TITLE: Awakenings (1/?)
AUTHOR: BirdBrain711
PAIRING: Emma/Graham
RATING: T
SUMMARY: This place has drawn her in, broken down her defenses, and now she feels wounded, awash in hopelessness. AU after 1.07.
NOTE: Emma/Graham fans – I promise this fic will make you happy, but it's not going to be an instant gratification kind of thing. I hope you'll come along for the ride. Also, fair warning – I'm a graduate student, so I might not always be able to update super fast. But I promise I have a plan for this story, and procrastination is a very powerful thing. ;)
Chapter One
Two weeks earlier, Emma stood in this office and felt the ground lurch beneath her feet. She remembers vividly the slight struggle to affix the deputy badge to the waistband of her jeans, how she'd pushed, felt the gentle give as it slid into place, her key to existing within the intricate fabric of this town. And then the world had moved, as if in synchronous echo, amplified thousand-fold. It had been enough to make her question for a moment, Henry's words reverberating through her mind even as the aftershocks had died away to nothing. Enough to make her feel—for a single instant—as though she might actually be changing the very fabric of the universe.
Now, with the cold floor beneath her knees and her head filled with throbbing pain, she feels as though the earth might be moving once more, coming apart at the seams. Graham's skin is still warm—deceptively warm—as she presses her fingers to his neck, clumsily searching for a pulse. But all she feels is the rush of her own blood in her veins, and wisps of a lecture on first-aid play at the edge of her awareness, a forgotten course she'd attended on CPR and other techniques which were supposed to bring people back from the dead. At the time it had seemed like the kind of skill set someone who got into as much trouble as she did ought to have. But she'd dropped out after the second class, and forgotten everything else besides.
Instead she shakes him again, violently, so that his head lolls to the side as if he's been transformed into some horrifying parody of a rag doll. It is as though someone has simply flipped a switch, snipped a thread, so that he was here one moment—in the midst of becoming more alive than ever before—and gone the next, snuffed into nothingness even with the flush of pleasure still illuminating his skin.
Rocking back on her heels, Emma becomes suddenly aware that she is crying, her throat raw—from shouting his name, she realizes with a jolt, though the sound of her own voice has been outside of her consciousness. She is filled with a sick terror, as though she has been violated, betrayed. She is alone now and she has been alone for so long, but suddenly it seems certain that nothing will ever be good again, and she wishes she could curl into a ball under the thick folds of a comforter and pretend that time has come to a halt, the way she did when she was a little girl.
Looking down at Graham's body again, she feels as though she might vomit, but instead the sobs just keep coming, painful and strong, so that it seems she is being shaken by the same force she used to try and rouse him from death. Emma thinks she ought to get off the floor, and she ought to call someone who handles things like this, but that's his job. Her job now, and it feels utterly insurmountable.
She isn't sure how much time has passed when the sound of the door swinging open rouses her from her dazed grief. Emma lurches to her feet, the room swimming before her as the pain in her head reasserts itself and she struggles to find her equilibrium. She cannot see who it is immediately, and realizes with a fresh shock that the rest of the world is still functioning outside, unaware of what has happened. Unaware of the way it seems that her life has come crashing down in a sudden collapse. She half expects the intruder to be an oblivious resident making a complaint about illegal parking, or a noisy party. Someone expecting her to be here, doing her job, as though her life hasn't been turned upside down this day. A little cyclone of anxious thoughts kicks up in the back of her mind, wondering how she will tell anyone what has happened here.
But when the footsteps reach the office doorway, it is Regina standing in the dim light, looking utterly unruffled, not a hair out of place, as though she has spent the evening sitting behind her desk, instead of in the woods. Emma feels the stir of anger instantly, the depth of her grief igniting into a hot wave of rage. Her gut tells her instantly that Regina is somehow responsible for what has happened here; irrational as it may be, no other explanation seems worth even a second's consideration.
"What the hell did you do?" The words slip out before Emma has even become consciously aware of them, and she finds herself shocked at the sound of her own voice, tattered at the edges. She doesn't regret the accusation; everything is still too raw for any attempt at niceties.
Regina pauses a few feet away, regarding her with an aloofness cool enough to chill the room. Every hint of the odd vulnerability Emma had glimpsed in the forest has been erased now, replaced by a freshly ironclad veneer. "What makes you think I have any idea what you're talking about?"
"Graham is dead," Emma breathes, finding that speaking the words aloud at last only strengthens the venom bubbling up in the pit of her stomach. Gone is the terrible feeling of helplessness, at least so long as she holds tight to this moment and the bitterness of hatred.
