not prompted, but swirled around in my head so much after that finale.

.

.

—so open up your morning light

.

The dreams begin right around the time they move into the new apartment.

Sometimes, they're innocent, tasting vaguely of memory; a woman with short, black hair laughing with her over a movie and a glass of wine, or a nightmare of watching Henry calling a different woman "Mom" as he walks away from her.

Other times, they're less innocent, and less familiar; a man kissing her with breathless passion, pushing her back onto a bed, fingers slipping between her legs. It's always the same man, black hair and striking blue eyes and stubble and these bizarre details, a missing hand and a tattoo on the other arm, a vague impression of an accent rough in her ear, cold metal of a ring on her inner thigh.

It's unsettling, and she always wakes up with a sense of disappointment, disappointed that it isn't real, he isn't real.

"I'm telling you," her coworker says over their lunch break, "he was a lover in a past life. I know a medium, she can look into it for you, tell you who he is."

"Past lives?" she repeats, raising an eyebrow in skepticism. "Seriously?"

"Look, I'll go with you. I'm curious, too. Who knows, maybe I was someone cool in a past life, you never know."

She rolls her eyes, but it's so specific — he's so specific — that she can't think of a better explanation. "All right, I'll bite," she says, throwing up her hands. "Tomorrow? Around 2, before Henry gets out of school."

Anna grins. "Sure!"

.

The medium looks exactly like Emma would have thought a medium would look — an "office" smelling strongly of nag champa, bangles and long curls and floor-length skirts — but when she talks, she's surprisingly reasonable.

"I know," she laughs. "It sounds strange to the uninitiated — I thought it was a load of crap the first time someone mentioned it to me, too. But there are some things that simply defy all other explanation. Anna said you're having dreams?"

"Yeah," she replies uneasily, taking a seat and looking around. "Same guy, all these weird details."

"What sort of dreams?"

She blinks. "Um."

The medium catches on, with a knowing "ah" and looks away with a little smile. "Well, they say that some loves are strong enough to transcend lifetimes. If you'll come with me…"

Emma follows the woman into a warm room, feeling like a total idiot, and sinks into the couch, a plush, overstuffed thing that's so comfortable it should probably be outlawed by the Catholic church as an agent of sin, while the medium turns on a white noise machine, setting it to a soft, distant rush of the ocean.

"You'll have to relax, love," the woman says quietly, and something jolts inside of her at the term of endearment.

She is pretty on-edge, she reasons. This whole thing is just bizarre.

"Close your eyes," the medium murmurs, and begins directing her through doors and light and the dream, as much as she's willing to tell (not damn much, not to a total stranger); she tells her to describe the man in as much detail as she can remember — but the more she tries to grasp his image, the more it slips away.

"It's all right," she says soothingly. "Don't fight it, just move on. You said this isn't the only dream, who else do you dream of?"

In the end, she doesn't feel much better — all they settle on is that she was alone in that past life too, that she's a wandering soul always looking for a family, a home, love, but, "in that life, you found it," the medium tells her with a smile.

"Why do I dream that I'm losing Henry?" she asks fervently, and the woman places her hand over hers.

"That's not residue of a past life, Emma," she answers, sympathy in her face, the sort of sympathy that unnerves her, especially coming from strangers. "That's good, old-fashioned anxiety. You said you nearly gave him up for adoption, didn't you? That dream, I think, is just the lingering fear and guilt, what might have happened if you hadn't changed your mind. It's natural," she adds warmly. "Everyone worries about what might have been, if they'd made a different crucial decision."

"It's just so… specific," she mutters, running a hand through her hair. "Always the same woman who adopted him, she's… evil."

"Of course she is," the medium replies, and squeezes her hand. "As I said, it's your fear that breeds that dream. You're afraid that he might have ended up in an abusive home, rather than with a loving family. It's all right."

She sighs; her words make sense, but they don't strike true. Maybe, she thinks, maybe she's just being paranoid.

