Impossible Choices, an once upon a time fanfic

Impossible Choices
by misscam

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

Author's Note: Set some time after 2x10 with Cora's presence in Storybrooke known, will probably be made AU by future episodes.

"Charming," the voice says, cutting through the darkness like a sword, sharp and painful. No. It's not the voice, it's his body that hurts, dull and aching in most places and sharper pains in select places. He moves slightly, becoming aware of soft hands on his face and hard ground underneath him.

"Charming," the voice says again, almost like a plea this time and his body seems to respond to its familiarity before his mind can catch up, his hands seeking hers.

Snow.He forces his eyes open as soon as the realisation clicks and it is indeed her face. She is leaning over him, her eyes glistening slightly and worry etched into every inch of her skin. The moment their gazes meet, she smiles, and he can't help but smile back.

That's when he notices the gash on her forehead. The blood has all but dried, but with a sinking feeling he remembers the moment she got it. Cora. Cora came and they tried to fight her and she threw Snow against a crate while he struggled to get free from the witch's grasp.

"Where are we?" he manages to get out, wincing as he tries to sit up. It's mostly dark around them, one single lamp in a corner illuminating nothing but brick.

"I don't know," Snow says, leaning into him as he sits up, moving her hands from his face to grip the cloth of his shirt. He puts a hand on her back, ignoring the pain that shoots up his arm because of it.

"Why didn't she just kill us?" he murmurs. His head feels heavy and it hurts to think, but he tries to force his mind clearer anyway. They're still alive, so there is a chance, but he has to be able to think if they're going to use it.

"I think we're a gift," Snow says miserably.

"To who?" he asks, and she looks at him, the shadows across her face still not hiding the expression on her face from him.

"To Regina."

Even if the sleeping curse is something that has affected everyone in her family but her, Emma has still had her fair amount of nightmares in her lifetime. Most of them are forgotten except as vague images in her mind, but since returning to Storybrooke, one nightmare has been clear and recurring.

Losing Henry. Usually it is Regina who comes in her nightmares and reclaim him but sometimes it is more vague terrors that she know are equally about losing her way as a parent as Henry being gone.

Not in any dream did she think it was her parents that might be lost to her, and yet here she is, wanting desperately to wake up as the cold wind of the harbour whips in her face.

"I am sorry, Emma," Ruby says again. Granny is patting her shoulder, but Ruby doesn't even seem to notice it, looking heartbroken. Since returning to Storybrooke, Emma has noticed the bond between Ruby and her parents, but she hasn't seen it in such stark lines of grief and horror on a face before.

"You're sure you didn't see who did it?" Emma asks, the sheriff in her seemingly on autopilot.

"No," Ruby says miserably. "I just heard the struggle – wolf hearing, you know – and when I got there, I saw what you're looking at now."

Signs of struggle, check. Crates smashed, some blood, drag marks and other little signs that something violent has taken place.

"And you're sure..."

"It was their voices." Ruby cuts in, almost defensibly, as if how well she knows David and Mary Margaret is at doubt. Emma isn't doubting Ruby knows her parents much better than she still does – she just doesn't want to jump to the terrifying conclusion.

And yet neither David nor Mary Margaret are answering calls or texts and no one has seen them since they were spotted walking down towards the harbour.

"Shit," Emma says, and doesn't realise she's said it aloud until Ruby puts a comforting hand on her arm.

"We'll find them," Ruby says. "I will search this whole town if I have to."

"That won't help you," a voice says, one that Emma remembers all too well and she balls her fists.

Cora.

Sure enough, the woman is standing a few feet away in the same clothes Emma last saw her in, looking more amused than anything. In Storybrooke, she looks out of place, a creature of fairy tales out of place in the real world and not caring to adapt at all.

"What have you done with them?" Emma asks, proud that her voice doesn't crack or waver. She has to be strong right now, for this woman pounces on weakness.

"I gave them to my daughter," Cora says calmly, while Ruby makes a strangled noise. "I thought she would enjoy ripping our your father's heart and watch your mother cry over it."

