It wasn't a surprise that no one heard Emma's knock at 108 Mifflin. Between the wind and the rain, Emma could barely hear herself think. She tried the doorbell, but didn't hear anything from inside-well, no wonder, since the power was out all over town. She debated just turning around and going back to her house, but no one would be there. Henry was supposed to be here, and Hook was with David at the Sheriff's station for the night, taking care of any emergencies that popped up and giving Emma a well-deserved night off.
"Don't worry, love," Hook had said. "The dwarves are working on the power lines, and your father and I can manage almost any crisis that comes our way."
"Well, I'll have my radio," Emma said. "I'm going to stop by Regina's to make sure Henry got back okay and then head home."
"Okay," Hook said. He gave her a kiss goodbye and she waved at David through the glass of the sheriff's office as she left.
Now, huddled on Regina's small porch, she looked back out at the driving rain and made a decision to try the door.
It was unlocked. She opened it cautiously. Inside it was dark, or mostly dark-she saw a faint glow from the hallway and guessed that they must be back in the more comfortable family room that faced the backyard.
"Hello?" she called.
There was no response, but Emma did hear muffled voices and assumed they were coming from the back room.
Emma came in, feeling much guiltier about coming inside Regina's house tonight than she had breaking in at any point before the curse broke.
Probably because she was dripping all over Regina's hardwood floors.
She was just going to go back there, check that everyone was okay, and then-
She jumped as she finally heard Henry's voice. "No, you can't just take that pillow, Mom-I need it!"
"I need it more," Regina said, her voice warm with a hint of a whine.
"You see this side?" Henry countered. "It's going to collapse without… that… pillow!"
"Find something else!"
"No!"
And then Emma heard Regina giggle.
"Mom!" Henry said, and at his exasperated tone Emma couldn't help herself; she laughed.
Silence, then, "Is someone there?" Regina's tone had shifted to tense and guarded.
"Sorry, sorry," Emma said. "It's just me. I knocked, but with the storm-" she rounded the corner and her mouth dropped open. "What the hell-"
The room was a mess. The couch was askew in the center of the room, and there was what looked like a tent of blankets draped over it and propped up from beneath by… something. There was a light of some kind shining through, making it the only thing lit up in the room.
"Hi, Ma," Henry said, emerging from underneath, his hair mussed and face flushed.
"Hi," Emma replied automatically. "What-"
"It's a blanket fort!" Henry said, sounding as if he were still ten and not fourteen. "It's a work in progress, because someone keeps hogging the pillows for her side."
Emma was still gaping. It wasn't like she'd never made a blanket fort when she was a kid, but those had been tiny things-more like blanket nooks. This? This was massive, taking up almost the whole room. She was pretty sure she could sit underneath without her head touching the top.
Something underneath the blankets moved, casting a shadow on the nearest blanket.
"Is Regina in there?" Emma said, disbelieving.
Henry just gave her a look, like duh, but it didn't seem that obvious to Emma. In fact, she would never in a million years have assumed that Regina Mills, someone whom people still called the Evil Queen (capital letters and all), would be sitting in a blanket fort.
Regina stuck her head out of the fort. With her most imperious look, only slightly ruined by the way her hair was flat on one side and sticking out on the other, she said "Are you dripping on my floors?"
"Uh…" Emma said.
"Take off those boots right now and then go to the hall closet. We need more pillows." She disappeared back into the fort.
Emma looked to Henry, who just shrugged.
"I was just checking to make sure you made it home," Emma said weakly.
Henry grinned. "I told her you might stop by. Looks like you're staying. I could use a neutral party-see? She's already restacking my pillows!" He pointed to a place where the walls appeared to cave in briefly, and then were righted to be even higher than before
"Your stack was inefficient!"
"I'll get the snacks," he called back. "You better wipe down the floors, too," he whispered to Emma.
Emma just nodded, unable to cope with landing in what felt an awful like the Twilight Zone. She took off her shoes (and jacket for good measure), then went to the hall closet and took out as many pillows as she could carry. She also took a rag and dropped it on the floor, mopping up her drips as she came back to the family room.
By the time she got back, she was starting to accept the idea that her fourteen-year-old son and his mother were building a blanket fort and that she was, apparently, invited. In fact, she was starting to enjoy the idea. No one would ever believe her, but that was okay.
"I brought pillows," she announced.
"Bring them in," Regina said.
