What A Wonderful World

iii) In The Air Tonight

If you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand...

Well I remember, I remember don't worry. How could I ever forget, it's the first time, the last time we ever met

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He walked into his cool cabin, and sat on the foot of his bed, his elbows resting on his knees as he started to tie the rope into a hangman’s knot. Just like Liam had taught him. When Killian first joined the royal navy, Liam told him that he needed to know how to tie different types of knot, so he tried his best to learn every knot technique there was. Hook remembers trying to tie the knots and his brother teasing him constantly about it, something he now wishes his ear could hear once again.

Hook looked down at the knot, and satisfied with the result, and scanned around the lantern lit cabin to see the most ideal place for this. He spotted a little place next to his desk where a hook hangs from the ceiling and with a heavy sigh, he gets off the bed and walks over, dragging a chair with him, and he places it under the hook. He climbs onto the chair and hangs the knot on the hanging hook, and steps down for a moment to look at his creation.

It so simple, so frighteningly simple, yet so beautiful. How can something so simple a knot claim the lives of many, pirates and innocents all the same.

As he walked back to the chair, a curious glint from his desk caught his eye, in turn, caused him to detour to the source of the light. When he moved his papers he saw the compass from the beanstalk. How did it get there? He thought to himself as he gently wrapped his fingers around it and picked up the cold piece of metal. The longer he stared at the compass, the heavier his heart got. All he wanted was to go back to that moment, back to when he first met Emma. When he first fell in love with her. Gods what he would give to go back. He remembered that when he first saw her, he didn’t believe that such a beautiful and strong person existed. His heart clenched at the fact that when he first saw her, he fell in love with her, but it wasn’t reciprocated.

To make the feeling go away he put the compass atop of the papers and riffled through his desk drawers, finding a bottle a small bottle, he opens it with much more desperation than he expected. Except, when he lifted the bottle to his lips nothing came out.

“Why is the rum always gone?” He asked himself aloud, as he gently placed the bottle down, letting out a sigh.

“I guess now, is better than ever,” he said, walking over to the chair and proceeded to stand on it. Once he stood atop of the chair, the air started to feel heavy around him. Almost like it was mourning him already.

He shakes away the thought and puts his head through the noose, and tightened it, feeling his heart in his throat. Wait no, he’s felt like that the entire night, it’s nothing new, or at least that’s what he tells himself as he leans to the side, trying to lift tip the chair. Slowly, inch by inch, it’s moving with him.

He closes his eyes the farther he gets but something makes him open them and he’s staring right at the compass. Staring right at the memory of Emma’s hair waving in the air as they climbed the curse-ed beanstalk.

The chair goes back down with a thump, and Hook wiggles his head out of the noose.

“This is what a weak man would do when he has nothing,” Hook said to himself, shaking his head, but he doesn’t take down the noose.

But he knows better. Emma was his everything. Without Emma, he has nothing, including hope and love.

Is it really better to have loved and lost, when the pain is this excruciating.

No. It’s not, he thought as he walked back to the chair.