"She wanted something else," Emma infers, feeling her heart contract a little painfully at the image Cora just painted.

"You seem to know my daughter well," Cora says, a faint smile. "Yes, Miss Swan. She wants her son. My grandson. Your parents are alive and will be returned to you in exchange for Henry. You have two hours to meet me here with the boy. If not, you can return here in two hours to watch them die."

With that, she is gone in a flash of purple and Emma is left wondering how she can feel like her heart has been ripped out and crushed when she can still hear her own heartbeats all too loudly in her chest.

They're locked in a basement of some sort, Charming has concluded after a walk (or more like a limp) around the room. The door is strong and of steel, and can't be budged with their combined (currently limited) strength. They do manage to find a few loose bricks as makeshift weapons, gathering them in a corner and then huddling down together there, regaining some strength.

His head feels a little clearer, but his body doesn't feel much better. Cracked ribs at the very least, he gathers, while Snow's ankle has swollen in a way he doesn't like at all. Not exactly fighting force, but he draws strength from the mere presence of his wife by his side. Something to fight for.

"I don't think Regina will kill us," Snow says into the darkness, but he knows her well enough to detect the uncertainty in her voice she's trying so hard to mask with conviction. "Henry would never forgive her and she knows that."

"I don't know, Snow," he says. "After you and Emma vanished into the portal to the enchanted forest, she was about to kill me when Henry walked in."

"You never told me that."

"She told Henry she wanted to redeem herself after that. She seemed to try until..."

"Archie," Snow says, a world of sadness in the name. He takes her hand in his, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. "If only we'd known Cora was here, we could have ..."

"But we didn't know she was here," he points out. "We gave Regina so many chances she failed..."

"And Cora may have taken away the one chance she hadn't failed yet," Snow finishes, sounding tired. "Charming? Is it always going to be like this, either someone to fight to keep our family together and safe or having to find each other yet again?"

"No," he says with all the conviction he has. "There has to be a happy ending. Have faith."

She smiles faintly at that, and he puts a hand to her cheek. She watches him intently as his thumb moves across her skin in a gentle caress.

"It would be worth it, though," he says softly. "For you, for our family, for our friends, for everything we have... I'd gladly fight to the end of my days."

She kisses him at that, neither of them acknowledging that the end of their days might just be today, but the desperation in the kiss is still screaming it loudly.

Henry is a perceptive boy and while it does cross Emma's mind to keep the truth from him, she comes to the conclusion that this might make him even more concerned.

So she takes a deep breath and tells him as calmly as she can that David and Mary Margaret is missing and that she needs him to stay in the apartment with the dwarfs while she organizes the search.

She doesn't tell him about Cora's proposal; she doesn't even want to think about that or making a choice like that.

"Do you think they're still alive?" Henry asks when she finishes, the sadness in his voice making him seem so much older than his eleven years.

"I know they are," she says firmly. For an hour and forty-five minutes more, at least, her brain reminds her and she screams at it. No. She just got used to thinking of them as family, she is not going to lose them now.

"Gramps always believed you were still alive after you and Mary Margaret fell into the portal," Henry says, and Emma tries not to feel touched at that; she can't hold any more emotions without breaking down right now.

"He was right," she says brightly, but it sounds brittle even to her.

"He let me help," Henry goes on, looking at her with expectation.

"Henry, right now the best help you can give me is be here where I know where you are, okay kid?" she says intently.

He looks at her for a long time.

"Okay," he finally says. "Good always wins. You'll find them."

Faith of his grandfather, he thinks faintly. She hope this won't be the day to kill it.

After Emma walks downstairs, Henry sits for a while watching his hands, thinking about what Emma just told him and what he overheard her tell Leroy, putting all the pieces together in his mind.

Gramps and Mary Margaret are in danger.

This calls for Operation Python for sure.

Win-win, her mother calls it, Regina muses.

Win one: Get Henry, be able to take him somewhere and explain everything, make him see her way, win him back and have her son's heart.

