What Happened in Berkshire {{3/3}}
THIS IS IT, FOLKS. THIS IS REALLY THE END. (though, I mean, I could probably be talked into a Christmas-themed epilogue. We’ll see.) This story has come to mean so much to me -- yes, this weird little statue-come-to-life story inspired by a @write-it-motherfuckers prompt, perfect for this year’s @cssns, and helped to be shaped into the perfection it has become by the lovely, always wonderful @thisonesatellite: my love, my incredible friend, Destroyer of Self-Loathing. And, of course, to the perfect @captainsjedi, who has, once again, captured the aura of this fic with her perfect artwork, and who created the magnificent @csseptembersunshine, for which this chapter is part of.
This final installment is dedicated to every single one of you who have commented, messaged me, liked, reblogged, kudosed, sent good vibes, flailed, and read the first two-thirds of this story. I love you all.
Want to be part of that group? Need to catch up?
PART ONE: tumblr // AO3 ;
PART TWO: tumblr // AO3
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November turns to December, snow blanketing the ground. Emma and Killian fall deeper into a routine, depending on Emma’s schedule at the hospital and which days he goes to the bar before it opens. Even though he is up much later into the night, Killian somehow always gets up before her in the morning, making her breakfast with whatever he can find in the fridge. She imagines that his being up before the sun comes from his Navy days, no matter how long ago that was; and the fact that he only sleeps for a few hours each night has a connection to all the years he spent "asleep" as a statue, fear of missing anything further than the 400 years he watched pass before his unmoving eyes. While she is not the most expert cook, she tries her best to have something for lunch, unless she’s at the hospital. It really is just about the least she can do.
(When she is at the hospital, Killian brings her lunch more often, knowing that whatever she packs or could buy at the hospital is far less healthy than what he brings her. She refuses to admit just how much she appreciates it, and how much she enjoys seeing Killian in the middle of the day.)
Especially because she’s… well, she hasn’t quite “come to terms” with what they are, but she has gotten closer. True Love still seems like total bullshit, but the relationship that they’ve built since she “broke his curse” is far from bullshit, regardless of what brought them together in the first place. Because they’re friends, before anything else. They’re friends, and as much as Killian hopes that they can be more than that someday, he’s also been giving her more space than she expected, given just how much he believes in whatever they’re destined to be.
And she’s thankful for him. She’s thankful for his friendship, for his rather uncanny ability to know exactly what he can do to make her feel better, and for the absolute spotlessness that seems to follow him around like a lingering shadow. She wouldn’t have admitted before just how unorganized her entire life was — and perhaps even just how much stress may have been caused because of it.
But now it’s better. Now it’s all better.
Which is how they wind up here, with all the furniture moved to the edges of the living room and Emma and Regina sitting in the middle of the empty floor, Emma with her eyes squeezed shut and her hands held out in front of her, concentrating harder than she ever thought possible. Though she cannot see it, a warm orange glow surrounds her hands and her forearms, fading away after her elbows. Regina is both watching her intently and emitting her own hazy red glow from her hands, though she requires much less concentration to do so.
“Can you feel him? Have you found him?” she asks after a few moments, intently watching her face for any movement.
Even though her eyes are shut, Killian recognizes the look that passes over her face, even if he cannot see the widening of her eyes that almost always comes with it.
Surprise.
And when she nods, he notices from his seat on the other side of the room that Regina’s face twists into a similar expression.
“Yes?” she asks, still trying to take in every detail of Emma’s face, even as she nods. “You can feel him?”
Emma nods again, then slightly tilts her head to the side. “Yeah, I do, I — I can feel him. But he’s — shit, he’s close.”
“What does that mean?” Regina asks, but Killian is afraid that he knows the answer, assuming that the strong chill the he feels rolling down his spine is because she also feels one rolling down her own.
