CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: FOODFIGHT!

(In which there's a food fight. Pretty self-explanatory, really!)

Sans keys but with her keychain now re-hung around her neck, Emma used magic to lock the pawn shop door, then entwined one arm around Neal's while touching the swan pendant. He smiled and she smiled back They would never be able to escape the past, the ways in which they'd hurt each other, but those memories and that pain could ground them now, make the happy moments that much more precious in knowing the unlikely path they'd taken to get here, walking into an unknowable future together... and, in the more immediate, into Granny's for reasonably priced mediocre food to replace the calories they'd burned off discovering that they'd had nothing to worry about in the "fitting together" department.

Granny's was packed. The beer tap was flowing, manned by the Dwarves who were passing glass mugs around and repositioning tables. Above the counter someone had hung a banner of butcher block paper scrawled with "Glad You Didn't Die (In A Magic Swamp)". The clever jerk had stuck the parenthetical part on like a homemade Mad Libs they pulled out every time someone almost died in town... which, really, would have probably saved a few trees if someone had come up with that earlier.

It was quite a crazy mashup of people, Emma noted as she looked around, not the least of which were her own present extended family members. Mary Margaret and David had their hands full with Ruth trying to magically throw mashed potatoes while Regina and Robin were sipping wine and Roland helped little Neal cut his meatloaf, joined by Marian who seemed to have called a temporary truce with her ex for the evening. Prince Henry and King Leopold were chatting what seemed to be amicably with Cora and Queen Eva, which reminded Emma that she'd barely had any interaction with her previously deceased maternal grandparents who seemed preoccupied with a dream retirement bromance - she didn't want to contemplate if it was a romance - and some sort of weird hippie ascetic charity retreat thing between them. Even Belle and Rumplestiltskin were at the party, though they had a table of their own off in a corner. At least Zelena, King George, and Uncle James weren't there, or it would probably signal an apocalypse... or that trio was up to no good. But Emma wasn't going to think about that tonight.

Mulan was throwing darts with Graham and Ruby kissed him on the cheek before grabbing a couple of plates from the counter after which she breezed past Emma with a smirking, "Hope you've worked up an appetite!"

"Do you think everyone knows?" Neal whispered.

"In this town? Probably," snorted Emma.

"Mom, Dad, over here!" Henry called out and Emma groaned a little at being immersed in this family.

"Give me a sec," she told Neal.

"Need to psyche yourself up?" he teased.

"And try to get out of picking up five cats tomorrow morning," she replied before unthreading their fingers and heading over to Graham, who'd just been out-bullseyed by Mulan.

"Got a sec?"

"I'll get more ale," Mulan answered for her competitor, giving Emma a slight nod.

"Not trying to get out of adopting those cats, are you?" Graham prompted and she groaned.

"Really? You're gonna hold me to that?"

"Yep."

"But my lease only allows one cat."

"Not my problem, is it?" he challenged.

"Fine," Emma grumbled. "Guess I'm holding a cat adoption fair tomorrow."

Graham chuckled, then asked seriously, "So, have you changed your mind about resigning too?"

"No," she answered without hesitation. That was Graham, always right to business. It was something she actually appreciated, even if it had been telling her off of late. "Gold made me Sheriff," Emma explained with a shrug. "It was never something I actually wanted. Not for anything more than to play the hero that Henry thought I was, and considering I've been a pretty unheroic Sheriff these past few years..."

She shook her head. "The badge is yours again, Graham. I don't think anyone will object."

"Well, you might have been a lousy sheriff," he conceded with a lopsided smile.

"Hey!"

"I wasn't finished!" He pulled her old deputy badge from his vest pocket. "You might have been a lousy sheriff, but I was wrong to say I regretted giving you this badge, Emma. You were a great deputy. And I can't say I'd mind having you around the station again."

Emma's brows lifted. "Talk about a backhanded compliment," she replied, then allowed, "But I guess I can't argue other than how good of a deputy I actually was. I wasn't even on the job a month before..." She trailed off, not sure how to address the death issue again.

