Summary:
Ever since Emma was 13, she knew she had the ability to destroy people if she wanted to, and some days, she really wanted to. After being forced to go the the Greenwood Academy following a traumatizing event in her childhood that brought to the surface her ability to manipulate fire, she never thought she would be free of the place. So for nearly 10 years, she lived a solitary existence with the exception of her best friends, but that was all about to change.
Killian Jones had just been sentenced to attend the university campus at Greenwood Academy after an accident at sea caused him to be dishonorably discharged from Her Majesty's royal Navy and lose his hand. He doesn't know what to think about these newfound powers and what they spell for the rest of his now not-so-normal life. But a chance encounter one day has the ability to change all of that.
A story about love and redemption between two people that shows, if you have the right person beside you, you can find a light in the darkness.
Rating: M
Content Warnings: Mentions of Violence/Death, Brief mention of Childhood Abuse/Sexual Assault, Mild Sexual Content
Chapter Notes: Here is Chapter 2 Guys! The story finally starts rolling from this point on, we find out so much about Emma's back story and how she came to be at Greenwood! Thanks as always to my Beta Daveyjacobsthepotterhead for making this story amazing and to my artist princesse-swan for the art done for this story that you guys will get to see next week!
Chapter 2
One of Emma's least favorite days at the academy had arrived, Open Campus Day. This day was meant to let new, prospective students for the college level tour the campus and see if this campus was where they wanted to continue their education, allow parents to come and visit their children, as well as allow non-violent students to leave campus for the day to eat out or go and do something in the community surrounding the academy. But the Academy also had ulterior motives for the day, and brought in many government officials to tour the facility to see the different techniques for how they control and contain their powers.
This allowed the government to keep better track of all the high risk cases they had files or cases on, as well as try and discover loopholes in the academy's procedures for training students to attempt to write stricter laws allowing them to confine more and more people to the communities around the world.
Discrimination at its finest.
But the thing that bothered Emma the most was that all High Risk students were restricted to their rooms on Open Campus days, because they "posed too great a risk to the general public" according to every official statement that the academy released ahead of the day. This also meant that all the published reasons for Open Campus day didn't apply to them. No family visits, no friends, no company. Ever.
And that's how Emma found herself locked down in her room for the day. The dorms on campus for high risk students were built more like studio apartments, so she at least had access to a bathroom and small kitchen throughout the day.
Emma was painting in an attempt to pass the time.
Since she didn't have to worry about having a different career outside of a regulated community, she was really allowed to major in whatever she wanted on campus without having to worry about providing for herself in the future. And painting was one of the things that she did before she came to Greenwood that she actually enjoyed.
Dipping her brush into the sky blue paint on her palate, she turned back to her canvas and added a touch to a pair of eyes looking back at her.
Sean, her older brother, had sent her a letter recently that contained an image of his first daughter with his wife Ashley, baby Alexandria. Emma was hoping that once she finished the personalized painting of the newest member of her family, the academy would allow her to send it to them without any trouble.
She thought back on the other paintings of family members she had done before she left and wondered if her mother still hung them on the walls in her home.
Mixing together some brown, orange, red, and white in hopes of getting a reasonably peachy skin tone, Emma was working on filling in the little girl's round cheeks when there was a knock on her door.
"This is a High Risk Room, I can't open the door," she called back, not looking away from the painting.
Hearing the release of the mechanical lock holding her door shut, Emma immediately dropped her paint brushes and backed away from the door. Besides the headmaster of the academy, she did not know who would have the security clearance to open her door. For a moment, she wished fervently that she was able to remove the bracelets smothering her powers from her wrists so she had the possibility of protecting herself. She didn't relax even though she saw the familiar face of her personal coach Graham through the door. The five security guards standing behind him were enough to cause her to push further back against the wall next to her bed instead. She wished the window wasn't bullet-proof, she might have had a chance of breaking through it to get free.
"Graham, what a surprise to see you," she commented, hoping to sound stronger than she felt, "What can I do for you today?"
Despite her best efforts, the tremble in her voice came through enough that one of the guards behind Graham smirked.
"The Headmaster would like to see you in the secure training wing," Graham said, extending a hand from behind his back.
