May 11/14 - chapter one rewritten
Leigha Erikksen is, of every definition, a forest child.
She doesn't walk around barefoot per say because heaven forbid you see her in anything less than the latest style of shoes. Its more in the way she presents herself; its in the way she dresses all loose layers and earthy colours, its in the way her eyes wonder to the trees when they near the outskirts of their quaint town, its in the way her voice is loudest when its the other thing piercing through the air.
She's the quiet kind of ethereal- a generous cup of serendipity in a town drenched in grand royals and rich gold.
During the curse, Henry doesn't even realize that teenagers exist until he hears her loud squawk one night and a siren that quickly wakes up the entire neighbourhood wakes him out of his daze as well.
"Those Erikksens are a rowdy bunch," he can still remember Regina mutter to herself the next day. She's scowling from behind the counter, fingers clenched tightly against a whisk and the young boy watches as the eggs turn into a thick golden colour. "Especially that Leigha. You'd think for a girl who just turned sixteen, she'd have more sense to use a door instead of climbing down an old tree."
"She fell out a tree?"
Regina had ignored him, just like she always does when she's deep in thought and baking pie. Her eyebrows scrunch together and she looks far off as if something in this conversation reminds her of a time in another place.
Henry had only taken a single bite out of his sandwich when she asks him to go visit her in the hospital.
Saying that this was something Regina would always make him do would be a lie; after all Regina, herself, never really dealt with situations like this personally either. Sometimes she'd send cards and other times she'd go out of her way to discreetly allow for a single convenience but never a personal visit.
Honestly, he was glad for her sudden moment's change in character nonetheless. Usually she would dissuade him from spending time with people like Leigha Erikksen. So glad in fact that he hadn't even asked why- he just bolted out the door and headed straight to the general hospital.
Even today, he still doesn't know just what kind of relationship her fairy tale self must have had with the Evil Queen to instill such civility. He never asked, and never bothered to pry into the pages of his aged tome to skim through pages of her story for an answer without her present.
Leigha was, after all, his first friend in cursed Storybrooke anyhow.
And really, he was just so glad that Regina had allowed her company because for the first time in forever, when he pulled out the brown book and began spinning a tale of theories and other lives- she didn't condemn him for his imagination. Instead she went along with it behind closed doors, even made some of her own during the daylight hours and, kept their theories a secret from his mother and Dr. Hopper until the day he ran off to meet his birth mother.
The code of honor like their's was rare among the nobles of their stories and it helped that Leigha's fairy tale self was far from royalty- that they were both sure of.
Her tale was one of a white bear and a girl with hair braided into the colours of scorching flame and whiskey. She was the youngest in her poor farmer family and had been described as the wild kind of adventurous; the type who jumped into rivers and washed out on the other side of the world, just barely breathing air into waterlogged lungs but still laughing hysterically all the same.
When Leigha read through the tale for the first time, she had only rolled her eyes.
"Please, I'd take a boat." She had said and they both giggled as they kept leafing through the pages. Pointing out random characters and making small quips and comments at some of the illustrations.
Henry wasn't stupid- he knew that prying deeper into the stories had taken a great toll on her. When her foot had finally healed ("don't overexert yourself," Dr Whale had told her, "you should keep off it for a few weeks." Obviously. she taught him how to climb trees the next day), she had made a giant web of all the townspeople and their counterparts. There were dark circles under her eyes and an ugly purple bruise hiding under her sweater. But she still climbed through the threshold and joked about how she had heard Dr. Hopper make a throaty noise earlier that sounded exactly like a cricket singing as if she hadn't just been wrapped up in casts and bandages the day before.
He didn't say a word about her mysterious bruise and Regina still managed to invite her over to stay the night the second they all sat down for dinner anyhow.
"So Sigrid huh?" She had whispered once Regina retired to her room. The smaller boy sat quietly at the foot of the couch and listened halfheartedly to the sound of her excitement. It was a sweet sound really, fitting for the kind of girl who set fires in the mayor's house and was still a 'nice enough kid' to be let out alive. "I wonder who's the bear."
"I bet he's your true love." He whispered back groggy.
"That's bestiality, Henry."
"True love conquers all."
"Go to sleep, kid."
When Emma drove in through town, the blonde woman had somehow managed to change everything- even if it was indirectly. Suddenly, the clock tower had begun ticking once again, the town's central library was rumoured to have a grand opening soon, everyone he passed by seemed to have more colour to them. Like all of a sudden they've been given back small quirks that made them them. And everyone Emma made contact to seemed to burst in colour.
The same could have been said about Leigha.
Except it couldn't.
Not until Neal stormed into his life that is.
Because once the curse had been lifted and all their memories came back to them, she had retreated back into herself. She was still the same wild girl that he knew- knocking on his window in the middle of the night and letting him drive her new car in empty parking lots (which was far more impressive than his Gramp's old truck) but he never saw her beyond that.
