A/N For the purposes of this fic, in 2x22, Emma and Neal never admitted their feelings towards one another before Neal fell through the portal. I've always been a massive fan of the characters of Emma and Neal, but I think the pair in a relationship together doesn't necessarily bring out the best in either of them. Obviously this fic won't be contingent with Season 3 of Once Upon A Time when it comes out, making it non-canon.
LIARS AND THIEVES
PROLOGUE
Maria suddenly felt sand being ground into her hair and face and her fingers clawed at broken fragments of shells as the sea forced her body up and onto land.
Waves pummeled onto her back and she realized her face was still half-submerged in water.
"Jesus Christ," she coughed out, pulling herself up onto her hands and knees above the line of surf. Her dripping brown hair hung in thick ropes around her face, and she pushed the tangled mess back, looking around her.
She was knelt in about four inches of sea water. There was a strip of beach a couple of meters in front of her, and fringing that was a long line of trees.
Where the hell am I?
She stood on weak, shaky legs. Her body had been pummeled by the relentless waves and there were bloody cuts all over her palms and up the left side of her face. Despite the wounds being relatively small, the salt from the sea water made them sting like a bitch.
Her eyes were burning too, and she wiped her running nose on the sleeve of her coat, looking around her.
Her gaze was instantly attracted to the dark form in the water a little way away from her. To begin with, she thought it was a branch, but then she realized that the branch had arms and legs.
Whoever it was, they were face down in the water and they weren't moving.
"Shit," she muttered, realizing who it was. "Neal?" she yelled, high stepping waves as she splashed back through the water and out to sea. It was so damn cold that it felt like she'd had an epidural; there was no feeling below her waist. "Neal?"
She grabbed the back of his coat, hauling him up so that her body weight supported his. "Stand up," she said, shaking him. "C'mon, Neal. Stand up. Stand up."
His eyes remained closed, and she looked round desperately, seeing the blood swirling in the water around him.
She began to remember.
Maria received the anonymous call on a Thursday afternoon.
Her credibility at The New Yorker had dropped to zero after the Booker-Jacobs fiasco, so she'd been bumped back down the ladder to writing articles on the quality of drinking water in the city. She'd usually ignore the phone, but she'd picked it up that day for the hell of it, because – really – did she have anything better to do?
It was funny how fate worked.
"Maria Kaufmann?" the male voice on the other end of the line asked, as soon as she picked up.
"Yeah?"
"The journalist, Maria Kaufmann?"
"Listen, if this is another jumped up attorney who wants to sue me for my uncredible source use again, before you do, can I just say that thanks to the Booker and Jacobs trial I have lost my house, my life savings and my boyfriend. So before you, I don't know, decide to sue me for everything else I have, can I just inform you that I have absolutely nothing left to give."
"I'm not an attorney."
"Then who the hell are you?"
"Someone who wants to give you your credibility back."
The fire that had burned up in her began to cool and she calmed a little. "How?" she asked, intrigued.
The man ignored her question. "I actually phoned you because of the publicity of what happened with you and the corporation owned by Mark Jacobs and David Booker. You lost the story because you refused to reveal who the people were who gave you the information that led you to the two men."
"I always protect my sources."
"That's why I chose you."
"For what?" she pushed, frustrated. She swiveled round in her chair to glance about the office, making sure no-one was eavesdropping. What the man said next, however, made her freeze completely.
"I have a story for you. One that could make you famous."
"How famous are we talking?" she said, suspiciously. "Dynamite under my car-seat when I drive home famous? Because if you're looking for a journalist to blow the whistle on some state secret that you've popped the lid on, you're barking up the wrong tree, buddy."
"I can't tell you what it is now. I need to meet you. Tomorrow"
Maria paused.
The last time she'd tried to play hero-reporter, she'd gone up against a coast-to-coast firm with lawyers who had flayed every last dollar out of her in court.
"If I did this," she said, eventually. "If I agreed to do this, I'd need a guarantee; nobody would come after me. I can pull the plug whenever I want to. I won't get hurt."
"Of course."
