Puppet Love

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Summary: Pinocchio didn't leave baby Emma but he stayed with her, protected her… until the day his feelings for the girl became too confusing. After ten years and with Emma back in his life, he contemplates his feelings and actions while he's slowly turning back into a puppet. (August/Emma)

And here it is, my very first Once Upon a Time fic. Wow…

Chapter 1

He groaned when Emma's image ran through his mind in spite of his best efforts to clear his head and chase away all thoughts.

He was in agony. Physically he wasn't able to do anything to stop the searing pain that held his slowly changing body in its grasp so he tried his best to stop the torturing thoughts that attacked his mind while he lay helpless in his bed.

But the uninvited thoughts kept coming…

He was fighting with his immense guilt that, though it had been his constant companion during the years, he had always managed to lock into the furthest corner of his mind. Now that in the face of his ultimate failure life was slowly leaving his body, he had no strength left to run away from his self-reproach. And maybe he shouldn't do it, either. He'd been doing that in the last ten years.

Maybe it was time to admit the truth. And for him, truth and guilt walked hand in hand.

There were so many things to feel guilty about… so many people he had failed.

His dear old father who went against everybody and everything he believed in just to keep him safe. The father who trusted him… loved him.

Then there were the royal couple. Even though they had no way of knowing it but he was their daughter's only support in a strange world where they were supposed to follow her. He was Emma's only connection to a world she had never seen… and ultimately he was the only hope of all the inhabitants of the Enchanted Forest for guiding their Savior on the right path.

He had failed his world… and Emma.

His Emma. The little baby girl who had come into this strange world having only him to count on. The little toddler who always reached for him when she tried to put her tiny feet in front of the other with a little proud smirk playing on her lips. The little girl who listened to his stories, hanging on his every word, always eager to hear about fairy-tale land. The skeptic always down-to-earth teen who called him crazy because he kept on talking about a land where magic existed.

The angry fourteen-year-old whom he found throwing up after a party where she shouldn't have gone at the first place and who, after calling her upon her drinking, lit on a cigarette just to make it clear for him that she wanted to go on her own way. The disillusioned sixteen-year-old who came to him after a boy from twelfth grade took advantage of her just for the next day to embarrass her in front of his popular friends.

And the seventeen-year-old Emma who was lying next to him nestled into his arms, sleeping peacefully. The Emma he left behind because he felt too ashamed of his conduct the night before to be able to look into the girl's eye. The girl he had always thought of as his sister… the girl for whom he had feelings that had nothing to do with brotherly love.

That morning, he had to realize that he had fallen in love with her… and he left.

The reasons behind his leaving were clear in his mind. He knew that he had done the right thing even if it had killed him. What made him feel so guilty about it was the fact that he had put Emma in that situation.

And if it hadn't been enough that he had left her to fend for herself even before she'd have turned eighteen, he had left her with a child, too. It didn't take him long to figure out who Henry's father was. The kid looked just like him.

Every time he ran into the boy or he just saw him, he couldn't help pondering the what-ifs. It was easy enough to imagine a world where they all stayed together living happily ever after but he never lost sight of reality. In life not everyone had their happy ending... at least not in a land without magic.

Maybe that was what they all needed... magic.

Truth was that however hard it was to admit, Emma did the right thing when she gave the boy up for adoption. Henry's whole life would have been screwed up from the beginning either way whether he had stayed with Emma or with the both of them.

Even if he could have accepted his feelings for her, it wouldn't have taken Emma long to realize that her feelings for him were not what she claimed them to be. There would have come a time when Emma found herself… when she realized that she didn't need him… when she found out what she reslly wanted from life.

He didn't want her to feel trapped.

Maybe it had been the coward way out but he still believed he had done the right thing.

The only problem was that in all his argumentation, he had forgotten about an important thing – he had forgotten his task to make Emma believe. Of course the always rational girl had long ceased to believe in fairy-tales but, after leaving, he killed every chance of her ever doing so.

In ten years, the first time when he thought about the curse was when killing pain shot through his leg one morning.

He knew then that he had no choice but to face her. And after a long time, he felt himself ready to face her. Sure she'd be angry at him or worse, indifferent towards him, but he was prepared for that. He was sure he could face her without those disturbing feelings that had made him run all those years ago. He went to meet the Emma who had been trusted into his care as a baby.

What he wasn't prepared for was to meet a beautiful young woman who didn't remind him of the young girl whom he had last seen at all.

He was right, though – he was able to face her without being confused about his feelings. It weren't his feelings for a child that came rushing back to him but his feelings for the woman. He fell in love with Emma Swan all over again. And this time he was all right with it.

Emma, though, while she didn't hate him, didn't trust him, either. And it made his task to make her believe all the more difficult.

