A small one-shot set in 6x01.
I'm hoping that one of the next arcs will be the Charmings getting a break, and honesty a good communication.
David heard the bell for Granny's chime and looked up to see if yet more people had turned up looking for a sanctuary, he looked over the brightly coloured clothes the people were wearing towards the door, but only one colour caught his eye; his daughter's red leather jacket as she walked out of the dinner's door, unnoticed by everyone else. He looked over to see Killian seemingly getting along with some people holding tartan blankets, based on their attire he assumed that they too had spent some time at sea; which David hoped would mean that Killian would tell them his sea jokes, not him. Henry was going around talking to everyone, he was deeply interested in the eccentric town they had travelled from and any part of stories the people would tell him, David couldn't help but think that his grandson got his hosting skills from Snow; she had always been much better than he during royal balls. Seeing his family distracted, he decided to go after Emma by himself.
He stepped out of Granny's, Emma's back was to him, and he could see the tension in his daughter's shoulder he could only guess that she had a matching worried look on her face. She had brushed off his and Snow's worries earlier that day, he thought that perhaps she would have been able to talk to Archie, the man did seem to have a penchant for getting people to talk: he wasn't sure if Emma had talked to him or not, but right now she was clearly still suffering, he'd be damned if he made her go through it by herself.
Emma started to walk, David thought about calling out to her, but he was worried she would simply brush him off again or perhaps she would run off; she seemed to want to be alone so he wouldn't make this a public spectacle. He decided to follow her, until they got to a place where the two could talk, David forced himself to walk slowly though his parental instincts wanted him to run after her and make everything okay; but he wasn't sure Emma would accept that.
He felt relieved when he saw her heading towards the station, which was guaranteed to be quiet at this time of night, after all it was only frequented by the two of them normally; and often they were out saving the town so the office was normally dead with calls just going to their phones. He frowned however as she didn't go back to her own house for whatever reason she didn't even want Killian to find her. He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket but he didn't retrieve it, instead he entered the station a couple of feet behind Emma, who was still oblivious to his presence. He watched her sit down at the nearest desk, the one which happened to be his, she crossed her arms on the desk and laid her head on top of them, her face was looking at the framed photos he had up. He quickly read the text message from Snow, who was asking where he was, she had clearly finished talking to Regina; he quickly fired one back telling her that he was in the station and had followed Emma there, that something was up, and that he thought Emma was trying to avoid people. He received an immediate response that she would be joining him as quickly as she could without letting people realise what was going on. He realised that that included the rest of their family, and she was right this was a parent's job, he shoved his phone back into his pocket and looked up to see Emma staring once again at her hand.
David walked quietly over to the desk, in the silent room his footsteps still echoed but Emma still seemed ignorant to his attendance, he rolled a wheely-chair over from Emma's own desk to the one she was sat at now, and sat on it himself. "Hey Em." He said softly.
Emma's head shot up, how long had her father been there? She could feel her hand shaking more and she quickly shoved it in her pockets, her heart broke when she saw the worried look her father was giving her, but it broke even more when she realised she would have to lie to him too. "Hey, what are you doing here? I thought that you were helping the new arrivals?"
"I could ask you the same." He gave her a small reassuring smile to let her know he was there to help her. "What's going on, Emma?"
Emma shook her head and put on the same false smile and happy voice she had used a short while ago on Killian. "Nothing." She watched her father sit in silence and simply raise an eyebrow in response clearly he would be even harder to convince than her boyfriend. "I just have a bit of a headache, Granny's was really noisy, I thought I'd come here for a while."
"Why'd you come here instead of going home?" he kept his voice soft and calm, he didn't want her to think that he was accusing her of something, but he also knew his daughter, he knew something was wrong with her and she wouldn't be able to fix it by ignoring and hiding it. He watched Emma open and shut her mouth like a fish as she searched for an answer. "Emma, what's going on? I know that something's wrong, you don't have to hide whatever it is from your mom and I, we can help."
Emma looked away from her father, but she was met with the pictures of her family on his desk, she could feel her hand shaking in her pocket. How could she tell him the truth, that she was going to die, and that there was no way around it. If she did tell him, he'd try to stop it from happening… and she wished that she could do that, that she could just let her dad deal with it. But in her vision she died to protect him… to protect all her family, if she were to tell him she'd put him at risk.
