Chapter Text
“An old fashioned, please,” said the man in the gray suit, not bothering to make eye contact. Oh, how I loathed that. I just couldn’t stand people who wouldn’t look right into the eyes of the people serving them. Really, that was the only thing I disliked about bartending. The weird hours, the belligerent drunks—I could deal with those: I had always been a bit of a night owl, and I had a decent enough rapport with the drunks and could usually talk them down and out, but I knew that I could break a nose or inflict a swift kick to the groin if necessary. People didn’t get belligerent much, anyway, just passionate. I couldn’t really blame them; alcohol did the same thing to me. Mostly, if they weren’t there for casual drinks with friends, they were alone, tired, and exasperated with their lives. They just wanted a little liquid comfort before going home to face whatever else they dealt with when the workday was over.
I only worked weekdays 10pm to 6am, which was simply a result of my longstanding friendship with the owner, August, who I had met in the foster system. He and I met as children, and ended up being handed over to the same rich couple when we were seven. After a month-long trial period, they’d kept him and dumped me back at the orphanage with the excuse that I was too argumentative and stubborn, but August had managed to contact me a few years later and we had been friends ever since.
I never really found a family that suited me until I came to work at August’s bar, which was named The Wooden Boy. He’d been attempting to reference Pinocchio, his favorite book as a child, but most people just read it as some sort of innuendo. Not that August cared. He was perfectly content with his business, the regular clientele, the people who worked for him, and the fact that we were content basically running the show so that he could write his novels (he'd already had three published and was about to go into a final edit of his final draft of the fourth). He just laughed at the name right along with them. It also seemed quite ironic that their competition, a seedy bar downtown, was called The Rabbit Hole, a reference to Alice in Wonderland.
“Are you seeing this guy?” asked Robin, the other bartender, under his breath as he towel-dried a beer stein, nodding toward the man in the suit. “Tell me he didn’t order an Old Fashioned.”
“No, you’re spot on. Clearly, we have found the reincarnation of Don Draper.”
Robin shook his head, a bemused smile across his face. “People in this town watch too much television.”
“Including us, apparently,” I said, dropping two cherries into the drink and sliding it down to the Mad Man, who nodded in thanks. Robin snorted.
"He’s even got the whole broody, deep thing down,” he said, and I couldn’t help but smirk. Working with Robin was always my favorite. He was in his mid-thirties and had grown up in England, moving to Maine after his wife, Marian, passed away. He had wanted his son to grow up with the influence of his wife’s family, who lived here in Storybrooke, since he didn’t have much family of his own. That seemed to be a pattern with August and the people he hired: people who belonged to no one. Robin was the only one with a kid, though. His son, Roland, was four years old, and the apple of Robin’s eye.
“Hey,” Robin said suddenly, “do you think she will come in again?”
“’She’?” It took me a minute. “Madam Mayor? You’ve really got a thing for her, don’t you?”
Robin smiled, which clearly meant that he did, not that his actions didn’t make it obvious enough. No matter how many drinks he had queued up to mix for people, he always stopped to make the Mayor’s first. Emma understood why: the woman was beautiful, intelligent, and sophisticated. Strange, since Robin was more the rugged, firewood-chopping, cabin-in-the-woods sort of guy (in fact, he and Roland lived in a cabin in the woods), but they flirted like crazy every time she came in and had mad chemistry. I hadn’t spoken to her much, but she seemed nice enough, and had consistently ordered apple martinis since the first time she came in.
“What’s not to like?” he asked. “She’s mysterious. I can’t figure her out. But she’s kind. I can see it, deep down. And I think she’s quite lonely.”
“You do have it bad,” I said.
“Says the resident cynic.”
“I’ll stop being cynical when someone gives me a reason to.” I started to wipe down the counter.
“What about Mary Margaret and David?” he asked, referring to my schoolteacher roommate and her longtime boyfriend.
I shook my head. “They don’t count. They have one of those fairy tale romances, one in a million. Those don’t happen to just anyone. They aren’t just regular people.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Robin asked with a hearty laugh.
“Never mind,” I said. I didn’t want to get into the semantics of Mary Margaret and David’s storybook romance. Met in high school, went to prom together, fell madly in love, but swore to live independently for a while so that they could grow and mature into an adult relationship. Went to colleges in different parts of the state, maintained the long distance relationship until they graduated and managed to both get jobs in Storybrooke, and then began to date just like any other adult couple, and it was only a matter of time before an engagement was announced. Basically, they’d done everything right, and deep down, I envied them a great deal. But I wasn’t about to let Robin know that.
