Wounds Won't Seem to Heal 4/4
Summary: It’s not her fault. She’s still new and doesn’t know. He’s not flawless. Not anymore. He’s got scars, ones she’s seen first hand. Ones she helped tend to. His body is covered in them. There’s a thin red line where he took a bottle to the face during his early beat cop days. There’s another angry red mark on his torso from where he was stabbed with a knife in his ribs. The one where he had his hand slammed in a locker as a teenager has long since faded, only the barest hint remaining, only visible in just the right lighting.
There’s two oval scars now too. One in his stomach and one on his chest. Those are from the worst day of her life.But none of those scars compare to the ones he carries on the inside. The self-inflicted cuts he makes to his soul never quite healing over. He blames himself. It’s not his fault.
There’s a scar on her soul now too. One he left. A piece of her heart forever missing.
Rating: Mature (mostly for language)
A/N: Ohhhhhhh snap. I made actually managed to finish a fic before 2022 hit!!!! I'm so sorry to anyone that's still reading this and was waiting on an update, and especially sorry to @searchingwardrobes since she's manage to have a whole extra birthday when this was supposed to be her present all the way back in 2020.
There’s a clanging sound that almost makes her flinch. A bus boy is cleaning off a nearby recently vacated table a little too haphazardly, signaling the end of the breakfast rush.
She’s exhausted and all of the coffee in the world isn’t enough caffeine to revive her.
“So you’re actually considering it then?”
Emma wasn’t completely certain how to answer the question. Not when the answer had been so black and white three days ago, and now so grey.
“I told you I was.”
“I know, I just-” August shifts in his seat across from her, aimlessly moving his scrambled eggs around his plate. “To be honest, I thought it was just a passing thought. You know, one of those things that you just talk about but never actually do. Like when I said I was going to get my pilot’s license.”
To be honest, it was just a passing flight of fancy when David first mentioned it to her. Boston had been her first real home. The first time she’d put down roots of her own, and she had a family here now. One of her own making. And if anyone had asked her a year ago where she saw herself in the future, she damn well knew she’d still be in the city.
But a lot can happen in a year, and a lot did. And now Boston was just a reminder of all of the pain she’d endured. She was screwed up now, broken beyond belief. PTSS, according to Archie. Her therapy sessions had been less than productive, unable to come to terms with all of the trauma she had experienced on the job.
“I don’t know how to be here anymore. I, I don’t know who I am anymore. Maybe a fresh start is what I need.”
He’s watching her, looking for her tells. He knows her better than anyone else in the entire world, he knows every sharp edge in her shattered heart, and knows just how each crack appeared.
“It’s not your fault. You know that, right?”
It is though. It’s entirely her fault and hers alone. After David left, she was adrift at the 35th, so when August asked her to come back home to the 56th, she jumped at the chance to go back to something familiar, hoping it might ground her again. August had been partnered up with Arthur, but at least she was able to get her desk back. And her new partner wasn’t unfamiliar. Annie, while still chatty, had matured enough to know when to stop talking.
Truth be told, they made a good team, and while they weren’t friends outside of work, there was a level of respect between them. A trust they shared, one that Emma betrayed. Not on purpose of course, but the fault rested at her feet none the less.
Emma never should have been there. She shouldn’t have come back to the force so soon after everything, she wasn’t ready. She can admit that now, but at the time she just needed to prove herself, to prove to herself that she was stronger than everyone gave her credit for. And it got Annie hurt. All it took was one panic attack, one quick glance at a man that looked a little like Jefferson to completely immobilize her.
She can still hear Annie trying to call her name, trying to reach her, but she snapped out of it too late. She’ll never forgive herself for that. Her partner could have been killed instead of just being concussed. She’s been pulling duty as an amory clerk for the last 9 months, unable to face anything more than that.
And perhaps that’s the real reason she’s contemplating taking David up on his offer. Storybrooke, Maine is a small town, where the most violent crime includes noise complaints and overdue library fines. Nothing ever happens there, and Nolan probably doesn’t even really need a deputy, but the budget allows for one anyway, and she’s pretty sure David knows how much she’s still struggling. He’d been there too, right beside her in that room, staring down death.
“You should come with me next weekend, see it for yourself.”
