A/N: So I started another story. I've just got so many ideas bouncing around, and I figure we need all the wemma we can get until Season 4! That being said, this story was inspired by a few Tumblr gifsets that were posted by Aurore (Castille94), so thank you for your wonderful gifsets! I don't know if the idea to write this story would have come to me without them!
Chapter 1: I'm Sorry for the Lies
"But she's ten, Emma. TEN."
Emma bit her lip and looked down at the ground, her hands fidgeting in her lap. They were sitting on a bench in the park, the warm Ohio sun beating down on them in the middle of July. Emma's hair was up in a curly ponytail and the heat on the back of her neck was a reinforcement of the hurt in Will's voice.
"Yes, I – I know she is."
"Why didn't you tell me?" He was staring at her, his eyes boring holes into her face. You could hear the hurt in his voice, the sound of his heart ripping in half at the thought that he missed out on the first ten years of his daughter's life. Will knew her answer before she even spoke it, because even when she was messing up, she always had good intentions at heart.
"Terri. She…I didn't want to cross her, not after she saw and told me to keep my mouth shut about her."
Dammit. Add that to the list of things Terri's screwed up in his life. Their divorce had been finalized for a year and still he couldn't bring himself to forgive her for holding him back. Twenty-eight years old and he only followed one dream; he got on Broadway at the age of twenty-two for a short run in Once Upon a Mattress. Other than that, Terri sucked the life out of him, and even then she wasn't very thrilled for him to be in a Broadway show. Will looked at Emma and nodded, biting his lip and letting out a sigh.
"Of course she did. What – uhm, what's her name?"
Emma smiled, her cheeks turning slightly pink, almost embarrassed to tell Will the name of his daughter, though at the time of her birth, Emma thought it clever.
"Willow. Willow Jane."
Will's chest tightened and he felt tears coming to his eyes. Was that really her name? His lower lip trembled and he bit the inside of it to make it stop. Clearing the lump in his throat away, he took a deep breath. "Willow Jane? L-like…"
"Like William James. Yes. I knew that she may never meet you, or she'd be…well, at least ten…before she badgered me enough to make me give in to letting her meet you. I wanted her to have a part of you always." Emma half-smiled and gave one shoulder a shrug, looking at him.
Will looked away from Emma, propping his elbows on his knees and dropping his head into his hands. "Why not sooner?" His voice was strained and Emma could hear the tears he didn't want her to see. "Terri or not, that marriage has been over for two years and finalized for one and you knew that. We haven't fallen out of contact for the past ten years, Emma, and we've staying in constant contact for the past five, so why not sooner?"
"I was scared, Will. I know that's not an excuse, but it's what was stopping me."
"Ten years, Emma. You lied to me for ten years. There are some things that can be looked over immediately, like you stole money from me and came to pay it back, or even watching you walk out of my life ten years ago and then walking back in. But you took ten years of my own child's life from me, Emma, so I'm sorry if 'I was scared, Will' doesn't cut it for me."
The pair fell silent.
Will stared down at the ground through blurry eyes, his hands on his forehead, the pressure from his elbows digging into his knees uncomfortably. Ever since he got out of high school, all Will ever wanted was to be a dad. He didn't care that he was going to school at the same time; he wanted to have kids and a family. Terri was staying home, so it wouldn't be a problem to have children, but she kept saying they were too young, they were too young, they weren't ready. Well Emma was eighteen, and she was too young, and she sure as hell was not ready, but she did it, and she did it on her own. Things just weren't adding up in his life anymore. He'd always looked back on that final night with Emma before college with nothing but love and passion, and now that he knew a child came from it, he looked back on it with pain. The pain of not knowing her.
Emma wondered what she could say or do to try and fix something – anything. She felt awful and she knew that ten years was too long but there was nothing she could do to give him back those ten years of Willow's life. It wasn't exactly a walk in the park for her, finding out just weeks after you've started college that you're going to become a mother instead. There were times that Emma would look back on her week at the beach with Will before the pair of best friends separated their ways for school, and she regretted every event that happened on their final night together. The night she made Will a cheater and he made her impure. But after Willow was born, after she accepted that school had to be put on hold, and after she held her for the first time, her only regret was that Will wouldn't know about her.
"I found out a month after I started classes at Columbia." Emma said, clearing her throat. She at least owed him the full explanation; she owed him that much. "I couldn't stop throwing up and it was sending my OCD into overdrive, so I went to the doctor to try and get some antibiotics for what I thought was the stomach flu, and I was told that it was a nine-month kind of deal and I was a month and a half in."
