His heart. His heart.
It is red and bright and gleaming and clutched roughly in Rumplestiltskin's rigid grasp.
He is crumpling to the floor and flashes of soft kisses and grey eyes and useless grasping at a lifeless body slam painfully into her from all directions.
She should've known, she should've known, she should've known.
It's as if it is her own heart in the death hold and she wants to cry out at the misery crashing upon her.
She is going to lose him after he promised her, promised, that he would survive.
She is going to lose him and she could've stopped it.
His wide bright eyes are on her and even at her distance, even through his pain, she can see the millions of things written in them, thrown hastily on display for her. Things that he will never be able to murmur softly in her ear after she's spent the night in his bed, things he'll never take her hand and whisper against her neck, things he'll never loudly, drunkenly announce to David when he probably shouldn't. They are things she has heard aloud endlessly, words that have never had any true meaning, any life.
Words that have seemed insignificant until now.
It is his heart being destroyed but she is suffocating right along with him.
She sees a flash of Belle out of the corner of her frozen eye and for a moment she is livid. For a moment all she sees is the other woman's love blinding her into helping the imp.
But as soon as she has seen her she is yelling and his heart is falling and they are gone.
"Oh my god."
She is stumbling up the stairs, eyes trained solely on him as she moves. His heart is held close to him and he stares at it in disbelief.
He knew he was going to die. He knew it was his last day.
When she reaches him she cannot even wait for him to come to his feet, crumbling in front of him and dragging him against her. Her knees sting and she breathes a shaking breath when he drops his head heavily to where her neck and shoulder meets, breathing her in deeply, movements drenched in relief.
He is shaking and she can feel his heart pressed between them, thudding a hasty staccato against her chest.
She holds him tighter, bowing her head to press a kiss where his neck is revealed to her.
He was almost gone.
She almost watched him die.
A sudden sob shakes through her body, and she hadn't even realized she was crying.
"Emma."
He breathes her name against her neck like she has never heard it before as she plays her fingers up his spine, tangles her fingers into the soft locks of his hair and along the rough scruff of his face and clings to him. His quivering is just beginning to settle and still it makes her ache.
"You were supposed to be good at surviving, you asshole." She chokes, and he actually has the nerve to laugh, shoulders shaking beneath her.
She can feel his heart absolutely racing and she finally, reluctantly, peels herself from him to see it. He holds his hand further out to her, opening his fingers in a clear offering.
"Might as well see what you're buying, yeah?" He mutters shakily with a sideways smirk, and if she weren't reaching for his goddamn heart she would've shoved him.
But his smile is wide and bright and ridiculous, eyes taking her in with the gentle reverence of a man holding the sun and the moon and the stars and she is so relieved to feel the steady beating of his heart cradled in both her hands that she can't help but lean in and capture his lips in hers.
He kisses her fervently and tangles his hand in her hair and it is everything but it still isn't right, still is missing that little spark that has been so notably absent for days and she swallows hard when she pulls back just a breath, forehead still pressed to his. His eyes are closed tightly to her and he breathes in slowly and heavily and doesn't let her go.
"We'd better get this back where it belongs." She tells him in a soft whisper and he just smiles, moving forward to press a single sweet kiss more to her lips.
When he comes back he brushes his nose against hers and smiles looking down at the heart she holds so closely to her chest.
"It already is."