ataraxionlogs | open-ish | i'm just trying to find my way to you

Emma, this is your mother.

[ As if her voice or her device number or any other number of identifying factors wouldn't have been enough. ]

Or... Mary Margaret? Whatever you want to call me. Shoot. Can I start this over?

[ There's some muffled sounds as Snow is clearly turning the device over in her hands and tapping at the screen to find some way to start her message over, to no avail. ]

Uhm, right. Sorry. That started out rocky. I had a point, though--

Do we need to talk? I've heard some people talking about... some stuff. I mean, your business is your business, but I just wanted to let you know that I'm here. If you want to talk about anything. Anything at all.

So. That's it, I guess. Call me back? Or don't, if you don't want to. But I'd like it if you would. Or come see me! I'm around. [ Oh my gosh, get it together, Blanchard. ] Right. Bye!

[ She gets the message right away, but given that she’s already planning a patrol down along the third level later for SEC, she puts responding off until then. Something nags at her throughout the day—primarily, what the hell could Mary Margaret mean?

Hook’s concern about the recon team comes to mind. The illness. Beyond that, though …

The confusion continues to furrow her brow even as she treks downstairs and catches Mary Margaret in the living spaces of the third floor. In the kitchen, Emma begins fixing herself coffee while she engages. ]

Hey. I got your message. [ Opens the cabinet. Pulls down coffee grinds. All of her movements seem carefully planned and executed. ] Everything okay?

At least you had a family line to trace back.

[ The minute it comes out of her mouth, Emma feels a little guilty for it. That’s the old Emma. The rough around the edges, adversity olympics Emma. She doesn’t want to do that anymore. Her life sucked. Big surprise. She’s trying to move past it, but the active effort isn’t always enough.

Still. She feels the need to explain. ]

My … family wasn’t really accessible. I got pushed around foster care. Didn’t manage to find my real parents until last year.

[ Emma's mother is fussing about the kitchen while Emma makes coffee, toasting slices of bread to snack on, because that seems appropriate. ] What? [ The slices pop early, startling the already-awkward Mary Margaret. She shoves them back into the toaster with more force than is strictly necessary. Smooshed bread toasts the same as unsmooshed bread. It's okay. ]

No, I'm fine. What about you? Are you fine?

I'm sorry, ( genuinely, and with no offense taken at the initial bite - like, fair enough. for as much bullshit as there's been in ilde's life, she's not ignorant of how many safety nets she's had, over the years. her father's money, her husband's willingness to cover for her, the fact that she had living relations to contact, even if they didn't tell her the truth until it was almost too late.

she's lucky, in a lot of ways. it's just the ugliest parts of herself come from illness and not hardship. makes life interesting, when there's more hardship to go around. )

My father got lucky-- when he was taken away from his parents, he was given to a couple who couldn't conceive that their parents knew. He was always such a princess about them trying to contact him, though-- so many people who'd kill to know where they came from, he didn't want a bar of it.

When the place you come from is that unbelievable, I’m not sure I can blame him.

[ It’s certainly crossed her mind to turn and run. In so many ways, she feels like she doesn’t belong amongst them. While they have their fairytale history and their magic, Emma doesn’t engage it. She grew up in the real world where none of it was possible, where there were no happy endings. Letting go of that isn’t as easy as breaking some curse.

What's more, that real world doesn't look so bad by comparison. What good is a happy ending if it gets taken away at every turn? She found her parents, then got swept away to another world. They got back, and Cora tried to destroy them. Her mother's grief had almost crushed her, and then Regina and Gregmara tried to destroy the town. Since that, there had been Pan, and—And it's too much, sometimes. ]

Is there a reason I shouldn’t be? You sounded pretty worried.

[ Not one to mince words, Emma opts to tackle the issue head-on. She turns around after setting a mug down on the counter, leaning her hips back, and resting her palms against the edge on either side of herself. ]

Obviously something’s on your mind.

Edited 2014-09-21 05:06 (UTC)

For him it was just- loyalty to his mother. I got that, I tried to respect it for a long time, but-- you know, he can't make the decision for everybody.

( emery'd been happy with his adoptive family; he'd been the miracle child, the son they'd always thought they'd never have. his parents - particularly his mother - had doted on him and he'd felt, and made clear that he felt, it'd be disloyal to go looking for anything else. he'd turned his back on the idea of ever being anything but their son long before fairies got involved in the mix.

blandly wry, a moment later-- )

Then he accidentally enchanted a ballroom full of people and said 'oh, fuck' into a microphone and had to leave Italy or be burned as a witch, I guess we don't always get to choose for ourselves, either.

( it's pretty horrible (because she's not kidding, he might not have lived through that), but be honest: that's also kind of funny. )

Edited (every??? emery your name is dumb it makes me typos) 2014-09-21 05:09 (UTC)

I'm not worried! Concerned, maybe, but that's not the same thing.

[ Snow shakes her head and goes through the motions of smoothing her ~~ridiculously~~ long hair back to pull into a ponytail. Only she doesn't have anything to fasten it with, so she lets it all drop back into place again. ]

It's just that I heard conflicting stories. I don't know if you made out with someone, or got into a fight, and I just wondered if you're okay. [ She winces as soon as the words leave her lips. But there, she said it. ]

[ Oh. Good.

