Summary: Killian Jones reflects on the life and death of his mother.

Notes: So acrobat-elle and I were crying about one of her fics (found on tumblr), and found ourselves desperately wishing for some motherly affection for Killian Jones. So here, have some Captain Snow with your CS.

"They dug his grave with a silver spade."

Killian trails his fingertips over Emma's back – up the ridge of her spine, over the curve of her shoulder blade, up along her neck before he reaches back down to draw faint, red lines over her ribs. He sings softly as he does, an old, mournful shanty he'd learned as a child. The windows along the east wall are thrown open, sheer curtains fluttering listlessly along the chilly, spring breeze. Light filters in through the haze, casting the room in dreary shadows. As he draws, as he sings, a gust of wind breathes along her back – shirt bunched up along her shoulders – and she shivers. He curls over her, grasps at her arm, puffs warm air over her neck until she stills.

"Of captain brave he was the best," he sings, gently, lips brushing over the small of her back. "But now he's gone and is at rest."

"I can't believe you're singing me a song about a dead sailor."

He hums, stretches until he can wriggle his feet around hers.

"Go back to sleep, love."

She turns, and peers up at him. Her hair is mussed, and her eyes are swollen. She rubs endearingly at her cheeks. He musters a weak smile, reaching out to pull at her ear, to sift his fingers through her hair, to drag his thumb over her lips.

"It's too late now," she says.

Killian pulls back, dragging his fingers from her face and scratching compulsively at his jaw.

"I'm sorry, Emma."

"Hey," she says, and she sits up. Or tries, kicking at the covers and pulling at the sheets until they're a riot at the foot of the bed. She grabs a fistful of his shirt as she hauls herself out of the mess she's made of the duvet, very nearly straight into his lap. She smiles, grasping at his neck. But it falters, fades when he barely looks at her.

"Hey," she says, hands sliding into his hair. "What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry," he repeats.

She scoffs. "About the song? It's been a few years, now, it's seriously not a big deal, I was just – "

"No, Swan."

He sighs, reaches for the hem of her shirt, grasping at her hip until the fabric rides up and over his fingers. He breathes in when another gust flutters the crystals hanging from the light above them, tinkling neatly in his ears as he turns to look up at her. She frowns, but keeps quiet, fingers tapping a gentle rhythm down the slope of his jaw until he speaks.

"I'm…" he starts. But she looks so earnest, so beautiful, shining brightly in a dense fog. So he closes his eyes. "I'm afraid I'm not going to be very pleasant company today."

Killian waits for the questions, squeezes his eyes shut tight until the wan light of the morning is swallowed in darkness. He waits, but he does so in vain. She leans forward, until he can feel her arms tighten around his neck, her breasts press against his chest, her breath wash over his face. He opens his eyes, met with such a gentle expression, he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep his lips from trembling.

"Okay," she says.

He quirks a brow. "Okay?"

She nods, and settles until she can tuck her head beneath his chin. "Yeah."

He hums, and holds her tighter, until the shrill ring of her alarm pulls her out of his arms, across the creaky wooden floors. He hears the squeak of the faucets, and the rush of warm water. Any other day, he'd follow her. But he sits, listless. And while he waits, he sings, softly –

"The shroud of finest silk was made."

"It's my mother," he says, not an hour later.

Emma is walking about the house – half in a sleepy haze as she loses track of what she was doing – feet scuffing along the floors. One of her socks is blue, the other black, her hair is in a damp, haphazard ponytail, her brow furrowed as she mutters to herself.

And she looks so comfortable, so vulnerable, so strong, so Emma, that the words just pour out. She stops a moment, brow climbing.

"What?" she says.

He looks down, watches as she slides over to him, hands reaching out to tip his head, gently, so he's looking at her.

"My mother," he repeats. "On a day much like this, many years ago…"

Emma frowns.

"She died," she finishes, for him. "Oh, Killian."

He shakes his head, lips quirking as she leans ever forward, until he can very nearly taste the mint on her breath on the tip of his tongue.

"It's alright, love. I just need a…a while."

Emma nods. A year or two ago, he might have expected her to offer to stay, to be with him, to walk beside him. But she's been with him long enough, and he with her, that when she looks at him, head canting from one side to the other, he says everything he needs to say with a sigh, and she with the mournful smile that pulls at her lips.

"A walk?" she says, simply.

"Aye."

"Wear a scarf."

