The Right Man
By Shahrezad1
Summary: Doubts plague everyone, even living consciences. But Ruby-Red soon sets these feelings to right. "I just feel like you're the right man for the job. Always have." Red Cricket, lost scene after "We Are Both."
Disclaimer: Ruby is Red, Jiminy is Green, I don't own either, so please don't be mean.
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The couple in the corner was worrying Ruby. The woman was tucked around herself, one arm against her middle and the other clenched upon the tabletop. And the man was taut with anxiety, sitting as close forward as the table would allow. But he hadn't reached out to grab her hand, despite the evident yearning to do so. And they'd been sitting in the same place, discussing the same topic, since first coming in.
That had been noon. It was now twenty-six minutes after four.
But no one, especially not Granny and certainly not Ruby, had any desire to reprimand them for loitering or ask them to leave. For the owners of the establishment knew where they were—whom they had been—and what they had to work through.
Ruby-Red sighed, coffee pot in hand.
"Deep thoughts?" a quiet voice asked at the level of her elbow. Her subconscious registered the voice before her eyes did, however, and with an instinct born of another life her gaze immediately went to the table. Searching for something much smaller than the man before her.
He chuckled.
"My eyes are up here, Red."
Blushing, she made visual contact with the town's resident psych, his lips twitching into the slightest of smiles, "I've always wondered what it would be like to say that."
Her blush, if anything, darkened as she tucked a strand of long, loose hair behind her ear, "well…now you know."
"They're going to need a lot of help before they'll be able to get back to where they were," the redhead remarked. But she had already moved on, mentally, and so blinked long, unmascara-ed lashes at him in confusion and earned a quirk of a smile in response. He motioned toward the occupied booth before them.
"Ka—Abigail and Frederick."
"Oh," her gaze softened on the duo. The two of them had been in love for as long as either of them could remember. And although Red's experience with the pair had begun and ended with Snow's wedding reception, their adoration of one another had had nearly a golden aura. But now…twenty-eight years of believing that you were married to another person—a married friend, even—could create barriers that no one would ever have expected. They were still deeply in love, yes, and anyone could tell it. But there was a war being waged in the heart of the guilty, sorrowful Princess, and a bridge that needed more than just magical mending.
"I was thinking marital counseling," she remarked lightly, at odds with the serious situation of the couple being discussed.
Archie's barely-there smile tugged into a more visible counterpart as he made full and direct eye contact with the werewolf, "fishing for patients for me? As though I don't already have a full course load as it is."
Her shrug was part flirtatious Ruby and part honest Red, "I just feel like you're the right man for the job. Always have."
Any mirth he'd been feeling faded and the former conscience gripped both hands around his half-full coffee cup, "am I? Really?"
The conflicted murmur led her to a decision. Setting the half-full coffee pot back in its place, Ruby pulled out a chair and sat down across from her longtime friend. Longer than they'd both realized.
"Yes," she remarked simply, firmly, "I do."
His smile was barely there, a painful, mirthless stretch of lips followed by what could only be termed a croak of speech, "and what about Jiminy? Would you consider him to be the right man for the job? Because there's an awful lot you don't know about him—almost eighty years worth."
Her eyebrows jumped at the word 'eighty' but she still had a ready response, "yes. Because I know that, no matter what, he's always tried to do his best."
"He hasn't always," the therapist remarked, sighing heavily. And she wondered long and hard just what sort of sadness he had locked away within his heart. But that wasn't for today, not here and not now. That was a conversation meant to be held while drinking hot cocoa as soft murmurs soothed away the pain of old wounds. Here, however, they were in a public place and as much as she would love to just reach out and show him comfort they were unfortunately restricted.
Red tried earnestly to make eye contact, but Archie was having nothing to do with that sort of effort, "but…there must have been a point when he made a decision—when you made a decision—to become the man that you are now…?"
Her effort at putting things into perspective didn't work, though, as he shook his head and looked down into the deep swirls of his drink, as though longing for something stronger, "look, Ruby, I appreciate what you're trying to do but you don't understand what I did. I-."
Frustrated, the brunette tossed her mane of hair, "and what do you know about Red Riding Hood? Tell me, honestly, what you know about my past?"
Caught like a deer within the headlights, he could only look at her and gape as the good doctor abruptly found his self-pity met with stubborn confrontation, "I…I…"
"Look, Jiminy, I ate roughly half of my village. Half," she repeated when he only continued to look at her, brows still furrowed with sorrow, "friends, schoolmates, friends, peers. Do you know how many widows I made over the course of a few years? I killed my own mother, for heaven's sake, and I slew who knows how many of King George's men! I am a monster, THE monster that everyone scares their children with at night-."
"I thought that that was Rumpelstiltskin," he remarked in a dry attempt at humor. A comment that she elected to ignore, continuing.
"—even people in this land have heard of me. And yet they think that 'Little Red Riding Hood' was the innocent, the girl who managed to get away. When I'm nothing like that."
He opened his mouth as if to argue, at which point she raised her eyebrows expectantly at him. Just waiting for the conscience to deny it. And yet…both of them knew that he couldn't. From the moment that Red had learned about whom she was—what she was—she had stopped being anything like innocent.
Similar to the moment in which his eyes had laid upon a pair of matching puppets, their grotesque faces twisted into what could only be termed as anguished screams.
After that point he could never have gone back.
