A/N: Apologies for the long delays. It's been a wild couple of weeks, but hopefully I can get back to the every two week cycle now.
Warnings: Strong language, extreme (though, not graphic) domestic violence and emotional abuse, death of a character and dub-con implied sex between Trev/Elizabeth. It's all deeply uncomfortable, but I promise you, everything which happens here (and is happening) has an overall point.
Guys, we're down to it, and it's intense, but we're getting close to the end of this part of the story so buckle in and ride with me. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
before.
The world is out of focus for Brennan Jones.
Alcohol, a pounding headache and a kind of simmering rage imake for a toxic cocktail, and every step he takes seems to be pulling him closer to something beyond his understanding. His feet move as if they have a mind of their own, his body heavy and thick as he stumbles into a dirty alley about three blocks from his apartment. It smells like piss and old rainwater, and that's enough to make his stomach revolt. With a lurch, he drops to his knees and starts vomiting up his last several hours of wasted living, everything spilling out.
He hears, "Well, I expected to find you down on your knees; didn't exactly expect this."
Groaning, Brennan stands and turns to face his smirking wife, a snarl setting across his typically handsome features as he regards her. "How did you find me?" he demands, his words slurring.
"Baby, I always know where you are," Emma answers, walking towards him, making sure that he knows that she's not the least bit afraid of him. She steps closer to him, and pats the front of his sweat-soaked shirt, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "I see you've been wasting all of our money on liquid courage again." She laughs cruelly, poking at his chest once again. "Oh, who are we kidding? You'd have to drown in the booze to have even a little bit of courage."
"You think you're so much better than me," he retorts.
"Oh, I know that I am." She looks around. "Where is she, Brennan?"
"Who?"
"The cheap whore you brought out here to fuck."
"There's no one here," he defends, motioning around him, seeming almost desperate for a fleeting moment. Perhaps it's the simmering madness he sees in her eyes that makes him so wary of her now, or perhaps it's the reality that what she's accusing him of isn't actually beneath him. After all, there actually have been other women and other dishonors.
At least he thinks so; truth is his memory is fairly hazy these dark maddening days, a sign of just how drinking and forgetting as much as he can has taken over his generally worthless life.
"So, you're in an alley all by yourself." She laughs again. "My, my, Brennan, you really have fallen hard, haven't you, dear husband of mine?" She spits out the words, openly mocking him.
So, he gives it right the fuck back; "I'm with you, aren't I?" he snaps out in return.
"I'm the best thing that ever happened to you," she retorts. "Without me, you'd be nothing but some loser – well, you're that, anyway, but you'd be even more of one, wouldn't you?"
He snorts derisively, the sound muddled and congested. "You really are a crazy bitch."
Her palm strikes against his face, her nails scratching down against his cheek, streaks of blood appearing there; though it's her wedding ring that cuts the hardest, leaving a deep gash.
Something in Brennan's mind snaps, and maybe it's the liquor or maybe it's the intense hatred that he feels for this woman – this feeling that he's utterly trapped in this terrible relationship.
Whatever it is or isn't, one moment he's staring at her, and then the next he's slamming his wife hard against the brick wall, delighting in the heavy thud her body makes as it connects. His joy fades a moment later, though – not because of guilt, but because she's laughing at him.
"Is that the best you can do?" she taunts.
"No," he promises, his good hand circling her throat. "It's not, sweetheart."
then.
She stays late at work, offering to take on a few extra tables just "to be kind". No one buys it, of course, but they also don't care all that much. Elizabeth Carson is a perfectly nice woman who has never been a problem of her own accord, and her co-workers all feel sorry for what she's most certainly going through at home, but it's really not their problem. Elizabeth always kept everyone at a distance, and so as much as most of them know how she's living with is terrible, they stayed clear of it and forgot about her as soon as every work day has ended.
None of them realize that tonight will be the last time they will see Elizabeth pulling her blue windbreaker tight around her body and nodding a quiet, "Goodnight" to the kitchen staff.
None of them think about her as she turns the corner and climbs into her car, her limbs heavy with dread, and her mind buried in the kind of worry that is both rational and irrational all at once. They turn away and return to their tables, and she starts on her way back to her home.
That word seems strange now, and she doesn't entirely know why.
Oh, but she does – Emma Swan is why.
Or is it Nolan?
It seems absurd to have let Emma in as deep inside her mind as the blonde woman has gotten, especially considering how little Elizabeth actually knows her; but that doesn't change the reality of the situation – ever since she'd met Emma, she's been thinking about little else.
Worse – even more disturbing – she finds herself actually listening to Emma.
Considering her words.
Which is dumb; all of this is dumb, and no good can come out of letting Emma put such stupid thoughts and ideas in her mind. In a few minutes, she'll be at home with her husband, and she'll make him a drink, and they'll settle in the edgy tedium of their perfectly ordinary lives.
Only she knows better.
Because earlier that evening, she'd essentially told him to go away; he's going to be pissed.