It was time to close down, and luckily Robin had already washed out all the glasses and August had already done all the counting so that we could get out earlier. Sure enough, shortly after Don Draper-wannabe left, August came out looking satisfied. “Another good night for The Wooden Boy,” he announced. “Now let’s get out of here.”
It was Thursday night—well, technically, it was six o’clock Friday morning—and I only had one more night of work before the weekend. I bundled up in my favorite red jacket and said goodbye to my coworkers before heading out to my car, a vintage yellow VW Beetle, my prized possession. It had been the first big thing I purchased after getting a job and an apartment and I loved it dearly, even though the air conditioning and stereo didn’t work: at least the heater did. The car roared to life, the engine’s steady rumble a comfort, and I started the short drive back to the loft just in time to catch the sunrise.
Mary Margaret was already awake, showered and dressed for work when I got home around a quarter past six. She had a cup of hot cocoa—complete with whipped cream and a cinnamon stick, our favorite way to drink it—waiting for me at my seat at the dining room table, and greeted me warmly. Mary Margaret was easily the kindest soul I knew. She was gentle, kind to everyone, and never raised her voice. Not only that, but she was beautiful, with smooth porcelain skin, a petite figure, warm brown eyes and black hair she kept in a pixie cut. She was truly beloved by all who knew her, and she always, always had a cup of cocoa waiting for me when I got home from work.
We had met when I first moved to Storybrooke, by pure chance. I had just moved from Boston, renting a room at the local inn and I saw her walking down the street and asked her where the nearest restaurant was, and she had said she was just on her way there and could show me. That led to friendly conversation, which led to eating dinner together (with David, of course), and by the end of the month she’d asked me if I wanted to move into the loft she’d been renting because it was so empty when she was there alone. It was all history from there.
“How was work?” she asked, as she always did, not out of habit but because she genuinely cared.
“It was good. Quiet night. Thursdays are usually pretty easy,” I said, taking a sip of the cocoa. “Man, that is good. Thank you.”
“Of course,” she said, sitting down at the table with her breakfast: a blueberry muffin, a vanilla yogurt, a few strawberries, and a strong cup of black tea.
“Today’s career day, right?”
“Right,” she said. “I’m looking forward to it; it’s the easiest day of the year for me.” She then covered her mouth as if she’d just said something downright naughty. I laughed.
“Oh! I forgot to ask, do you mind if David comes to dinner with us tonight?”
“You know I don’t mind.”
“Just making sure. I don’t want to be one of those women who has to bring her significant other everywhere.”
“Don’t worry, I’d let you know if you were, believe me,” I said, and she laughed.
“That’s what I love about you, Emma. You just cut right through the bologna,” she said, finishing off her yogurt. We proceeded to chitchat while she finished her breakfast, and then she was off, travel mug filled with tea in hand, to work. Our days typically went this way: I’d get home from work, have breakfast with her, sleep while she was at work, and then spend the afternoon with her before heading to work at eleven when she went to bed. It was a perfect schedule, really.
I finished my cocoa, washed out my mug, and had a quick bowl of cereal before showering, changing into pajamas, brushing my teeth and washing off my makeup. I climbed the stairs to my bedroom—Mary Margaret had the downstairs bedroom, mine was in the loft—and fell down flat on the bed, with all of its soft blue and white blankets. I snuggled under them, falling asleep easily against the cool, fluffy pillows.
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The ship rocked violently against the storm, waves splashing up onto the deck so that they were ankle-deep in water.
“Emma!” the man with blue eyes was yelling, his voice rough and ragged as he attempted to get to me, the tumult knocking him down and away any time he tried. “Emma, hang on.”
The ropes burned my hands. With the way my knuckles ached, I couldn’t hold on much longer, and I knew it, no matter how much I didn’t want to believe it.
“Emma, darling, please,” he begged, reaching for me, before I was thrown into the sea, waves crashing over me, pulling me down to the icy depths.
I awoke with a start, clutching at my pillows, and looked around the room. It took me a moment to realize that I was indeed fine, safe in my own bed. I got up shakily, and went downstairs to get a glass of water. Sunlight filtered in through the sheer white curtains Mary Margaret kept on the windows, and I suddenly felt very thankful for the blackout curtains I had in my room.
It had been the third time I’d had the dream of the shipwreck. I had no idea where it had come from, or why I kept dreaming of it, or who the man with blue eyes was, but I was sure it had to mean something. Why would I dream the same thing more than once if it didn’t? I stared at the glass of water, not sure if I wanted to drink it after having a dream about drowning, but went ahead and downed it before heading back upstairs and to bed.