Threads

Rating: T for Emma's foul mouth

Summary: Mary couldn't shake the feeling that she had seen the dingy, infant-sized blanket before, only this time it was wrapped around the shoulders of her twenty-eight-year-old roommate. Mary/Emma bonding

She didn't know why she was torturing herself in such a way; and she wasn't sure why she was allowing him to string her along. He had to be aware of what he was doing. He couldn't make such wide imprints on her heart, he couldn't open up so deeply and not think she was going to form some sort of attachment to him. It was as if he didn't see himself married, like there was a possibility that something of a formal relationship could boom between them.

But Mary Margaret didn't want to think about David Nolan, not for the rest of the night as she turned the key to enter her apartment after a long evening at Granny's with the former coma patient. She wanted silence, peace, and—

"Well fuck that," A booming voice rang across the kitchen, causing the short-haired woman to pause in her opening of the door, peering around it to discover if her roommate had a guest over. Seeing no one other than the blonde shouting into her phone, pacing and pulling at the roots of her hair in frustration, Mary entered the apartment and closed the door as quietly as possible. There was an air of tension as Emma caught her eye and pressed her lips together before directing her attention back to the person on the receiving end of her cell. "Thanks for nothing," She said as a closing argument into her phone, ending the conversation and tossing it onto the sofa before collapsing into the pillows, announcing in a monotone expression that didn't truly indicate remorse, "Sorry you came home to that."

"I-It's okay," Mary smiled reassuringly. "I know it's none of my business, but if you want to talk, I'll be upstairs."

Emma nodded and swallowed hard as she watched the back of the school teacher as she ascended the stairs. Mary had a knack of getting to Emma in a way that no one else previously had. She'd never been one to stop an action for the sake of others, to apologize for her wrongdoings, or to open up about any detail of her childhood. Yet in the four weeks Emma had been living with the woman whom her son claimed to be her mother, she'd been acting a lot like a daughter as she reevaluated her actions and choices.

She glared at a spot on the ceiling, trying to decide if the conversation on the phone would be something worth revealing to Mary Margaret. It would earn her plenty of sympathy, she was sure, but she didn't really want it. Emma knew that her new friend's emotions would be sincere, but there was nothing she could do to change what had happened in the past, and what was likely going to happen on Monday morning.

After mulling over the pros and cons of taking Mary Margaret deeper into her past than she had before, Emma strode up the stairs and changed into sweatpants and removed the button-up shirt she'd had on all day. Content in only a tank top, despite the chilly fall weather, she settled on top of her bed, pulling a ragged, knitted blanket out from under her pillow. Her fingers danced along the frayed purple ribbon that ran throughout the off-white yarn and she shook her head. For twenty-eight years, the blanket had been her only source of comfort at night, before she'd been able to fall asleep. It was the only thing she'd ever really owned, all that had been truly hers until she'd left the foster care system.

But now, she had a new source of comfort — an actual human being to whom she could tell her highest hopes and deepest secrets.

If only she could bring herself to trust Mary Margaret on such a level.

Mary woke to the sounds of shuffling in the kitchen below her and grumbled as she eyed the time. It seemed that at least once a week, Emma was a hungry beast at two in the morning, and the young woman's cooking capabilities resembled that of someone ten years her younger, so the buzzer of the microwave was a regular alarm. Along with the midnight feasting, Mary had noticed a pattern to the blonde's emotions, and a stressful situation seemed to call for eating them.

Deciding she could do without the sleep, as it was early morning Saturday, Mary dragged herself out of bed and tip-toed down the stairs, where she caught sight of Emma standing hunched over the counter, her blonde hair hiding her face like a veil and a poncho around her upper half to keep her warm.

On second look, she realized it wasn't a poncho, but instead a blanket, which caused her to blink and attempt to remember if Emma had left it out on the sofa or a chair in the past few weeks, but no such memory could be produced. It was as if she'd held a baby in one similar before; but that couldn't be true, as the only baby she'd held in years had been Ashley's newborn. Yet, Mary couldn't shake the feeling that she had seen the dingy, infant-sized blanket before, only this time it was wrapped around the shoulders of her twenty-eight-year-old roommate.

