Chapter XI

I love you, Kid

She was jerked awake by two tiny feet impacting something that felt very close to her bladder. "Jesus, Kid, could you just stop?" She eased off her bunk and pushed her uniform blue pants down and relieved her now screaming bladder into the lidless stainless steel toilet that was two feet from her bed. She hated the fact that her toilet was so close to where she slept, but for a pregnant woman it was actually kind of convenient. Especially if you were pregnant with the next freaking David Beckham.

Emma Swan had never imagined herself pregnant, she didn't want kids. Of course she had never imagined herself being in jail, either. She had always been a step ahead of the cops, a little bit smarter, and a little bit faster. Now she was pregnant and in jail, both at the same damn time.

"Your mother is a major fuck-up, Kid." She laid her hands on her seven-months-along-stomach and sighed. She was, according to the nurse-practitioner that the jail paid to keep the inmates more-or-less healthy, having a boy. She looked at the black and white sonogram print out she had taped to the gray wall above the bolted-down table and chair that served as a desk. She wasn't sure how the woman could tell what gender the Kid was, the picture looked like a black and gray blob to her. The kinda-person-looking blob that was inside her. Her son. Fuck. Fuck Neal. Fuck jail. Fuck being pregnant. This was not how her life was supposed to go. This was not how she wanted any kid of hers to live, either. Which was why there was no way in hell she was keeping this kid. What could she offer him? She was a teenage convict with no high school diploma or strictly legal talents or skills. He would end up in the system so fast that it wasn't even funny. That was definitely not happening. Her Kid was not going to grow up like she did. He was not going to bounce from home to home where no one cared about him. He was not going to be someone's paycheck.

If she put him up for adoption at birth, with one of the fancy-schmancy private adoption firms he would get a real family. He would grow up being loved and cherished and would never know that he'd been born in jail to an idiot. She had studying to do, she was working on her G.E.D., but she went back to her bunk instead.

Her Kid was going to be adopted by a great family, she told herself. A Dad who taught him to throw a baseball and ride a bike. He would have one of those 9 to 5 jobs where he had to wear a tie and signed off on paperwork all day. Like a lawyer or an accountant. He would be mild and respectable, he would volunteer to lead the Kid's Boy Scout troop. He would have a mom. She closed her eyes and tried to picture it. A pale yellow nursery decorated with the alphabet and soft and fuzzy animals. There would be a crib, and a rocking chair by a window that looked out over a huge green yard with trees for forts and flowers for picking. Though it was totally old school, his mom would be a stay-at-home one. She would cook and bake and dedicate her life to her son. She would sew his Halloween costumes and spend hours reading to him.

Sleep started to sneak up on her and Emma smiled as she surrounded to it. Her Kid would be happy, surrounded by nice people in some little po-dunk town where no one locked their doors and the Sheriff didn't do anything but eat doughnuts. Like that old black and white TV show, the one with whistling.

Hopes slowly gave way to dreams and Emma found herself in the yellow nursery. A warm, gorgeous voice, met her ears first and she turned to see a brunette woman in the rocking chair she'd imagined. There was a baby in her arms and she was singing him to sleep. Emma hadn't been sung to sleep often, not since her first family had shipped her back, but she knew some lullabies, the old standards. This was not one she knew of. It was slow, and melodic, and in a different language. Was that Spanish? She didn't know for sure.

What she did know was that the woman was her Kid's mother and she was perfect.

"I love you so much, my Little One."

And Emma loved him too, completely.

The baby had fallen asleep in her arms and the woman rose to lay him down in the crib. Emma caught sight of her face and was amazed at the beauty, joy and sadness she found there. She reached out to touch the other woman, to comfort her. She didn't want her son's mother to be sad. Only happy. She wanted to see the woman's perfect red lips, the scar only added to their appeal, stretch into a smile.

"Swan!"

The guard barked her name and she jerked awake, back in her gray cell once more. The dream started to evaporate almost immediately and was gone by the time her sock-clad feet touched the cold concrete floor.

"Time for lunch, Preggo."

She rolled her eyes at the guard's stupid joke and stood up. Hopefully The Kid wouldn't protest today's lunch selection too much.

