Emma's Plan Revealed

Dinner was a quiet affair. The change between Mary Margaret and David was obvious to everyone. Killian and Emma insisted on doing the dishes. Really they just wanted an excuse to get away from the tension that hung heavy in the air, no matter how much everybody tried to cover it up with small talk.

Shortly after they left, Mary Margaret excused herself as well. She had never suffered from claustrophobia, but she imagined it must feel similar to this. She felt dizzy and disoriented, like she might pass out any minute. She was doing the mechanics of breathing. Her chest was expanding and extracting, but it was as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the atmosphere. She wondered if maybe she was getting seasick. She hoped they would head back soon. She wanted off this boat, and away from David. She crossed to the back of the boat and climbed up on the rear deck railing, kicking her feet over the side. It was as close to being off the boat as she could get. The light headedness had dissipated and she had been enjoying the quiet sound of the waves lapping against the side of the boat when she was startled by the sound of his voice.

"Want to talk about it?"

She wondered if she ignored him, he would go away.

"About what?"

"Whatever your thinking about that has you off by yourself?"

"I'm not thinking about anything. I'm just enjoying the quiet."

"You know it's dangerous to sit like that, with your feet dangling over the edge. You're liable to fall in," he warned her.

She didn't even try to keep her annoyance out of her voice. "I'm a big girl, David. I think I can sit here without falling in. Besides, the boat isn't even moving."

David hopped up next to her on the railing, but sat facing the opposite way. He leaned back slightly, a smile on his face, attempting to get her to look at him. "A little feisty tonight, aren't we?" He teased.

"David, can you please just go?" Why didn't he understand that she couldn't do this? She couldn't sit here next to him and act like he hadn't broken her heart. That what they had together, even if it was short-lived, meant nothing. That he hadn't left her so broken, she had barely managed to put the pieces back together. That even though it had been two years, that the glue was still fresh enough, that she felt on the verge of falling back apart.

David sat there silently watching her. He should leave, like she requested, but he was so drawn to her. He was trying his hardest to just be her friend. Trying to pretend it wasn't killing him to be this close to her and not be able to touch her, or take her in his arms, or kiss her.

He broke the silence first. "Look, Emma and Killian went up to the bridge, saying they were going to go enjoy the sunset, and then we would head back. Their absence left me alone on the deck with Graham and Ruby. It was awkward to say the least. I could tell they wanted to be alone, so here I am."

She didn't respond to him.

"We agreed to be friends, remember?"

She looked like cornered prey as she replied back to him. "I can't. I can't be friends with you. I thought I could, but-" Mary Margaret's voice was cut off by the sound of a motor boat approaching.

Emma stood up quickly, from where she and Killian had been sitting together. At the sight of the approaching boat, guilt and second thoughts overwhelmed her. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. After what happened between her and Mary Margaret this morning she should have called the whole thing off. Now it was probably too late, but she had to try.

"Killian, get up. Hurry, you have to get us out of here now!"

"Why? What is it?" Killian asked, as he immediately did as Emma requested and fired up the engine.

"It's the press, trying to get a picture of Mary Margaret and David together. We have to outrun them. I promised my sister there would be no more trouble."

"She can't be mad at you, love. It's not your fault that they managed to find her here."

Emma lowered her head, as she shot him a look that told him she may not be as innocent as he thought.

"Swan, what did you do?"

"I might have made some phone calls."

"Emma, are you crazy? Why would you do that?"

"It was this morning, before we left. I was trying to help my sister, but I guess I wasn't thinking straight. Can you just get us out of here now?"

The boat was headed directly for them. Emma could see the photographer perched on the bow, already taking pictures. Killian got the anchor up as quickly as he could before shoving it to full throttle. The boat jerked forward. At the same time he made a full turn to port, away from the boat as if was trying to come up beside them. The camera man shifted his focus away from the couple he had been photographing. He scampered back to take a seat next to the driver and motioned for him to give chase. In the distraction of the ensuing chase, nobody noticed the drama playing out on the back of Killian's boat.

When Mary Margaret noticed the boat that was coming towards them, she stopped talking and looked up. It didn't take long for her to realize that someone was up front with a large zoom lens taking photos. Without thinking, she stood up and quickly moved to climb back over the rail. Killian had chosen just that moment to propel the boat forward. The momentum knocked her backwards, and she lost her grip on the rail. David recognized too late what was happening. He tried unsuccessfully to grab her before she fell. The sight of her hitting the water brought him into action. He turned and yelled for help, not sure if in the commotion, anyone had actually heard him. He spent about 2 seconds contemplating going to grab Graham for help, but with the rate at which they were speeding away from Mary Margaret, he knew he didn't have time. He couldn't lose her.

He jumped into the water. It felt like it took him forever to surface, though it couldn't have been but a few seconds. He scanned across the water looking for her. The sun had already begun to descend in the sky, and he knew nightfall wouldn't be far behind. The lack of light was already beginning to impede his vision.

"Mary Margaret!" He yelled her name as he swam in the direction he had last seen her.

"Mary Margaret, where are you? Can you hear me?" He called out frantically. He stopped to get his bearings, dog paddling in circles as he looked for any sign of her.

