A/N: So... this is an egregiously late update, and for that I apologize profusely. It was never and is still not my intention to leave this story unfinished. With Worlds Apart finished, I will be spending much more time on this. It's... taking a turn that I didn't expect. You'll find that, compared to the rest of the story, this chapter gets pretty dark. Don't ask me where it came from-I've got no clue. I don't know how it came about, but I kind of like it. I hope you do as well. Currently, I'm working on the next chapter and as soon as I'm satisfied with it, I'll post it. So, please accept two chapters in one day as an olive branch for not posting in so long. :)
When Emma walks into Granny's Diner, a slight limp in her step, she can't stop a wince. It's been three days since she's left Mary Margaret's apartment. Since she's left bed, really. She had hoped her body would quickly heal itself, but it had gotten worse before it had gotten better. She'd been taking the painkillers like candy, but she decided this morning not to take any. She feels a bit better than before, and she doesn't want to be looped-out anymore. Well, she was feeling better before she decided to take a stroll to the diner for lunch. The short walk had affected her far more than she cares to admit.
"Emma." Ruby steps up to her with a smile. "Hey. Long time, no see. How are you feeling?"
"Great." Emma tries to sound convincing, but her voice is cracked, and her smile comes out more as a grimace. Ruby gives her a sympathetic look. "Can I get, like, a deluxe hot chocolate? The biggest cup you've got with an obscene amount of whipped cream and cinnamon on top?"
"Of course," the waitress nods. "Sit down. Relax a second. You look like you're going to pass out."
"Thanks, Rubes." Emma carries her tired, aching body to the far corner booth and drops down in it with a sigh. Leaning back, she throws her head back and closes her eyes. She just wants to will the pain away. To mind-over-matter that shit until it's gone.
The bell over the front door rings out, and Emma ignores it. Or, at least, she does until she hears a very distinct, very sensual voice. Her head shoots up, eyes wide open, and she watches as Regina Mills enters the diner wearing one of her fantastic mayor ensembles. A pantsuit that clings in all the right ways, and, God, wouldn't Emma love to tear that thing off the immaculate woman? Emma is so caught up in her reverence of the mayor's beauty that she doesn't notice the person with Regina for a moment. A small, dark-skinned man moves alongside Regina, sitting down across from her at a table across the diner from Emma. And Emma doesn't like him. Not at all. Something in the way he looks at Regina. The devotion in his eyes. The sniveling desperation in his deep voice that carries well throughout the diner. Emma doesn't like it at all.
In her tucked-away booth, Emma goes unnoticed by both people, and so she watches their correspondence a moment. Clearly, the man across from Regina is infatuated with her. Pathetically so. However, much to Emma's relief, the mayor doesn't seem to reciprocate those feelings. She speaks with the man, and she smiles, but there is clear disinterest in her eyes. In those glimmering, fire-like eyes. Emma's gaze falls to red, puckered lips that she knows are soft and wonderful. To the scar that she had run her tongue over. To the neck she wants nothing more but to press her mouth to and suck until a darkening bruise appears.
Yes, Emma knows personally how the mayor looks at someone she wants to be with, and that is certainly not how she looks at the man across from her now.
From her pocket, Emma's phone rings, and she retrieves it with her eyes still absorbing every inch of Regina's face. She doesn't even check the caller ID when she answers the call.
"Yeah?" she says softly into the phone.
"What you mean 'yeah?'" Barry's voice shouts on the other end, ripping her immediately from her fantasy, and Emma slumps over the table, one hand buried in her hair to prop her limp head up. "You don't call me for days—a whole week. No updates. No information. No nothing. What the hell, Emma?"
"I've just been busy," Emma sighs into the phone line. "Really busy."
"You found this guy yet?"
"No, I haven't got him yet."
"Alright. That's enough of this. You come back home—forget Bradley Irving."
Emma's eyes widen, and her voice comes out in a growl. "No."
"'No?' Emma, you been gone weeks now. You come back. We got other hits."
"I'm not giving up and going back to Boston with my tail tucked between my legs. This fucker has sent me to the hospital twice—I am not letting him off."
"He what? He sent you to the hospital? What the fuck?"
Emma shakes her head, cursing herself for mentioning that. "Nothing. Neither of them was a big deal. Point is, I'm not going anywhere, Barry."
"Look, kid, I get it." There's something like pity in Barry's voice, and it leaves Emma confused and a little pissed off. She fucking hates pity. "I did some digging on where you are, and I… I get it. Why you don't want to leave. I'd probably be the same way."
Emma narrows her eyes. "What are you talking about, Barry?"
