So, I absolutely despise how far too often the writers of OUAT neglect to insert/continue amazing scenes for want of overly long backstories. Not that I'm saying this is amazingly written, however I've decided that it needed to be written.

I haven't edited this in the least bit because I simply hate doing so - and well, I just didn't have the... time.

TIME & REGRETS

Staring at the fire, she sat alone at the campsite they had made for the night. Usually she would have cuddled close to her husband all the while longing that their daughter would have come to sit beside the, but not tonight. Tonight, she needed time. Time. She laughed to herself as the word passed through her mind and onto the tip of her tongue. "Time," she muttered to herself. "What a joke."

"What was that?" She looked up to find David, her Charming, standing there, holding a plate of berries and a cooked skinned rabbit that had been prepared for dinner. He stared at her with a curious look on his face, one that told her that he was searching for some level of forgiveness for his lies and betrayal. It was a look that she had seen on his face several times before in their lives together: when he had lied to her about Excalibur, when, as David Nolan, he believed her to be capable of murder, and now. "Mary-Margaret?"

She looked away from him and back into the fire. Hugging her knees to her chest, she ignored him as he squatted down beside her. She flinched to his touch against her cheek. "David, don't," she growled. "I don't... I... I can't... Not... now." For as much as she had wanted to hold them in, the tears she had suppressed from the moment he had dashed her dreams had begun to fall. Pan had won. The secret her husband had never wanted to reveal to anyone had destroyed her and her dreams... again.

"What... I... I need to-" He stuttered unsure of what he could say to ease the pain he had inflicted on his wife. "Please, let me... let me explain!"

Snapping her head away from the fire, she looked once again at him. "Explain what, David?" She sniffled. "Do you want to tell me how great of a mother I would be, but will NEVER be since I won't ever have another child with you, and the one that we do have doesn't even-" Burying her face into her hands, she took in a deep breath before recomposing herself. "I've been sitting here thinking about how much time we've lost with not only our daughter, but with each other, and yet... we've had all this time in this world living each day over and over again while the little baby we-"

"I know," he whispered as he risked another gentle touch to her cheek. When she did not recoil away from him, he shifted to sit beside her. "We've had all this time, but not enough time with the ones we love. It's not fair."

"I just want a happy ending," she sighed. "I don't know... I want our daughter to be happy and to let love in... to let us in... but I know that even if she does that, it won't... it won't be enough for me... and I can't help but feel as though that's selfish."

"It's not," he wrapped his arms around her. "It's not selfish to want what we lost, and to still want what we have now. It's not selfish to want a second chance in having all the firsts we wanted to have with Emma."

"But I'll never have that," she cried. "Not if… not if… God I'm so angry with you right now, David!"

He caught her fist as she attempted to punch him in the chest. Taking her hand in his, he placed a kiss onto it. "I know you are," he replied. "I'm angry at me too… for getting hit by that arrow and for lying to you about it. I wish I could change what happened, but I can't."

Sighing audibly at his statement she turned her attention elsewhere. She chanced a glance across the fire to where their daughter sat on a log. The woman sat with her shoulders slumped and her head bent low as she pretended not to be watching their every move. While they had only a few months with one another as a reunited family, Mary-Margaret knew her daughter more than the younger woman would have ever cared to admit.

"She thinks we're looking to replace her," she said after some time. "She's angry because we weren't there for her growing up, and because of that she's having a hard time lowering her walls, but every time we try to be there for her, she pushes us away." Her eyes once again welled with tears. "I love her more than my own life, David, but I... I hate how easily she's able to stab me in the heart, but I can't... I can't let her know it because she's the one who was abandoned... and she's the one who lost time and was hurt by this entire situation. I'm angry too, David!"

She suddenly found herself wiggling from his arms and standing to her feet. She could no longer conceal her rage. There was no more room to bury her anger for fear that she might upset her already volatile daughter. She was tired of being the one who kept it together. She was tired of being the sweet, meek, and understanding Snow White that everyone thought she should be. Much as she felt when she watched her beloved Nanny, the only person left of her childhood, be murdered like her mother and father, she realized that something had to change within her. No, she would not become dark once more; but she would no longer harbor the guilt of decisions she made when she knew the alternative would have been worse. And so, taking her husband's hand into her own, she pulled him to his feet and dragged him toward their first born child.

