Storybrooke - Cursed

Sheriff Swan was not a happy camper.

Clearly anyone could have arrived at that conclusion, what with her pointed death glares and the tense line of her shoulders being particularly prominent as she sat in her booth at Granny's, not even her steaming mug of hot chocolate able to soothe her fraying nerves. But I felt rather sure of her mood when she stormed out the door, muttering something about strangers and jerks and several choice words she shouldn't have been uttering within a hundred mile radius of one Henry Mills. 

I wasn't very invested in the situation, admittedly. I knew Emma Swan (or more accurately, I knew of Emma Swan) only through the chatter that passed through Granny's, so my empathy for her didn't extend all that far. Still, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of sympathy as I watched her stalk away from the diner, hands shoved into her pockets, head down and obscured by her golden hair. When she'd walked in, she hadn't been any sort of exuberant, really, but she'd at least been calmer than she was now.

I had to wonder just who, or what, was capable of cracking the armor of our unflappable sheriff.
Nothing good, I mused, sipping from my own mug, only to wince. Apparently, it'd cooled in the time it had taken me to watch Emma make a rather undignified exit. Just my luck.

Your average person would have simply put in an order to Ruby to have her mug refilled, but I wasn't feeling up to human interaction today; it had taken a considerable portion of my mental strength to even place the first order, and this tragic blow (made all the worse for the fact that I'd only had a few mouthfuls of the wondrous elixir) had sapped the last of my reserves. Biting the inside of my cheek, I slid the mug to the opposite side of the counter and shifted on my stool, prepared to head into work early.

Again. But that was irrelevant.

And anyway, I never got that far, seeing as I smacked into the leather-clad shoulder of a passerby. The collision sent me careening back into the counter, and I caught my hand on the edge of my stool to avoid stumbling into another patron of the diner. A hand reached out to cup my shoulder, helping to steady me, and I murmured a nearly unintelligible thank you as I righted myself, huffing in frustration to dislodge the hair from my eyes. Home sounded so very wonderful right about now; there was no one there to knock me to the ground and no one to stare at the horror of my near-spill.

"No need to thank me," an unfamiliar voice said, the pressure on my shoulder falling away now that I was safely on my own two feet. "It's my fault for crashing into you."

"I wouldn't say we crashed." That sounded too dramatic for the situation. "And it's fine, we're fine, don't worry about it," I added, dragging my eyes from the scuffed-up toes of my sneakers to see who I'd run into.

Well. He's definitely unfamiliar. 

That revelation was strange in and of itself, seeing as strangers and Storybrooke seemed to exist on separate planes. Emma arriving had been enough of a shock; she was the first person to wind up in Storybrooke who wasn't already a resident in years. Now we had another drifter on our hands, and he didn't look any less threatening than Emma from where I was standing. Stranger danger, and all that. 

His blue eyes crinkled as his lips twitched into a charming smile. 

"No," he said, his smile widening a fraction when I blinked, "it's not fine. You deserve compensation."

"Compensation," I repeated, slowly, blankly.

Ruby passed by then, and the man signalled her over as he slid onto the seat next to the one I'd just vacated. His gaze flitted over my half-savored coffee before flicking back up to Ruby, who looked rather pleased he'd sought her out. The smile playing on her lips was one I'd seen enough to know that he was in danger of getting wrestled into a one-night stand that would have him avoiding the diner for a solid week afterwards -provided his survival instincts didn't kick in here and now to tell him that an adventure-starved huntress was on the prowl for him. But, looking at him (and the way he very much wasn't looking at Ruby, not in the same way she was staring at him), I thought maybe it wasn't something to worry about after all.

"Two coffees," he said, raising the appropriate amount of fingers. "Black for me, and--" He looked meaningfully at me, eyebrows lifted in question.

"...black for me, too."

I was terribly weak.

