Lilith Page

General Personality:

Lily can be whatever people need to see. Acting has been her life since meeting Emma and finding out who she really is. Alone, however, she describes herself as driven, sometimes to the point of obsession; she doesn't like to lose, and she hates being talked down to. She has been known to let her emotions drive her actions; she considers them to be her defense mechanism. She's quick to anger and slow to forgive; she's been hunting down Snow White and Prince Charming for years, and still blames them for every terrible thing that happens to her.



She's also vulnerable. Underneath all the layers and masks she wears, she's just a scared girl who wants to find a place where she feels right. Growing up with the Page family has made her slow to trust people; after all, she lived with them for fourteen years, and they still kicked her to the curb. But, once her trust is earned, she's loyal. The only friend she's ever had turned her back on her, but she didn't begrudge her; she only accepted that next time they met, she would have to try harder to be the friend Emma deserves.

History:



Abandoned as a child and found in the woods, Lily was adopted and named by James and Priscilla Page, where she spent most of her childhood. It was a rocky life; no matter how well she meant, or how hard she tried, she always managed to mess things up. Her adoptive parents grew to resent her, and, when they managed to have a child of their own, pretty much just ignored or berated her.



She can recall, in perfect detail, the day she finally had enough. It was clear and sunny, chilly for late summer, but otherwise unassuming. The Page family was leaving their summer home to return to Lowell, Massachusetts; when they stopped for gas on the outskirts of town. Lily swiped her foster father's credit card and fled. She figured the last place anyone would look for her would be the place she'd just left, if they even bothered looking at all. Hitting up a local grocery store for supplies, she met Emma, and recognized, almost immediately, a kindred spirit. She and Emma hung out all day, getting to know each other. Turned out, Lily had been dead on; Emma was indeed an orphan and on the run as well. Not wanting to lose the blossoming friendship, Lily omitted the family detail of her life and pretended the summer home she was "squatting" at was just a random home; she offered to let Emma stay with her, which the blonde quickly agreed to. It was the best time Lily had ever had.



The bubble of happiness popped, however, a week later, when James Page finally returned for his foster child. All the secrets of her past, the lies she'd told Emma to keep her only friend close, were exposed. Lily watched an angry and hurt Emma turn away from her, erasing the star she had "tattooed" onto her friend's wrist that matched her own. It hurt worse than anything else she had experienced in her life.



After that incident, Lily tried even harder to get away from her foster family. Every night, without fail, she would sneak out with a packed bag through her bedroom window. The problem was that James Page was relentless in bringing her back. This went on for a month. Finally, one night, James didn't come for her, and Lily successfully hopped a bus to a new life.



She ended up in Minnesota and took up shelter with a local gang, eventually forming somewhat of a relationship with one of the members. She stayed with him for two weeks, getting by shoplifting food from gas stations. It was coincidence that she happened to see Emma with her new foster family walking down the street. She followed them back to their house, noting, with jealous tears, how happy her friend seemed to be with these people; she had no right to intrude. She went back to the gang's house.



The next day, her boyfriend told her that they needed to make a food run. She went along, never suspecting he would make her an accomplice in an armed robbery. When he pulled out a gun and turned it on the shop clerk, she froze, only catching the gun tossed at her by remote. Panicked, she fled the store, dropping the gun on her way out. Fearing what her boyfriend and the gang would do to her and not having anywhere else to go, she sought refuge with the only person she trusted: Emma. To say Emma was pissed was an understatement, but before she could tell Lily to go, her new foster father stepped in. Donning the mask she typically wore with authority figures, Lily was charm itself as she smoothly lied through her teeth. She told him that she and Emma had met in a group home; after all, Emma had said that Lily was her friend. When he invited her to dinner, how could she refuse?



In the middle of dinner, after Lily made a slightly sarcastic comment about the family's chore wheel and decor, Emma pulled her into the kitchen to talk to her. Before Lily had a chance to explain, the television ousted her; to be fair, the only reason Emma suspected Lily at all was because the tv got a nice shot of her mask, which she, like an idiot, forgot to get rid of before going to see Emma. She quickly explained what had gone down, and begged Emma to get her necklace from the gang house. That necklace was the only thing she had to her real family; she needed it. Emma agreed, giving her explicit directions to wait for her, making it quite clear that after this, she never wanted to see Lily again. She agreed and waited at Emma's foster house.



About twenty minutes after Emma left, her boyfriend found her. Emma's foster family had gone out, not even bothering to lock the doors, and he strolled in like he owned the place. Inside, Lily was freaking out, but she didn't show it; instead, she adopted the Femme Fatale persona. He forgave her and they looted the fat stack of cash that was locked in the desk in the study. Wanting to leave a message for Emma, but not knowing how, Lily left. It ate her up, and she took it out on the guy responsible, telling him that they didn't need to steal that money. He told her to relax, that Emma was better off getting kicked out of that "whacked out" home. While Lily secretly agreed, she still ended up taking the money after he fell asleep.



