Author's Note: I'm sure we all know by now that I apologize for nothing, but still. :) Also, you guys are the best.
The unmistakable sound of a baby just beginning to fuss drew Snow out of a heavy and warm slumber. Funny, she thought as she dragged her eyes open. It was nothing more than a hitch in her son's breathing that had roused her, and it was something that had happened every night without fail from the day he was born. She could be dead asleep but the second her son's breathing changed, she would be wide awake.
And it wasn't just her son. She had been like that as Mary Margaret Blanchard. From the first night she offered Emma a place stay, she'd connected with her new roommate in a way she'd never understood at the time. She'd never understood why she would toss and turn or wake up every twenty or so minutes until she heard Emma come in for the night. She'd never understood how – or why – she always knew when Emma was awake in the wee hours of the morning. A couple of times she'd started awake and just lay in bed for a minute or two trying to figure out what had woken her only to hear her roommate begin fighting against a nightmare of some kind in the loft above. And she'd never understood it, not until a rainbow wave of magical light washed over her and she remembered.
Only then had it made perfect sense: mother's instinct.
She'd never told Emma any of it, though, mostly because she was afraid of pushing the parental stuff too hard. Maybe now, though … maybe now she'd be able to let Emma know that on some level that even the darkest of curses couldn't touch, she'd recognized her daughter even then.
A soft moan from beside her drew her out of her reverie. Her husband, too, had heard the hitch in their son's breathing. "That's his needs-a-changing fuss," he murmured to his wife, resting a hand on her shoulder. "I'll get him. You go back to sleep."
But she couldn't. Mother's instinct was pinging again, not for her son this time but for her daughter. Charming climbed out of bed, taking care not to disturb Henry. Immediately registering the loss of warmth from her husband's absence, Snow pushed herself up on her elbows and searched the dimly lit shack for Emma.
She found her stubborn daughter and her daughter's equally stubborn pirate sitting side by side in front of the well-stoked fire, cuddled up together to share body heat and wrapped in the extra blanket Hook had retrieved from the car. Emma had her head resting against Hook's upper arm, Hook had propped his chin up on his palm, his elbow on his knee, and they both looked like they were on the verge of falling asleep right where they sat. "I can't go back to sleep," she murmured to Charming, nodding towards them as she climbed out of bed as well. The chill of the air hit her full force, and she shivered. "We're on duty now."
Even if Emma and Hook weren't about to fall asleep on the spot, she would be forcing them into bed anyway. After sitting for hours in the cold air, they needed some time under to blanket to warm up.
Charming glanced in the direction she'd indicated and smiled. "Got it." Then he picked Neal up out of the car seat and carried him over to the other side of the shack for a changing.
While he was tending to their son, Snow decided to tend to their daughter. "All right, you two," she said softly as she approached the fireplace. She hid a smirk when they both jumped at the sound of her voice, their groggy minds fighting to come back to the present. "It's bedtime for you both."
"We're fine," a very sleepy and decidedly not fine Emma argued. She rubbed her eyes, completely unaware that she looked very much like a small child who'd missed a nap.
"The fact that neither one of you can keep your eyes open and your heads up says otherwise, Emma," Snow gently teased. "To bed with the both of you."
Surprisingly, Emma didn't argue any further. She pushed herself to her feet, grasping Hook's hand on the way up. Though she seemed wholly unaware that she'd done it, Hook was more than aware. His brows shot to the ceiling but he wisely said nothing to call attention to the gesture. He simply allowed her to pull him up and lead him over to the couch-turned-bed, a small smile curling on his lips.
Snow smiled as well. It seemed that the good captain was learning what she herself had learned in the Forest: Emma's affectionate side (and she most definitely had one underneath her tough exterior) had a tendency to show itself when she was half-asleep.
She thought she was going to get away with following them completely undetected due to her daughter's drowsiness but just as Emma grasped the blanket, she turned to Snow as if suddenly realizing she was there. "You're not going to like, tuck us in, are you?"