Ruby poured the coffee, flashed me a demanding look that promised she'd try to wring me for information later, then hurried off to attend to the other customers. I sank down into my previous seat, listlessly dragging the coffee close, letting it warm my hands and ease the ache from my fingers. I didn't drink yet, just stared down at it, wondering what the hell I was doing.

"So... what do you know about Emma?"

"Sheriff Swan?" I quirked a brow, side-eyeing the man and finding his smile wasn't quite as genuine as I'd thought it to be. Or maybe that was only now that it was just the two of us; no one besides Ruby would pay us any attention, no matter how unwarranted his arrival was. I glanced down at my coffee again. "I didn't think anyone in this town was actually that chivalrous... Okay. Fine. What do you want to know about her?"

"Anything," he said, "everything. My curiosity's sort of insatiable."

"That's great," I muttered, swallowing a sigh, "but you're coming to the wrong person..." I trailed off, frowning at the fact that I'd sat down to coffee with a man I didn't even know the name of.

"August W. Booth," he provided, without skipping a beat.

"August," I said, nodding a bit, then dipping my chin to indicate myself. "Melanie Moore. Anyway, I'm not close to her. At all. We've barely spoken since she got here. And if you're looking for flirting material--"

"That's not what I'm after," he cut in. "Just curious, like I said. She's prickly; I'm trying to understand why."

"Ask someone else," I said, and there was an edge to my voice now, a warning. Not a terribly convincing warning, mind you; I wasn't the most frightening of people, though I had talent for being off-putting on my less-than-good days. But hopefully it was enough to tell August this conversation wasn't doing anything for my (painfully obvious) mood. "All I know about her is that she's got some horrendous luck if she ended up here." I narrowed my eyes at August. "You might have that in common, actually."

That would have been that. I would have stood up, fished out my half of the bill, and skulked from the diner in much the same fashion as Emma, eager to start her shift at the hospital if only because it meant I could avoid human contact for the rest of the day. Working in the records room had always appealed to me that way.

But August seemed to have other ideas, evidenced by how he swung out an arm, barring my escape route. His smile was back to full wattage, blue eyes alight with questionable intent, and he appeared to be all-too aware of how damning a look that was from him.

"Then let's talk about you, Melanie Moore."

"There're even less interesting bits down that path," I sighed, resigning myself to the fact that he didn't seem likely to let me go before he'd exhausted this line of questioning. He probably thought that by getting close to me (or appearing to do so, anyway), he might have better leverage to pry information about Emma out of me.

"Come on, everyone's got a story."

"Oh yeah? Then what's yours, August W. Booth?"

"Mine? It's... nothing really. Well, nothing might be selling it short. Been all over the world, soaking up life's joys as I come across them."

"Sounds lonely."

"Lonely, really? A life of adventure and endless possibilities sounds lonely to you?"

"Yeah, it does. Because what I'm hearing is that you've been looking for something, and that you haven't found it yet. Therefore, lonely."

August's brows furrowed, but he made no move to refute what I'd said. I went back to staring into the depths of my drink, as though by searching hard enough I might find the words to get me out of here all that much quicker. Uncomfortable silence settled between us, and it felt like it was hooking into my skin, hunching my shoulders and pulling me into myself further. Screw the hospital, I wanted to go home; this was far too much social interaction for my ill-equipped (and admittedly delicate) constitution. And August wasn't what I would have called good company, which struck me as odd; he seemed the type to put on a good show for all those involved. Maybe the showman's mask slipped when he was on a mission and needed information - and that was what made me push away from the bar at last.

Simply put, I didn't trust August, and I was suddenly glad I had nothing remotely interesting to say about Emma Swan.

"Thanks for the coffee, Booth," I said, slapping down a handful of bills before zipping up my jacket and warming my hands in my pockets. I avoided eye contact, preferring to map out the scratches and cracked lines of my shoes. "Whatever you want with the sheriff... try not to muck things up around here while you're chasing after her, alright?"