Win two: See the look on Snow's face as her husband's heart is crushed before her eyes, then finally kill her.

Win-win.

Then how does it feel like she's already lost, Regina thinks faintly and watches her mirror.

Lose-lose, Emma thinks, watching Storybrooke abuzz with the search around her. Lose her son, the son she just started to feel like a mother to. Lose David and Mary Margaret, her parents as impossible as that logically seems but emotionally is just starting to ring true.

Lose-lose.

No.

There has to be another way.

The Swan girl surprised her, Cora has to admit (but not enjoy it). Having a protected heart, using magic... Her parents did too, Snow and her prince putting up a fierce fight even with the trap she had set for them.

And now, watching the harbour, it seems another member of the family is about to surprise her.

Interesting.

Charming has come close to death several times. He's even been ready for it a few times, or at least willing to die for things he considered more important than his own life. Love. Snow. His daughter.

There are things worth dying for, but there are also things worth living for, and oh, oh how he wants to live right now.

He has his wife back, his memories, his daughter that he is still learning to know, his grandson that looks at him almost like a father and he even still has hope that the enchanted forest may be restored to them. So many things to live for, and he wants it, wants this life desperately.

Snow does too, he can tell from her fingers digging into his shoulder as she tilts her head and kisses him again, fiercely and possessively.

When the door cracks open, his body tenses, but Snow keeps her lips glued to his even though he knows she heard it too. His fingers find one of the bricks they've gathered, he imagines Snow is doing the same even as they by all appearances are still making out fiercely. Enough to get the element of surprise, maybe.

Right. Time to fight for this life then.

As the minutes tick by, Emma feels every second as a crack in her composure. Ruby still hasn't picked up their scent, search of Regina's house has turned up nothing and Storybrooke is much too large to search every abandoned building within two hours.

And she can't give up her son for her parents. She can't. Even less can she let them die, and so she does the only thing she can.

Call on Mr. Gold.

He seems to be waiting for her as she walks in, and she considers the possibility that he even had something to do with it. Somehow she doesn't quite think so. For all his dealings, he does seem almost fond of David and Mary Margaret, maybe because they've been so instrumental to everything he's done or maybe even for something more than that.

"Ah," Mr. Gold says after a moment, regarding her calmly. "The second member of the family for the day."

"Second?" she repeats, wondering for a moment if he has actually seen one of her parents.

"Young Henry was just here," Gold says, and Emma's heart seems to skip a beat, and another. "Looking for his grandparents, I believe."

"What did you do?" she asks. Oh hell. She should have known. Henry has sneaked out on Regina often enough, she should have known. She should have. She was too focused on what she had to do to find David and Mary Margaret to consider Henry's feelings for them both and what he'd do.

"Don't worry, sheriff. I know a thing or two about losing a son. He will be fine. He's already gone to the harbour, you can't stop him."

"What. Did. You. Do," she repeats, wanting to scream at his calm. Wanting to scream at it all, in fact.

"Made a deal, of course," he says. "And now you and I are going to make one."

It is dark, Henry notes as he edges the door even more open. There is a light on, but it's barely lighting up any of the room and he can only just make out some shapes in the darkness. Looks like they are... Huh. He is pretty sure true love's kiss only works on curses, not kidnappings, but David and Mary Margaret still seem to be testing it.

"Gramps? Mary Margaret?"

"Henry?!" Mary Margaret asks incredulously. He beams as the two get up, Mary Margaret limping and David looking even paler than he did under the sleeping curse. "How are you...?"

"He came to trade himself," Regina says, and Mary Margaret and David go very, very still.

Emma runs, and yet everything seems to be happening too slow. Before her, David's sword is leading the way with the tracking spell Gold put on it, behind her Ruby and the dwarfs are following and it's all going too slow, too slow.

She's not going to lose. She can't, she refuses to.

Charming watches Regina walk into the room, a hand on Henry's shoulder, feeling Snow's fingers dig painfully into side.

