"Tokens"
(During the six weeks of peace before the Queens of Darkness appeared…)
As night falls and the stars come out, Killian Jones and Emma Swan are together atop the bluff outside of town, the same place Emma had fled when her powers went haywire at the Snow Queen's prompting, when she had nearly harmed her father, and run from them all in fear of what she might do next. However, on this night, with the Dark One defeated in his nefarious plot and banished from Storybrooke for nearly a week, that hurt and doubt which Emma had felt the last time she was here is no longer present. Both the princess and her pirate lean against the hood of her Bug and look out on the moon and stars lighting the sky and the beacons of the town still lit below.
Emma lets out a light, easy sigh and leans her head on Killian's shoulder, snuggling against his side and entwining the fingers of her left hand with his right where it rests on his denim-clad thigh. Resisting the urge to practically purr in contentment and curl into his body like a kitten on a sunny windowsill, Emma lets her eyes flutter closed, truly enjoying a quiet moment. She refuses to spoil this evening by thinking of how close she came to losing Killian when Gold had held his heart, what sort of revenge that imp is undoubtedly plotting even now as he seeks a way back from his forced exile to the outside world, or even from dwelling on the frightening ramifications to her no-longer-so-walled heart when simply being near her pirate can calm her fears so utterly.
However, she does shiver involuntarily at once more remembering the image of Killian on his knees, crying out as Gold attempted to finish him while she stood frozen, forced to watch helplessly.
"Are you cold, Milady?" Killian asks, his voice deep and throaty, the rasp of it as he tilts his head to search her eyes sending a shiver through her that has nothing to do with the chill in the late February air. His concern for her comfort is sincere, but his question still bears a hint of fond jest. He unclasps their hands to brush a strand of her silky blond hair off her forehead, and then wraps his arm around her shoulder, rubbing her upper arm to warm her, even before she answers.
"Really?" she asks, smirking at him with a head tilt and quirked brow. "You're really going with the 'milady' bit again?"
"It's what you are, Love," he murmurs, pulling her just a bit closer until their foreheads touch and he can nuzzle his nose against her cheek.
"Ah," she taunts playfully, reaching a hand up to the bared skin and dark hair peeking from his opened shirt. "Always the gentleman, aren't you, Jones?" Her fingers skim lightly along his collarbone, nails scratching through the coarse black chest hair and snickering when his breath catches and he swallows hard at the way her fingers continue to trace over his skin.
Her movement is arrest when the tips of her fingers twist in the metal links of the chains he always wears. Continuing to hold his gaze and looking mischievously up at him from under her long eyelashes, Emma twirls the charms at the end of his necklace around her fingers, then purses her lips and studies him thoughtfully.
"Does the princess have a question?" Killian speaks lowly, his voice steady once again and winding around her like an intimate caress.
"You've worn these as long as I've known you," she muses, letting the different trinkets play through her fingers. "Pirate spoils?" she quips.
He shrugs, a look of pleasant boast painted across his handsome features. "Aye, mostly," he confirms.
"Mostly?" She finds herself genuinely curious now that she has begun to learn a bit more about the physical emblems that make up the legendary Captain Hook.
Killian glances down at her graceful hands as Emma examines first the heavy skull, a piece liberated from a chest of loot on the first ship he ever took as a pirate, then the dagger he'd had fashioned after Milah's death – worn as a reminder of the one weakness his Crocodile had, of his vow to find a way to skin his love's murderer – and finally, she lingers on the third charm, holding it between her thumb and first finger. "This one too?" she whispers, her voice softer, no longer teasing, her eyes deep and full of sympathy, as if she knows this third charm, usually hidden by the other two, is the one of real value to him.
His smile falters a bit at the corner and a momentary fog of melancholy clouds the blue of her captain's eyes. "No, Lass," he whispers, barely audible, "that particular token was a gift."
She brings the hand that isn't holding onto his necklace up beneath his chin, tilting his face back to hers. Her voice is equally soft and knowing when she asks, "From Milah?" The name of his long lost first love, though inked on his arm in plain view, is not one spoken between them often. Emma respects the woman's importance in Killian's past and what she once meant to him, would never try to erase the woman's memory, but she does wish she could take the bitterness, isolation, and pain he had suffered at Milah's death from her pirate's psyche.
No words are needed here, and Killian merely nods his head as if hearing her unspoken wish and grateful for the sentiment. In fact, the awe and thankfulness that fill his eyes do something to her soul; Emma feels her chest expanding to hold the swell of emotion.
Raising the charm to her lips, Emma presses a kiss to it, her eyes never leaving his, trying to convey that she honors his first love, that she understands his pain all too well, and that she is glad he had someone to love him in that time he was so miserably angry and adrift.
Killian catches her hand before she can pull away and works his fingers down to her wrist, gently pushing back down both her jacket and sweater sleeves to trail the bootlace she always wears wrapped around it. "You carry treasures of your own," he offers gently, not to push, but to let her know that her losses and memories will be cared for and honored just as his have been. "Perhaps that is why you are so adept at understanding mine."
Emma's eyes follow his long, agile fingers as he runs them along the makeshift leather bracelet. Without stopping to consider, she simply allows this one secret out, long tired of being so guarded – at least with him – and ready to let her pirate in. "This was Graham's," she answers with a short bob of her head acknowledging his hinted question.
"The Sheriff before you?" Killian asks quizzically. "Were you two…?" he doesn't continue, choking off his train of thought as if afraid to overstep, but his worry is clear, as is his true question.
