15th October 2001

Whether her parents were alive or not, Emma Swan had always identified herself as an orphan. It was what the social workers called her, anyway, not an abandoned girl or even a foster child. No, Emma Swan was – and always would be – and orphan, and no amount of half heated smiles and foster parents calling her 'one of their own' would convince her otherwise.

By the time Emma was sixteen she'd run away from seven foster homes, the first one being at the young age of eleven having sat idly by and watched as a younger, happier and overall more pleasant little girl was carted off with her new family, adoption papers all signed, the I's dotted and the t's crossed.

Before she'd even turned seventeen, Emma had decided that she'd had enough of being passed around like a useless toy no one was interested in, destined to be left at the backs of wardrobes and the highest shelves out of sight and out of mind. And so she ran away – for good.

It hadn't been an impulsive decision, not at all. In fact, Emma had been dwelling on the idea of fending for herself the majority of her life. If she had managed to survive the brutality of some of the foster homes they had landed her in, with their 'Detention Closets' at the top of the stairs locked by a brass key and the cigarette burns by way of discipline, then Emma was sure she could survive the outside world.

Having bounced around a while, living in six foster homes in the past decade, Emma till found herself back to where she began. Portland, Maine. She'd been found and hour down the highway, abandoned by the side of the road like an unwanted dog, crying and afraid in a baby blanket she still owned. A man, or so the news article said, had found her while passing through, decided to take the child to the nearest foster home or adoption centre he could find. He'd left a name, Walter White, something that only took Emma a couple of hours on the internet to realise was bullshit. And so, her beginnings were and absolute mystery aside from that single stretch of road surrounded by forest and headed to a small time where nothing seemed to happen. Not that Emma had been back, the prospect of a small town far from a appealing to her. Emma Swan may not have known where she'd come from, but she had an idea of where she was going.

An idea that had been proved very wrong indeed after breaking into and stealing and already stolen car and meeting who she'd believed to be the best thing in her life. His name was Neal, a scruffy man, older than she was herself by about seven years, but shed found something in him, a kindred spirit amongst the crime and bravado. He was like her, alone in a world so much bigger than herself, another nameless orphan in a sea of strangers, each of them relying on the other to keep themselves afloat. Neal, it seemed, relied on Emma far more. He'd turned his back on her in a way that sent her already directionless life into a downward spiral. Emma had given him her heart and everything that went along with it and he, in return, had set her up for a crime he committed, leaving her alone once more, imprisoned in Phoenix for eleven months. As if her incarceration wasn't enough, Emma was let with a parting gift from Neal Cassidy, and insult to her already septic injury as she saw it. Emma was to have his child.

When the time came Emma had long since made up her mind. The only way to heal a septic wound was to cleanse it, and as much as it pained her, she would be a sepsis on this child's life. And so, she parted with her new-born son, barley even looking at his face, let alone holding him as she clutched tightly to the hospital bed, feeling the handcuffs around her ankles as she tensed every muscle in her body to refrain from looking at his tiny face. If she saw him, she'd love him and if she loved him, she'd never let him go. That was the one thing she needed to do, the only good thing she would ever do. She needed to give this child – Her child – his best chance, even if that meant letting him be without her.

The final three months in persons passed in stoic silence from Emma, her days flittering by a haze of police officers and meals. She didn't eat much, her stomach churning at the thought of what she'd let go. But she couldn't let herself regret and as she showered each morning, the jagged marks across her stomach were a notable reminder of just what she'd lost. The stretch marks were the only evidence besides a slip of paper bearing her name that she had carried a child at all. And so she was left once more, alone in her confinement, with no one but her demons for company.

When Emma opened her eyes, the first thing she noticed was the sound of conversation from the front seat of what sounded like a pick up truck that had seen better days. The second was how small she was, unable to see over the dashboard of the truck from where she sat confused I the back seat. She opened her mouth to call out, to get the attention of the people in conversation infront of her. Emma was met by the kind smile of a young woman, her dark hair cropped into an adorable pixie-cut framing her pale face, wispy bangs falling over forehead and covering her eyebrows.

