"Impressive."
Gold muses as he watches the two young women burst into the empty crawlspace behind his office. Pulling the curtain back into place, he turns to the Sheriff who currently shares the small, one-bedroom apartment with him opposite his shop with a smile.
"Much sooner than I'd expected, Miss Swan. I believe I placed my bets for tomorrow afternoon. I forget what you wagered?"
Green eyes regard him balefully from the bed as the blonde remains silent. After finding her this afternoon, bloodied and with the scrap of material he had used as a gag hanging uselessly around her throat, he has left her mouth uncovered.
It turns out the Sheriff is a woman of few words when in her current predicament.
Limping over to perch beside her, he fusses aside the messy curls that tickle her face; their tips stained a dull maroon. Sighing when Emma flinches away from him with a furious flash of her teeth, he rolls his eyes as he laments her undesirable behaviour.
"How's the pain?"
He asks, surveying her critically as his attention falls to the blood-stained rags bound tightly around her injuries. The blonde's face remains alarmingly ashen, while cool green glitters feverishly from beneath bruised lids, her pale lips chapped and bloodless, but she has remained both characteristically insolent and thankfully coherent since his lacklustre attempt to staunch the bleeding at her wrists, so he pays her worrying aesthetics little mind.
"Do you want to use the bathroom before we figure out what to do with you?"
Gold enquires graciously, only to be met with glowering silence. He supposes he should be used to such ill-mannered, childish behaviour by now. Pressing a finger cruelly against the sodden fabric of the Sheriff's makeshift bandages, he's awarded a pained snarl and he moves so that he sits nose to nose with the young woman.
"I said, do you want to use the bathroom?"
"Go fuck yourself."
"Really, Sheriff!"
Gold laughs, shaking his head in amusement as though the blonde has just shared a particularly humorous joke. Raising an eyebrow at her curiously, he simply remains seated and enjoys her silent company.
Her white dress and woollen tights both carry ugly blemishes from her foolish little bit of mischief earlier in the day, and he itches to change her but doesn't see how this would possibly go down well in her current state.
In her conscious state.
Sighing, his attention wanders back to the blood-dampened fabric covering her wrists and he frowns. He has changed her makeshift dressings once already since finding more suitable scraps of material than the sleeves of his ruined suit, and still, the pale blue fabric is blotted an ugly maroon. He knows little about medicine, but understands enough to be certain that the blonde is in need of stitches, and that forgoing them will leave her with crude scarring at the very least. He would almost say such a fate would serve her right, but he can't help but grimace at the mental image of the state of her right hand - now mercifully hidden - and the wary knowledge that if the bones she's shattered in her bid for freedom aren't set soon, she will likely lose the use of her fingers.
She's a curious young thing, and the thought bothers him.
But such is life.
She should have been better behaved.
Lesson learnt.
"Do you want another painkiller, dearie?"
He asks, and Emma doesn't react, but then he hadn't really expected her to. He'd discovered early on that to offer the blonde anything is a mistake. What is offered to her, her stubbornness refuses. Taking matters into his own hands, he simply feeds the chalky tablet firmly between her lips and holds up a can of coke so that she can swallow it down. He looks away as she does so; having also found that, if given the small hints of privacy he is able to offer her, the Sheriff is not entirely idiotic.
"Good girl."
He praises gently. She looks up at him miserably in response, and he's glad that she's stopped asking him why he is doing this to her. She seems unable to comprehend the idea of there being a bigger picture, and, as little as it bothers him to be thought of as 'evil', to be stuck in a room with only the injured Sheriff's angst for company has been wearisome.
"Why don't you try and get some- Oh!"
He exclaims as a knock on the door startles them both, and Gold chuckles at the sudden hope that alights the blonde's eyes. She opens her mouth - presumably to yell out - but the pawnbroker's laughter, along with the amused shake of his head has her voice catching in her throat.
"Not a valiant rescue, I'm afraid. Not yet. Fear not, dearie, our guest doesn't bite."
He assures. Pushing himself up from the bed and grabbing his cane, Gold offers the Sheriff a warning glance before making his way from the bedroom out into the living area. Limping over to the door, he peers through the peephole, before pulling it open and beckoning his guest inside.
"You found your way up the inner staircase alright, I see?"
"Evidently. A curious design, is it not?"
"Curious, but undeniably useful. I believe this apartment once served as a janitor's live-in space, hence the separate access."
"How fortunate."
"Indeed... Do you have what I asked for?"
"I do. Who's your problem?"
"The Sheriff."
"The Swan woman? Emma?"
