AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well, I don't know how I wrote this in a day, but I'm glad I did it. First of all, I'll thank to anyone who reviewed the first chapter. I was curious to see what Henry's story would be, and the result was curious indeed. I must warn you though that this chapter, and most of the story, will follow the format of the series: different plotlines, at different times, intertwined with each other. And since Henry is the lead character here, most of the storylines will follow his days before Lucy was born and went to find him in Seattle vs. his adventure with Lucy to save his family.
I've mixed feelings right now about Once Upon A Time. It was such a great show, but for the last few months I was not really hooked on the plotlines. I was sure it would end with this season in a high note. In fact, for the last five episodes I regained the same excitement I felt when watching the first seasons and the finale was wonderful. The ending, as you see, even inspired me to write this fanfiction right away. I started believing again in a show I was ready to give up. But now ABC is moving OUAT to Fridays' death slot, and I'm afraid the series will be treated as a "show to end as soon as possible". I hope Henry and Lucy's story make this last run worth it.
At last, I want you to know I'm Portuguese (from Portugal) and that my English isn't always correct. If you find any errors in the text, feel free to send me a PM to correct me. Thank you so much and I hope you like this chapter as much as I liked to write it.
— CHAPTER ONE —
Resume Game
Seattle
2027
It could've been an ordinary Tuesday night for Henry Mills.
But then someone knocked at his door.
As the sound settled around his small apartment, he knew it couldn't be his housekeeper, since Maud had her own key and used to do her chores every Monday and Thursday. And it couldn't be the delivery guy. He hadn't placed any order since the package with the new edition of Fables V had arrived.
Well, that's sad, he thought to himself, pausing the videogame.
If the housekeeper and the delivery guy were the first ones on his mind when someone knocked at the door, that meant something was terribly wrong with him. He looked over his shoulder, toward the door, right before a second knock sounded through the flat. The words on the screen were like a temptation: Press Play to Resume Game.
By simply pressing a button he could continue the game and ignore whoever was outside. In fact, if he wanted to finish the game to publish the walk-through on YouTube he couldn't lose a minute.
At least, that was the argument he tried to use to convince himself. But what if it was something important?
"Alright, alright…" He mumbled, slightly irritated, leaving the couch. "I'm coming."
What he saw through the peephole was even more intriguing than someone knocking at his door at 7 PM.
The someone was a little girl.
Slowly, he turned the key in the lock and opened the door just enough to show his face.
"Uh… hello?"
The girl smiled nervously. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn't say what. Was she one of the neighbors' daughters? Well, how could I know? He rarely left his apartment. Nonetheless, the little girl seemed likable enough for him to interact with her.
"Hi. Are you Henry Mills?" She asked promptly.
How do you know my name, little devil? The question almost left his lips, but he managed to contain it.
"Yeah." What a poor answer, he thought. He had to say something else. "Yeah." He repeated, just as dumb as one of those stupid creatures he was crushing on the videogame. "Who are you?"
"My name is Lucy." The girl continued, very determined. "I'm your daughter."
Daughter.
For a second he felt nothing beneath his feet.
Daughter?!, he asked, panicking.
The word suspended midair.
A series of faces, faces emerging directly from his past, passed right before his eyes.
Marissa from the diner. Violet from the High School reunion. Little Joni from Tinder… No. It couldn't be her. Their little encounter had happened only a year or two ago, and the little girl was at least six years old. So maybe Hannah from the video store?
That was it. There were no other possibilities.
Oh, God. I'm a joke.
"I don't have a daughter." He replied, starting to close the door. Henry was not totally sure about those words, but he had to bluff himself out of that mess. As the words came out, calm returned as a gulp of fresh air.
How had he fooled himself thinking that he could actually have a daughter? He had always been cautious.
Yeah, this is a prank from someone of the online gaming group. Probably from Troll1997 or even from the pr1nc3ss_0f_th3_darkw3b. They were pranksters and cruel enough to send a little girl to his doorstep with a bunch of lies. Oh yeah, they truly were.
