A/N: This first chapter would not be where it is without ThisIsMyTownAndIDefendMyShips (here on FFN), who beta'd for me. She was amazing, and deserves all the praise. Another thanks to Jrob64, who has been cheering this story on and get this off the back burner.
Disclaimers: 1) You'll eventually see some words or phrases in Irish that I.. googled.. (some were verified with youtube). I usually include the translation, but.. not always.. it's not important if you can't pick up the context clues. 2) Some things, like exact locations.. I basically skip over. For instance, I have no idea if Emma is living in Boston or NYC, and I never named the town Killian lives in.. and I probably won't. 3) I've never seen OUAT s7 except for what pops up on my tumblr feed.
Thanks for giving this story a look!
PS- I'm really torn about posting here.. but I figure there are a lot of people still sticking to this site like I'm sticking to ao3, and I like constructive criticism. So the more places this is posted, the more opinions I get, and the more I get to learn from my mistakes.
Paradigm Shift
Emma grumbled quietly to herself, shifting in her seat for the twelfth time in the past hour. The dissipating A/C did nothing to ease the small, tight knot in her stomach. She loved her little yellow bug but it was just that... little. The small space was taken up mostly by her equipment, leaving her cramped, and irritated. Her brain kept helpfully insisting she step out, stretch, catch the Springtime breeze, though she wouldn't. Not yet. She huffed as she shifted again.
She hated surveillance.
But rich people who were too insecure in their relationships to trust their significant others paid Emma's bills (because they had no real concept of money).. That was fine with her. She didn't mind taking money. Money made the world go round, after all. Cheaters were still gonna cheat regardless of her snoopery.
They ruined it for themselves, really. She didn't make them cheat. She only sped up the process in which their sins were discovered. Did it matter that some - most - of what she did was borderline illegal? Or that it was highly inappropriate? And morally wrong on several levels? Did it matter that, in each case, she ruined multiple lives? Possibly, but she liked to remind herself that it was their lives or hers. When they paid, she got paid. When they ate crow, she ordered ribeye.
The gigs were usually easier than this, and wrapped up a lot sooner though.
She'd left bail bonds about a year ago, jumping into the sea of P.I. work. Her only complaint was how little she worked out anymore. Bail bonds kept her figure sharp, especially since she ate take out for nearly every meal, or drank her calories from the bar she frequented.
She really needed something to counteract her food intake. Completely reevaluate her work out regime. Boxing was a sport, right? She could join a club. Boxing clubs existed, didn't they? That could work. Finally, something to replace the workout that bail bonds gave her. Why hadn't she thought of that before?
She tried stretching in her seat, to no avail, glancing out the window towards the room of her latest target. She had followed Jonah Hillsbury here over an hour ago. The familiar blond woman would arrive soon - she hoped. If only Emma could get the money shot. The photo that proved his infidelity by showing them kissing, undressing, something.
But Jonah Hillsbury always closed the curtains before Emma could pull out her camera, and she wasn't even sold on the fact that the blond was his mistress yet. She'd never seen them together, but five different hotels across the city seemed a little much for just a coincidence.
She'd been working this case entirely too long.
Keeping her eyes on the road, trying not to focus on the heat, she tried instead, to focus on the math of coincidences. Which would keep her from thinking about other things…. But her treasonous, back-stabbing mind kept curling back to what had happened. The event that had her nervous, unsettled, on edge.
It had been a month since she'd wrapped up that case, but it just wouldn't leave her alone. She tried everything. Busying herself with work - which was working fantastically - going to the library, even trying to cook. She'd actually bought new cookware to busy herself with, since the only item in her possession had been a rusty old pan she had no idea she even owned. She threw it away, burnt whatever she had attempted to cook from the online recipe (she would never use pinterest for recipes again) and vowed to do better at it. She could cook if she really tried. Really. She was an adult, she should be able to cook her own damn meals.
But their voices still haunted her nightmares. She wasn't sure how she functioned on a few hours of sleep.
Cooking classes could help distract her. And boxing.
