Archive of Our Own ^beta

When the Savior and her mother come into town, Giuseppe doesn't get a chance to see them.

He doesn't get to witness the arms on the clock tower starting to move again, either - the Sisters of Saint Meissa value punctuality above many other things, and thus both the convent and the attached orphanage run on a strict schedule that’s not easy to bend. By 8.15 the younger children are meant to be tucked in and sound asleep, and Giuseppe shares a room with two other boys besides, so it's not like he could climb out of bed and open the window to look outside if he wanted, even if the Mother Superior's lectures about the risk of catching a chill weren’t ringing constantly in his ears.

Still, he's hardly sleeping. He pretended to be when Sister Vanessa was making the rounds, but he's got better things to do with his time. He rarely gets a minute to himself when everyone else is awake as it is, he’s not about to waste an entire night as well. He swiped a torch from the convent's storage room for this very reason, quashing down the surge of guilt that kept telling him that stealing is wrong and that there'd be hell to pay if he were discovered.

He points it at his work as time in Storybrooke begins to move, blissfully unaware of anything but the sheets of paper before him, stapled haphazardly together and covered in scribbles and lopsided drawings. His masterpiece. His story.

Giuseppe loves stories - he goes through them as some of the other kids do their meals, swallowing them whole and begging for more right after. Sister Astrid reads for them before bed, picking tales from old, battered children's books, and he's always first in line when the time comes, propping his chin up with one hand as he waits to learn whether the hero will find his way home or if there'll be another threat ready to lead him astray.

He loves to tell stories, too, though he rarely gets the chance to. There's something wonderful about being the one to make every choice, to sort out characters and pick which ones will be on the side of good and which ones will have to be defeated instead. It's like playing with a life-sized dollhouse, one the nuns can't take away as they did little Arianne's, after the girl threw her Barbie at Paige while they were fighting.

It'd be better if there was someone willing to listen to him, because every good story needs an audience, but he's had little luck with that. Most of the nuns are too busy to give him anything more than a distracted nod and a pat on the head, and the other children think he's lost some marbles even on the best of days, so he's had to rule them out fairly quickly. He tried testing the waters with the babies in the nursery, leaning into their cribs when no one was paying him any mind and whispering in their ears, but it didn’t seem to prompt much of a reaction, though the sisters praised him for being willing to keep the little ones company afterwards.

He tried mixing things up a bit, once, thinking that perhaps people might have listened more if he made his stories less fantastical and closer to what they see on the daily, but that only served to get him in trouble. The Mother Superior scolded him more than once, saying he shouldn't blow his tales out of proportion and that there is no place in Heaven for liars and braggarts - Giuseppe thinks that was something of an exaggeration, because of course he hadn’t meant for anyone to believe a dragon had truly landed on his school bus, that hadn’t been the point, but he supposes she knows best, and so he stopped before it could get any worse.

Now a book, that would be different. He wouldn't need to catch anyone's attention over and over again - they could flip through the pages at their leisure, taking their time with the story, and mark the point they reached once their attention is directed elsewhere, so that they might return to it after a while. Sister Astrid owns a bookmark for that very purpose, with a beautiful miniature of St. Anthony, and she lets one of the children hold it during storytime, though Mother Superior insisted she only allow the well-behaved ones to touch it, as reward.

Giuseppe isn’t granted that privilege very often. It’s not that he’s ever all that naughty, not on purpose, but trouble seems to follow him wherever he goes, and he tends to fall in it with both his shoes before he even notices. Things slip out of his fingers as though they were coated in butter, and he’s always saying the wrong words at people, or making his presence known at the wrong time.

He’s got a good heart, all the nuns would agree, but his head’s stuck firmly up in the clouds, and he’s reckless to boot, like those birds that go peck at crumbs in the middle of the road without checking if there’s a car approaching. They despair of him often and loudly, not bothering to check if he’s within earshot, or if their words bother him at all.

Well, it doesn’t matter, at the end of the day. When he’s done with his book, he’ll let everyone have a go at it, though the uncharitable part of his mind insists that Mother Superior should be last in row. He doesn’t want anyone to feel left out, not the boys he shares a room with, not the ones he sees hanging out on the sidelines of the playground, like Romeo, who always seems to come to school with a grimy face and a new tear in his clothes. It wouldn’t be fair. They’re not any better or worse than him, no matter what the sisters say.

He trudges on for hours, mindful only of not leaving any marker smears on his bedsheets, and only falls asleep when it’s nearly midnight, his book clutched to his chest, blind and deaf to the winds of change outside his window.

(Snow walked through the wardrobe with her daughter clutched to her chest, and she walks into Storybrooke holding her daughter’s hand, squeezing it so tight it has to hurt, her face lined and her hair streaked with grey.

There is no Henry to return home, but perhaps there is a boy holding Emma’s other hand, looking around with wide eyes, drinking in every alley and every shop window. Perhaps there is Baelfire lagging a step behind them as well, a hand on his son’s shoulder, half eager and half fearful of who they might cross paths with.

Perhaps, or perhaps not. Stories can change on a whim, and nothing in set in stone.

Giuseppe could tell you that.)

Giuseppe is seven years old.

His birthday is in the middle of winter, close enough to the Christmas festivities for him to get only one gift when money’s tight, or two very small ones, which doesn’t make much of a difference at the end of the day. It’s not as fun as having it in summer, but there was a huge snowstorm once, the week he turned five, and he got to have a snowball fight on the morning of his birthday, so he guesses he could have it worse.

The sisters drilled it into their brains early on, that they could always have it worse, that they should be thankful they have a roof over their heads and warm clothes and someone to care for them. They say grace before every meal for that, even the little ones, though they probably only close their eyes and bow their heads because they’re being told to do so. Still, he remembers doing much the same, when he was small, so he’s not exactly of a mind to snitch on them.

Sister Astrid told him he was brought to the convent when he was only a few days old, when he asked. He asked her because she’s not as scary as some of the other nuns, and she sat him on her lap and told him of the morning he arrived, screaming of hunger and discomfort.

“It was freezing cold that day” Sister Astrid said, smoothing down his hair, a hint of a smile on her face. Giuseppe thinks she might be his favorite, because she never raises her voice unless she’s seen a spider, and she’s clumsy like him besides, so she’s never too mad at the messes he makes. “I was just a novice then, and you were one of my first babies. I was so scared you might have caught something on the way, and that you’d get sick, but you were perfectly well. Just very, very hungry.”

Food’s never lacking at the orphanage, either. That’s something he should be thankful for, too, and he is, truly, though he wonders why his parents would let him go so hungry in the first place, sometimes.

Giuseppe doesn’t remember his parents at all - how could he? He was just a baby. Too young to even consider he might have done something to prompt them to get rid of him, as he knows some of the older kids fear. The only thing they left him was his name, and even that almost got changed to a more common Joseph when he got to the convent before one of the nuns, Italian born and bred, put her foot down on the matter and told them to leave him be.

He’s glad she did so, though his teachers at school butcher his name more often than they get it right. Names are important, and his is so peculiar it might as well be the only reason he’s not faded in the background of his classroom, forgotten unless he’s causing trouble. And he doesn’t look much like a Joseph, besides, or at least that’s what he usually thinks, scrunching his nose up at his reflection in the mirror. Joseph is a name for an old man, and he’s still only seven. Seven and a half, if one wants to be generous.