"But the thing that being Ruby has given me…is the willingness to take some chances," she began again, hopeful this time that when she spoke he just might listen, "to give this place another chance," her hand went out to encompass the diner in all its glory, a cheerful little watering hole filled with all the people that she cared about the most. Including the man across from her.
"But…I have been living with this g-guilt for almost eighty years, Ru-Red," he hoarsely said, hand going back to rub the back of his head, only briefly skimming over his receding hairline, "it's been there, just hovering in the back of my m-mind for forever. A-and I'm tired. Archie is tired. He really just deserves the chance to live without my sins, I guarantee that J-Jiminy won't be missed, I-."
"Archie is Jiminy, you've got to see that," she said desperately as she took one of her best friend's hands in both of hers, unwinding it from its death grip round his cup in order to grasp it firmly. Willing all the love and care that she could through the simple connection, "he is everything that is good and caring and brave in Jiminy. He wouldn't be the man he is without the man that's underneath. And do you think that Archie could ever be happy leaving this place? This is Archie's home, and everyone here is his family. If you make him forget everything…he'll have lost the most important pieces of himself."
He shook his head, looking away, but Ruby-Red shook their connecting hands enough to draw him back.
"And do you really want to forget the wonder of raising Gepetto as though he was your own son? Of forgetting every caring moment shared between a father and his son?"
"Only because I killed his real parents," he whispered, anguished.
Keeping one hand on his, the other set of long fingers went to Archie's cheek, directing the man's gaze to her empathetic one, "Jiminy, you have to stop this. Marco loves you. You're his best friend. Just the same way that you're Henry's best friend. And they would feel the worst kind of sadness if you stopped being you. You've been given twenty-eight extra years to seek forgiveness, so you can't keep torturing yourself like this," carrying into herself a heavy, resigned sigh, a remembered conversation bubbled to the surface, paraphrased but still reminiscent of the therapist's own wording, "look, everyone has regrets. But rehashing them, agonizing over them, isn't going to help you. You need to let that pain go and move on with your life. This chance, here, is a blessing."
He motioned toward their surroundings with a small jerk of his chin, "but how can this be c-considered a blessing, Red? Even you wanted to leave."
"Which was part of my curse," she stated lightly, "I wanted to run, but was locked in what I thought was a cage. But once I learned about myself and who I'd been, I realized that Regina had actually given me something wonderful."
His puzzled expression wiped away some of the uncertainty, and she gave in to the urge to smile fully at him.
"I had twenty-eight years, Archie. Twenty-eight years in which I never had to worry about eating anyone," smiling sweetly, the waitress didn't even notice the single tear that escaped, too happy for anything else, "and I got the chance to get to know you as a man."
She could visibly see his voice catch at his words, time still for a moment in the space between them before he coughed, turning slightly away, "b-but not a good one."
"A sweet one and a kind one," she pressed, grip tightening, "a gentleman who would never treat Ruby disrespectfully even if everyone else around her was. Who listened to her, Archie, listened to her. When she was whining and witching about everything and nothing. You heard her, and you made the twenty-eight years bearable. And you stood up to Regina, remember? Even if he was just a man," Red straightened in her seat, tossing her hair in thought, "actually, I take that back—you've never been just anything. And whoever put that thought in your head deserves to come face to face with the wolf!"
The direct threat made him blink and pull back, shock jerking through his system, "wait, how did you-?"
"Look, I know what it's like to start believing what everyone thinks of you," she informed him earnestly, leaning forward in steadfast determination, "Red knows it and Ruby especially knows it. But can whatever they drilled into your head really shout out the truth? That your friends care about you? That they respect you and hold your opinions in high esteem? That I—we love you?"
The last one was a stumble and his blue eyes widened at the Freudian Slip—a term handily provided by the curse. Even more fascinating was the flush that climbed up the young woman's cheeks as she tried to collect herself, looking the slightest bit flustered. She bit her lip as she attempted to collect her thoughts and upon turning back her eyes were softer, sadder. But resigned in their fashion.
"Look, you're an adult and you can make whatever decisions you want. If you had walked past that barrier we would have still had Archie, yes, which is fantastic. But we would have lost everything wonderful about Jiminy. And whether you want to admit it or not, that would have been a loss for everyone."
Ruby clasped his hand one last time before standing, leaving a whiff of wild strawberries and clean forest behind her. But she didn't step away until she'd said her piece in full, looking down on him with heartbreaking affection and love.
"I'm glad that you're here. I'm glad that you're both here," she carefully repeated, heart in her throat, "and there's no one better for the job than you."
Resting her hand on his shoulder, it lingered a moment or two longer as the redhead stared up at her, heart in his throat. And even though she walked away the heat stayed behind, warming him until it didn't seem all that difficult to let the past go and simply accept what was.
And perhaps with her help he might even be able to face what might be.
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AN: This was originally started as of the onset of season two. I wasn't the only one that noted that Archie was leading the bunch as they tried to pass beyond the boundaries of the town, swept up in memories of regret. And I really wanted Archie to be given the chance to express this anxiety, and for Ruby to reassure him that they have been given a second chance.
Regrettably, I lost the documents somewhere in the mess that is my room and pretty much forgot about the tale. Until I unearthed the treasure while cleaning. That's why this fic is so late in coming. Still, I'm glad that I found it and was able to finish it after-the-fact, even if we're more than half way through season two already.