The first time you kiss her, or at least attempt to, it's a complete disaster and you make your excuses pretty quickly and leave as fast as your legs will carry you. You're pretty sure that you looked like a whipped dog, running away with its tail between its legs. You run carrying confused thoughts with you and sporting what is left of your dignity.
As you leave the sheriff station you curse yourself darkly and thank all of the gods you can think of for the fact that your mother is dead and gone, just so she couldn't see that particularly stunning defeat.
You don't know what possessed you in that moment. One minute you were sat in a chair on one side of Em- no Miss Swan's desk with her perched on the desk in front of you and the next you were stood right in her face. You were so close that you could feel her breath on your face, she was close enough for you to smell the hot chocolate on her breath.
You had been arguing about funding for the department, you'd be watching in rapt attention as she argued her case. She said something about needing a new patrol car and money to pay Ruby as her deputy full time. You'd been sat watching her, when out of nowhere (or so you tell yourself) you found yourself in the grips of madness.
You wanted to shut her up, you wanted to make her understand just how infuriating you found her. You wanted, in that moment, to find out what her lips felt like moving against yours. So you'd stood up, and she stopped ranting about funds. You watched her face in that moment and you're certain that you saw her eyebrow quirk up ever so slightly, as though she was challenging you. It was almost as though she were goading you on.
Before you could close the distance between you however her phone rang. In that moment, she seemed to snap to attention and realise what exactly the two of you were about to do. You saw the panic reach her eyes and the 'oh-shit' expression that was so profoundly Emma flash across her face. She didn't move away from you but she went rigid in that moment.
So you turned and walked away with as much pride as you could muster at the time, you remind yourself that you were once a queen, and queens do not show when they feel defeated. As you walk away you resolve to avoid Miss Swan so that you are never in that embarrassing situation again. The way you see it is quite simple, if you are not alone together ever again, then you will never have to deal with what your almost kiss means.
The second time, or rather the first time that you actually kiss, you find yourself going back on your word to never be alone with Miss swan ever again. You suppose that you should have seen it coming as she is Henry's other mother, but you had tried so hard not to think about it that you had succeeded in convincing yourself that you hadn't thought about it.
The second time is in your kitchen, on your territory, but it is not started by you. You're washing the dishes from dinner, normally you would put them in the dishwasher but there's something about doing it by hand that soothes you. The reason you need soothing is because one Miss Swan had come over for a family dinner for the first time in over a month. Throughout dinner she had avoided your gaze, but every so often, when you were looking at Henry, you could feel her looking at you.
The warm, soapy water and the monotonous actions are calming your nerves when you feel a presence behind you. A presence that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. You don't turn around though, you don't even acknowledge her presence, you just act like she isn't there. By the time you finish the dishes, you've forgotten that she's there.
When you turn around after drying your hands, you're surprised to see her stood there. Before you can move away from her, she moves forwards. Her arms grip the counter on either side of you and you can feel your breath pick up. She doesn't say anything, she just leans in and kisses you. It lasts for a long time and when she pulls away you're both breathing heavily. Before you can speak or move or do anything really she turns and leaves. A couple of seconds later you hear her yell goodbye to Henry and then you hear the door close behind her as she leaves.
You're first real kiss with Emma Swan leaves you reeling and angry and more than a little disorientated.
The third time you kiss Emma Swan, you are the one who initiates it. It's been months since the last time you kissed and your feelings for her have grown. This time, when you kiss her you're both in danger and there's a chance that one of you will die before morning and so you kiss her. It's a desperate kiss, and you pour as much feeling into it as you can. You hold her close using the material of the tank top she is wearing. She kisses you back with just as much feeling and although you don't want it to end it does.
Henry is safe, he's in your vault which is protected by both yours and Emma's magic, and now you have to prepare to fight. You initiate the kiss because you can't tell her how you feel, so you kiss her instead. You know she understands.
The fourth time you kiss Emma Swan, it's the next morning and it's because you're desperate. You don't have any hope that this will work but you try anyway because Henry begs you and you could never say no to him. So you kiss her because your son begs and pleads with you, because he wants to lose Emma as little as you do. You kiss her because he thinks that she's your true love, and you kiss her because more than anything you want that to be true.
During the night she was hit by a dark curse. More than one, from what you can tell. You cradle her in your arms as tears seep through the cracks between your closed eyelids and as your lower lip trembles from the effort of containing your heart broken sobs. Henry is sat beside you, rocking gently in place as he watches you trying to work up the courage to kiss his birth mother. Over the months, being the observant boy he is, he had picked up on the shift in your relationship, but he hadn't said nothing until now.
With a shuddering breath being inhaled through your nose, you gently bring your head down to Emma's and with your foreheads resting together, you softly brush your lips together. It is hesitant and your breath halts in your throat as her cold lips meet yours in a barely there kiss. You pause there, hoping against all hope that her lips will begin to move under yours. You pause in hope that she really is your true love, because for her you could become good, truly good. For her you would redeem yourself, you would do anything to be worthy of her.
All you want is for her to live, you want her to wake up more than anything, even if she freaks out and runs away and never returns. She had only been hit because she was saving those around her, you will her to wake up.
Slowly, you draw your face back up, away from Emma. Your hand comes up to trace her face, you can feel your face crumbling in misery. You can hear Henry beginning to sob next to you as he realises that his mother won't be waking up.
The last dregs of hope within our tired soul seep out of you as your hand cradles Emma's cheek. Storybrooke is silent around you, no one has come to seek out the fallen saviour. The woman whom had willingly sacrificed her life to save them mere hours before. None of them seem to care enough to come to her, even though they must be able to hear Henry's broken cries from Main Street.
You steel yourself as you prepare to say goodbye to the woman you have grown to love over the past months. You run your hand over the bridge of her nose, over her eyelids and back around to cradle her cheek again. Just as you are about to remove your hand for good, the fallen saviour comes to life beneath you. She gasps in a breath and her hand comes up to grasp the back of yours. Her eyes fly open and she stares up at you for a second before her ears seem to register Henry's broken crying beside you and her eyes flit to him. She sits up, far faster than should have been possible due to the amount of damage she had sustained hours previously, and her face settles into a deep knit frown as she takes in the state of the pair of you.
"Why are you both crying?"
Henry startles as he looks up, his eyes flying between you and Emma as he seems to put the parts of the puzzle together. After a few seconds he starts to laugh, at first just a chuckle which then grows to a belly shaking laugh. Emma stares at his for a few seconds before turning to you quizzically, you haven't moved from the spot you had become frozen to in those seconds.
You shake you head to try and clear it from the daze it is in "I woke you up. From a dark curse..."
She looks at you in confusion before something seems to click. "You're my true love?" You can see her smile starting to form, and it's difficult for you to believe that mere moments ago she had been practically dead in your arms.
She doesn't wait for you to reply, she merely grabs you by the lapels of your blazer, screwing them up in the process, and pulls you to her. The fifth time you kiss Emma Swan, in the middle of the road, you can both feel the love in it. The blast of pure white magic that explodes from between you both is intoxicating, you can feel every last piece of darkness being chased form you soul, and in that moment, you finally feel like a happy ending is something you have finally reached.