Their connection has grown stronger over the past few weeks, and he’s really hoping that it’s because she he started coming to terms with what has been brewing between them. He’s noticed her smiling at him more, choosing to spend more time with him, even coming to visit some nights at the bar after her shifts at the hospital, even staying later into the night after close while he helps clean up. Recently, he has found that he doesn’t always have to be touching her to feel what she is feeling, like right now. All he has to do now is concentrate, the same way she is currently concentrating on her magic. So, while she puts all of her energy into trying to find Neal, he is focusing on trying to figure out how she is feeling, what she is feeling. And this connection between them just proves to him (though he would never tell her) that their True Love is a big deal. He can’t quite explain just how he can tell that Neal is not just in England, but actually close by. So close by that he almost moves to say something, but before he can, the silence in the room is broken by a strong knock on the door, which causes both Emma and Regina to jump, Emma losing her concentration as they all turn their attention towards the apartment door.
After a few moments, there is another knock, this one a little louder, but still none of them move to get it.
But someone has to, so Killian leaves them where they are on the carpet and crosses over the apartment to open it. He is pleading with the universe, begging for his feeling to be incorrect, though when he opens the door, he’s never been more upset to be correct in his whole life.
“Uh, hi?” Neal says from the other side of the door, and even through the blood boiling within his body that begins to hum in his ears, it is not loud enough to drown out the holy shit that escapes Emma’s lips when she sees who is on the other side of the door.
It takes Neal a moment to recognize him since their altercation at the bar was almost a month ago, but Killian can tell the exact moment it happens because the expression written all over his face changes from confusion to rage, joined by an angry “You,” spat out through gritted teeth. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I live here,” he answers, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world.
Behind him, Emma’s eyes are still wide, her breath caught in her throat but her lungs weighing close to a million pounds.
Until she formulates a plan, pushing herself up off the floor and rushing to Killian’s side, just as Neal asks, “And what about Emma? I was told this was her apartment.”
“Yeah, she lives here, too, she’s my—”
Emma’s hand placed on his arm, gently pulling him back to let her stand beside him in the doorway, stops the roommate from falling from his lips.
“Hello, Neal,” she says, her voice completely lacking enthusiasm, which doesn’t surprise Killian; however, when she adds, “I heard you’ve met Killian, my boyfriend,” he finds himself much more surprised. Killian tries his hardest to stop the surprise from showing on his face, and when she slides her hand behind his back, curling her pointer finger through one of his belt loops, he slips his around her shoulders, trying his best to play along without giving anything away.
Yes, their connection has grown stronger over the past few weeks, but that doesn’t stop her from continuing to surprise him every once in a while.
Emma almost laughs at the way Neal’s jaw ticks with this new information.
“How can we help you, mate?” Killian asks, not hesitating before stepping into his new role, tightening his arm around her shoulder and realizing that he has started to play with the soft ends of her ponytail.
“Well, I was hoping to apologize for everything I’ve done, to tell her —” he realizes that he’s still talking to Killian, so he turns his attention instead to Emma. “To tell you that I was a complete and total idiot and that, if you would still have me, I still love you and want to be with you.” It takes everything in her not to roll her eyes, but she no longer tries to stop it when he adds, “But it seems you’ve packed up and moved on, so—”
Killian opens his mouth to speak, but Emma beats him to it: “I moved on? Neal, you moved on before we even broke up. You were cheating on me, so if you’re a little hurt about the fact that I’ve found someone that actually seems to care about me and makes me happy and who I’m already more in love with than I ever was with you, I’m definitely not sorry.”
She doesn’t realize exactly what she’s said until she feels Killian’s body tense up at it — but at the same time, she’s not sure why it surprises her as much as it does. It’s completely obvious, the fact that Neal’s feelings towards her can’t hold a candle to Killian’s, that Killian both cares about her and loves her far more than Neal ever did — and that she loves him back. Of course she loves him back. Sure, she wishes with everything in her that she discovered it another way, that she realized it at a moment when Neal wasn’t standing by their apartment door, but she can’t even deny it anymore.
She knows that she should turn to Killian, tell him somehow that she really meant it, wasn’t just saying things to make Neal go away, but she can’t bring herself to; so instead, she tightens her grip on his hip and thinks it — though she has no idea if it even works.
