a/n: sorry i haven't updated this in almost two years... i have no excuses. enjoy :P

Emma jogged down the street with nothing on her mind except finding Ashley. They didn't know what was going on, her and Killian, but maybe Ashley knew something else. It couldn't be a coincidence, Killian seeing Ashley at the dock explosion that almost killed him and then finding her again in Storybrooke.

Even if it was a coincidence, it was one that she needed to follow up on as quickly as possible, mobile husband or not.

Emma really didn't have much going for her in this search. She had a decent knowledge of the town, but she hadn't been back in four years and that was just a social visit, so who knows what had happened to the darker ends of town. And that was basically it—she didn't know where to look, she didn't know what she was looking for, and she didn't have backup.

She was moving fairly silently, thanks to broken-in shoes and practice, so at least she'd be an unexpected guest to… wherever she ended up.

She had a basic idea of going back to where they'd seen Ashley the first time and circling that area. With any luck, Ashley would be doing something or living nearby and they could have a little chat. She suddenly regretting running out without anything aside from her smallest pistol in her waistband. Regina would be so annoyed.

She stopped to catch her breath in front of Mr. Gold's shop. A light was on in the apartment above the shop, but that was probably just Gold himself. A movement in the alley caught her eye, and she took a step closer.

Ashley crouched in the darkness, the steps of a dancer evident in her movement. She suddenly remembered taking Alex back to Ashley's dance class, the one indulgence she and her parents allowed her when she was a teen mom and they could barely afford to feed themselves, let alone have fun.

"Emma?" she whispered, her voice hoarse.

Emma nodded. Ashley stepped out of the dark path, her blonde hair catching the light from the streetlamp. She held a gun loosely in her left hand, her right hand plainly visible. Emma settled into a defensive pose, pulling her own gun out and gesturing with it. "Come out the rest of the way and slide the gun toward me," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Ashley glanced up at the lighted apartment. She didn't speak, but the frightened tilt of her head was enough to convince Emma to try to trust her. Ashley set the gun down, sliding it a few inches toward Emma's foot, before ducking back into the darkness.

She grabbed the gun, testing the weight and trigger. Then she followed Ashley into the alley. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"I know what you and your husband are, and I think you have a better chance of helping me than I can on my own."

Emma blinked at the flood of words, quiet as they were. Ashley was backed up against the wall, keeping distance as her only defense. Then the meaning behind Ashley's statement hit her. "How do you know about me and Killian?"

Ashley exhaled sharply. "The people I work for, they know everything. When I said you were in town again, they said that you and your supposed boyfriend are in law enforcement."

Emma sighed, tucking her own gun into her waistband, keeping Ashley's gun in hand. Terrible technique, but she had the advantage in hand-to-hand fighting and she could tell Ashley knew it. "What do they want with us? Or, better yet, what do they have on you?"

Ashley shrugged. "I don't know what they want with you, aside from maybe killing you? They definitely meant to kill… Killian is his name? And they…" She sniffled and Emma's heart sank. "They have my baby."

"Alex?"

She nodded, shifting from foot to foot. "Sean is fine, he just thinks I'm the scum of the earth and took Alex away from him. He's in New York now."

Emma heard something in the street, possibly a footstep. Could have been a cat, but that had turned out to be a person last time, so she wasn't going to risk it. She motioned at Ashley to get down. Ashley immediately copied the movement, and they waited in silence. She blessed her senses when voices grew closer.

"I don't hear them, Keith."

"Me neither. I could have imagined it, but Ashley isn't in her apartment and I thought I saw Swan."

"Do you think she's just police?"

"They were at the dock, Tom. And now they're here."

"Yeah, cause her family lives here. That doesn't mean they know…" They moved out of Emma's hearing and she sighed inwardly. Ashley started to move but Emma waved her back down. They stayed in silence for a few more minutes until Emma couldn't hear anything aside from the wind in the trees.

"You need to go home," she whispered to Ashley. "I'm going to do the same and we're going to pretend that we haven't spoken. My husband and I will decide what to do next. Keep on with what you're doing, don't draw any attention to yourself."

