Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own words.
Some spoilers for future speculation. Canon CS and implied future CS. Title from the song 'Touch the Sky' by Julie Fowlis, from Disney/Pixar's Brave.
Warning: brief mentions of child abuse.
Enjoy. :)
where dark woods hide secrets
Emma is three when a kind woman with golden hair takes her little hands in her own and whispers fervently, "Emma dearest, do you want to know a secret?"
And she nods, just as fervently, so wisps of her hair fall into her eyes.
"My darling girl," the woman says, and runs her thumbs across Emma's fingers, "there is so much beauty in this world, if only you take the time to look."
And she spins a strand of ice and snow in Emma's palm, glittering in the summer sun.
"There is magic, child, if you believe."
…
i.
When Emma is seven, she is a wild thing – a princess of the forest, with twigs and moss for a crown and bare feet that pound strong against the earth. A fluttering of wings greets her as she hops the fence, and a nearby doe startles, sets off at a gallop on spindly legs. They're at her command, Emma thinks, their flurry of excitement at her will and her will alone.
This is her realm – a land of light and shadow, of mist and clay.
It pulls at her as if from a dream, a whispering voice in the farthest reaches of her subconscious that tells her that there is another life waiting for her, that she was meant for more.
That there is magic.
'It's a pretty common fantasy for foster kids,' her teacher had told Mama Jane, who seemed less concerned about her well-being and more inclined to find an excuse to send her away.
But Emma knows. She knows because she can feel it in her veins, can feel it prickling around her fingertips like static electricity, and she can taste it in the thick air of the forest.
Emma is seven, and she has magic.
The other children don't believe her, of course, not once recess is over and they're back in their seats, scribbling away in their workbooks. 'It's a fun game,' Belinda had told her once, 'but if we keep it up, we'll get in trouble.'
'So shhhhhhhhh,' Brenda'd added, her hand cupped around her mouth.
But she really does have magic, even if they can't see it.
Because here, deep in the forest, with the sweet, silvery threads of magic unspooling from her fingers, the birds speak to her in rhymes, and soft green tendrils twist and curl in the thick air beneath her palm.
And there is magic.
.
ii.
When Emma is thirteen, she loses her magic. It comes apart under harsh words and the harsher clap of her foster father's palm against her cheek; it breaks, shatters like glass against the wall, and it's gone, leaving only the spiny thorns of memory beneath her skin.
And there isn't magic anymore.
.
iii.
There are years then of nothingness, of emptiness heavier than lead that makes her sink further into the ground with each step.
There are years of pain, of heartbreak; years of betrayal.
There is the sound of a baby's cry, echoing in her memory, and there is the sound of three tiny knocks against her apartment door.
But there isn't any magic.
Not quite.
Not yet.
.
iv.
(There is a flash of … something, something strange and unearthly and yet somehow familiar when Graham cradles her face between his palms, when he presses his lips to hers. There is something there, rising up within her, filling her to the brim and—
And then he's gone.)
.
v.
And there is a flash of something more, something bright and rippling just when she thinks all is lost.
Her son, the baby she'd been too frightened to raise; too scared to even hold, to see, lest she change her mind. And maybe she should have, she thinks, maybe she should have protected him from this, from this town where nothing makes sense, this place of poisoned apples and dragons.
But then there's the light, a steady pulse that rolls across the town, washing over everything in its path; true love's kiss.
(A familiar voice - somewhere deep in the corners her memory - whispers, lilting as if to a child: true love is the most powerful magic of all.)
.
vi.
When Emma is twenty-eight, she's a princess.
She's always been one, really, even if her crown has held many shapes over the years.
She's a princess, but more than that, she has magic again. Even if she doesn't want it - even if she denies the shifting, shimmering glow beneath her skin - it returns, again and again, as if her power itself is telling her not to run; as if something deep inside her is urging her to stay.
It comes back first in a rush, shooting from deep within her marrow, shining out – rushing and pushing and commanding, because she is a princess and this is her realm, because this is her mother and she can't lose her now – not when she's only just found her.
And so the magic (which has been leaking from her since the breaking of the curse - leaking as if oil from a car and gathering into tiny puddles in her wake) leaps forth, and she feels the crackle of it, the spark. She feels the rush of freedom and then the warm comfort of Snow's hand over her heart.
"What was that?" she gasps.
And there are tears in her mother's eyes as she draws Emma closer. "That – is a great subject for discussion. When we get home."
(Home, Emma thinks. Such a foreign and familiar concept all at once.)
But Emma knows.
She has magic.
.
vii.
There is more magic, of course, more than Emma could have ever imagined; an ebb and flow deep within her veins. She feels it, sometimes as a dull hum, an itch lurking just beneath her skin, and other times more acutely - a distinct thrum of power and emotion at the smallest of moments.
(She can't control it, and it terrifies her.)
And more than that, there is power.
Power enough to save the town, to pull them from the brink as reality collapses around them, to protect the family she's fought so hard to find, to preserve the only home she's ever had.
Power enough to rescue her son; power that comes not only from magic but from deep within, to support and to lead, to guide her team of misfits to do the impossible.
(It is the power of a ruler, she thinks once, faintly. It's her birthright, her destiny; it's fantasy become reality and she's so lost.)
And then not power, but strength. Strength enough to say goodbye, to watch her family slip away, to watch fairytales and happy endings become the stuff of children's stories once more, to return to a world without magic.
.
viii.
There are nights when Emma wakes, the world coming into focus abruptly with a flash of blinding light behind her eyelids.
A dream, she tells herself.
It's always just a dream.
