I have signal again to post something. Here's the last chapter!

Epilogue

"'Hotel burns to the ground: arson or accident?' I'm not much of a journalist, but the title could use a little more oomph than that," Killian said with a look of disgust, as though he hadn't read it every day since they got back, tossing a newspaper on the sofa. She doesn't know where he got it from, seeing as they were in Storybrooke and the town that they had spent that horrible night in was nearly forty miles away, but she didn't question it. "They shouldn't be so afraid to really get into it."

It was little after midnight, but neither of them could really sleep and that was the way it had been since they arrived in Storybrooke – shaken, cold, and panicked – nearly a month ago. Neither spoke of the events that took place at the hotel – the good or the bad – and it was starting to take its toll. She jumped when the lights flickered, he flinched when a door slammed too loud, and neither spent much time sitting in the dark, but it was getting better with time and would probably continue to do so.

It would probably be faster if they spoke about what happened to each other, she mused, nodding as Killian began to describe much more fitting titles. Neither would though, despite the dance they played each night, pretending that they wouldn't arrive on the other's doorstep in the middle of the night when the fear became too much.

It seemed on the days that he was free from his nightmares, her own would emerge and she would spend the night thinking of his blank eyes, of his still chest, over and over again, until seeing him was the only way to find relief. He would take one look at her on his doorstep, her old pajamas and knotted hair, the lack of shoes, and then he would bring her in with a gentle kiss to her forehead, giving her tea when she couldn't sleep and holding her when she thought she could.

It was sweet and tender, so caring that her chest squeezed to think about it.

Not just him, but herself as well. It wasn't a one-way street that they walked, as many times as he had held her, she had held him, his head resting on her breast and her fingers running through his hair till sleep came over him. It was innocent in a way too, because aside from the occasional kiss to his cheek or the brush of his lips over her forehead, they hadn't addressed the good that had come from that night.

That is, the realization that she was in love with him and that he felt something for her in return.

It's complicated, she reasoned with herself.

Despite everything unbelievable that had happened that night, that kiss and those feelings were real, she knew it. But so much else had happened, things that sounded crazy to her own ears, and she knew that they needed to have answers, even just a few, to close the door on the supernatural part of their evening before they could even address the love bit.

There was Henry to think of as well. She hadn't seen him since she came back to Storybrooke, feigning illness, to which he had accepted reluctantly. She didn't want to frighten her son with the real reason behind her absence, but she feared he would read the truth on her face. If he saw the fear, would he believe it was from ghosts?

Yes, he would believe her. She didn't want him to though. There were some things that people were better off not knowing and this happened to fall under that category.

She reminded herself of these things before sleep, but when she woke up and scrambled out her door to find him, relief sprouting in her chest each time he answered to her knocks, and she wondered if it wasn't all that complicated after all.

His voice shattered her thoughts. "Swan?" He asked from the table, his laptop open in front of him, eyebrows raising up to his forehead.

The way he looked at her spoke volumes more than the way he called her, like he somehow suspected what the thoughts playing across her mind were, but he didn't push. She wondered if perhaps he should.

"Sorry, what?" She asked, shaking her head.

"You weren't listening to the conversation I just had on the phone at all, were you?"

He had been on the phone? She thought, up until he said that at least, that she had merely missed out on his comical ideas of a newspaper title, but only a quick glance to the clock on his microwave that it had been a few minutes since. Speaking of time… "Who the hell calls at nearly one in the morning?"

He grinned. "Weren't you the one that said you wanted answers, you didn't care when he got back to us as long as it was soon?"

She did recall that. After a long Yelp review about how unsafe the hotel was, lack of emergency exits and the bizarre layout and the overall dreariness of the place at night, she had received an angry phone call from the owner, who didn't seem to enjoy the insults and one-star rating that she left on his mother's hotel. After telling her that she would never, ever be allowed back there – like that was somehow a huge loss when Emma probably wouldn't ever sleep in a hotel again – the man had hung up, not realizing that he had offered her a very big and very important clue.

That is, he admitted that the hotel wasn't actually built by him, but by his mother, and that the idea of the whole thing, both the design and the evil lurking in it, should probably be directed at her. Not in those words exactly, but that was the summary that Emma had supplied to Killian's dubious brother when they requested that he use his skills as a private investigator to find the mother, an older woman named Guinevere Noble.