"Well, thank you," she shrugs, standing up and wiping her hands on her jeans.

"If you have any questions, don't hesitate to come back," the medium says, standing and hugging her — Emma fights the urge to recoil, touchy-feely people ugh — with a smile. "You have such an interesting mind, Emma. There's a lot of pain in your past, but a lot of good, too. I hope you can reconnect with that, in time."

"Yeah," she murmurs as she leaves. "Me too."

.

She dreams of him again that night, his lips hot on her skin and his voice in her ear, a rough chuckle and a muted Really, Swan, resorting to seers to find me? but the dream fades into white noise soon after she wakes up.

.

"My life continues to make no sense," she tells Anna, tossing her bag onto her chair. "Some crazy, hot… pirate guy showed up at my door yesterday morning, babbling something about my family being in danger? And he kissed me."

"Kissed you?" Anna repeats, incredulous. "What, like, 'hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name?'"

She rolls her eyes. "I don't know, I kneed him in the balls."

"Really?"

"What would you have done?" she counters, aghast at Anna's disbelieving tone. "Made out with some stranger at the door?"

"Well, you did say hot," Anna says, shrugging. "How hot are we talking? Like, 'yeah, I'd do you if you the occasion came up' or 'get in my pants now'?"

The second one, she thinks, and coughs. "He was wearing leather pants," she says by way of answer; Anna laughs.

"Did he pull them off? I mean, did they work?"

"I wasn't exactly checking out the goods," she replies, rolling her eyes again. "My son was in the kitchen, I'm not just gonna… drag some crazy guy into my bed because he's pretty."

The really bizarre thing, she thinks but doesn't say, the really bizarre part, is how familiar he seemed.

He called her 'Swan' — not Emma, just Swan with a familiar inflection, but she can't remember where she's heard that tone before.

.

He's waiting for her when she leaves the office for lunch, leaning against the wall like a holdover from a different era, and when he spots her, he holds up his hands in supplication.

"Hear me out," he says immediately, and she opens her mouth to tell him to go to hell, that she really is going to call the cops this time, but then she looks at him and —

He's missing a hand.

The words come out of her mouth in dumb shock, and she takes a closer look at him — black hair, check, gorgeous blue eyes, check, missing hand, check, rings, check, stubble, check, shit shit shit shit — and an odd, closed expression comes over his face.

"Yes," he replies shortly, "I am. It's a rather long story."

Rough accent, low like sweet nothings — check.

He isn't supposed to be real.

She can't breathe; she doesn't even hear what he's saying as she stumbles forward and grabs his right wrist, wrenches his sleeve up to see — tattoo, check.

It's him, there's no doubt, the man she's dreamed of — but he's supposed to be part of some past life, long-dead from a time she's reincarnated out of, or whatever nonsense psychics sell. He's not real, he's not — he isn't real.

He's also picked up on her panic. "If we've never met before," he murmurs, fingers closing around her hand in an almost tender way, "how did you know I had that tattoo?"

She stares at it blankly — Milah, Milah, that name is familiar — my first love, my Milah — someone from long ago — she blinks and the memory fades.

Abruptly, almost convulsively, she snatches her hand away from him.

"This isn't real," she breathes, and he tries to catch her by the arm, but she wrenches it out of his hand before he can grasp her.

"Emma, please, listen to me — "

She can't.

.

"He's real," she gasps to Anna, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her to the break room.

"What?"

"He's real, the man — the one I've been — dreaming about — it's — Crazy Hot Pirate Guy, that's who he is, I — I didn't get a good look at him the first time — "

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait," Anna says, holding up her hands. "You're telling me that this guy is real? And alive?"

"Yes! He was — he was standing outside, he tried to talk to me. It's definitely him, missing hand and tattoo and everything."

"Outside?" Anna repeats, and presses Emma into a seat. "Look, I'll go talk to him, figure out what he's after. You're kind ofpanicking."

