Prompt from skagengiirl: the prompt is that either Hook or Neal is hitting on Emma and gets a bit too close and she punches him, because she's not over Graham. I would love a happy Gremma ending though somehow. So maybe he hits on her, she punches him and then later she finds Graham or something? Idk. But the punching part is the main point.
Majorly anti-Swanfire, some minor anti-CS; Gremma all the way. Post-Neverland AU, I guess. I mean there's no way it'll ever be canon compliant. But whatever.
Some of my inspiration, a tiny little bit of it, and my title, comes from the Gavin DeGraw song "Not Over You"
Published 12/11/13 in honor of the two-year anniversary of 1x07 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
Don't own it! If I did Graham wouldn't be dead, Neal and Bae would not be the same person, and Jonas Armstrong would play Robin Hood, among other things.
"I remember," he states, standing tall. He's smiling, and she's not sure what he remembers but she knows it's important to him.
"You remember what?" she asks. She's curious. What could he possibly remember that would make him smile like that? He's walking towards her slowly, and…
"Thank you," he takes her face in his hands, a tear falling from his eye. She smiles on reflex but it's not one of her usual tight smiles that hide the pain inside of her – this a real smile. She hasn't smiled like this in years.
He's leaning in to kiss her when he gasps in pain and starts to fall. She catches him, but it's not enough, and they're both on the floor and she's shaking him and he just won't wake back up he needs to wake back up because she just found him and he just found her and they're both broken and they fit and why won't he wake back up? Why him, why now?
"Graham!" Emma bolts up in bed, the scream ripped from her throat. She's glad that Mary Margaret and David are having a romantic getaway night at Granny's, and Henry is at a sleepover with some of his friends – she knows Hansel and Gretel and Grace are there for sure.
The nights where she dreams of Graham are always the worst. Sometimes, they're just beautiful torture, dreams of the way things could have been, if he hadn't died. Others, like tonight, they're worse. Reliving those last moments, his dead weight in her arms, his pulse and breath gone forever, the light in his eyes extinguished.
She throws the covers off, padding down to the kitchen, where she starts getting some hot cocoa ready, pouring the water in the kettle and getting the heat going. It's the only thing that calms her on nights like this.
It's going to be a long day, she can already tell.
…
She's just left a somewhat late lunch at Granny's – when Neal shows up. 2:00 in the afternoon. Right on the schedule that he and Hook seem to have worked out to take turns trying to "win her heart."
One of the more annoying aspects of her life at the moment, but at least there won't be any more idiotic fighting like children with them on an alternating schedule rather than in the same place at the same time.
"Hey, Em," he smiles, jogging backwards, trying to keep pace as she heads for the station.
"What do you want, Neal?" she asks, sighing.
"Just to hang out with my favorite girl."
Emma rolls her eyes. He doesn't seem to get the message that she's not interested, and she doesn't know quite what to do when he makes statements like that except ignore them.
"Weren't you going to get a job somewhere in town, so you could move here to spend time with Henry? So, why aren't you working right now?" she asks, changing the subject. She knows why he's not with Henry, the kid is still with his friends after the slumber party; he's supposed to get back to the loft for dinner.
"Surprisingly not a lot of openings for the son of the Dark One around."
"Well, I am on my way back to work, so, if you could leave me be. I have paperwork to do."
"I could help with that."
Emma stops in her tracks. Is he seriously…?
"Don't you need a deputy?" he continues, "Come on, Em, we could work together. It'd be like old times. Just on the right side of the law." He reaches up and goes to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, but she steps backwards, avoiding the move.
"First, I have a deputy, and it's David. He's just off today. Second, Neal, you have no qualifications to be my deputy. Third, I have no desire to relive old times. Fourth, if you think that I would hire you, and it would be a step towards getting back together, you're dead wrong. This badge – the deputy badge, I mean – it's sacred. The man who gave it to me? Trust me, he'd kill you sooner than give you the job. And I try my hardest to do this job the way he would've."
"Henry told me about that guy. Seemed like the kid really liked him."
"He did. They weren't too close, because, you know, Regina doesn't like to share, but… Graham really cared about Henry," she admits.
"Of course, I asked around about the guy after Henry told me about him," Neal shrugs, continuing on like he hadn't heard her, "Sounded to me like he hired you to get in your pants, so not sure what's so damn sacred about the badge."
