Sorry for the wait, this was a another chapter that I rewrote three times. I think that I finally settled on something that I am happy with. Thank you to all of my loyal readers for their support and reviews. Let's see if we can push the reviews past 100! You guys are the best. Hope that you enjoy this chapter. Please review, tell me what you think!
Chapter 18 - Interrogation
When we left the sheriff station, I didn't expect to run into my mother right outside of the building. It was a beautiful day and she was walking down the street pushing my baby brother in his stroller. I quickly wiped my eyes hoping that she wouldn't notice my emotional state. But really, who was I kidding; I had just talked my father down from killing the man who nearly killed me when I was a teenager.
"Hey, guys," I heard her call. Oh, she was awfully chipper. I crossed behind my father toward the police car. I leaned my back against the car and turned my head to look down the street. My father tried to greet my mother with a short kiss, but I could see out of the corner of my eye that while she leaned into him, she was looking at me with concern written on her face. "What's going on?" She pulled her stare from me to look at my father.
"Nothing, we were just leaving to come home for a bit…" I knew that he was trying to push off the explanation without getting into what actually happened until we were able to be somewhere a little more private. The middle of the street was not the location for this conversation. I saw her step around him and approach me. I tried to look at anything but her.
"Emma? What's wrong?" I cast my gaze down to the ground, trying to avoid her questions. She put her hand under my chin moving my head to force me to look at her. "You were crying, you don't usually cry…" she said as matter of fact "…why were you crying?"
I still didn't answer her questions. I could tell that she was getting frustrated with my stubborn silence; she raised her voice but directed her next question to David. "Charming, why has my daughter been crying?"
He glanced up and down the street, trying to take notice of anyone who had been nearby, possibly watching the family interaction. "Maybe we should take this inside." He reached for my arm to pull me away from the car. He held the door to the sheriff station opened to allow my mother, with the stroller, and I to enter. I walked straight to my office knowing that they would follow me. My mother was not going to let this rest until she knew what was bothering me. I saw her do a double take toward the cell seeing that Zeke was securely locked inside.
I sat in my desk chair, not offering the seat to either of my parents. I leaned forward with my elbows on the desk and propped my faced in my hands. My mother waited until David closed the office door behind him before she said anything about our guest, "Why is Zeke locked in the cell?"
My father motioned for me to get up out of the chair, "Mary Margaret, maybe you should sit.."
"No, I don't think that I will," she eyed the both of us suspiciously. I didn't move. I just turned my head to have a better view of them. "Tell me…what is going on? Why was Emma crying and why is Zeke locked in the cell?" She suddenly got this look on her face liked she had finally figured out the mystery. She turned to David, I guess because she thought he would be the one to give her the answer. "What did he do to her?"
"Mom…" I finally spoke up, but she put her hand up to stop me. Clearly she wanted to hear it from David and not me. I looked through the window to our guest and saw that he was not lying on the cot but instead he had moved to the cell bars leaning on them. I'm certain that it was his attempt to eavesdrop on our conversation.
"Mary Margaret…" David let out a sigh. He was struggling to find the words to tell her who this man really was, "do you remember when Emma said that Zeke seemed familiar to her but she couldn't place how?"
"Yeah…" She drug out the word, urging him to continue. He let out another heavy sigh, "David, just tell me already."
He stepped forward, taking her hands into his. He was trying to make the blow as soft as possible, "She remembered," he looked down at me quickly then back to her. "Zeke, is JC's father…Mr. Cooper."
"He's what?!" She yelled. She yanked her hands free from his. She turned to me and I nodded in confirmation. Her hand flew to cover her mouth. The look of shock that was plastered on her face turned to raging anger. Before I knew it, she flung open the office door and was headed straight for cell. She reached through the bars and wrapped his shirt into her fist. Her motions were so rapid that none of us, including Zeke, had time to react. She pulled him toward the bars with such force that his head smashed against the hard metal leaving a gash on his forehead. I just stood there watching her. I don't know why I was in such shock; this was the same woman who tackled Mulan and shot an arrow into the eye of an ogre to keep me safe.
Zeke started to protest, "I've been locked up for a crime that I already served time for and now police brutality!"
"Oh you haven't seen brutal, yet." My mother's words were like a sharp knife.
"Mary Margaret, let him go." David had his hands on her shoulders and was pulling her away from him. As David pulled her, she pulled Zeke until he was stopped by the bars and she was forced to release his shirt.
"You are so lucky that you are behind those bars," she snapped back to him.
I approached with the first aid kit and the keys to the cell. "See, his own safety," David raised an eyebrow to me as he tried to justify why he had locked the man up. David turned his focus to Mary Margaret and he moved her away from the cell. Neither of them noticed that I was fiddling with my keys to unlock the cell.
I had to take care of the gash that was now on Zeke's head. "Lay down on the cot, Zeke." My words were tough and hard, but I needed him to know that I was no longer a scared sixteen year old.
