A/N: Hey! Thank you all SO much for your reviews and follows for the last chapter.
Hope you will all like this new chapter.
Things will be stepping up a gear soon, so hopefully you will stay with the story to see that happen. It should start from the next post!
The reviews are SO helpful for me to see how I'm doing with the story and whether I am managing to get across what I aim to. It's really helpful for me to see if I'm on the right lines! And I appreciate them so much so please, PLEASE keep letting me know what you think.
Opening the door to the library, Emma breathed a sigh of relief, finding it thankfully empty. She had trodden her path swiftly and silently from her apartment, choosing her timing carefully as to encounter as few people as possible. Stepping into the building and letting the door close behind her, shutting out the fresh chill of the autumn air, Emma glanced around the laden shelves, suddenly at a loss for where to begin.
She had made the decision the previous night, when waves of stabbing pains had plagued her restless sleep. She couldn't ignore the symptoms any longer. She knew deep down something was wrong and it seemed only to be getting worse.
The pains had been there for months, far longer than Emma had chosen to acknowledge. And though Emma frequently convinced herself that her grease laden diet and over exertion from chasing down whatever was the latest threat to grace the small town was to blame, the pains grew harder and harder to ignore.
It had started as a dull ache, something she only noticed in passing, perhaps once every few days. But that minimal impact had not lasted long. Soon there had been spells of pain so intense that she could barely move, struggled to even take breath. And those episodes had only become more frequent. In the past few weeks she had been lucky to go a day without more than one wave of trauma.
It had been a stark realisation as Emma had clutched her chest once again in the crippling agony, that something could be seriously wrong. Unable to decipher in her mind whether the cause seemed more likely to be natural or magical, she had resigned herself to set out on some research as soon as the morning broke.
There was no chance she would go to Doctor Whale. She had less than a small amount of trust in the man, not helped by his one night stand with her mother, nor the revelation that he was, in some life, Doctor Frankenstein himself.
Emma felt no desire to entrust herself to anyone in the town. It seemed like a weakness that she just could not afford, to let any of the residents that close to any form of vulnerability.
So instead she found herself walking up and down the rows of books, glancing here and there between the stacks, trying to decide whether she should be searching for medical dictionaries or scanning the pages of magical tomes.
She ran her finger absentmindedly over the spine of a book, lifting it from the shelf and opening it where she stood, to flip sightlessly through it. Picking up an armful of books from the shelf, she piled them onto a table in the corner, moving through different sections of the library and repeating the process several times over.
She soon found herself lost in the pages, oblivious to the world around her as her mind whirled in action, allowing herself for the first time to feel the panic rising inside her. The loss of control over her own body terrified her. She felt weak, diminished somehow. How could she even be the saviour, the one thing she was wanted for, if her own body was betraying her?
"Don't tell me there's another crisis."
Emma's head snapped up so suddenly as the voice broke through her silent study that she felt her neck twinge. Embarrassedly she felt her hand sweep up to press onto the ache as she looked up to Belle standing just feet away beside her table. She had been so consumed in her reading that she hadn't heard the other woman approach. She noted the edge of sarcasm in Belle's smile and raised eyebrows and gave her a weak but genuine smile in return, shaking her head.
"No," Emma pressed her hands down on the open book in front of her, pushing herself back to stretch on braced arms, "Storybrooke is as safe as...well as it can ever be." She spoke warmly to Belle and tried to keep the weariness from her voice. "Well...unless you count Pongo's latest bid for freedom as a threat."
Emma breathed out a half hearted laugh and Belle gave a humoured nod.
"Still, it looks like you're searching pretty hard for something?" Belle moved closer and Emma laid her arms on the surface, trying covertly to cover the titles of books scattered before her.
"No, just," Emma swallowed thickly as she formed her excuse, "good place to get some reading done for work, Town stuff. Peace and quiet to work, you know, no-one ever really comes here." Emma shrugged.
"Thanks," Belle voiced blankly, affronted. Emma cringed as she realised she had pretty much insulted one of the things the woman cared for most.
"I didn't mean…" Emma floundered over her words, "not no-one," she sighed and resigned herself to honest "I meant my family."
"Right," Belle said hesitantly, growing confused and then concerned as Emma seemed to fade a little before her eyes. "Is everything alright?"
"Yeah," Emma forced herself to a breeze tone, "there's just only so much you can hear about diaper rash and teething gel. And that's without the nursery rhymes that get stuck in my head for the rest of the day." Emma attempted humour before she realised the way Belle's hands had been cradled over her growing stomach during the whole conversation and once again realised that she had put her foot in it. "Not that babies aren't great and everything," she finished stupidly, trying to brush past her faux pas. But Belle just laughed.
"You're safe," Belle reassured her, "this can be your diaper free zone, at least for another few months, then you're out of luck."
