Chapter Text
"Ma…. Ma.... Mom I can't." Emma stammered her mouth hanging agape as she looked at the condescending expression on her mother's face before her.
"Yes you can Emma" Her mother repeated with a stubborn smile on her face, she was enjoying this after all.
Emma could feel her throat tightening as a strange taste filled the back of her throat as if she was going to be physically sick at the very idea. "But I can't leave her alone." She balked.
Mary Margaret raised an eyebrow, "She is six months old Emma and she won't be alone." She said gesturing to the sleeping infant in the crib, "And I do think your father and I have the faculties to take care of her."
"But what if we miss something... what if she sits up on her own or rolls over..." She trailed of, the expression on her mother's face telling her that she was being somewhat paranoid but she didn't want to miss a single milestone. Surely her mother had to have some sympathies for those concerns, but she just smiled as she placed the overnight back in her daughter’s hands.
"Just go."
"One of us could stay behind?" Emma whined.
Mary Margaret stifled a laugh. "It's not a honeymoon if only one person goes."
Emma felt the need to argue with her some more but she also knew that there was no point. She looked down at the little girl asleep in the crib, these little moments when Caroline was quite seemed all too seldom in her own life. She was fond of babbling and gurgling thorough all these little instants in life. Her hand reached down and brushed gently across the silky brown hair which covered her head in wispy strands. It had been six months of great joys and small panics. No two days had ever been the same and she assumed that they never would be. In time she had gone back to work, she had let other people watch her daughter, she had given up small amounts of control, but the idea of being more than five miles away from her seemed to be too much.
But she had to, at some point and time she would have to be away from her daughter. She felt guilty to about being away from Henry, but that was a different kind of guilt. He understood why they were going away for five days, he was able to speak to them on the phone. And at the root of it all, she had already missed Henry’s first full night of sleep and gurgles. But with Caroline, she was determined not to miss a single thing.
"Emma, it's okay." She felt the hand on her shoulder as the stinging tears began to fill her eyes. "It doesn't make you any worse of a parent to be away for a few days." She knew that, she knew that in fact a few days of decent sleep would do her good, but it still twisted at her insides.
She knew that if she didn't go now, she wasn't going to go at all. With a deep breath she left the nursery and climbed what seemed like the longest flight of stairs in her entire life. Henry gave her a strong hug as he stood by the door with a smile on his face. She assumed part of him was possibly happy to be rid of them for a while, not that she doubted he wouldn’t be helping out with his little sister while they were gone.
Outside the late summer breeze was warm against her skin as she walked away from her own house in the early morning light. Killian was leaning up against the hood of the yellow Volkswagen bug, two travel mugs of coffee in her hands as she approached. He looked just as apprehensive as she did as he kissed her gently on the lips as he handed her one of the coffee mugs. He took her bag from her hands and placed it in the back of the car. They both got in and stood looking silently at the back wall of the carport with the engine off.
Emma realized that he was heading off to her honeymoon in the car which she had stolen all those years ago with Neal. She had dissociated the car from him a very long time ago. "We should go Killian." She sighed as she looked straight ahead at the barren wall rather than back to the house.
He nodded slightly, and put the keys in the ignition but did little else. He turned and looked at her, half a smile on his face. "When is the last time that we were actually alone, just the two of us?" She honestly had no clue. It could have been weeks, it could have been days, that hadn't mattered for a very long time. She shrugged wordlessly in reply. "I trust your parents it's just...."
"I feel as if I am having a limb torn away from me." Emma replied in a whisper.
He laughed, the feeling was mutual. "We have to leave her to be at some point." He began "When she's thirty." He joked with a cock of his head.
"Yeah I mean, parents who cling to their children mess them us too... This is slippery slope." she said with a shake of her head.
He smiled. "Five days, four nights... we can do this." He said looking at her as he tried to mentally prep himself for this. "What if Henry gets into trouble?" He blurted out.
Emma rolled her eyes. "Oh my god we have to start the car." She said loudly as she threw her hands up in the air. They were both acting so pathetically cowardly, and yet they had such a good reason to do so.
Finally after another fit of exhaustive laughter, he turned the car keys ignition and they pulled out of their driveway and off to begin their Honeymoon.
