Discordia, an once upon a time fanfic

Note: I wrote this story for the 2014 Swan Queen Big Bang, and it's been hosted since then exclusively on AO3, solely because I was too lazy to migrate it here. I considered editing it, now that I'm quite a few months removed and can see the story's weak points, but I thought I should present it here as it was originally published on AO3, flaws and all. A warning: If you're into happy endings and whatnot, look elsewhere. Additionally, not a lot of the weird stuff that happens in this fic gets explained. You might not find the ending particularly satisfying. That was a deliberate choice on my part. Enjoy, if you dare (lightning flash) (thunderclap) (ominous music).

The kid was maybe sixteen, rangy, dark. And he was fast. He ducked around a crowd of talking townspeople, checked Archie Hopper's shoulder, spun off him, not losing speed.

Emma charged after him. He wasn't far ahead – she wanted to let out all her steam, to take the leash off the girl who'd wanted to try out for track in high school. She was 30 now, though, not 16, and she could see that the boy wasn't pushing himself, wasn't even breathing hard. He loped ahead of her, reeling out a stretch of pavement between them.

Emma spared a breath to shout, "Police! Stop." She felt like a little girl mimicking a cop movie in play, not a sheriff at all. The kid arrowed out into the street, moving between two cars stopped at the red light. Emma heard the bright stream of laughter that trailed over the kid's shoulder. It was the high pitched giggle of a child who is getting away with something.

Emma had laughed that laugh herself before, mad with the exhilaration of her imminent escape. She put on a hard burst of speed, feeling the bright shot of energy charge her legs. She swung out an arm – realized too late she'd miscalculated. The back of his black t-shirt was less than an inch past her reach.

Another cheerful run of laughter. Regina's purse was gripped in the hand of the kid's pumping right arm. Anger clamored in Emma's head, insistent, pushing her on like a rider with a horse. It wasn't just moral or legal outrage. That was Regina's bag. Regina's stuff he was running off with.

Emma had never completely parsed whatever she felt (for? About?) Regina. It was a hard thing to do when there seemed to be twelve different Reginas, with no guarantee that she'd meet the nice one on any given day. Still, Regina was – as Snow and Charming said – "family." And, compounding this simpler obligation, Emma knew Regina was angry at her – had been so, quietly, coldly, for a long time.

Thing was, Regina wasn't a quiet anger kind of person. Regina's anger was explosive and thunderous. Emma knew how to deal with that. But this voiceless anger, this stewing Regina was doing, Emma didn't know what to do about it. Regina's silent rage lingered in Emma's peripheral vision, never becoming concrete enough to be addressed. It had been like that ever since the Robin Hood thing.

Emma couldn't stand to have another mark under her name on the tally board in Regina's head. She had to catch that kid.

He turned down a side street. She followed. Their footsteps echoed, ricocheting off the flat, impassive walls of the spectating buildings. The kid spun to her and she saw his face, lean, dark, grinning. His black t-shirt had a graphic on the front: the blond boy in green from Legend of Zelda, leaping, an arrow nocked and drawn on his cartoon bow. She saw all this only for a moment before the thief threw Regina's purse high into the air. Emma's focus closed on it and the kid was off, hooking around a corner and disappearing.

The purse was open. Regina had been rooting in it, back outside Granny's, looking for Kleenex, Emma remembered with sudden clarity. Kleenex, because Henry had caught a spring cold, an easy condition to develop in Maine. The birds on the roof of Granny's, pigeons or maybe doves, had burbled and cooed as if cuing the thief. He popped up at Regina's elbow and ripped the bag out of her hands.

Regina reflexively flung out one arm as he ran, sending a burst of purple energy after him. It hit the door in the fence, making it bang back and forth twice, as if pushed and pulled by two opposing winds. Emma had dropped her coffee and run after him.

He had been holding the mouth of the purse closed as he ran; now, in midair, it opened again. A tube of lipstick fell out. Two pens, one after another. The little package of Kleenex in its cellophane wrapper. And something that winked bright and sudden in the overcast late morning light. It was round and, Emma saw with blank surprise, golden. A gold shape the size of a baseball.

Before she could really get a hard look, the ball hit the ground with everything else, lipstick, pens, and purse. The golden thing – an apple, Emma thought, not knowing where the idea came from, only absolutely certain of its rightness – rolled to her feet and tapped politely at the toe of one boot, where it stopped.

Emma was pierced with a stab of deja vu more profound than any she'd ever felt before. The golden apple rolling across the ground, hitting her foot, stopping there. It had the same roiling sense of unreality as her trip back to Storybrooke after the missing year, but all that had done was leave her shaken. This was strong enough to stop her where she stood. She gazed, stunned, down the street.

When people came at her with guns or dragons came at her with fire, she understood that these things were happening now – in the real world – and demanded action. All the golden thing from Regina's purse had done was roll toward her and stop, but that had been enough to unmoor her from any idea of response.

She stood, reaching for what to do next and for a moment finding only a blank. Move, you idiot. The thought came from that part of her brain that directed her when she was scared. It was a reassuring, solid voice – the voice she tried to speak in when she was at work or with Henry. What was she going to do, stay there until the next storm? She was being ridiculous.

Emma stooped to pick up the golden apple. Her hand closed on empty air.

The motion of bending and reaching had tethered her back to the present, but she felt another hard punch of impossibility as her fingers grasped at nothing. "What the hell is going on," she said aloud.

Hearing her own voice helped. It sounded clear and normal in the close space of the narrow street. She stooped again. She put the pens, the tissues, the lipstick back into Regina's purse and carried the works back toward Granny's.

The last night's storm – one of Maine winter's last Hail Marys – had pulled a tree limb down onto the power lines that fed a third of the town. Granny's, like any major community hub after a natural disaster, was pulling in dense thickets of people. Despite the thin chill in the air, people were sitting outside as well as in, talking, comparing notes on generators, offering freezer space to the needy. Emma found Regina and Henry at one of the al fresco tables, poked into tight seating with two dwarves, Emma's mother, the baby, and Belle. Regina's expression looked about two seconds from apocalypse.

"Here." Emma leaned past Belle and put the purse down in front of Regina, on the far side of the table.

"Did you catch him?" Henry asked. "We got you a new coffee."

"Nah, kid." Emma took the coffee, sipped. It probably wasn't the right thing to drink after running, but the heat and the bitterness grounded her more firmly where she was, eating the last traces of her deja vu. "He bolted after I got the purse."

She lifted her hair off the back of her neck, letting the breeze touch the sweat there, dry it. She drank more coffee, now reassured that it was definitely the wrong thing to be drinking, but needing the bite of heat at the inside of her mouth.

"Did you see who he was?" Snow lifted her head from baby Neal, who was fussing, his expression moving through those multicolor shifts common to babies who are trying to decide whether to laugh or cry. His breakfast was smeared generously across his face.

"Didn't recognize him." Emma's eyes were on Regina. She was going through the purse, looking for missing things. Would she lift her head now and say, Miss Swan, where is my golden apple?

"He looked like a kid," Henry was telling Snow.

"Maybe a Lost Boy?" Belle said. "Do you want to sit down, Emma? Here, I'll–"

"No, no," Emma said. Regina was opening her wallet now. There was a school picture of Henry inside, him grinning and looking about the size of Emma's thumb. Right, Emma thought with a stab of pained understanding. She doesn't have his new ones. He wasn't here. "I have to get back. There are always a hundred problems after a big storm and David's only got Grumpy to help field calls."

The two dwarves – Emma thought they might be Doc and Happy, but she had trouble keeping Grumpy's six brothers straight in her head – elbowed each other and shared knowing looks.

"Everything there, Regina?" Emma asked as guilelessly as she could.

"Yes," Regina said. "He didn't take anything." Was she lying? Emma listened to that other, quiet thing in her head, the one that spoke up when it heard a lie, but it was silent. "Thank you, Emma," Regina added. Her voice had that tight "This-is-being-dragged-out-of-me-by-wild-horses" quality that Emma associated with every genuine thing Regina said.

"No problem." Either Regina was lying slickly enough to get past Emma, or she was telling the truth – and Emma didn't know which. What happened had rattled her sense of security and thrown her badly off-balance. She took another pull of her coffee, slipping her eyes away from Regina's face in time to avoid her returned gaze.

"Are you sure you don't want to sit just for a few minutes?" Snow said. "Your face is all red."

Emma shook her head. "Thanks for the coffee. I'll call you later, okay?" She pointed the words at Snow, and at Regina, too. She, Regina, and Henry were supposed to have had a 'family dinner' tonight, a plan made long before the storm.

"Thank you," Regina repeated, looking none too pleased about it either.

"Tell your father to call me, too," Snow said, trying in vain to get a spoonful of something into the protesting Neal.

"Mhm," Emma said around the rim of her coffee cup, turning away.

Behind her, she heard a splat. "Neal!" Snow said. "We don't throw food!" Underneath, Regina's soft, amused chuckle.

"'Bout time, Sheriff." Grumpy had his feet propped up on one of the spare desks. He licked his index finger extravagantly and turned the page of his magazine. Its cover extolled the virtues of big jugs. "We've been waitin' for ya."

"I wasn't gone that long," Emma said, deciding only as she spoke that she wasn't going to tell them about the thief and the purse. She looked from Grumpy to David, back again. "Anything I need to know about?"

Grumpy and David shared a look of communication, a wordless but visible agreement passing between them. "You're gonna like this one, sister. Tell her."

"We had an... Interesting call," David said. He picked up the report from his desk. The folder had a red sticky note on it – his signal for a serious incident. He was fastidious about the paperwork, much more so than Emma was.

"Uh huh..." Emma, who had begun to unzip her jacket, stopped, starting to tick off possibilities in her head. Not a murder – he'd have called. A hit and run? Wouldn't he be at the scene? Or running license plates? Or –

"Miss Ginger was robbed," David said. "They broke in sometime at night, after the power went out."

Grumpy couldn't contain himself. "Horses," he said. "She says horses did it."

Emma pulled the rest of the story out of them inch by inch.

Miss Ginger was the witch from Hansel and Gretel – another one of those fun childhood nightmares Emma kept tripping over in Storybrooke. She had tried to eat the Zimmer kids in the other world. When a neighbor called in with their worries after the first curse was broken, David had gone out there with the Blue Fairy to find out if Miss Ginger was a threat. It turned out that her magic was inaccessible, as Regina's had been, and at the time they hadn't had the resources to keep a permanent eye on every old foe.

Storybrooke was more populated by villains than Emma liked to think about, big bads and minor players alike. According to David, they dropped off the radar after the first curse with a quickness that made Emma, hearing this for the first time, uneasy. She hadn't kidded herself that Regina and Rumplestiltskin would turn out to be the villains of every old fairy tale. The thought that there were others, that David knew, and that he let them disappear soundlessly into the woodwork – it made Emma uncomfortable. When she asked why he didn't keep a closer eye on things, employ more deputies, make a stronger infrastructure, he said that his focus had been on bringing her and Snow home, and on keeping an eye on Regina.

That made something twinge in Emma's head. Not the detector that told her she was hearing a lie, but some spring in the machine of her intuition.

Had Regina done anything particularly bad while Emma was gone? No, David said. Not after the first few days. He just had to keep an eye on her. It wasn't like the way things were now, after they'd seen how much she sacrificed. She'd said she wanted to change for Henry, but people like her never really changed, he'd thought. Especially not Regina.

There was a little surge of unease in Emma's stomach. David had more or less taken over law enforcement in her absence. He had mobilized the town in the wake of their restored memories. He had fought tirelessly to bring Emma and her mother home. And while a woman who literally ate children lived a five-minute drive away, he ignored her and watched Regina instead.

Emma brought the conversation back to Miss Ginger. The former cannibal-witch had been keeping a small house with a big fence on Old Church Road since the curse was first cast. She didn't have much by way of company, although she had a friend, Irene, who stopped by at least once a week so they could drink wine and play Scrabble with Miss Ginger's Braille-etched tiles.

She hadn't been any trouble, David said, and hadn't seen any trouble of her own, either. Emma knew what "trouble" meant. Sometimes they got calls from former villains, whose houses had been egged or their trees TP'd.

