A/N: Hey all! I hope you've all had a great holiday and that 2013 is a good year for you – at least Once will be back on our screens! (Stupid winter break.) Please accept my sincerest apologies for not updating sooner. I had to send my laptop away for repairs for what must be the fifth time now. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter. Just one more to go!

Only Just

Pulling her bedroom curtains apart an inch, Emma peered out and exhaled in a huff. For days now, Marcus had been lurking outside every morning just to annoy her. As soon as she left the apartment and it became obvious she had seen him however, he would soon slink off. Where he went and what he did, Emma had no idea. And, having not told anyone of his appearance, she could not justify using town resources to tail him and find out.

Resigning herself to his presence, she crossed the room and rifled through her wardrobe for a clean pair of jeans and a shirt. Trying to avoid her parents wasn't beneficial to her laundry, which never seemed to get done unless she was in the apartment when Snow loaded the washing machine.

Finally coming out with a pair of old, faded black skinny jeans and a plaid shirt that had belonged to another ex-boyfriend, Emma dressed and headed downstairs for breakfast, not even pausing at the sight of her father stood at the hobs frying pancakes instead of her other. Since the escapade in the school, James had insisted against Snow's protests that she take things easy and had taken leave of the Sheriff's station to do all the chores that his wife normally took care of.

Emma seated herself at the table opposite her mother, knowing she would only complain if she didn't stay for breakfast, and pulled her legs onto the rickety, wooden chair until she was sat cross-legged. A few moments after James had served up the pancakes, a large pile of them sat on a plate in the centre of the table forming a miniature Leaning Tower of Pisa, Henry rushed down the stairs, skidding on the wooden floors in just his socks. The precariously balanced pancakes wobbled as he collided with the table and fell over.

"Ow."

Emma smirked at her parents as she stood to help him up.

"You okay, kiddo?"

He nodded, rubbing his leg as he sat down in the seat beside her and speared a pancake on his fork. After transferring it to his plate, he eagerly returned to the pile of pancakes and somehow ended up with almost half of them on the plate before him.

Just as he was about to shovel a large forkful into his mouth, Emma pulled the plate away from him. "I don't think so."

"But, Mom-"

"-No buts, Henry. That much sugar will have you so hyper you'll-"

"-Be flying through the ceiling. I know," he said miserably, dropping his fork onto the plate and leaning down over the table, resting his head on his folded arms whilst Emma grabbed a box of cereal, milk and a bowl from the kitchen for him.

"Psst, Henry," James hissed, holding out half a pancake for his grandson to scarf down.

Henry grinned and stuffed the half into his mouth whole, trying his hardest to look innocent when Emma returned to the table and peered at the three of them.

"What's going on?" she asked suspiciously.

"Nothing," Snow and James assured her.

"Henry?" Emma asked, turning to her son.

"Nkjhgutng," he mumbled, unable to speak properly for the unchewed pancake still in his mouth.

"Sorry what was that?" Emma asked jokingly, eyebrows raised.

"Mne shed nruhng!" he tried again.

James sniggered. Snow elbowed him but found herself chuckling anyway. Emma couldn't help it. She snorted, almost slopping Henry's bowl of cereal over his head as laughter crippled her.

"Very funny," Henry said, his voice completely dead-panned, having finally managed to chew and swallow the piece of pancake. He accepted the bowl of cereal from Emma determined to stay annoyed with his mother and grandparents, but he was unable to stop himself from exclaiming, "Sugar puffs! Thanks, Mom," when he saw the cereal in his Avenger's bowl.

Emma smiled at him and grabbed two pancakes for her plate before proceeding to smother the pile with a dollop of Nutella.

As she took the plate to the microwave, wanting the chocolate spread to melt, James muttered, "Now we know where Henry gets his sweet tooth from."

Emma rolled her eyes at the exact time the microwave timer beeped, and returned to the table with her chocolate-covered pancakes. "I'm not that bad," she insisted. "Loads of people eat their pancakes like this."

"Right…" James replied.

Emma shook her head, but just carried on eating. As soon as she was finished, she made to take her dirty plate to the kitchen, but James beat her to it and scooped up everyone's dishes and cutlery, taking them to the dishwasher before anyone could move.

"Alright, I'd better get to work," Emma announced, standing up.

"See you later," Snow said, easing herself out of her own chair.

"Bye, Mom," Henry called.

Emma hung her purple leather jacket over her arm and waved goodbye as she stepped out the door. As she left the house, she couldn't help glancing around for Marcus, but he appeared to have left; though of course, Emma knew he wouldn't have gone too far. He had shown no desire to leave Storybrooke, though she still hadn't managed to work out why he was sticking around.

Brushing aside the thoughts, she unlocked her old VW Beetle and clambered inside, doing her best not to knock over the various case files littering the car. Her efforts proved pointless as, the moment she started the old car's engine the resulting shudder sent them flying anyway. Sighing, she drove away from the apartment, heading towards the sheriff station.

