A/N: Okay, I don't usually update THIS often. I like to wait a week for the most part, but my goal is to have the entire story posted before the premiere, so that's why it's typically only four or five days between chapters. In this case, it's just three.
Emma woke when Regina pulled back the curtain covering the porthole. Sunlight poured right onto her face. Sitting up, she twisted around to avoid disturbing Henry and reached over him for his book. With a yawn, she lazily flipped through the pages, again unsure just what she expected to stumble upon that would suddenly explain everything. All she knew at the moment was that no fairy that had spent time in Storybrooke, in her world, would have come across that whole "I don't believe in fairies" thing without some kind of protection against it.
Feeling eyes all of a sudden, she looked up at Regina giving her a raised eyebrow.
The two had lived in a taxing harmony during the journey, the memory of staring straight into the other's frightened eyes and hoping the self-destruct could be detained still fresh. Emma yawned again and stretched her arms, her fingertips brushing a beam, warm smooth wood...ship shouldn't be growing on you, she thought.
"Good morning," she whispered.
"Morning," Regina answered. Stiff, frazzled head nodding—yep, signs of Regina making an effort. Bail bondsmen, sheriffs...saviors—didn't leave a lot of time for advanced level psychology courses, but Emma had decided ever since she had come back from the Enchanted Forest that her response to Regina making an effort should be positive reinforcement.
"You don't happen to know how long going back this way will take, do you?"
"No," Emma said. "Slower than the way we got here anyway." With a forced laugh, she added, "I guess trading things for beans in your world isn't as bad a trade as it sounds." Hmm, no effort there to be sociable, she saw, watching Regina shift her weight from one leg to the other, biting her lip. "Something on your mind?"
"If we're going to spend another night on this ship, I would appreciate some quality time with my son."
"Sure, I...he was so tired..."
"And you just crawled in with him. Honestly, Emma, I can't compete with you."
"Compete?"
"You're acting more like a big sister than a mother."
Throwing her legs over the bed, she stood up, mentally counting to ten.
"Let's talk out in the hallway." She closed the door behind her, burning a hole into it with her mind first before facing Regina. So this is what she thought Henry wanted to return to, more arguing and "competing" for him? "I thought we were done with this. I have never tried to take Henry from you except for when you do things so terrible that he needs to be taken from you for his own safety. We worked together to find him and I thought we were going to go home together and take things one day at a time. My god, Regina. He's not a puppy dog where we fight over who he sleeps with!"
"No, no, you just try to whisk him off to a completely different land right under my nose," Regina snapped.
"You tried to kill all of us!"
"And your mother killed mine! When is all this 'evil queen' business going to stop? Did you ever think they made me the evil queen?" Her fingers rested against her chest, tears welling in her eyes. "You don't even know what living there during that time was like."
"I know you cast a curse that took away the identities of everyone you didn't like! I know you framed my mother for murder! I know you locked an innocent woman up in a cell for twenty-eight years because she was involved with the wrong guy! I know you killed Greg's father! I know you tried to make Henry think he was crazy whenever he questioned anything, and I'm sure I could go on. Life under you in the Enchanted Forest was probably a big long line of people getting their hearts ripped out..." No, her eyes widened. No, not after she had moved on from that pain... "Graham?"
Regina flinched, her lips drying.
"He said you had his heart and the very night he does something you don't like he dies of a heart attack. You...Henry said you had killed him. You did. Good lord, you did."
"Everything I've done, I was either forced or-"
"Stop! Just stop it! I thought you were finally taking responsibility. You wanted to change because you wanted Henry's love and you have it! You probably always had it, which is more than you deserve! When are you going to start atoning for all this...without an eleven-year-old kid guilting you into it?"
She stomped up to the deck, not wanting to hear a response. She felt she'd waited more than enough for a response. Why? Why, not even twenty-four hours after rescuing Henry, had things suddenly gone back to the way they'd been before? Had none of them learned anything, changed? Quests were supposed to bring people together, all united by a common goal and seeing the best everyone had to offer... Graham's face—damn it, she'd blocked out that horrible moment, pure joy on his face suddenly contorted in shock and torture. He hadn't even died in her arms, gone before he hit the floor, gone before she could do anything but shout his name. And maybe, maybe even if they'd had just one day, hell, maybe she could have loved him. Not many people looked at her the way he had, with that euphoric "I remember."
Emma perched herself near the stern of the ship, out of sight of Regina at the helm. She'd been cut in two, the only possible explanation for this urge to either bask in Henry's love and safety or scan the horizon for shadows. With Peter Pan gone, they would all be gone, and yet she peered through every cloud, their puffy cheerful shapes doing nothing for her.