She tells herself that this will hardly be the first time, and she certainly knows how to handle Trev.
Only sometimes, she doesn't.
Like the night Henry Mills came into her life, and she ended up with a fist in her face.
Trev had feverishly and even tearfully apologized, promising that it would never happen again, and telling her that she had just scared him, and she had accepted his words as always.
Even then knowing that there would be another time.
Thinking that's just how her life is meant to go.
Her fingers squeeze on the steering wheel, and she hears, "You deserve better," and thinks Emma must live in some kind of fairytale world if she thinks that life turns out for everyone.
It doesn't, and the loud grinding sound of an engine turning off isn't about coming home to a place of safety and calm, but rather a reminder of what she has to deal with before she can put her head down on her pillow and fall into a world where the only thing which can hurt her are the strange images of another world – another more magical reality - she sees.
One where she is stronger, and has infinitely more power, both external and internal.
She sighs and climbs from her car, staring at the front door for far too long, putting words together in her mind, ways to calm Trev and assure him that she's never going to leave him.
The problem is, she realizes with a cold shot of awareness through her veins, she wants to.
before.
He's a textbook gentleman the whole night; he buys her drinks and even insists that she drink water, and he's sweet and kind and seems to be listening to every word she says. He talks about his own past, but doesn't talk over her; instead he waits for her to finish before telling her his own thoughts. Oh, and Trevor Carson has a lot of them. A lot of really wild dreams, too.
The kind of dreams she's long since given up (or at least Elizabeth thinks that she has – she finds herself wondering about the past that she can't seem to quite touch; wondering who she might have wanted to be before a car crash robbed her of most of her memories).
He's passionate and emphatic, talking about how the world they live in – mad, dirty and completely devoid of purpose – just needs those who would dare to lead the way forward.
"And that's you?" Elizabeth challenges, not quite seeing it in this young man. Perhaps it's this weird cynicism that feels deeply baked into her, cold and seething. Sometimes it feels hard to breathe when all she can see are the many things to be afraid of when she looks around.
"That's me," Trev assures her. "I know, it's stupid, and I know you probably think I'm just some jerk trying to sauce you up and get you in bed, but I mean every single word I say." He grins at her, "Including the fact that you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life."
"Now, you're trying to get me into bed," she notes, smiling ever so slightly. Not because she particularly wants to go home with this man, but because having someone looking at her like she's not as damaged and off-kilter as she constantly feels is actually somewhat appealing.
Even if she's pretty damned sure that the end result of his physical attraction to her would be him realizing that she's too much of a mess to take even a quick surface level chance on.
"Maybe," Trev admits. "But that doesn't mean anything else I said wasn't true as well."
"Okay," she concedes. "But –"
"You're really not interested. I get it. And I promised to be a perfect gentleman, so that's what I'm going to be. No one will ever say Trev Carson ain't one." He reaches over to a napkin, grabs a pen from behind the counter and scrawls his phone number onto it. He holds it out to her, then, smiling in a charming boyish way. "But, if you ever are interested..."
She takes the napkin from him, "I'll keep you in mind." She steps back away from the bar, feeling the swirl of the alcohol for a moment, her vision blurring. A hand on the counter, and then she's smiling awkwardly, and moving away from Trev, thinking she needs to make her exit.
Before she somehow ruins what, for once, wasn't a terrible night.
then.
Trev stands up when she steps through the front door, stepping towards her. "You're late."
"It got busy," Elizabeth lies, and thinks that she wants a cigarette badly.
"Sure," he nods, his temper barely kept in check. "Or you're avoiding me."
"Why would I do that?" she contests, coming up to him and placing a hand on his cheek.
"That's a good question. With an easy answer: that blonde bitch."
"Trev, baby, she means nothing," Elizabeth assures him, her other hand on his face now.
His head dips and he looks down at her, smiling slightly at her words. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. She's just…a diversion. Someone to talk to during my breaks."
"She wants you to leave me."
"You know there's nowhere for me to go."
His brow furrows. "And if there was? Would you go?"
Elizabeth's eyes widen for a moment as she realizes her slip. "No," she says quickly. "No, I mean this is my home. There's nowhere I would go because there's nowhere that I want to go."
"You're lying."
"No –"
He places his hands over hers, and yanks them away from his face, holding them tightly in his. "I always know when you're lying to me, Lizzie, and you're lying now; you're not happy."
Her eyes close for a moment, her mind whirling. Maybe, she thinks, this is an opportunity to be honest with him. Maybe she can tell him the truth, and together they can change for the better.
Maybe Emma Swan is wrong, and she doesn't have to be trapped or unhappy.
Maybe…
She looks at him, "No," she confesses. "I'm not."
He nods his head, turning away from her, his hand going up to his jaw to scratch at it thoughtfully for a moment. He shakes his head, then, "I should have seen this coming."
"This?"
"When I first met you in that bar all those years ago, you were a fucking mess."
"This isn't about that," she insists, thinking for the first time in a long time back to that night, and to what had happened after she'd left the bar. To the sound of a gunshot and the flash of blonde hair as the woman with the gun ran past her, leaving a man dying in the alley.
