Ordinary Days (for a Vampire Slayer)

by Kelaine729

It's an ordinary day in Storybrooke for Emma the Vampire Slayer. There's school, coffee, friends, and her woobie Watcher, Mr. Rumple, still can't get a date. That changes when the school librarian, Ms. French, goes missing.

It had started like any, normal day at Storybrooke High, or any normal day if you were a Vampire Slayer, which Emma Swan was. She stumbled blindly through the school library, still trying to get her eyes open, and into the office of Mr. Rumple, school guidance counselor.

Emma had never found out how Mr. Rumple got an office there. The rest of the school counselors had their places down by the school nurse's. But, the rest of the school counselors also had people to counsel. Despite the bottomless pile of papers and folders Mr. Rumple was always working on, Emma had never seen proof any of them had anything to do with students. Her friends, David and Mary-Margaret, hadn't even known there was an office there or who Mr. Rumple was before she dragged them in during a pterodactyl attack (the geology class had rules, now, about accepting valuable gifts from anonymous donors).

Mr. Rumple looked up from his latest mound of paperwork as she came in, adjusting his gold-rimmed spectacles so he could get a better look at her, not that there was anything to see. After a few mistakes when she was still getting used to the life of the Chosen One, Emma had gotten pretty good at getting most of the slime and gore out of her hair and making sure she showed up for class in clean clothes that were (usually) the right side out.

She must have passed inspection, because all Mr. Rumple said was "Coffee's ready." He didn't offer to pour, having learned it was safer to stay out of the way while Emma lunged for her morning fix.

Emma grunted a reply, not being up to words yet. She grabbed her mug (the largest there) and filled it with steaming, black liquid, no cream, no sugar. Later, during her second or third cup, when she was awake enough to apprecieate them, she'd do it differently. Right now, all she wanted was caffeine and lots of it, hot and quick.

Although, even gulping it down in all its plain and undairified glory, Mr. Rumple's coffee was still the best thing Emma had ever tasted. She didn't know what dark gods of hot beverages he'd made a deal with, but, whatever eldritch forces he'd summoned, Emma approved. She could feel herself coming to life again.

Mr. Rumple, on the other hand, looked at her disapprovingly. "You know, Miss Swan, no amount of caffeine can make up for not getting a good night's sleep."

Since there were baby bunnies that were more intimidating than Mr. Rumple, the disapproval bounced right off Emma. She did try for a witty comeback, however. It sounded like, "Eurgh."

"You're a growing woman. You need a good night's rest."

"Grmph."

"It is possible. Even a slayer can get some sleep." He sighed. "You should reconsider homeschooling. It would give us the flexibility to work around your duties and still see you get a decent education."

Emma managed to get her eyes open far enough to glare at him. "Not happening." Oh, good, her mouth was working. Now, if she could just watch what came out of it. Crazy and exhausting as Storybrooke High was, Emma wasn't giving it up. An orphan in the foster system for as long as she could remember, this was the closest she'd ever had to normal life. She had friends, real friends, kids she could just hang out with and talk to about movies and boys and any other, normal thing when she wanted.

After a night of slaying monsters and preventing the end of the world, she knew they would be there in the morning when she got to class, not shipped off to another foster home in the middle of the night or taken by a family that wanted to try them on before deciding if they were a good fit.

Or, they would be so long as Emma was there and made sure nothing else happened to them. The foster system might be more than Emma could cope with, but she could drive a stake through anything else that threatened her friends

And, for once in her life, she knew she wouldn't be going anywhere either. Mr. Rumple might be the most unimpressive guidance counselor in history, but he was also Emma's Watcher and, when he promised she wouldn't have to leave Storybrooke if she didn't want to, she believed him. This was dark magic central, and nobody was taking the Slayer away.

As Emma was beginning to revive and become human again (and check that her shirt really was bloodstain free and right side out), Ms. French, the school librarian, came in with a Styrofoam box that smelled of eggs, pancakes, and bacon—lots of bacon.

"Hello, Mr. Rumple, Emma," she said. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

Mr. Rumple rose awkwardly to his feet. His bad leg made this something of a chore, but he had old-fashioned manners and never remained seated in the presence of a lady (Slayers and students didn't count). "Hello, Miss French," he said. Whatever century he'd been born in (Emma wouldn't be surprised if his first job was teaching Queen Victoria which fork to use), they obviously hadn't used words like "Ms." Mr. Rumple could never manage that one.

"It's so good to see you," he went on, starting to turn red, the way he always did when he was talking to Ms. French. Emma looked at the clock behind him. Seven seconds. Not a record. That had been the incident with the magic moths, the ones that kept eating everybody's clothes. Emma didn't think they'd ever get the poor guy back to normal after that one.

