Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time and I never will.
A/N: Slight Spoilers for 'Hat Trick', now on to the story :)
Just The Girl
By: DivineMist
Emma watched in amusement as the curly haired, young girl said hi to her son.
Henry smiles lightly, but only enough for the corners of his lips to lift.
She also smiles at the girl, but there's a nagging feeling in the back of her brain that won't shake. Before she knows it, the question tumbles out of her mouth.
"Who was that?"
He turns towards her, a minor flash of panic in his eyes and a redness to his cheeks. Emma wouldn't have normally noticed, only if he hadn't been sitting so close to her on the bench.
She can hear the elusiveness thick in his voice when he speaks.
"Just a girl I go to school with."
Fighting off the urge to raise an eyebrow and question the secretive meaning to his words, she frowns instead. It was her. Paige, Jefferson's daughter. His words come back to her in an instant. Their talk of magic, him trying to get her to believe in it. What Henry was trying to get her to believe for the past few months.
There's a part of her that wants to believe in what he said, that all she had to do was believe that magic was real, keep an open mind and think hard enough, and everything would be okay. She wants to believe in Henry's theories, that Mary Margaret and David Nolan are actually her parents, that they all lived in a fairytale land, that they would all be happy once more if she could break the curse.
But she's been trained to know that fairytale's don't come true, they're not real. This is reality, not like the stories in Henry's book...
However, she can't help but feel deep inside that some of what Jefferson said was true, that there is some form of magic on Earth, she's just too closed off to find it.
Glancing over at Henry, she spots the book cradled safely in his arms as he stares at her in confusion.
Not being able to resist, Emma takes the book from his grip, flipping towards the middle and begins to read. Ignoring Henry's smug comments about reading it with an eye-roll.
It's obvious Paige isn't 'just a girl'. She might be 'just the girl' to her son, and one of the few people to actually make her believe.
A/N: I hope my point came across in this, even though its kind of short. Leave a comment if you please!