Emma gave a grateful smile and Belle took this as a cue to pull up a chair to sit across the table.
"So what are you really looking for?" Belle asked. Emma opened her mouth, about to reaffirm that it was nothing but boring town business when Belle continued, lifting one of the books from the table as she spoke, "because I doubt you'll find much Town information in a book about lung disease." She gave Emma a knowing and almost reproving glare.
Emma stammered over excused for a while, but Belle's soft yet strong presence and tone eroded away at her slowly until she gave in.
"I've been having pains," Emma conceded, "it's stupid really. After fighting ogres and witches snow queens and well, everything, it's probably just strained muscles or something else equally boring."
"But?" Belle pressed further, knowing there was more. She watched Emma's eyes reluctantly meet hers.
"I can't heal myself," she admitted weakly. She had barely let herself think about that one ominous fact and had no idea why she was choosing to announce it now and to Belle, someone she not only rarely had any interaction with, but was also so closely linked to Gold, who no doubt would be able to find use for any sign of vulnerability in the saviour.
"I should be able to heal myself, I've done it before and for worse things," Emma was beginning to ramble.
"Maybe your body's just tired?" Belle suggested, though something behind her eyes belied her words, "you know, magic drains you, so if you're feeling unwell because you're already exhausted, then, maybe you just don't have the energy to summon the magic?" Belle trailed off, not even really convinced herself.
"I just thought I'd check some possibilities," Emma's guard was beginning to rise again as her own confidence waned.
"And you don't want to go to Whale." It was more a statement than a question.
"I think I can do without the flat head and bolts through my neck," Emma joked. Belle's brow furrowed in confusion.
"Never mind," Emma voiced at Belle's lack of comprehension. She shook her head, looking to her lap.
"Well I don't know anything about flat heads," Belle took a deep breath, "but I do know that when it comes to research, two heads are better than one. I'll get us some coffee, you look like you could use it."
Emma looked up, ready to decline, but Belle fixed her with a determined stare and wordlessly stood to get the drinks.
Three hours later, two coffees drained, both women sat in comfortable silence, pouring over their respective publications. Belle had chosen to cover the medical books, whilst Emma took the magical ones, stating that she'd had more than enough dealings with magic with Rumple and would rather stick to biology. Emma held back her smirk and refrained from making the obvious jokes.
With a huff Emma snapped her current book closed loudly and tossing it carelessly aside, moved on to the next. Belle held herself back from reprimanding her for the rough treatment of the item and chose instead to carry on reading, stealing furtive glances at the blonde woman, as she had done all morning.
There was something about Emma's appearance, her very being that was bothering her. She noted the dark circles barely hidden under makeup, the tired and drawn appearance that she hadn't noticed before today. But it was more than that, there was a sombre stillness about the woman that Belle had never seen before, she seemed smaller somehow, and there was something so lost in her eyes.
"What?" Emma drawled, not lifting her eyes from the page she was studying.
"Nothing," Belle rushed, cursing herself for clearly being caught in her staring. She focused back on the paragraph she had paused from and switched back to stealing only fleeting and surreptitious looks to the woman beside her.
It wasn't until much later that Belle chanced speaking again. She had looked across at Emma to find the blonde staring despondently into the middle distance. She steeled herself to keep her words vague and unthreatening.
"There's something here that could be a possibility," she began gingerly, keeping her tone casual.
Emma was brought back from her reverie and turned receptively to hear the suggestion.
"It says here that physical pain doesn't always come from a physical source," she allowed herself a fleeting glance at Emma to see her brow furrowed. "It says sometimes psychological pressures can manifest in physical symptoms."
Belle was bracing herself for an angered response, a chance she was offending the woman.
"So, stress or grief or anxiety could all cause you to feel physical pain." Belle breathed a relief that she had said the words uninterrupted and that so far there had been no sign of outrage from the blonde. When there was no response, Belle braved a look at Emma, realising her downcast eyes had probably given away her guilt.
"And you got all that from the encyclopedia of cardiology?" Emma questioned sarcastically, her eyes narrowed.
Belle had the good sense to look sheepish. She had tried to shield the cover of the book from Emma so it was hidden, but clearly she hadn't succeeded.
"I'm not any of those things, so I guess we can count that out," Emma stated bluntly with such a finality that Belle froze for a second, feeling the ice in the other woman's tone. She almost sounded like Regina, there was something deprecating in the way she had spoken.
"Emma, there's something wrong," Belle edged, the disquiet leaking through her voice.
"No. Really. There isn't." Emma didn't bother to look up from the new book she leant over, but the bite to her words stated clearly that Belle wasn't going to get anything more from her.
"I'll go and make us some more coffee," Belle whispered, worrying that she had overstepped some line and hoping that after a few minutes to regroup in respective private, they could go back to the comfortable ease with which they had been working and speaking earlier in the day.
