Emma sat alone in the empty room, staring at the empty bed without really seeing it. She could still see Killian so clearly, lying there with more tubes and wires snaking out from beneath the blankets than she'd ever seen before. But he wasn't there, not anymore. The echo of the alarms that had gone off so suddenly, so finally, still rang through her ears. He'd been so still through it all and Emma had remembered thinking inanely that he should have woken at all the commotion.
But he hadn't.
The only movement that had come from him was the tetany of muscles with the shock of the defibrillator, the spastic movements of his chest as they'd performed CPR again, the lolling of his head every time they pulled the bag away from the tube in his throat at the command of, "Clear!"
God, she'd wanted to see his blue eyes looking at her, reassuring her, pulling the terror from her heart with how calm he always was.
But he hadn't woken.
And now, Emma sat in shock, still guarding the empty bed. She didn't know what else to do. Part of her needed to get up, to find Liam, to make sure he was… 'all right' wasn't the right sentiment since he clearly would be as far from whole as she was. She needed him right now, needed someone who'd loved Killian even more than she did, needed to know that someone else was as near to falling apart as she was.
But there was still a job to do.
Gold had been killed; his part in this fiasco was finished. But Hades… Hades was still at large and still free to wreak as much havoc as he pleased and Emma couldn't stand for that. She wouldn't.
And she knew she needed to get to Liam before he could go off on his own. She didn't know exactly what Liam was capable of right now, but she knew that he wouldn't care what happened to him so long as Hades was made to pay for everything he'd done to Killian.
The only thing Emma could do for Killian now was make sure his brother didn't end up in a prison cell for the rest of his life. Or worse.
God, how had it come to this?
"Emma?" Henry's voice echoed through the empty room, startling her out of her thoughts and back to the present. There was still so much to do. "What do you want me to do?"
Emma just stared at Mills for a moment. She didn't know. This was her case and right now she just didn't know. There was too much to do and not enough to do and she didn't know where to start. She needed to get to Liam. She needed to find Hades.
She needed to end this.
"David said that you would have orders for me," he tried again, looking so goddamned hopeful that he'd be able to help that Emma peeked out of the walls that she had been rapidly trying to rebuild. She wasn't entirely sure when they'd come down, but she was sure that Killian had everything to do with it. And now he was-
Don't think about that.
She smiled shakily at Henry, the movement of her face tight and so, so false. Another brick in the wall, another fortification to protect what was left of her heart. She needed to get Henry away from this - away from all the darkness that she was ready to embrace. Anything to finish this. "All right, Mills, let's get to work. I need access to the surveillance feeds."
Henry beamed at her, a light in the oppressive darkness of the room that Emma, suddenly, couldn't wait to be away from. Killian may no longer be there, but his brother still needed their help. Her help. And she'd do whatever it took to get her… their vengeance. For Killian.
"I'm on it, Detective! Just give me a minute or two and I'll have them transferred to a tablet for you." Henry was halfway out the door when he paused. "What are you looking for?"
"Liam bloody Jones, for one thing," she mumbled under her breath, but then shook her head before speaking loudly enough for Mills to hear. "I need to know if anyone came or went from this floor after Jones d- after he coded. Anyone that we haven't cleared yet."
His eyes widened meaningfully at her stutter before he turned for the door again. "I'll be back in a minute," he promised and then took off.
"I won't be here," Emma muttered to his retreating back. She liked Mills, but even now he was still too green, still too eager to follow the book. And Emma didn't have time for anyone to question her or second guess what she was about to do.
She had a feeling Liam would be on board for that.
But first she had to find him.
Emma stood shakily to her feet, ignoring the sick feeling that nearly sent her collapsing back into the chair at Killian's… at the empty bedside. That's all it was; just a bed, nothing more. Not the last place that she'd seen Killian. Not where she'd watched them whisk her… take Killian from her. Her knees wobbled as she took those first few steps away from the bed, towards the door that Liam had haunted while his brother had fought and lost the battle to live.
