#in terms of plot and me trying to find something to draw for chipper

[kaiserouo]

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pet archon shard

[kathrynmaslow]

Love Lies (1/15)

Summary: 

Ever since Emma was 13, she knew she had the ability to destroy people if she wanted to, and some days, she really wanted to. After being forced to go the the Greenwood Academy following a traumatizing event in her childhood that brought to the surface her ability to manipulate fire, she never thought she would be free of the place. So for nearly 10 years, she lived a solitary existence with the exception of her best friends, but that was all about to change. 

Killian Jones had just been sentenced to attend the university campus at Greenwood Academy after an accident at sea caused him to be dishonorably discharged from Her Majesty's royal Navy and lose his hand. He doesn't know what to think about these newfound powers and what they spell for the rest of his now not-so-normal life. But a chance encounter one day has the ability to change all of that. 

A story about love and redemption between two people that shows, if you have the right person beside you, you can find a light in the darkness. 

Rating: M

Content Warnings: Mentions of Violence/Death, Brief mention of Childhood Abuse/Sexual Assault, Mild Sexual Content

Notes: Oh My Goodness! It's Finally Here! This is my first completed work (ever) and my first story for the CSBB! This AU has been a baby of mine for a while, and this project finally gave me the push to finally get it down onto paper and out of my head. I couldn't do it on my own though, I have a HUGE thank you to give to my beta @daveyjacobsthepotterhead. Without her guidance, this work wouldn't be nearly as good and composed as it is now. Thank you again for finding all of my plot gaps and inconsistencies and dealing with my, at times, horrible grammar. You have been my cheerleader since we were paired together and I couldn't have asked for a better experience. Thanks to @princesse-swan as my artist as well! I can't wait for all you lovely readers to see the wonderful art that she has put together for this story, I am blown away by it! Thanks again to the Mods for the BB, you ran a great project this year and kept me moving the entire time, even when it seemed like I was not going to be able to finish. Thanks to all the wonderful ladies on the discord chat, I will remember those late night, incoherent sprints always.

Without further ado, here is my Captain Swan Big Bang! Enjoy!

Read of FF: Link

Emma just made it into the doors of Mary Margaret’s dorm before the skies opened up and rain began to pour down from the heavens. She knew that it was supposed to rain that day, but in typical college student fashion, she decided against bringing her umbrella with her and just risk it.

Shaking her hair out from under her hat, she started to make her way up the back stairwell towards the fourth floor. David and Mary Margaret, she knew, were already waiting for her in Mary Margaret’s room for their planned study session for Ethics 104. She hated that class.

To be honest, she hated a lot of the whole, college charade that the school was putting up. That’s what this entire school was, a charade, it was a cleverly disguised prison. Schools like Greenwood were where they sent anyone who was deemed to be “different”, which was complete bullshit in her opinion. Anyone who manifested any type of power or gift, be it completely harmless to something deadly like her own powers, was sent here, or one of the dozens of other schools around the world like it.

But what made Greenwood Academy different was that it was one of seven schools in the country that had a college as part of the locked campus. Which was why Emma and her friends were currently suffering through Ethics 104 with the world's most boring professor.

Pushing past a group of students coming down the stairs, she rounded the final corner and made her way up the final flight of stairs towards the door to the fourth floor. Bright neon pages decorated the inside of the stairwell on the floor. Join KickBoxing Club, Friday nights in Fourtner Hall; Rock Climbing adventures, Starting the second weekend into Fall Semester. All of them meant to draw in the attention of the students visiting the hall, but all of them came with their own starred caveats at the bottom, “Super Strength not allowed, Students with physical powers not allowed, Must not have a power activated by physical contact to attend, NO HIGH RISK STUDENTS.” Emma sighed every time she saw them, since she was never able to go. Emma did her best to ignore the brightly colored advertisements as she walked down the hall. While they held interest as something she could possibly do besides just hanging out with her friends or in her room, she wasn’t able to participate as a high risk student.

Making a right turn down the hall, Emma arrived outside of Mary Margaret’s door and gave a quick knock. After hearing her chipper “Come in!” through the door, Emma turned the knob and dropped her bag next to the door.

