Starting off as little more than a dream, this story will be a multi chapter, so don't worry if there are a few mysteries still left in the story after the first chapter. Each of those will be based on a novel, this one being, J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or Once Upon A Time - Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz d. Nor do I own any of the amazing literature I borrow from.

One

Never Say Goodbye

"Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting." – Peter Pan

The story was splashed across the front page of the Globe, and surprisingly, page 2 of the Times. Funny, how New York decided that a suicide bombing in the middle east was what the world cared about that day.

But they should have cared about page 2.

Abandoned at Birth, was the catchy title the freshman reporter concocted.

An older child had been found several miles away, wandering in the woods. Though he never made it into the New York Times. He wasn't "news-worthy" enough.

After weeks of reports, asking to claim the babies, they were given over to child services, to people anxiously waiting to 'help' those poor unfortunate children.

The elder of the infants, a disgruntled dark haired three month old, was adopted by a couple in upstate New York, owners of a shipping company on the shores of Lake Erie, as a second son. Their heir and a spare.

The fair newborn girl was snatched up by an anxious husband and wife outside of Boston, teachers who couldn't conceive.

And the six year old, was, surprisingly, adopted by an elderly pair outside of DC, a writer and a government employee, in the hills of Virginia.

The boy and girl had been wrapped in blankets on the side of the road, the girl's elegantly stitched with a name Emma while the boy's had been a hastily written in cramped scrawl, Killian.

They were separated not knowing each other existed.

The oldest of the children, named August grew up, sneaking onto his adopted mother's ancient typewriter and wrote.

And to the middle, Killian, tragedy struck early.

The mother who had held him, the father who had smiled at him, the elder brother who had laughed with him were gone. Another story splashed all over the news when he was barely three. Drowning, a word Killian Jones was too young to understand.

The relatives, greedy in their own strides for inheritance, had wheedled their way into his place eventually turning him over to social services.

And that's when the dreams started. The more accurate term was nightmares, another word Killian Jones wasn't familiar with. He thought the people always gave him back because of his behavior, not because of the screams in the night he didn't know he was making.

They were strange, some not even frightful. It was a man, who looked a great deal like him, moving through them, sometimes with a silver gutting hook for a hand. Sometimes he wore leather. Others he wore a crisp white uniform, that looked positively antique.

The first time they stopped was when he met her.

The teachers, the Swans, were wonderful parents. Wonderful enough for "Mommy" to be blessed with a baby. The grey eyed little girl had watched excitedly as she was told that there was going to be a new baby in the house, ignoring the man and woman's sad eyes.

A stranger-a woman showed up the next day, and took her by the hand, strapping her into the car seat in the back of a car. Emma hadn't seen the suitcase being loaded into the back. All she had done was kiss Mommy and Daddy goodbye as they told her she would be back soon after straightening the white bow on the top her head.

If soon meant never of course.

Emma was the youngest in the home. The halfway house they called it. She was lucky the Nuns had taken her in that one, hearing whispers of worse ones.

After being brought inside by an elderly woman, the girl laid her bag down on a rather shabby bed, carefully pulling out her baby blanket and clutching it to her chest.

"So why'd you have to leave?" A small accented voice echoed from the darker corner of the room. She shrieked and jumped, her crying coming to an abrupt halt as she scanned the room anxiously.

"Who said I had to leave? My parents told me I'd be home soon." The blonde said defensively, her hardening eyes honing in on a figure cloaked in shadow.

"Grown ups lie." The boy said, jumped down from his hiding place and striding over to her with legs already taller than her. He outstretched on hand to her.

"They didn't give me up." She said, sniffing at the dark haired boy's hand.

"So there's a new baby?" the nameless kid said and anger flared inside the normally sweet blonde.

"How would you know that? You're just a boy?" She snarled, hastily wiping tears away from her eyes as they kept leaking. For a second, a wounded look crossed his face before it just turned to sadness.

"A lot of kids come in looking like you. Call yourself an open book." He said with a cynical smile that looked far too old on his face. Again, this time a bit more tentatively than the first he outstretched his hand, and Emma took it in an oddly adult-like handshake.

Then the little boy did the most shocking thing.

Stepping out to the side and with a wickedly mischievous grin, he bowed to her.

"Does the open book have a name?" He beamed, his brilliant blue eyes shining up at her from his princely position. He didn't look anything like one with hair that looked unfamiliar to a comb and a pair of muddy jeans. She sniffled but managed to smile through the tears, all too amused by the whole situation.

"Emma." She answered softly, giving him a soft giggle and a fumbling curtsy. "Yours?"

"Killian." He replied before snatching her hand and dragging her down the hall.

The girl and boy were inseparable for the month they spent together, before getting shipped off to respective foster homes. It wasn't purposeful, no, the second day Emma screamed at him for taking her blanket. But, secretly, they knew they were being shoved together by more than fretful old nuns.

During Mass, they always ended up giggling about something. Being the youngest it was sometimes excused, not by the beating of a ruler, but with a "stern" lecture from Father Matthew who secretly slipped them cookies and had taken a sort of special shine to Killian.

Killian liked to brag it's because they shared the same accent, the curious Irish one the boy couldn't seem to shake. Emma suspected it was because he was here the most.

Even though Killian was her only friend, she had heard the others talk. Of how he was always sent back before the month was even up.

However, on little Emma Swan knew why.

The nuns must not have been thinking clearly when they put the two in the same room together. Some kids had complained about how Killian didn't have to share, though he did have the smallest quarters.

