A/N: Hello everyone! My name is Noxxis and this is my first fanfiction...well the first one I've published on here that is, I've wrote several...*cough*
Anyways! Okay, so this fanfic is completely AU...with a couple things from canon being brought over. Most of the ships will be the same, with a select few of my own making their way in. This isn't exactly a no curse type of story, as there is a curse and then another curse. But it's done differently in this story than in canon, so if AU isn't your thing then you might not like this story. I'm rating it M for now, as I do plan on things getting steamier and darker later in. But it's definitely going to be a slow-burn type of situation. I'm going to try and get at least a chapter up every week, but we will see how that goes...I don't really have much else to say other than enjoy!
Oh, and I own nothing except my imagination. The fic is named after the song from A Star is Born, the song in my head while I was writing this. It fits I think.
They say that real love, true love, awakens your soul and sets your heart on fire. Now, I'm not the most knowledgeable about love myself, but that sounds pretty painful to me. My mom says that when you meet your one true love, you know. She didn't say how, which is even more confusing to deal with. The sad part is, I'm pretty sure I met my one true love when I was six.
We'd just moved to a new town, a small one in Maine called Storybrooke. My dad had landed a new job in town as the local veterinarian. My mother was a teacher, so she could work anywhere. I remember the day we moved in as if we'd moved in yesterday. I was outside of our new house attempting to climb the large oak tree in our front yard, which I'd spotted as soon as we'd pulled up into the driveway. I was on the third branch when I heard his voice for the first time.
"Never seen a girl climb a tree like a boy before," His voice called up to me, accented in a way that my six year old brain couldn't place at the time. I looked down to see a boy no older than eight standing at the base of the tree. He had short jet black hair and the bluest eyes I'd ever seen. They looked like they held the ocean inside of them, and I remember immediately thinking that he was pretty, if boys could be pretty.
"Girls can do all sorts of things that boys can do, didn't you know?" I said back to him with a smirk, "Sometimes girls can do them better,"
The boy snorted in disbelief, "Yeah right," He said and rolled his eyes.
I looked back up at the tree for a moment, thinking. It was suddenly very important to me that I proved I was a better tree climber than this kid. I didn't know why it was such a big deal to me, maybe because he was suggesting that girls couldn't do things that boys could, that it wasn't right. But then again, I was six, I probably just wanted to be better for the sake of being better.
"Come up here and prove me right then," I said in a teasing voice.
The boy sighed and placed his hands on his hips, "Fine then,"
The strange boy then proceeded to do exactly that, quickly climbing up the trunk of the tree and standing on the first branch. Determined not to let him show me up, I began climbing again and we continued like this for a few short minutes in silence. But sure enough, we both soon reached the highest branch we could safely stand on, and there we stood across from each other on either side of the trunk. It was a little awkward being up there with a total stranger, but the good thing about being so young was the ability to immediately make friends. I didn't so much care that I knew nothing about this boy, he was a kid just like me so in my mind he had to be safe. The downside to being that young was that I was definitely naive.
"I'm Killian," He said with a small smile, his eyes on mine. There, now he wasn't a stranger right?
"Emma," I said simply, tilting my head to the side slightly as I looked at him. His accent was strange to me, and he was slightly taller than me which I thought was nice. I was taller than all the girls back in Boston. "Where are you from?"
"Where are you from? It's you that just moved not me," He said with a crooked smile.
Frowning up at him, I sighed softly, "Some place called Boston. It was loud and dirty so I didn't like it much. It's much nicer here," I said with a small smile, "Why do you sound different?"
Killian shrugged his shoulders, "My family used to live in London and everyone there talks like this. We moved here two years ago because my dad got a new job at the hospital,"
I watched as he looked up, his eyebrows furrowing for a moment as if he was thinking really hard about something. I wondered what he was thinking about, my eyes never leaving his face. My mother said it wasn't polite to stare at people, but I felt like the only way to really see people for who they were, was to watch them when they didn't realize you were.
"I bet we could go higher if we tried," Killian suddenly said, breaking the silence.
I shook my head and pointed up at the smaller branches, "The branches aren't big enough to hold us, we could get hurt,"
Killian shot me another bright smile, "Just trust me,"
Sighing again, I rolled my eyes as he began to climb farther up the tree. Soon, he was four branches above me, standing carefully on a smaller branch close to the top of the tree. I don't know how he did it, but I knew I had to do it too. He must have been just as determined to be better than me as I was to be better than him. It was maddening, especially to my six year old brain. Part of me wanted to yell at him to stop showing off, and part of me wanted to climb up there with him. I knew which part would win out.
