Disclaimer: I don't own OUAT.
Emma couldn't explain the empty hollow feeling that had taken up residence in her heart. It followed her wherever she went and nothing she did seemed to shake the feeling. She did, however, recognize that doing some things or seeing some things seemed to make it worse.
Like eating a slice of apple pie at the local diner, wearing her favorite black turtleneck sweater, or when she saw a short haired brunette enter her field of vision. The latter of the three problems seemed to go away upon seeing those woman's faces. Emma wasn't sure if this was a good or bad thing.
The blonde woman dreamed of brown eyes and subtle smiles. The eyes would warm her to the very core while the smiles made her feel like she could slay dragons or save…someone or someones. She wasn't exactly sure, she knew that those smiles were rare and that she'd fight to keep them on their owner's face. She vowed that she would give up anything and everything to make her happy.
But those vows and promised were forgotten when she left the world of slumber and was thrust back into life with her son. Her very reason for existing. She had fought tooth and nail to carve out a good life for her little prince. Remembering the first time she called him that always brought a smile to her face and managed to fill some of the hole in her heart. But it was like a trying fill a barrel covered in holes with water, it would simply empty out again and leave her as empty as ever.
It was kind of funny how easily she recalled the memories of their life together but could barely remember the past few years. She couldn't remember why she had moved them from Boston to New York. It seems like she just did. Even weirder was the family trip that she had made them take to Maine. Nothing was in Maine…but she had taken the two on some sort of bonding trip to the middle of nowhere. She hated these fuzzy memories, they made the wanting in her heart worse. That hollow, empty feeling. So she tried not to let her mind wallow too much in these wanderings as she'd get swallowed up and drown in them forever.
She tried ignoring the emptiness by spending more time with Henry. She tried to do a weekly movie night where the two would make dinner together and then watch some movies (or tv shows) until it was time for the boy's bedtime. When it first started, it had worked. The two marathoned all of the kid's favorite superhero movies. Emma especially liked introducing Henry to Mythbusters and other sciencey type shows that brought out the curious kid in both of them. But never any Disney princess films.
Watching those just made the emptiness worse for some reason. She could barely handle Mulan, something just nagged her about the powerful warrior falling for Shang. Emma was certain that Mulan loved someone else but she couldn't put her finger on why. Henry had no problems watching it, however. Beauty and the Beast brought on an even worse feeling of wrongness to her heart. And when the two tried to watch Snow White, Emma practically ran out of the room sobbing for reasons she couldn't explain. It made her feel so empty. Henry felt the same way, surprisingly, so they promised each other not to watch those films for quite a while, if ever again. Thankfully, Disney had other films that the two found themselves bonding over that lacked the fairytale background.
She still had to be wary of the ones based on literary works. Alice in Wonderland had brought about a tightening in her chest, like someone was squeezing her heart, when the Queen of Hearts had been introduced. She swore, however, to never show any form of Peter Pan's story ever again. The Disney version and even the Robin Williams version had left the two with nightmares and sent Henry running to her arms for several nights in a row after. Thankfully, there was still a wide array of entertainment that the two could choose from that left her not feeling empty and cold.
And then the strange man showed up and kissed her. She had no idea who he was, but when his lips met hers…it felt odd and familiar. But still wrong. Theirs were lips that were not meant to meet, that much she was sure. And then something happened that broke her heart.
It had been a few days after the strange man had showed up outside her door. Henry asked if they could skip their movie bonding night. This in itself had been enough to hurt her feelings but then he told her the reason. He had told her that he felt empty inside. That he seemed sad. He was worried that he was depressed, having looked up the symptoms on the internet. Her son was hurting and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She had changed every diaper, soothed every fever, and endured every tantrum. She was his mother. Yet she could do nothing to stop the emptiness that ate at both of them.
That night, she let him do his own thing. He went to his room and drew pictures. Pictures of him and Emma but there were other stick figures there. When questioned, he simply answered that he didn't know what to draw for the other characters. She sat on their couch with a mug of hot chocolate, with cinnamon, and silently cried when he had gone to bed. The dreams of warm, brown eyes and subtle smiles could not come soon enough.
Author's Note: I just wanted to apologize to everyone who follows/followed my story The Infinite Black. I lost my muse mad-hardcore and then life happened (I had to move out on my own and go to four year school). Right now I'm on Christmas break and am working on the next chapters of The Infinite Black. It's slow, but it's going. I had to essentially scrap an entire chapter and then split the first into two and try to figure out how the plot will fit into the first season of OUAT while still being its own entity. So it IS coming, but it is slow.