Author's Note: Heyy everybody! I'm glad people like this first off! Second off, you will be happy to know this is a LONG chapter (I didn't want to cut it into two chapters) so enjoy! Third, this chapter does jump around a little bit. I didn't want to spend a lot of time with every detail of the twenty eight years (that would just take forever), so I have skipped some years. I also want it said that in the last chapter, it had been a while before Mrs. Hendrix figured it out. And now, without anything else, Chapter three...

I do not own OUAT or any of it's characters.

Three

"August?" Snow walked through the house. "August honey, where are you?" She searched. "Come on, this isn't funny anymore."

Snow searched everywhere for her son. As she walked into his bedroom she heard something in the closet.

"Honey, what are you doing in here?" Snow asked him when she opened the doors to see the small boy huddled in the corner of the small closet.

"I don't want to go." She smiled at the response.

Snow sat down next to Pinocchio and pulled him into her lap.

"Sweetheart we have to." She told him, running her fingers through his hair.

"Why?" He asked her.

"Look at you." Snow began. "Emma is four years old and you haven't grown at all since we got here, not to mention my…aging. People are going to start noticing soon if they haven't already."

"I don't want to though."

"I know, I don't either but we like the new place remember?" She reminded him. "You have a big bedroom and there are a lot of kids around for you to play with, and a school you and I can walk to, and a playground in the back yard to play on."

They sat quietly in the closet for a while before anything else was said.

"Why don't we age?" He asked, breaking the silence.

"Well…" Snow tried to come up with an explanation. "I…don't really know." She finally admitted. "The curse had some effect on us I guess. Otherwise we wouldn't have had the first house, or my car, or school, or money, somehow it gave us all that, but it won't let you and I age."

"It's stupid."

"Watch your mouth…" She quickly warned him.

"I'm not a baby!" Pinocchio yelled at his mother.

"Just watch your mouth please." She warned him again.

"I guess we should go get Emma." Pinocchio suggested, lightening the mood a little.

"We do have to get on the road soon." Snow answered.

The two made their way downstairs and outside to see four year old Emma playing with the Hendrixs'.

"Auggie!" Emma yelled, running for her brother, making the adults smile.

Snow walked over to her neighbors. "Thank you both so much." She told them, fighting the tears in her eyes.

"Keep in touch okay?" Mr. Hendrix told her.

"We will." She smiled.

"I mean it, don't just say you will." He told her, pulling her into a hug. "You are the daughter we never had." He whispered in her ear before letting go and going to say goodbye to the kids.

Snow and Mrs. Hendrix looked at each other for a moment. Each could see the tears welling up in the other's eyes.

Snow was the first to break the silence. "Thank you, for everything." She told her. "For watching the kids all the time, and for the help with the holidays, and…well everything else. I don't know what we would have done without you and Jeffry around."

"You would have figured it out." She answered. "But you're welcome, and Jeffry is right. Keep in touch. He loves those two," She said as they both looked to see the man playing with the two children. "We both do."

"We will." Snow answered, smiling as Mr. Hendrix let Emma and Pinocchio tackle him. "They both care about you two so much, I don't think they would let me forget to."

Mrs. Hendrix pulled her into another hug. "Goodbye Snow." She said, causing Snow to start crying.

"Are you two ready for a new adventure?" Snow asked her children a few minutes later as they headed for a new house, in a new town, in a new state.

OUATOUATOUATOUATOUATOUATOUAT OUAT

Snow walked down the hall towards the smallest bedroom of their soon to be old house.

"Emma?" Snow said quietly as she opened the door. "Are you ready to go?"

"Uh-huh." The little girl answered.

Snow looked at her newly six year old daughter and tried to stifle her laughs. It was obvious Emma had dressed herself. The little girl had her shoes on the wrong feet, her hair hadn't been brushed yet, and the ribbon on her dress hadn't been tied yet.

"Can mommy help you?" She asked her daughter, not waiting for her answer before crouching down to fix her daughter's dress first. "Where did you find that dress baby?" Snow asked.

"In that box." Emma smiled at her mother. "It's my favorite."

"I know it's your favorite, but it's quite…fancy for today, don't you think?" Snow asked her daughter. Snow, Pinocchio, and Emma went to church with their old neighbors, the Hendrix, last year. That was a dress they bought for Emma for Easter last year.

"But it's so pretty mommy." Emma pleaded.

"I know honey, but why don't we save it for another day." She told her daughter, going to the open box of clothing and pulling out a pair of leggings, a skirt, and a long sleeved tee shirt. "Baby, where are your shoes?"

"By the door." Emma answered as her mother helped her change clothes.

