Chapter 10: In Motion

When an object gets tossed into the air, just milliseconds before gravity brings it crashing back to reality, it experiences a moment of weightlessness; a second where it stops, neither continuing its flight nor retreating, a shift in momentum. It is a state of non-feeling. The world pauses and nothing can disrupt this moment, this beautiful second where the object is alone, uncompromised by anything at all. It can be described as the numbness that follows the excitement. The instant just before the realization comes that the world keeps spinning, no matter how wonderful or wretched one feels. It is a self-defense mechanism, protecting the object as long as the consciousness can.

Emma was past such a state. She jolted up, almost jumping to her feet in the bed. Her world was dark, but she felt his body beside hers, still and lifeless. He was dead. She had not been able to save her son, and even worse she had killed him.

"HENRY! HENRY!" she yelled shaking his body like a rattle, as if that would bring her son back. Her eyes bulged out of her head and she was hysterical.

Henry's eyes snapped open and he gaped at her, gasping like a fish without water; his eyes were blood-shot red and she saw the unfiltered terror ripple through him. She stopped shaking him.

"Emma, what's wrong?!" he shouted, pushing himself up and looking around the room.

It was not as dark as Emma had first thought. She could see him clearly in the pale sliver of moonlight that laid on her bed. She let out a sob. She was shaking so badly it was more like jerking, but she brought her hand up to her eyes and pressed down on them.

"Nothing," even her voice shuddered. "I'm sorry. Go back to sleep."

Emma tried to climb off the bed but found herself instead slinking down, like her body was no longer solid, but a runny mess barely held in place by her skin. She sank to the floor and found herself gasping for air, there wasn't enough in this room. It was too tight, and Emma was sure the walls were closing in, malicious smiles glinting in the dark as they moved to suffocate her. She had to get out.

"Emma," said Henry, coming down to the floor with her. "You had a bad dream."

No, no it wasn't a bad dream. Bad dreams did not start in the evening and follow through two nights later. Bad dreams ended; it was not this continuous nightmare that existed even in her waking hours. When it did that, it was reality. It was called hell.

"Water," she managed. She needed something, something solid to cling to. Anything that could ground her and tell her where she was.

"I'll go get you some," said Henry, immediately coming to his feet.

"No. I'll go, I'm fine," she lied. He didn't believe her, and honestly, that was okay. She just needed to get out. He gave her his arm and helped her to her feet. Emma patted him a little too roughly on the head and then walked out of the room.

The stairs were a challenge. Emma closed her eyes, and grabbed the railing. It was like descending further into her nightmare, the stairs steep and a cold metal. After a slow minute she finally touched down, and pushed herself away. She felt better now, she could breath again. Waking up more, the open apartment filled her with the sense of home; a sense she always got when she woke in the morning. She wondered if Mary Margaret was in her room. She didn't look. Emma went all the way to the counter before she realized someone else was there.

David stood right next to her, a glass of milk cradled in his hands. He was staring at her, looking almost through her, like his blue eyes could see everything: her churching stomach, the mush of her brains now melting, and the strain of her heart. Emma looked away.

She reached for the cabinet with the tall glasses and pulled one out. But with her unsteady hand, the lip of the cup hit the cabinet door and tumbled from her grasp. She waited for the crash that did not come. David snatched his arm out and caught it, holding it to her in an awkward angle. Emma just stared, inside she'd gone numb, and she realized that the man she was standing next to her was not David. David was probably gone.

He paused, then fixed the cup in his hand, putting down the milk. "Water?"

If she nodded, she didn't know it. Emma was staring him down. It was all very subtle, but she knew that this man was not David. David was an apologetic man, someone who always wanted people to like him. He stood broad-shouldered but meek, fading into a background quickly. David's eyes were a dull blue, and his face always had the traces of a frown underneath. This man was different. In his underwear and shirt, this man stood tall and unafraid. For the first time she noticed the muscles that cut his chest, and she wondered if they had always been there or just appeared as suddenly as their owner. His eyes were the startling paint of a bluebird, clear water, and with dark dashes, as if child had run a heavy crayon through them, all combined. His jawline and cheekbones were more pronounced. None of this made him more handsome-David had been attractive physically- they just brought out everything that David was not. Here was a leader, a ringmaster, and a fighter. She recalled the sword she had held in her hand not long ago and remembered wondering what kind of person could use something so beautiful. Here was that man.

He turned the faucet on, catching the water in the tall glass and filling it halfway. Then he handed it back to her. She did not know what she was supposed to feel. For David she had felt pity and the annoyance that such a buffoon kept ruining her only friend's life. She thought Mary Margaret could do better; David was a pain. But when she looked at him, Prince Charming, she felt an almost…reverence for the man. It surprised her. If this was her father, then he was exactly what Emma had once dreamed. He was tall and strong, with blonde hair like hers (she had always imagined her parents would have blonde stringy hair).

Emma shocked herself. For the first time in her life, she did not feel like running. Conflict she could handle, old emotions and memories she could not, and she knew it. But it was like he kept her firm, allowing her to just stand there. He didn't reach out, didn't try to touch her, and he didn't speak. He just waited. Emma took a small sip, wetting her parched throat.

"You're Prince Charming then…" she said slowly. How strange that it wasn't as awkward as she had imagined.

He scoffed good-naturedly. "Snow calls me that. You can too, if you want. But everyone else calls me James."

"You say that like it's not your name either," she eyed him, suspicion rising in the back of her mind.

He shrugged and took a sip of his milk. "I've found names mean different things depending on who's speaking. James is fine."

