Chapter 13

Emma spent the next several days bedridden in the hospital, besieged by a bewildering array of tests, diagnostics, medications, examinations, specialists, and shrinks. She lay as inert as a crash-test dummy throughout, letting them do whatever they wanted and going away inside her head. Give them the dead flesh. Let them call her by the wrong name; it was easier than trying to persuade them that it wasn't her, it wasn't. Emma Swan. I'm Emma Swan.

The nights were the worst. That was when she would lie dozing, unable to sleep, chased through dark and shadowed halls of memory. She still couldn't quite accept that there was no baby, never knowing how much she wanted it until it was gone. She'd always loudly scoffed at the idea of impressionable teenage girls getting pregnant on purpose so they'd have someone who loved them, until she realized that she felt much the same. They had sent a grief counselor to talk with her about the loss, but Emma clammed up, completely unwilling to reveal anything of herself to a perfect stranger. She only said something to make the counselor go away; she couldn't stand the cloying well-meaningness. She hated the idea that talking about it would make it better. She just lay inside her armor, suffering silently.

Once or twice, she tried to tell herself that it was for the best. How the hell would she have raised a baby in a dorm room? She'd have to drop out of school, get WIC or some crappy minimum-wage job, and that was even assuming that she didn't get charged and imprisoned for whatever it was she'd done wrong. She knew it was because of smuggling twenty thousand in stolen watches from the train station, but according to everyone else, it was a pot trafficking conviction. It was like living in a funhouse-mirror version of reality, where everything she thought or imagined was suspect, where she didn't know whether to trust her intuition or the insistence of others, and the majority vote was solidly against her. She was at their mercy, powerless.

When they had finally ascertained that she wasn't in present danger of dying, they brought in the DA, Spencer King, to enfilade her with more questions. Emma remembered him only somewhat from before her coma, and what little she did remember was bad. It got no better. He offered cursory condolences on her condition, then wasted no time in reminding her that he was still empowered by the State of Massachusetts to mount legal proceedings against her. They immediately ran into trouble when she mentioned the watches, and had no recollection whatsoever of the marijuana.

The consequence of this, however, was that her appointed public defender – a young UMass law grad named Jacqueline or Jack, who hid the soul of a ruthless mercenary behind beguiling blue eyes – insisted that Emma was plainly not in her right mind, and that pressing ahead with the trial now could only be grossly exploitative and profiteering off a vulnerable and unwell young woman. (Heaven forbid, everyone present was given to understand, that the American criminal justice system should ever be exploitative or profiteering.) Going toe to toe with King, Jack asserted furthermore that she was far from certain that her client was even responsible for the crime. It made no sense. A good all-American girl from an all-American upbringing suddenly goes banzai and starts hauling narcs, when her deadbeat boyfriend wasn't even enrolled at the prestigious college he claimed to attend? When all the other names they'd turned up in regards to this case were connected to Mr. Cassidy, not Miss Nolan? When Miss Nolan had just been poisoned and put in the hospital in her present confused state, which certainly bore no resemblance at all to the sort of cover-up stunt a desperate drug dealer might just try to pull to stop her from talking and revealing the frame job? Had Messr. King taken that into account? Well? Had he?

Emma was grateful for Jack's vigorous exhortations on her behalf, particularly when King enacted a tactical withdrawal out of sheer frustration and Jack announced her intention to stab him with her Manolo Blahnik if he ever resurfaced, but she couldn't think how to tell the attorney that she, like everyone else, was completely and horribly mistaken. What was this BS about "all-American girl, all-American home?" Were they fucking making fun of her? King clearly hadn't made a long and lucrative career of throwing hapless misfits in the clank by being stupid. He'd do some digging and find out who she really was. That she'd scraped and labored and starved to finish high school, and must have been accepted into BC only due to some kind of Catholic charity rule. About the petty theft, the property vandalization, the removals and re-placements in a demented merry-go-round of foster homes, and conclude that yes, she looked like exactly the sort of person to do this. Then they'd expel her from college, if they hadn't already, and her one faint flickering hope of making anything of her life would go out.