"For how long do you plan on giving me the silent treatment?" August ran after her when Emma left the diner without a sideway glance in his direction. It was obvious that she decided on pretending to be strangers.

"Until you realize that there is nothing I want from you," Emma threw behind her back without stopping in her track.

"Apart from, of course, finding out my reason to be here."

"I'm the Sheriff of this town… and people are getting suspicious."

"For God's sake, Emma, stop hiding behind your badge. You don't want to talk about what happened between us? Fine. But don't act like a sulking five-year old refus…"

"You want to bring up the past?" Emma stopped so abruptly that, when she turned around, August almost bumped into her. "Here is what I've got to say – Go to hell."

"Good, you're angry. That's a good start."

The understanding look on his face seemed to take the wind out of Emma's sails as she slowly shook her head, her attacking stance disappearing.

"I'm not angry… I'm disappointed in you." And this confession hit August in the face like nothing else. He just wanted the best for her but all he had managed to accomplish was to let her down. "Do you have any idea how humiliated I felt? If it hadn't been enough that the whole school thought I was an easy lay, the only person I trusted… the one I loved, betrayed me. You used me like all the other guys," she spat at him with disgust.

"No," he denied vehemently. He knew what those boys had thought when they tried to chat her up… when some of them managed to sweet talk her… and he was not one of them. "Don't compare me to those immature scumbags."

"Why not? You slept with me, you left. God knows, maybe you had a good laugh at my expense."

"You have no idea how I felt," he raised his voice, too, just because he got frustrated by Emma not seeing the other side of the coin.

"Damn right," she drawled in her voice low with anger. "And I didn't care, either."

"I felt ashamed," he admitted with a pained expression hoping for Emma to understand him. But all he got in response was a disgusted scoff.

"Ashamed? That's rich."

"Emma, you have to understand," he started as Emma tightened her jaw. He ignored her and continued. "You have to understand that I've known you since you were a baby. I saw you grow up. I always thought of you as a child and then there were you… a beautiful young woman whom I have fallen in love with. I just couldn't make sense of my feelings."

"You didn't even try," she pointed out, her still low voice hitching by the end as tears of frustration appeared in her eyes.

August took a deep breath. "I'm sorry," he told her because he didn't know what else to say.

"No, you're not. If you were sorry, it hadn't taken ten years for you to show up."

"All right. I'm not sorry. I did what I thought was the best for you. What we did was wrong… what I felt for you was wrong… and me staying would have been wrong."

"Why? What was so wrong in loving me?" she asked dejectedly.

"You were just a kid, Emma… a confused, bitter girl who was yet to find herself. Maybe we should have faced the consequences together. Maybe we should have raised Henry together… But can you honestly tell me that it would have worked out, truly worked out?"

"I loved you," Emma confessed in a horse voice.

"No, you didn't... not in a way that would have mattered if I had stayed. And you know that. You loved me like family… you had a childlike admiration for me because I was the only male figure in your life. You needed me. That was what you translated as love."

"Well," Emma straightened as her features turned cold. "Good thing's I don't need you anymore," she told him and, turning on her heels, she stormed away.

"No," August watched her leave with a pained look. "You don't. I need you."

He didn't know whether it had been wise to bring up the past and his actions that were undoubtedly viewed as betrayal by Emma but his confrontation with the woman and her subsequent outburst proved to be fruitful. At their next encounter they could act civil and August was sure that they were on the road to rebuild their relationship that, he hoped, meant just as much for Emma as it did for him.

And this time he was completely aware of the task lying before him and he was determined to fulfill his obligations. And he hoped that in the meantime he could get to know the woman whom the girl he had last seen ten years ago had grown into.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. Emma was calling his name from behind it and the door flew open after he had told her he couldn't open the door.

That look in her eyes when she saw him – half human, half puppet, she was shocked. And it only meant one thing: she believed.

He should have felt relieved because it meant that the end was near; Emma would find a way to break the curse and it all would end… even if he'd not be around to see it. All he could feel, though, was fear. He feared for Emma because in her eyes he couldn't see the Emma he'd got to know since he arrived in Storybrook; all he could see was the little girl who had always run to him when something bothered her… it was the desperate look of a girl who believed that he could make everything better.

But it wasn't his fight and the time when he could be of any help had passed.

He had failed her.

And all he could hope as he whispered his last encouraging words for her was that she'd rise above her fears and insecurities and dare to open her heart – because, as clichéd as it might sound in a land without magic, love can indeed make people do the greatest things.

TBC

Well, I'm still not sure what I think about their relationship in this one but I went with the idea anyway. Maybe I can figure it out by the end of the story. :)

Thanks for reading!