Title: Draft

Author's Note: So, I had zero intention of posting this on or AO3, because I didn't think it was that good, but now that I've had time to think, I wanted to put it up here, too. I keep hoping that somehow, some way... we'll get him back. He'll be back. Until then, I'll be thinking that this is what waits for him. August W. Booth is gone, but not forgotten, not by me anyway. Anyway, this was done for August Appreciation Weekend, and I have a chapter of Son of a Woodworker for you babes this week.
Music Recommendation: Once, by Caleb Kane. It hurts, it hurts so much, but it's what you need. If you cry, I'm so sorry, but I thought it was a good cry when I was done. :)

One day, I will write a story I can't finish.

It won't be for any reason, and it won't blossom from travels to lands afar.

My only friend will disappear along with his family, and I don't know where. But, my papa tells me everything is fine and I will believe him. I will spend my free time watching my father work on his newest projects, and will drink up his trade like a sponge. My memory of time before waking up on the sidewalk fades pretty quickly, and after a while, I know my name is Pinocchio, but I don't question why we live in Maine and why so many of the people I remember from my first few days are gone.

I will stumble upon an old typewriter that has been hidden away in my father's garage, tucked in a box named for a month in the summer. At first, the keys stick and they make a wretched clacking that my papa can't ignore. He'll pull the machine away from me in confused tears, and I go to bed without supper.

But two days later, the typewriter is on my desk in my bedroom when I wake up, and papa never mentions it again. I won't push him.

The first time I lie in school, he will tell me that instead of telling lies, I should tell tales, and he encourages me to take my gift for stretching the truth to paper.

By the time the summer arrives, I will have forgotten. The novelty of the old machine and its sounds, the words I can bring to life, all vanish in the face of new friends. They aren't the boy I remember always talking about summer – at least I will think he's talking about the end of summer – but they are friends, and soon, I all but forget about my friend and his family.

When I'm twelve – at least my papa says I'm twelve, but I can't really remember too well – my friends all begin to act strangely. The boys discover that girls aren't so bossy, and the girls start wearing make-up and telling the boys how stupid they are while also trying way too hard to be friends. But, I don't. I will remain disinterested at school, and when I come home, the typewriter will pull me back into its orbit.

I will write about a woman with flaxen hair. It takes me three days and two thesauruses to figure out what color her hair is, but its flaxen. And her eyes are gunmetal blue, but it takes me another four days to figure that out, but I stumble upon a book in my papa's shelf that says it, and I will just know that's the woman.

The girls will continue to think I'm interesting – especially when one winter my hair makes a sudden turn from bright ginger towards auburn, and by summer, I have a dark mop of brown hair that wants to curl in every direction. But, I won't be interested.

I will write. Every day when I'm home from school, and every morning before I have to get dressed and eat breakfast, my mind will be filled with stories of this woman with flaxen hair and the gunmetal eyes. At first, I will write "what I know", and her adventures will be in Storybrooke. When I walk home from school, I will see buildings and places, and be inspired to write about her. I will imagine she's the Sheriff, and her first adventures are lighthearted and mischievous, as I think all interesting girls should be.

When I'm fourteen, my papa will leave me. I will be old enough to understand that he was too old to really raise a son, and I will be on my own. The house will be mine, but I won't know how to cook more than sandwiches and canned soups. My teary-eyed granny will spend the first four months constantly hovering, constantly cooking and trying to soothe my considerable temper.

I won't know how to control my anger, and I'll nearly destroy the shop before Miss Red stops me and calms me down. She's nice and the only woman in Storybrooke that I like because, for some reason, she doesn't treat me like a kid. She never has. She never will. She makes me feel like I'm more than just Pinocchio, and it makes the loss of my papa hurt less. But, she stops coming by when I try to kiss her. I won't know why, but I know that it doesn't feel right to kiss her anyway, and that's the last I see of Miss Red for a while.

My stories about the woman with straw-blonde hair (I will have decided I like straw more than flaxen, but I still call her eyes gunmetal because I won't know the difference between being cliché and being descriptive yet) grow darker. I fill in her past with parents who had to leave her. It becomes my escape, and I fashion her a princess from that strange land in my past that I barely remember. I tell myself this woman of my dreams is the daughter of the king and queen I vaguely recall and that she, too, was brought to this world from the magical kingdom my father called home. Her parents have to leave her reluctantly. Her father dies saving her. It soothes me, and for a summer, I call her inspiration, comfort, and kindred spirit, even though she's fiction.

At sixteen, I will have become a man and travel out of Storybrooke for a month in the winter. It's the first time I've left, and it will be without my father.

But, I won't be thinking about leaving when fall approaches. I will be thinking of my princess and how I've now brought her identity as lost princess to her duties as Storybrooke's Sheriff. I imagine the Mayor that used to be in Storybrooke, is the Evil Queen that killed my princess's family. But, every time I feel as if I am close to the princess discovering her heritage, I will feel an ache, a loss, something I can't describe, and I will choose to wander my papa's house – my house – looking for distraction.

I will find that same old box my father labeled for the month of August, and I'll finally open it again. A pair of jeans that almost fit me – I'm still too thin – and a large belt buckle with azure stones, as well as a wallet and my old hat… I won't understand why my old hat is in this box, when I know I also have my old hat upstairs. And I won't understand whose license and information is in the wallet, but I will decide I like the name.

I really like the name. I will know that in the rest of the world, Pinocchio is a strange name, and I need something else to travel by, after all my reading of foreign places. I will find a ring of keys for my father's storage shed, which I have never been able to open.

And I will find a motorcycle with an old box that could fit my typewriter.