(Even if her cheeks and forehead feel warm and flushed, alight with something she can't quite place; even if she can't fight back the tears of leaving a woman she's never even met. Even if one choked sob forms the word 'mom' and she has no idea why.)
.
ix.
In the end, it was only her memories that had left her. Her magic had always been there, sleeping just beneath the surface. Dormant, Regina says, and unskilled.
(She still can't control it, as much as she tries. When she was a child, it had been so simple, but she's spent too many years repressing it, too many years letting the world beat it out of her, squish it down and bury it so deep inside her that she can't just reach it anymore. With focus, with love she can unwind it, slowly and carefully, but with fear it comes too fast, brash and irrational just like all the things about herself she wishes she could change.)
Because it isn't magic that leaps into action when Hook is pale and his chest is still beneath her palms; not magic that pools in her gut and not magic that saves his life - it's fear.
"Killian, come back to me."
(Because she can't lose him too.)
And it's fear that takes her magic from her, boiling off in the crisp winter air. It's fear and something else – something more subtle and wavering – that brings him back to her. He chokes, gasps, and presses his fingers to his lips, horror pressed into the lines of his face, and he knows just as well as she does – her magic is gone.
.
x.
At first it feels like freedom. Like for the first time ever she can live a normal life, like she can be a normal person – not defined by her daydreaming or her wildly overactive imagination.
(Not defined by the flag on her case file, by words like 'abuse' or 'maladaptive daydreaming'.)
That is until—
Until.
That is until she's irrevocably changed the past, until she's learned that that she can run and run but she'll never find home in the pounding of her feet on the ground (that it's waiting for her in her father's smile, in her mother's embrace; that it's all around her if she'd just stop and look.)
It feels like freedom until she watches her mother die and she is absolutely powerless to stop it.
.
xi.
When Emma was eight, her favorite book was The Wizard of Oz. In fact, her first act of thievery was holding a library copy – tattered and smelling thickly of smoke – long past the due date, smuggling it inside her pillowcase so no one would rat her out. Like Dorothy, she'd surely been sent to a foreign land – caught up in the chaos of a cyclone – and her family is still waiting for her to return, pacing and frantically wringing their hands, worlds away in some other Kansas, in a world where there a people like her who can pull shimmering strands of starlight in the empty space between their palms.
So the afternoon of her ninth birthday, she dug through Mama Jane's closet for a pair of shiny silver high-heel shoes, and standing on wavering legs, she squeezed her eyes shut and clicked the heels together three times, whispering fervently, "There's no place like home."
And though her magic hadn't been powerful enough then – could never be powerful enough to take her to a place that didn't yet exist – now, thinking of her mother and her father, her son and her baby brother, thinking of everyone she's lost, and everyone she'd die to protect—
"What?" she says, suddenly self-conscious, because Killian is smiling at her as if she's only just learned something he's known all along.
"Look down," he says, and when she does, she finds the wand has come to life in her hand with shifting, glimmering tendrils of light.
Magic.
.
xii.
There is magic in the starlight, Emma learns.
There is magic in the healthy cry of her baby brother, in the warmth of her mother's embrace, in the reassuring weight of her father's hand against her hair.
There is magic in this night when she's finally found her way home. Three decades, she muses, three decades of searching and hoping, three decades of disappointment and heartbreak, and she's finally found a place where she belongs. It isn't much, just a town of more-or-less ordinary people living more-or-less ordinary lives, a town where everybody knows everybody and rumors fly faster than she can keep track. It's just a small town in Maine, where everything that Emma has ever wanted was waiting for her all along.
There is magic here; there is magic in coming home.
And there is something as Killian confesses that he'd given up his ship to find her, and something more in his stillness as she leans close and presses her lips to his. She can't quite place it, this slow, careful build of longing and warmth within her, this deliberate and oh-so-real pull between them. Of course the mythical true love's kiss has been proven to be not a myth at all (despite her many years of kissing frogs to no avail), but she isn't quite sure this is it. There is no curse to break, no dark magic to undo, just her and him, and a night full of magic and potential. There's just them – Killian Jones and Emma Swan.
There's more than enough time for true love.
Because if there's anything she knows about magic, it's that it takes patience and belief.
And now that she's home, and now that he's here – standing there with open arms – there's time enough for both.
.
xiii.
It's early morning and the world is still, just dusted in an early winter night's snow. The sun rises against her back as she slips through the forest, her cloak pulled tight around her shoulders. Nearby, a young buck glances up from his morning graze, and she pauses.
(She remembers the story of the huntsman, of the stag who'd died to save her mother's life.)
But she knows she'll be missed should she stay too long, so she pushes on, pulled as if from a dream. There's a voice in the back of her mind, whispering and beckoning, telling her that this is where she belongs.
And she can feel it, too. Her whole body hums, vibrates and resonates with it, this distinct sense of belonging, this feeling of peace. This coming home.
Emma Swan is a princess – a princess of the wild; she is the ruler of a concrete jungle, the heir to a land lost in time and shrouded in mist and shadow, a land of light and magic. She is the savior of untold thousands, the one to break the curse. She is the lost princess of legend.
She is more than that, though. Because here, deep in the forest, with the sweet, silvery threads of magic unspooling from her fingers, a soft green tendril breaks through the early winter frost to twist and curl in the icy air beneath her palm, until finally it blooms vivid white against her fingers.
Because she is the product of a love true enough to shatter glass coffins, to transcend realms and to defy the laws of nature. She is the heir to not one throne but two. She is a daughter, a sister, a friend. She is a mother and soon to be a wife, soon to be a queen.
But she is so, so much more than that.
She is Emma Swan, and she is magic.
-Fin.-