Chapter Text
There is a tale, told often in the whispered hush of a dreadful fairytale to the children of the kingdom. Children listen, eyes wide, and the story spreads as gradually and as wholly as the grey spreads across King David’s beard, as the dark clouds spread across an estate at the edge of the kingdom where a fearsome witch practices her magic.
But the most exact version of the tale is never quite discussed. There’s a bit about a fairy, a princess, a new villain in every retelling, but only precious few know the reality of it. The queen, the king, the queen’s personal guard. To others, the nightmare of the story is the lack of explanation for what had happened. To them, the nightmare would be what might come next.
The tale, as it truly goes, is of Snow White, queen of the White Kingdom, bright-eyed and glowing with the birth of her first child. Her husband stands with her, her knight crouches beside her, and they wait together for the final moment of birth– the moment where the baby princess’s fairy godmother might come to touch her wand to the child’s forehead and gift her with something grand.
But the Blue Fairy had been late, caught up in a bitter feud with an imp, and another fairy, seeking to prove herself, had felt the pull of a new baby and arrived instead. Queen Snow had startled at the burst of green, and a tiny, fluttering fairy had thrown herself into a sloppy curtsy and said, “Your Majesty! It’s an honor. Blue is– Oh ,” she’d said, her eyes rounding as she catches sight of the new princess.
The princess had begun to wail, fairy dust caught in her little lungs, and Queen Snow had hurriedly hushed her without much success. The girl had cried and cried and cried, and King David had held her and Queen Snow had soothed and even Mulan had tried her hand at it as well. Nothing had helped, and Queen Snow had wrung her hands and said, “I’m so sorry. You’ve come all this way to grant her a gift and–”
“I know just the one,” the Green Fairy had said, bright and glowing at the opportunity that had presented itself to her. A royal baby had been far beyond her scope, and she’d immediately wanted to gift the girl with a treasure of which all fairies might sing. “I gift you obedience, Princess,” she’d said, tapping the baby’s forehead with her wand, and she hadn’t seen the queen’s and king’s eyes widening in horror. “There. Now, hush .”
The baby had quieted at once, her tiny fists still thrashing about as though the fairy dust irritation hadn’t ceased, and the fairy had disappeared.
The next morning, so had the baby.
The tales about her never include the gift. There is a fairy’s gift and a missing girl– there is always a fairy and a lost princess– but the gift is what keeps children awake at night, wondering what horror might have befallen the princess. Perhaps she’d been made to a creature of the night, to a bird that had flown away in the dark. Perhaps it had been a gift so valuable that the fairies had claimed her as their own before the kingdom could. Perhaps it had destroyed the baby, one moment at a time.
In reality, of course, the baby’s disappearance had had little to do with the gift– but the gift had been a horror indeed. And Emma Swan, orphan child, knows nothing of how she’d been cursed– only that she has been eternally cursed with terrible, terrible obedience.
When she’s very young, she can’t comprehend that anyone could possibly not be obedient. She’d been found by a childless family called Swan, and she’d never thought to try to resist any orders. Come with me, child. Stop sucking your thumb. Quiet down. Eat your vegetables. She’d listened, listened, listened. She’d been happy, young enough that she hadn’t thought much of how her own urges had been so easily dismissed.
Then one day in the market she’d seen a child screaming, beating at his father with fury. “Stop that!” his father had roared. “Shut your mouth!” But the child hadn’t stopped, and three-year-old Emma had watched with horror, then fascination, from behind her mother. “We’re leaving,” the father had ground out. “Come with me.” The boy hadn’t come. The boy hadn’t stopped.
“Come along, Emma,” Mother had said, shaking her head pityingly at the father and son.
Emma had said, “No,” and planted her feet firmly on the ground, struggling with a sudden headache. There’s a tightness in her chest that feels as though her heart is clenching, as though she can’t breathe, and it intensifies the longer that she stands there.
Mother had looked at her askance and her feet had begun to move, her mind and heart firmly steps behind her body. And Emma had realized, with a mounting sense of horror, that something is wrong with her.
It takes years for her to grasp what it is that her curse is. The Swan family has a child of their own and pass her off to a friend, and she’s sent away for being too difficult . It should be impossible for someone so obedient, but Emma has so little to fight for that she fights for this: a few extra moments of defiance, a way to twist orders into something she’d chosen. She grows accustomed to headaches and physical pain, to glaring darkly at those who issue orders to her and know only her resentment.
When she’s fourteen, she tells the truth to another runaway she’s fallen in with, hiding out in a little cave and stealing what they need. “I’m obedient,” she says, and Lily laughs at the idea of Emma Swan, thief and tiny scoundrel, being anything close to obedient. “No, really,” she insists. “I have to do whatever anyone tells me to do. Whether I want to or not.”
