Bet

Dancing4every1 asked for a oneshot of Charming offering Emma a sword fighting lesson. She rebuffs him saying she fought a dragon by herself and is already good enough. Charming bets she can't beat him.

"There's still time to back out of this." Charming said gently as he and Emma circled each other in the back garden with their wooden swords (Snow had forbidden them to use real ones in case there was an accident). Emma shook her head, keeping her vision focused on her dad.

"Not a chance old man. I've never chickened out of a bet before and I'm not about to start now."

"It wouldn't be chickening out. It would just stop me from hurting my little girl." Charming said with a cheeky grin. Emma rolled her eyes.

"Right, enough yabbering- let's dual."

"Please just be careful!" Snow called from where she stood at the kitchen window with Neal in her arms. "I don't want to have to bandage anyone up or worse arrange a trip to the hospital!"

"Yes dear." Charming replied without taking his eyes off of Emma. "I won't hurt our little angel."

"Little angel does not promise to return the favour." Emma said as she lunged at Charming. He dodged easily, Emma was going to have to do better than that if she wanted to beat him. Snow and Charming had spoken about him letting Emma win. Both had decided that was not a good idea because a) she would probably be able to tell and b) she might think she was far more advanced than she actually was and get into a real fight that was out of her depth. Besides, it would give Charming an excuse to spent some quality time with her giving proper lessons. That was his end of the bet. If Emma lost Charming got to give her lessons. But if he lost then Emma got three weeks off from the station. There was no way Charming was dealing with all the moaners in this town on his own for three weeks!

Charming had to admit that Emma was better than he had anticipated, but still no match for him. After all, there may have been a twenty eight year break but he'd been using swords since before she was born. She's only really got lucky a couple of times with one. After a short battle Charming had Emma (carefully) on the ground with the sword tip at her throat. He grinned down at her.

"Best get some comfy training gear, little angel."