Title: Fever Dreams
Summary: The dreams that come when you're sick are so real, you don't even recognize them as dreams at first. Which is fine when they're nice dreams but pretty much the opposite of fine when they're not so nice.
Word Count: 4783 by Works' count.
Spoilers: None, really, but let's say everything up to 1x12, "Skin Deep."
Characters: Emma and Mary Margaret, with appearances by Henry and Regina (sort of ... you'll see).
Rating/Warning: T for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. Not my toys, but I can pretend!
Author's Note: The only excuse I have for this piece is I was sick myself when I came up with it. As you can probably tell from the length, it turned out to be a lot of fun to write, so yay for silver linings! Feedback would make my day. Enjoy!

Bright patches of color peeked through the trees. Squealing in excitement, Emma ran towards the color and found herself in a small clearing filled with wild flowers in white and pink and pale purple. She swore she had never seen anything so beautiful in all of her seven years. "Here!" she called over her shoulder. "Right here!"

"Oh, Emma, this is a lovely picnic spot!"

Emma looked up at her mother, beaming. Her mom ruffled Emma's long curls as the two of them stepped into the clearing. They circled the area once before deciding on a patch of thick green grass where they wouldn't disturb any of the flowers.

Mommy set the picnic basket down, dug out the blanket, and spread it out over the grass. When she plopped down on the blanket, Emma crawled into her lap and pulled the basket onto her own. It was heavier than she expected. How on earth had Mommy carried it all morning without having to stop to rest?

They sat in silence for a moment, watching the flowers sway in the gentle breeze. Then Mommy wrapped her arms around Emma's shoulders and opened the basket on her daughter's lap. "Let's see what Daddy packed for us."

He'd prepared them a veritable feast. There were three different kinds of sandwiches – on top of the peanut butter and Fluff he'd included for Emma – along with pasta salad, carrot and celery sticks, and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. And beverages, of course: water for the both of them, iced tea for Mommy, and juice boxes for Emma.

"Daddy's so silly," Emma giggled. "We're never going to be able to eat all this."

"No, we're not," Mommy agreed, shaking her head at her husband's idea of a one-adult, one-child picnic, "but it'll be fun to try, won't it?"

"Uh huh!" Emma laughed and looked into her mother's kind eyes. "A whole lot of fun!"

Their hike through the woods had worked up Emma's appetite. She polished off her peanut butter and Fluff and a heaping mound of macaroni salad in the time it took her mother to eat just one ham and cheese sandwich. She hungrily turned her attention to the overstuffed bag of cookies.

"Not yet," Mommy said, reaching into the basket for the vegetables. "Have a few carrot sticks first."

Emma scrunched her nose but took the bag from her mother's hand without argument and withdrew a small handful of carrots. She peeked into the basket but a little cup of ranch dressing for dipping was the one thing Daddy had forgotten.

"You can do it, Emma," Mommy encouraged when she noticed the girl's face fall.

Emma nibbled on a carrot and promptly decided they were much better with ranch dressing. "I don't think I'll like it very much, but I'll do it."

"That's my girl," Mommy smiled. She twirled one of Emma's blonde curls around her finger before pushing herself to her feet and stepping off the blanket.

She picked flowers in every color before heading for the edge of the clearing. She crouched in front of a tree and began picking up fallen sticks, bending them slightly, and then putting them back down. Emma frowned, wondering what her mother was doing, but the frown turned into a smile when she saw the birds gathering in a branch above Mommy's head.

Birds had a tendency to follow her mother around like that. Squirrels and chipmunks, too. Mommy sometimes found it annoying but Emma thought it was the coolest thing she'd ever seen.

By the time Emma finished her carrots, Mommy had made her way back to the blanket with the flowers and a long thin stick in her hand. "I ate four of them!" Emma exclaimed, proud that she'd eaten her vegetables without the benefit of ranch dip.

"I knew you could do it," Mommy grinned, planting a kiss on her daughter's forehead. As a reward, she opened the bag of cookies and handed one to Emma. "Just one for now."

