A/N: Some material lifted from S1E1: Pilot. When necessary, scenes and dialogue have been modified to fit this AU.

Chapter Fifteen

Emma's eyes grew wide as Henry's words penetrated, but before she could form a response of her own, the boy had pushed past her and into the apartment.

"Kid?" she called. Then, louder, "Kid! Hey, hang on a second!" She'd wanted to meet him, to know he was okay, but for him to show up unannounced and unexpected out of the blue… Part of her was overjoyed. But part of her—the hard-nosed, practical part that kicked in whenever she was working a job and wanted to throw the rulebook out the window and make the collar to tell her that if she didn't do things properly, it wouldn't just be the perp sitting in a jail cell and she'd probably be sitting in one longer—was kicking in now. And while it might not be saying anything she wanted to hear, she had to listen.

She had no legal right to look after this kid.

Her apartment was a one-bedroom and definitely not kid-friendly. It wasn't exactly kid-hostile; it wasn't like there were radioactive chemicals and power tool lying around or anything; but apart from her Harry Potter boxed set and the TV, she couldn't think of a single thing that might appeal to a ten-year-old.

And even if she took steps to change that; even if she went to the nearest Wal-Mart and threw something together right now, since she and Neal didn't have custody, it would be kidnapping. Kidnapping was a felony. Punishable by up to ten years in state prison or two in a house of correction. Plus a fine. She'd be tried as an adult. Her juvie record might be admissible; it might not be. But Neal already had one felony conviction on his record.

She couldn't keep Henry here. Not now. Not like this.

And even though she wanted to, she had no clue how to be a parent and any screw-ups she made while she was looking after him would be magnified and picked apart when—no the authorities tracked him down.

Oh, she was going to find out his full name and address and she was going to be a part of his life if he wanted her to be. (And face it: if he'd tracked her down and knocked on her door, he probably wanted her to be.) And if he wanted to live with her, then she was going to do her best to make that happen.

But it had to happen legally.

And right now, that meant that Henry had to go back to his adoptive parents.

Henry could hear Emma Swan (his mother! That was his mother!) calling after him to wait, but he ignored her. This was an apartment and on TV, anytime you tried to have a conversation in the hallway, people in the other apartments were opening their doors to listen in. Or sometimes, they were holding drinking glasses to the wall so they could listen without being noticed.

Besides, if he was in the apartment, his mom couldn't shut the door in his face. Not that she looked like he was about to, but he wasn't taking chances.

Wasn't he? Wasn't he taking a huge chance that this was his mother, and not some other woman who'd given a baby up for adoption? The website had said she was. Well, it said that there was a 97 percent likelihood that she was, but there had been a couple of other names and a note at the bottom saying that the list was 'not exhaustive'. He'd had to Google what that meant. But the other names on the list hadn't been 'Emma'.

Unless Archie was right, and his storybook was just a book. Not that Archie had come out and said it that way. It had been more like, "So, what is it that makes you believe that the people in town are all also characters in your book? Henry, you've read fairytale stories before, right? What is it that has you convinced that this collection is more than just… stories?"

He'd tried to explain, but it was obvious that Archie didn't believe him. Oh, again, he hadn't said outright, "I don't believe you." Instead, he'd asked questions meant to make Henry decide that all by himself. But Henry knew better, even if he couldn't convince Archie. Not yet. But once Emma came to Storybrooke and broke the curse…!

"Whoa!" Emma had followed him into the room. "Hey, kid! Kid! Where are your parents?"

"It's just my…" Henry's voice faltered. "My other mom and me. I came on my own."

"What? Wait. How old…?" She stopped.

"Did you give up a baby for adoption ten years ago?" Henry asked her. The look on her face confirmed it. "That was me."

Emma sucked in her breath. "Give me a minute." She hurried through a door. Before it closed, Henry caught a glimpse of brown-tiled walls and a porcelain sink. Bathroom, then. He looked around the main room quickly. There wasn't much furniture, and what there was looked like the kind of stuff his mother had wrinkled her nose at when she'd seen it in a shop window on Main Street in Storybrooke. "Well, I suppose it's economical," she'd murmured, in a tone that Henry knew meant she'd never dream of having anything like that in her house. Henry had never thought it looked all that bad, though. And here, it looked… kind of comfortable. At least, that brown chair did—

Henry's eyes widened. There was a woolen throw draped over the chair. One that looked incredibly familiar. He pulled his book out of his knapsack and flipped it to one of the last illustrations, that of Baby Emma swaddled in her blanket in her father's arms.