Part of Emma hoped that somewhere, somehow, Killian knew that she was there at the end. She wanted him to know that he wasn't alone as he breathed his last breaths and when his heart slowed to a stop. But there was also a part - a rather large part - of her that would be grateful if he didn't know. Because if Killian didn't know that she was there, then he didn't know that his brother wasn't at his side. Emma knew he'd understand, that he'd have forgiven Liam, but right now she couldn't do the same.
She didn't know the whole story. Emma knew that. She knew enough about the brothers to know that Liam never would have taken the shot if he'd had another choice. He had to know that there was no other way, that Killian never would have blamed him for trying to save his life. Emma may not have been there, but she'd seen Gold's corpse and had drawn up enough trajectories from enough crime scenes to know that the bullet that had ended his life was the same one that had eventually ended Killian's.
Damnit, she'd been minutes away. All they had to do was stall.
Don't go there, she admonished herself. There was no guarantee that she could have done any differently and Emma had no way of knowing if Liam even knew she was coming. She had to find out what happened. She had to find Liam.
He wouldn't leave his brother. The thought came out of nowhere, but once it solidified in her brain, Emma knew exactly where Liam had slunk off to.
The morgue.
It took Emma longer than she would have liked to dodge the other officers on the floor and then make her way to an elevator that would take her to the basement. Despite the calming music spewing out of the speakers and the bright lights in the small metal box she was trapped in, a chill ran down her spine. It didn't matter how many times she'd been in the bowels of the hospital, how many bodies she'd seen in her days before transferring to Internal Affairs; it never got easier or less eerie to take the long path from the elevator to the door marked, "MORGUE".
It all just seemed so unnecessarily sinister. The gleaming metal doors, the chill in the air, the hum of all the refrigerated cabinets hiding the bodies. The lights were dimmed low, as if in reverence to the dead resting behind closed doors. And in reverence to Liam.
Liam was standing in the middle of the room, the defeat that was resting on his shoulders almost visible in its intensity. He looked so lost, so small in the vast room. Emma wanted to burst in on him and take him away from this place. She wanted to wrap him up in bubble wrap and keep him safe from the harsh reality he was facing alone. She knew Killian would have wanted that for him.
But Killian was gone and Liam was broken and Emma was only just hanging on herself, thoughts of what she was going to do to Hades when they caught up with him barely enough to keep her going. She wasn't strong enough to shoulder Liam's devastation as well.
So she watched. Like a voyeur with a sick sense of dread in her stomach, Emma watched as Liam shook himself, stood taller, and moved towards one of the banks of cabinets. She held her breath as he froze, his hand outstretched towards - but not quite reaching - the handle of one of the doors. Even from her spot behind the entrance, Emma could see the tremors in Liam's fingers as he hesitated, though she couldn't tell if it was from nerves or shock or his condition.
She thought it might be a combination of the three and was impressed that he was even standing. God knew that there was nothing more she wanted to do than to surrender to her grief for a moment or several. Thoughts of fleeing from the hospital, of taking shelter in her apartment and just collapsing on the couch to stare mindlessly up at the ceiling for days, of hiding away on the Jolly Roger amidst the smell and the memory of Killian, caught in her mind and she nearly backpedaled away from the doors.
No, Emma thought angrily to herself. It wasn't the time to break; not now. Right now she had to finish what Killian… what they had started. Together. No matter what, she had to take Hades out.
She needed Liam's help to do it. She thought that he might need the closure, the vengeance, as much or maybe even more than she did. At least if he were by her side, they could take Hades out together and watch each other's backs. Alone, who knew how successful they'd be. Maybe, just maybe, if they were able to take Hades out together, she could find it in her to forgive Liam for abandoning his brother in that hospital room. Maybe she could finally understand what had brought them to this point and find a way to get past the fact that, his fault or not, Liam had fired the bullet that ended Killian's life.
She blamed Gold for Killian dying, she blamed Hades for losing the first man she'd loved since Neal.
She blamed Liam for failing Killian at the end. But, she thought as she watched Liam looking so forlorn and yet so strong - finally - for Killian, she didn't blame him for Killian dying. That wasn't his fault.
