Part Deux.
/
The car ride is quiet until they get to the diner. Granny wants to go over the freezer again, apparently encouraged by Emma's suspicious nature – poke around with a little more intensity and a little less of a rush about her. Afterwards, she's volunteered to pick James back up when he's done supervising the crime scene by the cannery. And in the interim Emma will take Red back to the station and lock her up as she's asked for. Without Charming in the car to argue about Red's better nature, or Granny to mutter curses and unhappily commentate, the start of the car ride is silent. But there are things that Emma needs to know.
"What happened to Peter?"
There is a long moment where the only sound from the back seat is an uncomfortable shift of fabric, and Emma almost thinks she is going to get the answer she's waiting for – a cool 'I don't want to talk about that', or no answer at all.
"I tore him apart," Red says instead, and Emma's heart sinks at her tone. The sheriff understands – she might be the only one who does, in a strange way. It's the same tone she used to take when warning away her social workers, school councillors, and first day trying-too-hard friends. It's the tone of someone trying to convince others of the worst in them, trying to convince themselves. There is more at work here than Billy's murder and what that means for her as the Sheriff, or James as her father, or Red as the girl who turns into a wolf once a month. There is more than just the facts and the obvious. "I loved him, and I ripped him to pieces - because that's what the beast in me does, Emma."
"Did you really?" Emma asks lowly, glancing at the younger woman in the rear view mirror, far less affected than Red obviously expects. The brunette bristles.
"Kill him? Yes."
"No. Love him."
She sees Red open her mouth and pause, words caught in her throat – but then Emma's eyes are back on the road ahead of her, because she is driving, and not trying to get them killed on the road.
"I – of course I did," Red says eventually, but the strength in her voice is wavering, like it's a little too much to think about and she's not entirely sure. Emma wonders if anyone's ever actually asked her about it before. She shrugs.
"If you say so," she says, and she thinks about a magic wardrobe and seventeen years in the foster system, a keychain and a bag of stolen watches, a stint in prison, a set of adoption papers laid out on the table in front of her, waiting to take her child away from her forever. "We often hurt the ones we love." And quieter. "I'm not so sure we kill them."
They make it maybe another block before Red speaks again, more reserved but apparently still just as determined to demonise herself. Emma would huff and give up if it were anyone else – but Red means too much, somehow.
"I am a killer, Emma."
The blonde rolls her eyes. Well. If she wants to keep playing this game.
"Do you think I'm a criminal?"
Emma takes pains not to talk about her past, because she likes to pretend a lot of it never happened. She has a history of characteristic naivety and stupid mistakes, and while they eventually led her to become something else, she doesn't miss the old days – or particularly want to be associated with them. Red seems to be the complete opposite – rooting around for her past faults and bringing them to the foreground of her present life, putting her stains on display.
"What? No. Of course not."
"But I was in jail, right," Emma argues dryly. Red is about to have more insight into her life than pretty much anyone else in Storybrooke, and she's probably not even going to appreciate it. Not for a while yet, anyway. "Arrested for theft. Breaking and entering. I stole things, Red. It happened. I did it - I did a lot of it. So I must be a criminal, right?"
"Emma, I don't –"
"Or does my juvenile delinquency not count now. Is that it?"
"What – no, Emma, it's important, but, I know who you are now," she says, ever so avidly, and the blonde scoffs. She wonders if Red realises just how much she sounds like James in this moment. "And it's not who you were."
"Why?" she asks.
"What?"
"Why, I said. Why is that not who I am now?"
"You grew up!" Red says, lurching forward in her seat as if putting herself closer to Emma will get the point across with a little more force. "You changed, Emma, you made-"
"I made other choices?" the blonde cuts in, and watches in the rear view mirror as the droll comprehension crosses Red's face. She almost wants to laugh. "Snow and James are my parents, but I've never been a princess. I gave birth to Henry, but I was never a mother until I came here. And apparently, even though I used to steal things, I'm not a thief anymore."
"…It's not the same thing."
'The hell it's not,' she wants to say. 'If you're still a killer then I'm still a criminal. If you can't be saved, then neither can I.' But she doesn't. Red doesn't want to hear about redemption and change, Red doesn't need to know about her own self-doubt. So Emma just snorts and keeps her eyes on the road. They don't talk after that, really.
