notes: this is my first fic in the ouat fandom, so hopefully i don't screw up the characters too badly, but paige is a relatively minor character, so i sort of made up my own personality for her; this fic is for sophy (Slytherin Cat), with the pairing of henrygrace. i know that paige is the storybrooke counterpart of grace, so i decided that i would write henrypaige again, which technically is the same thing, but i'm sorry for changing so much—hope you like this, c:
disclaimer: i don't own anything—everything belongs to ABC family and their writers.
warnings: spag errors, general OCness; the plot takes place throughout the character's storyline, starting off when they're thirteen, ending at around eighteen or nineteen. also, devin and felix are part of the lost boys and are canon; catelyn, on the other hand, is not.
between two points
She sees him at a funeral—
It's not the first time Paige has seen Henry Mills, and it's not quite the last time either, not yet, but it's the first significant glance shared between the two of them, and for God's sake, she's a thirteen-year old girl, and significant glances are the second-most important thing in her mind after studying for final examinations. "Your mother," her father whispers down at her. "That's your mother's necklace."
"I know," Paige replies, quickly. "She would have wanted me to have it."
He sighs. "Maybe." Maybe not. Jefferson looks at the clock on the mantelpiece, as it reaches the ninth hour; there's the steady tick-tock, and perhaps, it's the only steady motion in her life. "We should go now. Everybody's waiting."
"I don't want to go. I'm not going," she makes up her mind, running up the staircase.
"Paige!" He calls after her, then sighs, and exits the door. Fifty-five minutes later, she finds herself standing outside the funeral home.
It's a rather odd little place, in the middle of nowhere, if that could be possible in such a small town—Paige had been here for her grandmother's death, and remembers dropping the bouquet of lilies upon the casket.
There was no ceremony this time, though.
Not enough money, perhaps; not enough people would come, anyways. She walks through the rows of gravestones, regarding the small group of people assembled around what Paige assumes to be her mother's grave—she should be crying, she thinks, and tries to think of the saddest memory that could come to mind, but there is nothing.
Her mother was never a wonderful woman, and her loss means almost nothing.
"Glad you could make it," the Mayor smiles, saccharine sweet lips—behind her is her adopted son, Henry Mills. He's something of a little boy—chubby cheeks, bright red from the cold that spirals down from the sky, settling upon them and erasing the traces of a once joyous summer; the weather isn't completely bad outside, either, which Paige hates.
It should be raining, pouring hail, thunderstorms and blizzards and tornadoes: something, anything. But it is a beautiful day, and for once, she does not feel beautiful.
(She has a stuffed animal that resembles the Mock Turtle, whom she passionately calls "Mr. Tortoise." The Mock Turtle tells Alice a story of the schoolmaster of the school in the sea that he went to being a turtle, whom he and his schoolmates 'called him "tortoise" because he taught us.)
Ninth grade starts, and Mr. Tortoise is tossed in the trash two months into the school year. The next day at school, Henry Mills approaches her, handing back the trash-covered stuffed animal, "Thought you might want this back," he states with an unabashed grin.
Her cheeks tinge with red, fists clenched together; she takes a deep breath, closing her eyes, and then opening them up again: he's still there, unfortunately. "That's not mine, you idiot."
"You don't have to lie," he says, as though it's the most normal thing in the world for a ninth grader to have a stuffed animal. Then again, Paige remembers that he's not the epitome of normalcy—he probably still has stuffed animals. She's seen him more than enough times carrying around this stupid maroon-colored fairytale book around school, as though it is his most sacred possession.
She blushes as Devin, an upperclassmen sitting adjacent, raises an eyebrow at her, and Paige feels the embarrassment within her turn to annoyance. "It's not mine, okay? It was an heirloom from my mother's side, but now that she's dead, I don't really need it anymore."
He shoves it at her, looking apologetic. "You need more than ever, now, then. I'm sorry about your mother."
"Just give me a moment," she shoots a look back at her lunch table—it had taken two months to build up her way through the social rankings, and just when she was brimming on the line of popularity, it seemed as though she would go crashing back down to the bottom. Paige stands up, and yanks Henry's arm, pulling him to the side of the canteen, ignoring the curious looks that people send her. After all, she is Paige Grace and he is Henry Mills, which makes all the difference in the world. "Look," she breathes in the air of confidence. "Those people there, I've changed for them—"
"You shouldn't change yourself to make friends. You're a pretty cool person, Paige. If you gave people a chance, then there would be people throughout this school who would want to be friends with you, just the way you are—"
She throws her hands up in the air, exasperated, before entwining her fingers together, "That's the thing, Henry." They're not even friends, but she continues spilling out her soul nonetheless—something about him is trustworthy, that's for sure—"I don't want to have a few friends who are somewhat popular; I'd rather have fake friends who are completely popular. And if I'm lucky enough, a popular boyfriend." Like Devin. "So, stop ruining everything for me, okay? It's bad enough that they know about my stuffed animal—"
"I'll put in your locker." It doesn't seem as though he's listening to a word she says, staring distractedly through her—later that day, Paige wonders if she's really that vapid—"Mr. Tortoise is a better friend than all of yours."
A lightbulb flashes in her mind, and she gives him a slight smile, confused, "Do you like me or something? Because it's totally okay if you do; Catelyn says that lower boys like her all the time, but there really couldn't be anything between us, because I don't like you back, and I don't kiss losers."