"Aye, love."

Another hour, and Killian doesn't make it much further than the docks, sitting wearily on a bench just along a lonely pier. There's an uninhibited view of the water here. On a day like this – blue and purple clouds curling along the horizon, mist sitting heavy along the seascape – it's difficult to tell the sea from the sky. The wash of the tide rings lightly in his ears, lapping along the river stones that have tumbled down from the creek. For a long while, he just listens, gazes a bit cross eyed at the water, until he feels he's floating too.

"He's moored at last, and furled his sail," he sings, quietly.

Here, by the water, the words are swallowed in the stretch of the sky, small and meaningless as the power of the sea pushes up along the wall beneath him. So he shuts his mouth, and hums, lightly. This, at least, he can feel in his throat, buzzing in his teeth. And so he continues on, the same song on a loop as he watches the muted impression of the sun climb higher and higher. The sound of it had soothed him as a boy, but now it lies bitter on his tongue, burying him deeper and deeper in his own sorrow, until the colors and sound around him fade and twist and gnarl into one, great shadow.

Which is why, he imagines, he very nearly leaps to his feet in shock when he feels a hand on his shoulder.

"Ah," he says, and he does stand when he turns and finds Snow looking down at him. She moves to sit on the bench, motioning for him to settle beside her. He obeys, albeit reluctantly. Despite the years between them, he's still a lingering suspicion that the Charmings find him wanting, to say the least.

Yet, he's nothing if not a gentleman, so he clears his throat, sits up straight.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" he says.

Snow just smiles, and pulls a haphazardly folded, red plaid scarf from her jacket pocket. "Here."

Killian quirks a brow, hesitates.

"Before you catch a cold," she adds.

He nods, and reaches out, takes it from her hand, and loops it around his neck. The chill abates, a bit. He startles – and snorts out a frustrated huff at his own skittish behavior – when Snow takes a hold of his hand, and he looks up, finds a curious expression on her face and a black leather glove in her hand.

"Your fingers are freezing," she says. She pulls the glove over his fingers as she admonishes him. He watches as her hand, small and delicate, turns his hand over, pulling at the leather until it's flush with his jacket.

"Emma sent you?" he says.

Snow shakes her head. "She mentioned you, said you'd gone for a walk, said you'd probably forgotten your scarf."

He nods. "It doesn't bother me. The weather, I mean."

She gives him a look, one with which he's all too familiar, one typically set between lighter hair, around paler eyes.

He sighs, amends, "Much."

To his surprise, Snow simply nods, pats his leg, turns her head until she's gazing up and out, towards the fair horizon. He watches her for a moment, takes in the dark sweep of her hair, the set to her jaw, the jut of her chin, her cheeks. He thinks, not for the first time, how it was really some kind of magic – hope, he's been told – that brought this family back together. And he wishes, just for a moment, shame sitting heavy on his neck until he's staring down at his shoes, that it were his own mother sitting next to him instead. He sighs, and he can feel Snow's eyes on him, but he doesn't turn, doesn't look, doesn't what to see himself in her eyes. Doesn't want to see disappointment.

So he looks back at the water, and he breathes. In. Then out. Over and over again. Until the tension eases, until he can feel something in his stomach unfurl.

Until the horizon blurs.

"Hook?"

He shakes his head, dips it until he's staring at his knees. He shakes it even harder when she reaches across him, and he can see her fingers curl around his hook. She pulls until he's looking at her, and the tears in his eyes begin to fall.

"Forgive me, your majesty," he says. "I'm out of sorts this…" He pauses, catches his breath, feeling winded as the pressure in his chest bears down, hard over his heart. "…this fine spring morning."

His Swan would smile, he knows, and bury her face in the crook of his neck. But as much of her mother as she carries in her, Snow White is not Emma, and so he's not surprised when she simply looks up at him, studies his face with something like determination, something like…well something he hasn't seen in centuries.

"You know," Snow says, and she turns where she sits, until she's facing him, urging him to do the same with a gentle tug on his hook. "My mother and I once planted a bleeding heart. Right beneath her favorite tree. It had such beautiful, delicate little flowers. You know, with the…?"

She pauses, gesturing a bit wildly.

"The hearts," Killian says, quietly. "Yes, I've seen them before."

"Yeah, the hearts."

