A/N: To the reviewer that asked if I A Fault in our Stars'ed the last chapter...I didn't really mean to, but after I finished writing it I thought the same thing. We'll consider it a homage to the book. :)
While I usually update pretty fast, the reason for this story's extra rapid updating is because I have to start studying for some super fun GRE's. I set a date for myself to start that and it's rapidly approaching, but I couldn't leave you guys hanging! I guess this way you'll always have an update waiting for you? haha.
Enjoy!
There had been a brief conflict on whether Emma would remain living in Regina's house, and at what price. In the end, Regina won. Kind of.
Emma insisted she would pay rent, but Regina insisted no more sleeping on the porch like some kind of beggar. Instead, she moved Emma into the guest room.
Later that night, Emma had to admit, sinking into anything that wasn't a thinly padded porch swing was felt amazing. Her eyes drifted closed within a matter of seconds.
"Mom! Check this boat out." Emma heard herself say as she glanced back at her mother who was fiddling around with something on the deck. The pixie haired woman remained hunched over, so Emma tried again.
"Dad! Look at that!" Her dad looked up as he heaved a box of ice packed fish off the boat.
"Wow, would you look at that." He went and stood next to Emma as they both admired a brand new fishing boat with state of the art gadgets.
"Isn't she a beaut?" A man with a short beard said as he admired the boat with them.
"Is she yours?" Emma asked with wide eyes.
"Sure is. I'm Bernie." He held out his hand and Emma shook it firmly. He must be a great fisherman to be able to afford that, she thought to herself.
"Bernie? That's an awful fisherman name. You're more of a…" Emma looked up at the man whose eyes were a sharp grey. They stood out distinctly against his tan skin, "Silver" she finished.
"Silver eh? I like it. And what do I call you?" He smiled largely and his eyes squinted correspondingly.
"Call me Swan."
Emma's eyes snapped open as she replied the dream in her head. She wondered why the situation with the man at the docks had rattled her so much that it caused her to have a dream about it. It seemed her subconscious was so unsettled by his presence that it had taken it upon itself to fill in the gaps.
In the middle of trying to decipher the meaning of her dream Henry ran into Emma's room, as he did every morning, to wake her up. It was even less effort now because he only had to walk down two door to her room versus walking all the way out to the porch.
He woke her up at six this morning and because Emma knew how tired Regina was from work, she allowed her to sleep. She fed Henry and left the brunette a note on the counter while she and the little boy went to play on the beach.
They walked along the sand as the dream Emma had that night settled in her head.
Meanwhile, in the brightness of the early morning, Regina lay soundly asleep in her bed, having a dream of her own. Although this time, it wasn't the dream.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Regina heard herself say to Emma who was staring at her with a knowing smirk on her face.
"You're ridiculous." Emma replied, her smirk growing into a brilliant grin.
"How am I ridiculous! I just met you and you're staring at me like that. It's weird." Regina felt herself roll her eyes, but the corners of her lips turned upwards slightly. She could feel her heart quicken in her chest.
"I'm just waiting for you to catch up." Emma responded with a small shrug of her shoulders.
"Catch up to what?"
"To this." Emma leaned forward and pressed her lips into Regina's softly. She held it there for a second before pulling back slowly. Regina's head leaned forward to capture as much of the kiss as she could before Emma's lips retreated from her own.
Regina's eyes drifted open slowly this time, her mind playing and replaying the dream she had immediately. She groaned as she hid her head in the blanket.
It was bad enough the woman was having such a debilitating effect on her when she was awake. She couldn't handle her infiltrating her dreams too.
"Emma. Are you staying here forever?" Henry walked along the beach just high enough off the shore so the ocean would wet his feet, but not so much that it would advance up to his ankles.
"Um, I don't kno,w kid. Want me to leave?"
"No, I like you. You let me drive cars on your head. My mom never lets me." Henry said as he looked up to Emma with shining eyes.
"Well, I'm glad that's what won you over."
"Yeah." Henry sighed as he stopped and dug his feet far into the sand.
When Emma realized he had stopped she went back and stood next to him, waiting for him to finish whatever he was doing.
She glanced around and saw a familiar reed like plant growing in the dunes. Running over quickly, she plucked one from the ground and sat down on the sand while still keeping an eye on Henry.
While standing there, he had found another sand crab crawling around and prodded it with a stick he found. Always with the stick.
He got bored with the crab twenty minutes later, walking back to where Emma was sitting.
"What are you doing Emma?" Henry leaned onto her bent knees with his chest and craned his neck to look at her rapidly moving fingers.
"You'll see, just one….second." She pulled a knot tight and held up her creation to Henry.
It was a tiny little braided bracelet made from the fibers of the reed. She'd been making them her whole life.
Her mother used to grab a handful of reeds before they would set out on a long fishing trip and she and Emma would braid them into different designs while Emma's father drove the boat to wherever their next fishing destination was.
"Cool!" Henry held out his wrist as Emma slipped it on and tightened it with the two braided fibers that hung down. He looked at his wrist and twisted it around to inspect it from all angles.
"Come on bud, let's go see if your mom is awake."
"I'm gonna show her this!" He held his arm out as if Emma had just given him the most precious, fragile gift he'd ever received in his life. He remained holding his arm slightly away from his body until they reached the house.
Regina sat on the porch reading a newspaper, small reading glasses sat on the end of her nose. She was so absorbed in the paper she didn't see Emma and Henry until they were walking up the steps. Looking up over the frames of her glasses, she lowered the newspaper slightly.