"That was Liam?" She said, shifting her legs out from underneath her, feet planting on the floor like she would somehow be able to pounce across the room and into Guinevere's house in one smooth move.

"Aye. He's got something for us and you won't believe how close she lives," he said, unplugging his laptop and crossing the room, sitting beside her. On the screen was a map of a forest. She squinted at it, wishing that her glasses were on hand rather than sitting on his nightstand, when he zoomed in, pointing at a splash of red in the middle of green. "That, my love, is a manor in the middle of nowhere. But it happens to be in Maine."

She gave him a blank look, inwardly smiling at his term of endearment. His love. Complicated indeed. "Really? I had no idea."

"Allow me to illuminate this all for you then: this manor in the middle of nowhere is owned by one G. Nolan. No relation to David, before you ask."

"Who the hell is G. Nolan?" She could guess, but she might as well just let him spell it out.

"Liam explained all of this if you were listening. Her dear son goes to that area a week before her birthday and vanishes from all social media till the day after – and also the son sends a rather nice chunk of money to a person named GN. Coincidence?"

"No, probably not."

"You don't sound relieved that we're going to get answers," he noted, closing his laptop and setting it on the coffee table. He got comfortable again, stretching his legs out and slumping back against the cushions.

"I am," she said, leaning her head on his shoulder. He caught her hand, holding it in his lap, stroking her fingers with a small hum to request an elaboration. "Just worried about what she'll say. If she'll say anything. I mean, she's old, she's probably senile by now, I doubt she's going to open her door and be like 'Yes, it was I.'"

"I doubt that's what she would say. She would probably wonder how we found her house, or threaten to call the police, or maybe her friend's on the other side will answer the door and then we'll both be puppets," he replied. She lifted her head, dropping it roughly back on his shoulder – it hurt her more, but he still jumped.

"Something tells me she wouldn't do that either. I mean, can you imagine that creature wearing an apron and asking for our coats?" She snorted, but he fell silent and she shifted to look at him, seeing his brows drawn together, sending a spark of fear through her. Had she brought a bad memory up? Was he going to say that they shouldn't joke about that? Would he-?

"I don't remember what it looked like," he admitted gruffly. He cleared his throat, continuing on in a low voice, like somebody other than her would somehow hear him. "I just… Every time I think of it, I see… a blank canvas, like that piece of my memory was never painted down for me to see later."

She thought of all the times that he had faced it directly, shivering as she recalled the blankness to his eyes, the way he had succumbed the creature without a fight. How he had tried to fight her when she tried to stop him.

She had thought about it constantly, wondering how it got him more than once, but it never even tried to get her. She hadn't asked him about what it was like, not wanting to know and not wanting to dredge the memories up, and that was why she hadn't asked him about what happened either. That was a mistake, she realized. They wouldn't get over this without talking.

They couldn't with others, but they could with each other.

"Killian, what do you remember?" She asked, equally quiet. His fingertips faltered in their beat across her fingers and she spun their hands, his palm up, her fingers finding their place between each of his perfectly. Like their hands were made for holding the other.

A faraway look was on his face and she squeezed his fingers, bringing him back to the present.

He blinked, coming back to himself, and he paused for a long moment, mouth opening and closing as he tried to find the words. Then— "I remember seeing you in the lobby, soaking wet and irritated, and I remember thinking you were beautiful, that my night was better just by seeing you. I remember talking with you in the hotel room, how hopeless I felt, and how I really thought that we wouldn't be anything, not even friends. I was going to apologize when I came out, it's not my place to tell you who to care for, but you were feigning sleep and I figured it best to leave you alone."

She tried not to react, not wanting to break the moment, but a part of her melted at his words. All this wasted time, she thought, thinking of the things that kept them apart before and the ones that kept them apart now.

"The screaming woke us up, I remember standing in front of you."

"I can protect myself," she protested, forgetting to keep quiet.

He laughed quietly. "I know, believe me, I know, but that doesn't mean I won't try to protect you if I can."

She thought of Neal then, toying with the chain of her necklace. The third thing he had left for her, Henry and the bug being the other two. "You can't… You can't leave me out of the equation, Killian." Neal had thought he was protecting her, that he was holding her back, and she had suffered the consequences of his decision without ever getting to decide for herself. "I'll protect you, you protect me, but don't make decisions for me."

