Title: Better Late Than Never
Summary: "I can't help but notice that we survived the curse and I'm not trying to be pushy or anything but you said–" "That if we survived the curse, I'd tell you how the hell my parents are my age."
Spoilers: Up through 4x10, "Shattered Sight."
Characters: Emma, Elsa, Anna, and Kristoff, with guest appearances by Snow and Charming
Rating/Warning: K+. As is typical of me, please keep a toothbrush within reach. Here be fluff and sticky-sweet sugar.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just swinging on their swingset.
Author's Note: Anonymous prompt on Tumblr: "So you know how in the curse episode Anna asks how Emma could be snowing' daughter and Emma promises to tell her? So maybe do you feel like writing it?" I have to say, this prompt made me grin like an idiot. I have so much fun with these characters, it's kinda unhealthy. :) I hope I did the Frozen characters justice. *cue nervousness* Feedback would make a fantastic end to my extraordinarily long week! Enjoy.
"And then we found out we'd been frozen for thirty years! That's a long time!"
Emma Swan smiled as she leaned her head back against the sofa and made herself comfortable. Anna was in the middle of a delightfully exuberant retelling of the adventure she and Kristoff had gone on in an effort to find Elsa.
Elsa had already filled her sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law in on the adventures she'd had with Emma in Storybrooke.
"I mean, we hadn't the faintest idea where you were or where Ingrid was and then we found you were trapped in that itty bitty urn for three whole decades. Oh, Elsa, I couldn't even imagine! I mean, Kristoff and I spent a few uncomfortable minutes in a trunk–"
"At the bottom of the ocean," Kristoff helpfully reminded her.
"In a trunk at the bottom of the ocean," Anna amended without skipping a beat, "and that was small enough but a little bitty urn–"
"It was bigger than it looked," an amused Elsa assured her sister. Emma swallowed a laugh.
"That may be, but still, thirty years, Elsa. We were icicles and you were in an urn for thirty whole years! That's a lot of years."
It was a lot of years. Emma hoped they hadn't been aware of the time passing, if only because the thought of knowing one was an icicle or in an urn for three decades was horrifying to her.
Emma shifted on the couch and allowed her eyes to close. She and her new friends from Arendelle had taken over the living room following their retrieval of poor Kristoff from the beach where Anna had knocked him out. "I did it for your safekeeping!" Anna had insisted when he regained consciousness and protested being whacked on the head with a bottle. "You were ready to swim back to Arendelle, and I don't think that can actually happen from here so you probably would have actually drowned after almost drowning in the trunk and that's just unfair."
Emma had just smiled and handed him a bottle of water and a couple of Advil. He'd taken the medicine even though he hadn't understood the point of it, not until his headache faded and he proclaimed the brown tablets portable magic.
With their takeover of the living room, the apartment was officially overcrowded. It was so overcrowded that Henry had begged off to Regina's for the night. It went without saying that Regina was thrilled with that arrangement. Snow and David had given Emma the hugest hugs in existence and then retreated to their room with little Neal to gave her some time with her new friends.
Said new friends were absolutely wonderful. Kristoff was hilarious, Anna was a delight, and Elsa was practically glowing in the presence of her sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law. All the tension the young queen had been under in Storybrooke had melted away when Anna was returned to her, and it thrilled Emma to see her friend so happy.
Emma also very much appreciated having the chance to just sit and talk and … decompress. It had been a very hectic, very emotional few days, to say the least. But now two families were reunited – Elsa's and hers – and she relished being able to relax and enjoy this time with everyone.
The relaxation was probably working a bit too well, however. The exhaustion of the past few days had finally caught up with her and she was just starting to drift off when Anna said, "Emma?"
Startled, she sharply lifted her head and opened her eyes. "Yeah?"
Both Elsa and Kristoff were stifling chuckles and poor Anna looked a bit sheepish. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," she said, "but I can't help but notice that we survived the curse and I'm not trying to be pushy or anything but you said–"
"That if we survived the curse, I'd tell you how the hell my parents are my age."
She nodded. "Yes."
Emma smiled and settled back to do a bit of storytelling. "This town was created by a curse ..."
And so Emma told the story of the Dark Curse and how her parents had come to send her through the wardrobe into this world. All of this was old news for Elsa, of course, but Anna and Kristoff hung on her every word. She was surprised that neither of them batted an eye at the whole magically trapped in time and not aging a day thing. Then again, they had just been through something similar themselves so maybe it was a little bit of been there, done that for them.
"Wait, so Regina set this all in motion?" Anna asked, her eyes wide. "I mean, when she appeared in the sheriff's station during Ingrid's spell, I just assumed it was, you know, the spell. I didn't realize that all that stuff she was saying was actually real."
"I can buy it," Kristoff shrugged.
Emma and Elsa shared a smirk. "Yeah, she did," Emma said. "Things have come a long way since then."
