Graphic here: tmblr . co/ZVRwvr1QLCS3n

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

This is how it begins.

She kisses him. And everything changes.

What she remembers most is how it felt to finally touch. She had finally allowed herself, allowed him, to break the barrier that had always existed between them. Unseen but always there, it kept her from touching more than his arm in passing, kept her from feeling just how soft his hair was, how his stubble felt scratching against her fingers. The warmth of his skin, the smoothness of his coat, the way he felt hard and solid and present against her roaming hands and yet soft and pliant where his lips danced with hers. All these sensations had been alien to her and she had gotten drunk on them.

She had gotten drunk on him.

He kisses her like she is water in the desert and he is a man dying of thirst. He touches her like he is trying to commit every curve and dip of her body to memory.

(She is the same way.)

(They have been wanting for so long that finally having is a rush.)

He is nothing like the ones who came before, erasing every shadow, every scar of her past with a brush of his lips. He stands beside her, strong, resolute, devoted.

He stays.

And slowly, he heals her.

She notices that she is changing. She doesn't covet her smiles like they are treasures to be stolen, but gives them away freely. She doesn't stand poised to attack, but to welcome. She hugs. She kisses. She loves.

He is there with her every step of the way and eventually she stands steady, secure in the fact that she has a family, that people love her.

(That he loves her.)

(She never admits it out loud though.)

She is less resistant to learning about her magic. She works on it with Regina (who teaches her reluctantly, not holding back on the snarky remarks every time she screws up) and it feels like finally accepting a part of herself that she's been denying for a while now. She feels like she is more whole somehow.

They handle the Snow Queen crisis the same way they always do. All it takes is somehow getting the complicated histories and relationships of their de facto heroes untangled long enough for them to work together.

He gets hurt (protecting her, always protecting her) and she realises that she can't breathe without him.

And that brings us to now, where she sits perched on an exam table in a colourless room at the hospital, trying to inhale, exhale. She needs to be calm if she is to heal him. Whale is on standby if she fails (she will not fail) because Regina can't be found. She believes it has something to do with a missing Robin Hood but she can't be bothered to go look for her.

"Emma? Are you in here?" She hears her mother's soft voice. It's tentative, like she's talking to a skittish animal, like she thinks that she's is going to panic and do something stupid.

(She is not going to cry.)

"How is he?" Her voice cracks a little at the end and she cringes.

Snow walks closer and faces her. She takes her hands in hers and strokes the backs of them with her thumbs in a soothing rhythm. Emma begins to breathe.

"He needs you now, Emma. I know you can do it, you can heal him."

She wants to believe her, wants to hold the same certainty in her abilities that everyone seems to have, save herself. But, the thought at the back of her mind that keeps niggling at her doesn't let her. She is going to fail. She is going to break him just like she has broken everything in her life.

She sees him in her head again, his face still, his eyes blank, holding none of their usual warmth. She pushes the images away and gets up of the table and does what she's good at. She pushes through all her personal bullshit because she has a job to do.

She fixes him.

Her hands tremble as she places them above the gash in his torso, her vision blurs and it takes her far too long to focus but she does it.

His eyes open, the warmth flooding back into them. She smiles in relief, breathing comfortably for the first time since he had been rolled in here.

Her fingers find the scar on his cheek, tracing it over and over as she watches him sleep. He tilts his face towards her hand, letting out a little contented hum.

They had had their reunion. Kisses, tears and apologies. He'd made his declarations (I would do it a thousand times over for you, love.) and she had rolled her eyes (Drama Queen) but her heart had felt like it was going to explode from feeling as she had kissed him, long and deep.

Whale had insisted he stay overnight under observation and despite Killian's protests, they had all convinced him to stay.

Now that she finally has time to think, all the nagging voices in her head speak up at once. The insecurities and anxieties from her youth, brutally buried, resurface. She hadn't realised that she depended on him this much, that his being hurt would hurt her as much as it did. She is not sure that she would be able to carry on without him, and the thought paralyses her. She has never given another person such power over her before.

Killian Jones has the ability to break her.

The image of his face, pale and still comes to her mind again and she pushes it away just as harshly as before.

When she gets home that evening, she tries to tell herself it's because David had practically begged her to get some rest and not because the room had begun to suffocate her.

(It is a sorry attempt and it doesn't work.)

She dreams of his smile all night.

This is how you break a heart in two.

She begins to pull away. It's not a conscious effort but it happens. She is more hesitant with her kisses, her smiles retreat and her eyes dim. The fact that the Snow Queen has not left them alone becomes a source of misplaced comfort. She throws herself into making plans, researching, anything to avoid being alone with him, to avoid thinking. But, it takes a toll on her. She feels tired all the time, snapping at innocent people but most of all her magic suffers. Her attempts to close off her emotions does wonders at hampering her progress. Regina is frustrated and the last time she had gone to her for one of their lessons, she had handed her a pile of books and asked her not to come back until she had read them all.

She's staring a hole through the page. As it turns out, reading about magic isn't as riveting as she had expected. But, she soldiers on, shaking her head in an attempt to renew her concentration. She loses it about a page and a half in. She is just contemplating giving up when she feels a hand on her shoulder and a kiss in her hair. The corners of her lips quirk up and she looks up at him.

"Hi."

"Hello." He smiles softly and it looks like he's lit up from the inside. His face glows with contentment and she feels her stomach churn with guilt. He seems to notice her sudden change in demeanour because he walks around the couch and drops to his knees in front of her.

"Have you not been sleeping well, love?", he whispers as he traces the circles under her eyes with his fingers.

She stares at him like a deer in headlights, dumbstruck by how well he knows her. Her parents, her son, with whom she had been spending most of her time (since she had begun avoiding him) hadn't noticed. But he, he had.

