A week passed. Seven days came and went, and every single one before them could have been the same, because they passed without any real notice from Emma. On the first, she left her building before the sun had fully risen over the buildings downtown, steeling herself for a week's worth of missed work sitting on her desk. She got the avalanche she was expecting, but it didn't keep her as busy as she wanted it to — so when the weekend came, Emma cleaned. The evidence of her effort bloomed from her bathroom outward, draping the entire apartment in the scent of bottled summer.
By the time the thin afternoon sun made its way through the windows, though, she was running out of things to keep herself busy. Her bills were paid. Her laundry was folded, put away in drawers that were just as organized. Emma was standing in front of the refrigerator, rearranging the photos and magnets and lists that covered the entire surface of the freezer door, when she realized what she was doing. She wasn't rearranging photos at all, at least not anymore. She was staring at one in her hands, the newest addition to the fridge.
The newest Star Wars movie had opened just a few short weeks before their trip to Tradition. Double shifts caused a bit of a problem for Killian and David when the midnight premiere came around — especially when tickets sold out before Emma could get home and buy tickets — but Sunday morning had been just as fun. They took the costumes meant for opening night and wore them without shame to the first matinee showing of the day, prepared to blend into the crowd. What they hadn't prepared for, however, was a six-year-old Kylo Ren to bat her lightsaber into the side of Killian's shins.
"What in the — ah," he'd said knowingly, drawing their group's attention as he twisted around to see what was going on. He'd come dressed as Han Solo, and even his most charming smile hadn't deterred the girl's frown.
"Where's your gun?" the girl hissed, trying her best to deepen her voice.
Killian had given her a cautious look, and pretended to search the pockets of his best. "I forgot to bring it. Must've left it in the Falcon."
She moved her plastic saber toward his shin again, more cautiously now that she saw multiple sets of eyes on her. The line had inched forward a little, but Killian had stayed where he was, as if one wrong move would get him run through with the toy, and proceeded to talk to the little girl as if he really was Han Solo. She tried her best to stay in character, but within a minute she was giggling and asking him how many times he had seen the movies. Mary Margaret had been all too eager to include the girl in their group photo, and she'd exploded into giggles when Killian pretended to die of a stab wound to the ribs.
It became a physical photo instead of a digital copy when Mary Margaret made good on her threatening promise to bring a little life into Emma's apartment. Her fridge had been covered in takeout menus and notes-to-self before she barged in one day carrying a pharmacy bag full of photo packets.
"If I only brought over the ones you were actually in, I wouldn't have needed a bag," she'd said accusingly, dumping everything on the countertop. Three piles — yes, maybe and definitely not — were combed through until only four or five remained, and at that point the day was more about storytelling than it was photo-choosing.
"You know, I was pregnant in this one," Mary Margaret had pointed out, beaming as she swiveled a group photo from Oktoberfest to Emma's side of the counter. "Not enough to know, but I counted backwards from my first appointment and the math added up."
"So that pumpkin-flavored beer didn't get you sick?" Emma'd asked slyly, sliding the photo into the maybe pile.
"I don't think it helped."
Emma remembered falling asleep with a smile on her face that night, long after Mary Margaret left her with photos to scatter around the apartment (including their group photo from the movie theater) and a promise to bring back frames. Not having a stable family home to grow up in meant not having family photos to sift through and reminisce on, so that night had been a first for her.
She hadn't known then about the power a photo could hold, but now? Now she was staring at their group photo from that morning in the theater, unable to look at anything but the way her eyes trailed to Killian as he pretended to howl in pain and clutch at his side. Now she was standing, tracing her thumb across her printed face as if she could change the expression on it to something less obvious.
She couldn't, so she shoved it beneath the largest magnet she had on the side of the fridge. One reminder down, she thought to herself, turning to look at her apartment. Too many to go.
