Chapter Text
Emma Swan is nine years, six months, twelve days and, approximately, fifteen hours old when she realizes she is hopelessly, painfully, deliriously in love.
It’s not a particularly pleasant feeling.
Mostly because it happens suddenly, without much prompting and the object of her affection is currently spraying her in the face with the hose in his front yard.
She yelps, water catching on her eyelashes and strands of her hair, but he just grins at her, taking a step forward to make sure her clothes are drenched through. Ingrid is going to kill both of them. Emma can almost hear Liam laughing somewhere.
This, of course, is why she’s so frustrated by her sudden realization.
Emma has been standing on the Jones’ front lawn for as long as she can remember – directly opposite of her own front lawn and close enough that Ingrid can still yell for her to come home when dinner is ready. Or when there’s pie. There’s almost always pie.
Emma’s friendship with Killian Jones is not much more than happenstance and convenience. He lives across the street, with his brother in a great, big house with stained glass windows that paint the inside of the living room different colors when the sun sets. They met by mistake, Emma drawing with chalk at the end of the driveway and he was watering the lawn and dared to disturb her masterpiece.
She threw chalk at him.
It went from there. They talked and yelled and Emma may have stomped her foot more than once regarding the destroyed drawings, but Killian picks up the broken pieces of chalk and offers her one and they come up with a rather stunning visual of a futuristic outer space world with some kind of monorail system. The engineering is very impressive.
And they don’t ever really stop. They dart back and forth across the street for years, afternoons spent constructing spaceships out of cardboard boxes Liam brought home from work and evenings in the kitchen with Ingrid while she lets them test a new flavor of pie she’s experimenting with. They watch movies and celebrate birthdays and there’s a secret handshake because of course there’s a secret handshake, and Emma tells Killian she sometimes wonders what happened to her real parents and Killian tells Emma he’s scared Liam is going to disappear like his dad did.
She shouldn’t love him.
And yet, at nine years, six months, twelve days and, approximately, fifteen hours old, Killian Jones is quite possibly the most important person in Emma’s life.
Except Ingrid. Because she makes all that pie.
Killian is quiet – at least at first, soft-spoken words, but with a certainty that rings of clarity and confidence and it hadn’t taken long for him to grow a little bolder with Emma around. He laughs easier as the years go on, smile wide and, usually, only for her. His hair is almost always too long, dark strands that drift dangerously close to his eyebrows and a gaze that Emma also seems to covet.
She doesn’t realize that yet, because she’s nine and she doesn’t know what covet means, but, eventually, it will all make sense.
And eventually, she will regret not telling Killian Jones that he’s her best friend and she’s absolutely, positively in love with him.
But Emma is nine and she believes she’s got the rest of her life and the rest of Killian’s life and she hasn’t allowed a little thing like death to even begin to enter the back corners of her mind.
That will change soon.
“Killian Jones, I am going to murder you,” she shouts, lunging forward. He laughs even louder when her feet skid on the slick grass, a flash of blue eyes and that smile that, even then, Emma considers hers and hers alone.
“That’s not very nice, Swan. You’re the one who got in the way of all my work.”
“Your work?”
He nods seriously, as if he’s not directing the hose directly at her feet now and she’s going to have to throw these jeans away. They’ll never dry. “Did you not see that list of chores Liam left? Making sure the lawn wasn’t dry was one of them.”
“It’s a lawn, how dry can it be?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Didn’t you want to know?”
“Maybe,” Killian admits, flicking his wrist up to move the water so it hits Emma’s stomach and she gasps when some of the air gets knocked out of her. “But you came over here.”
“And?”
“And what? You’re here aren’t you?”
It’s impossible for Emma to realize what exactly that question means in the moment, but she’s also just realized she’s in love with Killian, so her heart does a fairly good job of attempting to beat its way out of her chest.
He drops the hose.
“You could have told me you had stuff to do.”
“But you were here,” he says again, as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world. It kind of is. She can’t remember a single time he told her to leave.
Even when she was the new kid in school – after she and Ingrid first moved to Storybrooke and Emma heard the whispers because she didn’t have real parents and no mom to make her lunch, but Killian just bumped his shoulder against hers and flashed her half a smile. He held her hand when they walked into school.
Killian never cared about cooties.
Or anything except Emma.
“Yeah,” Emma mumbles. She digs her toes into the mud under her, the soft squelch of it almost matching up with the erratic rhythm of her pulse. “Well…”
He practically beams.
And Emma isn’t sure what’s going to happen next because she’s never encountered a moment quite like this, but she can hear Liam’s footsteps and grumblings about the state of the lawn and—
“Killian, if you’re just going to stand around all day...” he starts, but his eyes dart towards Emma as soon as she moves her foot again and the look on his face is unreadable. Particularly to a nine-year-old coming to terms with the idea of first love. “Oh,” Liam says. “Hey, Emma, I didn’t know you were here.”
She shrugs. “I was going to ride my bike, but then Killian thought he was funny.”
Liam’s expression changes again, more emotions Emma is not nearly old enough to understand or deal with, but it will, eventually, be that kind of day. At the moment, however, it’s sunny and there are a few clouds in the sky. The perfect day to race down the hill on the other side of town.
“How many times in a row have you beat Killian?” Liam asks knowingly, and Emma laughs before she can continue to consider whatever he’s doing with his face.
“Forty seven.”
“Oh, that’s not true, at all,” Killian shouts, ducking down to grab the hose again. Liam’s quicker than him, though grabbing him around the waist and pinning him against his chest. “God, Liam, let go of me!”
“Nah, little brother—”
“—Younger brother!”
“Semantics.”
“Stop trying to show off!”