"Mom."

She was rudely shaken out of her sleep by someone's hand on her shoulder and she rolled away from the asshole that was disturbing her. Could they not see she was trying to sleep?

"Mom."

Christ Almighty, somebody was about to get her boot up their ass.

"I'm sleepin', go away."

The hand descended again, "But it's after noon and you promised to take me to the stables today."

Reality crashed in on her. Emma cracked open an eye and all she could see was Henry's face about six inches away from her own. She let out a groan and started to sit up. Everything hurt. Snow, David, Henry and she had come home after the Diner and had settled in to watch The Avengers. They had been halfway through the movie, and she'd been into the action. Crazy fight scenes were awesome when you weren't apart of them. Then her phone had rung. Some of the Dwarves had taken the party down to The Rabbit Hole and a friendly discussion had devolved into a brawl. David had started to get up, but she waved him off, she was the Sheriff, after all.

How exactly a discussion about The Pats versus The Giants had turned into a huge brawl was beyond her. She hadn't realized that fairy tale creatures even followed football, let alone felt so passionately about it. She had waded into the middle of everything and had caught a stool across her back for her trouble. Grumpy had a wicked strong swing, probably thanks to all that diamond mining. He, and a few other assholes, were currently cooling their heels down at the station under Ruby and David's watch. She had stumbled home, her fists and ribs aching, at about six in the morning and had hoped to sleep for ever.

She squinted at the clock and saw that it was 12:15. What the hell was Henry doing home from school in the middle of the day? Also why did her eyes burn like fire? She twisted around and put her feet on the floor. She had fallen asleep with her contacts in again. Her eyes, crappy vision wasn't genetic it was apparently all hers, still hadn't recovered from her jolly adventures in The Enchanted Forest. 1-800 Contacts did not deliver to fairy tale lands and she'd been stuck in the same pair the entire time. It had become a pretty bad problem towards the end. The left contact had torn a little and had rubbed against her eye like sandpaper. She had seriously considered taking them out, but being half-blind in the forest hadn't seemed like a great idea at the time.

Henry followed her downstairs and into the bathroom. Kid had little concept of personal space, apparently. She looked in the mirror and winced at what she saw. She looked like Hell. She washed her hands and then started to fish in her left eye for her contact. It was such an ingrained habit at this point that it took little to no thought.

"What are you doing home in the middle of the day?"

Henry sat on the edge of the bathtub and she could see him shrug in the mirror. "Half day."

She should have known that. God, there was so much going on with that school. Was there some kind of schedule or something? Snow should have told her. Emma switched to her right eye and sighed audibly. No, she was Henry's mother. She should have known he only had a half day at school. Ugh, she sucked at being a responsible adult, and she definitely sucked at being a mom.

She reached, almost literally blindly, and grabbed her eye drops. She felt almost instant relief when she dropped the visene into her eyes. She really didn't want to put in a fresh set of contacts, but had no choice. Well, there was a choice, but she didn't want to be blind all day. She really needed to invest in a new pair of glasses for days like this.

"Oh. Yeah, I remember now." Liar.

"So we can go to the Stables. I want to show you my horse."

Oh yay, she had never been around horses, but assumed that she would hate them. She and animals didn't tend to get along well. Especially animals big enough to stomp you to death before prancing away.

She put her contacts in with a practiced finger and blinked until her vision lined up properly.

"Sure, Kid, sounds fun." Big fat liar.

She loved Henry, though, so she would do this.

She turned in time to see his face split into a huge grin and he wrapped his arms around her waist and squeezed hard.

Yeah, she would do just about anything to see her son smile at her like that.

It was a short drive to the Stables, of course everything was a relatively short drive in Storybrooke. She listened with half an ear as Henry proceeded to tell her every single detail of everything David had told him about or he had done with his horse. Kid was excited. When she parked her Bug at the Stables, Henry was unbuckled and out the door before she had even turned the car off. She followed at a far more sedate pace, because if she had to run today she would probably die. Her back was killing her. She wrinkled her nose as she got closer. Horse shit. She smelled literal horse shit. The only time she'd ever smelled it before was on Parade Days when the cops on horses came through. This was allot worse than that. It wasn't all bad, though, she supposed. There was also the smell of hay and wood chips and what she assumed was horse.

