Hello all! This is a fic request I got from crowned tiger – so I'm dedicating it to her :) - and I really hope she likes it and that you guys do, too! Just a quick Emma/Snow one-shot that deals with the aftermath of Emma over-exerting herself 'magically'. Hope you all enjoy :)

Alas, I do not own OUAT – but it would be amazing if I did!

Blinding pain and a bruised ego was all Emma Swan could feel.

Apart from the bobbing horizon as her guide, there was a part of her that was certain she wasn't moving at all. It was almost as if she was on a treadmill: constantly moving but getting nowhere. Keeping one hand locked to her side, possibly keeping her insides inside, her other hand traced the rough stone of the wall next to her, keeping her somewhat steady.

She was an idiot - that much she was sure of. The pain emanating from just above her left eyebrow and all of her right-hand side was proof of that. Emma bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut as her vision began to blot and she drew in deep breaths before attempting to move again. That continued until she could see the apartment hovering in the distance.

The worst part of it all was that she warned her; told her not to try anything stupid when alone. And Emma, partly because she believed she could do it, but mostly because she wanted to prove her wrong, didn't listen and deliberately set out to practice magic by herself.

Regina had been giving her lessons for about a month but it seemed like they weren't making much progress. Although in fairness it was tough for them to spend any amount of time together without one or both of them passing snide remarks and quitting the lessons early. Every day there was a, "Please concentrate, Miss Swan. I'm not doing this for the good of my health", or a "Are you even listening to me?", or Emma's personal favourite, "Do you honestly think I want to be here helping you? Trust me, there are a million other things I would rather spend my time doing than playing teacher to the ignorant supposed saviour". Naturally the remarks became nastier as time dragged on.

Her right leg going limp, she wedged her arm behind it, ushering it to move in pace with her left one and pulled her body along the sidewalk and up to the apartment block.

Oh God. Stairs. She forgot about them.

The blonde, slowly and methodically, dropped her head and scoped out the damage. Even the slightest of movements shot pain throughout her frame, and it was very obvious that manoeuvring her way up to her home would be practically impossible without help.

But she just didn't want Mary Margaret to worry about her. Or look at her with those big green eyes, which could see into the depths of her soul by the way, and find all that anxiety swimming in them. The idea of making her mother anxious made her own anxiety bubble in the pit of her stomach. Yet the ground was spinning and coming up to meet her and her vision was ever so gradually dissipating into a blackness and there was no way she could stay upright for long and…

There was no other option.

Steadying herself against the electrical pole, Emma raised her shoulder just enough so that her left arm could reach across her body and into the pocket of her leather jacket. It took a few attempts but with some squinting and doggedness she managed to grab the phone, flip it open and dial her mother's number.

Drawing in deep, long breaths while the phone rang, Emma readied herself for the woman's chirpy tone and decided to answer as calmly and as sweetly as humanly possible. No point in prematurely frightening a parent.

"Hello?"

Another deep breath. "Hey, mom."

"Emma!" the woman exclaimed happily. "Is everything okay?"

She pondered her answer carefully. "Yeah, well…yeah. Everything's…fine."

Silence on the other end. "What's wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"Something's wrong. You're hiding something. What is it?"

Emma adjusted her stance against the pole. "I, uh, need you to come and get me."

"Where are you?"

"Outside the apartment."

There was shuffling. The blonde braced herself and turned her gaze toward the window of their apartment that overlooked the street. Her mother was there in less than five seconds. She saw the brunette tense and she immediately dropped her eyes, wincing as she tried to lower her head.

"I'll be down in a minute," the woman replied tersely and then the phone went dead.

Refusing to move so much as to put her cell back in the pocket, Emma chucked it onto the pavement. The back came flying off and the battery sprung out but she really didn't care in that moment. The pain wasn't subsiding; every time it lessened and there was that sliver of sweet relief for just one second, her hopes flourished, but only to break her heart when it all came swarming back at her like a dead, stifling heat.

Without even realizing it was happening, Emma's body slipped down the pole and her body slumped against the ground, her eyes too heavy to keep open. It wasn't until she heard the distant, faint cries of Mary Margaret's voice urging her to wake up, to respond, to show any sign of life at all that she willed herself to reach out and grasp whatever was in front of her and hold on for dear life.

"Emma! Emma, can you hear me?! Sweetheart, open your eyes!" Her gentle but urgent hands framed the blonde's face, her fingers dancing lightly around her features. "Emma!"

