A/N: This is my partner-in-crime's baby. I'm simply, well, betaing for her! :D
It was amazing how quickly a simple plan could go completely to hell.
Decades, centuries of meticulous planning, of careful manipulation and patience all came tumbling down at his feet like a poorly built house of cards. All it took, he thought, was a few seconds' impulse by one well-meaning lunatic. There was no way to plan for that. No countermeasure to bottle and store against insanity.
They were all going to die here and it was all his fault.
—
The day had started like any of the thousands of identical autumn days before it; the sun rose, pale and watery, already half hidden by clouds. People began to emerge, one by one—the baker unlocking the doors to his shop and flipping on the 'Open' sign to tempt the morning commuters, the florist, bleary eyed and groggy, checking his morning shipment, the D.A., still in his robe and slippers, walking down his drive to get the mail. Like a clockwork model winding up, the town of Storybrooke slowly came to life.
Streetlights wink out of life one by one just as the first lights appear behind curtained windows. The first cars crept out onto the roads soon after dawn, carrying the earliest risers—those doctors and shopkeepers and politicians—to work.
The puppets all know their roles, the patterns long-ingrained.
At the local bed and breakfast a girl in a short skirt is trying to slip inside the back door, her red heels clutched in one hand so as not to make a sound. As always, she is met by her grandmother's disapproving glare as she reaches the back stairs.
A man in a tweed jacket passes by while walking his dog, an umbrella hooked over one arm in case of morning drizzle that never comes. He shakes his head and sighs as the shouting drifts out onto the street.
The center of town is the fastest to awaken. Shops are opened and pedestrians braving the morning chill begin to fill the sidewalks. Not long afterwards children emerged, bundled up against the lingering chill by overanxious mothers, heading to school. They pass in one large, unruly hoard by the local diner, where the first intrepid customers sit waiting for coffee.
They're used to the wait. Just like every other day, the owner and her granddaughter, who has traded her skirt and heels for an apron, were busy arguing in the kitchen.
Unfortunately, the signs that the rest of this day was not going to be like every other day in Storybrooke go largely unnoticed.
—
An old widow named Mrs. Holmes is washing the dishes when she notices that her neighbor's front door is hanging open. She considers calling the police again, but after what happened last time she decides to mind her own business. If anyone deserves to be robbed it is Mr. Gold, she thinks, although Heaven help the poor soul desperate enough to try it.
—
Nancy has worked as a secretary in the mayor's office for as long as she can remember, and never in all that time has she known Mayor Mills to be a minute late. Regina was one of those viciously punctual people for whom 'early' is 'on time' and 'on time' is 'late'. Being one of those people for whom 'late' was 'better than never', Nancy had been forcibly reminded of this more than once. Way more than once. So when the clock on her desk reads 9:15 and there's still no sign of Madame Mayor, she's considering asking the Sheriff to start dragging the harbor.
Before she can screw up the courage to actually do anything, Trisha from the central planning office pokes her head around the corner.
"Hey, wanna grab a cup of coffee before the witch gets in?"
"It's weird she's late," Nancy mutters, eyeing the phone. "You think I should call someone?"
"What, because her highness is fifteen minutes late? Maybe her broom is in the shop. Come on, we better hurry."
When the phone rings ten minutes later, there's no one there to answer it.
—
Marco is bent over in his workshop, applying a final coat of varnish to a particularly nice antique bookshelf he's been refinishing in his spare time-a surprise for Archie, for his office. His friend always seems to have too many books and nowhere to keep them.
As he turns tidy up he catches movement out of the corner of his eye.
There is a man just beyond the chain-link fence, watching him, with his hands tangled in the links. It's no one he knows. Marco gets an impression of torn dark clothes and large white eyes staring at him, and he is not an anxious man, but even so, he jumps. The can of varnish slips out of his hands, clattering to the floor of his garage and sloshing varnish out across the cement.
He turns to offer the stranger a few choice words—
There is no one there.
Marco rubs his eyes and directs those few choice words to himself before grabbing a rag off the workbench and bending down to mop up the mess.
He doesn't hear the slow footsteps that come up behind him.