He can’t really picture himself as an old man, no more than he can picture the people who left him at the orphanage. It bothers him to no end that he can’t conjure up faces for them, or voices – he’s good at it, usually, at making up characters down to the tiniest detail. He’s gotten a lot better with practice, even though all the heroes tend to look a bit like him, and all the scary witches like Sister Bridget, who yells at them if they try to sneak into the kitchen.

But his parents – there’s no way around it. He can’t see them. There’s no photograph for him to check, no trick he can use to jog his memory. When he dreams of them, the picture cuts just below their necks, like some characters in the old cartoons they sometimes watch before dinner. He’s scared that one night he’ll look up and find out they have no heads at all, the way the dolls in the playroom all end up like, after the younger kids have gotten their hands on them.

He could do without their faces, perhaps, if only he knew literally anything about them. Were they too young, and that’s why they couldn’t take care of him? Were they too old? Does he only have a father left? A mother? Which one of them gave him his eyes, or his nose, or his red hair? Would they like him better, now that he can walk and talk and sit quietly on his own when he’s asked to? Would they want to keep him around?

He’s got tons of questions, but he doesn’t voice any of them aloud. He doubts anyone around him would know the answers, and even if they did, they wouldn’t tell him. No one ever explains things to him – they say he should know better, that he wasn’t born yesterday, that he should have listened the first time they said it. He’s heard it from everyone, at school and at home both. He’s not sure which is worse, the sisters’ exasperated sighs or the other children’s mocking laughs.

Giuseppe doesn’t much care to find out, all things considered, so he keeps his mouth shut. He has enough nightmares as it is. No reason to make it all worse.

(There’s a world where Geppetto heard Blue’s reasoning, her pleas, her threats – and then bowed his head, defeated.

This Geppetto was less stubborn, perhaps, or perhaps he just had enough sense to think it would be for the best to let history run its course without interference, as to have a chance to be saved from the curse.

He did not love his son any less. That’s not the point. That was never the point.)

It’s at the drugstore, of all places, that Giuseppe meets one of the newcomers for the first time.

He’s supposed to be waiting patiently for Sister Vanessa to finish her errands, but he wanders off once she reaches the cash register, ducking his head so she won’t see him behind the stocked shelves. He shouldn’t – he knows he shouldn’t, but he’s bored out of his mind after spending the entire morning trailing after the nun as she walked in and out of shops. Saturday mornings at the convent are devoted to cleaning, and as such Mother Superior wanted him and the other problem children out of the way for a few hours, lest they trip on the mop bucket and spread dirty water all over the floor like they did a month ago.

He knows all of this very well, but it doesn’t mean he has to like it. Besides, it’s not like he intends to get very far. Only out on the sidewalk, where he’s spotted Dr. Hopper tugging at Pongo’s leash to get him to move.

Giuseppe likes Dr. Hopper a lot, all things considered. The man comes to the orphanage every now and then, to check on the children’s wellbeing, and he’s always very polite with everyone, even with the kids who cry and scream all the time. He always has candy in his pockets for those who don’t, too, though it’s the kind old people like, hard to chew and smelling funny. Giuseppe’s had a lot of those when the Mother Superior’s back was turned, because he never cries if he can help it, not in front of grown-ups, and Dr. Hopper says he’s always very brave when it’s time for them to have their talk, answering all his questions instead of putting up a fuss.

He likes Pongo even more, if at all possible, because Pongo is a good dog who doesn’t bark unless you try to hurt him, and lets himself be petted and scratched between the ears for a long time before he starts complaining. That’s more than Giuseppe can say about a lot of people he knows.

He’s only made his way halfway through the shop when he spots the two children lingering in a corner. They’re older than he is by a few years, a boy and a girl, and they’re whispering up a storm, sending nervous glances at the cash register. The boy makes to grab a can of food off the shelf, but the girl shakes her head and takes it herself, stuffing it under her jacket before moving to the next aisle. He shrugs, clearly unbothered, and then looks around once more, his gaze meeting Giuseppe’s for a split second.

Giuseppe averts his eyes, feeling his cheeks prickle with shame. Stealing is wrong - he should tell on them, go up to the owner and warn him before they leave, or before they take something else. He should go back to Sister Vanessa, at the very least, since in the time he wasted Dr Hopper has already vanished from sight and he can’t go say hi any longer.

But…he’s not a snitch. That’d be even worse than stealing. And he’s not sure anyone would believe him, anyway. They might roll their eyes and turn the other way, as adults often do when he’s talking. Or he might have gotten it all wrong – maybe that girl is only keeping things on herself because she doesn’t have a bag, and she intends to pay for them, at the end of their rounds.

He’s wrong, of course. Not a couple minutes later the shop owner looks up from ringing Sister Vanessa’s purchases and spots them swiping a bottle of milk, and he stalks over to them before they can make their escape, roaring so loud in rage that Giuseppe finds himself flinching, even from feet away. Which, by the way, is apparently not far enough, because the man insists he must have seen something and that he should stay as well, at least until the sheriff’s arrival.

“That’s ridiculous,” Sister Vanessa scoffs, taking Giuseppe’s hand with the one that’s not laden with shopping bags. “The boy isn’t involved in any of this.”

Giuseppe perks up slightly at her words, but he realizes soon enough that the nun doesn’t care much about him, and she’s only upset that this might disturb her plans for the morning. She taps her foot impatiently, giving morose glances at her wristwatch, and doesn’t say a word to Giuseppe or anyone else, except to grumble at the cashier and ask when the Sheriff might show up.

Finally, the little bell over the door rings, and a blonde woman walks in, frowning at the people gathered inside. Giuseppe stares at her for a while, though it’s not very polite, and watches her exchange a few words with the owner, polite at first, then firm, when he begins fuming and saying she needs to do something about those children.

He knows who she is, at least in theory. He knows that she was elected sheriff even though she’s only been in town a few weeks; he remembers Mother Superior telling the other nuns, when she came back from the town meeting. He knows it was because Sheriff Humbert died, too – he wasn’t at the funeral, because the priest only takes the older children as altar boys, but the obituary is still plastered in front of the church, right in the middle of the board.

The rest of the board is empty, and has been empty for some time. Not many people die in Storybrooke these days, it seems.

But he’s never seen her from up close, even though everyone in town has been talking non-stop about her. She doesn’t look like anything special, nor any different from his teachers or the nuns, but she’s got a kind smile when she crouches down in front of him, at the owner’s insistence. It reminds him of Sister Astrid a bit, and that’s something of a comfort, at least.

“Hey, kid.” Her voice is gentle, too, not brusque like Sheriff Humbert’s used to be, when he saw them crossing the street without looking both ways. “What’s your name?”

He looks down, eyes fixed on his shoes. Kind smile or not, he doesn’t like being stared at like this, and he doesn’t much want to see the desperate looks on the older children’s faces, frantically trying to signal him to shut up without being seen by the owner. “Giuseppe.”

“Alright, Giuseppe. Can you tell me what you saw?”

“Nothing” he mutters. Sister Vanessa nudges him sharply, though, and he knows very well what that means, so he raises his voice, though not his gaze. “I didn’t see anything. I was looking at the comic books over there, I didn’t see them do anything.”

