I was as pure as a river but now I think I'm possessed

You put a fever inside me and I've been cold since you left

-Haunting/Halsey

Alice never gets tired of the woods; there's always something new. Just when she thinks she's got them memorized like the back of her hand, she finds some new pathway, some new knot of trees, something different than last time.

Sometimes it seems like the woods are the only fluid thing about Storybrooke, the only part of her life that isn't static.

She's wandering through a familiar pathway-the one that starts just by her backyard, and takes her through the scenic route to the other end of town-when she hears footsteps behind her. Twigs always snap and grass always rustles here, but not in such precise measures. It's probably nothing, just the disruption, the sound and the sudden loss of solitude that's got the hair on the back of her neck standing on end, but she turns anyway.

The intruder is standing a few paces behind her, smiling in a friendly way. He's handsome, she'll admit that-dark hair, sharp cheekbones-exactly her type. Or what her type was before she was married, anyway.

(Her heart skips two beats-one because of his smile, then a second out of guilt for the first.)

"Hi," he says.

She's still vaguely annoyed with him for disturbing her scarce alone time, but her parents raised her better than to say so. "Hello," she says politely instead. There's a quizzical note in her voice she can't suppress, though.

"Sorry to bother you," he says, and she admits, he's hard to stay mad at. "You dropped this."

She steps forward to see what he's holding in his extended hand-oh.

She swears as she takes it from him. (Her parents didn't raise her that well, she supposes.) The compact mirror has been in her family for generations. It was a wedding gift from her mother, a rare show of affection. Maybe she should keep it at home, where it's safe, but she's never been able to bring herself to do so. She carries it everywhere with her instead, like a totem, or a good luck charm.

"Thank you," she says sincerely, slipping it into her pocket. "It-I don't even know how I dropped it, it's a family heirloom, I-" she shakes her head. "Thank you, so much."

"Of course." A beat passes before he extends his hand to her, suddenly, as if he's forgotten his manners. "Uh, I'm Jefferson."

Something about his name is like a bell ringing in the back of her mind, and she can't stop herself from saying it out loud; she needs to feel it rolling off her tongue. "Jefferson," she repeats, and takes his hand. "I'm Alice. Alice Royce."

She could swear she sees something dark flickering in his eyes at the name, but decides she must be imagining it.

"Nice to meet you, Alice," he says.

"You too," she says, and withdraws her hand. She's not sure if it's true or not-something about Jefferson seems to repel her and draw her in all at once-but it's the thing to say.

Another beat passes, and she notices, again, how ridiculously good-looking he is. She tries to keep this observation at arm's length, an objective fact, not something that means anything to her, personally.

"So, uh, where you headed?"

It takes her a second to process. "Oh, uh, nowhere in particular. I just like to walk when I get the chance. It's peaceful, you know?"

"Yeah. I know what you mean." And his voice is soft and he's smiling and she could swear he's looking at her in a way male leads in movies look at their love interests.

(And maybe there's something to be said for the fact that romcoms are her point of reference and not, you know, her own actual marriage, but that's another thing she decides to ignore for now.)

"Do you mind if I join you?"

And ordinarily she'd tell him "no," because this is the only real alone time she has, and she wants the silence, and because something about him screams "danger" to her. But if she says no then he'll leave and he'll probably stop smiling at her and both of those things are inevitable anyway, but she can't make herself let it happen just then. It's not even that he's attractive; it's like he's a train of thought that hasn't reached its destination, like if she can keep him around long enough, she'll figure out what it is about him that makes church bells and alarm bells go off simultaneously in her mind.

"Uh...sure. Yeah. Why not?"

Jefferson asks her a lot of questions. And it's a little annoying, but mostly sort of flattering. Which she feels kind of bad about, but maybe not as bad as she should. Mostly it's inane stuff, like hobbies:

"What do you do, outside of losing family heirlooms in the woods?" Truthfully, she doesn't really have any other hobbies, not anymore, so she just says she stays busy.

And where she's from, because he notices a faint accent:

St. Louis, but she makes him guess.

