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stephhannes · 6 years

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A Grief Reserved

Introduction: I don’t know how to grieve. Every substantial loss I’ve felt, I’ve repressed, ignored, pushed down until it doesn’t exist anymore. So far, that’s worked for me. My dad died three years ago and as soon as it happened, I returned to college, took 21 hours of class and somehow came out with my first 4.0 in my collegiate career. I lived a normal life, mostly. Every once and awhile the grief would bubble to the surface, I’d find myself shaking and sobbing and bursting, briefly. Then I’d return to what I knew, which was pretending like I never even had a father, let alone one that had died.

When my dad died, I was prepared. This was something I thought about a lot. Not in a tangible sort of way, not like something I daydreamed about. It was something I had built up in my head- which I promise is significantly less psycho than that sentence sounds. I was an actor when I was younger, and in an attempt to be able to conjure up emotion quickly, I had to have something that I could use to make myself immediately cry. The worst thing I could fathom happening was my dad dying. This is what I would use to make myself cry in scenes. In a sense, doing this exercise so much almost prepared me for the real thing. I knew that it was the worst thing that could possibly happen to me, and then when it actually happened, though I was shocked, it was something I had practically already processed.

In this same vein, losing Nathan was something that had crossed my mind from time to time. For some reason, this was a topic that we talked about a lot. We were both in agreement that the worst loss someone can suffer is the loss of a spouse. We were both incredibly moved every time we heard of a friend or celebrity, or whoever, losing their partner. Nathan and I flirted with losing each other, in the sense that there were so many times in our friendship where it seemed as if we truly had lost touch, and were never going to come back to each other. We somehow always managed to re-converge. Even when we had gone two years without contact, we still managed to come back to each other.

If I had things my way with this loss, I would do what I always do, and repress it. I would hermit myself away and try to occupy myself with something that would temporarily distract me until I crack. I would go out to lunch with people, and smile, and pretend like nothing ever happened. I would go to work and show up to happy hour and never say a word. I would meet new people and craft a lie as to what brought me to the city so I didn’t have to keep pouring salt in my wounds. But that wouldn’t be fair to Nathan. Not after he spent the last two years trying to get me to talk about my feelings. Not after letting him get to know me so deeply that he could look at my face and tell that something was wrong- and then making him ask me “what’s wrong?” for hours before I finally would cave and give a couple of vague sentences on whatever garbage I had been ruminating on and letting ruin me that day. For being a person who feels things so deeply, and so frequently, I hate sharing my feelings. I hate talking about them, I hate letting people help me. I hate showing weakness, and in my head, talking about my problems is making them tangible and real, and having tangible problems is weakness.

I know that I should be doing things to make Nathan proud, or to honor Nathan or whatever, and this is really the only way that I can do that in the most appropriate way for our relationship. We spent so much time working on getting me to a place where I’d openly talk about how I was feeling, where I’d actually ask for help when I needed it. I had finally reached a point where I felt comfortable leaning on him, and I’m so thankful that I got to that point because having someone to lean on makes things slightly bearable and less overwhelming for my tiny, anxious body. As much as I’d love to just throw all of that in the trash, I know that I can’t. It’s hard for me to talk about my feelings because I think that they’re stupid, they’re insignificant, they’re things that I shouldn’t be upset about. I’ve spent so many years silencing myself because I was afraid of being judged for my constant anxieties. Nathan worked so hard to make me feel like my emotions were never insignificant. If they were, he would never judge me for being upset, but rather help me redirect my anxieties onto more important things.

Ten days before Nathan died, I was an emotional wreck. That weekend, I had planned on driving to a friends’ for a small vacation, but a couple of days before I had a tire blow out. When I took the car in to have the tire replaced, the mechanic informed me of another problem that “needed to get fixed ASAP.” I went home and frantically researched the issue, and agreed that it needed to be fixed. It was one of those car issues that you can get away with for a period of time, but as soon as the part breaks- either your car is totaled or you just die on the road. So because of this issue, the Tuesday before I was supposed to leave, I had some sort of weird breakdown. I was so scared to have to drive my car because I knew that it was going to break at any point, I just didn’t know when and that thought terrified me. Eventually, Nathan got tired of hearing me stress about the situation, and sat me down to tell me one thing. Firmly, he said “Look, your car is going to die, eventually. You’re going to die, eventually. It could happen tomorrow or it could happen in two years, you don’t know. You can’t spend every day stressing about it like this. It’s not worth the energy.”

