Title;Chasing Kites.
Pairing; Emma/Regina.
Prolougue Part 1-
...
"Momma." A small hand lands on her shoulder and Emma sinks even further into the bed. "Momma."
"Five more minutes." She mumbles.
"But then I'll be late." The voice whines and she groans.
Her son is nothing if not stubborn. He's not going to leave her be until she gets up and does what he wants.
"Fine. I'm up."
"Your eyes are still closed." He dead pans and almost by their own accord, her lips twitch into a small smile and she opens her eyes slowly. Squinting when day light almost fucking blinds her.
God, she hates mornings.
She turns around to escape the burn of the sun light and meets big, green, impatient eyes. She fully smiles now. "Hey buddy." Her voice is edged with sleep and a little exhaustion. She hardly slept last night. Or was it this morning? Whatever, point is, she hasn't had enough sleep.
"I'm gonna be late." He grumbles again. She chuckles and leans down to kiss his forehead.
"I'm up now. Let me just go freshen up then we'll go make you some breakfast, yeah?"
He nods, finally smiling.
It's a lesson in improvising, this making breakfast business.
Her fridge has the saddest situation going on and and by saddest situation I mean emptiness and she's pretty certain the milk in there has gone bad by now.
She puts water in Henry's cereal because he hates it dry and she can't look him in the eye as he eats. Guilt gnaws somewhere deep inside her and it's awful and unforgiving.
"We'll go shopping sometime this afternoon, okay?" It sounds like an excuse. He nods at her and shoves more cereal in his mouth. She's just about to tell him one of her awful jokes that never fail to make him laugh when there's a knock on the door. She kisses his mop of brown hair as she goes to answer it.
Wishing she'd just stayed inside when she sees who's at the other side of the door.
"Emma." He says in that way he always does when he's annoyed at her. Which is more often than not honestly.
"Hey Grey." She smiles widely at him. "Morning."
"Don't 'morning' me right now. It's the fifteenth."
"Really?" She leans on the door frame, feigning complete obliviousness. "I had no idea. Henry and I used our calender to-"
"Emma."
She sighs, dropping all pretenses. "I'm going to get it to you."
"When?" He asks using more of his hands than his voice. "You owe me three fucking months worth of rent."
"I know, I know." She rubs the back of her neck more to avoid his eyes than anything. She knows she's not being fair to him. He's not the best of landlords. He's actually pretty shit at getting things fixed but he isn't a bad guy. In his own way, he's understanding and he's been more linient with her than most people would under the circumstances. "I'll get you all of it by the end of the month."
"That's what you said last month. And the month before that and the one before that one."
"I promise this time."
"You promised the other two times too."
"Momma! I'm really going to be late now."
She closes the door a bit to look back inside, "just a moment, baby." She yells then opens the door fully again and fixes Grey with a pleading look. Not saying anything because she doesn't know what else to say.
He sighs. "This is the last time Emma. I'm serious."
"Thank you. Thank you. I'll get it to you this time, promise."
He just fixes her one last look and walks away. She closes the door and leans on it, closing her eyes. She hasn't even been awake for two hours and already her day is pure shit.
"Momma, is everything okay?"
She opens her eyes and finds Henry standing there, his bag on his shoulder and a worried look in his eyes. That feeling of guilt comes back a hundred fold. She forces a smile. "Of course it is. Come on," she opens the door, "we don't want you being late for school, do we now?
...
At sixteen, Emma had never been in love, not once.
There was a boy when she was thirteen who she thought she loved because he sneaked into the group home sometimes and brought her doughnuts. But then they dated for two weeks and he started slacking on the doughnuts and she grew tired of his company and realized it's the doughnuts she loved, not him.
So at sixteen, Emma was pretty naive when it came to love.
That's why when she meets Neal, she falls in love hard and fast. It's months after she left the home. She has been harrased, almost arrested, rained on, slept hungry about four nights in a row and living alone is not panning out to be the amazing adventure she thought it would be.
Her last resort is stealing a car and driving as far away as she possibly can and maybe finding her luck somewhere else.
She does steal a car. And find a boy in a car. And fall in love with said boy practically minutes after meeting him.
He's protective and funny and he always tastes like doughnuts when he kisses her no matter what time of day it is.
At sixteen, Emma Swan thinks she's never going to love anyone as much as she does this boy.
/
At eighteen, Emma Swan is scared.
She hasn't seen her period in three months and she might not have finished high school, but even she knows what that means.
She sneaks out of the motel they're staying in somewhere around midnight and walks to the drug store they saw on their way here. She would have taken the bug, but it needs to be serviced and the tank is empty.
The green haired girl chewing gum at the register lazily points out where the pregnancy tests are when Emma asks and she looks at her with something that too much resembles pity when Emma asks if she can use their restroom.