Ashley nodded, looking even more scared than she had been when she and Killian saw her a few days ago. Emma handed the gun back to her (again, terrible technique, but there's no way someone wouldn't notice that Ashley suddenly wasn't armed) and watched her creep out of the alleyway and dart into the shadows. She realized, heart sinking, that someone had trained Ashley. Very few people had the innate skill of wandering through shadows without being seen (Killian among them), and someone had clearly cared enough to teach Ashley to become one with the night, as Killian liked to joke.

Finally she stood and crept through the alleyway until she could start jogging in the light again. She wandered through the town, making notes of dark places and spots she didn't remember, hoping to check them out with Killian in the morning or maybe just sometime soon when he could walk again. Finally she decided she'd been out long enough to take any attention off her break from moving around in the street, and she made her way toward home.

It was just after midnight when she got back to the house, and the light was on in her room. She clambered up the wall, hoping that no one was around to see how graceful she was when she was trying to move really fast, and tapped on the window.

Killian's face appeared and he had the window unlatched and a hand on her arm before she could even offer a hopeful hi-are-you-mad smile.

"Hey, are you okay?" he murmured, tugging her inside and latching the window again.

"I'm fine. I found Ashley—" Her words were cut off with a kiss.

When he eventually pulled away, he rested his forehead against hers and they just breathed for a minute. "Please never leave me again," he muttered.

She breathed out a laugh, pulling him a little closer. "I really didn't like going out without you, so I'll do my best."

"I couldn't sleep, Swan, not even a little. And I know I'm not that good at sleeping, but you've been gone three hours and usually—"

"I'm sorry, Killian. We work best together and I would say I forgot that but I literally never forget that." He grinned, almost preening, and then she noticed that he was standing on one foot. "How's your ankle?"

"It hurts but tomorrow I'm breaking out the good meds and pretending that it's fine." She opened her mouth to shut that idea down, but he pressed a finger to her mouth. "I'm not letting you go again, my love, not when I can manage it."

They glared for a few seconds but the competition dissolved when one of his eyebrows went up of its own free will and she giggled. "Fine. Anyway, I told Ashley we were going to work together on everything, so you're kind of needed."

"Thanks, dear. What did Ashley say?"

She filled him in on the details of their conversation as she changed into her pajamas. The shower would wait until the morning; it was cold enough that she was going to deal with it. By the time she finished telling him about Ashley's skillful disappearance into the night, the light was off and she'd pulled the blankets to her chin.

Killian was silent for a minute. "Did she mention our employment?"

Emma shook her head, curling into Killian's side. "Even Keith and Tom didn't mention anything specific. I think they think we're just police. They probably won't think that much longer, especially if they have the resources to check into actual New York police."

"Then they'll decide we're something else, maybe more of a threat than just NYPD." She nodded into the darkness and he exhaled slowly. "She didn't give any clues about what's going on or why Storybrooke's connected to a dock explosion that almost killed me?"

"She probably would have if not for Keith and Tom, but we had to hide and then I made her go home to try to lessen the chance that they would find her still gone if they checked again. And she's worried about Alex, Killian."

He fumbled through the sheets and found her hand and squeezed tightly. "Normally I'm sure I wouldn't be okay with pursuing this, even if just because we don't have any sort of jurisdiction."

"When have you ever really cared about jurisdiction?" Emma muttered. "Certainly didn't in Miami and the robbery. It was our anniversary, too."

"Good point. But this is your hometown, and Ashley was your friend, and they're making Storybrooke their target somehow. So we'll do something about it."

Emma leaned over and kissed him, conveying her thanks in the embrace. "I love you. And I'm sorry for leaving you to chase someone over town."

"As long as you come back to me, Swan." His voice faded into a whisper and she closed her eyes as exhaustion took over them.

"Always."

