Dizzy.
Everything was spinning and the world was falling and her hair was flying and—
Her feet met with something solid and she crumpled, only realizing as her body crashed down around it that there was down and it was the ground and she was wet and God she was going to be sick. She clutched her stomach and let out an involuntary moan as the world screeched to a halt, rolling to her side and squeezing her eyes closed and fighting the vertigo that was making her thoughts slosh uncontrollably in her shaken mind.
There was another rustle nearby, joined by a curse and a moan, and she forced her eyes open around the spinning, focusing on the lump on the forest floor in front of her— all tan cloth and mussed black hair and then, wide, bright, blue.
"Swan," he greeted through clenched teeth, but his eyes softened considerably when they opened to hers, and she let out a relieved breath she hadn't realized she was holding because he remembered her and he was here and Regina was right and…
She halted her thoughts there, trying not to consider what their current state of presence and memories meant. But it nagged and pulled and then just flooded her.
She was spared because her magic, the part of her that made her savior, made her untouchable, was still in place.
She was there because they'd— because she'd rendered the curse on Killian's lips void and brought the air back to his lungs (and then she was almost sick, remembering his pale skin and lifeless eyes and no, she couldn't think about that).
And now her parents, her future, Henry… everything— depended on them. Her hand clenched at nothing at her side, still warm from where her son had just been squeezing it.
"I believe in you, mom."
She pushed the thoughts to the back of her clouded, racing mind, digging her fingers into the dirt by her head and pushing herself upright. Her brain reeled and protested and she let out a long, heavy breath.
"Easy, love," Killian was already sitting, rubbing the back of his head with a soft wince, but concern evident in his blue eyes. They were searing into her, searching her face, reading into every line and pore.
She swallowed the lump rising in the back of her throat, blinked away the burning in her eyes, because crying wasn't going to get Henry back.
"We need to get going," she forced the words past her lips as she rose to her feet, wobbling and almost falling on her face when her badly placed foot discovered she'd been redressed in a floor-length peasant dress somewhere in the spinning nightmare.
Fan-freaking-tastic.
She glanced again at Killian, (now also righted), at the handsome brown coat her mind had been too mangled to notice before. But his attention was otherwise claimed, holding his hand— no… hands— in front of his face, wriggling ten perfect fingers, eyes wide and open and so innocently awed.
She stepped forward unthinkingly and reached gently up to his fingers— his real, moving, living fingers— and hesitated before tangling her own cautiously through them.
"Bloody hell," he finally muttered under his breath, eyes fluttering closed behind his long, dark lashes. His fingers gently folded around hers, giving her hand a soft squeeze and just holding her, a moment. But then a self-deprecating smirk slowly lit up his face. "This whole hero thing does seem to have it's perks, aye love?"
She ran her thumb gently up and down the back of his hand— solid, warm, muscles twitching— and he squeezed tighter.
Finally, he let out a soft and slightly defeated sigh.
"Your father will be needing a tree in his path, if I'm not mistaken," he said, eyes trained gently on her, never leaving her, making no move to start their quest.
"You're right," she agreed, nodding once and tearing herself from him. And it felt like a physical tear, too, knowing what they did now.
She wasn't sure what came next. But they had work to do—the savior never got a break. And he'd taken it upon himself in stride that he never did either.