For some reason this was a hard chapter to write. I tried to find the exact details on Snow's birthdate but came up empty, so I'm just going with the chapter the way it is. I know that it is in the winter, but that is about it.
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Chapter 13 - Break it or Not
The smell of bacon wafted up the stairs lifting me from my rejuvenating slumber. You would think that the smell would wake me because I was hungry. But no; no it woke me because the first thought through my mind was that Henry was cooking and the grease was going to be dumped down the sink drain again. And I still wasn't quite sure on just how serious my mother was about giving me the bill from the plumber. I breathed a small sigh of relief when I looked across the room and Henry was still sleeping.
I slipped out of my bed and quietly made my way down the stairs to the kitchen. My father was the one who was making breakfast this morning. It looked like the usual was on the menu, pancakes, scrambled eggs and bacon. "Where's mom?" I asked. I rubbed my face as I slid onto one of the bar stools by the island.
"Well, good morning to you, too." His tone was playful as it usually was with me in the morning. By now, everyone who lived in apartment knew that I was not a morning person. I watched him flip the pancakes then reach for a mug to fill with a morning refreshment.
"Sorry, good morning." I finally returned, through a yawn.
He gave me a good morning smile and placed a cup of coffee in front of me. "She's still sleeping; Neal was up a couple of times throughout the night with gas pains, so I thought that I would just let her sleep."
What were the odds that the kid would have had gas pains last night, huh? I squinted and tried to hide my face from my father's view by putting my head down. I knew where this was going to go. "Feeling guilty about something?" I heard him ask.
I looked up quickly with my best look of innocence. "What? Me? No…what would I have to feel guilty about?" I held strong to my confidence that Neal's not sleeping well was not my fault.
"Oh, I don't know…" He put both hands on the counter to support his weight as he leaned in my direction. "…maybe giving your brother ice cream yesterday?"
I shrunk back in my seat a little. "I still say that he has milk all of the time, and what I gave him was just frozen milk. I am in no way responsible for his little bout of gas."
He let out a little laugh, "Yeah, I heard that was your reasoning." I smiled like a little girl when he flashed me his charming grin and gave me a wink. I don't know what it was about my parents, but they both had this way of bringing out the little girl in me. He placed a generous helping of pancakes, eggs and bacon on plate and pushed it my direction. "I want you to meet me at Gold's shop around 1, if that's ok. Do you have any plans?" I was grateful for the quick change of subject.
"No, I should be ok with that…" I shoved a piece of bacon in my mouth. "…unless a call comes in that needs my attention. Why?"
I watched him look around the room to make sure that we were still alone; a sure tell sign that what he was about to say was not going to be good. "Today is your mother's birthday…" And I was right. I put my hand up to interrupt him. The little girl Emma that was pulled out of me a minute ago by my father just ran straight back into me and was hiding behind the legs of adult Emma.
"Whoa, stop right there. She hates to celebrate her birthday." I wasn't kidding. If I had the story correct, her birthday was the same day that her mother died after being poisoned by Cora. I believe that my mother was 13 years old at the time and she hasn't celebrated or even acknowledged her birthday since. With the exception of year that Johanna had sent her a gift that was her tiara. Anyway, if he was planning something, I did not want to be on the brunt end that backlash.
"No, you're right…" I could see the signs of hope developing in his eyes, "but I think that we can make it happy for her again."
"Seriously? You really want to go there?" I'm not sure what was going through his mind. But I did know that the last thing that he would ever want to do was hurt my mother. And I didn't like the way that his face fell when I rejected his idea. He looked like a sad little boy who was just told that goldfish had died. So I decided to go with it and hear him out. "What did you have in mind?" His smile returned. I closed my eyes and shook my head as I realized that I had just been played by my father. Wait a minute; aren't the kids supposed to manipulate the parents to get what they want? Not the other way around?
"I'm going to lunch with your mother at Granny's. After that, I want you to meet me at Gold's shop. I want to be there with you when you to help you pick out the perfect gift for her. But this gift is going to be from you, and just you." Wow, he seemed determined on that fact.
"Ok why?" I asked.
"I have the whole day planned out." He started to explain his plan but suddenly summed it up with what I already knew. "You're ok to meet me at 1?"
I heard the footsteps, so I knew why he had an abrupt change, I responded with a quick "yep." I looked up to see my mother approaching. She greeted him with first a warm hug and then a passionate kiss. "Ugh," I moaned. "Your daughter does not need to see this first thing in the morning." I said it in a sing songy voice. As much as I hated to witness these moments between these two, I really loved them at the same time. I was enamored with the fact that they were so in love and still had these moments. Nevertheless, my complaint was met with the response of a dish towel hitting me in the face. Even while being locked into a kiss with my father, my mother still had perfect aim. So I scrunched the towel in a ball and threw it back at them.
They pulled away from the kiss, but Mary Margaret stayed engulfed in David's arms. She laid her head on his shoulder but her face was turned toward me. "Good morning, sweetheart."
"Morning, Mom." Calling them mom and dad had seemed so natural anymore. There was a time when I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to call them by their proper titles. There were so many times, in foster homes, that I was forced to call my foster parents Mom or Dad (because it was the proper title for them, blah, blah, blah) and it never felt right. To me, those were titles that needed to be earned, and most foster parents, sure as hell, did not earn them. Sure there may have been a foster home here and there that was good, and I felt more comfortable with the foster parents, but not on the level that I had now. They were not my parents. But the two people standing in front of me, who were showing their love for each other, at the same time, were showing their love for me. They were my mom and dad.
