Thanks for the reception, guys – 56 combined reviews/follows/favorites in 24 hours is pretty awesome! As I said, I am a total newbie to this fandom, so I'm hideously self-conscious about posting this fic. Please forgive my occasional missteps. On that note:

Lena: I actually do know that Storybrooke is in Maine :) What Cora was saying is a reference to the prologue, where Rumplestiltskin tells her about Nebraska. The line was meant (clumsily) to indicate that she knew that Storybrooke was in the same world as Nebraska. I changed it to make that clearer. Thanks!

Anonymous: I'm sorry, I thought for some reason that Neal had learned about Emma being pregnant through August somehow. (As I said, I did kind of blast through all the episodes!) After some thought, I've kept it that way, and included my theory in this chapter as to how she might have told him. But Neal doesn't know anything personally about Henry at all, much less that he's in Storybrooke too, so he's still in for a massive shock (one of several. . .)

To everyone else, thanks for the support. And to my The North Remembers readers: I am working on the next installment, but when in the thrall of plot bunnies, I just try to get them to go away and write what wants to be written. Hopefully I will post TNR chapter 82 this weekend, however.

Chapter 2: Thanks for the Memories

Emma Swan had not expected the nightmares.

It was a bit stupid of her. She probably should have. It ran in the family, after all. Her mother, her son, and now her father had all been under a sleeping curse at one point, and as she'd had cause to learn in the Enchanted Forest, that entailed a lot of unpleasant visits to a horrible, hot, burning red room, the space between one world and another. She could still hear her mother's panic, after Snow had met her husband instead of her grandson, torn away before true love's kiss could be given, knowing what that meant. He's trapped there.

Emma's nightmares weren't like that, at least, but that didn't mean she enjoyed having them any more. As far as she could tell, her journey home through the portal, through the way she'd come the first time, had stirred up some old part of her. All the old parts of her, in fact. And now, like a tidal wave had just crashed through and left everything floating and bobbing around, she was having to pick through a whole crap-ton of garbage that she thought she'd gotten rid of for good – or at least buried too deep to ever see again.

There was no denying that she wasn't who she'd been when she was last in Storybrooke, before she went through Jefferson's hat. Whatever had come over her when Cora had tried (and failed) to rip out her heart, that blast of magic, that realization she'd uttered half-unthinking, that love wasn't weakness – no, it's strength – and the consequences of that statement for everything and every way she'd lived her life in the twenty-eight years she'd had of it to date. The other words that had come out of her like almost a dream, after watching Mary Margaret leap to her defense even at the cost of everything else. I'm not used to somebody putting me first.

And yet. After all of that, what had she done when she finally got home? Returned to the apartment she used to share with Mary Margaret, except now she was living there by herself, bar a few nights with Henry. David and Mary Margaret had moved into the house he used to share with Kathryn; there was plenty of room and they were more than willing to take Emma in, but she'd decided that living with your parents when you were almost thirty, even if said parents had been missing for nearly all of that time, was just too weird. Especially when your parents were pretty much the same age as you, and to judge from the way they were looking at each other, there was going to be a lot of. . .

Yeah.

Emma wanted to be more available to them. She really did. But once the euphoria of their return wore off, she found that she also really needed her space. Time to reconsider everything. Every choice she'd made. And the fact that now you'd think she'd just bond happily with her family and everything would be hunky dory, the end.

But she couldn't just do that.

It hurt too much.

She'd gotten to see Mary Margaret – Snow – as her true self in the Forest, and now was starting to feel the same sort of deep, gut-clenching love for her mother that she'd felt, totally against her will at first, for her son. But she'd barely had a chance to know David – Prince James – as her father before she and Mary Margaret toppled through the portal. And even if he was doing it with the best intentions and he desperately wanted to have a real relationship with her, right now he was still another guy acting territorial toward her and convinced that he knew what was in her best interest, and Emma had at least been honest enough with herself to admit that she wasn't ready to handle that just yet. She guessed he probably deserved it, at some point, and she wanted to give it to him. He'd served as sheriff in her absence, he'd kept Henry safe, he'd even gone into the red room himself so his grandson wouldn't have to. That's what family means. That's what love means. Her own kiss, on Henry's forehead while he was lying lifeless in the hospital – one of her worst memories, and yet one of her best – had been the catalyst to break the curse.

