Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Storybrooke, Maine
Summer, 2016
"Oi! Belle!"
The ball of paper hits her on her temple before bouncing away off to the side, Will's voice getting closer, his steps echoing in the empty gallery as he calls for her again.
And yet it isn't enough for her to tear her eyes away from the painting.
It sits against the wall in front of where she kneels, her fingers outstretched, reaching but not quite touching the soft dips and crests of the brush strokes on the canvas. Her eyes following the gaze of the woman in the picture, following the curve of her smile, the gentle cascade of her hair about her shoulders, the colour of her eyes as she looks up and smiles at something outside the canvas.
"Belle, come on. We have boxes full of this stuff that we need to label. What are you doing?"
She reaches her free hand up, finding his, her fingers closing around his hand as she pulls him down to crouch in front of the painting too.
"Oi, what the hell?"
"Shut up and look at this," she says, her eyes meeting his, ignoring the confusion on his face as she nods towards the painting of the woman with the breathtaking eyes, her hand letting his go.
"What about it?"
His voice is irritable and she knows that they have a million things to do. Sort and label and identify all the paintings and other paraphernalia in the boxes that had been donated to the gallery after being found in the attic of an old local house that had recently gone on the market.
But, even though she can feel his glare, she hears his voice soften as he adds, "She's alright, I suppose."
She feels a smile begin to bloom on her face.
"She is beautiful. But that's not the point. Do you see how he's painted her?"
"How who's painted her?"
"Killian Jones, obviously," she says, rolling her eyes as she points out his signature at the bottom right corner.
"Doesn't answer my question, does it? Who's Killian Jones?"
"I don't know. Clearly an artist of some skill and probably painted during the war, considering all his other paintings. British from the looks of it. But that's not the point."
She turns to face him and reiterates, "Look how he's painted her."
But his face remains confused and she lets out a huff of frustration, sitting fully on the floor before turning back to the painting as she begins to explain.
"It's just- It's different. She's smiling, her hair is down and her eyes- everything is so detailed but still soft?"
She pauses for a moment.
Her eyes follow the woman's hair down her shoulders, the gold of it shining in what seems like a hundred different shades, the light hitting it in a way that makes each strand look like it is lifting off the canvas, like if she were to blow at the painting, the woman's hair would fly into her eyes and she'd scrunch her face and laugh.
Belle smiles softly at the thought.
She follows the hair down to the curve of her neck, the lace of her dress only barely visible over the bottom of the canvas and yet so intricately portrayed, the shadow of the lace on the fabric beneath it visible to her even at the distance at which she sits.
Her gaze trails back to the woman's eyes. They are like glass, sparkling and reflecting the unknown sight that they chase across the canvas, a different shade of green every time she looks back at them.
But more than all of the beauty that the painting holds, it is the fact that every brush stroke on it tells her how carefully, how lovingly this portrait had been painted. The hand of the man who had created this had known the subject, had cared for her greatly.
"It's just so intimate," her voice is softer now, trailing off into nothing, as though she has forgotten that Will is still crouching next to her.
"It's like he knew her," she says, "It's like he-"
She turns back to Will then, catching him looking at her with a gentle smile on his face, his eyes crinkled in amusement, perhaps a little fondness, feeling her cheeks flush as she finishes her sentence.
"Loved her."
He smiles wider at her embarrassment even as she ducks her head and begins to stand.
"Didn't know you were such a romantic, Belle."
She hears the laugh in his voice, but she hears the affection too and she doesn't quite know how to respond so she just mumbles for him to-
"Shut up."
He laughs out loud this time in response, chuckling as he stands too.
"Alright, alright. The picture's pretty, she's pretty, you're pretty. Can we hang these things up now?"
She freezes in place, her eyes immediately going to up meet his still amused face, her mouth opening to say something even as she fumbles for the words to respond to his sudden compliment but he speaks before she can finish gathering herself.
"This is only the first thing we've hauled out of these boxes and there's notebooks and more paintings and we need to have all this sorted for the exhibit before the Evil Museum Queen turns us into frogs or something."
"You would make a terrible frog, Will."
She smiles gratefully at him even as he pretends to look affronted, hand to his chest, his mouth open in mock consternation.
"Hey! I'd make a fabulous frog, I'll have you know. All the frog ladies would love me."
He goes to pick up the painting from one end as she goes to pick up the other end of the heavy frame, her shoulders shaking from her laughter. He smiles back at her, his face settling back into the fondness from before as they both lift the painting with a grunt of effort, moving it up the wall to the hooks where it is supposed to hang.
But they only get it a foot off the ground when there is a small cracking noise and the back of the painting seemingly opens up, a few sheets of paper falling to the floor. Folded up into various sizes of small squares and rectangles, she can see little scratches, lines and curves in pencil visible on some of them, the shadows of writing, of ink pressed onto thin paper on others.
"Bloody hell."
"Put down the painting Will!"
Her voice is a little higher than usual, her eyes fixed on the back of the painting, her hands lowering. They place it back onto the floor gently, Belle directing Will to hold the front of it steady as she inspects the back more closely.
She finds it immediately. The little hatch built into the frame that had opened when they had jostled the painting as they'd lifted it. She jiggles it open a little more and finds the rest of the sheets that had been hidden in the frame.
"Oh my god," she whispers as she begins to open the folded sheets one by one, her voice a reverent whisper as she realises that they are letters.
Letters between the same two people over a course of a few months.
Perhaps a few years, she cannot tell.
But, she sees their names again and again. As she moves from letter to letter, only reading the first few lines before moving onto the next, she watches as the salutations change, the names they call each other different, more intimate with every letter they exchange.
Miss Swan,
Captain Jones,
Dear Miss Swan,
Emma,
Killian,
My Emma,
Dear Killian,
My Darling,
More fascinating though, are the sketches. Rough scribbles of the woman in the painting on the back of every letter she'd written him. Some are a better likeness than others, her pose varying, her expressions different, her face shifting minutely in each.
As though he'd been trying to remember her when they'd been apart.
"Emma Swan," she says, testing the name on her tongue as her eyes fall to the painting again, watching Will lean it back against the wall before crouching beside her and the letters.
"The woman in the painting?"
"Yes," she whispers before going back to the letter in her hand.
"What are these?" Will says, his head leaning in close as he tries to read the script that runs across the page in her hands.
She looks up to meet his eyes, her cheeks flushed, her lips curved into a smile.
"A love story."
A/N: Eeeeee! So, I've been working on this for months and months and I am so excited to finally share it with you! This will be a whole multichapter situation with new chapters posted every week hopefully or at the very least every two weeks. Also, just a note that this is the only chapter set in 2016. The rest of it going to take place in the years between 1915-1918 and the events that took place then.
I hope you enjoy this little prologue and stick around for the rest of this story which has owned my life for the last few months. :)