She stops, again, and stares somewhere, sometime, over his shoulder. He, in turn, waits. Waits like he's waited for Emma when she thinks of her childhood, waits like he's waited for Henry when he dreams of losing him. Waits.

"We planted it on a warm, sunny day. It grew well, seemed to like it under the shade of the beech."

"Somehow," Killian says, when Snow seems to lose herself in time once more. "I think this does not end favorably for the bleeding heart."

Snow smiles, sadly. "The night my mother died, there was a terrible frost. It was too young, too shadowed, too delicate."

The trembling picks back up in his lips, and he wonders what brand of foolish he is for feeling – oh so suddenly, oh so viciously, as per usual it seems – so attached to the fate of a lonely shrub.

"It died," he whispers.

Snow's jaw sets, and he can hear the subtle grind of her teeth. "I can't stand them. Bleeding hearts. Whenever I see one, I just want to – "

"Dump it into the sea?"

She smiles. "Something like that."

He expects her to go on, to talk until she's satisfied he's soothed. But, in the usual Charming way, she surprises him once more, eyes jumping back and forth between his own. There's a familiar tilt to her lips, wry and steadfast. She's close enough that he can see the dull twinkle in her eyes, catching the soft burn of the mid-morning light. The silence grows heavy between them, and Killian begins to wonder when he turned his heart out onto his sleeve.

"How did you know?" he says, quieter than he means to, catching on the thickness in his throat.

"We're all a little more lost than you think we are."

He nods, looks down, can't help the first tear that falls. Nor the second, or the third.

"Sometimes old wounds reopen," she says. "Yours just happens to look an awful lot like mine."

He nods, again, rather vigorously, closes his eyes.

"I love your daughter," he says. "More than anything. And she loves so fiercely, I could not hope to wear it out. I have no doubt she could carry me through a hundred more lifetimes, just as long as my own."

He pauses, bites at his lips, breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth. He lifts his eyes, to find Snow looking back at him, such a tender, dare he say loving, expression on her face, the pressure in his belly climbs up his chest, seizes at his throat, rattles at the base of his neck, until tears anew muddy the world in somber shades of green and blue.

"I only wish…" he breathes. "She died on a day just like this. I only wish she would…that she would…"

Come back, he thinks.

Sing to me, he thinks.

Hold me, he thinks.

"Killian Jones," Snow says, and takes hold of his face. "You don't love anyone any less, just because you want her back."

He moves to shake his head, but she grips him tighter, so that he's very nearly forced to look at her, to reveal himself, to bleed where she can see.

He sighs, a shuddering upheaval of warm breath stirring the fine hairs at Snow's temples. "I ask for too much – "

"You never ask for anything – "

" – that I couldn't possibly return – "

"Killian, would you just shut up."

He stops, if only because of the way she leans back, throwing a stern look down the slope of her nose. She regards him, and he would squirm under her scrutiny, but he's so tired. So very tired. So that when she applies a gentle pressure to the back of his neck, he goes easily to her shoulder, falling until he curls against her like a child, like the boy he never truly was. He breathes, heavy and labored, as her hand pats affectionately at his back, thumping along his ribcage just off the beat of his heart. His head pounds, and his mouth feels dry, but the press of Snow's fingers along his shoulders digs deep into ancient scars, and the relief of having someone pluck away at his past – like splinters sunk between his bones – pulls something loose, and a fresh sob builds on the back of his tongue.

"He was a sailor, bold and true," he sings, just barely a whisper.

Snow hums. "She sing that to you?"

He nods, and pulls back, eyes downcast.

"My bleeding heart," he says.

She nods, and reaches up once more, to dab carefully at his face. For several long, somber moments, she's quiet. The longer she's still, the louder the sounds around them. He can hear the distant mooring, the tinkle of metal rigging against modern masts.

"Well," she says, at length. "I think it's time for a drink."

He laughs.

"It's hardly afternoon, your majesty," he says.

Snow scoffs, tugging at his scarf and straightening his jacket.

"Not rum," she says. And she stands, righting the twists in her jacket. "Take a page out of Henry's book."

He quirks a brow.

"Sugar," she says. "Chocolate, cereal, you know, everything that's gonna rot that boy's teeth out."

He huffs, a weak laugh, and allows himself to be led off the pier and down the road to Granny's.

Somewhere around his third coffee – or coffee like drink, excruciatingly saccharine beverage with froth and whipped cream and a sweet, gritty crumble – he feels his heart lighten, if only at the sight of Snow White peering skeptically down at his old, weathered dice.

