#ask killianjones

Regina shook her head. “I don’t care about that,” she insisted. “Don’t you see? My mother wants me to be a good princess and be a queen someday, but I want more. I want to be free."

Stop looking at me with those remorseful eyes I’m still furious with you and it’s hard to keep being so when you look at me with those eyes you jerk.

Have they put out the flyers already? How did you find me when I’ve only just gotten the job?

Henry? As in…my grandson Henry? Is he okay? What’s wrong with him?

"Is it a gift?" Regina wondered aloud. Roni, really. And that was the problem. Roni wasn't a mother, a friend, a mayor, a queen. Roni was a pair of hands pouring drinks. With the casting of the curse Regina had disappeared entirely. And even though she remembered herself, she wasn't sure how much that was worth when no one else did. But Rogers didn't remember Killian Jones any more than he remembered Regina Mills, so he could have no deeper meaning to his comment. At least, she didn't think he could.

"Probably a useful talent in your line of work," she conceded. Captain Hook in law enforcement. Even as the Evil Queen, she couldn't have come up with such an absurdly poor match. David and Katherine weren't so poorly matched as Killian and law enforcement. And yet, oddly, he seemed so suited to it now. Lonely, but well suited to the job.

"How did you choose this line of work?" she asked, overcome with a sudden curiosity as to how the curse had convinced him of it.

“I know,” Liam said with a smile that was only slightly forced. He didn’t entirely want to leave home, to leave the cows in the pen out back that Father sold to Mr. Banning next door, to leave the notches on the door marking his and Killian’s height every year, to leave the stone marker on the hill where the grass had only just begun to grow over their mother’s final resting place. But he did love the sea. If they had to leave the farm, the sea was where he wanted to go. And maybe father was right. Maybe they all needed a fresh start. “Isn’t it exciting? It’ll be an awfully big adventure,” Liam promised. 

It had been a long day, spent fighting a war Liam had never wanted but couldn’t let go. The king’s trading partners were starting to hesitate because their ships sank en-route. It was damaging the king’s reputation, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

“Liam?” The voice saying his name in the quiet cabin was enough to draw his attention through the haze of exhaustion and rum. It has been more than a year since he heard that voice, but he would know Killian’s voice anywhere. He had dreamed the voice often enough in the intervening time, but never like this, never shaking with fear or pain. He looked up sharply, at the shadow in the corner of the room.

The specter of his little brother is still in the white and cream navy uniform he had died in. Only, now there is very little of it that isn’t torn away to reveal injuries beneath, and what remains of the uniform is nearly completely soaked in scarlet, the pale uniform doing nothing to hide the blood staining it. His eyes were wild with fear and exhaustion. Killian didn’t appear to be entirely there, flickering in and out of focus, shimmering in the air.

“Killian?” he asked, standing so quickly he knocked over his chair and didn’t bother to right it. “Killian?!” He tried to hug the flickering image of his brother, but his arms met empty air.

“Can you hear me? Liam, I...” His little brother sounded like he was hurting, badly, his voice shaking like it had after a severe beating on Silver’s ship. 

“Killian, are you...?” The image flickered and faded. “KILLIAN!” But his little brother was gone. 

I think he might still be regrowing his eye.