Not My Homeland Anymore

Chapter 6: A Feeling So Peculiar

"It's past closing time," Ruby said, annoyed. Emma Swan was sitting in the same corner booth she'd been in for hours, nursing yet another cup of coffee as she flipped through one of the numerous newspapers she had scattered across the table.

Be nice, Ruby, said a voice in her mind that sounded an awful lot like Neal's. Don't be rude to the customers! Granny's voice added.

But she didn't want to be nice! She'd been nice to the older woman when she'd first shown up at the beginning of the week, and the obnoxious witch had gone and attacked Neal. Neal, who wouldn't hurt a fly.

Ruby wanted her gone. But it was already Thursday, and Henry's birth mother didn't look as though she was leaving any time soon.

The woman paid for her coffee and the meatloaf she'd eaten two hours earlier, then sighed. (Ruby bit back a scowl.)

"I'm looking for another place," Emma said.

Ruby blinked.

"Excuse me?"

"I get it," said the blonde. "You don't like me. You don't want me here. And I'm looking for somewhere else to go."

She gestured at the various newspapers, which were open to an assortment of personal ads.

Ruby's eyes widened.

"You're leaving… because of me?" Sure, she didn't want the other woman around, but Granny would kill her if she chased off their only guest. "I never meant-"

"I know," Emma said, sighing again. "I probably wouldn't like me much either, if I were you. But I'm not going to apologize for what I did, either."

"Neal-"

"What happened was between me and him, and I don't need to justify myself to you," continued the other woman. "But I can at least do my best to get out of your hair."

"You don't-"

"It's not all because of you," said Emma, correctly reading the confused and frustrated expression Ruby knew must show on her face. "I can't to leave Storybrooke just yet, but I can't stay at the bed and breakfast forever, either. I've got to get my own place."

"Oh." Ruby wasn't sure what else to say. Everything the older woman was saying was so logical and reasonable, it had taken the wind right out of her sails.

"I don't suppose you know where in town there might be a vacancy?" Emma asked. "I can't seem to find any." And while Ruby did pick up plenty of town gossip here at the diner, she couldn't recall hearing about any rental space available.

"Uh, I think Mary Margaret might have a spare room," she said, her mind whirring.

For some reason, Mary Margaret actually seemed to enjoy Emma's company- she'd seen the schoolteacher come over to this same corner booth half an hour ago, after that disastrous-looking date with Dr. Whale, and leave a few minutes later in a much more cheerful mood.

"I know, she just offered it a few minutes ago," said Emma, answering the question Ruby hadn't asked. "But I told her I'm not really the roommate type. You might have noticed that I'm not exactly a people person."

Despite herself, Ruby found herself laughing. Then she narrowed her eyes, watching as Emma gathered up her papers and headed back to the inn.

She'd written the city woman off as a snob after what happened with Neal, assuming that Henry's birth mother just didn't care about hurting other people. But after everything Emma had said to her, she understood that that wasn't true.

Ruby still didn't like the newcomer, still hadn't forgiven her for what she'd done. But now, she realized that she was also curious about her.

Who are you, Emma Swan?

"You know, you should try singing to him," Henry said, walking over to Mary Margaret as she was browsing through the kids' books.

"Sing to who?" Mary Margaret startled slightly- she knew Henry volunteered here, of course, but he usually didn't say much to her during his shifts (outside of a casual greeting).

"John Doe, of course," the boy said, smiling. She'd noticed his curiosity about the poor man during their visit (which had been awkward enough after last night's mess, going out with the town's only real doctor had been a horrible idea), of course, but she hadn't expected this.

"Sing? Henry, you do realize that the poor man is in a coma, right?" Imaginative as he was, surely Henry had to understand that singing to an unconscious man was a futile endeavor.