He starts laughing, "Paige, I don't like you. Not really. You're a nice girl, vapid most of the times; believe me, when I like a girl, she won't be somebody like you." Still laughing, Henry walks back to his lunch table, and Paige is left with the sting of the words imprinted in her ears.
Paige actually notices him in the middle of tenth grade—he's gotten a bit taller, his voice a bit deeper, and there's still this aura of a boyish face that hangs around him, but it's a bit cute, and so is he. "Say," she mentions in the canteen to Catelyn, "Henry Mills over there, he's a bit cute, isn't he?"
Catelyn only snorts, "Yeah, if you associate cute with being a kid. He's cute, like, you know when you're doing babysitting? He's cute like a baby."
"Oh." Paige looks down, fingers clenched. There's something confusing about this school. Partly because it's in the middle of Storybrooke, and the only basketball team that they've versed had to come in from a different state—they have a pretty bad basketball team, and Catelyn had signed her up for Spirit Squad, which was horrid because who wanted to cheer for a basketball team who hadn't one since '53?
"But he is on the school's basketball team, so I wouldn't completely discount him. Actually, if you really do like him, then I'd probably tell you to snag him now before he becomes one of the 'in' kids. What about Devin, though?"
"What about him? He's an upperclassmen; I'm a kid to him."
Devin's a popular boy—not too bad-looking either; he's probably the only one on the basketball team who's actually good at the sport; he's smart too, and he knows it. A bit rude at times, but nothing she doesn't associate with teenage boys being. "Make him jealous, then."
"He's not going to be jealous if he doesn't like me in the first place—that's a stupid plan."
"Are you calling me stupid?"
It's at moments like this when Paige remembers that Catelyn is above her in the social hierarchy, and she must respect her elders (elders by three weeks, but still, elders nonetheless). "I'm sorry."
"You should be." Catelyn sighs, "Look, if you really like Devin, I can talk to him for you. After all, the two of us are really close."
Paige feels a slight twinge of jealousy, and calls it out on nerves. "How close?"
"Well, we do spend every summer together, but it's more like we're cousins than anything else."
(It doesn't seem like the two of them are cousins when Paige finds them snogging at an upperclassmen's party.)
So, on a Tuesday lunch hour, it's the slightest bit surprising that Catelyn starts off their conversation with, "I like Henry."
Paige drops her silver fork upon the lunch table, startled: because it's Catelyn. Catelyn's the type of girl who likes boys for their popularity—and vice versa—or for their looks, or maybe even for the fact that they could get her an A on a chem lab write-up, but not because she genuinely likes him. Henry's not the smartest kid in school, and not even closest to the most good-looking. He's okay, if she thinks about—hazel eyes are behind thick rimmed glasses, and his mop of black hair is always sticking up.
"What?" Catelyn shrugs. "I like a boy, is it that hard to believe? It's not even that he's man candy or popular, that's the thing—he's nice to me, like honestly nice, not nice most people are when they're trying to work through me to make their way up through the popularity ladder."
She smiles slightly, "Good for you, Catelyn. Except, I'm already the one who called dibs on him, and you've got Devin, so why bother with somebody else?"
"Devin's not really my boyfriend. We have an open relationship."
So there was still a chance with Devin—maybe. Paige raises an eyebrow. "You know what, I'm not going to even involve myself in the complicacies of your relationship, which is why I'm going to ask Henry to my party."
Catelyn's eyes narrow, "Since when have you had an interest in Henry Mills?"
"Since the beginning of tenth grade, in fact. I just hadn't realized that until now." She feels a little bad for using Henry, because he's such an innocent kid, but all's fair in love and war—except she doesn't really love Devin, and it takes her a little longer to realize that none of this was worth losing Catelyn's friendship.
Catelyn starts dating Henry midway through eleventh grade. "You're dating him," Paige approaches her at lunch, "And you never even told me about it?"
"What?" She looks up, annoyed. "I'm dating him, so? You're the one who said he was cute. It just took me a little longer to realize it."
Catelyn breaks up with Henry near the end of eleventh grade. "You broke with him," Paige approaches her at lunch, and thinks that this situation is all too familiar, "And you never even told me about it?"
"What?" She looks up, annoyed. "I broke up with him, so? You're the one who said he was a loser. It just took me a little longer to realize it."
(And that's when Paige thinks that change wouldn't be all too bad, because it seems as though nobody's changing but her.)
Paige holds onto Devin longer than she should have—
He is something of a boy of normalcy, and in a town such as Storybrooke, she wishes for normalcy more than anything else—but, she learns that he is not normal, and that is where she gives up. "We shouldn't keep pretending," she is the one who instigates the break-up, and Devin's not all too shocked or alarmed by the prospects of being single.
These days, they have more troubling things to worry about. Nevertheless, it doesn't stop him from asking, "Why?"
She sighs, smiling to herself, "Girls who run with the wolves aren't there for boys to love." It's a poetic quote, something from one of her television shows, and it seems very fitting in this situation, so Paige uses it, and hopes that Devin doesn't recognize where it's from, because maybe that quote will tell him more about herself than he's ever seemed to care about.
They never really were a relationship—sure, they held hands and went to parties together, were elected Spring Formal King and Queen two years in a row bak in middle school, but it wasn't a relationship because they weren't friends from the beginning: they barely knew anything about each other. Devin was friends with Peter and Felix, a gang that called themselves The Lost Boys for reasons unknown; he smelled like peppermint and destruction, an alluring though dangerous combination. His parents owned the town's pharmacy and his best friend was a girl named Maria who had died two years ago from a mysterious car accident, and her body was never recovered.