Emma dropped the pile by the entrance and ducked in. The floor was covered in layers of blankets. Overhead were more blankets, and most of the walls were blankets with a few pillow pillars to hold them up. In the middle of the tent, there was a tall kitchen stool that kept the blankets from getting too low overhead and the whole thing was lit up by an LED lantern situated underneath the stool.
"This is so cool," Emma said.
Regina avoided her eyes, apparently finding some of the embarrassment that had been missing earlier when she was chewing Emma out about her wet shoes. "Yes, well-"
"It's a tradition," Henry said, coming inside and bringing a couple of pillows along. "We had this huge snowstorm one year and we were stuck inside for like, a week-"
"It was three days, dear," Regina said.
"It felt like forever," Henry said. Regina shot Emma a look that meant Henry wasn't far off on that one, and it had been all Henry's fault.
Emma stifled a laugh.
"I was reading this book about forts and decided to go downstairs and build one."
Regina relaxed as she took over the story, her eyes taking on a wistful look. "The next thing I knew Henry had commandeered every cushion, pillow, and blanket in the house and my living room was a mess."
"I remember the look on your face when you came in and saw me," Henry said. "I thought I was going to be grounded for a year." He laughed. To Emma, he said, "Instead, she just said that I needed some snacks and a few more blankets."
"Honestly, it was the quietest you'd been for days," Regina said.
Emma laughed. She was glad Henry still did things like this. She thought that most of the kids she'd known at his age would have thought that spending time in a blanket fort with their mom was stupid.
"So what do you do in a blanket fort?" Emma said.
Henry shrugged. "Eat snacks, talk, read, wait for the power to come back on."
"Sounds pretty nice," Emma said.
"Nicer with those pillows in here," Regina said pointedly.
Emma fetched the rest of the pillows obediently. Regina stuffed a couple into the walls of the fort and then gave Emma and Henry a couple each. Henry set out a plate of vegetables, a bowl of chips, and a bowl of M&Ms.
"This is a pretty swanky place you've got here," Emma said.
"We improved upon the original design over time," Regina said, taking her own leftover pillows and fashioning them into a sort of armrest/back support before reclining against them. "There's a cooler behind you with some water."
"Wow," Emma said, popping the cooler open to find several water bottles stashed inside. For a few minutes they handed around the snacks and water and fluffed pillows, but eventually they all settled into their own corners of the fort and relaxed. The lantern made the blankets glow in a patchwork of soft, warm color above their heads, and the fort was just warm enough to be cozy without being stifling.
The atmosphere seemed to make their conversation flow, and they talked about their days (wet and cold and hectic, considering the coming storm), baby Neal (Henry had watched him earlier that day while Snow and Charming helped at the school), Storybrooke politics (there were some complaints about how Maleficent was keeping the books-but Regina said it was just because people were getting caught not reporting all their income on their taxes for the first time since the town was created).
Eventually they hit a lull in the talking. It was so comfortable in the fort that Emma almost forgot what the weather was like outside and that the house itself was dark and kind of creepy.
"I'm really glad I came over here," she said.
Henry, who had taken out a book and started reading, gave her a noncommittal grunt. Regina, however, raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"My house would have been boring. And dark." She looked around. "I think I need one of these in my living room. Permanently."
Regina rolled her eyes, but it was Henry who said, "It wouldn't be as cool if you had it all the time."
"Maybe not," Emma said. She guessed she could see his point. The novelty might wear off if she had to crawl into her living room whenever she came in or out. She lay back against her pillows and looked at the quilt stretched out above her. She listened to the storm outside. Beside her, Regina and Henry had started discussing Henry's book-something for school that Emma had never read. It hit her, how lucky she was, to have come here with nothing and no one and ending up with more people than she knew what to do with, including her son, the one person she'd always missed.
Sometimes, it felt like her life here was a never-ending string of villains and danger and grief. But tonight? This was the kind of moment that Emma tried to keep in mind whenever she was tracking down megalomanical jerks who thought that they'd become universally adored if they just managed to kill everyone who didn't like them.
This was what she'd fought for, before she'd even known what it was: the quiet moments between the storms. The inappropriate analogy made her smile.
Tomorrow she was going to be part of the clean up crew, making sure that everyone was as well as they could be. The day after that she'd probably get attacked by a giantess who'd turn out to be not so bad, fall in love with Anton and then a couple of years later they'd have a giant baby.
Tonight, she closed her eyes and let herself listen to an in-depth discussion of The Secret River, surrounded by warmth, light, and family.