To all who favorited or followed: thank you! Here's the next chapter for you. David Nolan awakes in Storybrooke with no memory of his past.
PART ONE: 16 Years
He awakes with his wife's lips on his. "I'll be home for dinner," she whispers against his cheek. "It'll be your favorite." She presses another soft kiss to his lips, and then her heels click across the hardwood floor of their bedroom and the door opens and closes softly. He does not open his eyes—he does not have to be at work for a good hour after Kathryn, and the temptation to curl over and go back to sleep is too great to ignore. He reaches over to his right and steals her pillow, curling over onto it and fading back into a half-sleep.
He wakes forty-eight minutes later from a strange but not unpleasant dream in which he had been wandering a strange, wild, tangled forest carrying a sword in one hand and a map in the other. He had been looking for something, but the dream and its implications vanish as his brain registers the blinking red numbers on the clock on his bedside table.
He is late.
Brushing his teeth takes 30 seconds, he skips the coffee, and he's shrugging on his favorite black jacket and out the door with one shoe untied and his keys in hand in less than 4 minutes. It is a short drive to Storybrooke High, where he teaches political science and history, and he walks into the classroom just ahead of the last student.
"Morning, Mr. Nolan," one of the girls says as he weaves his way around the desks and arrives slightly out of breath at the front of the room.
"Morning, Jess," David Nolan says, and tucks his hands into his jeans pockets as the bell rings. "All rise for the pledge, please."
David Nolan drives his truck home that evening after football practice with the high school team with a stack of papers to grade, kisses his wife hello in the kitchen, eats meatloaf and potatoes, sits down to grade papers on the American Revolution and the Birth of Freedom from the Mother Country, watches half of a football game, brushes his teeth, showers, climbs into bed beside his already sleeping wife and falls asleep quickly.
He wakes the next morning with his wife's lips on his. "I'll be home for dinner," she whispers. She presses another soft kiss to his lips, and then her heels click across the hardwood floor. He does not open his eyes—he does not have to be to school for an hour yet, and the temptation to lie in bed and doze until his own alarm goes off is too strong. He reaches over to his right and steals her pillow, curling his body over the top of it and falling back into a dreamless sleep.
He wakes nearly an hour later, grabs a bit of toast on his way out the door, and arrives at school almost late with one shoe untied, just ahead of the last student.
"Morning, Mr. Nolan," one girl says as he makes his way to the front of the classroom.
"Morning, Jessica," he says, and tucks his hands into his jeans pockets as the bell rings. "All rise for the pledge, please."
David Nolan drives home that evening after football practice with the high school team with a stack of papers to grade. He kisses his wife hello in the kitchen, eats meatloaf and mashed potatoes with gravy, retires to the living room to watch football and grade papers, and crawls into bed beside his sleeping wife at nearly midnight. He kisses her on the cheek, rolls over, and falls into a peaceful sleep.
He wakes the next morning to his wife's lips on his. He wakes late. Goes to school. Coaches football. Eats dinner, grades papers. Watches the game, falls asleep on the couch, crawls up into bed and ducks under the covers at nearly midnight.
He wakes with his wife's lips on his.
One morning, David awakes in an empty bed. He wakes suddenly, with no provocation, and sits up with the feeling of just having woken from a dream, a strange dream he cannot grasp. The sensations and sounds and feelings drift away from him across the room and out the open window, and the more he tries to grab them back the faster they slip away. He swings his legs out of bed and pulls on clean jeans and a flannel, red-checked button-up that always makes him feel a little like a farmer and less like a high school political science teacher, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Kathryn hates the shirt, but he can tell from the quiet of the house that she is already gone for work, so she isn't around to roll her eyes at his choice and huff loudly until he relents and goes back upstairs to change.
As he brushes his teeth, he tries again to recall the dream. Flashes of sounds, like high wind and shattering glass, a female scream, the melancholy tug of sadness deep in his chest…that is all he can remember, and he wonders what sort of dream it must have been to leave such haunting after-impressions.
He cooks himself a mess of eggs and makes a black cup of coffee while he listens to the morning news. Storybrooke is not the most interesting of towns on a good day, and a rather boring one on a bad. He has often talked to Kathryn of moving somewhere more exciting…Boston, maybe, or New York, but she loves the sleepiness of the one-diner Main Street and the charm of the old clock tower and how everyone knows everyone, and he does not have the heart or the energy to argue with her. Or, at least, most days he doesn't.
It seems lately that all he and Kathryn do is fight, and since they're both established with good jobs and plenty of friends in this little town, talk of tearing up roots and starting over is one thing he figures he can sacrifice, just to avoid a little contention.
