Her fingers tighten on the steering wheel as the bug approaches where Storybrooke should be. Emma remembers the last time she did this, and the crushing pain of realizing the town was nowhere to be found. She isn't sure she can go through that again.
But Hook says there had been another curse, and that the town should be back in Maine – her family should be back in Maine. Emma's not sure what she will find when ( if ) they cross the town line. The last curse had stripped everyone of both their memories and identities. The second might have very well done the same.
It makes her sick to think David and Mary Margaret might not recognize her. It's a cruel example of "be careful what you wish for," as she spent so much time avoiding them and their need to make up for lost years. Now all she wants is for them to do that very thing. She wants to hug them, have one of those cliché family dinners, and tease one another. She wants them to spend time with Henry and meet Wendy, and as old fashioned as it sounds, she even wants her father to give Hook a hard time.
Emma wants it all because these past few months remembering them without being able to see them have been hell. She doesn't how she will react if she sees them again, and they simply look right through her.
She casts a sidelong glance to Hook in the passenger seat. She takes comfort in the fact that if her family lacks their memories, she won't be completely alone in her endeavor to return them. She's still not sure where the two of them stand, or where she even wants them be, but it's better than nothing. Before their year apart, they were something like friends – friends who had sex once, with one party making their feelings explicitly clear, but friends nonetheless. And now, he's come back for her again, they share a kid, and have fooled around yet again. It's complicated. But it could be worse.
Hook could be wrong, and Storybrooke still might not exist.
Emma continues to drive into the night.
-/-
Storybrooke exists.
She drives right past the she sign she once destroyed, and Emma wants nothing more than to scream in victory. She refrains, however, cognizant of her two sleeping kids in the backseat. She settles on pumping her fist into the air.
Hook laughs.
-/-
"You'll be fine," she tells him as they stand outside the bug. "They're sleeping."
Hook's normal blustering confidence evaporated the moment Emma announced she was leaving him to watch over both Wendy and Henry while she attempted to reunite with her parents. If they don't remember her, she doesn't want their first impression of her to be a crazy woman with a son, a baby, and a one-handed pirate in tow – just a solo crazy lady will do.
"What if they wake, love?" Hook asks. His eyes dart between her and the backseat of the car. "You don't think your boy will find it odd that it is just me watching over him and the babe?"
She sighs. She knows his unease has nothing to do with Henry, and everything to do with the fact he's technically never been alone with Wendy. He's only really been around her for one day, so she can't blame him for being apprehensive. But if he wants to stick around, he's going to need to get accustomed to watching her without supervision.
"If anything bad happens, Henry has his phone and can call me. I won't be gone long. I just need to figure out the situation. "
He still looks apprehensive, but nods to her in acceptance. As she walks away, she hears him call out, "Good luck, Swan."
Emma is going to need it.
-/-
Her father pulls her into his arms, and it is everything .
She hears her mother's voice, and her heart soars.
She sees the swell of her mother's stomach, and her blood runs cold.
-/-
After a brief explanation – Hook arriving with a potion – they agree to meet at Granny's. Emma leaves out the part about Wendy. Revealing the existence of Wendy is more of an "in-person" kind of thing. Besides, she knows they will want to know everything about their granddaughter, and Henry's still asleep in the car, plus Emma really needs a moment to gather herself.
So she says she'll see them in forty-five minutes.
When she gets back to the bug, Killian has Wendy in his arms. He's swaying back and forth, his lips pressed to her head. He looks sheepish when he notices her approach, almost as if he is he worried he's done the wrong thing.
"She was upset," he offers, and Emma takes him at his word. She doesn't seem to be upset any longer. In fact, she looks quite content in his arms, one tiny fist wrapped round his necklace and the other in her mouth.
"Well, she's not crying anymore," she replies, brushing her hand over the back of her daughter's head. "Good job, Dad."
The smile Hook gives in response is brilliant.
-/-
"Cute kid, Captain," Granny tells Hook, who is still cradling Wendy, when they check into their rooms – separate rooms – at the inn. "It looks like you were busy during the missing year – or, before, I suppose."
