A/N: Based on 4x02. I got a feelzzzzz attack! (Also posted on tumblr.)
The world keeps jumping all over—she can't focus on what Elsa's doing. Is it working? Is the ice melting away? Is she only making it worse, thicker, colder?
Battling the exhaustion that pulls at her, coaxing her down, down back onto the ice—which really doesn't feel so cold anymore, now that she thinks about it—so why can't she get a grip on herself and stop all this shaking?—she forces herself up even more into a crouching position. This way, if she falls over, she's hoping it will hurt like hell and keep her awake. Because all she wants to do is lay down right now anyways. And if it knocks her out cold in the process (ha…cold), well, maybe dying won't hurt at all, and it really will be just like falling asleep…not so scary, right?…at least she would stop shaking so much…
(Somewhere underneath her body screaming at her Cold!, there's an ache that begins to swell, one of loss and broken dreams. One of the bitterness of hope snatched away. Of love. That seems important for some reason. She can't remember right now. Maybe…maybe if she just could sleep for a little bit, she'd…well, she'd remember why.)
But then, a brush of warm air against her face. It burns. She doesn't like it. Not at all. It's not supposed to be like this…she's read Wikipedia…it never said this was painful in the end …and why is someone talking? God has an accent?
Killian?
Her eyes snap to the hole gaping suddenly in front of her, his face there and just wrecked, absolutely wrecked. Maybe she is dead and she's having one of those out-of-body experiences people sometimes talk about. Of all the stupid things she's thought in her entire life, all she can come up with is a movie reference: Go to the light, Emma!
So, she does. (Why not?)
It gets worse when she has to bend her body to fit through the hole. The ice against her palms scrapes and stings, and yeah, God definitely has a weird sense of humor to make her feel like this when she already feels like shit.
Her hands fling out in front of her as her body lurches forward. She's falling, falling. Until she's being squeezed more tightly than she can remember being in a long time.
Voices. There's more than one. And she knows them. One mentions going home. But that's silly because she is home. Killian's right here in some fantastical hallucination her mind is giving her in this bizarre afterlife and that's all she could ever want. Forever and ever. See? She can smell him, breathe him in, touch him and rub her aching palms over the smooth leather of his jacket, the one that is just so ridiculous but she loves that he wears it all the time. This death thing isn't so bad after all.
Wait!
Higher and higher, she's going up (where to?) until a blue takes her breath away—how odd—and—
Not dead.
Alive.
Alive.
She gulps down her gasp of surprise just as the air is suddenly whooshed back out. He's there.
Killian. Killian, Killian, Killian.
With a strength she's startled to find she still has, she pulls him to her. As if her very life depends on it, on him (because it does, it so does, all those stupid and pathetic times she's tried to tell herself otherwise), she holds on.
"Are you okay?"
His breathing is ragged, heavy against her temple. It breaks her and fills her to hear it.
The words won't come, what she wants to say in response, to reassure him, to soothe him. It all just rattles around in her thawing brain. So she just does what she can—a vigorous and brief nod. Impossibly, he crushes her to him even harder.
Her fingers shakily find their way into his hair and rest there, cradling him to her, heart against heart (she can't tell whose she feels beating in her chest anymore). She never thought she'd have this again. Him. Them.
When her legs finally give out beneath her, he cries out for her and lifts her. A rum barrel, she wants to laugh just to ease his fear, the desperation of his grip not escaping her. But later…there will be time for smiles and laughter later.
She can be patient.
—
Later, yet not quite long enough for joking purposes (her ribs hurt like a bitch from all that shaking), after he pulls out the space heater for her and has piled on another blanket (Mom and Dad can't possibly have anymore), she leans her head against him and closes her eyes. Exhausted as she is, the final thought she has before allowing his embrace to envelop her completely is how warm he is, how right this is…so very, very right.
It's everything.