Title: Tradition
Summary: "Why, what did you do in New York on stormy days?" "We watched scary moves," Henry answered with a grin. "Mom would make popcorn and we'd curl up on the couch with blankets and put on as many scary movies as we could."
Spoilers: Set post-3x22, "There's No Place Like Home."
Rating/Warning: K+, for language, mostly. Charming Family & Captain Swan bonding, as per usual.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. These are all someone else's toys; they're just kind enough to let me play with them.
Author's Note: This is just a random little mini-fic I needed to get out of my head before the show comes back and renders it moot. I'm figuring I'll get five or six chapters out of this puppy. Charming Family and Captain Swan silliness lays ahead, with a dash of family bonding and healing thrown in as always! Also as always, feedback makes my little day. Hope you enjoy!

The overcast sky that morning was an omen, and Emma Swan should have taken it as one. When the morning that was forecast to be bright and warm dawned gray and chilly, she should have canceled her family's outdoor plans the second she got out of bed.

A big chunk of the reason she hadn't was because a certain pirate had insisted that the clouds would burn off by mid-morning and the day would turn out just as sunny and mild as forecast.

"A pirate knows his skies, love," he'd assured her in that soft, pleasant accent of his. (And good God, what that accent did to her. Not that she would ever admit that out loud, of course.)

She'd listened to him – see above re: accent – but she should have stuck with her gut. Pirates may well know their skies but they didn't know them a hundred percent of the time. Just as the entire family plus the pirate in question assembled in the middle of the loft apartment that seemed to Emma a whole hell of a lot bigger when she only shared it with Mary Margaret Blanchard, the skies opened up.

Sheeting rain poured from the dark clouds and thunder rumbled low in the distance. David winced, Henry frowned, baby Neal whimpered, and Emma groaned before whirling around to face a sheepish Killian, a single eyebrow arched in mild annoyance. "'A pirate knows his skies,' huh?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Henry trying to hide an amused smirk at her tone. Killian cleared his throat as a blush colored his cheeks. "Aye, well, no pirate can know with absolute certainty what the day will bring, of course."

Emma found it kind of adorable when he tried to backtrack like that. Not that she would ever admit that out loud, either. "Uh huh," was all she said out loud.

"So, no weapons lessons?" Henry asked, his frown refusing to budge as he wandered over to the window to look out at the sheeting rain. Emma was mentally thrown back to when he used to stand at the window of their apartment in Boston on rainy days, waiting for the first sign that the weather was clearing so he could go out and play.

Then she remembered with a pang of sadness that those memories weren't even real. Damn it. "No weapons lessons," she confirmed through a soft sigh. "I'm not going outside in that rain, period, and none of us should be holding a sword in an electrical storm. The last thing we need is to turn ourselves into human lightning rods."

This really freakin' sucked. Since Emma's return from the past, David had been making noises about wishing he'd had the chance to teach her some techniques with the sword. And maybe seeing him all dressed up in his princely clothes in the past had helped her finally make the mental connection between David and Prince Charming or maybe it was another remnant of emotional brick wall crumbling around her, but damn it, she really wished he'd had the chance, too.

And then it hit her that she'd picked up the sword out of necessity, not because she'd had any real experience with the weapon. At that realization, the lonely little girl inside her had reacted before the independent adult had had the chance to censor her. The touched, loving look in David's eyes when she'd suggested that he help her with her technique made her glad that the little girl had gotten her way.

One would think she'd given him the gift of a lifetime. Unbeknownst to her, he felt like she had. And it was that look in her father's eyes that made Emma turn to her mother and ask, "And when we're done, could you maybe let me shoot your bow and arrow?"

Snow's expression had matched her husband's, and Emma had never felt such an inward explosion of love and joy and comfort in her life.

The plan had been for David to handle sword technique with Emma while Killian worked on the same with Henry and Snow sat with Neal. At some point to be determined later, Snow was then going to take over teaching duty for David and he would watch the squirt.

It would have been an absolutely wonderful plan were it not for this damn rain.

Just as a bummed-out Henry turned away from the window, Snow emerged from the bedroom with a diaper bag hooked over her shoulder. "That wasn't thunder I just heard, was it?"

"'Fraid so," Emma sighed. "And it's pouring to boot. Looks like our plans are canceled for the day."

She did not mistake the disappointment that flitted across both her parents' faces. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized that they had been looking forward to the afternoon just as much as – or more than – she had.

Stupid goddamned rain.

Snow was the first to outwardly shake off her disappointment. "No big deal," she said, forcing a smile and taking the still-fussing squirt from David's arms. "We'll just have to make new plans."

Emma raised her eyebrows. New plans? It was pouring rain! "Oh, yeah? Like what?"

Everyone mulled that over. What the hell could six people – well, okay, four adults, a twelve-year-old, and a newborn baby – do together in the pouring freakin' rain?

Henry looked like he had a suggestion but for whatever reason, he kept quiet. When the silence stretched out an almost uncomfortable length of time, the kid finally spilled. "Maybe we could do what we always did in New York on stormy days?" he asked Emma, his tone somewhat hesitant.

Which would have been a perfectly good suggestion … if it were the two of them. "I don't know if that's something everyone else is going to want to do, though, kid."

David frowned at her. "Why, what did you do in New York on stormy days?"

