zfighter18

A Curse Upon Thee 0 (Once Upon A Time/Celestial Grimore/Jujutsu Kaisen)

Added 2025-10-15 06:20:20 +0000 UTC

Introducing a newly commissioned story by a Patron: A Curse Upon Thee (Once Upon A Time/Celestial Grimore/Jujutsu Kaisen)

The rain wasn’t hypnotic.

Emma Swan wished it was though, something to take her mind off all this w\eirdness of today as she drove another four-and-a-half hours back home.

But no, no hypnotism here.

Instead, the downpour was just a shitty drummer with one move, a relentless, piss-poor solo that didn’t sound all that different from those of the loser she’d dated around her twenty-first birthday.

Blame it on being literally drunk off her ass for a good chunk of 2004 but she remembered him well, even if his name was still not clicking just yet. Just like him, the rain endlessly hammering on the yellow Beetle’s roof felt like a fuck-up of a drummer that felt like he had something to prove. Thump-thump-thump-thump.

The wipers went back and forth, each swipe and scrape buying her a few bare seconds of visibility before the rain and the dark swallowed up the road again, all dripping pine trees and absolute, endless black. The twenty-eight year old was on autopilot; she had been from the second she drove off from Regina Mill’s big-ass house, body already prepped for that long-haul road trance that settled deep in your bones when you’ve spent a lifetime driving away from places that never wanted you to stay.

The kind of numb that felt like home.

She’d done it, though.

The right thing. The responsible thing. Another repeat of what she did a whole ten years ago that had her driving into the little town of Storybrooke around 1 AM in the morning today.

She had dropped the kid off, looked deep into those weirdly serious, too-old-for-his-face eyes that Henry seemed to have, and laid down the law. Go be with your real mom.

The words had almost hurt; syllables grimy and grainy gravel in her mouth, each one a technically true lie, perfectly shaped but still beautiful bullshit anyway. The kind of lie you tell yourself is for someone else’s good. It was almost kind… kinda.

Did it feel like chewing on a handful of nails, rust and all?

Of course it did, and she knew that more than anyone else ever would. Every word out of her mouth had pinged that little bullshit detector in her brain as an out-and-out lie, but not a simple one. Just a truth her gut was screaming was bullshit, a lie her body somehow knew was true. A goddamn paradox with a leather jacket. Her superpower, the one trick that paid the bills and kept her one step ahead of the scumbags, had gone haywire.

It had told her… it told her the kid, Henry, believed every single word of his insane, cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs story.

Why can’t the kid be a little sociopath con man or something? It would be just as precocious as everything else about him, but he was as sincere as a kid could be. Just too smart. That was the part that was still making the hairs on her arms stand up even under her leather jacket. Every single tiny tidbit about a town full of amnesiac fairy tale characters had pinged as true. Not factually true; no way, she was a lot of things but Emma Swan was no crazy woman.

No, not factually true; that was impossible, a whole six-car pile-up of logic, but it was still sincerely true.

For whatever reason, the kid believed it down deeper than his bones.

And that was a hell of a lot scarier than any grifter she’d ever chased across three states. A good conman you could understand, you could predict. You couldn't predict a ten-year-old true believer.

She’d left him with his mother, sure she was doing the right thing. Even though she didn’t believe the kid, Emma had still watched her, her own bullshit detector ready for anything, but nothing tripped it.

Not for even a second. As much as Henry wanted to think his mother was evil, Emma also knew that Regina hadn’t told a single lie. Not one.

For some reason, though, she couldn’t help but feel something was off about it all, even more than what Henry would already have her believe. Something about Regina, from her perfect house and even down to the (pretty good) cider, it was like the woman was just too poised, too practiced, too performed.

There was no denying there was warmth to her, but it felt more like the kind that came from a heat lamp, not a fire. The bondswoman clicked her tongue, mouth turning down into a tight frown as she kept her eyes on the road. Don’t think about it… you better not…

But her brain was just like her, stubborn and at least a little stupid.

“Just a town, Emma.”

The sound of her mutter was swallowed by the drumming rain, knuckles white in a bloodless grip on the Beetle’s steering wheel. For some reason, it felt like the only solid thing in a world that had decided to melt at the edges. A town where time was a prisoner, what kind of…

No, she wanted to call it bullshit but she remembered Henry’s voice when he told her, the words when he said it. Not a single lie, Swan. But it couldn’t be… it’s just a town. A town where the town shrink (Archie Hopper, now that was some kind of fairy tale name) had more nervous tics and tells than a first-time poker player on a Vegas weekend.

No, no, She shook her head fast and hard, pushing all thoughts of this ridiculous town out of her head as she finally drove her way out. None of this. The weird little detour into The Twilight Zone was over and done with it, and so was her short time in this sleepy little town. Let’s get back to the real world. A world of bail jumpers, greasy-spoon coffee that tasted like burnt ambition, and the profound, soul-deep quiet of motel rooms that smelled of stale cigarettes and other people's mistakes.

