He doesn't look like you. Straight dark hair in place of your childhood, sugar-spun tangles. His mouth is made for smiling, nothing like the patented Emma Swan resting-bitch-face. He's skinny, yes, and so were you, but so are dozens of kids—those with parents and those without.

He doesn't look like you.

Maybe you gave that away, too.

.

"Lot of nerve," you say, halfway along the oil-slick darkness of the highway at night, "Drinking my juice out of the jug like that."

He swipes at his chin like there's still a guilty dribble. "Sorry," he says, eyes boring into you. "Only child."

Like you don't know.

.

Holy shit, but Storybrooke is one of those enchanting little towns with the shadowy corners and eternal streetlights that never did anybody any good. Never did you any good. You like the grime of a towering city better. You like how you can get lost there because you want to.

Getting lost because you want to is the closest thing to freedom you've ever found.

.

You can never get it right, can you? Return the runaway kid, stack up the body-count of your pride. Face the death-glares of her, the woman who raised him, with her stilettos and her ruby grimace.

I'm bringing him back, lady. What's your problem?

You don't say that. You duck and run, or you try to.

(When he asks you to stay, he sounds like you.)

.

And OK, yes, you did wish for something over that sorry-ass candle. You shut your eyes and under the weight of mascara and threatening tears, you prayed.

Was the boy with the book the answer you wanted?

(Have you gone a day—a single day—without dreaming about him?)

.

Maine is different from Boston. It's wilder. You choke down the memory of yourself at ten, tattered canvas shoes, running through hedgerows, even forests, whenever you could find them. Sometimes the foster homes were rural. Sometimes you got to have your dreams.

Henry has his castle.

You do not have Henry.

.

You don't believe in God. You are not stupid enough to believe in yourself, most days. You just—get by, and you take no shit, and you don't have anyone who loves you.

(Been there, done that, took the punch to the gut one too many times.)

"You're right about one thing, though. I wanted to give you your best chance. But it's not with me."

.

The air smells like salt, even when you're not crying. You breathe it in. You wonder if there are orchards here, where Henry's mom got all those glossy apples. You wonder if you would like waking up here in the morning. You wonder, like you always wonder, where you would live if you had kept him. What that would look like. Would he look like you then? Dark hair and all, but your frown and your sharp, surprised smile, and the way you tilt your chin down when you're nervous?

.

"Even the possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing."

What is wrong with these people?

You don't ask that. You don't ask that of the angel-faced teacher with the soft voice and the relentless gaze.

Instead, you almost ask: What is wrong with me?