First off, I must apologize. I realized that I kind of lost track of Red. I love her, which is why I had her tag along, she's one of my favorite characters, but I found I didn't know how to fit her in, and in the last three chapters I kind of even forgot I had brought her along. So sorry for the inconsistency! Maybe if they would do more with her on the actual show, I wouldn't have such an easy time forgetting about her! Honestly, she is one of my very favorites. And now she's not even going with them to Neverland. Not cool.
"Have fun, kid," Emma called across her mother in the passenger seat out the open window of her bug as Henry slammed the door from the back seat. "I'll be back to pick you up later."
"Thanks!" he said, beaming at her and waving as he turned and darted towards the stables, where Regina stood waiting for him, clad in her riding clothes. She and Emma locked eyes for a moment, the brunette giving a curt, meaningful nod and Emma returning it. As Henry reached her, Emma saw her envelope her son in a warm embrace. She turned back to the steering wheel and put the car into drive.
"You know, you don't need to come with me everywhere I go," Emma told her mother beside her. "Whale said I'm in the clear weeks ago."
"I know," Snow said simply as she watched the scenery go by. She did not argue, neither did she imply that the pattern would stop any time soon. Emma just rolled her eyes. She supposed she understood. Even though she was grateful that she could safely trust Regina to be in Henry's life again, she still never liked to let him out of her sight after the events of the last few months.
Snow's phone buzzed in her lap. She picked it up and checked it.
"It's your father," she informed her. Emma couldn't help but smile every time she said that. "He's on his way back from the bean field with Anton and the dwarves right now with the new harvest. He wants us to meet him at Granny's. Probably to discuss the plans for the move some more."
Emma snorted a small, ironic laugh. Snow looked at her quizzically.
"What?" she prodded.
"Seems silly, is all," Emma mused as she flicked on her blinker. "We were already all the way over there, and we came all the way back just to pick up and go there again?"
"We needed to get you back, Emma," Snow reminded her. "Regina got your heart started again, but you were still in a very bad way. I don't know if you remember, but you had internal injuries, you were bleeding, running a fever…"
"I remember well enough," Emma assured her, all but wincing at the memories. The specifics were all very hazy, but the pain and fear were strong and very real. "I'm not complaining, I'm just… pointing out the irony, is all."
"I think I've had enough irony for one life time," Snow admitted.
"Or several," Emma agreed. The two laughed quietly at that, but the laughter dissolved into an uncomfortable, pensive silence. Snow peaked up at her daughter.
"It won't be like before," she assured. "The bean crop here is thriving and stable, and as soon as we're settled over there we'll plant another one. We can come and go as often as we want. If you or Henry are feeling homesick, you can just pop back over here for a little while. Already I know a number of people who are planning on staying – Red's leaving Granny to keep up the diner, and Whale is staying on at the hospital." Snow looked down at her hands and swallowed slowly. "And if you and Henry decide you want to stay…"
"Mary Margaret…" Emma started.
"… we would still be able to see each other as often as we liked," Snow continued, trying to mask the disappointment and present the possibility as a viable option.
"Not often enough," Emma reassured, and looked back up into her determined eyes as she said it. "I told you, I'm in. I'm nervous, but I'm in. My family means more to me than anything in this world or any other world. I won't be parted from you. Not ever again."
Emma took one hand off the steering wheel and grasped Snow's hand in hers. Snow squeezed back graciously.
"What about Neal?" she asked skeptically. She knew Henry's father was a touchy subject for her daughter, so she proceeded with caution. "Does he feel the same way?"
"I have no idea," Emma said, her voice flat to hide any kind of emotion that might have crept into her at the thought. "But like you said, Henry can come back any time. It definitely wouldn't be the easiest shared custody arrangement, but I don't imagine it would be the most complicated one ever conceived either."
Snow did not push the issue. She knew the dynamic between them had been tense and complicated ever since the group's return to Storybrooke. Sometimes it saddened her that her daughter had not experienced the kind of overriding true love she had found in Charming. That her walls had had to be built up so high.
With a beating heart back inside her rib cage, Emma had gladly succumbed to unconsciousness on the forest floor, and had woken sometime later a different world away, once again in a hospital bed. She felt the stiff plastic bracelet resting against her wrist and the soft pressure of the monitor clipped to her index finger as she groggily opened her eyes. She hurt absolutely everywhere. She blinked at the unnaturally white ceiling above her, then cast her glance around the room as the lines in her vision solidified.
Beside her, curled up and passed out in a chair, sat a welcome sight. Henry was practically snoring, his hand outstretched as if he had fallen asleep with her hand in his own. She reached towards it before she thought better of it. He looked exhausted. She didn't want to wake him.