Emma is still laughing, her sides feeling as if they’ll split from the force of it. Killian scowls at her when she doesn’t come to his immediate aid, but her eyes dart back towards Liam. He nods. And it only takes a few moments for Killian to realize what’s going to happen, more flailing limbs and shouted protests.
“Swan, Swan, Swan,” he chants, a nickname that isn’t really a nickname, but might be his in the way the smile is hers and Emma shakes her head when she grabs the water hose. “Don’t do that, that’s not even fair!”
“I know it’s not,” she says. “But you were being a great, big giant jerk before and Ingrid’s going to be mad my jeans are all muddy.”
“You should have dodged better then!”
“Ah, c’mon now, little brother,” Liam chastises, still holding him around the waist and he’s probably bruised from Killian’s elbows. “That’s not hospitable at all. Emma’s a guest in our front lawn and you went and ruined her whole outfit.”
Killian groans, but the sound turns into a yelp as soon as the water hits his feet and he realizes how cold it is. Emma widens her eyes. “Swan is not a guest,” he argues.
Emma briefly wonders if her eyes can actually fall out of her face. It feels as if they’re about to, that particular proclamation ricocheting around her brain and her subconscious until she’s certain it’s the only words she’ll ever hear again.
Killian blinks when Emma doesn’t say anything – or move the hose away from his feet. “You haven’t beaten me down the hill forty-seven times,” he mutters. “That’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”
She sticks her tongue out at him.
And sprays him directly in the chest.
There’s no way to really avoid Liam in this, but he doesn’t seem to mind, more laughter and tangled limbs, Killian’s hair sticking to his forehead and the shell of his left ear when Emma moves the water again. And for a few seconds Emma thinks she’s winning whatever unspoken battle they’ve staged here, but Killian’s always been a little shifty and and he turns quickly enough that he’s able to sneak out of Liam’s grasp.
He moves towards her quicker than she’s ready for, tugging the hose out of her hands with an almost triumphant noise.
“You’ve got to be faster than that, Swan,” Killian grins, waving the hose through the air until it feels as if Emma’s standing in a rainstorm.
“You are the worst!”
“Tell the truth about the hill!”
“I am,” Emma yells, sniffling when the water threatens to find its way up her nose. “Oh, my God, I’m going to kill you!”
Killian shakes his head, dodging what Emma thought was a particularly well-placed kick at his ankles. “No, you’re not. You like me way too much to kill me.”
“That’s not true.”
The words feel heavy on her tongue, despite the laughter still clinging to Killian’s voice and Liam’s rather pitiful attempts to get back on his feet after falling in the mud. Emma swallows, desperate to understand what is happening in the pit of her stomach, but Killian doesn’t look away from her.
He keeps staring and the water keeps running, slowing slightly because they’re probably emptying the Storybrooke reservoir at this point.
“I don’t know about that, Swan,” Killian says, leaning towards her. Emma gets the distinct impression he doesn’t mean to do that.
“Liar, liar.”
“I’m not the one lying. Forty seven? That’s impossible.”
“If you think you’re winning, you should have been keeping better track.”
That catches him by surprise, a quick bark of laughter and water splashing on Emma’s shin when he jerks his hand to the side. “Sorry, sorry,” Killian mumbles when he notices the look on her face. “That one really wasn’t on purpose.”
“Yuh huh.”
“Swan.”
Emma rolls her eyes, the sarcasm obvious in his voice and the half a smile on his face. Liam has finally stood up. “How many times do you think we’ve raced down the hill?” she presses, moving forward to push her finger into his water-soaked shirt.
That gets him to blink.
She takes that as another victory.
“Way more than forty seven,” Killian answers. “And I win most of the time.”
Emma stamps her foot – which gives Killian just enough time to wrap his own fingers around her wrist, pulling her hand away from him and pinning it against her side and the water is absolutely getting colder when he holds the hose directly above her head.
“Say it’s not forty seven,” he laughs. Emma shakes her head, pressing her lips together tightly as if she’s refusing to give federal testimony.
Liam appears to have given up on even trying to salvage the situation.
“It’s not forty seven, Swan,” Killian continues. “I’ll give you...maybe thirty two, tops.”
“Nope.”
“Thirty five?”
“I have beaten you down that hill forty seven times Killian Jones and that’s only in the last year since I started keeping track.”
“You’ve only been keeping track for the last year?”
“You never kept track to begin with!”
“She’s got a point, little brother,” Liam muses. He’s sitting on the far side of the lawn now, doing something that may actually be pulling weeds and no one could have taken better care of that house than Liam did.
“Oh, shut up,” Killian grumbles. He snaps his head back towards Emma, mouth twisted and eyes slightly narrowed. “Alright, so you started counting this year. I’ll give you that you’ve won most of the races, but I demand a recount for the rest of the summer.”
Emma scoffs. “No way. You’re only mad because you didn’t know you were losing and—”
“—And you were playing a game I didn’t know we were playing, Swan. So, either you agree to the terms or we keep up this...whatever we’re doing.”
“You being a jerk,” she mumbles, and that time her kick lands on his ankle. Killian lets out a gasp of pain, expression shifting slightly and they’re both drenched, water falling from their clothes and their hair and everything feels slightly heavier than it had a few moments before.
It’s not a feeling that belongs in summer vacation.
Killian hums, the tips of his ears going red and Emma learned that particular tell when she was seven and he tried to tell Liam he hadn’t gotten in trouble for fighting with that kid on the playground. The kid on the playground had been making fun of Emma’s distinct lack of parents.
“Forty seven though?” he asks. “Really?”
“Really, really,” Emma promises. “But I’m...we could start a new count. If you want.”
“Yeah?”
“We’ve got all summer, right?”
