Talisman

He had been a bit of a scrapper as a youth.

It had just been him and Liam, and Killian had been filled with an unrelenting rage, because their mother was dead, and they hadn't been good enough for their father to stay… and so he had fought. It perhaps could have been explained away as "boys being boys," except Killian never went after the boys his own age.

It was always the older ones. The ones twice his size, who thought the wild orphaned Jones boy was funny when he got mad, right until they discovered that his fists hurt just as much as any boy their own size's. Then they got angry, and always left Killian bloody in the aftermath. But never once did one of those boys walk away unscathed.

"You need discipline," Liam had told him, when a particularly nasty fight had left him nearly unconscious. Killian had managed to stumble his way home before succumbing to darkness, and he had awoken to Liam at his bedside, navy uniform askew, worry in his eyes.

"They were bastards," Killian had responded stubbornly, because the other boys were always bastards to him; cruel and not half as clever as he was.

But the look in Liam's eyes told him this wasn't like every other time. Other times yes he had been. He still had a scar on his cheek, from where one boy had hit him with a rock. But this was the first time he'd ever been beaten to unconsciousness, and something in Liam's gaze told him that this time, he had really gone too far.

"You'll be joining me aboard my ship. I've already gotten my Captain's approval. You'll be the cabin boy. The navy will teach you that using fists won't always win the day. You have a sharp mind, and we'll teach you how to use it."

Part of Killian had been ecstatic at the thought of never having to leave Liam's side, but there was a reason he had never bothered to ask his brother to take him along, and that had him clutching the bed sheets until his knuckles turned white.

"I can't go on the ship," Killian said, his mind already taking him back to that day. The day he awoke, just him and Liam in a tiny boat adrift, and how they had seemed to be there forever before they reached land. Abandoned by their father to the elements. "Liam, the ocean-"

Liam cut him off by ruffling his hair, and then he tugged on a ring that he always wore on his pinky finger. It was silver with a dark stone, and Liam opened Killian's palm, setting it in the middle. He looked at it curiously, turning it over in his fingers and then trying it on his own. It was too big, even for his thumb.

"What's this?" he asked his brother.

"That, Killian, will keep you safe on the ocean. It's protected me for this long, and it will do the same for you."

Killian was still young enough to believe such superstition, and his tiny fist closed around the ring, blue eyes going wide as he looked solemnly at his brother.

"But what about you? What will keep you safe?"

"Well, I suppose you'll have to stay close, won't you? Make sure that nothing happens to me."

The thought of being the one to protect his brother after so long being protected made Killian's chest swell. He could do that. To keep Liam safe, he would even face the ocean.

"I'll never leave your side."

They were the words that echoed in his mind as he watched Liam's body fall into the ocean. He gulped back the anguish that wanted to come out as the water consumed the body, and the chain around his neck felt as though it burned.

He had kept his promise. He had never left his brother's side. But he hadn't been able to prevent anything from happening to him.

Killian reached up and clutched at the ring – silver with a dark stone – and though he'd worn it every day since Liam had given it to him, it had been years since he'd thought on it.

Now it felt like a weight around his neck.

It's protected me for this long, and it will do the same for you.

Killian was no longer a boy to believe in such superstition, yet still the guilt nearly made his knees buckle. Because some part of him was still that little boy that believed him brother invincible, yet Killian had taken the token that made him so.

Killian had taken Liam's protection, and so had taken his life.

The guilt threatened to consume him, but despite the fine veneer he had worn, the one that made him appear the perfect Lieutenant, at his heart Killian was still that scrapper of a boy.

So he had taken grief and turned it to rage, and he had made sure that the Jewel became the Jolly and spat in the face of the man that had sent Liam to his death. He became the scourge of the kingdom he had called home.

And if the chain around his neck sometimes threatened to strangle him in the dark of night, Killian never told a soul.

Not even Milah.

At first he hadn't wanted to seem the fool when she looked at him with such worship in her eyes. Later, he just hadn't been able to tell her of the secret grief deep within his soul.

And then she was dead, and the chain seemed to gain more weight.

He couldn't save her, and once again he survived while one he loved didn't.

He had stood on the deck of the Jolly one night and hell the chain and it's bedamned ring over the ocean with every intent to drop it into the lagoon. But the Crocodile still lived, and Killian – now Captain Hook – pulled it back and put it back over his head.

It's weight would be a constant reminder of what he had lost, and what he had yet to do. And he wouldn't be relieved of that weight until he could avenge the souls of the ones he had lost.

For two hundred years, he carried the burden.

And then he met her.

Oh, what a tale theirs was to tell. Full of betrayal and longing and loss, and after he finally, finally, thought they could have a happy ending, she had sacrificed herself to darkness.

Two hundred years he had been a survivor, the weight around his neck a constant survivor of that, but when she kissed him, he knew that this time… this time surviving wasn't enough.

So he pulled the chain from his neck, with its two hundred years of protection and grief, and when he pressed it into her palm, for the first time it feels as light as the simple ring it is.

She told him she was immortal, but he of all people knew there was no such thing.

"The Dark One is. Emma Swan isn't. Bring her home to me," he told her.

He had worn that necklace with its ring and its guilt for centuries, alternating between hating it and clinging to it for the memories it bore. But when she smiled at him and kissed him, for the first time since he was a boy afraid of the ocean he hoped it truly was the talisman that his brother had told him it was.

And Killian was still that scrapper that would fight the impossible fight, even a fated Hero King, to make sure that the ring's chain never held the same weight for her that it had for him.