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:

I was a little confused, but did as I was told. There was a strange feeling, like I couldn't move my head. I desperately wanted to look somewhere, but looking forward was the only way I could tell if there really was someone else like me.

And then he appeared, with both hands on the sides of my face and hair like the inside rings of a chestnut branch. His green eyes sparkled and looked at me in wonder.

"You can see me." He spoke with a soft British accent. "Oh my god, you can actually see me."

I nodded slowly. The reality of the situation was setting in. There was someone else like me. "Yeah, I can. Can you get your hands off of my face?" My voice cracked a little from disuse.

He turned red and dropped his hands immediately. "Sorry, it's just... No one's seen me in..."

"Decades?" I guessed. He nodded. "Me too. Do you know why?"

"No idea." He shrugged. "I never really wondered. Usually I asked why me?"

I looked this boy up and down. He wore a green sweatshirt (it matched his eyes exactly, but of course that wasn't what I noticed) and some jeans. He had his hands in his pocket awkwardly, but all in all, we seemed to be in a similar situation. Clean, but alone. Homeless.

I stuck my hand out. "I'm Rosalie Jones, but you can call me Rose. Or Rosie. Or Rosa. Or Rosalie. I guess you can call me whatever you want as long as you tell me yours." Smooth, Rose. Real smooth.

He shook it gingerly, like he couldn't quite believe that this was happening. His palm was warm. "Pietro Liberi. It's great to meet you. It's really, really great."

"Do you want to go to Granny's and grab something to eat?" I smiled at him and he nodded. He was a little strange, but then, I probably was too. "It'll be really nice to eat with someone for a change."

Pietro's POV

I followed Rose to Granny's in a daze, as I had so many times before. I still couldn't believe that she could actually see me. After so long... It was unreal. On the way there, I had to stop myself from reaching out and grabbing her hand, just to make sure I wasn't dreaming. The only way I stopped myself was by reminding myself that I had just met her, technically, and it would be really weird if I randomly grabbed a stranger's-

She grabbed my hand. Holy crap, she's holding my hand. What should I say? Should I even say-"Sorry," she said, redfaced. "I just wanted to know what it felt like. It's really weird walking with someone, you know? After all this time..."

I gripped her hand to silence my internal freak-out. "Yeah, I know. It's weird walking around with people who don't know you're even there." It's weirder that you don't know I'm talking about you. I don't give a damn about this town or anyone in it.

Rose laughed. "Yeah... Hey, you saw the elections a while ago, right? Wasn't Emma fantastic, standing up to Regina like that?"

And... Moment over. I should have expected this. I faked a bright smile. "Yeah, she was. No one's ever been brave enough before."

"They're at war, you know," she told me wisely. "Over who's going to keep Henry."

I nodded as we got to Granny's. "I know. I've been watching."

We laughed and joked comfortably with each other as we ate. People walked in and out, but I hardly noticed them. All my focus was on the girl in front of me. Every so often, a stray piece of hair would fall into her face and she'd brush it away with a tiny huff of annoyance.

At one point, I laughed quietly and she looked up. "What's so funny?"

"You know Rosie, they have hairclips at the store literally a block and a half away," I said, gesturing vaguely to her head. "It wouldn't be too much trouble to go get some when we're done here."

She made a face at me and finished her burger instead of responding. It was almost as if we were old friends with a lifetime of history rather than strangers with the same problems. Hell, maybe we were. If Henry was to be believed, we all came from some enchanted realm somewhere and had lost our memories in the process. Wasn't it possible that we'd been friends before? Maybe... more than friends?

"What are you thinking about so hard?" Rose laughed. "You looked really concentrated on that french fry, and I don't think it was telling you the meaning of life."

I shook my head. "I was actually thinking about Henry." It wasn't technically a lie.

"I didn't know you swung that way." She raised an eyebrow. "I mean, I don't care, but isn't he a little young for you?"

I blushed and spluttered incoherently. "That's not at all what I- I'm not- I mean, I'm not against- I think you have the wrong-"

Rose laughed and reached across the table, putting her hand over my mouth to silence me. "I'm kidding. Calm down."

I pressed my hands to the table, now embarrassingly aware of the fact that they had been flying around the table as I talked (in true Italian style; I was able to live up to my name sometimes). Confident that I'd managed to shut up, Rose took her hand back. The imprint of her palm had seared itself onto my face.

Rose wiped her hand on her jeans. "Ew, you drooled on me!"

My eyes widened. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"

"Kidding," she said with another lighthearted laugh. "I'm playing with you. Geez, Pietro. Learn to take a joke."

I loved the way she said my name; she pronounced the Italian flawlessly. And when she laughed, her eyes-

"Anyway, what were you thinking about, really?" she asked, breaking my train of thought yet again. "What about Henry?"

I shrugged. "His theory about Storybrook."

She nodded before getting up and taking her dishes to the kitchen. I sat there dumbly before realizing that she expected me to follow her. I got up hurriedly as she started talking again. "I think his theory has some basis in fact, don't you?"

"Of course. I mean, how else would you explain the way we live?" I said, putting my dishes in the sink. "It's not like this can really be explained by the laws of the universe as we know it."

"My logic exactly."

I know. I've heard you say it before.

"Do you think Emma's really the Savior?" Rose asked. She looked at me with wide eyes. "I mean, if Henry is right, she would be our only hope, right?"

I needed to tread carefully. "Well, you're making it sound like Armageddon. I mean, yeah, she's the Savior, but is it really so bad here?"

Rose didn't seem to know exactly what to say, so she shrugged. We walked to the store in a comfortable silence, the subject dropped for now. For once, the sun was shining in the sky. I was glad; the constant rain was starting to mess with my mood, and walking in the rain with a pretty girl was tacky. The light shone on her hair, turning it a million different shades of black, blue, and white.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I was completely surprised when Rose screamed my name and yanked me back onto the sidewalk as a car flew past at highly illegal speeds.

"Pietro!" she said again, relieved. "Are you always this distracted? You could have been killed!"

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "I didn't notice it."

She yanked me in for an almost violent hug. Again, I was struck with the deja-vu sense that we were closer than we should be for strangers. "How could you not have noticed it? You know what? I don't care. Don't do that to me again."

"Okay."

Of course I didn't notice it. When I'm with you, I don't notice anything except you. The world could be burning to ash and I wouldn't care, as long as you were safe with me.