And that was the extent of what Paige knew about her boyfriend—ex-boyfriend to be. He only smiles, "You're running with the wolves, now are you? Wolves aren't real, Paige. Not sure which storybooks you've read lately."
"They're not storybooks," she murmurs, because she used to believe in them so so much, and maybe she doesn't believe in them any more—because Paige has grown up, and that's a terrible thing to do, but grown up children do not believe in fairytales, but she does, just a bit, and it's wrong, so she tries to force herself to think otherwise. "It just wouldn't work, anyway."
He shrugs, "Okay." Then standing at the doorway, "I'll see you at school, then?"
"Sure," Paige replies, in a matter-of-fact tone. "I'll see you at school." Then, she blurts out, "We can still be friends, right?" Because Paige wants a friend quite desperately—a real friend, not the fake backstabbing one Catelyn has turned out to be, and maybe her and Devin were never friends, but they could start being friends? She's sort of desperate, really.
Devin nods, "Okay." He doesn't seem to excited about the prospects of being friends with her, and Paige knows why but closes the door nonetheless, and mindlessly stares into the gaps between normalcy and Storybrooke. They are ever so close, but never reaching.
(They do see each other, but never talk: it's too awkward between the two of them—might always be that way.)
"You have a gift."
"It's not a gift," she replies, shakily. "It's some sort of freak thing. I can read people's minds—figure out their deepest secrets and desires, what makes them fail—it isn't natural. I'm not supposed to be like this. I'm a freaking teenage girl, I finally got asked to Prom even though I'm a tenth grader by one of the hottest boys in school, and now this? It can't get in the way of everything."
"Listen, Paige. You're important—this is important. Right now, outside these doors, there's a war going on."
She only laughs, "There's always a war going on, somewhere."
"But it's going on in our very own town, and people are picking sides, and you can choose the winning side, the side of the heroes. Because the heroes are going to win, in the end of everything, they've got to win. But if you don't join our side now, then you're going to be on the side of the villains, because somebody's going to figure out about your gifts, sooner or later. Your gifts are important, don't you understand? We can use them to figure out the weaknesses of the villains, so that we can get rid of them, and then everything will be good, don't you see?"
"You talk as though life is a fairytale, and it isn't, nothing about life is carved out of fairytales and dreams; we're not five years old anymore, believing in Snow White and Prince Charming."
Henry's lips twitch, smiling, "You wouldn't know half of the truth. They're actually real, though, Snow White and Prince Charming. They're my grandparents," he tells her in a completely serious tone.
It takes Paige a minute to process the fact, before she starts laughing like a madman. "Oh my god, Henry, are you on crack?"
He rolls his eyes, "You sound just like Mom did when I first told her about the book of magic, but you have to believe me, Paige; why else would you have these gifts? If you can believe that your gifts are true, which I think that you have, then how hard is it to believe that the fairytales are true?" He looks into her eyes, rather wistfully. "I remember a girl in third grade who dressed up like Snow White, and then you had Calloway be your Prince Charming, and the two of you got married under the basketball net, remember?"
She laughs even harder, then her face sobers up, because it could be true—though the two of them weren't the closest of friends, Henry had never lied to her. He had no reason to. "Maybe. But you know," she murmurs. "You sound like a madman."
"What?" Henry replies, stunned. "I just told you that there are pirates and dragons, and you think I'm a madman? Do you know how much of a risk I'm taking with spilling all the secrets of Storybrooke?"
Paige only laughs, shoving him out the door, "Complete madman."
(At night, she cries and wishes that this was all a dream; Paige wakes up in the morning, and two days later, reluctantly accepts that it is not.)
THE MONSTERS HAVE WON, reads the title of the Storybrooke newspaper.
She blinks, eyes flashing with subtle confusion, and the newspaper reads, THE CAMPAIGN GETS ROUGH, TERROR IN THE COURTS, and Paige smiles, leaning back in the ambiance of the Starbucks—she grips the peppermint-scented drink in front of her, the heat rising around her face as the waves of nausea roll through her knotted spine; therefore, it is nothing of alleviation to her problems when her eyes scan across the room, only to find a peculiar group of people staring back at her, and then back down upon their table, as though nothing is different.
They are not that peculiar, she believes—except they are. There is a man who smells of deceit and cunning, but his eyes whisper of gallivanting adventures and a world beyond—Captain Hook, Paige thinks to herself with a scoff, a man out of fairytales; Emma Swan, blonde hair and blue eyes, but she is not normal, she is not typical either.
The only fact Paige knows about Emma Swan is that she is Henry's mother—the biological one, not the real one.
For there is a difference between a mother, the one who has raised you, brought you up with the principles and the values that you hold true to be to the very day, who you love so much despite denying it half the time, and the woman who abandoned you, back to the quiet town, and disrupting the precocious balance of peace that Storybrooke had once contained, but in the mind of Henry—which is a conflicting place, she has rarely tried examining his mind, for fear of unsettling truths—they are one and the same.
Extremely unsettling, indeed. "Do you mind if I sit here?"
There is a strange man next to her—his hair is knotted and white strands run through the slight beard formed at the bottom of his face; his hands grip the table unsteadily, his fingers chafed and bleeding through the carefully handled bandages; Leroy, Paige assumes, is a dwarf. Or a hobo—and though she knows the truth (for Storybrooke is a truly dysfunctional town that believes in fairytales and nonsense), she desperately hopes that he is the latter of the two. She nods, ever so slightly. "Not at all. What do you want?"
