for my lovely Elisa, who is opening her home to me when I get to Italy and I can’t thank her and her family enough <3
(PS: I’m sorry it’s so short, love)
-----
Henry is the one who first suggests the idea, handing them two plane tickets to New York one day at Granny’s, his smile as wide as she’s ever seen it.
“How did you—“
“Not important,” he says before she can finish. “But you two need to get out of here for a while.” He pauses, making sure to make eye contact with both of them. “You deserve it.”
“But what if something happens?” she argues, still staring at the piece of paper in her hands like it might catch fire. Or grow two heads. “Have you met Storybrooke? It thrives on chaos.”
Henry sighs, giving her a slight eye roll like the teenager she did not approve of him becoming. “Mom, it’s been quiet for two weeks, and I promise I’ll call you if anything weird happens.”
She looks over at Killian, who is already watching her, and he smiles. “I think it sounds like a nice idea, love. After all, we won’t be too far.” He reaches over to pick up her hand, tangling her fingers together. “And Henry’s right. You deserve a break.”
“Everyone else is on board, too. They helped.” Henry smiles, so satisfied with himself that she can’t help the swell of pride that tightens her throat.
She looks back at Killian, still ready to argue, but one look at his excited eyes and upturned lips, and her resolve wavers. “What do you say, Swan?” He grins, raising an eyebrow at her, and she knows she’s a goner. “How about a new adventure?”
------
She almost goes home the first night.
The hotel check-in desk has a fancy quill sitting on top of it, and it makes her think of Henry. She takes their keys slowly and turns to Killian, her stomach suddenly in knots. “Should we really be doing this? What if—“
“Darling.” His voice silences her, and he pulls her to the side, out of hearing range for the check in clerk. “Everything is fine. You heard your boy as clear as I did—if anything happens, he’ll call.”
“But I feel guilty. Everyone has fought by our side to make Storybrooke safe. Doesn’t everyone deserve a vacation?” She searches his eyes, trying to figure out if she actually wants him to agree with her or not.
He sighs, reaching up to brush his knuckles across her jaw. “Emma, you’re the bloody savior. You want to give everyone their happy endings. You focus so hard on everyone else, and then you forget to include your own. You deserve this, love.”
He punctuates his statement with the press of his lips against hers, and she melts against him.
“You know what I don’t deserve?” she asks when they part, leaning forward to rest her forehead on his shoulder.
“Hm?”
She reaches up to find the charms of his necklace and holds tight. “You.”
------
There’s one day, where she tells him they’re going to just go for a walk, and she leads him right to the jail that he’d spent a night in when he’d come to find her. She laughs as soon as the recognition flashes across his features. He fixes her with an exasperated gaze, but there’s no heat behind it. He looks back up at it, his hand threaded tightly into hers, and the corners of his mouth tug up into a smile.
“We’ve come a long way since then, haven’t we?”
She tucks herself into his side, resting her head on his shoulder to appraise the building as well. She can remember how nervous she was when she got him out, how her mind screamed not to listen to him, not to drink something that might be poison. Yet, something deep inside of her trusted him. So, she’d taken a leap of faith and down the liquid right where they’re standing now.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “We have.”
“Our little adventure here was something, though. You know, before you knew you were hopelessly in love with me.” He twirls her around with their twined hands and tugs her body into his, his grin much too wide now. She looks up at him, thinking back to how she felt when she realized who he was, how her heart had raced at the words that spilled from his lips.
“I came back to save you.”
She reaches up to hold the back of his neck with her free hand. “I don’t think it was that I didn’t know. I think… I did, at least part of me did. The issue was that… you terrified me. I was scared of the idea of loving you, of returning your feelings, but… they were there. I’m just stubborn.”
His nose bumps hers affectionately, eyes the lightest she thinks she’s ever seen them. “It’s alright, love. I love your stubbornness.”
“I just… wasted so much time fighting it,” she tells him, freeing her other hand to hold onto his jacket. “I never really did apologize for… taking so long. But I am sorry.”
“Shhh.” He kisses her, drawing her even that much closer to him. “You needed the time. I didn’t mind. I would go through centuries of waiting for you if it meant that we would wind up where we are now.”
She nods, and he kisses her once more before making an offhanded comment about getting far away from the place that force fed him awful brig food.
(She swears that Storybrooke could hear her laugh.)
------
New York is prettiest in November, Emma thinks, as she and Killian walk through Central Park, leaves all shades of orange and yellow and red. She lets her eyes flick amongst all of the trees, finally allowing herself to breathe, only looking away when Killian chuckles softly.
She stops walking and turns to him, brows raised at his grin. “What?”
“You’re enjoying yourself.”
“Of course I am.” She looks around again for good measure. “There’s no one trying to kill us here.”
A smile is his only response before he kisses her, and right in the middle of Central Park, with leaves gently floating to the ground as the breeze blows, she’s sure they look like they came right out the end of a romantic drama.
She laughs a little into his kiss. No, what they have is much, much better.
------
They’re standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, craning their necks up at her, when he looks at her and tells her that her world is beautiful.
“It’s no Enchanted Forest,” she replies, tucking herself into his side. She looks around her, thinking of the immense beauty that she’s seen every time she’s visited the world that was supposed to be hers, and she can’t really imagine how the one that she got stuck with measures up at all. To emphasize her mental point, someone off to the side of them spews a profanity at someone who bumped into him, and she sighs.
“It’s still beautiful, because it’s yours. And there’s much that can be seen here.” He pulls a folded up pamphlet out of his pocket, and on the front cover is the Eiffel Tower. “This, in particular, looks like it would be a sight to see.”
“It’s your world, now, too,” she tells him, looking up at him as he takes in the image pictured in front of him.
And she has an idea.
When he looks at her, he must see the new gleam in her eyes, because he smiles. “Aye, love. It is.”
“I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” she says, her heart racing a little faster at the thought. “I’ll buy us a big paper map to put on our wall, and… we can put little push pins in it every time we visit somewhere, and buy them in different colors, and fill up our map. I want you to see this world.”
He tucks the pamphlet away and wraps his arms around her, bumping his nose against hers. “Only if you come with me.”
She smiles. “Deal.”
------
So they go.
They start small, in the United States—Killian becomes a five year old at the sight of Pandas in the Atlanta Zoo, complains about the weather in Seattle (until she suggests a very pleasurable activity to pass their time inside), he’s exasperated, at first, by the skin her bikini shows in Miami, but they’re together. Sometimes, Henry comes with them. Sometimes, they escape together, just the two of them getting lost in another world.
And then, they go further, to every corner of the world that they can reach, until a few years later, when a positive pregnancy test stops them in their tracks.
After that, they don’t really feel the need to travel the world anymore.
After that, all the world they need is right in front of them.
