Author's Note: Not much of a response to last chapter, which makes me assume that you, my lovely readers didn't enjoy it much. I hope that the following gets you back into this story. We've got a massive twist coming here. And though there's not much explanation yet - that will come next chapter - I hope that this chapter will provide you with some understanding that there wasn't for last chapter.


Chapter Eight: Changing Game

Reality was a bitter shock to Mary Margaret's system, once it came.

She'd been able to enjoy the happiness of what had been the best weekend she could remember for a little while longer after getting back to her apartment just before lunch. She'd walked in the door with a joyful smile on her face, that had only spread wider to find Emma sitting on the couch with the newspaper in her hands, a mug of steaming coffee on the table beside her, and Laci sitting in her lap looking for all the world like she belonged there.

Giddy. That was the word for it. Mary Margaret Blanchard felt giddy, and it was a feeling that she was coming quickly to associate with David and Emma, because if not for them, she'd never had experienced it.

"There's coffee in the pot," Emma drawled, amusement written all over her pretty features.

Mary felt the colour rise to her cheeks as she murmured her thanks while letting Amy off leash. The lab, having quite enjoyed her long morning out, was quite happy to run into the corner of the room where her bed was, and promptly busy herself with a chew toy. With a smile for the dog - and without another word to her roommate, Mary headed into the kitchen. Emma hadn't really said anything - yet - but Mary knew she was in for it.

Emma waited for the perfect opportunity - Mary having just taken her first sip of her coffee, light and sweet as always - before commenting. "You have a nice, quiet, insignificant, all by your lonesome - with no handsome charming men to delay you - and thus completely innocent walk with Amy?"

Mary choked on her coffee. Emma's smirk almost became an entity onto itself.

Recovering quickly, Mary delivered back a smirk of her own. "Yes, it was nice."

Emma's laugh filled the room, and Mary could've sworn she felt her heart swell at the sound.


Now comfortably seated beside Emma, Mary reached over to scratch the cat, who responded with a quiet purr. The sound of it made both women smile, and Mary turned to Emma. "She seems to have warmed up to the new situation."

Emma chuckled. "Yes, seems that way. And quicker than you'd think. I woke up this morning to her lying on my pillow with me. She cuddled in good at some point last night."

"Doesn't surprise me at all, actually. She warmed fastest to you when we were at the shelter. I think you're her favourite."

The easy smile on Emma's face turned self-depreciating as she quipped, "That'd be a first."

"Em," Mary sighed.

A blonde eyebrow raised challengingly. "Come on, Mare. With what I've told you of my life, you think I've ever been anyone's favourite before?"

"You're Henry's."

Emma looked away, slightly stunned. She didn't argue further.


"So if Laci was with you all night, and still there when you woke up this morning... what time did you wake up?"

"Ten. Stop avoiding, Blanchard. Talk. Walking a dog does not take hours. Unless the outing is much, much more than just getting the dog some exercise."

"She's a big, super energetic dog. Needs a lot of exercise."

The laugh lit up Emma's eyes even as she tried to appear stern.

"Mare. Come on. It's me. You know I'm not going to judge. What happened?"

Mary sighed, caught in that timeless dilemma of a woman falling in love, that in which she simultaneously wants to keep those precious moments to herself, secret treasures; and at the same time wanting share them with anyone willing to listen, in the ever-there human condition of desire to share the little happinesses of life with the world.

Mary surrendered. "I invited David to come with us on our walk. He did. We had a nice time."

Emma gawked. "That's it? You come in almost two hours after I woke up - and who knows how long you were gone before I was aware of it - and you're practically floating on air and all I get is NICE?"

The smirk from before returned to Mary's face in full force. "Nah. It was fun to see your reaction though."

This time, when the pillow went flying, it was from Emma's side to Mary.


"Ames woke me up around seven needing to go out..."

"Seven? What the heck? You've been gone since dawn?"

Mary whacked Emma gently with the pillow she was now holding. "Are you going to let me tell you or no?"

"Does regular commentary qualify as not letting you tell me? Because I need the sarcastic comments. They're an important feature of being friends with me."

Considering, Mary eyed Emma. "Semi-regular commentary I'll allow. Best I can do."

"I'll take it. So, dawn on a Sunday morning, you weirdo?"

