This story has sat in my head since we heard young Emma tell Lily that she learned to eat fast because otherwise the big kids would take her food.

Fair Warning: This does deal with food issues so, please, if that is in anyway triggering for you please close this tab immediately.

Disclaimer: Not mine. Not yours. Definitely A&E's.

It took Snow White a long while to figure out that her daughter had a less than adequate relationship with food; not an eating disorder per say, just lingering issues from growing up where there was just never quite enough to go around. She'd noticed things over the years, bits and pieces, but it took a while for the whole picture to form in the mother's mind and it broke her heart to realize just how much Emma carried on her shoulders, how much she had carried on her own for far too long.

She'd first noticed as Mary Margaret that her daughter seemed to have the appetite of a teenage boy, frequently packing away more than even a rapidly growing Henry did in one sitting. Emma ate quickly but the then school teacher had merely chalked it up to the woman having a veracious hunger, a high metabolism. Emma hardly showed any effects from her diet; the sheriff princess being muscular and lean, able to take down any foe she came up against even when they far outsized her. As Mary Margaret, Emma's eating habits had hardly blipped on her radar – she'd just made sure to keep the kitchen stocked, laughing when Emma would tear through their communal food like she was inhaling air. It wasn't like Emma wasn't on the go enough to burn it all off in a matter of hours.

When they'd fallen through the portal to the Enchanted Forest, Snow had noted that her daughter always took significantly less than she actually needed to get by. They had, all of them, gone hungry on more than one night during their several week stay in the destroyed land but when there had been food, enough food to adequately feed the four of them, Emma had always made sure to only take just enough to get her by. Just enough to edge of the burning pain of hunger. She'd take a few bites of rabbit stew or roasted chimera before passing off the remainder to Aurora. At the time, when they were on the run for their lives, Snow had just assumed that Emma couldn't stand to palate the less than familiar food or perhaps that her daughter was just as chivalrous as Charming, wanting to take care of the princess first. Snow herself had handed leftovers to Aurora more than once. The petite princess wasn't used to a world where there wasn't enough to go around and so they had all made sacrifices to help ease the woman's pains – especially when she was so frequently exhausted by sleepless nights, unable to rest enough to restore any energy and so the extra food helped her eek by, if just barely. The queen had kept a close eye on her daughter, making sure that Emma didn't drop off too severely and wasn't showing signs of malnutrition but, for the most part, just focused on their mission to get home.

Once they had gotten home, Emma had returned to her usual veracious eating habits and so Snow had tucked away her worry once more as the bit of drop off her daughter had suffered quickly filled back in.

It continued on in a similar manner; chalking Emma's need to inhale food like the apocalypse was just a breath away (which, in Storybrooke, it usually was) up to a high metabolism and rapid lifestyle and her self-sacrificing side was just nobility when she once again took just barely enough at each meal in Neverland.

But then Snow had wandered up stairs to collect the dirty clothes for the washing while Neal napped in his crib. Between Elsa, Henry, and Emma along with herself, Charming, and the newborn baby it felt like the former bandit turned queen turned mayor was always, always, always doing laundry anymore. Elsa's bit of clothing she had accrued during her stay in their land always landed neatly in the hamper but Henry and Emma were habitually messy, their dirty clothes stranded across the room they shared. Snow smiled wistfully as she plucked her grandson's dirty clothes from the floor, chuckling when she found his school sweater tossed across the shade on his lamp.

On Emma's side of the room, Snow her head at the bit of mess that Emma had created. When the blonde had first arrived in Storybrooke, it had taken her some time to relax enough to even leave a mess about. Life in the system had made Emma terrified of mistakes, believing that leaving messes would get her tossed out and sent off to the next family that could bear to put up with her. So, in some small way, it made the mother happy to know her daughter had relaxed enough to leave a stack of books on the floor next to her bed and a few files strewn across the mattress. She bent to pluck a pair of pajama pants Emma had half kicked under the mattress before kneeling on the floor to make sure her daughter hadn't kicked anything further under the bed. It was then that the queen gasped, under her daughter's bed was a small cache of food. Not much. A few bottles of water, gatorade, and a small array of snack food. All untouched, unopened. Just waiting for the other foot to fall.

It broke her heart as she pulled the food out, abandoning the hamper of clothes as she gathered the food in her arms, and took it all downstairs with her to put it back where it belonged. She checked on her sleeping son and pulled her phone out with a glance at the clock before sending a text to Emma, asking her to come home on her lunch break – just her, not her father. They needed to talk and she knew that if she drew David into the conversation that Emma would feel confronted and would bolt or throw up her walls before they had a real chance to discuss anything. The last thing she wanted was to make her daughter feel ashamed of her actions.

Snow put away the food that Emma had kept and then put together a small lunch for the both of them as she waited for the familiar sound of Emma's footfall in the hallway and the sound of her key in the lock. The familiar noises came when she had just finished plating the food and was pouring juice for them both.

