Chapter four

Henry furrowed his brow as he continued to look at the page, before he let out a frustrated groan and threw his head into his hands.

"Why do we have to write essays anyway?" he sighed, his voice barely audible between his fingers.

Emma tilted her head at him for a moment and she replied with a shrug, "because we do, complaining about the work isn't going to help Henry…"

The brunette looked up at her, he was about to argue, but the words died on his tongue when it occurred to him that he wasn't in a classroom. He was sure that if it had been a teacher who had said that, he would have retorted without thinking and then would have been sent out. That would inevitably lead to his mother being called and then being grounded. Of course, he knew that Cora was more lenient on him than she would be on Regina or Zelena if they talked back to a teacher, because she understood that it was out of frustration, but that didn't mean that she could leave his actions unpunished. At this point, he was sick of the cycle that he seemed to be going through constantly and he knew that some part of him had hoped that Emma helping him would be an immediate fix, but he was quickly realising that he would still have to do all of the work.

"How do I know what to write about?" he sighed after a moment.

"You need to make sure that you read the question properly first, you can write the best essay in the world, but if it doesn't answer the question then the teacher can't give you any marks."

Henry nodded and looked once again at the words on the top of the sheet he had been given to make up for his bad grades so far this year. This would be the first of many and he was surprised that the teacher had even agreed to issue it to him, but the woman had been just as surprised when he had asked for it along with the syllabus.

"How are metaphors used in To Kill a Mockingbird?" he read aloud, looking back up at Emma with a furrowed brow.

Emma tilted her head at the boy for a moment, before she picked up a pad of paper and handed it to him, "write down all of your ideas first…"

The brunette swallowed hard as he brought his pen to the paper and looked contemptuously at the novel sat on the bed between them. His pen stayed on the paper completely still for about five minutes, but Emma made no move to say anything as she simply waited. She knew that he had read the novel more than once since his parents had made sure he had all of the help he needed with reading, that really wasn't the issue. She had been slightly surprised at the programs on his computer that essentially read to you and allowed Henry to follow along on the page. Considering all of the books that she had seen in his room, she could tell that reading wasn't the problem, he obviously enjoyed it once he had found a way to make it easier. But that meant that she would need to help him find a way to make this part easier for him so that he could eventually start to see it as such a chore.

Eventually the boy looked up the blonde pleadingly and she reached out for the paper which he quickly handed over.

"Have you ever tried mind maps?" she asked as she set to work writing 'metaphors in To Kill a Mockingbird' in the centre of the page.

Henry shook his head with a furrowed brow as he looked over her shoulder to see what she was doing.

"Well I use them all the time…there's so much information in every subject, so there's no way that you can write a good essay if you try to force all of it in. But if you write down everything you know, you can figure out what would be the best things to write about. That way, you can just focus on maybe two or three things instead of all of it."

With that, she handed the paper back over to him.

Henry frowned for a moment with his pen hovering over the page, "so…I just…"

"Write down anything that comes to mind," the blonde replied, "even if you're not sure about it, just write it down."

The brunette swallowed hard, but it wasn't long before he was scribbling down all of the thoughts he had. Finally, the page was fairly full and he blinked at all of the words. He hadn't even realised that he knew that much about the book.

"Now what?" he asked, though the frustration had faded slightly from his voice.

"Now you need to pick the ideas that you find the most interesting. You can pick about two or three main ones and if any of the other ones are related to the main points you can highlight them as sub-points," she replied as she handed him three highlighters.

Henry stuck his tongue out slightly as he began doing as he was told and Emma briefly pictured Regina doing the same thing while she concentrated. She quickly looked down at her lap, hoping that Henry wouldn't see the blush that was creeping up her face.

A moment later, Henry looked up at his tutor and she handed him another piece of paper, "now write down all of the points you picked, draw a line off the main points to add any of the sub-points, that why you can see exactly what you're going to write about in the essay."

He once again did as he was told and Emma smiled broadly at the proud grin the boy was wearing as he looked down at what he had written.

"Okay…so now what?" he asked, his smile fading slightly when he realised that he would still have to write the essay.

"Point, evidence, explanation," she replied and when she received a confused expression she continued, "for each thing you've wrote down, you have to write a sentence to open your point, then put a quote to support it. Then you have to explain how the quote supports what you said."

Henry continued to frown and she smiled at him reassuringly, before she picked up a piece of paper that she'd had next to her.

The boy took it and blinked at all of the colours on the page but before he could open his mouth to question her, she pointed at her laptop and said, "I e-mailed the essay to you so you can use your computer to read along with it. Pink is point, green is evidence and blue is explanation. If you just read through that a few times, you should be able to see how to structure the essay. Just let me know when you're done and I'll show you how to plan the essay properly before you start writing it…"

The brunette nodded and allowed a smile to tug at the corner of his lips, before he said, "you'd make a really good teacher, you know?"

Emma just shrugged, looking down at her lap once again as she tried to stop herself from brushing off the compliment. She knew that school was the one thing that she excelled at and enjoyed. That, coupled with her eidetic memory, meant that she would most likely be a good teacher. But it felt amazing to actually have a chance to do it and she had to admit that she was looking forward to their next tutoring session so that she could feel that level of confidence again.

"So how about we meet after dinner? If you plan the essay today, you can spend the next couple days writing it and then I'll read it over before you submit it…"

Henry nodded vigorously, actually feeling excited to have been set some homework. He had known that he had wanted to have Emma as his tutor so that he didn't have to feel pressure, but he now he felt like he wanted to impress Emma just as much as his parents. But he also knew that she wouldn't be disappointed in him if he didn't do well straightaway and that she would probably think of another way to try and help him.

