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Summary: An AU in which Emma died and a grief-stricken Killian recounts the events surrounding her death.

Rated: H for hOLD ONTO YOUR FEELS

Every time he closes his eyes he sees her. He sees the fear on her face as she claws for her life, realizing all the people who are waiting for her to return home safely. He sees his arm outstretched, holding onto her, desperately trying to stop the inevitable. He sees their grip on each other loosen. He sees her hand slip and part from his grasp. He sees himself reaching out, trying to catch her. He sees himself failing.

And he can't help but think, Why her? Why her and not me?

Every time he closes his eyes, he watches helplessly as she dies in front of him, over and over again. And he can do nothing but stare at her body, lifeless and limp on the ground.

You could have stopped it. You could have saved her, he thinks every time this happens (which is all too often). You could have done anything…

He thinks about her all the time. He remembers how she would roll her eyes and stifle a laugh whenever he would throw an innuendo her way. He remembers how patient she was in helping him learn the ways of her world, and the amusement dancing about her features as she watched him struggle with things like the microwave. He remembers the way she'd beam as he coated her slender neck with warm and hungry kisses, giggling and returning the favor.

He remembers everything about her, despite wanting so much to forget.

David and Snow were holding a wake with the rest of the town.

He couldn't go. He couldn't bear it.

Instead he hides away, drowning himself in the rum he once shared with her.

Alone at the docks he sits, hoping that it's all just a bad dream but knowing as the rain hits his face with cold clarity that it's all very real.

Each passing day is like another wound in him. He recalls the pain he felt when Liam passed… when Milah passed.

Only this time it's different.

This time he has no one else to blame but himself. He can't blame a treacherous king or a bloody crocodile. He can only curse his lack of strength- his inability to help her when she needed him the most.

He sits on the pier, twirling the rum bottle with intricate finger movements. At first Henry would visit him and try to pull him out of his grief, but Regina found out and forbade him from speaking to the pirate anymore, worried he'd revert back to his dark ways.

But that just wasn't possible.

He'd lost the ability to do anything but drink and, sometimes, eat. He did the bare minimum to stay alive, and he wasn't even sure why he did that anymore.

What was the point without her?

He'd been living in the darkness- in a cave his entire life, and only with her had he been able to emerge, to see the light. And now he was expected to slink back into the darkness, to recoil. His life might have been empty before, but it was divergent. He hadn't known there was any other way. And when she came along…

He takes another swig of rum, but only a few drops grace his tongue. He licks his lips remorsefully and stares at his bottle with both disdain and desperation. Then, in a fit of anger, he raises his arm above his head and whips the bottle into the ocean, watching as it sinks beneath the waves.

Then he glares at his hook, resting on the wooden pier. He raises his left hand- well, not hand- until he's eye level with his sharp companion, an everlasting reminder of the pain he had suffered and endured. He twists it off and holds it with his good hand, staring.

Then he slams down his arm with sudden force, embedding it into planks of the dock. He stands, shaking wet raindrops from his hair, and begins walking away, the lonely hook soon far behind him.

He's not sure where he's going, but anywhere is better than the place where he lost Emma. Anywhere is better than the town where he lost his heart.