Post-curse check in with woodenass.
The sheer number of problems the town was facing with the end of the curse (and the beginning of magic working it's way through Storybrooke) equally amazed and pissed off Emma. There were the happy problems; specifically those related to reunions and the jumble of memories that needed to be sorted through. There were the serious problems; the ones
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"Open the door before I kick it in." At least with that warning, she could say she had tried. They couldn't expect her to leave Pinocchio on his own before she saw that he was alright. Her definition of "alright" at this point in time was better than she had seen him last; not made of wood, or partially made of wood. Able to walk, talk, and function as a human being again. She could check one of those things off just from hearing his voice, and another from the knowledge that he had gotten up to lock the door, but it wasn't enough. After everything she had put him through, and everything he had put her through, Emma needed to know that they had both made it out relatively unscathed.
Physically, anyway. Mentally and emotionally, she would never dare to hope for that much.
"Come on, August. If you're mad that I didn't believe you about the curse, at least say it to my face."
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August perched on the end of the bed, fiddling with a pen, twisting it around and around in his fingers. Pens were so functional. Regularly hexagonal around the circumference and only slightly gnawed. It even had its cap. He'd had this pen, the lone survivor of a pack of ten, since Arlington.
He was fully-dressed -- he'd even shrugged on his jacket an hour ago in preparation for leaving the room. Sighing, August crossed the six feet to the door and cracked it open. His body filled the gap, protectively. "I'm not mad at you. And it seems you believed anyway."
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"My kid was dying, I would have believed anything." It was more than that, but it was also as simple as that. Henry had proven that the curse was real, and she would have done anything to save him. Her desperation had also prompted the return of what few memories she had of the other world. She had played those thoughts over and over since the curse was broken, and each time, she came up with a new question that she didn't know how to ask.
"Are you seriously going to do this? Because everyone else in Storybrooke is looking for friends and family, which means there are at least two people here who are looking for you." But they didn't know who he was, did they? "You can't stay in there forever."
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"Do what?" August sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I'm not going to stay in here forever. For one, it's not really my style." A weak attempt at a joke, but he was trying. Sometimes dealing with people got hard; his habit was to retreat, but Emma was making that difficult. And even if he decided to be a total coward and quit Storybrooke entirely, it would be hard to make it past the city limits without meeting someone who wanted to bend his ear.
"Look, I haven't got family, except for you and my father, and my father --" He shrugged helplessly. "I was seven when I got here with you. I helped him out when I could since I got into town, but he didn't even know who I was. I'm thirty-five now, I don't know if he even likes me. Everyone else I knew is probably busy and well shot of me. No one's looking for me but you."
He paused. "I'm sorry I laid it so heavily on you. The information about the curse. I should've been around more, eased you into it. But I fucked up and didn't have time. I'm sorry."
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If he hadn't started talking about the curse, she wouldn't have pushed past him. When he did, she practically shoved him as she stepped into the room, looking around to see the state of things. She was looking for packed bags and a boxed up typewriter. Any sign that he was going to do what she would have wanted to do in his place. When she didn't find it, Emma sighed and took a seat on the edge of his bed. "Yeah, it was definitely a lot to take." It would have been a lot regardless of when he had told her about it. "But I get what you were trying to do. It shouldn't have been your responsibility to make me believe."
Emma couldn't be mad at a seven year-old boy for getting out when he had an opportunity to. And she couldn't be mad at his father for doing everything in his power to protect his son. As for her parents, it wasn't anger that she felt towards them, but she still had those questions. The ones she didn't know how to ask. The ones with answers she wasn't ready to hear.
"The way I see it, we're stuck in this together. I mean, I was what, five minutes old when my parents sent me away? My mother - who I've told things to that you should not ever tell your mother - thought of me as a friend, and my father barely knows me as the town deputy. I'm going to need someone to commiserate with, and you owe me that much."
Then there was the other side of it, the one that might make him feel guilty enough to stick around. "You know, if you don't find your father, eventually he's going to show up at the station and ask me to find you."
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"It's different. It's not like she was your mother when you were young. You can be friends now. There's nothing to feel weird about." He closed the door behind her and leaned against the jamb. "Wouldn't it be weirder to treat a woman your own age, who never got a chance to raise you, like a mom?" A mom, not your mom, because really, how the hell would either of them know exactly how to treat anyone like their mom? August's mom was a tree and Emma's was a near-stranger old enough to be her sister, and the foster mother August had been placed with the longest reminded him unpleasantly of Mrs. Bates.
At the mention of his father, he shifted uncomfortably against the door and crossed his arms, torn between evasion and self-respect. August was no stranger to guilt. It was part of why he found Catholicism and Judaism weirdly cathartic in literature, though it was difficult to believe in either when he knew for certain that the only person who'd chosen him for his tasks was his father, and the only person who could save him was Emma. Still, the aesthetics were appealing, the art admirable and the fatalism a bittersweet salve. Unlike many, the easiest way out of this guilt trip was just to sidestep it. "I'll go see him, if it'll save you a few minutes explanation. Presumably that's not why you broke in here, though," he commented wryly.
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"I woke up in the cell with Leroy across from me and Marco on the other side of the bars. He said it was good that I was there for Henry. That he would give anything for a son, and that he'd wanted one for years. Said it wasn't meant to be." Truthfully, Emma hadn't come by to give August a pep talk about his father, but given what he had said, she wasn't about to withhold information that might put his mind at ease. Marco or Gepetto - whatever his name was and whatever life he was forced into - would want him. She wouldn't even be surprised if he had already figured out August's identity. The age and interests might have clicked with him.
"But I came by to make sure you were back to normal." Her version of normal, regardless of what his natural state might have been. "And to give you a heads up. It looks like Storybrooke's a little more magical now than it was a few days ago. It came here all at once, and it's keeping a lot of people up at night." It was keeping Emma up at night. She knew that Regina would stop at nothing to get Henry back, and more likely than not, she had all of her magic to use in that fight. "Things are probably going to get worse before they get better." Wasn't that always the way it worked?
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