Neal, however, isn’t nearly as thrown off by this as both of them are; he just scoffs. “God, Ems, you don’t have to be such a bitch about it.”
Here, quite a few things happen simultaneously. The most obvious of them is that Killian, filled with newfound rage towards the man in front of him, unwraps his arm from around Emma’s shoulder and takes a step towards him, pushing him to the other side of the threshold while he snarls “I think it’s time for you to leave, mate,” through gritted teeth.
He also reaches out to grab the collar of Neal’s shirt in his fist, but before he can make contact, the second thing happens: Emma, with her eyes squeezed shut once more, holds both of her palms up towards Neal, emitting a soft white glow from her hands, which sends him into the wall behind him, not quite far enough to knock him off his feet, but enough to catch him off guard. It only takes him a moment to regain himself, and when he does, he is even angrier — though when he moves to step back into the place Emma pushed him from, he finds he cannot, finds that he is unable to come any closer to the apartment.
Because of the third thing that happened, the protection spell that Regina cast over the threshold the moment Emma pushed him out of the way. Only Emma can hex him away completely, but Regina at least managed to make it so that he could not come any closer to the apartment, and will find himself unable to re-enter the building once he leaves.
“Leave.” It’s all Emma needs to say, and when she reaches down to wrap her hand around Killian’s this time, it has nothing to do with Neal.
For the longest beat, he doesn't move, his eyes narrowing towards her. She can see the tense of his jaw, the flaring of his nostrils when he breathes out, but he doesn't move to leave, not right away. And then, without another word, he turns on his heel and stalks back down the hallway. Once the elevator doors close behind him, Emma finally steps back into the apartment and closes the door behind them, eyes wide as they find Regina, still sitting exactly where she was on the floor of the apartment.
"Show me how you did that," she whispers, once again kneeling beside her on the floor.
Regina smiles and takes her hands. "Close your eyes."
She begins to focus on him again, easier to concentrate now that he has pissed her off more recently. She finds him almost immediately, barely out of the building.
"Have you found him again?"
She nods, trying her hardest to focus on him and not the loud, excited hum of her magic — and she definitely tries to ignore the fact that it only gets louder when Killian sits down beside her, his hand resting gently on her knee, outrightly ignoring Regina's order to stay across the room.
(Regina doesn't seem to care as much when she realizes it makes Emma's magic stronger, either.)
"Focus on him, on all the anger you have towards him, and draw a circle around yourself with that energy. Make it as big as you want, as big as you can, and once you have your circle, once you can feel your circle, release all that energy, and it will protect you."
Slowly, she sucks in a deep breath, and then does just that: releases her anger towards him out into the world, into the largest circle she can muster in her imaginary bird's-eye view of Berkshire, of England, of Europe, just as she also releases her breath.
She doesn't feel any different, she realizes, slowly opening her eyes. Both Regina and Killian are watching her intently, but she is not sure what to do, what to say. She feels exactly the same.
Okay, that's not exactly true. She can still feel the screaming surge of her magic running through her, more obvious in this moment than it has ever been. She feels like maybe she can do anything with it, a thought that still startles her a bit because of her unfamiliarity with it — but if she just did that, then maybe she really is capable of anything.
And then, just as the surging begins to slow, begins to quiet, she feels her energy fade away, suddenly both lightheaded and exhausted, and she is thankful for Killian sitting so closely beside her, since it allows her to lean into him instead of holding herself up.
“Am I supposed to feel this tired?” she asks, not even meaning to pair the question with the yawn that immediately follows it.
A soft smile passes over Regina’s face, but it doesn’t stay there long, gone even before she starts to push herself up off the floor. “Yes, that’s normal until you get used to using your magic on a regular basis, especially since you really exerted yourself today. But you should be proud of yourself and the progress you made today.”
Emma nods, not sure that she can find the strength to put what she is feeling into words, grateful for Killian as he thanks her for both of them before she leaves.
