Rating: T (I have to put a bit of a trigger warning on this one: Mentions of abuse.)
Summary: Mary Margaret and David get Emma to open up about her past.
As always, prompts are always welcome, and thank you for reading!
"Emma, I know you can use magic, and you should learn to do so, but from what I've seen, you can be rather powerful and you should be careful!" Snow mentioned to Emma
"Mary Margaret, I'm 30, I know right from wrong."
"I know, this is all still really new for you—for all of us, but I've seen magic corrupt beautiful, kind hearted-," Realizing Emma had left, she stopped talking.
Emma sat where Henry's castle used to be. People rarely went there anymore, and she liked to sit there and reflect. She often thought about how different life would be if she grew up in the Enchanted Forest. She wouldn't have had to deal with all the savior stuff and she wouldn't have had an awful childhood. But she would've had to be graceful and kind like her mother, and learned to sword fight and ride horses like her father. The weight of being an actual princess on her shoulders.
The real question was which fate was worse?
Mary Margaret joined Emma on the bench Emma had put in the place of Henry's castle. She put a hand on Emma's knee. Despite half assed attempts at getting Emma to look at her, Emma refused to meet her gaze.
"Emma? What's wrong?" Snow may not have had her daughter's "super power" but she could tell when her baby was upset.
"I'm having an existential crisis," Emma complained, hoping she was using the term correctly.
"About what?"
"What I would've been like if I grew up in the Enchanted Forest. How different my personality, my life, my everything would be."
"Emma, you're you!" Maybe you would've been a little more ladylike," she paused picking chocolate off the corner of Emma's mouth. "But you would've been as selfless as you are, or as stubborn, or as honest!"
Emma laughed slightly at the thought, "So I would've been blonde you?"
Mary Margaret shook her head, "I don't think so. I have a suspicion that you would've been a bit of a daddy's girl"
Emma swatted her mother's shoulder playfully and laughed.
"Did I hear someone say 'Daddy's Girl'?" David asked, greeting his wife and daughter
"Your daughter's having a bit of a crisis," Snow explained. "The kind of crisis that we have regularly. Thinking about how different she would've been if she grew up in the Enchanted Forest."
David nodded. They did talk about that, perhaps more often than they should. Despite how often they thought of it, they could never agree on what Emma would've been like.
"Emma? What were you like as a kid? Like Henry's age," Emma's mother asked, figuring the best way to know what her daughter would've been like is to know what she was like.
Emma looked down and gulped. Her early teen years were the last thing she wanted to talk about. Once she got out of her hellhole of teenager-dom she never talked about it again. Not even Neal when they were together in New York. But these were her parents. If she could tell anyone how shitty her teenage years were, she could tell them.
"Where should I start?" She asked, softly.
Emma was sandwiched on a bench between her parents. She could feel how happy they were that she was opening up to them. She didn't wait for her parents to tell her where to sart. She would start at her fourth foster home, when she was eleven.
"My fourth foster home was almost the worst. The sixth was. But that's later. I was no longer a naïve little girl. I was ready to be disappointed. But even after steeling myself for that, I was underwhelmed. It was a five room, two bedroom apartment. I was one of seven kids they were fostering. It was hell. Mr. and Mrs. Conelly never lifted a finger. I was the only girl, so I cooked every meal and did all the laundry. Mrs. Conelly would slap me whenever a screwed up," she paused and pointed to a crescent shaped scar above her eye that was usually covered by hair. "That's where her fingernail dug into my skin."
David thought of a joke about her cooking, but he knew it was the worst possible time to joke. Mary Margaret wanted to comfort her daughter, but she wanted to allow Emma to finish.
"That was a year and a half of hell. Neither of them worked regular jobs. Taking in fosters was how they made most of their money. They refused any of us leave except to go to school. So one day I just didn't go home after school. I slept on benches, in alleyways, anywhere I could for almost two weeks. A woman in the area noticed me and figured out rather quickly I was alone. She told mer she would give me back to the Conelly's. I begged her not to. I slept on her couch while she found a group home for me. I liked the group home well enough. Nice kids, the people running it actually care," Emma stopped, she had barely taken a breath since she started.
"By the time I was fourteen, I already trusted no one. I was stubborn and didn't care about anyone because I couldn't. My sixth home. The one before Neal. That place is why I'm so messed up. That place is why I thought it was a good idea to take the cheapest train to New York I could and steal a car, make a new identity for myself," Emma didn't continue. She vowed long ago to never tell the rest of that story. Not to anyone.
Her parents didn't pry. They were proud of her for sharing this much with them.
Emma wasn't the one crying. Her mother was. The thought of her baby in pain made her sick, and lead her to regret putting her in that tree all over again. Emma's parents hugged her the way they always did: her mother on one side and father on the other, with David taking hold of her head. Emma was happy. She never had a family before, but she had one now. And however dysfunctional and ridiculously confusing her family tree was, she had them. And she couldn't be happier.
