Emma Nolan has always known exactly what she wanted. Fiercely determined, once her course was set then no amount of persuasion, gentle or forceful, could sway her from her self-appointed goal. When she was 7 she decided she was going to join the police force so she could ride in police cars and catch bad guys just like her father, David. She packed her suitcase, not the one with the buttercups on it, because that was too girly for a future police academy star, and she made it all the way from Storybrooke to Ravenswood before her father's patrol car caught up with her and David scooped her up and brought a fuming Emma home.

David loved his daughter beyond words and he was outrageously happy that she had stayed in her tomboy phase far longer than he could have ever hoped. He encouraged the tree climbing, the wooden sword battles, the dislike of frilly frocks and the love of comfy, baggy trousers. David was a man of vision and he could see the gorgeous young woman waiting to burst through the perpetual dirty smudges on Emma's cheeks. He called her his 'Duckling' and thanked the heavens each night that Emma still showed no interest in bringing up two words that would strike terror to his heart and put grey in his hair; boys and dating.

There was a reason for that.

Emma watched as each of her girlfriends turned 14 and boy crazy, virtually overnight. She watched over the next couple of years as her elder cousin, Zelena, earned herself the particularly unflattering nickname of 'The Town Bike' after she'd worked her way through the football, basketball and, too everyone's shock, the chess teams. Zelena was banished to Kansas halfway through school term, leaving her reputation behind and taking a bun in the oven with her. Emma was determined not to get tarred with the same brush so she kept away from boys.

This got a little more difficult after puberty had its way with her and left in its wake a generous set of curves. She grew into her lanky limbs and her rear end filled out into something rather spectacular. Emma may have wanted to stay away from boys but she drew them like magnets. Fortunately she was able to keep them at bay. Having a father with a badge and a shotgun helped with some of that, but she grew more gorgeous every day and the boys would just pant whenever she walked past. Through it all she held that laser-like focus of hers to excel at her schoolwork and not be tainted by her erstwhile cousin's reputation. Instead, Emma was the 'Ice Queen'.

No-one can escaped their teenage hormones entirely and when Emma saw him for the first time, she suddenly understood all that fuss her girlfriends made about boys.

Killian Jones. He arrived at school one autumn day, his family having moved over from Ireland to take over the fishing fleet. He was, by the harsh and judgemental standards of teenagers, a nerd. He wore glasses and t-shirts with Marvel super heroes on them. He was great at science and excelled at maths, so of course he was tortured by the jocks. He was moved into Emma's class when his home room teacher came down with measles and no substitute could be found. Head down, he had all but slunk into the chair next to Emma.

"Please show, Killian, where we are up to, Emma," instructed Miss French.

Emma looked across and into the too blue eyes of Killian Jones, and was nearly knocked off her seat. One second she was following the text on DNA and the next her mind was off and down the road to damnation. Emma had inherited many traits from her father, including the one of vision. She didn't just see Killian Jones, nerd with the 'Coke-bottle bottom' glass lenses and the pocket protector; she saw future Killian Jones who would grow into his gangly limbs with a lithe but solid frame. The glasses would come off and the contacts would go in and the sharp jaw would be covered with just the right amount of scruff that would leave marks in all the right places.

One glance was all it took for Emma Nolan to add a new goal to her life plan. She watched as Killian blushed at her intent gaze. He looked flustered and ran his hand through his thick black hair. She almost felt sorry for him. He was in her sights now. 'Poor bastard won't know what hit him', Emma thought as she felt her mouth curve into a glorious smile.

'When you know, you know,' Emma's mother had once told her, to which Emma had scoffed most vehemently.

Sometimes it was wise to listen to mothers.

Emma knew nothing about Killian except the odd tidbit she'd heard around school. He may have been an insufferable prig, a sexist prat or an obnoxious know-it-all. She had no clue. It was ridiculous the way the feeling of 'rightness' washed through every part of her. It was fantastically fast and completely impossible to feel so much from one look, but that day in class she swore she saw her future with Killian lay itself out in front of her like a roadmap. Once that idea that was fixed in her head, there would be no getting it out.

