Important stuff: This story is AU. Emma is still a foster kid and Mary Margaret is her teacher. Mary Margaret had a child when she was 17 (David's child), who was taken by her step mother, Regina, and put up for adoption. The Regina/MM background is pretty much the same, only minus the magic. Regina came from a very wealthy family and a marriage was arranged for her (MM's father), only she fell in love with someone else. You know the rest, but Cora hired someone to 'take care' of Regina's lover rather than kill him herself. It probably goes without saying, but MM is Emma's mother.

Emma's knuckles rapped lightly against the wood and she stepped back in almost the same instant, ready to bolt if anyone else answered and half hoping no one would at all. It had been stupid to come, she knew that already. But then it creaked open, the pleasant face in front of her morphing into quickly hidden surprise. The first thing the girl noticed was she was still wearing the same jeans and fitted cardigan she'd worn to work, along with the soft smile reserved for the kids.

"Emma," she greeted, with a softness that never stroked her name when anyone else spoke it. "Would you like to come in?" The simple offer, made without hesitation or wonder, eased the anxiety gnawing at her stomach.

She stepped inside without answering, her fist closing around the strap of her schoolbag.

"I was just about to make hot coca, would you like one?" Emma smiled back and muttered her thanks. It was almost scary how well her teacher seemed to know her. There were no mugs in the waiting on the counter of the tiny kitchen and the kettle sat still and lifeless on the stove. But had she just asked Emma if she would like anything, she would have refused.

No one ever did anything just for her.

Emma followed her to the stove, leaning casually against the counter, but her bag stayed on her shoulder, although she ached to put it down, heavy and burrowing a wide groove into the skin.

"Do you have any cinnamon?" she wondered aloud as Miss. Blanchard poured the steaming water over the coca powder.

Her teacher's gaze drifted towards her, an unreadable expression fluttering across her face before she simply nodded. "Top shelf of the spice rack."

Emma nodded her thanks and shuffled to it, reaching up without thinking and almost immediately regretting it as a spike of pain shot down her side. Her eyes snapped shut and her tooth clamped down on her lip to stop a hiss escaping. She resisted the sigh of relief when the continued sound of the spoon clanking against the edges of the mug told her Miss. Blanchard hadn't noticed.

Mary Margaret took the pot when Emma placed it down beside the mugs and sprinkled some into both before stirring it into the chocolate. Emma smiled at the similarity, feeling the familiar pang that seemed to stab right through her heart as she did. That happened a lot around Miss. Blanchard.

The pair carried their mugs to the couch, Mary Margaret blowing gently on hers as she walked.

"What brings you here, Emma?" The older woman asked as they sat simultaneously, both tucking on foot underneath themselves before they did. Her voice felt like the stroke of a mother's hand as she combed through her daughter's long curls.

Emma took a sip of the burning chocolate so she didn't have to answer right away. Why had she come? It wasn't as if she could cry into Miss. Blanchard's shoulder and tell her everything. She was almost sure her teacher would believe her, but who else would? And she'd been sure in the past, too. Trusting people was a mistake she'd made too many times to be willing to let it happen again.

"I heard you made amazing coca," she joked, blowing on it before she took another sip. She was far less careful than her teacher had been, however, and splashes of liquid chocolate shot over the edges of the mug and onto the wooden table. Emma frowned but Mary Margaret only rolled her eyes good naturedly.

"The hot chocolate is good," she agreed, tasting her own, "but I thought you might have a question or two about the homework assignment." She nodded towards Emma's bag, still slung over her shoulder but the weight of it taken by the couch seats.

Emma grimaced and nodded. "Right, that too," she muttered.

"How are you getting along with 'Wuthering Heights'?" Asked Mary Margaret with a smile, and just like that it was as if Emma was supposed to be there, as if she had every right to invade her teacher's home.

"I hate it," she answered, honestly.

"Oh?"

"Well, not the book so much as the characters. Everyone except Mr. Earnshaw and Heathcliff."

"Even Catherine?"

"Especially Catherine," Emma spat with such venom that Mary Margaret recoiled slightly, as if the hatred was directed at her.

Mary Margaret waited, allowing Emma the time to explain without question. After another sip of hot chocolate, she did.

"I hate how everyone treats Heathcliff," she admitted, calmly, as if the emotion she'd allowed to spill our mere seconds ago had evaporated into the air and drifted out of the open window. "They act as if he's beneath them, Hindley especially. He treats him as no more than a slave, like he's there for his convenience rather than a person. And because he's poor and an orphan, he's meant to be just so grateful that they're giving him a place to stay."

Mary Margaret set down her hot chocolate, her fingers twitching. Her hand crawled across the couch a mere inch before she stopped and clenched it into a fist, her face pinched. "But Catherine was his friend," she pointed out, "she loved him."