That blanket, or its duplicate, was now sitting on the back of a chair in his mother's apartment. A wide grin split Henry's face. It was true. It was all true. His mother was the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. And now, she had to come back with him to break the Curse!

Neal still wasn't picking up. From inside the bathroom, Emma could hear her son asking, "Hey, have you got any juice?" And then, a moment later, "Never mind. Found some."

Emma swallowed hard. Then she sent a text to Neal and left the bathroom.

In the kitchen, Henry was drinking orange juice straight out of the bottle. Like father, like son, she thought wryly. To be fair, Neal only did it when he intended on finishing what was left in the bottle. Henry was holding a quart bottle that had been more than three quarters full a couple of minutes ago. "Uh, kid…" she tried.

She could make up a bed on the sofa. In the morning, she could call a lawyer. Wait. If she told a lawyer what was going on, was she technically confessing to kidnapping? Did a lawyer have to report that?

It's not kidnapping if he shows up on my doorstep.

Is it kidnapping if I have no legal right to him and I don't let the authorities know he's here? What about if his adoptive parents reported him missing?

She knew quite a bit about the law, at least insofar as what she could and couldn't do, both as a PI and as a bounty hunter. This, on the other hand, was beyond her.

Henry set down the bottle. "You know," he said casually, "we should probably get going."

Emma blinked. "Going?" she repeated. "Going where?"

"I want you to come home with me."

Emma shook her head. "That's something we can talk about tomorrow," she said. "I mean, it's late. Your fath…" She stopped. Then she continued more firmly, "Your father is out of town and I can't get hold of him right now. Meanwhile, I mean, you show up on my doorstep out of the blue; you're here ten minutes and you want to turn around and go back. What's going on?"

"I can't stay here," Henry said patiently. "If I do, everyone will think you kidnapped me. I'm ten. Nobody's going to listen when I tell them the truth. Especially since you're my mom. But even if that weren't true, your parents need your help."

Emma gaped at him. "What did you just say?"

"I said," Henry replied with a long-suffering sigh, "that your parents need your help. Now, will you please come back with me?"

Emma swallowed hard. "I… I need to pack an overnight bag."

"You mean, you believe me," Henry said, clearly surprised.

Emma sighed. "Kid. There's not a lot I'm great at in life. But I do have this one skill. Let's call it a superpower. I can always tell if someone's lying. Right now, you're not. Or at least, you don't think you are. Which isn't the same thing. But the other point is, your parents have to be worried sick about you. In fact, I should probably call them."

"It's just Regina," Henry said quickly. "I don't have a dad. Except for my real one, I mean. But you can't call her."

"Why not?" Emma asked, trying to remember if Ross had ever said anything about who was going to adopt her son. I just sort of assumed it'd be a couple in the suburbs with a colonial home and a picket fence, and maybe dog or a cat, but it's not the 1950s. Single women can and do adopt kids, and that was happening already in 2001, when I had him—

The look Henry was giving her sliced through Emma's thoughts and made her feel as though she was the new kid in class again, and she'd just put up her hand to ask the teacher a question that immediately set the rest of the class to giggling and whispering about how she could not know the material they'd been learning for months, but which she'd somehow never covered at her old school. "Because if she knows I'm with you, then she'll call the cops and tell them you kidnapped me.

He wasn't lying about that either.

"Ten minutes," Emma sighed. "And I hope you're good with directions."

Henry's face lit up like dowtown's Faneuil Hall Marketplace after dark.

"So," Emma said, as she opened the passenger-side door, "where is home anyway?"

"Storybrooke, Maine," Henry said, as he clambered in.

Emma raised an eyebrow. "Storybrooke? Seriously?" Her son nodded with a bright smile. Emma rolled her eyes, but she shut the door, went around in front and opened the driver-side door. "Okay, kid," she sighed. "I guess I'm taking you to… Storybrooke." She turned her key in the ignition, started the bug, and drove out of her apartment garage and into the Boston evening again.

"Can we stop at a Cinnabon?" Henry asked, as Emma looked for the Interstate sign.

Emma kept her eyes on the road. "We're not stopping for snacks," she said. "This is not a road trip." My son likes cinnamon, she thought. Just in a sweet bun, or does he enjoy it in cocoa, too?

"C'mon," Henry wheedled. "We don't have those in Storybrooke. I was hoping I'd get a chance to try one at least once."

She could feel herself weakening. "Maybe next time," she said. "I mean… if we can work things out so you can come back to Boston." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her son's gaze drop down to the book in his lap.

"I don't think that's gonna happen," Henry sighed.

