Two Mondays.
It'd been two Mondays since Emma last saw Hook (not that she was counting because that would mean she was thinking about her pirate, which she most certainly was not doing).
She looked down at her plate of food, nerves buzzing in her stomach, flooding her with a random influx of nausea, and she twirled her fork in the spaghetti with disinterest. Her skin crawled, stretched too tightly over her body, tingling with an itch she couldn't scratch, no matter how many times she dragged her fingernails across her skin. A sudden chill swept over her and she ran her hands anxiously on her arms in a vain attempt to scrub away the cold that spread through her body.
Neal cast her a cursory glance from across the table as he took another bite of food. "You feelin' all right? You haven't eaten much the past few days."
Emma jumped at the sound of his voice and squinted at him with confusion as her sluggish brain labored to process his words.
"Emma?" He laid his fork down and leaned his elbows on the table, eyes searching her face, scrutinizing her features, mentally assessing the peculiar change in her demeanor. "You okay?"
She forced a smile, the motion feeling foreign and unnatural.
When was the last time she'd smiled?
"Yeah, I'm fine – just not that hungry."
She tossed a look to Henry, and Emma's chest ached as she regarded her son, sitting awkwardly in his seat, fidgeting as he avoided their stares. All she ever wanted to do was give him a family – a mom and a dad like any other kid, a family who sat down together for dinner, who watched movies on the couch together, who went out for ice cream together, who laughed and smiled and cried and loved together.
But he didn't have that, didn't have the familiar, comfortable unity of mother, father, and child. He had… this. This awkward thing with tension so palpable it was suffocating, drowning her in its disease.
She'd thought family was supposed to be easy and come naturally, but this wasn't natural, wasn't family, wasn't right. Emma couldn't place her finger on it, couldn't pinpoint the thing that made it all so confounding and uncomfortable. There was just something off about it, and Emma wanted to pull her hair out and weep and yell at it, scream it into compliance, bully it into submission so they could finally be a happy family.
This was supposed to be easy, supposed to be happy.
So why did it feel so wrong?
Three Mondays.
Emma laid in her shared bed with Neal as he pulled her close to him in his sleep, nuzzling his face in her hair. She cuddled against him, trying to find warmth and heat where there was none, and her heart sank. She slowly pried herself from his grasp and tucked her knees to her chest, fighting to fall asleep and erase the memories that played at the peripheries of her mind, little flashes of blue eyes and smarmy grins, soft touches and sinful lips. They tormented her, taunting her with a false reality that couldn't ever be, mocking her with the elusiveness of contentment.
She could be happy, she knew she could. It would all fall into place in a matter of time.
Four Mondays.
Emma sat in the dimly lit bar of The Rabbit Hole, finding solace at the bottom of a bottle, escaping the penetrating, worried glances from Mary Margaret and David.
David, who had taken it upon himself to don the paternal role as he cornered her in the apartment, speaking to her delicately, as though she would shatter at a moment's notice. He'd asked personal queries, questioned her uncharacteristic despondency, carefully told her she should go back to her therapy appointments and talk to Archie.
And she wanted to, oh how she ached with want to go back to her weekly appointments, to find the twisted, duplicitous sense of happiness and satisfaction that it brought her. But she couldn't and no one understood why.
It pissed her off, infuriated her, that after 28 years of him not being there, of her being an orphan thinking her parents had abandoned her, David had the audacity to show up at her doorstep and offer fatherly advice, stepping into a role that he'd been absent from for decades. He had no right to tell her what to do or how to live her life, much less give her advice on who she should be with.
She was sick of it, sick of them, all of them – Neal, Mary Margaret, David, Regina, Gold, Archie – everyone, all judgmental looks and probing questions, worried glances and hushed whispers.
Fuck them. Fuck them all.
She should just take Henry and leave, leave Storybrooke, leave all of this behind her and start over with her son – just Emma and Henry, mother and child, creating a new life for themselves away from the world, from the intrusive nature of her 'family', from the hurt and pain and treacherous memories that tainted this godforsaken town. Run away and never look back, run so she could escape her past and her memories, bottle up her emotions and tuck them away into that pit in her belly, ignoring them until they simply disappeared.
Take Henry and run, like she'd always run, like she always would run.
Because if there was one thing Emma Swan excelled at, it was running.
Five Mondays.
Emma picked Henry up from school and took him out to dinner, a mother and son date that she desperately needed, the one little beacon of light and happiness that brightened the shadows and eliminated the darkness.
They sat at Granny's sipping from their hot cocoa, topped with whipped cream and a dusting of cinnamon, and he laughed at one of her anecdotes. It was a beautiful sound, so honest and innocent, naïve and comforting, and Emma relished in the way it warmed her heart. If nothing else went right in her life, she at least had Henry. She always had Henry, always would have Henry, and that's all that really mattered, all that she needed. As long as she had Henry, she had a family, she had a home, and she could be happy.
If she didn't have Henry, she didn't have anything.
Six Mondays.
The sex was bad. Awful, even. She was hardly even interested in having sex anymore.
It wasn't Neal's fault, truly, it wasn't. He tried to please her, to make her come, to make her toes tingle and go numb with her release, to find that sweet spot that would make her see stars, to show her much he loved and cared for her.
But he used old tricks; the moves had worked on her years ago when they'd been together, but they did little to excite her now. They were different people, and they'd grown separately, grown apart, and what once made her smile, gave her pleasure, led her to her release, had changed. It wasn't that he lacked in talent or that his execution was poor – Neal was a skilled lover, Emma couldn't deny – but it just wasn't right, wasn't the same as it once was. Her heart wasn't in it, her body unresponsive, her own ministrations lackluster.
