Author's Note: I'm cheating a bit for CS AU Week - this is only barely a canon divergence fic in that it takes place at the end of the Dark Swan arc, but the arc itself is comprised of headcanons that had been floating around way back last year when we'd first gotten filming spoilers of Emma's house, since that's when most of this was written. Most of these headcanons should become pretty obvious as you read, but the most important thing to remember is to avoid making assumptions about what has or has not happened (yet) in this verse ;)

I.e. I wrote something a year ago that has since become completely irrelevant, and I've only just decided to finish it now because of CS AU Week and because I couldn't bear letting all of the fluff and cute dialogue go to waste.

Enjoy!

White Picket Fence

The Dark One, Emma thinks with vague distaste, must have had a twisted sense of humor.

Beside her, Killian slows to a stop, shifting the box in his arms. "Something wrong, love?" He squints into the sky, as if she might be troubled by a particular cloud, or if she's just spotted Storybrooke's latest villain making a dramatic entrance in the distance.

"The tower," she says bluntly, and his gaze follows hers to the cone-topped spire looming over the side of her house. "I can't believe I didn't notice it before."

"It is rather difficult to miss," Killian agrees.

"No, I mean – it's a tower. Doesn't it remind you of something?"

"Traditional New England architecture, I daresay," he says wryly, and while she's surprised that he even knows what New England is, she can tell he's purposely missing the point.

"Or a castle." To her chagrin, when she turns to him, he's biting his lip as though trying not to laugh, and even worse, it completely sabotages her attempt at a glare. "Really, of all the houses the Dark One could have conjured up, it had to choose one with a tower."

"I rather like it, Swan." His cheeky smile gleams back at her in the afternoon sunlight. "Useful for defense, which I doubt many other houses foreign to this town can say about their towers."

"Hilarious." Making sure to keep the tower determinedly out of her line of sight, she makes her way across the lawn, the last of her boxes in hand, but he somehow manages to reach the front door before she does. In an impressive balancing act, he props it open for her without dropping his own box, but when she passes him, the unmistakable glint of a hook lodged into cardboard catches her eye.

The consequences of having Captain Hook as your boyfriend, she supposes dryly: your winter clothes are in danger of his thoughtful bravado.

"If you're not as fond of the tower, then, why don't you change it?" Killian asks, letting the screen door slam shut behind him as he follows her into the house.

"I can't," she admits. The Dark One's magic, it seems, has left absolutely no trace in her system, though there's something to be said about the thoroughness of True Love's Kiss that brings her halfway between relief and embarrassment. Of course, she's still glad about it – well, until she realizes there's a certain level of convenience in wielding thousands of years of magic at her fingertips, including, but not limited to, do-it-yourself home renovations.

"We could always knock it down," he suggests, and she snorts at how he sounds almost serious. "Rebuild it the old-fashioned way."

"And live with a hole in my house for who knows how long? No thank you." Her tongue wraps around the words my house with an uncomfortable sense of unfamiliarity, and because she knows his propensity for picking up that kind of thing, she continues on in a rush: "Besides, it might be cheaper just to move to a new place." To keep him from reading her expression, she turns to pick her way around the half-strewn contents of a box on the foyer floor, courtesy of Henry's brief attempt at unpacking, in their danger-riddled trek to the stairs. There are two more boxes on the kitchen counter, she counts through the doorway, and how Mary Margaret managed to acquire so much kitchenware that she had a spare set to just give away is beyond Emma's capacity for imagination. Most of the boxes, though, are upstairs: five in the small blue room overlooking the backyard, and two in the master bedroom, the destination of their final trip.

"Is that right?"

"About blasting a hole in the wall? I don't think you'd like it very much if someone shot a cannon through the Jolly Roger either."

"Enchanted wood, darling," he says with all the pride of a pirate, although she's not sure if that's supposed to mean something to her. "And no, I was referring to your preference to move to a new place."

"I mean, if we're going to knock down a fourth of the house, we might as well fix everything else that's wrong with it." Including this awful staircase, she thinks wearily as they begin their ascent. They've only needed to make two trips so far, with the help of her son and father waiting outside, but she swears the one at the loft doesn't have quite this many steps. "And that would definitely cost more than just moving somewhere else."

His footsteps creak on the floorboards behind her, which only reaffirms of her opinion of the staircase. "What else is wrong with the house?"

The view of the long hallway that comes into her line of sight gives her an immediate answer, one that isn't a product of mild laziness or nitpicking. "The size. This house is gigantic – it's way too big for just me and Henry."

"An extra bedroom is hardly an offense."

"Yeah, except for the fact that when I made this house, I was the only one living in it. So that's two extra bedrooms."

