At sixteen, Emma Swan decides between a one way ticket to a nowhere town called Storybrooke, and carjacking a yellow bug. The choice is made, and an entirely different story spawns from it.
(or, Emma finds her parents as a teenager and breaks the curse a decade or so early.)
chapter one: meet emma
In front of the window of a small, dim bedroom in a house in Detroit, Emma Swan sat in her pajamas, a bowl of cocoa puffs sitting her lap, and a book tucked into the seat next to her, a page dog-eared somewhat resentfully by its current owner.
She had been reading – or at least attempting to. Shakespeare wasn't her cup of tea, thank you very much, but Hamlet was required reading for sophomores, and she'd hate to stir up trouble by declaring a revolution at this stage: the last thing she needed was another reason for the Fairchilds to resent her. Her newest foster family of a month and a half were a surprisingly stodgy bunch for people who lived in Detroit of all places. Emma had already managed to irritate them with her late night habits, such as eating sugary cereals, and her somewhat reclusive, backtalk-y nature (those were exactly Marion Fairchild's words, too, though Emma considered 'private' and 'witty' more suitable adjectives). Emma was there with two others; Sam, the little golden boy, and Glory, who was only two years older than Emma at seventeen, and far more rebellious than Emma had ever been, which was saying something.
She still wasn't entirely sure why the Fairchilds had taken in another child (she couldn't imagine it was simply to have one more person to disapprove of) but Emma had learned not to look too deeply into things if everything was going alright. She had a bedroom to herself, hot meals, and to be perfectly honest, if compared to some of the other families she'd lived with, the Fairchilds positively spoiled the kids in their care.
It was nearing ten o'clock, so Emma hurriedly drank down the rest of her chocolatey cereal, leaving the bowl on the desk, and cracking her neck as she stood up from her chair and closed the curtains. The house was quiet, but everyone around here went to bed early – like, nine o'clock early. Emma wasn't an early bird by any stretch of the imagination, but she forced herself to switch the lights off and slide under the covers anyway, shifting to her side to stare at the window aimlessly.
Things were okay. Good, even. This was probably the best she'd had since six or seven years old, even. That was ten years full of less than good before she had finally now caught something like a break. Sighing, Emma rolled onto her back. The sight of peeling paint greeted her from the ceiling.
No matter how hard she tried, for as long as she could remember Emma was never able to shake the feeling of emptiness. It was akin to loneliness, but it went deeper than that: it was right down to her bones, reminding her every day that she hadn't been wanted, that she'd been dumped by the wayside – literally – in a blanket with a name stitched onto it, and shoved into an endless shuffle of houses and faces and bad, bad experiences. The good would light her up sometimes; some people went out of their way to befriend her, to share some happiness with her, and Emma would eagerly accept, indulging the part of her that wanted to experience those silly things that kids or teenagers did, but it always faded away, leaving her with a backpack, a different bedroom, and a lump in her throat at the end of it.
It was mostly hard, and rarely fun. The anger towards her faceless, nameless birth parents was there, but it was far overpowered by the hurt – Emma had long since accepted that no matter how old she got, there would be a corner of her heart that was a little blond girl wondering why she didn't have two parents and goodnight kisses and hot chocolate on snow days.
But if she wondered that consciously, every day, she'd drive herself insane.
Yawning, Emma shut her eyes. Things were good, and she would smile.