OUAL Fic: The Many Loves of Emma
For OUAL.
Title: The Many Loves of Emma
Summary: Emma reflects on all the people she has loved.
Characters/Pairings: Emma, Henry, Regina, Snow, Charming, Regina/Emma (Emma/Hook, Emma/Neal)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1549
A/N: Unedited. Prettttty sure I change tenses, sorry!
Henry wasn’t the first person she loved. And he isn’t the only person she loves, now. But he was damn well the one that started it all. Her life changed slowly, the differences sneaky and subtle as they happened, but she knows now that if she had to pinpoint when it shifted, it was him: her little boy showing up on her doorstep, a stranger.
She fell in love with him slowly, exactly the opposite of how she thinks you’re supposed to love your child. But Emma’s broken and damaged and she doesn’t know if it’s normal to not feel love instantly, but she knows if it isn’t, it’s all on her.
Because Henry loves too much, cares too deeply, and it’s one of the things she’s so so grateful isn’t hereditary. He got her stubbornness, though, and that she’s happy about; after all, if he hadn’t been so damn driven (and, to be fair, a lot of that is Regina’s influence, too) she never would have stayed. Never would have realized she wasn’t too broken to love, wasn’t to broken to be loved.
*
They were the first. The couple that opened their homes and their hearts to a tiny orphan girl, took her in and kept her and loved her. Emma knows without a doubt that she loved the Swans, that she would always love them as the parents that raised her for the first three years of her life.
She knew it then as she knows it now, as her heart aches just remembering the two people she’d expected to want her forever, but didn’t want to keep her at all. Her memories are fragments, choppy and short and she’s almost positive the bulk are fabricated from social worker reports and files and twisted in her mind by bullies in the group home.
It hurts to think of them and how they will always be a reminder of how disposable she is. Mostly, it just hurts that she wasn’t good enough to love back.
*
Her dad is pretty awesome. And you know what else is pretty awesome? Her dad. Emma has a dad, a father that loves her and hugs her and cradles her head like she’s the most precious thing in the world. It’s awesome. He wants to do dad things, too, just like she’d always imagined; ball games and hot dog eating contests and silent disapproval when her jeans are just a little too tight to be appropriate.
It’s stupid and she rolls her eyes and shrugs him off-because she’s nearly 30, jesus-but to be honest, she kind of loves it. Loves him. The little moments like that make her stomach drop and her heart beat a bit faster because the pure unadulterated care she gets from her dad is just off-the-charts cool.
Except, real life never fails to come crashing back, fast, reminding her that they can have moments but they can never have her childhood. And he may be her dad but he’s two decades too late and a million games of catch can’t make up for the sense of abandonment and loss that she will never shake.
*
She could have loved him. If he’d stayed, if he’d been the guardian Blue had told him to be, Emma knows she could have loved August. He was douchey in that annoying older brother kind of way that made Emma roll her eyes but also kinda made her wanna steal his bike for a joy ride just to piss him off. She’s pretty sure he would have snuck her beer-maybe she could’ve avoided a couple of run-ins with the cops if he’d been there to do it-and helped her with her history homework and maybe even punched a foster dad or two that got a little too handsy.
Maybe. Only she’ll never know because he abandoned her, too. She can’t even blame him, really; in this world it’s every man for himself and she grits her teeth when she thinks about the fact that he taught her that lesson.
She could have loved him, she thinks. If he’d stayed to teach her anything else.
*
The way she felt when she was with Neal was the way she thinks she would have felt if the Swans had kept her-safe, warm, loved. Bad as Neal was on paper, he was everything she wanted, thought she needed. He was all of her hopes and dreams, tangible; freedom and independence and fluid.
When she was with Neal she knew it was love. It was; she loved him, she’s sure of it. But she knows, now, that it was something else, too. Neal represented all the things she wanted so badly, and she loved that, too.
It’s twisted now, marred by the knowledge of his betrayal and abandonment, but it doesn’t hurt the way it used to; the wound is closed because despite it all Neal gave her Henry, and Henry gave her this life, gave her a home, and that’s something she wouldn’t dream of regretting.
*
It’s unexpected, how she loves Snow. She isn’t positive-she had so little experience with friends before Storybrooke-but she thinks she loved Mary Margaret as a best friend, truly. At the very least she cared about her, loved being with her best friend, and when she makes the transition from friend to mother, it’s jarring.
Emma’d had more trouble navigating that change than any other, to be honest. She thinks that besides Henry, Mary Margaret was the only other person Emma loved, and meeting Snow was losing her best friend and gaining an absentee mother all at the same time and Emma isn’t even sure she’s fully adjusted to it now, years later.
She’d barely known David before the curse broke and so his fatherly ways feel crisp and clean and late, but easy. Snow is all uncomfortable boundaries and regretful heart-to-hearts and she wouldn’t trade her friendship but she can’t help but mourn for the mothering that could have happened the same was as David fathered.