"Emma, what are you doing?" My father asked after he had finally gotten my mother to sit down on the couch. The reality of who this man was sinking in for her. He had one arm wrapped around her shoulders and the other hand was holding her hand.
"I need to fix up the cut on his head."
"No," my mother jumped up again, "Don't you dare go in there with him." My father pulled her back down to the couch.
"He's isn't going to do anything! Are you!" The look that I gave him just dared him to make a move. He lifted his arms in defeat then laid down on the cot as I had instructed. However, I wasn't willing to tempt fate either, so I cuffed him cot as a precaution. I listened to my parents talking as I cleaned the cut and pulled it together with the butterfly stitches that were in the first aid kit.
"Why is he only locked in a cell, why isn't he dead?" I let out a small grunt to my mother's question.
My back was turned to my parents so I could only imagine the icy glare that my mother was shooting in Zeke's direction. But I couldn't resist egging him on, just a little. "If you're lucky, you might get out of this alive, Mr. Cooper." He just smirked at me.
"Oh, believe me, I was well on my way to ending his life," my father answered my mother. "But he seems to think that he has some information that we need."
"Well, why haven't you beaten it out of him yet?" I laughed at my mother's questions. "The same way that he beat our daughter." She yelled to him. Hearing those words from my mother made me wince. But I recovered quickly.
"Karma's a bitch, isn't it?" I whispered to our guest. "How long do you think that I can run interference between you and them?"
"Oh, so you're going to cover your ass by making them play by the rules?" his sarcasm was laughable.
I gave him an arrogant smirk, "Oh, I didn't say that. No…You see, because you say that you have information that we need to know, I'm going to tell you two things that you need to know. Let's call it…incentive…its incentive for you to tell us the truth about what it is that you think you know and for you to tell us in a timely manner." He didn't respond. He just waited for me to continue. "Ready…" he nodded "…my parents have felt very guilty about the life that I was forced to have before I found them and now that they have me back in their lives they are fiercely protective of me. By the way, you can thank me now. Since, had I not stopped him earlier, you'd be dead already. You understand what I'm saying to you? And, don't be foolish enough to think that you can use their guilt against them. Because, see, we've moved past all of that. And I won't stop him a second time." I gave him a wink and removed the cuff from his wrist.
I exited the cell and found that, during my little speech to Zeke, my parents had moved from the couch to the cell area. Once I was completely out of the cell, my mother grabbed my wrist and pulled me to her side. She slipped her right hand into my right hand as she protectively stepped in front of my body.
"So, here's the deal, Zeke…" My father got his attention and he moved closer to the bars to listen to David proposal. "You owe it to us and our daughter to truthfully answer all of our questions. In return we will release you; since legally we can't hold you; and you will cross the town line, leaving with us any trinket that you may have that would allow you to reenter Storybrooke. And once your gone…you won't come back."
"Maybe, I don't agree to your terms!" Apparently he was going to test the waters by being defiant. That was not the best move that he could have made in this game.
I saw the charming grin forming on David's face, "Well, if I recall, a minute ago, Emma explained to you option number two." David stepped a little closer to the cell, "is that a chance that you want to take, because, I pretty certain that no one will come looking for you here in Storybrooke."
It was obvious that Zeke did not want to concede to David's demands, but he didn't have much of a choice. He cocked his head to the side as if he was actually pondering his choices. "Fine," he finally said.
"Good, I'm glad that we understand each other." David unlocked the cell and led the older man to the interrogation room. Once he had Zeke cuffed to the table, he let Mary Margaret enter the room with him. I stayed behind to keep an eye on my sleeping brother. David and Mary Margaret both sat at the table, and I chose to watch them through the one way glass.
Mary Margaret had just let David do the interrogation. She sat there hanging on to his every word. If I didn't know better, I would say that she was actually sitting plotting ways to kill him and make it look like and accident. Don't misunderstand me, my parents were not murderous psychopaths. I actually admired them for their ability to see the best in just about anyone, but all bets were definitely off when it came to me or my brother. "I think we all know that you being here, in Storybrooke, is not an accident. How'd you get here?"
"Wouldn't you rather know why I'm here rather than how I'm here? Because, I think that you have already figured out how I got here. And don't you want to know about your kid's life before Storybrooke? I would think that every long lost parent would want to hear those stories."
"Alright, let's get one thing straight right now…anything about my kid's life before Storybrooke will come from my kid. Got it? She's the one that I trust, not you." I smiled a little when I heard him say that he trusted me.
"She was a good kid, when she came to live with us. Quiet. She just wanted to live her life and not bother anyone. But you could see in her eyes that she harbored a lot of resentment, towards her parents. She and JC made a connection to one another right away. They became close to one another, looked out for each other, like real siblings would do."