"Then where am I going?"
"A town called Storybrooke."
Despite all circumstances, Maria had to laugh darkly.
Nobody will come after me.
I can pull the plug whenever I want to.
I won't get hurt.
"You idiot," she aloud to herself.
Neal's body was still a dead-weight in her arms and she quickly stripped both of them of their heavy, sodden woolen coats. It meant the she was freezing, but at least it made it easier to tote him out of the sea and up onto the beach.
She laid their coats down and rolled Neal onto them.
He was still unconscious, despite all the movement it had required to get him up onto the sand. "Don't be dead," she muttered. "Do not be dead."
There was blood seeping through his shirt now that there was no water to wash it away with; like a red poppy she watched it bloom for a second, mixing with the dampness of his shirt so that it grew to cover almost the entire expanse of his chest.
The irony of the situation was not lost on Maria as she set to work on checking his pulse and breathing.
But she had to do something to prevent herself from thinking about what the hell had just happened.
"Should have been a god damn nurse like your mother wanted you to be, Maria," Maria scolded herself. She'd been trekking through the woods for almost an hour now, and she was seriously re-evaluating her choice in career as she almost twisted her ankle on a fallen branch.
At least she wouldn't have been given dead-end leads by mysterious strangers over the phone. At least she wouldn't be so desperate as to agree to go to a town that (and she quoted) 'wasn't technically there.'
Was that the big story? That map publishers had omitted to print the location of a town that, just by its very name, sounded like it had come straight out of a five-year-olds idea of story book?
And Maria wouldn't blame them. Storybrooke. She snorted. It had about the subtlety of a hammer to the face.
The trees in the woods began to thin out and Maria found herself at the edge of a small clearing that held a well. Next to it stood a man and a woman.
Unlike her, they were dressed for hiking. The woman was dark skinned and athletic-looking, dressed in trainers and a hoody and the man next to her was balding slightly, wearing a plaid shirt.
"Greg Mendell?" Maria asked, stepping forwards.
He nodded. "Maria Kaufmann?"
She indicated the affirmative and he smiled, walking towards her with his hand outstretched. She shook it. "So," she said, glancing between the pair. "You said over the phone you had the exposé of the century for me." She didn't attempt to keep the skepticism out of her voice. "This better be worth me booking it down to Maine on my day off."
The woman's mouth twisted into a smirk and Maria decided pretty quickly there was something about her she didn't like. "It's well worth your time, Miss Kaufmann, we can assure you."
She raised an eyebrow, looking at Greg. "So?"
He took out his phone, tapping a few options on it and then handing it over to her. "Watch this."
She accepted the phone, her interest piqued despite herself. Greg had loaded up a video onto its small screen, and when she tapped play, Maria found herself watching a black haired woman 'levitate' some objects out of a bag.
It was finished in almost five seconds, and when the screen went black, Maria felt irritation at them and annoyance at herself boil up with in her. "You dragged me down here to watch some dodgy CGI magic trick?!" she snapped.
"Except it's not CGI," said Greg, smoothly. He took the phone away from her and loaded up another video, placing it back in her hands.
This time, Maria watched the same black haired woman rip a girl's heart out.
She felt her face drain of color and she looked up at Greg very slowly. "And it's not magic tricks per say," he added, very calmly. "…as you know them."
There was noise of people approaching and Maria whipped round abruptly. Three figures were running across the sand towards her. One male, two female.
The man reached them first, sinking to his knees next to her. Despite everything, Maria felt herself stare. It wasn't that the he was incredibly good-looking (though there was that, too) it was the fact that he was wearing full, medieval body armor.
"What happened? Is he alright?"
Maria stared at him. "Who are you?"
"Prince Philip –"
She was aware that he was speaking to her, but suddenly, she couldn't see. The space between her eyes and the three strangers was washed red, like the blood pounding so loudly in her ears that she did not hear the man questioning her with increasing concern. Maria would have staggered if she was standing upright, but instead her body simply folded, unable to hold itself upright, and she found herself lying on the ground next to Neal, her eyes staring into his slack, unconscious face.