"Trade?" he asks, wishing he had his sword. Regina makes no moves to attack them, but he isn't sure what she'll do if she's pushed.

"Henry for you two," Regina says. "My mother seemed to think your deaths would please me. I offered an alternative."

"Emma agreed to that?" Snow says, disbelief in her voice.

"She did not," Emma says, and they all turn to the door. She is clutching his sword as she walks in, Charming notes, it makes him feel strangely proud in the middle of all this. He can spot Ruby and dwarfs behind her, but then Regina lifts a hand and slams the door shut before they can enter.

"Miss Swan," Regina says calmly. Her grip on Henry's shoulder grows stronger, and Charming judges the distance to her. It may only take him a second to reach Henry, but it may be a second too long with her magical abilities.

"Henry," Emma says, her gaze flickering to him and Snow as well. Her expression is pained and he imagines neither him nor Snow is a particularly pretty sight.

"I knew you wouldn't like it," Henry says to Emma. "I have to do this."

"No, Henry," she says. "I can't give you up."

"You can't lose your parents either," Henry goes on. "You just found them. I want you to trade me for Gramps and Mary Margaret. My mom won't harm me."

"I would never harm you," Regina says to Henry, looking hurt at the mere thought. "Listen to him, Miss Swan. You want to make this trade."

"I'd rather die than let you hurt my daughter like that," Charming cuts in sharply. "We won't have to do any trading at all."

"Oh, she does," Regina says, her eyes dark. "Or did you all forget my mother?"

She had forgotten Cora, Snow realises, but watching Cora teleport into the room in a cloud of purple is a stark reminder. Emma is still turned towards Regina and therefore doesn't notice the new arrival, Cora already lifting her hands.

"No!" Charming calls out, and she is already moving alongside him. Cora turns to them, an amused look on her face as she directs her magic to them instead, hitting them right on. She can hear her own whimper of pain as her and Charming both slam into the wall, and Emma's strangled cry.

"Don't hurt them!" Henry says fiercely.

"I just want my son," Regina says. "Let him go and I won't go after any of you again. You can all be safe. I just want my son."

Snow lifts her head enough to see Cora smile at that, Emma still clutching Charming's sword, Regina clutching Henry's shoulder and when she turns her gaze, Charming's eyes meeting hers with a determined look.

Right.

"No," Snow says, and Emma looks up surprised to see her mother stagger to her feet despite looking like hell. David too, both of them clutching bricks. "He's my grandson as well. I am not letting your mother anywhere near him."

"And how are you going to stop me?" Cora asks delightedly, holding out her hands as if ready to blast again. Emma takes one breath, focusing her desire to protect her parents, seeing both David and Mary Margaret look stunned as Cora lifts her hands and nothing happens.

Magic to counter magic.

"Together," Emma says, swinging her sword – as expected, Cora teleports immediately, but at that moment David and Mary Margaret are already lunging at Regina.

Too late, as it turns out – in a flash of purple, Henry and Regina are gone.

His mother hugs him the moment the spell finishes, and Henry lets her for a moment, feeling the desperation in her embrace.

"Henry," she says longingly."I love you."

As he steps back, he can see Cora look at them both.

"You take hearts but you know you can't own them," he tells his mother, watching shadows flicker across her face as he delivers the speech he has been thinking about since he formulated this plan, his Operation Python. "I love you, but I love them too. I will never love just you. If you really loved me, you wouldn't try to make me choose. It's impossible to choose."

"Henry..." she tries to cut in, but he shakes his head. He has practiced this speech so many times in his head heading over to the harbour, he has to get it out.

"I still believe you can change .You didn't hurt them. Your mother did. If you go after any of them again you will lose me."

With that, he reaches into his pocket, grips the key-chain in his pocket and thinks of Emma as hard as he can.

"No!" Emma screams, the sound tearing into Charming more painfully than any of Cora's attacks had; he staggers a little and falls to his knees, Snow already on all fours looking like she wants to throw up.