The older woman casts Emma a meaningful look, and she blushes. Emma knows she needs to speak to her parents soon, because there's no way Wendy will be a secret for long.
-/-
No sooner does she present Wendy to her parents that her daughter is whisked out of her arms and into Mary Margaret's. Emma envisioned this moment a hundred times since her memories were restored and yet she's surprised at how overwhelmed she is by the intensity of the moment. Her mother cries and her father hugs her again, and Emma wants nothing more than for Henry to have his memories and to be here, sharing the moment as one large, complete family.
But then the dwarves storm into the inn and that almost-perfect moment is shattered.
Welcome to Storybrooke.
-/-
People are missing, Neal among them.
Her parents give her a sad sort of look and assure her that Neal will be found. It's when her mother looks down at Wendy and says, "Don't worry, we'll find him" that Emma puts two and two together.
They think Neal is Wendy's father.
She wants to laugh, because the idea is so absurd to her because Wendy – Wendy just isn't his kid, and Emma wouldn't –
She hears Hook shuffle behind her, and she can tell by the hard set of his jaw and the tension practically radiating off of him that he's caught her parents' drift as well. She wants to reach out to him, but refrains. There are too many people here, and she's too unsure of her own feelings toward him to potentially encourage his further.
Instead she says nothing at all, and pretends not to see the hurt in Hook's eyes.
-/-
Wendy refuses to sleep that night. She whines and wails, and eventually Emma has to duck out of the bedroom she's sharing with Henry to soothe her other kid in the inn's den. No sooner does she enter the hallway does Hook come barreling out of his own room, hookless but cutlass in hand.
"Is she hurt?"
Emma blinks a few times, trying to understand his meaning, until she realizes he's mistaken Wendy's crying to be a sign she's in danger of being harmed rather than normal infant insomnia.
"No. She's just crying. She does this a lot," Emma explains to him. She doesn't tell him that one night, when Wendy was around one month old, Emma had to lock the baby in the bathroom and hide with a pillow over her own head to keep from screaming, her daughter's seemingly never-ending cries driving her to the point of insanity. "Um, you can put away your sword and go to bed, if you want. I've got this."
He does end up putting away his sword, but doesn't go to bed. Instead, he sits up with her until Wendy's cries die, and she falls into deep slumber.
-/-
"It's a good thing you're cute," Ruby says to the baby the next morning when her family gathers at the diner. Emma realizes Wendy's cries might have aggravated both Ruby and Granny's enhanced hearing, and she winces. Ruby turns to Henry and smiles, and says, "Because I'm sure you also had a helluva night, here's a hot chocolate with cinnamon."
She places the drink in front of him, and Emma stifles a laugh as her son's eyes grow wide. Her amusement is brief, however, because then her son asks how Ruby knows he like cinnamon, because of course that is something he would wonder.
She wants nothing more than for him to have his memories back. Emma is sick of lying to him about her past – his family – and her interest in Storybrooke.
Emma is startled by the shattering of glass, and she turns to see Regina staring open-mouthed and broken-hearted in their direction. Emma takes a deep breath.
It's another lie she'll have to tell Henry.
-/-
The day she spends with Regina, Emma leaves her kids with her mother and pretends not to notice Hook's put out expression.
That night, she hands him a cell phone she purchased earlier that afternoon.
"I couldn't have you watch her without any way to contact you, so here. It's a phone. It'll allow us to communicate or whatever."
He nods, but it's obvious that he doesn't quite know what exactly a cell phone is. She spends the next hour in his room attempting to show him how it works.
Things might not be perfect, but it's a start.
-/-
It's when they're hiking through the woods in an attempt to find out who broke into Regina's office that the penny drops.
"Tell me, love, just when are you going to inform your parents of our daughter's true parentage?"
They had just been talking about Hook's exploits during the missing year, so his question throws her. Maybe that had been his point, but Emma can tell by the undercut of annoyance in his voice and the way he's glaring that the issue has been bothering him for quite some time.
"Look, I'm sorry. That was unfair and wrong of me, but – "
He cuts her off. "But you were put on the spot and the bloody dwarves can't give anyone in this town a second of peace. I understand that part. I'm quite perceptive, you know. What I'm interested in knowing is when you'll correct their assumption."
