Happy Holidays everyone! I want to thank everyone for the kind words with my other stories and hope you enjoy this one.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

-Robert Frost

The first time he saw her he was sure his life would end by ice. He looked into her eyes and knew that she would have no qualms leaving him to the ogre, exactly like she said she would. It was no bluff. She was ice cold.

When she left him on top of the beanstalk, chained this time, he saw right through to her heart. It was encased in ice but it was still beating. And the fire in him wanted to destroy it. This was no tender sentiment. He didn't want to simply melt the ice. He wanted it blown to smithereens, crushed beneath his out of control flames, while she begged for mercy. Her doe-eyes speaking of sorrow had temporarily blinded him to the core of frost beneath. He had for one moment tamed his blazing anger festering for 300 years for her and she had doused it cruelly. And all that was left was a raging inferno.

Then she had saved him from the Dark One. Her icy voice informed him it was by accident and not design. Her survival instinct had kicked in when she saw Gold waving his hands around maniacally and she had dove for cover and tripped over his big feet. He didn't bother to point out that her swan dive had conveniently knocked him out of the way and put her in the direct line of fire. He was too busy staring at his hands coated with her blood. And right then he knew his instincts when he had first met her had been right. She would be the end of him.

The first time she saw him, it was like looking into hell's own fury. Despite his silly voice playing at innocence and childish pout, she had seen the burning savagery in his eyes. Blacksmith her ass. He was Dante's Inferno come alive.

She knew she had to leave him when his pain filled eyes tempted her into believing they were kindred souls. His anguish when he spoke of a lost love was like a blinding reflection of her own grief. It formed a hairline crack in the wall of ice she had built, barely there but existing all the same. She ran scared, and his thundering scream reminded her of what she had forgotten in that one moment. He was fire, threatening to burn her alive.

Then he had saved her son from Cora. The smugness bleeding through his voice bespoke of a pirate's code of honor. It wasn't personal and it certainly wasn't about her. She ignored his blathering and shut him up by crushing his lips beneath her own. And right then she knew. He was emblazoned into the very fabric of her being.

The world knew right as it was teetering on the edge of total ruin that fire and ice weren't mutually exclusive after all. His crushed heart had set off an apocalypse in the Enchanted Forest and her keening wail could be heard all the way to Neverland. The most powerful magic of all, true love, so pure it was supposed to be incorruptible and untainted. And now they all knew why. When something so powerful and so pure ceased to exist any longer, so too would the world. Molten lava ran in streams scorching the earth and ice rained down from the sky freezing all in its path.

Finally, Henry ran through the conflagration surrounding the two, one dead, the other wreaking death. He would be the only one to get through to her with a simple tap to her chest. She looked up tearfully, and it took a frozen moment in time to understand what he was trying to tell her. Placing her heart in his chest she held her breath in hope as did the rest of the world, for his new first breath. And when it came both fire and ice retreated.

Turns out, both were wrong in their fears. She wasn't the end of him nor was he, her ruination. It was a case of mutually assured destruction. There was no more Captain Hook. Or even Killian Jones. Just as there was no more Emma Swan. There was only Killian and Emma, fire and ice.