Jack, however, was not one to be daunted by trivialities. "Don't worry, hon," she said confidently as she perched on Emma's hospital bed, her freesia perfume mingling with the harsh scent of chemicals and sterile sheets. "I bet we can make this disappear without even going to trial. Spencer doesn't have a leg to stand on. His shtick is all about scaring people, and if he can't scare me – " she tipped Emma a confidential, girl-to-girl wink – "he's toast. Kaput. Forked. Finito. I can't wait to see the look on the son-of-a-bitch's face when I finally take him down."

Emma blinked. "Okay," she said uncertainly. "Jack. . . Ms. Antonsson. . . I mean, you've been very kind, but. . ."

"Nothing kind about it, hon. This is just my job." Jack whipped out a makeup compact and touched up her lipstick. "By the way, the hospital has been trying to contact your parents, but they haven't been able to reach them since they went back to Maine. Do you have another number we could try? Work line, old cell phone, friend of the family?"

Emma flinched. Of all the painful reminders that came with her mistaken identity, this one was the worst. "Ms. Antonsson. . . I know what they've told you. That I'm confused and making up lies and whatever, but I'm not. I don't know how this happened, but I've been mixed up with a girl named Emma Nolan, and everybody thinks I'm her. I'm sure her parents are very worried about her, but I don't know how to reach them. My name is Emma Swan, and I grew up in the foster care system. I don't have parents. Maybe a snafu in the hospital intake processing?"

Jack listened with a polite, unrevealing smile. "If you think that," she said, in a voice which clearly suggested she didn't. "Okay, how about you do this. Can you get your wallet over there – oh no, you're not supposed to be out of bed right now, let me." She clicked across the linoleum floor in her three-inch heels, then back. "Open it, take out your driver's license."

Emma cast her a dubious look, but did so. She weaseled it out of its plastic sleeve, then held it up. Her voice was small with disbelief as she read off the name – Emma Ruth Nolan – and the address. 228 Applewood Dr., Storybrooke, Maine 04916.

"There." Jack smiled. "I know it's bewildering right now, but – "

"No!" Emma interrupted. "No, you don't understand! I don't know who's behind this, but I think can be trusted to know who I am! Storybrooke's not even a real place! Google it, you'll see. If what you're talking about is true, if Emma Nolan is in some kind of trouble for smuggling pot, people probably have an interest in fobbing it off on me instead! What do I have to do? What do I have to show you – I promise, I – "

"You're not well." Jack's smile remained, but her eyes had become hard and resolute. "I'm sorry, Miss Nolan, but I'm not a psychologist. I can only tell you my laywoman's opinion that you just need to calm down and face the fact that you – "

"No. No, please don't call the nurse." Emma's hand fumbled to catch the attorney's as it crept toward the button. "They'll just sedate me again, and I – "

"Think of it this way," Jack said practically. "Let's apply Occam's Razor. Is it more likely that every single person you encounter is consistently lying to you, that every piece of identification you have with your name on it is wrong, that the hospital and the state legal system have made a blunder of epic proportions, and that everything we know and remember about you and your life is altered, mistaken, or maliciously misrepresented? Or is it more likely that the problem. . . not to be crass, but that the problem is you?"

Emma stared down at her hands. The problem is you. How often had she heard those words during her life? From the matron in the children's home, to her second or third or fourth – or second and third and fourth – foster mother, to countless exasperated principals, to sneering classmates, to even the fortunate few who'd tried so valiantly to be her friend. One by one, they'd all drifted away – whether it was when she wouldn't be their adopted "poor project kid," or she wouldn't go to Vacation Bible School with them, or listen to their tragic teenage problems, or even give a flying fuck. She wanted to, she wanted to be there for them, but no one had ever been there for her and she was entitled to hold onto a scrap of her pride at least. Or so she had always told herself. Considering where it had ended her up, it looked like just as much a fucking shit of a life philosophy as the rest of it.

The bed began to blur as she continued to stare at it. A hot tear rolled down her cheek.

"I'm sorry." Jack patted her hand, then gathered her papers back into her briefcase and clicked it shut. "All right, Emma. See you soon."