Emma pouted but after she finished the cookie, she understood why her mom had limited her to one. Her tummy was full.

Sighing happily, Emma once again crawled into her mom's lap. She watched her mother bend the stick into a circle and wrap the stems of the flowers around it. "What are you doing, Mommy?"

"You, my sweet Emma, are my little princess, and all princesses need a crown." With a gentle smile, she placed the unfinished flower crown on her daughter's head.

Emma grinned up at her mother. "I love it already!"

Mommy smiled and removed the crown from Emma's head. She worked until she ran out of flowers, at which point she shifted Emma off her lap so she could gather some more. Emma watched her for a moment before lying down on her back and staring up at the clear blue sky. The soft breeze whirling through the clearing soothed her and she closed her eyes.

Something cold and wet ran across her forehead. Startled, she opened her eyes to find the sky drastically changed. Dark clouds raced overhead, blocking out the sun. She sat up, rubbing her arms against the harsh wind that now whipped her long hair into her eyes.

Something was wrong. She looked around, confused, and that was when she noticed the missing picnic basket. She shot to her feet and was shocked to find the blanket gone, too. As she searched the rapidly darkening clearing, her heart leaped into her throat.

She couldn't find her mother.

"Mommy?" she called tentatively.

No answer.

"Mommy!" she cried again but the wind swallowed her words.

Emma started to panic. Mommy wouldn't have left her all by herself in the middle of the woods. Would she?

No, of course she wouldn't. Emma was her little princess! She wouldn't have left her behind. Something must have happened to her, something really bad.

Emma again felt something on her forehead. She batted at the cold spot with her hand but nothing was there. The wind was frigid now, making Emma shiver in her summer clothes. She wrapped her arms around herself as she started to cry, wanting her mother more than anything else in the whole wide world.

"Mommy!" she sniffled, her tears muffling her voice. "Mommy, where are you?"

She was still standing by herself in the middle of the clearing – the clearing that had looked so lovely when she found it but was now dark and menacing – when the skies opened up and the rain began coming down in sheets.

"It's okay," Mary Margaret whispered as she patted her roommate's forehead with a cool compress. She placed the back of her free hand against Emma's cheek and shook her head.

She'd come out of her bedroom that morning to find Emma huddled in the corner of the sofa with her knees pulled to her chest, still in her pajamas and complaining of lightheadedness. At first, she'd thought that Emma simply needed some hydration. While Mary Margaret filled a glass with water from the tap, Emma had dropped her head to her knees with a groan. It was when Mary Margaret reached down to tap her shoulder that she'd felt the heat radiating from her roommate's body.

Mary Margaret had grabbed the thermometer from the medicine cabinet and handed it to Emma, who groggily responded enough to the teacher's prodding to turn it on and stick the tip under her tongue. To Mary Margaret's immense surprise, Emma had allowed her to remove the thermometer from her mouth when it beeped.

Her eyes had widened when the thermometer read just a shade under a hundred and three. Though not emergency-room high, Emma's temperature was high enough that Mary Margaret hadn't wanted to leave her alone. She'd made her roommate comfortable on the sofa with some pillows and a light blanket and told her to get some rest. Emma had given a weak nod and closed her eyes without putting up even the tiniest of fights, at which point Mary Margaret knew that she did not feel well at all.

Emma had slept restlessly most of the day, waking just long enough to take her temperature, sip some water, and occasionally force down some Advil.

Mary Margaret had relied on a combination of medicine and lukewarm compresses to keep Emma's fever from rising. For some inexplicable reason, as soon as the compress touched Emma's forehead this last time, she'd become agitated. Mary Margaret had been trying to calm her for the past twenty minutes and had gotten nowhere.

With a quiet sigh, she left the compress on Emma's forehead and dipped another facecloth into the large bowl of water she'd set on the end table. She patted Emma's cheeks with the second cloth before running it down first her left arm and then her right.