Snow is waiting for them at the station, all anxiety and quiet apologies. "I left Henry with Regina," she says, pulling Henry's story book out of her bag and handing it over gingerly. "He sent the book, like you wanted. I wouldn't trust Regina with much, but with Henry – I mean, she's his mother. And Red needs me."
Emma has her own opinions of what Red needs, but she doesn't protest. Snow won't listen – stubbornness is a family trait, apparently.
"You can lock her in when she's ready," Emma says, handing over the cell keys and shuffling off towards her office with a frown. Interrupting her mother when she's comforting her best friend isn't high on her list of things to do; she had heard enough of "I know you" and "you wouldn't do this" to last a lifetime long before she even met Red – before she moved to Storybrooke, even – and she doesn't need to hear any more of it now.
No, she needs proof, more than faith. Hard evidence. The kind of stuff you can convict for.
Snow can fret over the brunette waitress or the brown wolf or whatever she wants to be this week, and Emma can be the Sheriff and do her job and be clinical and rough and follow her gut and ignore her heart. She's good at that.
She leaves the door open behind her for safety's sake – lord knows how many people like to track their way in and out of her station every day to talk shit or whine, and occasionally even report actual legitimate issues. But she ignores Snow's hushed tones, the probable reassuring words she's spouting, and focusses instead on her computer.
Wolves, she types, and spins around in her chair while the browser loads to go through her filing cabinets. Albert Spencer, she thinks as she tracks through her records, pulls a file and drops it on the desk. "King George", she mutters when she flips Henry's book open.
Emma wonders how different life would be if she'd ever studied this much in school.
She doesn't pay so much attention to the time, but eventually reading about how wolves kill amidst the archaic backstory of Albert Spencer-slash-King George gives her the worst urge for a coffee – and a glass of straight whiskey, but it really isn't the best time for that. The coffee machine in the hall calls to her, and she sighs and elects to stretch her legs; she walks out quietly and queues three cups. Snow is just locking Red in to the cell when she returns, looking oh so tragic while she turns the key, and Emma hands her mother one of the Styrofoam cups wordlessly before passing Red's through the bars.
"Thank you, Emma," comes the quiet reply. Red doesn't even try to look her in the eyes for it, and Emma snorts a little.
"Thank me later," she says, but she doesn't expand on why. She doesn't mention Albert Spencer. Red is only half her friend at the moment – the half that gets a Styrofoam cup of coffee without asking, or a blanket for the cool afternoon behind bars, but not the half that gets senseless speeches on morale and blind faith and potential other avenues. She's pretty sure that Spencer had something to do with the gigantic shitstorm currently pending in the wings, but until she has proof she doesn't want to say anything – she knows how that's gone in the past, with Regina and her shovel, and it is not a mistake she will make twice. Close to the chest, Emma.
And on top of all of that, what she seems to understand more than anyone else – Red doesn't want to be consoled. Words, affirmations, promises don't matter now.
Snow missed that memo.
"Yeah, in the morning – when we've found who really killed Billy."
"You already have." Well, think of the devil and he shall appear, apparently. Albert Spencer, right on time. If Emma weren't suspicious before she certainly would be now. "It's that thing. The she-wolf."
She stares at him for a long moment before answering, fighting down the impulse to make some droll, tasteless comment about ex-kings and privacy, trespassing and arrest.
"And do you have proof of this?" she asks instead, dry and unimpressed, because she's not so sure that she has proof of anything either. Everything is circumstantial at the moment – there are missing pieces, irregularities. It looks like a mess of coincidences and bad timing - and some incredibly bad manufacturing, honestly. She's betting on that part. If Albert Spencer has started this frame job she wants to know which part he's hoping will stick.
"It seems to me that you're allowing your emotions to cloud your judgement," the DA says. Emma wonders how closely he's really been watching if he thinks she's the emotional one here. He has a good poker face, she'll admit, but there's something in his expression, something in his eyes that's just so hollow. Red talks a big game about being a monster, Emma thinks, but she has to wonder if the woman has ever looked at one – something like Spencer, all calculation and ice, and nothing underneath.
Snow bristles somewhere behind her, and Red stands in her cell and says "leave her alone," but she's not a wolf, she's a human being behind bars and hardly intimidating, and Emma ignores her. So does Spencer.