—
A while later, Leroy tugs on the door of Mr. Gold's pawn shop and is surprised to find it locked. He looks from his watch to the door, with its sign definitely turned to 'Closed', to the town clock, which confirms his watch's assertion that it is nearly noon on a weekday. He cups his hands around his eyes and presses his nose against the glass, but the inside of the shop is dark and deserted.
Leroy knows that Gold has never taken a sick day or closed up early in his life, and that there is definitely something fishy about this.
He also knows that there are about fifty things he'd rather do with the money in his wallet besides pay Gold, and how many opportunities like this does a man get?
With an uncharacteristic feeling like this day might not be so bad after all, Leroy continues on his way to work with a spring in his step and a tuneless whistle on his lips. Maybe if he's really lucky the old bastard's died and he won't have to pay him back at all.
—
5:26 pm
They were holed up like scared rabbits in the boarded-up town library—the few of them that were left alive, anyway—while outside, the quiet little town of Storybrooke descended into chaos around them.
They had found some folding tables stacked in a supply closet and Emma and Doctor Hopper had set to work using them to strengthen the barricades on the windows and doors. Emma had shed her jacket on the floor to reveal a t-shirt covered with blood and what looked like bits of brain matter. In the corner by the children's fiction Mary Margaret was sobbing quietly, baby Alexandra bundled up in her arms. She had arrived last to their little party, clutching the baby tight to her chest and unable to speak without breaking down in tears. Both woman and child were splattered with blood, though neither of them appeared to be injured.
When Emma had asked her about Ashley and Sean, Mary Margaret just shook her head and sobbed.
At the one remaining table Mr. Gold sat, lips pursed in irritation, as he scrubbed at the blood and gore encrusting the handle of his cane with a handkerchief. No one had asked about it and he hadn't offered an explanation.
The only other sound, besides Mary Margaret's stifled crying and Emma's terse instructions, was the occasional thump of a book hitting the floor and Henry's quiet muttering from somewhere in the stacks as he tore through the shelves looking for answers. "It just doesn't make sense. This wasn't in the book…"
Everyone flinched and fell silent as a shotgun blast sounded nearby.
The silence dragged on, nobody daring to move or breath, but there were no more shots. Emma was the first to recover, dragging Archie's attention back from where he had frozen. "Hey, look at me. We need something to hold these tables in place. This isn't going to hold for long if whatever those things are try to get in here."
"Right. Right, um…" Archie glanced around the room unseeing, blinking myopically without his glasses.
"We're in a library," Gold chimed in hoarsely after several seconds of listening to the man flounder. They both stared at him as though he'd gone mad. He cleared his dry throat and tried again, "Bookshelves. Clear the bookshelves and push them against the wall."
"Right. Good idea," even now she sounded guarded, as though she were unsure if, by moving the bookshelves, she wasn't playing right into some Machiavellian scheme of his. As if he needed another reason to want the windows barricaded beyond the desire not to be torn to shreds and eaten.
Any other day he might have been amused. Today it was giving him a headache.
"Help me move these," she said to Archie.
Everyone jumped again when the door to the stairwell banged open.
"Upstairs is clear," Regina said, striding into the room, unslinging the Sheriff's shotgun, and setting it down on the table with businesslike efficiency. Out of the uniformly dirty, bruised, bloodstained lot of them, she somehow managed to look pristine, down to the sharp creases in her pants. "There was one of them on the roof of the hardware store, but I took care of it." She glanced around and a single tight note of panic crept into her voice, "Henry?"
"I'm right here. I'm fine," he drawled, poking his head out from around the bookshelf.
"This isn't a game, get out here. Stay where one of us can see you."
"How many of them are out there?" Archie asked, pausing in shifting one of the larger bookshelves.
"About two dozen on the street just outside, but I could see more moving further out. Luckily, they don't seem to have noticed we're in here."
"What- what's going on?" he asked helplessly.
"That's a good question," she said.
If Gold noticed the way her eyes were burning a hole in the side of his head, he ignored it.
"I want to check the basement—make sure nothing can get in down there," Regina paused. "Gold, why don't you come help me?"