Trying the door, she figured Graham had yet to arrive since it was still locked. Juggling the case files and her keys, Emma finally managed to unlock the door and flip the light switches inside.

Emma dumped the files she'd collected from the car on her desk and booted up the station's computers, preparing the station for the day's work. She didn't look up from her task of ensuring the phones were all connected when the door slammed, just assuming it was Graham arriving. She still wasn't used to him being around. And she felt she was justified in feeling that. It had only been a week since he'd returned after all. People just couldn't adjust that quickly. After being on her own in the station for months; it was more than odd having him back.

"Don't say hello then," somebody said acerbically.

Recognising the voice in surprise, Emma's head whipped up, cracking against the underside of one of the desks she had been bending under to turn the power on so she could charge her cell phone. Wincing as she carefully stood, Emma came face to face with Marcus.

"What do you want?" she hissed, rubbing the sore spot on the top of her head.

"I need your help," he replied calmly, not even looking at her as he inspected his nails.

"With. What?" Emma spat.

"I've been trying to get in contact with someone here."

"Who?"

"August W Booth," Marcus-Bluebeard-whatever-his-name-was answered irritably, emotion colouring his voice and expression for the first time.

Emma frowned in confusion. What could Marcus want with August. "Why do you want to talk to August?"

"Because he helped you escape me, of course."

"No he didn't," Emma told him slowly. She could remember exactly how her escape had happened.

Emma chuckled at some ironic joke on the TV. When Marcus wasn't around, watching TV was just about all there was to do in his apartment. He'd made it perfectly clear that he didn't want the neighbours to see her coming and leaving, so she was to stay inside. When he popped around every other day or so, he always brought food and whatever else she needed. He usually gave her a little surprise gift too, jewellery or clothes.

In a lull during the advert breaks, she thought she could hear someone approaching the apartment door and looked at the watch on her wrist, perplexed by the fact that it was too early for Marcus to have finished work but the mailman had already done his rounds in the building.

As the letter box clattered and something dropped to the floor, Emma turned off the TV and padded over to the door, mystified. Lying on the carpet was a single key. Emma frowned and glanced over her shoulder at the one door in the apartment that was always locked. It couldn't be a coincidence, could it?

Before she knew what she was doing, the key was in her hand and she was twisting it in the lock. Her breath rattled in her ribcage as she pulled open the door, inexplicably nervous. Stepping into the room, she could barely see. There was no window and the lights were switched off, though that was easily rectified once Emma had found the light switch. As the lights flickered on, Emma surveyed the room in confusion. Everywhere she looked, she was met with the eyes of a woman staring out at her from a picture on the wall. Attached to each photo was an object. Beside one brunette woman was a locket, pinned to the wall. When the lights finally stopped flickering, Emma realised what she was looking at. Beneath every picture were names scrawled in such a deep red-brown ink that it could only be blood. Feeling sick to the bone, Emma glanced down the line of photos, coming to a stop when she found herself looking at her own face, though her name had yet to be written underneath it in blood and there was no memento next to it. Her stomach churned and she had to dash to the bathroom, the contents of her stomach getting flushed down the toilet. Though there was nothing left to come up, it didn't stop her retching.

Still gagging, Emma hurried to pack a bag, throwing in a bunch of clothes from the wardrobe, though the sight of them made her wonder who else might have been given them, reminding her of what Marcus was. A Murderer.

As soon as the bag was full, she flung it over her shoulder and slipped her feet into shoes. Leaving the apartment, Emma didn't even bother to re-lock the room. She didn't even shut the front door. She was too focused on getting away.

Boarding a bus with the cash Marcus had left lying around that she had stolen, Emma couldn't help looking around, expecting him to appear and drag her back to the apartment and bash her head against the edge of the marble kitchen counter. If she closed her eyes, all she saw was Marcus standing over her with a gun. Sometimes he was stood in the kitchen, dangerously close to the knife block. Even when she had arrived in the next town over, she didn't feel safe.

"Who did you think gave you that key? Mr Booth came to see me at work that morning, and whilst I was searching the bank systems for the information he sought, he must have fished the key from my bags. Such deviousness. He was such a smooth liar too," Marcus drawled, making it obvious that he knew full-well who August really was.

Before Emma could reply, the station door opened once more, Graham stepping inside and knotting his eyebrows at the sight of Emma and Marcus.

"Everything okay?" he asked, looking at Emma in concern.

"Fine. Marcus was just leaving," Emma replied, glaring pointedly at Marcus.

"You will help me," he muttered threateningly as he left, slipping past Graham and out the door.

As the door swung shut, Graham asked, "Who was that?"

"Nobody," Emma told him, turning away from him and sitting down at her desk and starting work on the files she had brought in with her, effectively closing the subject.

Marcus didn't reappear that day, though Emma was on the lookout as she left the station for her lunch break and again when she drove back to the apartment. Instead of Marcus waiting for her outside the apartment, she found Snow and James standing before the front door, barely sheltered from the rain.

James walked out to open her car door and then escorted her up to the building where Snow waited, seemingly scrutinising her.

"What?" Emma asked guardedly.