That level of crazy, granted, sounds about on par with Greg and Tamara, and yet Emma finds herself wanting less and less to be connected to any of it. That’s the kind of danger that awaits her with these fairytales. Not just her, but more importantly Henry. And they’re all expecting her to fix it any time it happens. ]

How do you accidentally enchant anything?

One of the things we have in common with sirens is...you know, the music. Thing.

( ilde tries to avoid drawing attention to the fact she can mind-control people with her singing voice or other musical talents - she can do it without singing, too, but it's harder. this is not something that you generally want to discuss casually with people, who will, generally, look at you a bit differently.

but emma can probably take the thrust of what she's talking about, all the same. )

My father's a composer and musician who's spent most of his life performing for charity; he probably never had an inkling of why his causes always raised the precise goal figure, but there you go, that was...a really simple thing, you know. He cared about something passionately, so for a little while, people listening to him play cared about it, too, and gave accordingly.

He got a power boost, it got a little bit - weirder. I don't know the exact details.

( she makes a face. )

I can tell you from my extremely experienced position of six more years than you, none of that bullshit gets any less bizarre, by the way.

[ Emma’s jaw goes immediately slack, and the rest of her expression falls into something similarly dumbfounded immediately thereafter.

It’s a good thing she hadn’t finished making her coffee, or it’d be on the floor now.

Hastily collecting herself, she straightens and begins to turn away, jaw set, to continue on about putting grinds into the machine and so forth. ]

I—Oh.

[ Fuck. ]

With who?

[ If she might have gotten into a fight, she figures, maybe it’s not the obvious (and only) answer. Her eyes squeeze shut while she’s looking away, a silent grimace as she curses herself for not considering this moment before, well, this moment. She slaps the lid to the coffeemaker shut, taking a deep breath.

At the very least, the question might buy her some time to figure out how to navigate this conversation. It’s not the first time she’s had to tell her mother she kissed Hook.

Somehow, reminding herself of that only makes it worse. ]

Yeah, no kidding. I just dropped into Neverland to team up with Tinkerbell to fight Peter Pan. I’m about full-up on ridiculous.

[ Still, she sighs, scrubbing a hand over her face. The music thing. That’s, at least, good to keep in mind for if it ever comes up here. The more she knows, the better equipped she’ll be to handle it when it happens. Maybe. That’s the theory, anyway. She still isn’t sure she wants to know half as much about any of this magic bullshit as she already does. ]

( philosophically: ) I always thought he was a little prick in that book.

Seriously?

[ Emma was a Peter Pan stan and her childhood has been ruined. It's an orphan thing. She used to call herself a Lost Girl in idealistic, hopeful solidarity when she was just a kid. Now, having heard Rumplestiltskin's father use it as a weapon, it makes her want to crawl out of her own skin. ]

[ That was not at all the response Snow was expecting. Oh, you heard about that, sure. Or I don't want to talk about it, even. But not that. ]

What do you mean with who? Do you regularly wrestle with men in the showers?

[ Mom's not judging you, sweetie! Honest!!! ]

Oh, come on! He was terrible. I mean, he was fantastic, but I always wondered how many lost boys he'd probably just sort of got into trouble and forgotten about because they weren't fun any more.

Wendy was wonderful.

( how quickly the mighty magic moms have fallen. what is this conversation. )

Wendy was a little traitor who was ready to sell us out. She was working for him!

[ Sorry to crush that dream. ]

Real life never lives up to storybooks.

( so unfair. )

Erik?!

[ That answers that. Emma sounds a cross between shocked and disgusted. Not least of all because at the time of said wrestling, he had gills. Even on a normal day, tho … ew. She turns around, holding up her hands. ]

That’s not— [ Oh boy. ] He was drowning. [ Wow he was drowning in the shower and you had to save him with your vagina? Good one, Emma. She grimaces, realizing how that sounds, and pushes through. ] The nanites, when they acted up, they gave him — He had gills, and the stasis fluid went over badly.

It’s not like—God, no. I don't know how it looked, but believe me. That's not—[ She just shakes her head, dropping her hands. ]

That's why they call it real.

[ #cynic. ]

[ Snow holds her own hands up quickly, as if relinquishing ownership of the rumor she'd laid down between them. ]

I don't know his name! I'm just telling you what I heard. And I was really confused, to be honest with you. But what you're saying makes much more sense.

[ Because, really, that's just the kind of family they are. The kind of family where saying, "Oh, it's okay. He had gills," makes perfect sense. ]

Is he okay?

Probably. I dumped him off with medical.

[ She sighs, shaking her head. ]

There were a lot of after-effects that just weren’t cleaning themselves up. He’s probably in corrective surgery hell.

[ And yet, there’s something tellingly tense still in the shifty dart of her eyes as she turns back around. Yep. Erik. That’s the full story. ]

Not always worse, just, you know. God forbid anybody think they're prepared for anything.

( depending on the stories you're reading, after all, fairytales can be pretty fucking horrifying. or they were when people were reading them to her, as a child. she refused to wear red shoes under any circumstances until she was well into her adolescence.

just in case. )

I guess that's what happens when there's a billion of us writing the story instead of just one.

[ Except fairytales aren't just stories for her. They're her family history. The mental block between her and accepting that fact remains, however. ]

open-ish | i'm just trying to find my way to you

beginning via comms | i found out that everybody talks, everybody talks, everybody talks too much

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