Emma blanched as she beheld what Graham had in his other hand. Because even though she had on her suppressor bracelets, they would still have to bring her across campus, and that required the glove-chains.
The Academy had a set of chains made for very volatile shifters or new cases that had powers that manifested from their hands that they couldn't control. They were required to wear the metal gloves attached to chains to fully immobilized their hands and suppressed powers even more effectively than any other device that the government had created.
Noticing that it wasn't likely that Emma would move from her place against the wall, Graham took a step into her room, shrugging off the hand of the security guard that moved to stop him. Emma slid down the wall and extended her hands to him palms up, tucking her chin down into her chest.
"I'm sorry Emma," Graham said as he slipped the first glove onto her right hand.
The effect was immediate. Emma felt as though a blanket had been thrown over her senses and her stomach moved into her throat.
She pressed her lips together in an attempt to prevent herself from vomiting. The first time she had been shoved, screaming, into the gloves when she was thirteen, she had puked. Graham slipped the other glove over her left hand and, moving behind her, got his arms under her armpits and heaved her to her feet. Emma swayed as the room spun around her. These gloves were designed to keep even the strongest of animal shifters stuck in their human bodies, dulling senses even in human form, so the effect that it had on Emma was debilitating.
"Can one of you get her other side please, I can't support her full weight across campus." Graham asked, working at trying to keep her on her feet.
Emma felt someone else slide one of their arms under her own, and between the two of them, got most of the weight off her feet and began moving her around the easel in her room and out the door.
The trudge through tunnels under campus,made so prospective students didn't witness how some of the cases here were really treated, was a daze. Her head was spinning and she felt as if her stomach was trying to push its way out of her throat.
"Stop" Emma groaned part of the way down a tunnel, moving her right hand weakly to grab at the person holding her. The chains, loose and rattling while they were essentially pulling her across campus, went taut. She needed a minute to steady her head or she was seriously going to vomit.
Graham must have heard her, because she didn't sound very loud to her own ears, and stopped. The security guard holding her other side, however, didn't, and kept moving, forcefully pulling on her shoulder.
"What's the hold up here?" He asked gruffly.
Emma scrunched her eyes shut, pulling more on her chains to try and hold her head in place. The security guard pulled at her again, jostling her around and making her head really feel like it was going to roll right off her shoulders.
"What are you doing?" He asked, tugging at the arm that he was holding while he was talking.
"Hey, just give her a minute, okay?" Graham said from off to her right. He set her down a bit so more of her weight was once again resting on her feet, trying to hold her steady as she swayed again, her feet sliding out a bit from beneath her. His voice came from in front of her when he spoke again, "Emma, are you alright?"
"The world is spinning," was all she was able to mutter back, pulling again to try and get her hands up high enough to be able to hold her head steady.
The security guard, ignoring what she was saying, jostled her again. "Stop trying to pull free of the chains you little bitch, keep moving."
Graham turned to the guard, while trying to steady her shoulders again, moving his hands up to try and hold her neck still since she wasn't able to get her hands up, "Have you ever been in a set of these before, just give her a minute to reorient herself, okay? We have a bit of time before we have to be to the training room anyway."
The security guards muttered something, but mercifully stopped pulling back on her chains.
With Graham holding onto her neck, the world was slowly coming to a stop around her, and while the urge to vomit had decreased some, it still sat uncomfortably at the back of her throat. His thumbs gave a slow slide along her jawline, "Do you think that you can keep moving again?" he asked quietly after a couple of minutes.
Emma nodded, slowly opening her eyes to see him looking at her with concern. He gave her a quick quirk of his lips, a shadow of a smile, and then slowly released her face and neck. Watching to make sure she kept steady, Graham went around to her right side and levered his arm under hers, again lifting some weight off her feet as they continued to help escort her down the tunnels.
Graham had been assigned to her as her personal trainer four years ago, after her previous coach retired.
At six years her senior, it was hard not to notice the unruly locks of brown hair and the light in his blue eyes, the way he smiled at her when they actually were able to train her abilities and she did something proficiently.
She knew nothing could ever really happen, he was her coach for fucks sake, but she still had eyes.
Graham didn't look at her like he could be afraid of her, and it had also been a long time since a guy looked at her with anything remotely close to interest and not fear or disgust of her abilities.
