Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I do not own
A/N This is kind of short (by my standards) but it's just a prologue part 2 of sorts, summarizing their early life as opposed to going through it scene by scene. I hope you enjoy! Please feel free to review and tell me what you think or PM me with any questions you might have about the story!
In late October, 1983, two baby girls were found on the side of the road. Freezing and with no sign of family, they were found by a passing motorist and taken to a nearby hospital. One had the name Emma sewn into her blanket, the other had a piece of paper announcing her name pinned to her blanket. No amount of investigations or blood tests told who their parents were. They were shipped off to the foster care system, the mystery swept into the back of everyone's minds.
By 1986, the little girls were in a group home. Their foster parents had had their own baby and, evidently, saw no use for the twin girls anymore. The only thing they kept from that home was the last name of 'Swan'. Because, after a while, even their memories of a place they'd thought was home faded away.
One day in 1991, they had a stroke of good luck. They had just gotten back from another failed foster home when Alexia found a book in their room at the group home. It was just sitting on a shelf in the closet, as if it were unimportant. Yet it seemed magical to her. It was full of fairy-tales retold. The princesses saved the princes and love always won out. It was an open ending with a prophecy about a girl that would one day come back to save her parents and kingdom from a powerful curse as the Savior. Emma had her baby blanket for comfort; that book became Alexia's comfort.
As 1993 rolled around, Emma and Alexia had learned not to hope for happy endings and Prince Charming's and true loves... They just didn't exist in a brutally real world and they were kidding themselves if they thought they did. The real world was fist fights in the yard of the group home. The real world was Emma getting her glasses broken by a bully and then her getting in trouble breaking his nose in return. It was abandonment issues and trust issues and emotional trauma. It was Alexia isolating herself and wishing she was the character in her favorite books instead of herself. It was the two of them holding each other and crying themselves to sleep because they wanted their parents so badly.
In 1999, they'd had more than a few encounters with police and therapists. And they were also officially on the run. They were done with foster parents who didn't want them. Or, worse, crazy people who did. If they had learned anything in their sixteen years of life, it was that the only people they could rely on was each other. So, with a flower tattoo on Emma's wrist and a heart tattoo on Alexia's, and a new shared sense of freedom, they committed to their lives of shoplifting and running.
In 2000, the turn of the century, came a turn in their life. Grand theft auto hadn't been in the original plan, but it quickly became obvious it was their best option. Stealing a stolen car? Classic bad luck. Meeting Neal Cassidy? Unusual sign they still had some good luck left. He became family to them, a family that they finally believed could work. He was Emma's lover, a sign that someone could love her despite her many issues. He was the closest thing Alexia had to a brother, someone to protect her like family should.
That year, everything went right. There was adventure like Alexia wanted. There was love like Emma needed. There was everything they wanted, despite no stable home or parents or anything they'd thought they'd wanted years ago.
Then everything fell apart.
It was simple. Get the watches, Neal would sell them, they'd be on their way to Tallahassee as promised. Alexia gave Neal her bag to carry the watches in so he wouldn't be carrying around a decade old duffel bag that looked ready to fall apart anyway. Then they waited for him to return in an old parking structure in the middle of the night. And they waited... and waited...
Eventually, they had to admit one painfully brutal truth: Neal Cassidy wasn't coming back. Emma and Alexia were on their own once more because he had left them just like everyone else in their life always had. The one person they had thought they could trust had stabbed them in the back. And it hurt like nothing else had in their lives.
The turn of the century brought another gut wrenching turn before they'd even got over the first. Emma was pregnant with Neal's child. At seventeen, it was a turn that Emma didn't think she could handle. Giving the baby up for adoption seemed to be his best chance. It was Alexia who convinced her otherwise. Alexia reminded Emma of their own lives. Yes, there was a chance that Emma's baby would be adopted into a happy home and have a perfect live. But there was a chance that he'd end up just like them, alone and bitter and wondering why their parents could ever leave them alone. But, if the baby stayed with them, there was a guarantee that they'd be loved by a mother and aunt that would do anything for them. They had no permanent home aside from the car and Emma had had her heart stomped on so hard she wasn't sure it still worked. But Alexia wasn't going to let her make the wrong decision, not in that particular instance.
And Emma listened to her. She couldn't condemn her own baby to the life that she and her sister had lived. She couldn't live with herself if she did, even if a small part of her still believed she wasn't fit to be a mother. She had to try, because she knew just being wanted would've been an upgrade to her and Alexia's life. And she wanted her baby.
In August, 2001, Alexia Swan became an aunt to a bouncing baby boy. Emma cried as she held him for the first time, the first tears she'd let out since Neal had left them and connected to a completely different emotion. She couldn't imagine leaving her little boy behind and knew that adoption was out, completely and utterly. Her baby was hers and he always would be.
Emma and Alexia brainstormed ideas for names together. Emma hadn't truly thought about names before, but it was a pressing matter once he was born. She wanted her sister's input; after all, Alexia was the only reason she'd decided to keep her baby boy and enabled her to name him herself. Eventually, they agreed that Emma would pick out the first name and Alexia would choose the middle name.
By the end of the night, the baby boy was named Henry Wayne Swan. Emma thought the name Henry was a classic and, for whatever reason, was determined to give him a classic sounding name. Alexia choose another classical name that Emma didn't completely hate. She would just have to remember not to tell Emma she'd chosen to name her nephew after Batman. Naming brainstorm aside, they were happy. He was theirs, something tiny and innocent for them to protect against the world they knew to be cruel and unforgiving. That was more important than anything else they'd ever done. And, Neal or no Neal, they were happy.
Emma wanted to be a better person for Henry. Their days of crime was over. Emma got a job in retail, a temporary position while she earned her GED and went to the police academy. It seemed somehow natural to her, going from being a criminal to catching them. It was dangerous, sure, but she couldn't picture herself just sitting behind a desk going through paperwork all day.
As for Alexia, she went a different route that fit her own need for wildness: nightclubs. She was a D.J, able to combine her love for music and her love for parties in a way that paid and gave her enough time to read the pile of books she was dying to finish.
Together, they earned paycheck after paycheck and, eventually, they had enough to rent an apartment. They moved out of the car, a relief because the bug was not meant to be lived in by two teenagers and a newborn, and into something they could call a home. Two bedrooms, one bath, small and a bit run-down, but good enough to live in. Tallahassee was out but Phoenix was more than good enough. And, just like the mythological bird the city was named after, they were rising from the ashes of their old life and shaking off the burns they'd received during it.
Neal had shattered Emma's heart when he left. He damaged Alexia as well, though she played it like she didn't truly care about any of it beyond him probably pawning the book, her magic little book, that was in her bag. Yet, slowly, they were getting over it. Emma was a mother, too young to have to deal with a screaming baby in the middle of the night but too in love to complain. Alexia was curbing her wild child habits for the sake of said screaming baby, though part of her did miss the adrenaline rush of being on the run from the law.
Happy ever afters didn't exist. But maybe, just maybe, they'd made something close enough...