It's a rude statement, but she's tired of the deceit and people making small talk; she would rather have them be direct and straight to the point with her. Leroy looks rather surprised at the rage of a sixteen year-old but does not make much note of it, for it is not important, and they are all angry within this town, whether they choose to admit or not. "Henry was just telling me of your gifts."
She scoffs, "My gifts?" Then, her face sobers up from a malicious grin threatening to splay, and she remembers—her gifts; Paige tries to play off the situation with a tight smile, pursed lips, "Whatever Henry's telling you, the boy's not in his right mind, anyway. And even if I had these gifts, don't think for a moment that I would end up helping you. I know what your people did to my father."
Leroy snorts, "My people? We're the same, sister, we're all in this together, whether you like it or not."
But she doesn't like it, and there's no point in pretending that the two of them are friends, for he is a dwarf on the side of the winners, and she is a human girl with gifts unsure of her side—for her father was on the side of the losers, and what does that make her? A loser? Paige had never been one of the losers, not back when everything was simple, not now. "It doesn't seem as though you're giving me any choice, so I'll choose your side, if that's what you want me to do, and then I'll just end up being used, and how does that make you any different from the so-called villains?"
He sputters in response, "It's completely different, Paige. Can I call you that? Never mind: we're the heroes of the story. Good always defeats bad; you've read the books, watched the shows, you know what happens."
"This is real life," she says in a completely sadistic tone. "In real life, the monsters win."
"You've been watching too much Game of Thrones and not paying enough attention to what's going on around you."
She briefly ponders the comparisons between her favorite television show and what's actually happening in real life, and doesn't think that there are too many differences—after all, there is magic and there are dragons in both, but wait. It's completely amazing, that's what it is. Paige thinks to herself that she's so insane, because it's basically like life is like how it is in the tv shows. Then, she sobers up, because she remembers that one time Catelyn showed her a Youtube video of the death toll of one episode, and thinks that life might end up being like that. "Maybe. Maybe not."
"Just," he sighs. "Just tell me what you want to do, okay? I'm not going to tell you which side to pick, but just tell me what you want to get out of your gifts? Because you can't ignore them forever. You can't ignore what's happening forever."
"Watch me," she spits back. "As soon as I graduate high school, I'll get out of this town—I'll get away to college, and that'll be the end of it."
Leroy takes a deep breath, "Have you ever left Storybrooke, Paige?" She shakes her head, reluctantly. "That's the thing—in the Enchanted Forest, you have a counterpart personality—her name's Grace. And because you have a counterpart personality, you can't leave Storybrooke. At least not until the savior has died," he swallows hard. "But that's not gonna happen, not while I'm around."
"Fine," Paige complies. "Fine."
The only time they kiss, it's a complete accident—
And then, the two of them back up in rather lagging motions, and she stares down at the ground, then up at his muddled hazel eyes, waiting for him to say something, anything, and ends up blurting out, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for that to happen."
It's a complete lie—Henry probably knows that, she knows that, for sure. "It's no problem," is the only words that come out of his mouth, uttered numbly as if rehearsed. "Anyway, for the strategy, how many people do you think we can get out when the attack starts? Not out of Storybrooke, of course, but into the forest, where we'll have a portal to take us back to the Enchanted Forest. We'll get some backup there. Paige? Are you listening to me?"
"Yeah, yeah, sure," she murmurs, distracted tone. This wasn't the way life was meant to be—for God's sake, they were basically living in a fairytale, and weren't fairytales supposed to be out of happy endings? Apparently not. Never mind, she tells herself, remember, girls who run with the wolves aren't there for boys to love. Love isn't an option. Love makes you weak. Some of her thoughts are from her father, most of them from him, actually—he wouldn't have wanted this for her. Fighting in a war at the age of sixteen—poor waste of a short life.
It didn't really matter, though—the war was looming over them, shadows of destruction infiltrating through borders in the night, and the monsters were coming to kill. "Good," he stares at her for a moment, then back down at the blueprint, words shooting out of his mouth at a rapid pace.
The two of them—Catelyn and Paige—are splayed out across the bedroom floor, nail polish remover and jasmine flowers scenting the area, staring blankly at their textbooks, magazines smuggled within. "You know," Catelyn begins, placing the newspaper down, picking at her cherry red nails. "You don't have to be like this. You don't have to be a freak."
Paige raises an eyebrow, "I wasn't aware that using my gifts to my advantage, to help other people, made me a freak." Then, she remembers that Catelyn doesn't know the complete truth about the situation: of course, even she doesn't. She knows bits and bits of what's going on—that the monsters are coming, that there's a war outside their doors, a burning and raging fire of hate ready to destroy them all so that they will all burn together, but she does not care about the specifics enough to question others about them.
"You used to be different," Catelyn murmurs, sadly. "A few years ago, you wouldn't have cared about this—Prom's coming up in a few weeks, and you're just focusing on your finals and those plans for a war—
"I'm focusing on staying alive." It's a complete lie: if she wanted to stay alive, she wouldn't be half-killing herself, getting three to four hours of sleep on average, running on the pounding adrenaline, the pounding of the drums through her veins, that are ready to burst, for she is composed of tired folds of skin, and she is to run ragged soon enough, to burn out. She'll go out with a bang, though, that much she's promised herself—every star goes out with a supernova, and she'll be as brilliant as that.