"I know, Emma. I know that you were found as a baby in the woods outside the town." Her mouth falls open, eyes growing impossibly wide. "I know what that must be like for you. You probably feel an attachment to the place. Feel like you can get some answers, but, kid, you can't. Your parents aren't there, and, if they were, they probably still wouldn't talk to you. You know it deep down."
"How?" Emma's voice shakes with rage. "How did you know where this town is? How did you find it? It's not on any maps."
Barry was quiet a moment. "Well… I might have had your phone bugged a few years back."
Emma shakes her head, blonde curls tossing back-and-forth in front of her. "Son of a bitch. I don't fucking believe you, Barry."
"I'm sorry, Emma. Just come home, please."
"Home?" Her voice breaks with rage, grief, and devastation. "You want me to come home, Barry? Where is that exactly? Out of all the places I've lived over the past twenty-eight years, which one is home? Is it Boston with you? No. New York? Baltimore? Chicago? Maybe it's Minnesota, huh? Maybe it's in some shitty foster home? I don't know where home is, Barry." She is on her feet because she can't sit anymore. Not with this anger. Not with this pain. "I'm not here trying to find something out about my parents. I didn't even know this was the place where they… where they left me. But if that was why I was staying, you have no fucking right to tell me to leave. To tell me that they wouldn't speak to me. You don't know, Barry. You have no goddamn clue what they'd do. What I'd do. And what the fuck is up with bugging my phone? Since when do we do that? We've known each other years, and you don't trust me still? I'm still just an employee to you?"
"Of course, you aren't, Emma. You're the best tracker I got."
"Funny. I thought maybe we were friends, Barry. Stupid me, right?"
"Emma, please—"
"Fuck you, Barry. I'm done." She hangs the phone up before he can respond and turns it over. Ripping the battery cover off, she looks inside and sees the small, blinking red light tagged to the memory chip. Curling her lip in disgust, Emma grips the phone tight and throws it into the trash can as hard as she can, not even slightly satisfied by the shattering sound.
"Emma?" Ruby stands before her, clear concern in her eyes, and Emma looks at her. "Hey, are you alright?"
Emma sniffs, trying as hard as she can to compose herself. "Fine."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I just… Cancel my order, Rubes. I-I have to go."
Ruby nods. "Yeah, sure."
Emma turns to leave, but she is caught by a deep brown tidal wave of emotions. For a brief moment, Emma is trapped in stasis with her hand on the door by Regina's gaze. By the worry there. By the care. And tears begin to swim in green eyes, and Emma can't be there. She can't be seen like that. So, with a blink of her eyes that sends one wet, salty tear down her cheek shamefully, she races out of the diner.
Regina stares at where the blonde had only just stood, lips parted in shock. She can't think in that moment. Can't look away from the spot where leather boots had been planted. She can't get the image out of her mind. The sight of green eyes, usually glinting with mirth and playfulness, rippling with such an indescribable pain. Such a heart-wrenching grief. The tear that trickled down prominent cheeks and dropped down her chin is burned into Regina's mind.
And she can't shake the inexplicable longing to wipe the tear, the sadness away. To hold the young woman, usually so strong, through the pain. To kiss the sorrow away. To protect her.
"Regina?"
She blinks and looks away from the door to her companion for lunch. Sidney Glass has his brow furrowed curiously at her, and she realizes he must have been speaking to her.
"What?" she says. "I'm sorry, Sidney. I was distracted. What were you saying?"
He smiles at having regained her undivided attention. The man lives for those brown eyes on him alone. "I said that was quite a show. That new woman in town—she's quite the headcase, isn't she?" He chuckles, and he expects for the mayor to join him. She has always appreciated his jokes at the expense of others before.
He is surprised, though.
"Excuse me?" she growls at him, and his face immediately falls, his laughter dying in his throat. Regina's eyes are no longer soft on him, but sharp and pointed like knives, and her lips are curled downward in a furious sneer. Nostrils flare as she glowers at him with enough intensity to murder. "What the hell was that?"
He stammers in a panic, "I-I only meant…"
"You have no clue what she may be going through," Regina stops him harshly. "Obviously, she just received a distressing phone call. You have no idea what that conversation entailed. She could've lost a loved one for all you know, and you have the audacity to laugh over that." Not a family member, though. Regina knows that much. This was something. Something, somehow, worse. "Emma is not a headcase, Sidney. She's far more capable than you would ever dream of being." His mouth falls open in shock.
"E-Emma?" he repeats. "You… know her?"