Neal alive—she should be thrilled. Neal had looked at her that way once, like she was the reason life was worth living. She was happy, but it felt off-key, the relief one would feel for a friend more so than all this True Love business that had seemed forced down her gullet this past year. Childish little Emma, she scolded herself, still hoping dropping the love bomb fixed everything. She loved Neal...Bae...Neal, and probably always would. Hmm, maybe back in the Enchanted Forest, First Love had secondary powers to True Love. Nope, everyone probably just falls once and that's the one that takes. Would she even have declared love if he hadn't been one big swirly vortex of doom away from death? It haunted her dreams, prowled her brain, watching him disappear into a void. How her father must have felt when she and Mary Margaret vanished into one...how she felt when she watched Henry vanish into one...
And yet he'd chosen safety over her, had decided the mere possibility of seeing his father again wasn't worth her. She had no idea what she would be up against and he did, that as a savior she would have power, the thing his father craved. To be fair, Emma thought with a huff, she might have done the same thing. Rumpelstiltskin as a dad, a dad you already left one world because of, sounded...
"You're lucky you remember your parents, no matter how bad they were," she'd once said, rubbing his back after he'd woken with a jolt, his body covered in a sheen of sweat. He never, ever mentioned his parents, but in dreams, in babbling sleep conversations with himself, they visited him.
"It's the other way around, babe."
"Neal, I'd give anything to know who my parents are. At least you know, you're not left wondering." She trailed off before she crossed a boundary, before she insisted they had loved him at some point.
"No, if you don't remember, they can be whatever you want them to be." With a quick kiss, he rolled over and tried to fall back asleep.
She would go on a break, a sabbatical, when she returned to Storybrooke. No sheriff work, no discussing going to this land or staying in that one. She would go for long runs in the morning, do something casual and motherly with Henry, maybe something like fishing or...Tai Chi...whatever, and close the day with some fruity girly drink throwing darts at the wall. Yeah. It beat scouting the skies for shadows. If UFO enthusiasts only knew, she thought, the muscles it took to smile stretching.
"Swan?"
So much for the simple life right now, she thought.
"Something chasing us?" Hook asked, amused.
"Would it honestly surprise you if there was?" His eyebrows jumped as if to say "good point." Shifting his weight so it rested on his hand on the rail, he sighed.
"Boy retrieved, everyone safe and sound, True Love alive. If I were you, I'd be elated and here you are waiting for the next misfortune."
"So?" Lighten up, she scolded herself. He's trying to cheer you up a little.
"So is there a story there or do I have to go back and hear what a mammoth is again?"
"What?" she asked.
"In Henry's backpack, on his folder. I asked him what it was and he said it was a mammoth, some gigantic beast that lived in your world thousands of years ago or some such-"
"I know what a mammoth is."
"Well, I didn't and was beginning to feel rather stupid so I decided to go on about my business." Grinning, he waited for her to respond, but she didn't want to give him the satisfaction. Damn him for trying to cheer her up and it working. Melancholia suited her better than admitting that more than once she'd felt while talking to him that they were the only two sane people for miles, or at least the two insane people who best handled being insane...she frowned. A savior's not supposed to have much in common with a wife-stealing pirate...she hated herself for even thinking such a snobby thought. Just last night, with magic and weapons flung at them from every which way, he'd proven he was more.
"Silence again. Well, I do love a challenge." He fumbled around in his coat until he produced a rolled-up piece of paper. "That, that was meant for you but there wasn't really any time to give it to you." Hanging it awkwardly in front of her, curiosity took the better of her and she took it with a suspicious face. She unrolled it to find a small hand-drawn portrait of Henry, so well done she didn't notice her bottom lip dropping or her heart quickening.
"When did you do this? You'd barely seen him."
"Ah, turns out the Queen did in fact have a picture of him handy."
"You, you pick-pocketed her?" Stop being surprised, she yelled at herself. Like you're really able to arrest him right now for picking pockets.
"Took it and finished it before she even ventured out for the Lost Boys," Hook said dismissively. "She never knew it was gone."
"I...thank you." You know, to thank you for playing the gentleman and saving kids and stuff, I've decided not to arrest you for the countless crimes and misdemeanors you've committed since strolling into town in pirate boots...
"I've given some thought to what you had said before," he said, this time looking out straight ahead.
"And did you decide on something?" she asked.
"No." He laughed to himself, one self-deprecating enough to be contagious.
"Three hundred years not ever thinking about how to spend your future kind of means you can go a little easy on yourself." After a second's hesitation, she nudged his side with hers. Opening up to you means you should do the same, she told herself. "You're not the only one who's at an impasse...Killian."
Emma about broke into hysterical laughter at herself, seeing he'd mastered the WTF face even if he'd never heard of it—eyebrows sky-high, eyes not knowing whether to laugh or dance.
"Fine time you remember I have a name!" Unsure now if he was laughing at himself or her, she couldn't say anything. "And what is this impasse of yours...Emma?"
"Should a savior please herself or please others?" Her fingers spread along her face, the sky and clouds now out of focus. He wasn't answering and maybe that was for the best. If anything, a savior should make that decision herself, she thought. And then, some invisible boulder she'd been lumbering about with on her back crumbled into dust. She saved her son, she found a family, she had purpose—she could be elated. Fingers falling back to the rail, she breathed at the blinding blue of the sky surrounding them, the clouds far behind. Minutes ago, the emptiness would have unnerved her.
