Enchanted Forest

Gav looked at the floor as she shrugged on her trousers, trying to see where her socks had ended up. She had on only her chemise and had shoved her brassiere into her cloak's pocket, which she'd gathered up into her arms already.

The man whose home she was in was sprawled across the bed still, sleeping deeply with a pillow covering nearly his entire face. It was a pity – he had such a cute face.

Gav wasn't a stranger to one night stands, but she typically had them when she was in other realms or parts of the Enchanted Forest far from her home, where there was no chance of running in to her partners at a later time. This was only half an hour away on horseback. But she had been a bit drunk and this man had been incredibly charming, all messy hair and sharp grins, so she had dragged him from the tavern and insisted on getting to know him better.

So very, very worth it.

But now she was in a bit of a conundrum. Her mount was a nearly quarter mile away, and if she attempted to walk in her boots without those mysteriously placed socks she would have horrific blisters. Healing magic was not Gav's specialty, so she'd actually have to deal with them. Ugh.

Gav dropped the cloak to the ground, having giving up on simply looking about. Just as she was about to kneel down to check beneath the bed, a croaking voice echoed out from beneath the sheets.

"Running out on me?"

Gav startled a bit and met the man's gaze, finally saying in a genuinely curious tone, "Did you expect anything different? Jefferson, was it?"

He sat up completely and the sheet fell into his lap where it pooled and oh, hello muscular chest. Letting out an enormous yawn, he stretched his arms over his head and combed a hand through truly ridiculous bed head before responding.

"Yeah. And your name starts with a V. Didn't hear it right last night and didn't bother asking for clarification."

Gav smiled at him, somewhat amused by his bluntness and said in a dry voice, "A five syllable word this early in the morning? Consider me impressed."

Jefferson smiled back at her, unbothered by the teasing and said, "I would have thought you'd be impressed after last night anyway."

Gav couldn't hold in a laugh at that. She liked this man's sense of humor, and maintaining a sense of normalcy after a random night of sex was a very pleasant surprise.

"It was alright, I suppose."

She spoke with a lofty, clearly mocking tone and Jefferson laughed in response before lifting an eyebrow and saying, "You must be a very tough critic."

Gav let her expression shift to one that showed her amusement before saying, "I'm searching for my socks. Would you happen to know where they wound up?"

Jefferson shrugged and pulled back the sheet, sliding off of the bed himself. His naked body was visible for a moment before he pulled on his own trousers. Running his hand through his hair again – adding to the fluffy, strangely endearing look – he scanned the room.

"No idea. You could always look after breakfast."

Gav startled a bit but her voice didn't sound anything but curious when she asked, "Breakfast?"

Jefferson looked a bit embarrassed when he picked his own shirt up off of the ground and put it back on before replying, "Well, I've been… out of the area for a bit. There's bread, jam, and apples."

Gav felt a rush of fondness. Which was a very bad thing. Her lifestyle did not allow for any close personal connections. She'd learned how awful it was to become attached to a mortal after she'd been forced to watch her sister age and die. Gav had only kept in contact with two generations of her sister's descendants before deciding it wasn't good for her.

But breakfast couldn't hurt, could it? It wasn't like she would get attached.

Storybrooke

"I don't think my mom wants me to have any friends."

Gav frowned as she looked at Henry who was sitting beside her on the park bench. She had learned in the year that they had been running into each other that he was a bit peculiar, but she didn't see any reason the eight-year-old wouldn't have friends.

Gav truly had no idea how the rascal had wormed his way into her life. To be honest, it was most likely her own longing to be around a child. Grace's arrival had been a blessing. The girl had saved her, in a way - grounded Gav to reality in a way her husband unfortunately had been unable to. Running into the tiny girl who was lost in the hedge maze and barely more than a toddler during a routine job in Wonderland was unexpected to say the least. And Gav had surprised even herself when she'd decided to take her in. She would deny it until the day she died, but the first time Grace had called her "mama" she'd wept, to her utter embarrassment.