Her words quivered at the end as she thought of all the phantom faces that she chased. They were always running, never tiring and never once looking back to see who they left behind. She could feel it catching up to her though; she wasn't quick enough to escape or fast enough to catch up, just an almost – she almost caught them, she almost got away from them, she almost kept him, she almost got him, she almost lost. Almost something, always.

She turned her head away from him, wondering if the words almost enough would be written across her forehead.

"I won't leave you, not unless you tell me to," he said firmly.

"Why?" How selfish of her to turn the subject on herself when she was trying to help him. She took and she took from the right people, she gave and she gave to the wrong ones. She didn't know a balance, hadn't ever seen one for herself, but if he thought she was selfish, he didn't say so.

A look crossed his face, disbelief and sadness and fear, and then he smiled, small and fragile, like she had the power to break him as much as he had the power to break her. "Don't you know? I love you."

She kissed him, pouring everything she felt, the conflicts and the fights, the pain and the loss, the love and the passion, and he gave back equally, flooding her with all he knew and felt, pulling her close, so close. The longer his lips were on hers, the farther their troubles seemed to be.

When his lips detached from hers a long while later, she could only think of him and the taste of mint on his tongue, the tingle across her skin as his fingers found the small of her back. He didn't kiss her again, though a part of him looked like he wanted to continue, but instead he stared at her, eyes tracing over her features again, a happy smile on his lips.

"I love you," she murmured after a moment, realizing that she hadn't said as much. Not after what happened, not after he said it first.

The smile on his face froze, disbelief on his face, and he studied her face, not memorizing it, but searching, like he didn't know if it was true or just the moment speaking. She knew when he found the answer, the smile spreading wide across his face, beautiful and warm, like the sun appearing on a cloudy day.

All the poetic stuff that Emma hadn't ever given thought to before.

He kissed her and all thoughts of the hotel disappeared, buried under the feel of his lips on hers.

…

The next morning was different than all the rest, partly because they spent more time kissing than getting ready for the day, and also because once they were ready, the two were filled with dread about what they had to face. The address that Liam had given them for Guinevere wasn't far from Storybrooke, only about two hours away, and better for them to get answers now rather than sit on questions forever.

Still, they were going to face a very dangerous woman, one who must have known what she was doing when she built such a hazardous hotel, and it would be silly to say that Emma wasn't a little afraid of what Guinevere could do. The woman might have been old – early fifties – but surely it wasn't a coincidence that the creature chose her hotel to attack? No, she rather thought that the whole thing was orchestrated, that Guinevere had wanted everyone to die.

Why?

That was one of the questions that Emma would ask her.

Whether they would get answers or not was another matter. Would she take one look at them and curse them? Perhaps confronting her in the forest, without telling anyone where they were going, was a foolish idea. Scratch that, it was a stupid idea. Full stop.

"We can turn around, you know," Killian injected, his fingers running over a paperback book sitting in his lap, the edges of it frayed from use and the title too worn to even read. It was his favorite book, something he used to calm down whenever he felt too keyed up, but he hadn't opened it since they climbed into her newly repaired bug. "But we also… can't."

It was rare for him to be in such a loss for words, but she could understand why. Like her, he had doubts about what they were doing.

She tilted her head to smile nervously at him, hoping that show of emotion would say the words that she couldn't form. Unlike him, she never did have a way with words, communicating with actions, knowing those were less likely to lie. For him though, she returned her eyes to the road and said, "We have to do this. I'll sleep better when I can look her in the face and ask why."

"Agreed though I would prefer to burn all her spell-books or cauldrons to the ground so she can't do anything like this again, but answers would be very helpful. I'm still not sure if any of this happened." She didn't reply, knowing that he didn't actually need an answer. They both knew it was real. "Pretty dangerous way to go about it. If we disappear, at least Liam will know where we're at, but I don't think anyone else will."

The rest of the car ride passed much in the same atmosphere: long silences filled with tension about what they would see, brief glances that brought both comfort and heat as memories from the night before filled their minds, and mindless chatter. They only paused when it came time for Killian to pull up more specific directions, scribbling them down in case his phone lost connection midway through.

He directed her into a town not much bigger than Storybrooke, but a lot older and filled with cheery, bright colored houses. Further they went, down the less populated streets, houses dotted here and there, until even they disappeared, lost among the many trees that sprouted up instead. It was daylight still, only a little after eleven in the morning, but the leaves obscured the sun and made it seem later. Her fingers were tight around the steering wheel as he directed her off the main road.