"Emma?" She questioned softly, stepping into the only light in the room, a stream from the moon through the window. "Everything okay?" This was the first time the blonde had ever been completely non-responsive to Mary's attempts at getting her to speak. "Em?"

With a shaky breath, Emma turned her body slightly towards Mary, not meeting her eyes as the darker-haired woman saw damp cheeks and a fresh bought of tears rolling down them. She'd seen fits of anger lead to broken objects, and shrieks of stress form curses of which she'd never heard, but Mary Margaret had never seen Emma cry. Without thinking twice, Mary stepped forward and wrapped her arms around the taller of them, who stiffened at first stiffened at the contact, but then relaxed and let out a shaky breath of a silent sob. "Come on, honey," She inwardly flinched at the instinctive name, this was not one of her forth graders she was dealing with. "Emma, let's go upstairs, okay?"

Forgetting about the bowl of instant oatmeal in the microwave, Emma nodded and allowed Mary to rub her back twice before pulling away and following her upstairs and into her room. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Emma wiped her face with the back of her wrists and pulled her security blanket off her shoulders and into her lap, playing with its' edges once more.

Mary illuminated the room with the lamp on her nightstand, causing Emma to squint away from the light and contain another sob as the other woman sat next to her on the bed, tucking her feet under her knees as she sat criss-cross. "I don't want to pressure you into sharing things you don't wish to, or aren't ready to, but Emma, I'm just...I'm worried. It's not good to hold in your emotions...or to express them over a watery bowl of oatmeal."

"I know," She finally spoke, her voice crackling. "I'm sorry I woke you up," She took another shaky breath. "I told you I'd be a horrible roommate. I'm sure you can't wait for the day I skip town." Emma's eyes bore into her blanket, refusing to meet the likely annoyed ones of her entirely-too-hospitable friend.

"That is not true," Mary assured, placing a heavy hand on Emma's knee. "I don't know how people have treated you in the past, but—"

Emma gave a humorless laugh as she finally brought herself to look up. "You will come Monday."

"What are you talking about?"

The blonde bit her lip and shook her curls before explaining, "Regina got a court order for all my old files from when I was in the system, as a kid. She claimed that as a public official, the people I serve have a right to know of what I've done in my past. I was on the phone with one of my old social workers and a lawyer earlier, trying to...stop her. But there's nothing that can be done. Come Monday, every record, every medical file and disciplinary action will be published in the Daily Mirror."

Mary Margaret shook her head in disgust as her eyebrows knitted together in anger. "That horrible woman...Emma, I am so sorry that this is happening to you...Surely it can't be that bad? What could you have possibly done before you turned eighteen that—?"

"It's that bad," Emma whispered, tugging her legs to her chest and wrapping a protective arm around them. "And worse. Than anything you're imagining."

The look of the teacher was too much for Emma, who choked another sob, trying to keep silent as she'd learned to do many years before. Mary reached for her again, and the slightly younger woman allowed herself to be pulled into a long, strong embrace. She sniffled against Mary's shoulder, completely breaking down for the first time in ages. It felt so good, having someone with genuine concern for her, someone who could simply hold her as no one else had.

"People here know what Regina is all about. They know that her ambitions are rarely pure. I'm sure they will understand that this is all a horrible scheme. If they can't see you've changed from the person you were when you were younger, then shame on them."

"I don't even care what they'll think of me," Emma sighed, closing her eyes. "It's not all about what I did. It's about...how I reacted. I was so young and stupid, and reckless...and...Everything was my fault, and I've just tried...to keep it forgotten, and now...everyone is going to see what a fuck up I really am. And Henry..." She trailed off, "He's the only reason I'm here, and god...when he sees everything that's happened, he's going to be embarrassed that I even birthed him."

Her true panic had Mary Margaret rubbing her back, shoulders, neck, anything she could attempt at keeping her calm. "I'm afraid I don't fully understand what it is you're worried about. Do you want to tell me?"

