Authors Note: Hey all. Thank you for all the reads and reviews! Here is the next chapter. Part 1 of 2 and I hope you like it. I know some people have been asking for more Charming and Emma time :) Don't forget to let me know what you think, reviews are always appreciated. Thanks :)
Chapter 8, part 1
"Papa! Papa!" was all Charming had to hear for him to shoot out of bed. His eyes barely opened as he ran towards the door of his bedchamber and ended up colliding with his daughter. "Papa," cried Emma, and within a couple of seconds Charming had his daughter in his arms.
"What happened, Princess?" He rubbed her back and she instantly grabbed hold of her father as if she feared he would leave. "Shh, Em, it's ok. Papa's here," he whispered into her hair as she buried herself into his shoulder. He could feel her shaking and her sobbing slowly turning into a light cry. "Why don't we sit down so we can talk?" He felt Emma nod so he slowly walked over and sat down on the bed. "It's alright, I'm not going to leave, ok?" He pushed some of the hair that fell in her face behind her ears. After a moment of sitting and waiting for his daughter to calm down he spoke again "Why don't you tell me what happened?"
"Bad dream, bad, bad, dream," she said quietly as she cleared away some of her tears.
"What happened in this bad dream to get you so upset?" He looked at his daughter but she wasn't going to answer him. "Emma, I need to know what happened so I know how to help you."
"Mama doesn't make me say what happened," she argued, and at that moment Charming knew that this was going to be a long night.
"Yes, but your mother isn't here at the moment, and Papa wants to know what happened." When Emma would have a nightmare or a bad dream it usually took both of her parents to calm her down enough to fall back asleep. But with Snow away it was only him tonight.
"It was scary," she whispered.
"Here, you know what we are going to do?" Charming looked down at his daughter and whipped away some of her new tears.
"Candle?" It was something that her father always did for her.
"Yes." Charming paused for a moment debating if he should carry Emma with him to get the candle or if he should leave her on the bed, with his movement to stand up he felt Emma's grip tighten and decided that leaving her on the bed would not work. "All right, here we go." Charming got up slowly from the bed and walked towards the candle. Once he reached the candle, he made his way back quickly towards the bed a placed the candle on the night stand to light it. Emma looked up at the glowing candle, watching the light seemed the calm her down and she snuggled herself back into her father. "Now, you want to talk about what happened in your dream?" He tried again and felt her sigh and knew that he had won.
"I was with you and mama and we were having fun and then someone came in and hurt you and mama, they hurt you really, really bad. I kept on calling out for you but your eyes stayed closed and then they were taking me away and I woke up." She started to sniff again, clearly the nightmare having its effect on her again.
"Well, princess, that is a really bad dream." He could only see worry in her eyes, then an idea came to mind. He got up onto his feet and smiled. "But look, I'm here and I'm not hurt at all." Charming did a little dance to show that he was fine and unharmed.
Emma let out a little giggle at her father's silliness. Once her father was back on the bed, Emma quickly found comfort sleeping on his chest with her head in the crook of his neck. "Mhm," she softly agreed.
"And you're right here with me and no one will ever take you away from me, we always find each other." He smiled remembering his wife.
"Like mama?"
"Yeah, exactly like your mama." He could feel her breathing even out and took this as a small victory. "And you know that I will never let anything happen to you, I will always protect you," he assured her.
"Promise?"
"I promise, now, I'm guessing that you would like to spend the rest of the night in here?"
"Is that alright?"
"Are you kidding me? I was going to come and get you, I was getting lonely in here all by myself." He looked around the room, it was times like these when Snow was away that he realized how big the place truly was.
"Papa?"
"Yes, Em?"
"In my dream you were using a sword."
"Was I now?" Once of his eyebrows raised.
"Yeah, can you teach me how to do that? So I can protect you and mama too!"
"We can ask your mother about that. I'm not so sure if you're ready for that yet."
"But, Papa, I'm 5. I'm old enough," she held up five fingers. "Please." Wow this conversation has done two things: one, it had made her forget that she was just terrified, and two, it has made her wide awake.
"I promise that we can ask your mother as soon as she gets home." Charming starts to rub circles on Emma's back hoping that it would make her want to sleep again (it did always work when Snow did it). "You want to hear a secret?" He changed the subject.
"Oooo, yeah! I love secrets!" Emma yawned, the rubbing on her back clearly working.
"I've had a lot of fun these past couple of days with just the two of us. I like spending all this time with you rather than doing all my boring work." They had done so much together in the past couple of days that he thought he would be locked up in his office for days with the amount of work that he would have to catch up on.
"Me too, Papa." She smiled and started to close her eyes.
"Do you think that we should show mama our new place?" The day before the two of them decided it would be fun to just explore around the forest and came across a beautiful waterfall, where they spent the afternoon swimming and playing. They had gone there again that day, it was their spot no one knew about, where they could just have fun with no worries about anything else.
"No, Papa. That's our spot," she giggled.
"Really? What if Mama's really good, then can we tell her?" It wasn't that he didn't want a secret place with his daughter, it was that it was such a beautiful place that he wanted to share it with his entire family.
"Maybe," Emma stated. "I'm glad you didn't go with Mama." Her arms wrapped around him as he could feel her sleepiness starting to take over.
"And leave you all by yourself here? No way!" It was something that both Snow and Charming had agreed on when Emma was born. Neither liked being far away from their daughter, so if they had trips that would last more than one or two nights where they couldn't bring Emma, one parent would stay behind. To be perfectly honest the conversations usually consisted of both parents arguing why the other should go and why they should stay.
"I love you, Papa." Her eyes finally closed and her breathing evened out. No more worries about what happened last time she had closed her eyes. She felt protected and safe.
"I love you too, princess. More than you'll ever know." He kissed the top of her head and closed his own eyes, giving himself a mental pat on the back for concurring this nightmare on his own.
