For the sake of this story, let's just pretend that Snow didn't know the SQ was her daughter's foster mother until after they found that file of Emma's art work and papers.
Disclaimer: I own nothing and all mistakes are my own.
She fingers the worn plastic like paper of the dollar store card, her thumb nail trailing over her signature as she reads the message for the hundredth time. This woman, this evil villainous, had given her a home and apparently garnered some affection from the girl who at thirteen had already been so drawn in tightly around herself that she vowed to never trust anyone. With a heavy sigh, she tossed the card on the kitchen table and scrubbed her hand through her hair as she pulled her feet up on the kitchen chair to hug her knees to her chest.
"Emma," the quiet voice of her mother called to her through the darkness. Snow quietly made her way through the living space to wrap both her arms around her daughter's shoulders and dropped a kiss to her head. "What's wrong?"
"She was my foster mother," she explained quietly. She had purposefully stayed at the station until she knew her parents would be fast asleep so she could avoid all this but maybe talking with her mother would help. "The Snow Queen. She somehow came to this world before the curse or something... She was my foster mother and I can't remember a single thing about her. She must have scrubbed my memories like she did Elsa's."
"Oh, Emma." Snow moved to sit in the chair beside her but curled her fingers around her daughter's hand. "How long were you with her?"
"According to the file that Hook and I found," she explained. "Six months." Emma's teeth sunk harshly into her lower lip and she focused on her mother's hand that was protectively curled around her own to keep from striking out at something. "That's the longest I ever stayed anywhere between leaving the Swans when I was three and prison at seventeen."
"Emma," the brunette exhaled her daughter's name as she reached out to brush a blond lock behind Emma's ear. No wonder her baby's first instinct was to run, to never put down roots. It broke her heart to realize that for fourteen years, the most Emma stayed in any one place was a few months and that the only home she remembered having was one she was forced out of, replaced by what someone considered a 'real' child. The knowledge that the longest time Emma spent anywhere before Storybrooke was the eleven months where she was forcibly detained in prison, the knowledge that the prison system had been kinder to her daughter than any person claiming to be a parent ever had. She bit back a sniffle and yanked on her daughter's hand. "Come here."
"Mom," Emma sighed. She was almost thirty, she wasn't going to sit on her mother's lap.
"Come here," Snow ordered. "If I can hold your brother then I can most certainly hold you. Come here, Emma."
And Emma gave in. She so desperately craved the affection of a mother, her mother, someone who loved her unconditionally. She settled awkwardly across her mother's lap and allowed her head to fall to the woman's shoulder as she shook with sobs that she'd pushed down and bottled away for thirty years. "I... mom..."
"I know," Snow promised as she wrapped her arms tightly around her little girl, rocking her gently as she pressed kisses to her head. "You've been let down again, haven't you? Pushed away by someone you cared for."
"Mom," she protested.
"It's okay to cry, Emma," she breathed as she ran a hand through Emma's golden locks. "You've kept all this pain so bottled up, this was going to happen sooner or later – this witch is just the catalyst for what has been a long time coming."
"I just wanted a home."
Snow's own tears started then as her daughter's voice cracked on the word that had been such a foreign concept to her for twenty-eight years. "You have one now, Emma, and I am not going to let anyone take it from you ever again."
"It hurts so much," Emma whispered through shaky breaths. She grabbed the card from the table and flicked it open so her mother could see the scrawl of a fourteen year old. "Except for a few things I wrote Neal as a teenager, I never signed 'Love, Emma' to anything!" She grabbed the file and flipped it open, spreading the pictures and notes and report cards across the table. "I made her pictures, I called her my family, and she wiped every happy memory I had apparently – the only happy moments I had and she took them from me!"
Her mother quickly pushed the papers out of reach as Emma made to grab them, to tear them to pieces. "No, Emma. Stop. Stop, baby. You can be as mad as you want at what this woman took from you. Your dad and I will help you rip her apart limb by limb if that's what you need but do not ruin these, sweetheart. You made these for someone you loved... a mother. I'm your mother, Emma. May I have them?"
"Yeah. Yes." Emma sniffled, calmer now. She sunk back into the embrace her mother offered her and didn't try to hide or stop the tears that fell freely now. "I'm sorry... I'm sorry I loved her like a mother."
"No, baby, don't apologize," Snow insisted as she wiped Emma's tears with the sleeve of her nightgown before pressing a kiss to her forehead. "When I... When I forced your father to put you through the wardrobe, to save you, I knew what I was asking for. Honestly, as much as it would have broken my heart to share you with someone else I wanted you to have that love. I wanted someone to love you with the love of a mother, to love you as much as I love you. And this woman, evil or not, loved you, Emma. Enough that when you had no reason to let her in you did."
"I do love you," the blond confessed. "You and dad both. I know I'm horrible at saying it. But I love you both."
"We know," she promised. She kissed Emma's head once more. "You need some sleep, Emma. You've completely exhausted yourself."
