2Hello everyone.
This is the third chapter in a row I'm writing something for a new fandom. First, two weeks ago it was for Alexa and Katie, then I found a fanfiction I wrote for the lord of the flies in school years ago, and now this one.
And I'm writing this for Ally R. Swan's birthday so HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLY. I hope you like this.
It's told from adult Henry's point of view.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR HO-OPE HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU."
It was time for my little sister's first birthday, and while we all sang to her she sat in the middle of the group, on her daddy's lap and wearing a fabric gold crown, laughing out loud and clapping her hands.
As we finished the singing I felt like trollbound and watched as Killian let Hope help somewhat unwrapping a gift from himself.
"Look. A plastic toy that you can use in the bathtub. And it looks just like daddy's old pirate's ship doesn't it?"
Hope- of course too little to understand what he said only took a piece of wrapping paper in her hands and laughed so she screamed while Killian- holding her still with the arm with the hook moved it right in front of her as he sang.
"Row row row your boat gently down the stream…"
I couldn't help but smile like so many times before seeing Killian with his daughter. He was just the sweetest and softest along with her. Then, if anyone else would as much as lay a finger on her that would change quickly to the opposite..
"If you see a crocodile don't forget to scream… You're really mostly impressed by that paper are you?"
Hope confirmed what he said, holding a piece of golden and pink wrapping in her hands and clapping while she laughed at the top of her lungs.
I laughed and so did most people around the room as Hope kept clapping, taking no notice of her daddy's singing or the bath toys…
"You do that…" Killian kissed the side of her neck and she laughed more. "…If you see a croc then don't forget to scream. And daddy'll be right there to save you."
When she laughed more at the wrapping paper Killian held her tight and closed his eyes as if he took in everything he heard and felt, his daughter's laughter and her body in his arms. Cake, more presents and people around were forgotten and they were alone in the whole world…
"I love you baby girl."
There was no love as in between a dad and a daddy's girl was there?
"Lucy?"
I suddenly realized that, while she had been by my side just a second ago, Lucy was suddenly nowhere to be seen.
"Maybe she just went to the bathroom or something."
"No…" I answered Ella. "She would tell us where she was going… I'll go see if I can find her."
And hopefully I could relatively fast. If my daughter wanted to hide she had a while, big castle to do so in and we wouldn't find her again unless she just came back…
I found her fairly quickly sitting on the stairs not far from the doors where we had been, she didn't see me coming where she sat with a sad look over her whole self and her chin in her hand, far away in her own thoughts.
"What is it?"
Lucy still didn't look up, she was so far gone into her own thoughts she didn't even hear me and I went over to her until she saw me and looked up.
"Penny for your thoughts."
Lucy only looked up at me for a second, then she looked down again, and with a sigh she stroke away a tear from her cheek.
"Talk to me." I sat down on the stairs by her. "What's wrong?"
"It's stupid."
"I'm sure it's not."
"What if you get mad?"
"I'll try and keep an open mind and not get mad…." Lucy silent. "Whatever you're feeling I'm sure it's not anything that would upset me… I just hate seeing you like this. What is there I can do about it?"
"Nothing…" Lucy sighed at last. "…It's just… I love you and you're the best dad I could have ever asked for. But… seeing Killian with Hope."
I should have been more surprised if I'd never seen this coming than now I was.
"Luce." My daughter didn't say anything for for sure two minutes so I took over. "You're jealous. So what? I get it. You're ought to be. All of the time that passed by and all of the milestones you hit and your friends and any other child you knew were talking about their dads…" A few tears rolled down her cheeks. "It's okay… I get it…" I hugged her tighter with the arm I held around her shoulders. "…But I'm here now. And even though I missed a whole lot of milestones before. I'll make sure I'm here for the rest. And I promise you that if you or your mum would ever tell me all about it then it's second best…" Lucy gave a nod. "You don't need to run away like this. Just tell me what it is."
"I know… It's just. I don't want to upset my mum. I know she did her best with me and we did great and everything but… There was just something missing all the time."
