Title: Emma Swan's Magic Hour
Summary: What the hell else could she do with her magic if she actually set her mind to it? Maybe it was time to start practicing again, like she did with Killian that night at Granny's.
Spoilers: Set post-3x22, "There's No Place Like Home."
Rating/Warning: T, for language and probably innuendo, because, y'know, Hook. Family bonding, Captain Swan fluff, and magical hijinks abound.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox, building sand castles while waiting for them to come back out to play. (aka hiatus is sure to kill me so I'm just passing the time. ;))
Author's Note: I've had the idea for this story since Emma's little magic show at Granny's in 3x18. I wanted to wait to see how the season ended before I wrote anything (because if I had to go AU with it, I wanted to know before I started writing). Thankfully, canon ended up working out quite nicely for my story purposes! I have plenty of magical fun planned, but if there's something y'all want to see, let me know and I'll see if I can work it in. Feedback makes every day like Christmas! Enjoy. :)
Emma Swan's first brush with the amazing things her magic could do outside of a crisis happened completely by accident.
It happened that first night back from her own personal Hill-Valley-circa-1955, otherwise known as the Enchanted Forest of the Past. The Enchanted Forest of the Present was a friggin' wasteland, but the one of the past … well, let's just say she finally understood how it got its name.
That night, she'd watched the Evil Queen burn her mother at the stake. That night, her mother had survived against all odds. And that night, Emma had finally found what she'd been looking for her entire life.
After righting the timeline, making it back home, and running into her parents' arms and squeezing them like the lost little girl she'd been, Emma hadn't wanted to leave their sides. She'd dragged Killian back into the diner with her, and she'd stayed tucked into the booth with her family across the table from her and Killian squeezed in next to her.
Henry had gone off with Regina for a bit but eventually he returned to the party, stating that she'd said she wanted to be alone. Emma felt awful but at the same time, she truly felt in her heart that saving Marian had been the right thing to do, complications and consequences be damned. And honestly, she just wanted to enjoy this one night of peace with her family. She could worry about what to do about and for Regina in the morning, but for this one night, she was going to bask in the afterglow of finally finding a home.
The party began to wind down, and soon enough, only Emma, her parents, her sleeping baby brother, Henry, and Killian remained in the diner with Granny and Ruby. The second Emma and Killian stood to take down the decorations, Granny shook her head, clucked her tongue, and shooed them all towards the door. "It's late," she said, a smile at the little family evident behind her characteristic Granny toughness. "The decorations will hold until the morning."
The family thanked her, both for hosting the party and for allowing them to come back to clean up in the morning, and exited the diner. By silent agreement, Emma followed her parents to Snow's station wagon. She still had a room at the inn, of course, a holdover from those few days when Henry's memories were lost to him. Tonight, though, she didn't want to stay at Granny's. She wanted to go home.
Killian walked beside Emma but when they got to the car, he smiled at her. "Good night, Swan," he said, giving her a gentlemanly nod. Then he turned to head back into the diner and, she assumed, up to his room.
Clearly, he didn't want to impose. Well, screw that. Emma reached out and latched onto his hand, tugging him to a surprised stop. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" she asked.
With one look into his eyes, she made it crystal clear that he was coming with her. She didn't want to leave his side, either, not tonight. Not after what he'd done for her. And with one look into her eyes, he made his gratitude and his love for her crystal clear as well.
Emma pretended not to notice the way her mother raised her eyebrows at her father when she opened the car door and gestured for Killian to climb inside, and she pretended not to notice how her father smirked in response. All that mattered as they piled into the station wagon, her baby brother swaddled up in blankets and buckled tightly in his car seat, was that they were together.
They were all together.
That had been a few hours ago. Now everyone was snuggled under blankets in a darkened apartment, Snow and David in their room with baby Neal, Henry up in the loft, and Killian on the couch. The only one awake was Emma, who was far too keyed up and excited to sleep.
She was silently moving around the kitchen in search of a snack; Enchanted Forest food still left a bit to be desired and she'd been too high on family and home and Killian to eat at Granny's. Just as she opened the cabinet to scrounge for something, preferably sugary, the unmistakable sound of a fussing baby caught her attention.