It’s not a lie, not entirely – he always browses through the new comic books when he comes in there, though he never gets to buy one. He likes Donald Duck the best, and sometimes if he’s quick enough he can read through an entire story in one sitting, standing before the rack as the nuns finish their purchases.

That was not the case, today, but the sheriff doesn’t need to know that. As it is, there’s a sharp intake of breath, from the children and the owner both, and he finally looks up, just in time to see their reactions. The girl and boy seem stunned, but relieved – he’s not their friend, he’s just a little stranger they only met by chance. It’s clear they expected to be ratted out without a moment’s hesitation.

The owner, though, is gaping in disbelief. “Oh, come on,” he snarls. “He was right there, he must have seen something!”

“You heard the boy.” The sheriff stands up, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Thank you, Giuseppe. You two, with me.”

She pays for the things the children were taking and then leads them away, her eyes not leaving them for an instant. Before she shuts the door behind their backs the boy turns, briefly, and waves his hand at Giuseppe, a small grin on his face.

Giuseppe waves back, and then on his way out he waves out at the red-faced owner, for good measure, feeling something warm and strangely familiar tugging at his chest.

(“Who was he?” Emma asks her mother that night, sitting down for a cup of tea, the world asleep around them. “The boy. Who was he, where you come from?”

They’ve been doing it since their arrival, to gather the threads of what Snow remembers and Emma never got the chance to see. That’s Red, she was my best friend. There’s Granny, she looks just like she used to.

That one’s your father. He thinks he’s married to another woman, now.

Snow remembers a red-haired head peeking from under the council table, chattering excitedly as he trailed after his father, and then smiles sadly, looking down at her steaming mug. “The son of a friend” she says, softly. “Please, keep an eye on him if you can.”)

None of the children get much sleep, the night before Miner’s Day.

They’re all buzzing with excitement, even as the frenzy of last-minute preparations nearly drives the sisters insane. It’s as if it were Christmas Eve, with the difference that while Christmas is always a somewhat subdued affair, contained within the walls of the orphanage, Miner’s Day is considered by and large a free-for-all by everyone past the age of three or four. The nuns are generally too busy to keep an eye on all the children in their care, and Storybrooke is such a quiet, sleepy town - at some point they must have figured out that so long as no one leaves the fair’s premises, there’ll always be an adult on hand to warn them of any emergencies.

Not that anyone notices, usually, if one of the orphans slips away. Giuseppe does, more often than not, has seen plenty of older kids coming and going as they pleased over the years, hidden amongst their friends, but he doesn’t count. He wouldn’t tell the nuns or anyone else, not unless someone was in real danger. Some of those boys are four or five years older than him – he’s not of a mind to find out what they might plan to make him pay.

Mingling with a group to run off is not an option for him, though. He stays up until the small hours of the night with his roommates, sure, giggling and whispering about the treats they’re going to get with the meager allowance they’re usually granted for the occasion, but when the actual day comes he’s left on his own, wandering through the stalls and craning his neck to see over the heads of the crowd around him.

It suits him just fine, Giuseppe reasons, biting into his candied apple as he goes. There’s so much to see and try and taste, he doesn’t need anyone to slow him down or drag him along. If he focuses, he can almost stop noticing the gaggles of other children passing by altogether, after a while. Almost.

He’s looking wistfully at one of the attractions, trying to figure out if he’s got enough money left to take a turn on it, when there’s a sudden flurry of movement behind him. He doesn’t get to see what’s happening – probably a cart pushing through, or someone elbowing their way out of the crowd – but he does feel the people around him surge forward and then backward, swaying this way and that until he’s lost his balance for good, sending him sprawling to the ground.

Giuseppe feels tears prickling at his eyes, but he forces them back as he tries to gather his bearings. He’s not a baby. Only babies cry when they fall. Even if he’s done a bit more than just falling - his apple has gone rolling onto the ground, picking up bits of gravel and dirt along the way, and his hands suffered much the same fate, sticky with caramel as they were. They don’t hurt much, at least, but his treat is lost for good. It’d be disgusting to try and eat it now, five seconds rule or not.

And he’s torn his pants at the knee again. They’ve already been mended so many times, he’s not sure whether they might salvageable again, and he might not get new ones until Christmas. He’s in for an earful by the first nun to notice, that’s for sure.

He considers going to find Sister Astrid, so that she might soften the blow somehow, but the last he saw of her she was fidgeting and nervous, shaking after the Mother Superior had reprimanded her. Giuseppe is not sure of what might have happened, but he wouldn’t want to make her any more upset, if he can avoid it.

Suddenly, while he’s still thinking if it might be worth the risk, he feels two strong hands grab him from under the armpits and hoist him upright, until he’s standing on his own. He freezes for all of two seconds, remembering all the warnings about strangers and danger he’s heard over the years, but when he dares look up he sees it’s only Mr. Garrone, who frowns in concern down at him.

Giuseppe doesn’t know Mr. Garrone well – they rarely ever exchange a word, past good mornings and good afternoons when crossing paths at the store or when one of the nuns takes the children out on walks. He knows he’s friend with Dr. Hopper, and that he has a shop on the other side of town, and that most people simply call him Marco, though Giuseppe wouldn’t dare, not within hearing distance of any of the sisters, who might think he’s being rude.

He knows the man’s old, too, older even than Sister Bridget, who’s the eldest at the convent, but doesn’t have a wife nor children. It’s a bit odd, though not too much - Giuseppe knows plenty of children without parents, it’s only reasonable that the opposite should be true sometimes.

“Goodness, are you alright?” The man asks now, dusting sand off Giuseppe’s jacket. It’s far from the worst damage the poor thing has taken, seeing that it was passed down from two or three other boys before landing in Giuseppe’s hands, but Mr. Garrone is at loss of what to do otherwise, it seems, so it might better not to stop him.

Giuseppe only nods, then, still not trusting himself to speak. He doesn’t want to seem impolite, but there is a hard lump stuck in his throat, and he has no wish to risk bursting into tears again.

“Where are your parents? You shouldn’t go around on your own, most of these fools won’t pay attention to anything past their nose.”

That, at least, he knows the answer for very well. “I’m from Saint Meissa, sir,” he says, haltingly. “The sisters said I could take a look around if I didn’t wander off too far.”

A flash of understanding crosses Mr. Garrone’s face, though he doesn’t say anything that might explain it and merely shakes his head, his brow furrowing. “I see. Well, I imagine they must be a little preoccupied at the moment.”

He offers Giuseppe his handkerchief to blow his nose and clean up his hands, which the boy accepts with a muffled thanks, and then waits patiently until he’s done, glaring at the crowd with his arms crossed as though they were to be held responsible for this. Which maybe they are, in part, but there’s not much either of them can do about it, is it?

Silence stretches on for a while, but it’s not uncomfortable at all, much to Giuseppe’s surprise – usually when adults are silent around him it’s because they’re waiting for him to speak, to explain himself or make excuses for something. They snap at him if he doesn’t, more often than not, telling him not to play the fool, or scoff in annoyance and move on with what they were doing.

Mr. Garrone, instead, seems to have all the time in the world, and it’s only when Giuseppe himself speaks that he turns around, bending down to listen. “Do you have a stall, sir?”

“Me?” The man chuckles, shaking his head. “Oh, no. Who’d want to buy some old pieces of wood? No, one of the food stalls has collapsed and I’ve been called in for an emergency repair. A favor to a friend, is all.”