Sighing, the car passing hers caught her attention, before it parked across the street, a few cars up from Emma. The leggy blond stepped out of the driver's seat with grace. This was the woman who was at every hotel her mark had been at in the past month. Five hotels, now six. She always arrived at least an hour after Jonah Hillsbury.
An hour and a half, now. The pattern was holding.
It could be a coincidence. Really, it could. Stranger things had happened. Like that one time she thought she was following her mark's lover when it turned out to be another P.I. who was following the actual lover and thought Emma was his marks lover. It took a while for the confusion to die down. It gave her a headache to even think about.
Now, she knew her mark was already in the building, and she hadn't been able to get to him. She needed something solid, and this was her last chance, at least for a few days.
Emma was anything but patient.
She snapped a few (dozen) pictures of the woman, as the other blond locked her car before Emma set her camera down in the passenger seat, grabbing the small listening device that looked like a tic tac, and rushing out of the car and across the street.
Blissful, beautiful breeze.
Sprinting, she mentally planned her trajectory and managed to hit where she wanted to - the woman's oversized, name brand, bag.
The thing launched out of her hands and landed on the concrete, and Emma halted, turning to glance at the woman, before focusing on an unspecified point in the distance that, in reality, was a tree a few blocks down while simultaneously feigning a torn expression between the woman and the tree.
"I'm so sorry! I was -" Emma kept her head swiveling from the woman to the tree, wondering if she could fake following another person. It was all she had. Winging it, she finally let out a sigh in frustration, which came out real enough. "I lost him."
Turning back to the woman, who had gracefully bent at the knees to pick up her fallen possessions while glaring daggers, huffing, and voicing her displeasure in the form of profanities that had Emma impressed - if only she wasn't about to ruin this woman's life. Emma knelt far less gracefully to try and help, adding the listening device to a handful of make up as she dropped the items in.
A few more insults, a hundred sincere apologies, and the woman was moving off in a hurry toward the hotel. Emma watched for a few seconds before moving to her bright yellow bug. She really needed a more subtle car if she was going to keep doing surveillance.
But was she? Going to keep doing it? After what happened last month…
She normally didn't balk at weapons, but that long jagged knife did something unexpected to her. She had been scared. And Emma didn't do scared. Then the gun was in her face, and she knew she was screwed. She didn't mind the gun so much, and she couldn't help but wonder what it was about the knife - that knife - that terrified her.
That was the only word to describe her emotions that night. Terror.
She shook her head in an attempt to clear it, pulling open her car door, reluctantly getting back in, letting herself crumple into the seat. Obviously, her traitorous brain wouldn't let her avoid thinking about the near death experience so flippantly.
She had discovered her own mortality. Seriously realizing - she might die. And it could have been then and there.
But Emma didn't want to think about that. Instead, she opened the app on her phone to turn on the listening device, plugging in her earphones, hitting record as soon as she realized the woman was already knocking on - what sounded like - a door.
It was show time.
With commentary, apparently. She wasn't expecting them to be in love. Him wanting to leave his wife - Emma's client - and the woman wanting to leave her husband, seriously talking about plans on merging households, where they'd live, what their life could be like… And it made Emma feel things like longing or something entirely stupid that she never let herself consider.
She hadn't even come to terms with that, how was she going to find a person to put up with her shit?
Emma tried avoiding that train of thought - either one, really - by considering her professional options. She could be an absolute dick and find the husband and double her pay by getting him to pay for this recording, too. She hated doing that. But they were the cheaters, right? And Emma was just.. Planting illegal listening devices and using the misery of four people for her own profit.
Just the usual day at the office. What a fanfuckingtastic Saturday.
That happened on a Saturday, too.
Emma groaned, trying to focus on the nauseatingly love sick conversation for an hour - a whole goddamn hour - before the love making began and all Emma wanted then was to make her way to the gun range to blast her eardrums and try to forget the sounds coming through her headphones originating in the room on the 3rd floor.
But here she was. Alone in her car, listening because it was her job. She had nowhere to run away to.