She stands with her eyes closed for almost ten minutes after she takes the test, praying to a god she stopped believing in when she was eight to please not let this happen.
He either does not know she exists or he doesn't care because it does happen and she doesn't even have the energy to cry when she sees it.
It takes her two days to tell Neal and for a moment, she thinks he's angry. His fork full is dangling somewhere near his mouth and his eyes seem to be trying to catch her in a lie. But she just stares and tries acting like she's not as scared as she actually is.
Then after what seems like a lifetime. He smiles and gets up and gives her a hug that lifts her out of the chair and spins her around, "we're going to be a family!" He yells, happiness coating his voice.
Emma laughs and cries and wonders what she was so scared of.
/
That question is answered the next morning when she wakes up all alone in the motel room. It's not scary at first. Neal likes going for runs. Or maybe he went to get them coffee.
She takes a shower and when she's looking at herself in the mirror, her hand rests on her stomach.
We're going to be a family.
Neal's absence only starts worrying her after an hour and she peeps out the window every five minutes and begs her heart to settle when she sees the bug there still. And Neal's bag is still here.
She has nothing to worry about.
Except she does.
Because the clothes in that bag, they're hers, not Neals. He must have swicthed them as she slept. And the attendant at the front desk says he left in a hurry with a bag around his shoulders and said she'll cover the bill. That he got an urgent call.
This time, she does have the energy to cry.
/
It takes two days for her to snap out of it. And it isn't even on her own accord. The receptionist knocks on her door at around nine on morning. She either has to pay or get in trouble.
She doesn't mean to be rude, she says, but Emma owes her a shit load of money.
Emma wipes her nose with the back of her hand and looks around with eyes that hurt from crying too much. Her eyes land on the necklace that Neal bought -stole- for her. She grabs that, then grabs more then asks the girl where she can sell them.
The money she gets covers her bills and gets the bug serviced and she realises other than the baby in her stomach, this car is all that Neal left her.
/
The bug becomes her home.
She doesn't have money for hotels.
She hardly has enough to eat and buy baby stuff and make enough to go to clinics to -at the very least- make sure there's still something inside there.
The first time it kicks, she's seated inside the bug, her foot on the dashboard, eating a burger that she knows is unhealthy but still eats anyway.
It kinda feels like a tiny thing prodding at her stomach and she ignores it until it hits again and again and she places her hand on her belly, feeling it hit like some sort of irregular heart beat. Billy Joel playing on the radio and from nowhere, she starts crying.
And for the first time in a long time, inside that car, she's not so angry she ever met Neal.
/
She drives herself to the hospital on the day of Henry's birth. She changes clothes behind some bush and uses the dirty one to wipe the fluids off the bug's seat before carrying the bag she's had packed for months and walking into the hospital.
She gives birth barely three hours later and she leaves that very same night.
She and her small, pink, ridiculously perfect son spend the first night inside that car and he's so small and so fragile and it's so cold, she thinks he'll die.
He doesn't though, he just cries and cries until she plays Billy Joel then he calms down and sleeps.
/
They spend Henry's third birthday inside the bug. Just the two of them in the backseat, Henry seated on Emma's lap, his little party hat prickling her chin. A cupcake between Emma's hands and Henry's smilling face beaming at it, waiting for Emma to finish their special birthday song so he could blow the candle.
Later that evening, he sits with her on the bonnet as they listen to Piano Man and Henry singing the lyrics wrong making Emma's heart feel a little too large for her chest and in that moment, it's just her Henry and their yellow bug.
And that's okay with her.
...
That's why she feels like she's selling a part of her as she hands over the keys to the bug and receives money that hardly seems enough.
The man who's buying it says he's doing her an actual favour with that price. It's olden, she has zero papers for it. It's old.
It'll cost him more than it's worth. He says. Emma wants to ask then why is he buying it then.
But then she remembers Henry eating cereal with fucking water. this morning. And Grey threatening to evict her. And the fact that Henry hardly has anything to wear this coming winter and the fact that he's gotten too good at pretending his clothes don't smell like goodwill.
She thinks of her son and how she hasn't ever given him enough although he's her whole entire world and she places the keys in his hands.
And tries not to cry as she sees him head away in her car.
...
Henry's eyes are wide and unbelieving when Emma tells him he can pick anything he wants from the shelves and it doesn't make Emma feel as proud as she thought it would.
It just makes her realise, again, how much she's faliling him.
So she turns a blind eye as he fills their trolley with candy he's never had before and she deals with the painful tag in her heart everytime he asks. "Can we afford all these?"
He's eight, she thinks, he shouldn't worry about such things, he's eight.
She makes his favourite food as he sits on the counter, eating chips and telling her about his day. Which mostly just involves his lessons and the books he read. Other kids don't feature in there.
