Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time or its characters; I only borrow.
The "Drain-O for the aura" smelled as bad as it looked, and tasted even worse. Emma imagined that she probably could've been fed actual drain cleaner and she wouldn't have known the difference. Dr. Kyle had spread some of the goop on the back of her neck and the inside of Emma's hands before telling her to eat the rest. Yes, actually eat it. It had the consistency of slimy peanut butter.
She forced down three huge spoonfuls of the stuff (while the doctor informed them "free of charge, because that's just the kind of guy I am") before going into a coughing/gagging/choking fit. Killian reverted to Captain Hook for a moment and shoved the doctor against a wall and held him there by his throat while he delivered some creative threats.
"Killian, it's fine," Emma croaked, eyes red and watering. "Someone tell me a lie or something."
"My favorite superhero is the Green Lantern and my favorite color is peach," Kyle obliged, speaking around Killian.
Emma waited a moment, thinking, then shook her head. "I can't tell."
Killian applied more pressure to the doctor's throat. "You nearly killed her and it didn't even work?"
"It might take a day or two to be effective. It's got a lot of work to do." Kyle's voice was strained. Good, I'm petty enough to be okay with you having a bruised airway right now.
Emma let out a frustrated hrmph. "Whatever. Killian. Let him go." Once Kyle was free, and massaging his throat, she addressed him. "So, when should we start my training?"
She and the doctor set up a schedule as she wiped of the goop and got dressed.
"Hold on a moment, love. You missed a spot." Killian stopped her as she was about to open the door. He grabbed a warm damp cloth and rubbed gently at the back of her neck. When he was done he smoothed her hair back over her shoulders. "Alright, then." He opened the door and gestured for her to go through first.
Emma glanced back at the doctor as she left the room and saw an expression of thoughtful amusement on his face. Killian noticed her glance and looked back himself, then scowled. He shut the door on Kyle's laugh.
Henry and Divina were laughing about something when they entered the waiting room. Div looked at them with a smile. "Did Kyle get you all sorted out? Do you need to make another appointment?"
"We made arrangements with the doctor already. Ready to go, kid?"
"Yep." They all said goodbye to Div, and Henry threw a wave her way as they left the office. "You were in there a long time. Can he help?"
"Yes and no," Emma told him as they headed for the subway station.
"What does that mean?"
"Kyle can't help with the potions, but he's going to be giving Emma lessons on using her magic so that she might be able to make them herself," Killian told the boy.
"You're going to learn magic?" Henry looked up at his mom, and she saw an odd combination of apprehension and excitement on his face.
"That's the plan. Did you learn anything useful from Divina?"
"She hates that name. Her grandma is a seer, and her mom named her Divina because she thought that giving her a name that was close to 'divination' would make it more likely she would be a seer, too." Henry rolled his eyes.
Killian chuckled. "Did it?"
"Nope. But Div said that sometimes the 'wretched gift', her words, doesn't pass on to another person in the family until someone who already has it dies. So when her grandma dies she might get it. She doesn't want it, though." He shrugged at Emma's questioning look. "She thinks it would drive her crazy, because it took her grandma almost twenty years to learn how to control it. And Div wants to go into something scientific rather than spend so much of her life dealing with something that doesn't have an explanation."
"Fair enough. Did you learn anything about Dr. Mattison?" Emma smoothed Henry's hair as they got on the subway.
"Nothing really helpful. She really respects him, but she shut up whenever I tried to ask about anything magic. Unless it had to do with her family. She didn't have a problem talking about seeing the future. She did say that most of the people that Kyle treats get better, but he does send a lot of them to regular doctors first." He looked at Emma and Killian. "Did he say why he does that? If he can help them, why would he send them somewhere else?"
"Apparently his magic is limited. After he uses it he must let it regenerate. I don't believe he wishes to waste it on someone who could be helped in another way," Killian told him.
"Yeah, but he also said that potions aren't his thing. How is that disgusting crap he gave me not a potion? Other than being more sludge than liquid, I mean." Emma raised a brow.
"I don't think he used any magic in the mixture. He seemed to do something else when he put it on your neck and hands. I think he used magic in addition to the mixture rather than as a part of it."
"I guess I'll ask him when we start training tomorrow."
"What time do you start?" Henry asked his mom.
"Five. We can keep looking for those other ingredients earlier in the day."
"Is there any chance we can take the day off? We've been walking around for over a month now without a break, and we made substantial progress today." Killian watched Emma as she mulled that over, her expression changing slowly from protest to acceptance.
