Prompt: Golden State's "All Roads Lead Home"
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Character(s): Emma Swan, Snow White, Prince Charming
Set after Season 2, Episode 22: "And Straight On 'Til Morning"
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Your blood, your fire
Your kiss goodnight,
Your words and touch,
They might be mine.
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She'd called them Mom and Dad.
In the bleakest of moments, Emma Swan had called her parents Mom and Dad. In that moment, she hadn't wanted David and Mary Margaret. She hadn't even wanted Prince Charming and Snow White. In that moment, like a scared little girl, she had wanted – aw, hell, if she was being honest with herself, needed – Mom and Dad.
She'd opened a door that could never be closed. She'd let them behind her wall completely, let them hold her and try to comfort her as best they could. And if she was going to die, standing there with her parents' arms wrapped around her was how she wanted to go.
But, of course, they hadn't died. They hadn't died because she and Regina had accomplished the impossible. Emma had tapped into something within her that she didn't even understand and focused, like Gold had taught her, on saving her family.
And she had. With Regina's help, she'd saved her family. She'd saved everyone. For a second goddamned time.
But all the damn power she had wasn't enough to save Henry from the clutches of two people who … hell, Emma didn't even know what their deal was. Honestly, she didn't give a damn. All she wanted was her kid back.
So now here they were, Emma and her parents, their archenemy, a devilish imp, and a pirate captain with a hook for a hand, all headed to Neverland to rescue the one kid who connected them all.
A rescue mission, however, was still a long way off. Hook said it could take days to get to the island. Days! They didn't have days. Henry might not have days. She kept telling herself that it was good that they'd taken him. Good because if they'd wanted him dead, they wouldn't have taken him first. No, they wanted him for something, and whatever that something was, they wanted him alive.
That was good. Much better than the alternative, at any rate.
Not that, in the end, any of that mattered. She wanted her kid back, and she wanted her kid back safely. She just wanted to hold Henry in her arms, the same way her parents had held her back in the mines.
None of that could happen until they got him back, though, and it was hard to feel like she was doing something to help him when all she could do at the moment was sit on the deck of the Jolly Roger and stare out into the night.
She was so lost in thought that she didn't hear the two sets of soft footsteps approaching her. She gasped when a gentle hand slid onto her shoulder. Startled, she looked up to find both her parents crouching beside her. She reached up to pat her mother's hand on her shoulder before returning her attention to the Neverland night.
Without a single word, her parents took seats next to her against the rail, her mother on the left and her father on the right. For a long moment, they just sat there on the deck, Emma watching the sky and her parents watching Emma.
And then David tentatively wrapped his arm around her shoulders and whispered, “We'll find him, Emma. This family always finds each other.”
With that, the dam broke. Tears welled in Emma's eyes, and when she felt her father tighten his grip, her careful resolve crumbled. Just like in the mines, her walls were gone, and all she wanted was Mom and Dad.
Snow and Charming reacted in an instant, Snow gripping her hand and squeezing and Charming holding her tighter. “Let it out, sweetheart,” Snow whispered.
The pet name was ultimately too much, and Emma finally let go, crying tears she'd needed to cry for twenty-nine years. Tears for Henry and Neal. Tears of longing and despair and injustice. Tears for the love lost and time stolen. Snow White was born to be a mother. Prince Charming was born to be a father. These people would have been fantastic parents, and they should have been hers.
Their blood ran through her veins. She had their spirit and their fight. As Gold had once said, she had her mother's chin and her father's tact. At the time, she'd been a little embarrassed, but now … now she was damn proud of it.
Stirring somewhere inside her was the Emma Swan who'd first come to Storybrooke, the Emma who wouldn't have been caught dead crying in anyone's arms, let alone David Nolan's and Mary Margaret Blanchard's. But after everything she'd been through, Emma needed her parents She needed their comfort, needed their help to not give up, to not surrender. She needed their optimism and she needed to hear them say that everything would work out all right in the end.
And that was exactly what Snow was whispering now, that they would find Henry. That everything would be okay.
Eventually the tears began to dry up but it wasn't until Emma shifted in her parents' arms that they let her go. No one said a word, but Snow gave her a little smile, drying Emma's wet cheeks with her thumb the way she had done in the nursery. David pressed another kiss to the side of her head, and once again, Emma closed her eyes against it for a brief moment, allowing her father's comfort to sink in.
“We will find him, Emma,” he said, trying not to sound surprised when Emma snuggled closer and rested her head on his shoulder. He once again wrapped his arm around her and gently ran his hand up and down her upper arm. “We'll find him, and then we'll take him home.”
A now thoroughly exhausted Emma could only nod. The night was still now except for the lapping of the waves against the hull of the Roger. After a few minutes, David shifted position, taking Emma with him so they were leaning more comfortably against the rail of the ship. Emma reached for her mother's hand, gripped it tightly in her own, and allowed her eyes to close as both her parents soothed her.
In that moment, she realized that after a very long, trying, and lonely road, she, too, had finally come home.