Killian was plagued by something. The devil or demons was what the Bible told her. Yet, the girl's heart whispered that it was something more than that, something neither of them understood, almost compelling her to slip into the opposing bed with the child trapped in his own mind.

The screams stopped after that. And every morning Sister Agnes would rouse them with a laugh and a kindly smile, comparing them to puppies.

Killian would pout and Emma would grin, both of them thinking it would never end.

Yet, when the time ran out (the limit was a month) they were sent off to places not as kind as those original homes they had been given to a babies.

Emma was taken to an apartment in SoHo, to an artist couple growing weed in the flower boxes.

They were rather nice, introducing her (and their drugged out selves) to the world of Disney and replacing the pristine white hair bow with a slightly paint splattered ribbon, in a myriad of color.

Killian was sent to another nameless home with the absentee parents who only came home to sleep and left him during the day hours, giving him back in the first week. He suspected they had wanted to drag him back that first night, but the money wasn't horrible from the New York Child Welfare. It was sad that an almost-four year old knew that.

Emma was forced to return after 6 months. She hadn't wanted to. Hanna and Chris (they had told her to call them by their first names) were good people, a bit too lax as parents, to be honest, but Emma craved the attention that was given. Those were the last bedtime stories she heard.

Again, they stayed in the orphanage for the whole month, social workers uneasy to send the labeled "problem" of Killian into the world. The fathers had just convinced them that Emma should remain too.

Her fourth birthday passed without notice of most of the convent, excluding Father Matthew, who invited her to a very grown-up feeling tea and Killian, who managed to convince Mother Superior to play Peter Pan that night.

For some strange reason, Killian both hated and loved the Disney flick, but mostly he watched it because Emma. One of the few things she had been allowed to take from one of her foster homes had been an old downtrodden copy of J.M. Barrie's classic. Instead of showing it to the older kids, though, for fear of it being stolen, Killian and her struggled to read parts, though they both knew the story too well.

Of a place where there were no grown-ups. A place of happy endings.

Killian had an uneasy feeling about it. The little blonde had been subjected to more than one of his rants on the cowardly Captain Hook, defending the man for reasons the boy couldn't explain.

Always they were brought back to the much read lines from the end of the novel. "Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting." In the dead of night, under a half moon as they stood looking up at the stars, the girl in a thin white night gown, her green eyes concentrating much too hard on the stars and long blonde hair silver in the moonlight, and the boy in a pair of blue button down pajamas, his azure eyes instead fixated on the girl, made a promise.

Never to say goodbye. Never to forget each other.

Never was a very long time, as Pan once said, a fact that the children were unfamiliar with then, but certainly not now. They hadn't left the other's side, willingly, since that promise at 3.

That's why when they were sent away again, this time Emma got the crappy home and Killian got a decent one, they did say goodbye. The little girl took his hand and whispered in his ear "wait for me." And then with a comical bow, he replied, "as you wish" her face turned scarlet as she was put into a taxi.

Emma's new mother was unhinged to say the least. A smoker (and alcoholic) living off of state welfare, the woman wasn't psychologically sound. She would one moment be shouting at shadows that weren't there, and another be screaming at the very real child hiding in the corner. The neighborhood wasn't too much better. Alphabet City was terrifying to 'normal' people.

It took seven months of her cowering before the woman moronically tried to use the microwave and started a fire.

She was grateful to get away with the case that she had been dragging around for almost two years now. Grateful for the nice policeman wrapping the blanket around her and wipe the smudge of dirt from her cheek. Grateful when Father Matthew drove up in the shiny church Chevy and took her suitcase and picked her up, taking her away from the still slightly smoking building, reminding her of her ex-mother's cigarette burns, carefully hidden under her sleeves.

Emma was the opposite arriving at the convent. Her static companion, the Convent's boy, wasn't there.

That night, in their room, she cried herself to sleep, hollow eyes watching the bed across the brief expanse of floor, an ocean of hardwood between.

It felt so odd to Killian, the new home. They didn't kick him out at the end of the week. They were there the whole time. They didn't yell. They didn't add to his collection of bruises.

It was a small farm closer to Pennsylvania than his old home by the Great Lakes. Quite lonesome in a way, like the ancient couple who had taken him in, with a towering forest. Unlike New York, the silent was deafening.

The farmer and his wife, James and Sarah, had kids. A publisher in the city and a housewife in Philly. The visited not often at all, individuals who constantly complained to their elderly parents about 'the old place.' Thanksgiving and Christmas they gave him those looks, like what is this urchin doing here.

Killian didn't mind though. They didn't mind his nightmares, occasionally coming into his room and giving him a hug and a warm glass of milk from the cows outside to settle him down. And as all thing did in his life, they broke apart in the end.

A heart attack was like a snakebite, quick and deadly was the euphemism that the paramedic muttered as he closed up the body bag over the old man's peacefully wrinkled face, giving the sobbing Sarah a pitying look. Killian walked over to her, determined, and put his arms around her waist, sniffling as he watched another parent be taken away for burial.

This time, he didn't hear the conversations about sending him away. And this time it wasn't because of his screams. "Mom, you can't take this kid to my house." Was what the son hissed. And the daughter, with eyes, which her smile never reached, "Mom, I don't want him around my kids."

She did apologize. Gave him a hug and drove off crying as he stood, once again in front of the welcoming wooden door of the convent, a suitcase in one hand and another raised, about to knock. And then he looked to the side and noticed the calendar, marked with the church events.

Circled was the next day, July 20th, with a small pirate ship sticker and careful, but still obviously child-like handwriting in the corner.

Killian's Birthday.

A grin pushed its way past the mournful expression he wore.

This time, she had been waiting for him.