I HAVE ABOUT HALF A DOZEN OTHER STORIES I COULD BE WORKING WITH RIGHT NOW, BUT I JUST NEEDED TO GET THIS OUT OF MY SYSTEM. REVIEWS ARE ALWAYS APPRECIATED!
DON'T OWN ONCE UPON A TIME. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO ABC.
"How long's she been like that?" Emma asks, her knuckles going white around the mug of hot chocolate she holds to her body for warmth as she looks at her mother.
"An hour." David whispers back. "She's not really responding. I've tried talking to her, kissing her, hot cocoa… Hell, even a hug from Henry hadn't done much more than make her move. I don't know what to do." He looks down, defeated. Then he turns to his daughter. "She's the strongest person I know. I've seen her bounce back from everything life –and Regina– has thrown at her."
"Yeah." Emma smiles a little bit, despite the situation, because that's a very apt description of the brunette and she's proud to say her mother is Snow White. "I know."
"I can't help her." James sighs, looking helpless. "And I hate myself for it."
"Hey…" The blonde says gently, surprising both of them when she reaches out and places a hand on his forearm. "It's not your fault. You're doing everything you can, and that's all you can do." He offers her a small smile. Out of nowhere, Snow gets off the couch and stomps straight past them to her room. "Maybe I can talk to her."
"I think she wants to be alone." James says, his gaze trailing after his wife. "Henry's up in your room. Thanks for running to the store."
"Anytime." She squeezes his arm before dropping hers. "Just… trust me." With that, Emma places her mug in the sink and braces herself as she walks toward the curtained bedroom. Slowly, she peels it back and steps over the threshold. "Mary Margaret?" She calls out quietly. She looks at the brunette with dismay, recalling a similar situation. Mary Margaret's curled up on the bed with her back to the door. "I'm just gonna lay here…" Emma climbs into the bed, "cause I'm guessing you don't want to talk about it and you don't want to be alone. So I'm just gonna be here for when you, you know, wanna talk about it or… anything." Mary Margaret rolls over, nearly rolling onto her daughter. She scooches over so they're not quite touching, not wanting to make Emma uncomfortable.
"I appreciate this, but I want to be alone." It doesn't go unnoticed by the blonde that the other woman's voice is nasally and her cheeks are wet. Emma says with resolve,
"I'm not leaving. I don't leave people I care about alone when they're hurting."
"Emma, please–"
"No. I know what you're doing. You're pushing everyone away to try to protect us from the pain you're going through. But we're family, Mary Margaret!" When deciding to talk to her mother, Emma had decided she wouldn't yell, but that is proving to be increasingly difficult. "None of us are alone and goddamn it, you did the right thing." Emma takes a deep breath in as she swipes angrily at a stray tear. "I don't want to see you like this, none of us do. We hate that you feel this way, but we're here for you. We appreciate you trying to protect us, but… you're trying to go back to her you were before you met David. I've been there, where all you want is to go back to not caring and to being closed off because everything hurts less. I get it, I do. You're vulnerable and you hate it, you hate what you did. You're so angry you just want to explode but you're so sad and you don't know how to feel. The only thing you do know is that you don't want to feel."
"I killed someone." Mary Margaret states dully.
"What makes this any different than your intention to kill Mulan –and yeah, that still sounds weird to me–? Or when you had a knife to Aurora's throat? Both times you were prepared to kill to get back to our family, to keep me safe. Killing Cora… it was to keep your family safe. You know they would have killed all of us if you hadn't gotten to Cora first." Emma doesn't know where her sudden ability to be comforting came from, but she's willing to roll with it.
"I could have just given Regina the heart."
"Mr. Gold would have died." The blonde reasons. "Either way, somebody was going to die. At least Henry has another grandfather… and Gold isn't the one who's actively tried to kill us every chance he gets."
"That's the thing." For the first time, there's some sort of spark in Mary Margaret's eye. She props herself up on one elbow. Emma feels a little flutter in her stomach from seeing that her friend/mother is sort of okay. "Regina's had me alone a couple times yet she's never actually tried to kill me. Even when she had David with me at the clock tower… she could have easily flicked both us off and said we fell while the three of us were battling Cora, yet she didn't. I don't think she actually wants me to die."
"You just had to go and make things complicated, didn't you?" With a sigh, Emma pushes herself into a sitting position. "God, we have a lot of mushy conversations on this bed, don't we?" She laughs.
"We do, don't we?" Mary Margaret offers her daughter a small smile. "I told you one day you'd find your parents."
"Yeah, you did. But, you know, I think I've had enough mushy for a long time." As Emma takes to steps from the bed, the brunette says,
"Emma? Thank you. I didn't know you could be that way with words."
"Shut up. I think there's still some hot chocolate out here." With that, Emma walks back to the kitchen.
"I take it it went well?" David looks up hopefully from the newspaper he was reading.
"She's back to her old sassy self." Emma says with a smile. She eyes the teakettle and pours herself half a mug of water, then adds a Swiss packet. She then rummages through a cabinet until she finds what she's looking for: a bottle of scotch. "This should do the trick."
"That for you or her?" He asks.
Emma scoffs, "Me. Duh. I just had to have a heart to heart; I need it."
"It's okay." Mary Margaret appears suddenly, looking less peppy than usual but far better than when the four had stumbled into the apartment earlier. "She's more fun when she's drunk."
"I won't be drunk from this." Emma announces. "I can't just get drunk for the hell of it anymore." She glances up the stairs, thinking of Henry. "However, if I ever have to do that again, I may have to go back on that. So no one else feel bad about killing a psychotic psychopathic bitch." With that, she downs the rest of her beverage.
"Do I smell hot cocoa?" Henry pads down the stairs, his hair a little messed up and his pajamas clinging to his body.
"You have a good nose." Emma smiles, pouring him a mug of hot water and handing him two packets of powdered chocolate.
"Grandma doesn't let me have two." He looks at his grandmother questioningly.
"We've all had a rough day, Kid. Besides, I'm your mom so I get to override her" Emma winks at her son.
"But I'm your mother." Snow smirks.
"He's my kid." The blonde pulls Henry close to her. He laughs.
"And all of you are mine!" James pulls them in for a bear hug.
SO THIS DEFINITELY ISN'T MY BEST WORK IN THE WORLD, BUT I WANTED TO GET THE IDEA OUT SO… *SHRUGS* IT'S CHEESY AND PROBABLY A LITTLE OOC, BUT OH WELL. I THINK THE FLUFF MAKES UP FOR IT.