And with that, I nodded a short, stunted goodbye to Ruby (who was already looking at me like I was, quite possibly, the most moronic woman she'd ever laid eyes on), then walked right out of the diner. But not before August had the chance to call out to me, and I had to force myself to look straight ahead instead of whipping around to make sense of his words:

"I think you'll find that this town's in dire need of someone to muck things up, Melanie Moore! For both our sakes, let's hope I manage to finish what I came here to do."

__________________________________________________

Storybrooke - Present

Streaks of red and gold colored the darkening sky, painting the treetops with with heavenly fire and throwing long, trailing shadows across the ground by the time I'd abandoned my search in town and somehow convinced myself that sweeping the forest was going to yield better results.

 I'd never been particularly drawn to the forest in all my time in this realm, not like Charming had been, what with his post-coma stroll to the toll bridge (a story that the local papers absolutely drooled over, as it broke the small town monotony we'd all felt strangled by at some point or another). Once or twice I'd gone out for a run here, or walked someone's dog through the trails, but it wasn't a place I liked to spend my time. I often wondered if I had an aversion to nature of some sort, some not-quite-physical affliction that made me uneasy while surrounded by towering trees and the smell of new life; now I thought it had been something of a bleed-through from my old life, a wisp of a memory of starvation and frostbitten fingers and toes.

 And wolves, perhaps, but there were no wolves in Maine as far as I was aware, so I would have dismissed that as misguided superstition instantly.

Cupping my hands over my mouth, I breathed out slowly, warming the frigid skin of my palms as I moved awkwardly through the underbrush, having lost track of the path soon after entering the woods. Roots threatened to trip me at every turn (probably finding my choice of very-truly-not-outdoorsy shoes to be so laughable as to punish me for it), branches snatched at the ends of my jacket, trying to halt my progress. I'd like to say I handled myself well despite my self-imposed handicap, but... that would be a blatant lie. And I did try not to lie - even in this life.

I cursed with such vigor and fluidity that a pair of birds took flight from the branches directly above me, scattering in the wind to escape my uncalled-for tantrum. A stray, thorny branch had caught on my sleeve, and in my attempts to pry it off, I'd managed to tear a short gash into the thick fabric. Which sucked. Immensely. I loved this jacket, and finding a new one was going to be a pain in the ass I didn't currently need. Granted, it would be easier (and cheaper) to find someone who could patch up the tear, but - I didn't know who to ask, nor who could even direct me to someone who knew.

"Goddammit," I muttered, threading a hand through my hair as I examined my shredded sleeve, stepping into the patchwork sunlight to better assess the damage. The tear ran along one of the seams, starting from about mid-forearm and ending just below the elbow. In no way unnoticable, unfortunately, which meant it definitely had to go once I got home tonight.

 Speaking of which - what was I even doing out here? The chances of locating my parents in the woods were tragically low, and I wasn't even considering the option that, miraculously, they hadn't been swept up in Regina's curse at all. That, somehow, some way, they were back home, untouched by magic and unaware that Storybrooke existed. 

 That, or possibly they were dead.

They'd been getting on in years when this curse was first enacted, and twenty-eight years would have passed in the Enchanted Forest since. It was, now that I thought about, quite unlikely they were still alive back home, if that was where they'd been all this time. The thought wasn't especially morbid or depressing to me, though I assumed it should have been. If they'd passed on by now, I thought, then at least they'd done so while safe and in the familiar comfort of their homeland, in their actual home, the small but cozy house they'd raised me in for nineteen years. At least now they weren't faced with the incredibly problematic dilemma of settling two sets of lives in your head while trying to cling to the core of your existence, whatever the hell that was supposed to be. At least they didn't have to worry about what an uncertain future sat on the horizon, every present and growing distressingly closer with every stuttered heartbeat.

