Three Times
A/N: Part Two to my Gremma fic "Forever" focusing on the Huntsman after his revival and before his reunion with Emma and the restoration of his Storybrooke memories. Called "Three Times" because of a line he says about his wolf brother in both parts – "Three times he has tried to lead me to you." So, this part starts out the exact same way as part one does, but then instead of a time jump to post-Neverland and perspective jump to Emma, continues following scenes of the Huntsman living in Storybrooke's forest. He actually sees Emma more than three times, but not all of them are because he's following his wolf brother; only those three count towards the title.
Disclaimer: If I owned Once Upon a Time, Graham never would have died in the first place, and he and Emma would probably be married by now, and Neal and Bae would not be the same person, and did you see that time Tamara killed Pinocchio, who was made out of wood, with electricity? Yeah, that wouldn't have happened because it was stupid. Also Robin Hood's role would have been worthy of all that advertising before Lacey and I would have moved heaven and earth to have him played by Jonas Armstrong. But since none of the above statements are true, you can clearly see that I don't own it. Sadly.
May, 2012, The Forest, Storybrooke, Maine
His return to consciousness is swift, but he does not wish to open his eyes. He has not dreamt in a very long time – since before, even, he was tasked with the murder he could not commit – but he prefers sleeping to waking. When he is awake, the Queen does unspeakable things to him.
But then a familiar wet nose is pressed into his hand, a tongue licking him lazily.
His brother?
Impossible. He has not seen his brother since… Since the Queen's men brought him to her.
He opens his eyes and finds he is in a forest he does not recognize.
A near impossibility in and of itself, since he knows all the forests of the kingdom like the back of his hand.
His heart is beating a mile a… His heart?
With the realization that he has his heart back, he bolts upright. Save his brother, he recognizes nothing around him.
His brother stands and waits for him to do the same. He is a little unsteady on his feet.
His brother leads him through the forest and shows him to a nearby town. The signs say "Storybrooke." He hides in the shadows, watching. The people are in a bit of a frenzy. He sees and recognizes Snow – whose hair is far too short, for some reason – and her prince. They both look very different.
With them is a blonde woman and a child and his heart thumps harder though he cannot even see her face, does not know who she might be.
His brother nudges him, as though encouraging him to go to them, but he cannot do that. He does not know why… He does not know why he wants to go to her, be close to this woman he doesn't recognize, but he does and that frightens him.
He returns to the forest.
…
Distressing, he believes, is the word for what he just witnessed. A man in a strange suit, who looks like Rumplestiltskin, but more human, summoning some sort of monster.
Whatever it is, it will most likely put that entire town in danger.
Something about that doesn't sit right with him. He tells himself it is the safety of innocents, children, he is worried about, and at most Snow White, because he has invested much in protecting her before.
He does not allow himself to think it is for the blonde woman he doesn't know who his brother showed him.
In truth, it is very much for her, but he cannot admit that. He just cannot. He doesn't know her. He doesn't know a thing about her. So she seems to be friends with Snow White, all that means to him is that she is not on the Queen's side (always a good sign though that may be).
He refuses to think about her. He hasn't even seen her face, for pity's sake. He should not care a thing about her, and so he refuses to acknowledge the feeling in his gut that he does.
…
He is hunting with his brother the next time he wanders a little too close to the town. He is near their stables, apparently, and Snow's prince and the child he saw after he woke in the forest are there, and they are talking about responsibility and taking care of a horse.
"We are going to get them back," the boy says eventually, and he briefly wonders who the "them" refers to.
"We are," James replies to the boy, "We are going to get your mom and Snow back. Hopefully soon. And you can bet that as long as they're safe, they're fighting to get back to us."
There is a clenching feeling in his chest that he doesn't understand when he hears that Snow White and another woman – probably the mysterious blonde, from the sound of it – are missing. Where can they possibly have gone?
He does not know. What he knows is that for some reason, the idea of the blonde being in trouble affects him much more than the idea of Snow being in trouble. Then again, he knows Snow can take care of herself, in no small part thanks to the fact that after he spared her life, she had to become an outlaw, and she lived that way for a good amount of time before he freed James from Regina's clutches. The blonde, he has no such assurances for, although he has a sneaking suspicion that he does know she can take care of herself, and even if he doesn't, she's with Snow, isn't she?
His brother nudges him and he is drawn out of his thoughts to see the boy staring in his direction, eyes narrowed, like he thinks he might see something.
He retreats further into the forest, keeping out of sight.
…
When the full moon comes, he makes camp in the treetops. It was a precaution his wolf brethren had started forcing him into longer ago than he can remember. He wasn't too small at that point, he was big enough to climb on his own. He doesn't know how they protected him before then, but he knows what they were protecting him from.
Werewolves.
