Invented

Well I guess I was still a little obsessed with a ‘verse I wrote over a year ago, so I decided to give the whole thing a conclusion. A follow up to “Cut” and “Always Be,” this story shows Emma and Killian navigating their rekindled relationship and trying to find ways to put the past behind them to build a brighter future.

(Like the other two, the title and subtitles within are courtesy of Jimmy Eat World.)

Words: 9K

Rating: T 

[Read the whole collection on AO3 if you’d rather.]

I’m one more here, some old-time pioneer / who believes with shaken faith I still have some cool

It was a funny thing, being in a new relationship that wasn’t really new at all. 

Parts of it were new, of course. They had almost nine years of life to catch up on with each other so they had no shortage of conversation topics, for sure. It was almost overwhelming how much she needed share with him – every milestone of Henry’s, of her own police service, of her parents and her friends and the renovations she did to her house by the water (always thinking of her Captain, even when he wasn’t hers) – and he had things to share as well. The good he’d been able to do in the Navy after all the bullshit died down. The friends he found in the men whom he’d saved. But his life had been – well, far more empty than hers. 

It hadn’t been her fault. Nor was it his, not really. Like she’d always said, it had felt like the whole universe had conspired against them, had fucked up their perfect storybook life. Reality had been the reason she’d walked away, after all, not Killian. And she’d made a life in her (lonely) years. Mostly filled with Henry, but he wasn’t it. Even without him, if – god forbid – drunk Emma had had enough sense to ask that man from the bar to wear a condom, her life would still have gone on. Killian – he hadn’t seized the moments the way she had. In a lot of ways he’d crumbled in on himself after she’d made that hardest decision of her life to bolt. And some days it ate at her.

This day being one of them.