Title: Lost and Found
Summary: Though it was probably only less than a minute, it seemed like Emma was upstairs for an eternity. Snow and Charming were just on the point of following her to apologize when she emerged from her room and returned downstairs with a portfolio in her hand.
Spoilers: Up through 4x11, "Heroes and Villains."
Characters: Charming, Snow, and Emma. Charming Family bonding and comfort, as per usual.
Rating/Warning: K+, for mild cursing. As is typical, I'm not at all sorry for any feels this may give you. :)
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just trying to get through hiatus without going insane. I promise I'll out everything back the way I found it.
Author's Note: So, from like, the very second the two items involved in this story were introduced, I've needed a scene like this. I also wanted to address a little unintentional (on Ingrid's part) issue Ingrid's actions could possibly have raised. I decided to combine the two ideas, and this is the result. Feedback thrills me to pieces! Enjoy.

In all his time – well, all totaled, "all his time" came down to a couple of months, really, but that was beside the point – as acting sheriff, Prince Charming had never stolen evidence. Never, that is, until tonight.

In his defense, he'd done so with the mayor's permission. Of course, the mayor was also his wife but that was also beside the point. The point was, he had every intention of having the pilfered item back in the evidence locker before Storybrooke's other sheriff stepped into the station the following morning with her cocoa and bear claw, so it wasn't so much stealing evidence as it was borrowing it for the evening.

Because the sheriff and the mayor needed to go over this piece of evidence in peace, without an audience, and in the privacy and comfort of their own home.

Charming hooked up the borrowed video camera to their television, having memorized the connections Emma had made when she'd set it up for playback at the station. When everything was connected, he turned to Snow. "Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be," she nodded.

He nodded in return, turned the camera on, and pressed the Play button. A young boy's face filled the frame, and both Snow and Charming held a collective breath in anticipation. Seconds later, the boy vanished from sight and their baby girl came into focus.

Charming paused the video, leaving a young Emma frozen on the screen.

"Look at her, Charming," Snow breathed. "Look at her."

He was looking. Oh gods, was he looking. He was taking in every single detail and committing them all to memory. The waves in her long blonde hair, the distrust and defiance in her bright green eyes. And the pain, oh so much pain.

It was written all over her face. It was in the way she held herself. It was in how she stood. It was in her eyes.

Heavy, heavy pain. Who had hurt her so? Charming supposed, from what little he knew of his baby girl's past, the more appropriate question was who hadn't?

Gods, how he wished he could reach back in time and take all that pain from her. How he wished more than anything in this world that he could go back even further and keep her from ever feeling any of that pain at all.

Tears brimmed in his eyes as he reached a hand up to the screen, gently running his finger down his young daughter's frozen image. "She's perfect," he murmured, matching his wife's soft volume.

Perfect in every way, except for that heavy, heavy pain. Her eyes should have been sparkling and bright with mischief, not dulled and laden with so much suffering.

Beside him, Snow was just as mesmerized by the image on the screen as he was. Just as he had moments ago, she touched a finger to the television, as if trying to reach through and caress her young daughter's cheek. "We should have known her, Charming," she said after a moment, her voice full of anger, anguish, and guilt. "We should have had this time with her. We should have had little kid cuddles and running hugs. Birthdays, holidays, and every day in between. And this little clip of her … this is all we have. We should have had more. We should have had everything."

For a moment, Charming couldn't speak because he felt every bit of that anger and anguish and guilt himself. Anger that he'd missed priceless and irreplaceable decades with his own daughter. Anguish that she'd suffered so much in this realm. Guilt that he'd been the one to place her in the wardrobe and send her here.

He and Snow had only been trying to give their baby girl her best chance at survival. She had indeed survived but the Dark Curse had also condemned her to a life of hardship and struggle and heartache and loneliness, and gods, Charming felt responsible.

"We absolutely should have," he finally said, swallowing the lump in his throat. There was nothing else to say, really. None of it was fair. None of it. It was a damn tragedy. Of all the happy endings Regina had stolen by casting the Dark Curse, this one – the one she stole from their family – was the hardest for Charming to reconcile. Not even for him and Snow, really, but for Emma.