He gives her a noncommittal hum as he shovels in the last bite of his breakfast. They have a training today that neither of them is looking forward to, and she knows it’s best not to push him right now. He’ll either come around to the idea or he won’t, but until she’s sure, there’s no point in trying to convince him just yet.
The sexual harrasment training passes by without any fanfare. The whole unit has to sit through it annually to make sure they meet compliance. It used to be fun, back when she had to roll play with a certain fellow detective, some of his innuendos causing her to blush before the instructor would jump in to reprimand them for not taking the class seriously. A lot more things used to be fun before Killian left, and perhaps that’s the biggest reason she’s looking to escape Boston. His ghost is everywhere, and try as hard as she might not to think about him, sometimes she swears he’s still there. Just one of those raise-the-hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck feelings. Most days she succeeds in not thinking of him, and if she does, she pushes those thoughts way back into the recesses of her mind where hope long went to die. Sometimes she wonders if it was like this for him, sitting in Liam’s old chair. She pushes those thoughts away too.
But today, sitting in Archie’s office, everything hits her like a tidal wave. She’s fine, really she is, but from the moment she walks into the office, there was a scent she just can’t quite place. Hopper even calls her out once or twice for not listening to him, but it’s just so vaguely familiar, a forgotten word on the tip of her tongue that she just can’t get out. And then it really hits her, halfway through their session. It’s the scent of fresh sea air and sandalwood, and while she still can’t quite give voice to why she recognizes it, emotions flood her with the full force of a raging river. Loss, grief, joy. A garbled mix of happiness and bone shattering pain all rolled into one.
They cut her session short.
The weekend comes, and August goes up to Storybrooke with her. He hates it, just as she expects, and he makes snide comments about everything, from the name of the shops to the fact that there’s really only one main street. He tells her over and over how bored she’s going to be. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s not the fix she’s looking for, but she doesn’t really know what else to do. They return home Sunday evening, Emma giving David a promise that she’ll give him an answer soon.
A week later, August has changed his toon, and she’s not completely sure why, but August now thinks that Emma moving is a brilliant idea. He tells her that he was being selfish before and that he didn’t want to lose her, his sister, but she can see right through him. It’s a lie, but one she’s thinking about letting herself believe. It’s been a week of soul-searching, a month really, and she still doesn’t have answers as to what she should do.
So she goes. She packs what she can into her yellow bug, leaving the rest behind for her sublet renter, and she moves to Storybrooke. She finds a new rental place surprisingly fast, taking over the downtown loft that David and his wife secured while they househunted. The place isn’t huge, but she doesn’t need much. There’s a little furniture store a few blocks over that delivers a new bed, sofa, and end tables same day for no extra charge, because apparently that’s what they do in small towns. They watch out for their neighbors. She settles into work, not that there’s much to settle into. It’s mostly paperwork with the occasional building inspection to make sure everything is up to code. There’s a small fire station down the street, but it’s run by volunteers so most of the tasks a fire marshal would usually do falls to her and David. She doesn’t mind though. It’s something to do.
She’s been in Storybrooke for a full two months now. It is quiet, and she’ll never admit this to August, but she does get bored some days. She calls Ruby more now than she used to, hoping for gossip and to live through Ruby vicariously. But now her friend is here, visiting for a few days out of curiosity. This small sleepy town doesn’t know what to make of her scarlett lipped guest, and there are more than a few women admonishing their ogleing husbands in hushed tones.
Emma should feel bad, but it’s the most excitement she’s had in two months. They try out some of the Ma and Pa shops, including the antique store with the creepy owner. They get ice cream by the gallon, and on Ruby’s last night in town, they make their way to the Rabbit Hole. It’s been wonderful having her friend there, helping her feel a little more home in her new sleepy hamlet. As hard as she’s tried, Storybrooke just doesn’t feel like home, not that Boston really did in that last year either, but she feels lost most days and it’s just starting to occur to her that maybe it was the people that gave her that feeling, not the place.
Ruby rambles on about some of the cases she’s working on, or moreover about the evidence she’s working with. They talk about nothing and everything, and Emma’s grateful.
