She has to get the coffee maker to work, or else this will be the morning he decides to leave her.
This makes no sense, of course. And yet there she is, the once-feared pirate captain Swan, frantically trying to figure out why the little machine won't turn on. She does this every single morning. If she can make the microwave oatmeal, or send an email, or turn on the air conditioning, then she'll last another day.
(She won't last. She was built on nothing but a few planks of wood and a fickle sea wind. She's wearing a leather jacket which once was slick with the blood of her enemies. And him? He wears a shiny sheriff's badge, and everyone in town knows how he likes his cocoa.)
She's still staring down the coffee maker when he hurries in. He pins his badge onto his jeans as he walks.
"I just got a call," he says. "A drowning at the beach." He grabs his keys.
She stands up to follow him, then instantly regrets the impulse. But how the bloody hell is she supposed to know when to follow and when to stay back? She edges towards the coffee maker, fiddling with the buttons. If he tells her not to come, she can pretend she was only standing to do that.
He grabs an umbrella. "It's really pouring," he says, and hands it to her.
She beams. She tries so hard not to (she's a ipirate/i), but she can't help it. Every damn time, it's like he just handed over his whole heart.
You'd think, when this jogger called the sheriff about a drowning, she would have mentioned the murderous siren.
They've hiked to an inlet on the beach, surrounded by a thick grove of trees. The rain is pouring down in sheets. As they stand there, the jogger tells them: she saw the siren lure a man into the water. The siren changed into a different person - a woman he seemed to know - and the man ran into the water and drowned. Then the siren vanished.
As she describes the incident, Killian does The Face - the one that says, iwhat the hell is my life and why are there sirens in it?/i He's probably never even seen one before. He has his gun ready, like that's all it's going to take.
Emma calls a ride for the jogger and tells her to wait far out of sight and earshot of the beach. The wind picks up, and the water churns.
"Now what?" Killian says. He is soaked to the skin, and keeps pointing his gun at the water like that'll defeat the siren. Emma just sighs.
"Now I get to be the bait," she says.
Killian does the The Face again, so Emma explains,
"Beach sirens don't stay put. If we don't draw her out, she'll move along, and in a few days you'll get a call about another drowning miles away."
"Then I'll do it! You don't have to risk yourself!"
She shakes her head. "Of all my skills, my greatest by far is my powerful intuition when it comes to seeing through magical illusions."
She slides off her coat and hands it to him, along with some of her heavier jewelry and her necklaces. He takes it all automatically, dumbstruck. She pulls her sword out of its hilt.
Then she pauses. "Promise me something?"
"Anything, love."
"Promise you won't watch."
A little smirk plays across his lips. Even in all this rain, all this danger, that dork is ismiling./i He says,
"You know, I do understand the basic concept of sirens. I know what I'm going to see."
She wants to smack him. She wants to hold him. She wants to cry. He does not know how sirens work.
He is not going to see her being lured towards some sort of seductive fantasy version of him. The siren will not turn into a flirting, coaxing Killian. Sirens, despite tales to the contrary, don't just shapeshift based on the victim's sexual desires. It's far more powerful and wicked than that. They read the victim's soul.
And Emma does not want him to watch as Siren Killian tells her that he loves her and wants to spend the rest of her life with her.
"Don't be such a bloody fool," she says. "This isn't a game."
The smirk vanishes, and he's doing the sad puppydog eyes. "I'm sorry, love. Look, whatever it is, I want to be there for you. I want to fight by your side."
She turns away from him and closes her eyes. She has to do this. So she makes her voice as cavalier as possible when she looks at him and says,
"I won't have you risking your life just because you wish to watch me go weak at the knees for a siren. I need to protect myself, I can't have your silly fantasies interfering."
It's like she just slapped him. It's awful. He just stands there, mouth hanging open.
"Right," he snaps, and he walks away.
She wants to run after him. She wants to tell him she just did it to protect him. It occurs to her that picking a fight was not a great way to prepare herself to resist the lure of a loving, committed Killian. She considers running after him, flinging her arms around him.
(She considers never apologizing, letting this constant pain and worry end, and returning to her life at sea.)
And then she marches into the freezing water. It sloshes into her boots, and she hisses through her teeth. She presses the tip of the sword to her palm until it burns and splits the skin. She turns her hand over and squeezes the drops of blood into the sea.
The siren rises out of the water, scales glittering, tiara dripping, purple lips curled in the wickedest of smiles.
"Captain," the siren purrs. "It's an honor."
In response, Emma spits into the water.
The siren shrugs. "You'll like me in a minute."