“And forever,” Killian says with a shrug, another string of words that seems to take up residence in every corner of Emma’s brain and she feels her lips part slightly. It’s her body’s natural reaction to try and keep breathing.
She’s stopped breathing at some point.
And someone else is calling her name.
“Emma Swan,” Ingrid yells, leaning out the front door of the house across the street and the smell of lemon meringue is already obvious. “If you are done destroying all your clothes, then I think it’s time for you to come back over here and eat some lunch!”
Emma’s shoulders sag with the weight of her disappointment – an overreaction in the moment, but eventually it will seem like the most reasonable thing she’s ever done. “Do I have to?”
“In twenty-four seconds or less.”
“Fine,” Emma sighs. She glances back at Killian before she turns towards home, the smile still on his face and a piece of hair seemingly stuck to his forehead. He waves a dismissive hand through the air at the interruption, as if they do have all the time in the world.
“I’ve got to help Liam anyway. But, uh...after? We could…”
“There’s pie,” Emma finishes sharply. “I mean...it smells like pie? You could come over and then we could go.”
“Ok.”
Liam makes a ridiculous noise a few feet away – disbelieving and adult and Emma ignores it because she’s nine and cutting into her twenty-four seconds of travel time across the street.
“Emma,” Ingrid calls again. “Now!”
“Right, right, right, I’m coming. But…” She glances at Killian and she’s not sure why she feels like she has to make sure, but it feels important and—
“I’ll see you later, Swan,” he says. “I’m sorry about your jeans.”
“That’s ok.”
Ingrid is shaking the screen door now. “Emma!”
“Ok, ok! I’ll see you later.”
Ingrid takes one look at the state of her as soon as she gets across the street, lets out a knowing laugh and mumbles something that sounds a lot like we should just buy new clothes every week under her breath. “Go upstairs and try and get some of the mud out of your toes before you drag it across the entire house, ok?”
Emma nods, a blur of water-logged fabric and muddy footprints. She’s in the bathroom when she hears it, only a few moments later and nothing has really changed, but it suddenly feels as if everything has been flipped upside down, and Emma cannot possibly be expected to keep up with all of these emotions. Or sounds.
It’s a crash — loud and jarring and then absolute, overwhelming silence.
She freezes, heart sputtering in her chest and it’s impossible to know how she knows, but Emma knows and something is wrong.
She hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about her jeans, sprinting back down the stairs and skidding into the kitchen and Ingrid is lying on the tiled ground, the pie splayed out around her when she dropped it.
“Ingrid,” Emma whispers, knowing it’s pointless. She doesn’t know how she knows that either, but that appears to be the theme of the day and the step she takes forward is alarmingly shaky. “Ingrid,” she repeats. “Are you…”
She can’t bring herself to finish that sentence.
It’s obvious anyway.
Ingrid is dead.
Emma exhales, tears in her eyes and disbelief churning in the pit of her stomach where, just a few moments ago, there were butterflies and the certainty that everything was going to be alright forever and ever.
She tilts her head, as if that will change the scene in front of her and the combined scent of lemon and drying mud is particularly disgusting.
“Ingrid?” Emma repeats, moving towards her as if there are magnets and supernatural forces involved. There are. It’ll just take a moment for her to realize that.
Dropping to her knees, she ignores the pain that shoots up both her legs when she lands on the floor and Emma doesn’t ever actually cry. The tears are there, but they don’t spill over onto her cheeks. They stay in her eyes and, possibly, her soul and eventually that will feel like a very large sign.
With neon lights and sound effects.
In the moment though, it’s just another thing in an increasingly thing-filled situation and part of her wants to call for Killian. Most of her wants to call for Killian.
But Emma’s mouth doesn’t appear to be working anymore, breathing a very particular challenge and Ingrid isn’t her mom. Ingrid isn’t even her officially adopted mom yet, that’s a work in progress and Emma’s fairly certain Liam did something that may help and there were suits involved and Killian stayed at their house that day while Ingrid baked something.
Emma inhales sharply through her nose, Ingrid’s eyes already a little glazed over and staring at absolutely nothing and, if asked, she would have no idea why she does what she does next. Reaching out a finger, she pokes Ingrid in the shoulder, fingertip just barely skimming her skin.
Ingrid blinks, exactly, three times and sits up as normal as ever.
She’s very clearly breathing.
Emma might not be. And she’s worried about the state of her eyes again.
“Did you get mud in here?” Ingrid asks, like that’s an entirely reasonable question and Emma is still frozen. Her mind can’t keep up with the moment or the feelings coursing through her veins, a mix of terror and surprise and happiness, plus whatever she may still be feeling for Killian and she still wishes Killian were in the kitchen with her. “Must have slipped,” Ingrid continues. She shakes her head, clearly unaware of what just happened and Emma is still doing her best to keep breathing. The pain in her side makes it clear it’s not working very well.
“Emma,” Ingrid says lightly, leaning close enough that Emma jerks away out of instinct. That will eventually prove important. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
“Nothing,” Emma mumbles. The word comes out far too quickly though, less a word than just a jumble of syllables and—”I just...heard you fall.”
“Because of the mud. Did you not even change your clothes yet?”
Emma shakes her head. Her throat feels far too small and far too big, all at the same time. “No, I…”
“Well, go back upstairs and make sure you wash behind your ears and—” Ingrid glances around, grabbing a handful of plastic bags and pushing them into Emma’s chest. Her fingers never touch Emma. “Just throw them in here. I think we’ve moved past salvageable on that front. I swear, the messes you and that Jones boy get into should be documented for—”
It annoys Emma that no one will finish their sentences.
