Morning's Golden Light

A/N 1: A song fic that seemed to spring fully formed from my mind as I listened to an Enya song today…while I was busy working on a completely different, Mirandy, fanfic. It grabbed me, wouldn't let go and demanded to be written. You can listen to the song here: watch?v=GJgbzEGAvzc

A/N 2: I stopped actually watching OUaT about middle of season 2. My knowledge of anything after that is parsed together entirely from fanfic, manips and discussions on Tumblr. With that in mind it might be best to see this as an AU fic veering away from the show at that point but spiced with details from later on.

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; I make no money from my scribbles. Go on and sue me if you must, I'll enjoy reading femslash out loud in court just to show TPTB how it should be done.

The scream was long, loud and the pure essence of human terror, anger and anguish as it carried through the air very effectively waking one Sheriff Emma Swan. The blonde woman bolted up from her supine position on what she believed was her own comfortable bed only to discover herself standing in a dark and ominous wooded glade, a large pile of dry and dead leaves at her feet. The cry broke forth once more, its poignant terror striking the very marrow of Emma's bones as she cringed in sympathetic horror. She blinked and tried to gather her scattered wits as the cries continued to echo around her.

The confused woman looked down and saw that she was barefoot and clad in what she remembered going to bed wearing, just her tank top and boy shorts. A gust of cold wind made her shiver as she tried to press herself against the large trunk of the nearest tree to get away from its' icy fingers. Feeling the bark, rough against her skin, she heard the cry once again barely making out the strangled words of 'no' and 'please' amid the baser animal sounds of pain.

"God damned fucking magic!" She mumbled as she tried to work out where she was and just what the hell was happening this time in the magic benighted town of Storybrooke. Her suspicions immediately flitted to Gold, wondering what the Dark One might be up to now, that Regina herself might be involved in anyway didn't enter her mind at all.

The desperate cries were now almost constant and Emma stood very still listening carefully and struggling against her visceral wish to block out the distressing sounds so that she could try and pinpoint from which direction the cries were originating. After a minute or two she cautiously headed off, walking slowly, taking shelter from tree to tree and moving as quietly as her chattering teeth would allow she followed the cries which grew louder and more desperate as she moved toward them.

More than ten minutes of stealthy movement brought her to a thick stand of trees growing nearly trunk to trunk as if deliberately planted to be a fence shielding the clearing she could just make out beyond the woody barrier. The tearing cries had morphed into tortured whimpers and sobs as she'd neared this final stand of trees and continued as such punctuated still by pitiful statements of apology and pleas for forgiveness. She continued to search for a larger gap that might let her see better what lay in the clearing. It took a few more minutes for the blonde to find a gap large enough to look through and what she saw had her gasping in surprise and recognition.

In the centre of a circular clearing was a large bed, shaped almost like a divan with a large padded headboard rising up and curling backward, the whole illuminated in silver moonlight. The incongruity of a fancy bed in the middle of a forest clearing accounted for Emma's surprise, but it was the dark haired female figure writhing and thrashing in the middle of the bed that had been the cause of her startled cry of recognition.

"Regina!"

Even as the name left her lips the brunette on the bed sat bolt upright eyes wide open but unfocused she screamed in anguish.

"Henry, No!"

The name of her son ringing in her ears the clearing disappeared even as Emma felt herself falling backward landing with a grunt of pain she shook her head and blinked until her vision returned. Completely disoriented, it took her a few seconds to recognize that she was sprawled on the floor of her own bedroom and breathing hard as if she'd just run a marathon. Struggling in the tangle of sheets she'd dragged down with her she managed to twist round to lean back against the side of her bed and ran her fingers through her dishevelled blonde curls.

"Fucking hell! It was a dream. Just a dream."

Emma scrubbed her face with her hands trying to get rid of the feelings of fear and terror the dream had left behind, repeating over again that it had been nothing more than a product of her nocturnal subconscious. Speaking the thought out loud to the empty room seemed to ground her and distance her from the distress the dream embodied.

Calming eventually she glanced at her alarm clock noting that it was just after 5am, grumblingly she dragged herself up and went to take a shower, she knew she'd never get back to sleep so decided she might as well start her day. She noted that the sun was streaming in around her curtains so didn't bother to turn the light on as she exited the room and headed for the bathroom.