My parents finally let go of their embrace and proceeded with breakfast and the morning routine. "So, we didn't get a chance to talk about your trip last night. What did you find out?" David asked.
As I finished up my breakfast and they began to eat theirs I filled them in on all of the details of my late night/early morning run in with Mr. Gold. Yeah, I left out the details of the slime ball who was hitting on me. David was pissed off enough about me being in the grocery store by myself at four in the morning. But his anger soon refocused to Lily when I told them her story and involvement with Peter Pan and my teenage life.
"So Peter Pan brought Lily here to watch over you?" he asked. He put is fork down and with each arm on the table on either side of his plate, he fingers curled into fists.
"Not really to watch over me, per se, more like to keep tabs on me, so that he would know exactly where to find me and Henry when it was time." My parent's eyes were locked on me. "He always knew of my destiny, and he always knew that my child would have the heart of the truest believer."
"And Lily knew the whole time, too," I heard the hint of feeling betrayed that was in Mary Margaret's comment, "she knew exactly who you were, who we were." My only response was to nod my head; "and she wanted to use you to get back to Neverland."
"Yeah, I suppose." I shrugged. "But I walked away from her that night. I never gave her the chance to succeed."
"No, don't you dare," the shrillness followed by the sound of authority in my father's voice scared me a little. I looked up at him with wide eyes giving way to a slight sense of fear that a child being scolded would have had. "Don't you dare blame yourself for her not succeeding with Pan's plan!"
"But Dad, if I would have just given her the chance…"
"The chance for what…" he cut me off, "the chance to get you killed by Peter Pan. The chance to never break the curse…" it was the next part that stung a bit, "…the chance to never have Henry, the chance to never find us. No, Emma, you never asked for this. You never asked for any of it." He poke out his index finger on his left hand and hammered it on the table in emphasis as he made his point. "And I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and let you blame yourself for Lily and Peter Pan not succeeding in their plans to kill you and Henry so that they may have eternal life." I sat there shocked, listening to my father's rant. I don't think that I have ever heard him raise his voice like that before. And although I know it wasn't directed at me, I still couldn't help the small feeling of disappointing him that washed over me.
"Charming, you need to calm down." My mother had placed a calming hand on his shoulder.
"I will not calm down," He turned to face her. "Our daughter has lived a life of hell, masterminded by two men with Daddy issues."
"Whoa, wait a minute. That's it!" I interjected with a yell that got both of their attention. "Peter Pan never wanted me to break the curse!" In that instant it was all so clear to me. Well, most of it anyway. I still wasn't sure how looking to my family for answers fit into all of this, but I now knew a little more about what I was looking for.
My parents had their eyes locked on me waiting for an explanation. "So, Gold created the curse to get to this world to find Neal…Bae…whatever. Once here, he used me to break then curse and then again to find Neal. He had it all planned out. But Pan, didn't want any of that to happen. Because he knew that Rumple finding Bae, would ultimately lead to his death…"
"So if you never broke the curse, then Gold would have never found Neal," my father finished the sentence for me. He looked like he had just been slapped in the face.
My mother's expression was not much different than my father's, "So, let me see if I understand this correctly," she started. I could tell that she was trying to wrap her head around all of this; "so you're saying that Pan knew that Gold was going to use you to find Neal." She looked to me for confirmation and I nodded my head, "Pan also knew that your child would have the heart of the truest believer, which he needed to save himself from dying. Also, Pan knew that if you came to Storybrooke and broke the curse that would lead Gold killing him? So he needed to prevent that by keeping you away."
"Exactly," I responded with a nod, "when I gave Henry up for adoption, it made it all so clean for Pan. All he would have had to do was kidnap Henry from Regina. As long as I didn't know where Henry was and Neal didn't know about Henry, then Pan would have been able to make his move and would have succeeded with his plan."
"Ok, so we know that Pan was using you for Henry to save himself and didn't want the curse to be broken. And Rumple was using you to find Neal and did want the curse broken," my father summed it up quite nicely.
"Well we know that Gold is the one who won that battle." My mother interjected. "So now what?"
"Now we have to figure out how JC fits into all of this?" I said. I had this feeling that we had somehow only figured out a piece of the puzzle. No, there was definitely more to this little mystery. It seemed all to coincidental that JC as involved with Lily, Lily was involved with pan, pan was involve with rumplestiltskin, and they all knew and/or used me at one point in time.
The more that I thought about it, the more convinced I was that JC and Lily had a much bigger part in all of this, that that is what I had to figure out next; but how? I was startled out of my thoughts when I heard a knock on the door. I looked up to my parents, "who is that?"
David jumped up quickly, "Oh, that's probably Zeke. I asked him to meet me here this morning; I have some work for him to do at the station."
"Work? What work?" I spun around on my chair following David to the door with my eyes, "don't you think that you should have talked with me about having work done at the station?"
"Don't worry, dear," he called back to me. "We already talked about replacing the fuse box with a breaker box, I just finally found someone to do it."
"Oh yeah," I now remembered that conversation that we had a couple of weeks ago. "Did the mayor approve it?" I turned to look at my mother.
She smile, "Yeah that was one of my last official duties before turning the office back over to Regina."
I put my attention back to my plate. I waved my hand in the air, "Carry on then." I yelled back to him. I heard him laugh as he opened the door to greet Zeke.
"Wait," I turned back to the door to catch my father, but I was too late. He had already grabbed his coat and was out the door with his new friend. I furrowed my brow as I looked over to my mother, "I thought Zeke as a plumber?" She just shrugged her shoulders and began to clear the dishes.