#i love my french wife who carries the guilt of the battlefield with him but tries to be kind anyway

[kappaology]

human knight doodles, this time trying out krita's fill brush. more under the cut!

i don't often see knight fanart that showcase human headcanons of him so i am feeding myself and other enthusiasts </3 his character design really intrigues me because he's mainly defined by his "absence," so it was a fun challenge to imagine what he'd look like without shedding his original personality and such.

i also like how he canonically tries to be more modern as well (even to the point of wanting to be pink) so it opens up more design possibilities. that being said. have a comfy gamer knight

[sprnklersplashes]

shot through the heart

trigger warning for mentions of blood and injury. 

Also this is about Emma and Hope, not mentioning any partner for Emma, so it’s open to any and all shippers and fans :)

But it does take place in my universe where Rumple died, Belle moved in with Emma and the s7 time travel thing just... did not happen.

Hope’s never been in a battle before. She’s seen them more times than she would care to count; in her family’s storybook, in her history books, in paintings on gallery walls. All different and varied across history and between realms, some fought by her immediate family like the Battle For Neverland as it’s now called, and some between whole kingdoms. She’s never cared much for them, not even the ones her parents fought in, and skipped past them, knowing, or thinking she knew, that she’d never have to be in one.

And now here she stands, sword in one hand and magic cracking below the skin of the other, running down Main Street with blood rushing in her ears. It’s not like the paintings or pictures in her book where the hero stands triumphantly over the defeated villain, it’s hell on the streets. People she’s grown up with run past her without giving her a moment’s notice, most if not all holding some sort of weapon in their hands. She’s vaguely aware of them but couldn’t recognise their faces if she tried, not even her closest friends. Everything around her blurs and melts away, only leaving focus on the road ahead of her. Her ears are attacked with an unholy symphony of screams and cries and swords clashing and weapons being fired, the sounds coming together into one agonising noise, each one becoming indistinguishable from the other. She’s not stupid, she knows that battles and wars are far from valiant and mighty and all that crap. But she never thought that, even if she did fight in one, it would be with tear-streaked cheeks and the taste of vomit in her throat. The worst by far is the blood on her hands and blade.

“Mom?” She slows to a jog and tries to force her weary eyes to focus, but the ringing in her head only makes it harder. “Mom?! Henry? Mom!” She stumbles back into a little, holding her sword tighter. She pushes an escaped lock of hair out of her face, trying to search the endless sea of faces, the enemy only marked by their silver armour. “Mom?”

She’s about to let out a sob when something hits her. At first there’s almost no feeling to it, other than the weight hitting her stomach and pushing her back and her mind immediately goes to magic. Until her hand goes to that spot reflexively and she finds it wet; something warm and thick drips between her fingers.

It’s only when she sees the scarlet substance across her palm that the pain hits her, knocking her to her knees and making her hit the floor.

And holy shit, does it hurt.

                                                                                                                     *****

No. No, no, no, no, no. No!

Emma’s had her fair share of moments that made her blood run cold, beginning even before she came to Storybrooke. Her life sometimes feels like it was a series of horror movie moments from sleeping on the streets in a rainstorm to being thrown in front of a car to giving birth in jail. Then add Storybrooke and magic and you’ve got enough to make someone need a good therapist (or in her world, Archie). She’s seen shit that should have send her flying back, but she’s somewhat proud of how she stood back up, even after Dark Ones and curses and several close calls with death.

But none of those could prepare her for this.

She pulls her daughter into her lap, brushing her hair away from her face and wincing at how cold her cheeks are. She’s always been pale ever since she was a kid, but now she’s practically translucent, courtesy of the arrow sticking out of her stomach, its silver tip winking cruelly at her in the setting sun. Bile rises in Emma’s throat. This arrow, like the rest in the White Witch’s army, are enchanted against Misthaven’s magic. Her hands can burn down forests and melt glaciers but snow they sit limp and useless when it comes to fixing her daughter.

“Mom?” Her voice is tiny, so unlike the bright laughter or deadpan snark she’s grown used to filling her house. Her green eyes look up at her, hazy and unfocussed. “Mommy?” She hasn’t called her mommy since she was five.

“I’m here, baby,” she whispers, stroking her hair. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you it’s okay.” Hope gasps a little and a tear leaks out of her eye.

“Mom… it hurts,” she grunts. “It hurts so bad.” Such a blunt admission from the girl who faced life with as much dramatics as possible made Emma choke on her tears, but it also brought her back to the situation at hand.

“I know, baby girl.” She wonders how long it’s been since she called her that. Not since she wore tutus and carried her stuffed duck around at all times, she knows that much. “I know, honey. Just hang in there.” She wraps her arms around her daughter, cursing at herself. What Hope needs is a pillar of strength right now, not trembling arms and shaking breaths.

