Captain Swan - Handprints On My Soul

CSLB Project

Author's Notes: Oh gosh, after four months of working on this little story, I am thrilled to be able to present it to you. In the beginning, I struggled coming up with something that would meet the word-count requirements, so there are some people I would like to thank who helped me, inspired me and allowed me to burden them with this thing while offering an endless amount of support.

First of all, I wanted to give a shout out to all of the moderators of @captainswanbigbang for putting this project together and for always being responsive and helpful throughout the process. And thank you for blessing me with a fabulous artist @shipsxahoy who I really enjoyed working with. Thank you so much, Bianca, for the perfect artwork to accompany this story, including the fic banner. Please check out the gifset she made for the story as well.

http://shipsxahoy.tumblr.com/post/170608498710/i-cant-let-you-go-your-hand-prints-on-my-soul

I also have to thank @irishswanff for this prompt that helped me get this story rolling, taking on a life of its own. I can't say too much about the the actual prompt though, because bits and pieces of it are slowly revealed throughout the story. Then there is @resident-of-storybrooke who came up with Killian's former occupation when I was struggling to. A shout out to @distant-rose who's as sweet as a cupcake and looked it over, offering a bit of her cultural knowledge and setting me straight on some things. She is the reason Killian's daughter has an Irish accent, although she is also the reason I had cut out most of my original smut scene ;-)

Last but not least, I have to thank my wonderful beta-reader and dear friend @rouhn for all of her suggestions, for always getting me to see things from a different angle, for her encouragement and allowing me to bounce ideas off of her and for always being my biggest cheerleader and support. Thank you so much for sticking with me Lydia!

Trigger warnings include mentions of death resulting from labor and mentions of abandonment and abuse. Deals with catfishing/scamming over the internet.

Thank you all for reading and for your support and encouragement!

~*~

The raindrops pitter-patter on the windshield as the wiper blades swoosh left and right in a continuous motion, permitting visibility of the road ahead. The day is on the cusp of morning and afternoon, and the sky has grown grey and murky, unleashing a monotonous downpour over the streets of Storybrooke. Killian hadn't seen a drop of rain since his arrival, so it hadn't occurred to him to bring rain jackets before he'd left that morning.

He's not even sure exactly why he's here; he basically picked this place randomly on the map; or at least, his brother did.

After Killian's heart shattered into a million pieces yet again, he needed to flee from Ohio. Actually, the reasons are more complicated than that-Killian Jones didn't typically flee at the drop of a hat. His education consisted of mathematics, mechanical engineering and physics; he's a man of science-a man with a vision and a plan. In high school, his whole future was mapped out before him, down to every last intricate detail-the university he chose to attend, the degrees he required to achieve, the job he dreamed of attaining and the type of woman he desired to marry.

And everything went according to plan, until he took a trip to Ireland and met Milah. Of course, having a wife and starting a family completed the puzzle, but everything he's worked for, every dream, every drop of sweat, every tear and every part of his carefully crafted plan rose in flames when Milah died from giving birth to their daughter, leaving an empty hole in his life and his heart.

From that point on, he had to live from day to day, figuring things out as he went. When he moved back to the States with his daughter, his older brother helped him as much as possible, and perhaps that complicated things. Liam wanted to do anything to help Killian pick up the pieces of his life, and for once, Killian placed his faith in something he couldn't design, construct or control. He couldn't implement safety features or predict the outcome based on statistics or experiments or the laws of physics. He'd poured the fate of his (and his daughter's) future into something he couldn't spend months or years carefully envisaging.