A normal world that made sense.

“Motherf-!”

Something ripped itself free from her throat, half-curse and half a raw, ugly bark of pure stupid surprise. Frantic hands yanked the wheel hard to the left as something burst out of the woods like it was being chased only to simply stop. Green eyes went big and wide at the sight of a fucking wolf, some big backwoods timber wolf built low and solid as a Buick.

Jesus Christ! Golden eyes caught her headlights and Emma froze for a split second, something running through her in pure shock as she realized something.

It hadn't looked at the car.

It had looked at her.

She didn't get a chance to think about that any further as the world went sideways and her Beetle went with it. The tires screamed, her brakes screamed, she screamed; a high thin sound as wet asphalt fought the skid with all it had.

Turn into the slide! She screamed at herself, out loud and in her head. Turn into the fucking slide! The car was a toy in the hands of physics, Emma just along for the ride like she'd been her whole goddamn life. For one sickening stomach-lurching moment, the world was nothing but the massive hand-carved letters of the "Welcome to Storybrooke" sign filling the entire windshield.

She wrenched the wheel back and her little yellow car twisted across the center line in a lurch worthy of any drunk stumbling home after last call.

And that's when she hit it.

The sound of a dense thump followed by a horribly human groan…

It vibrated straight up the steering column, through her hands, and right into her teeth; jaw set tight and hard from the force as her head bounced around. .

The car spun to a dead stop; sideways in the middle of the road as siilence slammed down louder than her thoughts had been.

A physical weight. Absolute and crushing except for the frantic tick-tick-tick of the cooling engine and the goddamn rain, which hadn't stopped even for a second.

No. A single begging syllable in her head, against what she already knew she was seeing. No, no, no.

Her breath was tight in her throat, hitched in her chest and snagged on something that hurt. It could have been the steering wheel hitting against her but Emma couldn’t even bring herself to care. Not like this.

Hands shook as they fumbled with the seatbelt buckle, a stupid simple puzzle holding her hostage until the thing finally gave with a click. Breathing heavy and feeling lightheaded, the frantic woman shoved the door open. The metal groaned but she pushed past it and stumbled out into the cold wet dark.

Her brain, the same useful little organ that could track a perp through three states on a tip and a credit card receipt, gave her a frantic flip-book of what was next. Police reports; written in triplicate and marked with her name, some smug smirking D.A. slapping her with an open and shut manslaughter conviction, maybe even vehicular homicide if they wanted to get creative with it.

Nothing she could even call worst cases, because that was honestly the best case she could expect.

This was it.

The other shoe.

The one that had been dangling over her head for twenty-eight years, just waiting for the right moment to drop.

It took her eyes a second to adjust to the dark; another three for them to spot the crumpled heap on the shoulder. A splash of red against black wet leaves off the side of the road. Oh… oh fuck me.

It wasn’t a man.

No, she hit someone younger than that; much younger than she'd thought. A kid… a fucking kid, Emma? No, more a teenager than a kid, but definitely someone too young. Her stomach dropped even lower, the pit inside it growing bigger and wider and deeper with every step closer she took.

Her boots splashed, arcs of dirty water splashing as she got nearer and nearer. Her phone was already in her hand, thumb hovering over the three numbers that could end her life forever. The words caught in her throat as she picked up speed, getting closer and closer to the boy she slammed off the road. "Oh god, I'm so sorry, please b-"

A groan spilled out, low but audible even as the rain continued to fall on her head.

Emma froze halfway to him, eyes wide and phone clutched tight as her ears processed the sound. It wasn't a death rattle, not the sound of dying.

It was more like… annoyance.

The sound of effort, the kind of noise people made when they stubbed their toe on furniture at three in the morning on the way to the bathroom. What? In front of Emma’s eyes, the kid was moving, actually pushing himself up (first on his hands, and then his knees) as he shook his head hard, like a dog drying itself off.

Slowly, gracelessly, and with a shuddering lurch that should be impossible for a human being she’d just slammed into with a fucking car, the kid finally stood up on his own two feet.

Emma Swan just stared, mouth half-open as the rain dripped down from her hair and into her eyes. The pounding in her head from where she’d smacked the window and the steering wheel wasn’t helping, a dull throb sounding off in the middle of her forehead

…how?

No, seriously, fucking how? She'd hit the kid.

With a car.

A one-ton hunk of German steel going at least thirty, and probably faster than that. But somehow, the kid was standing.

Like, he’d taken a bad fall at most.

He was standing.

He was tall, lanky; not too scrawny but definitely with the kind of frame that looked like it had outgrown its own muscle mass overnight. Definitely the type of skinny that would make some sort of grandmother grab his cheeks and try to fatten him up by force. He was dressed in a torn red windbreaker over a black t-shirt and dark, worn jeans, body and clothes stained in mud and leaves. A gash bled sluggishly right above his right temple, a dark river of blood snaking down his wild red hair and the side of his jaw.

And he was standing.