But the timer on the oven dings, wholly unnecessary given the pie that’s still on the kitchen floor and Emma’s annoyance ebbs as soon as she hears the first shout. That’s not the right word. It’s less of a shout and more like absolute and complete anguish.
Her head snaps towards the open window, the same one that looks directly onto the Jones’ front lawn and she can barely make out the top of Killian’s hair. He’s kneeling on the ground, clearly not worried about the state of his jeans or the mud that’s likely working its way into the fibers, gripping something.
It takes Emma exactly two seconds, one gasp and three blinks to realize what he’s holding — Liam, dead.
The tears that land on her cheek feel like brands, hot and emotional and she’s moving before she realizes, dashing around Ingrid and across the street. A car honks at her when she runs in front of it, but Emma doesn’t slow down and Killian’s still yelling and Liam is very obviously dead.
He looks just like Ingrid.
Or just like Ingrid did before Emma touched her.
Because Emma touched Ingrid back to life.
“I don’t know what happened,” Killian stammers, eyes already rimmed red and the shake in his voice seems to rattle down Emma’s spine. “He was there and it was fine and then I...he wasn’t and he just...he fell over and it was…”
He lets out another choked sob, falling towards Emma’s shoulders like those pesky magnets are involved again and the only thought in her head is to hold onto him, like she’s trying to keep him there. Permanently.
She’s got no idea how long they stay there, and it’s impossible to tell Killian’s tears from the rest of the water in Emma’s shirt. She can hear Ingrid on the phone, quiet and slightly frantic and the ambulance arrives twenty minutes later.
There’s no explanation.
It makes no sense.
Because Liam Jones was young and healthy and fully capable of keeping his brother pinned to his side so Emma could point the hose directly at his feet. A dead Liam Jones makes no sense.
And Emma doesn’t say much for the rest of the day, just keeps staring ahead and trying to breath, her fingers laced with Killian’s for however many hours it takes for his uncles to show up.
“Killian,” a man yells. He jogs up the front steps of the porch, an oversized coat hanging off his shoulders and something that may be several earrings glittering under the street lights.
Emma dimly remembers Ingrid tearing through Liam’s paperwork that afternoon, trying to find someone to come watch Killian — and the result is two uncles, one named Nemo and the other Shakespeare, who’d spent most of their lives as part of a traveling acting troupe. They’re eccentric in a way that's fascinating at any time, let alone one that includes a dead Liam Jones, but Killian rushes towards the man who called his name.
His whole body shakes with the force of his tears.
And, for the first time since she moved to Storybrooke, Emma feels out of place sitting on that side of the street, not sure she understands the weight of wrong that seems intent on dragging her into the Earth.
“It’s alright, my boy, it’s alright,” the man continues. He barely pays any attention to Emma when she moves, but the other one, wearing his own ridiculous coat that looks like it came directly from the Navy, casts her a speculative glance.
She tries to smile.
She does. But it’s been a seemingly endless day and they never rode their bikes down the hill.
Emma can’t believe she’s worried about riding her bike down the hill.
“I think it’s about time you got some rest, huh?” Ingrid asks. She’s standing in the doorframe, apron still tied around her waist from that afternoon, but it doesn’t smell like pie in the house.
It smells like mud and ending and Emma is tired. That must be it.
She nods, and for a few minutes it’s normal and almost good and the lingering taste of toothpaste in her mouth as she climbs into bed is almost comforting. But then it’s Ingrid stepping into her room and tugging the blankets up under her chin and the kiss she places on Emma’s forehead will linger for years.
It’s the last thing she ever does.
Ingrid kisses Emma and her whole body goes taut, eyes getting that same glazed look as she falls directly onto her back.
Emma doesn’t gasp.
She blinks, opening her mouth and leaning over the side of the bed like this is one, long practical joke. Ingrid doesn’t move. And Emma has had enough experience with dead bodies in the last twelve hours to realize she’s facing her third.
Or, well, second. Technically.
“Ingrid,” Emma whispers, not expecting an answer, but frustrated all the same. She reaches her hand out, pushing and prodding and touching and none of it works. She uses two fingers and three, tries punching Ingrid’s shoulder, but nothing happens.
Ingrid is dead.
And Emma runs – directly across the street.
The Navy man opens the door, a little starling with dark eyes and shaved head, but Emma can feel the tears on her cheeks again, shoulders shaking with the effort of running and figuring out what’s going on and he doesn’t object when she falls towards him. He wraps his arms around her middle and lets her cry.
The rest is a whirlwind of phone calls and suitcases and arrangements that Emma is not capable of making. The state, however, is more than happy to do just that – a car set to pick her up after the funeral that will bring her to a group home in a different state and promises that everything will be fine, but Emma doesn’t trust much of anything anymore, particularly after Ingrid was alive. Again.
And then dead. Again.
None of it makes sense.
But that’s for a different moment and a different day to understand and in this moment Emma can’t help but keep glancing across the cemetery towards Killian, fidgeting in a suit with splotchy cheeks and shoes she knows don’t fit.
He nods towards the patch of grass in between the two services, hand stuffed in his pocket. His tie is slightly off center.
The state had to buy Emma a black dress.
“You’re leaving,” Killian whispers, not a question, but a statement of fact and Emma’s neck aches when she nods in response.
“I’ll be back.”
“I don’t want you to leave.”
“I don’t want to either. I’m...I’m sorry.”
Killian tilts his head, confusion settling into the space between his eyebrows. “Why?”
Emma doesn’t have an answer to that. She has suspicions. And she’ll figure them out later, but right then, nine years,
six months, fifteen days and, approximately, ten hours old, Emma Swan only has the certainty that she loves Killian Jones more than anything in the world and she doesn’t want to walk away from him.
So she takes a step forward.