I preferred the idea that my parents weren't here with me, despite the fact that that meant I was virtually alone in this world, devoid of any fragmental connections to home, however seemingly insignificant. There were a handful of townspeople like me, I knew, people who weren't captured poorly in the likeness of Disney's do-gooders and instead had lived rather plain lives, aside from their time under the curse; but our plainness was what separated us in the end, because we weren't well-known enough to have made friends with one another back in the Enchanted Forest. And with our memories returned, I thought it unlikely that I'd keep the flighty friendships I'd struck up with my co-workers.

(In somewhat unrelated news, I hoped the shock of his second identity dragged Dr. Whale off the knife's edge that was his life and into the steady arms of sobriety, because I was rather tired of seeing him waltzing through the emergency wing while drunk off his ass)

A wave of relief spilled over me, and the weight that had settled in my chest dissolved, allowing me to take my first deep breath since the curse had been lifted. 

 And yet, this revelation didn't drive me back indoors. Rather, it seemed to spur me on, as though I could better enjoy my time in the woods now that the burden of finding my family had been lifted from my shoulders. Shelving the matter of my ruined jacket for the time being, I walked further into the trees, careful to lift my feet a little higher so that I cleared the knotted roots (no one could ever say I failed to learn from experience), arms tucked against my sides.

I was stalling. Obviously. The longer I was away from the prying eyes of Storybrooke, the better. It was an unhealthy approach to the situation, sure, but I felt like I could breathe out here, like I didn't have to worry about the cold storms of my past or the potential hell that was our collective future. And with the overlapping memory of my time in the Enchanted Forest, the woods no longer seemed as constricting; this wasn't my childhood, and I had a warm bed and a fridge full of food waiting for me when I tired of this and turned in for the night. 

Things were different here, and I wanted to take advantage of that, to see if I'd really been missing something during all those years where I let my unnoticed fear of the trees and the elements keep me at bay.

The sun was sinking in the distance, plunging the forest into purple twilight. Birds still twittered among the branches, but their calls were fewer and farther between as the shafts of light breaking through the canopy narrowed and dwindled with the passage of time. I could hardly see past the lengthening shadows, but I kept up a quick pace regardless, promising myself I'd head back once I made it to a clearing and had the chance to catch my breath in an open space.

That promise seemed close to being fulfilled when I broke the treeline, stumbling with the sudden loss of closeness that had permeated my senses while I walked. I twisted around, squinting back the way I'd come. I'd have to have walked fairly far for it to be this dark, though I didn't know where I was, exactly. My short strolls through the forest had never taken me anywhere near where I was now, and that didn't bode well for my return trip. 

  Well, I thought, crossing my arms, I probably left a sizeable trail of crushed plants and ruffled shrubs. It shouldn't be that hard to get back from here...

The growing dark posed another problem entirely. Resolving to worry about it after I'd rested for a few minutes, I turned back to the clearing, intent on making myself comfortable on a fallen log, or something else suitably woodsy.

I blinked, though, nearly tripping over my own feet as I stopped short.

Was that... a trailer?

Granted, my knowledge of Storybrooke's inner working was probably lacking, but I couldn't recall someone ever living out here, not when we had all the conveniences of modern living back in town. And no one I knew had ever expressed interest in roughing it in the woods for an extended period of time, to the point where they'd require something as ludicrously out of place as this trailer. I knew of a few residents now who might've fancied the idea, but no one could have set this up that quickly. And besides, the trailer had clearly seen better days - it was old, had been here for some time, undisturbed.

The trailer sat on a bed of overgrown weeds, littered with fallen leaves, the color of it bleached from sunlight. It looked like no one had touched it in years, hinges rusted, paint peeling. I wondered if they'd be any identifying markers inside, trinkets left behind by its original owner. There didn't necessarily have to be anything left behind, but... I was curious.

Sue me.

I shook off my initial apprehension and crossed the clearing to reach the door, where I stood for a moment, contemplating the merits of knocking. It would be polite, and would alleviate me of any guilt that would follow the act of breaking-and-entering (which this would count as, probably, if by some chance it was ever reported), but I wasn't sure if it was worth the shame I would feel in the wake of hearing those knocks echo back to me in the middle of the woods. 