Emma sees red, and before she can even think what she's doing, she pushes him, and he stumbles back.
"Don't you ever talk about Graham like that again," she hisses, "Don't even think it. He was a better man than you could ever dream of being!"
She's still angry, still not quite thinking, and she pulls back and slugs him, her fist meeting his face with a satisfying crunch that she's secretly been hoping to hear for a good long while. His hands fly to the damaged nose, and he lets out an unintelligible string of curses.
"Stay away from me," Emma says, then breaks into a run, heading for the safety of the station, where she can lock the door behind her.
…
Mary Margaret is waiting at the loft when Emma returns. David and Henry are nowhere in sight and Emma is pretty sure she's in big trouble.
"I heard you punched Neal today," Mary Margaret says from her place seated at the table, inviting an explanation.
"He was asking for it," Emma answers with a careless shrug as she removes her jacket, not wanting to get into a discussion about her ex insulting her lost love.
"Emma, I have to ask… How are you doing? Really?"
"I'm fine. Just fine."
"You're sure? There's nothing on your mind?"
"That's right," Emma lies, her hand going to the shoelace on her left wrist. This is clearly not lost on Mary Margaret, who raises an eyebrow.
"I'm fine," Emma repeats, trying to play off her instinctual move towards the shoelace as an itch by scratching at her wrist a little.
"What is that thing anyway?" Mary Margaret asks, "You started wearing it a little after the election…"
"It's nothing," Emma shakes her head, "Just… Just a keepsake."
"Miss 'I'm-not-sentimental' has a keepsake? A keepsake she's not even willing to explain?"
"Mary Margaret…"
"Emma, you don't have to be all walls-up all the time. You can tell me what's wrong. I'm your mother, but more than that, I thought we were friends. You can tell me anything."
"It's a shoelace from Graham's boot, okay?" Emma blurts out, before she can stop herself.
"Oh, Emma, sweetheart," Mary Margaret starts to stand and come towards her, but she shakes her head. She doesn't need a hug, she doesn't want to talk about this at all, she just… Remembering makes the hurt worse. Talking about him… That would force her to remember. She doesn't want to think about that heartbreak, that moment when her heart shattered into a million pieces.
"It's alright for you to miss him," Mary Margaret says, taking the hint and stopping her advance, "I know you had very strong feelings for him. But you can't let missing him come in the way of living your life."
"I still have nightmares about it, about losing him like that," Emma says; she can't let Mary Margaret think that this was all just her clinging to the past, can't let Mary Margaret think that she's anywhere near ready to move on, and really can't let Mary Margaret think that Neal is going to be the one she moves on to – she'd allowed it in Neverland but now? No, now she had to set Mary Margaret straight about how wrong Henry's father is for her, "And Neal… He was asking me for a deputy job, saying we could be a team like old times, and when I told him no, said the badge was sacred… He said that from what he'd heard, Graham hired me just because he wanted to sleep with me. I couldn't stop myself, I just hit him."
"Good for you," Mary Margaret says, surprising her, "Graham… I may not have known him well, but I knew him well enough to know that he would never… Because he wanted to spend time with you, maybe, but… He was a good man. Not some creep."
"I know," Emma sighs, "He's the only good man I've ever fallen for."
"You will… Try and find happiness again someday, right? For his sake? He wouldn't want you to be alone, Emma."
"Maybe someday," she agrees, more to placate Mary Margaret than anything else, "But not today."
…
Emma is sitting at her desk, trying to do paperwork, when Hook enters the station.
"I hear you rejected Baelfire, love," he smirks, sitting down in the chair across from her. She can hear as he starts spinning in it; he's pretending to be bored but really, he's made it clear that spinning chairs are one of his favorite "Land Without Magic" technologies. Sometimes it's cute, but right now it's more annoying than anything.
"Doesn't mean I've accepted you," she says, not looking up. The phone rings.
"Sheriff Swan," she answers.
"Emma?" Leroy's voice is on the other end, "You've gotta come out to the cemetery. Someone dug up Graham's grave, he's gone."
Emma drops the phone. Whoever did that, whoever disturbed his rest, she would find them and make them pay. A small part of her hopes it's Neal, so she can shove his sorry ass in jail. Body snatching is still a crime, isn't it?
She stands, ignoring Hook as he asks where she's going, and heads out the door.