"I can't..."
Snow shook her head and scooped her daughter up with as much ease as she lifted her newborn son and Emma remembered the way her mother had carried chimera and deer carcasses around the enchanted forest, so strong for someone this world had painted so meekly. She didn't head for the stairs, for the room that Emma shared with Elsa and Henry, but for the small bedroom she shared with Charming and the baby Neal. She placed her daughter in the middle of the bed, a hairsbreadth from her father's dozing form. "We'll protect you."
"Mama," she mumbled in an exhausted tone. "I-"
"Just sleep, Emma," Snow insisted as she climbed into the bed beside her daughter. "Daddy and I will protect you tonight, our brave warrior. Close your eyes and sleep before your brother decides it is time to wake up."
"Okay," Emma relented as exhaustion took over. She scooted closer to her mother; both her lanky arms wrapping around one of Snow's as she allowed sleep to pull her under. "Love you, mama."
"I love you, Emma," she promised and sealed it with a kiss to the woman's nose, smirking as it wrinkled against her touch. "Sweet dreams, baby. Mama has you."
When Neal awoke two hours later, Emma slept straight through with a death grip on her mother's arm and so the woman forced her slumbering husband out of bed to bring her their son. She fed the little boy and when he finished, she relished in the moment of being able to hold both her slumbering children. Charming lay on the other side of Emma, looking at his wife and babies with absolute wonder written across his face. She smiled when he tentatively reached out to rub a thumb over the dried tears on Emma's cheeks. "She had a rough night," Snow whispered. "She'll tell you about it in the morning but, uh, just know that thirty years of hurt finally caught up with her tonight and she needed her mama."
"She figured out her connection to the Snow Queen," he guessed as he curled a blond lock around his finger. "Something to do with her past."
"One of her foster mothers," Snow gave him the basic idea. "She wiped Emma's memories like she did Elsa. Apparently she found some file that woman kept on her – she was Emma's foster mother for six months and that's the longest Emma stayed anywhere between the first home she had as a baby and prison."
"Oh Emma," Charming breathed as his heart broke for his daughter. "No wonder she's so walled off."
"She told me she loves me," Snow told him quietly as she adjusted Neal who was beginning to kick out of his blanket. "That she loves the both of us and that she's sorry for not being able to really say it."
"You told her we know," he asked. "Cause I don't need her words, Snow. I mean, I'll probably cry some very manly tears the first time I hear them from her but I know and I know you know too. She tells us every day with her actions."
"She does and I told her," Snow promised.
Emma shifted in her sleep, pulling away from Snow as she batted at the air like she was fighting away some invisible demon. "No. No."
"Emma," Charming breathed her name as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. "You're okay, princess. Daddy's got you."
"Daddy," the thirty year old woman mumbled in her sleep and visibly relaxed into her father's embrace.
Snow narrowed her eyes. "I knew she would be a daddy's girl."
"Don't be jealous," he told her with a smirk before kissing Emma's head like he had so many years ago when he placed her in the wardrobe. "She comes to you to talk things through but I think she knows-"
"That she's safe in your arms," Snow finished for him. "Because she is, Charming. On some level she's aware of the fact that moments after she was born her daddy fought off a whole legion of Regina's black knights with her in his arms, almost losing his life in order to save hers."
"And I would do it a thousand times over," he promised his sleeping angel who, though relaxed, still seemed to be fighting an invisible enemy. "Daddy has you, Emma. You're safe."
Snow shuffled so that both her babies were safely ensconced by their parents and she could reach over them to lace her fingers through her husband's. "We lucked out with these two."
"We truly did," he whispered as he took the moment to observe his sleeping babes. There was such a striking similarity between his son and daughter; they both had Snow's chin and his eyes, while Emma had his hair coloring and Neal appeared to be taking after his mother with a shock of raven locks they both had Snow's curls.
"Charming," Snow interrupted him. "I love you, especially when you're in daddy mode, but we should try to sleep while our children are."
"Yes, dear."
When Emma awoke to the soft murmur of her parents talking to her cooing baby brother in the kitchen she had both arms wrapped tightly around her mother's pillow and her feet tangled in the sheets that had once covered her father's side of the bed. She forced herself out of the warmth and safety of the family bed and bit back any embarrassment when the call of hunger and the desire of her family's company got too strong. Her parents greeted her vivaciously and only smirked when she mumbled something about coffee before happiness. She pulled up short at the sight greeting her at the refrigerator; their was her artwork from the file she had brought home, her pictures intermixed with Henry's school work and report cards and polaroids and footprints that belonged to her baby brother. She quirked an eyebrow at her mother. "Seriously?"
"Yeah," Snow told her with a grin. "Seriously. I'm your mother, Emma, and it's my gods given prerogative to fill our home with my baby's artwork."
Home. Emma sighed contentedly. "Yeah. Okay. I can deal with that."