"It's good to see you, too," Ms. French said, her eyes twinkling, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. She only saw Mr. Rumple every day. "Emma, I don't suppose you'd like to finish my breakfast? Granny always gives me more than I can eat." She held up the box of deliciousness. Emma jumped on the food like a werewolf on a pile of raw stakes.

"Thanks," she tried to say around a mouthful of food. "I really appreciate this." It came out more like "Urg. Hmrm'n im."

Ms. French was good at interpreting. "You're welcome," she said. Ms. French always seemed to have too much for breakfast or extra muffins that were about to go stale and had to be given away or something like that. Emma wasn't fooled. She knew she qualified for free breakfast at the school, but it was hard enough dragging herself to here in time for a cup of Mr. Rumple's coffee (wonderful, heavenly, magical coffee). The food was long gone by the time she made it here. But, Ms. French always just happened to have something to feed her anyway.

While Emma ate, Ms. French and Mr. Rumple settled down for one of their flirting-not-flirting conversations where Mr. Rumple turned redder and redder and cluelesser and cluelesser and Emma tried not to roll her eyes (always easier when there was bacon).

In other words, it was just another ordinary day. In fact, nothing weird happened at all. Emma got to her second period class and got notes from Mary-Margaret on what she'd missed in first. She found out David had made the school football team (second string) despite that whole mess with the Jekyll/Hyde formula that had almost made him lose out to his alter ego, "James." The family and consumer science teacher, Miss Green, was starting up a cooking club. Emma wondered if she could fit it in. It'd be nice to be learn how to make something besides ramen.

Then, Ms. French got kidnapped.

It was pretty low-key, as school kidnappings went. No vampires or giant bugs or anything like that. In fact, it turned out nothing like that could be involved. The first thing Mr. Rumple did when Ms. French turned up missing was check a small army of protective charms and spells he'd quietly set up around the library. Nothing had been messed with.

"Did you use up all your Watcher credit points on these?" Emma asked.

Mr. Rumple turned red (five seconds, still not the record). He also stopped making eye contact with Emma and turned his attention to the locator spell he was working on. "I was just being practical. I need the library as much as she does."

"No you don't. All the Watcher stuff is in the secret basement under your office. You like her, don't you?"

He turned several shades redder. "I respect Miss French a great deal as a colleague. She's a very intelligent, capable, young woman."

"See? You noticed she's a woman. Picking up on small details is one of the first signs of a crush."

"Recognizing that Miss French is female is hardly a small detail."

"For you, it is."

"Miss Swan, I hardly think. . . ." Fortunately, for Mr. Rumple, that was when a light began to glow on over part of the map he was working with. "There! There she is! Er, Miss Swan, could you read what it says? My eyes aren't quite as good as they used to be. . . ."

"Game of Thorns," Emma said. "Isn't that the flower shop downtown?"

"Ah," Mr. Rumple said.

"Ah?"

"It . . . makes a certain amount of sense."

"It does? Why?"

"I suggest you ask Miss French. It's a private matter. I'll leave it to her to tell you or not."

"Being kidnapped and held in a flower shop is a private matter? Since when?"

"Just grab your weapons, Miss Swan. I'll drive you over." Emma didn't have her license yet, having failed her test (like it was her fault the thing with all the tentacles was in the trunk. The night before had been really busy. Anyone could have forgotten to get it out). "Oh, and be warned, we might just be dealing with an ordinary human this time around. Perhaps some arcane skill. But, ordinary. Try not to stake anyone. Unless you have to, of course."

That was all Emma got out of him, despite pestering him all the way to the flower shop. Then, it was time to forget the teacher drama and get back to normal, everyday slaying. She left Mr. Rumple in the car, broke in, made sure the alarm wasn't going off, and found the villain of the week. This one was a small, plump man wearing a red, knitted hat standing in front of a boiling cauldron and holding a bottle of something green and shiny over it.

"That's far enough!" he said. "One more step, and this goes in!"

"Yeah?" Emma said. "And?"

"You can kiss your memories goodbye, Slayer, that's what!"

"You know who I am?" Not what Emma had expected. Also, meeting a Slayer didn't seem to worry him. That had to be a bad sign. All the same, Emma tried to sound confident. No worries here. "If you know that, you must know that most Slayers haven't got much worth remembering. So many corpses, they all start to blend. Try coming up with a threat that scares me."

"You're the Slayer," he said. "You're a killing machine. You'll always know how to kill. But, will you know how to stop?" He dangled the bottle over the cauldron.

It was like he'd been rifling through Emma's personal nightmare drawer. There'd been a few times when she first got her powers bad things had happened—really bad things—and it had been her fault. There'd been a few times after that when they'd almost happened—they hadn't, and Emma meant to keep it that way. If it meant there would be a new Chosen One taking over the job, that's the way the wooden stake crumbled.

