DISCLAIMER: Not mine, I'm just playing in E&A's sandbox while they're out planning a billion ways to kill us each Sunday. Title comes from the absolutely gorgeous song by Damien Rice The Blower's Daughter.
A/N: This is what happens when Sui P. Lestrange bombards me with feels. Your thoughts are more than welcome!
Based on her prompt: I seriously need someone to write something about Emma breaking down after she made Walsh go poof. And Killian just sitting at the other side of the door, his head against the door listening to her muffled sobs. And he wants to go in there to console her but it's not what she needs. So he just keeps standing there until it all goes quiet and she'll sigh and get up and thank him. Because she just KNEW he was standing there, giving her space, truly saving her. Because seeing her weak was the last thing she wanted.
"We leave in the morning," she brushes past him and closes the door shut.
"Swan," Hook's voice, concerned and gentle, carries through but she can't let him see her breaking down.
She should have known. God, she should have known. She doesn't get happy endings and it was stupid to hope this would be any different. The nagging part in the back of her brain said as much but she shoved it down and ignored it.
She loves - loved - him. She truly believes she did. He was good for Henry. For her. Constant. Predictable. Safe.
And nothing but a lie.
How could she be so stupid? She knew nothing about him - nothing, - yet still let him into her life. Into Henry's life.
It felt real. Happy. Just once in her entire life she felt truly happy, only to have that happiness ripped away from her. To realise it was never real to begin with.
Her legs give out and she's crouched on the floor, back to the door.
It shouldn't hurt this much. She should be angry instead. And there's a part of her that is. Not at Walsh, though.
At the man on the other side of the door. The man who brought her life back. The real one.
She should have never drank that potion. She should have left him rot in the police station. She should have…
That's a lie, too. Deep down she knows he's been right all along. She'd much rather face the harsh truth than carry on with this perfect farce.
But it doesn't make it hurt less.
She has to clasp a hand over her mouth to keep the sobs in.
He hears her muffled sobs on the other side of the thin metal between them and it breaks him to be this helpless.
What did he expect, though? She's had a life here. A good one. And he just stormed in to tear it away from her.
He would have, either way. Even if her family wasn't in danger, he would have done just the same. He's still too much of a pirate to let the possibility of her remembering him - remembering them - merely slip past.
He lays his good hand against the cool surface, praying he knew a way to lift that burden off her shoulders.
He closes his eyes, her whimpers echoing in his mind, and stands very still. He hopes one day he'd be the one to offer her the happiness she deserves.
He doesn't know how long they stay there, on the opposite sides of the metal door, until everything grows quiet.
Something shuffles on her side and the door creaks open.
She stands there, silent, hints of wetness in her eyelashes, and his heart breaks slightly.
"Thank you," her voice is soft, a bare whisper against the rumble of a waking city, "thank you, Killian."
Fin.