Part trois.
/
Emma doesn't go home that night.
She stuffs Albert Spencer in the back of the patrol car and sticks around to yell at the townspeople until the mob disperses, wishes Henry a goodnight and sweet dreams and tells James and Snow to go home and take the kid with them and says she'll see them later. Red stares at her through the whole conversation, seeming so small beneath her cloak, wide-eyed, and she calls Emma's name quietly as soon as Snow and James have turned and stepped away – but Spencer grumbles and babbles angrily in the back of the car and Emma shrugs her off.
"Go home, Red," she says, because she's exhausted, and she still has a load of paperwork to do, a prisoner to watch over for the night, a public statement to write for the morning. She's so, so tired, but she has so much left to do; she doesn't want to talk to Red, doesn't want to talk about any of this at all. The moment is over and the adrenaline has left her, and all that is left beneath her tattered, battered shell is weariness and a torrent of horrible, messy emotions that she doesn't know how to deal with.
Red seems to curl in on herself, dipping her head at the dismissal, and Emma might feel bad for that if it weren't for the rage and the fear and the sadness that are roiling within her, half an hour too late and confusing as ever. The young werewolf follows Snow away, and Emma watches her go coolly – but maybe she seems more haggard than cold.
The drive to the station is uneventful, despite the raving, raging man in the back seat and the short stop she makes at the library to release Belle from her shackles. Eventually, though, and still before midnight, she shoves Albert Spencer into the same cell Red occupied only twelve hours ago and locks the door behind him.
"It'll never stick," he says staring at her through the bars, clenching his old hands around smooth iron. "How are you going to sell it to a jury? Conspiracy to kill a disgusting half-breed? A mythical creature, in this world?"
"You're forgetting," Emma tells him with a scowl. "Red wasn't the victim here. Billy was." His face goes through every other shade of red. "You followed him out of the diner last night. Convinced him to meet you at the cannery – probably a fake call about a broken down car to get him out there with the truck. And when he got there, you butchered him. Then you went back. Loosened the screws on the freezer door at the diner and let Red out so it would look like she did it."
"You have no proof," he says, but it's coming on one o'clock in the morning now, and all the colour is draining from his face. He is a cruel king, and a psycho, it's apparent that he is far from unflappable. She stares at him coldly.
"We'll get the phone records in the morning. I'd bet you used your own cell," she says, ignoring him. "Maybe you were so sure you'd succeed. In killing Ruby, and – I don't know –usurping my family, or whatever it is that you've got going on in your head. It made you sloppy." She sees his fists clench a little tighter around the cell bars, knuckles whitening beneath the station's fluorescents. "We found the axe in your car. You didn't get rid of it – didn't even bother to wipe the blood off. You just left it there. Forensics are going to match the blood type. Anyone who looks twice at Billy's remains will know that it wasn't an animal attack. You were so eclipsed with framing Red, you forgot to cover your own tracks. And here was I thinking you were supposed to be some kind of cunning hard-ass bastard."
He scowls at her, but it's not as frightening as she knows he wants it to be.
"What are you going to do, Sheriff?" he asks snidely. "Lock me up, like your father would? Twenty to life? I have powerful friends – friends with magic. They'll get me out before you can even draw your gun."
She stares at him and shakes her head. Pathetic.
"I already told you," Emma replies drolly. "I am not my father."
She turns her back and sets her sights on the coffee machine, ready to set herself up for a sleepless night on overwatch. She thinks of James – her do-gooder deputy and the fragile thought of him being her dad. His optimism, reverence of life, strict moral stature. And she thinks of every other man who ever took her in through her youth – for some sense of misguided charity or for want of a paycheck. The third, who smiled at her over a dinner table for six months until things got hard and he sent her back. The fifth, who drank his weight in scotch and slapped her for speaking out of turn. The first, only a flash of a face in her mind, kind, lovely, old – met his time, gone now.
I'm not any of them.
/-\
James comes in at nine-thirty the next morning. Emma can hear his key scrabbling in the lock of the station door. The sound echoes through the air vent, straight into her office, but she doesn't particularly care to go give him a hand. It's been over twenty-four hours since she last slept, and she's not in such a giving mood.
"Emma? Have you been here all night?"
She doesn't really bother looking up at him when he makes it to her office door, just gestures idly at the empty chair on the other side of the desk and scribbles down another line on her copious amount of paperwork. If he thinks about it, she knows he'll realise that someone had to stay on and watch over their cell guest overnight. She hopes he doesn't ask about the locked front door, though – she doesn't fancy the idea of describing the way she cringed when the cry of a roaming wolf reached her ears at two in the morning, or how quickly she'd moved to lock it (her) out.