"Hence you were forced to run before you'd learned to walk," shrugged Graham. "Inevitable you'd stumble a lot and ultimately fall flat on your face."

Now she glared. "Okay, really, this is how you're trying to re-recruit me? By saying I'm like Barny Fife?"

"Of course not. You'd be far better looking in a deputy uniform, and without that deviated septum tick."

Emma gave him a 'ha ha' look.

"There's dental," Graham pressed to which Emma rolled her eyes. "Come on, I'll let you out of the cat adoption if you wear the uniform for a month."

"You're just digging yourself in a hole here. I can totally adopt out five cats."

"In one day? Without magic? You haven't seen the cats I preselected. That mangy thing you brought in, another one's diabetic, there's the fifteen year old incontinent one, the three-legged one, and the one that lost an eye to a raccoon."

"You're just punishing me now!"

"Little bit, yeah," Graham laughed.

"You drunk sexually assaulted me," Emma protested, crossing her arms.

"You became drinking buddies with the woman who sexually assaulted me," he shot back, brow raised.

"Damn it."

Emma grabbed the badge. "Fine. But I'm not doing any night patrols so you can walk your girlfriend."

She clipped the badge to her belt, waited a moment to see if the world came to an end, but all that happened was her sister lobbing a glob of mashed potatoes at her father's face - with her mother's precision archery aim.

Groaning, Emma told her former and once again current boss, "I should go join the fray."

"Good luck with that."

She shook her head, telling him, "Graham... thank you, for everything."

"You're welcome, Emma," he replied, picking up his pile of darts from the counter, "And I hope you know that my name is actually-" he followed this with a weird growling noise that startled her and Emma's brows lifted.

"I... that... seriously?"

He laughed. "No, but I had you for a second there!"

Rolling her eyes a final time, Emma made her way toward her family's table, pausing to whack August over the back of the head on the way.

"Jerk."

He grinned. "So, you like it?"

"It's clever. You're still not allowed in my house."

Leaving August to pout and rejoin Archie, his father... and Walsh whom she had no intention of speaking with tonight, Emma took a seat between her father and Neal, who looked a bit relieved to have a buffer zone, though he took her hand, giving a reassuring squeeze.

"Thought you resigned?" he asked, voice low.

"And got rehired as a deputy."

"You resigned as Sheriff?" Henry overheard.

"What?" David exclaimed.

Snow demanded, "Why!?"

"I had to," Emma argued. "After firing Dad, it'd be hypocritical of me to stay on. I was a bad Sheriff and a terrible boss."

"Emma, you were ill," argued Snow.

"Which just amplified bad decisions I was already making. I mean, come on, when we thought Archie'd been murdered, I let you guys trample all over the crime scene and then talk me into blaming Regina with zero evidence! Bo Peep was right that I operated by bounty hunter rules instead of law enforcement rules. I've been on the wrong side of the law or walking a fine line my whole life after having a magically screwed up moral compass from the start," she said, which drew guilty looks from her parents and Emma sighed.

"I'm not saying that to hurt you both. It's just what it is. And between the dark potential magical imbalance thing, compounding familial catastrophes, and being ill, I haven't really had a chance to figure myself out. I just made bad or stupid decisions and drank to not deal with it."

With a shake of her head, Emma concluded, "I can't figure all of that out and still be the Savior while also running the Sheriff's Department."

"I'm sorry, Emma," David told her. "It's my fault."

"Oh, no, don't you make this all about you," Emma shot back. "I'm my own person. I let you get away with all of that stuff and behaved badly myself."

"That's not what I meant," objected Charming. "I meant that I have more of my brother in me then I'd like. And, I think, you inherited a bit of that. Along with that alcoholism. I should have been more open about my... character flaws, but you get labeled 'Prince Charming' and while trying to masquerade as my inexplicably reformed brother for years, having to be his polar opposite to get people to never doubt that Prince James had changed... I think I must have got some sort of complex," he admitted. "All I can say is, it's not something I'm comfortable with, knowing that if I'd been raised by a tyrant, I could have turned out like James. And while I have your grandmother Ruth and your mother to thank for bringing out the good in me... that doesn't mean I should have been... suppressing those... flaws until they just started coming out. And then I went to great and stupid lengths to hide that I wasn't perfect."

