Chapter Text
Emma awoke with a grunt, something poking her in the back. That made utterly no sense; their bed was possibly the softest thing ever created by man or magic. None of the kids were currently visiting (although one or two sometimes randomly poofed over whenever they needed their Gran or Nana) so it wasn’t a small foot.
“Hush it, Swan,” a voice Emma’s half-asleep mind didn’t recognize spoke, a pillow landing on her face.
Jolting up, she gripped the pillow and took in her surroundings.
She was in a jail cell. A familiar jail cell that she would never forget no matter how old she got because it was tied into so many other things.
What fucked up magic thing had happened this time?
“Oh god, you aren’t going into labor, are you? That shits gross.” Her other cellmate spoke this time, drawing Emma’s attention to the fact that she was indeed pregnant.
“Did you wet the bed again Swan?” The voice of her third cellmate mocked. “Glad we gave you the bottom bunk.”
Emma glowered at all of them. Her fingers itched, but the familiar tingle of her magic was absent. Pity, since she would have dearly loved to turn all three of the other women into something small and furry. At least then they would have been pleasant to be around.
She didn’t remember the names of these women, but then it had been almost seventy years for her. Far too much shit had happened during those years for that kind of information to stick around. She did remember that she had mostly disliked them, especially the mocker.
“No, to all of that,” she responded, maneuvering herself off the cot. She’d forgotten just how awkward and gangly she had been at eighteen. Was she even eighteen yet?
Looking around the small cell, Emma spotted the calendar. It was marked as September 27, three days before Henry’s birth. So no, she was not yet eighteen.
She tried to think about why someone would send her back here or trap her in this particular set of memories. Had something happened? She didn’t remember anything happening, nothing unusual at any rate. They weren’t currently fighting anyone and even if they had been it was the younger generation's turn to do the actual fighting. Come to think on, what had they been doing?
Regina had gotten them up that morning, both of them retired for the most part but were still active with their family and friends. Regina had had a few students that day, the ones more inclined to fire and potions. Zelena had come over to pester them (mostly because her oldest granddaughter had perfected the changing spell and refused to turn her younger brother back from a puppy) about Emma teaching the grandkids bad habits. The sisters had snarked back and forth for a few hours while Emma went to convince Serena to turn Gavin back (she ended up doing it herself because Serena hadn’t perfected the reversal as she had the actual casting).
Henry had called, eager to tell them that his books were being picked for the opportunity to become a TV mini-series. They had spoken about Henry and his family coming up for Christmas from New York, possibly snagging up a wayward family member or two along the way. It was hard to believe that their oldest was almost seventy with kids and grandkids of his own, but he was.
They had had a family dinner with the local family members (their youngest daughter and her family, their middle son and his current partner, their oldest daughter and her current trio of fosterlings, Zelena and her little troublemakers of course). It had been a full house, although nowhere near what it would be if their entire extended family showed up for the holidays.
For them, it had been a regular day. At the end of it, they had climbed into bed and cuddled and talked of little things. Regina had reminded her to get the picking baskets out of storage for the first round of apples from the orchard. Emma had teasingly asked if she wanted another tree come spring, half serious as she thought about where to even plant it. Sleep had come, Regina drifting off first with Emma soon after.
Absolutely none of that equated to Emma being back in time, once again almost eighteen and pregnant with Henry in jail three-quarters of the country away from home. Maybe this was a dream?
Pinching herself proved otherwise, but she had to at least try. Lost and confused, Emma went about her day in a fog. She knew she wasn’t always the brightest bulb in the box, but she had lived far too long and gone through several lifetimes' worth of chaos to leap without thinking (unless the situation called for it).
Two days into whatever this was Emma decided it was permanent and she was probably the only one affected. She couldn’t imagine Regina staying in Storybrooke if she had also come back. Anyone else would have been trapped within the original curse at this point so even if they remembered they would not have been able to leave. No one had until she, Regina, Zelena, Mal, and Lily had worked out how to fully settle Storybrooke into this world. That was at least two decades away, along with favors not yet owed and players not yet on the board.
That decided, Emma threw herself into planning mode. She wasn’t going to go into this half-cocked or meekly. If she could change things, then she wanted to change them for the better. She could right some of her mistakes; help others avoid some of theirs.
Frankly, if she could keep Henry away from Neverland and Peter Pan she would do everything in her power to do so.
This time, she really did hold him. It wasn’t a false memory given to her by her wife, but an actual one. Emma still gave him up, knowing he would be perfectly safe and wonderfully taken care of by his other mother until Emma could get to Storybrooke (hopefully long before her twenty-eighth birthday). While she would have loved to have kept him, Emma knew she couldn’t.
It killed her a little, having to do it twice. She could not cheat Regina of those ten years though, not when she knew how much Henry meant to her wife. It helped that her circumstances hadn’t changed with this weird time warp, of that she wouldn’t lie.
All Emma Swan had to her name was a beaten-up old car, some clothes, and her baby blanket. Even if she had refused to give him up, the state may very well have taken him. One thing, at least: he was not traveling as ‘Baby Boy Swan’ but as Henry Swan. Emma knew Regina would keep the name, although it would be Henry Daniel Mills for the longest time. Their son had legally changed his surname to Swan-Mills when he turned eighteen to match his mothers' and the rest of his siblings.
Her heart still ached despite all of that knowledge.