She tried. She really did. But the pressure over her eyes was enormous; a crushing weight swallowing her whole. The only thing keeping her somewhat alert was her mother's frightful pleas and insistence that everything would be okay. But still, all Emma could manage was to open them for a flittering few moments, look upon her mom's pale, stricken face and collapse back into the muffled oblivion where all she could sense was the numbness wracking through her limbs. Feeling numb was such a beautiful reprieve to all other agony. In fact, when presented with an option, Emma always chose numb. Numb was safe. Numb meant not getting hurt. Numb was oblivious. So as she continued to drift – the dimmest tugs of someone cradling her dissolving second by second – the familiarity of feeling nothing at all soothed her before it all went away.

Waking up felt like breaking the surface of the ocean. She needed air, needed to rise from the immersion and she was swimming, swimming to the break.

She opened her eyes groggily, her head as heavy as lead atop her shoulders.

"Emma?" she heard. "Oh, Emma, how are you feeling? Are you okay?"

The brunette swam into view over her, her face a mask of innate concern.

Emma groaned. "That depends; am I dead?" She tried to gauge a feeling of where she was but all she could see was her mother's glassy eyes and creased brow.

"No, no," Mary Margaret assured thickly, "you're perfectly alive. I promise."

"Well that's good to know."

The woman reached a hand forward and tucked a blonde lock behind Emma's ear and sighed. "You scared me," she stated simply, emotionally. "When I got to you, you were already unconscious and you were bleeding and I…I had no idea what had happened. Honey, what happened to you?"

As close as they were now, Emma was sure that being called 'honey' was not something she'd ever get used to. It was too surreal to hear, to affectionate to be called. But maybe the truth of the matter was that she was afraid of getting used to it, afraid of falling into a comfortable space, afraid of having it taken away from her.

Ugh, if her head wasn't throbbing before it was now. Why did she always do that to herself?

"Where am I?"

"You're in your room," her mother replied soothingly, running a delicate finger across Emma's forehead.

"But…how?" Her voice cracked as she spoke and she managed to move her head to the side, hoping to alleviate some of the weight she was feeling. It was like her body was submerged under water, her limbs made of stone, making it seemingly impossible to make any kind of movement. "I was…I was outside?"

The brunette hesitated momentarily. "I carried you."

"Wait…what?"

Her mother crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. "Emma, I spent a lot of my life on the run, fending for myself, surviving. It was either build up my strength or surrender myself to the Queen's army – and if there's one thing I don't do, that's give up. I had no other option. Carrying my injured daughter up a flight of stairs? Saving you? That's nothing. I could carry you miles if it meant saving your life Emma, so don't sound so surprised. Now, tell me what happened."

"I was just practicing magic and it didn't go according to plan," she admitted.

"And Regina left you to go home like this?!" Since the curse had broken, there was only a select few times in which Mary Margaret crossed over into Snow White territory and Emma had been there to witness it. This was one of those times. Fury burned behind her green irises.

But Emma was quick to be straight. "No, no. It's not Regina's fault. I practiced," she took a deep breath, "I practiced alone," she confessed, meeting her eyes.

Fury was replaced with incensed incredulity. If Emma could have braced herself, she would have. Seeing an angered parent was easily one of the most terrifying sights. It was all in the eyes which somehow made it all that more frightening.

"I'm sorry," she threw in before Mary Margaret could speak.

Her mother stood up, arms still crossed and disappeared out of the room quickly, leaving Emma alone in the shrieking silence. She returned a few minutes later with a glass of water in one hand and a handful of pills in her other. "Here." She brought the tablets up to Emma's mouth and, without any questions, Emma tossed them onto her tongue. Mary Margaret then tilted the glass just over her mouth and Emma took a sip, making sure to swallow the medication.

"What was that for?" she asked.

"Pain management. You're supposed to take four tablets every four hours."

"What exactly is wrong with me?"

Mary Margaret removed a cloth from her back pocket and began dabbing around a tender spot over Emma's eyebrow; she winced every time the fabric even brushed across her skin. "I'm not exactly sure," the woman answered, continuing the treatment. "I'm not very acquainted with the effects of magic on the body other than what I've seen with you whenever you come back from your lessons. It seems to sap you of all your energy – although you've never been this bad."

"You could say that again."

Normally after Regina had put Emma through the wringer, Emma would be exhausted both mentally and physically. But usually after a nap and a sugary snack she was back to some sort of regularity. Just not this time it would seem. Though, she'd never exerted her power to that extent before. And that scared her.

Her mother then lifted her hands one by one, turning them over and examining the marks that defined them. The marks were akin to those of burns. "When I saw the blood," she whispered, "I feared the worst. But once I cleaned your wounds up, I realized they were all superficial. Nothing too serious. You didn't even have a concussion."

"How would you…?"

