LET THE LIGHT IN

You crawl your way into the wardrobe and it feels like your body his splitting open with pain.

"Just a moment, Emma, please, please."

Even your voice is barely recognizable, rough and breathless, on fire with desperation, but the life inside you, you might swear, listen to your plea, because the contraptions slow down as you curl inside and close the wooden door.

In the dark, your hands clutch around your stomach and your eyes close and the only thought in your head is that you are leaving James behind, to the curse, to Regina's malice, and it breaks your heart.

But at least you get to keep Emma safe and that is the most important thing, it has to be.

I'll find you, twenty-eight years from now, and then I and our daughter will save you. We will be the family we were supposed to be in the beginning.

Twenty-eight years. It feels like eternity.

Later, when you crawl out on the side of the strange, black-paved path and you discover Pinocchio made the trip with you, there's no time to be angry. You are giving birth and the little boy looks terrified, holding on your arm and begging you to let him stay with you, to forgive Gepetto, to forgive him, to not leave him alone.

The thought of leaving or resenting Pinocchio never comes into your head, not in that sad and bitter moment when you realize that James could have been with you, that no separation was really necessary, not in the long years later, when you raise your daughter without a father but with a brother.

Gepetto is whole another matter. You just don't understand why he did it – or maybe you do and you just don't care, in the face of his blatant betrayal. Your anger is something you ignore and strive to be free of, but every time Emma asks of her dad, every time there's a first James is missing, every time you see a whole family at the park and remember this might have been you and yours, the pain you had forgotten returns full force, always stinging and forceful, always alive.

And you get angry all over again, even if you fight tooth and nail so your children don't need to see that part you that is turning hard.

You wonder about Blue. Why didn't she tell you there was place for two? You look back and you think of the odd glances between her and Gepetto, you know she has to have noticed. You trusted her.

I was so naïve.

She tarnished a bit of your faith in goodness. For Emma you will be stronger, wiser, more cautious with your goodwill and trust in future.

Pinocchio turns to be your saving grace.

There are metal carriages, in this new worlds, and so many devices whose working is alien to you – they look magical, but they can't to be- and people are very, very different here too.

It's not just the way they dress, speak, behave (it is all so alien) toward each other. The absence of magic, of that mysterious element that remains out of the reason' reach, made them overly sensitive to anything that remotely resembles a deviation from norm. You stick out among them, and by your confusion and manner of speech and clothing, their doctors are ready to suppose you are mentally imbalanced, abused or escaped from a cult almost as soon they delivered Emma.

It's fortunate, that you have Pinochio with you in hospital, that his sneaky little ears pick up backroom conversations and you is quick and furtive in reporting.

You and him are folk stories in this world, and you have to think fast, to spin a story they will believe. You can't risk

You say you had a fight with your husband and he abandoned you and your son on the road and no, he was not violent, and you won't name him or press charges. Your name is Mary, your son is August, and you were dressed for a masked party.

August spins other sob stories to random nurses and he lies better, he is more inventive and endearing and convincing. He moves the nuns that serve at the hospital into taking up to their side, into helping.

You are so grateful you are not completely alone in this, so amazed you escaped a danger you had not, again so naively, ever taken in account.

Nuns take you in, and you learn to melt in the background and hide what you don't know while you push August forward for gaining the information you need – he gets always away scot-free with asking the most outrageous things, out of the virtue of being a child with sunny disposition and an imaginative mind.

You?

You con your way through, almost like you did in your bandit days, and you focus on Emma and August, who feels every day more like your real son.

Why not, in the end?

He never had a mother and you can't risk opening up too much to anyone else. The risk is always high- the fear Emma might be taken away from you if you misstep never leaves you.

Mary Margaret – a shy mouse of girl who tries hard to never be in the limelight and hides the steel in her spine and her mind with unfaltering paranoia - is the new you. You hate it.

You change a number of different humble, under-the-radar jobs as you adapt to this new world before you can consider it safe settling as seam-mistress first, theatre costume designer later.

You dream of James often the first years.

Except in those dreams he is called David, married to a princess Abigal who is named Kathryn, and he does not remember you.

At first you convince yourself it is only nightmares, but there's such a pattern to the dreams, a clarity of detail that is difficult to discredit completely, and the … aching pull to your soul, over everything else, that screams at you that True Love Magic, so powerful in your kingdom and not enough in this one, has not let go of you at all.

