A/N: Some lines lifted from S1E1: Pilot

Chapter 17

Emma had a headache. There was a buzzing in her ears and wherever she was, it wasn't her own bed. It was too comfortable to be the car, plus she was stretched out full length. Her head was hurting. Without opening her eyes, she tried to think back. She'd been in the car. With her son. Her son! Or had that been a dream?

If it were a dream, his name wouldn't have been Henry. She'd wondered what it might have been. Something nice and normal, like Jason or Ryan, or maybe weird enough to make you want to side-eye the parents, like Moon Unit or Pilot Inspektor? Henry? That one hadn't been on her radar at all.

Last night, she'd been tired and miserable and alone on her birthday and… And she'd probably crashed on the couch and dreamed everything that came afterwards.

This wasn't her couch.

Somebody was whistling close by, an annoying earworm of a tune that was probably going to stay in her head for hours now. Groaning, she opened her eyes and saw bars. A jail cell? Just what had happened last night? She turned her head in the direction of the whistling, and a grumpy voice snarled, "What are you looking at, sister?"

And then another voice, coming from outside the holding cells snapped, "Hey, Leroy! Manners! We have a guest."

This speaker was balding and quite a bit older, and though his voice was irritated, his eyes were kind. A moment later, the irritation vanished when he smiled at her. "So, you are, uh, Henry's mother? How lovely for him to have you back in his life."

It hadn't been a dream. Okay. So, why was she in a cell and what the hell was going on? "I…uh… was dropping him off," she told the older man.

The guy in the next cell snorted. "Don't blame ya," he said. "They're all brats. Who needs 'em?"

Before Emma could respond, though, the older man stepped in to say that he for one would have wanted a child, but it hadn't been in the cards. The guy, Leroy was it, was unimpressed.

And then the sheriff with the Irish accent—she hadn't dreamed that either—came back into the office to unlock Leroy's cell. And that was when Emma found out that she was locked up for driving while intoxicated.

"I wasn't drunk," she insisted. "There was a wolf standing in the middle of the road."

The sheriff chuckled. "A wolf. Right."

Before she could respond, running feet sounded outside and the woman she'd met last night practically flew into the office. "Graham!" she cried. "Henry's run away again!"

It was eight AM Eastern Daylight Time and Emma still wasn't taking his calls. Neal was beside himself. Worse. He wasn't beside Emma. He was racking his brains trying to remember everything he could about his encounter with August eleven years earlier. The guy had said he was Emma's 'guardian angel'. That there was a town in Maine that was under a curse, which Emma was supposed to break once she turned twenty-eight. And he'd made it clear that he thought Neal was steering her away from that destiny.

Obviously, Neal thought, he hadn't been steering hard enough.

Then again… So their kid had been adopted by someone in Maine. Maine was a big state, even if it was, from what Neal recalled, pretty underpopulated. Maybe that was why the curse had set a town down there, as opposed to New York or California. I guess they're lucky it didn't pick Antarctica, he thought dryly. But who said that their kid had been adopted by someone from that town?

C'mon, Neal. Storybrooke. Storybrooke. You're Rumpelstiltskin's son; you have a child with the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming… Those are stories! Your kid was probably adopted by Baba Yaga or Mother Hulda or something!

Why the hell wasn't Emma picking up? And what the hell was he doing three thousand miles away in Alaska? Damn, he had to get back there. If his father was in that place, then Emma could be in real trouble. Even if this land didn't have any magic in it, his father could still be formidable. And Emma wouldn't realize the danger until it was too late!

His phone rang and he grabbed for it. The number on the call display was local. Not Emma. Damn it. "Hello?" He listened for a moment and tried to pull his mind back to the reason he'd flown up here in the first place. "I'll meet you downstairs in twenty," he said finally. He hadn't slept at all last night, but he could grab a coffee from the breakfast buffet on the way down. Maybe a Danish for the road, too.

He hoped his colleague's hunch was right about their fugitive. The sooner he was in custody, Neal thought, the sooner he could fly home.