"Yeah, but I was doing some research," the boy explained, holding up a thick-looking book. "Apparently, people in comas can sometimes hear what's going on around them, and respond to outside stim-u-li." He pronounced the unfamiliar word slowly, as though testing out its sound. "So talking to them, or reading, or even singing, can sometimes help. And you've got such a pretty voice, Miss Blanchard!"

Mary Margaret blushed, flattered.

"I don't know, Henry…" Singing to a strange, unconscious man was more than a little outside of her comfort zone.

"It never hurts to try, right?" Henry ducked around the stack, then quickly returned and pressed a slim booklet into her hands, before disappearing off to who-knew-where.

Mary Margaret looked down at the slim volume. It was a musically annotated collection of love songs.

Well, that's different.

"What were you talking about with Miss Blanchard, Henry?" Neal looked down at the boy standing next to him, helping him sort through the day's returns.

"Prince Charming," said Henry, moving a book into the stack of biographies.

"Huh?" Something to do with that curse of his?

"I found him when we went to the hospital," the kid explained, and Neal remembered hearing that that would be happening today. "He's in a coma. Miss Blanchard didn't recognize him, of course, and the people the hospital were all calling him 'John Doe,' but I knew who he really was."

"Prince Charming… as in, Snow White's Prince Charming?" Neal asked. Henry nodded. "So you're telling me that this… anonymous coma patient is actually Miss Blanchard's soulmate, she just doesn't remember him? Because of the curse?"

"Shh!" Henry held a finger to his lips. "Don't talk about it out here. You never know where one of the Evil Queen's spies might be listening."

Neal looked around dubiously. It was already after seven on a Friday night- the only people here were Mary Margaret, Archie, and… was that Marco the psychiatrist was talking to? (Neal had been meaning to talk to the old clockmaker about the clocktower. Those bells that had rung numerous times over the past five days got really loud when your apartment- and workplace- were right below them.)

In any case, no one he'd consider 'spy-worthy.' But he supposed it didn't hurt to play along.

"Then we'll need some kind of codename, won't we?" Neal said, smirking.

"Of course!" Henry said, smiling. "How about Operation-"

"Chameleon?" Neal suggested. They were talking about things hiding in plain sight. Supposedly.

"I was going to say Cobra," said the kid.

"Ooh, that does roll off the tongue better," said Neal, laughing. "Operation Cobra it is."

On Saturday morning, Emma and Henry picked up their hot chocolates and headed to the castle to finish the story they'd started on Tuesday.

Emma read the lines carefully, finding herself pulled into the story despite herself. She'd already known the Prince Charming character had gumption, but Snow White was apparently just as stubborn. She felt something resembling regret as she reached the last few lines of the story.

"'…They didn't need words to express what they felt in their hearts, for it was here, in the shadow of the Troll Bridge, that their love was born. For they knew, no matter how they were separated, they would always'-"

"He woke up!" Emma blinked, startled at the interruption. Looking up, she saw Mary Margaret, looking more excited and jittery than she'd ever seen the schoolteacher behave.

What's she doing here, and who is she talking about?

"Who-" Before she could ask, Henry interrupted her.

"I knew it!" Henry said. He looked excited too, though not as surprised as his teacher did.

I'm clearly missing something here.

" I mean, he didn't 'wake up' wake up," said Mary Margaret, her hopeful expression dimming ever-so-slightly. "But he grabbed my hand!"

"That's awesome!" Henry said. "Did Dr. Whale know when he'll wake up for real?"

"He said that I imagined it, but I'm not crazy," Mary Margaret insisted. "I know it happened."

"We have to go back," said the kid, hopping up. "You have to sing to him again!"

Mary Margaret paused for a moment, then nodded decisively.

"Let's go," she said.

"Wait, wait, what?" Emma asked, finally able to get a word in edgewise. "Does one of you want to tell me what's going on?"

Henry was only at the hopital for a few minutes before his mom… er, the Evil Queen… dragged him out, reminding him that he was expected at the library and didn't have time to be galavanting all over town with strange women.