Giuseppe stares at him, wide-eyed. The words are out of his mouth before his brain has caught up with them, and he startles a bit as he hears them, shocked by his own audacity.

“Can I come watch?”

Mr. Garrone looks at him in surprise, and for a moment Giuseppe fears he might have said the wrong thing, that he should apologize for presuming and go back to where some of the nuns are no doubt counting heads already, searching for missing children. Of course the man has better things to do with his time than looking after a boy that is hardly his responsibility, that shouldn’t even be in question.

But then the handyman breaks into a smile, so huge it can’t not be genuine. “Well, why not? As long as it’s okay with the Mother Superior. Wouldn’t want to make her worry, if she comes looking for you.”

Giuseppe doesn’t doubt that the Mother Superior would be relieved that he’s with someone trustworthy and not causing a nuisance, and even if she wasn’t he thinks he might lie about it on the spot, despite how often he’s been warned about it. He’s not sure what compelled him to ask Mr. Garrone that, of all things – Giuseppe is much better at breaking things than fixing them, and he doesn’t think he’s clever enough to learn, even if he spent years watching the man at his work - but now that the thought has crossed his mind there’s nothing he wants to do more, not even climb on the inflatable slide that’s been set up in a corner, which up to a few hours ago had seemed the most exciting thing in the world.

It’s as if there were something pulling him forward, dragging him along like a toy train. It feels odd, somehow, curiously out of place, but in a good way, and so he can’t find it in himself to refuse, letting Mr. Garrone lead him to the stall and sit him down on a bench to watch.

Giuseppe’s not sure how much time he spends like that, perched at the edge of his seat in amazement, but he’s too engrossed in the task to care. It’s clear that Mr. Garrone is happy to have an audience, and he explains every step as he goes through it, loud enough to be heard over the din of the crowd, patiently answering Giuseppe’s questions and never scoffing at him to be sensible, even if they must sound like really stupid questions, to someone who knows so much about it. He even lets Giuseppe tighten a screw on his own, his hands hovering close to the boy’s to keep him from hurting himself, but not interfering any further.

He won’t take money from the people at the stall, when they’re done, but he does accept a paper cup full of tea, and one of the ladies gives one to Giuseppe as well, along with a chocolate-filled pastry. Mr. Garrone smiles at him as he munches happily on it, and ruffles Giuseppe’s hair proudly, as if the boy had done all the work himself.

“Say, you’d make a good apprentice, if you wanted,” he says. “Come visit my shop when you’re older, if someone else doesn’t snatch you up first. I could use another pair of hands.”

Giuseppe all but beams at him, chest swelling with pride. It’s the best thing he’s been told in a long while – perhaps ever, if he thinks about it hard enough.

He half-expects the man to send him on his way, afterwards. Instead, Mr. Garrone lets him trail along as they move through the fair, Giuseppe still pestering him with questions and marveling at every other thing he sees. The handyman never seems bored or annoyed by it, which would be enough on its own to make Giuseppe pause in thought if he weren’t so busy working his way through the pavilions.

Perhaps Mr. Garrone was lonely, he reasons after a while, and needed some company. Now that’s an odd thought. Giuseppe had never thought grown-ups could feel lonely as well, before.

When the blackout hits Mr. Garrone takes him by the hand, so he won’t be scared or get lost in the dark, and then leads him back to Sister Astrid, who’s lingering near the candle stall led by Leroy and the sheriff’s mother. The nun seems positively giddy, a stark contrast with the way she was behaving in the morning, and she all but spins Giuseppe around in glee before handing him a candle of his own, the flame flickering and swaying every time he moves.

The sight makes Giuseppe smile so wide his cheeks almost hurt, though he’s not sure he understands all that’s going on. He’s so happy he very nearly forgets to thank Mr. Garrone for everything he’s done during the day, but luckily he remembers just in time, and rushes to stop him before the man leaves to go talk to Dr. Hopper.

He doesn’t manage to say much, too caught up in the euphoria of it all to speak properly, but Mr. Garrone only grins softly at his stammering, ruffling his hair again. “Anytime, my boy. Anytime.”

Then he vanishes in the crowd, while around them more and more candles light up in the darkened town square.

(“I considered adopting, you know,” Marco says, thinking the woman he’s just met by chance at the counter of Granny’s might be close to his age, and thus might understand what he means. “After my wife…well. But it never seemed the right time, and now I’m too old. No one in their right mind would hand a child over to someone like me when there’s plenty of young couples around asking for the same thing.”

Snow bites the inside of her cheek as not to smile, thinking of the boy she saw poking at molten candlewax at the fair to see if it would burn, and replies jovially: “Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t give up yet, if I were you. You never know when the chance might present itself.”)

The Mother Superior might be the scariest person Giuseppe knows, he thinks.

There are plenty of other scary people in Storybrooke, of course. Mr. Gold, for example, has a terrifying air to himself when he comes around to collect his rent, his lips stretched in a thin, mocking smile. Once Giuseppe entered his shop on a dare, and he barely lasted a couple seconds before fleeing, even if Mr. Gold didn’t do anything particularly upsetting – he just smirked to himself as he continued dusting off the puppets sitting on his counter, which looked even more frightening than he did.

The Mayor is scary, too, though Giuseppe doesn’t see her a lot – only at school, when there are important announcements to be made, or when she visits the orphanage to do a cursory check. She’s always smiling, but it is not a kind smile at all: she shows teeth the way lions in documentaries do, before pouncing on each other.

Lions, or dragons, or monsters, but there are no documentaries on monsters and dragons, because they don’t exist. Only in stories, and stories are a bit like lies, Mother Superior says, if you put too much effort into them.

She always seems to know when the children under her supervision are lying, or when they’re hiding something from her. Giuseppe once heard her say to Paige that she has eyes everywhere, and she’d been laughing as she said it, so she must have meant it as a joke, but it’s not a joke if it’s true. And it has to be true, because he doesn’t know anyone that’s gotten away with lying to her.

Giuseppe certainly hasn’t. He stopped trying altogether, after a while – the stories he tells don’t count, even if she says they do. Those are not meant for her ears.

A great many things are not meant for her to know, but the Mother Superior knows them all the same. She’s the one to make the rules, and it’s not – it’s not bad, all in all. Their orphanage is not like the ones in books and movies, where all children tremble in fear and sleep in dirty rooms full of drafts. They have plenty to eat, and a bed each, and if they have nightmares, as Giuseppe often does, there’s almost always at least a nun still up and about and willing to tuck them back in. True, sometimes it’s only Sister Bridget, who complains a lot if someone comes to bother her midway through the glass of sherry she takes before going to sleep, but it’s the principle of the thing.

It’s not bad, but it’s not especially good, either. It’s not like having a home, or a family. You’re not supposed to be scared of your family, and all the children are scared of the Mother Superior, of her scowl and her reprimands and the click-clack of her shoes on the wooden floors as she’s approaching, and the very soft voice she uses only when telling someone they’ve been really, really bad. Even the older kids are afraid of her, the ones that are almost adults, though some of them are tall enough by now to tower over her by several inches. They all bend down the same way when she scolds them, hunched over like crumpled pieces of paper until they look as small as ants and she like a giant.

It comes as a surprise, then, that one day they look at her and realize she’s afraid as well.