She knew that, even if she also knew Liam didn't believe it.
Emma watched for a moment longer, fascinated by the strength Liam had found in the face of the ultimate tragedy. But when his fingers finally closed around the handle and he tugged open the door with a determined yank, she realized that her morbid curiosity was far outweighed by the respect she had for him. By the realization that he deserved this moment alone. By her absolute inability to deal with seeing Killian, cold and dead and laid out on a slab covered only by an austere hospital sheet.
Nothing about Killian Jones was cold or austere.
She'd say her goodbyes alone, without anyone watching, with a flask of rum and the sanctity of her own time and place. The least she could do for Liam was afford him the same privacy.
Before Liam could pull out the drawer that held his brother's body, Emma turned away from the morgue doors and nearly sprinted down the hallway.
She'd wait for Liam by the elevator.
There was a buzzing in Liam's ears drowning everything else out in that hallway outside his brother's room. He felt as though someone had dumped him in the ocean in the middle of a hurricane, nothing quite in focus and not knowing which way was up. His head lolled against the cold wall behind him, Mills's face swimming into his line of vision before droning on about something that Liam couldn't make out. Almost before he could process the rookie's presence and what it could mean, Henry was gone again. Liam wasn't entirely sure that he'd even been there.
He was shaking again. That seemed important. Dead people didn't shake. He wasn't dead yet. Killian was. And it was his fault.
Liam had no idea how much time had passed; it seemed only a blink of an eye and yet an eternity. However long it had been, he was startled when the door opened and Whale slipped out of the room. The doctor gave him a strange look, but didn't stop to offer his condolences - not that Liam was surprised. He never did have much of a bedside manner.
A moment later, and Whale's lack of sympathy was washed away by the tide of grief that crashed over Liam. The gurney wheel was squeaking loudly enough to grate on Liam's nerves. The white sheet that covered Killian's body was pristine, not a single mark on the cloth that spoke of the trauma beneath. It all seemed so simple.
The ramifications were anything but.
That was his little brother under that sheet, cold and lost and gone where Liam couldn't follow. His little brother, the man who had been so full of life, so full of potential and hopes and dreams and… and he was gone.
Liam rose shakily to his feet and stumbled after the orderly ferrying his brother away down the hall. The tether between brothers stretched and pulled as Liam fell behind; it felt almost real, as if a piece of him were being physically ripped away the faster the man moved and the slower Liam managed. When the elevator doors closed, separating Liam from Killian and blocking his view of his brother's body, it was as if everything just stopped.
Numbness.
The blissful absence of anything remotely related to feeling. It took over Liam without warning and he welcomed it with alacrity. Not being able to feel anything was far better than the terror that had mixed with the self-recriminations and the white hot anger that had coursed through him only moments ago. He had heard the doctor call time of death and everything just… just stopped. It didn't hurt, it didn't scare him, it just didn't matter anymore. He was alone in the world and nothing that could or would happen after 8:15PM even mattered. Killian was dead.
He was dead.
Liam was dead and his body just hadn't gotten the memo to stop and follow his brother yet.
He didn't know how long he stood there, watching the doors open and close as the people around him moved on with their lives. As if they didn't understand that everything had stopped. As if they didn't know that Liam's world had shattered so irrevocably.
Of course they didn't. They didn't know and they didn't care and nothing mattered and Killian was gone. He was gone. Liam didn't know what to do.
"Come on, Jones," David's voice came out of nowhere, soft and soothing and nothing that Liam wanted right now.
He shook his head in denial, his partner's presence wrenching him out of the depths he'd sunk into. David's hand on his shoulder was as shocking as that first breath of air he'd take once his head breached the surface of the roiling sea he'd been thrown into. He didn't want to be saved. He just wanted the muted pressure of being surrounded by water with no way up.
It always looked so peaceful in the movies when someone drowned.
"Liam, let me take you home."
Home. As if that word had any meaning without Killian there to make it so. Liam shook his head again. He didn't have a home anymore. Any place that he owned was so drenched with memories of his brother, so infused with Killian's presence, that Liam couldn't stomach the idea of going there now.
