A/N: My first foray into the Once Upon a Time fandom and an attempt to get myself back in writing mode. I really haven't felt like doing it lately. Hopefully this can do something to change that. To those of you waiting patiently for an update of one of my other stories, I apologize, unfortunately my creativity has run dry for the time being.
In the meantime, I hope everyone enjoys this.
The Camping Trip
So camping isn't exactly high on your list of priorities but Ruby is taking Emma and Henry out into the forest around Storybrooke so that the Charmings can have some alone time (apparently there was already one incident), and you want to spend time with Ruby so you agree to go. You think momentarily about inviting Rumple but there's pretty much nothing about him that suggests that he'd enjoy sleeping on the ground. Plus you seem to remember that there's tension between him and Emma for manipulating her in that whole Savior-thing, and between him and Ruby for some reason. He'd literally be a fifth wheel so you opt not to mention it to him.
On the way into the woods you get the impression that Henry isn't terribly thrilled to be coming out here either. His attention snaps to every time a limb breaks or an animal makes any sort of noise. It's strangely endearing to you that he's utterly fearless when facing down Regina or Rumple, powerful magic users both, but a bird takes off flying or a rabbit steps on a twig and he starts to freak out.
Ruby spends the entire trip identifying various animals to him by sounds, rabbits and squirrels and mice, and finally when you get to the clearing you're planning to make camp in she drops her pack and kneels down to talk to him. Even on one knee she's still taller than him. "Henry, buddy," she says putting a hand on each shoulder, "You don't have to worry, okay? The biggest, scariest predator in these woods is me. Nothing is going to hurt you out here."
Henry steps forward and wraps his arms around her neck and you can only sort of hear him say, "Thanks, Ruby," before he trots off to where Emma is unfurling their tent.
"That was very sweet of you," you tell her.
Her face lights up at the compliment from you and you mirror her smile back at her instinctively. She bites her lip, drops her eyes, shrugs, and says, "I've gotta look out for him. Snow's my best friend; we're practically sisters. I'm actually Emma's godmother."
"I didn't know that," you say.
"Yeah, well," she says, "It doesn't really seem like all that important a title now that she's a grown woman with a ten year old son of her own."
"Of course it's important," you tell her, "It means you're a part of the family. You're a Charming." In more than one sense of the word, you think to yourself, not daring to say it. No matter how softly you expressed the thought, Ruby's wolf ears would hear it. It's a thought you've had a lot but not yet dared to verbalize even in the still of the night when you're in the library and Ruby is at Granny's. You have no idea how good her ears are but if they have anything on her nose then you're not testing them… not now anyway, when you aren't sure about what it is you think you feel.
"I don't know about that," she says.
You and Ruby begin setting up your tent, which is really more like Ruby setting up your tent and you being variously inquisitive and supportive of her seeming knowhow. Emma has hers and Henry's tent up in a flash. By the time Ruby has yours up Emma has their sleeping bags laid out and the fold out chairs set up. There's already a circle of stones set up to make a fire break. Clearly this is not the first time someone has used this clearing as a campground.
Ruby and Emma volunteer to go find firewood while Henry and you gather dry leaves for kindling. It doesn't take you long so you sit down and start talking… or rather, he does. "I'm sorry my mom kept you locked up for thirty years." You literally have no idea what to say to that. It's the first time anyone has brought up your imprisonment and he's just so on the nose about it that it completely catches you off guard. You'd talk about it with him if he wasn't a ten year old kid.
It occurs to you that it's a rather huge event in your life and Ruby doesn't know anything about it. You've never told her and you seriously doubt anyone else has either. Come to think of it, you aren't sure how Henry knows about it, except that in addition to being Emma's son, he's also Regina's son and he's always involving himself with the goings on of her and Rumple and The Charmings.
"Thank you," you say, eventually.
He turns the conversation on a dime saying, "How are things at the library?"
"It's very interesting," you say, "Ruby's teaching me how to use the computer so I can catalogue all the books on it, but it's really slow going because the whole thing seems like magic to me. The reading is fun though. There are so many books in this world that I haven't had a chance to read."
"Have you read Harry Potter yet?"
"I've read the first three," you smile at him, "And you can't tell me anything that happens after or I shall have to sick my best friend the big, scary wolf on you."
