This being my first Captain Swan one shot, without a prompt, I'm rather nervous about posting this. However with the urging of the fabulously talented Montana-rosalie, I found my courage. Hopefully you find this as angsty as she did! The title and epigraph are for the Third Eye Blind song "Jumper." You can find me on tumblr at ladyswaninsists.
-K
I wish you would step back
From that ledge my friend
You could cut ties with all the lies
That you've been living in
And if you do not want to see me again
I would understand, I would understand
Killian had walked the edge once or twice in his life. A bottle of rum in one hand, now, nothing in the other, he stumbled through his own life looking for some reason why he should even care anymore.
People whirl around him in the diner, laughing, hugging, crying, full of such damn emotion, it only emphasizes the emptiness.
He hadn't feel the tearing sensation until after Neal slid away from the counter, and smiled at Emma and their son.
He hadn't realized what he was doing.
Selfish bastard.
Emma didn't need someone like him. Look at what had happened last time he had tried to love someone.
Or anytime he loved someone for that matter.
Stumbling out of the diner, he wasn't drunk. It would take more than a bottle of watered down ale to get a 300 year veteran even tipsy.
The stores on the ship were much more inclined, however, his mind was clear as he swayed on the wood of the deck.
She had stood in that spot on the wood, before diving off. Back in Neverland when he had realized that he couldn't breathe without her there.
He didn't really remember how that had felt until now. Like he was drowning with her, lungs being filled up with cool water, pressing him down into her warm embrace.
Killian wasn't even aware he was doing it until it was already done, his boots leaving the wood of his ship and plunging into the cool dark water.
The chill made him feel alive even as it started to kill Killian, the leather that he wore weighing him down to the bottom of the Harbor, his lungs finally being full of something. He didn't feel so empty anymore, not so useless.
They didn't need him. He was just the ferryman, from one realm to the next.
He didn't fear death, no. It was just another adventure.
What Killian feared was life itself.
He closed his eyes one last time and let the last of the aching breath go, his mouth filling with water, a shadow swimming to him, probably the ferryman of the afterlife, his own equivalent, come to take him to the Inferno where knaves and sinners belonged.
The angry boy a bit too insane
Icing over a secret pain
You know you don't belong
You're the first to fight
You're way too loud
You're the flash of light on a burial shroud
I know something's wrong
The pirate started to cough.
Fuck, that was air in his lungs.
His hand moved around on the surface, connecting with familiar wood that he was sure his very bones were made of.
"Thank god." A man said, and Killian scowled, his eyes shooting open, and his boots already moving, scooting his body far away from the noise.
"Prince." The pirate snarled, his torso leaned against the mast. A group of several other men, far smaller in stature were gathered behind David, who was just as soaked as Killian was, with the same level of adrenaline coming out in deep breaths.
"Hey Hook." He said, taking one of the smaller men's offered hands and taking to his feet, swaying just a fair bit. "Want to tell me why I had to save your life?"
Charming looked at him with a look Killian hadn't seen in a very long time. He was disappointed. Not in the fact that Hook was walking on the dark side, like everyone expected, but because he expected more.
Like Liam had looked at him.
His brother hadn't really been his brother. Ten years between them, Liam had acted as more of a father to Killian.
"You wouldn't understand." Killian muttered, looking down, the emptiness becoming dreadfully apparently again. Digging his hook into the wood above his head, he pulled himself to his feet, even more shakily than David.
He took a step forward to help, yet the pirate directed a guyliner-less glare that was no less intimidating than when he did apply it.
Hook stumbled to his cabin, still lurching from the drink, with David stubbornly creeping behind him, shooing the dwarves away.
The pirate managed to make it to the bed, collapsing as he did so. The prince took a chair, and dragged it over next to the bed.
It was Liam's chair, though it was insanely dusty, and dreadfully old, Charming had chosen it anyways.
"Grumpy saw you jump." He said quietly. Killian avoids looking at him. "Came running to me on the other side of the shore, babbling something about the pirate going off the deep end. I just assumed you were really really drunk."
