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Disclaimer: I do not own OUAT. *sad sigh*
"Get out."
"What?" both Hook and Henry exclaimed at once. Emma shoved at the leather clad man's chest with both palms, sending him soaring out into the hallway and slamming against the wall for the second time in two days.
"Stay away from me, and stay away from my son," she growled. "Crazy son of a bitch."
And with that, she slammed the door closed, without checking to see if she had actually injured the man. To be honest, she hoped she had.
"Mooom," Henry groaned. "What was that for?"
Emma marched him into the kitchen with her hand on his shoulder, and then trailed off to the side to wipe up all of the spilled cinnamon dusting the counter.
"I deal with enough crazies at work, I don't need to deal with one at home."
He wasn't a crazy, Mom!" Henry persisted, plopping down into one of the kitchen table chairs. "He knows something about your mom and dad! He knew stuff that you didn't even say out loud!"
Emma swept the warm colored dust into the palm of her cupped hands and made for the garbage can, where she dropped it in and let it fall like brown snow onto the white plastic.
"It's called 'a false sense of security', kid. I never really thought that stuff about giving you up and best chances. I just needed him to think he was in the clear so I could kick his ass out the door," Emma lied, the mistruth rolling off her tongue easily. Henry, however, would have none of that.
"So you broke our phone for nothing," he alleged testily. "Just so you could kick some 'crazy' out of our doorway."
Emma nodded dutifully as she turned to the dishes, scrubbing the empty cocoa mug out as casually as she could.
"Yup. Go hard or go home. Gotta convince 'em somehow. If breaking phones is the way to do it, than so be it."
Henry made a very dramatic grumbling sound in his throat.
"You're a terrible liar, Mom."
Emma rolled her eyes. She shut off the lukewarm water and dried her hands on the sides of her pajama shirt, and then pivoted towards Henry.
"Go get your homework so we can check it before school. Maybe I'll lie to you about the right answers and see how good your lie detector really is."
~o~
The second the door had closed behind his work-bound mother, Henry abandoned his homework. Today, he wasn't going to get himself on the bus and suffer through seven whole hours of things he felt he had already learned. He had too much to think about and besides, his mom wouldn't find out if he skipped. He had mastered the ability of faking a falsetto to call himself in sick years ago.
What had that Hook-Killian guy called his mom, anyway? Savior? It rang a bell in Henry's mind, and he couldn't shake the notion that he'd seen that title before. And, he realized, pushing himself to his feet and practically flipping his chair over backwards, he could easily guess just where he'd seen it.
Dashing through the apartment, he barged into his room, grabbing the old story book out from under his pillow. Once Upon A Time, it read, the four painted words shimmering with a burnish that reminded Henry of candlesticks. He ran his fingers over the gold embossed words and the soft brown leather. He didn't know why, but the book reminded him of home - even when he was in his own house.
"Savior," he muttered to himself, flipping through the creamy pages."Where have I seen that? Savior, Savior, Savior."
~o~
"Kid, I'm home!" Emma called, kicking off her heavy boots into the foyer carelessly. She stretched her arms above her head and arched her back, sighing in relief as she felt a few joints pop with a satisfying crack back into complete place.
"Okay," came the distracted response. Emma's forehead creased slightly as she hung up her jacket on the hook - ugh, that reminded her of the nutjob outside the door this morning.
"How was school?" she asked, warily listening for a response while tossing her NYPD badge into her jacket's breast pocket.
"Fine."
Emma's brows pinched together in consternation. She poked her head out of the foyer and looked around the room for Henry.
"Something wrong? Is everything okay?" she questioned, taking in the sight of her son curled up on the couch, poring over his fairy tale book as if his life depended on it.
"Yeah, everything's fine," Henry answered, his voice distant and withdrawn. Emma didn't like that tone one bit; it reminded her of the time a few years previous that she had taken away one of Henry's toys as punishment, and he had decided to 'punish' her in return by screaming about how he hated her and threatening to run away until she gave it back. At any rate, that had worked and the toy had been returned in a matter of minutes.
Emma yanked her gun holster off, quickly removed the bullets from the magazine, and draped the belt onto the hooks as well, her stomach becoming quickly knotted like a five year old's shoelaces.
"Whatcha up to?" she asked, padding on blue-socked feet to lean over the side of the couch. Henry looked up at her consideringly, and Emma had only enough time to catch the words "queen" and "curse" scripted onto the current page of the tome before Henry caught her gaze and slammed it shut.
"I don't think you're ready," he said by way of explanation. Emma raised an eyebrow.
"Ready for what?" she asked. "An old book of stories?"
Henry looked at her seriously.
"They're not stories. They're real."
Emma snorted.
"That's crazy."
Henry shrugged, hugging the book to his chest.
"It might be crazy, but its true. Mom, I've been studying them ever since we got this book. They talk about our family. You know that, I've read you stories right out of the book! I just didn't fully realize how true it was until now!"