Staring at her.

This isn't real. This can't be real. Except it was.

"Hey! You, are you okay?" Her own voice sounded thin, reedy; a stranger's voice scraped raw with a mix of gut-wrenching relief and a new creeping ice-cold dread that was somehow worse than the fear of having killed him. She lowered her phone, the 9-1-1 call forgotten. "I'm so sorry. I swerved, there was this wolf, this huge… I'll call an ambulance. Just, sit down. Before you fall down."

Unfocused blue eyes stared back at her, cloudy like the kid was looking at her through a dirty window, as he blinked so slowly it seemed to take one eye at a time. “...ow?” Fingers rose just as slow as they brushed against the gash on his temple, his hand coming away slick and dark with blood.

"Oh nooooo..." Emma couldn’t help the groan that left her, staring at his wound. It was a bad cut, much worse than it looked before, even with the pouring rain doing its best to wash away the blood.

He looked at the red on his fingertips, head tilted to one side as if unsure what he was looking at. His hair, a thick, unruly mop of bright, shocking red, was already starting to stick up in odd directions around the wound. “Wolf…” he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly rasp, as he looked around—at the dripping trees, at her crippled car with its one shattered, weeping headlight, then back at her. A flicker of something in his gaze, a brief moment of clarity in the cognitive fog. “大丈夫ですか (Daijōbu desu ka)?”

Emma just blinked at the sound, gibberish playing back in her ears as she tried to make sense of it. “...what?”

“Tá mé… gortaithe.” He swayed on his feet as the weird musical words left his lips in a slur, another odd language she’d never heard before. “...Tá mé…” He seemed to be fishing for the right word, translating on the fly from a brain that was currently scrambled eggs. “Hurt.”

His eyes found hers again, and this time the focus held past the daze as Emma realized he was actually looking at her. Not at her car, not at his own bleeding head.

At her. “You. You’re hurt.”

“Me?” The blonde woman blinked, confusion and shock fighting bare-knuckled for who had the upper hand here. “No, I’m fine, you’re the one who just g-” And then the adrenaline hit the emergency brake. All of it vanished, siphoned out of her, as her body remembered everything that had just happened. The world tilted on its axis, knees suddenly feeling like they were made of water.

The wolf. The crash. The impossible, physics-defying kid getting up like he’d just tripped over a curb. All of it slammed into her like she was the one who’d just been hit by a car. Throat suddenly dry, Emma staggered, throwing a hand out to steady herself on nothing at all, her breath leaving in a heavy, ragged sob. “Je-jesus…”

Before her legs could give out from under her, she felt something grab her. Emma Swan blinked, green eyes wide in surprise as she stared up to a pair of barely-there blue. Wh-what the… She wasn’t sure how exactly but the bleeding boy had crossed the space between them almost in betwee blinks, strides surprisingly fast for someone that had just been slammed off the road by a hunk of speeding metal.

His grip on her was strong, hands and arms surprisingly steady for a frame this lanky. “Hurt,” he repeated, the word firmer now, clearer, as if it was the one solid thing in his concussed mind he could hold onto. “Town. Get to town.”

Before she could say anything, before she could even try to stand up on her own, he just scooped her up.

One arm under her knees, the other hooked right around her back; effortless, like he was lifting a kid or something, not a full-grown 120-pound woman. Rain splashed against her face from a new and terrifying angle as she was carried bridal style, by the concussed teenager speaking in tongues and bleeding from a head wound.

Over his shoulder, she watched her yellow Beetle shrink in the distance, abandoned in the middle of a dark, wet, indifferent road. The world began to darken, everything going hazy as tiredness and pain took her. The last thing she saw before the forest and the rain swallowed it completely was the welcome sign.

Welcome to Storybrooke.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Our Story Begins

100 GP

ROLL: Jujutsu (Base) - [Jujutsu Kaisen - SOURCE] - FREE

"You are now a jujutsu sorcerer from the world of Jujutsu Kaisen. In this world, humans create cursed energy from negative emotions like fear and anger. Most people can't control this energy, so it leaks out and forms dangerous cursed spirits. Only a rare few called sorcerers can control their cursed energy. As a sorcerer, you can see cursed spirits that normal people can't detect. You can also pump cursed energy into your body to become much stronger, faster, and tougher than regular humans. The more energy you use, the stronger you get. You know some basic techniques that all sorcerers can learn. You can create barriers made of cursed energy to block off areas. The most common type is called a curtain, which creates a black dome that hides what's happening inside from outsiders. You can also summon simple shikigami, which are spirit creatures made from your cursed energy. These need items such as paper talismans to summon and aren't very strong, but they can help in fights. Most powerful cursed techniques are something you're born with and can't be taught. You don't get a special technique from this ability alone, but you can purchase one separately. You have a good amount of cursed energy that refills naturally over time. This puts you on the same level as most sorcerers, though some still have much larger energy reserves than you."
- GRADE 3 SORCERER

Saving the Savior