Emma looks around her, surveying the battlefield one last time. She looks up just in time to watch Robyn send an arrow into the chest of the man who felled Hope, making it look effortless. She’s her father’s daughter. The young archer turns around and does a double take at the sight of Hope’s prone form, at the blood blooming across her white top. Emma sees the words “oh my god” form on her lips as she runs towards them and drops to her knees and remembers with a wince that she’s hardly much older than Hope is.

“I’ll hold it down here,” she tells her, shouting over the chaos of the battlefield. “Alice has the front line. Lucas and I can keep it up back here.” Her eyes move to Hope, wide and fearful, and Emma sees her hold back from gagging at the sight of the blood. Hope doesn’t acknowledge her, if she even has the energy to see her at all.

“Thank you, Robyn,” she says, grabbing her hand tightly.

“Don’t even thank me,” she says. “Just go. Thank me when this one’s on her feet again.” Emma nods, enveloping them in white smoke just as tears begin to blur her vision.

She finds herself outside Storybrooke General, the protection spell Alice placed around it preventing anyone, friend or foe, from entering magically. Hope lets out a pained groan on impact, the change in position no doubt angering her already nasty wound.

“I’m sorry, baby.” She presses a kiss to her head before kicking the door open and storming inside, her daughter’s head resting against her shoulder. “Help! Help!” Memories of running into this same hospital with a different child flicker up in her mind, past and present colliding.

Gideon comes flying down the hall, his stride faltering only when he catches sight of his almost-sister limp and half-unconscious in her mother’s arms. Having grown up in the same house, they’re siblings in all but blood.

“Holy crap,” he gasps, meeting Emma in the foyer and taking a moment to stroke Hope’s head. “What happened to her?”

“There’s an arrow… in my stomach…” Hope whispers, her voice thin and pained, but it’s there and Emma could cry. “What do you think happened?”

“Save your breath, baby,” she tells her, but there’s a spark of hope in her chest. If Hope’s aware enough to recognise Gideon and be sarcastic, maybe it’s not as bad as it looks, even with the blood staining the floor and Hope’s short, laboured, desperate breaths filling the silence.

“Get a stretcher in here, now!” Gideon barks down the hall and two dwarves appear with one almost instantly. Emma helps lay Hope on it and Hope’s ice cold hand clings to hers. Gideon assesses the damage while the dwarves pull the stretcher down the hall, his shaking hands the only thing that betray his calm demeanour. “Magic isn’t going to work on this one. Get her into that operating room and get Whale, now. We’re going to need anaesthetic, a fuckton of bandages and antibiotics, just in case.” One of the dwarves, Sneezy, she thinks vaguely, nods and runs down the hall.

“Emma, I’m going to need you to wait out here,” Gideon continues.

“Like hell, that’s my daughter,” Emma replies sternly, her hand tightening around Hope’s.

“Yes, I know. But we can’t have a civilian-”

“I’m not a civilian.”

“Someone who isn’t on the medical team in that operating room,” he finishes. “I’m sorry Emma but you need to stay out here!”

“No, she needs me!”

“What she needs is to get better,” Gideon tells her, looking down at Hope. She didn’t even flinch at his voice. Guilt and regret cross his face, unusual for a Stiltskin, but he’s also half French and that’s the part of him that makes him a godsend in the hospital. “Emma… we’re going to do everything we can for her. But in there…. You can’t be in there, Emma. I’m sorry.”

Emma looks down at Hope. She looks so much like her grandmother, her black hair spread across the pillow and her skin as white as… well, as snow. Tears run down her cheeks as she realises Gideon’s right, of course. She’s about as useful in a medical room as a jelly pickaxe. Her family takes the battlefield, Belle’s takes the hospital. It’s right, but that doesn’t make it any less hard.

“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay.” Gideon pats her shoulder and it’s hard to believe he’s the same man who tried to kill her, albeit not of his own will. Not that he remembers any of that.

Emma kisses Hope’s knuckles and then her head, hoping against hope that True Love’s Kiss works on arrow wounds.

“I love you,” she whispers, stroking her pale cheek.

“I’ll call you the minute we’re finished,” Gideon promises. Emma nods, knowing to trust a French, and watches him wheel Hope away. She wants to call after him and beg him to take care of her, but she knows he will. There’s five people in the world who love Hope as much as she does and Gideon’s one of them.