Thing was, Storybrooke had a problem. Everyone who wasn't explicitly evil thought they were definitely good. It made them self-righteous. Their oldest foes were living right down the street, taking out the trash and mowing the lawn like any other person. Storybrooke residents believed they had a right to get their own back.

Every person in Storybrooke was complicit, sometimes even active accessories, in these minor crimes committed against town villains. Alibis would turn up in the nick of time. Gossips would turn close-lipped at the mention of "official police business." People Emma thought of as generally pretty nice, generally pretty good, would become mulish and uncooperative the moment she dropped a cerain name.

They're lucky they don't have it worse, was the silent opinion of the town majority. They deserve so much more. Even Regina hadn't escaped it – the facade of 108 Mifflin had seen a few eggs in its time, usually from wasted teenagers. (Emma thought Regina might be holding back reports of other vandalisms, though, maybe so she could exact private revenge.)

Miss Ginger had had no problems like that. At least, she hadn't called the sheriff about any. Her life had been so undisturbed that an action this dramatic was a brutal shock. Maybe it had been planned over time, leaving her free of the other, pettier crimes.

On the night of the storm, the electrical hum of her appliances all died at once. The power was out. ("Lucky she didn't need to light any candles," said Grumpy, and laughed.) The knock on her door came maybe a half an hour, forty-five minutes after the power went off. Miss Ginger wasn't surprised. Power outages were common in Maine storms, and Irene usually checked on her at least once.

Still, she thought it was better to be safe than sorry. Miss Ginger kept the chain on the door as she opened it an inch. "Irene?" There was no reply. All she could hear for a few moments was the steady assault of rain on the pavement and roof. (Grumpy interrupted again. "Aren't they supposed to have superpowered hearing, blind people?" Emma rolled her eyes and David ignored him.)

Then something new. No. Multiple somethings. She listened harder, straining to pick out the current of sound beneath the rain.

It was the sound of breathing. More than one person, breathing, very close by; not just breathing, but panting through their nostrils as though they'd just run a few miles up to her front porch. The recognition of the sound had only just come into focus when one of them shoved the door open hard enough to break the chain and knock her down.

This was where the horse thing came in.

"They had hooves," David said, reading from his report.

"She told you this," Emma said. "Like, to your face."

"On the phone. She was pretty adamant that you be the one she talks to face-to-face."

"What's the difference?" Grumpy said. "She can't even s-"

Emma gave him a look, then wheeled her gaze back to David. "Why me?"

David shrugged. "Anyway, she said that she heard it very clearly. They were all running around on hooves. She could hear them knocking things over and breaking things. I asked if she could have been hearing heavy boots, but she insisted. She says they sounded like horses."

"Like horses." Emma tried out the words. Well – they were living in a magical town full of fairy-tale creatures. Grumpy was chuckling softly. "Do you have... You know, those half-horse people, in fairy tale world?"

"I never met any," David admitted.

"Okay. Uh. I'm going to go talk to Miss Ginger." It was better than staying at the office, snug at her desk, thinking about what had happened with the boy, the apple, and Regina's purse. "Did you go to the scene, David?"

"I, ah..." He paused, his brow creasing. "Thought I'd wait for you."

"Why don't you go take care of that," Emma said, feeling another low pang of discomfort as she imagined him waiting, idle, for her to come back, letting this sit unattended.

"I'll hold down the fort," Grumpy said, and turned another page in his magazine. The phone went off next to him. As Emma was leaving, he answered it with a loud, "What?"

Emma had been expecting a wizened old hag – something like an illustration from a children's book. The woman in the hospital bed, Louise Ginger, was youngish, with a narrow, pointed face and feather red-blonde hair. Her uptilted eyes were on the ceiling, but her face was turned toward Emma, giving her a good look at the shadowy bruises at one cheekbone, another on her left temple, her swollen eye.

"I know you gave Deputy Nolan your statement," Emma said, "but maybe you could take it from the top for me."

The story was pretty much the same, told in Miss Ginger's flutish, breathy voice. She added something David hadn't mentioned, putting a cause behind her injuries: "They kicked me," she said plaintively. "There might have been two of them doing it."

"This was after they knocked you down."

"They burst in and knocked me over," Miss Ginger repeated, "and I heard them smashing things. After a few minutes, one or two came over and started kicking me."

"You didn't try to get up?" Emma asked, then wished she could snatch back the words before they reached Miss Ginger's ears.

"What could I do?" Miss Ginger's smile was bitter. "I used to have magic to take care of that."

"Deputy Nolan said you were having trouble with your magic."

"It's different here."

"I heard," Emma said, feeling a twinge of discomfort. She, Emma, who didn't really need magic, could use it, while people like Miss Ginger, for whom it was second nature, were left powerless. (Yeah, well, she used her magic to kill kids.)

"I thought people might leave me alone," Miss Ginger said, and Emma was taken steeply aback by the frank honesty, even vulnerability, in her voice. "If they knew I didn't have magic anymore. You hear things – people getting hurt – death threats – I just wanted to be left alone."

Death threats? People getting hurt?

Emma thought Miss Ginger had to be talking about other people like her – town villains. All they ever brought to her were eggings and toilet paper. Usually when they saw who did it. When they chased them off but caught a look at their faces. When the crimes were simple, complicated by Storybrooke's universal town complicity.

Was Miss Ginger exaggerating? Emma thought it was possible. If she knew anything about villains, she knew they had a heightened sense of the dramatic.

Villains getting death threats. Really?

It sounded implausible. Storybrooke had been so recently reordered, only just brought back to rights after everything that happened with Zelena. Most people were on their best behavior. Those adolescent pranks were the worst town crimes these days, and in a week the most exciting call Emma would get might be about a lost kitten.

"Sheriff?"

Emma jolted. She'd been silent for too long, turning "people getting hurt – death threats –" over in her head. A lie? Could it be-? She poked at the voice in her head, her lie detector, but it was silent.

Miss Ginger's hand lifted and groped once, twice. It landed on Emma's forearm on the third try and clamped down like a vise.

"You're not from here," she said to Emma. "You'll do something about this. Won't you? Your father – he wouldn't -"

Thought I'd wait for you. Not even a call, despite the red Post-It note. Letting it sit on his desk like an anecdote instead of a case.

"He's a good deputy," Emma said, feeling like she had to say it.

"He's Prince Charming." It sounded profoundly damning from Miss Ginger's mouth. "I know you're their daughter. You can't help that. But you're not – like them."

Like them? Emma stood stiff and silent. Like Snow and Charming, her parents – fairy tale heroes. Generous, kind, well-intentioned people. Loving people. You're not like them. What was the alternative? What else could she possibly be?

Emma took her arm away. Miss Ginger had just had the shit kicked out of her. She was traumatized, upset, maybe concussed. This was the talk of someone trying to make sense of a senseless act of violence.

Not senseless. Miss Ginger ate kids – past tense, yeah, but she'd done it. She was a villain, and Storybrooke had a thing about punishing villains. It was the wrong thing to do, illegal to boot, but it had a twisted, medieval kind of logic. Didn't mean Emma wasn't going to do her job.

"I'll be in touch," she said. "You focus on getting better." She fished one of her official business cards out of the inside pocket of her jacket, and was tucking it into Miss Ginger's outstretched hand before she remembered Miss Ginger wouldn't be able to read it. Shit. "Give me a call if you need anything, alright?"

She was almost at the door when Miss Ginger called her back. Emma turned. "Yeah?"

"I don't think they were horses anymore," Miss Ginger said. Her voice was careful, processing her thoughts as she went. "They sounded too... Light. Their hooves... I don't think their hooves were big enough." She paused. "I think they might have been... Goats."

"Goats," Emma said. "Okay. Thanks."

Outside the hospital, Emma called David.

"What do you think?" he asked her, voice tinny through the phone.

"Well, she downgraded from horses to goats," Emma said, heading to the police cruiser, "but it looks like she really does think things with hooves robbed and beat her."

"And you believe her?"

Emma paused at the car door. All that day, her lie detector – finicky and defective though it sometimes seemed to her – hadn't gone off once. "If we were anywhere else, I'd say this was some kind of really weird insurance scam. Or that she hit her head and was hearing things, or not understanding what she was hearing. But..."

"But this is Storybrooke," David finished for her, and sighed in a long rush of static.

"Yeah." Emma hesitated. "I know you said you didn't have... Horse people. Centaurs. Did you happen to have..." What was the word? She knew it, but, groping for it, it slipped away.

"Goat people? No." There was a laugh in his voice. "I never met any."

"No goat people. Okay." Emma got behind the cruiser's wheel. "Listen, did you bring — what's his name?" She put a hand to her head, closed her eyes. After two hard blows of strangeness today, normal things like the name of Storybrooke's one, part-time CSI seemed to dance beyond her reach. "To look at the crime scene."

"Felipe," David suggested.

"Yeah. That guy." David should have gone to the scene right away, carting Felipe with him. He hadn't. Had, instead, left the report on his desk, Post-It note waiting. Christ. Emma put a hand to her forehead and rubbed, feeling a headache budding behind the crest of her skull.

"He's on his way. I've got everything cordoned off."

"Good. Okay. Tell him to look for… Hairs. And footprints." That was part of his job already, and Emma knew that. She added, "I mean, especially. Especially hair and footprints." Goats had hair or fur or something, and hooves had to leave pretty distinctive marks.

Her head began to throb.

"I will," David promised. There was a silence while Emma closed her eyes and rubbed her head. He asked, "Are, uh, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Emma said. "Long morning."

"Yeah. Why don't you go back to the station? I'll take care of everything over here. Make sure Grumpy didn't burn the place down for me."

Emma huffed a laugh. "Call me if anything comes up, okay?"

"I will," he assured her, his voice that perfect, warm, princely promise.

Grumpy had been busy. He'd worked all the way to the end of his magazine and was now, according to him, on lunch break.

"Okay," Emma said. "Keep an eye on that phone for me."

In her office, behind glass, Emma hung up her jacket, put her sidearm in the desk drawer, and sat down heavily. The headache that had started outside the hospital had begun to thump hard against the inside of her skull. She called the guy from Storybrooke Electric who was overseeing the repairs on the street. She looked through the fistful of reports on downed tree limbs and public property damage. She picked up the file with Miss Ginger's information on it and stared at the red Post-It note.

What David should have done, Emma thought, was call her when the report was made. Call her, then go to the scene, or to the hospital, if Miss Ginger would see him. She could have met him at either place and gotten ahold of Felipe on the way. Of all the calls that had come in, Miss Ginger's was the most serious: assault, battery, destruction of property. Why hadn't he acted right away? What had stopped him?

Your father – he wouldn't —

David wasn't an experienced deputy. He might not have known the right procedure. He was an experienced leader in the other world, but over here, he'd worked in an animal shelter for twenty-eight years, living as the weakest, most passive version of himself.

You're not like them.

Emma looked at her phone, hesitated, then speed-dialed her mother. She wanted to talk to someone. When your best friend in all twenty-eight years of your life turned out to be your mother under a curse, you had to be a mama's girl.

"Oh, hey, Emma," Snow said. "I was just — your brother —" Behind her voice, there was a loud, discordant jangling, in rhythm with a series of thumps. Emma thought she recognized that sound, and, very clearly, the picture came into her head: Neal was clutching his favorite toy, a rattle with a bell, in one chubby little fist, banging it on the floor or the table.

"You, uh… You doing alright with him?"

"Yeah, yeah, of course," Snow said, voice shifting tone at the end of the sentence as she began to coo over Neal. "Give that to mommy now," she was saying. Emma could see her in that flowery maternity dress from his morning, her short hair, grown shaggy, mussed, maybe slimed with a little baby food, phone crammed between ear and shoulder, trying to pluck the toy from the baby's uncooperative hand.

"Hey," Emma said when Neal's whines told her Snow had won the day. "This might seem like a weird question, but… Did you have — uh — goat people, in Fairy Tale Land?"

"Goat people?" Snow's voice went high with curiosity.

"Yeah, you know. People who… Had… Goat parts. Like, feet."

"No," Snow said, words emerging slowly as she examined the idea. "No, I don't think so."

"Yeah," Emma sighed. She rubbed her head, feeling the headache uncoil itself from its short-lived sleep. "Thank you. It's, uh… It's this case we're —" a jagged, angry wail from the other end of the line interrupted her. Neal's indignation had flowered into full outrage.