You miss magic. You hate magic.

You miss James so hard that if you don't cry yourself to sleep every night is only because you don't want August and Emma to see (or anyone to think you are pathologically depressed).

You awake every morning knowing he is becoming more someone else, more Kathryn's husband, more David, and there's nothing at all you can do about it. Even your most cherished memories mock you with their candy-coated sweetness, their perfect and unfading color, the sharpness of the faith you are lost with every witnessing that this is not a land with happily even afters.

People don't believe in or prize the same way the power of love and friendship here and gods, this is not the place you would choose to raise Emma and August, if you had a choice.

But you push through, because you too, are becoming every day more Mary Margaret, shrew and disciplined theatre dress-maker, and less Princess Snow.

James, am I losing you?

You just can't believe that when this is over you and him will be too different to fit. Strangers in all but your true names, even after the curse is lifted. In your best moments, you have faith you will fall in love all over again, anyone you become, anyone he becomes.

You trust in the power of true love.

It does not stop the pain, when you dream of him as another man, with a wife he tries to do his best to.

A wife he makes love to while your bed is empty and you can't help wanting it that way.

The curse tells him he is married to Kathryn, your mind tells you he is cheating on you, your heart hurts for your separation, but James too, for the violation of his vows and feelings that feels like a rape almost.

In your worst moments, you don't like the cold and cutting edges Mary Margaret is growing where Snow used to be soft and idealistic. You play the devoted mother, the attentive friend that listens instead of talking about herself, the free-spirited woman who is naturally reserved about her off-work existence.

Only with your children, you feel like you are truly yourself and not a con-woman. But then they are just like you, fast on their feet when it is time to move, hard to trust outsiders, but oh, so good to recognize when someone is lying or hiding something. They are good children and they fill you with pride every time you see how loyal they are to each other , how smart they are shaping up to be.

They are your world and they are enough. Being their mom makes you so happy, too, that often you may forget the reality you left behind almost entirely and just exist there, in a golden moment where you are just a single mother and they are just your children and Emma won't ever need being the savior.

Still, you and August keep her informed on magic, slip her books on your true stories and this world wicca magic, just in case, and you tell stories about James, even if she will turn a deaf ear to any reminder that August is not her real brother.

You don't get a day older than you were when you jumped realms.

You assume it is the dreams, the magic of true love that still keeps you tethered to the man you lost. There's no other explanation and none to ask any questions to, but this is part of why your daughter never stops believing your story as she grows up.

Your little family doesn't spend more than three years in the same state, but then that is not necessarily a bad thing. The three of you enjoy the adventure, the exploration of a realm you know you will eventually leave.

No point in getting attached when you know the clock is ticking and you can't grow roots.

Twenty-eight years is all you got in this place.

When August moves out, it is a … surprise, to tell it nicely. He's eighteen and you have no idea of the whys or the hows. He cleared out his room while you were at work and Emma was at school, and when you return there's just a letter on the kitchen counter, thanking you for taking care of him and explaining he needs to find his way now you don't need him anymore.

You are devastated. You were so taken with this idea of him as your son, you never even considered he maybe never saw you as his mother.

You don't understand how you never noticed, how Mary Margaret, that notices everything, that tries so hard to be perfect, has failed you so completely.

Emma, on other hand?

She blames him, the whole male species, the world, her fate as the savior. For a couple of years she holds on that anger so much that you are worried and desperate to keep it and *her* in check.

You forget the dreams, James and Mary Margaret. You resurrect Snow , both the idealist and brazen outlaw to try to bring back to you a daughter that fights you every step of the way.

She adored her older brother, never thought he saw her as a charge and a Savior and nothing else and the more you try convincing Emma your family was real as it lasted, the more she rejects you. The more she questions what you will do if instead of becoming the white witch your realm needs, she chooses to stay only a juvenile delinquent.

She testes you, claws into your fears about her father with bitter insinuations, and all you do is holding onto her, never giving up.

She runs away with a boy, a Neal and she learned so well from you that it is hard to track her down, and for the first time in years, you feel completely lost, with no direction about where you are supposed to go from here.

You track her down eventually, thanks to a private eye.

She is living with this Neal in Tallahassee and she is pregnant, which is last development you might have imagined .

You are hurt that she didn't tell you, that she just left and cut you off from her life. She argues that she won't be the savior, no matter what, especially now, with her child on the way. She begs you to forget the curse, her father, the past.