But when she leaves behind an unsettling silence in the apartment, half-formed thoughts that Emma’s mind is too tired to put in the right order, but things that she knows Killian needs to hear.
When she turns to him, he is already watching her, scanning her features for some sort of answer. “Killian,” she whispers, but it’s all she can say before he shakes his head at her, reaching up to tuck a piece of hair that has fallen out of her ponytail behind her ear before curling his arm around her back.
“I know you’ll say what you need to say when you’re ready. For now, we should get you to bed.”
“Thank you,” she manages as he pulls her up off the floor, tucking his arm around her waist so she can lean on him as he leads her into her bedroom, and she is asleep before he finishes pulling the blankets up to cover her. But even in her sleep, she feels the soft kiss he presses against her temple before he turns away, and it brings a soft smile to her face that doesn’t disappear until long after he shuts the door behind him.
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It takes Emma exactly twenty-four days to get her thoughts together. She almost breaks down before that, but every time she tries to put her words together, her fear comes creeping back, slithering between her bones until it is all she can feel.
True Love. Absolute bullshit. They have to be together — why? Because the universe decided, four hundred years ago, that she was going to be Killian Jones’ True Love. How does that even make sense? Did the universe know that she was going to exist? How? What if she had never been born? What if her life had gone differently — if her parents had wanted her, if Neal hadn’t been an absolute jackass, if she had fallen in love with someone else? Would he have remained a statue forever? Would he have had a different True Love, if Emma’s life hadn’t brought her to Berkshire? And even with everything that’s happened, what if one day he decides that what the universe wanted isn’t good enough for him — that she isn’t good enough for him?
She’s afraid. Terribly afraid that one day, Killian will no longer want to be with her, but thus far, it hasn’t been a fear that she has been able to voice.
But tonight — Christmas Eve, for Christ’s sake — the thought that hasn’t left her mind for two months now is proving to be the least of her worries. Because, as she looks at the clock over the stove for the millionth time since she got home an hour ago, she’s terrified for a whole different reason.
He’s supposed to be here. He told her the night before that the bar was closing at 2, and that he would be home around three.
But the clock now reads a quarter to six, and the only reason she hasn’t lost the (very few) contents of her stomach is because she’s taught herself to steady her breath and fight to keep it down since med school. Her heart pounds in her throat, her head, her stomach. Her calming breath is not just to stop her stomach from turning, but also in hopes of keeping her mind off the worst-case scenarios, because in her mind, he’s either dead or decided to leave and never come back.
There has to be some sort of psychoanalytic bullshit that explains that, something about her being abandoned as a child and always needing to keep herself protected from going through that kind of hurt again.
Mary Margaret would know. Her degree is in psychology. All Emma has ever done was write some sort of paper about the formation of the Ego, but Mary Margaret practically minored in Freud.
That’s beside the point, though. She’s just trying to keep her mind away from the picture of Killian dead in a gutter somewhere.
Because she’s in love with him. She wants to know that he’s safe, wants him to come… home.
Worrying her thumbnail against her front teeth, she thinks about that, thinks about home. When was the last time she had a real home? Because it certainly wasn’t during her childhood, any of the foster homes and foster families. And it wasn’t with Neal. Could it have even been in college, in the dorms and apartments she shared with Belle, Ruby and Mary Margaret? None of those places have ever felt like a home. But this? This feels like a home.
Killian feels like a home.
She is pulled out of her own mind by a key in the lock of the door, and it takes all she has to stay in her seat instead of running towards him, especially once he actually comes through the door. He’s absolutely drenched, head to toe, in what she assumes is a half-melted version of the slush that has been falling from the sky all day.
Absolutely drenched, but with a bouquet of roses clutched in his hand, smiling at her even as he shakes some of the slush out of his hair. She recognizes the silver cellophane wrapped around the bouquet as the personalized one from the stand she passes on her way home from the hospital, the one she told Killian a few weeks’ back always has the most beautiful looking flowers.
