and I hate that little game you had called crying lightning
When they returned to Storybrooke bereft of their memories, the new Dark One was unashamedly aggressive toward most every person in town with just two exceptions: She loved Henry still, and her wild affection for Hook remained, a caricature of something True.
He clung to her love and flung it away simultaneously.
Emma- this thing that wore Emma's face- snuggled into his side, a soft smile crossing her lips. "I'm going to keep you, pirate," she murmured, tangling her fingers around his hook with a false innocence that turned his stomach. "Okay?"
Sometimes he thought this was a nightmare.
Sometimes, when David or Regina or some townsperson had been wounded by Emma's magical games, he could convince himself. Whenever he had to tape a fresh bandage on the prince's forehead or talk down the queen from some new act of stupidity, there was a surreal quality to what he was seeing that almost let him convince himself of its falsity.
Reality only crashed down when she wound her arms around his neck, when he inhaled involuntarily and she still smelled like Emma.
Earlier that week she'd grabbed handfuls of his hair mid-confrontation and dove in for a kiss; he'd reciprocated because gods help him, he couldn't do anything else, not even with pain shooting down his scalp and half of her family just feet away, glaring. They'd formerly been a bit miffed whenever they engaged in PDA, as Emma used to call it with a delirious giggle, but now when she broke away and ran the back of her hand down his face he could feel more than mild disapproval. They were on the same side, but as time went by it started to be more than just Regina who not-so-secretly hated him.
No one begrudged Henry the slight affection his mother still gave him, but the alternating ferocious desire and gentleness that Emma showed Hook was a subject of ever-so-silent contention.
He didn't tell anyone, least of all Snow, what Emma told him when they were alone.
"I love you, you know," she whispered into the junction of neck and shoulder. Her breath was cold, but gods, she still smelled like Emma. "That didn't change at all."
It was the middle of the night, and the Jolly was creaking uneasily beneath. Emma had taken to visiting him at the oddest hours, at first trying to seduce him with her body, now just chipping away at his soul with tender words.
He'd moved out of Granny's to make sure they were never interrupted in this late-night rendezvous. It wasn't because he enjoyed them, not at all, but for the safety of any possible interlopers. He didn't tell Granny why he was moving out, but from the way she looked at him- with a distrust he hadn't seen since before Neverland- she knew.
Emma stayed for sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. She didn't seem to sleep anymore.
It was only the day after their return from Camelot when this campaign of Emma's started, only it was the middle of the day that first time. He'd hoped the kiss would work then, hoped with all of his being.
"That's the pirate I remember," she'd said, smiling, almost as breathless as he was.
And she'd invited him to stay. Still in shock that the kiss hadn't worked, he refused.
Before long, she stopped giving him the choice.
"Where were you yesterday?" Snow hissed at him as soon as he stepped into the Charmings' loft. "You were the one pushing for us to do the spell to protect our hearts, and then you didn't even show up!"
Killian shrugged, fighting to urge to rub his stump of a left wrist. He hadn't had phantom pains in literally centuries, but Emma had brought them back somehow. He was fairly certain she hadn't meant to do it. "My time was unexpectedly occupied," he said.
Regina was glaring at him, as usual. "Occupied by what? Rum?"
There had been rum involved, and Emma baking cookies, and Emma making shadow figures on the wall of her kitchen with her magic. Her magic tasted like rust and sea salt, but it felt like ice.
"And other things," he said, and Snow huffed in frustration as she left the room to put Neal down.
"What about your parents?" Killian asked. He couldn't see her face in the darkness, but when her breathing didn't change he felt safe to go on. "Are you going to keep them?"
Emma wound her arm around his chest, pulling their bodies tightly together. "No."
"Why not?" he asked in a whisper, absentmindedly stroking the top of her head. During the day, and during any nighttime conflict, she kept her hair up in the harsh white bun she'd had when they materialized in Granny's almost a month ago, but she let it down when she came to see him. The strands were as silky as he remembered.
A quiet laugh vibrated in her chest and spread out into his veins, warning them softly. "Because I don't love them, silly pirate."
"How are you doing?" Dave asked under his breath the next morning in the crocodile's old shop. Belle was in the front looking through the jewelry cabinet.
Killian shrugged, not looking away from the drawer he was sorting through. "As fine as can be expected, I believe."
"You just look like you haven't been sleeping."
He hasn't. He can't relax enough to sleep when Emma's sprawled against him in his bed- or sometimes now on her couch- and he can no longer sleep when he's alone. "I'm fine, mate."
Regina knocked smartly on the door, but the sound seemed muted. She crossed her arms as she waited.
"What," Emma said, opening the door with a jerk. Even now, the harsh lines of her face startled Regina slightly.