As first kisses go, it’s probably not the greatest. There are two funerals happening and those suspicions lingering in the back of Emma’s mind make the air around her feel heavy, but she’s only a little certain she won’t ever be back and the rest of the reasons don’t matter.
She tilts her head up, a quick brush of her lips over Killian’s. He doesn’t pull back, but it’s nothing more than that, until his thumb brushes over the curve of Emma’s cheek, catching a tear on the pad and the smile he gives her when she pulls back echoes in her memories for the next twenty years.
“Ms. Swan,” a state official says brusquely and it must be time.
She nods another, still shaky and uncomfortable, but that may just be the state of her lungs and the ability of either one of her legs to hold up her weight. Killian hasn’t moved his thumb. He doesn’t appear to want to.
“I’m going to see you again,” he says, a promise Emma tries desperately to believe. It doesn’t work, the guilt and the weight in the very center of her is too big and too much and nothing has made sense, so it only makes sense that she doesn’t respond.
She will, eventually, regret that.
Because Emma Swan doesn’t ever see Killian Jones again.
At least not while they’re both alive.
Emma wakes with a start, glancing around her room like she’ll see several different ghosts spying on her. It feels that way, has for the last three days when she first started having these dreams and really the whole thing can fuck right off.
It hasn’t happened in years – nightmares about that day and that night and how cold Ingrid looked when the EMTs carried her out of the house, the same ones who’d showed up for Liam.
The irony of that was not lost on a grown-up Emma.
Because a grown-up Emma was also a vaguely jaded Emma and she stopped having nightmares about Killian Jones and death years ago.
Her subconscious does not seem to care.
Her subconscious seems intent on driving her insane.
Emma never went back to Storybrooke. She left with that state worker, lips still tingling from a first kiss that in retrospect would have been adorable if there wasn’t so much goddamn death involved, but Emma barely had time to linger on that thought before she was shipped to the first of nearly a dozen group homes and foster homes and less-than-pleasant foster families.
It went on that way for years nothing permanent and everything disappointing and Emma has kept a fairly wide berth between herself and lingering human contact. Because, well, here’s the thing; Emma Swan is not exactly normal.
In that she’s decidedly unnormal.
As unnormal as it is possible to be.
Because Emma Swan can wake the dead.
And kill them again.
It takes Emma three houses and one birthday without anyone acknowledging it is her birthday to grow disillusioned enough that it somehow makes sense to start conducting a few macabre science experiments. She’d always had her suspicions after that night and things that timed up too well to be coincidence and Emma starts with a dead bird she finds on the side of the road.
It’s gross.
The whole thing is gross, but she can’t shake this feeling that something is wrong with her, some fundamental issue that makes her unlovable and unfixable and she’s got to do something or she’s positive she’s going to shake herself out of her own skin.
So she starts with the bird and it flies away and something else falls out of a tree and it might be a raccoon, but Emma’s never seen a raccoon. So, she doesn’t spend too long thinking about it before she runs away.
And the houses keep coming and the experiments keep being...gross and Emma realizes, when she’s twelve years, ten months, sixteen days and nine hours old, that there are some rules to all of this.
They’re relatively simple, but they’re unbreakable.
Touch a dead thing once, it comes back to life. Touch it again, dead, forever. Keep a dead thing alive for more than one minute and something else has to die in its place.
It’s then that twelve-year-old Emma realizes magic never comes for free. There’s always some kind of price. And she never looks for Killian Jones.
She never goes back home.
She moves – house to house and family to family, in name at least, until she ages out of the system and scrapes together enough money waitressing to pay the rent on the shoebox of an apartment she can live in. She moves out of that apartment eventually too.
The concept of roots kind of freaks Emma out.
Everything kind of freaks Emma out.
She assumes it’s because she’s wrong.
At, like, the most basic level.
She does a good job of hiding it. Most of the time. She’s grown up and the years have passed, as the years have a tendency to do, and she’d saved up enough from those first few waitressing jobs that it only makes sense to open up her own restaurant and Emma may hate roots, but she’s still kind of a sentimental loser and her restaurant is on the other side of the county from Storybrooke and only serves pie.
Damn good pie, but only pie.
It’s kitschy. It kind of balances out all the death in her life.
Emma shakes her head, still sitting upright in bed and she’d left the TV in the corner of the room the night before. The news is on now, some perfectly coiffed broadcaster talking about a murder victim and reward for any information and Emma mutters a curse under her breath because she knows it’s only a matter of time until—
Her ringtone is loud enough that she’s momentarily concerned about the effect it will have on her wallpaper.
Ruby is already talking by the time Emma swipes her thumb over the phone screen.
“Em, Em, Em, Em, where are you? Are you home? Are you at work? Are you on your way to your very short commute from your home to your work?”
“Are you breathing?”
“No, this is more important than breathing.”
Emma slumps into the small mound of pillows behind her. There is only one thing Ruby would consider more important than breathing – money.
The story of how Emma Swan meets Ruby Lucas is fraught with miscues and miscreants, but the important thing is that a perp Ruby was chasing over the goddamn top of buildings missed a step and suddenly fell directly into the alley behind Emma’s restaurant.
Where she was taking the garbage out.
He died rather instantly. And then...was less dead once he slammed his hand on Emma’s forearm. All of which Ruby saw.
Emma managed to swat at his head before he took off back down the block, but the damage was done as they say. Not Ruby. Obviously. She claims it was fate and meant to be and, well, it’s much easier for a private investigator to figure out who killed murder victims when she’s got a partner who can wake them up and ask them.
“What’s the gig?” Emma asks, mostly because sometimes she likes to use the wrong lingo on purpose if only to get Ruby to make that put-upon sigh. It works.