There’s something in the air – none of them can guess what it is, but they can taste it, almost, feel it on their tongues. It’s plainly odd, but it carries the thrill of excitement along as well, like tiptoeing downstairs after lights out to snatch some candy, knowing the prize will be sweet but that they might be caught along the way.

The nuns can feel it, too, though they pretend everything is going on as normal. They move around the convent with exaggerated care, always on edge, always looking over their shoulders as if something beside too-observant children might be following them step by step. They’re troubled by it, it’s not hard to guess, but they’re curious, as well, eager to see what it might bring.

But the Mother Superior…The Mother Superior is worried, and watching it happen is as much a novelty as it is disturbing.

She’s twice as tense and prone to snap at people as ever, for starters. Giuseppe has only seen her so frazzled at Patron Saint festivities, or in the oh-so-hectic days before Miner’s Day, but both of those have long since passed, so there should be nothing to worry about, unless she means to get a head start on next year’s celebrations. And rent has been paid in full, so there’s no chance Mr. Gold might try to kick them out, as he threatens to do sometimes – he’s heard Sister Astrid whisper excitedly about it to one of the older novices, and she wouldn’t be so relaxed if she weren’t sure of it, much as she often tries to hide her nervousness.

There must be something else to it, then. Giuseppe’s not sure what could possibly bother her so, or if he should feel relieved or not that something bigger and scarier than her might exist after all, but he’s not like to get any explanation out of her even if he were to ask, so he watches, and he waits.

He’s climbing downstairs with an armful of toys Sister Malvina told him to put away, one day, when he spots the Mother Superior staring out of the window, and he stops midway through the room, uncertain on what to do.

She’s not looking at anything in particular – rather, it seems that she’s not looking at anything at all, her eyes lost somewhere far away, and Giuseppe hesitates, chewing on his lower lip in thought. He’s not supposed to pester anyone going about their day, and the Mother Superior of all people should be left alone on principle, but she looks so upset. He doesn’t like seeing anyone upset, even when he’s not the cause for it.

If it were Sister Astrid he’d try and offer a hug, but he doesn’t think it would work in this case. Still, he draws closer all the same before he can think better of it, mindful not to drop any of the stuffed animals he’s carting around.

“Mother Superior?” He asks, once he’s standing by her side. “Is everything alright?”

She startles, and then looks down at him in surprise, though thankfully there’s no sign of anger on her face yet.

It takes her a moment to reply, as if her eyes needed the time to focus on his face and place a name to it, but finally she smiles, tight-lipped and strained though it might be. “Of course, Giuseppe. I was…just a little lost in thought. There’s no reason to worry.”

But soon she’s glancing out of the window again, and she frowns, pursing her lips as though she were trying to remember something that’s just on the tip of her tongue. She remains like that for a good few seconds, then she shakes her head and crouches down in front of him, her hands coming to rest on the side of his arms.

That shocks Giuseppe more than her odd behavior of the past days ever could – she usually addresses him standing upright, as she does every other child, looming overhead like a hawk. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her so much as bend down to speak to someone, unless it was to tend to one of the babies toddling about, and he’s certainly grown enough not to be included in that group.

“Listen to me” she says, not sharp, exactly, but urgent, as if her words were of the utmost importance. “I need you to listen carefully, alright? I don’t want you to forget.”

He nods, biting his tongue to stop himself from asking question. He’s more than a little puzzled by the way she’s acting, but it wouldn’t do to disobey her now, of all times.

“Whatever happens, you need to remember to be good, okay? Good, and brave, and true. It’s important that you don’t forget, whatever comes next. Can you do that for me?”

Giuseppe’s eyes widen, and he takes an involuntary step back, though he really should know better than to try to leave before he’s been dismissed. For all the softness in her tone, she doesn’t sound like the Mother Superior he knows at all, with her hard gaze and frantic words – she reminds him of Leroy a little, of the way the man sometimes walks down the street raving and ranting, drunk off his mind. It’s as if she were a completely different woman altogether, swapped in place of the prim, level-headed nun he’s seen all his life.

It stings, too, even if he can’t say as much to her, because Giuseppe is always good. At least, he does his best to be – sometimes his best is not quite enough, but he tries, he tries all the time, and that should count for something, right? And what does she expect to happen, anyway, that he would need such a reminder? Nothing ever happens in Storybrooke, everyone says so. Why should it be any different, now?

He doesn’t know, and yet there’s a strangeness to the things she says, a small shift in her voice that would go unnoticed if not for the utter silence of the rest of the room. It’s hard to tell why, but the words sound familiar, somehow, as if she’d already said them once, the way he sometimes wakes up from a nightmare to realize it’s not the first time he’s dreamed of the same place, or the same face, or the same monster.

It scares him a bit, the tingling it sends at the back of his head: he’s never felt it before, and he’s not sure whether there might a word for it - and he knows by experience that if there’s no word, then he’ll never manage to explain himself, no matter how hard he tries.

The Mother Superior seems as stunned as him by her own actions, though. Something flashes in her eyes, a thin worry line appearing between them, and she opens her mouth to speak again, but by then Giuseppe is already scurrying off, beating a hasty retreat before she can remember herself – worse, before he can say anything back, worried and scared and probably out of turn.

She’s still sitting on her haunches as he watches her from the corner of his eye, and she hasn’t moved an inch by the time he rounds the corner, save for pressing a hand against her mouth, distantly, as if she had forgotten what she meant to say at all.

(There’s a threat, and a bang, and a True Love’s Kiss.

You’ve heard this story before. You know the drill.)

The curse is broken on a Thursday afternoon.

Children at the orphanage are supposed to do their homework as soon as classes are over, unless they’re old enough to find themselves an after-school job, but Giuseppe is only pretending to do so, moving aside his math workbook every time the nun patrolling the room turns her back to him to continue coloring the shark he’s doodled on a spare piece of paper. It’s not that good of a shark, but it doesn’t matter – Romeo told him at recess that it looked more like a very ill dolphin, but Romeo says a lot of nasty things he doesn’t really mean, and he gave Giuseppe half of his candy bar afterwards, so Giuseppe didn’t get too offended.

Besides, even if it doesn’t look like a shark at all, it’ll be good practice for him. He’ll put a shark in his book, once he’s drawn enough of them to know how to do it well. Sharks are real, so the Mother Superior won’t have anything to complain about, and he’s learned in science class that they can grow to be huge, large enough to eat a man whole if they wanted to. He doesn’t think he’d be happy if it happened to him, but perhaps one of the bad guys in the book might deserve it, at the end, if they’d done something terrible enough.

He’s digging into his pencil case to find a red marker when the wave hits, a bright, sudden flash of light that ripples through the room before vanishing. Giuseppe gasps, and his fingers go slack all at once, scattering pens all across the table. Some of them fall off the edge and land around his feet, but he doesn’t rush to pick them up – in fact he barely notices they fell at all, too engrossed by the rush of memories flooding his head.

Pleasure Island. The Great Puppet Theater. His father’s workshop.

His father. His Papa.

There’s a beat of abrupt silence in the first few seconds, a hush falling over everyone as they slowly piece together what they’ve just seen. All of the children have the same look on their faces, wonder mixed with growing horror while they stare straight ahead, and Sister Malvina seems to have frozen on the spot, clutching at the notebook she’d been checking with her thin, shaking fingers.

