ten_fwd | 1st Story - Ten Forward

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1st Story - Ten Forward

One minute, Henry had been sitting on a bus to Boston, the next, he was standing in a room with lots of other people having experienced a large flash of light. Looking around, he realised he had no idea where this place was. It wasn't in the book, it hadn't been described by his father and he certainly wasn't back in Storybrooke.

Glad that he still had his bag, he clutched it tightly and moved to stand in a corner out of the way. Closing his eyes for a moment, to stop himself from panicking, he took some deep breaths before opening them again and taking a proper look at his surroundings.

First thing he noticed was the bar. It spanned the length between the two sets of doors and behind it was a smiling woman. On the other side of the room were...well they looked like windows but all he could see out of them were white dots on a black background. And between them, only chairs and tables, people and drinks. And no one he immediately recognised either.

Moving towards the strange windows, he touched one, unsure if he wanted to believe what he thought he saw. They looked like...stars.

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She raises her brows at Henry, both curious and a little reserved. It isn't that she's against having friends, but she only really has three, and they're all here because she never needed them or had the option of getting them at home. There are no other children in the base underneath the Alps, not even considering what's going on systematically in other places not horribly far from where she'd lived. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas her life is not.

"What happened to your mother?" she asks. The offer of friendship is one she still hasn't quite learned to talk about. It feels too new to have words go with it yet.

Henry shifted uncomfortably at the question. He wasn't ready to explain everything about his family yet. Not about things he wasn't entirely sure about at any rate. So he just shrugged before answering.

"That's the complicated part." He could say she was fine and he'd been on the way to look for her. He could say she was dead because that's what Gold had told him when he'd asked at age five. But neither options sat well with him and he was still in two minds about everything that had happened in the last year anyway. So he just left it at that and waited to see if she responded to his question about the picture or not.

Edited 2014-07-15 09:42 (UTC)

"Oh," Sinthia replied. "It's okay if you don't want to talk about it," she offered, though a little awkwardly. She's never had a mother; she never knew hers, and birth wasn't exactly a memory she could look back on fondly, eight years later.

She'd settle for talking about the pictures instead. "If you want to show me a picture, that would be okay. If I recognize him maybe you can find him?" she asks. Sinthia already know Johann is not here, and she vehemently hopes he won't ever be here, because she isn't ready to go back to giving up every little impossible freedom she's found so many decades and centuries in the future. "I don't have any pictures of my family, though."

"Maybe another time." If they were going to be friends, Henry would eventually tell her the truth, but this was their first meeting and he'd only just arrived here. He didn't want to throw all the information down her throat like he had been given. It's not something any child should go through.

"Yeah." He smiled though it didn't reach his eyes. He was uncertain if he wanted his dad here or not. Life was so much more complicated these days. But he did open the book to the page where Rumplestiltskin was standing holding a knife in the air. It was before he had become the Dark One so it looked like the man Henry had lived with for ten years. "This is him. If he was here he'd go by the name Mr. Gold." Spoken as if he had another name he could go by.

"Do you recognise him?"

She leaned over to peer at the picture, and smiled quietly, but no less happy for the lack of great enthusiasm. "Yes," she nods. "I know Mr. Gold. He lets me watch him with his spinning wheel."

She found the device fascinating, especially given the ease with which the man used it, sending all those parts moving like a tiny universe of whirling bits and bobs she couldn't in the least figure out. "I like him, and I bet he'd be happy to see you."

There was a small silent pause as Henry let the knowledge of Gold being here sink in. He didn't understand how the man could have gotten here before him since he'd barely left him to head to Boston. But there had been time when he could have arrived. It was all just very confusing.

"That sounds like him." There was that forced smile again. Maybe once he saw the man, he'd feel happier about his presence but Henry was still unsure about where he was as well as feeling towards the man who raised him, so it was hard to feel exceptionally happy at the moment.

"I hope so. Do you know where he is? Can I leave his room to find him?"

"Yes, of course you can. He's got a room, number 732. He might not be there, but I think you could go and see," she says. "You don't seem happy, though. Are you fighting?"