She sounded vaguely horrified at the thought. "No," Snow assured her even though that had kind of been the plan. "I just want to make sure the blanket covers the three of you all the way."
Emma narrowed her eyes. "That sounds like a fancy way of saying tucking in to me."
"She won't tuck us in, love," Hook assured her softly. Then, over Emma's head, he winked at Snow.
Snow smiled gratefully at him. His encouragement worked; Emma climbed into bed beside Henry, eyes slipping shut the second her head hit the pillow. Hook climbed in beside her and allowed Snow fix the blanket over all three of them.
Once she was sure everyone was covered and warm enough, Snow murmured, "Good night, sweetheart."
"Night, Mom," Emma mumbled, already mostly asleep.
Oh, how Snow would never get tired of hearing her daughter call her Mom. She was more than ready to be Mom and it warmed her heart every time Emma let her know she was ready to let her in. Swallowing hard against the lump that had risen in her throat, Snow addressed the pirate who had done so much for her family. "Good night, Hook."
"Good night, milady," he murmured in return before settling down and closing his eyes himself.
Before Snow walked away, she performed a quick touch test of everyone's foreheads. Convinced that all three of the people in her charge were as warm as they could possibly be, she tiptoed away from the bed and crept over to where her husband was just finishing changing their baby boy. "Is he all right?"
"He's absolutely fine," Charming assured her. "His big sister made sure he stayed perfectly bundled up. He's probably the warmest of any of us."
A smiling Snow glanced over her shoulder at the rest of her family. Said big sister, curled up between her son and her pirate, was somehow already encroaching into both their sectors of the bed. No doubt about it, she thought, shaking her head slightly, my daughter is a bed hog.
She returned her attention to her son and husband. One glance at her son's bright and not at all sleepy eyes proved that he was going to be up for the next little while. It was just as well that they'd taken over watch, then.
"Come on, little prince," Charming said after he finished swaddling Neal back up in his blanket. "Let's go sit by the fire for a little while. What do you say?"
He must have agreed because he gurgled contentedly.
After a loving smile at each other, Snow and Charming crossed back over to the fireplace and eased down on the floor where Emma and Hook had been sitting. Snow grabbed the blanket they'd used and wrapped it around both her and Charming. It was still warm, which felt absolutely wonderful. "Are you covered enough?" she asked him.
"Yes." He shifted Neal in his arms to make the baby a little more comfortable and smiled when Neal freed one of his little arms from the blanket. Snow reached over and grasped her son's little hand, grinning when his tiny fingers instinctively curled around hers. "If we could just get this little guy to be a little less nocturnal," Charming teased lovingly, "we'd be golden."
"He's sleeping longer at night now so it'll come in time," Snow assured him. She checked Emma's phone, which her daughter had left sitting on the floor, for messages from town. Her eyebrows shot up when she caught the time. "He gave us a good six hours tonight, anyway."
Charming let out a low whistle. He clearly hadn't realized it was so late – or early, depending on how one looked at it. "No wonder Emma and Hook were practically asleep in their seats. I wonder why they didn't wake us like I told them to."
Snow arched an eyebrow at him and smirked. "They are two of the most stubborn people I've ever met. They probably just didn't want to admit defeat."
A smile curled on Charming's lips at that. "True enough."
They sat in silence for a long moment, listening to the wind whistling outside, the popping of the flames behind them, and the occasional gurgle from Neal. Snow was half-convinced that all of her son's little sounds were his pre-verbal way of saying, "Look at me, Mommy and Daddy!"
And they worked, because they smiled down at him with every tiny sound he made.
Then Snow heard another sound from her husband, one that her own body was echoing: the rumbling of his stomach. Neither one of them had eaten since lunch and frankly, she didn't think she could wait the next few hours for breakfast. After resting a hand on Charming's knee to let him know she'd be right back, she stood and crossed over to the cooler. They both needed something to take the edge off their hunger.
