The Huntsman and the Realm Jumper by helenluvsboo

Chapter 1: Jump

A month ago, if someone had told Emma Swan that, in four weeks, she would be planning to jump into a magical hat to go to a magical world to find her recently-deceased love, she would have spat nails and had them committed. Now she knows better.

"This is tricky," Jefferson, said, "You need to hit the right time and place, no screwing it up,"

"I understand," Emma replied, fingering the page torn from Henry's book, a sardonic grin twisting her mouth into a kaleidoscope of emotions.

"Visualize it exactly, down to the last detail," Jefferson said, "and you can't go wrong. The hat should take you exactly where and when you want" He licked his lips, hesitated, then ploughed on, "Remember to speak to him in his language, he is not Graham Humbert, Storybrooke Sherriff, but his true self, the man raised by wolves who lives by their rules."

"I got it, Jefferson, get out the hat already," Emma snapped.

This was her one chance to see Graham—The Huntsman—again before Rumpelstiltskin and Regina removed the magic from Storybrooke, and she wanted all the time she could possibly have. He wouldn't know her. She wanted him to.

"You have exactly two hours and fifteen minutes," Jefferson said, eyes narrow, "you have to be back before then, or—"

"—Or I will be trapped there forever, I get it," Emma growled.

Jefferson grinned, teeth flashing with his eyes in response to her tone, "Now you sound like a wolf."

Emma's mouth twisted into a sardonic grin, and she replied, "Thanks, I have been practicing."

He looked up sharply, eyes narrowed, but deigned not to comment, for once.

She quirked an eyebrow at him, and he schooled his features into an unconcerned aloofness that she knew well from each time she had turned him down for a date, not ready for anything after Graham's untimely death.

"Jefferson," she said, "I have to do this, I need the closure—"

He cut her off, saying distractedly, "—You know, it is entirely possible that you HAVE to go, to forge a bond with him that carries over from The Enchanted Forest into Storybrooke and draws him to you here..."

"Good," Emma said, "Because I am going, no matter what you say,"

Jefferson thumped his hatbox on the forest floor hard, "Don't let me get in the way of your true love," he glowered.

Emma softened, "I'm sorry, Jefferson, I didn't mean to snap, I just want to see him one more time, can't you understand that? He died in my arms and I never told him that I cared."

Jefferson softened at that, but tightness remained around the corners of his mouth and eyes. "Alright, saviour," he replied, "Let's do this."

He spun the hat on the forest floor in front of her, and she closed her eyes, zipped up her red leather jacket, and envisioned the page from Henry's book—the Huntsman in the forest alone, before he met the queen and accepted the assassination mission that would become his eventual downfall—and jumped into the swirling vortex.