"Someone's awake," The woman said, her voice soft like honey, glazing over Emma and leaving an unbearable sense of calm in its wake, the woman's smile the most welcome sight she'd laid he yes upon.

"I'm not surprised," said a male voice with a chuckle, but the man didn't look around, his eyes cast on the road ahead, his body shrouded in the darkness from the street lamp-less road. Emma wasn't sure why she could even make out the woman's features as she smiled down at her, but the more she focused, the more they shifted and until the face was left in shadows, undecipherable from the darkness surrounding them. "Doesn't miss a thing, do you, Emma?" The man asked, glancing over his shoulder for a beat before turning back to the road. Emma couldn't even make out his smile, her mind fogged as to what the man looked like.

"Don't worry, Baby," The woman said once more, her thin fingers reaching to track gently from Emma's tiny cheek down to her chin. It was an agonisingly maternal gesture that left Emma feeling cold and empty, longing for something she had never had. "We'll be there soon,"

As always happened with this dream, Emma didn't learn where there was as the screeching of the cars brakes sounded in her fragile ears, the truck swerving as the man fought to keep control of the vehicle. The woman cried out for the man, but Emma couldn't hear anything over the cries of a baby, a shrill sound she soon realised to be coming from her own throat.

A soft white light bathed the inside of the truck's cab, the woman's face turning to ivory in the glow as her mouth fell open.

"Take Emma and go!" The man said, Emma finally making out the strong features of his face as they clashed against his thick golden curls, but Emma's cries were drowning out anything else he said. The woman opposed him, of course, but the argument was fruitless.

A hand smashed through the driver's side window and the dark haired woman gave a scream, watching helplessly as her presumed husband was dragged out of the truck, his jacket snagging on the jagged edges of the broken glass. The woman fumbled with her seatbelt, wrestling with the safety device as the man's grunts turned to silence on the road side. She was reaching for the glove compartment, her hands shaking when the fist smashed the passenger side window.

"Emma!" The woman cried, but in vain, before she too was dragged through the window, her sobs echoing through the darkness of the road and shattering Emma's heart as thought it was made of crystal.

There was silence then, nothing but the shrill cries of infant Emma in the backseat, the adult's mind trapped in the terrified body of the baby. And then she was there. It was another woman, not the one who had stroked Emma's cherubic face and told her not to worry, but a woman bathed in light, glowing almost translucently.

Emma could do nothing as the woman smiled down at her, leaning between the passenger and driver's seats and popping the clip on Emma's car seat. She lifted Emma into her arms, and despite the severe cold from the woman's body, Emma felt as the cried died in her throat.

"Emma," The woman said, her slender hands cradling Emma's head as her dark eye seemed to brighten, leaving behind the pain and the sorrow Emma was sure had been there before. "Emma," She repeated as thought tasting the name on her tongue before giving Emma a kiss on the forehead and stepping down into a shallow ditch on the opposite side of the road.

As she lay Emma's body amongst the leaves, she was able to take in the woman's whole appearance, her shoulder length brown hair matted and straggled from its centre parting, clumps of it stuck to her temple with dried blood that seemed to trickle from her hairline down her cheek. The woman wore a long white nightgown, her bare arms almost pale enough to match the material. A large blood stain coated the front, one that had rubbed off onto Emma where she lay amongst moss and twigs, a helpless mess in the presence of what could only be an angel in all her translucent beauty.

And then she was gone, and Emma woke up once more, confused and disorientated with someone saying her name.

"Emma," The voice said and Emma blinked her eyes groggily, feeling as her muscle ached from the less than comfortable matt she'd curled up on. "Emma Swan," She said again and Emma came to, her eyes taking in the bars before her and the woman – Sheila, she remembered the police officer being called – standing with a set of keys and a rather bored expression on her face. "Up you get, Darling," She said, even jingling the keys for good measure.

"What's going on?" Emma asked, pushing her curls from her face and sitting up stiffly as Shelia smiled down at her, not seeming entirely forced which Emma noted was new.

"Your times up," She said, inserting the key into the lock for good measure, gesturing to the table beyond the cell that housed Emma's only personal defects and the clothing she'd been brought in with. "You're going home."

