She never told him.
Not once.
Sometimes she wondered what his reaction might be if she whispered it casually over coffee, with Henry seated at the opposite end of the diner, poring over the latest theory regarding Operation Mongoose.
The confused furrow of his brow, the awestruck set to his open mouth. Would his tone turn teasing in the end—"Tell me more about these feelings you've been harboring for me, Swan—keep you up at night, do they?"—or would he look at her in the way only he did, a way that managed to take her breath away, even in memory?
"You traded your ship for me?"
"Aye."
She imagined it a dozen different ways, a dozen different mornings.
Some days the impulse overwhelmed her when they were running for their lives from Storybrooke's monster-of-the-week. If this was the last time they saw each other, she didn't want to leave him with any doubt.
Then she'd remember his assurance, so often repeated just to set her mind at ease—"If there's one thing I'm good at, it's surviving."—and her confession died on her tongue.
She never told him.
Not once.
And now she'd never get the chance.
He was taken from her by a man wearing her father's face, spitting words like venom that Emma couldn't make out. All she heard was the air leaving Killian's lungs. All she saw was his hand reaching out—reaching for her.
She didn't remember screaming—she had to have screamed. It's what people did when someone drove a dagger through their heart.
She didn't remember running—she had to have run. One moment she stood rooted in place, watching the man she—
Watching him—
Watching Killian—
And the next, Henry guided her inside the hollowed out end of a fallen tree.
She didn't remember her decision to keep going—without him—and maybe it wasn't a decision at all.
Maybe it was habit.
Maybe it was her nature.
Maybe it was a gentle stirring in the quiet hollows of her still-beating heart—a four-letter word she thought had abandoned her, for good this time.
Maybe it was his voice running through her thoughts, brave despite the cowardly inclinations that'd been forced upon him.
"If I can help return things to how they were meant to be, then what happens to me here won't matter, will it?"
—
When she finds him again, when she barrels toward him, his name falling from her lips like a breath she didn't know she'd been holding, when she hugs him with enough force to propel him backward onto her bed, when she works up the courage to tell him—finally tell him—she chokes on the words she thought she'd never get the chance to say. Replaces them with gratitude that, while genuine, feels like the worst lie she's ever told. And she sees in his eyes how well he knows her.
But it's okay.
Because he's alive.
And they're together.
And they have time.
She thinks about telling him later that night, when the chaos of the day has faded to interlaced fingers beneath a starlit sky, half-whispered sentiments passing between them as Killian walks her home, the gathering at Granny's long forgotten.
She thinks about not going home.
Thinks about all the ways those three little words could manifest themselves—soft sights and brushes of skin and clothes scattered along the planks below deck.
She contemplates a thousand different scenarios, a thousand different days as she rests her head against his shoulder.
Because he's alive.
And he's hers.
And she'll never let go again.