Written for Xelbie's prompt "angsty Captain Swan" in celebration of my gaining 50 followers on Tumblr. This also took inspiration from the post I once saw about how the Huntsman role was originally going to be Captain Hook, but the show didn't get the rights to him until the second season.
My justification for Regina's curse not switching up Killian's name is that she didn't know it herself - she only knew him as Hook. Charming's name is actually David, but she only knew him by his twin brother's name (which he assumed), James. In the curse, he ended up with his real name, the one she didn't know. That's what I'm going with here, mainly because I selfishly wanted to have Emma call him Killian and none of you can stop me.
The title of this fic comes from the poem 'How Doth the Little Crocodile':
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
Even after she stops sobbing, she sits there in the dim light for… at least an hour. Much longer than she should; waiting this long before calling 911 probably goes against all medical or emergency response procedure. But Killian hadn't cared much for procedures, anyway – Emma has wondered more than once if he only offered her the deputy job because he knew she wouldn't blink an eye at his occasional disregard for the law, if it stood in their way. Well, for that and to piss off Regina (he's always seemed to like irritating the mayor, it's one of the things they first bonded about, and she doesn't know what he'd ever seen in that woman, finding them had felt like a stab in the back for so many reasons).
She can feel him getting colder, growing heavy in her arms.
And Emma just – she doesn't understand any of this.
Killian was a flirt, sarcastic and witty and very upfront about his attraction to her, but in a way that hadn't ever – she hadn't thought he was serious about it, not until – she'd thought it was just habit. He disliked Regina openly despite adhering to most of her rules, and Gold hated him for some reason, they avoided each other like the plague. He shared her cliché love of donuts, and drank hard liquor like he'd practiced at it for many long years, and he'd once told her over a half-empty bottle that he felt like something had always been missing, someone was gone (she would have brushed it off as a line but for that look in his eyes, that familiar yearning), though he didn't know who. She had seen him several times wandering through the graveyard, reading the tombstones as if searching for a familiar name, or sitting at the dock staring blankly out to sea.
Today, in the midst of his fevered ranting, he'd mentioned a woman, Milah, then stared at the pale skin of his wrist as though something was missing. He'd talked about hearts, and ships, and a crocodile, and snarled viciously that he didn't mean literally, Emma, he masquerades as a man. He'd talked about murder – and Emma has lived the sort of life where she can recognize a man willing to kill; he would have done it.
She talked him down from that, barely managed to reason with him that he didn't even know why he wanted to kill Gold, he kept drifting in and out of coherency and talking about his stolen heart. But she hadn't been able to calm him down or to get him to go to the hospital. Instead he insisted on going to the graveyard, babbling nonsense about 'recognizing the symbol,' which had led them to the Mills family tomb. Emma had only humored him because she was afraid otherwise she'd have to lock him up to keep from hurting someone – and then they'd run into the Mayor herself and everything had gone to hell, but at least he'd seemed to be getting better.
She had truly thought he was getting better.
And then – she'd kissed him and –
Emma hasn't kissed anyone like that since she was seventeen years old. His touch was burning, not from the fever but simply because it was him, his only hand on her waist, grip light like he couldn't believe it.
He gasped back, eyes wide with shock. "I remember," he said, smiling so brokenly that she had to smile back, "Thank you," and leaned in to kiss her again before she could ask why.
(She'd wanted to thank him too. She'd felt open, trusting, breaking free for the first time in eleven years, and she wanted this, wanted him, and it was so strangely gentle, unexpected but right as nothing else had ever been.)
And then he'd fallen. Made this horrible, gasping, choking sound and collapsed. Nothing would wake him up, nothing would – he wasn't breathing, wasn't moving, wasn't living anymore and it was all her fault, she should have taken him to the hospital, she should have done something, anything.
"Killian," she sobbed over and over, clinging to his ridiculous long leather jacket, curling over him, breaking in two over him, whimpering, praying, begging, "Killian."
Eventually, though, Emma stops crying. She just stares down at him now – his dark messy hair, the rough scruff on his jaw, the soft cloth stump of his left wrist.