Emma closed the cabinet and crept into her parents' room. Baby Neal was indeed squirming in the bassinet, but his fussing hadn't yet woken her parents. With an odd, foreign sense of sisterly and daughterly duty, she decided to let her exhausted parents sleep.
Cooing softly to Neal, she gently lifted him out of the bassinet. "It's all right, baby," she murmured as she carried him from the room. "What's wrong, huh? Tell your big sister what's wrong."
His diaper lacked the telltale fullness of needing changing, and she didn't think he was hungry because it wasn't time for his next feeding. So now it was time to play the game of Figure Out Why the Fussy Baby Is Fussy. Memories assaulted her, memories of those harried nights with Henry as a newborn. Memories, she remembered with a pang of sadness, that weren't real.
Real or not, though, those memories gave her experience, and she rocked Neal as if by rote, trying to quiet him before his whimpers woke their parents. A newborn Henry used to like when she babbled at him … or, more likely, he'd liked when Regina babbled at him, and Regina had simply imparted those memories on Emma.
Ugh, having memories that weren't real totally sucked. The point was, as far as she knew, babbling to a baby worked on some level, so maybe Neal just needed to hear a soft, friendly voice. "It's okay, Neal, it's okay. Hey, I think you need a nickname, huh? What do you think?"
Though he was still whimpering, Neal looked up at her with big blue eyes. Emma could practically feel her heart melting as she stared into her baby brother's teary eyes. "Yeah, you need a nickname, don't you? Your nephew has one, you should have one, too."
Since the sound of her voice was indeed calming him, slowly but surely, she kept talking. "How about goober? No, that's not right. You don't strike me as a goober. I can't make sport or buddy work. Maybe squirt?"
To her utter shock, her brother stopped fussing, just for a moment. "You like squirt?" Emma asked in amazement. She lightly grasped Neal's flailing little hand and smiled softly when his little fingers curled around her own. His eyes locked on hers as she caressed his fingers with the pad of her thumb. "All right, then, squirt it is."
For the next few minutes, she continued to murmur softly, trying to let her voice soothe him. It seemed to be working, so it was a surprise to her when, as she paced towards the living area from the kitchen, he started getting fussier.
Emma's brow furrowed as she headed back to the kitchen. Maybe he was hungry after all. She opened the fridge to check for an emergency bottle, and instantly, Neal went quiet. Well, that didn't make sense. If he was hungry, he wouldn't have calmed until that bottle was in his little mouth. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth – baby rule number seventeen: never question why a fussy baby quieted down – Emma closed the fridge.
Instantly, Neal squirmed and started whimpering again.
All right, squirt, what the hell? she thought, frowning down at her little brother.
Emma opened the fridge a second time, for no real reason other than the action had calmed him before. Once again, Neal went silent.
Okay, seriously, what in the fresh hell? Did he like the cold air from the fridge? After taking a moment to think of what difference the open fridge could possibly make to the baby's environment, she gasped in sudden comprehension. It wasn't the air; it was the light. "You don't like the dark," she murmured to him.
The realization sent a bittersweet memory to the surface. His namesake hadn't liked the dark, either. Emma cringed as remembered teasing him mercilessly about his dislike of the dark. Her seventeen-year-old self had been amused by the thought of a grown man not liking the dark and had, in fact, found it kind of cute. After her week in the Neverland perma-dusk, though, she could understand why Neal, who'd spent far longer in Neverland at a much younger age, hadn't been all that fond of the dark.
Her brother squirmed in her arms, returning her attention to the matter at hand. What the hell was she going to do now? She couldn't stand here with the fridge open until he fell back to sleep, and turning on any of the other lights downstairs would wake up the whole apartment.
Just as she was fixing to head out to pace the hallway under the safety lights until Neal went back to sleep, she caught a glimpse of a soft white light out of the corner of her eye.
Light that was not coming from the fridge. She looked down to find that the illumination was coming from her … her right palm, to be exact.
"Holy shit," she murmured in astonishment, then winced. Thankfully, her little brother was quite a ways away from parroting back language he'd heard. That said, holy friggin' shit. Her magic was still so new to her that it kind of freaked her out, especially when it went and did things on its own like this.
