A/N: Ahhhhh! Thanks so much to everyone for the reviews, favs and follows last chapter! Especial thanks to Rain Pours Down, agrace8, Ayyyylmao, Mrs. Killian Jones pureblood, ForAllTheStarsInTheSky, PrettyTimeBomb27, phoward, Colinodonewithyou, OnceUponABookworm, jdmusiclover, niniadepapa, Revenessa, avasmom28681, SolemnlySwearToManageMischief, blankface, Beagles002, Cheshire Illusionist, StrawberryFields4ever, Killian's Lady, blurred fragments, Kaicchan, Lunalove25, EurekaBeck, WapomeoHuntress, florenzu, Themasterchef, Greenhattress, leynosson, and the 2 guest reviewers! 3
School was cancelled the next day.
It seemed the hot weather the day before had been the precursor to a violent storm that swept through Storybrooke on Wednesday night, knocking down several trees and causing power outages in a few areas. The next day it managed to somehow be cold but humid, and rain was absolutely bucketing down, accompanied by flashes of lightning and an ominous white fog that made it hard to see to the end of the street.
"Are you staying home today?" Leroy asked Emma over breakfast.
She considered this. It would be nice to just rest at home, but at the same time she sort of wanted to get out of the house.
"Uh, not sure. I might text my friends and see if they want to meet up or something."
"Alright. Let me know if you need me to drive you anywhere on my way to work."
She nodded, and finishing breakfast quickly, went to message her group to see if they had plans. To her disappointment, Ruby was meeting up with the debating team to go over their argument for the next match, Mary Margaret had been roped into going somewhere with her mother, and David had work experience.
Now that she had asked people if they wanted to go out, she was unwilling to stay at home – and pondered for a few minutes if there was anyone else she might be interested in hanging out with.
Naturally, one person sprang to mind.
Ugh, she thought, running a hand over her face. I am in this way too deep. We're already ahead on the assessment, there's no real need to...
Besides, he probably had to go to work.
But what if he didn't?
Or he was probably already hanging out with Regina and co.
But what if he wasn't?
Making a snap decision, she opened her laptop and went to the school mail. She wasn't sure if he'd even check it in time to see her message, but supposed it was worth a try anyway.
She hadn't replied to the message he sent the night before, and did so now – just a quick 'Thanks :) Are you doing anything today or do you want to meet up at the library again?'
It was only ten minutes before he replied, which she supposed wasn't unusual – people were probably checking their email to make sure school had indeed been confirmed as cancelled – and he agreed to meet her in the library at ten.
Leroy drove her there. The rain still hadn't let up, beating hard against the car windows, the windscreen wipers doing double time to keep up. Even the short run from the car to the library doors had her soaked, and it was a relief to get inside where it was warm and dry.
She sat at the table they had used last time, and began to set out her things. When someone pulled out the chair next to her, she assumed it was Killian, and turned to greet him-
Only for the words to die on her lips. It wasn't Killian.
It was Neal.
"Hi," he said.
What was he doing? Why was he talking to her?
"Hi," she replied stiffly. "Do you need something?"
He shifted in his seat. "Bad weather out, isn't it?"
"No. We're not going to talk about the weather. What do you want?"
The alarm had faded since yesterday, replaced by anger. He had no right. No right to just stroll back into town and start chatting to her like nothing had even happened.
Neal had the good grace to look embarrassed. "I came to talk to you, Em. We should talk, you know."
"About what? How you abandoned me?"
The words made him flinch, which she thought was rather fine! She opened her mouth to continue, when she saw Killian approaching across the library. When he noticed Neal, he looked very confused for a moment, and then very concerned.
"Sorry I'm late," he said, sitting opposite Emma. "Neal, mate, what're you doing here?"
"I was in the library and saw Emma. Came to say hi." He seemed irritated that Killian had interrupted their discussion, and given the way he made no move to continue it, she assumed that he wanted to speak to her privately.
Good. She was not going to leave this seat. Let him squirm.
"Uh." Killian glanced between them, then shrugged and took his books out. "Are you here to study, Neal, or just dropping in for a book?"
"I did plan to do some work," Neal replied tersely.
Killian glanced at Emma, and she realised he was waiting for her permission to ask Neal to sit with them. She shrugged and flapped a hand. Like hell she was going to let Neal see that his presence was bothering her mightily.
"Best thing about this rain is that it gives us an extra day to study for our maths test," she said, and Killian snorted, nodding.
