Emma sat curled up in a ball on the sofa of their apartment, her feet tucked beneath her, bent over Henry's book in her lap. Snow regarded her motherly as she stood in the kitchen, dipping a bag of tea into her mug of warm water. Emma always curled herself up when she sat on the couch. Snow wondered if it had something to do with having had to protect herself her entire life. She tried not to think too hard about it.

As she came back into the living room, she saw that while Emma was looking at the book, her eyes were completely stationary. She wasn't actually reading at all.

"Emma?" Snow prodded gently. Emma blinked as if she had been in a trance and looked up at her mother. She pulled on a tired smile. "What were you doing?"

"Just thinking," Emma said. "About tomorrow."

Snow sank into the sofa next to her daughter and slid the book from her lap, placing it on the coffee table.

"Maybe you should put all this stuff down," Snow said. "I think we have a pretty solid plan for now. You should really get some rest before we leave."

"I wouldn't be able to sleep," Emma said, shaking her head and bringing her knees up to her chest.

"We will find him," Snow assured her, but the comment did not seem to ease her daughter's mind.

"And then what?" she asked in a discouraged voice. Snow tilted her head confused. "We find him, and then what? Then we are right back to where we started. It still doesn't solve the problem that Regina is his mother and he loves her and she will never stop wanting revenge on you. Or me. I keep going over it in my head again and again, trying to find a way that Henry doesn't get hurt."

Emma broke off, her face showing deep concentration.

"You've given this some thought, haven't you?" Snow asked, placing her tea on the table in front of her, intrigued. Emma nodded. She looked up at her mother as if she were about to say something, then seemed to hesitate.

"I thought," she started finally, "if I could get close enough to take her heart, I would be able to control her and stop her from doing the terrible things she always does."

"That's what you've been learning with your lessons with Mr. Gold," Snow pieced together in slow breath. Emma nodded. "And what would you do with it once you have it? Crush it?"

"I couldn't do that to Henry," Emma said sadly. "If I did that, I'd be no better than her. She's his mother, she raised him, and no matter what she's done and who she is, she will always be a part of his family and he will always care about her."

"What, then?" Snow asked. "What would you do with her heart once you have it?"

Emma looked up uncertainly and caught her mother's eye. She looked very young and insecure, sitting there balled up, hugging her legs to herself. As if she was a young girl asking her mother's advice. Sometimes, Emma surprised Snow with how young she could appear. She fought well and cuffed criminals, and even seduced some of them, with a confidence beyond her years, but every once in a while she seemed to shrink into a tiny girl that never really grew up. That still needed her mother.

"I don't know," she conceded. "That's where I'm getting stuck. If I had her heart, I guess I could just keep it and control her. But I don't think that would be a good idea. I have so much anger towards her, for everything she's done to you and me and to Henry, I don't think I could remain above it all, remain civil. What if I succumb to the power and take advantage? Then again, Henry gets hurt. I just… can't see this ending well for him, one way or another."

Emma face was fraught with distress and confusion. It pained Snow to see her so nobly struggling to do the right thing. She couldn't imagine how she could have feared Emma would turn dark for learning magic. The woman who sat in front of her had such a strength of will. After what she had just done to Regina's mother, Snow found herself wondering where her daughter had gotten it from. She reached out and rubbed her back comfortingly.

"You will figure it out," she said. "I'm sure of it. You won't stop until you find the right way. And anyways, we've got quite a mountain to climb before we even get to that part."

Emma nodded slowly, still lost in her angst. After a pause, she unfolded herself from her ball and climbed off the sofa.

"I think I'm going to go for a walk," she said in a distracted tone. "Get some air. Clear my head."

Snow watched her sadly as she reached for her jacket beside the door.

"Well, don't stay out too late, young lady," she offered humorously, and was happy to see a small chuckle escape Emma's lips as she swung the door open. As it clicked shut behind her, Charming emerged from the back room, looking up expectantly at the sound.