"Consider… your debt…" Killian wheezes. "paid. I saved your life, you saved mine." Under his breath he muttered something else, something David couldn't quite make out though he could tell that maybe, just maybe, the pirate hadn't wanted to be saved at all. David frowned.
"What's this about Hook?" He asked, already knowing the answer.
"Why do you even care?" Hook asked, the porthole stealing the light out of his eyes, leaving them just a dull grey. "Go back to your happy ending, Charming. You don't need me ruining yours too."
Charming stands up, green fire blazing through his eyes so familiar that the emptiness of Killian's insides turned, the ragged edges rubbing against his skin.
"You are a moron, you know that right?" He almost growled, his hands curled into fists at his side. "And that you actually saved mine." Killian cast his eyes down again. The emptiness was still there, in the shape of a 5'5" princess with honey blonde hair and a smile only meant for him.
"Your wife will be wondering where you are." The pirate muttered, pulling the nest of colorful blankets up to his neck, the vibrancy of the cloth leeching the color out of his skin.
"Don't dare try and die again, mate." He said, patting Hook on the shoulder before getting up, water running out of his fair hair. "Because I'll drag your sorry ass out of it." The prince smiled at him, an honest to god, brotherly smile that actually reached his eyes, the eyes that Killian wished for, lived for. "I'll be here tomorrow, so you better be awake, Jones!" He yelled behind him, a sad smile on his face as he opened the door.
"Why?" was still Killian's only word.
"I haven't had a friend in a long time, Jones." The prince responded, giving the other man a mournful smile before disappearing out the door.
Well everyone I know has got a reason
To say put the past away
I wish you would step back
From that ledge my friend
You could cut ties with all the lies
That you've been living in
Charming had pounded on the door and forcibly dragged Killian out of bed, where he hadn't as much slept as much as passed out, wearing a way too optimistic smile, countered by the pirate's surly scowl.
It was clear that Snow White had rubbed off on him as he chattered about trivial things, tossing Killian a pile of strange clothes, which the pirate didn't do anything to, only frowned.
"Put them on Hook." David prompted him.
"Why in the fucking hell can I not wear real clothes?" Killian swore, one handedly tossing the pile back to the prince. He caught them with effortless grace and just flung them back at the pirate, who didn't even come close to catching them.
"Because you're not a pirate." David answered, as the pirate still raised an eyebrow, unfolding the plaid shirt and pair of dark blue denim, a nearly identical outfit to the man who had given him the clothes. They were no doubt his. "Anymore."
He still protested, stripping down to his skivvies without a bit of propriety, as the prince examined his bookshelf.
The pattern continued each day, with the prince forcing Killian out into the world, dragging him to the diner and sliding a mug of coffee across the formica countertop. At precisely at 8:15, fifteen long minutes after Charming would manage to get Killian into a booth and chatting, Emma would breeze into with her son.
That first day, when she muttered a good morning to David and almost walked away before stopping in her tracks and turning to look at Killian. Her mouth gaped open and she almost laughed, as the once haughty pirate looked down rather shyly at the black liquid.
Emma just thought he was being shy.
Little did she know that the laugh he almost read as mocking, brought the emptiness only to head.
"Do you really find my attire so foolish, Swan?" He muttered, not daring to meet her eyes. Behind her back, her father looked at her uncomprehendingly as he watched the little princess fail to notice her own power. With a simple smile, a second of laughter, a smidge of a frown, a siphon of breath, she tore the insides of the man every which way.
While he could make only a trace of a dent in her.
The next day, she still only greeted her dad, never the other man, giving him a lingering look, though David started to drag him to the station as well, sitting him in a chair with a mountain of paperwork. He had stared at the pile for a full ten minutes before Emma walked in and noticed Killian's befuddled expression.
Patiently, she showed him what do, identifying each respective townsperson with their Enchanted Forest, or fairy tale self.
It was a good week. Emma graced him with more than a few smiles, a handful of kind words, and once, just once, a hug that seemed to destroy the emptiness for one stroke. Yet it was gone in a moment. She had captured him and gave him a glimmer of hope before dashing it all away.