"Why am I being set on Henry?" Ruby asks from behind you.
"It was a pre-emptive warning about spoiling my reading," you say.
"Better listen to her, Henry," Ruby says, "This is a woman who takes her books very seriously."
They talk about some other books, books you know are in the library but that you haven't been able to read yet because there's so much historical context to this world that you're still learning since you didn't get knowledge of this world like everyone else did. Emma starts talking about movies, saying she's not much of a reader. You've never seen a movie. You only sort of understand what movies are, again, it sounds like magic to you.
You do your best to follow along the conversation even if you don't comprehend most of it. All too often you find yourself distracted watching Ruby talk and react to others speaking. She has the most amazing smile you've ever seen, big, warm, and brighter than the sun. Just seeing it will almost never fail to make you smile as well.
There's also a calmness to her that draws your attention frequently. It's not that she's the most relaxed person that you've known but everything she does, every move she makes is with a purpose. There's no movement without purpose with her. It's strange, you could easily say the same thing about Rumple but mean it in a completely different way. His actions are heavily contemplated. His every move is part of some well thought out plan.
Ruby's are instinctive, natural, effortless. When you found out that she turns into a wolf, you were surprised at first but as you've thought about it, you've realized that it actually seems fitting for her persona that her wolf nature informs a lot of who she is. The very first time the two of you met she helped you find food that you like and offered you a place to stay. You realize now that she's brought you into her pack. You can't really say why but in that knowledge you feel safe, protected like you never did… never have with Rumple or your father. You like that she protects you and tries to provide for you rather than just tolerating your existence.
"Sorry, Belle," Emma says grabbing your attention, "We were kind of excluding you. I know you haven't really caught up with all the things of this world yet."
"It's all right," you tell her honestly, "I've spent so much time alone that it's nice just to be around other people and hear them talk, even if you don't entirely understand what they're saying."
Ruby smiles at you (and, yes, you smile back at her, at this point it's a reflex for you) saying, "It's still rude to exclude people."
"Well then," you say, "if we're going to do a group activity, then I happen to have done a little research on this custom of camping. I've brought along what are supposed to be staples of the experience." You retrieve your nearby bag. "Hopefully I got this correct." One by one you pull out the items you brought, piling them in your lap. "Graham crackers, marshmallows, chocolate bars, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
"Awesome!" Henry says.
"We should probably have some real food before all the sugary snacks," Emma cuts in. His face falls a little. "Besides, ghost stories are better after dark, anyway." That seems to brighten him up again.
"Granny packed us sandwiches," Ruby pipes in.
You have a delicious meal courtesy of Ruby's grandmother and then you all make s'mores. Once everyone's stuffed you read Sleepy Hollow in its entirety. After that, Emma calls bed time for her and Henry. You and Ruby stay out a bit longer looking up at what little you can see of the stars through the trees but you soon pack in as well.
You wake sometime in the night to what you think is an owl screeching. It startles you from sleep but your alarm is quickly abated when you find yourself asleep on your side with Ruby pressed against your back, an arm thrown over your waist, as fast as you startle awake, Ruby's already shushing you back to sleep. You start to drift off but you hear and feel a deep intake of breath and then a contented sigh. You're pretty certain that she just smelled your hair.
This is confirmed when she murmurs, "Smell good."
"Um, thank you?" You say.
"Sorry," she says almost before you finish your brief reply, "that was weird, I know. When it's late and I'm tired sometimes I don't have the best control over my wolf and some of her thoughts and impulses manifest."
"But your wolf time is weeks away," you say. You've got a chart back in the library of the phases of the moon because you always worry about her when she's out running.
"That's just when she tries very hard to manifest herself physically," Ruby explains. She points at her head and says, "She's in here all of the time."
"She talks to you?"
"You make it sound like I'm crazy," she says, "some lunatic with voices in her head."
You giggle at her choice of words. "Considering your relationship to the moon's cycles, lunatic would be literally accurate," you tease her, "but I don't mean that you're insane. I was just trying to understand you better. You are easily the most fascinating person that I've ever met."
"What do you want to know?"
"Can I talk to her?" You ask before you know what you're even saying. You twist your body so you're facing her. "I mean, can you let your wolf speak through you?"