Emma winced. "Hey. Going back tonight was your idea. I'm not saying you're wrong," she added quickly. "Your mother must be worried sick."

Henry shrugged. "I guess."

"Anyway, if I'm taking you home, then I should—" —Spend a little more time getting to know this kid, because when Neal asks me about him, I want to have answers. Hell, even if Neal wasn't in the picture, I'd want to have answers. "The nearest Cinnabon is in Marlborough," she said. "That's in the opposite direction from where we're headed. But we can stop at Bova's in Little Italy on our way out of town. They've got cinnamon sticks. Pecan squares, too," she added. "And other stuff. We could… grab some for the road. And some for your mother," she added. "Maybe it'll help."

"Maybe," Henry said dubiously. Then he seemed to remember his manners and gave her a quick smile. "Thanks."

"These," Henry said, pointing at the counter.

Emma blinked. "You sure? They've got amazing lobster tails here, and you won't believe the cannoli."

"My mom likes apples," Henry said decisively. "Like, a lot."

She tried not to wince. Of course this other woman was his mother. His adoptive mother. Who would have been assured that his biological mother was out of the picture when she'd signed the papers and was probably not going to be thrilled to have said biological mother turn up on her doorstep, especially once she learned that Emma wanted to be back in her son's life again.

I agreed to a closed adoption when I was scared and seventeen. The contract probably wouldn't stand up in court. Probably. But can I afford to hire a lawyer to fight it? What if…

She caught herself. First things first. She wanted to get to know her son. Maybe his adoptive mother would be okay with that. Maine was four hours away from Boston. She couldn't drive there every week, but every couple of months, maybe… A week or two in the summer? She and Henry could write, email… maybe phone each other. And over time, if she was convinced that she could give him a better life than the one he had, then maybe it would be time to talk to a lawyer. First, though, she needed to talk to his adoptive mother. And if Henry was right about her tastes…

She smiled at the clerk. "Two apple squares, please. Boxed separately."

Henry watched as the box joined his cinnamon pinwheel and Emma's lobster tail on the counter. "That going to be enough for you, kid?" Emma asked.

Henry nodded.

Henry didn't talk much after they left Bova's, though Emma didn't realize it until sometime after she'd got onto I-95 northbound and the traffic had thinned out a bit. Until then, she was just grateful that Henry hadn't been peppering her with questions, while she was looking for the on-ramp to the Interstate.

Now that they were on their way and she didn't have to worry about directions until they hit the state border, however, the silence was starting to bother her a little. She glanced at the passenger seat, wondering whether her son had dozed off. He had a large hardcover book in his lap, and was avidly poring over a page.

"You're lucky reading doesn't make you carsick," she remarked. Then she wondered if mentioning the condition had just somehow cursed it into existence.

Henry didn't look up. "I thought about that," he said nonchalantly. "But I read on the bus down to Boston and it didn't bother me, so I figured it would be okay."

"Good book?" Emma asked.

"You have no idea," Henry said with deep feeling.

Emma fought not to laugh. "What is it anyway?"

And now Henry did look up. And, quite seriously, he replied, "I'm not sure you're ready."

Emma took her eyes off the road for one second to glance at the open page in Henry's lap. Her eyebrows climbed upward at the image of a dark-haired girl, her arms linked with seven short, bearded men. "Not ready for some fairy tales?" she asked.

Henry shook his head. "They're not fairy tales," he said, still serious. "Every story in this book actually happened."

Emma snorted. "Of course they did."

"Use your superpower," Henry pressed. "See if I'm lying."

Her superpower wasn't something she could switch off and on. It was always working in the background, whether she meant for it to be there or not. And right now… She shook her head. "Just because you believe something doesn't make it true," she told him.

"That's exactly what makes it true," her son countered. "You should know more than anyone."

Wait, what? "Uh… why's that?" Emma asked. She got that he was disappointed that she wasn't buying his story, though why he thought it was a convincing one was beyond her, but the last time she looked, she didn't have 'gullible' tattooed across her forehead. If he tells me he thought his real mother would always believe him or something, I'm going to hate to have to disappoint him, but…

"Because you're in this book," Henry replied.

Emma blinked. He couldn't be serious. But if he was, then, "Oh, kid," she sighed. "You've got issues."

Henry smiled. "Yup," he agreed cheerfully. "And you're going to fix them."

Right. Sure she was. Clearly, ten wasn't too old to believe in fairy tales, after all, even if she'd certainly given up on them, by the time she'd been his age.

Henry went back to his book.

Emma kept her eyes on the road.