"See you," Emma mumbled, not looking up. She heard the door shut, shot a glance at the clock, judged that she had thirty or forty minutes before the nurse returned; since she was out of the woods, her checkups were now every three hours or so instead of one. As much as the hospital was no refuge, at least she could be certain of where she was sleeping tonight.

Emma sniffed, then brutally palmed her tears away, furious with herself. But the wounds were too fresh, too deep, and her grand plan of emotionally deep-freezing herself was not yet complete. She sniffed again, shoulders wrenching, and put a hand to her mouth in a frantic and futile attempt to stifle a small, forlorn, utterly devastated wail. Then she turned on her side, pulled the covers over her head, and silently cried herself to sleep.

The rest of the week passed on the same rollercoaster of hell and humdrum. Emma's recovery – physically, at least – was surpassing all her doctors' expectations, but mentally, to their lights, she remained simply not there. Her short-term memory, faculties of reason, critical thinking, and general sanity were perfectly intact, but her long-term memory had been completely altered, replaced with another life – a delicate and mysterious neuronal misfire of unexplained proportions, like the man who mistook his wife for a hat. There was of course a case literature on people waking up from traumatic brain injuries with completely new skills or personalities, but all the scans and imaging they took revealed absolutely no sites of damage, nothing but what a healthy, active, intelligent, non-smoking, social-drinking young woman's brain should look like. To them, she had emerged from her coma with a consistent, lucid, logical, extensive memory of being a different person altogether, transplanted cleanly into the body of the patient that they had known as Emma Ruth Nolan.

Some of the higher-ups wanted her transferred to the state psychiatric ward for further tests and observation, but this prospect terrified Emma, and she set to work straightaway on Jack. In turn, Jack blistered the hospital brass for being as willing to play politics with this unwell young woman's life as was the legal system, and Jack, after all, was no foe to sneeze at. Thus it was on the rainy Friday afternoon, the attorney marched into Emma's room without so much as a knock, dropped a department-store bag on the bed, and said, "Get dressed, honey. We're leaving."

Emma glanced up with a start. As her physical condition had almost entirely normalized, she was no longer required to be on an IV drip 24/7, and she was sick of walking-corpse chic. For once, she didn't question her good fortune, but eagerly dove into the bag, pulling out a set of fashionable new clothes. She shucked off the flimsy paper gown and changed on the spot, shrugging the black wrap blouse over her shoulders and pulling up the soft fawn-colored leggings, the belt and necklace and boots and scarf. Jack lent her the use of her makeup compact, and as she peered into the tiny mirror and carefully applied her eyeshadow, Emma felt human again for the first time in eons. "Where am I going? With you?"

"With me?" Jack snorted. "Hell, no. The studio apartment's barely big enough for me, James, and his godawful little schnauzer. Three would definitely be a crowd."

"James?"

"My boyfriend. We both work for the state justice system, it was where we met. Only he busts the perps – he's a marshal – and I try to bust them out. Keeps us on our toes. What?"

"Nothing," Emma mumbled, but she'd suddenly remembered that indeed, the officer who arrested her had been named James, James George to be exact. It meant nothing, but it was a funny little coincidence, a piece of symmetry that made her oddly more hopeful of discovering more patterns in this ridiculous distortion she was still forced to operate under. She finished dressing, and trailed after Jack down the hall to the nurse's station.

The discharge process, naturally, took for-fucking-ever. The doctors, if they'd had their way, would have kept her a few more days at least, and there was haggling about the bill since she didn't have health insurance. Or rather, she did, but they'd run the address on the statement through the computer, and turned up no matches. 228 Applewood Dr., Storybrooke, Maine, was – so far as the great informational apparatus of the creaking healthcare bureaucracy was concerned – a completely fabricated place.

"Ha," Emma muttered, feeling grimly vindicated. "I told you."