"I don't know," she tells him. There's no use in lying, not to him, not about this. He looks hurt, but he does his best to mask his pain. He shouldn't. She knows she's not being fair to him. "Can I just…can we just solve this crisis and then deal with my mom and dad? I swear I'm not trying to keep her from you, and it's not intentional, but I can only handle so much at once."
He doesn't look happy, but he agrees.
-/-
Emma, unfortunately, doesn't get the chance to tell her parents the truth about Wendy. Hook, it appears, is not the only perceptive person in her life.
"You know you can tell me anything, Emma," her mother says as the two of them sit together in the loft.
"What do you mean?"
It's a strange statement, one that comes out of the blue, because they had been discussing flying monkeys and how those now nix a potential zoo theme for the baby's nursery.
Mary Margaret takes a delicate sip of tea before answering.
"Wendy has Hook's eyes."
-/-
It's her father who talks to her next. They're in the woods searching for some more clues about the witch, when he awkwardly starts of the conversation.
"So you and Hook…"
She doesn't meet his eyes, which is fine, because she thinks he doesn't really want her to. Emma can feel her cheeks heating in slight embarrassment – is this really a conversation she once looked forward to having? – and she sighs, "Mom told you, huh?"
"Ah, yeah, she did, but I figured it out for myself," he says. When Emma makes a noise of inquiry, he explains. "He looks at Wendy like I look at you, or how I hope I look you."
Emma knows the look. She's seen it on Hook's face many times since he knocked on her door in New York. She's seen it on her own father's face once his memories returned after she and Henry broke the original curse.
"Don't worry, you get the look."
"Good."
They continue to walk in silence a little longer, and Emma wonders if he's going to push her further. He doesn't, and it's like he planned it, because she snaps.
"It's not that I didn't want to tell you guys. It's just – the dwarves and the witches and I worried you were going to run him through with a sword in the middle of Granny's."
"I'm not going to run Hook through with a sword."
"Oh?"
"Your mother wouldn't let me."
-/-
Hook takes to sitting up with her during Wendy's nightly feedings and tantrums. She tells him he doesn't need to, that he needs his rest in case the Wicked Witch attacks, but he shrugs and tells her this is more important.
"I've missed enough."
They don't always talk during these late nights. Sometimes they do. He's intentionally evasive when she asks about his missing year, but she doesn't press, doesn't want to disrupt the delicacy of their relationship and the situation. When they don't talk, he tends to read Wendy's journal, almost as if he's trying to imprint the words she had written to memory.
-/-
She gives Regina the journal she wrote about Henry. She pretends not to notice the tears in the other woman's eyes as Emma explains it contents.
Things might still be rocky between the two of them, but they both can agree on their shared love of their son.
-/-
"Killian's Wendy's dad, isn't he?" Henry asks one evening, catching Emma off guard.
She considers deflecting, but she's so tired of lying to her son. Besides, since Hook insists on being a part of Wendy's life, there is no use in not telling the truth. So she doesn't.
"Yeah, kid. He is. Does that bother you?"
He's quiet for a moment, and he looks down to study his hands. "No. I'm glad Wendy's dad came back for her."
Emma doesn't miss the unspoken " even though my dad didn't for me ". She takes her son into her arms and kisses his head. She hopes against all hope they find Neal. If only so her son could find peace.
-/-
Later that night, all Emma can think about is how Killian came back for her, and Neal never did.
-/-
Emma's ashamed to admit it, but it takes far too long for her to notice Killian's been avoiding wearing his hook, even when Henry isn't around. It's strange, and it feels a little unsettling and wrong for Captain Hook to be hookless, so she tells him as much.
"I…I don't want to hurt the lass."
It breaks her heart a bit, the uncertainty and fear he has surrounding himself and Wendy.
"Well, you won't," she assures him. "Besides, it's a part of you, and she should know that."
He allows her to click the hook back into place.
-/-
Emma pretends it doesn't hurt that Mary Margaret seeks out a midwife to instruct her through the end of pregnancy, and what to expect during the first few months of her younger sibling's life.
