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He should know by now, that this is how the story goes.
Father, Mother, Liam, Milah, Bae and now-
This is how the story always goes.
Somebody loves him.
Somebody leaves.
He had hoped.
A mad, far-fetched notion perhaps. Something befitting strapping young Lieutenant Jones. Something befitting the boy who'd had his heart broken but not completely, his brother holding on to the pieces long enough for them to stitch themselves back together.
But despite it all, when he had first seen her again, he had hoped.
Dressed in grey, rough around the edges, she looks jagged. Like the hem of an old shirt, stitches loosening, fabric splitting into its threads. Like someone deconstructed and hastily put back together. But, he notices none of these things. His eyes fix on hers, drinking in their emerald green like water in a desert. Wide and scared, she looks ready to run but the gods be damned if he's about to let her leave him again.
She falls into him when he touches her, all her fear melting away as she holds him as tight as he holds her. He tries then, to bind all her broken edges back together just like his big brother had done for him once. The space between them disappearing into nothing as he mutters reassurances, her face pressed into his neck. He mumbles his concern, his affection, his love as her hot tears fall against his skin.
And finally, he whispers hope.
A far-fetched notion, something befitting the young man whose eyes hadn't yet been darkened by kohl and bitterness, whose heart hadn't yet been shattered.
He should have known.
(She leaves them all one afternoon and he is left screaming her name into a clearing.)
(This is how the story always goes.)
He realises soon enough that her heart is a tangled web of string, woven of all the shades of her from the deepest black to the most blinding white and in her quest to untangle it, she changes.
He sees her in grey, in white, in black.
And loves her each time.
(It is slowly killing him.)
In some ways it is easier when she is in black.
It is easier because the monster living inside her heart reveals itself. It is wild and strong and unabashedly rapturous in its joy. And it becomes easier for him to tell them apart.
She is a vision when she is like this. Her head held high, her steps crisp and precise. She walks through the streets of Storybrooke as though the world resides on the tip of her finger. She looks whole and alive, like embracing the demon inside had filled in the ragged pieces of her soul, stitched them back together in black thread and left a little more of itself behind each time that it did.
This time, she is the one who touches him.
Her hands twist into his lapels, an echo of a life he can't seem to recall, drowning in a haze of her scent, her eyes, her lips. So soft, so inviting. His arm rises to wrap around her, aching to give in to the temptation. She looks up at him through lowered lashes, coy, light, laughing. Her fingers rising to brush against the skin of his neck, going down, down to his chest and scratching gently there.
Her touch is fire and ice all at once and he wants more, more, more. It doesn't quite feel like betrayal. She is the same after all, his Emma, his love.
She begs for him to kiss her, a whimper tucked into her voice, her need for him a palpable thing between them now as she shuffles closer. Her mouth hovers above his, open and waiting.
"Please, Killian."
He begins to forget. The tender smiles and the stolen laughter. Moments they had snatched away from the world. Her head on his shoulder, his arm around her waist. Smiles bumping clumsily as they kiss, lips sticky from their sweet breakfast. He begins to forget the softness of their love, the gentleness of it until all that remains is the want.
Gods, but he has wanted her.
He has craved and thirsted for her skin, for her lips, for the secret parts of her he wants to claim. She is his and his alone and now that she stands before him, begging him, her voice a husky whisper in the street, a moan hidden in the back of her throat, who is he to refuse her?
He feels the heat rush through his skin as her magic works. He licks his lips, his eyes fixed on her mouth. Red and shining and all he can think of in that moment is how much he wants to sink his teeth into it.
But then, a flash of a smile and a tilt of her head and the spell seems to break. He sees it lurking behind her, inside her. The darkness that pulses beneath her soft skin, the demon that hides in the back of her smile, in the glint of her eyes.
He sees it and pulls away.
(He only just succeeds.)
It is not her.
She is gone.
(This is how the story goes.)
It is hardest when she is in white.
The last time he had seen her in white, they still been in the land outside time. One day of forgetting she had said. One last day before they begin their quest in earnest.
