Hi, here is another chapter, our first one of 2017 and the first to feature Emma's point of view so I hope you all enjoy.
Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.
I think I am at the minute going to end this story at Season 5. Depending on how Season 6 goes but I think odds are it will end at Season 5, I am giving you all that warning.
Please Read and Review.
Paradise Lost
Chapter 10-The Camp
As Emma wakes up in a strange new land with strange new people, she comes across a man with sad eyes that she thinks she's seen before and an even sadder story (but more on that later) meanwhile in Storybrooke Giselle wonders if her biological father came through with the curse leading to a heart to heart with Prince Charming himself.
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent." (J. Robert Oppenheimer)
The Camp. The Hole. The Enchanted Forest
The first thing that Emma realised when she woke up was that the ground was hard, cold and wet. Then she looked up and saw mud turning into hard walls with a whole at the top showing a thin, week strip of blue that showed the skies of the Enchanted Forest.
Oh, holy shit. The Curse, Regina, Henry, her Mom and Dad...
Her Mom and Dad.
That was a particular mind-field that she wasn't sure if she wanted to cross just yet. Not while there were more important things to do. Like survive.
No she wasn't sure what she was gonna do about that, not while she was still sober. Not when Regina was back in Storybrooke with Regina.
Rationally a part of Emma's brain told her that people that did care about her son were with him. David, now her father was with him.
(Good Lord that was even worse than the fact that Mary Margaret was now her mother or did that make it better?)
However there was Ruby, there was Granny, there was even Scarlett though if Emma was to believe everything that she had heard about Gold...then she should be worried. As she sat up and winced at the cracking of her back she considered the thought of how Gold had brought up such a nice, respectable girl such as Scarlett. Then she remembered Scarlett's haunted dark eyes and why Emma thought she reminded her of herself.
She wondered briefly as she stood up and brushed dirt and twigs out of her hair weather or not Scarlett would find her biological father in Storybrooke. Emma had read heavily between the lines and done some private digging around the town and she suspected that Scarlett's biological mother had been murdered by her biological father. How she had fallen into Gold's hands or Rumplestilskin as he was now apparently known as she didn't want to think.
Then something in the darkness moved and Emma stepped half over her mother's body (and oh that wasn't going to be strange for a while) and stood to see who was standing there looking regal and composed. For a split second she thought it was Regina. But then the woman came out of the shadows.
And that was when the trouble started.
Storybrooke
So it seemed they couldn't cross the town line without losing their memories. There was a second where Giselle felt disheartened and then she felt glee spread through her veins. Storybrooke was her home at least for the last twenty eight years and she was more than comfortable with staying in her grand house (not as grand as her castle) and living a comfortable life with heating and water.
Then came the news that filtered through the town like water. It reminded Giselle much of how it was when her father had been imprisoned and the gossip had run amuck until there was nothing sacred anymore. Well, perhaps she was the one exception to that fact considering it seemed that nobody knew that she had existed.
The Enchanted Forest was still there, it was ruined, broken, destroyed and ripped apart, filled with Dark Magic and horror but it was there. Only thing was they couldn't get to it. As the days grew on her father managed to extract a conversation out of David Nolan that might have been more one sided than he would let on and came home with that pensive look on his face and a snarl in his tone whenever he spoke. Even with Belle. Whatever had happened her father had been disappointed by the results and that was plain to see.
But there was one factor that hadn't changed.
It soon became apparent that her biological father wasn't in Storybrooke. The fact that she was now exposed as the Dark One's daughter ensured that she was now known to the town. Therefore if there was anything dark coming out of the woodwork it would have done so now, when they knew that they could gain easy access.
Unless Giselle was reading into this wrong, as the days went by it appeared that her father wasn't in Storybrooke. Of course that meant nothing, her half-brother it seemed wasn't in Storybrooke either. Giselle didn't really know much about him. She would sit in her room well into the night and the morning and think long and hard about everything she had ever been told or for the most part learned about her birth family. She knew that her half-brother was her father's child, they shared the same mother after all but looking at her father now she didn't thinks he wanted to mention it.
Could her birth father be in the Enchanted Forest still? Granted it was now a land that had gone to shit but could he still be there?
Giselle's first thought was good. Then her second one made her feel irritable and long suffering. If her father wasn't in Storybrooke then on the one hand she was safe. If her father wasn't in Storybrooke however then she couldn't get either answers or revenge.
And the truth of the matter was that if her previous behaviour was anything to go by then she wouldn't get revenge. There was a second where she entertained the thought of killing the unnamed, no faced monster that had dominated her nightmares for most of her life. But the other part of her knew that she couldn't do that again. She wasn't sure if she had ever had that in her. Giselle gained headaches trying to figure out what was happening and who was what.
