This random little idea hit me tonight after I finished working on my NaNoWriMo and was rewarding myself with some Wooden Swan videos on youtube. Not sure if this is a little AU standalone or if it'll be part of a bigger fic - if you guys want more, I'll definitely write it.

Disclaimer: If I owned them then the show would be playing out far differently.

Portland, Oregon
Early 2001

He doesn't recognize her, not at first; she's a woman now, all curves and long golden locks with piercing eyes. She's a far cry from the big eyed baby that he abandoned all those years before. It's not until they're laying in bed together in Portland, her fingers playing with his, as she tells him about how she was found on the roadside in Maine just hours after her birth that he puts it all together. It takes everything he has not to jump out of the bed, out of his skin, because he's lying naked with a thoroughly ravished princess, the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, who has no idea of who she is, who he is. After a long moment of silence, she shifts in his arms to look at him and he can't stop himself from tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. She's Emma. His Emma. And, gods help him, he cannot stop himself from what he's feeling for her even though he knows that the king would have his head if he knew where they were, what they were doing. "You're beautiful... Emma."

"Stop," she orders and ducks his head to hide her blushing face in his chest. "I'm not..."

"You are," he counters. If they were home, if she knew who she was, she would have knocked her mother out of place for 'fairest of them all'. "Emma, you're beautiful."

"Flattery will get you nowhere," she tells him with a grin. "You're already in my bed."

They've been sleeping with each other for weeks now after having met in a bar (and he cringes now when he realizes that she's still a few years away from that being legal) but he cares about her, he's always cared about her but the way is different now. "We should go on a date."

"What," she asks and sat up, wrapping the sheet around her naked form. "But... Why?"

"Because you're amazing," he tells her as he too sits up and gently yanks the sheet from her. "And beautiful." He shifted to his knees and brushed the hair from her face. "And I want to see where this goes outside the four walls of this room. If you're interested."

She doesn't speak for a moment and his heart slams in his chest but then she grins and his heart sings. "I'm interested."

"Good." His hand comes up to cup the back of her head and he yanks her in for a kiss as they fall back in the bed together.

–

Storybrooke, Maine
Late 2011

His father died a hero, that's what she tells him. She doesn't tell him that her father made her believe in love and then disappeared when the waters got rocky. She doesn't tell him that she got arrested shoplifting food keeping the both of them alive. She doesn't tell him that he's read his father's books a thousand times and that the man has no idea who he is. It's too cruel. So, she tells him that his father died.

And then that familiar rumbling motorcycle rolls into town.

"I thought you said strangers don't come to Storybrooke."

"They don't."

And then the man straddling the familiar bike lifts the helmet from his head and her breath catches in her throat because, of fucking course, he would find her less than twenty-four hours after she lied to their son about his very existence. Of course their son is standing right beside her while she moves her jaw silently like a fish.

"Hey," he breathes and she lies to herself when her knees go weak. His eyes don't register her familiarity and she wonders if maybe he was so far gone on pain killers and booze back then that he's totally forgotten their romance a decade ago. Something in her shatters at that thought because, dammit, she had really loved him. "Know where a guy can find a place to stay around here?"

"You're staying," Henry pipes in then and she thanks whatever deity exists that her kid still has the ability to talk.

"Yeah. Know some place I can get a room?"

"Granny's," she jumps in. "Around the corner. On the square. You can't miss it."

He nods and his eyes rake over her in a way that has her grasping Henry's shoulders to keep her vertical. "Thanks... Sheriff. I'll see ya around."

Then he's back on the motorcycle and off around the corner before something loosens in her throat so she can breathe again. She never thought she would see him again. She knew he had taken to writing, adventure novels that Henry, of course, loved. She'd read a few. As far as she knew, he was living in New York and wowing the masses with his words – he had absolutely no business being in her town, near her kid. He had left her! He had been so strung out and on the verge of taking her down with him when he finally left. To be fair, he had asked her to stay in touch while he had gone into rehab but then the stick had two pink lines and she had purposefully fallen off the map. So... Maybe it wasn't entirely his fault but she was still mad, a piece of the seventeen year old girl inside her still nursing a broken heart.

With a heavy sigh, she blinks herself free of the painful memories. "Come on, kid. We've got to get you home."

"But who is he," he asks earnestly as he yanks the storybook from his bag. "Emma! He has to be a fairytale character – who else would be able to come to Storybrooke? But you were the only who escaped the curse... Maybe he's from a different realm? Somewhere the curse didn't reach? I need to ask him questions."

"No," Emma jumps in then. "Henry... Maybe he's just passing through. Look, kid, he's a stranger and, uh," she sighs and decides to play into his ideas. "If he's a fairytale character... he might not be a good guy, ya know? So why don't you leave the question asking to me and, if I decide he's a good guy, I'll let you talk to him."

"Fine," Henry relents with a pout. "I'll go through the book again and see if I find him."

"Sounds good, kid," Emma tells him with a ruffle to his hair. "Now lets get you home before your mom kills us both."

Henry grumbles something about her being his mother too and while it soothed her soul she knew that it wasn't time for such things. She got in the cruiser and he follows suit. "We'll figure it out, kid."

"I know," Henry promised. "You're the savior for a reason, Emma."

She focuses on Henry as she drove him home, enjoying the last few minutes of the night with her son before she had to turn him over to the woman who he was convinced didn't love him. She definitely didn't look at the motorcycle as they passed Granny's, she definitely didn't keep an eye on it in the rear view mirror until it faded from sight.

But when she lets herself in the apartment that night and she climbs onto the bed beside her roommate, one of the three people to make it past her walls and who her kid thinks is her mother, she lets herself accept that her ex who just so happens to be her son's father is in their quaint little hamlet. Mary Margaret stares at her, as if waiting for the grand confession. She clinches her eyes shut as she tries to come to terms with it. "I screwed up."