Emma woke up the next morning with dreams of Brooklyn-99 still floating around in her head. The ridiculousness of her brain was something she was grateful for most mornings, since it generally kept away the worst of the memories from the job. It did take her a few minutes though to realize that the chattering downstairs definitely wasn't any characters from the acclaimed TV show.

She pulled herself out of bed with a groan, wishing that she'd gotten in from her scouting maybe an hour earlier; that would have been a good time to be sleeping. Amazing how she could live on three hours a night when on the job and could barely survive with eight hours when at home. She was midway through washing her face when she saw Killian's ankle brace on the bathroom floor.

"Killian Jones!" she called from the top of the stairs, brandishing the ankle brace. There was no way his ankle felt okay enough to go without the brace.

"Emma Jo—Swan!" Killian called back from the kitchen. He finally stepped over into her viewpoint, laughter and the smell of chocolate chip pancakes trailing behind him. "What is it, love?" She waved the ankle brace and he winced.

"Get up here, then." Killian stepped up the stairs oh so carefully but without too much of a visible limp. "What did you take?" she asked as they maneuvered into the bathroom.

"First of all, good morning, my love." He kissed her quickly. "Secondly, that was probably the closest call we've had so far aside from Ruby, I think we should keep in mind that someone probably heard my almost-mistake in your last name."

Emma sighed. "True. But are they going to comment on it? Not likely. Tell me about the ankle."

"Thirdly, you accuse me of taking drugs? What do you take me for?"

"You sprained your ankle yesterday. Even you with your supernatural tolerance for pain can't go on like this." She lowered her voice for safety's sake. "And it's not even safe, remember that we sometimes have to run for our lives and if you're damaging your ankle permanently—"

He leaned forward and kissed her again, cupping her cheeks in his hands. It was a good combination of I-love-you-so-much and please-shut-up and you're-the-only-person-I-will-let-fuss-over-me-like-this kiss, and she was smiling begrudgingly by the time he pulled away. "I'm not letting you go out there by yourself again, so I took one of the pills for my hand. Which feels marvelous, by the way. Right now, everything feels marvelous. Remind me to never let them give me medication this strong again. I've had far worse, Mrs. Jones, and I'm going to be okay."

She glared up at him for another few seconds, leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss him again, and said, "Fine. I won't say anything."

"It's my fault if I trip and die somewhere, I get it."

She nodded. They walked back down the stairs hand-in-hand to see her family grinning up at them like a single cat that caught the canary. "What was that about?" asked her dad.

"You guys are too cute," her mom gushed.

"Did you call her Mrs. Jones?" Henry asked.

Emma squeezed Killian's hand just a bit more than necessary and Killian immediately sprang back into pancake mode. Henry's question was lost in a sea of flipping bacon and almost burning everything and pouring juice and tossing pancakes around the kitchen and it was probably the homiest scene she'd seen in years, possibly since she'd gone to college.

"What are your plans for the day?" Mary Margaret asked.

Emma and Killian glanced at each other and shrugged. There was basically no investigating they could do during the day, Emma figured, so they didn't have anything necessary. "We didn't have any plans," she said. "Did you guys have something in mind?"

Mary Margaret grinned. "Grab your scarves and hats. It's snowing again."

And that's how they found themselves walking through the town once more, the five of them arm-in-arm, looking at the Christmas decorations that had suddenly sprouted around the town.

"It's like they grew overnight," Killian said, squeezing her hand.

David laughed. "Storybrooke decorates for Christmas, Killian. It's a fairy town around holidays."

"You'll see if you and Emma stay for a while longer!" Mary Margaret piped up. Emma sent a sharp glance toward her mom but she was resolutely staring at the cotton-filled display at the jeweler's.

Killian tugged her a little closer as she felt the familiar guilt close in again. It wasn't her fault she was never around—except it was; she chose to take the job, she chose to spend her life lying, and she chose to stay away whenever possible.

"It's okay, love," he whispered.

"I'm not sure it is," she whispered back. He kissed the side of her head in answer.

Henry interrupted the slight tension with a request to go to Granny's, David agreed with the slightest of pauses, and they all turned down Main Street immediately. The Nolan family never said no to Granny's.

