Title - Feels Like Home

Setting - 4 years after A Queen Without Crown/ 2 years after Her Most Solemn Hour

Summary - Four years had passed since Emma had showed up on the doorstep of the mayoral mansion on her 28th birthday. Everything has changed and yet a piece of her heart is still missing. She wants to marry the woman of her dreams, but something is holding her back. Something she is afraid of sharing with Regina. She wants to know where she came from first. "A Queen Without A Crown" series

Trigger Warnings will be posted in each chapter

Well, here we are again. I just want to thank everyone for being so patient. This one was a hard one to plan out. It went into a million different directions until I finally figured out exactly how to tell Emma's story. Be prepared for fluffy moments with Emma and Regina but also the hard moments. We're gonna cry and laugh with Emma as we figure out exactly where she came from on her own journey of self discovery. Thank you so much for all your support and patience. You're in for a ride.

Happy Reading.

Prologue - Somewhere in Maine, 31 years ago

The onslaught of rain had forced the 16 year old dark haired and hazel eyed girl to hide out in a diner for a couple hours on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere Maine. She had run away so far that her parents or anyone else she knew wouldn't find her or the little baby she had kept hidden. For nine months she had managed to hide her pregnancy thanks to the fact that her parents were too wrapped up in their own lives and problems to fully pay attention to her. Besides from the rude comment of gaining weight from her mother, they never even suspected she was pregnant. Their negligence was the exact reason she was able to sneak away long enough to give birth in a gas station bathroom and then take the baby far away where know one could ever track her to being its mother.

She wasn't proud of what she was about to do, but she felt as if she didn't have a choice. She couldn't raise it when she was just a child herself. She had her whole life ahead of her and she couldn't bear the thought of throwing it away over a child that she never wanted. She could barely even look at it. This baby would only drag her down and surely her parents would disown her especially if they found out about the way she had gotten pregnant. She was so ashamed of it she couldn't imagine any other reaction from them. This squirming crying thing would only drag her life further into darkness and if she wanted her life to get better, she needed to get rid of it.

She had been a stupid girl, showing up to a party she didn't belong in. She let him into her life, let him into her heart. She charmed him like he did her and then he wanted more… He wanted what she wasn't willing to give and then he took it. She couldn't look at the baby in her arms without wanting to burst into tears and so she kept her eyes averted, staring out the window and waiting for the rain to end. The diner was runned down and in the middle of nowhere, probably serving as a pit stop for truckers. Her cold cup of coffee laid untouched before her. The baby's cries were an echo in the distance as she watched the droplets of rain streaming down the wet glass.

The waiters gave her odd looks every now and then but none of them really cared enough to approach her booth and check in on her. When the rain finally stopped, she slapped down whatever bills and change she had in her pocket and rushed outside into the cold crisp air. She had hours to think about the severity of what she was doing, but she felt numb just as she did throughout the entire pregnancy. She had no remorse for the cruel and despicable thing she was about to do.

The baby squirmed and cried in her yellow knitted blanket as she ran across the road and out of sight of the diner windows where the waiters couldn't see her. She chose a patch of grass not too close to the highway but close enough for a passing car to find. She made sure it was bundled up tightly, tucking it in the blanket and taking a moment to finally look at it for once instead of averting her eyes. It had stopped crying and was looking up at her with blue green eyes. His eyes. Her stomach churned in disgust and she felt bile rising and burning her throat.

"I can't take care of a baby," she said, her voice cracking with a sudden surge of emotion for everything she has been through in just under a year. "I can't raise you. I can't love you. I can't be the one to comfort you or feed you. I can't be a mother. I didn't deserve what happened to me and you don't deserve to be raised by a mother who can't even look at you without being reminded of…" She couldn't say his name. "I hope you find someone who can give you what you need… A home. And that isn't with me. If you survive, don't ever come looking for me."

The baby raised its arm out and she quickly tucked it back in so it didn't catch a draft. The front of the blanket read a name in purple embroidery. She frowned. She never even bothered to name it. She found the blanket in a thrift store.

"Good bye, Emma," she whispered.