We can be a family. A real family this time.

Neal holds on that word 'curse' and demand an explanation. Incredibly enough, everything gets even crazier from that instant onwards.

As fate will have it, he turns out to be the Dark One' son.

Emma is incensed to discover she has been lied to, at least until she is reminded she is guilty of a similar omission.

All Snow White feels is hope.

Surely, this has to be a good omen for the battle to come.

Years pass, you keep holding out to see August again. The son of your heart never even writes an email to the addresses he should still remember.

It pains you in a way you don't know how to deal with.

You still write him long emails, remind him that there is going to be always a place for him if he wants to return, tell him about your life and Emma's life and about Henry's growing up vivacious and sharp-tongued. Lament whether Neal will never propose.

Occasionally you get worried about whether something bad happened to him, and you realize the anger you used to feel toward Gepeto died somewhere in those long years. You can't imagine not being able to tell him, when you see him, that you don't know what has been of child he left with you.

The PI finds him for you in Tokyo, employed in questionable business but alive and hale.

You stop writing, but you keep the portfolio and the pictures. For Gepeto.

You don't date, and you never stop feeling married.

David you learn to know as a distant but familiar figure of your dream-world, only accessible in glimpses, snapshots of intense moments of his day .

You love him in ways you don't fully understand, but you resent him a little too, because by now your memories of James grew remote, pictures of a lifetime ago, a youth whose appearance and energy you preserve even if you grew out of it. James is in the past, David is frozen in a moment that constantly repeats itself, unchanging and unable to have any other experiences than the routine Regina picked for him.

You instead feel like you have been so many women and so many masks since you got out of that wardrobe.

You became a mother and a grandmother (in public, a younger sister and a loving aunt). You have your little business, an online shop selling customized costumes and wedding dresses that goes on pretty well.

Right at the center of your heart there's an empty space, where James used to be. You miss him, still, but it is a colder ache now, and you almost don't know what you are supposed to do with the feeling.

You used to feel like Kathryn had stolen away your years, the yearsyou were supposed to spend together as husband and wife, with James.

You have been jealous, envious, pained, angry, defeated and humiliated that someone else was getting to realize with him the dreams you first made together, even if you knew they weren't happy as the curse would have not allowed it.

Now, if anything, you feel sad at how much you lost, that another is more familiar and intimate with his secrets and feelings and little habits than you are.

What you had with him was a miracle, and you hope it can repeated, and yet… you question the possibility in the same breath. The dreams used to come more often, once, almost every night.

Now it is twice a month, at the most.

But you look young still, younger than you daughter, so there's a chance … there has to be.

It's your insides, not your outside that makes you to doubt.

You are not the Snow James knew, pure and naïve and optimistic and so very full of unshakable faith and ideals. Life in this dimension made you harsher, more sharp-edged, almost cynical and cut-throat about it.

You don't see yourself as an heroine anymore, someone who should by duty and character stand up for all that is true and right, be a role model for her people. You won't ever shy from the fight, and you will stand by Emma when her turn comes but honestly all you want is your family, your friends, and a good life made of little things that matter.

James knew you as a girl.

This is the woman you became, the woman maybe only Emma understands, Emma who is now your wonderful child and your best friend too, all in one amazing person you might never to not see as the most important presence in your life.

Twenty eight birthdays, and it is time to the end the curse, finally.

After so much waiting, it is hard for you, to accept the curse it is finally to be broken. Once it felt like the promise-threat of it was always hanging over your heads.

Henry is in a frenzy of excitement over it, Neal is less than enthused at the idea you might be soon seeing his papa (and how strange it was still, to think of that particular family relation), Emma is worried and having you quizzing her on this or that wicca book in her spare time.

You remember Ella, Red and all those faces that were so dear to you, whose absence you felt almost physically for years and you feel such a fire inside, at the idea you are going to see them all soon, that you are going to be Snow White again, in a different , hopefully wiser way this time and not the Mary Margaret whose past nobody remembers. You are going home. You are going to take back your life. You will keep your promise to James and you will see him meeting his beautiful daughter for the first time.

You are starting another chapter of life, with all of the people you love, and Regina is not going to take it from you. She can't, because she does not know how strong Emma is, how enduring you became, and how unbreakable you are together.

The only thing that is missing is a sign pointing to the right place.