Six days later Emma dragged her tired body into the Sheriff's station just after 7am and relieved her father from the nightshift. She tossed her empty coffee cup, bought from Granny's less than 15 minutes earlier, in the bin with one hand and accepted the large mug presented to her as a morning greeting from her father with the other hand. She brought the mug immediately to her lips and took a long sip of the strong Kenyan blend she'd bought for the station.

"Thanks Dad. I think I'm gonna need a couple gallons of this today, just to stay upright. I sure as hell hope it's a quiet day." She slumped in her chair and took another sip before she placed the mug on her desk.

James chuckled and patted her shoulder in sympathy.

"Still not sleeping well huh?"

"I feel like I haven't slept a wink for a month. I mean I know I'm sleeping, because I'm dreaming, but the dreams are just so real it's like I've been trekking in the woods the whole night and I wake up more exhausted each morning."

Her father yawned and gave a sheepish grin in response to Emma's glare in his direction before throwing his jacket on. His daughter had told him about the dreams two days ago, leaving out any mention of the former Evil Queen, when she'd asked if he and Snow would have Henry for the night so she could feel safe taking a sleeping pill to try and get a dreamless night's sleep. Although her parents had accommodated her readily enough the plan had failed spectacularly and she'd woken up after another vivid dream feeling even more tired than usual.

"Sorry Sweetie, but I have been up all night and it's time for me to catch a few winks." He bent and kissed the top of her head.

"Hope the day is easy, call me if you need me, if not I'll see you tonight. Maybe if you had some herbal tea before bed tonight it might help you sleep easier." With that somewhat innocuous advice he went on his way.

Instinctively she reached again for her caffeine fix, swallowing several times before putting the mug back down. She'd had the same dream for six nights running. It started, as near as she could guess, the minute she laid her head on the pillow and ended every morning just after sunrise with her waking suddenly on the floor beside her bed. The only detail that had varied in any of the dreams had been the clothes she was wearing, each dream accurately dressing her in the different sleep-ware she collapsed in on that night. The memory of the biting wind had caused her to dress for the dream on the third night when she opted for a sweat shirt and sweatpants, not that she'd noticed any particular improvement in the temperature in that night's dream.

Later that morning as she refilled her mug for the fifth time, she suddenly wondered if her dismissal of it just being an annoying recurring dream was maybe a little bit naïve of her given that magic now regularly ran rampant in the little town. Maybe there was more to it than her subconscious trying to work through something. Not that she thought Regina was being held captive in the forest somewhere, she'd seen the Mayor out and about town almost every day, and Henry had stayed with his adoptive mother on the first two of her dream haunted nights, but that didn't mean there wasn't something more to the dreams, something possibly magical.

The more Emma thought about it the more she thought she was on to something, but she needed to ask someone who knew about magic before she could be sure. Trouble was she was loathe to ask Regina because she wasn't willing to mention the Mayor's starring role to the woman herself, and because she just knew the infuriating brunette would refuse any kind of answer the second she realised Emma wasn't telling her every detail about the dream. Emma didn't kid herself that she could manage to mention the dreams and keep that little detail to herself, the fact was that Regina seemed to have accrued a little bit of Emma's lie detector super-power, at least where Henry and the Sheriff were concerned. She was also leery about approaching Gold for any kind of help because she had no intention of making any kind of deal with him ever again and she didn't trust him as far she could wriggle her eyebrows. Technically she supposed that left the Blue Fairy as the only other well-known magic wielder in town with whom she could consult. Truth be told though, she didn't really trust the secretive Fairy much more than she did Gold, there was just something about the creature that made the hairs on her neck prickle.

A sudden very audible growl of her stomach made her glance at the clock and seeing it was nearing 2pm she decided to head on over to Granny's for something to eat. Maybe she could pick Ruby's brains about the dreams, the woman may not actually practice magic but she had a hell of a lot more experience with it than Emma and she was a magical creature herself, so maybe she might have some light to shed on the subject. Decision made Emma headed out the door grabbing her jacket as she went.