Emma whimpered, weakly pushing at Mary Margaret's hands. "Don't … don't …"

"Shh," she soothed. "It'll be all right."

"No," Emma mumbled. She screwed up her face and made a sound halfway between a whine and a groan.

"It's okay, Emma."

Finally, she quieted. Mary Margaret doubled her efforts to keep her as cool as possible. She glanced up at the clock and decided she was giving the compresses thirty more minutes to make a dent. If Emma's fever hadn't dropped by then, she was going to get another dose of ibuprofen.

Emma could still hear the rain hitting the leaves of the trees as she ran through the woods but she was no longer seven. She was twenty-eight now, and this time the woods were vaguely familiar to her. Familiar but not, like she should know them like the back of her hand but couldn't seem to get her bearings.

She had only run into the woods for shelter from the pouring rain but once under the canopy of trees, she'd kept running. She didn't know whether she was running from something or after something. All she knew was that something was wrong and running would somehow make it right.

Out of breath and energy, she stopped when she found the clearing again. Her lovely picnic spot had completely changed. The wild flowers with their gorgeous colors were gone and rose bushes with huge thorns and large black blooms had taken their place.

The bushes encircled a large wooden enclosure that was wide at the base and curved in at the top. Like a bird cage, Emma thought, but no birds called this structure home. Mommy stood in the cage, gripping the wooden bars.

No, not Mommy. This woman had shorter hair than Emma's mother. She squinted through the rain and realized with a gasp that the woman in the cage was Mary Margaret.

Emma ran towards the cage, flinching as the rose bushes' thorns scraped her legs. She wrapped her hands around the bars and yanked. Damn things were stronger than they looked. "Mary Margaret? What happened? How did you get here?"

Mary Margaret started at the sound of her voice and looked at her with profound sadness in her eyes. "Oh, Emma. I wished so hard that you wouldn't find me."

"I don't understand." Emma stepped back and looked the cage over from top to bottom, trying to spot some weakness in the construction that she could exploit. She found none. "Who did this to you?"

"She did, but she's not doing it to me. She's doing it to you, Emma. I'm a trap for you."

"What are you talking about?" She backed up further, placing her hands on her hips and staring up at the cage. How in the hell had Mary Margaret gotten inside in the first place? She could see no door, no gate, no way to open it from ground level. Maybe the top opened up somehow but the bars were too smooth to climb. "Who's setting a trap for me?"

"I am, dear. And you flew right to it, like the proverbial moth to flame."

Emma whirled around to find Regina standing at the edge of the clearing. What the … she hadn't been there before. Had she? Emma didn't think so but Regina's all-black ensemble would have helped her blend into the shadows.

Her confusion quickly gave way to anger. "What the hell, Regina? You had to put a woman in a cage to get me to come to you? What's wrong with the phone?"

"Not a thing," Regina shrugged, a smirk on her face. "This is just … more enjoyable."

Thunder rumbled low in the sky even though the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Emma's heart raced; everything felt … wrong. "Look, Regina, I don't know what the hell is going on here, but let Mary Margaret go. She's not part of this." Whatever this was.

"She's more a part of this than you could ever imagine, Ms. Swan."

Something in the mayor's eyes sent shivers down Emma's spine. A darkness – or maybe emptiness? – like nothing Emma had ever seen before.

Regina had never scared her. The woman had the uncanny ability to make Emma go from zero to nuclear-explosion-livid in four seconds flat but she'd never scared her. Until now.

She backed up until she was standing flush with Mary Margaret's wooden prison. "What the hell are you talking about?"

A sneer curled onto Regina's lips. "I'm talking about how Mary Margaret is going to watch her favorite student and her roommate die."

"No!" Mary Margaret cried. Emma just barely heard Regina's statement. She had focused her attention solely on the second cage. The one she hadn't even seen until a flash of lightning illuminated the clearing.

Henry huddled in the second cage, his head down, his arms hugging his knees. With a strangled cry, Emma dashed forward and dropped to her knees outside the cage. She reached through the bars and grasped one of his hands.

