A/N: This was an idea that just would not leave. Playing fast and loose with the time-space continuum, but hey, fanfiction doesn't have to be 100% logical to be entertaining. For extra effect, look up the song "The Happiest Home in these Hills" from the movie to go with this chapter. Also, if anyone has a suggestion for a better title, please by all means tell me, I really don't like this one.
"Dammit Baelfire, hurry up, I can hear them coming!" Emma screeched quietly from her perch on a leaf shrouded branch.
The older boy scurried up the trunk to take the spot behind the girl. A few moments later, the lumbering Lena Gogan and her equally repugnant husband and sons entered the clearing below them.
"They had to have gone this way!"
"Hurry up you fools! Social services will never give us another kid if they find out we lost this one, and you two will have to do all the work yourselves!".
Lena screwed up her face into a horrible parody of a homey smile that Emma could see even from the treetop. "Sweetie, please come back home, we're not angry with you. The boys will do your work from now on, and I'll bake you cake and let you watch TV! We'll be tha happiest family in these hills!"
Emma rolls her eyes visibly, and mouths in Baelfire's direction "Yeah like I haven't heard that one before".
When her sickeningly sweet words receive no response, Lena's face melts back into its usual sour expression.
"Idiots! Hurry up and find them! They don't know about the boy, we can hide him if come sniffing around about the girl again!".
Emma reaches behind her to grip Baelfire's arm. The Gogan's wont be finding either of them if she can help it.
She turns to the green scaled, pink haired dragon currently crouched and cloaked below the tree.
"This is all your fault you know Elliot."
Emma had been in some awful foster homes before, but her three years with the Gogan's had taken the cake.
It was bad enough that the area they lived in was so small it wasn't even in parenthesis on the map. Bad enough that anything resembling civilization was a truck ride away. Bad enough that the woods surrounding their home frightened her a little.
It was worse that the couple's two natural sons were horrible, mean idiots who were lucky they could manage to dress themselves. Worse that none of her usual acting out, stealing and fighting, had seemed to work out here. Worse that the entire family's constant fighting had left Emma wondering how on earth they had gotten approved by social services. Worse even to the fact that they all treat her as if she's lower than the gum stuck to the bottom of their shoes.
The absolute worst part of Emma's life with the Gogan's was the understanding that the first people in her life who had ever sincerely wanted her to live with them did so because they wanted free labor.
The family owned several chickens, two large hogs, and had a very large garden. Not that anyone there could be bothered to collect eggs, feed the pigs, or weed the garden. Or mop, wash dishes, or even cook. During her time there, Emma had begun to understand how Cinderella must have felt.
The work was hard and long, and the Gogan's idea of how to feed the child working for them had generally been the leftovers of whatever it was they had made her cook for them. Sometimes this was a whole bowl of soup, sometimes a mere crust of bread. Emma had always been small for her age, but now at nearly fourteen years old, she was downright diminutive. Her growling stomach had often kept her up at night, and one morning in school she had passed out. Social workers had come after that, and Lena had scrubbed the house for herself for once, and put on her sickeningly sweet concerned face, and they had gone away. Emma had been pulled out of school after the incident, supposedly to be homeschooled. Homeschool it turned out, meant the Gogan's somehow finding even more work for her.
She was so hungry, that some days when working in the garden, she would have sworn she saw a big green dragon flying about the forest. But then she came to her senses.
One day when she's out pruning the tomatoes, she sees a boy stumble out of the trees, and come towards the house. He's slightly older than her, scruffy and dressed in dirty, odd-looking clothes. He also looks nearly as hungry as she feels. Emma opens her mouth, tries to tell him to go back, that there's nothing good this way for him, but nothing will come out, and Lena, coming out to order her to hurry up, spies him as well.
Lena's sugary smile, the one Emma has come to view as demonic, makes its way onto her face when she sees him, and she whispers "looks like there will be a new member of the family soon" to Emma.
Lena insists that Emma give the boy the last bowl of soup that night. The boy- who says his name is Baelfire, whatever kind of a name THAT is- gobbles it down as though he hasn't eaten in a week. He seems oddly fascinated by his surroundings, the stove and oven, and the TV and radio. Emma's growling stomach does not make her charitable, and she suspects he might be slow.
This peaks when the two are shooed off to bed. Emma's "bed" is really just a mattress and some blankets in the corner of the living room. and her stomach is empty, and she really does not appreciate having to share it.
When Bae moves to lay down beside her, she kicks him.
"What?"
"Turn around! Stick your feet up here!"
"Why?"
"Just do it ok?" How can he not understand? Lena will probably insist she call him brother, but she knows he's not.
Bae turns out to be a fitful sleeper too, tossing and turning and hogging the blankets.
Emma wants to ask him a million things, what on earth is the deal with his clothes, why he acts like he's never seen a plug before, why he seems so resigned to staying with a horrible family, but when he starts talking in his sleep, "Papa, papa no, not again, not this time" she keeps her mouth shut. She feels for him. At least the first time. The second time it wakes her up so she knees him in the side to shut him up.