Regina's back straightens, and she clears her throat uncomfortably. She hadn't had intention of reacting so strongly. She knows how unsettling it must be for Sidney—and all the other diner patrons who heard her rather loud outburst—to see the mayor, who has never shown concern for anyone beyond herself and her son, jump to the defense of a relative stranger. She can feel the waitress's curious gaze on her back, and she wishes she'd kept herself under more control. But she's still shaken from the look in those cool green eyes. The absolute devastation there.
"I apologize, Sidney," Regina says softly. "I didn't mean to jump at you like that. It was unfair of me. I just… I am familiar with Miss Swan, and I know something of her plight." She clasps her fingers. "Please, forgive me."
Sidney's face immediately morphs into that pathetic smile that is so desperate for her attention. The one that makes her teeth grind. God, she'd thought a servant with undying loyalty and devotion would be a good thing—the man is little more than a pest to her, though. Albeit a pest with his uses. "Of course, Regina. I'd never hold a grudge against you."
"Good." She clasps her hands in her lap tightly. "Now, what were you saying before?"
And even though she'd rather race out of the diner to check on Emma Swan, she stays in her seat and continues a meaningless conversation with Sidney about her initiative to build a new town playground being included in the next edition of the newspaper. She stays there and fakes approving smiles and nods because she knows she can't go after the blonde. Not yet. Not so soon after her outburst. She knows it would be a foolish display of sympathy and care, one she can't allow herself to display before the citizens of Storybrooke. No, she must remain the cold, stoic mayor to appease their image of her. To maintain the narrative of the curse. With foolish shepherd princes waking up unexpectedly, she knows she must do everything within her power to ensure that her curse stays intact. Something strange is going on in her town, and she intends to put a stop to it.
Emma makes her way down the highway, her hands balled into fists and her teeth clenched tight. Her head aches, and there's a shooting pain that runs from her heels up her spinal cord with very step she takes. The pain is intense and makes her nauseous, but even so she refuses to stop. She can't.
She doesn't know where she's going. She has no map or information to lead her. But her gut has never let her down before, and so she follows it along the road towards the Storybrooke town line. Something pulls her along. Intuition, maybe. Or perhaps a memory that she somehow retained, locked away from her until now. She can't explain it, but there is something that guides her along that wet, deserted road.
Barry's voice rings through her head. Your parents aren't there, and, if they were, they probably still wouldn't talk to you. She knows it is probably true. She's always known it. It only makes sense. Her parents threw her away when she was only a few minutes old. They didn't want her then. Why the hell would they want her now? They wouldn't. They'd take one look at her, and they'd walk away from her again. They'd tell her how much they didn't want her. How much they would never want her.
But that's not why Emma walks along that road now. That's not why she wonders about her parents. It has never been. Deep down, of course, she has always wished somehow that she could find them, and they would tell her it was all a misunderstanding. That they really did want her. That they'd always wanted her. The child in her still wishes for that, but the adult in her knows it would never happen. Emma might wish upon stars for the impossible, but she doesn't hope for it. She has been let down enough in life to know better than that.
No, she has never sought out her parents in the hopes that they'll love her. She doesn't need their love or their acceptance. She doesn't need them, not anymore. All she needs, all she really wants, is an answer. An explanation. She just wants to know why they left her there in those woods. What she might've done. What she didn't do. If they just didn't want her, they could've taken her to an orphanage or left her on a doorstep somewhere. They could've given her away. Why did they hate her so much that they left her out in the woods to die with nothing more than a baby blanket?
A baby blanket that has always perplexed her. It doesn't add up. The blanket is hand-knitted, painstakingly so, and her name is on it. The purple ribbon was oh-so-carefully woven into it. The blanket was made by someone who cared about her. It is the only thing that makes sense to her. Someone out there had to have loved her, hadn't they? Or at the very least had compassion on her. Who? Her parents? It couldn't be. The same people who abandoned her couldn't be the same people who made that blanket. Grandparents perhaps, then? But where were they? Where had they been when she was alone in the foster system? Her name and picture had been in the papers upon being found—why had no one claimed her? She has never understood it.
She just wants some fucking answers, and that doesn't seem like too much to ask for from the people who left her to die.
Emma crosses the town line without any hesitation and takes four more steps forward before coming to a stop. She faces the woods beside the road, thick and dark. Slowly, exhaling a puff of cold air, she moves towards them. She steps into the cool shade of the tall trees, muddy ground giving way beneath her a bit. She brushes back limbs and carefully steps over vines and roots of trees scarred with age. The deeper she goes, the colder it seems to get. It's quiet, which she finds strange. Even in a peaceful forest, there are always sounds. There are no such things as silent woods. There are animals scurrying around the dirt or in the tree branches. Leaves whispering in the wind. There is life.