Snow shushed Neal, crooning over him, soothing him. Emma looked out at the station — Grumpy chewing a bite of his Italian sandwich with methodical slowness, phone silent at his side. The day outside was tipping from morning into afternoon, the light strengthening, breaking through the overcast, after-storm gray. A few years ago, Emma might have been in the station with Graham, sharing a box of donuts, polishing off the lukewarm dregs of their morning coffee. A year before that and she'd have spent this day alone, on a stakeout, or in the sterile apartment she'd occupied in Boston, nursing the wound of her loneliness.

The noise from the other end had subsided a little. "Snow?"

"Yes?" Her mother's voice was breathless.

"Has David seemed okay to you?"

"Of course." Snow started to burble at Neal again.

"Not — distracted, or anything?" Emma could hear the hope in her voice, tried to tamp it down. What was there to worry about? To be hopeful about? (Your father — he wouldn't —) He hadn't done anything. There was nothing but the voice of a concussed, beaten woman to suggest that he had or would.

"No," Snow said, "I don't think so. What's all this about? Is he alright?"

"Yeah! Yeah. Uh." Emma began to fidget with the planner on her desk, a small notebook with a blue cover. She only used it for one thing. She opened it to the calendar, flipping through the preceding couple of weeks before landing on the right date. "It's just, this case. We just got the call today. Miss Ginger — do you know her?"

"I think we met, before the curse broke." Snow's voice was careful, measuring, touched with recognition.

"She was, uh, the witch that tried to eat Hansel and Gretel." Emma looked at the date. Friday the sixth. Today.

Written in big letters, framed with exclamation points, was ! DINNER REGINA'S ! Whenever she and Regina arranged family dinners, Regina always said something like, "You're not going to forget, are you, Sheriff?" Emma had missed one dinner total. That had been when the station's basement flooded and Emma told Regina later that the dinner had "slipped her mind."

"Someone busted into her house… Trashed the place. Beat her up pretty bad."

"That's terrible," Snow said.

"Yeah, it is." Emma cleared her throat. "It's just, uh, David didn't really… Take action on this one, the way he usually does. I thought, maybe he's tired, with the baby and all, or…"

Snow interrupted her own baby-talk to say, "Well, what can you really do, with something like that?"

"What?"

"You said she was a witch, didn't you?"

"Well — yeah — I mean, she doesn't have magic anymore."

"People just won't let go of their old grudges," Snow sighed. "It was bound to happen sooner or later."

Some part of Emma agreed with her. Louise Ginger liked to eat kids, for Christ's sake. She was the town Lecter and she'd gotten her comeuppance. It had been bad, but probably inevitable. Another part of Emma came awake, and it began to pound out a warning on the inside of her skull in time with her headache.

"She's a blind woman, living alone," Emma said. "She wasn't doing anything to anyone."

"A general amnesty for villains isn't going to do anything for the charges people are pressing in their hearts," Snow told her.

"That doesn't make it right. You didn't see her. She's had the shit kicked out of her. She's spent the last twenty-eight years not bothering anybody —"

"That doesn't mean people can just leave it alone." Snow spoke in her mommy voice, the one she used to teach Emma and Neal lessons. "There has to be some kind of recompense for what happened to them."

"So we should just have a free-for-all, is what you're saying. We should just let everyone —"

Snow sighed, very loud in Emma's ear. Emma swallowed, looked down at the desk. Her hand had closed convulsively over the planner, crumpling a handful of pages. She eased open her fingers, letting go of the day's dinner reminder.

"Sorry," Emma said. "Look, I have to go. Grumpy — uh, Grumpy's got a call waiting for me." Grumpy was looking out the window at nothing in particular, feet propped up next to the phone on his desk. "I'll see you later."

"Are you coming over tonight?"

It was Emma's turn to sigh. "I have dinner with Regina and Henry today." Family dinner was almost every Friday, and every Friday, Snow asked.

"Oh, that's right. Well, give your father my love."

"Yeah," Emma said. She looked at the cell phone after she hung up, at the Call Ended screen with the picture of Snow's face on it. She swallowed.

Your father — he wouldn't —

You're not like them.

She put down the phone like it might combust in her hand. Didn't she really agree with Snow, at the end of the day? Villains had done bad things in the Enchanted Forest. They'd destroyed lives. It didn't matter that they spent the next twenty-eight years watering their tomatoes or redecorating their kitchens. They had done bad things, and you couldn't expect people to just let go of that. Even the patience of heroes only went so far.

Did that mean it was okay to break into a disabled woman's house and beat her? Destroy her belongings? If you had to measure that against child murder, it seemed like a little thing, but this wasn't medieval times anymore. They were living in Storybrooke, not Fairy Tale Land. There were laws here. No one could act like that, villain or hero. Things couldn't be done according to the arbitrary rule of who was powerful at the time. Right?

Emma rubbed her forehead. She woke the phone display back up and hit the next number on her speed dial.

"Do you know who he is yet?" Regina demanded as soon as she picked up.

"What?" Emma was still spun up in the Miss Ginger thing. She thought Regina was asking if she'd figured out who the hoof-wearing culprit was. "Regina, it just —"

"Nothing was missing, but I don't think that's an excuse to let a thief go free. Neither is your failed athleticism."

Oh. The purse thing. Emma began to rub her head again. Right — the thief, the purse. The golden apple.

She saw it again. The golden thing arcing high into the air, carried by the momentum of the thief's throw. Winking in the light, dropping to the ground, rolling, and tapping the toe of her shoe. The spike of deja vu she felt was as sharp as if it were happening all over again, making Emma's brows knit. She opened her mouth, but her words slipped away before she could speak them.

"I… Do appreciate you getting it back," Regina said, snapping the thread of Emma's memory. She'd taken Emma's silence for reproach. "It was very…" The pause was loud with Regina's struggle. "Heroic," she finished, sounding as though the word left a nasty taste behind.

"It was broad daylight," Emma said, no more comfortable with the idea of heroism than Regina was. "Did he really think he could get away with it? It pissed me off."

"I appreciate it," Regina said again.

A silence settled between them. These had become a fixture of their conversations ever since the Robin thing — long pauses Emma knew Regina would like to fill with bile that had been bubbling up for months. Why did she keep it tamped down like this? Why delay the inevitable explosion? Emma saw Regina as a volcano, quietly simmering, waiting for the best time to shower destruction everywhere in a fifty-mile radius. It would be worse than Vesuvius.

Did Regina think it would hit harder if she played nice beforehand?

"I know you liked the piononos we had," Regina said. "We can have them again. Tonight. As a… Thank-you."

The first thing to jump from Emma's mouth was, "You're not going to make them that spicy again, are you?"

Regina's sigh was enormous. "No, Emma. I am not going to make them that spicy again."

Emma couldn't help it. She sighed with relief. "Thank you. And… Thank you. For the whole… For thinking of me."

She wondered, with a suddenness that startled her, if this was what it was like to be Henry. He had grown up with Regina thinking of him. Regina wandering the grocery aisle, musing on good things to make for someone she loved. Emma took a deep breath. She also took another poke at the lie detector in her head, searching for something disingenuous in Regina's offer, in her gratitude. Why would Regina want to do something honestly nice for her? Why pretend?

"Just be here on time," Regina said.

Emma slipped a glance back out to Grumpy. He was taking his Big Jugs magazine into the bathroom. "I will. Regina —" she thought, suddenly, of Miss Ginger. People getting hurt — death threats — and she remembered thinking that Regina had been holding back some of what she'd had, more than the eggings that still happened on holiday weekends. "Did you, um… Did you hear about Miss Ginger?"

Regina's voice was cool and diplomatic. "I heard she was in the hospital."

"There was, uh, a break-in. She got roughed up pretty bad. David got the call this morning."

"I'm sure he just leaped into action," Regina muttered.

It hit a bit too close to home. "He's a good deputy," Emma said, a note too loud. "He's a good deputy, and he did his job well, the same as he always does." Her face began to heat up.

"Fine," Regina said. Her voice was tight and curt; her cool restraint cut through the fog of Emma's temper.

"Look," Emma said. She had to wrestle her voice down, make it calmer. "He's — I get it. You guys don't really like each other. But you don't have to talk about him like that."

Talk about him like what? Regina had been right, that was the thing. Regina had not only been right — she'd only said what Emma herself thought. David had been slow to act. Emma remembered Grumpy chuckling the whole way through Miss Ginger's story, how he and David had, now and again, shared looks that suggested a kind of… What? Mutual agreement? An unspoken understanding, that they'd both fail to act like deputies should?

Emma didn't like thinking that way. It was even worse to hear her own thoughts in Regina's voice. It made them more real.

"Fine," Regina repeated. "I'll see you at dinner. Don't forget."

"I won't —" the underhum of static on the line shut off. Regina had hung up on her.

The big house on Mifflin Street stood over Emma, unwelcoming as a frown. She was early by fifteen minutes, and through the front door, she could hear the jazz Regina played when she was cooking. Barriers and distance made the music an indistinct run of smoky saxophone. She hesitated with her hand at the doorknob, thinking that there was still time.

Still time for what? She had had the absurd thought on the drive over that she could stop at Game of Thorns and get Regina a bouquet of flowers. Even the supermarket. It wasn't too late. Fifteen minutes could have Emma there and back, this time with tulips or roses swaddled in crackling plastic and foil.

Flowers? Why? Emma shook her head at herself and opened the unlocked front door. The music grew around her. Leaving her shoes and jacket behind at the coat stand, she took the steps up into the foyer. The brown, savory smell of the cooking meat touched her, and Emma felt like a cartoon animal about to lift off the ground and float toward her meal, buoyed by the current of scent.

"Regina?" It occurred to her only as she was taking the short hallway toward the kitchen why she might buy flowers. They'd had that lousy, five-minute conversation earlier, which ended with both of them getting snappy and annoyed. How could Emma be sure the piononos wouldn't be vengefully spicy? Was the food safe? Could Regina have poisoned the meat pies?

"You're early," Regina said, not looking up. She wore a paisley-patterned apron over her clothes, the belt tied in a neat bow. Emma remembered her image of Regina as Vesuvius — a volcano coming up to the boil inside a housewife's apron.

"Yeah, I…" Emma groped for a reply. Everything Regina said always seemed to demand an explanation from her. "I thought I could help out." She went to wash her hands at the sink, moving quickly so Regina couldn't toss the curt, are-you-stupid-or-something-Miss-Swan instruction at her.

"Oh." What was that? Surprise, at Emma's willingness? Disappointment at a missed opportunity to be condescending? Regina's face was tipped down, eyes on the food, her cutting board. Emma would have paid to get a good look at the expression there. When had she stopped being able to just get Regina? "Do you remember how to put them together?"

"Uh… Yeah. Let me, uh…" Emma stepped up to Regina's side at the island counter. Their shoulders touched, and Emma was surprised all over again by the warmth of Regina's body — normal human warmth. When they first met, Emma imagined Regina's veins ran icy cold; that touching her was like touching winter. "You make, like, a circle with the — and then —"

"Why don't you watch me." Regina's voice was mild, and very close.

"Yeah," Emma said, grateful to not have to keep talking. "I'll do that."

The first few minutes of being in a room with Regina were never completely comfortable. Even if they hadn't argued that day, they still would have stood in stilted, awkward silence, waiting for Henry to come downstairs and fix it. Had they ever been able to really talk to each other? Chat about their day, be buddy-buddy? Emma thought that if they had, they unlearned it after Emma's return from the past. She swallowed, focused on watching Regina's hands fixing fried plantain slices into rings, filling them with ground meat, brown and fragrant with onion and garlic.

"Okay," Emma said. "I think I got it."

She fumbled her way through the first one she made, but it went better on the second. Emma cleared her throat. "I, uh. Look —" she wanted to stop standing in this thick silence. "I'm sorry I snapped at you before. On the phone."

Regina paused, hands going still. "I accept your apology," she said, voice deliberately neutral. "I… Might have been too harsh on your father."

Emma pictured her lie detector as a lot of different things, depending on how it alerted her to a lie. Sometimes it was a big, blaring siren; sometimes it was a voice, murmuring softly in the back of her head. Once in a while, it was an aggressive car horn. This time, it was a bell. A silver bell, small, chiming once.