Emma's next mistake came early Sunday morning. Muted grey light was filtering through her blinds as she rolled across her sheets, coaxing her arm out across the panes of light to reach for her phone. What first sounded like her alarm now proved to be her ringtone — she flicked the screen to answer the call without thinking, pressing her phone to her ear.
"Emma?"
She blinked awake in a second. After avoiding phone calls and sending hastily written texts all week, the absolute last thing she'd been meaning to do was let Mary Margaret get a hold of her.
She tried hard to sound like she had been meaning to call her all week. "Mary Margaret, hey. How are you?"
"I'm fine, Emma."
Mary Margaret's voice had never been so careful, at least not directed at her. She sounded different without the bright, bubbling warmth radiating from her words. It was earlier than she usually called, which was a little alarming Emma. The first, terrible thought to go through her mind was that the baby had come early and she'd missed it, but that cautious tone on the other line interrupted the thought.
"Did I wake you up?"
"No, I was — well, yeah, but it's okay. Don't worry about it."
"Should I, though? Be worried?"
Emma bit the inside of her cheek, straining for an answer that wouldn't incriminate her. The longer she was on the phone, the more chance she had of breaking down, and that was not part of her plan for the last day of her weekend. She opened her mouth to say that she was sorry, she would call her back to talk at length when she didn't have as much work on her plate — the first excuse she could come up with on the spot — but the words faded on her tongue. Mary Margaret deserved more than an outright lie.
"No. You haven't done a thing."
"Are you sure? Because the last thing I remember saying to you was that I wanted you to be part of my baby's family, and I haven't heard from you since." She took a deep breath, a sure sign that she was gearing up for a long speech, and Emma sank back against her pillow to stare at a patch of light on the ceiling.
"When I told David that I wanted it to be you and Killian, he told me how you might react. We waited so long to ask because it was a secret, yeah, but there were other reasons, Emma. I wanted to make sure you didn't feel like we were replacing you in our lives. I even wrote it down on a little notecard; it's in my baby book. I had no idea it even bothered you until you missed dinner here the other night."
Emma tried to grasp it; the image of Mary Margaret delicately sliding an index card between that month's pregnancy diary entry and a paint swatch from the soon-to-be nursery. She suddenly remembered a promise she'd made to help them put the crib together when she got back from her trip, and the memory sank like a stone to the bottom of her stomach.
"I'm sorry about the radio silence," Emma responded lamely, aware that it wasn't enough. "I never meant for you and David to worry about me over that."
"Then what's going on, Emma? You've never tried to keep us out of the loop when something's going on with you. Not when it's something serious."
Emma thought the wariness in Mary Margaret's voice had been hard to hear, but the pain was awful. She could tell she was holding back, too, trying not to make things worse or push her away. Emma couldn't blame her; she'd jumped at every chance to keep them all at arm's length from the moment she left their doorstep a week ago, and Mary Margaret had no reason to believe anything had changed.
"Killian didn't say anything?"
"He talked to David earlier. I want to hear it from you."
"I kissed Killian the night I went through the ice. We started to be…something after that."
"And?" There was no excited glint in her voice, no impatient anticipation. Emma hadn't expected any, even if she hadn't heard a word of what David and Killian had talked about.
"And if I let that something exist, I could potentially screw up your whole family."
"Our whole family," Mary Margaret argued, frustration seeping into every word. She didn't seem to notice that she hadn't disagreed with Emma. "You say it like you can't have both, Emma. What in the world made you think you couldn't have both?"
"I don't know if I can handle both. Not without someone getting hurt." Emma said it quietly, knees drawn to her chest and hair falling in curtains in front of her eyes. She felt like she was shouting the words, like they were echoing out across her apartment and out into the hallway, out into the world where everyone would know. She already worried that it showed on her face; speaking it out loud was worse.
"That might be true," Mary Margaret allowed, her voice a little softer than before. "But trying to keep the pain all to yourself isn't working either. You deserve to give yourself more credit than that…and besides, we miss you."
"It's only been a week," she frowned, a little confused at the mention.