“Looks like you made it here just in time Emma, it’s really coming down out there.” David commented from the middle of the notebooks and laptops scattered about the floor.

Mary Margaret was sprawled out on her bed amongst her textbooks, highlighting the middle of a paragraph in bright pink highlighter, adding to the already colourful carnage on the page.

“Definitely, considering I left my umbrella in my room this morning.” Emma commented back, shrugging out of her leather jacket and hanging it on the back of the computer desk chair that was to her left.  

Emma grabbed her notes and textbook and moved across the room to spread her stuff out on the desk next to David. Right after she got settled the door swung open again, revealing to the three of them a soaking wet Ruby Daniels.

“Looks like you weren’t the only one to have left their umbrella behind.” Mary Margaret commented dryly.

Ruby paused in the middle of the room as three sets of eyes turned to look at her, and with a small smirk as their only warning, shook out her red and brown locks like a disgruntled wet dog.

David picked up his text book off the ground and began to brush the water from the pages, “Geez Ruby, was that really necessary?”

Ruby continued to look around the room with a wolfish grin on her face, knowing that she had succeeded in getting a rise out of her friends. “True, I didn’t have to, but isn’t it more entertaining when I do?” She asked, quirking an eyebrow as she shrugged out of her coat and hung it in her closet.

While Emma and Mary Margaret had roomed next to each other Mary Margaret’s first year at Greenwood, Ruby had stumbled upon their friend group by chance. There was one night freshman year when Mary Margaret and David had gone out and gotten trashed after a particularly hard exam week, and David had gotten lost in the woods.

Ruby just happened to be partying in the same area and overheard the distressed phone call that Mary Margaret had made to Emma back on campus, not being able to find her boyfriend. Ruby, in her wolf form, was single-handedly able to track David down in the middle of the night.

David and Mary Margaret introduced Emma the next morning, after their hangovers had lessened, and they had all quickly become fast friends. So much so that when Mary Margaret’s roommate Regina got clearance to live outside the academy, Ruby moved in the next term as her roommate.

“So does anyone understand what Professor Rodham was trying to get across on study guide question number seven?”

Emma jolted, not realizing that she had zoned out staring at her textbook.

“Nope, I am SO lost in that class in general so I have no idea.” Ruby offered from her place at her desk.

Mary Margaret slumped down into the pile of papers on her bed and sighed, “What even is this class? I don’t even know why they require us to take an ethics class.”

“Because it prepares you for ‘normal life’” Emma quipped, not looking up from the textbook that she had started leafing through.

“Yeah, but we are not normal, that’s why we came here! Why do we have to do normal people stuff anyway?!” Ruby whined.

Ruby did have a point. Since Greenwood Academy was one of a select few schools that had a college style campus on the same grounds, many people from around the country transferred into the school if they weren’t given clearance to leave and assimilate into regular society at the end of high school.

“Because you can likely graduate from here and move onto a normal job, Ruby, you weren’t forced to continue college at one of these schools,” Emma commented.

Ruby gave her a withering look. “I know that, but it doesn’t mean that we have to be forced into doing classes that have nothing to do with our major.”

“Regular colleges actually have you do that as well,” David said, deciding to join the group effort of ignoring their ethics assignment.

“You didn’t go to a regular college either, how do you know that?” Mary Margaret asked him.

“My twin is perfectly normal, so he went to a normal college. My mom wrote me once and told me all about it.” David explained. “Apparently they have these things called ‘General Education Requirements’ where you have to take a certain number of courses in other disciplines to graduate with a specific degree.”

“That blows,” Ruby commented, dismissing the explanation with a wave of her hand. “Does anyone want to order pizza?”

“So that is a no to the answer to question seven then, right?” David asked, shuffling the papers around in front of him.

“David, I say this with affection, but none of us care about this class.” Mary Margaret said from the bed, still sprawled out on top of her papers and textbooks.

“No! Emma still has my back, she cares about that class, right?” He said, giving her a look that begged her to agree.

“Sorry David, I have absolutely no concern about a course that I am not going to use for the rest of my life.” Emma said, pulling one of her favorite books out of her bag.