"No," Emma choked. "I don't want to tell anybody. I didn't want anybody to ever find it; it's all so mortifying and..." She pulled away from Mary Margaret, stroking the ribbon of her blanket again. "Nobody has ever wanted me. Nobody. And sometimes, to get rid of me, the people I was with took very drastic measures. I know that I was aggressive and hard to deal with, and I get how that would cause someone to react to me the way they did, but the fact that this whole town is going to find out about it—"

"Stop," Mary said with an assertive tone, forcing Emma to look her in the eyes. "To hell with the town, Emma," She said seriously, making the younger woman flinch at the use of a curse word from the usually tame woman. "Whatever anyone did to you? Was not your fault. I don't care what you think you might have done to deserve it—"

"I was a horrible kid, a holy terror—"

"No," Mary demanded. "No, it does not matter how you acted. Adults exist in this world to protect children. Especially adults who take on the role of a foster parent. They are supposed to embrace the child, despite everything they had been through, and—"

Emma cut her off with a demented laugh. "That's actually funny...oh, god, I know, I know that's how the perfect...utopia is supposed to work, but the reality is that these people take on a bunch of kids they don't want, so they can take the money the kids bring in. Each kid is worth about five hundred dollars a month, and when you have no income and a drug addiction, five hundred bucks is hard to come by. So you sign up with the DHS and they drop ten kids off on your doorstep and the next thing you know, you've got enough money for a nightly coma and a brand new handgun."

"Oh," Mary sighed. "Emma, what...what did they do to you?"

"Which family?" She questioned back, giving a dose of reality to the woman who simply did not understand the situation she'd been in. "In eighteen years, I lived in twenty-three houses or group homes. And each one was as bad as the last. You show up, with a backpack full of clean socks and underwear and your one worldly possession that each kid seems to have, and...you become a product of the environment you are in."

Mary Margaret eyed the blanket in Emma's lap. "Was...was that yours? Your one possession?"

The blonde wrapped a protective hand around it, nodding darkly. "It was all they ever gave me, besides this rotten past I continue to run from."

"Your parents?" Was the soft, obvious question which Mary chose to ask, staring hard at the familiar blanket.

"Yep," Emma responded, hugging it close to her chest. "Explain to me why they'd pick a name for me, have it monogrammed onto a blanket, and then dump me off on the side of the road? Because I've been wondering it my entire life. Why they would give me this one thread of a connection to them. It's maddening...like you said, the day I first met you," She said, not intending to inflict guild into her roommate. "Why would they give me up? I just...I just felt like they had this whole, great life planned out for me...and they changed their minds at the last second."

"Surely, something most have gone wrong, Emma. No parent in their right mind would have abandoned a child like that. You obviously had a caring mother and father at one time, who wanted only the best for you— who wanted to give you the best chance, and—"

"Well, a fucking brilliant job they did at that," Emma retorted loudly, not wanting to yell at her only friend, but not being able to help it. The anger she'd pent up against her parental units over twenty-eight years was endless, and rarely let out since her last fist-fight in juvenile hall when she was sixteen. "Because after all the bruises, all the broken bones, stolen lunches, and nights I spent crying myself to sleep, I certainly must say, they gave me a damn good chance by tossing me out like a rotten apple."

"But Emma, dear," Mary sighed, her own eyes watering at the intensity of emotions being displayed from the clearly broken woman before her. "Look where you are now. You are a very good deputy, you'd been very effective at your other job before that, and now, now you are here, in a town you had no intention of being in, but you are here to give your son a chance at a happy life with you. And that is huge. That is something that most people in your position could have never amounted to. You've overcome so much."

"It certainly doesn't feel that way," Emma sniffed, feeling sorry for herself. It had been a long time since she'd given pause to the topic of bettering her situation.

Yet Mary Margaret insisted that she was on the right path, "You have been mistreated for so long that now you don't know how you should be treated. But I intend on seeing to it that you begin to learn, Emma. I will never, ever ask you to leave. And I will never abandon you, and I will do my damnedest to ensure I never hurt you." Emma's tears fell freely down her cheeks, which Mary took into her hands. "Honey, I don't know why your parents did what they did. I'm sure they had a reason that made sense to them at the time. You've had a very, very difficult life, but now...now you have a chance at being happy. And I'm sure that's all they'd want for you."