"Home?" Emma hadn't meant for it to sound like a question and judging by Shelia's sympathetic look, she understood. Emma didn't have a home, and the prison and all of its guards knew that. It seemed that orphan Emma was not something she could escape.

"That's right. Get yourself changed and I'll escort you out." And then she was gone, leaving Emma to marvel at the space items left on the table before her. There were her glasses that she no longer wore, her phone that had long since been disconnected and a keychain, on the end of which hung a familiar car key she'd once replaced with a screwdriver. Sheila may not have known it, but as Emma grasped that key in her palm she knew that the older woman was right. Emma Swan was going home, wherever that may be.

September 8th 2003

Hoping had been a foolish notion, Emma knew, but there was something nagging at her gut from the second she'd climbed behind the wheel of the bright yellow bug that told her to drive the twenty-seven-hour trip from Phoenix to Tallahassee. Why she thought Neal was there, she didn't know, but there was a tiny part of her who had followed him here, part of he that was still holding out for that happily ever after. Perhaps they could reconcile, fix what was broken and start a life together. Perhaps they could even find their son wherever he may be. They could be a family; they could be home.

Two years proved long enough for Emma's hope to finally fizzle out and this time when she climbed behind the wheel of the yellow bug, her entire life sat pitifully in a single bag on the back seat, she had no idea just where she was heading. All she knew was that she needed to get away from Tallahassee, away from the wasted years and seemingly endless torment. Emma Swan was ready to move on. But not from everything, she realised as she dug through the front pocket of her rucksack, her fingers brushing the familiarly worn edges of the newspaper article of September 8th 1985, the morning after she'd been found by the side of the road. It was almost poetic, she thought with a scoff as she started up the engine, preparing herself for the journey ahead. The date on her phone read September 7th 2003 making it only a day from the anniversary she had been found. And so, Emma embarked on the twenty-two-hour drive from Tallahassee to Maine. If she'd find her home anywhere, it would seem her beginnings would be the best place to start.

The drive hadn't been unpleasant. Months in prison had taught Emma that sometimes her own company was the best company. And so she spent most of her hours on the road singing along to the radio, drumming her hand sgaainst the steering wheel to the rhythm before she grew bored of the song, or hungry enough to pull over or tired enough to park up for the night.

By the time she even made it to Maine it was gone midnight on September 9th and Emma's eyes were fighting excruciatingly hard to stay open. She was only a few miles from where she'd been found, nothing but the empty expanse of road laid about before her. All she needed was to get to the town nearby and get a room for the night, her investigation into whoever her parents may or may not have been would begin then. Sure, there was no telling if her birth parents had even come from Maine, but they had to at least have been here in order to leave her behind on the side of the road, something that still haunted Emma to this day with helpless dreams and the occasional night terror.

Emma was barely five minutes from the town of Storybrooke before a figure appeared in the road. Slamming on the brakes, Emma barely managed to miss the figure as she swerved off of the road, the front of the bug crashing rather unceremoniously into the Storybrooke town sign.

Had she not been so frantic in her attempt not to crash, Emma would have payed far more attention to the glow that seemed to surround the figure in the road dressed all it white, her red stained night gown fluttering in a non-existent breeze. She also would have noticed the familiarity the woman had to that angel of her dreams, the one Emma had pegged as nothing more than a mental personification of her mother's abandonment. As it happened, these things went unnoticed as Emma's head collided with the steering wheel at a forced great enough to cause blood to slowly trickle from her hairline.

Emma was still conscious when the figure approached and Emma was ready to put anything and everything out of the ordinary down to the head trauma she'd undoubtedly received. But as the driver's side door opened and the figure Emma now recognised quite clearly from her dreams as the ghostly woman with the matted brown hair reached inside, Emma was running out of excuses. Emma barely had the time to gasp when the woman's slender hand landed against her cheek. She felt the chill that settled excruciating into her bones, tensing all of her muscles in turn as the woman gently careened Emma's head to the side, leaning down a pressing a soft, freezing kiss to Emma's temple before phasing out of existence before Emma's eyes. It all fell away into darkness after that, the door to Emma's bug left open as she lay motionless with her head on the steering wheel, blood drying on his temple and the touch of an angel resting uncomfortable on her skin.