The road seemed to go on for miles - at one point the asphalt ended and became gravel, and another turn for it to become dirt - until they reached a wide, paved driveway leading up to a large, brown manor with many yellow glass-stained windows and a porch wrapped around the edges. The splash of red was the strange reddish roof. It looked like it had been beautiful at one point, but time had made its mark on it, leaving it dirty, broken, and overall frightening.

"I can't believe this," she murmured, slowing to a stop a distance from the front door. "This is…"

"The kind of place where someone with a lot of money wouldn't live?"

Well, no, but that too. From what she knew, Guinevere had made the hotel many years ago and the profit from it, being the only hotel in miles inside a town along the highway. She should have something much nicer than this. "Maybe she's doing repairs."

"Or maybe she's too busy summoning demons and making voodoo dolls for her to bother with repainting," he supplied, his brows drawn together. "I suppose we should go knock – plan still on?"

In their time driving, they had agreed that it was probably best for them to have some sort of plan going in, but it wasn't much of one. Emma would stay in the car while Killian knocked, if the door opened and anything looked remotely unsafe, he would go back to the car and they would leave this, and their questions, behind.

Not exactly bulletproof, Guinevere could stab him before he could even start running, but hey.

She nodded. He climbed out of the car and walked up the steps, pausing to take a breath before he knocked on the grand door. There mustn't have been a doorbell and she wondered how Guinevere would even hear them if she happened to be somewhere else in the house, but Killian had only lifted his hand to knock again, slightly louder no doubt, when it pulled open.

She couldn't see inside, it was too dark in the doorway and the porch cast shadows over them, but she did see when he took a step back and a large tabby cat sauntered onto the porch, rubbing against his ankles. "Swan, I think we're alright," he called to her. She shut off the engine, the roar fading way to the thudding of her heart, galloping as it did with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. She silenced her fears and left the car.

The porch steps creaked under her weight, but no spiders jumped out and nothing broke beneath her feet. Up close, the manor looked less terrible – broken still, but less dusty, like somebody made an attempt to clean. Guinevere, perhaps.

Emma faltered before she reached the top, mouth falling open as she stared at the figure in the doorway: a woman leaned on a cane heavily, her face lined with time and her wavy hair graying with age. Another cat, this one white and grey, stood just behind her, meowing loudly, sounding exactly as it had that night in the car.

It was the woman who gave Emma a ride to the hotel.

The woman that Emma had considered to be low on the list of possible killers.

The woman who had more than likely been attempting to lead Emma to her death.

She felt Killian's gaze on her, confused by her response, but then Guinevere smiled pleasantly. "Hello, Miss. Swan." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Killian's surprise increase and wondered if the same look was on her face. She hadn't given the old woman her name that night, but somehow, the woman knew it anyway. What was going on?

"Who the hell are you?"

"My name is Guinevere, but you've already figured that out if you're here. Would you like to come in and talk?" She gestured inside.

Killian and Emma stood still, feet planted firmly on the floor, half expecting a ghostly presence to force them into the manor. None came, but Guinevere sighed like it was an inconvenience, pressing past both of them and instead leading to a patio set on the porch. There was a bench against the wall, seating possibly three, facing out and then a single chair facing the house.

Guinevere sat in the single chair.

Neither made a move to sit. Emma wasn't sure if that was simple defiance or if he felt as frozen as she did.

Guinevere settled comfortably, her cane leading on the railing. A look of distaste crept over her face when she noticed that they hadn't joined her. "Oh, feel free to tire out your feet, but I am an old woman and I can't be expected to handle something so tiring. Now, I'll get right to it then, since neither of you seem to be capable of speaking: is it dead?" She asked bluntly.

"It?" Killian repeated, exchanging a look with her. The creature, they both seemed to think. She shuddered thinking of it, casting a watchful look around, as though it would come bursting through the trees or from the house. The only good thing about the creepy manor was that it was set in a clearing, the sun shining down on them, warming her flesh and quieting her fears.

"Don't play stupid, boy. I know you were there; it's power still lingers on both of you. I'm half surprised that you even lived with so much of it on you." She directed her words to Killian, who looked both puzzled and threatened. Rightfully so, considering Guinevere had just said that he should have died. Or the lingering power thing. Which was worse to think about?

Watching his face, Emma couldn't tell which way he was thinking, only that her words had turned him introspective.

