Harry Evans knelt in the garden behind his small house in Storybrooke, Maine, a trowel in hand as he loosened the soil around the base of a row of rose bushes. The smell of earth, sharp and fresh, should have grounded him, but his mind kept slipping. Slipping into memories that felt too real to be dreams, too bizarre to be anything but fantasy. Or madness.
The autumn sun cast long shadows across the backyard, dappling the garden in golds and oranges. Harry felt the warmth on his face, but in his mind, he was somewhere else. Somewhere far away, with a pirate by his side. A man with dark, intense eyes, a leather coat, and a hook where his left hand should have been.
Killian Jones. Hook.
Harry shook his head, trying to banish the image, but it clung to him, like the scent of salt and sea on a cold, biting wind. The pirate’s laugh echoed in his ears, and Harry’s hand slipped, the trowel digging into his palm instead of the soil.
"Bloody hell," he muttered under his breath, blinking as he pulled the tool away from his skin, staring at the small trickle of blood. He wiped it away absently, focusing on the roses again, trying to ground himself in the mundane. But his mind had other ideas.
Gold had taken him in once, hadn’t he?
No, that couldn’t be right. Mr. Gold, Rumpelstiltskin, his mind supplied, had never shown him any kindness. But there was a memory, tucked away like an old photograph in a dusty drawer. A boy, maybe ten or eleven, standing in front of the pawnshop, shivering in the cold. And Gold had let him in, hadn’t he? Given him something warm to drink, muttering something about debts and destiny.
But that didn’t make sense. Gold never did anything without a price. He didn’t help people.
Harry rubbed his forehead, trying to clear the fog of confusion. This was all nonsense. Crazy. The kind of crazy that Jefferson, the town’s resident Mad Hatter, seemed to live with every day. Maybe Harry was going mad, too. It would explain the flashes of memory, or was it hallucination, that kept assaulting him ever since Emma Swan had arrived in town.
Emma Swan.
She was the trigger. The savior, Henry called her. His mind twisted the thought around, Henry’s voice echoing in his head, telling him about fairy tales and curses and how nothing in Storybrooke was as it seemed. He had listened to Henry’s stories with a half-amused smile, indulging the boy’s imagination. But then things started happening. Strange things.
Harry plunged the trowel into the dirt again, his movements mechanical, trying to lose himself in the familiar rhythm. But his hands shook, the soil beneath him starting to blur. His reality was fraying at the edges.
He was no longer in his garden. He was in the Enchanted Forest, on the deck of a ship, the sea spray misting his face as he looked out into the endless horizon. He could feel the gentle sway of the ship beneath him, smell the salt on the breeze. Hook stood beside him, smirking, his hook tapping lightly against the wooden railing.
"You alright there, mate?" Hook’s voice was teasing, but there was something soft in his gaze. Something knowing.
Harry blinked, and the garden came back into focus. He was on his knees, dirt under his fingernails, the roses swaying gently in the breeze. His heart raced, and he tried to catch his breath, to remind himself where he was. This was real. This, Storybrooke, the garden, his simple life, was real.
But was it?
He felt the cracks in his reality widening, the memories flooding back like a tide he couldn’t stop. The curse, the one that had brought them all here, wiped their memories, gave them new lives. But now those lives were unraveling, bit by bit. He could feel it.
Harry wiped the sweat from his brow, staring down at the roses as if they held the answer. Maybe he was going mad. Or maybe, just maybe, Henry was right. The stories weren’t just stories. They were his past, a past he had forgotten, buried deep under layers of enchantment and lies.
He could hear Henry’s voice in his head again, talking about Emma, about how she was here to break the curse. And how things had been strange ever since she’d come to town. The clock had started ticking again. Time had resumed.
"Am I going mad?" Harry whispered to himself, his voice barely audible over the rustle of the wind in the trees.
But even as he asked the question, he felt the answer deep in his bones. He wasn’t mad. He was remembering.
Memories flickered again, fragments of a life lived in another world. Standing in a dark room, Gold, no, Rumpelstiltskin, looming over him, his eyes glinting with something like pity.
“You’re mine, boy,” Rumpel had said in that silky, menacing voice. “I own you.”
Harry shook his head violently, as if he could physically shake the memories loose. But they clung to him, stubborn, like the dirt beneath his nails. The more he tried to push them away, the stronger they became.
He remembered the curse now, remembered being trapped in this town, in this life that wasn’t his own. But he also remembered the Enchanted Forest, Hook, and Gold. He remembered the magic.
"I’m not mad," Harry muttered to himself again, almost like a mantra. But as the sun dipped lower in the sky and the shadows grew longer, he wasn’t sure if he believed it.
Was this madness? Or was it the truth finally breaking through the curse?
He didn’t know. All he knew was that he couldn’t stop gardening, couldn’t stop digging his hands into the earth as if the simple, grounding act could keep him from slipping further between the cracks of reality.
But deep down, Harry knew it was only a matter of time before the past came rushing back completely, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for what he might find on the other side.