I love getting your notes. Really. I love hearing what you think about this story and where it should go. Probably two chapters left and an epilogue, although ending this story is going to be bittersweet. Xo
Emma pried open an eye. Her cellphone was buzzing on the nightstand, pulling her into the morning and back to her new reality. She didn't recognize the number on the ID, so she let it go to voicemail.
Streams of sunlight were clawing through the cracks in the curtains, and she fought off a sick, mournful wave that threatened to wash over her as the remnants of the day before began to formulate in her head. The charred remains. The emptiness. The painful shadow someone had intensionally cast over her life. Her chest felt tight, and her stomach was uneasy.
But then she shifted in bed, and the sun caught her hand that was resting on her stomach. And the glint from the ring—her engagement ring—brought a barreling, determined happiness that shot right through her. She looked at the sleeping figure next to her then, the antidote to the pain of what she'd lost, and Emma let the hopefulness for their future take hold. She let go of the swirl of harsh memories for the moment, and instead let the thoughts of the proposal and the aftermath flood her mind.
After she'd said yes to the marriage proposal, Emma and Regina went downstairs into the kitchen and waited for Henry to come home from school. They sat across from each other at the table, their knees touching, their cheeks flushed with the emotions of the day.
Emma pulled one of Regina's hands into her lap and sandwiched them between her own, playing nervously with her fingers. She looked at the long, ladylike fingers, tipped with perfectly painted red nails, so different than her own—scarred from years of kitchen cuts and burns.
Once again reaching into the grab bag of feelings, of which she'd run the gamut in the last few hours, she settled into an anxious excitement, wondering internally if their engagement would be welcome news for Henry. Emma knew he cared for her, but this was a big step. Plus, it was one thing to accept that your mother was in a relationship with a woman, but to marry one… that could be difficult for a teenage boy to process.
But really, all of that took a backseat to the gnawing question it always boiled down to for Emma. Will he want me?
She kept her eyes focused on their hands, and she lost herself momentarily in her thoughts. But Regina used her free hand to tip her chin up, and she looked into her eyes appraisingly for a moment. She kissed her knuckles and brought her forehead in to meet Emma's. Then she whispered words that spoke to every fear and every insecurity that traipsed across her heart.
"Don't worry. He's going to be ecstatic. He already thinks of you as a mother. He loves you, Emma, and this will make him happier than you can ever know," Regina said softly, applying a soothing balm to Emma's uncertain mind.
Emma shook her head, a small, nervous laugh escaping her throat.
"How do you always know what to say?" Emma said, cocking her head with warm affection in her eyes.
Before Regina could answer, the front door slammed shut, and Henry came bounding into the kitchen, a worried expression tapered to his face.
"Guys? What's going on? Someone at school said there was a fire. What's—what's happening?"
Regina stood up and grabbed one of Henry's hands, guiding him gently to the table to join them.
"Henry, please sit down. It's been quite an eventful day, darling, and we have quite a lot of news to share with you, good and bad," Regina said, her voice soft and low.
Henry looked at Emma nervously, trying to read her face. She gave him a weak smile, trying to convey that everything was going to be fine, even if she wasn't sure herself. But Henry's bullshit meter was almost as good as Emma's.
"It's true? Savior's burned down?" he said, his eyes welling with tears. "Who? How did—"
Regina opened her mouth to speak, but Emma knew it had to come from her.
"—We don't know the details yet, Hen. All we know is that there was a fire that began in the kitchen late last night, probably with the fire-burning oven. The building is old, and the duct work went up in flames, and it burned for a very long time before someone saw it. Cause it happened in the middle of the night, you know? So by the time the fire department got there, it was…"
The words were still too hard to say, and Regina instinctively put her hand on Emma's knee, just for weight, for presence.
"Was it an accident?" Henry said. "Because you said—"
"We just don't know yet, Hen. We have to let them sort it out. Still probably at the beginning of a long investigation, you know? I cued up Chicago Fire for us so we can check out proper protocol and keep these fools honest," Emma said with a sideways grin.
"How can you joke about it, Em? It's your dream," Henry said, his throat tight.
"Well, because it's only part of my dream. The other part of my dream is to be part of a family who I love and who loves me. And something else happened today that made that dream come true," Emma said, wiggling the fingers of her left hand in front of Henry and giving him a genuine, fully lit smile.
"Holy shit!" he shouted.
"Henry! Language," Regina said, feigning outrage.
"You asked her to marry you?" Henry said, looking at his mom with shock and reverence.