For Emma, her words rekindled the fire that her appearance had doused. Emma stood up straighter, arms crossed over her chest. "Look, lady, I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you're fucking insane. We could have died – a lot of people did die! And you just sat back and let it happen. Hell, you helped that thing."

Guinevere huffed. "I did no such thing."

"Really? Because from my point of view, you practically gift-wrapped me and dropped me off on the creature's front door."

"I was trying to help."

Yeah, the creature, she thought, biting her lip hard, trying to have patience.

Killian took over the interrogation. "Who? Who were you trying to help?" He asked calmly, his stance remarkably relaxed for someone who had been looking doubtful about his existence thirty seconds ago. It was one of the things she loved about him, how he found his footing quickly. She spotted the way he rubbed the back of his neck and realized that he hadn't figured out his dilemma, but had put it aside for now.

Perhaps he had a box labeled later as well.

"All of us," Guinevere said softly. She sighed and a brown cat leapt into her lap, comforting her by nudging her face and meowing softly. "When my husband and I built the hotel, we didn't intend for things to turn out this way, we just knew that hotels were the perfect business in that town. We didn't have a shortage of customers, see. That ghost showed up around this time eleven years ago and ruined everything."

"Ghost?" Emma repeated skeptically.

"Yes, it was just a ghost then. Didn't harm much, just tried to scare people, and then, one year, someone died. How the person died wasn't of consequence, but the way the ghost reacted to the death was… It changed after that. Oh, it came back every year, but it didn't scare people anymore, it killed them. It wasn't quite skilled in the beginning, more shadow than beast, and all the deaths were just horrible accidents. Until the fire, at least, that's when it became less of a ghost and more of a demon."

A faraway look was on Guinevere's face, the loss playing across her vision, and Emma knew she wasn't talking about the fire that had consumed the hotel a month ago. There must have been another one, she thought, and Guinevere must have lost someone in it. That was the only way to explain the look of intense longing on her face.

She stepped closer to Killian and he wound an arm around her waist, holding her close to his side. His thumb stroked her side comfortingly and she squeezed the arm around her waist, holding tightly to him.

Guinevere cleared her throat. "I'm not sure how the fire started, but suffice to say, many people died. I had hoped the creature had died too, but when we rebuilt, we couldn't take that chance and so we tried to make it difficult for it to navigate. Thankfully so, because it came back again, the fire giving it strength I didn't expect."

"How did the fire give it strength?"

"It grows stronger with each death, Miss. Swan." Emma became cold, her nails digging into Killian's wrist. Hadn't she first seen the creature as just a shadow in their room? Hadn't it been almost transparent on the stairs? Hadn't it been frighteningly solid later? It grows stronger with each death… "Why, if it killed enough people, it would probably be strong enough to break free from the chains holding it down."

"The hotel," Killian said quietly. "It can't leave."

"Indeed."

"I don't see how you sending Emma into its arms was helping anyone still," Killian prodded, reminding Emma that despite everything Guinevere had said so far, she had still nearly killed Emma.

"It comes the same day every year. I make it a point to see who is there, to encourage some of them to leave, though I have little success with that, I am just a mad cat woman after all, but then I saw you and that ridiculous red jacket."

Emma stiffened, insulted as she glanced down at her sleeve. It wasn't ridiculous at all, it was comfortable and safe and it was her armor against the world.

Killian pressed his thumb into her side, just enough to draw her attention back to the matter, his lips twitching despite the situation. Guinevere continued, not seeming to notice Emma's falter in concentration. "You're powerful, I can feel it. You had protection as well— "

"Powerful? Protection? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you going to start telling me I've got some Harry Potter superpowers?"

"No, dear, that's insane, there's no such thing as magic like that. There is, however, a type of power that people are born with, the kind that makes them stronger against supernatural forces, it's untrained, but I thought that would be enough to stop the creature. As for protection, why, I was thinking of your necklace. Don't you know? Silver protects the mind, it's why you survived, otherwise you would have fallen under that thing's compulsion."

They were silent, taking all her words in. Or, rather, Emma tried to, but decided the entire thing was ridiculous and instead latched onto the only important thing in that entire monologue. "Compulsion… as in controlling someone?" She asked tentatively. "It could make people think that they wanted to go to it, that anything – or anybody – stopping it were an opponent."

"Yes," Guinevere said with a significant look at Killian. "Hence why you see my surprise at your survival. You wear no silver at all, I imagine you didn't then. How did you live? One look and it should have had you in its grasp."