He tried to convince Mr. Cassidy to let him go help Emma and Sheriff Graham. Unfortunately, the librarian didn't seem to understand the significance of what was happening today.

"But Mr. Cassidy, he's Prince Charming," Henry pleaded. "I have to go."

"Henry, your mother would kill me," said Neal, sighing. "Besides, the sheriff has enough to worry about with a missing coma patient, he doesn't also need to worry about you going missing."

"But-"

"Henry, I'm sure Sheriff Graham knows what he's doing. Just let him do his job, okay?"

As they wandered through the woods, Emma noticed Mary Margaret fidgeting with her ring.

A nervous habit?

Seeing the ring reminded Emma of the story she and Henry had been reading earlier, about Snow White and Prince Charming. They'd ended with the two splitting up by a bridge…

Wait a second, a bridge? Suddenly, she gasped.

"Uh, Sheriff?" Emma called, and he turned back to look at her.

"Yes, Miss Swan?" His tone sounded a bit annoyed.

"There wouldn't happen to be a river somewhere in this forest, would there?" Emma really hoped the answer was 'no,' but no such luck.

"Yeah, there is," said the sheriff, sounding confused. "Why do you ask?"

"Shouldn't we check there first?" Emma asked. "I mean, if he's just lost or passed out somewhere, it shouldn't be a huge problem as long as we find him within the next few hours. But if he made it to a river…"

Mary Margaret gasped.

"You don't think-"

"She makes a good point," Graham said, nodding. "Odds are, he's probably not there, but we ought to check, just in case. The bridge is this way."

The first thing Emma noticed was the sign.

Toll Bridge, it read. Or, at least it had. Some jokester had scribbled an 'r' between the 't' and the 'o,' so the sign now said Troll Bridge.

Just like the story, Emma thought. Wait, what am I talking about? Of course this didn't have anything to do with Henry's storybook.

That was when she heard Mary Margaret's screech.

"He's down there!"

Quickly, the three of them ran down to the shore. Graham got there first and started calling for an ambulance while Emma checked the man's vitals.

"He's still got a heartbeat," she said. "His breathing's pretty shallow, but I think we got here quickly enough. Hopefully, he'll be fine."

"Thank goodness," Mary Margaret said, as Emma waved her closer.

"Come on, you've got to help me warm him up!" The teacher seemed to flounder for a moment, then knelt down beside Emma.

"Alright, what do I do, what do I do?" She reached out a hand over the unconscious man. "Do I just…" She took his hand.

Emma was about to roll her eyes- the guy was freezing, warming his hands a bit wouldn't help much. Then she noticed his eyelids fluttering.

The man gasped, his eyes opening wide and meeting Mary Margaret's.

"You found me," he murmured, trying to sit up.

"Yeah," Mary Margaret said, squeezing his hand and smiling. "Yeah, I did."

There was some strange tension in the air, and Emma hesitated to break it with her own voice. Before she could, the strange man turned his head slightly, and, in the hazy twilight, she noticed a familiar-looking scar on his chin.

Where have I seen that before?

"What are you doing here?" Neal asked, staring at the blonde woman who'd just come into the library.

He'd thought it had been understood that she wouldn't come back here unless she absolutely had to.

Great.

"Do you have it here?" Emma asked, ignoring the question. She looked a bit frazzled, and there were still a few leaves in her hair. (Probably from the woods- Henry had mentioned that she was helping Graham search for the missing man.) For a moment, Neal was tempted to reach over and pull them out. Then he remembered that this was a crazy woman and he really didn't want any part of his body near hers.

"Have what?" He glanced up at the clock on the wall, but it was only six- still two hours before closing. Which meant that he wasn't escaping to play Whack-A-Mole with Ruby any time soon. (Which was a shame, because talking to this woman really made him want to hit something.)

"The book," she said, crossing her arms. "Henry's book. You know, the one with all the fairy tales?"