David sighed in defeat, turning to work on his assignment alone.

Ruby spied the book in her hands and let out a noise of exasperation. “Honestly, Emma! Are you ever going to return that book!”

Emma carefully gathered her copy of ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends and Every Thing On It’ by Shel Silverstein to her chest. The binding was slowly falling apart, and a page or two may have been haphazardly shoved back in after they fell out, but the weathered library barcode label was still affixed to the front cover, even though no plastic covering remained.

It was one of her favorite books when she was growing up, her brother read her poems from it every night before bed. And once she was off restriction after first arriving and had finally been fitted with her suppressor bracelets, they allowed her into the library the first time. She had scanned the shelves for hours, looking for something that she hadn’t already read before that she could sit down with and read for a little bit (they were still weary about letting her bring books outside of the library, even though she hadn’t shown any tendency at the time to possibly flare up  and accidentally burn a book) and had stumbled upon the copy on the end of a shelf. The size of the book didn’t fit in with any of the other shorter books and it was leaning to hold the other books in place. Pulling it off the shelf and to her chest, she began crying, missing her home and her brother with a ferocity that hurt.

One of the librarians had happened upon her not long after, curled into a ball clutching the already worn book to her chest. The woman looked down upon her kindly and comforted her to the best of her abilities, and asked her if she would like to keep the book. She had nodded, wiping the tears from her face. The woman walked her up to the front counter, wrote down some information about the book and took down Emma’s name and current room location (since Emma didn’t know her case number off the top of her head at the time) and promised her that she wouldn’t have to worry about anything.

And in almost 10 years of having the book, no one had ever come to her requesting the book back.

“Maybe one day,” Emma murmured, “I’m a bit sentimental.” She looked up at Ruby as she set the book into her lap, hoping to change the conversation, “Didn’t you say something about pizza?”

“That’s right!” Ruby exclaimed, leaning back in her desk chair. “Mary Margaret, where did we put the brochure for the on campus pizza place?”

Mary Margaret, who had been ignoring the conversation and reading for a different class, started. The book she was holding above her head fell onto her face and the papers surrounding her on the bed jolted, many cascading to the floor with her ethics textbook.

David instantly moved to start gathering the papers, while Mary Margaret just sighed in defeat from under the book. “Ummm, I think it is in the top right drawer of my desk, but it could also be on the refrigerator.”

Later, after demolishing three pizzas between the 4 of them and completely abandoning the studying for their ethics exam, they were lounging on the futon and floor watching The Bachelorette.

“You know, I still don’t understand why people sign themselves up for these things,” Ruby commented, “I mean, it’s pretty pathetic looking.”

“Well, not all of us are blessed with having a good-looking, future doctor as our boyfriend.” Emma commented from her place on the floor.

“Very true,” Ruby stated, “So, when are you going to start looking for a boyfriend Emma?”

Emma choked on her popcorn for a second. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah. Emma, I have known you for three years, there has to be someone that you have an interest in.” Mary Margaret chimed in. Emma looked pleadingly up at David to try and rescue her from this conversation.

David and Emma had known each other the longest out of any of the friends gathered. While her and Mary Margaret had roomed next to each other for a bit before getting to know one another, David and Emma had literally run into each other while they were heading across campus. Emma was running late for one of her intro science classes and had slammed right into David as he was exiting the science hall. They were fast friends after that. Especially because David, upon sitting down with her for a bit and getting to know her on one of her hard days, began to just step into the role of her older brother.

Emma would forever be grateful that he did that for her.

But he didn’t come through for her now.

“Emma, while I don’t necessarily condone the meddling of my girlfriend and her best friend, they do have a point.”

She sighed, closing her eyes and trying to think. Emma was lucky that she even had this many friends outside of the one or two other high risk students that she had had a conversation with during her years at the academy. Once it became public knowledge that someone was a known high risk student, many people began to avoid them.

“There have been a couple of guys…”

“AND…?” Ruby interrupted.

“They take one look at these,” Emma shook the suppressor bracelet on her left wrist under her friend’s nose, “And the attention tends to turn elsewhere.”