“That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“Listen, Rubes, I’ve got, just like, a ton of mail order...orders waiting for me, so if this is going to take several thousand years then…”
“Did you just call them mail order orders?”
“That makes sense.”
“Ehhhhh.”
“Give me a break, I literally woke up five minutes before you called.”
Ruby doesn’t sigh at that. She doesn’t say anything. That’s more concerning. “You just woke up?” she asks, a note of concern in her voice that probably shouldn’t feel as if it affects several of Emma’s internal organs. “Was...more weird dreams?”
Emma makes a noncommittal noise – mostly to save face and partly because she’s been incredibly vague with Ruby about the dreams, only mentioning them when her partner pointed out how dead tired she looked during a trip to the morgue earlier this week. Ruby thought she was far funnier than she was.
“Emma,” Ruby chides, drawing out her name until it feels like a reprimand and punishment. “C’mon, seriously. What are you even dreaming about?”
“Nothing.”
“Is your eye twitching?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your eye twitches when you lie,” Ruby says. “Like every single time. It may be your most giving tell, honestly.”
“How many tells do you think I have?”
“I know you have, at least, five. The eye twitch is the most obvious, but sometimes you play with your hair and you scrunch your nose. Plus that foot bobbing thing and, uh...that’s four, right?” Emma makes another noise, eyes flitting back towards the TV and she can’t shake the feeling she should know something about whatever the story is. “Damn,” Ruby huffs. “I can’t think of the last one. You know what, it doesn’t matter. You’re trying to distract me and it’s not working.”
“Did it not?” Emma laughs.
“No. Kind of. But no. Listen to me, do you want to get paid or not?”
“I thought we already talked about all the mail order orders I have. There are just...a questionable number of rotten strawberries in my walk-in.”
“It’s weird that you use rotten fruit.”
Emma shrugs. And tugs her hair over her shoulder. “Cheaper that way,” she explains, not for the first time. “Plus, it’s not like I’m eating my own pie.”
“Can’t have your pie and eat it too?”
“I don’t think that’s the colloquialism you were looking for. And you’re still getting sidetracked. Does this have something to do with the body they’re talking about on the news?”
“If the body on the news is offering a five-figure reward for any information regarding his untimely demise.”
Emma doesn’t usually react to Ruby’s blunt viewpoint of the world and its numerous dead bodies, but she can’t suppress the shiver that moves her body when she hears his and something is wrong.
“His? And did you say five figures?”
Ruby hums, sounding as if she’s already decided what to do with her share. “His. I promise that is the least interesting part. The interesting part is that he was found out by the old quarry on the other side of the county, you know right near the bottom of the—”
“Hill,” Emma finishes. “The bottom of the hill. That’s…”
Her vision swims, memories and moments attacking from every angle until she has to glance at her arms to make sure she’s not sporting inexplicable bruises from the past. She’s not.
Magic only goes so far, it seems.
“Yeah,” Ruby says, confusion obvious in all four letters. “That’s exactly right. They say it looked pretty bad. Some kind of something gone wrong, but the town isn’t happy about it and they don’t like the limelight and the allusions that they’re a hotbed for murder so I guess the mayor’s offered up a bunch of money and—”
“—What was the guy’s name?”
“What?”
“The guy,” Emma repeats, and her voice scratches on the words. “You said it was a guy right? At the bottom of the hill? In Storybrooke?”
Silence.
There’s silence on the other end of the phone.
And Emma’s head snaps back towards the TV when they finish their report because services for the deceased are being held tomorrow and—
“His name’s, well, it was, I guess, his name was Killian Jones,” Ruby says, and Emma doesn’t really hear the rest of it.
She barely realizes she’s agreed to any of this until the local news ends, switches over to even crappier daytime programming and Emma has no idea how she gets through the day. She bakes. That’s kind of her thing.
She bakes and comes up with ridiculous recipes and flavor combinations and the customers are happy and Ruby announces I’ll see you tomorrow when she slams the door closed behind her nearly ten hours after it feels as if the world has ended.
Killian Jones is dead.
And Emma can’t seem to catch her breath.
Ruby’s standing outside her car the next morning, two cups of coffee in her hand and an expectant smile on her face. “Your eye is twitching,” she says conversationally, handing Emma what better be a latte. It’s not.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure I don’t. I’m just paid to observe and critique—”
“—No one is paying you to critique.”
“Whatever,” Ruby shrugs, swinging open the passenger side door of Emma’s car. “Why the face about this place?”
“I will tell you it’s less threatening when you rhyme.”
Ruby scowls. “That was not intentional and mostly the fault of the limits of the English language. You lived there at one point, didn’t you?”
“Were you looking me up last night?” Emma balks, and her hand is shaking so hard it’s difficult to move the gear shift.
“Please, don’t insult me like that. I looked you up as soon as I met you.”
Emma jerks her head around, only to find Ruby grinning at her like several metaphorical cats. “Then why the third degree?”
“There are no degrees here. There’s friendly curiosity, particularly when it comes to the state of your body and your ability to do what we’re going here to do.”
“I’m fine.”
The lie is honestly almost offensive. Emma made sixteen pies the day before. One had five different kinds of berries in it. She tested a new crust recipe she’s been thinking about for years.
Literally. Years.
She’s so stressed out she’s not sure she even shut her eyes the night before.
And that’s not the right word at all.
She’s goodman terrified.
She can’t believe Killian is dead.
Ruby throws her whole head back when she laughs, the sound filling the entire car and lingering on air molecules. “God, that was horrible,” she mutters. “Ok, let’s try it again. You know this guy?”
“Small town.”
“Not an answer.”
“I knew him.”
“In a personal sense?”