"You're protecting your friend at the peril of everyone else. I knew you'd slip up, outlander. It was only a matter of time."
"Uh-huh." Non-committal. She wants to know where he's going with this.
"Hand her over to me and we'll let the townspeople decide her fate."
Her eyes narrow. She's spent weeks now dealing with the townspeople and their stupid feuds, and their archaic ideas of justice and penance – morons like Spencer who just can't grasp the fact that they have left their world behind. The way they think is not the way the world works. Someday soon she'll find a way of reminding them all of that.
"Did you want that order with or without a print-out of every human rights law applicable in the Northern Hemisphere?" she asks dryly.
"She's not human!"
"Animal welfare law, then, if you're going to be picky," Emma says. She crosses her arms over her chest and stares him down. "I'm not handing anyone over to you, because you're further proving yourself to be clinically insane."
"This town is bigger than you think. If I start telling people that you're putting their lives in danger to protect your own interests you'll have a mutiny on your hands."
Emma can't help it. She snorts.
"I've seen everything that you've done to these people," she says. "All the stories, all the lies – it's all in August's book. You're never going to be able to paint yourself the hero, Spencer." He's close to fuming – she can see it. "Now, you will kindly remove yourself from the premises before I arrest you for trespassing."
"The police station is public property."
"Not when the Sheriff has asked you to leave it."
If his ears could literally steam as he walked out the door they probably would. Emma glares after him until he's gone.
"Emma-"
"Tell James I need to speak with him when he gets in," she interrupts quickly, then trudges back to her office without another word. Red is her friend, and now her ward, but she is also a suspect – and until Emma can prove her innocent that's how things need to stay. She spends twenty minutes filling out forms before James strides into her office, Widow following on his heels. She looks at them both over her desk and leans back in her chair.
"Cannery scene is taken care of," James tells her. "Local CSU has handled it; the body is down in the morgue. All legal and on the books like you wanted."
He sounds more than a little miffed about that, like he doubts it's the right decision. Emma frowns at him. That is the David Nolan in him, she thinks – who doubts his every action and second-guesses his friends. Who would consider doing what is right for the people around him without being morally right at all. He'll remember himself later.
"I had another look at the diner," Widow says when Emma looks her way. "You were right about the... discrepancies. The hinges were hardly ripped from the wall; it looked like they'd been loosened. And there's a scent there, in the kitchen. I hardly picked it up at first, but it was – unfamiliar."
"Did you catch it anywhere else?"
"The Cannery, beneath the blood - barely," Widow says. "And here in the station, now."
Emma sighs, but sits forward in her chair, rifling through the papers on her desk and finding one of her more recent (twenty minutes fresh from the printer) forms. It's almost entirely filled out, and she scrawls in the last of it while James talks.
"What's going on, Emma?"
"I need you," she starts, folding the paper and sliding it across the table, "to take this down to the courthouse. Scrounge up Judge Parr, get him to sign off on a warrant. I settled a family dispute for him last week on rather favourable terms and he owes me a favour – remind him of that if he argues."
James takes the form, unfolds it and scans it through, and glowers at her across the counter. "Spencer? Why? You don't have any conclusive evidence."
"But I do have threatening behaviour to base my concerns off of," she tells him dryly. "He was at the diner last night, and he was here today. If I'm wrong, I'll find nothing, and then so be it. We'll pile a little more dirt on my name and call it a day. But you're going to get me that warrant."
"And what are you going to be doing?"
"Making alternative arrangements for the night," Emma tells him dryly. "Red thinks a jail cell is going to save the rest of the town from her. I don't think it's fit to save her from the rest of the town."
/-\
All in all, Emma thinks, Belle agrees quite readily.
"There were no bite marks on Billy's body," Widow tells the librarian initially, "no claw marks. It looked like more of a hack job than an animal attack, in hindsight. Not like her old kills. Back then, there was never really any doubt." It's an odd method of convincing someone, really – bringing up the old kills to cast doubt on the new one, to make letting a potentially dangerous animal into your home seem less risky. Belle just nods, though, like it's not weird at all.
"I've got some shackles," the librarian says. Emma doesn't even bother to ask. "Hallway closet. Should hold up through her phasing."
