princehonorable | (no subject)

Once upon a time, there was a land of magic, filled with true love and deepest hate. There were heroes and there were those who merely lived their daily lives amidst the power struggles of the wicked and the righteous. Regardless of what war befell the realm, it continued on until the Queen struck to take away the happy endings of all, banishing the world from existence with a curse fit to break apart even the truest of love.

When Charming had awoken from his coma in the strange land called Tabula Rasa, he thought that he would never see home again. His kingdom was lost, as was Snow's, and their people were scattered in what served as Storybrooke. It was in waking to the chirping of birds and the calm call of nature outside his window that he realized that he had been so wrong. Relative to his years, he hadn't spent a great deal of his life in the castle. He would be comfortable in any structure, no matter how simple. For Snow and for Emma, he would've built castles.

This one, King George's, was a structure he never thought he'd see again, but here he lay in his marriage bed. It was enough to get him to his feet, struck by the sense of urgency that came with awakening in a land that ought to be dead.

At this side, he took the time to indulge his gaze with a loving look at his wife, bending down to brush a kiss to her temple. "Snow, wake up," he coaxes. "We've work to do," he insists, grasping his cape as he dressed and hauling it around his shoulders in a hurry, affixing his sword and several daggers to his side as he began storming down the halls of the castle to search for an explanation to this.

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There are plans to be made, things to do, weapons to find, but in this moment, all that Charming finds occupies his mind is his daughter -- their daughter. The Queen's dark heart at the fringes of his mind, he turns to Emma and keeps his distance, but makes the effort to pitch his voice lower. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry you had to come here, with us, into this mess."

Everything's moving too quickly for Emma to process it, the snippets of explanation she's managed to gather in the past few minutes spinning in her head, that they think this is home instead of just a particularly vivid dream. When David returns with a little boy in tow (younger than Henry, though the comparison's already there, stuck in her head so she can't shake the thought), it's all she can do not to stare at the pair of them, her gaze eventually turning solely on David.

"You didn't bring me here," she says, sure of that much, if nothing else, and God only knows she has to stick with what's certain as to not lose her mind.