Tell me the way you've been so long
I want to go along and pretend that it's dawn
That's the start not the close
I'm your friend not your post
We're under Wolf's Law
- Wolf's Law, The Joy Formidable
She's thinking about the top drawer of his desk.
Emma glances up to look at it, nestled against the wall on the opposite side of the room, and remembers the first time she had looked inside. She'd been waiting for Killian, hearing his movements above deck as the ship creaked beneath his boots, and she was taking stock of the small room, running her fingers along the wooden walls and the furniture. It hadn't been the first time she'd been in there, but it was the first time Emma had taken time to appreciate it.
The top drawer on the left had been open just slightly, just enough to pique her interest, and though Emma wasn't one to invade others privacy, she couldn't help but reach for the intricate little handle and pull the drawer all the way open. Inside had been a pile of papers, all neatly stacked. Picking one off the top, Emma had run her fingers over the worn material, so old the texture and color were fading. When she'd asked Killian later about the beautiful drawings, he had become uncharacteristically sheepish, explaining that it was a hobby he'd had little time to indulge in as of late.
Emma remembers how she'd thought that, for everything she knew about him, there were still centuries worth that she didn't.
Now, she returns her eyes to his sleeping form, her fingertips still brushing at the scar on his cheek. She'd already got the story behind it (Killian's first run in with Tink), but Emma thinks of the other scars decorating his body, of all the stories she still has yet to hear, all the parts of him which still remain a mystery to her.
Emma wonders if she'll ever get his full history- if there's a way to discover all three hundred years of a person, and if so, if she'll ever know Killian the way he seems to know her.
There are some nights when this train of thought is the cause of Emma's worry. There are nights when she rolls over to look at him, shaking off the vestiges of a bad dream, and she panics that, even now, even after all they've been through, Killian might still leave her. Some nights she worries that she is only a blip on his radar, and it's worse when Emma compares them, when she tries to weigh their three years together against his three hundred before her. She thinks of how Killian's lived whole centuries to her decades, and she questions if she can be enough, if this new life doesn't pale in comparison to the excitement of his old one.
There are other nights, though, nights like this one, when Emma thinks of how far they have come. Such a short time for Killian, but still enough to be real, enough to change their lives permanently. There are nights like these, when she traces his scarred skin with her own, thinking of all she knows and all she has yet to learn, thinking of Killian as a treasure yet to be uncovered- and Emma can't help but believe that someday, she will.