But, the bad guys weren't supposed to figure that one out. She tried to think of a bluff or just something witty to say while she tried to think her way out of this, but nothing came.

Then, Emma heard Mr. Rumple clear his throat behind her (she knew it was him. Nobody else could make clearing his throat sound clumsy and awkward, like his tonsils were tripping over each other). "She won't need to remember," Mr. Rumple said. "She'll have me."

"Oh, yeah?" Knitted-Hat said, "And who would you be?"

There was a pause. Emma didn't turn around. One thing she'd learned was never to take her eyes off an enemy when she had a friend watching her back (even if that friend was Mr. Rumple). But, the hair stood up on the back of her neck, and Emma was suddenly certain that she didn't want to turn around and look at her Watcher.

Mr. Red-Hat-Guy didn't have a choice. The blood drained from his face till he was white as a ghost (not a metaphor. Emma had met a few).

In soft voice that would have sounded just like Mr. Rumple if Mr. Rumple was the scariest guy Emma had ever met, he said. "I'm Mr. Rumple. Mr. Tenebrosus Rumple. And you're Mr. Smee, aren't you?" His voice turned to even softer, no louder than the sound of a knife cutting through the air. "I know you. I have your name." Then his voice changed back to normal. "You've done a very bad thing, haven't you, Mr. Smee?"

Mr. Smee gulped. "I—I—" He looked like a fish gasping for air.

"And you don't want bad things to happen, do you, Mr. Smee?"

"No—no—I don't! Please, don't!"

"That's what I like to hear. Now, why don't you be a good boy and go let Miss French out?"

Mr. Smee put down the bottle and ran out of the room as if the devil himself were after him.

Emma turned around and looked at Mr. Rumple. He was leaning on his cane with one hand and putting his glasses back with the other. He looked as small and unthreatening as ever.

"How'd you do that?" she asked.

"Do what?"

"Scare that guy to death?"

"Whatever do you mean, Miss Swan? I simply pointed out the error of his ways. And, as you see, it worked."

There was a loud thunk followed by something that, to Emma's experienced ear, sounded an awful lot like a body hitting the floor.

"Ah," Mr. Rumple said. "That will no doubt be Mr. Smee opening the door." He raised his voice. "Miss French? Are you there? Emma and I came by to offer you a ride home."

Ms. French came into the room. She was breathing hard and had a wild-with-adrenalin look in her eye, a heavy wrench clenched in her hand. She lowered it when she saw it really was them. "Rumple? What are you doing here?"

"As I said, Emma and I came to offer you a ride home. I take it you already dispatched Mr. Smee?"

"How did you know?"

Mr. Rumple waved a hand, taking in the flowers, the cauldron and the rest of their surroundings. "One look at this, and I couldn't imagine there's a room here where you couldn't find something to turn into a weapon once you got free. It's quite a cluttered place."

Ms. French blushed. "You knew I'd get free?"

"My dear, I have never doubted your intelligence or your competence. Do you want to leave Mr. Smee where he is and let him make his excuses to his employers when he wakes up? Or should we call the police and have them sort it out?"

Ms. French sighed. "Explaining this will take a long time. There'll be forms to fill out. . . . I have so much to do tomorrow."

"I'm sure our illustrious principle could be talked into giving you a day off. If worse comes to worse, I could take over your duties tomorrow."

Emma made a choking sound at the thought of Mr. Rumple dealing with a library full of high school students but didn't comment. Then, she thought of how scared Smee had been, and wondered what it would really be like. Ms. French and Mr. Rumple pretended not to hear.

"Well, maybe. . . ." Ms. French looked at the cauldron. "I didn't know Smee could do potions. Do you know what he was making?"

"I doubt he was making anything," Mr. Rumple said. "It looked like he'd been given two halves of a potion and was simply combining them according to instructions."

Emma said. "You mean this was some kind of insta-curse? That's a thing, now?"

"Curse?" Ms. French said.

"He said it would erase memories."

Ms. French stiffened. "I . . . see." She looked at the still bubbling cauldron. "Mr. Rumple, if you wouldn't mind, I think I'd like to send a message to my—to Mr. Smee's employer. Do you think you could put this potion together? Safely?"

Mr. Rumple gave a little bow over his walking stick. "Safely for you. Not so safe for Mr. Smee."

Emma raised her hand. "Uh, excuse me? Sorry? What are we doing? It's just that it's a lot easier to lie to the cops if I actually know what I'm lying about. Makes it a lot easier to pretend to know nothing."

Ms. French looked uncertain. Mr. Rumple cleared his throat again—his normal, awkward-tonsils, throat clearing. "It's your decision, but you can trust Miss Swan," he told the librarian. "She has some experience keeping secrets of this nature."

