Saviour,

Written by WickedSong.

Disclaimer/Note: I don't own anything. There's really no context to this fic, I don't delve into how Emma found out, and it has no real place in the timeline apart from being post-curse. I just wanted to write something sort of raw, and feelings-y and just sort of vent my own issues with how this has been treated in canon in this medium. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, or at least as much as you can enjoy Gremma angst.

Emma paced the apartment, back and forth, up and down, trying to clear her mind somewhat. Trying to make some sense of what she had just learned. The words haunted her. Every time she thought it's going to be okay it all came back to she murdered him. She had murdered him and she hadn't even cared as had destroyed his beating heart.

"Emma, sweetie, please listen-"

She turns to her parents - her parents for God's sake, she has parents – and shakes her head. "No! No, don't you dare!"

They seem to be taken aback by her sudden tone, the way she flipped so suddenly to them with venom in her voice she had never thought possible until this moment. She's grateful, for a moment, that Henry is upstairs asleep. She'll have to talk to him in the morning.

Because she's suddenly realised that when he told her that Graham had died because he was good, because Regina murdered him, it had been the truth. The one thing that had shook his belief to its very core – the belief of a ten year old kid – and it was actually true.

Suddenly she's angry again.

"I know you're upset-"

Emma shakes her head, furiously. "I'm not upset! I'm angry!" she shouts. And she can barely believe that it's still this raw of a wound – maybe some small part of her had believed Henry all those months ago. But it's so painful, it hurts so badly and she just wants to shout, and scream, and tell them why it's not okay. And the walls she's built around her heart are coming down and it's not in the way that she's ever wanted them to.

Mary Margaret, Snow White, her mother, whatever her name or title is, steps forward, arms outstretched. "Emma, we understand-"

"No you don't!" She closes her eyes. Don't cry, Emma, just don't cry. Her eyes are still closed, her breathing somewhat steadied when she continues, "I was there with him the night he died. I watched the life drain out of him. I held him in my arms and I felt that last breath." She opens her eyes now. All thoughts of not crying are gone.

He's been dead, buried and gone for months and he still has this effect over her.

"Have you felt that?" She looks to the man and woman before her. "Have you held someone as they die and felt so powerless. I'm meant to be the goddamn saviour, I broke the goddamn curse but I couldn't save him!?"

"Why?" She begs them for an answer. "And don't give me some bullshit that not everyone can be saved." With some difficulty she swallows and she looks to them. And then she looks straight at her roommate, her best friend, her mother. "There's a reason I wanted to skip town that night. Because Henry was telling me I was some saviour, and so did August. And I…I…" She looks down, and the words die in her throat.

She feels herself almost fall to the floor, and thinks it's such an embarrassing weakness. But arms catch her. Soothing sounds guide her to some sort of sanity as she cries, cries like she hasn't since Henry was pronounced dead, or since Graham wouldn't open his goddamn eyes.

Slowly, quietly, Snow speaks to her. "Oh, Emma, I do understand." Is she crying too? Emma can't tell for sure, but it sounds like she is. "When your father put you through that wardrobe…I found him. Dying in your nursery. And true love's kiss couldn't bring him back." Her voice breaks, and for some reason Emma doesn't think being weak is silly anymore.

Another set of arms envelop her and now her father, David Nolan, Prince Charming himself is cradling her too.

A low sob, involuntarily comes from Emma's throat and she has one plea. "Why couldn't I save him?"

Neither answer.

Eventually they take by the hand to the sofa. Snow fixes both of them some hot cocoa and cinnamon and despite the memory, Emma accepts the bearclaw that comes with it. Some clichés are true. You're lucky you bought a bearclaw.

Prince Charming wraps his arm around her, while she leans into Snow White's shoulder and they tell her about a man who thought he had no heart, and no humanity, until he spared a young princess from death. And once that heart had been forcibly taken from him, once he had become the Queen's pet, he still clung to that virtue which took his life from him.

One arrow and he saved a prince from execution at The Evil Queen's hands.

And then a curse came and he was just a man, a sheriff, with a smile that made you feel at ease and a joke or two up his sleeve. But he was still shackled, until he met a very special woman, a woman who rolled into their sleepy town with nothing but a red leather jacket and a yellow bug.

One kiss from this lost princess, this saviour and the sheriff remembered. And then he did indeed die. But in the moments before death he had found a happiness, one he had thought he would never manage to find, not in his wildest dreams.

And it was in that happiness that she had restored his memory, and his heart. In that happiness, she had irrevocably and undoubtedly saved him.