CHAPTER FIVE

THE SAVIOR HEART

Emma finds Killian in their room, sitting on the edge of the bed holding her cigar box in his lap, the lid open and spilling out a pulsing red glow in the darkened room. It's a day of revelations, apparently. She isn't certain which of her secrets, her lies, is the most damning.

"I always knew that she wasn't mine," he says, not at all what she'd been expecting. "I knew you went to the cemetery that night with Whale. Back then I had a nasty habit of following you. I wanted... I can say that I wanted to protect you from harm, as is a man's duty, which I know you despise in and of itself, and I suppose it was more than that, some... want to control you. You were always so unpredictable, Swan, which was both exciting and infuriating."

"Like Milah?" she questions.

"Too much like her and in other ways nothing at all like her, but I chose not to dwell on either where I should have done," Killian states. "And so I suspected, but I hoped, and when I looked upon those blue eyes, for a time, I let myself believe she was mine. But she grew and so did her personality and though I could easily see you in her, there's nothing of me. When she started drawing, that's when I knew for certain she was Baelfire's child."

Emma has to her shut her eyes to blink back the tears. She remembers that clearly. Charley was three and somehow got into Henry's box of ink and quills. He'd been furious, of course, to find his little sister covered in ink, his quills broken, his half finished book about Agraba adorned with Charley's scribbles. They were very good scribbles for a three year old, all things considered, and rather than magically expunging the mess, Henry had copied the text to another book and left that one for his sister to draw in, something she'd continued since with increasingly refined talent such that Henry would promise her that when she was a bit older he'd hired her as his illustrator and they'd travel the world together.

"It was his mother's talent," she recalls and shakes her head.

"When did you take it out?" he asks, at last.

"After Charley was born," she answers. "Before you got back from your assignment."

"Removing one's heart doesn't eliminate the capacity to love," Killian recalls, "unless you let it."

"But it does make it easier," Emma sighs, taking a seat.

"Did you ever really love me?"

"No," she answers truthfully. "I thought I did, in the moment. Everything happened so fast. Between breaking the curse, Neverland, time travel, and becoming the Dark One, all I had time to process was the fear of losing more. I didn't even have the time to grieve for what I'd lost, and I don't just mean Neal. I had an entire life, and maybe it had a lot of pain in it, but it was my pain, it defined me. I started to forget that, though, caught up in the constant craziness and with my parents insisting that my life until I got to Storybrooke was just one giant suck-fest I needed to forget and start over so everything would be perfect. I think they genuinely believe that, and I wanted to believe it. I was so tired of living with that pain. But not dealing with it... it was more like becoming an addict than actually healing. I just used all of these distractions to become desensitized to what I'd lost, what I would be giving up, and how much it scared me to give up those parts of myself that belonged to that world."

"So I was your rum," Killian surmises with a grimace.

"I'm sorry," she sighs. "I never meant to hurt you. I was trying so hard to believe in everything that my parents said I should. I wanted them to be proud of me and have some kind of connection with them, which just got so much harder after my brother was born. And naming him after Neal didn't help, then piling on everything with Lily and the Dark One... I just didn't want to deal with any of it. And I didn't want anyone to be disappointed in me. I was pretty sure that I could never disappoint you, not with this... unrealistic, perfect image of me that you were in love with, that you actually believed I was no matter what. I think... I loved that you loved me more than I actually loved you. Or I loved... the perfect version of you that you thought I made you. But both are lies, though. Neither of us are good people, Killian. And loving someone, good or bad, doesn't redeem you. It just... makes you codependent and stuck in some... self-made delusion of love and happiness."

Emma lets out another sigh, continuing, "I thought I could be your moral compass and that would be enough for both of us, but it was exhausting and my heart... I couldn't let the mess we were taint what I felt for my daughter. I might not have wanted another child, but once she was born... I had to protect her from what I became when I let you into my heart. From the darkness I took out of you and into myself. Maybe I did think that was love once, some kind of fated balance, but it's not. Love isn't making someone responsible for you being good. And it can never be changing yourself into someone worse to make someone else better."

Killian doesn't say anything, but lifts her heart out of the box. There are patches of darkness, not in it like the usual way that darkness grows in hearts, but blotches on the surface like sun spots that she took into herself. As The Savior (and the Dark One) she could do it, she could fight it, but once the balance was restored and she was just Emma, it became harder and harder and started to affect her and her choices... choices like Charley.

"I don't regret having her," Emma says, "but I know that it was wrong. There was so much pressure to fall into step with everyone else that I didn't think or I didn't care enough how much I was hurting you. I'm so sorry for this charade, Killian."

He shakes his head, gaze forlorn. "It's a charade I allowed. I knew you had doubts. I pressured you when you were vulnerable, because I knew I had a chance that way to get under yours skin, to get into your heart. I called it love, but it wasn't. Not then. Not for a long time. And I knew... I realize that night in the cemetery that I hadn't won your heart at all. And it's impossible to challenge a ghost. My victory was a pyrrhic one. I got you to marry me, to pledge the rest of your life, but your heart would never be entirely mine, and the part that burned for him, however small, would always burn more brightly than the rest. He was the love of your life, and fate was unkind to you. I saw it as a kindness for me then, the opportunity to get what I wanted, and I pressured you, and I was unkind to him. And for that, Emma, I am sorry."

He then holds out her heart. "You may not be able to save the girl with magic, but she should have all of her mother's love with her."

She doesn't get much of a chance to argue the matter. He shoves it back in with the same lack of finesse she once returned her own.

AN: If Hook seems too nice and forgiving, there's a reason...