"Prison?" The frown on Mary Margaret's face did not look very stern or angry, it never did. The woman's round and serene face looked too sweet for her scolding to sound actually intimidating, and Emma figured it was her mother's number one flaw. "When exactly did you intend to tell us?"
"Well, I didn't see the point in scaring you." Emma defended. "I never go elsewhere than the visiting room and the warden's office, I'm not anywhere near gen pop, I never even meet with more than one con. Honestly, mom, I'm fine."
But the overly gentle frown did not leave her mother's face. Mary Margaret and David Nolan had adopted her when she was ten, after Emma's biological parents had died. Mary Margaret had been her baby sitter since her infancy, when Mary was just a teenager – and she had only been twenty-two years old when she had decided to adopt Emma. David Nolan, Mary Margaret's fiancé at the time, had stood by her and agreed to legally become Emma's father. It was not an easy thing for such young people to do, and Emma had always been grateful for it and tried to be as easy on them as possible. It was partly why she had not wanted to tell her adoptive parents about her current assignment in prison.
"Emma." Mary Margaret let out a sigh. "Just to think that you cross ways with convicted criminals –"
"Just one criminal, mom."
"That you actually talk to them, that you get near them. It's not a safe game, honey. You know that you can never get into these people's heads, they'll get into yours."
"That's not the point at all." Emma argued, but deep down, looking back on her last two sessions with Killian Jones, she figured it might be a bit true. "Besides," she added on a light tone, "criminal minds are the most interesting ones to study."
She only met seriousness in her mother's eyes. "Just promise me you'll keep this under control."
"I will, so long as you promise you won't tell dad."
"All right." Her mother agreed, not without reluctance.
They usually met up to have lunch once or twice a week at Granny's diner, just the two of them. Emma also went home to her parents' house once every two weeks, to have a family dinner with both her adoptive parents and Neal. Lately, she had been so busy with college and wedding plans that it had entirely slipped her mind.
"Are you free this weekend?" Emma asked, mostly to start on a new subject. "I've still got a wedding dress to pick."
Her mother gave her a reprobating look, because Emma had to know that the offer would most likely win her over. "This doesn't mean I'm not worried." She pointed out.
"Okay." Said the daughter anyway, because as long as the topic was off the table, it was good enough for her.
…
He watched as Emma's upper lip got between her teeth a split second. He watched as nervousness made her swallow and moisten her lips. He watched her straightening her glasses back in place and holding back from unpinning her hair to fiddle anxiously with the golden locks.
Killian Jones reckoned that he knew what type of girl that cute college student was. He had hardly needed more than a few seconds of appraisal, what with those doe eyes and long yellow hair, and that look of curiosity on her face – the curiosity of a kitten that doesn't want to get dirt on its plushy paw, but wants to eat the treat just the same.
The young woman was only beginning her journey into the world of the wild, and he wasn't too sure what to get her started with. He was always polite when he answered her questions, about his new living conditions and how he felt influenced by them, and as she took notes the way a pupil does from a teacher's speech, Killian was very aware that he was playing her. What's more is that he thought she was aware of it too.
"Can I ask something in return?" He inquired after a few minutes, ever so courteous, and yet the look that the girl gave him was like that of a deer under the headlights of a car, in the middle of the road. It drew a ravenous smile on his lips. "It's just you're asking all these things about me but the warden won't even tell me your name. He's afraid I'll write you, you see."
His college girl didn't answer anything. She was going to answer him in the end, he could tell, because he had asked politely and it was the polite thing to do.
"I'm not certain it's appropriate." She said cautiously.
He was used to breaking this sort of cautiousness without effort. Honestly, he ate innocent well-educated girls like her for breakfast and she was not much of a surprise to him; and yet, he thought he might take unprecedented pleasure in initiating her.
"Well, you know mine." He remarked as an argument. "You've asked me about how prison is affecting me, I've told you a great deal about my past and myself. I don't think it would be inappropriate for us to be on an equal footing, so long as I'll be answering your questions."
Emma's throat tightened slightly. The smile on Killian Jones's lips looked polite, but there was a hint of wildness that escaped politeness.
He went on with a honey-sweet tone – truly, he was the kind of man who could talk you into doing just about anything. "I'll be on this side of the glass and you will be on yours, but I would find it more suiting that we be on equal grounds. I have given up on my freedom but not my pride."
The girl appraised him as if frightened this would put him in a position of power – then she seemed to remember the manacles around his hands.
"It's Emma." She swallowed coyly. She probably regretted the word as soon as she'd spoken it. "Emma Swan."
"Emma Swan." He repeated, bristling the hairs in the back of her neck. He wouldn't forget it. "Tell me, how did you convince our dear warden to allow you inside his prison? He isn't too fond of outsiders, and especially those that disturb the peace and order of his fine trade."
"I have no intention to make any kind of disturbance here."
"This doesn't answer my question."
And she had been deliberate in her attempt not to answer. "It does." She tried to sound as convincing as she could. "Mr. Gold knows I don't pose a threat to anyone here. I just want to learn." She lowered her eyes with something surprisingly close to shame.
"I see."