I will travel that winter month using the name I find on the license, and I pick up an old beaten black leather jacket in the first thrift shop I find, realizing it's not only cold, but dangerous to be without a thick jacket on the bike. I make it as far south as Ocean City, and things get blurry after a blonde co-ed from University of Maryland buys me a drink of some alcohol. I call her my princess, but I never see her after that month is over.

At seventeen, I will take another trip, and this time, I take my typewriter with me. I keep writing as I travel, and I don't have a destination or a timeframe in mind. Easily, one month becomes four, and I grow accustomed to people calling me August.

Seventeen will become eighteen, and eighteen will become twenty-two and I will forget about Storybrooke for a time.

I will realize that I have a gift for gab, and I can get by on my wit and charm. I travel the states and learn how to gamble, how to drink, how to enjoy my vices and how to con.

I sell my first book, and then another. And then another. They won't make me millions, but they make enough. I take my interests in the vices of the world and turn a profit. I sleep exclusively with blondes, but after leaving Storybrooke, I won't write about my princess, my sheriff. Her pages remain in the bottom of my box, unfinished. Unfinished as she talks with a little boy that vaguely seems familiar to me about pie and fathers… Occasionally, it nags at me and I remember that there was something I wanted to add here, about a man arriving. That it's important. But, then I find another blonde and I forget again.

At twenty-five, I will realize I haven't been home in 8 years.

I'm broad-shouldered, built from what contracting work I do in between cons, and hairier than I thought I would be. I don't mind, though. And neither do the women I seem to charm.

At first, I will push that thought away. But, swiftly, it becomes more insistent. I listen to The Black Keys and go to Burning Man, but I never bother to do drugs that are offered. I won't know why, but some little voice in the back of my head tells me never to leave the country and never to do drugs.

For some reason, I will listen.

I write a draft of the man arriving to meet my princess. I fashion him just like me, and I hate the draft immediately. I will write him more broken than I've ever been, but he will be just as in love with her as I know I would be if only we could meet. I write that he's sick, that he knows he won't be able to stay with her, but he does everything he can to help her with whatever she needs.

But, I will lose direction, and I throw the draft away without much ceremony into the ocean on the broadwalk at Ocean City, just as he lays dying in her arms and all he can do is breathe her name. A cop gives me a ticket for littering, a fine, but I spend the whole night on the boardwalk, sobbing with a sorrow I won't be able to identify, and rips at me in ways I can't imagine.

I dream of my princess every night after that, whispering my name, my name, the new name I've grown for myself in my travels. Some nights, she tells me she needs my help. Other nights, I'm in her arms and she just says my name as if it's apology and loss all in one. And every morning I wake up, her name on the edge of my tongue. But it disappears before I can say it.

At twenty-eight, I'll start travelling north again. It's a slow crawl, but I make the trip nonetheless, and find myself climbing up the narrow arm of the north east all over again. I've stopped shaving as much as before, and I will have formidable scruff, an actual groomed beard by the time I make my way back home.

I will arrive to a town that's very different to the one I remember. There will be more people, but not nearly as many that I recognize.

I will head back to my father's house to find it just as empty as I left it, but still well-kept. I spend a few days there, re-acclimating, and a trip to my Granny's diner reveals it's now Miss Red's. Time will have been kind to her, and she will welcome me with open arms, even if she looks at me like she's seen a ghost.

At twenty-nine, I will be settled back in Storybrooke, but a loner save for the occasional visits to see Red at her diner. It's a reputation I will have earned and am proud of. I write with my old typewriter, draft after draft about my princess, but I hate every one of them. It becomes as much a ritual as eating and drinking that I throw the unfinished drafts into a trunk in my bedroom as soon as I've read my last line.

It always ends with the man dying in her arms. So many different paths, but I always go to the same place.

And I won't know her name. So I'll stop, throw the pages, and try again.

At thirty, I will offer to help Red set up a new expansion of her diner. I won't know why she's oddly quiet, but she tells me that with a family back in town she's missed, she needs more room. Storybrooke has grown in my years away, but this family is more important to Red than anyone else. I won't know why, and I won't question it. I just help build and etch new tables. I spend an inordinate amount of time on one table in particular, carving a family of swans into the wood before I overlay it with the glass top to the booth.

On a whim, I'll go camping later that week. I head out to a clearing near an old well that I know I've written about in my many drafts. I settle and pitch a small tent, but my curiosity about the well's history will get the better of me. I pull up a bucket of water and scoop myself a cup of the fresh spring, hoping it will be inspiration.

I gulp the water without thinking, then take a seat at my tent to watch the world around me.

Minutes later, I go home. I don't know why, but I know I need to.

When I get back to my house, I will find that the front door is ajar. I know I should call the new Sheriff, but I ignore my own warnings and I'll head into my home, myfather's home, determined to confront the intruder.

I find her in my bedroom, bent over the open trunk, my discarded, precious drafts in her hands.

I will be struck with awe and terror at once, because my princess will be right there. Her blonde hair is still spilling in curls over her shoulders as she is crouched in front of the trunk, reading through my pages. I'm terrified, because those are my pages, and those are… those aren't for her to see.

But she's there.

Somehow, I distract her, because she turns to look at me. I expect to see anger, maybe some sort of mocking gesture, but she's… crying. Those eyes, they really are that steel blue I dream and write about, and they're filled with tears as she holds up the pages.

"Did you remember?" The question will seem so completely foreign to me. "While I've been in Neverland… have you remembered? August, is that you?"

And then suddenly… it doesn't anymore.

I will remember that the well returns what once was lost.

And I will remember everything.

"Emma."

And then I will be able to finish it.