A/N: Do not dare me to write something painful. I take dares seriously and, in the famous words of a certain pirate, "I love a challenge."
Disclaimer: Not my characters, not my world. Just my imagination borrowing them for a bit.
They sat at the table in the kitchen in silence, just the two of them, digesting everything Liam had just told them about how to defeat Hades. Liam, Liam, had sat here, beside Emma, the two most important people he had left in this afterlife, his brother and his love. The sound of the door closing after his former captain still echoed as Liam left to prepare for nightfall.
It was too much for him, after everything that had happened, the blood barely gone from his clothing, and his brother had been right there. He hadn't a moment to process anything from the last few months, few days, hell, even the last few hours - the graves, this house, wounds that nearly did him in still fresh in his too-sharp memory, the words he shouldn't have shared with her not moments before Liam showed up. He just needed time to think.
And he was just so tired.
He sipped from his glass, water his body didn't truly need, but it felt good still, familiar, the cool water soothing his throat so recently screamed hoarse from tortures he wished he could forget, wished his memories could be magically wiped as clean as his broken body.
Emma shifted in her chair, the scrape of wood on tile reverberating in the house filled inexplicably with toys and baby items.
He surely wasn't ready to dwell on that thought just yet.
"Do you really think his plan will work?" she asked.
He nodded, hand wrapped tightly around his glass on the table. "It has to."
She was quiet for a moment, and so was he.
"And it's worth the risk?" Her voice was soft, and he could hear the unasked question behind her words. Is it worth losing us?
He nodded again, unable to meet her eyes. "Yes," he all but whispered.
He wanted to be sure, wanted to know for certain, but doubt pulled at him, swirled his fears, his hopes, everything he felt and everything he thought he knew until he couldn't separate them out.
The silence in the room had never been so loud.
She let out a shuddering breath, slow and soft, and he swore he could hear her heart breaking in her quiet words.
"I'm sorry."
His throat tightened at her words, knowing how deeply she meant them, but knowing didn't add clarity to his muddled thoughts. "I know."
"I shouldn't have held onto you so hard, I should have let you go. I just thought you wanted this, us, as much as I did."
He looked up and took in the sight of her, half hunched over her arms on the table, her head hung low. "Emma, of course I want to be with you," he said quietly. "I thought I'd made that clear from nearly the first time we met. How could you doubt that, after everything we've been through?"
She raised her head, her eyes guarded. "I don't know what to think anymore." Her words were quiet, but they stabbed at him as surely as the blade that actually killed him.
He reached his hand across the table and took hers, holding her fingers tightly. "This isn't about us, Emma. I believed in our future as strongly as you. Even when you became the Dark One and it seemed all was lost, I didn't stop hoping for it, someday."
She flicked her gaze to their joined hands, then back up to meet his eyes. "Then what is it? You told me you'd never stop fighting for us, but then you gave up, twice!" Her voice was shaking as she continued. "I died that day, Killian. Do you have any idea what it's like, having to kill the person you love? It killed me to do it and - hey! look! - now there's actually a gravestone for me to prove it."
He could see the tears welling in her bright green eyes, and he wanted so badly to run, to get away, to clear his head before he said something wrong, words he'd surely regret for all eternity. He clenched his jaw, fighting so hard to swallow the emotions that threatened to push him over the edge, and he managed to force a calm over himself.
"I didn't give up on us," he said quietly, taking a deep breath before continuing. "I gave up on myself."
For all the times he'd bared his heart to the woman across from him, he never felt as exposed as he had right then, the deepest pockets of his soul about to be laid out right there across the table in the house that wasn't really theirs.
"I'm not a good man, Emma," he said. "I haven't been for longer than you can even imagine."
"You changed, Killian, you became a-"
"A hero?" He didn't laugh, but the urge was there. "I'm not a hero. I thought I could be a better person, I thought I could change for you. But the moment the darkness took hold in Camelot, I failed, I fell right back into what I've always been."
She looked down at the table, to their fingers linked across it. "I couldn't lose you, Killian. You know how hard it was to open up to you in the first place, and I couldn't let you go, not when there was something I could do."
He squeezed her hand gently. "I'm not upset that you saved me, Emma. I would have done anything to keep you with me had the situation been reversed. But you didn't listen to me, even when I told you it was the one thing I knew I wasn't ready to face."
"We could have fought it together," she begged, her eyes finding his again. "You said I didn't trust you, but I did, I believed in you so much. I was so sure you could beat it, just like you already had, and this time you had me fighting with you."
"But I couldn't," he replied. "Just look at what happened afterward, the things I did, the things I said to you. I can't forgive myself for hurting you like that."
"But you beat the darkness, Killian!" she pleaded. "In the end, when it mattered, you fought back and you won."
"How many times, though?" He knew his voice was getting stronger, longer, he knew but he didn't have the energy to keep calm anymore. "How many times can I fight it, how many times can I hurt you and the people I care about, until I finally lose to the darkness that I'll never get rid of?" He swallowed hard. "You barely know me, Emma. You barely have any idea of the things I've done, my life one long string of other people's tragedy. I tried to change but, if anything, you going against my wishes in Camelot only proved how impossible that really is, and how right I was to be scared of that part of myself."
He closed his eyes, struggling against the emotions bubbling furiously just under the surface, threatening to burst forth in a wave he was certain he couldn't control once let loose.
"And now you're here again, to save me, to pull me back, and, honestly, I don't know if I can do it anymore." He held onto her fingers. "I love you, Emma. I'll always love you. But I don't think I can be the man you think I'm ready to be, not if you can't trust me enough to see that I've still got so far to go. I'm not there yet, and I don't know if I'll ever be."
"I'm still a villain, love," he whispered, his voice breaking. "And villains don't get happy endings."
Silence filled the room once more, and the tear that escaped her eye made no sound as it ran down her cheek.
"I have a chance to move on," he said, his whispered voice the only noise in the quiet kitchen, and he heard the wavering in it as clearly as she must. "I can go with Liam, I can help him and I can finally stop fighting. I'm tired of fighting so hard, Emma, I'm so tired."
She sniffed once, her hand pulling away from his as she ran her sleeve across her face. His fist clutched the empty air as he looked at her. He could see her hastily rebuilding the walls he'd spent so much time helping her take down, and he felt the last bits of his heart breaking.
"You're right," she said as she looked up at him, her expression flat, emotionless. "You deserve to rest. If this is what you really want, then I'll help you."
He nodded tightly, feeling even more drained than before. "Thank you."
She pushed away from the table and stood, grabbing her jacket from the back of her chair and swinging it around her shoulders. "Then let's go." He rose and without another word, they left the house that seemed to taunt them at each turn with the future they now only had in their dreams.
As they stepped into the hazy Underworld light, he couldn't help hearing the soft click of the door closing behind them and thinking it was the loudest goodbye he'd ever heard.