But Gold set it up that way.

Whoever he was ultimately working for, Emma didn't know. Himself, and only himself, and occasionally himself. What he wanted, why he'd done this, why any of it had happened. . . he'd told her that he wasn't responsible for the magic that blasted Cora away from her, the awakening that she'd had. But he'd crafted the curse and he'd appointed her to be the one to end it, and he'd even left that parchment with her name written over and over in his cell. . . it was awfully hard not to feel like a pawn in some strange, dangerous, sorcerous game far over her head. Her lurking, terrible fear was that no matter all the freedom she'd discovered, all the family she'd brought back, all the battles she'd fought, she had ultimately arrived back where she'd started: caught in the same trap, the same machine, that had held her from the start. Except now she wasn't playing the government and foster care system's game, where at least she'd understood the rules. She was playing Gold's, and he changed them every day, if not more often.

Mary Margaret had told her that they'd sent her away at birth to keep her safe. That if she'd stayed, she'd have been affected by the curse with the rest of them, doomed to forget everything about who and what and where she was.

Her own voice answering, heartbroken. But at least we would have been together.

A savior who hadn't been saving anyone. It wasn't thanks to her that they were back home. It wasn't thanks to her that they'd escaped Hook and Cora in the showdown at Lake Nostros. Emma was fairly confident about her ability to defend herself, and the fact that she threw an extremely competent right hook (pardon the expression) but she'd had no business winning that battle with a pirate captain who'd been fighting longer (very much longer, she wondered how much exactly) than she'd been alive. He'd gone down a little too easily. Sprawled on his back dramatically. She'd just been relieved at the time, but now she was suspicious. Here was someone else who constantly changed the rules to suit himself.

Not that she understood what in the hell had actually happened. For someone who'd proclaimed himself done with her, it was just a little fishy that he'd then been so eager to make overt sexual innuendos at her when they were facing off. Normally I'd prefer to do other more enjoyable activities with a woman on her back. . . When I jab you with my sword, you'll feel it. Yeah. Thanks, Captain Asshole. As if her life just wouldn't be complete until that happened.

He'd said that after he'd saved Aurora's heart. After he'd taken it in the first place, and used it to lead Cora straight to them. After he'd told her that he wouldn't have left her on top of the beanstalk as she had him. Nothing about him made sense. It would be insane to deny that she'd been attracted to him, much as she loathed his insouciance and untrustworthiness and constant flirtation and unnervingly perceptive comments about her past. She was a red-blooded woman, for God's sake, and it had been a long time since Graham. . . whatever had happened with Graham, since he died in her arms on the floor of the sheriff's office. And Captain Hook – seriously, Captain Hook? – wasn't exactly hard on the eyes. Far from it. All right? Fine.

But of all the things Emma Swan did not want to think about, Killian Jones topped the list. Worse, he was one of the things she most wanted to get away from. She was done with "bad boys," with hoping someone would change. With making excuses. For not seeing straight. For having loved in the first place.

But then she couldn't get around it what she'd said before.

Love isn't weakness. It's strength.

Hence, the nightmares.

(8888888)

Tonight had been particularly bad. She finally gave up on getting back to sleep around 4 AM, and padded down the loft stairs to the kitchen, reassuring herself that she was still safe here and everything had just been a bad dream. No better time to get to work on letting go of the past, right? Make herself a cup of tea and look out at the darkness of a Maine morning before sunrise. Slow down her breathing. Get a hold of herself.

For God's sake, Swan.

