Emma Swanson was born October 23rd 1897 in Storybrooke, Maine to her mother, Mary-Margaret Blanchard and her Father, David Nolan-Swanson.
Emma's young life was filled with joyful moments. She would play in the corn fields by her family home and chase butterflies whilst her father worked in the beating down rays of sunshine. Other days she spent watching her mother's hands craft the most beautiful multi-coloured quilts for the extremely cold winters, which she sold to the towns' folk in the square. They shared a beautiful farmhouse as their family home, it was coated in a glorious shade of light blue in the quaint small town of Storybrooke.
Emma loved her life with her beloved parents and spent every waking moment that she could with them. They would spend whole days together as a family snuggled up and telling stories about castles and princesses and all the joyous wonders that came with the imagination.
They went on long walks through the forest behind their home, though she would sit upon her father's shoulders and marvel at the tall trees as they passed them. When they reached their desired spot in the fields, young Emma would lay on the grass between her parents and play with her mother's silky dark locks whilst watching the clouds float by. Her life was perfect and full of love.
That was until her mother was sadly taken from her at the mere age of three, by the horrendous plague of consumption that ravaged their small town. Nothing was ever the same for the family after that, no matter how hard her father tried to hold it all together for the both of them. They were broken and in mourning. Young Emma had closed herself off from the world around her, she was no longer the bubbly three year old girl but a distraught and devastated burden.
As the years passed by she noticed her father had completely withdrawn himself from her, closing himself off and spending most of his time in the local tavern. She longed for comfort from her father, a simple hug or a gentle kiss to the forehead. But it never came.
At only five years of age, Emma had taken to the house chores that her mother would usually tend to, preparing and cooking meals, washing their clothes and hanging them out to dry using a small foot stool. The young child could only do so much and it pained her to see her once great family home become a cold hard shell of what it once was.
Since her mother's passing, her father no longer tended to the corn fields outside which had overgrown and started to rot causing the stalks to permanently shrivel. The beautiful baby blue which covered the wooden frame of her family home had begun to wither and peel from the winters over the years.
Eventually, the drinking had finally taken its toll on her father's body and he too passed in 1904. He was found by his only daughter at now seven years old one winter's morning. He was slouched in his favourite chair by the fire, the embers dying in the grate and a bottle of bourbon smashed at his feet, the liquid had seeped into the cracked floor boards. Forever stained.
Emma's screams could be heard throughout the town that day as she was dragged away from the only place she had ever called her home. The image of her father forever burned to her memory.
She was taken away to an orphanage for only girls in Boston. She hated it there, she was made to scrub the floors during the day which caused her hands to gain callouses and bleed. At dinner there was no more than a few scraps to eat and more often than not she would go to bed hungry. At night the matron gathered all of the girls together in one room, the rule was you slept wherever was free. It was over crowded and smelly and all Emma would think of in the dead of night before she slept is the happy times that she'd shared with her family, where she'd felt irrevocably loved in all sense of the word. But every night, every single night the lonely lost girl cried herself to sleep dreaming of a family long gone.
Storybrooke, Maine, New England 1986
"Papa, please!" screamed a five year old Regina Mills, who was reaching out her tiny little hands towards her father through the backseat of their black Mercedes 230 CE. Her mother Cora Mills known for being ruthless in all things but also the future Mayor of the town had opened the right side back door to the vehicle and grabbed her daughter by her upper right arm and began to drag her from the car.
"Please papa, please!" the little girl screeched again, tears streaming down plump olive cheeks.
"Silence!" spat Regina's mother. "It's time you stopped being an insolent little brat!"
A deep, painful sigh escaped her fathers lips as he exited the driver's side of the car, the door slamming closed behind him. His eyes filled with sorrow as he watched over the roof of the car, his wife dragging his little girl up the path towards their home. "Cora, please be gentle with her. It was an accident!" he bellowed.
...
Inside their home, Henry tried to calm his wife, who was shouting in his little girl's face, "Cora, that's enough now. How long are you going to continue to scream at our daughter over this, this accident? She already apologised my love. Let the girl go."
"Let her go?" she cackled, "Let her go!? Henry, she embarrassed me in front of all of those people at town hall. No, it's time that she learned a lesson. I will not have this behaviour anymore." Cora then leaned down towards her daughter, "You think you can do whatever you like little girl? You think that you can get away with being disobedient? I will not stand for this anymore child! You will come with me to my office and you will behave! You'd better hope that my chances of becoming this dreadful town's Mayor isn't in jeopardy. I've worked too hard for this."
At that Cora drags the small child towards her office, the ebony carved door slamming shut behind the pair. A muffled scream erupted from behind the closed door shortly after, followed by several more.
Storybrooke, Maine, New England 1989
Regina and her father were perched atop a beautiful red and white checked picnic blanket which was laid out in their garden underneath her most precious, honey crisp apple tree. The sun's rays, though scattered due to the trees long branches, beamed down on them kissing there olive skin. Regina sighed with content, she couldn't think of any other peaceful time than when she was with her father and being outside with nature was one of her favourite things.
They were having a picnic, prepared by the both of them. Her mother was away on business, it seems that her becoming the town's mayor meant that she would be away more than usual, which allowed for more father-daughter time and Regina relished in her time alone with her father.