Emma and Neal work as a bail bondspeople team… it's a career that keeps their schedules flexible but also a little unpredictable. It's you that takes care of Henry when they are out on a job.

The night of Emma's twenty-eight birthday, it is one of such occasions, and you and Henry are waiting for them to return, preparing a nice family dinner.

There's soft jazz music in the background and you baked a chocolate cake with the firm motherly determination that tonight nobody will bring up any evil queens or magic or the special significance of the date. You will give Emma a normal night to bask in her family's love and celebration of her birth.

And it will be a perfect dinner, despite Henry's implacable attempts to distract you from the sauce.

When the doorbell rings, you expect Emma and Neal, late as usual. You open the door, you find August instead, handsome and grinning, looking remorseless and reckless and so very grown up you want to hug him, even if you don't know whether the gesture would be welcome.

You can't say anything but his name. There are so many things you want to ask, and you have missed him, this son that one day decided you couldn't be his mother anymore.

He became a man and you weren't with him. You didn't want you to be.

There's an heavy tome with a lucid, red leathery cover in his arms. 'Once Upon A Time' is spelled in capital golden letters over it – your eyes are drawn to it instantly and you don't know why except your senses are drawn to the book as by magic.

"Mom, we are going to Storybrooke."

August smirks, voice warm and flamboyant, and you snap out of it it.

You roll your eyes and step aside to let him in. "I can't believe the gall of you, Pinocchio."

You have so many lectures saved for this moment, he will forget his name before Emma even thinks to come home.

When Emma does get home, it's fireworks. August ends up apologizing a lot, although he admits to having no good reason for the way he left except the desire to see the world by himself before returning to their homeland, and the fear you might have used the Princess card to make him to stay.

It is no excuse for the long silence that followed afterwards, you and Emma know, but nobody brings it up. In the end, you can't force him to be part of the family if that's not how he feels .

Besides, maybe it had to go like this. August had to leave to open the way to Storybrooke, so they could all return together.

You are surprised at amount of things you are leaving behind now you, even if leaving it was always the plan. You put the shop on a break, refund the orders you won't get to finish. You give back the apartment keys, leave little gifts for the friends you won't see again, find a new home for your parakeets and the plants you loved to keep on your window.

Every gesture is a goodbye that brings you closer to home, to him.

I am coming for you, James. I found you.

It is hard to contain the impatience, the sheer joyful want you have to book a plane and go to Maine.

You dreams are silent, but it's okay. You don't need them anymore. Soon you will have the real thing. And maybe there's a little part of you that hopes –despite knowing it will be disappointed- that you built David's life all on your own, that he was never another woman's husband, only yours.

What matters anyway?

Everything is starting again. Your heart is full and there's no pain anymore. You will see him soon, you will talk to him in person, ask all the questions you stored up inside you in these years. No more distance, no more doubts, no more waiting.

Truly, your heart has never left him. Not for a single moment. Not even in the worst days, those you didn't know who you were anymore, or who he was or how was it even possible, true love or not, for you two to get back together after this and start again right where you began.

You still are not sure how it is possible, to be honest, assuming he has been fake-married to someone else for much, much longer than the entire time that ran between your first meeting and your forced separation.

But your heart is not listening to reason nowadays, it looks in one direction alone.

I am coming home, to magic and to happy endings and miracles, and everything is possible, even this. Especially this. James, can you feel it? Can you feel me? I never stopped feeling you. You were always in me, not just in my memory or in our vows or our daughter's eyes, but part of me . Am I still part of you?

You don't want a rational answer to that question. You don't want any answer that you can't read on his face the precise instant he remembers because you feel it, that if only you could see him now, you would be able to tell if he is still yours, the way you are still his, after all these years.

And if he is not… well, you are not quite ready to deal with it and you don't know what you will do, if he turns away, toward Kathryn … Abigail, or anyone else, or if he just decides this person you are now is not someone he can love like he did once.

Either way, you are ready for an answer.

In Storybrooke, he is the first person you want to look for, but you have not any pictures, and you don't know where you begin from. The first tentative stop in town is a diner that turns out to be Granny's and to have Red as waitress.

Rumpelstiltskin is among the costumers too, drinking coffee and looking much more human than you ever thought he was able looking like, and Neal 's gaze freezes on him like he is hypnotized.

Emma glances at him and then you, silently asking confirmation to the suspicion arising in her mind, and then she is squeezing her boyfriend's elbow in sympathy and bee-lining for that particular table before anyone can stop her.