"You understand that she's still a wolf," Ruby says, "Most of what she says is just pure impulse."
"You don't have to do it," you back off.
"I'm not saying that," she says, "Just don't expect much conversation." I nod my head. She closes her eyes, takes in and releases a long breath. When she opens them again, Ruby's eyes are yellow instead of their normal green. "Belle," she growls.
"Hello," you reply softly.
"Smell good," she says again to which you smile. "Belle safe. Mine." Her eyes slam shut and Ruby covers her mouth. When she opens her eyes, they're green again and there's fear in them. You've never seen Ruby afraid before and you definitely don't like it.
"It's all right," you try to reassure her, "Nothing you...or she...whomever said was anything to be upset about."
"We should..." She swallows hard, "We should go back to sleep." With that she promptly rolls over facing away from you. Suddenly sleeping this tent seems a lot more difficult without her warm embrace. You roll to face her back but leave the distance thinking it unwise to crowd an emotional wolf. Eventually you do eventually drift back off.
The next time you wake up it's to Ruby moving around. You lift your head to look at her. "What time is it?"
"Really early," she says, "Just after dawn. I'm just too restless so I'm going for a run. Lay back down and rest some more. Emma and Henry are still sound asleep."
"I could go with you, if you like," you offer.
"It's okay," she says, "I'll be back in a bit. Sleep."
You do fall back asleep until you're woken again by the sounds of Emma and Henry's voices. You rise to meet them. "Where's Ruby?" you and Emma echo each other. "She hasn't come back?" you ask noting the rising panic in your voice.
You explain how she went running at dawn and Emma tells you that was over two hours ago. Fear floods you immediately and you start looking around frantically. Fortunately, her taking off running means that she left a trail. Emma can follow it better than you once there's not a big pile of hard trodden leaves for her to have stomped through.
"I'll find her," Emma says.
"I'm not waiting here," you say determinedly.
"Fine," she says apparently seeing the resolve in my face. "But be quiet. Ruby says she the biggest, scariest predatory in the woods but that doesn't means she's the only one. There are lots of fairy tale animals that could be out here. Last thing we need is Sheer Khan walking up on us."
"The Jungle Book isn't a fairy tale," you say reflexively, "I mean, yes, okay. Quiet."
Ruby's running path through the forest is winding and looping back on itself, but again, she's not treading lightly at all so it's not hard to follow. It takes us a while but we catch up to her eventually. There's another clearing and a river. She's sitting on the edge of it with her bare feet in the water. "I'll go see to her," you say. "You guys can go back."
"Are you sure?" Emma asks.
"She's not physically hurt," you say, "That was my biggest concern. Now I'm certain that she's just dealing with something that we talked about last night and I don't think the wolf in her really wants an audience for that."
They turn back for camp and you wait in the tree line looking at her, waiting for her to betray any sign of what this is all about. You harbor no illusions that she's unaware of you presence, even being upwind of her you know her hearing would have pegged all three of you approaching, but she's barely moved a muscle.
Ultimately you just decide to walk up to her and have a seat. You remove your own shoes and dip your feet into the chilly water of the river. She's still not speaking so you start, "Before you and I met, I'd been held captive by Regina for more than thirty years, the entire time we've been here and for some time before that as well, I sort of lost track." She's looking up river away from you but you can plainly see her jaw is tightened. "It was all a part of her… game, I guess, with Rumplestiltskin, keeping me from him to hurt him because of how much he cares about me." You pause to consider your own choice of words for a moment. You can't help but notice that your feelings for him didn't seem to merit mentioning.
Your train of thought is broken when Ruby snaps her gaze back on you and her eyes are bright, flashing yellow again. The wolf is fighting to get out. You have no idea if she can even do that but you don't need to be an expert in lycanthropy to know this isn't good. "Kill!" Ruby says in her wolf's growl and faster than you can think, she's up and stalking off in the general direction of camp, not even messing with her boots.
"Ruby, stop!" you call after her in desperation and shockingly it actually works. Ruby stops dead in her tracks and looks back at you. "Please come back," you implore her and pat the warm spot in the dirt next to you where she was just sitting. Again she follows your request and sits back down but she looks away again. "I didn't tell you about Regina to seek retribution. I told you because you shared something very personal with me last night and it seemed to scare you. I wanted to share something with you as well." Yet more silence, "I want you to know that nothing about you scares me and that whatever's going on you don't have to be scared of me either."