David saw Emma's hand shaking in her pocket. "Emma what's wrong with your hand? Did you hurt it?" he held his hand out expectantly. It was then that Snow walked into the station, she stood in the doorway, so he stayed quiet about her arrival.
Emma finally looked back at him, she felt completely conflicted, the more she worried the more her hand shook; her walls were down that was a good thing, she reminded herself, but she couldn't help but want to try and protect her family from what was to come… and she needed… desperately needed, to find a way out of it.
"Emma?" a higher voice called her this time. Her mother. She span her chair around to see her mother stood behind her, her hand shot out to hold the table and to try and steady herself. She felt her father's warm hand taking hold of her cold one. She span back around. He wasn't meant to see that.
David took hold of her shaking hand, but even as he held it, but it didn't stop shaking, so he took hold of it in both of his hands. He had seen it shaking before, he recognised, when Emma was trying to use device Jekyll had made to take down Hyde. She looked at him as though she was a lost child, or as though she had got caught with her hand in the cookie jar, either way much younger than her thirty years. He held her hand firmly and stroked his thumbs against her skin he hoped desperately to calm the shaking. Snow moved to sit in a chair at his side, even without words he could tell that she was just as worried as he was about their daughter, she shrugged off her grey coat, clearly she didn't think this would be a quick discussion.
"Emma, sweetheart," Snow asked, "do you know why your hand is shaking?"
If Emma thought it was hard to lie to her father, it was impossible to lie to her father and her mother, so she just slowly nodded her head.
"Were your hands shaking earlier," David chimed in, "when you tried to fire the thing at Hyde?"
Emma nodded again, she looked down, she wanted to tell them the truth now; but she couldn't bear to see the pain in their eyes when she did so.
"Emma, we can't help you if you don't tell us what's going on." Snow took Emma's other hand. "I think we all know that things work out better when we're all honest with each other."
"Archie says its stress." Emma's voice was barely above a whisper.
"Like PTSD?" David kept his voice soft and gentle, but inside he was terrified for her, how long had this been going on?
Emma frowned but nodded. "Yeah: stress."
"But there's more to it than just that, isn't there?" Snow said, she could tell that Emma was trying to avoid telling them the whole thing, though she was mentally thinking of ways to help her daughter with the PTSD too.
"I… I want to tell you, but I can't." her voice was desperate and begging. She looked at her parents pleadingly.
"You can Emma." Snow assured her. "You don't have to worry about us, let us help you, it's our job." She thought about her earlier words to Regina, about her and Emma's relationship, she knew that the honesty between the two was sometimes hard but only when they were trying to protect each other; in that aspect Emma was only too like her parents.
"I…" Emma sighed then took a deep breath. "I saw a vision… I was fighting someone, they were a villain, and they were going to kill you all." Emma's eyes filled with tears. "I had to stop them." She took a shaky breath "I lost."
Snow shook her head. "That's not going to happen."
This time it was Emma's turn to shake her head. "It is."
"Em, the future's not set in stone, what you saw we can change it." David implored.
Emma shook her head once more. "I went to see Hyde." She saw her parents shoot each other worried looks at the thought of Emma being with someone like that man all alone. "He knew what was going to happen to me, he told me if I wanted to know I had to follow this red bird." Her parents were hanging on her every word now. "So, I did. It took me to this girl… this oracle. She said no matter what, it's going to happen… I'm going to die." A tear rolled down her cheek and her voice broke by the time she reached her last sentence.
David and Snow couldn't face it any longer, they wrapped Emma in a big hug, and didn't want to ever let her go. Snow stroked her hand up and down her back, while David held the back of her head and pressed a kiss to the top of it.
"We'll figure this out." David whispered.
"Apparently Saviours don't get happy endings." Emma shrugged with a small, self-deprecating, laugh.
"No." Snow told her determinedly. "Emma you can't believe that." She kept her daughter in her firm hold, tears were in her eyes, but her voice was now stern. "We will find a way. We been through Hell and back, literally, we can stop this from happening."
And Emma hoped with all her heart that her mother was right.
Safe in her parent's embrace, Emma didn't notice, but her hand stopped shaking.