She followed the sound of Henry's excited voice, but stopped and had to move to the side when a man leading a horse came through. She didn't recognize the stable dude, but he nodded to her as if he knew her. The horse made her step back an extra bit. It was huge. Huge and black and it looked at her like she was delicious sugar cube just waiting to be gobbled up. It snorted at her, it wasn't a nice sound.

"Don't mind him, Sheriff, he's just temperamental."

He clucked his tongue, "C'mon Tencendur, let's get you out for your run."

She watched the man and the horse walk away and prayed Henry's horse wasn't as huge or mean looking. Surely not. He was just a little boy. He should be riding something out of My Little Pony. The beast that walked by her looked like it belonged in a rodeo, bucking some cowboy off it's back. She hated horses. The only other horse she'd ever been around had been the one she had been tied to and that hadn't been fun either.

She found Henry in a stall with a much smaller, way nicer looking, horse. Or was it a pony? She wasn't actually sure if there was a difference. Henry, all smiles, told her the horse's name but she immediately forgot it. "Hey" she paused, "Horsey." He looked nicer then the big black one, but who knew what horses thought? The horse seemed to like Henry, though.

"I'm going to go take him for a walk, do you wanna come?"

Take him for a walk? Like a dog? Well, anything was better than riding him, she supposed.

"Sure."

Henry lead the horse, by the reigns, out of a large fenced in yard. Emma looked around cautiously and was happy to find that all the other horses, the big black bruiser included, were safely behind other fences. It was just her, The Kid, and his horse. She could deal with that. They walked all the way around the yard and then circled it again. Henry talked the whole time and Emma sunk her hands into her pockets and listened.

"So Grampa says he has to trust me before I ride him because a Knight and his Steed are a team."

Well, she grinned, David would know all about being a Knight in Shining Armor. "Yeah, he's pretty knowledgeable about that stuff."

"Well, he is Prince Charming."

She grinned, Kid had her sense of humor.

"So-" She sidestepped a pile of what she was pretty sure was horse shit, "it's been a busy few days. How are you holding up?"

He had been having crazy fire nightmares, watching his grandfather (who was really old enough to be his father) be cursed, watched his mother suck up a crazy death curse and met the princess from his dreams, a warrior woman from a Disney movie and his mother's childhood nurse. Oh and his batshit insane grandmother was now on the scene too. It was allot to take in for her and she was an adult.

"Well I'm really glad you and Snow are back." So was she.

"And Mulan seems really cool. Belle is all excited about having her in town. She told me that her and Mulan once went monster hunting together but it turned out that the monster wasn't really a monster, it was Prince Phillip." Well that hadn't been in the Disney movie.

"And the principal at my school is Princess Aurora's mom." Okay so Queen Leah was the principal of Henry's school. How many Queens were employed at that school, anyway?

"I only wish the Gypsy hadn't come." It wasn't just the word, it was the way Henry said it. He said it with something that was way too close to hate for a little boy.

She was putting a stop to that shit right here and now.

"Henry!"

He paused and looked at her, "What?"

Oh Christ, he sounded exactly like her when she had been a snot-nosed kid who thought she knew everything. Same superior tone, same level of sarcasm, same look in his eyes. Damn.

"I don't want you talking like that." She was his mom and right now she had to lay down the law. She tried to think of what Regina or Snow would say, but came up blank. She was going to have to wing it.

"She has a name and it's Esmeralda. She's really important to your mom and you should respect her."

Henry blinked, "But Grandma and Grampa said that Gypsies are evil and wrong, they're bad people."

She was going to have a talk with David and Snow about this Esmeralda thing.

She went down to one knee and prayed that it was dirt and not shit under her knee.

"Henry you can't do that. Racism isn't cool. You can't judge anybody just based on what someone says. So your grandparents don't like gypsies? I know people who don't like black people and they're called the KKK. It's wrong to dislike anyone based on the color of their skin. Didn't your mom teach you that?"

She sounded like a freaking after school special, only with fairytales thrown in.