"One of which now belongs to the lad, the other of which would be a lovely guest room," he says, unnervingly reasonable. When he reaches the landing, he casts her a smirk that has her glad she's on level footing. "And if you prefer not to be privy to your parents' nighttime activities, should they stay as guests, you can always relegate them to the attic."

"Don't talk too loudly about my parents' nighttime activities or David will hear you," she mutters, although she's pretty sure that won't be the case. They'd already tested out the soundproofing of the house quite thoroughly the night after everything had returned to normal, after she'd returned to normal, and as much as she'd enjoyed reliving that experience in her mind and in real life every night since then, she really doesn't want to think about those kinds of noise-inducing activities in the same thought as David and Henry outside in the truck. "Anyway," she presses on before she has the chance to incriminate herself by blushing, "I don't need an attic. I barely have enough stuff to fill the rest of the house."

"I think you'll find that you'll start accumulating things once you find a permanent living situation."

"I'm not really sentimental."

"Aren't you?" He cocks a knowing eyebrow at her and turns to take the lead down the hallway before she has a chance to react.

"You don't seem to have found the need for building an extension on the side of the Jolly Roger," she grumbles after him.

"I wasn't aware that you valued the speed and mobility of this house."

"Who knows? It might be useful," she says seriously, catching his eye when he glances at her over his shoulder. "If I'm keeping the turret, I might as well weaponize the entire house."

That earns her a full laugh, the kind that snags at her heart no matter how many times she hears it. "All right, love," he says, though it sounds more like a challenge than a concession. He grunts as he plops his box on the floor of her bedroom, then turns to take hers with an amused look. "Let's hear it then. Since we're on the topic, what other grievances do you have about this house?"

"The yard," she replies without hesitation. At his clear skepticism, she rolls her eyes, gesturing vaguely toward the door. "Henry doesn't play outside anymore, and I don't have a dog. What am I going to use it for? It's a maintenance nightmare."

"Perhaps Granny will no longer be required to host the traditional celebratory party, what with all of your empty outdoor space," he proposes amiably, arranging her box in a neat stack next to the others.

"Oh no," she snorts. "I am not having the entirety of Storybrooke camped out in my backyard like some sort of Fourth of July barbeque."

"Fourth of July?"

"Never mind," she says quickly. "Is there a method to your digging through the library, or should I talk to Belle about getting you a list?"

"Swan," he says, and his tone draws her up short. She doesn't even realize she's been avoiding his gaze until she finds it difficult to look up again, this time with a touch of guilt. His expression is kind but shrewd in a way that makes her suspect he already knows the answer when he asks: "What is it you truly have against this house?"

She hesitates. It isn't as though she's ready to lie (really, she's sure that would be a lesson in futility); rather, she's just afraid of how ridiculous it might sound if she says it aloud. In the end, it's not the fact that he's been confirmed her True Love so much as the fact that he's him, and that she knows he'd stand with her no matter what leaves her mouth, that has her finally admitting the problem on her mind.

"It's that." She needs but three steps to cross the room, and he joins her, wiping his hand on his pants, to peer out the window at where she's pointing. Outside, her precisely manicured lawn lines the cobblestone path to her porch, and she can just make out Henry sitting in the passenger seat of her father's pickup (since the last incident, they both seem to have been on their best behavior as far as driving is concerned) parked by the curb. Between the two sits the neat little row of painted white posts that has vexed her since the moment she first laid eyes on it.

Killian pauses, following the path of her finger. "The picket fence?"

"It's not the fence itself, but…" She falters, realizing that she sounds even crazier without context. "It's just that – in this world, a white picket fence represents something… more. Settling down with a family – two-point-five kids and a dog. Probably a nice house with a swing in the backyard. That life, it's…" Her eyes fix themselves unblinkingly to the fence. "It's everything I'd ever wanted as a kid. But I'm not that same kid anymore. This house – it's not me."

He's quiet for a long moment. When he speaks again, she can feel his gaze on her face, and she imagines a sympathy there that comes from his assumptions being confirmed. "But do you still want it?"

She smiles weakly. "Are you asking me about kids right now?" But when his hand grazes her knuckles and forces her to look up, his expression is perfectly solemn. His fingers wrap around hers, warm and reassuring, grounding her in the moment.

"I'm asking you about that life," he says, his voice low. "Living in a big house, with a family to call your own. You may have grown up, but you needn't have stopped dreaming of it."

Trust someone from a land full of magic to have such a romantic view of the world. She shakes her head, sighing. "I was young and naïve," she tells him. "Idealistic. And you know how childish the Dark One is; of course it'd believe in that kind of thing, too."

"True as that may be," his mouth curves ruefully, "it wouldn't have conjured this house had you not wanted it, deep down."

Deep down, even now, she knows she can't argue with that. "That doesn't mean it's right for me, though," she protests. "I've never… I've never lasted long in any kind of picturesque suburbia like this. I've lived in tiny shared rooms and apartments all my life. I even lived in a car for a while."

