CHAPTER FORTY: HAPPILY EVER CLICHÉ AFTER

(In which Ruby gets nosy and one part of the cliché "feminist" happy ending recipe is achieved.)

It took several hours brewing the antidote in the kitchen after collecting all of the snails and trying to make sure everyone in the diner was accounted for and wouldn't get accidentally stepped on. No one had copped to actually triggering the sprinklers, though Emma had her money on either Cora - who brings a parasol to a diner on a clear night? - or Gold, who'd conveniently excused himself to the restroom, which just happened to be located near the fire/smoke detector near the entrance to the kitchen.

"Our son is a snail," Emma moaned, watching Snail Henry munching on a leaf of wilted lettuce inside a mason jar with a couple of holes poked in the top.

"He seems like a happy snail, though," Neal observed. "I'd totally try the hanging from the lid upside down thing first too."

Emma frowned. "Our son is a snail. How are you not freaking out?"

"It's not like it's his first animal transfiguration. And you know Henry - he takes this stuff in stride. Besides, maybe it'll get him to eat salad. He really seems to like that lettuce."

"Hmm..."

"Finally!" declared Regina, emerging from the kitchen with a spray bottle that had once held oven cleaner and was now re-labeled with tape and a sharpie: "De-Snail-ifying Potion".

"Should we put them on the floor?" asked Belle.

"Well, I don't want a bunch of people standing on the counter," agreed Ruby. "Granny'll break her hip!"

So they gathered all of the cake-topper covered plates and jars that contained snails and released the mucus-secreting garden pests onto a cleared area of the floor. It really was funny how they all had identifying markings on their shells. August's look like wood grain, Granny's was gray, David's was plaid, Graham had a little star...

"This had better work," Regina directed at her mother before spritzing August first, just in case there was some side-effect; she figured other than Marco, no one would really miss him, and the Blue Fairy could always resurrect him again.

Thankfully, it did work, and August became a human man again... with a lettuce leaf hanging out of his mouth.

In short order, everyone had been de-snail-ified and no one seemed overly phased by the whole mess. Even Ruthie was happily teething on a carrot.

"That was awesome," Henry declared of the transformation. "I could smell with my eyes!"

"Yeah, well, so could I that time I took LSD at Burning Man," said August, amending, "which you should never do," after Emma kicked him in the shin.

"I have to go write it all down," continued Henry, and he addressed Regina, "Hey, what happens if you use this stuff on snails? Do they turn into people?"

"Nothing good comes of flipping spells like that," informed Cora. "Sure, if you want a corpse for an anatomy lesson without having to rob a grave or murder someone..."

"Mother!"

"What? How do you think the first heart-removal spells were created? One has to have a basic understanding of anatomy first! But trust me," she told Henry, "I knew a warlock who'd turned a live toad into a human just to see what would happen. It was hideous and all it did was sit around and 'ribbit' while trying to catch flies!"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaand on that note," sighed Emma, "I am going to clean pie out of my hair and the mucous-y bodily secretions of various town's people off my hands."

She didn't wait for any further comment, heading to the bathroom and squirting as much soap into her hands from the dispenser as possible. Accidentally kissing her son the other day was bad enough. Having her parents' slime on her hands? Yuck! And the worst part was that they kept trying to mate snail style. She saw her father's snail penis! She could never unsee that!

The bathroom door opened, and she glanced at Ruby, who had dried ketchup in her hair and asked, "So, is my entire family banned for life now?"

"Well, that's really Granny's call. But I doubt it. Compared to your usual brand of fighting that includes attempted homicide, throwing food is nothing. You paid for it and Regina cleaned up the mess. No one seems to care who triggered the sprinklers. So, you know, just a regular day in Storybrooke."

"And people say small towns are boring!" groaned, Emma.

"Compared to life in the Enchanted Forest, it's pretty tame, I guess," mused the werewolf. "And there's cable and birth control..."

As she spoke and joined Emma at the sink, she gave a distinctive sniff and Emma scowled. "Okaaaay, I know I need a shower after hours in a car that reeks of fast food farts, but-"

"Sorry. Just... it's that time of the month and my wolf senses are even more acute than usual," Ruby explained, chagrined. "I just wasn't sure if I smelled what I thought I smelled in a room full of people and with that potion brewing, because I didn't notice anything other than the obvious pheromonal stank of sex when you and Neal walked in..."

Flushed, Emma sputtered, "You can... you can smell when people...?"

The waitress shrugged. "Oh, yeah, you were both wafting endorphins like a couple of horny muskrats. Which, I know, sounds gross, but hey, if I can smell when Regina's PMS-ing, I can get that bitch her chocolate donut sugar fix before she has a magical tantrum, so it has more uses than just winning the 'who's banging who' diner poll."

"There's a poll?"

"It's a small town with literally nothing to do for fun and a bunch of horny fairy tale characters who'd use Tinder to find true love if they actually had smart phones."

"Yeah, probably," Emma shuddered, then wondered, "Wait, if you knew we had sex, then what were you sniffing me for?"

"Oh," Ruby replied and finished washing her hands. "You're pregnant."

Emma dropped her wad of paper towels. "W-what?"

