Once Upon a Time in Storybrooke - OUAT DR

Chapter 17 - The Forgotten Twin

I met August down on the sidewalk outside my apartment a few hours before the sun had gone down. He was sitting on his motorcycle, which was idling on the street outside my apartment building. I got on the back of his bike after putting on the helmet he offered me. I had tried to inquire as to our destination but he wouldn't say anything more than "just headed out of town." I wasn't sure how long he planned for us to be gone, given that there was nowhere to go within two hours of Storybrooke. But sure enough, on the outskirts of Storybrooke August stopped the motorcycle at a small diner off the heavily wooded highway; a diner that seemed to match the exact description of the one I'd been searching for that had brought me to this town in the first place.

I dismounted the bike as shock and confusion ran through me. I whirled on August, demanding to know what the hell we were doing here. He simply responded that he thought I had been looking for this place, that was why I was here in Storybrooke, right, for answers on who I was, where I came from, and what my story was. He was just trying to help me figure all that out. 

I hadn't told him that though, any of it, I hadn't told anyone why I was in Storybrooke after my first few days in the small town had led me nowhere.

How did he know? 

He continued, telling me all the answers were right before me if I'd only see them. I demanded to know how he knew what I was looking for and what the hell he was talking about, but he just started walking into the woods, telling me to follow him, waving a newspaper article over his shoulder at me. I quickly caught up with him, grabbing for the paper but he pulled it out of my grasp. He told me he'd give it to me, but I had to keep following him and trust I'd find all my answers at the end of our little hike.

I agreed, wearily, and took the newspaper clipping, reading over it quickly. It was like the one I'd read a million times before, except without the water damage and holes making the clipping all but useless. This one was pristine – and I could finally read the full thing.

As we walked I read the article in the last remnants of sunlight coming through the trees. Once I was done I looked to August and told him that the woman at the Boston Social Services Center had believed the article was about me, and August confirmed she wasn't wrong – but the article wasn't right, either. He pointed to the bottom, where in small print it read that certain details had been changed or left out while the search for the missing parents was still underway. I looked at him quizzically and he explained that there hadn't been just one baby but two – the seven-year-old boy had found newborn baby twins, two girls. The baby mentioned in the article was about my sister, but it was me who had been left out of the article. 

The boy, the way August had so much information on all of this, it was August, he had been that little seven-year-old boy. He had found newborn twin girls, but not on the side of the road, no, he found them in the forest but he had lied about it, saying he had found them on the side of the road.

By this time we had arrived at a small clearing amidst a bunch of trees and he stood in front of the largest one, a giant hole in its center. He explained that it was inside the hole of this tree that he found the two girls, and he found them because he had just come out of that same tree. He had come from the same place the two babies had come from – the Enchanted Forest. One of the twins had been blonde, wrapped in a white blanket with the name Emma embroidered on the corner, but the other baby had black hair with tufts of white, wrapped in a rich velvet blanket, clutching a piece of parchment in her tiny hand that read Hannah.

He looked at me then, and I couldn't find a single hint of a joke anywhere on his face. 

He stated that it was all true, all of it. Henry's book, the curse, everything, and I was a part of the story that nobody had recorded. He had gone to Storybrooke for Emma, she was the Savior, but he realized once he got there that I was closer to believing than Emma, and if I could believe, I could get Emma to believe and break the curse. That was why I wasn't mentioned in the original telling of the story that Henry had found, it was too dangerous. August believed the Evil Queen would try and use me against Emma - against my sister - if she knew who I was, that Snow had had twins.