The one that’s out of his way home from work, but that she has never seen closed, even when she worked on Thanksgiving or was walking home after midnight.
“Hello, love,” he says, closing the door behind her. “Sorry I’m so late, Will wanted my help decorating the bar for Christmas for the party he’s holding tomorrow, I realized I should have texted you, but I forgot to charge my phone last night, and I—”
She holds up her hands, smiling warmly at him. “Killian, really, it’s okay.”
“I didn’t mean to cause you any fear, I just—”
At this, she pushes herself off the chair and crosses the living room, wrapping her arms around his middle and resting her cheek against his shoulder, not even caring how wet his henley makes her cheek.
He’s home. He’s safe.
And — holy shit — she absolutely wants to kiss him. She wants to take the bouquet out of his hand so he can hold her and press her lips against his.
But for all of the epiphanies she’s had recently, all of the personal conclusions she has come to, this, for some reason, is the hardest to deal with. She feels the smile fade from her face, useless against the ever-growing dread weighing down her chest.
Two seconds. That's how long she can stand to look at him for, by her count — both of which he spends smiling sweetly down at her, probably thinking about how much he loves her — before it's all too much for her.
She takes one step back, and then another, softly mumbling, "I'm glad you're home safe," before turning away from him and walking into her bedroom without another word.
But that doesn't stop him from coming after her, knocking softly on her bedroom door after a few moments. "Emma, love, are you alright?"
She hates that. The term of endearment is enough, isn't it? But when he pairs of with her name, it makes the smallest shiver creep down her spine. Because he doesn't just do it when he wants something from her, or when he did something he regrets — like Neal. The only time Neal ever called her anything other than her name was when he did something wrong.
But Killian? Killian calls her 'love' on a regular basis. Okay, sure, he calls everyone love, it's just part of the way he talks. But for as long as she's known him (which really isn't that long, all things considered, but she still thinks she has a pretty good handle on the type of person he is), she is the only person that he has referred to with both their name and the endearment, and sometimes at the oddest times: trying to get her attention, looking for the remote, wondering what she wants for dinner.
When she's upset.
It never fails to bring a smile to her face, even now, as she stands on the other side of her bedroom door having a crisis.
Maybe she doesn’t hate it. Maybe she loves it. Maybe she loves him — and yet, every time she thinks about voicing her feelings, feelings that she knows he will reciprocate, that same fear comes creeping up her entire soul, the fear that one day, Killian will leave her just like everyone else has.
It’s not until he does it again — “Emma, love, please talk to me” — that she is pulled back to the reality of her situation, of Killian on the other side of the door, of the tears streaming down her cheeks without her permission.
She’s an idiot. A god damn fucking idiot. It’s Christmas Eve, for Christ’s sake, and she’s locked herself in her room.
This isn’t the first time. She remembers the first Christmas she “celebrated” with her first foster family that kept her for more than a few weeks, the Millers, which was possibly one of the worst times of her life. But she promised herself that night that she would never put as much faith in anyone as she did in the Millers. And that she would never get that upset over trivial things — because you can’t be let down if your expectations are already incredibly low.
She lived with that mindset for years. She even still sometimes reminded herself of it when she was with Neal — because when it came to low expectations, Neal was the lowest.
But Killian? Killian went beyond even the expectations she dreamed of having, and even through everything he has done to prove himself worthy of her trust, there was always that nagging feeling in the back of her mind that he would just be another person to let her down.
“Emma, I can tell you’re upset about something, and I may not be able to make you talk to me, but I can stay right here until you decide you’re ready.” She hears him move on the other side of the door: the shuffling of his feet against the carpet, the soft shushing of his shirt against the door as she assumes he slowly drops to the ground, and the dull thud of his head falling back against the surface behind him.
Not for the first time, she’s amazed by just incredible he is. How sweet he is. She doesn’t believe that anyone can be perfect, but he certainly has the fewest flaws of anyone she has ever met — and her best friend since high school is practically an angel walking on earth. Most of the flaws he does have come from being cursed and turned into a statue for four hundred years, though, so she can’t really be mad at him for them.