It’s another four months before she finally makes it back to Boston for Ruby’s birthday party. She’s sleeping on her friend's couch, but depending on how the night goes, Emma’s already been looking to see which hotels nearby have available beds. As much as she loves her friend, they aren’t close enough from Emma to hear her friend’s moans of carnal delight from ten foot away.
It’s been nice, eating lunch with August, going to the shooting ranch with Lance. He’s got another baby on the way and Emma can’t help but be envious of the way he lights up showing her ultrasound photos. Not that she’s jealous of him having a baby, but she does wish she had someone that cares about her with as much passion as Lance does for his family. She’s tried dating, or tried dates, because the -ing would be misleading. Walsh, she’d tried to give him the benefit of the doubt on their second date after meeting him at the furniture shop, hoping his arrogance had been first date jitters, but she hasn’t been so stupid as to give him a third date.
Luck has never been on her side though, and Emma is thoroughly convinced that she’s meant to die a spinster, living out her days in the creepy old victorian at the edge of Storybrooke, no less that six cats in tow that will be more than eager to devour her body once she’s gone. Less mess that way she supposes.
Boston isn’t much different than she remembers. There is a new Starbucks around the corner from her old apartment, but for the most part everything is the same. She’s made sure to avoid the station though, up until now at least, not sure if her old ghosts are still haunting the halls. But Ruby is running late to her own party after a large haul of evidence came in that morning needing to be tested immediately, which is why Emma now finds herself stepping right into her past.
Hal is still at the front desk, just like always, counting down the days until his retirement can kick in. He gives her a sweet smile and head nod as he allows her through the old turnstyle leading to the elevator.
It’s only been twenty minutes, but she’s already regretting the heels she’s wearing as she luggs Ruby’s garment bag and a full suitcase worth of makeup and hair products with her into the elevator, pushing the button for the basement, but she’s so caught up in her nearly blistered heel that she misses the elevator moving up to the fourth floor. When the doors opened, she sees her old bull pen and it sends a tug to her very core. The desks are all still laid out just the same, the paint gives off the same musty odor, and there’s a very surprised man blocking her at the entrance to the elevator.
“Hey, Sister. What the hell are you doing here?”
Leroy steps forward and pulls her into a tight embrace that nearly forces the air from her lungs. She knows he’s dating someone now, that August has told her Leroy is happier now, but she isn’t prepared for this version of him. The one that asks how she’s doing and actually seems to care. She even lets him help her with Ruby’s makeup bag when someone comes up needing to use the elevator she’s still occupying.
It’s seeing Graham though that really messes with her. He’s walking out of the Captain’s office, and she can’t help but wonder if he got the job. August said the interim was leaving and his replacement had arrived a few months prior, but Graham has always wanted homicide. He even told her so once on a date. So maybe she was dating, with the -ing, but she shoves that thought out of her head.
Humbert had helped her pick herself up off the floor, dusted her off, and tried to make her shiny and new again in the wake of her life coming apart at the seams. But no matter how hard she tried to be alright for him and everyone else, she was too broken to let him in, and now it’s a little awkward, because she’s not sure how to react to him telling her that he’s missed her.
All she can do is blush.
He doesn’t stay.
A few more people come up and pay their respects and to catch up with their old colleague, but none of that matters when the Captain’s door opens again, and he’s standing there. The one that broke her, like nothing happened. Like he hadn’t run away in the middle of the night with absolutely zero explanation.
Every fiber of her body tenses, she’s drowning on air, and wants to fall into a hole, letting the world bury her in its weight.
And then August is there, dragging her into the empty break room.
They fight.
He tells her that she’s better off not getting dragged into Killian’s hold again. He reminds her of every single crack Kilian has left in her heart. Of how he can’t watch her be Killian’s marionette anymore. He lets it slip that Killian had left a message the night he left, and that he deleted it before Emma woke so she could finally move on.
She screams at him that it wasn’t his choice. That she’s an adult and can make her own decisions.
They fight like they’ve never fought before and something shifts, and invisible divid forms between them. An unrepairable bond broken and while everything else is muddled in her mind, she knows that things will never be the same between them.
When he leaves the room, slamming the door behind him, her throat is raw and she knows her face is streaked in mascara. But it doesn’t matter, because she hears someone take a deep breath behind her. She turns, and he’s there, his mouth opens and closes, and she knows that he’s trying to think of what to say.
