It happens slowly, but he is specifically fine tuned to notice it. The distance stilling and slowly freezing that she has shoved between herself and everyone else who has bothered to see it. The chill settling as jagged icicles in the depths of the green of her eyes. The bitterness that begins to bite into her tone.

He knows that learning of the prophecy has affected her ever since it had slithered back to the light of day from wherever her parents had been keeping it safely hidden away; and though her newfound belief in all things magical ought to have been reassuring, it has been anything but.

Because now she truly believes she is fated to darkness.

It is dangerous, really, what belief can do to a person.

His heart seems to fade in time with the color leaving her. Every time she kisses him she is further from him and herself and he can feel it.

"I know it is easier, love," he murmurs into her hair. She is curled to his chest beneath the sheets of his bed at Granny's that they share now more often than not, fingers blindly playing a gentle pattern over the scars he has finally revealed to her.

"What are you talking about, Killian?"

Her voice is still thick with sleep and she does not look up at him.

He buries his lips deeper in her golden locks, leaving her a tender kiss before sinking back away from her into his pillow, searching for her eyes that he finds actively avoid him, watching her fingers trace his arm.

"Believing you are less than you are."

She stills in his arms, and he bites his tongue.

"Love, I—"

"Just don't, okay? I don't need this from you too."

He doesn't.

She drifts further, and he is certain she has dug her fingernails sharp into his heart and is dragging it along with her. She is falling apart and it is tearing him to pieces.

"I know what you are going through."

She has been smiling and laughing beside him in the diner all bloody night, but that shining, glistening light he adores is absent from her eyes. When he utters the words, though, even the smile melts from her face and her eyes fall three shades darker.

"I thought we agreed not to discuss this." She speaks the words in a dry monotone, but he feels an uncanny relief nonetheless that she even bothers to look at him.

"I'm simply… concerned."

He knows that they are the wrong words as soon as they cross his lips, and she can see her shut down palpably before his eyes, arms crossing protectively around herself as her gaze falls to her plate.

"Well don't be."

He is.

But he chews his cheek and scratches uneasily behind his ear and warily lets it go.

He finds her when they are deep in the woods and she has hardly spoken two words to him in days. The turmoil that raged in her eyes for weeks has melted to dull lifelessness. She is still the golden haired savior on the outside.

But she is nothing but a shell.

She is hurrying briskly ahead of him, hair rustling lightly in the gentlest of winds. Avoiding him, and avoiding everyone else as well.

He clenches his teeth and catches her wrist. She does not turn around.

"You do not have to look at me or bloody like it, Swan, but I just wish you'd at least listen to what I have to say."

She doesn't answer, and he can see her spine stiffen.

He knows better than to push her, to press beyond what she is willing to hear.

But he and the path she is headed down have an intimate history and she has become a shard of herself before his eyes.

He is not sure if she is preparing a snappy response, but he chooses not to wait on it.

"Love, you of all people should know that no wretched prophecy decides who you are. This is bloody ridiculous."

When she whirls to face him he is startled to register angry tears filling her eyes.

"This isn't about a goddamn prophecy, Killian."

He does not try to move closer to her.

"What is it about then, love, because you have been acting awfully off since it came to light."

She studies him a moment, body stiff and teeth clenched. And suddenly whatever single string has been left holding her together snaps.

"I'm not a good person. I have never been a good person. Maybe this town forced me into whatever mold their savior needed to fit, but I am not that person," her posture is sunken and tears are rising in her eyes and dripping down her cheeks and he can hear the sob she is holding down in her every word. "I have darkness in me, I always have, and these people here just trust me and think I'm this perfect princess who can do no wrong. You see how my parents look at me. But I am not that person. I am just Emma, who stole and gave up her kid and screwed up. I have more in common with any given villain than I do with my parents. Maybe you are right, maybe that prophecy reminded me of the truth. But Killian, that doesn't make it any less the truth. Maybe I'm not a villain but I am no princess and no hero. I never will be."

She is closed in on herself, arms crossed and lips pressed tight together— but her eyes are finally open and trained wide and teary on him.

His heart thuds.

"No one is asking you to be something you are not, my love."

He thinks he hears his voice crack through its gentleness, but she does not seem to notice.

"But if I can be forgiven for the past I very consciously chose, I am certain you can be freed from the past you were forced into."

He takes the most cautious of steps nearer to her, and when she does not move away he reaches to run his fingers soft across her arm before tangling them loose around her hand and lifting it to press a brushing kiss to her palm. She is still biting at her lips, but her eyes flutter shut and send tears rolling free when his lips meet her skin. The tightness in her expression softens just visibly to the trained eye.

"I thought we determined long ago that you were a hero, darling— around the same time we crossed getting into the book off that bucketlist of yours, if I recall?" He teases her cautiously, and is rewarded with the lightest of smiles playing at her lips— but it melts as quickly as it came, and as he tangles his fingers in hers her eyes slowly open wide again.

"What is it that makes me better than Regina, then? What defines me as worthy of this happy ending? Having my fantastic parents and my son and…" She bites her lip again, and her eyes fall just slightly. "And you?"

His brow furrows in shock, and he reaches to scratch behind his ear with his hook.

"Are you not the one who taught me to believe in second chances?"

She lets out a slow breath, studying his soft expression.

There is a light twinkling somewhere deep in her eyes.

"Maybe I was."

He moves nearer to her, bringing his hook around her waist as he lowers his head, brushing a kiss across her forehead on his way to her ear.

"If nothing else, at least be assured you are my hero."

A blush tickles across her cheeks and down her neck and she guides his chin with her finger till his lips are nearly upon hers.

"Don't be cheesy," she breathes slowly, bumping her nose to his and very consciously starving him of her, finger still gentle on his chin, holding him back.

"Perhaps you are bloody evil after all," he answers gruffly.

(Her eyes are fully alight again, and he doesn't think any words could be any less true).

(She kisses him, laughter sweet against his lips).