Then again, for a blip of a second, sky blue eyes flashed through her brain. Killian hadn't necessarily looked at her with disgust, but he also hadn't taken note of her suppressor bracelets.
Emma slammed her eyes back shut after Graham buzzed them through a locked door into the secure training wing of the Academy, the overhead fluorescent lights blinding. They carried her down another set of hallways, to where the largest auditorium was located. Again pulling out his badge, Graham buzzed them through a final set of locked doors.
Emma hadn't been in the training wing for a couple of months, but it hadn't changed since the first time she was brought into one of the secure rooms on her first day at the academy.
"The steel doors of the training auditorium are at least 5 inches thick," the Warden had explained to her as she was deposited into the room. "Meant to keep some of our most dangerous and unstable cases contained." A wary look was cast in her direction.
She got that look from many here, no one could understand what had a 13 year old girl at the top of the High Risk cases list. There were no more than 20 High Risk individuals at this institution, but that was still more than most places could handle. And all of them had been sentenced to the Academy well into their late teens, maybe early twenties if they had graduated from a high school level academy somewhere else in the region and had been sent here as part of their sentence. So she was a bit of an anomaly.
"The Headmaster will be in to see you and discuss where you will go from here." the Warden had said before he buzzed through those five-inch-thick steel doors and she heard the airlocks seal her into the room.
The sound of those locks sealing her in at the age of thirteen flashed again through her mind as those same locks clicked shut behind her.
Graham and the security guard brought her to the center of the floor, where she caught a glimpse of the government officials standing behind the panes of bullet proof glass in the observatory.
The guard dropped her arm suddenly, and the sudden loss of support caused her legs to give out from under her and her knees slammed onto the floor. She got her gloved hands out in front of her just enough to prevent her face from hitting the floor as well.
Grahams arm slipped from underneath hers and he lost a bit of his balance trying to slow down her fall, but he quickly let her go and stood up, backing away a couple of steps.
"Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen, and Welcome to Greenwood Academy." Headmaster Riggans said from off to her right. Emma squeezed her eyes tighter and kept her head turned downward, not wanting to look at the gaggle of people here to watch her like an animal behind a glass enclosure at the public zoo.
"I hope you have already had a wonderful tour of our grounds this morning, as we are looking forward to showing you how the government's latest research has been implemented at our facility to help keep our High Risk and potential risk students under control while they are here and possibly in the future when they are released back into the regular population." He explained, his footsteps echoing through the floor and up her knees. "Emma Swan has been a high risk case here with us for nearly ten years, starting at the academy after-"
"They don't need to know my whole backstory, Headmaster Riggans" Emma said, mustering enough strength and volume to successfully interrupt his telling of her entire history to these complete strangers. She tossed her head up to get her hair away from her face and looked up at him with disdain.
The look was returned in kind with a malicious smile down at her. "Very well Ms. Swan. Emma here, as you can probably guess based off her attitude, has the gift of fire manipulation." He made air quotes around the word gift. "She can produce fire from her hands mainly, but can occasionally produce it from her feet. The talent also extends to manipulating fire that is already present. That affinity for burning things," He said, throwing another cruel smile in her direction, "is the reason she was brought to our facility."
"To keep her, and our other students and faculty members, safe while she was being brought across campus from her locked room; which you were given a tour of an example room this morning, she was outfitted in an upgraded model of the Suppressor gloves ten point six point five point two, modified to suppress shifter abilities and keep them locked in their human bodies."
Two of the security guards that were lining the walls came up from behind her and, shoving Graham further off to the side, grabbed her hands at the wrist, dragging her back up to her feet with her hands on display for the officials sitting and watching Riggan giving his grand speech.
"We use these on very high risk cases, like Ms. Swan here, when we are transporting them off or onto campus, and our newer cases that tend to be very volatile and are unable to control their abilities." Grabbing a key from inside his pocket, he came over and slipped it into the clasp at the base of her left wrist. Turning it quickly, she felt the glove loosen around her hand and sighed in relief. Some of the effects were already beginning to lessen, and the world finally came to a complete stand still around her. Riggans moved the key to the other wrist and turned it to loosen the other glove.