He squirmed, obviously uncomfortable, "Well yeah, she said that it's ignorant and immoral to judge anyone based on their race, religion, nationality or sexual orientation." It definitely sounded like something Regina would say. Hell it sounded like a line out of the Town Charter. Maybe it was, she hadn't really read all of it.

"She's right, Henry. Everyone deserves to be treated the same no matter if they're Asian, gay, Catholic or even a Gypsy."

"But" his brow furrowed, "She's evil, they're both evil!"

Emma thought about the woman who had looked at her last night, the woman who had been terrified for her son, and the woman who had been terrified of her own mother. The woman who had begged her to accept an apology. She remembered the woman she had seen in Regina's kitchen. Esmeralda had tended to Regina with a mother's touch. It was sort of awkward, like how she and Snow interacted, but someone who cared that much about another person couldn't be straight-up evil. It was the same reason she knew Regina couldn't be all evil, she loved Henry too much. Evil, true evil, couldn't love.

"Henry, we don't even know Esmeralda. Who's to say if she's evil or good or in-between." The Kid needed to know that there was an in-between. There weren't just saints and sinners in the world, there was a whole group of people who lived in-between those two titles, herself included. "And your mother is not evil."

He started to protest but she cut him off, "Evil people can't love, Henry. Regina loves you more than anything else. She did some bad things, and I'm not saying she is perfect."

Well, physically she was perfection, but the Kid definitely didn't need to know that.

"But she is trying to change. It's hard for her, you know. Everyone treats her like crap and they keep telling her she's nothing but evil and she'll always be evil. When you're told you're no good over and over again, you start to believe it."

She understood how that felt all too well.

"So you start doing things that aren't that good, because hey no one expects any better of you." Was she still talking about Regina?

"Because sometimes the easy way is the bad way. Why work hard and do good when nobody gives a damn?" Okay, she was pretty sure she wasn't talking about just Regina anymore.

"Turning things around, getting on the right path is hard and it hurts and sometimes it's just easier to give up and be the person everyone thinks you already are." How many times had she slipped? Putting her life together after jail had been rough. Tallahassee had been her proving ground. She had stumbled and had no one to help her get back on her feet, but she had done it. Regina could do it too. "So cut your mom a little slack, okay. She's trying."

Henry looked at her, and didn't seem totally convinced, but he nodded.

She stood back up and threw an arm over his shoulder, "Awesome."

This parenting stuff was way harder then it looked on TV.

"So let's finish up with your buddy here, then we can go to Granny's for some food. I am starving."

That cheered him up, as if he hadn't been to Granny's for weeks instead of since just last night.

He led the horse in and Emma lagged behind him, in no hurry to go back into the Stables. Everything she'd said was the God's honest truth. Swear on a stack of Bibles, and all that good stuff. Why had she said it, though? Why did she care what Henry thought of Regina? The woman wasn't exactly mother of the year.

The look on her face, though, when Emma had thanked her for taking care of Henry. The way that she had sounded so damn sad and proud when she'd said Henry was the only good thing she'd ever done. That told Emma exactly what she needed to know and that was why she had defended Regina. Despite her flaws, and there were allot of them, Regina was exactly the kind of mother she had always wanted her child to have.

She caught up to Henry and watched him brush his horse with slow, sure strokes. He looked so happy, healthy and bright. She could have never given him all of this. Had she kept him, he would have lived in some shitty walk-up apartment in some city's rough district. He would go to a crappy under-funded public school and would have learned which gang signs to avoid by now. He wouldn't be the sweet, funny kid he was. He would be street-smart and smart-mouthed and hardened to hardship. He wouldn't be Henry. Giving him away, giving him to Regina to raise, had been the best decision she'd ever made.

"I love you, Kid, you know that right?"

He looked up and cocked his head to the side, "Of course. I love you too, Mom."

When she had been pregnant and in jail she had told herself that these were words she'd never hear. Now that she heard them, her heart filled with warmth and love. Her Kid, the little boy she'd carried inside her for nine months, loved her.

It was hard, damn hard, but maybe being a Mom was exactly everything it was cracked up to be.

Author's Note: Took you long enough, Emma.