Not many would agree with her that it was the right thing to do. Not that Tinkerbell hadn't already broken a myriad of rules with him in particular, but in particular to use her magic on a man with a dark heart? Faeries did not help villains, that seemed to be the most steadfast rule they had. If there had been a part of him left worthy of aide, it had died somewhere in centuries of living cruelly and selfishly. Even beyond the rules set in place by the fae, not many would agree with Tink that saving a man such as himself was worthy of her time. He'd done little to merit not only her consideration, but the consideration of anyone else in the City. The few he'd touched didn't really know him. The only person that knew him well enough to miss him was Tatia and in the end, she didn't really know him completely. Tink was the only person left in this world and the next that really saw him, and knowing that made her actions even more confusing.
He didn't deserve to live. Hadn't deserved to live three centuries ago when he watched the last family he had brutally murdered before his eyes. He didn't deserve the unnaturally preserved life that he fought tooth and nail for—and despite everything he seemed to care little about whether he lost it. As long as he lived, he'd fight for revenge, but all too often death seemed close and he found he didn't fear it. A part of him might have even welcomed it. He always clung to life by the skin of his teeth, somehow. Some way. It was rare that he was aided in it, but Tinkerbell assisting him should not have been as surprising as it was.
In the end, he wasn't mad at her for staying by his side. It was not that he detested her company, and he never had. In fact he had an uncomfortable desire to have her around far too often. He'd asked her to leave because he didn't want to hurt her, and especially considering Tatia wasn't present it would have been all too possible for a hallucination to go south. He didn't want to know who would have won, between the fairy and the vampire, and he had enough regrets to take to his grave. Hook was not so strong that he would have happily died alone, he would just preferred that to potentially harming one of the last living individuals he cared about. He couldn't hurt Tatia but Tink was all too delicate. It would have been easy if he'd gotten too close, and he wasn't wrong in warning her he was dangerous. He was angry she'd put herself in danger to be with him, but perhaps there was always a certain amount of danger she endured when she allowed him close to her.
He couldn't help sputtering a bit on the potion, but the bite made practically anything he drank crawl back up his throat. The only thing he seemed to keep down was alcohol, rather true to form in a way. Alcohol comforted him, but it wouldn't keep him from what ailed him. He had faith in Tink's magic but no faith in how it'd react to a supernatural entity that didn't even exist in their world. He never had faith when it came to his own luck, but considering he'd lived centuries burning on rage and vengeance alone, perhaps he was not as unlucky as he felt. Or just as unlucky, really—Rumpelstiltskin had not been wrong that living like he had was quite close to a curse. He begrudgingly reached up to finish the shot of incredibly twee colored elixir, and it tingled quite oddly as it passed through a body that didn't quite live anymore. It was hard to save a life when no life existed. It burned in a way that wasn't particularly pleasant, but when he was already in the midst of dying it was hard to suffer more.
The potion settled oddly in his body—slowly soaking through old flesh. He couldn't quite tell if it was working, but he could feel a distinct relief of pain. He breathed heavily through his nose, before folding back into his bed. "I don't know why," he mused heavily, but whatever he was lost on, he was quickly losing the fight to finish the thought. He wasted what energy he had left skirting his palm up her side, grasping her hand in his. He had moments before he faded to whatever battle was going on in his system, be it victory or failure—and in that last moment he did want to reach out. Whether he'd be happy to admit it with clarity or not.