I didn't know he liked drawing.
He got it from his mother.
You tore apart my family, as sure as if you'd ripped her heart out yourself.
He had to get out of that cave or he'd suffocate. The walls he'd built around his heart cracked, sending sharp sudden pain through every nerve in his body. He followed Emma's lead, walking as fast as he could until he reached the opening, leaving the queen behind to undoubtedly make more flippant remarks to herself.
As he stood just outside the entrance, trying to draw as much fresh air into his lungs as they could hold, he could see nothing but their faces. Baelfire and Milah.
Lost. Both were lost to him. Milah, taken so suddenly, without even the chance to say goodbye. Just a pained whisper of "I love you", her last words before she was silenced forever. He had been walking the path of revenge for so long, consumed entirely by his anger, that the pain of her loss had become a numbness as debilitating as the loss of his hand. But here, in this place, this land where even the strongest among them would find themselves crippled by the pain of their own history, he felt it all…everything he'd buried deep within himself. The immense weight of her loss. The emptiness of 300 years seeking revenge for what he could never undo. The overwhelming guilt from the moment that he watched her son disappear into the darkness of Neverland with the Lost Boys, his surrender of the family they'd dreamed of having together.
Baelfire was not his son. But the time that he spent with the boy was what he had imagined a relationship with his own father might have been like. His own childhood had been spent dreaming of sailing the seas with his father, taking turns at the wheel and learning how to navigate by the stars. Ultimately, it had been his older brother who had taught him all of those things, including his love for the sea. And how to truly be a man of honor. But the moment that he lost Liam, he found himself alone again. And he didn't want Milah's son to spend his childhood as alone and lost as he had. But alone…lost…was what he had granted to the boy the moment that he allowed his anger and his need for revenge to overpower his chance at a family.
You hated my father so much, you didn't even realize you were just like him!
"You all right there, Jones?"
He turned from the spot he'd taken against a tree near the cave's entrance, trying to muster up his usual smirk or a witty retort in response but finding himself without the strength. When his eyes met hers, however, he realized that they must have looked like quite the mirrored pair, their stifled pain breaking through to the surface.
"I'm fine, Lass," he answered, if only to achieve the smallest of smiles tugging at the corner of her lips in her own recalling of the moment they'd shared mere minutes before.
"You know that I—" she started.
"-know when I'm lying," he finished for her, an emotionless smile on his own face. "As if I could ever forget, Love." He didn't elaborate on why he, in fact, was lying, choosing instead to take a seat on a nearby log and patting the space next to him for her to sit, surprised when she obliged.
"It's hard…" she began, hesitating for a moment as she chewed on the words she wanted to say. "When you think you know someone, and you realize that you never knew them at all. I knew Neal…but I never knew Baelfire. He lived…God, lifetimes…before he ever met me. All that time, and I never knew."
Her voice threatened to break, the tears he'd seen shining in her eyes moments before sliding slowly down her cheeks as she quickly swiped them away with the back of her hand. He didn't know what to say. There was nothing to say. He lifted his hand off of his leg and carefully placed it over hers, resting on the space of log between them. They sat in silence for several moments, both finding solace and comfort in the presence of the other, before Killian took a deep breath in, trying to prepare himself for what he was about to say. What he'd never said to anyone.
"Milah," he said, rolling up his sleeve to reveal his tattoo and catching the look of recognition in Emma's eyes upon seeing it again. "She was Bae—Neal's mother." A quick flash of realization brightened Emma's green eyes. Not the look of shock and contempt he was waiting for…not the look he found in Bae's eyes. But then, when had Emma Swan ever acted in a manner that Killian had anticipated? She was many things, but predictable was not one of them. No. Her emerald eyes were filled with some other emotion. Curiosity. Sadness. He could see her already piecing together the puzzle in her head. She was perceptive in a way that fascinated him, thrilled him, and terrified him, all in the same instance. "She had an adventurous, free spirit…but she felt trapped in the life she had with Rumplestiltskin. So she left her life behind, joined my crew, and we fell in love. The next time that we crossed paths with Rumplestiltskin, he had become the Crocodile…the Dark One. He ripped Milah's heart from her chest and crushed it to dust as she lay in my arms on the deck of my ship." He stopped, his own voice thick with the emotion of a time long passed, though the pain remained as raw as it was the day it had happened. "That was the moment I dedicated my life to avenging her death, willing to stop at nothing until the Crocodile was dead. I journeyed here, to Neverland, where I could make a plan, and that's when I met Baelfire. I brought him aboard my ship, and we were well on our way to becoming the family that Milah had wanted. But he blamed me for breaking apart his family…for her death. And rather than showing him that I wasn't the villain he thought me to be, I handed him over to Pan. I betrayed him, breaking the promises that I once made to Milah that I would one day take her son in as if he were my own, and I became as cowardly as the father who had abandoned him." He dug his hook into the log, splintering the wood as he scraped the outer layer of bark off with a sickening crack. He could no longer bring himself to meet the eyes of the one person in 300 years who now knew him for the villain that he was.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly after a moment, just loud enough for him to hear her. She placed her free hand that wasn't still resting beneath his good hand on his hook, wrenching it out of the wood and moving his arm so that it rested back in his lap. Then she reached into her back pocket, producing the one thing that, in the midst of all that had been said and didn't need to be said, could force a smile onto Killian's face.
"You're well on your way to becoming a pirate, Love," he said, letting his eyes drift slowly back up to meet hers only to find them brightened by the smile playing at the corners of her lips.
"I learned from the best," she answered, handing him a flask that he'd never seen before.
"You've had this with you the entire time," he said, no sense of a question in his words as he took it from her hand, placing it to his lips and taking a long swallow, an unexpected burn causing his eyes to water. "What the bloody hell is that?"
"Whiskey. Rum isn't the only solution to everything," she said, taking the flask back with a smirk that rivaled his own.
"And yet, when I offered, you seemed more than willing to take it," he replied with a wink, snatching the flask back and taking another swig so strong that he couldn't help but cough.
"If you can't handle it, just say so," Emma said, green eyes burning bright in the Neverland darkness. Seeing himself reflected in that emerald stare had become something of a pattern since they'd started on this journey. A hero's journey. And although he was a far cry from ever being a hero, as he saw his reflection staring back at him through the eyes of the one person in his long lifetime who truly saw him, he almost felt like it was possible.
"You'd be surprised what I'm capable of handling, Love," he replied, his tone a perfect mixture of truth and teasing, as he suddenly became quite aware that his hand was still resting over hers on the log. She must have felt it, too, as she carefully pulled it back and stood up.
"We should get back inside," she said, tucking the flask into her back pocket and starting towards the cave entrance before turning back to face him. "You're not a coward. You wouldn't…we wouldn't be here if you were." And although he had every reason not to believe her, with the pain and the guilt and the loss to prove her wrong, in that moment, he wanted more than anything to prove her right…to look into her eyes and be the man he saw reflected back at him.