"Do you want me to braid your hair?" Snow asked, watching her daughter nod. "Well get me the hair brush and a pony tail holder please."

"Mommy?" Snow couldn't believe how fast time had gone by. She could remember waking up with her daughter in the middle of the night just days after her birth and now her daughter was dressing herself...or trying to at least.

"Yes baby?" Snow replied as she began to braid the short, blonde hair carefully.

"Are we gonna meet daddy?" The little girl asked with little emotion as she played with a doll's hair.

"What was that honey?" Snow felt her stomach drop as she prayed that she heard her daughter's question wrong.

"Where we are moving to, is daddy gonna be there too?" She elaborated.

Snow's heart broke in two. She dreaded the day that this question would come up.

They had always told everyone that August and Emma's father was in the military. It was always the story that he was deployed, that was the reason he was never around. When they had to move again, they always said he was coming home. They were moving to join him at a new assignment. It was an explanation that did exactly that, explained.

"Not this time sweetie." She said simply, holding back the tears. "Not this time."

OUATOUATOUATOUATOUATOUATOUAT OUAT

Snow had now thirteen year old Emma and Pinocchio sitting on the couch in front of her ready to share the news the two kids knew was coming.

"Well," Snow began, not able to get much further when Emma interrupted.

"Let me guess, we're moving…again." Emma jumped to conclusions. "Where to this time, your majesty?" She asked her mother rudely.

"Emma, why are you so mean now?" Pinocchio asked in an effort to defend Snow.

"You're the one who says she's Snow White, so wouldn't that make her royalty?" Emma replied sarcastically.

"Because she is Snow White!" Pinocchio yelled.

"Grow up August! Fairy tales are stories! That's all they are!" Emma yelled back.

"That is enough, both of you." Snow intervened, raising her voice over the yelling. "Yes Emma, we are moving again. It's getting to be that time."

"The time when everybody begins to notice 'Hey, Emma is the only one who looks her age'" Emma said as she rolled her eyes.

"I know you don't like moving Emma but-"

"It's not that I don't like it mother, it's that I hate it, I hate all of this! I hate uprooting everything every two or three years and starting over. I hate having to make new friends. I hate not being able to say where I'm from because, oh that's right, I DON'T KNOW WHERE I'M FROM!" She remarked before getting up and running to her bedroom, fighting the tears she knew were coming.

Snow looked to Pinocchio with softer eyes. "I'm sorry honey, I know you don't like it either."

"It's fine." He answered quietly. "I'm getting used to it."

Snow sat next to him and hugged him for a moment. "I'm sorry." She said quietly before kissing the top of his head. "I wish I could change this but I can't."

"It's okay, we only have fifteen more years, which is only seven or eight more moves." He told her. "The countdown seems to help."

Snow smiled at the little boy's intelligence. "Okay my little Einstein, have you done your homework?" The silence answered her question for him. "Better get to that then, and I will go see if I can calm your sister down." Snow told him, hoping that the few minutes between the outburst and her going into Emma's room was enough time for Emma to cool off a bit.

"Emma?" Snow knocked before attempting to open the door. "Emma, unlock the door please." She asked calmly, waiting for the small click of the lock. "Emma, please unlock the door." She pleaded once more before she heard it.

"Yes?" Emma asked as she returned to the spot on her bed that she had been sitting on.

"Are you okay now?" Snow asked, sitting in the desk chair across from Emma's bed.

"I guess."

Snow looked at her daughter and felt what she felt. "Emma, what's the matter?" She pleaded.

"What?" Emma continued with the short answers.

"You have never minded moving before, and now you suddenly hate it?"

"We claim to be a military family, and even they have homes, even they have somewhere they can say is where they are from." Emma started. "I feel like a nomad. I don't know where I'm from and I don't know my father, who is supposedly a military man, and I don't have somewhere to call home. The only place even close to home is the Hendrixs', but we haven't seen them in almost two years."

"Emma, we have tried to tell you where you are from and who your father is." Snow told her.

"Mom, please not the 'Enchanted Forest' stuff again." Emma begged.

"Emma, I know you don't want to believe it-"

"The Enchanted Forest is a setting, in a fairy tale, and with all due respect mom, I stopped believing in those years ago."

Snow felt like she had just been shot with an arrow as her daughter said she didn't believe in fairy tales.

"Well, I'm sorry you feel that way Emma." She said quietly before getting up and walking to the door. "But that's the truth, and we are moving again, so I guess you are just going to have to deal with it." Snow finished before leaving the room for her own, the whole time wishing for Charming to be here with her.

AN: Please review, I love reading them :) Thanks!