A/N: All right, everyone. I hate to do this to you, but updates may not be very regular at all for a little while. We are in the process of an overseas move and while I'll definitely write and post when I can, internet may be spotty for a little while and there will be time constraints. Rest assured, I have no intention of stopping this fic. I will write up to the end of Season 5. Hopefully this is the last time I'm killing him. Writing this portion of this fic has unbelievably hurt, and I'm so, so tired of the physical and emotional pain I've had to keep putting into words. It's been heartbreaking, taxing work, and I'm sure it's been no picnic to relive on your end, either. But the one positive thing about angst is that it makes us appreciate the good moments, and I promise you, every opportunity I have that feels right and in-character and captures what is shown and implied onscreen, I will deliver you positivity. I will deliver love. I will deliver hope, which is what this entire show is based on, that anyone can be given a second chance at happiness if they are willing to earn it. We've earned it. Thank you for all your reviews.


The Dark Ones disperse into the night, unhurried, as black as the night and yet detached from the rest of the world. The price of magic demands lives for their resurgence, breathing, warm-blooded lives, and of course they'll target those most likely to try to stop them. And then he'll be alone.

But Rumpelstiltskin will be among them. When he dies, and rest assured he will die, the world will be one coward short, so, in a way, he's performing one last good deed before, before...

Do you ever wonder if this constant pursuit of revenge is the reason we have no one who cares for us? I mean, when all this is over, and I know the Crocodile is dead for good and all, I'll have nothing to look forward to. My life will be empty.

He'd uttered those words before, out loud. They'd poured out of him when he'd only intended them to be passing conversation. Nearly all his long, pitiful life, he'd hunted a man obsessed with power. Was obsession with revenge any better? Had he given it up and fought tooth and nail to take himself and Bae somewhere safe, or at least relatively safe... Or had he given it up the moment he'd laid eyes on Emma Swan, thrown that bean into the lake, and whisked her away to some remote stretch of beach...maybe then he could have had a life, a true purpose, things to anticipate. But, somehow, he'd squandered his chances, proved himself to be the last man deserving of such a fate. Revenge is the best he can hope for.

Footsteps behind him indicate Rumpelstiltskin is nearby. The real one, not the Darkness. Quite the parody, Killian thinks as he stares at the coward—the spindly, reluctant "hero" still carrying his sword. If he's to endure rousing speeches from this man, he might just very well die of laughter.

"It would appear I've won," he says to him. Rumpelstiltskin recoils at his voice, but his expression hardens into one of disgust.

"Did you? Last time we fought, this sword ended up at your neck." He tilts Excalibur upward, inches from Killian's throat. Fortunately, Killian Jones is so much beyond Excalibur now. What once had been a slave's chains now meant nothing more than a fancy strip of metal.

"You won a battle, not the war. I took the dagger from you, and now you have nothing and never will."

"Watch it, pirate!" Rumpelstiltskin growls at him. He lifts Excalibur higher, but he's too slow. Killian dodges it, leaving a puff of red smoke in his wake, and appears behind him.

"Ah! There's the Rumpelstiltskin we know and love!" he laughs. Oh, it's too rich. Even the idea of losing his cherished power incites riot-level hatred. The man just didn't understand he already had nothing—not the adoring wife he once had, nor the dear son to carry on his legacy. Drained of all magic: that bothered the once-great Rumpelstiltskin more than anything. "That is why Belle's left you, isn't it? She knows just what kind of man you really are."

"And what kind is that?" Rumpelstiltskin commands, still holding Excalibur out in front of him.

"The kind who loves power more than anything. More than her, more than your dead son, which is why it's so bloody satisfying to take it away from you. Mmm! Remember how good it felt?"

"Power is only as good as the one who wields it," the Crocodile counters, gnashing his teeth at him. "And you've done nothing but parlor tricks."

If only he knew what was coming, he thinks, smirking at him.

"Oh, is that right? Well, I think you're really going to like what's next—the trick where I finally get my revenge."


