"Emma!" Mary Margaret said in surprise, opening the door wide and allowing Emma to pass through. "What's wrong?" she asked at once.
Emma was trembling all over and she could feel the tears welling behind her eyes. It was all she could do to keep herself together and then suddenly, she couldn't. There in the middle of the Nolans' comfortably cluttered living room, Emma sobbed into Mary Margaret's shoulder. Mary Margaret did not ask questions or demand an explanation. She simply held her friend as sorrow poured out of her. At last, Mary Margaret ushered her to the couch and brought her a glass of water and a bottle of wine, for good measure.
They sat in silence. Mary Margaret didn't ask the plethora of questions no doubt running around her head. She knew Emma too well. The two women simply sat, both waiting for Emma to start talking.
"I can see colors." Emma's voice was raspy. She took a sip of water. Glancing at her friend, she saw Mary Margaret go through every emotion she herself had experienced over the last few weeks; shock, joy, wonder and absolute sympathy. Mary Margaret could also see colors. She knew the impact of this statement.
"How long?" she asked.
"Two weeks." Emma took another sip of water.
A look of dawning comprehension crossed her face. "The flowers. They were the first thing to change, weren't they?"
Emma nodded and finished her glass of water. Without being asked, Mary Margaret poured a glass of wine and passed it to Emma.
"Who is it?" Mary Margaret asked gently.
"His name is Killian." Emma smiled as she said his name, she couldn't help it. She could still remember the feeling of his lips on hers and could still hear his declarations of love running through her head.
"You've been seeing him?"
"We've just been having coffee. Well, it started out that way." Emma took a sip of wine.
"And now?"
Emma hesitated. "I kissed him."
The impact of everything that had happened over the last two weeks hit her in that moment. She wanted to cry and laugh and throw something. Mary Margaret put her hand on Emma's.
"Do you love him?" Mary Margaret asked. Emma nodded and took the tissues her friend offered her. They were quiet for the longest stretch yet.
"How can I do this to Neal?" Emma asked, her voice trembling. "How can I just launch a grenade into the middle of our decade-plus marriage? How do I explain to him that yes, I love him, but that's not enough? I can see colors now, so that's it for us! The universe has spoken and it's time to get a divorce!" Emma finished bitterly, taking another sip of her wine.
"Emma, you don't have to get divorced."
She let out a hollow laugh. "I'm in love with someone who isn't my husband. What choice do I have?"
"Emma, you always have a choice." Emma shot her friend a look. Mary Margaret continued, "Yes, you can see colors now. We both know that means you met your Sou-"
"Don't say it!" Emma snapped.
Mary Margaret rolled her eyes. "Your True Love, then. Can I say that?"
Emma muttered a response.
"Just because you met your True Love doesn't mean you have to do anything. You are still the only one who gets to determine your fate." Mary Margaret paused. "Does Neal know?" She asked gently.
Emma shook her head.
"Are you going to tell him?"
"I don't know if I can," she said quietly, taking another shaky sip of wine.
"Emma, you have to tell him. What happens if you stay with Neal another ten, twenty, fifty years? Are you going to keep something this monumental a secret from him for the rest of your life?"
Emma didn't know what to say to that. Mary Margaret pressed her point. "What if he does find out? What if five years from now you accidentally let it slip that you can see colors? How do you think he'll feel to know that all that time, your soul longed to be with someone else?"
Emma felt like the most horrible person on the planet. Like scum on the earth. She never wanted to be this. She turned her nose up at those cliche women who leave their husbands for the hot tennis instructor (or in this case, the knockout musician/flower store clerk who makes her head spin just by standing too close to her). She didn't want to be that person. But she wanted to be with Killian.
"Emma, sometimes love isn't enough." Mary Margaret said gently."If this is really how you feel, than you need to tell Neal. It wouldn't be fair to keep this from him."
Emma nodded. "I know. You're right." Emma sighed heavily, "I just don't know how I'm going to explain this to anyone else when I can't even explain it to myself. And Henry! what about Henry? How do I explain this to him?"
Mary Margaret sighed. "I'm not saying it's going to be easy, Emma, but True Love rarely is."
/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
"Hey." Neal called from the couch as she closed the front door behind her. ESPN blared from the giant 52 inch screen that Neal insisted they needed for their already cramped living room.
Emma sat next to him on the couch. Neal looked at her and turned off the TV. "Emma? What is it? What's wrong."
"Nothing, I just, I wanted to talk to you." Emma said quietly, her eyes on her lap. She fought back a rising panic and cleared her throat.
"Okay." Neal said slowly.
After many hours spent agonizing over how to tell Neal, after all of her careful preparation, Emma suddenly froze. Was she really going to do this? Was she really going to blow a hole in her marriage? Her one saving grace in all of this was that Henry was at a friend's house for the night. Emma didn't think she could handle telling both of them in one day.
"I think I need a break." Emma said hesitantly.
"What do you mean?" Neal asked.