She gets the need to have a doctor, but – she's been there herself recently. She's dealt with having no idea what to do or what to really expect, the first fever, and the fucked up things that happen to one's body after childbirth. She has her false ones with Henry, and her real ones with Wendy, and though Emma's not an expert, she's been there. She could be useful.
So it stings that her mother doesn't ask, not really, about any of it.
"With the Wicked Witch running around, maybe she doesn't wish to burden you," Hook offers after she vents to him one night in Granny's den during another late night feeding.
"Maybe," she agrees, even though this is something that wouldn't be a burden at all.
-/-
"Hey, kid, you don't feel like I replaced you with your sister, right?"
"If I said yes, would you get me an X-Box?"
"No."
"Then, no. People have other kids, Mom. It's not a big deal."
-/-
Emma finds herself looking at apartments in the classifieds. When Henry gets his memories back, she knows he'll want to move back. She wants to moves back. The four months of remembering her family and this town were absolute torture, and she spent her nights with Neal's words ringing in her ears.
"That's how you know you've really got a home: When you leave it, there's that feeling that you can't shake. You just miss it."
They're home now, and Henry needs to remember it.
-/-
The midwife is the Wicked Witch because of course she is.
-/-
Neal is found. Or, rather, he finds them, stumbling into his father's pawn shop in a panic.
As with everyone else in the town, he is devoid of memories from the previous year.
He asks about Henry, and later, he escapes from the hospital – the latter action so quintessentially Neal that Emma isn't surprised at all. Then he asks about her.
"So, how'd your year go? You remember it, right?"
She considers evading, but doesn't. There's no point, and she might as well have this conversation now.
"I had a baby – a girl. Her name is Wendy, and she's pretty amazing. Um, she's how I got my memories back, because apparently kissing your baby works as True Love's Kiss. So, it's been a good year. Mostly."
"Wow, Em, a baby," he looks at her in awe, like he can't quite believe what she said. He doesn't look mad or upset, though. Instead, he smiles at her, the wide, happy smile she once fell in love with. "How does Henry like being a big brother?"
Emma smiles, the memories of the past year fond. "He loves it. I was worried he'd be jealous, but he's not. You should see him. He's great with her."
It's easy talking to Neal about Henry. He's the best thing to ever come out of their relationship. Talking to Neal about other things, however, still hurts. She wonders if it will ever stop hurting. She tries not to think about how it never hurts to talk with Killian, about Wendy, their past, anything.
"Hook's great with her, too."
Neal's smile fades considerably. It might be unfair to bring up Hook so quickly, especially when they had been talking about Henry. But Emma reasons the best way to peel a bandaid is to rip it off, and talking about Henry is evading. This is going to be the part that hurts.
"That's good, I guess."
He doesn't talk to her the rest of their search.
-/-
Neal dies.
Emma mourns.
She mourns for a life lost too early. She mourns for a man she once loved. She mourns for her son, who never got to say goodbye. She mourns because it's unfair, and even if she wished him to be dead, it's something she wants no longer.
And despite it all, she wonders if she could be sadder.
-/-
The Wicked Witch is Regina's sister because of course she is.
-/-
Hook spends time with Henry after the funeral. It's strange how quickly her son takes to him, and he to Henry, but it's nice.
Henry comes back smiling, his first real smile since Neal's death.
During Wendy's 2:00 a.m. feeding, she fills Hook in on what happened between Regina and Zelena. He tells her about how Henry reminds him of a young Neal.
After Wendy gets her fill, Killian holds his daughter until she falls to sleep.
Fatherhood looks good on him.
-/-
During Regina's grueling training, Emma wonders if Wendy might also have magic.
She hopes not. She really, really hopes not.
-/-
That night when Wendy wakes, Killian does not join them. The next morning, she considers asking, but refrains from doing so. There's no use in making him feel badly for likely sleeping through the baby's cries.
-/-
It's Belle who discovers Zelena's plot, and Emma struggles to wrap her mind around the whole thing.
Time Travel.