"Did you know," she says instead, dryly, "the state of Maine abolished the death penalty in 1887? Of course. What was I expecting? In hindsight, the idea of Storybrooke manifesting itself in a state that still utilises capital punishment is entirely infeasible." There's silence for a long moment.
"Emma," he says again, cautious. "I don't think I like what you're implying. It goes against... everything we believe in."
"Everything you believe in," she scoffs. She signs her name at the bottom of the page in her lap and slaps it down on the desk, finally bringing her tired eyes back up to her deputy. "I don't know how the world worked where you came from," she tells him simply. "And in all honesty, as much as I try to learn, I probably never will." He frowns at her, somewhere between disappointment and disapproval, and she sighs. "You can call it wrong if you want, James, but you've never been outside of this town. I didn't grow up in a world where good and evil were so clearly defined. There was no magic, no knight in shining armour, no family comfort. None of that. I grew up in a complete moral grey area, where good people do bad things and bad people do good things, and sometimes the ends actually justify the means. I don't believe that my personal sense of morality should be the end of it all. I believe in the law."
Even though I used to break it.
"Then you can't kill him."
"I know," she says shortly. "Doesn't mean I don't want to." James stares at her as if she is a stranger. That's fine. She really is. He hasn't known her that long, after all. "We live in a town that doesn't fit the rest of this world. We're separate. The rules of both worlds apply here, and that's a problem. We have magic now. There are people who possess powers or connections that give them the delusion of being above the law. And in truth, it's not such a delusion. If I ever had real cause to arrest Regina, I would have no way of keeping her. She'd just smoke herself right back out of the station – if she didn't kill me first. If Red truly was a monster I would have no way of stopping her rampage short of shooting her in the head."
James stares at her like he's finally realising the problem, like he's finally coming to terms.
"I want Albert Spencer dead," Emma tells him simply, "because he won't stop. Because he will keep finding a way out, and coming back at us for another go, until he gets what he wants. And as proven, he doesn't care who gets in the way. He killed a man, clinically and violently. How else am I meant to stop him?"
They sit silently for a while, and Emma sips at her hundredth cup of coffee from the night. She's had it for a while now, and it's hardly lukewarm, but it does the job.
"I guess, if he knows too much," James hazards quietly, and glances behind him, through the windows of her office to Spencer, huddled in his cell. "There's really only one thing we can do..."
Emma just scowls and grabs her phone. She'll call the mayor, she thinks, and some of her courthouse associates. James stares at her, all Bambi eyes, and all she can think is 'where's your morality now?' She's the Sheriff, the one in charge, so of course she has to be the bearer of bad news. Regina picks up on the second ring, all dulcet tones and familiar snideness, and Emma sighs because she's too exhausted for this shit.
"Yeah," is all she says. "I need you to come into the station. There's something we need to discuss."
"What, Miss Swan?" Regina – shockingly still the Mayor despite the general public outrage after all the magic and memories returned. "Is honestly so important? I could be busy."
"And I am busy," Emma snarks back. "But we need to reassess a couple of points of criminal law as it applies to our time crash of a town. And quickly."
She can practically hear the woman scowling over the phone, but Regina still shows up twenty minutes later, perfectly done up and with several of their mutual courthouse contacts in tow. Emma ushers them all into her office and leaves James outside to watch his sulking fake-father. Then she sells them the worst idea in the world.
"You realise no one can sign off on this officially," one of the court men tells her, and she nods. "What you're proposing would border on illegal if it actually made any sense on paper."
"Of course. It can't get out of this town. Storybrooke is already suspicious enough as is," Emma says. "Unfortunately though, as proven, this town can't be properly governed by official policy."
"And how do we know you won't abuse this power, Miss Swan?" Regina asks, ever-unimpressed and probably mildly frightened. "Use your stunning sense of personal judgement to take out anyone who poses a threat to you. Perhaps even just that you simply don't like."
They both ignore all the eyes that seem to turn pointedly Regina's direction. That's no secret.
"Because it won't be a personal decision," Emma grumbles. "Pick a test group. A jury, if you will. As a response to any incidents where a person or group of persons utilise magic or some other power to act outside the law with intent to cause harm, they can decide if it's necessary. I just act out the sentence."
"And in the case of Albert Spencer?"