I bit my lip, weighing pros and cons, and - eventually - I huffed a short breath through my nose and brought my knuckles down on the rickety-looking door.

Once. Twice. Three times was enough, surely?

I waited several heartbeats, rolling my eyes at the silence, and I was just about to yank the door open when I heard a creak - the door opened for a split second - and then it shut just as quickly.

"What--"

The wind? Easy to blame, I supposed, but no sudden gales had passed through the clearing that I was aware. And since I sincerely doubted that anyone with magical capabilities had wandered after me this far into the woods just to play simple parlor tricks on me, that left very few options.

One of which (and this was the one I was banking on, personally) was that someone was actually in there.

"Um... hello?" 

 No answer. Of course they wouldn't answer. They hadn't opened the door except to check if someone had really bothered to knock (and then promptly dismissed me by shutting it again), they weren't very well going to invite me in.

"I'm... Shit, this is weird." I cleared my throat, stepping closer to the door, wanting my voice to carry without me having to raise it too much. Didn't want to sound intimidating, after all. Or maybe I did. I suppose it depended on who had locked themselves away in the woods. "My name's Melanie. Or, uh..."

My tongue twisted in protest, trapping the name; I swallowed thickly, shaking my head. Okay. That answered that question, then. Some things were still off limits, even in this world.

"Melanie Moore, if you're a full-name kinda person," I went on, trying to cover for my slip-up. I injected as much reassurance into my voice as I could when I added, "I'm not here, uh, to hurt you? Or even really bother you, if I can help it. I'm... a little lost?"

Lame. Utterly lame. I mean, I was lost, but that just screamed trouble. How many horror movies had the killer seeking shelter when they were lost alone in the forest, or wherever they happened to be per the setting? 

 "Let me try that again... I'm Melanie, and I thought this place was vacant, so I thought--"

"Would you mind leaving?"

I blinked, taken aback. I hadn't been expecting an answer.

"Um... "

"Leave. Before it gets too dark for you to find a trail. And... don't tell anyone about me."

Wasn't that considerate of them?

"I'll go, I will. No worries there," I said, waving a hand dismissively even though I was thoroughly aware they couldn't see me. "But..." My brow furrowed. What was I doing, chatting with a perfect stranger who clearly wanted nothing to do with me? "You sound kinda familiar," I said, without thinking, only realizing the truth of the statement once it had left my lips. I did know this voice; I just couldn't place it. 

 "...that's unfortunate," they said, with feeling.

It wasn't a voice I'd heard often, or I would have recognized it straightaway. That didn't narrow things down any, though; I heard hundreds of voices a day in passing, on the way to work, while slaving away in the records room, at the diner.   

The diner? 

My pinched expression suddenly cleared as I blinked at the door, the dots connecting in rapid-fire succession in my head.

"...August?" I ventured.

Something banged against the door in surprise. I took that as confirmation and sighed.

"What the hell?" I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose. "August W. Booth, right? The guy who took a weird interest in Sheriff Swan? What are you doing out here, man?" I fiddled with the hem of my jacket, recalling in that moment that August was other - he hadn't been in Storybrooke all this time. But he was here now, he hadn't left; did that count for anything? "Do you... am I right in guessing you're up to speed on all the strange happenings of our little town? Or is my cryptic question going right over your head?"

If he wasn't aware of the curse, then I was doubly curious as to why he'd come here in the first place, and what he'd wanted with Emma back then. Her being the Savior, I could see her attracting freaks from all corners of the world (our world, though, not this alien one), so if August was one of those freaks... there was a chance he understood what had just transpired.

August didn't answer for a time. I didn't blame him, really, but my patience was wearing thin, and it was dark, and there were so many other things I could have been doing right now if only I hadn't thought running through the woods was the best way to spend my time--

The door swung open.  

And, yeah, I supposed August knew about lovely little curse - because he was now made completely out of wood.   

Long chapter, as promised!

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