And foods:

"Have you tried the cheeseburgers from this one place downtown? Don't tell anyone, I know it's like heresy in this town-" and he sounds kind of bitter about that, but she doesn't mention it, because sometimes she feels the same way, "but I think they're better than Granny's." And no, she hasn't because she's Jewish, but she appreciates the tip and maybe she'll try their veggie burgers sometime.

It's not until they've almost reached the town line that things go wrong.

Alice can tell when he's about to ask her out. There's been a few moments over the last hour when she thought he might, and he didn't, and she thought she was imagining it, but no-she can tell now. He does that sort of sheepish thing men do, rubbing his neck like he's nervous, and asks if she wants to get coffee sometime.

She's hit, all at once, with how much she wants to say "yes"-a sinking, guilty feeling in the pit of her stomach, like all the butterflies are dying at once.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm actually-I'm married." She holds out her left hand, displaying her wedding band as if to prove it-to him or to herself, she's not sure.

It feels like a cage now.

Jefferson hesitates for only a split second. Then: "He doesn't have to know." His voice is soft, and there's something dark under it. Something persuasive. Something threatening.

She takes a few steps back, trying to subtly bring them fully out of the woods and into town, out where there are witnesses.

"I'm not that kind of woman," she says.

"We both know what kind of woman you are, Alice," he says, and that note of danger is no longer hidden. There's something wild and desperate and mad in his eyes.

It's crazy, he's crazy, maybe it's rubbing off on her, but she could swear that he says it like he knows her. It's like an accusation. Does he know what's gone on in her head for the past hour?

Thoughts aren't actions, she reminds herself. That's important. For example, thinking about punching someone-which Alice does not do-is not the same as actually punching someone. Which Alice does.

Her knuckles hit his jaw with a satisfying CRACK and his head snaps back.

"Stay the hell away from me," she tells him. She borrows that dark, threatening tone of voice that he's used, turns it up to eleven, and throws it back at him.

Then she runs.

Just long enough until she's on the other side of the street from the woods. Then she settles down into a long stride. She doesn't want to cause a scene. There's a part of her that's embarrassed of what's just happened. Like it's her fault, somehow. Maybe she did lead him on. She didn't mean to. Maybe she led herself on and it seeped out. She's always been bad at that line between her feelings and her actions. Her thoughts, her feelings, they creep out and touch everyone around her.

That doesn't really justify what he did. Or didn't do. He never actually verbally threatened her, to be fair. It was all unspoken, never in his mouth, only in his eyes-

Knock knock knock!

Alice jolts awake, upright on the couch. She'd been trying to get in a few more minutes of sleep before her job interview (such as it is) with Emma, but she knows now it's not going to happen. She's had this dream before such as it is-some mixture of a daydream, a nightmare, and a flashback. She's run it through her mind so many times, both intentionally and-like now-otherwise, until she's not sure which parts were true and which were embellishments she added on later. The one thing she does know is that there's nothing restful about it.

It's a moot point, because whoever's knocking on her door has just rung the bell, so they're probably not going away anytime soon. She pulls herself to her feet, unsure of what to expect-maybe Emma, there because of a miscommunication? One of Paige's teachers?

But no. When she opens the door, it's none other than Regina Mills standing on her welcome mat, holding a basket of red apples and smiling in a way that doesn't meet her eyes.

"Hello, Miss Kingsley. May I come in?"

1: So I know this chapter does not paint a particularly flattering picture of Jefferson, or of his and Alice's relationship, but I promise there's more going on here than meets the eye, that will be explained later. Which is probably obvious but I love Jefferson and feel the need to defend him from my own writing.

2: So to clarify the whole Alice-not-eating-cheeseburgers things for my gentile readers: Judaism has a set of dietary laws dictating what foods may and may not be eaten and under what circumstances. You might be familiar with one of them (pork is forbidden, hence "Jews don't eat bacon.") Another one is that meat and dairy can't be eaten together, hence: no cheeseburgers.

3: As per usual, I'm very sorry for the long wait between chapters. It was a combination of my life spiraling out of control from September to March and then me trying to set it upright again from March until now.