Henry wasn't there. He was over at Regina's for the night, and since Emma had learned that Regina had saved both her life and Mary Margaret's by absorbing the lethal green energy from the portal before they came through, she supposed she couldn't really complain. In fact, in the week since she'd gotten back, she'd discovered that contrary to her bitter words in the Enchanted Forest, Regina had been more or less working on their side. Only for Henry's sake, sure, but it was something. Not that Regina should just be forgiven for all the misery she'd caused, the lives she'd ripped apart, the selfishness and destruction that had led her to cast the curse in the first place, the fact that the apple fritter which almost killed Henry had been meant to dispose of her, Emma, instead. And the curse would have stayed intact forever, because who would have kissed me? I don't have a true love. It was supposed to be me. The savior. And I would have gone under for good because I just wouldn't believe Henry knew anything about the world that I didn't. That there was no such thing as innocence, and certainly no such thing as magic.

That thought gave her the shivers. More than that, it chilled her down to her soul. It stood in the way of every impulse she might have to let bygones be bygones. But as Emma was painfully learning, changing everything about who you were was hard, and Regina did seem to be sincere about it. Maybe she could at least give the other woman, her son's other mother, credit for trying.

Maybe.

Gold and Hook weren't the only ones playing a game by their rules. Regina was still the Evil Queen.

And she, Emma Swan, was still running away. And she, Emma Swan, had been just as responsible for Henry eating that apple fritter.

Emma sighed, pushing the half-finished tea across the counter. Most of the reason she was so hot and bothered right now, most of the reason she didn't want to go back to sleep, was because for the first time since she'd lied to Henry that his father was a fireman who died heroically in action, she'd dreamed about Neal last night. About the four-sentence letter that was (please God) the last thing she'd ever say to him, which she had written back in a rage when he'd mailed her the keys to the yellow Bug in jail. Nice try, you son of a bitch. A car won't ever make up for the fact that you betrayed me AND now you've knocked me up. I'm giving it up for adoption and getting out of here as soon as my sentence is done. Don't you dare to ever contact me again.

So far, at least, he hadn't. But Emma had become a bail bondsperson despite (or because of?) her rap sheet, partly to make sure he never did. And also to keep one foot in that world, she supposed. Because it was familiar, it was comforting, to know the rules of the game, to bust perps and felons and liars, to tell herself that she wasn't one of them anymore. Sometimes she wondered if she should have been honest with her son about his origins, but she always sat down until the thought went away. No kid needed to know that. No kid needed to know what she'd written about him. The letter hadn't said anything about the ambivalence she'd felt in doing it, how she had almost found herself wanting to keep the baby at times, but knew all too well that an eighteen-year-old delinquent, aged out of the foster care system, and keeping food on the table by robbing convenience stores with an FBI-wanted, watch-thief deadbeat, was in no shape to give him his best chance. So she asked for a closed adoption and signed him away. And, for ten years, felt few if any regrets.

She'd lost him. But now she'd found him again, and she intended to stay. Forever.

So why wasn't everything fixed?

Only because she was alone, Emma allowed a choked sound to bubble up from her throat. She leaned forward, head in her hands, fingers running through her tangled, unwashed blonde hair. If there was one thing she hated, it was feeling sorry for herself, and look at her right now, sitting like a coward in her empty apartment, because she couldn't face up to –

At that moment her work cell phone, which had been plugged into the wall to charge, started to buzz.

Emma jerked upright, moment of self-pity forgotten. She shot a glance at the clock: 4:30 AM. If someone was calling the sheriff's office now, it was trouble.

She snatched the phone off the charger. She didn't recognize the incoming number. With trembling fingers, she punched the answer key and tried not to sound how she felt. "Sheriff."

"Yes. Miss Swan." Oh God. It was Gold. "You'll come quickly, please."

"What? What is this? You?" Emma was already getting off her stool, fumbling for her keys, but no way was she driving out at the ass-crack of dawn without an explanation. "What's going on?"