For his child, who'd been completely innocent. For his baby girl, who'd been minutes old when she was taken from them. For his precious princess, who'd grown up alone, unwanted and unloved.

His eyes once again found hers on the video. No child should have that look in his or her eye, that look of anguish and defiance and utter hopelessness. Gods, Emma couldn't have been more than fifteen years old in that video and she'd already given up hope. That realization gutted him more than anything else.

His poor sweet baby.

Both he and Snow were so mesmerized by the video of their young daughter that they never even heard their adult daughter enter the apartment. It was only the jangle of her keys as she tossed them on the table that startled them back to awareness.

Emma stepped into the room, a weary smile on her face, and asked in total Emma fashion, "What the hell are you two watching so intently?"

Oh no. Charming fumbled with the camera, trying to find the Stop button, but it was too late. As soon as Emma caught sight of the television, she stopped short. Charming watched as a host of emotions flickered across her face in a split second: first, surprise, then anger, then defiance – an expression, he noted somewhere in the back of his mind, not unlike the one on her onscreen face.

Then she regained control and he actually witnessed her wall shoot up. "That camera was under lock and key for a reason," she said coolly.

Snow stood, wringing her hands as she tried to soothe their daughter's ruffled feathers. "Emma, please don't be angry. We were just trying to … there were so many people in the station when we saw this before and there wasn't time ..."

Sensing that his wife was floundering, Charming added softly, "We just wanted to see you."

Emma stared at them with an inscrutable expression for a moment before turning on her heel and heading up to the loft. She hadn't said a single word, causing Snow and Charming to exchange a troubled glance. Had they screwed up? They should have asked Emma before just taking the tape, shouldn't they? Damn it.

Though it was probably only less than a minute, it seemed like Emma was upstairs for an eternity. Snow and Charming were just on the point of following her to apologize when she emerged from her room and returned downstairs with a portfolio in her hand.

She hesitated only a moment before handing the portfolio to her mother and flopping down on the couch. The uncertainty in her eyes broke Charming's heart. What on earth could be in this folder that was making her so uncomfortable? Charming exchanged a troubled and confused frown with Snow, and the two of them decided silently to open the portfolio together.

At first, Charming wasn't entirely sure what he was looking at. A painted landscape, obviously an art project of some kind, done by a young but talented hand. It wasn't until he caught the signature in the bottom right corner of the paper that he understood.

"Oh, Emma," Snow breathed as she ran her fingers over the painting, lingering over the signature. "This is … this is amazing!"

This wasn't simply a file folder; it was a glimpse into their little girl's past. Paintings, writing assignments, tests and quizzes … every single piece of paper in that folder was a precious treasure, a little peek into the time they hadn't shared.

It was incredible.

"This wasn't in the evidence locker," Charming said as he stared down at another painting, this one of the night sky with Orion prominently featured. As soon as he realized how accusatory he'd sounded, he winced.

Emma, however, didn't seem to mind. "No, it wasn't. It was Ingrid's. She left it out for me to find … her own version of a bread crumb trail, I guess. I never cataloged it as evidence because … well, because it was mine, and it didn't tell us any more than we already knew. Not really. But now … now I think it should be yours."

Snow gave her a teary smile before continuing the examination of the portfolio. She handed Charming a story Emma had written for English class about a young girl making friends with a ghost. Charming had to swallow hard against the emotion rising in his throat; his poor little girl had been so lonely that she wrote stories about friendships that even transcended death. And somehow he knew before he even finished the tale that the protagonist of the story would help the ghost move on, even though it meant never seeing her friend again.

His baby had certainly had the makings and the mindset of a heroine even back then, hadn't she?

Out of the corner of his eye, Charming saw Snow pull a greeting card off the stack of the remaining papers. The tears in Snow's eyes spilled over as she read it and then handed it over to Charming.

He set his shoulders before he opened it, wanting to prepare himself for whatever had made his wife cry. It was a pointless endeavor, he realized after he opened the card. Nothing could have prepared him for this.