The boy raised his head and looked at her with teary, haunted eyes. "I'm sorry, Emma. I tried to make you believe before it came down to this."

She shook her head. As screwed up as Regina was, the woman would never harm Henry. She would never hurt him, let alone kill him. "No, Henry. She's … she's just doing this to scare me." And no matter how much she hated to admit it, it was working. "She won't kill you."

"You're right, Sheriff Swan, I won't kill him," Regina spoke up from behind Emma. "But I won't have to … because you're going to kill him."

Emma's stomach lurched as she jumped to her feet. "You're even crazier than I thought if you think I would ever–"

"Oh, you will." Regina inched closer to Emma – step by excruciating step – until she was standing right in front of her. The grin on her lips sent shivers down Emma's spine. "You're going to kill him. And then sweet little Mary Margaret is going to kill you."

Her eyes darted to Mary Margaret. Her roommate – her best friend – had sunk down to the floor at the back of her cage, her head down, shoulders shaking with sobs. "Y-you don't have the power to make us do anything," Emma said to Regina, wincing at how shaky her voice sounded.

"Oh, no? Observe." She turned to Mary Margaret. "Stand up and walk towards me."

Emma watched in horror as Mary Margaret obeyed Regina's commands, pushing herself to her feet and stepping forward little by little until the bars blocked her path. Tears streamed down her cheeks and when she met Emma's gaze, she mouthed, I'm sorry.

Regina placed her hands on Emma's shoulders and leaned in close, murmuring into her ear. "Mind control spells are amazing little things, dear. She has no choice but to obey my every word even though everything inside her is screaming at her to stop. I can cast one on you just as easily. No matter how much you won't want to, you will do whatever you're told."

Nausea churned in Emma's stomach. Suddenly, Mary Margaret's wish that Emma wouldn't find her made perfect sense. With simply a command, Regina was going to force Emma to kill her own son and then she was going to force Mary Margaret to kill Emma. And they both would be conscious of everything but powerless to stop it.

"Emma, it's okay," Henry spoke up. He wiped his eyes and tried his hardest to put on a brave face. "I've known it was going to end like this for a long time."

"No." Emma sank down to the ground next to Henry's cage and once again reached inside for his hand. "It's not going to happen, Henry. It's not. I promise."

Regina scoffed, shooting Emma a withering look. "What have I told you about making promises you can't keep?" She snapped her fingers and the cage surrounding Mary Margaret vanished. "Come here, Mary Margaret."

Choking back sobs, Mary Margaret approached Regina, keeping her gaze averted from both Emma and Henry. When Mary Margaret dutifully stopped in front of her, Regina leaned over and whispered something in the teacher's ear.

Mary Margaret turned and crouched down beside Emma. She touched Emma's cheek in apology before grabbing her roommate's arms and hauling her to her feet. "See that she doesn't run," Regina said, conjuring a dagger and handing it to Mary Margaret. "By any means necessary."

Emma stared down at the dagger in her best friend's hand and instinctively knew that this was the weapon that was going to kill her son before killing her. "No," Emma pleaded through sudden tears. "Don't do this, Mary Margaret. Don't listen to her."

Again, Mary Margaret gently ran her finger down Emma's cheek. "Shh. It'll be all right." Then she grabbed Emma's arms and whirled her around, pinning her hands behind her back and pressing the dagger against her throat.

"No!" Emma cried. She struggled to break free but Mary Margaret's grip was surprisingly strong.

"I wanted you awake for this, Ms. Swan," Regina spoke up with a weary sigh, "but if you're going to be this much trouble …" She rested the palm of her hand on Emma's forehead, closed her eyes, and began to mumble under her breath.

Emma didn't understand a single thing coming out of Regina's mouth but what she was doing became clear almost immediately. Within seconds, she was no longer fighting against Mary Margaret's grasp and fighting the coming unconsciousness instead.

The last thing she felt was the rain starting back up, and the last thing she heard was Mary Margaret whispering, "It's okay, Emma."

