DISCLAIMER:: do not own ouat or any of its characters. just borrowing for purpose of creative expression. no profit obtained.
A/N:: this took longer than expected, but I hope it doesn't disappoint. enjoy and review.
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Chapter 5
Snow clung desperately to the frame of the front door. "No! What is it?" Her eyes were wide as she stared at the truck that had once belonged to a man named David Nolan with nothing short of abject fear.
James sighed, tugging a little more firmly on his young wife's arm, trying not to hurt her but clueless as to how else to make her move; he'd never had to experience dealing with a child. Since Emma had been taken from them as a baby, he had never had the trying privilege to play father to a pre-teen girl. "It's like a carriage, but faster."
Snow's eyes, wide as saucers, took in the hulking mass of metal. The contraption looked nothing like any carriage she'd ever seen. Where were the horses? Where was the driver and the footmen? No, this simply would not do. She shook her head. "I'd prefer my own carriage, Your Majesty."
James's face fell, and he sighed. He'd told Emma that he would be at the mayoral manor within fifteen minutes. Anywhere in this town could be reached in fifteen minutes, but it had now been over twenty minutes since he'd made the call. Thanks to his, suddenly much younger, wife, they hadn't even made it out of the house.
The dress Snow had worn to the party last night, made for her twenty eight year old self, had been the first outfit he could find, and it now hung garishly loose on her fourteen year old frame. She had complained of course. Where were her gowns? If he was a King, where was his castle and all his servants? Storybrooke looked like no more than a village. It had been a constant string of objections and complaints. He had never known his wife had been such a brat as a child.
"Don't worry Gran... Princess Snow. I'll be with you the whole time and we're taking you to Regina. She'll make everything better." Henry smiled at her encouragingly.
Snow studied his face for a long moment, weighing his sincerity. Finally she released her iron grip on the front door frame, nodding, though her eyes were still filled with fear. "You promise it is safe Prince Henry?"
Henry nodded. "It can't be any more dangerous than the carriage my mom drives."
Snow raised an eyebrow as she let her grandson escort her towards the truck in the driveway. "But I thought you named Regina as your mother. I've been in her carriage; I found it quite lovely."
"No, not her, my other mom. Emma. You're going to meet her too. She's really fun." He opened the door and helped her up into the truck's cab before crawling in beside her.
Already seeming to be getting over her fear, she got a dreamy look on her face. "Emma. What a lovely name. You know, if I ever have a daughter, I think I would like that to be her name." She bent her head close to his, as if sharing a secret with him.
He smiled to himself as he reached around her and grabbed the seat belt, strapping her in.
"Why am I being restrained?" Snow looked down at the belt, fear returning to her expression.
Henry buckled his own seat belt. "It's just to keep you safe when the, er, carriage is in motion. It is a, um, royal decree in this land. It's against the law to not wear them."
Snow nodded in understanding, though her eyes remained wide. What a strange land the King ruled over.
James slid into the driver's seat. "We all good?"
Henry and Snow nodded.
James took a relieved inhale. "Good." He put the key in the ignition, turned it, and the old truck rumbled to life.
Snow White screamed.
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"Lady Emma, where are we going?" Regina picked her way across the enclosed yard behind a dark building.
Emma sighed, rolling her eyes. "I told you, I'm no lady. It's just Emma, Princess."
"And I am not a princess, not anymore." Regina narrowed her eyes as she tried to keep up with the blonde, whose steps were more sure.
Emma grinned, knowing Regina couldn't see it. There was something she liked about pressing the girl's buttons. It felt almost... right.
She had spent ten of their fifteen minutes running around the house and collecting everything they might need. She had found some spare duffels in an upstairs storage closet. There had been three bedrooms that appeared to belong to someone. One had contained only young boy's clothes, and bad ones at that... poor boy was being dressed like an Oxford professor five times his age. Probably another kidnap victim before them. Another was decorated fancily. Glass perfume bottles and makeup lined the vanity, the closet filled with pressed dresses and suits, shoe racks lined with heels that were from a variety of designers Emma had only read about on the pages of Vanity Fair.
She'd ignored these rooms after a quick cursory inspection, finding only a few things worth taking with them, like a wad of bills in the bedside table of the fancy room and an old worn book of fairytales off the bed in the kid's room. The third and final room proved more fruitful. She had found clothes that a normal human being would actually wear, filling one of the duffels with sweaters, leggings, and shirts. She didn't know when they'd be able to get supplies next, so they had to be prepared. She had instructed Regina to find something more comfortable to change into and grabbed two pairs of boots from the closet. They might be a little big, but it was better than going barefoot.
