A/N: I was just thinking of that moment on the beanstalk, when Emma says to Hook, "No, I have never been in love." Even though we've seen much more depth to it, I love taking a look at that fragile hardness that she built out of her pain. This is Emma pre-series, pre-Hook (if you didn't know, I'm a die-hard Captain Swan shipper, so, yeah... :D), and pre-hope.
See, there's a system. There's a way to make this work.
She figures it out.
Two years in Tallahassee, just to make sure she doesn't care. She doesn't. It's just—it's flat and dull and utterly unremarkable.
Something to be put in the past.
After that, she moves frequently. She's busy, quick, and restless. She's not looking for anything, though. She's fine.
She learns to hone the edges of herself steel-hard, something weaponized and efficient. She doesn't fix her heart, because she doesn't need to. She is absolutely fine.
And that makes it easy. Easy to slip in and out of personas, put on those starry eyes for yet another lowlife, snap out the steel when the moment of truth comes. Easy to drink whiskey like water, slosh it back and fall into her bed. She's just—tired, nothing more. It's a demanding job.
But it's easy for her. She can do this. She doesn't care about having a social life, much less a love life.
She doesn't envy Lindsey, two doors down, sobbing on the phone to her friends about the latest guy.
(Does she envy Mel, engaged for three months, voice high and almost wild with delight, when her fiancé shows up at door with two dozen roses? No. No, she doesn't.)
(She moves, shortly after that.)
Easy, easy, and fine—she reminds herself of these things, of what she has, of what she's left behind. There was nothing in that life to long for.
She has herself, and a job, and a purpose. She gets to tell them to their faces that they're lying, that's she's seen this crap a dozen ways to Sunday before and she is not falling for it.
It feels good. Really good. It's all the purpose she needs, all the meaning.
And it's easy—oh so easy—to keep going, no ties, no tugs to the heartstrings.
No real concern for her heart at all.
Because Emma Swan has never been in love.