She paused, looking to Will, not sure if he wanted her to continue or not. She knew it was a lot to take in, but when he remained silent, she went on. "I called my mom in tears, because I didn't know what to do and it wasn't something I could fix and school was already stressful enough without this piled on top of it. She convinced me to drop out of Columbia and come home to Lima, reassuring me that school wasn't what I should focus on. When I got home, she sat me down and we talked, and my dad yelled, and they both told me that I needed to tell you, but I kept telling them that I couldn't. You were my best friend and you were with Terri and you'd cheated and I'd made you." She shook her head and Will shook his own head.
"You didn't make me, Emma. I wanted to." He swallowed and looked up at her with red eyes. "I wanted to."
Emma nodded, looking at him and he stared at her for a moment before replacing his head in his hands. "Go on." He mumbled, falling silent again so Emma could continue.
"We agreed that we would keep it quiet and I would move to Virginia with my grandparents, at least until Willow was born, and then we'd talk about telling you about her. I didn't want to hide it from you, but you and Terri had been together since freshman year and I wasn't about to mess up your relationship with a baby. So I went to Virginia, I got a job there, I had Willow a month before my nineteenth birthday." Emma smiled a little bit, thinking back on it. "I almost called you after she was born, but I couldn't. You'd just gotten married to Terri and I wanted you to be happy. I kept my mouth shut and I stayed in Virginia."
Emma paused again, Will's head bobbing in a nod. "You said you were in Virginia because your grandparents were sick. We talked on the phone once in a while when Terri was out."
"And they really were sick, Will. They both passed away when Willow was three, and I really was taking care of them while I was there. I told you everything about Virginia."
"Not everything." Will said in a quiet whisper. "Not everything."
They remained silent for a few minutes; Emma not really wanting to go on with the next bit of the story, knowing it would possibly hurt him more knowing just how close he came to meeting Willow. Finally, she bit the bullet and went on; he'd find out eventually.
"When my grandparents died, they left me everything. They'd seen me struggling for three years, trying to be a good mom to Willow and trying to get my OCD under control, all while taking care of them and working a job in the evenings after all three of them were asleep. I talked to my mom and dad and they both agreed that it was best for me to sell everything that was left to me, put some of it in a college fund for Willow and put the rest into savings, and that's what I did. I sold their house, their cars...everything. Then I packed up what little things Willow and I had and I moved us to New York. I'd reapplied to Columbia and I was readmitted. At the time, you'd written to me that you made it to Broadway, starring at Prince Dauntless in Once Upon a Mattress. After I got to New York, I purchased pretty expensive tickets; one for myself and one for Willow, and we went to see you on opening night. I planned on taking her to the stage door afterward to meet you and—"
"You saw me. She saw me. You came?" He looked up at her, eyes wide and eyebrows high up on his brow. "You…" Will remembered talking to Emma about the show. He had been so excited to be cast that he called her to tell her before he called Terri back in Lima. When she said that she was moving to New York, Will begged her to come, offering to buy her tickets when she said she didn't have the money, pouting when she rejected the offer.
"Lied, yes, I lied. Something I'd become accustomed to doing, thinking I was protecting Willow, but really not wanting to shatter your seemingly perfect world. So I took Willow in secret to watch you and afterwards, in her three-year old babble, she couldn't stop talking about your character, asking me how come he couldn't be her daddy. That was the first time I actually explained to her that you were her daddy."
"That should have been the first time you explained to me that I was her daddy." Will said, starting to feel angry, knowing that he was in the same building as her, that he had a chance to know her, and Emma kept that from him. But the more he listened to Emma, the more he understood that she wasn't keeping Willow away because she was being selfish; she really did keep her away because she thought it was the best thing for Will. His theory was further proved as she continued speaking, shaking her head.
"No, Will. It wasn't the right time. I saw you on that stage singing and dancing…you followed your dream. You were so passionate and I knew you well enough to know that you were in Heaven on that stage. You were so thrilled – I could see it in your face. You'd finally achieved your goal and I was not about to tear that away from you by walking into your life after four years and dump the responsibility of being a father onto your shoulders."
"The show only ran for a year and a half, Emma. Then I was done – I was out of Heaven and back on Earth. Why didn't you tell me then? After I was done, right before I returned here to Lima, you and I met for lunch. Why didn't you tell me then?"
Emma looked at him sadly. She could see that he was hurting by all of this, and his want to have known his daughter all of this time was preventing him from remembering the bigger details. "Will, the whole time you were on Broadway, you and Terri were struggling. She couldn't stand being away from you and she couldn't stand that you were successful. Meanwhile you couldn't understand why she didn't want you to be away for so long, and you called me most nights, unable to understand why you two couldn't stop fighting. Again, it wasn't the right time to add Willow into your life equation. By that time, she was starting kindergarten as well, and it was stressful for her to be away from me all day. Her world was shaken up enough and this time I had to factor in Willow's wellbeing more because she was having separation anxiety. It wasn't the right time for either of you."