His jaw tightened, she realized, before she realized her gaze had shifted from the sky to him, noting how his eyes seemed so, so opened now, laid bare. She leaned into him as his head lowered and their lips met somewhere in the middle.
Emma's body all but hummed in anticipation, his kiss slower than she'd thought it would be, and warm, so warm. His hand flew to the back of her head and kept her in place as if he feared she would break away. His fingertips seared her scalp. Gentle and unhurried and yet so, so hungry...
Heavy footfalls from farther along the deck at the steps broke them apart faster than if they'd been electrified. She followed the sound, tucking her lips into her mouth, her tongue running over them. That, that didn't happen. That...she stopped, hoping there was some other reason she was breathless. She couldn't look back, especially when she arrived close to the bow where her father and Henry gazed out. The ship was fast encroaching land. The Lost Boys and everyone else cluttered around.
"David? What is it?" she could finally ask.
"Emma, look out," he said, his arm out. His face a mixture of confusion, worry, and, and glee? "Do you see any power lines? Any skyscrapers?"
The ship traveled over some woods, nothing to get jittery about, she told herself. Storybrooke had always been surrounded by woods, the rich emerald greens from heavy rainfall. Skyscrapers had no place in Storybrooke, but the top of a building should have been visible by now. In the distance, a windmill spun.
"So...we're in Holland by mistake?" Henry asked, glancing up at David. Oh, kid, she wanted to sigh, but couldn't. A high bridge led to all too familiar shambles that had once been a castle.
"We're in the Enchanted Forest," she whispered.
The ship lunged, ever closer to what Charming hoped would be a smooth landing on a smooth surface. On an overturned crate, he shuffled through scattered papers, fingers twitching to the point he dropped the ballpoint pen a few times.
"Not a good time for you to disappear." He looked up to see Snow closing the door behind her, her brow furrowed. "Henry and the boys are running around the deck like chickens with their heads cut off, Emma looks about ready to hyperventilate. What are you doing?"
"We're back," he said, taking a moment to sigh, to breathe. "Sit down for a second, please."
She sat on their bunk, across from him, skimming the half-thought-out notes he'd written in a frenzy on the papers, her lips tight. They'd ruled together once, briefly.
"Everything we had talked about doing when you decided you wanted to come too isn't just talk anymore. It's an inevitability." Her nod gave him more confidence. "Once we find Neal, we're going to have to rebuild. We're going to have to make this place suitable for everyone to come back...and then find a way for them to come back..."
"Charming?"
He wasn't a million miles away, he was ready to argue, but she didn't elaborate.
"Snow, I know there can't be a good reason why we're here, but...this is our home. This is where we started building a life together. Can't we be happy about it for five minutes?" he sighed, relieved the corners of her mouth stretched into a smile, that her eyes were closed in reverie rather than frustration.
"I forgot that it's been just a few months for me and twenty-eight years for you," she said, her hand reaching across the crate and resting on his, her fingers stroking the delicate bones between his knuckles and wrist. "It's good to be home for me, too, but we still need to take all this one thing at a time."
"I know. I'll, I'll check on our prisoner. Why don't you see if they need help on deck?"
She nodded again and they left the cabin in opposite directions, Charming nearly bumping into Emma. Her back against the wall just out of a ray of sunlight's reach, she froze at the sight of him, her face savoring some secret memory, watching each second of it like she'd never seen it before. It's subtle, he knew from experience, when he saw Snow try on his mother's ring for the first time, how right it looked on her dirtied, calloused finger, how even though they were saying goodbye he wanted nothing more than to just stay and talk to her a little while longer...
"You okay?"
"Yeah, I, I'm fine, I..."
There were times, more than to Charming's liking, that he felt Emma was on the verge of saying something, of letting the walls come down just a little bit...and he wanted to push, wanted to push so badly, but being a father didn't come with instructions, much less a father of an already-grown woman who knew far more cruelty than she ever should have. So, without knowing and without her telling him, all that remained was to resort to guessing.
"You know, I know that the Enchanted Forest probably didn't seem all that enchanting when you were here..."
"Oh, no, well, it didn't, but..."
"You're never going to have to be left in this world alone." He knew that wasn't it, but, gods, if anyone needed that kind of reassurance. "So if you want to talk about anything, if you have a question you think is really stupid, just, just know your mom and I would be more than happy to help you and whatever we're going to be up against, we're here for you."
"Thanks." She nestled just a little in his arms, her forehead pressed into his collarbone. So much is on your mind, Emma, he thought. Hopefully some of it's good.
A/N: So the Enchanted Forest! We're all becoming so well-traveled! Coming up, another letter and then a glimpse to what all is going on in Storybrooke. Hint: they're not having an easy time over there.