From the looks of things, Emma hadn't been able to wait, either. At least Snow hoped it was Emma; there was half a sandwich hanging out in a plastic baggie, at any rate, and Snow knew that Henry and Hook had shared a sandwich before going to bed. Emma hadn't eaten then but hopefully she had while her parents and son were sleeping.
Snow grabbed a sandwich for her and Charming to share and took stock of what remained in the cooler. There wasn't much left, but considering they had only meant it to be a picnic lunch, they'd done well to make it last as long as they had.
She sat back down next to her husband with a sigh and handed him his half of the sandwich. "We have enough food left to get us through breakfast in the morning, but that's it."
Charming nodded. "The last message I got from Leroy was that they'd plowed out the main roads and everyone who was stuck without heat. As the sun went down, though, the roads started to ice over so they had to stop the plowing to start salting. They're going to need to sleep at some point, too, but I'm betting we're out of here by tomorrow." He frowned. "Or today, I suppose. My point was, breakfast may be the only other meal we'll need to eat out here anyway."
A breath of relief escaped Snow's lips. Hopefully they really were only a few hours or so from getting out of here.
She glanced over at the bed, just to do a quick visual check. Everyone was still covered and still snuggled up together to share body heat. She didn't dare think of how badly this night could have turned out if they hadn't found shelter or if they hadn't been as experienced as they were.
Was that the point of this? To try to trap people unaware? If so, it was an awful lot of punch for such small an outcome. From the messages Charming and Emma had been trading back and forth with those in town, it seemed as if everyone was going to make it out of this unscathed. Plenty of people had been inconvenienced, of course, but there were no casualties, no accidents, nothing but a giant mess to clean up. The power apparently hadn't even gone out!
"What the hell is this, Charming?" she asked, mostly because her head was spinning as she tried to figure it out for herself. "Because if this is an attack, where's the attacker? It's been hours. It only snowed for forty-five minutes. It snowed a lot in those forty-five minutes, granted, but since then no one's come to lay siege. Is this it or is this just the first wave of it?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, Snow," he sighed. "Maybe it's not an attack. Maybe it's ..."
"What, natural? There's no way this is natural."
"Agreed. This is not at all natural. I was going to say maybe it's some kind of accident."
"Accident?"
"A magical accident," he shrugged.
Snow blinked at her husband in confusion. A magical accident made even less sense than an attack. The only practitioner in town who was both powerful enough and unpracticed enough in his or her magic to cause an accident like this was Emma, and she certainly hadn't done it. She hadn't been doing any kind of magic when the storm rolled in. They'd just been sitting together, having a nice time.
Then again, an attack didn't make any sense, either, not with no one coming forward and actually attacking anyone. "Maybe," she allowed, sighing heavily. "I just wish we knew."
"I do, too," Charming said softly. "I do, too."
Snow nodded and let the silence linger a moment before again glancing over at her sleeping family members. Emma had flung an arm out from under the blanket and rested her hand on her stomach, which had in turn uncovered Henry's and Hook's shoulders. Smiling softly, Snow got up, tucked her daughter's arm back under the blanket, and tugged the covering back into place. She thought she saw Emma's eyelids flutter but the flickering firelight made it hard to tell for sure. "I love you," she whispered to her sleeping family members. Then she decided that while she was up, she might as well check their temperatures again.
As her fingers brushed her daughter's forehead, Emma's eyes opened for a brief moment, just long enough for her to smile and mumble, "Love you."
Those words warmed Snow far more than any blanket or cuddling could have. With tears brimming in her eyes, she ran thumb down her baby's cheek. The tears spilled over when her daughter nestled her cheek against her palm. She was asleep now and hadn't really even been awake to begin with but all of that was completely beside the point.
Snow held Emma's cheek for a long moment before slipping her hand free. In the end, she supposed it didn't matter what had caused the storm. The only thing that mattered was seeing her family through the aftermath.