None of this helps the fact that she has no idea what to say to him.
So they sit in silence for a while, almost calmed by the presence of the other. For every good part of their relationship that she can think of, there is also a bone-chilling fear that comes to her mind right behind it, knocking her back and forth in her own mind until she is sure that she is falling to her death.
And then her phone rings, and it’s Mary Margaret.
“Fuck,” she whispers, and she can practically feel the way Killian’s whole body pricks up at the sound of her voice. She can’t not answer it — it is Christmas Eve, Mary Margaret’s favorite day of the year, plus she’s due at the beginning of February, so there is the slightest chance it’s not just her best friend calling to see how her holiday is going. “Hey, Margs,” she says, trying to put some semblance of happiness into her voice, though it all seems to have been drained out of her. She figures the least she can do is share the conversation with the man sitting on the other side of her door, so she puts it on speakerphone.
“Merry Christmas, Emma!” she yells, and Killian smiles. If anyone can help Emma through the crisis she is currently drowning in, it has to be Mary Margaret. “You’re off work, right? You said you should be home by 4 at the latest, and that was a few hours ago, right? You’re 5 hours ahead of us, and it’s 1 here, so you’re—”
Emma stops her before the time change math makes her head explode. “Yeah, you’re right, I’m home.”
“Okay, great! Great! So what are you doing for Christmas? Are you and Killian celebrating anywhere? I’m so glad you’re able to be home and not at the hospital tonight.” The rushed speed of her words isn’t completely abnormal, but there is something about it paired with the chipper tone in her voice that worries Emma.
“Yeah, it’s great, you know how much I love Christmas,” she says dryly, but before Mary Margaret can respond on the other end of the line, Emma changes the subject: “Is everything alright there, Margs? You seem a little more spastic than normal.”
She can hear the breath sucked in on the other end of the line. “No, no, I’m fine, it’s just—” she groans, a sound that makes Emma believe that it’s not all fine. “Just some Braxton-Hicks, you know? They’re just a little stronger than last time, and David suggested I do something to get my mind off of them while he gets ready to go to his mom’s tonight, so I — ugh, shoot — I called you a little earlier than I expected to just to see how things were going and if there was any new news that you wanted to divulge to your best friend.”
“Nothing that I haven’t told you already,” she says, trying to hold back the roll of her eyes. It doesn’t work very well. She’s going to leave it at that, but she has another idea, instead: she knows she’s talking to Mary Margaret, and that nothing she can say will be news to her oldest friend, and even though she might not be able to say everything she wants to Killian, she can say it to Mary Margaret. Killian listening to her through the door is just a bonus.
“So nothing new, then?”
Slowly, she breathes in through her nose and holds it for a few moments before releasing it. “Come on, you know how it is for me. I mean, I know how I feel, this whole True Love bullshit be damned, because there’s no way to deny the connection between us, but, like, it’s all almost a little too much. Everyone else in my life has decided that I’m not enough, that I’m not worth the effort of keeping around. You’re the exception, of course, but what if — I mean, I know that I want him to be an exception, but what if he’s not? What if we enter into this relationship and I think things are going really well until one day he decides that I’m not enough? That he doesn’t love me enough?”
On the other side of the door, Killian is fairly sure he feels his heart stop beating. Is that really what she thinks? After everything that he has done for her, is that really what she thinks he’s going to do? He knows it has practically nothing to do with him, that she’s been let down and hurt in the past, but he still doesn’t understand how she thinks he could do that.
But it’s not about him. It’s about her, about her fears and the hope that she will one day be able to overcome them.
He doesn’t see through the fact that she is saying all of this when she knows that he can hear her. She may not be saying this to his face, but it’s basically the next best thing.
“Have you tried telling him this? I know you think he’s going to hurt you, but what if he doesn’t?”
At this, Killian smiles, but he hears Emma’s head fall back against the door.
A few moments of silence pass between them all, and Mary Margaret is the one to break it. “It’s Christmas, Emma. Have a little faith. True Love is a big deal, nothing to shy away from.”