David parks his truck outside the high school and tucks a pile of papers he'd graded the night before under one arm.
"Morning, Leroy," he says in greeting, and the grumpy little janitor grunts back and continues to scrub spitwads off the display case in the foyer. David likes Leroy; the little man makes him laugh, and they've shared a pint or two on the weekends occasionally when there's nothing else to do and David doesn't feel like being home with a silent or irritable or melancholy wife.
(Sometimes things are still good—he'll come home to find that she's made meatloaf and potatoes (his favorite), and usually she'll kiss him good morning on her way out the door unless they've gone to bed angry the night before, or he's sleeping on the couch because they went to bed fighting. More often than not, however, she'll go to bed first and he'll stay up late watching football or grading assignments and crawl into bed beside her long after she's fallen asleep.
It isn't necessarily the healthiest marriage, he knows, but somehow he thinks that the less time they spend together, the less time there is for them to fight, and that can't be a bad thing.)
He walks into his classroom full of 15 and 16 year olds chatting and laughing and rustling papers and thumping each other and drops the stack of papers onto his desk with a thud.
"Morning, Mr. Nolan," a few voices chime, and he smiles around at them all—he has nearly shaken the melancholy feelings of that strange, wild dream, and he is about to tell them all about it to grab their attention before beginning a lecture on the War of 1812 when something completely strange and unexpected walks into the classroom.
It's a girl. A girl he does not know, one he has never seen before in his life. She is tall and thin, with long blonde hair swept out of her face and large blue eyes and a dimple in her chin. Everyone in the class turns to look at her, and the room falls silent faster than any story about his dream could have.
"Mr. Nolan, I have a new student for you," Mrs. Heals, the principal, says. She is standing next to the girl and looking just as bemused as he feels. "She's just moved to Storybrooke from Boston, and she'll be joining us for a while."
"Well, welcome," he says, and looks around for an empty desk. "Let's find you a place to sit." He walks down one row of desks to the back of the classroom and finds a spare one lurking in the far corner. He hauls it to the end of one row and smiles at the girl as she lifts her backpack off her shoulders and sets it down carefully next to the desk. "Storybrooke must feel a little small after the city," he says, feeling a little jealous, a little wistful, and a little confused. "But I'm sure you'll fit right in."
"Thanks," the girl says, and smiles. She has a nice smile, a cheerful one, but for just a moment he feels a surge of melancholy again before it fades away into the pit of his stomach like it had never been.
"I'm Mr. Nolan," he says. The class has begun to chatter again, quietly, and he is sure most of the whispers are about the new girl. She seems to think so too, but it doesn't seem to bother her. "And you are?"
"Emma," the girl says. "My name is Emma."
The girl Emma is with their class for a few weeks, and for those few weeks David feels more alive and awake than he ever remembers feeling. The world is sharper, clearer, more real, somehow, and he wakes every morning before Kathryn and hurries to school just to be there when she arrives. He cannot and does not want to explain how he feels to anyone, because he knows how people would react and it would be decidedly not good for a high school political science teacher to proclaim his fascination with a 16 year old girl, even if his intentions are entirely honorable and innocent (which they are).
Emma is a good student, a clever girl, but rather quiet. She does not make friends or attempt to talk to anyone around her, he notices, but she does her work and gets good marks. He is content to pore over her assignments with a fine-tooth comb after Kathryn is in bed, looking for something, anything, that will tell him why she has gripped at his very heart and soul in a way he cannot understand.
He is happier, calmer, and even Kathryn's demands and their petty disagreeances are muted and less horrible than usual. He feels stronger, lighter, as if a weight he has been carrying for years has been suddenly lifted. He finds himself looking over his shoulder for someone even when he is expecting no one, finds that his hands feel empty even when he is holding Kathryn's, finds himself listening for footsteps or laughter when he is alone in the house. It is strange, this wanting, this longing, that has come over him, and he knows he is not longing for Kathryn and it makes him feel horrible and miserable and dirty even while it makes him feel more himself than he ever remembers feeling.
He can only assume it has something to do with Emma.
But David cannot sort out any way to approach her without seeming (and feeling) like a lecherous old bugger. So he simply smiles at her and greets her (and the rest of his students) when she comes into class, writes generic, teacher-ly things like excellent work and creative thinking, I'm impressed on her papers, and does his best to not think of her when he goes home in the evenings and (on good days) gathers Kathryn into his arms and watches a movie with her on the sofa or (on bad days) settles down with a quilt and a throw pillow to fall asleep on the sofa grading papers and watching football.