They never do.
They do the dishes together and dance along to Billy's songs, even the undancable ones and it's only when she puts him in bed that he asks.
"Momma, where's Bug?"
She smiles sadly and tucks him even tigher before kissing his forehead. "He has a new home now, buddy."
"Oh."
He doesn't seem so pleased about it, but he had a good day today. And his stomach is full and there's a bag full of new clothes for him and Grey won't be knocking on their door until the end of the month. And that's all that matters to Emma right now.
...
Emma decides, rather abruptly really, that they're not going back to what life was before. She knows she's already spread thin between working in two diners and making sure she at the very least sees her son everyday and has conversations with him that consist of more than 'morning' and 'goodnight'. But she decides that she can do even more.
She can find late night jobs at a bar or something and hire a sitter.
She's doing a lot, she knows, but she can do more.
So in between breaks she steals the manager's news papers and goes through job ads and saves numbers and makes calls. She casually asks around if her friends have heard of any openings and she just tries and tries and tries some more.
"You quiting us, Swan?"
A coworker asks and she drops her pen, rubbing her eyes from squinting too much.
"What? No. I'm just trying to find something else to do, you can't have to much money you know?" She jokes and he laughs, sliding into the booth and pulling one paper in an effort to help her look.
"So what exactly are you looking for."
"Anything." She picks the pen again. She didn't graduate high school. She has no work expirience other than diners and that small store she worked in when she was sixteen. She doesn't really think she has the grounds to be very choosy right now.
"You know, my cousin, Danny. The bat shit crazy one-" he pauses and waits for Emma to nod, "she got an easy three hundred bucks the other day. There's this new agency that opened up and she got paid to put her name in their data base."
"Why?" Emma asks, completely confused.
"Well, it's a surrogacy agency and I guess it makes no sense for them to be one if they have zero donors." He frowns like even he's not sure of his theory then he shrugs. "Anyway, it's not like they're going to call on her or anything. Or maybe they will. I really don't know. All I know is she got an easy three hundred. Spent it all on shoes, the idiot..."
He then goes on and on about his cousin until they have to go back to work and Emma doesn't think about the conversation again.
...
Until the next week.
She has fifty dollars left and it's just the start of the month.
She can't lie to herself and say they can survive mainly on tips because that's lying to herself. She knows she should learn to budget better, but Henry had a school trip coming and he's never gone to one before.
"It's okay-" he'd said before she even said no, "I can go next time."
But the thing is, he always says that and she has promised herself to do better. So she takes all the money she has and pays for the damn trip and buys him snacks to eat on the way and convinces herself that his beaming smile is enough to take away the worry that between her and poverty, she now has fifty dollars.
Paul is actually surprised when she tells him that she wants to do it.
"It's some quick free cash, right?"
They get people to cover their shift and he drives her, asking if she's sure about a thousand times. He waits, reading some magazine as she goes to get tests done.
They ask about Henry, if she had any complications while having him. She tells them no.
They ask if he has any complications.
"A little trouble breathing when he was younger. But that was because of the cold." She doesn't mention the sleeping in the car and the fact that he had less clothes than any baby in the world. That they didn't live in an actual house till he was four months old.
That's no one's business but hers.
They give her some paper to sign and she's so nervous and so desprate to have this over and done with that she just puts a sign at the bottom and pushes it back.
She practically runs out of the place when she's done.
...
She asks paul to drop her near Henry's school although it's hours before classes end.
"Are you sure?" He asks, like he has been asking almost the whole day.
"Yeah." She nods and gets off the car. Waving goodbye and promising to see him tomorrow.
She walks to the nearest store she can see and buys a packet of Henry's favourite crisps and sits on the bench near his school.
His face absolutely lights up when he sees her.
"What are you doing here?" He asks, all eight year old excitement and disbelief. She laughs and hugs him, lifting him up from the ground.
"Don't you want me here?"
"Of course I do." He rolls his eyes and wraps his little hands around her neck. "But usually you wait for me in front of Moe's."
"Well, today's special. Because today, we're getting you that fairy tale book you've been whinning about."
"Really?" His eyes light up and she just nods. Laughing.
That night, their stomachs full of pizza, laid out, sprawled in the middle of the living room, Emma hmms and nods and listens attentively as Henry tells her one fairy tell after another.
A brand new kind of happiness filling his entire face.
And she lets herself concentrate only on that. And she doesn't think of clinics or of papers she signed without reading or of how something gnaws at the back of her mind like a rat trying to break free of a cage.
She doesn't let herself.
...
An; I realise how insanely long this is for a prologue. But some basic things needed setting up so...
And I know I took a couple of artistic liberties with the very last part, hopefully it isn't glaring.