*
At one point, she thinks she loves Hook. Really, truly believes she loves him. His attention is persistent and almost-flattering and she loses herself in it. She’s not sure if he loves her-like he professes so often-but even if he doesn’t he wants her, and that’s something that Emma knows even less than love.
It’s heady, and confusing, and her feelings are a combination of self-doubt and confusion and desperation, and so she clings to him for too long. Until her skin starts to itch and her legs start to ache and she finds herself outside of Regina’s house, knocking hard and praying that the right person comes to the door.
Only, she thinks that means Henry-she needs his uncomplicated care-but her shoulders relax when Regina answers and she takes a grounding breath as she brushes past Regina, her brow quirked and her lips thin, knowing.
*
She doesn’t understand August as much and as little as she does when she meets her baby brother. He’s fragile and tiny and she can’t imagine abandoning someone so delicate, and she isn’t even responsible the way August was for her.
But the way he looks at her, blindly trusting as he curls small fingers around strands of her hair, that’s when it clicks, the way she knows she could love him so easily-does already, if she’s honest-and even though he’s not hers, she still feels her heart beat faster as she thinks of the responsibility, the way he’ll need her.
Regina takes him from her easily, and she can see her son’s childhood in an instant, and she thinks it’s strange how her heart swells with love for baby Neal in that moment, of all times. But it does, and the smile that pulls at her lips at the thought of a baby boy with a loving mother-the very thing she wanted so badly-is easy.
*
She comes to the conclusion that she can love, it just doesn’t come easily. It’s slow, and earned, and mostly, rare. She can count the people she loves on her fingers, and to be honest, some days that even feels like too much.
Her heart gets heavy as the days go by and she starts to realize that there might be an addition to that small number. Love has such a high cost-for both of them-that the farther the falls the more often she wakes in a cold sweat. She doesn’t want this for either of them, not when things are getting to be so good as they are, but she recognizes the signs at an alarmingly frequent rate.
Regina, it seems, remains unaware and unaffected, and part of that soothes Emma as the same time it makes her withdraw. Her heart thuds louder each time they pass, her mouth gets drier, and so it’s embarrassing when Regina confronts her then kisses her, Emma’s lips chapped as they part in surprise.
*
She doesn’t like to compare the way she loves-it’s not as though any of the circumstances aren’t unique-but the second she lays eyes on her baby girl, she finally knows what it is to love instantly.
Title: The Many Loves of Emma
Summary: Emma reflects on all the people she has loved.
Characters/Pairings: Emma, Henry, Regina, Snow, Charming, Regina/Emma (Emma/Hook, Emma/Neal)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1549
A/N: Unedited. Prettttty sure I change tenses, sorry!
Henry wasn’t the first person she loved. And he isn’t the only person she loves, now. But he was damn well the one that started it all. Her life changed slowly, the differences sneaky and subtle as they happened, but she knows now that if she had to pinpoint when it shifted, it was him: her little boy showing up on her doorstep, a stranger.
She fell in love with him slowly, exactly the opposite of how she thinks you’re supposed to love your child. But Emma’s broken and damaged and she doesn’t know if it’s normal to not feel love instantly, but she knows if it isn’t, it’s all on her.
Because Henry loves too much, cares too deeply, and it’s one of the things she’s so so grateful isn’t hereditary. He got her stubbornness, though, and that she’s happy about; after all, if he hadn’t been so damn driven (and, to be fair, a lot of that is Regina’s influence, too) she never would have stayed. Never would have realized she wasn’t too broken to love, wasn’t to broken to be loved.
*
They were the first. The couple that opened their homes and their hearts to a tiny orphan girl, took her in and kept her and loved her. Emma knows without a doubt that she loved the Swans, that she would always love them as the parents that raised her for the first three years of her life.
She knew it then as she knows it now, as her heart aches just remembering the two people she’d expected to want her forever, but didn’t want to keep her at all. Her memories are fragments, choppy and short and she’s almost positive the bulk are fabricated from social worker reports and files and twisted in her mind by bullies in the group home.
It hurts to think of them and how they will always be a reminder of how disposable she is. Mostly, it just hurts that she wasn’t good enough to love back.
*
Her dad is pretty awesome. And you know what else is pretty awesome? Her dad. Emma has a dad, a father that loves her and hugs her and cradles her head like she’s the most precious thing in the world. It’s awesome. He wants to do dad things, too, just like she’d always imagined; ball games and hot dog eating contests and silent disapproval when her jeans are just a little too tight to be appropriate.
It’s stupid and she rolls her eyes and shrugs him off-because she’s nearly 30, jesus-but to be honest, she kind of loves it. Loves him. The little moments like that make her stomach drop and her heart beat a bit faster because the pure unadulterated care she gets from her dad is just off-the-charts cool.