He won't let Rumpelstiltskin get to him. He won't! Bloody beast doesn't know what he's talking about. Parlor tricks indeed. Says the man who just can't resist throwing his arms up as if he's about to dance just before he makes a deal. Every single person he ever wronged will be thanking the Dark Ones from their graves. If they need to take a few souls in order to do that, it's a small price to pay. Isn't it? It's not as if Robin really meant anything to anyone in the grand scheme of things. His first wife's been dead and buried longer than anyone had originally guessed, and his little son is still young enough that he'll barely remember his father when he's a man. Regina may care for the bandit, but she'll be a corpse lying next to him, and gods know how the denizens of Storybrooke will all miss her, the Evil Queen who captured them all and spirited them away to this land in the first place to be her town of dolls. Was she really any different than her mother? Different from the Snow Queen? Different from Pan? All her rants and ravings about magic and redemption will finally cease to be.

Now, the others...well...Killian bites his lip. He needs somewhere calming, somewhere soothing. Images of waves crashing against the hulls of ships enter his mind, harbored ships creaking in the wind, the masts nodding back and forth as if they were speaking to each other. When he closes his eyes and opens them a second later, he's staring at the side of the Jolly Roger, docked next to all the boats of this world. Clearly different, but not really out of place. Perhaps that was how David and Snow had come to regard him by now, that odd one out that had somehow lingered around long enough for them to grow accustomed to him. He supposes he loves them; that had been the revelation the night he'd learned of their worst deed. They'd accepted him as a member of their little Storybrooke Squad, tolerated him as a suitor for their daughter. But in the end, he'd just be a good-for-nothing pirate to them, not worth keeping around.

If they die, Henry will die, and that realization closes his throat and saps the color from his face. He loves the lad, as much as if he were of his own blood, and yet he's signed his death warrant. Never to grow into the heroic image he so craved. Can you really do this to him? Can you do Emma one last favor and spare her child?

Emma. Emma, Emma, Emma...all his brain could register some days. He'd always liked her. Even when he'd woken up in that damned storage room in New York with only a scrap of paper from her letting him know she would care for his ship that she stole right from under him. His blackened, pirate heart always beat a little faster in her presence. He should have kissed her, back when they were up in the giant's lair. The moment she'd pulled him out from the rubble and he saw the compass in her hand, he should have lifted her off the ground in a smoldering kiss. Maybe then he would have earned her trust. They would have been together sooner, which means she would have stopped walking away from him sooner. They could have lived out the rest of their lives never knowing what the other would do if faced with the temptation to turn the other into a Dark One.

Again, he hears footsteps. Only this time, it's more amusing to try and guess which one of the heroes has him "cornered." Not Emma. He knows that right away. The heavy heels, the impatient strides...it can only be Regina.

"Thought I might find you somewhere with a view of the sea," she greets him, so conversationally, all remnants of the Evil Queen's feline purrs back in the past.

"Oh, there's no use in hiding now," he says to the sea, still needing it. Hearing nothing behind him, he wonders if she's given up and left.

"You can't go through with this, Killian."

"Oh, 'Killian?' No 'Captain Guyliner?' No 'One-Handed Wonder?' Where are the bon mots tonight?" He's killed people for less, for failing to show a captain the proper respect, but he's always allowed her to live, the reasons all over the place. They could help each other. She was Henry's mother. She was Swan's friend. She was working so hard at becoming a better person. He turns around and grimaces at the most patronizing look he's ever seen on her.

"I understand you think Emma betrayed you," she begins. Think? Think? What the bloody hell kind of spin can she put on turning someone into what they hate despite their dying pleas not to do it? "But do you really think dragging her family to the Underworld's the answer?"

"This from the woman who enacted the Dark Curse to punish Snow White for telling a secret. You of all people should know how far someone will go for revenge," he scoffs. They're too much alike, only now he's accepted what he is, while she's still convincing herself she's on the side of good. Ha! He'd wager his magic he could rally together an angry mob of departed souls willing to go the extra mile in the name of their own vengeance, making her personal trip to the Underworld quite the colorful punishment. "And unfortunately for you, so do all the people you've killed who are waiting for you in hell."

"I'm not that person anymore," she argues, shaking her head.

"Oh, tell yourself what you want, love." There are no best or worst versions of a person.

"You may be the Dark One, but we both know you aren't the man you were when I recruited you to kill my mother."