Jack herself looked startled, but took charge of the situation as usual, managing to cozen them into enrolling Emma in a state assistance program – this was Massachusetts, after all, they did healthcare coverage like old pros. Once the vexing financial knot had been slashed, Jack had a nice snack on the cubicle rat who tried one last-ditch obscure legal tactic. Then she shepherded Emma into the obligatory wheelchair and, all the papers signed and witnessed, pushed her out beneath the portico, into the drizzling, frigid October evening.

Emma shivered, clutching her black peacoat tightly – someone had dropped it off at the hospital. She couldn't help herself from throwing a wistful glance at Jack as the lawyer helped her into the front seat of her Volvo; despite everything she said about it being just her job, Emma sensed a genuine proprietary interest. It seemed greedy, since she'd never even had a mother, but she could almost imagine Jack as a firm but caring aunt. Family.

Then she caught herself. The hell do you know about family, anyway? She was mentally sick, physically fragile, potentially expelled, essentially homeless, and Jack was the only human in the world who currently gave any sort of damn about her. No wonder Emma was already desperate not to be separated from her. But the language of abandonment was written so deeply into her psyche that she knew it wasn't a matter of if, but when. It was hard to tell if Jack actually had her best interests at heart, or just the prospect of taking down Spencer, and she reminded herself not to rely on the older woman for anything beyond the bare necessities.

Emma stared out the window as they inched through downtown Boston, city lights blearing the greyness and the Prudential Tower buried in low, heavy mist. "So. . . where are you taking me, then?" A women's shelter, probably. Maybe a Motel 6.

"Home." Jack smiled thinly. "I had a little talk with the dean of students. You're going to be allowed back into BC on a provisional basis – you're on academic and legal probation. I explained your situation, and they agreed that it would be premature to kick you out completely, but as I said, there are strings attached. You have to maintain at least a 3.0 GPA, and if your pending charges result in conviction, you will be expelled."

She must have seen the look on Emma's face, because she laughed, abruptly changing lanes and flooring it to get around a slow-moving U-Haul trailer. "Honey, I'm your lawyer. You're not getting convicted. Fact is, you could actually walk away from this with a pretty nice settlement, if you bring a countersuit for defamation of character and attempted murder. Get someone put away for a long time, you know what I'm saying? Or – "

"No," Emma interrupted. "No, I don't want Neal to go to jail, I don't want them to hurt him. I just want to know why."

"But you do want money," Jack said shrewdly. "Your kingdom is awfully broke right now, princess. There are the hospital bills, court costs, school fees, rehab, whatever. If you had a nest egg, some security, you won't have to worry while we look for your parents and – "

Emma raised a hand. "Please," she whispered. "Can we not talk about my parents?"

Jack shrugged, but complied. Wonder of wonders, they finally found a moving lane of traffic, and in ten or fifteen minutes more, they were pulling into the BC campus and Walsh; Emma had never been so glad to see a dormitory building in her life. The rain was still coming down, beading in her hair, as she collected the small rucksack of personal effects from the hospital and got out of the car. I'd better hope I don't catch pneumonia and go straight back in.

"Need help?" Jack called through the open window, casually flipping the bird to the SUV that had just roared up behind her and honked. "Piss off, you fucking idiot, I've got my flashers on."

"No. I – I think I have it." Yeah, right. What a lie. What a hollow, contemptible, horrendous lie. But Emma had gotten good at telling adults the things they expected to hear, and she mustered up a smile. "We'll be in touch soon, I guess?"

"Yes. Very. Think about what I've been telling you, hon. The lawsuit and all that."

"I will," Emma lied. "Okay. Thanks for everything. Really."

As Jack pulled away, the SUV rolling up in a huff to claim her vacated space, Emma stood watching her go, heart pounding. She was wracked by a sudden, crippling spasm of anxiety, almost strong enough to drive her to her knees. It felt as if she was falling, the ground coming out from under her while a giant fist strangled her lungs, breathing hard and short through her nose. Everyone, everyone and anyone she met from now on was going to do this, was going to leave, was going to hang her out to dry. She had to suppress an insane urge to sprint down the drive after the car. She felt cold and shaky, about to be sick.

At last, Emma swallowed heavily and turned away. Walked, much more calmly than she felt, to the door. With trembling thin fingers, she pulled out the college ID card with the wrong name, from the wallet with the driver's license with the wrong name and the imaginary address, swiped it through the reader, and went inside.