The moral of all of this pre-cursory garbage is this: I can’t sit around and repress this grief, I can’t spend forever stressing about things I can’t change or have no control over, I have to continue to build on the foundation that Nathan helped me build.

A few years ago, maybe even when we were in high school, Nathan told me to read CS Lewis’ “A Grief Observed,” and of course, I never did. Until a couple of days ago when I decided that I wanted to make myself sad on purpose.

In my attempts to understand my own grief, reading “A Grief Observed” gave me a lens to approach my feelings, a way to organize them into coherent thoughts. It gave me a way to even recognize the feelings I was having. Since I had never truly let myself experience grief, I didn’t realize that the thoughts I was having were so universal.

Chapter One: It almost seems cruel that her death was delayed long enough for him to grow to love her so completely that she filled his world as the greatest gift that God had ever given him, and then she died and left him alone in a place that her presence in his life had created for him. — Madeline L’Engle, Introduction- “A Grief Observed”

I don’t know a life without Nathan. We met when we were 11 and I honestly don’t remember much of my life before then. I don’t know a life where he isn’t just a text away. Even in our worst times, when it felt like we were never going to see each other again, I knew that if things got too bad, I could call him and he would be back in my life, like nothing had ever happened. I’d just recently learned how to live a life where I wasn’t trying to fight for our relationship. We spent so many years almost dating that for awhile it felt like a dream when we actually started dating. We spent seven years quietly in love with each other and never actually acting on it. When we finally got together, I didn’t have to fight any more. Being with him was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Deciding to move to New York to live with him was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. We had spent so long being so close that when we got together, we were able to skip the weird precursory ‘getting to know each other’ part of a relationship. We were able to get straight into the meat of everything. We knew we were going to get married the day that we started dating. Before that day, neither of us were ‘marriage people.’ Being married was never something that I had on my radar. It was never something I felt attracted to, I never planned out a dream wedding as a child, never thought about what kind of dress I wanted. I had resolved that I would only get married for some sort of legal benefit, if it came down to it- but there was never any draw for me to do it for some kind of romantic gesture, and definitely not for any sort of religious participation. But Nathan and I had fought for so long to have a relationship that we knew that we had to do it. It was what we deserved. It was what we had worked for for so long. When I moved to New York, that truly was the start of our life together. We started working as a team. I consciously started to live my life in a way where I would try to do at least one thing a day to make his life a little better. Whether that be washing the dishes, or picking up dinner without him asking, or just giving him some space when I got off work so he could work without distraction. The purpose of my life became trying to be the best partner I could be. I carried this onto when we moved to Philadelphia. Moving to Philly was such an exciting and terrifying time in my life. This was where I was finally truly leaning on him. We drove 1647.5 miles across the country, my small, shitty car following his. We moved into an apartment that we had both found, and were actually both on the lease together for once. We picked out furniture together, we made dinner together, we watched movies together. We were finally living some sort of a normal, entwined life. I caught myself falling into a false sense of security. We were engaged, and in my head I convinced myself that we had forever. We had forever to work on the small problems we would have, we had forever to help me find a perfect job, we had forever to work on paying off his student debt. We had just laid out a 15 year plan, and we were just starting to plan our wedding. And then he died and now I can just slam-dunk that 15 year plan straight into the trash can. I don’t know how to live a life without Nathan, and I don’t know how to build a future without him. I hate that I’ve gone from a person with a 15 year plan, to a person who just plans to wake up every day. Everything in my life has been colored by him, and I don’t know how to white that out. It’s hard to go anywhere without seeing him. I recently moved back in with my mother, and being in that house has been a tiny nightmare. My parents moved into the house after I left for college, so I never technically lived here, only really visited. And every time I came home to visit, in the days before Nathan and I were dating, I would go over to his apartment in Abilene and see him. Then when we started dating, he would spend a lot of time at this house. There were days when our sleep schedules weren’t aligning, and he would come over here at 5am just to sleep next to me while I watched TV. He’d keep me company on the nights when my mom was working, and would hang out with the two of us when she was at home. Driving around this town just makes me think of all of the late-night McDonald’s runs, and all of the times going to Market Street to just wander around a grocery store. Being in his neighborhood makes me think of all of the times I’d show up at his parents’ house at 10pm, and then go back to my place at 3am, or when I’d go over there just to take a nap, because again, misaligned sleep schedules. This is how I’d imagine moving back to Austin would be. There were a few weeks that Nathan came to visit me when I lived there, and I always refer to that period of time as “when we’d play house,” because it was like some sort of trial run of living together. That was where we cooked dinner together for the first time. And where we went grocery shopping together for the first time. And where we had our first fight. And the first time he met all of my friends. When I think of the time that I lived in Austin, the first thing that comes to my mind isn’t the fact that I did undergrad there, or that I lived there for the first 11 years of my life, I think of the brief times that Nathan was there with me, because that was the most important time I spent in Austin. New York reminds me of everything that I’ve lost, there were so many things we had planned to do when we lived there, but just weren’t possible because of how we couldn’t afford to do anything. I loved being back in New York recently, but I know that the city weighs me down. It was easier when we were together, but I’m not built for the NYC hustle. There were so many things that we had planned, so many things we wanted to do. Eventually, maybe I’ll start going through the list on my own, but I’ll always wish that we were doing those things together. Everything good that I have in my life now is because of him, and I hate having to navigate through everything without him.