"A fire," Gold said precisely, in his soft Scottish accent. She wondered inanely how he'd gotten a Scottish accent, if everyone had been stuck in Bumfuck, Maine for twenty-eight years, but now was not the time to ponder the question. "One-oh-eight Applewood Drive."

"One-oh-eight Applewood. . ." Emma felt a gigantic ball of ice congealing in her stomach. "Regina. . . that's Regina's house. Gold!" she almost screamed, remembering all too well the last mysterious fire on Regina's property, in that case City Hall, which the pawnbroker had had something bad to do with. "What have you done – oh my God, Henry – "

"Boy in trouble again?" Gold asked mildly. "I'd recommend a beeper."

"Shut up." Emma was already shouldering into her leather jacket, stuffing her feet into her boots; she was still wearing her flannel pajamas, but too bad. She knotted her hair into a slapdash ponytail and seized the keys off the hook. "I'm on my way. Are you there?"

"Yes," Gold said. "I am. Hurry." With that, he hung up.

"Bastard," Emma muttered, tearing open the front door of the apartment and pounding down the stairs, staggering out into the chilly predawn. She sprinted across the street, unlocked the Bug, and threw herself behind the wheel, laying a streak of molten rubber as she floored it down the road. Her heart was in her throat, she felt as if she'd been launched out of a cannon. Great way to begin the day. Especially after that damn night.

She drove the fifteen minutes it should have taken to Regina's house in half the time. When she pulled up, she saw the fire department already there; the place was mostly still standing but belching dark smoke, an eerie orange glow against the red dawn. Various dark figures were running around like headless chickens on the lawn. All she wanted was to run in there and look for Henry, but she had a job to do. She couldn't let attachments get the best of her.

Emma sucked a deep breath, then jerked the car door open. "Excuse me! Sheriff!" She dodged through the crowd of onlookers, up to where the fire captain was just supporting a coughing Regina down the front steps. "What's going on? Where's my – "

"I'm here, Mom," a voice called, and she looked over, her heart almost dissolving with relief, to see a somewhat soot-stained but otherwise intact Henry in his race car pajamas, waving at her from the protective custody of his grandfather. How had David gotten here so quickly? He was the acting sheriff, but – unless Gold had called him first, or something else –

No time. Emma turned back to Regina, nodding to the fire captain to return to his work; the brigade had the hoses going, the house wouldn't be a total loss, but it wasn't going to be livable for a few months at least. "Regina," she said instead, trying to sound as calm and forceful as possible. "What happened? Did you see anything? Was it – " She glanced over her shoulder at Mr. Gold, visible near the side of the house; he was bending down to examine something. Strangely, he'd somehow found the time to dress before hurrying out the door. Unless, of course, he'd never gone to bed. He didn't keep regular hours. Or regular anything. "Was it him?"

Regina shook her head, eyes wild. The normally impeccably composed Evil Queen looked as if she'd barely had time to throw on a bathrobe before running for it. "No," she said, gasping. "No, it wasn't. I saw – at first I thought it was just a bad dream, but I saw – "

Something with a thousand cold tiny feet skittered down Emma's spine. Bad dream. She knew a little too much about that, but that still didn't mean –

"Indeed it wasn't." The sound of Gold's voice startled her. He straightened up from whatever he'd been doing, and made his measured way toward them, leaning on his cane. She'd always wondered, as well, why exactly he needed it, but again, her timing was bad. And if he hadn't set the fire, then –

Gold reached them. For once, even he wasn't smiling. He looked between Emma and Regina as if to judge their fortitude for bad news, then opened his hand to reveal something – something battered, blackened, twisted, but still recognizable as a locket with a silver heart. Something that made no sense to Emma, but which clearly did to Regina, to judge from the color she turned. "Gold," she breathed. "No."

"Yes." Gold glanced deliberately between them once more, then uttered a single word that turned Emma's stomach and knees to ice water.

"Cora."