"I need some time… away from this… from us." Emma said slowly, her limbs shaking.
Neal was silent. He let out a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair. "Well, I can't say I didn't see this coming."
"What?" Emma finally looked up at him.
"Things have been so different lately." Neal stared at the ground in front of him.
"Different how? Emma asked.
"You've changed, Emma." He said, looking up at her. "You're rarely home these days and when you are, I can tell you're not really here. You're not really in this. It takes two people to make a marriage work and lately I feel like I've spent more time with an empty shell than with the woman I married."
"I had no idea you felt that way." Emma said quietly. She reached out and took his hand. He rubbed his thumb against hers, just like he used to. She smiled slightly at the gesture.
"Emma, do you want out of this marriage?" He wasn't looking at her.
She didn't know what to say. Or rather, she did, but she wasn't ready to hurt him or herself that much. Not yet. "I don't know. I just need some time to think."
"Bullshit." He did not raise his voice. He did not even sound angry. He simply stated a fact.
"You're right." Emma said, her eyes still on their joined hands. "I do want out."
"Why?"
Emma hesitated. She knew what would happen if she told the full truth. She softened the blow as much as she could. "I can see colors, Neal."
"You can?"
"Yes." Emma fought to keep her excitement in check but it was difficult. "Your eyes, Neal, your eyes are like warm hot cocoa with cinnamon. Henry's hair has flecks of sunlight in it, and sunlight! Neal, sunlight on the water is like music and… there's just so much color, so much beauty in this world that I never knew before."
Neal was quiet for a few minutes. Emma began to grow nervous. She was afraid she'd gone too far. "Who is he?" he finally asked.
"What?"
"You're…" Neal couldn't bring himself to say the word. He cleared his throat. "You see colors now. You didn't before. So who is he?"
Emma hesitated. "I don't think that's important."
"It's Killian, isn't it?"
Emma gasped. "How do you know that?"
Neal's smile held no humor, no warmth. "I met him."
"What?"
" I met him." Neal repeated, "I went into the shop. He sold me daffodils. He told me they were even more brightly yellow than they had been the day before. I asked if he could see colors, he said yes. He said he didn't used to see colors, it only happened recently. His face got this dreamy, far away expression when he said it."
Emma tried to process this. "When was this?"
"A week ago."
Emma pulled her hand out of his grasp. "A week ago? You've known about this for a week and you never said anything?"
Neal finally looked up at her. His eyes were bright. He nodded. Emma had never seen him so distraught in all their years together. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him. She heard him stifle a sob.
"I'm sorry." She said. "I'm so sorry." Emma had seen more than her share of sorrow but never before had she felt like this. Never had she held someone whose heart she had just broken. It felt wrong to be the source of his comfort when she had also been the cause of his pain. Emma wiped the tears from his face and kissed his cheek.
"I'm so sorry," she said again.
"It's okay." he said, quietly.
After a time, Neal sighed and sat back on the couch.
"I guess I always knew this was a possibility." he said, clearing his throat.
"You did?"
"Well, yeah. When we met, neither of us could see in color. I didn't think much of it back then. I didn't really think that would change."
"Neither did I."
They were quiet. Again, Emma took his hand. Neal looked down at their entwined fingers.
"Emma, if you knew... if you knew that this would happen one day, would you have married me?"
"I don't know, I guess I hadn't really thought about that," Emma said. "I mean, really, if you think about it, we got married because the stick turned blue," she added carelessly.
Neal was quiet. "Wow," he said softly, leaning away from her, "Is that really what you think?"
Yep. Emma was scum. Officially. "I mean, wasn't it?"
"No!" Neal insisted. "Emma, I asked you to marry me because I loved you. I wanted to have a family with you.
"I loved you too! But Neal, I was eighteen!" Emma said.
"So?" Neal didn't realize he was close to shouting now.
"So we were young! I didn't know anything about marriage! I was scared, I had a baby coming, it seemed like the right choice at the time."
They were both quiet again. Then Neal asked, "Did you ever love me at all?"
Emma couldn't take the pain in his eye. The pain that she caused. All because of a damned flower. "Of course I did. I do! I love you, Neal. But sometimes, love isn't enough."
/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
Emma stepped out of the apartment later that night and felt relief. A weight had been lifted. Her thoughts fell once more on a blue eyes musician and suddenly she couldn't stop smiling. She pulled out her phone. Though they had exchanged numbers, Emma had only ever texted him if she was running late to meet him, which happened more often than she liked to admit. A few minutes later she was hopping in a bright yellow taxi.
She paid the driver and nearly ran up the front steps. She pushed the door open when the buzzer sounded and almost floated to his front door. Barely a moment after she knocked, he was there. Killian's hair somehow looked windswept and he wore a smile the likes of which she had never seen. At once Emma threw her arms around him and their lips met. Again, her head spun as they stumbled together through the entryway, Killian reaching out blindly to shut the door behind them.