**
She had fallen asleep as they passed the city limits, when she awoke the world around her was a filled with dappled sunlight coming in through the canopy of the tall moss covered pine trees. The winding highway felt lost within the greater context of the world beyond, seldom cars passed by in the other direction as they ventured deeper into the forest. The occasional deciduous tree being to turn colorful as the weather grew colder.
They were heading deep into the forest of Vermont, crossing the northern most parts of the country until they came to upstate New York. It was a long and winding scenic route to their destination but it seemed to fit them. Their lives had been long and winding, never fully going in the right direction but always ending up where they meant to be in the end. The past six months had been filled with happy little moments. With tears and frustrations, sleepless nights and unspoken conversations. It hadn't been easy, it was never going to be. The way Emma saw it the moment life got easy was the moment when she wanted to find a new challenge.
Raising two children had proven to be a task. Henry was easy most of the time, but then there would still be days when he got wordlessly upset, when the lack of attention got to him, or when he got that look in his eyes which told her that he as longing for the way it had been in the old days. Of course that wasn't going to happen; Henry had suddenly become the oldest child in both the homes he had with Regina and Emma. So someone would take him out alone, he would drive into Boston with Emma and she would show him this or that place, or Killian would take him out for the day out into the bay patiently teaching him how to sail.
On most days Henry was a help, he would hold his sister, calm her down and entertain her, but then there were he days which he spent away from the newlywed couple. They wordlessly learned how to communicate in glances, a certain nod meant that Caroline was sleeping, a head tilt meant to pass her between them, a scrunched of the nose meant that a diaper needed to be changed. Together they worked side by side, in an unspoken partnership which both participants found comforting. And yet it left them little time for themselves, let alone them as a couple.
Suddenly the car felt strange and silent, as if they would have little to talk about over the next five days, but Emma shook her head. That was the panic of the person she used to be talking. The woman who anyway ago would have laughed at the very life she as currently living. Sometimes that darkness of who she had once been still fluttered across her mind. She looked at the words they were spending through, similar and yet different in small subtle ways to the ones she had called her home.
"Why don't you let me drive for a bit?" She said her voice deep from disuse.
He pulled over on the shoulder and they changed places silently, continuing on to their destination.
**
"Killian wake up, were nearly at the border." She whispered tapping him gently as she slowed down the car. The long line of car stretched before them as they came to a halt. After how many unknown hours they had nearly arrived at their destination. He was running his hands across his face, trying to stay awake as she was reaching across grabbing things out of her purse. "You alright?" she muttered as she held the passports in her hands.
Killian gave her a small nod. "Yeah you?"
Emma's head bobbed up and down. "Yeah I'm alright." She pulled out her phone, which she had heard give off the occasional chime while she was driving. She looked at the series of texts which her mother's had sent her. All very reassuring and yet somewhat lofty updates about what was going on at home. She felt less guilty now that she was farther away. The knowledge that her children were an eight hour drive away was somewhat paralyzing, but also freeing as they inched forward in the border crossing line.
"Did she send any photos?" Killian asked as he learned over her shoulder and looked the screen of the phone with her.
"No." Emma replied, somewhat disappointed that her mother had not sent any photos, and yet she realized it wasn't as if her daughter was going to grow a foot in the hours which they had been gone. Aside from her creation and birth, Caroline had developed normally. She had magic, there was clearly no doubt about that. Lights seemed to flicker when she cried and favorite toys always made their way into her crib, but Caroline was normal and Emma was incredibly grateful for that.
The line at the border crossing moved slowly, untill finally it was there turn. Emma rolled down the window of the car with a hard cranking of the handle, and handed the older gentlemen their passports.
"Good afternoon, what is your purpose for entering Canada?"
Emma gave him a smile. "We're visiting for our Honeymoon." She replied in a much higher voice than normal. She felt awkward as she sat in the car, aware of all the cameras pointed at it, at the man in the booth looking over their passports, giving them small and narrowed glances. He was only doing his job and yet it all seemed a bit much.
"When we're you married." He said looking at the passports which both had the same last name on them.
"March 12th."
He looked at them with a raised brow. "It's a bit late to be having the honeymoon now?"
