Author's Note: What better time to post this ridiculous fluff-fest than a few days before the episode that I'm sure is going to kill us Charming Family fans? Make sure your toothbrush is handy, ladies and gents, here be sugar. I'm not even sorry. ;)


"Emma Swan, in the name of all that is good in the universe, will you please quit fidgeting?" Snow asked, exasperated beyond the point of masking it.

"Ow, you're pulling!" Emma grumbled in return, whipping her hand to the back of her head.

Snow roughly pushed Emma's hand out of the way, causing Emma to cry out in surprise. "Emma! You just came within inches of grabbing a hot curling iron!" Snow cried, her panic evident in her tone. She let out a breath and when she spoke up again, she sounded a lot calmer. "And I wouldn't be pulling if you would just sit still."

Emma let out an exasperated huff of her own, wondering why the hell she'd agreed to let her mother do her hair for the ball in the first place.

Well, okay, she did know why she'd agreed to let her mother do her hair for the ball. Emma had assumed she would be doing her own hair but Snow had been vaguely horrified at the thought. It wasn't, as Emma had thought at first blush, that she didn't trust Emma to style her hair properly. It was just that a princess doing her own hair before a ball was apparently not a thing that happened.

Emma had been just as vaguely horrified at the thought of sitting for a stylist, so David had suggested Snow do her hair instead as a compromise. Snow had clearly loved the idea of being able to reclaim some of the mother/daughter moments they should have had while Emma was growing up. A little lump had welled in Emma's throat at the thought of finally having a mom to do her hair, so she'd agreed.

What she hadn't taken into account, however, was the sheer craziness of princess hair. Whatever the hell her mom was doing was clearly nowhere near as simple as running a brush through her locks and doing a quick half-ponytail. Her mom's chosen style involved the curling iron and copious amounts of both hair spray and bobby pins. Oh, and sitting still for long periods of time while Snow tried to get whatever the hell she was doing just right.

At least Snow had let her do her own makeup.

Emma glanced over at the clock on her mom's nightstand. It was two hours to showtime, which was still plenty of time. Snow couldn't keep her sitting in her bedroom for two more hours. Hell, it felt like she had been sitting in this chair for two hours already. (It was more like forty-five minutes but Emma had no real patience to speak of.)

She slouched in the chair, only realizing she did so when she heard an exasperated, "Emma!"

Oops. "Sorry."

"Once again, I would very much like to not accidentally burn you with the curling iron," Snow sternly informed her. Emma gulped; Snow had totally just broken out the mom voice. "Would you please sit still?"

"Can I at least see what the hell you've been doing for the last forty-five minutes?" Okay, so she was being snippy but holy crap, it had been forty-five minutes and she had a sneaking suspicion Snow was nowhere near done.

"If I hand you a mirror, would that make you sit still?"

"It'd be a start."

Snow heaved a sigh, released the lock of hair that she had wrapped around the barrel of the curling iron, and crossed the room to her dresser. She withdrew a hand mirror from the top drawer and handed it to her daughter. Emma smiled a thank you and, as her mom reclaimed her place behind the chair, tried to angle the mirror so she could at least somewhat see behind her.

As of this very moment, her hair looked like a complete mess. The remnants of an apparently abandoned French braid were visible at the top of her head and the curls she could see were uneven. "What are you doing?"

"I know it looks a little disjointed right now but I promise it will come together nicely. That is, it will come together nicely if you sit still."

Then Snow plucked the mirror from her hand and set it on the bed, leaving a chagrined Emma with nothing to do but stare at the wall.

Emma could have kicked herself. Here this was supposed to be a nice moment between mother and daughter and she was ruining it. She hadn't meant to ruin it but she was just so unused to … all of this. "I'm sorry," she said softly after a moment. "It's just … I've never had anyone do my hair before."

Snow's breath caught in her throat. "Ever?" she asked.

"Not that I can remember," Emma replied, shrugging. She was sure someone had done her hair when she was really little but as far back as she could recall, doing her hair had been her own responsibility.

For a moment, both of them were silent. Emma felt Snow lightly wrapping another lock of hair around the barrel of the curling iron. Then she spoke, and Emma was surprised to hear emotion choking her voice. "Well, we'll just have to remedy that, won't we?"

"Yeah," Emma said softly around the lump in her own throat, "I guess we will."

And finally, Emma sat still. She let Snow do whatever the hell she was doing and just reveled in the togetherness with her mom. Hell, she even began to enjoy the fact that someone else was doing her hair, closing her eyes and just letting herself relax.

Twenty minutes later, Snow set the curling iron down. "All right, I want you to take a look." She gave the hand mirror back to Emma and then held out her hand to help her daughter out of the chair. Emma grasped her mother's hand, stood, and tentatively stepped up to the full-length mirror.

As soon as Emma caught sight of her reflection, she gasped. Her mom had given her flowing princess curls with thin tendrils framing her face. And when she lifted the hand mirror to check out the back of her head, she was able to see that Snow had done a loose French braid a quarter of the way down her head, which she then tied off as if it were a half-ponytail so that the remaining hair disappeared into the curls.