Chapter Two: Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back—to be sucked back—into it?

This is the hardest part for me. Trying to keep myself from retreating back into my shell. I spent 20 years creating a cozy home for my suffering. I locked myself away and threw away the key, I boarded up the doors and the windows. I invested in furniture, and snacks, and hung tapestries of everything that had ever hurt me. My own personal pain museum to sit in any time I felt a human emotion. I didn’t know what it was like to let someone else into that home- to let someone come in and open the blinds for a couple of hours a day, or to dust off the bookshelves. Nathan was the first person to knock on the door, and that was the first time I’d cracked it open to let a little light inside. Eventually, I opened the door completely to let him in. I gave him his own key to come in and out as he pleased. He spent time packing up all the furniture, cleaning out all the clutter. Dusting the shelves and throwing out the knick-knacks. Folding the tapestries. I never fully moved out of that home though, the boxes never left. They’re all still there, just waiting for me to rebuild. It’s like when you’re moving houses and you have to go back and forth between houses because you haven’t turned the wifi off at the old place and you need to check your emails and even though your new house has all of your belongings in it, you’ve still got to go back to the old place. It took such an incredible amount of work to get me to move out of that house, and there’s always something so comforting about trying to return home, even if you know that there’s a new life waiting for you somewhere else.

Chapter Three: Getting over it so soon? But the words are ambiguous. To say the patient is getting over it after an operation for appendicitis is one thing; after he’s had his leg off it is quite another. After that operation either the wounded stump heals or the man dies. If it heals, the fierce, continuous pain will stop. Presently he’ll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg. He has ‘got over it.’ But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and perhaps pretty bad ones; and he will always be a one-legged man. At present I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg. But I shall never be a biped again.

I’m 23, and for lack of a better word, a widow. It’s not like I’m 65 and my husband just died after a long battle with cancer. Eventually I’m supposed to move on. And I know that it’s only been a few weeks since Nathan died, but I feel the weight of the 21st century coming down on me already. Theoretically, he and I were so lucky to have found each other so early, not having to navigate our 20s with awkward dates and rifling through dating apps. But in reality, now that’s where I’m going to have to find myself again. I don’t know how to date someone that I haven’t already known for 10 years. How much is appropriate amount to mention my dead fiancé during a blind date? When is the appropriate time to update my Facebook relationship status to ‘single’? When am I supposed to take off my engagement ring and show my face on 6th street? What’s an appropriate tinder bio? “Hi, I’m Stephanie. I used to be engaged but now I’m not! Hit me up!” How do I navigate a new relationship with someone when I know that they will never know me as well as Nathan did? I can spend all day talking about who I was in high school, I can explain with detail every moment of my collegiate years, but no one will truly know who I was during those times because they weren’t there. Eventually, I’ll stand on two feet again, but how far can those feet carry me when the concrete underneath them is fractured beyond belief? Eventually, someone will walk beside me, but is it fair to them when I know that there will never be anyone that can compare to Nathan? There are like 8 billion people in the world and I would swipe left on every single one of them because they’re not Nathan. I was in relationships before Nathan, and they all ended for more or less that same reason, I was always waiting for something better, I was always waiting for Nathan to come around. I don’t see this problem getting any easier to navigate, especially now that we had been together for a few years. I know that I’ll never be engaged again. That was a one-time deal. Maybe that’s the trade-off, maybe that’s how I make it fair. The only person that deserved my hand in marriage was Nathan, and I have a hard time believing that that will ever change.