"Who is he?" Snow asked with a sigh, opening the door for the three of them, though that didn't stop James protesting that she should be taking it easy.

"What are you talking about?"

"Graham called," James told her, the two words easily explaining the situation.

Emma resisted the urge to grit her teeth.

"And I told Graham that he was nobody."

"Sure," Snow muttered sarcastically, knowing Emma well enough from the months of being roommates to know when she was hiding something.

"He's just someone from my past," Emma told them, feeling uncomfortable.

"And what is he doing here? What does he want?" James asking, feeling dread in the pit of his stomach.

Emma mumbled the answer quickly, hoping her parents wouldn't hear properly. She didn't really want them to be aware of the fact that she had dated a serial killer and only narrowly escaped death herself. She still wasn't exactly sure she had.

"He what?" Snow and James thundered simultaneously.

Before she could answer, both her mother and father were out the front door and storming down the road. Emma dithered in the doorway, unsure as to whether she should follow them, and was still stood there in the doorway when Henry came down from the apartment to see where she, Snow and James had got to, considering she'd arrived home ten minutes beforehand.

"Mom? Where are Grandma and Grandpa?"

"They, er, they had to run out," Emma answered, stuttering as she tried to come up with an answer that didn't reveal the entire truth.

They stood for a few more moments, Emma staring after her parents, Henry looking at Emma in bewilderment. Aside from her short explanation, he had no idea what was going on.

"Come on, let's go up," Emma finally said, shutting the front door and turning her back on it. "You should eat dinner."

Henry followed her back up the apartment and sat down at the table to finish his homework while Emma warmed some leftovers for him – just about the only thing she could make.

They were both eating in silence when Snow and James returned, the both of them bearing similar expressions of anger. Henry glanced up and immediately looked back at his plate at the sight of them, finishing his dinner and going to his room without needing to be told.

As soon as he was out of sight and hearing range, Snow and James sat down at the table.

"He's gone," James said simply, though this fact did nothing to improve his or Snow's mood.

Emma nodded, grateful that Marcus wouldn't be bothering her anymore. But she still had to give her parents the whole story, something that wasn't made any easier by their hardened eyes as she got to certain parts of the story like the room of death.

When she had finished the story, neither James or Snow spoke, though James stood and walked into the kitchen, grabbing a bottle from one of the cabinets and pouring himself a straight whiskey. Emma glanced at both of them, though neither met her eyes. Eventually, coming to the conclusion that she was not going to hear Snow and James' story of their own encounter with Marcus, she rose and left the room, pausing at the top of the stairs where she would still be able to hear what they were saying.

"James," Snow said gently, seeming to have lost her own anger. There was a slight clink as she presumably took the whiskey from him and placed it on the counter.

"He-he said he was going to-to kill her and keep-keep her hair," he angrily ground out, having difficulty re-verbalising what he'd been told.

Emma gasped. She had known when she found the room that Marcus had been planning to kill her, but she hadn't known he was going to cut off her hair and hang it beside her picture.

"I know," Snow whispered. "But he didn't. He won't."

Emma didn't know what surprised her more, what Marcus had intended or James losing his composure and breaking down sobbing. As she listened to her mother shushing him, she found herself feeling guilty for eavesdropping on their privacy and quietly walked into her room, keeping her horror to herself even though she knew she wouldn't sleep a wink. Already she could feel the old nightmares returning, and that familiar feeling of the absence of safety that she had so long been without. Its reappearance almost crippled her with fear. But she kept it all inside though it threatened to spill past her walls. She kept it to herself. Only just.

A timeline so you can hopefully avoid confusion:

Reunion (Chapter 2) – Same day as the breaking of the curse

Witch Hunt (Chapter 12) – Same Day as the breaking of the curse

Parents together (Chapter 6) – 1 day later

Wooden Man (Chapter 8) – 2 days later

The Big Bad Wolf (Chapter 4) – 2 days later

A Bug's Life (Chapter 13) – 4 days later

Fathers (Chapter 14) – 6 days later

Bluebeard (Chapter 16) – 6 days later

Up Goes the Beanstalk (Chapter 7) – 1 week later

Hiking trip (Chapter 9) – 1 and ½ weeks later

Huntsman (Chapter 3) – 2 weeks later

Making Mischief (Chapter 15) – 3 weeks later

Only Just (Chapter 18) – 3 weeks later

Regina chapter (Chapter 17) – 3 and ½ weeks later

Storming (Chapter 1) – 1 month later

Dance with Somebody (Chapter 11) – 1 month later

Dreaming (Chapter 5) – 5 weeks later

A Fairy Mystery (Chapter 10) – 5 weeks later

A/N: I know this was pretty grim in a way, but I hope you still liked it. I'd really appreciate your thoughts and opinions on this chapter, particularly as it's not often I write this kind of crime/horror type stuff. Constructive criticism is welcomed. Please be honest, as I do want to improve my writing further. I really can't tell you how much I value your feedback.

Thanks so much for reading! Much love, SabreDae

xxxxxx