"Special Agent Jones?"

Killian turned at the sound of his title to find Emma lingering in the doorway to the studio. She had changed out of the small bathrobe she'd been wearing before, and was now dressed in a bright orange skirt that fell to the middle of her thighs; and a white t-shirt with thin, black, horizontal stripes, embellished with two birds made from gold sequins. A black blazer and a pair of black studded pumps completed her look, along with the trademark bold red lipstick she was never seen without. The outfit was every inch business casual, and yet still managed to reflect the young and bubbly personality that he'd seen shining through in all of Ellie's posters of the popstar.

"Yes, sorry?" he asked, pulling his eyes away from the long expanse of her bare legs.

"I just wanted to let you know that I was headed out now. Do you know how much longer you'll be?"

"I can come back when you're not busy," he offered. Killian knew that he would be uncomfortable with the idea of a stranger in his home, while he wasn't present. And he didn't want to be the cause of any more distress for Emma, given what she had already been through.

"It's okay. You can finish here. I mean, it's not like you're planning to go through my underwear drawer and sell my panties on eBay, or anything." She forced a laugh but he could tell from the sound of it that something wasn't quite right with the joke she had made.

"Has someone actually done that to you before?"

Emma flicked her glance down to the shiny points of her shoes, before bringing her eyes back up to meet his gaze once more. "Yeah. I was on tour in Brazil at the time. Some guy broke into my hotel room and stole all of my dirty laundry. My underwear turned up on eBay a few days later."

Killian's stomach twisted a little at her confession. The more he learned about Emma Swan, the more she surprised him. He couldn't even begin to imagine how violated she must have felt after such an incident.

"Did you report it to the police?" he pushed.

"Yeah. They found the guy responsible. I have a restraining order against him that's still in effect."

Killian nodded his understanding but pulled out a small notepad nonetheless. "Do you mind if I take his name?"

"Do you think he's behind all of this?" Emma wondered.

"Honestly, probably not," he admitted. "But I'd rather explore every avenue we have and rule the obvious out, than leave something uninvestigated that comes back to bite us in the ass."

Emma nodded her head in agreement as she said, "That makes sense. My um, my lawyer is coming over to lock up when you're finished, and can give you the name then?"

"That's perfect. I actually need to speak with him when he's available."

"She," Emma chuckled. "Regina Mills. My lawyer's a she."

"My apologies."

Emma stood in silence for a moment and Killian followed suit, just watching as her eyes darted around the room, seeing nothing and everything all at once. He suspected that there was something more she wanted to say, but before she could voice her opinion, someone called her name from another room in the house.

"I should go," she told him unnecessarily. "Thanks for coming to do this, Agent Jones."

"I promise I'll make sure everything is returned in the condition that it left this room in."

Killian wasn't a handwriting expert, but from what he'd seen so far, none of the fan mail on Emma's wall matched the writing on the packages she had been sent. But the content of some of the letters he had seen so far had his mind forming a different image of Emma Swan, than the one he'd first built when he'd pulled up to her home. Some messages spoke of encounters from previous years, or even personal correspondence the star had exchanged with people who had reached out to her. From everything he'd seen that morning, Killian was starting to realize that Emma's fan base meant a lot to her, and not just because of the money they made her.

Emma lingered for a moment longer before she turned gracefully on her heels and left the room. Killian waited until he could no longer hear the click of her shoes on the wooden flooring, before he returned to carefully removing each piece of paper from the wall, and depositing them into secure evidence bags.

Emma knew that she shouldn't, but as everyone in the living room began clearing out of the space, she turned to her liquor cabinet and poured herself a small glass of vodka. The burn of the alcohol was sharp and harsh, exactly what she needed to get her mind away from the images it liked to keep at the very front of her focus, and on the day she had ahead of her.

Their first stop was at the Good Morning America studios, where she would be giving a live interview to promote her new single, the up-coming album it was taken from, and the tour she had planned.

It wasn't the first live televised interview she had given, and Emma knew that it wouldn't be her last. But she couldn't stop the fear from creeping in as she climbed into the back of her car for the drive to the studio. The media hadn't yet made the connection between the murder spree currently taking place in the country, and herself. But she wasn't naïve enough to believe they never would.

She also wouldn't put it past them to spring it on her in a live televised interview either.

"Are we gonna talk about it?" Ariel asked suddenly, startling Emma out of her thoughts and back to the present.

"Talk about what?" she asked.

"The FBI agent in your home. What the hell was all of that about? Is there something going on that I need to be aware of?" she demanded.

Emma knew that the right thing to do would be to confess to Ariel everything that had happened in the last few weeks. When the connection was eventually made, she knew that her assistant would be in the best position to deal with the fallout. And if she was caught off guard, that wouldn't help Emma's situation.

But she couldn't bring herself to admit that she was the one responsible for the deaths of the people currently being attributed to a serial killer. Saying it out loud again would make it more real, and she wasn't ready to deal with everything that came from that confession.

Emma was barely holding herself together as it was.

So instead she told Ariel, "It's nothing important. And nothing I can speak of, I'm afraid. I'll let you know if that changes, though."

Ariel didn't look convinced, but she had been working with Emma long enough to know not to push the issue. "You'd tell me if you were in trouble, right?" she asked instead.

"Of course I would. I'm not about to be arrested anytime soon," Emma assured the redhead. "So you have absolutely nothing to worry about."

"I wouldn't be so certain of that," Ariel mumbled quietly, but she quickly changed the subject to the list of pre-approved questions that had been negotiated with the studio already. That way, Emma would have the perfect answers to them fresh in her mind, when she sat down in front of the cameras.

Emma's look here is based on Jen's look for the December 2012 Lucky Magazine feature.

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