Only she doesn't really have time to think, because everything turns into a whirlwind of trying to protect her family because Zelena apparently needs a baby to complete the spell, and that baby is her yet-to-be-born sibling.
"Why ours?" her mother asks, and Emma holds Wendy closer in her arms. She wonders if it makes her a terrible person that she's glad her daughter doesn't seem to be the target, even if it means her little brother is.
"Your baby is going to the product of True Love. It's likely that'll be of more use for the spell."
As much as she wants to, Emma doesn't look toward Killian.
-/-
She, Henry, and Wendy stay at her parents' loft that night. Regina casts numerous wards over the place, and everyone feels safer knowing the kids would be magically protected.
Emma calls Killian in the middle of night. She's surprised he answers.
"Wendy's awake, and I'm sorry you aren't here."
"It's for the best, love."
"I know you like staying up with her, though."
He's silent on the other side of the line for a moment.
"Swan, I hope you know I would do anything to ensure the safety of you and our child. A night away is nothing compared to knowing you are protected."
"I know," she says. She does. And it's true.
-/-
She's not sure how, but she finds Henry's storybook in her old bedroom in the loft. She traces her fingers over the lines of the book, feels its weight in her hands, and smiles fondly at the memories of her son toting the thing around to get her to believe.
It's then Emma realizes what she needs to do.
-/-
There are gunshots, flying monkeys, and Zelena attacks.
But her son remembers and Regina's kiss breaks the spell.
Emma tells herself she needs to focus on those two things, those two very good things, because if she looks at Hook a second longer, Wendy wailing in his arms, her blood may actually boil.
She doesn't care for his excuses. She doesn't care he was trying to keep her kids safe. All she cares about is that her kids were in danger, and he attempted to steal them away because he couldn't fucking trust her or even tell her the truth.
She wrenches their crying daughter from his arms, does her best to soothe her as she walks away.
He tries to reach out and stop her, but she evades him.
"Just stay away, Hook. Stay away."
-/-
Hook doesn't stay away. He's at the hospital when her mother goes into labor. Emma ignores him and hands Wendy over to Granny. It's petty, but she's so incredibly angry she can't deal with him.
It's her father who talks her down, her father who should be celebrating the impending birth of his second born, but is still seeking her out. Still soothing her.
"I know he made a bad decision – "
"He made a terrible fucking decision."
"– but he was trying to protect his family. We all make stupid decisions when we're worried about the people we love."
Emma doesn't point out that her father suggested Hook just might love her.
When she goes to find Zelena, it's also her father who suggests she take Hook with her. She doesn't know when he became President of the "Killian Jones Fanclub," and Emma isn't sure she likes it.
-/-
The rules of the spell are simple. If she kisses him, she loses her powers.
So, she won't kiss him. She hasn't kissed him since that night in New York, and she's too angry to kiss him again.
It's simple. They'll stop Zelena, and save her little sibling.
-/-
It's not simple.
-/-
It's not until she pulls Killian out of the water and she realizes he's not breathing that Emma's heart stops.
"Come back to me," she begs, and Emma can't stop the pinpricks of tears at the corner of her eyes. He can't die. He can't leave Wendy.
He can't leave her.
So, Emma does what she needs to do: she presses her lips against his in the hopes it will bring him back to life, her magic be damned.
She isn't sure if she meant it to be CPR or a kiss. All that matters is that it worked.
-/-
She receives a call from her father as they hike back to the hospital.
Emma answers, and her world shatters. She vaguely hears Killian ask what's wrong, but everything sounds so far away. He sounds so far away even though he is right there, right next to her. She thinks she drops her phone, but she isn't sure. She can hardly breathe.
"Swan! Swan! Emma, what's wrong?"
She opens her mouth, and she's surprised she can formulate words.
"Zelena," is all she says, and she's trying to explain, but she can't. She doesn't know how, and she's drowning and –
"What did she do, love? What did your father say?"
Emma looks up at Killian, and she wishes the panic in her eyes can convey what's wrong, but he can't read minds, and he stares at her with worry, so she has to formulate the words, say them aloud and make the whole thing real and –
"She has Wendy."
