Wow! Only one chapter and such a positive response already~ you guys are so great!

After a long, difficult walk, Emma finally collapsed in front of the Storybrooke hospital and allowed the doctors and nurses to lift her onto a gurney and wheel her into the dry safety of the hospital.

Emma's feet rhythmically slapped the pavement as she made her way across town to her mother's apartment. She threw frequent glances back behind her shoulder, observing the town as she ran through it, though she wasn't sure why she needed to do this. There was something fundamentally different and wrong about the town; the inkling scratched at the back of her mind that something had changed, but it wasn't strong enough to be brought to Emma's full attention. It was like a gnat buzzing in her face, annoying, but not enough so to hunt down the flyswatter.

Each time her boot touched the pavement, it jolted her entire body and sent a fierce wave of heat through her brain, but she pressed on. Her breath came in sharp, painful gasps: she wasn't a runner, but she needed to tell Mary Margaret what she'd heard. She wasn't one to waste time, either, so she bit her lip and forced herself to run faster.

Park benches tempted her with their fixedness, their inability to move and promises of relaxation, but Emma wasn't one to give up once she'd started. She passed long seat after long seat, ignoring each one though a fire burned in her puffing lungs and acid seared the veins in her shaky legs. Thus, she was drenched in sweat by the time she arrived at the apartment and shaking uncontrollably from exhaustion. Emma was so exhausted that she had to lean against the wall and dip her head between her knees to fight off the darkness that came with fainting. She watched tiny droplets of sweat splatter the floor as she did so.

"Anything new on the John Doe?"

Emma's head snapped up as she remembered this statement, and she forced her hand to the door. Her wrist moved rapidly as she banged the solid wood. It made a resounding THOD, THOD, THOD that echoed loudly down the halls, and Emma immediately regretted her decision to knock so insistently as the sound reverberated in her recently-injured head.

"No, nothing new. He hasn't woken up, and no one's claimed him yet."

Why would there be another John Doe at the hospital? Storybrooke was small; everyone was known by someone. Which meant they had an out-of-town guest.

Which meant they had a problem.

Emma knocked harder and faster, wishing now that she had been more forceful about her mother acquiring a doorbell. Mary Margaret's antique-y furniture and TV-less lifestyle were fine, but a doorbell was a necessity. Knocking, you could ignore indefinitely. Doorbells, they were loud and sharp and noisy and screamed at you rudely, forcing you to sashay yourself over to the door to greet your rather indignant guest.

Suddenly, the door swung open, and Emma found her fist nearly contacting her mother's face in her fervor.

Mary Margaret swerved just in time to avoid a, though entirely accidental, extremely painful bruise. Mary Margaret's eyebrows dipped slightly as she took in Emma's disheveled appearance: unbrushed hair, bruised arms, and a white bandage wrapped tightly around her head. "Hi, um, can I help you?" she said.

Emma pushed past her and plopped her sweat-soaked body into a kitchen chair. "I just learned something that I think you need to hear," she managed to huff out between breaths.

Mary Margaret pulled a gaudy chair up, next to Emma. "What is it?" she said.

Emma looked her dead in the eyes then, still breathing hard, and the obvious importance of what she was about to say scared Mary Margaret more than she wanted to admit.

"There's another John Doe in Storybrooke," Emma said with full severity.

Mary Margaret's stiff frame relaxed instantly, and she slumped in her chair. She blew her bangs out of her eyes. This girl had her thinking the town was on fire.

Emma furrowed her eyebrows at Mary Margaret's relaxedness; didn't her mother understand how big of a deal this could be? What this could mean for the future safety of Storybrooke?

"Don't you- don't you understand?" Emma said, grasping for words that would convey just how significant this actually was.

"Of course I understand," Mary Margaret replied, fiddling with the tablemat in front of her. "There are two John Does now. But there's nothing I can do about it."

Emma blinked. "No!" she said, trying to make her mother understand, not getting why she couldn't. "There's a fresh John Doe. A new one. Just one. Singular."

"There's always been a John Doe there; unless there are two, he's not new," Mary Margaret said honestly. Emma could decipher no lie hiding in this statement, which confused her immensely. Why wouldn't her mother remember her own husband waking up from a coma? "I go and read to him sometimes; I've been doing it for a while," Mary Margaret added.

"No!" Emma screamed suddenly, reverting back to the old defenses she had used as a child when no one would believe her when she said she didn't steal that, didn't break that, didn't draw on that.

Mary Margaret drew back at her outburst, looking alarmed. "David left! David left!" Emma reminded her angrily, watching her own fists curl themselves into tight balls. It had been a while since she'd been this infuriated. "Storybrooke hasn't had a John Doe in over four years, remember?"

Mary Margaret shook her head in disbelief at the woman in front of her. "Who's David? And why are you telling me all of this?"

Emma lifted her head to look at her mother, shocked. "David," she said, furrowing her eyebrows. "David Nolan. Your love. Prince Charming. My father. The man you made me with."

Mary Margaret's mouth formed a silent Oh. She could see that this woman had recently incurred a head injury. This woman must be confused, so confused, and not thinking right. That was why she'd come randomly knocking at her door. That was why she was spewing out all of this information she thought it was imperative for Mary Margaret to know. That was why this woman had entered her loft without invitation; she clearly thought she had some sort of connection to Mary Margaret.

Mary Margaret thought for a minute. She didn't want to set the woman off again. "So, that would make me your mother, right?" Mary Margaret said, inferring from Emma's previous sentence.

The girl sitting in front of her nodded, but she didn't look as confident about it anymore.

Mary Margaret offered the girl a sympathetic tilt of her head. "Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry, but I'm not your mother. Look at us, we're almost the same age," she laughed gently, as if she were telling a three-year-old something. "How could I be?"

Emma stared at her, her eyes opened wide like two incredibly green Frisbees, taking in the obvious evidence supporting this claim. She blinked once, her mouth agape and refusing to close.

"Let me ask you one thing," Emma, or whoever she was, said finally.

Emma was beginning to doubt even her own identity; she was so confused. Things had always been relatively black-and-white for her: either she was the abandoned orphan, or she wasn't. There was no in-between in her life; she had jumped straight from no family whatsoever to a bigger family than she knew what to do with.

Mary Margaret nodded politely. "Of course."

Emma drew in a deep breath. Her heart thudded in her chest, terrified of the answer she might receive. "Who exactly is Henry Mills, in relation to you?"

Mary Margaret cocked her head to the side, surprised at the question. "Henry Mills? He's my student."

Emma dropped her head into her hands, seeing she had a much larger problem to deal with now than John Doe.