"What are you, scared?" He asked me, looking down at me with a wicked smile on his face, his eyes twinkling in the sunlight. No way was I going to look scared in front of Killlian, but I still couldn't figure out why it was so important to me. All I knew was that I wasn't getting out of the tree until I proved that I could climb just as good as Killian, if not better. Maybe it was because I was the new kid in town and felt I needed to prove myself. Maybe it was the confidence behind Killian's smirk. But whatever the reason, I had to win.
I quickly climbed up just as high as he had, once again standing across from him. Smiling at him confidently, I gripped the tree a little tighter than necessary, not willing to admit that I was slightly unsettled about being up this high. I knew that if I fell, it would hurt me a whole lot. Looking back at him, I smiled in a teasing way, half tempted to stick my tongue out at him.
"Told ya that girls can do things boys can do," I said bluntly.
Killian chuckled softly and shook his head, "You're awful brave for a girl, that's true,"
"Emma!" I heard my mother calling, and I looked down just as she reached the base of the tree. She was looking up at me with her hands on her hips, her blue eyes squinted as she peered up to look at the two of us standing so igh up the tree. "What are you doing? I told you to come inside sp that we can unpack your room,"
I looked back at Killian, "I gotta go," I said sadly. I would much have rathered stay in the tree with Killian, not go unpack my things. But I remembered the last time I didn't listen to my mother, my father had talked to me rather sternly. He'd told me he was disappointed in me, something I always hated hearing from either one of them. I wanted them to be proud of me, not disappointed in me.
Killian simply nodded, "After you lass,"
Once we reached the ground, I grabbed my mother's hand as she held it out to me, looking at Killian as he stood on my right side with my mother on my left. Killian seemed to be looking at me with a curious expression, one I couldn't quite place. But his eyes looked like they were sparkling, which I brushed off as nothing but the sunlight making it seem that way.
"Who's your friend?" My mother asked politely, looking from me to Killian. I looked up at her, realizing that she and Killian actually looked more alike than me and her did. I looked more like my father, but both Killian and my mom had the same dark hair and blue eyes, though my mother's were more sky blue than sea blue.
"Killian Jones," He said and held out his hand, surprising my mother for a moment.
But then she smiled and shook his hand, her eyes warm, "You have very good manners, Killian," She said sweetly, the smile still on her face.
"My dad says it's good form to always be polite," Killian said proudly, puffing his chest out a little as he stood up straighter.
"Your dad sounds like a smart man," My mom said and then looked back down at me, "Come on Emma, we need to unpack. You can play with Killian some other time,"
"Bye, Emma," Killian said with a smile and a wave, his eyes looking as sad as I felt that we couldn't play anymore. I waved back and followed my mom inside, wondering if I would get the chance to be friends with Killian. I was never that good at making friends back in Boston, I had no patience for girly things like dolls and all the girls that lived around us in Boston hadn't wanted to do much else except play dolls. All the boys had been mean, not letting me play with them because I was a girl. Killian seemed different, I was hoping that he was different.
Over the next few months, Killian and I became rather close as friends. He told me all about his time spent in London and showed me around Storybrooke. I met his parents and his older brother Liam, who all seemed very kind as well. But Killian had quickly become one of my absolute favorite people. He would come over every day after school and we would climb the trees around our houses or explore around Storybrooke. We stayed away from the forest at the edge of town, our parents forbidding us to go there by ourselves because we could get hurt or lost. We were still kids after all, no matter how brave or adventurous we were.
It came as a huge surprise a year after we arrived in Storybrooke when Killian told me that he was moving back to London with his mother and Liam. He said that his father had left their family for some young woman he'd met at the bar. He only knew that because that was what his mother had told him. His mother wanted to move them back to England to be close to her family.
"You can't move, you're my only friend," I told him tearfully as we stood outside my house. I didn't want Killian to leave, he was my best friend and the only person I felt I could really count on besides my parents. I couldn't imagine a life without Killian in it, even if we had only known each other a little over a year. We spent every day together, having him suddenly gone would kill me. I was sure of it.
"You'll see me again Emma, I'm sure of it," Killian said with a hopeful smile.
That was the only time since I'd met him that Killian had ever lied to me...
