Emma looked around, cars and streetlamps and shops looking odd to her now that she'd seen her parents' world for so long. Her fingers fiddled constantly with the necklace, useless now that she'd returned. She pulled a few quarters from her pocket and slipped them into a phone booth. The number was easy in her mind, and as the phone rang, she smiled.
"Hi," she greeted the person on the other end. "What day is it?"
When she hung up, she was satisfied. It was two days after she'd left, and everything was right with the world.
Which wasn't, strictly speaking, true. Not everything was right just yet. August was still weeping over Grace's dead body. Jefferson's hat was still stuck in Maleficent's castle, and his bones were woven into a great wall. David was dead and james alive, Snow married to an off-color nobleman.
Although all that was fixing itself.
Grace's body slowly shrank, until she was eleven again. She woke up from a good night's sleep in her bed. She made pancakes with her father. She almost remembered a man with brown eyes. She wanted to forget, though, so she did.
Jefferson found himself sprawled in the kitchen, hat in hand. He shook off the sleep and began to make pancake batter.
August woke up in a hotel room, limbs frozen in wood, eyes made of marble. There was the faintest little glint in the back of his mind, a red-headed woman, a pool of blood... but he had bigger things to worry about.
Snow and David woke up to the ring of a phone. They scrambled to put their clothes on, and then scrambled some eggs. David went to pick up Emma from the edge of town.
Henry woke up and wrote down a dream of nothingness, white walls and black floors and red curtains.
Twenty-nine years ago, in a corner of the forest, a pirate and a witch were making a deal.
"Listen, your grace, promise me that should anyone ask you to change the timeline, don't do it." Cora fixed him with keen eyes.
"Is that a threat?" Killian remembered the kind old woman with white hair and copper thread.
"It's a warning."
Three days ago, a witch and a crocodile were making a deal.
"You'll allow Milah to convince me to run away with her?" Rumplestiltskin looked down his nose at Cora. "Why?"
"SO that you can leave, live a normal life, all three of you. Far out of reach of the Ogre Wars, far from that pirate or any magic beans. You'll be a family. Happy. Together. Human."
Only time was winding back. Cora was forgetting her plan, remembering a promise instead. Rumplestiltskin was remembering a girl, a chipped cup.
A pirate in a hospital, and a woman yelling for someone to hide him.
Time stopped.
Then it ran forward.
One minute.
Two hours.
Three days.
"Hello, beautiful." Emma turned, finding Killian leaning in the doorway.
"Kil." She smiled, wide and brilliant and bright, and Killian thought he'dd never seen anything more beautiful. She launched herself at him, forgetting all dignity or caution.
"Miss me?" he chuckled, wrapping his arms around her, clutching her further to his chest. Breathing her in.
"You have no idea." She laughed, hands tangling in his hair.
"Oh don't I?" He breathed, pulling back to cradle her face between his hand and hook. She looked intp his eyes, and she knew he remembered everything. "Three hundred and thirty years, Emma. And then you have no clue who I am."
"Did you miss me?" She asked, smiling. He chuckled and shook his head.
"You have no idea." His smile faded. "I thought I'd run out of time. That I'd missed you." His thumb stroked down her cheek. She pulled him close again, hands gripping at his coat.
"We have all the time in the world," she whispered. "We're timeless."
He pulled back just far enough to kiss her.
Soundly.
The End.