Summary: "Thought you'd like this more than roses." 5x21 Last Rites
Notes: An expansion of 5x21. Includes mentions of death.
Emma brings the lilies on a Tuesday.
"Hey," she says, like she always does, like she always did.
She lays them down across the overturned earth. The grit lodges up underneath her fingernails, smears across the palm of her hand, over her wrist. She leans forward, tracing the letters of his name.
"I know…" she starts.
But she can't finish, can't hardly speak, teeth chattering, jaw clenching against the sob that rises in her chest. She stands on warbling legs, her boots sinking into the ground. It's been raining something fierce as of late and it's just -
"Bloody hell, I hate the rain," he says, pulling his collar up against the wind, hunching down in front of her as they walk.
She laughs. "Uh, excuse me, I am not your rain shield."
- it's just too familiar.
So she turns, drags her fingertips up along the headstone, up along the face, the twisting columns, and rough hewn gable. She grasps at the point, presses down until she can feel it, really feel it down in her bones. She squeezes her eyes shut, chews on her bottom lip until her breathing calms, until she can almost feel him, almost smell him.
"Hey," she repeats, barely a whisper this time. "I brought you some lilies. I know you like red but…"
She heaves a sigh, squeezes her eyes even tighter against the image of him in his red vest, of her in his red vest, of the night they'd gotten ragingly sloshed, as he'd said, and rooted around in the chests scattered around the Jolly Roger.
"But I like white," she says, and then she smiles. Weakly, tears muffling the sound of her voice. "And I'm the one who has to look at them, so…"
"So…" she tries again. But she can't finish. And she can't say goodbye. So she waits. Waits until her father comes looking for her, and leads her away.
She brings him daffodils on a Wednesday.
"Hey," she says.
Killian, she thinks. But she can't say his name, not when it's staring back at her on the face of his grave. So she bites her lip, chants it in her mind for a moment -
Killian, Killian, Killian.
- before she allows herself to breathe, to speak.
"Daffodils, this time," she says. "There are like…a million different colors. Do you remember that shirt? The purple one, you know with the…"
She gestures for a moment, one of the petals on the little flowers falling to the ground, landing lightly on the toe of her boot -
"Killian, no offense, but that is the ugliest shirt I have ever seen."
"You're just jealous."
- before it tumbles to the ground beneath the weight of the rain.
"The ugly one," she says. "These kinda reminded me of it. Thought they might…" She has to look away, look anywhere but at him, his resting place, while she lays them down. "…might suit you."
This time, she walks away, after a moment suspended in time, in reality, in some nether space where she's begging for memory to overtake her so she can feel the heat of his breath across the back of her neck, can feel the chill of his hook curling around her wrist.
But she doesn't want to look at her father's face again, the helpless tilt to his brow, the shimmer over his eyes. So she walks away, despite the tether that seems to pull her back.
"Hey," she says, on a Thursday. "These are from Henry."
She's kneeling on the ground again. Somehow, looking at his name - the dip in the 'J', the flourishes on the 'K' - feels a bit like looking at him, like she's only just missing the sound of his voice in reply, like if she turned her against the wind, she'd catch it off the turn of storm that brews above her.
"Gladioli," she says, and lays them beside the others, patting down until they seem steady in the breeze. "Or gladioluses? I'm not really sure. You would know…"
She bites her lip, turns her head a moment as she picks at them stems of the flowers, digs her knees into the ground until the dampness seeps into her clothes, makes her feel something. Something besides -
"It's radii, Swan, not radiuses."
"It's radii, Swan, not bla bla bla."
- anything besides this. Besides the way she feels the weight of his grave on her chest, the heavy, sharpened stone as though it's sitting on her bones. Besides the tender petals between her fingertips, as strong and beautiful and fleeting as him.
She runs, this time, before she can say anything else. She has to remind herself not to look over her shoulder, to wait for him to follow.
"Roses," she says, on a Friday.
She's standing this time, looking down at the flowers in her hands. She runs the tips of her fingers over the petals, over and over again. They're sturdy, flashy, red like he likes, sturdy against the errant eddy breezes that turn up the twigs over his grave.
Even so - thorns pricking at her fingers, at her palm, at the thin white line of a scar he'd once soothed with his rum, with his scarf, with his tongue some months later - it's just -
"Not right," she says. She lets the flowers fall to the ground. Next to the others, though haphazard, like she knows he wouldn't like. She has to bite her lip against the sudden urge to fling them all away, to bury them as they'd buried him. These flowers will rot, they will sink into the ground, they will be nothing, for no one.
She counts her breaths, counts them in a language he'd barely begun to teach her in the dead of night.
"I wish…" she says -
"Make a wish, Swan, it's not every day you see a falling star."
"I wish for infinity wishes."
"That's cheating, love, very bad form."
"I wish infinity wishes wasn't cheating."
- though she falters.
"I wish you'd taught me some fucking curse words," she says, after a moment, voice rising in indignation, almost begging for him to retaliate. "Instead I'm sitting here counting to God only knows what. I wish these fucking flowers…"
She trails off, reaches out to steady herself on the stone once more, wondering when she allowed it to become her anchor.
"I know these really aren't for you," she says. "They're for us."
She flexes her fingers, watches as they turn white. She tilts her head back, looks up at the sky, gray billowing along the edge of twilight, the dark, damp, pervasive chill of early spring clutching at the base of her spine, rattling her from the inside out. She thinks she should have more to say, to him, for him. Anything to honor him, instead of them.
But she can't. And so she waits until the mourning doves begin to coo, until the sun begins to dip and glare from the west, and she turns, and walks away.
She doesn't go on Saturday. Can't bring herself to bring him something else that's just going to die. That's just going leave.
So she sits on the bowsprit of the Jolly Roger, sipping water from his flask. It's long since been emptied of his rum. Before…
Before, she thinks, with a terrible twist of her lips.
…before all of this, it never seemed to empty. But she'd found it, one of his favorites, with metal and filigree, tucked at the end of a row of books, with not a drop to drink. She'd filled it up, with water from a bottle in one of his cupboards -
"There's water in the faucet, Swan - lovely invention, that - I can walk you home if you're thirsty."
"Or I can put bottles of water in your cabinets, and we can pretty much never move from this bed."
"…fair point."
- and carried it with her to the deck.
It takes her several minutes - several long, measured sips - before she can look at it, really look at it. She turns it over and over in her hands as the liquid sloshes this way and that, tinkling neatly against the curved, tempered edges. It's a familiar sound, something she can remember hearing when he'd tuck her into his side, when he'd smile down at her and lean, down, down until he could brush his lips over the arch of her nose…
She shakes her head, takes one last sip - another moment of remembrance in the fury - and the sound of sloshing follows her in her quest, all the way to the library…
She brings it with her on a Monday. The flask. Clutched tightly in her hand, the other holding the black umbrella the funeral director had given her before she joined the procession. The masses gather just over the hill. But even with the sound of the water in his flask, even with the memory of his supposed distaste for sentimentality echoing in her mind, she smiles, wanly, and whispers,
"Hey."
She breathes in. Then out, feeling perhaps more alone than she ever has. But at least she can give him this. Give him this. Not herself.
"Hey," she repeats, louder. "Thought you'd like this more than roses."
"Hey," he says, on a Tuesday.
Emma turns, looks over her shoulder from the window that peers out from the cabin of the Jolly.
"Swan, where's my flask?"
She smiles.