A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing :). There's more to the unicorns story... Enjoy!


Burden of Proof 3

That afternoon, Emma glanced at the clock and let out a sigh. Ordinarily she would've left work by this time. Not much crime in Storybrooke when Regina and Mr Gold weren't up to anything. Plus the station phone redirected to her cell when she wasn't there in case anything urgent called. So she really didn't have a reason to be there, but she'd been hanging around idly, watching the time grow later and later. She didn't want to go home yet.

Home. She'd never had a real one. To Emma 'home' had always been a figure of speech for 'the place where she slept and kept her stuff'. She knew that's not what most people conjured with the word. But now, she had Mary Margaret and—

"Henry! What are you doing here?" Emma sat up and let her feet fall from where they were propped up on her desk.

"Hey Emma!" chirped Henry, always happy to see her. He was still wearing his school uniform and backpack. "Is Miss Blanchard okay? The school said she was really sick. Do you think I could visit her?"

"Oh Henry, I dunno…" Emma said, trying to think of an excuse. "She's… not feeling well."

Yeah, she's not feeling well! She's depressed because she thinks I hate her guts, thought Emma with self-loathing.

"Okay,' sighed Henry. "Maybe when she's feeling better. Everyone in class misses her. We've got Mr Grady instead and he's really boring."

Emma smiled fondly at her son. Every day with him was precious time she thought she'd never get to have. She'd been unsure at first, when she'd first met him, but then he'd captured her heart and wouldn't let her leave. She'd gotten to know him. She couldn't imagine how she'd feel if – if her child hated her.

"I gotta go see Archie soon. I just wanted to see you today," said Henry.

"I better be going too," said Emma, checking the clock again.

"Oh, hey Emma? Can you give this to Miss Blanchard, please?" Henry held out a hand-made Get Well card.

"That's sweet, Henry." Emma smiled wryly at the card. Henry had drawn a comic-book style version of Snow White looking fierce holding a sword. Not the traditional incarnation surely, but it spoke of the boy's hero-worship towards his teacher. She hoped there would be no harm in the fantasy.

"And this is for you," said Henry, shoving an envelope into her hand.

"Bye Emma!" Emma watched Henry run out the door with a wave. She gathered up her keys and sighed, making her way out.


Snow had spent the whole day in a frenzy of cleaning and laundry. She was utterly sick of lying in bed doing nothing but crying and worrying. James had gone out for work hours before. So she'd blitzed the apartment and now was left with only one room.

Emma's room. Her daughter Emma's room.

It was still hard to reconcile the thought of the tiny baby she'd held in her arms for only a few minutes with the assertive closed-off woman she'd come to know as Mary Margaret's roommate and friend. She'd been inexplicably drawn to Emma the first time they'd met – she hadn't merely been indulging Henry and his plan to find his birth mother. Snow had bailed her out and brought Emma into her own home before she even knew her. And Emma was hard to get to know.

Snow cast her eyes over Emma's room, drinking in every detail of her things and where she kept them. Emma didn't have many possessions. She'd claimed it was because she wasn't sentimental but Snow suspected it was because it was easier to leave at a moment's notice without the hindrance of furniture and keepsakes. And for someone who claimed she wasn't sentimental, Emma sure had held onto her baby blanket for a long time.

Snow picked up the blanket reverently and lifted the cream wool to her face, inhaling its scent. It smelled different. Probably laundered many times since she'd wrapped her newborn in it. She ran her thumb across the purple thread that spelled her baby's name and a tear slipped down her cheek.

"What are you doing in here." Snow jumped at the voice behind her.

"Emma! uh I was just… tidying up and…" Snow trailed off weakly. Being caught snooping in Emma's room was not the best way to repair their already fragile relationship. Emma didn't seem too angry though, she noticed with relief.

"I see you cleaned the entire apartment," said Emma. "Thought you were supposed to be Snow White, not Cinderella."

"Actually Ella was my good friend." The memory of her friend's wedding brought warmth to Snow's face. It was the morning of the wedding that she'd found out she was pregnant. She and James had had a hard time keeping the news to themselves, not wanting to take away from Ella and Thomas's big day.

Emma cleared her throat and gently reached for the baby blanket. As she had done countless times, she traced her fingers over her name, embroidered in purple thread. "I told you I've spent my whole life looking for my parents," said Emma. Snow nodded slowly waiting for her to go on.

"Well, that's not exactly true. I started looking not long after I got out of juvie… but the truth is I gave up ages ago because there was simply nothing to go on. My birth certificate had no details of my parents. I went back to the hospital where I was taken when I was found but noone there knew anything. The only clue was my blanket. "

Emma looked down to at the corner of the satin panel where the letters 'SW' were sewn in tiny white stitches. She'd known the initials were there, of course, but they had never been a useful clue before. She'd assumed they were a signature of whoever had made the blanket and she now knew whose name they could belong to … but it was just a coincidence. She forced herself to believe that.

"Apparently one of the hospital workers saw this and came up with the name Emma Swan."

Emma tossed the blanket onto her bed and placed her hands on her hips. She shook her head slowly, staring blankly. "One thing always bugged me about it….Why would anyone go to the trouble of picking out a name and embroidering it onto a hand-made blanket only to abandon the kid."

"Maybe because they never intended to abandon her." Snow said pointedly and then smiled lovingly at Emma. "I made it for you."

Emma folded her arms defensively across her chest, but didn't interrupt.

Snow laughed softly as she told the story behind the blanket. "I'm actually really not very good at embroidery. It took me forever to get the 'E' right. I used to get so frustrated with it, I almost asked Ella to finish it for me. One day, Charming found me sobbing hysterically over yet another piece of ruined satin. That's why I threw the unicorn mobile at his head. Luckily it didn't break. It was made of fairy glass – it repairs itself."

Emma stared at her seriously. "Mary Margaret, this has gone on long enough. I think you should see Dr Hopper."

"You think I'm crazy," said Snow, crossly. "What is it going to take for you to believe?"

"I don't want to believe it," cried Emma.

Snow recoiled liked she'd been slapped as she realised what Emma meant. "W-wait. Not only do you not believe it, but you don't want it to be true?"

Snow felt as though her chest were being crushed. Her daughter didn't want her and it hurt so much. "You hope that it isn't true. Oh Emma, why?"

Emma set her jaw and didn't answer, afraid that she would start to cry. There was no way she was Snow White's daughter. She couldn't be.

"Never mind. It's going to be ok," said Snow, smiling through her tears. She wasn't sure which one of them she was trying to reassure.