Except her mind, which wanted to do something ridiculous like process her internal demons instead of stuffing them into a box, tie chains around it, add about 50 locks, and throw the whole mess into the furthest, darkest corner of her mind.
But no, her brain was determined to think about the knife at her throat, the gun in her face, the sickening fantasies the men were all too happy to share with her, and to acknowledge the fun fact that she could have died. In those two minutes in that dark alley, she was forced to admit - begrudgingly to herself - that her life was gloomy. She was unhappy. Miserable, even.
She had been at their mercy, and all she could think about was her pitiful life, her near-empty apartment, how lonely she truly was, and she wondered what it all meant. Was there a purpose for life in general? Her life? Of chasing down leads, outing cheaters, catching the occasional bad guy?
She was having an existential crisis while the threats and laughter of two men had been whispered in her ears. And she was reliving it in a hot VW Bug, on the side of a street, while listening to live porn.
The grunts and moaning and the, "oh God yes," reminded her why she was so willing for this line of thought to continue.
But nothing was ever preferable to processing her own inner demons. Something must have shifted in her. Maybe a pebble in her wall got knocked out when that knife appeared at her throat, or while watching Stabby crumple at her feet.
Because, if facing her own probable death wasn't enough, the universe decided someone was going to die. And that someone was the man with the knife. It didn't escape her that if she'd been at any other Goddamn bar in the entire fucking city - things could have ended differently.
But they hadn't. She'd followed her leads to the bar she frequented, manned by her usual bartender. The same bartender who called the police when Emma left after her mark, followed by a shady man she later named Stabby.
Was it luck that the cruiser was literally down the street? Coincidence? Fate? She scoffed at that. Fate? Destiny? This wasn't a fairytale. Jonah Hillsbury's loud, obnoxious lovemaking with a woman who was not his wife was proof enough of that. Instead of listening very intently, she let her mind continue to wander.
Emma had survived that night. She did. She woke up every morning, still breathing, still working. The man she was after was in jail and awaiting trial, her client still paid her for his arrest, Stabby was killed when he tried to use her as a human shield….
And she realized how desolate her life truly was.
Something really had shifted, and it was enough to get Emma thinking. She needed to reevaluate more than just her nonexistent exercise routine. She needed to decide what to do to live her life, because this wasn't it.
What was living life? YOLO? Jumping from planes, and going white water rafting? It wasn't making more money than she was spending, living off the bare minimum like she had to.
And it hit her like a freight train just how done she was with surveillance, and chasing cheaters - but what else could she do? She never got her GED after prison, never went to college. Her past choices were catching up to her, not to mention people.
Wasn't that the healthy thing? To let people in? To have someone to call, just for a night out or a shoulder to cry on? She needed to let people - she needed to try to let people in. She needed to be open to it. Actively.
She needed - wanted - to choose to have people in her life, make a friend, maybe try dating for real and not one of her old honey traps.
Who would even want her?
Danger. New line of thought. Friends. Friends were safe.
The bartender? Her police contact? They could be friends. Right? Emma just had to let them in. Maybe. Should she let them in, though?
Emma was beginning to feel drained.
Avoidance was good, which is why Emma pulled out her phone to shoot off an email to Yolanda Hillsbury, the wife, to set up a meeting - soon. It would be better to have photographic proof, though. It always was.
But this latest mark had been extraordinarily cautious, and the typical photographic evidence was just not gonna happen. Instead, she had the pleasure of listening to the acts of the two cheaters. She'd just have to get creative in order to get her photos.
Which is how she ended up on the 3rd floor, in an alcove if you could call it that, with her camera and eyes trained on the door, the listening device still active in her ears.
The pattern was still holding. A total of three hours since he arrived, Jonah Hillsbury was leaving first, like always. Cocky bastard turned back to kiss the woman who was wrapped up in a towel. The same woman Emma ran into on the sidewalk.
The money shot. Finally.
Her stomach slowly churned but she took the photos anyway. The lovers were too blissfully unaware to notice her or the camera shutter, and she felt a pang of jealousy for it. She'd never been blissfully unaware like that, ever. She never felt like it was in her cards. But maybe that was her own fault. Maybe it could be in her cards. Maybe she just had to let it happen.