"Yeahhhh…" Neal drew out the word. "Why?"

"Can I see it? Just for a minute?" She closed her eyes for a moment, looking slightly pained, then opened them and said the word that broke him: "Please?"

Neal was tempted to refuse. He'd told Henry that he wouldn't loan the book out to anyone else, and he also didn't really feel like helping this woman with anything.

But he knew that Henry was reading it with her, and that the kid would be thrilled, rather than annoyed, if he knew she'd wanted to look at it on her own.

Neal sighed. He really was too much of a softie for his own good.

"Fine," he said, pulling the book out from under the counter. "Five minutes. Then I want you out of here." He was almost surprised at his own rudeness. He wasn't one to be ruffled by much, and he prided himself on his politeness. But something about this woman seemed to bring out the worst in him.

She nodded before grabbing the book. She sat down in the nearest chair and began flipping through the pages roughly. He reached out, about to try to stop her, when she reached whatever page she was searching for and froze, her fingers tracing something along the page. She had her back to him, so he couldn't see what she was looking at or what face she was making about it.

And for some reason, Neal really wanted to know.

Emma stared at the picture, running her fingers along the contours of the face illustrated in the book.

It was just a drawing, of course. It wasn't as though it was a photograph that she could point to and say definitively 'yeah, that's him officer, that's the guy I saw.'

And yet, her hand still paused at the chin, and she stared, glaring at it, willing all of this to make sense.

But no matter how hard she stared, the scar on the prince's chin remained- a scar in the exact same place as the man she'd found in the woods.

David, huh? It's a nice name. It suits him. And Mary Margaret knew she had no business thinking about such things.

She was startled out of her musings by a knock on her apartment door. She went to open it, unsure of who it might be. She really wasn't in the mood to deal with anyone else right now- the past twenty-four hours had been so topsy-turvy, she wasn't quite sure how she felt right now.

Opening the door, she saw a familiar blonde woman.

"Sorry to bother you so late," Emma asked, apologetic. "Is that spare room still available?"

Mary Margaret nodded. She hadn't wanted company, but for some reason, Emma was an exception.

After Mary Margaret finished showing her around the place, she asked Emma if she wanted some hot chocolate.

"I can't make it as well as they do at Granny's," she apologized, pulling out a few mugs and instant packets. "But a warm, non-caffeinated drink sounds great right now."

"I'm with you, sister," Emma said, smiling. She could tell the other woman's cheerful front was an act, but she wasn't going to push. "Can I get some cinnamon in mine?"

"Oh, you take yours with cinnamon, too?" Mary Margaret asked, pausing by the hot-water urn.

"Yeah, I guess Henry gets it from me," said Emma, only mildly surprised that Henry's teacher knew how he liked his hot chocolate. People in this town seemed to know everything about each other. (Which was another thing about Regina's story that didn't make sense- how had no one noticed that Kathryn's husband was missing, or that the John Doe in the hospital looked an awful lot like him?)

"I didn't know that," said the teacher, laughing. "I was talking about me."

"Wait, really?" Emma asked. Hardly anyone shared her predilection.

"Maybe Henry's right, and we're actually-" Mary Margaret paused, mid-sentence.

"Actually what?" Emma asked, curious.

"It's nothing," said the schoolteacher, smiling slightly and twisting her ring. "I just overheard… someone… mentioning that Henry thought I might be… related to you guys or something."

Emma could tell there was more to that story, but she decided it wasn't worth pushing.

"What do you think the odds of that are?" Emma laughed, sipping her hot chocolate. "How many long-lost relatives can you have in one tiny town in Maine?"

And then she paused, considering the idea further. It wasn't that bizarre of a concept. Twenty-eight years of searching, and she still didn't have any idea who her birth family had been. And she had been found in this region. For all she knew, she could be related to Mary Margaret.

Now you're just talking crazy, Emma.

But it was a pretty crazy town, after all.