Remember What We Had *Sequel to Remember the Rules*

A Fire Burning Between Us

Rose's POV

Sometimes, life in Storybrook sucks.

I don't mean it's bad, necessarily, but it was really boring when there's no one to talk to. Most days, I just walked around, pretending to talk to people or eavesdropping on their conversations. I guess it was a little creepy, but no one ever noticed. There's just so much routine there. Even I got sucked into it at some point maybe twenty years ago.

Every morning, I would wake up, read a chapter or two of whatever book I stole from the library that week, then get dressed. Then I spent a few hours doing whatever seemed interesting. Usually it was following Regina or the kid Henry. When that got boring at about lunchtime, or sometimes before, I'd follow people around and act as their invisible advisor.

When the town drunk debated getting behind the wheel of his pickup, I told him not to, when Regina tried to stay overnight at the Sheriff's house, I shook her awake rather violently because I knew better than anyone what Henry could get up to when no one was watching, and etc. There were perks to being invisible.

Sometimes I used the power to my advantage, encouraging people to leave things I wanted out in the open so I could have them, or pushing them to the wrong decision on small things. In my opinion, I kept Storybrook interesting.

"Only because you aren't that interested in yourself," I said quietly to myself. But that wasn't totally true. Sometimes, when the sun went down and Storybrook went to bed and I was really all alone, I wondered who I was exactly, and where I came from. Henry's latest obsession with fairy tales being reality was more than a little crazy, but sometimes I couldn't help but wonder if it was true. After all, in those stories it would be possible that my situation would be considered normal, right? Or at least it would be considered less crazy.

I laughed a little to myself. "But you are crazy, Rose. Why should your situation be any different?"

It wasn't and I knew it. But when Henry ran away and brought back Emma, I was star struck. She was beautiful, she was fierce, she was strong. She was everything I ever wanted to be and the only hope I had of getting free of whatever was wrong with me. Sometimes, when I did something out of the ordinary around her, she'd turn her head in my direction a little bit, like she knew someone was there. It was the closest I'd gotten to acknowledgement in a long time.

Times like that, Henry's ideas didn't seem so crazy after all.

*~*~*

Every day, I followed Emma closely, analyzing her speech patterns, her style, and her mannerisms. I tried to learn as much about her in just a few weeks as I had about everyone else in Storybrook in twenty eight years. And it was working. It was like collecting data, except that everything was being stored in my memory.

Basically, everything I saw matched her initial profile: a hero, through and through.

But sometimes, I realized, I felt like someone else was watching me the way I was watching her. Was it possible that there was someone else like me in Storybrook? As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I caught a flash of green fabric out the corner of my eye.

"Who's there?" I asked, not really expecting an answer. I got one anyway, a moment later. Someone tugged in the back of my shirt, pulling me toward the door of Mary-Margaret's apartment. I followed reluctantly, casting one last long look at Emma, who was eating dinner, before leaving silently. I looked around- had that piece of paper been hung there for long? There was writing on it: Stare straight ahead. Don't look to either side.