"Emma, I should really do this." Charming stated, placing a hand over the smaller blonde's shoulder. His attempt at sounding reassuring only succeeding in reassuring Emma that she needed to do it.
"No, let me, please." Emma looked from the prince to the older woman standing in their doorway. Who she immediately stepped out of the way to let in. "What do I have to do?" Snow was hovering at her shoulder now. With her full-fledged worried expression.
"First off do you even know how to shoot a crossbow?" Granny set the large weapon on the table directing her judgmental gaze to the blonde.
"Point and pull the trigger, right?" Emma asked raising an eyebrow.
"... Basically..." The grouchy woman huffed. "Aim for the hip, or the shoulder. Anywhere but the heart. She heals amazingly quick, even to silver, but she can't survive that." The worry over her granddaughter was obvious in the old woman's tone.
"When she's down get the cloak over her, and she'll change back. Keep it on her though, or else she'll just go right back the second the moonlight hits her." Granny raised her gaze from the fabric in her hands, to Emma's blue eyes.
"I'm trusting you with my granddaughter's life, and sanity. Don't let her hurt herself or anyone else." She then pressed the weapon and cloak into Emma's chest. "She took off into the woods near the inn, trust me even you'll be able to follow the path."
Emma couldn't help, as she drove through the night to the inn, but think that last statement towards her was meant to be an insult.
The spot was obvious, there were scratch marks over the fence, and she could tell by the size of them what a huge wolf Ruby was. She took off into the woods, pacing herself in case she did have to run for her life. It was honestly best to remain realistic.
The path made by the huge wolf was easy to follow. There were even a few places where you could see that she had gone off and come back to it.
The trail led her back around to the beach. The waves were crashing loudly to her right, and the night felt even colder here. Colder and more menacing. The fact that there was no cover here, and that left Emma all too open for attack by Ruby, in her killer form, made the hairs on the back of Emma's neck stand up.
The blonde finally stopped, she'd lost the tracks in the sand, and after turning in the mess of them on the sand she found out why the wolf had made a few huge circles, that twisted back and forth intermingling with each other. She'd been catching sea gulls, and had been successful in catching quite a few of them.
The blonde gagged at the smears of blood and feathers in the sand. The crushed half torn apart, lifeless bodies. They were just seagulls. The rats of the sky.
It scared her, because it was solid proof of the actual beast Ruby had inside her. Emma had never been face to face with the fact of it until now as she turned over a seagull carcass over with the toe of her boot.
Her Ruby, the immature and adorable waitress she knew who made her kill spiders and throw them away would never even be able to look at this. Much less do it.
Looking up from the bird she saw the tracks from huge paws blurring into two parallel lines where Ruby had rather obviously took off after something.
Emma followed them with a sinking feeling in her stomach. She didn't think whatever had caught her attention was the equivalent of a seagull.
She was keeping her even pace from before. Until she heard a long howl. Then she was running. The scream mingling with it fueling her.
Archie stood a good twenty feet from a huge wolf. He stumbled back a few feet. Which the wolf gained.
One stupid thought crossed Emma's head. Wolves hunt in packs.
She wasn't an ordinary wolf. She, this was Ruby.
Emma raised the crossbow, aim for the hip she had said.
Terror gripped the blonde. What if she missed?
The wolf let out another long growl, playing with him. Pongo stood some yards away. One flank of his whit fur stained red. He backed up with his master. Not wanting to leave him.
"Emma!" The psychologist cried. The panic in his eyes terrifying. It was the push she needed. Emma looked down the silver bolt fixed into the cross bow.
Aim and shoot.
The wolf was knocked off her feet. Flying to one side in a squirming heap. Emma flew after her.
She flung the cloak over the beast as she had been told. Dropping onto her knees as she did so. She wrapped her arms around the withering, whimpering creature. For some stupid reason tears rising in her eyes.
Archie stood panting the several feet he had been away from almost certain death.
"Is that... Is that Ruby?" The conscious panted, backing up more in the sand. " I was just walking Pongo, and it showed up out of nowhere, and pounced on him. I kicked it away, but it just came back at me. I..."
"Just go, just please, go away..." The tears pressed to the back of her eyes. Why was she crying? She had been successful.
One of Emma's hands slid beneath the cloak and found the bolt, right in the place where her hip met her body. Still furry, and shifting. She gave it as hard a tug as she did. It didn't come out covered in blood like she expect. Instead it seemed to have burned her.
She pressed her hands to the form beneath the cloak. It was shifting, and she could almost feel the canine body becoming the one she knew so well to be Ruby's.
"Emma-" Archie started again, only to be cut off.
"No, just go. Take Pongo, and go." Emma swallowed her pain. She'd just shot Ruby.
At some point Archie did leave, after several attempts to talk to Emma, Pongo's wound seemed to become to important to ignore.
Around that time Ruby seemed to regain consciousness.
Emma wrapped the cloak around her, and pulled her to her chest. She didn't care if Ruby didn't remember falling in love with her. If she was still totally freaked out about her kissing her. This was still the woman she loved, and she was hurting. So god dammit she was going to be there for her.
The brunette gripped her very suddenly. Grabbing at the thin material of her tee-shirt and her leather jacket. She was half panting, half sobbing.
"What am I." She whimpered into Emma's shoulder.
"You're a werewolf." The blonde responded quite simply.
"I can't remember anything, the most obvious things! I just want to remember! I hate feeling so helpless..." Ruby pulled the blonde closer, and buried her face in her shirt. She took an unreasonable comfort in being close to her. Even if she had jumped her in her secret place.
Emma rocked back and forth, Ruby practically in her lap as they sat on the cold sand. A hand sliding up the lean woman's back, and shift the cloak to pull the hood up over her head.
"I kissed you because I was trying to, to make you remember."
Ruby pulled away, blinking tears away, a very confused look on her face.
"Ruby... Before the curse broke, well, before you crossed the border. We were, together. Me and you... We were in love..."
"Oh... That's what David wouldn't tell me. That's why I feel..." Ruby trailed off. All sorts of things falling into place in her head.
"Yeah, and I thought..., Henry told me..., that true love's kiss would break the curse... Then Regina told me, after I kissed you, that both people have to be in love for it to work..." They were both still very close, and as Emma looked back from the night sky, and the round silver circle of the moon, to the hazel eyes of her once lover.
"So, you kissing me would only work if I loved you?" Ruby knew there was some unexplainable affection throbbing in her for this woman. That though, wasn't love.
"Yeah..." Emma trailed off again, she felt stupid, and vulnerable. What if Ruby didn't even believe her.
"I... feel this way about you. Like my heart knows that we're in love even if the curse made me not remember... I feel like it could be love... If I knew you better..." Ruby let out a small half laugh at the end. Her pulse had sped way up, and she shuffled clumsily backwards to put a bit of distance between them. "Like... I just feel this crazy attachment to you, and I didn't know what it was... until now.."
She felt stupid, and rather scared at opening up to Emma because Emma knew her. She didn't even know how well Emma knew her. What she knew about her. But she didn't know Emma, not more than could fill a page of notebook paper. No more than the basic facts, and a few charactersistics.
"So let me get to know you. I feel like... like I just want to be around you."
All the weight, and confusion, and heartache of the past few days seemed to all be pushed off of Emma's chest, and she could finally breathe.
They were in this together. Together, with Ruby. Together.