She thought of the sailors who had set out hundreds of years ago to explore the world. How terrified they must have been when they checked their maps and realized they risked falling over the edge; how amazed they'd been to discover, instead, an entirely different world.
Where am I? she thought desperately, her hand curling into the sand as if to anchor herself.
Where am I?
Where am I?
Where am I?
It was, without a doubt, the biggest story of her life.
It was also the most bewildering, confusing and scariest thing that had ever happened to her.
It was time to pull the plug.
Maria walked into her room in Granny's Bed and Breakfast at 7.30 after a week of staying in Storybrooke. She had booked the room under the name Jane Porter (an intentional nod to Tarzan) under the pretense of being a fairytale character looking for a different place to live. Acting like and insider can be enough to actually be one. It had been one of the first rules she'd learnt as a free-lance journalist.
She locked the door behind her and began to pack up her stuff. Her laptop was laid out on the table, the screen aglow with the word document of her recently-finished report. 300 words. Accurate and to the point. Readers would only look at the pictures, anyhow. And the name of the journalist who'd managed to unearth the story.
She glanced round at the homey room that was costing her 70 dollars a night.
420 dollars for the week. It was money that, until The New Yorker broke the story, she didn't have.
It had all worked out so perfectly, though. Normally, when somebody blew the whistle on something this big, you were expected to ditch your whole family and hole up in an embassy somewhere until the political or corporation moguls who wanted your hide had given up on the search. But the occupants of this town wouldn't come after her. Not because they wouldn't want to, but because they literally couldn't.
Maria hurled another jumper into the open duffel bag and then walked to the desk and grabbed her mobile.
"Greg," she greeted, after dialing his number; absently reviewing the word document on the laptop before her as she had done so many times that week. It was perfect. "I'm leaving town."
"What?" he sounded distracted – angry?
Maria frowned. "I've got everything I need. The article's finished. I'm getting out of this town before these people come after me with pitchforks and torches."
"It's a bit too late for that."
It took a second for Maria to realize that the voice had not come through the speaker's on her phone; was not Greg's; and had come from somewhere behind her.
She whirled round just in time to see a man with brown hair standing across the room before he rushed forwards, knocking her so that she was bent painfully backwards over the desk – her head hitting it so hard that her vision blurred momentarily.
There was no chance of her fighting back. He had to have about twenty or thirty pounds on her and he was using his whole body weight to pin her back against the desk. She could feel the uncomfortable pressure of his hips pushing hers back into the lip of the table and the position would have looked sexual had his forearm not been braced across neck, almost choking her.
The laptop was open, just inches from her face, she realized. He must have seen her glance at it, because he looked too and then his expression darkened, and he forced his arm a little more roughly against her throat. She cried out.
"Is this it?" he asked. "This is what you're doing here? You're a reporter?"
Damn, damn, damn. She didn't answer. It was obvious.
Her left hand was still gripped tightly round her phone, her right arm pinned underneath his chest.
"What's your name?"
"Jane Porter."
"Don't pull that on me. I checked the list of every person in this town and you're not on it. What's your name?"
"Maria Kaufmann," she rasped out, struggling to regulate her breathing.
"What have you done with Regina?"
Maria blinked. Honestly thrown for a second. This was not what she had expected. "What?"
"Regina. She's gone. All the evidence points towards you. Where is she?"
All the evidence points towards – Maria froze. Realization hit her. Greg Mendell you bastard.
"I don't know where she is," she said, trying to talk calmly and rationally. "It wasn't me, but I think I know who did it."
He lifted his eyebrows, and Maria suddenly remembered his name. Neal. Neal Cassidy. "I'm not buying that, I'm sorry."
Her fingers unfurled round the phone. It dropped to the floor with a dull thud and then her hand curled into a fist. "Me too," she said, striking him in the side of the head as hard as she could.
"Mulan, help me pick him up – Aurora, get the woman."
Maria felt gentle hands shaking her softly, yet urgently. She felt gritty, uncomfortable sand on her skin and down the neck of her shirt. She tasted bile in the back of her throat.