The enjoyment that her faltering had brought on his face seemed deep, and there was a kind of worry in her chest that said he would not allow it to stop there. "It's probably best we go back to the incarceration system –"
"You don't want to know about the victims?" He said. Sounding so candid. "How I picked them, where I put them?"
"It's not what I'm here for –"
"Still, wouldn't you like to know? The warden sure does."
"No." She said it before she could help herself, even though it went against her agreement with Mr. Gold. Actually, as Killian Jones had said the words, she had realized it might be the last thing she wanted.
Curiosity widened the smile on Killian's lips. It was the first time he had felt curious in a while. "Then what do you want to know, Emma Swan? What are you really here for? The study of alienation, is it – prison doesn't alienate the mind. We all grow up in some kind of prison. Alienation happens when we fail to choose the right one." Killian's eyes wandered about his surroundings, the grayish walls and the people in orange suits, and finally her. "I'm not the only one in prison here, sweetheart. The thing is I don't even need to know you to know this, because you would not have come here with your high heels and your secondhand suit if you weren't looking to break out of it – to break out of these prison walls that you've created. Anyone ever told you that being good will lead you to heaven, is that the law that you abide by?" A genuinely amused laughter tore out of him. It felt unnerving to imagine that Killian Jones could feel anything. "No," he answered his own question. "You hardly even know what you're doing."
Emma clenched her jaw. She was here to study, not be studied, and she should know deep inside of herself that the world that Killian Jones was describing was not the rational world – a world where killing was an art and evil was a passion could never be rational. This didn't make his words less persuasive. She was certain this one man could convince the whole world that they were mad and he was sound, if it crossed his mind.
"I won't play games with you." Emma said with a rather respectable attempted authority and calm; come to think of it, this one assertion was probably her most blatant lie. "The reasons why I am here are professional by nature and they do not concern you. I'd appreciate that you resume more professional language."
"Of course." He said, a lamb-like compliance. "You must forgive me for seizing the distraction – it gets boring inside my prison walls, too."
But the look on his face indicated nothing close to good behavior. Actually, if madness had a face, it was probably Killian's – the devil's human form is always charming. There would be no temptation if it wasn't.
…
"You ever wonder if the world isn't entirely different from how you think it is?"
Neal raised his eyes from his book to look at her. It was past 10 p.m., but even the quietest evening at home with her fiancé hadn't shaken the prison-atmosphere that Emma had seemed to carry all day. Maybe this eerie feeling did not come from Mr. Gold's prison, but from Killian Jones – from the idea that serial killers could look handsome and actually alluring, that mad people could smile and be amused and bored, like anyone else.
"This is about your thesis, isn't it?" Neal said for an answer.
"Don't lecture me, please. Just tell me, honestly – don't you ever realize that our life is guided by perception, and that the world might be completely different if we looked at it from a different angle?"
"You mean, are mad people actually mad or just misunderstood?"
Emma detected the dryness in her boyfriend's voice and retorted coldly also. "It's not what I'm saying." Actually, she just found it a bit easy to categorize them as: mad. It was not something that she had given much thought to before, yet now it seemed obviously too simple – someone that believes murder is just a lifestyle is insane, but Emma Swan had not decided to study the mind of a murderer to leave it there.
There was an alarm inside of her, warning her that no good comes out of opening Pandora's box and temptation is after all the original sin, but although she had seemed to pick this subject randomly, it would make no sense that she didn't go below the surface – everyone can take a look at a sea monster and tell you what it looks like, but they never tell you how it became a monster. Maybe the Leviathans started out as human beings. After all, Lucifer started as an angel.
"Well, I just don't see the good that can come out of looking at things this way." Neal said without sounding too begrudging. "I think the only world that is worth knowing is the one where we don't take a human life without trial. And just so you know," he added, "the only moment I've ever realized I had been living my life with the wrong perception of the world was when I met you."
Although the nagging thought was still on her mind and although she was still a bit upset, Emma smiled and gave her boyfriend a short kiss.
"By the way, I'm going shopping for a wedding dress this weekend."
"Well, be sure not to show it to me before we get married." He teased. "I don't want any bad luck."
…
The words 'bad luck' came to many people's minds, on that same evening. It came to the two guards who escorted Killian Jones back to his prison cell, and especially the one that Killian killed. The other one got away with a bump on the head and a broken nose. There was no telling how long the notorious convicted killer had been planning this or if he had even planned it at all. 'Bad luck' came to Mr. Gold when he learned about the disturbance in his prison, and that a certain criminal had reintegrated society.
It was observed on the several security cameras that the latter exited the prison facility with a very calm air. He struck in the evening, when the guards were taking him to his cell, in the camera's blind spot, and therefore there was no explanation as to how a handcuffed prisoner had managed to kill one trained guard and knock out another. The one that survived affirmed that Killian Jones struck like a snake, with that same suddenness and beastliness that can neither be contained nor thwarted.
Killian had then put on the dead security guard's uniform and walked out of the prison quite at ease.
It seemed that luck had rather been on the dark side of the world tonight.
And when Killian stepped out of the penitentiary of Storybrooke, Emma Swan was on his mind.
