Author's Note: I wrote this back during the events of S5 and forgot to ever share it with anyone, so I thought I would post it here. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support during this difficult season in my own life.
The sky was miserable and gray, grabbing up Storybrooke in a slack hug. Rainwater saturated the ground, pressing soggy puddles between the cemetery tombstones. The drops splattered against the grave markers, creating a sound that deafened not with noise, but with significance. Water splashed across his name and Emma shivered.
It wasn't the cold that chilled her—the rain had already soaked through her long black jacket, drenching her skin and numbing her to every feeling but that of her breaking heart. It was his absence that froze her in place, the reality of a world without him that she didn't yet have the strength to face. Emma stared at his name until the world around her blurred, ghosted the letters with her eyes until she could see them even when she closed them shut.
"Killian." Even her own voice sounded foreign in her head. Emma dropped to her hands and knees; they sank into the drenched earth. The mud slid between her fingers and she was reminded of the last time she held his hand, those dragging last moments before he slipped forever away from her grasp. She'd cried so much that she couldn't anymore. She just stared blearily at the place where her love was buried, her eyes red and burning, and choked over the dry sobs lodged in her throat.
Emma half-expected her parents to come looking for her, and so when she heard a car engine idling in the distance, she didn't react. She felt so frozen there on the ground, she faintly wondered if she knew how to anymore. A driver's door opened and closed again, clapping in the air like lightning. A pair of footsteps approached her from behind, their noise muffled by the mushy ground and the steady beat of rain gushing from the sky.
It stopped suddenly—or at least it did against Emma's skin. Jerked out of her sorrowful reverie, she looked up, her long blonde hair clinging to the curve of her cheeks. The face she saw hovering overhead gave her a start.
"Jefferson?" Emma's voice sounded raw, strangled by sobs and the frigid air. He smiled down at her in a way he hoped was reassuring and shifted the umbrella to one hand while sticking out the other. She stared at it.
"No tricks this time," he assured her.
Emma didn't look convinced. She took it anyways, unafraid and uncaring of anything he could do to her. Jefferson hoisted her to feet she could barely stand on; they were numb from where rainwater soaked her clothing. He steadied her as she stumbled. She glanced over his shoulder and to the high-end black sedan idling behind her yellow Bug.
A face not much younger than Henry's peered back at her with wide eyes, her long, wavy hair spilling down her shoulders like the rain from the sky. Emma recognized Grace at once and quietly marveled at how she'd grown and at how—well, real she was. She looked at Jefferson and for the first time since returning from the Underworld without Killian, there was something more than heartbreak in her eyes.
"I'm sorry," Emma said quickly.
Jefferson stared at her. "For what?"
"I didn't believe you before." That felt like another time, another reality. She'd crossed worlds since then, both fantastical and ordinary. She'd slain dragons, battled sorcerers, surrendered herself to the darkest force in the world and found her way back to the light. She'd loved and lost with all of her heart.
And yet somehow she'd never sought out the man she wrote off to madness, the one who suffered the very worst of Regina's evil curse.
Jefferson chuckled. The sound was startling. "You're a strange one, Emma Swan," he said.
She would have laughed if she had the spirit to. It wasn't every day the Mad Hatter called you strange. "For what, apologizing?" she asked.
"One could argue that I should be the one apologizing," Jefferson said. Emma shook her head.
"You do what you have to do for your kid," she said. "I get that now. I'm sorry I didn't sooner."
"I wasn't talking about that." Jefferson stared at the grave behind her, the earth still freshly overturned, the headstone a shade lighter than all the others. "I'm sorry, Emma."
She felt her stomach sink. Emma was suddenly aware of the mud smeared on her palms; it anchored her down even though it weighed nothing at all. A familiar, scratching feeling clawed at her throat, a sob that she didn't have the strength or the energy to release, especially in front of someone who was all but a stranger to her. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, holding herself and desperately wishing it was Killian's skin on hers instead.
"Thank you," she murmured, her voice barely audible over the rain as it dribbled steadily against Jefferson's umbrella.
"Grace was two when I lost her mother," he said all at once. He was barely aware that the words even slipped his lips as he stared at Killian's grave, studied the loving way his name had been carved into the gray stone. It was a handsome memorial, more of one than he'd ever forged for Priscilla.
A long second passed, nearly silent, punctuated by the steady drip and the hum of Jefferson's car. Emma's words were faint as she turned her eyes up to the hatter's. "Does it ever go away?"
"They say there's a season for everything." Jefferson shook his head. His voice was biting, a mockery of the words. "It always feels like winter to me."
Emma stifled the rasping sound that tried to escape her. Jefferson watched her for a moment, took in the hurt and the guilt on her features that he knew so well. Her face was a more beautiful mirror of his own. He reached his hand out to her and she took it without thinking. Her slender fingers slipped between the spaces of his larger ones. Jefferson's skin burned hotly against her own, and for a moment as fleeting as a break in the rain clouds, Emma felt comfort or something that resembled it.
"It's not fair," Emma whispered, squeezing his hand. Without thinking, she turned into him, buried her face against his chest and bawled. He let go of her hand to pull his arm around her waist, drawing her near and wrapping her in his warmth.
"I know, Princess," Jefferson mumbled, absently stroking her sopping hair. "I know."