He sees one that night, large and black and fierce. It looks straight at him and there is recognition there, he is certain, and perhaps some surprise there too, and he wonders about it, but in the morning it turns out to be Snow's friend Red, and James finds her there in the woods, unconscious, and she claims not to remember anything.
He is more careful after that, making sure that he is not seen again. He cannot risk it, cannot risk her seeing him again and remembering when she wakes, because he has no desire to go back into the human world and he is sure if he is discovered, he will have to go back.
He is afraid that if he goes back, the Queen will somehow gain control of him again.
…
He sees the Queen for the first time since waking up when his brother leads him to an old well in the forest.
He stands where he can see but not be seen and watches as she and the man who he saw summoning the monster that first day cast some sort of spell.
Some sort of spell to stop people from coming through to this world from elsewhere. They say it will kill whoever comes through. He knows instinctively that it is Snow and the blonde woman who are supposed to come through, and is about to risk exposure to try and stop them, telling himself it is because he cannot allow the Queen to kill Snow, no matter the cost, but feeling without understanding why that it is for the blonde instead, when the boy he has seen before, the boy who almost saw him, comes and pleads with the Queen not to do this. He has never seen a side of the Queen like she shows with the boy, and she absorbs the spell, and soon Snow and the blonde come climbing out of the well.
The blonde looks in his general direction, as though she can feel his eyes on her, and he finally sees her face. She is beautiful, he thinks, but there is a sadness in her and he can't explain why but it breaks his heart a little that she doesn't actually see him.
His brother nudges him, and he understands what the wolf is saying, go to her, but he can't bring himself to do that. He can't retreat, this time, but he can't go to her either, his legs feel frozen in place. And then they are all gone, running towards the town, and his chance is gone with them.
…
That night, he dreams. He dreams of her, and he doesn't understand it.
He sees her smiling and laughing and it warms his heart.
That sadness that was in her in the forest is mostly gone in his dream, not entirely, but enough that he can tell she is more happy than sad.
She is in his arms, in the dream, and it feels right.
It feels more than right, actually, especially when he takes her on the forest floor and she is glowing with pleasure in the low light that filters through the treetops.
He is worried about the fact that it feels so right, worried that he's dreaming about a woman he doesn't know, worried about the fact that he's dreaming at all.
Though he does not realize it, when he wakes, he now thinks of her as his.
…
He is near the road by the painted line that no one crosses when there is a loud commotion. He watches as the Queen's prisoner and the man she sent to kill her mother and another man are loaded into strange vehicles that say "Ambulance" on the side.
His blonde is there and she exudes authority, calming the man who looks like Rumplestiltskin and giving orders that even James follows. He feels proud of her, though he doesn't entirely know why.
As they are leaving he half-steps out of the forest and though his blonde and the prince don't see him, Rumplestiltskin – he is sure that's who it is, now – does.
The man does not say anything, does not call out to the others, just gives him a slight nod.
If anything, that worries him more than comforts him. Rumplestiltskin worked with the Queen, he knows that. He's seen it before and he saw it at the well.
And it is entirely possible that the man will reveal his location to her, if she offers the right price.
…
He does not want to believe his eyes when he sees the Queen and a woman who looks like the one that the pirate supposedly killed digging in the forest. They are looking for something, a dagger from the sound of things, and he knows it cannot be good.
He is thinking about going into town, maybe finding his blonde, or at the very least Snow, and telling them what he saw, even though at the same time he doesn't want to go into town, when he sees Snow herself sneaking towards the women to see what they're doing herself.
That, he thinks, is good. Snow will figure out what to do.
He heads deeper into the forest, wanting nothing more than to avoid the Queen.
…
When his blonde and a man he's never seen before appear in the forest, he scrambles into the underbrush.
Something akin to jealousy sparks in him, seeing her with another man.
She does not seem close to him, this other man, whoever he is, but whatever is going on he does not like it.
She is his. He feels silly being so possessive over a woman he does not know, but he feels it anyway.
They walk away, towards the town, and though he contemplates showing himself, momentarily, something stops him.
Something stops him.
…
The boy he has seen, his blonde's son, the one who somehow managed to convince the Queen to save Snow, is running through the woods with such fierce determination that he barely manages to hide in time.
He follows at a distance, worried for the child's safety.
There is another man, a strange man, also in the forest, and the boy runs into him. He knows that if the man should prove harmful to the boy, he will step in.
The boy seems nervous. He tells an obvious lie to the man about why he's in the woods, who replies in kind.
The man unsettles him. But he is more concerned about the boy, so that is who he follows.
The boy goes to the well, the well that Snow and his blonde came through, and pulls strange red sticks out of the bag at his side.
He bites his lip, worried about the boy. Whatever those things are, they scream danger for some reason he can't identify.
Soon the Queen arrives, and he is glad to be hidden in the trees.