“Mom?” And there’s another one. When Emma turns, Henry is behind her, half a roll of bandages in his hand. He decided that his skills, like Gideon’s, are better employed here. And since his wife is out on the battlefield with her step sisters, he can keep an eye on Lucy here. Henry opens and closes his mouth, his eyes wide. “Mom what happened-”

“Hope,” she says, and his face falls instantly. She takes a deep breath before continuing, shoulders back, chin up. She straightens her jacket. Her parents might have fought in chainmail and capes, but she’s fought every battle, emotional and physical, real and fairytale, in this jacket. “She got hurt.”

“Hurt?” he echoes. “How badly, what happened, where is she, is she okay?”

“One question at a time kid,” she replies, her voice catching. “She got hit with an arrow. Gideon took her a minute ago. She’s in good hands. She’s…” She’s going to be okay. She’ll be fine. Those words don’t quite cross her lips though.

“Oh my God.” Emma throws her arms around him just as his knees start to buckle. When his arms come around her too, she melts into it, not realising how much she needed this until now. He’s shaking against her, clinging to her like she’s a stuffed toy.

“She’s going to be okay,” she finally says. Despite the hope she’s trying to hold onto, the words feel clumsy and wrong in her mouth. She hates uncertainties, especially ones like this. “They’ve got Whale and Gideon in there with her and they’re the best we have.” She tries to flash a weak smile and wonders if Henry can see the lack of heart behind it. “If anyone can save her, Dr Frankenstein can.”

“Yeah.” Henry smiles against her hand on his cheek despite the tears shining in his eyes.

“Dad?” Lucy comes running down the room towards them, her dark hair flying behind her. Emma can’t help but find the hasty smile on her son’s face intimately familiar. Her hair is pulled into a ponytail and, like her father, she wears a white coat over her clothes. “Dad, there’s more people coming in.”

“I’ll be right there, kid.” Lucy nods and looks over at Emma, realisation dawning on her as she takes in her red eyes and blood-stained fingertips, and she looks over at her father.

“Dad?” she asks, her voice small. “Dad what’s going on?”

“Just checking what’s happening out there,” he says. “Come on, Luce, let’s go.” He turns to Emma before he goes, squeezing her hands tightly, his mask slipping away to reveal the desperation.

“I’ll let you know as soon as she’s awake,” she promises him in a low voice. “She’ll want to see you.”

“Thanks Mom,” he says. He hugs her tightly before he leaves, the shaking arms and teary eyes almost gone completely as he takes Lucy’s hand. Lucy sends a concerned look over her shoulder to Emma as Henry takes her away. Clever girl. She’s like her father that way.

Emma pulls her hair back into a ponytail and takes in deep breaths. In and out, eight for eight. As she bites her nail, she hears the phantoms of foster mothers telling her stop it, what a terrible habit is. They may have been right, but it’s one of the only constants in her life.

She flops onto one of the hard plastic chairs, the feeling of worthlessness settling into her like little pinpricks. A Saviour is what she is, apparently. And yet she’s sitting here waiting for someone else to save her daughter from something that no amount of magic can fix.

Just down the hall and to the left is the maternity ward, where after 8 painful and uncomfortable hours, her daughter was born. Hope Eva Margaret Swan, five pounds, three ounces, two full weeks before her due date. Emma likes to joke that was the only time she’s ever been early for anything. Born with wisps of blonde hair that turned red just before her first birthday and stayed that way. Zelena joked that if they were out with their daughters, people might think Hope was hers and Robyn was Emma’s. And that might have been true, but ever since Hope dyed her hair black, they’re more in danger of outsiders believing her to be Snow’s, especially with their chin and the family green eyes.

She has almost all of Emma’s bad habits. Not just the nail chewing, but the sugar addiction and the Star Wars worshipping, the eye rolling and the affection for puns, driving poor Gideon up the wall, the inability to sit on a chair properly if their lives depended on it. Sometimes Emma can’t even scold her when she sees her stealing cookies before dinner, knowing she would have done the same thing at her age. But there are so many things about her daughter that she didn’t get from anyone, completely unique to her. Her too-loud cackle and famous impulse decisions, her aggressive competitiveness and her use of affectionate insults to show love, the way she loves with every piece of her, even if she’s too cool to show it. And then there’s her smile. The sarcastic one with her eyes narrowed, the bashful one she gets when she’s talking to Melody even after six months of dating, the excited one accompanied by fists punching and bouncing up and down, the cocky “in your face” smile she puts on when she beats someone at even the tiniest game. But the best one is the one with her eyes sparkling and dimples in her cheeks and teeth on full display, the one she gets where she’s so happy she might burst. Emma had always loved that smile, but it’s only now, when she sees that there’s a chance she might never see it again, she realises how much she needs it in her life.