But when the girl prevented him from closing the door, something told him this couldn't be a prank.
"Yeah, you do." There was something more than determination in her voice now. There was also a little bit of desperation. "Now come on. Your family needs you."
Yes, it could've been an ordinary night for Henry Mills, but for the first time in months something was happening outside his TV screen.
A few years before…
The Enchanted Forest
2020
In a way, it was like waking up from a dream.
Just a few hours ago, he had fallen asleep on his bedroom, watching a comedy movie on Netflix. He could almost sense the smell of lasagna mingling in the air with the scent of candles and Violet's perfume. She was also there, of course. After all, they had had the house for themselves for the night to celebrate their third anniversary as a couple. With his eyes still closed, he could almost sense her cuddled by his side under the blankets. In a way, that was perfection.
The guilt of not having waited for Emma and Hook to come back home was easily overpowered by the idea of lying there without any care, just dozing off back to sleep for a few more minutes. Later he could find out if there were any developments in finding out whatever was ripping apart Storybrooke. The most probable, anyway, was that nothing new had been found out.
Any other day he would've accompanied them and Regina down the mines, to investigate and help any way he could. But not that night.
Turn off for a night, kid, Emma had said.
Amaze the lass with Granny's lasagna recipe, Hook had suggested, blinking. That little trick worked with me.
And so, with a bit of guilt, he had followed the advice and spent the night preparing a romantic dinner.
He relished on those thoughts for a few more seconds, until he finally opened his eyes.
It was then he realized something was not right.
Henry was stared to ceiling for a few seconds. He had never seen that ceiling, had he? It wasn't made of wood, nor even stone, but cloth. Red cloth.
"What…?" The word came out of his month as his eyes settled on the enormous bedroom around him.
He was no longer in his bedroom at Emma's house. Instead, he was in a large chamber, lying on a canopy bed. A desk full of papers, inkpots and candles stood in a corner, close to a bookshelf with dozens of leather bound books he had never seen in his life. Gulping, he looked around again, this time to look for any remnant of the night before: the iPad where he was watching the movie, the popcorn bucket or even his sneakers. All of it was gone.
"Violet?" Henry asked, his voice shaking in fear and shock. "Violet, are you here?"
But the bed was empty, and silence was the only answer he received.
This is a nightmare, he said, trying to calm down. Nothing more than a nightmare.
He closed his eyes and pinched himself on the arm, certain that pain would force him to face reality. But as the pain spread through his arm, and the luxurious chamber didn't disappear, he accepted his defeat: he was in a bedroom that was not his, in a place that wasn't Storybrooke, in a bed far away from Violet.
It didn't take long for Henry to get out of bed.
He looked around the chamber once more, noticing his reflection in a full body size mirror. He was not even wearing his pajamas, for God's sake! Instead, he had a white tunic, with a golden embroidery on the sleeves and the collar, something a man in the Middle Ages would've used to sleep and bath.
His hair was terribly disheveled, and a shadow of a beard spread across his face. Being nineteen years old, he had grown taller, especially thanks to the training sessions with Hook and grandpa Charming. You're getting into the shape of a knight, grandpa used to tell him, during sword practice. Not really sword sword, since they used shovels and garden utensils to train.
However, he looked nothing like a knight now. He was pale, and his eyes mirrored the fear and horror pulsating through his veins. He walked barefoot to one of the windows, still looking for answers.
Trees, hundreds of trees, greeted him far below. The morning light was spreading through the clear sky, birds twittered on the rooftop above him and somewhere in the distance he could see a town, with his little chimneys letting out thin threads of smoke.
It was then the truth hit him.
"This is the Enchanted Forest."
Inclining over the window rail, he inspected the long marble staircase that led to the castle, the small turrets looming down below and even the familiar bridge. Yes, he knew exactly where he was, but not why or how he had come there. Even if he had a guess or two.