She returns a few minutes later, whistling in appreciation. "You weren't kidding about hot, Jesus," she mutters, and Emma glares at her. "Okay, okay, he said he needs to talk to you, it's important. He wants to meet you at the cafe on the corner to discuss whatever's going on. He was kind of cagey about that, but he apologized for going to your apartment, said if it made you feel better, he'd only talk to you in public from now on."

It does, sort of.

"He seemed… really…" Anna muses, and finally winces. "I can't figure out the right word. Pining? I don't know, he seems really worried about you."

"I don't even know him," she gasps; Anna makes a face.

"Maybe you do?" she says softly. "He was talking about amnesia, and you've been dreaming about him, and… well, he definitely knows you. I asked him some questions, and it doesn't come off like he's stalking you, you know? He has no idea where Henry goes to school, but… he knows Henry's father's name."

A jolt of horror strikes her straight through. "What?"

"I'm telling you, he isn't lying. He knows you." Anna sits down opposite her, worrying at her lip. "I think you should meet him. If you want, I'll go with you."

"No," she says slowly. "I can take care of myself."

.

"Who are you?" is the first thing she says to him, sitting hard in the chair opposite him, hoping to exude an aura of I will not be taking an ounce of shit from you; if it sticks, he doesn't react to it.

"My name is Killian," he replies. "Killian Jones, I'm a… friend."

"Yeah, that's cute," she snaps, "except that doesn't tell me anything."

He takes a deep breath. "Your memory has been tampered with," he answers slowly. "To be honest, my dear, I would have left you be," he goes on, with a slightly self-loathing glance away, "if it wasn't a matter of life or death for your family."

"Why?" she asks, crossing her arms; he raises an eyebrow.

"Well, to start, you're happy, aren't you?" he says quietly. "I've no desire to disrupt that. Quite the opposite, really," he adds, with a short, breathy, and wholly insincere laugh. "You've had far more than your fair share of tragedy, love," he murmurs, and her breath catches in her throat at the word. "You deserve a happy ending, even if that necessitates my absence."

"You say that like we're a… thing."

He winces, scratching the back of his head. "I had hoped so," he admits finally. "Although I never had the chance to…" he trails off, melancholy and somewhat miserable, the phrase might-have-been given voice.

The dream rises up in the back of her mind, the sense of it, how it feels different than all the others, and dimly, she wonders if maybe — theoretically, assuming Crazy Hot Pirate Guy isn't full of shit (which he is) — she had once hoped, too.

She tries to blink it away, but it's hard, sitting across from him, hearing his voice, watching his lips move, to banish the phantom sensation of that stubble brushing against her lips, her neck, her thigh.

"I don't…" she starts softly, and glances away. "You know I can't believe you."

"Why not?" he challenges, just as soft. "You recognized me, some part of you remembers me."

She's overwhelmed by the feeling of being cornered, and very suddenly, she has to leave.

"Look, this is just — this is nonsense," she says, standing up and looking around for an escape; in spite of the fact that they're sitting at a sidewalk table, literally surrounded by places she can run, she still feels like she'll never, ever get away from him.

And worse, she can't shake the feeling that she doesn't want to.

"Emma," he pleads, standing up and reaching out to touch her but backing off at the last moment. "Swan, please — "

He says her last name like a secret, some private history shared between lovers in the night; it frightens her at the same time that it thrills her, piques something sweet in her memory.

He's telling the truth, and she knows him, and he's right, some part of her remembers him, and Anna is right about the yearning, the way he looks at her as if the sun has come out after years of winter; he's been haunting her and he lingers under her skin and she can't — he can't be real.

"I'm sorry," she cries softly, urgently, retreating like a coward; his face falls; she runs. He calls after her once, such a familiar sound, but she doesn't turn around.

.

She dreams of him again, pulls him closer as desperately as she pushed him away in reality, repeating herself over and over, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, please don't leave me, and he forgives her without words, fingers tracing abstract shapes into her skin; you need not worry, love, I'll always come back to you, I'm yours.

When she wakes up, her pillow is wet, and she can't quite remember why.