The second time Killian hit rock bottom, not quite literally this time, it was too slow, too easy was when Emma, his Emma, his lifeline, walking into the diner smiling.
She wasn't smiling for him, nor was she smiling really, the light of the pearls of her teeth never quite making it to her eyes.
She was letting Neal touch her, hold her hand. The hand that his only hand itched to grasp in every spare moment.
This time, he didn't rush out of the bar. He didn't let his friend suspect anything, only let the optimistically deluded fool that he hadn't seen his daughter walk in at all.
Calmly he finished his beer, as clumsily bid Charming a curt good night and walked out the door with the deputy's eyes following him suspiciously out the door. A second after the captain slammed the door shut, her father examined his daughter closely.
She hadn't even noticed they were there. Still, she wore a sullen expression whenever her date looked away, casting a glance at the clock.
David was out the door a second later.
The rope wasn't so much familiar as it was an old friend. He had used pieces from the same sturdy length to tie the sheet over his brother's body, and over Milah's. It was only fair it got to taste his flesh as well.
Tying a noose was much harder with one hand, though Killian managed, looping the whole rope around the mizzenmast twice.
It was too easy to go like this. He was a coward, for both letting her lead him around by the neck and for not leaving her a reason for his passing at all.
Killian weighed the rope in his hands for a minute before setting it down and regarding his hook. With a stab of rage he drove it into the mast, carving four lines into it, coming together to form one letter.
E.
With his headstone prepared, he climbed back up to where the noose still hung. Slipping it over his neck, he strained for one last glimpse of the stars, where he and his hopes had once soared. Now, the clouds hid the light from the darkness forcing the old sailor to bid goodbye to his last friend, the one he had begged to claim his life before.
She could live her life without him. Yet he couldn't breathe without her.
Stepping off the wood, he let the rope take his breath that rightfully belonged to the woman.
And then he fell, still with the accursed breath on his lips but his brain already drifting off. A golden bullet fell next to his dark head on the other side of the frayed rope it had so rudely cut.
Odd, Killian hadn't even heard a shot. He actually couldn't hear anything.
This wasn't like when he had died in the water. No, this was far worse, his brain chopping with a doubled headed axe against his skull, his eyes blinded by black, his throat burned like an open wound.
The most terrible thing was that, he was instead, and very much so still breathing.
"Come on Hook. You're better than this." The first thing that he heard, the weary tones of a certain prince who could handle a gun and cared enough to shoot it.
For a brief second, when he had seen the bullet, he had prayed it was Emma, who had turned back around from her date and ran to him, realizing that she was his mistress, and he her slave.
Alas, she didn't know. And never would.
Killian couldn't open his eyes, nor could really move anything, relying on his memories alone to know that once again David had dragged him into bed.
"Better than what, mate?" Killian rasped. "Certainly not Neal."
Charming made an indignant sound, more like a frustrated release of breath.
"Emma doesn't love him." He said quite bluntly, a hard edge to his voice that forced Hook's blues to flutter open. "I've seen her, you and I both. Her mother may think that first love is true love, but I've never seen true love watching the clock until they can say goodnight."
"She will be with Neal regardless." Killian dejectedly informed the woman's father. "For Henry."
Neither of them could lie well, not to themselves. They could lie to each other, they could lie to everyone else in the world, yet in the end they knew it was a failed path.
Silently, Charming patted Hook on the back and left. Finally when he was alone, Killian let the tears flow freely, trying to figure out why he deserved life, when he had been but seconds away from a engagement with death.
Everyone's got to face down the demons
Maybe today
You could put the past away
I wish you would step back from
That ledge my friend
You could cut ties with all the lies
That you've been living in
Emma pretended she didn't notice the rope burn, like a tattoo on Killian's neck.
She pretended not to notice the crude "E" carving on the mast of the Jolly Roger.
She pretended not to notice the noose still hanging on the Jolly Roger, cut from either an arrow or a bullet.
She pretended not to notice her father's worried looks, alternating between her and Hook.
However, she did pretend to laugh at Neal's jokes. She pretended to want the ticking clock stop completely. She pretended to have nothing for Hook at all.
