Disclaimer: OUAT is not mine. All I have is a set of very loved DVDs.

This is a fic I wrote for Navigator101 as a birthday gift. It seemed fitting, since we're both Captain Swan shippers. It is directly AU to the battle in the finale and it is angsty as heck, which is my specialty. I'm still not entirely sure I got the characterization down right, but I did my best. I also ignored a rule in the world to save the fic from being absolutely painful in the end like like how most of the things I write usually are since this was a gift fic. Anyway. Thanks for reading! Don't forget to leave a review!

Emma expected things to go differently when Hook leaned backwards over the portal and barely snagged the pouch holding Aurora's heart with his hook. Hook was a pirate. He was a liar. He betrayed her.

But there was something different when he said "I may be a pirate, but I bristle at the thought of a woman losing her heart – unless it's over me." There is something in the way he looked at her that made her squirm.

There was a change in the way he moved. Emma knew that he was a skilled swordsman. He certainly would not have survived as long as a pirate if he was not. He was better than she was, that much was obvious. She knew he was letting her win.

But it was not until she had retrieved the compass that Cora intervened. She barely jumped out of the way of the fire and nearly jumped right into Hook's sword. She was lucky, and not for the first time.

She heard Mary Margaret's shriek of her name and barely had time to register it before another fireball flew in her direction. Emma was barely out of the way when it hit the ground where she had been standing only a moment before.

There was no time to think as she threw herself up and started moving.

She didn't even have enough time to process the sound of a sword flying through the air. Then there was silence. Emma opened her eyes. She had not even realized that she had closed them, tensing herself for the strike of the sword and the pain. But no pain came.

Her eyes met Mary Margaret's and they stared at each other for a moment. Then she turned.

The pirate and the queen stood there, silent as death. Hook's sword was embedded in Cora's stomach and Cora's hand was buried in his chest.

He was looking at her. His jaw was clenched painfully shut, his lips pressed into a tight line. Every joint in his body was locked, every muscle tight, pain racing from his chest to the rest of his body. But he was looking at her. He was focused on her and nothing else.

Their eyes met and Emma could not help the wave of grief that followed.

Cora dropped a moment later, the midnight blue of her dress turning brown. Her breathing was labored and there was nothing she could do to fix the damage Hook had caused. Nothing she could do to save herself.

Hook staggered, his eyes leaving Emma's to fix on the red glow in Cora's hand. Then she squeezed. He could see the rage in her eyes as her hand tightened around his heart. Thwarted because she had trusted a pirate. He might have played both sides, but he had only been on one side since he met the girl who had brought warmth back to his frozen heart.

His eyes jerked up to Emma again. She certainly was the supposed savior Cora had said she was. She had broken the curse and saved them. But she could not save him, even if he would have let her.

It hurt, dying like that. It was white-hot agony ripping through his chest. The air left his lungs and his knees gave out. There was no sweet release like he had expected. It was not quick, like it had been when Rumplestiltskin had taken Milah's heart. It was a slow suffocation. But his eyes never left Emma's.

His doom was sealed. His purpose was unfulfilled. There was a crocodile left unskinned. If he had air to laugh, he would have chuckled darkly at that. But he didn't have air – he couldn't breathe. Pain lanced through his chest and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Cora was bleeding out but he had not the strength to end it.

A single thought registered in Emma's mind as Hook's focus crumbled, replaced by a grimace of pain and a gasp. He had done this for her. He had chosen her.

That set her into motion.

But she was too slow. As soon as the final blow was dealt, dust slipped from Cora's fingers, spilling into the wind and joining the soft swirl of sand.

She looked up to see him still looking at her. His guard was down for the first time since she had met him. There was pain in his face, need, but there was something else. Something- oh. It was a tenderness that she had not seen in a long time. Not since- not since Graham had died.

Then he fell.

There were no final words, no goodbyes, no last confessions. Just silence. Just screaming. Just loss. He fell, no more pixie dust to hold him up. He was gone before she could say anything. There were no sarcastic comments and no playful flirting. Just silence and emptiness on a beach.

The sword fell from her hand before she could stop it. Her thoughts would not whir back into place like she wanted them to. There was just an empty void that she did not know how to fill.

It was only the hand shaking her shoulder the brought her out of the numb sensation that was beginning to take hold.

"Emma, we have to go!" Mary Margaret was begging. Home. They had to go home.

She glanced back at Hook- no. Killian, she corrected herself. He wasn't Hook like that. She glanced back at the unseeing eyes, the outstretched hook, and she grieved for what never was, for what could have been.

She took one last look at him before she let Mary Margaret pull her towards the portal. Towards Henry. Henry. Henry needed her.

There was an ache in her chest as she hugged him moments later. There was a bittersweet edge to her joy. But she could push it aside and let it go when they walked away, back to Gold's and to David and everything they left behind.

The hours passed and she didn't think about it. Not until the whole group headed for the diner. She saw him, then. But it wasn't him. Hook was dead. But it had to be him. There were only storybook characters in Storybrook.

He smiled at her and she stopped in her tracks. "Hook?"

He paused for a moment. "Afraid not. James Davy at your service," a soft lilt in his voice. That only served to confirm her suspicions.

There was silence between them. He was not Killian. But there was something familiar in his eyes. Something veiled. That was a look she remembered. A look like Graham's – the feeling like there was something you wanted to say and it was on the tip of your tongue, but you simply could not remember it. "My mistake," she said. Then she started moving again.

There was hope.