Waking the following morning in a jail cell had been a surprise. Waking up at all had been a greater one and Emma was gladly taking the bars obscuring her vison as the lesser of two evils right now.

"What you lookin' at sister?" Emma started at the hostile voice, not noticing that in her daze she'd been staring into the neighbouring cell at an extremely grumpy looking man with a scratchy, grey lined bearded and mostly bald head.

"Leroy!" A voice announced and Emma blinked slightly, sitting up straight on the cot she'd been asleep on and doing her best not to fall off. "If I'm going to let you out, you need to behave." The man said, reaching the cells beside Emma's and twisting the key. He was a handsome man, Emma supposed, sweet looking, with bright doe eyes and adorable scruff covering his chin. "Put on a smile and stay out of trouble," the shorter man, Leroy, put on the falsest smile Emma had seen before sauntering out of what she'd quickly grasped to be the sheriff station.

"Where am I?" Emma asked, standing up by the bars, trying to peer out of the station's windows at whatever town was waiting beyond it. The man – or Sheriff, as Emma was quickly grasping – seemed to find it all very amusing. "Seriously." She asked again, spying her red leather jacket hanging up on the coat rail on the opposite side of the room.

"Seems the apple cider in the area is a little stronger than we thought." The man chuckled, smiling jokingly at Emma as he rummaged in the drawers of an empty desk.

"What – I wasn't drunk!" Emma said, abashed, her hands grasping the green painted bars in front of her. "There was a…" Emma trailed off, starting to realise how crazy she was about to sound. Still, it would be better than the sheriff thinking she was drunk. "A woman standing in the road."

"A woman?" The sheriff laughed. It wasn't patronising which Emma supposed she should be grateful for, but he did seem awfully amused by the young woman in the cell. "Right."

"Hey! I'm telling the truth." Emma argued, standing up a little straighter, pushing her thick glasses further up her nose. Granted, the sheriff had no reason what so ever to believe her, but she was still hoping that he did. Not only was she new in this town, but being both imprisoned and labelled a nut case on her first day was bound to be bad press.

"Seems you've had a run in with our very own Mourning Mother," The sheriff said, still as amused as before. Emma, however, was feeling far more intrigued.

"The what?" Emma asked, her chin rested on the horizontal bar as she watched the sheriff go about what was presumably daily business.

"Also known as the Woman in White, the Weeping Wife, the Vengeful V – You get the idea." He broke off. Clearly, the excuse of a woman in the road was a common one, enough that the sheriff found it amusing and not irritating, at least.

"What is that?" Emma asked, standing on her tp toes to try and keep the Sheriff in sight as he manoeuvred around his station. "Who is she?"

"It's a joke," He said, appearing in front of Emma's cell once more, keys in hand as he placed familiar paperwork on the empty desk. "I'm going to need your name, Miss?" He asked, opening the cell door to allow Emma out.

"Swan," She said, stepping across the threshold of the cell, feeling just as much liberation as she did when she'd stepped out of her cell in Phoenix. It was hard to feel released from a prison when you didn't feel trapped in the first place. "Emma Swan. Who did you say she was again?"

"It's just a ghost story locals tell their kids about the road at night," The sheriff said, gesturing for Emma to take a seat at the desk. She didn't take it, preferring to look out of the window at the frankly quaint looking town outside. All neatly trimmed hedge rows and wave friendly towns folk. "There's very little truth behind it."

"Little?" Emma continued, turning back to the sheriff who's accent she was still trying to place. Having not been too far out of America, Emma wasn't overly familiar with anything that wasn't that. She'd catch it in the end, she was sure of that much at least.

"Well, years ago a woman did die on that road," The sheriff said, taking a seat himself, his pen gliding across the forms he was filing out about Emma's apparent crime. The most she'd done, she was sure, was cash into the town's sign, and even that can't have done too much damage from her little yellow bug. "Her husband, the mayor, died the following year." Emma had always loved ghost stories, even the bogus ones about axe murders in hotels or lollipop wielding six year olds. It was strange, but after her childhood, Emma came to find that those who did the real damage to someone's life were very much alive and very much human. "That doesn't make it haunted."

