David has a dream.

It's an unrealistic, optimistic, impossible dream from some far off place, but it's a real, true dream, and dreams don't fly very high in Storybrooke. Yeah, even the guy who has no honest idea of the life before him is aware of that.

He doesn't dream it very often, but that's the sad part about dreams, though-you fall asleep, and for what feel like minutes you're in this perfect place, where things are flawless, and you wake up and have to just live life and wait until that dream comes back to life. And the worst part of it is, when you open your eyes to the sounds of reality, you remind yourself that you're not in it.

But he doesn't mind that-the dream he has seems like a dream of a flighting memory, which only makes it as real as a dream could be. He sometimes thinks that he's lived it before, which isn't totally rare, Dr. Whale and Dr. Hopper and Kathryn all say. But they've only really heard of the dream, not about it, and he's sure that things would be a turning point if he gave them details.

His dream is simple-it's that of a girl, the girl he lost, the girl that pains for him to speak of now. The girl lightyears away from him, locked up in her own cocoon of inner torture, the girl who he could never have in the first place. But that's the thing about the dream-he had her already. In some far off land, he decides, where the grass is green and the sun always shines and bliss is eternal. The thing about dreams is that you have to have them over and over before you get all the aspects correct. But that's not the issue with David-because this dream is all too clear to him.

And her hair is longer, too. And she doesn't wear cardigans and skirts, instead elaborate yet humbled gowns. And she smiles at him, and she stokes his hand, and once she told him she loved him, truly and dearly. Other periods show various other characters, most slightly random-a cricket that sounds like Archie, a grump called Grumpy (that part was extremely Brothers Grimm) who looked fittingly like Leroy, a woman dressed in red with eyes that sometimes glowed the color of fire. But they would pass, and he'd see her again, in her gowns and with her smiles and telling him that she loves him. With pale, snow white skin, blood red lips, hair as dark as charcoal.

And she calls him Charming, and he laughs like it's some sort of an inside joke. But David doesn't understand it.

He doesn't understand any of it.

Because, when he awakens, his mind feels eternally blank. But there's a part of him, the part that was lost somewhere in the coma, he knows, itches to return to the dream, because it has a truth in it that David can believe in.

James has a nightmare.

It occurs when he's at his most vulnerable, when the Queen is the farthest she could be from his mind, and he falls asleep smiling. He always awakes with his heart wrenching, and even though she tells him that he wasn't screaming, he has a feeling he might have been, because she's holding onto his shoulder too tightly.

And he's ashamed of the nightmares, and how often it occurs-that's not supposed to happen often, isn't it? Some old fairy tale his mother used to croon to him-nightmares only happen often to bad people, those who need that little light over and over again. He doesn't want that light, even though he's not a child any longer, and he doesn't find fear in the wolf howls.

But the nightmares don't seem like a conscientious thought-more like a prophecy, which is the real thing that frightens him. It reminds him of oracles and visions and the words of Rumplestilskin that always make the hairs on his neck stand up. The reality of it is frightening, and fright is something that James certainly can't have, because he's a prince and a husband and is going to be a father.

But he still feels the pain when he sees it.

He's nowhere familiar-certain things (age-old village blocks, apple trees) stand out, but there's no eternal valleys, or high mountainsides. There's dark, hard roads, and there's small, humbled homes, and there are people he'd never seen, people whom he might remember, and people whom he'd wish to forget.

And she's in it. But she's not the person he knows anymore-she doesn't love him, but she looks at him like she does, and she tells him things he can't hear, but hurt all the same. And they're lightyears away, despite their closeness, and there's a chant in his mind that tells him that he can't have her, not now or ever again. Almost as if he never had her in the first place.

And he awakens, and things are cleared, and the moonlight lying over their bed is some source of comfort, because, in the nightmare, there is no light. He can't have his only light-he can't have it, no now or ever again. Almost as if he never had it in the first place.

David has a dream.

James has a nightmare.

And neither of them believes that it will ever come true.

Because they're both stuck (painfully and blissfully) in reality.

Thanks for reading! I wrote this about a month or less ago, so it's not exactly keepin' up with the timeline. If you've seen it before, it's because I'm doing some spring cleanin. In other words, my term for going through my stories and editing them.

I hope that you enjoyed it! Reviews are like cookies to me :)

-LTGU

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