"What do you think?" Snow asked somewhat hesitantly.

"I love it," Emma answered, her tone breathless. It was the absolute truth. The hairstyle her mom had chosen was a miraculously perfect combination of ease and elegance, something that wasn't entirely outside of Emma's comfort zone while still looking princess-adjacent.

Snow let a soft breath of relief and now that her moment of panic was out of the way, she was able to fully take in the sight of her baby girl, dressed in her purple ball gown and her curls cascading around her shoulders. She couldn't have looked any more like a princess than she did in this moment, and Snow had never been more proud. "You're absolutely gorgeous, my princess," she whispered around the lump in her throat, cupping Emma's cheek in her palm.

Emma swallowed hard, blinking back tears of her own. She'd never felt like a princess more than she did in this moment, and she was surprised to find that it was kind of awesome. Still, she needed a joke, if only because crying right now would completely screw up her makeup. "You're not going to make me wear a tiara, are you?"

The joke worked. Snow chuckled, sniffling back the rest of her tears. "No, but a princess does need some jewels in her hair." She stepped over to the dresser and retrieved a small black jewelry box. She handed it to Emma, who accepted it with a bewildered frown.

Resisting the urge to shake it, Emma removed the top from the box. Inside on a bed of cotton lay two pairs of jewel-encrusted barrettes. Emma gasped and looked up at her mother with a combination of surprise and confusion. "These were mine and my mother's," Snow said as she removed one pair of barrettes from the box. "Belle found them in Mr. Gold's shop, catalogued as belonging to me, so she gave them back to me. My mother gave them to me for my first ball and she wore the other pair so we would match. I just thought ..."

"I love them," Emma said, smiling softly at her mother and tears once again welling in her eyes.

Snow smiled as well and, blinking back her own tears, clipped the barrettes strategically in her daughter's hair. Then she clipped the remaining pair in her own hair, fully passing down the mother/daughter tradition. "All right," she said, clearing her throat and swallowing the last of her emotion, "if you're ready, I'm going to get your father."

"I'm ready," Emma said, though she wasn't sure that was entirely true. She hadn't anticipated getting ready for the ball being so emotional.

Snow smiled at her, her own baby blue chiffon dress swishing as she ducked through the curtain into the apartment proper. A few of Evelyn's customizations and alterations had turned what was once a simple floor-length bridesmaid's dress into a proper ball gown. She'd done a beautiful job transforming the gown with beading on the bodice and along the bottom of the skirt and added chiffon to make the skirt fuller and more flowing.

Her parents' soft voices announced their pending arrival. Emma held a breath as Snow ducked back into the room with David on her heels. He was dressed in a sleek black suit that Emma hadn't even been aware he owned, and the second he spotted his daughter, he drew to a stop, his eyes wide and his breath catching in his throat.

Very slowly, he stepped forward and, just like Snow had done when she'd tried on the dress, took her hands in his. "You are the most beautiful princess in all the realms," he whispered, pride swimming in his eyes.

Emma felt pesky tears welling in her eyes again. "You're just saying that because you're my dad," she joked but to her horror, her joke backfired on her. The realization that she actually had a dad to tell her she was the most beautiful princess in all the realms forced those tears to spill over.

Her dad swooped in for the rescue, letting go of her hands to dry her cheeks with the sides of his thumbs. "I'm a dad whose daughter is the most beautiful princess in all the realms," he teasingly corrected, a sardonic smirk tugging at his lips.

Emma chuckled, sniffling back the rest of her tears. David smiled and stepped back to give his daughter a little space. "You're going to knock them dead, kiddo."

"You think so?" Emma nervously asked, blinking in confusion even as the words were coming out of her mouth. Where was the nervousness coming from?

Luckily, her dad lived up to his nickname. He just smiled and said, "I know so. Now, come on. I know a twelve-year-old boy and a couple-hundred-year-old pirate who are dying to see you."

She smiled back and linked her arm with his. "Lead the way, your majesty."

Snow sidled up to her other side, so her parents walked her out into the living room where Henry and Killian were waiting. She spotted them before they saw her, Henry dressed in the suit he wore when he was working at Gold's shop and Killian dressed in suit pants and a white button-down with his black leather jacket in place of the suit jacket.

In a word, he looked hot.

Henry caught sight her first, his eyes widening as he pushed himself up from the sofa. Killian followed his gaze and stood as well, a smile tugging at his lips. Admiration shone brightly in her son's eyes but in Killian's were love and lust and passion and pride and desire, all rolled into one.

"I take it you like it?" she said after a beat of silence.

Henry found his voice first. "You look amazing, Mom."

Killian remained dumbstruck. Then he strode forward and extended his hand to her. She unlinked arms with her parents to take his hand. "I am honored to escort the most stunning princess in any realm to tonight's festivities."

Though his eloquence sort of made her knees buckle, Emma managed to quirk an eyebrow at him. "I guess that means you like it."

"Of course I do, love," he nodded before leaning in to kiss her cheek.

That definitely made her knees buckle. "All right," she said when he pulled away, clearing her throat, "let's go to a ball."