"Who said anything about haunted?" Emma said, but it was making an awful lot of sense to her. Sure, it was irrational sense, but it was the most she had. She'd seen the woman before, she'd been sure of it, the same ethereal glow, the white skin the blood stained dress. This woman had been haunting her dreams for years, she was sure. Haunting a road didn't seem that implausible.

"You've got that look," He said, eyeing Emma knowingly over the top of his paperwork.

"What look?" She asked, but she knew exactly what he was talking about. If her ears were able to prick up, she was sure that they would. I was taking all she had not to tilt her head like a confused puppy.

"The one of somebody who's looking for trouble." That time Emma did tilt her head, not like a puppy, but no less curious. "You see it a lot as a sheriff."

"Not trouble, but I am looking for something," Emma said, finally taking the seat opposite the sheriff. If anyone was going to be able to help her with this, it would be him. At the very least she could try and weasel some files out of him, some names perhaps. It would be enough to go on, that was more than she had now. "Is this Storybrooke?"

"You did hit our sign." He said, but there was no harshness behind the words. In fact, he sounded amused, something Emma was beginning to realise was this sheriff's specialty. "I don't blame you for your confusion. What are you looking for?"

"My parents," Emma said, her voice surprisingly steady despite how harshly she was clenching her jaw, her hands clasped tightly on the desk before her. "They either came here, or were coming here, or just passed through here twenty years ago." The sheriff raised his eyebrow at her. Emma didn't blame him, she sounded incredibly naïve, grasping onto hope where hope wasn't that present. He probably thought she was just another lost child in the system looking for an excuse to find home. He wouldn't be entirely wrong. "I just want to know if they're still around."

"Right. Well, small town like this, you tend to know everyone," The sheriff said. Reading the top of the form in front of him, Emma could read that his name was Graham. A nice name, not one she'd heard a lot. It sounded British, or at least from that side of the pond, which explained the accent. "Any names?"

"No."

"Physical description?"

"No."

"Anything at all?" Graham sounded now, at least, a little exasperated. Finding missing people tended to be a far simpler job when you had something to go on, something you could research. All Emma had given him was all she had, a vague destination from twenty years ago.

"Just a date," Emma said, remembering the folded newspaper article still in the pocket of her jacket that was waiting for her not two feet away. "September 7th, 1985," She said, figuring that delving into her already pitiful backstory with this sheriff wouldn't be her best move. "If there was anything that happened that day, anything notable, it could help."

"Well," Graham said, tapping his fingers twice on the desk before standing. "As you can see, there are a hell of a lot of file in here," He said indicating to three filing cabinets in a row. Emma didn't know much about police stations, but she knew that they had a filing room at least. For there to be any more than one filing cabinet in the main room indicated to a serious filing overload. "Anyone of which could hold and answer. If you're willing to wait, that is."

"Yes. Whatever it takes."

"Alright then." He said before getting to work, pulling open draws and flicking through folders. Emma sat paitently while he did, spinning around in the office chair and staring at the ceiling. It didn't take as long as Emma expected, but after a quick expedition to what Emma assumed was the filing room, he as back, file in hand. "I've got something."

"Is it it?" Emma asked, jumping from her seat to attempt seeing the folder still in his hands.

"I said it was something," Graham said, snatching the file away with a stern, but kind look. "An incident report from September 7th, 1985, at approximately 23:20" He said, reading one of what Emma could see were three, maybe four papers.

"An incident?" Emma hated how gutted her voice sounded, the hurt she'd been downplaying for years bubbling slightly to the surface. Incidents never tended to end well. "What was it?"

"It's a report of a crash," Graham said, all amusement gone from his voice, the kindness toning into something that sounded an awful lot like pity. "Emma, I don't think you want –"

"Tell me." Emma cut him off. Her hopes weren't overly high, but if they were going to cone crarshing down, she'd rather they burned on the way down. At least then there were ashes for something to rise form, not ruins left t cripple her from the inside.

