She watches quietly by the door as he finishes tying himself (his old self? she tries not to think too hard on it because this crap is too damn weird) and shoving him unceremoniously into a cramped closet.
("You're going to feel that, eventually."
"I already have.")
(She tries not to think about what that means, either.)
"I was different," he says quietly, gruffly, as an explanation for the behavior of the former him. One that she certainly doesn't need.
"I know," she supplies softly. But his attention is elsewhere, wide eyes drifting slowly, clingingly, across his cabin.
He's been this way since they came to the ship, since before he cracked himself under the jaw. Detached and forlorn, even when she'd made a less-than-subtle joke about he and his past self that normally would have had him up and innuendoing in seconds flat.
"What's wrong?" she finally asks into the pressing silence, because there is so blatantly something wrong and if he thinks he is hiding it from her then he sure as hell needs to think again.
"Nothing, love," he answers, too quickly, a tight smile forcing it's way across his lips only to melt away immediately. His expression is guarded, but the wistful sadness is impossible to miss.
Her heart thuds against her chest.
"Killian, why wasn't she in Storybrooke?" she finally asks carefully. He doesn't look at her, instead staring frozenly at the desk in a corner, chewing softly at the inside of his lip. "Killian," she repeats, voice firm and solid and demanding and god damn him if he won't answer her, "What happened to your ship?"
He finally meets her eyes and he is so broken and torn and human and every fiber of her being is tearing apart at itself, screaming and kicking and tearing because she knows and because it was for her.
"It was what had to be done," he tells her, voice soft enough that she imagines it hardly makes a single ripple in the space between them and she's not sure whether to cry or scream or fold in on herself over and over again.
For her.
"Killian…" she takes a cautious step towards him and when he doesn't flinch away, another, until she can brush her fingers across his shoulder and he's looking down at her with those eyes, wide and broken and glistening with tears.
"She was my brothers," he says suddenly, and something in him cracks and crumbles away and it's not Hook in front of her, or Killian, or anything she's ever seen in him before. He's just a boy. An innocent, hurt boy who is so very lost. "She was my brothers, and he died. In this cabin, in my arms," his voice tears gruffly from his lips and he's trying so hard to hold back, to keep it in, but now it's useless and he's an open book.
A tear frees itself from his eye and rolls down his cheek and she reaches to catch it with but hesitates just before she touches. His eyes are trained firmly on hers and her heart aches. She sees herself in those eyes. Sees day old donuts and a sheriffs badge and grey, grey eyes flickering shut, never to open again.
And then the tears are burning the back of her eyes and she can't stop herself from cradling his jaw, from running her thumb softly up his cheek to catch his tear and back down across his damn scar and an unforgiving knot is rising in the back of her throat and she tries to focus herself fully on his eyes and his face and…
Then it's all swan keychains and watches and brown eyes and she breaks, pressing her forehead to his chest as she tries and fails to swallow the sob that shakes her shoulders.
His hand comes immediately to the small of her back, thumb running consoling circles over the lowest knobs of her spine, sending chills through her aching bones.
"I'm sorry," he finally says into her hair, and it makes her heart ache.
"Don't apologize," she shakes her head, peeling herself from his chest to look up at him, not bothering to wipe at the tears painting her cheeks, "Don't. She's your home."
His eyes soften fractionally as his hand leaves her back to come to her cheeks, thumbing gently at her tears as he studies her face.
"She was my home," he corrects gently, and broken promises of Tallahassee ring angrily and emptily in her ears.
Maybe home isn't meant for either of them.
She chews at the inside of her lip until his palm cups her face and his thumb runs cautiously up her chin, settling just beneath her lip. He's so close now that his nose is nudging against hers and their foreheads are brushing and she can't process anything but his gentle breath, coming in uneven bursts at her lips.
"Storybrooke is moving up in the world," she tries to tease, but her uneasy laughter breaks into a sob that she just barely swallows as her vision clouds with tears and her nose bumps again, gently, into his.
"Perhaps Storybrooke," he answers carefully, and she forces her gaze from his lips, back to his eyes. "Or New sodding York, if you bloody must," he teases with a tone she can only compare to a begrudging child.
But then she realizes, really realizes, and she can't breath.
She starts to laugh, or cry, but she never gets to either as he catches her lips and all she can do is kiss him hungrily back, running her hand up to tangle in his hair, pulling him closer and closer to her until she can't even breath and all she wants to do is keep kissing him anyway. Something blows around them and she doesn't notice, can't notice, her only thoughts full completely of him. He finally tears himself from her for air, pressing another soft kiss on the corner of her mouth, the tip of her nose, her forehead and she hardly even noticed the rush in the air earlier but something is tingling in her fingers and she feels her eyes widen as she puts it all into place."
"Killian," she breathes, and he kisses her cheek before hesitantly settling his forehead to hers and looking her in the eyes with those wide blue orbs of his, glistening with quiet awe.
"Aye?" he asks with a single soft spurt of breath that tickles her cheek and makes her heart pound.
Instead of answering she flourishes a hand, sending a playful spurt of wind through his already tousled hair.
His eyes widen comically and she feels like a goddamn lovesick teen but she kisses him again, gentler now, slower, trying not to show just how awed she is, and just how frantically her heart is beating. His hand is hopeless tangled in her hair and she's sure she's a flushing mess and she cant bring herself to care as she pulls back this time, meeting his eyes and offering him the smallest of smiles.
"I don't need New York," she tells him.
She's never seen him smile wider.
(And later, whose to blame her if she never lets him live down the fact that he was in the closet the whole damn time?)