The scent of jasmine floats through the air, and a faint stench of blood echoes: Paige looks down at her hands and quickly hides them—the gift came with a price; all gifts often do. For every time she used her powers against the enemy, a bit of energy would drain out of her—she was something of a witch, perhaps, but with no master to guide her through the ways of the world. Sometimes, it would be something easy and simple, like a nosebleed. Other times, she would fall unconscious, and there was no telling when or if she was going to wake up.
Of course, Paige didn't tell anybody about this, least of all Henry. He would start to worry, and then he would tell his mother, and she wanted to help them, more than anything. She wasn't sure when the urge to be a hero became so strong. "Staying alive? You're spending all your time planning for a war, a war, that I might remind you, might not even happen!"
Almost distractedly, "This is about Henry, isn't it?"
It's a mistake of the words that blurt out of Paige's mouth, but she can't take them back, anyways; Catelyn narrows her eyes, then laughs in a way reminiscent of a cackling witch. "Henry. You think that this is about a boy? For God's sake, Paige, we've been friends since forever; do you really think that I would end our friendship over some boy?"
"Course not," Paige is a bit too slow to reply. "Of course not, and I wouldn't either." She sighs, "Here, just for a few more weeks, let's pretend that we're normal again—that nothing ever changed from last year, that we're best friends forever, remember that? Remember being best friends."
Catelyn sighs, "I remember it: but pretending doesn't make the problems go away."
"You could join us, if you want. I know that you don't have any specific gifts, but then again, neither do the dwarves, and Snow White seems as though she trusts them more than most people in this town; but you shouldn't try to leave, apparently: don't know why that's important; you should join us, though. You really should."
"I don't want to be a freak!" Catelyn exclaims, standing up, collecting her nail polish and textbooks in her hands, fingers clenched upon the gilded doorknob, opening it quickly, and letting the door slam behind her.
He finds her leaning over the kitchen counter, fingering a knife in one hand, ready to plunge it into the mahogany furnishing of the hardwood floor, and backs up—Henry isn't one to underestimate Paige, much less when she's angry. There's a moment of silence between the two of them, and all Paige can hear is the tick-tock of the clock and remembers memories of the past, people of the past, and wishes more than anything to be taken back to the start—except she can't. "I don't want to be weak," she finally spits out.
He almost looks shocked, then continues, "You're not weak Paige. You never were. Actually, when we were younger, I thought that you were the bravest—and probably most stupid—girl that I had ever known."
"Thanks," she replies, sarcastically, flipping through the stacks of papers, throwing some aimlessly in the garbage can, consistently missing, and at the verge of tears. "Thanks for nothing. Look, if you don't mind," she stands up, pushing past him, "I'm going to find my backpack. At least I can get some studying done if this war never happens, because we'll still have finals—that much is for certain."
"Paige, wait," Henry hastily amends. "I didn't mean that: see, your mother had died, and then your father died, and you pretended as though nothing was different; you were fine, unaffected. When I figured out that my biological father was alive, I was hopeful yes, but devastated all the same, because all this time, Mom had never told me."
"That wasn't your fault. You can't control what your Mom tells you."
"Yeah, but I can control myself, like you can control your own fate—look, Paige, you've never been useless, out of all of this."
She turns around, sitting upon the floor, arms and limbs splayed out across the carpet in an Unorthodox fashion. "You don't understand what it feels like to be left out of everything. I know that I'm a girl and it's not my place to be fighting in a war—"
Henry laughs, then, a strange sound in the expanse of solemnity. "You're telling me that it's not a woman's place to be fighting in a war? My Mom's the savior of Storybrooke—she's the one who's going to save us all, and without her, we would be nowhere, and we would still be living our normal human lives, believing in nothing but the harsh coldness of reality."
"That wouldn't be all too bad, now that I think about it—being normal, not being a freak."
"Did somebody call you a freak?" He's quick to pick up.
She shakes her head a little too quickly, "No—it's not important, anyways. We have to keep on fighting, I know, but I wish that there was something more that I could do, something more than just stand on the sidelines and do what I'm told to do."
Henry ponders for a moment, before his eyes light up, "I think that there might be something you can do, to prove yourself, I mean."
"This," he motions, nodding, "Is the training room."
It's mostly empty, a few of the dwarves—dwarves, she has to remind herself, dwarves exist—fighting amongst one another, a glint of cunning and trickery gleaming in their narrowed hazel eyes.
Leroy nods at Henry, throwing him a sword—there's an emblem of a Mockingjay upon it, and Paige knows that she's seen it from somewhere before, from that fairytale book he had when they were younger—and he tosses her a smile. "Here: if you want to protect yourself, I'll show you a quick drill." Almost immediately, his left foot pivots towards the wall and then he lunges forward, decapitating the dummies one by one, tossing a plastic one over his head, and it would be quite impressive if the dummies weren't plastic. "Give it a try, if you want."
She already reaches for a knife, twirling it one hand; Paige twists her arm towards the right, focusing on the target twenty feet away—Imagine the target's Maleficient, blood strewn across her face; she can kill you with a twist of her hand, and what could you do with a simple human weapon? Magic training would have been much more useful—and aims it, disappointingly, watching it hit the arm of the target.
If this was a real-life scenario, she would have been dead by now; perhaps, she would get better with training. "There isn't much time left, is there?"
Henry wonders why he'd never notice it before, but she's gorgeous—there's something of a glint of happiness and freedom in her bright green eyes, red curls tangled, breathless. He wipes the thoughts out of his mind, though, because they're in the middle of a war right now, and there's no time for crushes in the middle of a war, out of all times; his face grows grim, "Mom estimates it at a few weeks."