He heard the splashing seconds before he saw her. She was struggling he could tell, fighting to keep her head above water. He was pretty sure that he had never moved so fast in his life. Not even during the swimming drills of his military training. By the time he reached her his heart was pounding. He wrapped his arms around her waist, as she grabbed onto his shirt, gripping it in her fist.

"It's going to be okay. I found you." He hugged her tighter, repeating the words over again. "I found you."

She placed her head on his shoulder and relaxed into him like a cocoon of safety. She was a good swimmer, but the plunge into the water had caught her off guard, frightening her. The fall had been far enough that the impact of the water had momentarily taken her breath away. In the ensuing struggle to regain it, she had swallowed an excessive amount of salt water. She could feel her chest burning with it.

David held her there in his arms, thankful beyond measure that she was safe. The boat was nowhere to be seen, so he could only assume that they had not noticed Mary Margaret's fall overboard. He wondered how long it would take them to realize they were gone. Hopefully before they made it all the way back to the marina. It would be dark soon, making spotting them in the water a difficult prospect. The water was also a good bit colder than it had been when they'd been swimming earlier, in the heat of the afternoon sun.

His military training began to take over, as he began to formulate a plan of action. He decided he needed to get them out of the water. He knew they had been anchored near a small set of uninhabited islands, he just had to figure out which direction they were. Squinting across the horizon, he finally saw the distinct outline of trees.

"Mary Margaret?" He lifted her from his shoulder, worried for a moment, until he heard her voice softly answer.

"You saved me." She sounded almost incredulous that he was willing to come to her rescue.

He was slightly hurt, that she would think it would even be an option for him to not jump in after her. "Well, it was the honorable thing to do."

"Always so charming, aren't you?" Even in the fading light, he could see that she was smiling at him.

That smile pulled at his heart. He wanted so much to kiss her right now, but he knew he couldn't give in to those feelings. He loosened his hold on her, and pushed her slightly away. She's not mine, he reminded himself. She has a fiancé.

"Mary Margaret, I don't think that Killian and Emma have realized that we aren't on the boat anymore."

"They'll figure it out eventually. They'll come back for us."

"Yes, but it's almost dark. It will be hard to see us, and depending on how far they got before they noticed, they may not even know where to begin looking. We need to try and make it to those islands over there. We'll have a better chance of them finding us there. And we can dry off and get warm. Are you okay to swim? Do you think you can make it?"

"Yes, I can make it," she said, her voice still raspy from coughing up the salty sea water.

"Okay." David pointed in the direction they were going. "See those trees? You can just barely make them out if you look really hard. That's where we are going. Can you see them?"

"Yes, I got it."

"I'm going to keep my eye trained on those trees to make sure that we swim straight and don't lose our way in the dark. Your job is to keep your eye on me, and follow me. I need you talk to me, so I know where you are. So we don't lose each other."

David kicked his legs and started moving towards their destination. "Come on Mary Margaret. We are just going to take it slow and easy." He could hear the splash of the water as she began to swim with him. "Good girl…now talk to me."

"I don't know what to talk about?"

"It doesn't matter, tell me anything. Tell me about your fiancé."

He regretted it the second the words were out of his mouth. The last thing he wanted to hear about was the man to whom she had given her heart. Not when he still desperately wished that it was him she was vowing to have and to hold. Then again, maybe this was for the best. Maybe talking about it would be the best way to get his mind to finally let her go. Then maybe he could move on, like all of his friends kept insisting he should.

"His name is Frank Steinman. I've known him since I was ten and he was sixteen. It's funny, I distinctly remember not liking him very much back then. He used to call me little M&M's and pat me on the head all the time. I hated it. I was also jealous of his relationship with my father. He interned with him when he was governor, and then later volunteered during his campaign for Vice President. They became very close, and he often spent holidays with our family. Emma and I were never very interested in politics, so I guess you could say he's like the son my father never really had. My father was so excited when we told him that we were getting married."

David's heart clinched in his chest as she said that. Of course her father was excited. It had always been part of his plan. Frank was practically family, and he was following in her father's political footsteps. David was the son of an alcoholic father, raised in poverty by a single mother.

He had worked at an animal shelter during high school, and briefly considered a career as a vet. He couldn't afford college though, so he had spent a couple of years just drifting, working odd jobs here and there. He fell in with the wrong crowd and got into some minor trouble involving alcohol and vandalism. Determined not to follow in his father's footsteps, he eventually decided to straighten up his act and join the military. He would never have earned Leo Blanchard's approval.

Oblivious to David's thoughts, Mary continued on. "After Frank graduated from University, my father had helped him secure a job within the Governor's staff, but he had bigger aspirations. He moved to Washington, D.C., to take a position as a legislative aide to the U.S. senate. His ultimate goal is to secure the experience necessary to run for the senate himself. He comes home as much as he can, but us being apart is still hard. I think that has caused a lot of the problems and misunderstandings that we've had. Once we are married and living there together, I know that things will be much better."

