Disclaimer: I cannot lay claim to Once Upon a Time. That right belongs to ABC and the show's creators, Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. I am just a fan with a pen and an overactive imagination.

Author's Note: Tags to 3x11 "Going Home" on this one. Snow's final goodbye to her daughter before the curse plumes descend.

Emma looks lost and more than a little frightened, her shining blue eyes a soundless plea as she slowly scans the ragtag group before her. It is as if she is searching, and Snow knows exactly what she wants; who she needs. These instincts inside her have become well honed in the years following Emma's arrival, and it gives Snow much joy to be able to understand her daughter so innately. Much joy and today, much sadness.

It shouldn't end like this. They just found each other.

In front of her, Regina and Henry are parting from a tender embrace, mother bidding child an emotional farewell. Thunder rumbles off in the distance, and the green clouds continue to build around the town like an unearthly beast plotting great plunder. Snow slips her hand free from Charming's, aware that time is slipping away just as surely. It's her turn now.

She moves forward like a ghost, transition from one loved one to another seamless; effortless. She is grateful that Charming has decided to linger behind, her ever loyal sentry, and allow her this moment -

A moment reserved for mothers and their children, people tied together so deeply through life and love that not even the chasm between worlds is enough to sever that most unbreakable of bonds. Emma Swan is a part of Snow White in a way no one else can claim, not even Charming. This is her baby, the girl who lived and grew beneath her very skin, once a smattering of cells and jumbled DNA and now a breathtakingly beautiful woman with Charming's terse fire and Snow's stubborn spunk.

Headstrong and true, unwilling to back down for what she believes in. A leader, a protector, a savior. The best of both of them, it would seem.

Snow's heart fills and nearly spills over with the spirit of pure connection she feels as she reaches out for her perfection creation, cupping Emma's warm face with remarkably steady hands.

She smiles, remembering late night giggles and failed attempts at baking; ogres and pirates and heartbreakingly heartfelt conversations, often shared between two mugs of cinnamon hot cocoa. And then she goes back further, to another time, another life. To a medallion that swung east to west, to tiny flutterings and powerful kicks she soothed away with gentle rubbing. There was fear and oh yes, there was pain, but nothing compared to the sensation of welcoming little Emma home, to having this fragile gift placed in her reverently waiting arms. Snow may have missed a good deal of Emma's "firsts" in life, but in those nine months and five minutes, she played witness to the first of the "firsts" - the most important of all.

She was there when her daughter took her first breath; there when her lungs burst forth in loud, lively greeting. There for the first heartbeat, there when the ten toes started sprouting and there when she and Emma first locked eyes, cementing in the intimacy of that bedroom the certainty in Snow White that she would do anything to keep this small crying human safe; happy. And that brings the young mother comfort, a comfort she wraps herself up in now.

Always everything for Emma, for Emma's best chance.

Snow thinks it is only fitting that she who was there at the beginning, who breathed the first hello, would now be here at the end.

Emma's last goodbye.

She bends her daughter's head forward, pressing a soft kiss to the blonde's forehead, where twenty eight years and a curse ago she once placed another kiss.

Goodbye, Emma, she thinks. No words escape her mouth, though. Snow is too afraid that if she tries, it will be the wrong words that topple out. Words like, Don't go. Please stay. But she has her grandson to think of; her daughter's future to consider. Now is not the time to be selfish. Now is the time to "do anything" for her not-so-small-anymore crying human so that she can be safe; happy.

Even if that means giving her up.

Again.

When Snow pulls back, she takes a moment to memorize Emma, categorizing every feature and every trait she recognizes as having been passed down. She sees her chin first and foremost, the combination of curve and dimple so impressively re-created it even causes others to stop and comment. Charming's eyes and Charming's hair, but the curls Emma has begun trying to tame, those are all hers. Snow even registers elements of earlier ancestors in her daughter - of Leopold, of Eva, of Ruth.

Ruth, she recalls fondly; wistfully. The grandmother who made Emma possible. Emma never knew Ruth; never knew any of her grandparents, actually.

And soon she will never know anyone else gathered here. Not even her own parents, who made the ultimate sacrifice for her best chance.

Snow has to stifle a sob and step back, before it is too late. She strives desperately to keep up a smile for Emma's sake, Emma who is fighting so hard to be strong and whom she just wants to sweep up into her arms and cradle, like the darling baby she once was and forever will be, to Snow. And so it is the least the aching mother can do, to not wipe away Emma's tears, to not hug her close, to not whisper sweet encouraging nothings. It makes the separation easier; it takes away the temptation to hold on and never let go.

Emma turns now and Henry follows, her other precious boy gone to live a life he should've had from the start, with the daughter who always had the mother in her. They disappear into the yellow bug, and Snow knows two very large pieces of her heart have absconded with them.

She may have crumpled then and there, succumbed to the despair where it not for Charming, returning his hand to its rightful place in hers. Snow glances over and meets his sad smile with the same one she's been resolutely wearing, and the cerulean blues she saw on Emma brim with the unspoken promise that he'll be her anchor until the bitter end. She squeezes his palm, the only thanks she can manage, right now.

Together, they watch the car as it begins to drive away, until the sight is too painful and Snow lifts her face; closes her eyes. She lets the noxious clouds engulf her, the purple seared behind her eyelids proof that Regina succeeded. They're going home.

She thinks of Emma, her first and her last, the baby she loved and the baby she lost.

Let her be happy. Please, just let her be happy.

And then she thinks of nothing.

FIN

Author's Note: I. Need. March. Like, right now. That is all.