“Oh my God, Ruby,” Emma groans, and she can’t slump down in the seat while she’s driving. It’s definitely the most unfortunate thing that’s happened to her all day. She can’t imagine that will stay the same going forward. “I left Storybrooke when I was nine!”
“Yuh huh, yuh huh, yuh huh. Ok. So...what is it, childhood sweetheart?”
“You know me better than that.”
“I thought I did until I saw the explosion in your kitchen yesterday and now I’m starting to think you and our body were a little—”
“—Can we not call him a body,” Emma snaps, knuckles going white when she grips the steering wheel too tight.
Ruby blinks. “Still sweet on him?”
“I was nine.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” Emma says, and she doesn’t expect that to hurt nearly as much as it does. That’s insane. This whole thing is insane. She wrote down conversational ideas for her sixty seconds with Killian somewhere around four in the morning.
Every one was worse than the last.
“No?” Ruby echoes. “You should tell that to your right arm.”
Emma groans, not taking her eyes off the road because she can feel her arm shaking against her side. Her elbow keeps digging into her rib. “This is going to be fine,” Emma mumbles. Ruby does not look convinced.
That’s probably for the best since Emma can’t control her limbs – or her mind.
And she might not be nine years old anymore, but she’s fairly certain part of her never really stopped loving Killian Jones and the rest of her never forgot Killian Jones and they don’t hit any traffic on their way to Storybrooke.
She figures that’s some kind of sign.
They come up with some excuse for the funeral director – a portly man Emma doesn’t recognize who doesn’t recognize Emma because she hasn’t been in Storybrooke in nearly twenty years – and he directs them towards the viewing parlor.
The whole thing is sterile and unfeeling and Emma keeps exhaling dramatically.
“They think he was into some shady stuff you know,” the man says, voice dropping low like he’s sharing secrets with them. Ruby arches an eyebrow.
“That so?”
“Oh yeah, yeah, very messy crime scene. Guess he came out on the short end.”
Emma's stomach turns, mouth dropping open. “And no one else was found there? Just Kill—Mr. Jones? He was the only victim?”
“You think the police are hiding more dead bodies?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“What she means,” Ruby says, stepping in between the two of them before Emma can throw the first punch, “is that it seems strange that there would be a sign of struggle and nothing else. No other evidence of other people around?”
The funeral director does not look impressed. “That’s not my area,” he shrugs. “All I know is there’s a reward and the mayor’s going crazy trying to keep the cameras out of here and the kid’s uncles are besides themselves.”
Emma has to count to ten in her head to make sure her exhale doesn’t fly out of her. Ruby’s gaze flashes her direction. “Right,” she says. “Well, if you don’t mind…”
There are a few more words exchanged – and possibly a few well-placed bills, but Emma ignores all of that, taking in the scene and there’s an actual sign at the far end of the room.
In Loving Memory of Killian Jones.
Emma drags her hand over her face, blinking back whatever has suddenly appeared in her eyes and she resolutely refuses to believe they’re tears.
She can’t believe he’s dead.
“Em,” Ruby calls. “We’re uh...we’ve only got a couple minutes here.”
Emma nods brusquely, avoiding the slightly accusatory stare of the funeral director and—”What if I did this on my own?”
“What?”
“My own. Just...there’s, you know, years and a familiarity there and he’s...well, it may be weird to wake him up and stun him like that.”
Ruby’s eyebrows set several different records for height and movement. “You think we’re going to stun him? And did you say wake him up? He’s not asleep, Em.”
“I know, I know, but...just...I think this is for the best.”
“Yuh huh.”
“You keep saying that.”
“That’s because I can’t figure out another string of words to use in this situation. You know you can’t stay in there long.”
“I know.”
“You’ve got sixty seconds to figure out who killed this guy.”
Emma shivers. And Ruby notices. Always. Perpetually. Infuriatingly. “I know,” Emma says again. “Trust me, it’s...I’ll be in and out and we’ll be collecting money in no time.”
“Announce that a little louder.”
Emma sighs, Ruby staring at her like she’s taking stock or emotional inventory. It seems to last forever and Emma does her best to keep her breathing even when Ruby leans around her to open the viewing room door.
“Sixty seconds,” she repeats. “That’s it.”
“Aye aye.”
The door sounds impossibly loud when it closes behind Emma, another sound that makes her jump and sigh and she’s an absolute disaster. Or at least she thought she was until she turned and saw the coffin and then it feels a little like melting and a bit like freezing and it’s a strange combination, particularly when she’s also fairly certain her lungs have disappeared entirely.
She squeezes her eyes closed, desperate for some trace of confidence or courage. It’s disappointing when she can’t find any.
“C’mon, Swan,” she mumbles, half to herself and half to the person on the other side of the room because that’s exactly what the person on the other side of the room would say to her.
Emma takes a step forward, wobbly at best and petrified at worst, lifting the coffin lid, and her lungs reappear in a miracle of modern science as soon as her eyes land on him.
“Oh,” Emma breathes, and that’s about all there is to it.
He’s wearing a suit, hair even longer than it was when he was ten years old. It curls slightly, just behind his ears, and there’s a dusting of scruff on his face. His hand is folded over his chest, only one hand, making his jacket twist slightly and Emma feels as if her throat is closing.
He’s got an earring in one ear.
It makes her laugh.
“Oh my God,” Emma mumbles. “You look like a pirate.”
She closes her eyes again when he doesn’t answer – she refuses to acknowledge why he doesn’t answer, but she’s got a job and justice needs to be served or something. Ruby probably has several dozen new pairs of shoes she’s already preordered.
Bobbing on her feet as soon as she’s within arms-length of the coffin, Emma shimmies her shoulders, like that will help shake free the nerves clinging to the base of her spine. Her lips feel far too dry, breathing far too erratic, but she’s on limited time and she’s got to touch him.