She is soft with the boy, trying to stop him from whatever it is he wants to do, and he wonders what happened to her. This is not the Queen who forced him to her bed. He still hates her all the same, but he recognizes that she has changed. Certainly not entirely, but the Queen he knew before would have sooner locked the boy in a dungeon than tried to reason with him.
"Hey, Regina! Get away from my son!" comes out from nearby and he looks to see his blonde, James, and the man his blonde was with before, the day she appeared in the forest as though by magic.
He can sense that whatever is going on, the boy is somehow torn between the Queen and the others. The boy is yelling about destroying magic, and he doesn't think it's a bad idea, but he also doesn't think it's possible.
The Queen destroys something, a little piece of paper, and the boy goes with his blonde and James and the man.
…
There is a part of the forest that he has been avoiding. A small structure on wheels is there and he gets an eerie feeling around it that makes his skin crawl.
He is somewhat near it, though, one day, when he notices Snow in the forest taking target practice. She's good with the bow, he'll admit that, not as good as him of course, but good.
One of her arrows bounces off and keeps flying.
And then he hears it. Footsteps. Someone is running away.
Snow notices too, and she follows, and he follows behind her. Whoever it is could be dangerous. He has always protected her, he can't stop now.
The trail they are apparently following leads to the wheeled structure, and Snow enters. He hangs back, deciding he will only make his presence known if he absolutely has to.
Snow stays inside for a while. He begins to worry for her, growing impatient, but eventually she comes out, shaken but unharmed.
His curiosity is piqued. So he decides to watch the strange structure for a while.
Eventually, a dark skinned woman comes. He has never seen her before, but she reminds him of one of the wolves he grew up with. His sister was fearsome and near rabid when attacking, but, like this woman, cold and calculating while lying in wait.
She knocks on the door that Snow went into, and it opens to reveal a man apparently made of wood.
They both go inside for a while, talking, and then they both leave and he doesn't like it.
But whoever the wooden man is, he is clearly the explanation for Snow's state when she left and he leaves, satisfied.
And then he sees Snow and his blonde and an old man trekking through the woods and they go to the structure and he is shocked because Snow slaps the old man.
His blonde does not enter with the others and he wishes he could reveal himself to her but something inside tells him that it is not a good time.
…
The ground is shaking and the forest is shifting around him. His brother nudges him and leads him towards the town.
They come out of the woods near what looks like some old mines, and his blonde and the child are leaving and he wants to call out to her, because he knows they are going to die.
He wants to meet her, for real, before that, but she is running, too fast, and a vine from the shifting forest wraps around his leg and he is pulled back, away from her.
After struggling for what feels like a long time, the shaking stops, the forest returns to how it was, and he frees himself from its clutches.
Somehow, their deaths have been averted.
…
For the next year he does not even see his blonde, no matter how many times he ventures close to town or the well.
His brother takes to visiting the cemetery daily and after a week he stops following.
That place unsettles him. Burial grounds always have. People place the dead there to honor them, supposedly, but then it seems to him that they promptly forget about that.
A few times, the Queen's prisoner treks into the forest, looking for something – or, he thinks, possibly for him, since the entire reason she was a prisoner was that Rumplestiltskin cared for her and the Dark One did see him.
But he avoids her.
One day his brother takes longer than usual at the cemetery and he waits at the bridge in the woods for the wolf to return.
Eventually his brother does return, tail wagging, smile on his face, and he bends down to scratch him behind the ears.
"Where have you been, brother?" he asks. The wolf continues to smile, as though he's very proud of himself.
Then a branch cracks at the edge of the clearing and his head shoots up and there is his blonde. She is staring at him, wide-eyed, like she has seen a ghost, and she is wearing a dark leather jacket that seems familiar but he has never seen on her.
"Brother, did you lead her here?" he asks, looking back to the wolf.
"He did," she answers. He is curious. His brother has never tried to get him to interact with other humans until her.
"He has tried leading me to you before," he admits, "You are friends with Snow White and her prince?"
"Well… I mean… They're my parents," she tells him. He wonders how it is possible. Could it have something to do with the Queen's curse? The one he hasn't thought of since waking, but is always in the back of his mind?
He walks towards her.
He looks her over and can certainly see features from Snow. Her chin, her green eyes, they are so like Snow that for a moment he wonders if he's seeing things that aren't there.
He wonders if it's wrong of him to have dreamt what he has of Snow's daughter, and decides that it is probably very wrong indeed, but he strangely cannot bring himself to care.
"Yes, I see the resemblance," he acknowledges, "You have your mother's chin. And her eyes."
"You saved her life, right?" his blonde asks, "I was told… You gave up your heart for hers."
He almost doesn't believe that she knows who he is, just on sight.
"I did," he nods, still confused how she knows, "Somehow it is back now."
