A/N: Episode tag for 3x15 'Quiet Minds'. Here be spoilers if you haven't seen it yet!
First there is cold, and he has to help move the body.
Emma left it with Rumpelstiltskin when she went to confront the witch, but then three hours pass and there is still no sign of the Dark One. He hasn't been seen in town, has made no effort to contact Belle – so, while the others continue to scour Storybrooke for any trace of Zelena, Killian and David go out to the woods to search.
Bae is lying where Emma left him; on his back, still and cold and white. If Killian were feeling poetic, he might have said that the man looks like he is sleeping.
But he is not feeling poetic and Baelfire is not asleep.
"Oh, Jesus," David says, when he turns towards Killian and sees what he is staring at. He takes a few steps forward, cups his hands around his mouth and hollers out; "Gold! You out there?"
No response.
Killian can't move. A creeping chill has spread through his limbs and settled heavy in the pit of his stomach, a lead block of emotion struggling to rise to the surface, barely suppressed by his efforts to keep breathing and process, process, process, accept it. Gods know he's seen death more than enough times, even in those he cares about, especially in those he cares about – but this is different, somehow.
Bae wasn't supposed to die.
Last time he fell through a portal and Killian didn't see it happen and there wasn't a body and he hadn't seen him in years, hadn't spoken to him – and three hours ago Bae was alive and well and Killian held him in an embrace, felt the warmth of his body and the pulse of his breath and now he is just a corpse on the forest floor, waiting for the flies to set in.
His breath chokes up in his throat and he thinks he is maybe going to be sick.
"Hook – Hook? You okay?"
Suddenly there is David. Hand warm on his shoulder, face close, eyes peering into his with concern. Killian can't help but flinch a little at the moniker. David means nothing by it, he knows, but he isn't sure he can bear to be called that – to be reduced to that – not right now, not after the last thing Bae said to him.
"'M fine, mate." His words sound distant to his own ears, and David doesn't seem convinced. When he moves his hand away the cold creeps back in quickly.
"Okay. Well, there's no sign of Gold, so... we should take him back to town." Voice tentative, a little awkward, waiting for a reaction.
He gets one in the form of a stiff nod. They step forward and when Killian bends over to grab Bae under the arms and lift him – lift his body – lift Bae's body – something inside him just snaps and after that it's like he's seeing everything happen through a sheet of ice, cold and distorted and just slippery enough that he can't quite keep a hold on it long enough to comprehend what's happening.
David is silent on the drive back into town, and silent when they deliver the body to Storybrooke's funeral parlour. When they walk back out the sun is starting to creep down below the horizon, and Emma has left a message saying that they have not found the witch.
Killian stands and looks at the building that they left Baelfire in. When Liam died, they gave him to the sea; Milah too – they have rituals here, he knows, preparing the body, dressing it or embalming it or whatnot. Bae is just a shell now. The thought makes him shiver.
He turns around and finds David watching him. The look of concern is at once touching and a little unsettling. Killian though he was keeping his upset fairly well hidden, but perhaps not; perhaps the frost he can feel inside, making his stomach ache, is showing on his face.
"You should come back to the loft with me," David says then, quietly. "Have a drink."
Kiliam hesitates. Part of him wants to be alone, back at Granny's, to scream and rage through it the way he did before – the way he did before – but before he was alone, after Liam and after Milah. He dealt with it himself, and now there's a pull to see what it would be like, to grieve with others, to have them share his pain. Maybe he doesn't have to be alone for this one.
He won't drink, though. He drank after Liam and Milah and Bae the first time, and it never helped; drink numbs you for now but the pain comes back worse later, and no amount of intoxicating yourself into a stupor will stop reality swinging back in the next morning.
By now he has learnt.
So he says, "Okay," and on the drive there David keeps reaching over and squeezing his shoulder to the point where he starts to think it's the other man who's searching for reassurance. He suspects it has less to do with Bae's actual death and more to do with his fear about how it will hit Emma.
Emma.
He hasn't seen her since it happened. Has no idea how she is reacting, because the only thing worse than someone you love dying is someone you love dying, coming back, and then being suddenly, cruelly, wrenched away from you again.
The loft is warm and full of people, and after the remote silence of the forest it is a welcome change. Belle is there, and Tinkerbell; it seems as though the general consensus in the room is 'try not to think about it' because they are valiantly holding up a conversation over glasses of whiskey and cups of tea.
Henry sees them come in first, and jumps up with a greeting of "Hey, Killian!"
They've not seen each other much since arriving in town, and for a split second Killian sees Bae in the boy's face and voice and words and is struck still, head reeling, staring at him with something close to horror. He tries to force a smile but Henry has already noticed something is wrong, and frowns.
He puts things together pretty quickly, what with Swan's story about his being a client, and then looks almost stricken.
"You knew my Dad, right?" he asks, and Killian nods.
"Aye, I did."