Ten minutes later they were huddled in the booths, trying not to freeze to death.

"Sorry about the temperature in here, guys," Ruby said as she passed out the food. She had taken it for granted that everyone was having their usual and that Killian's usual was now the lasagna. "Granny's refusing to turn the heat on until it's snowed for four days straight."

"It's only day three!" Granny snapped from behind the counter.

"But it's so cold," Leroy wheedled.

"Were they ever together?" Killian asked, glancing at the arguing pair. Henry gagged and David looked vaguely horrified. "Ah, my apologies." He went back to the lasagna. "Remind me to charm the secret ingredient out of the chef, Swan."

"Good luck with that. Granny hasn't even told Ruby most of her secret ingredients, last I heard."

Mary Margaret leaned forward, the better to block out the argument at the bar. "I'm sorry I was pushing about you staying longer, Emma. I know your work's important and you have a life that isn't in Storybrooke. We just—we miss you."

Emma reached out for her mom's hand and almost dragged her sleeve through her ketchup. "I miss you guys too, so much. I should have come back sooner than now. I'd love to stay, we'd love to stay, we just have a tyrannical boss."

"You could quit your jobs!" Henry said.

Killian tried to cover a laugh. "Can't do that, Henry." Emma tried not to show the slight panic that that suggestion brought. The main way to quit their jobs was to not get out of an explosion or not dodge a bullet. Not happening. Never happening. They planned to retire at the ripe old age of Old and move on with their lives. That was the plan. That was in the twenty-year plan Killian had written for them a month before they got married (it was in calligraphy, and it was framed in their closet).

Henry shrugged. "Worth a shot. I think Mr. Gold's hiring at the pawn shop, you'd probably have fun there."

Killian sent a sharp glance in her direction and she gave the slightest nod possible. That was the place. "I bet we would."

They finished their lunches in far better moods than they'd started in. David got up to pay and argue with Leroy and Leroy's friend… something, Emma couldn't remember. Just as they were all about to leave, Ruby cornered her. "Have you told your parents yet?"

"What?" Their conversation immediately came back to her—had it only been a few days since Ruby found out that they were married? Felt like so much longer. "No, and you can't tell them!"

Ruby held her hands up and backed away, shaking her head and smiling. "I won't, but you're going to have to!"

Emma sighed. "So much pressure!"

"What did the lass say?" Killian asked, taking her hand when she finally joined everyone outside.

"She says we have to tell them we're m-a-r-r-i-e-d."

"I'm sorry, love, I didn't get that," Killian dead-panned. "But I'll propose tomorrow if you want. I think I have a ring, actually. It might have a few scratches, but that's just because someone's worn it for a few years."

She leaned into his shoulder and tucked her other hand under his arm. "As long as David and Mary Margaret get to watch."

"So many demands."

"Speaking of demands, if you're going to keep insisting that your ankle is fine, we're checking out the pawn shop tonight. I want to see what Mr. Gold's actually up to, because I don't think he'd tell Ashley a third of what he's really doing."

"Sounds marvelous, love. I'll bring the weapons, you bring the cheer." They paused on the sidewalk to seal the agreement with a kiss. "I'm thinking the 9 mm. That should suffice." She hummed and tried not to grin at the fact that he was thinking about guns the way most people would think about what book to read next or what cut of steak for dinner. Although, with Killian, she wouldn't be surprised if either of those were part of the next sentence out of his mouth.

Somehow, Mary Margaret managed to hear one word of the conversation and ran back to join them. "Killian! Your ankle!"

"It's fine, milady, I promise," Killian tried to reassure her, but her motherly nature found them all back to the house in record time with Killian soon resting on the couch with an ice pack on his (slightly swollen) ankle, Henry running upstairs for comic books to share with the invalid, and an almost-amused Emma standing above him.

"Jones, you said it was fine." Killian shot a glare between her eyes, his hand, his ankle, his hand again, and back to her eyes. "Your hand is not the standard of injuries." She brought out her (good unless she's actually in England) English accent. "I mean, it's not as bad as the time I almost destroyed my hand in a boating accident, so I'm fine!"