Emma scowled, her grip so tight around the mug she was worried the china may shatter beneath her fingers. "If she loved him so much, why did she turn her back on him as soon as someone better came along? She was his friend, but in the end, she was even more cruel than the others, because she let him love her, let him hope that someone could love him, too, before she tossed him aside."

"Emma." That time, Mary Margaret's hand did reach for her. She tucked her fingers around her forearm, brushing her skin lightly with her thumb for a second before Emma flinched and jerked away, sending a shower of scalding coca cascading into her lap.

"Damn," she yelped, jumping to her feet as if it would somehow cool the drink burning through her jeans.

"Take them off," Mary Margaret demanded in her teacher voice as she hurried to the closet beside the bed at the far end of the large room that made up half of her apartment. Emma hesitated, embarrassment flooding her at the thought, before she was struck with another thought and folded her arms over her stomach in refusal.

Her teacher pulled a pair of loose sweats from the bottom draw and turned back to her, frowning immediately in concern when she saw the soaked jeans still on Emma's legs. "Emma," she reprimanded, her flats somehow managing to clip on the wooden floor as she strode towards her.

"Can I change in the bathroom?"

"Hurry!"

Emma didn't need to be told twice. She snatched the sweats out of Mary Margaret's hands and practically ran to the bathroom, flinging the door shut behind her, grateful for the minutes of escape as well as just the relief of the burning.

She emerged minutes later, having changed and bathed her legs with a splash of cold water. Not the perfect first aid, but without showing her teacher the rest of the damage there, there was little that could be done.

"Are you okay?" Mary Margaret pounced almost as soon as she stepped out of the bathroom, concern knitted across her face. Emma turned away from it, embarrassed and uncomfortable with what she was so unused to and nodded at the floor.

"They're just a little red, nothing to charge to the emergency room over," she reassured, but the worry barely left the older woman's features.

"Emma…"

"Is the couch okay? I hope I didn't ruin it." She looked up from the floor towards the slightly splattered chair that held her finally discarded school bag. Her cheeks turned slightly pink as she remembered what else was in there. The change of clothes and painfully saved money for emergencies. She'd grabbed it as she'd ran from her foster parents' house, but now it seemed pathetic. Had she been expecting Miss. Blanchard to open her home to her? A forever Mommy maybe?

Totally pathetic.

There was just something about the woman standing only a foot away from her that made the idea seem not so impossible.

"The couch is fine," Mary Margaret answered in an almost whisper.

Emma hated the way she was looking at her. She couldn't see it, but she hated it all the same.

She was looking like she was more important than the furniture. Emma already knew beyond a doubt that she wasn't.

If she'd spilled it at her foster parents' house, she'd be starved until the cleaning bill was paid and would probably earn a slap for the trouble. Miss Blanchard might not be her fairy tale ending, but she wasn't going to hurt her either.

Why was she there? She couldn't stay, she couldn't even tell and it certainly wasn't because she needed help with her homework. But Miss. Blanchard had always been so kind, and not just because she was her pupil. Emma had memorised the way she looked at her, she played the silk tones of her voice on a record in her mind over the screaming voices of her foster parents. It was different to the one she used on the others.

If she tried hard enough, Emma could almost convince herself it was special.

Until she remembered who she was and where she lived, and that she wasn't special, not to anyone. It was pity, that was all. Kind and enthusiastic Miss. Blanchard just felt sorry for the kid nobody wanted.

"I can put your jeans on a quick rinse."

Emma shook her head. "It's cool, the laundry is sort of my job. I can just shove it in with the rest."

The laundry. Along with everything else. A slave they got paid to keep. At least she'd be able to shove her clothes in the wash before her foster parents saw what she'd done to the shirt her kind foster brother had handed down to her after he was done cleaning his car with it.

"Why are you here, Emma?" It wasn't the rough, disgusted, 'what are you doing here? That she was so used to, but something different. Kinder. Warmer. Like she really cared about the answer.

Emma had first been inside her teacher's home when she'd been walking late under the flickering glow of a streetlamp and noticed the figure walking a few steps behind her had been there just a little too long. She hurried to get back to the screwed up safety of her foster parents' house, but she'd had a long walk ahead of her. Then she saw the woman wandering along the other side of the road, the woman who had always been so kind and smiled at her like she mattered.

She'd crossed the street and before Miss. Blanchard had been able to exclaim her surprise Emma had muttered out of the corner of her mouth that she thought she was being followed. Of course Mary Margaret had taken her under her wing, figuratively, and almost literally until Emma had shrunk away as if her arm were a double edged blade. She'd insisted on taking her inside her apartment and put a steaming mug of hot chocolate in front of her before personally driving her back to the house.

