AN: My first attempt at a Once Upon a Time fanfic. Probably not my best work ever or anything, but I don't think it's half bad so far, over-all. This is pretty much just my idea of what an episode in season one might have been like if they'd decided to do the story of H.C. Andersen's The Little Match Girl. The reason she's eighteen instead of a little kid is because I thought it might be interesting to do to her character what a lot of recent fairytale stories (including the OUAT show) have done with Little Red Ridding Hood's character, making her a grown up or teen instead of a little girl, and see what happens. This is probably not going to be a very long fanfic, I'm thinking of doing maybe about five chapters or so, give or take, but we'll just see how it goes.
Oh and, I think it's obvious, but just in case it's not, Adele is my OC Emmeline's (the little match girl's) Storybrooke counterpart.
Emmeline ran her fingers along the leather spine of the book her grandmother had just given her. She was kneeling, her legs tucked under her, on the soft crimson-and-green rug in front of fireplace, in which roared a cozy flame and several soft, brightly glowing, yellow-orange embers. Finishing, slowly sliding her fingertips away from the smooth, nice-smelling surface she held in her hands, she lifted her eyes up to her grandmother's face.
"Thank you," she breathed, cheeks flushed with excitement.
The grandmother shook her head modestly, half-smiling as she reached out and lightly nudged Emmeline's chin with the side of her thumb knuckle. "You ought to have nice things, Emme." Her eyes flashed from merry to serious, suddenly dark, as if thinking of something that displeased her but she could do very little about. "You're no less special than any other young lady in the kingdom."
Emmeline shrugged.
"You are," she insisted. "And there's something else." The grandmother turned her torso, groaning faintly at the effort it took, and lifted something concealed behind herself.
It was a golden chain with a large milk-white and rich blue pearl-and-sapphire pendant cut so that it was shaped in such a fashion that it closely, and purposefully, resembled a shooting (or perhaps falling) star dangling from the chunky gold links.
"It's...beautiful..." Emmeline recoiled, as if from embarrassment, or some other form of overt discomfort. She wanted the necklace, the fine present, but she had been talked down to enough to know it was sometimes not worth it to get everything you wanted; not when it meant you got scolded for it within an inch of your life at home.
Keeping secrets was worse. It was worse, because it was delightful; it was delightful to have something, however small, that was yours and yours alone, yet it hurt all the more so when it was discovered and ripped away.
Emmeline had yet to have anything in her life that was not, sooner or later, taken forcibly from her in one way or another.
The grandmother lifted the golden chain over Emmeline's head. "Here, dear. Wear it in good health." As if sensing Emmeline's fears, she added, in a low whisper, "Wear it under your dress."
Emmeline tucked the star pendant under the front of her brown dress and smoothed the top of her tan-colored, much-patched, smock. "I'll wear it always." And, in spite of the odds being against this, quite against her keeping anything of value secret, she meant what she said.
"You're a good lass, Em." She reached out and patted her granddaughter's cheek affectionately. "If only you had been born to a better life."
Emma Swan turned off the ignition in the official sheriff's patrol car and, leaning over the seat, pressed on the little black button until the window on the passenger's side went down with a faint whirring sound.
She stopped, was dead silent, and listened. Also, she watched, carefully.
It was early evening, not yet dark but close enough. Close enough to detect, easily enough, any sharp contrast to the steadily dimming daylight. And as she'd driven down the road, Emma had thought she saw, out of the corner of one eye, a flash. It was like a beam of yellow light, coming out of a brick-lined alleyway, not even half a block from the apartment she shared with Mary Margaret.
The light went out. Then came back on. Then swayed, like someone was turning it around and around in a deliberate but probably absent-minded way. That was when it landed, shining directly on the side of the patrol car before turning off again. There was the sound of uncertain scrambling, which Emma could hear because she'd gotten out of the car by then and was striding determinedly towards the alleyway.
The person who'd been playing with the light was not very quick, Emma could have caught up to her in two minutes tops with a sprained ankle. Nothing wrong with her feet, she stood, planted firmly in front of the culprit, who turned out to be a short girl, just under five feet tall, with disheveled, very frizzy, light brown hair that would have come down to her waist if it wasn't all sticking out like a witch's wig, holding a flashlight with her trembling left hand.
The girl's dark eyes widened and she took a few steps back. "Please don't make me go back, Sheriff. Please." She'd seen Emma's badge, but since it was a small town she already knew who she was without it anyway.
She maybe wasn't the most observant kind of person, but everybody knew about Emma Swan. The election posters, when she'd been sworn in as sheriff had been hard to miss, as had the gossip that flew over the girl's head so often, as if she wasn't even standing there.
"Wait." Emma held up her hand and blinked, confused. "Make you go back where? What are you doing with that flashlight?"
