He can't help sneaking glances at the boy as the wind fills the sails of the Jolly Roger, carrying them to the Bottomless Sea. The boy - Henry, he says is his name - scampers around the deck as if he's known her his whole life. His actions were sure - hoisting sails and tying knots far more complicated than Killian himself was capable of - calling out instructions for Killian himself to follow as they fled the safety of the harbor. And Blackbeard.

His muscles are still weak as kelp from the captain catching him in such a compromising position, the potential whipping for disrespect looming large in his mind's eye. He's weaker still from having to carry the captain's limp form off the Jolly, stowing Blackbeard behind some old, abandoned shipping crates. The boy Henry merely grinned, saying something about adventure and heroics, yet Killian's never felt more the coward. Stealing a man's ship, well... Henry may say the Jolly is his, but he's sure the boy is as daft as the summer's day is long.

The Jolly is a swift vessel, and the wind is on their side. The journey to the Bottomless Sea takes only a few hours and in that time Henry tells him stories of the woman they're to rescue. She's the breaker of curses, a Savior - he knows this is why the Queen locked her away, this woman who claimed to have power that rivaled hers - she's fought ice monsters and witches, crossed realms for love, faced giants and something called the Dark One.

There's a faint image in the back of his mind, of red and long, flaxen hair, but it's gone when he tries to pin it down.

Stronger is a feeling of loathing at the mention of this Dark One, and a phantom pain where his hand resides no longer.

The boy, though. Killian feels a pull towards this lad who not quite on the cusp of manhood. There's something familiar about his dark hair, the shape of his eyes. The way he seems to have a quip ready at any turn - as all lads of that age do - and the way he looks to Killian as one might to someone they trust implicitly.

The way he looks at him with something that might be affection.

Liam, Killian finally realizes. His brother, dead for nearly thirteen years now. The boy reminds him vaguely of Liam, in the shape of his eyes and his good cheer, but the hair...

Henry's shouting that the island draws near and comes to him with a plan to sneak in past the Black Knight. The boy is brave, offering himself as a false prisoner to trick the guard, and Killian can't help but think this ruse is something Liam might have concocted - had he ever operated on the wrong side of the law.

He's swift, too, knocking the guard out in one fell swoop, and clever to find the keys so quickly. As Killian hauls the guard into the brig, he thinks back to before Liam's death, if there was ever a woman he may not have told Killian about - and when the woman in this tower had been locked up.

And she's breathtaking.

The afternoon light slants across her face, lighting the greens in her eyes to the brightness of emeralds. Her hair shines gold that even a dragon would desire, let alone the feeble deckhand standing dumbstruck before her.

And she's looking at him like he's the most wondrous thing she's ever laid eyes upon.

It's unnerving.

"Hi," she breathes, the joy on her face overwhelming him.

He stammers out some sort of greeting, shooting the boy a wide-eyed accusatory look, and suddenly he sees her in the boy too. His smile, his chin, the self-assurance in his stance.

They escape the island and a dragon of all things - perhaps the dragon had lusted for the gold of Emma's hair as well - and she's still looking at him with pure, unadulterated adoration.

He, a lowly deckhand with one hand, who could barely load a cannon and somehow didn't kill this glorious woman in the process of taking down a dragon. And she looks at him like she knows him, this secret smile with a thousand stories behind it as she trusts him implicitly. She teases him about his goat's milk and he wonders again if his brother had known her, for he'd said much the same thing once.

She and the boy move in almost perfect synchronization on the decks, once she changes into a blouse and breeches and ties her glorious mass of hair into a horsetail. Killian's curious to see that Emma knows almost every inch of the Jolly as well, at least above deck, and gives pause to Henry's words from earlier. "Getting your ship back."

Was the boy perhaps not mad, that there was another life they were ripped from, one where the ship he so loved was indeed his own?

Emma looks at home, leaning over the rail and gripping a rope, glancing over her shoulder at him and smiling fondly.

The boy's a natural sailor, claiming to have been taught by the best. By him.

No.

When they dock, the Jolly's berth blessedly empty, Emma sends Henry to the market with coins and orders for food. Killian keeps his sword and she begins to tell him about this other reality, the life where apparently he was not meek and cowardly, but brave and daring, a pirate king.

He couldn't hope to imagine himself as such, not when this pirate queen looked at him with amusement - did she feel shame to see him like this, if she knew this other version of himself?

He may not be the most clever of men, but even a fool would be unable to detect her interest in him: the way she pressed their bodies together, the casual manner in which her hand rested on his side, the other taking his own to grip the hilt of his sword. Her breath is warm on his ear, her words soft and teasing and he cannot help but close his eyes at the feel of her.

The boy may resemble Liam in some ways, but his hair...

Henry's hair was almost the same shade of brown-black as Killian's own.

"I sense that we are... we may be close?"

The question is out before he can stop it, so desperate is he to know if there's a reason for this unnatural pull towards this boy and his mother. He's known her scant hours, the boy little more, but there's part of him that has been so lonely, so dark and empty for so long that's suddenly feeling hopeful and full again.

Her answer ("Very.") sends him reeling, his mind spinning with possibility. Thirteen years past he was hardly a man himself, only twenty, but that was no matter in his world. Emma could hardly be much younger than him, also an acceptable age for bearing his - a child in their land.

So when the Queen arrives, flanked by a dozen knights and her murderous drudge, Killian knows in his bones what he must do.

He must give them their best chance.

He knows, from the stories Henry's told and the looks Emma has given him, that this is the course of action that he in this other reality would take. That a pirate king would face more than a dozen knights and even the queen of Hell herself to protect his wife, his son.

"Save Henry."

His voice doesn't change, not even when she argues, when her face shows every fear he has in his heart. He draws his sword and faces the Queen, her minions, the dragon herself.

He knows that a true pirate king would die to save his family.

When the drudge runs him through, there are no regrets. It's more a shock that he lasted as long as he did, taking out the dragon and the knights at all and giving Emma and Henry a head start on the Queen. If their tales are true, this reality would cease to exist and his death would be erased.

If their tales are false...

Killian's eyes never leave Emma's horrified face, her screams of denial echoing in his ears as the darkness claims him.

He's given them their best chance.

Based on the heart-wrenching post by fergus80 on Tumblr. I feed on reviews.