Every time she spoke with Henry she was equally invigorated and devastated afterwards. He was much more outspoken than her daughter but had the same enthusiasm towards life that Grace had maintained. Grace was so very shy, but it made Gav even more proud when she was loud around herself and Jefferson. It was an enormous change from her initial refusal to even tell them her first name. Wheedling her middle name out of her had been a long process, and by the time she'd told them Grace had decided to abandon the name 'Alice.'

But for now, her daughter could not be with her. So Gav focused back on the child she was with, forcing herself to stop reminiscing.

"That sounds awful."

And – okay, that wasn't appropriate to say. So before Henry opened his mouth Gav quickly continued speaking.

"But it probably isn't true, ya know. You think a mother would want her little sprog to never branch out? Blasphemy, young sir!"

Privately, Gav worried about Henry. If he didn't have many friends for the entire time Stroybrooke had been frozen for nearly twenty-six years he had to have been exceptionally lonely. Though he wouldn't have truly registered the passage of the decades while stuck in the curse, Gav understood a bit more why he would have longed for friendship and sought her out.

To be honest, his persistence was absurd. He'd run in to her by chance a month after their first encounter during the outing the ward had every two weeks and demanded to know the schedule, showing up when she was allowed to roam. He'd revealed that he had not told anyone about her and would not in the future, so she had not seen any harm in spending time with the child.

It was nice, speaking to someone who actually knew her name. He hadn't asked about it any further, accepting her answer in the way children often did when adults said something. He'd even heard one of the orderlies call her "Jane" and continued to use what she had told him.

Henry's response to her words startled her and Gav felt a flash of anger at herself for once more slipping into daydreams when she was in the middle of conversing with someone.

"I think – I think she only wants me to have her. She'd not all bad, but she's not nice to anybody else."

Gav nodded along when she saw the upset expression on the boy's face. There wasn't much she could say in response. She had no idea who the boy had been in the Enchanted Forest, nor who his mother was in this cursed land.

"I wish that she didn't act in a way that made you feel like that."

It was the best she could do, and Henry seemed mollified. The sudden change of topic was disconcerting when he blurted out, "Where is your accent from?"

Gav froze. The closest thing she could really assign to the sound of her own speech was a Russian accent, and to be honest she was surprised he had picked up on the faint lilts to her voice at all. After all, when she had jumped to the Enchanted Forest and decided it would be the realm she would return to between dimension jumps she'd quickly learned the common tongue. Nobody in the Enchanted Forest knew the language of her dimension, and none had so much of heard of it when she'd asked around. Gav had spoken the common tongue in the Enchanted Forest long enough to have trained almost all of the inflection of her first language out of her voice.

Gav was silent for a minute or two, and Henry quietly sat beside her though she knew he must be bursting with impatience. One of their earlier encounters when he'd pestered her had caused her to finally say in a harsh and firm tone that at times she needed silence. What with not speaking to very many people for twenty-five years, Gav had grown used to staying in her own mind, and Henry had caught on quickly.

Gav hadn't 'lost it' exactly while in solitary, and being released into the main part of the asylum that allowed her to interact more with others had helped immensely. But even in the Enchanted Forest people had thought of her as… odd. Living for hundreds of years could do that to a person; she'd begun to view life as a game, at least until she married Jefferson and brought Grace into their home.

But this question might be it. Gav thought about it for yet another minute, weighing her options. When she finally spoke, it was in a serious tone.

"Henry, I'm going to tell you a story about magic. And it is a story you cannot tell anyone. Swear it?"

The boy nodded eagerly in response and quickly said, "Cross my heart and hope to die." Gave smiled and in response tried to make her tone serious when she replied, "stick a needle in my eye."

Gav took a deep breath and released it, preparing to finally talk about what had existed before this bizarre cursed town, even if it was only a story to entertain a little boy.

"There was once a girl who had magic. But as she grew into a woman, everyone in her village thought she was strange, and they called her dark. So when a powerful man offered her power beyond her belief – well. How could she have possibly turned it down?

After wandering through dreams and worlds for many years, she grew a bit lonely. So the sorceress took charge of her own life and decided that she should take on the world by herself and venture -"

Vistravara Gavronson spoke for a long, long time.