"It's my father," Ms. French said. "He has ideas about how . . . daughters should live their lives. He didn't like it when I ran off and decided to live mine the way I wanted."

"Really old-fashioned?" Emma asked, pretending not to notice that "daughters" wasn't the first word Ms. French had chosen, wondering what the right word was. Princesses? Witches? Eldritch abominations? The last didn't seem likely, but this was Storybrooke. Eldritch abominations always seemed to get involved sooner or later.

"Positively medieval," Ms. French said. "Mr. Smee was supposed to bring me back." She glared at the cauldron. "I suppose this was supposed to make me forget about being independent. And everything else."

There was a ladle on the table by the cauldron. Mr. Rumple found a small, round vase of clear glass with some zinnias in it. He emptied it out and poured some of the stuff from the cauldron into it before carefully adding a few drops of green liquid. "I'll just give this to Mr. Smee and be right back. I'm sure it will make his explanation to your father all the more interesting."

After he walked off, Emma turned to Ms. French. Of course, what she really wanted to ask was, "So, are you ever going to tell Mr. Rumple you like him?" but there were more important things that had to come first. "So, this Mr. Smee, you know him pretty well?"

"He has a reputation," Ms. French said. "He's a sort of gun for hire in the magical community."

"And do you know anything he's scared of? Really, really scared of?"

"Nothing I ever heard of. It's not he's so powerful, but he knows how to stay calm. He's worked for everything from pirates to demons."

"So, nothing off the top of your head would send him running like a little kid looking for his mommy?"

"No, why?"

"No reason."

Mr. Rumple came back. "There's that taken care of. Let's be going, shall we?"

It was about a week later in the secret basement under the school when Emma got up her courage and asked. It had been a good week. Mr. Rumple had finally taken Ms. French out on a date. Even if it was just for hamburgers and Principle Mills had interrupted them with some story about a school board crisis, Mr. Rumple had been going around with a happy, little glow like a kid on Christmas. He wasn't scary, Emma told herself. Just the idea of Mr. Rumple being scary was crazy.

She told herself that over and over again. Finally, when she was in the secret basement beating a punching bag to death while Mr. Rumple gave her pointers, the question jumped out of her all on its own.

"Hey, Mr. Rumple, that Smee guy? Do you think there was anything he was scared of? I mean, he knew I was the Slayer, and that didn't even faze him."

"Slayers aren't known for killing ordinary humans, Miss Swan. I'm sure he felt safe enough with you."

"Then, what wouldn't he have felt safe with?"

Mr. Rumple shrugged. "I suppose he fears what we all fear: the unknown. Think about it, Miss Swan. What was worse? Learning you were a Slayer and that all the monsters you thought were only stories were real? Or the time before that when you had your powers but didn't know what they were? When you first saw something you knew should be human but it wasn't, yet you didn't know what it was?"

Emma gave him a glare on principle. "It may have been scarier but it was a lot easier. At least, I got enough sleep back then."

"Really? The nightmares didn't keep you up? Well, however it works for you, I would guess that's what terrifies your Mr. Smee: darkness, the things he can't see."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the best one I have, Miss Swan."

"Yeah? What would the not-best answers be?"

"Nothing you want to hear."

"Didn't you just say not-knowing is always scarier than finding out?"

"Did I?" He gave her a smile. It was his usual, unscary, timid, baby-bunny smile. Except it wasn't. "Then, let me stand corrected. The one thing that is more frightening than looking out into the darkness and not knowing what is hidden in it is looking out into the darkness and knowing the darkness itself—infinite, unknowable, eternal, an entity that can hold all your fears and never waste a moment's thought on them—could crush them as easily as you draw breath if it did notice them—this thing has noticed you and is looking back."

His glasses slipped as he looked at Emma. For a moment, his eyes were no longer weak and rheumy and unfocused. For that small sliver of time, she glimpsed something dark and terrible that went on forever.

Then, he pushed them back in place and was only woobie Mr. Rumple. He gave her his awkward, haphazard smile. "It's not something you need to know about, Miss Swan. And I will spare you learning more, if I can."

Never turn your back on an enemy, that was one of the rules Mr. Rumple had taught her. He'd also taught her the rule that followed: Unless you have to.

She'd looked up the name he'd given Smee, Tenebrosus. It meant Dark One.

Slowly, Emma turned back to her punching bag and worked on her attack.

X

Note: This started because I was reading the "Swiper, No Swiping" entry on TV Tropes. It described this as when the villain stops the evil plan because someone explains that it is a bad thing. I tried to imagine a scene where that would work, and got Buffy meets Once with the Dark One explaining he does not approve.

The Latin dictionary I consulted said Tenebrosus is an adjective meaning "dark" rather than a noun meaning "Dark One," but it's close enough for my purposes (and Emma's Latin is worse than mine).