"These are loaded," she accuses.

He smiles. "Aye, of course."

Killian can no longer find it within himself to be surprised when she pulls a set of dice out of her own pockets.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I cheated a ship full of pirates out of one of their skiffs?"

He laughs, watches as she swipes his dice and mixes them with her own.

"I've not had the pleasure, no," he says.

"May the best load win. That's what the captain said to me."

Killian takes another measured sip of his drink, turns in his seat, and watches the mother of his love gesticulate along the twists and turns of a tale any young adventurer would love to call his own. He listens to the rise and fall of her voice, and thinks on his own mother – a softer, smaller woman, more delicate of voice and of manner. He thinks of her, and allows himself to wish, to want, to be greedy for the sake of his heart, long into the afternoon. The thick haze of morning thins with the heat of the sun, but it doesn't dissipate, only grows warmer, until Granny grumbles behind the counter and throws the windows open against the stirring of spring.

"Killian?"

He turns, looks down, finds a shade of concern in Snow's eyes. He smiles, wan but genuine.

"Your turn," she says.

"Aye," he says, quietly. Then, louder, grabbing at the dice, gathering them with a swift swipe of his fingers, "Aye, I'll admit, I've had many a run in with pirates, being one myself. But I can do you one better."

He pauses, and leans forward conspiratorially. "Two words, your grace. Brooding. Krakens."

She laughs.

"Old Storm has heard the angel call," he sings, head resting on Emma's chest, just on the cusp of midnight. His head still aches, though mostly just a remnant of the sugar still jittering along the chords of his back, down along his legs. Emma had remained silent most of the evening, content to stand beside him, to gaze out the window, to rest her head against his back as he'd hummed his tune.

Now, tangled together beneath an unforgiving pile of blankets, she runs her fingers through his hair, over and over again, sifting until he can feel the tufts twisting up and out, pulling at his scalp, a gentle tug that warms to the base of his spine. Killian hums the next few notes, reaching up to trace his fingers over hers, even as they continue drawing nonsense over the nape of his neck. He taps along her wrist, down towards her elbow, until he's gripping loosely at her shoulder. He sighs, long and loud, and her hands still.

"She used to sing that to you, didn't she?" Emma says.

He nods, and her fingers continue on in their gentle exploration. Another minute or two goes by, before he can muster the strength – here in the dark, where the shadows crawl in from the corners – to elaborate.

"When I couldn't sleep," he says. "She'd sing it to me. It wasn't until she died that the words really sunk in."

"Digging graves with silver shovels?"

He laughs. "Spades, love."

"Right, spades."

He turns his face into her chest, places a gentle kiss just beneath her collarbone. She stirs beneath him, pushing at his shoulders until he leans back, until he can give her a proper look.

"How's the rest of it go?"

He reaches up, brushing his fingers over the corners of her lips, caressing her jaw until she smiles. He kisses her, softly, just the barest touch of lips. He pulls away, just far enough to look her in the eye, though his lips still brush against hers when he sings, just this side of a whisper –

"So sing his dirge, now one and all."

She hums. "A bit morbid, isn't it? I mean, like to use as a lullaby."

He smiles, and presses his face against her shoulder. "To be fair, love, as a child, I was rather convinced a dirge was some sort of ball, with all of the fanfare and circumstance."

She laughs. "That's cute. I bet you were a cute kid."

He burrows even further into the crook of her neck, nuzzling the sensitive skin stretching where neck meets shoulder, before he rests his head back on her chest, before her hands find their way back into his hair, back over his shoulder blade.

"Killian?" she says.

He merely hums in reply, feeling the weight of content settle over his belly.

"Sing it for me?"

He nods, and before she can protest, he wraps his arms around her, and rolls until they lie on their sides, nearly flush from head to toe. And he sings, warm breath stirring the hair by her ears, nose bumping gently against hers.

"Of captain brave, he was the best," he sings, long and low, and she drifts to sleep. He smiles, and rolls back, until she rests lightly over his chest. He closes his eyes, the darkness he'd felt all morning, all afternoon, seeping away. He presses his lips to her temple.

"But now he's gone," he sings, drowsily. And he gives his Emma, his Swan, one last kiss, just along the ridge of her nose, before he says –

"But now she's gone, and is at rest."

– and drifts away beside her to pleasant, sun-drenched dreams.