No, no, no, no.

The door (what is left of it) slams open as six dwarfs with pickaxes push into the room, Ruby already heading for Snow and him with a look as furious as any wolf can manage.

"I can't lose him," Emma says brokenly, and then there is a flash of purple and Charming has a moment to think it's Cora come back before he realises it's Henry.

Henry beaming as Emma gasps and embraces him, her face radiating joy; as he looks over to the beaming face of Snow he sees it mirrored.

Choices, Regina thinks dimly. Some of them are indeed impossible.

"You lost," Cora says, and Regina turns to look at her mother, closing her eyes for a moment to not cry.

"No," she says, remembering the moment he said 'I love you', clinging to it like a life raft. He meant it. "You lost, mother. You orchestrated this. I still haven't made my play."

Safely home, Henry talks excitedly about the key chain Gold gave him and enchanted to return him to her, and Emma listens with half an ear, watching their hands intertwined. Tomorrow she is going to give him a lot of choice words about disobeying orders, running off, making deals with Gold and trying to be a hero at eleven.

(Even if she made a deal too, one she'd rather not think about until he comes to collect.)

For now she is too tired, letting him talk himself into exhaustion and then finally falling asleep. She watches him for a while longer, reassuring herself he's there, safe and sound. The apartment should be safe enough for now with the dwarfs on guard outside and Gold mentioning some protection spells for the future. For free this time, out of the goodness of his supposed heart.

Tomorrow she also has to find out how Henry climbed out the window and make sure he can't repeat the venture. She may have been happy he could do that when he was in Regina's care, but she's not quite herself anymore now. She's trying to be a parent too.

And a daughter, she thinks, walking downstairs. She can hear their whispered voices as she walks closer, both of them refusing to stay at the hospital despite their injuries. It doesn't surprise her, but it is still strangely heartwarming to have them here.

They grow silent as she approaches, watching her with so much love she feels a little bit dizzy. David has an arm lightly around Mary Margaret, her bandaged ankle on a pillow. Bed for at least a few days for them, and Emma makes a mental note to call ahead before coming home the next few days.

"How is he?" Mary Margaret asks.

"Proper little hero," Emma says, looking at them both. "Runs in the family, I guess."

David and Mary Margaret exchange a glance, then both smile at her. Tiredly, but genuinely, and it makes her want to crawl into bed with them as if she was a little girl.

She sits down on the side of the bed instead, David's arm coming to rest at her back, supportive without being too pushy.

"I'm sorry," she says hurriedly, forcing the words out. "I couldn't give up Henry."

"Oh, Emma," Mary Margaret says, her voice thick. "Of course you wouldn't give up Henry to Cora. You're his mother."

"And you're my parents. I couldn't let you die either," she manages, then the day's events seem to all come crashing down over her at the same time. She can vaguely feel the tears streaking her face as David shifts her against his shoulder and murmurs her name softly, Mary Margaret putting her arms around them both, leaning her head against Emma's shoulder.

It hurts. It hurts to know she was almost forced to make a choice today she couldn't make, that her whole family is all too willing to die for each other and protect each other.

It also fills her with fierce joy.

Love is both weakness and strength, Emma thinks distantly; it both breaks you and makes you stronger than anything.

It is still dark when Henry wakes up abruptly, sitting up in bed. For a moment he wonders if something has happened again, but everything seems calm. The house is quiet, and the sky through his window is full of twinkling stars.

Emma isn't here, and so he walks downstairs carefully, eventually finding her in David and Mary Margaret's bed. They're all sleeping there, Emma still in her clothes on top of the sheets, David and Mary Margaret curled together under. His family, he thinks as he watches them. His family, one member missing but perhaps not lost forever.

Another operation, he decides. That's what it will be, his plan to get Regina redeemed and keep his family safe. He's not going to choose between them. That would be impossible, so he won't do it.

Operation Dragon, that's it. He'll have to be as brave as a hero facing a dragon to do it, after all, but he can do it.

He loves them, after all.

FIN