"What part of fending for myself and having to survive in the wilderness alone didn't you get?" she quipped lightly with a sly smile. "I'm no doctor but I've learned how to tend to wounds and I can spot any serious damage relatively quickly. There are a lot of things I learned along the way."

Emma wondered about how her mother learned such things but figured that it wasn't the best time to have a trip down memory lane. Not while the painkillers were starting to kick in. Already she could feel the ache dampen.

Mary Margaret then pulled the blanket up to the blonde's neck, making sure to tuck it around her body as tight as humanly possible, flattening out the surface with her hands afterwards. "We had a deal," she said softly, sitting back. "No practicing magic alone. That was what this family agreed."

The blonde bit her lip. "I know. And I'm sorry."

"What were you thinking, Emma? Huh? Because judging from your condition I don't think you were thinking period. You know the toll magic has on you. You know how hard it is to harness a power like yours. Even Regina has reserves about how much you actually possess. This is bigger than all of us and you putting yourself in direct danger doesn't help anyone. It just worries me. It worries me that one day you'll do too much and your body will just…quit." She pulled back and dragged a hand across her face to dry a few wily tears that had made their way down her cheeks. "It's dangerous, Emma. That's why you have lessons and why we keep them to a minimum. It's to keep you safe while we all – as a family – try to understand what exactly we're dealing with."

"I'm sorry, I just – I just wanted to prove her wrong."

"Who, Regina? You really are my daughter," Mary Margaret chuckled.

The blonde shot her a questioning look.

Her mother shrugged. "You're just as stubborn as I am. All the time people tell you that you can't do this, you can't do that. People doubted me because I was a royal, said I was too pampered, too proud to be anything but royal. I'm pretty sure Regina didn't count on me, the princess, alluding her at every turn, living off the land. But I did. I wanted to – I had to – prove myself, prove my worth. I was sick of being viewed as this weakling. I see that desire in you every time you're faced with a task. So I should have guessed that you'd want to show that you can do it yourself even though you know how dangerous your magic can be. It was still a stupid thing to do, Emma. Stubborn, maybe even brave, but definitely stupid."

Emma groaned. "How many times do I have to say I'm sorry?"

"I'll let you know when you get there."

She closed her eyes to quell the feeling of her energy levels depleting. "That seems fair," she mumbled quietly. She knew she shouldn't have done it. She knew her mother would be angry. She knew Regina would be smug. She just didn't think she'd feel this bad about it.

"What exactly were you trying to do?"

The blonde shifted slightly under her iron-clad blankets and straight away Mary Margaret smoothed out any creases that appeared. Emma noticed that whenever she was worried or anxious, she'd find anything she could to keep her distracted. She always had to be doing something. "I was on my way home and angry over something Regina had said so I went down some alley where I could get some kind of privacy and I tried to emulate a spell we were working on earlier. No big deal."

"And then what happened?" she probed curiously.

"I, uh, don't really remember. I know that something happened and I think that instead of using my magic internally, it kind of shot out of my hands? Sorry I'm not really good at explaining all this stuff. Regina said something about me having a lack of ability to contain the power but half the time I just roll my eyes and tune out when she gets all…teacher-y."

"Emma!" Mary Margaret scolded.

"Don't 'Emma' me! I never was the Teacher's Pet type."

"I sensed as much."

"Anyway, I lost control, fell over, hit my head and waited until it stopped naturally. It took a long time."

"And somehow you made it back here," she marvelled.

"It's amazing what a little determination can do," Emma yawned, feeling drowsy. Must have been the painkillers.

"You should get some rest. I don't know how long you'll be feeling this way but right now the only thing I think we can do is let you sleep and keep you hydrated."

"Yeah sleep sounds really good," she replied, feeling herself slipping away.

Her mother leaned over and kissed her softly on her forehead. "If you need anything just give me a shout, okay?"

"M'kay."

The last thing she heard was her mother's gentle voice, lulling over the crashing waves of slumber. "Please don't scare me like that again. I know this magic is a part of you and it needs to be explored but it scares me to see you so sick afterwards. You are so important to me, Emma, and I need you to understand that you are not alone in this. I know you grew up by yourself, only having yourself to worry about but there are so many people here that care about you so please, honey, please stay safe. I need you safe. I need you healthy. I need you here with us, with your family. I love you, Emma."

Before she fell under, the blonde allowed herself a small smile at her mother's parting words as she exited the bedroom, leaving the door open just a crack. She vowed that first thing in the morning she'd tell her mother that she loved her too. What was the point in hiding it?

Oh, that's right; there was no point.

So I hope you all liked what you read! Would love to hear your thoughts! :)