Emma had protested and then thanked her more times than was necessary, because she could not comprehend someone wanting to do something so caring for her. And perhaps she'd seen the shadows flicker through Emma's eyes as she'd twisted her head towards the battered house, but something had made her take out a chewed pen and scrawl her written address and cell number on paper torn from the edge of the car instruction manual.

She hadn't told her what it was for, and Emma hadn't asked. She'd just taken it with another whisper of thanks and slipped in into the pocket of her worn jeans.

The street name, postal address and number were kept pressed between the pages of 'Angela Carter's Fairy Tales' and committed to her own memory.

"If there's anything going on, I can help you, but you've got to tell me." That time she was ready for the gentle, hesitant brush of fingers across the back of her hand and she neither resisted nor encouraged it as Mary Margaret's hand closed around hers.

Emma opened her mouth, perhaps to tell her that everything was fine and the only Emma related thing she should be concerned about was her latest homework assignment, or perhaps even to whisper the fears that lurked inside her head each time she heard her foster mother stumble in from another night of drinking.

But whatever she was going to say she would never know. A sharp rap at the door snapped her mouth shut again and the warm pressure was suddenly gone from her hand. The knock was followed by the scraping of a key in the lock and an elegant woman with chopped, dark hair strode into the apartment with the air that she had every right to be there.

"Who is that?" she demanded, her sharp, cold gaze travelling straight to Emma, who stared right back, her own eyes unblinking.

"My name is Emma," she snapped, "and I'm not a that."

The woman smiled, but her lips were a deep blood red and her dark eyes stayed cold.

"Then what exactly are you?"

"I am female. I believe the correct pro-noun is 'she'."

The stranger's shaped eyebrows arched. "I am familiar with the rules of the English language, Emma. What I would like to know is what you are doing in my step-daughter's house."

"She's my pupil," Mary Margaret cut in. "She's here for some help with her assignment."

"Well I hardly think it's appropriate that she come here to your home. She has a lunch break, I am sure. Or an after school meeting on the grounds, perhaps? I am sure her parents would not be impressed to learn of this particular breach of their trust." She was talking to Mary Margaret, but her penetrating stare never once left Emma's face, as if she were searching out the weakness of her prey.

"Then I guess it's a good thing I don't have any of those."

The cold eyes narrowed and Emma heard Mary Margaret shuffle behind her. "A foster child? How unfortunate. All the same, I believe it is getting late and the I am sure the state have better things to do than chase you around the country, Miss…?"

But Emma just glared, focused and determined not to break first. When she was twelve, a drama teacher had taught her that the key to confidence was eye contact. She had no intention of appearing timid in front of this black widow.

"I suppose it's only fitting that you have no last name since you belong to no one. You shall call whoever you are staying with to pick you up now, I'm sure you do have a roof over your head after all, and I do not expect to find you here again."

"Then you'll be surprised."

The ice chipped smile twisted into a sneer and finally, the icicles turned to Mary Margaret.

"I trust you have the child's contact details. If you would be so kind."

Although the cold woman's gaze was gone, Emma kept hers. She'd never met anyone so frozen. Every word the woman spoke sounded as if it had been carved out of ice, and Mary Margaret, who took on and enchanted classrooms full of teenagers every day, shrank against the stained couch. But still, somehow, and for reasons that crumbled as soon as Emma's fingertips brushed them, she spoke up.

"Regina, I really don't think Emma should be returned to her foster parents right now. If you could just give us five minutes-" her gentle hand came to rest on Emma's shoulder, as if trying to hold her close before she was snatched from her grasp.

"I will give you no such thing, Miss. Blanchard. The girl has already quite outstayed her welcome, as I'm sure she is used to doing, and now she must be sent back."

"She is not a miss-delivered parcel. She's-" Mary Margaret's mysterious strength faltered and something other than the icicles shimmered behind Regina's eyes before the smirk grew.

"She's a child of the state and that is where she will return. Tonight."

Emma tried to smile her reassurances at Mary Margaret, because as much as she hated the woman demanding it, it really was okay. She had not come in search of a home, or a shoulder to dampen with her tears. She'd come for relief, for kindness, for the twinkle in someone's vision of her rather than disappointment and for the sweet taste of warm cinnamon.

Mary Margaret stared back, not quite smiling, but her features filled with a promise. A promise that the stone pillar would not come between them, a promise that they would speak again and not just about assignments, a promise of more mugs of chocolate and spices and a sacred vow that she would, somehow, protect her.

I really do not know how to feel about this one. I wanted to do something original, but 'hmmm' is my overall response to what I have written. Hopefully someone can articulate.