After ten minutes of Neal glancing at Emma, and her pointedly stabbing numbers into her calculator and not looking back at him, he seemed to finally catch on that she had no interest in talking to him.
This made Killian the unfortunate mediary at the table.
"The swimming carnival is next week," Emma commented idly.
"Do you swim?" he replied.
She shrugged. "I can, but not seriously. I probably won't enter any of the long races. You must be bummed about your wrist, I remember you placed a few times last year."
"Yeah," he said. "But what can you do about it."
Emma suddenly recalled the year 8 carnival, and how she and Neal had snuck off behind the stands and sat and played tetris on their phones while the school colour houses began the cheering contest, loud enough to make the stands vibrate. They had only just been beginning to discover their feelings for each other, and it had been exciting, that tension, the way they'd dart glances at each other and give little smiles.
Beside her, Neal let out a long exhale of breath, and she wondered if he was remembering the same thing.
"Tamara wants to hold another laser tag," he said then, addressing Killian. "If you're free."
"Tell me the details and I'll check. Last time was fun, though, Tink and I whooped you guys so hard."
"You were running! You're not meant to run in there."
"Everyone was running. Except you, hide-in-the-corner guy."
"Hey, it was a workable strategy."
And that was how the conversation continued, rather stiltedly, Killian speaking to Emma and Neal in turns while the other two just ignored each other.
"David and I are the only ones of our group in Blue, and we hate cheering, it's so awkward. So we just lipsync."
"Next time we should play Storybrooke vs Queenhart."
"Did you go to the last athletics carnival? The teacher's race was hysterical. Mr Jefferson fell over."
"Our school open day is next Thursday so we get the next day off."
The strange exchange only ended when Emma and Killian finished their maths work and got out their Hamlet books. Neal had fallen silent, focusing on his own study.
"We should start putting together the collage soon," Emma said. She pushed her laptop across the table towards him. "Have a read of that. I finished the Ophelia character study last night."
Killian nodded thoughtfully as he read. "Yeah... sounds good. We should definitely have the 'get thee to a nunnery' scene as a prominent part of the maze. Talk about his choice to push Ophelia away and all that."
"What are we arguing?" she asked. "I've written there that we could tie it into our idea that all of Hamlet's dithering about and pushing people away just escalated things and made it far more confusing and convoluted than it could have been if he'd just charged in and killed Claudius right away."
"Ophelia is the only innocent character in the play," Killian agreed. "Polonius dragged her into things, but Hamlet was the one who broke her heart."
"Couldn't you argue that he was protecting her?" Neal spoke up suddenly.
Emma went very still.
"What do you mean?" Killian asked.
"He pushed her away to keep her safe. To keep her away from all the corruption and deception in Denmark. Get thee to a nunnery was his way of warning her off – telling her that it wasn't safe there. That he couldn't protect her from what was going on," Neal said. "If you think about it, it was a very selfless thing for Hamlet to do."
Emma did not like the way Neal was watching her carefully, as though gauging her reaction.
"No," she said. "No, it wasn't. He hurt her."
"He protected her! He couldn't be what she wanted, and staying with her would have risked her happiness, even her safety!" Neal's eyes were burning, a mixture of pleading and anger.
Emma knew what he was saying. She could barely speak, she was so angry.
"No," she said again. "Protecting her would have been sitting her down, talking to her, explaining to her! If he really loved her, he would have trusted her – he would have let her choose whether to be with him or not! But no, he just turned mad out of the blue and started bullying her, abusing her, pushing her away – that's not selfless, that's selfish! That's him thinking he knows what's best for her and going ahead and doing it without even asking! That hurts, Neal!" she cried, and stood up from the table.
She couldn't do this anymore – she couldn't sit here and let him talk at her and act as though he was in the right, as if he expected her to understand that he'd done it for her benefit.
Snatching up her books and shoving them in her bag, she strode out of the library. She heard someone call her name behind her, but couldn't tell if it was Neal or Killian.
She had forgotten it was raining outside.
Within moments of exiting, she was soaked, clutching her bag to her chest to prevent her books getting wet. Water dripped down her face, and the combination of heavy rain and fog made it hard for her to see where she was going as she started down the street.
"Emma! Wait up!"
She heard splashing footsteps approaching, and suddenly Killian was by her side, holding an umbrella over her.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
Emma pressed her lips together. Concern was written all over his face.
"I'm fine," she said finally, stiffly.
He grimaced, obviously deathly curious as to what exactly had happened between she and Neal, but he didn't press for details, which she was grateful for.