David and Mary Margaret kept swimming, the sound of her voice almost like a metronome creating a rhythm for their strokes. They were close enough now to see the distinct shape of land jutting from the surface of the water in front of them. David tried to focus on that, and not how the description of her future life didn't seem to fit the Mary Margaret that David knew. She would no longer work as a teacher. A politician's wife would be her role now. Her husband wanted her at his side, supporting him. Hosting parties and planning charity events would take up too much time to leave room for teaching. Frank had assured her that together they would work for better education. He would make it a platform of his campaign. Once Frank had successfully established himself, and with her father's name added to the mix, she would be able to have a greater impact on education than she ever could as a teacher. That's what Frank had told her.

David wanted to tell her how important her work already was. That she had never been just a teacher. He had seen her passion for her job. He had seen how much she loved her "kids". He knew how excited and proud she got when they were successful. It was as if they were her own. She may not have been impacting the state of education, but she was impacting individual lives. Most of all, he wanted to tell her how he felt about her. He wanted to ask her if he had been mistaken to think that she had felt the same. Instead, he used his pent up emotions to surge harder towards the shoreline.

Mary Margaret had been swimming for a good while now on nothing but adrenaline. She didn't understand where Emma was. She and David had thought a couple of times that they had heard a boat motor, but none ever came. As soon as she discovered they were shallow enough that her feet could touch the bottom, any residual energy seemed to leave her. Her arms and legs ached. She wasn't sure if the burning in her throat was from her continued talking, or the amount of sea water she had swallowed in the past hour. She literally crawled the last few feet to shore, before collapsing on the sand.

David immediately went to her. "You did good Mary Margaret. We made it. Are you okay?"

"I'm okay, just tired. I didn't realize how much until we made it to shore."

David helped her to move up further onto the beach and out of the waves. He noticed her shiver and realized that the ocean breeze had picked up.

"I'm going to see if I can build a fire. It will help us dry off and warm up. Hopefully, it will also draw the attention of our friends. I'm sure they are looking for us by now."

Mary Margaret shook her head at David, as she hugged her knees to her chest in an effort to warm herself. David stood up and began looking around for what he could use to make a fire. The island appeared to be currently unoccupied, but there was trash and other signs that people occasionally either camped or hung out here. He found a spot just a ways down the beach, where it was obvious someone had made a campfire recently. He added several small pieces of dry kindling to the half burned logs. It didn't take long for him to find a suitable stick and a piece of split bamboo, suitable for making a bamboo fire saw. He then gathered some dry moss and grass to use as tinder. It took several tries, rubbing the wood together to create heat and blowing to help it along, but he finally got the tinder to light. Before long the flames were licking at the kindling, growing stronger every moment.

David looked up to see that Mary Margaret had joined him at the fire. "I'm impressed," she said as she stretched her hands out to the warmth of the fire.

"Military survival training can come in handy. Although I never would have guessed it was because I jumped off a boat that was being chased by paparazzi."

"Well, I'm glad you did, so thank you. I wouldn't want to be out here alone."

"I can't help but think that I should've told Emma and Killian that you fell overboard, instead of jumping in after you. Then you'd be home in your bed right now, instead of wet and cold on a deserted island."

"I'm sure that they are looking for us right now, and with this fire, it won't take them long to find us."

The two of them stood by the fire, letting the heat warm their bodies and dry their clothes. They kept an eye out for any approaching vessels. David had been certain at one point that he had seen a spotlight sweep across the waters, but nothing had come of it.

Mary Margaret couldn't hold back her yawn. "I don't understand why they haven't come for us. What time do you think it is?"

David's watch was water resistant, but apparently that didn't include being submerged in salty ocean water for over an hour. "My watch stopped working at 7:15. That was probably close to three or four hours ago."

"Four hours! Where in the world is Emma? You don't think something happened to them do you? Maybe they were involved in an accident with that crazy photographer?"

David reached out and touched her arm in an effort to comfort her. "I am sure they are fine. It's going to be hard to search in the dark, but we have a fire now. That will help. It may take a little bit longer than we anticipated, but they will find us. Okay?"

Mary Margaret bit her lip and shook her head. "Okay."

David squeezed her arm before releasing it. He took his shirt off and spread it out on the sand. "Here, I know you're tired. Why don't you sit down? Or better yet, lay down and try and get some sleep. I will keep watch and keep the fire going."

She looked at him incredulously. "Do you honestly think I could fall asleep?"

"Well maybe not, but how about at least try to rest? I'll sit here and you can lay your head on me." David sat down on one corner of the shirt, and patted the spot next to it.

She hesitated for just a minute, before finally giving in and lowering herself onto David's shirt. She curled into a ball on her side, and laid her head down, using David's thigh as a pillow. In spite of her protests, it didn't take long for her to lose the fight to stay awake. David noticed when her breathing even out, and knew that she had fallen asleep. He protectively placed a hand on her shoulder, as he searched the darkness for any sign of an approaching boat. The boat had been anchored less then forty minutes from the marina. Killian was skilled captain, he would have known where to look for them. Even factoring in the darkness, they should have found them by now. Although he had been quick to reassure Mary Margaret that everything was alright, he couldn't help but think something was wrong.