"And yes. It might upset your mum and it might upset me but… Hey, Luce…" I gently laid my hand on her chin and pulled it until I looked her in the eyes. "That's because we love you. And there's no reason for you to ever have to worry about ever upsetting us okay? And especially not if it upsets yourself. Because then we can't sort it out together. And there's no one that we'd ever be more okay with upsetting us than for you… That's literally something you just sign up for when you have a kid. And there's no way you could know how much you can love one little piece of human being until you have one yourself."
Lucy gave a small smile, I tried to go through what I had just said and whether it was right or wrong.
"I love you Luce."
"I love you too dad… things have been a bit complicated more for us than for the others though…"
"You could say that again… I'm sorry for being against it for so long but you have to admit, it does seem strange when a kid shows up at your door and tells you that you're a character from a fairytale." The smile faded from Lucy's lips and my comment wasn't as funny as I thought it would be.. "There's no one I'd have doing it rather than you though. I wouldn't trade this for any normal life in a million years."
Lucy gave a slight smile, but unlike so many times before the smile never reached her eyes.
Anytime she looked like this I could just feel it breaking my heart. As the dad I was there was nothing more I wanted than for my daughter to be the happiest girl in the world.
Then, all of a sudden a thought struck me and I felt a small smile growing on my own lips, then a bit bigger and I just felt how it spread to my eyes.
"I…" I tried to think of anything to say and forced away the smile so I could keep a secret to Lucy. "Do you know what? I think you should go inside there and eat cake and cheer for Hope and her presents… or go to your room and read or whatever you like. Whatever you do, you just believe that we're going to think of something for you too… Okay?"
I wasn't so sure how I would express this without Luce realizing I was doing something.
At last Lucy went back to the celebration and in the middle of the crowd of people I found Ella, and when I did there was just no way I could hide my smile anymore…
"What do you look so happy about?"
"I have an idea. You see… since I couldn't be around for any birthday until Lucy turned ten… And then when I was. Well her last, when she turned ten her birthday was…" I chose my words and tried to imagine the whole mess last year. "…so chaotic we all forgot about it. But now… Whatever we want to do…"
"Her birthday's not in another five months."
"Just hear me out."
I told Ella my plans, then together we had quite some work to walk around and talk to people what we were about to do without it reaching Lucy.
I didn't get to bed until three in the morning sorting things out. But at last I had used all my money, all my power and all of my power to make the next day a happy one for my daughter.
And I had to say that with all the excitement by the time we met up in a dance hall fatigue was the last thing I was thinking about.
All of us were there- Killian and Emma and Hope, Regina and little Henry and Violet, Snow, Charming and little Neal and so many more…
"What's up?" The last one to arrive was Lucy as I walked behind her and held my hands over her eyes, every person in the dance hall was completely stil. "What's going on?" I let go of her and took a step back but Lucy kep her eyes shut. "What's going on? Dad? Mum? Where are you?"
I wanted to just shout at her to open her eyes and get this over with.
Then at last.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY LUCY."
Lucy was left with her eyes wide open as we all yelled at the same time and she looked around questioning.
"You guys do know my birthday's in December right?" Was at last the first thing Lucy said. "And right now is July."
"I know." At last I took the first gift from the table we had put up. "We know… But you see. Talking yesterday I realized that I too wished I had been there the day you were born and every birthday after that. So I came up with this and for every year, the seventh of July we will pretend it's your birthday. Today will be the day for the year you were born, and then July seventh next year we will celebrate your first birthday, the next year your second and on it goes until you've turned ten, and then when you turned ten and everything was chaos… What do you say?"
There for certain about thirty people in here, but each of us were quiet as rocks as Lucy took the first gift in her hand and span it a bit before she looked up at me with a great, big smile on her lips.
"This is great! It's like… second best… well. It is the best actually. Other kids can't remember the days they were born or their first birthdays…"
"Sorted then… but since people usually don't sing the happy birthday song to a newborn we won't sing until next year…"
Lucy's smile was growing bigger by the second and the light in her eyes could have lit up the darkest room.
"Come on…" At last Snow was the one tired of the talking. "Open your presents."