Jefferson raises an eyebrow as he pulls a small, velvet pouch from his tailcoat. He has found himself ever more intrigued by the young woman in question over the past few weeks, having started out merely watching her on occasion out of general interest; finding her arrival and that of the writer to be fascinating. His attention had fallen more often on the blonde than on August, simply due to the fact that the station's windows face North, and thus offer him a better view.
At least, that had been the case until two weeks ago.
As a recluse, he spends little time in the town; venturing out seldomly for the sole purpose of restocking his pantry. As such, it had taken him a good few months to find out anything more about the blonde than those things pertaining to what he'd spied through his telescope: Her favoured jacket. The way she wears her hair down when addressing company but ties it away from her face when alone. Her tendency to pace around her small office with a pen held to her lips as though nursing a cigarette. Her slow improvements with the dartboard that hangs on the far wall by her desk... All these things he knows, but it was only two weeks ago that he'd learnt of the Sheriff's name.
Emma.
And wasn't that just a little too coincidental?
"She's the-... It's her?"
"It is."
"You're sure? You-... What was that?"
Jefferson cocks his head to the side as the pawnbroker frowns; a heavy thud from the bedroom catching them both off guard. Giving the madman a stern glance, Gold follows him through the door to the blonde's makeshift cell.
"Again?! Really, Sheriff?!"
He grumbles irritably, dark eyes flashing angrily as he watches the blonde pull her knees up into her chest as she curls up on the floor; her legs having given out beneath her and her senses telling her to give up on a lost cause as her inelegant crawling had been laughable at best.
"Bad move, little girl-"
"-Oh, stop that."
Gold pushes aside the gun Jefferson trains on messy curls irritably, rolling his eyes as he uses the toe of his shoe to nudge the blonde's hip. She growls at him angrily, but he pays this little mind.
"She was trying to get away!"
The hatter whines as he re-holsters his gun; unappreciative of being reprimanded quite so patronisingly.
"Of course she was! Why did you think I asked you to come here?!"
Gold challenges, before leaning heavily on his cane and pointing at the Sheriff.
"Help me get her back on the bed."
In spite of his words, he offers no assistance as the younger man reaches down to pull at the blonde's long arms carelessly in an effort to hoist her back onto bloodstained sheets.
"Careful! She's not a rag doll."
Gold snaps, and the madman bristles but sets the Sheriff down a little more gently; eyes flashing with amusement as she glares up at him with seething fury.
"Pretty thing, isn't she? And you can see where she gets some of her features from. She has her moth-"
"-Go wait in the other room. I will see to you shortly. I wish to make something clear to our young Sheriff."
Gold orders, and Jefferson scowls as he finds himself rudely dismissed but stalks obediently back into the living room. He has numerous questions of his own, and he imagines they will be answered much sooner if he stays on the pawnbroker's good side.
And besides... He's not a man you'd wish to cross.
Waiting until the door clicks shut behind his guest, Gold turns for the bed, leaning down to study the blonde with his fists gripping his cane.
"A rather bad move on your part, don't you think?"
He demands.
"Fuck you."
Emma grunts wearily.
"Fuck me? That's all you have to say? 'Fuck you! Fuck you!'... How dull. Never mind, it matters not, because here's the thing, Miss Swan; you can bitch and hiss however much you please and it will make no difference whatsoever to me... But, you try something like that again, and I'm going to grow pretty tired of your games... Now, listen up. There are two ways out of this room, dearie. Either, you can attempt to crawl your way over to the window over there, only to find that it's nailed shut - a factor I would pay little concern, given the fact that even if you were able to climb down, you would most likely crack your skull open in the process - or, you could try leaving through that door right there. Now, you and I both know that you're in no fit shape to be outrunning anyone right now, but, nevertheless... Show me such insolence again, and I'll break your legs. Do you understand me?... Do you understand?!"
"Hey!"
Gold laughs dryly at the self-righteous snarl the blonde offers him as he raps his cane pointedly against her shins. She has yet to beg or crumble down weeping since her panic attack earlier, and this is something he has privately found rather endearing. Perching down on the side of the mattress companionably, he tuts as he notes that the saturated rags around her wrists have begun to stain her dress where they rest in her lap. Shaking his head, he gives her knee an apologetic squeeze, ignoring the flash of teeth the gesture earns him.
"I'm going to hope that you heed my warning, Miss Swan. I don't want to hurt you; it isn't part of my plan at all. But, I will if you make me. Now. Be a good girl and sit tight. Master Jefferson is here to fix you up some tea which will make this all much more comfortable for you, dearie."