"You'd be surprised at what a difference a week can make, Emma." She paused, and Emma could picture her shaking her head to herself. "We're always going to want you in our lives, no matter who else comes into the picture."
"You don't think I screwed all of this up?"
"II wasn't just talking about myself before."
There was no going back to sleep after a phone call like that. Emma pulled herself out of bed and showered until the water ran cold, all the while thinking over what Mary Margaret had told her. She still felt guilty, more so than she had before when she'd been jealous over a baby that had yet to be born.
Thoughts of things she should have said kept streaming through her mind, now that she was off the phone. She should have made it clear how excited she was to be a part of everything involving the baby, no matter what was wrong with her own past. She made it so easy for herself to fall back into the same old doubts, even when her brother and his wife had spent years and years convincing her otherwise. That needed apologizing for, too.
The hardest apology, though, was the one she needed to give to herself. Mary Margaret was more right about that than anything else; she'd been happier, more sure of who she was for the few days that she let herself feel something fully for Killian.
He wasn't just their passenger, a fourth person to take up space at the table and keep Emma from feeling like a third wheel. He was the deputy that pulled double shifts just to make sure David wasn't out on the road by himself. He was the friend who ambled patiently through the aisles of IKEA and Target with Mary Margaret until she found the baby furniture she wanted, and loaded it into the back of David's pickup truck without complaint. He was the man who traveled more than a thousand miles away from home with her without question, the man who didn't judge her for her past when it came up, the man who pulled her from the ice and warmed her. And that was just the trip — Emma could think of a thousand things that made him more than worthy enough to be the person she took a chance on.
The truth was she was scared of having so much to lose, and he was right below David and Mary Margaret on her list of things that were truly hers. Emma shut off the shower water and wrung out her hair, letting a cloud of steam out of the shower as soon as she stepped onto the tile. He would probably answer a call from her if she tried it, but she could already feel it wouldn't be enough. If she deserved more than she gave herself, then Killian deserved at least five times that.
She moved throughout her apartment with wet hair falling over her shoulder, ignoring the chill it gave her. She wasn't in the mood to be bothered by the cold when there was so much running through her mind. Would Killian be up this early? The drive had wiped both of them out, but he was never one to let himself sleep in just because he was tired. No, she knew he'd be up and doing something productive with himself, the exact opposite of her right now.
Emma made herself a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter, staring out into her living room. She wished she hadn't cleaned the apartment so thoroughly the day before; her hands were itching for something to do, her mind craving the distraction that work brought.
She tried closing her eyes and picturing herself back at Tradition once the smell of coffee started filling the air, calling to mind every detail she could. Emma imagined the ceiling yawning high above her, the walls stretching and painting themselves a warm red. She reached out her arm, holding it just in front of the carafe, and tried to picture flames licking the walls of the stone fireplace instead. All of it came together except — except it was empty. She had never been to Tradition alone, and it felt wrong imagining it. Emma opened her eyes and realized it was more than that. She didn't want to imagine it with nobody filling the seats on the couch, nobody rummaging through the cabinets in the kitchen, nobody tugging playfully at the corner of the blanket she kept for herself. There was no point in daydreaming about a place she loved without the people she loved in it, just like there was no point in going alone.
There was no fooling herself anymore. The moment she finished her coffee she was in a pair of running shoes and out the door. Her thoughts came more quickly when she was moving, and by the time she circled the neighborhood she had a better idea of what to do with herself than before. The chilly air woke her up in ways the coffee hadn't. She ran up the stairs of her building and stopped back inside to grab her car keys, and then she was out the door again, determined to make up for at least a few of the seven days she'd spent on her own.
Emma arrived at Mary Margaret and David's later than expected. She'd forgotten about the morning rush hour in her rush to come and talk to them, but for once in her life she hadn't minded navigating the traffic. It gave her something physical to worry about, even if it was just for a few minutes, and by the time she turned onto their quiet side street she'd worked through most of her nerves.