As things go, it turns out Baelfire isn't bad company. He's certainly better at household chores than her. And now she has someone to talk to other than the chickens.
And the first time he falls in the hogpen trying to stand on the fence post while pouring the slop, is hilarious. And Emma has had little enough to laugh about in her life.
She spills her guts to him. She tells him about all the awful foster homes she had been in before this. She tells him that she's never had friends, no one ever seemed to like her. She tells him about the fights she used to get in all the time, over things that seem so incredibly stupid now. She even tells him about the hobby of stealing things she had developed. She might not have many opportunities to practice out here, but stealing a few slices of bread from the kitchen when everyones distracted by their own fighting is really all she wants now.
And Bae turns out to be an incredible storyteller. She doesn't ask where he's heard all these, because she's not so sure he can read, but he knows a lot of them, and they all flow from his mouth as easy as if he'd been there.
Bae's stories are bizarre. They're like fairy tales, magic and monsters, but he speaks as though these these were as ordinary as the Gogan's spotted hogs.
They're not as pretty as the stories she knows either. Magic, it seems, only leading to hurt, fantastical creatures as likely as humans to be cruel. And very few happily ever afters.
But if Emma understands anything, it's that humans often suck.
One day they're out in the garden digging up carrots. Bae's telling her a story about a lost brother and sister, when suddenly he stops, his mouth agape, staring off into the trees.
"I didn't know there were dragons in this land!"
"Dragons?" Emma doesn't even look up from the carrot bed "Dragons don't exist, all of your stories must have fried your brain"
"No, really, look!" Bae grabs her shoulder and turns her around, pointing to the meadow's edge.
And sure enough, the flying green and pink monstrosity is there, fluttering about the treetops
"Oh him. Yeah, that just means we've been out here too long, come on, once we steal something from the kitchen and drink from the hose he'll be gone".
Bae doesn't want to stop talking about it, but a good spray from the hose gets him out of it. He's never seen a hose either, and teaching him about it is great fun. Even though they get stuck eating their supper (two slices of bread and a single cup of gravy) outside for coming in soaking wet with only one basket of carrots.
When they're getting into bed later that night Bae stays at the window staring out.
"Do you see a unicorn outside now?"
Emma's voice is dripping with sarcasm- she can't believe he's still on this- but Bae doesn't even break his gaze.
"No, just the same dragon as before"
Emma's rolls here eyes. "Is he standing guard over a cave full of jewels too?"
"No, he's just hanging out under the trees...it almost looks like he's dancing"
She rolls her eyes even harder and stretches out on the mattress, and Bae reaches out and pulls her up and out to the window.
And yeah, he's still out there. Now he's lumbering around on the ground under the trees. He's much fatter than Emma originally noticed, and his spinning and stepping looks downright comical. While the two are watching him, he stretches out on the ground, and begins to snore so powerfully the leaves in the tree above him are disturbed.
Emma's mouth has formed a perfect "O", her brain seems to have become stuck in neutral, and so out her mouth falls the only thing that seems appropriate: "Huh".
"Papa used to tell stories of dragons in the days of old. Fearsome creatures that guarded great treasures and kidnapped maidens. Slender flying creatures from other lands said to bring wisdom and great fortune. He...never spoke of any that could dance".
Emma forces herself to move again. She pushes herself away from the window back to the mattress.
"Well...I guess he'll still be there in the morning." She's trying not to say "And maybe by then we'll have stopped hallucinating".
After she manages to drag Bae away from the window and back to bed, they both lay awake fidgiting. Finally, Emma props herself up on an elbow so she can look at him, and finally gathers the will to ask,
"You've never mentioned having a family before".
He flinches visibly, like she'd hit him (and she didn't this time, honest). "I don't want to talk about it".
But Emma can't help herself, tact has never been one of her strong points.
"Did you runaway from home?"
He winces again. "No...I was thrown away. My papa used to be a good man. He loved me, I know it. Probably still did, but he got...obsessed with the things he did. Bad things. And no matter how much I begged him, he wouldn't stop. He wouldn't stop, and couldn't keep me there with him because of it".
Emma's speechless again. "What about your mother?"
"She left us both when I was little. I barely even remember her."
Emma's quiet again, then softly responds "At least they loved you once. No one's ever even wanted me."
Bae voice quiets too, and he asks "Your parents are both dead?"
Emma shakes her head "I don't know. They could be alive, dead, anything. I don't know who they were, just that they left me by the side of the road. Family to family, no one ever wanted me, much less loved me. Well, no one wanted me until the Gogan's decided they wanted a servant".
At this point, Bae's set one hand idly against her wrist. It doesn't make her uncomfortable like she thinks it ought, but it is extremely distracting. She pauses, then continues "I used to dream of running away all the time. But they always go on about awful things that happen to kids who run away. I don't care anymore. I'll take my chances...but now I'm too tired most of the time to even think about it, and even town is so far away, and if anyone there saw me, they'd just take me back here, but if I saw an opportunity..."
She trails off. Its been ages since she's even let herself entertain this fantasy. She's let her and Bae's fingers entwine loosely, and its making her feel incredibly vulnerable. "If I...if I see an out...if I see a way to run, will you come with me?"