Widow ambles off to find them. From Belle's bedroom, Emma can hear Snow's low tones trying to convince Red that nothing is wrong in the world, that it's just another day. Belle is quiet when she gets Emma's attention.
"Do you think she did it?" the brunette asks, slightly morose and genuinely curious.
"No," Emma says. "But I think she could."
It's the same distinction that she thinks Spencer is banking on – what Red has done and what she is capable of doing, and the way they have blurred together in the past. She sighs and links her fingers together to crack her knuckles while Belle frowns thoughtfully.
"Keep your phone on you," the blonde says. "All night. Any problems, call my cell."
When she has the affirmative response she steps towards the bedroom. Snow looks at her when she walks in, cutting off whatever semi-motivational discussion she's attempting to have with her werewolf friend and waiting to hear whatever Emma wants to say to her.
"Could you get home? As much as I actually trust Regina with him, I don't really want her to be the only one around if Henry has another nightmare tonight," the blonde says calmly. Regina's a little crazy sometimes -morally questionable at best - but Emma has no doubts that the woman has their son's best interests at heart all the time. She knows Regina will never do anything to hurt Henry, least of all intentionally – but sometimes these days Henry forgets that. He loves Regina, but he's forgotten how to trust her.
"Red needs me h-"
"I need you," Emma cuts in, harder this time, a flash of steel in her gaze, "to go home and look after your grandson."
Snow is nothing if not loyal, so there's that. Her bond with Red is disconcerting sometimes: Emma has only ever known them as the school teacher and the waitress from Storybrooke who sometimes went out for girls nights together, but they lived a whole other life in a fairytale that sometimes looked more like a horror story, with no one to rely on but each other. Snow looks at Red and sees her best friend, almost sister-figure, comrade in arms.
Family.
Emma has known her for much less of her life. Months. And while she has the title of 'daughter' beneath her name, and Snow sometimes looks at her with stars in her eyes - like she means the world - it is a far less comfortable connection than Snow's with the werewolf. Sometimes Snow regards her in a certain way, and for a moment Emma Swan can convince herself that here is the mother she always wanted who will always put her first, who will always love her more. Other times - like now, when the short-haired brunette looks to be a second away from arguing - some things are made all too clear: she was Mary Margaret's friend, not Snow's, and while she carries relation by blood and wishful thinking Red has years on her. She is a wish in Snow's life - a loss, not an instalment.
They stare at each other for a moment, and Snow is stubborn but Emma is too. She wins.
"You call me the second something goes wrong," Snow warns – and there's the concerned mother, all in the stern tone, as well as the concerned friend. She glances at Red beside her, suddenly awkward. "Not that anything will go wrong. If. If something goes wrong."
Emma just nods, and waits while her mother hugs their friend, whispers some last parting declaration of confidence, before moving over to the blonde. She finds herself caught in something of a bear hug all too suddenly.
"You look after her," Snow whispers, and Emma is still for a moment before she nods. "And be careful."
And then Snow is gone. It is Emma and Red, alone again, sharing space with silence in between them. Emma shuts the door and leans back against it. Red frowns and the blonde eyes her warily.
"I heard what you said to Belle," Red says after a long moment. "What you think."
"You said it yourself," Emma tells her. "You ripped your boyfriend apart. You're capable of it. What else am I supposed to think?"
Red just stares at her, lips parting fractionally, but no words falling out. She collects herself. "Why defend me against Spencer, then? I mean, if you think I'm a monster..."
"I don't think that," the blonde says dryly. "Don't put words in my mouth. I believe we're defined by our choices."
She doesn't say it particularly loudly - doesn't need to. Red can hear. She probably hears everything: whatever conversation Granny is having with Belle in the living room, the cars going past out on the street, a door slamming three blocks over. It is that new cautionary awareness keeping a limit on her volume and her tone – the knowledge that all is not as she has grown to know, that Red is so much more than Ruby. There is magic at work, as ever; complications, new facts, new thoughts. Red's old senses.
Ruby though – Ruby, who was Emma's friend first – is the kind to move forward, cover the ground, hear those tones closer. Emma can see it in her eyes: two different lives, different ways of thinking. It wars with her fear of herself, of what she can do, her nature, her wolf. The girl takes a few steps to cross the room – not close enough to crowd, but enough to appease whatever it is that bubbles up beneath her skin. The blonde's gaze diverts straight down and away from those curious eyes.
