Title: Snowbound
Summary: Out of the corner of her eye, Emma saw her parents and Killian doing the same thing she was, stepping up to the windows to stare out at the winter wonderland their quiet afternoon picnic had suddenly become.
Spoilers: Set post-3x22, "There's No Place Like Home."
Rating/Warning: K+, for language, mostly. Charming Family & Captain Swan bonding, as per usual.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing, and I'll put everything back the way I found it.
Author's Note: I knew I couldn't stay away for too long! And yes, this is totally one of those "people are trapped somewhere and have no choice but to deal with each other" stories. However, I'm hoping you'll forgive me the contrivance because, well, Charming Family and Captain Swan. ;) I'm also probably the only person in the country who has yet to see Frozen. It's ubiquitous enough that I have a general idea but I have no clue about specifics. And I dislike spoilers so I have no clue what Once is going to do with it. All that is to say: I'm totally spitballing here, and I'm only using it for setup for this story anyway, so if it's completely off-base, please just go it with. :) Feedback makes my little day! Enjoy.
"Stop fidgeting," Snow White instructed her daughter, her irritation crystal clear in her tone.
Emma Swan wrinkled her nose as she shifted forward on the picnic blanket, stretched her legs out in front of her, and leaned back on her palms. "My legs were falling asleep. I haven't sat on my knees on the ground for a long period of time since I was Henry's age."
She wasn't entirely comfortable sitting the way she was, either, but it was better than before. That is, it was better than before until the pins and needles struck as the blood began flowing back into her legs. She squirmed against the sensation, resulting in another exasperated huff from behind her. "Honestly, Emma. Are you quite finished?"
"Yep."
"Finally."
The word was soft, so soft that Emma highly doubted Snow had meant to be heard. Emma smirked. It had been less than twelve hours since she had decided to let Snow in and be her mother in any kind of official capacity, and she already sounded like ... well, a mom.
The smirk fled from her face and confusion settled there instead when Snow heaved another sigh. Emma's hair fell loosely around her shoulders and a moment later, she felt Snow combing her fingers through it. "What are you doing?" she asked, raising a hand to touch the back of her head.
Snow lightly pushed her hand away. "Do you have the slightest inkling how difficult it is to do a proper braid when the person whose hair you're styling refuses to sit still?"
A flush of embarrassment colored Emma's cheeks. She actually didn't have the slightest inkling. It wasn't as if she'd had a lot of experience in this area. "Oh. Sorry."
This time Snow's sigh was less exasperated and more loving and indulgent. "It's fine. Just stop squirming, all right?" Emma nodded, causing Snow to sigh yet again. "Head still, Emma."
A chagrined Emma cringed and repeated, "Sorry."
Sitting on a picnic blanket in the middle of the woods while her mom braided her hair was something Emma never thought she would be able to experience. Not that the picnic had been her idea. Like most of the family activities she got roped into, this picnic was Henry's baby. "A way to celebrate the fact that we're staying here," he'd said, and honestly, how could she have said no to that?
She did, however, insist that Killian come, too. The suggestion had resulted in her father's raised eyebrows but he was apparently so happy that she'd finally come home that he'd agreed. Begrudgingly, of course, but he'd agreed.
Snow had agreed less begrudgingly, which was interesting, but Emma hadn't had the time to truly ponder that little development at all. Within minutes of the decision, a cooler, a picnic tote, and the diaper bag were packed and all six of them – Emma, Henry, Killian, her parents, and her baby brother – headed to the woods to find the perfect spot to relax and eat their picnic lunch.
After lunch, Neal had fallen asleep in David's arms, and Henry and Killian had decided to busy themselves with some sort of "buried treasure" game. It looked to Emma to be nothing more than Hot and Cold with a vague pirate theme, but since they were having fun, she didn't think it was worth teasing them about it.
Emma had remained on the blanket with her parents and sleeping baby brother, basking in the togetherness as she watched Henry and Killian work out the rules of their game. Then the wind had kicked up and had started annoyingly blowing her hair in her face. After she brushed her hair out of her eyes for the third time, Snow had hesitantly suggested that she braid it for her. "Just so it stops getting in your face," she'd added.
Emma's heart had leaped at the offer. She'd never really had anyone offer to play with her hair. It was something she'd always wanted, someone to run a brush through her hair and just spend the one-on-one time with her. Even though she was more than capable of throwing her hair back in a ponytail herself, she'd found herself nodding her permission.
It took her a minute to realize that it wasn't Emma the adult who'd agreed to let her mom play with her hair. It was Emma the lost little girl who'd agreed.