(Does she know him as well as he does her?)

(She couldn't even tell you something as simple as his favourite colour if you asked.)

(Why had it never occurred to her to ask? Has she been taking advantage of him all this time, just taking, taking, never stopping to give.)

It is the concern etched into every line on his face that does it. She needs to move, to run from the way he is making her feel. She gives him a tight smile, mumbles something about stress and stands up, leaving him kneeling by the couch staring after her in confusion.

She goes to the kitchen to get a drink of water and she can hear him follow. As she downs her glass, she feels him put a hand on her shoulder and she flinches away from his touch so abruptly that the glass slips from her fingers, shattering on the floor.

She gasps and just like that her control vanishes, her breath coming in short, shallow pants. She takes a deep breath to regain it a little and turns around to face him.

He'd taken a few steps back because there was no way he could touch her from where he was standing now and he looks like someone had knocked the wind out of him, eyes wide, posture rigid.

"Emma? Have I done something wrong? Caused you some distress because I—" He drops off in the middle of his sentence, his body tensed to move towards her but he stops himself, fist clenching at his side. He looks pained, like the thought of hurting her causes him agony and she doesn't know what to say.

(I'm sorry.)

(It's not you, it's me.)

Everything she comes up with sounds hollow and wrong so she settles for the one that gives her time to think.

(She underestimates how it would affect him.)

"I just- I need some space right now."

His brow furrows in confusion.

"I need to be alone right now, Killian."

It comes out harsher than she intends and she wants to take it back as soon as she sees him flinch from the force of her words. His face hardens and he nods stiffly before turning around to leave.

She feels her heart shatter. Splintering into shards along the edges where the pieces had been put back together.

And she had done it herself.

He is missing from their usual strategy meeting the next day. In fact, he remains missing all day. She wants to ask David or Snow, someone if they've seen him but she is afraid of the answer. What if he's gone? Tired of waiting, tired of her crap. He gave up his home for her. Maybe he's finally realised that she isn't worth the trouble.

"Have you seen Killian today?"

Her head jerks up to meet David's eyes.

"What?"

He frowns and repeats himself.

"Killian. Have you seen him today? He was missing and I thought— Emma are you alright?"

"I'm fine!" She cringes inwardly at how overly bright her voice sounds and quickly pushes past David, out into the street. She feels his eyes on her as she leaves but she can't stop to explain herself. She needs to breathe right now.

She spends the rest of the day trying to track down the Snow Queen with Regina. She doesn't even mind the woman's clear distaste of her company. They trudge through the forest in surly silence.

The effort of walking, the burn in her muscles helps keep him off her mind.

(For the most part.)

She sees him as soon as she walks into Granny's that night. He looks like he's blurred around the edges. Her swaggering, dashing pirate captain replaced by a man who looks like he has lost everything. The fact that she had done that to him crosses her mind and she immediately turns to leave, the bell on the door jingling erratically in her wake.

She barely makes it out to the square before he catches up with her.

"Emma! Stop, please!"

She keeps walking, pretending not to hear him even though every time he says her name, it feels like something is stabbing her heart.

"Sweetheart, Emma!"

She feels his hook around her elbows he turns her around to face him.
He's breathing hard, his eyes bright as they seem to burn a hole through her. He steps closer.

"Why are you running from me?" His voice is a sigh and she has never seen him look this defeated.

She had done this.

She had broken him.

All this time as she had tried to protect herself, she had just hurt him instead. Maybe he would be better off without her. She jerks her arm out of his grasp and starts walking away again. He pulls her back, stronger this time. She stops with her hands pressed to his chest and his hand clutching her arm. Her eyes are wide as she stares up at him.

Just as abruptly as he had grabbed her, he lets her go.

"I apologise for my rudeness.", he mumbles, refusing to meet her eye.

What is she doing to him?

She realises that he deserves better. He deserves an explanation.

"Killian, I—" She takes a breath to gather her thoughts before her words burst out of her in a rush.

"I just— I'm scared Killian. I'm afraid that you'll leave me one day. I'm afraid that if I fall, I won't be able to get back up. I— I'm afraid I don't know you as well as you know me. I'm afraid that— that I'm taking you for granted, that you'll realise one day that I'm not worth it. I'm not worth giving up—"

She never finishes her sentence because suddenly, he's kissing her. He's kissing her like he wants to swallow all the words in her mouth and she is burning, burning. Her arms go around his waist, one hand climbing his back to tangle in the hair at the base of his neck. He tilts her head to the side, deepening the kiss and she finally knows without a doubt that he has been holding back this entire time. He hasn't let himself have her the way he has wanted until this very moment. She feels the yearning, the wanting in the way he holds her, the way he can't seem to stop kissing her, going in again and again.

When they finally part, their arms are still wrapped around one another, foreheads touching, breaths mingling. He pulls her a little closer, meets her eyes and begins to speak.

"Emma Swan, you are the most confusing, infuriating, bloody brilliant woman I have ever met. And I love you."

Her breath catches audibly and he smiles a tiny smile.

"I don't know if you're ready to hear it but I need you to know. I love you, Emma. More than anything I have loved in all my years and believe me when I say this, it has been a privilege. I don't need you to say the words back or even acknowledge that I've said them but please know love, I will never leave you."

He looks down, his grip loosening.

"Unless you ask me to."

"I'm not asking you to." She's not sure if he's heard her, her voice barely a whisper. He still doesn't meet her eyes.

"As for knowing me, darling, you know the heart of me. You see me. You see beyond the pirate, beyond the darkness and I could ask for nothing more."

She's stunned into silence, her vision blurring as tears gather in her eyes. When he looks up her again, uncertainty marring his features, she kisses him.

She spends that night showing him how she feels and even though the words don't leave her lips, she hopes he knows.