I remembered this old wives tale about an apple peel and true love. And I have this deep-seated desire for a Thanksgiving episode (which at this rate would happen in season 7. Pacing!) Watching Regina micro-manage the cooking would give me so much life.
Emma pauses, counting silently to ten before she asks, "Are you sure you don't want to do this?"
The question comes out a little more exasperated than she'd wanted, but Regina's hovering. Again. Emma can practically feel her body heat, Regina's standing so close. There's a huff and then Emma hears, "No. I have to finish the stuffing."
"And put the noodles away while you're at it, lasagna isn't Thanksgiving food."
"If we're making a good meal for everyone to enjoy, we might as well include food that is actually good," Regina says drily.
"Tell that to the Pilgrims," Emma retorts, rolling her eyes. She curses under her breath when she accidentally cuts the side of her thumb. Again.
She can almost hear Regina's eyes rolling. "And there weren't Jell-o molds or canned cranberry sauces at the first Thanksgiving either, but you're still insisting on putting those abominations on my table."
"Ladies," Mary Margaret chides softly. "Regina, there's not enough oven space for lasagna tonight. Maybe we can have that around Christmas. Emma, Regina just wants everything to go well today, this is a big day for all of us."
Emma's going to blame the fact that it's not even eight-thirty in the morning for her frayed nerves. Not the fact that Regina doesn't trust her for five seconds to alone cook anything, not the cheerful way Mary Margaret is practically floating around the kitchen, and definitely not the fact that this is the first Thanksgiving she's ever spent with her entire family. The year in New York had been her and Henry and Walsh, but this is different.
Her mom is humming as she makes a new pot of coffee, two piles of peeled and unpeeled potatoes left waiting for her to finish. Her dad's back at the loft with her brother, under orders to put a few ready-made pies in the oven. Her son and his... step-brother? (Robin and Roland live here in Regina's house, now that winter's coming, but she doesn't know how Regina wants to define the new relationships.) Henry and Roland are parked in the living room in their pajamas with bowls of cereal; Emma can hear Henry explaining about the Macy's parade and Santa Claus - though from Roland's exclamations it sounds like there's a thing or two about the real Santa that Henry has yet to learn.
Regina has about six things started but spends more time eyeballing the way Emma's peeling the sweet potatoes. In fact, Emma's about ninety percent sure the clam chowder is going to be ruined if Regina doesn't stop - "Seriously, if you want to do this I'll take over the crock pots," Emma snaps.
Regina' jaw works, but she goes back to her own cutting board, muttering under her breath. Emma's starting to understand the gripes about family dinners and too many cooks in the kitchen.
"Emma, you're taking too much potato off like that," Mary Margaret says, watching the rapid way Emma's peeler works.
Her hand slips and she cuts her finger again. "This is how I was taught, Mom." God, she sounds like a teenager. When Emma looks up, Mary Margaret's watching her with the expression she knows well: the sad, slightly guilty one that appears with every mention of Emma's misspent childhood. Emma frowns a little. "Can we not with this today? Be, I dunno, thankful that we're here together now or whatever?"
"Your mother's rubbing off on you," Regina mutters.
Emma side-eyes her for a moment before saying, "Besides, it's not like I would have learned how to peel potatoes if I grew up in the Enchanted Forest. You guys had servants for this kind of thing."
To her surprise, both women start laughing. "What?" Emma asks.
Regina composes herself first. "Emma, my family was run into exile. My mother managed to get us enough money to hire servants, but only because she was a miller's daughter and refused to do any housework for herself. She did not, however, hold that standard for me. She called it practice for running a household of my own, so I'd know if the maids were shirking their duties, but I know better now. Free labor is free labor, after all."
Emma frowns thoughtfully. She supposes it makes sense; cursing everyone to a land without magic and suddenly having to fend for herself with no prior knowledge didn't seem like Regina's M.O. Mary Margaret dabs her eyes with a napkin, sighing as she catches her breath. "And I picked up a few things here and there as a child; I didn't have many friends, so the servants got used to me lurking around. But I didn't really learn anything until I was on the run from Regina. Some villagers took pity on me. If the curse never happened, Emma, we would have raised you to be prepared for anything: fighting, dancing, cooking for yourself, managing armies, being queen someday."
