A/N: I vow to do my very best to keep this a fair fight. I vow to stay as true as possible to the characters in this modern au I'm building on the fly. By the end, Emma will be the one to choose her true love (not me!). I will lay hands on whatever religious object (or.. scientific?) that you want, and I will swear on it.
The Other Shoe
It was ridiculous.
She was being ridiculous.
And she wasn't hiding very well at all, sitting in Granny's, pouting over a now luke-warm (and spiked) cup of cinnamon hot chocolate.
It wasn't the chocolates fault. It was her, and this town, and the ridiculousness of everything and anything and she didn't even know -
When had it all gone to shit?
She'd been in Storybrooke a month, not even a whole month, and her luck just had to break or teeter or rev it's ugly head back up and do something about her vaguely happy existence she had managed to find in this tiney tiny God forsaken town.
She couldn't help but think over the month here, staring out the window, ignoring her cocoa, ignoring Ruby's attempts at friendly supportive whatever. Emma's attention was only partially on the raindrops pelting the window or the fog out there, which made it harder to spot her from the outside (which was a wonderful thing).
She was hiding after all, poorly or otherwise.
She may have thanked God or the Universe or the giant spaghetti monster or whatever for the rain and the fog that kept her hidden a little better than normal.
She should have just picked a better spot.
She had practically been dragged into town by her son, her actual son, who had found her, on her birthday, right after she made a wish blowing out her candle on her pitiful little cupcake like that was a thing she ever did. (Only every year.) Wishing that she wouldn't be alone, like that meant something, like that was an actual wish granted moment because her life had ever been that simple and perfect and -
God what had she been thinking?
Of course it wouldn't last. It had only been a month.
Not even a month. Three weeks, tops.
She thought of the moment she met Henry's teacher, the beautiful older woman, a streak of silver sweeping from her temple almost as if it had been intentional and Emma felt a pang of something that really meant nothing.. least, that's what she told herself. Hindsights a bitch, though. The older woman seemed to gape at her a little, too, almost like she was seeing a ghost, and Emma tried not to think about that too hard at the time.
She had been trying to find Henry, her son, who ran away from his mother, the fucking mayor.. again. But Mary Margaret immediately opened up to her, and Emma felt a sense of ease around the woman, pushing back feelings and words that sounded an awful lot like trust and hope and other ridiculous notions.
This whole town was ridiculous, and everyone in it, and everything else about it and -
Then Emma had a heart to heart with Henry. And then with both him, and Regina. And it was almost nice. Because that was the only word appropriate even though she hardly approved of the use of it. And Henry agreed to try not to think of Regina as Evil and Regina agreed to try to loosen the reigns a bit and even agreed to let Emma bond with him over the next month, helping her raise him, helping her co-parent.
Was that even a thing?
Of course it was. People didn't just make up words.
Like the redonkulousness of this entire place.
Then Mary Margaret invited the entire fucking town to a party on the farm she owned with her husband (because, why not?) A party for Emma, a welcome wagon or something equally as..
She really needed a new word. This was getting absurd. Comical, even.
And David gaped at her like Mary Margaret had, looking between Emma and his wife during introductions like he was going to actually burst into tears or melt or turn into a cartoon at a moments notice because that's just how… normal… the entire town had been the whole 32 hours of her being there at that point.
She should have been expecting their call on the weekend, asking if she'd join the Nolan's for lunch, at their farm. They had already thrown her a whole freaking party and she went and she wasn't sure why she went to lunch, but she did, and then -
She was asked by the older couple to come in, sit down, and Mary Margaret was asking her not to freak before her ass even hit the cushions, and David was scolding his wife, just a little. Which confused the hell out of Emma. She may or may not have actually asked if they were going to murder her for their dinner, earning a confused stare from Mary Margaret while David laughed a little too hard at that.
And they handed her the papers, those life altering, axis shifting papers, admitting to stealing her DNA at the party - somehow - getting it tested in record time - because these people loved their daughter, and their daughter was kidnapped 28 years ago right out of the hospital, the anniversary of which landed on the day Emma had met Mary Margaret at the school like it was kismet or some other normal notion.
And when they saw Emma they just knew and they didn't want to get her hopes up if they were wrong, so they went behind her back and roped Graham into it and -
She had parents. And a brother somewhere, in college. And a son. And she felt something growing out of her feet, hitting the dirt, diving deep into the earth, and that felt an awful lot like roots and -
Then she was crying, and they were crying, and the damn dog was crying, probably, and the champagne was brought out and they ate sandwiches like normal people at lunch and -
They knew. Just one look at her, and they knew.
And they looked at her like she was loved, and belonged there at their table, and was cherished. And they showed her a photo, a single photo, of baby Emma in the blanket she still had, in the arms of her mother, who was wrapped in her father's arms and they were looking at her then like they were looking at her now and Emma had no idea how to even deal.
She'd never been a daughter before.
And suddenly, she was crying in the booth at Granny's, smiling at the memories, chugging the less-than-luke-warm cocoa, forgetting it had been spiked with a wink from Ruby, because hope had always been such a stretch for her, until that moment in their living room when she was getting dehydrated from her tears in the loving arms of her actual parents.
She had to scoff at life, in general. Because, seriously, life is strange. Her son finding her, dragging her to his hometown, the town she had been born in, where her parents still lived, and - she couldn't have made that up if she tried.
She had actual parents. She had roots. That would take some getting used to.
She had to stay here.
Despite the recent churn of events that were still fluttering heavily in her stomach that made her desperate to bolt.
She wanted to run.
She didn't want to face -
She shook her head, letting her gaze fall back to the window, remembering the moment she agreed to become a deputy in her first week here. That might have been a mistake, if their drunken kiss meant anything, but he got up and she got up and they walked away and hadn't spoken about it since.
And Regina was always there somewhere, making some remark or other, probably with an eye roll, and letting Henry spend time with his birth mother.
And then the stranger came into town and Emma had to talk the entire population down from throwing him a welcome party because even she couldn't substitute the word normal with ridiculous when that topic arose.
But he wasn't a stranger. He was once a kid, in the system, and she knew him from her past, and he had been there for her many times over. He was a friend in a sea of strangers and he arrived the second week she was there like a leather clad knight on a trusty motorcycle.
It wasn't lost on her that she was beginning to tell time by events like who she met or some party she was at.
Roots.
And she was still in Granny's diner, trying to finish the now cold cocoa, glad Ruby had meaning behind that wink, because it was getting harder to breathe and she felt a little (a lot) like running - but she couldn't.
Knowing she couldn't made her want to run even further, even harder.
Half way into her second week, there were reports (complaints) of a new drug sweeping the high school and some of the bored housewives.
Which brought Emma to the cocky, flirty, Captain who planted himself in the middle of her investigation. But. He had helped her bring down C.O.R.A. Not that she got any credit, the coast guard took care of that.
She hadn't wanted his help.
She absolutely needed his help.
But he was the least of her worries.
No, her worries started with fucking Gold bringing his son to town - because if she thought life was strange before, she was dead fucking wrong.
Life was a nightmare trying to tear apart her sanity brick by brick leading her to drink a spiked cold cocoa in the middle of the day because the father of her child walked into town.
And ridiculous felt a whole lot more accurate than any other fucking word she had ever learned in her whole damn life.
Thank you for reading! If you happen to be a beta reader into SwanQueen or SwanFire, and are interested in future chapters, please let me know! I'd love a beta (or two) who can keep those ships grounded, since I'm a CaptainSwan girl myself. The second chapter won't be published till I'm sure I've kept my vow.