Emma thought that over in her mind. What did that mean? What was his real name? She stalled and took a big gulp of water. It tickled her thirst and made her want more. In another second the glass was empty. He reached out and took it from her, filling it again. Emma watched him. He seemed to be holding back, the muscles in his arm acting to keep him rooted, even his voice was withdrawn, taut over a layer of welling emotion.

"I heard voices," he said looking at her softly. She wondered what he was thinking. "Is everyone alright?"

She turned and leaned back against the counter. No, everyone was not alright. Her son had died, she'd battled a dragon, magic existed, she'd held a sword, fairytales were real and she was one of them, and the one person she had spent her entire life looking for was standing right beside her, as old as she was. No, she was not alright.

"We're fine," she said. Emma wondered at how easy it was to speak to him. They weren't speaking about anything in particular, but at least the words were coming out. She had barely been able to look at Mary Margaret. Now she was standing in the dark, having a conversation with a man who was supposed to be her father. Perhaps the shadow over it all was like a curtain, giving her a sense of anonymity; she had never really known David anyway.

"I'm glad Henry is okay. Snow told me what happened."

Emma took a deep breath and it shuddered out. She would never be able to get the picture out of her head. Earlier when she'd insisted Henry take a nap, she'd had a panic attack watching him sleep. She sat on the floor beside him counting the number of times his chest rose. When she realized how creepy that was, she forced herself to leave the room. And then he had screamed.

Her face must have been bent in pain, because Charming, or James, whatever, stood straight and inched to her.

"Emma-"

"Stop!" she snapped.

That's where the anger came from. When they said her name like that, like they knew her. They were reaching out, but she could not handle it, mentally or physically. They said it like they wanted to comfort her, and she despised it. Sentences that started that way always ended badly. Emma, we have a problem. Emma, I don't think we can keep you anymore. Emma, you can't wait forever, you need to pack your stuff now. Emma, you were found on the side of the freeway. Emma, I love you.

With every sentence came the memory and mental image of a person she now hated. Each one of them had added another layer of grime to the shit life that belonged to Emma Swan. The friendliness hit a brick wall and suddenly she was livid again. Emma glared over at him, infusing her stare with all they hate she had stored over the years, specifically kept for the day that she met him. He felt it. His eyes went wide and he stepped back, his mouth a little open. There were tears forming.

It satisfied her. Emma slammed the glass into the sink, spilling water over her arm. She didn't bother to clean it up but marched from the kitchen and up the stairs, hoping he was watching her the whole time. She wanted to show him she didn't need him. That he was as useless to her now as her mother was. When she reached the top of the stairs Emma quietly settled down. She needed to be calm before she walked back into the bedroom; scaring Henry again would be awful. She brought her knees up to her chin and stared at the bottom floor.

"Emma, stop kidding yourself. They're never coming."

"You're just mad at me because my parents aren't dead."

"You don't know that they aren't."

"Yes, I do."

"No, you don't. You don't know anything about them."

"Yes, I do. They're looking for me. It's just taking them a long time because I keep moving so much. They're going to catch up."

"You're delusional, Emma. Your parents pulled over and dumped you out into the street. Trust me, they're not looking for you."

"They didn't dump me there. They had to leave me. Something happened and they had to leave me."

An annoyed scoff. "Right, just like Dustin's parent's had to beat him up. They didn't mean to, it just happened."

"My parents aren't like that. You'll see; when they come to get me, you're going to be jealous. I just have to wait for them. They'll find me."

"Okay, sure. You just keep holding your breath."

Emma let out a shaky puff of air. That had been the last stretch. When she was eight years old she had convinced herself, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that her parents were coming. If she just stayed still and waited, they would knock on the door and take her home. But months after talking to that kid, she started to think that maybe they weren't coming. Maybe the world was as awful as it seemed. By nine years old she'd gone hard. No family could handle her, and she liked it that way. No more attachments. She wanted to be in and out. Bouncing around from house to house was better, they were all terrible anyway so why stay? And when she did find a home that was good and caring, she raised hell until they sent her back. She determined that no one was going to hurt her like her bastard parents. They may not have been looking for her, but one day she would find them. They would see everything they missed. And she would chew them out for it. Twenty eight years of hardcore scavenger hunting and she had come away with nothing.

Until now. Now her parents were downstairs. Her mother was not foul and ugly, and her father was not fat and stupid as she had imagined. In fact, from the outside, they might have been wonderful. Her mother was a shadow of a loving woman, and her father, admittedly, reminded Emma a lot of herself. But they were her age, they seemed as if they cared for her, and they were sitting right there.

It was nothing that she had expected.

The silence and darkness had calmed her down enough now, that she stood and padded back into her bedroom. Henry sat on the bed, his mop of dark hair greeting her. He lifted his face when she entered and gave her a sad smile. She returned it and climbed onto the mattress with him. Her back against the wall, she curled her feet under her, tucking the blanket over her toes so that they weren't cold.

"I'm sorry for that."

Henry shrugged and leaned back against the wall, mirroring her position. They both looked across at the hard brick wall. Emma wondered if the storming sea within her would ever settle. When she was with Henry it settled, but it was never enough to make her feel calm, at peace. The clock caught her eye, 5:00am its glowing eyes said.

"You should go back to sleep. You've got to be tired," she told him but Henry shrugged his shoulders again, his face twisting in that cute way.

"We don't have to sleep tonight," he said.

So they didn't. They talked quietly in the still darkness of Emma's tiny room. They looked out of the window as the sun rose, changing her bedroom landscape from a shadowy unknown to a bright space. The old and frayed furniture came to life, dotted with flowers in vases and little bird statues that Mary Margaret had placed all around the house. But mostly they sat, side by side, taking in the last moments of alone time before facing another day in a battle torn town. All the while Emma sensed the two bodies downstairs, like steel weights attached to her shoulders, and wondered what to do.