Title: Parchment, Bottles, True Love and Happy Endings

Part: 1/? - Day One

Author: Roguie et al.

Fandom: Once Upon a Time

Characters: Killian Jones, Killian/Emma

Spoilers: Up to and including S3 finale, no S4 involved.

Summary: Having watched Emma leave Storybrooke with no memories of her pirate, Killian vows to keep his promise to think of her daily. With a bottle of rum in hand, parchment and quills never far, and a heart so broken he can hardly breathe, so begins a year's worth of letters in bottles tossed into the briny sea.

Disclaimer: OuaT doesn't belong to me. I can no more control the princess and the pirate than I can control the fact that we are STILL in hiatus and I am slowly losing my mind.

A/N: I find I haven't been writing much lately, mostly due to my schedule at work and utter laziness once I manage to finally get home. This is going to be more of a writing exercise for me than it is anything else – each chapter will be between 100-500 words in length, a letter told from Killian's point of view during that year he spent alone. Will I write 365 of them? Maybe. That will depend, I suppose, on how many people wish to read words never meant to be read from a pirate who's heart was never meant to be broken anew. Enjoy.

~~~?~~~

My dearest Emma,

It has been mere hours since we said our goodbyes at the border to the confounded town that brought us together. I promised you then that not a day would go by without my thinking of you, and though I've no way to prove to you my complete honesty in that statement, I wanted to assure you that not a single moment has passed without your presence in my thoughts.

Unending time stretches out before me, love, a future devoid of your presence, and I cannot even begin to explain how bleak a horizon it provides. I know that you are safe, that you are with your lad, that you have no memory of myself or those who surround me and as such you suffer not the pain of separation. I envy you your loss of memory for I fear shards of glass are cutting through my heart with its every beat, and more so I fear that until we are reunited this feeling will not subside.

In my realm, those of us who have lived a life at sea have a tradition; once we have emptied the bottles of alcohol that have numbed our aching hearts, we fill the glass with a letter to those that have left us broken and toss it into the waters. If our words are meant to reach the eyes of our torturers, the bottles will float to the very shore necessary to be found. If our words are meant never to be heard, the bottles will never again be seen. I'm sure you can imagine how few bottles wash ashore.

Your mother has caught me writing this, love, and she's gone and named this activity a catharsis for my broken soul. Though I find she means well, they have thrown themselves into reuniting the towns people rather than dwell upon the loss of you and your lad; I cannot spend my days with their eternal optimism, when I know the bleakness that is my future will do nothing but cast shadow over what they are attempting to achieve. I will see their camp settled tonight, but come morning I will separate myself from their presence. Perhaps I'll have luck at locating the Jolly. If not, perhaps then the search will be enough to distract my thoughts from you.

I am hopeless, Swan, in a world of my creating. I no longer have my revenge to fuel my will to live. I no longer have a quest upon which to prove my worth. I have very little with which to survive, and yet, the worst factor in this life we have chosen? I no longer have you to remind me that I am part of this band of merry wanderers.

My heart aches at the sight of your parents, love, for I am reminded too much of what I have lost. I fear the man that will appear in the hole you have left upon my heart.

Your father approaches now, with a determined look upon his countenance. I fear he's derived my intentions to leave and has taken it upon himself to convince me otherwise. Perhaps it will give me something to tell you tomorrow, for I shall write these letters every day until I am left once again gratefully drowning in your presence.

Farewell, my love.

Always your pirate,

Captain Killian Jones

~~~TBC~~~

Remember, much like magic, all muses come with a price. This muse's price is that little box down below. Please don't make her chase you for payment, it seems a bloody awful waste of her time, don't you agree?