"I'll recuse myself, if it'll make you happy," the Sheriff offers dryly. "It's true. He threatened me, my family. My son. I'm biased, yes. But I'll also remind you all that in the last three days Albert Spencer has showed a complete disregard for the well-being of every person in this town, by releasing a potentially lethal creature from it's cage for the purpose of self-advancement. He was willing to put everyone's lives on the line for the sake of popular favour. More obviously – and I'll tell you this with absolute certainty, though I understand if you would rather wait for solid forensic evidence – he murdered the mechanic. Took to him with an axe, and chopped him in half. And for as long as he supplies himself with the thought of kingship and regal blood, magic and revenge, he will continue on this vendetta, regardless of who gets caught in the crossfire."
The group exchange glances, and Regina looks sufficiently cowed by the reference to their son. She nods, trying for stoic.
"All in favour of passing this judgement on Mister Spencer?" Regina asks stiffly, and Emma watches as every hand raises, unforgiving. She is half-relieved, and half – something else. "Very well. Get it done, Miss Swan."
Emma swallows thickly and nods, and all of the small group assembled stand and forward out of her office. Not one of them looks at Albert Spencer on the way out. That's fine, she thinks. She doesn't really think she can stand to, either. James comes in once they're gone and studies her quietly while she sinks back in her seat.
"You didn't get it?"
She stares at him, sullen. "Oh. I got it."
He seems to bite the inside of his cheek, uncomfortable with his own idea. "I can – I can do it. You've been up all night, Emma. You should get home."
Emma just shakes her head and stands up, grabbing her jacket from the back of her chair and glaring at the papers on her desk. She's twenty-eight, and strong. She doesn't need him to protect her. This may have been his idea but it was her decision, and she will follow it through.
"I've stayed up longer in the past," she tells him simply, and watches as he seems to sag a little on his feet. "Help me get him in the car and then get on with the rest of your day. I'll go home after."
James seems to realise she's set on it, and doesn't seem to know how to talk her out of it, and so instead he helps her get Spencer out of his cage and into handcuffs, and then out into the back of Emma's car. She drives off before her deputy can ask if she's sure.
"Where are we going?" the man in the backseat asks, and Emma doesn't bother to answer, taking every turn to get her on the main road out of town. The buildings reside, and then they're driving down the forest road, and Spencer takes a little longer to catch on than she expects, but he gets there. She pulls up at the side of the road five metres from the town border spray painted brightly across the road, and Emma gets out to pull him out of the backseat. "You're going to kill me," he says, staring at her with disbelieving eyes.
Not conventionally, she nearly says. Not really. But she doesn't, because he's not lying.
"You were right," Albert Spencer says, and she sees the steel seep into his eyes, trying to cover the fear. She chokes back all the good in her like she chokes back the bile. It almost sounds like respect in his voice when he says, "You're nothing like your father."
She pushes him over the line.
/-\
Emma's haggard when she gets home. Twenty-nine hours and counting. She staggers into the apartment, glad that James is at the station and Snow is at the school with Henry, finds her way to her room (doesn't remember the trek) and collapses on her bed. She only wakes up when her roommate, biologically her mother, knocks lightly on the door and decides to intrude.
"Emma?" Snow asks, and all she gets in return is a wordless grumble. "It's almost dinner."
The blonde just breathes quietly for a few moments, contemplating the options. Sleep is a big one. She really wants it. But then, it's also been more than a day since she remembers eating and she should probably get some food. She considers it, nearly convinces herself, but –
"Red's here," Snow says, and it sounds idle but maybe it's actually a warning and maybe her mother is trying to protect her, now, in this moment. Not from Red, because Snow's never believed the wolf to be a danger. So, from herself then. Emma shakes her head, face down into her pillow.
"Sleeping," she grumbles back. "Feel sick."
She hears Snow sigh, but she can't argue. If she has any idea what happened today – what Emma did – she'll let it go. She'll understand it's not really a lie. As soon as Emma was awake enough to remember, she wanted to throw up and scrape it all away. Snow buzzes around at the edge of her room but can't seem to make herself come closer, and part of Emma is relieved but part of her hates it too.
"I'll save something for when you're feeling better," Snow tells her instead, gently and from a distance. "Maybe Henry can go stay with Regina tonight?"
The school teacher seems to wait for an answer, but the blonde woman just curls into herself and pulls her blanket up to her face, and after another moment the door closes and Emma knows she's gone. She cringes beneath her blankets and forfeits to sleep.
That's fine, she thinks while she's drifting. I've never needed comfort anyway.
/-\
She wakes up an hour or so before sunrise and raids the fridge for leftovers. They fill her stomach, but something in her still feels hollow. Broken.
How familiar.