But Emma and her blue eyes and her smile and her quietness and unexpectedness is always there to greet him in the mornings.
Emma has been in his class for two and a half weeks when he realizes he has no idea how long she is staying or even where she is staying. Storybrooke is not large, and he sees most of his students' parents at least once a week for activities, pick-ups and drop-offs, or just around town at Granny's or the supermarket or the library. But he has never seen or had the chance to talk to Emma's mother or father.
So one day after class he pulls her aside as the students are gathering their things and chattering about the weekend and asks.
"Emma, any idea how long you'll be in town? I'm looking at the end of the semester and I'd love to factor you in to end-of-semester group projects if you're gonna be around."
"Oh, um," Emma says. She is always a little shy in class, but he has never approached her before and he hadn't realized just how shy she is. She won't even look him in the face. "I don't know, I'll have to…have to ask my mom."
He does not want to pry, but something warm has thrilled through him and he grabs at something else to say as she hauls her backpack over one shoulder. "Have your parents found a position here in Storybrooke, then? Or are you just visiting family?"
"It's just me and my mom," Emma says. "And we haven't found anything. We're just visiting. Extended visiting. My mom…she grew up around here. We're staying at Granny's." Emma still has not looked him in the eyes, and he knows he's being nosy and probably crossing a few dozen lines, but he rationalizes it as a teacher's concern for a student who might be struggling and presses on.
"Your mom grew up around here, really? What's her name? I might know her, I grew up around these parts too."
Emma's eyes finally flicker to his, and for one bizarre moment he thinks he sees fear in her eyes, and he takes a step back instinctively. She swallows.
"I'd rather not say," she says. And then she backpedals. "I mean, I've got a mom. Don't think I don't, I'm not just on my own, don't worry about that—she's just…we're just…private. We don't…"
"I'm not trying to pry," he says quickly. "Really." He smiles at her, but she does not relax—she looks tense, ready to run, and he steps back again, his heart clenching. He is confused at her violent reaction to his questions, but he feels bad already for approaching her so unexpectedly. "I just want to know if I can help. Let your mom know I asked, all right? If she wants to come in and visit with me about how long you'll be staying she's more than welcome. My door is always open." He smiles brightly at her again and retreats quickly to his office at the back of the classroom, leaving her standing there in the aisle with her backpack on one shoulder and (if he'd turned around to notice) a devastated, proud, resigned sort of look on her face. He sits down at his desk and sets his elbows on the top, clenching his fingers behind his head and running them through his hair.
He has finally placed a label on the feeling that had surged strong and fierce inside him at the sight of her fear: he wants toprotect her. Protect her from what he does not know, especially since it seems that she had wanted protecting from him. The possibility makes him sick.
On Monday, Emma does not show up to class. David does not let it affect his teaching, but he is concerned, and he knows that it is somehow his fault. He goes home that night and falls asleep on the couch.
He wakes feeling groggy and confused, and when he arrives at school Emma is not in class.
She does not show up for the rest of the week.
On Friday afternoon, after a week of climbing the walls and asking his students if they know if the new girl is sick or out of town, David makes his way down to the principal's office and inquires after her. Mrs. Heals pulls up a few files on her computer, looking vaguely confused.
"She withdrew from school earlier this week," she said. "No explanation. She and her mother just passing through, I suppose. Sweet woman. Nice little family."
David's gut clenches, and he has the inexplicable urge to run out of the office, jump into his truck, and chase them down, though heaven knows they could be anywhere in the world by now. He realizes that one fist is clenched so tightly down at his side that his fingernails have nearly broken the skin, and he relaxes it carefully and swallows a few times before he can respond. Luckily, Mrs. Heals does not seem to notice.
"That's too bad," he says, and his voice is completely calm and collected, to his great relief. "Emma's mom, I never met her. Emma said she grew up around here—did you recognize her?"
Mrs. Heals shrugs. "Can't say I did. Sorry, David. Pretty woman. Dark hair, big blue eyes. About your age."
David nods, makes small talk for a moment more without his heart really in it, and leaves her office.
He goes home and sleeps on the couch again. He has slept there all week. Kathryn has not said a word about it.
He dreams of chasing something or someone through a wild, tangled forest, but when he wakes up he does not remember dreaming.
Review! I'd love to hear what you think - if no one is reading or liking, there's not much point in continuing to post, right? Am I blackmailing you? Possibly. Shamelessly. But really, I'd love to hear what you think so far. :) Thanks for reading!
Next up: More time passes, and David Nolan's life slowly begins to change as he continues to run into Emma as the years go on.