She Lost Him but Found Herself and That Was Everything.
For the fourth time in as many days Emma sat in silence, tightening her eyelids and attempting to ignore the soft drumming of Dr. Archibald Hopper's fingers on her brand new leather recliner. Every once in a while the rhythmic strumming was exchanged for the sound of the man's pen scratching against the legal pad hoisted over his knee and Emma wondered whether the man was merely scribbling the hours away or if her actions had betrayed her and given him some unintended insight to her inner psych.
She didn't want to be here, but having the therapist come to her house at least gave her a home court advantage.
It was her parents who had insisted on the therapy sessions. When their pleas as family figures weren't enough to make her give in, they hid behind the authority given to them by the town and forced the time upon her as a condition of her return to the Sheriff's office. Storybrooke apparently doesn't mind allowing temperamental, melodramatic and morally grey magic users having the ability to level the town with a wave of their hands but heaven forbid a mourning women is given a gun so that she can do her job.
It was frustrating to be backed into a corner like that but Emma tried not to let it bother her. Her parents, and the town, and whoever else cared to interfere might be able to force her to spend an hour with Dr. Archibald Hopper every day for two weeks, but no one could force her to talk, not about what had happened. She'd use this time to nap or maybe to chat to Archie about the town's soccer league or other idle gossip but always with the unspoken agreement between the two that if her love life were to come up all discussion would cease.
In two weeks this would all be over and Emma could try to return to normal.
Henry would stop by every morning before class and every day after school let out. On the weekends he slept over. When she was able to, Emma would watch him from the lounge room window as he walked up the footpath, past the white picket fence and over the small steps to the porch.
He followed a similar pattern every time. He would immediately knock on the door but before she could answer it he would cup his hands over his eyes and peer into the window until she was close enough to be seen from the veranda. Then his arms would drop and he take a more casual stance.
The door was never locked and Emma often wondered what he was looking for.
It was only later, after a discussion about fleeing, that the thought occurred to her that Henry was waiting for the day that she didn't answer the door. The day he peeked through the window and saw an empty house and that scared Emma more than anything.
The two weeks were drawing to a close, much to Emma's relief. She had been in therapy before and knew how the process was supposed to go but the concept seemed rather useless to her. Maybe for other people it could work wonders, people who gave more control of themselves to their emotions, but Emma had always known that an objective and removed stance was for the best.
She glanced at the clock in the kitchen and smirked when she saw that the session only had fifteen minutes remaining. She mentioned cutting out earlier but Archie refused to budge. He seemed nervous and fidgety.
Why wouldn't they just let her go on? Why did everyone think that talking about it or doing breathing exercises or any of that bullshit would actually help? These feelings weren't going to go away. She had resigned herself to living with them, why couldn't everyone else? Why did everyone insist that they had to be focused on, and feed scraps and scraps of attention, until they had grown so large that they eclipsed everything else inside of her? Emma knew how to get rid of pain and make it something she is able to live with and that was to starve it, to cut it off from its source until it shriveled up and died.
Archie wouldn't get that and so Emma knew it was best to let the silence reign.
Her plan was interrupted by a hesitant knock at the door.
Emma paused and frowned at how quickly Archie jumped to answer it.
Standing in the doorway, mumbling apologies to the therapist and looking most contrite were her parents.
"We meant to come sooner but our babysitter was running late" said her mom.
"Oh its fine. We were-"
Emma shot up from the couch. "Okay, I'm leaving. I did not agree to this."
Archie made to stop her from leaving. Standing in-front of the pathway to the door and staring her straight in the eye.
"Emma, please wait. I asked them to come here today. They needed to talk to you and you need to talk to them."
"I can't believe you did this. Inviting my parents here? Is Regina coming next or should we wait for Henry? Maybe the dwarves wanted to share their input? This is so unprofessional. I don't know if any of you realized this but I am an adult."
Archie looked at the others for help and David, taking his queue, moved in front of the bespectacled man and placed a hand over his daughter's shoulder. Looking guilty, he attempted to explain himself.
"We knew you weren't talking to Archie and we were worried about you, Emma. We love you."
"I know that. What I don't understand is why I am being punished?"
Snow let out a sad gasp and approach Emma the way one would a frightened animal.
"Emma, you're not in therapy as punishment. We just want you to talk about your feelings. Bottling everything up isn't healthy."
"It's healthier than just crying all of the time and feeling bad for myself, which is exactly what would happen if I give into this. Look I am sorry but this is over. I-I have to go."
She removed herself from her father's hands and thanked god that being the Dark One had made poofing away so much easier.
Henry peeked up from his homework and looked at his mom as she silently washed the dishes. Trig wasn't his best subject and it would be easy blame his lack of concentration on the triangle in front of him but he knew that that wasn't what was causing his lack of focus. It was Emma. She had been different since Hook died. Quieter and sadder. Smaller too. Henry knew she hadn't actually shrunk, that was impossible, but the amount of space she took up in a room seemed to have diminished. Usually she was lively and just lit up, taking control of any situation that came her way. But now she slumped to the side and hid in the quiet lulls of dropped conversations and forgotten ideas.
Seeing her like this made him feel unsure and kind of guilty. He knew he hadn't actually done anything, he was one of the few who supported her desperate and futile attempts to save the pirate, but even reminding himself of that did nothing to fight off the churning guilt inside of him.