But not here. Here, it is quiet. The only sounds she hears are the crunching of leaves and snapping of twigs under her own feet. Her breath, shallow from exertion and dread that she can't explain building inside of her. There are no other sounds. No other movements but her own.
Her headache has evolved into a migraine so strong that it blurs her vision. Her skin is drenched in beads of cold sweat. She feels sick, and she thinks she should turn back. She doesn't know these woods. She could so easily get lost in them. And no one knows where she is. She could get lost here and never be found. She could die in these woods alone.
Looks like your parents will get what they wanted after all, Swan.
She should turn back while she still can. She should go back to town. No. She should get in her car and leave that place now. Fucking run for her life. She should go somewhere far away. As far as possible. She should never look back. She should forget these woods and her parents. She should forget Storybrooke and its inhabitants. She should.
Because Emma Swan has never felt terror like this before, and she doesn't even know what the fuck she's so afraid of.
Her feet come to an abrupt halt, and she stares down at a thicket of thorns a few feet ahead of her. Growing tall and bushy with a dip in the center, it almost resembles a cradle.
This is the place. She doesn't know how she knows, but she does. Something in her remembers this cold, gray place. She can hear a baby's wail screaming in her ears. She can feel the freezing cold of the night around her. The darkness shrouding around her. Stop. God. Make it stop. Make it fucking stop.
A flapping sound breaks the strange spell that seems to have fallen over her, and she looks up from the thicket. Perched on a branch just ahead of her is a pitch-black raven. She stares at it, the only other sign of life she's seen in those woods and holds her breath apprehensively. It picks under its wing with its beak before it seems to notice it is not alone. Raising its head, it stares at her with glinting black eyes like stones. Cold and unfeeling. And then it opens its sharp beak.
It begins to caw. No, not caw. It's a shriek. A shrill cry that makes her ears ring. She scrambles to cover them as it continues to screech at her aggressively, but she can't block that sound out. She squeezes her eyes closed and releases a scream of her own because this is a goddamn nightmare, and she can't handle it anymore. She turns, and she begins to run. She doesn't know where. She doesn't care. She could be headed out of the woods, or she could be going deeper into them. She can't know, but she can't stop either. The bird's shrieking follows her, and it sounds like there are more of them now. A whole unkindness of ravens chases after her, and she swears she can feel their beaks yanking at her hair, their talons slicing into her skin. She screams again, and tears fall down her cheeks. She keeps her eyes and head down for fear that they will scratch her eye sockets empty or wrench her tongue from her mouth.
When she breaks out of the woods back to the road, she falls onto her knees in the wet grass and screams with her eyes closed. The ravens are still there. Still cawing at her incessantly. Still clawing and snapping at her. Pulling the skin from her bones and the hair from her head. One lands on her shoulder and pecks at her temple until it breaks through the skin and cracks her skull. Her brains spill out into its insatiable beak.
"Calm down!"
The voice rips her away from the terrifying delusion, and she realizes she's screaming. She opens her eyes, heaving for air and looks around. She's in the grass on the side of the road. There are no ravens. Her skull is still intact. She is fine, other than cuts and scrapes from the tree branches when she fled from the woods. A man kneels before her, his brow furrowed in concern. Dark brown curls are trimmed short on his head while oceanic blue eyes stare at her. His hands gripping her shoulders are the only thing keeping her from falling face first on the ground.
"Are you alright?" he asks her. "What happened?" She stares at him with blurry eyes, lips chapped and throat dry, and he runs one hand over her sweaty forehead. "Shit. You're burning up with a fever. Come on. We've got to get you to a hospital."
"No," she croaks as he tries to coax her up. "No hospital."
"Miss, you're in no condition—"
She looks up at him darkly, and he frowns at how bad she truly does look. Pale, clammy skin. Black circles under her eyes. Chapped lips. She looks like death, and he wonders what the hell happened in those woods. "No hospital."
He can see that she has no intention of giving in, so he nods his head. "Fine. No hospital. But let me at least give you a ride into town." He holds a hand out to her in offer, and she stares at it a moment before accepting it. Helping her to her feet, he loops one of her arms around his shoulders and grips her waist firmly. He leads her towards a big, black motorcycle parked in the middle of the road, and Emma narrows her eyes at him.
"Who are you?" she asks in a tired voice.
He offers her a charming smile, and those too-blue eyes sparkle. "August W. Booth at your service."