"You're right. We've earned a break." She nodded as the subway car's doors opened.
"Awesome! Does that mean we can have Chinese food tonight? I want fried wontons!" Henry looked positively giddy.
"Yeah, kid." Emma smiled at her son's excitement. "I could go for some General Tso's chicken myself."
-.*.-.*.-.*.-
Emma's training didn't go well the next day. Or the day after that. Or that whole first week, for that matter. When she destroyed the failsafe in Storybrooke with Regina, she'd had no idea what she was doing, or how she did it. In Neverland Regina had taught her to call fire, and she'd managed it twice, but she hadn't been able to replicate it again. She was pretty sure it was because Neverland had a lot more magic than the somewhat poorly named Land Without Magic did. Whatever the reason, she hadn't made much progress in her current training.
She and Kyle were worried that she might expend too much energy in her training to still be able to make the potions, so she hadn't done any 'conjuring' or anything since the first day when she tried the fire. Instead, Kyle had her trying to tap into her magic without actually using it. This involved a whole lot of sitting still and trying to visualize her magic inside her. Emma tried balls of light, fire, string, and rubber bands. She tried vials of various liquids and boxes of random things (at least the barrel of monkeys was a little amusing). She even tried an egg of silly putty and a can of silly string (those were both desperate attempts on the sixth day).
On the seventh, Kyle decided that they would take a break from the meditation, stating that Emma clearly didn't have the concentration for it at the moment. Instead he had her trying to absorb magic that he left lying around. He'd leave a bit in an object in the room and have Emma try to sniff it out and then take the magic. By the end of the lesson she could successfully determine which item he'd infused with magic, but she still couldn't do anything with the magic itself.
Killian and Henry spent most of her training time looking for the last three ingredients. They hadn't even identified two of them, and they hadn't been able to find a place that stocked the third.
When Emma got back to the apartment on day seven she found them sitting on the couch, a bowl of popcorn between them and more than a few soda cans on the floor, watching some 'reality' survivalist show.
"Scoot over." She nudged Killian's leg with her foot and plopped down next to him when he obliged. "Did you guys find anything today?"
"We found a shop that will order the Desmodium gyrans for us. It should be in sometime next week. That clerk was also able to tell us what the tergemmon is, but he said he can't get it." Killian fetched a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen when he saw Emma trying to stretch her neck and shoulders. "He didn't know anything about the third."
"Thanks," she told him with a grateful smile. He just told her to sit on the floor in front of him after she downed a couple of pills. When she complied he pushed her hair over one shoulder and worked his fingers into the knots in her shoulder. As she leaned back against his legs she asked the obvious question. "What's tergemmon?"
"Some endangered poisonous slug that only exists in a three-square-mile area in Portugal," Henry answered around the popcorn in his mouth without looking from the TV screen.
"We're putting something poisonous in a potion that we're going to drink?"
"The Dancing Plant will counteract the poisonous part," Killian reassured her. "Love… Why are your hands blue? And glowing?" Emma looked down at her hands, revealed as she pulled off her gloves.
"Oh, that bastard! Henry, you didn't hear that." Henry absently mmhmm'd. "He said he was giving me homework, but I thought it was the gloves!"
"I don't follow." Killian picked up her right hand and examined it.
"He put magic in my gloves, and I thought I was just supposed to try to extract it. But he must've made it so that it would go in my hands instead." Jackass.
"Better motivation, I suppose."
Emma was too miffed to appreciate the tactic. "He could've just told me that's what he was going to do. What if I had stopped at the store and taken off my gloves there? It's not like I could explain blue glowing hands to a cashier!" Killian was (unsuccessfully) trying to hide a smile. She scowled at him.
Henry tore his eyes from the TV long enough to look at Emma's hands. What is so riveting about this show? Do we really need to learn survival skills for a desert area? Were we planning a trip to some unpopulated desert? Didn't think so. "Better get started then," was all he said to her. She spared a scowl for him, too.
"Fine," she huffed. She warmed up some leftover spaghetti and sat at the table, staring at one hand while she mechanically twirled pasta around a fork with the other. She made a sound reminiscent of a growl when Killian tried to sit across from her. She saw Henry smile and shake his head at Killian out of the corner of her eye. Killian backed off, hands raised as a placating gesture.
Emma split her concentration between pulling Kyle's magic out of her hands and throwing every nasty name she knew at him in her head. Then she invented some new ones.
A/N: Reviews are underrated TV shows, and constructive criticism is Firefly.