a/n: so here's another au thing i've been working on for months. i thought it was perfect to upload for AU week, day four: complete au. i've only completed this chapter and one other, even though i know there will be several more. i cannot promise when this will be updated, but i know it will be someday. until then, enjoy!

Emma moaned in relief as she tugged off her heels. She planted her feet up on the coffee table as she relaxed into the leather sofa beneath her, allowing her feet to air out in the cool air conditioning of the hot September Friday. They had begun to dig into her feet not even an hour into her long day full of lectures, but Emma knew that Belle would comment on her not wearing the very heels they had gotten together the past weekend when Henry was over at Ingrid's. She internally winced with every step she took across the campus, swearing that she'll only wear these heels during the Tuesdays where she only had one class to teach.

Emma tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear as her stomach began to growl. This Friday had been busier than usual, her breaks filled with endless meetings and her office hours filled with confused freshmen and exhausted seniors. Her TA was out sick with allergies from the changing seasons and so Emma had to at least attempt to begin grading the papers that were slowly piling on her desk.

Which was why her shoulder was aching and why her leather tote was sitting on the floor with papers sticking out wildly.

She sighed as she reached for the remote, flipping on the television and swearing that she'd begin grading the next day. Henry was over at Avery's for the night and he had a birthday party on Sunday, so Emma would have the apartment to herself for a decent amount of time. And even if Henry was there, she knew he'd force her to grade the papers.

Only God knew where he got his motivation from.

As Emma changed the channel to watch some rerun of Say Yes To The Dress, her cell phone dinged. Emma looked at her phone and saw that it was a picture message from Henry, showing Emma that he was with Avery at his house. The two boys were making funny faces at the camera, sticking their tongues out and crossing their eyes. Emma laughed at the picture, glad that Henry had his friends in Boston, after moving there a few years previously. Deep down, Emma wished he had a sibling that he could've grown up with.

Then again, he could've. Then again, he did.

But Emma didn't want to dwell on her past. She'd rather not remember the sharp cry of a baby boy and her refusing to hold him, knowing that she could not be a mother at the tender age of eighteen, when she did not even know how to love herself.

She didn't want to remember the piercing blue eyes and the lilting British accent of the man who taught Emma about the possibility of love.

Emma shook her head, trying to free herself of the memories her past held. She already thought about them every night when her mind tricked her into dreaming about the future she could've had. But she loved the life she had now: a beautiful ten-year-old boy whom she loved more than anything, a career she actually enjoyed, and friends that reminded Emma that she didn't need anybody else.

Emma stood from the couch and wandered over to the fridge in the kitchen, walking through the open room and grabbing her bottle of white wine. It had been a very long day for her and she just needed a large glass of wine to calm her mind. The stress from ungraded papers and numerous students begging for extensions on assignments and endless staff meetings about changes to the curriculum and new renovations and no hogging the conference room—it was just all adding up in Emma's mind and causing her to nearly go insane. It was causing her to remember the things she had tried to bury deep down in her mind.

She took a large gulp of her wine as she rested the half-full bottle on the counter. She'd empty the bottle by the end of the night, Emma was sure of it. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw flashes of those haunting eyes and that wide grin and shit she would need more than just this bottle of wine to get through the night. It always was the stressful days that brought out the worst of Emma's memories.

Well, not the worst. No, never the worst.

Just the most painful.

Emma walked back to the couch, plucking the bottle of wine from the counter and sipping generously on her glass, and relaxed back into the couch with her feet tucked under her. She watched the women find their perfect dresses and cry over the bitchy family members that don't know when to keep their mouths shut. Her feet rested on the coffee table, sticking to the random papers strewn there from work and some random pieces from Henry's school. Buttercup, her trusty Maltese, hopped up onto her lap from where she must've been sleeping in Emma's bedroom, just as she did every day when Emma left for work. Emma stroked the dog's soft fur, allowing the four-year-old dog to rest comfortably in her lap.

With her trusty wine and her favorite pet, Emma felt as though the night would be perfect.

But then her phone rang.