Emma the lost little girl who finally mattered to someone.
Her mother's fingers combed through her hair deftly, returning Emma's attention to the present. She gathered the strands at the top of Emma's head and started making her way down, pulling in more strands as she went. Emma smiled; Snow was doing a French braid.
"Your hair is a dream to style, Emma," Snow murmured after a beat or two of silence.
Emma did not mistake the wistfulness in her tone. No doubt Snow was thinking of all those mornings she would have styled her daughter's hair were it not for the curse. Emma, too, was thinking of all those mornings she would have had instead. No brush being yanked through her hair a couple of times before she was shoved out the door to school, none of her own clumsy attempts at doing her own hair because her foster parents couldn't be bothered.
"Yeah, you'd think differently if it was the middle of the summer," Emma joked, mostly to get both their minds out of the past. "When the humidity's through the roof, my hair becomes a frizzy mess and even something as simple as a ponytail won't come out right."
"I hear that one," Snow replied, a knowing smile in her voice.
Emma smiled as well. Snow wore her hair so short that Emma oftentimes forgot that her hair would be just like her daughter's, only dark, if she grew it out.
For a while, things were quiet. Snow continued the braid and David repositioned Neal in his arms to better protect him from the rising wind. Henry and Killian continued their game of Pirate Hot and Cold, Henry's instructions of, "Port … now fore … no, sorry, aft, I meant aft" filling the small clearing.
A sudden gust of chilly wind swirled through the clearing, causing Emma to shudder. She unconsciously drew her jacket tighter around herself. "I thought it was just me," Snow said. "It's gotten awfully chilly since we've been out here."
It had, hadn't it? Emma glanced up at the sky. The sun had disappeared behind gray clouds that were rolling overhead. "The sky just needs to clear back up," she said, smiling when she felt Snow tie off the braid. She touched the back of her head, trying to get a mental picture of what her mother had done. As far as she could tell, she'd braided the top sections of her hair while leaving the underside down in kind of a French-braid half-ponytail. She wished she had a couple of mirrors so she could see it.
"I don't think that sky's clearing up," David murmured, a touch of concern in his voice.
No, now that Emma thought about it, maybe it wasn't. She blinked and sat up straight when she saw a couple of little white flakes lazily drifting to the ground. She had to have been seeing things, though. She knew this was Maine and winter was long in Maine, but snow was very much out of season for this point of the year.
When Henry stopped in his tracks and glanced up at the sky, she knew she wasn't seeing things. Even Killian stopped right where he stood, holding his hand out flat, palm facing upward. "Um, guys?" Henry asked. "Is it snowing?"
It was as if he'd uttered magic words. The skies opened up and thick white flakes fell fast and furious. Snow cried out in surprise as David and Emma jumped to their feet. Emma gathered the blanket and stuffed it back in the tote while Snow hastily repacked the cooler. David took off his jacket and swaddled Neal in it instead, extra protection against the sudden frigidness.
"We have to get to the car–" Emma started.
"No time," David interrupted as Henry and Killian joined the mad dash to gather their stuff from the clearing. Henry hooked the diaper bag over his shoulder while Killian took the cooler from Snow. "We need to get to shelter now."
Before Emma could even open her mouth to argue the point, her father was proven correct. The snow had grown so thick that they could barely see each other through the flakes. They suddenly found themselves in white-out conditions; driving back to the apartment or even out of the woods was no longer an option.
"Follow me," Snow said as she took off in a run. All four of them dashed after her, but not before Emma shrugged off her jacket and handed it David to help further protect her brother from the onslaught of white.
Snow somehow managed to find a hunting shack. Emma had no idea who it belonged to, but frankly, she didn't care. They needed shelter, and Random Hunting Shack was indeed shelter. Henry ran through the door first, breath heaving and teeth chattering. David followed with Neal, then Emma and Snow. Killian entered last, pulling the door closed behind him.
David handed Neal off to Snow so he could attempt to seal all the windows and doors against frigid drafts. Snow gratefully handed her daughter her jacket back, and a shivering Emma happily shrugged it on. "You all right, love?" Killian asked as he draped his own jacket around her shoulders to help warm her.
"Yeah, thanks, I'm fine," Emma replied. A little cold wouldn't kill her. She paced over to the front window while blowing into her cupped hands to warm them. Fresh snow had already filled in the frantic footprints they'd made in the snow on the front porch. "What the hell is happening?"
"No idea, but we all need to warm up," Snow said as she approached the fireplace while trying to calm a crying Neal, "and of course, there's wood here but no matches."