Chapter Four: And this separation, I suppose, waits for all. I have been thinking of H. and myself as peculiarly unfortunate in being torn apart. But presumably all lovers are. She once said to me, ‘Even if we both died at exactly the same moment, as we lie here side by side, it would be just as much a separation as the one you’re so afraid of.’ Of course she didn’t know, any more than I do. But she was near death; near enough to make a good shot. She used to quote ‘Alone into the Alone.’ She said it felt like that. And how immensely improbable that it should be other- wise! Time and space and body were the very things that brought us together; the telephone wires by which we communicated. Cut one off, or cut both off simultaneously. Either way, mustn’t the conversation stop?

For some reason, I never imagined things would end this way. I always pictured myself dying before Nathan. Probably because I completely lack any sense of danger and do stupid shit all the time, but mostly because I thought of him as immortal. In the grand scheme of things, I guess I’m glad that things happened in this order. Maybe this sounds narcissistic, but the thought of him having to go through his life without me was something that always really fucked me up. There’s a reason I started looking both ways before crossing the street. I spend a lot of time thinking about how much he impacted my life, how much he changed and bettered for me, but I can’t completely discredit myself. In looking back at the progression of our relationship, I can easily see so much change that happened within him. After he died, I spent some time looking through his old phone. He got a new one right around the time we got together, so his old phone is like a time capsule from a time right before everything started. I keep thinking about a text he sent to his sister that said, “Stephanie is the only person I’ve ever really needed before.” I keep thinking about so many texts that I got from him during the year that we were in a long-distance relationship. “baby, I love you so much. I can’t even get near my bed tonight because you’re not in it and it doesn’t feel right. I miss you too much.” “I can’t believe I’m with someone that I miss so much when they’re gone. I really love you.” “I haven’t figured out how to get by without you taking care of me yet.” “I miss you baby, being without you just feels weird. I’m just so mad because I know I want to marry you and being apart is the worst.” “I’m so glad we fell in love again. Like sometimes it’s overwhelming how you make me feel and I can’t even imagine how much I’m going to love you when we’ve been married 10 or 20 years” I don’t know how, or why, but somehow he needed me. There was something that I did for him that was so important to him. It’s so hard for me to reconcile that in my head, because I know him as being such an independent human, so stubborn and so strong-willed, so resilient. I think the fact that I was able to crack him in the way that I could is what I loved about our relationship. It was symbiotic. We always walked this fragile line, we knew each other so intensely that at any moment we could break one another with ease. But we never did. It always moved me so much when he would show these moments of vulnerability to me. I loved it. When we first started dating, we would have interactions where I could see where he had been hurt before. He didn’t even have to explain anything, just the way that he would talk to me, or try to approach me about certain subjects I could see where he had been hurt before. Over time, I stopped seeing these things in him. He was eventually self-assured, and easily talked to me with confidence. I knew that he trusted me from the beginning, but I also knew what he had been through beforehand, and I understood these hesitations he had. I was so happy to see how he had grown. At least at the end of everything, he had been in a relationship that actually did something for him. The day that he left for New York, he sent me a letter, and in the letter he said, “There’s no way somebody this funny and kind and breathtakingly beautiful could actually be in love with me too. There’s no way I could have thought that I could have such a healthy and affirming and wonderful relationship as this. It’s not that I don’t actually think you’re real, you are just in every way better than I could have dreamed somebody could be, and I’m so lucky that you picked me. I am so helplessly in love with you, you make me so incredibly happy, and there is no amount of time or distance that could ever keep me from you. I am completely yours and I’ll spend every day this year waiting for the day you come to New York so we can sleep together every night. Our relationship makes me so happy and I can’t wait to marry you.” That’s all I needed to know that things were on the right track, that I had done something right. That I was a good partner. ++ It’s hard saying goodbye, but we did so much for each other. The last 6 months I spent with him were the happiest I had ever seen him, and maybe that’s a gift. The gift is that we loved each other, and we were better for it. As much as I wish we could have had an infinite amount of years, an infinite amount of highs and lows together, at least he was happy. At least things were good. At least we were together at the end of everything.

