Prompt: Love these so much. Would love a prompt set after the return from Camelot where Dark One Emma kidnaps Henry to protect him.
He looked so peaceful, the fringe of his hair falling gently over his closed eyes. His mouth was slightly a jar and moved gently like that of a sleeping toddler. Emma's heart swelled at the sight. In her mind danced images of him in his earliest of years being lulled to sleep in her arms, his face blessed with that safe peaceful look he wore at this moment.
The images were fake of course, the fabrication of some spell or other. Emma had never gotten to hold Henry when he was a baby. She'd never felt the weight of his infant form in her arms, or moved the cap of his head to her nose after bath time, taking in that new baby smell. Instead she had felt the tightening of cuffs around her wrists and the scratchy fabric of the all too think prison suits.
She pushed the memory, the dismal truth of her life, out of her mind and looked back over to her son. The kid was safe and happy in her house, under her protection and removed from anything (or anyone) that could hurt him. She pulled the blanket over his gently moving chest , as if it was another barrier between him and the rest of the cruel world, and watched him sleep from the distance of the door way.
"Yes," Emma thought to herself. "This was the right decision. Having Henry here alleviates my fears and ensures his safety. The others won't understand but once I explain it to him, he'll agree that it's best he stays here with me, at least for a little while."
"And if he doesn't see things your way, it's not like he has much say in that matter anyway. Right, dearie?"
A cruel, jiving voice called out from behind her, earning an eye roll from the fallen savior.
"Go away. I don't need your advice on how to raise my son." Emma turned to face the voice, but saw no one. Startled, she looked back into the room she had set up for her son and noticed a dark cloud taking on the form of another.
"Nimue." Emma stated, as she took in the figure standing over her son. "I didn't know you could change forms."
The scaly woman smiled back, her mouth stained black and yellow from the inside out as if the darkness was bile that had grown from the heart and burst out of her mouth when she was no longer able to contain it.
"There is still a lot you don't know." The first Dark One said, hers taking in the bedroom, shifting over the comics and clocks, until they fell on the place where Henry slept.
Emma straightened her posture and moved her hands forward, ready to defend her son.
"I am not judging you, Emma, it's like I told you back in Camelot. We are one in the same, all Dark One's are. If Henry is your son, then he is ours too and when something belongs to you, you can't let anyone take it away from you." Nimue's hand wavered over the top of Henry's head, pushing aside the stray lock of hair. Henry's sleeping face crumpled at the cold, forbidding women's touch.
Emma ran towards Nimue, ready to pull her off of the boy and plunge her fist into the figures heart. She let out a scream, similar to those that warriors make before a strike, but by the time she had reached the spot where the demon stood, Nimue had vanished leaving behind a cloud of black smoke and a waking 13 year old.
"Mom!? Where am I? What's going on."
Emma turned to the child, brushing off the fear Nimue had brought on, and leant down to his level.
"I was hoping you'd sleep longer." She mumbled "Henry, this is our new home. I've set things up for you already but we can change it, if you don't like it. I know the loft was cramped, but here you get to have your own room."
"You..brought a house?"
"With your help, of course. In Camelot you and Killian picked it out, so we could have our happy ending together, in our home."
Henry frowned and sensing his confusion, Emma moved to place a comforting hand on his arm, as she had done numerous times in the loft. The feeling of her son flinching away from her touch, stabbed into her heart worse than dagger.
"Henry, you don't have to be afraid of me. I am still your mom."
"Then why did you take all of our memories? And, we didn't you just ask me come here, instead of stealing me away in the middle of the night. I would have came, you know? It's not like I haven't been missing you too."
"You-you missed me?" Emma, asked quietly. Looking at Henry with trepidation as if she were afraid he would turn on her at any moment.
Henry sighed, a faint blush rising up his cheeks.
"Of course I did. This is the longest I've gone without speaking to you since we met and not seeing you every day sucks."
A smile tug at the corners of Emma's lips. She was so proud of her son. He was the brightest light in the dark hall that was had been her life that she could imagine.
"It's sucked for me too, kid." The husky, voice of the Dark One seemed to melt away for that moment, and once again she sounded like the Emma Swan Henry had found all those years ago.
"Henry, things got bad in Camelot. I did some things I really regret."
"It's okay, mom. Whatever you did I am sure we can fix it." Henry places his hand on the black leather of Emma's Dark One coat, ignoring the cold touch of her skin on his palm.
"I hurt you, Henry. I hurt some other people too. I am going to make it better, but what I have planned is dangerous. I took you here so you wouldn't get hurt again."
"Mom, you know how this goes, we both do. I can't stay here right now, and I don't want you to try to make me. Regina did that and it took me a really long time to trust her after that."
Emma frowned, the knowledge of what she had done to Violet and Henry weighed heavily on her mind. Would Henry ever be able to trust her again once he knew the truth? If that trust was already broken, what harm could keeping Henry here do? So many questions fought for attention in her mind, but eventually the truth was too hard to ignore. As much as she wanted to, as much as the Darkness inside her called out for her to use her magic to lock him in his bedroom, to rely on time to act as the balm to sooth any resentment who would gain for her from taking over his free will, she knew she had to let him go.
She hugged him tight to her once again, enjoying the weight of him against her torso, and promised herself that this time it was only temporary.
She ignored the mean spirited jittering of the Rumpelstiltskin figure the darkness had conjured to taunt her with words of her never seeing her child again, of him dying without her protection, and instead enjoyed the softness of his hair against her forehead as he slowly faded away, back to the loft from which he had been taken.
Thank-you for the prompts. They've all been really creative and challenging so far. I hope this one turned out to your liking, Guest.