Gold Lock, Silver Hook, Scarred Hearts
A/N: This is a character-development story set in Storybrooke with flashbacks to the Enchanted Forest. It was plotted and started in the beginning of Season 3a. I am pro-Captain Swan, but my mind began to wonder what-if...? And so a what-happens-to-Hook-after-Neverland-if-Emma-chooses-Neal story was born. And because I firmly believe anti-heroes deserve happy endings, I found a non-heroic fairy-tale female to be his friend(?). So enjoy...
Disclaimer: Don't own, but truly love to play with : )
Chapter i:
Broken
Storybrooke
May 13, 2012
8:12pm
Gwen McKinley pulled the hood of her jacket farther down, covering her distinctive pink hair. Hair that had been dyed in a fit of rebellious peak and without thought to any consequences – consequences like being noticed by the nosy stiffs of this gods-forsaken town. Highly inconvenient when one is trying to break into a vacant building for the night.
Slipping through the gap in the pine board fence, surrounding the aging Victorian house, she considered the bright side of possibly spending yet another night in the clink – she would get fed a hot meal on the public's dime, instead of the filched chicken salad sandwich from the Herman fridge. But that was a rather short-term thinking. Long-term, she was twenty-one and no longer eligible for the grace and mercy that is extended to juvenile delinquents. And with Sheriff Graham dead and no longer able to 'lose her paperwork' in exchange for community service hours at the shelter, Mrs. Boyd, her slave-driving boss of Boyd's Domestics, would fire her ass.
No job on top of no home and a criminal record was not something she was keen on burdening herself with.
She was half-way in the house via the formerly boarded up basement window, when she felt it – The Pulse.
And then she tumbled through, landing in a tangled heap on the hard and cold concrete floor as the memories rushed through her mind like an Oz-Kansas tornado, a mixture of Technicolor and black-and-white.
The abbey. Her sweet mother's sickly pale body laid out for interment.
The mausoleum. Her valiant father's armor-bedecked body, honored for his service and sacrifice for the King.
A Victorian house in its youth, surrounded by orderly gardens. China teas with a lonely motherless girl. Irish teas and fob watch and charm for a sad lonely father.
The austere but stately Spencer residence with its very own trophy room. James Spencer: All American athlete. James Spencer: Princeton's MVP…2002, 2003, 2004…
The hatred and rejection and scorn of those she would call her kin and her people.
A citadel of stone and bitterness. Towers and turrets. Maidens and maids. Guards and secrets. Schedules and habits. Tick tock. Flashing steel and provocative words.
Madame Mayor's papered forest walls and pristine kitchen.
Trees, fog, and more trees. A lodge. Elk horns. Bear heads. Wolf fangs. Angry men with filthy paws and minds. A man in black with a flinty stare.
The richly furnished and carpeted but empty and barely lived in Jefferson Mansion. A dust bunny's dream.
Herman's Realty: For Sale. The 'haunted' duplex. The fixer-upper ranch house. The aging Victorian. Rinse Repeat for twenty-eight years.
Once the furniture had quit falling to the ceiling in her mind, Gwen-who-was-not-Gwen began to cry, great big dry hacking sobs. The Curse was broken, but no one would be looking for her and she had no one to look for, Child of the Wilderness that she was.
A/N: Hook next chapter, promise.