I had quite an idea what the big present from her, Charming and little Neal was…
Right now, Lucy looked down on the gift I had gotten her, it was hard and somewhat flat and I gave a nod before she finally started unwrapping it.
"Aw…"
"You see." I explained about the silver frame with shapes of stars around it and a silver teddy in the corner. "There are a lot of people who keeps a sonogram picture, or a newborn one. And of course I could have gotten one of them since your mum has some. But I figured this one would be better."
The photo had been shot at a photographer's right after I… came to Storybrooke. I and Ella stood right next to her and I held my arm on Lucy's shoulder from behind her…
It was the perfect family photo…
"It does."
"OPEN THE ONE FROM US."
I wouldn't have been surprised if it was Snow herself who'd shouted that…
"Neal Nolan." His mother pulled him down from standing on a table. "One would expect I and your father never learnt you any matters whatsoever."
"BUT IF SHE DOESN'T OPEN THEM ALL WE CAN'T HAVE GRANNY'S CAKE."
"Well…" As Snow scolded Neal more Charming shrugged. "He's not wrong."
"You…" Lucy looked around the room, taking it all in- including now seeing the birthday cake Granny had made big enough for everyone to get a piece. "…Did all of this for me. Even though it's not actually my birthday."
"It is your birthday." Ron… mayor Regina came over. "And we'll show it with this…"
She unfolded one piece that first looked like a regular blanket. But showed to be one of those you shoot pictures of babies on and mark if they're one month or two months and so on…
"Granny will fix it so it says years instead of months." She folded it again. "And then we can store it somewhere safe and take one photo next year."
"OPEN THE ONE FROM US"
"NEAL!"
I had to make a choking sound to cover that I was laughing at the little boy and his excitement…
"Fine!" Lucy shook her head at him and laughed herself. "Which one is from you?"
"THE BIG ONE."
Neal had such a big smile on his whole face. Whatever was in the gift he must have came up with his mischivious child's brain.
"Diapers!"
I had turned away from Lucy and the gifts and didn't know about it until I heard laughter spread in the room.
"Well…" Charming lifted his son from the chair he was standing on laughing. "…If we're celebrating the day you were born then we are. And those things are expensive…"
"It's also…" Snow almost whispered to me. "A bit hard finding a gift for a newborn over one night just like that."
"I'm guessing you won't be having much use of those now." Ella said with a smirk before I had the time to answer Snow- realizing she was right.. "But I could have had use for them ten years ago. Diapers are so expensive and you just wouldn't…"
"Mum!" Lucy interrupted. "No details. Please."
I laughed- well. Had I said that I wanted to know about every milestone…
I took a step back and watched Lucy as she unwrapped a music box from my mum, put it on and span around to the melody.
The talk we had had yesterday and the tears on Lucy's cheeks seemed distant as I watched her lifting little Hope up in her arms and the two laughed as if there was no tomorrow…
And then, just for a second my fake life during the curse passed by. The whole mess with Lucy turning up, a graveyard, a fire. Everything was just so distant. It was like it had never happened- which it hadn't!
That was one of the last times I ever thought about what had been. It seemed like a million years ago and was only faint in my memory anyway…
…None of it was important.
What was important was when Killian took Hope in his arms, Lucy started the music box over and I took her in my arms. And as we span around so much her long hair was flying around her and I knew…
I knew that from seeing my daughter this happy I was the happiest man on earth.
So. The end. That didn't exactly end up the way I hoped it would but I sort of like it- especially the end of course. And I hope you liked it too. Especially you, Ally R. Swan.
It was a bit confusing about Lucy's age. She is ten in the series but the creators says she's nine… as you can see I sorted it out.
Random fact (I always leave these at the end of chapters)
I asked Ally R. Swan quite a few questions during writing this to get all fact right. This series confused me too much… I was hoping all the questions wouldn't reveal what I was working on.
And then one last HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRATTIS PÅ FÖDELSEDAGEN and GRATULERER MED DAGEN for Ally R. Swan.
(English, Swedish, Norwegian)
Curtains closing, lights off, and off we go.