Emma adjusts her grip on her sword over and over. Her palms are slippery from the rain. She starts the chant in her head: iit's a siren, not Killian, it's a siren, not Killian./i
But instead of transforming, the siren sinks under the water. And then something dark and massive begins to move below the surface. Emma wonders if it is a shark, or a giant squid, but it's far too large. It's rising now, water pouring off it, magnificent and impossible. Emma gasps when she sees the black sail. Black, with a design of a flower.
When she gave it up to rescue Killian, she never thought she'd see it again - it's her ship.
"Killian! Please, believe me, I don't want anything more than you!"
He's back (bloody stubborn fool, of course he came back) and everything is ruined. He's right next to her on the shore, and he looks like she just punched him in the gut.
"Emma," he says, his voice breaking, "I thought sirens turned into the person you desired most."
"Me too. But clearly it's got some other plan." She is about to elaborate on what this plan is, but she forgets. She shakes her head. It feels foggy and slow. A strange mist is creeping over the water.
He takes a step backwards from her, casting his eyes downward. "I think it's time we go our separate ways."
"Killian?"
"I just can't do this, Emma." He gives a little helpless shrug.
"What do you mean?" Her voice quavers. The mist is closer now, swirling and dark.
"Come on. You always knew how this was going to end. I think ithat/i" - he gestures to the Black Swan - "makes it pretty obvious."
"But I gave it up for you! You know that!"
The mist is closing in, dense around him. He whispers, "good-bye, Emma."
"Killian, no!"
But the mist rises up around him in a dark swirl, spinning into a vortex, and then he vanishes. When the mist fades, there's nothing left of him. She falls to her knees in the sand. She claws at the spot where he stood. She cries.
At some point, as she's crying, she starts to notice the sounds of the ship. A flap of a sail, the rocking of the ship in the water, the creak of planks. It's soothing and sweet.
Emma walks toward the ship. The closer she gets, the warmer and sweeter the air is. The rain stops. When she steps onto the deck, the familiar sound of her boots on the planks loosens the knot in her chest. She presses her nose against the old wood of the railing and inhales the scent, old and salty. The flapping of the sails is a more beautiful sound than any music. She trails her fingers along the scratchy ropes. Here is something familiar, something safe, something that will never turn her away or abandon her.
Only one sound is not sweet. Distantly, someone is yelling.
"Emma! Emma! Get off, Emma!"
She turns - the sea breeze billows her hair, a lovely feeling - and there's Killian, scrambling aboard the ship. And shouting. A constant stream of shouting and instructions that don't make sense.
"Emma! You need to get off immediately. This isn't a ship, it's a siren."
Emma lifts the sword with a loose grip and points it jaunitly at his chest as she answers.
"That's Captain Swan to iyou./i" She is pleased at how she manages to keep her chin high, voice cold, eyes hard.
"Emma, listen carefully. The siren turned a fake version of me. The fake me told you that he was leaving you. But that's not true! I love you, and I'm staying."
Emma scoffs. "Even if your story were true, you'd just leave me again." She picks up a rope and ties a practice version of a useful knot. Her fingers dance through it without a moment's hesitation, and the scratchy rope starts a pleasant burning on her fingertips. "This is where I belong."
"The siren is the ship now. And you need to get off! Come ion./i" He tugs on her hand, but she plants her feet. He huffs, exasperated. "Okay, so you're a sailor. You've seen a lot of...weird magic ocean stuff. Right?"
iWeird magic ocean stuff/i is too adorable. It makes her ache for him so much that she simply has to pretend she didn't hear it.
"You've seen sirens before, right?" He says, louder now.
She ties another knot. Loop, turn, bring it around, pull, perfect. Even the smell of the damp old ropes is pleasant, because it's a part of this ship.
"And you think I'm just a siren? Well, a siren wouldn't try to lure you back to shore. And I want you to come back to the shore. Immediately."
She looks at him now. She has to. Because of all her skills, her greatest by far is her powerful intuition for seeing through magical illusions. And her intuition is telling her that something is off. If he truly is trying to get her back to land, he's not a siren.
Nothing makes sense.
"But you said you love me."
"Yes."
She frowns. "Then you imust/i be a siren."
"Oh, Emma." He touches his hand to her cheek. "I want you to come back to the shore, and I love you."
She presses her lips together. She doesn't cannot reconcile it. But she has been a pirate for hundreds of years, and sirens don't tell you that. Ever. So maybe she doesn't have to understand - she just has to heed this strange warning, and figure out the rest later.
She's trembling as she lowers her feet to land.
The siren is long gone, but sometimes, everything Killian says still gives Emma the disorienting feel of that rescue mission.
He says, "I love you." He says, "I want you here." He says, "I always will."
And when he sees her eyes cloud over with the struggle to believe, to accept that such good things are true, he smiles sweetly and adds,
"And I want you to come back to the shore."