Then, chaos erupts.

Everyone begins to speak at the same time, raising their voices once it’s clear they’re never going to be heard over such a ruckus. Soon there are sisters rushing in and out of the room, and more noise filters through the doors as they keep swinging open, of people running through the corridors and little kids yelling from every corner of the convent. Some of the younger ones are crying – in fact, it seems that most of them have begun sobbing at the very least, too small and confused to understand what’s going on.

Giuseppe- no, Pinocchio, Pinocchio, that’s his name, that’s who he is – doesn’t cry. He hasn’t done that in a long time, and there would be no point in starting now, wouldn’t it, not when everyone’s being so loud that his voice would surely be drowned by all the others. He presses his hands against the tabletop instead, fingers stretched over the forgotten sheets of additions and subtractions, and then looks at them silently, his mind racing.

He’s not made of wood, for starters. That’s a relief, at least, though it would make little sense otherwise: he can remember going home, if he focuses hard enough. He remembers the house in the woods, and then the castle – he and his father had been living at court for a while, when the curse hit.

His father is Mr. Garrone. Pinocchio digs his fingers into that thought and holds tight onto it, because it’s the only thing that doesn’t make him want to scream out loud, right now. Mr. Garrone is his father, and Dr. Hopper was Jiminy all along, and the Mother Superior…

Oh, he thinks, his mouth going suddenly dry. Oh, he’s going to be in so much trouble, once she remembers who he is.

But he doesn’t catch a glimpse of the Mother Superior until early evening, and by then he’s grown too frustrated to care if she has a mind to cast a spell on him for all he’s done in the past years, however many they are. There are people running through the streets, have been for hours now, but the nuns won’t take the children outside to join them, for fear of what might happen now that they know how close the Evil Queen is to them all. As such, they’re stuck looking out of the windows, hoping someone will come explain what’s happening to Storybrooke and what they’re supposed to do with it.

There’s a knock on the convent door, every now and then, and the older kids waste no time in urging the younger ones to tiptoe downstairs and see who it might be, once the nuns have confined them all to the top floor to regain a semblance of order. It’s clear what everyone’s hoping for, though nobody dares say it aloud – if it’s not danger, then surely it’ll be a set of parents, come to reclaim their children now that they can remember ever having some. It used to be a common dream, right until the curse was broken, an orphan’s family showing up at the orphanage’s doorstep to claim them as their own, but now it seems possible, somehow, not the weirdest thing that’s happened all day. They crowd around the windows overlooking the entrance, shoving and elbowing their way to the front row, hoping to catch a glimpse of a familiar face.

Pinocchio is one of the fastest runners, still, so he’s constantly running up and down the steps to report what he’s seen. Some parents do show up, in fact, harried mothers and fathers storming in to sweep a little boy or girl away, but mostly it’s just frightened people begging the Mother Superior for guidance, now that they no longer know what to do with themselves. Pinocchio watches the light of hope fade slowly from the other children’s eyes, every time he makes the climb upstairs to tell them it was just another false alarm, and though he tries not to let it affect him, it’s almost impossible to do so when it keeps happening over and over again.

He almost slams headfirst against Sister Astrid’s legs, once, as he’s rushing to Paige’s room to tell her that her father is looking for her. The nun stumbles, then grabs onto the railing as to keep herself from toppling forward, the other arm outstretched to maintain her balance. “Please, Giuseppe, I know it’s hard, but no running inside-“

“Not Giuseppe” Pinocchio says, stubbornly. He knows it must sound rude, but he can’t help himself. Perhaps if he keeps repeating it, it’ll begin to feel real, not like what Mother Superior calls his tall tales. “Pinocchio. My name’s Pinocchio.”

“Right. Of course.” There’s a moment of hesitation, then Sister Astrid smiles, a bright, excited grin that makes her eyes sparkle. “Pleasure to meet you, Pinocchio. My name is Nova. Nova, can you imagine? I can’t wait to tell Leroy!”

Her enthusiasm is infectious, if a bit confusing, but even its effect lasts only for a short while before doubt begins to creep inside his mind again, slowly, inch by inch.

Those other children, their worries make sense. Some of them had no parents to begin with, back in the Enchanted Forest, and of those who did have fathers and mothers to speak of a good chunk doesn’t want to remember them at all, the memories of beatings and insults clearer now that they’ve been dug out of their heads. A couple of them are probably relieved nobody’s coming to ask after them, even, though they keep quiet about it in the face of their friends’ fervent wishes.

But Pinocchio’s father, he’s alive and well, isn’t he? And he should remember where his son is, unless this is another trick of the Evil Queen and Geppetto’s forgotten all that went down on Miner’s Day. He’s never been the kind of man to waste time thinking when he could act instead - he should have been at the orphanage’s door the minute he got his memories back, clamoring for his boy.

Instead, the hours tick by with no sign from him, and panic begins to build up in Pinocchio’s belly, lurching every time he hears the door downstairs slam closed once more.

Perhaps his father is not coming at all. Geppetto spent so much time running after him, perhaps he’s decided that enough is enough, and that Pinocchio’s best left in the care of fairies, in the care of Blue. Perhaps it was Blue herself who told him not to show up, since they’ve done so well without him since the curse was cast, and Pinocchio is still as in need of correction as he was in the Enchanted Forest.

She wouldn’t have done that. She wouldn’t – Pinocchio can’t truly let himself believe it, else he might as well start planning how to best run away from the orphanage. He’s going back home. They can’t stop him. Not again.

There’s no early bedtime, that night. The nuns are too preoccupied to do anything but put toddlers and babies into their cribs, and there’s not so many children left, anyway. Paige is gone, and so is Polly, and Mignon, and a dozen more - of those who remain, a few wander off to their bedrooms on their own accord, but the others give up their spying ruse and just sit on the main staircase as the sky darkens outside the windows, quiet and unmoving, not saying a single word.

Pinocchio is curled up at the very top, his arms wrapped around his legs and his head on his knees, too tense and drained to sleep but too tired to do anything else. He’s not sure what he’s waiting for – a miracle, maybe. A wish come true. It’s stupid, of course, it only ever happens in stories, but it happened to his father as well, so he might be lucky on that front, if he closes his eyes and wishes hard.

There is another knock at the door, but most don’t even turn to look at it anymore, dejected as they are. Sister Astrid is standing on guard, and she spares a glance to the children sitting on the steps before she straightens her clothes and goes to answer, cracking the door open an inch or so to peek outside.

It’s hard to see anything once you’re further than five or six steps up the stairs, but the voices easily reach the first floor – there is a man speaking, his rougher voice a sheer contrast to Sister Astrid’s fretful whispers, and Pinocchio finds himself blinking dully, craning his head up to listen.

“Blue told me you were all still here- I thought you’d be coming to the town square, everyone’s gone there already, I waited all day for you lot-“

“And take all the children along? We would have lost at least five of them on the way there. And what about the Evil Queen- “

“To hell with her, the Savior’s dealing with it- my boy, I know he was one of yours. My son- please, is he still here?”

Pinocchio bolts upright, jostling the children sitting on the steps below his. They mutter and complain, but he barely hears them at all as he rushes down the staircase, his heart hammering in his ears.