"This is always about that," he tells her. "Because you've never stopped being that mess."
"No –"
"Yes. Always looking for someone to save you. Me, and now this husband-killer."
"Trev, please, listen to me: I'm not happy. This has nothing to do with Emma. It's about me."
"Yeah? You want me to believe it's not about her, then prove it to me."
She sighs, realizing that he's not going to be able to talk about their issues until she's able to convince him that Emma isn't the most pertinent issue between the two of them. "How?"
"File the restraining order."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me. Go with me in the morning and file an official harassment complaint. Let's get a restraining order, and get that woman away from you and the fuck out of our marriage."
"She's not in our marriage."
"Course she is. She wants you to leave me."
"She thinks I can do better," Elizabeth says softly, moving away from Trev and pulling her arms in close around her. It's a strange motion, she thinks, one unfamiliar for her (she typically tucks her hands into her pockets, but this feels even more protective than that). "That's all."
"But she doesn't know you like I do. She doesn't understand how you used to be before. She doesn't understand how much I've done for you," he insists. "She doesn't understand that this is better." He nods his head like he's made his point. "That's why she needs to go, Lizzie."
Elizabeth lets out a soft sigh. "I'm not filing the restraining order."
"Yes, you are."
"No, I'm not."
He takes another step towards her. "Lizzie –"
"I'm not sending that woman back to jail just because she tried to be a friend to me."
"She doesn't want just to be a friend to you. She wants more."
Elizabeth's eyebrow lifts. "She's not chasing after me, if that's what you think."
"I think she hates men and –"
"This isn't about her," Elizabeth insists again. "It's about us. It's about me."
"You're not happy," he repeats.
"I'm not. But I want to be."
"With me?" he asks, and for a moment, he seems so sad and lost. So hurt and devastated.
She decides to push just a little bit further, to see if more truth will work for them, "I'm not sure if that's possible," she tells him. "Not like we are now. Not how our marriage is now."
"I see," he states and then turns away from her, walking over to the wall, and placing a hand on it, his head low as he takes in her words. "You know," he says. "I have given you everything."
"Trev –"
"I took care of you when you were scared." He slaps the wall hard. "I held you when you cried over not being able to have babies. I still love you in spite of all of your imperfections." He slaps the wall again, this time balling his fist and rapping his knuckles hard against the rough surface.
Her shoulders deflate, and she steps backwards; she's been through this before.
His simmering building anger.
It'd been a mistake to think this time could be any different.
"I never once thought about leaving you," he reminds her.
"No," she agrees.
He snaps around, taking two quick steps towards her, and grabbing her by the shoulders. He shakes her as he speaks, practically shouting "And I will be damned if I'm going to let you throw our marriage away because some stupid cunt thinks she can come in and twist your head."
"Okay," she agrees, the walls suddenly closing in on her as reality crushes against her.
This is never going to get better.
This is her life, and it's best to just accept it and find a way to be happy within it.
And if she can't, well, it's not like she's ever really known what happiness feels like, anyway.
Maybe this is it.
Maybe there really is nothing better than this.
"You're my wife," he reminds her.
"I am," she concurs, her voice dull and tired.
"We need her out of our life, Lizzie. Once she's out, you won't have these thoughts." He pulls her even closer to him, his fingers pressing into the soft flesh of her shoulders. "Tomorrow, we're going to go down to the police station, and we'll make sure she can never hurt us again."
"I don't want to do that," she protests, her voice thin and broken, like she knows that she's fighting a worthless battle against a man who won't relent until he destroys everything around her that could somehow provide her with an exit from him. That's what this is, she realizes.
The eradication of every option besides him.
"But it's what we're going to do," Trev replies, a tremor to his voice, his emotions darkly turbulent. "That's what we're going to do. You're gonna protect us, just as I always have." He accents his words by leaning in, then, and crushing his lips against hers. If he notices how she recoils from him, he doesn't show it, the kiss aggressive and demanding, his hold containing.
When he finally pulls away, there are tears in her eyes, blood staining her torn lower lip.
"Don't cry," he tells her. "Everything is going to be okay. I'm going to keep you safe.
Elizabeth stares at him for a long moment, and then puts her hands on his face, and leans in to kiss him in return, trying desperately to control the way her stomach rolls. "Everything is going to be okay," she repeats, and then pulls him to her, and then towards their bedroom together.
He sighs in relief, and asks, "You still love me, right?"
"I love you," she replies, almost automatically.
"You're still my girl, right?"
She doesn't answer, just pushes him down onto the bed, eyes glazed over, one purpose left.
Survive any way that she has to.
Broken and torn, and perhaps worth nothing at all, but still alive.
Maybe that means something.
Maybe it doesn't.
She turns the lights off.
before.
He's choking her, and she laughing.
His hand is wrapped around the slim column of her throat – bruises already forming and purpling on the tender pale flesh there – and her eyes are bulging, but she's still laughing.