Emma picked up her cell phone as it chimed loudly. It startled Buttercup, who had fallen asleep on her lap, and the dog stared at it curiously. Emma furrowed her eyebrows as she read the number, not recognizing it or the area code. But it wasn't out of the ordinary for Emma to receive calls from unfamiliar numbers, since many cities and universities from all over the world had contacted her to ask for her to visit and speak to the criminal justice professionals there.

Plus side of being constantly sought out in her field: traveling to London and Miami and Seattle and Vancouver and so many other places.

Down side: never getting a moment of goddamn quiet.

Emma swiped her screen after placing her glass on the coffee table. "Hello?"

"Is this Emma Swan?" An unfamiliar male voice asked.

"Yes," Emma responded, leaning back against the couch with her eyebrows furrowed. She noted that it was strange that the man didn't mention 'Dr.' when he addressed her. The calls for her to visit some random city always addressed her as Dr. Emma Swan.

"My name is Archie Hopper and I'm looking for someone, so I'm sorry if I'm interrupting something."

"You're not interrupting anything. I hope I can help," Emma replied, admitting that this was one of the strangest calls she had ever received.

She heard a breathless chuckle over the line. "This may be a strange question, but here it is. Did you by chance give birth to a baby boy eighteen years ago in Augusta, Maine?"

And Emma's heart froze.

She couldn't breathe.

And the very same memories that Emma was trying to drown in wine were coming back with a vengeance. She remembered the pain of the labor she went through with Ingrid and Elsa by her side, her heart breaking when the baby was taken out of the room without her so much as glancing at him, her working out as much as possible to return to her previous shape in order to forget the whole thing ever happened.

She remembered the ink black hair as it ran through her fingers and the waggle of his eyebrows and the way his beard burned as it scratched her neck and the way he looked almost angelic in the pale moonlight.

She remembered maybe being in love. Almost being in love.

Until he left.

(They always left.)

"I-I-you have the wrong number."

And Emma hung up the phone, throwing it to the other half of the sectional couch and gripping her wine glass tightly in her hands. She finished the half-full glass in a single pull and filled it up eagerly, drinking the glass without pause. She continued this until the bottle was completely gone and she was left with just her swirling and restless thoughts.

She couldn't be alone, not right now. Emma saw that it was only half-past six, which meant that Elsa would just be arriving home. She stood up, pushing Buttercup off her lap as the dog groaned in protest, and hurried to find any pair of shoes that were not heels. She wobbled around a bit as she found a pair of orange flip flops (which did not go with her black pencil skirt and dark red blouse, but who gave a shit), and it only took her a few minutes to grab the things she needed to head over to her sister's apartment.

While she felt bad about leaving Buttercup alone again after being gone all day, Emma just needed her sister's company. Elsa was by her side through everything—from the very beginning of that summer when she introduced Emma to the man that changed her world, to the final moments of that painful labor. Elsa remembered the pain that the pregnancy had caused Emma, coming to the conclusion that she could not take care of this baby and that adoption would be the baby's best chance at a perfect life.

Even though Emma believed she wouldn't have been able to achieve many of the things she had if she had kept the baby, Emma regretted the decision every day.

Emma hurried to the sidewalk for the short walk to Elsa's apartment and shot off a quick text to Elsa, telling her that Emma was coming over and that she should have a very large glass of wine ready for when she arrived. Honestly, Emma needed an entire box of wine, but she would take what she could get. She just needed to drown her memories and thoughts and he's searching for her-

It didn't take long for Emma to arrive at the locked gate that led to Elsa's apartment building. She tapped in the code she had memorized years ago, when Elsa moved to Boston to follow Emma and Henry. She hurried through the courtyard, following the concrete path to the front doors of the building, and sincerely hoped that Elsa had that glass of wine ready. She just wanted to drown herself in alcohol and forget the call and try to continue on like life was normal.

But life had never been normal for Emma Swan.

She hurried through the front door and up the stairs just past the mailboxes, skipping every other step to head up to the second floor. Her heart pounded from the mental and physical exertion of the night and she would need a week's worth of sleep after all of this was said and done. Her heart hammered against her chest as Emma arrived at Elsa's door and swung it open, rushing into her sister's apartment and slamming the door behind her. Straight down the hallway, Emma could see Elsa standing in her gray business suit, a full glass of red wine in her hand.

It took Emma two seconds to cross the hallway and take the glass from Elsa's hand, drinking it as quickly as she could without a breath.