"He never left your side," came a quiet voice from the doorway. Emma looked up to see her mother leaning in the doorway. She took a step into the room. "Not on the ship, not in the ambulance. We could barely pry him away when Whale had to take you into surgery."
She swallowed hard at the memories as she came up to her daughter's bed and sat at the end of it. The entire ordeal had been utter agony. The boat ride home with her unconscious and bleeding. Whale's gasped exclamation of 'What on earth happened!' when he arrived with the ambulance as the ship docked and saw the state Emma was in. Regina holding a hysterical Henry back as he attempted to follow her into the operating room, the hospital doors swinging shut in front of him until he collapsed sobbing into his mother's tight embrace.
Then the hours and hours of waiting. It felt like an eternity. No one spoke. No one moved. Charming held Snow's hand until she felt it was a part of her own body. Henry rested his head on his mother's shoulder, his eyes puffy and nose runny, unwilling to close his eyes for second.
Thirteen hours. That's how long it took, and when Whale emerged he looked about to keel over.
"Never have I ever dealt with anything of that magnitude," he told them. "She was falling apart. I'm surprised her heart held on as long as it did." The entire room flickered their grateful attention towards Regina for a moment. "But it did. She made it through. She's going to be alright."
Snow looked her daughter hungrily up and down from the edge of her bed, before meeting her eyes.
"You died," she squeaked.
"I know," Emma responded.
"Your heart stopped and you wouldn't move and I thought… and I couldn't…"
"I know," Emma told her again, grabbing her hand as Snow's breath became short and raspy. "I know the feeling. I remember."
She looked down at the sleeping Henry beside her, recalling what it was like when his heart stopped and Whale pronounced him dead and her world fell out from under her.
"He's been begging you to wake for hours," Snow said, swiping at the tear that persisted down her cheek. "He'd hate us for not waking him."
"Let him sleep," Emma said, her voice soft and loving as she looked at him. "He looks like he needs it. We'll have time." She looked up and caught her mother's eye. "We'll all have time."
Discussion of the big move sprouted before Emma had even left the hospital, and while at first the idea left an uncomfortable pit festering in her stomach, the more they discussed it, the more comfortable she became. With bean crops on both ends, it would be similar to moving just a flight away, to Denver or Seattle or Tallahassee. Some people had even decided to stay in this world, preferring it to the one they had left behind.
Emma had not spoken much to Hook since the events in the Enchanted Forest. He had been avoiding her, and she had let him, unsure what she would say anyway. She tried to stay away from the docks, but every once in a while found herself down by his ship, scanning it for any sign of him. Sometimes he was below deck, something he was above. When one day she walked by trailing Neal and Henry as they talked animatedly in front of her, she saw the sails partially hoisted. She took a deep breath and excused herself from her present company. Neal's eyes had darted uncertainly from her to the ship, then he smiled an understanding smile, nodding and pulling Henry farther up the dock to give her sometime. She climbed aboard and addressed Hook, who was busy at work.
"You're leaving," Emma said. It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact.
"Very astute," Hook grimaced as he hoisted a heavy coil of rope into a pile at the rim of the deck. He would not look her in the eye. He busied himself distractedly, moving on to the next task. Emma watched him in silence, at first at a loss for words. "Don't tell me you're surprised. I'm a pirate, lass, to the core. I go where the wind beckons. I never stay anywhere for long."
"You weren't going to say goodbye," she accused hoarsely, her voice low and vulnerable.
"Why, so you could tell me I should stay?" He eyed her meaningfully and she looked away, out on the horizon. "Of course not. It would never work Emma. We both know that." He cast a glance down at Neal where he spoke with Henry on the bench at the marina, their backs to the ship, and smiled softly. "Go. Be with him. Have your family. Have your happy ending. You deserve it."
"You saved me," she choked. Why were the words so hard to form? Why were her thoughts all muddled by some dull, throbbing, blinding emotion bubbling from her gut? "If it weren't for you in that dungeon, I would have…"
She didn't finish her sentence. She could already see the very thought of it darken his face, so she let the matter slide. She supposed she just needed to express it to him. To have him hear it, how much he had given her.
"I would be lying if I said I wasn't merely returning the favor," Hook mumbled humbly, all snarky nuances abandoned in an uncharacteristic fit of raw, honest vulnerability. "You saved me the day we met. When you called my bluff and strapped me to that tree, and you've been saving me every day since. Saving me from myself."
His eyes pierced hers and she blinked back, a soft ball of emotion growing somewhere behind her eyes.