For there was his baby's handwriting, a bit bigger and more wide-set than it was now due to her comparatively less practiced hand, but undeniably hers. And in his baby's handwriting was a message thanking another woman – a woman who'd plotted to let everyone in town kill themselves so she could keep Emma and Elsa all to herself – for being the family she'd never had.

He had to admit, it hurt. He should have been her family, Snow should have been her family. Still, a bigger part of him was happy. Happy that his daughter had found a family with someone else, happy that she had found happiness with someone else since they'd been unable to be with her.

But wait a second. Whatever happiness Emma and Ingrid had found was short-lived. Emma hadn't stayed with her. So what the hell happened?

"She told me a few times that I loved her once," Emma said softly from the couch, as if reading her parents' minds. "I didn't believe her but she was right. I did. I did love her once."

A quick glance between husband and wife was all that was needed. Together they stood and squeezed in on the couch with Emma, one on either side of her. "You remember what happened now," Snow said. It wasn't a question.

Emma nodded. "In her Ice Fortress of Solitude, before … before the Spell took her, she returned our memories. Mine and Elsa's, the good and the bad."

She paused, though whether she was simply lost in those memories or she didn't want to go on with the story, Charming couldn't tell. He inched closer to her, trying to comfort her with his presence.

He would never know whether it was the comfort or simply his movement that captured her attention, but after taking a deep breath, she did continue. "She knew who I was whole the time. She knew I was the savior. She knew I had magic. She'd started processing the paperwork to adopt me and when she told me, I was thrilled. I … I loved her, and she was giving me everything I'd always wanted. And then a week later, it all fell apart. She thought I was beginning to exhibit my magic and maybe I was. I don't know. All I know is that she … she held me in front of a moving car and told me to stop it. I freaked out and ran."

Charming and Snow exchanged a pained and angry glance over their poor daughter's head. That woman could have killed their baby! Not to mention betraying her trust in one of the worst and most frightening ways imaginable.

Emma, however, was too lost in the story to stop. "It's just … she was the only one who'd ever wanted me, you know? And now I don't know if she ever really wanted me or if she just wanted a magical sister."

Again, Charming and Snow exchanged a glance over Emma's head. Snow nodded at him, telling him she'd go first, and then tucked a lock of hair behind Emma's ear. "Sweetheart, you don't keep a file like this for someone you don't really care about. Maybe she did set out looking for you because of your magic but that doesn't necessarily preclude her from having loved you."

Emma didn't look entirely convinced. Still, she nodded and turned a somewhat sheepish expression on her mother. "I don't even know why it matters so much to me. She was obsessed with me. It never would have been healthy but ..."

And as Charming glanced over at the television, where the image of angry, defiant, hurt, lonely, unloved, and unwanted young Emma was still frozen, he understood. "But that lonely little girl on the videotape still lives somewhere inside you, and she wants to believe that someone could love her," he said softly.

Though Emma didn't respond in words, the tears welling in her eyes were confirmation enough. As one, Snow and Charming both leaned forward to wrap their little girl in a hug. She tensed at first, seemingly taken by surprise by the gesture, but then relaxed into the embrace, clinging to the two of them as if her life depended on it.

Good gods, their poor baby had suffered so much. Once again, Charming found himself wishing he could reach back into the past and take all that pain from her. "I know it's too little, too late," he murmured to her, "but we love you, Emma Swan. We wish we had known the little girl on that video. We wish we had known the little girl who made these drawings and who wrote these essays and who took these tests. We wish we had known you your entire life, because you wouldn't have just been loved. You would have been cherished."

Emma rested her head on Charming's shoulder, burying her face against his neck like a small child who needed her daddy's comfort. Charming's heart exploded with love and joy, and he nestled his cheek against the top of her head in an effort to give her that comfort.

"And you would have been loved and cherished then – and you are loved and cherished now – for two simple reasons," Snow added, smiling through the tears in her eyes. "You're our daughter, and most importantly, you're you. We love you, sweetheart, more than you will ever know."

Emma tightened her grip at those words. After a moment, she pulled away, sniffled, and blinked back her tears. "It's not too little, too late," she said, smiling at her parents. "It's absolutely perfect."

And as she pulled them into another hug, Charming's heart once again filled with love and joy. His lost little girl had found her way home.