Emma's stomach lurches at the thought of being queen of anything. Even after everything that's happened, the fact that she's a princess and will (maybe, maybe not) eventually rule an entire kingdom never really felt real. "So a princess is not above potato peeling, got it."
Regina and Mary Margaret trade knowing smiles. "A princess is never above anything, Miss Swan," Regina says.
An egg timer goes off, breaking up the impromptu princess lesson, and Regina goes to finish stuffing the turkey. Mary Margaret brings over her potatoes and peeler and shows Emma how she was taught. "Just cut it in one long peel," she explains. "Or try to, it makes less of a mess this way. And you don't cut yourself so much," she adds, nodding towards Emma's thumbs.
Emma never expected, at thirty years old, to be taught how to peel potatoes by her mother - but she also never expected to slay dragons, portal-jump through different realms, or fall in love with Captain Hook either. This is honestly mild in comparison.
It's slower this way, but Regina doesn't hover quite as much and Mary Margaret's beaming proudly, so Emma will take the slow route.
The noise in the living room changes to Henry explaining the balloon characters or Roland shouting about the ones he recognizes when Regina finally gets the turkey in the oven. Emma's moved on to slicing and her annoyance returns when she feels Regina's gaze on her again. "Now what?" she asks.
"You're mangling them," Regina states.
"And how exactly does one mangle a potato that's going to be made into a casserole?"
Regina glances up for a moment as if praying. "You're chunking them. Unevenly."
"Regina."
"It just tastes better -"
"Regina."
She scowls and grabs a bushel of apples that have been sitting neglected off to the side. "Fine, do it your way. Heaven help us all if someone left you alone in a kitchen for too long."
Emma rolls her eyes as Mary Margaret covers what sounds suspiciously like a giggle. It's not exactly her fault she didn't have anyone to teach her how to cook, or that when she was old enough all she could really afford was whatever noodle thing cost less than a dollar.
Still, she tries to be a little more careful with the dicing.
Robin pops in at one point to kiss Regina on the cheek and steal apple slices from her. She tries to hide her smile but fails when he rests an apple slice on her lower lip. "Open," he tells her. "David called a bit ago, needs extra hands with the pies and the baby," he explains. "I'll be back as soon as we can manage."
"Okay."
Emma sneaks a glance over at them again just as Robin swipes another kiss and an apple, then smiles down at the casserole dish she's busily arranging. It's nice to see them happy.
She gets a bit too absorbed in arranging the marshmallows on top; she jumps when she hears a wet slapping sound on the floor. "What the hell -" Emma stops when she sees the apple peel on the floor. "Regina, seriously, you're getting on me about the way I dice potato chunks and then you go throwing apple peels all over the floor?"
Mary Margaret's smiling though. "You still do that?"
Regina looks a little sheepish. "Force of habit if I get it all in one go."
Emma holds up her hands. She's starting to feel like she's watching a scratched DVD that keeps jumping past scenes - a feeling she should be used to at this point, but it's never a comfortable one. "Okay, what are you two going on about now?"
Regina crouches down. "It's a superstition in our land, peasant girls do it."
"And noble girls, when they're allowed a knife," Mary Margaret adds.
Regina glances up, smiling wryly at her. "True. The maids taught me this when I was a girl. If you peel the whole apple without it breaking, toss the peel over your shoulder and it'll form the initial of the person you're supposed to marry."
Emma raises an eyebrow. "And this is common in the Enchanted Forest?"
Mary Margaret studies the peel. "Well, with how rare true love is, sometimes people like to nudge fate along. I don't see a letter, Regina."
She scoffs, picking up the peel and tossing it in the compost can. "This is the land without magic, of course it won't work."
Mary Margaret bumps her with her hip. "Or the apple already knows you found your soulmate."
Emma's amused to notice a faint blush on Regina's cheeks. "Oh, be quiet. Apples might be true love fruit but they don't know everything."