"Um, technically I asked her first," Emma said. "Just have to get that on the record."
Regina laughed.
"It's true. In the morning, right before we got the call about the fire, she asked me to marry her. But then, we got a bit side-tracked by this devastating news. And when we got home, I thought it was a good time for me to give Emma the ring we picked out and let her know that I was in this for… you know, forever," Regina said, with a satisfied smile.
"Jeez, you guys couldn't be like normal parents where the big news is, like, getting Netflix streaming or going to Disney World or something?" he said, but hauled both women in for a hug, kissing his mother and then Emma on the cheek, a few stray tears escaping from his eyes. "Guys, this is incredible. I mean, I'm so sorry about the restaurant. But Emma! I have some great ideas for another restaurant, and—wait! When's the wedding going to be? Can I be the best man? Should I call you Mom now? Or Madre? Mamacita?"
Regina and Emma just laughed at Henry's enthusiasm. Emma grabbed one of Henry's wildly waving hands.
"Call me Emma," she said. "I love you, Hen."
"I love you, too, Emma," he said back.
Emma let her head fall into the pillows, snuggling into the memories from their evening together, feeling official and sturdy in their newfound status as a family. The words "fire" and "arson" were never uttered, and they'd turned their phones to vibrate, ordered pizza, and opened a bottle of wine.
Another buzz signaled the caller left Emma a message, so she pressed the play button and put the phone to her ear.
"Hello, Miss Swan, it's Robin from the Storybrooke Fire Department. I'm sorry to disturb you so early in the morning."
"I'd like you to come in today, if that's possible for you… We went through all the transcripts of our interviews yesterday and compared some notes with the Storybrooke Police Department. We plan to bring in some suspects for questioning today, but first there's some discrepancies we'd like to discuss with you if possible. If you have a chance to come down to the station today, I'd like to run those past you first. Thanks you. I'll speak to you shortly…"
Emma scowled at the phone in her hand. Discrepancies? What the hell did that mean? Just then, Regina stirred, an arm unconsciously reaching across the bed in search of Emma's body. When she found her, the brunette wound herself possessively around her body, securing her into a tight grip, and Emma just let herself be held. She slid her phone back onto the nightstand. She felt loved. She felt safe.
"Em-mah, isss nah-time to get up yeh," Regina muttered, in adorably sleepy syllables that stuck together.
Just a few minutes, she thought, as she let herself drift back off to sleep in her fiancé's warm, protective embrace.
Three hours later Emma and Regina were settled in a nondescript waiting room at the Fire Station, where they'd been sitting for 20 minutes, waiting for Robin to see them.
"I told you this would be a waste of your time, Regina. You should just go home. I'll call you when I'm done here, and you can swing by and pick me up," Emma said, rubbing between her eyebrows.
"Emma, that's the third time you've said that to me. So I'll give you a different answer this time," Regina said, her voice pinched with irritation. "If this situation was reversed, would you let me come to station alone to make a statement? Wouldn't you want to be by my side?"
"Mm-hmm," Emma said, a small smile creeping across her face in amusement. "This is how it's going to be for the rest of my life, isn't it? You're going to win every single argument. I don't stand a chance. Maybe throw me a bone around our anniversaries, just to make me feel good about myself."
The door to Robin's office swung open, and Mr. Gold barreled out of it like he was shot out of a cannon. Emma and Regina both sucked in a breath, and Mr. Gold sauntered right past them. Robin stepped out of his office to greet Emma and Regina. But then he turned on his heels and swung back to face them, speaking with emphasis as though they had been in the middle of a heated conversation.
"I may have resorted to somewhat unorthodox and even conniving chicanery in the past, but I'm not an arsonist. Besides, you've developed quite the fan base, Miss Swan. I'd be quite a fool to engender further sympathy and affection for you. Now that this has happened, I'm quite sure you could run for mayor or serve hotdogs out of the back of your pathetic little Bug and have restauranteurs from Alaska lined up around the block and raving on Yelp about how creative you are. No, I don't think I would have set you up to become the restaurant martyr I fear you are about to become. Would be quite short-sighted of me, don't you think, ladies?"
And just like that, he slithered out of the station. Emma stared impassively at the door as he left, but Regina was positively seething.
"He's disgusting little imp," Regina said through clenched teeth. "But I think—"
"—He didn't do it," said a gravely voice from behind them. August walked in, looking wrecked, his hair disheveled, his face unshaven, and his eyes bloodshot.
Emma's eyebrows furrowed, and she went to him, putting her hands on his shoulders in comfort.