Jonah Hillsbury left not long after she had more than enough photographic evidence, so Emma took the stairs back to her bug and immediately turned the engine over and hightailed it out of there.
An hour of blasting paper targets seemed to do the trick. Every vile sound had died away, leaving her far more at ease with herself.
Then she headed to the only diner she liked near her apartment, ordering grilled cheese and onion rings to go, eating them in her car because people were in the diner, and her capacity for social niceties were shot like her targets. Besides, she hated taking to-go boxes into her place just for them to collect in her fridge. Those damn styrofoam boxes never failed to clutter up her ancient fridge.
When she closed the door, just after entering the apartment, she just stood there. Mentally avoiding the spot between the door and the fridge where - just a few weeks ago - she had crumpled completely, crying her eyes out because she'd had a knife to her throat and a gun to her head and they'd told her how glad they were for her to accompany them that evening. Then everything had happened - ended - so quickly after that.
She shook her head forcefully, shoving the memories as far back as she could. She was done thinking about that. She'd spent enough time thinking about that. Now, she was evaluating her wretched apartment. Which was beyond sparse. Between the single wall that claimed to be the kitchen, the dining room that was supposed to have a table and chairs, and the living room, all she owned was the used futon that was practically falling apart and the single end table she had no idea how she acquired.
When had she let herself get... Like this? Was there ever a time when she owned actual furniture? No. She never did. Futon notwithstanding. Maybe she just really liked having a financial security blanket more than she liked having things. Which explained her pitiful apartment. Mostly. Old habits and all. She didn't need much. Wanted even less. Foster kid, she reasoned.
Her bedroom wasn't much better. Aside from the clothes in the closet, and her phone charger, all she had there was the mattress that rested on the floor and the unmade quilt. She didn't even have sheets, but one time she felt she deserved to buy herself something nice. She went with the Amish hand-made quilt and she wasn't sorry. At all. She loved that thing.
She spent the rest of her evening on her bed, switching from the email tab on her two year old laptop, to searching between Netflix, Hulu, and Plex. There wasn't anything she really wanted to watch, but she needed something to drown out her ever-growing thoughts.
She settled on reruns of Friends, while her mind trudged around her lonely existence, screaming at her that life's too short.
Maybe she should move. Actually buy a place. Acquire actual furniture. Get better clothes. And maybe try online dating.
There was no drowning out any thoughts, apparently.
She finally went to bed around 10pm just because she was tired of thinking so damn hard.
Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ
Killian glanced at the clock. 3 am. Sunday Morning.
He rubbed his tired eyes with the back of his hand. He had spent the entire night hacking into LogiCor. Their security was a joke - to him anyway. He'd already made his pay in the first five minutes of hacking their systems. But Killian was a perfectionist. Which led to him spending the next several hours exploiting their entire system, just to see how far he could go.
This was child's play. There was nothing he couldn't reach. He might as well own them.
He was well sought after for this very reason. He didn't just do the bare minimum, he ravaged the entire system as far as he could take it. Security was a big thing nowadays, and he knew the ins and outs of almost all of it.
Except GoldGroup. He'd gotten their contract years before. It hadn't been his first hacking job, but it might as well have been for all the good (bad) he could do with it. It was the only company he couldn't hack, so far, and he still had an open contract with them.
They wanted to know the instant he cracked into their servers. And Killian wanted to get into their systems just to say that he could. So, once a week, sometimes more frequently, he gave it another go - forcing the feelings of insanity away as he always did. But their contract was the main reason he was as good as he was. They kept upgrading their security, and he kept upgrading his skills and knowledge base, constantly learning new tricks to try and beat them.
Which was the main reason he had become the best in his business against everyone else. Not that anyone knew that. Anonymity was key, after all.
People just assumed he lived off his inheritance and the hours he worked at the dock in town. He never corrected them.