"That's exactly what I thought!" Regina exploded. "A lot of things I can take, but using magic on Roland? You've crossed a line, Miss Swan."
Emma rolled her eyes, stepping aside to let Regina through the doorway. "I figured you'd be here about that. Just don't make too much noise with that righteous indignation, okay?"
Regina all but stomped inside after her. "He's the most innocent of anyone here. How dare you-" Something cut her off midsentence, and one hand rose involuntarily to her throat.
Emma was weaving a web-like spell midair, twitching her fingers to let little gray strands float down the kitchen and rest somewhere above the couch. "I said, shush," she whispered, and Regina decided to resist the urge to point out she actually hadn't. "He hasn't been sleeping very well."
Frowning, Regina followed the path of magic, her heels ticking on the hardwood floor, and looked down over the back of the couch. A vein bulged in her forehead for a moment.
Hook was sleeping in front of the Dark One's television with his head pillowed on one elbow. His leather jacket was folded on one armrest with his boots neatly stacked beside, and his face was peaceful.
"Are you insane, Guyliner?" Regina yelled, flinging her hands in the air. "You can't trust her!"
David was staring at him with- not anger, no, not betrayal. Just fear, but not for himself.
The prince was afraid for Hook's sake.
Gods, he was tired.
It was a different Emma, to be sure, one darker and crueler and bereft of many of the qualities he had fallen in love with in the first place, but she still looked beautiful in sunlight.
"What's wrong?" she asked, a frown cutting into her mouth. "Killian, are you okay?"
He leaned in to kiss her with one hand on the doorway. She tried to deepen the kiss- as she always did nowadays- but let him pull away without complaint. "May I catch a few winks on your couch?" he asked.
She told hold of his bad wrist and pulled him inside with more gentleness than he'd thought she still possessed. "Of course," she murmured.
The cannery by the docks went up in flames, but the Jolly was completely untouched.
The phantom pains were starting to spread.
At first he only felt them on fingertips and knuckles that weren't there, but then he started to feel the burn on his wrist, climbing up his elbow. Sometimes, when his eyes were blurry from lack of sleep and he'd misplaced his jacket somewhere, he could swear he was seeing black dots shimmering beneath his skin like the ink of his tattoo.
He didn't tell anyone. It was probably just the rum.
At some point when Hook wasn't listening, the others had decided to try to wake the crocodile from his deathlike sleep
Belle was bouncing on her heels in excitement, but everyone else present looked almost as tired as Hook felt. Snow had her son cradled tightly to her chest and her hand covering the back of his head, as if someone would try to take him from her.
Hook waited in the back of the group, leaning against the counter as Regina recited the words of some new arcane ritual. Velvety red magic exploded in the air with a sound like hushed cannon fire, but the crocodile did not open his eyes.
The thought occurred to him that Belle was as ever so much stronger than him. Once, he'd thought her a fool for loving a crocodile who'd crushed the heart of his wife, but she'd proved to somehow be loving, kind, but still wise.
Some said they should banish Emma across the town line, but he couldn't, he couldn't. Not unless he could go with her.
Tears ran silently down Belle's face for her love, but she let David pull her into a hug without protest. Hook left the shop without a word, clenching and unclenching his fingers over and over in an attempt to dispel the stinging that was climbing his shoulder.
Emma would be waiting on the Jolly, and he couldn't explain how he knew.
She missed a night about a week later.
He'd stayed up waiting for her in the dark, as usual. Ever since he'd discovered that sleep eluded him when he was alone, he'd stopped trying to sleep before her arrival, and most days he only had to wait until midnight.
Midnight came and went with a distant tolling of the clocktower; he started to doze around two in the morning, but he was shocked awake by a spray of fiery sparks leaping up his phantom hand and spreading to his chest.
She never came, and he panicked.
"I'm sorry," she said the next night, eyes wide and desperate. "I just was starting to think that I was keeping you awake, and I had to try and stay away- Killian, you're going to get sick if you keep this up. You have to let me use magic to make you sleep. Please?"
"No," he croaked, pulling her to his chest. "Just stay?"
"Okay."
Sometimes he thought it was all a dream.
When Henry smiled tremulously during a little trek on the Jolly Roger to distract the lad from the buildings on Main Street that lay in ashes and ruins- when Neal started to cry magicked-black tears in the middle of the night- when Snow started blatantly searching for ways to kill her daughter-
It was so much like a dream that Hook found himself digging his fingernails into his stump, trying to relieve the numb sparks that traveled up and down a palm and fingers that had been gone for hundreds of years.
The dream only ended with the sound of Emma's quiet laugh and the smell of her hair.
Waking didn't hurt so much anymore.
"How long?" he asked her in the dark of night. The Jolly was silent.
How long do you want me to be with you?
"Forever," she said. "Forever and ever."