Neal follows after her like he is supposed to protect her from his father, and you hold Henry gently to your side to prevent him from shadowing his parents.

We are already one messed up family.

Beside you, August smirks in constructed nonchalance even while he scans the scene for his father, and you are tempted to do the same, again, for James, but two steps away from you Emma is introducing herself to her future father-in-law and you seize the exact moment you might bet he is remembering himself, because his eyes change in some mysterious quality. You think you are already seeing what you want to see, not what is, instead…

"Bae?"

He mutters, gaze glazed over his son, so reminiscent of that I-am-not-quite-here veil you saw on occasion fall over seers ' eyes when they looked among worlds … or claimed to, anyway.

"Papa?"

Neal always said his father was beyond forgiveness, that he made his peace with his abandonment ages ago. Predictably it doesn't seem much like the truth now. There's so much unresolved hurt and resentment and affection loaded in that one word that you are surprised it can contain them all.

You are more surprised tough, that the most feared sorcerer of your homeland is leaning in to grasp his son' face in his hands, every line of his visage so moved that you are not sure how this man can be the same father Neal described as callously abandoning to an alien world.

Surely, there was a misunderstanding of some kind. This kind of commotion can't be feigned, not even by the Dark One. Hell, his pupils are incredibly dilated and shiny, you are not certain he is not about crying (not like you might blame him if he was).

"it's truly you. I found you at last."

He says, voice hitching on the words, then the recovers himself, lets go of his son to look around furtively … now that dark and threatening look aimed to all present is familiar enough.

"More like I found you, and not because I wanted to."

Neal brings back his attention on himself and you can't avoid thinking he is being harsher than he has to, but it is not your place to judge their … situation.

"Let's bring this out of here?"

Rumpelstiltskin asks,briskly, and something passes between father and son you don't quite read. It feels a lot like the silent communication thing you do with Emma on occasion, and it is freaky, but encouraging nonetheless, to see it between this particular duo.

You bring 'it' to the pawn shop, but it turns that all what 'Gold' wants is to do is to reunite with his son.

Literally. He keeps tuning everybody else out of conversation.

It would be sweet if not for the fact all you want is to find your husband.

Emma and Henry tough, are very amused.

August is waiting outside, watching the streets.

"You must understand, this was all done for you- "

"You had a whole country cursed to –to do what exactly? Say sorry?"

"Yes! And to raise you, and to keep our deal! As I promised, and I won't ever be sorry enough I didn't-"

"Can I just ask where I might find my husband? Then I'll let you have it in peace?"

Snow White The First never sounded so icy, but you are annoyed, tired, and impatient. It is not a good combination to keep up any pretense that you Are unchanged, and you are not sure you are interested in pretending, regardless.

James is at the hospital, in a coma.

He was in a car accident, coincidentally a few days ago. His 'wife' Kathryn got out of it without a scratch.

Out of the room, you may still hear Neal and his father hissing at each other, but the words blur together, you can't make a sense of anything. All you see, all you are aware of, is James in that white bed, looking asleep except he is not and…

Emma takes your hand, squeezes it, and it is the one thing you can draw the strength to stay on your feet from.

"Gran, it's like your fairytale in reverse – Henry chimes in, breaking the silence-You have to kiss him."

"Henry-"

Emma starts to reprimand him, but you stop her, pulling at your still joined hands.

"He's right. There was no power greater in our world than a true love kiss."

You can't believe it didn't occur you right away, but then, you spent years away from this… believing. You almost let it go entirely more than once - It hurt too much to hold on the faith and the memories, just to have the tide of dreams bringing you the news you least wanted- but you always backtracked before long.

You could not forget or stop hoping for better or worse.

You still believe in you and James, in the magic and love that kept your souls in tune despite the distance, the many years apart, a curse, a false marriage, and many disillusions that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with you.

You believe.

You press your lips against his softly, slowly, just a caress begging him to awake.

Magic ignites – you feel the spark of it, candy sweet and lovely and warm, spreading from your mouth to his, from your heart to his, from your body to his body.

Soul to soul, self to self, a star exploding in between.

"Snow?"

He smiles your name as his eyelashes tremble, like he has been dreaming of you all time. Maybe he has, just like you.

Now we can say we will *always *find each other and know beyond all doubt it is not just words.

"I am here James. I will always be."