Mary Margaret let out a breath of relief when a fine sheen of sweat broke out on Emma's forehead. It had taken damn near all day but her roommate's fever had finally broken.

Emma squirmed on the sofa, her eyelids fluttering, but she settled back down after a moment or two. Mary Margaret smiled before pushing herself to her feet and grabbing Emma's water glass to refill at the sink. Replenishing her fluids would be even more important now.

She set the glass on a coaster on the end table before curling up in the armchair with a book. She wanted to sit with Emma but she had a funny feeling her roommate would flip her lid if she woke to find someone fussing over her.

It took a few more minutes, but Emma soon sat up with a moan. She spotted the water glass out of the corner of her eye and snatched it from the table, greedily downing its contents.

Mary Margaret watched her with an amused smile and waited until she'd caught her breath before asking, "Would you like me to get you some more?"

"Yes, please," Emma answered, her voice weak.

Mary Margaret marked her page before standing up and refilling the glass. "How're you feeling?" she asked as she handed the glass back to Emma.

"Thirsty. Tired." Sipping her water, she glanced at the wall clock and almost did a spit take. It was just after seven in the morning, last she knew. Unless Mary Margaret was playing a really immature joke on her, it was now almost five in the afternoon. "Did I sleep all day?"

"Off and on," Mary Margaret told her gently.

Emma groaned and tore her gaze from her roommate's. "Did you … I mean, were you …" She sighed. "You didn't take a sick day to stay with me, did you?"

"Would it make you uncomfortable if I said yes?"

Without looking up, Emma mumbled, "Maybe. Can I ask why?"

"Your temperature was almost a hundred and three, Emma. Someone needed to monitor it. We could have had a real problem on our hands if it rose much higher than that."

The fact that Mary Margaret had used "we" instead of "you" did not go unnoticed. Emma simply wasn't prepared to deal with what it meant that her roommate had made Emma's problem her problem, too. "That explains the dreams, then."

"What dreams?"

"Just some really weird dreams," Emma replied with a dismissive shrug.

Mary Margaret wanted to ask her about them, partly because she was curious but mostly because Emma looked like she needed to talk. However, asking Emma outright would make her clam up, so she had to end-run around it. "You were mumbling in your sleep at one point. I made out 'Don't' a couple of times and then 'No.'"

Emma began running the satin edging of the blanket between her thumb and forefinger. "It wasn't all bad. The first part of it was actually nice. I was a little kid, having a picnic with my mother."

"Your mother?" Mary Margaret asked, a gentle smile on her face.

She nodded. "I mean, I don't know what my mother looks like, obviously, but I just knew that this woman was my mother." The fact that the woman in her dream looked an awful lot like Mary Margaret with longer hair was on the tip of her tongue but she couldn't seem to force the words out. "Anyway, we ate our lunch and she started making me a crown of flowers because she said I was her little princess."

Mary Margaret's heart broke as Emma described her dream. It killed her more than words could say that Emma never had a mother who would take her on picnics and never had anyone treat her like a little princess. She didn't know why the stories about Emma's childhood made her feel this way but it was like a tiny little piece of her died every time Emma told her something new.

"But then things changed," Emma continued, her brow furrowing as she tried to make sense of the dream. "My mother and the picnic basket and everything disappeared and I was all alone. It started raining so I ran into the woods, and all of a sudden, I wasn't a little girl anymore. I found you trapped in a cage and you said that Regina had used you to set a trap for me. Turned out she had a mind control spell that made us do whatever she said, and she wanted me to kill Henry and then you to kill me. She'd already cast it on you and was going to cast it on me … and that's all I remember."

"Wow." Just the description of the nightmare sent a shudder down Mary Margaret's spine. "That sounds awful."

"It was," Emma agreed. She finally met Mary Margaret's eyes and gave her a sheepish half-smile. "I've been hanging out with Henry way too much if I'm having dreams that Regina can cast magic spells."