No. No, no, he will not listen to the Evil Queen plead with him to let go his revenge using that. One of the worst nights of his life, he owes her nothing but the bloodshed and the heartache. His father's life, his...his brother's orphaning, and in exchange for what? A partnership with Cora? He'd have rather been swept up in the Curse, dragged to this town like everyone else, completely oblivious to who he had been. He might have made something of himself then. He would have met Emma sooner and under a condition in which he might have been salvageable.

"When I...tested you," she continues. Bloody wench. Jerking out his hand, he imagines it closing in around her throat, just so he doesn't have to listen to her voice anymore.

"Not. Another. Word." He marches up to her, tensed and fighting for breath, not even able to cough. He could kill her before the Dark Ones do, just strangle her until she slumps to the ground, a rather anticlimactic end for one as dynamic as herself. He doesn't need her guidance. He only needs the power. Without it, he's nothing. "We agreed we would never speak about this again! Don't test me again. Whoever you think I am, I'm not! You've got no idea the kind of man I truly am!"

He releases her and charges down the dock for the street, eager for action.

"You know, there's a better way to find out what they're up to," the Darkness in Rumpelstiltskin's image hisses at him. "A faster way."

"Do tell."

"Your beloved...or ex-beloved is still a Dark One. Just as we can communicate, the two of you can."

"Emma's not fool enough to fall for that." She'd do anything to save her family, go to hell and back for them. No doubt she'd made some progress in forming a plan to counter his.

"Ah, well, it's not even that much effort," Rumpelstiltskin sings, giggling in the night as they walk. "All you have to do is think about what she would do. Or is there a conflict of interest here? Too afraid once you're inside her head you'll start to love everything about it again?"

"Quiet!" he snaps at it. If it's that easy, he can do it with minimal side effects. He knows Emma Swan well, can picture her standing across from insurmountable obstacles, narrowing her eyebrows the way she always does, so wondrous and selfless.

Selfless.

He stops dead in his tracks, eyes wide. She doesn't need a new plan. She needs only to alter her original one. The Darkness can be contained in a human vessel, and then vanquished altogether. Zelena's on the loose, no one else she would risk... That leaves only herself. She's planning to die for them. A surge of panic grips him, his heart racing. Of their own accord, his eyes begin blinking out flashbacks of the Darkness in all its tar-like glory oozing around her, consuming her and carrying her off, leaving him only the dagger with her name written across it. She can't. He'd rather die than know that she had.

So you still love her?

No. He despises her, always between him and his revenge. But if he lets her do this, he's left without her and his revenge. Nothing. He can't live without a purpose again. Stricken, he summons red smoke with a trembling hand and finds himself in the foyer of their house.

"Emma!" he shouts, running up to the staircase and leaning up the rail. Spinning around, he darts into the kitchen, then pokes his head out the side door.

"Emma!"

Calm down, he warns himself, falling back against the side door's threshold. You can't summon her in this state. He closes his eyes and inhales, steadying his breath. This is her house, too, after all, and therefore she will return to it before enacting her plan. All he needs to do is sit and wait. Extending his arms behind his back, he holds onto his hook and strolls around the first floor, pretending to come home after a long day of chasing Storybrooke-oriented villains. To hang up his coat, lumber up the stairs, sink into a bed, and curl up next to Swan—no use in imagining what could have been.

He poofs himself out of sight when he hears the door slam open, Emma storming in with her eyes fixated on the basement door. From one of the chairs by the front windows, the ones where the spyglass looks out onto the water, he watches her use her magic to fling open the door, yanking Excalibur out of its hiding place.

"Sorry, love," he startles her from his seat. Taking his time standing, he meanders to a spot between her and the door. "But I can't let you use that sword."

"Why? So you can get your precious revenge? If I do not do this, everyone I love will die."

"And if you do, you'll die," he adds, his heartbeat accelerating when something in her face flinches. He won't lie to himself and declare it fear; she's no coward. More like she's reacting to him differently, like he's told her something unexpected. "Come now, hand it over. I don't want to hurt you."

I want to hurt you. Like you hurt me.

"Now you care what happens to me?" she challenges him. As she always does.

I love a challenge.

Silently cursing himself for not immediately responding, he raises his voice.

"Like it or not, I owe you."

"For what?" she snaps.

"Well, if it weren't for what you made me, I would never have become the man I always wanted to be."