Never saw her waltzing through town square with a bag of groceries, never saw her on the way to school, never saw her climbing down trees and running away from the sheriff. Heck, the lights were never even on anymore in her house.
It was like after the curse, she had become a ghost that only made herself known when it was time to bug Henry.
Granted, her mysterious absences in town had come to an end when Regina bought him to the hospital one day. Leading him down through mazes of white walls and stinky hospital smell. She didn't say a single word until she led him to a room- the same room he had walked into without hesitation, his brown book clutched tightly in his small arms- and told him that there was an accident.
Her entire family was missing and Leigha Erikksen wasn't going to wake up until the day she found herself completely and utterly alone.
Moments like these were the only ones he counted on to remind himself of how much the Evil Queen was still human underneath all that ten feet tall steel exterior. Watching her dote on the unconscious Leigha reminded him that she was still the same woman who had taught him how to ride a bike and stayed by his bedside when his fever gave a sudden spike.
Regina loved Leigha like a daughter and when she showed no signs of waking up, it made the weeks following the Charmings' women disappearance all the more harder.
Sometimes he'd come after visiting hours and find the dark-haired woman sitting at the foot of the bed, brushing through the teenager's blond tresses with soft eyes and a bittersweet smile. Sometimes, Henry would sit just behind the closed door and listen to the sound of his mother's soft murmurs as she changed the flowers and find new ways to decorate her hospital room.
"You know," she had started one day after the curse had lifted, "all I remember are days and days of arduous labour. I don't see how people want to go back to the Enchanted Forest when there's nothing there for them."
"Maybe it's the thought of home?" He had offered, swinging his legs up onto the tree branch the older girl was sitting on. Leigha-Sigrid had only frowned at the boy's attempts and helped heave him up with a swift pull.
"What's home without wifi." She joked nonchalantly, laughing at the sound of Henry's snort. "Storybrooke's the only home I know."
"Same here."
Thinking about it now, Neverland wasn't anywhere near kind to him. It's so called King was the devil unmasked and his followers were no better, the air had a way of searing into his brain, the trees were thick and dense and they barely let even the moonlight peek through their cover unless Pan had allowed it to.
Just thinking of Pan irked him in all the worst ways.
Pan was cruel, ruthless and manipulative- he was anything and everything that the words that littered his storybook said he wasn't. The Pan he had read about had the kind of blameless curiosity that every child seemed to have within them. This one, however, knew the world like the back of his hand and, bounced it through his fingertips like sand.
Sometimes, when the Lost Boys took off, he'd see Leigha in them. Prowling around in the trees and just blindly anticipating the best chance to pounce on an unsuspecting bystander. He'd watch them sometimes, pretend to be fast asleep when they passed and just catch the scent of her shampoo in their knife sharp forest stench. The way their eyes always lit up whenever Pan declared a new game reminded him the way her's lit up every time she proposed a new challenge back home.
The thought had scared him senseless.
Sigrid's tale ended on an open note- as did all the others and just thinking that somehow his friend had once found herself planted in Neverland soil sent shivers through his spine. Sigrid was headstrong, impulsive, and adventurous. Heck, he had no doubt she would've survived fine but Leigha was still home in Storybrooke. A part of her still torn in two even though she wouldn't talk about it and it was times like these that he wondered when her Bear would ever come to wake her up.
Or if she was ever going to wake up.
The shrill sound of the Lost Boy's cheers would always interrupt his train of thoughts, however.
But they never stopped him from remembering the first thing he asked her before she started her vanishing act after the curse and the one sentence she offered in return.
"So how's it like to be Sigrid?"
"A whole lot like collateral if you ask me."
The memory had always send a rush of guilt through his system. Leigha had asked him to refer to her as just Leigha a few days after that and spent even less time with him pondering the wonders of their double life. It was a wonder how Henry could fall asleep in Neverland. And when he did, it was always to the memory of the two of them in his childhood home, sneaking chips into his room and giggling every time Regina came close to catching the two of them in the act. He'd mutter her name like an unrehearsed mantra and slip into unconsciousness before he could notice two pairs of eyes watching him closely.
"Leigha, huh?" One would mutter darkly, his eyes flickering with all kinds of mischievous plans.
"What do you plan to do?" The other one would inquire curiously. Never a hint too curious in case the other boy took it as a threat.
"Oh, nothing much." He'd chuckle as they stood over the Truest Believer's sleeping form. "Looks to me like she's out for the count anyways."
"Is that going to be a problem?"
The Boy King would only roar in laughter, startling some boys awake as he twisted around and grasped onto his second in demand's shoulder.
"Now now, Felix," he purred, his eyes alight under the warm glow of the burning ashes, "the real question is what you'll do."