He stumbles towards the end, and very nearly falls on his face, and Sister Astrid must hear him at it, because she turns to look at him, eyes wide. She gapes, understanding flashing on her face, but before she can say anything the door swings open, revealing the man standing on the porch.

Geppetto’s hands are trembling, but he doesn’t waste a second when Pinocchio barrels towards him, sweeping the boy off his feet and into warm, welcoming arms.

“Pinocchio,” he whispers in wonder, and Pinocchio burrows his face into his father’s shirt, breathing in the so very familiar smell of it, feeling the rest of the day finally washes over his shoulders now that his father is clutching him to his chest, real and solid and there. “Pinocchio, my boy, my sweet, sweet boy. You’re here. You’re here- oh, I thought I’d lost you again.”

(“You’re as beautiful as I remember,” Charming says, grinning bright as a star as he cups Snow’s face in his hands.

Snow feels tears well up in her eyes. “I could be your mother now, you fool.”

But she smiles just as wide as he kisses her on the forehead, and for a minute, every piece seems to be slotting into place.)

It takes a few days for Geppetto to feel secure enough to let his son out of his sight.

That suits Pinocchio just fine; he’d never leave his father’s side, either, if he had the chance. He’s having horrible dreams as it is, even with his Papa close by to reassure him that everything’s going to be fine - every night he’s back at the orphanage, the doors closed and barred to keep him from leaving, and every night he wakes up screaming and kicking at his sheets, struggling to break free. Sometimes there’s even a familiar face from the Enchanted Forest in there with him, donkeys and coachmen and sea monsters.

Those are the worst nights of all. It’s even harder to remember where he is, after, when the last thing he sees before waking is something that’s been gone for years.

He always ends up waking Geppetto as well, but there’s no helping it. His father says he’ll clear up some space soon, so that Pinocchio might have his own room (and isn’t that wonderful already – a room all for himself, with no one around to snore all night or tell him to close the damn window), but for now there’s only one bed in the house, and they’ve been sharing it since the curse was broken. It’s hard for Geppetto to ignore his son’s rolling about, especially when they’re laying side by side.

Pinocchio woke up twice last night, gasping for breath until his father tugged him close as the Mother Sup- Blue’s face flickered in and out of his dreams, so he’s tired and fidgety when Geppetto leaves him at Jiminy’s office to go discuss something with Snow White and Prince Charming, rubbing at his eyes to get them to stay open. He’s glad, at least, that it’s Jiminy and not someone stricter, though he’s not sure there’s anyone else his father would trust to keep him safe – Jiminy’s always shown him more patience than he probably deserved, even when he was doing much worse things than yawning so wide his jaw almost hurt.

True to form, the former cricket only smiles at his antics and pours him a glass of water, waving away Geppetto’s last-minute worries as his friend hesitates to leave.

“I have some stuff to sort out,” he says, once the other man has finally closed the door behind his back. “I’m still a doctor, even with everything that’s been going on, and now there are a lot more people asking for my help. Why don’t you play a bit with Pongo until I’m done?”

Pongo raises his head at hearing his name, his tail wagging eagerly, and Pinocchio nods, kneeling down to scratch the dog’s belly. It’s not a chore, even if he’d rather go outside to play - school’s been closed for some time now, probably because no one would show up even if it was open, too busy sorting out their lives to pay attention in class. He misses recess, even if there weren’t many people willing to include him in their games.

But it’s okay. He likes Pongo. Pongo’s probably the only one in town who’s still himself, happy as long as there’s someone around to pat his head and fill his bowl with food. He doesn’t know a thing about curses or magic or evil queens, and even if he did he probably wouldn’t care, not unless it kept Dr. Hop…Jiminy from taking him out on his walk.

Pinocchio thinks he’d really like to be Pongo, sometimes. It’d be good not to be so scared all the time, for a change, or not to worry about all the double memories he has regarding everything and everyone. He spends a long time every day repeating the real names of the people he knows, just in case he has to speak to them – most people tend to grow increasingly twitchy at hearing their curse-names, as they’ve begun calling them. He doesn’t want to make a fool of himself, nor to anger anyone who matters, if he can avoid it.

He’s trying to convince Pongo to shake hands like he’s seen dogs do in movies when the scratching of Jiminy’s pen stops, and after a moment the doctor says, casually, after a beat of thoughtful silence: “So, how have you been doing?”

Pinocchio goes still for a long moment before shrugging, his fingers still carding through Pongo’s fur. It’s a very odd question, coming out of nowhere as it is, and he’s not sure of what he should say in return, especially if he has to tell the truth, but…It’s fine. He’s been doing fine.

It’s certainly better than being at the convent, and by a long shot at that. Two days after he went home with his father Geppetto made him soup the way he used to in Misthaven, and though it didn’t taste exactly the same it was almost twice as good – Pinocchio asked for seconds and then for thirds, and there was no one to scold him for it, even if he couldn’t finish the third helping of food. And Papa says they’re going to get him new clothes once things have settled down – cheap clothes, because his father isn’t much richer here than he was in the Enchanted Forest, but clothes that fit him in colors he likes and a new winter coat and shoes that won’t pinch his toes when he walks. That’s nothing to scoff at, he thinks.

He’s not certain Geppetto will want to go through all of that once he’s seen his son’s school grades, but that won’t be a problem for a while yet, he hopes.

He hears Jiminy sigh and his chair scrape against the floorboards as he stands up, and Pinocchio flinches involuntarily, though he hopes the man hasn’t noticed it. He should have just answered and be done with it, it’d have been easier than whatever he’s about to hear on the matter.

But Jiminy doesn’t say anything, only draws closer and sits down beside him on the office’s plush carpet. His hand comes to rest on Pinocchio’s head, smoothing stray hair off his face, and Pinocchio finds himself leaning slightly into the familiar touch – it’s different than carting Jiminy around on his shoulder or in the brim of his hat, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. So many things have changed for worse, he’s not about to complain about this, is he now.

But then Jiminy says “Your father told me you’re having trouble sleeping”, and that ruins everything.

Pinocchio clenches his hands tight into fists, though Pongo begins to complain a bit, whining now that the petting has stopped. “It’s nothing,” he mumbles.

It’s not nothing, it’s really not, but what can he say? He’s been so good at keeping quiet and out of sight, at not complaining about anything, lest someone thinks to send him back to the convent until he’s learnt some manners. It’s barely been a week since the curse was broken, and all he’s done in the meantime was mind his place, careful not to intrude in the peaceful life his father’s had for twenty-eight years. He doesn’t exactly want to ruin all that just because Jiminy’s being nice to him.

Twenty-eight years. That’s ancient. He should be a grown man by now, with a car and a house and a job like his father’s. He should be able to do things on his own. Instead he’s just as stupid and small and scared as he was in the forest.

Jiminy sighs again, his hand still a warm weight on Pinocchio’s head. “You know that’s nothing to be ashamed of, right? It’s been a hard time for everybody. It’s only fair that it’d take you a while to adjust.”

If he were a little braver Pinocchio would tell him that no one’s ever left him the time to adjust to anything – it was expected of him to be a bit daft, when he was a puppet, but even then he had to learn the ropes pretty quickly before he got sent out on his own. And after he became a real boy, well…He was supposed to know everything that needed to be known, at that point, and everyone was too worried about the Evil Queen to pay him much mind.

