She'd disagree if she knew what he was thinking. It was fun, even if that wasn't all it was. It was fun to hear him complain about the kitten, and fun to annoy him with her inability to remain quiet for an entire television program. It was fun to tease him when she knew he wanted something, and fun to give in when he made it worth her while. Maybe she was just made that way, because she looked for joy instead of doom and gloom, and when he seemed happy enough to smile at her or to play the part of the intentional grump, it felt like some sort of personal triumph. She wanted good things for him, things that he didn't want for himself, but Killian liked to pretend he was a lost cause. He was so convinced that he wasn't capable of happiness that he focused only on what he'd lost. Tink hated how he'd chosen to live his life after Neverland - hated what he'd thrown away and how clearly he seemed to miss it, but she accepted it, too. He did what he thought was best at the time, and even if she struggled with him giving so much of himself to his fight against the Dark One, there was more than darkness in his heart.
Hearing how he felt about her, though, was unexpected. Tink was happy to protect herself with boundaries that didn't entirely exist. If it was fun and meaningless, then she wasn't any less of a fairy for being with him. If he didn't care about her, then her feelings were just an attachment to the familiar. If she missed him when he was gone, it was because she'd gotten used to having someone at her side. And if he wasn't capable of change, then there was no hope for them anyway. His heart belonged to a ghost of a woman who Tink wasn't sure had ever existed in the first place. She knew that Milah was real, of course, but she knew what years of loss could do to a person; how it twisted thoughts to honor the lost and made people out to be different than they were. He likely knew the details of her death better than the memories of her life, but he stayed committed to his lost love. Sure, the fairy had entertained plenty of thoughts of him moving forward, but she never dared to place herself in a more significant role in his life. He needed a savior, didn't he?