"Well, unless you're fake pregnant from screwed up hormonal secretions due to parasites in the brain again. It wasn't noticeable when you came in, but, yeah, definite hormone change in the past couple of hours. You'd be amazed how fast the body's biochemical secretions change."

The door to the bathroom opened and Granny poked her head in. "Ruby, I need help de-sliming the plates."

"Remind me again why I want to inherit this place?" she grumbled at her grandmother, leaving Emma alone... and trying not to hyperventilate.

...

The diner was emptying out, the two of them the last to depart. Neal shoved his hands in his pockets, then took them out of again to snag the sleeve of Emma's jacket. "Hey, please don't."

Emma blinked, drawn out of her thoughts. "Don't what?"

"Pull away, retreat, whatever, that thing you do," Neal sighed, "when you get emotionally invested in something or someone and then start to over-think and freak out. You've been... disconnected ever since you ran off to the bathroom."

"It's not that. I mean, it's not us," she answered, and sat down on the bench.

Sitting down beside her, Neal asked, "Your job then? Are you having second thoughts about-"

"No. I mean, I don't know. I hadn't even thought about that. But between our constant family crisis and therapy and AA and now a baby..."

"I know our family is time-consuming, and you've got personal stuff to work out besides, but..." Neal faltered. "Wait... what baby?"

"According to Ruby's wolf smell powers, I'm pregnant. Apparently, as we were crossing Main Street, you sperm were crossing into my fallopian tubes."

Neal leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs before asking, "How accurate are her, ah, wolf smell powers?"

"Accurate enough to sniff out Regina's PMS, apparently, which is more than I needed to know."

"Okay..." Neal ran a hand through his pie-encrusted hair, "so... this is a little faster than anticipated."

"Or at all!" Emma groaned. "Christ, Neal, we can't have sex without you getting me pregnant!"

"Um... sorry?"

Emma dropped her head into her hands. "I probably should have figured out that being magically changed into a teenage old girl was going to fuck with my birth control that I haven't taken since leaving Storybrooke! Shit!" She flailed her arms in aggravation. "I just got done with this! And I was relieved that I wasn't really pregnant, because I was pretending to be happy and excited and I was really just terrified and I didn't feel anything, just this... emptiness inside when I was supposed to be happy that I was having a kid."

"But you weren't having a baby. Maybe, subconsciously, you knew that, and that's why you didn't feel anything," Neal tried to reassure her. "But, hey, Emma, if you don't want this, if you're not ready-"

"No!" She stood up. "I wouldn't. I could never do that. I-I thought about it when I found out... with Henry... but I couldn't."

"Okay."

She wrapped her arms around herself. "This isn't how it was supposed to go. I always told myself, after Henry... that he would be my only kid, no matter what. That... I wasn't even programmed that way, to be a mom. I mean, living on the streets, I never even thought about it, about the possibility of having a family of my own. And knowing he was with a family, somewhere, but not knowing who or where, it's not because I didn't care."

"I know," Neal told her with a sad smile.

"It's just... you're not supposed to know, or you can't go on with your life. But the trouble was, I couldn't forget him. He was everything to me, except mine. And even now... sharing him with Regina... sometimes it's so hard, Neal. But I still never thought, 'hey, I should have another kid to get everything I missed out on'. How could I do that? I tell myself that I was trying to give my kid his best chance, but the truth is, I don't really know. I was just young and scared that growing up like I did, I didn't know how to be a mom. But considering Henry turned out great with Regina raising him... sometimes I wish I could get that choice back, that I could have the stuff in those fake memories for real. That maybe... I wouldn't be so messed up. And maybe trying to be a mom wouldn't feel like I'm always one step behind, like that Super Mom who existed in New York was just... a figment of Regina's imagination for Henry's benefit, because once I got me back... I don't know what I'm doing most of the time, so how am I supposed to parent a kid from birth?"

"I don't know," Neal said after a moment of silence, standing up to join her under the entry arbor. "I think you just do. All parents screw up. At least a little bit. No matter how good they are. But one thing I do know, this kid will be loved. And more than likely be clever and witty... though with questionable driving skills if she takes after you."

"Hey! There was a tree blocking that sign!" Emma huffed, then raised a brow. "She?"

"She, he, whatever. Doesn't matter. Though I gotta admit, I wouldn't mind a little mini Emma with your ponytail and your sass."

"Really, after dealing with teenage me?"

"Well, I got valuable practice," Neal reasoned, the amended as he slipped an arm around her, drawing her close. "We'll figure this out as we go along, together, like we used to."

"I love you," Emma exhaled, and it seemed each time she said the words they came more easily, and without the nagging sense of dread and memories of loss.

"I love you too," Neal replied and pressed a kiss against her hairline before standing. "Come on, let's get you and the cygnet home."

Already the kid had a nickname. Emma rolled her eyes, but took his hand, a smile creeping into her lips as they stepped off the curb onto the street and passed through the shadows toward the garden on the other side.

AN: A shout-out to Galavant with the toad thing. Remember when Ricky Gervais' warlock "flipped it"? So sorry about the Snowing snail sex! And knocking up Emma. But that is the mandatory cliché happy ending on Once Upon A Time, folks! (Also, I only just noticed that my in-chapter section breaks did not format in the saved chapter. Sorry about that. I've gone back and used ellipses which seem to have saved.)

Up next: Putting this angry baby to bed!