Emma took her time walking up to the door, She kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other, rocking up onto the toes of her sneakers and back again while she waited for somebody to answer. She knew where they kept their spare key, and had one of her own swinging from the carabiner that held her own, but she was trying to make a point to whoever came to the door that she was asking forgiveness on purpose.
Mary Margaret answered the door, pregnant stomach visible before her face was. The hand not resting on the doorknob was holding a phone to her ear, but she lifted it away the second she saw that it was Emma waiting on the edge of her doorstep. "Dr. Whale? Can I interrupt you for a second?" Emma held up a hand to say it was okay, but Mary Margaret gave her an insistent nod. "I've got company at my door. I'll call you back tomorrow morning."
Her phone wasn't in her pocket for a second before she stepped outside and wrapped her arms around Emma as tight as she could, pressing her cheek to hers.
"It's too cold out here for pregnant people," Emma pointed out, hugging her back.
"I don't care if it's a little chilly out. I thought it was going to take you a lot longer to show up here," Mary Margaret told her, although she did take a tiny step back through the threshold. "David just left to go to the store, if you want me to try and call him back —"
"It's okay. I think you're the one I'm supposed to apologize to first…along with this guy," Emma said, nodding down to Mary Margaret's stomach. "Can I come in?"
"Of course you can." She stepped aside and led the way out of the cold, heading right for the kitchen. Emma shut the door behind her and realized she hadn't eaten anything, but Mary Margaret seemed to be one thought ahead of her in everything today. "Have you eaten yet, or did you run right over here?"
The joke lifted ten pounds off of Emma's shoulders. She shook her head, taking the first step of many in terms of her own honesty. "I had a cup of coffee, but nothing solid."
"Well we've got plenty here," Mary Margaret told her with a small smile. "Grab something so we can go sit and talk. My feet have been killing me lately."
Emma did as she was told, reaching into the cabinets for a bowl of cereal. She ate it dry, intent on wasting as little of Mary Margaret's time as possible, as well as her own. Every minute that passed made it harder to keep a firm grip on her courage, and she needed every drop she'd summoned on her run.
"I'm sorry I made you have that conversation on the phone," Mary Margaret started, settling down into her seat. "I didn't say a word of it to David."
"It would have been okay if you did. I probably need to stick around and wait for him to come back," she offered, already soaking in the comfort that was their home. She didn't even live here, but a huge chunk of her heart had made a home here from the moment she moved in. This was her side of the couch she was sitting on, and she was drinking out of her mug. Mary Margaret was the kind of person she was sure she would have rented an apartment with, had she known her before David, and she thought about it now as she curled her feet against the side of the couch.
"You know him. He wanders every aisle." Mary Margaret smiled fondly at her, and waited quietly after that. Emma knew she was giving her the floor, so to speak, but it still took her a moment to gather her thoughts.
Breathing deep, she raised her eyes to meet and lock onto Mary Margaret's. She opened her mouth to say all the practiced words she'd come up with on her run, but all of it fell away as soon as she tried to speak.
"I'm sorry," she said instead, starting simple. "You and David and Killian have more than made up for all of the awful stuff I lived through in my past, but you've never gone through anything big with me before."
"Doesn't mean we don't want to, though," Mary Margaret reminded her, smiling a little more. "Especially since we're family."
She appreciated hearing it, and would have taken it in writing to hang over her bed if she could, but Emma pressed on. "As far as Killian goes…you're kind of my only girl friend. If I told you —"
"Then it'd be real. I know you better than you give me credit for, you know. And so does he," she said pointedly, cutting off the thought that just crept into Emma's mind. The two of them were her family, but he was a different kind. His forgiveness felt more important, just like it felt harder to earn.
"You sure about that?"
Mary Margaret reached forward, covering Emma's hand with her own. "If I was, I'd have to be completely wrong about him, too…and I'm about to be a mom. That means I'm always going to be right from now on."
Emma smiled and let her shoulder sink into the plush back of the couch, intent on staying a while and making good on her comment about David. "You better be."