"He in his madness prays for storms,

and dreams that storms will bring him peace."

-Mikhail Lermontov

It's the same dream every night.

Killian, it whispers.

Killian, in vowels of undertows and consonants of tempests.

Killian, it beckons, fading to just beyond the threshold. Waiting.

He should burrow under his covers and quake. He should offer prayers and sacrifices to the gods for protection. His instinct screams at him to do many things, binding him to his bed in self-preservation. But as always happens when the peals of warning reach their pitch, the invisible hand of loyalty frees him and binds him harder, inescapably.

He must follow.

He stumbles into the hallway. It is moving farther away and a Don't leave! keens from his lips only to disappear in the direction he knows he will have to go to find the horror he is yearning for.

And so he goes.

Down the stairs. Dark, dark. Down to the hull. Deep, deep. Down to the bilge. Death, death.

He senses it there. Nay, everywhere. Nay, nowhere. It breathes against his face in huffs of fetid dankness. He feels its hands at his throat, hovering, before they come to rest over his heart. The organ senses its own demise before he can even hope for a possibility otherwise, and drowns out the lapping waves. Tha-thump,tha-thump,tha-thumptha-thumpthathumpthathumpthathump.

This is the only pleading he can do, his very life begging.

Yet he knows it is futile.

Waiting the infinite wait of dreams for death's embrace of sea depth-whitened eyes and their weeping black poison, he wonders which he laments more: not having died in his stead or not having lived as he did.

That is the moment he always wakes, and in his grief, he is damned by the cold sweat clinging to him, to his sheets, eyes wheeling wildly to every corner of the room. Searching. Longing. Despairing.

And that is the reason why he sails the map over, hunting down the demon of his nightmare, to best it in its sadistic game of unfulfillment, to demand the chance to answer…even if the answer eludes him.

Heavy. How can emptiness feel so heavy? How can it choke him so, yet leave him alive? How can it bleed all the tears and begging out of him, yet still pump hatred through his veins?

(A swallow of rum.)

Hatred. He hates everything. He hates how nothing he does feels natural anymore because he's lopsided. He hates how he forgets sometimes. He hates doing Pan's bidding. He hates that his life is the price he can be bought for. He hates being responsible for all these men because he sees the way they look at him when they think he doesn't know, all pity and sorrow. He hates how they still call him Captain with their respect and Aye aye, sirs. He hates how they are willing to die to follow him in his quest for vengeance. He hates that she died—died! He hates that he killed her.

He hates that he couldn't save her.

Most of all, he hates that it haunts him how much he hates because it reminds him how much he cares, when all he wants to do is drink all the bloody rum in the bloody world to fill his emptiness until he is bloody numb, the hole in him completely topped off so that nothing can get inside ever again.

(Another gulp…or maybe it's a quarter of the bottle. He can no longer tell the difference.)

They say that Time heals all wounds. But he knows the truth: Time hones all purpose.

And in this place where Time begins and ends, it incessantly presses him against the whetstone of his obsession.

He is ground against her last I love you, against her limpness in his arms. He is sharpened on sandstone crocodile skin and plunge of hook and spurt of blood. He is steeled by the boy's vehement rejection, all the more so because of his rust-exposing tears.

So he adds his hand to the top of Time's and together they hone, hone, hone until he is gleaming with violent brilliance.

Driven by Time's favor, he steers his pointed fury into the maelstrom of his revenge.

The most hopeless storm is one that gathers fast and hard; the one that darkens sky and sea alike, blackening any sailor's chance to change course. They are fated to collide.

It is only because the sailor has spent a lifetime caressing the sea's waves and learning her sighs that, like a lover, he can understand her slightest tremors and desires; and only because he has spent lifetimes storming across his own oceans of pain and loneliness that he finally accepts that embracing her is the only way to find release: she, from her rampage; he, from his curse.

Easy, love, he murmurs to her, hoisting his sails full-mast and standing square to the helm. Because she is broken, so beautifully broken, she cannot hear him, cannot trust him, cannot see that he lays his empty revenge, his own brokenness down at her feet. Not in exchange for circumnavigation, but for passage straight into her depths, for drowning in her.

And so he drowns, her name his swan song.

Killian, she whispers.

This is the moment he never expects to, but does, wake.

Killian, in phonemes of golden sun and tones of emerald waters.

And in the purged tha-thump, tha-thump of his heart, he is redeemed in her calm aftermath, by her searing marks on his lips and skin.

Killian, she beckons, unfurling beyond his horizon. Saving.