The tears in her eyes still won't stream down her face, the stubborn minx. Her expression volleys from appalled to mournful and back. When she opens her mouth, she barely utters above a whisper.

"This is not who Killian wanted to be. Revenge did not matter to him."

She knows him better than anyone. The hours he's spent allowing himself to confide in her, to share his long, drawn-out past with her ring hollow now. But he can't allow her to know that. Once she pokes one hole into his life, she'll poke another and another until he's completely undone.

"Oh, it did. You just briefly distracted me. Well, now I can finally make the Crocodile pay."

It's meant to shock her, he supposes, or at least stun her long enough for him to know he deflected her words with signature Dark One panache. Instead, she inches toward him, the sadness that's haunted her ever since they returned from Camelot giving way to empathy, and gods but he's seen the power that look can do. It bolsters those around her—a giant, an Evil Queen, a horde of Lost Boys—and inspires them to fight alongside her, and it did the most thorough job of all on a selfish, pathetic pirate.

"Even if it means becoming the thing you hate?" she asks in a hushed voice, firm and soothing all at once. "The thing you spent centuries trying to destroy?"

Swallowing, he wonders why he can't look away from her, why this sudden urge to close the gap between them still lingers. It was after she'd spit out seawater while splayed out on the deck of his ship, when he'd feared he'd lost her just after he'd scratched the surface of learning who she really was—the moment he'd decided to be done pretending that no connection existed between them. He'd decided he would stop fighting whatever she'd awakened and let the chips fall where they may. Gazing into her face as he did then, he quells the sudden urge to cry, to grieve for what they had had.

"If you didn't want me to change, you should have let me die."

"I'm sorry," she breathes, eyes wide. "I couldn't watch one more person I love die."

Ah. Just one more person. Not anything unique or, if he's being generous with himself, True Love caliber. Just the last straw.

"And now, because of that, you get to watch everyone you love die." Including the man she'd loved.

"No!" Rushing at him, her panic renders her clumsy, allowing him to avoid the blade altogether by appearing behind her. Stumbling, she whirls around and lifts Excalibur in that crude, untrained way she does when given a sword.

"I will protect my family. Even if I have to kill you to do it!" She means it, as well as this next blow. Before she can strike, he pulls the same trick on her, only with a variation. She might be able to run a sword through him after claiming to love him, but he knows to a moral certainty another she would never hurt.

"Mom. Wait," he states in Henry's voice, Henry's image all too easy to conjure.

"Henry!" she gasps, not quite falling for it, but then, she didn't need to. It just needed to give her enough pause for him to steal Excalibur from her. He changes back to his normal appearance to spare her dignity. Let it be said Captain Hook doesn't kick them when they're down.

"Killian." Her voice quivers, her body nearly convulsing in an effort to keep from sobbing. "Do not do this."

"It's too late for that, Swan." Too late for a great many things. "Enjoy the time you have left with your family."


"But this time you're going to listen, because if you don't...you're going to regret it for the rest of your life, which, in your case, means forever. So, you have to ask yourself the same question you did that night—what kind of man do you want to be?"

Regina's words echo over and over in his mind, knocking on some locked door, but he still stands with the Dark Ones, and she stands with her family. His family? Only Emma's family?

"It's time," Nimue says, but it feels as though time doesn't exist, that he's outside his body observing everything it's doing...about to do...might do?

"No! You're not taking the people I love!" Emma screams, rushing toward Nimue, but the latter prepared for just such an event, merely lifting her arm. It sends gray waves into Emma, knocking her back. She begins to gasp, her eyes bulging as though unseen hands are choking the life out of her.

"I might not be able to kill you, but I can stop you from interfering," Nimue scolds her, keeping her arm up. The waves don't grow in intensity, but the longer they pulsate, the more Emma's eyes bulge, the lower she sinks toward the ground, looking up at him and straining to speak.

Killian...it's never too late. You can change. Be a better man. His father's dying words. The countless number of people he's let down over the years for not changing...Emma's suffering.

I have yet to see you fail. H-he can't be the one to finally bring down the Savior, costing her entire family. His family. His love, and...this was what this had been about. Love. And he'll do whatever it takes to ensure she'll never go without love again.