Emma gave him a playful laugh. "We've been a little busy." she replied, not wanting to have to mention the real reason why they had waited six months to have a honeymoon. She honestly didn't mind the order in which her life with Killian had worked out. Her family life was never going to be the perfect model of expected values, she had accepted at a very long time ago. She was just glad that she did now have a family that loved and supported her.
"And how long will you be staying?"
"Five days."
"And what are you bringing with you?"
"Just clothing, personal items."
"Anything to declare."
She shook her head. "No."
"And where are you both from?"
"Storybrooke, Maine."
He was typing on his computer as he talked to them. "And what do you do in Storybrooke, Maine."
"I'm the sheriff." Emma said blushing slightly as she said it.
He looked over and looked at Kilian who had been silently starting ahead the entire time. "And you sir."
He cleared his throat, "Um, I'm the harbor master." He replied in a strangely high voice.
He was sliding their passports through something which looked like a credit card scanner watching the screen ahead of him, a blank look on his face. Then he folded both of the passports up and handed them to Emma as the gate ahead began to rise. “Welcome to Canada, enjoy your stay."
Emma pulled forward as they looked at the bridge which spanned out across the long raging river below. She was trying her best to focus on the road ahead and the fact that they were so terrifying high above the water below. But she couldn’t help and turn her head to the left to look at the cascading water over the Horseshoe Falls. Niagara Falls, it seemed like such a strangely antiquated place of the past to have a honeymoon, and yet it seemed to fit them as a couple. The ever in flu mix of the past and the present, of the mixing of eras and cultures and times.
It was a waterfall, yet there was something breathtaking about the vastness of the nature which was before them. She had never been the type of person who had loved nature, never a person who enjoyed camping or willingly went for hikes. Yet seeing this before her now as they crossed the bridge, seeing the sheer size and scale of what nature could create if left to its own devices made her wonder what else there was in the world which she had not yet seen.
**
"So what do people do on these things?" Killian said as they both collapsed onto the hotel bed. The window was opened slightly the sounds of the pouring water from the falls ever constant.
"Sleep, eat, have rampant amounts of sex." Emma replied into the pillow.
"I'm good with the first two." He replied.
She laughed but she understood where he was coming from. She felt his body fall against hers and together they fell asleep for a short nap.
There was something gently pleasant about waking up to the sounds of silence rather than the cacophony she had become accustomed to. But while the feeling was pleasant there was also something which she missed, for years her life had been fast paced in a thousand different ways and now that it was just the two of them she felt the gaping hole where the call of adventure should be. She looked over at her sleeping husband, realizing how very long ago the last time they had ever had this sort of alone time had been.
“Emma.” She looked at his eyes fluttering open a smile forming across his face as he looked at her completely enamored. “What is it?”
There were still moments when it would all hit her, the sudden realization that this was the person who she had agreed to spend the rest of her life with. Sometimes it was accompanied with the thought that she was absolutely insane for doing such a task, but at least she never had the desire to bolt. “Don’t you ever just wonder what we are doing?”
His face tinged. “As in this very moment or in the general scheme of things?” He joked as he reached out and took her hand, squeezing it reassuring. “Emma I’ve lived long enough to know that the lack of bad guys trying to kill you is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean yes, this certainly is a little bit of a let down from evil witches trying to kill us all but, there are still adventures to be had.”
She looked at him with a bit of skepticism. Maybe it was time that they both came to the realization that they were addicted to the heroics which their lives had been for the past few years. But Emma couldn’t manage to see the opportunity for adventure which Killian could, all she could see was a life of being sheriff in a small town. “I don’t…” She trailed off not wanting to hurt his feelings
He rolled his eyes at her. “If it makes you feel any better we can just get the kids on a ship and begin sailing off to the next horizon.” He laughed. “Emma the best part of any voyage is the people who you are with. You, me, Henry, Caroline any other children we have in the distant future; there are still a hundred little adventures ahead of us. Henry going off to college, Caroline growing up, whenever the next group of witches comes into two, traveling this world and all the other realms, there is a whole lot of life ahead of us.”
She looked at his optimistic face, if he believed so ardently in a vivid future she knew that she could to. This was uncharted territory for both of them, and while she was crippled by the idea of making mistakes she also knew that follies were inevitable. “All right then.” She said as she leaned over and kissed him. “Let the next adventure begin.”