Lily casts a speculative eye over her, and Emma finds that she rather likes it when Lily looks at her like that. “Jump up and down,” Lily commands, and Emma finds that she likes that much less. “Stop. Start again.” She’s grinning like she still doesn’t believe Emma. “Do a backward flip,” Lily says, and Emma tries , her body moving into the right position and her arms arching backwards, but she doesn’t have the training and she topples into the dirt instead. She tries again and again, her body aching and her head hurting and dirt caking into her palms and knees, and Lily says at last, “Stop,” and gives Emma blessed relief as she falls to the ground. Lily stares at her with her brow furrowed in bafflement and then smiles, mischievous and daring, and says, “Kiss me, then, if this is real.”
Emma kisses her. Lily tastes like the berries they’d stolen and weeks of unspoken promise and abject betrayal. When it’s done, she shoves a startled Lily away from her, punches her hard in the face, and runs as far as she can from their secret little refuge together.
She doesn’t entrust anyone with her secret again. She grows adept at hiding it, at holding on for just a moment while she musters up the bravado to smooth over the moment she obeys. She’s caught twice when someone shouts, “Stop, thief!” and she learns to steal better, to steal faster and quieter before any orders can be issued.
As she gets older, men talk to her in innuendo and promises, and she learns the right things to say that will keep them from her before commands can be delivered. Meet me upstairs , she says in taverns, smiling promisingly. Let’s find somewhere a little more quiet , she invites when she’s accosted. And then she’s gone. She lurks in shadows, hides in the woods, and spends as little time as possible with other people.
She travels from King Leopold’s kingdom to Queen Snow’s, wanders in the hinterlands where the ogres lurk and travels beyond to other lands. She calls no land home and stays nowhere for long, and she picks up the languages of all the people around her far faster than she should be able to.
“You have fairy dust on your tongue,” an old woman in an elven forest tells her once. “You have their voice.” Emma sticks her tongue out and tries to squint at it, but it looks rather plain and pink.
It would be nice, she thinks, to have a superpower that isn’t obedience.
She tries speaking to the squirrels and they chitter back, and she doesn’t quite understand them but she can sense what they’re saying, speaking of hidden acorns and a place in the woods where the ogres might snatch them up. She speaks to strangers in taverns and understands bits and pieces– and then more, and more, and more. She speaks to songbirds and they flap excitedly around her, but they often have little to say. It’s almost always about when the snow will come.
The ogres, she stays away from. They may have once been blundering, hideous things, but the ones in the Enchanted Forest have begun to mutate into something far more intelligent and terrifying. It’s said that ogres can know a traveler’s darkest secret, can coax them closer with honeyed words before they become dinner. Emma, who wouldn’t need to be coaxed, doesn’t dare risk being in their vicinity. She hides from their sensitive noses and knowing eyes, and she flees to the towns when she has nowhere else to go.
It’s while fleeing a pack of ogres near the border between King Leopold’s and Queen Snow’s kingdoms that Emma celebrates her nineteenth birthday. She walks through the marketplace, watching shopkeepers with the eye of a practiced thief. There’s a fruit seller who isn’t keeping a careful eye on his goods, and she moves toward him before she’s distracted by a scuffle at a nearby booth.
There’s a baker’s apprentice who isn’t much more than a girl, a good ten years younger than Emma, and a gaggle of boys a few years older than her crowd around her. Her skin and her jewelry mark her as a foreigner from the Sunlit Kingdom, and she’s standing tall, scowling up at them as they jostle her, lifting her wares and jeering at them.
“Hey!” Emma says sharply when she’s close enough. “Don’t you have anything better to do than pick on little girls?”
The boys laugh, some uncomfortably, some nastily. “Step away,” one of them says, and Emma feels the compulsion and fights it long enough that her head spins. “This isn’t your business.”
She steps away at last, waiting a moment before her head clears, and the girl looks away from her in weary defeat. No . Emma’s jaw clenches and she shifts her path, moving away toward the fruit seller’s stand. She snatches a plum before the fruit seller notices, hurling it at the boy who’d spoken to her.
It hits with precision, crashing into the side of his face and exploding open, and the other boys howl with laughter. Emma throws another, then another, targeting only him. She’s learned long ago that people aren’t loyal , that they’ll turn on each other as easily as they’ll turn on her, and she throws fruit until the boy stomps off, the others following.
Emma takes some more fruit and makes a run for it now, hurtling into the crowd, and then she hears the inevitable, “Stop, thief!” The fruit seller has finally noticed her snatching his wares. Emma skids to a stop, waiting for her arrest, and she closes her eyes and opens them again.
The baker girl is in front of her, holding out a cupcake. “Thank you,” she says in a halting voice.
Emma glances over her shoulder. The fruit seller is running toward her, a soldier beside him, and he’s pointing her way. “Please,” she says in the girl’s language, a desperate idea coming to her. “I know it sounds absurd, but please, tell me to run from here.”
The girl nods, pressing the cupcake into her hand. “Run from this place,” she says, smiling at Emma, and Emma flees before she can hear another order. The fruit falls from her bag but the cupcake stays with her, and she runs until she finds a wealthy family’s stables, far from the marketplace.
There are rumors of a terrible witch here, and there are few servants because of it– and few people who might find her. Emma has stayed here from time to time over the years, when travelling near the edge of this kingdom, finding food in old travel bags and curling behind the hay.