The damned persistent pirate kept close to her, never actually outright declaring what he was there in the first place. And David aided him, just as much as Mary Margaret nagged her about going on dates with Neal.
And whenever Emma hesitated, or tried to skip out of anything with Neal, her mother would just cluck her tongue and in an airy dreamy voice tell her "Neal's Henry's father! And he's back!" and then after Emma would argue a bit, the mild mannered school teacher fell away and the archer took charge "Your true love is back and this fancy with Hook is ruining it for you!"
Neal did the same thing, a bit more subtly than Snow but the snarky comments about Hook only increased. And the only time she ever did anything about them was when he went so far over the line, she felt that stab as much as Killian Hook did.
"What the hell happened to his neck?" Neal asked in a probably purposeful carrying whisper. Emma looked up and over as her father and the pirate sliding into their normal booth. Neither acted as though they heard, though Emma noticed that, unusually, Killian wasn't watching her.
He did hear.
"Who?" Emma shot back in her best "Mary Margaret" voice, like she actually wanted to be there.
"You know." Neal had a practically sadistic smile on his face. "The pathetic pirate that pines for you."
Her false smile fell and she scowled at Neal.
"Maybe he tried to get out. He has no future anyways." Her heart thrummed in her chest. This wasn't Neal. It was almost like he had taken his father's title as the Dark One. "Emma, you might as well tell him he's lost. There's no use giving hope when there is none."
Emma looked over at the booth. David was still there, looking ready to behead Neal with one swipe of his sword.
Hook wasn't anywhere to be found.
"What if there still is?" She shot back, throwing a couple of bills on the counter and stomping out the door. Neal glided behind her, still with the malevolent smirk that unsettled her stomach turning it on edge.
"Emma…" He said, putting both of his hands on her shoulders, in a move that would seem tender and loving to any other viewer but to Emma, she felt as though bars of a cage were closing in around her. "Emma, Emma, Emma… What about Henry?"
"What about him?" She snarled, her green eyes flashing a poisoned ivy fire.
"I'd hate for you to lose him…" There was the endgame. The calm sickly sweet voice that his father had, the ruthless lizard-like dullness to his eyes, the satanic smile curling on his lips. She hated him all, yet in the moment she was completely and utterly helpless.
Her breathe came out in short gasps as she avoiding those eyes that she had once found solace in, straining to see the broken man at the end of the block, his head bent low and hand shoved in his pocket. He looks back at the end of the road and caught her and Neal's embrace.
"Emma… You have to seal the deal." Neal said, directing her gaze back to him with a vaguely boyish smile. She set her face, locked her heart in stone, and leaned in to give the revolting bastard a peck.
When she turned away from him, her pirate was gone, vanished with the sea breeze he had so fondly loved and her heart—and sanity with him.
I wish you would step back
From that ledge my friend
You could cut ties with all the lies
That you've been living in
And if you do not want to see me again
I would understand, I would understand
Emma-
I love you. I was a coward never to tell you, but a man who is taking this way out is the largest coward of all. You gave me hope. You kept me alive longer than I intended to ever be, when I jumped in front of the mechanical thing after I thought I finished the crocodile.
I loved you. I die for love, for your happy ending.
I will always love you. Yet, it is your ending, as I respect your wishes.
Goodbye Emma.
K
Killian looked at the piece of parchment and blew on the jet black ink, letting it become permanent on the page. Folding it thrice, he inscribed her name on the front of it and left it propped up on his desk, in the direct line of sight from the door, should she even dare try and find him.
He could count on Dave finding him though, that's what the note was for, he didn't waste any time. Stripping off the jacket that the prince had given him and the shirt as well, neatly folding them on the bed, so that they could be reused.
Then, with painstaking care, he drew his sword with one flourish, and held them level with his chest.
And with one sharp thrust it was over.
A fountain of blood hit the door, the window, the floor, as the man collapsed already dying, his vision going to dark.
A word pressed onto his lips, a name of his home, the one that had been ingloriously tugged out of his arms.
Please, please, please review, follow, and favorite!
-K