Author's Note: Happy Mother's Day to any and all moms out there, and Happy Finale Day to everyone! (Oh, and I promise I will reveal why, exactly, Emma hates camping so much, but I do so enjoy being cryptic in the meantime. :))
Snow White paced the length of the kitchen, her cell phone pressed to her ear and a frown of consternation on her face. Emma, on the other hand, was trying her hardest not to laugh.
To listen to Snow talk, all of her careful list preparation had been for naught simply because she had forgotten to include a single line item. She had been trying to get a hold of David for a good five minutes now, first on the landline and then switching to her cell. Emma had no idea why her mother had made the switch other than the cell offering her freedom to pace since Storybrooke had apparently not yet heard of cordless phones.
When Snow disconnected the call with a frustrated grunt, Emma bit her lip to keep from smiling. "He's still not answering?"
"No, he's not answering," her mother grumbled in response. "I don't know what could possibly be so important that he's not picking up."
Before Emma could offer up any number of innocuous but legitimate reasons her father wasn't answering his phone, the apartment door clicked open. The man question stepped over the threshold with a cloth shopping bag hooked over his shoulder and a ten-pound bag of ice in each hand. "Oh, thank goodness!" Snow cried, dashing forward to help her husband with his purchases. "You remembered to get ice!"
"Of course I remembered the ice," David replied as Snow relieved him of one of the rapidly thawing bags while Emma grabbed the other. He shrugged the shopping bag off his shoulder and carried it to the counter where his wife had piled up of the non-perishables they needed for dinner. "I'm well aware that we need ice to pack a cooler."
"She neglected to write ice down on the list and was afraid you wouldn't think of it," Emma murmured to her father, giving an indulgent roll of her eyes. Even if David hadn't thought to buy ice, it wasn't like they couldn't have picked some up before heading to the woods. Why her mother was having a minor panic attack over ice was beyond her. "When you check your phone, don't be surprised if you have about seventeen missed calls."
"Three," Snow spoke up, her dry tone a clear indication that she was nowhere near as amused as her daughter. "I called him three times."
Emma shot her mother a smile that was half apology and half blatant sarcasm. "I'm sorry I'm not treating the Potential Great Ice Debacle with the seriousness it deserves."
A flicker of a smile tugged at Snow's lips as she realized how much she was stressing over something that, in the grand scheme of things, didn't matter at all. The nod she gave her daughter was meant to be curt – because she had to uphold the reputation of the Potential Great Ice Debacle as indeed being a serious thing – but instead came across as playful. "I accept your apology."
David winked at Emma as he emptied the grocery sack of the items Snow had sent him out to purchase. A package of hot dog rolls (because there was only one left in the pack they had on hand) and a head of lettuce (because the one in the crisper had begun to wilt) joined the hamburger buns and condiments Snow had already piled on the counter.
Emma eyed the cooler, a frown turning down the corners of her mouth. "You know," she said with a sideways glance at her father, "that sucker is going to be a bitch to carry with all the food plus twenty pounds of ice in it."
"Oh, Emma," Snow sighed, bemoaning her daughter's mouth.
"We'll make camp somewhere close to one of the access roads," David assured her. He was trying to resist a smile; Snow would have had his head for actively encouraging their daughter's language. "We shouldn't have to carry it too far."
Emma started to tell him that coolers came on wheels nowadays for that very reason but stopped herself. She was trying her hardest not to let her dread come across as sarcasm and negativity. Instead, she began to gather the camping supplies she had pulled from the closets. Now that David was back, she and Henry could start loading the truck while her parents packed the cooler.
"Henry!" she called to her son, who had gone back upstairs for one more thing to put in his backpack. "Let's go!"
"Coming!"
He wasn't kidding. He bounded down the stairs at record speed, skidding to a stop at the pile of stuff. The eager look on his face as Emma handed him a sleeping bag made her heart melt.
He's the reason you're doing this, she told herself with a little smile. Just hold onto his excitement, and you'll be fine.
Henry reached down and picked up another rolled sleeping bag. When Emma handed him the yoga mat she'd found buried in the back of the hall closet, he frowned up at her. "Who takes a yoga mat camping?"
"I'm surprised you even know what that is," Emma muttered, brows raised. That was actually more surprising than the fact that Mary Margaret Blanchard had owned a yoga mat in the first place.
"I'm eleven, not dumb," Henry replied with the tiniest roll of his eyes.
She didn't want to come right out and tell him to watch his tone – because God, how mom-like was that? – so she simply gave him a look that got the point across without words. "If I have to sleep on ground tonight, I'll take whatever padding I can find, thank you."
Henry just shook his head as he tucked one of the sleeping bags under his arm so he could open the apartment door. "Sleeping on the ground is what makes camping fun, though."
"Says the kid who didn't spend countless nights in the Enchanted Forest," Emma reminded him. "Maybe sleeping on the ground is fun when you're a kid, but trust me, it loses some of its appeal when you get older." With that, she shooed him out the open door.