"Mary Margaret already started airing out the guest room. Come with me, partner."
Liam blinked slowly, his head turning against his will away from the elevator doors so he could stare uncomprehendingly at David. "I'm not your partner any longer," he whispered morosely.
He'd never seen David turn quite that startling shade of red quite that quickly before. Not even the time when they'd caught the nanny who'd been poisoning her three charges and she had simply confessed saying that they "deserved what came to them" with a sweet smile.
"Like hell you're not," he hissed, grabbing Liam by the arm hard enough to make him cry out. David shook him before dragging him bodily out of the hallway and away from the elevator. There was a loud thunk as David slammed open the door to a private waiting room before storming inside, dragging Liam along for the ride. He stumbled as David wrenched him around by the arm, tripped over his feet when he was shoved backwards, and had the wind knocked out of him when his back collided with the chair David had dropped him in.
Liam spent a few minutes coughing and wheezing until his eyes watered. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he tried to suck in enough oxygen to make the stars dancing across his vision fade.
Liam shook harder as he tried to grasp for the numb feeling again. The wetness on his cheeks was too real, was too close to the grief he was trying to keep bottled in. He couldn't break here; he couldn't break now.
If he did, he'd never stop.
"You're my goddamned partner, Jones. You have been since the Academy and you will be until the day they put one of us in the ground. And... goddamnit Jones, look at me! That day is not going to be anytime soon, do you hear me?"
Liam looked up, startled to see David crouched in front of where he sat. There was a frightening amount of grief reflected in his eyes.
"You're my partner, Jones," David repeated softly. "You'll always be my partner. So lean on me for a bit, okay?"
Liam nodded helplessly, the numbness stealing over him again with the assurance that David was there to take care of things. For a little while, at least.
"I don't know what to do," Liam admitted, nearly choking on the words. "David, I-"
"Detective Nolan!" a uniformed officer burst into the room with a shout. "We need your authorization to lock down the ICU. The hospital's head of security…"
Liam zoned out as David stood up and moved out of his line of sight. There was a tile out of place in the intricate pattern on the waiting room floor and it was making him irrationally angry. He couldn't take his eyes off of it.
"Liam? I need to go take care of this, okay?" David asked hesitantly, looking over his shoulder at the officer who was shifting from foot to foot. "Stay here, all right? Don't move; I'll be back as soon as I can to take you home. Mary Margaret's waiting for us."
Liam thought he nodded, but the questioning look on David's face and the increased anxious pacing from the officer made him think twice. He shuddered, closing his eyes and jerking his head in some semblance of agreement. David squeezed his shoulder in sympathy before turning for the door, hurrying out and letting the door shut behind him with a bang.
It was too quiet. Liam opened his eyes and looked around the empty room, the silence nearly deafening as his pulse pounded in his ears. He had to get up. He had to move. He had to keep himself from thinking.
Liam began to pace the length of the room, past the windows that looked out over the city and through the rows of chairs. Past the coffee maker and the dark television set in the corner of the room. Back again and again until all he was thinking about was the misplaced tile and the pattern on the uncomfortable chairs.
Killian would hate the pattern on those chairs.
Killian. Cold, alone, lost. On his way where Liam couldn't follow.
But Liam could follow him. Of a sort. He wasn't sure when he'd left the room or where exactly he was going to find a way down to the morgue that wasn't guarded by an overly attentive do-gooder who would rat him out to Nolan, but he knew that Killian would be in the basement by now, and that was the only thing he could think about. He had to get there. Now.
The elevator was too slow. Liam only lasted two floors before he bolted out the door and headed straight for the stairs. Logically, he knew that taking the elevator would be faster, but he couldn't just stand there waiting. Thinking. Grie-
He cut himself off. He needed to get to Killian. That was all he needed to think about as he finally got to the end of the stairway and slipped through the door. It was dark in the hallway, the hum of electricity grating on Liam's ears despite the few muted lights overhead.