Finally: When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. . . . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. . . . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. . . . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful. . . . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful. —Ann Druyan, on husband Carl Sagan’s death

I’ve included this last quote because it was something that Nathan sent me right before we started dating.

Despite everything, I wouldn’t change how our story played out. In the seven years we spent trying to work out a relationship, we had a lot of tough conversations, we had a lot of tough periods of silence. We worked on ourselves, we became good people- people that could exist independently of each other. When we finally got together, we were ready. We were perfect for each other. Our relationship was easy, but we both still worked so hard to maintain it and take care of each other. We both felt extraordinarily lucky that we were together. We never took that for granted.

We knew that we were the beneficiaries of chance. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.

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bromfieldhall · 7 years

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Force of Feeling - CS Fanfic - Modern AU - Chapter 4

Synopsis: Emma Swan is scared of opening her heart up to any man ever again. Love only brings pain as far as she’s concerned but then she meets someone who could prove her wrong…if only she has the courage to let him in.

Read from the beginning on FF.Net or AO3

Previous chapters: 1, 2, 3

Rated: T

CHAPTER FOUR

“So, are you seeing Killian tomorrow?” Mary-Margaret asked nonchalantly as she sat and folded her newborn son’s freshly laundered clothes.

“If you mean, am I taking Henry to the park tomorrow so that he can meet up with his friend? Then yeah,” Emma crooned softly, her eyes never leaving the almost asleep bundle that she held carefully in her arms.

“I did mean the park actually and, sure, you’re only going because of Henry,” her friend repeated a touch sardonically. With a wry smile, she picked up the next piece of clothing and made quick work of folding it up.

Emma looked over at her and frowned. It wasn’t the first time she’d had this conversation with her friend and she doubted it’d be the last. Mary-Margaret was one of those lucky people that had found a fairytale kind of true love with her husband and wanted everyone around her to experience the same. Which was fine, except for the fact that she’d gotten into her head that for Emma, that person was going to be Killian Jones - the man she’d been trying really hard to keep at a safe distance.

And, for the past few weeks, she’d been doing a damn fine job of it too…

Well, kind of. Maybe. When she wasn’t being distracted by that annoyingly endearing grin of his - or the way she caught him gazing at her sometimes. Like she meant something. Oh, he was always quick to mask it and she always pretended not to notice. But she did. Not that it changed anything. She couldn’t let it - even though he somehow now just slotted into her life. A constant that she knew she could rely on. That she could trust. Those people were few and far between for her and she didn’t take it lightly.

“Killian and I are just friends, Mary-Margaret,” she stated in a long suffering tone, “I’ve already told you that.”

“I know and it’s great that you’ve let him in even that much,” she replied agreeably, “But that doesn’t mean that you two can’t ever be anything more.”

Emma rolled her eyes.

“Who says I want anything more?” she challenged with a hint of irritation.

“I do,” Mary-Margaret declared, finally giving up any pretence of concentrating on the clothes in front of her and pinning the blonde with a narrowed gaze. “I’ve seen the way you look at him…and he you,” she added pointedly when a red cheeked Emma opened her mouth to deny the allegation. “And let’s not forget about that kiss at Granny’s.”

“No, let’s,” Emma muttered uncharitably, but Mary-Margaret ignored her, determined to drive home her point.

“It might have only been on your hand but you can’t stand there and honestly tell me that you didn’t feel it right down to your toes!”

“Can’t I?” Emma retorted a touch belligerently.

The other woman tutted at her friend’s hostility and shook her head.