At times, she indulges herself and peeks out of her hiding place during the day to watch the witch’s daughter as she strides into the stables. The witch’s daughter is just about Emma’s age and very pretty, and she brings treats for her horse and brushes his hair before she rides. Emma watches her fly across the grounds in awe, longing to ride beside her, with all the love and wealth that her station must afford her.
Perhaps not even with that love and wealth. Perhaps only riding beside her would be enough.
Today she shakes off that sentiment, reminding herself what comes of trust and pretty girls, and huddles on the ground behind the hay and opens the satchel with the cupcake. “Another banner year,” she whispers, biting into the cupcake, and she pulls a horse’s blanket that she’d borrowed from the back of the stables over herself and drifts off.
She dreams of horses leaping through fields and of pretty girls with dark eyes, and she dreams of a glittering green burst of light dancing around her. She’s crying, something caught in her throat, and the light touches her forehead and she screams.
When she wakes up, it’s to a sharp kick against her side. “Wha–”
“Get up.” The voice is like steel, and Emma scrambles up, stumbling back as she catches sight of the woman glaring at her. She’s smaller than the pretty girl, with the same shape to her face, and she walks with the confidence of someone who’s never obeyed an order in her life. “Who do you think you are? Does this look like a home for vagrants?”
The witch. This must be the witch. Emma doesn’t respond, wary of aggravating her more. The woman flexes her fingers and Emma flies , slams up and against the wall of the stable with blinding force. The walls of the stable seem to tremble around her. “Answer me,” the woman snaps.
An order. Emma answers carefully. “No,” she says stubbornly. No , it doesn’t look like a home for vagrants, but the woman registers it the way that Emma wants to mean it. Her eyes flash and Emma is brought forward through the air and then slammed back again to be pinned against the wall. And then again. And then–
“ Mother! ” says a voice from the entrance. The pretty girl strides in, and her eyes are wide with horror but no surprise. Emma doesn’t like how that lack of surprise settles in her stomach, like sick, sick dread. “Mother, no!”
“Hello, Regina, dear,” the woman says pleasantly, and even in the growing haze of pain, Emma seizes the name greedily and holds it to herself. Regina . Regina is the girl who rides like the wind and murmurs to her horse as though he’s her best friend. “Do you know this girl?” Now there’s an undercurrent of danger in her voice, a threat that Emma knows instinctively is to them both.
Regina doesn’t react to the tone, but her fingers press into her palms and then release as her face smoothes over. “Of course I do,” she says, and there’s a haughtiness in her response, a regality that Emma’s never seen when she’s watched her with her horse. “Don’t you remember my newest maidservant?” Emma’s eyes widen and she averts them, staring down as her mind churns furiously in confusion. “I found her rifling through my jewelry last night and sent her out here to sleep as– as punishment,” she finishes, and she stumbles over the last bit. “Have you learned your lesson?” she demands, her eyes piercing into Emma’s for the first time.
Beneath the darkness, her gaze is kind. Emma swallows. “Yes, my lady,” she offers, still bewildered and wary and a little afraid.
She’s dropped to the ground in a heap, the witch turning away from her in disinterest. “Finally,” the witch says, squeezing Regina’s shoulder with satisfaction. “You’re beginning to learn. These commoners will learn nothing if you are weak.”
“Yes, Mother,” Regina murmurs, and she’s staring at Emma again when Emma manages to pull herself to her feet. “Come,” she orders, and Emma is helpless but to follow, up the hill to a tree planted at the very top.
Regina waits until they’re out of her mother’s earshot before she rounds on Emma. “Have you lost your mind ?” she hisses. “Don’t you know better than to start up with my mother by now? Haven’t you heard the stories? You’re lucky I made it there in time or you’d be stuffed and mounted on the wall right now!”
She’s even prettier when she’s angry. Emma tries not to stare. “By now?” she repeats. “How did you know–?”
“Oh, I’m not an idiot,” Regina says impatiently. “I’ve seen you in the stables all the time. Watching me,” she says, and now there’s a flush of pink on her cheeks.
Emma wants to kiss them, just a little bit. Instead, she says defensively, “I was watching your horse. He’d fetch a pretty penny in town.”
Regina laughs. It’s probably the prettiest sight of all, and Emma can feel her own cheeks heat up. “He’d never come with you.” The horse snorts, nuzzling Regina’s hand as she reaches up for him.
“You don’t know that,” Emma says, her lip jutting out. “I can be very persuasive.” She lowers her voice to the one that always works on men to set them off guard before she flees, but Regina just watches her with amusement gleaming in her eyes.
“I don’t doubt it,” she says, and she reaches tentatively toward Emma, plucking a stray bit of hay from her hair. She blows it softly, letting it flutter to the ground, and when she turns back to Emma, it’s uncertain. “Mother will expect to see you in the estate,” she says quietly. “And I know…I’ve seen you here so many times before.” Regina’s words are careful, dancing around whatever else she may think of Emma. “Will you stay? For a little while?”
It isn’t an order, and yet, Emma feels compelled to respond regardless. “I suppose so,” she says, and she shrugs and flushes under Regina’s smile.