Neal was suddenly lifted away from her line of vision and she rolled over onto her back, staring up into the sky. "Where am I?" she rasped, voicing the question that was turning dizzily through her mind, over and over.
"The Enchanted Forest," a pleasant sounding, young woman's voice answered. The owner of the voice appeared in her line of vision several seconds later, and a hand touched her shoulder; light as a breath. "Come on, you have to get up."
Maria didn't move. "Can you save him?" she whispered.
"Maybe, but you have to come with us now."
She stood slowly. Her muddy, wet jeans and black shirt stuck to her as she moved. She probably looked a mess.
Up ahead the man – Philip – and the woman he'd addressed as Mulan were supporting Neal's weight between them as they carried him across the beach. Maria had loved the Disney film Mulan. She'd watched it with her little sister when she went back to visit her family in Boston.
Of all the thing's that had to happen to me as a consequence of taking up Greg Mendell on that damn article, of all the places I could have gone. Why here? Why me? Who dreamt up this sick joke? The universe?
Maria felt like she could cry.
"You set me up."
It had not taken Maria long to jump into her car and speed down to the cannery. She'd cornered Tamara in a deserted corridor and the black haired woman now had a pistol leveled on her forehead. (Ironic) righteous indigence and fury, however, meant that Maria only stared back at her with out fear.
"What gave us away?" Tamara asked smoothly, with out care.
"Well for starters. Greg, and his reputation in this town for being an addictive blogger. A guy with a story that good wouldn't wait around to hire a failed journalist to spread the story for him. You needed me to distract the town so that you could, what, abduct its inhabitants?"
"Destroy magic."
"I'll also bet you're the one who goes round telling kids that Santa isn't real."
Tamara's eyes narrowed. "Magic has no place in our world," she said, slowly. "It's not natural."
"So why hire me to show it to the world when you're going to snatch it away again? More to the point, why hire me for the sole fact that I don't disclose my sources? What the hell does that gain you?"
"Nothing. I'm not doing this for myself - I'm not Greg - this was never about me, this was about the greater good. I'm doing this for everyone."
Maria's eyes widened. "Jesus," she whispered. "You think you're some kind of martyr, don't you?"
Tamara didn't reply.
She's crazy, Maria thought, when her eyes flickered back to the gun that Tamara had trained on her. Both of them are.
For the first time, and with terrifying clarity, Maria realized she was out of her depth. That she'd been roped into some grand-master scheme far greater than herself. Far greater than the world she lived in.
Nobody will come after me.
I can pull the plug whenever I want to.
I won't get hurt.
She repeated the empty promise in her head, as if saying it enough times would make it true.
Tamara flicked the safety off on the gun with an audible click. "It was very perceptive of you to figure this out, Miss Kaufmann. Unfortunately for you, when you hire someone, it's for a purpose, and when that purpose is gone…" her face formed a fake, apologetic smile, "…well, so are you."
Maria threw herself to the side just in time, her head striking the ground. The sound of the gun going off was louder than she thought it would be. It rang in her ears and her head spun.
On the floor, with her palms skinned and bleeding, she looked up to see the ghost of Tamara hover in her darkened vision. She felt something cool pressed up against her forehead – the end of a pistol.
You're going to die, she told herself.
Crissakes, was the article worth this? Your life?
Somebody spoke – an echo, to her brain. The gun was removed and Maria saw blurs of people moving. Another gunshot.
Go. She screamed at herself. Leave!
She tried to move, but her head was still spinning. The ground seemed to open up in a vortex of green, and Maria wondered for a second if it was her mind conjuring it up – in the same way it was conjuring up the blur of Emma holding onto Neal as he dangled precariously over the lightening-green abyss.
This isn't possible.
Tamara appeared above her, and Maria felt herself being shoved, and then there was a terrible sensation of falling.
All around her, there was swirling green and Maria realized she was about to pay for the knowledge that magic existed in this world with her life.
A/N Please leave a review if you would like to read more!
Last Of The Lilac Wine