"So, this is what you want: to be trained for battle, to defend yourself?"
"It's not about defending myself, not really; I want to protect everybody who can't protect themselves." Like Catelyn and Devin and everybody else who doesn't believe. "There are people in this town who aren't going to believe what's happening around them, and they'll try running away, and they'll be killed in the process. I don't want anybody to die who isn't prepared to lie down their life."
He gives her a weak smile, "Everybody could die, but that's what we're prepared for—if all of us die, then we want to take down Maleficient and her forces down with us."
She ends up writing a letter to Catelyn the day before all hell breaks loose, and it goes along the lines of;
Catelyn—
I probably owe you the biggest apology.
Back at the beginning of freshman year, when everything was loads simpler, we were friends, we were best friends—don't you remember being best friends? It was probably my fault in the end, that I screwed everything up.
The truth is that I liked Henry Mills—probably still like him, but there's no time to tell a boy that I like him in the middle of a war, so screw that—but I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I got jealous over Devin, and then I tried retaliating, because I knew that you honestly liked Henry, and I was just using him at first, but I changed, I swear, it's not the same anymore.
I know you think that I'm a freak, and maybe I am, but I think that you're a bit jealous.
Course, this isn't probably the best way to word an apology, but I've never been good with words, so here goes nothing: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm not expecting you to forgive me, or anything, because by the time you choose to forgive me, I might as well be dead.
There's a war coming. I know that you probably don't care about the war or the magical world of Storybrooke, but you have to care just a bit if you want to make it out of this town alive, to have a normal life, and I know that's something you want, so you have to listen to me. The Mayor, Regina Mills, is the Evil Queen, but she's not so Evil, not really.
She's Henry's adoptive mother, as you know, and she's gotten a lot nicer lately—Henry says that she's changing for him, so that they can be a normal family, just like Regina's always wanted. She's just a bit lonely, that's all.
Emma Swan, that weird lady who came in about three years ago, she's Henry's real mother—the daughter of Snow, Miss Blanchard (yes, the same Miss Blanchard who was our fifth grade teacher) and James (the cute coma patient)—and she's the Savior. I don't believe much in her, but Henry believes in her more than anything, so I guess that I believe in her a bit, because I trust him. He hasn't been wrong about anybody as of yet.
Except me. I have this gift—I know it makes me weird, but in this magical world, it's almost as though I belong.
My father was the Mad Hatter, but he's dead now, so it doesn't make much of a difference, but even if he was alive, these people here, they would still treat me the same. They don't care who my parents were, they don't care what my family background is, they just care about the choices I make, and the side that I have chosen, and I have chosen their side, and it is wonderful.
I feel like I have a family again, Catelyn. I haven't had a family since I was five years old. So, I'll probably be dead in a few years, and it would be nice to have a friend here who isn't a boy or twice my age, so reply back if you'd like. I know that's asking a lot from you, so I'll understand if you don't reply.
—Paige.
The battle happens on Christmas morning, and none of them are prepared for it.
"Monsters don't care about human holidays," Henry whispers in her ear, dragging her out of the bed.
"Henry," she smiles up at him, still oblivious about the clash of swords and the firing of guns occurring outside of the safehouse of the apartment building. "I thought that you were going with Emma to New York for the weekend."
"They're here," he replies sullenly. "They're here to kill us."
Then, the thoughts come flooding back through her mind, and Paige remembers that though this is a fairytale, it's not really a fairytale because good might not win, and everything is just too much. "Okay. Give me a minute. I'll get ready."
"We don't have a minute," Henry shakes his head. "If we want to leave Storybrooke now, we have to go. Mom and Hook are in the car, and they're waiting for us, and the rest—none of them will leave. But we need to go now, okay? Maleficient, she assembled this huge army—it's really huge, horrendously huge, and it's not as though we're the Spartans, the three hundred or so of us, being able to hold off the 2 million population of a Persian army—with giants and thugs and everybody wants to kill us, I swear. We've got to go now."
Paige shakes her head, "No."
"What?" He spits out, looking back at her; she stands, in a pair of polka-dot pajamas, blonde hair tied up in a slick ponytail, eyes bleary and tired and scared, but brave nonetheless. "We've got to go, are you even listening to me?"
"I'm not leaving," she lets go of his hand. "I'm going to stay. And fight. With the rest of everybody else."
"You can't do that," he shakes his head. "You're going to die, Paige, we're all going to die."
She throws her hands up in the air, exasperated. "Don't you remember what we're supposed to stand for? Protecting those who can't protect themselves? Well, it doesn't seem as though we're doing a jolly good job of that now."
"We're going to come back," Henry lies, weakly.
"I don't know what's happened to you, Henry—you've changed, and it's not for the better. Anyway, you need to go now, maybe I can buy you a few extra minutes—I'm not leaving."
A million thoughts run across his mind, before he stands, blank expression upon his face. "Goodbye, then."
He leans, hesitantly, and their noses brush against one another, before Paige sighs, moving backward. She pushes him away. "I don't kiss losers, remember?"
Henry comes back to fight—he's brought everybody else with him two; Emma Swan and Captain Hook and Snow and Charming, and they'll fight until the very end, together. Isn't what this was meant to be about?
Emma Swan was never a woman of frailness—
Yet, as her body is placed in a casket in the middle of town, the woman looks of brittle bones, breaking. Out of the corner of her eye, Paige spots Henry standing numbly above his mother's grave: she doesn't make a move to comfort him. It's not her place; the two of them are friends, yes, but he has to have other friends, right? The savior has died.
