A/N: This story is set during S2, E06 ("Tallahassee"), while Mary Margaret, Emma, Mulan, Aurora and Hook trek through the Enchanted Forest in search of a portal to return to Storybrooke. This story was written for the Fanfiction Writers Unite group on Facebook. Prompt: "Poison Ivy."
Emma Swan was tired. She was tired in the physical sense, yes, in that she wanted sleep to come, but she was also drained mentally and emotionally. She did not want to be here anymore, in a land where there existed ogres and witches and dwarfs and God knows what else that she hadn't heard about yet. She wanted to go back to Storybrooke, to hug her boy, to sleep in a warm bed without fear of getting killed overnight. Usually, anyway.
She sighed, and rolled over. Hook and Mulan seemed to be out cold. Aurora seemed to be sleeping, too, although she was whimpering occasionally from the awful nightmares that kept plaguing her. Emma wondered if Henry would be there to meet Aurora again, and she desperately wished that she could float into that great terrible place and see him, let him know that everything would be okay.
Her mother – Snow White, as she was known here, although Emma could only think of her as Mary Margaret – was tending the fire. One of them had to be up at all times to make sure that the fire did not go out and to ward off any dangers that might approach overnight.
Standing carefully, Emma stretched and crept out of their makeshift shelter and to the welcoming fire. She plopped down next to Mary Margaret, whose eyes were blinking rapidly as she struggled to stay awake.
"Hey," Mary Margaret greeted in a soft, drowsy voice. She rubbed Emma's arm and shook her head slightly. "Can't sleep?"
"Nope," Emma said with a groan, stretching her arms out closer to the flames to warm them. "You can go to bed if you want. I can keep watch."
"No, that's okay." Mary Margaret stared ahead at the fire, seeming to awaken a little more. Emma watched as the light from the flames danced across her mother's face. "Is everything okay with you, Emma?" Mary Margaret was the picture of concern.
Emma's heart wrenched. She was still getting used to the fact that a woman who was her own age – a woman that she had considered a close friend – was her biological mother. Still, if she had to have this odd experience, she had to admit that she couldn't have chosen a sweeter person to be her mother than Mary Margaret. In the deep recesses of her mind, Emma feared that she was not, and would never be, good enough to be her daughter.
"Yeah, I'm ... fine," Emma said hesitantly. "I just ... I just want to go home, you know? I miss Henry. And I miss living in a world that I can deal with." She gave a small chuckle. Home to her was a place where there were cell phones, and coffee, and bagels.
"You're my daughter." Mary Margaret squeezed her hand, soft and warm. "You can deal with this world just fine." Sometimes Emma swore Mary Margaret could read her thoughts.
"Easy for you to say!" Emma protested. "You grew up here. In comparison to this place, I was practically pampered." The heat from the fire was beginning to grow uncomfortable, and Emma leaned back on her hands in the grass, away from the flames.
Mary Margaret looked at her, green eyes big and sad. "I wish you'd been pampered, but I know that's not the case."
Emma shook her head. "No, really. I don't know – shit!" She yelped and wrenched her hands in front of her. In the dim light she saw that one of her hands was starting to flush red. She needed to scratch it desperately. "What the hell is that? Oh, God, is it some kind of poison? I'm going to die, aren't I? Or shrink, or transform, or something." Emma's imagination was running wild. Who knew what could be out here in this forest that wasn't even part of the real world.
Mary Margaret had sprung to action when Emma had cried out, and she was examining the spot Emma had laid her hand. "Poison ivy," she pronounced.
"Excuse me?"
"Poison ivy," Mary Margaret repeated. "You might have heard of it," she added, ribbing her daughter gently. "Be right back." She hurried to get the supply of water they were carrying along with them on their trip.
Emma glared at the offending plant, feeling embarrassed that she'd overreacted. Still, how was she supposed to know that poison ivy, of all things, existed in the Enchanted Forest?