In less than a minute, he scavenged the chests full of clothes, looking for something proper to wear. He wouldn't walk out of the chambers in a tunic that was little more than underwear. After digging through chainmail, armor, cloaks and fancy clothing proper to a nobleman, he finally found a purple ceremonial cloak that resembled a bed robe. It would have to serve for the moment.
"And this too." He said, pulling a sword from a crook on the wall.
Sir Henry, or someone that didn't resemble at all like a knight, stepped outside the chamber to the halls of the Royal Castle.
He was determined to look for answers and, above anything else, to find his family.
Seattle
"I've to help my family, huh?" Henry asked, starting to lose his patience.
He would've appreciated the joke if it had ended right before any mention of his family. But this proved that whoever was behind this was an expert, probably hacking computers or government servers to find details about his family. He had never told anyone about his wretched mother, so there was no way a little girl coming out of nowhere could make such request.
"Well, I guess I don't have one of those either."
It was a half lie.
His mother, Emma, had left him when he was sixteen, a few years after his father had passed away in a mysterious car accident. She had never truly accepted that loss, losing her job and turning to vodka to drown her feelings. And then a day had come when she had packed her bags and told him she would be visiting an old friend in Boston for a few weeks.
And she was gone.
It seemed the friend was more like a lover, and so she took the decision of leaving Henry behind. They hadn't spoken for eleven years. Any postcards she sent him on Christmas or his birthday were sent directly to the paper bin. He had learned the hard way how to survive alone, and anything related to that woman was of no interest to him.
"Yes, you have." The girl insisted, passing him the book she was holding in her right hand. "And I can prove it, if you let me."
He looked with reluctance to the book. It seemed like an old fairytale book, with an apple tree on the cover and the words Once Upon A Time right below it.
"And what family could that be?" Henry asked, averting his gaze from the book.
The girl shook her head, as if she was finding hard to register how dumb he was.
"Haven't you heard me? I just told you: our family. That's the one who needs help."
Henry rolled his eyes again and took a step back, prepared to close the door and put an end to that anecdote.
"Dad, you won't lock me out again—"
"Will you stop with that?" He retorted, raising his voice. "I'm not your father."
"And I told you are." She insisted almost at the same time.
Oh, God, what have I done to deserve this?
"Look, girl… Let me be clear with you. I don't know what you want and I don't truly care. I've important things to do, you see?" He said, thinking about the paused game waiting for him. "If you want, I can call your parents… Oh, God, don't look at me that way!" Once again, Lucy was taking him for the most stupid person in the world and her eyes mirrored that. "I can call your true parents, whoever they are, so they can pick you here and take you home with them. Otherwise, I'll call the police and let them deal with you. A little girl should know better than messing around with other people's businesses."
This time, it was Lucy who rolled her eyes impatiently.
"You're boring in this land." She said, surprisingly feisty.
"Land? What do you mean?"
Lucy smiled, assuming a strange angelical posture.
"Exactly what you heard." She whispered, sighing. "But I guess it's fine." She bit her lower lip, trying to peep to the house behind Henry. "Well… Do you have hot cocoa?"
She is a strange girl indeed.
Even so, Henry smiled back.
Strange, yet fascinating.
"Well, yes… I do."
"Perfect." She smiled, taking a step further. "I would like some, if you'd kind enough to prepare me a cup." Henry stood by the door, still preventing the girl from entering. "In payment, I can tell you a story… and, if you don't believe me after that, I promise to go away."
"Hum." The girl was definitely cheeky, and for her bravery she certainly deserved her cocoa. But would he really let her inside his humble dominions? A girl who claimed to be his daughter, and who demanded hot cocoa like a little princess? "Yeah, alright. I guess I can give you some cocoa."
The girl smiled, triumphant.
"But please do me a favor…" He asked, letting her in. "Don't call me dad."