Emma was at the bus stop, and Lily inwardly cheered her friend for having the guts to get the hell out of that place. Emma, however, was not happy to see Lily, and mocked her for growing up with a family, saying how she wasn't really an orphan because she had no idea what it was like. It hurt, partly because it was true and partly because Lily knew, even if she wanted to go back to the Page's, they wouldn't take her back. She'd been kicked out. Still, better to be on her own than to live in a house with a family who hates, resents, and only lets you live their out of pity. In her heart, she knew the Page family was happier to be rid of her. She didn't say it in so many words, but she told Emma this and begged her for help; things were better with Emma, they felt right. When Emma refused and walked away again, Lily, desolate, got on the bus, not even caring where it took her.



While on the bus bound for Pittsburgh, an old man sat down next to Lily. He commented on the necklace that hung once more around her next; it was a mottled brown and yellow stone in the shape of a moon. The man commented on how it complimented the star-shaped birthmark on Lily's wrist. Curious, and a trifle unnerved, since her birthmark was not visible to the old man, Lily asked how he knew about that; the man explained that he knew a great many things about Lily, and went on to explain about her birth and the extraordinary circumstances that led to her being here on the bus to Pittsburgh at that moment.



As she listened, Lily shook her head, trying to deny the fantastic tale he spun about her mother being, of all people, the evil sorceress Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty; how her necklace wasn't a stone, but a piece of one of the dragon's egg. The egg she, Lily, had hatched from. It was a fairy tale; the man was deluded. Although, the idea of all the terrible mistakes she'd made in her life, especially after meeting Emma, not being her fault was slightly uplifting; it made her feel like she wasn't as much of a screw up. Still, if what he said was true, it meant that Snow White and Prince Charming were responsible for her crappy life. That the land of fairy tales, or the Enchanted Forest, as the man called it, was real, and that she was from such a place.



The more the man spoke, the more questions Lily had, and she spent the next nine and a half hours alternating between listening and asking questions. By the time she got off the bus in Pittsburgh, she was almost convinced. When she looked for the man again, though, he was gone, and she was once more alone.



For the next few days, Lily tried to convince herself that everything the old man had told her was bologna. Every time she did so, though, something went wrong: the pot she had been boiling water in boiled over, the book she'd been reading at the library had pages missing, etc. It only reinforced the idea that she was, in fact, cursed.



It was only after she had successfully gotten a job at a grocery store as a bagger that Lily began to believe in her heart that something was extraordinarily wrong with her. It was her first official day at the small, family owned grocery store, and she was excited. Her first customer was a lady she recognized from the library; she was a kindly librarian, always willing to let Lily read as long as she liked. Lily was extra careful to bag the groceries just so. She even offered to take them to the lady's car, of which the old librarian accepted gladly. The bags weren't heavy; Lily knew better than to do that. But that didn't stop the bags they were in from ripping and dropping all the produce onto the ground, allowing most of it to roll down a hill and right into a lake. Lily saved what she could (a can of beans and an apple), but ultimately the purchase was lost.



The librarian lady went off. It was like she'd been building up all her rage that day for just this moment, and this was the last straw. She went so far as to excuse Lily of ripping out the pages in her precious library books and that if she ever caught her in the library again, she'd call the police. Lily was mortified and devastated; she offered to pay for the lady's groceries, but that only set the woman off again, proclaiming, loudly, that such an act of generosity (not the lady's term for it) would be wasted, since the groceries had already been lost. Her manager, the owner, finally came out, asked what the trouble was, and, after the lady demanded it, fired Lily.



Hurt, embarrassed, and angrier than ever, Lily shouted, "It's not my fault!" and ran off. She seethed. It wasn't her fault; not the damn bag, not her life! She was a "victim of the unfortunate vagaries of fate", as the man had called it. An unjust fate, bestowed on her by the selfish acts of "moral" characters.



All the Man On The Bus could tell her about Storybrooke was that, if she wanted to find it, she would need to keep track of Emma. So she did just that. It took her several years; the girl knew how to keep her head down, but she finally caught up with her when she got caught fencing some watches down in Tallahassee. Turned out, her boyfriend set her up, just like that creep who had Lily on the run from Minnesota. Seemed like poetic justice to her, until she found out that Emma had been pregnant and gave up her kid. That one was a particularly hard bit to swallow; after all, Emma had been in the system. She knew what kind of life her baby was looking at. Still, such was life. Lily didn't give the kid a second thought until Emma disappeared one day, the last person to be seen with her being a boy the same age as Emma's child. That was when she located the adoption records on him. Henry Mills lived with the Madam Mayor Regina Mills in Storybrooke, Maine. She'd found it.



Fairy Tale History:



Like Emma, Lily was sent through a portal at birth, so she has no fairy tale history. However, according to the man on the bus, she is the offspring of the fearsome Maleficent, hatched out of an egg that was fused with the darkness of Snow White and Prince Charming's unborn child. Her mother, she was told, did all she could conceivably do to save her beloved egg, but Snow White and Charming outwitted her; she was powerless to stop the heroes from destroying her happiness.