Mary laughed lightly. "Hey. A dog needs out, she needs out. The timing's not a big consideration on their part. And our dog needed out. I got dressed, took her outside - I was just going to go for a short walk around the neighbourhood, but the morning was just so perfect, so peaceful. It felt like I was the only one awake in the world. Just me and my dog, and while that was such a nice feeling, when it comes to having moments where it's just me and Amy, it feels like David should be there too. I still think of her as his dog, that we're just kind of..."

"Providing the home where he can't. I get it. His dog."

"Our dog. He's quite insistent about that," Mary murmured, with a smile that revealed how much it meant to her that he felt that way.

"Hearts appearing in your eyes, Mare. Focus, I need story. More story."

"Fine. Story. I realized I wanted to spend the time with him, but tried to talk myself out of it for about eight minutes - I wasn't counting though - and finally gave up on that and texted him to come meet us by the Bridge. He showed up... more like appeared out of no where. He scared the crap out of me actually."

"Hope you gave him hell for that."

"He charmed his way out of it."

"So damn sappy."

"Says the girl begging for every detail of my romantic morning."

"So it was romantic then? Well, you must continue so that I may live vicariously through you."

"Wouldn't have picked you for a romantic."

"Not really a romantic," Emma smiled wistfully, "But I believe in love when I see it. And Mare... I'm seeing you and David are falling into it."

Mary stared at Emma wordlessly. The irrepressible smirk came to Emma's face once more. "And I may have a secret appreciation of the little moments that come in and with the falling. When it's real, anyway. And it's real with you two. So tell me more."

Thrown, Mary attempted to gather herself. It was funny - she'd known all along that she was falling for David - so much faster than made any rational sense - but she'd never let herself think of what she was falling into. Love. Was she falling in love with David? Could what she was feeling for him, this need to just be near him, all the time, was that what love felt like? And if that was the case... how could the feeling have been so intense from the start? She'd needed him from the moment she met him, needed him even when she found out he was married. Married. She was falling in love with a married man, and that was so not right. That lovely, perfect, wonderful morning she'd had with David - it was wrong.

It just didn't feel that way. It felt wonderfully, perfectly right. Still did. And that was even more wrong.

Mary buried her hand in her hands. "What am I doing, Em?"

Worried at the sudden change in emotion obvious in her friend, Emma reached out to put a hand on Mary's shoulder. "Okay, so we're not doing the romantic story thing anymore?"

Mary's laugh was half a sob. "No. Not when the romantic thing is wrong. I am a horrible, horrible person."

"Didn't we cover this a long time ago? You are definitely not a horrible person."

"I'm in love with a married man. That qualifies as pretty horrible in my books, at least in Kathryn's perspective. What am I doing to her?"

Watching Mary carefully, Emma picked her next question with care. "Are you doing any of this intentionally to hurt Kathryn?"

Mary looked up to stare at her. "Of course not."

"Then you're not a horrible person. You're a person who... God, Mary. If there's one thing I've figured out in life it's that people can't help what they feel."

"Even if what I feel is hurting someone else?"

Emma sighed, frustrated for the pain she could see on her friend's face. "Mary. This isn't... If this was some one-sided thing... it's not, though. David feels as strongly, as desperately for you. He cares for Kathryn. He's in love with you, or getting there. And the most unfair thing to all of you would be for him to stay with Kathryn for no other reason other than the fact that she's his wife."

She is not his wife. The sentiment, half snarled, overtook Mary's conscious thought in a way that she'd never quite experienced before, and with it brought a wave of fury that she felt quite removed from.

Stunned, Mary recoiled, then jumped off the couch, caught in a blind panic. She couldn't hear Emma's frightened questions, threats to call for help. The apartment, her roommate, the pets - both riled up from their respective previously relaxed states, Amy having come over in that instinctive way animals had of trying to calm their owners - disappeared from Mary's vision. Everything was blurred to the point of disappearing, as all Mary could see was black, and all she could hear were things that didn't make any sense - He's our husband Mary, not hers, you know this, you know this, fight it, let me out!

The slap across her face was hard enough to cause ringing in her ears, but it snapped her out of it. Emma's terrified face was the first thing she saw, followed quickly by the pets - both staring at her, and then the whole of her living room after that. Nothing was different. Nothing had changed. Everything was normal.

What the hell just happened?

The question in Mary's own mind was echoed perfectly by Emma's out loud, and Mary, hearing the shake in Emma's voice, hated herself, hated whatever was happening to her. It was bad enough what it was doing to her. But Emma had been through something too similar with Graham for Mary to have ever wanted to put her through anything that would cause her fear.

"Mary?"

"I don't... I'm okay now, Em. I promise. But I don't know what just happened there."