"Why do you stay out here in the woods?" she blurts out, "You would be more than welcome in town. Well, everyone but Regina would welcome you in town and her opinion doesn't really matter all that much anymore…"
"This is my world," he tells her, and is hit with déjà vu, like he has said it to her before even though they have never spoken before this moment, "What is that place? It is like no town I have ever seen before."
"Regina cast a curse," she tells him, "Everyone from the Enchanted Forest was brought here, without their memories, and frozen in time for 28 years. I broke her curse a while back. Almost two years, now."
"That's when I woke up here in the forest with my heart back," he says, stepping closer. He is inside her personal space now, he knows, but he is a hunter and in a way, she is his prey, for she is what he wants, and even though he won't do anything she doesn't want, he will get as close as he can.
"I remember her talking about a curse," he continues, "But nothing between her casting it and waking up in the forest with my heart back. Why?"
"I don't know much about how magic works," she says, and he can tell she is hiding something from him, something she knows and he doesn't.
"And why does my brother keep trying to lead us together?" he asks, trying a different tactic.
"I don't know," she says, still hiding something, "I've seen your brother before. He made me stay in town when I first came here. And then I saw him again today and it seemed like he wanted me to follow him and he lead me to you."
"Three times he has tried to lead me to you," he says, trying to puzzle out his brother's motives, "and today he leads you to me?"
"Do you have a name?" she asks him suddenly. Of course she would want to know that, the one thing he cannot tell her about himself.
"No," he says, "Those of us raised by wolves tend not to have names. But you must have one, Princess."
"Emma," she says, and something about it feels familiar. Like he already knew that.
"Emma," he repeats, and he likes being able to think of his blonde as his Emma.
And then she kisses him firmly, without warning, surprising him, but instead of stopping her, something inside him tells him to pull her closer, and he obliges, one arm around her waist, one hand tangling in her hair. Her arms wrap around his shoulders and then suddenly he is hit with 28 years of very repetitive memories and that last memory of pain, such intense pain as he died becoming even worse as he realized he had just found her only to be cruelly ripped away.
He breaks the kiss and stares at his beloved, his princess, his Emma, and she squeaks out his name, Graham, and her voice is so full of hope and in that moment he regrets not going to her sooner because damn, if he'd known that going into town would mean having his True Love back he wouldn't have been so hesitant.
"I remember," he tells her, just like that last night only so much better, and only then does he realize that he should not even be alive, "How is this possible? I was dead."
"I really have no idea," Emma tells him, her smile so bright, "But I'm glad it is."
"I am too," he agrees, taking her hand, one of those simple gestures that he wishes he could've been able to do all this time.
"Let's go home," Emma suggests, her voice almost a sigh as she rests her head on his shoulder and they start walking back into town.
"Home? Emma, you are my home," he says, and loves it when her bright smile widens even further.
"That may be," she says, "but I have two other guys to break up with, and Henry has missed you, and I haven't had a decent meal in months because I've been in Neverland. Granny's is calling my name."
They emerge from the woods near the hospital, and the crowd is large and the only person he doesn't know, at least vaguely, is the man who he saw in the woods with Emma a few times.
"Sheriff!" Henry calls, then runs over and hugs him. He is touched that the boy has missed him so much.
Emma drops his hand and he hugs Henry back.
"Hey, buddy," he smiles, "Good to see you."
Emma goes over to the man he's seen a few times and the pirate the Queen asked to kill her mother and is speaking to them and he wonders if they're the "two other guys to break up with" she mentioned. It is most likely the case, but she hadn't seemed too close to the man before.
"Have you been in the forest all this time?" Snow asks.
"I have been there for about two years, now," he tells her, "I… I would've come back, for her, but I didn't remember Storybrooke."
"But you do now," Charming says, his glare cutting through him like a knife. Or a sword. Something very sharp and most likely deadly.
"Yes," he says, carefully, "I'm very lucky. Your daughter has restored my memories twice now."
"I hope," Snow says, obviously trying to be the diplomat between them, "That you're okay with not getting your old job back. Emma's the Sheriff now. I'm sure she'll let you be a deputy with David, though."
"Emma's the Sheriff?" he asks, both proud of her and stunned that Regina let it happen.
"Yeah," Henry says, "She won the election against Sidney."
"A lot has happened since you died," Snow says, "We're going to have to tell you everything sometime. But for now… If you ever break my daughter's heart again…" She doesn't finish the threat, but he nods in understanding, even if he didn't exactly break Emma's heart due to anything he could control.
Emma glances back towards him and smiles, he sees, and then she comes back and takes his hand again. He can feel himself relax, even though he hadn't noticed he was tense. He supposes it was those old instincts showing through, making him uneasy around people – but calming him instantly with his mate by his side.
Yes, things are going to be different now, and adjustments will need to be made to all their lives – but as long as he has Emma, he knows things will be alright.