"We watched scary moves," Henry answered with a grin. "Mom would make popcorn and we'd curl up on the couch with blankets and put on as many scary movies as we could. The ghost ones, though, not the killer ones. Mom says I'm not old enough for the killer ones."

Damn straight he wasn't. Ghosts were fantastical (well, to her at the time; now that she'd participated in a séance and her mom had been possessed by a ghost, she had to admit that ghosts weren't so fantastical now); serial killers were not. And they always watched the same movies so Henry got desensitized to them fairly quickly. All in all, it ended up being less "scary afternoon" and more "odd little mother and son tradition."

It would be interesting when Regina found out about it, to say the least.

"Right, but scary movies aren't everyone's cup of tea," Emma gently reminded her kid. And oh boy how she knew that. An older boy in one of her foster homes had forced a seven-year-old Emma to watch The Exorcist and she'd hated every minute of both the movie and the subsequent nightmares. She was damned if she was going to force anyone in her family into an afternoon of scary-movie-watching if scary movies weren't up their alley.

Her parents looked at each other, one of those looks that lasted all of three seconds but during which they conducted an entire conversation. Eventually Snow shrugged and David shrugged in return. "I'm game," he said, turning to his daughter and grandson.

"I am, too," Snow nodded.

Emma's eyebrows shot to the ceiling. Her parents were willingly going to sit there and watch scary movies with them? Well, David wasn't so much a surprise but Mary Margaret Blanchard had pretty much squirmed through Poltergeist the one time Emma had watched it back before the curse broke.

Then again, her parents weren't just anyone. Her parents were Snow White and Prince Charming. They'd survived war and sleeping curses and her mom knew how to kill an ogre, for crying out loud. Some special effects on a television screen and some loud strings or drums on a soundtrack was probably child's play to them.

All right, so her parents would be fine, but there was one more helpless little member of her family to consider. "What about the squirt?" she asked.

David and Snow exchanged a touched smile. "Emma, your brother isn't even a month old yet," David gently reminded her.

"He's going to have no idea what's on the TV," Snow continued, "and if the sounds bother him, we can deal with it then."

Now that she thought about it, her newborn baby brother was probably going to sleep through a good portion of the afternoon anyway. Thunder rumbled again, low in the sky and reaching a crescendo that seemed to be just above the apartment building. Excitement lit Henry's eyes as he turned her. "Oh, come on, Mom, please? It'll be so perfect."

Again, Emma darted her gaze to her parents to gauge how they really felt about Henry's plan. And holy crap, were they totally on board. There was a pleading look in their eyes, and it took her an embarrassingly long moment to recognize that it wasn't at all about the movies for them. No, for them, it was a chance to share in this little family tradition she and Henry had made for themselves.

It was a chance to be close to them, a chance to spend an afternoon with their family, even if it wasn't doing what they'd originally planned.

And honestly, how could she deny them that? "All right," she sighed, nodding to Henry, "go upstairs and get the movies."

Henry grinned a thank you and took off for the loft, practically climbing the steps two at a time in his excitement. Emma gave an indulgent roll of her eyes.

"Do we know what movies are on the agenda?" David asked as he moved into the kitchen proper. He set a pot on the stove before digging into the cabinet for the vegetable oil and popping corn.

"If the kid follows pattern, I'm sure we'll be watching Poltergeist, The Others, and The Skeleton Key," Emma said, shrugging. "All ghost-type supernatural stuff." Although, with its hoodoo spells and caveats about magic not working until one believes in it, The Skeleton Key might just be a little more chilling now.

David nodded, it was clear he only just barely recognized the titles.

Emma hid a smirk when Snow gave a just barely visible shudder at the mention of Poltergeist. "Oh, come on, it's not that bad," she teased her mother.

"No, it probably won't be now," Snow admitted. "It was, however, a little intense for someone whose most terrifying experience was teaching small children for twenty-eight years."

"That's plenty terrifying," Emma deadpanned.

Snow smirked at her. "My point was, I had never seen a scary movie until the day you plopped down on the couch and turned Poltergeist on."

Emma blinked at her. "Not even in your fake memories?"

"Not even in my fake memories."

"Wow."

Snow smiled at her and then carried the squirt into the living room so she could begin setting up for their afternoon of lounging in front of the TV. David poured the oil in the pot and waited for it to come up to temperature. Emma could hear Henry rummaging around upstairs, poking through the DVDs they'd brought from New York.

Now that things had quieted down a bit, a sheepish Killian turned to Emma. "I'm sorry about today, love. I honestly thought the clouds were going to burn off."

"It's okay," she said, giving him an understanding smile. "Even the people who get paid to predict the weather don't get it right."

He blinked at her. "People in this realm get paid to predict the weather?"

She smirked and opened her mouth with every intention of the concept of the weatherperson on the local news to him. Instead, she said, "Yep. People go to weather-predicting school and everything." It was the truth; meteorology was a science, at any rate. The completely bewildered expression on his face made her hide a smile. "Are you sure you're okay with what we're doing instead, though?"

"Of course," he answered. Emma had a funny feeling he didn't care what the hell they did, as long as he could do it with her. Before she had the chance to even mildly freak out about that, he added, "I just have one question."

"Oh, yeah? What's that?"

"What in the blazes is a scary movie?"

Emma grinned. She was the one who got to introduce Captain Hook to scary movies? Oh, hell yes.

This? Was going to be fun.