Still daring him to be a man.
Telling him that he never will be.
He releases her throat, steps back a foot and strikes her with his fist across the face.
She falls immediately to a knee, fingers running across a newly formed bloody cut on her cheek.
And then she laughs again. "That temper of yours, Brennan, you never could control it."
"I never had one before you," he retorts.
"Yeah, well, good news, lover, you won't have it after me, either," she says, and then she's standing up and pulling out her gun and waving it at him. "You remember when you bought this for me? For protection. Because you were worried that I couldn't handle attention from men."
"Emma –"
"Do you remember the night you used it to make sex a little more…interesting? Guess it's my turn now. You get shit-faced, fuck every whore who crosses your path, and then bring your filth back into my bed." She presses the gun against his chest, her finger grazing against the trigger, her blue-green eyes dark and mad. "How many bullets do you think it takes to kill a loser?"
"We can talk about this," he says.
"You put your hands on me."
"You put your hands on me earlier," he recalls, eyes on the gun.
"I did," she nods. She smiles coldly. "You like your games, don't you? You like tying me up and seeing how far you can push me. Well, baby, how about we play that game right now. Only I'm going to shoot you instead of just choking you. Tell me about the last woman you slept with."
"It was you," he insists. "You were the last one."
"Liar."
"Emma, come on."
"Tell me. Tell me the truth or I start with your balls. Not like I need them, anymore."
"This isn't a game."
"Only because you're not the one in control. When you are, it's always a game for you."
"I'm sorry."
"No, you're not, and don't ruin my high by pretending you are. Now tell me, who was she?"
"She meant nothing. She was just –"
"Better than coming home."
"You hate me as much as I hate you," Brenna insists, eyes still on the gun.
"Oh, honey, I hate you far worse. You were a fairytale I never wanted. But now, it's over." She leans in and presses her mouth to her ear, "Will you cry on your knees for me if I tell you to?"
"Yes," he says, swallowing as he tries to force his brain to clear up enough to come up with a way out of this situation. Maybe later, he can seize back power, but not right now, anyway.
And she damn well knows it. "I want more," Emma tells him. "A lot fucking more."
He thinks he sees her finger starting to depress, and pure panic sets in; his knee jerking out, he lunges for the gun; maybe if he hadn't, she would have continued to taunt him, continued to frighten him and see if she could humiliate him even worse (she'd been aiming for making him piss himself, knowing that he would be mortified by it, a fitting revenge for having struck her), but his sudden movement startles her, and what was merely a twitch becomes a harsh pull.
The gunshot rings across the alley, loud and echoing.
"No," she shouts, in the same moment that he's falling.
A game of hatred gone disastrously wrong, red now splattering the walls.
He strikes the dirty gravel hard, rainwater mixing with blood.
"Brennan," she says, kneeling beside him. "Brennan, no."
He blinks slowly, as if trying to register what's happening to him. For a time, they close, and she thinks maybe he's died right there, but then they're opening again, and she think – inexplicably – that they look somehow different. Not color-wise, but recognition wise. , "Emma? Did you -"
Like it's a question, like he doesn't understand. His good hand fumbles for hers, and still too stunned to think straight, she lets him take it, watching as he turns it over and looks at her ring.
"I didn't mean to," she says, and wonders if that's true, and fears that it's not.
"Where are we?" he asks. "Emma, where are we?"
She thinks that her husband is dying, realizing that the pain he's in is probably robbing him of his sanity. And if it is, and if he dies here, she knows that she'll have no defense available.
She'd meant to scare him, meant to remind him that she wouldn't play good wife to his antics.
It'd gone too far, and there's bruises on her face and throats, scratches on his cheek, and a bullet stuck somewhere in the middle of his chest, his breaths growing rapidly more shallow.
She stands up; then, he grips her hand, "Emma, I'm scared," he whispers.
"So am I," she tells him.
"Don't leave me," he pleads, tears mixing with blood.
"I can't stay," she replies, and then she's turning; fleeing into the darkness of the night.
Trying to pretend that she doesn't hear him calling after her, his voice breaking with pain.
And trying with everything within her to pretend that he doesn't seem like he's become an entirely different man – someone disturbingly and strangely familiar – at the moment of death.
then.
It takes everything Emma has not to run.
It takes every ounce of courage and strength within her heart and soul to not steal a car and drive as fast and as far away from this town as she can; the very idea of going back to prison terrifies her to the point that even thinking about it makes her sick.
Violently so.
And her back…God, even thinking about being back in that place makes the already damaged muscles in her back seize up; and for a moment, the injection she received to allow her to stand straight stops working, and she finds herself nearly collapsing beneath the pain.
It's all in her head, though, and she knows it; fear is a terrible thing, and right now she's afraid.
She can't go back there. But she also can't abandon her family.
She won't abandon them.
She straightens herself up, swallows hard, collects herself, and makes her away back to Henry's apartment, stepping inside and flashing him a smile meant to reassure him that all is well.
He says, "Lucy, go brush your teeth."
