Sometimes when she looked at the scar she could still feel the burn, the tight grip on her wrist as he'd held her hand down on the table and smothered his light out just beneath the juncture of her thumb and forefinger. She could still hear her own screaming, so small and terrified and confused, and his laughter, so harsh and malicious.

That entire portion of her life was a bit of a blur, almost dream like in its obscurity, but that one moment stood out clear as day. She suspected it always would.

Killian was watching her carefully, flask lifted halfway up to his lips. He'd asked her about it, noticed it, and she didn't have the words to answer him. What was she supposed to say? One of my foster fathers got mad when he was drunk and decided to smother his cigarette out on me? Knowing him he'd probably hunt the guy down and gut him.

So Emma just stayed quiet, fingers wrapped around the cool glass of amber liquid resting on the desk in front of her. She could feel his eyes, sense the agitation at her continued silence. She heard him let out a heavy sigh, chair squeaking a bit as he shifted and took a swig of his rum. Her eyes darted up to him and locked with his bright, electric, gaze and she felt it down to her toes. He'd branded her long ago with that look, scorched her to the bone and marked her as his, though he didn't know it yet. Distantly she recognized she should probably say something, at least change the topic. Eyes sweeping the room she settled on a golden object on one of his shelves. It looked like some kind of compass.

"So what is that thing?" She nodded in the direction of it, gesturing slightly with her glass.

When he looked at it there was a longing in his expression, a pain that tensed his forehead and tipped down the edges of his mouth. "It was a gift from my brother. A sextant. We used it to navigate with the stars."

"How old were you?"

"Hardly even 19." It was a sad smile that lifted his lips then, lashes a dark smudge against his cheeks as he looked down at his hand on the desk. She felt it sting at her and there was an urge to reach out to him, to comfort him in the face of the memories. But just as she was lifting her left hand his quiet voice made her freeze. "So Swan, will you tell me now how you came to have that mark on your hand?" He was looking at her again and she was caught like a deer.

"I-well it... It was from when I was a kid." She shrugged, trying to play it off as no big deal but she knew from the way his shoulders tensed that he saw through it. He always managed to do that. Sometimes it felt like her walls were nothing more than glass to him, clean and clear-cut and barring every ugly scar for him to see. "It was an accident."

"Your tone seems to suggest otherwise, love."

She grit her teeth then relaxed, the fight leaving her so fast it nearly made her dizzy. "Fine." A sigh, long and drawn out as she gathered her thoughts. How was she supposed to say this? "I uh, I was burned. Literally. There was this home I was sent to and my foster dad was, well, he liked his vodka, okay? And one night he got mad at me. So that was that. Whatever. It was a long time ago."

She didn't realize she'd stopped looking at him until she heard the sudden violent scrape of his chair against the hard floor. He was in front of her in an instant, kneeling at her side and taking her left hand in his right to examine the scar. Slowly, as though she might run at any minute, he lifted it to his lips and left a single soft kiss right over the damaged skin. It was almost reverent in it's intensity and Emma could feel the hot blush creeping up the skin of her neck and over her cheeks, even while the pain of the memory felt like it was trying to tear at her flesh again.

And she mostly felt rather than heard him whisper against her hand, "Never again."

Short and well... maybe not sweet but yeah... Review?