It’s too late, and she’s too broken, and he made her that way.
So she tells him that he ruined her before leaving him, just as he had left her.
She has just enough anger fueling her to grab Ruby’s stuff and haul it down to the basement, throwing it at her friend.
“You knew. You knew this whole time and you never said anything?”
Ruby doesn’t answer, but Emma sees the guilt in the friend's face, and that is all she needs.
Boston is bigger than she remembers. She walks for the better part of an hour, breaking the stilettos off her heels so they turn into rocking shoes instead before finding herself on a park bench in Boston Commons. She watches people, couples holding hands on a romantic night time stroll, already drunk college kids getting a head start on the weekend, fitness fanatics on their daily runs. A few look at her with concern, but no one tries to talk to her, and she should be grateful for that.
She’s not though. It’s just one more reminder of how alone she is in this world. Almost eight billion people on the planet, and not a single one of them is meant for her.
She wants tequila, or a pint of rocky road. But what she needs is to talk.
So her feet carry her to an old brownstone with a red door. She’s knocked on it four times now. Once on the night Killian told her to leave his hospital room, and again when he left her with no word of explanation, or what she now knows was a message she’ll never get to hear. She also knocked on it the night she almost got Annie killed, and the last time was to thank him for everything before she left for Storybrooke.
She almost talks herself out of knocking, nearly does but then the door opens taking away her choice with it, and if she needed to talk before, she really does now, as she stands face to face with Killian Jones leaving Archie Hopper’s house. There’s something in the look he gives her, she’s seen it before, but he just gives her a short ‘Swan’ before stepping past her, leaving her with more questions.
If Archie is surprised to see her, he doesn’t let on. He just grabs a fresh tumbler from a shelf in the corner of his living room and places it down, pouring from a bottle of rum already open on the coffee table.
There’s a long silence, Archie aware of the pain flowing through her veins. He lets her lead, waiting until she’s ready to talk. And when she finally does, she lets the flood gates open, allowing all of it to come out. Even the little things that she’s kept back from everyone. Memories and feelings she’s guarded just for herself, not wanting them to be tainted. Her life in foster care, turning herself around after Neal, the Killian rollercoaster. How she felt like she was right back there, a nine year old girl, being thrown away like garbage by all of her foster families when he disappeared.
And the last piece of her finally falls, and she’s bare for the first time ever, but Archie tells her that maybe it’s a good thing. That sometimes, you have to knock down the old abandoned building, sweeping away the rubble in order to build something new. Something stronger.
And maybe he’s right. She’s been holding onto the pain and the hurt and disappointment her entire life, and it’s never gotten her anywhere. She thinks she might be ready too by the time they finish. She’s still got some sweeping up to do before she can lay the foundation, but the idea of it leaves her feeling hopeful.
The air is crisp as she opens the door, and she nearly stumbles on the stairs leading away from Archie’s house, not prepared for there to be a man sitting on the bottom steep.
“Have you been here the whole time?”
“Aye.”
She’s not quite sure what to do. Does she take what’s left of her dignity and head back to Ruby’s place, or do they talk?
Do they speak?
He answers that question for her. But she tells him not there. Not in front of Archie’s house. She let Hopper see her, but she’s not ready to emotionally expose herself to all of the city walking by.
He suggests his place, that it’s not far away, and she agrees. They walk mostly in silence, making idle small talk here and there. He gives her his jacket, and she thanks him, but they save anything more intimate for the privacy of his place.
He’s in the same building, but he has to stop her as she turns left at the staircase landing to where she used to visit him. He’s moved. It’s a new unit in the back of the building, overlooking the water.
There’s a strain between them, neither knowing who should speak first, or what they should say. There’s so much hanging over both of them, and she’s not even sure what she wants to come from their conversation. Does she want him to apologize, or to just explain what happened so she can have closure and move on? Does she want him to want her back? Would she even be able to take him back?
She’s getting ahead of herself. There’s no point in asking herself so many questions when neither of them can even manage to form a word at this point. He does speak eventually, offering her a cup of coffee. She nods before asking him if there’s a place she can freshen up. She can feel the makeup weighing her face down, and if the looks in the park were any indication, she knows she probably looks frightful.