He'd worry about how to find this Storybrooke place when he was at least back on the right side of the country.

There were two upsides to waking up in a jail cell. First, it gave you an airtight alibi if a distraught mother wanted to accuse you of kidnapping and second, your day was almost bound to get better from there. As soon as Emma understood the situation, she'd begun asking the usual questions. She was in her element and tracking down missing people was a large part of what she did.

According to Regina, Henry didn't have any friends with whom he might have discussed his plans. Emma wasn't buying that. In her experience, kids had friends, even if their parents might not be aware of them.

Once she'd convinced the sheriff and Regina that given half a chance, she might be the best person to track down Henry's whereabouts, she'd been released from the cell and granted access to her son's computer. The kid was savvier than she'd thought: he'd known enough to wipe his inbox, but not enough to make the contents irretrievable. No emails to friends turned up, but there was a receipt for a website called whosyourmomma-dot-com. No extra credit for guessing what that site was all about. She looked up with a frown. "He has a credit card?"

"He's ten," Regina snapped.

"Well he used one," Emma said, pulling up another transaction record. "Who's… Mary Margaret Blanchard?"

The expression on Regina's face was angry, but Emma realized, the mayor didn't appear to be very surprised. Now, why might that be? "Henry's teacher…"

Emma wasn't sure why she took an instant liking to Mary Margaret Blanchard. Oh, the woman was sweet enough, a bit nervous in Mayor Mills's presence, but Emma could understand why. Regina Mills was a woman who exuded power and authority from every pore and right now, her son was missing and she was looking for someone to blame. Sure, she'd been civil enough, but Emma could tell that the mayor detested the elementary school teacher. There was a story there, she was certain, but unless it was somehow relevant to Henry's whereabouts, Emma knew it wasn't any of her business. She also suspected that, if Storybrooke was like any other small town she'd passed through, if she hung around long enough, she'd run into some gossipy type who'd be happy to tell her more than she wanted to know anyway.

Meanwhile, Ms. Blanchard seemed to have a better handle on Henry than his own mother—either one of them!

"He's like any adopted child. He wrestles with that most basic question they all inevitably face – why would anyone give me away?" The words had stung, even though Ms Blanchard had apologized at once. And they hadn't only stung because Emma had been the one to give up Henry. They'd stung because it wasn't only adopted children who felt that way. Foster kids who'd never known their birth parents, who'd been shuffled from placement to placement—sometimes for good reasons, but sometimes for stupid, minor crap that any kid might get up to—felt like that too.

At least, Emma thought, as she got back into her car, Ms Blanchard had given her a lead. Henry had a castle. And while Ms Blanchard hadn't quite drawn her a town map, she'd given Emma enough of an idea where to find it.

Emma wished Neal were here. By the time she'd got her phone back from the sheriff, the battery had been at four per cent. She'd left it to charge at the sheriff station—Neal had warned her that charging it in the car (there was no USB port in a '72 Beetle, but she had a portable one that hooked up to the cigarette lighter) could stall the phone, damage its battery and hurt the car's battery too! Sheriff Graham had been gracious enough about it, though Emma thought he might have taken some initiative and plugged it in before she'd had to ask him. Or maybe she was being unfair and he hadn't wanted to be blamed on the off chance that something went wrong with her phone if he tried charging it before she'd requested it.

At any rate, once she found Henry, she was going to go back to the sheriff station; the phone was probably back to full power by now. And then she was going to check if Neal had got back to her. She knew that the reception was spotty where he was, but he'd been able to text her at least once a day until now and she wanted to hear from him. She wanted to tell him about Henry and this town and Regina Mills and the book and…

First things first. She had to find Henry's castle. And, she noted, as she glanced at the handwritten instructions on the passenger seat beside her, it looked like she was heading in the right direction.

Driving back to the mayor's house, an hour later, Emma sent a few concerned glances in her son's direction. Beside her, Henry sat silently, gripping his book like it was some sort of good luck charm. Thinking about it, Emma figured that was probably what it was to him. She wasn't sure where to go from here. She liked Henry. A lot. And she felt as though they'd really connected just now. At the same time, she couldn't deny that the kid had a few problems. Problems that had him in therapy. And she had to ask herself whether starting a custody battle right now was wise.