Henry grabbed his notebook from his bag and wrote the number down in the back in case he forgot it later. He'd already decided he needed a little more time in Ten Forward before he went searching. He'd observed the people in Storybrooke for six weeks before he'd confronted his father on the goings on and while he wasn't going to wait that long here, he still needed a little more than he'd previously had to assimilate the knowledge of his situation and surroundings. Maybe the man would turn up here before long.

As for Sinthia'a question, he sighed a little and nodded even if he denied it in his speech. "Not really. I mean..." He sighed again. "It's just complicated."

"It's okay if you don't want to talk," she says. "I don't talk about my family much either. It's...difficult to explain," Sinthia finishes.

She's told a few people who she is--who she really is, the whole history of her parentage and what she can do--but it's not usually something she feels like exploring with strangers. She just reaches over for her pencil, though it goes rolling off the table away from her fingers. She frowns at it and it stops in midair, coming back to her.

That got a smile out of Henry. She understood how he felt. How was he meant to explain that Gold was Rumplestiltskin and about the curse? He didn't want to do it the way it was done to him. That was for certain.

He was about to thank her when he watched the pencil stop and go back to her without her touching it. He stared for a moment, looking a little scared, before speaking softly. "You...you've got magic..."

"No, no," she says quickly, and noticing the fear--the very last thing she wants to see--on Henry's face she puts down the pencil. "It's not really magic, and it won't hurt you, I promise," Sinthia says.

"It's...this is why talking about my family is complicated," she says. "I can do a lot of things that normal people can't. But I promise I won't hurt anyone here with it."

Despite the assurances, Henry still edges his chair away from her slightly. He doesn't want to go but he has enough experience to be wary.

"It sure looks like magic. And all magic comes with a price."

But her continued explanation makes him nod. "Yeah. I know what you mean." Magic was what made his family complicated. "I can't do anything normal people can't but my dad can. Or could before..." He stopped. It was complicated.

"It...we don't call it magic where I'm from," she says. "But you're right, they do come with a price," she sighs.

She can't say she's never hurt anyone in the past, but nobody on this ship is in danger in the slightest from her purposefully harming them. "I don't want to hurt you. I'm sorry if I startled you with the pencil." She sets it down, and it stays put, and she folds her hands on the table quietly.

"I've just never seen it before. I've read all about it. It's in my book. But I've actually seen it."

He shrugs, not sure what else to say on the matter and wondering how to change the subject.

"I won't hurt you," she says softly.

"If you want to help me with my music box, I'd like that," she offers, sliding a sheet over to Henry. "It's not magic, it's just paper and chimes, and mechanics."

Henry nods, believing her and wondering if because she had magic, did his father?

"What do I do?" He's glad of the distraction, moving the book off the table to give him more space.

"You can write something if you want," she says. "Or you can punch out the notes I marked on one already."

Either way it's a fairly calming activity. "Which do you want to do?"

"I'll punch. I'm not good with music."

It would be monotonous but fun. Which was something he needed right now.

"You can play them when we're done," she says. "But you have to be careful to line up the crossmarks, and then punch straight down, hard. The hole is what moves the star wheel, and the star wheel sounds the chimes."

Henry listened closely and performed his task carefully. He didn't want to mess up her music box. Even if she said she wasn't going to hurt him, she had the ability to, and that was enough for Henry.

"It's okay if you mess up," she says lightly, having watched him and not liking the overt carefulness he was exhibiting. "We can fix it together."

"If you're going to do something right, best to do it right the first time." He wasn't going to rush and make mistakes just so she had something to fix.

"Are you still upset because you think I have magic?" she asks, pulling the half-marked sheet of punch paper towards her with a pencil so she can finish marking this segment of the melody.

He wants to say no in the hopes she drops the subject. But he hates to be lied to so he doesn't want to lie to her. Then again, he's not upset per se.

He shrugs. Not really lying but not really telling the truth.

Sinthia just looks at Henry for a few minutes, taking a breath and closing her teeth around her bottom lip. She finishes notating the sheet, humming the notes in their proper order to herself though it doesn't sound a thing like the melody it will end up as.

"Where are you from?" He'd told her where he was heading to, and she knew where Boston was, but he could have been coming from anywhere.

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