“I’d put more faith in Tinkerbell than I ever would in Christmas, you should know that.”
“Not every family is the Millers, and I can assure you that Killian is nothing like Neal. If you’re going to put your faith in anything, put your faith in him."
At this, Emma finally smiles. She feels much better, perhaps even enough to open the door to Killian and her relationship, both physically and literally.
Mary Margaret groans, the first one in a while, and she suddenly remembers the reason her friend called her in the first place. “How are you feeling, Margs?”
The laugh on the other end of the line is incredibly pained, but there is nothing she can do about it. “A little bit better, I guess.”
“Honey, are you almost ready?” she hears David call from another room.
“It’s time to go, Em. Think about what I said, alright? You deserve to be happy, and I think Killian wants to be the one to make you happy.”
Emma hears Killian let out a soft chuckle on the other side of the door, because they both know that she’s right.
“Merry Christmas,” Emma says, and when she releases her breath, she actually feels as if a weight was lifted from her shoulders.
“Merry Christmas. Talk to you soon, okay?”
“Yeah, of course. Bye.”
When she hangs up the phone, she is overwhelmed by the silence that surrounds her, picking out every little noise that the apartment makes: the creaking of the walls, the wind against the windows, every movement Killian makes against the door.
He’s still not sure what to say. If he should even say anything. Emma just revealed all of that, not quite to him, but she didn’t hide it from him, either.
When she does start speaking, her voice is so soft that he almost cannot hear it through the door, and it almost startles him, but definitely confuses him, because it seems to make no sense.
“When I was eight years old, I was adopted by Tim and Mary Miller, who had two biological children of their own, a three and a five year old. They adopted me in January, and another boy, a seven-year-old named Matthew, in April. Even before Matt joined us, they were the family that I stayed with the longest, for more than just a few weeks, and the year I spent with them was the longest I spent anywhere until I aged out of the system, the only family I celebrated a birthday with. I was really happy with them, even though they paid a lot more attention to their biological kids than they did to me and Matt.
“And as the oldest, I was expected not just to receive presents, but also to wrap the presents for the other three children. Every other Christmas I celebrated was at the group home, so I’d never really had a family, and I definitely never gotten more than the two or three presents that the group home could afford for each of us, but I had always heard stories of parents who spoil their children on Christmas. By the time I had spent a few months with the Millers, I thought that maybe I finally found a home, a family that loved me enough to buy me presents for Christmas.
“But when I snuck into the basement to start wrapping the presents without my other siblings knowing, I found two large boxes filled with presents for the two youngest — the biological children — and two presents each for me Matt. It took everything in me not to cry that night, and I distracted myself with wrapping, but the upset manifested itself on Christmas Eve, when other family members showed up with presents — for the two youngest children, but not for me and Matt. I spent the rest of the night in my room crying, and was back in the group home by New Year’s Eve.”
Somehow, he can tell that this is not the end of what she wants to say to him.
“I’d been hurt before, sent back to the group homes before, but for some reason, this hurt more than any of them. Getting sent back became something I got used to, but I think getting let down by the Millers hurt so much because I’d put my faith in them. So I told myself that I would never put that much faith in someone ever again, a promise that I kept until I found Neal, until I thought I found something different with him, and then — well, you saw where that got me.”
“Emma,” he starts, but she still cuts him off.
“Wait, please, I’m almost done.”
He snaps his mouth shut.
“I’m so afraid, Killian. I’m so afraid of so many things, but more than anything else, I’m afraid that someday, you’re going to wake up in the middle of the happy little life we can build together and realize that maybe you don’t love me as much as you thought you did, that maybe I’m no longer worth the effort you have to put into being with me, and you’ll just walk out the door, leave me behind for something better.”
She stops again, and he’s pretty sure that this is his chance to speak what he’s been wanting to for weeks — but at the same time, he doesn’t want to speak over her again. When she remains silent for a few more moments, he practically whispers, “Can I say something now?”