She grabbed the other two sleeping bags and the camping grill in an effort to make as few trips up and down three flights of stairs as possible. The only issue was that her hands were so full now, she had no way to close the door.
It seemed that Prince Charming was bound and determined to be her knight in shining armor today. He slipped the camping grill from her hand and grabbed the bag of water bottles she'd gathered for their hike before closing the door behind the both of them. "Um, thanks," Emma said, trying and failing not to sound confused, "but shouldn't you be packing the cooler?"
He shrugged halfheartedly. "Snow told me to help you." He cast a glance at the closed door before lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "To be honest, I think I was annoying her. Every time I put something in the cooler, she'd move it to a different spot."
Emma allowed a little smile. Times like this, it was far easier to believe that her mother had spent most of her life as a princess.
"Hey, here's something I don't understand," Henry spoke up from the landing. "How come you had three sleeping bags, Gramps? I mean, I have the one I took from my mom's house, but the other three came from your house, right?"
"I didn't have three sleeping bags," David told him. "I only had two. One of them must have been Mary Margaret's."
"But why would Mary Margaret have needed a sleeping bag?"
"The same reason she needed a yoga mat," Emma snapped, mostly because the conversation was beginning to make her brain hurt. "Or the same reason David Nolan needed a sleeping bag even though he spent twenty-eight years in a coma." She glanced at her father. "No offense. Who the hell knows why the curse set things up the way it did?"
David and Henry exchanged a troubled look. Henry gave a little shrug as if to say he had no idea what Emma's problem was before heading down the next flight of stairs.
The slump of the kid's shoulders broke Emma's heart. Goddamn it, she hadn't wanted to squash his excitement with her own negativity. "I'm sorry I snapped," she murmured to her father. "I just … really hate camping."
"Emma, we don't have to do this if you don't want to."
"Yes, we do. I promised him."
David looked her over, trying to figure out what was behind her reluctance. "Then you don't have to go. Let us take him."
"No, it's all right," she said while silently scolding herself to get it together already. "It's just one night. Besides, I have a bacon cheeseburger and roasted marshmallows in my future."
The expression on her father's face was loving and sympathetic, which simultaneously comforted her and told her that he saw through her blatant use of humor as a conversational misdirect. But where Snow would have pushed her at this juncture, David simply went along with her. "Bacon cheeseburgers are indeed one of the best things about this world."
Emma faked a gasp of shock as she finally started down the stairs. "You mean there were no bacon cheeseburgers in the Enchanted Forest?"
"Not a single one," he replied with mock disappointment, following behind his daughter. "No pizza, either."
"That's a friggin' travesty." Emma shook her head, clucking her tongue in disapproval. "If I had my way, pizza would be its own damn food group."
David chuckled at that, making Emma smile. The two of them exited the apartment building to find Henry already climbing into the bed of his grandfather's truck. "Be careful, Henry," David called.
"I'm being careful," Henry assured his mother and grandfather as they approached the truck. He took the sleeping bags from Emma's hands and set them next to the two he'd carried down from the apartment. Then he took the camping grill from David and placed it beside the sleeping bags before jumping back down to the ground. "We should bring the tent down next."
"I'll get it," David said with a smile. "You two stay down here." He headed back toward the building before Emma had the chance to protest.
As she watched him walk away, something new hit her: they only had one tent. David swore up and down he remembered it being a big tent, but should they really trust David's curse-given memories? And besides, no matter how big it was or wasn't, Emma was still going to have to share a single tent with her son and her parents. A tiny little shiver of claustrophobia made its way down her spine at the mere thought. This was going to be one of the most uncomfortable nights of her life, wasn't it?
"Mom?" Henry asked, startling her out of her reverie.
"What, kid?"
"You've been camping before, right? Real camping, not just back yard camping?"
She had, although she desperately wished she hadn't. "Yeah."
"And you didn't like it?"
Hmm, honesty or sugarcoating? She actually remembered enjoying the first night of her first – and, because of what happened on the second night, only – camping trip. She'd been so young then, though, and after that one night, all of her other experiences had left her none too pleased with the outdoors. "Not particularly," she answered as a kind of compromise between honesty and sugarcoating. "Why?"
Henry shrugged almost uncomfortably. "Because I was just thinking … I know Gramps went out and bought stuff and I know you and Gramma made food and we packed and everything, but we don't have to go camping if you don't want to."
Emma's heart melted yet again at her son's offer. Here she was, trying – not too successfully, she was afraid – to ignore how much she hated this particular activity for Henry's sake, and there he was, offering to give up something he really wanted for her sake. Even though it was over something as small as going back yard camping, the two of them were willing to sacrifice for each other.
She crouched down so she was eye-level with her son and took his hands. "That's very sweet of you, Henry, but we're going. I promised you we would go, and I don't intend on breaking that promise."
The wide grin that lit her son's eyes, coupled with the strong embrace he immediately wrapped her in, made all the negative emotions Emma was going to have to face over the course of the night worth it.