Except, real life never fails to come crashing back, fast, reminding her that they can have moments but they can never have her childhood. And he may be her dad but he’s two decades too late and a million games of catch can’t make up for the sense of abandonment and loss that she will never shake.
*
She could have loved him. If he’d stayed, if he’d been the guardian Blue had told him to be, Emma knows she could have loved August. He was douchey in that annoying older brother kind of way that made Emma roll her eyes but also kinda made her wanna steal his bike for a joy ride just to piss him off. She’s pretty sure he would have snuck her beer-maybe she could’ve avoided a couple of run-ins with the cops if he’d been there to do it-and helped her with her history homework and maybe even punched a foster dad or two that got a little too handsy.
Maybe. Only she’ll never know because he abandoned her, too. She can’t even blame him, really; in this world it’s every man for himself and she grits her teeth when she thinks about the fact that he taught her that lesson.
She could have loved him, she thinks. If he’d stayed to teach her anything else.
*
The way she felt when she was with Neal was the way she thinks she would have felt if the Swans had kept her-safe, warm, loved. Bad as Neal was on paper, he was everything she wanted, thought she needed. He was all of her hopes and dreams, tangible; freedom and independence and fluid.
When she was with Neal she knew it was love. It was; she loved him, she’s sure of it. But she knows, now, that it was something else, too. Neal represented all the things she wanted so badly, and she loved that, too.
It’s twisted now, marred by the knowledge of his betrayal and abandonment, but it doesn’t hurt the way it used to; the wound is closed because despite it all Neal gave her Henry, and Henry gave her this life, gave her a home, and that’s something she wouldn’t dream of regretting.
*
It’s unexpected, how she loves Snow. She isn’t positive-she had so little experience with friends before Storybrooke-but she thinks she loved Mary Margaret as a best friend, truly. At the very least she cared about her, loved being with her best friend, and when she makes the transition from friend to mother, it’s jarring.
Emma’d had more trouble navigating that change than any other, to be honest. She thinks that besides Henry, Mary Margaret was the only other person Emma loved, and meeting Snow was losing her best friend and gaining an absentee mother all at the same time and Emma isn’t even sure she’s fully adjusted to it now, years later.
She’d barely known David before the curse broke and so his fatherly ways feel crisp and clean and late, but easy. Snow is all uncomfortable boundaries and regretful heart-to-hearts and she wouldn’t trade her friendship but she can’t help but mourn for the mothering that could have happened the same was as David fathered.
*
At one point, she thinks she loves Hook. Really, truly believes she loves him. His attention is persistent and almost-flattering and she loses herself in it. She’s not sure if he loves her-like he professes so often-but even if he doesn’t he wants her, and that’s something that Emma knows even less than love.
It’s heady, and confusing, and her feelings are a combination of self-doubt and confusion and desperation, and so she clings to him for too long. Until her skin starts to itch and her legs start to ache and she finds herself outside of Regina’s house, knocking hard and praying that the right person comes to the door.
Only, she thinks that means Henry-she needs his uncomplicated care-but her shoulders relax when Regina answers and she takes a grounding breath as she brushes past Regina, her brow quirked and her lips thin, knowing.
*
She doesn’t understand August as much and as little as she does when she meets her baby brother. He’s fragile and tiny and she can’t imagine abandoning someone so delicate, and she isn’t even responsible the way August was for her.
But the way he looks at her, blindly trusting as he curls small fingers around strands of her hair, that’s when it clicks, the way she knows she could love him so easily-does already, if she’s honest-and even though he’s not hers, she still feels her heart beat faster as she thinks of the responsibility, the way he’ll need her.
Regina takes him from her easily, and she can see her son’s childhood in an instant, and she thinks it’s strange how her heart swells with love for baby Neal in that moment, of all times. But it does, and the smile that pulls at her lips at the thought of a baby boy with a loving mother-the very thing she wanted so badly-is easy.
*
She comes to the conclusion that she can love, it just doesn’t come easily. It’s slow, and earned, and mostly, rare. She can count the people she loves on her fingers, and to be honest, some days that even feels like too much.
Her heart gets heavy as the days go by and she starts to realize that there might be an addition to that small number. Love has such a high cost-for both of them-that the farther the falls the more often she wakes in a cold sweat. She doesn’t want this for either of them, not when things are getting to be so good as they are, but she recognizes the signs at an alarmingly frequent rate.
Regina, it seems, remains unaware and unaffected, and part of that soothes Emma as the same time it makes her withdraw. Her heart thuds louder each time they pass, her mouth gets drier, and so it’s embarrassing when Regina confronts her then kisses her, Emma’s lips chapped as they part in surprise.
*
She doesn’t like to compare the way she loves-it’s not as though any of the circumstances aren’t unique-but the second she lays eyes on her baby girl, she finally knows what it is to love instantly.