School had not yet started back up again. Even the teachers were still gaining their bearings in this new world they were in. therefore days were spent still helping the children find their parents still and for the most part helping herself to the free coffee that Granny was giving out to anyone she recognised. Giselle suspected that it might be the old woman that had kept people from asking her questions, therefore she took her free mug of coffee with whatever syrup Granny was trying to throw away and found a nice quiet place to sit and watch the chaos. And if she tried not to think about things that had long ago become painful then that was just on her.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) depending on how you thought about it she was interrupted. By David Nolan, or should she called him Prince Charming? God everything was so confusing. There was a second where she still looked up and the shadow of the man that had hunted her father down, stared at her but she met his gaze without flinching, something which she was proud of.
David Nolan sat down on the other chair over the small table. Giselle shifted her small journal, the tatty leather bound book with an embroidered cover that she had done herself once a long time ago. There was a second where they stared at each other and then he smiled. He really did have a nice smile Giselle thought and she also noticed he looked rather tired. His daughter and wife were gone and he was battling Regina for custody of his grandson who had brought this curse to its end.
"I was looking for some company" he confessed and he looked almost abashed. Giselle understood what it was like to want company but be swallowed up by some national crises. She passed him her paper cup of coffee and David took a small sip of it.
"Good Lord" he said coughing slightly. "I don't know what the hell you put in that but I don't want any more of it" he said. Giselle flashed him a brief smile before an idea came to mind that she felt she had to speak aloud.
"I don't snitch on my father if you're here for information" she said finally but David shook his head.
"I don't wanna talk to you about the Dark One, I still can't get over the fact that I didn't know you existed." He shook his head and Giselle saw that he even looked amused by the thought that she had remained secret for so long. Giselle could never understand what the point was of the Charming's.
"You look tired" she observed and David Nolan's face seemed to fall even more. Giselle put down her pen and stared at him before taking another gulp of coffee. He caught what must have been her expression and grinned again looking a bit more like the charming man that she had once known as the coma patient.
"Between Henry and making sure that everyone knows who they are in the town, and then are reunited with their families I haven't had the time to sleep" he confessed. Giselle personally thought that he had, had the time to sleep but hadn't because he was missing his family too much to sleep. She nodded casually trying to think of something to say but she wasn't sure.
"How's that going?" she asked and David shrugged. "Most of the kids are back home with their real parents but some of them were with other families and their confused and then that leads to more questions..." he shook his head and Giselle could understand why he was struggling. She still hadn't wrapped her head around it herself and she had always been in the same place. She had never woke up one morning with one family and then had to go home with another.
"Are you alright?" he asked and Giselle shrugged. She swallowed again and then looked up to see David Nolan watching her with those wide open blue eyes. "I don't know" she said truthfully and he nodded as if he understood where she was coming from. Giselle tried not to notice the fact that when he smiled he showed his dimples.
"So Henry told me you were adopted" he said conversationally and Giselle blinked, trying and failing to not be surprised by what Henry had told his grandfather.
"Yeah" she said finally. "I am"
"Have you found your birth parents?" he asked and Giselle shook her head. "It's just my father" she said smiling tightly. "My birth mother is dead" she paused trying to think of how much she really wanted to tell the crown Prince. "She was killed by my birth father" she said finally.
David choked on his own spit trying to pretend that he wasn't shocked. Giselle looked back down at the table and pretended that she didn't notice. There was a second where he tried to think of the words to say before he came out with "Is he here?"
Giselle shrugged. "I don't know" she said finally. "I don't think so" she looked back down at her hands "I hope not" she confessed and David nodded shooting her an apprising kind of look. "You don't have to sit with me" she said when she saw he had no intention of moving.
David Nolan smiled his smile so gentle and so impossibly fatherly that Giselle had to look away before her eyes filled with the tears that had always been so close to the surface. If there was someone that was born to be a father then it was clear that it was David Nolan, Prince Charming himself.
"I know" he said gently. "I'm gonna go and get us some more coffee"
And they sat there for most of the morning both of them lost in their own thoughts and stuck with the images of their own families.
The Enchanted Forest. The Camp.
In the aftermath of that emotional horror that had been the nursery Emma had been rather subdued as they walked back to the camp. Thankfully Mary Margaret had been just as silent perhaps realising that Emma really didn't want to talk right now.
Then they saw the carnage that Cora had done on the good people that had survived years of ogre attacks and a curse that had stripped the land barren.
Like mother like daughter it seemed.
There was movement among the dead and Emma turned to see eyes staring out of a rather handsome face. The man was rugged and tall and had the look of someone that had lost so much that there were times when he didn't have anything to do but sit and wonder about what he had suffered. Emma knew the feeling all too well.
He looked up at her with eyes that Emma thought she had seen briefly and for a second darker, longer hair flew in front of her vision and a laugh and eyes that were almost identical. For a second she thought of...no...No she was seeing things...
And that was really when the trouble started and two women's lives would never be the same again.
Next Chapter-Emma and Snow meet a man with sad eyes and as they climb a beanstalk Emma learns of an even sadder story that will blow apart the life of a woman that she likes deeply. Meanwhile we learn of Captain Hook's story both before and after that fateful day on his ship when the world was ripped away from him (first Hook's point of view)
And let me know what you think.