Important note: I usually write light hearted stuff, so this is quite rare, so apologies in advance for upsetting anyone.
Title: alive
Rating: pg-13 for mature themes and angst.
Warning: Angst. Severe angst.
Written because Glee's 'The Quarterback' was playing, and there's one scene that always, always destroys me and it just needed to come out.
His eyes fluttered, mind hazy as it tethered between the comfort of sleep and the light of the day. The comfort vanished almost instantly as Killian opened his eyes wide, the pain and heartbreak washing over him in wave after wave, magnified as he realized Emma was not in bed beside him.
It had been two weeks, but there was just no abating the chasm of loss and hurt, nothing to dull the edge of pain that wrecked his very soul. She had been born early, with underdeveloped lungs, and they'd named her Hope for so, so many reasons, especially after she fought like the little pirate princess that she was and survived her first two weeks of birth – the most crucial time of all.
She had been growing, eating, breathing, and even smiling; Killian and Emma had been beside themselves in absolute happiness.
She died on her third week.
Her lungs were not expanding, the pediatrician had told them puzzled – as if he hadn't spent years upon years studying the human condition, and Killian had upended an entire table in his rage, screaming what use was science and modern medicine if they couldn't save his little girl. What was the use of any of it?
He wiped his tears on his pillow, hurling his legs to the side of the bed as he padded through the house, walking without thinking about the direction because he knew there was only one place Emma would be.
The same place she spent all her free time in, just sitting on the rocking chair, staring into the distance with tears silently streaming down her cheeks. On the days that he did wake next to her, her back was always to him and the ever familiar tracks on her cheeks and the hunch of her shoulders told him she awoke in tears, or from a nightmare – or even worse, from a dream where Hope was alive.
When his feet padded into the bright blue nursery with its nautical motifs on one side and a mural of the Charming's castle on the other, he found his wife sitting by the side of the crib on the floor, clutching to one of the legs.
Her eyes found his, wet and red-rimmed.
"I'm trying," she said, after a moment. Killian didn't move.
"I'm trying, because I can't… can't do this," one hand waving to encompass the room, "can't do this anymore," she said, voice choked and heavy.
Killian swallowed with a nod. He wanted nothing more than to pull her in his arms and kiss the hurt away, to shield her from the pain, but he felt so broken himself that he was afraid that if he tried, that every time he tried, he only seemed to slice her with the jagged edge of his own miserable existence, an existence that had known so much pain and loss and yet had been so woefully unprepared for the magnitude that was the death of a child. His child. His infant baby girl.
"Killian," Emma said, tears falling freely again, "how… how am I supposed to wake up everyday and keep breathing when I know she can't?"
"We have to… for her, we have to Emma," he replied, closing his eyes as the tears slipped past him anyway, any illusion of strength washed away as he recalled his promise to the cold body of his daughter, the last kiss he had placed on her little forehead, the promise that 'Mommy and Daddy will always remember you Hope, we'll always keep you alive in our hearts'.
Parents had only one job. Keep your child safe, let them grow happy; give them what they need.
Killian had failed her, and more and more he wondered if this was just the cosmos returning in ten fold the pain he had caused in his long life, the lives he took, the sins he had committed, repented and forgiven by the ultimate sacrifice of Hope's life. He was no man of God, but if such a deity ever existed, Killian swore it would have to answer to him for this, that he would never forgive it, never accept it. He'd burn in the fires of hell for all of eternity if only it would bring her back.
He took a step forward, each step heavy as though his ankle was tied to a stone, and then another, until he reached his wife. He held out a hand to her, waiting patiently until she gathered some fortitude to face the day.
When she slid her hand into his, Killian pulled her up, and then wasted no time in encompassing his arms tightly around her.
"I don't know how, my love," he said quietly into her hair, "but we will get through this. Somehow, you and I will do this together. Little by little, every day. For the rest of our lives."
"Why her?" Emma asked angrily, arms tightening around him. She had already been down the path of anger before, screaming at him, at the world, raging against the unfairness of it all. Killian himself had unleashed his wrath on David, who had been trying to relate but had used a piss poor example of having to give Emma up… Killian had raged at him for being an insensitive dickwad who knew nothing about the pain of losing a child the way he had. To David's credit, the man had simply apologized, and challenged Killian to one of the most intense swordfights he'd ever had in recent years.
"Is it because I'm the goddamn Savior, which apparently means I don't get to have a happy ending? Or a life?"
"Sweetheart, if this was going to be about her parents, it would definitely be because her father used to be a ruthless pirate," he said bitterly. "If anything, your only regret should be pairing up with me."
"Don't be an idiot Killian."
"Why, because we're True Loves?"
He hadn't meant to say the word with such disdain, but what use was any of it at all if this was to be its outcome?
Emma deflated in his arms, the previously tight grip seeping away into exhaustion.
"I just want to stop feeling, just for a while," she said, words against his neck.
Killian hugged her tighter, eyes roving to the empty spot in the cot.
"I know, love. I feel like drinking it all away, but that's not likely to help."
"That and my father cleared the house of any alcohol," she said, and there was a sliver of a smile as she said, barely there that Killian could have imagined it.
"Bastard," he said with feeling, and Emma let out a little laugh. It sounded odd, after seemingly unending sorrow, but not unwelcome, not at all.
In the end, the thing that helped them move on came at the hands of Snow White, who had procured a beautiful little leather book with the inscription of Hope Swan Jones in gold lettering, a memory book project that allowed Killian and Emma to write Hope's story, as short as it was.
They wrote about how they worried when they found out about her existence – if she'd be safe from magical threats being a child of two generations of true love, how her father fretted that he'd never be able to hold her for the lack of hand, yet at her birth had deftly picked her out of Emma's arms confidently as if he'd been doing it his whole life, simply because he had been spurred with love for his daughter (he had however, had a panic attack about it later).
They wrote about the first two weeks in hospital where she had stayed under UV light, how Emma had cried and cried when she had to leave the hospital without her baby in her arms.
They wrote about how she was never alone – her mother, her father, her half-brother, her grandparents and step-great grandmother had all been there; she had never known a life of solitude, never had to experience the abandonment her parents swore they'd protect her from.
And finally, they wrote how they wished they didn't have to write any of this at all, that instead they wished more than anything that she was there to see and feel it for herself, and that wherever she was, she knew that they would never forget, never stop loving her, and that'd she would always, always have a home.
It was through this writing, weeks of cathartic release in the form of tears and recollections of moments through words and pictures and videos; that slowly, Emma and Killian Jones picked up their lives and moved on.
And every year, on the 14th of February, on the day of love celebrated around the world, they released a lantern into the sky for their lost daughter, every year, until the day that they died, surrounded by their children and grandchildren.