I… Might have been too harsh on your father. You could even call it a white lie.

"Ma?"

Emma saw the jolt as Regina instinctively reacted to Henry's voice. "Yeah, kid," Emma said, watching Regina tip her head down and rearrange her expression into something neutral. "I'm in here with your mom. You ready to eat?"

Emma was regretting the piononos. They were perfect — greasy and meaty, mercifully underspiced — but they sat heavy in her stomach as she shared the couch with Regina and Henry, watching The Sopranos. They had started with one of the Law & Orders, but Henry was showing suspicious signs of enjoying the supply side of crime, at least through fictional filters. It was a teenage boy thing, Emma thought.

"Mom," Henry said.

Regina hit fast-forward. Tony Soprano was meeting someone in the strip club; the dancers' heads were out of the frame, making them just nude, gyrating bodies. "You don't need to see this, Henry."

"But Uncle Junior —"

"Don't fight, kid," Emma said. They had this argument every time.

"You'll find out what happens when he goes back to his psychiatrist, anyway," Regina said.

"He doesn't tell her everything!" Henry protested, his voice a little congested with his lingering cold.

"He tells her enough," Regina said. She pressed play again. Mrs. Soprano was doing something with one of the whiny kids now. Henry sighed.

Emma felt her headache starting to creep back in, filling the spaces where the stream of the television's sound didn't reach. She closed her eyes and propped her head on one hand, rubbed the ridge of her brow. The sound from the TV cut off suddenly — the episode had ended on its usual black screen.

"Homework," Regina said.

"Mom."

"I'm going to make your bedtime 9 o'clock again."

"She'll do it, kid," Emma said, eyes still closed.

"Are you okay, Ma?" Henry asked, just as Emma felt the couch shifting, his weight lifting away.

She cracked open one eye. He was paused halfway up, looking at her, brows knit. "Fine, kid," she told him, and he straightened up. "I have a headache. Your mom's cooking…" Emma pulled a face, making him laugh. Even Regina, who sometimes felt personally offended by the weather report, knew it was a joke — Emma caught the faint smile on her face. "Remember," she added, "you have to get it all done, since you're not gonna do any next week."

Henry put his hands in the air. "Freeeee-dom!" Then he sneezed.

Regina gave a very loud sigh.

"No homework," Emma said. "No salads. No water, we only drink soda. Dirty clothes everywhere." This was the apocalyptic vision Regina projected onto the small house Emma occupied (with Henry, every other week or so). All three of them knew it was crap.

"You have a history essay to write," Regina said.

"It's due by Monday!"

"You're not going to do any of it over the weekend, Henry Mills, and you know it."

Henry looked at Emma. She spread her hands helplessly.

"Does the school even have power?" he asked.

"The school has power," Regina said. Henry heard the warning edge in her voice in time to give up, throwing up his hands and giving one last theatrical sniff before he left.

Emma watched Regina's face soften when Henry's back was turned, then sat up, reaching for the remote. "Want me to put something else on?"

Regina made an if-you-must gesture, leaning back in her seat and sighing. Emma fiddled with the buttons, landing on an inconspicuous-looking nature documentary.

Emma smoothed her hands down her jeans and watched Regina watch the show. Regina at home was a different animal than the one Emma met outside – they often spoke in the same tone of irritation, but wore different clothes; no bright red lipstick or power heels when Regina was in her own home. Makeupless in the light of the television screen, she looked as tired as Emma felt.

"Hey," Emma said. "About, uh – before. Henry kind of – he interrupted us, and I wanted to..." If she let it lie, it might eat away at whatever was left of their bond of civility; that was fragile enough already.

"Yes?" Regina wasn't looking at her.

"Here's the thing." Emma hesitated, realizing belatedly that she didn't know what to say. You were right, so it made me uncomfortable, and when I'm uncomfortable I get angry. When I'm uncomfortable around you, I get angry. She pushed herself up a little straighter in her seat. "What happened... It's... With Miss Ginger, it's really extreme. You, uh, you know?"

Regina was toying with the cuffs of her sleeves. "It's the worst thing that's happened since..."

"Since Zelena." Emma watched as Regina swallowed. "Miss Ginger... She said something to me." She remembered the slight shape in the hospital bed, bruised around the face. "She said that she wanted to keep her head down, because she'd heard about things happening to other people. Other people like her. She said she'd heard of people getting hurt. Getting death threats."

Regina looked up at her now. It was no more helpful than when her face had been turned away: her expression was a mask, and behind it, whatever Regina was really feeling hid, waiting to see what Emma was going to do.

"She kind of – she said that she couldn't trust my – David – to do anything about it," Emma said. "She asked for me, because I wasn't like them. And then you – it kind of threw me."

"Are you really surprised that people don't trust your parents?" Regina said. "They're not exactly paragons of morality and justice."

"Yeah, well, neither's Miss Ginger," Emma snapped, and the sudden spark of her temper was immediately drowned by regret. Whatever window had started to open in Regina's face closed firmly again. "Look – no – Regina, that's not what I..."

"You came to the wrong place if you want to be coddled, Emma." Regina sat up, began to clear the drinks and the popcorn bowl off the coffee table.

"No, that's not..." Emma picked up her glass, grabbed the popcorn bowl out of Regina's hand, the leftover kernels at the bottom rattling. "I'm not that stupid, Regina. Listen – David's my deputy. Why wouldn't Miss Ginger trust him to do his job?"

"People like Miss Ginger don't benefit from your father's kind of justice," Regina said.

"People like Miss Ginger. Villains."

"You become a hero by hurting or killing villains, Emma. That's the nature of the job." Regina gave the bowl a yank; it came out of Emma's slack hand easily. "Are you really surprised that Miss Ginger didn't want to talk to your father?"

Emma's mouth was open for a retort that wouldn't come. She sat back down on the couch, hard, as Regina carried the dishes into the kitchen.

"Do you really believe that?" Emma asked when she'd found her voice again. She trailed after Regina into the kitchen, the susurrant sound of running water in the sink under her voice.

"Believe what?" Regina's voice was curt.

"That – come on. That that's what being a hero is."

"That's the kind of hero your father is." Regina's words were directed at the dirty dishes, but she slipped a glance over her shoulder to Emma, a frown on her face. "You can't tell me you expect someone like Miss Ginger to go running to him for help."

"But he... It's not like that anymore." Emma's hands flexed at her sides as she tried to think. All she could see was David with the folder and its damn red sticky note, sitting on his hands as he waited for her return. Her mother's voice saying, It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Regina lifted her shoulders in answer, face once again turned away, unreadable to Emma. Emma was getting tired of Regina the mysterious and inscrutable. She wanted to pin her down, make Regina look at her, talk to her. She had enjoyed their moments of partnership in facing a common enemy, but now that they had a chance to share space like normal human beings, with no supernatural threat on the horizon...

"Miss Ginger said that I'm..." Emma hesitated. She hadn't known she was going to mention this until the words were coming out of her. "That I'm not like them. She wanted to talk directly to me because I'm not like them."

"Are you asking me something?" Regina said.

"I... I guess." Emma looked at her, and Regina looked back, hands pausing in the sink. "Do you think I'm like them, Regina?"

At first, Emma thought the woman in her kitchen was Regina. She dressed like Regina — the at-home version, not the pantsuits-and-red-lips Mayor. Soft cottons in mild colors. Emma's eyes began to pluck out inconsistencies, like the length of her hair and her height, before her brain caught up enough to ask, And why the hell would Regina be in your kitchen at eleven thirty at night? Definitely not to continue their little chat about heroism.

"Hey," Emma said. She thought she should do something more threatening, like call the police, or bash the intruder over the head, but she felt no sense of urgency. This, on top of all the weird things that had happened, was just one more weirdness, one more impossible event to process. She felt like she was in a dream.

The woman turned without surprise.

A jab of recognition struck like a punch to the ribs. God, she knew that face, didn't she? Coppery skin. She knew her — the smiling curve of her mouth. Who was she? In the poorly lit kitchen, Emma couldn't get a hard look. A car went by, its lights briefly splashing through the windows, running lines of shadow over the woman's face, and the second hit came. Deja vu.

"You dropped the ball," said the woman. She reached into the box of cereal she was holding, took out a handful, and ate it. Emma's stomach, still loaded with pionono, gurgled in resentful discomfort at the sight of another person enjoying food.

"What?" Emma said. There was a sweet scent she couldn't pin down, a sort of fruity, perfumelike smell, warm and smoky. Definitely not native to her house, where the primary smell was usually taco meat.

"I'm disappointed," the woman continued, dipping her hand back into the box of Life cereal. "I don't know how I can do much more to help you. I put everything in order, but I guess that means nothing to you."

"Uh," Emma said. She didn't know how to explain that the woman's disappointment wasn't provoking any of the corresponding devastation in Emma, because she had no idea who the woman was. "Have we..." She was so familiar, though. "Have we met before?"

"You made a trade, Emma," the woman said. "You chose this path."

"To buy Life cereal?" Emma said.

The woman (Number Three, Emma thought, like a title, but what was she the third of?) laughed, a warm sound. "That, too." Number Three sat down at the kitchen table. "What I'm saying is that you can't get upset when things start going... Awry, when you've brought it on yourself."

"Uh..." Emma sat down with her, feeling like a flunky joining the mob boss at the back table where the dirtiest deals are struck. "I don't know what you mean."

"I'm trying to help you, here," Number Three said. "I've been helping you all along, but you're pretty good at knocking them down as soon as I set them up."

"That's a skill of mine." Emma shook her head when Number Three offered the box of cereal. Maybe this was a dream, induced by a too-heavy dinner. Number Three certainly looked like a figure out of a dream: though the kitchen was unlit, she seemed to gather the few beams of light there to herself, illuminated in the night.

"You made a deal, Emma," Number Three said. Her voice was a little sterner. "Where I'm from, that means something."

"It means something around here too," Emma said. "Have you met the guy who runs the pawn shop?"

"If deals don't come through," Number Three said, "it means that a rule's being broken. This is serious, Emma. If rules start being broken, it's a slippery slope. Bad things happen in a lawless territory, you know what I mean?"

"Bad things," Emma said. "Do you – hey. Do you know something about -" she wanted to ask about Miss Ginger, if Number Three knew something about that. Bad things happening, right? An assault had just taken place.

Number Three waved a hand. "You're just lucky it wasn't centaurs," she said, and leaned forward. "Listen to me, Emma. This is important."

Emma obligingly leaned forward.

"You need to listen to what Regina's telling you."

Emma sighed hugely and leaned back again. Even in dreams, it was all about Regina. "Look – I tried. I listened to her tonight, and – "

"That was a good start," Number Three said, "but you need to start thinking about what she's telling you."

Emma tried to think. When she'd asked that question at the end of the night, Regina had gone silent. Then she'd sighed, and asked Emma to help her with these dishes, please. She hadn't responded to what Emma thought was kind of a critical thing – was she like her parents, the "bad heroes," or not? The people who won their good reputation by hurting others?

What did that say, then? Did it say that Regina thought she wasn't like them, but hated to pay Emma a compliment, so she was deflecting? Or did it say – well – just the opposite?

(Which felt more likely to Emma, frankly.)

Did it say that Emma was like her mother and father, even if she didn't mean to be? Emma, who hated picturing herself as a hero at all, now tried to think of herself as a hero who'd become one off the backs off "villains." People like Regina, and Miss Ginger.

Emma grabbed the box of cereal with a little more force than necessary, and ate a handful.

"It's always something about Regina," she said, irritated. "Isn't it?"

"Now you're getting it," said Number Three.

"It's a Canon EOS 5D Mark —"

"You can give us all that in a few minutes," Emma said. "Can you go over the whole thing one more time for me?"

It was another clear, bright morning in the station. Emma had woken up with her head on the kitchen table, one hand stuck in the box of Life cereal. As far as dreams about midnight snacks went, this one had been the most lifelike, and the most weird. She expected to find everything out of joint, even as she was getting dressed and seeing that all her clothes were in the same place, her good boots dropped in the same spot. The station was the same, and so was the almost empty box of donuts, which hadn't been replaced since yesterday. She texted David to bring in a new one minutes before Sidney Glass stormed into the office.

