It's that Jane Austen CS AU you have (not) been reading *g* This chapter is from Killian's POV, maybe a bit darker but it was time we got a glimpse of his inner workings as well. So hope you enjoy!
Contrary to what most people throughout the ages have said, believed, set on paper or even, on occasion, experienced firsthand, Captain Killian Jones never believed nights to be time and place where loneliness lurks, bids its time and lunges at unsuspecting gentlemen and ladies alike, thinking themselves safe in the comfort of their library or bedchamber.
Killian, to his surprise as much as the reader's we are sure, has rarely come to know this dark face of the later hours. No. Nights are too calm for all that – all light dimmed, all sound shushed, all conversation ceased and all social 'graces', that lacked the very essentials of grace (frankness and sincerity), stripped away.
Loneliness did not have time enough to sneak under his threadbare sleepshirt and sink into his weary heart when his bones were so heavy, when his head was already sunk so deep into the pillow and he was miles and miles from the overeagerness of his brother's nudges, the overagreeableness of his friends' conversation, the overrichness of ink on bills he still had little habit of dealing with and would probably never acquire any, the overheaviness of the contraption he strapped on his left forearm every morning with barely a shuffle and took off every night with an exhausted clang and a curled lip.
No, indeed, nights were somewhat safer for Killian Jones than most writers wrote them, with much softer tones than most painters painted them and much shallower sounds than most musicians played them. Safer in their being an end and not an unknown and unpredictable beginning, softer in their being dulled by tiredness and insensibility, shallower in their being too shrouded to need to dig deeper for even denser shadows.
For him, the evil was to be found in mornings. In their crispness, the sharp colours, the bright and painfully distinguishable forms, the strong and freshly unearthed smell, the rejuvenated and unrelenting birds' songs.
For him, all the weight of all the loneliness in the world managed to squeeze itself into a couple of seconds, into two drops – if drops it had been – less than a spoonful of sorrow, into a sliver of semi-consciousness, into the place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming.
For Captain Killian Jones, the world made contact and shattered into uncountable pieces and then, just as quickly, came back together – a little crooked, a bit bent, a tad not right – in the few blurry and yet so unreally clear seconds when wakefulness tore him from dreams. And it did not matter to him, much like it never matters to any not-quite-incandescently happy person, whether the dream had been a good one or not. It was the stumble, the jarring act of waking up into a world that could be anything – only to discover that it had chosen to be the exact same thing that it had been when you retired to bed the night before – that tore at him morning after freshly-washed but still dirty-grey morning.
It was in that place between sleep and awake that he would reach to the side, curl his fingers only to realize there was nothing – no one – to curl them around, curl his fingers only to realize there were no fingers to curl.
On occasion, an occasion occurring much more often than he could admit without some discomfort, Captain Jones considered the indisputable fact that his first meeting with Miss Emma Swan might have and could have gone quite differently, if it had not taken place on a morning. A particularly bright morning when he was feeling particularly justified in shunning that brightness and all sociability and yet found himself forced by promises previously given (extracted from him by an enchanting woman armed with a bow and the most honest and persuasive eyes he had ever seen) to move in the orchestrated manner of sociability and endure the combined brightness of a summer morning and the Nolans' household.
He might have, when faced with what was nothing short of the ethereal beauty of Miss Emma Swan, bowed longer and deeper, as was his custom when making the acquaintance of a lady who he knew every man with half his wits about him will give a pretty penny to make the acquaintance of. He might have, when confronted with the clear and alluring, almost inviting, greeting of Miss Swan, spared a genuine smile, responded in a way that might have left a door slightly ajar through which a tentative friendship to someday slip. He might have been the kind of attentive and irreproachably police gentleman that his brother had taught him to be. He might have been the kind of engaging and slightly provocative man that he had taught himself to be after he had firmly made his way into society.
But he hadn't been any of that for much too long by then and he had not done or thought of any of those steps into propriety, let alone potential friendship, for even longer.
So all he had managed to be was dazzled and all the more discontent for it.
After that first meeting –
Discontently dazzled by Emma Swan
- things have progressed steadily without bringing Captain Jones much more comfort.
Miss Swan, because hair spun from pure gold and eyes made of inimitable gemstones was not sufficient (no, not nearly sufficient enough to torture only one of Killian's senses), was also sharp as a whip, witty and entertaining to banter with to a fault, and determined to always have the last word (a vice of which he himself was in possession and which, to double the strength of the impact, he was quite fond of as well).
"You refuse to go because there will be a number of people there?"
"There will be a large number of people there. My idea of a pleasant time, incomprehensible as it is to our benevolent hosts, does not, in fact, involve having trouble in securing a place for one to stand, let alone sit, and coming in forced contact with virtual strangers at a criminally frequent rate."
"Goodness, Jones, you don't like crowds! Just say you don't like crowds. Or people for that matter."
"I quite simply do not-"
"No, I beg of you, I'm starving! You can turn "I dislike people" into a three-page manifesto when I have a plate of roasted potatoes and some of those birds you brought in front of me."