"What's going on, Emma?" Elsa asked, her hands crossed over her chest while Emma finished off the glass. "You're worrying me."

"Please."

"The last time you drank this much was when you thought you fucked up your dissertation defense and drank a solid two bottles of wine by yourself," Elsa explained as Emma circled around Elsa to the counter, where the half-full empty bottle of wine sat. Emma eagerly poured another glass and gulped it down yet again. "Jesus Christ, Emma, slow down."

Emma placed the now-empty glass back down onto the counter, planting her hands on the cool marble and wishing that she could just go to sleep for the next year or however long it would take to forget about the call that flipped her entire world. Her head was beginning to throb from the alcohol in her system and she pressed her hand against her forehead, feeling the heat radiating from her entire body.

"Emma," Elsa spoke as she stepped over to Emma, her black heels clacking against the hardwood floor. "Just talk to me. What's going on? You sounded fine on the phone today during the two seconds I got to talk to you."

Emma tried to take deep breaths to keep her head from swimming from the alcohol and the news from the day that her son was looking for her. Her hands began to feel clammy as she pressed them against her warm face and Emma noticed that they were beginning to shake. The news that her son (her first son) was looking for her was something that Emma had never expected. She thought she would go through her life without knowing what happened to the black-haired baby that she gave up for adoption over eighteen years ago.

(Eighteen years, four months, and three days ago.)

"Emma, you're shaking," Elsa said, alarm evident in her tone. She wrapped her an arm around Emma's back and helped her to the nearby couch, only a few feet from the small kitchen. Elsa sat beside Emma on the soft, suede couch and kept her arm around Emma's shoulders. Emma's body continued to shake, the nerves of the call and the thought of her past catching up to her were taking a toll on her body. She was terrified of the thought that the son she gave up all those years ago wanted to meet her, reminding her of the man she almost loved until he left.

(She wondered if he looked like the man who gave her hope for the future for once in her life.)

(She hoped he didn't.)

"Please talk to me," Elsa spoke after a few minutes of them sitting silently together. Emma's shaking had lessened, but her hands continued to quake. "What is all of this about? You're acting like you've seen a ghost." Elsa dramatically gasped and grabbed her chest. "Did you see Neal?"

"No," Emma responded immediately, looking over at her sister. "God, no."

"Then talk to me," Elsa repeated, crossing her leg over her knee and squeezing Emma's shoulder.

Emma sighed and looked down at her hands, watching them twisting together nervously. It was these very same hands that held his and held his face and traced the outline of his face in the moonlight on that beach all those years ago-

"Do you remember that thing that happened when I was eighteen?" Emma asked as she stared at her hands.

"Of course. You had a baby. The nurse said you almost broke my fingers during labor when you squeezed too hard," Elsa replied and Emma snorted as she looked over at Elsa.

"Well, I got a call from a man and he asked me the most curious question," Emma explained and Elsa began to nod, her blue eyes wide. "He asked me if I had given birth to a baby boy when I was eighteen."

Elsa's jaw dropped slightly. "Emma-"

"He's searching for me, Elsa," Emma told her sister, tears threatening her eyes. "My son—Henry's brother—is looking for me and I don't know what to do."

"Emma," Elsa spoke as she tugged Emma into her arms, allowing Emma's head to rest on her shoulder as Emma began to cry. Elsa had witnessed the heartache the pregnancy and adoption had caused Emma. She saw how Emma threw herself into exercise after the birth of the child, as if she could forget about the baby if she lost the weight she had gained. She saw how Emma couldn't sleep, terrified of the nightmares that plagued her, telling her that the adoption was a mistake and she ruined everything and how could she does this to her own child.

She saw how Emma mourned over the love that left and the love she refused to keep.

"I mean, how can I face him after all these years, Elsa?" Emma asked, lifting her head from Elsa's shoulder and wiping at the tears that continued to fall. "I regret that decision every day and what if he sees everything I have and gets angry because I have this life because I put him up for adoption? And what if he sees that I have Henry and gets angry because I didn't keep him? What if-"

"Emma, Emma, Emma," Elsa spoke, tightening her arm around Emma's shoulder as Emma leaned her head on her shoulder again. "Don't think about the 'what if's. Don't do that to yourself. You just have to accept the fact that he's looking for you. It was inevitable. Did you really think that he would want to go through life without wanting to find his biological mother?"