"That's it?" Emma choked back a sob. "You go into some kind of fit, you're unresponsive for five minutes, I get you back by slapping you as hard as I can, and all you can tell me is that you're okay?"

"I am now," Mary whispered, "Or as okay as I can be anyway. I wasn't then. I don't know what happened, I don't understand it. Something in me snapped when you called Kathryn David's wife, and what happened after that didn't make any sense. I can't even attempt to explain it."

Calmer now that she could see that Mary did seem to be alright now, a sharp, determined, steely note entered Emma's voice. "Try."

Infuriated, terrified, and frustrated beyond belief, Mary snapped. "I have thoughts and memories that aren't mine, but I experience them anyway. How do you begin to try and explain something like that? You say something normal, something true, something I know to be fact - Kathryn is David's wife - and something blows up in my head trying to convince me it's all lies. It's insane. I know it is, and now you know it too."

Emma took a couple calming breaths. What Mary was saying wasn't rational, and it frightened her, but belaying her fear in her response was not going to help Mary in any way.

"Do - do you think what you're experiencing is related to the problems with your memory that you were talking about the other day?"

Mary froze, then deflated. "I don't know. Maybe. Probably. It's all crap anyway, so it's probably linked."

Unable to stop herself, Emma snorted. "Even with all this going on, that spunk of yours that only showed up when you decided to start fighting for David is still shining through, Mare. He's good for you. The circumstances might be a little messed up, but there's no denying that..."

"That I need him," Mary murmured, suddenly as calm as she'd been earlier, when she and Emma were in the middle of nice, normal girl talk. That just the thought of him could sooth her so... "I need to talk to him."

Watching with a slight smile as Mary grabbed her phone, Emma excused herself, and snuck off to her own room, Laci trailing behind her.

While dialing David's cell number - from memory - Mary watched her roommate and her cat go, then turned to Amy, just in time to see the dog settle in beside her. "Moral support?" Mary asked the dog in a murmur.

When Amy barked gently twice Mary was somehow unsurprised.


David Nolan had been having a really, really good day. Best since he'd woken up, probably. Being able to spend so much uninterrupted time alone with Mary did that. Made him happy, and made him realize, finally, what the right thing to do - for everyone involved - was.

He needed to leave Kathryn. He needed to stop hurting her by staying in a marriage that he vaguely remembered bits and pieces of, but could no longer feel. He wasn't in love with Kathryn. Couldn't be. Not when he was so hopelessly, irrationally, wonderfully in love with Mary.

His feelings for Mary didn't make logical sense. That's how he knew it was right. Logic wasn't getting him anywhere. What he had *thought* was right didn't work. How he felt... that's what he needed to go on.

He'd walked into that kitchen, prepared to tell Kathryn, prepared to leave. What he was going to say, he'd had no idea, but he knew what he had to do.

And then everything went to hell.

Kathryn was - well, the idea that she would hurt herself like that was horrifying, and the knowledge that it was his fault staggered him. He'd never, ever wanted to hurt anyone - but by trying to do the honourable thing when his heart wasn't in it had only tortured everyone involved. Kathryn could sense his absence, his withdrawal from her - of course she could, he was barely there even in the rare time that he was at home. And now -

He didn't even want to think of it.

He'd convinced Kathryn to go and take a nap, promised that he wasn't going anywhere. And he wasn't. Couldn't. She'd begged him to stay, wounds she'd inflicted to herself still shining with blood on the wrist above the hand she'd gripped at his shirt with. He'd done this to her.

He couldn't do more.

So he sat on the floor outside the bedroom that was supposed to be his, and stared at his phone, wondering how in the world he was going to explain to Mary, and startled when the phone lit up with its ring, the caller ID showing Mary's number.

Damn it.

He walked into the room he'd been staying in and shut the door, trusting that Kathryn was safely asleep in the other room.

"Mare," he breathed into the phone when answering it, the warmth filling his voice even as he tried to contain it. What was she doing to him? What was he doing to her?

"David, I'm so glad you answered. I really needed to talk to you, to hear your voice. I um... I had another one of those moments, and it was worse than before, worse than it's ever been. Emma was there, and I terrified her, David. After everything she went through with Graham, the fact that she had to see - I don't even know what it must have looked like to her, just that I don't ever want her to feel frightened like that. But how can I protect her when I'm the cause of her fear, and when I'm so damn afraid myself?"