"I'm sorry." Henry bites his lip. He seems much less upset than he ought to be, and Killian quickly realises, he doesn't remember – this is that awkward phase of grief for someone you know of, but don't actually know – and God, he can't help but think of how this is going to shatter the kid once he gets his memories back.
And then, "Maybe you can tell me about him sometime. I'd rather... I think I'd like to hear it from you."
"Of course," Killian replies, and his smile is a little more genuine this time. And then, because he doesn't see her anywhere, "Where's your mother?"
"She's out with Regina."
He doesn't feel disappointed at her absence so much as he is concerned, but somehow he almost thinks Regina is the best person for her to be with right now – he has seen on Emma's face, from what happened in Neverland just after the first death that while Snow and David may mean very well, their concern can be a little overbearing. If Emma wanted to be here, she would be here.
And Emma was not the sole reason he followed David here; he came for himself, and when he sits down next to Tink and she turns and wraps her arms around him and presses her face into his shoulder it is like he has touched back down and is grounded again, and the cold fades away a little.
Next comes the pain.
It is the horrible stage of waiting between death and funeral; Bae is gone but he is not in the ground yet and it feels so dreadfully in between, like they are all waiting for something but aren't quite sure what.
Neverland messed with his mind enough that for a long time he did not dream at all, and even then they were fleeting nonsensical things.
Now they return, and they are not nightmares but worse- vague flashes that mix memory with reality. He dreams that Bae is alive again, that he never died at all, that there are ways to save him, and when he wakes up he is very confused for a moment before he is forced to remember exactly which world he is in and what really happened and that Bae is never coming back-
– he carried the body –
It hurts in a way hovering between emotional and physical, like the phantom flashes he still gets when he tries to flex the fingers of his non-existent left hand.
He sees Emma that day. They are split into groups to search the woods again, and he is with her. Returning to the forest is difficult because it is static; the sea is rarely the same twice. He dropped Milah there and she was gone in an instant. Neal died on this ground and when he is buried he will remain in one spot under the soil, a place forever marred and marked. Killian is too much a sailor to appreciate the sentiment of such a memorial.
They don't speak much at first, but Emma glances at him and their eyes meet and he knows, suddenly, that she feels exactly the same as he does.
They are both in pain but they are also both terribly used to it. So used to it that by this point they can push on and work through it.
"Maybe they crossed the town line," Emma muses as they finish one circuit of the trees and find jack squat.
"Are we operating under the assumption that the Dark One is with her?" Killian asks.
Emma nods. "She was keeping him prisoner. She must be using him somehow – probably controlling him with the dagger."
"Can he cross the town line?"
"Maybe? It can't hurt to check."
They head back towards the car in silence.
"You shouldn't call him that," Emma says suddenly, quietly.
He glances at her and she looks up at him, eyes a little red, face pale with the chill of the crisp cold air.
"Call who what, love?"
"Mr Gold. You shouldn't call him the Dark One any more." She doesn't sound chastising – doesn't sound much of anything, really.
She is right – he knows – the Dark One died with Bae, it was the part of his father he fought so hard to destroy – better not to trivialise his struggle, not to make it seem futile.
At the same time, Killian is stuck – he doesn't know the man as Gold, 'the Crocodile' calls back his revenge too acutely, and the name Rumpelstiltskin makes his skin crawl because when it comes down to it, he still hates him. Hates that he murdered his own wife and has never once apologised for it, that he still justifies the act in his mind.
Right now, though, hating Rumpel seems something like disrespectful to Bae, but it's not like it's something he can help, and that makes him feel uncomfortable deep in his stomach.
"The Scaly One, then," he mutters, which gets a scoff out of her, and they glance at each other, gazes meeting sidelong with the beginning twitches of smiles-
And then they both stop walking abruptly as they realise they have wandered into the clearing where it happened.
He feels Emma tense beside him, sees her eyes flicker to the exact patch of ground, and can sense the moment the pain swells in her the same way it does in him, forcing itself up through his chest, his throat, exploding burning-hot behind his eyes.
He heard the details from Snow; how she had to use her magic to separate them. Which means that he died in her arms, God-
Just like Liam-
Just like Milah-
He reaches out and takes her hand, and she doesn't pull away, just squeezes his fingers tightly, and he squeezes back, and they both clutch hard enough that the physical pain of that sensation leeches away everything else.
"It doesn't go away," she says softly, stiffly.
Empty platitudes he's used on himself a hundred times spring to mind – that just shows how much they meant to you – you can make it go away even only for a bit – but it does fade – but if he learnt one thing from the Charmings yesterday it was that it doesn't go away but it does hurt more if you're alone, so he slackens his hand in her grasp, forcing her to loosen hers too until their grip on each other is more firm than crushing.
"I know," he replies.
She stares at the ground for a moment longer before looking up at him with a half-smile, and their hands remain together as they walk out of the clearing.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews and concrit are greatly appreciated :)
Taking CS requests on my tumblr if anyone has a prompt~