She was allowed to indulge in life's simpler things, like watch movies about fairy tales and read about the brave knights who save princesses from tall castles, in which afterwards they would live happily ever after. Regina sighed again only this time in sorrow, she wished desperately for a brave knight to come and whisk her away from her mother's terrible temper. She also wished that her father would be brave just like those knights she'd read all about and protect her from her mothers wrath.
Regina wished for many things, she wishes her mother would just let her be an eight year old girl. But most of all, she wishes for her mother's love. Instead she is forced to be obedient, show no emotion and work so extremely hard in school to prepare her for when she would inevitably become the Mayor of this sleepy town in Maine.
Regina may have only been eight years old but she carried a heavy weight upon her shoulders, trying to live up to her mother's such high standards. To be exactly what her mother wanted her to be.
Boston, Massachusetts 1909
Rays of sun shone down through the long, high barded windows slicing the stiflingly hot air that was filled thick with cotton dust. Clacking and banging sounds filled the enormous hall as the various spinning wheels and cotton milling machines worked in tandem.
Young girls between the ages of ten and eighteen years scatted the work room, each at their own stations and many of them already into their seventh hour of a twelve hour work day, exhaustion causing their tiny shoulders to sag.
One of those young girls was twelve year old, Emma Swanson. Having now passed the ripe age of ten, the young blonde was forced into working in the town's local cotton mill. Emma had had two years of experience working in these horrendous conditions and still couldn't get used to the atmosphere which resembled a tropical palm-house. Beads of perspiration littered the young girl's brow and a sigh escaped her cracked thin lips as she reached a scrawny arm to wipe away the moisture.
Her feet were bare, to avoid slipping on the oily saturated floor and were covered in grime from walking up and down the large work room. This continuous exercise in a torrid atmosphere has made her lithe and wiry, without an ounce of unneeded fat upon her body.
She reaches for the spindles which are now full and starts to doff them off using break-neck speed with her right hand and places the full cartridges into her bent left arm. The blonde piles the cartridges high until she can't hold anymore and dumps them into one of the baskets close by. She continues this process until all the full spindles are collected, then starts to fit the new lot of paper cartridge rounds for more thread to be wound.
The whole process is nothing like she remembers reading in the old tatty fairy-tale book back in the orphanage, yarn cannot be spun to gold like Rumpelstiltskin accomplished and a pricking of a finger does not send anyone into a deep sleep only to be awoken by a prince with true loves kiss. Emma learned the last part the hard way. There were many times in which the young blonde had caught her bony fingers in the spinning process and has the scars to prove it.
The young child was lost in her own thoughts and didn't notice as she turned to collect more empty cartridges that her superior, Mr Elliot was standing right behind her and she collided with the overweight man's stomach with an oomph.
"SWANSON!" he bellowed.
At the sound of his voice the section around Emma's work station quietened, the other girls stood watching on in horror as the great house of a man grabbed the blonde by her wrist and shook her like a ragdoll.
"Watch where you're going girl!" He said quickly releasing the child like she carried all kinds of diseases.
Emma whimpered with her eyes tightly held shut, "I'm…I'm sorry sir." She croaked.
The old fat lump growled in her face, then raised up tall rocking backwards and forwards on the balls of his heels and clasping the suspenders below his shoulders. He started to inspect Emma's work station and the four baskets of spindles.
"Well, well, what do we have here? Hmm? Slacking aren't we?" he said directing the last part of his question towards the twelve year old. A sneer suddenly erupted upon the man's stogie moustache covered face, "You!" he growled again releasing bits of spittle, as he pointed his fat finger towards Emma's pale face.
"Six lashings!" he shouted around the cotton mill.
If possible, Emma's cheeks paled even further, her eyes bulging in fear, "No" she whispered, but only for herself to hear.
"ANGUS!!" called Mr Elliot.
A giant sized man wearing old rags that were far too small for his frame came striding into the area, his black boots squelching into the oil covered floor.
"Yes sir?"
"Take this one, six lashings. Three, to the hands for total disrespect and three more to her bare legs due to a lack of an insufficient work load."
"Aye sir!"
Giant hands came down around scrawny little shoulders, Emma kicked and screamed as she was lifted up into the air like she weighed nothing and was taken from the work house.
"BACK TO WORK!! Before you all receive a lashing."
...
Outside, behind the work house, Emma Swanson was stood with her bruised and bloody hands against the splintered red wood of the Cotton Mill. Tiny whimpers escaping her thin lips from the cane that had beaten her slim fingers.
A loud crack came, the first of three lashing to the backs of her thighs. The belt that Angus used in his discipline cut into the thin material of her work dress. She tried so hard to keep the tears at bay, but her eyes were swimming with them and eventually they fell littering her cheeks with the stream. She wished for her father or her mother in that moment to come and save her from this horrid place. She knew that if they had both still been alive, they would have never let something like this happen to her. Then again, she definitely wouldn't be in this situation.
Emma could hear the belt being raised again, and as the whip of leather cracked against her already sore skin an excruciating hot pain rippled through her small body making her want to vomit, she cried, bellowing out into the hot summer's air. Anger seethed beneath the surface and it was in that moment she promised herself that no one would ever inflict this kind of pain upon her again. That no belt would ever scare her flesh ever again.
She took a deep breath, standing taller, bracing herself for the last inevitable blow.
She swallowed the pain and salty tears down with clenched teeth and with the final lashing of the belt slicing her thighs no sound escaped her thin broken lips. She accepted the pain, embraced it even. She would escape this place and leave these horrid treatcherous people behind.