There were a million things that could go wrong with this, Emma knew that. And so she exercised caution. Regina might be gone but her spies were very much here. Sidney with his camera was always a problem. He could hide very well. Emma once caught him up in the tree of her yard trying to get pictures of how she spent her day.

He fell out when she threw her shoe at him. No broken bones at least and he stayed far away from her after that. Hopefully he didn't get a really good look at her face. That might raise some questions when the past her arrived in town.

But Sidney was easily distracted . Emma sent him to the other side of town with the rumor that her husband was seeing another woman at the cabin today. He'd be busy for awhile waiting. IT wouldn't hurt their reputation, Sidney wouldn't dare publish that without photo proof and since Gold loved the Anna side of her, he was never going to get that proof.

Emma knew what would probably happen between Gold and 'Clara'. They wouldn't recognize the other. They'd be friendly and maybe awkward but nothing would spark. It would be impossible at this point. They still had ten more years left.

Oh God, ten more years. She was going to go insane here

If she wasn't insane already.

Emma brought Clara up to the pawn shop. Clara was wearing Jefferson's oversized coat to hide who she was. He'd even fit a nice snug baseball cap over her hair.

"I have to go talk to my husband about something before we go eat," Emma pulled open the door so Clara could go in.

"But you promised we'd grab something to eat," Clara muttered and walked in the door.

"we will in a moment," she told her. She was cautious, she knew that Clara had a hard time with things that weren't planned in advance. It wasn't something that she could help. She was stuck like this until the curse was broken.

So Emma tried to deal with it as best as she could given the circumstances that she was in right now. It wouldn't be Rumpel and Belle, but at least Clara and Mr. Gold could meet.

One thing that always made Emma smile was the way Mr. Gold's face lit up as soon as he saw her come in through the front door, "Anna! How are you today?"

"Fine, about to go grab some lunch."

"You look so pretty," he told ehr with a confident smile.

Emma felt herself going red now that he was saying that in front of Belle's cursed personality. She doubted Belle would remember it in ten years or hold her accountable for her husband complimenting her. "darling, this is Clara, she's my friend."

He looked up, Ema hoped for something anyway, some sign of recognition but he didn't give one. He just glanced up to Clara and gave a nod, "Hello."

Clara shrank under the man's gaze and went to go hide behind Emma.

He gave her an amused look, "My wife says plenty of wonderful things about you. She's lucky to have you, you've helped her a lot."

Emma blushed even more now, "Darling- ."

"Hm?"

"YOu're...you know….embarrassing her."

"Her or you?" he teased and then gave a gentle nod to Clara, "She talks about you often."

"Oookay," Emma cleared her throat, she hardly wanted her husband talking about lifting her up to his cursed true love, she just wanted them to meet, "We're going to the diner, would you like to come with us?"

He gave her that smirk that he always did when she was embarrassed about something. He apparently found it adorable, "No, I already had lunch. You two have a good time."

"Yeah, Granny's is a thrill a minute," she muttered and turned to usher Clara out of the shop, "See you tonight."

Clara stared at her as they left the shop, "was that truly your husband?"

"Yeah," Emma wondered why she would lie about that

"He's a lot more attractive than you led me to believe he was."

Emma shoved a slight bit of jealousy down to the depths of her subconscious back where it belonged, "Oh Clara."

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It was big news when Regina came back into town with a baby in tow. The whole town lit up with buzz about what gender it was, what it's name was. Where it came from. All sorts of theories were raised that Emma heard about. There were some mind boggling ones too, Ruby thought that Regina left town to have the baby, bring him back and claim he was adopted to avoid the scandal like it was the 1950's or something. As for how Regina could hide her pregnancy, that one was easy. Not all women showed. Even Ruby's own mother had a flat belly while she was pregnant with her and didn't know until the last minute that she was pregnant.

It was a good thing that Granny hadn't been around at the time to say something.

Emma on the other hand ignored most of it. None of it was very flattering anyway, they could all speculate all they wanted to, they'd know the truth here in about a decade.

She on the other hand trailed Regina to try and get glimpses of her son. She never got close, but the cries he gave cut her to the core. he wasn't happy, Emma wasn't sure what to do. She wanted to be there for him but she didn't want to expose herself.

Would he stop crying if she held him? She didn't know, she doubted that she'd ever find out.

It was a hard day with Clara when Emma came to the shop one day. She'd been hard to handle all week and Jefferson just asked her to go home while he dealt with her. Some cases, he could deal with her in ways that Emma couldn't.

"Hey," she greeted her husband.

"Hey," he said more quietly than usual, "Rough day?"

"Don't even know the half of it," Emma rubbed her back and looked up, "Why are you whispering."

He gave her a smile and lifted his arms to show that Henry was in his arms.

Emma dropped her purse.

"Regina needed time away from him and his constant crying, she dumped him off on me."

Emma creeped forward. Her eyes never leaving her son's face. She felt the tears gather in her eyes, "He's beautiful."

"He is. I don't know what Regina's problem is, other than some mild fussing, he's been lovely for me."

As Emma drew closer, she took as much opportunity as she could to memorize her son's face. His perfect little fingers and eyelashes, the way his forehead scrunched up when he slept...it was all almost too much.

Her husband went to place Henry in her arms. Emma jumped for a second, processed this and then went to hold him. This wasn't a fake memory, this wasn't a dream, this was her holding her son as a baby for the first time.

A tear slipped down her face as he stopped the mild fussing, yawned and went to sleep.

"It's alright," he told her and placed a tanned hand on the baby's head and kissed her hair, "You'd have been a lovely mother."

"No, I wouldn't have," she whispered.

"Only because you never see yourself the way the others around you do. The way I do." he stroked her hair, "I could take him back if you're uncomfortable."

"No," Emma said quickly and smiled at her son, "Let me hold him….just for awhile longer."