A/N: Emma's POV in the weeks she was away from Killian. Written for CS AU Week on Tumblr.
Emma had always been good at telling herself no.
The country station that had become all too familiar over the past month had dissolved into static half an hour ago and now the car was filled with forgettable alt-rock and the hum of the road beneath her tires, and all of it sounded like no. No, she shouldn't stay in the house up on the hill; no, she shouldn't let herself believe Killian when he told her she was welcome; no, she shouldn't chase something that might make her happy because it could all still fall apart. No, she shouldn't listen to the insistent thought that this wouldn't fall apart, that this time was different. No, no, always no.
The sky was a clear, cloudless blue and the sun was brilliant, slowly sinking towards the western horizon as she drove farther and farther past midday. She didn't really know where she was going but she knew it had to be away – far and fast enough that there was nothing remotely nearby to tug her back the way she had come. It was strange, the sensation of needing to run from something that was building instead of from something that had fallen apart, but the habit was too familiar to feel wrong even if the reason she was running was something entirely new.
She braked at a stop sign and kept her eyes firmly on the road in front of her as a soft wind came through the open window to tangle in her hair, as the rays of late sunlight dappled her arms in patches of heat, and told herself very firmly no as her thoughts strayed to evenings after work on Killian's porch, his hair a riot in the breeze that blew over the field and his fingers following the streaks of sun across her skin.
For a moment the folky guitar coming through the speakers sounded too much like the soft strains that always filled the garage and her next breath was laced with Killian, the way the air swirled between them when he leaned in close and his nose brushed hers. She knew the turns she would have to take to get back to Storybrooke. She knew how fast she would have to drive to get there before dark. She couldn't remember, in that moment, why she was running.
No. She told herself. It's not for you. Not anymore.
She pressed the gas a little too hard as she left the stop sign behind her, as she got that much farther away from Killian, his house, and everything that could have been.
Emma had always been a little too good at telling herself no.
—-
She drove until it was dark, until the yellow lane lines blurred together in the glow of her headlights, and pulled into a rest stop just off a highway she barely knew. She had taken a deliberately roundabout route to get here, enough so that she wouldn't be able to find herself back on Killian's doorstep without a map and a lot of intention, and she didn't know if that made things better or made them worse. She wanted to keep going, to push the car faster and farther until she couldn't think about anything beyond the road in front of her, but even she knew how that would end. Instead, she parked the Bug in an empty space behind the rest stop and climbed into the back seat. It wasn't the first night she had spent in this car and even though her body molded instantly to the familiar shape of the seats as she settled in, the relief she always felt here just didn't come.
She was so good at no but it failed her now and for a moment…for a moment she was back there. It was the space of one breath, maybe two, but it was so real – the worn softness of Killian's sheets, the gentle evening air seeping through the old windows and whispering across her skin, the warmth and safety and yes of Killian's arm wrapped around her, the golden halo of light from the lamp on his nightstand that made it feel like they were the only two people in the world, the way she didn't care about anything else…
Emma pressed her hands hard against her eyes until colours bloomed to life in the black behind her lids. From the moment she pulled out of Killian's driveway she had been telling herself no, you're not allowed to miss it. But she was far enough away now and, more than that, so incredibly tired that she let that particular no fall away. A tear slipped down her cheek to drop on the vinyl seat and she didn't stop it, wrapping herself in the memory of what she had as she fell asleep in a place that wasn't home, not in the same way, not anymore.
—-
It took her less time than it should have to get all the way to Key West, and she thought it would get easier as she got farther away but it didn't. Every morning she woke up and thought that this would be the day she would fall back into the habit of running, the day she would stop catching reminders of Killian's house in places they weren't. Reminders of home, she thought sometimes before she could stop herself. But no, no. That place didn't belong to her and she didn't belong to it. So she drove and she tried to replace the memory of Killian's palm pressed against hers with the smooth leather of the steering wheel, the lingering taste of pancakes at his messy table with hasty breakfasts balanced on the dashboard, the twang of a country guitar with pop and classic rock and anything else she could find on every radio station in every state she drove through, the feeling of permanence with the thrill of possibility.
She told herself that no, possibility hadn't lost its thrill. No, a life in one place with one person, where she belonged, didn't sound better. No, this was for the best. For both of them.
Still, there were only so many no's Emma could tell herself before they started sounding like lies.
She had spent enough time running that she knew the routine she had to fall into to make it work: find a town, rent a motel room, get a job, stay as long as she could until her demons caught up to her or until everything fell apart as it always did, and do it all again somewhere else. She knew the routine; she ate, slept, and breathed the routine; she was the routine; except that this time….she didn't. Wasn't.