She’s got no idea where to touch him.
She scans his face, trying to find a spot that isn’t too forward or too weird and her eyes land on the scar on his cheek – a souvenir of a race down the hill and faulty brakes and Liam had been white as a sheet when they came home with Emma’s blood-stained sweatshirt pressed against Killian’s cheek.
“Ok,” she nods, and talking to herself is definitely a sign of impending insanity, but she kind of hopes she’s already gone insane and—
He moves far quicker than she expected.
Emma’s no more than brushed her fingertips over the curve of his cheek than he’s throwing his arm out in the minimal space between them, his wrist colliding painfully with her stomach. She stumbles backwards, barely keeping her balance and mumbling a string of curses under her breath and when she looks up he’s brandishing a chair at her.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Killian shouts, and Emma does her best to quiet him without taking a rogue chair to the side of her legs.
“Listen, listen, listen. Do you remember when you were a kid there was a girl who lived across the street from you?”
He doesn’t immediately put the chair down. He licks his lips instead. And the tips of his ears go red. “Swan?”
Emma nods, ignoring the lump of everything in the back of her throat at her sound of her own name. “Hi.”
“Hi? Did you just say hi? What are you doing here?”
“I’m uh...how much do you remember of, like, the last seventy-two hours?”
Killian makes a face, an expression that does something particular to Emma’s heart and soul and whatever, tilting his head and his eyes widen when he notices the coffin he just leapt out of. “Oh, shit. Is that…”
“Yeah,” Emma says. “So, uh. I don’t have a lot of time here.”
“How much time is not a lot of time? God, are you some kind of angel? Is that what’s happening? Because if that’s what’s happening, then that’s a really twisted trick to show me you when I’m dead and—”
“—No, no, I’m really here.” She ignores most of that sentence too. She’ll have the rest of her life to linger on what those words, maybe, mean. “But, um, we’re wasting time.”
“To?”
“Have you tell me who killed you.”
Killian blinks – far too quickly to be anything except entirely distracting, and Emma wishes he wouldn’t because she’d really like to see his eyes and she’s almost pleased to realize her memories of his eyes have remained perfect for the last two decades. “Are you a cop?”
“No, but, Killian, you’re really cutting into your time here. It’s like...twenty seconds now.”
“What?”
“Killian!”
His answering smile is blinding. That’s the only word Emma can come up with. It makes her breath catch and her shoulders sag, as if all the worries and fears and anxieties of the world have disappeared. At least for a moment.
“It’s really good to see you, Swan,” he says, taking a step towards her and Emma backs up on instinct. That gives him, visible, pause. “I don’t know who killed me.”
“What?”
“I have no idea who killed me. It was an arrangement and—that’s not important, but I don’t know how it happened. I think I had a dream about some kind of blade but—”
He cuts himself off when he twists the wrong way, gritting his teeth when his gaze falls on the blunt end of his left arm. “Holy shit,” Killian mumbles. “That’s...shit did I bleed out somewhere?”
“I don’t know,” Emma admits. “That’s why I’m here.”
“To find out why I died?” She nods. “And you’re not an angel?” She shakes her head. “Huh, well I’m sorry to disappoint, Swan, but I’ve got no idea. Does that send me directly to hell or something?”
“I’m really not an angel.”
Killian hums, rocking towards her and ignoring whatever Emma’s eyes do at that. “So, uh...what happens now? I was dead, wasn’t I?”
“Yeah. Um...well, I have to touch you and you’ll be dead again.”
“You have to touch me?”
“Them’s the rules.” He chuckles, the smile on his face her smile and Emma’s a greedy jerk. She wrings her hands together. That’s probably the fifth tell. “You know,” she mutters. “When I was a kid...I was...you were my first kiss.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You were my first kiss too,” Killian says. “And you’ve got to touch me so I die again?”
“Please don’t say it like that.”
There’s more laughter and they’re definitely in the final seconds and Emma tilts her head up as soon as Killian’s incredibly shiny dress shoes threaten to brush against her flats. “No better way to go out then to go out kissing, huh?”
“Oh my God.”
“Admit it, Swan, that was funny.”
“It was not.”
“You’re arguing with a dead man.” She rolls her eyes, but her stomach doesn’t get the memo about jokes and humor and Killian mumbles hey under his breath. “Missed the mark, didn’t I? You don’t…” His ears are still tinged red, a hand reaching behind his back to tug at the hair at the nape of his neck. “It’s not a requirement, Swan. The kissing, I mean. Just felt...symmetrical.”
“You were always way better at math than me.”
Killian grins. “So?”
And for half a breath, Emma is going to do it. She’s going to kiss him and it’ll be something, in some kind of way that may result in a complete and total mental breakdown, because Killian’s already leaning towards her and she really can’t cope with the cut of that suit, but that seems a little morbid too and Emma pulls her lips back behind her teeth.
“Ah,” Killian says, a note of disappointment in his voice that does not make sense for a man who’s standing a few feet away from his own coffin. “That’s fine, Swan.”
He’s called her Swan more in the last forty-five seconds than he did in the last forty-five days they saw each other.
Emma’s not totally convinced he isn’t doing it on purpose.
“What if...you didn’t have to be dead?”
Killian scoffs. “That’d be ideal, honestly. Is that an option?”
The objection sits heavy on Emma’s tongue, the certainty that the rules are the rules and there’s no way to break them, but he’s standing there and smiling at her and she takes a step back before she can consider anything except how much she wants Killian Jones to be alive.
With her.
Emma hears the timer on her phone go off. Her sixty seconds are up. And Killian Jones is still alive, smiling at her.