Author's Note: Holy friggin' crap, you guys! When I came up with this, I thought I'd get a couple reviews all, "Okay, cute idea" but 22 reviews on one chapter?! Y'all are absolutely awesome. Hope you enjoy the next part!
For whatever reason, Henry insisted on playing Sorry first. The wicked gleam in his eye told Emma that he had every intention of attempting to dethrone the reigning Queen of Sorry. Which was perfectly fine with Emma; she enjoyed a challenge.
"So," she said to her family as she set up the Sorry board, "we all know how to play, right?"
Henry heaved a sigh, as if he couldn't believe someone might not know how to play Sorry. "Draw cards, move pieces around the board according to the instructions on the card. If you land on a square someone else is occupying, you send their piece back to Start. First person to move all four of their pieces into Home wins."
It came out all in one breath. Emma raised her eyebrows at him while trying – and failing – to hide an amused grin. "That was impressive," she said to Henry before turning her attention to her parents. "Did you two get that?"
Snow, who sort of remembered playing with the kids at school, nodded. The slightly lost look on David's face made Emma wince. This game was clearly not an Enchanted Forest invention so he wouldn't have played as a child, and he didn't have twenty-eight years worth of vague Storybrooke memories involving children to fall back on like Snow did. "It's actually rather self-explanatory," she assured him. "You'll pick it up quickly."
"I'll go last, then," he said, giving his daughter a little smile. "Watching you three go before me should give me an idea."
"Works for me," Emma shrugged before telling Henry to get the ball rolling.
The first section in Emma's patent-pending Sorry Strategy Playbook detailed observing her opponents, watching how they played. Some people used no strategy at all, chalking everything up to luck of the draw. Others kicked the other players off the board willy-nilly, figuring the more frustrating it was for everyone else, the easier it would be for them. Most people played somewhere in between those two extremes, but the point was, Emma knew almost instinctively how to counteract any possible strategy she encountered.
In just a few minutes of play, Emma learned a lot about her family's playing styles. Snow was playing nicely, moving her pieces around the board and actually cringing when she had to kick either Henry or Emma back to Start. Any time a drawn card forced her to do something to one of her opponents, she chose to screw David over. In other words, she was playing like a mom.
David was playing a bit more aggressively, going after Snow out of revenge but also taking out Henry and Emma equally. He took pleasure in kicking their pieces back to Start and even attempted teasing trash talk all of once before Emma laughingly said, "Never say anything like that again."
Henry sat on the opposite end of the spectrum from his grandparents. He was playing like a wild child, gleefully sending his opponents' pieces back to Start at every opportunity.
None of their actions gave them a single edge, though, because Emma knew exactly how to win this particular game.
All she had to do was try her best to remain unobtrusive as she let the game unfold. Her parents' good-natured battle of one-upmanship kept them focused on each other, while Henry's penchant for knocking everyone else off the board made him a favorite target for revenge. To win, Emma simply had to stay out of everyone's way.
This little strategy of hers did not mean completely refraining from gameplay, however. Doing absolutely nothing to anybody would attract just as much attention as doing everything to everybody. A well-timed land on a slide that knocked Snow back to Start or the occasional position swap with David or Henry instead of moving forward eleven spaces went a long way towards protecting and preserving her true strategy.
When she finally drew the three she needed, she grinned to herself. "And that's a wrap," she said as she plunked her final pawn down in Home.
All three of them looked up sharply at her words, identical looks of surprise on their faces. Henry's jaw was actually hanging open, which made Emma bite back a snicker. "That's a great way to catch flies, kid."
Henry snapped his mouth shut but only for a second. "Whoa, wait a sec," he said, waving his hands in front of him. "You just … you won?"
"Read 'em and weep," Emma confirmed, nodding at the board. "Or, you know, look at the board and weep. Whatever." That cliché certainly worked better when playing cards.
"But you weren't even … I mean, I didn't …"
At that point, Emma could no longer hold in her chuckle. The poor kid had absolutely no idea what hit him. "Didn't I tell you that I always win?"
"But I didn't even see you doing it!"
"I imagine that was the point," Snow told him, a gentle smile on her face.
Emma remained noncommittal, giving a tiny shrug in response to her mother's statement, but David regarded her with a proud grin anyway. "Well played, Emma. That was great."
Henry narrowed his eyes in his mother's direction. "I want to play again, and this time I'm going to win."
"Henry …" Snow chided.
Behind the challenge in her son's eyes was playfulness, however, and Emma knew in an instant that he wasn't really as upset as he sounded. "No, it's okay," she said, giving her mother a reassuring smile before turning a challenging expression on her son. "The kid wants a rematch, so let's give him a rematch."