If someone came to the academy with what was already known to be a high risk ability, or had seriously injured or killed someone, they were immediately outfitted with custom suppression gear that nulled their powers while they were on. This prevented the students from posing a risk to themselves or anyone else on the campus.

Ruby’s nose wrinkled, “Have those always smelt like that?”

“Like what?” Emma commented. She’d gotten this pair of suppressors two years ago, after the last set died on her.

“Like death.”

“Well, they didn’t design them to be pleasant,” Emma quipped back.

“Well, not everyone-”

“Yeah, they do,” Emma said, interrupting whatever ‘hope and love speech’ Mary Margaret was about to give her, “And honestly I’m not really looking for anyone anyways. I’m going to head back to my dorm.”

“Emma, you really don’t have to go just yet,” Mary Margaret commented, seeming to try and salvage the situation. Emma just shook her head as she shoved the rest of her books and papers back into her bag, moving ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’ to another pocket to prevent it from getting further destroyed.

“No, it is really time for me to be heading back,” Emma said, looking at the setting sun peeking out from behind the dispersing rain clouds as she tugged her rain boots back on.  

She caught David laying a placating hand on Mary Margaret’s thigh, preventing any further protest from the woman. “Thanks for the company Emma.” David said, giving her a quick wave with his other hand.

Emma reciprocated with a small quirk of her lips as she slung her bag over her shoulder and backed out the door to the room.

Taking the back stairs down the four flights to head back to her dorm on the other side of campus, Emma thought back on the end of the conversation. Sure, Emma really hadn’t invested any time in guys or relationships. But honestly, she thought, why would she? It wasn’t likely that she would ever leave the academy and the communities after she graduated, so why should she invest any kind of time in a relationship with someone who would eventually just leave her? And, considering what happened with her stepfather that caused her to come to the academy in the first place, she really didn’t feel like an actual relationship would ever be in the cards for her.

Emma passed a few students leaving the academic buildings late heading for the dorms on the other side of campus or to their cars. She enjoyed the solitude of a quiet walk across campus at the end of the day.

Feeling a bit like a little kid, she looked down at her booted feet and the puddles scattered about the sidewalk. Letting go, she just started jumping from puddle to puddle on the walk across campus. A small giggle escaped her for a moment just as she slammed into a solid chest, sending them both crashing down onto the damp sidewalk.

Emma closed her eyes and cringed, her head hitting the sidewalk.

“You know, with the way you were laughing there lass, I think you meant to run into me just then.” A distinctly British-sounding voice came from just to her right.

Emma opened her eyes just as a pair of eyes the color of the midday summer sky came into view. One hand grabbed hers, the other arm slipping into her armpit to leaver her up.

“Up we go love,” he said, steadying her a bit as he set her on her feet.

She looked down to see papers strewn about the pavement, many of them now soaking wet. “I am so sorry about that, I wasn’t watching where I was going,” she commented, immediately kneeling down to start picking the papers up, feeling all too clearly his gaze on her. She tucked her hair a bit awkwardly behind her right ear under her hat.

“No need to fret about it love, I have it all on a digital drive anyway,” the stranger commented.

She really should get his name, Emma thought to herself.

“I still feel bad, I got your clothes all wet,” she said.

Her back was a bit damp now that she thought about it, along with the knees of her jeans.

Looking over at him, she noticed he was gathering papers next to her, but not necessarily with the intent of trying to salvage the damp paper. He used his left arm, which she just noticed ended at his wrist, to try and push the paper against the pavement towards his right hand.

“Well, you can make it up to me by giving me your name Love, sound like a fair trade?” He asked, flashing a grin that was all white teeth in her direction.

“Sorry, I don’t give my name to strangers,” she commented back, handing him a stack of sopping wet papers, standing as she did so.

He stood up alongside her, pushing the mass of paper into the crook of his left elbow, extending his right, gloved hand towards her.

“The name’s Killian Jones, at your service.”

Emma extended her right hand to meet his.

“Emma Swan.”

She would be lying if she said her heart didn’t skip a beat when he took her hand and smiled at her.