The double doors to the morgue loomed menacingly at the end of the hall. It seemed like for every step Liam took, the hallway got that much longer, the doors that much further away. He didn't realize that he'd stopped entirely until the echo of his footsteps faded away and he was left with his thoughts and the maddening noise above his head.
Killian was beyond those doors; the least Liam could do was drum up the courage to do what he couldn't when Killian would have known the difference, when it might have made a difference - walk through the doors to where his brother was resting.
It was too late for Killian to know one way or another, but Liam would know for the rest of his life that he'd failed his little brother when he was needed the most.
The door creaked open at Liam's insistence, the humming louder in the cavernous room than it had been in the hallway. Here, there were two walls full of refrigerated cabinets, the gleaming chrome mocking Liam with his own distorted reflection. He took three determined steps into the room before his courage slipped out from beneath his feet like the outgoing tide and he froze. He couldn't do this. He couldn't see his brother like this.
He had to see his brother like this. Liam might have stood there for a mere minute or an eternity, he had no way of knowing. Killian needed him. Not in any way that mattered, but at the same time in every way that had ever mattered. They were brothers, and Liam needed this for his own sanity as well as what Killian deserved.
Squaring his shoulders, Liam looked around the room, searching for a way to find Killian. He wasn't sure why, but he migrated towards the side wall, reading the penciled in names to the side of each cabinet. It only took him three tries to find his brother's resting place.
Liam's hands were shaking violently, the tremors painful as they coursed through his fingers and up his arms. He raised his hand towards the chilled metal, shuddering at the thought of what he'd find behind that door.
"I'm so sorry, little brother," he whispered into the silent room, unable to wrap his fingers around the handle of the small door. "I'm so bloody sorry."
He nearly ran, screaming, from the room at the mere thought of opening that door. If he saw Killian's body, if he acknowledged that his little brother was gone, then it was real. It wasn't a nightmare or a hallucination or a horrible joke. His little brother was dead and there was nothing he could do to change it.
Killian needed him; nothing else mattered besides that.
Liam wrapped his fingers around the handle and pulled the door open before he could change his mind. A blast of colder air hit him in the face and accented the tears that he hadn't even realized were streaming down his cheeks. Killian's body was still covered by that damned white sheet, covering his face but not quite managing to hide the wild locks of hair that Liam knew better than his own.
There was nothing for it; Killian was lying on that slab, dead and gone.
He was dead.
"Oh God," Liam shuddered, his stomach clenching and nearly making him scramble for a trash can. His free hand came up to cover his mouth in horror, the sight of his little brother's wild hair more than he could handle.
He couldn't let go of the door. The metal was icy in the palm of his hand, the tremors nearly spasmodic now, locking his fingers around the handle and freezing him in place. Liam's breath caught in his throat, choking him and sending his blood pressure even higher. The hum was replaced by his pulse in his ears, mocking him cruelly with the reminder that he was still living while Killian was gone.
"Killian," he cried pitifully, wanting nothing more than to flee from the room, run so far and so fast that he left the memories behind. Wanting nothing more than to find that this wasn't real - he didn't care how and he didn't care why - wanting to find that his little brother was home waiting for him. Wanting nothing more than to wrap Killian in a hug so tight that his brother grumbled and complained about being a grown man and, 'God, Liam when will you remember - younger, not little, all right?'.
But wishing wouldn't make it so. Killian was lying there, not at home or at the cabin or on the Jolly.
Liam let go of the door, took an involuntary step back before squaring his shoulders again and stepping to the side of Killian's column of cabinets. A quick yank and the drawer slid out, Killian's body shifting a little with the force of the movement. Liam jumped in spite of himself, years of following up with the coroner on countless cases not doing anything to dissipate the aura of unease in the room.
Killian stilled again, the sheet billowing a little from the refrigerated air but otherwise shrouding his brother's body perfectly. Liam's hand came up involuntarily to rest on Killian's arm, the chill of his skin through the material shocking in spite of everything. God, his little brother was never still, always twitching in his sleep and constantly moving while he was awake. It drove people nuts sometimes, but it had always reminded Liam that Killian was there. That he hadn't failed, that they hadn't been separated, that Liam could still protect him.