David slid down against the wall to the floor, his head resting against his knees even as he continued to hold the phone to his ear. Mary needed him. Emma probably did too. He remembered what Mary had looked like when she'd blanked out in front of him earlier today - she'd just been gone, the blankness in her eyes had been horrifying - and if this one was worse, after what Emma had been through, to see something similar happen to her best friend must have been a special kind of torture... They needed him. He needed them. Desperately, he needed to be there with them, to help them, to protect them. If something was happening to Mary, he needed to be there to keep her safe.

He couldn't go.

"David?"

His silence was telling, and David knew that Mary could tell something was desperately wrong. The worry crept into her voice. "David, what's wrong?"

He answered with a pained, frustrated groan first, as he wondered if this all was a special torture designed especially for him. "Mary. Something's happened with Kathryn. She's - I don't know. I don't know if she's had a breakdown, or what happened, but she... she cut herself, Mare."

Mary's answering gasp was horrified.

"I was going to end it, Mare. For all of us. I need to be with you, and Kathryn needs to be freed from a life with a husband who doesn't love her. But now..."

"You can't leave her," Mary realized, and her voice did not like sound like her own. Shock had changed it, roughened it, and he realized with horror that she was crying.

"Mary... I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," Mary responded, trying to force a smile into her voice through her tears. "I understand. You're a good man for it. You wouldn't be you if you left anyway."

David was fighting tears of his own as he replied. "Don't... don't give up on me yet. Please don't give up on me. I don't know how now... but we'll find a way."

On the other end, Mary smiled for real this time. "David... I couldn't give up on you if I tried. I'm still here."

David's sigh of relief was audible. "Are you going to be okay?"

"I am. I've got Em. You just worry about Kathryn."

"You call if you need me. I'm still here too."

"I know. I will. I'll see you, David."

"See you, Mare."

Both hanging up at the same time, David stared at his phone for a moment, then slid it away from him across the hardwood floor of the room, resisting the temptation to toss the thing into the wall. Burying his head in his hands - unaware of how strikingly similar his pose was to Mary's a couple neighbourhoods away - he sighed. "Damn it, damn it, damn it."

Having been listening outside the door the entire time, Kathryn shook, her fear nearly overtaking her. David was staying, but against his will. Only his sense of honour was keeping him with her.

Desperate measures were needed, she knew. She would be paying the town's schoolteacher a visit tomorrow.


It had been a very, very long day at work. Mary had not slept well - if not sleeping at all qualified as not sleeping well - and her concentration was impacted. She'd planned for that, thankfully, with a number of individual work exercises for her students, including a lot of reading. Her students hadn't really noticed anything was up with their teacher- thank God - save for Henry, who kept shooting her worried looks. The boy understood too much for his own good.

The end of day bell finally rang, and Mary watched the majority of her students file quickly out of the room, and smiled as Henry walked towards her desk, eyes wide.

"What can I do for you, Henry?" she asked, intentionally injecting a cheerful note into her voice and overdoing it obviously. She barely hid her own wince at the sound of it.

"What's wrong... Mary?" The boy whispered her first name as if afraid of somebody else hearing and getting him in trouble, and the smile that came to Mary's face was real this time because of it.

"Nothing's wrong, Henry. I'm just tired. I really appreciate your concern, but I'm okay."

Henry smiled at her. "I don't believe you, but okay. If you can't tell me I understand. But talk to my Mom, alright? She makes things better."

Mary laughed. "You're right, Henry. Thank you. Have a good night."

Henry left the room with a wave, and Mary turned back to the lesson plans for the rest of the week that she'd been working on while her students read quietly. She definitely did not want to be out of sorts all week, and she wasn't planning on being so, but she'd best be prepared with some activities for the kids that would allow for some quiet moments during the day.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Blanchard," came a voice from the doorway.

Mary looked up, startled, even more so to see the blonde now standing in her classroom.

"Kathryn."


The two women simply stared each other for awhile in something of a standoff, neither completely sure what to say. Mary broke the silence first.

"How are you, Kathryn?"

Kathryn sucked in a breath for a light, obvious sigh. "I've been better, Ms. Blanchard. But you know that, don't you?"

"I..."

"Well, let's see. I know that you know about my little accident, because I heard David on the phone with you."

"Kathryn..."

"Oh, no big deal, don't worry about that. It's lovely that he has someone to talk to. I'm just not sure it should be you. Because let's see, what else do I know? Ah, yes. Tell me, Ms. Blanchard. When exactly did you fall in love with David?"