"I was at the Rabbit Hole last night," he repeated. "I had my camera with me —"

"Why did you have your camera with you at a bar?"

"I was — coming off of work. I still had it with me. Anyway, ah — I was in the Rabbit Hole for a little while, you know, relaxing, and I had a couple of drinks, and I was leaving to go home —"

"Around what time was that?" Emma said.

"Around — around — ten?" Sidney's eyes slipped from side to side, rimmed with a raw redness that made Emma's own eyes twinge. Her hangover days were pretty much over, but she could sympathize.

"Around ten. Okay. And this was when the man attacked you?"

"Yes!" Sidney sat up, leaned forward toward her desk. "He came out of nowhere, a — a young guy, he had this — sly-looking face —"

The first go-around, this description caught Emma's attention, making her think of the teenage boy who snatched Regina's purse. Even then, though, the blaring Klaxon sounding in her head hadn't been necessary. She knew it was all bullshit.

"A sly-looking face," Emma repeated.

"Yeah, and he —" Sidney caught the look on her face. "He was wearing —" he stopped. "You don't believe me."

"Let's just say, I'm gonna need you to cite your sources."

Sidney sighed. Emma stood, crossed to the water cooler in the outer office, and got him a full cup. She handed it to him on the way back in and said, "Why don't you tell me what really happened?"

"I was drinking at the Rabbit Hole with Robin Hood and Captain Hook," Sidney said, his voice flat. He took a sip of water and grimaced.

"After work."

He shook his head. "The Mirror hasn't hired me back. They think I'm untrustworthy."

Emma swallowed what she really wanted to say and asked, "But you had your camera?"

Sidney made himself busy with his cup of water again. Emma rested her arms on the desk, leaned forward a little, and the minute he looked back up, pinned him with a hard look.

"I'm hoping Regina will hire me again," he admitted. "If I can just get the right shot —"

"So you're doing her dirty work even when she's not paying?" Emma sat back. "She's got you pretty well trained."

"Well, it hasn't worked yet," Sidney said with a grimace, putting one hand to his head.

"You were drinking at the Rabbit Hole with Robin and — and Hook," Emma said, feeling a little squeeze of nervousness that he'd notice her stumble. "What happened? You lost the camera when you were drunk?"

"No! No, of course not." His voice jumped out too loud, and Sidney's grimace deepened, his eyes closing. "No," he said, much lower. "I didn't lose it. There was a young guy there — but he wasn't outside the Rabbit Hole. He was there with us. He asked if he could sit at our table, then started buying us drinks."

"Okay. Can you describe him?"

This time, the face Sidney pulled was one of frustrated confusion. "He was, uh. Clean-shaven. Maybe in his twenties. He had this… Long hair. Curls." Not the kid with the purse then, who would have been too young to get into the Rabbit Hole, anyway. Emma pushed the thought away. "Dark curls. He had that kind of… That feeling to him, you know. He was the life of the party. He made great jokes."

"Did you get a name?" Emma said.

Sidney shook his head with care, trying not to aggravate his hangover. "I think he told us, but I — don't remember. He got us to start playing this — this dice game with him. It was fun, you know? He had this laugh, this big laugh —"

"You gambled away the camera." Emma sat back, looking at Sidney — his exhausted face, his crumpled clothing.

"I would never have done that," Sidney insisted. "I don't care how drunk I was. I would never have bet the camera. I don't even like putting it down. I had it in the case, in my lap, the whole time."

"But it's gone now."

"I think he must have drugged us." Emma threw a sharp look his way, but there wasn't a single disingenuous flicker in his expression. "I don't remember enough of that night. Not anything after we started throwing dice." He picked up a hand and rubbed it heavily over his face. "You know I can drink. I don't lose hours like that. It's not normal."

"Okay," Emma said. She remembered when Sidney had been drinking under the curse, the boozy smell he carried with him everywhere. He had functioned — more or less. This wasn't the nice, neat package of victimhood presented by his lie, but it felt like truth to Emma. "I'm gonna take a look into this. Alright? Maybe this guy's done the same thing to someone else."

Sidney almost spilled his water in the rush to grab and shake her hand. Bad idea: he pulled his hand back again to touch his aching head, wincing.

Emma opened the top drawer of her desk, and popped the top of the aspirin bottle inside. She offered him two. "Now, what kind of camera was it again?"

"Sry! Up w baby N all nite. Shud be in soon," said David's text.

Emma sighed. She sent him another text, telling him to follow up with Felipe and let her know as soon as he was at work. She was tucking her phone away again when the door of the hotel room swung open and Hook, looking as trashed as she'd ever seen him, peered out at her.

"Swan!" he said. "I knew you'd come, sooner or later."

"Sorry," Emma said, not sorry. "Official business. Can I come in?" She stepped past him. The room had that dense, man-cave stink to it — a smell like unwashed laundry and takeout. "Is your girlfriend around? What's her name — Winnebago?"

"Winnifred," Hook said, closing the door behind her, "and you know perfectly well she isn't."

Emma liked to twist the knife when she could. It hadn't been until she ended things that she was able to pin down what really made her uncomfortable around Hook. She watched him mope around Storybrooke, living off of Granny's irritated goodwill. He alternately cried about losing "the truest love he'd ever known" or vowed to his drinking buddies that he'd win Emma back. (All of this was faithfully reported to her by Grumpy. If he wasn't in the Rabbit Hole at the time, guaranteed one of his brothers was.) That lasted until he found Winnifred, who really was a nice, smart girl — she just got suckered in, like a lot of people would, by the prospect of fixing up a handsome man's broken heart.

He lived in Winnifred's apartment for two weeks before she kicked him out. Back to Granny's, back to pissing and moaning.

"Right, sorry." Emma faced him. Alcoholic stink was roiling off of him like heat off blacktop, and the way he sagged against the closed door told her her might still be drunk. "Where were you last night?"

"Where do you think?" he asked. He pushed himself off the door. "I know your dwarf friends report on me."

"You were seen at the Rabbit Hole with Sidney Glass and Robin Hood."

"Is that a crime now, drinking with friends?" Hook picked up one of his billowy, Fabio-looking shirts, sniffed it, and pulled it on.

"Sidney Glass reported his camera stolen this morning." Emma skimmed her gaze over the room, but she already knew it wouldn't be there. He wouldn't have taken the camera, even for some quick cash — he knew piracy wouldn't be popular in a town full of "heroes." "You know anything about that?"

Hook scoffed. "Stolen? He lost it fairly."

"Lost it fairly, huh? To you?"

"No." Hook shook his head, then winced at the motion. He sat heavily on the edge of the bed, rubbing his hand over his eyes. "He… Ah… He lost it to the fellow who supplied the dice."

"Uh huh." No alarm bell in Emma's head. Even Hook's oily lies would have been muddied by his obvious hangover, anyway. "And who was this guy with the dice? Sidney can't remember his name."

"It was…" Hook exhaled, the sound a long, heavy hiss from behind his teeth, and closed his eyes.

"Let me guess. You can't remember. You can't remember anything after you started gambling."

"I can remember a few things well enough," Hook said. He looked up at her. Emma remembered, with a grim "Never again" feeling, that she used to think his eyes were incredibly beautiful. "The man. He was young. He had…" He gestured with his handless wrist, making a line from his head to his shoulder. "Long, dark hair." That aligned with Sidney's picture of the man, at least. "He had a tattoo."

"A tattoo?" Emma echoed. She took a step closer, into the cloud of beer fumes hanging around him. "Can you describe it?"

"On his forearm. The inside of his forearm. It… Might have been an arrow."

"That's it?"

"As you already know," Hook said, "I was quite intoxicated at the time."

"Okay." Emma thought she could find a reason to linger, to taunt him a little, but he was more pathetic than anything else, still oozing beery stink. "Anything else you think of, give me – give the sheriff's department a call. Okay?"

"Hoping you'll hear from me?"

"Yeah," Emma said, "when Granny has me throw you out of here for your unpaid bill. I'll be real happy to hear from you then."

The second partner-in-crime was one Emma at least didn't mind seeing. Robin Hood seemed like an okay guy – loved his kid, seemed like he was trying to make it work after the whole time travel thing – but Emma couldn't help but wonder what a family man with a steady job was doing out drinking with guys like Hook and Sidney.

"How have things been?" Emma asked Robin. He was Regina's ex, not hers, so she could be a little nicer. He looked marginally better than Hook and Sidney — at least he was fully sober — but he lurched when he walked.

"Fair," Robin said, scratching a hand through his burgeoning beard. She suspected him of trying to grow a disguise so Regina wouldn't be able to recognize him and take her revenge. "Perhaps a little rougher than I imagined," he admitted.

"Marian and the kid okay?"

"Fine. It's an… Adjustment. At least she's no longer afraid of the stove."

Emma huffed out a small laugh. It had been a chore getting the Merry Men out of the woods and into real housing before the winter — they were big on living off the land — but an even bigger one trying to teach them how to use their household appliances.

"You guys lose power?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Marian is loaning out our shower to those in need." Robin's smile had a note of sad affection. Emma looked away, feeling that expression was somehow private. "Have you, ah… Have you seen Regina recently?" The change in his voice, his casual, offhand tone, made Emma look sharply back.

"I told you I'm not gonna do that," Emma said. "If she found out I was… Reporting to you, she'd kill me. Both of us. Really painfully."

"I just…" Robin's gaze slipped away from Emma now, moving out to the sheds of lumber across the asphalt yard. She saw his throat work as he swallowed. "I just want her to… Be well."

"Yeah," Emma said, "I know." She watched him shift his weight in uncomfortable silence, and said, after letting him squirm, "I'm actually here on official business."

"Trouble?" Robin asked, voice keen for a change of subject.

"Were you at the Rabbit Hole last night?"

Robin's gaze slipped away. He passed a hand over his mouth, then sighed. "Yes. If you must know. I'm not particularly proud of it."

"Marian didn't send me," Emma said. "I'm not here to put the fear of God in you. I just need information." She didn't say that it didn't matter if he was proud or not. The fact that he was out getting falling-down drunk with the guys told her everything she needed to know about how he was dealing with his newly rejoined family. "Who were you with?"

"Killian Jones," Robin said, still not looking at her. "Sidney Glass. There was – another man, as well. He joined us later."

"Another man."

"I confess, I can't recall his name. He had... Dark, curly hair. I remember, it was quite long. He invited us to play dice with him."

"How'd that go?"

"I believe the three of us lost to him, often. Sheriff, I'm not sure what you're driving at." This time, he did look at her.

"Sidney Glass told me his camera was stolen by this guy with the dice."

Robin shook his head. "No. I can't remember much, I'll admit, but he gambled the camera away. I was shocked – he was holding it like it was his baby." A thin grimace passed over his face.

"The long-haired guy – you wouldn't happen to remember his name, would you?" Emma watched as his brow creased and expression tightened with the effort of memory. She knew that feeling – had felt it herself after some bad nights.

"I don't recall," Robin said. "I do remember his tattoo."

"An arrow?"

"No, I believe it was a... A sort of staff. It was wrapped in ivy."

"Uh... Okay." That sounded like an old world, Fairy Tale Land kind of thing, right? "Does that mean anything to you?"

He shook his head. "I'm afraid it doesn't."

"Alright." Well – then it was something to go on, anyway. It didn't sound like something you'd pick off the wall at the local tattoo place, and if two out of three noticed it, then maybe someone else around Storybrooke had also seen the tat.

"I'm sorry, Sheriff," Robin said. "I wish I could be of more help."

"No, you've been – thanks," Emma said. "If you think of anything else, you get in touch. Give my best to Marian and Roland."

"By the way," Robin said as she began to walk away. "Sheriff." He cleared his throat, scratching his beard again as Emma turned. "I was wondering. Is, ah, is your department currently taking job applications?"

The box of donuts was waiting for her at the office, an unopened apology. David smiled at her hopefully as she came in.

"I really am sorry," he said as she hung up her coat. "Your brother was up all night, and, well – it's been so hard on your mother. I wanted to take this one for the team, and then I ended up sleeping in, and..."

"No, no," Emma said. "It's fine. You want one of these?" She popped the top of the donut box. He took a powdered one and mustachioed himself in white with the first bite.