Bae's face is soft, and she wonders if this, whatever, if he feels it too, but he quickly covers it with a grin "What, you think I want to stay here? That hog has it out for me, and Willie's rock throwing arm's getting good!".
She laughs along with him, and the hopeful specter remains in Emma's head.
And yes, the dragon is still there in the morning. Emma busies herself with filling the slop troughs. She's still not entirely sure he's really there.
Bae on the other hand, approaches him. The thing is now sitting up and plucking acorns from the tree above it (Bae had once tried to eat them during a weeding session in the middle of the hottest day of the year. His retching had had Emma in hysterics). Bae picks one acorn up off the ground and tosses it into the air, as high as he can. The beast leaps for it like an eager dog for a treat, catching it in his mouth, and licking his lips. Not that he even really HAS lips.
Emma ignores their game, and moves onto to feeding the chickens. At least until a stray acorn heads in her general direction and the dragon's enormous girth topples her over into the pen.
She sits herself up, sore and covered in corn, annoyed until Bae's hand reaches out to help her up.
"Not so funny when it's you is it?"
She remains unamused until later in the morning, when Willie and Grover decide to come out and play their usual game of "throw rocks at the orphans".
Emma's pretty good at dodging by now, even with the lawn mower holding her back, but Bae is stuck pruning, and his back is an easy target. They're both lucky neither boy is good enough to aim for the head.
Emma braces herself, turning a corner of the lawn to make herself a harder target, when she notices the dragon puffing up his muzzle, and then disappearing.
A acorn flies from that corner of the year, just perfectly in the direction of Grover's head.
"Hey you hit me!"
"I did not!"
As the two brothers began wrestling on the lawn, Emma and Bae finish up and sneak back into the house, howling.
Emma decides the dragon, who Bae informs her is named Elliot, can stay after that.
They still have to keep a close eye out for any of the Gogan's, but Elliot brightens up all of their days. He can't exactly talk, but what he wants to say is obvious enough that it gets through eventually. While he can't fly very well holding either of them, he can hover quite high for a period of time long enough that they get a breathtaking view of the hills around the Gogan's farm.
One late evening, the two were banished outside for the night for burning supper. It wasn't the first time, but at least it was summer this time.
Emma is pushing the hay piles into a shape that would make a decent bed. The sun isn't completely down yet, but the moon is already huge in the sky, and the stars have begun to shine. This actually might be better than sleeping inside.
Bae's on the other end of the garden, digging up some young potatoes. He'd insisted that packed in mud and straw they would just need a tiny fire to cook them well.
"How are we going to light it, we don't have any matches"
"That's what Elliot's here for!"
Emma hadn't believed Elliot could actually breathe fire. At least until she said it outloud, and the beast let out a burp of flames toward the sky that had blazed as bright as any July fireworks. She didn't doubt anything about him after that.
When they finish digging the shallow fire pit (to smother it easily later, Bae says) and filling it with tightly twisted straw as kindling, Bae calls Elliot over.
"Think you can just get us some embers going buddy?"
Elliot nods comically, and gets down on his belly, aiming a deep breath at the pit.
Emma should have stopped him when she saw the breeze blowing some hay in his general direction. And she definitely should have spoken up when she saw his nose twitch.
In a split second, Elliot lets out the biggest sneeze Emma has ever heard, and with it, a giant blaze from his nostrils. A blaze, which is unfortunately, aimed right for the Gogan's roof.
As she watches as the thatching on the roof goes up in flames, Emma utters a few choice words that had once gotten her sent home from school.
She turns to Bae, wild-eyed, and grabs him by the shoulders.
"You said if I saw an out, you'd come. They'll be distracted for a while, but they'll blame us and you know it. But we have a head start, we can get away. Away from all of this! Are you with me?"
After a moment, Bae takes both of her hands, "I'm with you".
She turns to Elliot, "You should make yourself invisible, or they'll see where we're going. Just stay behind us".
And with that, the three run (well, two run, one flies) off into the night time woods.
Its the next morning before they feel safe enough to come down from the tree.
The road they're on is dirt, and its only by sheer luck that a tomato truck comes by with a broad enough bumper to quietly climb and hitch a ride. Its a few hours before they reach a larger highway, with a shoulder large enough to walk on, and they quietly dismount.
"Do you know where we are?" Bae asks, his face unsure and as full of confusion as he had been that first night.
"No" Emma says. "I guess we'll get where we're going at some point".
And with that, the three walk. Its nearly dark, and they're all exhausted, Emma's feet complaining loudly, and Elliot falling behind more and more, when they reach a small thatch of trees again with a road sign for the next town.
"We should stop here for the night." There's a grove, and with the go ahead, Elliot flops on the ground, and cloaks, sound asleep in a second.
Bae asks "What are we going to say when we reach town?"
"I don't know. I'm pretty good at lying. Give me the night, I'll come up with something." Emma says grimly.
Bae lay on his back on the ground, using Elliot's ample side as a pillow, And Emma takes her place beside him.
"What did the sign say this place was called anyway?"
"Storybrooke. Storybrooke Maine".