Since she'd returned on Friday night, theoretically she had the entire weekend to manage the re-entry shock. It did not quite work out that way.

Her roommates, with the best of intentions, had thrown a "Welcome Home Emma" party in the suite, and everybody was there – Wendy and her latest broody handsome literature major, Alice and Jefferson, Irene, and the rest of their friends. In deference to Emma's continued invalid state, they hadn't planned anything too vigorous and kept the music down to shouting-conversation level, but her head was spinning nauseously after the first beer. Worse, while she knew them, they didn't know her – or rather they all knew Emma Nolan, whoever that girl was, and kept burbling happily about how worried they'd been and how glad they were to have her back. It was her birthday next week! Did she have any big ideas?

Emma only sat mute, unable to answer them. While it was comforting that she'd probably have a place to go if she did get kicked out, their conversation washed over her head like a tidal wave, sweeping her helplessly along in the undertow. They all wanted to utter various slanders on Neal's name to her, but she didn't want to hear them. Oh God, where was he? Was he all right? Why would he do this to her, why? She'd loved him, trusted him. Why? She just couldn't wrap her head around it. Why had she been so stupid? What should she have done differently? What should she have known, or guessed? What? What? What?

She had no stomach for frivolity. As gracefully as she could, Emma excused herself from her own party and crept into her room. Crept into bed, listening to the silence, feeling again the baby in her arms, the unlived child, the gaping hole in her heart. Lay on her back, staring into the darkness, until the darkness finally took her home.

She slept badly, both that night and Sunday, and was shocked awake on Monday by the strident screech of her phone alarm, summoning her back to the world of the living. Her eyes were gritty, her wits were wandering, and she had to look at her notebook to remember what even damn class she had. Oh, right. History. Eighteenth-Century Europe I: 1700-1750.

Wait. Something. Something was familiar about that, as was the professor's name. Well, obviously, if she'd been taking his class all semester. But Emma had a nagging feeling that it was something else, though she couldn't possibly have said what. Something that mattered to Emma Nolan, perhaps. Nothing that mattered to her.

Yet when she stepped into the classroom, and every single pair of eyes swiveled as if on a beanstalk to stare at her, she didn't recognize the bespectacled, sweater-clad garden gnome at the front of the room. He introduced himself as Neville Lewis, faculty adjunct, and announced that due to regrettable and unforeseen personal circumstances, Professor Jones would be absent for the remainder of the year. He would be taking the course over, hoped they'd work with him to ensure a smooth transition, and did his manful best to ignore the gasp of heartbroken desolation that echoed from every single female throat. At that, Emma rolled her eyes; apparently Killian Jones had been one of those professors. But there was still something niggling at her, edging her heart cold, an undeniable sense that somewhere, somehow, she had forgotten.

Her sense of dislocation only increased during the week. She felt like she was sleepwalking, shuffling through a setpiece, the prototypical melancholy player while the stage of the world rushed on around her. She'd stopped trying to tell people that she wasn't Emma Nolan, as it was too hard to explain otherwise, but there was only so much comprehension she could feign and so many smiles she could fake before she felt like crawling into a corner and screaming her lungs out. After class, she returned straightaway to her room with a wild expression, and steadfastly refused Wendy and Alice's constant attempts to nurse her. She forgot to eat unless they made her. She had a brief phone conversation with Jack and then a nervous breakdown over the idea of midterms. She'd somehow managed to pull a C on that math exam she'd thought she completely flunked, but more and more, she simply couldn't stand the magnitude of her disconnection, the wrenching, rotten intensity of her grief. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Her twentieth birthday, October 22, arrived with minimal fanfare. Wendy and Alice did their damndest to coax her to dress up and go downtown for a night out, but absolutely nothing could budge Emma. In the ensuing argument, she finally shouted that she was sick and tired of the whole charade, of pretending that she was someone she wasn't, and that whatever girl they thought they'd known before was gone forever. She had been forced by the weight of evidence to at least consider that she'd somehow been known by another name, imagined herself in another life before the coma, but she had no idea what and she had no idea how. There were no answers, or even partial answers. Only a shifting, soulless, endless, empty fog.