Lucy lifts an eyebrow. "What?"
He turns towards her and sighs, "I need you to go away so I can have talk to Emma."
"Kid," Emma murmurs. And then shakes her head. "It's okay. I'm okay."
"Emma –"
"Nothing in this world matters more than her, Henry; don't ever send her away."
"You didn't send me away," he reminds her. "I went to school. I wanted to go to school. And what happened wasn't your fault. Wasn't mom's fault, and wasn't Killian's. What happened between all of you…the Black Fairy is still the one who cast this curse. She's responsible."
"You know it's not that simple. We all made choices. We let her win."
"Luce –"
"Go brush my teeth," she repeats.
"Please?"
"Fine. But I'm just going to be on the opposite side of the door. Still listening."
"I know," he admits.
"Good," she says, stopping only to hug Emma tight. "It'll be okay," she tells Emma.
"I believe you," Emma answers, and thinks it's both a lie and not one.
Lucy gazes up at her for a long moment, as if she's clocking Emma, but then with a dramatic sigh, she's stomping away and slamming the door and most certainly leaning against it to listen.
"I think I would have liked to have met her mother," Emma notes.
"I think you would have loved her. She was…she was amazing. I miss her every single day."
"I'm sorry. I…we never wanted any of this pain for you."
"I know, but some of it…what happened to her? That's just life sucking. That's not on…anyone. But what happened to you and mom and the rest of our family, that's something we can fix."
"I hope you're right," Emma replies softly, tears in her eyes.
Henry steps forward and wraps his arms around her, the muscles in his arms reminding her just how much of a man her son has become. She drops her head onto to his shoulder and lets him just hold her. No, it's not what a mother should do, but for a moment, she allows herself this much. Knowing that Regina would kill to do this, to be able to embrace him like this right now.
But she doesn't even know that she has a son.
Doesn't even know that she has the massive family that she does.
"What happened?" Henry asks.
"I think I screwed up," she admits, and then she's stepping back from him, and roughly wiping at her face. She feels a sharp pain radiate through her back, but chooses to ignore it, instead focusing on the worry she sees in his expression. "I think I pushed too far too fast, and she's not ready to leave him. He wants her to file a restraining order, and I think she might do it."
"Which means –"
"I'd go back to jail." And then tears are falling down her cheeks, and Emma hates herself so much for the weakness she's showing Henry when what he needs from her is strength.
"She won't do it," Henry tells her. "She won't. She…Mom…Elizabeth trusts you."
"I don't think she does. I didn't tell her about being in prison. He used that against me." Emma drops her head into her hand. "I tried to do everything like I used to, but I'm not that person."
"Yes, you are," Henry insists. "Your instincts are still good."
"Nothing about me is," she tells him.
"Mom –"
He's about to say more – about to vehemently reassure her – but then the phone is ringing and they're both just staring at it, wondering if it's Emma's lawyer calling to tell them the bad news.
But it's a number he's never seen before – not JB's so maybe it's not that…
Maybe?
Henry picks it up after the third ring, "Hello?" He listens, and then says softly, his voice suddenly intensely wrought with emotion, "Yeah, of course." Turning to Emma, he places his hand over the speaker on the phone and says, "There's nothing bad about you. No matter what you think about yourself, I know you. Your heart is still strong. Nothing – not even a curse or ten years away can change that, Mom." He then extends the phone to her and says, "It's Elizabeth."
before.
The first thing she hears is a booming gunshot, loud and echoing.
And then the woman, her head down, her blonde hair sticky with blood, slams into her shoulder and keeps running, her boots slapping wetly against the dirty rainwater of the alley.
Elizabeth's first thought is that she should have taken a different way back home instead of the fastest one, and now she's covered with blood and she doesn't –
"Oh my God," she whispers, looking into the alley and seeing the body there. Her hand covers her mouth and she silently screams into it as she stares at the red puddle beneath him.
And then she looks down at herself and sees the red all over her.
Likely his blood.
She's covered in his blood.
Logically, she could easily explain this.
Logically, science most certainly could.
But she's covered in his blood, and she thinks she's far more drunk than she'd realized, and everything always crumbles for her no matter how hard she fights to keep it together.
No matter how much she tries to be something more than a terribly damaged woman; one whom everyone looks at like she's broken and adrift, incapable of surviving without someone holding her up.
Problem is, she thinks, they're right.
She finds her phone in her pocket, and finds the napkin, and calls, "I need you," she says.
Something inside of her – deep and buried – claws at her for these words, tearing at her heart brutally. It insists that she can handle this situation on her own, like she has so many others (she hasn't). That she's stronger than she thinks she is. But she's not, and she'll never be.
She's the woman who woke up in a hospital with only stories behind her but few memories. Stories she has no connection to, of a family who she'd never really been part of.
A family who doesn't care if she lives or dies.
This is all she has, and all she'll ever have.
There are footsteps behind her, and then Trev is standing there, hands on her shoulders, arms around her, and that voice is still clawing at her, telling her that she needs to step away from this idea of protection and find a way to protect herself, but then Trev is saying, "It's okay."