To say that Mary was stunned would be a terrible understatement. She felt frozen, unsure what to do or say. "I..."

"No need to deny it, dear, we both know it's true. I saw the two of you together by the bridge yesterday morning."

"You saw..."

"Oh, of course. David's little walks by himself got so tiresome, long ago. I figured it was about time I found out what he was doing. So when he went off at the crack of dawn, I followed him. You two were quite sweet, actually. I'm a romantic, so I can appreciate such moments. Usually. Not when it's David sharing them with another woman."

Finding her voice, barely, Mary stuttered. "I am so sorry, Kathryn. I - neither of us ever meant to hurt you, please, please believe that."

"But I do, sweet little Ms. Blanchard. I fully believe that neither one of you are capable of intentionally trying to hurt me. But you did. And when I left after your cute little dog pulled you off - I suppose that was the mutt David couldn't shut up about, yes? Anyway, I left, and went home, and I knew that I had to stop this. You two with your sickeningly sweet little love story certainly weren't going to. What could I do, but appeal to the one thing that David may want more than you, and that's his desperate desire to be an honourable man."

"What are you saying?"

"Oh, you know what I'm saying, don't you, Mary? I can call you Mary now, right? I feel like we're all good friends now. And since we're such good friends, I'll tell you a little secret. We both know how badly David wishes to be a good, honourable man. And good, honourable men do not leave women in the middle of mental breakdowns. So I did what I had to do, and I faked one."

"You... what?"

"Oh, don't get me wrong, dear," Kathryn sighed, pulling up her sleeve to stare at her wrist, "The cutting hurt. It had to happen though. He's staying - just as we both knew he would."

Mary found herself fighting tears as she stared disbelievingly at Kathryn, who'd always seemed to her to be a nice enough woman. She could not believe that Kathryn was capable of such cruelty.

"You can't do this to him," Mary cried, "He's so worried about you. My God, I know what we did was unfair to you..."

"Unfair?" Kathryn snapped, all pretense of civility gone. "You think your little affair was merely unfair to me?"

"It's not an affair. We've been friends... Yes, I wanted more, but we never... We took it too far, once, yesterday, that's what you saw, but Kathryn, I haven't been sleeping with him, I haven't, we haven't... we wouldn't have done that to you, Kathryn."

"It's interesting to me how desperately you try to justify what you're doing. Guilt, perhaps? Remorse? Regret?"

Mary's fired, vanished until now, suddenly appeared violently in her eyes. "No."

"No, what?"

"No, I do not regret a moment I've spent with David. I love him, Kathryn. And if you could do something like this to him, then it seems quite clear to me that you do not."

"You do not know anything, Ms. Blanchard. He is my husband."

A blind rage had overtaken Mary then, and the words exploded out of her before she had any idea of what was happening. "He. Is. Mine."

Kathryn stared at Mary, stunned silent. Her eyes...

Mary had frozen. Those words... they weren't hers. She hadn't meant to say them. Whatever was happening to her... whatever other personality she may have... she had lost control over it.

"I'm sorry." Mary murmured, desperately, while stumbling to gather her things, shove them into her bag. Her hands were shaking. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't know what just happened. I have to go. I have to go now."

Mary ran out the door before the blonde could do anything to stop her.

Walking to the classroom's doorway, she watched Mary run down the hall and out the main door to the school. The teacher hadn't been the only one shaking - she herself could feel every part of her body shaking as pure terror overtook her.

"Oh God," she cried to herself. "Oh, God, Oh God. Snow."


Author's Note: Oh, did I forget to mention earlier that Kathryn is not actually Kathryn, but Abigail, because *she* remembers FTL? Whoops, silly me.

Okay, so hands up everyone who saw that coming, because I must congratulate you, because I certainly didn't. It was never part of my plan for this story to have Abigail remember - but like I said last chapter, I was brainstorming, trying to figure out a character's motivations - *why* would Kathryn do this? - and it was like Abigail waltzed into my head, her character fully formed (I don't think the show has done nearly the kind of development of her character that I'll be trying to portray in future chapters) and announcing, "Because I'm not Kathryn, silly."

If you have no idea how this could possibly be, don't worry. We'll be hearing from Abigail a lot next chapter, as she explains what the hell is going on. For now, all you need to remember is that all is never completely as it seems - at least, not in a OUAT fic, with all the worlds and lives we have to play with.

Let me know what you think of this twist - get me even more pumped to write next chapter, because I am so excited already.

Thanks, as always, for reading.