And okay, yeah, she knew it didn't do it on its own. She somehow was doing it herself, but it was completely unconscious, coming from base instinct and … again, holy shit.
She shifted Neal in her arms and was surprised to find that her baby brother was now completely calm. He appeared to be mesmerized by the soft light emanating from his sister's hand. "Yeah, you and me both, squirt," she muttered, mostly under her breath.
Feeling a sudden need to sit, Emma carried him over to the sofa and eased down on the end cushion by Killian's feet. "It's all right, Neal," she whispered to her brother, trying not to wake Killian as she tucked her legs underneath herself. "Your big sister's got you. I'll keep you safe, and I'll chase away the darkness for you."
The magic-driven light was indeed the answer. Emma watched as Neal tried to keep his little eyelids open and eventually gave up the fight, drifting off to sleep surrounded by comfort and warmth and soft white light.
Even after he was asleep, Emma didn't move, nor did she release the light. She was perfectly content to just hold Neal and have a few quiet minutes with him. She stared down at him in the soft illumination, seeing bits of Henry in his little face, picking out familiar features of his – and her – parents.
And that was when it hit her: she had a baby brother.
All her life, she'd wanted this. She'd wanted home and family. She'd wanted siblings, real siblings, real siblings who wouldn't leave when a social worker decided to move them to another house.
And now she finally had it. She had home and family and a real sibling. It was unconventional, to say the least, but it was hers.
"You're bloody brilliant, Swan, you know that?" an accented voice whispered, drawing her from her reverie.
She turned her head in the direction of the voice and found a sleepy Killian staring at her, a contented smile on his lips. She gave him a smile in return as she rested her head against the back of the sofa. "Sorry if we woke you."
"Not to worry, love. The young lad's very lucky. Not every older sister in the world can give her brother a magical nightlight."
A proud grin tugged at Emma's lips as she gazed down at her sleeping brother.
Then something else struck her: if she could give her brother a magical nightlight without even thinking about it, what the hell else could she do if she actually set her mind to it? Maybe it was time to start practicing again, like she did with Killian that night at Granny's.
At the very least, practicing would strengthen her energy reserve. She'd severely underestimated how exhausting sustaining the nightlight for so long would be. Still, she didn't want to let it go; she didn't want her brother to be in the dark. She could feel her eyes closing and knew on some distant level that she needed to get up, but she lacked the energy to do so.
Just a few more minutes. She'd get up in a few more minutes.
After what seemed to her like mere seconds, she felt someone gently slip Neal from her still tight grip. She blinked her eyes open to find her father smiling down at her proudly. "You're off duty now, big sister," he whispered.
"'Kay," she mumbled sleepily. "Just a heads-up: you might want to go out and get the little squirt a nightlight."
"Will do," he chuckled. "Get some rest."
Emma nodded and, with her brother safely in her father's arms, finally released the light. Since she didn't have the energy to move from her spot, she decided to lie down right where she was. She curled up on her side, pulled a blanket down from the back of the couch, and covered herself up. "And Emma?" David – no, Dad – murmured.
"Hmm?"
"You're lucky the pirate's asleep."
He said it teasingly with just a hint of seriousness, which made her swallow a grin. "Mm-hmm," she mumbled, hopefully giving off the impression that she was more asleep than she really was. Because, whether David pitched a fatherly fit or not, she was not moving. The exhaustion from holding the squirt's nightlight was completely worth it, but it also meant that heading up to the loft was not a thing that was going to be happening any time soon.
She had to work hard to swallow a snicker when Killian nudged her foot with his through the blankets, out of her father's view. So much for the pirate being asleep.
When David tiptoed out of the room, leaving his soon-to-be-sleeping daughter on the couch with a sleeping – or so he thought – pirate-turned-hero, Emma and Killian shared a quiet snicker. "Your father quite obviously adores me," he whispered, making her choke on a snort.
Was this how sneaking around with a boyfriend as a teenager would have felt?
After a moment, the two of them settled back down. "G'night, Killian," she murmured, her eyes sliding closed.
"Good night, love."
Tomorrow, magic practice begins, Emma thought as she drifted off to sleep, her feet still touching Killian's through the blankets.