She does what she's always done best: she runs. Changes into sweats in her dark room and takes off out of the door with a torch in her hand and her blood rushing in her ears. There's a trail through the woods that she's used once or twice (on the days where she would rather work her muscles than her liver), and she takes to it for a half hour, following her torchlight through the trees and ignoring all the sounds of nature. The path is well-used – not a lot to trip on – and that's good, because the sky is hardly lightening. She avoids any turn that will take her to the orange line that marks the town border. She doesn't need that reminder.
But then she hears something over the heartbeat pounding in her ears – a quiet growl, almost a purr – and whirls on the spot to see that familiar shadow skulking out of the trees near her, all fur and bared canines. The tail wags and the creature steps towards her, and she knows it's Red, logically, and Red likely won't ever hurt her – not like that – but that doesn't mean she really wants to deal with the girl, or the wolf, or the storybook character, or anything that she is, or anything that she represents. Emma nearly trips over herself trying to get away, bolts through the woods faster than she ever has in her life. The sad yowl that follows her nearly distracts her from the fact that she's crying. Not quite.
Somehow she winds up on the beach, sitting on the sand and inhaling the smell of salt while the sun finally peeks over the horizon. A new day. But it feels a lot like the last few, just with a little extra weight. She feels the breeze against her skin, cooling the sweat, and closes her eyes against the distant glow.
Criminal, she thinks. You lied, you stole, and now you've done this.
She doesn't move until the other morning runners start to make their way down. Then she gets up and goes home, and leaves the sound of footsteps squeaking through the sand behind her.
It's a new day.
/-\
She spends most of the next few days doing paperwork and responding to phone calls about shoplifting and street side arguments. She sees Henry once, after school lets out, when she tells him to stay with his other mother for a little while, because she's bogged down at work and doesn't have a lot of time. That's not entirely true. Part of her – the part that doesn't handle emotions well and fears interconnection – just doesn't want the responsibility. She's still new to this mothering business, and she's not that good for it, even without the wave of self-loathing that came in with the tide and the full moon. Regina is an evil sorceress from a faraway land, but Emma is a thief, a bully, a criminal, and while neither of them are great role models, somehow she feels like the worst of the two. Another part – the flinching moral compass – wants him to stay with Regina and teach her something new, some other way, so Emma will never have to toss her across the town borders too.
James hovers, and she pretends not to notice while she's writing up incident reports and stupid forms, and grabbing coffees from the station's machine. Eventually, while they're driving out to deal with another stupid domestic that has to do with bad history and stolen chickens in a past life, he musters up the guts to talk to her.
"How'd it go?" he asks cautiously and she almost ignores him. "The other day. With Spencer. You never said."
She thinks about it for a few seconds – considers telling him about the way her stomach roils whenever she thinks about it and how she dreamed of orange spray paint the night before. She considers it, and that's more than she can say of most days. But then she shoves it aside and looks for the least personal answer she can find.
"Our DA is safely ensconced in the mental ward down at the hospital, amnesia diagnosis pending," she says idly. She doesn't even glance at James. She hasn't known him long, but she knows him well enough to know he'll be staring at her with searching eyes, always wanting to be the hero and fix the ache. He can't. It's too late for that.
"I could have done it," he offers gently, like he knows what she's thinking, like he understands. Emma just sniffs and pulls the car up outside their house call.
"No," she says, "you couldn't." Because she knows better. James has too many moral lines in the sand, that criss-cross and wash away with the tide to be drawn again in the morning. Conditional. But he could never bring himself to push Spencer over the line, and she knows it – and he might not, now or ever, but it's the truth. James is not ruthless, but Emma's grown up in a world where she's had to be, and, "I have to take responsibility for my own decisions. I made the call."
She leaves him there like she leaves all the things that could possibly matter, because she doesn't know how to make a conversation like that work. She doesn't know how to make any conversation work.
He meets her at the door, and doesn't say anything more on the matter. Twenty minutes and four brutal offers of an overnight in a jail cell seem to calm down whatever dumb problem the residents are having, and once the whole thing's been sorted out diplomatically, Emma scoots back out the door and into the patrol car, eager to get to the station and get her paperwork done. The sooner it's over, the sooner she can go home and sleep. They're halfway back to the station when James decides to start again – something different, now, but equally uncomfortable.
"Red's worried about you," he says – wary, testing the water. Emma frowns and taps her thumbs on the steering wheel, and he pushes forward, both feet in. "She thinks you've been avoiding her for the last few days." Emma doesn't deny it because it's not wrong. James seems to wait for her to say something, and continues tentatively, "she says you're not returning her calls. Thinks she scared the shit out of you the other night, and you're not going to forgive her for it. She thinks you hate her."