Over and over.
Like he can make it okay just by the force of his will and his arms.
She's weak, she knows.
A shadow without any depth.
"Stay here," Trev says, and then steps into the alley. He kneels down next to the man there (Elizabeth thinks what she can see is familiar and wonders if it's the one-handed drunk from the bar; come morning, she'll forget this detail entirely) and then after a moment, stands up and crosses back over to her. "We're going to go," Trev tells her, tucking her back close to him.
"Shouldn't we –"
"He's not going to make it, and you have blood everywhere on you. They'll ask a lot of questions, and…I don't think you need to be answering them. We need to get out of here."
Elizabeth looks back over at the man, noticing then how his chest rises and falls; there's a violent hitch in the middle, and then a slow descent before an even slower rise. Trev is probably right, and this man is well beyond help, but that clawing voice is telling her she has to stay.
And do something.
But there's nothing she can do, and so she allows Trev to lead her away from the alley.
Away from the stench of death.
She allows him to lead her from one nightmare to the next.
then.
So this is what true and absolute terror feels like, Elizabeth Carson thinks as she shakily lights a cigarette. She stares out into the dark cold Bangor, Maine night, awaiting the arrival of yet another savior, and hating herself for needing one, just as she had almost a decade earlier.
It's not like the last time had worked out for her; turning to Trev had led to all of this.
God, this is so fucking stupid.
She should take her clothes off, and crawl back into bed beside her sleeping husband. Even if his touch has come to make her feel like her skin is burning, she should seek the comfort of it.
Because at least it's the kind of dirty she understands well.
It's the prison cell she'd helped to create, and she knows how to turn around within it.
She should close her eyes and remind herself that the idea of happiness is a child's delusion, and that what she has is stability, and it's how she has survived the last decade. If she leaves today, she'll just be back all alone in that apartment, afraid and drifting, buried in emptiness.
But if she stays, she thinks maybe she's going to die.
It's a strange thought, and it comes to her almost unexpectedly as she brings the cigarette to her lips and inhales the smoke. In that moment, she sees herself standing in that alley again, that man on the wet ground dying in a puddle of his own blood as Trev holds her close to him.
The details are as blurry and fuzzed over as the rest of her memory – very little stays for long – but she can still feel his arms, and now they feel claustrophobic, damning in their control of her.
A control that she gave him.
And one she now knows she has to try to break.
Because she thinks that he'll never allow her to break free.
But does she want to, she wonders? Is there anything worth breaking it for? Certainly not herself, right?
It's a strange thought, one she has seldom allowed herself to indulge in because life has always just been life, and she's been very good at just putting one foot in front of the next and getting from day to day. Any time you think beyond that horizon, there is trouble, and she knows this.
So why then?
Is he right, and this Emma Swan has changed her thinking too much?
Yes, probably, but if she's fair, it had started with Henry – the young man who wouldn't stay away. She'd thought he'd wanted her sexually as men tend to do, but he's backed off of her.
Especially after Emma had stepped forward.
Maybe then it's a scam and –
To what end? She has nothing. She can give nothing.
She is nothing.
Why would anyone scam her? Why would –
She hears a slight scuff behind her, light and almost tentative. Turning, her fingers gripped around the cigarette, she's telling herself that Trev wouldn't approach like this and –
"You look like you're trying to talk yourself out of this," Emma says gently, not moving from the spot where she's lightly reclining against the wall behind her, looking like this is all very casual and easy. But there's a coiled tension in her body, a tightness in her jaw and a kind of gritty wary apprehension.
Emma is as anxious about this as she is; perhaps, that's something of a relief.
"Miss Swan?"
"Emma, please?" Emma requests, standing up straight. It's then that Elizabeth sees the gun on Emma's belt. It's a strange thing, really, because coming to her aide isn't illegal, even if it's throwing her right into the lion's den; but carrying a weapon most certainly is for a convicted felon, and for a moment, Elizabeth finds herself caught between multiple conflicting thoughts.
What if Trev is right, and Emma wants to kill her husband as she had apparently killed her own?
What if –
"It's not mine. It's the Kid's – I mean Henry's. And don't worry, okay? I have no intention of using this," Emma tells her. "But getting you to safety is what matters most, and sometimes it's better to have a threat that you can wave around than not to. But if it's all the same to you, I'd like to get the hell out of here now and not let anyone see me with it, because if they do –"
"You'll go back to prison. Why are you taking this risk for me? I'm not worth it," Elizabeth counters, her eyes flickering up from the gun to Emma's face, trying to read her. Not like she's ever been especially good at this, but for some reason, she feels like she can read Emma a bit.
Emma smiles slightly, an almost watery look to her gaze. Too much intensity for their relationship, Elizabeth thinks, but then Emma is saying, "Because you asked me to help you."
"Not in the beginning."
"But tonight," Emma tells her. "And that's enough. Now, can we go? I really would like –"
"To not be seen." She tilts her head. "I could be setting you up. Working with Trev."