Liam couldn't protect him anymore.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered again, resisting the urge to tuck the sheet tighter around his brother's body. Nothing he could do now would warm Killian up. "Killian, I…"
The motor controlling the temperature in Killian's cabinet whirred to life in protest, allowing Liam a moment to corral his thoughts. God, his little brother had always been there, following him around like a shadow that Liam never wanted to get rid of. He-
"You never annoyed me, you know. Not really, I mean," he spoke softly at first, eyes boring a hole in the sheet near Killian's hip. "I know I yelled at you sometimes when we were little and you were always underfoot, but I didn't mean it. Not really. Mama told me to look after you before she…"
He clamped down on that particular memory. No need to pick at badly healed wounds when the loss of his brother was bleeding so freely already.
"I've always been proud of you, proud to look out for you, proud to be your brother. God, I never told you that." Liam shook his head in regret. Why hadn't he just told Killian? "I told you when I was proud of things you'd done, but you could have sat on the couch watching awful television and done nothing with your life and I'd still have been proud to call you my brother.
"But you terrified me, too. So many times. The first time you fell riding my bike, that time you fell down the stairs at the Muellers' and bled all over their white carpet, your first day of primary school when you insisted that you could walk to your classroom by yourself. I followed you anyway, you know. No one else was going to bother, so I made sure that I did, no matter what you wanted. I just wanted what was best for you."
Five-year old Killian's confident grin filled Liam's vision and he had to stop for a moment. Liam held onto that memory for as long as he could.
"Sometimes you infuriated me, too, you know. You always thought you knew best, that you were bulletproof - with the bullies, with those bastards who were supposed to be raising us, with… with everything. It didn't matter to you that I just wanted you safe, you were bound and determined to do things your own way." He laughed humorlessly, shaking his head in disbelief. "You know, I'm pretty sure you joined the Academy just to see how high you could make my blood pressure go. I've never been so frightened and so bloody proud of you in my entire life as I was the day you walked across that stage. God, Killian, you… you're… you were a hell of a cop and I… I'm so proud of everything you did. I'm so proud of who you were."
Liam froze when he realized that he'd corrected himself. Killian was dead. He was gone. He…
He was gone.
Liam watched, detached, as his hand came up slowly, shakily, and clenched the sheet in his fingers. He could feel Killian's features beneath his hand, knew the shape of his brother's nose, the independence of his damned eyebrows, the quirk of his cheek before he smiled, all without seeing them.
He'd never see them again.
Not with the thrill of life thrumming just under the surface. He didn't want to pull back the sheet. He didn't want to see Killian's slack features, so devoid of everything that made Killian who he was.
Slowly, the material fell away, first from his forehead then from the rest of his face. Liam smoothed out the sheet carefully, reaching over Killian to tuck it in securely across his chest. He'd done that as a boy so many times, checking in on Killian one more time before he could sleep. And now, Killian was… he was… Liam laid his hand gently down on Killian's thigh, as if he would disturb him if he held on any tighter. Killian looked…
He looked wrong.
People say that the dead look like they're just sleeping, that they look at peace, that they… Killian was never at peace when he slept, always furrowing his brows or twitching some muscle or another; he always dreamed as vibrantly as he lived. There was none of that in the slack face turned towards the ceiling.
A sob worked its way past Liam's defenses, echoing through the room and assaulting him just as surely as if he'd been struck repeatedly. Killian's hair was wild, far too long and untamed. Liam had lectured his brother only last week about letting it get unprofessional and giving Gold ammunition with which to sully his record further.
Now Gold was dead and Killian was… he was… Liam had…
"God, Killian, why didn't you just… why couldn't I just… I… God, I'm sorry, little brother. I should have been better, should have been able to protect you. And now you're… and I'm… I can't…" he trailed off, paralyzed by everything that he couldn't hold back any longer. His head bowed, the slump of his shoulders too much to keep it upright. Tears dripped onto the sheet, dampening the fabric over Killian's heart and tearing at Liam even further. He couldn't stay here. He needed to go. He needed his brother. He needed… he didn't know what he needed any more.
