Title: You Were My New Dream
Author: snarkysweetness
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Emma/August
Summary: For the Puppet, the Princess was his new dream. But the problem with dreams is, eventually once must wake from them.
Warnings: Pain.
Disclaimer: This is better than canon.
Author's Notes: I wrote this in like fifteen minutes to make my wife cry. It's not part of Pornpocalypse, I just specialize in trolling Maggie and in making The Babes really upset with me.
He'd lived a lonely life filled with nothing. He was a lost boy trying to navigate his way through the strange, fast-paced world he'd been thrust into and along the way he'd succumbed to what was easy; Women, booze, drugs, gambling; anything to keep skating through, jet setting from place to place, never getting attached.
It wasn't a real life. He just went through the motions. He existed, nothing more. There was nothing real about his life, then again, there was nothing real about him either.
He wasn't sure why he was so desperate to save his pathetic excuse for an existence, but he the moment his death loomed near, he scrambled to return to the small coastal town where he knew he would find his wayward savior.
She was perfect. Everything a woman should be; stubborn, fierce, independent, compassionate, loving, and beautiful. She crawled under his skin until she became a permanent fixture in his being. Once she made him vulnerable, the kid wormed his way into his heart and firmly planted himself there.
Before he was aware it was happening, he'd begun to imagine himself having a real life. A life with his father and Emma and Henry. A happy life. One filled with love and family and everything he'd wanted for himself as a boy.
Things he didn't deserve.
As he reached his hand up to touch her face, once final time, he struggled to find the words he would never be able to say.
I'm sorry.
I wish I'd been better.
"Emma, I…"
I love you.
The words wouldn't come. He wasn't a real man. This life of his had been a fantasy, something of fairy tales, and he'd squandered it. This was what he deserved, to return to nature, as he was meant to, while enduring the pain of leaving this world with the face of the woman he loved being the last he would ever bear witness to.
He just hoped she would find all of the happiness he wished he could have given her.
A small gasp escaped his lips as he tried, once more, to whisper a goodbye to her. But it was too late. His eyes fell closed as the life fell from his limbs. A small smile tugged on his lips as he recalled a vision of her face in the sunlight and his final thoughts were of her.
You were my new dream.