"I like your glasses" Emma said honesty, a light pink blush appearing on her cheeks. Regina ripped the glasses off her face, scolding herself for forgetting she was even wearing them.
"No. I don't think you understood. I said I like them," Emma jumped up the top step, took the glasses from Regina's hand and put them back on her face, making sure not to poke her in the eye with the end.
Regina sat frozen as Emma's face leaned in dangerously close to her own, "That means, you should wear them." Emma finished, looking back at her handy work now that the glasses rested back on Regina's face. Regina smiled softly and looked back down at her paper, unsure if she would be able to reply without her voice wavering.
"MOM, LOOK WHAT EMMA MADE ME," Henry burst in between the two woman and held out his arm as if his life depended on it.
"What is it, honey?" Regina fixed her glasses slightly to look through them, glancing up to Emma as they exchanged a smirk.
Regina looked at the intricately braided bracelet that sat on his arm. Turning his wrist over, she saw the zig-zag pattern that made it adjustable to Henry's wrist.
Her heart stopped.
Her jaw slacked.
She ripped off her glasses.
"You made this?" She asked in a slightly trembling voice.
"Yeah…" Emma looked at Regina questioningly, unable to tell exactly what she was thinking.
Regina pushed her chair back and ran inside to the kitchen. She leaned against the kitchen wall, tilting her head back.
What's happening? She felt like crying. She might already be crying.
That bracelet had been in the dream. Just the other night, when she had the longer version of the dream she remembered distinctly looking down at her wrist, that exact bracelet on it. She remembered because in her dream, she could practically feel how much she loved the damn thing.
But how? I've never seen it before in my life.
Her stomach churned and for a second there she thought she might be sick. She'd felt crazy, but never so crazy that she thought she might lose it. Before she was able to further evaluate the chance she was going to vomit, Emma burst through the kitchen doorway with wide eyes.
"What's wrong?" She looked at Regina up and down just to check for any sign that she was hurt. The only thing she saw on Regina's face was confusion.
"What's wrong?" The blonde woman repeated.
Regina just stood there, leaning her head back against the wall and closing her eyes. There was no way it was possible. I know I've never seen that bracelet besides in my dream.
"I just don't think- I don't know if- And I can't-" Regina was reduced to a blubbering fool. She had no idea how she was going to explain that just because she had seen the bracelet Emma made, before in her dream, her life felt like it was spinning out of control.
Emma saw the condition that Regina was in and empathized with the woman who looked like her world was slipping away from her.
"I think it's time I told you about how I ended up here." Emma said quietly.
She told Regina to stay put, and left for two seconds to put on a movie for Henry, returning to the paralyzed woman who had slid down the wall so that she was sitting.
Emma joined her, leaning her own back against the kitchen wall. They sat side by side just as they had against the bait shop. Emma scootched closer to Regina so that the sides of their legs were touching. Somehow, she knew Regina needed it.
"My whole life I traveled around the ocean with my family. They were fisherman, like I told you. So we'd spend the summer on the boat catching fish and then going to harbors to sell it. I loved it. Every minute of it." Regina listened to Emma as she looked at the spot where their knees were touching. If she focused on that one point of contact, she was able to remain grounded.
"A week ago when we were out, the fish were biting. We caught more fish than we could manage. So much that we had to stop at some harbors we don't usually right near here. We saw the seas getting kind of rough, but my Dad said that he'd be able to get us around it. My parents spent a lot of time whispering behind closed doors though, so I kind of had a feeling that it was more serious than he'd let on. One night, I could feel the boat rocking more than usual, it was jerking around rather than just rolling back and forth," Emma looked at Regina who was resting her head against the wall, absorbed in Emma's story.
Emma continued, preparing herself for the hard part that was about to come.
"I woke up in the middle of the night to them screaming back and forth on the deck. The wind was too strong and it was blowing us off course, there wasn't really much we could do except for man the wheel. Anyway, my mom pulled me aside, I guess she knew that something bad was going to happen. She told me…" Emma trailed off.
She wasn't ready to reveal that just yet, she couldn't. She didn't even completely understand it herself.
Regina saw the blonde woman struggling beside her and did something that felt so natural at the time. She reached out her hand and interlaced it with Emma's.
"Let's just say she told me something that changed a lot. Within ten minutes, water was spilling over the deck and the boat was almost tipping completely to the side with each gust of wind. I remember my dad screaming at me from the wheel. He told me to find my mother. So I ran to the other side of the deck, I couldn't find her. When I ran back, he was gone,"
Regina held on tighter to Emma's hand and looked over, seeing tears fall slowly down Emma's face. They weren't angry sobs though, ones that cried out for justice, revenge. They were surprisingly the opposite. Ones of cathartic release.
"My mom was launched off the side of boat. She was hanging on the nets hanging off the sides, but I couldn't get to her in time." Emma looked down at her and Regina's joint hands.
"How did you survive?" Regina asked, her voice scratchy from lack of use.
"I got launched off the boat as well, but there was a lifejacket floating near and I grabbed onto it. I hung on for awhile, but I passed out after a couple hours and woke up to Henry poking me on the beach."
They both remained against the wall, the information that had just been revealed swirling around between them.
Their hands remained tangled, the sides of their bodies touching completely.
In the silence they could hear clips from Henry's movie.
But they didn't move. They just sat there.
Because at that moment, right there, it was the only place they felt completely comfortable.
Alright so far we've got: a bracelet, a man named Silver, and two women who don't even know they're falling for each other.
Read, review, favorite, follow, whatever else there is to do... I appreciate it :)
