It surprises him. She had seemed so nervous over the phone when she asked if they could meet at Granny's for breakfast before work. But when she had walked in and hesitantly removed her hat and scarf, he had frozen in his seat. She hovers anxiously in front of him.
"Do you like it?"
He quickly recovers and clears his throat.
"I do. It's just very different love, and sudden."
She instantly flops down onto the chair opposite him in relief and steals a piece of bacon from his plate. As chew hungrily she pronounces,
"I had to sneak out of the loft this morning, Mary Margret doesn't know yet and I think she'll cry when she finds out."
He raises his hand to her cheek and then runs it through her hair, or what she has left of it. Her glorious golden locks no longer tumble all the way down her back, but end just before her shoulders, and as she turns her head it gently brushes her collar bone.
"Killian, is it ok? I know you liked my my hair."
"I love it love, it's bloody brilliant in fact!"
And he really does think so. She radiates beauty even more so than before and she no longer seems to be weighted down by her hair. The way each curl shines under the diner lights gives her a halo, the angel that she is. He understands why she has cut her hair. She is not the same person she was before the darkness and she needs to separate herself; she is free of the burdens that had held her down before.
Later, after a joy-filled breakfast (only interrupted a few times by towns people who couldn't mind their own bloody business) and a thankfully uneventful day at the station, Killian and Emma walked hand in hand to her parent's apartment. Mary Margret promptly bursts into tears when she finds out.