He can tell by the way she laughs that she is crying, but she’s done with what she was trying to say. “Yeah, sure, go ahead.”
“I love you, Emma. Even if the universe didn’t bring us together as True Loves, I would love you. I knew that we were meant to be together from that very first breath I took, but I have spent every day since then learning about you, learning who you are, the type of person you are, and it’s only made me more sure that you are the only person I would ever be able to love as much as I love you. You’re the reason I’m here, and I owe everything to you, literally owe you my life. I can never feel the same way about another than I do about you.”
This time, when she feels the tears rolling down her cheek, they’re no longer because of the sadness that she has felt deep in her bones since that terrible Christmas. Instead, flowing through her, unhindered by fear or pain or dread, is hope.
Is love.
She stands up, much more awkwardly and making much more noise than she expected, and when she pulls open the door, Killian almost loses his balance from where he is still sitting when she pulls the door open. How didn’t he hear her get up?
“Sorry,” she mumbles, reaching down to help him back to his feet, but for as embarrassed as she feels, he just smiles at her.
“No worries, darling, I’m just glad you’ve come out from hiding.”
She has not let go of his hand, but has also not yet raised her eyes to meet his. She just bared her whole heart, her whole soul, to him, and she knows that as soon as she locks eyes with him, she is going to get lost in the vast oceans that she finds within them, and that he will continue to be the most understanding person she has ever met. She’s still not quite sure how to feel about that.
“Did you — did you mean all that?” she asks, even though she already knows the answer.
He lets go of her hand, and for the briefest moment, she expects him to take it all back, to admit that this whole thing was fake — to do just as everyone else has done, and she feels her heart begin to rise into her throat, the beginnings of her stomach turning.
But instead, she feels the soft touch of his index finger under her chin, gently pulling her head up and forcing her eyes to meet his.
Just as she expected, they have never been bluer, back to their regular brightness, and she feels herself beginning to get lost in them for just a moment until he speaks.
“Of course I meant it all, Emma. I love you, you have to know that’s true by now.”
She tries to nod, a slightly awkward movement with his finger still tucked under her chin, and she wipes the tears out of her eyes with the palms of her hands.
“I do. I — I’ve known for a while, and I just…” She pulls her bottom lip up between her teeth, worrying it for a moment. Killian’s eyes never leave her face. “It’s nothing now, and I’m sorry it took me so long to see that.”
He presses his lips against her forehead. He’s warm and soft and he loves her. “No apologies, love. I promised you that I would wait as long as I needed to for you to reciprocate how I knew I felt from the first moment I saw you, so I’m just happy that I don’t have to wait anymore.”
Emma surprises herself. She smiles. She sets her hand against his cheek, feeling the soft yet prickly stubble that he has started to leave there. And then she kisses him.
He seems just as surprised by it as she is, though at least one of them probably should have seen it coming. It’s soft, at first, as soft as his lips were against her forehead, until it quickly becomes more, weeks’ worth of passion and emotion no longer bottled up, but rising to the surface all at once. Lips, tongue, teeth, and hands all coming together as they learn the smallest details about the other.
It almost surprises her how much she enjoys kissing Killian Jones. Almost. But what does surprise her is how kissing him — that giving in to what the universe has built between them — makes her feel. And not in the way that her heart pounds in her chest, how his hand pressed against her cheek sends shockwaves against her skin. No, what gets her attention is the way her magic screams within her when his lips meet hers, the way she feels it not only in every inch of her body, but even beyond that, how she somehow feels it spread out from inside her and throughout the room.
Because she loves him. It may have taken her this long to realize it, but there’s no going back on it now, no way she would ever want to. Because, more than anything else, her magic reacts to him, to his hand in her hair and his arm wrapped around her waist and his tongue as it presses deeper into her mouth. She feels like she’s floating, lighter than she has ever been — and then he lifts her up, her legs wrapping around his waist, and she really is floating.
Because she’s happy — they’re happy. Happy, together, and in love. And that’s all that matters.
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