To answer a few questions: the time issue will be answered, don't worry. No, David isn't aging. And no, Snow isn't aging either. Yes, Emma is aging. And it will all be explained! Also, Emma used "James" as a convenient fake name for the man she was looking for since using David's real name (David, or worse, "Charming") would be a little harder to explain.

We're getting much closer to the curse being broken, and as the 28 year mark gets closer, David's interactions with Emma bring him closer and closer to remembering things the curse is hiding. So his concept of time (especially when she comes to Storybrooke) is slowly starting to sync with real time (which is disorienting for the poor man since the curse is still, of course, not broken).

Thank you for your attention with this story! We're getting closer!

PART FIVE: 26 Years

She slides into the booth opposite him at Granny's with a mug of what looks like hot chocolate with whipped cream and cinnamon. David looks up from the newspaper to see long blonde hair and big blue eyes, and blinks. She is a stranger, something that Storybrooke doesn't see often.

"Hi," she says. "Mind if I sit here?"

"Uh, sure," he says, but something about the quality of her voice and maybe that hot chocolate is feeling familiar, and he looks at her more closely until she snickers and takes another sip of her hot chocolate.

"Do I have something on my face?"

"No, sorry," he says, though she does actually have a smear of whipped cream on her upper lip. He decides to ignore it. "You just look familiar."

She freezes with her mug halfway to her lips again, and her eyes widen until they seem like they're taking up half her face. He cocks his head at her.

"What, do I have something on my face?"

She laughs, and he knows that laugh is familiar, and he starts to search his memory. Sometime, somewhere, he has heard that laugh before.

"Dad jokes," she says. "They're so bad."

For some reason this goes straight to his heart. He clears his throat and leans back. He has always wanted children, but it had never worked between him and Kathryn, and now he's not sure he'll ever get the chance to be a father at all. "Well, good to know I've got them down if I ever have the chance to use them," he says lightly (at least, he hopes it sound light). But the young woman smiles softly at him, and he knows she somehow understands exactly what he was thinking.

"So," he says. "Who do I have the pleasure of eating breakfast with?"

"My name is Emma," she says, and though she seems more focused on her hot chocolate than on him, he isn't stupid, and he can tell she's just as invested in this conversation as he suddenly is.

So he calls her out on it.

"And why, Emma, did you decide to come sit at one of the only booths at Granny's that has someone else already sitting here on a Saturday morning in Storybrooke, Maine?"

Emma glances around the diner—it is mostly empty. The high school is on Spring Break, so every teenager in town is still asleep at 10:24 on a Tuesday, and most of Storybrooke does not have the luxury of being a teacher with periodic breaks from the 9-5 workday.

"Just thought the company might be nice," she says.

"For you or for me?"

"Both."

David folds his arms across his chest and smiles at her. "Have we met, Emma?"

Her eyes widen again, but she conceals her surprise a little better this time, though he is not fooled. She knows him, he knows, and he thinks he knows her, and she knows that he knows, and he wants to know why.

"I don't think so," she says. "Why?"

"Why were you so surprised when I said you look familiar?"

"You're being very direct," she says, and though she's deflecting his questions he lets her. For now.

"I could say the same thing of you," he says, gesturing at her. "We don't get a lot of strangers in Storybrooke…especially not strangers that act like they know the resident high school football coach. That's me, by the way."

"I figured."

David waits, but she seems to be collecting her thoughts, and he is content to watch her. He feels comfortable with her here despite the strangeness of the situation, and all thoughts of grading and papers and catch-up work and later football practice has fled from his mind altogether. He knows he is pushing her and does not know why or where it has come from—usually he's one to avoid confrontation at all costs, to buckle under pressure, to give extra points to begging students and one to throw up his hands and admit defeat in all of his fights with Kathryn. But it is as if something has woken inside him, something tough and assertive, and he is enjoying it.

"So?" he says.

"So…"

"When was the last time you were in Storybrooke?"

Emma fiddles with her mug. "Last year sometime," she says quietly. "I was looking for someone. Maybe you saw me around."

He closes his eyes. It's almost there, like a word on the tip of his tongue, but the memory or image or idea or whatever slips through his head like a whisper and is gone.

"Could be," he says. "Maybe. Did you find him?"

She cocks her head at him and he sees a ghost of himself in her and warmth blossoms in his chest. "I think I'm getting closer and closer."

"Good."

Emma glances at her watch, and then back up at him. She smiles at him, and if he isn't mistaken, she looks almostfond. He is about to ask her more questions, dig deeper, but she is sliding out of the booth and rising, and his heart thumps painfully against his ribcage.

"Leaving already?" he asks.

"My mom is waiting," she explains. "I'm not here for long. Just passing through."

He stands too, and glances out through the glass door at Granny's. A yellow bug he assumes is hers is parked outside, and there is someone else in the car, but he cannot see him or her clearly.

"Well," he says, wondering if there's anything he can say that might make her stay longer. The assertive, powerful feeling is fading fast, and he is scrambling for words again and curses himself inside his head. He wishes he were strong, wishes he were braver, wishes he had the courage to just ask her to stay and talk, to explain what has just happened and who she is and maybe even who he is since he gets the feeling that she knows him better than he knows himself.