By the time Emma caught them up to the present, Anna had tears in her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Emma," she said softly. "Your childhood must have been so lonely. It didn't sound any easier on you than Elsa's was on her."
"Or yours was on you, Anna," Elsa gently reminded her. "Isolating me ended up isolating both of us."
Anna smiled at her sister, silently acknowledging her point. "No wonder you two get along so well," she said softly, her gaze darting from Elsa to Emma.
Emma met Elsa's smile with one of her own. Their time in the ice cave had led to a hard and fast bond born from commiseration. Both with magical powers they didn't really understand, both lonely kids who grew up into guarded adults, both thrust into positions of responsibility with no real training or guidance.
Both with the weight of the world on their shoulders.
Hell, just being able to talk about it with someone who understood had helped. And they were so similar, with such similar backgrounds and experiences, that a close friendship had been pretty much inevitable.
"I can't speak for you, Emma," Elsa spoke up softly, "but I do know that you're my first real friend."
Emma found, to her horror, that she was choking up. She swallowed the lump in her throat and smiled at Elsa. "You're mine, too."
And she was; Emma could see that now. This was what friendship was supposed to be: sharing each other's hopes and fears and dreams and being there for each other.
Anna was beaming, her excitement and happiness for her sister evident. Kristoff, who'd watched the emotional moment among the women with reverence, now turned a sly smirk on all of them. "You know, I bet there are all kinds of little childhood firsts the three of you didn't get the chance to experience. And there's one of those little firsts we could give you right now."
Emma wasn't quite sure what he meant but Anna must have been able to follow his train of thought because her eyes widened in excitement. "Oh, yes, we have to!" she exclaimed. "Elsa, we have to have a sleepover!"
A tiny bubble of excitement burbled in Emma's stomach, and she felt utterly ridiculous for it. She was almost thirty years old, for crying out loud! Grown adults did not have sleepovers.
But there was a little girl inside her who'd never been invited to a sleepover and wanted desperately to have one. And okay, maybe they wouldn't be doing manicures and braiding each other's hair and giving each other makeovers but she did have some games she could teach them to play and something told her Anna would get a kick out of Netflix.
Elsa turned to her with such an anticipatory grin that she wouldn't have had the heart to deny her anyway. "What do you say, Emma? Do you think your parents will mind?"
"As long as we're quiet, I don't think they'll even notice."
Anna grinned. "Oh, this is going to be the best night ever!"
For such a full house, it was awfully quiet when Snow awoke the following morning. She found her husband already awake and checking on their baby boy, who, in a miracle in and of itself, was still asleep. "This never happens," an amused Snow whispered to Charming, who swallowed a chuckle and put his index finger to his lips.
Since neither of them wanted to chance waking the sleeping baby, they both crept out of the bedroom and found, to their surprise, a mild disaster area in the kitchen.
A couple of pots were soaking in the sink, the mountain of detergent suds long since worn down to a thin film along the surface of the water. An opened bag of chips lay on the counter and bowls, glasses, and mugs were nestled in the drying rack.
Bowls, glasses, and mugs that hadn't been there when Snow went to bed.
She frowned at her husband, who shrugged. "It wasn't me," he said.
If it wasn't him and it wasn't her and it certainly wasn't little Neal …
Then she realized that but for her and Charming the downstairs was completely empty. All of a sudden, everything made sense.
"I think I know who the culprits are," she said, smiling at her husband while pointing above her to the loft.
She and Charming crept up the stairs to the loft and sure enough, there lay the culprits, all deeply asleep amid the evidence of their late-night activities. Kristoff was curled up on Henry's day bed and Elsa lay in between Anna and Emma, all three of them on top of the covers on Emma's bed.
Emma had apparently kicked their snacks off the bed in her sleep; overturned bowls lay on the floor beside her amid popcorn kernels and broken remnants of potato chips. It also appeared that she'd been teaching her new friends some of this world's games. A deck of cards and the Boggle set were scattered across the floor. One lone letter cube remained on the bed by Elsa's feet.
Emma's laptop had thankfully made its way to her nightstand and the silent press of a key brought it out of sleep mode and back onto Netflix.
With a touched smile, Snow stepped away from the laptop and over to the armoire in the corner of the loft. After a quick rummage, she rustled up a couple of quilts, which she then spread across her baby girl and her houseguests. The mess could be cleaned up later; right now, Snow had every intention of letting Emma and her friends sleep. Heaven only knew what time they all actually went to bed. "Sleep well, sweetheart," she murmured, pressing the barest whisper of a kiss to her daughter's forehead.
Then she tiptoed back up to an amused Charming to survey the rather adorable scene, smiling when he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "Apparently our daughter had her first sleepover last night," she whispered to her husband.
Charming smiled. "Better late than never."
Snow's smile grew wider. Better late than never, indeed.