A/N: This is just something I wrote a while ago, but it never really seemed to fit into anything else. A 'What If Graham Was In The Underworld?' kind of thing.
He wonders at first, as he finds himself adjusting to this new reality, if this a personal hell, just for him, fit to bursting with all of the people he wronged across the centuries. But not all of the faces are familiar. The Sheriff is not someone he has ever met. This he knows because he recognizes the face. He's seen a likeness of the man hanging up in the Sheriff's Station, by the magic box. Bearded. Handsome. Kind eyes. It's the same man whose bootlaces have adorned Emma's wrists for as long as he has known her, as a remembrance. Graham. The man she could have loved, had he not died in her arms before she really had a chance to try.
It had taken her some time to tell the tale. They'd sat out on the deck of the Jolly Roger together under a blanket of stars, her wrapped solidly in his arms, he having stolen her away from her role as the Savior for a few hours and anchored them in a sheltered cove where her talking phone didn't seem to work, and no crisis could find them. He'd made some flippant remark about her choice of jewellery, something about princesses with modest tastes. He knew, of course he knew, there was a deeper significance to the item. When it came to Emma, nothing was accidental. She was careful, and she was deliberate, and she always had her reasons. But instead of shutting down, and deflecting with sarcasm, as she was won't to do when he struck a little too close to the nerve, she'd taken a deep breath, and told her about Graham.
He had been a good man, she'd said, caught in an impossible situation. Cursed to play the role of Regina's right hand, he risked her wrath to help Emma and Henry try to break the Dark Curse. He'd defied Regina's wishes and given Emma a job at the Sheriff's Station. It was a vocation which not only gave her an excuse to stay in Storybrooke, so that she could be near Henry, but also gave her a valuable role in the community. The chance to make a difference. To be a hero. Alas, Graham hadn't survived to see Emma succeed in breaking the curse. He had died suddenly, and far too young.
Knowing the Evil Queen as he does, did, he wonders if there wasn't more to that "heart attack" of his. Regina knew how to eliminate a threat when she saw one, and Graham's actions certainly seemed to put him directly in the line of fire. He considered broaching the subject, delicately, of course, but Emma seemed content with the explanation the good doctor provided, and he kept his suspicions to himself. He wasn't sure the delicate understanding that Emma and Regina managed to strike up between them could survive so weighty an accusation, and he wasn't sure Emma wouldn'tt be more miserable for it, in the long term. Killian knew, perhaps better than anyone, that vengeance was not a recipe for lasting happiness.
But if the Sheriff is the victim of a murder most foul, he doesn't seem to know it. Every morning, Killian watches on from his assigned booth in the diner as the man comes in for his customary box of pastries on his way to the station, the pistol strapped to his side poking out from under his jacket as he reaches up to accept his order with a polite smile, his every step imbued with an unspoken authority. For a moment, he lets himself wonder if he could have ever won Emma's heart if he'd had this man as his competition.
But it was foolish to deal in could-have-been and never-was. Far too easy to imagine himself out of the picture entirely. But that isn't how things turned out, for better or worse. He'd fallen for a bloody princess of the realm, and her for him. He'd traded his ring for her safety, and his life for the lives of her family and friends. His friends. And now he'd finally succumbed to his mortality, and he'd just have to bloody get on with things.