"Yes. Because I thought putting him up for adoption would give him a better life than I had and he wouldn't want to go looking for me, because he already had his family and he didn't need to know," Emma explained immediately, sitting up and scooting to the far end of the couch. "Maybe I thought that he wouldn't even know he was adopted. That his parents just never told him. And even if I did expect it, I didn't think it would happen so shortly after his eighteenth birthday."

"Well, you already know what I think about all of this," Elsa replied, reaching back to her hair and untangled her bun, allowing her long blonde hair to fall over her shoulders.

Emma sighed. "You think I should meet him."

"Of course I do," Elsa responded, arranging herself in a position matching Emma's. "Just as you said, you've regretted putting him up for adoption all this time. I think if you meet him, it'll help you realize it was the best choice. You won't know until you meet him, Emma."

"But what if he's angry at me, Elsa? What if he had the life I had, never being adopted and moving from place to place because no one loved him?" Emma asked, her voice quiet as she wiped away the last of her tears.

Elsa sighed and folded her hands on her lap. "You have to forgive yourself for all of this, Emma. You can't keep blaming yourself for all of this. You have to understand that you did what you thought was best for him. I'm sure he understands that. You just have to forgive yourself because I'm sure he already has."

Emma's jaw clenched as she looked down at her hands, tangled together on her crossed-legs. "Elsa, there's one thing we haven't considered." Emma looked back up at her sister, who stared at her with concern in her eyes. "What if he wants to meet his father?"

Elsa let out a long breath, a low whistle through her lips. "Well, then you're gonna have to face him. If your son wants to meet his father, you're gonna have to do it. And I know that's a touchy subject, but he deserves to know."

"The son or the father?" Emma whispered quietly, allowing herself to consider even the idea of finding the man who left.

(The one she still thought of every night, when the moonlight broke through the curtains in her bedroom and she thought back to the night where everything changed.)

"Both. Both deserve to know."

Emma had a restless night when she returned home. It wasn't even an hour after her conversation with Elsa that Emma returned back to her apartment, trying to go back to her utterly normal life after her world flipped. She had gone straight to bed, Buttercup cuddling right next to her the entire night, but Emma couldn't find sleep. While Buttercup slept deeply next to her, half under the blanket because Buttercup liked to think she was human, Emma stared up at the ceiling. Her thoughts wouldn't stop running through her head, reminding her of those summer days spent by the beach with a boy with sparkling blue eyes and a wide grin that gave her heart palpitations. Ever since that summer, Emma had never stopped thinking about the boy who changed her life, goosebumps raising as she remembered the way his hand pressed against her lower back whenever they walked down the street together and the way his tongue trailed against his lower lip whenever she wore that one low-cut top.

She remembered the butterflies that filled her stomach whenever he so much as glanced her way, and even how she feels those butterflies when she remembered the intensity that swam in his eyes.

She remembered the way his beard and tongue felt against her that night, so long ago.

Emma had sighed and turned to her phone, doing exactly what she did on sleepless nights like these. She had looked up the man that changed her life: Killian Jones. And still, she had found the exact same things she always did.

Only his LinkedIn profile, without a picture to match the description of his accomplishments.

Emma had sighed, even though she could see that he was pursuing his dream of becoming a graphic designer. She had smiled, remembering the days he spent sketching her as she laid out on the rocky beach of Storybrooke, Maine and the long talks they had at night about what they wanted in life. He had always talked about becoming a graphic designer, earning money doing what he loved. Emma had talked about doing something with the criminal justice system, but not quite sure what and had always repeated her doubts of even getting into college.

But Killian Jones had always reiterated his belief in her, even though he had only known her for three short months.

And now, Emma was sitting on her couch, staring at her recent call list at the unfamiliar number that had called her the night before. She had been sitting there for the past few minutes, trying to gather the courage to call Archie Hopper back. She had to tell him that he had the right woman, that she had indeed given birth to a baby boy eighteen years ago in Augusta, Maine.

And a day didn't go by where she didn't think of that little baby.

