Title: Crumbling Walls
Summary: All Emma had wanted to do was return the kid to Maine where he belonged and then go back home. She never expected to stay, she never expected to make friends, and she certainly never expected to find the people she would eventually call family.
Spoilers: Will vary according to chapter, but for safety's sake, let's say everything up through 2x03, "Lady of the Lake."
Rating/Warning: T, for Emma's mouth.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just fiddling with someone else's toys.
Author's Note: Trying something a little different here, but this idea just jumped into my head and refused to leave me alone. Since I am a slave to the plotbunny, I needed to indulge it. Enjoy!
Exactly when the kid had wormed his way into her heart, Emma Swan had no idea.
Perhaps it was when Henry slipped his hand into hers when she brought him back to Regina the second time. Or maybe it was at some point during the drive to Storybrooke, somewhere in between the license plate game he continued to play even after she refused to join him and the "all the stories in my book of fairy tales are real" conversation. Or perhaps it was the second he showed up on her doorstep in Boston.
Sometimes a tiny, little voice inside her told her that Henry had been in her heart from the day he arrived in this world. That voice was painful, however, and Emma quickly distracted herself every time it whispered to her in an effort to make itself heard.
She knew beyond a doubt that giving him up had been the right thing to do. Not that she would have had much choice in the matter even if she hadn't already decided she couldn't keep him. The courts would have taken him away from her while she finished out her sentence anyway.
But even without the whole jail thing, she had been an eighteen-year-old kid who barely managed to take care of herself. Bringing a helpless baby into that situation was out of the question.
Even though Emma knew she'd done the right thing by her kid, over the years, she'd still thought about him more than she cared to admit.
It was always when her mind was idle; she would catch herself wondering what he looked like now. Whether he liked going to the zoo. Whether he preferred the slides or the swings at the park, or whether he was like her as a child and eschewed swings and slides and see-saws for monkey bars and jungle gyms. Then she would tell herself that no matter what, her son most certainly had a better life now than she would have ever been able to give him.
The night of her twenty-eighth birthday was the first time she'd ever questioned her decision.
The kid was decidedly not happy. Regina Mills didn't exactly strike Emma as the zoo-and-amusement-park type. The only park Henry had likely ever been to was his little castle play structure. Everything Emma had believed her son would have, everything she'd told herself
to justify her decision to that pesky little voice she tried so hard to ignore… it was all wrong.
And the bitch of the bunch was that she couldn't say she would have done it differently if she knew then what she knew now. After all, she'd chosen to give him up because she couldn't care for him in the way he deserved. That hadn't changed. She just … wished he hadn't ended up here. With her.
"Emma! Your ice cream's melting."
The voice startled her. Emma blinked, tearing herself from her mental wandering. The booth at Granny's came back into focus, and she looked across the table at her son, who was frowning at her. "Huh?"
"Your death by chocolate sundae, remember? It's melting." Henry swiftly popped a gooey spoonful of his own caramel sundae into his mouth. After he swallowed, he said, "You're going to have death by chocolate soup in a minute."
Oh, right, she was having ice cream with Henry. How long had she been zoned out?
Too long, Emma thought as she frowned down at her melting sundae. Before this afternoon, she didn't believe that there was such a thing as too much chocolate. Now? She had to admit that there might be some merit to that argument.
Ruby had given Emma a funny look when she ordered a hot fudge sundae with double chocolate chip ice cream and a sprinkling of jimmies. As a matter of fact, Ruby was the one who'd dubbed the concoction "death by chocolate." Emma had expected it to be the best sundae in the history of sundaes. The jimmies, though … they may have been overkill.
Now that she'd ordered the damn thing and insisted it would be delicious, she had a reputation to uphold. "Mmm, chocolate soup," she said teasingly. She poked her spoon into the half-melted ice cream. Maybe if she could somehow avoid the jimmies, she could choke down a few more bites.
"With the cherry on the bottom," Henry added, nodding sagely.
The first time they'd gotten sundaes together, Henry had watched in amusement as she spooned the cherry off the top of the whipped cream and shoved it to the bottom of the dish. When he looked up at her with a questioning quirk of a single eyebrow, she'd shrugged and said, "Saving the best for last."