"Who was that?" he asked.

"Emma is just going for a walk," Snow sighed, extracting herself from the couch and coming to stand by her husband. He opened his arms to receive her and she pressed herself into his strong chest. The couple stood there in silence for a long moment, Snow feeling the warmth of her husband's arms wrapped around her.

"I don't want to leave you," she finally admitted in a shy whisper. She felt his arms close around her even tighter.

"I know, me neither," he sighed, true pain in his voice. She broke from him enough to tilt her chin and look up into his eyes. They were moist and glossy. They bore deeply into hers, and behind courage in them she saw a fear. A fear that after everything they had gone through, no matter how many times they had found each other, that this might be the time they lose each other for good and all. But he blinked and he would not allow himself to believe that. "But you know that I will always find you, right?"

"I do," Snow sighed, and she desperately pressed her lips up to his. Their shared anxiety drew them into each other, their feigned confidence vanishing as their uncertainty and doubt encompassed them. All of their emotions, the good and the bad, the passion and the fear, swallowed them in a moment of intimacy. Snow felt herself sliding deeper and deeper into the kiss, pulling Charming with her, until their lips touching was not enough anymore. She felt his heated breath on her skin as he took her deeper into his embrace, one of his strong hands sliding down her back while the other reached up and buried itself passionately in her hair. She reached and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling herself still closer into him until he took a few steps back, her light form tumbling with him, and they both found themselves pressed up against the wall of the apartment.

Charming paused for a moment and breathed her in, looking down into her eyes that were desperate and hungry for some kind of release, some kind of certainty, some kind of life that didn't involve the stress they were living. Had been living for a year, for twenty-eight years, essentially since they had met. She looked back into him and they stood in a suspended, breathy silence before he leaned forward again, taking her mouth in his and devouring all of her grief. Everything melted away. Tomorrow would hold what it would, but they still had tonight and in this moment, that was all the time in the world.

Snow tugged passionately at the tie around her husband's neck until it loosened enough for her to slide it from his collar. She creaked the door behind her open, peering out it briefly while Charming buried his face in her neck. She smiled a guilty, sly grin as she dropped the tie to hang around the doorknob on the outside, per Emma's previous request. Then she turned to face her husband again, and their lips collided in renewed passion as she let the door swing shut.

Emma sat on the ground where Henry's castle had once stood. Her elbows rested on her knees as she faced the brisk breeze blowing off the coast. It softly blew her hair back from her face. The rhythmic sound of the waves in the distance tickled her mind pleasantly as she saw the sparks of the moon's reflection rise and fall with the tide.

She hadn't noticed that light tears had begun to slide down her cheeks as she lost herself in her thoughts until a soft voice spoke behind her.

"Mind if I join you?"

Emma glanced over her shoulder. Neal stood a few paces back, his hands dug into the pockets of a leather jacket. Emma shook her head, but did not say anything before she turned her attention back to the sea. She felt Neal settle himself beside her on the ground, mimicking her position.

At first, the pair sat in silence. Emma reluctantly admitted to herself that it was nice. She was glad he was here next to her. The one person who, regardless of how short a time he had known Henry, shared her innate pain in his absence.

"He'll be twelve tomorrow," she breathed finally.

"I didn't know that," Neal said. Emma nodded slowly.

"Twelve. Twelve years of his life, and I've barely been around for two of them."

Emma knew that her mother would have tried to comfort her by discounting what she said. By telling her that the amount of time didn't matter when it came to family, by reassuring her that Henry was and would always be her son and would always love her. But she found that she was quite grateful that Neal did not respond. He let her brood over her loss. His silence drew more thoughts out of her.

"This is where he convinced me to stay," she recalled. She did not turn to Neal, but spoke towards the water, as if she were speaking the words to herself. But Neal listened closely nonetheless. "I did it because I thought he was crazy then. I thought he was a lonely, crazy kid who wasn't getting enough help. But he was the one who was right all along, and I never believed him. Not once, until her was lying there dying in that hospital bed. It was almost too late."

