A/N: It's time to play "Guess The Author's Head Canon!" Also, show, please don't get canceled until we get an episode with the backstory to Grace's mom, so I can see if I'm right about stuff, okay?


Part Nine: In The Doorway

"So," she says.

He nearly trips on the last step down. He catches himself in time, though, catches himself before she attempts to catch him, and finds himself more or less upright at the bottom of the stairs. He lifts his chin above the scarf, stretches his neck.

"So," he says.

Emma heaves a half-hearted sigh that she is apparently trying to hide from him. Her hands swing briefly at her sides, then her fingers lace together in front of her and she points at him.

"This is your castle."

"Was," says Jefferson, one hand now busy with the scarf, arranging it, arranging it just so. He thinks of scarves, and scars, and how they encircle him. He can't get away. "It was my castle."

"What happened?"

Emma's eyes are dark with trepidation when he swings sideways to look at her. She looks as though she regrets asking; or as though she's afraid she's going to regret asking, which for all intents and purposes is nearly the same thing. He looks at her, the same look he gives scissors post-sharpening: weighing in the balance, judging the sharpness.

"I made a mistake," he says abruptly.

"In bringing us here?" says Emma, looking suddenly relieved. "I'll say you did. I did say it, actually. More than once."

"No. Not that. Well, maybe. But that's not what I mean. I made a mistake." He swipes at the edge of the bannister and inspects his thumb for dust, then moves away, away from the uphill climb, away from Emma. "That's what happened."

She's following him, though, because of course she is. He picks up speed at about the fifth stride— he'll be back outside on the castle grounds in no time, at this rate— but she half-skips a step or two and homes in just behind him, dogging his heels like a good sheriff should. He thinks briefly, fleetingly, of warning her off with the only story about a sheriff he knows— that one in Nottingham. Got too close to the royal family. Never a good decision.

"Jefferson," she says, and her voice is stern as a school teacher— something she picked up from her mother, no doubt— and he reaches the arched stone of the doorway and swings around to catch her as she steps into him, one hand gripping the stone to block her path, the other out, warding her off and sheltering her in, hand hovering just around the curve of her lower back, not quite touching. He steps into her, and she looks down at him, then up— at the scarf and the scar— she swallows hard— then up, then up. He drops his head downwards so she can hear him as he keeps his voice low. The walls have ears. Ears have walls. All magic comes with a price. Everyone pays for their magic.

"I made a mistake," he says, and even his whisper is harsh. "Alice wanted— she wanted to see her home once more. I thought— there'd be no harm, I thought. But I couldn't go. I was busy. I had an assignment." He bites the word out, and Emma doesn't need to ask who for. "I sent her with someone I trusted. I've known him forever. We— we were kids together, even. I was the talent, the portal jumper, and he handled the business end of the deal. But he wanted to branch out. Learn to jump himself. So." He swallows, closes his eyes briefly to carry on. "So. He took Alice through."

Emma looks up at him, that look on her face, that look that means, sometimes, she's sorry; and means, sometimes, she's about to tell him that he's insane. She can say either. They both apply.

"They didn't come back?"

"Hat's rules," says Jefferson. "Both, or none at all. He'd said— he'd told me that he wanted to branch out." He swallows, but it's hard; he barely manages it. There's something thick and sharp there in his throat, as though someone's taken scissors to it. Emma, for her part, is breathlessly sad. The weight of her regard sends him spinning in a diagonal.

"You couldn't find her?"

"I tried. I spent everything I had, looking for her. For him. No one could help me. I lost—" His eyes drift past her to focus momentarily on what had been his home, long ago. "I lost everything except Grace. So I stopped before she was gone, too. I hung up my hat, and we started over." His eyes drift closed again. "I can't forget."

Unexpectedly, he feels Emma's hands fist into his jacket. She pulls him close, and rests her forehead gently against his.

"What sort of person would you be if you could?" she murmurs.

There's a moment of time, and they stand in it; outside, something ticks. Seconds pass. They breathe. They breathe.

"She's out there somewhere," says Emma.

Jefferson's chin jerks up, and he moves back slightly.

"She's out there somewhere," he agrees, and he steps aside, and swings an arm wide to welcome her back into the world.

She matches his steps as they walk away from the castle that had once been his.

"Who was he? Your business partner."

Jefferson swallows, and thinks how much he would like some tea for his dusty throat.

"Most people knew him as the Hare, because he was always running. After something, or away from something, but always running." In spite of himself, a smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. "I called him by his real name. Cass. Cassady. I always wondered where he ended up. What he was chasing, when he went there."

"Yeah," says Emma, and the next unexpected feeling is her hand, smoothing gently down his arm, comforting, once, then again. "I wonder."