Paige processes the fact, letting it run around in her head, before she pushes it out of the forefront. She steps upon the fading yellow line, staring at the WELCOME TO STORYBROOKE sign that she had practically memorized; there's a small boy standing next to it, replacing the numbers of the population count—they switch from 242 to 57 within a few seconds, and it's depressing, that's what it is.
So, she stands upon the line, steps over it, and walks away.
Paige gets a reply from Catelyn two days after she's left for college interviews—
Paige—
I'm not going to forgive you for everything that you've done, but I might say that it's okay for us to be friends again.
If that's something you want, of course; then again, we probably can't be friends because you're moving away from Storybrooke, and I'm probably going to move away too—California seems like a great place this time of year, the sun and the tanning and the beaches and especially the cute boys. I'll miss you, though; I'll miss Storybrooke, and I'll miss the world we've created here.
Storybrooke's an awfully weird town, in my opinion, and I wish it wasn't that way. I remember in third grade when Miss Blanchard—I'd rather not call her Snow White, thank you very much—told us about there are birds and larks inside all of us, and I believed her, oh God, I believed her.
Except then sometime during eighth grade, my parents got divorced, and my mom moved away with the gardener, and my dad drove himself into a hole with his work, but he was rich, and that was all that mattered. Sometimes, I wondered where he got all the money from—he was a school teacher, for God's sake, not a CEO of some massive company, and even though he said that he left town for business trips, I knew that wasn't the case.
I've tried leaving Storybrooke countless times. It didn't work until a few days ago: I stood before the yellow line, the line that separated me from the world and my home, and walked over it.
And I didn't die or anything! Your world's a bit weird, though. And I never wanted to be involved with it, but I guess your world is destroyed now. All the adults are gone, so there's no point in being in Storybrooke anymore, unless we're to be the adults, and I just don't want to grow up, you know what I mean? Actually, no. I do want to grow up. I want to grow old and be normal.
None of us are normal in Storybrooke, as much as we try to be, and I hate it.
I've met a boy. His name is Felix—remember him from tenth grade? He was one of the Lost Boys, but he left Peter Pan for me. He left his friend, his brother, for me. And now that there's a chance for a life with normalcy, we're going to leave Storybrooke. Maybe enroll in a high school far far away from this wretched town, and go to college, and we'll have a real life. Isn't that what life is about—going to college, falling in love, getting married, starting a family, and then bursting into flames?
Course my death's not going to be that way, not if I can help it. I'm going to die when I'm one hundred and eleven years old, because that seems like a wonderful year today, and Felix and I, we're going to die together.
I think I love him, Paige.
Sometimes, at these times, I wish we were still best friends, because I terribly need somebody to gush over all the details of our first date, our first kiss; we're going to college, together. Or at least we're going to college close by one another, because I need him. I needed somebody, and you weren't there, and it seems as though Felix sort of filled your spot, but he's more than you ever were to be.
He changed. He left Peter Pan for me. I can't emphasize that enough. He became normal because he loves me—now that I think about it, if we really were best friends, then you would have become normal for me.
But you didn't, and that's that. I'm sorry for the lies that I said at the beginning of the letter. I was just feeling sentimental, I guess, remembering all the old times that we used to share. But that was in the past, and the past in the past, and this is the future. Maybe one day, if you choose to be normal again, you can send me back a letter. If you choose to live in your world of fairytales, then don't bother. I'm not going to lose anybody else to the monsters.
—Catelyn.
The last time he sees her is at a graveyard—Henry walks up to her, and stares at the gravestone in their faces. It is of crumbling stone, for Storybrooke is a small town, and it seems as though all the adults have died—it was to be a very makeshift funeral, to say the least. "Glad you could make it," Paige replies, lips pursed together, the corners of her lips turned upwards, though there is nothing but emotion and blankness running through her eyes, all at once, if it is even possible for that to occur.
It is a makeshift funeral, with all the children standing over their parents' bones—"This wasn't supposed to happen," Paige jars Henry out of his thoughts. He stands up from kneeling, laying the bouquet of roses over EMMA SWAN and CAPTAIN HOOK and SNOW and CHARMING and LEROY and RED—even Red died, and she wasn't too old either.
None of them were meant to die: none of them were that old, in fact. They shouldn't have died when they had the rest of their wonderful lives to lead; Paige had found Snow and Charming—Miss Blanchard and James, she thinks of them no longer with those names—lying together on the street, heads chopped off not cleanly, either, blood crusting on the pavement, drying on their neck like scabs that one wouldn't pick off. They died together, if that was any consolation for their deaths.
And for a moment, it will be okay—
For it is them, and they are always okay—but not quite. They always make it through to the day, for they are the survivors, the children of the heroes who are heroes themselves without truly knowing it, the little spark of fire and hope that runs through their veins, and only theirs, for the adults of the days are tired creatures, tired minds and eyes knowing no closure of sleep.
For it is them who will save the day, except what is the point of saving the day, now? The heroes have died, and the monsters have won in a brilliant display of bright green lights and purple powder spreading across the sky—it is the end, the end of it all.
"There's no point in fighting anymore," she murmurs, numbly, staring across the graveyard. Even Henry, the boy with the hope and the spark of fire, and the eternal optimism, only nods his head; except, it shouldn't be this way, Paige thinks to herself. "You shouldn't give up." Her statements are quite hypocritical, though Henry does not comment on them. "We shouldn't ever stop fighting, we should never give up."