"But it's my turn now. To save myself. It's been hundreds of years, but it's never too late for a fresh start. You taught me that. So it's time for me to hoist my sails. Off for a new adventure. Who knows, maybe I'll find a new true love. One who doesn't have a kid with the guy who used to thwart me when he was an obnoxious adolescent. And you - you should get to go be with your true love, too."
"There's no true love, Hook," she told him wisely as she began to walk towards him. He was constantly enamored by how she could seem the purest thing in the world and at the same time the wisest. "Not here at least. There's only love. With all its imperfections and complications. And for some reason, I like that better. Maybe it's because I grew up here, and it's just what I'm used to. But there is something about the fight and the risk and the pain and the uncertainty and the sacrifice that seems to make it so much stronger. Weaker, but stronger at the same time. Yes, I love Neal."
He felt a sour taste in the back of his mouth as she said it so simply. But she did not look over at Neal at all as she advanced. She seemed to only have eyes for Hook. "On some level, I've always loved him. But he's not my true love. And neither are you. But that doesn't mean I don't love you, too."
She was upon him, her face inches from his as her eyes dipped down to his chest and then back up to his face. She let the words simmer, and he absorbed them, not one hundred percent sure he understood what they meant, but all to glad she had said them anyway. She leaned in and he felt his lips drawn to hers like a magnet. Slow and steady, but inevitable. Unavoidable. The first kiss had been seductive as all get out. The second had been raw and angry and frightened. But this one, this was something else entirely. It was slow, and it was real, and it was devastating as hell because they both knew it would be the last. Despite that, he let himself sink into it until for a split second he had convinced himself that it never had to end.
But then the lips left his and her face was before his once more, looking at him with those eyes he so easily lost himself in. And if he was being perfectly honest with himself, he was grateful for the closure.
"So, aren't you glad to stuck around long enough to say goodbye," she asked, a suggestive twinkle in her eye. He found all he could do was smile down at her.
"Aye," he said softly. She smiled back.
"Goodbye, Hook," she said with finality. He brought her hand up to his lips.
"Swan," he said, nodding and pressing his lips to her knuckles before allowing her hand to fall back to her side.
She blinked and smiled once more, and then she was gone, a wisp of golden hair swinging off the deck down onto the dock below. He listened to the sharp clack of her boots on the hollow wood below until he heard them no more, before he moved again, a small smile on his lips.
"So, you have magic," Henry started expectantly, blinking his eager, youthful eyes up at his mother from where he sat across the booth from her. She swallowed her scalding sip of coffee in a quick gulp and felt her throat blister. She paused for a moment, then gently placed the mug in it's saucer, trying to keep her hands from shaking.
"I wondered when we'd get to that," Emma sighed. She'd hoped that the matter would slide by in the wake of her abduction and almost death, but considering it played such a prominent role in the matters that had taken place in the Enchanted Forest, she had known that was too much to hope for. "Firstly, let me just say that I didn't lie."
"I know you didn't," Henry conceded to her. He did not look angry at all. More excited than anything. "I'll admit I was a little disappointed that you kept it a secret from me, but I understand why you did."
"I wanted to tell you," Emma admitted genuinely, reaching over and taking her son's hand in her own. "I just… didn't know how."
"I get it," Henry said, nodding with forgiveness in his bright eyes. "But now that the cat is out of the bag, I have one question for you."
"Shoot, kid," Emma allowed.
"Does this mean I have magic too?"
Emma felt a tenseness in her body at the question. She was dying to know herself, and terrified of the answer at the same time. She'd seen what magic had done to Gold, how it had torn him from his son. She'd seen what it had done to Cora, and what that in turn had done to Regina, Henry's own mother. All because of magic. In her heart of hearts, she hoped dearly that she had not passed the trait to her son. She didn't even want the burden herself. But looking into his bright blue eager eyes, she knew that he probably did have the same ability as her, especially if it ran in her blood. And she vowed to herself then and there that whatever the answer to that question, she would fight to the death not to do what Gold or Cora or Regina did. And she smiled at him because she knew that if there was one person in the world she didn't have to worry about being corrupted by magic, it was her son. It was just in his nature.
"I honestly don't know, kid," she told him truthfully. "But whatever the answer is, and whenever and however we find out, I do know one thing."
"What's that?" he asked.
"That we will get through it together."
Thank you so much for reading! To be perfectly honest, I got quite sloppy at the end. But I truly enjoyed writing for you and getting all your feedback. Please leave final thoughts in the reviews! And hopefully I can keep up the pace and quality a bit better as I start something to amuse myself throughout the summer until season 3. Practice makes perfect!