#ellamills2003

Oh hey, my favorite trope from the perspective I don’t do as much. PG-ish and also on ao3.

He's not sure what the hell just happened. There's probably some kind of explanation, but it will likely involve words and concepts he does not understand. What he is sure of is that despite the sudden and inexplicable death of their captors, a woman he cares far too much about is still in a lot of pain and that is not any kind of okay.

Marcus is still chained to a wall, still helpless, but at least the screaming has stopped. He'll have nightmares about that for at least the next year, he's pretty sure - he has already seen Abby in pain too many times, and he's not sure how to atone for how many of those were his fault, but this was on another level. They were going to kill her for no reason other than that they could, and without her… oh, he knows this is no time to be selfish, but he doesn't know what would happen to him without her. He doesn't want to think about it, but it wouldn't lead him down a good path, he knows that much.

She's been his guiding light for years on end. Losing that would be too much for him to bear. And having almost done so, he realizes he needs to become better, become someone who could be equally good to her in return.

Lucy Mills takes her last unassisted breath and the machines are going crazy. It’s only then that Henry wakes up, everyone does. The doctors do everything they can, but it’s too late. Lucy Mills is dead.

Henry is hollow. He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t scream. He’s an empty shell as Ella breaks down in his arms, sobbing. Regina is standing nearby, tears streaming down her face as she squeezes her son’s shoulder. Even Zelena is crying. Alice kills Gothel and Regina unites the realms. With Drizella locked away for murder, they hold a small service for their daughter. They don’t want a huge crowd. Just family and close friends.

Henry watches the tiny white coffin lowered into the ground and he bolts. It’s cowardly, but he doesn’t quite give a damn. He runs as fast as he can and Rumple isn’t far behind. He tells Henry that he does not want to miss his daughter’s funeral.

“What do you know?” Henry asks through glassy eyes.

“Because I missed my son’s.”

The next few weeks are a blur of casseroles and well wishes. Henry and Ella don’t say two words to each other. Tiana, Regina, Emma, Snow and David surround them with more support and love than they can handle. It’s almost suffocating in a way. Killian 2.0, Alice and Robin stop by a few times, but know to give space, like Rumple.

Henry knows that his marriage is falling apart when Ella starts sleeping on the couch.

He realizes that he hasn’t come to terms when he hears Killian 2.0 asking Regina for help in finding a cure for his and Alice’s hearts. Why does Killian get his daughter when he’ll never see his son again? When Emma gets pregnant with Hope, it gets even worse. Why did Hook 1.0 think it’d be a good idea to tell him it was a girl?

It’s Regina that pulls him back to the surface. She reminds him that this isn’t the father Lucy left behind and she’d never speak to him if she saw the way that he was treating everyone.

He breaks down and goes to Archie. In time, Ella agrees to couple’s counseling/grief therapy. It doesn’t solve everything, but they slowly start communicating. On Archie’s advice, they take a trip out of the United Realms, out of Maine. Henry takes Ella to all of the places that Neal and Emma went on their adventures, plus a few more.

They don’t have more children. Lucy was it. She was the perfect light in their worlds and they spend every day thinking of her, but also living for her.

Photo credit: @trueloveismagic

How I think I look:

How @findingtallahassee @ellamills2003 and @bixisarusher think I look:

Hi!

Drizella wasn’t turned into a statue after Lucy’s birth and the threat of her curse was still looming. In order to prevent another family from ending up like his own, Killian convinces Smee to give him back the Jolly Roger so he may gift it to Ella and Henry. They leave their home, Regina with them. They spend the next ten years sailing the realms and raising Lucy, who loves every minute of it. Eventually, they decide to head back to where Ella grew up, because the threat of the curse has past.

Or so they think.

When they arrive, they realize that Drizella managed to cast her curse without Regina there. The friends and family they had found in their early days are now gone. They know it’s risky, but they have to save them. They use their last bean to take a chance and find a way to where everyone is.

They arrive in Hyperion Heights. Within days of being there, Drizella is able to curse them all into Jacinda and Lucy Vidrio, Roni Ramirez and Henry Mills, with the memories of losing a family and being an orphan. Will they be able to break the curse and save everyone? Or will all their hard work be for nothing?