Emma's face crumpled and Mary's did too as the women cried together, for the painful past and the notion of moving past it. By the time either of them were in any position to speak, the clock had rolled over to four in the morning. Emma sniffed and sat back, looking into Mary's green eyes, begging to ask the question she'd been burning to since she arrived in Storybrooke. "Why do you care about me?"

"I don't have a reason," Mary chuckled slightly, "I don't know why, but I just feel this innate, urge to protect you and give you the life you've never had. I just...I want to take care of you."

Emma couldn't help but compare what Mary Margaret had just said to what Henry had been telling her all along. The woman had an intense trust and affection towards Emma which, while she had never experienced directed at her, if her feelings for Henry were any indication, she would say the feeling was motherly. "Can I tell you something?" She asked, feeling suddenly brave and free of being judged.

"Anything," Mary whispered, brushing Emma's curls off her sticky, tear-stained face.

"I...I lied, when I told you that Henry didn't think I was in the book. I am, in the book...and according to him...I am the daughter of Prince Charming and Snow White."

Mary Margaret's heart dropped for a moment as she processed the new information. "That's...that's um..."

"Crazy," Emma finished, a smile forming. "I know, I know it is. I didn't want to tell you that...because I figured it would freak you out...but now, if we're playing along with his fantasy land, it...just kind of feels right, you know?"

"Yeah," Mary said as she mulled over the new information, halfway wishing her student weren't so incredibly delusional and was truly onto something. "It does." The two women shared a look before leaning into a mutually initiated embrace, one which had Emma sighing in contentment. For the first time, she'd felt truly wanted. "Well, it is now four AM, and I believe it is time for all the princesses in the land to go to bed."

Emma chuckled and drew her blanket close to her chest again. "I'm so sorry for keeping you up."

"Don't apologize..." The darker haired of the two crawled to the top of the full-sized bed and patted the space next to her. "Feels like the kind of night for a sleepover, don't you think?"

Nodding, Emma joined her at the head of the bed, falling against the pillows and holding her blanket close before letting it fall to the mattress beside her. She had a better source of comfort, sleeping only inches away. If it had been any other individual in the entire world, the deputy would have thought it strange to sleep beside them. But, as Mary Margaret turned out the light, everything felt right.

"Goodnight, Emma," Mary said softly, pulling her quilt around herself and reflecting on the past two hours. Henry was certainly not in his right mind; but as she glanced at Emma in the darkness as the blonde shifted closer, she almost wished he wasn't delusional. The instinct she felt swell within her chest was one she could only place as motherly.

The baby blanket caught her attention again. Emma had claimed it was her one thread of a connection she had to her parents. But, if by some twist of fate, Henry wasn't crazy, her threads seemed to be weaving closer together with each passing day.

"Goodnight, Mar...and...thank you," Emma mumbled, eyelids fluttering despite being swollen from crying. "For everything."

Mary swallowed hard, trying to keep her strange prayers of delusion at bay. "You don't need to thank me." After meeting Emma's hazel eyes with her green ones, both women assured the other they were hoping for the same thing, no matter how crazy — that maybe their separate threads were really just one.

Would you like some wine to go with that cheese? This was inspired after I discovered that Emma had her baby blanket sent over to Storybrooke. (Which is why I shouldn't rewatch episodes 3908676 times each.) The bits of Emma's past that I mentioned are based off interviews with Jennifer Morrison on Emma's character. Also it might be worth a re-read, not that I'd ever tell you what to do. There's a lot of layers in this; and you might not see them all on a first read — probably because I didn't even realize I was writing them. Some are obvious, some are hidden and some are very symbolic.

But regardless of the fluff factor, I hope you enjoyed this Mary Margaret/Emma bonding piece, which also happened to be requested by a number of readers! There is a strong possibility that there is room for a few follow-up chapters. A new chapter of To Those Who Wait will be posted within a week for those who follow my other story.

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