Chapter 4! I promise to update as much as I can. I might add in an OC at some point, to give Emma more people to interact with. I hope you guys like it and please review if you've got feedback, ideas or you just plain enjoyed it!

Chapter 4: Dreams

Emma hadn't slept well. The entire night she'd been plagued with vivid dreams about different situations concerning her and Hook. Let's just say, vivid, means vivid. Everytime he appeared in a new dream she could feel that particular spot on her hand burning just as it had when he'd first kissed it yesterday evening at the diner. In one dream they were dancing, in the other dream they were laughing. In the next, they were cuddled up on the couch watching a movie. Every single time, Emma felt as though they were real, as though these dreams were something that could happen to her in the future. And everytime he would inch closer to her in the dream she could feel her breathing getting heavier and a cold sweat covering her body. At one point, she woke up, gasping, after he'd gotten so close to her she could have sworn that he truly holding himself up over her in her bed.

Waking up to the sound of pots and pans clattering downstairs, she quickly put her hair in a ponytail, rubbed her eyes and headed downstairs. Henry wasn't at home; apparentely he'd already been picked up by Neal. Emma looked curiously at the clock, and was surprised to find that it was already 12.30pm. She hadn't realized she'd slept so late. Mary Margaret smiled at her daughter as she entered the kitchen area.

"Did you have trouble sleeping last night? Your father and I could hear you moaning and talking in your sleep all night. Bad dream?"

At this, Emma blushed. She hadn't realized that her dreams would make her talk in her sleep. Thankfully, Mary Margaret wasn't look at her with a smirk on her face, so she figured she hadn't heard anything suspicious.

"No, not particularly." Emma said. Not at all, in fact. They'd been quite enjoyable.

"Oh, okay. Well I guess it doesn't matter. Henry left with Neal, he told me that you had agreed to them having lunch. Right?"

"Yeah, yeah I did. Don't worry about it."

Emma stared absentmindedly at the mug of coffee that Mary Margaret had placed in front of her. Her thoughts were whirling around dreams of love and passion.

"Emma, listen. I wanted to talk to you about something. Emma? Are you listening to me?"

Emma looked at her mother's concerned expression and sighed. "Okay. What's up?" She asked, afraid she already knew the answer.

"I noticed that you've been kind of absent-minded lately. I feel like you're just going through the motions of work, Henry, and us"-

"I would never neglect Henry like that!" Emma defended herself.

"No, no, that's not what I meant. I know that you are taking care of Henry. I just mean…God, I don't know what I mean. I just want you to know that if anything's been bothering you, you can come to me. I'm your mother Emma, I want to help you in any way I can." That concerned look was still plastered on Mary Margaret's face.

"I'm sorry. It's just… I don't really know what it is. I can't help it."

"Is it something… something that happened when we were in Neverland? Any realization you might have had while we were there?"

Emma looked at her mother with a hint of sadness in her eyes. Her mother, Snow White, who was quite literally the most trusting, honest, hopeful and loyal person Emma had ever met. She knew that she had hurt her mother in a way she had never intended to when she'd told her that she'd always felt like a lost girl; She hadn't meant it in an accusatory way, it was just the way it was. Emma had spent most of her childhood fending for herself, and she had just grown accustomed to it. Sure, she had missed the concept of a family during the holidays, when posters in shop windows and television ads were polluted with images of happy-go-lucky children smiling with presents in their hands that had been given to them by their loving parents. Sometimes, it was hard, when her foster families had completely ignored her in the name of their own biological children. She had only ever had one true instance of feeling like she had some kind of family. At one point, in one of her foster homes, she had felt strangely close to one of the other girls that lived there. They had gotten seperated in their late teens, when they had finally decided to get out of the system once and for all. Besides, that, Emma had been alone for most of her life, up until the time that she met Neal, and after that as well.

"I know that it hurt when I admitted what I truly was to get the map to work. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry that it might have hurt you and David, and I know that I haven't really made myself call you..call you Mom and Dad yet. But I'm trying. I really am, and I – I just want you to know that. And that's not what's bothering me. I honestly, and truly, don't know what's bothering me."

Mary Margeret looked her daughter right in the eyes and laid a hand over hers. "I believe you Emma. And I understand that it will take time. And we'll be here for you when you're ready."