This time, she couldn't spend more than an hour in her hotel room without comparing it to the room at the end of Killian's hall that had been hers, and then to his room with him in it, to the painfully few mornings they had lingered in that bed together. This time, she went out in the mornings to find herself a job and instead ended up burning through tank after tank of gas driving far from town and into the country, always returning disappointed because the sandy soil and beachy shrubs and flowering fruit trees were all severely lacking when the image behind her eyes was always long, golden grass and houses with flaking white paint and driveways that kicked up dust behind growling black cars.
This time, she was too busy living in a world she had left behind to begin building a new one.
Still, a week after arriving in Florida, Emma was still saying no. Sitting on her motel room bed with the map Killian gave her spread out in front of her, she traced the careful circle drawn on the Maine coast and Killian's careful, beautiful script beside it: in case you forget the way.
No. She told herself. You made your choice. You can't go back.
She was trying to be firm and her no's had always had so much power over her, but night after night she saw those words on this map and it was harder and harder not to think that she was robbing herself of happiness, of a future, of ahome that no, wasn't hers, but could be. That would welcome her if she let it.
Do you even know why you're doing this anymore? She asked herself, but before she could touch on the inevitable answer, there was a knock at the door.
"I just wanted to catch you while you were in." The woman from the front desk said when Emma answered. "You mentioned you weren't sure if you'd stay past the end of the week, and before I book housekeeping I wanted to check if you'd like to extend your stay?"
Emma should have said yes. She should have stayed another week, then two, then found herself an apartment in town and kept going the same way she had been for years. Instead her eyes drifted shut and the warm Florida evening wrapped around her, and she let herself fall into the vivid memories of Killian's porch and the garage at sunset, the comfortable dishevelment of his house and the creaks it made as it settled at night, and him. His soft smile across the breakfast table, his hand anchored in hers, his eyes in the morning light, his lips whisper-soft against hers as he lingered in the doorway. His voice saying please don't go.
She opened her eyes and glanced over her shoulder, her gaze sweeping across the map and the notation that, even though she couldn't see it from here, she knew was there.
She turned back to the woman and shook her head. "Thanks, but no."
—-
The trip back to Maine took simultaneously years and seconds, the pull of the place so strong that it was impossible to ignore, and as Emma eased the Bug to a stop just behind the Storybrooke sign the feeling of right almost drove her mad. She was terrified to see Killian even as she called him, even as she faked mechanical troubles to get him out here, and twice she told herself that she shouldn't drag this out, that she should just drive to the house and take whatever came next. But as scared she was of the possibility that Killian would change his mind, that he would see her and that he would be the one saying no, she was just as scared of the house – scared to pull in the driveway and find that her memory had skewed it, that the place that had made a home for itself behind her breastbone didn't actually exist; or, even worse, that it was exactly as she remembered it, that she would pull in and a piece of herself would click into place, but that Killian would tell her that she was no longer welcome, and that she would have to leave it again knowing that there was nowhere else she belonged more.
She shouldn't have worried because it was always her who said no. Not him.
Their brief exchange by the town sign was all yes. Yes, he still wanted her. Yes, she could come back. Yes, he forgave her for being an idiot. Yes, yes, yes.
He took her home after that, led her there in the shop truck with his eyes flashing over to catch hers in the rearview mirror too frequently to be safe but not frequently enough to stop her heart from pounding every time he looked away. She was the one who had left, but now that she was here she didn't want anything between them – be it states or a handful of feet.
He pulled into the driveway first, the truck kicking up a familiar cloud of dust, and something shifted in her chest. It was all exactly as she had remembered – the garage solid and certain with both doors thrown open to catch the evening breeze, the faded lettering on the sign out front, the flakes of paint making faint shadows against the side of the house, the porch looking worn and welcoming, and the soft golden light in the kitchen window that somehow said there was always somewhere to go if you needed to.
The few hours she and Killian spent in the garage together made her feel as though she had never left, and it was a strange kind of magic that she never wanted to end. The curled up together in his bed after that, both fell asleep with whispered words nestled between them, and Emma woke up to home.
It took a week for Killian to bring it up, but one night when they were nestled together on the porch with the sun setting before them, his careful voice started, "Do you ever regret…"
She didn't let him finish, shaking her head and pressing her fingertips against the corner of his mouth to silence him. She didn't even need to think about her answer and leaned in, her lips a hairsbreadth away from his so he could feel her words against them when she whispered, "No."
Emma had always been good at no, after all.