journey's end in lovers' meeting.
x
once upon a time,
no, scratch that—
when she was young and the world was cruel and she was alone, there was a boy. There had never been a boy before. He was dashing and charming (how she will laugh and laugh at that later on) and had this grin that could make her do anything, so she did.
Together they ran, wild and free, and reckless without abandon, and all the love ('love', she later regards as well, nevermind, that's another story) ate her up, he ate her up.
And then it was back to when she was young and the world was cruel and she was alone, there was a boy. This time it was a different boy.
He is only three minutes old when she hands him away.
x
she is twenty eight when she hears a knock (fate, Henry insists time and time again later on down the line) at her door and there is a child, no more than ten, maybe and he calls her 'mom' and suddenly she is stuck in fairytales and folklore and it's just too much for the world to handle—
once upon a time,
she was a savior and her parents were snow white and prince charming and she saved the kingdom from the evil queen.
yeah right, kid, she scoffs, and her son grins as the curse breaks and the walls shatter and she finally gets her happily ever...
we're not done yet, her fairy godmother proclaims.
x
there is another boy, a man really.
Graham— her name sounds blessed in his mouth, sounds safe, sounds no more.
don't keep out love, her mother, snow white (good god) reprimands. Easy for her to say because true love's kiss and forever and always sound so similar and I will always find you as her father (prince charming, she giggles and giggles) sighs heavily from the kitchen table ever reproachful as another man walks through the front door with a leather jacket and a typewriter and pens down their words and wisdom and calls himself the biggest liar ever—
Pinocchio was always bad at keeping all the facts straight.
including the ones that involve true love cause he sure wasn't hers.
x
for real this time though.
once upon a time,
there was a badass princess and smart mouthed vagrant that made her heart skip a beat.
hold up—
this is not supposed to be part of the story. But then he smiles and bows, introduces himself (Killian Jones, charmed), and she feels that baby bird that came alive once before with a boy with sandy hair and hot cocoa with cinnamon and storybook confessionals chirp in her chest, that blessed bird begins to hum for the second time since forever.
He smirks at her and somersault over cartwheel over backflip that she pushes down and out of reach as he extends his hand, inviting her in to rip him to shreds with one lift of an eyebrow.
x
she understands that he is suave and debonair, can lace his words with sweet disposition and flare, can twist and barb, deceit, lie, and steal, and yet, when he has the chance to do so, the arrow (or sword, though it were) aimed directly at her heart, he stops all beats and she seizes
like mother, like daughter
the paralyzing thought hangs briefly in the air before her as he smiles winningly at her from his place on the earth, soil caked in his face, and good lord, his eyes are blue before she grabs her mother's hand and leaps back home.
(she pretends to be offended when he shows up a week later and she chains him to a hospital bed that he flirts his way out of in under two minutes.)
x
there is another boy, not a man, never a man.
She chases him down the sidewalk into the street in front of cars and inside out of subway stations before she realizes that she doesn't want to be. Their chase ended with a jail cell and a growing bump under her hospital gown.
She's not young and the world is not cruel and even more importantly, she is not alone.
He is still just as clever and charming, maybe even more so than the days of wild and reckless without abandon, but he is missing the one quality, that one spark in his eye, it used to glint in the reflection of the bug's rearview window. She scoffs to herself, maybe she imagined it all along. Perhaps this is what letting go feels like.
He may have put her story (the story) in motion but he isn't the hero that saves the princess.
x
there are stolen moments of blinding brilliance that feed her soul from the stoppage of time and all that stuff she has heard her parents boast about in earnest.
once upon a time,
there was a badass princess with hair like golden waves of honey and sea glass eyes and walls built up so high around her heart that she didn't dare learn to love.
there was a rapscallion of a pirate that fed off revenge and borrowed time handed to him with a price on its head, his eyes cerulean sapphires and the silvered smile on his mouth delicate and fleeting to the touch because he didn't dare remember how to love.
And there were villains and evil queens and storybook characters and far off lands that they travelled to, apart, but together…
x
the villain, (she crassly laughs because peter fucking pan, really), and how she is so fucking tired of this, steals her baby boy (she can almost hear him straining 'moooooooo-m' with two syllables in embarrassment), and runs away to another fairytale land and she doesn't crumble because she is the savior damnit, so she will bring back her happy ending, other worlds be damned.