"I know he's your friend," she said finally, "but I can't sit there with him. Not right now." She'd do or say something she'd regret.
Killian had an odd look on his face, like he wanted to say something but couldn't. Finally he nodded.
"Are you going home?"
"Well, I can hardly walk back in there now," she muttered. "So yeah. You don't have to walk me back."
"No, I will. You'll be drenched otherwise. I'd give you the umbrella but I'm not meant to get my cast wet."
She nodded, and they set off. The umbrella was small enough that to stay beneath it she had to sort of huddle by his side. They didn't speak as they walked, but Emma felt herself slowly growing calm again. The beat of rain on the fabric above them was almost soothing, and focusing on how cold and damp she felt took her mind off how enraged she'd been at Neal's words.
When they reached her street, Killian finally spoke, if only to comment that "this fog is like something from a bloody horror movie. I keep expecting Slenderman to appear at the end of the street."
"If he does, you distract him and I'll run," she replied. He scoffed, and she added, "Nah, jokes, I'll just chuck the maths textbook at it. That thing is ridiculously heavy."
"We're more likely to be attacked by a car. I can't even see halfway down the road. Is this your house?" he asked, squinting through the rain.
Emma nodded, recognising the gate. "Yeah, it is." She paused. "We didn't get much work done at the library. Did you want to come in, maybe, and we can start on the collage?"
"Sure. Are your parents home?"
"The car's not here, so I guess Astrid went out marketing. She'll probably be back soon."
As she walked to the door and fumbled for her key, she wondered exactly what she was doing. Normally she would never have dreamed of inviting anyone from Regina's group into her home.
The house was dark and quiet inside, the thunder clouds blocking out any semblance of the sun, but Astrid had left the heater on so it was at least warm. Emma wandered through, turning on lights. They had done their spring cleaning lately, so things were much tidier than they usually were.
Killian was lingering by the door. He had hung up his umbrella and was struggling to take off his coat with the cast.
"Need a hand?" Emma asked, glancing at him.
"That would be great, love."
She stepped closer to him and helped him pull it over his shoulders. The movement brought them quite close together, and Emma felt a bit embarrassed suddenly. As soon as the coat was off, she quickly stepped back.
"How's that healing?" she asked, with a nod at his wrist.
"Quite well, I think. I bet the cast will come off just as soon as I get used to tying my tie and shoelaces with one hand."
She snorted.
"So when will I find out how you really broke it?" she asked, turning back into the living room. She remembered what he'd said to Regina – last time we went 'drastic'. She had no idea what that meant.
Killian grinned as he followed her. "I've got to keep some sense of mystery about me. The accent doesn't carry everything, you know."
She laughed.
The kitchen table had stuff on it, and the light in the dining room wasn't great. Which really only left her bedroom. For a moment she hesitated, because inviting the year 10 king of innuendo into her room could be taken drastically the wrong way, but at the same time it was the only other room with a desk.
Rather than say anything, she just walked to her room, Killian trailing along behind her.
"Will your parents be okay with this?" he asked, when he realised where they were going.
"Yeah, David comes over all the time," she said. "Besides, they trust me."
And then she was hit with a wave of guilt x 1000, because Astrid and Leroy still didn't know about the year-9-incident-that-would-hopefully-never-be-spoken-of-again. The incident of which she tried very hard not to think, and had been succeeding in not thinking about until bloody Neal had to come waltzing back into her life.
Killian looked around her room with unabashed curiosity, and Emma really hoped she hadn't left underwear or anything lying around. A quick scan revealed that the floor was neat at least, though she hadn't made her bed and there was a mountain of crap piling up on her desk.
"You kept them," Killian said suddenly.
"What?" She turned to look at him and found him standing by her bookshelf, where the jasmine flowers were sitting in their little tub. They were quite sad and wilted by now.
"Uh," she said. "I didn't get around to chucking them out."
"I see," he said, and smiled a very wide smile.
Emma suddenly realised that they were both wringing wet, Killian's hair plastered to his forehead and sending droplets to the floor.
"I'm gonna go get changed," she said. "I'll bring you back a towel."
"Okay, thanks."
She grabbed some clothes and went quickly to the bathroom. When she returned, Killian was still standing before her bookshelf, looking at some of the framed pictures there.
"You're on a boat!" he declared, turning to look at her. She tossed him the towel and he caught it, vigorously drying his hair before pointing at one of the photos.
"What? Oh, right!" She grinned. "That's Leroy's boat. He's mad about it."