He watched as she dropped the dish into the sink and stared out the kitchen window, still as silent as ever.
"So mom, did anything happen today?"
"What. Uh no. Not really. Why?"
"You seem kind of..off"
Emma smiled tightly and walked over to her where her son sat at the dining table. She stood slightly behind him and ran a hand over his hair absently.
"No, kid. Everything is fine."
Henry chewed on the end of his pencil and looked back at his homework.
The room fell silent as it always seemed to do now but it didn't seem like Emma noticed. She just stood there behind him, her hands planted on the sides of the chair.
The words he wanted to tell her were on the tip of his tongue, o the point where he felt like he could actually feel them trying to escape. He scraped his tongue across the back of his front teeth as if trying to rub them off. Henry wasn't a stranger to an unspoken silence. He and Regina went countless dinners, over countless years, with them. Even he and Emma had times where things would just stop, especially under the first curse. But this was different. This silence was awkward, it wasn't full of anger or annoyance and couldn't be fixed by a bad joke or even a day apart. It was sad and worst of all, He feared it was permanent.
He hitched his breath before he started to speak and his head fell down to his homework once more.
"I don't want you to leave but.. I..Ill understand if you do. I know it must be hard, being constantly reminded of him."
He whispers it, because it's harder to say then he thought it would be and even in the shushed tone he used, his voice catches on the back of his throat.
He knows the heart isn't actually where feelings come from. It's not a big love heart in the chest, it's a pump circulating blood throughout the body. And emotions, like everything else, are only in the mind. But still, he could swear that the back of his heart was crumbling.
Emma stared at him for a long time after that. Not like she's looked at him for the last couple weeks, where it feels like she always sees just a little beyond him, but like her eyes are taking everything in about him as if for the first time. He watched her eyes scan each feature individually, her eyes moving around his person with all the precision and twitches of a grandfather clock.
Then she spoke.
"Kid, listen to me. I am not going anywhere and I don't want you to worry about it. Things are hard right now, I am not going to lie. Killian's..death was hard. But no matter what happens, I am still your mom and nothing is going to change that."
On the second Friday of the sixth month of the year, Emma stood in front of Dr. Hopper's office and did something she never imagined herself doing. She waited for her parents to join her in therapy.
Emma Swan realized she would probably never like therapy. It was everything messy and complicated and decidedly too emotional that she had always shunned in her life. It ripped off the scabs covering her wounds and showed that no matter how much salt and dirt she had rubbed into her scars in an attempt to ignore them into recovery, the blood still flowed underneath and it needed healing.
And heal she did.
"I was planning to settle down with Killian I..I thought that me and him we were going to be married and have a family. But were not. He's dead and I don't know what I am supposed to do." She said, looking into the faces of her parents.
Archie sat to the side more as a mediator than anything else. Emma and he had done a lot of work but facilitating discussions was a goal of hers and one he planned to help her achieve. So far his interference had been kept to a minimum as Emma and her parent got a chance to really talk. Emma looked to him for support. He smiled at her softly and nodded his head. Emma closed her eyes and after a deep breath continued.
"You and dad have this perfect relationship and now every time I look at the both of you I see everything I am never going to have. And when the curse first broke that was okay. I was okay with being alone, I had accepted long ago that no one was ever going to love me like that and it didn't hurt. Not like this. Then I started to think ..think that maybe things would be different and that's where everything went wrong."
"You can still have what you wanted, Emma." started Snow, but Emma placed a hand over her mothers, lulling her into silence.
"Maybe I can, eventually. But not now. I need a break. Getting back to how I was before, that's going to take some time because after all that has happened to me, after Killain's death and Neal's and Graham's and even Walsh's, I can't just bounce back like nothing happened. No one could. I've lost way too much love in my life for that."
"We understand" said David.
Emma shook her head slowly, but smiled, long and trembling. Her eyes fluttering from the tears.
"No, I don't think you guys do but I am starting to realize something, something I really need to realize. I think that it's okay if you guys don't feel what I am going through. I wouldn't wish this experience on anyone. And you, both of you, you're so hopeful and so beautiful and we - I- need that. I need you two to be exactly what you are because I.. I love those people."
It was her father who initiated the hug. He lifted his left arm and clasped her hand across the back of her head as he always did. Cradling her as if she was a much younger girl then the woman of thirty who sat in front of him. Then her mother moved to her left side, David scooting over to give her room, and Emma soaked in the feeling of her parent's arms holding her. Her mother lent in closer, she check placed against Emma's own, and whispered into her daughter's ear.
"We love you too, Emma. Maybe it's not the way you dreamed of being loved with Hook, but we still love you. More than anything."
Emma and Henry laid on the floor of their two story suburban house, in the heart of the sea side main town. Henry was half draped over the couch, while Emma was spread out on the rug. Both were dressed in warm winter coats, their cheeks pitch patched in red and their fingers defrosting against mugs of steaming hot chocolate. The cemetery had been cold that day but the Swan house was always warm.
They told each other stories and jokes they remembered and laughed as often as possible. It wasn't even that they were particularly funny or clever stories, it just felt good to spend time like that again.
"How about you and me take a trip, mom." Henry said, when the laughter from the latest joke had fallen silent
"Where would you want to go, kid? New York?"
"Hmm maybe somewhere new."
Emma thought for a moment.
"Yeah, I think going somewhere we haven't never before would be great. That sounds great, kid."