"Swan, Jones, where the hell are you two?"
Sirens are wailing from several blocks away, beads of salty sweat are sliding down the side of her face and she can swear she hears David's voice coming through the broken static in their comms, calling for them to fall back as aliens continue to pour from a damn hole in the sky. She didn't plan on listening if that was the case, but it was certainly nice to know he was still alive. He'll forgive her later when all of this is over and done with, when road crews find themselves busy scraping concrete and otherworldly bodies from the ground.
Emma can't shake the thought from her head, even as she fires bullets into the air and drop-kicks her way across the lower streets leading up to the bridge. She's seen a lot in her twenty-odd years, as has the man beside her, but another realm? Never, or at the very least, not before their new friends came to town.
She could hardly believe her luck when she knocked him back to himself in the middle of their brawl. It was bloody knuckles under her gloves and stinging lashes from his bowstring, harsh blows to her ribs and a particularly nasty bite to his arm, and all the while she felt herself wondering what she'd have to do if either one of them didn't survive. She'd gotten so used to him reminding her in that stupid, smug voice of his that he's good at it, she'd never considered the alternative.
When his head smacked into the metal pipes lining the bridge, he called out her name. Her real name, not the one listed on her file. She actually saw the unnatural blue fade from his eyes as he came back to her, and Emma gave him a quick smile before she knocked him out cold. He deserved that much, at the very least.
She watches him wake up in the helicarrier's medical bay hours afterward, sitting across from his sleeping form and waiting as his blue eyes flicker into focus. There isn't a single soul that can tell, but part of her had been terrified to see whether they'd be their normal color. He was under restraint, in any case, and it's only when she says his name aloud that he stops trying to free himself from his binds.
"You're gonna be alright, you know."
"Do I know that?" His frown only deepens at her words, probably because they aren't normally in the business of offering each other empty sentiments. "Do you know what it's like to have your heart held captive while it's still inside of you? To have it played with and ripped apart while you're told to simply soldier on until your part is played?"
She turns her head and looks at him over her shoulder, reminding herself that the angry words aren't meant for her.
"You know that I do."
Her hands trail over the metal restraints as she lets him free, refusing to answer him when he asks how many agents he disposed of. Even if she had let herself keep count, there was nothing he could say that would make her want to answer. He doesn't need another reason to hate himself, not when the list is already so long. This is something they've never dealt with before, something foreign and magical and straight out of their strangest nightmares, and he doesn't get to blame himself for that.
"He's going to make his play soon," he tells her, compartmentalizing all the rest for a later date. She sits down beside him as they try to decide how to take on an immortal man with magic at his disposal, and it's a mark of how well they knew each other that she doesn't flinch away when he asks her why she's so ready to go off to war.
In the end, it's the way he whispers her name again that draws it out of her.
Another symphony of explosions comes rolling through from the east quarter of town, shaking the already crumbling fridge beneath their feet. It's reassuring to hear the familiar sound of their own artillery echoing off the skyscrapers instead of the strange, plasmic sound of the enemy gunfire. Several SHIELD pilots are having the time of their lives, apparently, which is more than most of them could say on the ground.
She isn't with him for most of the battle, although their paths definitely cross more than once in the rubble of New York City. He feels close because of the comm, even when she decides the impossible and flings herself on board of one of the alien's little hover-chariots to get the portal closed. If you want something done right, Emma grumbles to herself, slicing through the cords linking the pilot to its vehicle, hijacking the thing's nervous system and banking through the shattered wall of a building while someone takes care of the others pursuing her.
It turns into a nasty thing, the imp himself chasing after her and sending cold blasts at her limbs. She manages to send a sneer his way before dodging another blow, glad he seems so wrapped up in attacking her. She only has to call Killian's name in her comm before she hears his arrow buzzing their way. It flies true, and the explosion that follows puts her right where she needs to be.
There is no moment of silence as their friend flies up through the portal and falls back through noticeably limper than before. It comes in the aftermath when all of the invaders drop to the ground, when a roar brings the man in the metal suit to life again. They find her later as she keeps watch over the Dark One's body, and it's there of all places she feels at home.
They don't call it banishment, this ceremony to rid him of their world forever, but it doesn't end up mattering much. She stands close by Killian as the muzzled man is led away, holding tight to his hand. She forced him to come today, calling it closure with a tight-lipped smile because they both knew he would rather have sent an arrow through the man's eye instead, and she thinks it helps a little when he gets to see the bitter defeat in the monster's eyes.
She sees it the second his eyes turn hard again, and she ducks her lips to his ear before he can clench his hand at his side.
"You know, he's probably going to wish there was bologna and jello where he's going."
And she sees a smile crack on his face, a little unsteady and bitter still, but it's there. The resulting scowl on the Dark One's face makes them grin, and then it's back home for them both.
Emma spends a moment with her father and her mother before going to check on him while he rests, reassuring them that she's okay, that she's already gone and gotten stitches for the cut on the back of her neck, that she's going to wake herself up every few hours just to make sure it's not a concussion giving her the headache she's getting over now.
Her father's shield rests against the island bar as they talk in soft voices, her mother standing close by still in her own suit of armor for some reason or another. She can feel it, all the time in the world settling into the quiet air around them, and she wonders if her mother's battle-ravaged clothes are a form of celebration all their own. Their eyes catch, and her mother's smile confirms it. Her father and mother pull her in for a hug before she leaves and then she's excusing herself, making her way toward Killian's door.
He's not sleeping when she slips her boots off at the door and pushes it closed. She can tell by the way his breath hitches when the mattress dips beneath her weight and she curls herself around his back, her hand slipping beneath the hem of his shirt to rest right over his heart. For a minute nothing happens and she thinks he's going to fall asleep like that but then he turns, twisting around so her hand lands somewhere on his back instead.
"You look like hell," he breathes, settling his nose somewhere along the line of her jaw and the lines of her collarbone.
"You've seen worse," she tells him with a huff, lightly digging her nails into a patch of unbroken skin on his back for a second. She can feel him smile in response as he presses a kiss to her cheek and tells her he knows, that he only wanted to hear her laugh before he fell asleep for the night. It's sweet, a part of him he only unveils when the doors are shut behind them, and so she obliges.
"Debriefing's at seven, and we — "
He interrupts her with a low groan, dragging his hand up from her side to clumsily cover her mouth. "Don't you dare tell me what time it is, Swan. They can debrief me when I wake up, and not a moment sooner."
She shoves his hand away but only just, letting his fingers fall into the hair that covers her shoulder. Emma only gets up to pull a pair of sweats out of his dresser before falling into bed with him again, letting him curl around her this time as she shoves her cold feet beneath his sheets.
If saving the world doesn't mean a pay raise, she thinks, then sleeping in late and waking to his beard scratching her cheek is close enough.