By the time he looked at the clock, he had exhausted LogiCor's servers, and he held the company in the palms of his hands. He rather enjoyed the power trip. He could completely shut them down if he wanted to. Or divert their funds into one of his offshore accounts. It would only take one line of code, one push of the enter key, and they'd be wiped from existence, or broke, or whatever he chose to do to them.
Damn, he was good.
But he'd gone down that route before. He wasn't always an ethical hacker. White Hat, as they say. But he'd learned from an early age that hacking was important - at least to him. His first success was as a teen, funneling missing pennies from the banking industry into his own account. No one noticed, because they were already missing.
He still had that program running, though he had tweaked it over the years as needed. Pennies added up swiftly, he had learned. He really ought to delete his last rebellious code.
Later. Maybe.
He sat back, rubbing his chin in thought, absentmindedly taking a sip of tea before spitting it back out. When the hell had he made that?! It was disgustingly cold.
The rumble in his belly alerted him to the fact that he had been ignoring his own body - again. He was starving, but it was excruciatingly late - early? - in the morning. He moved into the kitchen, dumping the tea, realizing he didn't have the energy to cook anything spectacular.
Instead, he threw a few things in the crockpot for later - the one thing his well-traveled father gave to him and his brother before the bastard abandoned them - hoping that by doing so, he wouldn't skip dinner again.
Shaking his head off the train of thought, he finished his simple dinner preparations before pulling out a few ingredients to make a lazy... breakfast? Tossing the mushrooms and tomatoes into the pan with some salt and butter, he thought about the rest of his day. He hadn't shown up at the docks in several days at least, so he mentally made a note to travel there later.
Which meant going into town. He wasn't a hermit, per se, but he wasn't thrilled at the idea of churning the gossip his appearance there always stirred. He couldn't blame them, really. He'd dealt with a lot of loss in his life, and they all knew him since he was a wee lad. In their own unique way, they cared for him. He knew that.
Glancing in the pan, he tossed around the food there before adding a pinch of salt, then going to the fridge again for two eggs. He stopped to examine the contents. A trip to the village was needed, anyway. He'd need to visit the market for most of his supplies. Maybe stop off at the farm for a few fresh eggs and a jug of milk. He might visit Amelie again for more of those delicious mushrooms she grew in her backyard.
Moving back to the stove, he turned the flame down, waiting a moment, before cracking and tossing in the eggs, allowing them to cook before flipping the mixture.
Market or not, he had to go to the docks. They really weren't much to speak of, hence his lack of interest, but he was the harbormaster - whatever that meant to a self-sufficient town that didn't ever have incoming ships (boats, really) unless they were returning from delivering their own goods to other ports.
Ah, fresh garden omelet. He moved the meal onto a plate, dousing the flames entirely, putting the hot pan onto a back burner before moving to the table.
There was always something to be done at the docks, at least. Odd jobs, sure, rare ones too. But something. He couldn't expect his two dock workers to have completed everything over the past few days without him. If nothing else, they'd need his signature on things. But he hoped there was work to be done. Mainly to keep in shape. The hard work there was sparse, but it was worth it when it did exist.
He also needed to check the schedule. Being the harbor master, for whatever reason, meant he would sometimes ferry villagers to other ports when requested. Also rare, but it happened, and it was his job.
Scoffing, his fork hit nothing but plate causing him to look down. When had he finished eating? Apparently sometime in the last hour, if his watch was to be believed.
He had far too much time to think. Unfortunately, cooking and eating were not things he could avoid. His thoughts always went rampant when he did, though.
He sat back in his chair, just looking out the window, his thoughts taking over again, this time on his own pitiful existence. Here he was, a handsome man if he could say so himself, living in a fully furnished home without a family to liven up the halls. There had been a day he thought he could bring a woman here, build a family of his own. He was just starting to heal from Liam when Milah -
But now, he was practically a hermit, aside from his treks into the village or his visits from Tink or his drinks with Will, despite the man being thick as a plank. But Tink only came when he called, Will only drank with him when he was in town. Both were becoming more and more rare.
He really needed to do something about his life. But what? He could move. He could live anywhere. His business was essentially on his laptop, which meant he could do it while sipping a frilly frozen beverage on a beach somewhere. As long as there was an internet connection.