"I'm not afraid of… I didn't…" she falls silent and stares up the river some more and you let her have the time she needs. "People are all about sight," she says and you get the sense that this is going to be the scenic route to what's bothering her. "They… we believe what we see. Most of our world is sight based. Wolves, on the other hand, don't see as well as they smell and hear. With us, a lot more is based on scent than sight." There are hints of her point but you aren't getting the whole picture.
"I'm sorry I ran off and left you guys worried about me," she continues, "I didn't really mean to. I really was just off on a morning run like I always do. I stopped to dip my head in the water to cool down a bit before heading back in but… my wolf is being a whiney little pup over stupid wounded pride and she's kind of really hard to resist when she's this wound up."
You are completely lost now. "I'm sorry. Did I do something to…?"
"No," she cuts you off, "I mean, well, a little but you didn't know what you were doing so it's not like it's your fault. I didn't talk to you about any of this."
You reach over and take one of her dirty hands in yours. "Talk to me now, please."
"Last night, when I gave voice to my wolfish thoughts, I said you smell good," she says. You nod along, recalling her saying as much, twice. "Well scent is pretty much everything in the wolf world, so for her… me to say that, it means that the wolf part of me wants to mate with you." Your heart speeds up considerably at this admission. It's unexpectedly very exciting to hear, but she quickly looks back to you. "I'd never hurt you, Belle. Even if she wanted me to, which she doesn't, I'd never force anything you didn't want on you, especially after knowing what Regina did to you."
She's heard your heart rate increase and mistaken your excitement for fear, so you squeeze her hand tighter. "I know," you say softly. "As I keep telling you, I'm not afraid of you. You just surprised me is all… not in a bad way, mind you. I just wasn't expecting it. I, uh…"
"You don't have to say anything," Ruby says, "I know you're… with him."
"I'm not," you say reflexively, even if you're not sure how true it is, "Or I kind of am. It's… undefined and kind of really complicated and that's really starting to not work for me anymore. Plus, there's something here, I think."
"What do you mean?" Her face looks calm but you know very well that it's just a façade. You can feel the tension in her grip.
"It means that I feel something for you as well," you tell her, "Something different to anything I've felt before, even to what I feel for Rumple, which… I don't really know what any of it means. I've been going over all of it in my head for a couple of weeks now. Spending the majority of my life incarcerated and isolated seems to have stunted my ability to define my feelings."
"That's okay," she says now squeezing your hand in reassurance, "But before anything happens between us, I need you to give it some serious thought, okay? Because here's the thing, I can date whoever I want in the human custom of courtship, but mating is more than that and wolves mate for life."
"So I'd be making a lifelong commitment?" That though scares you significantly less than you think it ought to.
"No," she replies, "but I would be. You're still human so if you wanted to leave because you weren't happy, you could, and if you did I could see other people too, sleep with them, marry them, and even have children with them if I wanted to…"
"But you wouldn't love them," you finish the thought for her.
She shakes her head. "And normally I could date you without it being this huge ordeal right up front, but what I feel for you already, Belle, is so powerful I'm afraid to even kiss you for fear of falling irrevocably."
"It's a lot to think about," you say honestly.
"I know."
"But I am going to think about it," you reassure her.
"And in the meantime?"
"In the meantime, you're still my best friend, Ruby," you say with a smile, "No matter what happens between us, I always want to be your friend and I'll always want you to be mine."
She smiles at you in response. You lay your head against her shoulder and the two of you sit there in silence a while longer. Eventually you chicken out and have to pull your feet out of the cool water. You feel her body rumble as she laughs silently for a moment before pulling hers out as well. You both dry off and head back to camp arm in arm. Along the hundred yard stroll, you can't help think how right this feels.
You've still got a lot of thinking to do because the very last thing you want to do is cause Ruby to live out her life without love, which is problematic because that could actually be the result from either choice you make. Thankfully, it's not a choice you have to make now. Right now you can just enjoy the company of someone that makes life very enjoyable indeed.