He needed the person who'd caused this to suffer like he was suffering.
No. No, he needed the person who'd caused this to be erased from existence like his brother had been.
The grief burned white hot, searing away the pain and the regret and leaving only anger in its wake. Gold was gone by Liam's own bullet, but his benefactor was still out there. Hades had to pay.
Liam swiped away the tears that remained on his cheeks, ignoring the sting in his eyes. He brushed back some of the hair from Killian's forehead, trying to tame it into some semblance of the artfully disheveled style that his brother preferred. His fingers tangled in the locks, tightening to a point that would have been painful if Killian were…
"I love you, little brother," he whispered, his lips a hair's breadth away from Killian's forehead. "I love you and I'm going to make sure I finish what you started. Even if it's not how you would have wanted it. He won't hurt anyone else."
Liam brushed a kiss over his little brother's cold skin, much like he'd done when they were children and one of them or the other had woken from a nightmare.
No one was ever going to wake from this nightmare.
"I love you, Killian. And I'm sorry for everything." Liam hovered over his brother for a moment longer, letting the tears drip down onto Killian's cheeks as he tried to breathe through all the emotions coursing through him. God, he missed the numbness already.
Straightening up, Liam grasped the sheet again and tugged it up to Killian's chin, his entire body shaking as he closed his eyes and tried to summon the courage to cover his brother's face. As soon as he did that, it was final. He'd never see Killian outside of his casket again.
Dark mahogany. Liam thought Killian would like that for his final resting place.
Choking back a sob, Liam managed to drape the sheet over Killian's face reverently before bowing his head to rest his forehead on Killian's.
"Goodbye, little brother."
Without giving himself time to falter, Liam pushed Killian back into the drawer and shut the door gently. The audible click of the latch snagging shut was deafening in the silence and rang in Liam's ears long after the sound had faded.
He scrubbed the tears from his cheeks, but more just kept coming. Liam had to clench his hand over his chest to try and regulate his breathing as he took one step and then another towards the door. It felt as though he were physically tied to Killian, every step he took away pulled the rope tighter around his chest until finally, beyond the door and back in the hallway, it snapped. Killian was gone; there was nothing tethering him against the storm anymore.
Liam turned towards the elevator, unsure if he had the strength to climb the stairs and get out of the hospital, away from the place that failed his brother as utterly as he had, towards the man who needed to pay for Killian's death.
Emma was collapsed against the wall next to the elevator, her knees tucked into her chest and red-rimmed eyes following his movements. "Emma?"
"Hey," she croaked back, her voice thick with tears of her own. She looked nearly as wrecked as he felt and it did something to his heart. He'd alternated between being angry with her and glad that his brother had found her for as long as they'd been acquainted. But now, with Killian gone and Liam alone, he found that he needed the common ground they'd found in his brother.
"Did you" - he cleared his throat to rid himself of the knot in his throat - "did you want to go in? Say your good- goodbyes?"
Emma just shook her head, finally lifting her head off her knees to meet his eye. "I can't," she whispered.
Liam nodded back. He understood that. "It's all right," he absolved her.
Emma shot to her feet, anger rolling off her in waves. "It's not," she hissed, but she jammed a finger against the button for the elevator in spite of her words.
Liam took a step back subconsciously before he squared his shoulders. "No, it's not," he agreed.
Emma visibly deflated before she looked over his shoulder towards the doors to the morgue. "Want a chance to make the bastard who did this regret ever hearing your brother's name?"
Liam shuddered at the rage boiling just under the surface of her words. He reached for the white hot anger that had started to burn when he'd thought of Hades while saying goodbye to Killian. The anger was safer, it was easier to handle. It kept him from thinking too much about what his little brother would say, what David would do, what would happen to him afterwards. None of that mattered.
Liam Jones would burn down the entire world if it would bring the man who had orchestrated Killian's death to justice. It was clear to him that Emma was on the same page.
"Aye, lass. Let's make him pay."