"Emma?"
The sheriff doesn't need the prompting. Not really. Emma doesn't like to talk about the past, but sometimes she kind of has to. Maybe it's about time. She crosses her arms over her chest and swallows thickly before she continues.
"It's the first thing you learn in the foster system," Emma tells her after a moment, but she doesn't move her eyes from the floor. "Not how sparingly you should give out your trust, our how jealously you should guard your heart – that comes later. With the third school and the fourth family placement, and the foster father that eventually raises his hand at you."
Red flinches, but Emma only catches it in her peripherals. The brunette's body is taut, eyes locked on her – attentive. She would be; everyone knows Emma doesn't talk about her childhood. Then again, she never really had much of one. She lives in the here-and-now, and everyone knows it, and Emma has found over the years that if she projects enough bluster no one ever even thinks hard enough to ask more. Her history remains just that – history – even to her mother.
"The first thing you learn?" Emma says, and she forces her gaze back up from the floor. Red must be expecting some kind of relatable 'moral-of-the-story' kind of tale, an 'I overcame adversity, so too can you' deal. She's had pep talks all day from the Charmings, from Granny, and she'll probably get one from Belle before sunset, lord knows – but all the 'I know you's and 'you're truly good inside's will only get someone so far if they can't see it themselves, and that's not Emma's plan. "The other kids in the home couldn't care less what your last name is or what story you've got tied to it. They just want to know whether you'll lift the cash from your Director's drawer and join them on the next bus out of town. Your social worker doesn't care if you were born in Maine or dumped there like trash on the side of the road as long as you choose to behave, so they can get rid of you too. And most of your foster families – they don't give a damn who your real parents were, or-" She pauses and exhales, and it almost sounds like a laughing breath, dry and flat and morbid. "-who you are. Doesn't matter. You're just a meal ticket. But god, they like you better if you're never a problem."
She sneers. There are reasons Emma doesn't bring up her past, there are things she likes to forget. She forces her arms down to her sides, steels herself. She is stone, now – not some stupid little kid in a new town and a new school, waiting to get chucked out on her ass again. She's more than that now. She's more than she was then. And the moment that this was about her, that Red could pretend it was all about Emma and not about her own shitty situation, is gone.
"You are defined by your choices, Red. What you say, what you do. Not by your blood. Not by your titles."
There is a long pause. Red says nothing. She probably doesn't entirely understand what she is being told – what it means to Emma, how it pertains to her. What is the point, really – where is the part that sticks? The silence seems to stretch out – Red trying to figure out what to say and Emma just waiting. But really, it's not long at all.
"I could stand here talking until my face turns blue," Emma grumbles, shakes her head, dull-toned, and stares at Red: harsh, hard, calculating, sad. "Keep telling you what I see in you. Snow can tell you how good you are and Belle can plead to your better nature, and Charming can reassure you as much as he wants – and Albert Spencer can muster his torches and his pitchforks and call you a monster – but none of it matters. The only thing that does is what you have already decided. We can say whatever we want, but this one's on you."
Emma toes this precarious line between empathy and disconnection, and she can see the realisation as it dawns in Red's eyes – and the outrage.
"You think I want to be a monster?" she asks, and Emma quirks an eyebrow, because, yes, that's the implication. "You think I would choose that?"
The words rush past her lips, righteous anger that Emma should ever think it of her. And Emma is not surprised, because even if Red spent all day sulking and trying to convince everyone of the worst it her, hearing someone actually admit to believing it in any small way is something she is not prepared for. She asks in outrage, but she is not prepared for the answer she gets.
"No." Red glares and turns away, so Emma says it to her back, all in that quiet, tired tone, underlying steel, all perception and frustration. "But I think no one ever really holds a wolf accountable for its actions," Emma explains. Red's head dips forwards, heavy, ever-burdened. "And a wolf will never regret a hunt, will never feel guilt for its prey, for the way it lives."
Emma steps forward, away from the door but no further. Red tenses, expecting an approach, a touch, a comforting hand to the shoulder. But it never comes. Emma doesn't want to play that game, and Red doesn't need it from her. She distances herself from that place, that moment of exposure, where she dredged up her past for a purpose Red probably doesn't entirely understand.