"Well," she echoes. "It was nice to drink hot chocolate with you, David. Sorry for the intrusion."

"Not at all," he says. "It was my pleasure."

"The pleasure was mine." She smiles, turns and walks away, weaving her way between tables and pushing the door open with the faint tinkling of the bell.

It is not until she has already lowered herself into the bug that he realizes that he never told her his name.

David wants to go after her. He wants it more than just about anything he thinks he's ever wanted, but he stays put, like his feet are nailed to the floor, and watches the bug pull away from the curb. It is not until it has driven out of his sight that he is able to move again, and he hauls out of the diner, bouncing off of Leroy, who has just come in for a coffee, skirting around Mother Superior and two nuns whose names he doesn't know, and then nearly running over Ruby, who is wiping the booth closest to the door. He says sorry at least seven times, (once to Leroy, four times to the Sisters, and twice to Ruby), and then he is exploding out the door onto the sidewalk.

The bug is nowhere in sight.

His heart is beating hard in his chest, and Emma's voice is still echoing around in his skull, and he lifts his hands to his head in frustration, clasping his fingers around the back of his neck. He wants to punch something.

"You ok there, David?"

Archie, the town psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, and counselor all in one, has pulled his large Dalmatian to a halt just outside the diner, on the other side of the white picket fence. David shakes his head, and then nods.

"Yeah, Archie, I'm fine."

"You sure? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Yeah, well, maybe I have." David lets his arms fall limply to his sides. "Archie, you ever meet someone and swear you've met them before, but you just can't remember where?"

Archie glances down at the sidewalk and then back up at David. "I think that's fairly common, David," he says. "I wouldn't start believing in ghosts just because of a little déjà vu."

"No, it's not that," David says, and he is still frustrated but doesn't want to explode at Archie, who is probably the nicest man he's ever met.

"What is it, then?"

Also one of the nosiest. But then, that comes with the territory of holding the weight of an entire town's emotional and mental states on your shoulders.

"Sometimes I'm not sure I know who I am," David says, and he moves forward so that he can lean on the fence, forearms resting on the top slat, fingers clasped loosely together. "Do you ever get the feeling that you're…someone else? That you, the person you think is you, isn't really you at all? Like there's something more?"

Archie frowns gently. "Sounds almost like a question to ask Mother Superior. Are you having a religious awakening, David?"

David reaches over the fence and scratches Pongo behind the ears. "No, I don't think so," he says. "But maybe. Maybe I'll ask her about it."

"Look, if you want to come talk to me, I'd be more than happy to sit down with you and discuss this," Archie says. He glances at his watch. "I'd stay and chat now but I'm actually running late for another appointment."

"No, please," David says, gesturing down the street in the vague direction of Archie's office. "Go ahead. Maybe I'll stop by."

"Please do," Archie says, and holds out his hand for David to shake. "I'd love to talk to you about it."

"Yeah. Take care, Archie."

If there's one thing he is sure of, it's that he's not having a religious awakening. He thinks he believes in God. He believes in having faith and in some kind of higher power, and he doesn't see any reason why that couldn't be God. But this is not a religious feeling, and he doesn't think it's a psychological one either.

But then he doesn't know what else it could be.

"Déjà vu," he mutters, and straightens, rubbing the ache out of his forearms. "Just déjà vu."

David goes home that evening after coaching afternoon football and volunteering for a few hours at the animal shelter, pours himself a small glass of scotch, and sits down on the couch. He does not turn on the TV—he wants to think, to be alone, to be in the quiet and the dark.

Already that morning feels like it might have been a dream, so he closes his eyes and tries to hold the image of her, of Emma, in his mind, to remember her voice and the way she laughed and the way she looked at him over her mug of hot chocolate.

A woman's scream. A baby crying. Something warm and wet on his face.

He jerks awake (if he was asleep at all), and he is still sitting in his dark living room. The nearly empty glass of scotch is sitting on the coffee table in front of him. He rubs at his eyes—his heart is pounding loudly, like he's just run a marathon or been badly startled.

"Déjà vu," he mutters again. The scotch is just asking to be drunk, so he downs it in one and flops back onto the couch. "Emma. Emma." The name is thick and familiar on his tongue, and he closes his eyes again.

A woman with long, dark hair stands with her back to him. He loves her. He loves her more than he loves life itself, more than he has ever loved anyone. She is holding a baby in her arms.

He wants to reach out and touch her, hold her, but his arms are frozen at his sides and he cannot move, cannot speak.

The woman turns. It is Mayor Mills, and she is smiling at him through red, red lips, and her eyes are cold and dead. She laughs, and the window shatters behind her, blowing glass and dust and smoke into the room—there is fire everywhere, burning the drapes, the carpet, the walls. He is burning, burning, he cannot breathe…

David is thrown from the dream like he has been doused in cold water. The early morning sun is filtering through the blinds, and he has a horrible crick in his neck. His clothes smell like sleep and sweat, and he brushes a shaking hand across his forehead.

The dream is already fading faster than he can hold onto it, but he remembers fire and a baby, and something about the Mayor…

A cold shower wakes him up quickly and eases the tension in his neck and back. He puts on a collared shirt and tie and goes to church, where he sits in the pew with a handful of others and listens to the sermon without really hearing it.

His mind is far, far away.

Review!