"Thanks." Emma looked at Mary Margaret with a small and sad smile, before turning her head towards the door as she could hear Henry's loud voice out in the hallway. The door opened, and Emma was about to stand up to greet Henry as he came in, until she heard a second voice, a voice that she knew all too well.

"Next time, I'll get you a sundae with extra everything. But you ate that whole plate of fries on your own, that can't be healthy!" Walking through the door, Neal spotted Emma, and stopped in his stride. "Oh, hey, Emma, Mary Margaret. I don't think you're going to have to feed Henry for a while, I can't imagine he's not completely stuffed."

Mary Margaret chuckled and thanked him for brining him back. Emma stood awkwardly at the side, until Henry came up and gave her his usual hug around the waist. She smiled down at him, and hugged him back. But she could feel both her Mother's and her ex's eyes on her, and as Henry let go, she felt the same awkwardness she had felt the minute Neal had walked in and she hadn't had anything to do. She fidgeted with the charm on her necklace, and before she even realized, she caught Neal's gaze on her hands and neck. Quickly she dropped the silver swan, and glanced over at him. He was smiling at her, and she couldn't help but smile back. It had been a long time since he had looked at her like that, and she couldn't help but reciprocate the kind look in his eyes. It was hard to have him look at her like that, but then she remembered the way Hook at looked at her in her dreams, and she felt a tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach. She knew that it was ridiculous, they had just been dreams she'd had, but she couldn't shake the feeling that they had felt as though they were real. She felt more than saw a change in the way Neal was looking at her, and she could tell that he had registered the difference in expression on her face. She blushed again, quickly looking away. Even through dreams, Hook had the power to make her face turn as red as that of a school girl with a crush on her English teacher. Mary Margaret looked at her daughter with concern and curiousity, and as Neal said goodbye to Henry and the awkward moment had passed, Emma breathed a sigh of relief as the door shut behind him. She was going to need to get a grip on herself, and she desperately needed to figure out what she was feeling.

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As she sat at the corner table in Granny's, Emma took a careful sip of her hot cocoa (with cinnamon, of course) as she continued to fill out the enormous amounts of paperwork that had been stacking up at the sherriff's station. It amazed her how it was possible to have so much paperwork in such a small town where everything bad that ever happened had to do with magic. It was hardly something she could record in a national database. Storybrooke was made up of one seemingly endless Main Street, and yet so much had happened in this small town that could fill up the pages of an entire novel if someone bothered to write it all down.

Registering the sound of the doorbell, Emma was about to put her pen down on the paper when she heard the chair across from her being pulled back. She looked up, hoping that it would be Hook and dreading that it would be him at the same time. Instead, she was surprised to see Tinkerbell sitting opposite her, gazing at her with the standard confused and curious expression that most fairy-tale folk had when they first came to Storybrooke.

"Hey, Tink! How you settling in here?"

"Alright, I guess,' she said in that somewhat Australian sounding accent, 'I just need to get my bearings here and all. Don't really know a lot of people here."

"Well, that's not necessarily true, is it? I mean, you know me, obviously, Mary Margaret, David, Regina, and, you know… Hook." Her voice caught on that last name, and she was worried that Tink would have noticed. Apparentely not, because the blonde fairy ploughed on ahead with her story anyway.

"That's true. I'm just not very good at meeting new people. Without my magic to help them, I don't really know how to start a conversation with them." Tink lowered her eyelids as she said this last thing, and Emma felt a pang of sympathy for the young woman.

"Don't worry about it, everyone here has felt like that at some point. Ruby, behind the counter, she's the person for a good time, and Ariel and Belle are good to talk to."

"Thanks for the tip. I'll remember that." Tinkerbell stood up from her chair to go, but Emma interrupted her with a question before she could stop herself.

"Did anything – anything happen between you and Hook when he was in Neverland the first time?" Emma regretted the question as soon as it came out of her mouth, but she couldn't help herself. And to be honest, she really wanted – no needed – to know the answer.

Tink looked at her with a glint of mischief in her eye, but answered the question with an even tone of voice. "It might have, but it seems like a hundred years ago. Don't worry, Emma, as far as I know, he's on the market." Tink smiled a small smile, and headed over to the counter. When she was turned around, Emma buried her face in her hands, embarassed by the question she had just asked but even more ashamed that she had been so desperate to know the answer.