That was why Killian couldn't remember, that was why he kept falling into a trance when the creature got too close. It had been messing with his mind, it had kept him from fighting back. It was why nobody else in the hotel had fought back at first, she realized with a pang. Those screams were from the people who had been wearing silver, who had some protection against it.

How many hadn't?

She toyed with her necklace. The swan part wasn't silver, it was more like metal, but the chain was silver, real silver, something that had cost Emma quite a bit to buy, but worth it. It was meant to be poetic, that she had something real and something bought to hold the fake and stolen swan that Neal had given her. Who would have thought that it was useful?

"Whenever the creature came, I don't remember what happened. As soon as I saw it, everything goes blank, but I remember being with Emma before it happened and I remember her after I returned to normal. Emma, you must have saved me," Killian said, a sad smile on his face, no doubt thinking of all the people who hadn't had her by their side.

She dropped her hand from the necklace, leaning into him silently.

"I thought I was helping everyone by bringing you there. Was I right?" Guinevere asked, triumphant. "Is the hotel safe now?"

Emma shifted. The creature was dead, Guinevere was right about that, but was she right about the rest? Was she right to let the hotel stay standing, to let people come in and die? No. Was she right to send Emma in, only hoping that she would win? No.

Despite everything else that Guinevere had done, trying to save people from the hotel, she could have done more. She could have closed it down, leaving it abandoned, the creature trapped inside, and it would have grown weaker with the lack of people to kill, perhaps it would have even faded entirely.

"The creature – the demon – is dead. But you're wrong about everything else and if you're smart, you won't rebuild the hotel again and you won't let your son either. Have some honor," she said sharply. "Congratulations for being selfish for years while people died, I hope your money's worth it." She looked around the manor, less sinister than it had at first glance; it was more lonely and sad than anything, and she shook her head.

This is what greed had bought her. The sympathy she had felt, the pity, it vanished at the look of surprise on Guinevere's face. Not guilt, not sadness – surprise, anger. Like Emma had somehow been the one to ruin everything.

"Well, you have your answers, dears. I suppose you can go on your way now."

Emma nodded, stepping out of Killian's embrace to leave. He didn't move immediately, lingering on the porch, and asked, "Why didn't you ever just close it down?"

"It was safe the rest of the year, it was just that time when things were bad," she replied, petting her cat still.

They left after that.

…

They were on the couch again, her laying on top of him, her head leaning on his chest and his chin resting on her head, his breath whooshing over her hair. It wasn't the most comfortable position, the couch wasn't built to hold two people like this, but after their return from Guinevere's, she had been too numb to do anything except slump down. Likewise, he did the same, and all it took was him pulling her into his arms for her to crack.

She didn't cry, but she did find her words finally. They rushed out of her, some to do with the hotel and some to do with life in general, like a dam had broken and unleashed everything that she hadn't been able to say and all those boxes labeled later finally overturned. He had held her the entire time, brushing down her hair or stroking her back or kissing her cheek, and Emma had thought she fell more in love with him by the time she was done.

After the guilt, of course. Because it seemed like they were always focused on her – her thoughts, her feelings, her inadequacies – and she knew that he had some of his own, some that he probably hadn't wanted to tell her or maybe he couldn't.

Either way, she had offered to listen and he had obliged.

She wasn't sure how many hours passed, talking back and forth, all the subjects they had avoided finally coming to light, but they had eventually succumbed to sleep. Emma had only woken up a few minutes prior, not wanting to move from him and his warmth. Though her stomach and bladder protested equally, their wants were ignored.

Guinevere had said powers. That was ridiculous, of course, because there was no such thing as magic. But, then again, hadn't Emma said there was no such thing as ghosts either?

She wasn't sure what to think about it.

Instead she felt guilt. All those people, gone before they were meant to go. Guinevere could have done more – Emma wondered if she could have too.

"Don't," he mumbled blearily, his hand running through her hair, getting tangled in the golden strands.

"Don't what?"

"Think like that. There was nothing we could have done differently, you or me."

"Are you sure there's no such thing as magic? I think reading my mind counts."

"I'm sure there's such thing as magic, but I don't possess any of it. You were talking out loud."

Oh. She blinked once, frowning slightly, before she snorted, resting her forehead down on his chest, one of the buttons on his shirt poking her nose. "I didn't realize I did that."