"Hey, Mom," Henry's voice called to her from the front door as it slammed behind him. Emma nearly jumped out of her skin, not realizing that it was almost one and Henry was expected to be home at any minute.

"Jesus Christ, you scared me, kid," Emma spoke as she stood up from the couch, turning around to face her ten-year-old son.

"No need to be formal, Mom," Henry teased, dropping his backpack onto the floor beside the couch. "How was your night?"

Emma let out a breathless chuckle as she stepped forward and hugged Henry. "Eventful, to say the least."

"Why?" Henry asked as his head pulled away from chest (and her son was getting so tall). His eyebrows furrowed and suddenly, he looked like Neal and it twisted her heart. "What happened? Your nights are dull without me."

Emma snorted as she draped her arm over Henry's shoulder, steering him over to the couch and sitting him down next to her. "You sound so sure of yourself."

"Mo-o-o-om. Come on. Spill."

Emma sighed and ran her hand through Henry's longish hair, noticing that he really needed a haircut before it got too unruly. "Henry, this is a really big thing. I need you to know that before you hear it and think differently of me."

"I can't think differently of you, Mom," Henry responded honestly, his face softening at her tone. "What is it?"

Emma sighed again and pushed her knotted hair back from her face. "Last night, I received a call, asking me about something that happened long before you were born. Eighteen years ago, to be exact." Henry nodded in encouragement. "Henry, the man asked me about a baby boy who was born eighteen years ago."

Henry's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Why would he ask you about that?"

Emma took a deep breath as she rested her hand on the back on Henry's neck. "Henry, when I was seventeen, I met a boy over the summer, when I was in Storybrooke at Grandma Ingrid's summer cottage with her and Elsa and Anna. And we hung out every day when I got off of work from Grandma Ingrid's ice cream shop and we had a lot of fun together. And he left when the summer was over to go back home to England to go to college and nine months later, I had a son."

Henry's eyes widened as his jaw dropped. "What?"

Emma nodded. "I had a little boy and I put him up for adoption because I wasn't ready to be a mother, not when I was eighteen and in high school. And I never thought that he would even want to find me, but this call from last night tells me that he's looking for me. And I wanted you to know before I decided to call the man back, or completely ignore that I ever received the call."

"You have to call him back, Mom," Henry replied immediately, resituating himself beside Emma to angle toward her.

"Henry, if you need time to think it over—"

Henry shook his head as he interrupted her. "No, no, no. You have to call him back. It'll be so cool to have an older brother!"

"Henry, what if he's angry at me for putting him up for adoption? What if he sees you and gets angry because I couldn't be a mother to him, but I could be for you?"

"You have to believe, Mom. It'll all work out. I'm sure of it!" Henry replied, picking up her phone from the coffee table in front of them. He held it out to Emma with his eyes lit up. "Call him."

Emma took her phone from Henry's hand with a sigh, scrolling through the recent calls on her phone and finding the one from last night. As she took a deep breath, she hit the number and the phone began ringing on the other end. Her heart was tight in her chest, the nerves squeezing it in a tight grip. The phone continued to ring and just before Emma gave up on ever contacting the man between her and the son she gave up, the phone picked up.

"Archie Hopper," The man spoke over the phone.

"Hello, Archie. It's Emma Swan, from the phone last night," Emma began, Henry smiling encouragingly from his spot beside her.

"Oh yes, Emma Swan. How are you?"

"I'm fine. Actually, I'm calling back because I'm sorry about how I responded on the phone last night," Emma spoke. "You just caught me off guard and I panicked."

"That's all right. It happens more often than you'd think."

Emma laughed under her breath. "About the question you asked me last night, I realized I never answered you. And I had to call you back to tell you that I am the woman you're looking for."

Emma heard the creaking of a chair in the background of the phone call. "Are you saying that you gave birth to a baby boy eighteen years ago in Augusta, Maine?"

Emma swallowed back a knot in her throat. "Yes, I am."

"Oh that's fantastic!" Archie said excitedly over the phone. "Well, I'm here to tell you that your son is searching for you and, if you're up for it, he'd like to meet you."

Emma took a deep breath, glancing over at Henry. Henry smiled at her and it gave her the strength to say those words. "I'm up for it. I want to meet him."