And he’s not- he’s not ashamed, really. He should be, of a great many things he’s done during the curse and his father still doesn’t know about, but it’s too late to do anything about it. And he hopes that by now, most people might have forgotten how dumb he was while in the forest, or at least that they might be too busy to think much about it.

It’s just that he’s so tired. Not just of not sleeping, he would hardly sleep when he was on Pleasure Island and there were too many things to do and see and watch and he was fine afterwards – he’s tired of everything that’s been going on, all day, every day, and he’s not sure how long he can stand it before bursting. He doesn’t want to worry about what the curse might have left on them anymore, or what the Evil Queen might do now that she has her magic back.

He wants things to be the way they were before – which of the two befores he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t much care, so long as it gets everyone to be quiet for a little while. He wants his room back in Misthaven, with the creaking floorboards and the pear tree outside the window. He wants to go back to school and pretend he knows what his classmates are talking about. He wants Sister Astrid to teach him how to make cookies, and his father to tell him stories of his homeland, and Jiminy to let him hold Pongo’s leash on his own. He wants and wants and wants, and there’s nothing he can do about it, because no one ever shuts up long enough for him to explain what it is that he needs.

His throat is burning something fierce. He tries to swallow through it, but that only makes it burn harder, and now his eyes are stinging as well, his vision blurring more by the second. Pinocchio wraps his arms around himself, the way he used to in his bed back at the orphanage, and digs his fingernails into his sides, silently willing it all to stop, please, just stop.

Jiminy makes an odd noise, half shock, half worry. There’s a moment of hesitation, and then suddenly his hands are under Pinocchio’s armpits, tugging the boy close until he’s all but sitting on his lap. “Come here, now.”

Pinocchio goes stiff for a split second, his mind screaming at him to pull away and just get a grip. He’s supposed to know better. He’s supposed to behave, for pity’s sake, not to make a mess of everything as usual.

But Jiminy’s seen him do so many awful things already, this will hardly make a difference. And he can’t really bring himself to stop besides, not now that there are tears already streaming down his face, so Pinocchio gives up, burying his face in the crook of the man’s neck, and then begins sobbing aloud, so hard it wracks his chest painfully.

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, him hiccuping and sniveling and Jiminy holding him close and making soft, soothing sounds, but it feels like hours, somehow. At some point Pongo joins them as well, his head nudging at Pinocchio’s leg as he whines, and that only serves to make the boy cry even harder, for all that he wishes he could scratch the dog’s head and tell him that everything’s alright, even if it’s not very true at all.

His head is pounding by the time he finally looks up, and there’s a huge, wet spot on Jiminy’s shirt, big enough to make his cheeks burn in shame. “I’m sorry” he stammers, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hands.

“It’s okay.” Jiminy fetches a couple tissues from the box on the side table and hands them to him, his other arm still not releasing its hold on Pinocchio. “You probably needed that a lot. Do you feel better, now?”

“Dunno.” He does, a bit, but he also feels curiously empty, as if by crying he’d poured out everything he had in his head, good and bad and very, very ugly. It’s a weird feeling, and he doesn’t know what to make of it, or if he should say anything about it at all.

The doctor chuckles softly. “That’s alright. You can tell me in a couple days, when you’ve thought about it a while.”

Pinocchio nods weakly, resting his head on Jiminy’s shoulder once more. He’s exhausted, even more than he was when he left the house that morning, but oddly enough it doesn’t feel any worse – if anything, he thinks he could fall asleep in a matter of seconds if someone were to put him to bed now, and then not wake for a week, nightmares or not.

Silence stretches on for a while before Jiminy speaks again, shifting the grip he has on Pinocchio a bit so they can be face to face. “You know, you’ve been very brave all along, all this time.”

“Was not” Pinocchio mumbles. You shouldn’t contradict the adults speaking, the Mother Superior’s voice chastises in his mind, but it sounds curiously distant, as if she were talking to him from underneath the Troll Bridge. It’s funny, in a way – he’s used to her being much louder, even in his thoughts.

He quite likes the change, he thinks.

“Yes, you were. I told you the same thing during the curse, didn’t I? You’ve been through a lot, and you’re still here. I’m proud of you, and so’s your father.”

He smiles gently at Pinocchio, who’s still blinking owlishly up at him. “Things have been hard, and they’ll be hard for a while yet. But I know you can make it through, and it’ll be easier afterwards, for every one of us. Do you understand?”

Pinocchio does; in fact, he understands very well, for once. On a normal day he wouldn’t believe a single word of what Jiminy’s saying – he’s not anyone special, nor strong enough to do any of the things the Savior or Snow White or Prince Charming might have to do in the coming days, to keep them all safe from the Evil Queen.

But he finds that he can believe almost anything when he’s sitting like this, Jiminy’s arm around his shoulders and Pongo’s snout nosing at his shoes, and that might just be enough, for now.

(This is not the easy way out.

There rarely ever is an easy way out, even in stories – happy endings come with a price, and someone has to pay it, willingly or not. There’d be no story to tell, otherwise.

But it’s worth the expense, if you make it to the end. It nearly always is.)

“Pinocchio, stop jumping on that thing, you’ll put a hole through it.”

Pinocchio stops mid-hop, a sheepish look on his face, though he gives the mattress another experimental bounce when his father’s not looking, testing its resistance. It’s not as fun as the convent’s beds were, old and caved in as he remembers them being, but it’s even better like this, when he knows no one else will get to jump on his bed but him.

He’s supposed to be helping Papa unpack his stuff and sorting it into his new room’s cabinets, but in truth he’s too elated by it all to do much beside darting back and forth in glee. He has his own room – it’s a luxury he would have never been given at the orphanage, and it would seem almost too good to be true if he weren’t standing right in the middle of it. He has a room and a new bed and a door that locks, and walls were to hang pretty pictures he sees on newspapers, and drawers were to stash all his drawings without anyone tossing them away, and and and-

“Well, what is this, now?”

Pinocchio looks at what Geppetto has just dug out of his suitcase and freezes. He doesn’t answer, only climbing silently off the bed and walking closer to where his father is holding his book.

He hasn’t touched the thing ever since he left the convent, aside from retrieving it from the spot under the bed where he’d hit it from prying eyes. He hasn’t had much time to think about it, and he’s been wary of showing it to his father, besides, for fear that he’d make fun of it like some of the children who saw it did. It would be worse if he were the one to do it, Pinocchio thinks – at least he knew that those kids only wanted to be nasty, and hadn’t even given his work a proper look before making it the butt of their jokes. His father would mean every word he said, and he’d probably be right about it, in the end.

Well, there’s no hiding it now. Geppetto flicks slowly through the pages – some are already falling apart after being jostled around so long, Pinocchio’ll need to tape them together again if his father doesn’t decide to toss the whole thing away – and then turns back to his son, a small frown on his face. “Did you make this?”

Pinocchio nods, holding his breath.

His father turns another page, then smiles, to the boy’s surprise. He looks genuinely delighted, now that the lines have been smoothed off his face. “This looks very good- you’ve done a good job, my boy. Can I read it, when we’re done here?”

And Pinocchio can’t do anything but grin in return, bright and cheerful and dripping with relief, feeling happier than he’s been in months – in years, if the curse counts, and it does, because he says so. There’s nothing stopping him from making up these rules for himself, even if they sound stupid to everyone else.

He’s happy. That’s all that matters, in the end.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.”