There's a silence – nothing but the low hum of the radio between them while he waits for her to say something, to prove him wrong, to prove Red wrong. She chooses not to.
"I know you," he says, and she cringes. "You wouldn't have stood in front of her like that if you really thought, for even a second, that she would go for the throat."
That term again. 'I know you'. Like he said to Red three days ago, like her teacher said when she bombed her ninth grade chemistry mid-term, like that one friend who called her out when she tried out smoking, like her case worker said to her every time she was shipped back in to the office for a lull between foster homes, another upset, another complaint, another black mark in her history. 'I know you' – could have done better, been smarter, tried harder, settled down, stopped running, stopped yourself. The stranger of a cellmate who watched her while she stared at the growing bump beneath her own orange jumpsuit and considered keeping it – 'I know you know better than this'.
She's nearly thirty now, and faith has hardly gotten her anywhere at all. It certainly didn't drag her out past a mob and into a dark alley, in front of a wolf that was so close to biting back. She knew Ruby well enough, but she doesn't know Red, and she doesn't know these strangers who came in with purple smoke to steal her friends faces and lock them away just when she wanted them most. Not for a second did she stand in front of Red thinking that she wouldn't do it – because Emma always knew that she could. She's had too many little lies in her life, now. She scoffs a little before she speaks and undoes the seatbelt to make her escape.
"You don't know me at all."
/-\
She dreams about the dark, a glint of sharp teeth, gold eyes, snarls and hot breath. Albert Spencer laughs, and she pushes him past spray paint and tar.
Emma wakes sweaty and shivering, and runs until dawn.
/-\
Henry comes over for dinner, and they eat and talk, and he tells Emma all about his school day, and she enjoys the way his voice drowns out Snow and Charming and their worried little looks at each other. The later it gets the more Henry glances at the couch, and he looks so very disappointed when Emma cuts in to offer him a lift home.
"I thought I could stay the night," he says, and he looks a little wounded, and she herds out of the apartment and into the car and away from her roommates who think they're her parents.
"You're my son," she tells him while she navigates the streets. "I carried you to term, and gave birth to you. It's my blood in your veins. But Regina's your mother, too."
"She's not-"
"She's not the mother you wanted," Emma cuts in, and thinks of her own. The first, and the third, and the seventh – who bought a bottle of wine for herself every Friday and polished it off before ten – the years in foster homes, and Snow. She thinks of the social worker that took her case for four years, talking her through school and the gaps between placements, and her track coach in tenth grade who told her to run like it meant something and gave her a lift home on rainy days – more of a mother than all of them combined. "But she's the one you have. And she's been good to you, Henry."
"She's evil," Henry argues. "The Evil Queen."
Emma tries her hardest not to scoff. "You're eleven," she says. "You're not old enough to debate morality with me." He huffs, and she nearly smiles at his stubbornness. "Nothing in this world is purely black and white," she tells him gently. "I'm not the good guy, Henry. I've hurt people. I've stolen things. And Regina – she's not always going to be the bad guy, kid. There's more to her than that – she just needs you to help her see it."
"Shouldn't she be strong enough to do it herself?" he asks, the picture of petulance, and now she does scoff.
"Being an adult has never meant having your shit together," she explains, wholly candid, and when she glances at her son he stares back at her with wide eyes and blinks. She sighs. "You need to give Regina a little more credit. And if you can't do that -" she pauses to take a breath and thinks of Albert Spencer and his missing half. "-then you need to ask yourself if you can live without her in your life."
"Like you're asking yourself about Red?"
If she hits the brake a little too quickly pulling up in front of Regina's place, she can't be blamed. She's quiet for a short time, staring at him shrewdly before she sighs and taps her thumbs against the steering wheel.
"You're too much like your mother," she says, and ignores him when he asks 'which one?'. He goes inside, and Emma drives home, and Snow is waiting for her on the front step of their apartment building, pensive and a little morose. She pats the empty space beside her when she sees Emma, and the blonde hesitates for a moment before taking a seat.
"Red's worried about you," Snow offers after a long moment, and Emma sighs, resting her chin in her hand and slumping a little in the cold night air.
"I know."
"What happened the other night?" Snow asks. She's less cautious with her words than her husband – and far more perceptive. "You put on one hell of a show – carrying the investigation and talking Red down. But you're obviously upset. Is it about Spencer?"