Emma stepped into the loft and offered her mother a warm smile. "Hey ma. What's going on that I couldn't bring dad with me? You finally figure out his Christmas present and need help hiding it?"

"Emma," Snow breathed her daughter's name and shook her head before motioning for the woman to sit down. It warmed her heart how easily 'ma' and 'dad' rolled off her daughter's lips these days – that in itself had been a long and hard fought for battle that had required both her and Charming just waiting their girl out for the most part. She placed the food in front of her daughter and was quickly reminded why they needed to have the tough conversation ahead of them when Emma heartily dove into her food. "Slow down, Em. It won't disappear, I promise."

"Sorry," Emma muttered as she put down her sandwich and self consciously plucked a chip to nibble at, trying to match her pace to her mother's.

"So I went upstairs to collect the laundry," the brunette began softly. "And I was picking up your clothes from the floor-"

"Sorry," Emma interjected. "I'll try to remember to pick stuff up and get it into the hamper. I can do my own laundry. I-"

"Emma." The apology with such intensity was so unnecessary. "I'm glad to pitch in and do the laundry, sweetheart. You've got a lot on your plate with being sheriff and fighting off villains every time we turn around. I'm glad to do your laundry every once in awhile and, while I would appreciate if you and Henry would at least aim for the hamper with your dirty clothes, I don't mind picking the occasional item up off the floor."

"Okay," the blond relented as she took a small bite off her sandwich.

"But, Emma... honey, when I was picking up your clothes there was a pair of pajama pants half under your bed so I wanted to make sure I got it all – when I looked under you bed... Emma, I found your food stash."

"Oh." Emma paled considerably at her mother's confession. "I can... I'm..."

"It's okay." Snow reached across the table and comfortingly draped a hand over her daughter's wrist, rubbing her thumb over her hand. "It just made some things click for me. I'm not even sure if you realize you do it but when there's food available you eat like you're storing up for winter and when there's just enough to go around you always make sure to take less and then you only eat a bit of what you've taken before foisting it off onto someone else."

"To be fair, chimera tastes like crap."

Snow smirked but shook her head. "And you hide food under your bed."

"It's just..." Emma sighed heavily as she turned her hand over to curl her own around her mother's so they were palm to palm. She knew how much talking about her time in foster care pained her mother but she also knew that Snow needed her to acknowledge her habits. "Growing up the way I did... There was never enough. When there was food, you ate fast or you didn't eat at all because the big kids would take it away from you."

"And when there wasn't," she asked and closed her eyes for a moment to steel herself for Emma's answer.

"It was punishment in a lot of homes," she explained. "Food wasn't a right but a privilege. If you screwed up, you lost your privilege and you went hungry until you earned it back. If you took too much, you lost your privilege. If you spoke out of turn, you lost your privilege. Hell, sometimes you lost your privilege just for breathing. So I learned to take just enough. And I usually gave half of what I had to whoever was the smallest and had lost their privileges for something like crying after getting the belt."

Snow had seen a few pictures of Emma when she was a little girl, when the woman had shown parts of the file during her time as Mary Margaret. She didn't doubt that her daughter was frequently the smallest in each home and probably still gave at least half her food to whoever didn't have privileges at the time. And she wondered just how many times Emma had lost her own "privileges" in an effort to defend somebody else. Emma was more noble than either of her parents, more than any of the knights in Camelot. She knew that her little girl would have gladly taken the lickings for someone she deemed smaller or weaker than her with her chin held high because it was the right thing to do.

"We all learned to keep stashes," Emma continued. "If you got a snack at school, if someone brought in a treat for the class for their birthday, then you didn't eat it because at the very least we were guaranteed free lunch because we were foster kids so we weren't going to go hungry at school. You saved the snack for later, for a time when you didn't have any. It just stuck. I don't store anything open," she promised. "Just... closed stuff. Snacks where I bought two."

"I put them away," Snow explained. "Emma... You're not going to go hungry here. I know what it's like to eat when you can because you don't know when your next meal is coming," she explained and she did know, as a bandit there had been times where a handful of wild berries had been all she'd had for a whole day and plenty of nights where she went to bed feeling like her stomach was going to eat itself. Snow White was familiar with hunger pains. And she knew how important it was to promise Emma that she was never going to have to live with that feeling again. "Food is your right, Emma. Not a privilege. It's just as much of a right as breathing. You'll always have food here and it's okay to slow down and taste it. It's okay to enjoy the food you eat. No one is going to take it away from you and if they do they'll have to face mama wrath, okay?"

"Okay," Emma whispered.

"And I promise to always keep enough snacks on hand that if we ever have to portal hop again you won't go hungry having to share a piece of chimera seven different ways but, please, sweetheart, don't hide the food in your room."

Her daughter smiled. "Deal."

Snow stood and rounded the table to wrap her daughter in a hug, pressing a kiss to her head. "I love you to the moon, Emma Swan."

"I love you back, mama," Emma replied with a squeeze to her mother's waist.

"You'll always have more than just enough here," Snow promised.

And Emma knew this would be the first promise in thirty years that wouldn't be broken.