AN: I have reordered chronologically but any new chapters will probably continue to be out of order as we learn more about the missing year. I'm still enjoying this compilation. It's out of my comfort zone, as normally I normally thrive on dialogue, but I suppose I like being in Hook's head! Enjoy.

Swan,

Somehow this feels less like talking to myself. Less like insanity. So for a moment I'll pretend I know what I will do with this letter when it is completed. Pretend it is destined for you rather than, most probably, the flames.

Something isn't right here. Aurora is expecting a child. Your mother said she was glowing. I didn't see any glowing, Swan, I saw fear. She and her prince were the gracious hosts of course, but they were nervous, and their fears were not ablated by the preparations your parents were making to return to the castle. It's something other than another Royal family showing up on their land. The forest itself seems nervous. I haven't had sight nor sound of a single animal since coming here. Even the oceans are not so quiet. There are seabirds around even when the nearest land seems too far away for them to have crossed.

Perhaps I'm going mad already. Perhaps the hole you left makes me see discord when none exists.

I'm sorry. I had to get away from there. I think you might understand. We always have had that at least.

I know I should stay, make sure your family makes it safely back to their castle but- Well I told your father, I tried the hero thing and it didn't take. How do you do it, Swan, the hero thing? You, your family, they're always thinking about other people, trying to help, trying to ... God, Emma, I can't think about anything other than myself. I can't stay here and play the hero. Selflessly stick by your parents and pretend to care about whether or not grumpy's shack is still in one piece. Watch Bae and Belle teeter between grief and denial. I can't watch Regina. Her least of all, I can't even look at her. I look at her and I see myself, just on the edge of falling apart.

The last time I fell apart it took 200 years and a bloody perfect kiss for me to realize there was something more to life than revenge. Bad things happen when people like us fall apart. If nothing else I hope you would appreciate me being far from the ones you love when that happens.

I've only one recourse; I must find the Jolly.

There have been precious few things in this world that ever felt like home. The Jolly is the only one left to me now. Your parents are falling into their positions gracefully, they tell me that you're happy, that you have a chance for a happy ending with Henry. It's all wrong, Emma, do you feel it too?

Of course not.

But I know you, Swan, better than you know yourself now. You wouldn't want this. You wouldn't want to live a lie, would you? A life chosen for you, a life designed to give you consolation for all you've lost. Would you take the lie if it meant pretending to have the life you always wanted?

What if I could have that life. What if I could pretend Milah had never been taken from me. That we had gone back for Bae, made a life for ourselves, the normal ordinary life of a happy family. It would be a betrayal. Not only of her, Swan, of myself. My life created me. Learning to find joy in the sea with my brother, becoming an exceedingly boring military man...

Holding his body when he fell tore me apart. When I finally started to put myself back together again I was a different man. One who fell in love with a woman in a tavern who left part of her heart with her son. How many times have I wished that she hadn't been taken from me. But the man who met you in the enchanted forest would never have existed without that pain. I don't know if that is for better or worse, Swan, but it is true. The man I am is made of the elation and the agony of my past.

You too have been forged in fire. Who are you now, Swan? Are you still the fierce lass who dragged herself across realms by sheer force of will? Are you still the perceptive woman who read a closed off pirate like the open book he claimed her to be? Are you still the mirror of all the best I wish I could still see in myself?

You are, Emma. You are still beautiful, frustratingly obstinate and brilliant. You are. You have to be...

I know you can't remember, so enjoy your vacation, Savior. I will find you. I will find a way to make you remember who you are.

Until then, I remember for you,

Hook

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