Afterward, as she lay in bed fuming and alone, Emma could hear the two of them conversing in low, worried whispers outside the door. Plainly they were going to stage some kind of intervention. Maybe even try to drag her back to the hospital. Well, she'd resist tooth and nail if they did. Nothing on earth was making her go.

That night, she dreamed about a faceless man, a man in black, a man with blue eyes that shone like stars in the gathering darkness. She woke with a gasp just before dawn, reaching for him, not knowing if it was in fear or in wanting. But it was already fading, and when she slept again, she remembered nothing when she woke.

The next morning was a flawless late-fall day, the campus clean-washed and brilliant in its red-gold mantle of leaves. Emma inhaled a deep breath as she stood on the steps outside Gasson Hall, trying to clear her muddled, murky, unhappy head. Across the way, she could see the grey oblong of Stokes, and yet again, some misty filament of memory tugged at her. It was probably just some revenant or remainder, but she had the strong urge to go in. Some old instinct wanted her to follow it. To what, she couldn't possibly say, but it was better than standing here and wondering if she should take up smoking so at least she'd have an excuse to skulk around the bike racks. She swung her backpack onto her shoulder and headed off.

Emma took the stairs to the third floor, not stopping to ask herself just why she knew to go there, and wandered cautiously down the hall, past the history faculty's offices. It being a class day, there was a steady hum of commerce, but down at the end, there was only one person. A little old lady with a cane and a hat and an overcoat, intently studying the nameplate on door 302.

Emma slowed, confused. For some reason, she too had been angling for office 302 – Professor Jones' office, now that she remembered. She cleared her throat and coughed.

The little old lady glanced up. Her hair was perfectly white, her face wizened, but her blue eyes were still clear and sharp as a blade. "Excuse me, miss." She had a posh, old-school British accent: tea and crumpets and the London Times in the drawing room, croquet on the lawn, Sunday Anglican services in a quaint thousand-year-old countryside chapel. "I'm terribly sorry, but would you happen to know where I'd find Mr. Killian Jones, please?"

"I. . . no." Emma was surprised. It was a reasonable enough question to ask; she was a student, she was plainly coming to the same place, the old woman might well infer that she had the inside track. "I. . . I actually heard that he's not going to be around for the rest of the year. Personal problems. He used to teach my class, but. . . he doesn't anymore."

The old lady's lips went very thin. She gripped her cane firmly, back straightening, a sudden, formidable, and fierce demeanor completely altering her entire aspect. "Well then," she said. "That's quite a pity. Because I didn't drop everything and fly here – on a bloody aeroplane, no less – to be ignored. Or let him off the hook. He can run to the ends of the earth if he so pleases. He's not going to escape me."

He had to get out of here.

He didn't even know where yet. Just somewhere. Anywhere.

Gods, he missed his woman. The wooden one. And the flesh one. Both. But his Roger especially now. That was how he'd always solved his problems: raising the sails and running.

Killian Jones, after awkwardly attempting to smooth over the wretched farce of a situation with the nonexistent town he'd told the police harbored a murder suspect, had made one of his decidedly least dignified exits and not stopped until he got back to his apartment in Boston. One sleepless, rum-soaked night, one bloody bitch of a hangover, and one pacing, neurotic day later, he'd decided that it was too late. He'd compromised himself enough, made enough of a mess. The history department chair had convinced him to take a leave of absence rather than quitting outright, but if she knew what a bastard he really was, she'd have sacked him on the spot. He'd offered, racked with rage and regret, but she told him that his students had only glowing things to say about him and the college remained very satisfied with his hire. Not if they knew what I've bloody been doing with Miss Nolan.

Gods, Emma. He'd been fiercely resisting the temptation to at least find out if she was all right; it was better that he shut that door entirely. He'd done his part. Everything he owed. Gone down to her room and stood silently at the foot of her bed, watching her still, lifeless body forced to continue breathing by the ventilator. Fought back his guilt at getting her into the mess. Reminded himself that he was the last person she needed to see, ever again.