Sure, Henry wasn't happy right now, but he had a stepmother who clearly cared for him. He didn't seem to be abused or neglected. Regina might lead a busy life and not always have as much time as either of them would have liked, but that hardly made her 'evil', did it? She was giving her son the psychological help that he clearly needed and Emma found herself wondering about the wisdom of yanking him away from a doctor with whom he was already comfortable and hoping that they'd find one as good or better in Boston. Even if they could, a custody battle could turn out to be messy. No, the adoption hadn't been legal, but Henry had been in this environment for ten years. A judge, she knew, would take that into consideration when determining whether it was in her son's best interests to be uprooted from the only home he'd ever known. Regina looked like she had the money for a protracted court battle. Emma had to admit that she and Neal didn't. And even if they did, that couldn't be good for Henry.

"Hey," she said gently. "Hey, this isn't the last time you'll see me."

Henry glanced at her. "I know," he said, almost whispering.

"I mean it. It's too bad you showed up when your dad's up in Alaska, but I know that once he comes back, he's going to want to meet you too. So, we'll both probably drive up here in a month or two if not sooner."

"You say that," Henry said, "but if you go, you might not be able to come back here again. The curse was created to keep all the storybook characters here and everyone else away. I knew that if I could leave, then I could bring you back with me. But I don't know if you can get in without me."

"Kid," Emma sighed, "I get that it's a little confusing finding the way here. They really need to have a few more signs on the highway; I must've missed the one telling me where the turnoff was. But now that I know, I'm sure I can find it again."

Henry didn't look at all convinced. "One week," he wheedled. "Please?"

"Kid…" They were almost at the house. She tried to think of something else reassuring to say, but they were at the door before she could. It looked as though garbage pick-up was tomorrow; there was a bin at the bottom of the walk and, as Emma glanced up and down the street, she could see similar ones in front of the other houses. As Henry got out of the car, Regina came out to greet them. Henry rushed past her and into the house without a word.

Regina smiled at Emma, and if the smile wasn't warm, it was genuine. "Thanks."

"No problem."

"He seems to have taken quite a shine to you," the mayor remarked.

Emma smiled. "You know what's kind of crazy?" she asked. "Yesterday was my birthday and when I blew out the candle on this cupcake I bought myself, I actually made a wish. That I wouldn't have to be alone on my birthday. And then, Henry showed up."

Regina's smile seemed to freeze then and an edge came into her voice. "I hope there's no misunderstanding here."

"I'm sorry?"

"Don't mistake all this as an invitation back into his life."

Emma tried to protest, but Regina cut her off. Her words were sharp and they cut deep as she made it clear that Henry was her child and Emma had neither right to him nor any place in his life. When she was done, Emma had only one question. "Do you love him?"

Regina blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Henry. Do you love him?" She looked away miserably. And that was when she saw the plastic clamshell box sitting atop the knotted garbage bags in the trash bin. The two apple squares were still sealed inside untouched. A wave of fury washed over her. Regina didn't notice.

"Of course I love him!" she snapped. Then she spun on her heel and went back in the house leaving Emma behind with her anger. And her confusion. Her superpower was… doing something weird. She didn't always know if someone was telling her the whole truth, but as she'd told Henry, she could always tell when someone was lying. But Regina's assertion… It almost felt like there was a big flashing sign in Emma's brain vacillating between 'true' and 'false' and she didn't know what to make of it. Unless Regina was so angry in the moment that her fury was somehow overriding her love? Maybe, Emma allowed, that was possible. After all, Henry had run away twice in less than two days. It sounded like he wasn't the easiest kid to raise right now. Maybe Regina was at her wit's end and her emotions were all over the place. Maybe, but Emma's power had never behaved this way before.