"I don't think you want to be a monster, Red," Emma says quietly, but now all the strength is gone. She's so tired of dealing with everyone else's magical, archaic problems. She isn't trying to convince anyone – she never was. She is simply stating a fact. "I think you just don't want to feel guilty any more."
There is a long silence, and Emma isn't entirely sure if it is because she is waiting for a response or for an excuse to leave. Red doesn't look at her, though, even when the brunette finally gets her words in order.
"You're cruel, Emma," she says – whispers, almost, and she sounds angry. Good on her. "Granny wanted me to be Red, and my mom wanted me to be the wolf. And Snow told me, 'why not be both? Why not toe the line?' and I was fine with that."
But now, here is Emma, standing behind her at the crossroads and saying it's her choice to make. Cruel. Red is lost, like Emma was once – fresh out of prison, sick, with nowhere to go and every other avenue open to her. Red doesn't know what to do.
Emma wants to be sympathetic; she doesn't know how to.
"And where does Ruby fit into the equation?" Emma whispers, more to herself than Red, another grain of salt to the wound. Ruby, the girl she knew first, the friend she had first. Ruby, who was a shadow of what Red is now. A 'copy', somehow, but really someone else entirely. She misses Ruby like she misses Mary Margaret. James stood on a truck once and told everyone 'we are both' as though it were really so simple – and sometimes, truly, she looks at him and sees David Nolan, and his foolishness. But those times get fewer and farther in between as time goes by, and the people who she knew, who meant the most to Emma for the first time in so many years, turned into strangers with the same faces.
"What do you want me to do?" Red asks her – harsh, finally jerking around to look at her, to glare and plead. Emma purses her lip. The time for coddling and direction and being guided along by the hand is long past. It needs to stop.
"Belle is going to offer you her living room for the night," she says stiffly, because it's already been discussed. Red's heard it already, super-sensitive hearing and all. "I'm going to track down a lead. Do what you want, Red."
It's grudging and accommodating and aloof all at the same time. Emma should get a damned medal for it. She doesn't wait for one; she leaves.
/-\
Spencer is leaving his house when she arrives. She flashes the warrant in front of his face and he scowls at her, but leaves the door open.
"Go for it. I have things to do."
He hops in his car and drives off before Emma can mention that her warrant covers that too. Bastard. Emma can only think that he should have been angrier. He didn't seem the least bit worried, and she's fairly certain that she won't find anything on the premises. He's a psychotic moron, but she's pretty sure he's not actually that dumb.
She looks over the house quickly – half-asses it, really, but she knows, just knows, that there's nothing there to find. She pulls out her phone and dials Charming's number while she rifles through the files on Spencer's desk and scowls when it nearly rings out. James picks up at the last second. Neither of them are in the mood for conversation starters, apparently.
"Found anything?"
"Not so far," Emma tells him. "And I don't think I will. The son of a bitch left as soon as I got here. I need you to find his car. If we want evidence of anything that's where we're gonna find it."
"How do you know?" James asks, and Emma thinks of Spencer's car, parked across the road from the diner that morning, and the stupid smug presence that the slimy ex-king exudes, and her teeth grind a little before she replies. He's not so stupid as to leave the axe lying in his living room, but he might be dumb enough – and self-assured enough – to leave it in his car.
"Just trust me," she says. "It'll be there."
There is a pause.
"We have another problem," James says eventually, and she only offers silence to prompt him. "Granny's hearing what seems to be an angry mob six blocks over."
"Well then." Emma drops the casework she's looking at and grabs at the car keys in her pocket. "Let's double time this thing, don't you think? Tell Belle to be on mob-watch. One hand on the phone at all times. And call me if you find the car first."
/-\
By happenstance, Emma finds the car before James does – though only by minutes. He jogs around the corner with Granny just as Emma is getting out of the patrol car.
"Do we have a key?" the deputy asks, and Emma doesn't even look at him when she pulls the jigglers from her pocket and starts to screw around with the lock.
"Do we really need one?" she asks dryly.