…
Her first stop, after going to the cemetery and making sure Leroy wasn't pranking her, is the hospital. Whale looks surprised to see her. Probably is; she's not there often. Almost never, actually.
"Did you take him?" she asks. She doesn't have time for pleasantries; someone took Graham.
"Did I take who?" Whale seems confused.
"I got a call, from Leroy. Someone dug up Graham. Was it you?"
"No," Whale says. There's hesitation in his tone, but it's not a lie. She turns to leave. If Whale didn't take him, this whole stop has been a waste of time and she has to figure out her next step.
"But I know where he is," he calls.
She stops, and looks at the doctor. If he's messing with her, if he's playing her, she will hurt him. This is important to her. He knows that, he's the one who sat with her explaining how Graham's heart had just given out when she was inconsolable. She'd always known there was something fishy about the chart and the explanation, but that wasn't Whale's fault.
"Where?" she spits.
"Gold's shop. He called me this morning to tell me, knew you'd come to Frankenstein first when a body disappeared."
"He wanted me to come there and find Graham?" Emma asks, confused. Gold always has an agenda.
"I suppose so," the doctor says cheerily.
Emma turns on her heel and heads for the exit.
"He said make sure you bring the jacket," Whale yells after her.
…
"What the hell is your game, Gold?" Emma bursts into the backroom of the pawnshop, Graham's jacket in her arms.
Her eye is drawn to the cot that's set up there, where David had been under the sleeping curse. Graham is there. He looks no different than the day he died, even after two years underground, except he's in a fancy suit, what he was buried in, rather than his standard uniform.
"As I often told your parents, dearie, I'm a fan of True Love," the older man says, appearing somehow out of the shadows, "I wasn't sure about you and your Huntsman at first, but when Bae told me what happened yesterday, I knew."
"Gold," Emma growls a warning. No way the older man dug Graham up himself, she knows he had an accomplice or two, and she's ready to throw all of them in jail, whoever the hell they are, so he had better stop speaking in riddles and get to the point.
"He's not truly dead, Miss Swan." The words stop her angry thoughts in their tracks. Not truly dead? Should she even dare get her hopes up?
"Excuse me?"
"The curse was designed so that nothing could change, dearie. Therefore, no man could die under it," Gold explains, "Besides that – he was in your arms when it happened. About to kiss you, I presume. True Love is very powerful magic. It can find loopholes in just about anything. He's not truly dead. Are you going to wake him or not?"
"Wake him?"
"True Love's Kiss, dearie," the man gestures to Graham's body.
She hugs the jacket to her, taking in his scent, though it's faded from time. Pine and fresh air and a hint of coffee and something else she can't quite define. She sits on the cot next to him, looking him over. He looks like he's sleeping peacefully. She takes one of his hands in hers, not able to help but notice that he's ice cold, then leans down, closing her eyes, and presses her lips to his, forgetting how little faith she has in magic and True Love and happy endings despite literally being a fairytale princess just for a moment. She wants her happily ever after more than anything else in the world, and that's… Well, that's him.
She feels a rush of something burst forth from them, some sort of magic, and his skin warms under her touch, and when she goes to lean back and watch him wake, the hand she's not holding comes up to her head, catching her chin, bringing her lips back to his, as he kisses her, passionately but slowly, until they need to part for air.
She pulls him up to a seated position so they're more comfortable.
"Emma," he sighs, smiling, as they rest their foreheads together, "You found me."
"Did you ever doubt I would?" she laughs, hardly able to believe she's finally got her own epic love story. It's enough to make her quote her parents instead of smacking him for being so cheesy.
"Not once," he shakes his head, pressing a quick kiss to her cheek, "Although the funeral gave me pause."
"Don't suppose you'd like to be my deputy?" she asks, gently, "You'd have to work with my dad, but… There's dental."
He wraps his arms around her, pulling her impossibly close.
"Always knew you were in it for the dental," he smirks. Emma shakes her head quickly and he raises an eyebrow.
"Don't tell anyone," she whispers, running a finger down his cheek, "But I was in it for the incredibly sexy boss that I'd get to myself all day."
"Damn," Graham chuckles, "That's why I was about to accept."
She kisses him again, smiling into it.
Emma Swan is finally going to get her happily ever after, her fairytale ending with a man who's perfect for her.