Summary: Pulled in by a dream better than her reality, Emma Swan travels to a world where nothing will ever hurt her again. A land outside of time itself, a place where fate and destiny cannot touch her - but chance is fickle in its ways. It can go where others cannot, and one chance encounter is enough to bring her world crashing down.

Notes: So, this AU I've been working on for quite some time and it's very close to my heart. I plan to have 10 chapters for it and hopefully update it once every week/week in a half (depending on how long the later chapters take to write). As always, I appreciate any feedback (though especially on this AU because as I've said, it's precious to me.) This chapter is very short, but longer chapters to come (as always for me).

Part 1: So My Shadow Will Cover

She wrapped her anger and hurt around her and it became her shadow. Friends forever. It was a cruel dream, and yet Emma tossed and turned in that place where they could have run away together and been a family if Lily hadn't been a liar like all the rest.

Family was something she would never have. Emma was never meant to be a daughter.

It was a cruel dream. A childish fantasy that played in her sleeping mind in the backseat of a car to nowhere – another foster home, another house of misfit children who would only ever find envy in the families on TV and the chosen few who joined that illustrious world of family life.

The cruelty was that it was beautiful.

Island after island of trees with canopies of bright green to green so dark it was almost black with veins so red they looked painted on. Trees and animals of bright colors that she had only ever seen in library books or on the nature channel shows one of her first "official" foster parents watched while Emma cleaned up after them. Nine at the time, she much preferred sneaking glances at the TV than sweeping. Like those shows, there were screaming brown monkeys and cawing birds of all sizes and designs – and even, black cougars with fierce roars and sharp white teeth.

There were even mermaids with scaled tails of every color Emma could imagine and more. They would splash in the waters of their very own lagoon off the coast of Emma's favorite island.

If she had to give it a name, she would have called it Swan Song because as she flew through the trees, a melody played in her head. It was not unlike the beating of drums.

In the center of the island was a treehouse with levels that climbed up higher than any building Emma had ever seen. Ladders to nowhere and ladders to rooms filled with trinkets, books, food of all kinds – all the things Emma had never had. In her room, the one at the very top, across her pillow of feathers lay her baby blanket, carefully aligned so that when she fell asleep, the last thing she saw was her name, the only thing her parents had ever given her.

Best of all, there was no one else. No parents to never find her. No friends to promise her the world and say they were just like her when they had a family. No one to tell Emma they felt invisible when she'd run away from her foster home and not one person had come looking for her.

On the Swan Islands, Emma was all alone, with nothing but her shadow to track her steps. To her shadow, she wasn't invisible. It followed her everywhere, did everything she did, and when she felt lonely – remembering Lily's lies and empty promises, the foster homes and the foster kids, and her parents who never came and never would – her shadow would wrap its arms around her until all she could see was the blackness that sucked out all the light.

The cruelest dreams were the ones that never came true, so perhaps her dream wasn't as cruel as the woman with the hard frown that promised Emma she would get her back to a "proper home."

For when Emma awoke, the van with its stained grey seats, darkened windows, and radio that only seemed to play old people news stations had disappeared. Golden sand slid between her painted toes and the beach of her dreams lay before her. The white, frothing sea that surrounded the island stretched out all the way to the horizon. In the distance, she could see a tail of shimmering blue smack across the water and disappear beneath it.

Emma collapsed against the ground. The sun was bright but it didn't hurt her eyes. Nothing could hurt her here, not the memories of her past or the hopelessness of her future. Here, time didn't matter at all. It faded into nothing but darkened images of a world that she no longer lived in. Nothing mattered but monkeys swinging through the trees and the cougars prowling the gloom of the forests.

She laughed, at first just to make sure she could, and soon it became giddy, uncontrollable. Her laughter became part of the chorus of birds, roars, and screams.

In her ears, the drums played to the sound of her shadow's black heart, pressed to her cheek and beating the same as her own.

On the smallest island, far, far away from Swan Song, as if it was never meant to be found by anyone or any creature of her world, there was a clock tower, raised high to the sky.

It was something Emma never dreamed or imagined. It was inexplicable in its presence on this barren island of grey rock and cold dirt and confusing to her senses. No matter how much Emma wished it away, it stayed.

No matter how hard she tugged at the door, it would not open. The rocks she threw, the weapons she summoned with a flick of her wrist – none of them made a dent in the windows, doors, or the clock with its face that winked at Emma if she looked at it just right.

It was wrong. Even her shadow could not get through its barriers as if it had no power over it, and the shadow had power over everything.

So, the Storybrooke Free Public Library stayed in its corner of her world, tucked all the way at the edges, and yet, always pressing on Emma's mind.