I should be preparing for finals, but this brainworm just would not let me go. So here you go, tissue warning in advance.
I don't own OUAT.
It had been a hell of a day.
Murphy's law had joined up with fate, karma, and the Dark One, and they had proceeded to make a mess of her town.
But now it was finally over, and she was free to go home.
Home. She had spent her life traveling from one place to another, without a place to call home, her whole life, and there was a certain poetic irony in the fact that home was now bobbing at the end of a dock, rather than being rooted to the ground. Her parents, especially David, weren't particularly happy with her choice, but Killian made her happy, and they accepted that, at least.
A dark shape detached itself from the shadows and met her a few steps from the gangplank. "It's almost midnight lass," Killian said, "I was about to become worried."
"Sorry," Emma mumbled, wrapping her arms around him and enjoying the solid warmth and the scent of the sea that hung around him no matter where they were, "I got hung up dealing with the three blind mice, who aren't actually blind or mice and then I had to walk here."
"Where's your little yellow death trap?" Killian asked, peering over her shoulder.
"It broke down halfway through the morning," Emma answered, not bothering to move and make the words more comprehensible. After the day she'd had, she deserved the chance to relax and against all odds, she trusted him enough that she could relax with him and just allowed herself to be. She didn't have to be the Savior of Storybrooke or a princess or the sheriff with him, she could be just Emma.
It was one of the things she loved about him.
"The cruiser got wrapped around a lightpole half an hour after that and David was using the truck, so I've been walking," she continued, "It's been a crappy day."
"Then I believe a better ending to your day is in order," Killian replied. He picked her up, arms under her knees and behind her back, and turned back toward the Jolly Rodger. The first time he had done that, Emma had freaked out, convinced she was going to fall because Neal had once tried the same sort of thing over the threshold of one of their stolen hotel rooms and wound up dropping her, but now she relaxed further into his arms, winding her own around his neck and craning up to capture his lips.
Emma would never admit it, but she had fantasized about kissing him from the moment she first saw him in the Enchanted Forest, and even now when he had kissed her more times than she could remember, it still took her breath away.
Killian carried her up the gangplank and onto his, no, their ship. Most of the time, Emma paused to say hello to the Jolly Rodger when she boarded, as the ship had a tendency to get huffy if she felt she was being ignored, but right now she was far too wrapped up in Killian to care where they were going, let alone what the enchanted vessel thought of her.
He kicked open the door to his quarters and Emma tugged him with her when he set her on his bed. They tumbled down onto the covers in a mess of limbs, entwined so thoroughly it was impossible to see where one ended and the other began.
This, Emma thought, pulling Killian down she could kiss him, long and slow and sweet, must be what Happily Ever After was like.
She's never experienced pain like this before. It feels like she's having her heart ripped out.
No, having Regina's or even Gold's fingers fishing around in her chest would be preferable, less painful than what she's experiencing.
Emma shuts the door to the captain's cabin, shutting out the world, and slumps against it. She wishes for warm arms to go around her and an accented voice to tell her it will all be alright. She wishes it could be alright, wishes she didn't feel like she was falling apart at the seams.
But most of all, she wishes this was just a dream and she could wake up.
The surroundings seem to mock her, untouched and pristine and before she knows what she's doing, Emma is tearing around the cabin, throwing things, rending destruction in her wake because it's easier than trying to deal with everything right now.
She suspects she'll regret this later, but the only person who might be able to talk her down right now is gone to a place where nothing can touch him and she can't bring herself to care.
She stops when the interior of the cabin looks like the interior of her heart and collapses onto his bed, sobbing so hard she can hardly breathe. A thousand miles away, on a world that isn't spinning crazily off its orbit, she can hear someone calling her name, but Emma ignores them, rolling over and hiding her face in a pillow instead.
For the first time, she wishes someone could take her heart. Anything has to be better than feeling this horrible ache.
It's not lost on her that he already did, and that's the cause of the pain.
She collapses into sleep, welcoming the relief from this ache. When she wakes, the sky is dark outside, and her surroundings are rocking in the way she's come to associate with being out on the open water, rather than in the harbor.
She gets up and trudges out on deck, numbly watching the Jolly Rodger sail herself, without any external hands guiding her. She had been enchanted the first time Killian had shown her this, honored when the ship chose to listen to her just as much as her captain.
Emma looks back, finding the lights of Storybrooke in the distance, and knows why the ship brought them out here.
Killian would never have been happy on land, not so close to the Crocodile, even though he is no longer the Dark One. Emma skinned him of his magic in her pirate's place, and there's a certain poetic irony in that it's his death that fulfilled his quest for vengeance.
The Rodger creaks in a mournful sort of way, as though she knows where Emma's thoughts are and wants to offer condolences.
"I miss him too," she can admit as much to the ship, because this was the other woman in Killian's life, and now she's one of the few things Emma has left of her pirate.
They bury him at sea, a private funeral beneath the stars, and Emma looks up and finds the Second Star, Killian's portal to Neverland, the land he always wanted to take her, and tries to fix into her mind exactly what he was like.
Wishing that if time can't be merciful enough to rewind, it would freeze here so she never has to forget him.
She will know won't be able to sleep easily tonight, no matter what she has planned tomorrow or how much she needs the sleep, so Emma will stay above deck, thinking that her year is counted as much in deaths as it is in birthdays now.
She'll trace the constellations she can remember, sinking into memories of when Killian tried to teach her how to navigate by the stars. She'll be so lost in memories, trying to remember the exact details of a face that gets blurrier with every year that goes by that she won't notice when a set of small footsteps joins her on deck.
"What are you doing?" Faith will ask.
Emma will turn and hold out her arms. The girl will run straight to her, perhaps sensing that her mother needs the comfort. "I was remembering your father," she will tell her daughter.
Not for the first time, she will regret that she has not a single picture of her pirate, that Faith will never know exactly what her father looked like, forced to depend on her mother's recollections.
In a way, it will make the loss easier to bear, never having to turn around and unexpectedly see him smiling back at her; but in another it will just make the hole in her heart larger.
"Tell me?" Faith will request, and Emma will settle them at the base of the mast and tell her about the man who loved her so much he died for both of them, who was vibrantly alive and always fought for what he wanted, even when what he wanted was fighting back. She'll recall sword fights and stargazing and sailing and more enjoyable activities, though the last she will keep to herself.
When Faith falls asleep, Emma will smooth back her daughter's dark hair and stay there for a while, watching the Second Star that will still burn brightly for a boy who grew up and is never coming back. Eventually, she will carry the girl back into their quarters and tuck them both into bed in the captain's cabin.
Emma will lay there and watch her daughter until she finally falls asleep herself, counting her blessings. While Killian's face will get more indistinct every year she goes without seeing him, she'll never forget what his eyes looked like.
Not while she will see them every time his daughter looks at her.
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