"Only myself and our highest level training staff have access to the keys to release these cases from the gloves. And this is only after they have proven that they have gained some control over their person, or have been properly fitted with some other form of suppression equipment." Graham came over and grabbed the gloves from her hands and took them off, moving quickly to release them and the chain around her waist.
Graham took over speaking to the group of spectators after walking a few steps back from her.
"After the initial period where these students learn how to control their powers in control rooms with specifically selected trainers who have powers to combat or diminish the effects of their powers, they are outfitted with specific suppression gear so that they are allowed to continue their course work and complete a high school or college level education while in an area that will help them gain full control over their powers. Ms. Swan has been given two bracelets that are designed to specifically suppress her ability to produce fire, but also manipulate fire that is already present. In tandem, these bracelets also suppress that ability from her bracelets work on a remote monitoring system, so they also have a remote unlocking system, meaning that no specific key is needed to unlock her set of bracelets. All personalized suppression items are on the same system."
Graham set the chains aside, while the officials leaned forward to get a better look at her bracelets. They were pretty subtle, looking like two ordinary silver bangles on her wrists, but the intricate design hid the hardware under the surface that did the work of suppressing her powers.
"We also have one of the most rigorous screening programs here for allowing students here to begin to assimilate into the real world after completing schooling here." Riggans said. "This ranges from anything to a simple application for students with low risk abilities, to a full panel interview and skills testing for students with more high risk abilities. Depending on the risks associated with each individual case, some students won't be granted a hearing and will be given notice at that time that they would be moving into a regulated community after completing their schooling here."
Emma knew where she fell under that description easily. Someone like her, with the HIGH RISK stamp all over her file and a court case against her, she would be lucky if they allowed her to live in a "Community" without her suppression bracelets. But there were days where she hoped that one day she wouldn't have to live behind walls separating her from society.
Graham started talking again, describing the training that they did to teach students to control their abilities.
Students in the younger areas of the academy got to work with coaches to master their abilities (not so much on the college side of the academy), but high risk individuals didn't get that kind of training. They were not allowed to practice their powers on their own without the supervision of one of the school's deans and no less than 3 trainers, two of whom had to have powers to counteract their own. And as Emma looked around the room again, Graham was the only one of her trainers present.
"In our demonstration for you today, we will begin with demonstrating the suppression ability of her bracelets, and then move on to displaying her abilities, so you can see exactly how extensive the suppression lies." Riggans said, gesturing to two security officers off to the side that Emma hadn't noticed when she was initially brought in.
Riggans and the guards that had been holding her backed away as these new officers approached, wearing flame retardant suits and carrying what appeared to be industrial flame throwers. Emma's eyes widened. Another two guards surged off the wall and grabbed Graham as he moved back towards the center of the room, obviously not having any knowledge of what was about to happen.
Emma barely heard Graham yelling her name as the flamethrowers roared to life and the inferno came screaming at her.
Emma dropped, curling up on herself, pressing down on her knees and throwing her arms over her head in protection and squeezing her eyes shut. The flames were even louder as they flooded over her.
Thankfully, the one thing the bracelets couldn't suppress was her immunity to fire. She could be completely surrounded in flames; as she was now, and not get a single burn. She supposed it was one of the redeeming aspects to her power.
Emma could hear the flames clearer now, hear them whispering secrets to her and only her through the roar of the inferno. They wouldn't hurt her, they were life, and warmth, and survival all in one. Only people looking to do harm could turn them into war, and death, and destruction.
And they wanted to burn.
With a click that Emma heard as clear as day amongst the whispers of the flames, her bracelets fell from her wrists. The flames were singing now, singing a song only she could understand.
Singing that she was FREE.
Inhaling deeply, Emma felt along the flames to their source, smothering out the gases and the spark that gave these flames their life. She gathered the life of the flames and pulled it inside of her as she stood, listening to the whispers of the flames as they merged. They told her the lay out of the room, the 7 guards that still stood stoik along the walls of the chamber. That Graham was 6 feet to her left, panting as he stopped struggling with the two guards who held him; Riggans, who was shocked still as she gathered her power, stopped on his way to the protective barriers along the wall below the observers box.
She cupped her right hand on top of her left, as if she were holding something precious between them and pulled the flames further inside of her until they winked out.
The room was silent as everyone waited with baited breath to see what she would do.
Emma opened her eyes, and the world burst into flame.