"I love you," she immediately stated.

"I... uh... um..." Emma bit her lip when the words would not flow from her lips. She knew how she felt about these people who had given her life, but saying the words... it was not easy. She needed... time. "I'm sor-"

Mary Margaret shook her head. "Don't... just... don't," she held out her hand to stop the woman from speaking. "I get it, Emma. I'm sure that someplace deep inside of you and buried behind the walls you've built up that you do love us." Even in the darkness illuminated only by the campfire she noticed the redness in her daughter's cheeks, and the slight puffiness in her eyes. She had been silently crying over the feelings she would never audibly express to them. "And I want to be perfectly clear when I say this that I have no intentions of replacing you."

"I don't-" Emma began to state... lie...

"Yes, you do," Snow nodded as she spoke over her. "You think that I want to replace you. And you're angry about it. Right?" When all the blonde could do was lower her gaze from hers, the brunette released her husband's hand and knelt before her. "I'm angry too, you know. I'm angry at Regina for obvious reasons. I'm angry at David for lying to us. And-" She gently raised Emma's chin so that she could look her in the eyes as she spoke. "In the spirit of sharing our darkest secrets, I'm angry with you."

"Mary-Margaret-" David began. He had not expected his wife's final statement.

But she shook his hand from her shoulder. "No David, I need to say this," she explained before turning back to Emma. "I get that you had a horrible childhood, honey. And I get that you grew up feeling abandoned and like an orphan. And I want you to know that with all of my heart that had I known that that would have been the life you would have had because of my decision to have your father put you in that wardrobe, I would have sooner given my life so that Regina would've gotten what she wanted: the end of any happy ending that I might have had. But, I can't-"

"I know you can't," Emma finally responded.

"And I'm done apologizing for it," Snow confidently stated. While it killed her to reveal everything that was on her chest, she knew that if she had to face a life alone without her darling Charming and without a relationship with her daughter that she had always wanted, she would need to make sure that they understood everything she felt. They did not have to accept it. But they would certainly hear her out. "I gave up everything for you, Emma. You were there... you saw the castle. I wanted so much for you. I wanted to teach you to walk, talk, dress you for balls, teach you to... to... to track in the woods! Just... I wanted to teach you something... everything... I wanted to be your everything. But I wasn't..." her voice lowered. "And I'm not."

She closed her eyes as she allowed her imagination to run wild with thoughts of the life out of which they were all cheated. She imagined the way her daughter had looked at every stage of her life and the personalities that would have come at those times. She thought of the fights they would have eventually had and the ways in which she would have attempted to make up with her baby girl. She thought of everything and nothing all at once because in spite of the fact that she had given birth to this beautiful woman before her, she was not a mother. Not to Emma. And not in the eyes of her husband. She simply would have been a good mother.

"I refuse to feel guilty for still wanting all of that," she continued. "I refuse to be afraid to say out loud that I hate the way I allow you to make me feel when I try to reach out to you and you throw me away, Emma. I want to be a mom. I want to be your mom. And I still want to have everything that I never had with you... even if it isn't with you. Just as I want you to have yours, I still want my happy ending."

Wiping his face of the tears he had shed over his wife's brutally honest confession, David took a few steps away from his family in order to compose himself before returning. He hated the lost feeling he felt in that moment. Ironically, of course, he - an orphan himself - was in Neverland, but he would never have dared to compare the pain that radiated from his wife and certainly not from his daughter who had never known the love of her parents... until recently. But he was scared - terrified, really - of what was to come upon their inevitable rescue of Henry and his family's return to Storybrooke... without him. No longer could he state 'I will always find you' when his life was doomed in a place from where he could never escape.

"I'm sorry," he whimpered at a volume meant for only the two women in his life could hear. "I.. I wish I could-"

"We all have our wishes," Snow stopped him. "Unfortunately, I think the only one that matters right now is finding Henry. At least one of us can get a chance to be a mother to their child."

With that, she released her daughter's hand she had unconsciously taken and stood to her feet. "And I know that this might seem as though I've given up on both of you, but I haven't," she said quietly. "It's just that right now, I need time."