She shuffled the cards while everyone else moved their pawns back into starting position. From the fire in her son's eyes, she could tell that Henry was going to be charging after her with everything his little eleven-year-old self was worth.
Which meant Emma needed to up her game. Henry wouldn't allow her to quietly go around the board four times this time. Since the best defense was a good offense, she needed to pull out all the stops. It appeared as if her family was about to learn exactly how she became the Queen of Sorry.
She almost felt guilty. The fact that she had given them fair warning before they even started tempered that guilt a bit, though.
"You guys ready for this?" she asked as she placed the cards down on the board.
"I should be asking you that question," Henry teased, causing Snow and David to chuckle.
Emma raised her eyebrows and gave Henry an innocent little smile while thinking, Oh, kid, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
From the second Emma moved her first pawn out of Start, she played the most brutal game of Sorry any of them had ever seen. Father, mother, and son all got kicked off the board without impunity. She engineered moves that knocked pawns out of her way, she split sevens, she swapped positions, and she felt an almost perverse sense of pleasure every time she drew the Sorry card.
None of them stood a chance. She ended up with two of her pawns in Home before any of them even had one. "I see what you meant when you said you were vicious," Snow said, amusement in her voice, when Emma split a seven, moving one pawn two spaces forward and the other forward five to land on a slide that sent two of Henry's pawns back to Start.
"I tried to tell you," Emma shrugged as she watched Snow and David take their turns. "I would bet the new kids either money or ice cream sundaes depending on my mood that day. The veterans would just shut up and let me fleece the new kids because it amused the crap out of them. I lost count of how many sundaes I was treated to and how much money I won. The only thing they saw when they looked at me was a little girl with blonde curls. They were expecting sweet and innocent, and they got … me."
"That's my girl," David murmured. Emma froze and shot her head up, her hand hovering over the draw pile. Her father's eyes widened, and she immediately understood that he hadn't meant to say that loud enough for her to hear. He really needed to work on his under-the-breath voice. "I just meant that …" he started, then sighed and tried again. "I mean, it's–"
"It's okay," she said, giving him a tiny smile to set him at ease.
When he smiled back, Emma's heart skipped a beat at the affection. It was still so weird to her. These were her parents, the people she'd searched for all her life. The people she had alternately loved and hated growing up. She'd finally found them. There was still that awkwardness, that sense of not really knowing them, that sense of them not really knowing her. And yet – though she would never admit it to them and it was hard to even admit it to herself – there was also that sense of being unable to imagine living without them now.
It was at the same time amazing and terrifying, which was why she tried not to think about it too much. She shook her head in an attempt to bring herself back to the matter at hand. After all, she had a game to win.
This time, no one was shocked when she deposited her final pawn into Home. She shifted her gaze to her son, sweet victory mixing with nervous anticipation as she awaited his reaction. Had she maybe gone a little overboard?
"You totally creamed us," Henry said softly, his eyebrows raised. "That? Was awesome! You've got to teach me how to do that."
Emma laughed. Full-on burst out laughing. Everyone was surprised … including Emma. "I'm not sure you're ready, young grasshopper," she teased when she finally caught her breath, "but perhaps someday."
From the identical bewildered expressions on her parents' faces, it was clear they didn't get the joke. Henry laughed, though, so at least it wasn't a complete waste. "Can we finish out the game?" Henry asked his grandparents. "You know, see who comes in second and third?"
"If you want to," Snow answered, her gaze shifting to Emma to make sure she didn't mind sitting out while they played.
Emma didn't mind at all. She pushed herself away from the game a little bit as her family continued to play, leaning her back against the sofa and wrapping her arms around her legs. She noted with an odd sense of pride that Henry had already picked up a couple of her tricks.
Apparently, so had David. He drew an eleven and passed up the chance to move one of his pawns into the safety zone to swap another of his pieces in play with Snow's simply because it set her further back. "That was an Emma move!" she cried in protest.
Emma dropped her head and bit her lower lip but she could not stop the smile from spreading across her face. It took her a moment to identify the new feeling now gripping her heart. It was a feeling she was not used to at all but one she was coming to learn that, if she allowed herself, she could actually enjoy.
Contentment. She was feeling contentment, and she liked it. Would wonders never cease.
She lifted her head and refocused her attention on the game. It was Henry's turn, and as he reached for one of his pawns in play, she caught something he could do with the other. Quickly, she leaned over and whispered, "Move the other one. You'll knock David back to Start, and since it's his only piece out on the board, it'll delay him a lot."
Henry grinned and did as she instructed. "Hey!" David protested when Henry kicked his piece off the board. Emma snickered, causing David to look at her with mock sternness. "No fair giving hints."
"Oh, I'm not supposed to do that?" Emma asked innocently as she gave a nonchalant shrug. "Sorry!"