She had raided the bathrooms, grabbing a few medications out of the cabinet and a few extra toiletries, tossing them into a makeup bag before tossing them in with the clothes. She had shouldered the duffel and ran back downstairs, tearing through the kitchen, grabbing anything that wasn't perishable. Food and clothes were key; she knew that from the several times she'd run from bad foster homes in her young life.
A glance at the clock had told her their time was dwindling. She had gone back into the foyer. "Regina!"
The other girl had appeared at the top of the stairs, coming down quickly.
Emma's jaw had dropped when the other teenager had stepped down onto the hardwood of the foyer. Regina had chosen to clothe herself in a tight fitting pair of black leggings and a loose fitting maroon tunic that dropped down to mid-thigh. With her wavy long dark hair framing her face, she was nothing short of gorgeous. Emma hadn't noticed until that moment; she'd been too worried about their situation.
She had shaken the encroaching inappropriate thoughts, putting them on the back burner until she got them to safety, or at least somewhere safer than this. She had handed the lighter duffel to Regina and shouldered the heavy one with the food and taken them out through the back door.
Now they were steadily picking their way through quiet backyards and edging away from the large white house in a curving pattern. She had been able to see from the second floor of the house that the main part of the town they were in was to the north, beyond it the ocean. But there were woods to the south. That's where she was taking them. It would provide cover and a place for them to lose this guy who was coming for them. She would find a place for them to set up camp and then sneak back into town under the cover of darkness to find someone who could help them.
Regina's hand slipped into one of hers and she flinched at the contact, though she managed to refrain from pulling away. She wasn't used to being touched. She glanced over at Regina, squeezing the older girl's hand to reassure her. "Don't worry, I'm used to this."
Regina raised an eyebrow. "Being kidnapped?"
Emma gave her a sad smile. "Surviving."
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Rumpelstiltskin had tried to stay up until the effects of the potion had taken hold, but he'd fallen asleep in his chair by the fire some time just before dawn. He woke up now to light streaming in through the curtains and the last smouldering embers of a nearly dead fire. He squinted in the dim light. "Belle?"
A quick glance around the sitting room of his old Victorian house turned up no sign of the librarian. He stood, pulling off the blanket that she had obviously draped over him after he had fallen asleep. "Belle?"
No response came.
It didn't take long to search his house. Despite the wealth the curse had afforded him, he had chosen to live a more modest life than his wealth could afford. He had never been one for lavish displays of wealth. In the Enchanted Forest he had secured a castle for himself, but it had been left in near ruin, only made liveable for the average being by Belle's feminine touch. His house was no different. Though clean, the decorations were outdated, as if he had been left the place by a grandmother who had passed away. Surely it was an antique hunter's dream, but he hardly paid attention to possessions that were secured for him by a curse.
Belle was nowhere to be found. Her meagre possessions were still in their places, but the woman herself had disappeared. Maybe she had just gone to Granny's, looking for a younger Red. The girl was her best friend after all.
No matter. It was time to go out and see the damage his potion had wrought on the unsuspecting citizens of Storybrooke.
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After a ten minute drive became a twenty minute drive, with the driving five miles an hour just to keep Snow from screaming and having a full blown panic attack, James finally pulled the old truck into the driveway of the mayor's vast home behind the sleek black Mercedes.
He glanced over at Snow. "Stay here with Henry. I'm just going to go inside and grab Regina and Emma. I'll be right back." He looked pointedly at his grandson with a hard expression that left little room for misinterpretation. Keep her here was what it said, loud and clear.
Henry nodded.
James spared one last glance at his wife before sliding out of the front seat. He jogged up the walkway to the front door. It was locked. He knocked, once, twice. Nothing. "Emma? Open up." He banged on the door once more. Still no reply.
He moved back up the side walk and back around the side of the house to the backyard and the back door. It was unlocked.
The kitchen cupboards were hanging open, cans and containers littered the ground of the pantry. "Emma?" Panic started to bubble up inside him. Had someone broken in and taken advantage of his daughter? He moved into the foyer and then the living room. Blankets were hanging half off the couch, heels discarded on the floor. But no sign of his daughter. "Emma?"