"Jesus, you look like hammered shit. Are you ok, August?" Emma said, putting a palm against his scruffy cheek. "I should have called to check that you were doing all right. I've been so caught up with myself that I—"
"It was me, Emma. I caused the fire," August said, his voice catching in his throat, his words barely above a whisper. Behind her, Regina gasped, and Robin ran to his desk to grab a notepad.
"What the hell are you talking about, August?" Emma said, her eyes narrowed and her hands suddenly clammy.
"I—I, uh. Wow, this is hard, Em. You need to know that you're the last person on this planet that I would ever want to hurt or let down," he said, steadying himself against the wall. Emma steeled her jaw, bracing herself for the blows she expected to come next.
"Ok, well, here goes. So the thing is, I have a bit of a drinking problem. I mean, you know, I always have, and we joke about it and stuff, but it's gotten away from me a bit in the last few months."
"It's sick, I know, but the happier you got with Queenie here, the worse I got, and the more alone I felt. I guess I was jealous. Pathetic, right? Not because I have, like, feelings for you or anything because you're like my sister. But you and I were always kind of simpatico in our mutual self-loathing and Eeyore-ishness. Or at least I thought so. But when you found this amazing true love and were just lifted into stardom and happiness like a fucking angel from heaven… Jesus, I just kinda lost myself," August said, his eyes cast at the floor. Emma noticed he had a sheen of sweat on his forehead and some percolating across his upper lip.
"Anyway, it wasn't like some diabolical thing I did or planned or anything. Just the opposite. I kind of drank myself into a stupor, and I must've left the oven on last night," August said, his voice cracking, hot tears betraying him. "The irony, right? I mean the fucking oven, Swan. It's crazy, right, because I convinced you to get that stupid fucking oven. You said we should invest the money in a few more line chefs to make sure the kitchen ran smoothly. Ha! You remember that? I told you to stop doubting me, and I made you feel like shit about it. Shoulda listened to your gut there Swan. If you made any mistakes at all in this whole thing, trusting me to be your go-to guy would be top of the list, my friend."
August took a deep breath and hauled his head up, finding Robin who stood somewhat slack-jawed behind Regina.
"I guess you'll need me to revise my statement or whatever," he said, looking back at Emma. "In case I wasn't loathsome enough in the last 24 hours, I was gonna blame it on that Gold guy. Figured he was sleazy enough to take the fall. But I remembered that built-in lie-detector you got. Plus, I would have had to drink myself to death to ever look you in the eye again. So, there you go," August said, his voice hoarse and raw.
Emma just stood staring at him, tears rolling down her face, one after another, his self-hatred almost as hard to hear as his confession.
"So that's it. Uh, you can press charges. That's probably smart—maybe you can get a settlement or something. Plus, a little jail time would have the added bonus of giving me a chance to sober up before I hit the celeb chef circuit on the Food Network," he said, giving Emma a wink. He started to shuffle away from her toward Robin, and Emma finally awoke from her stunned silence.
"Don't move, Booth," Emma said, turning to face him. "Look at me. We are both to blame in this. You left the oven on last night, but I have been a shit friend and a terrible boss. I've been so wrapped up in myself and my own happiness that I couldn't even see what you were going through or that you were coming to work drunk. So this is on us, as a team, and we're going to make it right. You are the closest thing I've had to family, and families don't desert each other."
She took a deep breath and put her hands back on his shoulders, resuming her original stance, before August sucked all the air out of the room with his admission of guilt.
"This is how this is going to go. You are going check yourself into rehab, and I'm going to be there for you through your recovery. Because when you're sober, you are one of the best chefs I know. And I'm going to need a good chef, August. I can't do this without you. Cause we're fighters, you and I. We get back up, right?"
Emma leaned in to hug him, wrapping her arms around him tightly. August tucked his face into Emma's neck and began to sob, his shoulders heaving in relief and sadness. Robin walked into his office and shut the door to give them some privacy, and Regina walked into the bathroom to compose herself.
When they were alone in the room, August picked up his head and looked Emma squarely in the eye for the first time.
"I am so sorry, Swan," he said, his voice thick and low. "And you did not let me down. This is not on you."
"I am sorry, too," Emma said. "I love you, August. But you really do look like complete shit."
A low rumble built in August's chest, and before they knew it, they were both cracking up, clutching their sides in hysterical laughter.
Regina walked back in, shaking her head at the scene in front of her.
"You two are fucking insane," she said. "I think you deserve each other."
"We know," Emma said.