Killian knew that she was unwilling to have anybody one up her yet she seemed particularly against letting him do so. Thus, time and time again, he found himself –
Willingly outsmarted by Emma Swan
And Emma, being Emma (which he tried not to call – not even in the private recesses of his mind where he occasionally allowed himself the privilege), didn't draw or play the piano. No, of course. That would be too "proper and set".
(It was a phrase of hers – "this is too set" and "that is too set" and "why do they have to be so set?" and "what would you like my bookshelves to be, Swan? flying all over the place?" and he never quite knew what she meant from one moment to the next with her setness and he rarely dared hope he was not set himself and was mostly convinced he was, in the worst of ways). But, oh, Emma would never be considered set, that much was certain.
She played the harp, and not nearly as masterfully as many young ladies he had listened to, and yet she always managed to make everything else, everything but her capable fingers, recede into an inconsequential blur, just background noise, static that shimmered at the edges of the space she cast her spell over and he always managed to find himself within it, right in the middle it seemed, where her pull was the strongest.
("it's like it doesn't want me to play it." "indeed, it sounded quite well to my little experienced ears." "all is well when that thing is not biting into your fingers, punishing you for waking it up and making it exert itself." "all part of the choice of instrument, no?" "yes, well, I didn't consider that. was thinking how I dislike the way people hover when someone sits at the piano." "you cannot hover over a harp?" "oh, you can but it is not really done. at least I haven't seen it. and it is so different if you look up close, if you see its glint from the right angle, it can- come, I'll show you.")
She had the most haphazard pattern of reading and, when a party including Emma had been visiting Neverland for a mere afternoon, Killian would not even wonder anymore at finding at least four different books, faces down, pages flung to the side, spines bend and wrinkled, scattered in different corners, different rooms even.
("you have so many. i cannot help myself. i cannot choose." "exercise some restraint, Swan, some patience and you might enjoy getting to the end of one." "that's so set.")
She was a self-proclaimed nightmare with a paintbrush but she danced. He had seen her once but he just knew – the way you know the tide has come in even when you weren't there to meet it – she danced. Often. When no one was there. Not the way people danced at balls or the way they sway by a piano or the way they tap their foot at a particularly irresistible gig. No, Emma danced. And he'd only seen it once and yet it took him that step further –
Irrevocably enchanted by Emma Swan
After that he'd been resolute. More set in his mind than he'd been in years. He was not to take that last leap that would lead him into pure madness, into a folly from which there would be no coming back.
And then his brother, the meddler, had gone and ruined him completely. And he'd be so proud of himself, if he knew.
He'd received Liam's letter mere days after Miss Swan had come back, a month ahead of Lady Ingrid and her nieces, to stay with the Nolans. He'd felt long-abandoned superstitions pressing in on his heart and had yielded under the belief that he shouldn't share Liam's pending return until he had his brother himself at his gate at Neverland. He excused himself from making appearances at the Nolans' with a mild illness and set about preparing his and his brother's home for Liam's arrival. He did not account for the repercussions of a prolonged absence after an announced illness. He did not account for Miss Emma Swan.
Yet there she had stood on his doorstep, not even a week after he'd made his excuses to Mary-Margaret. Her hair wild in the wind that had been blowing steadily all day and slightly damp from the rain that had been trying to fall and her cheeks flushed and her chest rising faster than normal from the slight climb that was required to reach Neverland and maybe from something else, something that came along with the breathless, soul-crushingly (that being Killian's soul) relieved "oh, you are all better".
There she had stood and her eyes had scanned him almost anxiously, almost… And Killian didn't think… But then he couldn't… So he told her about Liam and led her in and showed her his letter and didn't seem to even grasp at the sheer impropriety and improbability of her being in his house, by herself, because…
There she had stood and then impossibly closer and grasping his hands – one his, one not quite, but did he have time to react when – she was beaming and talking and almost turning him in a circle like little children in a garden with the strength of her hold and the energy of her and –
Completely enamored with Emma Swan
Captain Killian Jones had done his reckoning and he decided early in their acquaintance, much earlier than Miss Swan had worked her unsuspecting magic on him, that Emma was the kind of woman that few men could have and even fewer deserved.
And the more she had unraveled before him, the more resolutely could he exclude himself from either list.
Which was a rather fortunate circumstance. Captain Jones had never and would never run the risk of attempting to court Miss Swan, barely even skirt the borders of being more than acquaintances (singular instances, likely prompted by Mary-Margaret's worry, lending false closeness to their relations, being strictly excluded and non-considerable despite having played a devastating part in rooting and nourishing his unfortunate feelings).
They were – him and Miss Swan – to anyone with even the barest knowledge of either – an unlikely pair. And to Killian himself – quite obviously – completely impossible.
It is a rather melancholy note to exit this gentleman's mind (and heart) on, but I'm afraid we've already dwelled here well past the point he, if not the reader, would be comfortable with, and, as we have seen, Captain Killian Jones had very few sources of comfort and it would be indeed abominable of us to remain and take any of what little he has of it.