Emma thinks about it before she bothers to respond, and frowns before she opens her mouth. "No," she says, and finds she's not lying. Sure, she's upset. She killed a part of him out on the town line, throwing him past the barrier and watching the magic rip the fairytale life right out of him. And it makes her sick, still, and runs around in her dreams, and probably will for the rest of her life. But that's not the problem here – it's got nothing to do with what Snow's asking, and nothing to do with Red. "I chose his sentence, and I carried it out. I'll get over it."
Snow mulls it over and says "Red, then," like it's finite. It is. "It was brave, provoking her like you did – and very stupid. But it spooked you. Why? You must have seen that she'd never hurt you, or you wouldn't have cornered her and told her that she should."
"I didn't know that," Emma tells her quickly, and it flares up for the first time – that slow burning anger in her, the doubt, the fear she never let herself feel. "I didn't know that she wouldn't. I could never know that. As long as she has the capacity to, there will always be a chance – that she will lose her temper, or lose her mind, and do what she fears most."
"You can't keep thinking that," Snow says gently, reaching over to grip her shoulder. "You can't keep thinking the worst of her."
"It's the only thing I can think of her," Emma argues. "Because I look at her, and I see me." Her hand moves up for a moment to cover her own mouth, and her eyes scrunch shut while she reminds herself to breathe. Snow squeezes her shoulder – some kind of silent encouragement – and the massive, familiar, broken part of her wants to withdraw. But there's something new in her now that sees friends and people who are meant to be family and wishes so very much to be able to open up and let things go, and for a brief moment that part wins. "I had a life before you knew me. I did so many things that I'm not proud of now. And it was so much easier to look at Red when she was just Ruby – when she just reminded me of the orphan girl who wanted more from life, rather than the broken thing I became."
"Emma -"
"No, Snow," she cuts back in, because the blonde doesn't explain herself – she never has. This is the first time, this is rare, it's hard. She doesn't need the interruption – she needs to get it out. "I swore, after Henry was born, that I would be better. And in a lot of ways, I was. I left all of it behind – the prison stint, and the running away, boosting cars, and pickpocketing, and shoplifting – but I still wasn't a stand up person. And then I came here, and had to deal with Henry looking at me like I was some kind of hero, and everyone calling me a saviour, like I'd never stolen from good people to pave my way. I felt like a liar, until I started to think that maybe it could be true. So I told Red-" she chokes on it for a moment, "-I told her she didn't have to be the killer. She could choose to be something else – like I did when I left the thieving and lying behind. But then she had me do it again."
"Emma, you broke into Spencer's car under a warrant, for a murder investigation."
"I picked the lock like it wasn't a problem at all," Emma argues. "And it wasn't. It came as easy as breathing." She stares at her hands. "How can I trust Red not to be what she used to be, if I can't do it myself."
"You had no choice."
"Of course I had a choice. There's always a choice." She looks at her roommate, her naïve friend. Snow was a champion in another world, but she's always so clouded by her optimism. "I didn't do it because I was forced to, Snow – I chose it. I did it because someone I love was in danger, and it was the easiest way I knew how to deal with it. And you're kidding yourself, mom, if you think she won't do the same."
Snow heaves a sigh and holds her until they eventually decide to go back inside, but for the first time ever doesn't try to convince her otherwise.
/-\
Emma runs again. She's always been good at it. It's been two days since Snow sat with her on the step and learned a little more about her daughter, and Emma hasn't talked about it since. She's hit her sharing quota for the decade, and she will not be pressured into any more of it.
Her feet lead her on a new trail through the forest, but it's dark and she's never had any sense of direction so she probably shouldn't be so surprised when she comes up on the hint of a spray painted line on the ground sometime before dawn. But then, she is surprised. She didn't mean to come so close to the borderline.
It jars her – catches her breath with a whisper on the wind of "you're going to kill me" and she's not sure if it's real or just in her head. She does what she does best when faced with something that frightens her – she runs. The problem, of course, aside from the fact that she leaves the trail and loses the last of her direction, is that talking about the mess of feelings she's dealing with still hasn't made sleeping any easier, and she's been running herself haggard by running in the mornings and chasing up stupid family feuds at work all day. Today, it takes it's toll. It's dark, and she misses a step.
Falling is still such a familiar feeling, and the ground comes at her too fast to do anything other than twist in the air. She feels her head crack against the ground before everything goes black.