It's not even ironic, really, that the sheriff should walk around with a set of lock-picking tools – just pathetic. She's spent her day telling Red to choose what she wants to be as if the past doesn't matter, but eleven years hasn't made the feel of a pick between her fingers any less familiar. She breaks into Albert Spencer's car with the weight of a warrant behind her, but the experience of a criminal decade moving her hands. Practice made perfect – before Storybrooke, and before this. And Emma can wear a badge, and work under the pretence of the same 'law' she used to work so very hard to undermine, but she breaks Spencer's trunk open and feels every bit the criminal she did eleven years before, clad in an orange jumpsuit and signing her son away across the table.
She scowls.
Her phone rings, even as David pushes past her, rooting through the trunk and unearthing the spare-tyre compartment. But there's no spare there at all – only a red cloak and a bloody axe, and Emma doesn't need super senses or a DNA test to know that it's Billy's blood, and the murder weapon. The scowl deepens, and she steps away and lets Charming and Granny speculate while she answers her cell. Belle's panicked tone tells her everything she needs to know.
"She got out."
There's a howl from somewhere else in the town that only backs that up.
"I'll be over there to let you free as soon as we've stopped the mob from killing Ruby," Emma tells her quickly, and hardly waits for the affirmative before hanging up. Granny bolts around the corner, crossbow in hand, following whatever scent she's got at her nose and whatever sound is assailing her ears, and Emma follows with James at her heels in kind.
The mob beats them.
Albert Spencer has a gun in hand, raised and pointing at a form in the shadows, and there is not enough time. But Granny is quick on the trigger of her crossbow and she knocks his aim off and somehow manages to blow something up across the alley. The explosion pauses the crowd, but Emma knows it won't stop them. That part is up to her, and to James – the sheriff and her deputy, the princess and her father. There are so many faceless people she will piss off in the next ten minutes, and Emma can hardly find it in herself to care. She just wants it to be over, whatever way it ends.
Charming doesn't have to nudge a single person out of the way; Emma shoves through the mob, leaves it jarred and parted in her wake – a clear path, straight to his fake father. And James isn't even given time to deal with that.
The old man has his gun drawn and raised again to the darkness, to the snarls in the shadows, the gold eyes peering out of the alleyway, obviously wanting to get his shot off before he can be further interrupted. Emma doesn't hesitate, though. Her gun leaves its holster, draws up level with the back of Albert Spencer's greyed head.
"Drop your weapon now or I'll put a bullet in your skull," she says, and it's cold, harsh. Here is the saviour, the sheriff. More than that, here is the girl underneath, sparing trust and unflinching loyalty to those who eventually earn it. She isn't pleading for him to stop, isn't begging him not to make her take his life. If anything, it seems she has no distinguishable qualms about it. He is a threat to her friend, to her family, and if he does not stop she will put him down with a clear conscience.
Does that make her any less good? Or does it just make her different?
"You think this crowd will let you stop me?" Spencer – George – asks, all haughty tone and full bravado. Same as ever. "She is a monster. And I am their king."
"Not here."
There is nothing but finality in her voice when she says it, no room for argument. And the old man stares at her with something in his eyes that says it hits him, just for a moment. He is not a king in this world – just a common man with a law degree that he's apparently forgotten in his quest for torches and pitchforks. And now a killer. Emma does not understand these people and their delusions of grandeur, their birth rights, their kings and queens. Her world left their monarchies behind centuries ago – that is not the world they live in now. Not anymore.
"You all seem to have forgotten," she says loudly, making herself heard over the murmur of the crowd, James standing behind her as protection. "This is not your world." The crowd surges, and she hears it and feels it, but her eyes are locked on Spencer. She discharges one round up to the sky to bring them back to silence. Relative silence, anyway – Red yips and snarls somewhere back in the alley – but that's not the problem she's dealing with now. "We traded lordships for law and democracy. You elected me as sheriff. So you can play by the rules or get the hell out of my town. Assuming I don't shoot you first."
Her finger twitches on the trigger, and Spencer seems to realise how horribly serious she is. He lowers his weapon. James moves forward, pulling his handcuffs and dropping Red's cloak over Emma's outstretched arm.