"We weren't a couple," she corrects, shaking her head slowly and a contemplative, wistful look crossing her face for a moment as she studies Killian's features and traces a hand over his dark, furrowed brow until his expression clears. "But he was my friend. He gave me a chance when I first came to Storybrooke for Henry…when many others wouldn't have. Graham gave me a job as his deputy…and a legitimate reason to stay in town – one that Regina couldn't do anything about."
"Good man," Killian says, toasting this stranger he has never even met without question, simply on the knowledge that this man had been good to his love. "If you were such compatriots, why aren't you still?" he asks after another pause. "Did he not return with the second curse? I don't believe I have ever seen him here. Was there a falling out?"
Emma swallows over the monstrous lump that almost immediately constricts her throat at picturing that night in the deserted Sheriff's station and Graham's collapsed, lifeless body on the floor. Her voice trembles when she answers, twining her fingers with Killian's and squeezing gently, needing to pull strength from his support. Even after all the time that has passed, even if there is no good way in this world to seek justice for Graham's murder, no way to avenge his death without irreparably wounding Henry once again with how cruel and depraved his adoptive mother had once been, it doesn't make it any easier when she remembers that Graham was killed in cold blood and has seemingly been forgotten, his murder going unpunished. Clearing her throat, she does her best to explain. "You've never met him because he's dead…He- he was killed because of m-me…Back before the curse was broken, before I accepted that all of this…" she sweeps her arm out to indicate Storybrooke spread below them, "was real. Before I understood what had really happened. By- by the time I realized what had actually been done to him…it was too late. I still don't know what I could really do to his killer…but he's gone and nothing will bring him back."
Emma falls silent here, biting her lip and breathing in several steadying breaths through her nose. Killian's hook now runs lightly over the leather laces, and it is a soothing, strangely healing sensation. She can't say she won't always miss the kind sheriff with the messy mop of curls and the goofy smile, won't rage inside at the injustice he suffered, won't wish desperately that he had lived to see the curse broken and to find freedom and healing, be recognized as the hero he was. Still, she senses her lingering regrets over Graham are quite akin to what Killian has for Milah and the horrible way she died, only perhaps Killian's are even more scarring because they were deeply in love. Graham was gone before they had really explored that.
"I don't mean to press a painful topic, Lass," Killian breaks in, smoothing his hook through her hair before he uses it to push the blond strands back over her shoulder and press the lightest of kisses to her temple. "However, I'm sill not sure I comprehend what brought about his demise. Though if it is something you do not wish to speak of, do not feel that you must."
Emma shakes her head, letting him know his questions aren't the problem, and that she is willing to tell him, merely trying to brace herself and find the best way. "In the Enchanted Forest, Graham was called the Huntsman. The Evil Queen ordered him to kill my mother and return with her heart as proof that the job was done. But he couldn't bring himself to kill Snow, so he let her go and brought back the heart of a deer instead. Regina saw through it, and…she took Graham's heart…and kept him in the castle as her slave." Emma pauses, wetting her lips nervously and darting her eyes to Killian's face, realizing this might strike too close after what he has just endured with Gold. "While they were here in Storybrooke, no one remembered…but she still had his heart, and he was under her control. When he disobeyed…stood up to her…she crushed it…and he died…"
Killian sucks in a sharp breath at her last admission, stiffening as if slapped when her words trail off. Finally, he wraps his arm around her, relaxing once more as he gathers her close. "That makes sense," he says at last, so softly that Emma strains to hear it. "When the Crocodile crushed Milah's heart, she fell almost instantly. She barely had time to whisper that she loved me before she was gone."
"Killian, I'm sorry," Emma begins, "I should have thought –"
"No, Love, please don't apologize. I should have known that as well as we understand each other, and with the painful pasts we both share, it makes a perverse sort of sense that we have each suffered just such a horrific loss."
She only nods, still hearing Graham's whispered "I remember" and his beatific smile through teary eyes as he had thanked her.
Killian is the one who now puts his fingers beneath her chin and tips her face up to his. "You were with him when he died, weren't you, Swan?" he asks solemnly, already seeing the answer in her haunted eyes.
"Yes," she responds simply. "Regina and I had fought, and he was patching me up. We…we kissed…and he was thanking me. He had just started to remember who he really was. And then he…collapsed. I tried to bring him back…but he was gone."
Neither of them speak for several long, silent moments. The silence is much more soothing than awkward though as each draws comfort from the other.
"I am glad you had this Graham for the time that you did," Killian finally says, breaking the quiet. "He sounds like a truly honorable man – and a good friend – which you must have needed, taking a stand alone against the Evil Queen as you did."
"Honestly?" she questions, searching his eyes for resentment or jealousy, but finding only understanding and love in those mesmerizing blue depths.
"Aye, Lass. Honestly." He gently fingers the loops of leather again, delightful little tendrils of warmth trailing up her arm from every place his touch connects. Shaking her head slightly, Emma finds herself wondering – not for the first time – how this man can possibly be real. He may be wounded and flawed, but so is she, and his jagged edges seem to fit right next to hers and fill in the cracks that have always held her back, kept her alone. Killian may have called himself a villain, may have done things he isn't proud of, but his heart is true and brave. He holds just the heart she has always to support her own, as battered and bruised as it is.
Just as she doesn't begrudge him his love for Milah and the right to mourn her, he absolves her of any guilt she feels for still harboring respect, affection, and gratitude to the former sheriff, her friend Graham. Emma glances down at the bootlaces on her wrist once more, touched that Killian is still stroking the skin just there and drawing away the hurt with each pass of his warm fingers across her wrist. Their tokens, and the people those tokens represent, have made she and her pirate who they are, but finding someone who will guard those memories as well as helping to make new, happier ones was a gift neither had dared hope for until finding each other.