He laughed too, shifting his weight. "I didn't either, but I learn new things about you every day, Swan."

"Like what?" She said, tilting her head to look up at him and smiling. His eyes were open, bluer from sleep than she thought possible, and entirely focused on her – it was a heady feeling, to be so completely loved by someone that just talking with her seemed to make them happy, but more than that, it surprised her by how much she enjoyed it too.

She hadn't thought she would feel that way about love, but then again, she hadn't loved him before.

"Well, apparently you snort when you laugh."

True. "I don't do that, sorry, you must be confusing me with another Emma."

"Ah perhaps it was with the lovely Emma Bennett then," he mused, earning a light tap on his nose. "You wear a ridiculous red jacket."

"That's not new."

"The ridiculous part is. It's a little hot to be wearing one, isn't it?"

"Says the one that has a heavy leather jacket inside his closet," she pointed out.

"Fair enough," Killian conceded, falling silent as he thought of the next thing to say. He sat up suddenly, nearly knocking her off the couch, but he merely caught her legs and shifted so that she was sitting in his lap. "Not quite what I intended to do, I must admit."

She rolled her eyes, preparing to climb off, but he kissed her before she could move, pressing her to him. Butterflies flit across her stomach, her lips burning from his touch, his tongue darting into her mouth, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, tongue lazily stroking his. His apartment could light on fire and she wouldn't have noticed, comfortable as she was kissing him, fingers trailing up and down his back with a whisper of touch.

How easily they moved from words to touches, from serious to less so.

He broke away, his hair mussed and a wicked smile on his lips.

"As much as I would love to continue, I did have a point when I sat up," he said, standing up and setting her legs on the floor. She didn't point out that he had started it, mainly because she was annoyed that he wasn't finish it already. Shooting him a look, she dropped her arms, stepping away from him and fixing her hair.

When she finished, he led her into his room, letting her sit on his bed. "Didn't you have a reason for sitting up?" She asked, looking pointedly at his bed, grinning at the way his eyes darkened some at the clear invitation.

"In a moment, lass. I was thinking… about what Guinevere said," he said, uncharacteristically hesitant as he stood in front of her.

She sobered, resting her hand on his. "She said a lot."

"About silver keeping us safe."

Her necklace seemed cold against her neck at the knowledge. He dropped her hand, rummaging around in his dresser and returning to her with a long, silver chain. Her breath stopped in her throat as she spotted a ring hanging off of it, also silver but with a beautiful red stone. Was he going to-?

"Don't panic, Swan. I'm not proposing, not yet. This belonged to my brother, he gave it to me when I moved to the states, he said that it was a lucky charm, that it would keep whoever wore it safe. I know you already have something to keep you safe, but I wanted this one to be from me," he finished, holding it out for her, a hopeful smile on his face. It was the smile that did her in and she held her hand out, letting him drop the chain into her palm.

Unlike her necklace, it was warm. She knew it was from him holding it, but a part of her, even the one that didn't believe in magic or ghosts or even love, thought that it was his protection encompassing her. She squeezed it tightly and took a deep breath. Then, she unlatched the swan necklace around her neck, the charm slipping off one side, falling to floor, until only the chain remained.

He watched, confused, until she held the chain out to him.

"I'm not good with words, you know that. I bought this chain myself, you know, one of the first things I did and it's been my protection for years. It held something that hurt me, as a reminder to not let myself be hurt by people again. I trust you and I love you and I don't need it while I have this," she lifted the necklace he gave her, smiling. She slipped her own necklace into his hand. "But this is my protection to you. You'll save me and I'll save you, right?"

She didn't know how to finish speaking, close to rambling if she wasn't there already, but he helped her with that, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her close, kissing her urgently, skillfully, and she melted under his touch, feeling as though something warm and wonderful was wrapping around her, around them, almost like a bubble, almost like magic.

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the end

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I want to send huge thanks to Angelique, Heather, Lana, and all my reviewers. Your encouragement and kind words were so appreciated while I wrote this project, even if some of you were probably sick of me talking about it. I loved writing it and I absolutely loved reading the responses on it on both fanfiction, ao3, and tumblr.

I actually have ideas to turn this into a trilogy of sorts, where we get to see Emma and Killian on their next ghostly encounter, there's plenty of cliches for me to play with, but until I actually sit down to write that, I hope this was a fitting ending. If there's any moments you want me to see, or maybe Killian's perspective at certain points, don't hesitate to ask.