His eyes are ghosted and terrified and he holds all the answers to the questions she has been asking in his hands, and he wordlessly gives her the hope she had lost the moment the boy was taken.
you and me, we understand each other, he recalls and most days, more often than not, he is sure that understanding is more than he could have ever hoped for.
x
he watches her, those too blue eyes stormy and resolute on her mission and he knows why he is loathed and forgotten and irresponsive to the plights of his companions.
once upon a time,
wait, he's a villain, and villains don't get happy endings.
x
she can say with absolute certainty that true love's kiss is a real thing. She has experienced it, she has used it to her benefit, she has only ever loved one thing enough to hone that kind of selfless power.
the love a parent has for a child is a sensation is beginning to understand to the best of her ability. She will forever be flawed and unholy for his abandonment, but she will also spend her forever, and her son's, trying to make up for it.
But the other kind of true love, well she is the result of it (I will always find you, oh true love's kiss! He is my husband), and maybe she has felt the slightest tingle back when she had curls in her hair and felt scruff on her cheek and words laced with british accents fell on her ears and his mouth went limp on her own and then she built another wall around her walls and couldn't scale them even if she tried herself.
and then that damn pirate climbed that beanstalk into the clouds with a triumphant look on his face, a grin stretching so widely it was almost indecent, those eyes still seemingly vivid against the opulent robin's egg blue. Killian Jones could scale any height, so what was keeping him out.
x
she is the one that starts it. A swift swish of five fingers grappling with the leather of his coat, the other tangled in his artfully tousled mess of hair, her mouth crashing on his in the most unorthodox fashion because for chrissake, he is a rogue of a pirate—
(and a good man, she barely fleetingly considers as he kisses her back, harder pushing all realms and worlds and everything else out of that pretty little head of hers).
The kiss is over before she can even begin to drown in the way his ringed hand knots in her mane of blonde, lips furiously tasting every bit he can, foreheads pressed together, those goddamn blue eyes shocked and stoic for once in his life, and oh, lord that bird that has taken flight in her chest swoops to her stomach.
But this isn't a fairytale, she scolds.
x
when I win your heart, emma, and I will win it, it won't be because of any trickery, it will be because you want me.
once upon a time—
fuckit. She's the savior and she is going to make her own rules. And honestly, she isn't ready for that catapult that her mother talks about that was so easy with her father, she just knew with one look at charming's face through that great net of rope and tree top and his full out shit eating grin that one day the ring with the emerald stone would sit on her finger. And it does.
but there is something in the way he drawls her name almost lazily like a second language off his tongue, how he doesn't treat her as fragile or a broken object that cannot be put back together, the lascivious nature of those damn blue eyes raking over her in admiration and amazement and faith. It feels like hope and she wonders what one can do with that kind of power in the way that he thinks her to be formidable and strong and beautiful. So maybe, she can make her own guidelines and find her own way because she knows that one day, perhaps in the far future or even the near one, she will completely and utterly trip and tumble and fall and if he catches her, then she'll pretend it was her plan all along.
so, anyways, once upon a time—
x
there is always that climax in a story that shows where the characters get torn away from each other, scattered even to the farthest corners of the world[s], and though this is no storybook tale, no happy ending, it still makes like one and she finds herself hugging her mother and father tightly as she had just found them, evil and creeping clouds beckoning with a traitorous finger on the blurry horizon, and the yellow bug from the depths of cinnamon on cocoa and red leather jacket hell straddling the town line, a virtual police station queue of fantasy characters standing behind it.
This is not what was supposed to happen, she is the savior, she has to bring back all the happy endings. Not get into her tiny little car with her son and speed away to the life she had wanted, she's going to forget everything everyone.
don't look at him, she internally wages wars and epic battles with herself, the itching in her fingers to maybe just once, run her palm over his face and memorize the way that he sees her that will all be ash the moment they cross that scratch on the pavement.
not a day will go by that I won't think of you.
good.
x
his name is the word that leaves her mouth as the bug crosses the town line.
x
once upon a time—
there was a badass princess with golden reams and sea glass eyes that could watch out for herself and totally kick your ass.
there was a man with sea tossed hair and a blinding grin and unforgiving blue eyes with hope in his heart and a promise in his hands.
swan, he breathes as the door swings open and there she is in the flesh after three hundred and sixty five days of waiting and looking and searching and finally getting to his happy ending. Only to be kicked in the groin and slammed against the neighbor's door.
Killian has never been happier.
x
i will always find you, charming repeats to the young man time and time over, determination in his eyes, one magic portal swirling beneath their feet, hand clapped on shoulder and a huge leap of hope that he lands back in the world where she lives.
x
once upon a time—
record skip. Scratch that.
There's a new fairytale in town.
x
I will always find you.
And he does.