Killian's response, but his son was not convinced.

"Seems like a wretched place."

"We've been through this," he said, his voice perhaps a bit too stern.

He'd had to rein in his temper too frequently the past eight months. With his superiors, with clients, with the little boy who'd suffered the same tragedy as him, and yet suffered it uniquely. Killian had more years with Milah than Liam had on Earth—and they were good years, filled with memories that would carry him through until they met again, in whatever life waited beyond this one. But the child presently curling up in Killian's bed had been forced to face a future without his mother.

Would Killian could shoulder that burden for him.

Liam looked up at him with the eyes of his namesake, and Killian's frustration dissipated. "Come here, lad." He crawled closer, tucking himself beneath his father's outstretched arm. "I know change is hard, but you trust me, don't you?" Liam nodded but held firmly to his frown. "Then trust that I have your best interest at heart."

"Yours, too?"

Killian smiled, as much as Killian ever did anymore. "Aye. Mine, too."

"What kind of name is Storybrooke, anyway?"

It was the point on the globe where Killian's finger had landed. A point that, the more his eyes drifted to it and away from his work, had become like a promise of possibility, a fresh landscape, where everything he saw, every place he went, every person he talked to didn't remind him of the one he'd lost.

It was the one thing they needed most if they were to survive this: hope.

"Sounds made up."

Killian reached across the bedside table to turn out the light. "Goodnight, Liam."

"Tell me it doesn't sound made up."

"I guess we'll find out in a few days."