"Swan!" he screamed again to no avail – but she had to come back. She had to. At first he told himself that he didn't understand, that it didn't make sense. Killian had kept his meager and unenthusiastic promises to Emma Swan without fail, had he not? And she had saved him, caught him before he fell over the trip wire – wasn't that some sign of respect for his life? If she had wanted to simply use him to get there and past the giant, she could have let him get crushed then and there or trapped or left him under the rocks. There was ample opportunity for her to get rid of him – so why did she wait until she had saved him from the rocks to abandon him in the giant's castle?

Nothing made sense. But everything hurt.

"How could I have been so stupid?" he groaned as he tugged on his chains. He wasn't talking to anyone in particular – but whenever he whined, he liked to do so aloud. "I should have known it was coming! I should have seen it in her beady little eyes!" Her beady little aquamarine eyes, he accidentally mused. "No. Now's not the time to think of that, old chap. You need to find a way out of here and-and…" he trailed off. He didn't know quite he wanted to do to her – but it was nothing good, that was for sure.

After picking at his lock for a while with his hook (he couldn't seem to bust the blasted thing – his head was somewhere else) he moaned in frustration and kicked the wall – which hurt far more than he thought it would. "Damn," he hissed, clutching his throbbing foot. "Everything is awful. She's awful, this situation is awful and goddammit all my foot bloody aches!" he grunted melodramatically; he knew he was being a baby about this situation. But he'd been to Neverland – it made sense that he couldn't grow up.

And then (because his situation couldn't possibly be worse,) the ground started to shake. "Bloody brilliant," he growled as the giant approached. "You might as well kill me now, beast – that's what she actually told you to do, wasn't it? For me not to get in the way."

The giant's reverberating footfalls ceased and Hook turned to face the massive figure who loomed over him. "No," he boomed irritably, "she didn't ask me to kill you, so I won't kill you," The giant sat down and eyed him loathingly. "Although, you whine enough to tempt me… puny human."

"Go ahead," he yelled up to the giant sarcastically before looking down at his feet cagily. "It's what she would have wanted."

"Huh," the giant scoffed. "No it's not."

Hook's brow shot up faster than a beanstalk when he heard this. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry – I'm sure you know her much better than I considering you've been friends with her so long. Well," he smirked, "after you were done trying to eat her."

"Well, you don't seem to know her too well, either," the giant scoffed right back at him. "She's not a killer – so neither am I. And for the record she didn't ask me to kill you."

"Oh, really?" the captain crossed his arms – or attempted to, at least. It was hard to do with one hand bound and the other hand, well, sharp.

"Really," the giant mocked before becoming serious. "She asked me to let you go… and make sure you got to the land below safely. She said… She said that she owed you one – whatever that means."

"But why would she leave me here then if she went through all of that trouble to make sure I lived – she said she needed a head-start but killing me would have been a far more efficient way to obtain one!"

The giant just stared at him before shaking his gargantuan head. "You talk too much and think too little… If you don't understand something you should look to what you already know to figure it out."

"Yeah, great – just great. I'm trapped and I'm receiving sage wisdom by a mindless beast."

"A mindless beast that still has more of a brain than you do. Now what do you know about her?" he slammed his fist against the floor beside Hook to prompt him.

"That she was abandoned," Hook snarled at the giant.

"By who?"

"Her parents, obviously," Killian hissed; he didn't want to deal with this – but what choice did he have?

The giant looked puzzled and shook his head yet again. "That doesn't make any sense – considering the way you looked at her when she first locked you up. I saw you. And you are not parental in any way."

"So?" Hook prodded petulantly.

"So perhaps her parents weren't the only ones who abandoned her…"

Hook looked at the giant – he was surprised by his intuitive nature. "She said that she had never been in love – but then she was so capable of seeing love's scars that she must've been in love once. When I confronted her about it she said as much!" he rubbed his eyes. "What does that mean, giant?"

The giant suddenly looked sad, and glanced towards the bones of Jack. His eyes then trailed towards a portrait on the wall that was blocked from Hook's view. "It means that she lost the person she loved in a terrible way – she might even blame herself. And she feels that maybe if she said that she wasn't in love," the giant said in a sad and pensive tone, "that perhaps she would one day believe it and the loss wouldn't hurt as much. But from what you've said it sounds like what she went through was far worse than loss – it was abandonment of another kind: betrayal. No wonder she left you – she felt that she had to abandon you before you abandoned her."

Hook closed his eyes. He was blind. "I can't believe how stupid I was not to see it."

The giant snorted. "I can."

Thank you so much for your feedback. I originally posted this to my Once Upon a Time blog, poisoned-with-prudence. A very lovely lass there made a graphic to go along with an excerpt and I've put a link to it on my profile.

Much love and cheers, C