"Two adults, mid to early twenties, driving a Ford F-100 Truck – Red." Graham said solemnly. Emma sense that she knew the answer to her next question, but she asked it anyway.

"Did they make it?"

"No, I'm afraid they didn't," Graham said, placing the paper back into the folder and shutting it, no doubt in an attempt to close the subject. Emma, however, never was so easily swayed, something Graham clearly picked up on as he sighed, opening the folder once more and reading off of the page like he was reading a textbook and no a death report. "Police found them at the scene an hour or more after it happened. A regular at the diner a couple of miles up the freeway called it on his way home."

"What were their names?" Emma asked, fighting to keep the anxiety out of her voice. If this was really it, if these were her parents, Emma was hearing their names for the first time from the report of the incident that killed them.

"Emma," He said, not seeming all that willing to give up the information to the obviously emotional girl before him. Emma was told once to put her armour on, she just wished she had it with her right now. "There is no way of knowing that these people were your parents."

"Please," She didn't want to beg. Emma liked to think she had a little more dignity than that. Her voice did sound a little too pleading, but it seemed enough to way Graham.

"David and Mary-Margret Nolan. Married. Nothing here about any children." He said, looking once more at the file before shutting it. Emma, however, wasn't taking that as closure. Instead, she snatched the file from his hands before heading to her jacket. Ignoring Graham's protests, she reached inside the pocket of her jacket, gripping the slightly scrunched newspaper article that was as old as she was.

"it's the same night," Emma said, opening the file onto a surprisingly empty desk before slamming the newspaper down next to it. "The same place, I think. This could be it." She said, gesturing to the papers on the desk, the article seeming to have grasped Graham's interest. There was no reason it wouldn't, baby abandoned by the side of the road near a small town like this one? Emma wouldn't be surprised if there were old women still talking about it while they drank their tea. "This could be them!"

"Or it could be a coincidence." Graham said, reasonably, reaching to close the file once more. It appeared he'd had enough of emotional orphan girls for one morning, assuming that it as morning that is. "Besides, at the time of the crash you'd have been, what? A year old?" He asked and Emma could feel the doubt creeping around in her stomach. "If you were with them the odds of an infant surviving such a crash is slim, let alone going unnoticed by the police."

"Unless someone moved me," Emma said, it sounded ludicrous, she knew, but her dream was feeling extremely potent in the back of her mind, the recurring one of the woman dressed in a blood sodden night gown, her kiss soft but cold on baby Emma's forehead as she placed the crying infant unharmed in a ditch beside the freeway. "Maybe they took me away, or something."

"You're grasping at straws," Graham said, taking back the file as though it had awoken some insanity in the young woman.

"Who identified the bodies?" Emma asked, going so far as the reach for the folder once more, but Graham was a step ahead, holding it out of her reach. As sheriffs went, Graham didn't seem to be the most orthodox of them.

"A friend," Graham said, peeking into the folder and lifting the page, but not enough for Emma to see. It was childish, she knew, but Emma found herself trying to go up on her tip toes to get at least a glance if nothing more. "Walter White. Says he was on the trip with the Nolan's and fell behind to get gas. He stopped at the scene after recognising the truck."

"Walter White," Emma said, eyes widening at the recognition to the name.

"That's what it says," Graham said, but didn't elaborate. Not that Emma minded, she'd instead gone back to the empty desk grasping the browning article in her hand. She'd read her story a thousand times; she knew every paragraph as well as she knew her own name. And Walter White was a name that Emma had always wanted to find. He was the man who had found her, the one who'd left her with the foster family just over eighteen years ago. "Does that means something to you?" He asked, but Emma was already rushing off.

"I need to go," She said, trying to slip into her jacket as awkwardly as was humanly possible before snatching her phone and keys in the zip lock bag off of the desk. "Am I done here?" She asked as a second thought.

"Yeah, you're all signed off, but wait –" Graham called, but Emma didn't wait. She was out of the door and into the streets of Storybrooke in a heartbeat, the cool wind whipping her hair across her face as she scanned the area for a town hall or a library, or anything that could hold city records. She may not have much, but she had a link. She had Walter White.