She stood outside his door, summoning her courage. She waited, store-bought cake in hand, its clear plastic cover showing every ridge and divot in the chocolate icing.

All she'd thought about on the drive back to Boston was this moment. Finally being honest. Opening up about everything she'd kept to herself for the past month.

She'd have to take it in stages. Magic, Storybrooke, Savior, Alistair. In that order.

Then again, maybe starting with Alistair was the best. Rip off the mentor-turned-adversary-turned-girlfriend's-guide-Band-Aid.

If only she could bring herself to knock.

How was she ever going to get the words out if she couldn't conquer this first step?

She lifted her chin, squared her shoulders, raised her hand. And froze.

She took a deep breath and felt for the ring that lay like an anchor against her chest, holding her steady. Keeping her grounded. Her fingers wandered the familiar edges as she commanded herself not to be afraid.

There was nothing to be nervous about.

This was Killian. He always understood. He would understand now.

Shrugging off any residual doubt, Emma knocked. Once. And again when Killian took too long to answer. Impatience took hesitation's place, now her decision was made. If she delayed any longer, she'd change her mind again. It was now or it was never.

The door opened and Emma smiled, even as something in her ached from the absence she hadn't let herself feel—not fully. Why did it suddenly feel like ages and not days had passed since she'd seen him? So much had happened in that time. So much had changed.

It all threatened to come tumbling out at once, so she presented the container in her hands and said, "I brought cake."

Killian smiled, and Emma was seventeen, hurled headfirst into the treacherous fathoms of a first crush. She was twenty-nine, dressed in white, walking down an aisle toward an altar and a future she never dreamed she'd one day call her own. She was thirty-two, watching from the doorway to a room painted in pastels, smiling to herself as her husband pleaded with the final obstinate pieces of a crib to just bloody fit.

And she realized that neither magic nor Storybrooke nor Alistair Smith was the confession she'd come here to make.

"What's the occasion?" Said Killian.

"Do I need an occasion? It's cake."

"Fair point."

Killian stepped back to let her pass. No longer having an interest in the dessert she'd carried six blocks from the patisserie she feared might not last any longer than the previous three tenants who'd tried to make the most of a run-down storefront the wrong side of a Starbucks, Emma went to set it on the coffee table, only to find said table occupied by a dozen books lying open on top of one another.

She turned to see Killian's gaze trained on the collar of her white knit sweater. "What's all this?"

He blinked away whatever had captured his attention and gave her a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Research," he said before attending to a nonexistent itch behind his ear. Seeming to remember that Emma knew his every tell, Killian's hand stilled, his eyes darting from one open book to the next, on the hunt for a plausible explanation. "Did you know that in Boston, frightening away pigeons is an offense punishable by up to a month in prison?"

"I think some of those laws are even older than you." Emma smirked, an action that Killian mirrored, but something about his demeanor was off. Restless and unsettled. Emma gestured to the couch. "Will you sit with me?"

Killian took the middle cushion, and Emma, the far left. She set the cake on a book secure enough to bear its weight, then grasped Killian's hand and gave him a kiss that was ten years overdue.

His unease vanished by the time she looked at him again, her own trepidation melting away as words like soulmate and True Love flitted across her mind. For once, she didn't shy away from them. Didn't balk at the idea that she didn't deserve them.

Cliché as it was, and as much as her twenty-six year old self would've scoffed at the things she was ready and willing to embrace at twenty-seven, she felt like her entire life had been leading to this moment. Leading to him. She didn't know what it was about the stories Alistair had told, about learning that she and Killian had met before—what could've been a thousand times before—that'd broken down a wall she hadn't realized was still standing.

There was a time when few things terrified her more than saying, "I love you."

But sharing her whole heart with someone—not just the pleasant parts, the easily acceptable parts, the safe parts—now seemed the simplest thing in the world.

So she told him.

She watched as Killian's eyes narrowed, his brow furrowing. She'd known they had this one thing in common—this deep-seated unworthiness.

"What about your happy ending?"

"I'm not sure I have one…"

But seeing it carved across his features like a scar, like a truth Emma sought to paint over with fallacy—

She reached up with both hands, held his face so that his eyes had nowhere to wander but back to hers, and repeated the words he didn't know how to reconcile with what he knew to be true about himself.

"…it's probably been erased, if it existed at all."