"Okay," he smiled as he stood from the bed, "do you need any more comics?"

Emma looked over to the growing pile on her desk across the room (which Cora had added to her room a few days ago) and she shook her head. Henry hadn't actually been taking back the comics that he borrowed to her so far, she shook her head and replied, "I think I'm good for a while…"

The boy smiled at her and grabbed the pieces of paper, and began walking towards the door.

He quickly slipped out of the room but cringed when he heard the next room's door also open at the same time. He automatically brought his mind maps and the highlighted essay to his chest and looked guiltily over to the brunette who had her eyes glued to her phone.

Regina seemed to realise that she wasn't alone in the hallway and her eyes snapped up from the device in her hand to look at her little brother. They stared at each other for a moment before Regina asked, "what are you doing?"

Henry swallowed hard and shook his head, "I was...just…taking some comics to Emma…"

"And she gave you…notes?" the older brunette asked with a quirked eyebrow.

"I asked to borrow some paper," Henry shot back before he scurried away, not giving his sister any more chance to question him.

Regina opened her mouth to say something else as she watched him go, but her phone let out a little ding and she just shrugged and looked down at it as she walked towards the stairs.

August leaned against the door frame and sighed deeply as he stared at the blonde teen lay in the bed while he adjusted the messenger bag strung over his shoulder to a more comfortable position.

His honeymoon had been the most peaceful three weeks of his life and he had loved every moment of it, but now he couldn't help but wish that he hadn't gone. If the agency wasn't so understaffed, he wouldn't have had to worry about the minors in his care, but the checks that were supposed to bed made weren't. He knew for certain that if he hadn't taken two months off work for all that came with getting married, then this would have never happened. He completely understood why his fiancé had suggested it since he had so many vacation days that he hadn't taken, but he was now being rather rudely reminded why he never took off more than a single week at a time.

That was why he had to return to find out that the neighbours of Emma Swan's foster parents had called the police and an ambulance when their suspicions had become too much for them to handle.

He couldn't imagine what it would have been like if he'd have come back and visited the week after as his schedule had dictated and no one had called for help. Emma's state was already difficult to take in and he was trying not to think about whether he would have been able to physically stomach if things had been worse.

"August?"

The man blinked out of his thoughts and realised that Emma must have woken up. He quickly pushed himself off the doorframe and walked over to the bed.

"Hey," he said, trying not to allow his voice to shake at the bruising on her face, her broken nose caused a deep shade of purple to ring her unfocused eyes. He couldn't even imagine the intensity of the pain killers that she must have been on.

Emma's right hand immediately went to the cast on her left so that she could figure out what the new weight on her arm was. For a moment, she tried to remember the last thing that had happened to her, but her mind was somewhat blank in that moment.

"Where am I?" she asked hazily.

Her social worker smiled sadly at her and replied, "the hospital. You've been unconscious for about a week, you had to have a couple of surgeries…"

The blonde nodded slowly, completely understanding exactly why she was here. In that moment, everything came back to her and she winced, which caused pain to ripple through her entire body despite pain killers pumping through her veins.

"What happened to the Chases?"

August furrowed his brow for a moment, wondering just why she would be worried about the people who had hurt her so much, but then the reason occurred to him and he allowed himself to smile slightly at how much of a good person Emma still managed to be.

"Mr and Mrs Chase are currently in custody and will be going away for a very long time. Victoria and Nathan are being looked after by Mrs Chase's sister and from what I've heard, she would be more than willing to adopt both of them…"

Emma blew out a rather pained breath as she managed to relax slightly. As much pain as she was in, it helped slightly that two more children were not sent into the foster system.

"So…when do I have to go to another home?" the blonde asked somewhat timidly.

The man smiled at her sadly and reached up to push aside a golden lock of hair that he knew must have been irritating.

"Nowhere just yet…I'll start looking for a placement soon, but the doctor said that it would be quite some time before you can be discharged."

Emma frowned again and she actually took a moment to look around her surroundings more critically, "am I…in a private room?"

August nodded slowly, "as I said, you're going to be here for quite some time…what happened was on the news so Social Services wanted to make sure that your recovery was fully funded in the interest of appeasing the media…"

"It was on the news?" the blonde sighed, she was already so sick of being pitied by people when they found out that she was in the foster system, but this would only serve to make it worse.

"Sorry, Em," August replied with a sigh, "after that case a few months ago with the baby, the media were more than willing to shed their light on this."

Emma nodded and looked down at her lap. She was somewhat relieved that she would be able to spend the next few months in this room. No new family. No new school. It would be actually refreshing, but she knew eventually that she would have to return to real life and she then people would be able to just Google her to find out more about her.

"So what am I supposed to do here?"

August tilted his head and replied, "you need to focus on getting better."

"But…"

The man quickly held up his hand to cut off her worry before he appeased her, "your GPA will be fine, Swan, the school has borrowed you a laptop that you can use to finish this semester's assignments."

With that, he brought the bag off his shoulder and placed it on the bedside table.

"You just need to ask one of the nurses for the Wi-Fi password."

Emma nodded in understanding and silence passed between them before August took a deep breath and began, "Emma I'm so…"

Before he could finish, the blonde shook her head and said, "it's okay August, I'm fine."

August thought to argue, but he knew that there was nothing he could do to convince her that she didn't have to pretend to be fine.

"I'll visit as often as possible," he assured, "and if you need anything, call me, morning or night, you understand?"

Emma smiled at him and nodded, "thanks August."

A/N Reviews are a great motivator ;)