He ran up the stairs. He started with Regina's bedroom at the end of the hall. It was the most fortified, complete with both a lock on the door of the en suite bathroom and the door to the bedroom. If there was somewhere the girls would hide from an attacker, that would be it. But when he tried the handle, the door was unlocked. Regina's room was slightly messier than he imagined someone like Regina liked it to be, but it didn't seem as torn apart as the kitchen had been.
He moved to Henry's room. It was messy, but no more than a twelve year old's room should be. He knew from first hand experience due to the condition of Henry's room at his and Snow's house. But when he came to Emma's room, it looked as if a tornado had blown through the room. He knew Emma wasn't exactly as neat as Regina, but she wasn't exactly the messy type either. Clothes were strewn everywhere, her dresser drawers hung open. The entire room was in disarray.
Where was his daughter? Where was Regina? Why hadn't either of them used their magic to fend off their attacker? Then it hit him. They had reverted back to their teenage selves. Regina would know of magic, but as far as he knew from Snow's telling of her childhood, Regina hadn't been practised in her magic when she'd first married Leopold. If she had gone back to an age before she had been married, she wouldn't have any knowledge of the extent of her powers. And Emma. Emma hadn't discovered her powers until after coming to Storybrooke two years ago. She wouldn't even believe in fairytales let alone know her magical potential. Wherever they were, they were without protection.
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Little Red was starting to smell more people, she was almost to a village, she had to be. The trees were thinning out, enough that she could see over a hundred feet in any direction.
Twigs snapped off to the north. She crouched behind a tree just as two figures broke through a grouping of trees in that direction.
"Not too much father." A girl, older than Red by a few years by the look of it, carrying a strange pack over her shoulder, glanced back at her companion.
"You've said that four times already. Are you positive you know where we are going? We could be lost." The girl's brunette companion glanced around worriedly. "Maybe we should stop and wait here to be rescued."
The blonde in the lead rolled her eyes. "We're not lost. Trust me Princess, I'm already rescuing you."
Red tilted her head at the pair curiously. They were the first people she'd come across out here in the woods. These woods could go on for leagues for all she knew. She glanced back over her shoulder towards the direction they'd come from, the direction she'd been heading before she saw them. Maybe the people she'd been smelling had been them. She glanced back towards the girls, now barely visible through the trees, back the direction she'd come from.
Making a split second decision, Red turned and followed the girls. She hung back out of their range of vision, unworried about losing them. With the way they were clumping through the foliage, there was little risk of that.
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"I'm tired." Regina stumbled behind Emma through the trees. Her feet had blisters from wearing the boots Emma had provided her with back at the house, slightly too big for her feet. The blonde girl had insisted they keep moving, but they'd been walking for over an hour, moving in a weird back and forth pattern that made no sense to her, but that Emma had sworn was the best way to avoid their captors catching up to them.
"Let's get just a little farther away from the road, just to be safe, and then we'll set up camp." Emma glanced back over her shoulder. She was used to walking for hours, getting as far away as possible from a place before stopping, but it was glaringly apparent her companion was not. She just wanted to get them a little farther away from town, close enough that she could sneak back later and get them help, but far enough away that they wouldn't be found.
"You have done this before, have you not?" She sidestepped a rock, nearly stumbling again, displaying none of her usual grace on this unfamiliar terrain, though she had to admit that this looked much more like the Enchanted Forest than the home she'd woken up in. But Emma was moving with a practised ease, as if she did this all the time.
"What? Being kidnapped? Nah, I'm a first-timer."
"No, I meant running from people."
Emma jaw tightened. "The bad ones, yea. Listen Princess, I'm sure mummy and daddy dote on you wherever you're from, but not all of us have the perfect fairytale life. Some of us live in the real world." She didn't want to be short with the other girl, but she had touched on the one nerve that always remained raw in Emma's life.
Regina stopped, planting her feet and glaring at the other girl's back, Emma having unknowingly touching on her own raw nerve. "You know nothing of my life Emma Swan! Do not presume that which you know nothing of. I have seen the darkness that can exist in a person, darkness so thick that it would send you running for cover."
Emma turned back to Regina with wide eyes, thrown off by the pain masked by anger in the other girl's voice.
Regina tilted her head up, proud and regal, and stormed past the blonde, trying her best to keep her feet moving in a dignified manner.
Emma watched her as she went, waiting until she was several paces ahead before following, a small smile tugging at her lips. It would seem she'd finally met her match.