He really wasn't a beach kind of man. Ocean, yes, beach, not so much. Lots of places had coastlines. But he couldn't keep secluding himself. He had to be… open to the possibility of forming friendships, preferably without the entire town gossiping behind his back.
Perhaps he could find a nice lass to put up with him.
Now that was a pipedream. But was that really what he wanted? After the actions of his father, and the loss of Milah, he wasn't sure he would be fit in any sort of relationship. Hence Tink and Will, even in their limited capacity in his life.
Perhaps he just needed to let go of his past, move on from his mother, father, brother, and Milah, try dating again - which meant moving somewhere people actually lived. A coastline with a population. Anywhere was more populated than here.
He found himself thinking about his mother as he moved to stand over the sink, beginning to work on the few dishes he'd dirtied. He had very few memories of her. Her laugh, how she always smelled of flowers, but he still had her home. The place he lived now, still filled with her essence, full of the life from before. Before his father left, mother died, Liam died, Milah -
Before he was even half way through the few dishes he had, he found himself moving across the room to the back door, toeing on his boots, throwing on his coat, and was hit with a blast of frigid morning air before his brain caught up to what he was doing. Perhaps that was for the best. He never did visit them if he was thinking about it.
On his way to the edge of his land, he stopped at the first patch of Elder flowers his mother had loved - trom, he reminded himself. She always used Gaelic whenever she could. A pure Irish woman, he did recall her vibrant red hair and the melodic sound of her voice as she taught them their nation's tongue.
He could just see the edge of the cliffs now. If he moved that way, he'd be able to see a glorious view of the ocean. Procrastinate on reaching his destination for just a bit.
Shaking his head, he plucked two sprigs of the trom, forging ahead toward the family graveyard. How many generations rested here, he wasn't sure. He never did try to count, or find out. This land had been in his mothers family for long enough to have a place to bury loved ones.
Perhaps, one day, he'd be buried here. Alone, if he kept on the way he was going. He'd have to pay someone. He had no loved ones to do it for him. To him?
How, exactly, does one approach another to ask such a thing? Hey mate, when I die, would you ensure I'm buried on the other side of my mum? K thx bye
He chuckled at that, despite the morbidity.
When he finally reached the Alder tree, he found he didn't quite have it in him to look down, focusing instead on the tree as he had been on his codes, examining the twisted branches in the waning moonlight, the bright green leaves glistening from the recent rainfall. It would be a beautiful sight if it hadn't become a symbol for his fallen family. That was why he chose this spot. His mother would have loved the beauty. And Liam would have appreciated being near their mum.
Sighing, he tore his eyes away and forced himself to look down to the two stones sticking up and out of the ground, marking the final resting places of the last of his family. Placing the trom down at the front and center of each stone, he knelt between them, brushing a fallen leaf from one stone, a twig from the other. Brushing off invisible specks just to feel the cool rock beneath his fingertips to avoid the names engraved there.
He knew he'd make it to the pub at some point. This visit all but cinched it. Perhaps Will would be there this time, so he wouldn't have to drink alone, thinking even more.
He still had to actually sleep at some point if he was going to make any use of this day.
He had no idea how long he had knelt there, but before he knew it, his trousers were wet at the knees from the rain, and he was beginning to feel chilled even through the coat.
Along his walk home, spotting the glow of morning on the horizon, he decided something had to change. Really change. His life was a world of code, he could live anywhere, he just had to make a choice. He had enough savings and offshore accounts to make light work of it.
But he hated to leave his family's land. His mother, and brother, his childhood home, the village he grew up in before he was taken, shuffled around after his father left, before Liam was old enough to claim him.
But what would it take for him to be happy? What did he truly want?
Honestly, just a person would be nice. A companion. A friend. A true friend. How did one go about finding one of those?
Killian had no idea, but he had to figure something out. If nothing more than to appease his mother and brother - who, he was sure, were both disappointed in his recluse of a lifestyle.
He tried not to think about that.
Thank you for reading!