"My dad used to be into sailing, back when we lived in England," Killian commented.
"Really?"
"Yeah. I used to think I really wanted to join the navy. Changed my mind, though, I don't think I could handle following orders all day." He gave a crooked grin.
Emma reached out and touched the photo. "Leroy loves boating. He used to want to do it full time, but now he just works as a janitor in the hospital. Sometimes I think if it wasn't for Astrid he'd be terribly unhappy."
Killian looked at her with an odd intensity, before his gaze flickered away towards the window, spotted and fogged over with rain.
"It's funny," he said quietly, "How one person can just change the way you feel about life like that."
She nodded. "Astrid and Leroy... I don't know, they've become like the pinnacle of an ideal relationship for me."
"How so?"
"They just make each other so happy. And it seems like they make each other want to be a better person, but not in a pressuring way." She scoffed out a laugh. "I used to be terrified of Leroy when I first came here."
"Why?"
"I thought he didn't want kids and Astrid had just pushed him into it. I thought they would send me away."
He looked puzzled. "Can they do that? Send someone away after already having adopted them?"
Emma paused, hesitant. She took a few steps back and sat down on the edge of her bed.
She didn't know why she was even considering talking about this. Normally she would have changed the subject long before it could get to this point. But somehow – somehow she wanted it to come out. Maybe it was the stress of Neal, maybe she was just tired of hiding things.
Maybe, maybe she wanted to see what he would do, if she revealed to him just how broken she was.
Killian, having noted her long silence, opened his mouth, presumably to change the subject. She jumped in first.
"I... it happened before. Lots of times before."
His gaze softened. He pulled out her desk chair and sat opposite her.
"The number of foster families I went through... until Astrid and Leroy, no one wanted to keep me." Her lips stretched into a humourless smile. "One family discovered they were having their own baby. They couldn't afford to keep us both. Another only wanted the benefits. Another divorced and neither of them wanted me. And so on, and so on."
He continued to watch her. His eyes were wide and full of pain. Pain for her, she realised.
"I couldn't trust people. Feeling like no one wanted me – like I was just a burden on society – every time I was put in a new home I was paranoid that they would get rid of me. And sure enough they did. Nothing was ever permanent." She let out a huff of breath. "Until Astrid and Leroy. The whole first year I was so scared. Trying so hard not to get attached, even to people at school, because I thought I'd be leaving again. And then another year passed, and another, and it was only in what, year 9 or 10? That I finally realised I was here to stay."
She ran her hands over her face.
"They've been so good to me. But I still can't open up to them. To anyone, really."
In the moment of silence that followed, she realised the weight of her last statement, because what, exactly, was she doing right now?
"Emma," Killian said softly. He came, and sat upon the bed beside her, and after a brief hesitation, put his arm around her. Emma sat still and stiff for a few seconds, before giving into the urge to lean in against his shoulder.
They sat for a little while, and did not speak.
Finally Emma stirred, and Killian pulled away immediately.
"Well that got real deep real fast," she said, deflecting, and he smiled a bit.
"That sucks," he said simply, and didn't add anything else. Emma appreciated that; what had happened had happened, and worthless platitudes were never helpful.
"We should probably start work now," she said, and he nodded.
"Yeah."
The process of planning the collage was much more fun than writing and analysing. Deciding where to put things, the layout and pictures to be used, was enjoyable work.
"Are you doing anything tomorrow night?" Killian asked after a bit.
"Not that I know of?"
"Did you want to go to a party with me?" he asked.
Emma paused, and slowly lowered the marker she was holding. "A party?"
"Yeah." He grinned. "It's Regina's birthday. She's throwing a massive bash, as you undoubtedly know. Same as every year."
"You mean the big, extravagant party that she always pointedly invites everyone in the year except my group to?"
"That's the one." His grin widened. "So you'll come?"
She shrugged, tossing the marker back into her pencil case. "I dunno. Won't she be mad if I turn up uninvited?"
"She generally lets us bring a few extras," he said. "Besides, there'll be so many people there. She probably won't even notice! Come on, you can't tell me you've never been curious what her house looks like before?"
Emma thought about it. She hadn't been to a party in ages. And crashing Regina's would certainly be fun after the myriad of unpleasant things the other girl had been doing to her all year. She smiled.
"Sure, why not."
A/N: not really sure how I feel about this chapter x.X Anyway. THINGS TO COME
Thanks for reading! Hope everyone liked it, and any comments or criticisms are appreciated! :)