Emma nods, almost jerkily, her eyes showing the very real fear of this. "You could be. Are you?"
"No," Elizabeth sighs, her fingers tightening around the cigarette. "I just want to breathe."
"Me, too. Come on." She holds out her arm as if to guide Elizabeth around the corner. There's one last hesitation, one last look back at the home she's had for the last decade, and then she lifts her head up with a strength she has seldom if ever felt, and she follows after Emma.
before.
She watches from a close distance.
Watches as the sirens appear, cops and an ambulance.
Watches as they zip Brennan's body up into a bag, wondering why this somehow hurts.
Thinking this is fear.
And then Emma Nolan runs.
Back to her apartment so she can pack a bag and find somewhere else to run to, but there's blood all over her hands and body, and his face is on the news. Brennan Jones has been a nobody for most of his life, but now he's a somebody in an alley, and her prints are everywhere.
They know.
She throws a lamp across the room, furious that the man she hates will finally defeat her.
Even more furious because he looked at her like he loved her at the very end.
Impossible.
She's just leaving her apartment when she hears the footsteps, and she drops the bag before the door is even busted open. Her hands are up, and then they're down, and steel cuffs are being slapped on her wrists, the metal roughly tearing at the delicate skin there.
They interrogate her for hours, and she holds firm, even though there's still blood all over her hands and beneath her fingernails, and her conviction will likely be the easiest one ever.
But they want to know why, and it's nearly impossible to explain hate quite so fully.
They bring her in a free lawyer, a dark haired woman with a soft British accent.
Who doesn't really stop her from talking about it as much as she probably should, Emma thinks.
She just keeps telling Emma that she's not alone, even though Emma has never felt more alone.
She breaks the morning after Brennan's death.
Her shoulders shaking, Emma whispers, "This wasn't supposed to happen."
The detective snorts derisively as he rises up from the table with her signed confession, and replies, "Yeah, well, lady, it did. And now you get to live with what you did."
then.
He stands when the door open, and they step through, his palms sweaty as he tries to offer her what's meant to be a reassuring smile. It takes everything he has not to surge to her and wrap her in his arms, but she still doesn't know him beyond being the young man who'd shoved his way into her life. It's weird, he thinks, wondering now if this is how Emma once felt, too.
"Hi," Henry greets, his words rushing from him. "Are you hungry? Thirsty? Cold?"
"Henry," Emma murmurs, her lip quirking up just a bit in bemused understanding. She puts one of her hands out, palm down, as if to tell him to take a deep breath and calm down.
Not like that's the easiest thing in the world to do.
"Lucy in bed?" she asks, glancing around the apartment. Beside her, Elizabeth stands ramrod straight and disturbingly still, her slim arms wrapping her windbreaker around herself in a way that is eerily reminiscent of a woman she doesn't even recall having once been.
"Yeah," Henry nods. "But she'll probably come out if she hears voices."
"I'm sure," Emma replies, then looks at Elizabeth. "So? Hungry? Thirsty?"
"Cold?" Elizabeth finishes, and tries to offer up something of a soft laugh, but it doesn't quite work. Because she's terrified out of her fucking mind right about now, and this isn't going to go well, and she should just go home before Trev wakes up and realizes that she's gone.
The further she's gotten from him, the more she thinks she should be smart and not rock the boat. Hell, she'd told Emma that three times on the way home, even turned around once.
Each time, Emma only said, "Tell me what you want to do."
Which is what convinced Elizabeth to keep going.
So she answers softly, "Cold. I'm very cold."
And then she's crying; God, she hates herself, but she's crying.
She sees Henry step forward, sees Emma put a hand out to stop him; it's weird, Elizabeth thinks, through the haze of her emotions, but Henry almost looks disappointed to be stopped.
Emma says, "Tell me what you need?"
Elizabeth shakes her head, can't even begin to explain the depths of how much she doesn't know how to answer that question, how much she's never been expected to answer it.
How much everyone has always answered it for her.
"To not be afraid."
"We'll help," Henry promises, and he's holding out a child's blanket to her, full of bright colors and brighter creatures. It's the very youth of this, the signs of so much love around here, which gets Elizabeth to take it from him and wrap it around herself as she sits down onto the couch.
"You're both making a terrible mistake," she tells him. "He won't let me go."
"We'll worry about that tomorrow," Emma promises, her hand settling for a moment on the gun on her hip. "Tonight, you're safe. Tomorrow, we'll figure out what all of our next steps are."
"I presume a shelter for me?"
"We're not abandoning you," Henry tells her. "As long as you –" he swallows hard, and there's that weird kind of sad emotion from him. It occurs to Elizabeth now as she's staring at this boy that it's almost bizarre to have thought he wanted to sleep with her; this is a young man who is seeing someone else in her and trying to save her because of it. Both of these people are.
Which fills her with sadness for reasons she can't quite understand.
Maybe because even now, it's probably not about her?