At that, Mary Margaret laughed. "Perhaps." She looked her roommate over and suddenly remembered that Emma hadn't eaten all day. "Do you think you'll be able to eat something?"

"Maybe some toast," Emma shrugged. She wasn't hungry at all but she knew she should get something into her system.

Mary Margaret nodded, headed to the kitchen, and dropped two slices of bread in the toaster.

Emma drained the glass of water and slowly pushed herself to her feet with the intention of refilling it. A wave of dizziness forced her back down on the sofa with a grunt. "Emma, what are you doing?" Mary Margaret asked, hurrying over to the couch.

"Trying to get myself a damn glass of water," she grumbled.

With a mildly exasperated huff, Mary Margaret snatched the glass from her roommate's hand and filled it at the sink. When the toast popped up, she buttered it and returned to Emma with the water, the plate of toast, and the thermometer in her hand. "Temperature first, then food and fluids."

Emma made a face at her as she stuck the thermometer in her mouth. When the device beeped a minute later, she pulled it from her mouth, glanced down at the display, and wrinkled her nose.

Mary Margaret took it from her before she had a chance to clear the reading: 101.2. Still fever territory but much better than earlier. She gave Emma a comforting smile and then went back to the kitchen so Emma could eat her toast in peace.

After she finished the toast, she once again tried to stand. This time, she succeeded. She slowly made her way over to the sink to deposit her dirty dish. Mary Margaret took one look at her pale face and shook her head. "You look awful, Emma."

"You sure know how to charm a girl," Emma replied with a roll of her eyes.

Mary Margaret smirked at her roommate, then returned her attention to the dishes that had accumulated during the day. She usually washed them as she used them but she hadn't wanted the running water to disturb Emma.

"Mary Margaret?"

"Hmm?"

"Thanks for looking out for me today."

"It was no trouble," she assured her roommate with a smile. "Anyone would have done it."

Emma averted her eyes, staring down at the counter instead. "You're the first one I can remember."

Mary Margaret turned the water off and gave her roommate her full attention. "What about when you were a kid?"

She shrugged. "Maybe someone took care of me when I was really little but I just remember my foster parents sending me to my room with some water and saltines and telling the other kids to stay away from me until I got better. No sense in getting the whole household sick."

Once again, Mary Margaret felt her heart breaking for her roommate but she was surprised to feel a heavy guilt underlying the sympathy. She had no idea where this guilt had come from but she had a sudden and overwhelming desire to shower Emma with affection and give her everything she'd never had growing up.

Uncomfortable under Mary Margaret's gaze and suddenly exhausted, Emma pushed herself away from the counter. "I need to lie down."

She headed towards the stairs to the loft but Mary Margaret grabbed her hand and tugged her to a stop. "Couch. You can try the stairs later." Emma rolled her eyes but obeyed Mary Margaret's command and shuffled over to the couch. "Just rest," the teacher instructed. "I'll be over to check on you in a little bit."

"Yes, Mother," Emma sarcastically shot back. When Mary Margaret grinned at her, Emma just sighed.

She plopped back down on the sofa, pulled the blanket up around her shoulders, and shut her eyes. She listened to Mary Margaret humming quietly as she finished the dishes and allowed a tiny smile.

She'd never admit it to her roommate – hell, it was hard enough to admit to herself – but having someone look after her when she was sick actually felt sort of nice. If she felt well enough in the morning, she planned to buy Mary Margaret a hot chocolate at Granny's to thank her.

Holy crap, being sick was making her kind of sappy. It needed to stop, because if there was one thing Emma Swan did not do, it was sappy.

The water turned off and soft footsteps approached the sofa before stopping just behind it. There was a moment of silence before Mary Margaret, clearly thinking that Emma was either already asleep or well on her way, whispered, "Sweet dreams, Emma."

Emma couldn't recall a single person saying to her before, not when they actually meant it. The words filled her with a sense of comfort, making her smile grow a little wider.

Again with the sappy, she thought. But maybe being a teeny, tiny, little bit sappy wasn't the worst thing in the world.