"That's deep, especially for you," interjected Regina.

Giving her a mildly insulted look, David responded, "What can I say? Midas is a good sponsor. Apparently, under the Curse, he had lost his job and family to a gambling addiction... and, possibly, it's also something to do with how he actually got cursed in a tragic irony sort of way. He was rather cagey about that. Point is," he directed at Emma, "Your mother and I disappointed you once, Emma, and I didn't want to disappoint either of you again."

Emma shook her head. "As long as you're not disappointed having an alcoholic for a daughter, I'm not disappointed in having a compulsive gambler for a father. I just want us to finally be honest."

Relieved, David told her, "I'd hug you if I didn't have a lap full of mashed potatoes and gravy on my shirt."

Just as he finished speaking, a glob of mac 'n' cheese hit him in the ear.

"Ruth!" Snow exclaimed. "Stop throwing food!"

"I thought she was banned from the premises?" Emma asked, trying not to laugh.

"She was doing much better until today," groaned David.

And so levitated and shot toward him more mashed potatoes... which Emma intercepted and shot back at her sister. The glob hit Ruthie right in the nose and the blue-eyed baby gaped, shocked at having gotten a taste of her own medicine.

"I've been wanting to do that for months," snorted Regina, oblivious to the conspiratorial looks shared between Henry and Roland, who readied their spoons, catching the former Evil Queen unaware with twin assaults of her own lasagna... upon which Snow burst into giggles... and soon had the contents of the gravy boat upturned over her head. Of course, Prince Neal thought this was the most hilarious thing ever, and being at the copy-all-things-older-kids-do stage, flung his peas at his namesake.

Naturally, within moments, the entire table erupted into an all-out foodfight, mixing magic, utensils, and plain old lobbing with food-covered fingers. Emma, with her magical defenses raised, managed to remain mostly free of food-related battle scars - that is until Neal grabbed a pie while taking cover behind the counter, snuck up behind her, and with a simple "Hey, Em," got her to turn right into his attack.

She sputtered and gasped, wiping orange filling from her face. "You... what the hell, Neal!?" she accused, not quite able to put the anger into the accusation that the words demanded.

"Pumpkin looks good on you," he giggled.

"Shuddup!" she grumbled and levitated the still half-full tin onto his head.

Suddenly, the sprinkler system went off. Emma had just enough wherewithal to magically deflect the spray from herself, as did Regina. Neal was saved from most of the spray by his pie-tin hat, and Archie popped open his umbrella while Ruby had made use of the service tray she'd been wielding as a shield to cover herself at Belle where they'd been squirting condiment bottles like water guns. Everyone else, however, got drenched before the sprinklers shut off.

"Well, at least your parents won't have to give your siblings a bath tonight," Neal considered of Emma's furiously wailing sister and delightedly puddle-splashing brother.

"Right," snorted Emma. "But why did the-"

Suddenly, the puddles and dripping water shimmered, rather like slime, and with in-unison "pops" and little puffs of purple magic, everyone who'd not managed to avoid the deluge was reduced to snails. Of the former was a matronly woman in the corner twirling a parasol and smirking in satisfaction.

"MOTHER!" Regina howled.

AN: Cora was a last minute add-on again. I couldn't help myself! I mean, you know you wanted that snail-ifying potion put to use! No Zelena in this one either. I think the others wised up that putting her in the same room with Emma's disembodied heart was a bad idea, and letting her back into Granny's would just ruin the festive mood. I initially wasn't going to include the talk between Emma and Graham, though I had planned for her to resign in some capacity. I feel bad for Marian, and I loath OutlawQueen, but there wasn't time and I lacked the motivation to truly destroy that boring-as-dirt ship.

Next up: In the penultimate chapter, slime is cleaned up and Ruby gets nosy again.