"I sell them." The girl reached behind a dumpster to her left and pulled out a backpack she'd stashed there a few minutes ago. "Look." She unzipped the largest compartment. Inside were a number of small and medium-sized flashlights.
It was full to the brim. "Don't take this the wrong way, but it really doesn't look like you've sold that many."
"That's just it," she mumbled at the ground. "I didn't sell any. Not today, anyway. Just one, last week. That's why I can't go home." Her eyes filled with tears and she dropped the backpack on the floor by her boot. That was when Emma realized there was a big hole on the side of her boot, near the heel. Her jacket was missing its buttons, too. "I'm... I'm scared."
"How old are you?"
The girl paused, blushing, like the question embarrassed her for some reason. "Eighteen."
Emma was pretty surprised; she'd thought she was addressing a girl barely four or five years older than her son Henry at best, not a girl the same age she was when she'd had Henry.
"Look," said Emma flatly, rolling her eyes. "You're an adult. No one can make you go anywhere."
She shook her head. "Course they can. I got no place else to go."
"Come with me," Emma decided.
She looked even more frightened. "Am I under arrest?"
"Of course not!"
She thought for a moment. "Oh. Okay, then."
"You have a name?" Emma asked.
"Adele," she managed softly. "Adele Matchworth."
"Come on, Adele." Emma walked out of the alleyway, indicating that she should follow.
Adele came, backpack full of flashlights flung haphazardly over one shoulder, getting into the passenger's side of the patrol car. She'd aimed for the back first, though, Emma had noticed, before she realized the sheriff was holding the passenger door open for her. She wondered if the girl had ever been allowed to sit up front in a car in her life, given the semi-shocked look on her face as she climbed in and timidly fingered the dashboard.
They'd gone down two roads before Adele thought to ask where they were going. When Emma hesitated slightly, paying attention to a stop sign they were coming up on, before saying, "My office," (it sounded a lot nicer than jail, especially since she wasn't going to put her in a cell or anything), she took it for anger and blurted that she was sorry.
"For what?" Emma's forehead crinkled.
Adele shrugged. When it came down to it, she wasn't actually sure; it just felt right, normal even, to apologize.
"I'm sorry," whimpered Emmeline, pulling the frayed shawl tighter around her shoulders, fighting back a fresh round of shivers, from out-right fear as much as the coldness that seemed no less in the cottage than outside on the streets of the nearest town she'd spent the day wandering, pockets full of matches for sale.
"Sorry?" snapped her mother. "Sorry isn't going to give us money to buy food with."
Emmeline was the thinnest body in the family, she got less to eat than any of them. It occurred to her, suddenly and rebelliously, that she could-should, really-say something back about this. If she wasn't complaining, why ought they? Then again, they were older, and her parents, and a minute later, when her mother started in (as she surely would) on how much of a burden putting food in her mouth was, how much it cost, how she ate the most, she'd knew she would believe them. Somehow, she always did; even when she knew they were wrong, or just flat-out lying. She was slow, not in mind itself so much as wits and biting words. Emmeline felt stupid when she argued with anyone; it was her one sense of stinging pride her poor circumstances allowed her. So she simply didn't. It was easier to give in, to let others win debates, seeing as it was so important to them, and it left her alone in peace with her misery.
But sometimes she looked at her father, who was the cruelest to her, simply because he blamed her, as her mother did, for not selling enough matches, but also for incurring her mother's wrath, and wondered. He liked peace and quiet, too. He hated hearing his wife's nagging. And it seemed that, lately, ever since the girl was no longer a child yet stayed on with them, every other complaint out of her mouth began, or else ended, with the name of their daughter.
Was it possible, Emmeline wondered sometimes when her hunger pains or the bruises (those visible and those not) were so bad she could not for the life of her fall asleep, that once upon a time, long, long ago, her father was just like her? Submissive, wanting quiet, giving in to every whim of others, thinking it would make things better?
No, she would tell herself, getting up, bare feet on the chilly floor though it was no colder than the bed with its hole-filled, louse-infested blankets already was, making her way to the lopsided window and lifting the creaky latch, I'm nothing like him.
She would look out at the stars, touch the bulge at the front of her dress, remember her grandmother, and know. The Grandmother had had no patience for her father, but she had admired her; wanted to protect her.
Only grandmother was gone now... Was...dead... The only person left now to protect Emmeline, to stand up for Emmeline, was Emmeline herself. There was absolutely nobody else to turn to.
But where did one go, when one decided, just maybe, to stand up for one's self? To stop doubting and blindly obeying? That question, which she could not answer, kept Emmeline from actually doing anything about it.
