Beane Odette: Reawakened: A Once Upon A Time Tale

It sounded depressing there in her head, ringing around, but it was her wish, she had to admit.

She was not one to indulge in self-pity. Plenty of people had worse pasts than she had, and she was strong enough to contain the ache of her blank history. That didn't mean she didn't get lonely, no, but it meant she could handle loneliness. She just also needed to wish it away sometimes.

Just as she blew out the candle, the doorbell rang. Emma frowned at the door, ticking through the various fugitives she'd hunted down in the last few years, trying to recall if any of them had recently been released from prison. Probably, she thought. One of these days she was going to open the door to a sledgehammer falling down on her head.

She went and looked through the peephole and thought: What in the hell?

When she opened the door, a small boy — a stranger — stood looking back at her. He had shaggy brown hair and was wearing a sagging, full backpack. He stared up at her, eyes wide.

— Hello? — Emma said hesitantly.

— Hi, — said the boy. — Are you Emma Swan?

— I… am? — said Emma. — Can I help you?

The kid smiled, held out his hand. — I'm Henry Mills, — he said. — I'm your son.

Emma stared. She didn't take his hand.

— I don't have a son, — she said flatly.

The boy seemed to ignore this. Instead of responding, he pushed past her, looking at the kitchen.

She was too shocked to do anything, to stop him.

— Ten years ago, — he said casually, looking around. He turned back to her. — Did you give up a baby for adoption?

Emma again said nothing. Some of the color had drained from her face, though; she noted it when she looked in the mirror.

— I'm him. The kid. Are you gonna eat that cupcake?

— I…

It could be him. Emma didn't think he was lying, and she could see her eyes in his eyes. But if he was the son she had spent so many years burying and forgetting, to see him here, so casually asking for a cupcake, sent her into fight-or-flight mode. She felt dizzy. She felt…

She didn't know what she felt.

(She never knew what she felt.)

She closed the door and turned, trying to think of something to say.

— You can have it, — she said, distracted. — Have the whole thing.

This seemed to please him. Emma put the cupcake on a plate, removed the candle, set him up on a stool, and excused herself.

In the bathroom, she stared at her face in the mirror, steadying herself, holding the edge of the sink. How different she looked from ten years ago, when she was only eighteen and all alone. She remembered looking in the mirror then, too, in the last days before the birth, when she'd been holed up in a dusty jail simply waiting, not a soul to help her. Loneliness. She remembered feeling it then, and realizing that the baby she was about to give up would have meant the end of loneliness had she kept him. But she didn't.

She took a few more breaths.

— Get ahold of yourself, Swan, — she said out loud.

At the sound of her own voice, a more reasonable, skeptical, and stronger part of her mind stirred and snapped to life. Old Emma. Tough Emma. Bail-bond Emma. The real question: Who was this kid, really? He was certainly not her son. Here she was getting bent out of shape, and for all she knew he was rifling through her things in the other room, or he was the front end of some con that involved a number of large men bursting into her apartment just as she was beginning to open up….

It was a con. That was it. Someone knew her past. Someone knew her past and someone knew how to get under her skin. She hurried back out to the kitchen, ready to start shouting.

The boy was sitting at the table, eating the cupcake. He looked up, and his eyes disarmed her.

— Hi, — he said. — How was the bathroom?

— Hi, — she said, frowning again. She walked over to him, put her hand on the table, took it back. This little kid was making her unsure how to behave.

— So. I'd like to ask you a few questions, — she said finally.

— Okay, — he said. — Go.

— How… did you find me?

— I'm resourceful, — he said. He seemed bored by the question, more interested in studying her reaction than anything having to do with his own feelings. — This isn't going how I thought it would go.

— What's «this»? This conversation?

— Yes.

— How did you think it would go?

— More like Oprah. You know? With crying and hugging.

— I'm not the crying type, kid.

— I can tell, — he said, agreeing.

If she didn't know better, she would have guessed he was making fun of her. Or chiding her, at least.

— We should get going, — he added.

Emma smiled skeptically, lowered her brow. She did like his audacity, whoever he was.

— I'm sorry, I didn't know we were going anywhere, — she said. — You were just leaving. I was just going to bed. We were just about to never see each other again.

— We are going somewhere, — he said, nodding. — You have to come home with me. You have to give me a ride, at least.

— And where's home?

— Storybrooke.

Emma looked at him. She looked at the book he'd taken out of his backpack. Ah. I see. This kid, she thought, is in the middle of some kind of psychological «event».

— Storybrooke? — she said finally. — Are you kidding me?

— No. What? — he asked innocently. — That's what it's called.

— Okay, kid, — she said. — This has been fun. But one, I don't have a son. And two, I'm calling the cops now. I don't have time for this and you're obviously a runaway. Do your parents not know where you are? I'm calling the cops. — Emma went toward the phone, realizing she had said it twice.

— No you're not.

She glanced up, phone in hand.

— I'm not?

— No, — he said, taking another bite of the cupcake. — Because if you do, I'll tell them you kidnapped me.

Emma thought it through. The doubts trickled back. If he was really her kid, it was a good plan. The cops would suspect her of having a motive for taking her biological son, and at the very least, she'd get tangled up with red tape for hours, possibly days. Calling the cops would be a lot more trouble than it was worth, even if she was in the right.

But still, something was wrong with this whole thing. He couldn't actually be her son, could he?

— Listen, kid, — she said. — I like to think that I have one superpower. One thing I can do. You know what it is? I can always tell when someone's lying. Always. And you, kid, are lying.

She wasn't sure if she believed it, but she let it sink in. She was good at sussing out lies, but the truth was that he seemed to be telling the truth. Which meant she didn't know what to think.

He swallowed the last of his cupcake.

— I'm good at telling when people are lying, too, — he said.

— Are you? Spit it out.

He nodded slowly. She could see that his confidence was starting to wane; he looked upset. He's just a little kid, she thought.

And then that softhearted other Emma popped up again, and she thought: No, Emma. He's your kid.

It was the little things. His ears were the same as his father's ears. The shape of his eyes — she could see her own there, just a little bit, just a flash of I am looking in the mirror right now. Emma could even hear something in the pitch of his voice. Of course it would have been nice to be able to compare his ears and his eyes and his voice to her own father's, her own mother's. But that was another thing altogether. She'd never known her parents.

This isn't a con, Emma thought. You know it.

— Please don't call the police, — he said. — Okay? Just come home with me.

Emma took a breath.