Sleepwalking

Late Night Rescue Mission

A/N: Hi everyone!!! Welcome to my fanfiction. I wrote this about a year ago, and am ashamed at how long it has taken me to post it here. This little nugget came to me one day while I was at work, and wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it. My original plan was for this to be a long one-shot, but as things usually go, the story had different ideas.

As always, I do not own Once Upon a Time, nor do any of the characters or places associated.

Without further ado, I present you: Sleepwalking

It all started a few weeks after we moved to New York City. A huge fire had destroyed our apartment, forcing us to move. We decided a change of scenery would help us move past the tragedy, so we packed up what little we had left, flipped a coin, and started driving to New York, leaving Boston behind. We found a decent apartment pretty quickly, and Mom got a great job working for another bail-bonds company, while I assimilated to middle school in New York easily. Everything was starting to look up for us.

Until one night, my mom started sleepwalking.

At first it wasn't that bad. I would hear her moving around in her bedroom in the middle of the night. I thought nothing of it in the beginning. Ever since the fire we both had trouble sleeping, so I just assumed she was pacing around in her room to help distract herself from the insomnia. But as the weeks progressed, her pacing began to sound faster, more frantic.

Things began to become a concern about six weeks after everything started. It was a Saturday night, and like always, I too was having trouble sleeping, so I snuck out into the living room to watch some late night television. At exactly 1:08 am, I heard my mom's bedroom door open. I was sure I was going to get into serious trouble for being up so late. But instead, she walked right past me to the front door, and started searching for her keys.

"Mom?" I ask, slowly making my way towards her. There was something strange about the way she moved. And her eyes, while they were wide open and alert, seemed glossy and distant. "It's one in the morning, where are you going?"

"I need to go home." She said, as she continued to rummage through the piles on the table by the front door.

"You are home, Mom." I said. "We live here in New York now. Remember the fire in Boston?"

"Not here. I have to go home to the forest. The Queen needs me." She said, finding her keys with triumph.

"What are you talking about? Seriously Mom, where are you going?"

"I told you, I need to go home to the forest, the Queen needs me." She said again, unlocking the front door. That was when I realized what was happening. She was sleepwalking.

"Why don't we go back to bed now, and tomorrow, when it's light out, we can take a trip to the forest." I said, prying the keys out of her strong hands.

"No, I need to go now. She needs me." She said again, her eyes still glossy and distant.

"The Queen told me we could wait until tomorrow morning. You need to get some sleep first." I said, guiding her back to bed.

I made sure everything was locked up tight before going to bed myself, making sure to keep her car keys with me the entire time, in case she got up again. I didn't sleep much that first night, waking up every so often to listen to see if I could hear her moving around again, but ever since I put her back to bed, everything was silent once again.

The next morning she woke me up with a knock on my door.

"Hey Kid, do you know where my keys are? I can't find them anywhere."