She meets him in a glade, her hair open, her smile sweet. She looks as though she is glowing from the inside, and if he didn't know better he could not have said that she carries darkness within her.
But he does know, so he looks for it even as guilt churns in his stomach for doubting her.
It had become easier in the days that she had been grey, her eyes growing sharper and dimmer in turns, her smile cruel and caring all at once. He had learned to find it in the almost savage curl of her lips, in the sudden scratch of her nails as she held his hand.
It hides well this time. Its malevolence invisible in the pink of her cheeks, in the sound of her laughter. He knows that this is but a ruse, its most clever one yet perhaps, but he can't help but surrender. His soul aching and tired after so long without her.
He stops resisting.
He lets himself love her.
And it is as though they are made new.
Their every touch and kiss is laced with an innocent wonder. She smiles when he presses a flower into her palm, biting her lip and standing on her toes to kiss him in thanks. His hand brushes against hers and even though they have held hands a thousand times before, this small of brush of fingers feels as though a bonfire had been lit in his heart. They speak of nothing and everything. The stars and the sky, the colours that had made them believe in magic as a child, the ways in which they love one another.
Perhaps it is where they are, surrounded by the constant newness of this eternal spring, the magic that lives in the heart of this land buzzing in the air. Perhaps it is because they have not had a quiet moment in so long that they have forgotten what they are like. Perhaps it is simply an attempt to repair the centuries of heartbreak they hold between them.
Perhaps.
Or perhaps it is the darkness playing a game, letting him have this, her, only to take it away.
But he doesn't not let himself dwell on that thought, preferring to concentrate on the way her laughter dances across his skin, lighting tiny little fires along the way. The way her hands wrap around his waist on the horse as they ride, her head resting on his shoulder.
She is incandescent in her joy, her glow dimming the very sun.
She kisses him again as they sit by the water, falling gently into the grass, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed as she traces his cheekbone with her fingers and he hovers above her. She whispers them then. The words they had both held locked away in their hearts for so long that they had forgotten where they had left the key. The words she had handed to him and left, taking his poorly bandaged heart with her.
She whispers them again and again as he kisses her, laughing through the words as he presses his love into her neck, her jaw, her temple. Finally he brings his forehead to rest against hers as her giggles die down and he wants to speak, to tell her that he loves her too. That his heart has been hers since he had heard the rusty organ beat again. That he wants to stay here in this moment with her forever, where their words colour the air between them, where she is happy and carefree, where it feels a little like their hearts had never been hurt at all.
He wants to speak, but the words get stuck in his throat, his vision suddenly blurring as her fingers come up to wipe the errant tears away. He kisses her palm, taking her hand in his, his eyes closing as he presses a kiss to her lips.
But when he looks at her again, he knows.
He sees her now. She is blurred around her edges, hazy and diffused. She is herself and yet not. Like all the darkest parts of her had been locked away somewhere and left the light for this day. And only this day, he realises, as he scans her form. The darkness beginning its return as the light around them starts to dim.
Her smile is sad as she meets his eyes, understanding that he knows. She says the words again and holds him as he collapses into her chest, rolling them over to their sides as his arms come tight around her waist. She cards her fingers through his hair and doesn't stop saying the words, pressing kisses to his temple. His grip only grows tighter as time passes, far too quickly now. He hides in her scent, her voice, her kiss, desperately trying to escape what he knows is coming.
She stops moving, one last lingering kiss to his forehead and a final whisper of the words.
And she is gone.
(This is how the story goes.)
That is the day he remembers later as they fight, blood and heart and soul to bring her back. That is the day he remembers when it is all he can do to keep himself from marching over to her and begging her to hold him. When the dark and hollow places of his soul echo with the ache of being left behind.
That is the day he remembers.
Perhaps the story would be different this time.
He lets himself hope.
A far-fetched notion, more suited to—
She had left him then too. Even on the day that he treasures, that he struggles to hold between his fingers as it threatens to spill through the cracks, even then she had left him.
After all, this is how the story goes.
Somebody loves him.
Somebody-