                                                                                               *****

Something’s tickling her chin. Or someone, but for her sake and the sake of whoever’s with her, it better be a something. But that’s the first thing Hope becomes aware of, the presence of something soft tickling her chin. She goes to move lift her hand to slap it (or them) away, but it feels stuck to the bed. Her whole body feels like it’s melted into the mattress, her head fused to the pillow. She isn’t necessarily complaining though.

She spends minutes (or hours, she’s not totally sure) walking the line between awake and asleep, before she gets restless, her body not at all jibing with how still her limbs are. She tries to move, but her muscles don’t comply despite her best efforts. They don’t feel locked exactly, just deflated. Like a bunch of sad, empty balloons. There’s probably a better comparison, but her brain is a jumbled mess of thoughts right now, and not in the way it normally is where she can sort through it, especially when she feels herself fading in and out of consciousness.

After a while, she manages to blink her eyes open. The world is blurry and disjointed at first, but slowly manages to come into place. With the light from outside, she makes out the grey walls and TV standing isolated in the corner on a heavy looking metal stand and she frowns. This isn’t her room, nor is it any of her friend’s rooms. After some considerable effort, she manages to push herself up onto her elbow, only for a blinding pain to flash through her stomach. She lets out a gasp before she can stop herself and collapses back onto the pillow, her heart racing from the effort.

Thanks to the pain, the fog in her mind lifts and everything comes flooding back to her; the battle, running down Main Street, the arrow piercing her stomach, her mum’s face over her, telling her everything was going to be okay.

She turns her head slightly. Sure enough, she’s sitting on the visitor’s chair beside her, her hair messy from sleeping on her side and her eyes bleary and bloodshot. Her mum.

“You look like crap,” Hope jokes weakly.

“Look who’s talking,” her mum replies, moving from her chair and sitting on the bed. She takes her hand in hers and Hope squeezes with as much effort as she can muster. Her mum’s other hand strokes her cheek and pushes her hair away from her face, letting out a laugh as tears make their way down her cheeks. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” she says. Her mum raises an eyebrow at her. “Okay, maybe I’ve been better. What’d I miss?”

“We won,” her mum says. “Turned the tide, White Witch arrested. Oh and Robyn sent an arrow into the guy who shot you.”

“I need to buy her a drink.”

“She’s taken,” Emma reminds her playfully. “And it’ll have to wait. You’re not drinking for a while. Doctor’s orders.”

“Oh, boo,” Hope scoffs. “What would he know? He got his degree from a curse.”

“Normally I’d agree, but Gideon said so too,” she tells her. “And I have some experience with this kind of stuff.” Hope pouts for a second, but it’s soon gone and she nods in understanding. Her free hand slips under the hospital issue blanket and her top and she feels the strip of bandages across her stomach. “They’re staying on for a while.”

“Am I going to have a scar?”

“Most definitely.”

“Awesome,” she whispers. She turns her head and finds something tickling her again. She reaches up and finds a stuffed duck sitting on her shoulder, a pink bow tied around his neck. “Ducky…”

“I brought you some of your stuff from home,” Emma tells her. “You’re going to be here for a while. I brought your laptop, your books, your headphones, your Pop Tart stash…”

“And Ducky,” Hope adds, shaking the toy in front of her face. Emma nods slightly, her cheeks turning pink.

“And Ducky,” she admits. “That was your grandma’s idea.” Hope toys with it, her fingers running over his fur.

“I don’t mind,” she says. A few years ago, Ducky took up semi-permanent residence in her wardrobe, too babyish for her bedroom but too important to throw out. “I don’t.”

“I had a feeling you wouldn’t,” Emma whispers. There’s a lot unsaid in her eyes; a mirror of Hope’s own. Neither one of them are good with words, especially when it comes to this bedside manner, emotional sincerity crap. But the tight hug she pulls Hope into tells her everything she needs to know. “I’m going to go call your brother. He’s probably pacing the floor of his apartment right now.”

“I’ll be here,” Hope says, making Emma chuckle. She kisses her head again, and once more for luck, before lifting her phone and stepping outside.

Hope turns and looks at the digital clock on the wall. 4:15am. She feels a stab (pun intended) of guilt followed by telling herself how ridiculous she’s being. She slips her hand under her blanket and, against her better judgement, feels the bandage across her skin. It’s too thick for her to make out the wound, but if her memory is anything to go by, it’s probably bled through a little. Pain still flashes through her when she touches it, the icing on top of the throbbing ache she already feels in her stomach. She knows it's going to take a long, long time to recover from this, and maybe even then she won't be the person she was before this. She doesn't want to think about all the things she might miss out on now.

Being the product of a fairy tale isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, she realises sadly. Even with the magic.