"Thanks," he said. She didn't mention his new facial accessory, hiding her smile as she sat behind her desk. "What's the agenda today, boss?"

"The agenda today is..." Emma looked at the donuts, took one out. "Sidney Glass reported his camera stolen." She picked up the report from her desk. This one meant some running around – interviewing witnesses, poking around for leads. They had a good description of the guy, and thanks to Robin, they knew his primary identifying characteristic – the tattoo.

And it was more or less straightforward. No moral dilemmas for a "hero."

"He was drinking in the Rabbit Hole with Hook and Robin Hood when it happened," she said, and held out the report. "I did some talking around, nothing extensive. If I give you my notes, can you take point on this one? You're pretty good at the, you know, talking to people stuff." She smiled at him again, feeling disingenuous; like she was running another con.

"His camera?" David said, taking the report from her. "That thing is his baby."

"And he really wants it back," Emma said.

"Well, the sheriff's department is on the case." His smile was that sunny, princely one, and it gave Emma a jab of guilt.

Why not just talk to him about it? Emma watched as David went back to his desk to review the case, his expression serious. Well – if she was being honest with herself, she wasn't good at it. She mangled words. And she didn't want to hurt his feelings. What kind of daughter was she if she questioned David's competence at his own job?

And there was an outcome honestly worse than his feelings being hurt. The possibility – a real one, she felt, after her talk with Mary Margaret, and after what happened with Regina – that he might say exactly what she was afraid to hear. That he might not get it, the way Snow hadn't gotten it.

Fear squeezed Emma's chest tightly. Jesus. She'd hate that. She just wanted to think that David was a hero the way heroes were supposed to be – that by extension, so was Snow, and Emma herself. She didn't want to ponder serious moral dilemmas about the villains you stepped on getting there.

Did she have that luxury? Emma began to fidget with a stray pen, watching David across the office. She had to worry about this Miss Ginger thing on her own, now that she'd given David his own case. And Regina – Miss Ginger had brought it up, but Regina had condensed the issue into words, given it a deep, serious weight.

Emma was going to have to deal with Regina for the rest of her life – they shared Henry. There was no running away from what Regina had said the night before.

The ringing office phone startled Emma. David looked up at her, started to reach for the receiver on his desk, but she shook her head and picked it up from her extension.

"Sheriff's Department, Storybrooke," she said. "Sheriff Swan speaking."

"Sheriff Swan? This is Felipe Placillo."

Right – the CSI guy. Emma sat up straighter, mouthed 'Felipe' to David, and then said, "Hey. I was actually about to call you." Well, she'd have thought of it sooner or later. "I was wondering if you'd gotten anything off Miss Ginger's place."

"That's what I was calling you about. I picked up some prints from in the house, and a palm print from the door. They're only good for comparison – lucky if we get more than five points off the palm, but they're something. And we got a footprint."

"A footprint?" Emma's hand closed on the pen, clicked it once, twice.

"Get this – it's a hoof."

Emma paused. She pulled one of the notebooks she never used toward herself, opened it, wrote down 'hoof print.' "Okay."

"It's a cloven hoof. I found it in the yard out front. Pretty big."

"Um. What kind of animal could leave that?" Emma said.

"Well, her house is right on the woods," Felipe said, warming to his subject. "At first I thought it could be a deer. It would be easy; the whole woods aren't fenced, you know? Then I got a good look at the size of the print. Animals with cloven hooves – that's cattle, deer, sheep, and goats. I think a cow could be big enough, but I don't think there are any farms out that way. I took photos, if you want to see. There were some tracks around it, but that was the only clear print."

"Yeah, you know..." Emma tapped her pen on the open notebook. "I'd like to see those photos. Can you email them to me?" I think they might have been... Goats. "Did you find any fibers or anything in the house?"

"I pulled some off the arm chair, and some off the kitchen door frame. Can't process them very far myself, though. They might be able to do them in the lab at the hospital here, or I can, y'know, outsource them. There's a place in Bangor."

"Thanks. Why don't you – uh. Let me see if there's room in the budget for that."

Felipe laughed. "Can do. I'll email this stuff to you, Sheriff."

"Thanks, Felipe. I'll get back to you on the lab stuff."

The sheriff's department didn't have much of a budget; then again, there wasn't much crime in Storybrooke. Was that an expenditure she could justify, Emma wondered as she hung up the phone? Testing hairs from Miss Ginger's house?

So there was a hoof print outside the house. Okay. There were also hand prints inside it. Kind of made the argument for goats a complex issue.

Emma got to her feet, retrieved her half-eaten donut. Felipe had made a run through the place, and so had David, but she was leading the case now. She had to get a look at Miss Ginger's house on her own, and see if her intuition sniffed anything out.

When she told David where she was going, he shook his head. "It's a mess up there," he said somberly. "I couldn't make heads or tails of it."

"Yeah, well. Felipe found some stuff." Emma cleared her throat. "I'm going to see if I can put the pieces together."

"Good luck," David said. "Let me know what you find." He waved Sidney's report goodbye to her as she went, smiling that prince's smile.

The house on Old Church Road backed onto the forest, far enough away from the Storybrooke town center to seem detached entirely. All the houses back here were like this, spaced out among the trees. Emma, as she went up the front walk, let her gaze move over the house's facade. Not made out of cookie and candy – just an ordinary house, one story, with windows like blank, staring eyes. There was a garland hanging on the door, touching Emma's nose with a dense eucalyptus smell.

She detached the yellow tape from the doorway and unlocked the door, tucking the key back into its evidence bag before she went inside. With no lights on, a trickle of sun spilling in from the windows, the house felt like it was waiting. Waiting, Emma thought, for a cleaning crew.

It was like looking at a battlefield after the carnage has died off. Smashed knick-knacks, a broken mirror in the hall, splintered furniture. As she moved into the living room, she saw even the upholstery was shredded.

People getting hurt. There was a splintery dent low in the wall next to a side table, which had one broken leg. Like someone had missed the first kick. Death threats.

She sighed, deep and tired in her chest. All she was doing on this case, she thought, was running over the same damn ground, chasing cars. Not just chasing cars, but chasing them up and down the same piece of road. Was she failing here – losing the thread of the case? Or was there something here her intuition saw and her conscious mind didn't?

Sherlock Holmes would have done better with the scene in Miss Ginger's house. There was too much wreckage for Emma to piece everything together. All she could see was the damning thoroughness of it all, like each and every breakable thing had been its own condemned target. And Emma felt, with the part of herself that recognized lies, the glee that lay under it all. Whoever had done this had been delighted to ruin Miss Ginger's home, had probably gone home laughing about it.

Who? Who would take so much pleasure in deliberate, systematic destruction?

Well, there was the goat thing. A print outside the house – okay. But it could have been a deer; and did goat people beating up a blind lady really make sense? (Emma wasn't so sure about the answer to that anymore.)

The Zimmer kids' dad? Emma's first instinct was no. He had motive, but didn't seem the type. Not that that meant much when it came to crime in Storybrooke – the villains were the ones keeping their heads down these days.

If it was Zimmer, then what did the hooves thing mean? Had he worn heavy shoes? Miss Ginger had been resolute not only that the culprit was hooved – "goats," she'd said, and there was the print – but that there was more than one. Accomplices?

The kids themselves, maybe? They were teenagers, or about to be. It didn't seem impossible that a pack of them could get an idea in their heads and carry it out with this kind of determination. But to hurt Miss Ginger like that? Was the pack mentality strong enough for them to beat a grown woman into the ground like they had?

Revenge was a good motivator. Emma had learned that pretty quickly after the curse broke. But was it enough? Could something so simple really make sense of the senseless?

She found the back door in the kitchen and went out into the yard. It was a plain, unadorned plot, fenced, with a slant-back sun chair, a little table with an ashtray, all of it glinting with rainwater. There were a few crocus buds starting to grow, scattered in the grass. Emma sidestepped them, moving across the yard to look into the treeline, hands slipping into her jeans.

She could see the appeal for a woman living alone. It was peaceful out here. Bird sounds, the wind in the leaves. Who would willfully break the peace of this solitary life? Who would take malicious pleasure in hurting someone who had long ago stopped hurting anyone?

She was turning to go inside when she heard it.

"Emma!"

She spun. "Henry?" Her gaze zigzagged among the trees, touching the empty spaces, trying to find him. "Henry?" What was he doing out here? Why was he calling for her? Her heart began to go double, triple time.

Calm down, Emma told herself. He did his little sneaking-out-of-the-house trick, that was all. He snuck out to follow her around on police business, the way he did the first year in Storybrooke. She crushed a crocus into the mud as she crossed to the far side of the fence, peering into the trees. Her breath sounded enormous in her ears, whooping gusts as she tried to feed her anxious, tense body.

"Emma!" It was loud, so loud, and so afraid.

Emma vaulted the fence and ran into the trees. Adrenaline erased the house behind her, erased Miss Ginger, erased Storybrooke itself. Her gaze skittered from side to side as she chased the echoes of his voice.

"Henry! I'm coming!" But what Emma needed was his voice again, a sign of where to run. She stopped running, staggered a little with her forward momentum. She strained to listen.

Was that a rustle in the underbrush? A human body moving among the trees? It had to be. It had to be. She spun to her left, charged in that direction. A low branch slapped her face, tearing a streak of pain across her cheek as she ran on.

Her sidearm. Goddamn, her gun. Had to get her gun out. Where was he?

She had to stop again. She realized that the only sounds she'd been hearing were the sounds of her own noisy charge through the trees. If Henry had given another sign, it had been lost in the crashing of her footsteps and the thunderous pounding of her heart.

Emma stumbled to a halt in a small clearing. There was a ragged tree stump in the middle, its center pocked with the crowns of brown and white mushrooms, a peaceful eye in the hurricane.

"Henry?" Her voice was strained now, breathless and weak. Where was he?

The silence was horrible. A wind stirred the trees around her, but not even the birds sang into that quiet. Emma crouched, hands on her knees, sucking in air and listening for her son's cry. She felt scraped raw, scooped hollow, by the adrenaline-fueled charge that had taken her here.

"Emma!" She froze.

That wasn't Henry.

It was Regina.

She heard the direction of the call very clearly – off to her right, from within the trees – but she stood still. What was Regina doing out here? What could Regina be doing in the woods? Panting, Emma turned toward the voice. One part of herself was still saying Gogogorunrunrungethenrygetreginasavethemsave – ! The rest of her was confused. And wary.

What would Henry and Regina be doing here? What could have happened? And how – how would they know they could call and she would hear? Henry was one thing – her first assumption that he'd followed her to work still felt sound – but both of them? What was going on that Regina's magic couldn't fix?

Panic had taken her this far, but now it was starting to weaken. Confusion was trickling in. The kind of confusion that came hand-in-hand with disbelief.

God, was that another sound? The crack of a branch made her spin, all her nerves live wires. Her train of thought slipping away, Emma tried to grab for it. Her breathing and her thundering heart were too loud.

"Why don't you give that to me," said a third voice, awful and familiar, neither Regina nor Henry, "and I'll take you somewhere to get cleaned up?"

Emma began to heave staccato breaths, too quickly to take their air. She could feel the panic attack starting in the terrible numbness of her limbs. She dragged one foot back, then another. Out of the clearing, she thought. Back into the trees, where she would be invisible to this predator, which spoke with voices from Emma's own memory.

Her own memory.

She grasped at that thought, seized it. Just voices from her own head. Cries of need from crises past. Not Henry and Regina and – the other one – now. Not them somewhere in the woods, hurt, but their voices mimicked. Parroted.

Her breathing came in deeper now, not the high-pitched gasps but real breaths. She clasped her shaking hands together to still them, then tested her feet. Her next step back was still clumsy, but the one after that less so. She turned, and heard the enormous, crashing sound of the monster's passage, moving toward her. She ran.

It came out of the trees and crossed the clearing in a bound and a half, barreling into her and driving her into the forest floor. Emma's breath went out of her in a choked wheeze. The arm that went out to catch herself took a long, dirty drag along the forest floor.

Its enormous, furry weight lifted off her as the animal reared back to inspect its catch. Emma scrabbled at the dirt and tried to work herself forward, out from under the reach of its body. It had to be a bear – nothing, nothing else could be that big. Behind her, it growled, a deep, rippling sound.