David's face was getting red at Zeke's intentional defiance, "I told you, to leave her out of this!" He yelled.
Zeke raised his voice and pointed a finger in his direction, "You need a history lesson here, Daddy!" David quickly stood. I thought that he was going to lunge at the older man, but instead he curled his fingers into a fist and began pacing the room. He was using every ounce of self control that his body possessed to not fly across the table and strangle the man. I was trying to determine where exactly Zeke was going with his 'history lesson.' Because if his intent was to hurt my parents; I was going to kill him myself.
Zeke continued with his story, "I'm not telling you all of this because I'm trying to make excuses, but so you can understand the full picture here. I had a problem with alcohol back then; I got into a bad way. That's when I learned of your world and its inhabitants."
"You're not from the Enchanted Forest?" My mother interrupted.
"You don't know it all, girlie." Ugh, there was that word again. Apparently my mother didn't like the term much either, judging by the daggers her eyes were throwing at him. "This isn't going to be easy for you to hear. I was drinking my way out of a job, and instead of one kid to support I had two. I met this man who seemed to know an awful lot about your daughter. Said she was destined to complete some great task. He told me that if I stopped her, he would make sure that all of my debt was cleared. I was supposed to make sure that she died that night."
My father sat down again. I watched as he slipped his hand into my mother's then I closed my eyes; my heart broke for my parents who just heard that the most torturous night that I ever lived through was actually supposed to be the night of my death. And the man who had become their friend in the last couple was weeks; was responsible. "Who was the man?" my father's voice cracked through the tears that he was trying to hold back. "Who was he?" David slammed his fist down onto the table, making everyone jump.
"His name was Malcolm." Zeke answered.
"Malcolm? Who's Malcolm?" my mother asked. She wiped a stray tear from her face. I knew exactly who Malcolm was, although I knew him as a different name.
"You would know him as Peter Pan," Zeke explained. They all sat in silence for a minute as they wrapped their heads around the fact Peter Pan tried to have me killed to stop me from breaking the curse. And that he almost succeeded. After a couple of minutes, Zeke just started to volunteer information, "I failed. She broke the curse. And now, she is destined for a much bigger job."
"Bigger job? What are you talking about?" my mother questioned through the confused expression on her face.
"I don't have those answers. You need to look within your family." Ok, that was now the third person to say that exact same thing. My family was in this room and none of us, knew what the hell that statement was supposed to mean.
"How did you get in this town?" David asked coyly.
"Ah…now you're getting it. Do you mind?" Zeke lifted his cuffed hands up indicating that he needed to have them taken off. David obliged by unlocking one hand. Zeke slowly showed his free hand then moved it to his shirt pocket. He pulled out a small medal and tossed it on the table. "There's your trinket; the one that allowed me to enter the town."
David picked it up, the looked on his faced showed that he recognized the small medal. "Where did you get this?"
"You're father." Zeke answered.
"My father? My father is dead…" Zeke shook his head in disagreement. David understood, "King George."
This was all getting confusing, what did King George have to do with Zeke? It wasn't making any sense. Apparently, David had thought the same thing, judging by the next question that he had asked. "What is your involvement with King George?"
A sly smile crossed Zeke's lips, "King George, paid me handsomely to make sure that you're nephew made it to Storybrooke and united with your daughter."
"Nephew? I don't have a nephew." David looked to Mary Margaret. I'm guessing that he had hoped that she knew something that he didn't, but her stare was just as blank as mine. What nephew?
"I've held up my end of the bargain. I've told you what I know. I've held up my end with King George. Now it's your turn. Take me to the town line." I guess this was where Zeke's help ended.
"I have one more question…" Zeke knew what the question was and answered it before he David had even asked.
"You need to talk to JC about that." Zeke held up his other cuffed hand. "Shall we go?" David unlocked the cuffs escorted out of the room. Zeke stopped abruptly when he saw me, causing David to crash into his back. "For what's it worth, Princess, I'm sorry."
It wasn't worth much. "Let's go," David said has he pushed him forward.
Mary Margaret stepped up to me. She glided one of her hands down the side of my cheek before she pulled me into a bone crushing hug. "I'm so, so very sorry, baby." She whispered to me. I felt her hot tears hit my shoulder. I closed my eyes and hugged her back as tightly as she was holding me. I had never intended for them to learn any of this, and now they knew it all. Maybe it was for the best.
When my mother finally pulled back from the hug, she placed a kiss on my cheek. As time went on, I was getting more used to their show of affection toward me. Actually I was really beginning to like it. I took a deep breath and smiled at her. I stepped around her to enter the interrogation room. I had remembered that Zeke placed a medal on the table and nobody had ever picked it up. It didn't take me long to realized where I had seen this medal before. It was the emblem that was in the picture on the inventory card, at the pawn shop, of the Crystal Swan that I had bought for my mother. "Where the hell did King George get this?"