Regina looks pointedly at his body on the floor, now lying at a grotesquely odd angle from Emma's futile attempts at resuscitation. Something tightens in her face, as though the depths of her eyes have taken in the room's reaching shadows.
"So it would appear," she says simply.
"Graham is dead," Emma repeats, a perverse relief in the word, as though the sting of hearing it reverberating through the still room marks the limit of her pain. "He just—drops dead. And you suddenly appear out of nowhere, not acting the least bit surprised. Convenient, don't you think?"
Shaking her head, Regina laughs, a slow, dangerous sound, almost a hiss. "Your audacity never ceases to amaze me, Miss Swan. I simply happened to be walking home this evening and heard you shouting for help. You sounded practically hysterical."
"I wasn't calling for help," Emma replies slowly, suspicion growing, though she can't truly be sure of what she might or might not have done in the past few desperate minutes. "And I know where you were coming from. If you were on your way home, you shouldn't have needed to come this way at all. Or did you get lost in your own town, Madam Mayor?"
The ghost of a sneer curls Regina's lower lip; there is a hint of something wild in her, a predator foaming at the mouth. "And what, exactly, are you implying, Miss Swan? That while visiting my father's grave, I somehow managed to reach out and kill the Sheriff? You must think I'm awfully powerful, to make an accusation like that. You know, deputy, if you insist on bringing up foul play—Well, a careful look at the evidence would point to you as the killer here. You seem like an ambitious woman, intent on taking what isn't yours. Maybe you wanted a quick promotion."
Emma flies into motion the instant the words register, so blinded by helpless frustration that she nearly stumbles over Graham's body on the floor, another reminder that this nightmare is real. She has always been stupid in anger, and her hands connect with Regina's shoulders for the second time this night, pushing until her back is pressed against the wall. Regina does not move, offers no resistance, doesn't even flinch as Emma brings up a knee to connect sharply with her stomach. Her breath leaves in a rush, and she doubles over, but there is a strange satisfaction in her eyes that brings Henry's insistent warnings to mind: Evil witch.
Emma is suddenly certain that she is going to kill Regina, slowly, feeling all the agony of hopelessness she has created in her own town. Never before has Emma seen herself capable of such abject cruelty, and there is something empowering, intoxicating about it. She has failed in all of her attempts to be honorable, to be responsible, to be good here in Storybrooke. Perhaps, then, brutality is all that is left. Keeping Regina in her peripheral vision, Emma turns over her left shoulder, reaching for the gun that Graham kept hidden in the desk drawer, for emergencies. That it has remained there, untouched, for years speaks volumes about Storybrooke, but now everything is changing, shifting beneath her feet. Slowly aiming, she clicks off the safety. It is practically a shot at point-blank range, and there will be no missing, no turning back. Yet still Regina has not moved, has made no attempt at escape. Too easy.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Henry's voice now, from the doorway, filled with utter terror.
Emma freezes, instantly fumbling to put the safety back onto the gun, its mere presence far too risky with him in the room. Regina's smile grows again, and suddenly Emma realizes that this has been the plan all along. Played yet again, and she feels the beginnings of fresh tears prick the backs of her eyes. This place has drawn her in, broken down her defenses, and now she feels wounded, awash in hopelessness.
"Henry—" she begins, with the intention of warning him to stay away, but he has already seen everything here, wide-eyed gaze fixed on Graham's body as his breathing quickens.
"You did this." Emma rounds on Regina again, the gun held slack at her side, useless now. "You brought him here. You knew what I'd do."
Regina straightens, sedately smoothing the wrinkles out of her blouse. "Henry wanted to see you. I was feeling charitable, so I thought I'd walk him down here myself. This town can be dangerous, Miss Swan. You of all people should know that."
But Henry is already running toward the door, and all Emma can think to do is shove the gun back into the desk drawer and follow him, Regina be damned. She catches up to him in the street; he hasn't made much of an attempt to get very far, perhaps guessing that she would follow. Hot tears are spilling down his cheeks, and Emma brushes away the thought that this night will haunt the remainder of his childhood.
"Henry," she tries again, but then finds that she has nothing further to say, no explanation for this injustice, nothing that will just make him feel better.
"You did this," he says, before she can think of anything else.
Emma rocks back on her heels, reeling as though he might have physically hit her. "What?"
"You were supposed to break the curse," he spits, crying harder. "You were supposed to bring back the happy endings. But you didn't believe me, and now she killed Sheriff Graham because of you!"
"Henry!" Emma throws up her hands. "This is crazy!"
But he is already off and running again, and this time his words keep her rooted to the spot, too afraid of making the damage any more irreparable.
Somewhere in the distant night, a wolf howls in mourning.