"First of all—"

"I don't sound like that," they said in unison. Killian glared again.

"Second of all," he continued, "it is fine. I don't feel any of it."

"Because it's very, very cold outside and your feet are frozen!" Mary Margaret chirped from the kitchen. Her future/current son-in-law taken care of, she was returning to the world of dishes and cleaning. Since Killian was officially pouting, Emma patted him on the head and joined her mother.

They worked in silence with the dishes for a few minutes before Mary Margaret turned to Emma. "Why can't you quit your job?"

Emma was struck silent. What could she really say that wasn't a complete and utter lie about the insurance cover story she hadn't thought about in way too long? If I left, the government would not be happy. Regina would probably kill me. Killian would get himself killed in a foreign country. I would be bored out of my skull. "It is fun most of the time, Mom, and I do enjoy what I do. Please don't worry about me. Us, really."

Mary Margaret accepted that as fact. "You know, it is so cute that the two of you have an office romance."

"Isn't it," Killian called from the couch.

Mary Margaret sent a beam in his direction. "Do you have any plans for the future?" Emma shrugged. Her immediate plans were mostly job- or Netflix-related. Ariel had probably finished Parks and Rec by now. "I do want grandkids at some point, you know."

Emma choked on nothing. "Mom!"

"Mom, please don't, that's so weird!" Henry added, emerging at the best possible moment with a pound of comic books. "Here, Killian!"

Killian, slightly pink-eared, glanced at her for a second before turning to the comic books that Henry was holding aloft like they held the secrets of the universe. Some of them probably claimed to.

Mary Margaret turned back to the dishes with a slight sniff. "Well, weird or not, I mean it, Emma. And I just want you to be happy."

She leaned over and hugged her mom as tightly as she could. "I know, Mom. Just please don't mention kids in front of my boyfriend."

It was the first time him being simply a boyfriend was really convenient.

"Are we still thinking kids in three years?" Killian whispered as they jogged through Storybrooke in the dead of night. The snow that hadn't melted all day was adding confusion to the sound, which was really interesting. They hadn't had too many cases in the snow.

Emma snorted. They had in fact had the kids conversation—it was one of the conversations she thought was pretty important to have, especially given a pregnancy scare when she was in college and one of their own eight months into their relationship—and had in fact come to an agreement. "I think it's closer to two years now, if we're going by the original plan."

Killian stepped into her space for a second, cupping her jaw in his hands. "I don't care when we have them, whether in nine months or seven years. Whenever it feels like it's time."

"Me too," she whispered, leaning forward to kiss him quickly. "As long as we're not in a complete crisis."

Killian grinned, the soft smile she loved so, so, so much transforming his face into a thing of beauty. She took a moment to admire her husband before turning away to keep jogging. They'd decided to make a full lap of the area before settling down near the pawn shop, both for the exercise they hadn't been getting and in an attempt to draw someone out. Anyone. Someone to gently interrogate.

They were silent for a few minutes. "They better have your hair," Killian said.

"And your eyes. How many are we thinking, anyway?"

"Two, right? One of each. So they can be rapscallions together. Too many more and Regina would attempt to make us retire too early. I'm not going out before I'm forty."

"You'd still get the plaque, probably, for really good and longer-than-many service."

"And gods know that's why we're in the business." They were about two blocks away from the pawn shop, so they slowed to a walk. Killian wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "Or we could have mirror images of us. My charm and your inexplicable beauty. They could take over the world."

Emma breathed out a laugh, her breath hanging in the air like smoke. "I don't think it'd be a bad world once they were done with it."

"Not at all." They stopped and stared at the pawn shop. "Ready to commit a crime that could get us a significant amount of jail time if we get caught?" he asked.

"With you?" He quirked an eyebrow, the smallest of smiles growing in his eyes. "I guess so," she fake-sighed. "Anything with you, Killian."

Hand-in-hand, they stepped toward the dark shop.