scapeartist:

CS AU — Another Time Period: The American Civil War

You Will Be My Ain True Love

Emma Swan has been on her own her whole life, getting passed from orphanage to orphanage, and when war breaks out between the States, she sees an opportunity to help others and herself. She travels to Washington, D.C. to work as a nurse under Clara Barton and the fledgling Red Cross. She becomes the favorite of the doctors when they need assistance because she never flinches, never looks away, no matter the gravity of the soldier’s injury.    

Killian Jones and his brother, Liam, immigrated to the United States after their mother died and father left them to fend for themselves. As war is declared, the brothers enlist to fight for the Union Army and fight bravely through the early part of the war. Liam, who rose to the rank of Captain in the 69th NY Infantry, is killed during the battle of Antietam at the Sunken Road. Killian barely makes it out with his life. He takes his brother’s place as Captain, and at the battle of Fredericksburg, he is shot in the hand leading his men against the Confederates at Marye’s Heights, and is shipped to Washington when his injury becomes infected and his hand needs to be amputated.

As night nurse in the largest hospital in the city, Emma is overrun with patients, but none more pitiful than Captain Jones who calls out for “Liam” in his fevered sleep, and sobs when he thinks no one is looking. She tends to him, brings him extra rations whenever she can spare them, and offers to write a letter to a loved one. He dismisses through gritted teeth that day, telling her there is no one to receive such a letter. She never brings it up again.   

In time, Killian recovers well enough to be useful around the hospital in a limited capacity under Emma’s supervision while he learns to function without his left hand. He asks the local blacksmith to make a hook he can wear when the stump is healed fully so he can help carry more water buckets to help Emma wash her patients. 

One day, when he can see that Emma is at her wit’s end trying to fit more maimed men where there is no more room to be had, he brings her a book of fairy tales one of the older rich ladies has left behind that she’d been reading to the wounded. They take turns reading the tales to each other at the end of their shifts. Eventually they tell each other their own stories and Killian asks if she will be part of his. She says yes.