Henry only somberly replies, "We should never have grown up. It happens to the best of us, though." His eyes scan across the graveyard, and for a moment, Henry swears that he sees the makeshift treehouse, and remembers his mother and him, planning their secret operations with those ridiculous names only he could make work.
And then, it is gone, and they are left to face the truth of it all. For a moment, Paige sees the slight smile on his face, and remembers the boy with the endless hope, but he is gone, a new slate imprinted upon his face—but he is not gone completely, perhaps.
Clinging onto his hand, Paige hopes that for the sake of all of them, he is not truly gone.
(Years ago, she knew a boy who made all the wrong choices—Peter Pan was a boy of dreams and fairytales, and though everybody else in the town of Storybrooke had grown up, he had not.
So when he held her hand under the moonlight of Neverland, she thought that with him, maybe she wouldn't grow up either.)
It's not the last time, though—yet it feels like it.
The next time that they meet, they are new people; she had breathed in college like a new start, a clean state; he had breathed in college like it was a place to get away from everything that happened, a place to forget the problems and tragic ends of the past. "Hello," Paige states quite plainly, looking in front of her in the registration line at the Maine Maritime Academy.
"Hello," he almost stutters. His voice is harsh, deeper by at least an octave. And he's different looking, now too—a bit taller, a bit more mature. Paige would have rather seen the childish boy face more, because seeing him is nothing more of a reminder that they have changed, that they are going to change, grow older, and where will that lead them? For their parents have died, and it seems as though all adults are faced with the same sad fate of life.
It would have been much easier to forget that Paige had existed, for in his mind, she is a person, but she is also a reminder of everything Henry has left behind, everything he is trying to forget, and it seems as though his past will not be allowed to be forgotten so easily; and through her mind run the same stream of thoughts. "Are you enrolling here?"
She lets out a brief smile, "No, I'm just visiting my boyfriend."
"Really?"
"No, you prat," the wording is awkward, and does not roll off her tongue as easily as it used to in the younger years. "Well, technically—never mind about technicalities. I'm enrolling her, as a freshman—I got the acceptance letter over the summer, so I didn't think I would get in, you see, because my grades were never the best, and the only thing I had going for me was my sob story and my essays weren't quite that bad either."
"You're brilliant," he states in a matter-of-fact tone. "If you had told me that you applied to Maine Maritime Academy in the first place, I would never have doubted that you would get in."
"Thanks," she smiles back, hesitantly. For it has been days since she has smiled last, over three months since she has seen him, and Paige is unsure of what they are anymore—acquaintances, friends, more than friends? Paige brushes the latter of the options out of her mind—remember that can't happen, and after all, you don't like him in the way anymore. The last time that she had fancied Henry had been in the fifth grade, and oh, what children they had been then—with dreams of the future, with songbirds and larks running through their hearts, only to be replaced by dread and worries for the future with nobody to guide them towards it. "I didn't think that you would choose to leave Storybrooke."
Henry nods, "True. But Mom would have wanted me to go to college, so I'm trying to lead the life that she would have wanted me to lead."
Paige doesn't bother asking which mother he is talking about, for in the end, both of them were equally good mothers; they had their differences, yes, but they both loved Henry unconditionally, and wasn't that what being a mother was supposed to be about? "How have you been? I know that it's been hard since your parents died," the words slip out, accidentally.
She sees the strain on his face, the bags forming underneath his eyes, and the way that he clenches his suitcase's handle a bit tighter before she had brought up everything he had been trying to forget, and knows the answer. But he only smiles brightly, "Jolly good. Couldn't wait to get to college, start a new life, get a job, get—"
"You don't have to lie to me Henry," Paige interrupts. "For God's sake, we've known each other, for what, how many years now? Probably since we were in the third grade, and we've been friends for a few years now, so it doesn't make sense that we're pretending as though we're okay, because I'm not okay, and I don't think that you're okay either, and it's okay not to be okay, okay?"
He chuckles, "I don't think that Mr. Bentley would have approved of your word repetition." Then, his face turns sallow, because he remembers that Mr. Bentley had bought his mother three more minutes of her life. "Have you been to therapy?"
Paige's eyes narrow, on the defensive side, "Do I look like I need therapy?" Because she's spent quite enough time that morning on her makeup, thank you very much, and she doesn't think that she looks as tired as Henry does, or maybe she does—it's at times such as these where she misses having her friends who would always tell her you look gorgeous, Paige, stop worrying but she hadn't had those type of friends for a while.
He doesn't respond to that; The lady at the front table calls out his name then, "MILLS, HENRY." He's wearing a leather jacket and there's the necklace hanging loosely around his neck—the one that has the same symbol as Anita's gravestone; a moon with a white dot in the middle—and it just screams I haven't moved on, and Paige isn't about to give him any more false hope; he actually hasn't asked her out or anything, and it seems as though he wouldn't, at least not for a while, but all the same, she blurts out, "I have a boyfriend— his name is Peter."
Henry looks hurt for a moment, then shock, and then another million emotions roll around his eyes. "Peter Pan?"
"That's the one," she replies, standing there awkwardly for a moment, before embracing him in a friend hug—friend hugs are the worst, Paige thinks later that day, because she used to nestle her head onto his shoulder, and breathe in the scent of cinnamon, looking up at those bright hazel eyes, but it is a friend hug, and she pulls back after about two seconds, and there's no time for anything like that—and smiling, "I might see you around, Henry."
He thinks, I hope that you don't, and waves goodbye.
For iron hearts all turn to rust, and they have grown up, and this is the end—or maybe not.