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The thing is, these days he can only remember small details about what Milah looked like. He can remember the colour of her eyes but not the shape of them, and the way she wore her hair but not the texture. He'd waged a 300 year revenge quest in her name but the effect of his single minded drive to avenge her was he remembered her more as an idea than a reality, a motivation than a person, so her face was hazy unclear in his mind's eye. The fog of vengeance lifted, he deeply regrets losing her face -it seems like an insult to her memory and vows not to do the same to Emma. As much as he has to move forward with his life in any small way, he refuses to break his final promise to Emma.
So his reaction to the bar maid is a visceral one. He can't explain what it is that makes his mind scream ' Milah' but it does. She's so like Milah it makes his head spin, and his knees would be weak if he were standing. The bar maid smiles coyly at him and lingers around their table and Killian stares because he can't help it. It occurs to him that he might be giving the poor woman the wrong impression. After her shift ends, she comes over again and Smee is all too eager to shift over to give her room, leaving her to sit uncomfortably close to Killian.
She talks to him softly, sometimes in his ear, touching his arm and hands occasionally. Killian is drunk enough by this point that he barely responds to her but it doesn't put her off. His mind dully repeats Milah's name over and over, like a scratching at an almost healed wound. It'd be so easy, he thinks, he could leave with this woman who looks so much like his lost love-maybe forget for a few hours that the woman he loves now was literally realms away. It'd be painfully easy.
His mind only clears when the bar maid leans in for a kiss. It's his fault for staring and leading her on, he thinks but the flesh memory of Emma kissing him in Neverland is suddenly so strong that the thought of anyone else kissing him is absolutely abhorrent—Milah doppelgänger or not. Killian never wants to kiss anyone else but Emma. Coming here, thinking he could fuck his way out of pining heart, it was a mistake. All of it was.
He skids the bench back forcefully, making the woman's head jerk back and abruptly breaking the moment. The rest of the group stare at him.
"Sorry," he mutters to the woman but it's somewhat redundant seeing as he's already pushing his way to the exit into the alley way beside the tavern.
The fresh air affords him some small amount of clarity that he's grateful but he still feels winded leaning up against the brick wall. He realises with a start that the woman -he doesn't even know her name still- has followed him out, watching him from the shadows. He attempts an apologetic smile. "S'nothing personal, love," he says, placating.
"No?"
"No," he assures her, then quieter. "My- my heart belongs to another, I'm afraid. I was wrong to think I could pretend otherwise."
He sees the shadows shift and decides it's the woman nodding slowly. Killian turns and starts walking in the direction of his inn but after a moment, the womancalls out, "This woman who holds your heart- is she very beautiful?"
The question makes him pause. Killian recalls Emma's strength of character, her ferocity and absolute devotion to the ones who were blessed enough to be on receiving end of her love. "In every single way," he says into the night because it's the only phrase he can think of that comes close to capturing Emma's beauty.
"More beautiful than I?" A new voice says behind him and Killian would swear it was... but that's impossible. He turns anyway on instinct, squinting and blinking into the shadows. A head of blonde catches the moonlight. Killian's aching heart seizes hard. Emma Swan floats out of the inky darkness, hair curled and piled up high on the crown if her head like the barmaid's, wearing the bar maid's dress. Killian wills himself to wake up because the nights he dreams of Emma always lead to melancholic mornings.
"Emma," he sighs like a prayer. "You're not- you can't be..."
Emma smiles with a gentle upturn of her lips. She's close enough now to ghost the tip of her index finger over his lips. "Shh," she murmurs. "I'm here."
"But you can't be," Killian argues weakly, but just looking into Emma's eyes for the first time in months is enough to sap away any cares about technicalities of how she's here. "This is trick."
"Do you really think so?" she asks curiously, a teasing lilt to her voice. She circles him, trailing a finger continuously around the circumference of his body; across his chest, along his shoulder blades and back around around and even through his coats and his heavy leather coat it makes him shiver. "Well... you can see me," she says.
His eyes are locked on hers, his lonely heart stuttering out a fast, uneven rhythm. She leans so close to the side of his head that her lips brush the shell of his eye as she whispers, "You can hear me."
Emma pulls back to stare into his eyes and Killian is so spellbound that when she pushes him back against the wall he barely keeps his balance. His hand holds her waist and his Killian rests on the small of her back. Emma closes any and all space between them, her body presses flush into the length of his. His desire is mirrored in her eyes, a storm passing between them. Emma wets her lips and meets his eyes with a seductive smile and all at once they're barely an inch away from each other. Killian tries and fails to remember any other purpose his life other than to kiss her right now. Her head inches back just slightly every time he leans forward, maintaining a tantalising space between them.
“And you can... touch me,” she breathes, her lips ghosting over his. Killian closes the rest of the distance and sighs into the kiss he's been yearning for since she pulled back in Neverland. Her hands card through and grip his hair tightly, pulling him closer still. Killian moans, whispering her name when she pausesfor breath. He'll never get enough of this, he's raw and open and nothing will ever feel this good again.
Emma pulls back breathlessly, pressing her forehead to his. “Why don't we go somewhere a little more private ?”
His first instinct is to scream 'yes', drunk on liquor and the taste of her and so ready to worship her the way she deserves. And he's so close to taking her hand and running back to his inn with her, locking the doors behind them and not ever coming back out but consciousness seeps in, turning the fire raging in his veins to ice. Emma is in another realm, without her memories—there's not way she could have gotten here. No way she could have taken the form of a barmaid who looks like Milah. Killian throws himself away from her against the other way, drawing his sword without another thought.
“You're not her!” he spits venomously, his sword shaking in his hand. “You're not Emma!”
'Emma' starts forward, her face contorting into hurt and pain. “Hook, it's me—I'm really here, you have to believe me!”
Killian straightens his sword arm at her. Despite himself, it feels deplorable on every level to be pointing a weapon at Emma, even if it's just her image. “Stay away from me, demon!”
“Please, Hook,” she cries, a silver tear rolling down her cheek. Killian clenches his jaw, seeing even Emma's likeness crying affects him on levels he can't explain. “Don't kill me. Just come with me, we can talk, I can explain everything! Please!”
And it's oh-so-damn-tempting to believe her; everything about her invites him in and he's not sure whether it's because it's the demon's design or because it took on Emma's face. Hating himself, he clenches his eyes shut against 'Emma's' enchanting presence because he can't look at her face, not while he does this. He's been in enough sword fights to know the proportions and location of another person's limbs without needing to look so when he blindly slashes the air with his sword it hits the outside of the demon's arm, slicing it. Killian despises himself, even as the demon lets out a loud, and distinctly non-human , screech and he feels the air shift in front of him, like something had changed forms.
He doesn't open his eyes again until he hears... oddly, the flapping of wings. The night is too dark to see what the demon was, and by the time his eyes focus enough to find it, it's a nothing but an inky spot against the horizon. His hand shakes so much his sword clatters to the ground, black blood on one rim. It wasn't Emma, it wasn't her, you didn't hurt her, you sliced a monster's arm not hers she's safe, he repeats to himself, needing to convince himself. The thought of hurting her is so vile it makes his stomach turn.
A half strangled sob forces its way up his throat, He's been captured by the most brutal scourge ever to draw a breath, 'questioned' by corrupt royal guard who didn't have an ounce of mercy in them, and imprisoned for days and days in complete darkness without food... but nothing will ever be as torturous as that.
Killian draws a jagged breath in while Hook draws back his fist and punches the wall next to him so hard he feels every knuckle shatter under his skin. It's almost a relief.