"That's not a problem," Emma said, crossing the cabin and crouching down in front of the fireplace. She shut her eyes and concentrated. Her magic burbled within her, warming her belly and rushing through her veins. When the internal magical temperature was just right, she flicked her wrist. The logs ignited, and a little bit of old-fashioned stoking was all that was needed to get the fire roaring.
Snow beamed, pride swimming in her eyes. "That was incredible, sweetheart."
Emma smiled almost shyly back at her. Before she could even find the correct words to acknowledge her mother's sentiment, her phone rang. David's rang a second later. The sheriff station's number popped up on Emma's caller ID, making her frown. Everyone who would be calling her from the sheriff's station was in the cabin with her. Stifling her confusion, she answered, "Hello?"
"Where the hell are you guys?!"
The panicked, somewhat angry voice belonged to Leroy. "Some random hunting shack in the woods. We were having a picnic and got caught in the storm," Emma told him. "Why the hell are you in the station? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine but there's already a foot of snow on the ground!"
"What?!" she exclaimed. Killian, Henry, and Snow all looked over at her, startled by the disbelief in her voice. She held her hand up to them and crossed back to the front window. Damn it, the Dwarf was not exaggerating! "What the hell–"
"Your guess is as good as mine, sister. People are panicking here. What do we do?"
That was a very good question. There wasn't a whole hell of a lot she and David could do for Storybrooke from a shack in the woods but the people in town needed to feel and stay safe. As she was trying to come up with something to tell Leroy, Emma heard another voice in the background, a female voice. The voice stopped just as David said something into his phone. Oh, whoa, wait a second. "Leroy, is someone with you?"
"Yeah, Red's here, too. We both came here looking for you."
All of a sudden, Emma knew exactly how to easily reach as many people in town as they could. "Put Ruby on the phone."
"She's talking to your father."
"I know she is. Put her on the phone anyway."
Leroy muttered something under his breath about her being touchy. Emma rolled her eyes. There was a muffled rustling on the line and soon, Ruby's voice filled her ear. "Emma?"
"Yeah," she said, meeting her father's confused gaze from across the room. She again held up her index finger, indicating that he would find out what the hell she was doing in a second. "Listen, you remember how to activate the phone tree, right?"
"That thing where everyone in town gets a phone call with a recorded message?"
"Yes." From the relief and pride on her father's face, Emma gathered he'd figured it out. "I need you to record a message telling everyone to get inside and stay where they are until the storm passes and then send that out on the phone tree."
"Got it," Ruby said, getting right down to business.
"Thanks, Ruby."
"No problem. Stay safe."
"You, too."
They both hung up, and David ended his call as well. "Quick thinking," David said, smiling at his daughter. She shrugged, downplaying the compliment, but she was smiling.
"Are you seeing this?" Henry breathed from the front window.
From her vantage point, all Emma could see out the window was white. She approached Henry and stood behind him to get a better look at what he was seeing.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her parents and Killian doing the same, stepping up to the windows to stare out at the winter wonderland their quiet afternoon picnic had suddenly become.
A winter wonderland that Emma was pretty sure was scientifically impossible. This was not how snow worked. Even in the fiercest blizzards, snow only fell at the rate of a couple inches an hour. They'd had five times that in fifteen minutes!
For the first time, a tiny shiver of fear crept down her spine. Something was wrong, something was very wrong. "What the hell is this?"
Her parents exchanged a troubled glance while Snow adjusted the blanket and jacket around Neal. Neither of them had an answer, at least not one they were willing to voice, which didn't exactly set Emma at ease.
Emma stepped away from the window and headed back toward the fireplace. Listening to the howling of the wind outside made her crave the heat even if she wasn't actually any colder than before.
Her family followed suit. "Mom?" Henry asked, a tiny bit of fear in his voice, too, as he plopped down in front of the fireplace. "This isn't normal, is it?"
"No, kid, this is most definitely not normal," Emma replied. "I didn't think this much snow in such a short amount of time was even possible."
"I don't think it is," David agreed, meeting his daughter's eyes meaningfully, "which leaves only one explanation."
Emma understood in less than a second. "It's magic," she breathed.
Storybrooke was, for whatever reason, under some sort of magical snow attack, something Emma didn't even know existed until right this very second. And she and her family, including her newborn baby brother, were trapped under at least a foot of snow in a hunting shack in the woods with no gloves, no hats, and no food beyond what still remained in their picnic cooler.
Great. Just great.
Killian sent her an apologetic smile. "Well, love, at least our lives won't ever be boring."
She sighed. Apparently they would not.