"That's enough," he hears himself order Nimue. Facing her, he sneers at the irritation on her face.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Being the man I want to be." He has the sword, Excalibur. He can go through with Emma's plan to contain it all into a vessel. No world having to suffer from the Darkness, his family safe, Emma back to her old self—the thoughts still his heaving chest and keep the tears in his eyes at bay. To die will be an awfully big adventure.

"You can't stop us," Nimue argues with fear in her glare, confirming that he can, and he will.

"Yes, I can." Raising Excalibur, it glows a bright red, sucking ribbons of Darkness into it, shapeless masses of tar and decay identical to the night Emma let it overtake her. Slowly, the Dark Ones surrounding him fade, reduced to black strips absorbed into Excalibur, which grows heavier by the second. As they all finally disappear, he realizes he can't exhale, not yet. They live in the sword, the blade black with the symbols now branded onto it in a hellish red. It strains his shoulder, then all of him, his jaw tightening, his knees buckling, as his weakening grip starts to lower it to the ground.

"Killian, you can't do this," Emma calls to him, her voice cracking. Everything she'd tried to prevent unfolding before her eyes. Because of him.

"We both know there's no other way, love. We have to hurry. The Darkness won't stay trapped in Excalibur much longer." Be strong for her, he commands himself. Facing her, he holds out the sword. "Take it."

"No!" she shouts.

"You have to help me, Swan. Take it." He can feel every vein in his forearm as he bears the weight of Excalibur. If the Darkness escapes, he might be lost, back to that vile, vindictive horror who had set all this into motion in the first place. He watches her straighten herself to her full height, chest outward, as if she's preparing for him to run her through. She locks up the anguish on her face into something more stoic.

"I can't. It should be me."

Never.

"Your family needs you," he argues. "If anyone deserves to go to the Underworld, it's me. You were right. I was weak. So let me make up for it now by being strong."

"I don't want to lose you," she sobs.

Good.

Come back to me.

I can't lose you, too.

I love you.

"And I don't want to lose you," Killian confesses, the tears in his eyes burning. Bloody hell, they need to go away so he can see her, really see her, before he goes. The last thing he'll ever see. He couldn't ask for a grander sight. "But you have to let me go. Let me die a hero. That's the man I want you to remember, please!" He winces at the cacophonous mess shrieking at him from inside the sword. Unable to even hear his name in the chaos, he knows it's calling out to him, calling to her also. But she's not approaching it; she's approaching him, holding the sword, both of her hands lingering around his before she breaks away with it. Her grip shakes too, letting out a shocked gasp at the weight. Even now he finds her bravery endearing, so unbearably kissable he wonders how he ever lost sight of their love.

"I love you!" she cries, as if she had heard his thoughts, and crashes into him. Her fingers wind around his hair as her lips try everything in their power to heal him. But this isn't a curse. This goes beyond a curse, not that it matters. He's content to dip his forehead down onto hers and breathe her in one last time. To be soaring over the realms just by gazing into her eyes, to feel the burden of every past sin washed away when he's in her arms—the Underworld most definitely will not be a paradise without her. But then, he'd always known she'd be the death of him. A small part of him knew it the moment he first saw her with the sun at just the right angle that everything else blurred.

"I love you," he murmurs to her, shivering when she pulls back from him. One last time, they mirror each other, bracing themselves for what will happen next. Swallowing, inhaling, tensing. She can do this. She's the strongest person he knows. "It's okay."

He doesn't mean to scream. He'd meant to spare her that, but the pain is excruciating...like in their meadow, but it's all happening faster this time. He can hardly see her, can hardly wrap his arms around her when she burrows into him, weeping...everything's vanishing.

No. He wants to see her. Balancing himself, he cups her face and watches a white, warm light return the color to her face and her hair. She's softer now, the scents of sunlight and cinnamon stronger than his vision, though. Panting, she pulls Excalibur out of him, drenched in his blood. Pulling it out hurts even more than it did going in, even the knowledge it's disintegrating failing to numb the pain. His neck begins to burn. His hips feel like they'll snap from his torso if he so much as twists. It hurts not to run to her. It hurts to be unable to open his eyes. It hurts to know his body will never be flush with hers after this moment.

And then it doesn't hurt anymore.