At last, he shook his head, stepped forward, and left the note from her father on her bedside tray, by the untouched cup of water, where she'd see it when she woke up. Then he'd bent down and kissed her briefly, chastely on the forehead, an apology and a farewell. He straightened up, turned around, and never looked back. Driven up to Maine with the police, in desperate, hungering hope. And look how bloody well that worked out for you, Jones.

Fine, then. He was done with hoping. Done with thinking he could manage. He had already made himself too vulnerable, and the pain of missing Milah was almost incapacitating. Staying here, knowing that Storybrooke lay so close and yet so utterly far – it would evict the last frangible remnants of sanity from him permanently. If he had any chance of holding it together, he had to go.

Hence, his apartment was mostly in boxes – half of which had never been unpacked in the first place. He didn't have much; he never did. Barely even any furniture. He'd be out of here by the next morning. And he didn't plan on coming back.

Killian was throwing his books into a crate, wondering if he could even stand to go back to BC and clean out his office, when the knock came on the door.

Startled, he jerked up so fast that he banged his head on the shelf, and spent several moments swearing viciously under his breath. Then he crossed the creaking old floor of the flat, took a hard grip on his hook (he'd taken to carrying it everywhere with him) and opened it a crack. "Aye?"

"Mr. Jones?" said the unfamiliar woman's voice. "Killian Jones?"

"Aye," he said again, still more taken aback. He didn't think he knew her, whether from BC or elsewhere. Of medium height, slender and elegant, with smooth cocoa-colored skin and straight black hair, carrying a long, bulky parcel that instantly made him suspicious. "Can I help you?"

"I don't know. I think you can." She shrugged. "I certainly think you can."

"Do I know you, lass?"

"Now you do." She flashed a quick, sly smile, and held out her free hand. "Tamara."

"Pleasure," he said curtly. "What are you doing on my doorstep?"

She shrugged again, then lifted up the parcel, peeling back the wrappings. He had time for an instant of horrorstruck certainty before she held up his own sword, the one he thought he'd lost for good in Robert Gold's mansion in Storybrooke, the one Emma had kicked under the sofa just as Humbert arrived to stick his fool nose in their business. "Missing this?"

He made a grab for it, but she jerked it out of his reach. "Give that to me!"

"Ah." She looked pleased. "So it is yours?"

"Pet," Killian growled. "You have about one bloody second to hand that over before I – "

"Before you try to kill me too?" She didn't rattle easily, he'd give her that. "Yes, I've heard you're good at that. The trying to kill, and the failing."

"What do you want?"

"Since I have this, you know where I've been." She smiled. "What if I told you that I had a way to get to Storybrooke? And a perfect opportunity for you?"

Killian went very still. He'd readily made alliances with frightening women of doubtful character before, if it got him closer to his aim, but for once, he managed to hold his tongue. He just studied her without a word, then said, "What makes you think that name means anything to me?"

"Please." She shook her head, then held the sword out to him. "Here. Good faith?"

He hesitated again, then took it. I could drive it through her right now. Yet that would be just the thing to complicate his disappearance, if he acquired another murder charge – of a person who would be noticed, who was real. Without a word, he strapped it to his belt.

"Follow me." Tamara beckoned, and he grudgingly stepped out after her, down the apartment stairs into the cold night, to the back lot where her car, a silver Lexus, was parked with a U-Haul trailer hitched to the back. She bent down and unlocked the rolling door.

Killian was skeptical and tense, his old fighting instincts on bristling edge; he was more than half convinced that she had something large and homicidal within, and moved his hand to his newly restored sword. But as the trailer door opened, he saw something – someone – else entirely.

It was a young woman in a torn white hospital gown, tied up and gagged. A very familiar young woman with luxuriant brown curls and wide, terrified blue eyes, a young woman who plainly had no idea who he was, even though he'd backhanded her in a cell and nearly killed her. A young woman who, upon setting eyes on him, must have thought he'd come to save her.

Her.

Her.

The crocodile's woman.