“Oh please, I was there. I saw your face and his too.” Seeing that Emma wasn’t happy being told what she thought was obvious to even the most casual observer, her expression softened and she tried again. “Listen, all I’m trying to say is that he’s a good guy, Emma. And you like him. Why don’t you just ask him to go for a coffee or something? See what happens.”

“I know exactly what’ll happen,” the blonde retorted flatly, “It’ll end up ruining our friendship.”

“Or maybe it could turn into something even better,” Mary-Margaret enthused optimistically. “Look at David and me. We were friends first.”

“Oh please,” Emma scoffed lightly, wondering if there was any way, bar jumping out the nearest window, for her to end this unwanted conversation. “What you two have is special.”

“Yeah, for us,” the brunette agreed, “and you can have your own kind of special with someone too, Emma.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” the blonde protested wryly, “You’re happy; you’ve found the perfect guy already.”

“You might have too,” Mary-Margaret persisted.

“Or he might not be and in the end I’m left brokenhearted again, just like with Neal,” Emma suddenly snapped, having had enough of her friends pushing. “I’m not going to take that chance.”

“Oh, Emma!” the brunette declared unhappily. She simply stared and took a moment as she searched for the right words to try and help her friend to see that it was time to put the past behind her, “What Neal did…it was awful, and I know things have been hard for you but, honey, it’s been over twelve years…don’t you think you’ve let him rule your life for long enough now?”

Emma eyes widened at Mary-Margaret’s words, the truth of them striking an unpleasant chord deep down inside. She’d never thought of it like that and didn’t like the stinging realisation it gave her either. She wanted to deny it. Badly. But she couldn’t and that just made her feel even worse.

The baby began to fuss in her arms and she looked down in surprise, almost having forgotten that she was still holding him.

“Sorry,” she mumbled apologetically, worrying that it had been her angry tone that had upset him.

“Don’t be, he’s due a feed,” the brunette assured her with a smile as she got up and came over.

Emma handed the baby back to his mother then quickly stood and made a show of checking her watch.

“I’d better go. I just remembered I need to do some…shopping for dinner tonight.”

She knew from Mary-Margaret’s expression that she didn’t believe her for a second, but she was grateful she didn’t call her out. Instead, her friend merely summoned a smile and nodded then asked hopefully, “Will you and Henry come over for dinner one night next week?”

“Yeah, sure,” the blonde replied with her own, rather forced, smile. “I’ll give you a call and we’ll sort something out.”

“Great.”

Emma nodded then made good her escape after bidding the brunette a brief goodbye. Once outside the house, she drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

She needed to think.

The short car journey home did nothing to ease her troubled thoughts. As soon as she entered her apartment, she went straight into her bedroom and sat down heavily on the bed. Flopping back, she let out an audible groan at her short-sightedness.

How had she not realised the way Neal’s actions had influenced her before?

It was so painfully obvious now that Mary-Margaret had pointed it out. All these years she’d thought she was just being cautious – and with good reason. She’d been hurt. Devastated. Betrayed by the one person she’d believed wouldn’t do that to her.

She had a right to be guarded with her heart, hadn’t she?

Of course she did.

Only - there was guarded and there was closed off and somewhere along the way, she’d become the latter.

She’d allowed Neal’s one act determine her life.

It was a sobering realisation. One she balked at even as she accepted the truth of it because acknowledging it was only the start. It didn’t mean that she could just snap her fingers and all her trust issues and fears would disappear like magic.

What would that even feel like?

To willingly open up her heart. To risk the possibility of getting hurt again.

Could she do that after all this time?

Unbidden, an image of Killian with his laughing blue eyes and warm smile suddenly came to mind and her heart gave a little stutter. A familiar warm feeling started in her chest at the mere thought of him but, as was her habit, she quickly stamped it down, refusing to let it flourish.

Abruptly, she sat up again, her eyes widening slightly in mild panic. It scared her to dare think of anything more with him. What little she’d allowed was good. More importantly, it was safe – something she was sure their relationship wouldn’t be if she allowed her feelings free rein.

Just looking at him was enough to have her senses swimming, and when they touched…Emma looked down at her hand and flexed her fingers lightly before clenching them into a fist on her lap. Mary-Margaret had been wrong about that kiss under the mistletoe. She hadn’t felt that brief, barely there brush of his lips down to her toes – no…she’d felt it everywhere.

