Her cheeks are wet with tears as she follows her mother's logical command, clicking the locks shakily into place and holding her brother near to her. She is relieved beyond words that the curse will not affect her. That it will not cut deep into her worst parts and bring a monster clawing free.
But she cannot bear that it will harm everyone else.
She does not care to be the savior over and over and over again.
Her brother shifts, fussing in her arms as if he knows what is coming and is putting up his own quiet protest, and Emma presses her lips firmly together.
She feels as if she loses everyone she loves every goddamn week.
And then she hears the door.
A million thoughts are swirling through her mind when she sees him, when she asks Elsa to hold her brother and passes him blindly to her.
He shouldn't be here.
She tells him as much selfishly, because it is he alone she is not sure she can stand to be around when the curse sets in.
She cannot bear to hear what insults might tumble past the lips that have kissed her so fiercely and murmured strong assurances to her every step of the way. She isn't prepared for the pain it will be sure to cause her. She isn't prepared for those lips to be sullen.
"Aye," he breathes as she approaches him shakily, and his gaze is sullen and trained so firmly upon her that she thinks again it may just drill straight through her. "I know. I just needed to see you."
His gaze does not falter and she hates the way her heart thuds towards him, urging her forward as he says something about chaining himself to the dock that makes her ache for him.
His eyes fall heavily to her lips and drift back up her face.
Studying her.
Memorizing her.
"I needed to see you one more time."
She sniffs and fights against the sob rising up in her throat, pretending that tears are not slipping endlessly from her burning eyes.
"Killian, I…" She chokes out, and the tenderness that fills his expression very nearly breaks her and the sob chokes against the back of her throat, "I'm not a tear-tearful goodbye kiss person, but…" She presses her eyes tightly shut, trying desperately to hold her ground. But he is so close and his expression is burned permanently to her mind and when her eyes fall open and he is still watching her brokenly, her resistance falters. "Maybe just this once," she says through her sob, reaching to grasp at the scruff of his face and pull his lips roughly to hers.
He kisses her hard and when she drags her lips from his he kisses the corner of them and her cheek and all the way down her neck, burrowing deep in her hair and letting out a heavy sigh before breathing her slowly, lovingly in.
She clings to him and squeezes the tears shut into her eyes.
When she forces herself to pull away her nose brushes his cheek and she reaches to again cradle his jaw and just hold him a moment. She cannot force her eyes open.
She is not a teary goodbye kiss person.
Not at all.
He cannot meet her eyes either as a broken goodbye tumbles from his lips, and she can practically hear the multitude of things his tongue presses back.
But she hears and she knows.
She is not a teary goodbye kiss person.
She cannot imagine leaving him without one.
And she cannot imagine this is their goodbye.
The word rises in the back of her mind and she shoves it back hard, brow furrowing as he moves back from her.
She touches her lips, watching after him and using everything she has to keep her feet planted to the dirty linoleum of the sheriff's office as his eyes finally cling to her as he rounds the exit—wide and watering and breaking to bits.
It isn't right.
It is in his kiss goodbye that she notices something is wrong. The way it isn't quite him. The way he doesn't drag relentlessly at her lips as if his heart is up his throat. It is in the way he presses near to her but doesn't feel her, caresses her but doesn't hesitate in the way she's learned to relate to him—savoring every moment. Memorizing every touch.
The town has to come first, or he will never stand a chance of being remotely the same again.
But his behavior still haunts her.
He acted like a man expecting never to see her face again.