Author's Note: We've come to another end. Thank you for all the follows and favorites and lovely reviews! Y'all are the best. Also, the end of this story is ridiculously cheesy, even for me, but I couldn't help myself. I'd apologize for any feels it may give you but once again, I think we all know by now that I'm never sorry. ;)
There was something about sitting on her bed, flanked by her parents, that made Emma feel remarkably safe. Remarkably secure. This is how it should have been, she thought as she basked in the comfort their arms gave her. This is what I should have had.
This was safety and security and stability, all things she should have had from birth. She should have had her parents' love and her parents' comfort and her parents' support. She should have had so much. She should have had everything.
She knew she should get up. Henry and Killian were probably worried. She'd darted up here so fast and her parents had followed right on her heels. And though it was probably only about ten minutes, she felt like the three of them had been sitting together for an awfully long time. But the little girl who still resided within her, the lost little girl who'd never had this kind of comfort and safety and security, didn't want to give it up. She was reveling in it, basking in it, taking in as much of it as she could like a thirsty traveler who'd found an oasis in the desert.
And so Emma stayed. She let her parents hold her and comfort her a few more minutes until her independent adult side finally wrested control back from the lost little girl.
When she fidgeted, Snow and David both let her go. They smiled at her, tear tracks of their own running down their cheeks. "You all right now, kiddo?" David softly asked as he brushed his thumb along his daughter's cheeks to dry the rest of her tears.
"Yeah," she said, giving him a smile in return. "Thank you both for following me."
"You're very welcome, sweetheart," Snow replied warmly.
And under their warm and still comforting gazes, Emma began to feel a little foolish for having run off in the first place. She didn't have to handle everything alone anymore, and it was clear now that even if she tried, her parents wouldn't let her. They would follow her and do whatever they could to help her, whether that was offering reassurance, assistance, or simply an ear and a shoulder to cry on.
The lonely little girl felt more loved than she had ever felt before and the independent adult was touched by and immensely grateful for the support. Maybe it was time to stop trying to deal with everything on her own. Maybe it was time to stop trying to lick her wounds and private and maybe it was time to let her family offer her the support she both needed and wanted.
And her family included not only her parents sitting on either side of her but also her kid and her pirate sitting downstairs, more than likely concerned for her. So even though she was a hundred percent positive that her eyes were rimmed in red and that her tear tracks still stained her cheeks, she stood up from the bed and held her hands out to her parents. "Let's go back downstairs," she said, a shy little smile gracing her lips.
David and Snow shot her identical warm smiles and grasped her hands in theirs. Then Snow reached up and brushed her thumb over Emma's cheeks, drying the last of her tears.
As the three of them descended the metal stairs, Emma caught her not-as-stealthy-as-they-seemed-to-think boys whipping around in their chairs to face the table and pretending that they were completely absorbed in their just-started art projects. They'd obviously been trying to eavesdrop on the conversation happening above them but Emma didn't belabor the point. They hadn't been nosy, just concerned, and though she hated that she'd made them worry, she realized that it was really nice to have people who loved her enough to worry about her.
Much better than being a little girl who didn't matter and didn't think she ever would.
"So, free art period, huh?" Emma asked as she reclaimed her seat at the table. "I was never very good at just painting whatever."
Snow and David also joined everyone at the table as Henry and Killian exchanged a concerned glance. Though Henry clearly want to ask Emma if she was all right, he gave her a smile and instead pointed out, "You know, you could always paint that castle you said you used to draw."
Out of the corner of her eye, Emma saw the anticipation shining in her parents' eyes at the thought of seeing the subject of some of their little girl's childhood artwork, even if it was a couple decades too late. It was a ridiculously cheesy idea but it was also ridiculously touching and Emma found, to her surprise, that she wanted to show her parents what she used to draw as a child. "That's a great idea, kid," Emma smiled. "Sappy as all get-out but great."
Henry beamed at her before turning back to his own painting, which seemed to be of some kind of waterfall in the woods.
Everyone got down to work. Everyone except Killian, who reached for Emma's hand under the table. She looked up at him, her questioning frown fading when she spotted the sheer concern swimming in his eyes.
"I'm all right," she assured him in response to his silent question. "I just got a little … overwhelmed."
Though he nodded at the reassurance that she was okay, he couldn't quite hide the bewilderment in his eyes. Before she could explain what had sent her running up the stairs, Henry's eyes lit up in realization. "Hanging a kid's artwork on the fridge is basically the highest form of praise a parent can give," he said softly.
Sudden understanding flooded Killian's features, and all at once, Emma knew. She knew that he'd figured out that Snow hanging their paintings on the refrigerator was the first time any of Emma's artwork had ever graced a fridge. As was typical of him, though, he didn't dwell on it. With a glance up at her parents, he simply smiled and said, "I must say, then, that I am honored to have my painting displayed among such incredible talent."
Emma chuckled and gave a slight roll of her eyes. Her Killian may have spent a couple centuries as a fearsome pirate but he also had quite the dorky side.
It was ridiculously endearing.
Soon enough, everyone focused on their paintings. David's depicted a pasture on a calm day. Snow's was of a fountain in a courtyard, ringed on all four sides with stone benches. Killian's was another ocean scene, this one of a ship battling a stormy sea. Henry's waterfall was beginning to really take shape.
Emma closed her eyes, let out a deep breath, and called up the mental image of the castle she used to draw as a kid. She painted from that memory, the regal castle taking shape against another stormy gray sky. It was clearly better rendered now in her more practiced hand but it still evoked the same air of fantasy as it had when she was little.
Or maybe not fantasy. As the castle began to come together, Emma realized that it was familiar. Not familiar because she'd drawn it a hundred times as a kid. Familiar because she'd been there.
She'd seen this castle, she'd walked within its walls. It had been crumbling then, destroyed by time and a Curse. But there was no doubt in her mind that this was her parents' castle in the Enchanted Forest, the one that should have been her home. Her home with her family.
The rational side of her kept insisting that she was remembering her childhood drawing wrong. That she'd simply conflated the two castles in her head. Deep down, though, she knew she wasn't remembering wrong. The castle she'd drawn hundreds of times over as a kid was a dead ringer for the one that should have been her childhood home.
A soft gasp from beside her drew her out of her own shocked reverie. Both of her parents were staring at her painting, their eyes wide with both surprise and nostalgia. "Emma, that's … that's our castle!" Snow breathed.
"I thought you were going to paint the one you used to draw as a child," David murmured when he found his voice.
"This is going to sound crazy," Emma said, blinking her own surprise at her parents, "but I am painting the castle I used to draw as a kid."
Everyone, Henry and Killian included, stopped their work and stared at Emma's painting. Killian was the one who broke the shocked silence. "Perhaps on some level, a level you didn't even realize at the time, you were connected to your parents after all, love."
Could she really have had some kind of unconscious connection with her parents back then, a connection that manifested itself as a fantasy drawing? It seemed impossible but then again, stranger things had happened.
"Yeah, maybe," she said, smiling at her parents.
They both got up and wrapped her in a tight, loving hug. "We love you, sweetheart," Snow murmured into her ear.
"We always have," David added.
"I love you, too," Emma whispered back. "Always have and always will."