The Ugly Duckling

The Ugly Duckling stood alone outside her orphanage and watched again as another child got another home, another life and another chance. She stands alone, confused, lonely and lost and wondering why. Why isn't her turn?

She's getting older now, she's nearly sixteen. Most children she's lived with have found a home by twelve, she is the oldest orphan she's ever met. All she feels now is a longing, a desperate longing for a home, a family and love.

Though it has been many years since she stopped believing in fairy tales, it breaks her heart to watch others get their happy endings, whilst she has no control over achieving her own. Her family abandoned her. She's grown up alone with only the knowledge that she is unloved, unwanted and now perhaps undeserving… Has she done something? She wonders, maybe she has… Maybe these things are not meant to be for a reason.

She thinks back over her years, over every event that has led to where she stands now, watching as another 'perfect' child is driven away to a place of happiness that she has never been able to find. Did she do something? Surely at least the first time it was not her fault where the family who loved her were granted happiness of their own and suddenly there was no room for her. She didn't cause that uprooting did she?

She comes to the conclusion that she is probably cursed. Maybe that's the way things are meant to be, maybe some people aren't meant to be loved. She thinks back to a book of fairytales she read as a kid, to curses and villains and then to one in particular, The Ugly Duckling, she still has the name of Swan after all.

Perhaps she is not meant to fit in, to find happiness here, perhaps, if she is very lucky, she will find it elsewhere and blossom as the swan did.

So she runs.

Lilly ruins her latest and last chance at happiness as a child. Now she decides she is an adult. At seventeen she's on her own and on the run.

For a while she survives. She finds food and shelter, Aladdin style. A new name for her new lifestyle. This she sees as especially fitting if she is to bloom like a fairytale character. She amuses herself coming up with names for herself, perhaps one day they will help define the newer, better her. The one who will be loved and adored.

Orphan.

Lost Girl.

Thief.

Beggar.

Survivor.

She reminds herself everyday who she is and who she will be.

Then she meets Neal.

That's when things change. He's charming, he cares about her and just like her, he's a runaway. As they grow closer, bonding over a life of crime, she begins to wonder if this is it, this is the moment where she turns into a Swan.

They plan a life together as they fall in love, they even give it a name, Tallahassee. Now all they need is a way to fund it. Neal is the one who comes up with the solution. A bunch of stolen watches he stashed at a train station all ready and waiting to fund their new life together. She offers to retrieve them, believing it to be less suspicious, but when she returns, he is gone.

And she is alone again. She is left in a prison befitting an ugly duck, pregnant and alone but for the fresh sting of all those memories that constantly and consistently fill her days and haunt her nights.

With her release, she begins again. She gives up her child, not seeing the irony of placing him in the same system that failed her, perhaps she just believes her son more deserving of a home and a happy ending than she ever could be.

She becomes a bail bonds person and hunts down all those who have wronged their families, who have cheated or lied or schemed. She finds it fitting, if she cannot find her own family then maybe she can be of assistance in helping others, or at least help in cleaning up the mess.

At twenty one she wonders if this is it, if this is her happy ending, making enough money to stay afloat and not be living in complete misery. She never found her crowd or her home, perhaps she'll never turn into a Swan.

But this is all before Storybrooke, before Henry comes knocking on her door, before curses and magic and True Love.

There is no need to fear child (because deep down she still is one, lost as the first day she ran.) One day you are going to live up to your name Emma Swan and you will be the most beautiful one of them all…