She saw the moment it clicked. The moment understanding turned disbelief into acceptance. He kissed her, what started out soft but deepened into something impatient, desperate to convey how sincerely he reciprocated.

—

"I know what you're thinking."

Killian hadn't said anything in several minutes. He wasn't angry, she didn't think. It was more that he needed time to process everything. She hoped.

Coming clean hadn't gone exactly as Emma had imagined. There was always an idealized version of events at the start of any undertaking. Unlikely as it often was, it still allowed for a comfortable cushion between that wasn't so bad and that could've gone better.

She'd expected him to have questions. Concerns were only natural. Perhaps a few moments of mild insult at having been kept so long in the dark.

But unreadable silence wasn't something she'd prepared for.

She'd meant to start him off slow. Share her new relationship—both emotional and physiological—with magic. Inform him that she was now a full-fledged believer in the supernatural. Not that she had a single clue as to how to proceed from here.

To be honest, she still had moments of panic where it felt like some faceless creature had caught her by the ankle and was dragging her beneath the depths of something she didn't understand. Magic and curses and True Love's Kiss were simple enough in theory. But the fact that everything rested on her shoulders—

She'd meant to start him off slow. First magic. Then she'd ease him into the investigation that'd led her to Storybrooke—how she'd come upon its border and taken a stroll about town. Casually mention that he was right and she was wrong and let's not make a big deal about the Dark Curse being a thing that exists.

Finally, she'd confess to the Alistair of it all. Before you get upset, she'd say, just hear me out.

Instead, everything came out rushed and uneven and out of order. He'd followed along patiently in the beginning as Emma had skipped over important plot points like the wardrobe and August Booth and the shock of seeing Neal for the first time in ten years, and she'd had to start over.

But something changed the instant Alistair's name left her lips in conjunction with descriptors like guide and replacement and little under a month ago.

She hadn't gotten the chance to bring up their past lives, or alternate selves—she hadn't quite wrapped her mind around this part, herself, much less come to terms with what it all meant—because Killian got up from the couch and started to pace.

"I get why you might be mad."

"I'm not," Killian said too quickly.

"You do a great impression of it."

He went to the window, where he stayed for a minute staring out at the city before speaking again, leaving Emma to pass the interminable quiet with anxious tugs of a loose thread that, if she pulled hard enough, would unravel her sleeve. "Whatever I'm feeling, rest assured—it isn't directed at you." Killian shook his head, asking in a low voice, as if only intending for his reflection to hear, "Why would the council send him?"

"Maybe they didn't." Killian looked over his shoulder at her. "Alistair isn't exactly subtle about having an agenda in all this. We didn't know each other twenty minutes before he brought up his plans for breaking the curse on Storybrooke."

"If you think he's come here without the council's express consent—" Killian grinned, and Emma waited for a scoff to follow—one that told Emma she was too innocent for this world—but his dark humor fell away with a furrow of his brow. His eyes moved about points in the near distance like his thoughts had stumbled upon a riddle he'd forgotten to solve.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he said in a faraway voice. "Just…something Charlotte said. Something important, I think, about Alistair. But I…," he squinted, like the pieces of that puzzle were slipping away before he had a chance to connect them, "…I can't remember."

Emma crossed the room to join Killian, took his hand in hers, and looked out at the city. "I'm not saying Alistair's a good guy. I'm saying he might not be the villain in this. I think someone he knows may be trapped in Storybrooke—someone he loves. And I'd like to help him, if I can."

"His daughter."

"I don't know for sure. But if I'm right? I've been standing in the way of him reuniting with someone he's been separated from for…who knows how long?"

"Century, at least. I had assumed she'd passed on long ago."

The semi-transparent Killian staring back at her in the glass, suspended like a ghost over the bright lights of Boston, softened as she felt gentle pressure against her hand. "It isn't your fault," he said, turning toward her. "You couldn't have known."

Emma didn't meet his eye. "I didn't even tell him I found it."

Even as he'd waited with her for her car to be fixed. Silent hours had ticked on as they sat outside the shop, Emma harboring a truth that could change his entire outlook, spark a dying hope back to life. Some part of her feared he would make her go right then, Killian be damned. Some part of her feared she would go. Some part of her knew she needed Killian, that no matter the evidence, no matter how overwhelming, it wouldn't be real without him. So she sat next to her guide on a rusted metal bench, holding her breath, and hoping he couldn't read her mind.