Glancing over at her bedside cabinet suddenly, she pulled open the top drawer. Reaching in, right to the back, she felt around until her fingers came in contact with a smooth, wooden object. Drawing it out, her lips curved into a soft smile at seeing the gift Killian had given her for Christmas.

A beautiful hand carved swan.

He’d made it himself. She’d found that out when Henry had called Killian to thank him for the games voucher and wooden pirate ship he’d given him. He’d made the ship as well which Henry had been effusive in his praise about down the phone.

Emma had made some excuse about seeing to dinner when Henry had innocently asked if she’d wanted to speak to Killian herself. She hadn’t known what to say. Not when it was obvious from the smooth finish and expert lines of the swan that it had undoubtedly taken a lot of time to craft. A lot of care. The kind that came from it meaning something. She might be wilfully blind, but she wasn’t stupid. She just hadn’t wanted to examine his motives too closely. Not right then at least.

Henry had ended the call shortly after and told her that Killian had hoped she liked his gift.

She did.

Far too much.

In a fit of pique with herself, she’d shoved the swan into her drawer in the hopes of forgetting about it. Out of sight, out of mind. But much like the man who’d made it for her, neither could be expunged from her thoughts quite so easily.

And maybe, she realised as she sat there staring at the delicate ornament now, it was time to admit to herself that she didn’t really want to - that she needed to stop listening to her head and, for the first time in many years, start listening to her heart again.

It wasn’t going to be easy, she already knew that. Anything worth having never was but, despite her fears, she was becoming more and more sure that she wanted to try. A tiny smile lifted her lips as a swirl of excitement started to unfurl in her gut at that thought. This time when she pictured Killian’s face, she allowed the familiar warmth to grow, testing it out, letting herself just feel.

And it felt good.

Right.

Slowly, she placed the swan down on top of her bedside cabinet. No more hiding it away. It would be a symbol; a reminder to her every morning and every night to do the same with her heart.

Suddenly, she let out a shaky laugh, the enormity of what she was contemplating hitting her in a wave of mixed emotions. How differently she viewed her life, herself, in just a couple of hours. It should have felt too fast, but with each new wave of emotion that crashed through her body, it hit her that this had been coming for weeks now. Months, even. Since the day she’d first met him in fact. Right from the beginning he’d affected her and her heart had been silently responding to him on a level she hadn’t even realised. No doubt, at some point, she would second guess herself, it was just who she was, but right at that moment, her most overwhelming feeling was one of anticipation - and no little amount of nerves.

It was one thing telling herself that she could do this; it was going to be quite another to actually face Killian. Especially since she’d made a point of telling him that she wanted to be friends and nothing more.

To his credit, he’d never once overstepped that boundary she’d put in place and now…now it was down to her to remove it.

A cup of coffee, Mary-Margaret had suggested. See what happens.

It sounded so…easy. So non-committal and yet, it’d be a tentative, albeit huge, step forward. For her at least.

But when to do it? Wait and casually ask the next day? With the boys there, it’d certainly be easier.

Or…

“No time like the present,” she muttered wryly to herself as she stood up, suddenly decided.

With one last glance at the swan to bolster her confidence, she left the apartment and got into her car. Heart thumping, she headed off towards the docks and maybe, just maybe, towards the start of something good.

END CHAPTER FOUR

Tagging those that might be interested: @hookedmom, @captainswank-e, @alpha-redd, @the-reason-to-sail-home, @galadriel26, @katie-dub,@walkerfairytales,@emmascaptn, @vigorousjazzzhands, @smoakinmayor, @laughswaytoomuch, @piratesbooty63fan, @natascha-remi-ronin, @bookishgiraffe, @jackieorioncat, @bethacaciakay, @liketenerifesea, @ab-normality, @mamageek2107, @teamhook, @fleurreads, @kmomof4 @justanotherwannabeclassic, @whimsicallyenchantedrose, @deathbycaptainswan, @tomeandflickcorner, @nerdherd8, @eala-captian, @n3llaxo, @laurnorder, @doctorwhohook86, @slimacwrites

#cs mc ff #cs ff #cs modern au #cs romance #force of feeling #chapter 4

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