"Albert Spencer," he says loudly, yanking the man's hands behind his back and clasping the steel cuffs tightly around his wrists. "I am hereby placing you under arrest for the murder of the mechanic, Billy. You have the right to remain silent – though considering the bloody axe in your car I don't think it will do you any favours…"
That's all that Emma really takes the time to listen to. As soon as Spencer is detained she holsters her gun and walks forward, further into the alley, into the dark. And then she stops, three metres away from glowing gold eyes, similarly cast in shadow. She holds Red's cloak idly in one hand, letting it drag on the ground, and makes no attempt to throw it out to Red, to whoever she is now. Granny has a crossbow trained their way, she knows, in case all else fails, but Emma knows they're not going to need it. Red goes home by choice tonight or no one goes home at all. This is the ultimatum they've been given. Emma wonders if she's the only one who knows that.
"This is what you're here for, right?" she says, not too loud because Red doesn't need it. She can hear. She knows. Emma's not talking about the cloak twisted tightly between her fingers; she's talking about the standoff, the crowd, the torches and pitchforks, the loud anger. Somewhere beneath the instinct and the fear she thinks Red understands. Somewhere beneath the fur and the fangs is the unhappy girl who decided to come here tonight. "This is your choice. But I'm not living with it." The growling starts, some kind of attempt to ward and warn and intimidate. But Emma doesn't see just a wolf – she sees the guilty girl. Her friend, who she truly adores. Who needs that shock to her system to get it started again. "You want to be a monster, Red, you start with me."
"Emma!"
"Mom!"
Snow and Henry, somewhere behind her, nearer the crowd, listening in, horrified. She wonders when they got there. Waiting for the "I know you" that anyone else would give, the explanation of Spencer's crimes, and Ruby's better nature. Emma's not going to give any of that. She knows better.
Red spends all her time toeing the line between human and beast, girl and wolf. Worries too much about the basics to notice the guilt that fuses itself to her spine and drags her down into all the dark places. She pretends, every day, to be normal, to be okay with who she is. But she still hasn't decided who that is just yet. And if she won't do it of her own accord, then Emma will make her. Somehow, she knows she's the only one who can.
"You owe me this much," Emma says, and there is no gentle tone to soothe the beast. Just the cold, the ice she remembers from her childhood. All the force she remembers from the first time she fought in school, all the provocation she gave when she was sixteen and stupid and she had her first run in with the cops. Red snarls at her and lurches a few steps out of the shadows, teeth bared, all the promise of pain, of following through. But Emma still only sees the wounded animal trying to warn her off, to cover the weakness, too prideful to turn its course but too caring to cut her down.
Emma doesn't falter. She's not the kind. It's about time Red makes her choice.
"Do it, Red."
"Emma!"
"Kill me!"
The growling cuts off with a whimper, the wolf flinches back as if struck, and still Emma doesn't move other than raising her hand to halt her family behind her. The wolf whimpers and snarls and paces in front of her, eyes locked on and never leaving, caught between moving forward and running back. Emma waits for a short time – ignores the noise behind her, the crowd, the burning torches. There are only golden eyes. There is only Red.
"Turn into what you fear most," she says eventually, quietly so only Red can hear, wolf senses and all. She gestures forward ever so slightly with the cloak in her hand. "Or turn back."
There is the hesitation, the contemplation, and finally, decision. The wolf moves forward, less of a stalk and more of a sad drag with every step, straight to Emma's side, to the red cloak in her hand. The growls have since petered out to huffs and whimpers. This is a shamed submission. Forfeit. This is Ruby, Red, the wolf that is a part of her. All she is at heart, as a whole. This is her first step. It's probably going to be her hardest. Emma doesn't move to cover the wolf until it tugs at the cloak at her side. And moments later it is Red kneeling next to her, beneath the crimson fabric, not her other form.
Red breathes out her name, but Emma halts whatever string she's trying to follow with a low "I didn't think so," and then that's it. That's all she wants it to be. That's all she can let it be now.
Then Henry is colliding with her, wrapping his vice-like arms around her waist, and she huffs at the impact. Snow goes to Red first, kneeling in front of her, hands on her shoulders, catching her gaze and checking that she's okay. There are muttered words before Granny makes her approach, taking Snow's place and allowing the younger woman to move her focus onto the blonde. Her hug strangles, and Emma's entirely certain it's on purpose. Even if she wasn't, the "put yourself in a situation like that again and I will skin you alive, you gave me a freaking heart attack," that Snow whispers in her ear kind of solidifies the notion.
And if she grips Snow just as tightly back and chokes back her own fears before they pass her lips, then that's okay. No one has to know.