With a mug held in each hand, spreading warmth through her fingers, Belle made her way from the back office into the main room of the library, but looking over to the table they had been working at, she found the chairs empty. She looked around the room, but it too was empty. She sighed as she realised Emma had made her exit.
Emma's phone buzzed intrusively for the sixth time that evening. She glared angrily at the screen, knowing what she would find.
She watched the phone, waiting until the ringing ceased and saw yet another voicemail notification spring up. That made two from each her mother, father and Henry. She balled her fist, restraining herself from smashing the device against the wall and just allowing herself some semblance of peace. But she didn't even switch it off.
She knew she had to be available if there was an emergency. She was the saviour. If there was a threat to the town, to the people, she knew she would be expected to act, to risk her life to protect them. So she would have to put herself aside and know that it was just her duty to forgo being Emma, and just be their faceless saviour, at their beck and call, should the need arise.
She could almost smile at the irony, in her desperation to avoid any contact with her family, she was plagued by their incessant intrusions. And yet, if she was honest with herself, it had been weeks, perhaps months when they hadn't cared to contact her at all, unless there was some emergency, or something they needed from her.
That was the strange little dynamic the family had seemed to find, Emma knew her parents would always want her, if there was something they needed her to do; but when there wasn't, then her parents had been notable only by their absence. It hurt. Almost more than she could bear. With their perfect son and their own marriage and respective work, they had become more and more distant.
First the family dinners had waned, be it due to work or baby Neal's unsettled sleep. Then the calls had stopped. When she would check her phone after a long shift patrolling the town, Emma would find nothing, no missed calls, no texts, no concern, no acknowledgement that she even existed. She had faded from their thoughts and their lives. And yet now, now when she actively accepted that fact, she could feel them bearing down on her and it was just too much.
Emma leaned heavily on the kitchen counter, palms flat against the cold surface, grounding her. The apartment was once again shrouded in a greyed darkness. As Emma stood alone, she stared blindly at the tumbler of whiskey set between her hands. Raising a shaky and clammy palm, she swept her hair roughly off her face, irritated by the sensation of it, and in a flash, grabbed the glass and knocked back the drink in one fluid motion.
Setting the glass heavily back on the counter she exhaled audibly and pulled the open bottle toward her, pouring another decent measure into the glass and bringing it to her lips, swallowing without thought, eyes closing as the liquid burned her throat.
She repeated the motion, filling her glass, each time a little higher, swallowing and setting her palms flat against the cool granite of the counter, letting it take her weight a little as she tried to drown out the feelings crawling within her.
It had been almost two weeks since her run in with her mother outside Granny's. She hadn't set eyes on the woman since, careful to avoid any public space that she knew Snow to frequent. It hadn't been that hard to do. Her past, running away from foster homes, learning to keep out of the way of the more hostile family members had set her in good stead for her aim.
It had been easy enough to switch her shifts at the station too, so that she wouldn't run into her father. He was there less and less with his growing duties as a new parent, so Emma had found it surprisingly simple to manipulate the rotas to avoid even brief meetings in passing.
It had all been physically so easy, and yet with each action, despite the relief and relative peace it afforded her, there seemed to be a dark edge of panic that set in, a deep ache somewhere in the pit of her stomach that Emma really didn't want to address.
Emma felt her muscles jump and tense as the loud buzzing once again screamed through the lonely silence of the room. Eyes snapping to the glow of the screen Emma could see her mother's name once again. Emma's breath shook and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut, her knuckles whitening on the counter.
She wanted so much to just hear her mother's voice, to give in and fall apart. But she couldn't. Emma Swan, as strong and stoic as ever, she held her body rigid, suppressing the longing for contact, for comfort. She tried to let the anger and indignation flow over her but instead she felt a wash of loss and a gaping emptiness as the phone fell silent.
Slumping to her knees on the wooden floorboards, she felt tears stinging her eyes. Vision blurring through her unshed tears, Emma curled in on herself, letting a solitary teardrop fall onto her cheek.
A/N: Ok, so this chapter kind of came from nowhere...to be honest, Belle's appearance in the scene surprised me as much as it did Emma! She just kind of popped up and wrote herself in there! Ha! But hopefully you guys will think it works too. And...I guess actually, she's kind of an underused character on the show...we really only ever see her with Rumple.
So what is wrong with Emma?!
How long can she really avoid everyone for? And why?
Please let me know what you think. I worry that since this isn't overly "shippy" that people won't be as interested in it. But I promise...a lot of stuff IS going to happen if you stick with it!
I also worry that I am not managing to get the character's dialogue quite...THEM enough...does Emma sound like Emma etc? I would REALLY like to know your views on both the story and writing. The reviews really help me know if I'm on track or not.