"Tomorrow," her father hissed, intervening before her mother could get angrier and turn on him next; "tomorrow you'll sell every single match your laziness cost this family today. Do you hear?"
Emmeline plucked at a loose thread in the shawl. "Yes. I hear."
"Good."
"But I can't."
"Can't what?" His greenish-gray eyes darkened, almost to a pale icy blue.
"Can't sell what people won't buy," she murmured, already regretting having spoken up.
"You didn't offer to enough people," her mother said. "Nor to the right ones. The right sort. You did it on purpose, too, little twit! You wanted free time to sneak off and look at everything in the marketplace when no one was buying from you."
I didn't, I didn't! "I suppose," squeaked through her trembling lips. It was true, as they claimed, that she was fond of getting done early, when she honestly could (which was actually rare enough), and looking at pretty trinkets and baubles she could never afford. Having no money didn't mean she couldn't identify, and enjoy, beauty when she saw it.
Still, she had done her best-her very best-to sell those matches. It wasn't her fault that all she got, for her efforts, were no-thank-yous, shaking heads, and the occasional gruff shove out of the way.
"You'll make up for it tomorrow," her mother stated, firmly, leaving no room for argument or protest, even if Emmeline had been able to force one out.
The match girl swallowed hard. "I suppose."
"You suppose?" Her father took a step towards her, one eyebrow arched.
Emmeline took a step back. "Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I will." She blinked, feeling her throat relax as her father's eyebrow slowly sank back into its right shape. (How could so light and straw-like a brow be so frightening? Perhaps she was just a coward. It wouldn't really surprise her to learn that about herself, when all was said and done.) She almost added, "I promise," but then thought better of it. Emmeline, even if she was the coward she feared herself to be, had one virtue that was undeniable; short of the sky falling on her head, there was nothing that could make her break a promise. That was why she couldn't say those last two words. If she said it, and failed, however impossible, however much she was goaded into it, she'd never forgive herself for turning back on a solid, distributable vow.
Twice Emma had picked up the phone, thinking to call someone about Adele, and twice she'd put it back down.
Adele had been very cooperative. Much as she didn't want to go back home to her parents, she had no problem immediately blurting out a phone number when Emma asked for contact information. But that was, of course, almost instantly, followed by another round of pleading not to make her go back; she was scared, she repeated, her eyes darting, this time a bit unwittingly, to her backpack. The zipper was closed, at that moment, only halfway and the florescent lights in the office ceiling flickered down on the cold, black plastic of the flashlights' handles.
Shaking her head and grunting lightly out of frustration, Emma picked up the phone again. She didn't call Adele's parents, though; she called Mary Margaret. It would have been so much easier if Adele had been as young as she seemed and acted, young enough to be in her friend's class. Then she would have been able to get some information on her.
In theory, Adele was lucky to even have parents to go home to, but if they had anything to do with her nervous mannerisms and brutally unkempt appearance (as Emma strongly suspected, sensing with her 'super power' that Adele's fear was real and she was being completely honest with her), she was probably better off without them.
If only she had some other place to go.
All the same, Mary Margaret might know something. She'd lived in Storybrooke longer than Emma, after all.
She didn't. At least, she didn't know anything that was exactly news to Emma. She was able to tell her over the phone that she'd seen Adele Matchworth plenty of times, that she was poor and always wore the same coat, and every day, mid-afternoon, she went into Granny's, rarely ordered anything to eat (likely because she couldn't afford it), but always got two glasses of water; the first she swallowed in less than two steady gulps, the other she sipped, sitting down at a table, looking out the window, like she wanted an excuse to linger. Emma already figured she was poor; she hadn't seen her at Granny's ordering nothing but water, but it didn't sound unlike something somebody with no money and no desire to go home early might do. And it didn't give her any clues as for what to do with the girl now that she'd picked her up out of the alleyway and brought her in.
"Hey, Adele-" she began, hanging up the phone. Then she stopped. The chair Adele had been sitting in, hands folded in her lap in a clenched, kid-in-trouble kind of way, was empty. The backpack was still under it, but she was gone. "What the hell?" Emma finally spotted her, in one of the cells, curled up on the bunk, wrapped in the blanket, sleeping.
She thought of waking her up, but it felt wrong. It was a different girl than the one Emma had just met who slept there. She was relaxed; eyes closed but with lids flat and not crinkled up, fists uncurled, one arm dangling over the edge of the bunk like a large jungle cat's paw hanging down from a high-up tree branch it dozed comfortably on...
Emma groaned to herself, rolled her eyes, and decided to let the girl sleep for now. The alternative was to wake her, or call her parents; or both. None of which seemed appealing. Adele was sleeping like she hadn't slept in years. Best to just let her rest, for a little while.
AN: Any good? Thoughts? Review if you please.