"But it wasn't," Neal said soothingly. "And it's not now, either. We are going to find him. We are going to get him back."

"I should never have let him go," she said. Saying it felt like a huge weight being lifted from her chest.

"You had no choice, she was about to kill you," Neal said.

"No, not that time. The first time. I should never have given him up for adoption. I should never have left him." Emma felt warm tears fill her eyes as she swallowed hard, trying to keep them down. She had been trying to protect her son by giving him up, but all she had done was sent him to live with a monster. Was this the kind of doubt and guilt Mary Margaret was feeling about her decision to put Emma in the wardrobe?

"Shh," Neal cooed. "Everything you did, you did for him. And he knows that."

"Doesn't change the fact that I'm sitting here right now in what is supposed to be our spot and he's not here," she sniffed. The cool breeze blew on the wet streaks on her cheeks, causing her to shiver a bit with the chill. Neal looked as if he were about to argue with her irrationality again, but then he thought better of it and just looked back out at the rolling water.

"No," he agreed, nodding his head sadly. "No, it doesn't."

Emma tilted her head to survey the starts in the sky above the ocean. They seemed cold and distant. They almost seemed to be mocking her, winking at her as if they knew something she didn't. As if they could see her son right now off in his other world while she was none the wiser to where he was. She squinted at the moon, looking for the second star to the right. She couldn't see it. The moon must outshine it. Either that or more likely she just didn't have the eye for it. She had spent her life building up her practical defenses and banishing any thought of magic or true love or happily ever afters from her mind. Now, she found herself engulfed in a world full of them, and she was struggling to keep her head above water.

"Do you think this is going to work?" she asked Neal.

"I don't know," he answered honestly. "There's a whole lot of land to search." He turned to her. "I hope so. But even if it doesn't, then we will try again. And we won't stop. We won't stop until Henry is back with us."

Emma looked down at the ground and let out a small chuckle.

"Us," she repeated. The phrase felt odd on her lips.

"You know what I mean," Neal said, though he wasn't exactly sure himself.

"Sure," she said. There was an awkward silence, Neal brimming on the seat of saying something he had meant to say for a while, but hadn't found the right way to say. He took a breath.

"For the record," he started quietly. "I did love you. And I didn't want to leave you. I don't know if you can believe that…"

"I can," she said simply, though she continued to stare out at the water. "It wouldn't have worked, anyway," she said.

"Why's that?"

"Pure age difference," Emma said, with a straight face. Neal blinked. She turned to look at him, a humorous grin on her face. "You're hundreds of years older than me."

She and Neal both broke into a soft spurt of laughter at the same time.

"I guess your dad would not approve," Neal said.

"I don't think we'd even have to go that far to get to why he wouldn't approve," she chuckled. "We only have to go as far as 'he knocked me up and landed me in jail'."

Neal laughed along side her, but then his smile faded as he looked back out over the ocean.

"If I had known," he said, looking down at his hands, unable to face Emma as he said it. "If I had known that I had… that you were…"

Emma blinked at him, waiting for him to continue.

"I know what it's like to be abandoned by your parents," he attempted a different approach to expressing what he was trying to say. "I never thought I'd ever have a son, but if I did, I never wanted to do that to him."

"We can't change what happened in the past," Emma said wisely. They sounded like words from someone else coming out of her mouth. "We can only choose what to do with the future. And choose not to repeat mistakes we made."

They looked at each other. Emma's eyes were glossy in the starlight.

"I gave him up once," she said. "I'm not going to make that mistake again."

Ok, enough fluff. Let's get back into a faster plot pace, shall we? (Although don't worry, there will still be plenty of fluff mixed in). Emma, Snow and the others are only expecting the unexpected as they dive into their search. But even still, they never even considered running into an obstacle like this...