"I may have freaked out unnecessarily," Emma admitted, wincing with the pain. Mary Margaret returned with a flask of their water. She watched, enthralled, as Mary Margaret ripped off one of the sleeves of her shirt like it was nothing and carefully poured some of the water onto the piece of cloth.
"I don't blame you," Mary Margaret said, beckoning Emma's hand forward. She wrung the cloth out over the injured hand, then repeated this again. "Any better?"
"A little." Emma carefully made a fist with her hand and then released. The water was, blessedly, helping to soothe the stinging sensation. "Thank you."
Mary Margaret wrapped the wet cloth around Emma's hand. "Have you ever had a reaction to poison ivy before?"
Emma nodded. "Yes, I had it once when I was seven. I must have lay in a whole pile of it, because I had it all over my body. It was terrible."
Mary Margaret pursed her lips together, and she suddenly looked like she wanted to cry. "I'm so sorry that I wasn't there for you, Emma. I would have kissed you and made it all better. I wish..." she trailed off, staring into the night sky with glazed eyes. "I wish I could go back in time and fix it."
Emma suddenly felt bad about bringing up the incident from her childhood. "It's fine. I was okay. I survived." She smiled at Mary Margaret to indicate how okay it was.
"It's not just about that," Mary Margaret said wistfully. "I wanted so many things for you, things that I never got to do for you." She turned to face her and took her hands in hers. "I just ... I want to make up for it now. I know that I can't take back not being there for you for the first twenty-eight years of your life, but I want to be there now."
Emma's throat clenched painfully, and tears stung her eyes. Growing up, she had been so convinced that her mother hadn't loved her. She had been given away, hadn't she? She mustn't have been wanted. To find out that she had been wanted, desperately, was heartbreaking. Emma could certainly understand a parent having to give up a child to do what was best for them. It was what she had done for Henry, after all. It had been earth-shatteringly difficult, but she had. She knew Mary Margaret's pain, because it was the same feeling she had knowing that she had missed out on the first eight years of Henry's life.
"I know," Emma said finally. "You missed out on all kinds of things in my life. Sometimes, growing up, I felt ... I felt so alone." Mary Margaret's face fell even further at this, and Emma quickly continued. "But I know now that you wanted to be there for me. You're here for me now. And that's the most important thing."
Mary Margaret gripped her hand even tighter, and scrunched her face up in the way she did when she cried.
"Please don't cry," Emma begged. "I don't feel alone anymore. I can't ever remember feeling so loved, so surrounded by people who care about me, ever before." This was true. Emma had quickly learned, growing up, that it was just her against the world. She had had no one to depend on. But as fiercely independent as Emma was, she was beginning to see that she could depend on Mary Margaret and David. After all, Mary Margaret hadn't hesitated to jump into the portal and follow Emma back here to the Enchanted Forest. And it felt kind of nice, having someone who loved her unconditionally.
"I'm glad that you know now how loved you are – how loved you always were." Mary Margaret was crying, despite Emma's attempts to calm her mother. "I'm so sorry that I gave you up." She stroked her daughter's face.
"Hey, you did what you had to do," Emma said with a shrug, sounding more nonchalant than she felt. Was it okay? Not really. But what was done was done. And Mary Margaret had been a mother who'd had to make a terrible decision to do what she could to protect her child, just as Emma had done for Henry. And Emma couldn't fault her mother for that.
"It's not okay that we didn't get to experience all the things that you and David wanted for me. It will never be okay. But we have time now. We can make new memories." Emma squeezed her mother's hand reassuringly. She adjusted the makeshift bandage of sorts her mother had wrapped around her injured hand. It was feeling better already. "We know each other now. And we have the rest of our lives to make up for what Regina stole from us."
Emma was beginning to see that she would never feel completely alone, not ever again. She had too many people in her corner now. And maybe things would work out in the end. Maybe she wasn't a girl unwanted, not after all.