"There was never a right time, Emma. There is still never a right time!" Will stood, shaking his head. He placed on hand on his hip, the other coming to pinch the bridge of his nose as his head bowed down towards the ground. He stood in front of her, squeezing his eyes closed. "But for some reason, you called me last night, crying, telling me that you've messed up and you need to see me and it can't wait until work on Monday and that you're sorry. There is no right time, Emma, no matter how much you want it to be – what makes you think that now is the right time?"
"We're all established." She said, looking up at him. Once they'd moved to New York, Emma found a sitter for Willow, and she took all of her classes in the morning, then once Willow was in kindergarten and elementary school, Emma picked up extra classes as well as a job at a daycare center so she could be with Willow in the afternoons, as well as forcing herself to manage her OCD in messy places. After she graduated, she found out that there was an opening for a counselor at McKinley – thanks to Will – and she moved back, taking up the job. They were established. They'd been in Ohio for six months, her job was going well, Willow was well adjusted to school, and things just felt right.
"What the hell does that mean, Emma?"
"It means we're established. I have a steady job and I'm sure that I'm staying in Lima. Willow's in school and she's adjusting well, your divorce is final, you're doing so well with Glee club…we're all in good places. It just feels like the right time, Will." Emma paused. "And she saw you the other day."
"She what?" Will's hands fell and his eyes opened, gazing down at Emma.
"She saw you. We were driving home from the grocery store and she looked out her window and you were in the car one lane over, just behind us. She turned to me and said 'Momma, Daddy's behind us.' I looked and I nodded, and that night she wouldn't stop talking about you, begging me to let her meet you. She even said she'd give up eating chocolate chip cookies for a month if I agreed." Emma laughed slightly, shaking her head. She'd agreed to the conditions, but had no intentions of stopping Willow from finding cookies in her lunch.
Will's face lit up immediately and he sat down, looking at Emma. "Can – I can meet her?" He asked, smiling a little. "Is she here?"
Emma shook her head. "She's not here. She's at a friend's house for the day. I told her that I needed to talk to you about it first because you might be really mad at me. She asked if it's because lying is bad and I told her that it was really bad and that I just know you're going to love her so much, that it would upset you that you've missed her all this time…she said she missed you, too." Her eyes began to tear up and she looked at Will, shaking her head, "Will, I am so sorry. Ten years is a long time and I know that, and I'm sure you hate me and you have every right to hate me. But I couldn't…I was scared, Will. I was so scared to mess up your life and I was scared that you wouldn't want her and I'm just so sorry."
Will nodded, looking at her. "I don't hate you, Emma. I understand that you were scared, but you could have come to me. I'm just extremely hurt and I hate that I missed out on ten years of her life."
"I know, and I wish I could give that to you, but I can't. I was still a kid, trying to raise my own kid. But I never kept her from you to be malicious, I swear. I only had good intentions at heart."
Will nodded again, swallowing. "I know, Em. You don't have a mean bone in your body."
"Yeah, okay. Ask Willow about that one. I'm always so mean, making her do her homework before television." She laughed a little bit, trying to lighten the mood. "Mean mommy."
"I don't believe it." He said, laughing with her before falling silent again.
"So you want to meet her?" Emma asked, glancing over at him, biting her lip gently.
His head bobbed in a nod. "Yeah…I do."
"You can come over tonight, if you want to. We can all have dinner together."
"I…yeah, I want to." Will said, nodding. He gave Emma a small smile, his stomach becoming nervous at the thought of meeting his child.
"Okay, come by around six." Emma smiled and looked at her watch, sighing. "I need to go pick Wills up from her friend's house. We have a special dinner to plan."
Will's smile widened at her nickname for Willow. His heart both swelled and broke at the same time. "Of course. Six o'clock. I'll see you then."
They each stood and looked at each other for a moment before turning their opposite ways and heading to their cars. Emma stopped after a few steps and turned around. "Will?"
"Yeah?" He asked, turning to look at her.
"Thanks for not hating me. You're going to love her." She nodded earnestly.
Will nodded and waved at her, turning to go to his car and head home. This was nothing like what he was expecting in his head when he came to see Emma today, and as much as he hated the situation, he loved the news. He was halfway home when he had to pull over to the side of the road, tears streaming from his eyes.
He was a dad.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Glee, Will Schuester or Emma Pillsbury. That is property of Fox and Ryan Murphy.
Willow Jane Schuester is my own character, though.