She wakes a few times – watches the sun come up in short glimpses through the trees – and she's not sure if the reason she's not moving is because she's hurt herself or simply because she doesn't want to. Maybe it's the fourth half-return to consciousness – maybe it's the sixth – but sunlight filters through the leaves above her, and the world is tinted green while the crunch of footsteps on twigs and dirt carries to her through the trees. Someone calls her name, and the voice is familiar but it doesn't really compute. That steady loping gait grows closer, and then she figures it out, and she'd groan and run away again if she could but her head hurts and her body's too heavy to move and, hey, maybe it's just finally time that she faces it.
"Emma? Where are – oh, shit, Em, what happened?" A shadow falls over her and she grumbles a bit when adept fingers brush her hair back from her face and the brunette tuts at her. "What did you do?"
"Fell," Emma grumbles back. "Hit my head on something, I think. How'd you find me?"
"I know what you smell like," Red tells her bluntly, tapping at the blonde's shoulder and tugging her up from the ground, trying to get her at least half-seated. "Let me see."
To her credit, Emma doesn't flinch when Red's fingers start brushing through her hair, looking for some kind of injury at the back of her scalp. Maybe it's because she's too tired for it, or because her head hurts like a bitch, or maybe she's just not bothered any more. For a moment, while Red almost growls to herself and prods at the back of Emma's head, it almost feels nice.
"Well, you're not bleeding," she concedes after a moment. "Looks like you're just going to have one hell of a lump. Maybe a concussion. I should probably get you to the hospital just in case."
Emma grunts and falls back again, because she's pretty sure she might vomit if she stands up right now and she's not too bothered with trying. Red's moved just so, and the blonde's head winds up resting just above the young werewolf's knee. Comfier than the rocks, she has to admit.
"I think," Emma says, looking past Red, with her stormy eyes and her red lips, and back up at the tree canopy overhead. "I'd rather just stay here for a while. Please."
She pretends not to notice the way Red's lips purse, or the way she deflates at the words, all of the urgency seeping out of her body. She starts playing with Emma's hair again, and the blonde's eyes close at the sensation.
"James called me," Red says after a moment. "Nearly ten o'clock, at his wit's end. Said you hadn't been home when he woke up, so he figured you might have left for work early. Except you weren't there either. And when you hadn't shown up two hours later he lost his shit and started calling everyone to find out where you were." Emma lifts a hand to wave around idly, and Red lets out a short, choked laugh. "Nearly gave me a heart attack," she admits. "He thought something had just – stolen you from your bed sometime last night or something, but – well, I know you've been running lately, so, I guess I just..."
"Made the obvious jump that if I was lying in a ditch somewhere it was probably of my own accord," Emma fills in for her. "Good job."
She earns a light slap on the shoulder.
"You scared the shit out of me," Red tells her, and it sounds like it catches low in her throat. Emma forces her eyes back open and is not surprised to see that the brunette is crying. Ouch.
"And you, me."
Red – Ruby, now, definitely Ruby – leans down and kisses her suddenly, soft and desperate and with the slightest taste of tears, and Emma lets her and doesn't know why, or what it's meant to be. Some kind of apology, maybe, or proof – that she loves Emma, or did once, or that they're going to be okay, because you hurt the ones you love but you don't kill them – for Emma and for herself, or maybe just completely genuine. Possibly, it's none of those things. Or all of them. Ruby presses their foreheads together when their lips part, and for a moment, with the world blocked out by a curtain of brown hair, Emma almost forgets that she's a thief, emotionally stunted, lost in the woods with a werewolf and a probable concussion.
"We'll be okay, right?" Ruby asks, and she sounds so young, fearful. Emma bites her lip and closes her eyes again, shutting out what little light there is.
"Yeah, Red," she says. "We'll be okay."
/-\
She's lying on the couch, head in Red's lap, when Snow gets home from work. They spend the latter half of the day, after a brief hospital visit and a few phone calls, watching movies while Emma falls in and out of consciousness and Red checks regularly to make sure she hasn't died in her sleep. She wakes up when Snow comes in, but keeps her eyes closed and her breathing slow.
"Hey," she hears her mother say. "How is she?"
Red is quiet – about as loud as the television, and the volume's been down low for hours now – but Emma feels the words more than she hears them – a low vibration wherever they connect.
"Alright. Just tired."
"I'm not surprised," Snow says lowly. "Even if she weren't concussed. She hasn't been sleeping well the last few nights. Up late, out early. Any nightmares?" Red seems to shake her head. Emma blames it on the scent of the brunette's perfume and the way the waitress has been playing with her hair all day, chasing away all the bad dreams. "That's good."
"What's she been dreaming about?"
"I don't know," Snow replies. "She hasn't said. Probably doesn't even think we noticed. But with the timing, I would guess, probably, you. Or Albert Spencer."