Emma had mastered the art of faking her pleasure, moaning his name, scratching her nails down his back, squeezing her thighs against him. She had Neal fooled – he only saw what he wished to see, blissfully ignorant to her deception, choosing to ignore the glaring signs that Emma wasn't satisfied, wasn't sated, wasn't happy. Neal was content in this illusion, and so she faked it, again and again, each time a little quicker than the last, simply wishing for it to be over so she could go to sleep.
Just fake it.
Fake it 'til you make it.
It was Emma's new life motto.
Because if she faked it enough, maybe she could disillusion herself into believing it, that this is what she wanted, that Neal was who she wanted, and that she was happy. Maybe she'd believe her own lie, fall prey to her own ruse, find her happiness if she told herself enough times that this was what she always wanted.
Fake it 'til you make it.
Seven Mondays.
It'd been seven Mondays since Emma last saw Hook.
Still not counting – it was simply a measurement of time and not an indication that she missed her pirate, or that he plagued her thoughts as reminders of him popped up at the most inconvenient times in the most arbitrary of places.
Or, at least, that's was Emma told herself while she stood in front of the mirror as she appraised her reflection – putting the final touches on her makeup, flattening out her shirt, sucking in her gut, puffing out her chest, finding her most flattering angle. A few of the residents of Storybrooke were planning on gathering at Granny's tonight for a Christmas celebration, and Emma simply wanted to look her best for the party, and the thought that Killian might show up didn't cross her mind. Not even once.
In all probability, he wasn't even going to be in attendance – Christmas was a holiday of her realm, and he'd likely never even heard of it before. Besides, Killian wasn't much of a people person, much less a party person, so even if he was aware of the celebration, he wouldn't go purely on principle.
Really though, of course he wouldn't be there, because he knew she would be there, and Emma could safely assume that he wasn't exactly keen on the idea of seeing her again.
He might go, though, because maybe he knew that she knew he wouldn't go, so he had to go just to prove her wrong, to show her up, to make a fool out of her and let Emma know that he was doing just fine without her. Then again, he probably knew that she knew that he knew that she knew he would go simply to prove a point, and he was counting on the fact that she knew he'd show up, so he wouldn't go to the party just so she'd be stewing in her seat as she waited for him to walk through the door, agonizing over her outfit and makeup to make sure she looked her very best.
Emma's head hurt.
She huffed out a sigh of frustration as she relaxed her posture, unhappy with her appearance, second-guessing her choice of attire, irritated by her seemingly inability to get her eyeliner just right on that damn second eye. It was an impossible task, an unachievable feat; a medal of commendation should be issued to those precious few people who were able to perfectly apply eyeliner equally to both eyes.
A person like Killian.
Emma never thought she'd be one to be attracted to a man in eyeliner, but damned if he didn't wear it well.
"You look great, babe," Neal said as he walked up behind her reflection, sneaking his arms around her waist. He planted a kiss to her cheek before he rested his chin on her shoulder, smiling at her through the mirror. "You're gonna blow 'em away at the party."
"Maybe we shouldn't go."
"Are you kidding? Henry's been looking forward to this for weeks! It's our first Christmas as a family – we should do something special."
There was that damned word again.
Family.
Emma was beginning to doubt if she'd ever truly understand the concept of the word, wondering if the idea was simply a fanciful, unobtainable illusion. Her only family, the only family that truly mattered, was Henry. That bright-eyed little boy who loved this time of year, when everyone he loved would be together under the same roof, when the magic of this realm sparkled and twinkled and glowed with the love and merriment of the Christmas season. She couldn't let him down, couldn't back out of the party now.
She offered Neal a tight-lipped smile, the gesture not quite reaching her eyes, and leaned her head on top of his. "Yeah, you're right. Just give me a few minutes to finish up and we'll head out, okay?"
"Sounds great," he hugged her tightly, and for a brief moment, Emma felt a pang of loneliness and sadness at the arms that wrapped around her, warm and comforting, yet still somehow just off, just not quite right.
He slipped his arms away from her and left the room, leaving Emma to stand in the front of the mirror, observing her reflection, staring at a face that was slowly becoming a stranger to her, a ghost of the person she'd once been. Dark circles rimmed her eyes, her cheeks sullen and heavy, her brow tense and worried, her lips tight and strained.
It was in this moment that Emma allowed herself to open the vault in her memory, nervously turning the key in the lock as her heart pounded erratically in her chest, riddled with anticipation. She thumbed through the file of guarded memories, the precious moments in her life that she rarely allowed herself to revisit, fearful of the emotions they provoked. But she needed it, needed that memory, needed the reminder that there was something more.
And then she found it, that one perfect memory that filled her with a soothing warmth that chased away the icy chill in her bones, unfurling the fingers that clutched her heart in a brutal, debilitating grasp.
Blue eyes stared at her, filled with a plethora of affectionate emotion that she didn't want to dwell on, didn't want to decipher and understand. A lazy, lop-sided grin lit up his dangerously handsome face, half hidden in the recess of a pillow; dark hair disheveled and messy from the previous night's activities; toned body splayed on a bed, sheets hanging haphazardly off his torso; accented voice lilting in her ears.
He'd be there, like she knew he'd be there, like she'd hoped he'd be there, and then maybe his face, his voice, his smell wouldn't have to be a mere memory.
And then she smiled for the first time in weeks as she let herself reminisce, remembering a time when she'd been happy, a time when she knew what it meant to feel loved.
A/N: This story is turning out to be a whole lot longer than I originally planned. Hopefully you guys stick around through the pain - my muse just thought that exploring Emma's emotional turmoil during this time was necessary. The bitter pain makes the end game all the more sweet, yes?