I don’t have many headcanons about Lucy’s sex life. It’s too difficult given she’s a kid.

But I will say, I think Henry and Ella are very open with their discussions about safe sex and such. They don’t use nicknames for the parts, they’re very straight forward.

@ellamills2003 prompted: Glass Believer, 9 (meeting online AU)/39 (long distance relationship AU) if you can.

Also on AO3

“She’s probably Catfishing you, bro,” Nick told Henry as he got ready for his date that night.

“We’ve been talking online for 6 months now.”

“Have you seen that show? Some people get away with doing it for years.”

 Henry rolled his eyes and walked back into his room to finish getting ready, away from the comments of the peanut gallery. He loved Nick, he was his best friend and roommate, but sometimes he could be a bit of a downer. He wasn’t one to believe in romance at all and had a number of one night stands. Henry didn’t judge, but it wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted the fairytale, his happily ever after.

 He truly believed he had found it with Jacinda Vidrio or glassslipper103 as she was known on the forum they were both apart of. She made beautiful fan art and he wrote metas, fanfictions and more on their favorite show, which was about fairytales with a modern twist. He had admired her work from afar and one day decided to write a one shot based around one of her pictures. She had been so flattered that she drew a picture for one of his works and soon they were talking almost every day.

 It didn’t take long for them to exchange Facebooks and phone numbers. They texted, called each other and would tag each other in their works. It was the greatest connection Henry had ever made on the internet and he found himself falling deeply for her. She told him that she felt the same way, she just feared it wouldn’t work out. While he lived in Maine, she was all the way in Seattle.

 After a year of corresponding, she told him that she was going to be attending a friend’s wedding about a half hour away from where he lived. She invited him to meet up with her for dinner the day before her duties as bridesmaid would begin and he obliged, suggesting Granny’s Diner in his small little town. It’d be a public place so on the off chance she was an axe wielding murderer, there’d be witnesses and if she didn’t show up, he could drown his sorrows in one of Ruby Lucas’ famous chocolate milkshakes.

 On his way to the diner, he stopped off at Game of Thorns and picked up a bouquet of blue hyacinths, Jacinda’s favorite flowers. He finished the rest of the drive to the diner and parked his motorcycle, looking into the rearview mirror to get a good look at himself. He had combed his normal mess of dark hair and was wearing a suit, a little dressy for a diner but he wanted to make a good first impression.

 “If you don’t take yourself seriously, no one else will,” his mother had once told him.

 Getting out of the car, he walked inside and asked for a booth towards the window so he could look out for her. Jacinda had said she was borrowing her friend’s truck to drive over, so he kept an eye out for it. He was so caught up in looking, that he almost missed someone calling his name.

 “Henry?”

 His head shot up and he saw her standing there. Her long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing a blue sundress, white sandals on her feet. She looked just how she did in her pictures-no, even more beautiful.

 “Jacinda,” he breathed, quickly rising to his feet. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she repeated, taking him in. “You look handsome.”

“You look beautiful.” He remembered the bouquet in his hands and held them out to her. “Here, these are for you.”

“Oh, thank you.” Jacinda accepted the flowers and sniffed them. “They’re my favorite.”

“I remembered. Do you want to sit down?”

She nodded and slid across from him. “My friend, Alice, said I was crazy. That you were probably going to be an axe murderer or something.”

Henry chuckled, feeling a bit comforted by that. “My roommate said the same thing. I’m glad you’re not one, though.”

“Night’s still young,” Jacinda teased and his smile widened.

“You’re as funny as your texts and e-mails. Just as beautiful too,” he quickly added.

“And you’re as cute as your pictures.”

 Heat grew on Henry’s cheeks and she smiled, a beautiful smile that made his stomach fall into the pit of his stomach.

 They were only going to have a week together before she had to fly back to Seattle, but they’d make it count. He knew in that moment that he wanted to make it work, no matter how they did it. Long distance was possible, especially when you’re in love.