Black & White | Once Upon A Time

Three

Storybrooke - Present

The shock of it didn't hit until a minute later - a full sixty seconds of aggressive blank staring that was met with August's hollow-eyed gaze, my spine taut, muscles screaming in protest as my limbs locked into place. Then, as if suddenly released, I was pedalling backwards, feet slipping on the mossy, leaf-strewn ground; my sneaker caught the edge of something (a rock, a branch, my fallen dignity) and, arms windmilling, I went down, hard; a sharp gasp, colored more with surprise than pain, burst from my lips, though it was quickly drowned out by the hiss that followed.

Needle-like pain skittered over the palms of my hands, and I ducked my head to examine them, sucking on my bottom lip as my eyes flitted over the newly-acquired red lines that crisscrossed my skin. I probably scraped them up during the fall, dragged them over loose stones or something. It wasn't out of the ordinary for me, what with my minimalistic survival skills and knack for tripping over air, but that didn't make it any less aggravating for me. Or any less humiliating with an audience cued up.

Dragging my eyes away from my fresh battle wounds, I managed to settle on August again. He hadn't moved from the doorway, hands still braced on the edges; hadn't budged an inch even in the face of my nasty spill. Again, I wasn't surprised - I hadn't taken August to be the compassionate type, at the very least with strangers, but his inaction irked me all the same.

"Thanks," I breathed, gathering my legs beneath me in order to stagger to my feet. He remained unchanged, his expression just as wary as before (well, I was guessing that's what he was going for, in any case; the lack of facial muscles made it harder to decipher). Dusting myself off, front and back, I frowned down at my hands for a moment before ultimately sighing, knowing they wouldn't receive any immediate attention, or really more than a passing second thought. My priorities had already been decided. "Do you need to be oiled up to move? Is that it?"

"Wrong movie," he said dryly.

I scowled. "Then I hope you're not waiting for me to start screaming. Magic's everywhere now, man; something like this isn't going to send me running into the hills."

"I felt it," he said, "the magic. It's why I'm able to move at all. And I wasn't expecting you to scream - fainting seemed more likely."

Mildly offended, I crossed my arms, tucking my hands under my arms to preserve the meager warmth I now clung to, and lifted my chin in mock challenge.

"Alright, so you are in the know," I concluded, as though that had ever been up for debate. "So... are you... doubly cursed?" My face scrunched up at the thought; that another person in this town suffered from such an affliction... I hadn't considered it a possibility before. But I was drawing a blank on how August could have ended up this way if he hadn't been doused by some tainted magic. "Back in the Enchanted Forest.... you piss someone off?"

If I'd been expecting August to cop to his sordid past in that moment, then I would have been sorely disappointed, as he did little more than shake his head and pinch his wooden brows together (as much as was possible, anyway). 

I huffed a strand of hair from my eyes, twisting around slightly to survey the clearing again. The last of the sun had disappeared over the course of our stunted conversation, and the shadows had congealed into one black mass that swept over the forest. There was no way I was making it back to civilization without assistance, and though I was internally reeling over the fact that August was a tree-man in his spare time, I saw very few paths I could take at this point that didn't end with me tripping over a straggling root and cracking my skull open on a rock because I couldn't see.

"August," I said, crisply, pointedly.

He said nothing, but his hands had slid from the doorframe to sit in his pockets. The stance was slightly less defensive, so I decided to take that as a good sign.