"How long do you think he's been searching?"

Killian shook his head, his mouth hanging open, unable to offer any consolation.

"I know you guys had a falling out, but…"

"Say no more, Swan." Killian lifted their joined hands to press a kiss on the back of Emma's. "You've sufficiently tugged the heartstrings of this erstwhile pirate." Emma went to say thank you when he stopped her. "Just don't mistake my willingness for enthusiasm. Need I remind you—the last time I saw the man, he threw me in front of a moving car."

—

"Good, you're up." Alistair entered Emma's apartment without knocking, and Emma took some solace in the fact that he'd at least used the door this time.

Progress was progress.

He went to the kitchen and opened the cupboard where the coffee mugs were kept and helped himself to the carafe, at capacity with freshly brewed Columbian Roast. He drank it black and relished every taste.

"Now we've got the ball rolling, I see no sense in slowing down. You don't have plans for the day, do you?"

"Not exactly—"

"Excellent. I've told you the what and the how, but not the why—"

"I actually wanted to talk to you about that. I think I might already know."

"This ought to be entertaining." Alistair laughed. "Go on, then. Enlighten me, Miss Swan. What is my ulterior motive? Hm?" Devilishly handsome individual like myself, and charismatic, to boot—must be set on nothing short of world domination, is that it?" He smiled into his steaming mug and took a leisurely sip.

"I told Killian everything."

Alistair froze mid-drink.

"He told me why you hate him."

Emma had never seen a person's mood shift as suddenly or as drastically as Alistair's did in that moment. He set his coffee aside with calculated precision and took slow, methodical steps toward her.

"What is it you think you know, Miss Swan?"

Emma adopted a rigid stance, refusing to be intimidated by the near-murderous look in his eyes. "I know you fell for a client." She took a step back as her guide advanced. "I know you married in secret and had a daughter."

"Don't stop now, Darling. You're nearing the best part."

"I know you think Killian sold you out to the council, and that you blame him for your wife's death."

Alistair grinned, but there wasn't a single discernible trace of cordiality to be found in him. No kindness in his eyes. No civility in his tone. She'd just come from telling Killian she didn't view Alistair as a villain, but with every angry step Alistair took toward her, with every silent second that simmered between them, Emma started to feel as though she'd awoken the danger Killian had warned her about. And it made her question what good could come from helping someone she didn't know she could trust.

At the same time, she knew she would help him. Without question or compensation. She refused to be the reason a family remained separated.

"Jones is a most informative man, indeed. While the two of you were discussing details of the not-so-distant past, did he happen to mention the fact that he was in league with the Director from the off? That the Director handpicked him to be an informant—must've recognized a kindred soul, wouldn't you say? Someone willing to stab those nearest and dearest to him in the back—all for the sake of a few measly centuries." Alistair's voice grew quiet as his ire slowly faded. "Did Jones tell you what they do to traitors?"

He'd told her what they threatened to do with guides who broke the rules. But judging by the man before her, Emma got the impression beheading was more of a scare tactic than a practiced punishment.

"I'm sorry, Emma." Alistair looked away from her, rubbing his eyes of the moisture he didn't want her to see. "It's been a long journey here. Now we're so close—wouldn't it be poetic justice for it all to slip through my fingers?"

Emma reached a tentative hand toward his shoulder and said the words she wished someone had said to her, just once, when she was young, "You're not alone anymore." Surprised didn't begin to describe what overtook his features, widened his eyes, as he regarded her again, no longer concerned with concealing his emotions. "You have us."

"Us? Jones has agreed…to help me?"

Emma smiled while Alistair absorbed this information. After a full minute, it still didn't seem to compute.

"So…," said Emma. "On to part three?"

Alistair cleared his throat and backed away. "No, I…I don't suppose a third story is necessary now you've guessed my endgame, as it were."

Something about his answer didn't sit right with her lie detector, but Emma chocked it up to his most recent mood swing and shrugged it off. "Then what's our next move?"

"Well, firstly," Alistair walked back to the kitchen, sounding every bit himself—the self he'd chosen to show Emma, anyway—with each word, "I intend to finish a full pot of the only thing this wretched realm has going for it. Then it's on to finding Storybrooke."

"About that…"