Emma crinkled her nose up.
"Yeah? Most kids make fairy tales fit their lives. Its just what kids do. I did it when I was your age."
Henry groaned.
"If you had just listened to Hook, you would have known that I'm right. He knew something about it, I could tell."
Emma exhaled irritably though her nose.
"I didn't listen to him because he was insane. You shouldn't listen to him either," she alleged.
"But Mom, your name is in the book! It says that you're the Savior, just like Hook said!" Henry argued. Emma scoffed.
"I'm not a Savior like in the books, Henry."
"But you even do it now, in real life as your job! It's part of the curse, making sure you always are the Savior!" Henry ranted. Emma groaned internally. Not the damn curse thing again.
"What curse?" She checked her watch. Maybe she should send Henry to bed soon; he was clearly sleep deprived. Henry took a deep breath, like he was about to jump into a pool, but Emma cut him off, pushing herself off the couch and of her leaning position.
"You know what, never mind. It's a school night, you need to get to bed."
Henry's eyes widened in complete shock.
"But Mom," he resisted, grabbing onto her arm. "You've gotta listen!"
Emma pulled Henry to his feet gently, so he stood on the couch looking down at her.
"Kid, you know I love you, but I can't deal with the fifty shades of curse psychobabble right now," she sighed, releasing his forearm and rubbing her temples as the pounding in her head increased. "Go brush your teeth and grab some shut eye."
Henry grumbled loudly and hopped down off the couch, the storybook tucked under his arm.
"Hold it, hold it," Emma said, extending her hand. "Hand it over."
Henry looked up at her with wide eyes.
"Hand what over?"
"The book." Emma almost laughed at the dumbfounded expression on her son's face. "You think I'm dumb or something? I know about book lights, kid, I wasn't born in medieval times."
Henry's lips twitched as he tried to resist, but in moments the guilty little smile of someone who had just been caught red handed made its way across his face. Emma smirked right back.
"Gimme."
Reluctantly, Henry plopped the book into her awaiting hand. She tucked it into the crook of her elbow and pulled him in for a one-armed hug.
"Night kid. Love you."
"Love you too, Mom."
And then he stood there, looking up at her expectantly. Emma raised an eyebrow.
"Henry?" she queried. Henry watched her innocently.
"Aren't you going to kiss me good night?" he requested, his eyes shining with a light that Emma deemed too good to be true. She narrowed her eyes.
"You made me stop doing that when you were eight," she reminded him. "You were pretty firm about how 'cool' kids don't get kissed good night by their moms,'" Henry shrugged his shoulders ambivalently.
"I've grown up a lot. Moms are cool now," he said by way of explanation. Emma looked at him curiously, her head tilted ever so slightly as she tried to make sense of what her almost-teenage son was doing. She pressed her lips gently to his forehead. For some reason, his face felt tense to her - like he was expecting something. Even as she drew back, his eyes were screwed up tightly like he was waiting for something to hit him. That's weird. No more Swiss Miss for him. He's getting Yoohoo in the microwave from now on if this is how it's gonna be.
"I therefore pronounce you kissed good night," she announced. She gave him a little nudge in the back. "See you in the morning."
"See you in the morning," Henry sighed. He sounded disappointed as he trudged away down the darkened hallway towards his room.
Should I be offended? Did I do something wrong?
Emma readjusted the book under her arm and started off to her own bed, where she knew she would only too happily crash and sleep until her alarm blared the next morning. Then a page fell out of the book, fluttering to the floor with a high pitched sliding sound. Kneeling down, groaning under her breath as her sore legs protested the motion, Emma grabbed the paper, wincing slightly as the edge sliced the tip of her thumb and sent three drops of ruby splattering onto the snowy page, just barely missing the word 'true'. Her eyes narrowed as her gaze shifted to the center of the page, where shimmering onyx words proudly glistened under the bright lights of the apartment.
"...and when the Savior bestowed the True Love of a mother in the form of a Kiss upon the cursed Truest Believer, his golden heart reawakened from its still slumber and his eyes opened. A wave of light rippled like a pulse from the Savior and the Truest Believer, and with that, the oblivious townspeople remembered who they truly were, and who was to blame for all that had happened to them. The curse was broken, thanks to the help of True Love's Kiss," she read to herself under her breath, in a murmur.
Emma had to bite back a startled laugh. Had Henry really attempted to re enact this? Had he actually thought it would work?
Well, she thought, now I have to fix his book or he's gonna think I got mad and attacked it like I did the toaster last month.
She eyed the thick book and its many pages.
"And now I'm going to actually flip through this entire thing to glue one page back in, when I could be sleeping right now," she said aloud.
With a resigned sigh, she plopped down at the kitchen table and opened to the first page.
Once upon a time, in a land far far away...
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