His mind was hazy, pounding as the liquor wore off its ephemeral bliss, but it didn't take away his sorrow. "Alice," he murmured as he watched through tears clouding his view as a daughter and her father stood in front of him, glancing at a shop's wares, laughing over a joke. He stumbled to a rapid crawl, desperate to see if it was her on the arm of some man, having finally gotten freed from the stone tower. Alas, his vision cleared and it wasn't her.
Hook pounded his fist on the ground, wishing he could trade places with them, pretend that all he did leading up to his sorry state was a dream. Alice should have been able to walk around, explore the shops, and he'd buy her anything she'd want within reason. But the young girl with blonde tresses was not her. Even though the sight of her made him see Alice for a moment, it was just a pale mirage. Hook knew he wasn't young anymore, his body tired and slumped over from the day's travails of drinking. Ahab was right. He had become a pathetic shell of a formidable captain that once traveled the seas. He fought for his honor then and look where that got him. He sighed, erasing the dull thought. All he wanted was to get back to his little girl.
But he didn't. He couldn't even if he got sober. Hook had no clue what to do next, what mattered next if he couldn't free her. "How old would she be now?" he wondered.
He hated the fact that he had even questioned it when he used to know in the blink of an eye. However, after the first years of being away from her looking for a cure for his poisoned heart, each time her birthday came felt like a stab to him. He used to buy small presents he planned to give her if he ever could, until he gave up, realizing that he didn't know her as he used to. The graying boxes, weathered by the sea air, still hung with their colorful ribbons stashed at the bottom of his sea chest. He was ashamed he didn't know her favorite color or interests. One year turned into two, then three, and so on. However, he never forgot his promise to free her, to come back for her; his regrets tying him down as his efforts had been futile and he knew he was selfish for stopping when he could have gone on. He did the mental math anyways, scared for himself to know how long, but realizing he deserved the blow for not being the man he needed to be when she needed him most. He hoped and wished to the gods that Gothel didn't harm her while they were cursed to stay apart. Hook could handle anything that came his way, but Alice… she deserved the world.
At least before, he could give her hope of getting free, but instead he had condemned her to an immovable prison. A broken smile broke on his face and a bitter taste stained his mouth from biting his lips. "Seven years. She'd be seventeen this year," Hook said, a wry laugh escaping in his frustration.
It'd been too many years. The wrinkles on his hands and the aged face that stared back at him on the street's wet cobblestone only spoke it sooner. His hair, greyed, long past his shoulders, tangled in disarray. Only a single strand of pride he had kept in memory of Alice, a faint small braid plaited into his frizzled mane, reminiscent of the year he had grown out his black locks and she had made braids into it because she didn't want it cut. Even that seemed wrong but he would have liked to think she would have enjoyed it, if she could see him now. No, if Alice saw him now, she might look down on him as others had, seen him as nothing more than lowly scum of the Earth because of his history and current state. "Maybe I am like my father, maybe worse," he said softly aloud.
Sure, he hadn't purposefully abandoned Alice and didn't want to, but he had done so all the same in technicality. The voice in the back of his head whispered that there'd be no way she would forgive him, and even if she did like the angel he remembered her as, he wouldn't be able to accept it. Hook couldn't remember her face, her laugh a distant blur and her voice no more than a gentle hum, as he envied the father and daughter pair. Ironically, her screams still plagued his nightmares, always while he was trying to soothe her dream self, her face masked in despair as he had broken his promise and blaming him for defending his pride when he should have been with her. His flask was empty, the last bits of the bitter nectar shimmering in the light of the sunset as they and their shadows walked by.
His guilt was immeasurable, but he found himself yielding to his need to relieve the pain. He didn't want to be in this realm of reality, sitting at that exact place anymore for the day. "Maybe there's another bottle of rum back at the cave," he assured himself. He kept one for emergencies there if he ever got injured or needed a pain reliever, but it could be empty from his last craving. If so, Hook knew he could beg, steal, or cough up enough money from his stash to buy another bottle as he pulled himself off the ground, anything to dash his thoughts away until the next hangover. Drinking had become a routine, the days fading into the next.
He listed from his head like clockwork, saying with a falsified childlike glee, "One for the memory, two for the pain." He didn't love the bottle with a deeper distain. With a grave seriousness, he whispered, "I know I'm not the man I wanted to be, but wait for me, Alice. Please be safe," as if his words could reach her, his hand firmly clutching on the black rook on the inside of his coat pocket. He looked around, trying to compose himself as he started stumbling and darting in the crowd, heading back to his cave to let himself sleep until the next bottle called to him.