He tells her there’s a bathroom just though his room, pointing down a small hallway, to the second door on the left. She leaves him to fiddle with her coffee grinder.
She’s right, although ‘mess’ may have been an understatement. Her cheeks are covered in black, her lipstick is smeared, and her face is blotchy. She’s not sure how Archie managed to hold such a meaningful conversation with her looking like she did.
She turns on water as hot as she can get it and grabs a washcloth from its place on the counter. The mascara is stubborn, annoyingly so given how easily it ran down with her tears, and finally she finds some soap in Killians shower, squirting out just enough to wash her face when the scent hits her. Sandalwood and salt. His scent, the one she used to be so familiar with, was also the one she couldn’t place from Archie’s office before she left, which meant he was in Boston already all those months ago.
She washes her face, scrubbing hard in her frustrations. She may not have had the words when they first arrived, but she has them now. She’s ready to scream actually, but as she leaves the bathroom, she bumps into his dresser, knocking over a picture frame, and while she shouldn’t care, she’s not here for destruction of property.
She’s never seen the frame before, which shouldn’t surprise her, but the photo inside has her taken aback. She forgot it even existed. Her fingers glide over their faces squished together in his bed. Drunk from one too many jagerbombs, back when their livers were still young enough to recover.
“It was easier back then wasn’t it.”
She jumped a little, almost knocking the frame over again.
“How- how do you even have this?”
They’d partied until the bars had closed the night Emma Swan got her promotion letter. After getting kicked out, they all went back to Ruby’s and drank more, until they both felt the room spinning. Realizing it might have been time to call it a night, they called the only cab still taking fares at such an hour and went back to his place.
It was something they’d done so many times, spending the night at each other's place, often sharing a bed because neither of them felt right leaving the other to sleep on the couch. But that night, they’d been so happy, and as they climbed into bed, they’d sought eachother out, letting their lips say everything neither one of them had ever had the courage to do. But Killian stopped it, something about good form, and the last thing they did before falling asleep was to pull out Killian’s phone and take a picture of them together.
The next morning, they didn’t talk about it, and went back to whatever version of normal they’d been holding onto.
“It’s one of my favorite memories of us. I was so proud of you for making Detective on your first try.”
That look is back, and she’s still not sure what to make of it. It’s guilt and self loathing and while in the past she would have told him to snap out of it, now she thinks that maybe it’s deserved.
“I miss it. The way we used to be before- before I mucked it all up.”
And there it was. The admission she’d waited so long for.
“What happened? What did I do to make you hate me?”
She’d asked him that once before, the night she asked for her transfer to a new precinct. He didn’t give her an answer then, but she needs to know, and she’s not leaving until she gets it.
And he does. He tells her everything. How he’d been in love with her, possibly since the night they met, about how terrified he was when he went undercover that he’d never see her again, or get to tell her how he felt. The guilt over how Liam died because they were fighting over her, and the way he absolutely hated himself and didn’t know how to handle it so he wrongly took it out on her.
How the night Jefferson almost killed her might have even been worse than when Liam was killed, and that he knew she deserved better than him. She asks him about the message he left that night, if it was him telling her goodbye. She sees him clinch his jaw when she explains how August erased it before she heard it, but he does his best to stay calm.
He tells her that despite knowing how much better she deserved than him, that he still wasn’t strong enough to let her go, so instead he decided to become a man worthy of her. That he tried to explain that, and that he told her he still loved her, that no matter what happened, she’ll still always be the one.
She kisses him. It’s not like before, there’s a heaviness lingering over them. His confession won’t fix them. It won’t take back all of the pain and resentment, but hopefully time will. It doesn’t go further than that kiss. Not that night, or the next.
They start back at the beginning, to get to know these new versions of each other. They talk long distance, and they visit each other every few weeks. They do their best to grow back together. Killian is still seeing Archie, still trying to rebuild his own foundations, but in time, they’ll both be ready to build something better and stronger together.
And they do.
In that creepy little victorian house by the sea up in Maine. Plank by plank, wall by wall, they rebuild until it’s everything they’ve ever dreamed of.