"What happened to him?" Red asks, curious, like it hasn't occurred to her before now – and it probably hasn't. "James never said."
"Emma," Snow starts, this quiet little hitch in her voice, and Emma feels the way Red's breathing catches, "Emma pushed him over the town line. He's only Albert Spencer now."
"Oh, Em..." Ruby breathes, sympathetic, and Emma feels a hand cup her face gently. She can't stop the quiet little hum that passes her lips when Red's thumb smoothes over her brow.
"I'm going to pick up Charming. We were planning to go out for dinner, but..."
"Go. I'll look after her. We'll talk more, maybe."
"Doubt it," Snow hums. "You know she doesn't like to talk about things."
"It's not that," Red says pensively, and for a fraction of a second Emma thinks that maybe – just maybe – someone here does know her – not wholly, but just enough. "I think it's more that she doesn't know how."
Snow tuts and says something about being back late and leaving money on the counter for pizza, and it sounds a lot like parenting. The half-asleep part of Emma wonders if this is what being a teenager was meant to feel like – minus the fairytale portion, and the magic, and the town line, and the fact that her mother is roughly the same age as her. Snow's keys jingle lightly before she closes the door behind her again, and then it's just the two of them and the quiet soundtrack of whatever bad movie is still playing on the television. Red taps Emma on the nose.
"I know you're awake," the brunette teases. "Your heart speeds up a little. I can tell. I've been listening to it all day."
"Creep," Emma mumbles, opening her eyes just enough to squint at the other woman. Red smiles down at her and chuckles silently, but calms again when Emma yawns and then goes back to stroking her fingers through blonde hair.
"It's alright," the werewolf croons quietly. "You can sleep for a while longer."
Emma hums an agreement and lets sleep reclaim her.
/-\
She's out until a little after the sun has set, and wakes up in time for the pizza Red orders. Rousing herself well enough to eat takes more out of her than she expects, but afterwards she stays up long enough to actually watch a whole movie, sitting upright on the couch. She notices the way Red watches her through the whole second half of it.
"What?" the blonde asks when the movie's over and they've switched the television over to the late night news.
"I just..." Red mumbles, and Emma turns to look at her with wide eyes. "I haven't seen you in days."
"Red, you've seen me all day."
"Not like-" the brunette pauses, seeming to rethink her words. Her brow furrows and she frowns far too thoughtfully for the late hour. "Not like this. I – feel like, somehow, I've never really seen you before today." Emma's head tilts to the side. "You've always been so strong, Emma," Red explains slowly. "The mysterious stranger who came into town and set us free from the evil Mayor and her curse. Didn't talk about yourself. Never made it about you. And even when you told me, the other day, about fostering – well, you've never seemed fragile."
It's the concussion that makes her shrug and sink further down on the couch. "All people are."
Red stares at her for a long moment before smiling lightly and pushing up to her feet. She turns off the TV and stands in front of Emma, offering the blonde her hands. "Come on," she says. "Let's get you to bed." Emma lets the brunette help her up, and then steady her when the dizziness hits her – not as bad as earlier in the day but disorienting nonetheless. Red takes her into her bedroom and helps her change, and she crawls into bed without complaint while the brunette finds herself a spare set of pajamas and changes in the corner. The lights go out.
"You're staying?" Emma asks when Red falls onto the bed beside her and yanks the covers up over them both.
"Mmhmm. We have a lot to talk about, still. Tomorrow, maybe. Can't let you die in your sleep," Red explains gently. "I only just got you." They're quiet for a while – little more than the sound of even breathing – and Emma feels the exhaustion from the last few days and the drowsiness of her concussion creeping back in. She wants to sleep for the next ten years, forget all about magic and feuds and Albert Spencer and just feel safe for a while. The void beckons her and she creeps towards it willingly, but something holds her back, dazed, just for a little longer.
"Hey, Red?" she mumbles, hardly awake, voice thin in the dark. She hears the slight shift of fabric beside her, a questioning hum in return. "Why'd you kiss me?" There's a long silence afterwards while Red seems to think it over, and Emma waits for an answer. She's nearly completely out of it when it comes.
"I spent so much time struggling to figure out who I wanted to be, between Red and the Wolf. I forgot there was more to me than that," Red whispers, hand finding Emma's in the dark and linking their fingers. "You asked me where Ruby fits in the whole picture. I figured it out."
Emma squeezes her hand lightly, easing out of consciousness. She's not entirely sure if she actually hears the end of it or if it's just a trick of exhaustion – a dream – but she smiles nonetheless.
"She belongs with you."