Things change. The years go by. Though, August sometimes thinks, they don't change by much.
At seven he leaves on a bus and keeps his anxious tears of regret to himself, wept in silence against the window. He doesn't stay missing for long before the world—this world without magic, with buildings taller than any castle, vehicles faster than any horse—finds him again, but this time Emma isn't the only friend he has there. He's alone. Absolutely alone. Far more alone than he was as a wooden boy when he strayed from his father's advice, when he'd lied and gotten into trouble and not understood that there were consequences to his actions. There was no Gepetto waiting, no Jiminy to find him, no familiar trees of the forest to guide his way.
Night comes and still he cries, now into his pillow while the other children sleep nearby. Time passes, as it inevitably does, and there's some distant resemblance of family he finds, with a mother and father and other children, but it never feels quite right, not like it did back in the place where he belonged. Just when he starts to feel like he's found a home, something comes to shatter the balance. He moves on, family to family, learns not to get attached, and soon he's a teenager and it isn't the people he's surrounded by that are the barrier to happiness, but himself. August makes trouble, and that warning he'd heard from a blue fairy, from a cricket, from his father: be brave, truthful, unselfish, falls belatedly on deaf ears. Still, though, every year or a little more than that, August thinks to himself about the baby he left behind, and when he's sure he's completely alone, he lets the tears come.
He saves a pittance from the wages of odd jobs he kept as a teen and when he can, he leaves everything behind. To be free, he thinks, that's what he's going to be. He's going to be free. August doesn't plan on staying anywhere for long, but even so, his dreams don't come as easy in this world—the real world—and his money's too little, his skills uncultivated, nothing to offer anyone else, so in between the late nights and early mornings when he works, August tries the only thing he really knows how to do besides craft and carve wood with his hands: he writes. Writes about the stories that he grew up with that weren't stories but fact back there, and sometimes he imagines new tales that belong only to himself. But every couple of years after a long and weary night, August climbs into his bed, comes to terms with all his mistakes, and cries for them all.
There's a break to be caught, the wind blowing just the right way, the planets aligning, his luck finally coming through, and with all the meager savings he has to his assumed name, August buys that bike and sets out for the world. It's rough. The motorcycle needs work, repairs stalling him in his travels for weeks on end, but he tries to see the bright side. There are people to be met, some mean and cruel, some kind and interesting, and always, he realizes, always beautiful women that ease the burden of the past, solve the problem of the future that approaches on the distant horizon.
He lands in Thailand, rents a room that's always hot with a ceiling fan that only stirs up stale air, but he doesn't spend much time there, so it's money well spent. August has seen a lot of the world by then, but this, he thinks from the blue green waters off the shore, is the prettiest place he's been. The ocean's always felt safe to him even if it shouldn't, but the day he'd lost his life to harsh seas had also been the day he'd been born, so in some ways he knows the ocean will always be part of him. In his periphery, he hears before he sees a group of friends splashing in the water, and August smiles to himself, a pang of jealous regret in his chest at always being the one who never fit in, at least not for long and not when it mattered. But there's a girl, hair long and sodden with sea water, bleached from extended sun exposure, and their eyes catch across the way as she giggles to her companions.
It makes August feel like the teenager he never really got to be, and whenever he steals a glance back towards her, their eyes always meet, lips quirking into a smile at the corner of their mouths. The group she's with begins to retreat when the clouds of a late afternoon rain roll in and darken, but she lingers hesitantly, and calls out to him, her accent so thick it's like she's nearly chewing her words. Australian, it's apparent, not just in her pronunciation but the phrases she chooses, and soon they exchange hellos like they're both in a bar and not in the ocean, schools of tiny fish swimming nearby looking for crumbs of food from tourists. She invites him to dinner, and it doesn't take him half a breath to consider and answer yes. Of course, he'll come.
Her friends are loud, but nice, warm and friendly, and though he's thankful for the company, he only has eyes for the woman from the water, their bare knees brushing underneath the table as the drinks come and go. When the meal's over, she doesn't leave with her group, she's brave enough to go with the stranger, and that's when the day's rain finally falls, soaking them through and through. There's no preamble, no bullshit when they both decide to go back to his place, and before the door's even shut behind them, August has the taste of her in his mouth, the feel of her skin under his palm. The first time's quick, both of them urgent and rough, but in the hours that follow they slow down, appreciating the anonymous tenderness that can sometimes come with a partner one hardly knows.
In the morning he wakes with a pain in his leg, an ache so sharp he's sure he's been bitten by something, although a hacking with a machete sounds more accurate if he's honest. It subsides eventually, and beyond the fading dullness of searing pain, August remembers the woman sleeping soundlessly beside him. He makes it to the bathroom, every step an echo of the pain that dissipated, and there he stares back at the image of himself in the mirror. He sees skin and hair, darker than it had been as a boy, the freckles hard to find with the tan of his flesh, and for the first time in a long time, August recalls on the memories of what life had been like in that other place. Not a dream, he reminds himself, it was never a dream.
The mirror reflects back at him. Thirty-five already. Thirty-five and not a step closer to doing what he'd been avoiding for the last twenty-eight years. By some blessing of what this world calls God or by some sprinkle of fairy dust, that baby he'd sworn to protect and take care of nearly thirty years ago has found her way to where she needs to be through no help of his own. He thinks of his father, not the one that raised him on this planet for the longest, but the man that had wanted a child so much he'd carved one out of enchanted wood and wept with tears of joy when his boy started breathing for the first time. In that sleepy town in Maine, his father waits for him, and though August has spend his whole life being a coward, a liar, selfish, maybe it's time to make it right. Here, he doesn't cry, though he can feel the moisture prick his eyes.
When he returns to the room, the woman's gone, a note in sloppy script scrawled across a square of paper. See you around. No number, no hint of where she'll be, though August suspects Phuket won't be her home for much longer. Beneath the words there's another, a signature of Emma, and though he knows it's not the Emma he'd been the charge of, the Emma that he needs, he considers it a sign. August packs his bag that day, fills his bike's gas tank up, and finds passage on a ship back to the states.
Things change. The years go by. He comes to a stop outside the sign for Storybrooke. There's no more running.