(He has a prosthetic hand, but hates wearing it. Says if he's going to have any attachment it might as well be something that can actually perform a useful function, and re-directs the conversation whenever she asks how he lost it in the first place.)
(Used to. He used to do that, when he was alive.)
(God, Killian is dead. Dead, in her arms, he isn't breathing, god.)
She knows what she is supposed to do. She should call an ambulance. She should inform – someone, god, for all he flirts around she can't think of a single other person Killian knows well. But still, Emma ought to get up, call this in. If he was… if he was sick, it might be contagious, or something. Nothing about this makes any sense, because he's fit and has always been in perfect health with the exception of the missing hand, but there has to be some reason for this. This can't just happen, he can't just be dead, she can't handle him being dead, she needs him alive, this can't be –
Emma closes her eyes and gathers Killian closer, struggling a little against his dead weight. She'll get up, and she'll get past this. She just – she just needs some time.
-xxx-
"I just wanted to… express my condolences, really," Gold says two weeks later, every word ringing false. "The Sheriff was a good man."
"You hated him," Emma says flatly, and remembers the confused anguish on Killian's face, the way he'd insisted Gold needed to die.
"We had our differences," he acknowledges, before commenting on how she's still wearing the deputy badge, and Emma is not ready to discuss that, not with this man. Not with anyone, but especially not this man, so she turns to go.
"I have his things," Gold calls after her, and it's wrong, it's so wrong that he should have Killian's belongins considering their mutual hatred, that Emma can't help but turn back. Even so, she can't handle a keepsake, she refuses the coat, and –
"What the hell is that?" she snaps, hand darting into the box. "What the hell is – have you been talking to Henry? Is this your idea of a joke?"
It's a hook. A goddamn boathook, curved and polished and bloody sharpened, and Emma can't breathe, she's so angry. She brandishes the hook at Gold in what could probably be called a threatening manner, but she couldn't care less.
"I'm sorry, Miss Swan," he says, unperturbed. "As I said, I gathered these from his apartment –"
"Don't lie to me," Emma snarls, hand curling tight around the cool metal of the hook. "I know when you're lying, I can tell, this – if this was his he would've worn it."
"I can't imagine he'd have cause to do that in a peaceful town like this," Gold says, so blank and smug Emma wants to deck him. "That looks like a weapon."
"It looks like a sick fucking joke, is what it looks like!" Emma snaps, and flings it back onto the counter, where it clatters loudly. She can't help herself, she's remembering every time Killian complained about the way his prosthetic was worse than useless, muttered grumpily about how "even a bloody fork would be able to at least pick things up" – and he wouldn't care what anyone else thought, Henry already called him Captain and he just laughed, he would have worn it for that joke alone and how dare Gold do this.
"Miss Swan, please – perhaps you're right. It might have just fallen into the box off one of the shelves of my shop. You knew him far better than I… if you say he didn't own this hook, I'll take your word for it." Gold picks up the hook with a placating smile and stows it out of sight under the desk, before redirecting Emma's attention to a pair of walkie talkies instead.
She takes them, because he brings up Henry and – she's seen how this has hit him, he at least needs something to hang onto even if the thought makes Emma burn and want to run. But she's still furious, and refuses to leave without getting the last word.
"Don't you dare make that kind of joke around Henry," Emma grumbles as she accepts the walkies. "Killian was not freaking Captain Hook and it's – it's not right for you to do that."
But it gnaws at her; she can't get her mind off it. The hook was made to latch into something at the base, and it was the same kind of latch as Killian's prosthetic fit into, when he actually wore the thing. It looked well-cared for, and – she can't get his voice out of her head, his frantic insistence that the he needed to kill Gold, he needed his revenge.
He'd talked of someone missing, and walked through graveyards. He'd said Milah, with such despair. And he had – it was all just the fever, Emma knows that, she knows, there's no proof of any wrongdoing.
Even so, she spends an hour walking slowly through the graveyard. Milah isn't on any stone.
(When she agrees to let Gold help her win the election, his grin is smug and sated, crocodile-wide.)