She was shaking her head as she headed back to her car. A minute ago, she'd been ready to swing by the sheriff station, get her phone, and drive back to Boston, but between her superpower inexplicably going wonky, her anger at seeing the apple squares—the squares Henry had picked out for Regina—sitting at the top of the trash bin, and Henry pleading with her to stay, well, Neal wasn't likely to be back for another few days at least. With Ryan Kirkpatrick back in custody and no new assignments in her inbox, really there was no reason that she couldn't stay in Storybrooke for a little bit longer.

What was she thinking? She couldn't just drop everything and stick around. She had a… a life and a job and an apartment…

…And a son.

First things first, she told herself. Get her phone, see if she was actually free to go or if she had to wait around for some court date or give the sheriff her address or deal with some other paperwork. And then, she needed to decide whether to go back to Boston and take stock of the situation there, or…

Three hours later…

She'd gotten her phone back and checked her messages. There had been several from Neal, each more agitated than the last, all of them telling her not to push things. I want to see him, too, Neal had typed. But if we want to do this right, if we want to do it legally, then we need to back off until we can talk to a lawyer. You don't want this Regina Mills person to take something you said or did and twist it around until it looks like you said something else. Come back to Boston and wait for me. We'll discuss everything once I get back. Emma had to admit it sounded like sensible advice. Sure, she wanted to get to know her son, but Regina had made her opposition to that idea abundantly clear.

Also, for all that Henry had tracked her down and sought her out, he hadn't been in her apartment five minutes before he'd wanted Emma to drive him back to Maine. Clearly, he didn't want to leave the only home he knew.

So, Emma had to ask herself, why exactly should she stay in Storybrooke? Just because Henry had asked her to? Yeah, he was her kid, but that didn't mean she had to give in to whatever he asked and asking her to stay in town for a week was a little bit beyond asking to stop for pastries! The smart thing, the sensible thing, was to do what Neal was telling her and head back to Boston. She could start researching attorneys in the morning.

She'd had mixed feelings as she drove out of town.

Those feelings were still persisting as she made her way southward down I-95. She was thinking about Henry telling her that Regina was evil. Yeah, the kid was obsessed with that fairytale book, and what stepmother wasn't evil in those stories? Strict wasn't the same as evil.

She remembered the apple squares in the trash bin and wondered why they'd been sitting there in the open instead of tied up in a garbage bag. Had Regina wanted Emma to see what she thought of the peace offering? And she was still bothered by the 'mixed signals' her superpower had given her when she'd asked Regina whether she loved Henry.

It was probably nothing.

What if it wasn't though?

What if there was something seriously wrong here?

If she came back in a month to find out that the kid had been right and something… horrible had happened, Emma would never forgive herself. Yeah, it was probably nothing. Her son had a wild imagination and a slight problem—okay, a major problem—telling fantasy from reality, but…

…But what if there was more going on than that, after all?

There was a road sign up ahead. She was five miles from Kittery and the New Hampshire state line was coming up one mile beyond that. She was probably about an hour from Boston then, give or take. An hour, hour-and-a-half tops and she'd be home. She could stop off on the way for take-out, have a quick meal, a hot shower, unwind in front of the TV and… and…

She couldn't do this. Something about that town wasn't right and she had to get to the bottom of it. Her tires squealed on the asphalt as she made a sharp U-turn and she checked her rearview mirror anxiously, half-expecting a police car to peel after her, but the road behind was clear.

She didn't stop again until she was back in Storybrooke.

It was 8:11 by her watch when she pulled into the parking area at Granny's Bed and Breakfast. The wind whistled as she made her way across the walkway and up the steps into the motel. As she did, the sounds of a heated quarrel reached her.

"You're out all night and now you're going out again," said one voice. As Emma approached the desk, she saw that the speaker was a woman who looked to be in her sixties.

"I should have moved to Boston!" a dark-haired woman in her twenties shot back.

"I'm sorry that my heart attack interfered with your plans to sleep your way down the eastern seaboard," the older woman retorted tartly.

Emma cleared her throat. "Uh… Excuse me," she said, cutting through the argument. "I'd like a room."