But still, they're here, and this room is warm, and she really is so cold.
"I don't want to go back," she admits, and knows she'll change her mind within the hour.
For now, though, Elizabeth knows that anywhere but there is where she wants to be.
"You don't have to do anything you don't want to do," Emma vehemently assures her. Then, her voice softening, "So how about I make us some coffee, and we throw on a movie?"
"A movie?" Elizabeth blinks.
"A movie," Henry agrees, a broad smile on his lips. And just does stop himself from saying something else. Probably, Emma thinks, something about doing it like they all used to do.
So many years ago in a town Regina had built and Elizabeth doesn't remember.
"Comedy?" Elizabeth asks after a moment, her voice full of hesitance.
Uncertainty about all of this.
About the weird normalcy being offered to her by these two people.
"Elizabeth!" she hears from behind her, and then there's a child rushing her.
Colliding with her, shaking her thin frame in a bone-rattling embrace.
It's too much, and it even hurts, but Elizabeth hugs Lucy tight, kissing the top of her head.
Because whatever fears and conflict she might have over Emma and Henry, she doesn't over this girl who looks at her like she's something wonderful and strong. Something likeable.
Even capable of being loved.
Above her, watching, Henry smiles as he watches, his eyes full of worry and sadness.
Emma places her arm around his waist, hugs him to him and confirms, "Comedy."
Because they could all use a few laughs to wash away all the heartbreak and devastation.
before
In the end, Emma pleads guilty at the recommendation of her lawyer, who manages to get the charge reduced to second-degree manslaughter. She's sentenced to twenty years, eligible for parole in seven years, which at least gives her the possibility of seeing the light of day again.
Brennan is cremated and stored away, they tell her - in case someone else should ever come to claim his remains.
She doesn't say that no one ever will, that all they'd had was each other, because somehow that just makes this whole terrible story that much worse.
It's three weeks after her conviction when her lawyer comes to see her, to check in on her.
It's been rough and strange for Emma, and she's not at all set up for this life.
Her lawyer promises her that she can make that better. "I know a way to help you adapt."
"What?" Emma asks, because she doesn't know how to fight back against the stronger ones.
And everyone here is stronger.
Her lawyer leans across the table, and whispers in that polished British accent of hers, "What if I told you that you're not who you think you are, and you who you actually are is someone who knows how to handle prison."
"I'd say you drank too much last night," Emma answers. Because she would know if she had ever spent another day in jail before this, and she hasn't. This is a whole new hell for her.
"Oh, dear girl," her lawyer croons, the polished legal language falling away, pure malice and spite suddenly in her tone. "Dear, Emma. Tell me, do you remember your husband's face? When he died? Did he look up at you like he loved you? Like you had betrayed him? Again?"
"I don't know –"
"He remembered who he was at the moment of death. The death you provided him."
"What the fuck –"
Her lawyer reaches forward then, and presses her fingers to Emma's forehead.
Emma gasps loudly as a lifetime of memories floods through her mind.
As she sees her wedding on the rooftop to Killian, an amazing if complicated night spent with Regina in Boston, a fight between her and husband over the truth of it all and then…
…and then the town-line and the fairy dust.
The words, "I'm not happy…"
Everything fading away to sheets of darkness even as fingers had clutched to try to hold on.
And then she sees Killian – Brennan to her, then – falling to the ground, a bullet in his chest.
Dying, calling for her.
Telling her he was afraid.
As she had left him there to die alone.
Emma Swan looks up at her lawyer, eyes wide, her eyes watery and wide.
"No," she murmurs.
"Oh, yes. He loved you so much, and you betrayed him every step of the way. For her."
"Regina –"
Her lawyer lifts, the sound too merry and joyous for this terrible conversation. "Try not to worry too much about her, she's been well punished, too. To a life within her own prison walls. Not quite –" she gestures around – "these, but familiar ones to her. Trapped without her spirit."
"You…why?"
"Because you earned this fate of yours. Because this is all any of you should have ever been."
"This isn't –"
"Fair, yes, I know you don't think so, but well, fairness is such a dull insipid concept. You can slam your fists against every surface here to insist on that, but it's all over now. Be a good girl, Emma; use your brains and your courage and maybe you'll live to see freedom again." She taps Emma's forehead one more time, and Emma sees herself from Killian's eyes. As he'd died.
As he'd watched her run away from him.
One last tap even as Emma pulls away her, and she sees the walls of an apartment, and then Regina, drawn and frail and so very tired, looking at her expression in a mirror, a naked man coming up behind her, his arms circling her and pulling her against him, Regina sagging into him like she's been defeated, and this is the only thing keeping her from falling into nothing.
"But probably not," Fiona laughs as she stands up to leave Emma to this steel nightmare.
The door closes behind her, and Emma screams.
Screams until the guards come for her, and a needle is pressed into her flesh.
Screams for everything that they've all lost.
And the broken and terrible memories she knows she'll never lose again.
Which, she thinks, as she fades to unconsciousness, might be the worst curse of them all.
:D
