What are words?

Humans are funny, fickle, extremists. We seek to do what cannot be done.

We live in a world of moments and feelings. We live in a world of existing, of breathing, of being. We live in a world of now. We live in a world of emotion and thoughts and feelings.

But humans, we do not comprehend this. We are mutations, we are malformed. Our brains haven't quite caught on yet. We can't cope in this world. We are vessels of future and past and, hardly of the present. We seek to explain what we are feeling. We long, so desperately, to hold on to what we have. Because there are little moments in life that are precious. And as humans, humans that cannot cope with loss and moving on and letting go and just existing, we search for ways to hold on to these moments forever.

Words are one of these ways.

With words, we can make a moment last for eternity. With words, we can explain what is happening inside our heads, our hearts, our souls. With words, we can share a moment with anyone in the world… and by moving the movement through different people, throughout time, we make it alive. We create life.

But sometimes, words can't perfectly express life. We can create it, but it's just that—a recreation—a recreation of something you can't quite replicate.

There are moments—moments that are raw and pure and indescribable. These moments can't be captured. They slip out of our grasp, yet in a beautiful way, in the kind of way that scream "im too beautiful too be recreated. I can't be shared. I have to remain inside your head forever, for only you to see. Im your little secret." And the moment is so precious that you can't describe it. You can't share it. It's yours. It belongs to you, and you only, forever.

It's the kind of moment when someone smiles at you and all of the sunshine in the world is just raining out of the heavens. Everything pauses. It's still. It all fades away. Your pain, your suffering, your reality, all your problems. They're gone, and it's only this person in front of you—their smile, their heart, their presence. And you look at them, at their heart (their soul) and you see them, really see them, something they've only let you see. They look at you, in your eyes (in your soul) and it's something you've only ever let them see. In this brief precious moment, it's just the two of you in the world, and you are sweet and innocent and vulnerable.

It was these kind of moments that you keep, that are just yours, that you can't recreate in words, no matter how you try.

And Emma Swan found that her head was filled with these moments. They were filled with soft bubbles of laughter, in small words shared at two am, in intakes and exhales of air, in the flash of smiles, in gentle touches, in small conversations, in silence shared over mugs of coffee, in the way sunlight pools through a car window and lands on someone's face ,in the simple presence of a person besides her.

Perhaps this was the reason Emma swan always remained quiet. Perhaps this is why she could never tell Regina how she felt.

Snow White had asked Emma once why she had never told Regina about her feelings. After all, it had been so many years. So much time had passed. Henry was grownup now….

Emma had looked at her mother in that moment, and Snow saw how truly grown up her daughter was. She could see all her strength and wisdom glowing gently in her daughter's eyes. It made her fill up with this sad sense of swelling pride.

"It's not the kind of love I can express that way," she had said.

She couldn't say, "Reinga I love you" because that wasn't it. That wasn't the story. Those words couldn't explain the way she had once hated her, loathed her, resented her, then slowly learned to learn from her, to trust her, to care for her, to come to a point where she would have died for her.

It couldn't express the way she felt when she looked into her eyes and felt Regina's soul mingling with and connecting with and being tangled up with and making love with her own soul.

It couldn't explain the way her eyes teared up and she felt like everything in the world was right when Regina showed her a rare, raw, genuine smile.

It couldn't explain the way Regina was the only person that could make Emma feel alive. It couldn't explain how she made Emma's heart roar with a passion and a love and a life she had lost. It couldn't explain how she made the world brighter, better, more full of that child-like awe she hadn't held for so long.

Yet it also couldn't explain the way they cried together, died together, suffered together. How they trusted each other with their darkest sides, with their most precious secrets, with their very cores that struggled against themselves. It couldn't explain the way they drowned together, tackled the world together, kept each other breathing. It couldn't explain how much they suffered, and how much hurt and relief it took to suffer with each other.

But most of all, it could not explain how much Regina and Emma needed each other. Not ever.

Snow White looked at her daughter, in awe of the person she had become. When had she grown so wise, so full?

"Are you ever going to tell her?" she asked her daughter.

And Emma smiled gently. "She knows," she said, and thought to all the times they'd shared gentle touches, talked until the sun rose, showed each other their most vulnerable sides, saved each other's lives, made sacrifices for each other, loved each other's son.

"She knows."