If she could get into the trees, she could take off running. Nothing so big could also be fast. Christ, were you supposed to go up trees when a bear found you? Was that still what you were supposed to do?

Maybe it was Winnie the Pooh, she thought inanely, and to her horror, an awful, hysterical laugh bubbled up out of her. Yeah, he was real too – just another member of the Storybrooke Town Zoo – and he wanted his Hunny, honey.

She turned onto her back to get a look at it, still squirming and dragging herself away. The details of its shape were smothered by the size, the enormity of muscle and fur. Past a certain height, didn't all monsters start to look alike? It could have been Godzilla. It could have been Cloverfield.

It was a dog. A wolf. In the clarity of pure adrenaline, she saw. It had the high, domed, doggy forehead, and the narrow forward snout. The eyes that fixed on her had a terrible intelligence, seeming to recognize her, to know her face. When it bared its teeth, saliva dripped from its strange ridge of bony white teeth.

"Oh, fuck," she said. She worked herself back on her elbows, and when her back hit a tree, one hand, scraped and red, groped for her gun. The dog-wolf-thing growled at her again, hackles up, muzzle twisted gruesomely with rage.

She lifted her gun. If she didn't get off a shot, it'd be on her in a second, God, look at the size of it, the size of its fucking stride. It was revving up to take a leap. That was all it would take, one bound and she was mincemeat. Fuck, fire the gun, fire the –

The pop-crack of the shot startled both of them. The thing made a yowling sound, its voice terribly humanlike. Emma didn't have time to see where she'd hit. She was up and on her feet, running, before it could recover and pay her back.

The car. Which way was the car? She could radio for backup. Radio for a SWAT team. A tank. For the fucking National Guard. Emma's head turned, turned, trying to make sense of the trees. The car. Get back to Miss Ginger's back yard, from there to Old Church, on Old Church was parked the police cruiser, and she'd call for help.

She had to stop running. Her own spinning thoughts had tangled with the relentless confusion of forest around her, making the landscape nightmarish, impossible. If she didn't slow down and think (but the thing back there? The dog? What if it was two steps behind her, about to jump, what if it was in midair right now, about to pin her and take her face off in two quick snaps of its jaw –) she wouldn't get her bearings. Maybe she was even now running deeper and deeper into the woods and a few weeks from now they'd find her badge in a horse-sized deposit of animal scat.

She imagined Regina saying sadly over the discovery, "I always knew you were a piece of shit, dear." That terrible laughter returned, the babble of encroaching panic. Emma came to a staggering, uneven halt, and tried to get her bearings. From a standstill, the forest reassembled itself into something saner.

Was the light brighter that way? Were the trees thinning out? She had to decide; to decide now, before the monster caught her. She pitched one frantic glance in the opposite direction, trying to figure out if the difference was just wishful thinking. She couldn't afford a second look: she ran again.

The dog-wolf was behind her. Closer. At first, the sounds of its passage had been blurred into her own crashing footsteps, but it was gaining and it was getting louder. If it had a running start, she didn't think she could get another shot in.

She could see where the treeline ended ahead, could even see the slats of Miss Ginger's backyard fence. If she hid in the house, would the thing just follow? She imagined it cramming its enormous body through a human doorframe, splintering the wood, claws reaching in for her.

Get to the car. Just had to get to the car. Thank God she wasn't in the bug today. Just had to get in the car, gun that motherfucker, and take off.

And go where?

It almost made Emma stop running. Her feet stuttered, but she caught herself, pumped her arms as she circumnavigated the fence, moving up the path along the side of the house. There was the cruiser, right outside the house. There was the cruiser, waiting for her like her noble steed.

And where are you going to ride that steed? Right into town? Going to bring that wolf right into the sheepfold?

If she radioed for backup, David could clear the streets.

That takes time.

She groped in her jacket pocket for the car keys.

Think he can get every citizen of Storybrooke off the streets in time for Cujo back there?

She jabbed the key at the car door. Missed twice, then landed it. Door was open. Was the dog thing behind her? Stop thinking about it.

She landed hard in the driver's seat, slammed the door behind her. She felt a shadow touch her face, and then the impact of the animal, a crunching squeal of metal as it cratered the door. Emma's head snapped sharply forward and back, and when she tried to push herself upright, she found the world spinning.

Claws scrabbled at the window. The monster's percussive growl of frustration and rage vibrated in Emma's chest and head. The car, start the car, start the fucking car. It was looking in at her and she could see the blood running down one of its awful, yellow eyes. Her bullet had scraped a gouge along its forehead.

The key landed on the first shot. The ignition started, and the wolf snarled as if it shared a language with the engine. "Better hold on tight, motherfucker," Emma said.

It took her two big, screeching swerves of the car to throw off the wolf. She swerved a third time looking back over her shoulder at the thing. It hit the ground, rolled, and was – Jesus – back on its feet, but shaking its head fiercely, looking baffled. Good. Enjoy your brain damage, asshole.

She groped for the radio. Christ, what was the code? She was supposed to have taken a test on it, when Graham hired her, but – "This is Sheriff Swan! I got a – a ten – ten-forty – a wolf! Do you copy?"

"Sheriff?" The crackle of static over the voice made it impossible to tell if it was David or Grumpy or goddamn Santa Clause. "Say again?"

"A-a dog! Wolf! A dog-wolf-thing! It sounds like people!" No one out on the lawns of the scattered houses flicking by. Good, that was good. "A giant – fucking – wolf! I need backup! I'm coming off Old Church onto Susquehanna Road!"

It was bounding after her in her rearview mirror. She was barely looking at the road even as she made the turn onto Susquehanna, scanning for bystanders, already thinking, If it spots an easier target, I'll get out of the car, get out of the car and go hand to hand, hand to paw, if I get my gun on it –

She hit the siren. The one car ahead of her pulled close to the narrow sidewalk. Emma saw, very clearly, as the man driving it looked up into his rearview and said, inaudible to Emma but clearer than any sign language, "What the fuck?" She didn't have a chance to see what he did next. She was peeling through the intersection, the monster on her heels.

"Emma?" The radio again. She groped for the handset as the voice continued, "Do you copy?"

"Yeah – yeah! I'm here!" Not for long, though. She took a hard turn off Susquehanna onto Inverness Lane, shaving a few degrees off the wolf's forward momentum as it scrabbled to match her.

"Emma, we need you to take the wolf to us." This was definitely David on the scanner. Even blurred by radio static, his voice came through firm, reassuring – Prince Charming all over. "You need to take it heading north outside the station. Can you do that?"

"Heading – yeah, I think I can – uh..." Her inner compass wasn't as good as her inner polygraph. She almost missed the turn onto Hemlock Drive. A woman, crossing the street with a kid, grabbed him under the arms and hauled him back off the street as the police cruiser careened by.

Emma almost hit an electric pole, her gaze in her rearview, trying to see where the wolf was. She swerved hard away from the pole. The tires screeched a protest. Emma thought in a flurry of panic that, Christ, the cruiser was too old for this, just as bad as the bug, and it was going to fall apart, going to collapse, going to explode like a Wile E. Coyote contraption.

Making the last turn now. Cars on the far north end of the road. Emma's gaze jumped back and forth, looking for the monster in her mirror, then searching for the help up ahead. David's truck. Grumpy's car. A low-riding hunk of junk with a lot of bumper stickers that Emma didn't recognize until she saw Granny Lucas, standing with her crossbow and the two deputies.

Jesus. One hit from the wolf and Granny would shatter like glass. Watch out, criminals! Emma thought hysterically. There's a new crime-fighter on the streets of Storybrooke, and she's a seventy year old woman!

Emma hit the brakes hard, trying to keep a stretch of space between the cruiser and the barricade of cars. But how fast was the wolf coming up? Was it already closing the distance? She got the car door open, staggered out onto the street. David shouted something to her. Granny took aim. There was a terrible scream from behind her, in that awful, humanlike voice. The weight of the monster pinned her, crushed her, and Emma's vision went black.

Foot traffic stopped late in this part of town. She had to get off the street.

Emma, head down, dragged her feet around a corner, down a thin alley. There was a Chinese takeout on one side, and as she passed its back door, the dense, greasy smell of food hit her, carried by the steam from the kitchen. The cooks would be in and out, catching smoke breaks, escaping the heat. They might take trash out to the dumpster. She put a hand out to the wall and let it hold part of her weight as she walked.

Further down, there was a second dumpster, but it sat in a pool of unlit space. There was a door on the opposite building; the light over the top was busted. The door itself had one dirty pane of glass, broken. She sat down heavily next to the dumpster, one hand on the wall guiding her down. There was a smell of stale garbage, but she didn't think anyone had made a drop-off here in a while.

She leaned her aching head back against the wall. She'd been as gentle as she could, but it still throbbed, a deep pulse behind the overheated skin of her face. Emma unbent her sore legs by increments, stretching them out ahead of her. Soon she'd curl up, make herself as small as possible, but she was hoping she could find a way to drain the ache from her limbs in the meantime.

The fever was bad – she didn't realize until after how bad it was; that the vague, nonsensical thoughts that spun through her head were the product of a brain that was slowly frying itself. Everything she thought – including "I should marry a library" – seemed perfectly rational to her.

A streetlight stood sentinel near the closest mouth of the alleyway. One shadow passed beneath it before the night went still. Emma sighed, head tipping forward now, eyes starting to slide shut.

That was when she felt it bump her foot. She twitched her leg away, thinking a rat was sizing her up for dinner, and picked up her head. There was something on the ground. In the field of indistinct light and shadow she saw from behind her eyelashes, she saw that it was... Golden.

She reached out. Her hand missed it by a few inches, her vision distorted like a warped lens, but after a moment of scrabbling, she had it. Something... Round.

Emma held it up to her eyes. It was a golden apple.

In the logic of her fever, this seemed very normal to her. She passed the apple from hand to hand, feeling its weight. She later realized this was a mark of how sick she really was, that she could accept it without question. A mouthbreathing seventeen-year-old with a bad cold and a golden apple – made sense.

The apple wasn't very heavy. She thought it might be a piece of wax or plastic, something you'd put in a centerpiece. She scratched at the fat curve of the fruit with her thumbnail to see what was underneath, but the paint resisted.

Then was it real fruit? Could you eat it? She wasn't very hungry – not because she'd eaten well, but because the fever occupied all the empty spaces in her body. She sniffed the apple, but it didn't smell like much. Maybe she'd save it for later. Eat it. Hock it. Woo a pretty lady with it. Or –

"I believe that's mine."

Emma's head tipped back again with a slapstick quickness. The woman that stood over her loomed at least fifteen feet tall, or so it looked to Emma, in the feverish, poorly lit gloom, and her face was all cheekbones, topped with eyes like cut glass that glinted down at her with unfriendly interest.

"Oh," Emma said.

"That's not fair." A second woman, who seemed to come from the direction of the door with the broken window. It was getting to be a regular party here in Emma's neck of the dumpster. She didn't look like the charity type, unfortunately; though not as mean around the mouth or eyes (gray, Emma noticed thoughtfully), she did seem as huge, as intimidating, as the first woman.

"Don't make a fight out of this," Cheekbones said. "You know as well as I do that that is mine." At first Emma thought Cheekbones was pointing at her; then she realized it was the apple in her hands.

"It's mine." Gray Eyes enunciated very clearly, like she was speaking to a slow child. "I'd like to know what could make you think –"

"Ladies." A third one? How many could Emma expect now? Number Three had a voice as low and soft and comforting as a blanket, a nice change from the others. "Please, let's not fight. If it's for the most beautiful..." Cheekbones looked at Gray Eyes in triumph until Number Three said, "Then we all know it's for me."

The other two began to sputter out indignant protests. Emma tried to get a good look at Number Three, who was moving closer. She couldn't get a good look at her face, but couldn't shake the idea that Number Three looked like someone. An actress?

As Cheekbones and Gray Eyes argued behind her, Number Three crouched in front of Emma and smiled. Emma had been cultivating her sullen frown since age ten, but found herself smiling back.

"You look tired," Number Three said. "And I don't think you're feeling well."

Emma shook her head, holding the apple in both hands, close to her chest.