It hadn't escaped her notice that Henry had started burying the cherries under the ice cream of his own sundaes after that.
"With the cherry on the bottom," she agreed, preparing herself for another chocolate-y bite.
"So what were you thinking about?" Henry asked her. He tried to sound nonchalant, as if he was just trying to make conversation as he fished an M&M out of his sundae with the tip of his spoon.
Unfortunately for Henry, he was a long way from being able to believably fake nonchalance to someone who made a living catching people in lies. Emma heard the tiny bit of concern in his voice and sighed; like she had any intention of telling him what had been running through her head. "What makes you think I was thinking about anything?"
He gave her his patented I'm-ten-not-stupid look before pointing his spoon at her sundae. "Ice cream soup."
Damn that kid and his keen observational skills.
"Not to mention that I called your name four times before you answered me."
Damn her own mental meandering! Now she had to come up with something on the fly. "I was just thinking … maybe Graham will let me extend my lunch another half-hour."
Emma took her lunch break late so she could meet up with Henry for a little while after he got out of school. She ate her sandwich at her desk – or, on rare occasions, in the passenger seat of the car on the way to do something vaguely resembling law enforcement – and used her break time to have a snack with Henry.
So far, Regina hadn't said a word about Emma's new preference for plying the kid with sugar and fat. Either she hadn't noticed (pretty much an impossibility) or she was waiting for an opportune moment to bring it up (much more likely).
"Do you guys have a lot going on today?" Henry asked. This time, his conversational tone was natural, indicating that he wasn't trying to pry. He was simply curious.
"About as much going on as we normally do," Emma shrugged, then wrinkled her nose at her half-eaten sundae. Half is going to have to be enough, she thought, setting her spoon down on the table. I'm so done. "Which means I've been playing mahjong solitaire on the computer while he reads the paper."
"You like computer games?"
The kid's eyes had brightened so much that it actually pained her to have to burst his little bubble. "Not particularly, but there's nothing else to do."
"Oh," Henry said, pouting down at his sundae.
"Why? Do you like computer games?"
The expression on his face told her quite clearly that he adored computer games like any self-respecting ten-year-old boy should. And that look gave Emma an idea. "Come on," she said with a grin. She fished out her wallet to pay for their sundaes. "Finish your ice cream."
Henry furrowed his brow in confusion but did as she asked, cramming the last bit of caramel, ice cream, and M&Ms into his mouth. "Why?" he asked around the mouthful of sundae. "Where are we going?"
"We're going to the sheriff's station," Emma told him as she slid out of the booth, "so you can show me the computer games you like."
From the look on his face, one would have thought Emma had just told him that Christmas was coming two months early this year. He climbed out of the booth, already chattering on and on about Oregon Trail this and Bookworm that. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "And then there's this one online called Tower Blaster that I love. It's so frustrating but it's so fun! You'll see."
She told him to stay put while she went to pay Ruby for their ice cream. As soon as Emma was out of Henry's line of sight, she gave an indulgent roll of her eyes. Ruby simply grinned at her before whispering, "Good luck."
"Thanks," Emma replied. She had a funny feeling she was going to need it.
She and Henry left Granny's and headed for the sheriff's station side by side. A few feet down the sidewalk, Henry slipped his hand into hers. Emma tried – and failed – to ignore the way her heart jumped at the contact. Instead, she gave his hand a light squeeze before pulling her hand free. When he smiled up at her and sidled closer, she couldn't help smiling back.
As they walked, he babbled about all the games he wanted to show her. From the fast clip of his speech, Emma gathered that Regina didn't allow much talk of video games and that he was excited to finally have someone who seemed interested. She was surprised by how much her heart broke for the kid. She knew that lonely feeling of not having anyone to talk to quite well, so she doubled her effort to give Henry her undivided attention. Not because she really cared about computer games but because she cared about Henry and Henry cared about computer games.
No, she couldn't put her finger on exactly when he had wormed his little way into her heart. But she was finding, to her complete surprise, that she was really glad he did.