He was shy and he was clumsy. He was also, apparently, completely oblivious to the signals she was sending him that she was very, very interested in getting to know him. Starting with going with him to the Founders' Day school dance so everyone would know she had laid claim to him, because she knew once the other girls realised what a hot piece of work he was a hair's breadth away from being, there would be all out war to get hold of him. Emma intended to get in and grab her bargain early.

More direct action was obviously required to achieve the desired outcome. So she contacted Ruby, who called her boyfriend, Victor, who was Killian's only friend. Victor arranged to catch up with Killian for dinner at Grannies so they could start on their Social Studies project.

So here Killian sat in a corner booth at Grannies waiting for Victor, who had called to say he was going to be very late. Killian was desperately trying to eat his meal in peace while he waited for his friend, but Emma was seated across the room with her parents. She'd been torturing him from the moment he had come in and sat down. She would write a note and have Ruby, the waitress, deliver it. He would read it, blush, scratch his ear and sigh; entirely convinced that the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen was playing some awful trick on him.

Despite his status as school outcast, even he knew that Emma Nolan did not date, ever. All that gorgeousness was going to waste, but he had no illusions that he would be the one to change that. He just allowed himself to enjoy the time he spent close to her in the one class they shared and tried not to stare at her whenever they were in the school common areas. Over the last week she had been trying to engage him in conversation and asked to sit with him at lunch, but all words caught in his throat and he usually had to hide from the jocks at lunch. To see her in the diner had been a joyful surprise, but four of his worst tormentors from school were also having dinner and he was trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.

He could feel Emma's eyes bore into him from 30 feet away. She was clearly waiting for a response to her notes. Killian was flummoxed. Did he risk answering the notes only to find out it was some cruel trick? He looked up and his mouth dropped open and his blood vacated his brain. Emma had dipped her finger in the cream on her sundae and, looking right at him, she ran the tip of tongue across her top lip then she slowly, sensuously licked her finger clean.

Then she smirked.

Unfortunately, David had witnessed the entire episode and all his comfortable illusions about his 'boy-free' Duckling were now dead on the floor and his peace of mind was dressing inappropriately for the funeral. A shadow of his former self, he announced they were going home. Mary-Margaret, Emma's mother, patted him on the shoulder sympathetically and ushered him out the door. So lost in his puddle of misery was he, that David barely acknowledged his daughter's telling them she was going to the bathroom and would catch them up.

As soon as her parents were outside, Emma sauntered over to Killian. He swallowed so hard that the movement made a drop of sweat fall from his fevered brow onto the right lens of his glasses. He took then off to clean them but his hands shook as he watched Emma approach. He fumbled and tried to catch the glasses before they fell but all his motor skills had deserted him, the traitors. The glasses landed at Emma's feet.

Emma threw Killian a look that would have been at home in Gomorrah as she bent at the waist to pick them up. She sat down next to him. Lifting the glasses to her mouth she huffed on them, then with a sultry pout she lifted her skirt just enough to rub the lenses against her bare thigh.

Killian may have actually stopped breathing at that point.

Once she deemed the glasses clean, she leaned into his personal space so their faces were only inches apart and slid them back on his head. Just to make sure there was no mistaking her interest, because Emma was nothing if not thorough in all things, she dropped a kiss on the end of his nose. Drawing back to look him in the eye, she said, "You, me, school dance. Right?"

Having lost the facility for speech, Killian just nodded, obediently.

"Good. Glad we got that sorted out." Booping his nose with her index finger, which made Killian almost go cross-eyed, she added, "Your ass is mine, Jones. Best accept that now." Giving him a smile that could rival the sun, she swept out the door to find her mother was frowning at the sight of her husband knocking his forehead against a lamp post.

"You got longer than most dads before she discovered boys, David, be grateful," Mary-Margaret said.

Emma shook her head. "Not boys!'' she told them derisively. "A boy. One particular boy," she apprised her parents. "THE boy. I'm not Zelena, Dad, you don't need to worry. I know exactly what I want and who I want it with." Tossing a stray lock of hair over her shoulder, she was off up the street with her usual purposeful stride to the car.

"It?" Came David's strangled cry as he slumped to the ground. "She wants 'it' with him."

As it turned out, Emma got all sorts of 'its' with Killian and each one added a new grey hair to David's head. He had quite the grey thatch ten years later as he walked his Duckling down the aisle to surrender her to her beaming groom (who no longer wore glasses or a pocket protector).