"Is that why you used an apple on Mom?" Emma asks, curious at this new tidbit of information. "And tried to on me and Henry?"
A shadow flickers across Regina's face at the memory of Henry falling prey to the sleeping curse; Emma feels a bit guilty about bringing it up. "I thought it was poetic at the time," Regina says simply, then gets back to work.
There's a kitchenette in the basement that Emma is instructed to use for the casseroles. She makes a few trips up and down the stairs to preheat and then set the dishes in to cook, but on the last trip back she's confronted by Mary Margaret holding an apple and a peeler. Emma barely holds back her sigh. "Mom."
"Just try. Once. For me?"
"This isn't the Enchanted Forest."
"And your magic works differently than everyone else's here."
Emma bites the inside of her lip. "And because I'm the product of true love, the true love fruit or whatever is going to work in tandem with me."
Mary Margaret smiles broadly. "Now you're getting it."
"Mom..."
The protest is on the tip of her tongue - she just learned how to peel properly like an hour ago - but the sensible (paranoid?) part of her mind tells her that she's more nervous about if it actually works than anything else.
If it doesn't make a K.
(If it does.)
(She knows what true love's kiss feels like after saving Henry, but the one kiss during her stint as the Dark One that had made the madness recede felt... different.)
(What if he's not -)
Emma practically snarls as she grabs the apple and the peeler from her mother and stalks over to the counter. She takes a breath and makes herself calm down. She needs steady hands. She goes slowly, chewing on the inside of her lip the whole time. Regina's hovering again, but watching her progress. "Cut a little lower, thicken the peel or it'll break," she says softly and Emma does.
She's struck by the absurd thought that in another life this would be her step-grandmother teaching her how to peel an apple, how to follow a custom that Princess Emma would have grown up hearing about from the servant girls in the palace.
Her life is so weird.
Emma holds her breath as she makes a final cut, the peel coiling in on itself as the last of it lands on the counter. "I did it," she says, almost in disbelief.
"I knew you could," Mary Margaret says. "Now, over the left shoulder."
Emma's careful to pick up the peel so it doesn't crack in her hand - just her luck, get it right on the first try and mess up the rest - and takes another breath to calm herself. Her heart is pounding in her chest and this is so ridiculous, it's just a superstition from a place she's only seen less than a handful of times -
She tosses the peel just as they hear the front door open and David announcing, "We have pies!"
Emma turns and, instead of looking at the floor, her eyes catch on her boyfriend striding into the kitchen bearing a pie tin in the crook of his hooked arm and another in his hand. "Ladies, we come bearing the fruits of a long and arduous battle with the fire demon dwelling in Lady Snow's abode," Killian declares, winking as Emma loses her own battle against her affectionate exasperation for her ridiculous boyfriend.
"Uh, Emma," Mary Margaret says.
She glances at her mother, then follows her gaze to the floor.
"What's this?" David asks, a pie in one hand and the other holding Neal's head; her brother is strapped to the Baby Bjorn on David's chest. Robin's a few steps behind, bearing the last of the pies. "Oh, is this that apple peel thing? I remember my mother talking about that. I always thought it was just her way of trying to make me help her cook."
Killian walks around the counter to join them. "What apple peel thing?"
Emma kneels hastily and scoops up the peel, tossing it in the trash. "Nothing."
"Emma -" Mary Margaret starts, but Emma cuts her off by kissing Killian briefly. She hears her dad grumble and chuckles.
"Hello, Swan. What apple peel thing?" Killian asks when she leans back in his embrace.
She shakes her head. "Nothing, just some superstition from the Enchanted Forest. It's really nothing."
He quirks his eyebrow at her, clearly not believing her, and she can't help but grin. She distracts him with another kiss, ignoring Regina's commentary about how her kitchen isn't a brothel.
Even after all this time, Emma's not really one to put a lot of stock into fate. A lot of people and a lot of outside forces have tried to make her do what they want, and every time she reminds them that her life is made up of her own choices.
It's just a silly superstition from a place she's seen less than a handful of times.
Even if the apple peel did look an awful lot like a cursive, lower-case K.
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