This is all old information to him, but he still appears to need a few seconds to process her words. "That may be what you've become accustomed to, love," he says at last, "but that doesn't mean it's who you are, or who you want to be."

She swallows. The who you are part has always been tricky – she's never even had a real last name. And after she'd stolen one from a family she'd never seen again, she'd always been branded with a black mark. Foster kid. Runaway. Felon.

Savior. Storybrooke had been the one place she hadn't been vilified for what they'd called her, but even then, even now, she's not really sure what it means. But it had made her wonder, maybe, if the kind of person who could be that Savior might also be worthy of a precocious ten-year-old's love.

Who you want to be.

Killian's hand squeezes hers, tugging her back to the present. In her mind's eye, the short mop of mousy brown hair standing in her doorway disappears in favor of earnest blue eyes, fervent and unyielding as the sea.

"You were always meant for a castle, Emma," he says quietly. He doesn't say it with the disappointment of royalty, but, rather, with the confidence of a man who would follow her across realms, wherever that castle may lie. "Don't settle for anything less just because you're afraid of having something you never thought you would."

Her throat tightens, her heart trembling in her chest. The space between her ribs suddenly feels far too small as she holds his soft stare, captures it to flutter in her memory for as long as she can keep it safe. And then, exactly three heartbeats later, she's stepping forward on her toes and kissing him so soundly that she's positive this must be what it feels like to fall in love all over again.

When she finally breaks away, it takes her a moment to catch her breath, and she spends it pressing her cheek into his palm, clutching his collar for purchase as she revels in the way he seems to be panting, too.

"This house…" she says at last. She feels the corners of her mouth curl upward to match his as she sighs. "It's going to take some getting used to, I guess."

"Hmm." His nose brushes against hers. "That doesn't seem like anything new."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," he says placatingly, "from what you told me, Swan, it took you a while to believe in fairytales, and to want to be a mother to your son. And I know firsthand how much you wanted to run away from acknowledging your parents, and from Storybrooke. And… me." It's an echo of a conversation they'd had once before, and she's glad that the last bit seems to come without prompting this time, even when it's accompanied by a wry chuckle.

"And you," she agrees. Just to affirm that this is no longer the case, she leans in to kiss him again – unlike before, only a brief peck on the mouth, which earns her a noise of complaint until she speaks again. "You know what would make the transition a little easier, though?"

He cocks his head against hers. "What's that, love?"

As much as she's loathe to, she pulls away just enough, only because she needs to look him straight in the eye as she says, as sincerely as she can: "If you were here, too."

He freezes, blinking at her. "Swan," he says slowly. "Are you asking…?" She lets that question hang in the air, if only because he already knows the answer. Sure enough, the grin that spreads across his face could light up all of Storybrooke, though the warmth that trickles through her is nothing compared to how she feels when he surges forward, pressing his lips to hers in a way that has her sure she won't be going anywhere this time.

And she's quite positive she'd have refused to budge an inch for the rest of the day, give or take a few feet in the direction of the bed, very suddenly and thoroughly convinced by the appeal of not leaving this room, thanks to the steady hand that threads through her hair and the firm drag of his tongue sparking a shiver down her spine after but a moment of innocent bliss – had it not been for the loud horn that blares pointedly from outside, tearing them apart with a jolt.

Emma's head jerks to the window, but she sees no car on the street save for her father's truck, of course. Through the rolled-down window, an elbow propped outside, Henry appears to be scanning the exterior of the house, as if impatiently trying to determine where they might have gone.

Internally, she thanks her lucky stars that she'd stopped about a step away from what would have surely been a traumatizing parenting experience.

Killian chuckles beside her, though she notes that he's yet to unwrap his arm from around her waist or remove his hand from where it now rests against her neck. When she turns back to meet him, he's still smiling, bright as the sun.

"Emma, I would be honored to share your home," he says in that way of his, and it's his choice of words more than anything that has her heart stumbling like she hadn't already gotten that from his response. "But," he continues, "I fear there may not be a house for the two of us and your lad to inhabit for much longer if we continue to test your father's patience."

She returns his grin with only vague embarrassment, feeling the delight linger in the pleasant ache in her cheeks even as she pries herself from his grasp. Her hand does a quick comb through the hair at the back of her head, but it seems pretty useless when David will probably be able to spot the heat in her face from the doorway anyway. Killian, on the other hand, seems to be wearing his flushed expression with a pride she can't bear trying to make him conceal.

"Come on," she says with amused resignation, holding out her hand for him to take. He interlaces their fingers, falling into step beside her as though nothing in the world could be more natural for him to do.

And as they make their way back to the stairs, for the first time since she set foot in it, this house finally starts to feel like home.