"Why don't you give that to me, and I'll take you somewhere to get cleaned up?" Number Three held out a hand for the apple.

Emma had just enough time to think how nice that would be, to get a warm bath to steam the ache out of her sinuses, when the others noticed what Three was doing.

"You're cheating!" Gray Eyes was appalled.

"I'm not cheating. I'm being proactive." Three favored Gray Eyes with a beatific smile.

"If you're going to be proactive," said Cheekbones, "I'm going to be proactive. You. Listen to me." She stood over Emma, bent down to her, and occupied Emma's entire field of vision, her pallid, angry face seeming bigger than Mount Rushmore. "Give me the apple. I can do more than get you cleaned up. I can give you incredible gifts. I can give you power."

"I can give you wisdom," Grey Eyes cut in from behind her. "How would you like to be the cleverest girl in the world?" Grey Eyes smiled at her, but Emma wasn't sure it was a nice smile.

"Emma," Number Three said, and Emma looked at her, compelled, drawn like a magnet. Number Three's smile was nothing like Gray Eyes'. "Please give me the apple. I can give you something they could never give you."

There was a quiet, unstated intensity in Number Three's face. She was so uncannily beautiful. Emma began to shiver.

"The love," Number Three said, "of the most beautiful woman in the world."

Grey Eyes scoffed loudly, and Cheekbones rolled her eyes, but Emma was looking at Number Three. The lights from a passing car briefly illuminated Three's face, her coppery skin, the plump curve of her lower lip. Three's eyes, in the here-and-gone flash, were brown, a deep, melting, beautiful brown that seemed to ring with echoes of gold and red, and Emma liked those eyes… And she liked the idea of love. She couldn't picture herself with power – she was seventeen and trying to sleep next to a dumpster – or possessing awe-inspiring wisdom – she'd left school.

But she could picture herself being loved. She could imagine what it was like to be loved, loved by one person above anyone else. Very sick and very tired, Emma thought she'd like that more than any of the other things. She wanted to be held and kissed by a person who loved her, a person she could love back without danger, someone who wouldn't send her back where she came from.

Emma gave the apple to Number Three.

Gray Eyes and Cheekbones were doing something in the background – kicking the wall in frustration, or making inarticulate noises of rage – but Emma only had eyes for Number Three, who was enfolding Emma in her smile and gaze as tenderly as she might a child. Emma felt like she was floating in that wonderful warmth, cosseted and rocked, her nose starting to clear, the ache leaving her head. She began to doze as Number Three reached out and stroked the curve of one fever-bright cheek.

"You should go to sleep now, Emma," Three said, and Emma did, eyes falling shut as Three leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Three smelled wonderful, both sweet and smoky, like an orchard filled with incense, and Emma carried that scent down into her dreams.

All the pieces were in place. It had just taken one big knock on the head.

"Okay," Dr. Whale said. "Can you tell me your full name?" He was fishing out his little penlight.

"My name is Emma Swan," she said. She knew how you checked for a concussion. "It's Saturday the seventh. I'm in Storybrooke General Hospital because I hit my head when a wolf monster attacked me. I don't feel nauseous or dizzy. Is there anything else?"

"I'd like to hold you for a little while, just in case," Whale said. He passed the light over her eyes, checking the response of her pupils. Emma felt a hard little spur of frustration, sharpened by the relieved, approving look on Snow's face.

Emma sat back on the hospital bed. She tipped her aching head back, closing her eyes. Her body was a catalogue of sore limbs, a record of her run, her falls, the last moments when the weight of the wolf – dead by the time it landed – crushed her. Scrapes on her hands. Bruises everywhere. She was exhausted. Truth was, even if Whale said she could leave, she'd have a hard time dragging herself out of the bed, much less out the door.

But her mind – that was wide awake. Emma flexed her hands at her sides, helpless. Her head was buzzing, yeah, with pain, but also with something else. With understanding.

Understanding that what she'd thought was a fever dream had been real. That she'd made a bargain and it had come back to bite her. The dream (visit?) in her kitchen the night before had come back; with it, a surge of the taste of that cardboardy Life cereal in her mouth.

I'm trying to help you, here. I've been helping you all along, but you're pretty good at knocking them down as soon as I set them up.

Who the hell was Number Three? Some kind of – Dark One, was Emma's first impulse. She made deals, like Rumplestiltskin made deals, but – they all tried to make a deal with her. Cheekbones offered power. Gray Eyes offered wisdom. And Number Three offered love.

(There was a little ping of intuition at that thought, all the offers lined up in that order. That meant something, didn't it? Those offerings, they were important, but Emma couldn't think how. )

But even – and admittedly, Emma wasn't sure about this – even the Dark One couldn't influence events indirectly. Emma hadn't seen Number Three in, Jesus, thirteen years? Where had she been? How had she been acting on Emma's life?

On Regina's life?

Because now that Emma thought about it, for the first time in more than a decade, there was no one else "the most beautiful woman in the world" could be. She'd never tell Regina that, but she felt it was so. There was the eerie congruence between Number Three and Regina's looks, those acres of golden skin and the big brown eyes. And then there was –

It's always something about Regina, isn't it?

Now you're getting it.

"How are you feeling?" Snow asked. David had gone back out to oversee the removal of the gigantic dog-wolf corpse, after making sure Emma was okay. It was just her, her mother, and her brother now.

"Fine," Emma said, and then, more gently, "Fine. Sorry – I, uh. My head's hurting. I don't really want to talk."

"I understand."

What Emma wanted to do was piece this together. To make it all fit in a way that satisfied both her intuition and her thinking mind.

It's always something about Regina, isn't it. Now you're getting it. Three had offered her the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, then somehow events just – aligned – to make that happen, with or without Three's help. Except it didn't happen.

Regina wasn't in love with her, and Emma – she didn't want to think about whatever she felt for Regina. A futile kind of affection, maybe. There had always been something between them, though, some weird electric zing that made their partnership so effective, their camaraderie – when it had existed – so natural.

It was supposed to happen, and it didn't. Love. Between the two of them.

"Do you want some water?" Snow said.

"No. No, not – " would Snow get it herself? Emma had to give it a shot. "Actually, uh, yeah. Maybe – maybe you could check if they can give me something? For the pain."

They probably couldn't – wouldn't want to fuck up a possible head injury by doping it – but Snow was getting up. She left the stroller with Neal in it (asleep, thank you God), and now Emma had a few minutes during the trip between the room and the nurses' station to think without the chance of interruption.

What was supposed to happen didn't happen. No love between her and Regina. And then –

Bad things happen in a lawless territory.

What did that apply to? The recent spate of strange, awful things – the attack on Miss Ginger, the theft of the camera, the dog-wolf? Maybe even the snatching of Regina's purse? Did it mean everything that went on between Storybrooke's chaotic borders, including Cora, Pan, Zelena? Where was the limit?

Had it all been under Number Three's influence? Or was it just a consequence of Emma and Regina's failure to shack up?

Christ. It seemed like no matter where Emma looked, there was another person with a hand in her fate. Someone else, like Gold, like Three, pushing the Savior pawn around on a big chessboard she couldn't see.

Snow was back with a little Dixie cup of water. "They say no medication for now. They'll be in to check on you soon, though -" and Snow smiled at her, but the smile faltered as Emma reached up to take the cup. "Are you alright?" she asked, more seriously.

Emma tried to rearrange her face into something inconspicuous. "Yeah," she said. "I'm – yeah. Just – knocked me for a loop. That's all. Thanks." As she ducked her head to drink, she saw Snow make a motion in her peripheral vision – like she was reaching out to touch Emma – and then stop.

Emma finished the water in two swallows. What she wanted to do – she'd figured it out the minute Snow's eyes were on her again – was talk to Regina. At least see her.

"Was Regina in town hall, when the, you know?"

"I don't know," Snow said, voice a little curt. She made herself busy with the baby, even though he was already asleep – fussing with his blankets, tucking him in more securely. "Maybe your father does."

There it was – a flash of the same stoniness that appeared when Friday night dinner rolled around.

Emma frowned. She fished out her phone from the pocket of her jeans – the screen had cracked cleanly when the wolf took her down, but it still worked.

She went into the bathroom to make the call. (Somehow she thought Snow might not appreciate hearing it.)

Regina picked up with, "I assume you're not dead, then."

"Thanks," Emma said. "Really touching concern there." She felt a weird surge in her chest of – what had called it before? A futile kind of affection. "Everything, uh. Everything alright over there?"

"Well, we're watching them try to pick up the body," Regina said, meaning she and the town hall staff were standing ten feet apart, pretending not to notice each other doing the same thing.

"Them?"

"Your father. The dwarf. No – dwarves, there's another one."

"Couldn't you just... With magic?"

"I could," Regina said.

The laugh came out before Emma could swallow it, making her head ache. "Oh, crap. Ow. My head."

"You should be resting." Regina's voice was a little quieter and a little softer.

Any chance of laughter was gone as quickly as it had come. "Um..." Emma sighed, and took the plunge. "I wanted to talk to you about something."

Telling it to someone else made Emma hear how crazy it was. She knew it sounded like – well – a fairy tale. One of those weird modern fairy tales that people made into young adult fiction, where the heroine discovers the real enemy was herself and also gets the guy, but this wasn't fiction. It was real. And Emma felt her heart sink the more of the truth she told Regina, knowing how likely it was she'd be disbelieved.

"One minute," was Regina's initial reply. Her voice was stony and flat.

"What?"

"I'm going somewhere with a little privacy."

There were sounds of footsteps. A door closing. Emma leaned her back against the bathroom door, wondering if Snow could hear her voice through it.

Regina came back to the receiver, and spoke in her counting-to-ten voice. "Are you trying to tell me you bought me with a piece of fruit."

"I know this sounds bad."

"It sounds ridiculous. What exactly are you trying to do? What could you possibly –"

"Gain from lying?" Emma said. There was silence on the line. She spoke into that silence, trying to make her voice sound reasonable instead of strained and pathetic. "You know I don't. Gain anything. I'm not making this up, Regina. I don't – I'm not sure how I can convince you."

More silence. She tried to picture Regina's face, what she'd be thinking at that moment.

"So – you..." Regina stopped again. "Let me guess. There are – consequences – for our failure."

"That's what I said. I mean – I don't know if there are consequences because of us, or if, you know, like she said – "

"Like this Number Three said."

"Yeah, it's – like you always say. Right? Magic always comes with a price."

"Then you can pay it," Regina said, and hung up.

Emma stared at the cracked screen of her phone, dumbfounded, for only a few seconds before Regina called her back. When she picked up, it was as though Regina had been soliloquizing the whole time, and Emma had only just now tuned in.

"Because I'm tired – tired – of you making decisions and me having to bear the consequences," Regina said. Her voice was very close to the phone, and it was very, bitterly angry.

"I know – Regina, I know you've been upset, about everything," Emma said. Even to herself, it sounded pitiful. "About Robin, and this can't – "

"Yes. Another one of those interesting moments when your choices ruined my life," Regina said. "And I've just been sitting here, sitting on my hands, not saying a word. I suppose you weren't ever going to apologize. I suppose you – "

"What? Hey! I was – look, I've been feeling like crap about it ever since – and you never said anything to me. I just kept waiting for you to blow up or something, and then we'd..."

"Why do I have to get angry before you can take responsibility for your actions?" Each word came out harsh, clipped.

It stung. Emma felt her face redden. She wanted to shout back, to defend herself, but she could still hear Number Three in her head: You need to listen to what Regina's telling you.

"How could I get angry? For all I know, you'd decide it was a sign I was an evil villain who can't be a mother to my own son, and I'd wake up the next morning with Henry gone forever." The bitterness in Regina's voice was awful to hear, resonant with pain. Emma started to speak – not knowing, honestly, what she'd say – but Regina went on: "It wouldn't be the first time."

"Regina..." You become a hero by hurting or killing villains. That's the nature of the job.

"And now I found out you bartered for me, and I'm supposed to – supposed to, what. Fall into your arms? Assuming this little story of yours is real?"

"It is real. It's -" That was the only part of it Emma could answer. The truth was, she didn't know what Regina was supposed to do. She hadn't expected Regina to make some love confession, to swoon or something, but she...

"You can't buy me with fruit, Emma," Regina said. "Right now, why would I ever love you?"

End.